(*)The title of this blog post is taken from a (NSFW) tumblr.
I spent yesterday at Fem11, the feminist conference organised by UK Feminista. It was great to be in a room with a thousand other feminists, and you know your event is successful when the hashtag on Twitter attracts both trolls and spammers. Sessions at the conference covered a wide variety of subjects, from violence against women, through abortion and the plight of asylum seekers. As usual, I wished there were two of me so I could attend more of the sessions.
There were a few themes through the day, but the one that really struck me was around sexualisation, objectification and the sex industry. The opening session had Cllr Rania Khan speaking about her campaign against lapdancing clubs, Isabella Woolford Diaz telling us about tackling lads’ mags in Tesco, and Bjorn Suttka introducing the Anti-Porn Men Project. The absolutely packed workshop on ending violence against women covered a lot of ground, including exploring the role of sexualisation and objectification of women in creating an environment conducive to violence against women.
A session by campaign group Object showcased their campaigns against lapdancing clubs, lads’ mags, demand for prostitution, Page 3 and Miss World. Some of these were highly satisfying. There is something inspiring about a representative of the lads’ mags industry being intellectually floored on live television by Object’s extremely articulate campaign manager Anna van Heeswijk.
During Feminist Question Time, we were told by Matt McCormack Evans (founder of the Anti-Porn Men Project) that a feminist future could not exist with the sex industry. Thundering applause from a thousand feminists followed.
Yet I find this debate somewhat one-sided. One or two voices suggested alternatives. One woman brought up the subject of women working in the sex industry by choice. This was not addressed – we were just given more statistics about the women who are forced to work there. Another audience member posed the question of what impact the closure of some lapdancing clubs following stricter regulation would have on the women working there. This was met with yet another explanation of the terrible working conditions for women in these clubs. Yet in no other industry would we see appalling working conditions and campaign for the entire industry to be shut down. We would campaign for those working conditions to improve.
To me, the objectification debate as presented yesterday at Fem11 seems to miss the point. Sex is not the enemy. Heck, porn isn’t even the enemy. As you may have spotted if you followed the link to the tumblr this post takes its title from, porn doesn’t have to objectify and exploit women. Just as it’s possible for pornography to promote objectification, it can also promote values like respect, consent, safety, pleasure and joy.
The issue we face is much bigger, and when we strike at pornography or lapdancing clubs or lads’ mags, we are only striking at expressions of a bigger underlying problem, cutting off the hydra’s head so it can grow two new ones. The issue is that objectification and exploitation of women is the only socially and culturally sanctioned expression of sexuality – for both men and women. Take a step back. Read that sentence again. Think about it. It’s important.
If we truly want a feminist future of gender equality and respect, we can’t start with pornography and lads’ mags – we have to start with the romantic comedy which teaches us, before anything else does, that the only sex that “counts” is penis-in-vagina sex where the man has an orgasm. More to the point, we can’t just fight against things we don’t want – we have to create a positive vision of what we do want. We have to establish a space, an environment, a culture where men and women can explore and express their sexuality free from gender norms, social expectations and moralising. As @feorag put it, sex negativity is as objectifying as the current social norms: humans have emotions and feelings, and lust is one of them. We can’t replace one type of objectification with another. We can’t just have half the debate.
We freak out about the message pornography and lads’ mags send to children and young people about sex and relationships between men and women. In many cases, this message is truly harmful. What we need to do is give young people the tools to engage with and question that message. We need to enable them to explore their own sexuality, find what feels right for them, escape the limiting social norms they are currently presented with. We need to give parents and teachers the tools to help young people do this. We need to create safe spaces – not just for young people but for all of us – where sexuality can be discussed in an open and honest way, without fear of being judged. We need to make information available to help people separate fact from fiction when it comes to sexuality.
Some of this work is already happening. Brook do an amazing job engaging with young people on the subject of sex, sexuality and sexual health. Blogs like Sex Is Not The Enemy challenge our perception both of pornography and of the socially acceptable expressions of sexuality. Shops like Sh! provide a safe space for women to engage with their own sexuality, light years away from the unimaginative exhibitionism of Anne Summers or the seedy places from which men emerge looking shifty and carrying non-descript paper bags.
We need to welcome work like this into the mainstream of feminism. We need to have the other half of the debate. If we do not, we are making it more difficult to achieve our objective of gender equality, and we are actively harming women, men and young people who are trapped by the objectifying, exploitative socially acceptable expressions of sexuality.

In debates about abortion, anti-choice activists often advocate the option of putting a child up for adoption as and alternative to abortion for women who do not wish to, or have no means to raise a child. In the United States in particular, a dangerous rhetoric has developed to counter the Planned Parenthood slogan “Every child a wanted child”.
Pregnant Pause is a good example of this. They argue that every child is a wanted child, as up to two million American couples are currently waiting to adopt a child, and 1.3 million abortions are carried out in the US every year. If only every woman who found herself unwantedly pregnant chose to carry the pregnancy to term, all of these babies would find happy, loving homes with one of the two million couples waiting to adopt them!
The US-based anti-choice lobbying organisation National Right to Life makes this bold claim: “Adoption is a thoroughly responsible, helpful-to-all alternative to abortion that is, unfortunately, not well understood.” The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children and abortionfacts.com go a step further, to paraphrase the Planned Parenthood slogan as “every unwanted child a dead child” and “Every Child a Wanted Child, and if not wanted, kill!”, respectively. Ultimately, what we are being told here is that women who choose to abort an unwanted pregnancy are murdering children, and that instead they should simply act as incubators for those who want to adopt children instead.
A similar discourse can be observed among anti-choice organisations in the UK, though it is more subtle. Care Confidential gives information about the different options available to pregnant women. Just a quick glance at the paragraph heading on their abortion and adoption pages gives you an insight into which way Care Confidential leans. After some more-or-less factual information on medical and surgical abortions we get “What are the health risks of medical abortions?” and “What are the health risks [of surgical abortion]?” The list of “risks” is rather more extensive than those given by the NHS, with in some cases drastically inflated numbers and in-depth discussion of “post-abortion stress”. When it comes to adoption, the paragraph headings are “What’s good about adoption?”, “What is the adoption procedure?”, “What support is there for adoption?” The page makes no mention, for instance, of mental health impacts of carrying a pregnancy to term to then give the child up for adoption, nor of the risks posed to a woman’s physical health by pregnancy and childbirth.
Alternatives Pregnancy Choices Newham has a similar approach. The organisation states that women are entitled to have “all the information about all three options” (keeping the baby, adoption and abortion). Yet a good two thirds of the information page on abortion is dedicated to risks and particularly potential mental health issues. There is a certain implication here that women should feel guilty and traumatised after an abortion. The adoption page, on the other hand, concentrates on describing the improvements in approaches to adoption, how the woman would be involved throughout the process, for instance through being able to choose the adoptive parents, and how she can change her mind for up to six weeks after the birth.
Particularly worrying is the fact that these organisations offer information and counseling to women in unplanned pregnancy situations, who may often be in a vulnerable position and in need of factual, impartial advice rather than the
railroading, judgmental “information” offered by anti-choice organisations.
The leaflet Baby Adoption Today [PDF] published by the Adoption Support Society and linked to from the Care Confidential website makes at least a token effort to address some of the emotional issues around adoption, with questions like “I couldn’t go through 9 months of pregnancy and then give my baby away”, and “What would I say to family and friends afterwards – pregnant one week and without a baby the next?” The answers it gives, however, are far from unbiased.

It’s still hard to decide. Isn’t an abortion more straightforward in the long run? It may seem to be in the short term, but in the long run you could be coping with the emotional problems and depression that can follow and abortion and which may be ongoing. If you choose adoption, you may also experience similar emotions but your baby will have the chance of life in a loving home.

I am particularly concerned by the answer to the “What would I say to family and friends” question:

You may feel awkward or embarrassed. Tell people you decided on adoption because, although it was a very painful choice, you believe it was the right and loving decision for you and your baby.

There are other problematic passages in the leaflet, characterised by the assumption that the default state of a woman is to want a child, and that only external circumstances prevent her from being able to keep and raise that child herself. Advocates of adoption as the alternative to abortion often fail to deal with a number of basic issues: that there may be more than one reason for not wanting a child beyond simple inability to support them economically at a particular point in a woman’s life; the emotional and physical effects on a woman of carrying a pregnancy to term and giving the baby up for adoption; and the social, economic, and educational impacts of this process.
The disruption that even a “normal”, complication-free pregnancy, where the woman fits all the social norms of being happily married and financially stable, causes to a woman’s life is significant. I have watched friends and colleagues go through this: doctor’s appointments, loss of energy, physical side effects, being off work sick. Imagine now someone who fits the stereotype of the Baby Adoption Today leaflet: relatively young, not in a financially stable position, possibly not in a long-term relationship, either still in education or possibly in an unstable, low-paid job. Some of the issues this woman might face if she chose to carry the pregnancy to term to give up the child for adoption include:

• Workplace discrimination: Although this is illegal in the UK, it still happens [PDF] What’s more, the government is currently not collecting or publishing statistics on distrimination due to pregnancy so we have no meaningful ways of addressing this.
• Missing out on school/university: This can be simply to attend doctor’s appointments, but also due to physical side effects of the pregnancy – loss of energy, morning sickness, etc. Over the course of the nine months, this can be incredibly disruptive and damaging to a young woman’s education, and significantly impact her future educational and career choices and path.
• Having to take time off work: Never popular, often seen as a justification for employment discrimination; in a job paid by the hour or with few or no benefits, this will also have a significant financial impact on the woman throughout her pregnancy.
• Social stigma: To be fair, there is a lot of this going round, regardless of whether a woman chooses abortion, adoption or to keep the baby. Adoption, however, seems to offer the worst of both worlds in this area: unlike an abortion it’s not something you can keep secret, and after months of visible pregnancy having to explain to friends, family, colleagues and the nosy lady next door that you aren’t keeping the baby can be extremely challenging.
• Lack of benefits/legal protection: A woman keeping her baby would be entitled to maternity leave – both to help her recover physically from pregnancy and childbirth, and to give her time to bond with and look after her child. A woman giving her baby up for adoption, while she doesn’t have a child to look after, has still gone through the same physically traumatic experience of pregnancy and child birth and is additionally going through what may be a very stressful adoption procedure. Yet as best I can tell, she would be expected back at work the day after giving birth. At best, this is a legally grey area.

To be honest, even in my stable relationship and middle-class, salaried job with exceptionally good benefits I wouldn’t want to put myself through any of the above unless I genuinely wanted a child. To ask a woman to put her life on hold for the better part of a year, to expose herself to risks of short- and long-term health problems, discrimination, of not being able to fulfill her life ambitions as she misses out on educational, social and employment opportunities, so that her “baby will have the chance of life in a loving home” is beyond reasonable. There may be women out there who are selfless enough to do this. Ultimately, though, denying women the choice, presenting adoption as the only option for a woman in an unwanted pregnancy situation, asking them to make such sacrifices for a bundle of cells they never wanted is not a viable alternative. The message proponents of adoption send to me is that I am only valued as an incubator; that the baby that may come out of my uterus to be adopted by others is of more value than anything else I can offer society through who I am, what I can do or what I personally aspire to.

I could, I suppose, be accused of having an unhealthy obsession with Nadine Dorries. But then again, she is the one who has an unhealthy obsession with what goes on between my legs and inside my uterus – so I suppose it’s only fair.
Dorries’ proposals to target abstinence education at girls, and well as her and Frank Field’s move to introduce additional mandatory counselling before a woman can have an abortion are some recent examples of the brand of small government she champions – small enough to fit in my bedroom. What is even more chilling is that both these proposals are cleverly disguised in a “caring for and empowering women” rhetoric. Here is Dorries on abstinence education:

I want to place an emphasis on girls. I do. It’s girls who get pregnant, girls who lose their education, girls who are left to bring up a child on benefits, girls who reach old age in poverty, girls who are subjected to a string of guesting fathers as they throw in the towel in a life of welfare misery, girls who seek abortion, girls who suffer the consequences of abortion, girls who are subjected to the increased medical risks of giving birth at a young age, girls who have little control over condom use, girls who are pressurised, girls who are targeted by lad mag marketing, it’s seven year old girls Primark made alluring padded bikinis for, girls who are targeted by paedophiles.

And again, on abortion:

We are no longer chanting the ‘right on’ mantra of the elitist university graduates of the 1980’s. Real women, those who are not motivated by political ideology, want real choice and the last thirteen years just haven’t given them that.

I would like to make one thing clear: Nadine Dorries’ agenda is about as far from an empowering, pro-woman agenda as we can get. And frankly, it’s about as far from a pro-children agenda as we can get.
There are subtle differences between teaching girls to say no and teaching all kids to make an informed choice on when they are ready to have sex and have constructive conversations about it with their partners. Something which struck me when doing some high-level reading on abstinence education is that success tends to get measured based on how many teens went on to have or not to have sex over a period of time following the education programme. This then gets compared to the same figure for teenagers who’ve had more comprehensive sex education. This says a lot about the real goals of promoters of abstinence. They may talk about preventing teenage pregnancies and the spread of sexually transmitted infections, but all they’re really interested in is enforcing traditional gender roles and views of the family: one man, one woman, married and only having sex for the purposes of procreation.
There is nothing wrong with having sex – no, not even with teenagers having sex. As long as the sex is consensual, respectful and safe, it is a perfectly natural, human thing to do, and discovering your sexuality is a part of growing up. It is the “consensual, respectful and safe” parts of this we should be focusing on in order to empower girls and young women, not the “sex is icky and damaging” message that Dorries wants to push, which empowers no one.
On abortion, too, Nadine Dorries is attempting to reposition herself as empowering, pro-woman, pro-choice – as long as your choice is not to terminate a pregnancy. Yet putting up more hurdles for women who wish to access abortion services (they already get counselling) only delays the procedure, increasing the risk of complications for women. Instead of empowering women, such tactics endanger our health.
But here’s the real catch: I want every child to be an actively wanted child. I want Mum and Dad (or Mum and Mum, or Dad and Dad, or just Mum or just Dad) to have sat down and talked about it and decided that now is the right time for them to have a child, that they are emotionally, physically and financially^[1] in a position to raise a child, that it’s the right thing for them and that child. Talking a woman into wanting a child is not, and cannot be in the interests of either the woman or the child. To me, that’s a no-brainer. And therefore Nadine Dorries’ approach by definition cannot be either pro-woman or pro-child.
On Monday, I attended a not very secret meeting in London to discuss how we counter Nadine Dorries’ anti-choice, anti-women agenda. It was a very productive session, and I am very much looking forward to the action that will come out of it. One thing I made clear at the meeting is that we cannot afford for this to be a campaign exclusive to London. We need to make it clear that the majority in this country reject the Dorries agenda^[2]. We need to regain control of this debate everywhere, not just in London, and we need to make every single one of our MPs understand that women’s right to choose is not up for negotiation, and neither is our children’s right to fact-based, impartial sex education. If anyone in the Northeast is interested in this area, or already doing something, then please give me shout. Let’s get our voices heard.

[1] And I don’t mean David Cameron style “only the middle classes should breed” financial situations, just that people should at least have thought about it.

[2] 75% of people in this country believe women should have the right to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term. And one in three women will have an abortion at some point in her life.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. And after today, it must surely be a truth universally acknowledged that V. S. Naipaul has never read Jane Austen.
Before I go any further, I shall put my hands up and admit that I have never read any of Mr. Naipaul’s fiction either – so the below is purely based on his comments at the Royal Geographical Society.
He said of Jane Austen that he

couldn’t possibly share her sentimental ambitions, her sentimental sense of the world.

Now, anyone who has read Jane Austen and engaged with the text for about 30 seconds would struggle to call her work sentimental. I often joke that Austen gets her own special exception to the Bechdel Test. While she has plenty of female characters and they do often talk to each other, they rarely talk about topics other than men. And yet, every time a female Austen character discusses men, she is actually commenting on the social and economic conditions of her time. There is nothing at all sentimental about being one of five daughters who will be left penniless after their father’s death, and for whom therefore securing an advantageous marriage is a matter of survival. Mr. Naipaul’s understanding of both Austen and the world in general seems incredibly limited if he cannot get his head around this.
Of women writers in general, V.S. Naipaul says

Women writers are different, they are quite different. I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me.

He puts this down to their “sentimentality, the narrow view of the world”.

And inevitably for a woman, she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing too.
My publisher, who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold, it was all this feminine tosh. I don’t mean this in any unkind way.

I especially love that final disclaimer – almost like he realises he’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar but can’t quite work out why this is a bad thing. Then again, “unkind” is perhaps too mild a word to apply to Mr. Naipaul’s comments. With a few words, he invalidates the experiences of half the human race, makes it clear that he finds nothing of value in those experiences or in women’s attempts to express them.
I guess that’s his prerogative – just as it is mine to think that V.S. Naipaul has failed to meaningfully engage with the world around him. So I for one shan’t be engaging with his work.

I’ve a confession to make: I am a bigot. Here are just some of the ways in which I am bigoted.
I’m a racist. The latest example of my racism is from this morning. I caught a snippet of news on Sky about the shooting in Milton Keynes and the first thought in my head was “I wonder what colour the victim and perpetrator were.” In my head, that information would have put the shooting into one of a number of available pigeon holes.
I also have the tendency to assume that all Muslims are homophobes, and that Muslim men with beards are extremists.
Sometimes I think very Tory thoughts (and yes, I’m bigoted about Tories too) about the disabled – especially when I meet disabled people I work with. Then I think “Why can’t all people who have this particular disability also work?”
I am incredibly bigoted about class and especially education. I find it difficult to engage with people who do not come from the same privileged background as me.
Religion is another one of those things I’m bigoted about. In my head religious people are all alike, and that generally means all like the most exasperating examples of religious people I’ve come across (think the rapture people).
And these are just the bigoted thoughts I catch myself thinking. There are probably countless other small things I think and do in my life that reflect prejudice and stereotypes living in my head.
Most of the time though, my brain does a double-take after that initial impulse and goes “What the fuck – that’s racist/sexist/etc.” And sometimes I’m lucky enough to meet someone who will gently challenge my prejudice – sometimes just by being the person they are, sometimes by calling me out on bullshit. Occasionally, I’m challenged quite rudely – and that’s great too.
I suspect deep down inside we all have our little bigotries. And I think it’s incredibly important that we recognise them, acknowledge them, and then try to do something about them. So, what’s your pet prejudice?

So far this week:

• Half the world has gone into collective denial with regards to attempted rape allegations against former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
• Nadine Dorries MP has claimed that teaching girls to say no will prevent child sexual abuse.
• The Justice Secretary had to apologise after he displayed a spectacular level of ignorance and insensitivity on the subject of rape, as well as the legislation surrounding it.
• The Lord Chief Justice stated that spreading rumours about celebrities on the Internet was comparable to distributing child pornography.
• And to top it all off, Roger Helmer MEP thinks that some rape victims are to blame.

And the week isn’t even over yet. Is there something in the water in London, Paris and Brussels?
I’d had enough after Dorries, nevermind the other three. I have very little energy left to actually argue with these people. I will keep doing so, keep calling them out on it, but I want to do more.
Every time I write about violence against women – whether it’s to tell my own story or to challenge the monumental ignorance and cruelty displayed by people like Nadine Dorries and others – I get one response consistently: every single time, a few more women get in touch – privately or publicly – to share their own stories of sexual violence, rape, domestic abuse.
If you’ve been reading my blog over the last year or so, you’ll know the stats:

• 45% of women suffer sexual assault, domestic violence or stalking.
• One in four women is raped – that’s 200 every single day.
• 21% of girls are sexually abused.
• 2 women a week in England and Wales are killed by a partner or ex-partner.

The stats are clearly not enough. Somehow, our politicians and judges still seem to find it acceptable to trivialise this kind of violence and to blame the victims. We need to do more to help these people understand the extent of the issue and its impact on women and society in general.
So I have spent my weekend with two friends, working on a way to give women who have suffered this kind of violence a voice; a place to speak out safely about what happened to them, to tell their story, to make others aware and help them understand. As I am writing this, Gemma is sitting next to me, coding the alpha version of the site.
We will go public very soon, and we want your contribution. If you have a story to tell – safely, anonymously – then please get in touch with me. I know it’s an incredibly brave and difficult thing I am asking of you; but if we do not speak up, the victim-blaming and trivialisation, and ultimately the violence, will never stop. It’s time to stand our ground. Stand with me.

Dear Nadine Dorries,
I had an epiphany last year. After fifteen years of self-hate, guilt and shame, something in my brain finally switched and I realised that I was not to blame for what was done to me by an uncle when I was a teenager. Imagine for a moment fifteen years of living with the thought that something you did or didn’t do caused the horrific abuse you had to endure. Did you dress wrong? Did you say something wrong? Should you have said “no” more forcefully, perhaps slapped him or kicked him? What should you have done differently so that this person whom you had trusted almost like a parent for all your life up to that point didn’t commit this horrendous crime against you? You’ve read all the literature, you’ve been told to just say no, you were old enough to look after yourself, so why didn’t you?
Fifteen years. For the first five I didn’t tell anyone. When I eventually did speak up, the only expectation I had of people around me was to ask me why I had let it happen; to challenge me and tell me that clearly I didn’t find the right way of saying no, or else it wouldn’t have happened; to tell me I must have wanted it in some way, brought it on myself. Mercifully, my friends are better people than you.
To this day, the abuse I suffered is affecting my relationships – with my family, with my partner, with others. It left me damaged, with a view of human relationships and intimacy that is warped, unhealthy, hurtful to me and those around me. I still get flashbacks. Pianos, random gestures, words, the way someone approaches me – all of these can trigger them. Even last year, when I first considered telling my parents about this, I had to sit down and mentally go through all the possible ways in which they could react – and make my peace with the possibility that they might not believe me, might blame me. Mercifully, my parents are better people than you.
One in every six children is sexually abused. My heart aches for every single one of them – boy or girl – and for every woman or man who has been through this horror, and who had to read or hear your comments.

If young girls were taught abstinence, there would be less sex abuse.

Ultimately, even if we’ve been fortunate enough to have epiphanies, most of us still walk around with a tiny bit of our brain constantly telling us that it was all our fault. We have good days and bad days. Some of the worst are the days when our elected representatives stand up, point the finger and say, in as many words, “It was all your fault”; or, for the boys and men who have survived abuse, when said elected representatives refuse to even acknowledge your experience.
There is enough victim-blaming going on in our society, without prominent politicians such as yourself having to reinforce it. Victims of sexual violence and rape who speak out – from those who accuse people like Dominique Strauss-Kahn or Julian Assange, to those who speak out against abuses they suffered at the hands of Catholic priests, and those abused by family members, friends or strangers – are constantly questioned, smeared, intimidated. Most do not come forward, precisely because they fear this kind of treatment. You have just given your stamp of approval to this attitude.
Not only will your proposed abstinence education for girls not decrease child sexual abuse; your victim-blaming comments are likely to lead to less abuse being reported and stopped. More children will suffer in silence, wondering what they are doing wrong. More survivors will be traumatised by having that nagging suspicion that they are to blame confirmed by people in power who are supposed to act as role models and opinion leaders. Boys and adult male survivors in particular will continue to suffer because their experiences are not addressed, not even acknowledged.
You have done a lot of damage, Ms. Dorries. And yet it is not too late to remedy at least some of it. You should stand up and apologise for your comments, publicly, sincerely. You should make it clear that you do not believe that children are to blame for being abused, that you do not believe it is children’s responsibility to prevent or stop sexual abuse. You should make it clear that you believe that the only person at fault in a sexual attack – regardless of whether it’s against a child, an adult, a man or a woman – is the attacker, and that any measures to prevent or stop such attacks should be focused on perpetrators, not victims.
Only if our political and cultural elites – which you belong to, Ms. Dorries – present a united front against child sexual abuse will we have the slightest hope of tackling the issue. Your victim blaming is not helping, and those of us who have been victims, as well as those of us who care about the welfare of our children will thank you for not causing any further damage on this front.
Sincerely yours,
Milena Popova
You can contact Nadine Dorries at
dorriesn@parliament.uk
or
Nadine Dorries MP
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA