Getting lippy

An interesting article on BBC News questions both the safety and ethics of 'designer vaginas', i.e. the rising trend of labiaplasty amongst western women. Can't copy and paste because for some reason this blog has gone haywire when it comes to accepting commands, but the gist is that senior gynaecologists and psychologists have started questioning the reasoning behind blowing £3,000 to cut perfectly normal, healthty tissue out of one's genitals in order to achieve a 'homogenised, pre-pubescent' appearance. Thank god someone is finally speaking out.

Naturally, plastic surgeons are staunchly defending the procedure, citing women's right to mutilate themselves, the influence of lads' mags, and the syndrome (?) of 'hypertrophy' where 'the tissue is dark and hangs down'. Hmm, we wouldn't be pathologising perfectly normal genitalia in order to line our pockets a bit more, now would we? It's a bit like asking a turkey farmer if they're in favour of Christmas - you're not exactly gonna get an answer that doesn't betray a vested interest, now are you? Why the BBC even bothered giving these people a voice I'm not sure - they don't interview drug dealers for 'their side of the story' when reporting on heroin problems, after all.

I've wondered for a while why no one has identified the irony in the fact we fight against and fiercely condemn women having their genitals mutilated in 3rd world countries, yet here we're happy to pay £3,000 for the privilege. The only real difference is the setting in which the mutilations take place - in Somalia you may have your labia chopped off with a piece of broken glass in the middle of a forest courtesy of a village elder, in Britain you'll have it done under sterile surgical conditions in a nice clean hospital. But the motivation is the same - namely the notion that women's genitals are wrong/grotesque, and must be changed.

The medical profession definitely need to do more to identify the madness in undertaking such procedures, as the media isn't interested in doing so. Instead, TV programme makers sanction and compound interest in women surgically altering their genitals, in programmes such as Designer Vaginas and Embarrassing Bodies. The latter programme (which has, tellingly, altered its title from Embarrassing Illnesses, probably because it shows a lot of conditions where there is nothing medically wrong with the person) has shown two women coming in on separate occasions, bemoaning the length of their labia. I'll step up to the plate right now and say that my labia are probably longer/more protruding than either of them, and their vaginas looked completely normal to me. Instead of reassuring the women and suggesting perhaps some counselling or confidence-building therapy about their bodies, the doctors on the show sent them both for operations to get their labia trimmed. Nice message to send out. Don't have a tuppence like a porn star? Get thee to Harley Street and spend a whack of money that'd get you a new car, part of a house or at the least a holiday on a nude beach to see what real vaginas look like, on trimming a few millimetres off your lady lips. Sigh.

A poster on feministing.com made me smile by defending her 'big sexy labia' before cheekily adding 'still hurts to ride a bike though!'. True, having big labia can be a bit of a pain - they get in the way during sex, rub during biking/horse-riding, and require an extra-attentive sense of personal hygiene. But, um, so frigging what? Bodies in all their glory can be a pain in 1000 different ways, and we don't rush all down to the nearest body-butcher to get bits chopped off in order to remedy that, even though that's what cosmetic surgeons would have us do in the name of 'returning our confidence to us'.

The trend towards unquestioningly encouraging people to undergo serious surgery under the flimsiest of pretexts is worrying, and it's good to see some medical professionals speaking up against it. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't worried and wondered about my labia over the years - whether they're freakish, unattractive and in need of a trim. But when I observe this sickening trend of portraying normal female flesh as requiring medical intervention, I become fiercely proud of them; and yes, it does help that my partner is very enamoured with them. No, I don't derive my self-esteem solely from male approval, but it's just nice to have the viral myths of porn and lads' mags debunked by a real live man. After all, we hear very little from the actual men in aid of whom these procedures are presumably, or at least in part, performed. As Jo Brand pointed out, labiaplasty is an operation undertaken 'for your doctor, and your partner' and no one else (because who else knows or cares, was her point). And who says that men demand a certain kind of vagina, apart from the magazines and films that purport to speak for them? I think if we asked real men, who are having sex with real, unaltered women, their answers would range from 'couldn't care less' to actually positively liking more visible genitalia on their women. But instead we let the media and cash-happy scalpel jocks tell us what's hot and what's not below the waist. We've really got to wise up and start thinking for ourselves again. When did we stop?

Notes on Feminism In London, Oct 10th

This was a fantastic day and I only wish it could've lasted over a whole weekend or even a week, there were so many teeming issues to deal with. But I appreciate it took the organisers a whole whack of time and money to make the day happen, and all I can say is I can't wait for the next one. As someone who often feels largely alone in their concern about feminist issues, it was so fulfilling to be surrounded by equally concerned women and men, and be able to talk freely and without curtailment, about the stuff that really bothers me.

The one talk that was particularly affecting was 'What's Wrong With Prostitution?', which was so graphic in places about the reality of prostitution that it left several people, including my friend who I was with, in tears. I'm going to try and transcribe my scribblings from it as I thought all the contributions were something people need to hear.

panel: - A Travers - ex-prostitute and organiser of Mothers Against Violence

D Marshall - Eaves/Poppy Project worker

R Mott - ex-prostitute/blogger

A Travers spoke of how she has three children, with her eldest son being in prison for violent crime, her middle daughter currently working as a stripper, and only her youngest daughter relatively untouched by violence or the sex trade. After watching a child of 5 play Grand Theft Auto where he can 'virtually' have sex with a prostitute, then stamp on her head and rob her, she began the campaign to make an equivalent game, Grand Truth Auto, which focuses on the victims rather than the player. The game would function so that, as the player was about to commit a violent act, the game would pause and a bubble would appear giving the victim's thoughts/feelings/perspective.

D Marshall, as someone who works with vulnerable women who have left or are trying to leave prostitution, spoke about the overwhelming statistics about the risks of violence, mortality rate and rate of drug abuse in prostitution. She argued passionately and articulately against liberal arguments for legislation and the lazy response that 'prostitution has always been around, you'll never get rid of it'. The room rumbled with laughter when she blew the notion that 'prostitution is the oldest profession' out of the water with the sardonic reply 'no it isn't. Agriculture is.' She also dismissed the notion that anything is so embedded in culture that 'you'll never get rid of it', pointing out that the same could have been said of slavery or child labour yet we've managed to leave those behind and never return to them. In response to the argument that some men are so ugly/disabled/socially inept to get a woman without paying for her, she said that our priority should be making a social/romantic life accessible to the disabled, and ensuring that our boys don't grow up so socially retarded that they can't relate to women. Always agreed with that one personally - I haven't heard many women arguing that because they're old, ugly or shy, they have the right to pay for someone else's body. She summed it up thus - "Sorry, but sex is not a human right", which I think is a harsh truth of life. You want to get some, you have to make the effort for it. The more men think they can just pay for it, the less they will bother to try to be sociable or get to know a woman.

Against the argument that the existence of 'happy hookers' legitimises the sex trade, Ms Marshall agreed that there are such women, and she has met them, but they are not representative. Instead, they are a privileged minority, often well-educated and middle class, and have options open to them that the vast majority of prostituted women do not. It's wrong to allow this tiny minority to make us think that prostitution is OK just because they have chosen it. She also snorted at the remarks on the vile Punternet site (where men who use prostitutes can rate their 'services') that most anti-prostitution feminists have never been near a prostitute; as a woman who works with them every day, she has probably been far closer than most people.Her concluding remarks were that women should step outside of their own privilege, abandon the myths (often peddled by well-meaning liberals) and support prostitutes to leave the industry.

R Mott, an ex prostitute, spoke about her experiences in a moving and disturbing manner. She described herself 'not as a happy hooker, but as a prostituted woman'. She described how she moved from being sexually abused as a child to starting as a prostitute at 14. She described her first night at 'work', where she was gang-raped repeatedly for hours on end while she passed in and out of consciousness. She described how she knew whatever was in fashion in porn because she found herself being forced to do it. Here are some of her quotes:

"Imagine being so dead inside you no longer care what happens to your body."

"You learn your body is there to be damaged. You have no right to say no."

"Punters love anal sex, because it's unnecessary and often causes the woman pain."

(on being choked and anally raped) "That's what men think it's their right to do."

"People think it's not rape if men pay for it."

"It's so much easier to speak of happy hookers rather than face the reality that most women don't want to do it."

R Mott spoke vividly of feeling let down by feminists and liberals who defend prostitution. She emphasised strongly that abolition, not regulation, is the only way to save other women from going through an ordeal such as her. Feminists need to listen to ex prostitutes, because these are the women who truly know 'the cold face of male violence'. She rejected the notion of women freely choosing to be prostitutes, pointing out that 'only if you know the whole life of a woman and you can say for sure she has never been abused, influenced or coerced, could you know that she was really choosing'. She also, chillingly, said that had she been asked while she had been working as a prostitute, she would have defended her profession to the hilt.

In the discussion that followed, the issue of decriminalisation was raised. D Marshall agreed that the bizarre asymmetry in our laws that mean the women are criminalised rather than the men who use them should be reversed, with the criminal burden for prostitution lying solely with men. She rejected the notion that this would drive prostitution further underground, pointing out "If the punters can find the girls, then the police can too." She also emphasised the need for exit strategies for women who find themselves trapped in prostitution. She pointed out that since Sweden adopted a policy which criminalised male use of prostitutes, trafficking to Sweden has dropped significantly - to 1,500 women a year, compared to 10,000 a year in surrounding countries.

D Marshall dealt with the notion that the legalisation of prostitution in Australia and New Zealand has been a good thing. Since both countries did so, human trafficking has increased, as has the illegal sex trade. Her question was a fair one - "Is this progress?". She also questioned the legitimising of prostitution through trade unions (which pimps can join, hmmm), saying that it's an insult to call it a job. R Mott agreed that this lends prostitution a respectable air which it does not deserve. She also railed against the notion that prostitution 'isn't as bad' as other soul destroying jobs such as cleaning or working in McDonalds. Only when a cleaner is raped on every shift, or the McDonalds worker gets their head shoved in the deep fat fryer, can you compare them to prostitution she said. Both speakers also said that the legalising of prostitution normalises it as a 'career option', which is a complete fiction. After all, no one wants their daughter to be one, do they?

There was also an interesting side-discussion on how the term 'punters' is not pejorative enough to describe the men who use prostitutes, having a sort of jolly connotation. Although an alternative wasn't really offered (someone proposed simply calling them 'rapists'), R Mott summarised the notion with a very affecting quote.

"Call punters what you like, but call them criminals. It's not normal to be treated like a piece of dirt. It's not normal to think that your only purpose is to be fucked."

Websites and resources from the day:

http://www.demandchange.org.uk/
http://www.eaves4women.co.uk/
http://www.truthaboutrape.co.uk/
http://www.whywomen.org.uk/
http://www.stoprapeindrc.org/
http://www.wrc.org.uk/
www.object.org.uk

Do you remember the first time?

There's an interesting post today on Feministing.com, asking community members when they became feminists, or at least, interested in the notion of feminism. I wasn't surprised to see more than a few people respond 'at the age of 4', or 'since birth'. I'd say I'm definitely in the earlier rather than later camp, and in some ways I do think a commitment to women's rights has always been in my nature. It's not something I really 'learned' so much as I just felt it, from a very early age. I always find it a bit surprising when women say they have merrily trundled along for 20 or so years before taking a Women's Studies class or similar, and suddenly being enlightened. Much as I know that we all arrive at things in our own way and at our own pace, I always wonder, what were you doing before, that it took you so long? How much of society and culture were you simply ignoring? And how many of your own experiences of sexism and misogyny just passed you by before you thought 'hey, there might be something in this?'.

As a child, I wasn't exactly loyal to my gender. At the age of 6 and 7 I found most other girls trivial and irritating, and could never understand why they were always getting told off by the teacher for chatting - I was too busy working. I was never a cute little girl who got her own way by fluttering her eyelashes and playing the little princess - I was proud to be intelligent, and loved nothing more than to be complimented on my schoolwork. Whilst other girls played with each other's hair, I was scribbling furiously away in my spelling book. As is not uncommon, I went through a tomboy phase. Deciding my own gender were simply an embarrassment, I thought I wanted to be a boy. I had the short haircut, the androgynous clothes - although I wasn't interested in climbing trees or getting dirty. I just didn't want to be associated with the air-headed behaviour of other girls. However, I discovered fairly swiftly that there was plenty of moronic behaviour on the other side of the gender divide - boys were often just as idiotic, if not more, with their random, pointless fighting, constant clamouring for attention, and deep immaturity. Wishing there was a third gender I could try (but there wasn't, and this is not a confession leading to transsexuality!), I went back to the XX camp and there I stayed, trying to figure it all out.

In some ways my mum gave me a good image of a strong woman, but as I've grown older I've found her lifestyle increasingly difficult to reconcile with my beliefs. Yes, she taught me to be strong, opionated, assertive, to use my talents to get where I want, and not to get married or have children unless it was what I truly wanted. However, she also encouraged me to be manipulative and mercenary-minded, made me see marriage in an entirely financial/materialistic light, and set the example of giving up one's career to have children, thus depending entirely on a man for money. In a roundabout way, she has made me never want to be in that last position, so I suppose I have her to thank for my determination to always support myself and not be beholden to others.

My mum was also the biggest adversary of my dad's father, an man who could be deeply unpleasant, chauvinistic, cruel and boorish. My mum refused to have anything to do with him for the last 8 years of his life, following a bust-up which I believe was her snapping point after a decade of holding her tongue and putting up with her father-in-law's obnoxious, bullying behaviour. It was always therefore difficult for me to view him with any objectivity, but I could also see as a child that my mum had a point - he could be a really nasty character. It was fitting therefore, that my first act of feminist assertion was directed at him. I remember being in the car at the age of 7 with both my grandparents, my dad and brother, and hearing my terminally downtrodden grandmother bemoan that she had forgotten to tape Women's Hour on the radio. My grandfather responded along the lines of "What do you want to listen to that for? Load of bloody stupid women, going on and on...". Outraged by this unprovoked declaration of sexism, I addressed my grandad and told it how it was: "You're just afraid they'll realise you're rubbish, and gang up on you." After a brief shocked silence, the adults in the car laughed in a oh-how-cute, out-of-the-mouths-of-babes manner, but I believe to this day I'd hit the nail on the head. The men who are so vocal in their denouncing of feminism are usually the ones most afraid that this ker-razy notion of treating women like human beings will take away some of their so jealously clutched power. I felt an obligation, both to my mum but also to my gut feeling that people who talked this kind of shit shouldn't be allowed to get away with it, to challenge my grandfather. That feeling has never gone away.

I also remember being disgusted and angry to discover what rape was and just how prevalent it was. It appalled me that this was an 'everyday' crime which you could see on the news with your family sitting by, and no one got up in arms about it. I found it hypocritical how everyone paid lip service to the notion of female equality whilst treating women like children or invalids who had to be protected from sex attackers - I still do. Why was my wellbeing of so much more concern than that of my brother? Why, if I was five minutes late home, did my dad feel the need to shout "You could have been raped!" (this actually happened when I was 10 years old. Yes. 10 years old.), as if the idea of having a daughter who had been sexually violated would be more troubling to him than to me, the actual victim. Why was my vagina and its inviolability suddenly everyone's business? I hated this unjust imbalance, found it disgusting, and raged against this invasive concern about vile acts which were surely nothing to do with me and everything to do with the evil men who perpetrated them. Only later did I discover I wasn't the only girl to have had these thoughts, and felt greatly comforted. However, it's deeply depressing how much victim blaming continues. If I could see, as a child, that the blame for sexual violence lay only at the feet of the men who committed it, why can't so many adults see that now?

Caring about women's issues has always been a tough job, and yes, someone's got to do it. I couldn't not do it - no matter how many times I want to throw my hands up in despair, and conclude that most women don't even give a shit about their own equality, and don't want my help, I never give in. I just can't - it's been in my nature all my life and likely always will be. Only last week I was inwardly shaking my head in despair as a group of 18-20 year olds completely failed to see why taking your husband's name in marriage reflects nothing but an oppressive tradition. That's the hard part - you're never off duty, and often enough the people you end up fighting or arguing with are other women, who clearly view you as unreasonable and slightly embarrassing for daring to even question the status quo. But their right to be uninformed, ignorant, and to internalise their own oppression, is, in a freakish way, a right I fight for. Just as well I fight for the right to try and educate them as well.

Cross-post of two fantastic blog entries...

on how to REALLY prevent rape.

This one.

And this one.

After spending so many (wo)man hours talking myself hoarse about why placing the onus for rape prevention on women is so absurd, it's a bloody relief to know I'm not the only one who has picked up on this insanity.

You can rely on Mitchell and Webb...

...to tell it like it is when it comes to the advertising industry.

This is just too funny. And too true.

I Should Know Better...

...than to even glance in the direction of OK! magazine, given that it's owned by a notorious pornographer who also has the dubious accolade of owning The Daily Mirror. These facts alone should tell me to keep my blinkers well fastened when passing the magazine shelf in Borders but as big, red obnoxious headlines tend to, this week's issue caught my eye. Cover celebrity - Jordan aka Kate Price. No surprises there. What got me looking? The blaring proclamation "JORDAN - 'I WAS RAPED'". Alright, this just got interesting, I decide, and dare to look inside. What followed was a sensationalised account of Ms Price's sexual assault at the hands of a stranger at the age of 6, and some fairly vague words about feeling 'threatened' by staff who were 'standing very close' to her during an early nude/topless photo shoot. Hmmmm.

Several issues immediately jostle for attention in my mind here. One, is the pretty deliberate use of the word 'rape'. Legally, I'd call what Ms Price describes (being touched and being asked to touch the abuser) as sexual assault- the legal definition of rape being penetration of the vagina, mouth or anus by a person or object. Perhaps I'm nitpicking and unfairly trivialising her experience, but I can't help but feel the headline wouldn't have had as much clout without the undeniably emotive and provocative word 'rape'. We think rape, we think violence, we think stranger in an alleyway, threats, weapons, physical force. Even though this is rarely how it happens. It could be that OK! Magazine are trying to remind us of this, but I seriously doubt that this is a magazine with the promotion of women's rights at the forefront of its agenda. Rather, I think they used a deliberately sensationalist term to sell more magazines, even when it's questionable to define Katie Price's experience as rape.

As a feminist, you're immediately getting onto dodgy ground when you start questioning the victim or arguing over the severity of the label that should be awarded to their ordeal. However, that doesn't mean we should be afraid to do it. Confusion over what rape actually is, or misuse of the term to describe a different type of assault, is often what leads to actual rapes not being taken seriously enough. If a grope of your breasts (sexual assault) is being put in the same category as someone forcing their penis into your vagina (rape), then people are going to stop taking the crime of rape as seriously as they should. Or rather, they're going to take it even less seriously than they already do (have you ever had an argument about the legal treatment of rape without someone piping up about the evil wimmin who are always 'crying rape' just to get at men? I haven't). A few months ago I sent a story about the rape of a 15 year old girl in a swimming pool changing room to a highly intelligent, culturally educated lawyer friend of mine. His response was that he would have to take it with a pinch of salt, as rape could mean all sorts of things - after all, we use the term 'statutory rape' for sex with someone under the age of consent, even though in many cases no violence or coercion has taken place.

So clearly we already feel that the word has become bandied about, legally blurred and misused enough that before we even start thinking about the victim, we're already questioning the seriousness of what happened to her and if it was really that bad. OK's cover today really hasn't helped that situation, and nor have the actions of a woman whose career is so dependent on publicity that she would allow a magazine to sensationalise an act of paedophilia in order to boost sales. What is also distasteful is how the claim seems to be something of a grab for sympathy, given that Katie Price is being painted as the bad guy in her acrimonious divorce. You wonder just how low she is prepared to go if she'll bring out a 25-year-old sexual assault in order to make herself seem wronged and vulnerable. The sisterhood may want to crucify me for saying this, but having been sexually assaulted or raped doesn't make you a better person, or more deserving of forgiveness when you behave in a distasteful way. I would hope victims of assault would understand that what I am saying is not 'let's give victims of sexual violence a hard time', but rather, that people should be judged for who they are and how they act towards others, not the random awful things that have happened to them, over which they have no control.

In an episode of The Office (the US version), a female worker accused of deliberately sabotaging her colleagues' careers, breaks down in fake tears and says "I was raped." The viewer is shocked until her manager responds wearily, "You can't keep saying that. You can't just keep saying you were raped every time you do something bad.". The viewer then feels they are allowed to laugh, as it's clear that we're not dealing with a real rape victim, but someone who trots out a deliberately shocking lie every time they're caught misbehaving. The implication is that the girl is trying to deflect attention from her actions by blurting out a (fabricated) statement about something that she know will shock and gain sympathy for her. The show makes it clear that nothing of the sort has actually happened to her (as her crocodile tears turn off as soon as the manager says he will let the matter go) so it is not mocking real victims, but rather those who do a shameful disservice to real victims by taking their experience and using it as a grab for attention, or a deflection of the negative focus on them. I can certainly see parallels between this scene and what I saw in OK! today.

It's pretty clear what damage these actions do. As long as we see rape claims - real or fabricated - as something women do for attention, revenge or sympathy - we are going to continue down the road of not taking sexual violence seriously, and continuing to treat victims with suspicion. In a country where the conviction rate for rape remains shamefully low, and complaints about police treatment of victims (often described as 'a culture of disbelief') continue to flood in, those who exploit tales of sexual assault are only making matters worse. Sadly, it's probably only when those people find themselves or their loved ones accused of 'crying wolf' or 'saying it for publicity' when they really do experience sexual violence, that they'll realise why it's such a dangerous game to play.