February 2012
4 posts
4 tags
Women in film
It’s the day after the Oscars so the papers are full of the usual film industry celebration and analysis of the female attendees frocks.
So I thought I’d share a video I came across on Sociological Images looking at this year’s Best Film nominees and seeing if they pass the Bechdel test. For those who are unfamiliar with it the Bechdel test is used to assess how meaningful the...
8 tags
Life, Work, World: Women Empowering Change
The second Social Media Week event I went to last week was called Life, Work, World: Women Empowering Change. It was open to both men and women but the speakers were a great line-up of three women who are doing their part to make changes in the world.
In the interests of full disclosure I should say that the host of the evening, Sinead Mac Manus is my closest friend who I’ve known since...
5 tags
Women in a Room - Is a woman’s opinion “the...
Last night I attended a Social Media Week event run by Women In A Room. The title of the event was Is a woman’s opinion “the miniskirt of the internet”? – a reference to Laurie Penny’s Independent article last year discussing the abuse that she and other women have received online for airing their opinions. The discussion for the evening was to ‘talk about whether social media is useful and...
9 tags
Sister Fa and Female Genital Cutting
Over the last week or so it’s been easy to be dragged down and disheartened as rape culture in our society seems to be as strong as ever and women get abuse for drawing attention to it. On Monday night (6th Feb) however, I had the privilege of going to see Sister Fa at the Union Chapel and was left feeling inspired and motivated by the work that women can do.
It was a night organised...
January 2012
2 posts
4 tags
Rape culture and the media
The following post involves discussion of rape culture, victim-blaming and quotes that are offensive. Some of this may be triggering.
For feminists and activists one of the most frustrating but important areas to address is rape culture. Frustrating, because it’s so pervasive but so intangible. It’s difficult to know where to start in terms of tackling it.
As if we needed further...
3 tags
New year perspective
One of the benefits of the Christmas/New Year season is that I’m crazy busy and often living outside my usual routines. My yoga classes finished for almost a month (boo), I had a decent amount of time off work this year, I went to quite a few Christmas parties and I spent a lot of time with my family and my husband’s family. The upshot of this is that I also took a step back from my...
December 2011
1 post
6 tags
Sky High fundraiser
I’m am so excited to announce the launch of Sky High - a fundraising evening for two fantastic charities.
Earlier this year I read the amazing book Half The Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. It inspired me in so many ways, not least in starting this blog I consider it a must read, and fortunately one of my friends took up the challenge. She in turn has also been spurred into...
November 2011
5 posts
4 tags
Reclaim The Night
Last Saturday night was the 8th annual Reclaim The Night march and rally in London. It felt brilliant to be on the march again, having missed it the last two years. The website can you give you more information on the background and aims of the march but the main point is to draw attention to violence against women in our society.
The atmosphere was amazing and as always, felt like more of a...
5 tags
We Are Man
At the Fem11 conference last weekend I attended a workshop chaired by End Violence Against Women (EVAW) - a coalition calling for ‘urgent action to end all forms of violence against women and girls’. The session was a highlight of the day for me and provided a platform for a lively debate on the factors that contribute to violence.
A key area for concern amongst all of us was the need...
5 tags
Fem11
Yesterday I was delighted to attend UK Feminista’s sold-out annual conference Fem11. It was a brilliantly inspiring day and fantastic to see over 1,000 women and men in one place eager to discuss a range of topics and hear what others had to say.
The day opened with a brief introduction by Kat Banyard, Director of UK Feminista who started running these conferences seven years ago. She...
4 tags
Men call me things
The last week has seen a sudden explosion of talk, hashtags, blogs ands news comment pieces regarding harassment of women online. It’s sparked some really interesting discussion about the extent to which it exists and the particular brand of violence and vitriol that many feel is reserved specifically for women.
The discussion began with an article on TheNewStatesman. In it Helen Lewis...
5 tags
Sexy Halloween
Image taken from the Jezebel post below
I wanted to do a proper post about Halloween and the array of ‘sexy’ outfits out there. However, due to being ill, I didn’t get around to it. Instead, I’ll share with you some of the fantastic posts on the topic I’ve been reading elsewhere. These are mostly US-based sites and apply to costumes for sale over there.
The first...
October 2011
2 posts
4 tags
Street harassment
Over the past year or so some fantastic campaigns have really come to prominence in relation to tackling street harassment.
It’s a tricky issue because it’s so unbelievably prevalent that it has become normalised completely. It doesn’t occur to women to actually complain about it or object to it a lot of the time. It’s just part of life, part of being a woman. In addition...
4 tags
Girls are the answer - The Girl Effect
I dare you to rethink what it means to look at a girl - not a burden , not an object but the answer.
I’ve always considered myself a feminist and a champion of women and girls. However, earlier this year I read a book that transformed how I see what it means to champion girls and why it’s so important in ways I hadn’t begun to grasp. That book was Half The Sky by...
September 2011
3 posts
5 tags
Women's rights in Saudi Arabia
It’s been a conflicting week of news in relation to women’s rights in Saudi Arabia. On Sunday King Abdullah announced that women would have the right to vote and stand for election in 2015. It’s a major reform and shouldn’t be dismissed, as women have fought hard for suffrage around the world. It’s an important right, both symbolically and practically as women can support candidates who are in...
4 tags
Girl Effect Blogging Campaign
I’ve blogged about this fantastic campaign before but I’ll be doing so again on 4th October as part of the Girl Effect blogging Campaign. So this is a call to all other bloggers - to learn more click here and see how you can get involved.
6 tags
Book review: How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran
I’ve recently finished reading one of the funniest books I’ve read in quite some time – the brilliant How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran.
I remember Caitlin Moran when she first started to write for Melody Maker, at the age of 16. At the time I hated her and found her quite annoying but this was solely because I was 16 and loved music but was not writing for Melody Maker.
Twenty years...
August 2011
1 post
4 tags
The London riots and women
So, so much has been written about the London riots and what might have caused them so I don’t want to go over old ground. I have had some thoughts about women and the riots - who we took note of, how they were talked about and their link to the causes.
The most notable is probably the latter. It’s struck me that much of the rhetoric from the Conservatives and papers like the Daily...
July 2011
1 post
4 tags
What about the men?
One of the most frustrating things about feminist discussion – especially online – is the reaction from some men who seem to think feminism or feminist policies are threatening or damaging to men in some way. The arguments they make can be really contradictory, because they’re so convinced by the idea that feminists hate men and want to make the world crappy for them. I wanted to break down...
June 2011
3 posts
4 tags
Strong women on TV - Samantha Jones: The third in...
Sex And The City’s Samantha Jones may seem like an odd, obvious or slightly tacky choice for this occasional series, but it’s easy to forget how genuinely surprising her character was when the series started in 1998. People tend to think of her as the woman who ‘had sex like a man’ but she didn’t. For a start, that was an experiment that Carrie attempted. ...
7 tags
Legislating women's sportswear
Two recent news stories have had me seething, and both relate to legislating what women can and cannot wear when engaging in professional sports. It’s a constant source of frustration that women’s sports are, more often than not, reduced to stories about clothes and fashion - as if male athletes don’t also have fashion/fragrance/jewellery sponsorship and tie-ins. However, it...
4 tags
Strong women on TV - CJ Cregg: The second in an...
It was when I was recently re-watching episodes of The West Wing that the idea of doing this occasional series occurred to me as, without doubt, Claudia Jean Cregg is one of the most fabulous characters to ever grace our TV screens.
The West Wing was, for many reasons, a fantastic show. It was smart, well-written, funny, dramatic, sad and absolutely addictive. I initially caught the first few...
May 2011
9 posts
4 tags
Playboy bunnies come to London
A protest is planned in London on 4th June, against the opening of a Playboy club in Mayfair. The club is due to have a bar as you’d expect, as well as a casino and as is usual in Playboy clubs, all the waiting staff will be women, dressed as bunnies - ears and little fluffy tail included.
The protest, called the Eff Off Heff campaign is being jointly organised by UKFeminista and Object,...
3 tags
Strong women on TV - Buffy: The first in an...
I’ve been thinking about some of the great women characters that have graced our TV screens over the years and making a mental list of which ones I’d like to write about when I was hit by the obvious. Probably my favourite TV character of all-time, who also happened to be female is Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
People who didn’t watch the show or aren’t that familiar with...
5 tags
Michelle Obama and the education of girls
I’m going to post these links with little comment as Michelle Obama can speak on it far better than I can.
Just a brief note to say that I spent two days volunteering at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson school in 2009, a few months after Michelle Obama’s first visit to the school The girls I met there were so impressed by her words and were genuinely inspired by her visit and her...
6 tags
Why women don't report rape
All the discussions on Slutwalks lately has opened up discussions about rape and the focus on what victims may have been wearing or how they have been behaving. However, the treatment in the international press of late has thrown a massive spotlight on how women who allege they have been attacked are viewed.
Going back to August of last year, two women accused Wikileaks founder Julian Assange of...
4 tags
Ken Clarke and date rape
A lot has been said and written today about Ken Clarke’s comments on BBC5Live this morning regarding rape but for these words to come from the Justice Secretary took many by surprise.
The main quote which started all the problems came in a discussion on rape sentences. When it was pointed out to him by host Victoria Derbeyshire, that the average sentence for rape was 5 years Clarke...
5 tags
Nadine Dorries and victim-blaming
Nadine Dorries MP was on the Vanessa (Feltz) show on Channel 5 today, discussing her abstinence education for girls bill. In the course of the conversation, Feltz raised the point that young girls are already taught to say no and have adults respect their personal space. In response, Dorries added
Well do you know that’s really interesting because one of the reasons for this is that some of...
6 tags
Slutwalk marches on
Boston’s SlutWalk on 7 May, 2011. Photograph: Josh Reynolds/AP - from Guardian.co.uk
I’ve been giving the Slutwalk event a lot of thought, and it seems I’m not alone. The BBC and the Guardian have both devoted several pieces online to it and there’s a lot of talk in the blogosphere.
I came across this piece via Jezebel which I thought was really interesting. Some of the...
6 tags
Pink stinks!
With a royal wedding just behind us and a new princess in the making I’ve been thinking about the princess fantasy sold to young girls. It’s closely tied in with the everything-for-girls-must-be-pink trend that is so pervasive in toy shops and kids’ clothing. It may seem harmless, but the endless trail of toys marked as ‘for girls’ and only coloured pink does...
7 tags
Sex education for teens
Yesterday Nadine Dorries MP presented a 10 minute rule bill to parliament proposing that 13-16 year old girls should be given additional sex education in schools, and ‘that such education must include information and advice on the benefits of abstinence from sexual activity’.
There are lots of benefits of abstinence from sexual activity for both boys and girls. Sex at that age is...
April 2011
8 posts
8 tags
Calm down, dear
Yesterday David Cameron’s carefully constructed mask slipped as, during Prime Minister’s Questions he told Labour MP Angela Earle (shadow chief secretary to the treasury) to ‘calm down dear’. George Osborne found it hilarious. Nick Clegg remained stony-faced. Ed Balls demanded an apology.
‘Calm down, dear’. It’s not the most offensive thing you’ve...
7 tags
Slut Walk London!
This afternoon I read the fantastic Vicky Simister’s latest column on the Fresh Outlook and discovered the upcoming Slut Walk London! event on 4th June. It follows the inaugural Slut Walk event in Toronto, which was founded in response to a Toronto police officer’s comment to a group of law students that if they don’t want to get raped “women should avoid dressing like sluts.”
...
5 tags
Alternative beauty?
So Lady Gaga’s back with a new album and the current cover of NME with a headline that reads “I’m not full of shit, are you?”. Well, frankly, I think she is. I normally try to avoid woman-bashing or picking apart what other women are doing personally or professionally but there’s something about Lady Gaga that really bugs me (aside from the fact that I’m just...
7 tags
Domestic violence and slut-shaming
Everyone once in a while, I read a news story that makes me genuinely sad. Sunday was one of those days as I read on The Guardian site that
teenage girls between 16 and 19 are now the group most at risk of domestic violence, closely followed by girls aged 20-24 – all victims of a new generation of abusers who are themselves in their teens and early twenties.
It’s hard to believe...
7 tags
Women hold up half the sky
I’ve been telling everyone who’ll listen recently about an amazing book I read recently - Half The Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.
On International Women’s Day I attended an event organised by the indefatiguable social entrepreneur Sinead Mac Manus entitled Enabling Women. At it, Ruthie from the Orchid Project spoke about their work to end Female Genital Cutting...
4 tags
3 tags
Going back to my roots
All the reading I’ve been doing lately has made me think about my early awareness of women’s rights and first steps into politics.
I’ve always been aware that for many women in the world, things were not as they should be. I don’t know where this came from (possibly being an avid newspaper reader from a fairly young age), but I strongly felt that women should never be...
3 tags
Hello and welcome
Welcome to my new blog Stop Whistling, Start Listening.
It’s been suggested to me many times over the years that I should have one; as a place to collect my thoughts, sort through all the info swimming around in my brain and ultimately air the opinions and discussions that occupy me.
More recently I’ve been taking my passion for women’s rights a bit further and have been inspired by some...