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March 9-7, v.25

Every year on March 8, feminism and feminist concerns are suddenly in the media in a happy and encouraging kind of way. To the extent that focus on world problems can be happy and encouraging. It almost gives you hope for mankind. And then there is the rest of the year. My plan is as follows. Every week (I hope) I'm going to update this post with some of what I come across, pretending that the days from March 9 to 7 are also days when feminist concerns are important. I'm interested to see how it will look on March 8 2014.

Feel free to add to it through the comments section.

April 13: Margaret Thatcher died. This is feminist news, how? you may ask. After all, the woman famously declared feminism "poison" and claimed she had received no help from women's liberation (glorious expression of the absurdity of her belief in the independence of the individual). Feminism has, to a large extent, cordially returned the feeling. But it really is interesting to see the glee with which her death has been celebrated, despite the fact that she has not been a force in British politics for decades. (Not to mentioned the gendered quality of the words used about her on places like Twitter -- as someone observed, calling Thatcher a "slut" seems a little beside the point.)

I was also intrigued by assertions like "The first prime minister of female gender, OK. But a woman? Not on my terms", which raises the question of what exactly makes someone a woman. But I think on of the best comments was actually made by Russel Brand (I know!): "Barack Obama, interestingly, said in his statement that she had 'broken the glass ceiling for other women'. Only in the sense that all the women beneath her were blinded by falling shards. She is an icon of individualism, not of feminism."

This week also saw Equal Pay Day celebrated in America. According to this piece women in 2013 earned what men did in 2011. While not as dire as America, there is a definitely gendered pay discrepancy in Norway as well.

The Everyday Sexism Project has been pointing out that while Facebook bans images of women breastfeeding (the horror), they happily display pages endorsing rape and domestic violence. Ask me again why I'm not on Facebook. Everyday Sexism also had a campaign this week, on the sexual harassment of women on public transport. You can find some harrowing stories under #endsh on Twitter.

If you had a look at that, you will be very ready for some good news right about now. And here it is: change is possible. Mariam Chamberlain, one of the pioneers in gender studies, died last week, and this lovely article looks at how much things have changed in academia with the advent of this approach. It makes me happy.

April 6: While you may be a pioneering rocket scientist, your main asset will still be cooking if you are female (or so the first version of New York Times obituary for Yvonne Brill would seem to suggest). Explore offered this photo as a corrective.

Syria, as our very own foreign minister has observed, is fast becoming the new Balkan in terms of rape as a weapon of war (the aftermath of which has been a topic here before). I am not suggesting this is a weapon which only affects women, but it does so disproportionally (like hunger). And it is not limited to Syria.

In more upbeat news: There is a Women in the World summit going on (organised by the Women in the World Foundation), which seems to have gathered together all the big hitters, and which is covering a plethora of interesting issues. Of course, it must come as no surprise that part of the media coverage has taken care of more vital issues, like whether Angelina Jolie is Stylish or Sloppy in her sartorial choices at the event.

March 30: After last week, I shied away from the news a bit. As a result, I am now more well balanced. Somewhat. As a side effect, I have less to show the class; I have, however, managed to gather a few observations.

Bleeding over from the depressing depths that were last week, Public Shaming had a good commentary on the 40 hottest women in tech debacle and the desperate attempt to make it appear acceptable ("we used normal looking women!"). Sexism is always more fun with a side of snide comments.

In happier news: The news broke that the BBC launched a database on "expert women" in order to help their journalists diversify their sources. It has been a bit of a problem. It will be interesting to see if the database has any effect on their actual output, but it is good that they are trying. In a world where women are not socialised to put themselves forward as experts, and where the word still too often means "white middleclass man", a public broadcaster like the BBC has a special responsibility to help change perceptions.

Oh, and President Obama has nominated the first female head of the Secret Service.

It helps take the edge off the realisation that there has not been a single female writer in the last 60 episodes of Doctor Who, and only one since the show's reboot in 2005.

March 23: The world can be a depressing place to wake up to, and social media is making the idiots I have spent much of my life shielding myself from all the more accessible. I cannot tell whether that is good or bad. At any rate: The rapists of the Steubenville case were convicted and sentenced, and all the maggots crawled out of their lairs and onto Twitter.

The Public Shaming Tumblr page (which will be very useful when the revolution comes) has gathered some of the atrocious fuckwits in four posts so far: Read this, this and this (and this on how it is not limited to the Steubenville case). Can we just get this out of the way and into the open in case there was ANY DOUBT? If you see a girl (or, you know, a boy) passed out drunk, you DO NOT HAVE SEX WITH HER (or, indeed, him) or stick things into the openings of their body. I'd have thought that was clear. The phenomenon you are encountering here is called rape culture, in its current incarnation of victim blaming ("if you go down a dark street/drink/wear X it is really your own fault if you get raped") and slut shaming ("this woman is not pure enough to be raped"), with a dash of "men cannot help themselves" (were I a man, I would be horribly insulted by the assumptions of rape culture).

If you are dismissing this as a simple case of "idiots online", you would be wrong. CNN (in)famously did a horrendous job of it, with their reporter going off on a rant about the poor boys and how the verdict had ruined their lives (not, you know, that fact that they chose to rape). (If you feel inspired to tell CNN to go fuck themselves, signing this may help.) The CNN story is indicative of a wider pattern. And here's another piece on all of this for good measure.

Give me a moment to breathe. I get angry.

Now. Today's dose of "boys can't be expected to play a girl in a game". Never mind the fact that girls have somehow survived playing boys for years.

I don't have happy news to end on. In fact, this week just kept getting more and more depressing. Lucy Meadows, who was an innocent caught up in the tabloid monstering of trans men and women, probably killed herself this week. If you have time, I recommend you read the TransMediaWatch's submission to the Leveson inquiry.

On a more upbeat note, I Fucking Love Science came out as a woman (not having Facebook, I had never heard of it and couldn't take part in the shock and outrage). Actually, that is not quite what happened, but going by the responses you'd have thought it was some shameful secret she had sneakily kept quiet in order to spring it on the unsuspecting public at the right moment.

Even my upbeat notes are depressing. It's been that kind of week in feminismland.

March 17: (Yes, I was supposed to do this yesterday; I plead marking).
This was always going to be about highlighting tendencies, and here is the first one: Epad femme has finally arrived (how did we do without it; oh, yes, that's right; just like everyone else). See also, from earlier years, this Ellen video on Bic for her. Not the end of the world? Not as insidious as LEGO Friends? Maybe not; but damned annoying and insulting.

In other news, there was a good article on rape in literature and films in The New Statesman. And meanwhile, the rest of the world is going steadily to hell in a handbasket -- especially if you are a woman in a conflict zone, but also elsewhere.

And ending on the upbeat note again (because it is good for mental health): the Veronica Mars kickstarter is looking very healthy, demonstrating once again (to those who doubt it) that kick-ass women as protagonists is not a way to lose an audience.

March 9: To get us started: Amazon.co.uk once again showed itself to thrive at the nadir of human decency last week, helping to sell "Keep Calm and Rape A Lot" t-shirts (produced by Solid Gold Bomb), as well as "Keep calm and Hit Her" and variations thereof, accidentally demonstrating that algorithms hate women, too. Except, while the claim is that the t-shirts were automatically generated by matching an inane slogan with random verbs, "keep calm and +verb" does not give any result for a number of other verbs. Moreover, according to reports, "her" (not "him") was added at the end of a number of these t-shirts. I am no computer expert, so for all I know there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this.

In a more upbeat segment: Feminist Frequency has finally published the first video in the Tropes vs Women in Video Games series, which caused such consternation and misogynistic dimwittery (yes, I made up that word) when it was launched. Please watch it.

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