New year, new job, new blog, same me

Posted on January 4, 2012 | 5 Comments

Only one of the statements above isn’t true, but hopefully at some point this year I’ll finally get around to moving this blog over to a self-hosted site and then the title of this post will be entirely accurate. Watch this space (or listen out for the screams of frustration!).

So anyway yes, it’s a new year and I’ve got a new job. In fact I started my new job a couple of weeks ago, but it’s all been so hectic what with Christmas and everything I’ve not really had much of a chance to blog about it.

The long and the short of it is, I’m not working in the public sector anymore: I’m now working in the women’s voluntary sector. In fact I’m now working for a Rape Crisis Centre, doing the kind of work that (apart from writing) I’ve always wanted to do.

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Posted in blogging, campaigning, me, public services, random musings, rape, violence against women

Regrets, I’ve had a few…

Posted on January 2, 2012 | 23 Comments

….and having now seen this piece of unmitigated misogynist shite – Fake Bitch Anthem – one of my biggest regrets  is for ever endorsing the wanker concerned on Comment is free: The Andrew Lansley Rap perfectly skewers its target.

Truth be told I regretted that piece within days. Not because I didn’t agree with the message in the rap, but because I didn’t know at the time of writing that UNISON was behind the video. And even after my CiF piece had been published, no one from UNISON had the decency to tell me they’d funded the whole thing, which considering I’m a UNISON activist as well as a writer, left me (I felt) looking like a bit of a UNISON stooge. And that’s not a position I’m very comfortable with. At all.

So there you go: I’ve (finally) said my piece. All that’s left is to hope that someone from UNISON will now issue a statement disassociating the union from MC NxtGen and his vile misogyny…..

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Posted in angry? what me?, blogging, FFS!, me, music, sexism, trade unions, violence against women, what?, you really couldn't make this shit up

Guest post: It ain’t necessarily so

Posted on December 21, 2011 | 3 Comments

This is a guest post by Polly

I wrote a while back about my (now ex) friend who gained her ex status when she suddenly expressed a belief that civil partnerships in churches were wrong after coincidentally hanging around with a bunch of evangelical Christian homophobes, who were coincidentally black Africans, and who then, in one of the only genuine instances I’ve ever come across of political correctness gone mad, further proposed that there must be something  in homophobia if black Africans were expressing it because it was obviously some sort of ethnic characteristic,  thereby being simultaneously homophobic AND racist.  She is doing a PhD in ethnography, which might explain it. That and the prodigious quantity of illegal drugs she gets through.

She was of course at pains to protest her non homophobia, and just before being chucked as a friend, said that I must know she’s not homophobic, it’s just that she didn’t agree with every bit of my “political agenda”, and couldn’t I respect her view, the way she “respected” mine. My response was that unfortunately I couldn’t respect her view, because it was homophobic. Well she did ask. And I wasn’t prepared to facilitate a delusion that she couldn’t be homophobic because hey – some of her best friends are lesbians.

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Posted in campaigning, ConDems, Daily Mail shite, guest post, homophobia, lesbophobia, Polly, religion

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Guest post: See the violence inherent in the system

Posted on December 12, 2011 | 44 Comments

This is a guest post by Polly

A few months back I was sat in the hairdressers and noticed a simply enormous frown line. Fuck, I thought, that looks really terrible. So passing one of those cosmetic surgery lite places I went in to inquire about Botox. Having beaten them down to match the price of somewhere cheaper, I went for a consultation with a somewhat slimy doctor who put me off the whole idea, by telling me how much more ‘confident’ it would make me and basically implying that having 150 quids worth of poison injected into my face would transform my life. I was insulted by this,  mainly the suggestion that I wasn’t already full of myself as it was, not to mention his patronising manner, and decided to sack the whole thing off. That and on reflection I didn’t really fancy the syringe full of botulinum/paralysed face scenario.

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Posted in campaigning, ConDems, feminism, FGM, guest post, health, mental health, Polly, porn, sexism, trade unions, violence against women

16 days and counting

Posted on December 10, 2011 | 2 Comments

It’s International Human Rights Day today, which means it’s officially the final day of the 16 days of activism against gender violence campaign. But 16 days isn’t enough is it? Not when you consider that violence against women and girls continues to be perpetrated day after day after day, 365 days of the year.

Sixteen days of awareness raising and speaking out isn’t enough, not when you consider that at any point, day or night, somewhere in this world, a woman or girl is being subjected to rape, or domestic violence, or FGM, forced marriage, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, or a so-called ‘honour-crime’. Sixteen days of blogging, tweeting, marching, chanting, shouting about this isn’t enough when at any moment you care to pick a woman or girl is being prostituted, or trafficked for sexual exploitation, or is enduring any one of a number of other gender hate crimes.

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Posted in 16 days of blogging, abortion, angry? what me?, blogging, campaigning, crime, domestic violence, femicide, feminism, misogyny, porn, prostitution, rape, sex industry, stalking, trafficking, violence against women