11 vague thoughts on being a step-parent

Last week my husband's youngest son turned 12. This means I have known him for seven years. The eldest is nearly 14, and their double digit advancement is relentless. It lacks imagination but recently even I've been wailing with sadness about how fast they grow up. I cheerfully admit total hypocrisy here, because I've spent the last seven years moaning about what a massive pain young kids are.


Two main things strike me on the far side of this recent birthday milestone. One, several friends have since also collected step kids, ignoring a lot of advice they didn't ask for, but seemingly doing a much better job than me. I'm guessing there'll be more of these to come. And two, I haven't come to any conclusions whatsoever about the value or worth of having my own children, and I don't know whether this is clouded by spending time with someone else's. Children are still as big a mystery to me today as they ever were. Why and how people merrily have them with minimal thought and maximum confidence is a total puzzle. The only thoughts I have are vague, such as;

1. We share clothes a lot, the two boys and I. I'm wearing a lovely navy gilet now which belongs to one of them. And, since they've forgotten they own it, I'll never be asked for it back. Sometimes at the dinner table I will look up and see them both in my hand me downs. Worryingly, my husband put a pair of boys Bonds undies in my clothes pile just this morning. This suggests problems in our marriage on many, many levels....though in my defence I haven't worn them. Yet.

2. I still dislike saying 'step kids' or 'stepson' or being on the receiving end description of 'step mother'. It just isn't comfortable. It's a bit like wearing trainers as street fashion, it's for other people.

3. It still surprises me how unaware 'real' parents are about how 'same same' step-parenting is. I still get asked by friends, 'so, how often do you have them?' as if it might be once a semester or three times a year. Same answer for seven years. Every second weekend, all year, and four weeks a year holiday. They also still, in conversation about their own kids, roll their eyes and say 'just wait!' as if I may not be aware of the phenomena of kids at bath time, or bed time, or travelling, or endless conversations about whether you'd rather be a warrior squirrel or a battlefield badger etc etc. I have done all of those things. I have ticked off that list too.

4. I feel good about the things I've taught them: laundry, cooking, and that God may just be a figment of mass imagination. They, in turn, have taught me a lot of things about igneous rocks, the angles of reflection and refraction, and the difference between Doric and Corinthian columns using the Bank of England as a case study. Together we have faced Wellington's Non Verbal Reasoning paper, and won. I bloody hate Non-Verbal Reasoning.

5. The thing I would like to teach them now is that it's all blind luck. Everything. Luck of genes, luck of country, luck of time, luck of the draw. They could so easily be riding a refugee boat out of North Africa, or being shelled in Afghanistan, or starving in some shit hole in Glasgow. I am sad that in going to boarding school they will be surrounded only by other white kids soaked in litres of similar luck. I hope they don't become people who moan about immigration levels, or paying tax.

6. I read somewhere once that being a step parent was like swimming up a waterfall. I don't know what they meant by that, I guess something about always trying but never getting there. It hasn't been that bad.

7. I had a funny conversation the other night with a man who just couldn't understand why his second wife didn't want to get particularly involved with his kids from his first marriage. 'She likes them, but she doesn't really want to have much to do with them...' he said, genuinely puzzled. He said, 'but isn't being a step-parent brilliant? All fun and no responsibility?' It made me laugh then, and on many occasions since. One day, people might stop assuming all women to be welcoming caves of maternal interest.

8. If I had one piece of advice to anyone new to it all, and even to myself today, it would be to do things with your partner's kids on your own. I don't even mean fun hobbies, though that's great if you can. I mean just anything, like picking them up from school, doing the groceries, washing the car, going for a run, anything. When you're on your own with someone you have to make more of an effort. When you are otherwise a bit of a third wheel, and not involved in the big decisions, it's hard to see why you should bother.

9. No one wants to hear that you don't love your step kids. This is strange to me, as scientific studies have proven that 56 per cent of all people in Western families daydream about murdering at least one blood family member*. If you do meet someone who says they understand, they will still ask you 'but you'd really miss them if they weren't around, right?' And the look they give you makes you want to hug them, and tell them everything is OK.

10. I don't understand why parents want to talk to their kids all the time. At work, a lot of fathers are in the early teen years at the moment and there's a lot of frustration about how their kids are silent in the long drives from school and back. I say, isn't silence one of humanity's greatest virtues? Coming years of teen silence holds no fear for me. It sure beats the 'badger army vs squirrel army' conversation.

11. I hate being beaten at anything by the kids. It is much, much worse than being beaten by anyone else. They bring out the worst of the bad loser in me.


*this is a totally made up statistic, I bet the truth is much higher.


By Katherine Burgdorf.

UK: Anti-abortion campaigners dress up in feminist clothing

By Katherine Burgdorf

This week in the UK a pregnant, undercover reporter from the Daily Telegraph 'exposed' two doctors who signed off her proposed abortion after she told them she wanted the termination because she didn't want a girl baby. The doctors were filmed interjecting with 'we don't ask questions.'


In response to this story the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has criticised the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for declining to bring charges against the two doctors, and was backed up by Emily Thornberry, the Labour MP for Islington and South Finsbury who took to the press saying this was an illegal act which should be punished as any criminal activity. The doctors are currently answering to their professional conduct board, the General Medical Council.


The sub-text here is that these doctors - and many like them - are condoning female infanticide. The suggestion is that any feminist should be outraged that unborn baby girls are being killed across Britain. But more dangerous is that this story is generating another attack on women's right to choose what happens when they become pregnant. It is being suggested that if women cannot be trusted not to abort girls, then they cannot be trusted to abort at all. It is the Telegraph - and a modern working female journalist at that, shame on her - paving the way for another attack on women's rights to govern their own bodies.


I've always vaguely taken it for granted that getting an abortion in Britain is fairly straightforward - something you hope you never need to do but reassuringly available if needed. When I imagine it, I imagine going to a clinic, saying that I just didn't want to bring up a child, possibly be subjected to bloodied photos of terminated embryos to make sure I was ready to proceed on my murderous path, but nonetheless given approval.


This week's story got me wondering what the law actually is, and embarrassed not to really know it. Is it really as straightforward as I think? Because if you aren't allowed to say 'I don't want this baby because it's a girl,' then what can you say? In Britain is saying that any different to 'I just don't want to have a baby'? Or are they both illegal?


According to the Family Planning Association's factsheet, the Abortion Act of 1967 (amended in 1990), allows that a woman in England can be granted an abortion up to 24 weeks if two doctors agree there is a risk to the physical or mental health of the woman. After 24 weeks, agreement is needed that there is grave mental or physical risk to the woman or a risk that the child will be seriously mentally or physically handicapped. There is a high profile group of campaigners and politicians, including Health Secretary Hunt, seeking to reduce that to as little as 12 weeks.

For context, the FPA reports there are around 189,000 abortions in England and Wales each year, which is just under 22% of all pregnancies. In 2012 only 160 abortions were carried out after 24 weeks. Rates of abortion have been steady for many years. In 2007 members of the British Medical Association voted in favour of removing the requirement for two doctors to provide signatures up to the 24 week period but this has not affected the current law requiring two doctor's signatures.


So, in order to get a termination currently a woman has to prove to two doctors there is a risk to her mental or physical wellbeing if she has to carry the baby to term. Well, what does that mean? How does a doctor determine that risk, or indeed judge the woman's current or future wellbeing? I argue they can't. The point is, the legislation is graciously forgiving in its language. The point is, the legislation doesn't specify how unhappy she would be to have a child, or why she would be unhappy, though one might presumably be asked to say something on the matter. It just implies, rightly, that a mentally balanced woman has a greater right to physical and mental wellbeing than the State has to say when or if she gives birth. To a point - currently 24 weeks and sometimes longer - she has more of a right than the foetus, I would argue on the basis that without her, there is no foetus.


Now, of course the point of the Telegraph's story is that this woman had a different agenda. She was breaking the law - or rather entrapping others to break the law - by saying she wanted a termination because her child was going to be born a girl. Her request, they argue, had nothing to do with mental or physical health. But how are we to know what is in the heart or mind of any woman seeking an abortion? Yes, we 'know' in this case, but how in other cases are we to probe the minds of those who say their health or wellbeing is at risk? And if the police are likely to come and ask, why on earth would any doctor agree to carry out abortions even though they may well believe in a woman's hum\n right to choose? How do we ask women to prove they are not getting an abortion because they want to get further along in their career, or if they don't think they're ready yet, or they don't have a reliable partner, or enough money to pay rent, bills and also raise a family? These could all be loosely termed 'risk' to mental or physical health, but I would argue many are not, they're simply good reasons not to have a child at a particular point in time. Who am I to point and say 'criminal' to the family of four boys who doesn't want another? Or someone who just doesn't want kids? Or a woman who's just bought a house for two kids and doesn't want a third? Technically it's against the law but how far do I travel before I say 'criminal' to those who choose to say 'it's just not for me?'


The truth of course is that in many countries around the world girls are killed for being girls. They are killed soon after birth or, if the technology is available, aborted beforehand. If they survive those scenarios they are consistently and heftily discriminated against for life. What sort of society drives this discrimination? The answer, of course, is a patriarchal one in which giving birth to a boy brings significant economic benefit and status to the family, from sheer muscle power to help run farms, or bring in wages, to wealth through patriarchal inheritance laws. In many countries families must raise crippling dowries to marry off daughters, so they kill them to avoid the expense. These societies - China being the classic - show significant disruption to natural birth ratios of boys to girls. In China there are around 121 boys born to every 100 girls. Within nature it's between 105-108. In Britain, it's 105.1 and it has not changed in decades (Department of Health, 2011). Nor, as Janice Turner points out in The Times (7th Sept, Opinion), have these statistics changed due to immigration in Britain. She reports that in 2011 the DoH looked into birth figures according to the mother's country of origin - focusing on countries where female infanticide is more common such as Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and China - and found no evidence they were outside normal British parameters. There is no evidence suggesting the systemic termination of girl foetuses by people from those societies living in Britain. Why? Because thankfully, despite the slow progress we make against everyday sexism, in Britain it makes no particular economic or social difference if you have a boy or a girl.


So, what conclusions do we draw? A newspaper has uncovered what is technically a criminal act. Two doctors have been asked by a woman for an abortion and she has offered up a reason that does not comply - on its own - with the law (and we do not know what else she said to those doctors). The Government is putting pressure on the CPS to charge them with a crime. The CPS has stated that bringing a prosecution would not have been in the public interest, in part because the abortion did not take place, and was never going take place. Had this been a real situation, perhaps they would have.


I draw two conclusions. Firstly, anti-abortion campaigners are dressing up their agenda in the clothes of feminism and asking us to share their outrage that a woman might decide to abort a girl. They will use this to tighten up abortion laws generally, and are already making moves on the 24 week limit. It is hardly going too far to imagine that next week a male-orientated campaign group will uncover that a woman who wants to terminate a male foetus.

I also argue that the current abortion law is still too restrictive. How can one doctor, or two, or three, know what is in the mind of another person? They cannot, and to say otherwise is ludicrous, so why do we insist we can assess it? The pregnant woman - and only the pregnant woman - should be able to choose an abortion within a timeframe guided by scientific research and say whether or not she gives birth. To make her jump and justify degrades our right to personal freedom and the pursuit of happiness. If the point of the current law is to give broad discretion then why not explicitly state we may have it? Society's role - and it does have one, backed up by the law - is to ensure that anyone born - girl or boy - has access to exactly the same rights and opportunities such that there is no reason for families to favour one or the other on any normalised basis. If we changed the law in this way we would see absolutely no change to the birth ratio in this country. Why? Because British women are not pursuing abortions based on gender in any systematic way. And I predict they would not start if it was legalised. The role of the law is to ensure that women are safe, just as men are safe.


I am not arguing that female infanticide  doesn't matter. It does matter and it matters on a dramatic scale but it matters because it's the sign of a terribly and hopelessly unfair society. It is not the result of legalised abortion, it's the result of long history of patriarchal favour, and laws which ingrain that favour. It's the result of hopelessly ingrained pro-male culture, implicit and explicit. And it will lead to unprecedented imbalance in countries like China. I'll write it again, female infanticide does not exist because women are allowed access to abortions. It exists because the societies where it takes place hold boy babies dear, and girl babies cheap. It happens where women have no recourse, and often no education, to do anything to change the environment in which they live, and the laws which govern them. It is an outcome of history and social values, not an outcome of freedom. And in these countries do you think it's well policed? Of course not.


There should be oversight of abortion in the same way there should be oversight of all medical and health services. There is room for women to be pressured into abortions and vigilance and support is required. I support euthanasia on the same grounds. But let the person bodily affected by the situation decide. Give people information, consideration and support to make their own informed decision. Carrying a baby, and giving birth, carries all sorts of big and small health consequences from death in labour to stroke, diabetes to simple (but debilitating) incontinence. Would men be hasty to restrict the right to choose if it were they who faced these risks? No indeed. 


Women in Britain are not systematically aborting girls or boys - let the statistics reassure us of that. Anyone suggesting that the right to abort will lead to it is motivated to reduce the right to choose any abortion. No. Women in Britain are aborting babies at the same rates they always have, and they are choosing to abort for the reasons they always have...individual reasons. May we all have the right to do so, lest the Government start asking us to prove what's in our minds.

Will it really be easier for the next woman?

Australia's first Prime Minister Julia Gillard was beaten in a leadership ballot for control of her own party today, losing to persistent challenger Kevin Rudd. Rudd, it is argued by the Labor party, has a better chance of defeating the Liberal leader Tony Abbott in this year's election.

Why did Australia struggle so much with its female Prime Minister, and what does it say about the state of the country?



By Katherine Burgdorf

So, there we go. As it turns out Australia wasn't ready for a woman PM. But who wasn't ready? The media? The public? Her political colleagues? Aren't we all the same thing, at the end of the day? Many modern psychologists argue we learn more about ourselves from the reactions we have to others than we do about the subject our reaction is focused on. So what on earth, in Julia Gillard, are we so afraid of?

The treatment of Julia Gillard by politicians and the mainstream media has been debilitating. Debilitating for her, as it turns out, and debilitating for those of us who want to see Australia advance. I feel stumped as to what we do next, and I don't live there.

The reaction to the event in the UK has been one of astonishment and no small amount of awe at the ruthless nature of Labour politics. Indeed, Julia's own takeover of the leadership from Rudd has been described as such. There is much coverage of whether sexism befell her, or whether it was wider incompetence and pure political strategy. The event has been very widely broadcast, including a segment tonight on Newsnight. When Jeremy Paxman asked whether women be put off politics no one was daft enough to suggest they wouldn't be.

To suggest her gender hasn't been an issue is fantasy. Can we think of a single male PM treated with such disregard by both colleagues and the press? I can't. Not Rudd when he cried the last time he was booted out. Not Hawke when he cried, and not Whitlam when he was cut off at the knees by the GG. Not Keating when he dumped Anita. It is perhaps the only admirable thing about US politics...the respect for the post is what is most important, not the man or the woman in the post. Perhaps Russell Crowe sums it up best as saying it is simply ungallant. Ungallant to our own country.

So is Australia afraid of career women? Is it fearful of childless couples? Is it fearful of women generally, or outspoken women? Unusual people who don't fit the mould? The difficult thing for me, and people like me, is that other than her role she appeared ordinary. I have a hunch it was her straightforwardness, and I think that straightforwardness was amplified by her rarity in her environment, and Australian's didn't like the sound.


People who say what they think is rare - in politics as in financial services, as in any other alpha industry. Sometimes it is delightful - hence London's love affair with Boris Johnson, and sometimes it is uncomfortable, as we see with Gillard. One fits a mould we are comfortable with, and one does not yet come from a mould not enough of us are comfortable with.

From what was reported about Gillard before she become PM her no bullshit approach was highly regarded, and one that suited her. In her early days as PM the press kept asking where the 'real' Julia went to...the impression being she appeared muzzled and newly uncomfortable in her leadership role.

Perhaps in her role as PM it was unpalatable, and perhaps her advisors never found a suitably comfortable press replacement. No doubt her policies were not impressive to big business, but the venom with which she was attacked was bigger than that. She was never considered incompetent as the deputy leader and it seems unlikely she suddenly became incompetent as PM. Sexism was to play here, but many will not understand what we mean by this and will genuinely believe this not to be the case.

'Telling it like it is' is considered a great quality. It is talked about as a great quality, but not in women. Telling it like it is tends to make people unpopular and most people want to be liked. Arguably, being liked is a politician most important goal and being a plain speaker is a quality in very rare supply.

By and large people feel safe making their feelings known in private conversations, and very uncomfortable and unwilling to tell it like it is in public situations. They respond to leadership, and appreciate straight-talkers, but if that straight-talker falls outside the usual comfort shape then anxiety ratchets. The kneejerk reaction is to cut the speaker to size. In the City - and I will write more about this - it often comes dressed in light-hearted taunts, or shaded in language designed to remind you your outspoken behaviour is unusual. Unusual as a woman, and somewhat amusing. What I argue is that outspokenness isn't unusual for women. It's simply rare in general. It is not desirable in women, and that is different.

In Gillard we had a capable, straightforward politician as committed, clever, ruthless, calculating as the next politician. But we were not comfortable with her. We had to make out complaints about her about her as a woman. Her thighs, her gay hairdressing husband, her lack of children. That is how uncomfortable she made us.

It says more about us than her. It does not make us look good.

Nigella is the real face of domestic violence

This week in London the art investor Charles Saatchi was cautioned by the police for the actions which shocked many on the weekend – the assault of his wife, Nigella Lawson, in Scott’s, the Mayfair restaurant. Lawson is the celebrity chef and broadcaster.

 

Saachi was photographed by the paparazzi with his hands over his wife’s throat on four separate occasions while they argued, and allegedly giving her nose a good tweak as they left. She was then photographed crying as she left the restaurant and then leaving her house with a suitcase and her son later that day. Of the incident Saachi said, “There was no grip, it was a playful tiff. The pictures are horrific but give a far more drastic and violent impression of what took place. Nigella’s tears were because we both hate arguing, not because she had been hurt.’ He says he suggested she leave their London house to avoid the press. Lawson has not yet made any comment.

 

The pictures are shocking for lots of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ reasons. They are shocking because we are seeing something which is usually private, in public. And shocking because this image is not the media image we conjure when we think of Nigella Lawson…she is not the typical face of domestic violence. Except that, of course, we are wrong.

 

Domestic violence and the spectrum of behaviour it encompasses has no typical face in reality. In our minds it’s probably still the face of poor people, or of house-wives. It is still a wife, rather than a girlfriend, still a middle aged woman rather than a teenager. It is still a woman, and not a man, and an adult and not a child.

 

Today, when an event like this happens and is reported on, it is not the mainstream media coverage of most interest to me, it’s the comments left by readers on noticeboards, news sites and Twitter tell us so much more about what wider society thinks. The digitisation of news and media has given us unprecedented access to the thoughts of others, and a view on public perception of issues that continue to dog women as a group.

 

Yesterday there were 145 comments on the Time’s Monday article about Saachi’s assault. They varied from those who thought the story was not news, to those who thought this was a matter for the couple privately, those who wondered what on earth Nigella might be scared of ‘what, losing her mansion?’, and no one else’s business, to those who wished they’d been there to lamp Saatchi good and proper. As one man wrote ‘my father told me to hold a woman by her waist and a wine bottle by its neck….Saatchi has got this the wrong way around.’

 

As I read through the comments I would say the majority thought Saachi’s behaviour was unacceptable. But many thought it wasn’t news, and a few thought the whole scheme had been enflamed by charity workers, the police state and ‘those people at Everydaysexism’. I was delighted to see a (male) journalist from The Times join the comments to write back to defend the Everydaysexism Project and suggest its detractor spend a bit more time understanding why your average run of the mill sexism was dangerous.

 

So is it news? Yes, I think it is. The fact we are shocked at the assault suggests we still aren’t used to the idea that domestic violence can happen to anyone. Does it matter that it’s Saachi and Lawson? No, but if we don’t report this, and don’t profile an event which took place in public how else do we shine the light on an issue that is still so common. Even one comment suggesting it’s no one’s business but theirs suggests we haven’t gone far enough to deal with this sort of violence.

 

In other opinion pieces in the week, such as Channel 4’s ‘4thought’, there have also been suggestions that domestic violence toward children is woefully underreported, with a suggestion that it’s women who are the main perpetrators of violence against their children (and we’ve all seen it in shops and the streets), and that physical and psychological violence toward men in the home, or from their spouses, goes virtually unreported. My gut feel is the latter probably is right, in the same way the Government wilfully ignores statistics on rape committed against men in prison. Like Nigella and Saatchi, the reality is all too uncomfortable, too inconvenient.

 

Violence is violence wherever it takes place, and in whatever form, and whoever it is done to. It is a shame we cannot dispense with the tags that seem to confuse our natural understanding and acceptance of that.  

Dumbing down for the dummies?

London Fields Lido - Pre-renovation, with tache.

There's nothing worse than coming home riled up by something and banging out a full blown passionate blog entry...and then realising at the end of the process that you're probably on the wrong side of the argument.

*sigh*

London 2012. It seems only yesterday one of the peaks of the sporting landscape was in London. Not Russian-owned, Sloane-eyed, French manicured West London. But here in East London - layered across the little suburbs who could of Hackney and Tower Hamlets. Making real before our eyes the Olympic pledge of revitalisation of places which for decades had struggled along in the blind-spot of political will.

And it was wonderful. Britain shone. Women won gold medals, silver medals and bronze medals. They were celebrated in newspapers, on the TV and radio not for what they wore, or who they were married to, and not for one-off body parts but for strength, and speed and skill. We talked about maintaining the focus on sport as a means to deliver health, hope and social advancement. We have talked about raising the profile of women's sport after these Games. I believe we meant it. So why, in its women's-only swimming hour, has my local pool decided to focus on pool noodle water aerobics? Why has it chosen to dumb down sport for women and blunt ambition for sporting skill?

Last Tuesday evening I went to my local pool in London Fields in Hackney to do some long distance training. This pool is a gem. It's one of very few outdoor 50m pools in the UK and attracts a wide range of people from paddlers to serious swimmers. It was originally opened in the 30s - like a lot of the UK's lidos - and was re-opened after refurbishment in 2006.

From 7pm to 8pm on Tuesday evenings the pool is open to women only. I don't agree with this policy since both men and women contribute to the pool's operation via local taxes, but I can live with it. I can certainly understand some women might feel uncomfortable wearing swimsuits in front of men, but on the basis most of the lifeguards remain men during this slot the theory lapses in practice. But it's not something I feel that strongly about and women have long suffered exclusion and discomfort in public spaces at the whim of men.

What I do feel strongly about is the pool's decision to dumb down the sport and this facility to the point where it is unrecognisable as sport. With music cranked up until the water vibrated, a poolside gym instructor led about a dozen women through a coloured foam rodeo. It looked like a dozen clowns drowning with their balloon animals. The music was so loud it was impossible to relax, think technique, count laps or do anything other than endure dripping wet Justin Beiber. It wasn't just loud, it was utterly depressing. If this is the legacy of the Olympics, I want my money back.

I know people reading this will say hang on! It's about participation!' or 'But I use water aerobics for my knee rehab! Don't be a snob!' Right? No! Wrong!

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

This legacy of the Olympics should be about striving, about excellence, and about ambition for the people of Britain, and in this case Hackney. This pool is one of Britain's rarest sporting environments and instead of leveraging its power and the skills of people who could teach high quality swimming, the company who operate the pool - Greenwich Leisure - have sunk the pool to the lowest level. They have, effectively, said to women, 'we know you don't think you can swim. You're right! So let's have fun doing something utterly useless that you'll quickly tire of and which will leave you with no lifelong skills at all, but which ticks our Hackney Council box of 'inclusion.' Job done! Thanks for playing!

Girls are culturally raised to be safe, conscientious, and quiet. They are raised to try hard, smile when they (expect to) lose and to put others before themselves. They are raised not to make mistakes, and not to be loud and not to be aggressive. They are raised not to be ambitious, because they are told through invisible signals all through their lives that a woman who is ambitious is not liked. Worse, dangerous. They are raised, not to put it too bluntly, to like pool noodle aerobics! Read Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In and she will list you numerous scientific studies which show this to be true (I mean the bit about ambitious women, not actually studies on pool noodle aerobics). Even women are shown to fear and mistrust ambitious women. Ambition in men, however, is totally different and is encouraged subconsciously by mothers of boys, fathers of boys and friends of boys. Women thrive in the ordered environs of school, but don't do well in life.

And yet. And yet we love Rebecca Adlington. We love Jessica Ennis. We love women who win at sport - because we saw it all at the Olympics last year. These athletes come to win, or at the very least to be the best version of themselves possible. So let's use sport, real sport, to expand women's horizons. Let's use the few top class facilities we have to get hold of women and team them to swim, and swim better, faster, and further, whether that's 200m, or 10km.

If you think I'm being politically incorrect by suggesting women need this sort of intervention then I'll point no further than the Government's programme launch last week doing just this same thing in business. We need to shake women up, and show them what can be done. This isn't because they can't do it, it's because they are still not raised to do it. They are raised to settle for comedy non sports. We have been let down over and over again and if we keep dumbing down things like sport, or education, or the workplace, then we won't ever set our sights higher.

I predict the women who attend these noodle aerobics classes will attend 4, maybe 6 sessions in summer. They will have fun for a while, then it will rain and they'll get bored, and find other things to do. Then it will be winter and the noodles will be packed away for another season. These women will drift back home with no swimming fitness, no confidence to train on their own and no high level swimming skills. And they will miss the beauty of the pool in winter looking like a hot Turkish salon, its quiet lovely lanes, its muscle toning, lung expanding magic.


I asked the manager and assistant at London Fields what other people's feedback was - and the answer is mixed. Some people love the idea of the pool offering different things. Others, like another woman in reception at the time, feel the same way I do, and agree that men would never be subjected to such low-brow fob offs.


I mentioned my anguish to two people this week. One man, and one woman. The woman, a fellow swimmer, wrote back 'but think of the COMEDY value! Surely it's worth it for that?' No. I sighed. It's not. I want more. I'm saying let's not make women's fitness a thing of comedy. Let's not say 'aim low and hit the ground.' Let's make it about high achievement, and skill, and goals. Instead, currently, it's ambition in the slow lane. And it's not just women. When I first started swimming at the pool, in 2008, I asked if they offered private lessons for kids. No, they said, they didn't. I was staggered. Here's a dream chance to make some money off middle class ambition but they weren't having a bar of it. The second person I mentioned my argument too is a man. He didn't agree with me, saying who cares what the exercise is, it's exercise. But he was incensed about women's hour and suggested that was the real problem.

So after a week's thinking I've come to the conclusion that technically I probably am wrong to say that pool noodle aerobics is nothing but sexist devil's work, but the spirit of my argument and feeling on the matter is the right one. I'm suspicious of dumbing down activities for the sake of popularity - see UKIP, Page 3 in The Sun etc - or an easy life. I think the value of this special place is not done justice by pool noodle aerobics and, being something of an evangelist for swimming, I think these women are missing out on the King of Sports.

Deeds, not words - What really happened to Emily Davison?

The 1913 Derby: Emily Davison is killed colliding with Anmer, the King's horse.

Two very different TV programmes captivated me this week, and they shared both obvious and subtle connections heightened by my happening to watch them back to back. In the depressing spin cycle of feminist setbacks there is something to be said for taking an accidental 100 year view on the 4th June, the day feminism took to the track.

The first programme was Clare Balding's 'Secrets of a Suffragette' on Channel 4 (view here on 4OD), and the other was 'The Queen: A Passion for Horses' on BBC1 (see BBC iplayer), also presented by Balding whose grandfather, father and brother have all trained racehorses for the Queen.

In the first programme Balding and her team examine one of the greatest events in British feminist history - that of the death of Emily Davison at the Epsom Derby 100 years ago under King George the Fifth's racehorse, Anmer.

Emily Davison, a member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) which was formed in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, has largely been presented in history as a madwoman who deliberately went to Epsom to kill herself in the name of her movement. Her death, three days later from internal injuries, divided many around the country. Some argued her actions were necessary, many said she was a lunatic, and others have since said she set her own movement back in achieving its goals, particularly given the popularity of the Royal Family at the time, though it was widely believed the collision with the King's horse in particular could not have been planned.

Quite apart from the event itself the programme showed me how little I know about the sufragette movement, the women who developed and participated in it, and the theory behind their motto 'Deeds not words.' Before the programme my hazy assumptions would have been that Davison ran onto the track to kill herself to fight for her cause. Brave, yes, but probably unbalanced of mind too.

This has been disputed since the day itself but Balding's Channel 4 programme goes further to try to uncover the truth. They investigate Davison's known militant history, the consequences of her multiple terms in prison for violent attacks and arson, and her serious attempt to injure herself by throwing herself down an iron stairwell to bring an end to repeated force feeding regimes the imprisoned women faced in answer to their hunger strikes. This side of the investigation was particularly hard to watch - the mouth clamps, the funnels and tubing. They were lucky if wardens found their stomachs, and unlucky if they had gruel poured into their lungs. Apart from the mental trauma, many women suffered gastric and other illnesses for the rest of their lives.

But the main focus of the programme and of the team's investigation was footage of the Derby race itself and how it brings new evidence to light which suggests that Davison did not mean to die that day. The programme shows Davison and her actions on that day from new angles, and consolidates it with evidence found on the track. In summary, the footage appears to show Davison seeking out the King's horse from a vantage point good enough to allow it. It then shows her dodging several other horses, and then seeming to draw something from her clothes - a sash, it is thought. The argument goes that a sash, embroidered with the words 'Votes for Women' was found at the scene of the collision by a race official who saved it from the turmoil and later passed it on. It was bought recently at auction by writer Barbara Gordon who, importantly, outbid the Jockey Club itself. Clare Balding argues that the strong bidding by the Jockey Club points to the authenticity of the sash and the theory that Davison did not intend to kill herself at Epsom, but instead intended to attach the sash to the horse, perhaps to its bridle as it galloped by, as a high profile way to petition the King directly for her cause. The sash now hangs in the Houses of Parliament.

A sad postscript to this story was that the jockey who collided with Davison, Herbert Jones, killed himself years later in 1951, as it was said he never recovered from the sight of Davison's face as he rode into her. He attended Emmeline Pankhurst's funeral, in 1928 (the same year women achieved universal sufferage), where he laid a wreath for both women 'to do honour to the memory of Mrs Pankhurst and Miss Emily Davison.'

In watching the programme I was struck by how little the women's suffragette movement survives on. A few interested societies, a few historians who uncover pieces of evidence here or there, a grave in Morpeth with the slogan 'Deeds, not words.'

In Balding's lighter piece, charting the Queen's history and passion for horses, we watch another Regent's bid to become a Derby winner...one of the only major races to elude her stable. But apart from this obvious connection to Davison's history and her grandfather, George the Fifth, there was a wonderful moment in this programme where, the day after attending Baroness Thatcher's funeral, the Queen takes to the Winners Circle at Newbury to receive a trophy for a horse ridden to victory by a young woman, Hayley Turner. The pictures tell a thousand words.

And so I went to bed thinking a hero, a monarch, an owner, a TV star and a winner. That is the difference 100 years makes.

Anti-abortion bill comes to Australia by stealth

By Gabrielle Jackson

The latest American cultural import comes to Australia via the Democratic Labor Party Senator for Victoria, John Madigan. He has introduced a bill to ban Medicare funding for sex-selected abortions in Australia.

Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Especially when you consider that most sex-selected abortions result in the termination of female foetuses.

Or does it?

If we believe a woman has the right to choose, then we must believe that all women have the right to choose, whatever her reasons may be. We cannot say that only educated, liberal, westernised feminists have the right to choose because their reasons are more amenable to our beliefs.

A woman’s reasons for choosing to abort are neither my business nor my concern. Her right to choose is my only concern and it must be defended at all costs. I’m not sure whether –in countries such as Australia – the provider should even have the right to ask a woman’s reason. Aren’t we capable of making this life-changing decision all by ourselves? Or do we still need the circumspection of others (usually men) to ensure we’re making the ‘right’ decision?

It’s the same argument that is used for free speech. I don’t believe in that right because I like to listen to the opinions of people who agree with me. I don’t defend women’s right to choose because I assume she’s choosing to abort because she was raped, or she’s young, or for any other ‘good’ reason. Women, and men, fought for abortion to be legalised because they believed a woman had the right to control her own body. To start introducing clauses is to diminish the crux of the defense of abortion in its entirety.

And therein lies the secret of this spurious bill. There is no evidence to suggest that sex-selected abortions are happening at a concerning rate in Australia at all. The bill, called the Health Insurance Amendment (Medicare Funding for Certain Types of Abortion) Bill 2013, has been referred to the Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration, which has received many hundreds of submissions, overwhelmingly in support of the bill.

The Women’s Centre for Health Matters also made a submission, pointing to the lack of evidence that sex-selection was even an issue in Australia.

‘Were sex-selective abortions taking place in Australia on a systematic basis, this would be revealed through skewed gender ratios. Australia has a normal ratio of male-to-female births.

‘Looking at data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics from 2011, just over half (51%) of all births registered were male babies, resulting in a sex ratio at birth of 105.7 male births per 100 female births. This is a biologically normal sex ratio at birth and does not indicate a skewed sex ratio in Australia.

‘Taking a view of the population overall, we see that at June 2011 there were 124,700 more females than males residing in Australia, with 11.2 million females and 11.1 million males.’

In the latest posting of Anne Summers Reports – which does a good summary of this debate – Summers claims that the make up of today’s parliament is no longer pro-choice. What will happen to women’s right if the anti-abortion activist Tony Abbott becomes prime minister is anyone’s guess. (Let’s not forget that as Health Minister Abbott tried to personally veto the import of the abortion drug RU486 - a drug that is on the World Health Organisation's list of essential medicines and is already available in more than 50 countries. Under the current government, it has been recommended for cover on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, which would make a safe, legal abortion available for as low as $12. A final decision is imminent.)

This isn’t to say that sex-selected abortions aren’t a public health issue everywhere. I was in many hospitals in India and was confronted with countless posters and pamphlets addressing the issue. Posters reminded doctors and patients that sex-selected abortions are illegal. Doctors face heavy penalties and even licence restrictions for performing these terminations. But these penalties were framed within a wider public campaign promoting the dignity of the girl child.

Of course, this campaign has a long way to go. Girls who aren’t aborted are often left to fend for themselves. Abandoned, abused and ignored. All countries, not just India, should be looking to build a society in which it is not a burden to give birth to a girl, where her rights are respected and she can grow up to be a valuable, loved and loving, member of her family and the society she lives in.

If we don’t want women to abort female foetuses, we should be promoting equal opportunity for women, not banning her right to control her own body.

And we should see this bill for what it is in modern day Australia – an underhanded way to restrict abortion by stealth.

Do look up this Anne Summers Reports newsletter, which includes an impassioned article by the American feminist and abortion provider Merle Hoffman.