that's enough politeness--women need to rise up in anger
That's Enough Politeness – Women Need to Rise Up in Anger
by Laurie Penny
To get into the UN Commission on the Status of Women, you have to get past several ranks of large armed men. In the foyer, you can buy UN women-themed hats and tote bags, and pick up glossy pamphlets about this year's International Women's Day, but what you can't pick up is the slightest sense of urgency. In the 101 years since the first International Women's Day, all the passionate politics seems to have been leached out of the women's movement. [Jordan Romeo, a Virginia Commonwealth University student from Roanoke, is arrested Saturday during protests at the state Capitol in Richmond. (Courtesy of Style Weekly)] Jordan Romeo, a Virginia Commonwealth University student from Roanoke, is arrested Saturday during protests at the state Capitol in Richmond. (Courtesy of Style Weekly)
International Women's Day began as a day of rebellion and outlandish demands – Equal pay! Votes for women! Reproductive rights! – but 101 years later, judging by the invitations in my email inbox, it seems to be more about jazzy corporate lunches, poetry competitions and praising our valued sponsors. At the UN, in a session on body image and the media, delegates (who are meeting this week) applauded politely as a promotional anti-airbrushing video by Dove cosmetics was shown. Cabinet Minister Lynne Featherstone gave a speech in which she condemned the "distorted image of beauty" offered by cosmetics advertisers, and lauded the efforts Dove has apparently made to change this while selling body lotion at £7.49 a tube.
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A huge cultural change is taking place all over the world right now. Over the past year, from the Arab Spring uprisings to the global anti-corporate occupations, young people and workers have realised that they were flogged a false dream of prosperity in return for quiet obedience, exhausting, precarious jobs and perpetual debt – most of it shouldered by women, whose low-status, low-paid and unpaid work has driven the expansion of exploitative markets across the world. Equality, like prosperity, was supposed to trickle down, but not a lot can trickle down through a glass ceiling.
Women, like everyone else, have been duped. We have been persuaded over the past 50 years to settle for a bland, neoliberal vision of what liberation should mean. Life may have become a little easier in that time for white women who can afford to hire a nanny, but the rest of us have settled for a cheap, knock-off version of gender revolution. Instead of equality at work and in the home, we settled for "choice", "flexibility" and an exciting array of badly paid part-time work to fit around childcare and chores. Instead of sexual liberation and reproductive freedom, we settled for mitigated rights to abortion and contraception that are constantly under attack, and a deeply misogynist culture that shames us if we're not sexually attractive, dismisses us if we are, and blames us if we are raped or assaulted, as one in five of us will be in our lifetime.
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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/08-0
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