Pt 4: The fact that there are no women in the tournament

No one ever talks about the FIFA Women's bloody World Cup do they? Why isn't that covered more in the media? Sexism, that's why.

Toodles! x

Pt 3: Racist World Cup Sexism

It didn't take long to spot another case of World Cup Sexism. This time, childish alcopop for infants WKD have charmed us with their 'women can't watch football' advertising campaign, of which I have found this shocking example.

A more shocking example, as yet not available on the internet (which recoils in disgust) says:

THE OFFSIDE RULE FOR THE LADIES: IF THE FLAG'S UP, IT'S OFFSIDE.

Part 2: Wags

Yet more sexism in the World Cup! The Daily Male have taken it upon themselves to bastardly declare that calling WAGs WAGs is sexist; sexists.

A guide issues by the Equalities Commission says the term WAG is "now in danger of overuse and arguably sexist".

A spokesman from the Equalities watchdog said: "You could argue (that the phrase is sexist), in the way in which it was used, if it was being used in a particularly derogatory way or to pejoratively target a group of women."

True, it's just a shame these women happen to be strumpets.

Shopfront sexism strikes again!

I was wandering home after a delicious meal at a French bistro in Soho last night when I was confronted with this shocking window display in the shoe shop Kurt Geiger on Regent's Street (the store was worryingly close to Hamley's).

As this image demonstrates, the mannequins were lying on their backs with their legs spread high in the air (modelling the frightful shoes) indicating a provocation for sexual intercourse. They were dressed in corsets and bras; some were wearing no knickers.

But it doesn't end there. Inside the shop, visible straight on through the store's glass door, was a electric neon light 'Peep Show' sign that read "Great shoes available downstairs' - ultimately likening the the sale of sex to purchasing some pretty disgusting, over priced strappy sandals.

It was awful. In the middle of central London / a tourist area / next to England's most famous toy shop.

Sexist stilettos, misogynistic mules, lecherous loafers... what's next?

It completely ruined my coq au vin, which I can tell you now was jolly expensive for a supposedly rustic French dish.

Does shopfront sexism know no bounds? We need to take that jump out of its step.

Write in to Kurt Geiger to complain and berate at online.info@kurtgeiger.com.

Does chauvinism know no bounds: Skype is offically sexist

I have just been skyping Emmeline (she's at an opera festival in Armenia) and the following just popped up on my screen:

European and American women are too arrogant for you? Are you looking for a sweet lady that will be caring and understanding? Then you came to the right place- here you can find a Russian lady that will love you with all her heart. Can't find a queen to rule your heart? How about beautiful Russian ladies that have royal blood and royal look? Here you can find hundreds of portfolios of these fine women of any age for every taste. Please excuse us if you are not interested.

Beautiful Russian ladies - http://moscowdatings.ru

Can you believe it? I can't believe sexism can travel this far? No I am NOT interested, and just for your information Russia IS in Europe you misogynistic wart. Needless to say I have initiated anther campaign against these male war mongrels. I have been prank calling them on Skype all afternoon with a voice generated message saying:

Vladamir Putin makes me sick and Lenin had a tiny brain.

If that doesn't get their goat then I don't know what will! Female (European) wit rules supreme once more (and no, I don't want to marry you, internet pervert).

Ah Dave Buss, I presume?

So, I've been researching David Buss and it turns out he's the professor of psychology at the University of Texas, which explains A LOT.

Sadly, this also means that I will be unable to attend any of his lectures and confront him over his very sexist (and probably uninformed) claims about women in the bedroom.

In the mean time I am going to start drafting a very rude email accompanied by an excerpt from my up and coming scientific pamphlet: Dorian Lay.

More insulting assumptions about women in the bedroom!

My nemesis, the so-called 'scientist' (science-tit more like) David Buss has decided to compile all his stupid ideas into one book for our reading pleasure. It's a work upon why women want sex, and Dave really knows what he's talking about. Tanya Gold reviewed it in The Guardian.

She writes:

"Then I learn why women marry accountants; it's a trade-off. "Clooneyish" men tend to be unfaithful, because men have a different genetic agenda from women – they want to impregnate lots of healthy women. Meston and Buss call them "risk-taking, womanising 'bad boys'". So, women might use sex to bag a less dazzling but more faithful mate. He will have fewer genetic benefits but more resource benefits that he will make available, because he will not run away. This explains why women marry accountants. Accountants stick around – and sometimes they have tiny little feet!"

As ridiculous as Dave's theory may seem - I can't help but think there's an element of truth behind it. My past experience with 'bad boys' aka Gerald (although actually just a whiny sack of congealed chauvinistic gunk) and 'bad girls' aka Ann (although actually just a chav) has shown that they were not faithful mates to me. Maybe it's time I skulked around the Men's shoe department in Harrods on the look out for a man with size six feet? Or stand dressed like a prostitute outside KPMG?

Basically the possibilities are endless- thanks Dave! Oh how I'd love to shove a vagina cake in your mouth and watch you choke. But that not being an option (because I don't know where you live YET) let's move on to explore Dave's other really insightful observations about the opposite sex:

"And so to the main reason women have sex. The idol of "women do it for love, and men for joy" lies broken on the rug like a mutilated sex toy: it's orgasm, orgasm, orgasm. "A lot of women in our studies said they just wanted sex for the pure physical pleasure," Meston says. Meston and Buss garnish this revelation with so much amazing detail that I am distracted. I can't concentrate. Did you know that the World Health Organisation has a Women's Orgasm Committee? That "the G-spot" is named after the German physician Ernst Gräfenberg? That there are 26 definitions of orgasm?"

OK the last part is quite interesting (Meston is Buss's 'female co-writer', although is probably non-existent- a construct designed to confound women and make them buy the book. If she is real she's probably an illegal immigrant!)

"And so, to the second most important reason why women have sex – love. "Romantic love," Meston and Buss write, "is the topic of more than 1,000 songs sold on iTunes." And, if people don't have love, terrible things can happen, in literature and life: "Cleopatra poisoned herself with a snake and Ophelia went mad and drowned." Women say they use sex to express love and to get it, and to try to keep it."

I'm sorry Dave but that ^ is definitely NOT true.

"Meston and Buss also explain why the girls in my class at school went down like dominoes in 1990. One week we were maidens, the following week, we were not. We were, apparently, having sex to see if we liked it, so we could tell other schoolgirls that we had done it and to practise sexual techniques: "As a woman I don't want to be a dead fish," says one female. Another interviewee wanted to practise for her wedding night."

This is not the 19th century, stupid women! Although they're probable friends with Dave which explains why they're incredibly stupid.

Yes, upon reflection, I remember that awful summer when every single girl at Our Burning Infant Hearts Primary School lost their virginity in the graveyard. I was the only one who didn't. Not because I was a feminist at the time you understand, but because I was writing my precocious historical work; 'Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life in Haiku'. All my life history is revealed in my upcoming work 'Posie Rider: A Year Off the Ward' published by WPR Books, in which I cover my time and school and psychoanalyse myself to buggery in an attempt to stay sane.

Back to Dave and the part where he really excels himself:

"Women also mate to get the things they think they want – drugs, handbags, jobs, drugs. "The degree to which economics plays out in sexual motivations," Buss says, "surprised me. Not just prostitution. Sex economics plays out even in regular relationships. Women have sex so that the guy would mow the lawn or take out the garbage. You exchange sex for dinner." He quotes some students from the University of Michigan. It is an affluent university, but 9% of students said they had "initiated an attempt to trade sex for some tangible benefit"."

Would these kind of books ever be written about men? I know plenty of intellectual artistic types of males with lawyer girlfriends to keep them afloat. Indeed having a giant trust fund and a family heritage stretching back to the Norman Conquest, I too have had to bare the brunt of men only after me for my good looks and cash. I fight them off on a regular basis, if not with my copy of Simone de Beauvoir then with my sheer intelligence, which I can tell you now, most of them seem unable to handle.

Men sleep around for self-gain just as much as women, in fact I think they may do it more often. If you think about a successful ugly man wanting a pretty (dumb) girlfriend odds are its in order to improve his image. Now that's worse than just wanting economic independence like Virginia Woolf or Coco Chanel. That's buying someone's body and selling your own soul in exchange for improved self-image.

Be damned! Flees flea say I!

So inspired by Dave's miraculous study I have decided to write my own faux scientific pamphlet entitled:

"Dorian's Lay: How men sell their silly souls for sex"
by Posie Rider.

Plus I'm all over this Dave Buss character like a rash... I'm going to tell him exactly what I think...

And i wasn't alone in thinking Strictly Come Dancing attire is 'trashy'

Look what I've found:

One of the two professional costumiers that supplies dresses to Strictly is DanceSport International in Croydon. DSI hires the dresses to the BBC, and then sells them to anyone who could possibly want a half-dress made of fringing and feathers in some eye-burningly luminous shade. Twenty-five dresses worn on Strictly are being shown on the DSI website as I write, prices on application. Every dress is based on a leotard; some of the celebs choose to wear something under the leotard, others don't. Even the virtual nudity that features in so many of the Latin routines is fake, although the grotesque bump and grind is real enough.

I know. Anyone would have thought I had written that, but it was in fact Germaine Greer.

Read the rest of her article in which she whole heartedly agrees with moi here.
Great minds think alike.

He's Back...

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into your living rooms Chris bloody Hollins rears his ugly sexist head.

You may remember Hollins for the sexist remarks he made last year to innocent news present Sian Williams. I of course stepped up to the challenge and made my thoughts known to the BBC (aka the Basically for Boys Corporation), but they refused to meet my requests and Hollins is still allowed to run wild of licence fee payers televisions insulting the female race.

And now he's managed to worm his way into Strictly Come Dancing! I can't believe he's been allowed to set foot on the set for this 'family' show. Bruce Forsyth presents it for god's sake, although I'm sure even his hands are not clean from the putrid stains of chauvinism.

Look at this video of him yapping on about himself:
< SEXIST!
Quote: "I can't wait for the tight outfits..."

We all know ballroom dancing is pretty misogynistic anyway. Those gaudy dresses are terribly revealing and remind me of that awful debutant's ball I was forced to attend during my late teens. I of course spent most of the night alone in the toilets writing poetry, a pass time more worthy of my creative talents. Apologies, I digress. But what's more even shocking is my concurrence with the Daily Male when they criticised the skimpy 'dish cloth' dresses for 'cheapening the show'. I was of course one of the angry viewers who called in and made my thoughts KNOWN to the BBC. You just can't get away with skirts that short before the watershed. I refer you to said article. And then of course there was the sexist ageism evident in the dismissal of the lovely old biddy Arlene-what's-her-name.

And just when you thought it couldn't get anymore sexist... Chris Hollins is a contestant!

<"TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF HER!": sexual harrassment on live telly.

Lady readers, I would urge you not to vote at all, but if you must know that I am officially endorsing Natalie Cassidy (aka Sonia from Eastenders). I admire her courage for appearing to national television despite being extremely overweight. Her winning might set a positive example to other young fat girls.

We fight on and we fight to win! Toodles!

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.

Laptops for Girls

After my FWord featured article, Pity in Pink, hit the internet at the beginning of the year, you would have been forgiven for believing that the purveyors of PINK LAPTOPS might have rethought their strategy of tarring all of femininity with the same pinkish brush. You'd have been wrong, however, as this new PC World ad featuring the Dell Inspiron demonstrates.

I can't find a way to embed the video as it's on this slightly creepy Dell based blog (seriously, who cares?) but please follow this link to explore yourself, or if you're not sure, let me give you a run down. The advert begins with a slightly incredulous female voice, who tells us 'My world is fashion', what she means isn't exactly clear - is she a designer? Or a seamstress? Or just really into clothes like, you know, a woman. Either way, it is really quite important to her that everything she owns is colour coded. But how can this be achieved with something like a laptop, which you only generally have one of unlike clothes and shoes and dresses which come in lots of different colours and which you change frequently? Scream! Should she, for example, buy the pink Dell Inspiron to go with her pink shoes? Or the blue one to go with her blue jacket? Shit! Which one? Best go with the pink really. And why? Because MY WORLD IS PINK. And fashion. Her world is pink and fashion. Where does she live? Really, stop keeping us in suspense, what does this woman do??

They don't need to tell us what she does, or why her world is made of Pink and Fashion, because she is Everywoman, a competant and non-individualised figure with whom it is easy to identify. We can identify with her because she likes pink, and shoes, and laptops that are the same colour as our shoes, like us.

Poesie Rider in the New World!

Look! I'm on tour in North America being a poet! Fuck you Steve! I've gone to a land where they can appreciate me, as a woman, for who I am - a woman! More news and photos soon darlings! xxx

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!

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!

How cruel is man?

You know things haven't been going too well with me and Martin recently? Well I found this awesome blog post from a feminist mum justifying raising boys. No I'm all pro-abortion of course but I do think the idea of flushing yourself out just because it has a phallus is a little excessive. However, that doesn't mean you can't try your best to loose the little scallywag when it pops out.

Feminist Mums on Raising Male Children

So I sent the link to Martin and look at the email he sent me:

Posie,

I really can't take this anymore. Please, leave me and my son alone.

Martin.

Can you believe it? He's basically trying to side step the issue, big time. We spoke about it last night and he got rather angry again, in fact he threw a glass on the floor and ran out. I spoke to Melody and she thinks I'm pushing him over the edge, like last time.

I love this man; I have to save him from the ugly beast named chauvinism!

And yet more misogyny!

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse- on the way back from my Aunt Lilly's house (we had a lovely Sunday lunch together at her charming cottage in Hampshire) I was confronted with yet more casual sexism!

I was sitting on the train to Waterloo, working on my little (non-pink) laptop, when some awful 'man' got on the train and greeted me with those charming words:

"Alright darling, what's a pretty gal like doin' workin' on a Sunday?"

As you can imagine I was almost sick, but managed to swallow it back down. This man had obviously be drinking heavily and felt at liberty to reprimand an independent young woman for being hard working and youthful. Well it's just not on. Where will it end I ask you?

Women are never safe, even in floral.

Rickey Gervais: Anti-Misogyny Campaign

Hi Gals,

Now we all know that ricky gervais is a fat-ugly racist with no personality, but did you know he's also a chauvinist. I KNOW! I, along with the London Feminist Network, are taking strong action against, using female force in the form of a strongly worded letter to his agent, the (craftily named) Mr Hayes:

Duncan Hayes
United Agents
12-26
Lexington Street
London W1F 0LE


Mr. Hayes, I presume,

At the first of three Humanist Seasonal Specials your acting friend the so-called 'commedian' Ricky Gervais made several ‘jokes’ about sexual violence against women and girls. Us Feminists do not find this funny and we are extremely upset. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE.

Mr Gervais told a 'joke' about the sexual abuse of an eight year old girl and another 'joke' about raping women suffering from Alzheimer's. My Grandmother died of Alzheimer's and I wasn't sexually abused, but I might have been, so you can imagine that I did NOT take to this well.

Rape and child abuse are not a joke, and should never be laughed at. According to the British Crime Survey there are over 40,000 rapes every year, and over 300,000 sexual assaults. That's a lot of people who won't be watching awful films like 'Ghost Town' and 'Not now Helen I'm taking a Shit', which in all fairness isn't a film but could be and if it were would most certainly star Mr Ricky himself because he has the basest tastes imaginable. Baser than Hitler.

I am upset. Very upset Mr Hayes. I would appreciate a reply indicating your views. Ideally I would like to see an apology from Mr Gervais.

In the meantime you should take a good, long look at yourself in the mirror Mr Hayes and comfort yourself with the knowledge that no one will be sexually attacking you, nor your 'client' in the near future because you are both perversely ugly.

I look forward to your response, Mr Hayes.

POSIE BLOODY RIDER.

Now remember gals- personalise, personalise.

Keep up the fight! Toodles xx

Josh

I had to 'talk' with Martin yesterday about Josh, only it didn't go exactly as I had planned...

We were going to the park to feed the fucking ducks when Josh fell over next to my feet. He was still rolling round on the floor and Martin's eyes went from me to Josh, from Josh back to me (he probably wanted me to pick him up from the floor - male exploitation strikes again!) My eyes went from Martin to my feet, then back to Martin and then on to the ice cream van pulling up beyond his left shoulder.

He huffed and picked Josh up, who also noticed the ice cream van.

After I had finished my Twister (yummy) Martin gave Josh a loaf and I pushed him into a hoard of geese. We sat on a bench to talk.

'What's wrong Posie? When Josh fell over you just kept staring at the ice cream van'

'I know. I like ice cream, but I'm not going to lie anymore Martin, I haven't seen you alone now for quite some time. Josh is always there and well I can't help but think you are exploiting me as a woman. Next thing you'll be asking me to breastfeed.'

'But Josh loves you, P! Why the other day I was reading him a story and he called you Mummy No. 2"

"Oh that's great, so now Josh associates me with shit!'

I was incredibly annoyed and when Josh came back over Martin ran off somewhere. We were alone.

"Hello Josh - did you have a nice time over there?" I was trying to sound nice.

"I heard what you said Posie Rider." I looked down to see Josh staring right back at me. He had suddenly acquired a proper grown-up voice and his hands sat resoundingly on his hips. He was tapping his toddler foot, aggressively. "If you think you can get away with my Dad and not me you are not right. I am big boy and you do like I say, do you understand?"

I was furious - yet more misogyny and at such a young age!

"Or what Josh? What ARE YOU going to do about it?"

Josh growled, clenching his little eyebrows. He lifted his hand high above his head. "Or else I do like Dad does - bang bang!"

At that point Martin came running back over the hill. He gave me a kiss and it smelt like he had be drinking. Heavily. I was speechless and Josh gave me a big hug upon seeing his father return. The hug of betrayal.

What did it mean? Did Martin hit Josh? Am I safe? Does Josh want to kill me? Am I a woman?

What do you think? Something is definitely brewing. I am reminded of one of my literary heroines: Judith Coalstream. She was a real life woman and it was up to her to solve the death of her mother. Had someone played her mother foul? Had she been...murdered? All eyes pointed to her brother Harry, and she was the only woman brave enough to accuse him. She got it all wrong of course but I'm must more intelligent than her and I live in the future.

Martin...I'm watching you.

Yet More Sexism

So. this is just a taster of the overt sexism that exists today. I personally have been on the receiving end of this with Martin and his demon son, Josh. They took me out the other day to get some plastic bed sheets, because Josh kept pissing himself. Martin had gone to find a mop and Josh needed the loo (obv) and HE insisted on going into the ladies WITH ME! So us women are lesser than you then Josh- you little shit. You can just wonder into the ladies with your pants down flashing. But I'm allowed o where near the MEN'S loos.

I hate you Josh, hate you hate you. Death.

P.S Melody decided to abort.

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