Closed. The boat sank, the sharks won.

Apparently, according to Sir Stuart Rose, chairman of M&S.

"Women can get to the top of any single job that they want to in the UK," he told the Observer newspaper.

Sir Stuart also rejected the suggestion that having children can damage the careers of working mothers, saying he knows many who are successful.

He said: "Apart from the fact that you’ve got more equality than you ever can deal with, the fact of the matter is that you’ve got real democracy and there are really no glass ceilings, despite the fact that some of you moan about it all the time.

"Women can get to the top of any single job that they want to in the UK. You’ve got a woman fighter pilot who went in to join the Red Arrows yesterday."

He told the newspaper: "I mean, what else do you want to do, for God’s sake? Women astronauts. Women miners. Women dentists. Women doctors. Women managing directors. What is it you haven’t got?"

I’d like a life where I’m not afraid of male violence, a life where I have genuine equality not something a man hands to me on a plate and tells me is equal.  This man is so entrenched in his white male privilege he has no idea what he is really saying. "Hey uppity women, I’ve given you jobs and something that looks like equality, will you quit threatening my precious patriarchy now?"

No. Not going to happen. Yes, some individual women can achieve those positions within the male world and I celebrate that they are able to do so. But those choices are not open to most of us still and those that pursue them can only do so by becoming more male than the men in many cases. You still make us play by your rules and with your tools and strategies.

HT and thanks to Witchy. Thank you. 

"Women united will never be defeated!"

*cough, sneeze* I think I may be breaking out in rashers…

Now, I know that any form of flu can be dangerous for the young, elderly, immune compromised or those with respiratory problems. And I know that this swine flu is a nasty one. I also believe that one day some virus will adapt to resist all our medicines and will become the pandemic that we fear and millions will die, if not billions. But 28 cases does not make a pandemic.

So, compare that with 2 women dying every week, 104 every year. That’s this year, next year and the year after.  This is something that targets women and kills with terrifying regularity.

Not large enough numbers for you?

Try 100 women affected every day. That makes 36,500 every year. Now is that a pandemic yet? Are those numbers big enough to frighten you?

Yet these are not diseases as such, they’re not caused by a virus or bacteria. These cases do need medical help, and there is a long recovery if the woman survives. 

104 women every year are killed by their partner or ex-partner. The disease that is pandemic here is Domestic Violence.

100 women every day are victims of Sexual Violence and that’s just in the UK. Globally it must be so huge that I don’t even want to think about the numbers involves. Yet, where is the news? Where is the panic? Where is the outrage?

Oh, there isn’t any, no-one cares and life goes on as normal because it’s just women isn’t it……

Source: Shock, Horror - From the Foot of Witchy’s Stairs.

Honest, it’s not…

I’m not well. 

I spent my teens passing out every time I menstruated, pouring blood, throwing up etc and no-one would listen apart from "Oh you just need to go on the pill." Which is
so damned bad for you long term. So I was on the pill for years until I decided to have kids. Oh and as for "It’s normal, you’re female you just have to live with it." 

So I took birth control pills for years until I decided to have kids and that was when I stopped taking them and my periods were actually fine, all settled down and no-one had thought to suggest that they might do that and that I could stop filling my body with unnecessary and potentially harmful synthetic hormones.

Then 2 years ago I had a catastrophic period which wouldn’t stop and I had to have a blood transfusion and lots of medication to get it under control. I ended up back on the pill again for a few months but now I was armed with so much more information and was determined to get off it as soon as possible. 

I saw a (male) gynae doc and was again told that, I could be offered a hysterectomy, and a microwave ablation of the uterus - I refused both. If we can’t understand it, whip it out, it’s probably not worth having…. Besides, it’s not a penis…. Oh and those nasty female hormones? I can take as many man made ones as I like, they’re perfectly safe and do not ever cause reproductive tumours or other problems….Sheesh, well why is it that I get crippling uterine cramps while taking the pill and never, not ever when I’m not?

So, what’s wrong with me? We don’t know.  I suspect it’s menopause, but we’re not even sure this IS my menopause…. Because there’s no bloody test for it that sodding works and because the NHS doesn’t take any sort of baseline for each woman’s hormone levels so has no idea when they’re out of kilter. I’m sure that in the past women wouldn’t have survived this.

That friend of mine Witchy Woo said to me, "You know that "it’s normal, you’re female you just have to live with it" comes from the patriarchal model of medicine, don’t you… "they’re only female - we needn’t even try to understand those things". Same goes for reliable individual tests for menopause."

And she’s so right… As always..  Do they really hate us so much?

Last Friday, Delara Darabi was hanged in an Iranian jail with no warning and with total disregard for a 2 months stay of execution granted by the head of Iranian Judiciary.

BBC News.

early on Friday morning Delara Darabi made a desperate phone call to her parents, saying she could see the hangman’s noose.

"Mother they are going to execute me, please save me," she said, before a prison official took the phone away and said: "We are going to execute your daughter and there’s nothing you can do about it."

Her lawyer was not informed of the execution and neither was her family. 

"Amnesty International does not consider her trial to have been fair, as the courts later refused to consider new evidence which the lawyer said would have proved she could not have committed the murder,"

A young women’s life is ended for a crime she did not commit. She confessed to protect her boyfriend, funny how there’s no mention of him or him being tried and convicted for the murder.