Elettaria (original) (raw)
08 January 2014 @ 08:50 pm
One of the things which I sometimes end up lying awake thinking over at unholy o'clock is what I think sex education should be like. Mine was somewhat mixed. My parents didn't really bother, unless you count my mother muttering a few things just before I turned 22. My school was a case of "blink and you miss it", and I think I was off ill that day. I got most of my sex education from the uni LGBT society, which meant that I had a great knowledge of safer sex but knew squat about contraception. It also resulted in my sitting in the Family Planning Clinic, looking up at all those leaflets depicting a woman gazing up soulfully at a man, thinking, "That's a bit heterosexist...oh, hang on."
Most of what I've learned about sex has been since then, from reading on the internet, talking to friends, and the experiences I've had with partners, both good and bad. There's no substitute for really widespread reading and lots of good conversations, but I think that a lot of the things I've learnt should have been covered at school at the basic level at least. So here's my wishlist, in no particular order.
The nicest story I've heard about sex education: how a friend of mine was sat down by his parents when he was a child so that they could explain that sadly, some people are homophobic. It says so much about where they were starting from.
The funniest story I've heard in a while: we were talking about this in the pub the other week. After reminiscing about the putting-a-condom-on-a-banana lesson, someone was talking about learning to put a condom on with your mouth. R (my partner, who is, for the record, a straight cisgender man) said in surprise, "But I couldn't reach!"
06 November 2013 @ 02:34 pm
I've just written such a long comment to an article by Ava Vidalon FGM that I may as well copy it over to here. The article is excellent, go and read it. The comments are full of racism and will probably make you headdesk repeatedly. Here's what I put.
I've noticed that when FGM comes up, sooner or later someone brings up male circumcision, and there's a lot of anxiety about talking about the two together. ( Read more...Collapse )
22 September 2013 @ 03:02 pm
A friend of mine spent many years working with sex workers, and is still very much involved in sex worker rights. I've ended up learning a great deal from her, and from sex workers who write on this topic. When we’ve discussed sex workers, I’ve often noticed the number of parallels between prejudice against sex workers and prejudice against people with disabilities. (For the record, I’m a disabled woman myself, with no personal experience of sex work, and I'm not trying to speak for SWs here.) Here are the ones I've thought of so far.
1. Multiple attempts at silencing.
2. Telling sex workers/people with disabilities that they are “not representative”. ( Read more...Collapse )
Louise Mensch turns out to be quite the interesting read. In her recent Guardian article trashing intersectionality, she thoughtfully provided a link to her series on What Men Want. As expected, I found many of her viewpoints highly problematic. Much of it was about how women should mould themselves to men's desires. Now, I've seen this approach before. It's just enough out of favour these days to give the impression of being new. When the "Surrendered Wife" movement sprang up around a decade ago, I coined the term Nouveau Doormat to describe it. Suffice it to say that I've never had a high opinion of this way of doing things. I think it's harmful to women and insulting to men.
Then I read her article What Men Want: Relationships. ( TW for discussion of rapeCollapse )
Twitter is currently ablaze about an outrageous article by Louise Mensch, in which she complains about "intersectional bollocks" derailing feminism. I have a few observations.
1. "Mensch" is literally Yiddish for "man". Metaphorically, it means "decent human being", as in, "He helped the family out enormously when Granny was ill. He's a real mensch." Let's all savour the irony there.
( Intersectionality affects various aspects of being human...Collapse )
In the wake of the Woolwich murder, I've been reading a few people who are horrified and alarmed at the strongly racist response that's occurring, both in the media and amongst the general public. This IS my home, you racist swine is an article by a woman talking about her experiences of "'my difference' or to put it in correct terms 'other peoples' racism'". She's Asian British, and I've also been reading responses from people who are black British, or immigrants who are white British.
All this has made me think about racism, ethnicity and identity politics, and how they affect me. ( Read more...Collapse )
To return to the Woolwich situation, I also want to say that I too am absolutely horrified at the amount of racism coming out in response, and concerned about the safety of people of colour and Muslims. I'm thinking of you, and I hope you stay safe.
Apparently it is Blogging Against Disablism day. I am pretty tired today, so you are going to get random witterings. But hey, it's not as if there's a shortage of material.
( Scroungers? Not so muchCollapse )
( You want benefits? I hope you've worked for years to earn them.Collapse )
As for "disablism", it's not a word I use myself. It sounds odd. People usually don't know what it means. It's not universally accepted. This shows just how bad the situation is: we don't even have the language to describe the hatred we face. I wish I were exaggerating when I said "hatred".
I've been reading an excellent article about white privilege and feminism called This is white privilege by Reni Eddo-Lodge. After a much-needed discussion of racism and transphobia within the modern feminist movement, she goes on to relate her experience of trying to explain what it feels like to be discriminated against to a white woman.
I told her about a recent experience of being passed over for a job I’d interviewed for and finding out through mutual friends that the job had gone to a white woman my age with almost identical experience to me. ( Read more...Collapse )
In the light of the benefits scandals, the BBC has published an article pondering How little money can a person live on? It mentions that some people on benefits have to live on £53 a week, and then goes through the "essential" costs, but neglects to tot them all up. I presume this is so that you come away thinking that it's perfectly easy to live on £53 a week, anyone can do it. Plus it waves around the magical £350 week per single adult that you can supposedly claim on benefits. I'm on ESA and high-rate DLA, and I don't get anything like that, and I now have to cough up over £100 a month to pay for support workers who are variously homophobic, don't meet basic literacy standards, and keep on wrenching my arm painfully due to lack of proper movement and handling training.
Let's have a look at their maths, shall we.
If you're anything like me, you will have recently noticed that there is a pink-equals-sign-on-red-background doing the rounds at the moment. You will probably have enquired about it, been told that it represents equal marriage, thought, "Excellent idea," and adopted it.
The snag is that it's not just an American-centric equal marriage symbol, it's one created by a specific organisation, the Human Rights Campaign. And they are not particularly popular in the transgender community. There are various articles you can find if you search, and apparently they have come right out and said that "Marriage equality is not a transgender issue", telling transgender activists to take down their flag at a rally. To be honest, I hadn't even heard of the HRC until yesterday, being on the other side of the pond, and I'm not going to get into who said what and whether it can be proven. It's enough that the whole thing is making me profoundly uneasy, and that I do not wish to use a symbol which excludes transgender people. And come to that, I don't mind the idea of a symbol which is a bit more international. Equal marriage is a big issue in many countries, including the UK.
So I created a new one. It continues the idea of the equals sign, which is simple and catchy, but I've used a rainbow on black background instead, as rainbows are a traditional symbol for the LGBT community. I'd be honoured if people could start adopting it.
