NS November 30th, 2007

I’ve been engaged in the same debate on two different forums I belong to and it’s been on my mind for days now — what is wrong with the word feminism? I started a poll on each, asking the (mainly female) participants if they consider themselves feminist or not, as I often encounter women who say they identify with the feminist movement but would never call themselves an actual feminist. So I had to ask: Why?

The consensus seems to be that the majority of women polled do call themselves feminst but a significant, very vocal, minority do not merely because of what the word brings to mind. I find this execise in semantics-turned-political-debate endlessly fascinating, even if I did get a bit too worked up last night and had to walk away from the computer lest I break it. It may be ‘just a word’ to those arguing against its use and so no big deal if it were to change, but to me it is an attempt to subvert the message itself, water it down until it’s nothing more than a glass of ice lemonade left in the sun too long and allowed to melt because no one drank it fast enough.

When those arguing against the word ‘feminism’ suggested that we change the word to something friendlier, more inclusive of men, I wanted to scream. Mostly because I used to feel the same way. I wanted everyone to play nice and get the ‘opposing team’ involved for brainstorming powwows and group therapy sessions. I naively believed that if we worked together, we could achieve our goal. But as I’ve delved further and further into the world of gender politics, that ball of sunshine high in my throat has settled like dusk in a Western sky and now resides, fiery and bursting with smoldering red light, in the pit of my stomach. My passion has been awoken and I can no longer bear the thought of waiting for the men in power to give us that which we deserve. Every day that I wait, every right I concede, every time someone tells me I have to include my gender’s oppressors in our liberation…it’s too little verging on too late.We don’t need a new word, we need a new way of thinking.

Then the argument comes that if we don’t include men in the solution, they have no incentive to help solve the problem. Apparently, some believe that this could be aided by changing the word ‘feminism’ to ‘gender equality.’ The rationale is that feminism is about only women whereas gender equality signifies men and women working together for equality. But I ask: What is so scary or wrong about something being just about women? It’s been just about men for a long, long time. Why do we always have to defer to them, make them involved as if we need their leadership or their permission to do what they haven’t done for us since humans came into existence? If they haven’t given us equality by now, will they ever? I don’t think they will, sadly. And if somebody won’t give something that is yours, even after every ‘nice’ tactic and compromise in the book has been exercised, you start demanding it.

You march

You get in their face and shout a little louder

You refuse to back down and wear your badge proudly

And that’s exactly what I’m doing and will continue to do. If that makes me a radical feminist, so be it. I embrace the term. There is nothing wrong with being either and, in fact, the two words only benefit from being put together. Radical means “Arising from or going to a root or source; Favoring or effecting fundamental or revolutionary changes in current practices, conditions, or institutions.” So to those who think these are dirty words, consider yourself cleansed. You can call whatever form of activism you participate in whatever you want. Call it ‘gender neautrality’ or ‘gender equality’ or ‘lucy in the sky with diamonds.’ I don’t care.

Just don’t take away my feminism.

• Feminist Fury
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NS November 29th, 2007

That is all.

• Banal Breakdown
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NS November 28th, 2007

I thought I’d dig into my archives and find some posts from the last two Novembers for entertainment value. I wrote about the wonder that is British meat-flavoured food in 2005

Meat is good, I’ll be the first to admit it. I ain’t no vegetarian. However, I have limits. I don’t like meat intermixing with my desserts, potato chips, or pastries. Call me meatist if you must, but meat or meat-flavouring doesn’t go with just anything. Britain seems to be a bit behind in realizing this, however, and you can still find the following dishes being served in homes and pubs across the nation(s):

Beef, Oyster and Kidney Pudding ~ steamed beef, oyster and kidney with onions, tomatoes and mushrooms, baked in a suet pastry. This is what they ate during the Plague, so consider it a history lesson as you gag your way through it.

Cock-a-Leekie Soup ~ beef, chicken, leeks and PRUNES. Since we all know that prunes are eaten only in a last-ditch effort to cure constipation, I think it would be more aptly named Ass-a-Leekie Soup. (continued…)

Then in November 2006 I wrote about TNC’s first cold

Snot. More snot. Yet more snot. And then, just when you think it’s over? It’s snot.

The Noble Child has her first cold and snot is flying out of her at an amazing rate. It’s mystical, really. If she were a superhero her power would be to render people’s limbs and faces immobile with a web of green goo. It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s…SNOTTY BABY! (continued…)

The joy of English bathrooms in winter

No place so cold, no place so wet
as the English room in which is set
the throne, the basin, and the tub
Mould all around the room I scrub

From this, the damp, o cursed thee
’tis this, not drink, the English disease
Double glazed and waterproofed
even with an ironclad roof

It matters not, the damp prevails
causing my poor health to ail
And then the cold, o wretched chill
is this what drives good men to kill?

For lads ’tis fine, their visit brief
but ladies shiver w’ chilly cheeks
Semi-clad and frozen through
such is a visit to an English loo

And in keeping with a meme I was tagged for by Vol Abroad, a list of strange things about me

* When I laugh really hard, I lose all control of the muscles in my right hand, making it impossible to hold or grip anything. Everyone from my elementary school teachers to my husband has tried to say I’m making this up, but I’m not. It’s inexplicably, strangely true. Do you think I want to drop my drink or have my handwriting turn to that of a drunken kindergartener just because someone made me chuckle?

* My eye squeaks. No, I’m not making the noise with my mouth, it’s really my eye. I know it’s gross, I don’t care. Would you care to hear a rendition of ‘Jingle Bells’ on the squeaker before you go?

* I can’t bend the two littlest toes on my left foot. They just stick straight out if I try to curl them. But other than that, I have adorable, dainty feet that any foot fetishist would be lucky to lick, suck and generally adore

* I am incapable of letting a microwave complete its alloted time and beep to signal it has finished heating whatever it was I put in there to be heated. I have to stand there and watch the timer and then press ‘Stop’ or the ‘Open Door’ button just before the buzzer goes. The Noble Husband thinks this may stem from a rather loud microwave we owned many moons ago but I don’t remember such a microwave, which is even creepier. Maybe all that radiation I absorbed while standing there waiting to pounce on the ‘Open’ button have erased that part of my memory. Interesting, nonetheless. Or completely neurotic, whichever

* I once inadvertently got into a taxi with two men (one of whom had just been released from prison), who were covered in swastika tattoos and had been drinking heavily. The driver didn’t speak much English and the men started yelling and throwing things at him as the taxi made its way to their destination, which was in the middle of nowhere BFE. One of the guys licked my neck as he got out. Charming. Then the driver got lost and spent almost two hours finding his way back to the city. What should’ve been a five minute cab ride turned into a nearly three hour adventure. Things like this happen to me a lot. I have accepted it as my destiny

* I go into a homicidal rage if strange men on the street tell me to “Smile, it’s not that bad!” Serious. Homicidal. Rage. Fellas, if you see a lady purposefully striding down the street with a scowl on her face, do not, I repeat, DO NOT tell her to cheer up, call her ‘baby’ or ask her smile so you can see how pretty she is. You could end up like the guy who did this to me and get a whack across the head with a roll of Pillsbury cinnamon rolls. So just, you know, beware, mothafuckas

* I have a routine in the shower that I do in the same order every time and if I am spaced out and mix up two of the steps, I always swear internally and panic a little bit before I realise that it’s just a SHOWER and the world is not going to end if I wash my face before I condition my hair

* I have a pretty extensive vocabulary (even though I hardly use it) so you would think I’d be good at Scrabble, but I really suck at it. I don’t have whatever it is in the brain that one needs in order to be able to ’see’ where the letters you have on your little tile-holder-thingy fit in with the ones already on the board. I can see all sorts of words with the letters I have, but to have to look at my letters, then at the letters on the board and try to come up with words involving the two is beyond comprehension to me, apparently. I’m like “YES! I have the word ‘xanthodont’ (one who has yellow teeth), suckers! That is gonna score me some MEGA points! Haahahhaha. Oh, wait. There’s nowhere to put this word. Damn it! How can I use the R and the U that are available when there is neither an R nor a U in ‘xanthodont’? I have to come up with another word? But I have this freakin’ fantastic word right here and it’s soooo frustrating not to be able to use it. I hate this game, it’s stupid. Hmmph.”So you see why TNH just looooves playing Scrabble with me

* I do things like run up and down the hallway screeching like a wild banshee and waving my arms around while singing songs about how good broccoli is to get TNC to laugh and/or eat her dinner. It only works half of the time but it keeps me freshly insane and is a great workout. I just have to remember to shut the blinds so the neighbours don’t call the cops

* I hate fruit combined with chocolate. Seperately, I love them both. Together? Blech! This baffles the British minds that think a box of chocolates should contain 90% fruit-based delicacies like ‘fudge covered apricots’ or ‘chocolate orange’ or ‘hazelnut cherry confection’. Vomit. I’d rather not eat chocolate than eat one of those and that’s saying a LOT

* I curse like a sailor at sea most of the time but, oddly enough, did not curse once while in labour with my daugther. This helps in my theory that we become supernatural alien-beasts completely unlike our true selves when giving birth in order to get through it without maiming or killing. Just a theory, folks

* I thought that Napoleon Dynamite was the stupidest movie ever made and don’t get why so many people thought it was funkin’ hilarious. It was just a dork saying dorky things and speaking in a monotone, or was I the only one to get that? And the whole ‘dry humor/subtle irony thing, mixed with the 80s theme? Done, done and done to death. It’s not original, it’s not funny, and it’s not a reason to start using stupid cathcphrases and wearing Vote Pedro t-shirts, you sheeple

* Only four hairs grow on my left armpit

• Miscellaneous Missives
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NS November 27th, 2007

I am seriously cheesed off right now.
As (hopefully) many of you know, a Saudi woman had her sentence doubled last week from 90 lashes to 200 and a six month stay in prison for the grievous crime of violating one of the many sex segregation laws inherent to Islamic rule in the Kingdom. Not only did she ride in a car with a male not related to her (gasp!), she was then gang-raped 14 times by no fewer than  seven men. All of the rapists have been given sentences of five years or less. The victim’s original sentence was doubled upon appeal because the judge seemed to think she had ‘influenced and aggravated the judiciary’ by using the media to broadcast her plight.

Un-fucking-believable.

And though this was a moderately covered story last week, there was no call to arms or public outrage beyond a few feminist websites and blogs. People read it, perhaps felt a bit sad or outraged, but then kept flipping channels/turning pages/clicking on images. Because it didn’t matter to them. Wasn’t their problem. If those savages want to do that to their own people, fine. Right? Fucking wrong.

Now –NOW!– everyone is getting all bent out of shape and stomping their feet because a middle-aged white British lady who teaches primary school in Sudan is being held in a jail and may face charges of blasphemy for allowing her students to name a teddy bear Muhammad. As you probably remember from the Danish cartoon debacle, it is considered highly offensive and even illegal to create an image in Muhammad’s name. So by naming the teddy bear after the Prophet (even if done so innocently and voted for by the children themselves), she may have broken the law. A possible sentence could be six months in prison, 40 lashes or a large fine.

Notice I sad she may be charged and that a sentence is possible. Nothing has happened so far but the media and everyone in the Western world are getting their embroidered panties in a bunch over the mere thought of a civilised Brit being subject to barbaric Sharia law. Yet nothing is done about the woman being punished for being a victim of the most barbaric crime of all. All this hand-wringing over a teacher but nothing more than a ‘oh, that’s too bad’ for the Saudi woman. It astounds me.

I don’t want either woman to be punished, I think corporal punishment is wrong, but I get so tired of people begging for leniency for Westerners living and working in countries with different judicial systems — based on different ideals, values and religions — who have committed a crime. Even if we think the crime is absurdly stupid, the punishment barbaric and the circumstances questionable, we have no right to expect clemency because we “don’t know better.” If a Sudanese Muslim immigrated to America or the UK and did something which broke one of the laws there (say, giving a strange child a lift home because it’s cold out and being charged with kidnapping), there would be a shortage of sympathy. I guarantee that most of the commentators would say “Well, he should’ve known that we do things differently here and educated himself on the law and customs.” I expect there would be little leniency from the law enforcement officials or the general population.

Ignorance is not an excuse, ever.

We say that all the time but apparently it only applies to situations in which we see fit to judge others and perch ourselves up on the moral high ground. I mean, we very well may be on the moral high ground. I too find Sharia law cruel and horrid and I wish the Islamic Sharia judiciaries didn’t inflict such severe corporal punishments on its citizens. But the US still has the death penalty and I find that equally as barbaric. I don’t value human life any less there than I do here, and I don’t change my belief in what is right and what is wrong based on what color skin or even what color passport a person has.

So go on, Britain. Fight for your teacher, bring her home unharmed. But for fuck’s sake — use that screechy, middle-class outrage to save someone else’s skin besides your own, too.

• I Bitch Therefore I Am , In The News
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NS November 26th, 2007

As promised, a second entry in my Is/Is Not series. The first was on Feminism. This one is on Breastfeeding.

Breastfeeding is:

• Natural
• Beautiful
• Best for the baby
• A bonding experience
• Often difficult (in the beginning)
• Sometimes painful (in the beginning)
• More portable and convenient than bottles and formula
• Free
• Empowering
• Biologically awe-inspiring
• Environmentally friendly
• A public health issue that deserves more attention and respect from the medical community
• 90% more likely to happen if you have unwavering support from your partner and/or family
• One of the most rewarding things I have ever done

Breastfeeding is not:

• Weird
• Gross
• Silly
• Sexual
• Embarrassing
• Something that has to be done in private, like it’s a dirty little secret
• Similar in any way, shape or form to someone urinating, vomiting, defecating or masturbating in public
• Only for hippies and sanctimonious know-it-alls
• Overrated — it really is that important to a baby’s health
• Automatically critical of formula feeding
• Only for stay-at-home moms — plenty of working women breastfeed successfully
• A debate that should divide women

Would you add anything to either list? (Please keep it respectful and intelligent)

• Health and Fitness , Is/Is Not
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