Race for Life

On 18th May I am going to do the Race for Life.  This is an annual fundraiser for Cancer Research UK who fund about half of the UK's annual cancer research programmes.  Participants can do either a 5k or 10k track, and they can run or walk.  I will be walking the 10k with a few friends, because I don't run, and I don't think I have a hope in hell of training up to 10k between now and then.  10k is about 6.5 miles, and I think it will take us between 2 and 2.5 hours to walk it.

So, this is a plea for sponsorship.  My fundraising page is here.  Please, please consider sponsoring me.  Even if it's just a penny or a pound.

As to why i'm doing it.  Well, with my new fitness regime the idea of a 10k walk is exciting.  I also like fundraising and giving to charity, but I can't afford to give a lot or money.  Doing a sponsored walk/run will hopefully allow me to raise more than I could personally give.

As for the disease itself, I have not been personally affected by cancer, but I have a few friends who have had breast cancer or lung cancer.   Family members and friends' family members have had skin cancer and other types of rare cancer.  My friends are fully recovered, thankfully.  Oddly enough they are not the primary reason I am doing the race.  I am doing it because cancer is a shit disease, and while my friends were lucky to recover, lots of people aren't.  It seems to me to be a very common disease.  I have no idea about general recovery rates, other than that every cancer is different so that every case is different.

Thank you for reading.

Reeva Steenkamp

Oh fuck, I've just seen the news about Oscar Pistorius murdering his girlfriend.

She was shot in the head and the hand four times.

Oh my gods. :(

This is why I attended the Norwich Rising part of One Billion Rising this afternoon.

Fuck.  Somehow it seems worse when celebrities do this shit, but it's not worse, because every act of violence against a woman is horrific and must stop.  One act is not more important, or less deserved, than another.  They are all disgusting and nightmarish and the only way they will stop is to teach people that women deserve respect.

We are Norwich organise counter demonstration against racist EDL march

A racist fascist organisation called the English Defence League are marching in Norwich today, because they are upset that a man was selling Islamophobic, hate motivated leaflets.  Well boo fucking hoo.  It is, quite rightly, illegal to sell leaflets containing hate speech.  I was furious when I found out the EDL were marching in Norwich, and very pleased when I heard a counter march was being held by We Are Norwich.  But I'm not at the march, mostly because I heard there might be violence and I'm scared (also because I have house stuff to do, we may be moving soon).  I don't want to get caught up in the fights (if there are any).  But I'm also ashamed of myself for not going, because I'm giving in to their tactics.  If you give in to fear then they can spread and win.  That's not right.

But there you have it - I'm afeard, and I'm at home blogging about it, and not there.  I am following it on twitter though - search for #wearenorwich, and I'm very proud of my friends and everyone else who is there.

Fuck I'm still furious those bastards dare to turn up in my fucking city.  Piss off EDL.  We don't want you and we don't support you.  Go back to your poisonous little rock.

#Spartacusreport : challenging the government

Over 2011 a group of disability activists got together and decided to challenge the government's welfare system reforms.

Headed by Sue Marsh, blogging on Diary of a Benefit Scrounger and tweeting on @suey2y, and by BendyGirl, blogging at Benefit Scrounging Scum, they conducted interviews, researched the meanings of the proposed reforms, analysed the data and developed conclusions on the proposed changes.  This was all pulled together into a document titled Responsible Reform and launched last Monday.  The twitter hashtag is #spartacusreport.

Before Christmas, Sue found out her application for DLA had been rejected.  Instead of appealing that, she elected to continue working on the report.  Several activists involved with the report made themselves ill and ended up in hospital, because of the workload.  These activists are all sick or disabled themselves.  The reforms will directly affect them.

There wasn't much national media coverage on the Monday, or the Tuesday.  Despite the fact that national organisations such as Mind, The Papworth Trust, Scope and United Response support the report.

But on Friday Sue Marsh went on Newsnight, with Chris Grayling, Employment Adviser to debate the Thursday night discussion in the House of Lords.

This is a victory for grassroots activism, and a victory for the cause itself.  It is amazing what these activists have done, and it amazing (in a very different way) what the government is trying to do.

Mega mega kudos to Sue and her colleagues.  Take a gander at the links, especially if you live in the UK.  I reckon most people who don't have direct personal experience of sickness or disability won't understand the implications of the proposed reforms.  Why would you?  But they ain't good.  They are being proposed purely to save money. 

This government is placing a greater importance on saving money than on providing a decent quality of life and standard of living to it's citizens.

This government thinks money is more important than people.

"...And that's what your holy men discuss, is it?" [asked Granny Weatherwax.]

"Not usually. There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment on the nature of sin. for example." [answered Mightily Oats.]

"And what do they think? Against it, are they?"

"It's not as simple as that. It's not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of grey."

"Nope."

"Pardon?"

"There's no greys, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That's what sin is."

"It's a lot more complicated than that--"

"No. It ain't. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts."

"Oh, I'm sure there are worse crimes--"

"But they starts with thinking about people as things..."

--from Carpe Jugulum, by Terry Pratchett.

Abortion Support Network update

The Abortion Support Network (ASN) have a new website!  They have also started a 'standing order campaign' to get a £1000 in standing order donations coming in every month.  As you well know, I fully support this organisation.  Their fundraising thermometer is currently at £500 a month but they need more.

The ASN is "a volunteer-run organisation that provides financial assistance, accommodation in volunteer homes, and confidential, non-judgmental information to women in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland who are travelling to England to access a safe and legal abortion."

FAQs about the organisation can be seen here.  ASN have this to say about the law on abortion in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland:

In both Northern Ireland (despite being part of the UK) and the Republic of Ireland, abortion is illegal in almost all circumstances and it is virtually impossible for women to access an abortion legally. In both countries, however, women can legally travel abroad for an abortion and information can be provided about accessing abortions abroad (under certain conditions).
Further information about the law on abortion in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland is available here:

• Irish Family Planning Association
• Bpas Ireland

In the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man there is limited-to-no provision of abortion.

Please conszider giving money to the ASN.  Help them meet their £1000 a month target.

Call for papers: Being a feminist academic (UK)

I got emailed this the other week and thought it would be worth posting, with the vague idea that I might have more than one academic type reading this blog.

I will add that I am not any of the named people listed in this Call out, and am not an academic, or associated with this call out in any way.  I don't think anyone should confuse me with the clever people who do this type of research properly!

But hey, they specifically mention black feminism!

Please feel free to distribute this to your contacts or crosspost wherever you like.

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Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. Special Issue: Being a Feminist Academic.

Editors: Katherine Sang, Susan Sayce, Josie Kinge, Simy Joy.
DECERe, Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia, Norwich, Norfolk, NR4 7TJ.

A growing body of academic literature argues that there is a resistance to feminism and gender equality within universities, particularly amongst the student body. This is supported by popular media which cites resistance to feminism within a broader societal context. Feminists working within universities report a range of problems. Feminist academics may challenge students’ gender attitudes, causing discomfort which may result in complaints. Additionally feminist academics may be vulnerable to abuse from male students who enrol on women’s studies courses with the intention of causing disruption.  The increasingly commercialised nature of UK higher education (HE) has resulted in a corporate culture which may be incompatible with feminist ideals.

Feminists working within academia have been able to affect change to the benefit of marginalised groups and are often loyal to their institution. However, some feminist academics report a perceived need to keep their feminist identities at home while expressing a desire to unite their identities of ‘feminist’ and ‘academic’.

Much of the extant literature does not explore the intersection between a feminist identity for academics and ethnic minority status. There is some suggestion the diversifying of the student body within Western universities may offer hope for black feminism, although further empirical evidence is needed. Marginalised academics may prefer to undertake work within their own communities, although such applied work is often not recognised by leading journals, potentially resulting in further marginalisation.  It has been argued this has led to a focus on feminist theory rather than feminist practice within universities.

This special issue focuses on feminism within universities. Given the broad range of definitions of feminism, we do not provide one. Rather authors are invited to provide their own. Our aim is to further understand the experiences of feminist academics (faculty, research staff and PhD students) in relation to their teaching, research, relationships with colleagues and career progression. Papers are invited from academics at any stage of their academic career from any country. These papers may be reflective pieces or empirical work. Papers could include reflections on (but are not limited to):

• Feminism and career progression
• Intersections of feminism with ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, academic discipline, type of institution or age.
• Feminist activism within universities
• Relationships with students
• Relationships with colleagues
• Feminism and research

 The call is open and competitive. Each submission will be subject to the usual (blind) review process. Submission to this special issue implies that the paper does not contain original work which has previously been published and is not currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. Authors should follow the journal’s regular author’s guidelines. We ask that papers are no longer than 7000 words.

20th June 2010 call for papers opens
1st March 2011 submission of papers
1st July 2011 authors notified of outcome of peer review
1st October 2011 authors to submit final papers to Editors.
1st November 2011 Editorial decision

Prospective contributors are welcome to contact the Guest Editors prior to submission to discuss the suitability of their work for the special issue.

Kate Sang
Norwich Business School
University of East Anglia
Norwich
NR4 7TJ
k.sang@uea.ac.uk

Susan Sayce
Norwich Business School
University of East Anglia
Norwich
NR4 7TJ
s.sayce@uea.ac.uk

Josie Kinge
Norwich Business School
University of East Anglia
Norwich
NR4 7TJ
j.kinge@uea.ac.uk

Simy Joy
Norwich Business School
University of East Anglia
Norwich
NR4 7TJ
Simy.joy@uea.ac.uk

----------------------------------------------------------------

Oh, if anyone wants this in a pdf document email me at paicomics at yahoo dot co dot uk and I'll send on the original pdf I got sent.

Brightest Day and Bristol Uni

I've been wasting far too much time on twitter and not enough time blogging.  I was going to write somethign about Brightest Day and tokenism but I've wasted too much time on Twitter.  On the whole, I liked Brightest Day, altho owning a White Power ring is now making me really embaressed.  If you're not sure what I'm on about, go check out WFA's links roundup.

News on Bristol Univeristy's proposed closure of the Deaf Studies degree.  Basically they've postponed the final decision, as they want to have a committe discussion about redundancies first.  Altho it now seems the whole department is being considered for closure, not just the Deaf Studies course.  I was chatting to someone today who's sister is at Bristol, doing the second year of her Deaf Studies course.  Apparently she may have to go to Wolverhampton to do the final year.

Thanks to all who have signed the campaign's petition and/or forwarded the links.

Save BBC 6Music and the Asian Network

So the BBC wants to axe 6music does it?  The only radio station to play alternative music.  The only one without witless presenters yammering away being loud and obnoxious in the mornings.  I listen to 6 music and Radio 4.  That's it.  There is nothing else like 6music, and if you agree please go sign the petition here.

The petition is also for the Asian Network.  I have never listened to this channel but I am pretty sure there's few outlets for stuff like the Asian Network, and without it we'd have a pretty whitewashed media.  So if you're against the closure of this station, please also sign the petition.

Let me point you somewhere excellent...

Lucy over at Catspaw has written an excellent post dissecting Julie Bindel's transphobia.  Here I shall crosspost the first few paragraphs and then urge you all to go read the rest of it:

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Just when I was hoping that Julie Bindel had moved on from being actively transphobic, she's appeared in an, at-best, centre-right magazine called Standpoint (What the heck is a feminist, especially a self-proclaimed radical lesbian feminist, doing cosying up with the right?) with an article entitled "The Operation That Can Ruin Your Life".  Three guesses as to what operation she's referring to and the first two don't count.  I hate being a puppet dancing to strings being pulled by Ms Bindel, but I also can't let this sort of hate pass by uncommented.  I'll mostly be snarking, so fair warning.  I'm skipping large parts of the article because a full fisk would be interminably long.  It's also worth noting that in many ways this article is sort of her "greatest hits" on trans stuff in that she's stitched together material from previous articles she's written.  She even includes the quote about trans people and Grease that she later apologised for, showing just how insincere she can be when apologising.  That said, let's get to her article.

Almost immediately one has to wonder what world Ms Bindel lives in.  Referring to last year's Stonewall awards she says that "I, along with a police escort, walked past a huge demonstration of transsexuals and their supporters, shouting 'Bindel the Bigot'."  This should concern everyone.  In that I mean it should concern everyone that a protest of about 150 people is a huge demonstration in Bindel's eyes, that she remembers a chant that was not chanted, and that she also remembers having a police escort while others don't.  Of course since she also refers to the demonstrators as a "powerful lobby" who have been "hounding [her] for "five years", the real point here is to establish that: a) trans people are possibly dangerous, b) there are a lot of trans people, c) trans people are not activists trying to assert their rights (as feminists might be described) but are like industry lobbyists, and d) trans people are personally out to get her.  Notice how this is reinforced at the end of the same paragraph: "I now find that a number of organisations are too frightened to ask me to speak at public events for fear of protests by transsexual lobbyists."  Trans people are boogeypeople that scare people away from Bindel with their lobbying, ehr, protests.

"Feminists tend to be critical of traditional gender roles because they benefit men and oppress women."  Yes, yes, we do.  I couldn't agree with you more, Ms Bindel.  Glad we could find common ground.  Of course, then she completely rips that ground away by immediately following up by saying that "[t]ranssexualism, by its nature, promotes the idea that it is 'natural' for boys to play with guns and girls to play with Barbie dolls."  By talking about the "nature" of transsexualism (as though it somehow exists independent of actual transsexual people) and what is "natural", Bindel is trying to hit us over the head with the usual "You naive fools, you don't understand it's all socially constructed!" thing.  Just in case we were unclear on that she goes further with: "The idea that gender roles are biologically determined rather than socially constructed is the antithesis of feminism."  Again, I couldn't agree with her more since I am a feminist.  Gender roles are socially constructed.  How could they not be?  Of course the problem is that as a feminist and a transsexual woman, I see a difference between gender identity, gender expression, and gender roles.  For Bindel, like other radical feminists, gender identity, if it even exists, is the result of the imposition of gender roles as is gender expression.


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Please go read the remainder of the post, and the comments.

Rage against the machine for Christmas no.1! UK readers take note!

I interrupt my usual comics posts to bring you a highly exciting bit of news:

From the facebook group:

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EVEN IF YOU HAVE THE TRACK ALREADY...LET'S FACE IT MOST OF US DO...JUST BUY IT AGAIN (NOT YET!!!) FROM DECEMBER 13th

********************************
this year the Christmas No.1 will be announced on Sunday 20th December

Which means...
ONLY buy the track from 7Digital / iTunes / Play.com between these dates:

SUNDAY 13/12 from 00:01am -to- SATURDAY 19/12 at 11:59pm

********************************
ATTENTION TWITTERERS: The trending topic for this is #ratm4xmas

Copy and paste this post into your Tweets:

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE FOR XMAS No.1 #ratm4xmas See here for details http://bit.ly/inthename PLEASE RT

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Who's up for doing this?  I'm personally sick of our usual inane top ten crap and I would love to get Rage to the number one spot for Christmas.

More BNP stuff - hopenothate and media coverage

Hope not Hate is a campaign run by Searchlight with the aims of countering racism and fascism in elections. They have a petition up which they will present to the European Parliament on the day that the 2 BNP members take their seats.

I urge all UK citizens to sign it.

I had actually seen a flyer by this campaign before the election. I had a brief look at it and put it to the side, I didn't actually think that they were serious contenders.

Please forward the link to your UK friends, put it on your facebook status, twitter it, post a link on your blog. The least we can do is stand up and say that racist fascists don't represent us.

And next time maybe ya'll should vote?

EDIT- I've been reading the Justice League Task Force run and one of the issues dealt with racism. The task force set out to find and stop a group who had bio-engineered a virus that would target the genes of non whites and melt them to death in a painful and prolonged fashion. The end result was that he unleashed the virus (in a confined air tight space) and himself melted as he evidently had non white ancestors.

In real life we don't have a task force, we do however have protestors who find where Nick Griffin is and pelt eggs at him. It's a start. It would be helped if more of the media had referred to the BNP as a fascist racist party in their pre-election coverage. I'm looking at you EDP who in a pre election guide to all the parties article, not only included the BNP but completely failed to label them racist or fascist, and presented them as a legitimate political party.

I should have complained. More shame on me for not.

Reclaim the Night

I did have a whole long post typed up ready to go online about the march on Saturday, but i can't be arsed. It was fun, I went with 2 friends I haven't seen in a while, they got on, we marched and shouted, bystanders supported us, there was a signer translating the speeches and I saw a cool band in the evening - Zombina and the Skeletones. Check them out.

There's lots of stuff up online about the march - sadly no pictures of me or my friends, but if you want to read more here's some links:

The F Word
Reclaim the Night
London Feminist Network
Shut Up Sit Down - on sex workers rights

While we're at it, please all go help Rape Crisis. You've got no excuses not to do so. Do it.