DISCLAIMER: I would like to make it ABSOLUTELY CRYSTAL CLEAR at this point that whilst I wholeheartedly support breastfeeding (and indeed advocate for it) this does not mean that I do not support the right of all Mothers/Parents to make their own infant feeding decision. This article is not intended to shame any woman who does not breast feed.

Jessica Valenti wrote this piece in The Daily recently. I totally agree with her sentiment that mothers shouldn’t be made to feel guilty. Breastfeeding is awesome and leads to much improved health outcomes both long and short term for Mothers and Babies. However, it’s also incredibly hard work and not everyone will be able to access support to breastfeed. Some women,  will have issues that mean they are physically unable to breastfeed. For some women, particularly those with premature babies in NICU’s the act of pumping breast milk can be incredibly stressful, particularly with no baby physically demanding milk to stimulate production. I get that. For these and a whole host of other reasons, which include not being mean, arsey people, we shouldn’t be making any woman feel guilty about how she chooses to feed her baby.

I don’t have a problem with any of that. In fact I salute Valenti for talking honestly and frankly about the fact that breastfeeding is difficult, and requires support which is often lacking, and without that support many women stop breastfeeding which is a why a shockingly low number of women continue to breastfeed following initiation at birth – at 6 months of age in the UK less than 1% o women are still breastfeeding exclusively as per recommendations (Infant Feeding Survey, 2005) and across the world less than 40% of infants are breastfed (WHO Global Strategy).

Yes folks thats right- us evil breastfeeding mamas, the ones who go round, apparently harassing non breastfeeding mamas, make up such a majority that LESS THAN ONE PERCENT OF UK MOTHERS BREASTFEED TO 6 MONTHS.  We aren’t some scary, self righteous majority, we are in fact an underfunded, under represented and socially harassed minority.

Anyway I’m digressing. My issue with Valenti’s piece is this statement :

“Thousands of studies have shown that breastfed babies are healthier on average than formula-fed babies — but no research has shown that it’s the breastfeeding that’s causing the better health. Moms who have the time and support to exclusively breastfeed, for example, may be more likely to support their children’s health in other ways. There simply is no proof that breast milk is the magical elixir so many of us believe it is.

“I never doubted that breastfeeding had myriad health benefits, so I was actually very surprised at what I found in the medical literature,” Wolf told me.

And it’s not just the science around breastfeeding that’s iffy — the social expectations and the dismissal of how hard nursing can be are also affecting women. “

I’m sorry, what? You know what, you can formula feed if you want to. You can claim that there are forces out there that shame you as a formula feeding mother. I’d like to argue that actually those same forces are busy shaming ALL mothers for all and any of their choices. But don’t you DARE to tell women and well, anyone reading for that matter, that the science around breastfeeding is iffy. Because really, it isn’t.

There isn’t some conspiracy where formula is secretly equal to breast milk, and nasty mean breastfeeding mamas (who make up less than 40% of the global mama populace) are lying so that poor formula feeding mamas feel bad. Breast milk is, scientifically speaking,  better for babies health by dint of it being custom made to meet the specific needs of the baby it feeds. The reason breastfed babies are generally speaking healthier is because breast milk contains immunological factors specific to each baby which protect it from disease. Breast milk doesn’t require making up with water which may be unsanitary thus exposing babies to gastreointestinal issues. Breast milk doesn’t require careful making up to ensure it is the correct strength, meaning that many babies every year become ill due to simple human error. And breast milk, unlike formula milk is sterile.

That doesn’t mean that people should always HAVE to breastfeed. People should breastfeed if they are in the privileged position of being supported and able to do so, if they want to and that’s that. I don’t care HOW you feed your baby, I care if you’re supported in doing so. I care if you have full access to ACCURATE and valid information which enable you to make your choice. No one should be shamed for parenting decisions- we do the best we can, with what we have at the time, and perhaps with different circumstances we’d make different decisions.

But, for fucks sake, don’t you dare lie about breast milk (or formula milk for that matter) when you are a publicly visible and respected figure. Don’t you dare. Because you’re contributing directly to a culture which shames women and uses shit science to justify shit social attitudes.

*Please see the WHO Report “Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding” for more details.

I’ve been interested recently to read some media reports by a local branch of the Fawcett Society on the representation of women in the media. They can be found here and here.

By counting the numbers of pictures/mentions of men and women in various media genres and analysing whether they are included because of what they look like or because of their achievements, they provide a snapshot of the very different ways in which the two genders are represented in books, magazines, newspapers and on TV.

Their findings on children’s TV and literature make particularly stark reading, because the culture children are exposed to will help shape their attitudes to themselves and to others as they grow up. The researchers found that, on the sample day, on the CBeebies channel, 100% of story narrators were male, as were a whopping 70% of characters shown. What message does that send out to girls about their importance in society and their right to have their voices heard?

The ratio of female to male characters in both adults’ and children’s TV and literature is something I tend to get very hot under the collar about, particularly the ratio between male and female central or authoritative characters.

I very often get into debates with people about this and am accused of “playing a futile numbers game”. The usual arguments I hear (and I’m sure many of you will be used to hearing these same cracked records, too) are:

(a) Shouldn’t we be focusing on serious problems, like genital mutilation, forced marriage, domestic violence, female infanticide? Isn’t how many female characters there are in a children’s book too trivial to worry about?

To which I would respond, well, no, actually. Men who feel they have the right to subject women to violence and coercion do so because they believe that merely having a Y chromosome makes them intrinsically more valuable and powerful than people without one. They weren’t born with this world view. I’m not suggesting that reading children’s books with a male: female character ration of 3:1 is, on its own, going to make someone abusive to women. But it’s one of the many things that cumulatively teach children to believe that men are “naturally” more important than women.

(b) Surely having one powerful or strong female character in a book is enough? It gives girls a role model and shows that women can achieve?

If it were the 1950s, when real-life female leaders were thin on the ground and school careers advisers counseled girls not to aim for any job more authoritative than a secretary, I might be able to buy that argument. But we are no longer in a position where girls are starved of any role models and anything is better than nothing.

Indeed, literature and TV often lags woefully behind real life in its portrayal of authority figures. For example, one of the clichés of detective stories, in novels and on TV, that most does my head in is the male-female authority sandwich. The female second-in-command, the female sergeant seems to be everywhere in detective series these days, from DS Reid in Taggart, through DS Havers in Inspector Lynley, to DS Clarke in Rebus (and, although they’re not police officers and none of them has a formal rank, arguably Harry-Hermione-Ron in Harry Potter is the ultimate example of the male-female authority sandwich). And what a depressing example of faux feminism that is! I always feel that the female sergeant is being held up as an example of how right-on the author is and how far on society has moved, that we are supposed to be grateful that’s she’s made it to the dizzy heights of the rank of sergeant and isn’t still languishing as a lowly Constable. Shock! Horror! She even has male constables working under her!

But, of course, none of this mitigates the fact that the woman is always stuck in second-in-command, that the inspector whose name is the title of the series is male, that he is the one whose maverick but flawed genius is central to the franchise and that, while she might be allowed to be bright and resourceful and sometimes even hand him the crucial clue without which the case wouldn’t be cracked, his is the central consciousness with which we are invited to identify, to the extent that even his failings and weaknesses are fetishised.

Where fictional female police officers are allowed to reach the rank of inspector or higher (e.g. in the Prime Suspect and The Commander series), the focus is usually on how hard it is being a woman in a man’s world, with her gender being presented as a rarity and a problem.

The fact is, though, that in real life it is nowadays far from unusual to see a woman in the higher echelons of the police service. There are female superintendents, commanders, commissioners and chief constables. Why can’t we see more police inspectors in fiction, as in real life, who just happen to be women?

So, no, I don’t think having one female character in a position of authority or a position of importance in the plot is enough: while it might demonstrate that women can be important, the fact that they are in a minority still reinforces the sense that it is far more likely and normal for men to be leaders, often suggesting that this is less likely and normal than is actually the case in real life.

However, I don’t think it’s always wise to get too hung up on rank and positions of authority. It is not, in my opinion, a good idea to start criticising female characters for “only” being a stay-at-home housewife or for “not being strong enough”. That would reinforce patriarchal notions about paid work outside the home being the only work of importance and set standards of “feistiness” and “strength” that female characters are expected to meet that are higher than those expected of males. Male heroes aren’t always expected to be “strong” – indeed, when they show vulnerability, we often love them even more.

For me, the most important thing is to have more female characters in central roles, more female characters who are presented as the subjects of the stories. I’d love the female sergeant if it were her name in the show title, if the stories were about her problems and concerns and her role in the investigation. She doesn’t have to have a promotion – she just needs to be shown to be important.

(c) But the author didn’t intend the text to say anything about gender or to imply that one sex is superior to the other! That’s just how the characters happened to appear in their head. It would be unjustifiably interfering with their creative control of their work and lead to political correctness gone mad if we insisted that all books/TV shows had to have exactly 50% male and exactly 50% female characters.

I will concede that, in practical terms, it would be impossible to insist, for example, legally, that books and series had to have an even gender split of characters and might make plots and characters seem formulaic and sterile.

The trouble is that it’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation: while male characters being in the majority is the predominant practice, most authors will subconsciously follow this practice when characters “just happen to appear in their head”, because they are heavily influenced by prior literature. Until we start seeing more books and TV series with as many or more female characters than male in the centre of the action, authors and screenwriters are far more likely to see a male face in their head when they think of the words “hero” and “villain” and a female face when they think of “assistant” or “love interest”. In my opinion, it would be good if writers voluntarily started operating positive discrimination and didn’t just go with the clichéd idea that first pops into their head. And if publishers and commissioning editors didn’t lean on them to follow the status quo.

Apologies to all,  for you may have noticed the lack of posts from Suzi and myself. Well,  I have just finished my SPE degree and Suzi is in the midst of catching up on work. Tradition dictates that Suzi does a thorough investigation of subject matter and so she decided to do her dissertation on the Politics of Breastfeeding, which naturally, included having a baby to perform test analysis on the subject! I did my dissertation on the subject of Post-Feminism from a  radical feminist approach which,  once its marked, I will condense and post here.
So at the moment (like a lot of people) I’m going through the misery that is job hunting in a double dip recession, so in between the endless job search I can actually manage to poke my head into the real world. I realise that I’ve had the privilege of having three years out to learn,  study and develop my own ideas. I have met amazing people that I otherwise wouldn’t have met (Suzi being one of them), have taken part in events such as the Ruskin@40 Womens conference where I took some academic baby steps into a group discussion about what post-feminism is, I also listened and watched in awe as Beatrix Campbell took my economics tutor down a peg!

Real life sucks but its up to all the bloggers , the off-line activists and networks to keep questioning, profiling and lobbying for full equality between the sexes.

So tonight after reading some stuff posted on a friends Facebook wall, I went and had a look at  a Poll on Breastfeeding. The questions asks ‘Do you think women should be forced to cover up when breastfeeding in public?’. I’m was somewhat pleased to see that of eveyone who had answered the poll, 56% said no.  However, what really troubled me was a) the fact that this is even a question that needs asking at all and b) the comments section which was full of glorious examples of mysogyny such as men telling women that breastfeeding in public without covering up was ‘indecent exposure’.

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.

Apologies to all for lack of posting on the site , Suzi and myself have been going through last term of  academic year hell and I’ve also made myself a glutton for punishment and been voted in as  Student Union President (again).

Pursuing my interest in the doctrine (or non doctrine) of anarchy, particularly the action, or non action of  forum use and the ‘feeling’ that being, in these anarchist forums is to them, a space of free thinking (or, to use Hakims Beys definition, a ‘ temporary autonomous zone‘)  I started a thread on an online anarchist community. So far so good. In a second year of degree act of stupidity I made too good an argument, leading to a situation where the forum users just blankly agreed with me.

Thing is, I used an androgynous handle (name) so I decided to stir things up a little and reveal explicitly that I was female-  can you guess what happened dear reader? Yep, the thread wasn’t pulled, but, my explicit reply was!  I  e-mailed the sites administrator to ask why my reply was pulled and  he replied that my mentioning radical womens squats ‘marginalised’  a lot of the forum users!  I’m sorry I forgot there are no female anarchists! My topic was valid and a useful talking point, oh, pat on the head for me then for being clever, erm WTF?

I’hm not immune to the notion that there is inerrant sexism in the world and on the net ,I just thought that there may be a little less sexism  on the net.  The net is a place of deception as well as a place of truth telling and yes you could argue that my handle gave no clue to my gender, but should it matter  on an anarchist website? In an anarchist utopia we are all equal and not subjected to the mindless actions of blokes in balaclavas smashing up shop windows and ‘us’ women keeping the collective home fires burning. We are elders as we always (and have been ignored for many a generation and governmental policy) have been within the collective, just as men pass on their wisdom, so do women.

I know I may sound naive but I really feel that this is 2009, I’m a working class, single parent woman and I am  free to be educated, select partners etc, however, I have to also acknowledge that  I’m blonde ,’skinny’, white with technological advantage.  I have to acknowledge this privileged in off-line life , but do I have to on-line? Why, if the Internet is a virtual space where everyone is supposedly equal am I bombarded with adverts for pink computers, dating sites and online bingo halls? Its time to campaign against on-line sexism as well as offline sexism.

I watched the last episode of Pulling. It was ok at times its quite sexist towards men. However,  hey how many times to you see a BBC programme where the women get the funny lines?

I`m reading ‘The Dispossessed’  by Ursula K.Le Guin. Anyone else read it? I’ll do a review in a few weeks time.

Sue Moss, the Domestic Violence Coordinator from Bucks County Council has started a petition to ask that media companies report incidences of murder by partners as Domestic Violence, instead of ‘normal’ murder. I think this is a fantastic idea, in recognizing the levels of violence against women, and the numbers of women who are murdered by their partner in DV situations.

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

Louise highlights this story at the F Word, regarding what happened to a 15 year old girl, who was found to be an Escort.

Has the Agency been prosecuted? Has the girl recieved counselling for rape? Nope. She’s had her ‘immoral earnings’ removed and no has bothered to find out why a 15 year old girl was engaging in sex work.

I’m disgusted. Is there anything we can do? I’d like to write a strongly worded letter to both my MP and the Police force involved, condemning their inaction at investigating the multiple rapes of a child, and the pimping of a child by an Escort Agency. Does anyone think this will help?

So, in a repetition of last year I have injured my knee and am on bed rest for at least the next week. Luckily this year, I did it the day AFTER Million Women Rise, and so now there are various photos of me on  the Internet carrying the London 3rd Wave Banner.

More embarrassingly there is video footage of me attempting to lead some chanting and talking to the very fabulous and talented Laura of shemakeswar about why marches matter.The video is one Laura made of the whole march and why it’s so important to marc h and maintain a visible presence,  and also features Finn Mackay of London Feminist Network and Jess McCabe of  The F Word

So here is the video.  And very good it is too! More reports of MWR, along with the FemAcadem photos will follow.

Million Women Rise 2009 by warriorgrrrl

So the economic doom and gloom continues, more high street stores closing, pieces of companies being sold off and the downturn apparently hasn’t even bottomed out yet. According to government statistics for January, the number of job vacancies were 179,000 with the benefits claiming count coming in at 1.23 million and this months figures set to be even worse.
The jobcentre has to move with the times, its not just dealing with underclass ,job dodging scum like me anymore. No the middle class are out of work now ..eek.. quick scrub those fake jobs off the computers that lie about how many job vacancies there actually are, give the security guards nicer uniforms and call them greeters, get a cappuccino machine in here and for gods sake  give them their own floor so we can keep them from mixing with those benefit culture lot.
How can Jobcentre Plus possibly find vacancies for the middle-class professional?  Their bosses reply “We’ll outsource and get an agency in to deal with these highly skilled professionals”. Crikey we wouldn’t want any intelligent sorts on the bottom of the economic heap now would we?  Especially ones with a posh accent, it just wouldn’t do.

Then Mr Brown pipes up-  “lets get this green low carbon industry going that’ll get us out of this pickle!” . Reskill and everything will be grand. Firstly, I was at an MPs question time last October when Ed Vaisey and Andrew Smith were directly asked if green technology was still going to be implemented in light of the coming recession and  both of them said that plans would have to be shelved. Secondly where the hell is all this surplus of cash coming from, if its from reserves then why the hell wasn’t it put into public services? In light of the tragic Baby P case didn’t it show that social workers were under intense staffing pressures and that children were being abused/murdered and it was missed because of lack of resources?  Thirdly ,who will be re skilled to do these ‘green’ jobs? Manual workers, or the newly out of work middle class ?

Well of course in my opinion,  it’s the middle class. Have the  postmateralistic values of the middle class actually led to the reduction of their economic earning potential? After all if you have a ‘green’  collar job a new status is attached and just as the banker had a champagne lifestyle won`t the new green collar professional lead a elderflower wine lifestyle?

The goverment are bailing out the middle classes and still ignoring the working class. In the current climate there is a chance to look at benefit traps and the scrappy amount people on benefits have to survive on. Will the goverment reform the welfare state? Only if enough of the middle classes are out of work.

This post is about a pivotal experience in my life-  a visit to Womynspace. I feel its relevant to write this because it changed my perceptions about my attitudes to other women, left wing politics, the legal system, the list could go on. The point is that nearly every week I find myself drawing on the experience.

To rewind…before I started at uni I never thought about feminism. Once or twice when I’d heard the word it was portrayed in a negative light. I myself come from a dysfunctional family and the women in the family had been subjected to cycles of abuse which in turn trickled down to me. I felt the only person I could trust was my father figure and therefore even though I did have female friends, I never really trusted them, they were all out to’ get’ me.

This visit also coincides with the beginnings of a great friendship with Suzi, my first interactions with another very intelligent role model who pointed me in the direction of Womynspace and myself for the first time in my life , truly being out of my comfort zone.

Necessary arrangements had been made, directions gathered, feminist peer grabbed in order to be my comfort blanket and off we went to London . I’d been to London only twice – once on a school trip and once on a jolly with an ex boyfriend. I took the car, I realise now that that was a comfort blanket too- I didn’t know my way around and the car was safe in the fact that I could get into it and drive away should anything untoward happen.

We drove into a rough looking area of London, a police car seemed to follow us in to a side street and observe where we were going. I parked up and we approached the metal  security gate. A woman  appeared unlocking the various padlocks in order for us to gain entry , she chatted whilst we went through the door and as she fortified the the door via a plank slatted against the door.The entry was dark damp and forbidding and the woman starting to show us around. The welding room,the smoking room and then up the stairs.

Once we got to the top of the stair case the atmosphere started to change ,there was some sunlight coming through the windows and I could see artwork on the walls. A photographer was taking pictures and two other women were chatting. We were shown around this tier of the house and the atmosphere was almost church- like, we were offered tea (thank you womynspace for introducing me to rooibos tea)and then sat down to chat.

I for once didn’t have anything to say for myself. Suzi on the other hand starting talking and drawing out the other women’s stories (usually my ‘job’). I felt for once that I really didn’t have anything to contribute and on reflection the way I looked didn’t matter this opportunity to just be `me` had never presented itself and therefore I was at a loss .

We left and got back into the car and Suzi and I didn’t say anything until ten minutes later when we both let out a collective sigh. We both felt peaceful and then talked about the experience.It wasn’t until much later that we realised we’d both had completely different experiences – Suzi had felt comfortable and confident, I felt the opposite.

I wrote the experience up as a feminist reflective essay and thought that would be the ‘end of it’….not so. As time went on and suggestions about space from tutors started to make sense to me I started to figure it out and de-construct what society had socialized me in to thinking. Feminists..bad, squats are only used by druggies and homeless people, the law is always right.

Womynspace taught me that its ok just to ‘be’ rather than ‘doing’, in the respect that we as women are always supposed to be pre-occupying ourselves with caring for other people, caring about what other people think of us and caring if  the sexually preferred gender finds us attractive.The one sentence that sticks in my mind from the experience was a woman saying ‘he doesn’t know anything about me’, that’s the best thing I ever heard in my life. Complete strangers don’t know anything about you. How dare they comment and judge someone they know nothing about?!

Another thing that struck me was the the premise of what space is – whats the difference between a woman’s group hiring a village hall or making use of a near derelict building in order to empower women? Money and the legal system that protects an investment. How much is a derelict building worth? Why shouldn’t it be put to use instead of being left to  crumble until the owner gets the ‘right’ price from a developer?

Womynspace changed and still is changing my perception of the world and society around me. Without it I wouldn`t be writing here, have the strength to show the world who I really am(ok, I’m your basic geek, but there you go) and that the ‘hidden’ shit’ – the issues that are swept under the carpet like the empowerment of women really does matter. Thank you Womynspace .