Posts Categorised ‘Uncategorized’
Aug
30
Never mind the new plans by the Road Safety Authority to introduce stricter penalties and restrictions for young drivers speeding or driving under the influence; the Donegal Road Safety Working Group has a much better idea. Leave the responsibility of reducing traffic related deaths to concerned young women and mothers!
Their campaign ‘Tough Love‘ appeals to girls and women to ‘speak up about their sons, partners and friends, whose risky driving behaviour is likely to lead to a serious traffic collision killing him or another road user’.
A telephone service has been set up allowing concerned members of the public (read: mothers and young girls) to call or text in confidence.
However, Inspector Pat O’Donnell is aware that this campaign can attract criticism for its’ stereotyping…….of young male drivers.
That’s not stereotyping Pat, that’s statistics!
Stereotyping is assuming that only the female part of the population is able to worry about their friends and loved ones being killed in car crashes.
Stereotyping is assuming that females have no influence whatsoever on their (male) loved ones, and that they need to call or text the authorities to have them talk to their sons and boyfriends for them. Anonymously.
Stereotyping is making a road safety campaign focusing on people who care about each other, but assume that directing the young male’s attention to his loved ones (the friend or girlfriend that could die if he drives recklessly with them in the passenger seat) will have no effect, and deciding appeal to the females who care about him instead.
Stereotyping is thinking that young males are unable to take responsibility themselves and that their mammies have to sort things out for them.
Aug
26
I’ve had time for a lot of reading this summer, and thought I’d put up a small selection of good feminist books I’ve come across lately!
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Living Dolls – The Return of Sexism
by Natasha Walter
A great book if you’re interested in the facts and the pitfalls of the highly sexualised culture surrounding us. Through a mix of personal stories, political history, popular culture and current affairs, Walter describes the ever-growing sexism through the following telling chapter titles:
- Babes
- Pole-dancers and prostitutes
- Girls
- Lovers
- Pornography
- Choices
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The Yellow Wallpaper
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
I’ve read this excellent short story a hundred times, but I’ll read it a hundred times more after finding a bound copy in my favourite book store, Charlie Byrne’s in Galway.
This feminist classic gives a disturbing insight to a woman suffering a nervous breakdown; trapped in an endless existence of nothingness after her brother and husband decide that she must rest and do nothing else.
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The Woman’s Hour – 50 Years of Women in Britain
by Jenni Murray
This book was published in 1996 to celebrate the 50th year of the BBC radio programme ‘The Woman’s Hour’.
It gives a remarkable insight to the historical battles of British women.
The topics for the radio shows from 1946 to 1996 reveal what women were discussing at the time and why; from the difficulties finding a landlord willing to rent out his property to a single mother with a child in the 40′s (when divorce was considered shocking), to the first civil case successfully abolishing a husband’s immunity from prosecution from rape in the 90′s. And everything in between.
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Aug
16
I remember being a bit put off when American Apparel were opening in Dublin and the advertisement for staff specified that applicants had to include a head-to-toe photo. I’ve also heard various unflattering stories about the founder, and noticed that some of their ad campaigns are a bit over the line. But it wasn’t until this weekend I decided that there will be no more American Apparel T-shirts for me.
I’m currently reading ‘Reclaiming the F Word -The New Feminist Movement‘, which made me aware of the About Face, a website which according to themselves ‘equips women and girls with tools to understand and resist harmful media messages that affect their self-esteem and body image’.
I was shocked to find this American Apparel ad for a unisex T-shirt.
Absolutely Appalling.
The great thing about the About Face website is that it features lots of actions. For ads like this one they supply both the American Apparel CEO’s address which allows members of the public to make complaints, and give advise on how to write a good complain letter. So, get writing! I certainly will.
Aug
16
The Wexford teenager won silver at the European Long Course Swimming Championships in Budapest this weekend. She finished the 1500 metres freestyle with a time claiming the Irish record, as well as being the second fastest in the world this year. Congratulations!
Aug
11
Jennifer Sleeman from Clonakilty in Cork has called on women in Ireland to boycott Mass on Sunday, September 26th to ‘let the Vatican and the Irish church know that women are tired of being treated as second-class citizens’.
The 80-year-old, who has the support of her son Fr. Simon, said to the Irish Times:
Whatever change you long for, recognition, ordination, the end of celibacy, which is another means of keeping women out, join with your sisters and let the hierarchy know by your absence that the days of an exclusively male-dominated church are over.
Sleeman thinks that the Church’s strict focus on rules and regulations is blurring the original ideas of love and community, and that the Church needs to ‘grow up’ and keep on track with changes in society.
Jul
20
I’m going on holiday for a few weeks, so it will be quiet on the blog for a little while.
I’m going to spend one week in Denmark, and hopefully I’ll come back thinking the country is as good in reality as it is on paper. (I have a bad habit of referring to Denmark as the ‘red hot dogs and tits’ country after I was left traumatised by a family holiday in -94. The soccer World Cup was on, and the country was plastered with posters of female models representing each of the nations participating in the championship. All the respective countries apparently had in common that none of them could make clothes that managed to cover up large breasts in the slightest.)
Being away means that unfortunately I’ll miss the first episodes of BBC Three’s Baby Beauty Queens, a series about UK beauty pageants for children. According to the Observer Magazine, more than 20 such pageants are organised in Britain every year (five years ago there were none). The first episode follows two of the youngest girls ever to enter a UK beauty contest, as well as their mothers entering the ‘yummy mummy’ category. The mini-series starts at Tuesday 27 July.
