Well, That's that.

I did it. I finished my thesis, wrote it up and sent it for printing. Tomorrow I submit and then who knows what? I feel tired and emotional and deflated and happy all at once. I may not pass, I may never look at my work again, but I set out to finish and finish I did, and for that I am thankful. And a tiny bit proud. It's over, and I can move on.

My new life starts here...

Little Updates

Thanks to you who commented and gave me support over the last few days! I feel better, my daughter is happy and coping, the house still feels empty but I'm getting used to it quite quickly.

My neighbour passed away this morning. I mentioned a couple of posts ago that he had cancer, it has taken less than three weeks from diagnosis for him to succumb. I am glad for him that it was fast and that he was unconscious during most of those days. I am sad for his family, who will miss him and mourn him and who had no time to get ready for this. I know that no-one can really ever prepare for cancer and death, but really, this was FAST.

I have six days left before I pack up my books and head off to submit my PhD thesis. It can't be done in the time that I have left. Except that it must be. And then my life will change and that scares me. What will I do? Who will I be without my thesis and my writing? I'll let you know when I find out!

Waving Goodbye.

Today I left my astonishing, compassionate and beautiful daughter in a town 130 miles away from home, in a strange town, with strange people, so that she can learn new things and get all clever and come home with a degree. And right this minute all I can think of is that her room is empty and the cat misses her and there is less "stuff" all over the house and I feel lonely. She is destined for great things, as, I firmly believe, are all of our young feminist children.

About My Daughter: If you feel lonely, she will hold your hand. If you are frightened, she will stand behind you, holding you up, or in front of you, guarding you. If you are hungry, she'll give you her food. You may absolutely always no-matter-what count on her.

But it's her first night living away from home. I hope she's okay. I hope she's not missing me. I hope I feel better than this tomorrow.

Happy.

This just makes me all kinds of delighted! I think it's about time we all started shouting about civil partnerships vs. marriage; separate but equal isn't fucking good enough. What an awesome dad!

How Did I Miss This?

I know I've been a bit slow blog-wise these last few months; but really. When The Vatican gets into it with Amnesty International, a radical feminist, pro-abortion, potential catholic convert ought to be on the ball. So, not a moment too soon, here's a link to the relevant info. Amnesty International News

Three cheers for that paragon of Christian charity, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who is reported to have said: “Violence cannot be answered with further violence; murder with murder; for even if the child is unborn, it is still a human person. It has a right to dignity as a human being.”

No mention of the right to dignity of the woman whose body has been brutalised and invaded by a clump of multiplying cells that carry the DNA of her attacker. Nope. No dignity for her then. Oh, but he did bang on a bit about ending violence towards women, blah blah. You know, the trivial stuff. The church treating women less as chattel and more as capable, intelligent, morally self-determining human beings might kick start that process. Just a thought.

Oh. Sad.

Anita Roddick died. I feel quite sad today. The Body Shop was a huge and unusually powerful thing when I was growing up in the greedy, finance-driven 80's. The very presence of a woman-owned big business that had some heart and was focused on ethical trading and ecological awareness was a strong influence on my developing radical feminism. I gloss over what happened next: all the accusations of selling out and secret exploitation. I forgive her pushing of the "beauty" message that I now find so loathsome.

Anita Roddick was, for a long time, a strong and generous woman whom I very much admired. And so, today I shall mourn her passing.

I Guess I'm Just One of Those

lazy arsed Radical Feminists getting such a bad name in some parts of the blogosphere recently.

I have just been catching up with the latest round of blogwars! Hurrah! I learned that intellectual theorising is meaningless. I learned that stripping and getting sexually humiliated and ass fucked is all about whether I like it or not; if I do, then it's feminism. I have learned that if I identify with Radical Feminism then I am useless to REAL women in the REAL world, preferring as I do to sit and pontificate the politics of gender, sex, patriarchy and oppression. I am a dinosaur. I know nothing of reality. I sit on my duff and read Dworkin. I am humourless, sexless and dry.

Except.

I do my part. I get off my arse and DO stuff for people. I volunteer my time, I give what money I can. I work HARD. And I still recognise and celebrate the women who do the thinking. The kind of hard thinking that allows me to operate within my own moral and ethical codes. The kind of hard thinking that exposes subtle inequality and highlights oppression. We humans NEED our philosophers. Women NEED feminist thought and theory. And you know what? There are women who blog Radical Feminism because that's where their contribution to the cause lies. That's their best fit, and that's fucking awesome. There's room for all of us. The REAL LIFE activism has its genesis in the theory that some amazing women spend so long learning and developing.

So that said, from this moment on I will not be engaging my brain in any more debates about who does most for women. I won't be fretting about my intellectual feminism versus my "real life" activism. I won't be listening to any denigration of Radical Feminism. I will be Radical Feminist, embracing all the facets of my life. Join me!

Margaret. And Me.

I got my internet back! Sporadically. So I'll do my best to catch up with you all when I can. I've been active on the radfem front, the yoga front, the kitten front and the PhD front. Only four weeks to go before I must submit, so posting here will be light until then I'm afraid. Until then, I could use your good thoughts. I feel a tad overwhelmed and lacking in ability! Here's how Margaret is helping me out in her own special way:






She's totally lovely and she smells fantastic. I love burying my nose in her fur! She is my sweetheart. I forgot how goooooood cats are.

At Last! A tag...

Mwezzi tagged me. I feel honoured. So here we go (from my mother's tiny screened computer)

A. Each person lists 8 facts/habits about themselves.
B. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed.
C. At the end of the post, the person then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

Eight facts about me:

1. I had all my wisdom teeth removed and kept them in my jewellery box for ages. They were perfect and strong. I miss them.

2. I have a "finger bud" on the left hand little finger. It's hereditary and should have been a sixth finger.

3. I love brussel sprouts and can eat a plate of them with no accompanying food. And no unpleasant after-effects. Mushy peas on the other hand...

4. I do everything naturally left-handed except writing.

5. I got pregnant at sixteen.

6. I don't regret getting pregnant at sixteen.

7. I crochet things to relax my mind. And I'm really good at it now. Name your winter clothing item, doily or whimsical bag and I can whip it up for you in an evening.

8. I have had a nightmare every single night of my life. Thirty five years of vivid dreaming, and I can remember pretty much everything that I dream and I am able to revisit the dream later. Sometimes this worries me...


I tag Spotted Elephant, Ms Jared, Anne Bartow, Arantxa, Merdeen, Kitty Glendower, lost clown and witchy! Most of whiom, I suspect, have already been tagged! That was fun. Thanks!

Aaaaaaargh!

I'm internet-less. I can't STAND it. I'm reduced to snatching moments on other people's computers, until the techies can get my line up and running again. And at the last update the time frame was five days. So posting will be light, but hey, what's new there then? Oh, I'm soooo frustrated.

Margaret had DOUBLED in size. She is the most affectionate kitten ever and just flops over on her back and goes to sleep when she is my arms. I love her so much already! More pics when I get up and running again.

I'm off to my dentist in a minute, to sit and be irritated in the waiting room for half an hour. She does botox and the like as well as dentistry and every single poster that advertises that service depicts a white, slim, middle-aged woman. No men. No fat women. No people of colour. I feel singled out and wrinkled. So I'm going to complain today, just as soon as she has her pointy metal implements out of my mouth. Wish me luck!

I miss you...

Introducing the Mighty Margaret!

Hee! Looks who lives with us now:





My old boy is not overly thrilled by Margaret's tail fetish!:



Margaret is seven weeks old and she's lived here for two full, anxious days. She didn't poop until this morning and she's being really picky about her food but she'll settle down soon. She's totally unafraid of anything and completely clumsy! We love her to bits already. Our house is catfull again!

Have I Ever Told You

About the Inappropriate Yoga guy? He turns up at my yoga classes wearing the MOST REVEALING shorts. Every single pubic hair is outlined against the tight lycra. Or he wears loose shorts and no underwear. He often winks at me and tries to be a bit flirty and he likes to take up loads of space at the front of the class. He's training to be a yoga teacher and he LOVES himself. So last week I'm talking about him to a friend and she tells me about this video and I swear to God, the character is based on my guy. Except my guy is much older and has no hair. Inappropriate yoga guys must be a common phenomenon. Anyway, here it is. Enjoy!

It's STILL raining

and I'm feeling blue. Somebody send me a link to something REALLY wonderful and make my day! I'm off to my voluntary job in a few minutes and I am not looking forward to it. I am so stressed out with what I see going on there, but I looooove the work and the customers and the sense of well-being that comes from volunteering. How am I going to keep doing this if it gets me so down? I need to look for something new. How are y'all anyway?

Just b coz.

Heh. Male violence up close.

So, I'm on my way out last Tuesday and I'm in someone else's car, being driven v e r y slowly because she's careful and a bit nervous. We get overtaken (in a residential area, in a 30mph zone) by a really cross man in a sports car with a numberplate that appeared to be a rude word for genitalia, you know, when they try and make numbers look like letters(oh how jovial!). He then stops dead in front of us. Of course, we are going sooooo slowly that we can easily swerve round him and we do, but really, he's just pissed off at us and trying to show us that. So, being the impetuous person that I am, and rude, I reach over and smack the horn. Biiiiiig mistake. This fucks him off and he chases us.

Now, I'm not suggesting that this was in any way a chase of the kind that leaves devastation in it's wake; our heroine, the driver of the slow car, barely got above 20mph. But it was quite scary. At one point the man chasing us drew alongside and threatened us through the window with a beating. Then he dropped back and started pounding HIS horn and waving at me with closed fist. I turned right round in my seat and watched him through the back window, because I WON'T be intimidated. He appeared to be shouting "you are fucking dead" at me. He pointed and thumped his dashboard and windscreen. It was quite a display. Through all of this, his (female) passenger sat there looking bored. She's probably utterly sick of his behaviour. Anyway, my slightly bemused and mocking expression seemed to only rile him further and he had another go at getting alongside and screaming at us, at which point I made it obvious that not only were we not scared (we were), or impressed (we weren't), I was dialling my phone and calling the police. He sped off down a side street. We pressed on with our journey relieved but a little shaken.

So my point is this: he got really fucking pissed off and violent over the speed at which we were travelling. He got himself involved in the slowest ever street chase. He felt that it was appropriate to threaten us with beatings and death. He was bigger than us. He was male. And everything that he did, he did only once he had established that we were two women in the car. What a loser. What a scary, powerful, violent loser. My abiding thought that evening was "what about the woman in HIS car? Is she safe?" My guess is no.

Weight Matters

Yes, it does. Whether we like it or not, what we weigh is of importance to lots of people. Sometimes, when I'm feeling really shitty and lonely, what I weigh and what people think about that starts to matter to me. Doctors, politicians, pundits, celebrities, friends and family members all seem to have something to say about obesity. The perpetually fat-critical Gillian McKeith is currently back on our screens, doing her "thing". A "thing" which,by the way, seems solely to consist of humiliating fat people and trying to cure them by forcing them to eat bugger all and have their poo examined. Each week for a while, she will be shaming three fat women into fighting each other in the weight loss arena for the grand prize of a ludicrously expensive frock in which the winning fatty can get married once she drops enough flab and fits into it. If you have the stomach for it (pardon the pun) you can read all about this shame-festhere.

If you would prefer a really intelligent discussion of the politics of fat and eating and the socio-economic factors that influence eating choices and behaviours, take a look at Regina Austin's amazing, eye-opening article (hat tip: Feminist Law Profs, thankyou!) Super Size Me and the Conundrum of Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Class for the Contemporary Law-Genre Documentary Filmmaker . You can find it here. Ms. Austin examines Morgan Spurlock's film Super Size Me and discusses whether or not Spurlock undertook to examine the Pelman v McDonald's lawsuit from a fair and inclusive position.

Here's a tasty, tempting chunk of Austin's argument:

Of course, the Pelman plaintiffs are black. The film notes only
their sizes, accompanied by a cute graphic of their ballooning
dimensions, and provides no other information that might be relevant
to understanding their obesity or the role McDonald’s played in their
lives. At the time the suit was brought, plaintiff Ashley Pelman was
fourteen years old, four feet ten inches tall, and 170 pounds. The
other plaintiff, Jazlyn Bradley, was nineteen years old, five feet six
inches tall, and 270 pounds.38 The plaintiffs ate their McDonald’s in
the Bronx.39 The population of the Bronx is 15% white, 31% African
American, 48% Hispanic, 3% Asian and 3% other. The Bronx has
the highest rate of obesity in the City of New York.40 Plaintiff Jazlyn
Bradley, one of ten children, resided in a dilapidated apartment that
had no kitchen sink (dishes were washed in the bathtub)41 before she
moved to a homeless shelter where she lived between the ages of
fifteen and eighteen.42 Given that there was no place to cook, Jazlyn
was given money with which to eat out; she chose McDonald’s
because it was cheap and close; she might eat there up to three times
a day....Super Size Me's homogenized
message, by skirting over significant details of the social and
economic context in which the plaintiffs became obese, is less truly
informative about fast food’s contribution to obesity in general than
it appears.

This article is utterly intelligent, sensitive and well thought out. Read it, digest it. It's soul food.

Banaz Mahmod

was 20 years old, of Kurdish descent, living in Britain with her family, in love with a man, murdered and stuffed in a suitcase, left lying under rubbish in a garden in Birmingham. She asked for help. She told the police that she was likely to be killed by her family. She escaped one murder attempt. How much more did she have to do? I am so angry. You can read the story here. Click the link and watch the video that Banaz' boyfriend shot, as Banaz lay in hospital after the first murder attempt. Police who were called to assist Banaz thought that she was "a drunk" and failed to take her complaint seriously. Banaz' sister had aleady been taken into the care of social services after suffering years of beatings and abuse. At 17, Banaz had been forced to marry a man who raped her. She attempted suicide. Her father and uncle said that she brought shame on her family. They decided to hire people to kill her.

Today's Times newspaper has the headline: Police 'Failed' Victim of Honour Killing. I can't be alone in thinking that the quotation marks are applied to the wrong word.


**UPDATE**

From The Telegraph Online:

The 20-year-old's father, Mahmod Mahmod, 54, was among the three men sentenced, and will have to serve a minimum term of 20 years.

His brother Ari, 51, will serve a minimum of 23 years.

A third killer Mohamad Hama, 30, was told he would spend at least 17 years in prison.

Banaz Mahmod was strangled because her family disapproved of her relationship with her boyfriend.

Hama and three other men who have left the country killed her during two hours of torture at her home.

She was raped and subjected to degrading sex acts before succumbing to an agonising death.

The murder was ordered by her Iraqi Kurd father and uncle after her affair with fellow Kurd Rahmat Sulemani, 29, was discovered.

It's not enough.

So, How've YOU been?

It's been a few weeks. While I have been malingering there's been some almighty radfem writing going on and you can get your fill over at the second Carnival of Radical Feminists currently hosted at Feminist Law Professors.

I am having a re-think about my Happy Monday! posts. I find that I am becoming tired of trawling through the crap to get at the golden nuggets of joyousness. I'm making myself feel despondent. In future, I shall post Happy Whenever! posts, when and if I spot something worth celebrating and sharing. I hope that these posts will be frequent. I suspect that they will be rare.

I'm going to keep my ramblings about my mental and physical health for posts on t'other blog. I worry that posting such updates and discussions here may be excluding and unsettling some readers. My personal journeys into depression and panic are not always suitable for this space and I think they are better moved to Sometimes Twitchy. Some of you already know the place, the rest of you are welcome to visit!

So that's my short update. Here's to regular radfem blogging and a radical, energised summer!

An Update, or "All About Me"

I'm getting better. I slumped for a while and felt crappy, but I'm picking up now. I re-arranged my living spaces, my work areas, my books and CDs. I threw out some crap. I listened to some great feminist music, (thanks you all!) and I feel better. Less harassed by my own self, if that makes any sense.

I made a decision to stop taking bullshit from strangers out of politeness. I volunteer in a charity shop and you wouldn't believe the racist, sexist hate comments that fly past my ears every time I am there. I realised that I was holding in my words, fearing that my responses might offend. It's not good for anyone to do that! So now I'm answering back. If I hear another comment about "immigrants" or "illegals" or any other racist name calling, I'm putting a stop to it, customer or not. I may get asked to pack up my duds and volunteer elsewhere, but hey ho! There you go. I'm prioritising.

I decided to stop shitting myself about money. If I need some, the universe will provide. I'm not hungry or cold or even uncomfortable. If I need money it's for something luxurious not necessary. I'm obsessing because I don't have a proper paying job and the obsession is running a huge part of my life. I will get there. I'm leaving the worry behind and moving on.

I'm reading again. I stopped reading, which was probably a sign of impending mental trauma but damn, I missed it again! There's ALWAYS a sign and I don't always catch it. But still, I'm adding it to my list of things to be aware of. I'll know next time! Anyway, I'm reading fanny Flagg's "Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!" and it's wonderful.

And I'm writing. I'm blogging today, I wrote a couple of short verse exercises yesterday and I started a yoga journal last week. My fingers and brain are re-connected. Things are looking up...

Yes, Vile.

I join Twisty and Anne Bartow and all other bloggers who are acknowledging the death of Du'a Khalil Aswad. We can not ignore this. If, for our own painful reasons, we can't bring ourselves to watch her murder, we can scream about it until our throats hurt.