Saturday 27 November 2010

'Healthy' relationships

Thursday 25th November was International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. The Home Office posted this, quite interesting, but I'll just highlight a particular point.


  • early intervention – making sure young people understand the importance of healthy relationships and respect the right to say no
    • make sure young people understand the importance of healthy relationships and respect the right to say no
    • crack down on irresponsible advertising and marketing, especially to children 
    • take steps to tackle the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood, and publish materials on teenage relationship abuse to support young people, teachers and schools to tackle this issue

If you're going to teach children about healthy relationships, and that people should respect their right to say no, you have to start with children at an early age. Many people take for granted their own privilege and don't acknowledge that the difference between right and wrong is not set in each individual as 'common sense', it is something that is learnt through one's experience. Children could witness awful things at home and believe it to be completely normal as they've never been told otherwise. However, if you're going to teach children about healthy relationships, that means teaching them about relationships between all people, between differing religions, races, genders, sexualities etc. I'm aware that this particular publication from the Home Office is to deal with violence against women and girls, but I think a wider point needs to be acknowledged. Emphasising the importance of healthy relationships means talking about inequalities in relationships across society, not just between men and women in the private sphere of the home. Equality between men and women is really important, but if we're discussing relationships, and I'm assuming (I know you shouldn't ever assume, but whatever, I'm going to) they're meaning relationships in a sexual sense, I'd be interested to see whether our lovely *cough* Coalition are up for talking (or 'promoting' as the Tories often call it) about homosexuality in schools. Homosexual relationships are also relationships, right? I just hope that when the government say they wish to teach children about healthy relationships they emphasise the different relationships in society, it'd be sad if they didn't.

And...whilst I'm here... (this does actually link, I'm not going completely off topic)

Anyone who has had to talk to me for the past week will know how much I've been chatting on about Sweden and how jealous I am of their fabulous country, and I'm about to do it again, so sorry to those of you that are already sick of this. Sweden start teaching Sex* Education between the ages of 7 and 10, incorporating lessons about sex and relationships into other parts of the curriculum. Sweden has one of the lowest teen pregnancy rates in the developed world, with less than 7 births per 1000 teenagers. So surely, because Britain hates teen mothers**, it would make sense to establish better sex education (and whilst I'm ranting I may as well say, compulsory sex education) from an earlier age. Although, the downside is, the chances of us getting younger children to learn about healthy relationships and the right-wing press not overreacting to the idea of sex (even though it isn't sex) is so slim *rolls eyes and sighs at ridiculousness of this country*. They -the right-wing press- hinder so much progression, it's really frustrating. 


I'm done now, you can all get on with your merry lives.



* It's not really anything to do with sex, not that that'll stop the right-wing press over here if anything like this was established in the UK
** There hasn't actually been that much of an increase in the teen pregnancy rate at all over the past 30 years. It's just another moral panic. Oh, and for what it's worth, our sex education is a lot better than the U.S.A's, at least...

True.

Saturday 20 November 2010

Plain offensive

I shall now tell you about a conversation I had yesterday. Enjoy *rolls eyes*

Girl: You know, men are getting children to sit with an address on the streets and women see the children and feel bad for them, so they take the kid to this address and they get gang-raped by these men
Me: That's really horrible.
Boy: It probably wasn't horrible. Ya know, about 9 out of 10 women enjoy it.
Me: Well that's bullshit.
Boy: No, it's a fact. Especially if the men are hot.
Me: Are you actually joking?
Boy: No. Why? You gonna get all feministy on me?
Me: Probably
Girl: Are you a feminist?!
Me: Yes
Girl: Oh I love feminists, are you gay?
Me: Sadly not
Girl: Ahh, that's a shame.

WHAT EVEN WAS THAT?!!?

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Quote

“Feminism expects a man to be ethical, emotionally present, and accountable to his values in his actions with women — as well as with other men. Feminism loves men enough to expect them to act more honorably and actually believes them capable of doing so.”
-Michael S. Kimmel

Sunday 7 November 2010

Lyrical masterpiece: #1

"I am a ladies man,
Come be my lady, ehhhh"
- Flo Rida et al (2010)

Flo Rida, creating slightly catchy shittastic music with zero emotional capacity beyond 'we should hook-up', since that annoying song he made in 2007 with T-Pain (the guy from "I'm on a Boat"). I know right, he works with all the stars; T-Pain, Ke$ha, Timbaland, David Guetta, even The Saturdays *fans self due to fan-girl moment*.

To be honest, nothing any of us do will ever amount to the brilliance he's achieved in his life (I mentioned he worked with Ke$ha, right?), as now, he's so hot the club can't even handle him. I kind of wish that would happen to me so I could stop going to clubs, ya know, so I could stop hearing the Flo Rida songs they play all-the-fucking-time.

Apparently he doesn't even say 'ehhh', he says 'and', but if you listen to the song it sounds more like 'ehhh' and quite frankly, I don't think me questioning his lyrical capabilities would bother him that much, he's probably aware that Club Can't Handle Me isn't exactly Candle in the Wind.

Thursday 4 November 2010

Week/Weak

I am so utterly dead, but I'm in a writing mood, but not one that can be of any use to my degree, as that would be sinful. Productive towards my degree, urgh, no more. I've had this blog for just over a year, and in that time it's gone from "here's a list of things I did, aren't I productive and fun" blogs to "why aren't people fucking striking the passive wankers" blogs. I will say though, this blog is a massive distraction and I love a good distraction, preferably a pretty one...with good taste in music....and quick wit....

Because I don't really do the "here's what I did with my life, please confirm my ability to be a real person" blogs any more, here is a list of things I've done in the past couple of weeks :)

1. Went to London for the Feminism in London conference. That was good.
2. Walked from Euston Station, to Tower Bridge to Westminster then died.
3. Went to a Q&A in Coventry, Ed Miliband was answering questions. He was stood like a foot away from me at one point and smiled at me and I swooned. (There were two questions about trains at that thing, are people really that concerned about trains?)
4. Went to Warwick Labour things. Have met some lovely people. Had a ridiculous all-nighter that ended up with me seeing my Volunteering leader in Costa at 8.30am, I looked like such a mess. I wasn't even meant to go out, I was meant to watch Warwick Question Time, go home and make chilli then watch real Question Time. Instead I was awake for 26 hours and had a really stretched out hangover. Urgh.
5. Had a breakdown on Floor 5 of the library.
6. I made chilli con carne. I've never made it before, I was proud.
7. Bought 2 books, one cookbook, one amazing book.
8. Still haven't started my dissertation, don't have time/the motivation.

There we go, look, I'm a real person who does real people things.
Can you tell I'm feeling a little stressed and bitter about life?
I'll be over it by tomorrow, it's finnnnnneee.

Wednesday 3 November 2010

Having a dumb week

My friend Chris said to me the other day - when we were discussing politics -"people sacrifice their life to it". It was weird, I was up watching the US midterms on BBC News 24, I was knackered, it was 2am and I was just mindlessly watching it, half concentrating, giving a small "woo" when the Democrats won/held anything. Today, when I was on the way to the library in the rain I was thinking about what Chris said. I read so much political crap on a daily basis, and genuinely feel like I know nothing, like it's useless knowledge. I know it's not completely useless, some of what I read does go and in and it does stick. Comparing myself to people who've made politics their life will never help. I think I'm just having one of those weeks where I feel very dumb. It's not the best of feelings, I blame all the bastard smart people at this university. Urgh, smart fuckers.