‘How It Feels To Be The Husband of a Suffragette’ – a 1914 guide for men

Imagine the horror. You’re a respectable man with a good job and a nice life and then, blimey, you discover your wife’s one of those ruddy suffragettes.  This 1914 manual for men – anonymously written by ‘Him’ and illustrated by May Wilson Preston (published by George H Doran Co, New York) – attempts to make the suffragette situation a little clearer for the troubled male at the turn of the last century. It's something of an obscure text now, and I can only find reference to it in two other books...

How It Feels To Be The Husband of a Suffragette is not as derisive about suffragettes as you might imagine, and – with the aid of a little out-of-date humour – attempts to portray women’s demands for suffrage in a somewhat sympathetic light.  Although there are still a few areas where the more enlightened reader will flinch. For instance, ‘Him’ refers to his wife as ‘his’ property, and seems somewhat patronising in his condescension that women are not intelligent enough to know how to vote unaided. And, most eye-popping of all is the following excerpt:

You’ll be pleased to know that Him concedes that since women make up about 50% of the population, he supposes they are indeed people. Phew.

Moving on, our author suggests that gun-owning readers have less reason to be afraid of their suffragette wives than their more peaceful brothers, which is strange logic – you’d think the wives would have more to fear from their gun-toting spouses.

Him also asks for some sympathy from both his male readers and his wife and her sisters because he insists a maid washes the daily dishes (rather than his wife), and that he himself takes over the cooking when they are away camping – presumably a barbecuing role that sees him revert to caveman stereotypes.

Mrs Pankhurst is dismissed as “a bit trying at times”, but even so, Him somehow manages – despite all the toss mentioned above – to generate some concealed semblance of sympathy, if not support, for the emancipation of women.

How It Feels To Be The Husband of a Suffragette is mostly interesting only as a historical curiosity. At almost 100 years old, it is a text of its time and mostly of its country – the American campaign having a fair few differences to the British one.  Yet the principles remain the same, and it is interesting to read a man’s view of the fight – especially one written while the demand for votes was still being shouted.  It’s a slim 63-page document of small pages, so don’t expect to learn too much from How It Feels To Be The Husband of a Suffragette, but it’s interesting from a historical and humorous point of view. And lest we forget, the fight for female emancipation was really all about how it affected men!

Jaclyn Friedman – What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety

Why didn’t this book exist when I was younger? But at least it exists now!

Jaclyn Friedman – author of Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, as well as a regular media commentator on gender issues – has produced a vital and engaging go-to book to help inform young women to make safe sexual choices, and to feel liberated by the choices they make.

Whether Jaclyn’s readers are yet to embark on their sex lives, in a monogamous relationship, or enjoying regular casual flings, What You Really Really Want (Seal Press,November 2011, £11.99) provides them with the tools to separate what they actually want from what society tells them they want, thereby arming them with the skills to define and create their own sexual identity.

What is most satisfying about Jaclyn’s book is that it succeeds in being non-judgemental. The media, schools and even our families often portray sex as a taboo subject that young women must never engage in for fear of becoming infected, tarnished or ousted as a whore. Yet at the same time, young women are told that unless they dress provocatively and are willing to perform virtually any sexual act imaginable, they are frigid prudes. And nobody wants to be seen as a prude. It’s an absolute minefield, and I can’t say I envy today’s teenagers for all the mixed messages and hypocritical views hurled at them by the world.

What You Really Really Want is a welcome text to help young women make informed decisions about what it is they, as individual people, want sexually. Instructive and interactive, the book uses case studies, quizzes, creative exercises and more to help illustrate the points it raises. Jaclyn writes in a friendly, accessible and un-patronising tone, but because the content provides a lot of food for thought, you should set aside a fair whack of time to fully digest the book and work through the exercises she suggests.

Along with MichaelKaufman and Michael Kimmel’s book The Guy’s Guide to Feminism (also published by Seal Press recently, and reviewed by me here), Jaclyn Friedman’s latest book should take pride of place in the library of every school, college and youth club, and ought to be an essential read for all young women as they consider their sexuality. I wish this book had existed when I was in my teens – it would have made those treacherous years just that bit easier to manage. As it is, this book exists now and thank goodness it does!

In my humble view, teachers and parents will be failing in their responsibilities if they don’t give this book to the young women under their care. So, congratulations to Jaclyn for writing this book, and to Seal Press for publishing yet another essential book for women. There is a microsite for What You Really Really Want here.

Coram Boy at Colston Hall, Bristol

Because essential building works are continuing at Bristol Old Vic, this year the famous theatre is putting on its Christmas show at another of the city’s iconic venues: Colston Hall.

Hot on the heels of last Christmas’s magical Swallows and Amazons, and the exhilarating outdoor summer production of Treasure Island, there was every expectation that Coram Boy (directed by Melly Still) would be just as breathtaking. And, of course, it didn’t disappoint.

Based on the award winning novel by Jamila Gavin, and adapted here by Helen Edmundson, Coram Boy is billed as “an epic tale of love, loss and reunion”. Set in the South West in the 18th Century, the play follows Alexander (George Clark and Freddie Hutchins) on his dream of becoming a musician – despite his wealthy father insisting that the minute Alexander’s voice broke he must leave the cathedral choir and take on the family estate. But after a passionate night with the beautiful Melissa (Mabel Moll and Emily Head), Alexander flees the family home – unaware that Melissa is now carrying his child.

Alongside all this is a much darker plot circling around child-murdering Otis (played by the mighty Tristan Sturrock – who recently delighted as Long John Silver in Treasure Island), who is known as the ‘Coram Man’. He takes the unwanted babies from poor and vulnerable women, who pay Otis in the belief he will take their children to Captain Thomas Coram’s Foundling Hospital in London, where they will be looked after. In reality, evil Otis kills the babies and – with the help of his traumatised simpleton son Meshak (Fionn Gill) – buries their bodies in the forest, pocketing the money for himself.

Taking in a variety of locations from cathedrals to orphanages, stately homes to slave tunnels, Coram Boy follows Alexander and the child he never knew existed as they embark on a remarkable journey, eventually to find each other.

As with Swallows and Amazons and Treasure Island, it is the simplicity of the set design (by Anna Fleischle) that renders it most effective. From some of the young cast being draped over banisters to represent statues of church angels, to the extremely effective interpretation of the sea using just a thin sheet of clear plastic.

The stark messages coming out of Coram Boy – between the beautiful musical interpretations of Handel’s music, and the chilling singing – are the vital developments that have been made in terms of birth control information, abortion advice, and the care of children – both in the family home and by the state. And it is important to remember that while Coram Boy, set in the late 1700s, may depict an era of long, long ago… it was only in the early 1900s that scant information about birth control began to circulate, it was only in 1967 that abortion was legalised in the UK, and the care system still has a great deal of progress to make. Coram Boy is a historical play, but please don’t be mistaken for thinking that the issues it addresses have all been resolved.

Unsurprisingly, Coram Boy comes with a warning that it is unsuitable for those under the age of 12 – and there are some very dark sequences, involving crying babies being murdered, the bedraggled bodies of dead babies being dug up, an agonising and degrading scene where Melissa gives birth, and – most creepy of all – the heads of baby dolls with ghostly bodies appearing from all over the stage.

However, this is an overwhelmingly excellent production, encompassing a cast of 35, and featuring a full chorus, a live orchestra and a host of Bristolian children – who all gather on stage for a spine-tingling performance of Handel’s Hallelujah at the end: I had goose bumps all over my arms. Just wonderful.

I can’t wait to see what Bristol Old Vic will pull out of its talented bag next… And I hope it includes Tristan Sturrock again. The man’s a local legend!

Coram Boy is being performed at Colston Hall until December 30. For full information and to buy tickets, please click here.
To visit the Coram Boy microsite, please click here.

"Miss Rivers & Miss Bridges" – by Geraldine Symons

I was tipped off about this 1970s children’s book by someone on Twitter who knew I was working my way through as many suffragette books as possible. And although Miss Rivers & Miss Bridges by Geraldine Symons (Puffin Books) is sadly long out of print, there are a fair few second hand copies available on Amazon Marketplace at very reasonable prices, so I snapped one up.

Miss Rivers & Miss Bridges is aimed at readers of around 11 years old, and follows teen heroines Pansy and Atalanta over a week in the early 1910s, when Pansy has come to stay with her friend and see the big smoke. Free-spirited Atalanta, who is blessed with a bohemian author and actress for parents, is impassioned by the suffrage movement and determined that she and Pansy will make their mark for the cause, and attract the attention of Emmeline Pankhurst.

Their determination sees them hurl a brick through a window at 10 Downing Street, dive into the Thames, cause a scene in front of the Prime Minister at the theatre, and even end up in the police cells… A busy week by anyone’s standards.

While it is, of course, entirely ridiculous that Pansy and Atalanta could get away with all this without serious repercussion, just suspend your disbelief and go with the flow of these passionate and spirited young women as they illustrate the depth of feeling that exists in people of all ages for female emancipation.

The long-running fight of our foremothers for the vote must never be forgotten, and it is important that our children are educated to know about this important part of their history. And Miss Rivers & Miss Bridges is an entirely readable and fun way of doing that.

2011: What was that all about?

Everyone else does an end of year round-up, so here’s my vainglorious stab at the thing.

FICTION BOOKS OF 2011:

Anthony Quinn – Half of the Human Race 

Maggie O’Farrell – The Hand That First Held Mine

NON-FICTION BOOKS OF 2011:

Jennifer Hayashi Danns and Sandrine Leveque – Stripped: The Bare Reality of Lap Dancing

Gary Younge – Who Are We: And Should It Matter in the 21st Century?

GRATUITOUS NODS TO BOOKS WOT I WROTE SOMEFINK FOR IN 2011:

Deborah M Withers (editor) – Sistershow Revisited: Feminism In Bristol

Sian Norris (editor) – The Lightbulb Moment: The Stories Of Why We Are Feminists

 

GIGS OF 2011:

British Electric Foundation at Camden Roundhouse, London, October

Scritti Politti at the Trinity Centre, Bristol, October

PLAYS OF 2011 (PERFORMED IN BRISTOL):

The Wild Bride at St Georges (with Bristol Old Vic)

Treasure Island at Bristol Old Vic

Plus a festive nod to Coram Boy at Colston Hall, which I’ll be seeing tomorrow and reviewing shortly (with, err, Bristol Old Vic again!)

EXHIBITIONS OF 2011:

The Glamour of the Gods – at the National Portrait Gallery, London

Sistershow Revisted at Centrespace Gallery, Bristol

MOST POPULAR MJM POSTS OF 2011 (in terms of hits):

Why Caitlin Moran and Grace Dent are never on panel shows... but should be

Laurie Penny... looking familiar

“The Suffragette” by Janet MacLeod Trotter

My ongoing mission to compile an exhaustive directory of novels and non-fiction books about the suffrage movement continues with this review of Janet MacLeod Trotter’s novel The Suffragette (originally published in 1995, but republished in 2011).

Janet has made her career writing novels, mostly historical fiction, which clearly is the category The Suffragette falls into. The novel begins at the turn of the last century, and follows our heroine Maggie Beaton on her fight for female emancipation. What immediately makes The Suffragette different from so many other novels about the movement is that it is not only set in the north of England, but also profiles a working-class protagonist.

The Suffragette is literally illustrated with such detail about the slums of Newcastle, and the degradation and filth that Maggie and her family live and work in, that it is easy to quickly become absorbed in the world Janet recreates here. And the further Maggie becomes involved in the cause for suffrage, the faster you start turning the pages to see where her story goes next. I found that after Maggie was locked up in prison, and after reading the harrowing descriptions of her force feeding, that the story really picked up pace for me and I became completely absorbed in her tale.

Perhaps this is because Janet herself has such a strong link to the suffrage movement. She explained to me in an email: “My interest in the suffragettes was sparked by family stories of my three great aunts in Edinburgh, who were all members of the WSPU, and their mother, my great granny Janet, who accosted Winston Churchill with an umbrella and shouted ‘Votes for Women’ at him! He was then in the Liberal government who were denying women the franchise.  Women got arrested for doing less, but luckily Janet was not.” This family story is paid tribute to in an anecdote near the start of The Suffragette.

Janet continued: “They also took part in the 1911 census revolt and the 1909 mass rally in Edinburgh for the Pankhursts, in which my aunties dressed up as figures from history – Mary Queen of Scots and Agnes Bar-Lass (both Scottish heroines). In the early 1990s, we moved to Morpeth and lived near the grave of Emily Davison, the great suffragette martyr, and it was researching more about her that spurred me on to write the novel.  I wanted to highlight that there had been plenty of women outside London who fought hard to win emancipation.”

There are a lot of twists in the novel and I won’t spoil them, but I’d urge you to read Janet’s book and find out for yourself. There were quite a few areas where I really started racing through the pages to find out what happened as soon as I could, and also quite a few places where I seethed with rage on Maggie’s behalf. The Suffragette is a very convincing and vital novel on this topic.

As well as being for sale via Amazon and Janet’s website, you can also buy an e-book of The Suffragette. Please visit Janet’s website for more information about the author and her other books.

Dorothy Whipple – ‘Greenbanks’

Dorothy Whipple, taken from Persephone's website

If you don’t yet know who Dorothy Whipple is, you’re really missing something special and I suggest you hot click it to the Persephone Books website – as they are steadily republishing this once-forgotten author’s back catalogue.

Greenbanks is the seventh Dorothy Whipple novel to get the Persephone treatment – a process involving the book being bound in the publisher’s recognisable dove grey cover with a carefully considered endpaper, sold with a matching bookmark, topped off with a contemporary foreword, and the novel itself reprinted in a sympathetic font. The whole package is comforting, delightful and such a simple idea that it’s no wonder Persephone books are so popular after 10+ years.

Dorothy Whipple was a favourite writer for many in the 1930s, writing page turning novels about, well, families. But these weren’t forerunners to the so-say Aga sagas – these were timely warnings of morality, or small town thinking, or comments about how hard it is to escape our past.

Like another of Whipple’s novels, The Priory, Greenbanks turns a property into a character, and the Greenbanks of this novel is the site for all of the book’s main twists and developments.

Louisa is a devoted mother and grandmother, who’s stood by and supported her husband and children whether through right or wrong. She shows herself to be a loyal, kind and devoted woman, who repeatedly ends up putting herself out for others, sacrificing her wants, and considering the needs of others. But before you think she’s a nauseating do-gooder, Louisa isn’t at all. Hers is simply a tale of kindness winning out.

With a family tree of philanderers, money grabbers and big heads, Louisa has quietly looked out for the underdog. And we watch as she nurtures former neighbour Kate, who was shunned by the village for having had an illegitimate child as a teenager. And we watch as Louisa provides a home for her free-spirited granddaughter Rachel, one that the girl is denied by her own parents due to her father’s pig-headedness.

These are frequent traits in a Whipple novel – women picking up the pieces after men squander their money, or men bring shame on a family, or find other selfish ways to ruin a good woman. But at the same time, these novels don’t hate men – they are also filled with kind and sensitive men, and there are plenty of loathsome female characters to choose from in a Whipple novel.

Trying to decide just what it is that makes Whipple’s novels so readable, so exciting and so compelling, even 80 years after initial publication, is surprisingly tricky. They clearly bring different things to different people – and different readers find different stories and messages in Whipple’s words. Maybe that’s part of her appeal – that she says so much to so many different people. Whatever it is, her novels are comforting, exhilarating and gripping – I worry Persephone are running out of Whipple’s to republish, and am keeping my fingers crossed that somewhere, someone will discover a chest of her unpublished manuscripts in their loft. And soon.

Gary Speed’s death shows we urgently need to tackle the ignorance surrounding mental illness

When I started reading mysterious tweets on Sunday saying “Gary Speed RIP”, I did not know who they were referring to. But the volume of these tweets made me curious to know who Gary Speed was and why his death had caused such a stir. I discovered he was a 42-year-old husband, father and football manager and that he had committed suicide on Sunday.

That somebody felt so desperate and in such mental pain that they could not bear to live is obviously extremely sad, and I have every sympathy for Gary’s family and friends. I also have every sympathy for Gary – to take your own life is a terrifying thing for an individual to do.

But what struck me even more than the public outpouring of respect for this man, was the joyous tittle-tattle I overheard in my day-to-day life from ignorant people gossiping on buses, in shops, in offices…

On Monday, I overheard different people say – with evident delirious excitement at having something to dissect, despite their own clear ignorance of mental illness – such terrifyingly ignorant statements as:

-       “Ooh, did you hear about Gary Speed? Ooh, what was that all about?” (Said as if they’d just heard that someone famous had been caught having an affair, or something equally salacious.)

-       “How selfish of him. He had kids, and to do that just before Christmas? So selfish.” (Said as if to imply that if only Gary had waited until January 2, it would have been OK.)

-       “But I saw him on TV the other day and he didn’t look depressed.” (Said as if to imply that people with depression and mental illness wear their pyjamas all day, their pants on their heads and shuffle about dribbling.)

In all of these situations, the people these statements were said to agreed with the first person, and joined in the gleeful bashing of Gary Speed for being so ‘mental’, ‘selfish’ or ‘deceptive’.

I’m annoyed with myself for not butting in and calmly explaining to these people how frightening their ignorance was, and suggesting that perhaps it would be a good idea for them to find out a little bit more about the many types of depression and mental illness, so that they could have more empathy next time something like this happens. Because there will, unfortunately, be a next time. And next time, it may not be a public figure: it may be their partner, their friend or even themselves. Regardless of being a public figure, Gary Speed was also someone’s partner, father and friend.

But I didn’t say anything because I felt too angry and too upset with them, and I knew I would not be able to talk calmly – in all likelihood I would have fumed, ranted and maybe even cried. And these are not actions that would have effectively put my point across – more than likely I would have merely reinforced their view that people with mental health problems are ‘deranged’.

Because I do have mental health problems – I was diagnosed with depression four-and-a-half years ago, and was too ill to work for almost two years. While most of the time I am now much, much better than I was, like everyone with mental illness, I still have times when I struggle. And sometimes I don’t feel brave enough, or well enough, to talk to people about it – especially when I realise how ignorant they are about mental illness, or how amused they are by the topic.

Mental illness can affect anyone. It is not a joke. It is not a subject to be laughed about over the water cooler in the office. Someone feeling so desperate that they take their own life is not a topic for gossiping about like an excited fishwife.

Gary Speed’s suicide has brought several issues into the open air, but the one that is most apparent to me is the glaring and desperate need for us to keep talking about mental illness, to fight to remove the unfortunate stigma attached to mental illness, and to work to educate those who don’t understand mental illness.

Figures from the Mental Health Foundation suggest that one in four people in the UK will be affected by some kind of mental health problem. So it is imperative that the gross ignorance surrounding mental illness is addressed.

There are already some good campaigns being run that are trying to do this. Time to Change has a lot of information on their website about ways to talk about mental illness openly, and offers advice for people wanting to find out more. Put simply, talking tackles discrimination. It really is that simple. It can take courage to talk about mental health (and I know I’ve failed at times to speak up when I hear ignorance about mental illness), but it’s the only way.

Mind is another excellent organisation fighting to help people with mental illness and to raise awareness, and it was only on November 28 that they published an article showing that recent Mind research proved mental health was still a taboo topic in the media. It’s frightening.

We must take something from Gary Speed’s death, and if that something is the ability to talk about mental illness, suicide and depression, then so be it. The ignorance surrounding these topics needs to be addressed, and now is as good a time as any to start.

And let’s start by stopping decrying something as ‘mental’ if we find it unusual. Let’s start by stopping calling something ‘mad’ if it is silly. Let’s start by stopping using all those terms as ‘nutty’, ‘manic’, ‘crazy’, 'batty', 'loopy' etc in derogative, light-hearted or dismissive ways. Even if you don’t feel able to start talking about mental health, you CAN stop using those terms in the wrong way.

Billy Bragg interview: “We need more opinionated women”

Photo: Michael Barbour

After 30+ years as one of our most-respected protest singers, Billy Bragg has never been more relevant than now. In these turbulent days of mass occupations in major cities, industrial strike action and deep-rooted recession, Billy’s no-nonsense approach to trying to change the way we operate makes a lot of sense.

This Sunday and Monday, Billy was in Bristol – primarily for a sold-out gig at the Fleece & Firkin on Monday, but also to perform at the Occupy Bristol camp on College Green, and a spontaneous gig at the recently opened Occupy UWE camp. Throw in getting some rhyming slang for shit on BBC Radio Bristol, and Billy was kept busy on his flying visit.

He also kindly made time to talk with me, and I had the pleasure of catching the end of his soundcheck before his gig – which included a chorus of Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want: an extra treat for me as it never made it’s way onto the final playlist.

“SHIT COMES AROUND AND GOES AROUND”

With a career as enduring as Billy’s, it could seem depressing that his songs warning of Thatcherite hell are so relevant again. But he takes it in his stride, saying: “That’s the trouble if you write topical songs.” Bringing it into a more recent perspective, and linking to one of his newer songs (Never Buy The Sun), he adds: “When the Milly Dowler phone-hacking scandal broke, people were saying ‘You’ve got to rewrite the lyrics to It Says Here’, and I thought I probably should. So I looked at them and thought, ‘Actually, you know what, I don’t have to rewrite them at all’. That’s the sad thing about being a topical songwriter – shit comes around and goes around.”

And while that’s true, this has been a particularly busy week for the population concerned with standing up to the shit that’s doing the circuit. Today (Wednesday), Billy was in London supporting the mass public sector industrial action. “Our political discourse has become so shameful that the leader of the Labour party – the LEADER of the LABOUR party – can’t even come out and support public sector workers when there’s industrial action.”

All being well, Billy’s plan was to record vox pops for Radio Five Live… “I’ll be talking to Tories,” he laughs, “Trying to be impartial.” There’s a pause before he wryly adds: “We’ll see what happens.”

“DOING WOODY’S WORK”

What’s been happening since October are the Occupy camps, which are growing in number weekly. The main Bristol occupation on College Green is the second biggest in the UK after St Paul’s, and is gaining in strength all the time – despite concerns from some people that the demands of the camps are unclear, and that women’s issues have not been fully engaged with.

Yet Billy insists he’s seen no evidence of women being sidelined at the Bristol camp or any other. “All I can say is a woman introduced me on stage, a woman sorted me out when I got down there, a woman showed me where to go and what to do. That’s not uncommon. But I think there always is a male thing going on, and as night falls it becomes more macho.”

Expanding on this, Billy adds: “I was down there last night [Sunday] after dark and it was quite Neolithic. People come out of the woodwork after dark, people who may be sleeping on the streets and are tempted by a fire and maybe some beer… There’s bound to be people who are not completely signed up to the programme who want to come for a bit of warmth and company.”

For all that, the Occupy movement has fired Billy with enthusiasm, not least because the spirit of the movement is so closely aligned to his own reason for becoming a protest singer. “The reason I’m here is that I work for a man called Woody Guthrie,” Billy explains, referring to the American protest singer who died in the 1960s. “Woody Guthrie never did a gig like this where he had a dressing room and a rider and someone selling t-shirts. He played schools and picket lines and occupations. So I have to do that, too.”

In reference to his performance at Occupy UWE that afternoon, he added: “I was saying to the students: ‘I’m thanking you, I have to be here because of who I am and what I believe in. But you’re students, you don’t have to be here. So salute you, never mind me. I’m supposed to be up here, I’m Billy Bragg, I’m doing Woody’s work.”

There are many people who have called the Occupy movement wishy washy and complained it is unclear what the demands are, but Billy simply says it depends what expectations you have. “The globalisation movement smashed shop windows and burned cars. You can smash up branches of McDonalds all day long, nothing’s going to happen,” he states. “What’s happening now, though, is different. While all those demonstrations were going in the 1990s, and with the miners’ strikes in the 1980s, capitalism was rampant. Now capitalism is flat on its arse and something has got to change because we’re all up against the wall.”

When pushed on what that change might be, he says: “In a very broad sense, it’s all about accountability. Those who have economic power over us – the bankers, the multinationals, the lobbyists – those people must be held to account. If it was down to me, I would have publically funded political parties and have all lobbying be transparent. Nothing should be done behind closed doors. Why do our politicians want to say things that are off record? We employ them! They are our employees. They should be accountable to us.”

Yet his faith in the current Occupy movement is clear: “I have confidence in them to articulate a compassionate ideal in a way that’s not tarnished by totalitarianism, in a way that’s not held back by what happened in 1917, that looks forward to 2017 and what kind of world we want to live in. Not how Lenin did it, or Trotsky did it. That doesn’t work anymore. Marx isn’t the problem: Marxists are the problem. Those sour old bastards! They need to stop lecturing and start listening.”

“IT WAS WOMEN’S VOTES THAT
SET UP THE WELFARE STATE”

It would be impossible for me, as a feminist activist, not to ask Billy where he stands on equal rights for women and feminism. “How would you define feminism?,” he muses. “I’m a socialist but there’s a lot of different definitions of a socialist.” There are a lot of different definitions of a feminist, too, I say. “I believe that women should have equal pay with men. Does that make me a feminist? I believe that childcare should be provided free. Does that make me a feminist? I do the washing up at home. Does that make me a feminist?” I laugh and say that I don’t think it’ a question of ticking boxes! “In that case, in the sense that I believe we should live in a fair and equal society, then I’d like to think I’m a feminist. But I’m also a disablist, a gayest…” Well, I think they all go hand in hand… “Yes, that’s true.”

But when talking about the history of union membership, Billy stresses it was thanks to women’s suffrage in 1928 that the election of 1945 saw the roots of the NHS being planted.

“In 1945, we had the first election where women’s votes really counted,” he says. “A lot of people say that the 1945 election was about soldiers. It wasn’t. Women under the age of 30 first got the vote in 1928, and then there wasn’t an election between 1931 and 1945. So an entire tranche of young women with children had come in, and it was their votes that set up the welfare state. Not the soldiers’.” He’s quick to add: “The soldiers did vote for a better world, but the significant thing was the untapped bulge of young women of childbearing age who did not want to go through what their mothers went through. That was the vote that made the welfare state.”

“ANARCHY IN A POLITICAL SENSE”

When the UK riots kicked off in August, Billy was in America and he says it was extraordinary hearing over the wires what was happening at home. “I couldn’t get a handle on it. What was it about? It was weird,” he says, still sounding baffled and saddened by what happened. “I saw rioters had burned down the Westbury Arms in Barking where I come from, and I couldn’t understand that. What would they do that? It was totally illogical in the sense that previous riots had been focussed on some sense of social anger. And although it began with the death of Mark Duggan, it quickly descended into a free for all. It didn’t have a focus.”

What was highlighted at the time, and is the only thing we can salvage from the riots, were the volunteers who selflessly cleaned up the mess. “The anarchy to me was the people who came the next day and swept it all up without being organised. That’s real proper anarchy. That’s what anarchy is in a political sense.”

“THE TIME IS COMING WHEN YOU
CAN MAKE POLITICAL MUSIC AGAIN”

With the clock ticking towards Billy’s time on stage, I was anxious not to keep him too long. But I wanted to know if he thought it would be possible for a new protest singer-songwriter to enjoy the same longevity that he has? “Five years ago I’d have said it’d be really difficult, because any kid starting out would have been going against the tide,” he says. “But now, with the Occupy movement…”

I ask if he worries that the Simon Cowell-ification of the music industry – an industry that synthesises an unidentifiable, characterless, soulless puppet for a TV series, who is then forgotten three months later – is deadening our ability to recognise real talent. “Abba were number one all the way through punk,” Billy states. “The only punks who got anywhere near the top of the charts were Blondie. The Sex Pistols, The Clash… forget it. They never got anywhere near the mainstream.”

Returning to opportunities for new talent, he adds: “I think the time is coming when you can make political music again, because it’s hard to make it without political context. I’ve managed to keep going because I’ve found an audience that connects with it. I’ve spent my time looking at issues and connecting with things like Woody Guthrie.

“The thing that worries me now is that what supported what I did is no longer there, which is the NME, Sounds and Melody Maker. When I was making political music 30 years ago, the editors of those three papers were children of 1968, they believed that music was the alternative lingua franca. That was how we talked to one another, it was how I talked to my parents’ generation as a working-class person. The only medium available to me was to buy a guitar and learn to play and write songs. But that’s all gone. Even the NME pours piss on anyone who’s political now.”

And it’s not just the printed music press, as we also have a whole world of online commentary to deal with now. And Billy is not a fan of Facebook: “People think they’re engaged but they’re not in the way that the audience will engage with me tonight, I promise you that. Facebook likes are not the same as coming together.”

I ask if he gets much abuse online. He says he doesn’t, adding: “You know why I don’t get as much abuse as you? Because my genitals are outside my body. Women with opinions get a lot more shit. Some people cannot stand the idea of a smart woman voicing an opinion. But we should stand up to people who are abusive to women online. Your freedom of speech isn’t freedom to be abusive.”

It’s time to wrap up and for Billy to grab some food before he goes on stage, but as a parting shot he says: “The younger generation are in the throes of discovery and energised by everything. And we need more opinionated women.”

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The Bristol gig was the last night of Billy’s tour, and his set closed with him calling on stage both of his support acts – Sound of Rum and Akala – and the three vocalists performing an extended version of the 1931 union anthem Which Side Are You On? With lyrics rewritten to take in our contemporary situations, the affirmations from the audience were overpowering but not nearly so much as Akala’s repeated opening chant of “We are the 99%” – truly spine-tingling. 

If the future is in the hands of women and men now, as much as the creation of the welfare state was in 1945, then women and men need to jointly keep fighting in solidarity to ensure we keep the NHS and don't let the bankers grind us down. 

One25 Bristol Community Cake Book

Need a Christmas present for the cake lover in your life? You can’t do better than the Bristol Community Cake Book, produced by essential Bristol charity One25, and selling on their website here for the bargain price of £4.99. I’ve just bought three for presents, that’s how good they are.

The book is beautifully produced, lavishly illustrated with colour photos, and well supported by lots of Bristol restaurants and foodies. Recipes have been donated by everyone from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall to Pieminster and, of course, One25 volunteers. And those recipes include the tempting Apple, Pear & Honey Cake, Boisterous Brownies and, err, Courgette Cake (well, let’s give it a go!).

All profits from the book go to One25, which is a Bristol charity that is run by women for women who are street-based sex workers, those who are in the process of exiting such work, and those who have now exited. Launched in 1995, the charity helps vulnerable women build new lives away from violence, poverty and addiction. Support One25 by buying this tasty book!

Feminism In The News

“It is lazy journalists who frequently rely upon stereotypical representations of men and women, and who consequently do injustice to social movements.” (Mendes, p67)

Anyone with even a cautious interest in feminism is aware that we don’t get a good deal from the media. We never have. However, it’s not as cut and dried as all that and there are corners of the media, pockets of publishing, where women’s rights and feminism issues are allowed an airing… although there are always compromises and sacrifices involved.

In this extremely thorough analysis, Kaitlynn Mendes (a journalism lecturer at De Montfort University) goes back to 1968 and examines how feminism has been represented by eight national newspapers (four each in the UK and US).

Feminism In The News: Representations of The Women’s Movement Since The 1960s (Palgrave Macmillan, £49.99) is such a detailed and carefully woven study, presented in an academic yet readable style, that there’s little to find fault with. Apart from with Mendes’ findings that women’s issues have been so consistently and persistently relegated for so long, despite advances in reality!

Depressingly, Mendes’ studies confirm there has been little to no improvement in the perception of feminists as “crazy, ill-tempered, ugly, man-hating, family-wrecking, hairy-legged, bra-burning radical lesbians” (p35) from the ‘60s, and that – as we know – the lie that bras were burned at the 1968 Miss Universe pageant just will not go away. It proves that if the media peddles a story loudly enough, it simply doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, because people will want to believe it if it makes a marginalised group look foolish. However, Mendes also reports an attempt, in 1978, to counter the bra burning myth with an equally preposterous myth of men burning their y-fronts: “Downtrodden men are after something you have already got – equality. Moves are afoot to make 1979 the Year of Men’s Liberation. Bonfires of y-fronts could soon be burning in the streets” (p80). What a shame this equally ridiculous tale never worked its way into folklore in the same way.

What also won’t go away is the attempt by much of the media to ‘humanise’ feminists by needing to state the woman’s marital status and whether or not she is a mother in any introductory text. Mendes cites a 1970 report about Betty Friedan at the Women’s Strike for Equality rally which, she says, spends more time focussing on Friedan’s visit to the hairdresser than it does on the reason for the rally.

There is a lot of weight in Feminism In The News given to the public perception of feminism, because unfortunately this is something that is going to dog us until patriarchy no longer has the upper hand. Feminists on both sides of the pond have always been presented as unfeminine and threatening, an alien and ‘other’ type. While anyone who experiences or lives feminism knows this to be nonsense, sadly it is the willing disbelievers who we have a harder job to convince. Mendes calls this “the normalisation process” that the media needs to go through in order to try and reconcile these unruly deviants as “normal” (p60, p77).

Unable to escape the need to focus on the appearance of women, Mendes also notes a trend in her sample papers – especially in the 1970s – to link feminism women to all manner of apparently unsightly physical conditions from alcoholism to baldness, as well as the antisocial characteristics of bullying and violence (p118). Who knew that feminism could make your hair fall out?

Mendes observes trends in the writing of feminism, with newspapers honing in on one woman’s experience of a topic – thereby skewing or biasing their coverage, and neglecting to represent “the diverse nature of feminist political theory, goals and tactics” (p51).

In more recent years, she observes a trend for newspaper articles about feminism to try and hook the feminist thread up to pop culture, in a bid to make it fashionable. So there were scores of articles pondering whether Sex And The City was a feminist show, whether Bond girls are feminists, and declaring just how much of a feminist icon Cheryl Cole and the like is (p136), which is a trend that’s just not going away.

In almost all areas of her book, I agree with Mendes wholeheartedly and her findings are hard to doubt anyway. But one point ruffled my feathers – Liz Jones from The Daily Mail, whatever Mendes may say, is not a feminist. While rightly stating that The Daily Mail is particularly opposed to feminism, Mendes goes on to add that “certain writers such as Liz Jones are responsible for what little supportive coverage existed” (p148), and later: “Authors such as … Liz Jones stand out for their commitment to feminist values” (p165). Make your own mind up on that one, but I can’t think of one feminist who would stand next to Jones in a line-up.

Clearly, by only focussing on eight newspapers, Mendes’ findings are relatively limited, however to have focussed on more would surely be impossible, and the fact her results from eight titles have been condensed so precisely into this trim volume is a credit to her.

Feminism In The News is an important and useful text, not least because in one book we now have clear academic proof that – regardless of what male editors may like to tell us – feminists have been consistently and repeatedly pushed to the margins and treated like a joke. It would be interesting to see follow up articles and volumes focussing on specific countries, or types of publication, to gain a bigger picture of this problem, as well as to try and suggest solutions for allowing women’s feminist voices to be heard on pages outside of The Guardian.

The Vagina Monologues

 

Last night, Bristol welcomed a one-night showing of the episodic play by Eve Ensler, The Vagina Monologues. Having been doing the circuit for 15 years, the three-woman production has seen all manner of actresses take the hot seats – from Oscar winners to TV stars.

Billed as ‘hilarious’ and ‘moving’, The Vagina Monologues seems a tricky show to market, especially with the ‘v’ word in its title, titter titter. I overheard one man walking past the Bristol Hippodrome complaining that seeing the word ‘vagina’ on a poster was offensive, and should be covered up to protect children. Seriously! I wonder if the same was said of The Puppetry of the Penis, which the same theatre put on a few days earlier.

Tonight’s production was performed by Louisa Lytton (EastEnders, The Bill), Wendi Peters (Coronation Street) and Zaraah Abrahams (Waterloo Road). And while they were all impressive, Wendi was the standout star – even if it was hard to shake off thoughts of Cilla Battersby!

Based on Eve’s ‘Vagina Interviews’ conducted with women from all around the world, the monologues give voice to human stories, all in some way related to the vagina: sex, love, periods, hair, masturbation, FGM, rape, birth, orgasm, the multitude of alternative names for the vagina… all presenting the vagina as an organ for empowerment.

Understandably, there’s been some debate in the feminist community about The Vagina Monologues. For instance, several critics have damned the play as too anti-male and for implying that heterosexual relationships are fuelled by violence.

As such, I wondered how the (few) men in the audience would feel hearing women talk about themselves and their relationships with men like this? More to the point, as a feminist who is very aware of the PR battle we face when trying to convince men that feminist women are not anti-sex, man-haters, I wondered if this play might in fact convince these men that feminist women are the angry harridans the media falsely portrays us as.

Men are even applauded by the cast for attending, which strikes me as patronising. Why wouldn’t they attend? This is an accessible opportunity to gain an insight into how women think and feel. It’s worthwhile anyone attending.

Here’s a recent review of the play by a male reviewer. It’s interesting to read his take on it. In it, the reviewer Rob writes: ‘It is disquieting to imagine the women one knows thinking like this. How many really do?”, before asking: “Do men have anything about which they feel similarly superior?” My comment here is not in any way directed at Rob personally (I don’t know anything about him), but this tack is dredged up when anything pro-women appears – what about the men? Why does a play called The Vagina Monologues need to pander to men? It is clearly about women.

And being about women, women dominated the audience. All sorts of women. Which was great. Although there were also a number of groups who were on hen nights, maybe thinking this was going to be a raucous, cackling, smutty show. And the feeling of my companion and I was that the performance on stage was great, but the performance from some audience groups was disgraceful. Because while it was fine (if irritating) for the hen parties to shriek in the monologues about, for instance, different types of orgasm, it was wholly inappropriate and disrespectful for the same women to giggle and talk among themselves through the monologues about rape in the Congo, for instance. We observed at least two such groups rightly being asked to be quiet by Hippodrome staff.

The Vagina Monologues is not a hen night show! It’s a thoughtful exploration of a part of the body that often goes ignored. The jarring discomfort of sequencing a monologue about gang rape next to a monologue about the joy of lesbian sex is effective in how it jolts you out of your mental comfort zone, but I wondered how much of the message about the gross global abuse towards women was lost on the hen party goers. Not least because they were giggling through it.

But The Vagina Monologues *is* an important show. The caliber of actresses it has attracted, its ability to fill theatres, and its lasting reputation are all testament to its future. It’s fantastic to hear the vagina being discussed, embraced and simply talked about – when normally, but inexplicably, it’s considered a taboo word. And by mixing serious and fun monologues, Eve Ensler is ensuring that the global inequalities for women are brought home to Western audiences, as well as highlighting more local women’s issues.

Through the success of The Vagina Monologues, Eve has formed the charity V Day, which is a global non-profit movement that has raised around £50m for women’s anti-violence groups worldwide. You can’t sniff at that.

Stripping the illusion about lap dancing

 

There was a gripping article in the Guardian last week that offered a different perspective to lap dancing to that which is usually touted by the mainstream media – ie that lap dancers are wealthy, empowered and fulfilled. Instead, the Guardian article proposed that the reality for lap dancers is a much more desperate, abusive and damaging experience, often fueled by alcohol and drugs in order to tolerate the physical and mental abuse from clients, colleagues and bosses.

The article was prompted by the recent publication of Stripped: The Bare Reality of Lap Dancing, by Jennifer Hayashi Danns and Sandrine Lévêque (Clairview Books, 2011, £8.99). This really is an excellent book, and one that certainly ought to be placed on the desks of all members of every council’s licencing committee up and down the country – especially those who are in the process of deciding whether or not to grant new licences to existing Sexual Entertainment Venues (SEVs), also known as lap dance clubs.

Through a combination of personal narratives from former lap dancers, journalists, students etc, Stripped creates a rounded picture of the UK lap dancing industry. A former lap dancer herself, Danns is extremely well placed to know what the industry is really like. Her co-author, Lévêque, was Campaign Manager on Object’s Stripping The Illusion campaign until 2010, which concluded successfully with the British Government's passing of legislation that gave councils greater control over the lap dancing industry, and called for lap dancing clubs to be licensed in the same way as sex shops or sex cinemas… not cafes! The law was successfully changed, but the problem of lap dancing clubs still exists…

Written in an accessible and page-turning style, Stripped is a compulsive read – at times a repulsive read. Nonetheless, it’s essential for anyone interested in finding out more about what really goes on in this growth industry. By posing questions and allowing lap dancers a voice, in a non-judgmental manner Stripped poses questions such as: Are lap dancers sex workers or exotic dancers? What attracts so many women to work in this industry? Are women being sexually exploited and their bodies used as objects for male gratification?

The second part of the book moves to a more analytical perspective and offers some possible solutions to the situation, and advice for people working in the industry or who are interested in campaigning in this area.

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You may also be interested in the current work of Bristol Fawcett in this area. For years, Bristol Fawcett has campaigned against the normalisation of the sex industry through the proliferation of lap dancing clubs, and has a dedicated group of volunteers who put in countless hours researching the industry in Bristol, finding out when new applications are being submitted to Bristol City Council, and trying to improve the situation both for the women who work in the clubs, and for people who have the misfortune to live or work near the clubs. There is a great deal of information about the campaign in Bristol on the link here.

The Scarlet Hotel, Cornwall

It’s hard to decide what the best thing about the Scarlet Hotel is, so here’s a short list: the beautiful views from every room, the commitment to sustainability, the delicious and local food, the genuine manner of the staff, the wealth of calm rooms to unwind in, and the fact there are no under-18s allowed. Bliss.

Tucked away at the end of a wiggly road in Mawgan Porth, the Scarlet feels delightfully remote from the real world. You know right from the start that this isn’t going to be a traditional hotel experience. With no reception desk for staff to hide behind, you’re simply greeted by a friendly person who checks you in without the need for a barrier between you and them. Teas and coffees are brought to your room to enjoy while you unpack, and soak up the ambience.

Of course, the first thing that hits you when you reach your room is how quiet everything is without any children hurtling around the corridors or shrieking in neighbouring rooms. This is wonderful. The second thing you realise is the stunning view of Mawgan Porth beach from your room, with the beds perfectly positioned so you can gaze on the roaring waves from the picture window without even needing to stand up. And then there’s the simple elegance that spells out the room’s décor – ours had a tasteful wooden tree motif on one wall, which was much more agreeable than the usual attempt at contemporary art you find in many hotels.

We had a Just Right room… and it was, with wooden flooring and simple but stylish furniture. The bathroom is open plan with the room, and the shower and toilet are behind a screen (perhaps a little exposed for some!), but it works well and the room is infused with the scent of rosemary and lavender from the locally made toiletries. We were given a little cloth bag in which to take the soap home in, so as not to waste it – meaning my bathroom at home now smells as delicious as the Scarlet!

The Scarlet has a calming Ayurvedic-inspired spa, and although we didn’t take advantage of any treatments this time, we were sorely tempted. However, the spa is adjacent to the indoor pool (since it was November we weren’t brave enough to try the outdoor one!), which is a haven of peace and boasts a view overlooking the coastline. Although the 37-room hotel seemed busy with guests during our stay (it never felt busy, I hasten to add, but it just seemed well populated), we never encountered more than two other people in the pool at any one time, so it always seemed peaceful. The pool area also has a beautifully tiled steam room, and a range of enormous beanbags and hammock-tents made for two, which are the most relaxing things ever to lie back and swing in.

As you would expect, all of the food at the Scarlet is locally sourced and prepared with the highest standard of care. We had a delicious dinner (three courses for £42.50 per person) in the restaurant on our first night, and I was delighted that the music included a few Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood numbers. For starters we had pork belly, and fillet of red mullet, both of which were perfectly presented, and just the right size to not spoil our appetite for the main course. I enjoyed the pan fried brill, and my husband had roasted cod with mussels, as it seemed only right to eat seafood so close to the Atlantic (which we gazed out at while we diend). Both were extremely tasty, and the variety of flavours across the plates complemented each other perfectly. The salsa on the side of my brill worked fantastically with the simplicity of the fish and the gentle flavours from the potatoes. We finished our meal with the apple jelly, crumble and custard, which was a charming alternative to the more traditional apple crumble. I sometimes find that a three-course meal can leave me feeling heavy and uncomfortable, but the choice of dishes and sensible portion sizes meant I left the Scarlet’s dinner table feeling comfortably full and very contented.

We rounded our evening off with a few games of pool in the adjoining library, which includes a growing collection of books sympathetic to the Cornish area, as well as some interesting scrapbooks showing the development of the Scarlet since it opened in 2009.

Breakfast, brought to our room, was equally delicious. I had the continental with pain au chocolat, red apple juice, and natural yoghurt with cinnamon and baked apples – which was divine. My husband had a cooked breakfast, which while looking like sausages, bacon and eggs, he assured me was one of the finest he had ever tasted. And that’s saying something.

With bracing walks on the beach an obvious distraction, we ventured down to Mawgan Porth several times, being a short 5-10 minute walk down the hillside from the path outside our room. We climbed over the rocks, bravely paddled barefoot in the Atlantic, and explored the beautifully shaped small caves around both sides of the bay… and watched the dogs being exercised on the beach. What was also noticeable was how clean the beach is, possibly the cleanest we have ever seen in England. Long may it last.

Our two night stay was short but sweet, and it was such a treat to have a little taste of heaven – who knew it was possible to have such a blissful seaside retreat in an typical English winter?! We will definitely be returning, and we will definitely be making sure our stay is a longer one next time. Wonderful. 

Visit the Scarlet's website for more information, or to book your own trip!

“The Life and Times of Stella Browne” - book review

Stella Browne is a largely overlooked yet pivotal figure in British feminist history, and Lesley A Hall’s meticulously researched biography of the “feminist and free spirit” reminds us just why we should remember and revere Stella.

Born in 1880, Stella had no intention of conforming to the conventional life society assumed for women, remaining not only unmarried, but taking a number of sexual partners of, gasp, both genders! She devoted her life to all number of women’s causes, notably socialism, suffrage, lesbianism and, most significantly for Stella, sexual reform.

She was a tireless writer and campaigner for abortion rights and contraception, at a time when it was considered abhorrent to even mention either topic in polite society. Taking no notice of what was expected of her, Stella wrote and spoke publically to demand women’s rights for safe abortions, revealed to a government committee that she had undergone abortions herself (which was illegal at the time), and co-founded the Abortion Law Reform Association.

Stella is presented in this biography as a frequently unfashionable woman, who was disliked by many of her contemporaries, quite possibly for her dominance, outspokenness and plain speaking. But the simple fact that she campaigned for birth control information to be freely available to women and men, unmarried and married, marks Stella as a deeply important character.

Hall’s book is a thorough and in-depth analysis of Stella’s life, which is no mean feat considering how scant the existing research is. But Hall has unearthed a library of letters and papers that have helped her piece together a well-informed and fascinating insight into this extraordinary woman’s life.

That Stella achieved so much and that her name is not better known is a travesty, but I hope Hall’s excellent book will help to secure Stella a much-deserved place in the feminist hall of fame.

The Life and Times of Stella Browne: Feminist and Free Thinker, is written by Lesley A Hall, and published by IB Tauris at £25.