‘Sexuality’ Category

  1. It’s your choice…

    April 16, 2012 by luc7m

    Image from http://www.demotix.com/

    So, Rick Santorum has dropped out of the Presidential race, leaving the marginally lesser of the two evils, Mitt Romney, to lead the Republican Party against Obama in November. Now, my entire knowledge of the American political system is based solely on everything I’ve learned watching eight series of The West Wing and a book called ‘Understanding the American Government’ which my parents brought me back from Washington once (not sure why). But, I do know enough to realise that should Romney win, there will be big changes for women everywhere.

    In case you haven’t been following, I will summarise. If the Republican Party wins and Mitt Romney becomes President of the United States, he has vowed to overturn the ruling passed in 1973, stating that women have the right to terminate a pregnancy in its early stages. This puts the decision to allow abortions to be carried out down to the individual States. If the law is overturned, it is likely two thirds of the States will prohibit abortion, which will result in a rise of unwanted children and an increase in the use of illegal and dangerous back alley abortion clinics.

    Understandably, it has caused uproar in the US amongst pro-choice supporters but it has also caused renewed fervour amongst pro-life groups and their intimidation on abortion clinics, doctors and pregnancy advisory services. There has also been an increase in this behaviour over here, where abortion has been legal since 1967, with Marie Stopes clinics amongst those being targeted by protesters across the country. Thankfully the protests haven’t quite reached the levels of terrorisation seen over the pond but it’s only a matter of time and, if the US government is supporting pro-life campaigns, they’re likely to get worse.

    Currently in seven, soon to be eight, States in the US, the law requires the unspeakably abhorrent practice of making a woman listen to the heartbeat of the foetus she wishes to abort, go home and wait 24 hours to consider her decision, before the procedure can be completed. Some even require the patient to view the ultrasound image.

    This is for EVERYONE, regardless of whether it’s a one night stand gone wrong, a desperately wanted child with a life limiting birth defect or even if the birth would place the mother’s life in danger, not to mention cases of conception through rape and incest. It’s a disgusting attempt, by law-makers sitting thousands of miles away in sound proofed offices with plush carpeting, to influence an already vulnerable woman into changing her mind by personifying her foetus.

    No one should ever underestimate the emotions involved in making that decision. An abortion is an incredibly sad and traumatic event, but no-one has the right to manipulate or judge it in any way. I have never been pregnant and I’ve never had a scare, but I have supported friends through it, and it’s horrible and heartbreaking and distressing.

    In the past few months, five of my close friends have given birth to beautiful, healthy babies and I love seeing them, but I also love giving them back at the end of the day. At 33 I should most probably be thinking about settling down and having one myself – I do know that I want a family one day but I also know that I’m not ready yet, not even close. Nevertheless, I don’t think that means I should be celibate as pro-life groups believe, however I don’t sleep with people I don’t have feelings for regardless of whether there’s a future or not. And if I do find myself pregnant before I’m ready, whatever decision I make will be MY choice and no one else’s.

    In the meantime, let’s all hope Obama wins again.

    Lucy is a PR lady, peanut butter aficionado and marmite lover. She’s a big fan of Jilly Cooper (sorry, Luce – I still haven’t finished Riders) and recently came second in her work’s big bake off. You find follow Lucy on Twitter right here. 

    Category Body, Feminism, Motherhood, News, Sexuality | Tags: ,,,,, | 2 Comments

  2. Why I Still Love You, Madonna

    April 3, 2012 by CJMortimer

    Photo from http://chuvachienes.com

    Liz Jones of sperm stealing, Daily Mail fame wrote last Tuesday that Madonna was past it and should put some clothes on.

    In her third article criticising Madonna’s lifestyle choices this year (her other potshots include telling Madonna dating a toyboy makes her look old and her looking ‘pillow faced’ at the Venice festival) Liz Jones attacks her for wearing fishnets and satin short shorts at a recent musical festival.

    While I must concede that Madonna, at 53, is no longer in her prime I am still outraged by an attempt to say that the Material Girl should behave some decorum.

    As preamble to her tale of controversial semen rustling Liz Jones proudly proclaimed that she was a feminist and that she looked down on ‘mumsy’ types that had given up on any hint of independence and sex appeal.

    So why criticise Madonna for doing the opposite?

    I’ll be first to admit that Madonna is not the spring chicken she once was; no matter how many liposuctions or macrobiotic lunches or toyboy husbands she gets through she will never again regain the true flower of her youth. Not even if she grows it in a lab, which I’m sure she has either already tried or will try in the near future.

    However, Iggy Pop, who is incidentally 65 next month and has a bass player who frequently appears with a cardigan and a cup of tea onstage, is almost ubiquitously seen running around topless and no-one has told him to cover up. When he unexpectedly performed a set to my sister and her classmates on a school trip to the local country house six or seven years ago (long story) most of the parents and teachers regarded the spectacle of a half naked pensioner cavorting about in front of a bunch of eight year olds amusing rather than distasteful (my sister on the other hand remembers just being confused by the whole thing).

    Similarly, Mick Jagger (pushing 70) still struts around a stage doing that bizarre chicken-fish hybrid dance that he does and sleeps with women a third of his age.

    Why is it when does Madonna any of this then she is ‘sad’?

    Madonna has always been a massive headache for the establishment. When she first arrived on the scene people thought she was a one hit wonder because she was no great beauty, no great voice and pop still considered the need for a King rather than a Queen on its throne.

    Fast forward thirty years; Madonna still reigns supreme and she is now in good company. At some point she will have to pass on her crown but it never would have been possible for the Britneys, the Kylies, the Lady Gagas and even the Adeles of the modern music industry to get their stilettos through the door if it wasn’t for her. She has proved time and time again that women can sit at the top table with men and behave just as badly as they like.

    Why stop now? Why not branch out and take over small African countries while you’re at it? A man would give half the opportunity.

    As feminists we have a set list of people we’re ‘supposed’ to admire. Emmeline Pankhurst, Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer and the rest. They wrote about feminism, they studied, they campaigned for it. They railed against the Patriarchy. Women like Madonna who spent the past thirty years parading around in their knickers should be ashamed by comparison.

    However, Pankhurst, Friedan and Greer were campaigning, all in their own ways, for women’s right to behave exactly in the same way as men.

    The new generation of female icons like Madonna, Caitlin Moran and even Lady Gaga are doing exactly that. They don’t give a crap if people think they’re being obscene, uncivilised or stupid. They do what they like, get their own way and don’t even bother to notice those who get in a sulk about it.

    So that is why Madonna, no matter what she wears or how many African children equate her with the child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, will always sit comfortably between George Orwell and Anna Wintour when I list my idols.

    Living your life according the principle WWMD (What Would Madonna Do?) may not seem so ridiculous when you consider she moved to New York in 1978 with $35 in her pocket and in 2008 earned an estimated $40 million bringing up her total net worth to an estimated $500 million as of 2011.

    Caroline is a student at Birmingham University. She’s also a freelance journalist and blogger, providing insights into political, social, and economic news from around the world. You can follow her on Twitter here, or you can check out her superb blog here. 

    Category Body, Feminism, Happy, Rants, Sexuality | Tags: ,,,,, | No Comments

  3. Street Harassment Goes On Tour…

    March 26, 2012 by CJMortimer

    Image from http://www.shropshirestar.com/

    Breaking the trend of the last few days, my tale of harassment happens on a train rather than on the street.

    Although I’ve had my fair share of leery, creepy men and their unwanted attention, I’ve never experienced the kind of verbal abuse that lots of women were talking about last week. My story is not about drunk men, dark evenings and inappropriate banter. It happened on a commuter train, silently, in the middle of the day.

    It began relatively innocuously. I was minding my own business, nursing a (slight) hangover on a Virgin train between Birmingham and London at around five o’clock on a cold December afternoon in the window seat of a carriage full to the brim with businessmen (quietly) conducting their business on their laptops, (loudly) discussing their next meeting on their iPhones and Blackberries and (probably) texting their mistresses the time they were coming over that weekend.

    At Rugby a man came and sat next to me. This in itself wasn’t all that remarkable as there were few free seats left on the train and despite my slight claustrophobia and dislike of people I don’t know near me it did not bother me too much. For half an hour nothing happened, I looked out the window, listening to my iPod and thought about the night before while he read the Daily Star or some other tabloid that I wasn’t really paying attention to.

    Then he decided to ‘fall asleep’.

    I didn’t noticed much at first until his fingers started to graze my thigh slightly. I shifted uncomfortably so they’d fall off, yet the hand remained. I coughed loudly so he was jolted awake and his hand moved as he stirred. Thinking it was innocent I looked out the window again. A few minutes later I felt the hand again this time they were edging a bit closer to my crotch. Then I realised his eyelashes were flickering the way my little sister and I’s used to when we were little and were trying to feign sleep to my parents.

    Horrified that this was deliberate I trying edging closer to the window but, as anyone who has ever been on a Virgin train will attest that, this did not make much difference.

    So I was stuck. Of course what pass through my mind was forcibly pushing his hand away, telling him to piss off or standing up and asking one of the other passengers to swap with me. But I did nothing. I squirmed and I wriggled and I squished myself up against the window until he got off the stop before I did. I think it went on for another half an hour in all.

    And I did nothing. That’s the worst. Out of everything that has happen in my life, this particular incident doesn’t make the top ten on its own. It’s not what happened, or that horrible guy, it’s how I reacted.

    I wanted to say something but I was too scared of what other people would think. I was scared that I was overreacting. Because he didn’t try to grope me fully and because I was wearing jeans I tried to rationalise it and told myself that if I screamed everyone else who just think I’m being over dramatic. The other businessmen might have sided with the guy or thought I’d made it up.

    This is why I want to tell this story and why I decided to publish it under my own name even though I’d rather my parents didn’t find out about it. My mother told me a story years ago about being groped on the Underground in her twenties as part of her ‘don’t trust strangers’ speech at around ten or eleven but as I was already becoming a nascent feminist I assumed that this sort of thing didn’t happen anymore, especially not to girls like me. The Queen of standing up to the boys, feminist rhetoric and answering back.

    To paraphrase a bad* eighties movie; nobody puts me in a corner.

    And yet I let this happen because I was scared people would think I was a silly little girl. In hindsight, those men probably would have rushed to my defence if I’d protested but I was too afraid to test that theory because there are so many occasions where women are told we’re overreacting to sexism and abuse; its harmless or just ‘a bit of banter’.

    So in a way I suppose this is my call to arms. We’ve won a lot of battles over the past hundred years, we can vote, think and say what we like; we have options to fight back against this sort of thing we just have to use them. Just because we can shrug it off doesn’t mean we should or that men like that should be allowed to get away with it.

    When it comes to sneaky abuse like this its time women fought back because when we do will probably find everyone is already behind us.

    Caroline is a student at Birmingham University. She’s also a freelance journalist and blogger, providing insights into political, social, and economic news from around the world. You can follow her on Twitter here, or you can check out her superb blog here. 

    *AWOT does not support the theory that Dirty Dancing is anything other than cinematic brilliance. 


    Category Abuse, Body, Feminism, Sexism, Sexuality, Street harassment | Tags: ,,,,, | 9 Comments

  4. A Girl Yes, But Not Very Good At It

    March 1, 2012 by CJMortimer

    (photo from cyborgmonkey.wordpress.com)

    So I have always been described as a ‘girly girl’. I like pink, I like flowers, I like pretty dresses and high heels. I don’t have a sense of direction (it’s not just bad, it’s non-existent), I hate watching sport and I don’t like mud.

    People around me suggest that I’m the stereotype of ‘feminine’ because I’m highly strung, physically weak and have a tendency to get ditsy and confused on occasion. However I have always been one of those girls who is far more comfortable with men. You see, I’m one of those obnoxious people who rather shamefully likes ‘banter’ (provided it steers away from any misogynist, racist, homophobic or just plain mean lines), I like action movies, I read the finance sections of the newspaper and I find the offside rule really easy to understand. I hate shopping, I would rather have my eyes gouged out than watch a chick flick, I can’t cook, I don’t like wearing make up and I’m the archetypal, anti-romantic ‘Valentine’s Day Denier’.

    It’s not that I don’t like women or that women don’t like me. Far from it. I have a lot of close female friends who I love and adore but if I’m walking into a room full of strangers I naturally gravitate towards the male side of the room. A lot of people find this strange. This may be to do with my high school days as a wallflower and the mental scars of too many P.E. classes with the mean girls or spending my early childhood running around sailing in Essex with a group of friends who were mostly boys but I have always felt judged or on edge around women I didn’t know.

    When it came to the first AWOT meet up back in December I’ll admit I was a little nervous about being alone in a room with sixty or so women. Thankfully they all turned out to be lovely, friendly women who all accepted my eccentricities without challenge and I have no idea why I even worried. Although the reason we were all there because we had our gender in common (as well as a love of gin and cake), we were not all defined by it. We all came from different walks of life, had different interests and different life stories. We are women yes but that’s not all we are and many of us shared our supposedly unusually ‘male’ traits. None of us fits into the stereotyped ‘feminine’ box.

    This got me thinking, why are we defined principally as male and female before most other criteria? Why do women have to like shopping and men have to like sport? A lot of my university course lately has been focusing on gender as social construct and how this has limited our understanding of both women and men. Women are socialised to be ‘weak’ and ‘feminine’ and men are ‘strong’ and ‘masculine’; my enjoyment of male things and male company is somehow ‘not normal’ because it shows commonality with men when in social terms they must remain the distant ‘other’.

    Yesterday for instance, is seen as an aberration where women can ‘take the day off’ from fainting, embroidering and doing other meek and mild lady things to suddenly become assertive like men for 24 hours. Doing this full time would be far too taxing for us ‘weak’ womenfolk you see. The idea of a woman proposing marriage to her boyfriend would suggest too much control over her own life and decisions; women do not do the chasing, we are supposed to wait to be caught.

    The obsession with putting people and their sexes in boxes is a hangover from the Victorian period when dubious psychological and medical theories abounded about personality and sexuality. One particularly influential one was that homosexuality was the result of a defective ‘third sex’ that was neither male or female which formed part of the moral panic that lead to Oscar Wilde’s obscenity trial in 1895. Homosexuals were victimised during this period, and largely are still now, because they don’t fit into the norms of what is ‘male and what is ‘female’.

    The ‘Coalition For Marriage’ discussed in Tuesday’s blog post is based on the assumption that ‘one man’ and ‘one woman’ can be defined and their idea of marriage is based on a strict sexual binary which simply does not exist. I am a woman yes but when I was going back for a double helping of the X chromosome I didn’t miss out on the queue for some of those stereotypically male traits either. I am many, sometimes contradictory, things that make one unique whole and my gender is only a small part of it; I refuse to let it define me nor can it describe anyone else.

    Caroline is a student at Birmingham University. She’s also a freelance journalist and blogger, providing insights into political, social, and economic news from around the world. You can follow her on Twitter here, or you can check out her superb blog here.

     

    Category Rants, Self, Sexism, Sexuality | Tags: ,,,, | 4 Comments

  5. Pride and Prejudice: Thoughts on Marriage Equality

    February 28, 2012 by alicehaswords

    Image from speakequal.com

    Hello.

    I am writing this blog in response to a petition put forward by the ‘Coalition for Marriage’. Sounds benign enough, doesn’t it? I quite like marriage. It has a bit of a shady past, and it doesn’t always work out, but when it does, it can be a wonderful thing. Romantic soul as I am, I find the idea of getting married one day quite appealing – all that security and commitment and support? Lovely.

    Surprisingly for an organisation claiming to be ‘for marriage’, the Coalition for Marriage holds the strange belief that if, for example, I were allowed to get married, (to another woman, as I imagine I might some day want to do), society would somehow collapse around me as a direct result of this well-intended, loving union.

    In a surprise (and I can’t help but suspect cynically calculating) move, David Cameron, the Conservative prime minister, has stated his support for the legalisation of same-sex marriage in the UK. “Society is stronger when we make vows to each other and support each other”, he says. His claim that this view is the basis on which Conservatism is built is just plain inaccurate (unless I have missed a recent, drastic Tory swing in favour of the ideals of the socialist left) – but regardless, I can’t help but agree with this statement. Which is why I think it can only be a good thing to open up the marriage field beyond its current heterosexual margins.

    The Coalition for Marriage disagrees. This is the text of their online petition:

    “I support the legal definition of marriage which is the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. I oppose any attempt to redefine it.”

    The thing that bothers me most is their reasoning. So I’m going to pick it mercilessly apart.

    The following excerpts are taken directly from the Coalition for Marriage’s website:

    1. “Marriage is unique: Throughout history and in virtually all human societies marriage has always been the union of a man and a woman. Marriage reflects the complementary natures of men and women. Although death and divorce may prevent it, the evidence shows that children do best with a married mother and a father.”

    Well, that’s just not true. Throughout history and in virtually all human societies, marriage has had little or nothing to do with what we consider it to mean in Western societies today. It has been used as bargaining tool, to cement peaceful diplomatic relations between nations and families, to keep wealth within the realms of the already-wealthy; marriage as an entirely voluntary union between one man and one woman based on mutual love and commitment is, in the context of global history, a novel and peculiar notion. Don’t get me wrong, I think marriage is improved vastly by the attitude that women aren’t commodities to be exchanged in pursuit of wealth or power; I think the fact that marriage is no longer a necessity for one’s own physical and financial security is a good thing (much as I enjoy the works of Jane Austen for their wry, wordy humour, I can’t help but wonder if the intelligent and independently-minded Miss Elizabeth Bennett would have been quite so smitten with Mr Darcy had he not been fabulously rich).

    Yes, children are important. Yes, there have always been and will always be single-parent families (I tend to believe divorce actually adds value to the institution of marriage – there’s no such thing as a voluntary commitment when it’s legally irreversible, after all) – but the argument that children do better when brought up by a married couple surely falls in favour of marriage equality. More married couples! More basic, stable societal units! Everybody wins.

    2. “No need to redefine: Civil partnerships already provide all the legal benefits of marriage so there’s no need to redefine marriage. It’s not discriminatory to support traditional marriage. Same-sex couples may choose to have a civil partnership but no one has the right to redefine marriage for the rest of us.”

    Civil partnerships are quite nice, I’ll grant. But you can’t pretend they’re not a compromise. For one thing, heterosexual couples aren’t allowed to have them. That seems unfair. Some straight people really don’t like marriage (possibly for some of the associations I’ve already mentioned), or are just cross that their gay friends don’t have to right to call their partnership the thing they feel it to be: a marriage. Why can’t everybody have a choice between the two?

    And there’s that annoying word. “Traditional”. Again, whose tradition? How old exactly is this tradition? And why does changing this tradition to include same-sex marriages differ from changing the traditions that frowned upon marriage between people from different class and ethnic backgrounds in the past – (which, coincidently, were also widely disapproved of at first but gradually accepted as the norm. Funny how that keeps happening with stuff, isn’t it? I personally enjoy the way the centre ground is gradually pushed more and more towards the progressive left. I can vote AND go to hospital for free! Brilliant.)? The same arguments about things not being ‘natural’, as I recall, have been used time and time again to counter positive change. It’s a non-insult. The flushing toilet is not ‘natural’, but goodness knows I’m glad it exists. Whether or not homosexuality is ‘natural’ is irrelevant. There are gay people. Some of them want to get married to eachother. It’s not going to do anybody any harm, so let them.

    3. “Profound consequences: If marriage is redefined, those who believe in traditional marriage will be sidelined. People’s careers could be harmed, couples seeking to adopt or foster could be excluded, and schools would inevitably have to teach the new definition to children. If marriage is redefined once, what is to stop it being redefined to allow polygamy?”

    I just. What? There is absolutely no basis for these claims.

    And now they’re starting on polygamy too? But in many religions and societies, polygamy is traditional! Sticking with just one person for life? What a weird and unnatural thing to want to do. (That is, going by the Coalition’s own ideals of the all-importance of Tradition and Nature.)

    4.  “Speak up: People should not feel pressurised to go along with same-sex marriage just because of political correctness. They should be free to express their views. The Government will be launching a public consultation on proposals to redefine marriage. This will provide an opportunity for members of the public to make their views known.”

    Well there’s an easy answer to this one. If a gay person approaches you and proposes marriage, you don’t need to feel pressured into going along with it! You can just say no. Like with any other marriage proposal from somebody you don’t want to marry. Maybe you’ve misunderstood the suggested change to the law. If so, good news! Same-sex marriage is not compulsory. You can carry on your happy heterosexual life utterly unaffected.

    As a member of the British public, I am making my views known: marriage inequality IS discrimination. The definition of marriage lies with the specific individuals involved, and nobody has the right to take that away from them. Love is a fantastic starting point around which to build a shared life and a compassionate society, and it’s stronger than prejudice, and it’s stronger than intolerance, and if you think that a petty, narrow-minded, poorly justified petition is going to get in the way of that, you’re likely to find yourself on the wrong side of history.

    Yours patient-yet-defiantly,

    Alice x

    Alice is a student of cultural studies, a blogger, an aspiring maker of stuff (including, but not limited to, music, films & cake) and an all round Very Nice Person. She has a rainbow hat (and quite possibly a rainbow jumper) that I am fond of.

    You can find her on Twitter, or you can shake and shimmy over to her superb blog. I highly recommend it for insightful posts and general brilliance.

    Category Feminism, News, Sexuality | Tags: ,,,, | 1 Comment

  6. Transphobic and misogynistic: Paddy Power’s latest ad

    February 21, 2012 by Jane_Fae

    According to the Guardian, the UK (and Irish) trans community is up in arms at an undeniably transphobic ad campaign devised by Irish bookmaking megacorp, Paddy Power.  Darn tooting!

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/feb/20/paddy-power-transgendered-ladies-ad

    http://blog.paddypower.com/2012/02/17/video-sneak-peak-of-the-all-new-paddy-power-ad/

    But limiting the debate to issues of trans sensibilities misses an extremely big point.  For the “joke” here – as well as the consequences in terms of disrespect and violence – is one that applies equally to all women, trans or otherwise.

    Its yet another production in a long line of failed advertising industry productions that seem to think a dose of laddishness and an appeal to “the craic” excuses anything.

    The ad, airing on YouTube in plenty of time for Ladies’ Day at the Cheltenham races on 14 March, is based on the premise that not all ladies are “ahem, ladies”.  Punters must take care to distinguish between mares and stallions (trans women).  Along the way, the voice over takes an oh-so-humourous sideswipe at a woman,  mistakenly referring to her as “a dog”.

    Loads of nudge-nudge innuendo in the accompanying launch, as women are urged to “get down” for Ladies’ Day.  Loads of paddy power afficionadoes prepared to defend the ad as “just a bit of fun”.

    Or as one little boy blogger put it: I don’t care what people say or do; it doesn’t hurt me.

    Ah: the voice of male privilege.  Of course humour doesn’t hurt.  Not the way being beaten unconscious on a public railway station for the heinous crime of being deemed a “stallion” by the passing yobbery – as happened to one friend in the last couple of months.

    Because this is where most of those defending the ad have got it very, very wrong.  For the trans community, this odious focus on whether someone is a “real” woman, together with the equally odious habit of regarding what trans women keep in their knickers as public property, is not about the somewhat academic issue of whether the ad “gives offence”.

    First and foremost, it’s about respect.

    One of the eureka moments in my career as a journalist was an occasion when someone cut through my defence of whether or not it was right to use a particular phrase when describing someone with a simple question: “If they’ve asked you not to, why would you use words that are clearly disrespectful?”

    I had no answer to that.  Because it made little difference to the story: sticking to MY phrasing merely made me feel powerful about my status as journalist.  There’s a whole other piece in there: towards a journalism of respect, which applies equally to every minority group. But it also argues for a re-phrasing of many protests.

    What about violence?  Sadly, I think that, too, is a possible issue here.

    The piece is misogynistic.  It frames women – trans or otherwise – as subject to the judgment of the male gaze: pure objectification, which most feminists would acknowledge as severely problematic and, insofar as it is depersonalizing, possibly leading to abuse.

    The problem is, of course, redoubled for trans women,: for in a world where they regularly get beaten up simply for NOT being “real women”, encouraging guys to look twice and judge – particularly in an environment as laddish, as boozy as a race event – feels like it is just asking for trouble.

    Except it won’t be Paddy Power paying the price.

    Jane Fae is a writer, journalist (The Guardian, Pink News and others) and avid feminist. She writes about political and sexual liberty, ethics, online censorship, IT and the law. In 2010 she published Beyond the Circle, which won her the title of Erotic Writer of the Year. You can find her personal blog here, or follow her on Twitter here. 

     

     

    Category Abuse, Feminism, News, Sexuality | Tags: ,,,, | No Comments

  7. Stripping Q&A

    February 17, 2012 by Ashley

    Following yesterday’s blog post, ‘Stripping: The Naked Truth’, our anonymous writer answers your questions about her experiences working as a stripper.

    Image from Tumblr

    Do you consider yourself a feminist?

    Yes, absolutely. I’ve always been a feminist and it’s something I believe in whole heartedly. I think a lot of feminists are uncomfortable with the idea of stripping – it’s not easy territory to navigate. Is it powerful to own your sexuality and use it to your advantage? Or is it an archaic activity that puts the women’s movement back several decades? I’m afraid I don’t have the answer to that one. But yes, I am absolutely a feminist.

    Do you feel like you were paid enough? It doesn’t seem worth it.

    Yes and no. Dances are worked on a sliding scale. The cheapest dance was £100 and that was only a 20 minute one in a non-private room, and you’d only get £50 of that. But on a good night you’re earning upwards of £100 an hour, which can be very lucrative. The private rooms are much more expensive (upwards of £1000 for an hour). At the end of the night you can be holding £50 or £500 or even £1,000 – the good nights feel worth it. The bad nights don’t. You just have to be careful not to tie your own self worth up in the money you’re making. That’s one of the real challenges.

    Didn’t stripping make you feel dirty or ashamed?

    No, it didn’t. I enjoyed it some of the time. Some of the weirder customers would say things that might be a bit… off. But you’re playing a part, much like an actor. You just switch off. Which is why I almost pity the men who go to the clubs. The women dancing for them are running through the next day’s shopping list in their head while they writhe and moan. It’s completely artificial.

    Does it annoy you that strippers are reviled and burlesque dancers are celebrated? 

    It doesn’t annoy me exactly. Burlesque is certainly more tasteful and more artfully done, but it’s the same principle. You’re still trading on your naked body. It’s just less… visceral. It’s arguably something of a double standard. Naked dancing is ok if you camp it up and wear red lipstick, but it’s not ok if you’re in a barely there evening gown? There’s no doubt that people are more comfortable with burlesque, but I don’t think a woman should be looked down on because she chooses one side of the coin and not the other. Burlesque is a perhaps a more respected option because it’s more about the tease than the cheap thrill of a naked woman in your lap.

    Was it 100% dancing, no time-filler chat? Did men feel bored/tired/spent/awkward during a 1hr private dance?

    Well if it was an hour then you’d usually try and draw out the small talk bit at the beginning. Men are funny – they ask you all these questions about your life as if they expect honest answers. But all the customers were different – some didn’t want you to dance at all and would just hug you. Others would just want to talk to you while holding your hand. Sometimes you’d feel more like a therapist. A therapist with their breasts hanging out. Some guys would even ask you to keep your clothes on. But for the most part, it would be 10 mins of talking, then you’d be doing the lap dance for 50 mins. But the lap dancing isn’t all aerobic all the time (though it is quite tiring). You’re mostly straddling them and waving your boobs in their face. When I got tired I would lie across them and they loved it. Where I worked, they could touch everything apart from your actual crotch. They were usually pretty happy for you to take a break as long as they were touching you.

    Did you ever feel sick doing it?

    Yes, sometimes.

    Do all the strippers get along?

    It’s like any group of women. There are friendships and rivalries. But for the most part, the women I knew were all very friendly with each other. You’d know you’d made a friend if they told you their real name. The rest of us just called each other by our stage names.

    Were you ever offered paid-for sex? And if so, were you tempted? Is there really much of difference between stripping and prostitution? 

    Yes, you quite often get propositioned for sex. It’s understandable when you’re in the sex industry. But no, I was never even remotely tempted. It’s one thing to entertain someone else’s fantasy – but as a personal choice, I wouldn’t have wanted to sleep with any of the clients. Most of them were just sort of sad. And while I would never judge a woman for being a prostitute, it’s not something I have ever considered. I feel some things should be left sacred.

    What was your worst moment as a stripper?

    The hardest part of the act is pretending you’re really into someone who’s a complete turn off. The upstairs rooms where the dances took place all smelt of sweat and sex, so stripping can be a really ugly business when you’ve got a nightmare client. The most demoralising part of stripping is when you’re chatting someone up and they don’t want to buy a dance. But the one moment where I really thought ‘what the fuck am I doing?’ was during the middle song of a stage dance. I was dancing on my own at the beginning of the night, so the club was still pretty empty. ‘My Neck My Back’ came on and I was attempting to dance sexily while a man rubbed his crotch at me 10 feet away. I had to laugh at the ridiculousness of it. It was that moment when I knew I had to quit.

    Why did you quit? 

    I quit because I didn’t need to do it anymore. I never saw it as a career – it was a way of getting some quick cash. I think it can be dangerous to stay in the business in the long term. Some of the girls were quite damaged by it. You have to be careful with it.

    Was stripping really your last alternative? You couldn’t have gotten a job in McDonalds?

    Yes, at the time it felt like the only light in a really dark storm. I needed cash in hand and I needed it within a couple of days. It was stripping or giving erotic massages to businessmen on Craigslist. But it was also something I wanted to try just to see if I actually could do it. It was like I dared myself into it. But I didn’t do it for very long at all.

    If you’re not ashamed of stripping, why post anonymously?

    I wrote the post anonymously because stripping is a huge taboo, even for modern, free thinking women. When people find out you’ve been a stripper, they put you in a box marked ‘stripper’, which is synonymous with lots of negative attitudes. You cease to be a woman, a girlfriend, a wife, a mother – you’re just a stripper. Stripping is a job – it’s not who you are. A couple of my close friends know about it and they don’t judge me. But I suspect most of my friends wouldn’t be able to look at me the same way again.

    Would you ever encourage someone to try stripping?

    I wouldn’t outwardly recommend it, no. I don’t regret it, but it’s definitely made an impact on me, in both positive and negative ways. But as with all experiences, you really have to try these things to know how you’re going to feel about them. But would I tell someone to become a stripper? No, I wouldn’t.

    Did you ever get turned on by a customer?

    I would be lying if I said no.

    What’s the biggest myth about stripping?

    That all strippers are gorgeous, skinny blondes with daddy issues. I’m not gorgeous, skinny or blonde and I sure as hell don’t have daddy issues. The girls I worked with are all attractive in their own way, but most of them don’t look much like Heidi Klum or Miranda Kerr. A big part of being sexy is confidence – I’ve seen size 18 girls take to the pole and go home with more money than God. They’re just people. Women. They also own onesies, eat whole pots of Ben and Jerrys, and know Bridget Jones off by heart.

    Any final words on the subject?

    Just wanted to say thank you to the people who’ve shared the blog. Ashley passed on some wonderful compliments that came my way and I really appreciate the kind words and support.

    If you have a story you would like to share anonymously, please email anonawot@gmail.com or DM me on Twitter for the anon account log in details. Thank you.

    Category Body, Sexism, Sexuality | Tags: ,,,,, | No Comments

  8. Stripping: The Naked Truth

    February 16, 2012 by Anon

    Image from http://lifeasastripper.tumblr.com/

    I am a perfectly ordinary woman. I’m fairly average looking, I’m not hugely body confident and I have a curvy figure (and when I say curvy, I don’t mean the Heat magazine version of Kelly Brooke – I mean the more delicate way of saying slightly fat). I have a pretty ordinary job, I have typical hobbies (cross stitch, cocktails and cooking Italian) and I refuse to wear a bikini on the beach. I’m ordinary in every way, except for the fact that for a short time in my life, I was a stripper.

    It’s funny even typing that, because I’m the last person you would imagine taking their clothes off night after night for a living. And yet for a short period of time not so long ago, I made my money giving lap dances in the back room of a strip club. And I should point out now that it doesn’t all look like this.

    Stripping is a strange business, mostly because being naked suddenly becomes completely ordinary. I took up stripping for the classic reason: I was broke. I was down to the last hundred of my overdraft, about to be two weeks late on my rent and barely able to afford food. A girl I knew through a friend had taken up dancing a few months previous, and had encouraged me to meet the manager at the club where she worked. I laughed it off for a good month before I finally went down there. You never imagine when you audition to be a stripper that they’ll say yes. Before I knew it, it was my first night and I was downing my second vodka.

    I can’t speak for all strip clubs, but at the one I worked at, money was worked out based on how far you were willing to go. Women don’t get paid to dance on the stage – that bit is seen as your showcase to invite punters to buy a private dance. If you get completely naked on stage, you earn significantly more than if you stay in your pants. The same goes for the private dances. A 45 minute dance would cost £150. If you took everything off you got 50% of that. If you took everything but panties off, you got 30%. It’s a harsh system that knows how to make its money. And they would pay you at the end of the next shift, so you had to keep going back to get the previous night’s money. When I look back, I can’t believe they can honestly get away with it.

    But anyway. Back to the stripping. I wanted to discuss what stripping actually feels like, because I’m guessing for the most part that people don’t really know. Strippers have a terrible reputation for being stupid, easy or dirty, but I can honestly say that most of that is bullshit. The best strippers I worked with were professional saleswomen through and through. The most successful strippers know that the game is to sell themselves. When a new customer walks in, someone will immediately engage him in conversation. If she cannot secure a private dance within three minutes, she will move on. The next woman will chat him up. If she can’t persuade him to go upstairs, she will also move on. The customers like to shop around. You learn not to take rejection personally – sexuality becomes a business matter and nothing else.

    And of course, all men fancy something different. We all wore the same black dress – slit to the navel and up both thighs – but everyone looked different in it. There were tiny Asian girls with childlike figures, statuesque blondes with supermodel good looks, tattooed goth girls with multiple piercings and the bigger girls, with their roly poly humour and generous cleavages. Needless to say the dress looked ridiculous on anyone with large breasts. It was less ‘cleavage’ and more ‘boobs on display for all to see’, but you learn to own what you’ve got pretty quickly, and it’s amazing how quickly you stop comparing yourself to the other girls.

    The easiest way to make money is to dance on stage – that way the men could see what they’d be paying for ahead of time. The rule was dance for three songs. In the first song, you’d take off the black dress. In the second song you’d dance in your knickers. And in the final song, you would take off your pants and dance fully nude. There were girls who could do full gymnastics on the pole and girls who would just dance around it (me). The only rule was that you didn’t do ‘open leg work’ on stage (aka, you don’t open your legs to show your goodies to the crowd – that is saved by the private dances and it’s up to you if you do that). The first thing I found surprising about stripping was how much fun it was. I did my first stage dance with a similar sized girl, and we had a brilliant time teasing the crowd (even high-fiving half way through!). We got a standing ovation and I was booked for an hour’s dance (£180) straight away.

    The first man that paid for me was short with dark hair, and he smelled of beer and desperation. I couldn’t believe that he had paid nearly £200 for just an hour of my time. The euphoria of dancing naked on stage to loud cheers hadn’t worn off and I was turned on by the thrill of it. Ten minutes in, you realise an hour is a very long time to be in the company of a stranger. Twenty minutes in, you’re trying to remember what happened on last week’s 90210 while he tells you that he’s never been this hard. I can’t say that the first time wasn’t a bit of a rush. I was getting off on the taboo of it all, and I knew I’d have a crispy cheque to pick up the following evening. But after he told me he could ‘smell my wetness’, (gross!) the thrill of it died, and I was suddenly just a stripper, taking my clothes off for the first man that would pay for it.

    Stripping is a strange balance of power. When you’re on that stage, you own the room. Every single person is a captive audience, staring with lust and admiration at your body. But the moment you’re out of the limelight, the glamour is gone. You’re just a sales person, draping yourself over the next new punter, hoping that he might choose you. A successful night can bring in up to a grand. An unsuccessful night can bring in £50, or nothing, if you’re really unlucky. It’s a harsh game and you’ve got to be tough enough to stick it. And you’ve got to believe in what you’re selling. You are the fantasy and it’s your job to perform for the highest bidder.

    Some of the time, you feel on top of the world. The rest of the time, you feel like a cheap commodity. At least, that’s how it was for me. There’s a dimension to stripping that is extremely sexy, and there’s another dimension that feels like you’re worth as much as a Greggs sausage roll at the end of a night out. Stripping let me feel truly sexy for the first time, but it also made it feel like a vagina/tits combo on stilts. I was just the next thrill for anyone with a generously sized wallet.

    Stripping is not something I will ever regret, though it’s not something I ever talk about either. For me it was a private experience that is over now, and I don’t dwell on it. I don’t even remember the faces of the men who bought me, and I’m sure they wouldn’t remember mine. I met some incredible women through stripping and it has deepened my understanding of my own sexuality. At the same time, it has made me understand sexuality as a currency, which pervades more relationships than you would care to know. Stripping has also lent me an incredibly open mind – I am quite certain I would never judge anyone for anything sexual.

    Would I do it again? Sure. But only the dancing-on-stage bit. The thrill of performing for an audience is still there. And do I love my naked body? Sure I do. Stripping made me see the power of it more than any sexual partner. But lap dancing is not for me. I would happily dance for a room of 150 men, but the one on one thing just doesn’t do it for me. The fun bit is the tease – once you’re straddled naked over a Japanese man that won’t stop pinching your nipples, the illusion is well and truly gone. Perhaps a career in burlesque beckons…? Either way, I would say that stripping as a career can’t truly be judged until you’ve tried it yourself. You never know – you might surprise yourself.

    If you have a story you would like to share anonymously, please email anonawot@gmail.com or DM me on Twitter for the anon account log in details. Thank you.

     

    Category Anonymous posts, Feminism, Self, Sexuality | Tags: ,,, | 1 Comment

  9. The ‘R word’: a man’s perspective

    February 13, 2012 by stu_bradley

    Image from Tumblr.

    It isn’t all that often that men write about, or even think about, rape. The common misconception is that it’s something that will never affect us directly and that, as such, it’s something we aren’t ‘qualified’ to write about. However, it is precisely this sort of attitude that serves to widen the gap between male and female perceptions of sexual assault.

    Of course, it’s generally true that rape affects the daily lives of women much more than those of men. From worries about whether or not an outfit is ‘too sexy’ to speeding up the walk home after a night out for fear of being followed, it’s something I know a lot of women worry about. I recently heard a great analogy about reactions to rape that I’d like to share -

    Man: Hello, I’d like to report that I was mugged.
    Police officer: Ok, when and where did the incident take place?
    Man: I was walking home after a night out at the pub with the boys. Someone threatened me and stole my Prada wallet and my Rolex.
    Police officer: You mean you had a Rolex watch on display? And you had your Prada wallet right there in your pocket? That was dangerous.
    Man: What do you mean?
    Police officer: Well, anyone who saw them would know that you have a bit of money. Do you give money to charity?
    Man: Yes, I donate every month, but what does that have to do with anything?
    Police officer: Well, you’re a man known to give your money away and you were walking home late at night, after a few drinks, with an expensive wallet in your pocket for the taking. It sounds like this is your own fault.

    Hopefully the metaphor is plain to see – in the past, both the police and members of the public have seen fit to blame girls for being raped because the way they were dressed and the fact that they had been drinking meant that they were ‘asking for it’. This suggestion is not only shocking and misguided, but demonstrates how removed some feel from the threat of rape.

    Whilst training for a helpline service I heard a shocking story of rape that has stayed with me for a long time. A group of male friends were on a football team together and one was facing a lot of criticism for having missed an important shot. Over a few drinks the group went too far and the boy struck out at one of them before storming off. He was pursued by the other members of the group, who held the boy down while the person who had been hit raped him. The fact that ‘friends’ could commit such a traumatising act in the name of ‘banter’ horrified me, but also reminded me that sexual assault by ‘friends’ is something that thousands of girls have to deal with regularly.

    The story also shocked me before it forced me to think about the fact that it isn’t just girls that get raped. Take, for example, urban legends about prison showers. You’ve all seen The Shawshank Redemption and American History X enough times to know what I’m talking about. Somehow, because those involved are ‘wrong-doers’ people seem content to laugh along with jokes on the subject when they appear on Family Guy and the like. People conveniently ignore the fact that individuals who may be meeker and have only been jailed on a technicality or may have been falsely accused are likely to be on the receiving end. A recurring theme in recent discussion around the topic; rape is never funny, yet reactions like these sometimes suggest grey areas in which people think it can be. We might even consider the case of young men who get so drunk that they go home with girls they wouldn’t consider having sex with when sober – friends are almost certain to make jokes about such incidents (the four years I spent at University has proven this to be the case…) despite the fact that in certain cases it may be tantamount to date rape. No-one is immune to being raped, and realising this can be a helpful step for men who struggle to empathise with how pervasive the threat of rape is for women on a daily basis.

    It is undeniable that the presence of rape is becoming increasingly prevalent in modern society. This is especially true of the word itself; prefixing it with a single letter ‘f’ has created a word to describe social media antics that is used by both the general public and the mass media without hesitation. But despite this, the issue itself is increasingly one that many seem prepared to ignore, gloss over or actively misunderstand. As moved as I was by the recent trend of ‘slutwalks’, which actively encouraged women to overcome their own body issues as well as unite for a common goal (right on), I was equally saddened by the men who targeted or cat-called isolated women on their way to or from the event. Ironically enough, these men are probably the very same ones who avoid gay bars and areas because they fear everyone there will hit on them…

    I’d love for ‘more empathy’ to be the answer to the question of how to change outdated and oversimplistic perceptions of rape. But it simply isn’t the case, at least not on its own. Men know that their sisters, girlfriends or mothers might be victims, even if they are one of the high percentage that choose not to report the crime, but that doesn’t seem to be enough for some. If responses to jokes and ‘banter’ surrounding the issue remain as fierce as they have done in recent weeks, hopefully that will show that it is not ok to ignore or awkwardly laugh along with rape jokes. And I sincerely hope that, in some small way, articles like this will help – yes, I’m a man, writing about rape and rape jokes, and how both really need to stop. A call to arms; please stand with me and make your voices heard.

    Stu* Bradley is a guitar playing, DJing, tech, culture and celebrity writer as well as a skramz fan (I had to google that one too – it’s sort of like screamo, which  you may also have to google). Anyway, check out his lovely blog or follow him on Twitter.

    *It will not have escaped you that Stu has man-parts. All**menfolk are welcome to blog here. 

    **Well, only the nice ones.

     

    Category Abuse, Body, Rants, Sexuality | Tags: | 6 Comments

  10. The stuff that would have blown my pre teen mind…

    February 9, 2012 by @NotRollergirl

    Photo from Exploringthefaith.com

    I hit my teens in 1998. The people who were being born when I started being a teenager are now teenagers themselves! Amazing, non? When I was going-on-thirteen I believed that jet packs would probably be commercially available by the time I was a grown up. I’m waiting on that one, but some of these post teen discoveries and inventions are just as awesome…

    iTunes

    When we were young, my sisters and I spent a lot of time getting carpet burn on our chins. We’d lie on our stomachs, each with an ear pressed against the speaker of the double tape deck hi-fi I got for my tenth birthday. (The top loading CD player made me feel VERY glamorous.) With two fingers hovering over play and record, a layer of hard plastic between me and the upside down D90, we’d jam the buttons down whenever Steve Lamacq or John Peel or Mark Goodier promised to play something we wanted to hear. Sometimes we’d spend up to an hour on our chins, waiting. We’d adopt a similar pose for the whole of the Saturday morning Chart Show, or at least as long as we could manage before we were chased away to do something middle class like piano practice or, erm, croquet. (“But it’s a lovely day outside!”) We were, as only bored and overly imaginative pre teens can be, dementedly passionate about music and obsessed with everyone from Marillion to Mariah. And when the new Now 30-something came out, we’d rush out with our £17.99 (which is quite a lot of money when you’re 10) and rush home with our purchase, feeling slightly resentful that the track listing featured 14 minute mix of ATB’s 9PM (‘Til I Come) when I was hoping for the unlikely inclusion of some Elastica. (Thanks, Video Vault.

    “Imagine”, we used to say to each other dreamily, painting our nails with a sixth layer of 17 Nail Polish in Clear Sparkle. “Imagine one day, going into a magic booth and making your own Now CD – but being able to choose ANY SONG IN THE WORLD! Truly, that would be amazing. Maybe, when we’re really, really old, like 35, they might have invented something.”

    It still blows my mind that I can sit at my desk and put together a mix tape with the Ramones and Britney and Blackstreet and Sonic Youth and WALK AROUND AT LUNCHTIME LISTENING TO IT. Although I do miss hearing John Peel’s voice before a song starts.

    You can just ask people out!

    I wasn’t the best feminist as a child. One of my oddest fears was a premature terror that no-one would ever want to marry me. When Aurora’s betrothal was making her angsty in Sleeping Beauty, I didn’t get it at all. “She knew who she was marrying when she was born! It’s all taken care of! Lucky bitch” I thought. I was the gold standard for The Unfanciable in the playground. I still fret about a fairly depressing moment in Mrs Kemp’s class when I had been sat at a table of naughty boys in order to set them a good, calming example. I was the subject of a conversation I was not participating in about whether the naughty boys would sleep with me for a million pounds. The general consensus was no, they wouldn’t, with the exception of Adam Zwonkner who squinted at me appraisingly and said “well, maybe for a million…” Fair play – it was a lot of money in 1995. (For the record, Adam was a good 14 inches shorter than me and looked a little bit like Quasimodo’s gargoyle mate Hugo.)

    If they can invent the amazing machine that lets you listen to all the music in the world, how about time travel? I’d love to go back and tell that shy, anxious, underconfident little girl some true ass shit. That being too tall and too clever for her own good would have a massive pay off in years to come. That she will survive and reach her teens and twenties and go on dates and have boyfriends – and that will sometimes be awesome and sometimes be awful, but she will be desired. And that being desired is WAY less important than feeling it. That she will have the confidence to talk and flirt with guys she meets in bars, at parties, through friends – and they won’t be freaked out at all. They will be thrilled. And that there will come a time when, as an adult, she could walk into a room containing all the grown up naughty boys – and given the opportunity, they would pay a million pounds to sleep with her – or at least pony up for a fancy dinner. (Not that she couldn’t pay for her own dinner, or has to sleep with anyone who buys her dinner. Although I usually do. ANYWAY).

    Discovering I had pulling powers that wouldn’t get me laughed out of a pub felt as sudden and magical as waking up and discovering I’d become fluent in Mandarin in the night. I still can’t quite believe you don’t need a B Tech diploma and a special helmet to get a snog. You just ask. Truly mindblowing.

    Not everything you wear should remind everyone about your vagina

     My first foray into fashion, or “being very bothered about how I looked and spending what little disposable income I had in Topshop” was alarming. I did not have an innate sense of style. It was a time of cropped things and crotches. Sickly sweet scented glitter rollerballed across a barely emerged cleavage. (Yeah, you could get glitter in roll on form, like deodorant. Why?) Everything was bright and stretchy and logo’d. I had a fetish for expensive things that looked very cheap – especially if they had the name of the shop they came from spelled out in sparkly crystals. When it came to putting clothes on, my spirit animals were Lolo Ferrari, Flavor Flav and Emily Howard. Everything needed to be pink and shimmery and gold and silver and furry and lacy and pretty and sexy – because otherwise people wouldn’t know I was female! What if someone looked at me AND WASN’T IMMEDIATELY AWARE OF MY FANNY?! Quelle horreur! Best get it out and show them so they’re not in the dark for one single second.

    I still think that being a woman and dressing like a madly enthusiastic post modernist drag queen is ace, but if you’d told me fifteen years ago that you could look like a woman even when your knees are covered, that grey and blue are not ‘boring boys’ colours’ and that when I got to choose my own underwear I would not opt for a thong every single day (because there is precious little that is grown up or hot about having a thin strip of polycotton wedged slicingly near your anus) I would have said “Muuuuuuuuuuuuum! Shurrup!” But there it is. So, dear Daisy from 1997, get out of Jane Norman. Walk away from the Lucite heels. You’d be better off in a floor length hooded sweatshirt embroidered with the words “Hiiiiiiii! I HAVE A VAGINA!”

    Girl Power is bollocks

    In the nineties, my personal feminist revolution was interfered with in a most unsavoury way. I’d discovered Hole (and spent a lot of time on my chin taping the Live Through This CD I’d borrowed from the library). Courtney Love captured my heart like the Sexy Mad Banshee Empress of Emo she is, and slooooowly I was finding out about other important people like Kim Gordon and Kathleen Hanna and Nico and Patti Smith. I was patiently frowning my way through bits of Germaine Greer and obsessed with Camille Paglia’s drag queen essay and Gloria Steinem’s Playboy Club expose (although I sort of wanted to be a sexy grown up lady in fishnets and a little tail too.) Then FIVE VERY LOUD GIRLS were on Newsround, flashing bewilderingly toned midriffs and lime green lycra’d boobs, banging on about Girl Power. Our parents hated them, so obviously I was instantly captivated. They had the confidence of my other idols, but it seemed…hollow. What was Girl Power? It seemed to be about flashing your knickers and Thatcher. And how come the fanciable one was the infantillised Baby and nobody wanted to be Sporty because she was probably a lesbian?

    Now I know that Girl Power is, like most marketing slogans, a lie. It has about as much emotional resonance as “oooh, Danone!” It’s a vague, cheerful thing to shout and jiggle to. And although personally and irrationally, I’d tell Angelina to fuck off out of it I’m never going to tell anyone that they can’t join the Sisterhood. I’m sure La Beckham, Geri and both Mels are lovely and feminist. (Emma Bunton definitely is – a friend of a friend knows her a bit and says she’s dead nice.) But pioneers of nineties pre adolescent feminism? Oh, hell no. If you’re going to shout about something quite so noisily you need to do something to back it up as well as just jiggling.

    @NotRollergirl is a funny funny lady. You can follow her on Twitter (recommended for daily giggles) or check out her excellent work on Sabotage Times. 

    Category Body, Feminism, Happy, Sexuality | Tags: ,,,,,, | No Comments

  11. Let’s talk about RAPE

    February 3, 2012 by Anon

    This is the second part of a two part instalment following the ‘unilad’ pro-rape post earlier this week. Content could be considered triggering. 

    Photo from Slutwalk

    I am a healthy, happy, relatively straightforward twenty something woman living in London. I have an awesome job and awesome friends. I make filthy jokes and talk about my tits and cook steak and get laid and have a respectable fear of my Visa bill and run everywhere because I’m always running late. I’m a proud, porn watching, sometimes smoking, usually drinking, constantly swearing, good-frock-push-up-bra-and-matching-french-knicker-wearing highlighted lipsticked feminist.

    You’re probably a lot like me. Or I’m probably a lot like your sister or your daughter or a mate or someone you went to uni with. Chances are I have something in common with someone in your life.

    I hope it’s not this. I got raped by my boyfriend when I was 17.

    It’s not something I tell many people – it only comes out at the drunkest, darkest, intimate and emo moments. And I get teary and feel bad that I’m teary because I wasn’t attacked by a stranger who jumped out of a bush. I never formally reported anything to anyone. And I stayed with that boyfriend until I was 21.

    For the sake of clarity, here’s how it happened. We were staying with his grandparents, two sweet, kind, generous conservative people who I am genuinely sad to have lost touch with. We’d been there for a few days (I think it was the Easter holidays) and he was complaining nearly constantly about having blue balls, how desperate he was to fuck me et cetera. When you’re both adolescents this is to be expected – you learn to filter it out like white noise. I was against the idea – even though he was a two minute man, any periods of quiet or creaking furniture would have the grandparents rushing in to see what was going on. Also, they had given us separate rooms and sexing in their house would be bad manners.

    We were playing Scrabble. I had suggested, by way of a compromise, Sexy Scrabble. “We can spell things out and then…do them next time we’re in an empty house!” I said enthusiastically. Sexy Scrabble was dually frustrating. The boyfriend was suggesting that his penis might burst forth from his pants like a fleshy sea monster, and I was struggling to make normal words out of K, Q, W, R, R, T and L – never mind erotic ones.

    Here’s what I remember next. Him, behind me, pulling my jeans down, me saying “I really don’t think this is a good idea.” Then “I don’t want to do this.” Then “Stop it.” Then silence.

    Because if I screamed or struggled his grandparents would rush in, and that might be awkward. They might tell his parents and that would be really bloody awkward.

    I remember feeling sad, not angry, and hoping he’d come soon and stop. And then feeling sticky and cold and uncomfortable, and pretending to his grandparents that I was quiet and uncommunicative because I had an upset stomach. And they were adorable, fussing over me and offering herbal tea and Gaviscon and ginger biscuits as their grandson glowered in the corner because of the quiet conversation we’d had earlier.

    “You just…well, I told you to stop and you didn’t stop and there’s a word for that.” I blinked very hard.

    “Why are YOU crying? You’ve just called me a rapist.”

    I’m not sure why I didn’t break up with him then. I wish I had. I think I was scared of admitting what had happened to anyone – especially myself. I couldn’t reconfigure my thinking to see myself as some victim of abuse. I just didn’t fit the profile.

    A couple of days ago, I watched with slack jawed astonishment as links to a misogynist website appeared all over Twitter. (The people posting the links were as horrified as I was, no-one was suggesting it was the work of a reasonable human being.) The website made a joke about 85 per cent of rape cases going unreported, suggesting readers might as well have sex with someone without their consent because it would probably be fine. It then removed this joke, making an anaemic, mealy mouthed apology about it. The writers shut the site down (temporarily) last night.

    The rape joke was bad. But I can read something like that and deal with it. It’s not as if I’m getting traumatised by horrible flashbacks whenever it’s referenced. It’s pretty grim, and I’m not proud of it, but me and my similarly left leaning feminist friend collective often refer to pricey things as “pocket rape”, bad kissers as “mouth rapists” and have announced that we’d happily “rape that cake” when outside the Patisserie Valerie window. Yeah, I know. We’re working on it, and digging each other sharply in the ribs when we catch ourselves doing it. One shouldn’t use abuse to abuse language.

    But the weirdly polarised response freaked me out. Nearly everyone I follow felt it was utterly disgusting and reprehensible and said as much. The supporters and readers of the site started asking critics about their sexuality, implying that they needed a cock up their arse where the stick was, urging complainants to “look the other way” and “everyone who doesn’t agree that rape is pure banter is a frigid fun sponge!” (I may be paraphrasing the last one.) It was as if Blackadder’s Prince Regent was inhabited by Chuck Traynor and had a Broadband connection.

    Like everyone else, I grabbed my digital pitchfork and ran with the angry mob, far, far away from the point. 85 per cent of rape cases go unreported! Hold on, is this not what we should be talking about?

    And hearbreakingly I surmised that if I have good friends who don’t know I’m in the 85 per cent, then it must have happened to some of my friends too. And because they also weren’t attacked by a stranger from the depths of a bush, they filed their experience away under “I’m not quite sure what to do with that” and left it there. And not to go all Andrea Dworkin, but if we all know someone who has experienced rape (even if we don’t know about it), then we might well know a rapist too.

    Rape is undeniably horrific, and serious. But maybe if we were a little less serious about it, we’d talk about it more. We could start to figure out who the 85 per cent are – and what is motivating the criminals who are driving those stats. It would be a pretty dark game of Word Association Football where ‘rape’ came up, but if it did the word that would probably follow it is ‘victim’. Even ‘survivor’ sounds a bit grim – “yes, I got raped and now I dress like I’ve been in a nuclear apocalypse and my eyes have a hint of zombie about them – but I SURVIVED!”

    I wish I could eradicate all rape forever, but I think that the best way to start doing that is to normalise it as an experience. Of course we must be sad and upset and angry – but as well as wailing and gnashing our teeth and fetishising it in a Catherine Cookson way, we need to address it as something that happens to smart, funny women like us and everyone we know. Rape doesn’t just happen as a result of poverty or neglect or vulnerability or all the other human tragedies that we may or may not be able to relate to. And if a lot of ignorant, naive boys want to make a joke out of it, if we’re in a position to do so we must use our smart skills to show that the joke’s on them.

    If you’ve been the victim of a sexual assault, you can speak to Rape Crisis or Solace. For additional information, have a look at Rights of Women. 

    If you have a story you would like to share anonymously, please email anonawot@gmail.com or DM me on Twitter for the anon account log in details. Thank you.

    Category Abuse, Anonymous posts, Body, Sexuality | Tags: ,,, | 1 Comment

  12. Rape: it’s not a punchline

    February 2, 2012 by Anon

    Following the unilad.com piece condoning rape (and its subsequent ‘apology‘) a couple of our members have chosen to share their experiences of rape anonymously (second post to follow tomorrow). Please be aware this piece could be considered triggering.

    Recently the website, Facebook page and Twitter of “Uni Lads” has been getting quite a lot of attention.

    One snippet came from an article where the writer:
    a) used the word “slut” like it was acceptable,
    b) made a homophobic joke,
    c) suggested that as only 85% of rapes were reported a boy had pretty good odds and
    d) stated they didn’t condone rape unless “surprise” was shouted.

    Unsurprisingly, the article spread over Twitter. People were understandably disgusted. Even Frankie Boyle was appalled by what they wrote. I think it’s fair to say that when you’ve managed to offend Frankie Boyle, you’ve crossed a serious line.

    Soon after, people started checking the website. I can’t quite decide what my favourite article was. The one where a boy boasted about vomiting over a women after she came on her period during sex? The one where a boy, fearing that the women he was having sex with wouldn’t take the morning after pill, elbowed her in the crotch and looked for chairs/tables to smash over her stomach, before saying that he wasn’t going to put any money into buying the morning after pill because it was her that might get pregnant? Or the article where a boy takes pride in the fact he has “revenge” on a woman who sobered up enough to realise she didn’t want to sleep with him on night one?

    The level of misogyny is almost impressive. If a girl is ugly, she’s not worth fucking. If she is good looking, all she’s good for is fucking (as long as she knows her place). If a woman actually enjoys sex she is a slut/whore/slag and you should think twice before going anywhere near her.

    So, the whole site made me sick to my stomach. But it’s the rape bits that made me spend last night shaking with fear and tears. When Uni Lads apologised for the article on the Facebook page, floodgates opened. Any hope of a meaningful apology was destroyed by the comments beneath.

    “It’s not rape if you say surprise, that’s surprise sex.”
    “When people ask me what I do I tell them I test rape alarms. It sounds better than saying I’m a rapist!”
    “Still, NO means YES!”
    “I called that Rape Advice line earlier. Unfortunately it’s only for victims.”
    “The person who complained deserves to be raped.”

    Now, I read articles with trigger warnings with no problems. I don’t have nightmares. I don’t have issues with consensual sex nowadays. In fact I lead a totally normal life. But this casual acceptance of and joking about rape was enough to, for one night, unwind eight years of “coping”.

    Okay. When I was 13, my then-boyfriend lay on top of me (he was a rugby player and I was short and chubby. I couldn’t move) and he told me calmly that if anyone came in now or heard about this they would think that I was a dirty slut and hate me forever. My world changed. This was my first boyfriend and in my head everything was going to be walks in the countryside and happy-happy lovey-dovey. Not him warning me not to make a noise and then slapping me across the breasts when I whimpered as he took my virginity.

    I didn’t cry. I didn’t have PTSD. I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, actually. Oh, apart from the fact that I spent the next five to six years doing every I could that was sexual.

    I went online and read/wrote erotica like crazy. I went into internet chat rooms and had cyber sex with strangers. Any boy that would kiss me, I kissed. Any boy that would go further, I would go further with. I had sex with anyone that would have me – the “worse” the better. One-night stands with my best friend’s slightly-younger-than-me brother? Meeting strangers several years older than me from the internet for kinky sex? Having sex with my boyfriend in the morning and his best friend in the evening? No problem! Anything I could do that would make that first instance of rape seem trivial.

    I never told anyone the full extent of it. How could I? This was before I realised that it was okay for a woman to enjoy sex; I believed my rapist when he said I was a dirty slut and I seemed determined to prove it.

    The tipping point came when I was in the bedroom of someone over a decade older than me, tied to a bed and being beaten with a ruler. No-one knew where I was really; I was 300 miles from home but I had lied to my friends and family about where I was staying that night. Maybe it was self-preservation kicking in, but I realised something had to stop. I left, broke contact, tried to become “normal” again.

    It didn’t work. A year later I decided to go after a dangerous looking guy, convinced I could get some filthy sex and make everything OK again. Fortunately he wasn’t dangerous at all and three years later I actually think of him as my saviour. I shiver when I think about what could have happened without him, what I would have done without someone keeping me safe.

    Particularly because I started uni a few months after our relationship started.

    This is why I was so shaken last night. Uni Lads is aimed at and written by boys at uni. If I hadn’t had my boyfriend, if I had been single and still in self-destruction mode, what the hell would have happened to me? I know that most boys aren’t like that. I know that most of the boys at my uni aren’t like that — in fact, one of them was asking his Facebook friends to report the Uni Lads FB page. But what if some of them are?

    What if some of them read Uni Lads? What if they read things like the above articles and think that that’s a cool way to behave? What if some boys at my Uni were the ones commenting on that Facebook apology? What would have happened to me if I’d met these boys — after all, I would have been looking for filthy sex. Could I have been the one being elbowed in the crotch?

    Rape isn’t funny. It just fucking isn’t. I got off lightly and it still ruined my teenage years. Laughing about rape in that way and writing the articles that cause such comments is not helpful. Whilst a 13 year old girl will stay silent because she honestly believes that it is her fault and no-one will believe her, rape jokes need to stop. When you are writing for young men at university who are surrounded by women, rape jokes need to stop. Because as much as most people are smart and lovely, some people are idiots and won’t get the difference between an “out-there” joke and something that’s funny because it’s true.

    Stop saying that rape is anything but appalling, disgusting and life-changing. Just stop.

    If you’ve been the victim of a sexual assault, you can speak to Rape Crisis or Solace. For additional information, have a look at Rights of Women. 

    If you have a story you would like to share anonymously, please email anonawot@gmail.com or DM me on Twitter for the anon account log in details. Thank you.

    Category Abuse, Anonymous posts, Body, Sexuality | Tags: ,,, | 4 Comments

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