Well I’ll Go To The Foot Of My Stairs…

ETA - there’s tons more here that’ll make you laugh too.

…because they make me smile and I think they’re fab. Besides, they dress a lot like me and I can do most of what they’re doing now.

Look…

There’s also something very powerful about them. One video on their website shows them improvising to a salsa band along Thetford High Street. How fab is that?

What do you think?

….makes depressing and angrifying reading but I recommend you read it.

It’s a report from EVAW (End Violence Against Women) in partnership with EHRC (Equality and Human Rights Commission) about ‘the postcode lottery of violence against women support services’. In her article about the report in the Guardian Julie Bindel says:

Most women in the UK do not have access to a rape crisis centre, and fewer than one in 10 local authorities provide for minority ethnic women escaping or recovering from attempted “honour” crimes, forced marriage or female genital mutilation. Almost a third of local authorities have no specific domestic violence services, and fewer than one in 10 have services for women in prostitution.

and

There are more refuge spaces for abused and stray cats and dogs in the UK than for women and their children escaping domestic violence. For those who wish to stop smoking, there are more places to go for instant access to help than for women who feel their lives are in danger from a former partner.

Anyone who’s been reading here for a while will know that much of my life is taken up with the provision of support services for women recovering from experiences of violence and the essence of this report really doesn’t surprise me. The local Rape Crisis group I volunteer with learns of the closure of yet another group almost every month as more and more women call us from further and further afield. There were 85 Rape Crisis centres in England and Wales in 1984. These days there are only 32 - and that’s not because there are fewer women wanting our help and support. The Refuge group I work with can only just manage the ever growing demand for space for women and their children fleeing domestic violence and abuse from all areas of the country.

Both groups I work with are seriously underfunded, women only, Not for Profit organisations. Women who need violence against women support services tend to prefer services designed and delivered by such organisations because we are woman-centred and client led. We’re non-threatening. Statutory agencies work in a different way and often seem to work to an agenda that is less about enabling and empowering women and more about blaming and punishing them. For thirty years or more Not for Profit violence against women services have been achieving excellent results - changing lives - on a shoestring.

The Map of Gaps illustrates only too well the shameful tokenism of successive governments in their repeated acknowledgement of our wealth of knowledge and expertise and their abject failure to put their money where their mouth is. It actually costs the public purse far more not to support Women’s Refuges, Rape Crisis Centres, services for BME women and prostitution and trafficking services than it would if existing services were adequately funded and allowed to get on with doing what we do best - supporting women in their recovery from experiences of violence.

(I could go into a long and boring tirade about Supporting People here - the Central funding stream that was hailed as the saviour of Refuge funding problems but has turned out to be a time consuming red-tape exercise that has us all jumping through endless administrative hoops which keep us from doing our jobs i.e. actually supporting people. And all for peanuts! It really is the bane of my life but I’ll leave that for another time.)

From the Map of Gaps here’s an illustration of the postcode lottery as far as Rape Crisis Centres are concerned.

It’s shameful, isn’t it.

…is here.

We all did this last year. We all did this the year before that too. Actually, some of us have been doing this kind of thing since the 70’s - can you imagine?

How come we’re still having to do this?

I want things to change. All feminists want things to change - for the better -for all women.

Much love to Fin for being who she is - it’s a massive deal to get London’s roads closed for a bunch (troupe/tribe/army?) of women saying “Enough!”. Personally, I think it’s a huge deal to have SR close their main London doors on a Saturday night because the Feminists are in town so Yay us! A minor victory, maybe. But it’s minor victories that win wars, isn’t it?

…this post from The F Word couldn’t make it more clear.

As radical feminists, we’ve concerned ourselves with the power dynamics of the sexual activities of men that demand younger and younger children to rape and kill, more and more prostitutes to rape and kill, more and more sex workers to rape and kill, more and more girls and women to rape and kill in order to demonstrate their dominance of our world for eons. And now their sexual abuse of animals, orangutans in this case, is highlighted. Watch the vid if you can. It’s about 20 minutes long.

It took them over a year to rescue that poor creature. I commend them for doing that but I can’t help thinking ‘that’s a year longer than they spent trying to rescue a human female from the same kind of life’.

There’s something more horrific in an orangutan having to live like that than a human woman having to live like that? Oh, I forgot. Human women choose to live the life an orangutan needs to be rescued from. But, as always, there’s something missing from the analysis - the actions of men; their culpability.

Some may say “oh, but they’re Indonesian men - they’re different”. Some may say “my clients/audience/lover/whatever, are/is good to me”. Whatever gets you through, I guess, but the bottom line is… men hate you. Whatever your nationality, profession/occupation, status, sexuality, ethnicity, age, level of ability - if fact anything about you that deems you female - counts for nothing in their world. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Your humanity is neither relevant or important.

In their world you are the same as an orangutan. How does that make you feel?

Me? I’m fucking angry.

…grrrr. I’ve been referred to as a ‘lady’ twice this week and once even as a ‘girl’ - at my age ffs! The guy who referred to me as a girl did it, I think, because he knew it’d piss me off - and he was right - and he won’t be doing that again.

Why do they do this? Why do they diminish us with their language? I’m not asking because I don’t know; I’m simply making an opportunity for us to share our grrrr’s about it and to see if there’s any way we can change things.

…Emma Thompson.

Only just saw this so I’ve missed the events but isn’t it brilliant when women with clout get on board your boat?

It’s just possible that Joe Public finds the realities of the sex industry a wee bit scary what with all this talk of gun totin’ pimps and hard-headed whores that’d bite his balls off rather than give out the name of their handler. Emma says “go see for yourself”. Go see and make up your own mind.

She is convinced that police will be able pierce the culture of fear and silence around sex-trafficking gangs only if the public gets involved in bringing out the truth.

I assume “the public” here means ‘women’ because, as we all know, men use prostitutes because they get off on their enslavement and couldn’t give two shits about bringing out ‘the truth’.

So get up and go, women! Wander into your local massage parlour and ask some questions. Be that ‘awkward customer’ who doesn’t go away till they got what they came for. Ask those indelicate questions.

Let’s go to work…

….40 times a day ??

I just listened to the ’supply’ side again. Use of one’s vagina to that extent is punishment, surely? Even for the yahoos? I sincerely believe that those women who actually do service men to that extent - your bog standard prozzie without internet acess and the self obsessed, self destructive ’support’ of the “sex-poz” internet community for example - are in the majority.

And this is a feminist blog.

“We have to act. We have to end this apalling abuse of women (and children)”.

Act, my sisters. Get out there and make your truths known. Men couldn’t do 40 times a day could they? What’s their agenda there then..?

ACT.

…is back as well.

This week, it can be found here

…to say yes, I’m still breathing and thank you to everyone who’s e-mailed asking after my health/wellbeing (there’s been a surprising lot of you - I’m flattered!). It’s also kinda nice to know you’ve missed the appearance of my scribblings here. I’ve had something of a blog hiatus - partly self imposed and partly due to real life stuff that takes precidence because, you know… some of it pays the bills. But my haitus is over (actually, I just find it hard to keep my gob shut) and normal service is resumed.

I had intended to gabcast this because I’ve been told by *the one we all love to hate* that my voice sounds like a “strict nursey type” - a comment that just had all of us here wetting ourselves in fits of laughter because it was said in a way that was intended to demean me by someone who can’t get past thinking in sexual stereotypes. But I had to give up in the end because I couldn’t gabcast it for laughing - you’d never have understood a word!

It’s Halloween next week…