May 1, 2013

Boys will be boys?

Posted by glosswitch under Education, Feminism, Gender stereotyping, Parenting | Tags: , , , , , |
[5] Comments 

I am the mother of two boys. I know I’m not perfect but I do try to be a good parent. Unfortunately it appears that for the past five years I have been remiss. I have failed to “channel” my sons’ boisterousness.

According to James Delingpole – now the Ross Kemp of posh rightwing journalism – “we seem to have forgotten that boys will be boys”.  I for one am guilty of this. I look at my boys and think “they’re boys”. But rarely do I go on to conclude “and thus they will be boys”. This might sound like a minor omission but it’s not.  What it actually means – and this is a serious fact, because the Telegraph says so – is that they’ll grow up to beat the shit out of other boys. And possibly also girls. And maybe even household pets. Basically, because my boys have not been allowed to “be boys” (as defined by the Victor Book for Boys circa 1964) they will grow up to be violent hooligans as opposed to men of courage – the kind of men who win wars, slaughter beasts and present Top Gear.
(more…)

 

March 28, 2013

GCSEs, O-levels and gender: Myths of underachievement

Posted by glosswitch under Education, Feminism, Gender stereotyping | Tags: , , , , , , , |
[5] Comments 

I wrote this post in a fit of rage-fuelled inspiration. Only kidding. I am, after all, a mere woman. What I actually did was take hours, nay, days to plod diligently through several drafts, listening to the creaks and groans of the slow-moving cogs that drive the female brain. Hopefully it’s therefore an okay piece. I mean, I’ve tried my best. What more can we women do, given that pure unadulterated genius – or failing that, just the ability to think quickly – is way beyond our reach?

I am a well-educated person – possibly over-educated, given that a) I’m a woman and b) I have kids. I have lots of qualifications, partly due to my class background, partly due to luck – but mostly, it could be argued, due to fortunate timing. After all, I took my GCSEs in 1991, only shortly after the introduction of the exam. As we all know, GCSEs favour girls. Had I been born a few years earlier I’d have had to take O-levels and we all know that boys, being innately clever as opposed to innately arsed to do coursework, consistently outperformed girls when it came to these. We all know that, and yet it’s actually total bollocks.
(more…)

 

March 10, 2013

Mother’s Day: It’s time to make it a more radical, arse-kicking event

Posted by glosswitch under Employment, Feminism, Mummies, Parenting | Tags: , , , , , , , |
[10] Comments 

Until this week I had no idea that Hugo Chávez formally recognised the economic value of traditional “women’s work” . To be honest, I didn’t know much about Chávez. The one Venezuelan I know didn’t like him, but then none of us like our political leaders, do we? The most I’d assumed was that Chávez didn’t like women overly much, given the state of abortion law in Venezuela. Seems I was wrong, at least where a certain type of woman is concerned. It appears Chávez acknowledged that women who, to use the terminology of the average pay gap apologist, “don’t work because they’re raising children”, were bloody essential to a country’s welfare. Even if things were a bit more complex than that, as a basic principle that seems brilliant. Globally, we pay lip service to the devotion of mothers, yet so often stop short of saying you could actually put a price tag on it.

With Mother’s Day coming two days after International Women’s Day, I can’t help wishing it was more about that – genuine, heartfelt recognition – and less about a bunch of flowers, a pat on the head and yet another year of being horrendously undervalued. Don’t get me wrong, on a very personal level I love it. The card my five-year-old has written for me (“Thank you for all the love yoof givan me”) is just marvellous and I’ll treasure it forever. But as a cultural event, I wish Mother’s Day kicked a bit more arse. The commercial focus of it these days all feels rather KFC “Mum’s Night Off” in how it values what mothers do, bigging up inequality as a noble sacrifice in return for which you get, if not a bucket of chicken, then the only marginally better box of Thornton’s Continentals. It celebrates a particular type of motherhood – twee, self-effacing, repressed, waiting for that one day of the year when it can truly let rip with a half-bottle of rosé wine and a Lush bath bomb. It has got, let’s be honest, fuck all to do in appreciating what a wide range of mothers, all of different backgrounds and with different needs, do for their own children and society at large. If it did have, it would at least offer some form of meaningful response to all the things which piss us off.  (more…)

 

March 1, 2013

Emasculating women: Sergey Brin, smartphones and gendered metaphors

Posted by glosswitch under Feminism, Gender stereotyping | Tags: , , , , |
[7] Comments 

When Google’s Sergey Brin suggested that using a smartphone was “kind of emasculating”, he no doubt didn’t mean it to sound as ridiculously sexist as it did. He probably just meant “it’s a bit silly” or “it makes you look a bit of a prat” (still not a great thing for a Google boss to say, but an improvement at the very least). Unfortunately, I and countless others can’t help reading his actual words and hearing them translated into the language of almost every boy we remember from primary school: “Urgh! Smartphones are for girls! Girls are rubbish and smartphones are too!” (to be fair, smartphones didn’t exist when I was at primary school, nor even your basic mobile. But they said this kind of thing about skipping ropes, so it’s plausible that they’d have said it about potentially outdated technology, too).
(more…)

 

February 25, 2013

Postmodern irony and the appreciation of tits

Posted by glosswitch under Feminism, Random thoughts | Tags: , , , , , |
[6] Comments 

I have in my time been called a “humourless feminist”. Obviously this is something of which I’m very proud. I think if you’re not called humourless at least once – preferably by someone who’s also speculating on where you are in your menstrual cycle – then you’re doing feminism wrong (this rule applies regardless of whether or not you’re someone who actually menstruates. I’m pretty sure my partner’s been accused of having PMS in his time, although clearly not by me). (more…)

 

February 8, 2013

Just how tiring should parenting be?

Posted by glosswitch under Gender stereotyping, Mummies, Parenting | Tags: , , , , , , , |
[5] Comments 

Top tip for partners: If you and your partner have children together and there’s one bit of parenting you don’t usually do – let’s say it’s getting everyone ready for the school and nursery run – and it just so happens that one day you get to do it – let’s say you’re setting off for work a bit later – and it turns out it’s really, really difficult, do you:

  1. think “crikey, this is stressful” and make a note that while your partner may not have to start work as early as you do, that doesn’t mean life’s necessarily much easier?
  2. stomp about wondering why no one has got a better routine established, intermittently asking the kids pointed questions that start with “but don’t you usually …” or “doesn’t Mummy get you to …”?

The correct answer is of course (1). The second one does NOT accurately describe the way my partner behaved this morning, but it just felt that way. Because I’m stressed and tired and so is he. We’re really, really tired and even though our children are lovely, they don’t half whine about irrelevant crap. (more…)

 

December 21, 2012

Learning from Miss Meadows

Posted by glosswitch under Gender stereotyping | Tags: , , , , , |
[8] Comments 

Come Christmas Day, my three-year-old will be getting the pink doll’s house he’s been asking for for weeks. Or rather, he’s been asking me for it for weeks. I’ve only recently discovered that his whims seem to change depending on who’s around.

During my son’s nursery Christmas Party last week Father Christmas asked each of the childen what he or she would like to receive. Much to my surprise I discovered that “a pink doll’s house” becomes “a lorry” when other children are around. Well, to be honest, it wasn’t all that surprising. He’s at the age at which one starts to learn what it means to be a girl or a boy within a highly gendered culture. He’s starting to realise he’s not really “allowed” to like pink things, at least not in public. From now on his beloved Suzy Sheep socks are for bedtime only. (more…)

 

December 13, 2012

If that’s respect I’m Chrétien de Troyes

Posted by glosswitch under Feminism, Gender stereotyping, Random thoughts | Tags: , , , , , |
[2] Comments 

So feminists don’t do chivalry? Frankly, I find the very suggestion reveals a complete lack of politesse. I’m a feminist yet I’ve always been a friend of courtoisie. Indeed, I’ve read whole books that seek to define appropriate ritterliches Benehmen (I didn’t study medieval literature for nothing  – well, actually, it’s starting to look like I did. But still …).

The debate on chivalry has been “restarted” by an article in the Atlantic (a publication which I sometimes feel was set up with the sole purpose of rewriting Femail in Pseud’s Corner-friendly language). You know all that stuff about how feminists get really mad if men hold doors open, so then men get told off for holding doors open, then women – who are not the same as feminists – get pissed because the told-off men have stopped holding doors open etc. etc.? Well, it’s that. Again. “The breakdown in the old rules, which at one extreme has given rise to the hookup culture, has killed dating and is leaving a lot of well-meaning men and women at a loss.” Blah blah blah – you know the drill. Except – except! – there’s a sort-of social sciencey bit.

According to Emily Esfahani Smith, a recent study has shown that “chivalry is associated with greater life satisfaction and the sense that the world is fair, well-ordered, and a good place” – so a world not unlike the end of an episode of Mike the Knight. Who could possibly be unhappy with that? Well, the authors of the study to which Esfahani Smith refers, for starters. What Kathleen Connelly and Martin Heesacker actually observe is that benevolent sexism – a term which the Atlantic piece immediately dismisses as a kind of Orwellian doublespeak – “is indirectly associated with life satisfaction for both women and men through diffuse system justification”. This isn’t quite the cause and effect scenario that Esfahani Smith would like to suggest. Still, never mind – where made-up social science stumbles, let’s throw in some made-up history instead! (more…)

 

December 12, 2012

The nature of angels: Confronting the girlification of the nativity play

Posted by glosswitch under Gender stereotyping | Tags: , , , , , |
[5] Comments 

I like to watch the clouds roll by,
And think of cherubs in the sky;
But when I think of cherubim,
I don’t know if they’re her or him.

The Cherub, Ogden Nash

I haven’t studied theology and I’m not a great reader of the Bible. Thus when it comes to the nature of angels in a Christian context, I’d say I’m pretty ignorant. I think there’s some debate about whether they are male, female, intersex or none of the above, but I’m worried this is just me confusing Christian representations of the divine with the above Ogden Nash poem. I’m pretty sure one was called Peter Gabriel and that Satan used to be an angel before the Emperor turned him to the Dark Side or something like that. But that’s about it. If you want a definition of angels (and you don’t mean the Robbie Williams song or the 1970s hospital drama) please don’t ask me. And yet, despite my professed ignorance, here’s one thing I don’t think angels are: simpering girlies in pretty white dresses, all trying desperately hard to look like Beyoncé while swishing their hips in a saucy manner. (more…)

 

November 19, 2012

Patriarchy and misandry: Same difference?

Posted by glosswitch under Feminism, Gender stereotyping | Tags: , , , |
[10] Comments 

Imagine there’s an issue you really, really care about. It’s a serious one, one which causes harm to billions of people the world over. In some cases it leads to death. You attend conferences about it, write articles on it, try desperately hard to raise awareness. And then someone asks you what this issue really is – what are its causes, how does it operate – and you tell them “personally, I don’t really care”. Wouldn’t you find that just a little bit odd?

This is the problem I’m having with Ally Fogg’s Guardian piece on International Men’s Day. As the mother of two boys – and, on a far more basic level, as a human being who at least tries not to be a total tosser – I have no objection to engaging with problems that are more likely to be faced by men than women. I don’t want to have rights that my sons couldn’t also enjoy nor for them to feel afraid of expressing views that hold no stigma when they are voiced by women and girls. All the same, I tend to think that in order to challenge what Fogg describes as the “spider’s web” of “specific social injustices that specifically or disproportionately affect men and boys”, the most obvious port of call would be feminist analyses of gender injustice. If something is happening to men and not to women, it says something about what we think of women as well as men.
(more…)

 

November 18, 2012

Sometimes women need feeding, too

Posted by glosswitch under Eating disorders, Gender stereotyping | Tags: , , , , , , , |
[3] Comments 

In my household I am outnumbered. On the pink side there’s only me while on the blue there’s my male partner and our two sons. Obviously this causes no end of troubles when it comes to purchasing food, but thankfully our kitchen has plenty of cupboards. Once the weekly shop is done we tend to use our space wisely to maintain an appropriate level of gender-based food segregation.

In my cupboard (painted pink) we have: Galaxy bars (for when I’m sad / wistful), Maltesers (for when I’m up for Loose-Women-style japes), Ryvita (for miserable lunches with unfunny friends) and the full range of Special K products (for when I fundamentally hate myself). Meanwhile, in the men’s cupboard (blue), we have: Yorkies and Snickers bars (the only chocolate straight men are permitted to eat), extra thick-cut crisps (since Skips are way too effete) and various Big Soups (since, unlike women, men are presumed to eat because they’re hungry – and to want to consume something genuinely substantial, as opposed to some deceitful “fuller for longer” salad nonsense). We used to have a shared cupboard for things we were both allowed to consume (it was painted yellow, obviously). Alas, it mainly contained carbs, which are now men-only and thus belong in the blue cupboard (although I’m considering creating a neutral shelf in the fridge for cheese and bacon – except I think the new rule is that women can only have these if they have nothing but these. And I’m not giving up my Galaxy – I might get all weepy and need it). (more…)

 

November 10, 2012

More dismally silly nonsense from the post-sexist world

Posted by glosswitch under Employment, Feminism, Gender stereotyping | Tags: , , , , , , |
[10] Comments 

I was born in 1975. I do not recall a time in my life, ever, during which sexism, racism or homophobia were not considered to be passé. Discrimination always happened yesterday. Then today becomes yesterday and suddenly we realise that today wasn’t too great, either. Apart from “today today”, 2012. Finally, at long last, we’re totally sorted. Prejudice doesn’t exist. It’s not as though thought there’s the remotest possibility that in twenty year’s time we’ll look back and say “actually, I don’t know why we all thought that was acceptable”. (more…)

 

October 1, 2012

Remind me again, which bits of the news am I supposed to read?

Posted by glosswitch under Feminism, Gender stereotyping | Tags: , , , , , , |
[26] Comments 

So we’ve finally started talking about how many of us don’t like Page 3, what with it marginalising women in general and female consumers of news media in particular. Great. Good for us. And while we’ve been busy doing that, the Telegraph has sneaked in and revamped the “women’s area” on its website. Called – I kid you not – Wonder Women, it claims to be “a new daily online section filled with sassy, irreverent and intelligent content about politics, business, family, life and sex”. To demonstrate the sass quotient, we get a series of headshots showing smiley, preened, young-ish female commentators, all of them vaguely reminiscent of The Day Today‘s Collaterlie Sisters. Wonderful. As a woman I just can’t handle my politics without that added bit of sass. (more…)

 

September 30, 2012

The End Of Men: It’s okay, I checked – they’re still here!

Posted by glosswitch under Employment, Feminism, Gender stereotyping, Politics | Tags: , , , , , , |
[5] Comments 

Whenever a person makes any of the following statements – the future is female, men are the new weaker sex, masculinity is in crisis, the pendulum has swung too far, the male of the species is becoming redundant etc.* – it is surprisingly hard to mount a challenge. Deep down, you know such people are talking straight out of their arses, but you really don’t want to be the one to say so. First, it sounds mean and unsympathetic. If, for instance, you are a middle-class woman and you’re being compared – somewhat conveniently – to a working-class man, you risk appearing rather uncaring and ungrateful (and that’s before you get onto the standard feminist rant about how positively frightful visiting Waitrose on a Saturday can be). Second, you don’t want to make it look as though you actually believe feminists are merely engaged in an ongoing competition with the patriarchy to win the coveted Crappest Life Cup. Challenging gender stereotyping and power imbalances – and actually proposing change – are rather different activities to splitting the human race into two undifferentiated groups and complaining that your group is the current “loser”. It’s important not to engage in such a stupid argument (even if stupid people have spent years trying to bait you into doing precisely that). So you might think “well, best say nothing – it’d only give them ammunition”. Or perhaps pull a sad face and nod thoughtfully, just to make sure these people get off your case. (more…)

 

September 5, 2012

Pink LEGO vs the Imagination Police

Posted by glosswitch under Gender stereotyping, Random thoughts, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , |
[5] Comments 

Up until this morning the whole LEGO Friends kerfuffle had passed me by. I knew the product range existed and had guessed it arose from yet another desperately unimaginative attempt to appeal to all girls, ever. Nevertheless the only child I know who happens to want a LEGO Friends toy is my youngest and guess what? He’s a boy (and in case you’re wondering, it’s the Adventure Camper, £36.95 – and no, I’m not dipping into the Shoe Fund to purchase that). Anyhow, I wasn’t particularly annoyed that this range existed. After all, there are a million other crappy toys just like it. Indeed, some of them aren’t even that crappy. Looked at independently, “girls’ toys” aren’t any worse than those marketed at boys. The problem is our failure to think of them simply as “toys”, and the way in which, through marketing, this message then gets passed on to our children. (more…)

 

August 9, 2012

Bigging up the office in the name of choice

Posted by glosswitch under Employment, Feminism, Gender stereotyping | Tags: , , , , , , , |
[4] Comments 

Most mornings I trudge resentfully to work. Today, however, I skipped merrily through the August sunshine, eager to reach my desk, get my head down and perform my duties as a useful economic unit labouring away for The Man.  Whence this joy? It’s not simply because my kids were being annoying, making the office seem a welcome break (let’s face it, that would be most days anyhow). It’s because I’d just read this, a piece that’s enough to make any sane woman think OFFICE! WOO-HOO! YEAH!

The piece I’ve uncovered (via @Scriptrix and @LynnCSchreiber) tells the story of a woman whose whole family turn up at her office to “liberate” her from the tyranny of work and celebrate the start of her new life as an “ever-present loving homemaker”. I don’t know if it is a spoof; I suspect it isn’t. Either way, it reminds me of the reasons why I became a feminist in the first place. (more…)

 

July 12, 2012

Shared parental leave: Is it really that hard?

Posted by glosswitch under Gender stereotyping, Mummies, Politics | Tags: , , , , , , |
[5] Comments 

Do you have one of those jobs that involves thinking outside the box? Do you indulge in blue-sky thinking on a daily, nay, hourly basis? Are you kicking those ideas around so hard that you’re wearing metaphorical football boots? If so, well done you. Perhaps you’re just the kind of person this country needs.

Of course, there are some who might feel “thinking outside the box” has become an excuse for people in senior positions to spout a succession of shit ideas without having to face the slightest consequence (It was just a bit of creative thinking. You didn’t think I meant it? Oh, and don’t forget your P45, which I’ve creatively tied to a purple balloon). Don’t believe the cynics, though. The UK needs its creatives. After all, we’ve got sod all proper industry left. Ours is meant to be a knowledge economy. We should all be sitting around having ideas (even if you’re getting minimum wage for cleaning toilets or  working on the checkout at Asda. There’s gotta be a better way of doing everything, even the most boring jobs in the world, and if you haven’t found it, well, you’re not just letting down Wal-Mart – you’re letting yourself down). (more…)

 

July 10, 2012

Huggies and potty training: Same old shit

Posted by glosswitch under Gender stereotyping, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , |
[5] Comments 

This summer I am about to embark on another potty training odyssey! Way-hey! The summer’s great for potty training, isn’t it? That’s what everyone says, like it’s one great pastoral idyll where children can run about naked all day long, with not a shitty Thomas the Tank Engine pant in sight. As you may have guessed, that’s not quite how I found it last time around. Still, perhaps I can look upon this summer as a chance to improve on things. In the spirit of this, I have been scouring the Huggies website for some top tips.

I have used Huggies Pull-Ups in the past, whenever they’ve been on special offer and therefore marginally cheaper than the supermarket’s own brand. I always let my son choose which pack we bought and he always chose the pink one with the Disney Princess pants. When I asked him why, he pointed out that the girl on the packaging was wearing fairy wings. I think he assumed if he got enough wees on target, he’d get fairy wings, too (and indeed he did). Some might call that bribery; I call it aspirational pissing. Of course, I kind of knew that we were transgressing the gender boundaries by purchasing the “girl” pants – for a boy! But I figured that what went into them was the same old shit. (more…)

 

July 7, 2012

Does being a feminist make you crap at parking?

Posted by glosswitch under Gender stereotyping, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , |
[6] Comments 

My car has a scratch in it. Not a little scratch, a big one. And the paneling around it is slightly dented. That in itself is bad enough, but do you know what? Of late I have been considering causing even greater damage. I have thought of arming myself a screwdriver and scratching the following into the paintwork above where the big scratch is:

See that big scratch? Well, if the person driving this car happens to be female, please note that she did not make it. It was her partner. Her partner who is male. And also a fuckwit when it comes to gateposts.

Moreover, that would not be a fib. It was my partner who made the big scratch. But I have yet to make the littler ones (I’m practising – it needs to be neat so it’s clear that I didn’t somehow write it by accident. Although the Daily Mail will still think I did). (more…)

 

July 4, 2012

Feminism: It’s not just about covering your toddler in eyeliner

Posted by glosswitch under Employment, Gender stereotyping | Tags: , , , , , , |
[7] Comments 

Strange though it is, there are times in life when you come across people who don’t believe misogyny exists. This evening I decided, once and for all, to set the record straight. I armed myself with a netbook, black eyeliner and a suitably feminine-looking toddler (i.e. my youngest son). I thereafter proceeded to trawl all the websites I could think of – the Mail Online, the Guardian Comment is Free,  Waitrose Online Grocery Shopping – searching for random anonymous comments which proved that SOME PEOPLE DON’T LIKE SOME WOMEN! Once I’d gathered all my comments, I proceeded to use the eyeliner (Benefit Bad Gal!) to write them in massive script all over my son-pretending-to-be-a-girl. Then I told him that his cuddly monkey didn’t love him any more, which made him go all cry-y and vulnerable-looking, at which point I took a photograph. This photograph proved, once and for all, that MISOGYNY EXISTS! (more…)

 

Next Page »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 2,765 other followers