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.

In the spirit of sisterhood and women friendly spaces, some friends and I recently had a women and children only weekend and piled into one house for a night of cooking, chatting, recharging and connecting. Between us we had 4 school age children, one baby, three dogs and a lot of catching up to do. It was brilliant- the power of strong female friendship is something I’m starting to really appreciate as I head towards my thirties. The only dent in the weekend arose on the Sunday morning. The children were watching TV as we sat round drinking tea and trying to come too, and then an advert break came on. There were about 8 adverts in this break which occurred on a national TV channel, during a Sunday morning kids program. The adverts were highly gendered- 4 aimed at girls and 4 at boys. There wasn’t a single advertisement which wasn’t obviously gendered. The adverts didn’t even feature a single child of the opposite gender, if you catch my drift.

So, that was infuriating point number one. Infuriating point number two can be found in the types of products aimed at girls and boys. Aimed at girls were kits to make soap, fridge magnets, a doll and a toy kitchen. Aimed at boys were two types of skateboard/scooter, a gun and a set of armed forces action figures and vehicles. The clearly gendered division of those adverts can be broken down to indicate that girls make things- useful things no less, and care for others; boys do physical activities and engage in strategic and destructive games which train them to engage in ‘manly’ pursuits.

If this is what we’re teaching children with the toys we buy them then really we’ve not come that far in terms of gender equality. Boys can care and make things as nicely as girls, girls can be as physical as girls. To suggest otherwise is to further participate in a mysogynistic culture which harms children of both genders.

So the headlines blazing across the Sunday Papers was the story of how the Coalition intend to ‘make’ benefit claimants do unpaid work for a specific period or risk losing their benefits. At first glance it seems a good idea, being out work takes it toll on your mental state, so why not do some unpaid work whilst looking ? Firstly, job hunting takes time, the internet searches, the rehashing of the C.V and even the time to travel to employment agencies (as my favourite champagne socialist Polly Toynbee found out and expressed in Hard Work). Secondly,  most people already do unpaid work, its called voluntary work which, if you’re lucky enough not to had to trudge to the dole before, you have to declare as part of your job hunting plan, but you’re not allowed to do ‘too much’ voluntary work nor state that you have made  a fixed time commitment less it stop you from landing a ‘proper’ paid job. So , if the government makes you do unpaid work because you are guilty of  the crime to be out of work in the middle of  double dip recession what gap are you filling? Why! the gap made by public spending cuts, think tank genius! The third sector is awash with recent graduates, the long and short term unemployed already,  so I can only presume that the newly unemployed  (fresh from the spending cuts, low level civil servants , librarians etc) are going to fill the gaping gaps left by the shrinking state. However, there is another kind of unpaid work done by nearly half of the planets population that the Coalition government never mention, a gap that is always filled due to social construction and that is the unpaid domestic labour provided by Women.

According to to a paper commissioned by the UN, the unaccounted economic activities performed by women include:-

• Cleaning, decoration and maintenance of the dwelling unit
• Preparation and serving of meals
• Care, training and instruction of children
• Care of sick,infirm or old
• Transportation of the household’.

Sound familiar? All that day to day stuff you do is worth nothing to the government and my argument is that it should be for several reasons. Firstly, these unaccounted activities are presumably unpaid because financial sustenance comes from a partner or the state, which as everyone knows is complete rubbish. Only the elite and upper middle classes can survive on one wage per household.  Single mothers live on a pittance and even when in work often end up hovering just above the poverty line . Secondly we also have to factor in the concept that women’s work is a relic of the industrial revolution,-  the Woman offers emotional and maternal support to the man who ‘is’ the wage slave ( the Women being a non economical unit). This concept is problematic now as Woman in this country have long been visible in the public sphere and now Woman  finds she is a wage slave Herself but but still endures the double burden. This is  nothing compared to our Sisters in developing countries but non-the-less, equal,sexist free Britain? Thirdly even if you don’t have children, Women are socially immersed into ideals of being this caring, nourishing being, via the media (domestic goddess that can whip up a four course meal in 10 minutes,drop everything for your friends, look out for your neighbours). Women have always been the volunteers that filled the gaps left by the state’s policies, the PTA’s that raise money for schools (mostly women), the coffee mornings for charity, Women activists that march and lobby at grassroots level , keeping your eye on that neighbour who you know is taking abuse from their  ’other half’, saying hello and engaging in conversion with an elderly person who you know, probably hasn’t spoken to anyone all day. If I where to categorize our ‘unaccounted economic activities’ as paid work then the list would be this;Nanny,Counselor,Lobbyist,Community worker,Fund-raiser,Chauffeur, PR,Carer, Nutritionist, Personal shopper. All validated, trusted positions,  economically viable but not so if the work is unpaid.If as the DaveCam puts it we are ‘all in this together’ then why is unpaid ‘domestic labour’  economically irrelevant in these days of the Big Society? We fill the gaps!

Did you notice that last week the fire service threatened to strike on bonfire night? The New Statesman posed the question is it an abuse of power? No actually its not, it strikes at the heart of the public’s fear of unsafety. So why is it that Womens strike day this year was largely ignored by the media? Well you know why,Women in the west are still seen as unpaid labour, economically irrelevant, whining when we have so called political rights.If we were were to strike, can you imagine the gap?  This is what I say, mind the gap left by Women, the void is too vast to cross safely, society would as we see it would crumble. Women fill the void left by the shrinking state , unpaid work for women claimants creates a triple burden. Marx once wrote’ We stand on the shoulders of giants’ but that’s rubbish we all stand  on the shoulders of women and society is taught that those strong shoulders are irrelevant because of a chromosome. MIND THE GAP!

A call for papers comes via the Filament magazine FB page, Feminst Porn Studies is looking for papers between 3000 and 7000 words from both sex industry workers and academic writers.

Oxford University’s Left Review is looking for submissions for Issue Three, which gives you two weeks to submit if you have any sociological, radical politics or economics papers.

When it comes to Filament magazine, I’m still in two minds about it. Yes, I like looking at sexy men and yes Ii think women should be able to access porn if they want to.  What I can’t actually bridge is the gap between the following-  when did I start thinking it was OK to view men as sex objects when most feminist thought dictates that women must not be seen purely as sex objects? Surely as a result,  neither should men.  What is this female gaze discussion all about?

The female gaze can be seen as  binary to the male gaze, but how do we truly know what the female gaze is?  If it is the  opposite to the male gaze then where is the space for Lesbians and Trans men? I know that all men do not not desire the slim blonde identikit archetype offered by the media, and all women do not desire the chiseled  jaw six pack ‘hunk’ also offered by the mainstream.  Nor are all women ‘secret bisexuals’, so why are the main images in this magazine oiled up and laid out for the ladies pleasure?

As a critic of post-feminism, I could simply say that this is  a new and improved way to control women’s sexuality, to mould us as sexually subservient to men. Don’t be fooled by embracing the so-called power of what I truly think the female gaze is . The male gaze is digested in the consciousness of women, who then internalise and invert this gaze because ultimately  men have power. To seize this power you must be seen as this veracious, ironic being who sees women as the media do- as a consumable product . Ariel Levy in her excellent investigation ‘ Female Chauvinist Pigs’ explores this notion within both heterosexual and homosexual culture and illustrates this perfectly.

As a woman in the ‘real’ world, having been socially conditioned to what is ‘hot’ and what is not (lets not be naive here), maybe Filament is a good  thing. I enjoy reading the feeds on FB  asking for what kind of image the readers would like to see ( I can’t help but think that it may sink into a readers boyfriends/husbands expo).  Most of the articles are pretty good and I don’t think I’d ever put it under my bed to avoid detection. That said, can any sexual objectification ever be justified?

I’m going to marry Benedict Cumberbatch.

Admittedly, the star of the BBC’s Sherlock series may not yet be aware of this fact. In fact, strictly speaking, he hasn’t actually ever met me. But that hasn’t stopped me publicising my matrimonial aspirations on Facebook, Twitter and in numerous text messages to my friends this week.

However, don’t worry, you don’t need to buy your hat just yet. And in the unlikely event of Olivia Poulet reading this, she can breathe a sigh of relief. Because, obviously, I am not really going to marry Le Cumberbatch (he’s not really my type and I don’t even believe in the concept of marriage), it’s just one of those metaphors which women of my age find so easy to trot out about any male actor/musician/writer/sportsperson whose work they admire: “I want to have his babies”, “I love him” etc. It’s a throwback to the days when we used to doodle our favourite pop stars’ names on our pencil cases during the boring bits of Double Maths.

It annoys and embarrasses me that, after years of identifying as a feminist, I still thoughtlessly do this (although I don’t think I’m alone – many of my friends, including those who are already happily married and even some who are lesbians, are equally guilty). Because I’m acutely aware that the romantic ideal of “The Hero I’m Going To Marry” is one of the things that often holds women back, both from aiming to achieve themselves, and from fully appreciating the achievements of other women. While boys of my generation spent their Maths lessons dreaming about being a guitarist/actor/footballer, we girls wasted too much time dreaming about marrying a guitarist/actor/footballer, and that may be one of the reasons why so few of us got round to actually picking up a guitar or kicking a ball around the park. It may also be one of the reasons why so few female pop stars achieved the popularity or financial success of e.g. Duran Duran, Kajagoogoo, Bros, East 17, or even U2, The Police or The Smiths – we might have quite liked Michelle Shocked or Tracy Chapman’s music, but as we couldn’t process down the aisle with them with the sound of Mendelssohn blaring in the background, they were never really going to become an all-consuming passion.

But have things moved on for today’s teenaged and tweenaged girls? Since the rise of the Spice Girls and All Saints in the 90s, it does seem to me that young girls have been far more likely than previous generations to look to female role models as their heroes. I am ambivalent about whether this is a better attitude than that of my generation. There is no doubt that the word “career” has become firmly embedded in girls’ vocabularies in a way it wasn’t when I was eleven, twelve. There’s a pragmatic openness about the capitalist way in which the entertainment industry works, which I don’t remember being the case in the ‘70s and ‘80s, when I was growing up, and female stars seem to be at the forefront of that. In a sense, when I see eleven-year-olds idolising Cheryl Cole or Katie Price or Lady Gaga and I know that they know full well that these are hard-nosed business women who have consciously launched themselves as global brands, carefully charted and controlled their ascent to fame and riches, it does seem that girls today are more attuned to taking control of their lives and having ambitions of their own, shallow and materialistic as those ambitions so often are.

But, quite aside from the narrowly materialistic nature of the “success” and “empowerment” to which these girls aspire, there is, of course, also the body image issues that so often go with it. Girls seem to learn in the cradle that the route to a successful career is being “sexy”, moulding yourself to please the male gaze – primary school children now identify “sexy” as the attribute they most want to have and pre-pubescents dream of having boob jobs. Is there much difference between aspiring to marry a footballer and aspiring to be an independently wealthy pop star or supermodel who marries a footballer? Frankly, I’d almost rather we were back in the days when every female twelve-year-old’s dream was eloping to the Las Vegas Wedding chapel with Adam Ant. At least they were expressing an appreciation for either his art, for what he could do, or for his body and the fact that it pleased their female gaze.

But better, by far, to jettison both the belief that you need a high-octane career that brings you fame and money in order to prove your self-worth and the belief that your self-worth depends on bagging yourself an alpha male. Best to aspire to do things for their intrinsic value and for the pleasure of developing your own skills, the way that the boys in my class did when they tried to play guitar like Johnny Marr or kick a football like Kevin Keegan.

So, actually, no, I don’t want to marry Benedict Cumberbatch, I just really wish I could act like Benedict Cumberbatch. Or even better – act like Josette Simon or Fiona Shaw.

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.

I recently advertised for a language exchange partner on the internet. You probably know the kind of set-up I mean – they are native speakers of the foreign language I’m trying to learn who live in my town and want to improve their English, and the idea is that we meet up on a regular basis to practise our conversational skills in each other’s language. I soon received a number of replies to my ad, including one from a couple in their 20s who seemed very friendly, lived close to me, and it didn’t take us long to set up a date to meet.

The thing is, I’m well-versed in internet safety etiquette. I know all the rules backwards: don’t give away too much personal information about yourself online, never give out your home address, never take what strangers say about themselves online at face value and, above all, never meet up with someone you’ve met online in real life in a private home. Always set up the first meeting in a public space, like a pub or café. And yet, when my new online pals suggested we have our first meeting at their flat, I immediately agreed, even though the idea made me feel anxious and uncomfortable.

I think one of the reasons I didn’t insist on meeting on neutral ground is that I do tend to be a tad on the neurotic side – I’m the kind of person who goes through a nightly ritual of checking the inside of the wardrobe and under the bed for intruders and regularly exits an Underground carriage the minute a young man carrying a rucksack gets on, just in case he happens to have a bomb in it. It’s a side of myself I’m trying to battle with, so I didn’t want to indulge my paranoia here.

And maybe I was being overcautious – after all, while my love life is solidly vanilla, my more sexually adventurous friends seem to spend half their time in the bedrooms of people they’ve only just met and no-one’s taken an axe to them yet.

But deep down, I suspect that the real reasons I completely ignored the ground rules I’d decided to set were because:

(a) like – I’m guessing – a lot of women, I have a horror of seeming rude, of putting people to any inconvenience. They preferred to meet at their home – who was I to say different?

(b) I am also reluctant to be viewed as the local nutter. I know through personal experience that women who insist on taking taxis short distances at night instead of walking, refuse to open the door to strangers or demand to see IDs from tradesmen, tend to get treated like they have acute psychiatric problems, even those are all things which we are officially advised to do.

On my way over to my language partners’ place, my anxiety grew. As I walked the couple of miles to their address, I mentally replayed what I knew about this couple and all sorts of innocent things they’d mentioned in their e-mails suddenly seemed to take on a sinister significance. They’d seemed very eager – suspiciously eager? – to set up a meeting as soon as possible. They’d made a big deal about the fact that they were a couple and had attached a photo, but that’s exactly the kind of thing a solitary rapist or people-trafficker would say to try and put his potential victim at ease and the photo could have been of anybody – any idiot with a search engine could find a picture of A Random Couple and pass it off as himself and his non-existent wife. After my first e-mail, they’d Googled me and found my Facebook page, which hadn’t seemed odd at the time, but now started to appear macabrely stalkerish. And, come to think of it, all their e-mails had been in English, so I had no proof that they even spoke a word of the language which they claimed was their native tongue. Before long, I could hear Kirsty Young’s voice in my head, appealing to the public to help solve my murder on Crimewatch.

Well, I eventually reached their block of flats and, as you’ve probably gathered from the fact that I’m here writing this blog, they weren’t axe murderers: fortunately, they were exactly who they said they were. They were, in fact, utterly charming, I spent a highly enjoyable couple of hours with them and I’m hopeful that the language exchange partnership will go swimmingly.

But this experience has, yet again, underlined for me how, despite talking the feminist talk and knowing the theory, in actuality I’m incredibly easily swayed by media crime scaremongering, yet equally easily convinced that, as a woman, my right to set boundaries which make feel safe and comfortable is negligible and that I am obliged at all times and in all places to accommodate others.

I wonder how many other women feel continually torn between two totally unreasonable and utterly conflicting societal dictats – on the one hand, we’re taught to be people-pleasers who shouldn’t inconvenience others with “selfish”, “neurotic”, “rude” demands, on the other we’re bombarded with victim-blaming propaganda that suggests that if we fail to observe a 24-hour curfew and apply for a full CRB check on anyone we speak to, should something untoward happen to us, it is somehow entirely our fault.

When Suzi asked me if I would mind writing a blog about my experience of being a full-time carer for my elderly parents, I thought it would be easy to put my thoughts down on paper. Actually, though, it’s been extremely difficult, not least because I’ve found myself going through several drafts agonising about whether I’ve written too much about me and not enough about my parents.

My anxiety on this point probably stems form the fact that, like many of my sex, I have probably internalised the belief that we women have a special caring gene stamped all the way through our DNA like “Blackpool” through a stick of rock, and that, therefore, if we do not devote every waking moment of every day to others, or dare express any needs of our own, we must be “unnatural”, “cold” and “selfish”.

But we don’t need to internalise this belief, as there are always plenty of people ready to remind us of it. Not long after I first moved down here, I left a post on an internet message board devoted to advice on family problems, asking for tips on how I could build more of a life for myself around my caring duties for my parents, as I was beginning to feel a bit isolated, having moved hundreds of miles from my support network of friends to a more provincial community where there was a lot less going on. I was astonished to receive a response suggesting that I should “get local authority help for them as soon as possible, as it’s not fair that the care of your vulnerable parents should be dependent on someone as incredibly selfish as you.”

Since people like that are going to damn me whatever I write, I therefore make no apologies – this blog entry is focused on my feelings and experiences alone. Not because I don’t think my parents’ feeling are important, but because I’m not them and I can’t speak for them, I can only speak for myself.

One thing which I find very curious and very sad is that, when I tell people that I care full-time for my elderly mother and father, they look at me with sympathy, as if I’ve just announced that I have a terminal disease. It was a voluntary decision – I love my parents, enjoy their company, consider myself very lucky indeed to be spending large swathes of time with them while I still have the chance, and (while I acknowledge that caring for them has meant some very difficult compromises, as well) giving up paid work outside the home to go and live with them has also given me the time and space to do a lot of things I wouldn’t have been able to do while juggling a full-time job – and yet many of the people I meet assume that I feel like the child caught when the music stops at the end of a game of Hot Potato.

This probably stems largely from the societal belief that the only work which matters is paid work outside the home.

As full-time parents, the unemployed and those on incapacity benefit will know all too well, if you can’t answer the question “What do you do?” with something that involves a big salary, then you are all too often viewed as boring, valueless to society, insignificant and possibly congenitally stupid. Carers have little status and few rights in our society – carers’ allowance is derisory and when I do need to re-enter the workforce, probably in my 50s or 60, I’m a bit concerned about how potential employers will view the large “gap” in my CV.

But I’ve found that caring for elderly parents has also really brought home to me the social prejudices that exist about single, childless women. First of all, there was the automatic assumption in my wider family that I, not my married sister, would be the one to care for my parents. While I was more than happy to fulfil this role, it was because I wanted to, not because I thought that it was my rightful duty, and I still resent the assumption that, because I didn’t have a partner or children, there couldn’t possibly be anything at all important in my life that I might mind giving up.

Then there’s the caricature stereotypes that people try to hang on you. While working single women who live alone are often decried as hard-nosed, ambitious bitches, fecklessly ignoring their biological clock in a quest for ball-breaking career dominance and heading for a lonely, unfulfilled old age as their rightful comeuppance, at least people assume they are having some fun in the present. But there’s something about the stereotype of the “woman who stayed at home to look after mother” that has no redeeming features at all. I am presumed to change every night out of my horn-rimmed glasses, hard-wearing tweeds and sensible shoes into my high-necked flannelette nightie, before wistfully dreaming of the man I will never now meet who might have made sense of my life.

I think being a full-time carer for my parents has really brought home to me how narrowly most of society views fulfilment, as being entirely dependent on having a partner, children and/or a high-paid job. And where women are concerned, let’s face it, largely the first two.

People often say to me “Well, obviously, your sister can’t do more for your parents – she’s got her own family to think about.” To which I want to reply “And who, then, are her parents? Strangers?” As a society, we are so locked into the idea of the heterosexual nuclear family as being the only unit that matters, that we are in danger of closing ourselves off to the other relationships and paths that are possible.

If you knew how many attempts I’ve made at this you’d laugh! But Suzi asked if I’d like to contribute, and I would, so I guess I’m just going to have to get used to writing in a new style – I don’t suppose anyone really wants to read an essay at the moment.

Anyway, Suzi wants me to talk about the perspective of a disabled feminist – so I’ve decided to share a story with you.

A few months ago, during a phone-call, my mother asked me if there was any point in her still keeping my old baby clothes.  I can still remember looking through them as a child; they were stored in my old pram body, I have no idea what’s happened to the metal frame. I was fascinated by them. Partly, I suspect, because the idea that I had once been so small was just so strange and partly because I liked seeing how much care my mother took of them. I found it reassuring. The care given to these tiny clothes seemed to demonstrate how much she must have cared for me as a child; the possibility that one day I too would have tiny infant of my own to care for; and that she would be dressed, at times, in my old well loved garments; it was the past the present and the future all tied together.

My mother’s comment made it clear that she was abandoning hope that I would provide her with a grandchild. It underlined something I knew, that it was getting very unlikely that I was going to be a mother myself. I was incredibly hurt by my mother’s comment. I knew it was a rebuke, the idea that I had let her down by not providing a baby.

So far this is story that many able-bodied women will know or have seen. But let me give you a little of my background.

Seven or eight years ago, when I was about 30, I knew time was getting short and I knew I wanted a child. Circumstances hadn’t worked out, my long term relationship had ended some time previously and there was no real sign of a new one coming. so I started thinking – could I do this alone? Getting pregnant didn’t seem like the real problem, that was the reality of being unable to work alone, broke, and looking after a child. While I thought I might be able to cope I was not naive enough to think that life as a single mother was going to be easy.

Anyway I thought about this, mulled it over – I became more convinced it was something I wanted to do, and I was open with my close friends about my thoughts.  Of course just when you give up hope of a relationship they do have a tendency to appear!  He was one of the people that knew of my plan and I was clear that us getting together only meant that I was prepared to delay getting pregnant by a year or so – if at that time he didn’t want to be part of it that was fine, but it was going to happen.

One person I hadn’t shared this plan with was my mother. A year later and my partner and I began planning. We both had disabilities, the same one in fact.  So I talked to my doctor about how to go about this and give my child the best start I could. Step one would be reducing my medication, we both knew that this meant a big increase in the amount of pain I was going to have to deal with, and that almost every other symptom I had would get worse but it would be worth it.

It was at this point, with a partner on board and my doctor not just on my side but almost as excited by the idea we were – which would have been a minor miracle if I hadn’t spent several years finding a decent doctor, that I talked to my parents.

My mother wanted to know if I was sure – I didn’t bat an eyelid at this, I assumed she was just be a protective mother but I had no idea what was really behind the question, or what was coming next.

 ‘Do you really think you should have a child with him?’

Now I was worried, had she seen something in him that I had missed? But no that was not what she meant.

‘I mean with his condition he really shouldn’t be a parent should he.’

At that point I felt sick. I remembered the little things my mother had said in the past. When a mutual friend of ours had committed suicide after battling with severe depression as well as the same condition as I had, my mother had said ‘perhaps its better that she is has been removed from the gene pool, the whole family is a bit…’  

I pointed out that he had the same condition as I did – she ignored that. I repeated the point adding that I thought it was probably slightly more relevant that I had the condition, after all I was the one contributing a life support system as well as DNA to the child. ‘Well I’m just trying to be helpful’, she said.

Those words are so … I can’t think of the word, but it feels like every time I have to deal with other people’s problems with my disability they excuse their actions by saying ‘Well I’m just trying to be helpful – there’s no need to be ungrateful.’ And now I had to hear it from my own mother.

I don’t know how to explain the level of pain this caused me; even if there had been a chance of there being some truth in what she said it probably would have hurt, but my condition is not genetic; it will have no known impact on my ability to carry a child to term, or on that child’s health.

But really, what could I expect of my mother? I have to remember that she trained as a children’s nurse, that she had dealt with neonatal babies, and all this happened at a time when it was normal for a disabled baby to be taken away from its mother, at a time when it was thought that she would be better off is her child died, and if that child was disabled enough it would simply be left uncared for in a room, probably the sluice, to die, slowly of neglect and starvation. I have no idea whether she was one of those people; I know it is easily possible, but how do I ask her? And how can I expect her to understand how much her opinion, her frankly eugenics-based opinion hurts and attacks me.  When she was a child the Nazi’s forced sterilisation on approximately 400,000 disabled people.[1] The compulsory sterilisation programme for genetically undesirables virtually ended in 1939 when the Euthanasia Programme was introduced – it is estimated that in the 4 years the programme was in operation at least 70,000 people were murdered.[2] As if this wasn’t awful enough the Allied authorities were unable to classify the sterilisation as war crimes because by the end of the war at least 11 European countries and 29 American states had passed similar legislation with regard to “unfit persons” which included both Black and disabled people. Compensation could only be provided by the West German authorities if the claimant could prove that they were not genetically alcoholic, epileptic, feeble minded, schizophrenic, manic-depressive, or in any other way disabled. So in their eyes no crime had been committed?

This is the world my mother grew up in – how is she supposed think about me. I am her daughter but I am also one of those people. The ones you don’t see on TV, or at school, or at work, or in the media. Don’t think I’m not furious, at her, and the world which condoned these actions. I am. Yes, my mother and I had a massive argument about it – the idea that she was using the theory of eugenics horrified her, she was angry with me for making such an accusation.

We pretend now that this didn’t happen – bigger things have happened and dealing with them has subdued that topic. But I am left caught between a mother who wants me to provide her with a grandchild but doesn’t want me, a disabled person, to breed. So, when she asked her question about my old baby clothes, all that followed was a hurt and painful silence on both sides.

[2]               Ibid. page 49 & 54

I’m passionate about music and waste away far too much of my time surfing internet music sites and I’m wondering if I’m the only one who regularly seethes at the way that female musicians and fans are often marginalised and humiliated in the fan community?

One expression that’s doing my head in at the moment is “girls’ band”, which seems to be routinely hurled as an insult by male fans of one group at a rival group. The principle seeming to be that if too many girls like a band, that automatically proves that it’s a rubbish band with no credibility, as girls don’t understand music and have no taste.

All too often, on music message boards and forums there appears to be a widespread assumption that if a woman keenly follows a male musician, it can’t possibly be because she understands or appreciates his music, it must be because she fancies him.

This is strange, given that most of the time women get told that only men are visually stimulated and that (if we’re heterosexual) it’s natural for us to choose a partner for his nice personality, not his looks, otherwise we’re “superficial” and “mean”. And yet, when it comes to pop musicians, we apparently become raging balls of hormones who fork out oodles of money for CDs and concert tickets, regardless of the musical content, merely because we can’t resist being swayed by a pretty face. Even if the musician concerned is the wrong side of 50 and looks like Mr Potato Head.

Of course, I’m exaggerating a bit, here. I have also interacted with male music fans on the internet who have been courteous, friendly and genuinely interested in what I and other female fans had to say. But all too often, as elsewhere on the internet, anything posted by a user with an obviously female-sounding user name gets ignored, while exactly the same point made by a male fan a few posts later gets rapturously applauded and fawned over for its wisdom and perceptiveness.

And it’s not just female fans that get patronised or ignored, it’s female artists, too. One male artist I particularly like recently collaborated with a female singer/songwriter. I wasn’t at that point familiar with her work, but I knew she was respected in the industry for her technical proficiency (she was classically trained) and had gained critical acclaim for her debut album, which had been considered daring and innovative. Which of these aspects of her work might have drawn my favourite musician to work with her? Intrigued, I logged onto a fan forum devoted to him, to see what other fans thought.

“Do you think he’s fucking her?” was one of the first suggestions posted by male fans pondering this question, followed by a lengthy discussion of her physical attributes and a debate about whether other male fans would do her, as well, had they the chance. That a male musician might wish to work with a female musician because he was genuinely excited about her work or looked up to her as a songwriter or instrumentalist apparently didn’t even occur to them.

You would think that female artists might at least be safe from sexism from their own fans. You know, fans? People that allegedly like the artist? Alas, no.

While visiting a blog devoted to a little-known, long-deleted female indie singer, I was surprised to see that one male fan had confidently, but completely wrongly, attributed the writing of all three of the artist’s (self-penned) albums to her male accompanist. The most worrying thing is that he seemed a pleasant chappy who was obviously devoted to the artist in question and clearly hadn’t meant it offensively – when corrected on his assumption by another fan, he apologised, explaining “I read somewhere that he played the keyboards on her albums and I was led to the wrong conclusion that he had written her songs”. Well, yes, easy mistake to make, he had a Y chromosome, he was somewhere on the record…a far more “obvious” conclusion, apparently, than that the woman with her name on the front of the sleeve might be capable of a little creative autonomy.

This widespread tendency of fans and journalists to underestimate the creative input of female artists to their own work has been remarked on by many well-known musicians, including Sharleen Spiteri:

“No one ever wants to give the credit. There has to be a man up there pulling the strings.”

and Bjork (thanks to my friend Yoana for pointing this quotation out to me):

“I have had this experience many, many times that the work I do on the computer gets credited to whatever male was in 10 meter radius during the job. People seem to accept that women can sing and play whatever instrument they are seen playing, but they cannot program, arrange, produce, edit or write electronic music.”

Still, if even the god-like genius that is Bjork gets subjected to this kind of crap, perhaps it’s some small comfort to the rest of us, next time our opinions and ideas are belittled because of our gender, to know we’re in such exalted company.

Friends sometimes tell me it’s pointless getting worked up over something so trivial, that there are bigger battles to be fought, that in the scheme of things it doesn’t really matter that much whether my opinion on electropop gets listened to or not. But, for me, this is symptomatic of attitudes elsewhere – just another part of the everyday process whereby women’s experience is marginalised and women’s intellect, expertise and creativity doubted in our so-called “post-feminist”, “gender-neutral” society. And that’s what makes me seethe.