Fox (n): carnivore of genus vulpes; crafty person; scavenger; (vb) to confuse; -ed (adj): to be drunk.
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Wednesday 11 January 2012

Good work, girls.

HERE are some recent events.

A woman was on national TV this morning because she had two vaginas.

Three women are on an oxymoronic 'celebrity reality' show on the basis they are frequently pictured naked or in swimwear.

A fourth is on the show because she is nationally reviled for having an affair with a married footballer, a fifth is famous for having yo-yoing weight, and a sixth for being a bit of a harridan. There are no other women on the show.

Last week a female TV presenter with a new job gave an interview to a national newspaper (agreed with her agent) in which she discussed how her breasts were not as large as those of her predecessor.

The 11-year-old daughter of two celebrities has been pouting for a fashion photographer in pictures published by her own mother on Twitter.

An actress who caused a row by stripping naked to play a dominatrix in a pre-watershed Christmas drama - adapted from a book in which the strong female character was not a prostitute - says it was "really empowering".

A female politician who has had arguably the most publicity and attention of any woman in the House of Commons bemoaned the fact woman are trivialised in a glossy photo-shoot with a men's magazine.

A 30-year-old who is probably the best-liked female in the country, after her grandmother-in-law, never speaks.


Now, I am no hairy-arsed right-on We-Hate-Clarkson fully-paid-up member of the Wimmin's Brigade. My gender comes in all shapes and sizes, colours and types, and I'm fine with all the ones which aren't morbidly obese, who in my experience are generally lazy and should lay off the cake because they're sucking money out of our health and welfare system and, more importantly, are taking all the cake.

I accept there will always be -isms of many kinds, not least between the genders, but so long as they fire in both directions and don't do too much harm they do not bother me much. Such is life.

But I was raised on tales of strong women doing their best in difficult circumstances - before they had the right to vote, when they fended for themselves in the wars, as they struggled for equal rights in the workplace and their own homes. Despite the fact it's the 21st century I've had to do the same, on occasion. And considering the popularity of this anonymous blog the fact you don't know what I look like doesn't seem to stop you judging whether or not you like me and what I have to say.

I don't know about you but I can't help thinking what Emmeline Pankhurst or Elizabeth I or George Eliot - all of them unpleasant people in their way, intolerant and autocratic, not great to live with but without whose achievements my life would be the poorer - would think, if they spent twenty minutes in our world.

I expect the first 10 would be spent being religious and asking what happened to petticoats, but the last half would involve trying to work out how to get back to their own lives which, as brutal and horrid as they were, generally gave women a jot more credit and respect than we get today.

I don't have a solution for it apart from turning off or away, nor anyone in particular to blame beyond random finger-pointing. I'm just boiling with generalised outrage, because I bet that if you think of the one woman that you most admire in the whole world, she would not put up with any of this shit.

But for some reason we are.