Season's greetings, and welcome to this special festive edition of the Carnival of Feminists.
As we're so close to the holidays, it's tempting to fill this space with cheery, unproblematic links and posts celebrating all our gains and pretending all's right with the world. This winter in particular that process seems especially hypocritical, so I've decided to just say bollocks to it. Here is a Carnival full of righteous indignation, intersectionality, rage and renewal.
As it's Christmas, let's start by remembering that the personal is political. A guest blogger at The F Word has some words of advice for fellow survivors of childhood abuse on dealing with the holiday season - which, for many victims, can involve unwanted proximity with their former abusers or with those who were complicit.
Even for those of us lucky enough not to have to face our abusers over the dinner table, Christmastime nearly always throws up a few feminist dilemmas. I've often found myself squeezed in with blithely misogynist members of my extended family, trying to explain why certain remarks are hurtful without causing an almighty row. An exciting-looking new blog, Stop Sexist Remarks, is here to help, with tips to challenge bigotry and stop sexist jibes in their tracks: Setting Boundaries in 15 Words or Less.
You might also want to take a look at a humourless festive rant I posted here at Penny Red this week, in which I get all pissy about the contemporary fetish for retro-domesticity.
Sometimes anger is important. Even at Christmas, when even more than usual women are expected to be placid, to keep the peace, to make things nice for everyone else, anger can be constructive, and it can be precious, and it's possible to stay tapped into to that vital stream of political awareness and personal rage without souring your appreciation of life's many joys. In that spirit, here are some excellent, topical posts full of incisive anger:
Radical Profeminist offers a powerful, angry and constructive response to man men's perception of their own 'suffering' at the hands of feminism, in one of the finest feminist posts I've read all year.
Guest blogger Dumi Lewis writes at Racialicious about the politics of being an ally.
Sara Ahmed at Comment Is Free reminds us that climate change is also about gender justice.
HarpyMarx reports on institutional police misogyny, brought to light once more by the case of a murdered woman failed by Greater Manchester Police
And the brilliant Womanist Musings offers a timely dose of WTF over the latest jolly commercial racist misogyny outing in celebland.
Rape, intersectionality and the language of victim-blaming -the feminist blogosphere is currently awash with powerful, courageous discussion of rape - and not only rape itself, but how we fight rape culture by working to change the language we use to describe rape, criminality and victimhood. Of particular concern this month has been the victim-blaming language used by authorities nominally responsible for rape prevention. (The following posts may be triggering for rape survivors):
On a new blog, rapedattufts.info, a brave survivor of rape at Tufts university speaks out about how her experience was dismissed by college authorities because she didn't resemble the 'perfect victim' - in part because she is a woman of colour. She describes the 'intersectionality of discrimination' that she faced with dignity and depth.
Kate Harding at Salon offers a powerful dissection of the shocking case of a 12-year-old girl being told by site supervisors at her middle school that she had 'asked for it', and that her attacker's 'hormones' were to blame. Jezebel has more.
In the UK, Dark Purple Moon tackles the graphic, distressing 'anti-rape' adverts currently being featured all over the London public transport system, reminding us that rape doesn't just 'happen'.
In slightly better news, In a Strange Land has details of a new rape prevention programme to train bar staff in reducing the risk of rape. The programme is refreshingly free of victim blaming language, in part because it was compiled in conjunction with anti-rape educators. And this week Al Franken's anti-rape amendment has been signed into law in the United States, which would 'withold defence contracts from companies like KBR if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court", after Jamie Leigh Jones was prevented from seeking justice for her charge of gang-rape by Haliburton (via Shakesville). Slowly but surely, and with tireless work from feminists of all genders, the dialectic of the rape culture we are living in is beginning to falter.
So, that about wraps it up for 2009, no pun intended. It's been a really exciting year for feminism online and in the meatspace, and next year looks set to be even more jam-packed. Watch this space for details of the next Carnival; meanwhile, on behalf of the new-and-improved Carnival of Feminists, it falls to me to wish all readers and contributors, of every faith and none, a happy holiday and a tolerable end to this crazy bloody decade. In sisterhood. x
Showing posts with label christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label christmas. Show all posts
Wednesday, 23 December 2009
Tuesday, 23 December 2008
Hope and Humbuggery: a Christmas tantrum.
This sucks.
I’ve just arrived back from my mum’s place and been greeted with a bollocking HUGE gas bill that we have only a slim chance of paying, plus a plumbing system that’s still buggered to the tune of having to wash my hair and essential parts in the sink, with a saucepan. All this, and scrabbling to prepare for a parental visit: clean, fumigate, hide the S’M posters, hide the ashtrays, hide the kingskins, hide our same-sex partners, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll make 2009 intact.
At this most magical time of the year, I truly pity the undeserving souls who work in call centres. Having been on the line to a dogged unresponsive pissed-off hack for half an hour, you could hear a festering note of impending armaggedon in the weary British Gas man’s voice when he asked if he could keep me informed of any new products and services.
Talking of festering Armageddon, does anyone else feel like we’re approaching the end times?
Maybe it’s just me. But in the latter months of 2008, it’s become far less easy to be a freak in this country. The black dog of recession is crunching us in its bloody jaws and, unlike the States, we don’t have any liberal saviour preaching change who we can clutch at, whispering save us. The government is clamping down on everybody, no matter where they live or why. The poor, single parents and the mentally ill are going to suffer under the new welfare plan. The atmosphere in Whitehall is one of stunned denial, with ministers emerging over the ramparts to frantically fire desultory, mean sallies such as today’s announcement that bailiffs will be given new powers to enter debtors’ homes at will, physically restraining or pinning down the occupants if necessary.
Will Monaco and Jersey swarm with smart-suited Scrooges wearing knuckle-dusters? Will hired muscle be sent to collect billions of pounds’ worth of debt from Britain’s richest tax-dodgers, like Philip Green? Will members of the treasury, recently found owing £645bn which my generation will have to stump up for in our middle age, be turfed out onto the street in their scanties? Nah, thought not. Once again, it’s the poorest and most vulnerable who are being targeted by this supposed people’s government, this government that promised us change, transparency, a new world order. Maybe that’s why Obamania is failing to cheer us up: we’ve heard this line before.
Meanwhile, in Vatican City a nominally celibate former Hitler Youth member in a dress has a Christmas message of goodwill and peace in our time. Yup, Ratzinger wants to defend holy heterosexuality from the despicable ‘gender blurring’ perpetrated by gays, bisexuals, transsexuals and women who don’t sit with their knees together in church:
‘We need something like human ecology, meant in the right way. The Church speaks of human nature as 'man' or 'woman' and asks that this order is respected.
"This is not out-of-date metaphysics. It comes from the faith in the Creator and from listening to the language of creation, despising which would mean self-destruction for humans and therefore a destruction of the work itself of God."
I would like, at this point, to swallow the greater part of the Fuck The Pope tirade that was going to be my inevitable next outburst and instead point Herr Ratzinger towards the roll-call of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Christian saints recently enumerated by activist scholars, amongst them Saint Joan of Arc, Saint Sebastian and ooh, wouldn’t you credit it, Saint George, patron of this blinkered isle.
I apologise for the unseasonal amount of bile and hatred in this post. Believe me, behind this cold, hard exterior twitters the pink and fluffy heart of a perpetual six-year-old who bounces out of bed at 5am on Christmas morning and dreams in sugarplums and fairy lights. But behind that is the chill adult realisation that we’re going to have to take the long road home. 2009 will be a hard, hard year, we didn’t need the IMF to tell us that. The rest of this beautiful, broken, brilliant decade is going to entail threats to socialism, liberalism and freedom of thought and action from all sides, with governments offering no quarter and giving none. Those of us brave enough to weather the distance, those of us with the strength and temerity to hold on to our liberal ideals, will need everything we’ve got to keep the hope in our heads alive.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. [Tennyson, 'Ulysses']
And that’s my Christmas message. Hope, if nothing else: hope, because that’s all we’ve got, that we will come through this with our sanity and our integrity, everyone: the poor, the young, the mentally ill, the geeks, the freaks, the queers and their allies, the feminists and race-activists and socialists and war protesters and those who dare to dream of a better and a fairer world. When we have nothing else but hope, we will have to find the energy from somewhere to keep on getting out of bed, keep on striving, keep on thinking for ourselves. I’m certainly going to keep on writing; I hope you’ll keep on reading. Thank you all for keeping up with this blog over the past year, and please believe me when I wish you, whatever your faith, a merry Christmas.
I’ve just arrived back from my mum’s place and been greeted with a bollocking HUGE gas bill that we have only a slim chance of paying, plus a plumbing system that’s still buggered to the tune of having to wash my hair and essential parts in the sink, with a saucepan. All this, and scrabbling to prepare for a parental visit: clean, fumigate, hide the S’M posters, hide the ashtrays, hide the kingskins, hide our same-sex partners, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll make 2009 intact.
At this most magical time of the year, I truly pity the undeserving souls who work in call centres. Having been on the line to a dogged unresponsive pissed-off hack for half an hour, you could hear a festering note of impending armaggedon in the weary British Gas man’s voice when he asked if he could keep me informed of any new products and services.
Talking of festering Armageddon, does anyone else feel like we’re approaching the end times?
Maybe it’s just me. But in the latter months of 2008, it’s become far less easy to be a freak in this country. The black dog of recession is crunching us in its bloody jaws and, unlike the States, we don’t have any liberal saviour preaching change who we can clutch at, whispering save us. The government is clamping down on everybody, no matter where they live or why. The poor, single parents and the mentally ill are going to suffer under the new welfare plan. The atmosphere in Whitehall is one of stunned denial, with ministers emerging over the ramparts to frantically fire desultory, mean sallies such as today’s announcement that bailiffs will be given new powers to enter debtors’ homes at will, physically restraining or pinning down the occupants if necessary.
Will Monaco and Jersey swarm with smart-suited Scrooges wearing knuckle-dusters? Will hired muscle be sent to collect billions of pounds’ worth of debt from Britain’s richest tax-dodgers, like Philip Green? Will members of the treasury, recently found owing £645bn which my generation will have to stump up for in our middle age, be turfed out onto the street in their scanties? Nah, thought not. Once again, it’s the poorest and most vulnerable who are being targeted by this supposed people’s government, this government that promised us change, transparency, a new world order. Maybe that’s why Obamania is failing to cheer us up: we’ve heard this line before.
Meanwhile, in Vatican City a nominally celibate former Hitler Youth member in a dress has a Christmas message of goodwill and peace in our time. Yup, Ratzinger wants to defend holy heterosexuality from the despicable ‘gender blurring’ perpetrated by gays, bisexuals, transsexuals and women who don’t sit with their knees together in church:
‘We need something like human ecology, meant in the right way. The Church speaks of human nature as 'man' or 'woman' and asks that this order is respected.
"This is not out-of-date metaphysics. It comes from the faith in the Creator and from listening to the language of creation, despising which would mean self-destruction for humans and therefore a destruction of the work itself of God."
I would like, at this point, to swallow the greater part of the Fuck The Pope tirade that was going to be my inevitable next outburst and instead point Herr Ratzinger towards the roll-call of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Christian saints recently enumerated by activist scholars, amongst them Saint Joan of Arc, Saint Sebastian and ooh, wouldn’t you credit it, Saint George, patron of this blinkered isle.
I apologise for the unseasonal amount of bile and hatred in this post. Believe me, behind this cold, hard exterior twitters the pink and fluffy heart of a perpetual six-year-old who bounces out of bed at 5am on Christmas morning and dreams in sugarplums and fairy lights. But behind that is the chill adult realisation that we’re going to have to take the long road home. 2009 will be a hard, hard year, we didn’t need the IMF to tell us that. The rest of this beautiful, broken, brilliant decade is going to entail threats to socialism, liberalism and freedom of thought and action from all sides, with governments offering no quarter and giving none. Those of us brave enough to weather the distance, those of us with the strength and temerity to hold on to our liberal ideals, will need everything we’ve got to keep the hope in our heads alive.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. [Tennyson, 'Ulysses']
And that’s my Christmas message. Hope, if nothing else: hope, because that’s all we’ve got, that we will come through this with our sanity and our integrity, everyone: the poor, the young, the mentally ill, the geeks, the freaks, the queers and their allies, the feminists and race-activists and socialists and war protesters and those who dare to dream of a better and a fairer world. When we have nothing else but hope, we will have to find the energy from somewhere to keep on getting out of bed, keep on striving, keep on thinking for ourselves. I’m certainly going to keep on writing; I hope you’ll keep on reading. Thank you all for keeping up with this blog over the past year, and please believe me when I wish you, whatever your faith, a merry Christmas.
Tuesday, 25 December 2007
Humbuggery and radical rantings.
Woman is born free, and is everywhere in chain-stores.
This holiday season, the drop in national festive spending has been worse than predicted; even the last-minute pre-christmas dash hasn't been enough to recoup losses on the high street. This is causing panic over dried-out mince pies in boardrooms up and down the country. Women wield a level of consumer power that is truly terrifying to those who recognise it, and in the face of spiralling food and clothing costs, we're starting to dig in our heels just a little.
Let's not forget that in the macro-capitalist playground in which we live, our power as women doesn't reside in our looks, nor in our sexuality: it's in our wallets. Seventy-five percent of global retail revenue is generated by women. That means that, every time an ordinary consumer makes a purchase anywhere in the world, three times in every four it's a woman handing over the cash or the credit card. We have a huge and terrifying amount of purchasing power - enough to bring world economies to their knees simply by changing our spending habits. Which we might be starting to do, ever so slightly, at this most financially loaded time of the year.
My Christmas wish? That every stressed and overworked home-maker, every dutiful daughter, sister and friend, every woman breaking herself and her bank balance in order to make christmas that little bit more special for those around her, will realise the true nature of the power that she wields. An economy that is geared towards making women consume and expend effort in an established manner can only be maintained if those women continue to do so in those same, very precise ways. And at this time of the year, the effort required, the money involved and the social and financial juggling expected of us in fulfilling those social requirements pinches particularly hard. But, sweating over the mince pies or collapsing under a sea of discarded giftwrap, we are not as disempowered as we might think.
*********
In the spirit of a Socialist Christmas, have a truly amazing short story, written by China Mieville for the Socialist review three years ago. Never say I'm not good to you. And that's it from me, I'm now going to go and gorge myself on booze and chocolate in the best British fashion. Merry non-denominational festivities to all, and bollocks to all that.
This holiday season, the drop in national festive spending has been worse than predicted; even the last-minute pre-christmas dash hasn't been enough to recoup losses on the high street. This is causing panic over dried-out mince pies in boardrooms up and down the country. Women wield a level of consumer power that is truly terrifying to those who recognise it, and in the face of spiralling food and clothing costs, we're starting to dig in our heels just a little.
Let's not forget that in the macro-capitalist playground in which we live, our power as women doesn't reside in our looks, nor in our sexuality: it's in our wallets. Seventy-five percent of global retail revenue is generated by women. That means that, every time an ordinary consumer makes a purchase anywhere in the world, three times in every four it's a woman handing over the cash or the credit card. We have a huge and terrifying amount of purchasing power - enough to bring world economies to their knees simply by changing our spending habits. Which we might be starting to do, ever so slightly, at this most financially loaded time of the year.
My Christmas wish? That every stressed and overworked home-maker, every dutiful daughter, sister and friend, every woman breaking herself and her bank balance in order to make christmas that little bit more special for those around her, will realise the true nature of the power that she wields. An economy that is geared towards making women consume and expend effort in an established manner can only be maintained if those women continue to do so in those same, very precise ways. And at this time of the year, the effort required, the money involved and the social and financial juggling expected of us in fulfilling those social requirements pinches particularly hard. But, sweating over the mince pies or collapsing under a sea of discarded giftwrap, we are not as disempowered as we might think.
*********
In the spirit of a Socialist Christmas, have a truly amazing short story, written by China Mieville for the Socialist review three years ago. Never say I'm not good to you. And that's it from me, I'm now going to go and gorge myself on booze and chocolate in the best British fashion. Merry non-denominational festivities to all, and bollocks to all that.
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