Not a hotbed of radical political lady-times, and yet it’s been home to not one, but two awesome women. Briefly, it was also frequented by our editor Miranda this autumn, so technically that makes it three, and the temptation to create Bad Reputation plaques, possibly as stickers, is actually quite strong.
Anyway, here’s the street…
Pelham Place, Hastings. Most feminist street ever?
…and here are the plaques.
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, 1827-1891, Educational pioneer and campaigner for women’s rights and artist. Lived here 1830-1853.
Muriel Matters-Porter, 1877-1969, Adelaide born activist and first woman to ‘speak’ in the House of Commons. Lived in this house 1949-1969.
The two women in question, Barbara Bodichon and Muriel Matters, are not only pleasingly alliterative but also both very cool people in their own way.
Barbara was a formidable lady. Born out of wedlock to a reasonably wealthy and very forward-thinking father, she had an “unusual upbringing” by all accounts (well, here’s an account that says that).
Bodichon was an artist who travelled Europe, and she was heavily involved in women’s suffrage. She is credited with helping campaign for the Married Women’s Property Act, a step towards independant financial security for women which allowed them to own and control their own property.
She also set up the English Women’s Journal to discuss issues pertaining to womens’ rights, and founded Girton College, Cambridge.
As an aside, her family is related by marriage to the Bonham Carter family which contains both Florence Nightingale and, eventually, Helena Bonham Carter, a BadRep Towers favourite, so there’s clearly something going on in this family and they deserve watching.
Muriel Matters, meanwhile, was born in Australia, moving to the UK to participate in the suffrage movement, where she became known for being somewhat militant and outrageous in her attempts to gain publicity for the cause (including hiring a dirigible).
She was also a campaigner against slums and poverty and an early teacher of the Montessori Method. She stood as a candidate for the Labour Party in 1924.
Matters lived in the house on Pelham Street, which was a nursing home, until her death, the later part of her life focusing on what is coyly described by Wikipedia as “the local community”, and spending time being a pretty great lady of letters.
I can only imagine what it must have been like to campaign so ardently for change and to see it realised in your lifetime, then to go on and survive through the war, all the way to to the revolutions of the 1960s. It’s only when presented with those dates that I can begin to appreciate the scale and speed of the feminist project, that so much happened within these two overlapping lifetimes. It’s inspirational to think about what could be achieved within our lifetimes.
The two didn’t overlap when they lived at Pelham Place, sadly, and my Google-fu doesn’t reveal any evidence they actually ever met, but that’s certainly a Fantasy Dinner party guest list to think about.
I like the Blue Plaque project. I like any kind of history you can pick up just by looking up whilst you’re walking along. It’s nice to be able to put things in context and to see the past as places with real people rather than objects in a museum.
But this combination in particular strikes a chord with me, possibly because it is so unusual. And it’s the standout element here that makes this a Found Feminism.
Let’s face it, most commemorative plaques are about men – English Heritage is working to tackle this issue – and the coverage of women’s rights is often a late addition to the table. The Pankhursts didn’t get their plaque intil 2006, for example, so to have two together is impressive.
So here’s to Pelham Place, and to Hastings!
- Found Feminism: an ongoing series of images, videos, photos, comics, posters or excerpts – anything really, which shows feminist ideas at work in the everyday world. What’s brightened your day, or made you stop and think? Share it here, tweet us, or send your finds to [email protected]!
They decline to reveal the smallest details, aiming to maintain total secrecy. They will say only that most of the band members met at the small protests held by Russia’s once-feeble opposition, from monthly illegal demonstrations calling for the right to assembly to banned gay pride marches. Their average age is 25. They are hardcore feminists. Most studied the humanities in university. They won’t detail their day jobs.
– Guardian, 2nd February 2012
Pussy Riot, like the Sex Pistols, have a name designed to make headlines, and a bit more political substance to back up the sensationalism. Formed in Moscow last September, this offshoot of Russia’s complex and fractured political scene has come to prominence in the UK media in the context of protests against political corruption which have been gaining in volume and intensity after parliamentary elections last December. In mid-January, one of the collective’s impromptu guerrilla gigs, taking place on Red Square opposite the Kremlin, ended with its members detained by police.
Laura Barton in the Guardian, picking up on the band’s citing of Bikini Kill as an inspiration, offers a slightly short-sighted view of 90s Riot Grrrl as an antecedent for the expression of ‘an alternative female voice’. While the group clearly do reference Riot Grrrl’s ‘tone of wild irreverence’, it also makes sense to consider Pussy Riot in the context of the former Soviet Union’s long and fascinating history of political protest coalescing around avant garde art and music, especially punk. Adam Curtis’ recent blog is an interesting attempt to make sense of this sort of determinedly oppositional culture which has been notable by its relative absence from the UK’s current wave of socio-political protest. Similarly, the clash of sartorial signifiers which Pussy Riot provide by combining miniskirts and stockings with ski-masks and balaclavas could be a legacy of Riot Grrl too, but as a practical measure it has as much in common with other Anonymous-style contemporary protest movements, not to mention the general history of masking and disguise in protest.
Russia does have a long tradition of women in protest, notably the 1917 revolution in which women played a prominent part, encouraged by the intersection of socialism with many of the goals of women’s liberation. Pussy Riot cite this ‘deep tradition… of gender and revolution – we’ve had amazing women revolutionaries.’ They add that ‘the revolution should be done by women… For now, they don’t beat or jail us as much’. This assertion ties in with historical debates on the ability of women to take part in protest or civil disobedience with a greater degree of impunity than men – an ideal which isn’t always borne out by the treatment of female protesters.
Contemporary Russian politics – like any – are not a straightforward matter, and the extent of Pussy Riot’s relevance and representativeness remains to be seen. But in a context where growing and disparate opposition groups are encountering heavy and often violent repression across the world, the ways in which women participate in protest, and the styles of self-expression they employ, are always worth noting.
]]>For those of you who don’t know, I’m a massive foodie. I will happily spend an entire day poncing around making dinner from scratch for my friends (including sugar-coating rose petals for Rose Martinis. Helpful hint: overdo it and they glue to saucers, never to come off). I was the only person at school who wanted to take Home Economics at A Level, with the result that it didn’t run so I had to do Chemistry instead, which is just Maths Cookery anyway *ducks*.
So, I love food, food prep and all things kitchen related. Yet there’s a Bad Reputation (geddit?) between women, feminism and kitchens, and I’d like to talk about that. Not just in the wake of the Great British Bake Off, either.
Women’s Lib, to coin an old phrase, has been linked to the rise of labour saving household appliances, yet it’s a fact that women do most of the shopping and cooking, probably because whilst we’ve made great leaps forward in terms of being able to vote and not being treated as the property of husbands, there’s still a massive social expectation around looking after the home. Separate Spheres for the 21st century.
Now, on a practical front, this means that it’s women who are often in control of what a family eats, what a family thinks about food. This can be both a good and bad thing. This setup means that many families understand a “woman’s role” as one which involves spending time feeding and looking after them, and whilst it’s great to be the nurturing one, the one who can make the AMAZING pie, the one who keeps the place feeling like a home. It’s less great to be that person because you are female. And that’s the problem.
The kitchen is the centre of a lot of families and households. Control of the kitchen means control over a lot more than that. Women are, whether they realise it or not, at the very centre of what kinds of food we eat and hence the sort that is offered, produced and sold. Realistically, the entire industry of FMCG products – and the potential for increasingly environmentally friendly products, fair trade products, and organic products – is supported by the habits of women when they go to the store.
In short – women can make a huge amount of difference to the world by leveraging their role as consumer. And this is where the feminist bit comes in. It’s not about consigning the entire role of “homemaker” to the bin of 1950s retro parties and relief over how we’re not Betty Draper. It’s about using the history of women in the home, women cooks, our mums and grandmothers, to think about (and act upon) a new tradition of taking charge and getting on.
My gran taught me how to cook. She also taught me many other things about making my own way in the world, which included a damn good shortcrust pastry.
Wooden spoons at the ready? Here we go.
First up, and an easy starting point are some big name women cooks. From Mrs Beeton through to Delia and Nigella, these are women who have helped shape how we think about food, our homes and ourselves.
They’ve even helped us understand more about countries and cultures beyond the UK and Europe – food being an excellent and tasty way of enjoying a bit of intercultural sharing. In the 70s, Madhur Jaffrey’s travel-diaries mixed recipes with vignettes on where the food was found, who made it and interesting titbits of stories on Indian culture. More recently, Harumi Kurihara has given us access into the world of Japanese home cooking.
Next up, we can look at women’s roles in the kitchen in connection with the economy. The recent waves of recession after recession have seen a rise in cost of living with a corresponding reactive change in shopping habits as women revolt every day against the high cost of food prices by changing where they buy things and what is being cooked and eaten in the home. The fact that the cuts fall more heavily upon women, and that the burden of dealing with households with lower incomes also falls into the pockets of female aprons, has led many women to become increasingly political.
The revolution begins in the kitchen. Bake for victory!
The connection between politics at home and the wider political world is not a new thing. Many food awareness and food movements have been driven by women, such as the aptly named Kitchen Revolution and the almost too awesome to exist Isa Chandra Moskowitz who heads up the Post Punk Kitchen a refreshing mind-spin for anyone who thinks vegan cooking is about boring mung beans. The memory of her peanut butter and chocolate cookies are making my mouth water right now.
I’m going to close by saying that I really believe that teaching everyone to cook, to know where food comes from and the value of properly sourced, sustainable food products is part of the feminist movement. The power of the kitchen is not something to be set aside in the belief that we are letting down the sisterhood by being chained to the oven. Instead, we can help make a much better world by getting everyone involved.
And yes, you can lick the spoon afterwards.
]]>On with Part 2, then.
Let’s talk about UK Uncut as a movement. Do you reckon it’s pretty equally gender split, and if so, do you reckon acting as a collective helps achieve this more effectively?
“I wouldn’t feel confident commenting on the gender split in UK Uncut – I’d be referring to tens of thousands of people across the UK. However, in terms of active groups working within the UK, the majority are dominated by white males. But this is why we need to be talking about cuts in terms of gender: to encourage women to join the frontline.
“I do feel that acting publically as a collective has strengthened the movement and UK Uncut’s message – the cuts are something that everyone should be concerned about and everyone should be acting against. However, it is still true that certain vulnerable groups within society are to be hit in ways that the more privileged may not be. Disabled people are losing their Disability Living Allowance, poorer students have lost the EMA that they and their families rely on, and some women will no longer be able to work because they now have to care for elderly family members or young children. I strongly believe that highlighting the different ways in which the cuts fall should spur people into action, on behalf of themselves or those less able, instead of acting in some divisive way. So what if today we’re standing up against cuts to childcare and you don’t have or want children – don’t you want to protect those in society who do?
“These aren’t just issues for women, because protecting women and vulnerable groups is in the interest of the whole of society.”
Have you found any women’s protest movements around the world or in history particularly inspiring?
“There are so many instances of women’s protest that inspire me consistently. At the moment I’ve been reading about the experiences of Assata Shakur and Angela Davis, and find myself inspired by their unrelenting power (and their incredible writing!).
“I am inspired by the endurance of the women at Greenham Common, and the physical strength of the four women who destroyed a Hawk fighter jet with hammers that was being sold by the British government to East Timor to be used in the government’s illegal occupation of the country. I also recall an image of a row of Zapatista women standing in line with their faces covered but still wearing these incredible bright dresses – and that image alone inspires me. But closer to home, I am inspired by the women close to me and the support we provide for each other.”
What would your advice be to young women reading our blog who are concerned about the impact of the cuts? Maybe they’ve never been on a protest before. Perhaps they’re even a little nervous to start – do “clicktivism” and hashtags and so on make a difference in themselves?
“Well, I wouldn’t say hashtags aren’t worth anything – that’s how UK Uncut started! But my advice to anyone nervous to get involved would be that anything that is worth fighting for is going to be a little scary, so that’s even more reason to give it a go. It’s scary because there is so much at stake. The kind of action UK Uncut takes is a great way to get involved. It’s fun and creative and there is always space for people to choose their own style of action, and meet other people who share the same views.
“Although other types of protest can be effective, I believe that direct action is necessary in any situation where other avenues have been exhausted and shut down. And that is the situation we are in now. For example, the reforms the NHS is facing weren’t in the Conservative or the Lib Dem manifesto, and this coalition government is not even acting on behalf of the majority vote. So how is it fair that these radical changes are being made to a health service that Britain should be so proud of achieving, but is instead determined to destroy, without a say from the public who use it?
“The leaders in charge of pushing through the bill do not have the population’s interests at heart, are not interested in what we want or what we have to say. But this is our NHS – we rely on it, and we must protect it.”
Is it hard for protesters to keep momentum going in the face of these cuts? What’s next for you?
“The groups organising actions every week across the country keep momentum going. This issue isn’t going away, the cuts are already being felt, and the fight against them will continue.
“UK Uncut have just announced the next day of mass action, called ‘Block the Bridge, Block the Bill’ – 2000 people are already attending on the Facebook event, and hopefully will be showing how serious they are about not losing their National Health Service by transforming Westminster Bridge into hospitals, medical lectures, and a space to share stories about the NHS.
“On October 12th, the Lords have one last chance to amend the Health and Social Care Bill in Parliament before it is voted on again, and we have one last chance to show that we won’t lose our health service. So join UK Uncut on October 9th and take part in the fight against the cuts!”
Thanks again to Rox for giving us her time.
- Visit UK Uncut’s blog
- Follow UK Uncut on Twitter ]]>
In the era of headlines like RAGE OF THE GIRL RIOTERS, what’s it like for women on the front line of anti-cuts protesting in the UK right now? Roxanne was at that first sit-in at the London Vodafone flagship store on 27 October 2010 – out of which a nucleus of energy exploded into the movement we now call UK Uncut.
Hey Rox, thanks for talking to us. What do you think is the struggle for women in terms of the impact of these cuts? Obviously “women” aren’t a monolithic or homogenous group, but is there a distinct fight?
“The full scale of the public sector cuts fall in a way that is unbalanced in terms of gender. Women make up most of the public sector jobs being cut, women rely most heavily on public services and on certain benefits that are being cut, and where vulnerable people like children, the disabled and the elderly are stripped of their governmental support, it has historically been women that step in to bridge the gap and become carers.
“The cuts attack services that women depend on in order to live ‘equally’ with men, services that are there to compensate for existing gender inequalities – Rape Crisis centres and helplines, SureStart and childcare benefits. These are not privileges. Many women rely on these services. Without them, the progress that past generations have made by fighting to get us this far is being unnecessarily sacrificed. The cuts will push us back in time in terms of women’s rights and equality.
“I don’t believe the struggle is distinct – this is a fight that everyone should be fighting – but we should be aware of what we are fighting for and what we, as women, truly stand to lose. The message out there is not clear enough yet – as these cuts fall, they will cut through the progress women have made.
“The problem is, because of existing sexism within our society and a scepticism towards ‘feminism’, it is still so hard to have conversations about women and the inequality we struggle with. I believe we need more and more great acts of exciting and inviting civil disobedience to get people thinking seriously about gender and the cuts.”
Have you found that the police and the media have treated you differently as a female protestor?
“Not so much the media, but the police yes. Of course. In the most extreme sense, my personal experience of being arrested was interesting in terms of my treatment as a woman. The fact that I am young and female was repeatedly used against me, as a way to make me feel inferior. Of course, that’s often what the police aim to do with any arrestee; to intimidate and isolate. But after talking to male activists, it seems to me that the treatment is often different if you are a woman in custody.
“I was arrested by a woman. She commented frequently on my appearance, asking things like, “Do you never brush your hair?” and when I was asked if this was my natural hair colour, she pulled at my roots and answered on my behalf, “No.” A friend of mine was arrested at the same time, and the woman arresting her was even worse. She searched through her backpack, pulled out a pair of underwear and pulled a face like she was disgusted to be holding them. She stretched them out and waved them in the faces of the male officers around, who seemed genuinely embarrassed and uncomfortable at the treatment this woman was giving my friend.
“It wasn’t any better when I was in the cell. I was not allowed to use my own tampon, and when I asked for a new one I was told the police station didn’t keep any. I was then given one hours later, which I had to use until I was released after 24 hours. Why don’t police stations have to stock tampons? They have to go out any buy you food if you have special requirements. I was also told I had to be watched closely as I inserted the tampon, which I later found out did not happen to other female activists in different stations. Taking away human rights as basic as this seems like just one more way to reduce an arrestee to a more helpless and regretful position.”
So how did this all get started for you, and is anti-cuts action your first foray into public protest?
“I was involved in environmental activism before UK Uncut, and that is where I learned about the use of direct action as a political tactic. I also learned how to use the consensus model of decision making which empowers each individual to have their say and play an equal part in the movement. These skills have been invaluable to me in every action I have been involved in.
“I felt that I had to do something to try and stop the government cutting the services that I am most proud of, that society’s most vulnerable people rely on to live in this country. I used to be proud of the structures we had built here to support our population- we built the NHS when we had a bigger deficit than we have today. We should all be proud of such universal services, and we shouldn’t give up the fight and watch as they are all sold off to profit-making companies.”
Come back tomorrow for part 2 – more from Rox, why Block The Bridge should be your next demo, and how to get involved with protesting the cuts. Thanks to Rox for giving us her time.
- Visit UK Uncut’s blog
- Follow UK Uncut on Twitter ]]>
In the meantime, here’re some relevant links, some of which throw the baton to you. If you’re feeling like revolting, now’s the time…
- Block The Bridge, Block The Bill, 9th October: “On Sunday October 9th, join UK Uncut on Westminster Bridge and help block the bill. On one side of Westminster Bridge is Parliament. On 7th September, MPs in the Commons voted for the end of the NHS as we know it. On the opposite side of the bridge is St Thomas’ Hospital, one of Britain’s oldest medical institutions. If the bill passes, hospitals like St Thomas’ will be sold to private corporations, the staff put on private payrolls and beds given over to private patients. Despite the government’s lies, this bill represents the wholesale privatization of the NHS and, with it, the destruction of the dream of comprehensive healthcare provided equally to all. We will not let a coalition of millionaire politicians and private health lobbyists destroy our NHS. Be on Westminster Bridge for 1pm on October 9th and together let’s block this bill from getting to our hospitals.”
I work at one of the hospitals UKUncut are talking about. It looks no better from the inside. We’re having our birthday party < 48 hours before (you're totally invited! see below!), but I will be hauling myself out of bed for this. Readers, join Team BadRep as we revolt against both Torygeddon and our inevitable shared hangover in one giant last stand.
- TUC March For The Alternative: 2nd October
- All Out: our new favourite campaign. “We are organizing online and on the ground to build a world where every person can live freely and be embraced for who they are. Gay, lesbian, bi, transgender or straight, we need you to go All Out to build this historic movement for equality.” The page on Alice N’Kom, Cameroonian attorney and activist, is particularly inspiring: “I’m 66, and in ten years of defending LGBT people in Cameroon, it has never been this bad.”
- WomanKind Worldwide’s Overseas Aid Mythbuster: “Print off this page, put it in your bag and next time you hear someone complain about the UK giving money overseas challenge them with the facts.”
- Say Yes to Gay YA: authors Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith on young adult fiction and sexuality: “The overwhelming white straightness of the YA sf and fantasy sections may have little to do with what authors are writing, or even with what editors accept. Perhaps solid manuscripts with LGBTQ protagonists rarely get into mainstream editors’ hands at all, because they are been rejected by agents before the editors see them. How many published novels with a straight white heroine and a lesbian or black or disabled best friend once had those roles reversed, before an agent demanded a change? This does not make for better novels. Nor does it make for a better world.”
- COME TO OUR BIRTHDAY PARTY ON OCTOBER 7! We wanna meet you! Find out more and RSVP here!
I want to think about icons, and how activists use them, particularly how protest movements – satirically or seriously – “borrow” figures from previous eras – art, history, legend – and recast them for current ends. On the one hand, as a post on the F-Word nearly a year ago outlined with feeling, this can create frustration, particularly around the idea of setting up individual “heroes” – even when they are rooted in metaphor – within a protest dynamic, which will usually derive much of its force from sheer collective whump. On the other hand, like any exercise in comparing bits of art, looking at the feminist movement’s choices of icons and allegories paints an invigorating kind of conversation down the centuries.
Let’s start with Joan of Arc, resurrected forcefully by the suffragettes in the early 20th century to grace more than a few posters … and an impressive spate of parades.
Yes, parades.
Deeds, Words, and Military Martyrdom
Check this out.
This is Elsie Howey in April 1909 – the month Joan of Arc was beatified by the Catholic Church – preparing to ride a white charger through the streets of London in armour as part of a parade to celebrate noted suffragette Emmeline Pethwick-Lawrence’s release from prison.
Two years later, in June 1911, Marjorie Annan Bryce (seriously, you have to see this next pic) led WSPU members through London the same way as part of a procession organised a week before George V’s coronation. (The horse was led by a young woman dressed as Robin Hood.) The Women’s Coronation Procession was one of the largest WSPU demos, and it marched with Joan of Arc at its head.
Three years later, in Baltimore, Ida Baker Neepier also climbed onto a horse whilst clad in armour. Earlier that same year, English Jesuit Father Bernard Vaughan had expressed his consternation in a speech that the suffragettes wanted “to make Joan of Arc one of [their] patronesses”.
Joan – canonised in 1920 – was a central icon for the women’s suffrage movement in Europe and North America. The WSPU in particular, with its emphasis on militant tactics, were especially enamoured of her, and Hilda Dallas designed a poster featuring her, wearing a tabard emblazoned with the word JUSTICE, to promote their magazine.
Oh, and here’s the thoroughly don’t-mess Nellie Van Slingerland with a load of “Joan of Arc Suffrage League” flags in NYC. (Would you mess with this hat? I thought not.)
Joan was a perfect fit for the suffragettes, personifying militant force and virtue simultaneously. For context, Victorian literary culture allowed plenty room for female heroism of a certain kind; for example, Grace Darling was idolised. But the demands of heroism, when they force the heroine of a Victorian novel out of the domestic sphere, often spring from a moral imperative (the heroine of Wilkie Collins’s The Law And The Lady, for example, defies the men around her to save her man from himself). Adopting Joan as patroness – a woman who had abandoned domesticity for battlefields only to act on imperatives sent to her in divine visions – gave the suffragettes’ cause similarly pressing moral overtones.
Joan herself was something of a hot topic at the time; Sara Bernhardt had appeared as her on stage in 1898 and publically endorsed women’s suffrage after the Joan of Arc Suffrage League welcomed her to the US in 1910. The tragic events of the 1913 Derby saw Emily Davison cast as a literal Joan in WSPU eulogies; they were quick to capitalise on the acquisition of a contemporary martyr-narrative to go with historical ones. In the US, when Inez Milholland, who famously asked the President how long women should wait for Liberty, died of pneumonia in 1916, she was directly represented as Joan by artists.
These days, however, we’re not falling over Joan of Arc button badges (although I do own this pretty natty sketchbook from the Museum of London) and Joan is not the Twitter avatar du jour for fully half your feminist mates, because that honour belongs to another female icon…
The Return of Rosie the Riveter
We still can’t get enough of her. Clasped to the bosom of the women’s lib movement in the 1970s, Rosie’s been a staple on flyers, books and posters ever since.
The woman from the We Can Do It! poster – known colloquially as Rosie the Riveter, although she was not, unlike Norman Rockwell’s poster, which was far more widely circulated, ever officially given that title – has, like Joan in the 1900s, been embraced by feminist campaigners as a a key visual figure. Minimally circulated in the war itself, rediscovered as the women’s movement gathered speed, “Rosie” is arguably as famous in her capacity as a feminist pop culture icon as a piece of WW2 propaganda; having borrowed her, we can’t stop remixing her, making her more bluntly feminist, more cheekily self-aware, undercutting the patriotic feeling of the original, or just because, from under a pile of retrokitsch retouches, she gives many of us a more direct sense of legacy than Joan. Although many feminists claim emotional kinship with the suffrage movement, it is Rosie that they totemically hold on to.
Fridge magnets, wall clocks and coasters, many replacing “We Can Do It!” with “Feminism!” populate Cafepress in mushroom clouds of pouting and elbow-baring with a regularity that is by turns reassuring – look how far we’ve come – and galvanising – and we’re not done yet – but also carries a ring of predictability, mainly because I often find myself hoping we’re all still considering which “we” we’re talking about who “can do it”.
Rosie’s enduring popularity with feminists is good-ironic or hmm-ironic depending how you look at it. Sociological Images produced an excellent article earlier this year, Myth-Making and the ‘We Can Do It!’ Poster which ably demonstrates her limitations as a feminist icon, particularly in terms of her original status as a possible anti-trade union figurehead – we can do it (if you guys don’t ever strike, so better not!).
On the other hand, the persistence and force with which feminists have held fast to Rosie has created a new cultural space in which she exists beyond WWII as a feminist symbol in her own right – we discovered just how often she appears on Google for “feminism” in this post.
There’re many images are out there of real-life Rosies, who often aren’t as primped, glamorous or white. To your right is one such worker in 1943; many women (and men) of colour who did not feature on the war’s posters at all, played a crucial role in winning it. The many Rosie remakes on the market, all of which are uniformly white, have so far not engaged this issue. The more amusing ones include Buffy going retro and Princess Leia following suit. Meanwhile, celebrities including Pink have posed as Rosie. And on the explicitly feminist media front, the cover image of Cath Redfern and Kristin Aune’s Reclaiming The F-Word also references her with a knowing wink.
A section of Judith F Baca’s mural The Great Wall of Los Angeles features a panicked Rosie being swallowed by a television, titled “Farewell to Rosie the Riveter”:
The inference is clear – the reminder that after the war, women went, in droves, back to homemaking. And it’s this that partly sits behind Rosie’s continued resonance; the War is still such a milestone, representing simultaneously the power of a female workforce and the limitations placed upon it.
And what about now?
Everything Old Is New Again (Again?)
… And it’s only in the last century that women have got the vote, women have had the right to go to university, and this government cannot be responsible for taking hard-won women’s rights away from us, ‘cos the damage they’ll do if they pass this bill… will undo decades…
– student protester dressed as suffragette speaking to the Guardian, December 2010
The suffragettes themselves, who once dressed up as Joan of Arc and declared her their cultural totem for the age, are now totemic in their own right. The women who held a woman who died in the 14th century up as their patroness have now inherited their own set of legendary laurels. What do we think about this? How useful is it? I’m honestly not sure.
LibDem Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone’s office was picketed last December by student protesters dressed in the WSPU’s signature colours of green, white and purple. Whilst on the 26th March 2011 landmark anti-cuts demonstration spearheaded by GoingToWork, I spotted replica pieces of suffragette propaganda being carried down Whitehall.
Meanwhile, feminist climate change pressure group Climate Rush have resurrected the entire apparatus of Edwardian propaganda aesthetics. Their promotional material, which is replete with obvious references to the imagery of the suffrage movement – big hats, button boots and sashes – that dominates the public consciousness, uses slogans such as “In the Name of the Suffragette”.
I doubt this would faze the WSPU leadership, who were adept self-mythologisers even in their time. They knew they were making history, and the Pankhursts particularly were anxious to dispense with self-effacement in the face of what they saw as the pressing need for deeds over words. I admit I’m not sure what I think of the Rush’s implied assertion that the WSPU’s goals, aside from their slogans, would necessarily marry up with those of climate change activists in 2011 (Emmeline Pankhurst did, after all, stand as a Tory candidate, when all was said and done, and the upper echelons of the WSPU did little to help working class women such as Dora Thewlis).
Perhaps the most interesting of these modern takes on early 20th century protest propaganda is Climate Rush activist and artist Cordelia Cembrowicz’s lithographs which feature a more diverse range of women than the many iterations of Rosie.
I do wonder what will be on our posters next. Are we done yet, in these trying times of savage cuts that themselves remind of past eras, with suffrage and sainthood, with rivets and rolled curls? Should we be? I’m not sure.
I’ll be on some of the demos, finding out.
]]>Geneviève Pastre is France’s leading lesbian activist, poet, writer and philosopher. Born in 1924, she is responsible in a large measure for the creation of the Gay Liberation Movement in France.
Despite the list of titles above, Pastre herself refuses any simple political identity, declaring “Je ne suis pas une activiste. Je suis poéte et danseuse” (I am not an activist. I am a poet and a dancer). Nevertheless, she has also been a journalist, radio broadcaster, publisher, mime artist and theatre director.
Pastre’s coming-out, at the age of 56, followed successful careers as an academic, theatre practitioner and poet. Born in French-occupied Mainz after the First World War, Pastre was educated at the Sorbonne, then became a high school teacher. While in Paris, Pastre studied mime with Marcel Marceau and Jacques Lecoq; between 1960 and 1976, Pastre also directed a theatre troupe, which would eventually take her name: Compagnie Geneviève Pastre.
It was during her time as a director that Pastre began gaining recognition as a poet, subsequently publishing ten poetry collections between 1972 and 2005. In 1976, having privately begun to live with a woman, she began agitating for lesbian rights in France. Her official coming-out was a declaration in print: the 1980 essay on female sexuality, De L’Amour lesbien (About Lesbian Love).
By 2000, Pastre had published a further five books, including historical works. As the titles of Homosexuality in the Ancient World and Athens and the Sapphic Peril suggest, Pastre was one of the first feminist theorists to deconstruct classical myths. Challenging the dominance of Foucault’s History of Sexuality, she argued that Foucault – and with him the male academy – had misinterpreted both ancient languages and lesbian sexuality.
Pastre’s greatest contribution, however, has undoubtedly been to the transformation of queer rights, and thus queer life, in France. A year before coming out in the pages of De L’Amour lesbien, Pastre co-founded Comité d’Urgence Anti-Répression Homosexuelle (CUARH). Mobilising the smaller, disparate French gay rights groups that already existed – including David et Jonathan (gay Christians), and Beit Haverim (gay Jews) – CUARH organised a massive protest on 4th April 1981. 10,000 French LGBT people and allies joined what has since been recognised as France’s first ever gay rights march, campaigning for homosexual sex (decriminalised since the French revolution) to have the same age of consent as for heterosexuals.
Such was the strength of the CUARH protest that a few days later, the French president, Mitterrand, pledged to fulfil their demands. In 1982, Geneviève Pastre organised, with CUARH, France’s first ever Gay Pride celebrations; the organisation went on to fight against homophobia in the workplace and in the adoption process.
The 1980s were Pastre’s most prolific decade, touching almost every area of queer life in France and beyond. In 1982, within months of helping to found France’s Gay Pride movement, Pastre became the president of Frequence Gaie, FM Paris’s gay-interest radio station. Despite leaving FG in 1984, she continued to host a weekly show on Radio Libertaire, showcasing other French queer and feminist activists. In the world of publishing, Pastre not only founded Editions G. Pastre, a press dedicated to progressive and feminist authors, but also Les Octaviennes, a collective for lesbian authors active in France.
However, it was in 1995 that Pastre stepped even further into the political arena, founding Les Mauves, known in English as the “Lavender Party”. Although their most high-profile campaign – to run a candidate in the 2002 presidential election – failed, Les Mauves have campaigned successfully on national and international issues. Pastre’s party helped successfully persuade the World Health Organisation to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness; similarly, France was, in 1999, the first country to remove transsexualism from a national list of mental disorders. Pressure from Les Mauves also contributed to Amnesty International’s decision to support banned homosexuality as one of the grounds for seeking asylum.
At the age of 87, Pastre continues to write extensively on arts, politics and queer history: she has also organised festivals of queer culture, including the 1990 Festival européen de l’écriture gaie et lesbienne, in Paris. Active worldwide in the feminist and queer rights movements, Pastre’s influence can be felt not only in French activism, theatre, academia and publishing, but internationally. Beyond her enviable contributions to French culture, her work with Les Mauves has helped transform the status, rights and prospects of LGBT people around the world. No revolting woman could have done more.
Further Reading:
- Pastre’s blog (now an archive, in French, and if you do read French try this post, pour reflechir: le projet des Politides ou Mauves)
- Biographies of Pastre: Poezibao (in French) and glbtq.com (English)
- Band of Thebes feature on Pastre (from 2007, in English)
- Overview of gay rights in France (aimed at LGBT tourists and immigrants, in English)
- CUARH’s manifesto (1980, in French)
- Amazon UK author page
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- Read more from Sophie at Clamorous Voice
So, this happened.
In case you’ve been on the other side of the moon these past few months, the media’s much-touted Arab Spring had an interesting tangent via a discussion in the Saudi Council on whether women in Saudi Arabia should be allowed the vote. They eventually decided that yes, they probably should… eventually. We wouldn’t want to rush these things. They won’t be able to contest the elections, of course, but least – if King Abdullah considers the recommendations – they may be able to cast a vote in the municipal elections.
Except that this small pittance of representation didn’t seem to be satisfactory for women in Saudi Arabia. So… well, see for yourselves. Here is Manal al-Sharif driving in Saudi Arabia, and discussing what it means for her to do so.
She was arrested and imprisoned for 10 days for daring to drive.
She’s not the only one. There’s an entire site of these vids (in fact, more than one): women driving in Saudi Arabia, in protest at… well, mostly not being allowed to drive. Here’s a twitter feed of them doing it in style. In fact, June 17 saw 30 or 40 women behind the wheel, following weeks of an online campaign that saw women taping or photographing themselves driving. (If you’re wondering whether 30-40 people is a lot, consider what happened the last time women tested this ban. Think about what ‘punishment’ means in Saudi Arabia. Then try to imagine being one of those women out there on 17 June.)
There is, of course, a danger to conflating correlation and causality. Yes, women protesting by driving happened to take place at about the same time that women’s voting rights were being revived for discussion in Saudi Arabia. It could have been a massive coincidence, and 30-40 women, however courageous, hardly make up a political movement all by themselves. And anyway, what does driving have to do with political representation?
The Times‘s Janice Turner is pretty clear where she stands in a now-paywalled article titled The Freedom of the Road is a Feminist Issue. Consider being a woman in Saudi Arabia. Ignore all the discussions about political representation for the moment, and focus instead on the daily grind. You get up, you get dressed, you have to go to work or to the market or whatever. Luckily, your husband has hired you a car with your very own (male) driver… and should he feel perfectly comfortable in sexually assaulting you, there is nothing you can do about it.
Or how about you forgo the potential dubious safety of a hired car and opt for a taxi. Prepare to walk the streets trying to hail one: streets where your mere presence outdoors may be cast as a sexual provocation. Inevitably, in trying to lock women away ‘for their own protection’, lest they be seen by vociferous male eyes, the Wahhabi religious laws have created a space so deeply hostile and threatening to women that their mere presence is transgressive. It is little wonder, then, that Manal al-Sharif talks about how safe she feels in her car, with her doors locked.
A person’s first car has always symbolised their freedom: be it at 17, with their newly-minted license and the entirety of the countryside filled with welcoming ditches to drive it into, or at 50, with a newly-issued divorce and a hesitant rediscovery of independent living. A woman who has a car gets to choose the place she is occupying. If she wants to leave, she is not dependent on anyone else. What could be more terrifying to the Saudi religious leaders? Never mind that neither the Koran nor the law bans women from driving; they were so terrified at the freedom driving would afford women that they went ahead and issued a fatwa just to be safe.
New Saudi Arabia's traffic sign (women2drive). (Image = public domain via wiki. Created by Carlos Latuff)
So what actually happened on June 17th, when these 30-40 women took to the road? Did governments fall or cities rock? Reports differ. For one thing, no one can agree on the number. Even the Guardian seems confused, using the 30-40 figure in one article, and “at least 45” in another. The government of Saudi Arabia is in flat-out denial, refusing to acknowledge that the protest happened at all (despite a traffic ticket being issued).
Two weeks on, five of the drivers were arrested, despite early comments from the government that they would allow their families to ‘deal with them‘. Despite this, campaigners are not deterred, continuing to maintain a significant social media presence. And even before the protest took place the Shoura declare that they were ready to discuss women driving “if requested“. I’m thinking that women risking arrest in order to parallel park in Riyadh would qualify as such.
Meanwhile, Manal al-Sharif hasn’t given up. Since her release from custody, the former prisoner of conscience has been spearheading a movement to teach more and more women how to drive. With the moderate King Abdullah on the throne, and the authorities apparently turning a blind eye to the recent on-road excursions by three women during Eid, it looks like the driving ban may not be in place for much longer.
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“¡No pasarán!”
(‘They shall not pass!’)-Dolores Ibárruri, July 19, 1936 (Madrid, Spain)
Dolores Ibárruri age 82
No, not Gandalf: La Pasionaria. Or, ‘The Passion Flower’ in English. Before I continue to talk about Ibárruri, I acknowledge that I’m a bit of a giddy schoolchild when it comes to praising anything Basque in a public sphere and that having a Hispanic Studies degree means I take some knowledge for granted. So some background information is probably going to be pretty useful for you all.
The Spanish Civil War began in 1936 when General Francisco Franco led troops in an attempted coup d’état against the Second Republic. Although the government were caught unawares and significant numbers of Spain’s army were behind Franco, the events of July 1936 turned into a three year civil war. Having written several thousand words on the subject during the course of my degree, I could go into much greater detail but I don’t want to detract from our main focus. Basics to remember: Franco et al were far-right/fascist; the Second Republic was left/socialist. Now we can move on to our woman of the hour.
Isidora Dolores Ibárruri Gómez was born on 9th December 1895 in Gallarta, within the borders of the Basque Country in Spain, into a poor mining family. In 1918 she adopted the pseudonym ‘Pasionaria’ on the publication of an article, highlighting religious hypocrisy, which coincided with Holy Week in a devotedly Catholic country. In 1920 she was appointed as a member of the Provincial Committee of the Basque Communist Party and in 1930 moved up to the Central Committee of the PCE (Communist Party of Spain). In ’31 she moved to Madrid alongside the formation of the Second Republic and was jailed in September ’31 for the first in several arrests over the following five years.
There are many amazing things that she did as a prominent pre-war communist woman in politics in Spain, and for a succinct overview of them all I urge you to have a look over on her Wikipedia entry. There’s only so much I can say within one article and I want to focus on her wartime contributions to the fight against Franco and fascism.
During the war she was, above all, an astounding orator and a passionate figurehead for the men and women trying desperately to battle Franco’s advances. As a communist she was no stranger to strong retaliations against her speeches and actions, but during the Civil War she became much more than just a voice for communism. She became a central figure for the Republicans trying to push fascism back and defend Spain against Franco.
The whole country cringes in indignation at these heartless barbarians that would hurl our democratic Spain back down into an abyss of terror and death. However, THEY SHALL NOT PASS! For all of Spain presents itself for battle.
[…] The Communist Party calls you to arms. We especially call upon you, workers, farmers, intellectuals to assume your positions in the fight to finally smash the enemies of the Republic and of the popular liberties. Long live the Popular Front! Long live the union of all anti-fascists! Long live the Republic of the people! The Fascists shall not pass! THEY SHALL NOT PASS!
– Dolores Ibárruri, No Pasarán speech (translated here)
- Youtube:an original speech
- Youtube: Maxine Peake reading her International Brigades’ sendoff speech
- Daniele Conversi, The Basques, The Catalans and Spain: Alternative Routes to Nationalist Mobilisation (2000)
- Helen Graham, The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction (2005)
- Paul Preston, The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution and Revenge (2006)
La Pasionaria statue in Glasgow
Most people will know, however, that Franco won. Ibárruri spent much of her life thereafter in exile, but returned to Madrid in 1977 and lived in Spain for the remaining 12 years of her life. On her 90th birthday, the PCE organised a party in Madrid with upwards of 15,000 guests; when she died of pneumonia at age 93 thousands of people paid their respects and attended her funeral, where they chanted “They shall not pass!”. The life and actions of La Pasionaria were felt internationally (e.g. there’s a statue of her in Glasgow) and there remains strong opinion on both sides of the political spectrum on her in Spain (if you read Spanish, have a glance at some of the comments on the YouTube video).
I know this has been brief, but there is plenty more to discover for yourself; I am only here to open the door.
It is better to die on your feet than to live forever on your knees.
– La Pasionaria