Safety in spaces

I’ve been thinking about rooms of our own, lately.

This post from Chally at Feministe about women-only train services, and this column by Clem Bastow about an unsuccessful attempt to obtain equal opportunity exemption for a women-only travel company, have been great reminders of the value of safe spaces. And how sometimes, a safe space is one without any men in it.

I go to a women-only gym. I happened to mention the name of my gym on Facebook a while back and an old friend (who is a sometime reader too, hello G) commented facetiously that he opposes the existence of my gym because providing chilled, scented towels only to women is unfair. It made me laugh because, yeah, I do love those towels. And I’m sure that more than a few men would appreciate them too, if only the management of their mixed gyms would show enough imagination to provide them.

But of course the point is, I don’t just go for the towels. I choose a women-only gym because

* The first gym I joined was mixed. I got sick of being made to wait all the time to use the weights while men ’saved’ them for each other. I got tired of exasperated stares as I adjusted the machines to fit my body and my strength level.

* I’m not co-ordinated, I’m not fashionable, and I’m fat. I’m pretty much okay with all of those things but there’s a lot of old baggage from PE class nightmares still banging around in my brain. And much of that baggage involves boys sniggering, staring or openly teasing. I know that most men are not boys anymore, and I know I’m a lot tougher now. Still, I would rather not be forced to revisit those tortured teenage feelings whenever some guy forgets his manners and stares or even sniggers. (And by the way, this has happened to me on the street so there’s no way it wouldn’t happen when I’m sweating and panting and jiggling at the gym.)

* My gym has a large, clean change area. It has amenities like the scented towels, and shower gel, and hair dryers. It isn’t smelly. There’s a massage chair in a dark, quiet room that women can book when they just want some relaxing time to themselves. The walls are decorated with images of women of all ages doing active things (not just ’sexy’ things). In other words, I’m part of the business’ target demographic, not an afterthought. I like that.

* The staff are all women. Whilst I’m sure there are many talented and empathetic male fitness trainers around, I just feel better working out with a woman. I feel safer mentioning period pain or my pelvic floor. If my breasts act like they’re trying to enter the earth’s atmosphere while I do step-ups, I don’t have to feel embarrassed. My body, in this space, is acceptable. Unremarkable.

* Women are relaxed at my gym. There is a lot of chatter and laughter (and not a lot of lycra). There is no one to dismiss this behaviour as ‘girlish’ or ‘frivolous’ or ‘boring’. Being with other women who feel safe and relaxed and open is refreshing and uplifting.

* Recently a woman was raped in the toilets after attending another local, mixed, fitness centre. In the most vital sense, my gym is a safe space.

There are a lot of unofficial women-only spaces in my life right now – more than ever before. Spending days with a small child and other at-home parents of small children will do that. Sometimes, I miss mixed company a little. Even so, I still appreciate the few hours a week I spend in a place where I feel catered to and valued and safe.

And until more of the world at large is able to mimic that atmosphere, we will need women-only spaces.*

 

*Importantly, some women will probably always require women-only spaces for religious or personal reasons. But, y’know, it’d be nice if aside from these caveats we could get to a point where something as simple as a gym felt fair and safe and comfortable for all women.

What is the world coming to?

There’s been a shocking amount of alcohol-and-pack-mentality-fueled violence reported in my local media of late. It seems that every day there is a battered man (usually young) showing off stitches and bruises in the newspaper after being set-upon by a ‘gang of youths’ whilst walking home or catching a train or buying some food at a convenience store or trying to enjoy himself on a night out. And with disturbing regularity, there are the stories of young men suffering permanently disabling brain or spinal injuries or of the families left behind when one of these men dies.

Going out for a night on the town, it seems, is becoming a risky proposition for young men.

Now in some ways this is nothing new. Young men have always faced a greater risk of violent death than young women – bar brawls being only one contributer to these. But much has been written about the confluence of factors (generational change, liquor licensing and planning failures, ineffective policing, ‘disaffected youth’) which are contributing to a rise in these random violent attacks. And of course the media want us to know all about it because it’s scary.

Tonight on the news I saw a police officer decrying the spate of violence after an unprovoked attack on a man walking home at 1:30am.  He said (and I’m paraphrasing) ‘if it’s not safe to walk home at night, what is the world coming to?’

Of course, what he really meant was, ‘if it’s not safe for an able bodied, straight, cis-gendered, white man to walk home at night, what is the world coming to?’

Because if you’re not part of that privileged group of people (of which the police officer appeared to be a member, incidentally) then feeling unsafe whilst out alone at night is pretty much situation normal. This ‘new’ spate of attacks and the resulting fear is nothing new to many of us. Certainly not to women.

I don’t walk around at 1:30 am on my own. I never have. In the past when I needed to catch public transport at night, I got off at well-lit staffed stations with a taxi rank rather than brave the walk home (and then kept my fingers crossed that the taxi driver wouldn’t assault me). At the very least I made sure a housemate was expecting me and would leave the light on. I never go out for a ‘night on the town’ without at least one friend along. I don’t like to stop to buy petrol late at night. Riding public transport or using public toilets when not many people are around are uncomfortable situations for me. If I’m near a close-knit group of young men – pretty much anywhere – I feel my alertness rise.

And it isn’t just me who feels this way.

Now of course there is nothing positive about this current spate of street violence. The images of these bruised and damaged young victims move me and concern me.

But let’s get some perspective. There are plenty – more than can be counted – of bruised and damaged victims of rape and assault, of harrassment and cruel jibes, of racism and bigotry – whose faces never get on the TV news and whose stories go untold.

If you’re an able-bodied, cis gendered, straight white man and you don’t like feeling afraid when you walk home at night – do us a favour and think about that a little. Think about how lucky you are to have the privilege to know anything different but fear when out alone. Think about what you can do to make it so that not only people like you, but all people, can take public transport or walk or roll or stroll more safely in the public domain. Think about what it feels like to be afraid of harrassment, violence or rape your whole life. Think about when you or people you know might contribute to the fear that others feel.

And change that behaviour. Now.

Butter + respect = what’s not to love?

A friend and I stole a few kid-free hours today and went to see Julie and Julia. I enjoyed it for the butter-worship and the humour and Meryl Streep. It made me hungry and giggly and not even a teensy bit angry. Result!

On reflection, I think I liked this film so much because it let me relax (not just because I was sans Bean, although that helps). It was because it didn’t demand of me that I put aside kneejerk principled reaction in order to enjoy the experience. There was nothing for this humourless feminist to get shirty about.

For once, it was a mainstream film for women and about women where the bulk of the dialogue had nothing to do with men, romance or weddings. Both Julie and Julia were characters who did things and were interested in more than their apparent desirablity to others. Sure they both spend most of their time in the kitchen – but they want to be there. Nice.

But I think, more than this, what I liked about the film was the abscence of misogyny. Sounds kind of silly to say it so plainly but the fact is that even in the chick flick genre, overt misogyny is rife right now. An obvious example would be the execrable The Ugly Truth, where the leading man is meant to be appealing because he’s not quite as bad as a guy who laughs at his own rape jokes on live television. Perhaps that film is an extreme example – but even when the lead actor plays a basically nice guy, he usually has at least one douchebag friend with a porn addiction or a tendency to ask inappropriate questions about the female lead’s anatomy. In other words, they find some way to insert a good dose of objectification into the script. For laughs. Because that stuff is so funny.

Somehow, Nora Ephron and her Julie and Julia team have managed to make a chick flick without any arseholes. The male leads in Julie and Julia are genuinely nice guys who love and support their wives, enjoy having consensual and mutually pleasurable sex with them, show affection and concern when appropriate, and delight in their partners’ successes.

Feminists are so often accused of being man-haters but the simple truth is that many of us adore men. Certain men. And the irony is that it is misogyny and bigotry which paints men in a bad light: The Ugly Truth (and countless films and TV shows just like it) suggests that all men are nothing but two-dimensional neanderthals incapable of real connection and love because of the incapacitating effect of their sex-driven decision making.  They put forward a view of masculinity that is not only limited to hetero-and-macho, but is also deeply flawed and frankly, unlikable.

On the other hand, as a feminist, I expect more from men than the cookie-cutter mold of sexist gender stereotyping generally allows. I know that men can be caring. Intelligent. Diverse. Multi-dimensional. Capable of restraint and also passion.

And respectful.

It took me a while to realise that one of the things I liked most about Julie and Julia was actually the husbands (particularly Stanley Tucci’s beguiling portrayal of Paul Child). My friend and I certainly didn’t chat much about them in our post-film debrief. But perhaps, after all, that was as it should be. To us there was nothing remarkable about those characters -  we were going home to men who love and value us and treat us with respect.

I wish it were the same for all straight, partnered women.

And I wish it weren’t such a novelty to go to the cinema to watch a bit of froth without coming out frothing at the mouth.

Are thin thighs really worth dying for?

What kind of screwed up world makes a healthy young woman hate her body so much that she pays people to mutilate it and loses her life in the process? Oh yeah, that’d be ours.

Death after ‘fat’ surgery

PETER GREGORY  link here.

Lauren James died after liposuction.

LAUREN James was 26 years old and full of life when she had liposuction on her legs and buttocks on January 19, 2007. Three days later she was dead.

On the night she died she told her boyfriend, Simon Dal Zotto, over the phone that she loved him, after she collapsed at her family’s Kew home.

Within hours Ms James was dead, despite the efforts of two teams of paramedics. Coroner Paresa Spanos is inquiring into her death.

In a statement read to the Coroner’s Court, Mr Dal Zotto said he asked Tam Dieu – who had performed the operation – on the fatal night if Ms James should go to hospital.

He said Dr Dieu told him her pain and swelling was normal, and to give her a painkiller and see how she went overnight.

Sean Cash, for Dr Dieu, suggested in court yesterday that Mr Dal Zotto said Ms James was comfortable when the doctor asked that night how she was.

Mr Dal Zotto replied: ”I wouldn’t have said that.”

Earlier, Mr Dal Zotto, who was tearful in the witness box, said Ms James had been bleeding, blistered and in pain after surgery at Caulfield’s Centre of Cosmetic and Plastic Surgery.

He told his counsel, Robert Harper, that he had asked about hospital because he was worried, and had not taken her there because he trusted what doctors were telling him.

Ms James’ grandmother, Margaret Braley, 85, was in tears as she took the oath yesterday.

Mrs Braley agreed with Gary Hevey, who is representing her family at the inquest, that she had a heart attack after Ms James’ death, and had a pacemaker fitted as a result.

She said in her statement that Ms James bled after the surgery, but a doctor had said it was OK because it would relieve the swelling.

Yesterday, Dr Dieu said in a statement that Ms James, a real-estate valuer, who weighed 65 kilograms, and was 169 centimetres when measured shortly before the surgery, had received information about complications of surgery and general anaesthesia.

She had had breast augmentation almost eight years earlier, was a social smoker, went to a gym and was recovering well when telephoned by a nurse on January 20, he said.

The death rate from liposuction had been quoted at one in 5000, the statement said.

The hearing continues.

The two things that struck me most about this: Lauren James was so young (and must have only been about 18 when she had her breast augmentation) and the death rate from liposuction is one in 5000.

Seriously? There are not many things I’d save up thousands of dollars to do voluntarily that have a known death rate that high. Sure, if I needed life-saving or health-saving surgery with those odds I’d go through with it. But to risk my life to suck a little fat out of my thighs? No thanks.

What is cosmetic surgery but a whole lot of slicing, bruising, mutilating and bleeding whilst passed out on a big cold slab of kyriarchy?

Blossoming Bean, 20 months

It’s fun watching Little Bean’s play habits change and develop.

Right now it’s all about the nurturing.

She feeds her doll, she gives her soft toys water, she takes her little plastic farm animals over to a little bowl to feed them, she holds her baby doll’s hand to wave bye-bye, she kisses and cuddles her toys, she rocks her doll and pats her on the back, she hugs the cat until she’s half-squashed, she insists on having a soft toy sit in the chair with her at meal times, she tries to brush her toy dog’s teeth, she puts toys in the basket of her trike and pushes them around whilst talking to them, she picks her up her doll and dances along with her to the music or makes her do the hand actions, she won’t leave the house without a soft little friend tucked under her arm, she tucks her doll into bed, she strokes her daddy’s head and plays run-and-hug games, and she kisses and holds hands with other children she likes.

Louann Brizendine would say this is all such a prominent part of her behaviour because her brain was ‘marinated in estrogen’ during her development and so she’s hard wired for social connection. I tend to think it’s beause she’s at the pretend-play stage, and she’s a sweet kid. And because adults coo and praise her for that very sweetness (very likely more effusively than if she were a boy, because that’s how these things roll). Truth be told, my little girl is also physically brave to the point of foolhardiness (I told her she could go down the big slide when she could climb the ladder by herself so she damn well learned to climb the ladder, of course) and when she’s not being affectionate with something soft and furry, she’s completing a puzzle, building a block tower or pushing a truck around. Even so, many people still point out how ‘girlie’ she is, what with all the kissing and hugging that goes on. We see what we expect to see.

Anyway, I don’t much care what the origins of her play are right now. I figure if she makes sure her doll is fed and cuddled and given lots of attention that’s got to be a good reflection on her father and me.  And — this stage is totally frickin’ adorable.

 In between tantrums, that is.

Pretty pushy (reply turned post)

One of the things I’ve learned from blogging is that the interest a post generates is unpredictable. I have a pretty low traffic flow here, but there are a few search terms that keep getting me hits. (Salma Hayek’s breasts, anyone?) And there’s one post of mine – barely even a blip to begin with – that’s attracted more comments than the others. It’s this one, about a product called Pretty Pushers.

The comments I’ve let through are there for all to see. I’m sure if the commenters I deleted could spell ’humourless feminist’, that’s what they would have said. Anyway, I’m a little bemused by the fuss so I thought I’d address it head-on by responding to this comment from Mary:

I am the owner and sole creator of Pretty Pushers. I am a woman, mother, wife, and currently pregnant with our second child. I am disturbed and shocked to read some of these posts which put such a negative blemish on this company. I took my own experience in labor, along with hundreds of stories from other women to put together the ideas for our products. Just for you, CK and Spilt Milk…I of course took a dump on the delivery bed among other things…who doesn’t? That’s the whole point….our gowns are pure cotton and with few seams…hence DISPOSABLE. You throw it out when it’s full of shit, blood, and sweat. Isn’t that better than wasting gallons of hot water and harsh chemicals on cleaning it…and then being worn again by others? Along with the other frills in the box…you use them once, and then recycle the packaging. Why all the nonsense comments on the lip gloss? Don’t most women carry that around in their bag/pocket in some form on a daily basis anyway? It’s just something to do….some labors are extremely long….why not have a little gift set to open? I’m sorry to anyone that is so deeply offended by this product! I am a huge advocate for women and feminism…I had a midwife and doula for the birth of my first child and received much acclaim for the labor gown that I had made for myself! It is WAY smarter than the classic mundane hospital gown that was probably created by a MAN, as it is the same one worn by MEN. The box is shaped like a pregnant woman…what could more celebrate the pure miracle of the occasion? I am sorry this has been so mis-interpreted by some women. We are very happy with our products and have had many pleased customers. We continue to produce better, smarter, more environmentally-friendly products for women in labor who would like to have a choice beyond the typical provisions.

1) As a woman, mother and wife myself, I’ve got to applaud someone who’s found a niche in the market and started up a company. Women in business = generally a good thing. But being a woman, or even ‘advocate for women and feminism’ doesn’t automatically make all of one’s thoughts or actions feminist. I mean, seriously.

2) I also applaud any company considering the environmental impact of their product, even though I made no mention of that in my first post. Kudos for that.

3) But, I dispute that a hospital gown that has been worn by others is ‘unhygenic’ as stated on the PP website (it’s germ-phobic thinking like this that drives people to disinfect their house to the point of growing super bugs.) I also wonder whether the environmental impact of the production + packaging + shipping + disposal (bearing in mind that not all consumers recycle) of this product really is less than that of including one more hospital gown in the industrial wash. But I am prepared to stand corrected if data shows that it is.

4) I actually think the idea of having a labour gown made for a pregnant woman’s shape and to allow for comfort and movement is a great idea. I really do. When I first posted about this product I did so without thinking through the relevant cultural differences. In Australia hospitals don’t generally require a labouring woman to wear a gown. We mostly wear what we want to - usually a big old t-shirt, or nothing. I think this is vastly preferable to being expected to wear what is basically a uniform associated with illness – especially since most women get to a point in their labour where they feel that clothes are uncomfortable and tear them off – and also since baths and showers are such popular methods for pain relief in the first stage. I do know of women here who have had surgical births and wore their own colourful hospital gown. I can imagine it’s cheering, to have some say over attire, for those to whom that matters. And I’m all for choices in birth.

5) To be frank, I posted about this originally because I had an outraged reaction to the product’s website, not so much the product itself. (An empowered, feminist, birthing woman might well pack her labour bag with a comfy gown, some lip gloss for moistening dry, sore lips, a headband to keep the distraction of sweaty hair on her brow at bay, and some massage oil, candy pink packaging aside.)

But the marketing for the ‘Dressed Up Delivery’ set describes the typical look of a woman who’s just given birth as a

horrible monster

Post-birth, most women are sweaty and mucky and exhausted looking. Most (not all) are also elated. Most show raw emotion on their faces and the evidence of great physical effort. Not unlike photographs of sports people right after a coveted win. There is no place for imposing patriarchal standards of feminine decorum and beauty on women – especially not at that moment in their lives.

The marketing of PP says that women

deserve to look your best while you work your hardest

Hmmm. Again – who deserves to look how? Why have looks got anything to do with birthing? Is this all a way of saying that there is no excuse for failing to be a pretty picture to be looked at - even childbirth? Or is it another way of encouraging women to fear the visceral nature of an event where bodily fluids and loss of control are par for the course? Whatever the subtext, I happen to believe all women deserve to look HOWEVER THE FUCK THEY NATURALLY LOOK when they are having a baby. And, um, they deserve a break from having people tell them they should care about how they look in the photos. For once.

Employing marketing which supports the notion that women are there to be judged by how they look, not what they do and who they are, is not advocating for women and feminism.  And it isn’t pretty.

Behold! The horrible monster!

10 things you may not know about me

1) When I finished reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, I paused for a few minutes, turned back to page one, and read it again.

2) I first started calling myself a feminist during my first year of uni, after a guy who lived in my residential college accused me of being one because I had stickers from the campus Women’s Collective on my door. When I told him that yes, I was a feminist, he leered at me ‘Does that mean you’re a lesbian who hates men?’ Only certain men, I told him pointedly. And that was that.

3) My favourite colour is green. It used to be purple – I wore something purple basically every day for years, from my late teens on. I’m so drawn in by talk of chakras and auras and colour-mood interaction that I tend to believe that the reason I now love green is because personal peace is what I want. Back then it was all about emotional expression and ‘finding myself’ - you know how it goes.

4) A few hours after my daughter was born, when I was resting next to her sleeping form, my father came into the room and stood over her. He leaned over and kissed her brand new forehead. I could smell him, he was so close. It might have been a dream.

5) I have broken my left ankle, once and my left arm, twice. All three were the result of careless and mundane accidents but each time I tried telling inquisitive strangers that I’d been on a skiing holiday. The first break was when I was six.

6) When I was about twelve years old, I found some love letters that my mother had written to my father. They were tucked behind a poster of a horse that hung on the back of our toilet door. I thought I should take them out and put them elsewhere because I knew my stepmother might find them, since they had come loose from their hiding place, but I was too scared to do anything but put them back as best I could. When I went to check a few hours later, they were gone. To this day I wonder who moved them.

7) The first cassette tape I owned (aside from mixed ones recorded from the radio) was Kylie by Kylie Minogue. The year that I got it for my birthday I was staying at my mother’s house. When she was at work, my brother and I carefully unwrapped it and played it up loud on the stereo, singing and dancing all afternoon. Then we wrapped it up again before she got home. The first CD I owned was either Crowded House or The Cranberries, I don’t remember which. And the CD I bought most recently was Bertie Blackman’s latest.

8 ) I have an abiding love for 80s teen movies. I named my dog after Ferris Bueller, I watch The Breakfast Club pretty much yearly, and I still name Heathers as my favourite film when those Facebook polls come around.

9) I have a medical condition which affects my fertility. It took two years to conceive Little Bean. One of the many reasons she is so very precious.

10) There is an unopened packet of dark chocolate royale biscuits in my cupboard.*

* true at the time of writing

I’d like this one on a t-shirt

I learned to love myself, because I sleep with myself every night and I wake up with myself every morning, and if I don’t like myself, there’s no reason to even live the life. I love the way I look. I’m fine with it. And if my body changes, I’ll be fine with that.

- Gabby Sidibe, from here, via Feministe.

What if someone took you?

This afternoon The Bean and I had a lovely time playing in the sunshine in an outer suburban playground with fencing all around. It was a weekday afternoon; only a few parents (mostly mothers) and their toddlers/babies were in attendance.

A little girl – about 2.5 years old – came over to sit on the swing next to us. She was walking about six metres ahead of her mother – who was none too pleased about this state of affairs, as evidenced by the shrill admonishments that followed:

Zoe! Don’t run off! Why were you running ahead of me? You know you shouldn’t do that, don’t you? It’s very naughty, isn’t it? Yes. Very naughty. Don’t do it again. You must stay with mummy. You understand? You must stay with mummy!

What if someone took you?!

Now it would be very easy for me to be smug about this. Hell, my parenting is pretty Free Range compared with hers. And there was absolutely no reason for this mother to imagine that any of the other parents enjoying a sunny afternoon at this park were actually child predators with a big white van waiting around the corner. I feel sorry for that kid, and the fearful person she may grow into.

But I’m not posting this to anonymously shame an anonymous woman I saw at the park. She could well be suffering from an anxiety disorder or post natal depression or have been a victim of child abuse or have an estranged spouse who has threatened to take her child — there could be any number of scenarios I’ve not been privy to that would make her behaviour seem less bizarre.

There is a tension that parents face every day, between wanting to keep our children perfectly safe and allowing them to learn about the world for themselves. I remember when Bean was a few days old, just sitting and crying while I looked at her face as she screamed in hunger and frustration at my breast. I wanted to put her back in my womb where she had been nourished and protected. Always warm, always embraced.

And how do we - those of us who have faced hardships like molestation or neglect or bullying or abuse - learn to trust others to keep our children safer than we ourselves were? How do we do this without causing harm ourselves through our ‘helicopter parenting’?

I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know that most parents could do with a little more kindness and understanding. We live in a world where some people tsk and frown at parents who put their toddler in a harness to keep hir close by in a crowd, and an equal number of people rant and complain at parents who fail to keep a toddler completely quiet in a cafe. In an ideal world we’d all find a happy medium between appropriate supervision and allowing children to develop their own resilience through learning natural consequences, and we’d be supported in that by a child-tolerant society.

But then, in an ideal world, child abduction wouldn’t merely be rare, it would be non existent. In an ideal world our worst fears would be far, far less frightening. And in an ideal world all parents would take their responsibility to protect their children seriously, and would love them.

On that score at least, the woman at the park is doing okay. We have that much in common.

Love language

Today The Fireman and I scrounged a few free hours to go and see ‘Up!’ (we both laughed and we both cried, incidentally). I enjoyed the delightful doggy character who can speak English with the help of a nifty translating collar. When he jumped up on the protagonist and cried ‘I’ve only just met you and I love you!’ I thought that is what Ferris used to say. He may not have had a translating collar but I knew what he was saying nonetheless.

Little Bean can’t talk. She’s trying, and there are a few discernible words coming through: Dad, that, milk, foot, jumper, block, bath, tail (for the cat), no, yes, Mum.

She talks to me though. There are days – admittedly, not the bad days – when I feel like I can hear her thinking. When she uses her gestures and expressions in such a way that we can converse without words. When she barely needs to ask because I anticipate or intuit what she needs. I suppose this has been going on since her birth, our communication. But now it is more complete and also complex and, in a way, all the more special because soon she will have words to take the place of our familiar telepathy.

I do long to hear her questions and her stories but I can wait. This is a nice place to linger.