I was excited when she gave a follow-up talk in March, but I didn’t imagine I’d be posting about it on BadRep. The reason I am is that at 15.00 minutes, it became ALL about gender. (I strongly recommend you check it out – both videos are excellent):

[We’re having trouble with embedding! Click this handy link instead!]

Shame is often strongly gendered; we are intended to feel it when we don’t live up to our society’s imposed, sexist expectations. She cites a study from Boston College which got women to answer the question:

What do women need to do to conform to female norms?

The answers were: be Nice, Thin, Modest… and ‘Use all available resources for appearance’.

For men, they were: Always show emotional control, Work should be your priority, Pursue status… and ‘Violence’.

That they’re different answers for men and women should be enough to prove the need for some real changes in our society by itself, but that the actual points are also so disgusting just seals it for me. Nice. Thin. Don’t make a fuss. Physical appearance is everything. Emotionally cut off. Violent. Competitive. Judged hugely by job and status. Not one of these things is good for society. We could lose them all and it would only improve everyone’s lives. (Well, ‘nice’ could be okay, if it were applied to the more powerful groups in society, but in terms of gender you’ve then still got the ‘chivalry’ problem – that men can forget about power differences if they treat women ‘nicely’ while giving up nothing.)

Brown’s previous point had been that successful and happy people have to allow themselves the risk of being seen as weak, or to fail. However, in reaching that conclusion (and it’s definitely true), she only interviewed women. In this second talk she relates how a male fan pointed out to her that men often feel unable to choose this route.

Shame feels the same for men and women, but it is organised by gender…

For men, shame is not a bunch of competing, conflicting expectations [as it is for women], shame is one: Do Not Be Perceived As Weak.

– Brené Brown

The fan claims that it’s the women in his family who reinforce this for him. In terms of how strictly the two sets of ‘norms-to-conform-to’ listed above are enforced, I often see that men have a lot more leeway in dropping one or two of them… but only if they replace them with ‘money’.

So the next time I’m looking for a shorthand example for why feminism is important, I’ll reference what people perceive as the biggest demands by society on who they are allowed to be. It’s a flawed, gender-binary test, but the fact that the public returned those answers counts for a lot. That a list so gendered and outrightly harmful to society should be the TOP pressures many of us seem to be facing is something we just don’t need. It may not be set in law, but this stuff is a strong daily message.

…Which makes me want to find a solution. Well, first to scream F*** THAT and opt out, and then find a solution. Equality means removing this heinous bullshit for everyone. The goals listed as the top answers in that survey are both unattainable in size and harmful in practice, but what choice do we have? It’s fine for me to urge people to stop conforming, but for many if they do the reality is they’ll never pass a job interview again. (Although not shaving your armpits or legs sometimes works out just fine).

I refuse to give up. Reducing inequality towards any gender is so fundamental to everyone’s happiness that stuff like this just makes me more determined to keep fighting: we’ve all got to keep educating each other, pushing for change and making the issues visible. Whether it’s about who they marry, if they have sex, issues of consent, or who their political leaders are, women have a lot less freedom than men internationally. That’s not in dispute. Gender inequality is measurable. If you really can’t see it, you haven’t spent two seconds looking. Yes, I’m also concerned with the pressures sexism places on men, and I think these ‘norm lists’ showcase exactly why there’s so much still to do for everybody.

The memorialising of the First World War is long established and institutionalised, to the extent that no politician will be photographed poppyless. But remembrance can also be a deeply political, even radical act. Especially if you’re remembering people that many would prefer to forget.

In a couple of weeks, on the 20^th November, it will be the 13^th International Transgender Day of Remembrance. Before I started blogging at BadRep this wasn’t a big date in my calendar, but two moving posts by other team members last year made me realise that it should have been.

Why does it matter? As Gwendolyn Ann Smith of the Remembering Our Dead project puts it:

The Transgender Day of Remembrance serves several purposes. It raises public awareness of hate crimes against transgender people, an action that current media doesn’t perform. Day of Remembrance publicly mourns and honors the lives of our brothers and sisters who might otherwise be forgotten. Through the vigil, we express love and respect for our people in the face of national indifference and hatred. Day of Remembrance reminds non-transgender people that we are their sons, daughters, parents, friends and lovers. Day of Remembrance gives our allies a chance to step forward with us and stand in vigil, memorializing those of us who’ve died by anti-transgender violence.

There’s another kind of remembering which needs to be done. I’m a big gender history nerd, and although I’ve spent years reading about changing gender roles and expectations; women in history; gay, lesbian and bisexual history, there’s are gaps in my knowledge around the experiences and heritage of the transgender community.

So I went along to a recent talk by Juliet Jacques at Westminster Skeptics in the Pub about transgender history from the 19^th century onwards. My ignorance was laid bare. I knew about the 2004 Gender Recognition Act – I was working at the Equal Opportunities Commission helping to implement it in 2005. But I’d never heard of the Compton Caféteria Riot in 1966 (there’s a documentary) nor of Boulton and Park, James Barry, Lili Elbe or Magnus Hirschfield. (Fun fact: most of the pictures of Nazis burning books show the bonfire that took place at the Hirschfield Institute.)

Jacques’s talk is available as a podcast here and here are a few other quick history resources: a brief history of trans people in the media on Jacques’ blog, a trans timeline here, and this nifty interactive LGBT history timeline which includes a lot of dates and events significant to trans history. I also found this post on film representations of transsexuality interesting.

Recording, recognising and remembering the histories of marginalised groups might seem like an academic endeavour, but it has a vital political function. The stories of transgender, gay and bi people, of disabled people, of women, of ethnic and religious minorities, of the poor, have been both accidentally and deliberately erased over the centuries. By remembering, we can restore these missing voices to history, and we have ammunition when we’re told that x behaviour or y social group is a modern scourge, that they’re unnatural or against tradition, or that this is the way things have always been.

Note: Between writing this post and publishing it I also found out about the International Intersex Day of Remembrance, on 8 November.

• LGBT History Month
• Women’s History Month
• Black History Month
• UK Disability History Month

There’s nothing that takes us back to basics more than camping. Take away the shower, the clean toilet, the puffs and powders and that whole sleep thing and you’re playing on a level field. Or are you? After the first set, I watched as scores of men took to the fence, whipped their genitalia out, and relieved themselves with an efficiency almost amounting to elegance. Then a girl and her friend approached, one providing coverage to the other. Barely had she begun to unzip when a (female) security guard magically materialised – you can’t do that. Use the portaloos, please.

Now we can argue endlessly about the acceptability or otherwise of whipping any species of privates out in a public place, but surely if we’re going basic for the weekend, we should all be as basic as each other? As for the portaloos themselves, well – the feminist implications of in-conveniences for the ladies have already been discussed in this very publication, so I won’t repeat them, but I will ask you to consider what happens when those using urinals also share the cubicles with those for whom this is not an option. And the queue-length that implies. All in all, I ended up feeling my experience had been inferior to my male companions’ on account of my sex (and, in the case of the security guard, because of my gender, too). But others have had it worse…

Managing events on this scale, however much it may be a British institution, comes with all kinds of questions around safety, both onstage and off. The dominant concern must always be to make people feel like they’re living dangerously, when in fact they’re safe as the proverbial houses. That’s how you deliver a great live experience. No-one wants to feel on-edge all weekend, but no-one wants to feel mollycoddled either. After all, the teenagers who trash Reading Festival each year are trying to get away from their parents, and it’s surely a given that any festival is riddled with drugs. Who cares?

Festival Republic (who manage Glastonbury and run Latitude, Reading, Leeds and the Big Chill) took this thesis to its logical conclusion in 2010 and significantly scaled down their police presence from the outset. The resultant spate of thefts was accompanied by a gang rape on the first night, and a second instance on the second. On-site, the organisers responded with that old chestnut about women not going around the site unaccompanied. Oh! There’s that gender thing again.

I find this particularly galling because there was a suspected instance of rape in the campsite I was staying in myself on the Saturday night at Bestival. It seemed to be a case of domestic abuse, but it’s the height of irony that a festival attended by 30,000 people could be seen as a ‘safe’ space to take this toxically private crime outside its eponymous home. It’s even more ironic that these crimes against women are occurring at events that are almost synonymous in many minds with the image of one very famous female – Kate Moss, whose ‘festival style’ was recently voted the most iconic festival fashion moment of all time, beating Jimi Hendrix’s tasseled white Glastonbury shirt. Rarely was it more truly spoken that one is never so alone as in a large crowd.

The live events sector is a multi-million pound one, and despite this year’s setbacks (and the state of the economy more generally), it’s still a growth industry long-term. Illegal downloading and the resultant changes to the music industry’s economy will only make live music events of all sizes more important over the coming years. And with Beyonce this year becoming the first female headliner at Glastonbury in 20 years and women like Kate Moss and Sienna Miller leading the style stakes, there’s clearly a female voice coming through. Yet, as unpleasant as it undoubtedly is to admit, when something goes wrong, it’s often the women who suffer – festivals are the perfect rape storm: scantily-clad girls (whose hemlines do not but may be perceived to = consent), large groups of drunk men (our neighbours serenaded us with a beautiful rendition of ‘Get your rat out for the lads’ at four in the afternoon on the Saturday), crowds that can easily separate you from your party, softly-softly security, copious amounts of drugs and large open spaces where people may hear your scream but probably won’t realise, care about, or be in a state to deal with, its urgency. There’s been evidence that some live events companies are listening, of course, and I don’t want to suggest a doom-fest of misogyny either – but with the industry set for the boomtimes to come, I’d like to be assured that festivals aren’t a feminist issue.

Reams have been written about whether Tank Girl is a legitimate feminist icon or not. My position is something along the lines of OMIGODILOVEHER which comes partly from a feminist place and partly from a place of profound 12 year old outsiderdom and rage.

Just to be clear I’m talking about what I think of as Tank Girl – the comics not the film (oh God not the film) and basically the first two volumes of the collected comic by Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin. After that the stories go to an even weirder place, and I think the artwork goes downhill too (I’m fussy about artwork – reading Alan Moore’s superb Swamp Thing series despite the garish colour was a labour of love). But anyway: there’s a little chunk of my soul which belongs to early Tank Girl.

Where to start? She looks awesome. Yes, she’s often in a bra, and yes, she has a slightly implausible figure, but she’s a million miles away from traditional balloon breasted comic book heroines. She is rather androgynous, masculine without being butch, has actual facial expressions and a great philosophy about clothes. She is sexy, and sexual, but in a way which entirely rejects the idea of a performed sex appeal.

Then there’s her attitude. Irreverent and subversive to the very core of her being, she is linked in some of the stories with a demonic force, a sort of soul of chaos. There’s a great story where an aboriginal community summons a kind of mystical proto-Tank Girl (called Tanicha) to wreak bloody vengeance on the white men who are trying to steal their land and assault the women.¹ Tanicha slaughters them gleefully, and in interestingly gendery ways. Tank Girl laughs at danger, power, pomp and duty in a thrilling and vicariously liberating way.

Tank Girl, Sub Girl and Jet Girl

But then there are a few moments in which she is breathtakingly, shockingly human, even vulnerable. In one story, she dreams that her friends and her lover have had their minds destroyed in a psychiatric institution, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest -stylee. She wakes up shaken and goes to sit outside her beloved tank to think. As the sun comes up, her lover brings her a mug of tea. He’s a mutant kangaroo called Booga, for anyone who doesn’t know, but that doesn’t make the moment any less touching.

Although many of the characters that accompany her on her adventures are men, her female relationships are surprisingly significant. Her two childhood friends Jet Girl and Sub Girl are introduced in a story about her birthday party (spoiled through a lack of decent beer) and one issue consists of a letter from Tank Girl to her mum. She also goes to England at one point to visit her sick grandmother.

And some of the best stories are where she gets one over on a series of macho tough guys, from a kangaroo gang leader to a bounty hunter who underestimates her special gift for total destruction. In one of my favourites her former sergeant becomes obsessed with her lack of respect and her lack of discipline, and sets out to annihilate her. In his dream he prepares to blow her apart with a rocket but she just laughs at him.

Sergeant: “Look at me when I’m going to kill you!”

Tank: “The male ego rides again… Should I faint or scream? Ha ha ha ha!”

Then her breasts transform into missiles. Which makes the point quite nicely, I feel.

Tank Girl is not a positive role model. She’s not a ‘strong female character’. Unlike, say, the similarly badass Starbuck in the Battlestar Galactica reboot, she’s not particularly troubled, and she doesn’t experience remorse.

But when I was a geeky 12-year-old at school, powerless and furious, she was a lifeline. I’m sure my TG-inspired dreams of destruction saved me from turning my rage on someone in real life, when I finally gave up the fight to be quiet and pretty and clever and kind. When my peers were throwing sandwiches at me on the bus I’d just think, “What would Tank Girl do?” And I’d lean my head against the window and enjoy the carnage.

1. This is a bit dodgy I guess as Hewlett and Martin patch in a bit of faux aboriginal culture as it suits them, but one of the main characters (Stevie) is an indigenous Australian and there’s nothing particularly mystical about him at least.

Amid calls for the video to be banned, it’s interesting to see how much of the outrage centres on the murder, rather than the rape. Granted, the shooting and its aftermath is shown far more explicitly than the hinted-at assault, but commentary such as that of media watchdog Paul Porter:

“‘Man Down’ is an inexcusable, shock-only, shoot-and-kill theme song. In my 30 years of viewing BET, I have never witnessed such a cold, calculated execution of murder in primetime…”

appears to be divorcing the shooting from its context, concentrating on Rihanna as the agent and perpetrator of a crime, rather than as the victim of one. This wilfully ignores one of the video’s central messages, which is the ease with which these roles can be merged.

Sex and violence, and sexual violence, as themes in art and entertainment are as old as art and entertainment themselves. To be flippant for a second: maybe it’s just the use of the word ‘Mama’, but the chorus of ‘Man Down’ put me in mind of that certain section of Bohemian Rhapsody where the narrator, having just killed a man, ruminates on how ‘life had just begun and now I’ve gone and thrown it all away’. And while I don’t think Freddie Mercury was ever actively described as a positive role model, neither was he castigated for encouraging cold-blooded cod-operatic executions among 1970s youth.

Is Rihanna coming in for particular criticism because of the publicity previously given to her real-life encounters with violence? Those of you following along at home will of course have noticed that she didn’t respond to her experience of assault by shooting Chris Brown on the concourse of Grand Central Station. Surely no one seriously believes ‘Man Down’ to be advocating that the victims of violence engage in violent reprisals – any more than that was true of Thelma & Louise, or Straw Dogs, or, to really stretch the analogy, Death and the Maiden? ‘Man Down’ is, on one level, a revenge fantasy which relies on the dramatic and the sensational to get its message across.

Roger Ebert wrote of Irréversible, whose backwards chronology ‘Man Down’ recalls, that the film’s structure makes it inherently moral – that by presenting the vengeance before the acts that inspire it, we are forced to process the vengeance first, and therefore think more deeply about its implications. Might the same apply to ‘Man Down’? Throughout the lyrics and video, the song’s protagonist may contextualise and explain her actions, but she’s not free of regret, she isn’t gleeful or exultant, and she acknowledges her actions as a crime with implications for the rest of her life. She calls herself a ‘criminal’ and reflects that her rapist and victim was ‘somebody’s son’. The narrative doesn’t glorify murder, but it recognises that we live in a world where this kind of fantasy-vigilante approach might often seem more accessible and plausible than relying for justice on the state or the police.

Art and entertainment don’t exist in a vacuum. Art will be asked to justify itself, particularly when it touches on themes that are an everyday reality for many of us and which feed into issues like the space which women, particularly women of colour, have to express themselves, and the perpetuation of negative stereotypes versus the impetus, the desire, and perhaps the moral duty, to openly discuss the conditions under which we live.

The complex intersections of race and gender hardly lend themselves to being cleared up in the confines of a blog post, but ‘Man Down’ has sparked plenty of engaged and informative discussion online – at Crunk Feminist, The Beautiful Struggler, and Hello Beautiful for starters. I’m just glad debate is happening and that we have a mainstream artist who doesn’t shy away from instigating it.

*

Rhian Jones also blogs at Velvet Coalmine.

Spot the difference

Thanks to Brave Sir Robin for sending this in to us.

There’s a heavily advertised rape prevention campaign in the London Borough of Lambeth at the moment which has some very laudable aims, including to challenge the victim blaming culture around rape, recently criticised by Baroness Stern CBE in her report (downloadable here).

The adverts are aimed at young men who socialise in Lambeth, especially Brixton and Clapham, which have recently seen very disturbing rises in rape and sexual violence.

So, is it Found Feminism? I’m going to give it a two thumbs up for yes, for both reversing gender prejudices and trying a different approach to understanding and dealing with attitudes around rape and rape prevention.

The language and style of both the posters and the website offer a more detailed and mature look at the old “no means no” giving very clear examples of what is and isn’t legal or acceptable. I’m particularly interested in this poster because it pushes back the responsibility of gaining consent, and hence on committing the crime, away from what the woman is wearing or what she has had to drink.

Instead, it choses to unpick standard excuses for poor social behaviour:

Harmless fun is just that – harmless fun. Wolf whistling, jeering and making sexually provocative comments can be threatening and make a woman feel at best irritated but also scared and vulnerable. This could be seen as criminal behaviour and you could be arrested and charged. Sexual assault is any unwanted sexual activity.

I’d be interested to see whether this style of advert has a wider spread than just one particular borough, and what impact it has on the young men who see the posters.

• 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. Send your finds to [email protected]!

Picture this.

It’s Friday night.

I’m a young woman of 25.  I have several friends. I celebrate Christmas. These two facts have combined to create FESTIVE OPPORTUNITY! So I’m going to a house party in East London. I’ve dressed up a bit and everything.

It is snowing heavily. I’ve wrapped up warm, but it’s obvious I’m a bit dressed up; mini skirt, tights, thigh high socks over the tights, stompy boots (OK, I’m a bit of a goth). I feel good about the way I look.

BE CABWISE! Text this number, and find out where you can be overcharged for being out of the house! You hussy! (Image: Transport For London, 2010)

The party goes great. I leave at about midnight, and am juuust too late to make the last Tube home. On the way out, I catch sight of the new poster encouraging me to take a licensed minicab. It says, IF YOUR MINICAB’S NOT BOOKED, IT’S JUST A STRANGER’S CAR. It seems to have replaced the triggertastic, victim-blame-loaded images from a couple of years ago, which showed a woman’s screaming, tearslicked face and bore the headline “STOP, PLEASE, NO, PLEASE, STOP… taking unlicensed minicabs.” I was not a fan of that campaign, well-meaning though it was. It was a giant neon cultural signpost as far as I was concerned: ladies, rape is your problem, sort it.

The streets are covered in thick ice. I have to pick my way very slowly through it, even in my stompy-but-relatively-practical boots, to avoid falling.  A couple of guys outside a pub have things to say about the delectability of my arse as I do this. Their commentary isn’t particularly appreciated.

There are barely any nightbuses running. I realise, shivering and fumbling for my wallet, that I want a minicab. A licensed one.

The rest of my night is an expensive nightmare which opens my eyes to just how much quite a lot of people are happy to exploit my need to get home safely. And how many people out there think that if I want to be safe without paying through the nose, I shouldn’t be out at all.

Leytonstone’s not the life and soul of London on a Friday night, but there are quite a lot of people out, so there must be a few house parties going down. There are several women, at varying levels of party-dressed, in varying states of sobriety. It just so happens that tonight I’m sober. All of us are looking for a way home. A fair number of us are travelling alone.

There is one minicab office in the area I’m trying to navigate. It’s the only one I can see. I’ve used it before and it’s usually been fine. The office has several women milling about outside it. Encouraged, I go in.

The man behind the counter studies me with a faintly critical eye. I tell him I want to go to South London – a long journey, so I’m prepared for some outlay.

“Normally,” says Counter Dude, a little nervously, “that’d be £35.”

Okay.

There is some nudging and muttering going on behind the glass. I wonder if my skirt is rucked up or something. It all looks okay.

“Tonight is fare-and-a-half night.”

Ah. Fare-and-a-half-night. That famous British institution WAIT WHAT.

“It’ll be £53.”

What the shit.

“We’re charging extra,” says Counter Dude, “just for tonight.”

I look out the window at the snow, and the shivering lone women. Is it just the snow that’s suddenly made the petrol so expensive? Or is it more the crowd of women the snow has delivered into the arms of the minicab company that’s occasioned this spontaneous jolly price-hike? I look back at Counter Dude.

“Just tonight,” I say pointedly.

“Yeah.”

There’s an awkward silence.

“Unlucky,” he proffers, after a brief conversational abyss while he searches for a word with which to label my predicament. “You’re unlucky being out tonight.”

What follows is essentially a Paddington Bear-style stare-out, which I win. My prize? A “discount” taking my fare down by a fiver. Still £££ more than I’d usually be charged. You’re damn right I’m unlucky. I’m already drafting a My Fault I’m Female submission as we speak.

The previous safety poster, with bonus feminist stickering. Image via Flickr user jonanamary.

Here’s the deal, guys: I know it’s snowing this week, GUYS, EVERYBODY CAN SEE IT IS SNOWING THIS WEEK. I know that in all likelihood, you’re charging dudes the same amount.

But here it is, right, here’s the thing: hardly any dudes are in this cab office. More women are taking your cabs, because (cis, at least) men do not have the same sense of personal risk going home alone at night after a thing like a party. Most of my male friends rolled home. My boyfriend regularly rolls home when he’s had a few at a party! I’d love to be able to roll home in the same way! But often I don’t feel able to. Especially not since a female acquaintance of mine from the same area was sexually assaulted on public transport less than a year ago. I went past a yellow police SEXUAL ASSAULT poster for weeks after that knowing precisely who it related to.

ALL OF WHICH IS TO SAY THAT when you notice a predominantly female bunch of customers need cabs, and rack up your prices in kneejerk response, on a night when it’s particularly difficult to do anything but take a minicab, and not doing so may result in Judgement and Scrutiny if something goes wrong…  well, guys, what you are doing there is helping create a LONE LADIES: STAY HOME kinda vibe.

I’m not saying that women are more likely to be attacked than men; this would not be true. But there is an atmosphere, a culture that we live in, that frequently suggests that women walking alone at night, especially if they are dressed for a party, are at least partly asking to be attacked and that if they do not take appropriate measures, it is their fault if such a thing should occur. That is the difference. And minicab companies, it seems, who provide Said Measures, rather like to capitalise on that.

As I wait for my cab – which presumably runs on petrol of molten gold! – I’m curbcrawled, basically, by unlicensed cabs, twice. They offer me a cheap way home. £20! £15! No dice.

But the majestic fee for my licensed cab is coming right out of my Christmas overdraft. I wonder how many women are tempted by the riskier option.

Probably quite a few.

In the cab, which is not, ALAS, plated with gold and drawn by a unicorn, my driver’s so annoyed I’ve argued the fare down further to a “really very reasonable” £42, he spends our journey informing me that I should be “grateful” his boss “felt like being nice” to me. Eventually I just slip my headphones into my ears and overlay his voice with a nice Christmassy choir. Much better.

What I really want to do here is offer some positive advice at the end of this post – it’s one of BadRep’s policies to try and go beyond ranting as far as we can, and recommend what you can do with your voice, your money and your time to change things.

I’m a bit stumped here, though.  Maybe there’s a Minicabs Ombudsman Person, or a Price Regulating Committee I can give a shout? I dunno. I’ll have to try to find out.

But don’t hesitate to argue your corner if the little voice in your head reckons you’re being supremely bloody fleeced.

Have a safe Christmas.

“I suppose I might open the trick door now, and seek the monster of my own volition, sword in hand and ready. Then, if I slay him, I might return for you, and free you.”

The girl wept. Through her tears she said, with a knife for a voice: “If you are a man, you will do it.”

“Oh no, lady. Only if I am your notion of a man.”

– The Hero at the Gates, Tanith Lee

Conan felt at ease in the office.

Following on from Sarah C’s blogpost yesterday, I wanted to ask: who decides what it is to “be a man”? And why is the answer vital to improving things for women?

This is not just about Alpha Males, but our entire definition of masculinity (and therefore what we’re telling boys and men they should aim to be). We can talk about being a responsible adult, but how is that different from ‘manly’?

We haven’t moved on very much from celebrating men as muscle-bound warriors, from equating manliness with physical strength. Nerds are not manly. Thin, ‘weak’ guys are not manly. The efficient office worker is not ‘manly’. The patient father is not praised with “What a man!” Anyone with the wrong body shape can never qualify.

Manliness also requires independence: you’re not a successful man if you live in your Mother’s basement, but men who own motorbikes or fast cars are sexy. It goes beyond this, though. You’re not manly if you’re ruled primarily by tender emotions, or “under the thumb” of a woman, or –

Sorry, I just can’t keep this up. It’s such utter, utter bullshit. The short answer seems to be: you’re not a man unless you control your own destiny. If others are in charge of you, or you submit to them, then they are above you on the Manliness Scale.

And we wonder why the entire planet is in danger.

It’s as though the capability to fight and take – and therefore provide – is still the only measure of what makes a man. Male aggression is not popular in modern society (outside of sports, boardrooms and the army) but Sarah C referred to some websites yesterday which celebrate a particularly horrible version of poisonous alpha male tropes. Their vision consists of controlling your women (multiple), being in command, being admired for being powerful, and taking it easy while your slaves do the work because you’re the big man.

It’s pretty strange to see that this still exists in an allegedly modern country. These men seem to think they can be less powerless in life if they take imagined power from women around them. A big part of it lies in succeeding specifically because you have lowered a woman’s power from a perceived higher place. Femininity is seen as making men weak, and women are assumed to be always less powerful (making any example of them EVER overruling the alpha an unacceptable demonstration of the alpha’s weakness.)

So why is this commanding behaviour not only acceptable, respected, sought-after, but the definition of masculine prowess?

Some sources believe it’s because fighting is the one thing you can’t fake. It’s also the action which overrules all others: it doesn’t matter how deserving, wise or honourable you are, someone with a bigger gun can take it all away. So maybe it’s about security, and therefore defence of loved ones, rather than the more pessimistic approach of valuing someone primarily for their ability to attack.

What’s interesting is that this Conan image comes more from the media and movies than reality. A quick poll of some female friends found that they mainly think “manly” means having Values, Character, Responsibility… behaviours which suggest you are not just a boy in adult clothes. The change is from a child to an adult, not to being more male than before.

But the images and lessons boys receive from TV and cinema simply cannot equate maturity with manliness unless the man can also kick the ass of everyone onscreen. And be totally 100% heterosexual, of course. (In the same poll, one woman said she’d think less of a man if he wasn’t physically stronger than her, so it’s not all one-sided.) Even here, ‘feminine’ qualities are seen as taking away from a man’s masculinity. And since ‘feminine’ is deemed inseparable from a woman’s perfect role of being a (usually married) mother, that means men are deemed less manly if they show any nurturing behaviour towards kids, are emotionally sensitive, etc etc oh god this is depressing.

Ultimately, masculinity is bound up with individual heroism instead of having to rely on others, and that’s a dangerous place to be.

It’s a sad trend for feminism that men are judged on what they do, and women are judged on how they look, but the male side of that is not as enabling as it appears. The target for masculinity has to include muscle, mastery and money. A man’s worth (as a “successful” male and especially as relationship material) is very closely linked to his money. Not just the prestige of the job, but how far up the status ladder of it he is. Success and potential future success are what are really being measured, in whatever field. And it IS about wealth; that’s why status symbols work. They represent the money, and therefore the power, or his capability and drive to get power.

Who are the male role models on TV? Bling-laden hard men rappers surrounded by girls, secret agents who win every fight, footballers and movie stars. All of whom are alpha males who get the girls and status (and money). Individual parents might offer better role models linked to how to be manly, but “society” doesn’t. Even the “lad’s mags” of the 1990s like FHM and Loaded aren’t connecting with what men feel is right for their lives.

Despite all this, the problem is nothing compared to what women face when society tells them what it thinks ‘feminine’ is. That still must include sexual issues in a way that ‘masculine’ doesn’t, as well as passivity/submission. And for all the harm that men feeling unneeded may bring, reclaiming feminism from its Bad Rep is a more urgent issue – but it’s not unrelated. We need ways for men to behave better towards women without feeling less masculine. The strict mandate to never appear as ‘weak’ as a woman is a foundation of male violence.

The message needs to change. We need to be saying that a man is valued if he behaves well, with compassion and thought and honour. The only medium that counts in bringing messages like this to the public is television, and that’s why pop culture is so crucial. Less ‘lone white male avenger’ shows, more balanced, nuanced depictions of heroism. We won’t get it from retail advertisers (who want you to believe you need money, items and to be having constant fun or you are a failure). We need it to come from pop culture, and to reach children and young adults in ways which seem natural and obvious.

There is hope. As well as the attitudes of real individuals in the surveys I mentioned earlier, some websites and magazines are also looking at the problem. One very interesting example is The Good Men Project, which launched recently. They seem to be asking precisely the same question I have: what’s the difference between “being a man” and “being a GOOD man”? And why is there such a huge potential difference at all? (Also: high-five to that site for genuinely exploring how to get comfortable with masculinity in a way which benefits the individual and society, and so far not setting up feminism as any kind of block to that.)¹

While men are told that compromising, accepting help or having anything in common with a woman makes them weak, everyone needs this harmful definition of masculinity to change.

“The tragedy of machismo is that a man is never quite man enough.”
– Germaine Greer

1. Ed’s Tiny Note, Added In 2013: It would seem The Good Men Project has since made quite the effort to distance itself from feminists, and has had more of its fair share of problematic moments. But at the point this post was written, none of that had gone down.

Arriving at Studio La Danza on Holloway Road, walking up the stairs past brightly coloured adverts for poledancing and LGBT ballroom dancing classes, in the mirror-walled second floor studio I met our smiling instructors, Sian and Lydia, two students from Goldsmiths College.

We moved chairs into a circle for a quick discussion about the class, and what feminist self-defence actually is, while Sian handed round flyers such as ‘Your Voice Is A Weapon: How To Use It,’ and a cartoon diagram mercilessly depicting the weak, soft, vulnerable parts on any attacker.

Lydia and Sian had learned the techniques they were going to teach us when their student feminist society arranged for an instructor from Sweden to stage a practical demonstration at Goldsmiths. Feminist self-defence is an idea that has especially taken off in Sweden, the home of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the VPK feminist socialist political party, who are calling for feminist self-defence to be taught to girls in schools.

Sian watches while Lydia holds a boxing pad for class participant, Suzie.

Feminist self-defence, we were told, is a DIY grassroots movement of gender activists teaching simple self-defence techniques, “specifically tailored towards experiences of violence against women, trans and queer people.” We weren’t going to find competition-winning martial arts or ‘complicated Houdini style escapes’ here; this was about simplicity and practicality, using your natural reflexes to quickly get away, and maybe giving your attacker an injury or two to remember you by.

The most important part of this movement, and why I’d come along to the class, was that there would be no victim-blaming here. The Ladyfest programme asked ‘Are you sick of being told not to walk on your own at night? Tired of hearing that it’s our fault if we get attacked if we’re alone and it’s dark?’ Having had several self-defence instructors who repeated the same tired old bullshit of “Well, I shouldn’t say this really but it’s their own fault if they get attacked out on their own, I know you girls like to look pretty, but…” and having also been sexually harassed at classes, this class was a refreshingly new experience for me.

For once, there was the acknowledgement that the burden should not be on women to protect themselves from rape, that this is not how things should be. One student remembered the time she’d been heartened to see in her inbox, instead of that cheery chain e-mail of the type we often receive, ‘Women: how to protect yourself from rape! (Forward this to all your girlfriends!)’, the variation ‘Rape Prevention Tips for Men’.

We started the practical part of the class by talking about personal space. How close does someone have to get for us to feel uncomfortable? “We’re so polite in this country,” said Lydia. “We don’t complain.” We discussed how the size of our personal space decreases when we’re in a crowded area, on the train or at a gig, but what was emphasised was that although its size can change, we’re still entitled to our own space, and entitled to tell people to get out of it. Lydia and Sian pretended to be confident commuters bumping into us, while we walked around looking shy, and then we switched roles. Less of a ‘This Is How You Must Act In Order Not To Be Attacked’ than a lesson in where our personal boundaries lay, and a funny icebreaker for the class when we were allowed to ‘get revenge’ and barge into our instructors.

Something that especially impressed me was that our instructors acknowledged how practising for assault can be upsetting – that people might have traumatically experienced the situations that were being described. Participation in the physical aspect of the class was not compulsory, they told us – if we felt upset we could go away and come back again and no-one would judge us, and every part of the class was explained to us before we took part.

The instructors were even respectful of each other’s boundaries, and yet the atmosphere in the class was much more lighthearted and pleasant than many self-defence classes that I have attended – “May I strangle you, Lydia?” “Yes you may, Sian,” they laughed. There were horrible people and horrible situations out there, but we had the power to do something about it, and learning these techniques was going to be fun, too.

We practised shouting – useful for throwing an attacker off balance, alerting others who might help, and also something that can make your strikes stronger and help you to focus, in the manner of the Japanese Kiai. Here, Lydia did a pretty scary impression of her Swedish instructor shouting “Nej!!” – I’m surprised no-one came upstairs to see what was happening! – but we used the English, “No!” and practised hitting boxing pads. Our instructors again emphasised how polite we are as women or minorities in this culture, how we’re afraid of causing a fuss, and how getting past that fear can be one of the best things we can ‘unlearn’ to keep ourselves safe.

We were afraid to shout at first, but as our inhibitions dropped we became louder and louder. We shouted not once, but twice, and when we struck, we struck twice, because we were told, if possible, “do it twice,” as that way there’s more chance of getting a result. If shouting for help, Sian advised us not just to ask but to ask specific people – “Hey, you in the red bobble hat, this man won’t take his hand off my leg, please alert the bus driver!” works because picking on individuals is better than asking a crowd, where everyone might assume that someone else will help you.

As an attacker is likely to be physically stronger than their victim (unless the attacker is feeling a tad suicidal), we were told not to wrestle, not to use ‘might against might,’ but to find weak spots. We looked at the diagrams we’d been shown and practised using the strong parts of our bodies, the heels of our hands, our fists, our feet, against the vulnerable parts of an attacker’s, their shins, their solar plexus, their throat. This wasn’t karate, this wasn’t the Marquess of Queensbury rules, this was fighting dirty, and fighting for your right to go about your life unharmed.

Sian and Lydia explained that we weren’t just practising for that shadowy figure that jumps out of the bushes, we were also practising close-quarters techniques, where you might not have the space to deliver that awesome roundhouse kick you saw on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because sexual assault is much more likely to come from people we know (friends, acquaintances, dates) than from strangers, and can happen just as easily in your house, on your sofa, as in a dark alley somewhere. This is where a lot of the anti-rape advice given by many self-defence instructors falls down! It’s no good saying ‘don’t walk alone at night’ when it could be your date who attacks you.

My one criticism of this class would be that they could have explained a little more about the specific experiences of queer and transgender people, as these were mentioned on the programme, but as a one-hour starter class it was full of great, general advice for people from all walks of life on how to avoid sexual or violent assault from a stronger attacker.

The class overran, there had been so much to say, but as we all quickly cleared out of the studio to get to the next Ladyfest event we left our email addresses with Lydia. The nature of feminist self-defence, as a DIY movement, is that one takes what one has learned and passes it on. Lydia and Sian’s instructor had done so, and now the two of them were passing it on as well. They told us that they wanted to prepare another class in London, and would contact us with details. I handed round flyers for BadRep, having already mentioned I’d be writing about the class, and it was decided that our readers should contact Lydia and Sian if they were interested in another London-based class, or if interested in resources for starting their own classes elsewhere in the country. You can e-mail us at [email protected] if you’re interested, and we’ll put you in touch.

Meanwhile, here’s a little further reading…

• The F Word showcases a free, downloadable pamphlet by Isy, aimed at women and girls, which features some practical self-defence tips and diagrams.
• Pervocracy breaks down some typical ‘anti-rape’ tips – The Best Friend Test (note: this blog, if not this particular post, may well be NSFW for you).
• A report from the Metropolitan Police on rape statistics in London, including stranger rape vs. aquiantance rape, in PDF format.

RJ at RiotNrrd comics lays into a particularly awful self-defence instructor. Used with permission - www.riotnrrdcomics.com.