CICA Sucks

So, as if this wasn't bad enough, we now find out that the little girl abused by paedophile Craig Sweeney will get £9,000 compensation. Yeah, you read that right. Nine grand. This child was three years old. Sweeney was on early release for another crime when he attacked her and can seek parole in 2011. Nine fucking grand.

I'd like to put this in some sort of perspective. I once broke my ankle on school property and got five grand. CICA insists that it works on some sort of tariff scheme, grading pay against injuries. I assume this must include emotional injuries, and to that I say what the FUCK? Who wrote this fucking injury list? She was three and abducted by a fucking paedophile, and nine grand is the best you can do? How much therapy is this girl going to need? How many horrendous emotional problems is she going to have thanks to this abuse? How many times is she going to wake up in the night screaming? You cannot possibly tell me this is only twice as bad as broken ankle. For fuck's sake.

You can't compensate the child, clearly. There is nothing anyone could do to truly compensate her. But come on, at least give it a shot. At least pretend like you give a shit. I sincerely hope that our justice system will keep the asswipe in prison for the rest of his life, and CICA, pull your fucking finger out. Jesus Christ.

In Case You Didn't Know...

Jeremy Paxman is a pillock.

Oh, no! The poor middle-class white men! They've got no chance of getting into TV, have they? He knows of five women - five! - in powerful positions, and so obviously this is evidence that women have taken over the world, because they shouldn't be in those positions at all! How dare they? Why aren't they making the tea?

What is wrong with these men? If there are a hundred people in a room, ninety-four men and six women, women are clearly underrepresented. But the ninety-four men are all panicking because there were only two women last time. It's a conspiracy! There can't possibly be six women who are good at their jobs. Bloody political correctness, grouch grouch grouch.

Jeremy Paxman makes insane amounts of money. He sees an awful lot of middle-class white men on his job. I would wager he sees very few women or people of colour on a day-to-day basis, unless they're fetching his sandwiches for him, so presumably it must come as a shock to have anyone who isn't a middle-class white man speak to him like an equal. Perhaps that's the problem here.

I decided to do a little experiment, using the guest hosts of HIGNFY. In the eleven series of the show since Angus Deayton was fired, we have had:

13 white women
1 woman of colour
3 men of colour
30 white men

Ooh, Jeremy's right! Look at that, nearly half as many women as men! Wow, we really must be taking over. Seriously, though, I really enjoy HIGNFY, but only one black woman (newsreader Moira Stuart, who'd just been fired for apparently being too old. Lotsa jokes there)? I must say I'm disappointed. Mock the Week has had exactly one black man and one black woman, and in every show five out of six of the panellists are white men. I decided to look up the panellists on QI, too - in the first series we have Meera Syal and Peter Serafinowicz, and then no POC at all for the next four series. Wikipedia promises me Lebanon-born Dom Joly next series, but then it also promises an appearance from creepy molesting bastard Johnny Vegas, and I'm afraid that if appearances by Vegas outnumber appearances by all POC put together, I am going to have to go and scream at Stephen Fry.

So, yeah, nice one, Paxman. White men are totally screwed over by British TV.

Shitty Comedian Watch: Him Again

Dear Frankie Boyle,

I watched Mock the Week yesterday. I was left with the impression that you had stumbled across this blog and were determined to piss me off in every way possible, just to show me that you're better than me. Next time, leave a comment, please.

Jen

In other news, I am now completely in love with David Mitchell. It takes an awful lot for me to watch a show despite presence of Boyle, and that's him. I'm even going off Dara since he gave out points for a rape joke. Bah.

Never Again...

I was perusing the internet trying to cheer myself up, and I cannot stop laughing at this:


see more pwn and owned pictures



I usually hate this sort of stuff. It inevitably leads to LOLspeak. But "Do not laugh at sign"... Damn, I've started myself off again. Excuse me.

We Must Be Warned

So, new research tells us that abortion is not as traumatic as the anti-choicers like to claim. And, of course, some people are not pleased about this. The Times presents us with this charming piece by Melanie McDonagh which protests: "But risks! There must be risks! Because it's an abortion! You're killing a baby!"

It's been a while since I've done a smackdown, so let's go through this, shall we?

She starts off by going on about how there's no such thing as "value-free abortion research" or, indeed, "value-free interpreters of the research". What this translates to is: Bias! Bias! This and all previous and subsequent information about abortion is biased! You can't trust any of it! She goes on to reveal which side of this particular argument she's on by referring to the APA report as "meat and drink to the pro-choice lobby". Hey, we're a lobby! You know, she's probably right; I welcome anything that might lessen the potential for guilt-tripping and scaremongering. Odd, that. I bet she'd think I was value-free.

The APA has concluded that abortions do not really impact one's mental health. McDonagh has to throw in a quick scaremonger about multiple abortions. She then complains that this research will be used when the UK Parliament votes on a possible amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill (how poncy are we?), which would require compulsory counselling for every woman wanting an abortion. She's not happy about this report being used, because the evidence is biased. Come on! We need something to counter the truly excellent research of Nadine Dorries! She then refers to journalists writing about their own experiences with abortion (as Caitlin Moran, among others, did) as "snuff journalism". Yeah, snuff journalism. Look at all these nasty murdering women, "bragging" about their abortions. Yes, Melanie, they're bragging. It's not as though they're doing it to break the taboo or reduce the censure that women get if they consider having an abortion. It's not as if they're writing because they aren't ashamed of their abortions and don't believe that any woman should be. Way to demonise women, though. Why aren't they ashamed of it? Shut up, bitches!

Ah, now we get to it: "My chief objection to abortion isn't the damage that it might cause the woman concerned; I mind that it kills the foetus." In case you missed that, she doesn't really care if abortion does cause huge amounts of mental distress - she just wants to exploit that line of reasoning to protect her own world view, and while we're at it, the imaginary babies. But if we are going to take the silly mental distress thing seriously, we must acknowledge some spurious studies that she's thrown in in order to make herself look academic. Apparently, there are a lot of variables. Who knew? Women are people! Excuse me while I pick myself up off the floor. It really irritates me that she then spends the rest of the article pretending to care about our mental health and how important it is to warn us of the risks, when she's already admitted she doesn't really care.

I have to admit to being highly confused by her next bit. She says that a study which concluded that there was increased risk of "depression, suicide and substance abuse" was criticised for not including information about the backgrounds of the women who had these abortions. She then informs us that some other researcher said: "there is consensus among most social and medical science scholars that a minimum of 10 to 30 per cent of women who abort suffer from serious negative psychological consequences". Oh, consensus, is there? That's what Nadine said. Surely if there was consensus, the APA wouldn't have just told us the opposite? What I really don't get about this is that she's just provided us with a handy rebuttal to that quote - what about the women involved? What are their backgrounds? Do they have a history of depression? She does say something about the APA study being criticised by pro-life groups for this and that, but I have yet to come across a pro-life group that doesn't rely on emotional blackmail and slut-shaming to get their points across.

Bizarrely, McDonagh then complains that MPs are susceptible to research from well-respected sources (well, she says "authoritative-sounding" because she is right and everyone else is wrong). And, y'know, I hate to bring up Nadine and her "reasons" again, but your side really doesn't have a leg to stand on at the moment, Mel. This stuff is coming from a highly-placed academic organisation, and countering that with the Daily Mail just isn't going to cut it. Sorry. She then says this:

"Before the recent Commons vote on whether to restrict the time limit on abortion, research was published that suggested the life chances of premature babies had not increased beyond 24 weeks, despite medical advances. This was extensively quoted in favour of keeping the limit at 24 weeks, even though babies born prematurely self-evidently have problems, or their mothers do. The study had no bearing on ordinary, healthy foetuses, yet was used to see off the attempt to change the time limit on abortion."

This really pisses me off. As I've said before, you cannot painlessly remove a foetus from a woman at 24 or 20 or 16 weeks and place it in an incubator for a few months until it's fully developed and is ready to be sent to an adoption agency. The woman has to carry that unwanted foetus inside her. She's stuck with it. She has to give birth to it, even though she doesn't want to. That's what this all boils down to - McDonagh and her ilk want to force women to give birth. Who cares, really? She's pregnant, not a person. You can opt out of any medical procedure. If you don't want it, you don't have to have it. Even if it would save another person's life, like a kidney transplant, you don't have to do it. We do not have to give birth. Leave us alone. It freaks me out that these forced-birth people think the limit should get lower and lower along with medical and scientific advances. I once had a very early miscarriage. Should the day come when I have to bring it into the hospital to see if they can "save" it?

McDonagh then protests that there must at least be a risk of depression following an abortion, mustn't there? All that other stuff is biased anyway. There must be a risk, and "isn't there a case for warning women of this?" ARGH. Jesus, Melanie, we're grown women. We know what abortion is, we know how we feel about it, and we can make our own damn decisions. Just because a woman has gained an unwanted foetus does not mean that she has lost her mind. We who support choice know what abortions involve, we know that we may or may not feel upset over having one. We do not need to be talked down to by some sanctimonious counsellor who wants to make sure that we really understand sadness. She also advocates a cooling-off period, because we all know that pregnant women are irrational, and also five years old. We shall place her on the naughty step until she sees the error of her ways. Then she chucks in a little more scaremongering, just for good measure. You'd better have this kid, you know, because if you don't, your next one might come slightly earlier than it should. Think about that! And, of course, if we have a slightly later abortion, we should definitely be talked down to by a sanctimonious counsellor, because we clearly haven't thought it through at all.

"Come to think of it, has anyone done any research on the effects on men when their wife or girlfriend has an abortion?"

GAH. Fuck off. Seriously, fuck the hell off. "You can't have an abortion because your husband might be sad"? Fuck off, Melanie. Frankly, if he doesn't support me he can go to hell, and it'll be the best place for him. It's my fucking body and no man has any say over what happens to it. Get lost.

Then McDonagh really frightens me by letting me in on her idea of counselling. Remember the guilt-tripping and scaremongering? Yeah, she doesn't want to help us.

"Of course, there is nothing magic about counselling. It depends how it's done. The best and most brutal example of pre-abortion counselling that I can think of is in the film Alfie (the original version, with Michael Caine) when the unfortunate illegal abortionist rattles through all the downsides of the procedure before pocketing his £25, mentioning, if memory serves me correctly, “the injustice to the unborn child”."

She thinks this is "counselling". She also says she'd make a bad counsellor because she'd say "Don't you realise the foetus is human too?" She wouldn't be able to stop herself. This is likely to be much more traumatic than the actual abortion, having some nasty woman call you a slut and a baby-murdering bitch, but what does she care? She has no interest in our mental health - the best form of counselling is the most brutal. If a woman left in tears, she'd be pleased. A job well done, she'd say, and possibly a baby has been saved today. Even though it's not a fucking baby. Hear that? Foetuses are not babies. And nor are pregnant women.

Today in Bad Ideas...

I would just like to say that I was against the idea of a Rocky Horror remake in the first place, but if they cast Russell fucking Brand as Frank-N-Furter, it will be the most irredeemably godawful piece of shit ever produced. Jo Brand would be better than Russell Brand. Get Anthony Head! I'd watch that. Not fucking Russell fucking Brand. I'm just praying this is like the time when people were claiming that Robbie Williams was going to be the next James Bond, and that everyone will realise how shit Russell Brand is before they go and do anything stupid.

A Personal Note

A quick note with regard to this post. I wrote this:

"The only thing I can do is refuse to be labelled by the people I care about. I can only promise myself never to get involved with anyone who puts me on any kind of pedestal, who calls me perfect and acts aggrieved when my looks or behaviour are not. I can only refuse to be shamed for being both human and a woman, for liking cake and sex and being picky as hell over both. I can only hope that I have the guts to tell the man who likes mystery to go to hell. I can only believe that I will never put up as being treated as less than human, even if he thinks he's treating me as more than human, and that I will choose to be alone over being someone else's nice girl."

I was writing to myself, and I have taken my own advice. I have chosen to be alone rather than to be Adam's nice girl. It feels like utter shite, to be honest, but it was something I had to do. Your regularly scheduled ranting will soon resume.

Shitty Comedian Watch

Another new feature that may last three or four posts before I forget about it. I was going to title it "MtW WtF?" but I just can't write that sort of stuff.

For Part One of Shitty Comedian Watch, we have to go back to Mock the Week, which has been an inexhaustible source of horribly traumatising jokes this series, despite presence of the eternally lovely Dara O Briain, who I will shut up about one of these days. A number of people I know have stopped watching it, but I sort of feel the need to keep an eye on it, if only to discover what the BBC considers acceptable humour in this day and age. I was feeling slightly better about last night's episode - Frankie Boyle's racist joke was met with, "Oh, that's alright now, is it? They've got an economy, so the racism is OK?" (I think I might be slightly falling in love with David Mitchell). And then, of course, Boyle gets up to do his little stand-up bit. His horrendously triggering stand-up bit. I'm not kidding, I was almost sick.

So he says:

"Viagra is overrated. You know, it takes at least half an hour for Viagra to take effect. By that time, the woman has usually managed to wriggle free."

WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT??

How on earth is this getting broadcast on national television? I expect shit like this in a comedy club, but on fucking BBC prime time? Ha ha ha, it's funny, see, because you think it's just a sex joke, but then it turns out not to be, and that's funny! Frankie Boyle is so, like, edgy and dangerous with his humour! Isn't he clever?

No, he's not fucking clever. I don't understand this. You can make dumb noises about comedy pushing boundaries or whatever crappy excuse bad comedians always use, but why the hell is this considered acceptable for broadcast at a time when swear words are bleeped out? Why is the BBC continuing to screen jokes about women being imprisoned and raped? Who the fuck is running this operation, and what the hell is wrong with him? It's not funny, it's traumatising. Boyle is allowed to get away with this stuff because some stupid people have decided that being nasty is his schtick, so he can say whatever he wants - oh, he's just Frankie, he does that. That's his thing that he does. It's harmless, really, they say. Hey, guys. When a joke leaves a woman in tears, that's not harmless. When a joke leaves a woman in tears, that's not her fault, that's your fault. Frankie Boyle can say what the hell he likes at his gigs. He's on TV a lot, so we've all to come to know what to expect from him, but on the BBC? No fucking way. If programmes with unbleeped swearing have to begin: "This programme contains strong language throughout", why doesn't a show with this sort of sick-fuck content warn me: "This programme contains potentially upsetting material"? Why doesn't it warn me that I might be triggered when it has to warn people who object to swearing?

I would like a re-edit of this show that contains only Dara and David, please.

At Last, An Excuse!

The viewing public in general has been informed that one of the contestants on the upcoming season of America's Next Top Model is transgender. Here she is. Fierce, no? I'm very pleased for many reasons, not least of which is that I now get to blog about ANTM without looking frivolous (not that I'm not frivolous, but everyone else is doing Serious Blogging and I feel compelled to keep up). So, you, my dear imaginary readers, are going to be subjected to weekly posts about ANTM. Don't worry, I'll warn you in the titles.

Isis, the transwoman, is my current favourite to win. I picked her out of the promo shot (the first picture in the link) along with a couple of others as Girls I Will Stick Up For No Matter How Bitchy They Get, and coupled with the fact that she's likely to get an awful lot of crap from the media in general and Tyra Banks in particular, I am now enthusiastically rooting for Isis to be ANTM. I mean, I doubt she's got a hope in hell, but I really, really want her to get it. My other favourites, as if you cared, are Elina the Ukranian girl and possibly Clark and McKey, if I can get over the fact that they're called Clark and McKey.

It's All Your Fault

So, the BBC informs me that the decision to cut a rape victim's compensation because she had been drinking has been overturned.

This is what we're dealing with. Rape victims can get a poxy £11,000 "standard award", but because she'd been drinking they cut it by 25%, implying that the rape was 25% her fault. It beggars belief that our fucking justice system can hand down such a verdict - the attacker was never found, so nobody was busting out the old "you're just regretting consensual sex" line. It's simply considered acceptable to assume that a woman who has been drinking is by default responsible for any sexual crime. A mugger who attacks drunk people is accused of preying on the vulnerable, so why is rape still considered to be a two-way act?

I'm pleased the decision has been overturned, but really, what's eleven grand to this woman? After being brave enough to report her case and take it to civil court, she then has to continue fighting against the assumption that it was her fault. I don't think she cared about a couple of grand, really, but how can get on with your life when you've essentially been blamed for the worst thing that ever happened to you by the very system that's meant to be in place to protect you? I can't wait for the latest Drink Responsibly ad. Hot on the heels of the guy that drives his wife home when he's pissed and kills them both, and the guy that runs up the scaffolding thinking he can fly and falls to his death, we'll have: "Alcohol makes you responsible for rape. Drink Responsibly: don't drink at all."

I cannot believe she had to fight for this. God speed, anonymous woman.

Nice Girls Don't Do That

I've always shied away from writing about sex, but what the hell. New horizons and all that.


My partner is what we might call a feminist novice. He comes from one of the least feminist backgrounds possible, and whilst he is willing and eager to learn, I'm often surprised at the things he's surprised at. I cannot and will not marry a man who doesn't call himself a feminist, so light lectures often ensue, which so far he's been taking rather well. We had one such discussion in the car the other day, after I told him about a dream I'd had the previous night. In the dream, I was on a TV panel show (I've been watching nothing else lately), talking about the time I did a talk on female masturbation for the BBC, who then cut everything masturbation-related from the broadcast. Everything I said on this imaginary panel show was then cut for being "potentially offensive".

Masturbation jokes are all over the TV at the moment (as it were), and every single one of them is made by a bloke about a bloke. I ranted gently about the fact that masturbation is considered normal for men but some sort of bizarre deviant practice for women (see also oral sex).

Adam: Well, we don't think you do it.
Jen: Why not?
Adam: Because you don't talk about it.
Jen: We don't tend to talk about having a shit either.
Adam: Some men think you don't do that.

Which explains a lot really - the number of times I've come back from the loo in a pub and a man has said, "What do you girls DO in there?!" I probably should have twigged earlier. We don't shit. We just sit on the bathroom counter wielding oversized powder brushes. I always knew that the Nuts crowd consider women's toilets to be arcane and mysterious places, and now I know why - they don't think there are actually loos in there.

The above conversation came as no surprise to me. Adam's biology teacher sent the boys out of the room when the time came to discuss menstruation, and he has long been surrounded by the sort of well-intentioned men who will respond to a fact about rape or sexual harassment with "Really? Are you sure?". We know it's not "feminine" to be sexual, or to talk about shitting, or to eat an entire pizza followed by a huge pudding and a belch. We've learned to accommodate this - we say "down there" and "powder room" and "do you want to split this?" because we're meant to be better than that. Men have these "base desires" and "can't help themselves", and we are supposed be "refined" and "elegant" and "ladylike". All of which translates into: Women aren't supposed to be human.

Since I was very little, I've hated the sort of misogynistic arsehole who refuses to be with his partner when she's giving birth because it "ruins the mystery". He wants to walk in afterwards, when the baby has been cleaned up and the woman is smiling happily and he can pretend that the whole stork thing really is true. If you're having a child together, you're having a child together. She's got the worst of it by far, and putting up with a bit of blood and screaming is the least he can do, really. Referring to the wonder of a woman's "mystery" is one of my top ten warning signs that a man is a git. He wants to believe that you don't fart, or get drunk, or bleed. He doesn't want to know that you shave off or rip out your body hair - you're a woman, so you have to do it, but he wants to think of you as naturally hairless, smooth and perfect. I'll be the first to admit that I don't have the courage to let my armpits go au naturel, but I'm not going to pretend I don't cover them in wax and rip all the hairs off. I'm not going to pretend I'm not hungry. I'm not going to pretend that I don't even notice my period (seriously, fucking ARGH. Whose idea was it to make it so bloody painful?). And I don't see why we have to pretend that we don't masturbate. Blokes sit around and boast about it. Why, exactly, are we supposed to be above it? Why are we supposed to be "nice girls"? And what the hell is a "nice girl", anyway?

Some people think I'm a nice girl. I don't sleep with men outside long-term relationships (partly because I have severe trust issues with strangers, and partly because nobody has ever made me feel inclined to do so), I've never smoked, have no interest in drugs and barely even drink anymore. My friend's boyfriend consciously tries not to swear around me. On the other hand, some people look at me and see a bitch. And, y'know, I'll be a bitch. I don't think I'll ever feel comfortable enough to reclaim "cunt" as a feminist word, but I can deal with bitch. Because "bitch" means "not a nice girl" and if there's one thing I dislike about my drugless, monogamous lifestyle, it's the idea that I will be mistaken for one of these "nice girls" who don't shit and laugh dutifully at bigoted jokes. So I have to make do with being bitchy, because if I talk about masturbation and a man hears me, that's a desperate come-on. Nice girls don't talk about that sort of thing, so since I've said it, I'm not nice - or, in modern parlance, a slut. And we all know that sluts are there to be used, and have no business being discerning. I saw "slut" defined, brilliantly, on Shakesville as "woman who is getting more sex than I think she should", which apparently applies even if that sex is with yourself.

I used to read a lot of really terrible chick-lit (it was my secret guilty pleasure for years), including a series of books in which the nasty bitch was always marked out by a masturbation scene. This told us she was a bitch because a) she was always fantasising about money, or private planes, or something equally ridiculous, and b) she couldn't get a man. In a) we see that even a masturbating woman is not allowed to actually have a sexual fantasy, and in b) we see that women only masturbate if they are single and desperate. Where the hell did this come from? Why can't we be in control of our own bloody orgasms? How come we're only allowed to masturbate if there's a man watching? Why is it never about us? GAH. Sick of having my desires regulated by some sort of bizarre governing body. OFWANK, or something. We're told who we're supposed to find attractive, and it's usually David Beckham, even though he's as dumb as a box of hair. I once tried to write an essay on the rules of attraction, but getting people to admit to unauthorised crushes was damn near impossible. I remember Adam listing several unspeakably gorgeous women and then saying, vaguely, "That's embarrassing for men. Trust me." I have a bit of a thing for John Malkovich, but you try admitting that to people in the pub.

I have no solutions, I confess. I don't know how we go about breaking down this wall that divides us into nice girls and dirty little sluts when none of us are either. The only thing I can do is refuse to be labelled by the people I care about. I can only promise myself never to get involved with anyone who puts me on any kind of pedestal, who calls me perfect and acts aggrieved when my looks or behaviour are not. I can only refuse to be shamed for being both human and a woman, for liking cake and sex and being picky as hell over both. I can only hope that I have the guts to tell the man who likes mystery to go to hell. I can only believe that I will never put up as being treated as less than human, even if he thinks he's treating me as more than human, and that I will choose to be alone over being someone else's nice girl.

Quote of the Day

"Alan Sugar made his money by building the ninth best computer on the market, and the second-best satellite dish when there were only two satellite dishes. Then he bought Tottenham Hotspur. Who is he to talk about winning?"

- Dara O Briain lambasting one of my arch-nemeses, Alan "I won't hire women of child-bearing age" Sugar.

I still love Dara, but I am sad to report that this week's episode of Mock The Week contained yet another Fritzl joke. Is it me, or is comedy getting lazier?

Upskirting is "Sometimes Annoying"

This morning, IMDb says to me:

Actor David Thewlis once threatened to attack a photographer - for trying to film up his girlfriend Anna Friel's skirt while she was pregnant.

The Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban star hates it when the paparazzi try to get unflattering pictures of his partner, Pushing Daisies actress Friel.

And he once confronted a snapper who deliberately tried to get an embarrassing shot - when Friel was expecting their first child.

He says, "It's sometimes annoying when a cameraman tries to put a camera up her skirt.

"The only time I've got close to hitting a cameraman is when one tried to put a camera up her skirt when she was pregnant - that's sexual assault.

"I said 'What the f**k are you doing?' I could have understood if she was wearing a mini skirt but to put a camera below a knee-length skirt with a pregnant woman...That's weird. It's illegal I'm sure."

The couple's daughter, Gracie Ellen Mary Friel, was born in 2005.

I'm confused. It's "sometimes annoying" when a guy puts a camera up your partner's skirt? It's only sexual assault when she's pregnant? It's fine for a guy to put a camera up your partner's skirt if said skirt is short?

I see two possible theories here. One, Thewlis regards women as public sexual objects. Of course a photographer will try and take pictures of his partner's underwear, why wouldn't he? She wears short skirts. It's kind of annoying, but hey, that's life. However, when a woman is pregnant, she is not sexual. She is off-limits because she's some sort of holy vessel for his seed, or something like that.

The other theory is that Thewlis has simply got used to this. Friel has been constantly treated like a sexual object (first lesbian kiss on British TV and all), probably since long before they got together. Maybe she said to him, "It's alright, they always do this." So it's not outrageous, it's just annoying. Sometimes. Photographers are permitted to take pictures in public so long as their subjects have no reasonable expectation of privacy, and we've been told again and again that if you're out in a skirt, you can have no reasonable expectation of your underwear remaining private. I find this depressing as both a woman and a photographer - you can be banned from photographing your own children, but not from sticking your camera up a stranger's skirt.

As we all know, things are different for pregnant women. Pregnant women are pure, fresh-faced and shiny, provided they're not chavs, in which case they're sluts and probably have four more by different fathers at home (© The Daily Mail). But decent pregnant women are a class unto themselves - in exchange for automatically getting a seat on the bus, you must resign yourself to your lack of entitlement to personal space from the moment you start to show (taking pictures up your skirt is unacceptable, but grabbing at your stomach is the right of everyone), take advice and stern tellings-off about your diet, exercise, sleeping patterns, reading material and sex life from stranger and friend alike, be bullied about your future sprog's name ("You can't call it Jake/Andrea! I went to school with an evil Jake/Andrea! What do you mean he is/isn't getting the father's name?"), and become an enormous hypochondriac after every single newspaper publishes contradictory reports about tiny things you should or shouldn't be doing, all of which will be cut out and brought to you by someone who's heard you're pregnant. All this you must take with a contented smile because a baby is coming. It's almost as if pregnancy turns you from a slut into a child.

I just can't get my head round a world where a man thinks it's reasonable for people to be shoving cameras up his partner's skirt and publishing the pictures in national media. It's bad enough that women have had to write it off as "one of those things": we know no policeman will bother his arse, and we'll just get a lecture on how some things aren't appropriate to wear in public and next time perhaps we could try wearing some shorts. We know people will roll their eyes at us and tell us it was only a picture of our knickers, let it go, it's not that big a deal. You go out in a bikini, right? We sort of have to let it go, because we're sick of being whacked round the head with the slut-shaming stick. I'm not saying if someone did it to me I wouldn't at least try to stamp on his camera, but if it's already so normal as to be "sometimes annoying", like pigeon shit, what chance have we got? Proper post about "letting it go" coming up soon.

Whether this is Thewlis's issue, or society's, I'm scared.

Who to Avoid, and Who to Love

As you may know, I spend a lot of time watching stand-up comedy, panel shows and other such things, and I have become aware lately of a huge broadening in what is acceptable (since the BBC now seems to be allowing some quite horrific stuff and yet another upsurge in fawning over so-called "controversial" comedians. I've learned in my time not to bother with controversial comedians - it seems to translate as "this comedian will bully his audience".

I was at this show when the idea of an Avoidance list came to me. The charming comedian in question made misogynistic jokes, painted himself as a serious homophobe and closed with the most disgusting anti-trans joke I've ever heard. It was disgusting enough to make me worry about who was in the audience. Sean Lock will forever be on my Avoidance list, and it's a list I'd like to share and expand.

My list is based on comedians I've actually seen performing stand-up, whether live or on TV, except in extreme circumstances like this. I'm also doing a corresponding Safe list, which is based solely on live stand-up (Sean Lock never said anything triggering on TV). I'm taking suggestions for both lists, if anyone would like to volunteer. I would like to say, this isn't a list of everyone who's ever made a slightly unpleasant joke, and I'm not after censorship, I just want to help prevent comedy-goers being triggered.

This is what I have so far.

Avoidance List
Johnny Vegas (misogynistic sexual assaulter/rapist)
Jim Davidson (probably horribly offensive to most, but especially LGBT)
Sean Lock (LGBT, trans especially)
Simon Clayton (women - most misogynistic show I've ever seen)
Andy Parsons (rape jokes, eating disorder jokes)
Frankie Boyle (offensive to most - rape jokes and ableist jokes particularly common)
Jim Jeffries (women)
Paul Zerdin (LGBT)
Adam Carolla (women, LGBT)
Bill Maher (rape jokes)
D.L. Hughley (rape jokes and associated misogyny)
Jimmy Carr

Safe List
Bill Bailey
Ross Noble
Dara O Briain (his stand-up is totally safe - as you may have noticed, Mock the Week is not)
Eddie Izzard
Gina Yashere
Mark Steel
Omid Djalili
Peter Kay
Kathy Griffin
Margaret Cho
Jim Gaffigan
Brian Regan

They're both pretty short at the moment - I don't want to list anyone I haven't seen and my memory escapes me on some of the particularly bad ones, but I will keep updating.

Update One: Can anyone give me information on Jimmy Carr's stand-up act? From what I've seen on TV he looks like one for the Avoidance list, but I'm determined not to presume.

Update Two: Yeah, Jimmy Carr is best avoided. Has anyone seen Reginald D Hunter or Rich Hall live? Both of them seem pretty safe from what I've seen on TV, but I'd like to know what they're like on stage before I give them the seal of approval.

Link Time!

Please read this. I have seen little coverage of this horrendous crime (the post may be triggering), and if we discount the articles that use the word "duped" in the headline, I have seen no coverage at all. This doesn't surprise me - wouldn't want to freak out transphobic readers, after all - but even though I am basically a trafficless blog, I can't just shut up and sit down. This is evil, and the general reaction to it is evil too. You don't get to kill a woman just because you think she's icky. No.

That's all I have. As you were.

Why Isn't She Dead Yet?

I've been meaning to write about this for a while, and was reminded to do so this morning when the BBC reported on Margaret Thatcher's funeral plans. Is she dead? No. Has her health worsened? No. Have any decisions been made as to whether or not she will get a state funeral? Again, no. So, perhaps, this is not technically news. But the BBC has learnt that people love to read about Thatcher's impending death. At the time of writing it's the most-read story on the website. And for a long time, probably since her stroke or maybe before, there has been an unmistakeable whiff of "Why isn't she dead yet?"

I was born during Thatcher's government, and I quite like that I got to come into the world during the reign of the first female Prime Minister (when I was seven or so, I did a quiz which asked "Who was the first female Prime Minister?". Thatcher was the only one I'd heard of, but I was convinced that couldn't be right as there must have been female PMs back in the 18th century, mustn't there?). I was still very young when she was kicked out, so I don't remember much about the way the country was under her, but I was always keenly conscious of the fact that everybody hated her. It was so acceptable to hate her that newspapers could call her a damnable bitch with no fear of complaint - except from a few reactionary Conservatives, but who cares about them, right? - and praying for her death on stage would earn you a huge round of applause. But this was the way the world was, so I didn't think about it much.

This all came back into my head during one of my frequent bouts of insomnia, when I decided to hell with the sleeping and I would watch comedy videos on Youtube. My first port of call was Room 101, with guest Mark Steel. I am quite the Mark Steel fan; he's the sort of comedian who will be invited onto Question Time to make serious points. He makes politics funny, he makes history funny, and he never has to resort to slurs based on gender, race, sexuality or physical appearance, unlike the legions of comedians who think they're being terribly clever and edgy in doing so. Anyway, Steel talked about Bono and Ben Elton and bad teachers, and I nodded and laughed merrily. He then said he would have chosen Thatcher, but that it was "too obvious". He told a story about how he was sitting at home watching the news on the day Thatcher had her stroke - the Very Serious Music played, the newsreader had his Very Serious Face on, and a picture of Mrs Thatcher flashed up: "I must have been one of about a million people who leapt out of their seats and shouted 'Dead?!'" He went on to talk about the disappointment of it being "only a stroke".

In a similar vein, Jeremy Hardy on QI (whom I am not a fan of the way I am of Steel, but he's usually funny and I consider both of them part of Linda Smith's lot, which gets them quite a lot of points automatically) remarked, "Thatcher's grave is going to be a permanent urinal to all decent people, isn't it?" Let's look at that. First of all, Thatcher wasn't the topic of conversation - this was the first thing that came into his head when someone mentioned graves. Her grave is going to be a permanent urinal - she will never, ever, ever be forgiven. And to all decent people - she is so horrible that pissing on a grave becomes not a sign of horrendous, deliberate and malicious disrespect, but a badge of honour, and if you don't fancy pissing on the woman's grave, you're not a decent person. Neither Steel nor Hardy are proponents of the "haha, I can swear and toss out tired old stereotypes" style of what is apparently terribly sophisticated comedy, so I can only conclude that yes, they do bear that kind of ill-will towards Thatcher, and they do genuinely believe that she was such a force of evil that she ruined the country. They genuinely see her death as being 'justice'.

Why? She's an old lady. She has had no power of any kind for more than fifteen years. She is ill and frail, and looks it. Will it be 'justice' to see an old lady die nearly two decades after she last did anything? Tony Blair took us into war under false pretences, but nobody was praying for his death - they just wanted him to leave power. Now that he has, we don't care what happens to him. When he does die, there will undoubtedly be people who say "I'm not sorry he died, he caused thousands of others to die" but nobody will be hanging around his deathbed screaming for him to piss off and die already, we're tired of waiting, you soldier-killing bastard, you Iraqi-massacring bastard, why won't you die? Even from parents of the dead, this would be unacceptable and, well, pretty damn weird. Politicians make bad decisions and we hate them for it, but they're rarely criminals (well, of the non-profiteering type, anyway). Mrs Thatcher was not a serial killer, she was not a rapist, she was not an abductor of children. And I have no truck whatsoever with people who say things like "well, she raped the miners" or "she abducted our children's future" (both of which I have heard recently), because using language intended for violent crimes to describe a political decision you disagreed with is frankly vile.

Is death 'justice'? I don't think so. I can see, however, how some might think that Ian Huntley's death would be justice, or Josef Fritzl's (when they're not pissing themselves laughing about it, of course), or any other real criminals who directly inflict real abuse on others, but this does not describe Margaret Thatcher. It just doesn't. Her policies may have caused great difficulties for great numbers of people, sure, but to compare her to a violent criminal is grossly offensive. "Thatcher did worse things to the miners" is a LIE. And to anticipate her death with the eagerness of Christmas Day, to look upon it as a gift, the shiny toy in the shop that will finally, finally make you happy, finally make you truly believe that Father Christmas exists, is just ghoulish. And yes, whether you like it or not, misogynistic. The same show that laughs at Josef Fritzl's actions talks with unconcealed disgust about Thatcher and the desperate wait for her death. There are few figures in the world, criminals or not, who inspire such gleeful reflections about their eventual death, and it is hard not to conclude that Mrs Thatcher, an uppity woman who dared to believe in power for herself, is in her old age a victim of men who wish they could have cut her down to size when she was powerful and are now taking the opportunity to do so in her weakness.

I believe that there are a lot of lovely men in the world. I also believe there are a lot of down-and-dirty misogynist assholes, who know they are misogynist assholes and enjoy it. The majority of men, I think, believe that they are good guys who love women, but have never dealt with their internal misogyny because they simply don't see it. Most Thatcher-hating men believe themselves to be totally open to a woman running the country, and they hate her that much because she is Just That Awful (Hillary Clinton has seen a similar thing in the last few months: "I've got no problem with a female President, but why does it have to be that bitch? I'm not sexist, I just hate her. Jesus, you fucking hysterical feminists, what's wrong with you?"). But she's not Just That Awful. A man in her position would not be subjected to this. He might have been disliked at the time, sure, but once he got out of power nobody would care. There would be no close watch on his health, looking for signs of the Reaper. There would be no comedy routines predicated on the blissful day when he finally passed on. There would be no large-scale defacings of his image. In fact, his death would be treated the same way as that of any other Prime Minister - we would look in the papers and say: "Oh, is he dead? He was the guy with the miners, wasn't he? That was a bit crap. Oh well." Then we would look at some cartoons.

All this fuss about a state funeral, too - who cares, really? I'm not sure anybody does. People are just frightened that she'll have a funeral in public and nice things will be said. People don't want good things said about her, and crucially, they don't want her to be remembered as anything other than a useless evil bitch. A state funeral is an endorsement. An endorsement of the first female Prime Minister who managed to get elected three times, despite her apparent useless evil bitchery. The Auditor, currently, is a fair picture of "useless" - wasn't elected in, and will probably be elected straight back out again. And if she was an evil bitch, so fucking what? What choice did she have? You can't be a woman in charge and be a moderate, or be "nice", especially if you're in the Tory party, where women are there to make the tea, thank you, sweetheart. You have to fight them all the damn way. You have to take them to war, you have to tell them to toe the fucking line or you'll fire them, no excuses, no nothing. And to the watching public, that's not what women do. The papers tell us that women are embracing their destiny as nurturers, and want to stay at home with the babies. If this is what you're being told constantly, and then along comes a Mrs Thatcher who is going to do what she's decided to do, you can't use human interest stories to appeal to her feminine side, because she doesn't care. She will not have it. She is busy. People perhaps start to think, maybe she doesn't have a feminine side. Maybe she's some sort of mutant. She's weird.

And now the evil bitch is old and sick, withering away. Just getting out of power wasn't enough to satisfy the misogyny that dare not speak. She ran the country, and she ran it like a man. She must be destroyed, utterly and completely. After all this time, the scars run deep. How dare she? I hope I live to see her die, and all decent people will piss on her grave. Well, fuck that. No decent person pisses on anyone's grave. I don't care whose grave it is. And no decent, self-aware person waits with delight for the death of someone they never met. Hate her policies, hate her actions, whatever. But if you're desperate to see her die, you're just a creep.

Grammar Police: Words That Sound The Same Are Not The Same

So, I'm currently getting small amounts of money from our lovely government, and thanks to this I've discovered the reason Labour are going down the crapper: their grammar is awful. My benefits agreement says:

Must be willing to:
1. Travel at least 1.5 hours to work
2. Except jobs at minimum wage.

Now, where they say "at least", they mean "at most". Otherwise they would have found me a job in Sunderland or Abergavenny. And they would have told me not to apply for a job in the centre, because that's only twenty minutes away and I have to travel at least an hour and a half (I suppose I could drive round and round and round). And where they say "except" they of course mean "accept". They would like me to "accept" jobs at minimum wage. They do not want me to "except" them. They do not want me to come in and say, "Well, this place offered me a job, but it's only minimum wage, so I can't take it. You told me to except those jobs."

Memo to the Auditor: You got lots of points for your non-bigoted voting in the IVF and abortion bills. Please don't squander them with grammar like this. Sort it out.

Rape and Imprisonment - Such a Thigh-slapper!

Hi! Back. Blogger let me in without throwing a strop, so I'm still here. Pissed off as ever, of course.

The other night, I watched a new episode of Mock the Week, which is the hugely smug cousin of Have I Got News For You, but without the politics. I watch it mainly because of Dara O Briain, who manages to be side-splittingly funny without lapsing into "politically incorrect" and "edgy", which from what I've seen translates as "lazy". I used to watch it for both him and Andy Parsons, but I've gone right off him this series. For a start, he made a "John Prescott is wasting food" joke, which is unacceptable, and actually prompted Frankie fucking Boyle to point out that there is a difference between bulimia and eating so much you throw up.

I also counted several jokes about Josef Fritzl. Because that was HILARIOUS, wasn't it?? He locked his daughter up in a dungeon for 24 years and raped her over and again! Are you laughing yet? Locked up! Raped! Forced to give birth to her father's children! HA HA HA. Ooh, you're so clever. When asked for "Statements that would change the atmosphere at a dinner party", Parsons responded with, "Ignore the banging, she's been in there for 24 years!" I am furious that I paid twelve quid to see this guy. I was mildly pissed off at the time anyway because his entire act was comprised of jokes he'd previously done on the show. Grrr. But anyway, he made the Fritzl joke and people laughed. Because they're like, cool, and get references and stuff.

Here's what really threw me. Frankie Boyle, in the most recent episode, said: "Gordon Brown's wife's autobiography is going to be less eventful than Anne Frank's." And the audience HISSED. Every last one of them. No laughs, just a long, collective hiss. Compared to a lot of Boyle's jokes, this is pretty damn mild, but the audience hissed. I suppose I just don't understand why this - which happened more than sixty years ago - is beyond the pale, but a woman being imprisoned, repeatedly raped, having to give birth to her father's children in a dungeon and only getting out when one of them nearly died is HILARIOUS. Sure, the Anne Frank thing isn't in the best of taste, but Boyle is hardly the first person to make that kind of joke.

I went to see O Briain perform not so long ago, and an audience member attempted a Fritzl joke. We, of course, hissed at him, and O Briain, in his that's-not-nice-but-I'm-still-funny way, said, "Do you not think maybe it's a little bit soon for that?" Apparently, not anymore.

The Fritzl case is not like Anne Frank. It's not going to be high up in the public imagination for years to come. It's as though these comedians are desperate to seize on this particular bit of comedy gold while it's still hot. And the case broke a few months ago now - there are no more revelations, only little bits tucked away at the back, saying the children won't testify and he's looking at ten years max instead of ten years min - but apparently the story is SO DAMN FUNNY that these comedians have sat on these jokes for weeks, waiting for the show to come back on. "Oh, I know it's kind of old news now, but come on! Ignore the banging! I can't deprive the British public of that gem!"

Guys, not cool. Really not cool. I expect some high-quality Cameron gags next week or none of you are getting any of my money again, ever, even the ones that didn't make the jokes. Those that did - never again. I don't care how funny you are.

Dara? I still love you. I can't help it.

GAH!

I may not be coming back.

Blogger is demanding I switch to a Google account (which, y'know, I have, but I REALLY do not like being forced into this stuff), and demanded it AFTER I HIT PUBLISH ON THE LAST PIECE then refused to let me back in insisting that my account did not exist. I quite like using Blogger, but there are tons of sites for starting a blog and I do not appreciate attempts to gain a monopoly over what I use. If I can't keep the blog on my old Hotmail, fuck it, I'll move.

It's just a blog, it's not a house. You really have no leverage here, Google.

Bootstraps Cameron: It's All Your Fault

I am becoming extremely nervous about the prospect of this man running the country. I think it's more than likely, given the impression the Auditor has left on the public, but I am seriously considering leaving the country rather than living under Cameron's government. Poverty is poor people's fault. Obesity is all about dumb lazy fuckers stuffing their faces. It's terrible that we don't judge people anymore and we should be all about attacking people. Cameron himself is uniquely gifted to tell us what is right and what is wrong, with no reference to the law whatsoever. Cameron has also got where he is today by sheer hard work, nothing to do with private schools and Oxford and extremely expensive elitist clubs and being wafted into the leadership because he had hair. Good old Bootstraps Cameron, a shining example.

Listen, Bootstraps. Do you have any idea how hard it is to pull yourself out of poverty? When poverty is all you've ever known, you've gone to a substandard state school that failed to teach you anything useful, you left school at sixteen because education held no value for you, you were never encouraged to explore career options and you grow up exactly the same way your parents grew up because that's all you ever knew and all they ever knew, unless you're seriously exceptional, with brains, talent and drive, you're kind of stuck. Not that you would know.

What really worries me is that Cameron seems to think politicians are supposed to dictate a country's morals. This from the party of Jeffrey Archer! Bootstraps says: "There is a danger of becoming quite literally a de-moralised society, where nobody will tell the truth about what is good and bad, right and wrong." Erm, what? No, David. Just because you aren't telling people what's right and wrong doesn't mean the morals are leaking out of the country. We are hugely, hugely judgemental

EDIT: Blogger seems to have lost the end of this one. Not sure why. Bah.

The "20 Weeks" Shootdown

Nadine Dorries must be stopped. I mentioned this briefly earlier in Feminist Issue Week, but I feel it could use a more comprehensive attack.

So, the site linked has her "20 reasons" why abortion is all bad and wrong and kills babies and shit.

Reason One: "Public, parliamentary and medical opinion is changing on late abortion. 63% of MPs, two thirds of GPs, nearly two thirds of the public and more than three-quarters of women support a reduction in the 24-week upper age limit."

Bollocks: No source for any of this information is provided. Not even a link to highly biased anti-abortion site. For all we know, she could just have made this up. And if 63% of MPs support a reduction, why didn't Dorries' previous limit-reduction bill go through? Could it be that this is a big fat lie? Could it be that the only link marked "evidence" links to an article in the Telegraph written by Dorries herself? No, surely not.

Reason Two: "High profile cases of babies surviving well below 24 weeks like Manchester's Millie McDonagh, born at 22 weeks, and the world's most premature baby, Amillia Taylor, who was born a week younger, both in October 2006."

Bollocks: Ooh, two babies. Two! That's quite the case, Nads. Notice there is no mention here of severe medical problems, or the fact that - hmmm - one cannot in fact painlessly remove an unwanted live foetus from a woman, stick it in an incubator for four months and then put it up for adoption. Women are not incubators.

Reason Three: "High resolution 3D ultrasound images, pioneered by Professor Stuart Campbell, have shown babies in amazing detail 'walking', yawning, stretching and sucking their thumbs in the womb."

Bollocks: So fucking what? This isn't an argument, this is a stupid woolly "oh, but it's a baybeeeee!" line of reasoning. Foetuses are not doing these things in the way babies do them. This is the horrible emotional blackmail of trying to make vulnerable pregnant women believe that as soon as the egg implants, it's a real live baby. It's disgraceful, frankly.

Reason Four: "In top neonatal units, such as in Minneapolis, Minnesota, 80% of babies born at 24 weeks and 66% of babies born at 23 weeks will survive. Recent figures from University College London are similar."

Fucking MINNEAPOLIS. They'll survive in MINNEAPOLIS. For fuck's sake. We're already getting into the repetitive stuff: babies cannot be removed and incubated at this point, which means the woman would still have to go through an unwanted pregnancy for MONTHS and give BIRTH. Also, she yet again links to an article in a right-wing paper in which she herself is quoted extensively. If you're trying to get the law changed, you can't be so fucking sloppy.

Reason Five: "Recent research, such as that by Professor Sunny Anand from the University of Arkansas, has shown that fetuses are well enough developed to feel pain down to 18 weeks gestation."

Bollocks: Yet again, her link is a Daily Mail article which is mostly about her. Not the actual research. Oh, no, we couldn't have that. Also, you can find one person with the title "Professor" who supports any crazy belief. And really, you'd think she could find more than one, because a lot of research goes into this stuff, and why is 80% of her data American? Minnesota? Arkansas?

Reason Six: "Mothers first feel their babies kick at 19 weeks in a first pregnancy and at 17 weeks in a later pregnancy."

Bollocks: That's not an argument. That's stupid emotional blackmail. She just wanted to get "mother" and "baby" into it somewhere. Next.

Reason Seven: "Stories of babies born alive after botched abortions, as young as 16 weeks, are increasingly common and have understandably shocked the public."

Bollocks: All this says to me is that doctors aren't getting enough training. She implies with this that actual live children are produced, as opposed to almost-dead foetuses with no chance whatsoever. Also, this didn't shock me. Frankly, I'd never heard of this, and I keep a pretty close watch on this stuff.

Reason Eight: "The number of abortions carried out between 20 and 24 weeks has been rising in recent years. Lowering the limit to 20 weeks for normal babies will save almost 2,300 young lives per year."

Bollocks: What do you mean "young lives"? It's not a kid, it's a foetus. This one depends entirely on you already believing that it's a kid and has always been a kid. I don't. I'd rather the abortion rate rose than the number of unwanted kids rose. Also, the Telegraph article she links is the most disgusting piece of misogynistic crap. The thrust of it is essentially "women are dirty sluts and unfeeling bitches".

Reason Nine: "Leading public figures including Opposition leader David Cameron are calling for a cut to at least 20 weeks."

Bollocks: Ha! David fucking Cameron is her next reason! I don't even understand why this is important. She's already pretended, sorry, stated using hard, well-sourced and appropriately-linked data, that at least two thirds of everyone supports her campaign, so why does she need to say, "Oh, and he does, too! You've heard of him!"

Reason Ten: "Britain has the most liberal abortion laws in Europe. A termination can be obtained up to 24 weeks of pregnancy - double the limits in France and Germany and six weeks later than in Sweden or Norway."

Bollocks: Erm, so what? Again, this only works if you already think it's an awful, horrible thing. I think this reflects badly on France and Germany (12 weeks? Really? I'd love to know stats for death-by-illegal-abortion from these countries), and it makes me proud that my country is supporting women's rights better than our friends across the channel. It also makes me nervous about the EU, to be honest.

Reason Eleven: "The methods required to abort a post 20 week baby are abhorrent. To avoid a live birth a lethal injection is given into the baby’s heart through the mother’s abdominal wall. The baby is then delivered stillborn or is surgically dismembered and removed from the uterus limb by limb."

Bollocks: More fucking emotional blackmail, and only works if you believe all abortion is infanticide, which it's NOT. Jesus, Nads. Must try harder.

Reason Twelve: "A recent Royal College of Psychiatrists report acknowledges a link between abortion and mental illness. This is worse with late abortions, especially those for fetal abnormality."

Bollocks: What the fuck does that mean? Well, it's a proper link (as in, it takes you to the Royal College of Psychiatrists and not the Daily Mail), and says nothing of the sort. It says "mental disorders can occur for some women during pregnancy and after birth." So, perhaps, it's just that pregnancy can be a pretty bloody traumatic thing to go through. It also says there is no conclusive evidence about links between abortion and mental disorders (NOT mental illness - depression is a mental disorder, but our Nads makes it sound like abortion gives you schizophrenia) and says nothing at all about late abortions or foetal abnormality. She's even spelling 'foetal' the American way, for God's sake. I now know why she hasn't given proper links for any of her other 'reasons'.

Reason Thirteen: "The vast majority of late abortions (after 16 weeks) take place in private clinics but are classified as ‘NHS Agency’ (ie charged to the NHS). Abortions over 20 weeks cost from £1,300 to £1,600 each and there are inevitably financial vested interests involved."

Bollocks: This one is an absolute fucking disgrace. It's like saying that hospitals try to convince you that you need major operations when you don't, because they'll get paid more. This borders on libel, frankly. How dare she accuse doctors of putting off abortions to get more money? Ugh.

Reason Fourteen: "Babies are now undergoing surgery in the womb under 24 weeks, the photograph of Samuel Armas having surgery at 21 weeks for spina bifida has received international attention."

Bollocks: This has nothing to do with anything, except that she wanted to crowbar another real kid in here. That's not a reason. It also reinforces the idea that women aren't really people when they're pregnant, because that must have been a terrible experience for her.

Reason Fifteen: "Very few if any UK graduates are now willing to perform abortions beyond 16 weeks. Almost all doctors performing late abortions in the UK, in BPAS clinics, are from overseas."

Bollocks: And suddenly, we run out of links. How does she know this? Apparently, that's not important. It seems pretty xenophobic to me - "it's those bastard foreigners! You hate foreigners, right?"

Reason Sixteen: "A Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) guideline, supporting an upper limit of 24 weeks, was published in 2004 and needs to be updated in line with the latest evidence on fetal sentience, ultrasound and neonatal survival."

Bollocks: No links to this 'latest evidence'. I maintain that ultrasound is irrelevant, neonatal survival is irrelevant given that the foetus (you're British, Nadine! It's got a fucking O in it!) will generally have to remain in the unwilling woman's body for months on end. I think foetal sentience is bollocks, too, since she seems to relate that directly to the ultrasound stuff. Notice that an actual medical body supported 24 weeks and some crazy MP with no actual fucking work to do is claiming it's wrong. Was she supporting 24 weeks in 2004? I might have to go a-hunting for that information.

Reason Seventeen: "The British Medical Association’s opposition to lowering the limit is not supported by the majority of its members and almost 1,000 BMA members recently signed a petition against attempts to further liberalise BMA policy."

Bollocks: What a confusing sentence. She offers no evidence of the limit not being supported by the majority of BMA members. She does link to the petition, however. The petition invited ME to sign it, and I don't have squat to do with the BMA. This has nothing to do with the Associaton's members at all - it can be signed by any arse on the internet. This woman is such a fucking liar.

Reason Eighteen: "Pregnancy testing kits are freely available at chemists and there is now little excuse for not diagnosing pregnancy long before 20 weeks."

Bollocks: What the fuck? Ooh, because Superdrug sells pregnancy tests, there's 'little excuse' for not knowing you're pregnant. Well, if you're not looking for a fucking pregnancy, that's not necessarily true, is it? Some women don't put much weight on. Some women still have periods. Oh, and you know that foetal abnormality thing? Not so easy to diagnose early. But we can't say that, because then you couldn't blame all the stupid women, could you? Fucking hell, the tone of that 'reason'! I feel like a nine-year-old at a Catholic school being told off by a nun for not doing her homework.

Reason Nineteen: "The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee’s report recommending retention of the 24 week upper limit was heavily influenced by pro-abortion witnesses."

Bollocks: She links to a Times article. The article talks about the report which was published (it also recommended scrapping the "two doctors must give permission" law and allowing nurses to perform the procedure), which two MPs disagreed with. Can you guess the name of the female one? That's right, Nadine is linking to her own opinions YET AGAIN. For fuck's sake.

Reson Twenty: I can't write this one out, because Reason Twenty is a picture of a foetus face.

Bollocks: Nadine has run out of ideas, and has to resort to pictures. Her brain has melted from all this meticulous research she's been doing. A picture of a foetus face is not an argument. The foetus face comes from the Life Institute. That'll convert the waverers nicely, Nads.

Then she says that all evidence points to cutting the limit, and links to her own fucking article. Really, Nadine. If "all evidence" points that way, show me some of it. Show me any of it. "Evidence" is neither your opinion nor legitimate sources which say nothing related to what you claim they say. If you're going to try and wrest control of my body and hand it over to David Cameron, you're going to have to try harder than that.

Out-of-Touch Old Gits: Women are Mush-Brains

To continue with Feminist Issue Week, I'm going to yell at some people.

In this article, which I strongly recommend, we learn that Theo Paphitis of Dragons' Den fame is an arsehole.

"All this feminist stuff," he said, "are we seriously saying that 50% of all jobs should go to women?" Paphitis went on to note that women "get themselves bloody pregnant and ... they always argue that they'll be working until the day before, have the baby, go down to the river, wash it off, give it to the nanny and be back at work the following day, but sure enough, their brains turn to mush, and then after the birth the maternal instincts kick in, they take three months off, get it out of their system and are back to normal". On the subject of paternity leave he suggested that he thinks "it's a bit soppy".

Yes, this "feminist stuff". It's shit, isn't it? No, of course 50% of jobs shouldn't go to women, it's not as though they're half the population or, y'know, people. Also, women somehow get themselves pregnant (how does that work?). Also notice that he seems to believe it's totally reasonable for a woman to have a baby, jump straight out of the hospital bed and goback to work, as though they haven't actually undergone an enormously painful, body-altering experience and pushed a bloody person out themselves. Note that taking three months off is considered insane and the result of "brains turning to mush".

On top of that, the contempt with which he mentions nannies suggests that even if we could jump out of the hospital bed and go straight back to work, it wouldn't do anything to push up his respect for us as a gender. My partner and I quite like Dragons' Den and I distinctly remember watching an episode in which a woman pitching them made a snarky remark about the nanny doing the work. Paphitis, who has five kids, immediately stopped her and said, "There's no nanny. There's just Mrs P." Two of the other dragons (five kids and six kids respectively) immediately fell over themselves to make clear that they had never, ever hired child-rearing help. For five fucking kids. And Paphitis thinks paternity leave is "soppy" so God knows he's not helping out. His poor wife. Can't get any help from anyone. Looking after the kids is the mother's job and only the mother's job, goddammit. He's big and important and has businesses to run. Including, amusingly, multiple lingerie companies. You'd think it wouldn't be in his best interests, especially taking into account his personal celebrity, to make disparaging remarks about his entire target market. And lingerie shops have to have, well, bra-fitters. The entire staff has to be female, really, and he's so unconcerned with them that he's quite willing to go out and call them mush-brains to the entire world. Guess where I won't be buying my lingerie anymore. I'd write and tell him, but he'd probably assume I was just a pregnant mush-head. Screw it, I'm going to do it anyway. La Senza, Contessa, you will be hearing from me.

Alan Sugar, apparently, thinks it's disgraceful that he's not allowed to hire based on whether or not a woman wants a family (and presumably, if she says no and then gets pregnant, he can fire her), and that to cut all the crap out, he just doesn't hire women. Just in case they get pregnant. I think that might be kind of illegal, but nobody will tell him off because he's on the telly. He doesn't think it should be illegal, because successful businesses can collapse under the strain of having to phone a temp agency and ask for someone who wants six months' work. How useless is he? We all know Alan Sugar is out of touch (email phone, anyone? All the convenience of email with none of that computer/internet stuff! You wouldn't think he made his money in bloody computers), but Jesus Christ. Has the man ever left 1972?

Edited to remove incorrect information.

My Vulva Is Not Your Work of Art

So, to start Feminist Issue Week, let's go with this one, the empowering vaginoplasty. I was confronted with this over breakfast on Sunday. What we have here is a doctor, apparently known to some as "Dr Sex" (I'm sorry, but he gave that name to himself, I don't care what he says), who wants to help women by cutting up their privates and reshaping them to eighteen-year-old porn star standards. This is so great for women, and he's totally doing it because he cares.

"He wants to talk about his work, which is proudly displayed in a series of ring binders. It is not my usual choice of pre-breakfast viewing. “Look at that — excess tissue along the clitoris. Now, see how clean and sleek that is. The minora: nice and neat.”"

First of all, ew. Second of all, clean and sleek and nice and neat? I'm not a bloody designer vase. But he's very proud of these cloned vulvas. What does it involve, doctor?

“I have procedures that I pioneered, trademarked and have developed over the past 12 years. Laser vaginal rejuvenation, for the enhancement of sexual gratification. Designer laser vaginoplasty, for the aesthetic enhancement of the vulva structures. I also do liposculpting.”

Again, ew. It really, really freaks me out when anyone uses the word "designer" to refer to reproductive parts. And it's always women's reproductive parts, too - men get their share of the surgical enhancement crap, but I've never come across "designer penis" ads. Anyway, this guy is a multimillionaire and charges tens of thousands of pounds to reshape and revitalise.

"A self-styled, can-do crusader for women, he sees his role as one of liberating women from the tyranny of sexual inadequacy and disappointment. By arming us with the tools for total physical dominion over our private parts, he is, to his mind, setting us free."

ARGH. Argh, argh, argh, ARGH. A crusader for women? How are you a crusader for women if you earn your living from telling them the most intimate parts of their body are weird and gross and need fixing? Also, he's not arming us with the tools for total physical dominion over our private parts. By doing this, HE is the one with total physical dominion over our private parts. He's the one with the tools, and he's cutting us up with them, to make us look like his previous works. A ring binder full of identical vaginas. It's like a really twisted version of Argos.

“My customers say, ‘You know what, I don’t like the length of my labia minora. I don’t want the small lips projecting outside the outer lips.’ We can take that excess skin away. They say, ‘I don’t want my labia majora. They’re too flat, I want them full.’ We can inject fat there. Or, ‘I’ve got too much fat in my mons pubis. It looks like I have a penis.’ And we can do that. Or, ‘I’ve had children, I’m too relaxed, I want intense sexual gratification’, so we tighten the muscle. Or, simply, ‘I just look too old.’ Because it's all about youth, youth, youth.”

Oh, for fuck's sake. I wouldn't mind betting that nobody has ever come into his office and said "You know what, I've got too much fat in my mons pubis". Nobody says "mons pubis". The idea that women are actually sitting around with little hand mirrors between their legs, poking their labia and panicking about lack of plumpness, panicking to the extent that they have to call a doctor and pay thousands of pounds to have them fattened up frightens me more than I can say. Whether it's just come from watching porn, or from horrible partners, or from the nagging insecurity that they're wrong, the magazines have told them that so few women have great vaginas, that they have to go and ask a man who knows. A feminist crusader, no less. Am I wrong? Yes, you are. You have flat labia, you ugly bitch, says the feminist crusader.

"He does hymen repair, but doesn’t talk about it since receiving death threats from religious groups."

I'm not sure what the worst part of this sentence is. I can't stand the stupid virginity cult, and since some women legitimately fear for their lives if they don't bleed like hell on the wedding night and give the man something to show for it, this is the one part of the surgery I could, under these circumstances, understand (it's still vile, though). But for a feminist crusader, this seems cowardly in the extreme. Stand up for your damn patients. No points for anybody here.

He also does a rather bizarre procedure called the G-Shot, which involves sticking collagen into the G-spot, or what is assumed to be the G-spot. I don't know much about the existence or lack thereof of a G-spot, because I am lazy and do not research. He reckons this collagen idea is brilliant and 87% of people report more sexual pleasure. The journalist amusingly points out that this figure comes from a study of 20 people. 87% of 20 people? I don't get science.

Some say there is no G-spot, or that it only exists in a certain number of women.

“I would say that every woman does have one. Reports like that . . . it’s as if men want to take pleasure away from women.”

Go Feminist Crusader! We all have G-spots that are insufficiently pleasurable naturally and must have plumping agent stuffed in there! It's totally about our pleasure and not about his profits at all! Hooray!

The journalist asks, helpfully, if this is maybe not about us and more about piling the paranoia on in a world that's already full of the stuff.

“Look, demand for these treatments comes from women,” he says. “I didn’t create it, the market was there, and I discovered it because I listened to women. Every single one of the procedures has been developed because it has been requested. And it’s going international. There is demand.”

You know, I find this remarkably hard to believe. I know that some women are hugely insecure about the way their privates look, and would give anything to have something done about it, but not only is correcting these apparent faults not a helpful or feminist action, but also this man is operating a business. Businesses must have customers. Without vulvas to inject, he's fucked. He needs us, and he must convince us that we need him too. That's what success is all about. He has an enormous vested interest in instilling paranoia, nurturing it and making sure it doesn't die. There is no way in hell he could be a multi-millionaire in a world where women aren't made to feel insecure about this and no alternative route is publicised. He knows damn well what he's doing here.

Apparently he has a couple of UK customers a month, but we have no stats about vaginoplasty over here because it doesn't really happen. He thinks (and this is fucking brilliant) that this isn't because we don't need it, it's because we're weird. He blames our healthcare system. No, he does. And this man is from the stupidly rich nation where people die because they can't afford medical care. I mean, I rag on the NHS as much as anyone, but thank God we're not in America. He, however, thinks we should envy Americans because they can spend all their money on a designer vagina - I hate that phrase with a rhyming passion - and then die of whatever when their money and insurance runs out.

"Also, the mentality of the doctors — they work so hard, they have no life. Doctors here are entrepreneurial, in the first place."

Yeah, our doctors are fucking weird. Wanting to save lives and shit. Who cares if people die, so long as they die with diamond-encrusted genitals? Seriously, this is disgusting. Who the hell thinks like this?

"It isn’t just the fault of the doctors. Some of the blame must also be laid at the feet of British women. Matlock is frustrated by the modesty of his British patients when it comes to that part of their anatomy. “My UK patients are so shy. They say, ‘Women in the UK would never talk about this.’ The attitude is, ‘That’s how it is. You were born like that, so leave it alone.’ That’s why they come here. Here, the culture is 100% different.”"

Well, thank fuck for that. How dare we be modest about it? It's not like we keep it covered up and hidden from view all the time, and only the people we really trust are allowed to see it or anything. Oh, wait. I cannot believe "you were born like that, so leave it alone" is a bad thing in this context.

He goes on about the whole tighter vagina = better sex thing, which the journalist points out is crap. We read a testimonial from a happy customer. She wanted to be like a nineteen-year-old, which makes me sad for her self-esteem.

"Back in Matlock’s office, we’re poring over pictures of a Playboy model displaying what he calls “a beautiful structure”. Matlock's hands-down bestseller is laser vaginal labioplasty, and it’s this kind of image, he claims, that inspires women. “Women bring in this pornographic information — I have drawers of it — and they say, ‘That is what I wanna see.’ That’s what women want to see after rejuvenation.”"

I don't know about you, but I feel sick. Women watch porn, feel inadequate, and come to him. He confirms their fears and takes a huge chunk of money. Women want to look like porn stars. WHY?

"Dr Toby Mayer is a plastic surgeon working in Beverly Hills. “If someone has a functional problem with their vagina, then they should have reconstructive surgery,” he says. “But who can say what a vagina should look like? I am 66 years old. I have never, in all my life, ever heard a man say,‘I saw this woman, she had an ugly vagina.’ Never. To tell someone otherwise is to promote body dysmorphia. What is the mentality of this person? It’s not progressive, it’s entrepreneurial. It’s about money. And doctors should never be about the money.”"

Read that again. And again, and again. Thank God for him. I have not lost faith in all doctors. And, thankfully, even "Dr Sex" himself has to admit that no, men do not care if your vagina looks like that of a teenage porn star. He's quite sad about it, though. We end on some horrible motivational-speaker thing about perfection, and then some even more horrible stuff about French women having toned pelvic floors.

I really hate this wave of people who say and do horrifically anti-feminist things, and then try and pretend they're trying to help us. We've had people who think women shouldn't be working, and tell us that they're on our side, because we don't really want to be working. This "I correct women because they want to be corrected" stuff has been all over the place forever, trying to sell us an image of the person we could be if only we bought this, or went there, or did that. We are supposed to accept without question that breast implants can be empowering if a woman really, truly wants them (and I'm not about to psychoanalyse any of these women, but empowering? No. Confidence-boosting, perhaps) and I am pretty worried that one day soon I will be expected to accept without question that if a woman really, truly wants this man to re-mould her vagina in his signature style, then more power to her. It's inevitable that vaginoplasty will migrate over here, but I wish I could keep it out. Whatever this guy says, we clearly don't need it here, otherwise there would be actual demand for it. We seem to run enough plastic surgery clinics, and if enough of their patients, unsubjected to the hard sell, had asked for this sort of thing, they would have found someone to do it. It's all about profit.

What it is emphatically NOT about is empowering us. It's also not about what we want. This man knows what he thinks a good vagina looks like. It's not like a haircut, or even a nose job - one size will damn well fit all here. There is one image of symmetrical, youthful perfection. What if you like your flat labia? You think he'll encourage you in that, or will he break out his ring binder and say, in wheedling tones, "Oh, but darling, see how much better you could look"? The only reason this is being marketed as personal empowerment is because, by his own admission, men couldn't care less if there's fat in your mons pubis (I don't even understand this one, frankly) - if they did care, the good doctor would be working that angle for all he's worth. We all know that what other people think is far more important than what we think, at least when it comes to our own appearance, and if there was a viable "don't you want to give him this gift?" or "well, you can leave it alone if you want, but it's the kind of thing guys whisper about in pubs" selling point, the empowerment spiel would be out the window. He doesn't care about us, he wants money. Of course he wants money. That's understandable. But for the love of God, admit you're in it for the money. Don't pretend you're in it for us, because you know you're not. You know this is nothing but a breeding ground for insecurity and panic and self-loathing and looking at as much porn as possible trying to work out what the 'perfect' vagina looks like. And then we come to you and you say "Let me help you, I want to help you." And we believe that we're wrong, and funny-looking, and can never have sex ever again because what will he say? And you smile, and you fix us, and you take £40,000. And you get to tell the whole world that you're on our side.

I am not here to be shaped and moulded into someone else's idea of perfect. Not a stranger's, not a doctor's, not my partner's. And whatever the good doctor may say about the woman's decisions, it's not. He gets to reshape and remould every woman to have the "structure" and the "lines" that he thinks a woman should have. I am a person, and I am not your work of art. In fact, I'm one of those Englishwomen you hate so much - I was fucking born like this, so leave me the fuck alone.

It's Feminist Issue Week!

This week at LLS, I am going to yell at misogynistic arseholes. It'll be nice for my imaginary readers to have a respite from all this bishop stuff, anyway. I'm going to shove in a few links and go more in-depth later.

First we have this from The Guardian, about misogynistic arseholes, including one of the guys from Dragon's Den.

Then we have this from the Sunday Times Style magazine. We learn that vaginoplasty is empowering to women, and more women should do it so that we can we can feel confident with our genitalia. You have no idea how cross I am about this.

I also feel that the 20 Weeks campaign could use a little step-by-step shooting down.

I'm keeping half an eye on responses to the so-called "discrimination bill" which aims to balance out the male/female workplace ratio. If you want to see my favourite headline on the subject, go here. For the link-phobic - "White Men To Face Jobs Ban". Seriously.

And because I just can't seem to leave the poor bishops alone, we learn here that the idea of female bishops (I can't say "women bishops", it doesn't make grammatical sense. Why is it a "male model" but a "woman bishop"?) is so horrendous and awful that they will LEAVE THE CHURCH if women are allowed into their little club. "Screw you, God, I gotta run before the women show up." If female bishops must be ordained, they would like to be exempted from having to take orders from a woman. I promise I won't make this into an entire post, but for fuck's sake.

More to come, with the sad inevitability of a world that just doesn't like women very much. If by any chance anybody is reading this, and has any further links to drop in, please feel free.

Don't Worry Your Pretty Head About It

I just noticed that I didn't post about it at the time (something I apparently make quite a habit of - your up-to-date news! Three weeks after it's of any use!), but there's some stuff that I think needs saying about the Lisbon Treaty.

As you may or may not know, the Lisbon Treaty was created to replace the rejected EU Constitution, and so as not to have the same trouble again, most of the MEPs decided not to put the treaty to referendum in their countries. The only exception was Ireland, whose laws make a referendum on matters such as this compulsory. And, of course, the Irish voted No. Despite the fact that all member states have to ratify the treaty in order to be enacted, I believe the current EU plan is to pretend Ireland didn't say anything, though some have suggested changing three words and making them vote over and over again until they get sick of it.

I don't understand why the EU is so surprised at the Irish No. The Constitution was roundly rejected and the Lisbon Treaty looks quite a lot like the same old thing in shiny new packaging, and nobody seems willing to dispossess us of the notion in any specific terms. Nick Clegg (aka Cameron 2.0) of the Lib Dems said the treaty was "very different" to the Constitution, and Gordon Brown said the treaty wasn't the same as the Constitution because it said it wasn't (I don't have a link for this, because it's from a speech he made on the Breakfast News). Apparently, the first page of the treaty says something like, "This is not a constitution, because the people said no to a constitution, so this is something else instead." I'm sorry, but that is hair-splitting, manipulative guff. I could say "I don't speak English" but it wouldn't make it true. Writing "Not A Constitution" (I am so sick of typing that word) at the top in big letters doesn't make any difference to the contents at all.

We simply do not trust anything that comes out of Europe these days - I speak of Europe as a Parliament as opposed to a continent - because they simply do not see the need to tell us anything. Oh, they complain loudly about the "misinformation" distributed by the Irish No campaign, but they don't offer any specific refuting evidence. The BBC informs us that the treaty is indeed largely similar to the Constitution (argh), including the same loss of veto powers and redistribution of voting weights, which was a huge problem last time. The BBC, I assume, has read the treaty. I tried reading the (insert C-word) when it first became available for public reference. I planned to read the whole thing, translate it into human language and post it on my website. I got about sixty pages in before my head exploded. It was not written with the intent of being read. I came across numerous ambiguously suspicious passages, but I could not say with any degree of certainty whether a certain passage meant the end of autonomy for national banks or meant absolutely nothing. You cannot read it and extract the intent behind it - it has been written with the express purpose of concealing intent. You have to know what it means before you read it. Were we told what it meant? Were we hell. We were told it was no big deal, just a silly little document, something about trade, don't worry your pretty little head about it. The big men in suits will take care of all the nasty words. And frankly, even if it was just a silly little document with no wider ramifications whatsoever, we do not take kindly to being told that, and we assume, quite sensibly, that they're trying to hide something. Now, I don't think it's necessarily the case that the public has to know everything about the way the country is run. In fact, it's probably a bad idea more often than not. What's also a bad idea is making it quite obvious that you're not telling them ANYTHING. Here it is in dramatised form:

The British public: The treaty is pretty much the same as the Constitution.
The British government: No, of course it isn't. We rejected the Constitution and this is something entirely different.
The British public: What makes it different?
The British government: Oh, this is just a little something about trade, not even important enough for you to vote on. Don't worry about it.
The British public: This is hugely suspicious.
The British government: Suspicious? It's not suspicious! Who's been spreading these lies?

So when the time came for the Irish to vote on it, were they going to trust the people who said, "Don't read it, just sign it!" or the people who told them actual stuff that was actually in the document? Perhaps these people exaggerated, or were scare-mongering. Yeah, maybe. But they were giving out information. The European Parliament could easily have given out a few sheets of easy-to-read facts about the more boring stuff included in the treaty, but they chose to tell us instead that thinking too much will give us wrinkles. So there's really no call for them to be surprised when Ireland decides to take the only information it's got. To most of us, the whole thing smacks of taking the old Constitution round to the tradesman's entrance and pretending it's just the potato man.

Public: We weren't expecting a potato man.
Government: Oh, come on! It's just potatoes! What harm can that do?
Public: Is he going to charge for these potatoes?
Government: Oh, sweetie, we take care of the money. Go and knit a nice rug, that would be productive.
Public: This potato man looks weird.
Government: RELAX! Jesus, you and your damn prejudices.

So, really, guys, let's have a little more respect around here. We're already vaguely suspicious of anything you do because you're politicians. Telling us not to worry about it is both insulting and counter-productive, since we all immediately start wondering what we have to worry about. I am interested to see where we go from here - I want to know exactly how respectful Europe will be towards the Irish No. I could imagine some serious problems if they decide to ignore it, but somehow I really don't see that stopping them. Watch this space - I'll attempt to make it interesting. Possibly with more dramatisations and some one-line comic relief characters.