The silence of feminists? Or just people not listening?

On the day Amnesty International and women’s organisations lobbied MPs for increased protection for all women facing violence in the UK, I re-read Janice Turner’s recent article on the silence of feminists in the face of casual sexism. Wondering where feminism went wrong Turner writes that of the half dozen twenty-somethings she met in a bid to find out only one identified themselves as a feminist and the rest didn’t identify with it at all:

The only feminist they can think of is Julie Bindel, the radical lesbian writer. Feminism means no fun or make-up, anger and hating men. It is a broken brand, not needed now. As one put it: “All the battles are won.”

Why is it, Turner asks, “that while America has a tradition of feminist writers and thinkers, including Naomi Wolf and Katie Roiphe, there are no young women “questioning the orthodoxy here”?

In a later article Turner sets out to rally feminists and stir up resistance to the “pornification” of culture. It’s time to challenge casual sexism she writes, inviting readers to send in examples of sexism.
The response to her first article she says was “thank God, someone is saying this — I thought I was alone”.

Blogger on the Cast Iron Balcony argues it isn’t a case of feminists being silent, although she acknowledges those voices are rarely heard in the mainstream. She also criticises Turner for showing “a lack of knowledge or disregard of just what has been going on in the online world for the last decade” and picks up on the fact that feminists are often criticised for being silent on a variety of issues: “I’ve had it up to here with the “feminists have been silent about…” trope that springs up everywhere in the media both on line and off”.

So to an article by Clive James I recently re-read criticising feminists for their silence on the subject of so-called honour killings. He writes about Pamela Bone, an Australian journalist whose 2005 article in the Melbourne Age attacked Western feminists for failing to speak up against abuses in the Western world.

Reading around this issue, as with many others, it’s clear there are many vibrant feminist writers online.
If you are looking for authoritative voices speaking out in the mainstream media in the UK however, “silence” is what you’re likely to get.

Whether that’s important depends on how much weight you give to the mainstream. If you think it’s important that feminism is “heard” in the media then some of the questions Janice Turner raises about the pressures to keep quiet are important ones – but is it as much about deafness as about silence?

 

Football, homophobia, violence.. what’s the missing link?

The news bulletins during Kate Silverton’s Five Live programme yesterday included three grim stories:

The discovery of six bodies in the home of convicted rapist Anthony Sowell in the US city of Cleveland, Ohio.

The attack in Liverpool of trainee policeman James Parkes and the candlelit vigil attended by 1,500 people.
Kate Silverton followed this up by playing Rod Stewart’s Georgie Boy, opening a discussion about a 14 per cent rise in homophobic attacks including the murder of Ian Baynham in Trafalgar Square with this:

As a teenager I remember listening, this was in the 80s to this track by Rod Stewart the killing of The Killing of Georgie, a song about a gay man killed simply for being gay and I remember distinctly thinking at the time that such a terrible thing really couldn’t happen today. That was in the 80s and here we are again seeing exactly the same kind of violence meted out to someone just because they are deemed to be different, strange, not normal, whatever justification someone uses to turn against someone else.

Emily Carr, the woman attacked by Marlon King provoked a different discussion when she called for the footballer to be given a lifetime ban: George Riley’s report focused on the theme of the Wigan Athletic forward’s career and the backing he received from Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballer’s Association.

So what makes for the different approaches: that it’s a footballer doing the punching, or is it less shocking if a woman gets punched?

Talking to Kate Silverton about the homophobic attacks Dr Matthew Waites, senior lecturer sociology Glasgow university, said calling it hate crime was “complex” – it implies it’s an issue for a small minority of people.

His suggestion that it was an issue of masculinity got lost as the conversation moved on.. Masculinity, gender, violence: they just don’t seem to fit in a radio show discussion.

 

Taking Liberties…

I went to the Convention on Modern Liberty at the Institute of Education in London yesterday.
I first went to the Blogger’s Summit that the chair Sunny Hundal of Liberal Conspiracy has written about here.
Interesting observation from Heather Brooke of Your Right to Know that whereas in the US electronic data and information is readily available, those in power in the UK regard information as something that “belongs to them” and not the people.
Ben Goldacre whose run-in with LBC is described below described amusingly how new media tools could be used for “chaotic, puerile disseminated investigative journalism”.
It was an event that brought together people across the whole political spectrum.. and covered a wide range of subjects as one of its organisers Henry Porter outlines here and here.
Peter Oborne’s comments about the media-political class inspired me to read his book The Triumph of the Political Class and so far its analysis of a political elite that exists for its own advancement is very persuasive – and goes some way to explain the apparent disconnect between the governing class and the people, no matter what political party they are in.
There was also some discussion about the impact that an economic slump will have on liberty and questions raised about the role the mainstream media would play if discontent leads to civil unrest.
Another book, Shafted, published later this month to mark the anniversary of the beginning of the miners’ strike examines some of the pitfalls journalists fell in.
What are the lessons to be learnt from the likes of Nicholas Jones who contributes to the book? What role will “chaotic, puerile disseminated investigative journalism” play? How important was yesterday’s convention as a step towards the fulfillment of what Sunday’s Observer editorial says is the obligation of every citizen – “vigilance and resistance” to the restriction of “freedoms” and “conceptions of the moral autonomy of the individual to act without impediment by the state”?

 

Becoming a cause célèbre…

I remember when I worked on a paper in Camden covering meetings where it was suggested that big pharmaceuticals and the medical profession were conspiring to suppress information on the link between MMR and Autism..
Now ten years later Bad Science columnist Ben Goldacre is being championed by the likes of Stephen Fry on Twitter for “hammering away at these people and their superstitious inanities”.
Goldacre writes here about about LBC’s request that he take down audio of Jeni Barnett’s 7 January phone in and updates the story here – as well as Stephen Fry on Twitter, it’s been shared on Wikileaks and Youtube and excerpts of the transcript have been posted on numerous blogs.
On Monday 9 February it was discussed on Start the Week in a debate on censorship and the internet and the next day in his Times column David Aaronovitch weighed in.
All the blogs that have covered the story are listed by Goldacre courtesy of Holfordwatch which has logged them all here..
There will be a lot to learn from this about the web in relation to laws that Glodacre “apparently works a bit better for wealthy people”.

 

I wish you were Sean Connery…

(When he was younger of course)

That’s what Mark’s son Tyrone* told him when he was staying over the weekend.
“I mean you’re not a bad dad, you’re pretty cool, but it would have been SO much better if you were Sean Connery.”
Normal exchanges between a father and son, but the added twist is the fact that this father and son hadn’t seen each other for more than 13 of Tyrone’s 18 years.
Who did Tyrone imagine his Dad to be before he met him again a year ago? A man in a Rolls Royce bearing wads of cash he aint I told him while we queued in Somerfield and he suggested Mark should buy him a flat…
This was the first weekend we saw him after THE CHRISTMAS VISIT… A fun, riotous, rowdy, testosterone-fuelled, bordering on anarchic visit.. particularly when he paired up with his newly discovered half-brother and experienced the heady power of siblings ganging up on the adults.
It was the visit that we recognised that what we were doing was a DIFFICULT THING… A friend pointed out that if we were adopting we would probably face tough questioning, counselling, ongoing support. That’s not the solution I’m looking for but it did bring home the fact that we are having to find our way through a pretty novel and tough situation.
Mark is getting to know what it’s like to be a father to an 18-year-old, I also need to learn about part time living with an 18-year-old who isn’t my son, just as I had to learn about Mark’s 14-year-old, who also isn’t my son, when we first met.
Mark has discovered wrestling, table tennis, trips down the pub and sessions in front of the telly watching football and rugby all help re-build the bond with the son he had danced with and cuddled and sang to all those years ago.
I’ve found that a shared appreciation of clothes and shopping and a liking for cafes shapes how we spend time together….odd to find myself pondering if I can afford to splash out and treat him when he’s trying on a new jacket. – It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was doing the trying on hoping my Mum would decide to treat me..
I haven’t really had that much to do with an 18-year-old since I was a teenager myself. Funny how it triggers off reactions that are now completely redundant. So what I can say I’ve learnt so far: There’s no point trying to compete with them as I probably did when I was growing up with my brother. Secondly, appealing to their softer feminine side by dropping Simone de Beauvoir into the conversation is also futile, apparently. ‘They don’t have one,” Mark told me when we escaped for a walk one afternoon.
I also have to learn not to over-react when I feel pushed out – by the fact that Tyrone obviously wants to spend time with his father without me and also because it comes as a shock when the life I value comes under such bombardment – no curling up on the sofa with a French sub titled film.. continual fights over the remote control, the relegation of everything I’m interested in to a minority view.
I also had a fast-track experience of how rotten the bombardment can make you feel: Last week I was at J’s and her gorgeous, squirmingly teenage son made a scathing comment which brought it all back. I thought it was adults who were meant to be disapproving but what I wasn’t prepared for is just how critical they are. Living with the Thought Police isn’t easy…

*The name he chose when I told him I might write about him

 

Long live the ‘Altermodern’

The Altermodern exhibition opened at Tate Britain yesterday… French cultural theorist Nicolas Bourriaud who identified ‘relational aesthetics‘ as an emerging art movement curated it – and claims it marks the end of postmodernism and the emergence of the ‘Altermodern’.
Bourriaud’s thinking is outlined in a manifesto and will be presented in his new book, the Radicant, this month.

I wrote a piece on it for Palladium magazine, which isn’t published online. I was interested to see if the claim that postmodernity had given way to the ‘Altermodern’ would create much interest.

In the nationals: The Telegraph’s Richard Dorment gives it a thorough review; and The Guardian’s Jonathan Jones examines the ideas behind it.
The Times also gives it a show.

But maybe days when many of us have had our lives hemmed in by snow aren’t the best for wrestling with Bourriaud’s arguments about the impact of globalisation on art.

Art collectors and critics have been sceptical - one I spoke to said it was a lot to do with the Tate wanting to assert itself as cutting edge:

“Bringing in Bourriaud is just re-establishing the Tate as a brand leader,” says David Gleeson, art historian and writer. “I suspect it’s a move to show just how serious, academic and hard-hitting and in the know it is. A brand new theory will establish the Tate as international, cool, cutting edge, sharp and clever. All the major reviewers will give it pages. In a way it’s as big as the new limited edition Barbie. Anything in that bracket where they are bringing out something new knowing that there is already a demand for it, is an enviable position to be in. ”

 

Sending out an SOS

Steve Hewlett focused on how twitter was used during the Mumbai attacks on the Media Show today.
Among those interviewed was Rory Cellan Jones who blogs about Mumbai and Twitter here.

Over on The Ushahidi Blog, Ory Okollah reflects on how her open-source crisis project fared in the DRC.

Okollah points to the need for a strong blogging community such as those that exist in Mumbai and in Kenya – where the project was first launched as a tool for people who witness acts of violence after the election.

The nature of the crisis in DRC also played a part: “As one person closely involved in assisting people affected by the crisis in DRC pointed out to me, in a crisis situation most people are on the run – they don’t have time to file reports etc. In a place like Eastern DRC that is compounded by things like electricity cuts so phones can’t be charged; difficulties having the resources to buy credit so the SMS functionality doesn’t really help them…”

The project got some coverage in Forbes and Kenya’s Daily Nation.