Four Things Meme

Four Jobs I’ve Had:

1. Tour Guide
2. Music Teacher
3. Sexual Health Worker
4. Secretary / Receptionist

Four Movies I Can Watch Many Times:

1. The Sound of Music
2. Thelma & Louise
3. Shine
4. Amadeus

Four Places I’ve Lived:

1. Lancashire
2. Yorkshire
3. Aix-en-Provence
4. That's about it, unless I'm forgetting somewhere

Four TV Shows I Love(d):

1. Have I Got News For You
2. Mock the Week
3. The Wire
4. QI

Four Places I’ve Vacationed:

1. Tunisia
2. Turkey
3. Italy
4. France

Four Websites I Visit Often:

1. facebook.com
2. gmail.com
3. flickr.com
4. xkcd.com

Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now:

1. Somewhere sunny
2. Sleeping in my bed
3. Aix-en-Provence
4. Mexico

Latest Photography Blog Updates

Exhibition at the Mall Galleries

The Edale Cat Strikes Again

Busker Playing the Didgeridoo

Black and White Portrait

RedBubble

Some Photos I Wish I'd Taken

Abandoned Shopping Trolley

Raising the Flag

Autumn Colours

Poor Old Lily



NaBloPoMo

Feminist Carnivals

I found out yesterday that my Access to Feminism post, about (dis)ableism in the feminist community has been featured in the 68th Carnival of Feminists. They have randomly called me Penny, but that doesn't matter, it's nice they spotted and included my post. The issue does need to be brought out into the open.

There are some other interesting posts in the Carnival. What a crazy random happenstance talks about Feminist Dealbreakers - what constitutes a 'dealbreaker' in the relationships in her life. Behaviours or attitudes which force an end to a relationship with someone. For her, it can be people who claim to be feminist pro-lifers, for instance.

Reading the post, and the discussion continues in the lengthy comments section, got me thinking. I realised I have different deal-breakers depending on who the person is! Most notably if they are new to my life I deal break quickly and firmly, for instance someone being anti-choice or pro-pornstitution writes them off instantly), whereas people I have known for many years I seem more able to tolerate some of those things. Partly because huge numbers of people from my childhood (half my family, many of my friends), are Roman Catholic and so being 'pro-life' was kind of the default. Hell, I was!!

I guess I feel I can't expect my old friends to change in order to remain friends with me, but I don't have to put myself through trying to make friends with a new person with whom I am fundamentally opposed.

Jill at Womenstake wrote "Pro Life"? Puh-lease! about how misleading the term actually is, when preventing access to family planning, contraceptive and abortion services and products can indeed put lives at risk.

I didn't need to read Is Sarah Palin a Feminist Icon? No she's not. People get this mixed up, like Margaret Thatcher must be one too, for being the first female Prime Minister. No no no no!


NaBloPoMo

This Blog Will Change Your Life

For the last five years, I have had a diary that would change my life. Five years!

It gives you mad tasks to do, from making the Dalai Lama get angry, to making citizens arrests, to matching your mood to the stock market, and blaming the full moon for everything.

As I'm starting to get appointments and things for 2009 I decided it was time to get my next year's diary so I went to Waterstones on Sunday, with an open mind - to get my favourite of the diaries there. Something that, knowing I would use it most days for a year, would stay interesting and not bore me. I looked at the numerous ones on sale but guess what... I ended up with This Diary Will Change Your Life 2009

I hope it will. I'm nothing if not original.


NaBloPoMo

An Open Letter to Barack Obama

by Alice Walker

Alice Walker on expectations, responsibilities and a new reality that
is almost more than the heart can bear.

Dear Brother Obama,
You have no idea, really, of how profound this moment is for us. Us
being the black people of the Southern United States. You think you
know, because you are thoughtful, and you have studied our history.
But seeing you deliver the torch so many others before you carried,
year after year, decade after decade, century after century, only to
be struck down before igniting the flame of justice and of law, is
almost more than the heart can bear. And yet, this observation is not
intended to burden you, for you are of a different time, and, indeed,
because of all the relay runners before you, North America is a
different place. It is really only to say: Well done. We knew, through
all the generations, that you were with us, in us, the best of the
spirit of Africa and of the Americas. Knowing this, that you would
actually appear, someday, was part of our strength. Seeing you take
your rightful place, based solely on your wisdom, stamina and
character, is a balm for the weary warriors of hope, previously only
sung about.

I would advise you to remember that you did not create the disaster
that the world is experiencing, and you alone are not responsible for
bringing the world back to balance. A primary responsibility that you
do have, however, is to cultivate happiness in your own life. To make
a schedule that permits sufficient time of rest and play with your
gorgeous wife and lovely daughters. And so on. One gathers that your
family is large. We are used to seeing men in the White House soon
become juiceless and as white-haired as the building; we notice their
wives and children looking strained and stressed. They soon have
smiles so lacking in joy that they remind us of scissors. This is no
way to lead. Nor does your family deserve this fate. One way of
thinking about all this is: It is so bad now that there is no excuse
not to relax. From your happy, relaxed state, you can model real
success, which is all that so many people in the world really want.
They may buy endless cars and houses and furs and gobble up all the
attention and space they can manage, or barely manage, but this is
because it is not yet clear to them that success is truly an inside
job. That it is within the reach of almost everyone.

I would further advise you not to take on other people's enemies. Most
damage that others do to us is out of fear, humiliation and pain.
Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess
a certain religious or racial devotion. We must learn actually not to
have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in
disguise. It is understood by all that you are commander in chief of
the United States and are sworn to protect our beloved country; this
we understand, completely. However, as my mother used to say, quoting
a Bible with which I often fought, "hate the sin, but love the
sinner." There must be no more crushing of whole communities, no more
torture, no more dehumanizing as a means of ruling a people's spirit.
This has already happened to people of color, poor people, women,
children. We see where this leads, where it has led.

A good model of how to "work with the enemy" internally is presented
by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he
confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet. Because, finally,
it is the soul that must be preserved, if one is to remain a credible
leader. All else might be lost; but when the soul dies, the connection
to earth, to peoples, to animals, to rivers, to mountain ranges,
purple and majestic, also dies. And your smile, with which we watch
you do gracious battle with unjust characterizations, distortions and
lies, is that expression of healthy self-worth, spirit and soul, that,
kept happy and free and relaxed, can find an answering smile in all of
us, lighting our way, and brightening the world.

We are the ones we have been waiting for.

In Peace and Joy, Alice Walker

NaBloPoMo

Fundies Say The Darndest Things...

Fundies Say the Darndest Things is a site which is always worth a visit. People post totally bizarre or outrageous things said by Christian fundamentalists, and others can vote and comment on them.

It sounds maybe puerile, but that's until you see the quotes by the fundies... then you realise who is being sensible here and who's not.

Some examples:






I believe that the husband and wife should vote as one: meaning that, after discussing the possible options, both come to a mutual decision and the wife strengthens the husband's vote with hers. I think it's a shame if the wife disregards her husband's opinion and "cancels" his vote by choosing the opposite. And in my opinion, the same is true for adult unmarried daughters - they are under their father's authority until marriage.



But imagine some stranger came knocking on the door of your house and asked if he could move in and live with you. How much would you welcome him? You would certainly see him as "the other," and in many ways he is. He is not part of your family.

The request of gays to be "married" might be similar, even for a tolerant person like myself. The request to be married is a request to move into my "house"--the order of my society that has been traditional for thousands of years.



If those 40 million babies had lived, there wouldn’t be so many jobs for illegals to steal from Americans!



I believe it's in the heart of the earth. I suspect that earthquakes happen because hell is enlarging itself. But's that's my opinion.



In the 7th grade we always said grace before leaving the classroom to go to lunch and the whole class recited the 100th Psalm each morning. You weren't afraid to walk your own neighborhood after dark or even considered closing your windows at night since we had no AC in those days. Lock your car at night? What for? No reason to do that. They're wasn't car hijacking back then either. No one committed suicide either.



But Andrew, I beg to differ. All that science is really BS. If you have a penis, you're body automatically wants to find its way into a vagina, not into another dude's asshole.



God help us. We just voluntarily put an Antichrist in power. Hope you all enjoy socialism which will invariably take even more of your rights away. When you realize that I will say I told you so.



"An Anderson (SC) man who had alleged his father attacked him with a baseball bat "to cast the demons of homosexuality out of him"

Wishful thinking. More fathers should have such courage and take moral responsibility.



He explained that the ham came from a type of black-hoofed Iberico wild pig that wanders around eating acorns, "which turn into delicious fat in its muscle tissue, and also make it really healthy for you." That drew a chuckle from the reporters Obama had brought along. "All I know is it tastes good," said Obama. "That was delicious."]

Obama is a pork eating muslim to throw us off the trail



It is sad to see how mislead some of you people are. Abortions don't turn a profit? Not true! Aborted babies are used in vaccines and the medical establishment is trying to get more women to have abortions because the demand for vaccinations have gone up in recent years!



I accept and agree with equal rights. They already have these though. Every single homosexual is entitled to marry someone of the opposite sex anytime they so choose.



CHRISTIANS I HAVE BAD NEWS

OBAMA WON!
NOW PRAY HARDLY THAN YOU EVER PRAY BEFORE CAUSE ARMAGEDDON IS NEAR THAN EVER BEFORE!



Woman seem to think they are only beautiful when they are undressed as they show their flesh off?

I find it funny. Woman are just our slaves and they will always be. God puts woman to slave them selfs to only one man their mate. Which by the way is suppose to be someone that loves her. The devil slaves her to all the world.

There is, as expected, and as you have seen, much horror at the election of Barack Obama, commonly referred to in these fundie circles as Hussein (his middle name) with references to him being a Muslim (which he is not). I was ever-so-slightly amused by the reference to impending OBAMANATION though, I have to admit.

I don't think the quotes on FSTDT need much commentary, they mainly speak for themselves in their ignorance, prejudice and bile. But if you want comments, click on the links. I won't make any because, rather like Thatcher or Dubya, you can't much parody someone that is already a total parody of themself.



NaBloPoMo

Amnesty International Greeting Cards Campaign

A few days ago I spent a few quid in the Post Office, doing my bit for the AIUK Greetings Card Campaign.

The annual Greetings Card Campaign brings people across the world in touch with each other in a simple way - sending a card with a friendly greeting or message of solidarity to someone who is in danger or unjustly imprisoned. These are prisoners of conscience, people under sentence of death, human rights defenders under threat because of their work, and others at risk.

The campaign, which runs from 1 November to 31 January, offers hope and encouragement to the people who receive our cards. It can also help bring about change - the impression their international mail makes on police, prison staff or political authorities can help keep them safe.

There are 30 people, families or groups listed, for whom Amnesty International think that receiving greetings cards would support them, help them in their campaigns, or draw attention to their situation. Realistically, I knew that I couldn't send cards to all 30, if only because of the international postage that I would incur, so instead I chose 9 recipients. I chose all the women, and one of the men in Guantanamo Bay.

I used some of my photographs to make cards, and wrote encouraging messages based on the advice given by Amnesty, and got them posted.

It is a really worthwhile thing to do - it's easy, it doesn't have to be expensive (you can choose as many people or as few to send cards to), and it can make a massive difference to the people who receive them. Some have had relatives missing for years, others in prison; many, many desperate situations.

Amnesty provides full information about what you should or shouldn't write, whether the cards or messages should be religious or not, whether you should mention Amnesty or add your own address.

Seriously, just go there, pick some folks and get writing a few cards. Small things can make a huge difference.



NaBloPoMo

All About Me

From Sunday Stealing.

I am: cold

I think: that antibiotics make me feel iller than what I had in the first place

I know: that the weather will improve again

I have: a brother and a sister

I wish: that toothache would stop waking me up all through the night

I hate: spiders

I miss: my Dad

I fear: being sick

I hear: radio four

I smell: incense

I crave: brie and bacon panini

I search: for some filter tips

I wonder: whether feminism will ever make itself redundant

I regret: getting into debt

I love: photography

I ache: when I miss someone

I am not: as mobile as I used to be

I believe: in the goodness of people

I dance: to Erasure

I sing: when I'm on my own

I cry: when I'm scared

I fight: with myself more than anyone else

I win: competitions occasionally

I lose: things all the time

I never: eat bananas

I always: want more sleep

I confuse: architects and archaeologists

I listen: when people talk

I can usually be found: online

I am scared: of many things

I need: to be philosophical about it all

I am happy about: the friends in my life

I imagine: there's no heaven



NaBloPoMo

Chinese Takeaway

It is three years today since my Dad died.

In so many ways it's still so hard. Some things have got easier, the coping day-to-day with the loss, but when the pain hits, it still hits just as hard as ever.

The more photography I do, the sadder I feel that I can't share it with him. When I discover a great new recipe or learn an obscure piece of vocabulary, he's the one I want to tell.

Tonight I got a Chinese takeaway. Dad was a great cook, and when cooking foreign food he always strove for authenticity. He wanted to make Indian food like people in India make it, make Thai food like people in Thailand make it. Similarly when he was eating out, he wanted to go to the curry houses that the local Asian population ate at. When he did some work in Lahore in Pakistan, he avoided the tourist food places and instead found where the locals ate out.

So whenever I go in the takeaway I went to tonight, I think of him because it is very popular with Chinese students. This suggests authenticity. And they have a menu in mandarin on the wall, which is clearly different from the English language menu because of the number of items, and the prices. Whenever I'm in there I imagine my Dad asking the guy who runs it what's different about the Chinese-language menu, what makes those items more popular with the students and others from China, which item was most popular with the Chinese guests, and could he please have that. I smiled as I imagined being faintly embarrassed by all of this, too.

As it was, my takeaway tonight was as inauthentic as it gets - chop suey and chips, both as rooted in the West as is possible. And tasty it was, too.

I miss him. Painfully, frequently and deeply.


NaBloPoMo

Women Deserve Better

Today's the first time in this daily blogging business where I'm really struggling for what to say.

It's only day 6 so I hope this doesn't continue! I did today's photography blog post this morning, but it's here on hippie blog post I'm having trouble with, mainly because I feel entirely lacking in words.

There are plenty of subjects available, it's the actual writing about them that's the problem.

So for today, I will let someone else's words do the talking, originally seen on the f word blog.




NaBloPoMo

The Man Done Good

So, a black man is to be the most powerful man in the world. The first black President of the USA. Even as the polls and such were improving over the last few weeks, I didn't quite believe it could happen, especially since the weirdness of Bush becoming President (two elections ago) when he didn't actually win the most votes.

Obama is far from perfect, but shit, compared to McCain and Palin, it was vital he won. I haven't heard anything about the Palin of the Obama campaign, Biden, but it seems he is vice-President elect so no sudden wiping out of him by the voters. (I remember when the 1997 general election results were being counted here in the UK, I was desperate for the Tories to lose power to Labour, but for Tony Blair to have lost his seat so not be PM).

Of course when I say Biden is the Palin of the Obama campaign, I mean technically (i.e. running mate, potential vice president), rather than ideologically!

While US politics affect us here, affect most of the world in fact, we do get disproportionate coverage of such things, compared to what we hear about the rest of the world.

When the election campaigns were starting, months ago, at the top of each news report, there were groans all round. And the process was going to be so looooong, these November elections so far away. I, and many, were bored of the American elections by about May.

But these last few days, the possibilities... peaked my interest again. And the whole thing paid off.

Congrats to Obama and supporters. Let's hope he does a better job than his shambling predecessor.


NaBloPoMo

Access to Feminism

Among the many words which I may use to define myself, two key ones are feminist and disabled.

You wouldn't think these two identities are mutually exclusive, they certainly shouldn't be. Feminists, fighting for equality and justice for women, include black women, lesbians, refugee women, disabled women, don't they?

Some references:
Feminism, Gender & Disability:

. Non-disabled feminists continue to treat disability as a
side issue, an optional extra and in no way part of the so-called mainstream
academic or political debates. The disabled people's movement - while
many and sometimes the majority of its activists are women - is still
informed by political and theoretical debates which strangely sideline
women's experiences and issues.

[...]

A failure to understand the social model of disability lies at the heart of the
dominant reaction to the situation where children are having to provide
support to their disabled parent. Challenging the medical model of
disability and the dominant concepts of independence and dependence can
help us to promote disabled women's human and civil rights.

[...]

As Liz Crow writes in Encounters with Strangers, we need to put back the
experience of impairment into our politics. We need to write about,
research and analyse the personal experience of our bodies and our minds
for if we don’t impose our own definitions and perspectives then the non-
disabled world will continue to do it for us in ways which alienate and
disempower us.

Feminist Disability Studies:

The author discusses shortcomings in the women's therapy community's response to disabled women and suggests some analysis of the phenomenon of what she calls the "active unwillingness to know."

[...]

DePauw reflects on the often misunderstood and ignored intersection of gender and disability, an intersection she sees as a "final frontier." Feminist issues often have revolved around the female body and the exploitation of it; when disability issues are raised, it can work to disrupt and complicate issues of exploitation and control of female bodies and identity.

[...]

The feminist movement is not sufficiently conscious of its own "ableism." Feminists who criticize the traditional sex roles of wife and mother are insensitive to the fact that women with disabilities are taught that they are asexual, as oppressive a message as that conveyed by heterosexism. What is more, feminism's strategy of complete separation from patriarchal society ignores the fact that women with disabilities experience constant and tangible barriers such as physical inaccessibility. The writer suggests that women with and without disabilities need to communicate, so that a new critical feminist anthropology can be engendered; an anthropology that will take not only gender into account, but also sickness, disability, and age as powerful shapers of self and society.

[...]

This paper analyses how disability informs and complicates gender identity for women with disabilities and demonstrates that disability is a feminist issue. The first section underscores the dual silence of women with disabilities who remain largely unheard of, both in feminist literature and in the disability rights movement.

[...]

The second section of this paper suggests possible points of entry into several debates within feminist literature that would be broadened or transformed by a disability perspective. Issues of reproductive rights, control of women's bodies, newborn's right to treatment, the construction of gender as informed by disability, and sexual representations are among the issues analyzed.

[...]

the last section of this paper analyzes various strategies for change, including standpoint or minority models and strategies within feminist thought that may be useful or emancipatory for women with disabilities.

[...]

how applying a “disability lens” and reflecting the values and vision of disability feminism can help us bring the voices and visions of disabled women and girls to the policy arena and to feminist research, policy and advocacy agendas.

[...]

feminist critical analysis does not usually recognize disability as a category of otherness (as it does with race, class, and gender) unless the study specifically states this focus.

[...]

an articulation of feminist Disability Studies as a “major critical subgenre within feminism.” She asserts that feminist Disability Studies can be located in the broader area of identity politics if discourses of the body marked as deviant are included.

[...]

Feminist disability theory augments the terms and confronts the limits of the ways we understand human diversity, the materiality of the body, multiculturalism, and the social formations that interpret bodily differences. The essay asserts that integrating disability as a category of analysis and a system of representation deepens, expands, and challenges feminist theory. To elaborate on these premises, the essay discusses four fundamental and interpenetrating domains of feminist theory: representation, the body, identity, and activism, suggesting some critical inquiries that considering disability can generate within these theoretical arenas.

[...]

[Feminist disability studies] situates the disability experience in the context of rights and exclusions. It aspires to retrieve dismissed voices and misrepresented experiences. It helps us understand the intricate relation between bodies and selves. It illuminates the social processes of identity formation. It aims to denaturalize disability. In short, feminist disability studies reimagines disability.”

[...]

The nature of the problems faced by disabled women are such that they need to be addressed by both the feminist and disability movements. But the fact is that they remain invisible within the women's movement at large.

[...]

The author examines disability from the perspective of disabled women. She focuses on the social model of disability rather than a medical model and asserts that disability is another form of oppression experienced by women. She argues that disabled women have been excluded from both the women's movement, which is oriented toward non-disabled women, and from the disability rights movement, which is oriented toward disabled men. Using the history of black feminism, the author argues for a reframing of the analysis in which to explore the simultaneous experiences of gender and disability.

[...]

Disabled women activists have, however, been equally critical of the failure of mainstream feminism to recognise the disability perspective.

[...]

the incompleteness of feminism without the inclusion of a disability perspective.

[...]

The author discusses her anger and frustration with feminism in two ways: first, that disability is generally invisible from feminism's mainstream agenda, and second, that when disability is a subject of research by feminists, the researchers objectify disabled people so that the research is alienated from their experiences rather than attempting to understand the experiences of disabled women.

[...]

[she] calls on nondisabled as well as disabled researchers to continue to study the ways in which the nondisabled society oppresses its members with disabilities. Lastly, she argues that disability research is of great importance in the general understanding of the perpetuation of inequalities in society.

[...]

leading activists explore the ways feminism can and must acknowledge disabled women for the benefit of all. Revealing the ways in which disabled women have been rendered nearly invisible, it shatters received feminist wisdom on a wide range of core issues. Offering cogent evidence of the many ways in which disabled women's experiences would revitalize feminism today, Encounters with Strangers makes an invaluable contribution to a more inclusive understanding of disability rights, outlining how new and vital alliances may be achieved.

[...]

Unfortunately, little research has been conducted on this issue as it effects the lives of women with disabilities, which may reflect the belief that the lived experiences of many women with disabilities are not important nor perceived as valid by mainstream researchers.

[...]

It is part of my work as a nondisabled feminist to interrogate my own ablism and to look for the opportunities disability analysis provides for fuller theorizing and activism.

[...]

Disabled women's issues, experiences, and embodiments have been misunderstood, if not largely ignored, by feminist as well as mainstream disability theorists.

[...]

Beginning as separate enterprises that followed activist and scholarly paths, gender and disability studies have reached a point where they can move beyond their boundaries for a common landscape to inspire new areas of inquiry.

[...]

the cross section of oppressions that is created when a woman is black or a lesbian is much more mediated than the cross section of oppressions created when a woman is also disabled.

[...]

one of first articles reporting on the exclusion of women with disabilities from the “mainstream” women’s movement,

[...]

feminist critiques of these norms have virtually ignored the pressures on women who do not have full use of their bodies.

[...]

by arguing that the myth of bodily perfection and appearance norms which deny the experiences of disabled women contribute to the denial of disability and therefore are oppressive.

[...]

One group, however, continues to remains mostly invisible in feminist research; disabled women. Disabled and non-disabled feminists have expressed their deep concerns that the voices of disabled women have been missing in most feminist texts so their lives are unknown, their contributions unrecognized and the effects of social discrimination and inequality in their lives ignored.

[...]

We need a feminist theory of disability, both because 16 percent of women are disabled, and because the oppression of disabled people is closely linked to the cultural oppression of the body. Disability is not a biological given; like gender, it is socially constructed from biological reality. Our culture idealizes the body and demands that we control it. Thus, although most people will be disabled at some time in their lives, the disabled are made "the other," who symbolize failure of control and the threat of pain, limitation, dependency, and death. If disabled people and their knowledge were fully integrated into society, everyone's relation to her/his real body would be liberated.

[...]

feminist theory has neglected to incorporate the perspectives and experiences of women with disabilities, and that these perspectives must be included in future discussions of feminist ethics, the body, and the social critique of the medical model.

Disability is a feminist issue:

Disability Rights are a feminist issue because women know what it’s like to be infantalized and treated as lesser people. And we should know damn by well that it isn’t right. Not for us, and not for anybody.

See also Domestic violence and disabled women.

Okay, so that's a lot of quotes but you get the point. Feminism needs to integrate disability politics, needs to embrace disabled women and our experiences, to be fully feminist. Excluding disabled women from feminist academia, analysis, activism and community not only is crap for the disabled woman, it prevents feminism from becoming all it needs to be to liberate women.

I am drawn to blog about this because of a recent experience with a local feminist group. They appear radical, have done some great actions and one woman I have had contact with who is involved in this group is a vocal advocate for women.

I am on their email update list and recently enquired if there was a lift at the venue because they meet upstairs, as there was an upcoming meeting I was considering attending.

I got a reply saying that no, there wasn't a lift. They kept asking the pub to provide one. She asked whether I had any suggestions for alternative, accessible venues.

I replied to that email with several suggestions, and questions to find out more about the group so I could see if I could come up with any further ideas to make the meetings accessible to physically disabled women.

I had no reply to that email. I don't think she liked my suggestions because she had originally said they were not keen to sacrifice the atmosphere of where they already meet, whereas to make the meetings accessible would mean to meet elsewhere. Given that the venue is inaccessible, and they don't want to meet elsewhere, what suggestion could I possibly make that would seem acceptable?

Of course, as I never received a reply I can only speculate on why my suggestions (which she had requested!) and questions were ignored.

Then later I received an email with minutes of their latest meeting. There was no mention in the minutes of accessible venues at all. This showed me just how little Sheffield Fems seem to care about allowing physically disabled women to become involved in their feminism.

I felt dejected and totally invisible. It is not good enough for women who are supposed to be fighting for women to not even acknowledge this huge issue.

Sometimes I can do stairs, sometimes I can't. That isn't the point. Which women are they empowering? Which women are they supporting? Which women are they liberating?

Not me.



NaBloPoMo

Photography Blog Latest Posts

Alongside hippie blog I also have a blog which is specific to photography - called, imaginatively, Philippa's Photography. I am doing NaBloPoMo over there as well, so here are links to my first 3 of those posts, and some other more recent ones that I hadn't linked to yet from here.

Excitement!

Free Tibet

Locked and Chained

Crouching Texter

Fudge Fudged

Graffiti Artists' Feet

World Mental Health Day

Bandstand in Weston Park

Popular Funk


NaBloPoMo

Used Stamps charity list is no more.

Some years ago, I was trying to find out which charities accepted used stamps as a form of fundraising, and realised there was no central list of such places.

As a result, I did much research and compiled as comprehensive a list as I could, both national and international, and put them up at used-stamps.co.uk.

The site has had 30,950 hits and created many comments and enquiries to me. Many charities have received stamps to help them raise money and it's been great to be the source of such a resource.

However its success has also been, I'm afraid to say, its downfall. I get so many emails telling me about new charities which collect stamps, or charities listed which no longer collect stamps, or from charities wondering how to fundraise with used stamps, or from people wanting rare stamps, that I cannot keep on top of it.

The list needs constant attention, which I cannot give it.

I considered leaving the page up with a note at the top saying that it was out of date and that visitors couldn't rely on the information provided, but realising this would cause hassle to the listed charities who no longer fundraise with stamps has now led me to remove the information entirely.

I feel sad! But I have to be realistic. In case anyone, for some reason, really really wants to see the final list, you can do so here, but I cannot accept any responsibility at all for the information there. If in doubt, it is best to assume it is out of date and not reliable information any more. Despite the work put in to it, times change quickly.

Last December I posted this information about a way to help charities fundraise with used stamps. It is perhaps the most reliable information and you can find all the info you need there.

You can see more of what I do online here at hippiness.co.uk.


NaBloPoMo

NaBloPoMo

So, I am embarking on National Blog Posting Month. It seems rather insane to attempt to blog daily on not one, but two blogs when they have been so neglected of late, but that is in fact the reason I'm doing it. I love my blogs and they deserve more attention. NaBloPoMo seemed the perfect way to refocus on them and get disciplined in regularly posting again! I'm not trying to do NaNoWriMo at least!

The 'national' aspect of the name is somewhat odd, given that it is avowedly international, but I'll forgive them that.

So, keep checking in here and hopefully there'll be new things for you to see every day. Check in on my photography blog too.

Happy blogging!

E-mail error ends up on road sign

Embarrassing translation error...

When officials asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign, they thought the reply was what they needed.

Unfortunately, the e-mail response to Swansea council said in Welsh: "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated".

So that was what went up under the English version which barred lorries from a road near a supermarket.

"When they're proofing signs, they should really use someone who speaks Welsh," said journalist Dylan Iorwerth.

Swansea council became lost in translation when it was looking to halt heavy goods vehicles using a road near an Asda store in the Morriston area

All official road signs in Wales are bilingual, so the local authority e-mailed its in-house translation service for the Welsh version of: "No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only".

The reply duly came back and officials set the wheels in motion to create the large sign in both languages.

The notice went up and all seemed well - until Welsh speakers began pointing out the embarrassing error.

The sign was lost in translation - and is now missing from the roadside
Welsh-language magazine Golwg was promptly sent photographs of the offending sign by a number of its readers.

Managing editor Mr Iorwerth said: "We've been running a series of these pictures over the past months.

"They're circulating among Welsh speakers because, unfortunately, it's all too common that things are not just badly translated, but are put together by people who have no idea about the language.

"It's good to see people trying to translate, but they should really ask for expert help.

"Everything these days seems to be written first in English and then translated.

"Ideally, they should be written separately in both languages."

A council spokeswoman said : "Our attention was drawn to the mistranslation of a sign at the junction of Clase Road and Pant-y-Blawd Road.

"We took it down as soon as we were made aware of it and a correct sign will be re-instated as soon as possible."

Eve Ensler on Sarah Palin

Drill, Drill, Drill*

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was
a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of
drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a
particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness
or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I
have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact
that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the
polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life
trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence
against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the
Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The
people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of
Feminists. But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is
antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story --
connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women,
giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance,
and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous
choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those
candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in
so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally
disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the
world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen
the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency
with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a
metaphor. In her world and the world of fundamentalists nothing
changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global
warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying
our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's
plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered
species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and
plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and
plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here
to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It
was a task from God."

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women
who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should
have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or
not. She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth
control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we
know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather
she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to
dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an
environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could
and might very well be the next president of the United States . She
would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting
rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot
hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private
right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector,
when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are
denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and
state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this
election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the
future not just of the U.S. , but of the planet. It will determine
whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever
uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards
dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence
through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether
we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in
alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It
will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or
whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine
whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of
fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your
power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the
hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of
teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of
destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises
that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis,
doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the
floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between
nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing
we call life?

Eve Ensler

September 5, 2008

Imagine A Woman by Patricia Lynn Reilly

Imagine a Woman

Imagine a woman who believes it is right and good she is a woman.
A woman who honours her experience and tells her stories.
Who refuses to carry the sins of others within her body and life.

Imagine a woman who trusts and respects herself.
A woman who listens to her needs and desires.
Who meets them with tenderness and grace.

Imagine a woman who acknowledges the past's influence on the present.
A woman who has walked through her past.
Who has healed into the present.

Imagine a woman who authors her own life.
A woman who exerts, initiates, and moves on her own behalf.
Who refuses to surrender except to her truest self and wisest voice.

Imagine a woman who names her own gods.
A woman who imagines the divine in her image and likeness.
Who designs a personal spirituality to inform her daily life.

Imagine a woman in love with her own body.
A woman who believes her body is enough, just as it is.
Who celebrates its rhythms and cycles as an exquisite resource.

Imagine a woman who honours the body of the Goddess in her changing body.
A woman who celebrates the accumulation of her years and her wisdom.
Who refuses to use her life-energy disguising the changes in her body and life.

Imagine a woman who values the women in her life.
A woman who sits in circles of women.
Who is reminded of the truth about herself when she forgets.

Imagine a woman who is interested in her own life.
A woman who embraces her life as teacher, healer, and challenge.
Who is grateful for the ordinary moments of beauty and grace.

Imagine a woman who participates in her own life.
A woman who meets each challenge with creativity.
Who takes action on her own behalf with clarity and strength.

Imagine a woman who has crafted a fully-formed solitude.
A woman who is available to herself.
Who chooses friends and lovers with the capacity to respect her solitude.

Imagine a woman who acknowledges the full range of human emotion.
A woman who expresses her feelings clearly and directly.
Who allows them to pass through her as naturally as the breath.

Imagine a woman who tells the truth.
A woman who trusts her experience of the world and expresses it.
Who refuses to defer to the thoughts, perceptions, and responses of others.

Imagine a woman who follows her creative impulses.
A woman who produces original creations.
Who refuses to colour inside someone else’s lines.

Imagine a woman who has relinquished the desire for intellectual safety and approval.
A woman who makes a powerful statement with every action she takes.
Who asserts to herself the right to reorder the world.

Imagine a woman who has grown in knowledge and love of herself.
A woman who has vowed faithfulness to her own life.
Who remains loyal to herself. Regardless.

Imagine yourself as this woman.

Banks, Bras and Brilliance

Yet more fabulousness from xkcd.com

And those deep question of philosophy and Shakespeare...

In credit crunch news, "A man who chose "Lloyds is pants" as his telephone banking password said he found it had been changed by a member of staff to "no it's not"." read more...

That reminds me of the man who changed his name to Yorkshire Bank PLC are Fascist Bastards, and when the said bank told him to close his account he asked them to write a cheque for his remaining balance (a whopping 69p), payable to his new name.

Designer Vaginas

I'm watching a documentary called The Perfect Vagina, about the rising trend of women having cosmetic surgery on their vaginas.

It is the fastest growing area of cosmetic surgery, and seems to be predominantly due to women's concerns about the size of their labia minora. In a medical research paper referenced in the programme, we learn that labia minora range in size from 20mm to 100mm, so naturally there is a lot of variation, but it seems that the vaginas we see, especially in porn, are 'perfect' and contained and neat, with small labia minoras, and this is making many women insecure. To the point of wanting surgery to reduce theirs.

Girls of 14, 15 and 16 are enquiring about the surgery, and the numbers seeking it are unprecedented.

The operation is called a labiaplasty and it is done under local anaesthetic, the woman being awake while her labia are sliced off. It can take three months for the vagina to recover after surgery.

The presenter, Lisa Rogers was clearly moved and alarmed by the attitudes she came across, from women, from men and from medical professionals. We also saw her own changes throughout the film.

She continually wanted women to love their bodies, and their vaginas, and could see clearly that cutting bits off and stitching bits up was not any kind of answer to the problem of us feeling so pressurised by our pornified society that even intimate parts of our bodies do not look 'right' and must be brutally modified.

The whole programme made me incredibly sad. It strikes me that hating our vaginas is yet another way that our patriarchal society infiltrates our minds and destroys women. Piece by piece.

Wiki Birthday

Look up your birthday on Wikipedia. Pick 4 events, 3 births, 2 deaths, and 1 holiday.

May 14th

Events


• 1796 - Edward Jenner administers the first smallpox vaccination.
  
• 1889 - The children's charity the NSPCC is launched in London.
  
• 1925 - Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway is published.
  
• 2005 - Pope Benedict XVI observes his first beatification, elevating Blessed Marianne of Molokai on the road to canonization into sainthood.
  
  
  Births
  
  
• 1666 - Victor Amadeus II of Sardinia (d. 1732)
  
• 1926 - Eric Morecambe, British comedian (d. 1984)
  
• 1982 - BeardyMan, English beatboxer
  
  
  Deaths
  
  
• 1847 - Fanny Mendelssohn, German composer and pianist (b. 1805)
  
• 1998 - Frank Sinatra, American singer and actor (b. 1915)
  
  
  Holidays
  
  
• Feast Day of St. Boniface of Tarsus

Free Tibet

Holy Ghost

Yet more from the ingenius xkcd.com

Photography Blog Updates

In no particular order

Weather Vane Compass

Blue Bandstand

Girls Can Be Geeks, Too

ESPRE

More of my work used elsewhere

Park Benches

Children Playing: Stencil Art

Diagnosis Research

At a hospital appointment last week, I received a diagnosis of sensorimotor axonal neuropathy. Possible causes they are looking at are medication-related, coeliac disease, and vasculitis. We know that I don't have diabetes or alcoholism, which are the most common causes.

So, of course, I'm doing all the googling. Amongst others, I have learned these two things:

1)

With exception of the Roman Catholic Church, most mainline Christian churches offer their communicants gluten-free alternatives to the sacramental bread, usually in the form of a rice-based cracker or gluten-free bread. These include United Methodist, Christian Reformed, Episcopal, Lutheran, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and many others.

Roman Catholic doctrine states that for a valid Eucharist the bread must be made from wheat. [...] On August 22, 1994, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith apparently barred coeliacs from ordination, stating, "Given the centrality of the celebration of the Eucharist in the life of the priest, candidates for the priesthood who are affected by coeliac disease or suffer from alcoholism or similar conditions may not be admitted to holy orders." After considerable debate, the congregation softened the ruling on 24 July 2003 to "Given the centrality of the celebration of the Eucharist in the life of a priest, one must proceed with great caution before admitting to Holy Orders those candidates unable to ingest gluten or alcohol without serious harm."

2)

In patients with an aggressive, evolving polyneuropathy or a specific paraneoplastic syndrome, additional testing for an occult malignancy is often performed

(my bold - am I possessed by some kind of ghost with cancer?!)

More seriously of course, it is good to finally have a diagnosis. Just need to try and get to the bottom of what's causing it, to be able to find out if it can be treated.

I've been Stumbling.

StumbleUpon...



from Brad Barrett's Iraq Paper. It seems the tutor *really* wanted a specific answer!

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Made at flashface.ctapt.de. It kind of looks like me.

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Five minute chocolate cake

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Bubbles game. I used to have this on my phone, highly addictive.

Wordle.net

I've been having a lot of fun with this new toy

From this blog in general.



From this Stonewall post



From this post about lapdancing



From my photography blog

Duty Calls

I ♥ you xkcd.

Last Night

11.30pm - go to bed. Take night meds, include painkillers for toothache.

12.30am - going insane with toothache. Smear orajel over teeth.

1am - do three Buddhist pain management meditations.

1.30am - smear orajel over teeth and gums.

2am - getting insaner. Pain pain pain!

2.30am - cry.

3am - run a bath, get in the bath, hope the heat will soothe and relax. It doesn't.

3.45am - google 'pain management'.

4am - smear orajel over teeth and gums.

4.15am - cry.

4.30am - get the instruction manual out for the brand new microwave, learn how to use it. Heat up wheat bag.

4.45am - slight relief from the heat of the wheat bag! Yey!

5.30am til 6am - SLEEP!

6am - wake up throbbing, agony, argh. Count down til 7am painkillers.

7am - painkillers. While it's a relief to take them, realise that it'll be another 45 minutes til they have any effect, which they didn't last night.

7.30am - cry. Smear orajel over teeth.

8am til 11am - listen to radio, try not to cry, moan, groan or rock.

11.30am til 1pm - SLEEP!

1pm - bastard evil bastard evil electricity meter reader wakes me up by ringing the bell incessantly.

1pm til now - ouch, yuck, grim, tired, pain, ARGH.

Things You Really Need to Look At.

Carved crayons - w-o-o-o-w.

Google in 20 years - genius, I need this for my house.

I love tattoos, but... - some of these aren't so bad but some are so, so, so bad.

Another Funny Tattoo for the html geeks among us.

Sins - what happens with different combinations of the seven deadly sins.

Hillary. Normally avoiding all mention of the endless US elections, had to share this one.

15 hilarious church signs - Not sure I'd go with 'hilarious', but some raised a smile, especially the google reference.

Vandals like tetris too

15 Spectacular Lightning Images - what it says on the tin.

Last Day on Earth - yowch, someone's in trouble...

Talkin' Serious Cute - indeed. Serious cute.

The Man She Forgot to Google

Along the Autobahn. Don't speed. Really don't speed.

Wiki Fact of the Day

Sellotape entry.

BoJo

Oh for fuck's sake.

So, so wrong

in so many different ways...

Impossible Babe of the Day.

Do we go with the political? Having a 'babe of the day' at all?
The technical? That photoshopping is appalling - her back would break and her shadow actually has a stomach.
Back to the political? What on earth are we telling women and girls about how they should look?
Back to the technical? What the hell happened?

Gah!

You Stage Two

You.

Monday Mumbles

The 100 Greatest Female Artists of Rock'n'Roll has been published.

How is Celine Dion there and not Nina Simone? I mean really, how is Nina Simone *not* on there? It's obscene!

Still on music, it's surprising just what can be created using only sounds from Windows XP and Windows 98.

If you're running short of toilet paper, why not try the 100% recycled Shit Be Gone! That is seriously its name. I do like it when you know where you are with a product, and exactly what it will do!

I'm sure I'm not the only one whose teenage years were characterised by Judy Blume and all her books and characters. Interesting to see, then, that two of her books have been updated to reflect more recent practise in sexual health. And one of them's Forever, which was the one we all thought was exceedingly rude. Ah, the innocence!

New Photo Blog Updates

The Orton Effect

Photo to Drawing: Raspberries

Spell With Flickr

More Orton Effect

Fake Model Photography

Same Photo, Different Treatments

Duel / Dangerous Pathways.

I don't know if you've ever seen the film Duel, but despite it having virtually no dialogue, not much of a plot, and a tiny budget, it is one of the scariest films you could ever see.

This, my friends, is just the same.

Sic!

From worldwidewords

Sic!
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"Don't most people know this already?" was Tom Gould's comment on a
front-page teaser headline advertising an article inside (what's
the newspaper term for these?) that appeared in The Tennessean on
26 March: "Don't expect smart car dealer soon."

What a difference a misplaced hyphen makes. Annie Clarke reports
that the London freesheet Metro included a headline on 27 March:
ANTI-YOUTH CRIME EVENT.

"The instructions on a carpet cleaner," e-mailed Pete Swindells,
"caused me momentary confusion: 'Empty when full'."

Department of athletic horticulture. Henry Drury was reading the
Home & Living section of the Sunday Telegraph for 30th March and
found this property advert: "Paradise Cottage, West Berkshire, a
glorious Grade II listed four bedroom hotchpotch of a cottage.
Gardens and a stream run through the property."

Bankers struggle against their reputation for unfeeling arrogance
but error messages like the one that Roger Jones encountered on the
Barclays Bank Web site don't help: "We suggest you try to log in
later and apologise for any inconvenience this may cause."

Not really ok

It's a year today since Helen died.

Well, probably. The inquest couldn't give an exact date, they gave a week's time span, but from the evidence given I do think it was the 3rd.

I miss her every day. Every day. But today feels even worse. I feel weighed down with sadness.

incurable hippie is 'a convergence of the worst aaspects (sic) of the religious right and feminism'

I am, apparently, a tool of the religious right. And the brave 'Anonymous' tells *me* to get a grip!

In other, less surprising, news:

Homophobia rife in British society, landmark equality survey finds.

· Bullying in schools worse than for older generations
· Public bodies complacent, says gay rights charity

Britain's 3.6 million lesbian, gay and bisexual people see themselves confronted by huge barriers of prejudice at every level of society, according to the first authoritative poll of their views.

The poll, commissioned by the equality charity Stonewall, which said some public bodies were too "smug" about their record on discrimination, indicates that the schoolyard is the most entrenched bastion of prejudice.

The YouGov poll of 1,658 gay adults found homophobic bullying in schools is more prevalent now than in previous decades. Around 30% of lesbian and gay people expect to encounter discrimination if they were to try to enrol a child at primary or secondary school, and 80% believe they would have difficulty if they were to apply to become a school governor.

The NHS, police and courts are doing better than the education system in combating discrimination. However, a significant minority of gay people expect to be treated less well at a GP surgery or during an emergency admission to hospital.

One in four think they will be treated less fairly by police if they become a victim of hate crime, while one in five expect to find it harder than a heterosexual person to get social housing, and nine in 10 expect barriers to becoming a foster parent.

The poll also suggested prejudice is endemic in political life, with most lesbian and gay people expecting discrimination if they seek selection by a party to run for parliament. Nearly nine in 10 think they would face such barriers from the Conservative party, 61% from the Labour party and 47% from the Liberal Democrats.

Ben Summerskill, the charity's chief executive, said: "Too many public services are a bit too smug about the progress made towards fair treatment for the lesbian and gay taxpayers who help fund them.

"Last spring we heard from a 14-year-old girl who had - incautiously - shared with a teacher at a faith school the thought that she might be gay. Subsequently the girl has been required to sit outside the changing room at the beginning and end of sports lessons while the 'normal' children get changed."

Of those polled, two-thirds of lesbian and gay people under 19 said they were bullied at school on grounds of sexuality, compared with half of those aged 35-44 and only a quarter of those over 55.

Stonewall said the problem was exacerbated in schools when teachers were banned by Section 28 of the 1988 Local Government Act from doing anything that could be perceived as promoting homosexuality. Section 28 was repealed in 2003, but the charity says the education system is years behind in its efforts to tackle prejudice.

Across Britain, one in 14 lesbian and gay people expect to be treated less well than heterosexuals when accessing healthcare. Gay women are almost twice as likely to expect discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.

There are big regional differences in perceptions of discrimination in the NHS. In Wales, 16% thought they would get inferior treatment if they were admitted to hospital in an emergency, compared with 2% in the south-west.

Summerskill said: "The research highlights the one remaining gap at the heart of Britain's legislative equality framework. There is not yet a duty on public bodies requiring them to promote equality of service for gay people in a way that already exists for gender, ethnicity and disability. We'll now be pressing the government to honour its outstanding manifesto pledge to introduce such a duty."

Summerskill said he regarded the debate about the size of Britain's lesbian and gay population as having been settled by the Treasury's actuary department, which said it was 6%, or 3.6 million people.

Sell-Out.

It's that time of year again... the one where for an hour a week I turn into a raving capitalist.

The Apprentice. I just can't help myself! I guess I'm fired.

'I was seen as an object, not a person'

"I was seen as an object, not a person" | Lifeandstyle | Life and Health

Lap-dancing clubs are advertised as exclusive, glamorous entertainment for 'gentlemen'. As a former dancer tells Rachel Bell, the reality for the women who work in them is both degrading and dangerous

Wednesday March 19, 2008
The Guardian

Lap-dancing clubs
'Just by being there you're acknowledging that you are something the men can pick and choose from.'

Weeks after moving into a new flat, Elena [not her real name] learned that her temping contract was to be cut short - she had to find money to cover the rent as quickly as possible. She had recently met a woman who worked as a lap-dancer, which had reassured her that it "wasn't too dangerous. It made it seem normal." For the next six months, Elena worked for one of the many lap-dancing chains that assures customers that they are "gentlemen", paying for an "exclusive" experience. During that period, any sense that she had had of lap-dancing as just another job was laid firmly to rest.


It wasn't only the earning potential that led Elena to try lap-dancing - she now believes that she, and women in general, are socialised to see it as an inviting occupation. "I thought, well, I'm a sex object anyway, I might as well have it out on the table. It was as though I felt I couldn't do anything else. Everywhere I look I'm being told that my main source of power is my sexual power, my body is the best thing I have to offer and so to use those things in your job is empowering. But sexual power isn't power. It's meaningless in the real world."

Lap-dancing reinforced all Elena's negative beliefs about herself and about men. "The men just see you as an object, not a person, and whether you are equally engaged in their desire is irrelevant. Increasingly, you learn to despise the men because of the way they perceive you. Lap-dancing is about creating a situation whereby the men feel they are doing you a favour - that's the way the game is set up, so all the power is with the customer." She believes that for men who visit lap-dancing clubs, enjoyment derives primarily from handing over the money, not from the dance itself.

Rather than being a lucrative job, in her experience, as soon as a woman starts working at one of the clubs, it costs her money. "You pay 'rent' to the club just to be there and if you can persuade someone to buy a dance, you get £20 - about 20% of which the club takes. Then there are the fines - £10 if you miss your turn to pole dance, if you're late, you're wearing the wrong shoes or you break the rules. There are so many ways to make money from you. You are constantly trying to make as much money as possible out of everybody, otherwise you are literally paying to be there.

"The club management take on more women than are needed in a night so it really becomes dog eat dog. Quite often I made nothing. There were a lot of nights when I would have taken money out and come home with less." The most Elena made in a night was £205. "I love talking to people, but to make any money you really have to act stupid, admire their tie, massage their ego for hours. I could never go to work as anything near myself and that becomes damaging."

The message that working in the sex industry is normal, exciting - sometimes even empowering - is a popular one in our culture. Over the past few years, lap-dancing clubs have proliferated, branding themselves as a respectable part of the leisure industry. At the end of last year, Larry Flynt, the founder of Hustler magazine, opened his first British lap-dancing club in Croydon; Manchester has its first student lap-dancing bar, the Ruby Lounge, and a former stripper has been shown giving a topless lap-dance on Big Brother. Music videos by mainstream artists including Britney Spears, Kylie Minogue, Robbie Williams and Justin Timberlake, have featured lap-dancing or pole dancing, while job centres advertise lap-dancing jobs alongside the more usual calls for human resources managers and chefs.

Yet academic research has linked lap-dancing to trafficking, prostitution and an increase in male sexual violence against both the women who work in the clubs and those who live and work in their vicinity. A recent conference in Ireland highlighted the use of lap-dance clubs by human traffickers as a tool for grooming women into prostitution; the clubs also normalise the idea of paying for sexual services. And a report by the Lilith Project, run by the charity Eaves Housing, which looked at lap-dancing in Camden Town, north London, found that in the three years before and after the opening of four large lap-dancing clubs in the area, incidents of rape in Camden rose by 50%, while sexual assault rose by 57%.

One factor in the proliferation of these clubs is the 2003 Licensing Act which introduced the one-size-fits-all premises licence, meaning that strip clubs are no longer required to get special permission for nudity. The campaign group, Object, which is launching its Lap-Dance Challenge on April 22, wants legislation changed to classify lap-dancing clubs as "sex encounter establishments" and recognise them as part of the sex industry, which would allow local authorities to regulate them as such. Following round-table meetings with supportive MPs and local authorities, it is working to put forward a bill in the Commons.

Sandrine Levêque, advocacy officer at Object, says: "Ten years ago, a handful of lap-dancing clubs operated in the UK. Today that figure is well over 300, according to industry sources. This has been facilitated by liberalisation of the law, which licenses them in the same way as pubs and cafes, and not for what they really are."

The Fawcett Society and the Lilith Project are also calling for tighter controls on lap-dance clubs. In its 2007 report, Inappropriate Behaviour: Adult Venues and Licensing in London, the Lilith Project showed how current licensing policy helps to foster the illusion that all women are sexually available, in a culture in which a rape is reported every 34 minutes, and 26% of people believe that an "inappropriately" dressed woman is "asking for it".

Elena supports the calls for a change in licensing legislation. "I live in a country with unbelievable levels of rape, where two women die every week because they are murdered by their partners ... For me, I suppose, the question is always, why would you want somebody to take their clothes off for you when you know that they don't really fancy you, when you know it isn't what they really want to do?"

The sex industry doesn't just tell lies about women. One of its biggest lies is that it is positive for men. Statistics show that addiction to the porn and sex industries is the third biggest cause of debt in the UK, while sex and relationship therapists are seeing an increase in the number of men suffering from sex addiction. Does Elena think lap-dancing is damaging to men too? "Stag do's, in particular, made me think there must be a lot of crossed wires about it," she says. "I think men are fed just as much bullshit about their sexual identity as women are ... I don't think that it makes anybody happier".

One body of research on strip clubs in the US found that all dancers had suffered verbal harassment and physical and sexual abuse while at work; all had been propositioned for prostitution; and three-quarters had been stalked by men associated with the club.

Was Elena ever verbally abused, or propositioned for prostitution? "Just by being there," she says, "you're acknowledging that you are something that they can pick and choose from, in that dehumanising way. A lot of men are totally blunt, and will say 'I like bigger tits than you've got', or 'How much for a blowjob?' Sometimes men try to persuade you to go back to their houses or to a hotel room for sex. There's a lot of blurring of the understanding of what it is you're supposed to be doing and whether you're actually a prostitute.

"The clubs maintain a veneer of no touching, but touching is more standard than not," she continues. "If I had a boyfriend now and he said he was going to a lap-dancing club, I would consider it to be infidelity. The fact is that if you break the rules, you make more money. If one dancer starts breaking the rules then the pressure is on others to do the same. Otherwise a bloke would think, Well, that dancer charged me £20 and stayed three feet away, but that one charged me just the same and she put her breasts in my mouth and sat on my crotch. Once you've been there a while, you learn that certain things are profitable, and no contact is the first rule you learn to break. Eventually you start to wonder, what is the difference between me and a prostitute?"

Oddly, men who pay a naked woman for a sexual service in a lap-dancing club do not see themselves as "johns", she says. "It's seen as a totally respectable thing for a man to do. Yet I don't feel it's something I'd put on my CV. The respectability is very one-sided."

Elena doesn't believe that lap-dancing is about sex, instead, she says,"It fosters sexual violence. It is damaging even if people are doing it voluntarily. I chose it and that's part of the problem. Even if lap-dancers did make loads of money, it would be irrelevant - paying a lot for something doesn't make it all right. The point about lap-dancing clubs is to ask what they represent culturally and what they do to all of us, not just women working in them".

One reason that Elena stuck with the job was other people's perceptions of it. "The reality didn't matter as long as I could pretend [to myself] that other people thought it was interesting, glamorous or sexy. It's hard to say, 'I am shocked by the reality of it, I do feel degraded, but I need to pay the rent and gas bill'." Research shows that the majority of women become lap-dancers through poverty and lack of choice. "There was definitely a hope among the people who worked there that one day someone would come in who would just pay them loads of money and 'rescue' them," says Elena. "Cinderella thinking, if you like. There were single mothers, nurses - it wasn't what you might think. Some of these women had a whole other career but, for whatever reason, they needed to supplement their income. Some of the nurses would come in knackered after a day on A&E, strip till two in the morning and then go home."

Elena wishes to remain anonymous for self-protection. "The shadowy world behind some clubs is not something that you would want to go up against," she says. "You just know that instinctively." What finally made her leave? "I began to sort myself out a bit and realised that it was a crazy thing to do. I could never be myself. I just suddenly thought, Oh, there are loads of things I could do other than this. This is really shit. I'm going home."

Saturday Dribblings

Bad punctuation is everywhere, and I try not to be upset, but sometimes it is just unbearable!

This:

is a sign in Sheffield city centre. Caf'e. What happened?! I guess they were trying to convey the E acute accent on the E, but surely, if you really want to do that, and the signwriter doesn't have an E acute accent capability (?!) then you do CAFE'.

But if you think that's bad, I came across this in the Bon Marche magazine yesterday. It is entirely bewildering.



First to confirm, the product is not called TAKE. If it was, there could perhaps be some mitigating circumstances to the ad. But no.
'TAKE', control of your pelvic muscles.

Why? Why oh why oh why? Why is TAKE in capital letters? Why does it have quotation marks? And why is there a comma after it? Why?! Nothing in the world makes sense any more. Who wrote that ad? And who the hell approved it?! It's actually painful to my little mind.

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New Photography blog updates.

Different Lomo Effect Tutorial
Create a Rainbow in Photoshop
More Classical Art Colour Match
Comparative Lomography!
Human Impact
Fresh

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I watched this video on facebook, it was quite funny. It led me to look up the original on youtube, which was better (though without the sheer number of impressive celebs). However, it has left me singing to myself, "I'm fucking Matt Damon" all the time. Not a good one to be overheard singing, it gives entirely the wrong impression, i.e. that I'm fucking Matt Damon. And actually I'm not.

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It is time to tell you about The PIPS. It's a Radio 4 blog, with a few of us on board. Radio Four has something of an obsessive following, of which I count myself a member. If you listen, or if you don't, check us out at The PIPS.

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