Talking to teenagers about sex and feminism

Last week I spoke to students at Hills Road Sixth form college about feminism, taking ‘the equal right to sexual pleasure’ as my topic.  Here’s the blog post I’ve written for Gender and Education about it:

http://www.genderandeducation.com/issues/doesnt-being-a-sexual-subject-risk-you-being-slut-shamed-talking-to-teenagers-about-sex-and-feminism/

Reclaim the Night

Great to see so many people at an energetic Reclaim the Night last night.  There were three fabulous speakers and a performance poet, with several hundred of us hanging on every word in a candlelit Kings College chapel.

I wrote a statement for The Cambridge Student in advance of the demo (to be quoted as ‘a member of FAC’ not on behalf of the group, as discussed in the meeting last week), so I thought I’d share it with you, as it sums up quite nicely what Reclaim the Night is about for me:

I’m thrilled that the CUSU Women’s Campaign are continuing the hugely important tradition of Reclaim the Night marches.  This march is a rare space for the voices of women who have been silenced by sexual violence to be heard.  Marching together in a group of women also means that, for once, we can respond to the street harassment that most women experience frequently.  For once, we can actually respond to harassers without fear of escalation of violence, as we’re surrounded by other women who are in solidarity with us.  And we can shout about our truth – that rape is common, and victims are silenced. Read the rest of this entry »

Press release: Cambridgeshire pregnancy advice centres misleading women

Here’s the press release which went out today.  Please share and quote:

Women seeking abortions in Cambridge are being given false information about risks and pressured to continue pregnancies, Feminist Action Cambridge has revealed.

Audio-recordings from Feminist Action Cambridge members presenting with unplanned pregnancies reveal the staff of clinics in Newmarket, Ely and Cambridge referring to a made-up medical condition and using emotional manipulation to discourage abortions.

Staff at all three centres referred to a condition which they called ‘post-abortion syndrome’, which the Royal College of Gynaecologists and Obstetricians have confirmed is not a medically recognised condition*.

The centres were also found to be emphasising the risks of abortion while minimising the health risks of pregnancy, childbirth and post-natal depression.

Staff used emotionally manipulative techniques, including showing images of the stages of development of the foetus (in order to increase the guilt women might feel at having an abortion), telling one client that her mother may be upset ‘at losing a grandchild’ and another that ‘the clock is ticking’ because of her age.

They also used delaying tactics to get women to spend a few weeks considering their decision.

Despite anti-abortion lobby group Care Confidential being exposed last year as misinforming and misleading women who approached them for advice about pregnancy and abortion, they continue to claim on their website that they provide ‘unbiased pregnancy and abortion counselling’, all the while giving women false medical advice and using emotional manipulation tactics to scare them into not having abortions.  They gave the women pamphlets from US Christian group Focus on the Family who are opposed to abortion under any circumstances*.

“Women who seek help in this matter have a very serious decision to make and they cannot make that decision without medically accurate information,” Cambridgeshire MP Julian Huppert said.

“And organisations providing that information have a duty to make it crystal clear if they have a particular religious or anti-abortion stance.”

A spokesperson from Feminist Action Cambridge said “The anti-abortion lobby in the UK has become more vocal and more militant recently. But we now know that they are using much subtler techniques too. They are targeting women when they are most vulnerable and lying to them about a medical condition that does not exist. These centres should give proper impartial advice or be closed down.”

Local feminists are holding a rally on Saturday 15^th December at 12 noon at the corner of New Square and Jesus Terrace (right next to the Grafton Centre) to inform local women and protest against local anti-abortion centres.

For more information, email feministactioncambridge@gmail.com

*See link for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists’ statement that there is no link between abortion and mental health risks: http://www.rcog.org.uk/what-we-do/campaigning-and-opinions/briefings-and-qas-/human-fertilisation-and-embryology-bill/abor-0

*Focus on the Family are a US Christian group who are opposed to abortion under any circumstances.  We believe that the links with this group show that US anti-abortion tactics are travelling to the UK: http://www.focusonthefamily.com/socialissues/social-issues/abortion/our-position.aspx

For further information please see Channel Five’s expose of crisis pregnancy centres last year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ecV_qVr4FU&feature=plcp

The centres referred to are

• The Haven Cambridge, Citylife House, Sturton Street, Cambridge, CB1 2QF
• Ely Pregnancy Crisis Centre, Lighthouse Centre, 13 Lynn Road, Ely, CB7 4EG
• Newmarket Pregnancy Support Centre, Unit 11, Studlands Park Avenue, Newmarket, CB8 7AU

Demo tomorrow!

The weather’s looking good for the demo tomorrow – sunny and not too cold.  So we look forward to seeing you next to the Grafton Centre on the corner nearest Midsummer Common – next to Christs pieces.  We’ll be the ones with the banner and fliers.  Here’s the flier we’re going to be handing out.  We’ll have more information tomorrow on the organisations involved, so this is just a taster!

Pro-choice Demo THIS SATURDAY

We’re counting down to our demonstration this Saturday to voice our opposition to the local ‘crisis pregnancy centres’ which give misinformation on abortion to women seeking help and support.

Local MP Julian Huppert who is a staunch defender of a woman’s right to choose has provided this statement in support of our demo:

“It is crucial that all organisations offering information or advice in
relation to unplanned pregnancy choices follow evidence-based guidance from
a professional medical organisation.

“Women who seek help in this matter have a very serious decision to make
and they cannot make that decision without medically accurate information.
And organisations providing that information have a duty to make it crystal
clear if they have a particular religious or anti-abortion stance.

“That is why I put forward an amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill
that would have required that any organisation giving advice to women
considering termination must give medically accurate information.”

The demo will be this Saturday 15th December 12pm-1pm. We’ll be in Cambridge City Centre, on the corner of Fitzroy St and New Square, right next to the Grafton Centre and Christs Pieces.

We’ll be the ones with the banner.  Come along and show your support!

As feminists, how should we organise?

This was the title of the discussion group we had last Wednesday, with a view to thinking about how we as FAC should structure our group.  As I mentioned in the introduction to this discussion, this is something that people have spilled a lot of words trying to think about, as there are very vivid political implications – whose voices are heard and whose are silenced, for example.  So no pressure, then!  (I was facilitating). Read the rest of this entry »

FAC goes to school (to run pro-choice workshops)

A couple of weeks ago, my multi-talented colleague and I went to a local school to run pro-choice workshops for their Year 10s (14-15 year olds).

The school had approached us last year as they were organising a medical ethics day, in which the students would be discussing abortion (among other issues).  The teacher we were in contact with told us he’d had no trouble finding a group to do the anti-abortion (‘pro-life’) side of the ‘debate’, but it was pretty impossible to find groups willing to talk about pro-choice issues.  One local youth charity had branded it ‘too political’ for them to be able to get involved (and in the current funding climate you can see why they want to be careful).  The school had arranged for the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC) to go in and present their views, so we felt it was really important for us to go in as well, and make sure the students could hear some woman-centred, pro-choice, non-religious views.

In the States, SPUC are involved in quite militant anti-abortion activism, while here in the UK they take a slightly different tack.  We asked SPUC for a copy of their talk in advance but they said they wouldn’t give it to us because they were worried it would be leaked to the media (this is the same talk they are giving to thousands of school children every year!).  While we didn’t have any recent information on the talks they give in schools, in the presentations they were giving a few years ago they were giving medical misinformation, such as saying there was a link between abortion and infertility, and between abortion and breast cancer (both of which the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists say are unproven).

Luckily for us, the wonderful two-woman charity Education for Choice shared their workshop resources with us.  They do pro-choice workshops in London schools but they are too small to travel to schools outside London.  With their help we put together a workshop which included ‘why is abortion a feminist issue?’, a true or false quiz, including a discussion of how to tell whether your evidence is really evidence, and a brilliant exercise in empathy where students in pairs pretended they were in a pregnancy testing clinic.  We had also brought resources to distribute to students including frequently asked questions on abortion, and a useful information list with phone numbers and websites such as Scarleteen that we thought the students might be interested in.

The workshops went really well and the students seemed to particularly enjoy the pregnancy testing exercise – in pairs they came up with a back story as to why they thought they might be pregnant, whether they wanted to have a baby or not, and what they would do if they were pregnant.  Then we gave them their ‘pregnancy tests’ in which half of the students were pregnant and half weren’t, and discussed their responses.  It was a particularly nice way of getting the boys involved – with a pair of boys, one of them had to pretend they were a woman, and might be pregnant.  I felt this allowed them to imagine what it might be like to be a woman in this situation.  One pair of boys decided they were a gay couple, and one of them was a trans man – they were thrilled to find out that they were pregnant.

Overall the response from the students was lively and engaged and hopefully they all felt they learned something as well as thinking about the issues.  We emphasised of course that pro-choice is not the same as pro-abortion, and I felt it was particularly important to respect the decision of each ‘couple’ as to whether they wanted to go ahead with their ‘pregnancy’ or not. As Education for Choice argue, this is not an issue that lends itself well to a ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ stance.  Pro-choice is about choice – so of course this is something that individuals have to think about for themselves, but presenting it as ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ seems to encourage people to impose their ideas of right and wrong on others, and increase the burden of guilt on those women who do have abortions.

We hope to do more pro-choice workshops in Cambridgeshire schools, now that we have our workshop all prepared and tested, so if anyone knows of any schools that would like us to do these workshops please put them in touch.