More Action Required

For this first post of 2018, there is so much I want to write about, I might burst.  So many subjects  which I have previously covered are still at the top of the news agenda and not for good reasons.  

• There is no resolution in the Middle East -  thanks in no small measure to Trump.  He makes everything worse.  An expected outcome.  But somehow even worse than we feared.
• The NHS is buckling under the weight of the social care crisis, budget cuts and systemic issues like GP changes, staffing, etc.  No change.  In fact - again - worse.
• It is a year since the women's marches and there has been some progress thanks to women speaking up.  But how much has actual change permeated?  Very little.  We are only seeing the visible, brave tip of the iceberg with those women who are going public on harassment, pay inequality, discrimination.
• There are more people in the UK using foodbanks than ever before.  A disgusting statistic for the year 2018.
• A news programme the other day was quite seriously discussing the likelihood of nuclear war with some expert or other.  I was so horrified, I didn't register the details.  As I have written before, how did we reach a point where this is a normal discussion again???
• Our pathetically poor representation of what a female Prime Minister should be has placed serial misogynist Toby Young in charge of the new Office for Students.  Yet another reason for Theresa May to be ashamed of her record.  
• Only a year until we 'Brexit' apparently.  And we are absolutely none the wiser as to the consequences for any areas of our lives.  Other than getting blue passports again obviously.  Don't.  Just don't.

And yet there can be some hope.  

• At last night's Golden Globe Awards, during her fabulous (in so many ways) speech Oprah Winfrey made some very powerful points about the importance of the press, of investigation.  Despite the distortions of social media, there are truths to be told.  The Watergate journalists had no access to Google or Twitter.  But they managed to prise out the truth and bring down an administration.  It can be done.  We have to chip away and ignore the distractions.
• In 2017 Rose McGowan began the Hollywood backlash by standing up to one of its most feared moguls.  The movement continues to spread.  Time's Up!
• It is not inevitable that the NHS should collapse.  It is staffed by amazing, dedicated people and situated in a 'first world' country with plenty of money.  Protest, protest, protest.  On social media, by email or snail mail.  March if you can.  But protest

Let's make 2018 a year of more action.  We want a decent NHS.  We don't want nuclear war.  We don't want men to believe that harassment is 'a bit of harmless fun'.  Whatever the issue, we have to stand up and be counted.  This year,  it is one hundred years since the end of the 'war to end all wars' definitely didn't end all wars.  But no-one has pushed the nuclear button since 1945.  An achievement which must be defended.  It is also one hundred years since women got the vote.  But there is so much more to do.

Start small.  Here are some ideas:

• Send a postcard every week to your MP asking about the same one issue.  NHS, fracking, food banks, you decide.  Don't be fobbed off with a standard letter back.  You need only write one sentence a week.  The address for all MPs is House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA and a book of 25 plain postcards is £2 on Amazon.  [You can do the same in other countries of course!]

• Don't follow Trump @realDonaldTrump on Twitter.  If you want to see his madness, unedited, follow @UnfollowTrump.  They retweet his stuff without you adding to his followers and therefore his ego.

• We all have coats in our cupboards that we don't wear and keep 'just in case'.  Imagine not having one at all.  There are lots of places focussing on coat donations this winter - for both UK and refugee people.  Google for a local organisation.  Or simply hand it to a homeless person.

Wishing you an active and fulfilling 2018. XXX

The Language of Women

I have been wanting to write about the Harvey Weinstein scandal and its implications since the news broke.  But it has taken me a while to consider what I thought I might add to the debate.  There has, understandably, been a huge amount of comment around the revolting behaviour which has finally been made public.

In discussion with a friend last week, I was saying that I had no experience of such treatment.  But then as we talked, we realised that we both could name many times when our gender had been used to make us uncomfortable or afraid.  For example, I worked on London trading floors in the Nineties.  Barely a senior woman in sight and you were forced to push between lines of blokes to deliver any message or file.  They would push back on their wheelie chairs to intimidate you.  My friend and I could both name times when we had been groped at bars, shouted at in the streets, felt unsafe to be somewhere, etc.  Imagine if a woman grabbed a man's crotch whilst queuing for a drink or screamed about his trouser bulge from across the street?

Earlier this year, I blogged about Naomi Alderman's book The Power.  It tells of a world where women are in charge and I commented on how shocking the anti-male violence seems in the book yet the author is describing little that is not, in our world, being perpetrated against women.

And I think this is one of the most telling points with the Weinstein scandal.  Men like him - and lets be fair, he is hardly even the tip of the iceberg - have felt able to continue their activities because the world is still so skewed towards the idea of the inferiority and subjugation of women.

Last week, I watched a documentary about the suffragettes.  It really struck a chord when it talked of the disgusting language which the press and politicians of the time felt able to continually use about women.  Many of us know of the force feeding and other violence towards the suffragettes but I had not realised quite how appalling the anti-suffragette campaign had been in other ways.

We live in a world where the press cannot be as overt as they were then about their hatred of equality for women.  But every day women are written about and spoken of as inferior to men.  It is completely ingrained.  Criticism for working or for not working.  Comment on signs of ageing, shapes of bodies. The deification of motherhood but the insistence that you should snap back into physical and mental health after giving birth.  After I watched the documentary, I looked at the Daily Mail website - a loathsome place but I braved it for research purposes.  Here are some examples of the language used about photographs of female presenters and actresses going about their daily lives:

'putting on a leggy display' - wearing shorts in a hot place

'packing on the PDA' - giving their partner a peck on the cheek

'flashes a glimpse of' - a photographer has managed to get an upstart or down top picture

'steps out in racy...' - wearing a strappy top

'showcasing her...' - dressed in something figure hugging, short, etc.

And so on, ad infinitum.  It is considered acceptable to comment on female presenters' or journalists' ages, outfits and bodies even though they are doing the same work as their grey-suited, ageing male colleagues.  No-one takes to exception that we have only ever had two British female prime ministers and language is used about them which would never be used about males.   Look at the questioning suffered by female politicians about their life plans and intentions.  And as for women in business or positions of responsibility?  Can open, worms everywhere.  And these worms are not turning.  We are not breaking the ceilings because they are not glass.  They are institutionalised, conditioned, brainwashed steel.  In other blog posts, I have mentioned to need for us to stay angry.  The Women's Marches were a start, the brave women speaking out about Weinstein and others are another step on a long road.  But a road which must be travelled if we are to do right by the next generation.  Our ancestors fought for the vote, for equality.  They achieved a lot.  But so much more remains to be done.

The Power

A while back, I posted a picture on Instagram of a book chosen by my book group.  It was The Power by Naomi Alderman.  I didn't make it to that group discussion unfortunately but I brought the book on holiday with me and ever since I picked it up, I have been reading frantically.

It tells of a future where women hold the reigns of power in the world.  Where this is normal.  Where men are assumed to be the softer sex.  And of how the world may have become that way.  I won't go into the story - it would spoil it for you.  I am not a book blogger and I am unused to writing reviews.

But occasionally on this blog, I have recommended books and I cannot recommend this one highly enough.  It is a hard read in some places, with descriptions of violence both sexual and otherwise.  But then you remember that in describing the women's violence against men, the author is simply describing the violence perpetrated against thousands of women on a daily basis in our own world.  And suddenly you wonder why we read or watch so many reports of such treatment without being angrier.  It has become commonplace to hear of rape, sexual slavery or women being trafficked.

I wrote, at around the time of Trump assuming power in the US, of the need to stay angry.  For us not to allow the women's marches and protests of that time to fade away.  This book should be read by all women - and preferably men as well.  Not as a vision of what a matriarchal world should be.  But as a call to continue the protest in our own time. 

We are living in a world where Trump can still be elected - and even worshipped by many - despite his distain (far too polite a word) for the female fifty percent of the population.  We are living in a world where an immensely successful female singer can be groped in a public place and then have to go to court to clear her own name (an experience shared by thousands of women of course).  We are living in a world where women are still routinely denied the capacity to choose when to be pregnant.  And so on, ad infinitum.

Read The Power if you have the opportunity.  And then think about what needs to be done now.

[If you can't get the book, look it up on The Writes of Woman.  There is an excellent synopsis plus an interview with Naomi Alderman.  The book won the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction 2017 in June.]