About a month ago I emailed both Sainsburys and Tesco, following it up with tweets, about the gendering of magazines. It seemed wrong that New Scientist, Photography, NME, The Economist and Private Eye sat in ‘Men’s Interests’ sections while women had the 3,738 fashion and beauty mags as well as knitting and cooking mags.
Tesco were the first to respond, telling me via tweet that they were passing this up to central management:
It took a while for anything else to happen, but a week later I got an email from Sainsburys saying that where they were refurbishing or creating a new store, they would cease to gender their magazines.
Fabulous. I mean, I would prefer it if they spent the small amount of money printing new labels for the plastic holders on their magazine racks and replaced them all NOW, but that’s because they have a lot of stores, and seeing this every day still makes my head hurt and fear for young girls who go in and subconsciously learn that science and politics are not for them and that they should concentrate on being pretty while cooking.1
But Tesco still haven’t replied properly. Nothing more except another tweet to BadRep saying management are looking at it. And now, the Everyday Sexism Project (@EverydaySexism on Twitter, and you can also check out the hashtag #everydaysexism) is really helping out – drawing attention to the gendered labels in a local store and retweeting those pressuring @UKTesco to take some form of action.
What would be even better would be for more of us to email them. And while you’re at it, email Sainsburys too and ask them to put their hand in their pocket to start making the changes now, so we don’t have to look at this sexism everyday. It’s just not good enough.
- Ed’s tiny note: Or indeed the boys who learn to compartmentalise “knitting”, for example, as “for girls” – certainly some proud male knitters have commented on this site in the past!
A few days after we received the post, one chain emailed Lizzie back. We’ve added the email into the post so you can see CUSTOMER SERVICE IN ACTION.
And if you have a guest post brewing in your brain, you know what to do: pitch us at [email protected].
Image: Flickr user Toban Black (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tobanblack/)
The Problem
Dear Tesco and Sainsburys,
Can you please cease categorising The Economist, New Scientist, Private Eye, and the Spectator as ‘Men’s Interest’ magazines? I think you’ll find all genders are interested in politics and business. You are perpetuating the myth that women only care about (because they are valued for) their beauty.
While I accept (but hate) that a large proportion of women read Cosmo and Marie Claire and Good Housekeeping, I think that a large proportion also watch the news, vote, work, and may be interested in reading The Economist from time to time. You don’t segregate papers (although papers themselves, with their Femail sections, and Style sections, also start pushing my buttons). Why the shit have you determined that certain topics are not for the eyes of women?
Women still suffer unequal pay way before they think about maternity leave, and this is part of the same problem – you are saying that business and politics (something we are all involved in, one way or another) is purely the domain of men.
Sort this out immediately, please. It’s patronising and misogynistic. Actually, can you please also remove film, photography, game, cars, nature and music mags from the same category while you are at it, as that’s also inaccurate as well? Unless you think women can’t like music, cars, photography, video games, nature and film? I mean, it’s not as if you really think only men are interested in those topics, right? You have to admit that, say, there have been some female musicians, and some women actually enjoy going to the cinema and hey, Diane Arbus existed, and gosh, there are female commuters on the roads.
I’d stick with just Men’s Health if I were you, and even that’s shaky.
Thanks,
Women in the UK
What to do?
To complain to Tesco, please go here. For Sainsburys, here. If we get enough people complaining, maybe they’ll actually listen and change their stores. I mean, if a little girl can get the name of a loaf of bread changed at Sainsbury’s, surely they’re amenable to listening to vindicated complaints by women who are tired of being told to not use our brains and instead just look pretty. I mean, bread name change by photogenic small child must have meant something rather than being innocuous PR in a time of recession, right?
Boom! Progress from Sainsburys!
From: Sainsburys
To: LizzieDear Lizzie
Thank you for your email and suggestion that we reconsider the signage used to categorise magazines in our stores. I understand you feel our current method is dated and we certainly do not want to imply the magazines are gender specific.
Up until now we have used information from publishers, who identify the target demographic for their magazines. We have organised the magazines on our shelves accordingly. We appreciate the points you have made, and have undertaken a review of the signage we use in store.
I am pleased to say that going forward, our magazines will be shown by genre and they will not have a gender prefix. There will not be an immediate change to the magazine sections in all our stores as this will be a gradual roll out replacing the existing signage. This should also address the grammar issues that you kindly brought to our attention.
We appreciate you taking the time to contact us, giving us the opportunity to look into your concerns. We look forward to seeing you in store again soon.
So that just leaves Tesco, from whom, as we go to press, Lizzie is still waiting to hear. Bad form, guys. (Although what Sainsburys mean by “grammar issues” is eluding us slightly here at BR Towers. This is a SEXISM ISSUE.)
Time to get on it, readers! To the Tesco feedback page, one and all.
- Thanks to Lizzie for making a noise and sending us her progress. Have you had a Customer Service Breakthrough or Problem lately? Get in touch and tell us all about it!
On the surface, it doesn’t seem like it would be a big deal, right? I mean, you say bride, you think ‘bridesmaids’. What wedding photographer doesn’t have a plethora of pictures of a girl in white, smiling, with five other women of varying ages in a terrifying shade of coral, looking less happy? If you’re the bride, you’re meant to be surrounded by loads of female extras being feminine and cooing about appearance and hair and The Dress and flowers – that’s what the media show. But I had a big issue when it came to my bridesmaids. I have a lot of friends and they are’t all female, and lots of them are in different groups and some are in different countries. In the end, I have a family member (stepsister), my best mate (who lives in South Korea) and a bridesman.
Yup, that’s right. I’ve known Dan since I was 18 and he knows me almost as well as my fiancé, so screw it, he’s in my bridal party. I have a bridesman. There are actually some great sides to this. For one thing, like my fiancé, he doesn’t drink, so he’ll be very helpful in negotiating the family tensions on the day when it comes to the group photographs. For another, he’s great at calming me down and getting me to remember to have some perspective. And he’s funny and can cheer me up when I’m stressed and grumpy.
Needless to say, my mother does not approve. ‘Why can’t he be part of Future Husband’s party?’ she wailed. It is seemingly ‘not done’ to have men in your wedding entourage if you’re a woman, I imagine because of women not having male friends in the same way in the old days, because, tradition implies, that would surely lead to romance. (Although I have in fact slept with him. I am not revealing this fact to my mother.) A couple of other people have joked ‘Oh, in a dress?’ and I’ve just stared at them until they stop with their gender stereotyping.
The idea of just having your female friends is a lovely one but a little outdated when you a) know what sex is and don’t need your married friends telling you before your wedding night, and b) regularly talk to men without the worry that someone will see you and call you a strumpet. We’ve moved on as a society, haven’t we? It’s nicely balanced by the fact that Future Husband chose his sister as his best man. I love that our wedding party is made up of a mix of men and women on both sides.
It’s also nice to have an additional excuse for extra parties. I’ve always said I would have a Cock Party as well as a Hen Do. Future Husband is having a Doe Night as well as a Stag Do. Fine, we’ll segregate by gender but by god we’ll have both. It shakes it up from the normal alternative of one single party we could throw, but also means that I’m not just hanging out in a female-only group.
It’s not even that I’ve set out to be ‘controversial’ (my mother, yet again), it’s just that I couldn’t see how I could organise my wedding and not be non-gender biased. We have too many friends, male and female, to simply be that abrupt and schismatic.
- Lizzie is getting married in 2013 and has already planned roughly 5,748 weddings in her head. You can find more of her musings, wedding-themed reviews and rantings at Wedding Belles UK.
Last week, Paul Cornell (comics, TV and novel writer) stated that, in a bid to get more equal gender representation on Science Fiction and Fantasy convention panels, he was going to stand down from any panel that wasn’t 50/50 or near as and invite a woman to take his place.
Cue an awesome shitstorm of vitriol and support. The main thrust of some feminists’ arguments I’ve heard against this, and in some cases against Paul personally, is that this was ego boosting, man-on-a-white-horse, mansplaining wank and we don’t need it.
Sorry, sisters, but we do. Let’s take a look at the arguments.
1. ‘This looks like it’s a man to the rescue of women, showing us in a submissive and passive light, needing us to be thrust into the spotlight by a man with agency.’
Um, yes. You know why? Because sexism has been so ingrained in SFF over the years, back when it was a male-dominated genre, this is actually our starting point. Editors get fewer submissions from women regarding horror, fantasy and hard SF, the subgenres that are often most applauded by critics (also mostly male). Publishers put fewer women forward for convention guest spots, and female authors themselves look at the gender make-up of panels and step back. I think women haven’t stood up en masse to rectify this because it became the norm. We told ourselves ‘SFF is sexist, so they don’t notice women’ and forgot that arguably – especially when you take account of urban fantasy and paranormal romance – there are more of us in the genre, and hey, we sell more copies. We have as much right to be at those cons, doing those signings, making our voices heard, as the feted men do. SFF convention organisers have shoved women on all-women panels, told us to talk about ‘women in SFF’ and then told us that’s the debate and equality will shake out of that. It won’t. I think, somewhere along the way, we forgot to band together and tell SFF and con organisers to go shove their sexism. Maybe this will help.
2. ‘We don’t need no man sorting this out for us.’
See above. We do. It sucks. That’s the frikkin’ point. SFF wasn’t listening when we were raising our voices. I wish, I fervently wish, that when a woman makes a point about gender inequality, it wasn’t explained away as being a ‘women’s issue’ and therefore marginal and easy to ignore. It shouldn’t be. This is about equality – which affects you, regardless of gender. Yes, it sucks that the world takes notice when a man does something. No, it shouldn’t be this way. But it is. And maybe, just maybe, if we join hands and do this thing together without drawing gender lines ourselves, in a few years, it won’t be this way anymore.
3. ‘This casts the woman who is invited to speak as an also-ran, putting her immediately as a runner-up to the man stepping down for her.’
Yes, it does. And I think this does mean that Paul may have to change his approach, perhaps so that he and other people (male or female, it’s 50/50 for all) ask the con organisers to disclose the gender balance of the panels they are being invited on, and then, if it’s out of whack, suggest another male (or female) author to readdress the balance. This way, your fans still get to see you on a balanced panel elsewhere at the convention, and there doesn’t have to be any theatre or drawing of attention to an act of substitution.
But, and I want to be really clear about this, just because Paul suggested something that isn’t 100% ideal for women, doesn’t mean we have to throw out the entire idea. The theory is good; we just have to look at the best way of putting it into practice. We don’t need to get into an uproar because the first suggestion wasn’t the best approach – it’s not carved in stone.
My point is: this is a starting point. We’re gonna have to be big girls and suck up some of the stuff we don’t like to help make a change that we desperately want. We have to be pragmatic and proactive, because the status quo wasn’t changing with us doing nothing or shouting about it in forums and on blogs. We shouldn’t be jumping on this suggestion and saying it’s all tosh because it can be seen as patronising – can we please get past that and look at how the entire situation that this is trying to fight against is worse?
Paul’s proposal may not be perfect. But out of it is growing a 50/50 movement that a lot of women and men are getting behind. We’re asking people to talk to cons to check out their gender balance before they say yes. We’re asking women to promote themselves more. We’re asking readers to look at their shelves and see if they read mostly female or male authors, and to try adding a different gender to the shopping cart next time they buy books. I’m hoping that feminists can look at the big picture here and see that we are struggling to bring visible equality to SFF – and that along the way, we’re going to need equal input from all genders to do it.
- Lizzie is the publicity officer for the British Fantasy Society but considers herself ‘rogue’ when it comes to the 50/50 campaign, so content is her own and not the BFS’s. She prefers fantasy books and science fiction TV, and believes that books are a viable form of currency.
- I made that one up, but it’s a valid question. Why?
Photo by flickr user ninasaurusrex
Oh, it’s a little thing, I grant you. One word. And it’s so innocuous that most people don’t even think it’s an issue. When we got engaged, we got cards addressed to ‘The Future Mr & Mrs HisLastName’. One friend remarked she couldn’t wait to address her first Christmas card to ‘the HisLastNames’. Another asked if we were looking forward to be announced at our reception as ‘Mr and Mrs HisLastName’. Each time, I’m afraid I’ve shot them down brusquely – even though I’m still deciding what to do.
Why? Well, for starters, I’ve had 30 years of being Lizzie MyLastName, not Lizzie His. It sounds weird to me, like I’m playacting someone else. I’d have to change my passport, my bills, my driver’s licence, my personal emails, my work email, my Facebook – it’s too much damn work. And the biggest reason for my uncertainty: why should I have to literally rename myself to my husband’s last name when I get married? What’s so special about him? (Note: Obviously he’s very special or I wouldn’t be marrying him, yadda yadda don’t take the ring back).
The looks and comments I get when I say these things are rooted in blustering British patriarchal tradition. I’ve had ‘But that’s just what you do’, ‘Just change it in your personal life, you don’t have to change your professional name’ and ‘But don’t you want the same name as your husband and children?’.
Um, maybe, if I planned on having any children. But he could change his name. My name is perfectly lovely. And quite frankly, if we did have kids, plenty of people would call me Mrs HisLastName without me ever having to change it. And for the person who said ‘But that’s just what you do’ (hi, mum! I forgive you because you gave birth to me), we used to put lead in cans, but hey, we changed our way of doing things! As Lucy Mangan said, “I’ve only known him six years. How come he gets to obliterate my history?”
So, what to do? If I don’t want to change my name to his, equally he doesn’t want to change it to mine. People have suggested hyphenating, which is what we would usually do – but alas, our name is a spoonerism that equates to ‘a bird’s balls’, so that’s not the ideal option after all. I quite like the idea of portmanteau-ing our name because it sounds like ‘Baroque’; clearly the most awesome outcome. But he thinks that sounds a bit fake. So, future husband and I are on a quest to find a new name that we can both change to. And in an example of patriarchy working for women instead of against them, this is easier and cheaper for me to do. He has to change it by deed poll – I just have to sign my new name on the marriage licence.
I’m secretly convinced that this will not happen. Family pressure will mean he keeps his name – plus, his profession of author spills into his personal life, so changing his surname is not the most sensible thing to do. And my name actually sounds great with his last name. But while it doesn’t make a whole lot of logical sense to insist on keeping one man’s name (my father’s) instead of taking another’s, equally I don’t want to have a visible sign that I am subsuming my identity into his and becoming ‘the wife’. I’m sure we will make a decision – but more late night discussions and trying out new signatures may be required.
- Lizzie is getting married in 2013 and has already planned roughly 5,748 weddings in her head. You can find more of her musings, wedding-themed reviews and rantings at Wedding Belles UK.
But feminists come in many shapes and sizes and while the froo-froo shit doesn’t bother me in weddings (although really, someone tell me why you would spend money on wedding favours instead of booze?), there are a couple of traditions that I’m having trouble swallowing. I’m talking about being given away. This is actually really stressful for me, because I’m torn between duty/love and wanting to remain true to myself. It’s tradition that the bride’s father gives her away. Sometimes, if he isn’t available, it’s her brother or uncle, or her mother. In Jewish tradition it is both her parents. And I sodding hate the entire idea.
It’s only in recent years that we primarily started marrying for love. Back in Ye Olden DayesTM, people married for financial security, or because their families had arranged it. Brides came with dowries of land, money, and/or resources and grooms came with significant presents to her family. To show that the head of the family (the dad) was satisfied, the bride would be handed over on her wedding day by her father to show that she was no longer his property and was now the responsibility of the groom’s family.
Ick.
The very thought of this makes my skin crawl. I don’t understand why I can’t walk down the aisle myself, head high as I approach my future husband – my own agency, my own choice, nothing to do with being someone’s chattel. I even like the idea, becoming more common in America, of meeting your betrothed at the entrance of your ceremony venue, having a private moment and then walking in together. You are, after all, entering the married state together, so why not the church or hall?
But. There’s a but. In that I know my dad has always planned on walking me down the aisle. I mean, it’s not like he’s been fantasising about it since I was seven, but it was taken as fact that that’s what I’d have. And while he’s said to me he doesn’t mind what I do at my wedding and that he doesn’t even have to be invited, I can’t quite get to the point of saying ‘No, dad, I don’t want you to walk me down the aisle’. For one thing, he’s my dad and he’s been damn supportive of me, so making him happy with this one thing should be a compromise I’m willing to make. For another, I may need someone to lean on so I don’t wobble with nerves, or panic, or booze (fuck yeah, Dutch courage!). And part of me thinks ‘aww’ when I envision his face as he walks me down the aisle and I face my fiancé. We’re not having a traditional ceremony so there will be no ‘who gives this woman’ because no one does – so surely it won’t matter that much.
So with all these reasons, why does my stomach clench when I think about it? Why do I actively fret over this very simple, 30 second task that is dwarfed by the lifetime vows I’m going to make five minutes afterwards? Do what I want, and I have to deal with a hurt father and guilt – do what will make him happy and I feel like a fake. It’s a conundrum and one I’m not sure I know how to answer. I’m hoping wisdom and clarity will come to me sometime this year.
(Photo: Phil Hawksworth.)
- Lizzie is getting married in 2013 and has already planned roughly 5,748 weddings in her head. You can find more of her musings, wedding-themed reviews and rantings at Wedding Belles UK.