Girls Smash, Grrls Riotous!

I don't know if anyone saw this - The Daily Male's Hi-Larious reportage on last week's student protests in London: it went under the headline Young, bright and pretty: The day girl students went to war over tuition fees... and the pupils who just wanted a photo for Facebook

Yes, you can see where this is going. Some highlights:

"among the thousands of people who brought chaos to Westminster yesterday, a remarkable turn-out of well-dressed, well-spoken teenage girls swelled the ranks."

"If you had seen them in their short skirts and trendy scarves, you might have thought that a few chants and a bit of banner-waving would be the limit. But almost as soon as some mindless thugs began trashing a police van abandoned in the middle of Whitehall, the girls went into battle."

It wasn’t quite Cheltenham Ladies College, but several of these girls, it emerged, were from respectable schools and decent homes."

"Had this been a girls’ schools winter camp somewhere, it would probably have been quite fun. But somehow the backdrop of the Houses of Parliament – not to mention the police corralling these youngsters with thousands of hooligans, yobbos and criminally minded troublemakers – lent it a rather different beat."

"What made it different was the feminine touch, if that is the right phrase to describe so many young female faces joining the rebellion."

The reasons for the Mail's confusion can be isolated to three main issues. These are:

1) the class
2) the sex
3) and the attractiveness of the protesters.

"Why," asks the Mail, "would a pretty person be unhappy? Why, indeed, would anyone who had gone to the trouble to buy a nice scarf have cause for complaint? What luck if you are a girl, to have a fine face and bright disposition! Your parents are already proud of you, and one day they will offer you to a man along with a good dowry, and he will take care of you. But wait, you want to go to University first? I suppose Kate Middleton did it and it didn't do her any harm, she met a Prince after all, and she was only middle class to start off with! In fact, it is imperative for you to go to University my sweet."

"BUT WAIT! Government cuts slashing arts and humanities budgets??? My little dear, how will you take your Eng Lit degree now? You can't study the hard sciences, and you're not nearly pragmatic enough to earn a living after you graduate. I mean, I never intended you to work a day in your life. If you don't meet Mr Big Income, or Mr Royal, will Mummy and I have to fork out for your needless perusals of Shelley for the next twenty years? That seems deeply unfair, and we have been planning on retiring to the Caribbean for so long."

"No University for you, India, and damn the consequences. India? Oh my goodness, is that her, in her Cheltenham Ladies College blazer, with her arm around a man with Tartan trousers and dreadlocks, shanking a copper? Good god, little India has become a socialist while we weren't even looking!"

Middle class parents - I, Posie Rider, urge you to support the anti-cuts league, protect your daughter's futures! If she doesn't go to University somewhere like Oxbridge, Durham or St Andrews, and study a solid liberal arts degree, god only knows what could happen!



WE KNOW WHERE THIS SORT OF THING LEADS!

PUT THAT WOMAN DOWN!

And better luck this week, girls! Keep smashing, keep looking great! xxx

Women: inherently irrational?

Halt, lady readers, don't book your hostels in Cambridge just yet, as the Valentines launch has been postponed. This time, it's not because I tried to kill myself, but due to publishing technicalities. I'm not bitter, but I do wish I had a bloody boyfriend. Oh the world of a lady writer! Speaking of Lady Writers, in 1925, Scottish Lady writer Willa Muir penned Women, An Enquiry, in which she frustratingly linked the Freudian unconscious with the female gender, and the rational, decisive consciousness with, you guessed it, men. Now, far be it from me to support gender essentialism: I've met plenty of Transfolk and I tell you, it's definitely not as simple as all that. Some mornings I don't feel anything like putting on a bra, and my formidable skills at Scrabble alert me to the fact that frequently I am able to be perfectly rational and on top of things, unlike poor Willa Muir who thought that women were given an important 'creative outlet' in motherhood to match all the fun inventions and science the boys got to do. Silly bitch. The irrational, spontaneous and emotional outbursts of the unconscious/women could, Muir claimed, be channelled creatively and supply society with valuable growth, vitality and humanism, something which starchy men, trapped in their mechanical functionalism, were unable to supply for themselves (for some reason).

Generally, I disapprove, but when it comes to publishing schedules, perhaps Muir was right about women's inherent inability to meet deadlines. Now, one publication which definitely did get off the ground successful was Issue 2 of the Cambridge Literary Review which launched last night in (you'll win a pair of my knickers if you guess it successfully ...) yes that's right, Cambridge! I was trapped in familial pow-wows last night with Aunt Lily over what to do with vast chunks of the family 'fund' which were invested somewhere truly ghastly which might not exist anymore (further proof of our gendered inability to cope with masculine rational constructions, I'll thank you Helene Cixous). The outcome of this was that I missed the launch, which promised to be a good one, with readings from tender Valkyrie Marianne Morris and Tony Robinson from Time Team! I was very glad to have a poem I composed in honour of fleur du mal, Tom Chivers included, and to be able to represent the gritty London scene in the formidable, ivory cloisters of Cambridge, like a female Jude the Obscure, although of course I still use my cantab.net address occasionally.

Do please check it out. Finally, many apologies to those who turned out to see me at the Edinburgh Student Fringe Festival's feminist poetry event, Shout Out! on the 18th Jan, where I had intended to read. After walking around an intimidating student union, full of 'young people' and scores of the sort of idiotic girls who are produced like Sea Monkeys every time a new 'mega-trend' takes off, this time wearing fake fur jackets and palpable Topshop irono-novelty brogues, I chanced upon a sign which made me realise the reading had in fact taken place the day before. Proof, if proof is necessary in your gendered framework of fixed texts and unambiguous language, that women are subject to what Julia Kristeva calls feminine time, which is circular, reproductive, and eternal, in contrast to masculinity's linear, teleological time and its association with culturally valued 'progress'. I contend that if the poetry reading had been feminist, it would still be going on now.

Finis

(or is it? another feminist question)

Why Women Are Really Afraid of Psychologists

Last week's news coverage of a would-be psychologist's proof that women are 'genetically predisposed to be socially conditioned in certain ways', aka to be afraid of spiders, while men are less likely to fear spiders, has to be the most depressing thing ever. EVER. Here are some highlights from the Sky News coverage.


Why Women are Really Afraid of Sexist Spiders

Psychologist Dr David Rakison from Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University tested 10 girls and 10 boys, all aged 11-months, with pictures of spiders to see how they reacted. He showed them images of a spider next to a fearful cartoon face and a spider next to a happy face. Dr Rakison's report, published in the New Scientist, states that the girls looked at the picture containing a happy face for longer than the scared one. However, the boys looked at both images for an equal amount of time.

He concluded that the girls found the happy face puzzling as they were expecting to see the spider paired with a frightened face.The psychologist said these tests show that girls have a genetic predispostion to fear the arachnids in contrast with boys who do not ... He linked the difference in results to our hunter-gatherer ancestry when he says women had to be wary of dangerous animals to protect their children, whereas men used more risky behaviour in order to be successful hunters.

Let's ignore the obvious - that 20 individuals tested is not representative of ANYTHING - and have a little look that Dr. Rakison's conclusions.

Firstly, I must ask, why didn't they monitor the amount of time the girls looked at the image of the spider? I had to delete the tarantula image from the article just to write this blogpost! There's every chance that they just enjoyed looking at the happy face. People are cute like that.

Or perhaps the girls, by the age of four, have learnt that spiders are often frightening, and were intrigued by the mixed messages being sent by scientists. This would have nothing to do with their innate predisposition for fear, more to do with their enhanced sensitivity to social mores in the abstract, which the silly (or 'indifferent') boys lack.

Another technical problem with the research is that Rakison doesn't seem to have used a control. In this case, I imagine an image of something innocuous like a circle or triangle next to a happy then scared face would demonstrate whether the amount of time the children looked at the image had anything to do with their enjoyment of the expressions thereon, or sheer confusion of the object and expression being put together.

Rakison's 'social' conclusions don't make sense either. I'm sure any mother would willingly mash a spider or fling a snake out the cave door to save her precious little ones. Otherwise she'd have to stand on a boulder or something squealing until a Manny Man came home, by which time the kids would all be dead.

More convincingly, maybe women in this day and age are allowed to indulge their fears more in infancy, and are encouraged to take delight in the attention of others (a nasty tarantula on my pretty pink dress, eek!) whereas men are encouraged to overcome them in shows of bravado. Social construction of gender anyone? Oh nevermind.

Anyway, none of these musings on the sexism of spiders matter anyway because

TWENTY INDIVIDUALS TESTED IS NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF ANYTHING.

Another 'latest bloody study about women' reels its ugly head once more...

Hi gals! Just when you thought science had unearthed every possible truth about women, another ugly American lab rat reels its ugly head to correct you. Now don't get me wrong, I don't mind rats and I actually love science (I got an A at GCSE!) however, one has to ask the timely question: do these people have a f**king clue what they're talking about?

Point in case: the latest research has shown that women who are optimistic have a 9% lower risk of developing heart disease and a 14% lower risk of dying from any cause after more than eight years of follow-up.

In comparison, cynical women who harbour hostile thoughts about others or are generally mistrusting of others were 16% more likely to die over the same time-scale.

First, what the hell does 'follow-up' mean? Is that a form of malnutrition? Second, I know exactly what category I fall into. Since my break up with Martin earlier this year I've been feeling so happy and content with myself that I think I might live until I'm 102! Ha ha ha hahaha. Yes. However, I also know how it feels to want to stab strangers, especially when walking down the street on a Tuesday morning in the rain with a stonking hang over, wearing no shoes having just woken up by a canal in the suburbs of Manchester next to a tramp with his trousers down. That certainly didn't do my life line any favours at all!

Also has science ever given any thought to what might happen to the lovely optimistic women when they're 'hostile' sisters run at them with nothing but a big grudge and a carving knife? They wouldn't live so long THEN would they smarty-pant science?

Everyone have fun! Love you gals!

Hugs and pugs x

Intelligent women have better orgasms

Boffins say...

Is the above true? I'm not sure. I'm often thinking of other more esoteric things while having sex, which can distract from the task at hand. Questions like 'Whatever ever happened to the Amber Room?' or 'Palestine: a two state solution?' The list is endless...

Can men be feminists?

William Godwin, John Stewart Mill, John Lennon, the list of male feminists is endless(ish), but can men ever really be feministing when they lack that all powerful 'fe' suffix?

Posie Rider says "no". Men jumping on the band wagon of female endeavours has been going on for years. They have taken over cooking (Jamie stole the limelight from our Dehlia); clothes (Matthew Williamson); and makeup (transvestites and media types). And now Feminism too?

Well I say "no", you bastards. My ex said he was a feminist but he wasn't; he was a fucking liar! J. S. Mill travelled round the east end of London distributing 'contraception literature' to prostitutes because he believed in the sovereignty of free speech: he was doing it in the name of liberalism, not feminism.

Feminists have argued that liberalism even hinders the agenda. Although she is my idol, I had to take on board Dr Kapur's* comments about Catherine MacKinnon at a recent feminist networking lunch. Kapur argues that MacKinnon's discourse of liberalism (particularly neo-liberalism, which sporned the deathchild post-feminism and it's evil twin 'men can join in too') only works to 'victimize' women. Discussions of female rights have spiralled out of control, as Western values dictate the agenda and acquire the despotic qualities of patriarchy. Feminists like myself aspire to label the conditions of alternate cultures as good/bad; just/unjust, without having any concept of the complexities at hand. For instance, I only found out the other day that Egypt was in Africa. How could I have known that when I live on the other side of the world?

I can only conclude that if feminists must be cautious when conversing with our sisters from abroad, how are men expected to understand the problems of women? They 'Other' us because they must.

I DO like Martini Rosso though.

* Please see Kapur's wonderful book Erotic Justice

Saw this and thought of you all!

By the way- do you know Martini Rosso only contains 7 calories a gram?


Toodles!

Police brutality all too familiar?

Over the last week, we have seen two instances of shocking police brutality. Against both the G20 protestors and the Tamils, horrified at the violence in their ancestral home, police have used force and violence against peaceful protesters, utterly disregarding the safety of the public and their rights to gather and demonstrate, all in the name of maintaining the status quo. Am I disgusted? Yes. Am I surprised? No. It looks all too familiar to me. Remember, all yea who take the vote for granted, the Suffragettes were considered radical and subversive once too.

Spot the odd one out...

It's this one.

"Working Women Caused the Credit Crunch" - Satire and its Limits

I suppose I should be getting annoyed about the Michelle ObARMa fiasco, but who has the patience?

I think Posie has been keeping herself too busy trying to stop chauvinism in interpersonal politics, when really she should have been attacking chauvinism in the economy and in environmental issues. I’ve just signed up to Plane Stupid, and not only because I want to dress up as a Suffrajet and chain myself to Parliament like Lily Kember.

As a freelancer with no savings or debts to speak of (except for Aunt Lily's trust which the lawyers say is unaffected) I can't really identify with most of today’s economic concerns. However, I can tell bloody-mindedness when I can see it, and I can see it now. It’s time for Posie to get financial.

Last week, I was most cruelly confused by the Irish Times' article "Working women almost certainly caused the credit crunch". The alleged author, Newton Emerson - a foolish name, my lady premonitions should have been up! - claimed that working women caused the credit crunch by raising families' income levels and pushing up house prices. His solution? Remove women from the workforce! This, to his mind, would solve the problem of unemployment - jobless layabout men could replace women in work - and also of overburdened public transport as, while climate conscious women get in everyone's way by taking the train, most men drive to work in their big cock jags. Women are more suited to home life, which depresses men. Women are greedy and their "oestrogen-crazed acquisitiveness" was at the root of the greed that caused the credit crisis.

His article is clearly an offensive, nonsensical, bigoted and sexist anomaly which no newspaper should have been willing to print, even under the 'moral lease' of a 'free comments' section.

Of course I responded to this article at once, sending a three page treatise of Kantian proportions to the vile rag. Echoing Wollstonecraft’s Vindication and Rousseau's On the Origin of Inequality, with more than a dash of J S Mill, my complaint, entitled Bloody Fuming in Hampstead hit their desks on the morning of Friday 27th February at 10am sharp. Only today did I receive a response.

A smug, arrogant letter was waiting on my Habitat Boucle Stripe doormat. Even Emmeline Pankhurst didn't like the look of it. She generally brings me my post at 11am, when I rise, but she had left this right where it was on the mat. Her lady premonitions were clearly on top form!

I was told by Tony O'Daly, the comments editor, that the article was in fact a raging satire. No such writer as Newton Emerson exists, he is an avatar for the comedian John O'Farrell. I was asked to look up Swift's A Modest Proposal to compare tone (SWINE. I wrote a 2000 word essay on Swift as a Cambridge Undergrad, which is much more than can be said for John O'Farrell. I got 67%).

Apparently my scathing response was all in vain, as the article was in fact a parody of the chauvinist press and its representation of women. I came away with egg on my face and an afternoon wasted. All that I managed to do was amuse a few overpaid hacks. Three cheers for Posie.

Their article was certainly controversial. But is it satire?

In my understanding of satire, there must be someone or something who is being mocked. In this case, the anti-working-women views of the chauvinist press. But does anyone actually hold such views? I don’t know what it’s like in Ireland, although if their government’s outdated abortion laws and restrictions on getting the contraceptive pill are anything to go by, I can imagine that women don’t have the best of times over that Irish Sea.

The opinion that women are more suited to confinement in the home than men may seem like a comical anachronism, but it is a view espoused in earnest by the Daily Male in their article on house husbands -

Just as many women feel the deep-seated urge to bear children, so most men feel a similar need to do their duty, not only in terms of offering care and protection to their wives and children, but also in a wider, public sense - to be useful to society.

Honestly! One point to Mr O'Farrell.

As a born-again green activist, it’s not hard to find examples of wanton destruction of the sort satirised by Mr O’Farrell in his suggestion that more workers should travel to the office by car. Two points.

But everything else? Women’s natural acquisitiveness? Our greed? Our oestrogen levels? I encounter ‘biological’ nonsense like this everyday – see my F WORD FEATURED ARTICLE, Pity in Pink – but it’s hard to see who Mr O’Farrell’s target is this respect.

My major complain against Newton Emerson’s approach is that, by making his satire so broad, he leaves most of his targets unnamed and unscathed. Yes, feminist satire is a powerful tool, one that I myself am want to wield like a petrol soaked tampon, but it must be one that hits home and hits hard.

Who is really the victim of Newton Emerson’s wit? Feminists like me who respond in affront and then themselves become the victims. Like a straw-mugger, he sends his argument wheeling down the poorly lit street as I return home alone at night, and when I lunge in self-defence, he pulls the straw mugger away and I fall over at his feet in a cascade of lipstick and pamphlets. Then the editorial team of the Irish Times appear from various shadowy bushes in a chorus of
laughter. Very funny, John O’Farrell. Those chauvinist hacks you were ‘mocking’ can join in too.

This is right-wing satire if ever I saw it!

Anti-Feminists? Are you SERIOUS?

I am just so damned busy at the moment, ladies, which is why posts have been coming a little thin and slow, unlike my period which has reached Gaza levels of atrocity and is laying me low at the moment. Still finding time to work on Sally: A Fiction and am in heated contact with some Pornocrats - await my probing article on the sexualisation of just about damn well everything coming as-soon-as.

In the meantime, check out this great article at the Guardian Comment is Free. Normally content with spouting nonsense genderist tripe, they've finally managed to employ a proper writer in the form of Cath Elliot. In Beware the Anti-Feminists she delves into the frankly terrifying world of the US anti-feminist WOMEN-LEAD movement, 'True Woman', who in their MANifesto resolve to cultivate (her quote) "such virtues as purity, modesty, submission, meekness, and love" and "to encourage men as they seek to express godly masculinity, and to honour and support God-ordained male leadership in the home and in the church".

Apart from the fact that there's an ark full of God-wanking nonsense splattered all over their rhetoric, the position this aims to return women to is so utterly at odds with modern life and the advances of women's liberty that, along with Cath, I'm adamant that it'll only attract an absolute minority of weirdos. Here's their skank manifesto if you're interested, but really it's barely worth criticising. http://www.truewoman.com/assets/files/TW_Manifesto.pdf

What's really troubling are two other movements she discusses, Surrendered Wives and Taken in Hand. In the former, women are supposed to float back into Prelapsarian Bliss by attending to domestic chores and bejewelling their interior surfaces with cupcakes and pastel, the usual fare. In the latter, women are admonished to consent their husband's will, "which basically boils down to physical and sexual chastisement, up to and including rape, as punishment for the woman's transgressions." There's some masochistic stuff going on here which should appall anyone and everyone, and more of the tell-tell biblical hocus pocus that really makes these 'movements' stand out as complete shite.

Cath's criticisms of these movements should be considered as fine, done and dusted, easy to agree with, quick to condone, right? Or WRONG, according to a frightening amount of commenters who felt the need to parp their little thoughts after her sweeping report. SwiftBoy (Swift in which capacity, Boy? Fast to talk without thinking? The old premature ejaculation without consideration of one's partner? I expect both) makes the inane reply:

@Cath:
the men in our lives... if they can't handle a bit of dust on top of the telly and are seemingly incapable of doing anything about it themselves
Heh, how's the pilot light Cath, did Mr Elliott finally get it fixed after weeks of promising to?
As usual, my main gripe with your cheerful ramble through the outer fringes of rational thought would be along the lines of "if a woman chooses to be in one of these organisations, who are you to say she can't?"
Surely, if feminism has taught us one thing, it's that women can be who they want and choose for themselves, without having their choices questioned, isn't it?
Or is that two things?

I've made his writing smaller to match his brain. I've actually just checked his profile and he lists his interests as "Guitars, words, how things used to be." What a twat. I digress.

For a start, cheerful Miss Elliot was not. She was sombre and disgusted, as should you be SwiftBoy. Secondly, 'rational thought' is one of those 'universal' markers of judgement which anyone vaguely capable of critical thought should be more than able to query. Once it was thought 'rational' to kill children who were born with disabilities (see Plato's Republic, SwiftBoy) or to enslave prisoners of war and foreigners (see Aristotle, why don't you?). Finally, as Feminists and our like minded compatriots on the Left continually ask, what kind of choice are women really given in a social situation which embeds them with norms of submission and apathy before they have even reached puberty? The capacity to act as a 'free agent', which SwiftBoy so delightfully waves around like so much attack-jelly, is only made possible in a social and cultural system that allows women to act as free agents in the first place. That IS, to criticise their social order, to hold its values to scrutiny and to firmly refuse to occupy the place in it carved out by patriarchs, 'god', or any other idiot man.

Last week, a 15 year old girl was rescued from a paedophile she'd met on the internet and returned to her parents. Why did she run away, and why was it the right thing to do to separate them? Because sometimes people make choices as a free agent (which she clearly felt she was doing) which are reallyreallyreally bad for them. How do we know the choices are bad without the presence of a law to help us make a moral judgement? (the girl's age, in this case). We can begin by looking at whether the so-called choice puts the chooser into the position of a victim, sufferer or slave to the interests of another person who is making no similar sacrifice. Surely then, something is at work other than free will. Why have peoples around the world at various stages welcomed fascism? Not just for the great outfits and the sense of camaraderie, I'll tell you.

To SwiftBoy I say - check out Adorno, Deleuze-Guattarri, Horkheimer and, like, stop being so damn representative of public opinion! We'd be much better off without you.

To everyone else I say - find the SwiftBoy in your lives, he's bound to be there somewhere, maybe at work or lurking in a group of friends from college you really should have dropped, and destroy him. You can use my words if you like: as usual they are absolutely final.

Toodles!
xx

Yes, fine! Rich men make me Orgasm.

Some more misogynist 'research' to come from the ‘scientists’ of Newcastle University - otherwise famous for promoting the notion that women like pink because it reminds them of 'ripe berries' whereas men like blue because it looks like a 'happy sky', things they were used to looking at back in those highly influential days we spent in pre-history which thousands of years of civilisation have done nothing to overwrite.

This time, they are suggesting that women are more likely to orgasm if they're having sex with a rich man. I know, right? This alleged research was gathered by 'asking women about their sex lives', surely an inexact science if ever I heard one.

Pollet, a man, said: “Increasing partner income had a highly positive effect on women’s self-reported frequency of orgasm. More desirable mates cause women to experience more orgasms.”

Oh, so that's that then is it? Well, I'm going to conduct my own research, using my memories of sexual exploits, and if they agree with your research we'll call it science, shall we?

A (somewhat edited!) list of Posie's lovers:

My finger, c.1985- Took a while to master, but generally a came up with the goods. Income: Mine, so medium.
Darren, c.1988: Not a chance. Income: Medium.
Indigo, c.1990: Oh goodness, maybe once? Income: High.
LeAnne, 1991: Short lived but sweet! Income: Low.
William, 1991-1992: Very good. Income: Medium.
Terence, 1992: A rebound, AWFUL. Income: Medium.
[Quiet spell]
Raif, 1999: Oh holidays! Oh sun! Oh wonder! Income: Unknown.
Cristoff, 2001: Far too quick to notice. Income: High.
Name unknown, 2001: I can only imagine not. Income: Unknown/Suspicious.
Max and Oliver, 2002: Oh dear, thankfully too drunk to remember. Income: Hiiiigh x 2.
Leon, 2004: Yes. Income: Low, with pretensions to fallen aristocracy.
[Quiet spell, cf. Me, Ted and my Head.]
Gerald, 2008: A swine, but parfait in the boudoir. Income: High but with pretensions to working class ennoblement.

So that’s a:

Yes!: High - 2; Medium – 2; Low -1 ; Unknown – 2.
No!: High - 3; Medium – 2; Low – 0; Unknown – 1.

So, that's not even the full list and it proves you wrong, Pollet. Stick that in your Bunsen burner and smoke it.

Another douche bag is Dave Buss, Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas, Austin, who raised this question in his book The Evolution of Desire and believes female orgasms have several possible purposes.

“They could promote emotional bonding with a high-quality (my italics) male or they could serve as a signal that women are highly sexually satisfied, and hence unlikely to seek sex with other men,” he said. “What those orgasms are saying is ‘I'm extremely loyal, so you should invest in me and my children’."

Oh naff off, Dave. You wouldn't know a 'signal of satisfaction' if you were trapped up there in the dark for whole a week. Maybe, just maybe, females orgasm for reproductive purposes, to encourage sex? Or maybe women actually have a sex drive?

Otherwise, yes I do agree: to an extent. It's like the novelist Rosamund Lehmann (who had LOTS of sex) said about boffing Cecil Day Lewis: the great thing about being in bed with a poet is that you know he's always thinking about poetry. You feel second best: a sure recipe for desire!

It's a bit like that with money, I guess. Especially for stupid people i.e. the overwhelming majority. Men wouldn't be aroused by money because it threatens their masculinity (a gender construct). As Valerie Solanas wrote: women give milk, men give money.

Finally, it is interesting to consider that Simone de Beauvoir was a firm believer in women marrying a greater intellect - which for the sake of argument could be compared to wealth - whereas this just 'isn't possible' for the male. She didn't manage it, of course, as Satre was an idiot and de Beauvoir was a Goddess. In fact, perhaps it precisely this ambition that gives credence to Lady Astor's observation that paradoxically 'every woman marries beneath her'?

Women - What NOW?

Last night I had the privilege of attending a debate on the future of Women's Rights at the British Library (followed by some Jaegermaister with Marxists at the London Student's Union - how subversive!). The panel, chaired by Polly Toynbee (hiss) consisted of the fabulous Nicola Brewer of the EHRC, novelist Tahmima Anam and some sort of student, Emily Beardsmore. The panel was one woman short, in that Helena Kennedy QC didn't turn up (probably doing something more important ‘in the House’). I think Polly took that rather well, although without Ms Kennedy the panel unfortunately consisted of 50% moron rather than a more conducive 40%. Thank God for the delightful Nicola and Tahmima. Polly and Emily are idiots.

Panellists were gifted with eight minutes of talk, followed by debate, followed by floor questions. Brewer glided effortlessly through a range of issues concerning equal pay, parental leave, affirmative action in employment and access to childcare. Anam described the situation of the women’s movement in Bangladesh, which is alive and well but meeting the frustrations of religious opposition. The she wooed us with excerpts from the delightful Sultana’s Dream (1905) by the Bangladeshi feminist, Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain. Acknowledged as the first literary depiction of a feminist Utopia, it depicts the scientifically sophisticated Ladyland in which men are locked away and Women rule through reason alone –

‘I became very curious to know where the men were. I met more than a hundred women while walking there, but not a single man.
'Where are the men?' I asked her.
'In their proper places, where they ought to be.'
'Pray let me know what you mean by "their proper places".'
'O, I see my mistake, you cannot know our customs, as you were never here before. We shut our men indoors.'
…
'But my dear Sister Sara, if we do everything by ourselves, what will the men do then?'
'They should not do anything, excuse me; they are fit for nothing. Only catch them and put them into the zenana.'

This was, of course, met with rapturous delight amongst the audience. Food for thought ladies.

Finally, and here is where the evening took a plunge towards the inane, the idiot Beardsley told us ‘wot da kidz fink’ about feminism (Lord knows how, she is 23, by which age I’d acquired a proper job in journalism and a coke habit to rival that of any college upstart).

Now, far be it from me to discourage a young woman to assert herself, or to scoff at her involvement in the Girl Guides (!!) which I'm sure is really 'right on' nowadays (Brown Owl...sitting on a oversized papier mache mushroom...jumping the broomstick...the 'Entertaining' badge which I REFUSED to accept, even though my table setting was by far the prettiest. You gotta make some sacrifices, ladies.)

But if I knew I was going to be partaking in a panel with PollybloodyToynbee from the Guardian, I'd make sure I had some facts on my side, or at least an opinion or two. Relating moronic anecdotes of how you "decided not to be rubbish like all the other girls," or how "a man told me I couldn't do something, gasp!" is as pathetic as it is unhelpful. I was on the Tube the other day and a guy looked at my breast 'area'.

And.

What?

Every woman has a rinky-dink story to share about the day 'when bigger boys came'. Moaning over our knitting only makes feminists look self-involved and dangerously unsystematic - which those in the camp Beardy are.

Now, as ever, thick is a feminist issue.

At one point, while the red faced Emily was avoiding answering yet another question from the floor concerning sex workers, religious fundamentalism or social welfare, by spouting nonsensical rhetoric about 'empowering young women' and 'education' and… um… 'empowering young women', Polly's eyes glazed over. As did her entire face. If it is possible for a person to glaze with their entire body, then that is what Polly would have done. And I knew what she was thinking, because it's what all of us were thinking, especially those of us who were involved in the Women's movement in the 90s (like myself), which was "If this is the future of feminism, we're screwed."

And why? Because Beardsmore’s wishy-washy, softly-softly brand of identity politics will never get Feminism anywhere. Nor will adopting a lamely quietist approach to such pathologies of culture as lap-dancing and the compulsory sexualisation of young women. Not being attractive is NOT an excuse to exempt yourself from arguments concerning the commoditisation of the body, nor is pointing out your own credentials as an ‘empowered young woman’ (find/replace “career-hungry-moraliser”) a recognisable political act. Occupying a position such as Ms Beardsleys (Head of some kind of Youth Club, I gather) must entail the responsibility of voicing difficult and outspoken opinions on the state of young women today, rather than limply condoning the kind of behaviour (lap-dancing, whoring, being a bit crap) that you find personally and theoretically reprehensible. Ms Beardsmore, however, clearly sees her position as a back-road into journalism, possibly imagining herself writing a column on her Vaio whilst supping on a Fair Trade Chai latte in a few years time. As such did little more than suck Polly Toynbee’s arse.

She was probably bullied at school. And because she was crap, not ‘different’.

After the lecture, when I rushed into the loo to look for the gloves I dropped during a clandestine pee when Polly was doing her introduction (Pink Leather Dents, size 8, if you found them please let me know!) something rather interesting happened. As a throng of ladies queued all the way out the door and into the halls, and the few menfolk who had bothered to attend cruised into the Gents in record time (nice work providing adequate facilities for the ladies, Brit Lib, or shall I say Brit No-Women’s-Lib-Thanks) I heard the voices of the crowd, speaking as if in one voice, to one another, over one another at times, and they were saying – "We should use the Gents! Let’s use the Gents, sisters! Why should we wait to pee any longer? That was a bloody long talk, and I drank a lot of water. I am absolutely desperate to pee. Now is our moment!"

And do you know what? Not one of them did.

I myself went to the loos in Euston.

Now, what do you think that means??
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