Charlotte Sometimes

Category: Feminism

  • Why critising Page 3 is not just about stopping men looking at tits

    TW: Rape

    In the wake of the news(!) that Page 3 will now show women in bras instead of half naked, I’d like to address some concerns that I have seen posted on my social media feed, amongst other places.

    Here we go…

    Last week you were all “Je suis Charlié” in defence of freedom of speech/expression. Now you’re advocating censorship coz boobs?

    It might seem like semantics, but nobody is calling for the censorship of boobs. Or not that I’ve seen anyway. What the people who are criticising Page 3 are largely saying is ‘Hey, we don’t think that some mass media outlets treat women with the same respect as men. We’d really like it if you did. Could you think about doing that please?’

    It’s not just women objectified by the sun. How come every guy athlete is photographed in shorts and stripped to the waist?

    I’d like to say that this is a fair point, but it’s not. When guy athletes strip to the waist they do it because they’re hot and they want to take their shirt off to cool down. The editors of the paper don’t put these images in because their readership find them sexy and arousing, they put them in because that is considered the normal behaviour of a sportsman. Well, a footballer. You don’t see many skiers stripping to the waist after having a good run. Not to mention that shorts are the standard uniform of most land sports. You think the photographers are going to run onto the pitch as a striker kicks the ball at a goal and asking him to put some joggers on? Didn’t think so.

    Instead of asking why guy athletes are photographed in shorts and no shirts, perhaps we could instead why women never make it into the sports pages of Red Top newspapers? Or newspapers in general really, unless there’s an Olympic Games on. The fact that women’s sports are not considered good enough to report on in the newspapers (i.e. women’s sports are not news) is a symptom of the problem that goes hand in hand with the glamour models on Page 3 and the paparazzi reporting. All reinforce the idea that if a woman wants to get into the newspaper she needs to look great and show some skin. There’s no point in her being brilliant and successful in any other way.

    Don’t like it, don’t buy it.

    You know what? I totally agree with you. But I’d also like to make you aware that you can be exposed to the sexist attitudes that it helps to reinforce even if you don’t buy it. Lucy-Anny Holmes covered this much better than I could in her piece for the Huffington Post. I’d like to highlight a few points though:

    The school girl, who wrote to the Everyday Sexism project saying that the boys in her school hold up Page Three in the corridor and mark the girls out of 10 as they walk past, doesn’t buy it.

    The woman who sits in a staff room everyday while a male colleague shows Page Three to all the men with the words ‘would you do that?’ doesn’t buy it.

    The father who felt outraged that a man was looking at Page Three while his three-and-a-half year-old daughter was having a hair cut, didn’t buy it.

    When Clare Short stood up in the 80s and spoke out about these pictures being in the paper, she received 1000s of letters of support. Twelve were from women who had Page Three mentioned to them while they were being raped. These women didn’t buy it.

    The boobs in page 3 are there soley for viewing pleasure and no model who poses for page 3 is under any other illusions.

    No, you’re quite right. But if we’re going to play the ‘these women are up for it’ card, then perhaps at least we could briefly pause to consider how now all glamour models actually want to work as glamour models. Some are forced into it because it can be hard for young women to find work in our society (caused by sexist notions that are reinforced by this kind of imbalanced journalism). Some are forced into it as part of being in the sex trade. Some are forced into it as being part of a trafficked sex slave. Some are forced into it because education has failed them.

    It’s true that many glamour models are brilliant, bright, intelligent women who are aware of the cultural arguments surrounding their choice to be a model – I was not one of those women. I worked as a glamour model to try and somehow get approval for my body. I felt I was liberated, but I actually really wasn’t. And that’s why lots of former Page 3 models speak out about Page 3. Because at 18 (or younger) how can we expect a young woman to make such huge decisions concerning her future? I’m not saying that 18 year old women aren’t capable of making good decisions, but certainly I think it’s very young to have enough relevant life experience in our sexist society to understand the full implication of their choices. The industry systematically takes advantage of the naivety of many of these women, and that’s not very pleasant at all.

    To suggest page 3 breeds acceptance of objectification is the same as suggesting video games normalises gratuitous violence in teenagers & kids.

    Except video games are fiction. The systematic sexist treatment of women in some mass media is real. You can’t compare real life with fiction.

    I appreciate that video games also have a high degree of misogyny in many titles, but this is something that many of us are also working towards. If you disagree that this kind of behaviour should be normalised I’d love to have you on board with our work.

    Your right to be offended should never trump my right to be offensive.

    No, but perhaps the right of 51% of the population to not be treated disrespectfully trumps the ‘right’ of a few guys to look at porn with their cornflakes? Or on the bus? Or in the staff room? Or at the hairdressers?

    I don’t buy this “I’m offended because women are objectified” argument. If people truly feel that way, campaign against makeup, fashion designers who make tight fitting clothing, shoe companies who make high heels.

    I feel like this is somewhat of a spurious argument, but I’m going to do my best. I’m not against men or women wearing makeup or tight fitting clothing. What I’m against is the fact that some mass media outlets perpetuate and promote the idea that women are only worth anything if they conform to a particular stereotype and take their clothes off. If people want to wear things that make them feel great, then I’m all for that. But that’s not the same as presenting a half-naked, primped women as ‘news’.

    The human race objectifies people hundreds of times an hour as we walk down the street, whether it’s turning your head for a second look or crossing the road to avoid.

    Objectification: treating a person as a thing.

    I don’t know about you, but I don’t treat people as things if I can help it at all. Crossing the road to avoid someone because you perceive a negative stereotype isn’t objectification. Having a second look at someone because they’re hot might be objectification due to cultural context.

    But the important thing is how you act on that. If you objectify people inside your own brain and you don’t make any external actions, then I guess that’s ok. It’s your call how you work your grey matter. However systematic objectification of women throughout a newspaper in a way that affects many, many people is not ok. I think there is a pretty big difference between those things.

    For if you censor then where does it stop? Transgendered people using a bathroom they were not born to? Muslims being offended at the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed? Women sunbathing topless on family beaches?

    1. Once again, there’s no call for censorship. There is a call for mass media outlets to treat women with the same respect as men.

    2. Transgender people use whichever bathroom is relevant to their status. I’m trying to think of a polite way to put this, but their ‘birth sex’ is none of your fucking business.

    3. Everyone has a right to be offended. That’s ok. To be offended means resentful or annoyed due to a perceived insult. It’s natural human reaction to being insulted. I think the Pope made a fair point on this the other day – if you talk trash about my mother, that’s going to make me pissed. It’s how you act on those impulses that sets you apart as a person.

    4. Where did women sunbathing on a beach come into it? Oh, I see. You think that those of us who think that women should be treated respectfully in the newspapers believe that tits are bad? I’ll tell my girlfriend. I’m sure she’ll find it hilarious.

    The women in the pictures are very well paid models who know what they are doing, I’d have thought a feminist or a male apologist would be campaigning for the right for them to show naked breasts, not cover them up.

    Just to set the record straight, posing for Page 3 isn’t generally that well paid. Not considering the amount of work that goes into it and the fact it basically devastates your ability to do many careers in the future. Your average (non famous) glamour model is probably doing well if they’re making £15k a year. I mean, they’re probably doing really well. Not so great really, is it? You could get paid more stacking shelves in supermarkets.

    You say male apologist like it’s a bad thing for men to support equality for women.

    However I absolutely campaign for the right for women to show naked breasts. I mean, I was there a few years ago handing out leaflets on a demonstration that said women should have equal rights of men to take their shirts off in the street. And I think that absolutely we should be able to model nude if we choose to. I think that the nude body is a wonderful thing and it’s great to use it to make art (or porn, I like porn too). What I don’t like is the fact that some media outlets choose to treat women with less respect than men. (I feel like a broken record now.)

    And lastly when you say it’s about access, show me someone under the age of 18 who actually buys a newspaper.

    Actually I’d like to suggest that lots of young people – mostly young teenage boys – probably buy newspapers like this to see the soft porn. Certainly they did when I was at school, and that wasn’t actually that long ago. Because if you’re underage you might not be able to get round the porn filters on your smartphone, without an adult putting their credit card details over the phone, or without you going into a phone shop and convincing them that you’re an adult.

    But you know, Tesco didn’t just put some tabloid papers behind screens for no reason. They felt it was right right thing to do. To stop young people seeing overtly sexualised pictures of models (and celebrities) at eye level. I can’t see why anyone would think it is a good idea to instil in young peoples minds that overt sexualisation of women is natural, normal or a good thing. Perhaps we can encourage this generation to grow up with a far more egalitarian outlook if we stop ramming the message that women should be sexualised down their throats.

    This “I don’t want boobs in my news” is ridiculous because I’m betting that no-one who is for the removal of page 3 actually buys and reads The Sun.

    I don’t see how this is a relevant argument. I don’t buy battery farmed eggs and yet I still campaign for the removal of battery hen farms.

    So it’s about censorship and removing some else’s access to something.

    As was previously pointed out, it’s not about censorship it’s about calling for respect. And any adult who wants to look at soft porn can do so any time they wish on their mobile phone. There is no reason for it to be in a newspaper.

    I think this is also a great place to leave this video. Again.

     

  • Five things you shouldn’t say to a photographer

    So a friend posted a link this morning to an article of things you shouldn’t say to a photographer. Predictably it was full of things like ‘you must have a really expensive camera!’ and ‘ I wish I had your job, all you have to do is press a button!’

    I get that these rile photographers up. After all, (some) photographers do work hard and have a talent for taking great pictures, and it doesn’t happen just because you bought a great camera. And there is an awful lot more work that goes into it than just pressing a button.

    But readers, I present to you my own – slightly cynical – list of thing not to say to a photographer.

     2011_11_12_charlotte 0666

    Are you the model?

    Heard being said to photographers who are women at workshops since… well.. since forever. No, I’m not the model. Do I look like a model? I’m five foot tall, have bad skin and don’t take care of my hair. I’m also wearing all my old walking gear because I’m going to be rolling around on the floor sometimes when I photograph the model. Oh and this bag here? It’s a fucking camera bag. Being a photographer is about noticing details – please try to notice some mode. Thanks.

    I know you’re not a model, but would you pose nude for me? It’ll be tasteful.

    Anyone asking that question of a photographer who is a woman and that they don’t know very well is unlikely to shoot anything tasteful. Ask yourself this simple question ‘would I ask this question to 72 year old Master Photographer Bob who is standing ten feet away? If you wouldn’t, then don’t ask that photographer either. If you still ask this question of a photographer just because she’s a woman and you like photographing women – you’re a sleaze-ball. And a creep. Just don’t. Thanks.

    You do sports and product photography? Oh. I thought you’d be more likely to photograph babies and weddings.

    Presenting as a woman in public doesn’t mean that I have any desire to come into contact with small humans or celebrations of monogamy. Thanks.

    Don’t you find it hard carrying around all that equipment you need for sports photography?

    No. I don’t. I’m under thirty (just) and I’m pretty fit. I also used to enjoy powerlifting. I might even be able to deadlift more than you. But while you’re worrying about the health and safety aspects of my job, perhaps you could direct that angst towards the gear manufactures who seem to think that their entire target market is 6ft and has stereotypical male proportions? Thanks.

    Female photographers have it easier.

    Well firstly I’d like you to stop adding the prefix ‘female’ to photographer. You don’t add ‘male’ to the word photographer when you’re talking about someone who appears to be male. I’m a human, so if you must use any word to describe me it’s ‘woman’.

    Secondly, you might think we do, but we really don’t. I mean aside from the pervasive casual sexism that is rife within the hobby and industry (you know, things like, having to constantly prove that we know what we’re doing and that we’re not just some soccer mom with a camera), and then aside from the fact that society expects us to hang out at home, get married, have babies and then have a hobby job, being a photographer is really bloody hard whichever gender you identify as. Yeah ok, so some women might find it easier to attract work when it comes to things like maternity shoots, newborn babies, lesbian weddings and the like, but you know what it’s harder for us to work in any of the traditionally male dominated areas. Photographers who are women often aren’t taken seriously if they pitch for corporate work, product work, work within the science industries – the list goes on. So don’t whinge and there are a few minority areas where some women find it just a little easier than men to get work. Because honestly, every other part is just as hard or harder for us.

    Please do take this in the spirit it was intended. And possibly with a little extra hate and bile.

  • #JeSuisCharlie

    #JeSuisCharlie

    B6wIMCGIUAAa7IV

    Dark Times.

  • Men’s Rights Campaigning

    So there’s been lots of discussion on domestic violence and shelters this week and last.

    I see so many comments comparing women and men’s domenstic violence and by extension the amount of beds available men and women in refuges. The fact is that there are very, very few beds available to men who are not gay.

    And then the vitriol starts – against feminists as usual. Guys questioning why feminists are not doing more to ensure that there are more mens beds in refuges. Questioning why we aren’t as concerned with men’s rights as we are with womens. Questioning why we aren’t fundraising specifically for men’s refuge charities. Always with the guilty questioning.

    I’ve searched and searched and searched inside my soul for an answer and the only one I’m ever able to give is a shit one. Feminism – the clue is in the name – focusses primarily on making things better for women. Yes, sometimes there is intersectionality with various men’s rights campaigns, but they are generally supported because it moves the cause of women forward.

    But these guys, they seem to expect feminism to now work for them directly. It always feels like a bit of a kick in the teeth to be honest. ‘The women have organised to help themselves – now lets make them help us because they are a powerful group’. It feels slightly controlling to me actually, like we’re being guilted for helping other women. I’m entirely sure these guys don’t mean it that way, or maybe they do.

    I’d love to be an ally here. I’d love to support movements that further the rights of men in situations like this. That form campaign groups and splinter groups. But where are they? Why are there no men standing up and banding together to look at things like domestic violence refuges for men? Where are the genuine campaign groups that are looking to solve these problems, so that we – as feminists – can ally alongside them? Why are they not shouting loudly? Why are they not telling the media about these problems, raising awareness, forming groups and getting organised?

    Why do so many guys seem to want women to solve all their problems? We have so many problems of our own still to solve. We need help on this one guys, we need you to start the ball rolling so that we can help you gather speed.

  • #ShirtStorm

    #ShirtStorm

    A disproportionately high number of my friends work in the STEM subjects. I also have a disproportionately high number of friends who are feminists. My social circle at the moment feels a bit like this. But with WAY MORE OVERLAP (I can’t draw Venn Diagrams). Also – all my friends are awesome. I couldn’t really write “ALL THE FUCKING AMAZING AWESOME RIGHT NOW” in the middle bit without looking a bit childish. #ShirtStorm happened this week.

    Screen Shot 2014-11-19 at 13.27.27

    So my Facebook feed has been full of #ShirtStorm for the past few days. For those of you that don’t know what happened, some awesome chap landed a spaceship on a comet – which was very cool. Except he wore a shirt that lots of people found frustrating for various reasons. Then the cesspit of the internet got upset with these people for finding it frustrating. And spawned memes. And of course the whole thing reinforced Lewis’ Law – The comments on any article about feminism justify feminism.

    Lets just take a look at the shirt that he was wearing before we go any further.

    matttaylor_shirt.jpg.CROP.original-original

    As well as wearing this particular shirt to the press conference announcing the landing, when asked about the difficulty of the Rosetta Mission, Matt Taylor replied with “She’s sexy, but I never said she was easy.”

    “She’s sexy, but I never said she was easy.”

    I’d like to address this before we get onto #ShirtStorm. Because I think it’s important for context. I’m going to let this twitter user start for me:

    https://twitter.com/Arlnee/status/535056180981141504

    https://twitter.com/Arlnee/status/535056380000874496

    https://twitter.com/Arlnee/status/535056511773323264

    https://twitter.com/Arlnee/status/535056667386208256

    https://twitter.com/Arlnee/status/535058094460399617

    You see, there is a background of institutionalised sexism within the STEM fields.[1] The background radiation of sexism (the tweets above are a great example) means that – like it or not – the STEM fields can be a hostile place for women. And it’s not just women who work in the STEM fields either, it’s also young women who are at school and are considering perhaps going to university with a view to working in them and people like myself who are considering moving into them from their current work.

    Casually sexist tropes like this all create the general feeling of women being ‘the other’ and that is not helpful to promote an industry that is diverse. And if there’s one thing that we’ve learnt over the years it’s that industries with good diversity do better. Making 50% of the population feel excluded from an industry doesn’t help anybody. Except maybe those who aren’t very good and got their jobs as part of the old boys network – but I digress. Or possibly those straight, white guys who realised that they’re playing life on the lowest difficulty setting available.

    You see, this is a common theme for me. I worked in logistics and I like things like cars, planes, boats… you get the idea. In all those hobbies the machines are always referred to as ‘she’. Some days when indulging in my hobbies I feel a little bit like Angeline Jolie in Gone in 60 Seconds. In case you don’t know, all the cars they have to steal are given female codenames so that they can say talk about them over the radio using euphemisms for sex while plotting to nick them and avoiding the police.

    gone-in-60-seconds-car-names-list

    Except this is real life, not a film. And we have to put up with everything being given female names, being referred to as a female gendered object, using crass language to talk about objects as women… Sheesh. Why the fuck do we put up with this shit in our hobbies? I remember once when I was a teenager when someone asked me what my bass guitar was called. I told the guy that my electric bass was called James. He said it couldn’t possibly be called James because guitars had female names, because you caress them, play them, finger them and make them sing. ARGH!

    This attitude of treating objects of women is just one of those little subtle signals that shows (usually without intention) that this is a male dominated sphere. Cars, boats, bikes, guitars, spaceships… you never see objects being referred to as male… do you? Of course you don’t. Because there’s a powerful link of ownership when you use these words. You’re reinforcing the idea that women are objects to be obtained and owned. It’s not very pleasant.

    Altogether comments like this create an atmosphere that’s dismissive to women. And then there’s the shirt…

    a5a

    #ShirtStorm

    First off, lets check what we mean by the word ‘offend’.[2]

    1. Cause to feel upset, annoyed, or resentful
    2. Be displeasing or cause problems to

    Yeah, so I’m offended by this shirt. And I’m a feminist. So I guess that means that his shirt did offend feminists. Or at least some feminists. I’m upset, annoyed, resentful and I feel it’s caused problems. More than anything though, I’m really fucking frustrated. I’ll take a look at ‘why’ in a sec.

    A friend of mine wrote this on his Facebook recently. He’s a senior teacher at a mixed gender secondary school.

    Right. There is an issue with encouraging girls into science. There is a reported issue of institutionalised sexism in science professions . These are big issues that need fixing for us to have a decent society.

    Landing a satellite on a comet is fucking awesome and should be used to encourage/inspire people into science.

    Was awesome scientist any less awesome at science because he fucked up and wore the wrong shirt. No.. Still an awesome scientist.

    Does the fact that (until it hit social media) noone saw this as a problem, highlight the endemic problem in the profession. Yes. Only would have taken one person to say.. dude, do you think that shirt’s appropriate…Put on a work one before you’re interviewed.

    People need to stop confusing the two. This is an awesome achievement and the team of scientists were ace scientists.
    There is an issue in the profession that we should deal with this. Internally or externally.

    I want to show this to 16 year old girls and say science and maths is great… You should consider this for a profession.
    I do have an issue doing this due to his dress sense.

    It’s still an awesome achievement though

    Too many people are Missing The Fucking Point. No one (I promise you) is deriding this guys achievements in the world of science. I can’t think of anyone who thinks that landing a spaceship on a comet is anything less than absolutely fucking incredible. I mean the guy is brilliant and his achievement is something that should be celebrated.

    Now, many people will know that I’m a reluctant participant in geek culture. I move in circles of geek culture and have lots of geek friends. I photograph geek culture, I write about geek culture, and I build databases for fun. (For the love of fucking God, I build databases for fun. Someone save me from myself.) I’m even dating a couple of geeks. Geek is my life. Well, not exclusively my life. Actually, it’s pretty much my life.

    Within geek culture there is undoubtedly a higher proportion of people who for various reasons are not quite as socially trained or aware as the majority of the rest of the population. If they are drawn to geek culture, if they are a product of geek culture or if they – in part – caused geek culture is debatable, but either way geek culture does act as a certain kind of safe haven for people who lack some social awareness. I’d like to argue that in some cases it actively attracts people without social awareness too, but that’s really for another blog post. Social awareness of gender issues in geek culture is also something that I’m studying at university, so I write from that point of view to an extent.

    Like the the points made above, this shirt conveys a message of ‘this is a male environment, women are welcome if they look sexy or shut up’. This issue of pornographic images at work (because yes, these are sexually titivating images and I’m going to label them pornographic) is one that many British feminists in particular are familiar with due to the No More Page 3 campaign. They wrote a good article on their site about how porngraphic images at work constitute sexual harassment. It’s actually against the law to force people to view this kind of sexual imagery.

    The Equality Act 2010 says that the following constitutes harassment in the workplace:

    When unwanted conduct related to sex has the purpose or effect of violating an individual’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for that individual.

    Wearing a shirt with highly sexualised images of ‘perfect’ women in skimpy fetishistic outfits who are brandishing guns while in the workplace is something that adds to an intimidating, degrading, humiliating and offensive environment for many women. It is not acceptable in the vast majority of workplaces. Indeed in the UK, I would be confident to complain about this to an employer and take it to a tribunal if required. (For the record I understand that a female friend made it for him. It’s irrelevant. It’s also irrelevant that some women are not offended by it. Again it’s saying that women are valuable in this environment for their sexuality rather than their brains.)

    How can you show a video of this press conference to a 15 year old GCSE student and tell her with a straight face that if she goes into science that her body will be valued more than her brain when one of the leading space scientists in the world is wearing a shirt covered in flawless pneumatic tits? What kind of a message does this give her, let alone the guys female colleagues.

    I don’t think that Matt Taylor was malicious. I don’t believe he’s misogynistic. I believe that he’s a misguided geek who aimed for ‘cool’ but landed on ‘unprofessional’. Recently in the news there was an article about how the education secratary believes that STEM subjects are far more important than arts subjects, but to me this is a perfect example of why both paths work together in harmony. This guy can launch a rocket and put it on a comet, but he doesn’t have the first clue about behaving in a way that doesn’t intimidate a large portion of the world. This is why we need social sciences, arts and humanities. It brings the humane side to the science

    8e2

    ShitStorm

    And then of course there’s the shitstorm that happened. Like I said right at the start – the comments on any article on feminism justify feminism. So many people are complaining at feminists and their allies for ‘making a fuss’ about the shirt and suggesting that their fuss is overshadowing the achievements of the team of scientists that landed a probe on a comet (including women scientists, I should add).

    One of the things that really gets my goat is people saying things like ‘feminists should pick their battles’ or ‘there are more important issues in the world to worry about than a little sexism’.

    Because quite frankly…
    1. This is actually quite a big battle in the grand scheme of things that will actually eventually change lives for the better.
    2. I’m more than capable of worrying about more than one issue at once. Being a feminist doesn’t prevent me from caring about issues like the environment or whatever the latest hot-topic cause is.
    3. Sexism is something that affects more than 50% of the population. It affects almost all women and an awful lot of men. That’s a bit bigger than ‘a little’. I’d say it’s one of the most important issues in the world today, actually.

    But the problem with the people who complain about the feminist response is that they’re perpetuating the message: women are welcome in Science, as long as they shut up and don’t cause a fuss about the institutionally sexist barriers that they might face. And that male scientists should be given a free rein to do what they want, even if it upsets female colleagues and commenters, or prevents just one young woman from choosing science as her career.

    There was more I was going to write, but I’ve been writing this on and off all day. And now I’m tired. And female scientists have had death threads for saying that they’re not happy with the image that this guy presented to the world. *le sigh*.

    References

    1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STEM_fields ↩
    2. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/offend ↩
  • Displays of hyper-masculinity in amateur photography

    Displays of hyper-masculinity in amateur photography

    Something I’m really interested in is the way that men are depicted in the media, especially when it comes to photography. A while ago I spent some time exploring what it was like to shoot glamour images of men and that involved spending time looking at lots of pictures of men (oh gosh… what a hardship…).

    Immersing myself in the world of amateur model photographers was a fascinating experience, especially since I came at it from the angle of photographing men rather than women. As you can imagine this particular subset of the hobby is rather dominated by photographers photographing attractive young women and initially placing photographs of men in front of this demographic appeared to cause active discomfort.

    However as time went on I noticed a trend in that more of these male photographers were adding male models to their portfolios (I shan’t speculate on the reasons why this might have been the case, that is for another blog post) but that the tropes that they were photographing were in many cases as damaging as the way that women were being depicted.

    Weapons. Lots of them. It seemed that if you normally photographed sexy women and you’d decided to photograph a man instead, then they had to come with a sword or a gun or some other display of violence. This hyper-masculine portrayal of the male models seemed to equate ‘sexy’ with ‘violent’ in a way that has far ranging and extraordinarily worrying implications.

    CM-110508-7752

     

    I too spent some time with the ever-wonderful Seb Morgan putting together a video based loosely on martial arts and dodgy b-movies and we got this: http://youtu.be/9BMf2aZWigI as well as some stills photography. I tried to focus on the mediative aspects of the weapon rather than the aggression that other photographers portrayed.

    If I succeeded or not is down to my viewers, but it has to be worth trying to break the stereotypes down that link men’s sexuality to overt aggression and even violence.

    kaGh5_patreon_name_and_message

  • REPOST – WHY WE’RE WINNING: SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIORS AND THE NEW CULTURE WAR

    http://laurie-penny.com/why-were-winning-social-justice-warriors-and-the-new-culture-war/

    Read it.

  • Misogyny : Not in my (gaming) industry

    Misogyny : Not in my (gaming) industry

    Facebook can be amazing. Over the past year or two I’ve steadily curated my Facebook friends lists to provide me with utter joy on a minute-by-minute basis. I can log on and be in touch from people around the world at any hour of the day and my main feed reflects the absolutely wonderful fuckers that I call my friends.

    However the downside to Facebook means that occasionally you see a comment from a friend of a friend that isn’t something you would want on your daily feed of happy.

    Recently #GamerGate has been in the news and since I have an awful lot of friends working in tech and gaming it’s getting commented on. Alot. Which is great because almost every post that I see on my feed is largely positive about the whole debacle.

    But occasionally you get someone, a friend of a friend, who loudly protests that this isn’t what they see in their industry. By saying that they don’t see it, they’re basically silencing the voices of those who do. They’re saying ‘your point is invalid because I don’t see it in my day to day life’.

    I’m not seeing the vast quantities of sexism I’m supposed to be seeing. Maybe it just doesn’t affect the company I work for, or the community built around our game.

    Yesterday I pointed out that of course the chap in question hadn’t seen anything like the degree of sexism that us women experience because he is a man. Do you know how he responded to that? He told me that now he had experienced sexism because of my comment to him. My comment to him was apparently sexist because I pointed out that the fact he was male means he doesn’t experience systematic gender-related oppression. The problem is that there’s no answer to this. I can’t counter his claims that I was sexist to him because it’s a personal thing. I feel sorry for him if he believes that genuinely is sexism because he will never understand the pain and hurt that so many of us go through on a regular basis, but I can’t help him with that.

    The thing is, I’m a gamer. There, I said it. Something that I don’t often admit. Do you know why I don’t admit it very often? Because people go ‘oh, that’s cute’ and then either assume that I play computer games because of some fictional boyfriend that I may or may not have, or that I play ‘girl games’. I confess, I’m actually a Warcraft addict. But it all started way back when I used to play games on my Atari ST and mess around with programming. Then came Tomb Raider for the Playstation and my Dad and I used to sit in my bedroom on the floor for hours playing it together. I’m also a God Sim addict and haven’t found one that can defeat me yet. Oh, and I like to write databases for fun. So no, I’m not a fucking ‘healer girlfriend’.

    Where were we. Yes. I’m a gamer. Warcrack. I have experienced the fear of not using microphones in raids because you just don’t know if you’re going to get some misogynistic prick who thinks that women shouldn’t play computer games. In fact I joined my awesome guild because they were a mature guild who didn’t let children – or bad behaviour – be a part of it all. For the last five years I’ve played with an awesome group of ScaNorwegianDogs where we treat each other like humans. But that doesn’t mean that every now and again I don’t dip into the public chats and raids for some reason. Even on a roleplaying server – which are generally more mature in nature – within a few minutes of being in the city chat channels I can experience homophobia or misogyny. Is this why people tend to use the best gaming vpn they can find to find better server locales to play games? But, isn’t misogyny everywhere?

    And really all this is pretty amazing considering that around 48% of gamers are now women.

    48% of gamers are women. WOW I hear you say, that’s some motherfuckingawesome equality RIGHT THERE.

    Well yes it is. And no. Because #GamerGate continues.

    Female game developers, journalists and critics are under mass fire right now. I’m even writing this blog tentatively because I know it’ll eventually get picked up on searches. Already a while ago there was an attempted hack on my twitter account because during the #ZoeQuinn business I dared to question the men’s rights activists who were so active during that mess. And I’m just a small fish in a massive pond. Imagine that those big fish feel like.

    No wait, we don’t need to imagine. This week the University of Utah has been threatened because Anita Sarkeesian is speaking there tonight. And I don’t just mean a little threat, I mean some pretty fucking graphic shit has been written to them.

    If you do not cancel her talk, a Montreal Massacre style attach will be carried out against the attendees, as well as students and staff at the nearby Women’s Centre. I have at my disposal a semi-automatic rifle, multiple pistols, and a collection of pipe bombs. This will be the deadliest school shooting in American history and I’m giving you a chance to stop it.

    You have 24 hours to cancel Sarkeesian’s talk. You might be foolish enough to just beef up security at the event, but that won’t save you. Even if they’re able to stop me, there are plenty of feminists on campus who won’t be able to defend themselves. One way or another, I’m going to make sure they die.

    […]

    Anita Sarkeesian is everything wrong with the feminist woman, and she is going to die screaming like the craven little whole that she is if you let her come to USU. I will write my manifesto in her spilled blood, and you will all bear witness to what feminist lies and poison have done to the men of America.

    […]

    Feminists have ruined my life and I will have my revenge, for my sake and the sake of all the others they’ve wronged.

    This is the rage that is incited by Sarkeesian. Do you know what Sarkeesian does? She critiques video games from a feminist perspective, pointing out that they’re rather hateful and misogynistic an awful lot of the time. (Wow, that was pretty polite of me…).

    Let me remind you again. 48% of gamers are women.

    But this isn’t the first time that Sarkeesian has been targeted for her work. Here’s the TED Talk from 2012, shortly after she kickstarted her Tropes vs Women project (which I should point out, funded at almost $160k for making a feminist video game series for YouTube).

    I’m going to use a trigger warning here. I hate them. But this video does contain depictions of actual online violence against Sarkeesian.

    You’ll notice something very telling on the YouTube video page.

    Screen Shot 2014-10-15 at 08.29.22Sadly, not an uncommon sight on anything involving feminism on YouTube. It seems that men’s rights activists and anti-feminists can’t actually be trusted to engage rationally. How often do you see comments disabled on a MRA video because the feminists are threatening sexual violence against the MRA? Yeah. Quite.

     

    Anyway, I’m not sure where I’m going with this now. I think that the big frustration for me is that people still say ‘I don’t recognise this industry, this isn’t the industry that I work in’. Guys, we need you. We need you as allies. We need you to educate yourself so that you can see this batshit crazy behaviour and help us call it out. Because sadly much of society still gives more weight to the voices of men.

    We need you to actively look for this behaviour in your friendship circles, your workplaces and your industries and we need you to call it out.

    Because this weekend more than one female game developer has had to flee her home due to threats of sexual violence and violence being made against her and her family and this isn’t acceptable in the gaming and tech industries. Or any industry. Or just generally in the world. At all.

  • Why am I a feminist art historian?

    Why am I a feminist art historian?

    A few months ago I posted this video to my blog.

    Some people tell me that studying art history from a feminist point of view is pointless. That it’s irrelevant. What’s the point of writing about art history with a feminist slant when it’s so detached from what goes on around us on the street.

    It’s not.

    Everything has provenance.

    Screen Shot 2014-09-26 at 21.58.26

     

    I like the word provenance in this context. It’s other meaning is:

    The chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object.

    The ownership or custody… It kind of sums up the whole problem really. While attitudes towards women are gradually experiencing a counter-cultural revolution there are still many people who still have this outdated mindset. That women are there to be owned.

    This is the kind of day to day problem that we’re all very used to hearing about. Popular feminist campaigns regularly make the news, everything from Laura Bates and the Everyday Sexism Project to No More Page 3. I’m an avid supporter of both (and more). But this isn’t what I deal with when it comes to my academic interests.

    [no title] 1985-90 by Guerrilla Girls null

    I’m interested in the way that women have been treated historically. I personally mostly enjoy studying art post 1900 and seeing what it can tell us about women in society and the attitudes towards them. In fact I’m currently working on an essay with the title ‘Analyse the way in which gender has affected the interpretation and status of British women artists of the mid twentieth-century.’ And their status was indeed affected by their gender, as well as the way that we interpret their work. Remember it was only eighty six years ago that women gained even the most tenuous sign of equality – the right to vote.

    I like investigating the way that women (and LGBT artists, and artists of colour) have been treated in the past and getting down to the roots of patriarchal behaviour. I like examining how (or if) people tried to change attitudes and how the world responded to that. I like discovering work that isn’t considered canonical and questioning why it was not an acclaimed work. I like understanding the struggles that these artists faced.

    Because I believe that it’s only in understanding our past that we can influence our future. By knowing where we have come from we can understand the journey ahead of us. If we understand the things that we tried in the past and the effect that had on society we can make plans to change the future.

    But why art? Why not politics? Or history?

    Because art parallels society. It is influenced by the world around it and often it will influence the world. It is a distilled journal of the world in visual form. You can look at a work of art and read the circumstances that caused it’s creation, what drove the artist to create that form. It’s just another form of historical source, except that you need different skills to understand and interpret a work of art compared to a written journal or diary.

    It’s more than that though. When you look at a written source you have to believe that the author was being true to their words. You only have the words. However with an image, you see how the artist saw the world. It’s very hard to fake an imagine convincingly and convince the audience that you think something that you do not. You can see how society treated women from the artists status but also from the way that people are portrayed within the images themselves.

    It’s fascinating. And I plan on changing the world. But to change the world I have to understand how much it has already changed. There’s an awful lot to understand.

  • Laura Bates: Everyday Sexism

    Laura Bates: Everyday Sexism

    I love TED Talks. I love Laura Bates. I love The Everyday Sexism Project..

    In this talk she lists some pretty convincing reasons as to why women have not yet found equality.

    “Women are equal now, more or less.” Apparently. So I am often told when I’m told that we don’t need feminism. When I’m told that I’m making a fuss about nothing.