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Life changing photos

Friday 17th April, 2009 in Civil Liberties, Media, Politics, Protests by andieberry | No comments

I recently saw this photo- it’s from a friend of a friend of a friend, from a face book account. This photo made me mad, made me think, made me analyse what else the photo does represent to me. Ok, its not a picture of the moon landing, the first image of earth from the moon or the mushroom cloud of Hiroshima, but I feel it’s just as important.

At first we can clearly see that it is taken at a protest . You, dear reader, may have even been there. You may even be one of the individuals in the photo. Even if you are not, in another time and place, it could be you. Your fellow protesters all around you clashing and being penned in by the police, you look forward and a police officer grabs you by the throat in order to restrain you! What have you done ? Exercised your civil and human right to protest? Or, have you identified yourself as a threat to national security, because you have chosen to exercise that precise right?

The image  speaks volumes to me about civil liberties, feminism and class struggle. It conveys to me that there are individuals that will come together in order to stand up for a cause. It also tells me that no matter how big the group is, how just the cause is, the authorities (or oppressors) will always be there to grab the idealists by the neck in order to suppress them. That said it doesn’t make me want to give up protesting , blogging , and airing my views. It makes me feel mad that protests have to be approved by the authorities, and that the same authorities, then use illegal and unjustifiable actions in the form of “kettling” and violence in order to restrain the very protest they approved.

According to Noam Chomsky, “power is illegitimate unless proof of legitimacy can be found”. In the case of the photo, the police are an institution of the state. That fact gives this institution the right to  police citizens of the state legitimately, but how far should the police be able to go in enforcing the laws of the land?  When did violence and the containment of citizens exercising their legitimate rights,   become acceptable actions the state could take against its own citizens? Pictures like this make clear that the authorities should always be questioned and observed, just as much as the authorities question and observe us.

This is my life changing photo , whats yours?

More MWR Goodness

Thursday 19th March, 2009 in Million Women Rise, News, Politics, Protests, Technology by Suzi | No comments

We are lucky enough to be able to host some amazing photos of Million Women Rise, taken by the very talented Rowan Fulton (who is also very lovely). Do enjoy the photos, and do also please consider writing to the major newspapers, who once again completely failed to highlight Million Women Rise. Whilst this does mean we get to host some excellent photos, I would much rather be seeing them in the paper, highlighting our cause!

All photos are Copyright of Rowan Fulton, Photographer

Oh the stupidity

Thursday 26th February, 2009 in Media, Politics, feminism, gender by Suzi | No comments

So, somewhat predictable some idiot has gone and blamed the recession on women. Seeing as reading the article itself has caused my brain to actually explode due to a) The sheer, unadulterated misogyny of it, and b) The total lack of any grasp of economics the afore mentioned idiot has, I’m not going to try and deconstruct it.

I’m just going to reccomend you go and read Louise at The F Word quite thouroughly demolishing his argument. And then I reccomend you join me and the FemAcadem team at Million Women Rise on March 7th and help ensure idiots like the above don’t get to spread their hatred to far. Opinions like that, help a culture where violence against women is acceptable, and Million Women Rise gives women and their allies a chance to have their say in a public space.

Rescue package for the green middle class

Thursday 26th February, 2009 in Education, Politics by andieberry | No comments

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.

There’s a piece of this puzzle missing Mr President…..

Thursday 22nd January, 2009 in Politics, Popular Culture, feminism, gender by Suzi | No comments

Reading through the Guardian today, re- celebrating the fact that America finally has a decent President, a guy who happens to be intelligence and have a social conscience I was struck by something. And that something was the absolute absence of commentary on women’s role in the Obama victory. In all the coverage I read there were TWO mentions of Michelle Obama and ONE mention of the Obama girls- the bulk of the commentary about Michelle was about how journalists couldn’t decide what colour her dress was. The one sentence regarding Sasha and Malia commented again on the colours of the dresses that they and their mother were wearing.

I watched the inauguration on the BBC. I wept a little, listening to the address, booed at Rick Warren and practically danced for joy watching Bush fly off out of public life. But, I noticed something. Of all the commentary on the BBC, there was only one female presenter and she was assigned to the route of the procession and largely redundant in the coverage. None of the guests were female- they were all men, and none of the commentary mentioned any of Michelle’s accomplishments or any of the sacrifices she would be making as her husband became president. Renee wrote a few days ago about the unpaid labour a First Lady performs and yet none of this was mentioned in any of the coverage I’ve seen. The one mention of Michelle’s role in her husbands presidency, was that she would be at the school gates each afternoon to collect Sasha and Malia. Her husbands role as a father was totally written out. It would seem, that, in the eyes of the world now, the Obama children have one active parent and that is their mother. Their father is just, obviously, going to be far too busy doing important manly things to be worrying about the trivialities of raising children. This portrayal annoys the hell out of me, because I’m damned sure that isn’t what the Obama’s think.

This total erasing of the women who are key in Barack’s life astounds me. The world really hasn’t changed that much. Michelle, a talented, intelligent successful woman, with her own career, her own achievements, her own dreams has been wiped out in effect, and reduced to being unpaid housekeeper to the worlds most ppowerful man. Or at least that is what has happened in the eyes of the media. She has ceased to be a dignified human being in her own right and become merely an extension of him.

I was bitterly disappointed. But, the fight for recognition goes on. Maybe one day, POTUS will have a wife who continues her own career, who employs ( at a decent and reasonable wage, let’s not perpetuate the exploitation here people)  someone to carry out the Housekeeping at the White House , and whose achievements are recognised, giving her a public identity of her own in the eyes of the media. Maybe the position of First Lady will change into a meaningful position of political power and social change, instead of being one of sacrifice and expectation. Maybe one day we’ll have a First Gentleman, or a female POTUS and First Lady. I live in hope.

For now, the fight goes on. The war isn’t won, even if the battle was.

Round up

Monday 19th January, 2009 in Civil Liberties, News, Politics, feminism, gender by Suzi | No comments

It’s not often I’ll ever do a round-up post. However, I’m incapacitated with pain from an (actually) pustulent ear infection right now, and despite the fact that I’ve broken out the uber painkillers of doom, there is still green shit pouring out of my ear and I’m still on the verge of screaming in pain. Therefore, instead of writing the thoughtful and provocative piece I had planned on Feminist Marriage, I’m going to be lazy and just highlight a few things which caught my eye and made me thoughtful today.

The first is obvious- in less than 24 hours the world is rid of the sheer hell and devilry of George Dubya Bush and Barack Obama becomes the 44th President of the United States of America. Lauren at Feministe reminds us of why this is just the best damn thing!

This British Feminist would like to wish Mr Obama all the luck in the world. May he live up to his hype and not suddenly become an outrageous sexist the minute his ass hits the chair in the Oval Office. And may we all, be aware of our responsibility to progress and change, and not just leave it up to the guy who gets to have the title. That’s not social change at work people, that’s scapegoating.

Next on the “List of things that made me go Hmmmm” is this report from Cara at Feministe about an anti-choice nurse ‘accidentally’ removing women’s IUD’s and then refusing to give them new ones.  I’m sickened by this story. Sadly, I’m not surprised and I wish I was

I’m very pleased to wish Jessica at Feministing, many congratulations on her engagement, and the sincere best wishes of the FemAcadem team. Whatever your personal feelings about marriage, it is a joyous event in peoples lives.

I’d like to finish the round up by saying a resounding ‘Hells Yeah!’  to the fab Catherine Redfearn of The F Word, who has blogged about the lack of recognition Feminism as a movement receives, despite the large amounts of feminist activism that’s going on.

Right, if you’ll all excuse me I’m going back to lying on the sofa in fast amounts of pain, with half my face out of use!!

Rise of the golddigger in the credit crunch

Monday 19th January, 2009 in Uncategorized, gender, sex by andieberry | No comments

Reading through the Sunday papers today two articles caught my eye.  The first one is an idiotic article regurgitating the same old nonsense about hetero women being attracted to rich men because its part of our genetic code. It was  “backed up” by a quote from a female Lawyer – well she’s a professional so it must be true! Apparently being a rich man gives you the capacity to deliver top notch orgasms which of course next to money are the only things we women require.

But wait… further on it stated that men can pick up how fertile a woman is , and this observation was concluded from watching men tip Lap Dancers. Apparently the more fertile you are the more you get tipped.

My question is do lesbians, transgender, infertile and women with poor partners therefore have really crap sex all the time? That’s what this *ahem* ’scientific’ led piece suggests.

An excellent article over at  The Guardian points out that employers are more likely to dismiss women first because of the belief that there will be a man around to financially support her. Surely this a massive sign of sexism given that most households need two wages in order to survive? An adjoining article pointed out that just being financially secure does not eliminate the feeling of redundancy and social isolation. In short you can’t buy fulfillment.

The link in my mind is this – according to The Times article we hetero women can take the rough with smooth as long as we get a good orgasm out of it. According to The Guardian we can take the rough with the smooth as long as the goal of personal fulfillment is in sight. Sorry to be a spoilt brat but……….. I want both.

Laptops for disadvantaged children in the U.K

Saturday 17th January, 2009 in Civil Liberties, Education, News, Parenting, Politics, Technology by andieberry | No comments

Following on from the reports that the government intend to provide economically and socially deprived children a laptop and broadband my questions are these:-

Given the credit crunch and the pull back from implementing green technologies, will this policy also be put on the back-burner? I can’t find anything on the net to suggest that pilot schemes are going ahead.

Is this a ruse to free up teaching time? i.e “difficult” students could sent home from school and told to resume their studies on-line, therefore making them more socially isolated and marginally more susceptible to being groomed,it could also raise depression levels in socially excluded young people and increase the likelihood of them committing electronic crimes.

I do think this is a great scheme-  I’m certainly more liberated since going on-line at home. As a single mother it has enabled me to cyber socialize and self educate. Is this a case of “great idea, it’ll be a possible voter morale booster”? I really hope not, because children who live below the poverty line need the social capital enabling tool of the Internet.

We’re paying the watchdogs to moniter us

Tuesday 13th January, 2009 in Civil Liberties, News, Politics, Technology by andieberry | 1 comment

So, according to the BBC our Internet service providers are being asked to retain and store our electronic traffic and, if needs be, inform the police if they find anything suspicious.The police then only need to get a warrant in order to look through your e-mails and text messages in order to gain evidence of any wrong doing.
Given that we live in the post 9/11 era we are ,apparently, all potential terrorists,I say this because every time the government trial these security ideas its because of the need to protect national security.

Let me ask you this- in the 1970’s & 80’s,were we all subjected to surveillance because of the terrorist threat posed by the I.R.A? Were all phones and paper mail bugged and tapped into? No. Why?  Well there wasn`t the technology then and a lot of people didn’t have telephones. So did terrorists communicate via carrier pigeon? No they met up ,the police then did police work (using human intelligence not using a programme to sift out the words bomb ,kill,maim etc). Human intelligence ,if I’m not mistaken, is what differentiates us from the rest of the animal kingdom and A.I.
Human intelligence and intuition is what guides us through life ,enabling us to make decisions (to what ever ends) and the police use it to catch criminals and to protect citizens.
Why does the government put more faith in monitoring systems than it does the actual human intelligence and the intuition skills of police officers? Could it be because its a cost cutting measure? Tell me,can monitoring someones electronic messages stop a knifing ,mugging,rape,domestic violence murder? Surely these crimes are more of a threat to national security than  the sensationalist statements of religious radicals.
We can`t rely on C.C.T.V . If you remember in the Mendez case the police used the C.C.T.V to back up their version of events, but in the end it was the human witnesses that convinced the jury of the truth. Yes the visual evidence of events were there, but it was manipulated so the police team could get a way with murdering an
innocent man and only with the honest testimony of human witnesses did the truth out.

There’s also the great moral panic about the electronic criminal,the electronic criminal who rips your credit card details of the net,the electronic criminal who clones your phone.
Listen carefully I shall only say this once…Hackers are not electronic criminals.
Why be afraid of the beast which is the electronic criminal, find the best firewall you can (you can download them free at Linux) ,change your passwords every couple of weeks, don`t use your birthday or name on your passwords and limit the amount of time you have blue-tooth switched on. If you knew someone had your debit card pin would you not change it? Would you walk down the street with your purse/wallet hanging out of your pocket so a pick pocket could easily lift it? Course not if you take the same precautions on-line as you do off-line then there’s a good chance you won`t be a victim of electronic crime.

So now here’s the bottom line: what a lot of people say is  “I don`t mind, I’ve got nothing to hide”. Well you know what, I’ve got nothing to hide either , I’m not a criminal , I’m just a citizen going about my business, but I do mind that I’m being monitored by my services providers,  whom I PAY for services, and likewise the Police (through taxes) .We are a nation that is paying for its own errosion of Liberty namely the right to privacy.

He who gives up liberty for security ends up with neither.
- Benjamin Franklin

Freely selling sex.

Thursday 8th January, 2009 in Education, feminism, gender, sex by Suzi | No comments

I have to say I’m a pro porn feminist- well by that I mean , I’m a pro porn-that-is-made-by-consenting-adults- who-are-appropriately-re-numerated-for-their-time-and-who-have-working-conditions-that-are-as-safe-as-possible feminist. I’m anti trafficking, and I’m against a society that forces women into sex work, because they feel they have no other options or skills with which to generate much needed income. I’m not against women (or men for that matter) going into sex work because they enjoy it, or because they truly and freely want too. Before you tell me no woman could ever possibly be like that and all sex workers are forced, are suffering from deprivation or have drug/alcohol/psychological problems I suggest you go and read the blog of Renegade Evolution (NSFW), who is quite frankly damned awesome and was one of the first people ever to comment on my blog,  and then read Diablo Cody’s book Candy Girl about her experiences of stripping and the reasons why she did it.

If you don’t want to go and do that, then do go and read this awesome post by Renee at Womanist Musings. I’m particularly fond of this section :

This is not a profession that I would choose for myself but because I ultimately believe in the right of a woman to have control over her body and her sexuality I cannot sit in judgement of the result of where that decision leads.  My concerns are for the ones that are being prostituted without their consent.  My concerns are for those that are addicted, abused and raped.

That’s sums it up pretty well I think!



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