Scribbles

Hate: People who get on the bus and talk REALLY LOUDLY ABOUT ALL THE SHITE GOING ON IN THEIR LIFE. I don't care. Just keep it down. (not being dublinist but we're talking dubs here)

Like: Sunny skies

Complaint of the day: I've been receiving loadsa complaints. Stop complaining!

Writing class was brill! Very happy I joined. It was better than I predicted although I did get somethings right. There were loadsa housewifey types there. And the teacher had a beard. But there were way more younger people people than I thought, more men and a big pints session afterwards. Didn't expect that.

It's based around improving your reading knowledge, looking at other writer's work, searching for ideas and critiquing your class colleagues' scripts. Apparently the knees up afterwards is a way of getting you to relax in each other's presence so that you can bitch each other's pieces without offending anyone cos you are all 'friends'. I like it! I also enjoyed meeting new people who shared the same interest as me. It's safe to say I felt... alive.

I rushed out to buy a load of new books afterwards. I love buying books. This is only a recent phenomenon although I do geekishly remember being very excited when I rented a book from the library that I knew I'd love. It's so much easier to buy a book than find a pair of jeans/shoes/top/handbag/bra that fits you, matches everything and doesn't cost the earth. Sure a book only costs 11 euro. And it doesn't make you feel fat.

Looking forward to tomorrows' class - have to finish the readings tonight and write the task, but that should be fine. Slightly more worried about the personal essay you have to produce at the end of the term - what the hell will I write about? Having your personal problems displayed for all and sundry to see makes me feel vulnerable. Very vulnerable.

I'm not going mad with the drink either. Can't be getting locked after every class... think of the beer belly. So I've arranged it that I can't go drinking for long for the next two Thursdays. Good woman.

In other feminist news, I watched a really good doc at the weekend about honour killings. Kadriye Demirel, a 17-year-old living in Diyarbakir in Turkey, was being raped by her neighbours (it was not clear whether it was consensual or rape, but it seemed to be rape). When she became pregnant, her brothers and cousin put a sword in her head and then beat her with a rock. The rock lodged in the wound. She died later in hospital. In protest, the muslim women removed their headscarves and carried her coffin at the funeral - a big no-no in the muslim faith. It was fascinating stuff.

I know honour killings receive quite a lot of press and the stigma of pregnancy outside marriage is still taboo, even in Ireland today, but beating a young girls head in with a meat cleaver and a rock, to punish her for being raped, fills me with so much rage I could spit purple blood. The hypocrisy and injustice of it all makes me want to kill men or something. This would be pointless however, as the women seem to be included in it too. In this case, it appears that her mother knew she would be killed and let it happen. She claimed she 'fell asleep, or something' while her daughter was being butchered in the street.

So that's my feminist rant for today.

I don't hate men (actually I really like them) I just hate what I've described above.

(Inherently female) Ladysinger

Sluts!

Hate: Hating, I'm going to have to start putting 'like' first
Like: Softmints and going on dates and having a free house so that you can clean loads without people getting in your way
Complaint of the day: None today

I was going to blog about a SHIT piece of journalism that I unfortunately picked up in the SINdo's magazine Life, so I went looking for it on the net to attach clunks of its crapdom. I couldn't find it but I did find this:

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/lets-face-it-monogamy-is-getting-a-tad-monotonous-135747.html

which scared me. Then in today's Examiner (and radio ad, which they are running to promote it) I found this:

http://www.examiner.ie/irishexaminer/pages/story.aspx-qqqg=ireland-qqqm=ireland-qqqa=ireland-qqqid=36923-qqqx=1.asp

Why do we cheat, a special two part series on affairs of the heart, tells us that a third of people over 50 have sex with someone other than their partner. A third! Jeez. And both men and women (in Ireland anyway) are as likely to cheat as each other. The figures for other bold stuff are amazing too.

I find stuff like this saddening and frightening, but also fascinating. Were we made to be monogamous or do Mormons have the right idea? Or is that Muslims? Are both allowed to be polygamous?

Anyway, it seems and is portrayed that nature intended man to spread-it-around happy while us mere fe(eble)males are too busy having his babies to care that he has another woman on the go. I mean a Muslim man is entitled to four wives, but she, not only must not be shared, but can't ask for divorce . It's entirely up to the man! Now maybe that's only in Taliban countries etc, but still, the sentiment is the same.

The article I was orginally looking for was called... Sluts! Despite the exciting name, it was the biggest loada drivel I ever read in my whole life. Carol Tobin (I don't know who she is, but when I google her, it seems she may in fact be a well known comedian) writes on the opinions of opinions of somebody she was talking to and he said that she said that I think that we will. It made no sense, had no context, and went nowhere. I think it was supposed to be about women having one night stands but I couldn't really find any content to do with the headline. Will bring in the mag tomorrow to back up my opinion. Then you'll see.

In other relationship news, the breakup of Chanelle and Ziggy was utterly amusing last night. (Big Brother, loving it this year) Chanella sat with a faaaayse on her as Ziggy explained in no uncertain terms how they weren't working out. They both tried to blame each other for stuff, but with him being more articulate than her, all she could do was interrupt. Meanwhile one of the dumb twins (I'm blonde, I'm sweet, I don't have a lot of meat.... what was the question again?) kept entering the room where they were arguing asking: "Would you like beans or mashed potatoes or chilli. Would you prefer beef? If you like beef, I can ask Carol to make it, what would you prefer? I'm having a salad. With potatoes. I love pototoes."

If I had of been arguing and some food monster insisted on breaking my argumentative flow I woulda told her where to go.

Off to see Die Hard tonight. Yeah!

Not really, but the boy will love it and anything to keep him happy.

(Feminised) Ladysinger

Sexy Mama

Opened up a girl's magazine recently (i think it was aimed at the age 8 and up) and it had the lyrics of Pussy Cat Girls written out on the back page for little girls to sing along with. The song? Loosen up my buttons.

Chorus: I'm tellin ya ta loosen up my buttons babe (uh huh) But you keep frontin (uh) Say what you gon' do to me (uh huh) But i see nothin' (uh) Im telling ya ta loosin up my buttons babe (uh huh) But you keep frontin (uh) Say what you gon' do to me (uh huh) But i see nothin' (nothin')

Verse: I like when the physical, dont leave me askin for more Im a sexy mama, Who knows just how to get what I wanna

What i wanna do is bring this on ya. Baby can't you see How these clothes are fittin on me And the heat comin from this beat Im about to blow

You say you're a big boy, but I cant agree 'cause the love you said you had ain't been put on me I wonder if im just too much for you Wonder, if my kiss dont make you just... Wonder, what i got next for you What you wanna do

Open up my buttons? I'm a sexy mama. You're a big boy, i'm about to blow? What were the magazine's editors thinking?! Anyway just thought of that after I read the article below, taken from today's times. I had Debbie as a lecturer in first year and she got me really interested in feminist studies. I think this piece hits the nail on the head. I am so uneased by sexual dolls being given to kids.... what was wrong with Sindy???!

Society is complicit in turning girls into sex objects

We are outraged by child pornography, but the sexualisation of children is all around us, from bra tops to Bratz dolls, and we say nothing, writes Debbie Ging.

This week's news about the break-up of an international paedophile ring revealed some facts which are literally too horrific to contemplate: men videoing themselves raping their own children, some as young as five. Naturally enough, most people want to see these individuals put behind bars for life; others advocate more severe punishments, from chemical castration to public hanging.

The sense of anger and outrage people feel is justified, and there is no doubt that tracking down and imprisoning the perpetrators will save many children from a fate arguably worse than death. It is not, however, going to solve the problem - because sexualised images of children are not just the stuff of covert internet porn rings. They are all around us, and we have failed to be shocked by them.

High-heeled shoes and boots are available in Irish shoe shops for children aged five and upwards. T-shirts with "porn star" written across the chest are widely available for the same age group. Major chain-stores sell g-string and bra sets for girls ranging from five to 10 years of age. Bratz dolls, now far exceeding sales of Barbie, combine pre-pubescent, wide-eyed innocence with the clothing and make-up of the prostitute or dominatrix. Bratz Babies, which wear make-up and earrings but carry babies' milk bottles, represent an even more perturbing mix of adult sexuality and infancy.

Irish parents seem to have put up little resistance against the tide of gender-stereotyped and sexualised products and images which have recently flooded the children's media, toy and clothing industries.

The spectre of little girls wearing bra tops, shaking their bootie and singing suggestive lyrics does not appal us, at least not sufficiently to make us call for a ban on advertising during children's programming or to reject the alleged inevitability of these developments.
Increasingly we hear reports of eight-year-old girls about to make their Holy Communion availing of highlights, tanning and leg-waxing. Parents roll their eyes and say "girls will be girls".

It is time to get real. Girls, if they continue to be treated like this, will be sexual objects: in their own eyes and those of others. For all its rhetoric about a society of free choice that engenders liberal, open debate, post-Celtic Tiger Ireland has not yet had an honest public discussion on this topic.

The Irish media has routinely constructed paedophiles as anti-social "outsiders" or strangers, (homo)sexually-repressed priests or disturbed celebrities, while playing down or ignoring the fact that most child abuse takes place within the family. Statistics from the Rape Crisis Centre in Dublin show that, in 2005, 19.6 per cent of reported child sexual abuse cases were perpetrated by fathers, 16.2 per cent by brothers, 26.8 per cent by another male relative and 30.2 per cent by another known person. Only 3.4 per cent of cases were perpetrated by strangers.

It is time to face up to the realities of child abuse - to acknowledge that raunch culture for the under-12s has become acceptable in the current mediascape; to face the fact that paedophilia is not restricted to small circles of anti-social sex monsters but is more commonplace than most people would like to think; and to take responsibility for the messages we are sending out to children by condoning and conspiring, albeit inadvertently, in their sexualisation.

Many of these realities are hard to stomach, but there is a real need, now more than ever, to think about them and to talk about them honestly and openly if the problem is ever to be successfully tackled.

Dr Debbie Ging is a lecturer and researcher on gender in the media at the School of Communications, Dublin City University.