'In 2013 I want to....'

I was inspired this week by the New Orleans-based artist Candy Chang when I watched her TED Talk about a piece of urban art she created. On an abandoned building in her neighbourhood she wrote the words 'Before I die I want to....' and then left spaces for her neighbours and passers-by to fill in. She got some amazing contributions...funny, sad, ambitious, brilliant. If you're interested watch it here.

I thought I'd ask you, readers of notthestylepages, what you'd like to do in 2013....

I'd like to be able to swim 200m butterfly (with no break).

Are your parents cooler than you? Welcome to hell.

'The daisy', said my father in law, sipping his tea in my sitting room last week, 'represented a vagina.' He paused for a moment. 'It was too obvious.'

This statement was shocking not for the casual use of the word that makes the world uncomfortable nor his confident assessment of a work of modern art but because it revealed one of the greatest divisions in modern society today and that is the fun our parents are having versus the fun we are (not) having.

Yes, the collective parental unit (‘The Unit’) has emerged from the sucking hell of its suburban bog, wiped itself clean on 400 count Egyptian cotton and reinvented itself as the curator of the modern zeitgeist. The Unit is living the Life of Riley while its offspring groan under the burden of their fin de siecle pension entitlements. And boy o boy, what I wouldn’t give to swap places.

My father in law's psycho-floral observation was made after an art ‘soiree’ (the organiser's word) he and my mother in law attended in Bognor Regis. Bognor is a small town on the Sussex coast with ambition, it seems, to be twinned with Hoxton-upon-Shoreditch. This particular 'soiree' was merely a teaser for a bigger, louder, more shocking art event planned for the New Year. In giving us a rundown of the event it became very clear The Unit knew a lot more about modern art than we did. The question is, how did this happen?

The change that happens to The Unit after retirement is baffling.

‘But they never went anywhere!’ my husband said as they drove away. 'I don't understand. A big night out used to be the Harvester on Grandma's birthday. What the hell are they doing at a 'soiree'?' He had the same problem coming to terms with his stepmother's superior grasp of phone text abbreviations in 2008, and his own mother's casual use of Facebook. He is being forced to confront the neo-social and cultural husk of his own life.

I'm sympathetic, but I'm struggling with the same thing. Here is a series of texts my mother sent me this week:

‘Thinking about buying a new car’

‘Bought a new VW today!'
'It's silver!'

‘Picking up the new car today! Oh, btw, happy birthday!’

‘Am drinking glass of wine in sun, with new car keys in hand. Smiling!’

Now, if I’d ever sent my mum a text suggesting I was drinking within 100ft of a new car while holding its keys I’d have my arse kicked from Sydney to Saigon. I'm almost certain it was wine from a bottle too. No more ‘Kaiser Stuhl’ in a cask for The Unit.

From extreme kayaking in the Ardeche, to summers in France and trips to Cairns for the lunar eclipse The Unit isn’t just on the local art scene or propping up the German auto sector. It’s going global Gangnam style. It's riding the credit crisis like a toddlers' merry go round. Its diary is jammed solid. It might be able to squeeze babysitting in between lattes with gym mates and social networking but don’t rely on it. The saying 'old age isn't fun, but it's better than the alternative' no longer applies. Old age is a laugh a minute and busier than a Manhattan till on Black Friday.

And it's not just about a busier social life and the flagrant spending of our inheritance. The Unit has built a richer role for itself in the community too. One of my mother in laws (I have two) retired a few years ago only to start working for three charities. Three! At the same time! I think, on average, she saves two lives before breakfast and one after lunch Monday through Friday. And that's before the big stuff like selling cushions to ladies with piles at the charity shop. She isn't part of the Cameron Government's 'Big Society'. She IS the Big Society - just her, alone! If Van Rompuy can't fish Europe out of its pond he knows who to call. 

Of course The Unit may read this, scoff, and say 'we did our time wiping your arses, now it's OUR time suckers.' Or they'll plead with us and say 'We were REAL PEOPLE too all those years, you just didn't see it!' Well to that I say it's hard to see the face of humanity when it's glowing purple over a missed curfew or loud music, or when it's hidden behind health & safety goggles and a clipboard. We are being forced to reassess decades of capricious repression of our own artistic identities and accept a new world order, where we are the slouches, the povos, the luddites.

As my father in law drove away last week, having taken pity and brought us up to speed on the symbolic associations between Romantic artist William Blake and she of the daisy, Georgia O'Keeffe, we were left slightly shaken and badly regretting we hadn't booked a table for dinner at the Harvester.

by Katherine Burgdorf

Vagina. Half the world has one

By Gabrielle Jackson

It was in response to the bodyform brouhaha in October that I changed my Facebook status to ‘Vagina’.
 

What happened, for those who missed it, was a young man wrote on the Facebook page of bodyform – a sanitary word, sorry, products brand – asking why they lie about women’s periods in their commercials. Bodyform responded with a humorous YouTube clip saying that when they tested adverts telling the truth about menstruation men couldn’t handle it. They cried.

You can view it here:

Well, big whoop if they cry. I cry pretty much every time I have my period, but it still comes. Every month.

The Guardian didn’t think bodyform went far enough. Neither do I. Because what annoyed me more than ads for pads was the fact that we’re not allowed to say ‘vagina’ on TV. Well, you are actually 'allowed' to say it on TV in most Western countries, but it isn't often said, and when it is, there are complaints, such as when Carefree said the word in one of its commercials in Australia. You can read that story on Mumbrella. 

That illustrates the bigger issue at play here, which Sarah Silverman gets at in her snort-laugh-inducing book, The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption and Pee.

"There's essentially no limit to how often we can say 'penis', 'balls', 'scrotum', and 'shaft', but female anatomical language is a big, flapping red flag (so to speak),' says Silverman speaking about her show on Comedy Central, a channel owned by MTV.

She does admit that 'gaping rectum' in reference to a male was once censored but it's almost always the exclusively female genatalia that the standards people take issue with. Once she wasn't allowed to say 'vagina' because it was too graphic and was substituted with 'genatalia'. ('Vagina' does get through on other occasions). In this instance, it was 'labia' that was about to be scrapped.

"According to the censor, 'labia', in this instance was too 'graphic' and we were asked to remove it. Labia? Fucking seriously? We can say 'penis' and 'balls' until the cows come home, but labia? I asked our censor if this is what she wanted to teach young girls - that penis is fine and balls are funny but labia - your own body part - is dirty? It was not a stretch to me to view this as telling little girls to be ashamed of their bodies, which genuinely offended me," writes Silverman.

 In that case, she won. But on the whole, I'd say we're generally losing.
 

That’s why I thought I should make it my status update. You know, just get it off my chest at last: ‘OK, world, there’s something you should know about me. Not sure if you already do….BUT….I have a vagina!’

That’s what I wrote on Twitter and immediately lost followers. And to them I say, ‘Hahahahahaha. HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!’

It’s not dirty or rude or disgusting. It’s pretty much the reason we’re all here. We all entered the world through one, so it’s pretty funny, if you think about it. We’re not allowed to say on TV what half the world has and the other half (roughly) wants (to enter, not to possess). Have you ever heard of anything so RIDICULOUS?

Well, perhaps the conversation that ensued comes close. I’ve recreated the conversation and deleted surnames here to protect the identities of those involved. They might not want the public to know they engaged in a conversation about VAGINAS.

Gabrielle Jackson 

Vagina

Nick and Joe like this.

Helen: thought your favorite term for it is 'front bottom (1 like)

Margaret What!

Kate Gabbs. If I were a boy I'd def hit the "like" button for this one. And no you can't blame angus!!

Gabrielle I am doing it in response to the fact that you are not allowed to say 'vagina' on television. Pad and tampon companies who wanted to use the word on an advert were BANNED by the networks in the US. I am investigating the situation now. In the meantime, this is pretty funny: https://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/commentisfree/2012/oct/17/bodyform-bloodless-snark-attack

Gabrielle But if you think we should be allowed to use the word - because HALF the world has one - you should change your status too. AND Sarah Silverman was allowed to use the word penis in her show, but not vagina. WHY?

Gabrielle I'm glad you liked Helen's comment, Mum, because that's what you called it when we were little

Margaret Oh I know! Catholic upbringing is to blame, the words vagina and penis spoken out loud could have led to excommunication! (1 like)

Simone This is so funny because [my 6-year-old son,] angus asked me this morning if there was another name for 'front bum' & after our conversation with Jess in the Hunter I told him ' Yes, it's called a Vagina". He said 'What? A Begina?" I said "No, Vagina" & he was not impressed at all!! Think we'll just stick to Front Bum thanks! (5 likes)

Gabrielle that is hilarious, sim! I'm glad he knows the proper word for it

Margaret Hilarious! However vagina is not a "nice" sounding word, I wish it was called something else!

Gabrielle Reminds me of the scene from Rake last week! Should we call it a weewee? That sounds nicer (2 likes)

Margaret Thinking about Rake what about calling it a ninny? Then we could have a ninny and a nonny. (1 like)

Gabrielle I think you've solved the problem, mum! (1 like)

Julieanne Wats up with the good old fanny!! (2 likes)

Gabrielle We were allowed to call it that when we were older, Jules

Sheri Foo foo was a favourite growing up... My little guy uses the term weenis because mark calls it a willy and I call it a penis and this the blend was born so maybe the vagina needs to be a voo voo...(1 like)

Nick I had to press the like button Gabs - its not often that's the first word you read when you wake up! X (1 like)

Wendy I quite like fahina - it's also urban slang for 'the boss', so that works for me. (4 likes)

Jenny What about cloaca ? In agriculture I think I recall that was the name of a chicken's bits.

Gabrielle How do you pronounce that Jen? I also wrote vagina on twitter and three people immediately stopped following me, which is more than a little amusing (1 like)

Jenny Clo. Aka

Gabrielle Hmm, something tells me that's not going to work. I think ninny and nonny are currently in the lead (1 like)

Nick @Gabs - re Twitter. Can't believe one could ever stop following vagina...! (2 likes)

Margaret Hey Gabs Fred has just read all these comments and wants to add to them. He says "beaver" and "ferret" are his particular favourites! Both terms should be immediately disregarded as far as I'm concerned but just saying.....

Karen Hilarious comments. Always called it "Wee wee" with my kids. (2 likes)

Eirwen I was born in the city of Regina, in Canada. It's pronounced the same as vagina, but with an R. I can't tell you the looks I get when people ask me where I was born. Hilarious! I love to see them squirm, thinking I've just said vagina!! (1 like)

What do you call your vagina (if you have one) or penis (if you have one)? And what words do you teach your kids to say for vagina and penis?

Diary of a Pakistani Schoolgirl.

Lost for words, except that, you know the bastards are worried if this is their answer.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7834402.stm

The Bechdel Test for women in movies

This movie has two women who talk to each other about something other than men (but only once)

By Gabrielle Jackson

I'd like to draw your attention to the Bechdel Test for films. It goes like this:

Does the film:
1. Have at least two (named) women in it?
     2. Who talk to each other?
          3. About something besides men?

If you answer yes to all three questions, the film has passed the test. Woohoo!

The fact that such a test exists is testament to how few films actually pass. And passing doesn't mean it's a feminist film, by any means, or that it's good, simply that it has parts for a couple of chicks.

The film industry is structured to make movies about men, for men. Are you happy with that? Women are half the world. You wouldn't know it by looking at Hollywood films. Independent cinema tends to score better, but there's still a huge gap between what is represented on the silver screen and what actually happens in real life.

I know that films are an escape and that they don't have to be representative of real life. But are we really saying that women don't feature in any fantasy world? That women are not interesting to anybody? That women have no stories to tell? 

Nobody is saying that all films should have women in them. Or that films with all male casts are bad. Or that we shouldn't watch films that fail the test. I'd never give up Top Gun.

But I think we should be aware of it, and apply the test to the films we see and the films we like. Maybe we should seek out films that pass the test.

I remember going on a date with a man when I first moved to New York in 2002. He asked me if I wanted to see Black Hawk Down, and I replied, 'Does it have any female characters?' He laughed, said, 'There's probably a love interest' and we saw The Royal Tenenbaums instead. He brought up that response often. He'd never thought about it before. It wasn't a feminist theory I'd researched and developed; it was just an instinct I had for what I liked.

I know a lot of men and women who love Black Hawk Down. I don't. I know a lot of men and women who hate The Royal Tenenbaums. It's one of my all-time favourite films and I felt that way before I even knew about the Bechdel test, let alone that it passed. Maybe I just like films that have women in them? I know I don't enjoy movies where lots of men go around shooting each other and I know if there's a car chase, I will probably hate it. But not all women are like me. I know women who love shoot 'em up movies and I'm happy for them that they have so much choice in what to see at the cinema.

But I'd like more choice too, please. So spread the word, be aware and watch some movies that pass the test. That way, more will be made. It's the box office, after all, that dictates the next films that are funded.

For the record, the last two films I've seen at the cinema both pass the test: Your Sister's Sister (with the added benefit of a female director AND writer) and Mental. I enjoyed both, but I think Your Sister's Sister is one of the best films I've seen all year. And I saw it with a MAN. WHO LIKED IT! I saw Mental with a woman who like it too, but since I know women's opinions are not as important, I won't capitalise that.

The Bechdel Test website is basic, but serves it purpose.

The Bechdel Test: What It Is and Why It Matters does a better job than me of explaining it. 

The Bechdel Test For Women In Movies is a short but good explanatory clip

Jeremy Hunt get your hands off my...

by Katherine Burgdorf.

Jeremy Hunt, the new Secretary for Health, would like to reduce the legal time limit for abortions in Britain from 24 weeks to 12 weeks. He is supported by other Conservative MPs like Nadine Dorries. He is not supported by any of the medical bodies interviewed by The Times as part of this story.

How Jeremey Hunt is still in politics after the BSkyB scandal I will never know. What he wants to achieve with the politicitsation of medicine is completely and utterly beyond me. The only thing I can think is that he wants to make women's lives more difficult for the benefit of his Christian faith.

Is that it, Jeremey? Does your personal fulfilment through your chosen religion feel better if I can't have an abortion beyond 12 weeks?

How about this Jeremy. I'll trade you 24-week access to abortion if you dismantle the British arms industry. If Britain stops manufacturing weapons to kill people, because human life is so precious, I'll support a reduction in abortion time to 12 weeks. After all, there's nothing more important than life, right? Well, usually. Well, middle class white people and children anyway. The Society for the Preservation of White Middle Class Brits and Unborn Babies. I'll be co-president if you stop making and selling weapons.

What's that, Jeremy? An important source of income for Britain? Someone else's department?

Gotcha. No deal.

Didn't think so.

The trouble with reading these stories on the weekend is that it enrages me. I can sit at my kitchen counter on a beautiful Autumn day, when all should be right in the world, and I weep with frustration at the people who seek to control my insides with politics. This is what living in America is like, and we fucking hate it. I will not live in a country which tries to govern through religious politics. This personally puts me in a difficult position because my husband says he won't live in Britain if Miliband becomes PM. I won't live here if Hunt gets his way. Looks like we're in for a tricky marital decision come 2015. I'd pay any amount of tax for the right to live under rational government policy.

Lowering the limit to 12 weeks will rush women into making a decision they might otherwise make differently. It will prevent women from getting abortions who didn't know they were pregnant - this is not uncommon, particuarly for older women who are not expecting to be pregnant. It could force teenage girls into having children before they are emotionally or financially capable because they have had no one to confide in and who have therefore missed their chance. It will prevent women from aborting babies with illnesses like Downs Syndrome which only starts to show at around 14-15 weeks. That's science.

Women are not born with the unlimited capacity to nurture. We are not that different to you, men. We are not superhuman. Yes, we can grow life. Yes, hormones help us in that process. But we are not an unlimited cavern of human sympathy and love. We are exhaustable. You should know, because for thousands of years you've been telling us we weren't as good as you at anything! We are not capable of emotionally thriving with 3, 4, 6, 13 children dangling around our necks. Even if stay at home mothers do make your unemployment figures look better.

I hope there are other women - mothers and non mothers - out there who will fight this if it comes to it. If I was a third wave feminist I would sit back, smile and say fuck em, I fought for equal pay, I fought for equal rights, and look what these silly girls have done. They've been ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL. They've been smug, they've been educated, and now they're at fucking home, not working, baking cupcakes and the men who still run this country are slowly, slowly, quietly, quietly cutting away at their rights. Politicising gender. Why? Because men don't raise children. Their lives are not sucked down into despair over children. Because science still isn't as powerful as religion.

Well, not me. If this thing kicks off I will be out protesting like it's 1960 all over again. I will turn into one of those insane people who builts a cardboard protest camp on Parliament Square and dies in it 67 years later, still protesting, still angry, still right and still, possibly, wearing flares.

At least we know what our protest slogan will be: Jeremy Hunt get your hands off my...womb.

More female fuckwits at the top: the failure of feminism

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By Gabrielle Jackson

I went to the Opera House on a glorious Sydney spring day to hear Germaine Greer, Eva Cox, Tara Moss and Dannielle Miller discuss the topic All Women Hate Each Other.

In the first few minutes, as the topic was dismissed by Greer as a ‘non-topic’, ‘absurd’ by Moss and Cox asked how many men would be in the room if the topic were All Men Hate Each Other, I was pleased I’d forsaken the sunshine for the bad acoustics of the Concert Hall.

Men are mean to each other as well, Greer helpfully pointed out. Cox despaired the western need to stereotype all women as One, as though we were all the same because of our gender, and said of course some women hate other women. Just as some men hate other men, and – in classic Greer style – all men hate women but women don’t know that all men hate them.

Moss said she thought it was incredible the way female behaviour is demonised when male behaviour is so much more dangerous. Women may call each other fat, but we don’t – on a scale compared to men – assault each other or murder each other and we’re not committing suicide at anywhere near the same rates as young men and boys.

‘It’s a distraction as old as Eve,’ said Moss. The myth that the world was created perfect by an omniscient male (God) and it took a woman (Eve) to bring sin to it and mess it all up is still the premise on which our patriarchy is based.

Greer and Cox, in particular, were keen to point to the phenomenon of women being mean to each other as politics of the powerless.

‘We’re dealing with the psychopathology of the oppressed,’ said Greer. Because women have a fear of being abandoned by men, she said, they tend to express negative emotions to those they can hurt, that is their girlfriends, their mothers, their sisters. Those whose love they know is unconditional, in other words. Women can’t treat men this way because the men might leave them or hate them (not knowing that they already do).

It’s because of women’s powerlessness that they act as the police of broader society, said Cox.

Some talk was given to discussing the supportive and loving relationships shared by women, but not much, because – let’s face it – as women, we all know this.

Equality doesn’t mean we’re the same

It was about half way through that the talk took on a more interesting angle for me. It was around the time Cox recalled that a boss had once told her that the problem with equality was that you get just as many female fuckwits at the top as male ones.

‘It was a mistake,’ she said, ‘to think getting more women in top positions would change the workplace.’ 

Greer despaired that women in the corporate world had utterly failed to change it; that essentially they’d emulated and fit into the macho corporate structure, while at the same time failing to understand how it works.

Women get onto corporate boards and think decisions are made based on the strength of their ideas, Greer said. They don’t understand that all the power-broking happens outside the boardroom – at lunches, on the golf course or in the gym. What’s more, women tend to want to form emotional relationships, so that when they’re ‘done over’, or somebody takes credit for their work, they feel betrayed and hurt, most especially if the person doing it is female. Management is based on taking credit for other people’s work, she said, but women can’t do it. And, when they do, everybody is horrified.

What makes it worse for women in the male corporate world is that the rules aren’t the same. A woman in the workplace is expected to be the mother and sister to everyone, and when she isn’t, she’s a bitch.

Not all women are nice, Cox said, so let’s stop expecting them to be.

But, more importantly, let’s not try to fit into the corporate world. It’s a man’s world and we cannot change it from within. It’s time to re-think the women’s movement, Cox said.

This was a welcome concept to me. I’ve felt for most of my adult life that the concept of feminism was dead. I was sad, but it seemed that other women weren’t interested. I felt they’d been duped by the patriarchy into thinking that because we could go to university, vote and take the pill, we were equal. It was clear to me we weren’t.

So I blamed the feminist-deniers. But what I now realise is that maybe the way the debate was framed was to blame. It had become too academic, too framed in male talkshow ‘bra-burning’, man-hating’ terms and it took a long time to win the debate back.

It took the Slut Walks and, for me, it took two other things: Caitlin Moran’s book How To Be A Woman and Liz Fell’s theory that equality doesn’t equal assimilation.

Moran made it easy for young woman to call themselves feminists by resting the entire concept on something we all have: vaginas. Moran asks women two questions:

1. Do you have a vagina?

2. Do you want to be in charge of it?

If you answer yes to both of those questions, da-daaaa – you’re a feminist!

Such simple concepts were what feminist discourse had been missing.

It was around the time of the release of this book that I began to listen to Fell’s approach to the women’s movement more closely. Perhaps it was also because I’ve been living in London and she’s based in Sydney and we didn’t get to talk much. Our catch ups usually revolved around my tales of failed romances and other misadventures. But suddenly, I was incredibly energised by this debate and what she had to say about it.

I will paraphrase in my inelegant fashion, so please don’t blame Fell for that. What her argument comes down to is this:

·      Equality doesn’t mean we’re all the same

·      The idea of the women’s movement was not to assimilate women into the patriarchal society (or corporate world) but to integrate women into a new kind of society that values women’s contribution

What Greer and Cox were saying about the corporate world was very much what Fell has been banging on about for the past few years. For a woman to succeed in the corporate world does not mean we’ve reached equality, it means women have learnt to play by male rules, and this is certainly not what Fell had in mind when she formed the women’s co-operative at the ABC all those decades ago.

We have to change society, not adapt to it. We have to change the values of a society that has one version of success, one version of the workplace, one version of mother.

What I’ve come away with on this long weekend is the thought that we’re not all the same; we’re not all nice; we don’t all want to form loving and trusting relationships with every woman we meet.

But I think we all do want more control over our lives; to hear more female voices in the news, in parliament, at the cinema and in the workplace. I think we could agree that we want a society that values the unique contribution that both men and women can make.

Greer said that the greatest achievement of feminism will be freedom from guilt.

Come on, fellow feminists, how do we get there?