Why can't we have a bloody revolution? Why not?

Friends, the cuts are disturbing and regressive! And I must say, I've been very disappointed by your lack of revolutionary fervour. Parliament still stands, Cameron is unhurt and nothing, I repeat, nothing, is on fire.
Can't we have a bloody revolution like in The Dreamers?
I attach some images to inspire you!

Esther Rantzen's Double Dealings - A Posie Rider Investigation

Ok so I'm now a journalist! Here's my first scoop - enjoy, be appalled, write a letter, torch a car! It's about CORRUPTION!!!


Esther Rantzen (TV star from such shows as, oh you know, Crime Watch or something, and general ageless gurner) has, as we all know, been campaigning to become MP for Luton South. Rantzen has sidestepped like a crab into the runnings following MP Margaret Moran's decision to resign after her embarrassing expense claims were revealed. Ignoring the blatant fact that it'll take more than a lute to save Luton (for lute read 'nuke'), Rantzen is planning a form of slash and burn in the wake of messy politicians, and has publicly called for greater transparency in parliament. Weirdly, however, Posie's prying has revealed that the clever minx is in fact the director of a series of complex secretive companies. Listed under her directorship is the eerily named, 'Jembex', which records show is a sinister Private Unlimited Company.

Now, not being an expert on banking, money, the law, or anything really (except feminism) I consulted Sharlene Spiteri (not real name) from Companies House, a sort of business museum on the river (next to a really nice pub). Huddled in the nice pub next door, and taking painful drags on her pastel blue Sobranie, Sharlene (this is a false name) was on edge as she told me the truth about Rantzen's dealings. Concealing her face with a russet pashmina, leaving only the barest crack through which to insert aforementioned Sobranie, she confessed that in the five years she had worked there she had only come across one other private unlimited company: "They are extremely rare," she said.

PUC's are unusual, she explained very slowly and a few times, because they don't have to file accounts. An obscure legal loophole, which, despite valiant attempts, Sharlene (real name Kate) couldn't quite enable me to understand, means that a PUC avoids any kind of public scrutiny by not filing records of how money passes in and out of it. It's like eating in the dark, she sighed, eventually. Now, this strikes me as very peculiar, seeing as Rantzen is attempting to rise to the dizzy heights of Luton supremacy on a platform of transparency (not a transparent platform, which would reveal altogether too much of Rantzen's private affairs (if she happened to be wearing a dress/skirt, which of course she might not be, even though she's a woman))

Interestingly, even though the company can obscure its monetary dealings from the worthy hack through legal skulduggery, it DOES still have to produce a register of shareholders. AND Jembex's shareholder list shows that other than herself, the only other shares in the company are all owned by Rantzen's three children: Jem, Bex and Will. Why Will? Because a second company - Wilcox productions - is also headed by Rantzen, but only has her children as shareholders. It allegedly is a production company, but my investigations prove that the only production it's invested in is the production of inherited wealth. What on earth is wrong with a nice simple trust fund? Aunt Lily never went through all this hassle and I'm doing just fine!

The door of poetry is Openned (sic) - for MEN!

Hail, readers. As you well know, I am a writer, and like to dabble, dawdle and dip my brush in an intimidating range of media (plays, novels, histories, polemics, masques etc). As if that wasn't enough, I'm also an able poet, having wowed the world with my psychoanalytic thriller Gulf Scream, Labial Elegiac and the recent Aphorisms for my ex, which extends over many more hundreds of pages than I dared to publish to my blog (for legal reasons, I've been told: apparently some of my honest admissions in that work, for example the details of how I hacked Martin's internet banking and stopped the child support payments to his ex wife, could actually be used as evidence against me. Whoops! Has no one ever heard of artistic licence??).

Anyway, last night I had the good humour to attend a poetry reading in the 'Xing the Line' series (pronounced Zing the Line I think, poets eh!). I went along primarily to schmooze, I mean why else would I go, and met some very attractive Beta males who had lots of interesting things to tell me about themselves. All was going well until, two glasses of Rose down, I encountered literary sexism of the kind that hasn't been encountered since William Wordsworth nicked all of Dorothy's best lines. I was told at point blank range by the curator and tsar of a prominent poetry reading series, who shall remain nameless (you know who you are, Steve) that I, a lady writer, was unsuitable to make an appearance at his 'night'. I was informed, however, that if I wanted to pass my poems to a MAN to read, or make a short video of myself reading them in a bikini with a soft core Bashment backing track, I would be allowed to participate, but otherwise, no!

Once more the mesmeric ivory bower of the literary establishment was Clossed for women. The fact that other ladies have been admitted to these readings is merely further proof that sexism is rife in the world of poetry: does everyone remember Working Girl? That film, apart from being solid gold entertainment, taught us that it's not only men who polish and buff the glass ceiling - women can be raging, careerist chauvinists intent on keeping other women down as well. Like little Tess was abused by the Ivy League show off bitch, Katherine Parker (Sigourney Weaver), so little Posie has been cast to the wayside by the sorts of trustafarians who can take a year out to complete a 'Poetry MA' merely in order to meet a few people who they could meet anyway by merely attending a poetry reading and offering around a few cigarettes and looking 'needy and interesting'. In my early twenties I had no time for such things and, until Aunt Lilies' estate was wound up, had to labour and toil hard in Miss Selfridges as a personal shopper merely to afford a panino at the Nero's across the road in my lunch hour. Any poems I found time to write were scrawled on the back of a receipt for shoes, and my first novella, Me, Tim and My Quim (now a major motion picture) was written entirely on an All Bar One wine and nibbles menu. It's experience like that that makes a great writer, like Hemingway, not arsing around and paying good money to be deemed a 'qualified writer' by an academic institution. (I should say as an aside that I am now enrolled in Birkbeck's Summer Course in Female Memoir Writing, but what of that?)

Anyway, having been turned away so cruelly, there was nothing for me to do but consume further Rose, vom a little on my skirt, then come home and plot my revenge. This post, set to lay waste to the blogosphere, is merely the beginning. I have skills, for example internet banking fraud, and I have rage on my side. I've also just had a contraceptive implant (which stops your period for three years girls!) so, like Lady Macbeth, I will cry unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty!

Step one, an protest poem! I feel just like Brecht! Enjoy!!

Openning the cowl

I am self published!

Hark lute! Thumb me an envious tune

and autopsy reveal

the various instances

of the demise of the crowd song.

Openning the cowl

I am self kettled!

Authoritatively pilfering

lyrical nonchalance from

complacent bloggers all set

on their own aggrandisement.

Openning the cowl

I am self-harming!

Just to see if I can write.

Trade marking utterances best left be

or taken out used worn destroyed

passed out again

through the thigh of a pig.

Pour into moulds the

filling of the Arctic Roll tube

as capillary excess waste

laden tissue damage

but let’s turn this about

and call it dessert!

This is like me!

The Beauty Myth Exposed - embrace ugliness!

As I sat upon my porcelain loo this morning, I was amused to read a feature in G2 concerning women and that terrible word, make up. A fellow feminist, Julie Blindel, had written an article about whether make up, when applied to feminism, masked our hypocrisy like a burkini, or merely slipped off like so much water on oil. Should feminists be allowed to use make up? Should they refuse in principle? Is personal choice part of what feminism was about in the first place? The Guardian featured this story, and were so astonished at the various responses of their surprisingly literate readers (They used punctuation! They can spell!) that they thought they'd glorify them in print by publishing a selection of letters.

The range of opinions through up no surprises: Make-up-attracts-men=bad; make-up-express-self=good; I-have-a-rash-need-make-up-look-terrible etc. What fascinated me was the angle of argumentation concerning the 'beauty myth', and the pressures women are under to look good. See the excerpts below.

We all know the truth of this; most of us have experienced the different reactions when we're dressed up and when we slob out. No one has said that succumbing to the endless pressure to "look good" is a betrayal of feminism. However, I would say that we owe it to ourselves to be honest enough to acknowledge those pressures.

I think the personal choice argument [regarding makeup] doesn't entirely take account of the difficulties involved in not wearing it.

Now, I quite agree that young women are under pressure to look beautiful, and that unobtainable body shapes are thrust in our faces on a daily basis to such an extent that I really sometimes forget that I'm a woman at all. But this isn't the point, is it? The point is that women who go around without make up on are, allegedly, made to feel like pariahs. Perhaps this is the case, but as a woman who doesn't wear make up at all, ever, through sheer forgetfulness rather than to make a 'point', I really can't say I've noticed the slightest bit of difference in the way I am treated, compared to women who wear make up.

And I have yet to see the evidence to prove that this 'truth universally acknowledged', that women encounter 'difficulties' through not wearing make up, makes any difference as to how people actually dress. We may all hate ourselves for our rubbish hair and our un-made up faces, but we go out like that everyday just the same.

Honestly, I haven't seen a person who didn't look absolutely terrible for weeks. I must see one genuinely well dressed, well taken care of individual perhaps once a month, and that's not to say anything about their innate physical attractiveness to start with. Because whatever feminists say, and I say this as a feminist, there is no 'difficulty' concerned with personal appearance that cannot be overcome by simply not giving a sh*t. Now, it may sound drastic, but rather than take on a) the self-censoring media, b) cosmetic manufacturers; and c) global capitalism, worthy targets of our scorn though they may be, it really might be best just this once to accept that looking like crap really is the price you pay for choosing not to look good.

I say this as one of you, a badly dressed and blotchy faced woman, whose only accessory is a cigarette and who hasn't worn make-up since I got my face painted like a zebra at Lovebox. There is no way of getting round the fact that 9 times out of 10 your face will not look like it has make-up on it if it doesn't have make-up on it, just as there is no way of ignoring the fact that 9 times out 10 no one cares if you have make up or you don't.

If you're not that attractive to start with, putting some make-up on is not going to stop traffic, and leaving it off is not going to cause hoards of school children to follow you down the road screaming 'witch' until someone tosses you in a pond just to see if you float: everyone is used to seeing people looking haggard, exhausted and, well, a bit rubbish. One more make-upless face is just one more person to ignore in your meaningless flaneusette wandering around your alienating city in your empty life. Embrace it!

Think! before you kill your husband by talking

Has anyone seen the new Think! advice advert? It's one of those helpful ads that warn us docile members of the general public not to do stupid things which might result in our own deaths. My FAVE new ad is this Think! ad that warns against the perils of using mobile phones in the car.

For those of you can't be bothered to watch the video below, here's the storyline:
The screen is split down the middle, with the man on the phone in his mancar at night on one side talking to the woman on phone in kitchen on the other. "How did it go?" she asks, "It went really well," he replies "Blah blah I'm a man, and I'm on my way back now. I'll tell you about it when I get home." "OK, well, the dinner's on and the kids are in bed," she says, just before he crashes the car, gets covered in blood and so on.

Tagline: You don't have to be in a car to cause a car crash. As soon as you know they're driving, kill the conversation. (Instead of them, geddit?)

Well, thanks Think! for pointing out that it was the woman's fault for blathering on while the poor man was driving. Who called who, huh? Before she killed him, he was probably just about to say something like "Don't you know it's dangerous to talk to me when I'm on the phone in my car? I have to go to abide by the law and good sense." To which she would reply "I'm so alone! Please, don't hang up." To which he would reply "I know that, as a woman, you have no faculty of Reason (cf. Kant) but can't you trust in my superior masculine understanding and concede to my judgement?" The subtext, no dammit, the hypertext of this advert clearly demonstrates that he's trying to get rid of her, and she's all "How did it go sweetie?" just enforces the unfortunate notions that women:

a) talk too much
b) have no common sense
c) are so homicidaly bored that they would rather risk the lives of their loved ones than put up with another moment's emptiness and silence between the last kid falling asleep and hubbie coming home with his tales from 'the outside'.

Mobile phones and cars are a fatal mix, of course, but please, there is such a thing as personal responsibility of the driver for switching the damned thing off or, my lord, not answering! I think we all know who the douchebag is in this infomercial, and I hope I'm not alone in being glad he ends up dead. Whoops!

Feminism and anarchism is femarchism, not manarchism!

And I must say, I WAS on those streets to protest against G20 on Wednesday! I took a long lunch from writing (1hr & 10mins, how cheeky!) and popped down to Climate Camp with a Pret (they do Charity Runs so I didn't feel too guilty). It was lovely! Healing sessions with flapjacks and such beautiful youths, someone gave me a daffodil! Not quite the same scenes later when I returned having changed out of my writing gear into a black bowler hat (irony!) stripy tights from Hallowe'en and a raunchy red coat! The poor dears had been kettled and though I tried to get in by flashing my LadiesAlone business card and claiming freedom of the press, the swine wouldn't let me! I tried to scale a wooden fence connected to a building site but was confronted by a hefty builder, which was frankly a relief as I wasn't doing very well anyway and had laddered my tights.

I sipped whisky with some Fourierists in a side alley, fascinating! Then I got into a confrontation with a policeman over a tent (You have the guy (ropes) but we have the numbers!) and bought a quick cheese sandwich before following some new comrades over to Earl Street Convergence Centre, the anarchist HQ! (It was raided at lunchtime the following day, by which time I was still safely tucked up in bed!)

It was rather dull in there as they were holding a meeting to decide how to protect the building from 'pigs'. I offered my services as a helicopter look out on the roof but they didn't seem convinced. They did give me a nice bit of flapjack though to follow on from earlier's, which was Vegan! I had no idea!

All was going fine until I left and was immediately swept upon by pigs, who used a spotlight to frighten me. I, of course was not shocked, in fact it reminded me of my youthful interventions on the stage. I was being detained under Section 44, as a TERRORIST! I told them I had merely entered the squat because I thought it might be like that scene in the Baader Meinhof Complex where they all get naked in the bath, but really it was rather dull and they should leave them alone (sticking up for comrades!) All I can say is that they found nothing but dirty tissues and Public Man, Private Woman in my handbag, and that they ticked the box on the Suspect Description Form that said I was 'Thin'. Hurrah!

Here's a picture of Ulrike Meinhoff (Feminist Icon!) from The Baader Meinhoff Complex becoming radicalised at a demonstration! She's just about to throw a brick - that's how I felt!!

THEN all hell broke loose on the way to Liverpool Street! I was innocently heading to the Tube to meet my friend Lara, who'd just been released from Climate Camp and get the Northern Line back to N1 (I had no idea, of course, but the station was full of Alsatians, which are only just worse than commuters) when I was hit full frontal by a line of battering riot police charging at a few bedraggled teenagers, including a girl so drunk her boyfriend actually had to drag her to avoid being attacked by the advancing police line!

I, of course, walked straight up to them, like a surfer stepping up to a Tsunami, and tried to explain that I just needed to get past, and the bloody swine started battering me too! My poor tights did nothing to cushion the blows. I was so cross, I might have started a *little* fire outside Pizza Express. But the nerve! Here's a picture of the scene.

Remember girls, Police Brutality + Climate Change + Power + Capitalism = Patriarchy. Fight it!

"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'?

Sexually Assualted in Hoxton!

That's right lady sisters, I was grasped, groped and grabbed as I was innocently ascending from the ladies loos in what I thought was an upmarket drinkery on Saturday night! I was demurely, even elegantly attired, wearing a nigh Dallas-esq shoulder padded cream blouse with strings of diamante baubles wound around my neck, trendy single stripe gentleman's dress trousers (the American choice I know, but I was in a hurry!) and sturdy leather walking boots - hardly an arousing combination for any but the most discerning fellow! But obviously my raging good looks spoke too, too loudly to be quieted by even the most humble attire. I was too tempting a filly for the vile, leather jacketed philanderer who passed me on the stairs to being able to avoid reaching out for a grope. That's what you get for going out in Hoxton, obviously.

Let me set the scene. I, Posie Rider, looking like a paid extra from such films as Brideshead Revisited, Gosford Park and Bright Young Things, am innocently exiting the ladies loos in a HOXTON BAR [which, may I add, had no mirrors. Now, I'm all in favour of women being given one less opportunity to stare at themselves, vanity being on the of the most deadly of the Deadly Sins and obsession with one's looks being obviously poisonous to the Modern Feminist (despite being constantly endorsed by those bloody Third Wavers) BUT when it has been raining, and when one's adorable masculine quiff, which one has spent the better part of half and hour and two Gin Fizzes crafting, has been utterly flummoxed, the presence of a mirror becomes more than a necessity. It becomes a RIGHT. I mean, how on earth is one to go forth for Women's Liberation with a bodged barnet? Have you ever seen a picture of a Suffragette? Now, those Sisters had style.]

I digress. So, attired as thus, I was ascending the stairs. Now, ahead of me was lolloping a much less wittily clothed young woman. Wearing a zebra print clingy 'thing', legs up to her eyebrows and teetering silver heels, this lady was clearly the lowest common denominator in terms of taste, and to all intents and purposes, a crowd-pleaser. So it was with disgust, although not with surprise, that I watched as an odious toad of a male descending the stairs reached out his vile mits, touched her shoulder and said in the most grotesque way possible "Alright darling, you're looking nice" followed by slurring and some obscenities I daren't repeat for risk of nutting the computer screen (which was quite expensive).

Now, all hail to the blond ahead of me, she shook him off and swore very righteously in his face. Hurrah! Thought I. She may be dressed like a slattern, but at least she knows how to deal with a man. BUT, this is when the really surprising thing happened. For as I was passing him on the stairs, rather than marking me for the high class sinorita I patently am, he addressed me in exactly the same terms! "Alright darling, pwoar looking nice" excetara ad nauseum ad a hand on my shoulder ad a shotgun.

Had I been in possession of a shotgun, I would have had no reservations about using it. Had I been prepared for such an attack I would undoubtedly have been able to respond in a fitting way, but you see I wasn't! How COULD I have been. And, Lady Readers, I'm rather ashamed. As all I could think to say in response, in sudden and spontaneous response, was a simple and rather hurried moniker, which was:

"You! Piss off now!"

Hardly fitting such a vicious attack, right? Now, as I rejoined my table (a group of far more enlightened fellows, and rather tough looking too, I'll add) I couldn't help but play out the various ways I'd have rather the scene had went.

And here's my question to you - would it have been so wrong for me to grab his tiny little head in my powerful hands, shake it from side to side to unbalance him, and then fling him headfirst down the stairs (they were sort of concretey, I mean I think it's pretty obvious he wouldn't have been altogether OK afterwards. Like more close to dead, really). I mean, that could pass as self-defense, right? Because if it happens again that's how I'm going to play it.

Answers on a postcard! My freedom depends on you, Lady Readers!

Anorexic or FAKE-orexic?

I am utterly SICK, sick sick sick of fake-orexics! Or fanorexics, I can’t decide which meme to engender yet. I am as SICK of fanorexics as they are sick all over themselves. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to disparage those proper anorexics out there, you know, the frightening skeletal ones that you see wheeling suitcases around the underground and fear for their lives. Obviously this is a crippling disease which is depressingly endemic amongst young girls, and a symptom of untold external and internal pressures in this hideous thing we call society. But really, credit where credit’s due – if you’re going to go around telling everyone about your terrible eating disorder, you’re going to have to be really, exceptionally thin, that is if you don’t want to look like a complete idiot.

I’m not just talking out of the air: this is something I noticed just last night when I went to a canapes and nibbles reception with my ladyfriends, Melody Wittgenstein and Lara Buckerton.

It was the usual thing, glam literary types, authors, feminists like me and the girls – or so I thought! They were more than happy to swig at the free wine (very fattening, so I’ve heard), but everything fell apart when I moved swiftly towards the buffet.

‘Munch munch munch’, went Posie, eating her mini-quiche like a PROPER WOMAN. ‘This is species being!’ cried I, ‘this is liberation’. And down went another eight or nine mini-quiches (honestly the things were the size of chocolate buttons, it was like eating a packet of chocolate buttons). But not so for Melody and Lara.

First there were disapproving looks. Then there were raised eyebrows. Finally, they turned to one another and began the most heart-wrenching, attention destroying conversation I have ever heard in my life. Melody has very low self-esteem. She is very, very depressed. She thinks she’s fat and skips meals. If she ate a mini-quiche, even just the one (may I remind you they were the size of chocolate buttons) she would just hate herself. And, it turns out, Lara is bulemic. Buleeemic? She could have fooled me. Oh sure, everyone was bulemic in school (we went to school together, the usual thing: boarding, tartan, lax pitch, orchard) but then there was precious little else to DO. But now? Honestly, can anyone be that bored?

The problem with women like that is it’s never enough to be quietly, humbly pathological. It always has to become a public annoucement. This also includes getting a female friend drunk, waiting until she is good and drunk, and then boring her half to tears with emotional renditions of how you’re bodily dismorphed and instead of seeing a gorgeous, 20-something year old supermodel (that’s you Melody, Lara not so much) you see a big fat trout. This is especially unacceptable when the friend in whom you’re confiding a) is less attractive than you b) less thin than you and c) isn’t nearly as idiotic and vain as you are.

Being a bit depressed is fine, it can be extremely creative. When I was in hospital over the summer for self-harm with a bic disposable razor (shh, don’t tell Terry Blackteeth! I don’t want him to think I’m a psychopath – it’s our little secret) I was at my creative peak – writing the first 20 chapters of my novel Sally: An Independent Woman; A Fiction in only 2 months! Do you think Coleridge wasn’t depressed when he wrote the Prelude? Do you not think Blake was a little on the blue side of the mind when he wrote those funny little poems of his? How about Van Gogh? You see what I mean.

But unless you’re going to sublimate your melancholy into great works of art like me, which, let's face it, most of you aren’t, you really owe it to humanity to accept your position of utterly unearnt and undeserved social priviledge and opportunity and use it to do something useful. Talking about your ‘issues’ a) incessantly b) as if it hurt you to do so and c) as if there was something beautifully poignant about them only makes you look chronically self-obsessed and, yes I’m GOING to say it, vain.

So, here are my requests, oh women of the extra pound!: Don’t you make me valorise your vanity, and don’t you dare try to make me identify with you. I don’t. You are what is ruining women. I can’t remember the last time a manfriend (and admittedly I don’t have very many) commented negatively on a woman’s body. Most of them are utterly astonished if a woman so much as looks at them, and are far too grateful to concern themselves with whether said woman has ‘muffin tops’, flappy arms or thick ankles. ‘I don’t like flabby women’ says the chauvinist. ‘We don’t like you!’ the flabby woman should reply. Instead she cries, skips a meal, faints, cries, writes a blog post, tells her friends, reads Slyvia Plath, cries, wanders around in a stupor, etc ad nausea. If she can fit in time to binge-eat a pizza then vom it up, well that’s all to the good.

Or she sees a picture of a very pretty women. ‘Why is that not me?’ she asks. Because it is a picture. Of someone else. Not you. You may as well ask, ‘Why is that picture of a chair not me?’ Because it is not you. It is a chair. It is a discrete object. There are lots of discrete objects in the world. Not all of them can be you. Only one of them is you. You are it. Google Ontology. Have a read. Grow up.

And how, how have I have managed to keep my head, when all about me are loosing there’s? How have I managed to stay sane in a crazy mixed up world? How have I managed to keep slim and trim without skulking around gyms like a paedophile round a playground, complusive self-starvation or vomiting up my soup? Worthy questions, sisters. I’ll tell you: a positive mental attitude, a healthy, varied diet and a very fast metabolism. Those are the kinds of things that money can’t buy. Neither can shame.

(Some names have been kept the same in order to NAME AND SHAME)

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??
.

Turner Prize? Turner Lies, you mean.

I quite agree with this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/dec/03/turner-prize-female-winner

Why should some jumped up man win it just because he's from the North? Come on artists don;t you think we should be hurdling over those class divides? It's not their fault they are well turned out and he's a scag.

Maybe I will enter the Turner Prize next year- anyone know where I can get a form? My great friend Melody Wittgenstein had offered to do the filming for my new grapefruit video depicting the period: I shall call it 'Forbidden Fruit'. I think it's stands a good chance of winning!

I am also going to be launching a collection of still life shots: 'Fucking a Mango' and 'Peach Poof', exploring queer theory in the fruit bowl.

Watch this space...

Did someone say Prostitute?

Well hello there ladies.

I just found this article 'online' from the Independent: the writer called Sophie Morris, is accusing US of sponsoring prostitution. Now, I tell you straight up Miss Independent (up-your-self) journalist: WE do NOT encourage prostitution. You wouldn't catch me dead wearing a Playboy bunny t-shit. In fact I was one of the main campaigners in a key subsidiary of the 'Ban the Bunny' Campaign, known as 'Harrow the Hare'.

http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2007/09/bin_the_bunny

Here are some of my thoughts on the article (which I would have written much much better than her):

1. "Victoria Andrews, 31, owns the lap-dancing club Aqua: Lounge in Southampton. She started dancing with friends when she was studying. "I went to audition with a group of housemates and we all got the job," she says. "It suddenly became more real, but we all made some cash on the first night and thought, 'Wow. This is great.'"

Posie Says: Do I really give a damn what Victoria thinks? She's a bloody prostitute for god's sake.

2. "Every sexual aid, every accoutrement, every raunchy negligée and multicoloured condom, has been freed from its restrictive hothouse and allowed to blossom in the open air. Sex is now on every high street, not just in the seedier areas of town. Have we reached sexual enlightenment? Categorically not. Deviant behaviour is as rampant as ever, and prostitution itself remains, in effect, illegal. But demand is on the up, out of control even. Do the people paying for it think that because we can talk about it pre-watershed, the moral arguments surrounding it have dissolved?"

Posie Says: Oh Fuck off Sophie! No one gives a shit what you think. Why are there so many question marks? It makes it look like you don't understand. Oh sorry, I forgot, YOU DON'T!

Men endorse this kind of behaviour, not women. And the women that do are too stupid to think about why they are doing it. That's why my brand of New Wave Suffrage shall be calling for a ban on sexual merchandise and castration for anyone consorting with sex workers (including women). Bin the Bunny? Why not Burn the Bunny?

3. "She (Sam) also has a theory about the people who use prostitutes. "Who's the punter? The punter is everyman. And why is it growing? Because they're disassociating from themselves sexually, and from their emotions. It's an expression of self-hate. Men who go to prostitutes, no matter how much they think they are functional, are people who can't be honest with themselves about who they are. When you scratch the surface and start to ask questions about their emotional relationship to their own sexuality, you find big dark holes."

Posie Says: Right on sister! I agree with you, you should know, you are friends with Emma Thompson (refer to article: click blog title for link).

I would go further to question exactly what men are trying to cover up here. I have a sneaky feeling that as society increasingly evolves men are starting to realise that in fact women are their intellectual superiors. Perhaps it is not only the uncontrollable male libido that is driving prostitution? If you follow this line of argument you might conclude that it is also fuelled by a male acceptance of immanent puerility?

4. Oh and the opinion of the 'lovable' Sebastian Horsley:

"Contrary to what those foul feminists will tell you, the prostitute is not a victim," he says. "If you talk to them, and I've met thousands (in what capacity, Sebastian? ) they don't often find themselves victimised and exploited, but the middle-class intellectuals who formulate their opinions for them tell them that they are (So, if the innocent, gentle middle-class intellectual is capable of forming the opinions of a zesty prostitute, who else is, Sebastian?). There's a whole rescue operation going on at the moment made up of social workers, community leaders and politicians, and it's in their interests to find suffering. There is exploitation, but there is exploitation in all industries."

Posie Says: I want you dead, Horsley. You. Have. Been. Noted.
cf. "I've met just thousands of them and they're really happy", well Sebastian, I've met 4 of them and they were miserable. We talked about the price of baked beans.

5. According to Samantha, there's now a growing number of women who hold down professional jobs and go on the game at the weekend. These women are not on the breadline, nor are they feeding a drug habit. No – their behaviour is a tragic indictment of obsessive consumerism. Whither a woman's sanctity when there's a new pair of Manolos and a trip to Chiva-Som in the offing?

Posie Says: Again I agree. These types of women are little more than spoons for the ladling of an almightily bitter soup, the foul blend of capitalism, poverty, poor education, sexism and inherent stupidity. Grab a gun and look for further details in first issue of I've Lost My Arm.

6. A summary of recommendations from the Home Office report "Tackling the demand for prostitution" (published 19 November):
* Make it an offence for people to pay for sex with someone who is controlled for another person's gain.
* Run a campaign aimed at sex buyers to raise awareness about trafficking for sexual exploitation.
* Amend the offences of kerb-crawling and persistent soliciting to allow prosecution for a first offence.
* Launch a national anti-kerb-crawling campaign and support forces in reducing street prostitution.
* Introduce closure powers for premises linked to sexual exploitation, allowing police to restrict access for up to three months.

Posie Says: Me and the New Wave Suffragettes will help you Ms Smith! And we'll knock off a few of those Belle de bloody Jour types too. Grasping wankers.

BBC Complaint Result!

Received this morning by email (!)

Seriously though, is this the best they can do?


"Dear Miss Rider

Thanks for your e-mail regarding our 'Breakfast' programme.

I understand that you have concerns over what you feel were sexist comments made towards Sian Williams on the programme. I acknowledge that you believe that the presenter in question, Chris Hollins, should be disciplined because of these remarks.

Although all of our presenters are aware for the need for professionalism at all times, there will be times when light hearted humour comes into play amongst colleagues. I'm sure that this comment was meant as such and not meant to be taken in an offensive way.

This is not to excuse your feelings on the subject and I can assure you that your complaint has been registered on our audience log. This is a daily report of audience feedback that's circulated to many BBC staff, including members of the BBC Executive Board, channel controllers and other senior managers.

Thanks again for taking the time to contact us with your feedback.

Regards

Sarah Wilson
BBC Complaints"

Oh yeah, nice work getting a woman to respond, nice to hear from you 'Sarah'. Or should I say, Steven??

Update

Still no news from the BBC.

A sample letter for your complaint

I have constructed a letter below for you to post to the Beeb website:http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/complaints_stage1.shtml


Dear Sir,

I say 'Sir' and not 'Sir/Madam' because it has recently been brought to my attention that your corporation is in fact extremely mysogynist towards women. I was shocked the other day (Tuesday, 4th November 2008) by the comments of a Mr Chris Hollins (BBC Sports presenter) who told the lovely Sian on Breakfast News that he, I quote had 'finally got her alone on the sofa".

Needless to say I find this kind of language highly offensive and urge you to discipline My Hollins straight away.

This behaviour is NOT ON. It is derogatory towards women and as a Feminist I feel it is my duty to protect women like Sian who are less intelligent than myself.

I look forward to seeing Mr Hollins behave himself in the future.

Goodbye SIR.

Spread the Word...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/breakfast/4370574.stm

I HATE you

Chris.

BBC: The Basically for Boys Corporation!

OR Chris Hollins, or why Sport is as Crap as the BBC

Forgot to say:

I spat out my scrambled eggs this morning after hearing the sly remark of Chris 'dickhead' Hollins (the 'S' stands for Sexism and Sports) Sports presenter for BBC Breakfast, who perversely cooed to the lovely Sian Williams 'Finally Sian, I get you alone on the sofa...'

Alone on the sofa? Aloooooone on the sooooofa? Who does this football hooligan think he is?

Oh Sian finally Mark's away covering the American election and I 'get you alone on the sofa'!

I'd like to get you alone in an incinerator Chris Hollins, I'd like to burn you into tiny pieces of ash and eat you. In fact I'd just like to get you AND the sofa, which inspires memories of 80s Nescafe adverts, full stop. Not only are you both chauvinists you are an out of date chauvinists which is the most unacceptable chauvinism of all.

So Posie being Me, and Me being Posie (yes I have been reading Hegel) called the BBC to let them know my thoughts. Yet it seems any offense against a woman bears little resonance with the fat cat bosses at the Basically Boys Corporation. Needless to say the bastards did not take my complaint seriously and told me I was overreacting. OVERREACTING, moi?

So I am appealing to all my lady readers to call up the Beeb and let their voices be heard!!

Poor Sian- someone has to help her! She is only a BBC newsreader, who doesn't even realise when she is being sexually harassed! Get on the phone, get online, DO something. If intelligent, accomplished women like you and I can't do something to help imbeciles like Sian, then what must we be thinking we have to do with ourselves?

Down with Chris, up with Satanic Sluts, down with Andrew Sachs, burn Russel Brand, eat Johnathan Ross, love Hillary Clinton!

(Hillary: you will always be the President of MY United States!)

Posie and out.