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Consent: Not actually that complicated - Animated!

A bonus blog day for a Friday, partly because I am away this weekend and don’t know if I’ll be able to have blogday as usual this weekend, and partly because I have been sent this awesome animation by Blue Seat Studios of my blog about tea and consent.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did!

I absolutely love how simple the animation is, and that they kept it gender neutral.

There’s a common rhetoric that suggests that it’s always men making the tea and women drinking it, which is hugely harmful to people’s sexuality and to notions of consent within same sex relationships. It buys into a narrative which denies male rape - by both men and women. It buys into a myth that women aren’t sexual beings. It buys into the myth that men always want sex, or that an erection is consent. An erection is no more consent than a woman being drunk and unconscious is. As pretty much every teenage boy ever discovers during puberty, male bodies can react in physical ways without reference to emotional desire. Erections can happen on their own, or in response to physical stimuli even if the man doesn’t actually want it to happen. In short, just because it’s up, doesn’t mean he’s up for it.

Reducing consent to [men asking / women accepting] also erases gay sexuality- where consent is obviously just as important. Men who do men need to make sure they are both up for what they’re doing. Women who do women need to make sure they’re both up for what they’re doing. And while you’re mid-coitus, if you’re engaging in different acts, you need to keep checking in that your partner (assuming you’re not super familiar with them already, that is) is comfortable. Or, to use the tea analogy, if you’ve both been drinking Rooibos, don’t suddenly hand them an Assam without telling them, or checking that they’re cool with Assam.

This is why I deliberately wrote the original blog to be gender neutral, as consent affects all genders, all sexualities, all kinks, all activities. I love that the animation kept that neutrality.

Also I love they kept the swearing because seeing stick figures swearing is totally hilarious.

Edit 15th May 2015 - people have asked for a swearing free version for use with younger children - here it is

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Creative Commons License
Tea Consent by RockstarDinosaurPiratePrincess is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://rockstardinosaurpirateprincess.com/2015/03/02/consent-not-actually-that-complicated/.

21 Comments feminism, my opinions let me show you them

harassment is not a virtual issue

I was going to write something about drinking this week, because it’s been a while, and last week’s post was kinda feministy and I like to usually mix things up a bit in between the being Really Angry About Things but something, well, two somethings but really the same something, happened this week which made me, well, Really Angry about Things.

Thing 1 - Sue Perkins - cake botherer, national treasure and all round amazing person - was hounded off Twitter due to some baseless rumours that she could be in the running to present Top Gear. For non UK people, Top Gear is ostensibly a program about cars, but for many years has basically been a vehicle (oh, lol) for the champion of the sort of people that say things like “I’m not a bigot but I should be allowed to say these things it’s political correctness gone mad MAD I TELL YOU.” The completely fabricated rumour that she was in the running, prompted by some betting activity, led to death threats so severe she left twitter. No doubt to a celebration of the Top Gear fans and any other people who just like sending women on Twitter death threats.

Thing 2 - Just a few days later, Jack Monroe - austerity chef, anti-poverty campaigner and down to earth ‘accidentally famous‘ blogger - was also hounded off Twitter. In her case she hadn’t done anything as egregious as be at the centre of rumours so much as simply being a lesbian, or a ‘militant queer’ in the words of one of the messages.

These aren’t the first women to be literally harassed off the internet. There is much writing already out there about how women with opinions are often the recipients of horrific (and very much gendered) internet harassment and threats. Occasionally the perpetrators are caught and face punishment, but more often they slip through the net (oh, lol) in the face of internet harassment being such a ‘new’ phenomenon that the courts and police aren’t really equipped to fully deal with it.

When they spoke of this harassment publicly many - if not all - of these women were advised (either well meaningly or otherwise) to ‘just get off the internet if you don’t like it’.

Just get off the internet.

Because off the internet, women don’t ever get harassed or assaulted for being women, right?

There’s this strange idea, which has been around for a really super long time, that the internet isn’t a ‘real’ place. Back when I first started using the internet it was mainly newsgroups, and later LiveJournal. The idea there that the internet was somehow a separate world to the ‘real’ one was super pervasive back then, and the acronym IRL which you don’t see often these days - meant ‘In Real Life’. Even I bought into this idea that the internet was literally not real life and therefore somehow behaviour could be held to different standards. It was one of my closest and oldest friends that took me to task on this, years before Facebook was pivotal in transforming the internet from a niche interest to a normal part of most people’s lives.

The thing is, she pointed out, the internet IS a real place. Ok, it’s a virtual space, but it’s inhabited by real people, who make up real communities. She pointed out that if people kept thinking of the internet as ‘not real’ then they’d start thinking of other people on the internet as ‘not real’. And once you start thinking of real people as not actually real, with real feelings, then you stop treating them like people.

So let’s stop pretending the internet isn’t real life. It is. It’s as much a public place as a town square; with people meeting up, chatting on benches, buying things from the market and the shops, hanging out in a cafe, or in the library, or just watching life pass by. Just because it’s virtual, doesn’t make it ‘not real’.

And let’s stop pretending that by ‘leaving the internet’ a woman’s harassment will stop. I have been harassed by men I don’t know in public ever since I hit puberty. What should I do? Never walk on the street? Never leave my house? For some of the women harassed online they can’t even feel safe in their own house.

The harassment of women is not limited to the internet. The harassment of some of the women that started on the internet didn’t remain on the internet. The harassment of some women in real life followed them to the internet. Women can’t stop being harassed by leaving the internet any more than they can stop harassment by, say, moving to a different city, no matter what some people might say. Because harassment isn’t limited to one internet site, to one city, to one country. It is a global problem.

When I was sexually assaulted in January by a stranger, he probably wasn’t expecting me to react with anger, fury and loud shouting. He probably wasn’t expecting me to call the police. I knew the police could probably do little but I wanted to make sure my voice was heard, my incident was recorded, that I didn’t brush this off as just something that happens all the time that I should just put up with and change my behaviour to avoid. I didn’t stop going out with my friends or getting public transport or crossing the road.

When that man groped me, I am quite sure he wasn’t consciously thinking “If I grab that girls bum she’ll know her place. I am going to demonstrate my power over her by grabbing her bum. This bum grabbing will let her know that as a man I am entitled to her body in a public space”. He was possibly drunk, saw a girl with her back to him minding her own business and saw nothing wrong in touching her. Maybe he even thought it was funny.

When people harass women on the internet, it’s quite likely that they aren’t consciously thinking “I will put this woman in her place. I am more entitled to this space than she is. Her opinions aren’t welcome and I will demonstrate my greater importance by making her feel small and scared”. Maybe they see nothing wrong in making these threats. Maybe they even think it’s funny.

Part of me wasn’t even sure whether I should write this. I feared writing about the harassment of women, and linking to stories of harassed women, could potentially lead to attracting levels of harassment against me too. But then, isn’t that partly what these people that threaten and bully women online want, after all? They want the voices that are saying things they don’t like to stop. They want them to shut up. If I don’t speak up about this then I am letting those voices win and leaving the internet to them, to shout and bully unopposed; and I can’t do that. If I do get harassed online for writing this, perhaps it demonstrates a variation of Lewis’ Law. Maybe “the comments on any online article by a woman about online harassment are evidence of the problem of online harassment of women”?

We have a culture which allows and normalises the harassment of women in public spaces - both real and virtual - and the solution to preventing the harassment of women is NOT telling them to leave or stay away from public spaces, or to suggest that they are somehow responsible for their own harassment simply by being in those public spaces. The only people that are responsible for harassment are the harassers. And the way to stop them is for harassment to be taken seriously, whether online or off.

9 Comments feminism, my opinions let me show you them

"I wish we talked more about…" Part 1: Women and Sex

Earlier this week one of my fellow humourless killjoy feminist friends came up with the idea of a list of “Things we wished people spoke more openly about”.

The conversation that ensued lead to several revelations amongst the group and numerous exclamations of “I am SO glad we’re talking about this” and “OMG I thought this was just me” and “why don’t we talk about this stuff? This is GREAT.”

So this is the first blog of what I intend to be an ongoing yet occasional series themed around “Things we wish were talked about more openly.”

Before we go further, I am going to add a content warning. This blog, and indeed probably the whole series, will feature talk of things like sexual acts, body parts, bodily functions and fluids and other things that often make people (right across the gender spectrum) feel uncomfortable. It’s almost certainly going to make my family feel uncomfortable, so if you’re related to me, you might want to stop right here.

I am going to say, straight up, that a lot of the things that are likely to come up are things that I personally find really difficult to talk about. I spent a lot of time hating my body and not really wanting to look at it, feeling awkward and anxious about sexual acts, being ashamed and scared of things my body did and generally feeling unable to talk about it. So just as you might be leaving your comfort zone to read this, I am going out of my comfort zone to write it. So we’re on this journey together.

And so, lengthy pre-amble complete, let’s get it over with.

“I wish we spoke more openly about…

Women’s masturbation, sexual pleasure & orgasms”

It’s pretty much accepted that boys wank. It’s a common trope in fiction and a frequent joke punchline. There are a million (hilarious) euphemisms for male self pleasuring, and you can make up a million more by just “Adjectiving the Noun”. Hugging the giraffe. Wrestling the one-eyed dragon. Marinating the sausage. Feel free to suggest your own. It’s most entertaining. While there’s a great deal of humour over the subject, male masturbation is generally accepted as a normal male act, part of healthy development and generally a pretty fun way to pass the time if you’ve got not much on and there’s nothing of interest on Netflix. But if you’re a woman, and you make a joke about “adding that to the wank bank” there’s often an awkward silence. Women’s masturbation, even in our relatively sexually enlightened culture, remains a taboo subject and jokes about women taking a walk in their own lady garden are OMG TOO SOON.

But yes, it’s true. Women do take themselves into their own hands. As with men, some will do so more often, some will do it a lot; some with a lower sex drive might not do it that often and some might just do it to pass the time and when there’s not much on Netflix. There should be no more shame in women having a solo joy party than a man doing so; but it’s so much harder to talk about. In part this is down to women often being seen as passive sexually; as not being sexual agents or having sexual desires of their own so much as being something on to which male fantasies or acts are projected. A woman getting herself off doesn’t fit into this idea.

But not only is it super fun, and totally a feminist act (it so is. You are demonstrating your sexual agency as a subject. Totally a feminist act. Not just because there’s nothing on Netflix.) it can also be really valuable for a woman to explore herself; to learn what she likes and how, how she wants to be touched and what gets her excited. If she learns her own body, she’s going to be able to better guide her sexual partners to what she likes, to mutual sexual satisfaction.

Mutual sexual satisfaction in a relationship isn’t something that just happens. Every one’s body is different, and people take pleasure in different things. So it’s really important if you care about your partner and their happiness that you both find out what you enjoy, what they enjoy, and what you can do for each other. The frustrating stereotype that women spend their time avoiding sex with their male partners that never get enough is not only pretty offensive but perpetuates the idea of a passive female object for the pleasure of men. For this chap buying his darling beloved a latte for Christmas, my main thought was “well perhaps if you were more interested in pleasing her than getting yourself off she’d enjoy the sex more, and you’d get more sex”. Sex shouldn’t be a transaction, bought with gifts and begging. If your partner isn’t totally into the sex with you, then maybe you need to be having a conversation about what you can do that will please him/her. And if you can’t have conversations like this without either of you getting embarrassed/awkward/upset/turned off it’s kind of a red flag. If you can’t communicate about what makes you both happy sexually, perhaps you need to think about whether you have a good relationship in the first place, as the key to a good relationship is communication.

One of the big problems here is the pervasive myth of the vaginal orgasm. It was in 1905 that Freud claimed that vaginal orgasms were something that ‘adult’ women had, while ‘adolescent’ women had clitoral orgasms. Freud had absolutely no evidence for this assertion whatsoever. No studies, no facts; it was all based on his own theories of sexuality. Despite our understanding of human sexuality, biology and psychology moving on significantly in the intervening one hundred and ten years we’re still clinging onto this outdated view of orgasms - which let’s remind ourselves was based on exactly no actual evidence. The theory has been heavily criticised ever since but somehow the myth clings on.

Movies, TV, books, porn, magazines; they all continue to perpetuate this myth that women have these big old screaming orgasms from penetrative sex when actually the vast majority of women simply can’t. It’s not because their male partner’s penis isn’t big or wide or hard enough, or because the man isn’t good at sexing enough; it’s because most lady parts are just physically not designed that way. Our culture is obsessed with the idea of P in V penetrative sex when that’s one tiny part of a whole range of super awesome fun times you can have, many of which are more likely to result in *mutual* pleasure. It’s no coincidence that lesbians tend to have more orgasms than women in straight relationships; it’s because they are engaging in a whole lot of ‘extracurricular’ activities that directly stimulate all of the best places.

If you’re a dude, and you’ve got this far (good on you!) and you’re looking sidelong at your girlfriend, wondering if she’s faked it, don’t be too hard on her. Many women will admit to faking it because they’ve had fun, but know they aren’t going to climax, and they know their partner is holding out for her, and she wants him to enjoy himself, and so will fake it to help him make it. If you get me. But if you’re only ever doing the P&V thing and your girlfriend isn’t up for it that often then leave off the sarky picture macros and the passive aggressive comments and just talk to her. It’s not your penis, it’s her vagina. Just because parts other than her vagina need need stimulation from things other than your penis doesn’t mean she doesn’t really like your penis (or the man it’s attached to.)

We need to stop thinking about sex as simply being “place penis in vagina and pump for a bit”, and thinking of it as a whole range of sexual acts which please everyone involved. Forget the word ‘foreplay’ – that suggests that all the other stuff is just the prologue, when for many women the ‘other stuff’ is most of the novel, with the actual penetrate part being the epilogue. Or maybe even the acknowledgement. And as with women’s masturbation, this all links back to society’s difficulty in seeing women as sexual beings in their own right, as likely to be horny, with desires and pleasures of their own, and wanting some sweaty love times as much as men.

(And if any of my family are still reading, don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

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18 Comments feminism, my opinions let me show you them

Splitting hairs

I remember when I first tried to shave my legs. I didn’t really know what I was doing. I didn’t really even have any hair to shave. I’d just picked up from the magazines I read (because everyone else was reading them) that it was A Thing Teenage Girls Did and that to not shave would be unthinkable. I used a disposable razor I found in the bathroom and some talc. Yeah. I know. As you can probably imagine, I made a bit of a mess of it.

A few years later real hairs actually grew, I worked out how it was done without looking like a victim of Freddie Krueger. It never occurred to me to question the whole shaving thing. Not once. Shaving legs and armpits was just what you did. You’re a girl, puberty has arrived, and therefore you shave because girls aren’t meant to be hairy.

I didn’t question that for decades. Not until I started playing roller derby, in fact, and met some girls who didn’t shave. At first I was shocked. Because girls aren’t meant to be hairy, right? The girls who didn’t shave had all, at some point, received actual verbal abuse for having hair in places where girls aren’t meant to be hairy. Keeping hair where hair grows, it turns out, is actually a radical political statement. Whether you chose not to shave because you can’t be bothered; because you have sensitive skin, or due to religious reasons, or for an actual political statement, being a hairy girl always ends up coming across like a political statement. Because girls aren’t meant to be hairy. But if girls aren’t MEANT to be hairy, how come we, y’know, grow hair?

A couple of years ago I developed one of my random allergic reactions. This happens to me occasionally. Some part of me will swell up, or burn, or flake, or itch or look like it’s trying to fall off. I will spend months trying to work out what the hell is causing it, cutting all sorts of things out of my life and then slowing bringing them back in one by one to try and work out what the fuck is making my life temporary hell. Sometimes, like accidentally watching the first part of a two part CSI while you’re sick off work and finding the second part isn’t on next because these things get shown in some bizarre order known only to some time travelling daytime TV scheduler, I never actually discover the culprit. The one that developed a few years ago that mainly affected my eyes, ears and patches of skin across my back and shoulders and made my skin extra sensitive was that unfinished two-parter. I had to cut out pretty much every strong chemical substance. For months I could wash only with expensive allergen free shower gel and put nothing stronger than coconut oil on my face. This also meant no shaving, so sensitive was my skin.

Whatever it was that caused this particular reaction left my skin permanently sensitive, so that I have to be really careful how often I shave it – unless I want to be a red flakey itchy burny mess. And having spent rather a long time not shaving, I was out of the habit. And also starting to question why it was so important anyway. And wondering whether maybe it was better to be a bit hairy than a red flakey itchy burny mess, even though I knew this would automatically put me into Not Shaving Political Statement territory.

Have you ever wondered WHY aren’t girls meant to be hairy? According to mental floss it’s all thanks to Harpers Bazaar (of course. Women’s Magazines. Have I mentioned before how much I hate women’s magazines? I am not sure I have. But I do. I hate them. I’ve hated them since I realised that on one page they tell you to be happy just as you are, the next page the best celebrity diet, the next a page shows you how fat this celebrity is, the next page worries that this celebrity is too thin. The next page points out that you don’t need a man to be happy, the one after tells you how to ‘bag your perfect man’ and in between all those pages are adverts telling you without these products you’ll be a fat, skinny, old, young, ugly, stupid, single trapped-in-loveless-hell frigid slutty wallflower harridan who no one will ever love who has to love yourself. So yeah. I HATE THEM.)

So, I decided to stop shaving for a bit just to see what would happen. And, well, not much happened. To be fair, it was winter, so the only time hair was ever actually visible was when I went swimming at the Ladies’ Pond, which is the least judgemental place I’ve ever been in my life. There are women in their 90s who’ve been swimming there every day for over 50 years and they couldn’t give a flying banana whether the other women there are shaving their legs or not, quite frankly. If you ever want to learn a lesson in Giving Exactly Zero Fucks then hanging out with nonagenarians who swim regularly in -0 degree water is a pretty good start.

As spring has drawn near and my shirtsleeves are getting shorter it’s got harder. I don’t really like the look of the hair under my armpits. To me it looks, well, kind of ugly. And knowing that this is decades of cultural GIRLS ARE NOT MEANT TO BE HAIRY isn’t going to just make me get the hell over that. If it was that easy to shrug off powerful media conditioning we’d all be much happier (and buy fewer things, and the beauty industry would pretty much vanish). But I was determined to persevere. And not only persevere, but try to spread my message of STOP SHAVING THROW OFF THE HAIRY SHACKLES OF THE BALD LEG BEAUTY STANDARDS. Because if my friends all stopped shaving too I wouldn’t be the only hairy one. I started discussing it with other feministy friends and questioning their epilatory routines. I started questioning why women felt the need to remove their hair for OMG NO REASON STOP IT.

I started re-writing the lyrics of a certain Disney song to become a feminist anthem about binning your razors and depilatory cream.

Let it grow let it grow
don’t want to shave any more
Let it grow, let it grow
Slam the bathroom door!

I don’t care
What they’re going to say
about my skin
I’ll wear shorts anyway

Let it grow, let it grow
Think of the time I’ll save
Let it grow, let it grow

You’ll never see me shave

Here’s my hair
And here it stays
Razor in the biiiiiiiin

My skin never bothered me anyway!

YES WOMEN I was shouting. WE MUST ALL REJECT THIS NOTION OF HAIR FREE WOMEN AND EMBRACE OUR HAIR.

And then, a conversation with a group of friends stopped me in my tracks. (Which is probably for the best because That Song being in my head, no matter the lyrics, probably will actually drive me round the bend.)

One friend was talking about an incident where her son had been playing with hair on her toes, and how it had led to an exchange between her male partner and son where her partner said something along the lines of “Son, when you grow up, society will tell you that women are more attractive without hair, and you’ll have to think about whether you agree with that.” (He probably didn’t say it in James Earl Jones’ voice, and probably didn’t call his son ‘Simba’ at any point but that’s kind of how it ended up in my head). What I took from this conversation SHOULD have been “what an amazing supportive partner and father, how cool.” What I ACTUALLY thought was “toe hair? Women have…toe hair?”

A whole conversation ensued, right in front of me, about toe hair. About how one of my friends shaves her toes more often than she shaves her legs. How one friend’s boyfriend thought her toe hair was ‘cute’ and hadn’t met any women with it before and wondered whether that was because they always shaved it. One friend then mentioned the agony of tweezing out the hair from her nipples. Another about having an awkward conversation with her children about women and moustaches. Another saying that if she didn’t tweeze her chin hair, she could probably grow a full on Kung Fu Master beard within a month.

My mind had already been completely blown by the toe hair so the rest of this conversation rendered me speechless (and that almost never happens.)

As soon as I got home I took my socks off and stared at my feet. And then I stared at my lip and chin. And, yes, I also stared at my nipples. My nipples were bald as anything. My lip does have downy hair on it but so downy pale you can’t see them unless in a certain light. My toes did in fact have one or two wispy little hairs, but they were so white blonde that they were pretty much invisible.

As an argumentative opinionated sort, who generally thinks she has a good grip on this whole intersectionality business, it was rather a shock to be confronted with an example of my own complete lack of awareness or knowledge about what other women deal with. The idea that ‘girls aren’t meant to be hairy’ message is incredibly powerful, and is not going to disappear over night, and it’s certainly not going to disappear with pale blondie soft downy haired types like me haranguing our more hirsute female friends into not shaving their body hair and making them feel bad about having it. Especially when as a pale blondie soft downy haired type I even caved last week and shaved my armpits because I had a new tattoo and needed to wear sleeveless dresses for a bit and didn’t want to go to work with hairy armpits.

It’s terribly easy for me to stop shaving as a ‘political statement’ because as a natural blonde, the hair on the parts of me that are hairy is pretty damn fair. I am not actually, when it comes down to it, really very hairy at all. I can swan around going YEAH EFF YOUR BEAUTY STANDARDS but in the right light actually not really showing much of a deviation from those beauty standards in the first place.

My friends had inadvertently slapped me in the relatively hair free face with a privilege I didn’t even know I had. Blonde privilege perhaps? Follicle privilege? Whatever it was, I had it. And I’d never realised. That’s the thing about Privilege - the capital P kind - we don’t know we have it because it’s a Privilege. The important thing about Capital-P-Privilege though, is what we do about it once we realise we have it. And what I need to do is stop thinking that I am making a grand political statement about letting my wispy pale hairs blow in the breeze, and stop making other women who don’t have the luxury of wispy pale hairs feel bad if they want to remove theirs to help them feel better about themselves.

Sure, Let It Grow, if you can, and if you feel comfortable doing so. But if you don’t, that’s ok too.

Society will tell you that women are more attractive without hair, and you’ll have to think about whether you agree with that.

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18 Comments feminism, i am a disaster area, my opinions let me show you them

Tea Myths and Sympathy

I’m going to be upfront about this - I am experiencing an online form of performance anxiety. My blog, up until Monday evening, was bimbling along with an average of perhaps around 13 views per day. I was pretty happy with that to be honest. I’m happy when ONE person reads it. Since posting the Consent/Tea blog, I’m currently averaging around 30,000 views per day, my twitter hasn’t stopped buzzing and my mum messages me every hour to ask me how many hits my blog has had. (She’s a blogger too, so of course she taught me everything I know.) All week the question has been bouncing around: what the hell are you going to write next Sunday. I usually write about something that’s been on my mind in the week before, but this week the only thing that’s really been on my mind is, well, last week’s blog.

The comments and messages I have received have been overwhelmingly positive - with people taking the metaphor and extending it in ways that never even occurred to me. My favourites including “If they ask for Earl Grey, and you only have Assam, don’t give them Assam until you’ve checked that’s ok” and “if they ask for soy don’t give them dairy milk and afterwards go HAHA it was really cow milk all along, gotcha lolz”.

There were two distinct types of feedback that struck me most - for very different reasons.

Feedback type 1

I received a higher number of questions than I would have liked that asked a variation on a theme of “What if they say they want tea, and you drink tea with them, and later they say they never really wanted the tea and then RUIN YOUR LIFE. This happens a lot!” This, ladies, gentlemen, dinosaurs and others, is a TEA MYTH.

Actually, let’s move away from this tea analogy, because I don’t want anyone to get muddled here. Rape Myths are beliefs about rape which are often widely accepted but wrong and/or distorted which actively prevent genuine justice or appropriate support for victims. There are many rape myths - all very damaging and I think all of them featured at one point or another in the comments section, but none more so than the ‘false rape accusation’ one.

It can be tricky to discuss this particular rape myth - because - and this is important - false accusations of rape are very serious, and they can ruin someone’s life. When I say that false rape accusations are part of a rape myth I am IN NO WAY suggesting that 1 - they don’t happen (they do) or 2 - they don’t matter (they do). The issue is one of equivalence.

To illustrate my point I am going to use this risk assessment model ‘borrowed’ from a project manager friend of mine.

RA_Myths

This model is often used when establishing what resources an organisation needs to put into a particular aspect of their work, and is a useful way of discussing difficult issues. If something appears in the top right it will need more resource/focus than something that appears in the bottom right. Something in the bottom right should not get more time/attention/money than something in the top right. If it’s in the bottom left then you might want to think about forgetting it entirely.

So, let’s add some badly drawn MSPaint wotsits to this model about the topic in hand.

The Crown Prosecution Service’s report of 2013 found that in the period of study there were 5651 prosecutions for rape, and 35 prosecutions for making false rape accusation (prosecuted as either ‘perverting the course of justice’ or ‘wasting police time’.) That means for every 1 false rape allegation there were around 160 actual rapes. I don’t call that even remotely equivalent.

False rape accusations are extremely rare, and even those accusations themselves are often complex. Sometimes numbers that make up ‘false rape allegation’ statistics aren’t even, well, false at all. So to bring up the risks of false allegations in a discussion about consent is not only misleading and disingenuous, it’s downright dangerous.

Feedback type 2

These were harder to read, but infinitely more valuable.

I received a number of messages from people telling me of things that had happened to them in the past, and how they’d blamed themselves, or never quite dealt with the feelings, or never quite been able to move on. They said that my post had made them cry, or laugh, or just feel believed or understood. Some said that they’d used my post to talk to their children about consent. A few said that my post had given them a sense of release from their past, a way of dealing with their past experiences, a sense of understanding that what happened to them wasn’t their fault. One said they wanted to tell me “what a difference you made today”.

To have people say they enjoyed your words, to see them shared over and over and to see people going YES, THIS was bewildering and wonderful and strange. But those messages telling me that I didn’t just write something funny or clever but that my words actually had real impact for people; to know that my brain ramblings have affected people, touched people and even helped them is an extraordinary feeling, and one I will treasure, even if no one ever reads this blog again*.

My life has also been changed by this experience; in that I will never be able to answer the question “fancy a cuppa?” without smirking.

*But I hope they do.

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50 Comments feminism, my opinions let me show you them

Consent: Not actually that complicated

Dino tea party, by KaffySmaffy on Tumblr

A short one today as my life is currently very complicated and conspiring against my preference to spend all of my days working out what to blog. But do you know what isn’t complicated?

Consent.

It’s been much discussed recently; what with college campuses bringing in Affirmative Consent rules, and with the film of the book that managed to make lack of consent look sexy raking it in at the box office. You may not know this, but in the UK we more or less have something similar to ‘affirmative consent’ already. It’s how Ched Evans was convicted while his co-defendant was not - and is along the lines of whether the defendant had a reasonable belief that the alleged victim consented. From the court documents it appears that while the jury felt that it was reasonable to believe that the victim had consented to intercourse with the co-defendant, it was not reasonable to believe that she’d consented to intercourse with some random dude that turned up halfway through (Evans). The issue in the UK isn’t traditionally in the way it’s dealt with in court, but in the way it has been investigated - new guidance was recently issued to try to improve this.

It seems like every time an article is written about consent, or a move made towards increasing the onus on the initiator of the sex to ensure that the person they are trying to have sex with, you know, actually WANTS to have sex with them, there are a wave of comments and criticisms.

rape-and-consent-590
even the comments in response to this cartoon illustrate the depth of lack of understanding of consent

It seems a lot of people really, REALLY don’t get what ‘consent’ means. From the famous “not everybody needs to be asked prior to each insertion” to the student that (allegedly) thought he’d surprise his partner with some non consensual BDSM to that fucking song to almost every damn comment on any article by anyone that suggests that yes means yes; it seems people really have a problem understanding that before you have sex with someone, and that’s every time you have sex with them, make sure they want to have sex with you. This goes for men, women, everyone. Whoever you are initiating sexytimes with, just make sure they are actually genuinely up for it. That’s it. It’s not hard. Really.

If you’re still struggling, just imagine instead of initiating sex, you’re making them a cup of tea.

You say “hey, would you like a cup of tea?” and they go “omg fuck yes, I would fucking LOVE a cup of tea! Thank you!*” then you know they want a cup of tea.

If you say “hey, would you like a cup of tea?” and they um and ahh and say, “I’m not really sure…” then you can make them a cup of tea or not, but be aware that they might not drink it, and if they don’t drink it then - this is the important bit - don’t make them drink it. You can’t blame them for you going to the effort of making the tea on the off-chance they wanted it; you just have to deal with them not drinking it. Just because you made it doesn’t mean you are entitled to watch them drink it.

If they say “No thank you” then don’t make them tea. At all. Don’t make them tea, don’t make them drink tea, don’t get annoyed at them for not wanting tea. They just don’t want tea, ok?

They might say “Yes please, that’s kind of you” and then when the tea arrives they actually don’t want the tea at all. Sure, that’s kind of annoying as you’ve gone to the effort of making the tea, but they remain under no obligation to drink the tea. They did want tea, now they don’t. Sometimes people change their mind in the time it takes to boil that kettle, brew the tea and add the milk. And it’s ok for people to change their mind, and you are still not entitled to watch them drink it even though you went to the trouble of making it.

If they are unconscious, don’t make them tea. Unconscious people don’t want tea and can’t answer the question “do you want tea” because they are unconscious.

Ok, maybe they were conscious when you asked them if they wanted tea, and they said yes, but in the time it took you to boil that kettle, brew the tea and add the milk they are now unconscious. You should just put the tea down, make sure the unconscious person is safe, and - this is the important bit - don’t make them drink the tea. They said yes then, sure, but unconscious people don’t want tea.

If someone said yes to tea, started drinking it, and then passed out before they’d finished it, don’t keep on pouring it down their throat. Take the tea away and make sure they are safe. Because unconscious people don’t want tea. Trust me on this.

If someone said “yes” to tea around your house last saturday, that doesn’t mean that they want you to make them tea all the time. They don’t want you to come around unexpectedly to their place and make them tea and force them to drink it going “BUT YOU WANTED TEA LAST WEEK”, or to wake up to find you pouring tea down their throat going “BUT YOU WANTED TEA LAST NIGHT”.

Do you think this is a stupid analogy? Yes, you all know this already - of course you wouldn’t force feed someone tea because they said yes to a cup last week. Of COURSE you wouldn’t pour tea down the throat of an unconcious person because they said yes to tea 5 minutes ago when they were conscious. But if you can understand how completely ludicrous it is to force people to have tea when they don’t want tea, and you are able to understand when people don’t want tea, then how hard is it to understand when it comes to sex?

Whether it’s tea or sex, Consent Is Everything.

And on that note, I am going to make myself a cup of tea.

*I actually said this word for word to a friend in the early hours of Sunday morning after a warehouse party. Tea. It’s fucking brilliant.

all comments are subject to moderation

Creative Commons License
Tea Consent by RockstarDinosaurPiratePrincess is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://rockstardinosaurpirateprincess.com/2015/03/02/consent-not-actually-that-complicated/.

901 Comments feminism, my opinions let me show you them

difference is not definition - where's the diversity in our narratives?

A few weeks ago I read an article suggesting that we wouldn’t accept white actors ‘blacking up’ to play black characters, so why would we accept able-bodied actors ‘cripping up’ (their phrase, not mine) to play disabled characters. While I agreed with the general premise of the article the key example used was not ideal and derailed any useful discussion of the points the writer raised. The main example used was Eddie Redmayne’s portrayal of Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything”. I have to admit, I haven’t yet seen the movie, but I know enough about it to realise that Redmayne was portraying Hawking as both a young man and an older man, and therefore showing the progression of Hawking’s condition, requiring the actor to play both able-bodied and disabled aspects of Hawking’s life; something that even with the advances of CGI would have been extremely difficult for an actor with ALS. It’s a shame that this article didn’t quite pack the punch it could have done purely by dint of chosing a bad example with which to make the point; because there are many other films and TV shows where a disabled actor could have played a role, but it was handed to able-bodied actors because they were more famous, because CGI can do that now, or, well, I don’t know, just because.

I question casting in so many ways when watching film or TV. Why wasn’t the part of Maura in Transparent played by a trans actor? Why were all the dwarves in all of the recent Lord of the Rings movies played by average sized actors shrunk by CGI? Why wasn’t the part of, well, anyone powerful AT ALL in Exodus played by anyone other than a white dude?

The casting of able-boded actors in roles that could reasonably be played by disabled actors, or cisgendered actors in parts that could reasonably be played by transgendered or non-binary actors is another form of whitewashing and it’s not ok.

But I think there’s an even bigger problem here.

Why aren’t there more disabled actors working in films or tv playing, you know, characters? Not disabled characters, not a character with an ‘inspiration’ story arc about dealing or ‘overcoming’ their disability, just a person, playing a role where that person just also happens to have a disability? Why shouldn’t any disabled actor audition for any part at all and have a fair chance of playing that character, assuming that being partially sighted, or deaf, or a wheelchair user doesn’t actually affect that character’s storyline in any way shape or form? As Mark Povinelli put it, “I’ve got no problem with Ian McShane playing a dwarf, if I’m allowed to play a lawyer or a doctor or all of the things we seem to be denied so often.”

When Liz Carr was cast in Silent Witness as Forensic Examiner Clarissa Mullery, it felt like a breakthrough moment. As Carr said herself, “What I love about Clarissa is that she’s a disabled person but we don’t base the story on that, she just is. We don’t focus on it, but we also don’t deny it, and I think that’s brilliant.” Clarissa Mullery’s disability has absolutely nothing to do with her narrative, with her motivation, with her personality. Why aren’t there more roles like this out there? I mean, out here in the ‘real’ world disabled people go to work, they eat their lunch, they raise their children, play computer games, eat cake, fart, fall over, make mistakes, tidy the house, stay up late - all of those random little every day things that people do because that’s what people do because, you know, they are people. The question isn’t just why aren’t disabled actors being cast as disabled characters, but why can’t disabled actors be cast as any character?

While I was thinking about this lack of diversity in casting when it comes to disability, it occurred to me that this goes even further than disabled actors playing characters where their disability isn’t part of the narrative; in fact if you are anything at all other than an able-bodied white cisgendered heterosexual male, chances are that the thing that makes you ‘other’ - that differentiates you from that able-bodied white cis gendered heterosexual male - that thing will actually be fundamentally important in your character arc. Able-bodied white cisgendered heterosexual male characters get to be ANYTHING. They have all sorts of different narratives, storylines, motivations, flaws, trials and quirks. But if you are, say an able-bodied white cisgender homosexual man, there’s a high chance that your sexual preference will form some significant part of the narrative or feature as a plot device. If you are an able-bodied white cisgender homosexual woman, then the film will probably dwell on that even more. If you are a disabled black transgender homosexual woman, then, well, that entire movie is probably about how this woman is black and trans and gay and disabled.

It’s almost as if any deviation from the ‘default’ able bodied white cis gendered heterosexual man is seen as character or narrative in of itself. This is not the way things should be.

When a movie does manage to escape this idea of a ‘default’, the results can be fantastic. Ripley, for example, was originally conceived as a male character, but when the final draft of Alien was completed she was a woman. There was little difference to the script, to the plot or to her motivation as a result. They didn’t feel the need to throw in any references to PMT or add any sort of sex scene or pregnancy in to make us Get that She was a Woman In Space (at least, not for the first movie. But that’s a whole other blog post…) It didn’t MATTER in Alien that Ripley was a woman because her ‘woman-ness’ wasn’t in any way important to the narrative. Why is this so rare as an example when it worked so damn well? Why is it so rare that the gender, race, ability or sexual preference of a character is so unimportant to the narrative that this is one of the only examples I can think of? A film made 36 years ago?

On some occasions where a non able-bodied white cis gendered heterosexual man has been cast as a character where being an able-bodied white cis gendered heterosexual man DOESN’T EVEN MATTER there has been, well, let’s politely call it ‘consternation’. When rumours went around that Idris Elba could be the next Bond? CONSTERNATION. But really, does being white matter in any way shape or form to the character of Bond? Rumours that The Doctor could be played by a woman? CONSTERNATION. And poor Idris Elba can’t get a break because when he was cast as Heimdall? CONSTERNATION. Because people can apparently suspend their disbelief enough to go along with the idea that a semi-immortal alien race were mistaken for Norse deities while travelling interdimesionally using a rainbow bridge; but the idea that one of them might be black is just a step too far. James Bond’s or Heimdall’s ‘whiteness’, The Doctor’s ‘maleness’ - neither of these have any bearing on the character’s narrative or story whatsoever, so why couldn’t Bond be black, or The Doctor a woman?

Why do we have so many problems even now, 36 year years after Alien demonstrated that gender matters not a whit when it comes to being a badass or selling cinema tickets to awesome movies, in thinking that maybe, just maybe, we can be a little more diverse in how we write characters, how we cast characters?

If we can lose the idea that deviation from an arbitrary ‘default’ is the same thing as narrative, perhaps we can we have more characters who are not defined by their gender or their sexual preference or their disability. Who, like Clarissa Mullery, just are.

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Feminism is…

It can be hard to feminist (if you’ll permit me to use that word wholly inaccurately as a verb for a minute) especially once you pass the threshold of “wait, we’re not actually in the post-feminist society I was promised in 1997” and enter the world of “this bullshit is everywhere, I can’t unsee it and everything I used to enjoy seems tainted.” Your friends think you’re too earnest, too sensitive, too…feminist. Random people on the internet think you’re a mouthy shrill bitch who isn’t getting enough good man loving but they wouldn’t want to give it to you because you’re too fat for them anyway. People at work look at you askance when you tell a colleague that saying “god, MEN, all the same, never ask for directions” is sexist and then they all awkwardly change the subject.

And it’s a battle on two sides - you’re not just trying to be the good feminist ambassador for rights and equality, you also feel that you’re constantly having to defend feminism itself. I often find myself on the back foot in these sorts of conversations - saying things like “that’s not really what feminists think”, “that’s not what feminism’s aims are”, “that’s not what feminists want” and, of course, “#notallfeminists are like that”. But you can’t really define something by what it isn’t. When you are faced with people challenging your viewpoint retreating into your corner and assuming a defensive position isn’t going to win hearts, change minds or get you a cool winning move. So today, instead of talking about what feminism isn’t, instead of saying “this is not my feminism”, I thought I would write about what feminism is and should be - when it’s working at its very best. I asked a few pals, men and women, who self identify as feminists, what words and phrases they associate with the starting words “Feminism is…”. What follows is an edited collection of the ideas we came up with.

Feminism is about equality

At its very core, feminism is the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities and the advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes. So, if you believe that men and women deserve equal rights and equal treatment, and you say that out loud, then you are a feminist! It really is that simple.

Equality doesn’t mean that women should be better than or in charge of men, and equality doesn’t mean that men should be treated as badly as women.

Feminism is about choice

Feminism wants women and men to be able to have the freedom to make the same choices; be they big obvious ones like becoming an engineer or an art teacher or a parent or less obvious ones like being able to choose to walk home alone after dark. Obvious ones like a girl being able to choose to do a GSCE in computer programming and a boy to choose home economics and less obvious ones like a girl chosing to dress as Batman and a boy chosing to dress as Elsa.

We’re not talking about the choice to do absolutely anything you want to do without consequences; as I discussed a few weeks ago choice cannot be unlimited, as some choices you make cause harm. But choices shouldn’t ever be limited to gender.

Feminism is intersectional

Intersectionality is about recognising that people experience different types of oppression which intersect and affect how we experience the world. How we think about feminism and how we advocate for each other must take this into account. To talk about an “oppression olympics” is to miss the point by such a spectacular margin that one can only assume anyone that does is either trolling or wasn’t paying attention. Intersectionality is particularly important for feminism because white women’s voices have a tendency to be heard over those of other marginalised groups. If we see hashtags like #solidarityisforwhitewomen and go oh hey now, I’m not like that, waaaahhh #notallfeminists then you know what we’re doing, right? Instead of taking the opportunity to learn and listen we are derailing; forcing the conversation to be about us, and failing to take into account how different aspects of people’s lives and backgrounds affect their experience of gender based oppression.

Feminism is for men

Anyone can be a feminist (although I think cats struggle with the concept) and as feminism advocates for equality it by definition advocates for everybody. The majority of feminists recognise that pretty much all of the issues that women, men and people who identify outside of the gender binary face are down to a society with patriarchy built in at it’s very roots.

There is a lot of confusion over what ‘patriarchy’ means and it’s often misunderstood as meaning simply ‘men’, but it’s far more complex. When someone blames ‘patriarchy’ they are not blaming men. While my personal focus is on empowering women and ending violence and oppression against women, I also believe that dismantling patriarchical ideas of gender expression will have a huge benefit for men too, and that many of the issues men face (for example, in custody issues, suicide and depression rates, minimisation of male rape and domestic violence against men) are products of a society which values ‘masculinity’ and sees ‘femininity’ as inferior. When women are no longer seen as inherently nurturing (a product of patriarchy) and men as inherently violent (a product of patriarchy) we’ll see change. When women are no longer seen as inherently weak and submissive (a product of patriarchy) and men are no longer seen as inherently strong and dominant (a product of patriarchy) we’ll see change.

Feminism is multifaceted

One accusation often lobbied against feminists like me is that we are focusing on silly unimportant things like page 3 and “compliments“ and toilets and putting women on banknotes when what we SHOULD be doing is campaigning against IMPORTANT things that REALLY affect women like FGM and domestic violence. This demonstrates a lack of awareness of how all of these things are related in a structural system like patriarchy, and it implies that any feminist that is campaigning against, say, street harassment, is incapable of also caring about or campaigning around other issues.

There are so many aspects of our world which need attention and focus, and no one feminist can campaign against Every. Single. One. That would be exhausting! What we can do however is lend our voices to each other’s campaigns even as we focus on our own. I don’t personally campaign directly around FGM or for the 50/50 parliament but I know people who do and I support them and spread their message, and offer my assistence when they need it, just as they would do for me.

Feminism is global

From the college in Nigeria offering scholarships to the girls affected by Boko Harem, to the projects in India working to improve access to safe bathrooms for women, to the youth empowerment schemes in Burma; movements all around the world are working to improve the future for women and girls.

We’re lucky in the UK to have as much freedom and power as we do - but just because women in one country are better off than women in another isn’t a reason for women to ‘settle’ for being ‘not as badly off’. Feminists therefore will focus their energies on the issues close to them, and to their communities, but this doesn’t stop feminism being, and needing to be, a global movement.

Feminism is courage

When women are bombarded with threats and are even killed for standing up for their beliefs it can be scary - and dangerous - to keep putting yourself out there and continuing to stand up and shout. For every woman that refuses to be silent, for every woman who won’t ‘just get off the internet’, who won’t ‘just stay at home’, who won’t ‘get back in the kitchen and make a sammich’, who won’t ‘shush now and be a good girl’ there are millions more standing behind them supporting them, holding them up, and millions more unable to use their own voices who rely on those that speak out to make a difference. It takes courage to stand up, courage to keep speaking, and determination to never stop.

Feminism is community

Divide and rule is a known tactic of oppressive systems, and it’s extremely successful within patriarchy. Once you can escape the media-supported idea that other women are your ‘competition’ and that bringing other women down will make you feel better, you open yourself to a brave new world of supportive voices. I have met some of the most incredible women on my journey, and we’ve all had similar experiences of having our battles minimised and criticised and denied by people who think we can’t succeed, or who don’t want us to. I can vouch from experience that there’s nothing more powerful than a room full of women going “I get it. This is hard. But we’re utterly awesome, and we understand, and we can do it. YOU GOT THIS”.

Feminism is honest

I will let my friend’s own words speak for this one: “I almost said ‘acknowledgement’ but I think ‘honesty’ is more positive. The recognition of inequality, and the drive to address that to make things better for everyone, rather than to promote women above men. A lot of anti-feminist criticism seems to suggest that we are dishonest about what we want.”

Feminism is being a good parent

I am not a parent, but I have many friends who are, and they all felt strongly that their identities as feminists and parents were inextricably linked. They want to make sure their daughters get all the opportunities they deserve, and aren’t limited by society telling them they must be pretty and sweet. They want to make sure their sons know they can be sensitive, loving, kind and caring. They want their daughters to believe it’s ok for them to be strong and powerful, and for their sons to believe it’s ok to be gentle and quiet. They want their daughters and sons to never fear chosing a pink item over a blue one or vice versa. They want their daughters to feel safe on the streets, and their sons to know why this is their responsibility too.

Fathers should be able to take on a loving, caring and nurturing role without it being either questioned or applauded. Mothers should be able to take on an economically supportive role without it being criticised or analysed. The work of being a parent should be recognised as vital, important, difficult and rewarding - regardless of the gender or sex of the person doing the parenting.

Feminism is challenging

Feminism challenges the prevailing ideas within society. It questions the status quo and says “um, actually, no, this is not ok” and goes about trying to fix that shit.

But feminism also has to challenge itself and feminists must challenge each other in order to develop our own ideas and be better allies. We should challenge each other when our feminism is exclusionary, when it isn’t as intersectional as it should be. We should challenge each other when we perpetuate problematic language . We should challenge each other even when we agree, just to make sure our ideas hold up to scrutiny, and to know how to back up our arguments. Challenge should be about mutual learning and understanding. It is through challenge that we grow.

Feminism is hopeful

Every feminist genuinely believes we are going to one day have a society where we all have equal rights and opportunities. That’s why we keep doing this. Sometimes it seems insurmountable - it feels like the task is just too huge and too complex, and that patriarchy and oppression is so deeply hardwired into our society that even the task of getting people to see it in the first place is too great. But every day we’ll fight on because we believe we’re right, and we believe we have the moral responsibility to keep pushing.

My hope comes from seeing the young people in my local community and how engaged they are with issues of equality, empowerment, consent and respect. They might get written off as ‘just kids’ - but these young people have a far more sophisticated understanding of social justice, privilege, inequality and equality than I ever did at their age, and they are developing the language to speak out with confidence.

If the young people within my community are in any way representative of the young feminists out there, and I believe they are, then I have no doubt that the future is feminist.

And Feminism Is Awesome.

n.b. Feminism is…about so much more than I’ve been able to cover. If I’ve missed something important to you, let me know in the comments

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Paladins and Paradoxes

“You have to have a motivation - think about it. What’s the source of your hatred?” “PATRIARCHY”

I remember once, when I was quite little, back in nineteen eightymumble, finding a red box with some books inside, with pictures of dragons and monsters. I think there were also some dice, a map and some picture cards. My memory is hazy as it was a long time ago. I don’t remember where the box came from, but it did end up amongst my other games and occasionally I’d take out all the contents and try to understand them. I have a vague memory of asking MummyDinosaurPirate how it was played, but I don’t remember the actual answer, just a vague sense that it was ‘complicated’ and ‘for grown ups’.

Fast forward several decades to last night - I played my first ever actual game of Dungeons and Dragons. It was confusing, but an awful lot of fun. I took pictures and posted them online to the shock of some of my friends. The overall reaction was along the lines of: NO WAY this was your FIRST GAME? WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU DOING as a child? Continue Reading

6 Comments feminism, Me Me Me, my opinions let me show you them