In response to Sam’s request to see a bit more about my trade union activism, here’s a little film I made earlier. (Well okay, I didn’t, my colleagues did. But I’m in it!)
We made this at last year’s UNISON National Women’s Conference by way of explaining just how important women’s self-organisation is to trade unionism.
Anyway, here’s the video:
→ 1 CommentCategories: campaigning · feminism · trade unions
See, now all that there’s going to be a change of direction round here angst from yesterday is starting to make sense isn’t it?
I’ve just finished reading A Bad Day for Sorry: A Crime Novel by (first-time novelist!) Sophie Littlefield, and I loved it: and I’m someone who doesn’t normally read crime novels. In fact, after I’d finished reading Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy during my recuperation from surgery last year, I thought I’d never pick up another crime novel again. As far as I was concerned, Larsson was it, and no one, ever, was going to be able to top his accomplishment. (Note to Melanie Newman – I couldn’t disagree with your F Word review more, Larsson is so a feminist ally!)
And to be honest, Sorry doesn’t top Larsson’s work, but only because Sophie Littlefield’s writing style and approach are so completely different it’s actually impossible to make a comparison between the two: so I won’t attempt to. Suffice to say that having avoided reading crime novels for what seems like aeons, I’ve now realised just how diverse a category it is. I’m really looking forward to reading some more.
But anyway, back to the book.
A Bad Day for Sorry is set in rural Missouri and has as its main protagonist a 50+ year old woman, Stella Hardesty. Now a few years prior to the story’s beginning, Hardesty had finished off her abusive husband with a wrench and managed to get off with it in court, and as the story unfolds we learn that she has now made it her life’s work to help other women deal with their own abusive husbands and boyfriends.
So as a sideline to her day job of running a perfectly respectable sewing shop in her hometown, Stella Hardesty works outside of the law “convincing” some men of the error of their ways. As the blurb on the jacket says: “some men need more convincing than others, but it’s usually nothing a little light bondage or old-fashioned whuppin’ can’t fix.”
And if that all sounds a bit dark to you, trust me, it’s not: it’s bloody funny.
→ 9 CommentsCategories: book stuff · feminism · violence against women
I’ve been mulling quite a bit over the past few weeks about this blog, and I suspect some changes (albeit quite minor) might be afoot. So I’m posting this by way of a warning to my more regular readers, just in case they notice the change in emphasis or direction and wonder what the fuck’s going on.
So for instance, although in my bio it states that as well as being a feminist I’m a trade union activist, and although Ian Dale has me listed (bizarrely!) as one of the top 20 Labour Party supporting tweeters (note to Ian, I’m a leftie yes, but I’ve never claimed to be a Labour supporter), I don’t think some of that has been reflected in this blog so far. To be honest, I think that’s partly why I’ve been so quiet on here lately.
I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time nowadays searching for stories on the web or in the press that I can put a feminist spin on, because I know that’s what my regular readers have come to expect. But I’m also conscious that a gazillion other feminists are doing the same, and that often-times we’re simply regurgitating the same old stories as each other but with a slightly different take.
Well I don’t know about anyone else, but I get tired of seeing the same stories on every feminist blog I read, or of reading 20 different blogs all pulling apart the same Daily Male article, so I’ve decided I’m going to branch out a bit.
So, in future you can expect to see more feminism (trust me, I’ve no intention to abandon the feminist cause) but also a lot more politics (by which I suppose I mean party politics, ‘cos unlike some of the bigger name bloggers and those who compile blog lists etc I resolutely maintain that feminism absolutely is politics and not some kind of niche interest). There’ll also be a bit more on local politics, and even, to cater to my other great love (of reading), some book reviews. In fact hopefully there’s going to be a bit of everything, but all with my own unique leftie feminist slant on it.
I think taking this decision is going to mean I’ll be posting here a lot more regularly, as it gives me scope to comment on a lot more things. But don’t worry, I promise I’ll try not to go too far the other way and start bombarding the blog with my endless wittering (if that is what you’re after though, feel free to follow me on Twitter).
Anyway, I’m really looking forward to it. Now fingers crossed it all works out as I’ve planned.
→ 8 CommentsCategories: Norwich · a bit of politics · blogging · book stuff · feminism · me · random musings · the Internet · trade unions
Homa Khaleeli had a great piece in the Guardian yesterday: Stalkers are criminals – not ‘incompetent suitors’, in which she discussed the case of Claire Waxman, who has just seen her stalker, Elliot Fogel, get off with a 16 week prison term despite subjecting her to seven years of terror.
Click this link to see an interview with Claire Waxman, although be warned, some of the written coverage on that piece is misleading and downright annoying – I’m not sure for instance how turning up at someone’s workplace, jogging behind their car, and turning up at one of their children’s nurseries, qualifies someone to be labelled a web stalker: I’d have thought stalker by itself would have done, but then I’m not a headline writer, so…
What I am though is someone who has been stalked, so as you can probably imagine this is a subject I feel quite strongly about. In fact if I’m being honest there aren’t many things that piss me off more than reading uninformed comments from people who have no insight into the very real harm, emotional and psychological, that stalking can do to a person: suffice to say I won’t be tolerating any of that bollocks on this thread.
→ 6 CommentsCategories: campaigning · fear · feminism · health · me · mental health · misogyny · stalking · violence against women
I came across this story while I was researching Eddie rape-joke Wake, and while it’s a couple of months old now and I’m a bit late in picking it up, I still think it’s worth a mention here. Let’s not forget after all that as far as Call me Dave and George Osborne are concerned, Tory councils, and ergo, our esteemed Tory councillors, are the blueprint for the (god-help-us-all) upcoming Conservative government.
So anyway, here’s former lord mayor of Coventry Andy Matchet:
Doesn’t he look grand and important in all that lord mayory garb eh?
Well he won’t any more, because Matchet was recently suspended from serving as a city councillor for a term of three months after, as the Telegraph politely puts it, “repeatedly asking a female guest at an official ball if he could have sex with her.”
Except that he didn’t repeatedly ask her if he could have sex with her, he told the female guest he wanted to have sex with her. Actually no, he didn’t even do that: what former lord mayor of Coventry Andy Matchet did do, while acting as an official council functionary, was tell an invited female guest, not just once but three times mark you, that he wanted to fuck her.
Or at least, I think that’s what he did: I’m assuming that fuck is the missing word in both the Telegraph’s and the Mail’s version of this story.
“At the ball last December, the married father of two allegedly told the woman, the 45-year- old chief executive of a voluntary organisation: ‘I enjoyed dancing with you, I find you attractive. I’d like to **** you. Am I wrong in saying that?’”
→ 9 CommentsCategories: Daily Mail shite · a bit of politics · feminism · local politics · misogyny · public services · you really couldn't make this shit up
