Quick Post: 'Male' as default

I was reading through a news article today when I spotted this little image:


Looks fairly unassuming and inoffensive, right?

Read it again.

'His'.

Oh, STV link-image-designer. I realize that it would take up an awfully large amount of space in that little box if you were to type 'his or her', and 'hir' still hasn't quite made it into common parlance, but would it kill you to type in 'their'? Lots of people use it as a gender-neutral term. It's only two letters longer. It doesn't break the flow. Most importantly, it doesn't imply that all MPs are male. This probably wasn't your intention, but it's there. When I and many others read 'his', we don't think 'person', we very specifically think 'man'.

Really, this is the 21st century. Despite being in the minority, Britain has had a number of non-male MPs and MSPs for a good while now - by the time I was born, we'd even had a female prime minister, and her time in power was hardly forgettable. There's no excuse, in this day, age and country, for using 'he' as a supposedly neutral default.

Today Did Not Start Well

I woke up with a headache, couldn't find my dissection kit, ran out of cereal, knocked my shins off things - the whole lot. My concerns, however, are minor compared to the news today of the ways in which the recession is hitting women.

First, a report on GMTV told how a fifth of women and a quarter of men (surprise, surprise) felt that, if a business has to make some employees redundant, the the maternity-leavers and possibly the working mothers should be given the boot first. Can't be having women with children working to support their progeny, can we? Why, they may have concerns outside of making their employer rich! They're a drain on the economy - in fact, I bet they're the reason for the whole recession. Women! Go back home and let the mostly male people in suits get us out of the fix they created. The men will save the day if you just stop stealing their jobs! etc.

With the sour taste from that little newsbit still in my mouth, I returned from classes to find this Guardian article sitting in my inbox. It's predicted that violence against women will go up as people (men) get more stressed about finances.

The attorney general, Lady Scotland, has also warned that domestic violence will rise with increased financial worries. The government booklet devotes a section to the impact of the recession on divorce, violence and family tensions.

"Economic downturns can be difficult times for family relationships. Worries about finances can create additional tension and in some cases, where couples have already decided to part, problems over selling the family home can deepen tensions," the booklet states.

It goes on to say: "Women may face threats from violent or abusive partners." Information about the state-funded services on offer for victims are set out in the leaflet, with advice about when to call for help from the police. A separate report headed "Are women bearing the brunt of the recession?" published today by the Fawcett Society echoed the government's concern, warning that "women's social and economic circumstances make them particularly vulnerable to economic downturn". The campaign group for women's rights said there had been an increase in domestic violence referrals.

Fix the economy, please. And whilst we're at it, teach those guys some better ways to manage their anger. You know, something OTHER than lashing out.

Sod today for a bundle of laughs, I'm going back to bed.

Why I'm a Feminist

On Saturday the Glasgow Feminist network held a public participatory reading at Borders entitled 'Why I'm a Feminist'. Instead of coming along and having an author or scholar do all the talking, people brought along books and materials that opened their eyes to the fight for gender equality.
I searched around for something by Ensler or Dworkin or Greer or... well any of the feminist authors in my bookshelves that would sum up my reasons, but no-one truly represented my reasons for being a feminist. I then forgot about it until the day, and with nothing else to read I wrote down my piece on both sides of an A4 sheet and jumped on the subway into town without editing or re-reading (looking back, I'm proud that I remembered my statistics correctly!). Here it is with added references.

I wasn't always a feminist. When I was a little girl I just assumed I would be treated fairly... or better than boys because they were smelly and I was pretty and a princess and everybody loved me, of course - but even then there were signs that I was wrong. An example of this is the nursery picture books I loved. There was mummy the housewife or the beautiful queen, and there was daddy the farmer, baker, banker, king, outdoor hero, he-who-saves-one-from-the-big-bad-wolf. The princess would love being pretty, was chastised for messiness and a temper (also known as an opinion) and always needed a prince for lifelong happiness. Lastly, the doctors were men and the nurses were women. Always.
I internalised all of this. I hated trousers and Lego because those were for my brother and told Dad that I wanted to be a nurse "because that's what girls do". He told me that was good and nursing is an honourable profession, but girls could be doctors too. I didn't believe him. (I recently discovered that, around this time, my mum finished her job as a research Biologist not only because she wanted to see her children more but also because she was being given a hard time at work since giving birth to us.)
Then I entered the real world. A world where famous chefs are men but we'd never dream of giving a boy a toy kitchen or iron or anything domestic because it's too feminising. A world where Wal-Mart pulled a line of T-shirts featuring a girl saying 'Someday a woman will be president' because it was in some way 'anti-family values' yet kept the one of a boy shoving an 'uppity' girl ("Problem solved!") despite the worldwide epidemic of domestic violence. A world where I'm told to be scared to go out after dark, even though statistically I'm 10 times more at risk of victimisation from an intimate whilst my brother's more likely to be, and has been attacked by a stranger when out. Where the woman who married Steve Wright, the Ipswich murderer, was recently asked if she thought that if only she'd had more sex with her husband, he wouldn't have seen and killed those women. Where my bodily freedom is government-controlled, whether I want to plan or end a pregnancy. Where I'm 'asking for it' if I get raped whilst drunk even though the majority of rapists are inebriated when they attack, yet that somehow excuses them. Where I'm still likely, in our modern country, to be paid less and given fewer opportunities than my male counterparts, where male violence against women causes more deaths and disabilities to 15-44 year olds than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and war put together, where almost a third of the British public say violence against women is absolutely fine and half - 50%, one-in-two! - say domestic violence is a private matter that should remain behind closed doors where we can't hear or do anything about it - and where people who say they want this all changed for the better are called man-haters, crazy, or worst of all, ugly fat spinsters *cue mock distress*.

I don't have the answers to this. I believe that my position is perfectly logical and morally right, and I want people to know that when half the population of the world is poorer, less healthy and more frightened than the other, I care. I want REAL equality, new attitudes, men proud to be sensitive and women proud to be assertive; people being who they are as opposed to what they are told they should be.

And I'm going to med school this year.
Your future doctor is a feminist.

Doctors are supposed to help, right?

Back at the start of November I got ill. Very ill. Can't-get-out-of-bed, can't-eat-due-to-severe-pain ill. It turned out that I'd come down with a nasty case of tonsillitis, so I saw a doctor for the first time since I broke my arm 10 years ago. She was sympathetic and patient, she listened to my concerns and symptoms, gave me a quick once-over and prescribed me a ten day course of penicillin. This particular GP has a long waiting list of patients who prefer to see her, and she must've been busy, yet I couldn't have hoped for better treatment at such short notice.

Fast forward to today. Since my tonsillitis was treated I've had a persistent cough, at one point coughing up thick discoloured mucus for a period of at least 2 weeks. I've had aches and pains, suffered lethargy and disrupted, irregular sleeping patterns, and have been much paler than usual. I'd been working in a pharmacy over Christmas helping people with common winter cold and flu related problems, which may not have been great for my weakened immune system but gave me a fairly good grounding in the basics of what is and isn't normal, and from my personal knowledge of my own health I knew this wasn't a normal cold - they used to be the only health problem I'd have, getting them once a year, and I'd have shaken it off in, at most, a fortnight. This was my first long-term illness; yet still I was prepared to leave it for as long as possible in the hope I'd fight it off unassisted. However, today I finally gave in a saw a GP. Not the same one as last time. He was also a busy man, of course, and I understand that he has many patients to see - but this didn't warrant his interrupting me as I listed my symptoms to 'remind' me that he had house visits to do, as if I'd just popped in for a chat without making an appointment. I was instantly made to feel like a nuisance. My sleeping problems were brushed off with standard advice that I'd seen before - 'try reading, don't use the computer near bedtime, cut down on caffeine,drink something warm and milky, gentle midday exercise, warm baths' - which I'd tried before, but felt so belittled that I didn't say. I wish I had. He looked a little put out when I explained that no, I wasn't a student, nor was I undergoing any stressful points (or at least, not for the full 3 months!). I guess I he realised I wasn't so easily brushed off. My cough was diagnosed, after some chest-hearing, as a viral cough - these are fairly common after an infection like I've had, and can take a while to go away, and I was advised to come back in another month if it hadn't subsided. This is fine, I understand this, but the way it was delivered just made it sound more like he was dismissing me as a hypochondriac than as someone who has a very slim medical file and no history of such complaints who has a very good reason to be worried. On the plus side, my paleness and lethargy was plain to see and he ordered some blood tests done - I suspect anaemia (like my mother has) or some other deficiency, I'll find out when my results come in next week.

This reminded me of another case I heard. A friend of my mother once came in in a fury and said, "If your daughter becomes a doctor, make sure she doesn't become a pompous git!" Her own daughter is away at university and had been suffering from a variety of stress-related and other health problems, and eventually went to see a GP. He basically looked down his nose at her and dismissed her concerns as 'women's problems' and that he 'suspected you girls get these complaints all the time'. Seriously! She has problems which she hasn't had before, goes to see a doctor as any concerned person would, and is told she's overreacting and a silly little girl!

Why are so many doctors - and I hate to say it, but the majority of such complaints I hear seem to be about male GPs towards female patients - such condescending arseholes? They are trained and paid to help all their patients without making them feel like they're stupid or making stuff up. No WONDER the first GP has such a long waiting list, when some of the others at the practise are so unsympathetic. 'Women's problems'? How about, instead of packaging up all sorts of complaints into these two words (which seem to have become short-hand for 'unimportant time-wasting matters'), the doctors explain to the patients the possible causes for their complaints and, if it IS possibly related to hormonal changes in a woman's body, help her to understand what's happening and give ways to help cope instead of dismissing her? We don't get a lot of readily-available information about our bodies aside from 'you'll grow breasts and have periods during puberty. This may hurt a little. Try not to get pregnant or infected if you must have sex. Eventually you'll be unable to have children, so remember to have plenty when you're young or you'll regret not contributing to our already oversized population and following the urges you must have if you're a real woman.' A lot of the changes caused by hormones and the possible discomfort this can cause is ignored, so when women DO experience them it can be worrying or even frightening, so WHY DON'T DOCTORS UNDERSTAND THIS? More to the point, why do we have to go so much out of our way to find out about such things?

Ugh.


[UPDATE: All this 'medical rape' stuff recently just got me even more riled. Men and women across the medical establishment are ignoring their own patients. All these stories are coming from women - that is the one common factor in these tales so far, it is WOMEN who are feeling that they have been truly violated, although there are men who are also having their concerns and voices ignored. Where is all this arrogance coming from? Why are doctors, nurses and midwives ignoring the need for their patients to consent to any and all procedures, failing to see how traumatic it can be to have ANYONE force ANYTHING upon someone who's already in a vulnerable state? Are doctors also carrying out prostate exams on men whilst they're repeatedly told to stop, or are they only forcing things into women 'for their own good'? WHAT'S GOING ON?]

New Blog Links!

I've added a couple more feminist sites to the right there, and you'll also notice a new section - "Of Interest". This is for not-necessarily-feminist sites that are well worth a look at - and the first one, Ramblings of Today's Yoof, is written by a friend so I will be very sad if you don't visit it. It currently focusses on consumer advice for people interested in all things green and earth-friendly, as well as products that could be better for you. She's covered budget- and environmentally-friendly household cleaning products (and knows which ones do and don't work!) and even fairtrade contraceptives, so go have a look. She also writes about human rights, and this includes feminism - she's just put up a video of standard anti-feminist bullshit, which we've both flagged.

Wolf-whistles

Recently I've been going out more - I have free time, new friends and a willingness to have fun, so why not? I went to a couple of clubs, had a good time and was hit on by a couple of guys. Now, when I'm at a bar or a club, I'm prepared for this, I don't really mind - I mean, people often go out to bars and try to hook up with people, it can be part of the fun, half the patrons, male and female, are flirty and so a few attempts to be chatted up are to be expected. Time and a place etc. Usually (in my experience), if you make it clear you aren't interested, it's cool and you get left alone - you may even make a few friends.

However, when I'm nowhere near the bar, I DON'T APPRECIATE THE ATTENTION. I don't enjoy having strange men whisper things in my ear as I walk down the street to post a letter. I don't like groups of men eyeing me up on the Underground. WOLF-WHISTLES AREN'T WELCOME. This never used to happen to me, I used to go out and just be another person on the street, then all of a sudden I turn 18 and it's like I broadcast a signal saying 'Harass me! I have a vagina!' Why don't these men understand how threatened you can feel when a strange person who looks like they could knock you over with a flick of their finger starts leering at you? How it makes you HATE being who you are, if only for a few moments, because it feels like YOU brought this attention on yourself? I'm not doing anything differently. I'm not even looking at these people half the time until they draw my attention with their idiotic comments. But suddenly, I'm all too aware of myself. Of my gender. Of my physical weaknesses. I hate it, and wish people would leave me alone. I'm not ready to go back inside yet.