Women and bicycles (but no fish)

I’m going to talk about something a bit mundane but important. Accessibility. This is something I’ve been learning a lot about over the last few months. But before I do that, I’m going to talk a bit about cycling, and then try and link it all together in a clever way (you can tell me if it works or not).

There’s a great book by Ann Oakley, veteran feminist researcher, called Gender on Planet Earth (2002). She starts off by setting up an analogy between being a woman and being a cyclist. Being both a woman and a cyclist myself, I was quite excited by this idea, which is quite simple: roads are designed for cars and motor traffic, so cyclists have to negotiate systems which don’t really take them into account very well. This means that many cyclists do illegal things to keep themselves safe and visible, or have to improvise as they go along in order to figure out what route to take, because there is no clear path for them to follow.

Oakley suggests that being a woman in a society where most institutions are built around the male as the norm is a bit like being a cyclist on roads designed for cars. I love this analogy – the idea that you have to fight for space on the road, you’re expected to just fit into the structures that are already in place, and that it’s really awkward, frustrating and dangerous. (And then there’s the suppressed report by Transport for London which showed that women cyclists are more likely to be killed on the road in London than men because women follow the road rules – so, being a woman AND a cyclist is doubly dangerous).

So, back to accessibility. I’ve had the privilege of organising monthly discussion groups for Feminist Action Cambridge since we set ourselves up in April, and part of this is finding venues. We started off smoothly in the Humanitarian Centre which, thanks to two fabulous feminist members of the group who were working there, was free AND it was accessible for wheelchair users. This was in line with our general policy of being open to anyone who’s interested – trying not to be cliquey or closed in any way. (And accessibility shouldn’t even need to be pointed out as being necessary).

So things were great for the first few months – honeymoon period and all that. Then the Humanitarian Centre got in some engineers who were using the room all summer so we couldn’t use it. The search began for cheap, accessible, central community venues in Cambridge. Well, it’s a frickin nightmare. We used Newnham College for a couple of months – thank you Newnham – but as it was part of the university, it’s not really a community venue and that puts people off, we feel.

We’ve now moved to Romsey Mill, a lovely, friendly accessible venue which isn’t very central, but there was just nowhere that was accessible, central, cheap and available. But then talking to people about accessibility I came to realise that it’s not just about having a lift. In order to be able to use the life, you’ve got to be able to get into the building, there’s got to be parking nearby, and a half-decent properly-wide footpath leading up the entrance. It’s not Romsey Mill’s fault, but it’s pretty hard to get to the entrance there. Hrumph.

So, the grand denouement: you’ve probably picked up on the link here between being a women/a cyclist/differently-abled – we’re all trying to fit into structures that weren’t designed for us. It’s an obvious point which has been made many times before, but I’m repeating it because (being a sociologist) I think it helps us think in terms of the way structures – physical, psychological, institutional, or whatever – get in the way of us being able to do what a ‘normal’ citizen is supposed to be able to do. – the ‘normal’ citizen being cis-male and able-bodied. Women have to negotiate masculine norms of competitiveness, confidence, lack of provision for childbearing and caring responsibilities in most career structures… even the school day is designed in a totally ridiculous way for people who have jobs. And there are plenty more examples – add your own ideas in the comments!

Now I should put some jokes in to reward you for having read this far, but instead I’ll just finish with another picture of a ridiculous cycle lane.

Boastful Women workshop and action

Feminist Action Cambridge was out and about yesterday, with our Verbal Self Esteem and Assertiveness workshop (yes, a catchy name, i know) followed by a Boastful Women action in Market Square.

It was a real privilege to co-facilitate the workshop (with the glorious E-R) for ten fabulous women. We worked on body language and using your voice; verbal self defence (including E-R.’s five stage theory of harassment, which I hope she’ll blog about soon); and then finished off with boasting practice, which was great fun. I’m now dying to run the workshop again, so that we can do it even better.

We finished off the workshop with some real boasting in Market Square with a fabulous megaphone, fliers and a banner, highlighting the gender pay gap which is marked by Equal Pay Day on Nov 4th. I have to say, for getting a feeling of power there’s nothing like a good megaphone. Especially when we’re using it for boasting. We did a good stint of boasting and fliering, even getting one or two passers-by to throw in their boasts, and then went for lunch at Clowns. Thanks to everyone who came along for making it a really good event.

Self Esteem and the Mask of Femininity

We are talking a lot about self image, assertiveness and confidence in relation to our Boastful Women Equal Pay Day Action this November. Many women I know are held back by low self esteem, I would go so far as to say that it is an epidemic plaguing women as a class. In the malestream media it is suggested that this is something defective in women that needs to be fixed by tele-experts. But actually, low self esteem seems like a perfectly reasonable reaction to being the subordinate class in a patriarchy. Patriarchy proscribes low self esteem for women, it is seen as attractive modesty and contrasts with the grotesqueness of ‘pushy self promoting women’.

Self esteem is not a hippy phrase with no meaning. It is not- to be accurate- ‘loving yourself’- in the language of beauty ads and makeover shows. You cannot paint it onto the outside of yourself and it is not  some mysterious essence that you conjure up from inside yourself without foundation, from nothing.

It can be proven and tested out in reality. It comes from being active in the wider world: contributing, achieving things, reaching goals through your own effort and celebrating your success, pushing out from yourself into the world. Being active in society, as a citizen, being politically active, involved in ‘the life of the polis’. From living as a real body- having a physical presence, not tolerating offences to your person or your dignity. Having power over yourself and your life. Deciding your own fate. Speaking your mind to other people, standing up for your ideals and convictions.

These things are proof of self esteem and they generate self esteem. This is also a pretty comprehensive list of things associated with masculinity, that females are not allowed to do, have or be.

Gok Wan style makeover shows are about negotiating a higher price for your sale as opposed to not selling yourself at all, or objecting to the notion of a trade in women altogether. They often evangelise about women having more self esteem- loving themselves and accepting themselves when at the same time showing in minute detail all the things that are wrong about being a woman- fat belly is wrong, bony knees are wrong, body hair is wrong, menstruation is wrong, stretch marks are wrong, wrinkles are wrong, saggy breasts are wrong, post birth body is wrong. These programmes require opposing events to occur- for women to modify themselves physically so that they no longer resemble themselves- and for them to love and accept themselves just as they are. It is an astoundingly successful work of propaganda that more women do not see this as a ridiculous contradiction.

The test of self esteem is not whether you feel good when you’ve shaved all your body hair, but whether you feel good without shaving. Its not how good you feel in makeup but whether you can feel good without it.

The unrelenting moderations and interventions and alterations women are required to make to come up to the bar of acceptable femininity require constant invasions of the body that create a breakdown in personal integrity.

We’re born naked and everything else is drag. As women’s lives become more free in the west and we are allowed to step into public roles as full citizens and public spaces that were the preserve of men, the beauty mandate becomes correspondingly harsher and more intrusive. The standard of acceptable female appearance gets higher and more narrow. Each time dress codes gets more free and liberal- corsets evolve into bras, the Victorian all in one bathing suit becomes the bikini- more flesh is
on display and the cruel eye of the male gaze points out something that must be corrected to please it. Women are never allowed to appear in public- in the male domain- as themselves i.e. looking like people. The are allowed to appear so long as they are in disguise. A mask of face paint, a wig of extensions or a weave, fully dipped in tanning dye, the corset of ‘magic knickers’ or of a diet, padded bra, false nails, false eyelashes. The details change with fashion but the rule is the same- females are required to ‘pass’ as real women. Alternatively, a full Niqab does the same job- women are in disguise- seen and not seen.

Your beauty regime is a terrorist organisation. Time for a regime change. Easy to think, harder to do. I have tried over time to decrease the amount of make-up I wear from the ‘full face’ to minimal, first because of the time it takes and then from a political objection to it. I am tired of putting it on every morning, the same re-painting over and over, and of taking it off every night. The truth is, like most young women who I know, I feel ugly and vulnerable without make-up,  and in that way it functions exactly like a mask- when people are protected by a disguise they can do anything.

Having trained as an actress I can say what an incredible feeling it is to be on stage wearing a real mask. From the moment you turn to face the audience the effect is instantaneous- there is now no responsibility for what you say or do, no one will know even if you are blushing from embarrassment as you do some weird thing you’d never do otherwise. Social conventions and self censorship deteriorate and the feeling of relief is enormous.

Interestingly, an important theatrical convention with masks is that the audience do not see you actually put it on or take it off, because it breaks the illusion if the transformation is visible and the mask is revealed as a bit of plastic. Men don’t want to know about the weird beauty products, odd contraptions and insane regimes you use to get the effect of ‘pretty dolly’ perhaps because it breaks the illusion, and they will have to face the reality that underneath it all is a flawed, hairy, smelly human woman. What a scam! False advertising they think! And so make-up etc is culturally cordoned off in a section labelled ‘silly things silly women do to themselves’ and women are made to feel guilty for hating themselves and/or hating the mask.

The compliments I receive, often from strangers, when I ‘dress up as a woman’ are as addictive as crack cocaine [I assume] and they almost always come from other women. The positive reinforcement is very hard to let go- perhaps I’d still get compliments if I was without make-up, but I don’t actually believe that. Maybe that ex-boyfriend would still have wanted to go to bed with me if, when we met, I was dressed down and bare faced, but I don’t believe that either. On the contrary, I felt that I had tricked him into bed with the promise of being more good looking than I actually was and that it was only a mater of time before the spell wore off and he made his escape. This is a common theme in het relationships which gives men an enormous amount of leverage and power- women having to ‘keep themselves maintained’ in order to keep him interested, he’s always half way out the door and we have to lure him back inside with the promise of… Vajazzles?

As far as I am concerned nothing so closely resembles suspicious warts on a recently plucked chicken as a pink diamanté Vajazzle. Even a little bit of resistance is meaningful: the strongest bastion of body hair colonisation is surely the armpit. It outranks leg, pubic, and facial hair in its disgustingness to the beauty ideal. I recommend at least a three month grow out to the hair-curious, especially if you’ve
never seen your full adult body hair in all its luscious glory. I’m hoping this will lead to a Best Lady Pits competition for Cambridge-competitors be warned my armpit hair is of a particularly high quality. Check out this awesome website-

http://hairypitsclub.tumblr.com/

What counts as “political”?

A few of months back I went into Cambridge Central Library in Lion’s Yard and asked to put an A4 poster for an abortion rights protest on their display board. I was told “no, because it’s political”, so I shrugged and said “fair enough” (and I put the poster up on the self-service noticeboards on the 3rd floor instead).

Today I was in the library again and this poster caught my eye, on the glassed-in display board curated by the library rather than the self-service one:

Image Description: A poster that reads: “Christian Heritage Presents Sharon James 13th Oct: Has Feminism Been Counterproductive?”

Why, I wondered, had this been allowed when the poster for the abortion protest was not? This got me thinking about what types of things are considered 'political', and it occured to me that some people might not consider the event advertised in the poster to be political because it is religious. I have to admit that when I first glanced at the poster I felt indignant, and then when I noticed the word 'evangelical' I found myself thinking, 'oh, it's just some religious thing'. But why should an idea be less disturbing just because it comes from a religious group? I remembered that the failed amendment to the Health and Social Care bill attacking abortion rights had been strongly promoted by Christian groups.

In smaller text at the bottom of the poster, we can see that Sharon James is the author of the book "God's design for women". With a title like that I couldn't resist Googling it. An online review tells us:

"Part II presents the biblical view, showing the beauty of God's original design and what the Bible teaches about being a woman. The main planks of this are the absolute equality of men and women and the differing, complementary roles that God has assigned to each." [1]

So men and women are equal, but they have "differing, complementary roles". Exactly which "differing, complementary roles" did God assign to women, according to Sharon James? The reviews I found were all a little cagey on that point, but luckily there is a 6-part DVD course (!) and the chapter titles give some hints about what "God's design for women" actually entails:

"This new teaching DVD has six sessions:

* Session 1 God's Design for Women
* Session 2 Marriage & the Woman of God
* Session 3 Motherhood & the Woman of God
* Session 4 Singleness & the Woman of God
* Session 5 Church & the Woman of God 1
* Session 6 Church & the Woman of God 2" [2]

So there is quite a lot in there about relationships and children, and also quite a lot about God and the church, and nothing at all about, say, having a job. Of course many women do focus their lives on children and family and that is absolutely great, but it's pretty clear that, according to James, marriage and motherhood are the only acceptable roles for women. This message is not only overtly political, but also quite sinister, in my view.

So there you have it: a poster advocating that women should control their own reproduction is seen as political and viewed with suspicion, while a poster suggesting that the only acceptable roles for women are those of wife, mother, and church-goer is perfectly fine. It's a funny old world.

[1] http://www.e-n.org.uk/p-1917-God%27s-Design-for-Women.htm

[2] http://clearcutmedia.tv/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1

Boastful women

(This was written by Anna, I’m just posting it for her -KM)

There are many reasons why women are paid less than men. One of the reasons is that we live in a culture where women (and some people of other genders) are actively discouraged from taking pride in our achievements, and especially in talking about that pride.

Most women don’t speak up about what makes us great, and when we do, we can be viewed negatively for it. Contrast this to the way in which …men are encouraged to “big themselves up” at all times, and especially when in a wage negotiation situation, and you have one of the justifications for the status quo.

We don’t think that women are to blame for this situation – the problem is a culture which treats the genders differently. But we definitely think that the world could use more boastful women, women who are prepared to be vocal about our amazing skills and victories. And people of all genders need to get used to hearing loud and proud women, because feminism is here to stay.

That’s why on Saturday November 5th, the day after Equal Pay Day, women will be out in Cambridge, UK and announcing what makes us stand out. Equal Pay Day marks the day of the year when women in effect stop getting paid because of the pay gap between women and men of 15.5%. But it’s no boast to say that we are worth just as much as men.

So tweet #boastfulwomen and tell us what you have to boast about!