Not got time for the whole story but...

...article in today's Guardian Weekend section (paper edition) interviewing the editors of the "major" lads mags - Nuts, Loaded, etc. Anyway the article dismissively claims that "feminists" don't seem very bothered by the proliferation of degrading images of women and sexist jargon that fills the pages of these nasty magazines. As usual no feminists were interviewed in the making of this article. I'm very bothered by the situation and so are all my feminist friends. I'd be very happy to be interviewed and indeed to write an extensive article about the issues, many of which I have addressed in previous posts on this blog. Most notably:

http://cruellablog.blogspot.com/2005/07/how-other-half-lives.html#comments

http://cruellablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/porn-post.html#comments

Totally circular arguement

Following on from the announcement earlier this week that the first state-funded Hindu school in the UK has been approved to open (see Cru-blog below), Margaret Hodge has said she wants faith schoools to open up to children of other faiths... She doesn't mention what atheist children should do. Her comments included the remark "cultural practices such as forced marriages that are unacceptable within Britain must be banned".

Now I don't want to make any direct connection between Hindu-ism and forced marriage, because I think that arranged marriages (which are considered socially acceptible as long as you've thoroughly brain-washed your kids in advance into believing they shouldn't make a fuss) are more of a cultural than a religious thing. However I would be prepared to bet pretty good money that kids sent to secular schools with a mixture of religions, including Atheists and Humanists, etc, Pagans, Animists and Jedi knights, are a lot more likely to stand up against their parents on these kinds of issues than kids sent to a specialist Hindu school where I'm guessing 100% of the students will be from the same cultural background.

Two major rip-offs

Firstly I went to Birmingham last night (to perform at the fantastic Glee Club, which is not a rip off at all but a really lovely comedy club...). However due to not checking out times and prices in advance I had to go with Virgin trains. Return from London Euston to Birmingham... £100! Seriously, and that's standard class, not business or first or whatever! Surely government watchdog people checking train fares shouldn't be allowing that sort of thing? Then on the (two and a half hour last train) journey back the intercom system was broken and every 30 seconds there was a deafening "PING-PONG" noise as if an emergency announcement was about to be made. So no chance of sleeping or concentration on my paper. Just made me really irritable, grrr...

The other incident which I was able to laugh at was that the drinks trolley came round and I asked for a cup of tea to which the woman replied "I haven't got any stirrers so if you want sugar I won't be able to stir it". Fair enough but she said this deadly seriously while the train was rocking about from side to side like a rollercoaster. "I don't think stirring is going to be a problem", I replied clinging for dear life to the arm rest. She looked at me blankly and poured me a tea.

Rip-off number two though is the new identity cards... £30 for the basic card and £93 for the accompanying passport. Even the lower £30 is a lot of money for people like elderly women receiving a fraction of the already pathetic standard pension. And without the card they won't even be entitled to healthcare... There are a lot of more worthwhile causes I can think of who would really be able to put this money to good use.

On top of this no-one seems to be quite sure what the point of the cards is. Clearly they'll do little to combat terrorism since all the London bombers were British citizens. And they open up carte blanche for would-be identity thieves to simply steal the card and not need to bother with learning the signature and figuring out the pin numbers, proof of address, etc. I don't want to pay £30 (or more likely £93 if I ever want to travel) for the right to be arrested and randomly locked up if I mis-place my card. I don't much want my irises scanned or fingerprints taken either thanks. It's totally intrusive.

Pointless out-of-context science "fact" of the day

According to the Guardian "Girls less likely to use condoms than boys " - that's the shocking headline. The implication is clearly that contrary to what "we" would all expect, actually girls are the irresponsible ones, tut tut tut. I'd like to see how exactly a girl is supposed to use a condom without a boy present!?

They then offer a breakdown of the 3,300 students interviewed... "...aged between 12 and 17 in the Midlands and the north-east England. One in four was said to be sexually active with half the active girls having sex without condoms, compared with 42% of the boys. " Thats all the numbers we get.

We really don't have enough information here though to form any actual conclusions. We need to know (1) what % of teenage girls versus boys are sexually active, (2) the age ranges of their partners, (3) the breakdown of heterosexual and homosexual relationships within these brackets and (4) the nature of the relationships they're in - marriage, casual sex, etc. I fail to be shocked that lesbians get through less condoms than gay men, which in theory could fully explain the discrepancy. Some of the girls may be married to men in their late twenties and thirties, we just don't know. All we know is that yet again we've got sensationalist headlines along the same-old, same-old "women should be locked up" lines from jounalists and sub-editors who don't appear to have actually understood the research in question.

To add insult to injury the remaining paragraph does exactly the same thing for racial breakdowns of the students: "The study also revealed that black boys were more likely to suffer from sexual health problems than their Asian or white classmates because they lose their virginity at an earlier age.". No data, no explanation. I guess black boys must be almost as awful as girls, eh...?

Our Father who art in the classroom

Isn't it obvious that the state-funded proliferation of single-faith schools is going to do absolutely nothing for race and inter-religion relations in the UK? Today the first state-funded Hindu school was approved. This will, in the long-term, take 240 students out of mixed-faith and secular schools and segregate them from the rest of the community. The remaining schools in the area will be deprived of some of their cultural diversity. Who is this good for? Well it's good for the religious leaders who want the chance to really drill their religious doctrine down the throats of young people...

Welcome to the increasingly famous Cruella-blog!

Thanks to a few people for pointing out to me and getting me copies. The Cru-blog was featured in the paper edition of the Guardian on Saturday 1st October for my comments on the Elizabeth Lloyd article they'd published a few days earlier.

Possible typos in the word of God...

Fantastic article in the Times, highlighted to me by fellow blogger Stephen Newton. The church has decided to let people know that it thinks there are a few minor errors in the text of the bible. You know the bible? Yeah the book their whole religion is supposed to be based on. So don't read the book, just listen to us and we'll tell you which bits we think apply. The word of God is all very well but you'd be better off listening to the word of a bunch of self-appointed "holy" men.

Anyway here are some of the key points:

1) Good news for women, we are no longer to be "ruled over" by our husbands. Bad news for generations of women before us who were taking that bit literally when God really wanted them to be liberated. Of course we're still not ready to be ordained, but progress is progress eh?

2) Creationism, that's not true any more. Neither version. All that un-scientific nonsense is to be scrapped. Good news all round.

3) The virgin birth and the physical resurrection from the dead of Jesus. These are apparently true still. So some un-scientific nonsense is being kept. The earth isn't flat any more and it wasn't made in 7 days but God can still raise the dead and impregnate virgins.

4) The ten commandments. We're keeping those, in spite of their inadequacies. For starters they're totally contradictory. "No other Gods but me" and "Honour thy father and thy mother". What if your parents are Muslim/Hindu/Shinto and want you to worship their God(s). Or indeed "Respect the sabbath and keep it holy". What if they're atheists who run a Post Office and want you to man the till on a Sunday? Also the fact that God never bothered to include one about not playing noisily with your Game-Boy on public transport...

5) Sermon on the mount. That's still true. The meek are still getting the earth. Go the meek! I'm not sure the meek want the earth.

6) Revelations. All false. The whole thing's rubbish apparently. Lakes of sulphur, horsemen of the apocalypse, all that fun stuff is going. Wonder why we ever had that book in the first place. They must have had some real good hallucinogens back in those days.

Speaking of Revelations. I was at a pub quiz a few month back and one of the questions was "Who are Pestilence, War, Famine and Death?" and my mate suggested "The Queen's corgis?". Hahaha.

Modern art

I know a lot of people like to loudly claim that they "don't get" modern art, as though stupidity were a virtue. Could they make it more obvious though than these religious zealots in Russia. I haven't even seen the piece but I can't help thinking that a sculpture of the Virgin Mary in caviar is probably going to be intended to make people think about the contradictions between extravagant lifestyles and religious belief. Probably, if anything, the correct response from religious people is to campaign against those who dine on caviar while outside on the streets people are starving to death. No, no, no though, down with art. Yeah I guess pointing out the ridiculous contradictions between what people profess to believe and what they practice in real life could be construed as inciting religious hatred...

...and the good news is that it'll be illegal here in the UK too soon. Artists, musicians, performers, comedians, secular activists and free-thinkers watch your backs!

Busy weekend and bit of fun

Well I spent last night in Wells, compering at the Long Paws Comedy Club. Britain's youngest comedy promoter, Ben Williams (16!!) had put together a really brilliant line-up (Simon Evans, Will Hodgson and Chris McCausland) for me to introduce. Made my job very easy indeed. Got back about 3am though, dzzzz.... You can read all about it on the club's website.

And that came right on the heels of compering at Amused Moose Soho on Saturday night with another fabulous line-up: Addy Van Der Borgh, Hal Cruttenden and Topping and Butch. Recently I have spent a lot of time compering new act nights so it feels like a bit of a luxury to be introducing acts who I just know are all going to be great. Long may this trend last...

And next Saturday (Oct 7th) I'm compering a music show at the Rhythm Factory. All the info is on the website. Looks like that'll be another late night, and I may have to dust off my old 60s black-and-white dress too! There's no guest list but please come along and have a boogie if it sounds like it's your bag.

Meanwhile if you're really bored you can express your views on the Tory party and have a bit of a laugh at the Pimp My Party website (note: not MY party, THEIR STUPID party...).

Sorry guys but word verification is now on...

Seems like every time I log on now there are 300 messages saying "interesting blog, why not come and have a look at my blog about penis enlargement drugs". While Cru-blog has the deepest sympathy for those less well endowed in the trouser department, we suspect that there are plenty of internet resourses available to those who wish to buy the new v!agra or to consolidate all their existing loans into one "easy" payment... So if you wouldn't all mind just doing the copy the word into the box thing that would be cool, I love comments whether you agree or disagree with me or want to ask question or have a laugh but I can't be doing with spam spam spam all day. It will make the blog easier to read for you all anyway. Ta.

How much are we really doing to help?

A few days ago we read that a brothel in Birmingham had been raided and a number of victims of human trafficking found working under duress as prostitutes. They had been brought to the UK on the false expectation of legitimate work. They had had their passports stolen, had been forced to remain under the supervisoin of brothel owners 24 hours a day. There was even an electric fence out the back of the building. On top of this of course, they were forced to have sex against their will repeatedly.

Amnesty International commented at the time that "there [is] no protection in law for victims of trafficking, who are usually classed as illegal immigrants and deported. Most are deported without any care or support or assessment of the risks they face if sent back. Communities might not want these women back if they know what has happened to them and there is evidence of people being re-trafficked." The police responded by saying that these women would "be treated as victims".

Todays new shows a slight shift in story. This report says that "six of the women removed from the premises have been handed over to immigration officials". So just shipped straight back to communities where they will likely be unable to reintegrate. There clearly hasn't been time for them to have received proper medical attention since they have been released from the brothel. At best they return to the same situation which led to them being trafficked in the first place. At worst they might well be excluded from their families and communities.

What sort of country do we live in? Surely in the circumstances the women should be given proper medical care, a few weeks/months in safe houses to recover from their extended ordeal with appropriate counselling and rehabilitation, the opportunity to engage in training or education to improve their employment prospects and reduce the risk of repeated trafficking, the right to choose for themselves which country they wish to stay in and support to enable them to do so. Surely we owe these women that much.

Also I would like to see a proper police search for the men who were using the brothel. The sex trade exists because people pay money for it. It is illegal to visit a brothel in the UK. We should seek out people who do and prosecute them in the normal way. This might reduce the number of people who go to these places and in turn make it less financially profitable to run such places. Isn't this obvious?

Must-read article!

This is a brilliant piece of writing, providing a whole new sane slant on the issue of ever-growing influence of religious leaders on our schools and education systems. Not that we would expect any less from Prof Dawkins!

Yes, yes, YES...?

The Guardian women's page never fails to have me twitching in delight or disgust or just general bemusement and today is no exception. An interview with Elizabeth Lloyd is offered. Fair enough, she's written a book about female orgasms, lets see what she has to say...

Now apparently the crux of her arguement is that "the female orgasm is not a biological adaptation with evolutionary advantages - it's just a light nature forgot to turn off". And being generally interested in evolution theories I'm curious to see the explanation for this. The Guardian interview doesn't bother with any such thing however. It merely offers Ms Lloyd's remarks that "In my book I examine 20 explanations which turn out to be completely unsupported by the evidence". That's a null arguement. If her explanation IS supported by the evidence, then we should be shown that evidence, just to say that other theories aren't supported by the evidence doesn't mean that an untested theory must be the right one. Now weirdly Elizabeth Lloyd agrees with me, since she adds "my view isn't necessarily the right explanation". So we're not learning much from this interview. I have a few points though...

Firstly, what isn't addressed is the widely-known fact (especially if you've ever seen The Vagina Monologues, which is well worth a trip if you get the chance) that the clitoris has twice as many nerve endings as the penis. So the arguement that it's a biological left-over, compared in the article to male nipples, doesn't hold a lot of water.

Secondly so what? I mean I don't really care WHY it's there. What difference does that make? The article claims that Ms Lloyd's work has enraged feminists... Yet it doesn't name-check any feminists who have been enraged, nor does it offer any quotes from feminists or opportunity for feminists to respond to the comments made about them in the article. I should like to register now that I, a feminist, am distinctly un-enraged by a discussion on biology.

And finally, and this always gets me, why is biology the main thrust of every other article on the women's page. Is X biological? Are women pre-programmed to do Y? These seem to be the perpetual undertones of a majority of articles they feature. As if the question we all need answered is "do women deserve to be treated as second-class citizens?". It doesn't really matter what biological pre-dispositions we all have, what matters is that we're all given a fair and equal chance of success in this society. Save the biology for the science pages and address the issues that matter: the pay gap, discrimination against women, violence against women, the pensions gap and the rights of women around the world to live their lives in the way that they want to.

Big Brother is really watching you

What kind of police state are we living in? Now they have arrested the woman who "leaked" the information about the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. You remember, the information that he wasn't acting in the least suspiciously, that he wasn't wearing a "bulky" jacket and hadn't skipped the ticket barrier at the station? The information that made it quite clear that either the police were deliberately trying to shoot someone to give some credence to the notion that they had stepped up security after July 7th or that they were entirely incompetent in dealing with a straighforward mistake of their own making? Now it may be technically against the law to leak such documents but when the action is so clearly in the public interest surely whistle-blowers, in any industry, need protection, not intimidation!

The new pope...

According to this report on the BBC the new pope has announced that he doesn't want any more gay priests. That's pretty offensive, although not much more so than the policy on no women priests, etc, etc. What really amazes me though is that he can get away with claiming this policy is a reaction to US priests being involved in child sex abuse. Now even the BBC hasn't picked up on this and is reporting it as if we all see the obvious connection. Being gay and wanting to sexually abuse kids are, as far as I know, different things, no...? How horribly offensive to link the two!

Babies and biological clocks and so on

Seems to have been a lot of it in the news again. Most of the usual sources (BBC, Independent, Times, Daily Mail, etc) have been eager to highlight to women (who we all know are the only ones involved in baby-making) the "dangers of waiting to have a family". Well here's a bit of reason on the subject from the Grauniad, pointing out that the fact that men in their late twenties are fed a steady diet of how-to-be-a-swinging-bachelor by the battery of lifestyle magazines aimed at them might just have something to do with it. Not to mention the fact that we all know getting pregnant ruins your career which might just be putting some women off.

I wanted to make a different point though. It really does seem that everyone has assumed that all women want to have children. Or at least that all women have a definite, 100% view on whether or not they want to have children and all women feel that those kids must, at all costs, be biologically "theirs"...

Maybe it's not a question of "waiting to have a family" but in fact of only deciding later in life that you actually want a family. And maybe the focus of medical advice should be to think twice about having a family if you're over 35, rather than encouraging women to get started now in case they decide later that they did want a family. Maybe older couples could be encouraged instead to consider fostering or adopting children if they are worried about the risks of pregnancy later in life? They would be ideal candidates to adopt older children who are often much more difficult to find good homes for than those put up for adoption at birth.

There is no shortage of babies in this country, no pressing need for more screaming ankle-biters around the place. In a fantasy Britain, governed by me, no-one would be allowed to have kids (yes, I know, Hitler tried this and it wasn't very popular, still run with me on it...) until they'd completed a programme of parenting skills classes at the end of which, assuming they passed all the assessments, etc, they would foster a child for a three-month period. It would, I suspect, significantly reduce the birth rate, increase the adoption rate and solve the problems of unwanted children and the shortage of foster carers. It would probably also do wonders for community spirit and race and inter-faith relations since inevitably people would be fostering within their own communities and sometimes across races and religions. ...well, ok, so we would all be living in a fascist state too. Realistically we couldn't make such a programme compulsory. Available and encouraged would be good though. Here's a link to Hackney's foster parenting scheme website.

Just what Hurricaine Katrina victims need!

...a day of prayer in their honour! I wonder how the Atheist (with a capital "A" like the rest of you, thanks), Jewish, Muslim, Pagan, Buddhist and Devil-worshipping members of the devastated comminities feel about that. I am always infuriated when cases of mass deaths are responded to with Christian rituals. Also I can't help thinking that possibly a bit more aid a bit faster might have done rather more good than a day of sitting around doing nothing!

Well far be it from the Cru-blog to refuse to participate so here's a nice bible quote for all of you to muse on this Friday (or any day you like!).

(Nahum Chapter 1, verses 2-8):
" The LORD is a jealous God, filled with vengeance and wrath. He takes revenge on all who oppose him and furiously destroys his enemies! The LORD is slow to get angry, but his power is great, and he never lets the guilty go unpunished. He displays his power in the whirlwind and the storm. The billowing clouds are the dust beneath his feet. At his command the oceans and rivers dry up, the lush pastures of Bashan and Carmel fade, and the green forests of Lebanon wilt. In his presence the mountains quake, and the hills melt away; the earth trembles, and its people are destroyed. Who can stand before his fierce anger? Who can survive his burning fury? His rage blazes forth like fire, and the mountains crumble to dust in his presence. The LORD is good. When trouble comes, he is a strong refuge. And he knows everyone who trusts in him. But he sweeps away his enemies in an overwhelming flood. He pursues his foes into the darkness of night. "

Praise be!

God bless America

If one news story could ever highlight in one simple go what's wrong with America's undying love for organised religion.... this was it!

Here we go again

I see the ever-popular Guardian gender section cover story is back... Men, it turns out, according to the latest wannabe popular scientist, are smarter than women. As usual the focus of the article then witters on to whether women's progress will be turned back 200 years when word gets out. There are a few points which the article doesn't really get into in all the detail I'd like. So I've suggested some alternative headlines:

1) Lets assume IQ and IQ alone dictates ability to do a high-level job. Now we're told that the study shows that "there are three men to each woman with an IQ of more than 130, and 5.5 men for each woman with an IQ above 145". So why isn't a woman for every 5 men in a position of national leadership?

Here's the numbers by the way - amazing I can get my pretty little head around them I know - there are about 200 countries in the world. Most have one or two main leaders, a president and a prime minister, or just a prime minister, I'm ignoring monarchs who don't have any actual political power like the queen. So lets say a total of 300 key world political players.

And women in those roles:
Chandrika Kumaratunga, President of Sri Lanka (1994- )
Mary McAleese, President of Ireland (1997- )
Vaira Vike-Freiberga, President of Latvia (1999- )
Helen Clark, Prime Minister of New Zealand (1999- )
Tarja K. Halonen, President of Finland (2000- )
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, President of the Philippines (2001- )
Khaleda Zia, Prime Minister of Bangladesh (1991-1996, 2001- )
Luisa Diogo, Prime Minister of Mozambique (2004- )
Yulia Timoshenko, Prime Minister of Ukraine (2005- )

I make that nine. Lets assume I've missed one (I haven't, I'm smarter than that but hell...), so thats one woman for every 30 men in a position of global political power. So the headline should be *IQ study suggests women should have six times more political power*. That's not turning back the progress of the womens' movement...

2) This loser's so-called scientific research also shows that *Black people have a lower IQ than white people* by 15 points - three times the alleged male-female differential of 5 points. Why did the Guardian not choose that nugget of "information" as their headline? Well because the public would have reacted with understandable disgust to such a suggestion. And we're back at square one here where racism is rightly shocking but sexism is the acceptable face of prejudice.

3) So what? Since when has IQ and IQ alone been a reliable indicator of ability to do a worthwhile job or earn a certain salary? In my professional life there has always been a lot more need for hard slog than for genius inspiration. And we all know girls get better exam results than boys... "Prof" Lynn tackles this point with confidence:

"Asked why girls consistently outperform their male peers at school, he said: "When you're talking about better exam results like GCSEs and A-levels, this is partly a function of intelligence and partly a function of motivation and conscientiousness.

"Many of today's exams involve coursework, and women are more conscientious than men. This explains why girls are doing well at this level despite their lower IQs.""

So how about running with the headline *Women more conscientious than men*. Since given our super-low IQs we must be doing a hell of alot of extra work to take more exam glory across the board than boys! And isn't coursework - where you can use reference books, look stuff up and ask for help if you need it - a lot more like real life work than sitting in a dusty exam hall? Not that I have seen any evidence to suggest that coursework is the area where girls overtake boys.

4) Funny how whenever IQ is mentioned in any other context the media is quick to dismiss it's relevance. Suddenly when there's a chance to put women down or justify the pre-existing prejudice they've all been subscribing to for hundreds of years, it's the be-all and end-all again. So perhaps *no headline at all* would be a good choice?

5) No difference in average IQs justifies a deliberately discriminatory policy in the workplace, in the academic arena, or anywhere else. A difference in averages relates to averages. If a woman has the skills to do the job, give her the job. Assess people on an individual basis. Surely that's obvious. Again I think I'm going for no headline at all, although they probably need to fill paper space so *Vacuous pseudo-scientist publishes pointless report*

6) Personally my IQ has been measured a few times and has to date come out consistently in the range 156 to 164. This makes me one-in-five-thousand, but remember that means one-in-thirty-thousand since I'm a woman too, and therefore stacks more conscientious. So my final suggested headline is *Cruella for prime minister* ...join the campaign now!

Shock! Horror! Cru-blog gets it right!

Remember this post? Where the team here at Cru-blog postulated that handing out plastic surgery as competition prizes sent out the wrong message? Well the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons agrees with me. It says so on the BBC! It also provides more helpful information about the original competition, explaining that to enter men were asked to send in a picture of their girlfriends breasts and state which celebrity breasts they would prefer them to look like. And comment-adders came on here and said it wasn't degrading... Would anyone care to comment now?