So many great blogs to choose from…hmm…

Feministe has an interesting blog on Christian Bale and the accusations against him

Unapologetically Female asks: does advertising show us men want breasts, or not?

And posts this awesome video:

Brownfemipower looks at the plans for a new Disney film

Courtney Martin assesses the idea of marriage

Today’s Big Thing has a video of some women kicking the girls-are-bad-at-sports stereotype where it hurts

And feministing has made my life complete by introducing me to this wonderful, wonderful woman:

Seriously, MAN CRISPS? Fucking MAN CRISPS?

How can they get away with this kind of advertising?

I actually hate the world.

I have been more than a bit rubbish on here lately. No detailed posts, no news…you may get the impression that I’ve given up.

But while I feel like there’s an awful lot I’m giving up right now, you, dear readers, are not one of those things. Writing this blog opens my eyes constantly, and hopefully has made one or two of you think, every once in a while. Lately, though, I’ve neglected it.

There are hundreds of reasons. The most obvious - I had exams, I travelled, and now I need time just to space out and enjoy just being (which, incidentally, is what one child claimed they could smell when they did a blindfolded trail on the school trip I helped with yesterday - Me: “And what can you smell, J?” J: “I can smell…being” ). But there’s also the emotions that this time entails - the ‘oh my god I’m leaving all my friends behind’ emotion. The ‘oh my god I’m not going to be with my family all the time’ emotion. The ‘oh my god I’m going to be on my own for this one’ emotion. The ‘my results are in August and my whole life hangs in the balance’ emotion. The…well, yeah, the list goes on. I’ve not been handling this emotional car wreck all too well, so I’ve needed to distance myself from…well, from myself a bit. This blog is very much a way of channelling what I care about, an element (and a rather powerful one at that) of myself which I have tried (unsuccessfully, may I add) to distance myself from, so I suppose that is also a reason for my general absence.

There’s also a sense of despair that has become a more permanent fixture, though. I can’t read the news properly at the moment. I struggle to get past the first page of the paper, I look at my RSS feeds, 1000+ unread, and I just let them build up and build up. The world is too dark, it’s too much for me. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel, there’s no ‘one day this will all be different’, because there will always be terrible people who, even against the odds, can cock it up for everyone. I just…I dunno, I feel a bit like everything I do, everything I try, is futile. I can’t brighten this world, and hell, by opening people’s eyes to it surely I’m spreading darkness, not preventing it?

Even writing this, though, I know that I don’t (well, can’t) 100% believe it. There have to be small changes everyone can make, differences that matter. There’s always a reason to keep going. But while I’m feeling the futility stronger than usual (which is, no doubt, tied to this stressful [supposedly holiday] time), I tend to leave the world behind, and that, I think, is the main reason for my neglect. When I can’t make the difference in my own world right now, what use is there in trying with the world?

So I apologise. I’ll be back soon, and hopefully with a vengeance. I’ve returned to reading Who Cooked The Last Supper?, which is one of the reasons that this blog exists in the first place, and I fully intend to keep my promise to profile the various bluestockings women. For now, though, I need a bit of time to clear my head. It might be a few hours, it might be a few weeks. We’ll see.

So until we meet again, friends, adieu.

I wrote a while ago about SPUC visiting my sister’s school. Well apparently they did (she thinks she missed the assembly - phew!)

Anyway, I recently received an email from a woman from Education For Choice, who had read my blog and who provided me with some info about the charity she works for. So I’ve written to the school to let them know that SPUC isn’t the only organisation that they can get in to talk to their students - here’s what I said:

To whom it may concern,

Recently, I was informed that SPUC came to Priory to give a talk to year 10s about abortion. SPUC is a biased, disgracefully untruthful organisation which denies women basic human rights, yet it was deemed suitable to talk to your students. I was horrified to hear of their coming, especially as no alternative was provided, no pro-choice organisation invited to speak to the students as well. At this age, these young women and men are extremely impressionable, so being told lies by an anti-choice organisation may well affect their beliefs for the rest of their lives.

While I accept the importance of freedom of speech, providing such people with a platform and a chance to influence young minds is reprehensible. Yet if you insist upon doing so, at least allow these young people the chance to make up their own minds by providing a balanced account. There is an abortion education charity in the UK called Education For Choice, who “work with professionals as well as young people and parents themselves to ensure that young people only receive accurate, evidence-based information about abortion and are able to consider all of the pregnancy choices in a way that respects choice“. I believe that they are willing to do talks at schools, and are certainly able to provide information and assistance in teaching students in a way that respects women’s rights. If you must invite organisations like SPUC to speak to your students, please invite other organisations who are able to provide an alternative way of thinking.

Here’s the link to their website: www.efc.org.uk, their number: 020 7249 3535, and their address: Education For Choice, The Print House, 18 Ashwin Street, London, E8 3DL. Also attached is their education pack.

I hope that this information is enough for you to be able to provide your students with a more balanced account of abortion, and that you think twice before you next invite a society which willingly tells lies to young people in order to get them to share their beliefs.

Another great blog to read - Rainbow Girl. It’s been around a while I believe, but I’ve only recently started nosing around the feminist blogosphere. Thanks to Derek’s blogroll, this is now easier!

Check out the latest post - it’s clever, funny but at the same time reveals yet another rather depressing element of society - victim blaming when women are assaulted.

What a great video HT to Shakesville

It’ll cheer you up after that stupid advert, it’s just so sensible =]

Hat tip to The F-Word, who in turn have tipped the hat to Punk Planning

I have neglected you. It was my exams and then my birthday, then my party and, immediatly after, a 5day trip to Paris, which I returned from on Friday, only to return to work on Sat and Sun! So I’ve had no time for a breather until now… I hope to return in even more detail now that I have the Summer (although even this is proving rather less free and rather more busy than anticipated), and to keep you going I give you this to mull over:

Yeah, I know. Hideous, huh?

How can people do this?

In Suffolk on the 14th, a woman was forced into a car and raped. The rapist was in his 60s and had asked for help with heavy bags…

I just can’t understand it. I don’t see why someone can think that that is an ok thing to do, I cannot fathom how someone can justify raping someone. As with the man who raped and tortured the student in Columbia, there is a thought process that these men go through that I cannot begin to comprehend.

I suppose it’s the same with all criminals - it would be strange if you could understand them, understand the reasoning behind their actions. You would have something in common with them. But this isn’t like stealing a loaf of bread to feed your family, this isn’t like bank fraud. This is such a serious, terrible crime, this is a crime against womankind and yet still, so many people, all over the world, can find it in themselves to rape. Can justify it to themselves, can live with themselves having done it. Would do it if they could get away with it (as seen in Malamuth and Check’s research in a uni in the US, where 1/3 of the all male participants said that they would rape if they could get away with it).

Part of me seems to think that if we could understand, maybe we could stop these men. Prevent them from terrorising women, from torturing and raping women.

Ultimately though, I suppose, it comes down to the education of men (because, strangely, it shouldn’t be the case that women have the responsibility of defending themselves, it should be the rapists that are being stopped) and the efficiency of the enforcement of law…

Either way, it’s highly depressing that this is still such a frequent occurrence, not only in our country but all over the world. It’s disgraceful that people think that it’s an ok thing to do, and that women so often get the blame. It’s disgraceful that people think you are making up statistics if you tell them what they don’t want to hear, that a woman can be penalised for what she was wearing or for her relationship history or indeed just for being a woman, it’s disgraceful that there isn’t a bigger effort to prevent this from occurring. It’s disgraceful the amount of men who get away with it, and the amount of women who have to live with the memory of such a horrific experience.

Really, how can we ever be proud of a country where there is so much disgrace?

Link

I think it’s important for us to know that there are such people in the world, and that in raising awareness of them hopefully it will also increase attempts to stop them. As Holly says over at Menstrual Poetry,

More people need to speak up about this type of violence because it happens and it isn’t always making headlines.

The trial of Robert A. Williams began on June 5th, and is still going - Columbia Spectator has live updates.