Category Archives: Feminism

Can Someone Explain To Me, In Small Words of One Syllable…

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Why people who are committed to each other in a relationship, live together or married or what have you, own a house, raising children etc have ‘his money’ and ‘her money’?

I have specifically made this gender split, BTW, because I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a gay or lesbian couple operating this way. And I know a few.

But it seems perfectly acceptable for a man to have ‘his money’ and a woman to have ‘her money’ and if one is short? They have to borrow from their spouse/partner.

What?!?!

Surely, all money, as all everything else, is joint. Surely, even if one of you makes millions a day and one of you makes pennies it doesn’t matter because it all goes into one account and you both spend what you need/want?

Why on EARTH would anyone, man or woman, agree to anything else?!?!

It’s financial abuse, BTW, to keep your spouse short of money because you can. It’s a form of emotional abuse and control.

Of course, it’s usually the woman who is short and asking to ‘borrow’ money from their spouse. Or, more likely, not daring to ask for the money.

So they go without because if they don’t? Their children will.

Wake up. Smell the financial control. Change it.

Or Leave The Bastard.

I Realized I Have More To Say

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About the links I posted yesterday.

People ask me if I would ever move back to America to live permanently. The answer is: probably not.

Why?

Well, because the place is terrifying. It’s flow from conservative to liberal and back again with no middle ground and very little notice scares the shit out of me.

Living in Northern Ireland is steady. We are a conservative, Christian country where people still throw petrol bombs.

Yeah. It can be physically scary. But politically? It’s going nowhere.

Abortion is illegal. It always will be.

We had to put my son’s religion on his school application, even though his school is integrated and we don’t, technically, have a religion. That field on the app will never disappear.

Northern Ireland isn’t going to suddenly become non-sectarian. It will matter, for centuries, if not forever, what religion you are, even if you have friends on both sides of the Peace Line. People care.

What Wendy Davis did was amazing. She stood up to the rich white majority of probably the richest whitest state in the union. And she won. And she continues to win as the Governer fires silos of hate at her.

Something similar will never happen here. Not in my lifetime. Not in my son’s. Even though we do have female politicians.

And as much as I hate a lot of stuff here, as much as it goes against my feminist ideals and my own wants and needs, it’s sort of comforting. The lack of change, the knowledge that it will always matter what religion you are or in what part of Belfast you live.

I hate change. And I’ve found the perfect country to live in to never have to worry about things changing.

This all probably sounds defeated and cynical and probably a cop out.

It all probably is.

Feel free to prove me wrong Northern Ireland. I’d be happy to eat my words.

But I am still not moving back to the US any time soon.

That place terrifies me.

I Need Feminism Because…

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That’s the phrase of the hour. Day. Week. Month. Year.

There have been two news reports this week regarding feminism and that phrase. One has been incredibly positive and one that has been incredibly negative.

The second one terrifies me and makes me a bit ill. Mostly because of the school’s response. It should have been ‘Find out who those boys are and get them to stop and give them some sort of sanction’. It should not have been ‘Take your pictures down. You’re getting what you deserve.’

Victim blaming, in other words. From a girls school. To girls who are trying to make the world a bit better for themselves and everyone else.

So tired of the apologists. The victim blamers. The ignorant.

It’s like we’ve gone back in time to the early 1900s. I just checked. It’s still 2013.

A black man is President of the United States. A gay man just became the Mayor of a town here in Northern Ireland.

But women are still blamed for wearing short skirts and having a drink if they are raped.

Women are still fighting for control of their own bodies.

Women are still second class citizens in first world countries. Or less than second class.

Women are still paid less for the same work, called bitches when men would be called strong, expected to never age and not speak up. Ever.

Is this the world to raise our children in?

Is the world my own mother fought to create?

No.

So what are we doing about it?

Personally I am blogging and Tweeting and reading. I’m thinking and speaking.

I will not be quiet.

I will not be silenced.

Power to the women…

Dear:

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Nigella Lawson: If you haven’t already left? Leave. Pack a bag and get out. He’ll only get worse. Protect yourself. If he does that in public, was does he already do in private? Please. Get out.

Christina Odone: Just shut the fuck up. I am ashamed that we are both women. Any woman who sits there and tells another woman who has been attacked in public to make up and eat a fucking mars bar is not a woman I want to share the title with. Ever. You are stupid. And so is your article on the matter. To which I shall not link because I don’t want to give you any hits.

Every Other Person Who Is Victim Blaming Anyone: Shut up.

 

Seriously? These Are The Women You Chose?

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Like so many others I know, I’m a bit addicted to The Apprentice. I didn’t start watching it until a series or two ago but now it’s definitely a favourite.

But, I have to say, it pisses me off.

I have spent my entire adult life working with business people, the last 10 years of that, before I launched Designed To A Tee, focussed on entrepreneurs. Supporting them, helping find them, matching them up to funding.

And if even one of them had acted like these idiots on this show? They would have been laughed at.

But forget them in general and let’s look at the women in specific.

Because they are an embarrassment. To professional women. To entrepreneurs. To people.

Most of them with out of control hair, stabbing each other in the back, enough make-up to stock Boots 100 times over and, most importantly, not an ounce of business sense between them.

And after Rebecca Slater’s firing last night? It’s obvious that that’s what Lord Sugar and his co-horts want.

She wasn’t fired because she cost the team the task. Without her, they really would have lost the task.

She was fired because she was dignified, professional and presented herself well.

In other words, boring TV.

So it beggars the question: are you really looking for a business partner Lord Sugar? Or are you looking for a male business partner?

Because with Rebecca gone? The only contenders left are male.

I am the last person to yell “sexism”. If the right person for the job is male? Go for it, hire a man.

But if they only people available for the job who might be able to do the job are male because the women are unprofessional, screaming harpies? Then the deck is stacked.

And I think this deck is stacked.

Stacked so that the winner will be male. Because they haven’t selected any competent women. Well, they did. But then they fired her.

So, what’s the deal, Lord Sugar? Do you want a business partner?

Or do you want a TV show?

Because it would appear you can’t have both.