That's What She Said #5

Contents

Hello

...............................WOMEN & ART/ .........

Thanks for picking up our magazine, we hope there’s something here to interest anyone – feminist or otherwise. It seems you can’t open a newspaper at the moment without seeing a story which prompts feminist thought; from the Steubenville rape scandal to the Ugandan miniskirt ban. Feminism is a boundary crossing concern, as we hope our feature on Intersectionality makes clear (p.15).

For the first time TWSS includes articles from members of staff as well as students, as this edition sees us collaborate with Bristol Perspectives. Thank you to all our contributors for making this such a diverse edition. To all our readers, we hope you find something in here to spark your interest and maybe ignite some revolutionary zeal!

Neglected Female Artists, 5 ............................... ............................... Feminism in Punk, 7 .........

Public Exposure & Other Radical Acts, 9 ......

.......... PERSPECTIVES/ ............................ .............A Chilly Climate for Women?, 13........ .....The Philosophising Male, 13........................

...................................FEATURES/ ............. ....... Intersectionality, 15 ................................... ...Women’s Bodies as a Site of Warfare, 17 .... .............Women’s World Wide Movement, 26..

...... COMMENT/ ......................................... ........ There’s Something About Mary, 2.. .........

......................Stop Being Such a Girl, 3............. ........................ Boobs Aren’t News, 4 ................ .Women Only Spaces, 19 ................................... .....................................Working Chance, 20 ......

Not My Tradition, 22........................................... .......Who Needs Feminism? The Internet, 21...

...........................EVENTS/ .......................... .................. Review: Poetry Slam, 11 ................. ...........................................1 Billion Rising, 23 .

Cover Image: Zoe Zietman Magazine Design: Sophie Wall & Edward Orlik

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Lots of feminist lovin’, Sophie and Cat

There’s Something About Mary Battenberg vs. Beard: the great debate. Ellie Paul is torn.

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and delicious Victoria Sponge. She’s even fashionable! Remember the sartorial splash she made with the righton Zara bomber jacket? Amazing.

Older women are sadly lacking from our tv schedules, so it is definitely worthwhile focusing in on those present. A comparison of the Marys is discouraging. Mary Beard should be our national hero. She’s a rare beast female academics both in universities and the media are underrepresented, and equally programmes like Question Time often seem a man’s game. Yet for not conforming to image expectations and maybe for just having an opinion, Beard suffered abuse no one should have to deal with. Mary Berry on the other hand has become highly popular, and it worries me that one of the few older women on television conforms to grandmotherly stereotypes.

Furthermore, she’s recently been revealed to have some pretty outdated views about women’s maternity leave and how we should use a softly-softly approach if we want our men to do anything. Is this really the model of a mature woman that modern-minded people want on their screens? I might not have the nation on my side, but I’m with team Beard. She might not pop by mine with a lemon drizzle anytime soon (more’s the pity), but I’d like more of her on my television.

hat is it about the women’s role models and the name Mary? It used to be all about the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene. Now, a new and very different Mary duo are on the scene. Beard and Berry are two Marys who challenge the youth-obsessed media culture. The latter is the much-loved judge of The Great British Bake Off, all polite suggestions and cheeky bites of cake. The former is a media academic, a Fellow at Cambridge, and a recent victim of some horrendous internet-based misogyny.

For those who missed the Question Time debacle, Mary Beard came under fire for relaying a study concerning the positive impacts of immigration. This clashed with the impressions of one local woman. Fine, you might think.

Standard Question Time incident. Yet the backlash was shocking. Beard was attacked viciously for her appearance (someone even superimposed her face over an image of genitalia), and was awarded Rod Liddle’s ‘most stupid woman on Question Time’ award. Charming. And odd, since she was just... fine.

She said nothing particularly stupid.

The vitriolic response was just baffling.

So what about the other Mary? She’s much more palatable to the media at large. The sprightly 77 year old is exactly what the nation wants from older women- a neat grandmother for the nation who could make us all an enormous

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Stop Being Such a Girl Jess Wingrad mulls on the nature of our gender identities

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t is a truth universally acknowledged (a dutiful nod to Jane Austen there), that a man should enjoy drinking with his mates, watching football and secretly playing acoustic guitar in his bedroom late at night, while a woman should enjoy drinking cocktails, trying on clothes, and openly playing acoustic guitar in her bedroom late at night.

From the moment we are born, we are gendered. Throughout our lives we are categorised as being either one or the

sues, celebrities and sex, oh no hang on, Cosmopolitan have a section on ‘travel’. So, if you are ‘M’, off you go to learn about activities of interest and endlessly judge girls in the most dehumanising and brutal way. If you are ‘F’ you may try your very best to look pretty so that men can judge you, and you can judge each other.

When we are born we are made to be a girl or a boy; this is problematic enough, even before taking into con-

...oh no hang on, Cosmopolitan have a section on ‘travel’. other: ‘M’ or ‘F’, ‘blue’ or ‘pink’, ‘rugby’ or ‘netball’. It is a neat way for society to organise and understand humans, and what is even easier is that civilization is able to mould people to fit into these categories.

The modern bible of the twenty-first century, the magazine, is the most obvious place to start since they so aptly demonstrate the enforcement of the gender binary which holds us all in place. Men’s magazines explore issues of the Playstation 4, recent film releases, cars, food, sport, culture and girls; there is even a sub-section on the ‘GQ’ website entitled “Art”. Men are invited to engage with these topics and think critically about them. Now let’s turn to women’s magazines. Key topics include hair, make-up, fashion, body is-

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sideration those who are biologically neither one nor the other. Sixty-four years ago, a wise woman, Simone DeBeauvoir, said “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” It seems rather clear to me that we have yet to advance from this basic premise.

Of course this doesn’t call for a universal androgyny, there are fundamental differences between people, but why can’t everyone just be that? a ‘person’. It may be a bit too much to ask that when a baby is born the doctor cries, “it is neither a girl nor a boy since it refuses to abide by the gender binary which is merely a social construct holding no real meaning and is in fact a self-fulfilling prophecy!”

But maybe something along those lines would be a start.

“Boobs Aren’t News” Boobs are something to be celebrated. Just not in the national press, as Zoe Hunter-Gordon explains

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occurrence in most tabloids it seems apparent that perhaps we are living in a culture where boobs, have become news. Not so simple then, to demand a newspaper stops showing tits.

Or is it? There’s a difference, a big difference, between “Ashley, 19, from Bromley” and Rihanna. We know her for her talent and, yes, okay perhaps her arse helped get her there but it’s not her defining feature. Ashley – sadly – is only given that full page spread for one reason, and that’s her body alone. This is the real danger of page 3, the abstraction of the body from the individual. Ashley is not there to contribute anything, just to titillate, and unlike Rihanna, she never has contributed anything. It’s not great that Rihanna’s chest should feature in the “news” but at least she has another purpose, Ashley however is reduced simply to a pair of tits.

Should Ashley be ashamed of this reduction? God, no. Feminism has fought hard, and won, for her right to make as much money as she can from taking as many provocative pictures as she pleases. Magazines like Zoo and the internet exist for a reason; there’s definitely demand for Ashley and she has the freedom to build whatever career she pleases, but should she be in a newspaper? No. Ashley’s boobs aren’t news- and if it’s not news, get it out of a newspaper.

oobs aren’t news.” Kinda catchy, isn’t it? This phrase, credit to Andrew Hicks, has received over 2,000 likes on the “No More Page 3” campaign on Change.org – the petition itself totalling at 83,000 signatures. With all the controversy surrounding page 3 and the stereotypical “angry-dykey-jealous” vs. “pervy-lad” labels being chucked about with reckless abandon one can find oneself at a bit of a loss. I don’t like page 3 (more coverage for female MPs and less random nipple please) but do I think women should be allowed to get their tits out for cash? Yes. I have a solution- and luckily, it’s a simple one. There’s no need to argue big boobs aren’t fabulous, leave that as a matter of taste. You can hold on to both freedom of speech and get shirty about page three as really, actually, as fabulous as boobs may be, they’re quite frankly not news. This being the case, it nicely follows that they have no place in a newspaper.

Is the Sun a newspaper? Yes, it defines itself as a “family tabloid”. Okay, so point one – It’s a newspaper, it should contain the news. However, defining what the “news” is these days, especially news one can expect to find in a classy publication such as the Sun, isn’t so clear cut. As pictures of Rihanna in a bikini become a daily

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he feminist group Guerrilla Girls recently posed the question: ‘Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?’

They were referring to the fact that whilst 85% of the nudes in the famous New York museum are female, less than 5% of the artists in the modern art sections are women. Similarly, just 10% of the painting owned by London’s National Gallery are by female artists.

Despite the suggestion that slow progress in this area appears to be happening – since 2010, two of the winners of the highly regarded Turner Prize have been women – the history of art is still notoriously male dominated. Although some sexist critics have tried to argue that the reason for this is because ‘women are incapable of greatness’, in my opinion the real reason for the lack of famous female artists from roughly 1400 to 1900 is down to the fact that women were excluded from almost all cultural and social resources during a period when much of the world’s great art was created. But there were a handful of exceptional female artists who managed to overcome their oppression to make a much needed mark on the history of art. Here is a list of my top three neglected female artists, who deserve as much recognition as their male peers.

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1)Artemisia Gentileschi

Frequently compared to the much better known Caravaggio, Gentileschi, who lived from 1593 to 1656 in Italy, is not only a true feminist icon but an extraordinary artist. She created dramatic and realistic paintings often of strong and suffering women. One such example, is her Judith Beheading Holofernes. This gory work shows Judith as a ruth-

Buried They rival the likes of and Renoir, but you’ve prob Becky Black fills less killer, wielding the dagger with a hard, unforgiving facial expression as she murders her tormentor.

Other works, such as Susanna and the elders, seem almost autobiographical. Susanna is shown naked but not at all vulnerable, pushing off the advances of the two creepy elders with a look of sheer disgust.

This is made all the more poignant by the

knowledge that Gentileschi herself was raped. Gentileschi turned this terrible event in her life into the inspiration for an extraordinary artwork.

2) Mary Cassatt

Part of the impressionist movement, and working in Paris alongside the likes of Degas, Renoir and Pissaro, Cassatt painted members

in Time Caravaggio, Degas ably never heard of them. in the gaps of the bourgeoisie in the city, but in a way that captured so much more than what many of her male contemporaries managed. Often, artists such as Renoir depict women as passive spectators. However Cassat broke this mould. In her painiting ‘La Loge’ we see a woman dressed soberly and unaccompanied: a statement of her independence. She looks through her opera glasses at the crowd – a seemingly witty statement on Cassatt’s part, as it mocks paint-

ings like Renoirs’ where the woman in unengaged and represented as nothing more than a beautiful object to be looked at. Paintings like these allowed Cassatt to stand out as a woman artist in an extremely patriarchal domain.

3) Séraphine de Senlis

The subject of the 2008 film ‘Séraphine’, this French painter of the naïve style only received full recognition after her death in 1942. A house keeper and cleaner for most of her life, she painted at night by candlelight, creating huge canvases decorated with incredibly intricate and beautiful floral designs. The colours of the works are often cited as a reflection of her turbulent mental state – a constant battle between ecstatic joy and poor mental health. She was eventually admitted to an asylum, where it is said that she died penniless and alone. As sad a story as Vincent Van Gogh’s, it serves us well to appreciate this little known artist who stands out as extraordinarily talented in a history of art that seems to ignore some of its brightest stars because of their gender.

This may just be my top 3, but there are hundreds if not thousands more forgotten female artists who deserve to have their names known.

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Feminism in Punk

The protagonists of Punk shook up perceptions of gender (whilst being totally kick-ass), as James McKernon informs us

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ver since it began to seriously take aim at youth audiences a little over a half-century ago, pop music has been one of our culture’s most powerful disseminators of preconceptions about gender and gender roles. Its seductive, disposable brilliance make it the perfect medium to indoctrinate impressionable young minds. Unfortunately, it ordinarily presents a pretty narrowly-defined set of role models for both genders in its unbroken stream of glamorous, fanciable, yet ultimately dimwitted idols.

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Punk, on the other hand, presented a new form of cool for youth to imitate, which in many quarters included notably more liberated roles for women. Musically, they participated not only as singers, but also expressed themselves through songwriting and musicianship.

And, just as importantly, bands of the era weren’t bashful about getting confrontationally political in their lyrics - an attitude which happily extended to gender topics.

Here’s a brief introduction to a few key voices of the era:

Their dress sense was a thrift store melange of OTT looks, drawing on an eclectic range of kitsch sources and made complete by Kate and Cindy’s inexhaustible supply of outrageous wigs. Presenting themselves as a camp parody of mainstream America’s traditional gender roles, the band were a provocatively queer presence in the pop world.

Their music was a uniquely danceable combination of punk, surf rock, sci-fi movie themes, and all manner of other kitsch references. In their best song, Dance This Mess Around, Kate Pierson’s powerful yet vulnerable vocals prefigure powerful later female figures like Le Tigre’s Kathleen Hanna.

X-Ray Spex

Visually, X-Ray Spex’s most distinctive feature was frontwoman Poly Styrene’s idiosyncratic, unglamorous looks, but their music was a stirring take on punk. Their key track, Oh Bondage Up Yours!, is an intense hit of guitar energy, shot through with romping, atonal rock ‘n’ roll sax (reminiscent of Roxy Music’s Andy Mackay), while its lyrics provocatively compare woman’s consumerist shackles to the chains of S & M....

The Slits

The Slits’ provocative name, together with their all-female lineup, presented a confrontational statement before one even heard their music - which lives up to expectations. They had an innovative tribal sound, drawing equally on dub reggae, funk, and punk sources. In songs like Typical Girls, singer Ari Up bemoans the unnatural place of women in modern society: “Typical girls buy magazines / Typical girls feel like hell.” (Services to gender equality aside, they also earnt themselves a place in history with that song’s b-side: a punked-up cover of Heard It Through The Grapevine, guaranteed to slay any dancefloor.)

Scritti Politti

Despite starting life as a highly experimental post-punk outfit, Scritti took an abrupt turn for the charts after singer Green Gartside realized that the best way to rebel against pop music’s institutional sexism might be from within. Thereafter, Scritti became a poppy vehicle for songs like The Word Girl, whose saccharine melodies are belied by their witty, incisive lyrical deconstructions of pop songwriting’s tired, objectifying, sexist tropes: “A name the girl outgrew / The girl was never real / She stands for your abuse / The girl was no ideal.”

The B-52s

Best-known for their fun-butnaff early 90’s hit, Love Shack, one might be surprised to find The B-52s on a list of gender-progressive punks. True, they lacked the shameless ideological sloganeering of some of their contemporaries, but their smart, campy deconstructions of gender performance formed an equally sharp critique.

Interested readers are encouraged to consult Rip It Up And Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 and The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion, and Rock ’n’ Roll, both by Simon Reynolds.

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Public Exposure and Other Wall looks at female artist Radical Acts Sophie Ewa Partum, who challenged patriachy and politics through her work

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ave you heard of Ewa Partum?

You might be surprised to find out that her art is part of the Tate Modern’s permanent collection, or that she is one of the foremost pioneers of early conceptual and feminist art (if none of this is new information, cultural kudos to you). Despite her relative anonymity, Partum’s experimentation in film, conceptual art, body art, and the breakdown of artistic forms and spaces have had far reaching effects on the contemporary art that fills our galleries today.

Through this experimentation in media, she is also noted as opening up an artistic language, wherein the spectator was invited to become part of the creative act, through the act of observation and thought.

Born in Poland in 1945 against a backdrop of social and political unrest, Partum was subject to the influence of overarching communist powers throughout her youth and early adulthood. In an environment characterized by oppression, her art became a subversive discourse,

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questioning the legality and autonomy of public spaces for Poles, artists and women. Being all of the aforementioned, Partum was effectively placed to tear away at the patriarchal ideas still rife in the literature, media and daily life of 1970’s and 80’s Poland, and the world at large. With a period of productivity spanning several decades, Partum’s seminal works date from this period, a context to which her artistic messages are inextricably linked.

This is not to say, however, that Partum’s art is any less pertinent to a contemporary audience. Although some of her pieces might conform to a stereotypical notion of conceptual art (nudity, nudity, and a bit more nudity) they tap into ideas about femininity that are as arresting now, as at the time they were conceived. Even this continued sensitivity regarding female nudity in the public arena, not in the form of pornographic images, but of real womens’ bodies, serves to highlight how Partum’s messages are still as current as ever.

Self-Identification (1980)

A performance show with an accompanying photomontage, Self- identification documents Partum wandering naked around the streets of Warsaw, putting forward a provocative analysis “of the cultural and social exclusion of female expression in public space”

Active Poetry (1971)

Scattering cut out letters across a multitude of landscapes, from a sprawling field to a grotty underpass, poetry was created by chance, shaped by coincedence and the natural environment. In this process Partum challenges the ideas of patriachy in language, as well as freeing art from its institutional confines and prescribed settings

Tautological Cinema (1973)

Highlighting the discrepancy between artistic vision and subsequent creation, delivery and reception, Partum highlights the technological process of filming is incapable of truly encapsulating artists’ intentions

4 works by Partum to get you thinking Change. My Problem Is a Problem of a Woman (1979)

Another performace art piece, which sees a naked Patrum aged by prosthetics on one side of her body, whilst the other half is perfected by make up artists. Change is an overture to the obsession with aestethic perfection that dominates the 21st century psyche. Alongside the performance a caption could be read by audiences “a male artist has no biography. However, a female artist has one. It is important if she is young or old.”

IlIllustration: Sophie Wall

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Poetry Slam I

Heather Christie enlightens us on this increasingly popular craft, and the emerging talent that is Holly McNish

Review

n early February FemSoc ventured to the Hammer & Tongue regional poetry slam final. Not only were we promised an intense slam between 6 stellar local spoken word artists but a performance from the brilliant Hollie McNish who boasts 2009 Female World Slam Champion.

Hammer & Tongue is a live literature association dedicated to promoting fresh talent and celebrating the spoken word. On these fronts they most certainly delivered. You may be wondering, as was I, how a poetry slam works. Randomly chosen audience members mark each contender and after two rounds the top two poets enter a final slam. Marks are deducted if the performer takes longer than three minutes and a friendly atmosphere is encouraged.

A personal favourite was Bristol University student Vanessa Kisuule whose thoughtful, honest and beautifully written poetry was enlivened by a bold and rhythmically satisfying performance style. Unfortunately Vanessa did not make it to the final slam largely due to her second poem running over time. Although this was disappointing, I was grateful to hear the piece in its full glory as it was a highlight; an exploration of the all too familiar stigma associated with labelling yourself a feminist, something she cleverly coined the ‘f-bomb’.

Slam aside, Hollie McNish topped off the evening’s entertainment. Her poetry is candid, bold, witty and

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thought provoking and the tone she adopts during performances is truly engaging; you can’t help but hang on to her every word. Her writing tackles blonde jokes, heat magazine, breast feeding in public, gender stereotypes and even the declaration of human rights. In WOW!, she comments on her baby daughter’s inherent comfort in her body and skin and questions why this can’t be maintained as we grow older: “I try to do the same, ignore the plastic advert spreads that pass me on the way, I say ‘my body is amazing’ despite what some might say”. It was empowering to hear someone articulate issues that concern many of us in such an immediate and evocative way.

As with many artistic pursuits, the majority of the big names in spoken word are men: Gil-Scott Heron, Benjamin Zephaniah, Scroobius Pip and the list goes on. However in a genre of performance so closely related to activism, with its modern roots in the civil rights movements of the 1960s, the flag is flown for change and the underdog is welcomed. What’s more is that the slam format creates an equal platform where the voices of poets are heard and respected and their artistry celebrated regardless of their gender.

Let us look, then, to McNish and Kisuule as well as Hedwig Gorski, Kate Tempest and Amy McAllister to provide us with more of this re-affirming literature. Word.

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Knowledge Closed Until Further Notice

BRISTOL PERSPECTIVES

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The ‘forum’ for the other voices

ristol Perspectives is an online newsletter that was established in 2011 following the occupation of Senate House and university wide strikes. It provides an alternative forum for marginalized members of our university to speak out in. Perspectives aims to inform, discuss and politicize the university community, overcoming the barriers between staff and students.

Bristol Perspectives aims to provide University of Bristol students and staff with a means to educate and debate with each other, free of the terms of debate laid down by those at the top of this University’s

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hierarchy. During November 2012, Perspectives and FemSoc collaborated on a "Reclaim Education" event, discussing patriarchy in the university and how we could tackle it. Hearing lecturers and PhD students speak candidly about their experiences was an eye-opener, as we often assume that our liberal university should be a supportive, non-discriminatory space. We thought our readers might be interested to learn more about problems dealing with misogyny in our very university. Here, That's What She Said brings you two articles from the Perspectives team...

Harriet Bradley, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, asks

Bristol University:

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hat do I mean by a ‘chilly climate'? It has been defined as an environment that dampens women’s self-esteem, confidence, aspirations and their participation in a particular activity—e.g., academics, sports, politics. American researchers Roberta Hall and Bernice Sandler argue that universities in the USA provide a chilly climate for female students who find that males dominate in seminar discussion, that tutors take men more seriously and are more likely to sponsor them, and that women may have to contend with sexual pestering and patronising treatment.

Within universities, the science laboratory has proved an especially difficult environment for women.

There is an aura of male bonding and camaraderie into which many women find it hard to fit. The men go off to the pub together after the day’s work, while many married women have to go home to look after husbands and children. Female postgraduates are allotted the most mundane lab tasks, while bright young men are given career breaks by mentoring professors.

So is this true at Bristol? As a lecturer, I have taught many confident young women, who can give as good as they get! However, the least confident students are often women. In a recent survey a number of women at Bristol and UWE have complained of being intimidated or ignored in seminars while no men have done so.

Dangerous specimens have been found in the higher echelons across academia. Cerelia Athanassiou & Bethany Benker warn us...

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substantial group of Philosophising Males (homo philosophus) has been found roaming the University of Bristol. So far, sightings have been reported in the majority of departments on campus.

The affected individuals will often appear non-symptomatic; diagnosis can only be confirmed in conversation or upon a review of behaviours.

Presentation requires very specific conditions, often seen in tandem with jobs of societal privilege (e.g., a position of power, non-manual desk jobs, often with enough wage-pay to facilitate their apologetic defence-

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Beware :

statements). It is not confirmed whether or not positions of power are causal or merely correlated. Symptoms include: extreme cognitive dissonance, lack of empathy and a tightness of the trapezius muscle, located near the collarbone; often manifesting in excessive shoulder shrugging.

Remember: this sickness is endemic and conversation-borne, even short contact with contaminants can cause paralysis of important mental processes. Five unlucky victims of the disease are said to be in critical condition. One of them is reported to be suffering intense frustration from acute

A Chilly Climate for Women?

One young women’s self-esteem was so battered she left her university.

In my view things get worse as we go up the occupational hierarchy. I have spoken to many young women researchers in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects who felt they were bullied by their supervisors and principal investigators . I have seen young women driven from the university by such male behaviour.

Across the university, women academics with children struggle with their work-life balance, confronted by increasingly macho managers who will not tolerate anything they see as ‘weakness’, such as complaints about workload.

At the top end, we have only one

woman in the Senior Management team, Professor Judith Squires.

Some while ago, Ruth Levitas, Vala Ragnasdottir and I conducted a survey of professors which established that women took longer to get promoted, were paid less and were pushed into pastoral roles and teaching administration which did not help in getting promotions in the way research activities did.

At the time, the report was well received and its recommendations accepted. Sadly, little has changed.

The proportion of women professors has not increased; in fact, in these Hard Times, things might be getting worse.

Brrrr. I feel the cold. How about you?

The Philosophising Male! boredom. Her treatment plan consists of a stress-relief programme, and later, therapy to treat the petrifying allergen concerned, severus-patronismus. As

a result of these serious events, we ask readers to be vigilant, and take these simple precautions against any Philosophising Males you may come across, ready to impart their knowledge to you. This will result in aforementioned petrification - this is as serious, painful and traumatising as it sounds.

What to watch out for: -Males with a fondness for other Males, who are preferably Dead,

(N.B: does not always come in male form)

White, Middle- to Upper-Class.

-Patronising spoken monologues on topics linked to ‘philosophy’ as defined by above DWMs (Dead White Males).

- Selfish disregard for the welfare or views of other colleagues or students.

- When in conversation, the eyes form a glassy coating, (appearance similar to 1000-mile stare) when waiting for you to finish speaking.

Remember, their only weapons are verbal. Concerted action, in solidarity with others suffering under their oppression, can beat their unearned dominance!

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section ality Inter A short introduction to a big idea cluding Burchill and Moore – do not. Though this doesn’t mean they have nothing of value to contribute, it does show a certain short-sightedness – a failure to look beyond the boundaries we have set for ourselves.

ome months ago, feminist journalist Julie Burchill got in a teensy bit of hot water. For those of you too busy to closely follow the ever-spinning carousel of brouhahas which keeps the Court of Internet Justice in a state of hysteria: Burchill’s friend Suzanne Moore had written an article which made an offhand comment about women being expected to look like “Brazilian transsexuals”.

Following a negative response to these comments, Burchill (being the loyal friend she is) verbally vomited on to some paper, scanned it onto her computer and then e-mailed it to the Observer, who duly published it on their website it under the title “Why transsexuals should cut it out”. Though the Observer took the article down, several people preserved the text on their own sites, so you can Google it if you’re curious to read about “a bunch of bed-wetters in bad wigs” and “dicks in chicks’ clothing” ruining feminism for all the proper women.

Regardless of how secondary-school playground this all sounds, it did serve to highlight a growing chasm in feminism between those who believe in the importance of intersectionality and those who do not.

Generally speaking, prominent feminists of generations past – in-

“Intersectionality” is a complicated word for a simple concept. Basically, every defining ‘group’ you are a part of affects you – your gender, sexuality, class, race etc.

– and your experiences are affected by the combinations of these groups. Gay women are subject to different expectations, stereotypes and risks from straight women.

A white, middle-class, able-bodied woman experiences prejudice, but not in the same way as a black working-class disabled woman.

Instead of bickering over who gets to be a part of feminist discourse, we should recognise these different experiences and give everyone who identifies as a woman a voice, including those who were born biologically male.

When you know what intersectional theory is, you can see the irony in Burchill and Moore deriding it while simultaneously complaining about how working-class women 15

All this does is splinter the feminist movement, turning women away from each other, instead of working together in unity. The challenge is to work together to fight all these issues.

We must listen to and work with all women; whether they are from India struggling for legal justice, girls in Africa fighting for the right to education, or women in Bristol at risk of female genital mutilation.

like them are so rarely given room to speak about feminism. That’s intersectionality right there. We need a diversity of voices because feminism is for all of us. Well, yeah. Duh.

Ciara Fitzroy

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ustice for some, is justice for none”. A sentiment that, I think, lies at the heart of intersectionality.

Feminism should not force women to choose between their identities.

Intersectionality is the solution to this. It acknowledges difference: the forms of oppression women face are not identical and should not be treated as if they are. Feminism should be about wanting equality, about caring for women whose daily struggles may not match our own and yet still fighting these struggles anyway because until all women are equal, none are equal.

Feminism is often accused of focusing on issues mainly relevant to white, heterosexual, middle-class women. A black woman’s experience of being a woman can be very different from a white woman’s experience, due to the added dimension of racial marginalisation. Race changes the meaning of gender.

We cannot suppose that all women will be fully empowered if some women are still held back by ethnic or class marginalisation. Everything is connected: oppressions interact and play off each other. They are inseparable. In order to eliminate sexism, we must also eliminate racism, and classism, and ableism, and homophobia and so on and so forth. To quote Flavia Dzodan: ‘My feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit’.

Black women’s gender cannot be isolated from their racial or ethnic identity. They face issues relating to both racism and sexism, sometimes in combination, on what is likely a daily basis. Both are significant parts of their identity, so why should gender be privileged?

By forcing women to only focus on one aspect of their identity, you makes them choose between acquiescing to sexism or racism.

Alexandra Heyer 16

Women’s Bodies as

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Rape as a weapon of war is sadly an all too known

s Feminists, we are supposed to be all for birth control. In the 60s and 70s, campaigning for increased availability of contraception was as important a part of the women’s rights movement as dungarees and a refusal to wax. However, as prochoice campaigners constantly try to stress over cries of “baby killers”, the point of making contraception available is to allow women control over their own bodies.

It is this autonomy that has been taken away from Ethiopian migrants to Israel. It has recently emerged that, for the last twenty years, Ethiopian women entering the country have been coerced into taking a controversial form of birth control, Depo-Provera. Depo-Provera is a rarely used long-term contraceptive injection, administered every three months.

There are a number of side effects to the drug, including decreased bone density, and difficulties in conceiving lasting two years after injections cease. The Israeli government has been accused of making migrant women

feel that they must take contraception to enter the country, and failing to inform them of the long term consequences of taking Depo-Provera. Whilst the government denies these charges, it is evident that a disproportionate number of Ethiopian women are taking the drug, and that the birth rate for Ethiopians in Israel has plummeted in recent decades.

Whilst this particular scenario is hopefully unique to Israel, all over the world women’s wombs have been, and continue to be, co-opted as sites of political and racial struggle.

The American Eugenics movement saw over 64,000 individuals forcibly sterilized between 1907 and 1963, in an attempt to reduce the “undesirable” elements in society. The vast majority of these sterilizations were performed on women, controlling the results of their disruptive sexuality.

Sterilizations continued to be performed in the states until the 1970’s, with non-white, poor or mentally-disabled women being the key targets.

...all over the world women’s wombs

have been, and con-

tinue to be, co-opted as sites of political

and racial struggle 17

During“The Indian Emergency” be-

a Site of Warfare phenomenon, but contraception? Cat Evans reports

Women’s reproduc-

tween 1975 and 77, a major focus was containing India’s e v e r- i n c r e a s i n g population rate.

Individuals were offered loans, land and money for consenting to sterilization. All though vasectomies are a much simpler operation than the corresponding female procedure, the government targeted their energies at women in an imbalance which still exists today. Indeed, in 2003, 4.6 million female tubal-litigations were performed in India, in comparison to 114,000 vasectomies.

Health visitors report that when they approach men about vasectomies, the answer is always the same: “take my wife”.

While it is obvious that there is a whole host of different reasons why governments may resort to sterilization methods, many of which bring with them charges of racism and ethnic cleansing, it is important to note the gender imbalance which many of these cases reveal.

Female sterilization is often prioritized over male, despite being more complicated and potentially life threatening. Women’s reproductive powers mean that their bodies are public property, whereas men’s virility is seen as a private concern. These vile infringements upon human rights are symptomatic of cultures where women are viewed as “baby machines”. Often feminists are accused of focusing on inconsequential issues, however, it is when personhood is reduced in manner, either by sexism or as a result of other prejudices, that these sorts of atrocities can occur.

tive powers mean that their bodies

are public property,

whereas men’s virility is seen as a private concern

Forced sterilization is reportedly still government policy in Uzbekistan for women with more than three children, as part of a policy to reduce population. There have also been reports of forced sterilization in Russian mental institutes and Czechoslovakia has recently come under criticism for forcing sterilization upon Roma women.

Want to find out more? Check out Harry Bruinius’s Better

for All the World 18

Louis Devenish is looking in on

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Women-Only Spaces

time, these women will then hopefully think of myself as a feminist, I also have the confidence to integrate into a happen to be male. When I say i’m a mixed-gender space. feminist I simply mean that I strive to Yet I’m not convinced this incubation treat everyone I encounter with equal process is working because those emrespect, and if I perceive someone to boldened next steps into mixed-gender be part of a marginalised group then spaces don’t seem to be happening– I try to make an extra effort. Somewomen stay with the women’s night. times women fit into this latter cateWorse than this, however, I see the gory. I’m involved with a women’s night actually exaccommunity bike project in erbating the woeful gender Bristol, which runs work- Want to find shops which help asylum out more about ratio in our other workshops.

This is because, for a female seekers, people in recovery this newcomer to the project, programs and people with learning difficulties. The community women’s night appears as the principle avenue to get inproject also runs a wombike project? volved (Women are positively en-only workshop, which I’m not allowed to attend. See http://www. encouraged to come to any workshop, but few do.)

This is my perspective on thebristolbike- In an ideal world we wouldn’t this women-only space. even understand the concept The women’s night is inproject.org/ of gendered spaces – there tended as a “space where would just be human spaces – the agenda, tone, atmosbut I recognise that they have positive phere and debate isn’t always defined by benefits in certain contexts. Yet it’s immen.” This is quite a persuasive arguportant to work out what women-only ment, particularly when you consider spaces aim to achieve: is it wider culthat typically the other workshops are tural change – if so integration is parmore than 90% male. amount – or is it simply getting more So why is the women’s night a good women into an activity, regardless of thing? It gets more women into hiswhether their involvement changes the torically gendered mechanical work. wider culture of that activity? OverridIn a simple sense, if more women get ing most other opinions I have, I can’t involved, then this workshop empowhelp feeling that exclusion in any form ers more people (in absolute terms) to is a regressive act, and should be avoidunderstand their bike, and therefore ed if the social context permits it. I feel to get out on two wheels. It’s definitethat an inclusive community bike proly true that this space is more accessiject is one of those contexts. ble to novice mechanics. After a certain

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Working Chance This London based charity shines light onto the women that society is keen to forget. Kiki Knowles reports

O

ver the holidays, I spent a week at Working Chance, a small but growing charity which helps get female ex-offenders back into work. Before stepping into their office in Islington, I had little idea of what to expect. I was soon overwhelmed, however, with admiration for the work they do, and I wasn’t the only one. Working Chance’s offices are filled with cards from the women they have helped (or ‘candidates’, in Working Chance terminology), containing heartfelt messages of gratitude. It was clear the immensely positive effect that re-employment had on the lives of these women. I learnt first-hand from some of the candidates about the problems they face on leaving prison. After adjusting to the world ‘inside’, with structured days and limited responsibilities, the prospect of being released can be daunting. Many of the women have families to look after and support – the female population of UK prisons are responsible for some 18,000 children. There is a huge discrepancy between male and female offenders in this area: of new prisoners, 94% of men said that their partners would look after their children, compared to only 23% of women.

In an already tough jobs market, the stigma of having a criminal conviction is enough to turn the most enthusiastic employer sour. I was shocked at just how judgemental employers could be, and at how calmly and patiently the Working Chance staff dealt with this, despite their frustration. As Raman, head of

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volunteer placements told me, ‘It’s just about ignorance. They don’t know any better. Our goal is to re-educate these employers so we can have a long-term impact on the relationships between ex-offenders and employers.’

It’s an uphill struggle, as Working Chance is the only charity in the UK providing this service specifically for women. However, it is growing fast, and, thanks to government and National Lottery funding, the charity is able to help more women improve their lives.

The charity is currently comprised of five full-time and five part-time team members, all of whom happen to be female. Whilst the exclusion of men was not intentional, it is part of what makes the charity so unique, as there is a strong sense of female camaraderie which filters out into the work they do. These women understand the issues that the candidates face – between them they have years of experience of recruitment, the UK prison system, and juggling work with their own family responsibilities. The atmosphere in the office is extremely sympathetic, supportive and upbeat, and it is this which was perhaps the most inspiring aspect of my time there. During my time with Working Chance I became achingly aware of the problems faced by both male and female offenders, but knowing that said charities exist, made me a lot more optimistic about their future.

Who Needs Feminism?

THE INTERNET

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There’s more to the web than facebook. Ella Hopkins finds out

n the midst of UniLad and constant pornography pop-ups it’s reassuring to note that inventive web campaigns promoting feminism are everywhere.

One of the most popular is ‘Who Needs Feminism?’ The tumblr page shows pictures of people, of all ages, genders and ethnicities holding up a sign describing why they need feminism. From a teenage boy stating: ‘I need feminism because playing like a girl is awesome,’ to a couple: ‘We need feminism because we both wear the pants in our relationship’ and a young woman: ‘I need feminism because there’s no room for a politician in my uterus.’ Started by 16 students, it has inspired hundreds of similar blogs. Bristol students have contributed, as well, with my personal favourite: ‘I need feminism because my bum shouldn’t become public property when I step into lounge.’

The Baltimore Feminists’ prank on the website of women’s lingerie company Victoria’s Secret (pinklovesconsent. com) is another eye-catcher. This was 21

a response to a new range of underwear which bore logos such as ‘sure thing’. The Baltimore group felt that this promoted the attitude that women should act coy, and that saying no is mere flirtation. The online boycott depicts women of different sizes and races wearing the alternative ‘Pink’ range, with slogans like ‘Ask first’.

Victoria’s Secret has denied any association with the site and tried to remove it, but it continues to target rape-culture and has received overwhelming support through social media.

Sites like these are an encouraging sign of new media being used as a creative force for good. In a cyberspace saturated with unrestrained misogyny and commercialism, this is invaluable. The Baltimore group puts it well: ‘Imagine how different our lives would be if we put as much time and thought into sharing ideas like consent as we do into selling underwear’.

Not My Tradition F

Jewish customs are harsh on women but Raphael Fischer digs up some flimsy foundations.

examples of women like Rebecca, Deborah and Hannah praying (the latter is even suspected of being insincere because her voice cannot be heard) – so what happened?

or Jews like myself, tradition is one of the greatest parts of our identity – it is said that ‘halacha (law) without aggadah (tradition) is dead’, and for me tradition has always been perhaps the strongest signifier of what it means to be part of a community. To quote Tevye the Dairyman, “It’s how we keep our balance!”. But unfortunately, sometimes it feels as though it’s hardly left the Old Country.

Among the most Orthodox interpretations of Judaism exists the idea of kol isha erva (KIE) – put simply, the belief that a woman’s voice is “licentious” and cannot be present in a religious setting.

From time to time, it is claimed that religion is automatically anti-women, and kol isha erva does little to dissuade people. It’s the rationale used to ban women from praying alongside men at the Western Wall (despite Elia Kahvedjian’s superb photographs of mixed prayer dating back to the early 1930’s), or to prevent women from singing even at secular events in South Africa. But despite its modern interpretation, it’s clear that there’s nothing explicitly banning women from taking part – the Hebrew Bible is full of

KIE starts off as a phrase in the Song of Songs (also known as “that really erotic book”), where it’s written as “Ki kolech arev” (“your voice is like honey”). Eventually, since words in Hebrew can be interpreted in various ways depending on what their root word is (arev can be switched to ervah, sweet to nakedness), one rabbi in the Talmud makes a pun out of it, leading to KIE, but even then nobody pays much attention to it. It’s only in the 16th century that it’s codified by Joseph Karo, and even this is specifically limited to recitations of the Shema, the affirmation prayer – beyond this, it’s increased prevalence is purely the result of what can only be described as a traditions arms race – ‘aggadah without halacha is wild’.

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So what can we really take from this? There are already women fighting to have their voices heard, most notably Women at the Wall, but even beyond the Jewish community there is something to be said – the most entrenched forms of sexism can easily be the flimsiest.

What did you do on Valentines day? Ruth Davies celebrated women all over the world, right here in Bristol

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1Billion R i s i n g

t’s a chilly Saturday morning in Bristol. People are going to work, going shopping and buying their last minute Valentine’s gifts. But in Castle Park there is something else going on. People wearing red and black are assembling, some taking photos and some doing stretches.

There are women – and the odd man – of all ages plus several small children and a dog. There are so many of us that people are starting to wonder if something is going on; I heard a man on the phone saying ‘what are all these women doing here??’ What indeed Mr Business Man. The story of why we were there begins fifteen years ago when Eve Ensler, au-

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thor of the Vagina Monologues, decided to establish the V-Day movement.

Through her work over the years, talking to women about not just their vaginas but their lives, loves and struggles, she had come to decide that enough was enough. She set up a movement to end violence against women through fundraising, consciousness raising and changing attitudes. For the 15th anniversary, Ensler decided something drastic was required. One in three women on the planet will be raped or beaten in her lifetime. That’s one billion women. To quote the One Billion Rising website: ‘One billion women violated is an atrocity. One billion women dancing is a revolution.’

So we danced. Along with women and men all over the world, we danced to show that we will not tolerate violence against women and girls anymore. Starting in Castle Park, we performed our flashmob routine to Beyoncé and Gloria Gaynor in four different locations, ending in Millennium Square.

There was then a candlelit vigil to remember victims of rape and violence.

The atmosphere was great: we were angry but positive, and the dancing was a really moving, uplifting experience. Most importantly, passers- by stopped to watch, read our banners and talk to us about why we were there. I heard one man read the banner about 1 in 3 women being abused in her lifetime and he said ‘I didn’t know that, that’s awful.’

I’ve heard a lot of people say ‘well it’s fun but what’s the point?

Dancing isn’t going to fix it’ Maybe not, but for survivors of sexual violence,

those who suffer from eating disorders and other women who have been made to feel disassociated from our bodies, dance is a powerful way of reclaiming our bodies and our right to own and enjoy them. In this country, the event provoked a debate in parliament and put violence against women back on the agenda. In India, it allowed hundreds of thousands of women to get out on the streets to express their anger at the shocking levels of rape, brought to the world’s attention by the horrific gang rape of Jyoti Singh on a bus in New Delhi. For Jyoti, and for our future daughters, let’s keep this momentum, and rise again and again.

Let’s refuse to be quiet until this violence ends for good.

1 Billion rising doesn’t just end after Valentines!

Check out http://onebillionrising.org/ for more information Photos: Zihixin Tan

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A World Wide Feminism has made great strides over the past 110 years, but

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n 1903 Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters formed the Women’s Social and Political Union more popularly known as the Suffragettes. After many years of direct action, including the memorable death of Emily Wielding Davison, women in the United Kingdom finally achieved the right to vote on equal terms with men in 1928. The primary objective of the First Wave of feminism was to gain women the vote and equality within marriage and parenting. In the early years of the 1900’s women’s movements were being founded throughout the world. Examples of this include The American Women’s Suffrage Association which campaigned for a nineteenth amendment to the constitution in order to grant women the right to vote.

As the Twentieth Century progressed, more and more countries were giving women the right to vote and thus the concerns of feminist movements changed. The Second Wave of feminism was more concerned with the right to work,

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equal pay and sexual equality. The National Organisation for Women was founded in America in 1966 in order to ‘take action for women’s equality.’ They lobbied extensively for an Equal Rights Amendment which would have constitutionally guaranteed equal rights for women. This amendment failed to be passed, however. In other countries women were attempting to be liberated from their traditional gender roles. In Latin America the revolutions of the period during the 1970’s often brought about new ideas of women’s roles within society. Similarly in China, the Chinese Communist Party often claimed to have liberated women by allowing women into traditional male dominated careers.

‘Equal pay for equal work’ became the focus point of many women’s movements during the 1960’s and the mantra often inspired direct action. A particularly famous example is the 850 sewing machinists who went on strike at Ford in Dagenham in protest for equal pay

Movement we still have a long way to go. Ellie Cox looks to the future and the end of sex discrimination.

Just two years later the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1970. This was the first legislation passed for equal pay in Britain.

During the 1970’s the first Women’s Liberation March occurred.

The 1970’s was to be a time when many of the women’s movements we know today were founded. Women’s Equality Day was founded in America in 1971.

Every year August 26th is used as a symbol of the ongoing fight for women’s equality. The United Nations also created the International Women’s Day as a formal day during which women’s political and social progress is celebrated.

In the late twentieth, and early twenty first centuries, more and

more of the feminist movements have been global. A movement that has attracted a huge amount of publicity has been the Slutwalk.

The Slutwalk was a global response to a comment from a Canadian police officer who suggested that in order to stay safe women should ‘avoid dressing like sluts.’ Women took to the streets across the world to protest at the archaic attitudes of some people in positions of responsibility.

These recent movements show there are many years to come at protesting for gender equality.

What do you think ? Get in contact and let us know your thoughts!

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Before we leave you, a quick note from our presidents...

This is the first year we have had committee positions designated entirely to producing That’s What She Said. We’d like to take this opportunity to congratulate Sophie and Cat on the brilliant editorial work that they’ve done this year. It is so fantastic in fact that we’ve doubled the number of magazines we print to ensure TWSS gets the wider readership it deserves. Hope you enjoyed reading!

Laura & Shannon x

n in If you f ing a wome eel insp We’re plann rs e k a e a p s b h o it u w t, t n e Workin ired by Kiki’s religion ev g g Chan in article apply c nt faiths talk from differe riences. See our the s to volunteer w e, why not ummer xpe ? See h ith them over about their e ! s i il n ta e g d c r ttp://ww hance.o ge fo w.work rg/ facebook pa -

Get Involved!

muring the su d m a h g in m In Bir kers e great spea m o s e e S e r? me Page 3’ at th re o M o ‘N such as ool! summer sch ta is in m e F UK ista. ttp://ukfemin Sign up at h org.uk/

Interested in hist ory? There are a number of exci ting feminist related worksho ps happening at the M-Shed, and they are free!

See http://femin istarchivesouth. org.uk/

As always, you can get in contact with us on bristolfeminists@googlemail.com or via our facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/groups/ bristolfeminists/. Let us know what you think about the magazine, or any other feminist issues!

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