We’re gonna need a bigger boat…

Today I’ve decided to take a look at the BBC News site and find a few stories featuring women. Let’s see what we find….

Taser parties. 

In a downtown loft apartment in Denver, Colorado, a group of 30-something women is having a party. They joke easily with each other about men, cats and botox.

It’s more Sex and the City than Psycho, but party organiser Dana Shafman would have them believe they could easily be victims of violent crime.

She runs a company that sells Tasers, the electric stun guns used by security forces around the world.

 Rapist to serve at least 35 years.

The Judge, Mr Justice King told him [the rapist] "Your victim was particularly vulnerable. She was 14. Your attack was particularly brutal and frenzied."

Any wonder some women would go to a Taser party? Moving on…

Father jailed for rape.

A man who raped his daughter more than 30 years ago was jailed for 11 years.

11 years. She was abused for 6 years and she is "undoubtedly damaged" - so, is 11 years enough? Is that sufficient punishment?

Ex-Conservatice councillor facing sex charges.

A Conservative Party worker has appeared in court charged with sex offences and assault on girls under 16.

Stephen Mullins, 52, a member of the Norwich North Conservative Association, is charged with rape, two counts of indecent assault and two of assault.

It’s all very negative isn’t it? There’s more but I’m feeling annoyed now. These are just the ones that made the BBC site, the ones that made the headlines. It’s a huge issue and it affects us all. Yet somehow there is no 24 hour helpline, there is no adequate provision for any woman needing to report rape or assault, and then there is woefully sparse and underfunded support for that women as she recovers and comes to terms with what has happened. Want to add your name to those pushing for this situation to improve? Go on, click the link, sign the petition, it’ll take seconds. Need to know what you’re signing for?

We commend the invaluable work of Rape Crisis in bringing much needed support to people affected by sexual violence often years after the offences have taken place. We note with sadness that in 1984 there were 68 affiliated members of Rape Crisis (England and Wales) but now there are just 38 . We believe this is a failure of successive administrations and endorse the New Statesman’s campaign to secure proper funding from the government so existing Rape Crisis centres can continue their work and that new centres can open.

When you’re next in your local library, can you please ask them if they could order The Portal Between into stock?

They should be able to and most libraries don’t charge for this service, or don’t charge much so it’s not like going out to buy a book! Of course, I’d been even more pleased if you all went out to your local WHSmith, or other bookstore, and ordered it there instead but the library is fine and they won’t know if you’ve read it or not right?

Details for ordering:
Title: The Portal Between
Author: Sarah Barnard
ISBN: 978-0-9556887-0-6

Thanks!

On The Aleena Naylor show today, about an hour in on the listen again thing. That’s me chatting about the wonders of soap nuts.

Just thought I’d share. 

I’ve heard this all over the place. But women can do what they want now so why are you bothering with that feminism rubbish now? 

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Women face bias worldwide - UN

 70% of the world’s poor are women and they own just 1% of the world’s titled land.

Hmm, I think I’ll carry on with the feminist politics a while longer. 

rape within marriage has still not been made a crime in 53 nations.

Really?  Why not? Oh and while I’m looking at marriage - the US State of Arkansas recently passed (and then repealed) a law removing the minimum age for marriage!

Lawmakers did not realize until after the end of last year’s regular session that a law they approved, intended to establish 18 as the minimum age for marriage, instead removed the minimum age to marry entirely.

Then when they sorted it all out the min age for boys is 17 and for girls it’s 16. Why the difference? So boys get to finish college? So young women are pressured to quit school early and not finish their education?

I think we still have plenty of reasons for being feminists, and plenty of areas in which to fight. 

Keep business local. I try to use local and small businesses as much as I can, as a matter of principle as well as for various other reasons. I believe that keeping things local reduces the (lorry/transportation) impact of global business, it makes for a stronger local community and quite simply the giants can cope by themselves.  

The House of Commons All-Party Small Shops Group estimates that there will be no independent retailers by 2015. This equates to the loss of 50,000 small businesses. Small shops are struggling to survive because of local, regional and national government policies, together with the failure of the competition authorities to deal with the aggressive policies of supermarkets. The loss of the UK’s independent retailers has far reaching socio-economic and environmental implications for the whole community. Superstores and small independent shops should not be considered as two separate markets. An independent regulator should be created to ensure that local retail planning decisions do not have a negative effect on the interests of the local community. Unfair pricing advantages, such as below cost selling, should be prohibited. We believe that these measures would help to secure the future of small shops across the UK and safeguard the choice and competition that people expect in the market place.

2015? That’s only 7 years away. I run a small business and plan to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. Mind you, mine is run from home and is online so I’m not sure you’d call it local really. But my local garage is brilliant with my car and I’d hate to lose them. The little shop on the corner if perfect for if we run out of milk or bread. The hairdressers up the road is friendly and cuts all our hair nicely. The kids have never looked so regularly neat in that department before. Then there’s the wonderful butcher in town who raises his own pigs to make into sausages, and delicious sausages they make too. However we did lose the independent, family run bookshop recently, that’s now a Cafe Nero. Oh and the man on the market where I get my fabric for soap nut bags, and every other market stall in Chesterfield, and the tiny little crystal shop too, and the cafe that I based Nutters on in The Portal Between. I’m sure there are more, but are they a dying breed? Can we afford to let that happen?

That quote is from here: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/keeptradelocal/  Please, please go and sign it. It’ll only take a minute and could well save your local plumber/garage/corner shop and many more.

Steve Wright has been found guilty of the five murders of Gemma Adams, Tania Nicol, Anneli Alderton, Paula Clennell and Annette Nicholls, all killed over a six and a half week period in late 2006.

This is obviously a good thing. But I have some questions, some stuff in the BBC reporting is making me think.

Peter Wright QC, prosecuting, said the decision by the women to turn to prostitution "was ultimately to prove fatal".

Decision? Like a career choice? Like they had a huge amount of choice? Like they wouldn’t have chosen to get out and do something else instead? And this *decision* proved fatal - umm, that kind of implies it was their fault? Hang on, who did the killing here?

Interesting is the background in this article -  Killer steeped in world of vice.

What drove a man to carry out such a campaign against prostitutes, systematically selecting and murdering them before dumping their bodies in isolated locations around Ipswich?

He’d been using prostituted women since the 80’s at least, in the UK and abroad.

He regularly used sex workers in the red light district of Ipswich, bringing them to his home or having sex with them in his car.

His appetite for prostitutes took him from Thailand to the streets of Norwich and eventually Ipswich.

In the 1980s, Wright was working as a steward on the QE2 cruise liner when he was captured on film in Pattaya, Thailand

Appetite? Like women are a consumable commodity like food? I#’m more and more uncomfortable with the language being used here and the implications.

But what lead him down this path? 

Wright, while appearing quiet and unassuming, harboured anger from his difficult, transient childhood and bitter resentment towards his real mother who he did not see for 26 years.

Oh, I get it. It’s his mother’s fault?  It’s his mother’s fault he killed five women? And it’s the women to blame for being killed because they *chose* to work as prostitutes?

Maybe I’m wrong but I don’t think the blame lies in either of those places. It lies with him, the man who did the killing.