Have a little faith, Fay...

Fay Weldon recently published an article in which she claims that feminism has turned women into wage slaves.

"The downside of feminism", she says, "is that women are now expected to go out to work...Once it was only the men who were wage-slaves, and now it's the men and the women too".

Oh, Fay. Herstorian wishes you had more faith in feminism! It's like the Dalai Lama saying "Well the downside of world peace is..."

Weldon does praise feminism for offering the "least worst" method for reforming society: "And least worst is feminist society, which is more or less what we're getting now. And people are on the whole happier than they were before. Although everybody's much more tired"

Not a stunning endorsement from such a ground-breaking feminist.

Weldon is right to call attention to the problems with the modern family and the current organization of labour. Work-life balance, the need for two-incomes, the cost and availability of childcare, the decline of social capital are all feminist issues that need to be addressed. But blaming feminism for these issues is thinking so lazy it is on par with arguments that the current economic crisis is due to too many women in the workforce taking up jobs (instead of bankers who, dissatisfied by the size of their cocks, compensate by making risky investments and giving themselves massive bonuses).

The fact that women are 'wage slaves' now too is not an inevitable, unfortunate result of the feminist movement. And it doesn't mean that we should give up on feminism. Herstorian sees it as evidence that the feminist project is far from complete. In a truly 'feminist society' everybody, male or female, would be able to make a decent wage working decent hours. They wouldn't have to choose between raising a family and having an inspiring, challenging career. If thus far the feminist movement has been about allowing women into male spaces then its project now should transforming those spaces. Only then can we truly call our society a 'feminist society'. But to do so we need to have little more faith in what feminism can do.

Don't forget about the men...

Several universities, including Manchester University and Oxford, have recently launched 'men's groups' - exclusive male groups that will "celebrate and explore the concept of masculinity". Not surprisingly, this has provoked outrage by many. Prominent feminists say these men's groups undermine efforts to achieve equality and that society in general is already male-oriented. Herstorian says: it's true that most social spaces are male-oriented. Which is exactly why we need men's groups to discuss masculinity and traditional gender roles. Alex Linsley, founder of the men's group at Oxford explains:

"There is so much conflicting information for men. There is massive confusion as to what being a man means, and how to be a good man. Should you be the sensitive all-caring, perhaps the 'feminised' man? Or should you be the hard, take no crap from anybody kind of figure?

Neither of those are particularly useful paradigms. But there's perhaps things we could learn from both perspectives."

If feminists really want to achieve equality, then they have to develop a more nuanced, complex understanding of the subordination of women - namely, how it is made possible by dominant female and male gender archetypes. Social equality for women is unlikely to be achieved simply by overthrowing old notions about what women should do, be and want. We need a similar revolution in how we think men should behave and what we think masculinity should mean.

Time is a feminist issue...

Herstorian apologizes deeply for her long absence. She has been working loads at a uninspiring, ill-paid bar job. This leaves little time to sort out the problems of the world.

But then again most women in the world spend their time doing uninspiring and ill-paid - and usually exploitative, dangerous, or abusive - jobs. Isn't it ironic that it is just these women that we need to hear from the most? These women have a perspective on gendered inequalities that is invaluable. And thus, usually invisible.

Anyways, no more moping, let's crack on. Jill Berry, president of the Girls' School Association, recently said that girls need to be taught to be 'realistic' about the difficulties of being both a good mother and career woman. Berry does well to highly the difficulties of balancing work and family. But why shouldn't men be taught to be 'realistic' about the difficulties of being a good father and a 'career' man (by the way career men are never called career men; they are either just men or - if they are good at it - good providers)? Most importantly, though, Herstorian wishes Berry had advocated a' dose of realism' for the state and society. She casts the difficulties of balancing work and family as an individual, female issue instead of as a crucial issue that affects society en masse and requires a mass solution. We need to provide more social services to help women - and men - to manage careers and family more easily. Flextime, job sharing, and state-sponsored childcare is a start. But to really make a difference we need to make it socially acceptable for men to be equally responsible for childcare and the running of a successful home. That is the 'dose of reality' we need. If we don't, we risk losing the brain power and social capital of half of the our population.

Herstorian needs back up....

Check out Piyali Bhattacharya's column on South Asian feminisms here. And not just because she's Herstorian's friend.

Biggest Sex Slavery Inquiry Fails to Net Single Trafficker...

....and biggest Herstorian inquiry of major media coverage of sex trafficking fails to find single article that incorporates a female perspective. Today's Guardian contained two articles concerning sex trafficking and sexual slavery in the UK. In these articles, Nick Davies reports that Operation Pentameter Two, the UK's biggest anti-trafficking operation to date, failed to find any traffickers.. Out of 406 arrests, 153 were released without charge or with a caution for a minor offense, 73 were charged with violating migration laws, 76 were convicted but for non-trafficking offenses. Only 96 people were arrested and held, and only 67 were charged. Of those 67 only 22 were prosecuted. In sum, only 15 traffickers were arrested and prosecuted as such. From these numbers Nick argues that the scale and nature of sex trafficking into the UK has been greatly exaggerated. Well this is just great! A feminist issue Herstorian can stop worrying about! Thanks, Nick!

Unfortunately, Nick's logic is as faulty as Jan Moir's (see 19 October). Davies reels off numbers but fails to give an adequate account of just how police investigations into sex trafficking is actually undertaken. Police forces frequently have little knowledge or understanding of the nuances of sex trafficking and thus can often fail to recognize a trafficker or a trafficked person. Police action on sex trafficking usually takes the form of raids on massage parlors or brothels, such as the Soho raids in 2003. In these raids anyone suspected of being trafficked (read: any foreign woman) is arrested and held in police detention. They are then interviewed by a police officer or a immigration officer to see if they have been trafficking. Is it really likely that a foreign-born woman, who may be illiterate or have very limited English, would be able to stand up and say "Hey I've been trafficked, yes I have! That's my trafficker right there!"?!?!? It is unlikely that a trafficked woman, who may have been raped, beaten, or otherwise abused, would be emotionally, mentally, financially or physically able to open up to a stranger in a uniform, especially one with the ability to deport her.

She may not even realize that she has experienced a rights violation punishable by law. Think about it. The line between smuggling and trafficking is blurry. Very rarely is a trafficked woman actually abducted in her home in the middle of the night and kept in chains. A woman may have may have decided to migrate voluntarily but was then captured, tricked or coerced in the migration process. Migrating is expensive and dangerous for disadvantaged women. Usually women rely on third-parties to aid the migration process (such as procuring visas, loaning money for transport). They arrive in the country of destination with "debts" in the tens of thousands and so are in effect held as indentured sex labour until their "debts" are paid off. The 2003 UN Protocol on the Trafficking of Persons recognizes situations such as this, where a person is coerced or tricked into migration or sex work, as trafficking. But is it likely that a trafficked woman would be up-to-date on the niceties of international legislation regarding human trafficking?

This has huge ramifications for the identification and prosecution of traffickers, which rely on victim testimony. If victims are unable or unwilling to report, identify, or testify against their traffickers, then it doesn't surprise Herstorian that only 15 traffickers have been prosecuted. This doesn't mean that the sex trafficking and slavery phenomenon is exaggerated. It means we don't have adequate means yet of addressing it.

There's nothing smart about Jan Moir...

There's nothing Herstorian hates more than gay-bashing....except maybe bad statistics. Last Saturday's Daily Mail ran an article by Jan Moir arguing that there was "nothing natural" about gay Boyzone member Stephen Gately's death in Mallorca last week. At the end of her article Moir states:

Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael.

Of course, in many cases this may be true. Yet the recent death of Kevin McGee, the former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, and now the dubious events of Gately's last night raise troubling questions about what happened.

So Moir's argument is, basically: Gately was gay and died, Kevin McGee was gay and died. Hmmm... I guess, being gay is no good. That's just bad maths. Every statistics professor on the planet starts off the course with the same example of bad stats: Everyone who has eaten beans has died. Therefore, beans are fatal. Moir needs a refresher course in basic stats. Actually, just plain old logical thinking would do the trick.

She goes on to bash Gately's elements of "gay" lifestyle, citing such activities as smoking pot and clubbing - as if heterosexual people never smoke pot or go clubbing. Why, when a gay person does it, does it suddenly have something to do with his or her sexuality?

Poor Polanski....

Ruh-roh. Last week, film-maker Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland for the 1977 rape of Samantha Geimer. Having plead guilty to 'having sex with a minor', Polanski fled the U.S., fearing the judge would reneg on his plea agreement. He has been 'on the run' ever since - by the way, 'on the run' has meant living the good life in France, having lots of sex (hopefully consensually-and with people old enough to spell 'consent'-but one never knows). His arrest has been greeted with a suitable level of outrage from artists, writers, philosophers, politicians and journalists around the world. Yay! Justice is served.....

Wait a minute though....they seem to be outraged that Roman was arrested at all..... "Free Roman Polanski?

Surely these petitions are the work of back-water, unenlightened, hill-billy misogynist cavemen? Hmmm... Woody Allen? Herstorian doesn't understand. Oh, that's right. It's Woody Allen. He enjoys getting frisky with his adopted daughter. Don't worry. Didn't you know that artists with penises can do whatever they want? If they've got a solo exhibition or an endorsement from The Times or an Academy Award under their belt it's not disgusting, ladies, it's bohemian and enlightened. Anyways, Woody MUST be a one-off....

Wait a minute....Salman Rushdie? Milan Kundera? These aren't backwards hicks stuck in the Stone Age. These are our intelligentsia. These are our great thinkers. What is going on?

The Polanski case, and particularly the intensity of support for him from so many areas of seemingly enlightened public life, just reveals how little progress we've actually made in creating a world in which women can live free of the violence of sexual assault. And by violence, Herstorian doesn't just mean physical force, but the psychic and emotional violence of coercion, of manipulation, of threat or of the abuse of a position of power. Herstorian's answer: we need to start thinking more deeply about what the terms we use to describe rape, consent, power, or responsibility actually mean - and whether they are actually adequate descriptions of the way women move through the world, experience their bodies and interact with men. A more stringent definition of responsibility in the Roman Polanski case could leave no doubt - even in the mind of Salman Rushdie - that Polanski is a criminal and should be punished accordingly.

On a brighter note, now that Herstorian no longer has any respect for Salman Rushdie, she no longer feels obligated to suffer through Midnight's Children.

C'mon ladies....

Rawr. So apparently we all should be quite peeved that Lady Scotland, the attorney general and the highest legal authority in England and Wales, has employed - oh no! - an illegal immigrant. Never mind that said illegal immigrant is "not a welfare scrounger, drugs racketeer or slum landlord, but a respectable, hard-working, married woman." 

This story becomes even more Greek tragedy-esque when we remember that it was Lady Scotland that played a crucial role in steering the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act of 2006 which, among other provisions, imposes stricter penalties for employers that failed to ensure their employees were able to work legally in the UK blah blah blah boring legal political stuff...Fuckit, Herstorian is bored. Let's gossip about the gals!

Mrs. Loloahi Tapui-Zivancevic grew up in a one-room house with five sisters and two brothers on the island of Vava'u in Tonga. Her family lives on the meagre income garnered from her sisters' mat-weaving business for the tourism industry and her fathers' subsistance farming. She attended school until age 17, and then helped her mother to run their impoverished household.  As the oldest sibling, it was considered her responsibility to provide for her younger siblings. She emigrated to the UK on a student visa in 2003. Since then she has supported her family in Tonga with regular remittances. 

 "I thought she was a really nice woman", says Lady Scotland, (Hmmmmm....Herstorian thinks so too) "but it looks as if I made a number of errors of judgment in terms of character."

Herstorian is confused. Exactly what kind of character has Mrs. Tapui-Zinvancevic displayed? Helping her mother to run a household under circumstances that are less than ideal?  Getting an education? Supporting a family? Sure she was - oh, dear! that evil of evils -Illegal. But Herstorian still suspects Lady Scotland might have had it right in the beginning. 

In a speech at the "Women of the Year" Lunchean in 1993 Lady Scotland argued there is a female and a male way to do things in any profession. Herstorian wishes Lady Scotland would take a dose of her own advice and look at the Loloahi scandal with a female perspective. 

Tough, tough. No worries though, L.S.! Herstorian will help get you started....

Hmmmm...a female perspective... Well, it might guide us to an understanding that the Loloahi Tapui-Zivanocevic is hardly an individual, isolated incident.  Women make up the bulk of the world's poor. No surprise then, that women make up the bulk of the world's survival migrants. Many developing nations rely on the remittances sent home by their surplus supply of desperate - and therefore cheap and exploitable - female labour and encourage migration as a development strategy. At the same time, developed industrial nations (England, that means you) rely on draconian immigration policies to keep needed migrant labour 'illegal' and therefore cheap.  

L.S., a female perspective involves examining incidents like the Loloahi Tapui-Zivancevic scandal for what they reveal about wider structural gender inequalities. It means questioning "common sense" statements like "she is illegal" for what they really mean. It means discovering who is really benefitting from controlling the discourse surrounding issues like "illegal" migration (Ahem...Herstorian says the answer is men, the answer is always men...kidding. Kinda.). 

It means seeing beyond the values and the ways of thinking about the world that serve to impoverish, subjugate and exploit women. Come on, ladies....let's all follow our first instincts and be "really nice" to one another. 

What your tutor is realllly thinking about while you're talking about your essay....

Terence Kealey, Vice Chancellor of The University of Buckingham, has kindly taken time out of his busy schedule to warn his colleagues of the dangers of lust in the lecture theatre.

...what happens when the natural order is disrupted by faculty members who, on parking their cars, head for the students' bedrooms?

What indeed, Terence?

The great academic novel of the 19th century was George Eliot's Middlemarch. The great academic novel of the 20th century was Malcolm Bradbury's The History Man. Both books chronicle lust between male scholars and female acolytes, and I expect that the great academic novel of the 21st century will describe more of the same. So, why do universities pullulate with transgressive intercourse?

Why is the overarching narrative, the only relationship conceivable between teacher and student, that of the male scholar and the female "acolyte"? Women are scholars too, my friend. And, here's a little secret for you: not all female students are devoted acolytes. In fact, some of them - and Herstorian is just taking a wild stab in the dark here -  think you're a pompous pontificating little prick.  Hmmm....Good SAT word there with pullulate, though. But too bad -  Herstorian says: you're still a dick. Let's read on! 

The fault lies with the females.

Oh, dear! 

...girls fantasise. This was encapsulated by Beverly in Tom Wolfe's novel I Am Charlotte Simmons, who forces herself on to JoJo, the campus sports star, with the explanation that "all girls want sex with heroes". On an English campus, academics can be heroes.

Herstorian gets the impression Terence really wants to be a Hero. Tom Wolfe, too.

Normal girls - more interested in abs than in labs, more interested in pecs than specs, more interested in triceps than tripos - will abjure their lecturers for the company of their peers, but nonetheless, most male lecturers know that, most years, there will be a girl in class who flashes her admiration and who asks for advice on her essays. What to do?

Ahem, we'll just leave the whole "calling women girls" thing slide. Herstorian would hate to be thought of as one of those strident, nit-picking feminazi types. Oh, horrors! However, Herstorian would like our friend Terence to define normal girls. Herstorian thinks of herself as a normal girl, and she couldn't care less about abs, pecs, or triceps. She is, however, quite embarrassed that all of those times she asked for advice on an essay, she was coming on to her lecturer! What a little slut! And here she thought she was just being a conscientious student. 

So, what advice does Terence have for his poor academic heroes, especially those cursed - one might even say pullulating - with treacherous normal-girl-distracting abs, pecs and triceps?

Enjoy her! She's a perk. She doesn't yet know that you are only Casaubon to her Dorothea, Howard Kirk to her Felicity Phee, and she will flaunt you her curves. Which you should admire daily to spice up your sex, nightly, with the wife.

Yup, I'm afraid so. As in Stringfellows, you should look but not touch.

Herstorian has several fancy degrees (but no job....hmmmm) and is saddened to realize that all these years, to her male lecturers, she was just a perk. Not a person. Just a perk with no passions, no interests, no opinions. 

Terence has defended his article by saying it is just humour deployed to make the point that academics and students shouldn't sleep together. But things are funny for a reason.  They are funny because they reveal a truth. The male academics that would find this article funny do so because, deep down, they really do think of their female students as voluptuous, wanton Dorotheas, Felicitys and Beverlys. The humour of the article comes from the fact that Terence has transgressed the social boundaries that keep those thoughts hidden. 

Terence is right. It is just a humourous article. For some. It's funny. But it shouldn't be. 

Hair where?

Ah! Clarification! Herstorian has been confused by hair etiquette for years and finally - Thank God! - the fashion world has come to the rescue. Apparently, hair is good! - desirable, even - when it is on one's head, on one's feet, and costs a lot. Legs, pits and cunts still off-limits, though, ladies! So don't throw away that Nair! And by-god don't cancel that Brazilian with the scary woman with a fierce belief in the aesthetics of no eyebrows, slicked-back hair, and the liberal application of lip liner (How else would she terrify a gal into getting into positions no person with any respect for the dignity of the human body would consider? "Now lift your legs and spread your.....").

Seriously, though. When and why did hair there become such a big deal? This certainly isn't a new phenomenon. Female nudes have traditionally never had hair. Gustave Courbet was one of the first artists to ever show a female nude with pubic hair and he was practically rode out of the Paris Salon on a rail. (Herstorian has a bit of a crush on Gustave.)  The little girl look, however, has seemed to take on a new, different kind of resonance in recent years. Herstorian watched an old episode of Sex and the City - that avatar of modern heterosexual relations - recently in which a major story line revolves around the naughtiness, the strangeness, of a no-hair-there situation. Ten years later the baby girl look is not only desirable, but common, acceptable, the norm even. Herstorian wonders if this isn't a reaction to women getting more power, being more independent, and putting less stock in their relationships with men. Scary for the boys, who need to make their women girls again. Scary too, for the women, who just want to be girls again, when daddy, grampy, uncle or Prince Charming would make everything okay. Maybe we're just talking through modern gender relations with our twats. 

In the interest of full disclosure, Herstorian herself has left Brazil long ago and moved to Hollywood. Discuss.