Melaszka is 41, based in the West Country and has identified as a feminist since the age of fourteen. She currently cares full-time for elderly parents, but has previously worked in education and the arts.

Dorri has been many things in her life so far; English, foreign, able-bodied, feminist, worker, disabled, student, activist, partner, and born-again singleton.
She attended her first peace protest on 1st April 1983 at the age of 10, a few years later she succeeded, although very briefly, in trespassing on RAF Greenham; that was the beginning of her life as a feminist.
When she was 18, just before he was planning to go to university she became ill. It was a very unremarkable event but it changed her life entirely. The illness quickly worsened and within weeks a single step defeated her. It took years but eventually she got to university but it was a very different experience as a disabled woman, despite this she has gone on post-graduate studies.
Today her passions included Taijiquan, disability rights, feminism, psychotherapy, writing, LARP, and the rather handsome cat with whom she shares her home.

I’m excessively pleased to welcome them both to the blog and they really are doing a sterling job so far!!

I’ll be posting more formal introductions up to Melazka and Dorrie tonight but for now please wlecome them, and enjoy the first posts from them!

We are however pleased to announce that tonight we attended the inaguaral meeting of Oxford Feminist Network, and it looks like some really exciting Feminist Action will be kicking off soon, in and around Oxford. If you want to get involved then do please look us up on Facebook or Yahoo (or indeed both) and please feel free to come along to the next meeting which is the 27th January 2010 at 6.30pm at Ruskin College, Walton Street. This is an open meeting, and all feminist minded people are welcome, including trans people.

We’re also positively thrilled to be welcoming a Guest Blogger in the shape of the lovely and talented Louise Livesey. She’ll be joining us for a while, and as those of you who have come across her in the Blogsphere will know, she blogs superbly about just about everything! So do all make her feel really welcome.

As ever, we’re always on the look out for new bloggers, and guest bloggers, so if you’re interested in filling either of those roles or if you see something you particularly want blogged about drop us a line at suzi@femacadem.net

So let’s deal with point a) first- the fact this question even needed to be asked. I’m against the use of the word ‘forced’ in the question. No woman should be ‘forced’ to do anything, especially not when feeding her child. Let’s all just take a moment here to remember that breasts, contrary to popular myth, exist so that women can breastfeed. It is in fact, the primary function of the mammary gland to produce milk in order to nourish infants. I suspect that the reason this question gets asked is because in our modern, western, over sexualised culture we seem to have completely forgotten that  breasts are not sexual objects designed to titillate and pleasure men.

Moving onto point b)- the misogyny in a lot of the comments. There were of course several comments from people pointing out the sheer ridiculousness of expecting Mothers to feed their babies in toilets or  under blankets etc – when Michael Jackson stuck his kids heads under blankets in public we called it child abuse. How  is it suddenly okay when the parent is a Mother who is FEEDING her child? There were several comments from people asking what all the fuss was about, when breastfeeding is a perfectly natural thing. And then there were the comments where people argued that urination is natural, but that doesn’t mean they do it in the street. Here’s the thing- babies need feeding. Babies, when not fed become quite upset. I am fairly certain, the same people who call ‘disgusting’ upon seeing the tiniest hint of flesh in a breastfeeding mother, are the same people who ‘tut’ and mutter ‘ can’t they shut that child up? shocking’ under their breath when confronted with a Mother who is attempting to soothe her hungry child when she is too anxious to feed in public because of people’s reaction.

Also- how do these people think women breastfeed? Having breastfed one baby, bottlefed another (for long and complex reasons),  and in about 6 months time I’ll be breastfeeding a third, I’m desperately trying to work out how on earth anyone is ‘exposing’ themselves enough to warrant being stared at by people in public. It’s not as if one flops one’s breasts onto a table while the child uses a straw or something! Breastfeeding requires a baby to be latched on so closely to the breast in order to suck, that unless you’re feeding over a vest top or topless it’s nigh on impossible to see any flesh. Ifyour an inexperienced breastfeeder, who’s just getting into her routine, then yes you might ‘expose’ a bit of flesh whilst latching on, but seriously ‘indecent exposure’? That’s a bit much really.

It seems to me that there are many things tied up in this question and the attotudes the poll has revealed. Primarily there’s an issue about women and their use of public spaces- these people feel women should not feel comfortable or able to use public spaces to feed their children and that their behaviour and autonomy should be censured for ‘moral’ reasons. Those moral reasons rest on notions of womens bodies and body parts as sexual objects designed to bring pleasure to men, but not to carry out their primary function- that of feeding babies. Then their an issue about ‘forcing’ women to comply with a ‘rule’ which is based on fallacious arguments and a dominant male based oppressive power structure.

I’m not that fussed about how or where women choose to feed their babies. Breastfeeding from many points of view is prefferable to bottlefeeding,  but  for many women it isn’t a practical, medical or cultural option, and  either way it shouldn’t matter. We need to support women and their partners and families to be comfortable with their feeding choices- this means access to breastfeeding cafes, and clinics and lactation consultants. This means access to peer supporters, and proper, accurate information about both breast and bottle feeding.  This means being able to feed your baby in public in any way you damn please without fear of censure or disapproval or abuse.

And it means that as onlookers, as other humans using a public space, we do not judge. We do not comment, becuase whether supportive or not, we are intruding. We do not ‘tut’ or mutter ’shocking’. We recognize that what we see is not indecent exposure, or bad parenting or shamelessness or a woman flaunting herself. What we see is a child being given it’s meal by it’s caregiver, and that is a perfectly normal, perfectly natural thing.

Despite our months of silence FemAcadem is STILL going- it’s just that we’ve been very busy doing end of year fieldwork and such, and so, have had limited time to do anything other than  in gurgling heaps.  As Andie and myself are both students and parents, and I also have a job to boot occasionally our blog schedule gets put on the back burner while we deal with the obstacles and deadlines that life throws at us, especially in the end of term.

We’re on our summer break now, so we’re hoping to be getting back in the saddle over the next few weeks, and hopefully we’ll be introducing a new blogger or two over Summer.

Whilst the start of my post is straight up wrong- a valuable lesson for me to learn-, when talking about privilege and oppression, I stand by the points I make about how being fat puts one at a disadvanatge in this world, and how thin people, do have privilege over fat people.

I got an email today from a friend asking me if I had read this piece by Amanata about fat hatred. So I went and read it……… and then had to fight the urge to applaud, loudly, because she says everything I try and say, but does it a million times better.

I recommend you read the piece I wrote at The F Word, and please accept my immediate apologies for the first paragraph or so- I made a mistake, and in doing so said something highly offensive. Bloggers, are humans too.

I also recommend you read this piece written by Anji, from Shut Up, Sit Down, and then read Amanata’s piece. And if you don’t find yourself agreeing, or find yourself thinking  ‘but being thin is hard too….’ then Shut Up, Sit Down, and Learn Something.

Being fat is not easier than being thin. Being thin is a socially acceptable, and desirable thing to be. Being fat is seen as deviant, unattractive, sexually inadequate, and a characteristic of someone who lacks in self control. Being fat means people will criticise your day to day life- if you eat they will tell you it is the wrong thing, if you don’t they will praise you for ‘being good’ (becuase of course being fat, you will also be infantilised. A lot). You will find it difficult to buy clothes that fit- and I don’t mean, difficult to find clothes that fit in a flattering way, I mean find it difficult to buy clothes at all. People will publicly humiliate you, and everywhere you look you will be told you are unnaceptable, unlovable, sub human. You will have to listen to people tell you all about how much of a health risk you are, and how much of a drain you are on NHS resources- despite the fact that smoking causes more disease and costs more of tax payers money a year than obesity, and despite the fact that links between obesity and the things it supposedly causes (like Type 2 diabetes for example) are tenuous at best.

And if you try and complain that you are being discriminated against and oppressed because of your shape/size people will promptly tell you, you are wrong and you don’t know how hard it is to be thin.

Actually, I do know how hard it is to be thin. I have had an active eating disorder for 10 years. I’ve been in a state of recovery for about 18 months. Not living in a state of starvation, and a cycle of purging, alongside several injuries and existing medical conditions means I have put on about 6 stone. I have gone from a dress size 8 to a dress size 18. And at no point in any of that time, have I experienced anything, which has made me glad that I am bigger. At no point has anyone made a single comment that has made me glad that I no longer have a socially acceptable body. And ironically- now I no longer starve myself, and purge, and smoke to try and keep my body weight down, I am significantly healthier than I was when I was thin. I have struggled, and continue to struggle to accept my body as it is, and to accept that fat or no I am still a vibrant, intelligent worthy, sexually attractive human being.

Don’t tell me that Thin Privilege doesn’t exist. If you are thin, you will have the privilege of not being discriminated against and abused daily, based on the completely arbitrary factor of your weight/ body shape. If you are thin, your food choices are less likely to be interrogated, you are more likely to be employed and less likely to be informed by doctors that every medical condition you have, regardless of whether you had it before you gained weight or not, is caused by weight. And you will have to listen to completely ableist crap that equates health with thin-ness and the ability to perform lots of excercise.

Fat is still a feminist issue. It’s even more of a feminist issue now that society has become obsessed with the ‘obesity epidemic’. And it is about time that fat acceptance got to be a part of mainstream feminist discourse, and thin privilege got recognised alongside other privileges.

Coming soon………. my response to a recent channel 4 programme (once I’ve stopped being cross!)

If you are interested in  signing the petition please go here and do so.

I could have written about two thirds of that myself. Except for the bit about not ‘complying’ with treatment because I always take my meds when I’m on them, and I always go see my Doctor exactly when he says I should.  It’s interesting for me, to see someone else’s view of living in a depressed/depressive state. Other people will (and frequently do) tell me that my world isn’t ‘real’. It is. To me- because that is how I live.

We all have our own subjective reality. In my reality running is a torturous experience, no longer something joyful- two spinal conditions and some hefty asthma have removed the fun I once had from running. For my dear friend D, running is an amazing experience, a chance to ignore the world and participate in something almost spiritual. Both our experiences are real, both are valid.

A reality of living with mental illness is that people will question your reality. This questioning is an attack on ones autonomy- if I am not experiencing the real world, how can I make real decisions? There is an assumption that if you have a mental illness you cannot function in the world, that somehow you are not ’safe’. For some people, this is true. Some individuals living with mental illnesses are unable to cope with the demands that ‘normal’ live places upon them. I’d argue that as many ‘normal’ people are just as unable to cope. For every individual who manges their condition, knows their triggers, has a system to deal with unepected episodes, there are ten ‘normal’ people saying hurtful things, and denigrating that persons ability to function. They all have an anecdote ‘oh well this crazy woman who had depression….’, they all have ‘advice’  ‘oh well I hear yoga works’, they all have sudden instant medical knowledge ‘ oh well depression doesn’t exist, it’ s all in your head’.

What these people are doing is undermining the right of a person to live and manage their illness in their way. They are refusing to acknowledge the validity of another persons reality, the validity of another individuals choices.  They are deciding once again, that we must all conform to an invisible, and, ever shifting standard of ‘normal’.

This post isn’t particularly ‘feminist’. Mental illness affects anyone regardless of age, sex, gender, race, creed, social standing- mental illness is fairly non discriminatory. It’s more of a note, to myself and others, to remember not to remove the autonomy of others, and to remember that we are all different, we all struggle in our own ways, and we all deserve to have our realities recognized and validated, regardless of the state of our mental health.