Sex-Change Society

Melanie Phillips' The Sex-Change Society and the Neutered Male published in 1999 is currently annoying me. It is interesting reading but her theme as might be assumed from the title is that men have become irrelevant in British society which has been re-made to suit women. Her viewpoint is extreme and at times she reminds me of an inept tree surgeon busily sawing off the branch on which she is sitting. Women should do what they're best at and stay at home bringing up children and doing the housework. I keep wanting to yell at her - does that include you?

She propagates the myth that feminism is a conspiracy to destroy the traditional family. She fails to mention that the nuclear family - non working mother, breadwinner father and 2.4 shiny faced children - has really only been in existence since the middle of the 20th century. Prior to that many people lived in an extended family with children, parents and grandparents frequently living in the same house. I would argue it wasn't feminism which destroyed the family but the State Pension which made it possible for people to retire from work and still have money to support themselves without having to live with their children.

In the extended family there was always someone at home for the children. Mother and father may well both have worked but there was no need for a babysitter or childminder as granny or grandpa were always at home when the kids returned from school. You only have to look an census records from 1841 onwards to see this time and time again. Even relatively low income families could often afford to have a maid to help with household chores as well. The nuclear family therefore is a relatively modern invention.

She argues that easy divorce has shattered the family structure to the detriment of men who can only find security and an identity in the traditional family where father's word is law. In fact the picture she paints of men is of a nation of wimps who only exist if they have a defined structure and defined roles to fulfil - and this was even before feminism. Men only exist in relation to women and if you change that relationship men can't cope. She seems to wilfully misunderstand feminism's view of the family and men. Except for the extreme feminists, most women are not anti men and anti family. Feminism was about giving women more choices but not about stopping them having traditional female roles if that's what they wanted.

On one hand she is arguing that feminism has destroyed men but she isn't really putting forward a good case for saving them anyway. Is it really feminism and easy divorce which has created all the single parent families? Or is it simply that attitudes have changed and illegitimacy and divorce are no longer social stigmas? Attitudes have changed radically and I saw a good example of that the other day. It was an article by a lady who had given up her illegitimate child for adoption because she was 18 at the time and unmarried. The comments were dreadful and many were along the lines of 'How dare you give your baby away? I could never do that'.

These comments fail to take into account the morals of the time and the lack of support for unmarried mothers in the 1950s and 1960s. No cheap childcare, no benefits and free council house. Bringing up the child yourself was not an option unless your mother was willing to look after the child while the girl went out to work.

This is an interesting book but very one-sided and I find I can only read a chapter at a time. I dislike the cover as well.

Blizzard conditions today and books

Well that is a bit of an exaggeration but the wind is swirling the snow around the back garden and we have what looks like a lunar landscape in the making. There was more snow last night - though not very much - and it has been snowing today in short bursts. I managed to walk to the post office earlier but I would probably need to get out my wellies and dust them off if I wanted to venture out now. Next door's new dog will be starting to think that the world is always white as he has hardly known anything different.

I am currently reading Natasha Walters' The New Feminism. It was published in 1999 and actually presents a very much more relaxed attitude to many things which are a big issues now. For example she talks about surveys showing women are not bothered about what people think about their appearance - clothes, weight, hair etc. This is certainly not the case now with girls as young as 5 worried about their weight! Are we going backwards over such issues?

The author has some interesting things to say about the way working life is organised on the basis that the breadwinner is cut off from their domestic life on the assumption that someone will be at home to take care of it. If domestic responsibilities were more evenly spread between men and women then working arrangements would need to be more flexible. I've worked with men who have had to leave work at particular times to pick up children and no one bats an eyelid.

Flexibility and getting rid of the long hours culture are probably two of the keys to the problem. With ever changing technology more and more work can be done wherever it is convenient to do it. There is video and telephone conferencing for communication. I can't help feeling that much of the business travel undertaken these days says more about people's love of status and being seen to be important than about the necessity for a face to face meeting. When I was doing a job which involved travelling to apparently essential meetings I used to get fed up of the waste of time and effort some of my journeys were. Yes I liked the travelling but that didn't stop me feeling some it was a waste.

The Female Eunuch

I finished reading Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch last night and found I had forgotten how revolutionary the final chapter was. It advocates encouraging new ways of organising society such as co-operative buying of staple household items and not being brainwashed by brand appeal. She warns about the adverse effect of consumerism and suggests that if women really want to change their lives they should not be so influenced by the idea of having the latest appliance - just because it is the latest. She suggests farming out domestic tasks you hate doing to people who like doing them and sharing things like washing machines between households. In this way families will not be 'forced' to spend money they haven't got on things they probably don't need - though she does say a washing machine is necessary!

She points out that while the nuclear family with traditional roles suits a minority of women it forces many to spend most of their time undertaking repetitive and boring tasks. To share these out on a barter system would ease the burden for many people. She sees nothing wrong with paying someone to look after your children if they can do it better than you can. She argues that it is only with domestic tasks this is seen as unacceptable. If you needed legal advice you'd pay a solicitor so why not pay someone who enjoys spending all their time with kids to look after yours so that you can spend some time doing the things you do find satisfying and rewarding? Simple - but still revolutionary even 40 years later. I can see why this book caused such a stir at the time it was first published. I know it made me stop and think about things I'd always thought unchangeable.

Naomi Wolf

I am gradually reading my way through the classic authors and books of the so called second wave of feminism to see how relevant their thoughts are today. Fire with Fire by Naomi Wolf was published in 1994 and yet she paints a picture of a very similar world to today. She is scathing about 'victim' feminism - and I agree with her. You cannot fight or change anything if you are starting from a position of weakness and simply expecting things to change because people feel sorry for you.

She argues that if you want things to change then you need to go about it an adult fashion and use reasoned argument and don't forget your sense of humour. Her view of feminism is quite similar to my own - it's about choices in life and what suits you may not suit someone else. She points out that stereotypes straight jacket everyone - not just women. It is not helpful to see men as anti women since the majority aren't - they're just struggling along trying to make the best of their lives like the rest of us.

Great reading and full of common sense - but then I would say that since I agree with a lot of it!

I occasionally read a website called the F Word.(www.thefword.org.uk) which can be interesting but is frequently over the top. I came across a post a couple of weeks ago in which a woman had been taking part in a Reclaim the Night March and had been pushed by a man. She said she had been sexually assaulted because the man had pushed her on her breasts and at the same time grabbed them. Right - so if you're pushing someone away from you how can you be grabbing them at the same time? To me this is not a sexual assault in any shape or form. If she'd been a man he'd have pushed her in the same anatomical area - so what? Unpleasant, unnecessary but not a sexual assault.

Re-reading a classic

I am currently re-reading Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch. I first read it soon after it was published and was very impressed. I've read about 70 pages so far and many of the things she rails against are even worse now. The cult of the body beautiful for example and the emphasis on not having any body hair. Now this has extended to men which wasn't the case back in the 1970s. The book stands up well to re-reading and her writing style is always interesting.

For myself I am against hair removal and I always feel that it makes adults look like children. Adults have body hair and children don't. I know it's now pushed as being a hygiene issue but I've always believed that you just need to wash regularly and that natural smells are just that - natural smells. However I do think we need underarm deodorants - but that's as far as I go I'm afraid. As someone I once worked with commented on a colleague - 'She's got deodorants for places that I didn't even know I had.'

One Dimensional Woman

One Dimensional Woman by Nina Power is a small book - just over 100 pages but it makes some very interesting points about women today. Why do the few so-called feminist books aimed at younger women concentrate on personal improvement rather than changing society? Why has the consumer society had such a huge effect on women to the extent they must have the latest designer handbag, plastic surgery their own flat and a man - probably in that order? Why do women objectify their own bodies even though women have spent decades complaining about men doing just that?

What I also found interesting were her comments on pornography. She points out that original silent pornographic films always contained an element of humour and it looked as though the participants were enjoying themselves. She is not anti pornography but suggests we have lost something along with the humour. She also suggests that 21st century feminism has rather lost the plot. Very well worth reading.

Education and feminism and Steve Moxon

This seems to be a common complaint of the education system these days. Apparently boys are being held back so that girls look better - not sure I believe that. People seem to be worried about most primary school teachers being women. I was at primary school in the 1950s/1960s and all my teachers - with one exception - were female. So how have things changed?

The other complaint is course work favours girls where exams favour boys. This is definitely a sweeping generalisation. I've come across more than one man who doesn't do well in exams but excels at coursework. I tend to do better in exams than I do at coursework but my mother used to go to pieces in exams. So surely if you have half the marks on the coursework and half on the exam that is fair to both? Or am I missing something?

I am currently reading an interesting book by Steve Moxon called The Woman Racket. I haven't got to the section about education though he has talked about men getting a higher percentage of first class honours degrees and being better than women at maths. His basic theory is that men are discriminated against because in almost any activity women cluster in the middle sections of ability with men at both ends - the best and the worst. Men have bigger brains and higher IQs. I paused to wonder whether that's because they were better at IQ tests but he seems to have ignored that point.

He also argues that the NHS pays more attention to women's health. Germaine Greer argues that's because it's an indirect way of controlling women by screening them for everything under the sun. I've also read somewhere that men in general resist attending for any sort of screening and that is one reason why screening programmes for prostate cancer etc are not considered viable. There is far more at stake than a simple discrimination issue.

Steve Moxon's basic argument is that women have never been discriminated against in any shape or form and have always lived privileged lives and yet they never achieve anything particularly noteworthy. Marie Curie anyone? Florence Nightingale? Rosalind Franklin? He also says we should not judge what happened in the past through the eyes of today. I know what he's getting at but surely nothing would change if we never looked at it differently? He is saying men are the ones who are discriminated against. He hasn't yet annoyed me and while I don't wholly agree with what he is saying it is interesting reading and is backed up by verifiable sources for a change.

Cruel Hoax

I am currently reading a book called Cruel Hoax: Feminism and the New World Order by Henry Makow who seems to have an inferiority complex before he starts as he has PhD after his name on the book cover. His opinion - not backed up by verifiable facts - is that feminism was invented and propagated by the big banking families in America and Europe. It was done to destabilise society and make people more easily controllable. It was easier to invent feminism as women are much more easily brainwashed than men.

The whole idea is that women would be indoctrinated into thinking they should rebel against their oppression by men and destroy the nuclear family. According to this guy, feminists are all lesbians, communists and atheists and are being controlled by the Illuminati to break up families and not have children so that the world population reduces, society is fragmented and individuals are more easily controlled.

He seriously believes that women are naturally self sacrificing and find true happiness in giving up their wants and needs in exchange for being supported by a man. Men have only become promiscuous because women made them so and man's natural inclination is to have a wife and children but feminists thwart this desire. He says women should behave like they do in Muslim countries and not work outside the home. It is wicked not to have children. Obviously he is not aware that in Iran more than 50% of university students are women. The author says he never found happiness with women until he got himself a submissive wife who believes his word is law and that her own interests don't matter as long as he is happy.

Women should not have careers because it is not natural to have women in positions of authority over men. In fact all the things he says should happen if suggested in connection with a race or religion would be against most Western anti discrimination and race hate laws. I find it suspicious that even though he writes mainly about America he lives in Canada and his web site is hosted in Canada. Is he persona non grata in the USA? He also appears to have been adversely affected by being sacked from a University post because of sexual harassment in connection with his teaching of the works of D H Lawrence. His writing is emotive - 'feminists vomit' over material on his website and he does not back up his theories with verifiable facts only by quotes from long out of print books and articles.

I am far from believing that feminism holds all the answers but if this is the standard of the opposition they don't have much credibility.

Gender and the Media

I'm still ploughing my way through Rosalind Gill's fascinating book Gender and the Media. I was reading last night about magazines especially the ones which have sprung up over the last 15 to 20 years aimed at men. Some of the quotes are really awful - just so sexist and derogatory. As the author says it is almost impossible to complain about them or criticise because they are billed as ironical or humorous and forestall criticism by saying what follows is not meant seriously. In other words they are using the get out which some men have always used when you complain about an unpleasant remark - only joking, you must have lost your sense of humour.

I was also interested to read about women's magazines and how the majority spend all their time telling you how to have better sex, how to attract a man, how to make yourself more attractive. These were the reasons I stopped bothering with women's magazines. They never had any thought provoking articles in them it was all aimed at finding a man. Cosmopolitan was never like that when it first came out as it had hardly any fashion and make up stuff in it and was all about social issues of the day, relationships - other than with men - practical things, books, music, theatre travel etc. I stopped buying it because it became far more traditional.

For a while I bought one called - I think - Red which came out every fortnight and had really interesting articles about politics, problems in this country and elsewhere and sort of up market true confessions. But even that got boring after a while. Marie Claire was quite good as well at one time. Now I just don't bother with magazines except ones about writing.

Am I the only one who thinks clothes, make up, appearance, weight, doing the right thing to attract men and keep them interested is just soooo boring? These days it is so in your face it is difficult to avoid - it seems to be my duty as a woman to be always dressed up and made up and worrying about what people think of me. This 21st century woman wants more interest in life than that. Where have all the feminists gone?

The World According to Women

I'm currently reading The World According to Women by Jane McLoughlin. It is trying to show how popular culture has ruined women. She appears to be excluding The Guardian - for which she does/has work(ed) - from her definition of popular culture. I would be more impressed with her theory if there was a contents list, an index and a bibliography in the book. I'm just over half way through and at the moment it seems to be her own views about Margaret Thatcher et al and how they emasculated men by depriving them of their traditional jobs. Um, really? So the miner's strike is all the fault of feminism - or at least women?

I'm not quite sure how encouraging women into work emasculates men. She seems to be saying popular culture excludes men and tells women how to denigerate them so that they feel worse about themselves. If she could really support her theory with facts and figures I would be interested. What she seems to be saying is that the 3 million unemployed in the 1980s were all men and women had been put into jobs at the expense of the men. She may well be correct most of the unemployed were men but for totally different reasons.

If women were unemployed they would not have been able to register and claim Job Seeker's Allowance because their husbands were working. Also a lot of women paid the Married Women's rate of National Insurance and therefore weren't eligible to claim Job Seeker's Allowance so again they wouldn't have been registered.

By creating jobs which are part time and low status the author is saying men became marginalised because the only jobs available suited women and made use of their inherent skills - caring, domestic work etc. These jobs were demeaning to men. Oh right - now I see. So it's women's fault because she goes out to work and because she's willing to do the jobs other people won't do.

If men have become emasculated and marginalised by society how come they can still be found at the top of most big organisations in far greater numbers than women? In the organisation I worked for once you got above a certain level 90% of the jobs were held by men. For those of you who are familiar with general civil service grades I was an Higher Executive Officer when I retired. In the job I did women were in the minority - only about 35% overall at that grade are women. The area I worked in was very macho and male dominated so the percentage was probably less.

This is an interesting book but it seems to be a manifesto in support of Guardian Women rather than anything else. I do agree though that the magazine Nova was excellent and in a class of its own. Even though it was resurrected a few years ago the new one wasn't as good as the original. My mother - not a lover of women's magazines - used to buy it and we both used to read it.

Bluestockings and How Not To Shop

Bluestockings by Jane Robinson is absolutely fascinating. It is strange to read how women had to fight for any sort of education as they were not considered worth educating. There's a marvellous quote from a sermon delivered by Dean Burgon of Chichester Cathedral in 1884 'Inferior to us God made you: and our inferiors to the end of time you will remain. But you are none the worse off for that.' The author comments that apparently his audience/congregation, brave souls, dissolved into incredulous laughter. I knew Oxford did not award degrees to women until the 1920s but I had not appreciated that Cambridge was even later - 1948!

I'm about half the way through the book which is written in a very approachable style. There is a comprehensive bibliography at the end and the author spoke to many of the women still alive who were involved in the early days of women's university education which really brings the whole subject to life.

How Not To Shop by Carmen Reid is excellent chick lit with great dialogue and characters. Yes there is a happy ending but there are also problems in the background. Annie Valentine - the heroine - is having to deal with her mother's increasing vagueness and with trying to support her sister through IVF. These issues are not reslolved at the end of the book. It's a real feel good read whether or not you've read the previous books in the series.

Stupid council decisions etc.

I was reading a story yesterday about a local authority who closed down a women's refuge because they wouldn't accept men as inmates. They said they couldn't afford similar provision for men so it would have to close. I can't at the moment locate the story but that was the gist of it. I seem to remember it was somewhere like Weymouth.

Common sense suggests that if there are limited resources you share them out evenly and provide support for both sexes but that doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone. I have no problem with the idea men do suffer from domestic violence so I think they should be provided with support but surely it makes no sense to deprive women because you can't afford to provide for men?

I was shocked to find I actually agree with Harriet Harman when she says male bankers are to blame for the banking crisis. After all the top jobs in such institutions usually go to men so they should take the responsibility. If they want the huge salaries and bonuses which go with such jobs then they should take the flak and the responsibility when things go wrong. It's nothing to do with feminism or doing men down. I don't agree with positive discrimination which is another of her big issues.

Gender gap?

I've noticed recently there is beginning to be a backlash against women which today's story about more women than men at universities will do nothing to quell. It appears more women go to university and do well than men who are more prone to dropping out. But men apparently still do better in the courses which are likely to lead to well paid jobs. So nothing new there then.

I haven't read all the media coverage of this story but I could pretty well write it myself. The tabloids will use it as a way of bashing women. Some of the broadsheets will see it as a positive thing while others will see it as a wider trend in society as a whole.

The story this week about women not being as happy as they were before the anti discrimination legislation in the 1970s prompted several articles in the Daily Mail in particular about women never being happy because the poor dears never really know what they want in the first place. I thought this sort of sexism went out with the ark. In my opinion women will never have equality until men play an equal part in child care and domestic chores without being asked and without being thanked. Yes I'm generalising but in my opinion this is why many women aren't happy - because they're now expected to do 3 full time jobs - bring up the kids, do the domestic stuff AND work.

I also noticed a footballer pontificating to the press about women's place in society though much of the media did not take this one up. He was advocating women not being allowed to drive at all though I don't remember him volunteering to do the school run. Someone posted a comment saying he personally would be much happier if women were not allowed to talk, vote and drive. So which bit of the Stone Age did he originate from?

David Starkey couldn't resist a spot of criticism of female historians feminising history and in particular Henry VIII. Probably because male historians have spent rather a long time air brushing women out of history, David, or hadn't you noticed?

As I've said before I do not subscribe to radical feminism but I also dislike the extreme views of some people (male and female) who suggest women should be kept at home and should confine their attentions to domestic chores and child rearing. There's more than a hint of this in the media coverage of female politicians at the moment.

Feminism

I almost always read Dr Crippen - see NHS blog link at the top of this page as he writes with a great deal of common sense and compassion. I don't always agree with what he says but I find what he writes to be balanced and fair. He seems to have stirred up a lot of vitriol amongst the extreme feminist lobby again when writing about so-called 'obstetric rape'.

Rape of any description is always going to be an emotive issue for anyone. Please let us not forget that men can be raped as well. But to equate any medical procedure with rape is I feel going a little bit far. I have had many vaginal examinations in my life - some more painful than others - but I have never felt as though I was being raped. They have all been carried out with sensitivity and frequently humour which help me. I have never felt powerless or in any way oppressed during the procedures which to me are some of the essential properties of a rape. I am not decrying this lady's experience http://burningtimes1645.wordpress.com/. She obviously feels extremely strongly about the issue.

What I would say - as a woman - that not everyone feels like her. I do not agree with her apparent suggestion that anyone who doesn't agree with her has been brainwashed by the patriarchal society. There is always room for more than one point of view. I think both men and women should have equal rights in society, but you cannot change a culture overnight. I am not sure how this lady wants to change things from reading her blog. Does she want everyone to accept her particular view of the world as the only view? If so then I think she would advocate locking up half the human race and not allowing them access to the other half - or that's how it reads to me.

Yes there are some really awful things that happen both in the UK and in America which appear to show that women are still treated as objects and property by some men. Just because some men behave like that doesn't mean all men are unreconstructed male chauvinist pigs at heart. I currently work in a male dominated environment but I have no problem with this. In fact it makes it easier to be frank about what I think as I know no one is going to take offence. I have worked in all female environments and I found I really had to watch what I said. Maybe this says more about me than society in general. I don't like laddish talk and behaviour any more than many people of both sexes do, but in general I find it easier to work in a male dominated environment.

When I was working exclusively with a small group of women I found my own views had to take a back seat. I was always quizzed about the contents of my sandwiches - they were all vegetarian and I'm not - told off I ate chocolate, commiserated with if I had to go for a smear test - because 'it's really unpleasant and a chance for a horrible man to look at your bits' etc etc. In fact I'm sure this particular group of people would have very much sympathised with the views expressed in The Burning Times. I found I was on a different wave length completely. In spite of this I would say I am broadly in sympathy with traditional feminist views. I read Germaine Greer and Betty Friedan and didn't wear a bra if I felt like it without feeling I was a shameless hussy.

So what has happened to feminism? Is it alive and well and living with this type of comment

"This kind of shit happens a lot, as I’m sure you all know, as soon as you get into blogging and you have the audacity to be both female and have a brain. Normally, I just ignore it, but this man is dangerous"

No I don't agree and the whole of The Burning Times leaves me with a very uncomfortable feeling because I know that any comment I post will be treated as criticism and deleted. Women are allowed to use their brains - it is one of the main benefits feminism has achieved in my opinion. I was always brought up to think of myself as equal to any man, but then my parents never encouraged me to think I should stay at home and let the man go out to work - even though my mother did stay at home until we were all teenagers. I wasn't treated as inferior because I was a girl and as a consequence I suppose I've always felt that equal rights for men and women were logical and sensible.

If the views - evidenced by The Burning Times are widespread then I dread to think what could happen to society.

Fat people are responsible for global warming

There is an article in today's Telegraph online http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1973230/Fat-people-blamed-for-global-warming.html saying new research blames fat people for global warming. There's a certain strange logic to this: fat people eat more so it costs more in terms of resources to produce their food. Yes I can understand that. It was the next bit I found unpalatable - fat people walk less and travel by car more and don't use public transport!! How's that for sweeping generalisations?

I actually walk more and use public transport more than many thinner people I know so I don't see how they can generalise like this. If you're thin and active you might also eat more than fat inactive people. What about food everyone in the Western world wastes as well?

Personally I don't subscribe to the idea that mankind is wholly responsible for climate change. What about volcanoes? What about all the historical evidence about climate change in the past? Were dinosaurs driving around in gas guzzling cars before the last ice age? I don't think so - though of course there are the Flintstones to consider!

I'm all in favour of limiting waste but not for reasons of climate change. The whole carrier bag thing irritates me immensely. Those of us who use carrier bags as bin bags will only have to buy alternatives if they ban them entirely - so where's the difference? I refuse to wash out the kitchen bin every time I use it because I can't put a bin liner in it - that's a waste of water and washing up liquid.

The other thing that really bugged me today on the news is the idea that many rural doctor's surgeries may have to close under the new grand plan for polyclinics. So how are rural communities to manage? This potentially means more cars on the road and more people travelling which is not what this government wants. Our leaders and their policies seem less and less joined up by the minute.

Those of you who follow Dr Crippen's posts on NHS blog doctor - link at top of page - may have read his comments on extreme feminism. Even though I'm female I still sided with him. The women he's referring to who are discussing 'birth rape' seem to have a very strange outlook on life. I fail to see how medical procedures can be described as and equated with rape. They may be unpleasant and uncomfortable but NOT rape. There is something definitely skewed about this sort of attitude in my opinion. Do men being examined for prostate cancer regard the examination as male rape? I doubt it.

I've come across this attitude before in women of my acquaintance who seem to think doctors get turned on by giving women internal examinations and regard anything like that as disgusting and demeaning. To me it all depends on your attitude to it. What if the doctor is turned on? As far as I'm concerned if he's doing his job properly I don't really care what vicarious enjoyment he's deriving from the task. As long as a procedure is medically necessary - what is the problem?

Maybe this all brands me as anti-feminist - which I'm not. I don't like the extremes of misogynism or feminism as they're apt to throw the baby out with the bath water in their pursuit of their ideals.