protest – Bad Reputation

Pussy Riot revisited

Rhian E Jones — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 09:01:32 +0000

Since we first wrote on Pussy Riot back in February, widespread attention has been given to the subsequent arrest, trial and imprisonment of three members of the group, while mass anti-government protest continues in Russia. From the past few months of coverage and debate, here are just a few things which have interested me on the complexities of Pussy Riot’s background and media presentation.

This (mildly NSFW) video is кисья ересь (Heresy of Little Cats), by the Russian electro-punk band Barto:

As a non-speaker of Russian who hasn’t found the lyrics anywhere, I’m sure there’s a lot I’m not getting, but I like the song, the band are pretty admirable, and I like the video’s satirical emphasis on the patriarchal intertwining of political and religious authorities – the formal alliance of Putin’s government and the Russian Orthodox Church, making it possible for civil disobedience to be framed as blasphemy, was a point of contention highlighted by the Pussy Riot trial.

I found the song via this post, which discusses the relatively muted response by the Russian underground music scene to the group’s trial and imprisonment. It also corrects the impression of Pussy Riot as (merely?) a feminist punk band, when they are more a product of the intersection between political activism and performance art:

As a matter of fact Pussy Riot, although calling themselves a punk-band and using the sign of punk in their performances, never belonged to the Russian punk scene. They consider themselves as art-actionists, clearly place themselves in the context of contemporary Russian actionism, quoting the names of Prigov, Brener, Kulik and other art-provocateurs of the 1990s.

So Pussy Riot’s frequently mentioned connection with riot grrrl has more to do with the latter’s existence as a DIY subculture involving zines, art, détournement and activism, than with music alone. Which is fair enough; back in the 90s, one of the odder of Courtney Love’s swipes at Kathleen Hanna, in fact, was that “She’s not really in a band… She’s a political activist who took a bunch of women’s studies classes.” On the subject of Pussy Riot, Hanna herself had this to say:

What if people all over the world started their own performance groups, bands, art collectives, etc… and called them things like Pussy Riot Olympia. Pussy Riot, Athens Greece, Pussy Riot Paris, etc….And maybe if this trial turns out as the prosecutors want it to, with the women getting at least 3 years, we all play benefits and go to Russia en masse under the banner that we are all Pussy Riot, Yoko Ono could be in Pussy Riot, Patti Smith could be wearing a mask next to a troupe of girls from Tennesee storming the Cathedral of Christ the Savior screaming “We are all Pussy Riot!!!”

As I wrote in February, it 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. The Western media, perhaps understandably, tended instead to present the band in more straightforward and simplistic terms – rendering them more comprehensible to a Western audience, sure, but often in a less than helpful manner. I’d been hoping someone would pick up on the patronising and infantilising aspects of much of the media presentation of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich, and, in this article, Sarah Kendzior nails it:

Imagine this: The three men sit in court, awaiting their verdict. The youngest, a experienced dissident described by the media as a “sultry sex symbol” with “Angelina Jolie lips”, glances at his colleague, an activist praised by the Associated Press for his “pre-Raphaelite looks”. Between them sits a third man, whose lack of glamour has led the New Republic to label him “the brain” and deem his hair a “poof of dirty blonde frizz”. The dissidents – or “boys” as they are called in headlines around the world – have been the subject of numerous fashion and style profiles ever since they first spoke out against the Russian government. “He’s a flash of moving color,” the New York Times writes approvingly about their protests, “never an individual boy.” If this sounds ridiculous, it should – and not only because I changed the gender… Pussy Riot identifies as feminist, but you would never know it from the Western media, who celebrate the group with the same language that the Russian regime uses to marginalize them. The three members of Pussy Riot are “girls”, despite the fact that all of them are in their twenties and two of them are mothers. They are “punkettes”, diminutive variations on a 1990s indie-rock prototype that has little resemblance to Pussy Riot’s own trajectory as independent artists and activists.

Of course, as Kendzior also points out, Pussy Riot have far more pressing concerns than being mischaracterized in the press. But:

Pussy Riot also tells us a lot about how we see non-Western political dissent in the new media age, and could suggest a habit of mischaracterizing their grave mission in terms that feel more familiar but ultimately sell the dissidents short: youthful rebellion, rock and roll, damsels in distress.

A lot of this sentiment is familiar: an impulse to treat protest in which women, particularly young women, are prominent, as fun, flippant, and fundamentally unserious. It’s the reverse of the censorious and sensationalist ‘Rage of the Girl Rioters’ response to the 2010 UK student protests. In the case of Pussy Riot, arguments for their sympathetic treatment are often explicitly predicated on the power imbalance involved – they are ‘just’ ordinary women (or indeed ‘girls’), what threat to the state can they possibly pose? – which surely entrenches the idea of women as both relatively powerless and harmless, rather than enabling any sort of feminist empowerment. Away from such frustrating portayals, however, there’s something to be said for the earlier stages of Pussy Riot’s trajectory, which offer examples both of how music can form part of a wider oppositional movement and for how women’s protest can be collective and anonymous, with no need of iconic or martyred figureheads.

And yes, I do realise this post can be summarised as: “Pussy Riot? Preferred their earlier work, before they got so commercial”. So it goes.

Take It To The Bridge: Beyond the “Rage of the Girl Rioters” (part 1/2)

Miranda — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 08:00:02 +0000

So. March For The Alternative hit Manchester’s Tory Party Conference last weekend, and this weekend there’s more direct action on the way.

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

Women in Black: A Revolting Women Found Feminism

Sarah Cook — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 08:00:57 +0000

This edition of Found Feminism is also part of a series on the theme of women and protest. The full series is collected under the tag “Revolting Women”.

They meet every Wednesday at 6pm and stand around the statue of legendary badass and feminist hero Edith Cavell, wearing black and holding signs. They don’t speak. They have an awesome homemade banner with some very cool patchwork stitching on it. We at BadRep Towers are very fond of both banners and patchwork.

Women in Black patchwork banner of EPIC-NESS!

They are the Women in Black. Not to be confused with their male counterparts – the Women in Black are probably not our ‘best, last and only line of defence’ against extra-terrestrial invasion, although I wouldn’t put it past them.

So, who are they and why is it a Found Feminism? Well, they’re an international network that offer a specific form of peaceful protest model – wear black, hold signs, don’t chant – and link up all the people (men AND women) in the world who do this or who want to do it.

Women in Black officially started off in the late 80s in Israel with women protesting against the occupation of Palestine, but they acknowledge their roots in much earlier female-led non-violent movements such as Black Sash and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

Women in Black are therefore part of a much wider story about the long-term involvement of women, and feminists, in the peace movement, in anti-war demonstrations and in alternative (including non-violent) forms of protest and revolution.

At a time of shouty, flash-in-the-pan protests and unpredictable acts of anger, a regular, silent protest is interesting in and of itself. It’s a reminder of the other ways to influence and change the world, as well as recognising the value of solidarity across borders. Something Edith herself would have probably approved of.

Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.

– Edith Cavell

For details on all the Women in Black UK vigils go here.

Revolting Women: The Ju-Jutsuffragettes

Stephen B — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 08:00:24 +0000

This post is part of a series on the theme of women and protest. The full series is collected under the tag “Revolting Women”.

My choice of subject for our Revolting Women series was decided the moment I saw the picture below, an event which caused me to loudly shout “GET IN!” and do an air-punch with great abandon.

The lady in this image is Mrs Edith Margaret Garrud (1872-1971), and she appears to have a policeman in an armlock.

It turns out that it’s only an actor playing the hapless bobby, because Edith is the person responsible for teaching the Suffragettes jujutsu.

Before we ask how a middle-aged woman in a respectable hat was able to learn the (then barely discovered) Japanese martial art, let’s look at why she’d bother:

We have not yet made ourselves a match for the police, and we have got to do it. The police know jiu-jitsu. I advise you to learn jiu-jitsu. Women should practise it as well as men.

We have got to have [military] drilling in the East End. If there is any man who has been in the Army or who knows anything about drilling, will he please communicate with me, and we will start drilling.

You should all go out with your sticks [Indian clubs which were popular for exercise at the time, and easily hidden in clothing]. What is the use of demonstrating for freedom and going unarmed? Don’t come to meetings without sticks in future, men and women alike. It is worth while really striking. It is no use pretending. We have got to fight.
– Sylvia Pankhurst, quoted in the New York Times on Aug 12th 1913, shortly before she was arrested.

With the recent practice of police using “kettling” to contain students during anti-cuts protests, and any (very predictable) resulting violence against police by the protesters subsequently being loudly criticised in newspapers, it’s refreshing to see the sentiments above. ‘Well, we have to learn jujutsu too, or the police might be able to stop us. And obviously we can’t have THAT. This is a protest! Get someone who can make it happen and have him report to me immediately. Next?’ While the actions may cause debate today, the sheer ‘nothing will stop us’ attitude is amazing.

But Sylvia is not the focus of this post, much as we love her here on BadRep. It’s Edith who is less well known but also truly remarkable. She taught PE at a school and married William, also a PE instructor, when she was 21 and he 22. They moved to London and met the intriguing Edward William Barton-Wright, who in 1899 started to teach them both jujutsu.

I have to pause again and talk about Barton-Wright, because England produces a unique brand of truly bonkers things and he was definitely responsible for one of them which is of great importance to this narrative.

Stances from Bartitsu, and in the centre E.W. Barton-Wright and his terrifying moustache. (Image = Public Domain from Wikipedia)

Sherlock Holmes, as well as being a boxer, was written in a later story as knowing the gentleman’s martial art of “Baritsu”. This was a mis-spelling of Barton’s invention, “Bartitsu” (Barton-jujitsu). Asian martial arts weren’t very widely known in the West before 1900, and he was one of the first instructors in Europe. It was a time when… well, when men had moustaches and hats like those in the accompanying image. Barton-Wright had learned Shinden Fudo Ryu jujutsu and judo, and developed a new system for English people of ‘class and bearing’ to use with dignity (and often a walking stick or umbrella).

It was his academy that Edith and her husband attended, and they both went on to become students of Sadakazu Uyenishi who taught there. When Uyenishi left his own dojo a few years later, they took over as teachers of that club in Soho. (Their daughter, Isabel, also assisted them in running the dojo from 1911 onwards, at the age of fifteen.)

Edith was almost certainly the first female jujutsu instructor in Europe. She and her husband continued teaching until 1925 – but from 1908 she alone ran some classes which were only open to suffragettes.

And if you thought that Sylvia was a straight-talker in the quotes above, Edith didn’t hold back either. There is far, far too much awesomeness going on to fit it all into this post, so I strongly recommend you read the pages on the other end of these links:

In her article “Damsel Vs Desperado” for Health and Strength magazine in 1910, Edith said that jujutsu was not just for protesters to use against police (as the newspapers were gleefully retelling) but that

Woman is exposed to many perils nowadays, because so many who call themselves ‘men’ are not worthy of that exalted title.

She then goes on to write a short story (with illustrations!) about a woman being attacked while “returning home along a lonely country road.” It contains lines such as:

Believing that he has had enough by now and that she has shown him what she can do, she gives him a severe twinge that makes him fairly squeal, and throws him off as a “thing” beneath contempt.

It was this magazine which came up with the title “Ju-jutsuffragettes”, one which Edith seemed to quite like, and in 1911 they printed another article describing a short sketch also written by her, in which a wife defends herself against her violently drunk husband. The headline proudly announced
“Ju-Jutsu as a Husband-Tamer: A Suffragette Play with a Moral“(!) The photos are brilliant (I am all too familiar with the wrist-lock in no.4, ouch) and the short script contains some comedy:

“I’ll learn this ‘ere jucy jujubes, Liz, for I could do for you if I was sober,” he says.
“No,” answers Liz; “you’re a good husband to me then, and wouldn’t want to, but when you’re drunk I’ll always be a match for you.”

The reminder that domestic violence was (and is) widespread enough to make the play relevant to the audience is chilling, however.

What makes Edith of particular importance to the protest movement she was part of is not just that she was a suffragette, or taught others to take on police during protests, but that she trained the 30 women known as “The Bodyguard”. This group was set up to prevent the frequent arrest of top suffragette protesters (the police would release those who were on hunger strike and then quickly re-arrest them). As well as pitched hand-to-hand fighting between ladies and Her Majesty’s constabulary, the Bodyguard used disguises, decoys and all sorts of other tricks to get the known leaders away after a protest. For many years, she was their chief trainer.

I ordered a copy of a charming book by Tony Wolf called “Edith Garrud: The suffragette who knew Jujutsu“. It’s one of the most fully-researched works on the woman and her deeds, but is written for children, leading to sentences such as ‘The Police, of course, didn’t like the idea of the Suffragettes’ new Bodyguard society one little bit.’ It also provides some amazing quotes and stories: during one public demonstration, a reporter from the Daily Mirror was invited to attack the 4’11” Edith on stage. After trying several attacks and being roundly thrown or wristlocked each time, he wrote of his experiences in an article for the newspaper:

I rose convinced of the efficiency of Jujutsu, and, aching in every limb, crawled painfully away, pitying the constable whose ill-fortune it should be to lay hands on Mrs. Garrud.

Again and again in her story we see parallels to the student and anti-cuts protests earlier this year. The suffragettes knew that property damage meant headlines, but there were generally strict boundaries – no people were to be hurt, and no factory or other workplace was to be damaged where people’s jobs would be affected. One incident Edith was involved in was a gathering of women on Oxford Street, who, when Edith blew a whistle, pulled hammers and rocks from under their clothes and threw them through shop windows. This was seen as a logical, necessary and entirely justified action which had a place in protest, not just empty vandalism, and she defends it eloquently. Newspapers and blogs are still having that debate today.

She presented a suffragette petition to Lloyd George, who started to argue with her. Edith replied “Now then, you are dealing with a fellow countrywoman from the Welsh Valleys. Be sensible, man!” (She was born in Bath but grew up in Wales). They then had entirely civil conversations on more than one occasion, although never agreed on ideals.

Edith depicted in the July 1910 edition of Punch magazine.

In an interview for Woman magazine when she was 94, she said that self-discipline had been the key to jujutsu and protest – discipline of the body, but much more of the mind. Even at that age she presented as someone with unbending levels of determination. Reading about women’s voices in protest then and now, the difference comes over as a directness in attitude: of being entirely sure that your cause is just and that you must therefore do everything to help protest succeed. The conversation in those circles would be “So the police are using kettling and ‘pre-emptive arrests’ to suppress dissent. How do we make sure those techniques never work on us again?”

Edith Garrud died in 1971 at the age of 99. She was instrumental in teaching the suffragettes the skills they used to evade capture and speak in public for longer. She also broke new ground in being a woman who taught martial arts only recently discovered in Europe to women. This year, Edith will be honoured with a permanent memorial by Islington council – an ‘Islington People’s Plaque’ – because she won a public vote to be one of the five people or places thus celebrated.

Revolting Women: The Fight for the Missing and the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo

Rob Mulligan — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 08:00:59 +0000

This post is part of a series on the theme of women and protest. The full series is collected under the tag “Revolting Women”.

Argentina, during the period from 1976-1983, was not a good place to look even remotely like a dissident. The era, known as the ‘Dirty War’, saw widespread violence carried out by Jorge Rafael Videla’s military junta against those it perceived as enemies of the state – students, journalists, trade unionists and Peronist guerillas (see the Night of the Pencils, Ezeiza Massacre, Margarita Belén Massacre and Luis Mendia’s death flights for examples). Assaults, assassinations and kidnappings were rife, and somewhere between 9,000 and 30,000 people were forcibly disappeared, leaving no official trace of their fates.

This set the stage for the formation of a group known as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, named for the plaza in central Buenos Aires where they first gathered. The Mothers are one of the more interesting protest movements of the late 20th century, and also a bunch of remarkable badasses.

Formed in 1977, the Mothers set out to pressure the government into admitting the fates of their disappeared children, the Desaparecidos. On the 30th of April that year sixteen women gathered outside the presidential palace to stage a demonstration, demanding to know what had happened to theirs sons and daughters. Consider that this was right in the middle of the Dirty War, when state-sponsored death squads were meting out harsh discipline pretty much with impunity. How staggeringly brave and determined do you have to be, at a time like that, to march up to the presidential palace and demand answers? This isn’t a movement that formed years later, in safety under a civilian government – they stood up to the military junta right from the start, despite the risks.

A poster of the missing

In a time when the government sought to isolate individuals, to separate and control people through application of terror, the Mothers gave a unified voice. They acted publicly, sharing their stories, gathering others to their cause. It was by no means a safe or easy course of action (fully one quarter of the founding Mothers were also disappeared before the junta left power in 1983), but they managed to grow a movement that is still going.

The ongoing work of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo has not gone on unnoticed. It has earned them international awards from bodies such as UNESCO and the European Parliament. It has also been met with harassment and repression. Three of the organization’s founding members have joined the ranks of the disappeared since its work began.

– Bruce Allen

Since the fall of the junta and the return to civilian government, the pressure exerted by the Mothers has resulted in several hundred of the missing being identified, or their remains found. Many younger children turned out to have been given to adoptive loyalist families, and the Mothers have acted as intermediaries to help these children come to terms with their pasts and interact with both their adoptive and birth families.

Beyond just finding the missing, many of the Mothers have seen it as their duty to carry on the dreams of their children, to live for the causes that got them taken in the first place. To this end the group has grown to encompass other political causes, including the founding of a university, libraries and bookshops, and the provision of healthcare subsidies.

What makes the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo particularly interesting is the boundary-crossing nature of their protest. A lot of activist movements and protest campaigns become unfortunately mired in divisions, locking out valuable voices (see the refusal by key female American activists to accept the black suffrage movement in the early 20th century, or the frequent erasure of trans* and non-white issues among a lot of modern groups). The Mothers, by contrast, brought together several spheres of Argentinean culture.

One of the early demonstrations by the Mothers, outside the Presidential Palace.

Active in the central business areas of Buenos Aires, and by all accounts an urban movement, they nevertheless counted many rural Argentinians amongst their number. Age divides were crossed too, with a Grandmothers division of the group who continued the work of their kidnapped children, and looked after the offspring of disappeared Mothers.

Following the return to civilian government in 1983, and the Trial of the Juntas in ’85, the Mothers went international. Argentina hadn’t been the only South American country to disappear dissidents during that time (see: Operation Condor), and the Mothers sought to bring international pressure down on countries that still hadn’t come clean about their activities, particularly the Pinochet regime in Chile.

“One of the most beautiful things that came out of my work with the Grandmothers was learning that there was so much interest and solidarity from people in other parts of the world. It was an extraordinarily positive experience. We have had support from the women’s movement, from the CHA [Comité Homosexual Argentino], and from the transsexual groups.”

– Nélida de Navajas, quoted in Rita Arditti’s Searching for Life

The Mothers are still active today, still working for answers about the fates of the thousands who remain unaccounted for, and still promoting the ideals and social changes their children were kidnapped for. They still march through the Plaza de Mayo every Thursday, in addition to a larger annual March of Resistance.

For further reading:

Searching For Life by Rita Arditti
Circle of Love Over Death by Matilde Mellibovsky
Revolutionizing Motherhood by Marguerite Bovard

(Note: This post is primarily concerned with the Founding Line branch of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. The Association faction, who split off in 1986, are more radical in their politics. They also do some very good work, but have publicly expressed some views that are difficult to endorse.)

Revolting Women: an introductory overview

Rhian E Jones — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 08:00:19 +0000

Last winter’s wave of student and youth protests held many points of interest, but one of the most amusing was the Daily Mail‘s pearl-clutching front page on what it chose to call Rage of the Girl Rioters, in which it claimed that ‘rioting girls’ had become ‘the disturbing new face of violent protest’. While the article betrayed predictable anxieties about social protest in general, the visible presence of female agency was an ingredient that occasioned a particularly salacious shock.

Comemmorative dollar for the Little Rock Nine, six of whom were women

What this highlighted, besides what we already know about the Daily Mail‘s peculiarities, was its historical ignorance of female involvement in popular protest. Contrary to the fears of Middle England, this is nothing new – we have, like John Sullivan’s comic creation, been revolting for years. Centuries, in fact, from the demonstrations by upper class Roman women in protest at state restrictions on their use of luxury goods, through the involvement of women of all classes in the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the great civil rights struggles of the twentieth century (left), to female participation in the current unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and Chile. We have marched, struck, rioted, occupied, petitioned, organised and agitated not only on behalf of our own interests as women, but also as part of broader social movements and collective actions, both peaceful and violent, carried out for social, political and economic reasons.

Often women’s involvement in protest has drawn on their gendered role within families and communities. Women played a significant part, for instance, in the riots over food supply, quality and price which swept Europe during its transition to a capitalist market economy from the 16th century to the 19th. Historians like Temma Kaplan, E P Thompson and Natalie Zemon Davis (and, er, me) have seen female participation in these protests as an extension of their role in the sexual division of labour, including food procurement and preparation, which lent legitimacy and authority to their involvement. The prominence of women in local networks of communication, and their presence in social centres like market squares as part of their daily routine, also allowed them to collectively mobilise and organise – the equivalent, under agrarian capitalism, of creating a Facebook Events page.

There is, however, a myriad of other movements and moments in which women have taken part as workers, students, trade union organisers, family members, and consumers, as well as on grounds of class, race, sexuality, and political principle. There’s even a Wikipedia list of female rebel leaders dating from the 9th century BC to this year’s uprising in Ivory Coast, which, even though this series is concerned less with individuals and more with women’s mass participation in protest, is still pretty cool.

Just as their presence is still being obscured in reports of current events in the Middle East, so women have historically been absent from many popular and academic accounts of protest. The advent of feminist-influenced social history from the mid-20th century sought to correct masculine bias within traditional narratives of labour history or liberal teleologies, both of which had marginalised or misrepresented the involvement of women. Conversely, strictly purist or doctrinaire feminist narratives of history have also tended to ignore popular movements which did not advance a specifically feminist programme, regardless of how heavily women may have been involved. Both of these approaches resulted in the omission, until recently, of women from the histories of protest movements like Chartism in which they played a significant part.

The place and properness of women in protest has long been a bone of contention, with discourse surrounding their involvement portraying them as hysterical, unwomanly, deviant, or deranged. Sheila Rowbotham, in her historical study of women and protest, notes that:

It is at the point where the revolution starts to move women out of their passivity into the conscious and active role of militants that the mockery, the caricatures, the laughter with strong sexual undertones begin.

The vicious alarmism and mockery drawn by female involvement in politics, with which suffragists and civil rights agitators found themselves contending, is already evident in several cartoons on female Jacobins and campaigners for constitutional reform. Political cartoons of the 18th and 19th century were rarely noted for their subtlety, and caricaturists tended to focus upon the disorderly nature of political females, as well as imputing to them an ‘unwomanly’ loose or aggressive sexuality. Cruikshanks depicted ‘The Female Reformers of Blackburn’ as vulgarly outspoken and blowsily dressed, distastefully dominating their political platform, and J L Marks’ ‘Much Wanted: A Reform Among Females!!!’ gives its female protagonists suggestively brandished rolled-up papers, poles clutched between their knees, and – oh yes – hands clasped in their laps to form a gaping dark hole, setting out their desire to usurp male power as well as their own wantonness. As, perhaps, does the presence of all those upthrust pikes, swords and cannons in depictions of the women’s march to Versailles. And of course Cath Elliot’s recent piece on online harassment, by which politically uppity women are impugned as frigid, or sluts, or lesbians, provides a piquant reminder of this glorious tradition.

Women in protest don’t merely have attacks from the right to worry about. Their involvement does not take place in a vacuum – women protest not only as women but for multiple reasons of sectional interest, and the gender identification of protestors has historically generated conflict and tension with identities based on race, class, sexuality, and ideology. To take just one example, the involvement of women in 20th century industrial conflict, acting in support of or solidarity with male industrial workers, has been criticised by some feminists who view such conflict as manifestations of an unhelpfully macho patriarchal culture from which women should separate themselves.

Nor can it be assumed that female involvement in social protest will naturally result in an outcome which is cognisant of, sympathetic to, or even comfortable for women. After the Women’s March to Versailles, women as revolutionaries became a potent symbol of the power of the French Revolution, and the young Republic was eventually personified in the figure of Marianne. But, as Joan Landes has argued, Marianne’s visual prominence did not mean that women obtained significant political, social, or economic advantages during the French Revolution; the new Republic’s politics was one of laws and texts in which Marianne’s image bore no concrete significance. Similar tensions are apparent in the complex relationship of Iranian women with the after-effects of the 1979 revolution, and the contention that the presence of women in the current ‘Arab spring’ uprisings, when acknowledged at all, is being appropriated and used symbolically.

In addition to the examples given in links above, this series will look in greater detail at case-studies of women’s involvement in social, political, and economic protest, their motivations and methods, their successes and setbacks. It’s been a long, hot summer of discontent and it shouldn’t be any surprise to see women as well as men taking their place in the sun.

Rhian Jones also blogs at Velvet Coalmine.

The pro-choice push back starts here

Sarah Jackson — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 08:00:44 +0000

Abortion was legalized in the UK in 1967

Some of Team BadRep were at the pro-choice rally in Westminster on Saturday with 300+ other people including Kate Smurthwaite, Laurie Penny, Diane Abbott MP, Evan Davis MP and Jenny Jones of the Green Party to protest the attempts being made to restrict access to free, safe, legal abortion. Here’s the Guardian writeup and a great slideshow of pictures.

Why were we out in force raising our voice for choice? Here’s a quick rundown in case you’ve missed any of the grim news in recent months… What frightens me most at the moment is that ‘Right to Know’ campaign architects Nadine Dorries MP and Frank Fields MP (guess which party! Go on. Guess) have added amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill to change the law on pregnancy counselling. Their big idea is that abortion providers who offer counselling such as Marie Stopes and British Pregnancy Advisory Service have a ‘vested interest’ in persuading women to have a termination. Because abortion is such a money spinner… It’s a wonder we don’t see more people on Dragon’s Den offering an investment opportunity in a chain of pop-up abortion clinics. Anyway, here’s a post by Education for Choice explaining why this is bollocks, and Abortion Rights give the campaign a dressing down here.

Anti-choicers LIFE were invited to sit on the government’s Sexual Health Forum at the same time that BPAS got kicked off. A new Sex and Relationships Education Council of abstinence and anti-choice organisations drew praise from Secretary of State for Education / evil ventriloquist’s puppet Michael Gove. Nadine Dorries popped up again with a bill proposing abstinence education for girls which passed the first stage vote in parliament. Does abstinence education work? Short answer: no. Long answer: no. Then of course there’s the shocking situation facing women in Ireland (find out more from Abortion Support Network)

It was great to see so many angry people out on Saturday, and hear the inspiring speeches. Lisa Hallgarten of Education for Choice read out a chilling message from pro-choice activists in the US warning us not to be complacent because things are getting really bad across the Atlantic (see this and this, for example) and it all started in the same way it has here: with little laws which chip away at the right to choose.

I was particularly happy that the demo drew support from Queer Resistance, who made the vital point that we must work together cross-cause to protect bodily autonomy, reproductive rights and sexual freedom. This demo felt closer in spirit to the reproductive justice movement I believe we need to build to fight proposals which are spun as pro-woman but are in fact bad news for anyone who doesn’t subscribe to a vicious and controlling version of “family values”.

This demonstration is just the beginning of a grassroots push back against Dorries, Field, Gove and their supporters, and we’re going to need your help. Start by emailing your MP about the abortion amendments and keeping track of developments on Education For Choice’s blog.