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The first J ar Belles meeting wa hoped for. s better t As if by m han we cou agic, a gr came toget ld have ev oup of tru her that n er ly awesome ight to tr for self-e y somethin women and xpression, g new and men support an have bange created a d action. d out the p l a T ce f o ollowing g gether, th - To raise oals: e Jar Bell awareness es and fight t - To creat he inequal e a safe z i one for wo ties faced - To promo men to exp by women te body po ress thems sitivity a - To fight elves nd accepta the perpet nce uation of We want to t raditional reconnect gender rol to the old the anger es and passio 60’s idea n of the 9 of sisterh need permi 0’s riot g ood but wi ssion from rrrl movem th anyone, we all we nee e n t . We don’t d are our don’t need opinions a any specia of them. nd hot dam l experien n , we certa ce, We’re incl i n ly have a usive of a f l ew l religions, genders, a etc. Femin ges, sexua ism benefit l orientat di erence s everyone ions, race if they bl s, oody well and anyone want to. can make a Massive lo ve, JM and KL xx
THE INTERNET VS ANITA SARKEESIAN
An ostensibly minor thing happened this week, which set fire to comment sections around the internet and resulted in a woman receiving so many violent threats that she was forced out of her home. The catalyst: Anita Sarkeesian released the latest episode of her well known video series Tropes vs Women in Games. For those unfamiliar, it’s a kickstarter-backed series of videos pointing out misogynistic tropes found in video games. The videos have never been about shaming the gaming industry, or attempting to stop people playing games, but aim to point out blind spots to an overwhelmingly male industry. By raising public awareness, it’s hoped that developers in the industry will create more fully realised female characters, and the next generation of girls growing up playing will have more role models to aspire to. Whilst much of the reaction has been positive, the wave of negative comments has been huge and pretty soul destroying. Sarkeesian has received thousands of threats of violence and rape and both her home and parents’ addresses have been posted online. This is an unacceptable way to treat a human being, let alone one whose only goal is to educate others. In between threats of violence, there have been some attempts at “legitimate” criticism. All of which has been vaguely nonsensical. One of the main criticisms made about Sarkeesian’s series is that video games provide a sense of escapism, allowing people to live out thousands of di erent lives or to be an idealised version of themselves. The critics will say that by calling attention to this issue and injecting more political correctness into games, they are losing this escapism. The problem with this is that the majority of girls and women are not going to get this same sense of escapism, when their characters are typically white, American, macho men and the only females are trophies to be saved, or prostitutes to be murdered for fun. All this negativity reeks to me of a group of people who have never had their ideologies questioned, and so are unable to react to the questions and issues posted in these videos. So for now they snarl and lash out, as I’m sure people did when the suggestion was first made of giving women the vote, and how I know people did when the idea of same sex marriage was proposed. Ultimately attitudes will change, there just needs to be someone brave enough to question the current mindset. When the original kickstarter was first posted, the monetary goal was reached within 24 hours, eventually making $158,922 when its original goal had been $6,000. Obviously there is a real need and desire for Anita’s videos and I’m extremely grateful to her for taking that first step. Now, we just need everybody else to catch up. - JB
Page Three is an antiquated, sexist and degrading newspaper feature which is embarrassing for everyone involved. If you’d like more information as to why, I recommend reading up on the fantastic No More Page 3 campaign. Their website is nomorepage3.org and you should definitely consider signing their petition. We’ve been thinking about what could replace Page Three. After so many years contributing to the crappy portrayal of women in the media, we thought The Sun should make it up to us somehow. We agreed that the page should stay dedicated to a woman, but for her achievements rather than her physical attributes. You can find the Jar Belle’s Boob-Free Page Three on our blog (thejarbelles.wordpress.com). Let us know of any awesome women that you’d like to be featured.
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My problem with porn
I have a problem with porn. orn. . Not No with pornography as a whole – as Caitlin Moran so accurately put it, “pornography “pornograph ogra is just “stu fucking”, after all. The act of having sex isn’t sexist exist so there’s there no way pornography can be, in itself, inherently misogynist.” .” My problem roblem is with wi the porn industry. • •
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In a recent survey, urvey, the majority of teens asked agreed that porn was too accessible. 72% said it led to o unrealistic views about sex and 80% of teenage girls said it led to pressure on n girls girl to look and nd act a cert certain cer way. Porn is s everywhere. When I was younger, young you had to stumble across s it. My first exposure was whe when someone left some vintage e 80s porn in the town centre fountain - now, if you’re online, ne, e, it’s unavoidable.
A quick glance at one e of those porn por hubs that compiles free videos (you know the he kind) shows s that th unless you’re thoroughly plucked, thin and have a load lo of stu up your bum - not unlike an Aldi chicken cken - you yo are undesirable. Any video featuring someone without hout the usual flat stomach and tiny waist gets titled something like “Fat slut gets banged hard”. In fact, almost all of the titles follow this sort of formula – there is emphasis on the woman as
an object and it’s usually insulting. “Teen whore gets face fucked” or “Chubby MILF gets shown who’s boss”. Not since I was in primary school and the dinner ladies refused to let kids go unless they finished their Spam ‘n’ Smash have I seen so much crying, gagging and choking: there’s a real element of punishment. A male actor will say “This is what you get” as something oversized gets rammed somewhere forcefully, or a woman might get ‘caught cheating’ as a prelude to the action – this is not uncommon. Themes of non-consent are everywhere,‘gang bangs’ are two a penny and anal is present in most of the videos.
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It’s no wonder that we have a problem m with wit rape culture, w with consent a ‘blurred’ issue for or many man and an the prevalence of the rape defence “She was asking for it”. That’s the t story sto that porn is selling. Teenagers grow up thinking that normal mal sex comprises comp of o hairless vaginas, brutal sex that a woman has to be manipulated anipulated into int and jizz, jiz jizz, everywhere! Considering how squeamish a lot of men seem to be about their own semen (they rarely fancy a mouthful), , why is the porn aimed at them so obsessed with plastering it all over someone ne else. Is it just to re-iterate the dirty, even degrading nature of the act? I don’t recall seeing much porn where men with wet, shining faces go making a big deal of it, smacking their lips li together and banging on about t the lady-juices they’re smothered in. As porn becomes cheaper aper and more widely available, it has to fight for attention. The acts get more dangerous and provocative. But, over ov time, won’t that desensitise the people watching? What about the young people p who grow up with it?
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Women don’t t watch as much porn, which is the t argument for why it’s mostly aimed at men. With h the above ve being the norm though, tho why the hell would women watch it? Since sexual xual liberation eration apparently apparentl swept in during the 1960s, women in the west are supposedly osedly free to enjoy sex as much as men. We know that this is not often the case (slut-shaming, -shaming, what up) but the porn industry seriously needs to catch up with the he progress rogres made. When porn is safe and an enjoyable for women to watch, we will watch. In the meantime, when the pornographic arena mostly features women being degraded, humiliated and violated, it’s unlikely to happen. I’d ask any feminists reading this who do watch porn to think before choosing their next video, “What kind of culture am I encouraging when I add a pageview to this?” There are various feminist porn sites out there which, while not free, do not exploit or degrade women. If you really want to get your rocks o without paying anything, consider erotic fiction. There are plenty of free sites out there, no women will be harmed in the making of it and there’s a story covering every sexual fetish going, no matter how niche. Finally, you can get the Hagrid-and-Harry-do-feetstu porn you’ve always wanted. Neat, huh? -JM
Being feminist and looking good – not mutually exclusive, honest. Back in my nineteen-and-earnestly-studying-Simonede-Beauvoir days, I took myself a bit too seriously. I’d just about relax with a glass of organic red wine in the union cinema café over a deeply intense conversation about comedy (irony…), when someone would mention that they don’t find women as funny as men, and I’d burst into a tirade of abuse and storm home to drink cognac on my own, smoke cigarettes and read To The Lighthouse for the hundredth time. Whilst I know that challenging views such as these can only be a good thing, back then I just took it too hard and too personally that I couldn’t change the world. So I punished myself for my failure to do so. When really I’d have rather thrown it o and gone down the club to dance to Lady Gaga like everyone else, and told guys to fuck o if they looked up my skirt. This sense that I was to blame for my shortcomings in being unable to change things manifested itself in other ways. I hid my figure because I thought that being a good feminist was synonymous with covering up – that I couldn’t be proud of my body if I was going to be proud of my opinions. I thought being a feminist was baggy t-shirts and baggy jeans and boots, and reading nothing but women writers, and never listening to Cheryl Cole, and hiding away. Turns out, that’s a load of bullshit. Being a feminist is just as much about enjoying yourself as it is about being pro-active and serious. Feminism to me has become something to wear to make me feel more myself; like a suede coat or a pair of Ray Bans, I put on my feminist ‘cloak’ and it gives me the balls to stick my finger up at the builders that heckle me on my evening jog. We’ve su ered thousands of years of persecution, rape and abuse at the hands of men: we deserve a few cocktails, sparkly tights and the back catalogue of Kylie, if that’s what takes our fancy. So these days I’m not beating myself up too much over the fact that this patriarchal society isn’t going to be torn down in a day. I’m just trying to do one thing every day that stands up for women and for equality. I still call people out on sexist crap. And in addition, I’m making up for lost time by spending my evenings in the bath reading Vogue. Turns out that is an education in itself. The trouble is, we’re taught from a young age to see sexuality and clothing as intrinsically entwined. I truly believed that the fashion industry was something to rebel against for teaching this rather than embrace as being ‘on my side.’ In my indie college days I didn’t really get that taking o that baggy shirt wasn’t tantamount to betraying the sisterhood. Having tits is fine, ditto getting them out if you want; what’s not really fine is the shame girls are led to feel in having them in the first place. There is something timeless about real old-school punk, a-line skirts and 80’s leather jackets and charity shops and liberation and everything that is deliciously good and powerful. There is nothing like cashmere to make me feel better and nothing like a good bra to make me feel able to do anything. After all, our evolving culture is inspired and improved by fashion and this feminist is finally embracing it. GO FOURTH WAVE! -KL
Why blockbusters owe The summer blockbuster season is nearly over and once again, something’s missing. Where are our female leads? Blockbusters make supreme dents on our pop-cultural consciousness, which in turn is a reflection of the society and cultures we exist within. Women are half the world’s population, so it stands to reason that approximately half the big movies should be equipped with female leads. But they’re not. Why? If I were to point to a single, main reason, it would be that big movies are businesses run by huge corporations typically managed by men: an entrenched and unfair system. There are few women running major studios and it’s because a top-down paradigm has been in place since the inception of film as commerce itself; the image of the rotund, cigar-chewing, cocaine-addled film producer hasn’t changed much. The only di erence is that in the modern era there’s a tableau of even more powerful men, with finer and more plentiful cocaine, who run the now frighteningly large corporations behind the studios. There are exceptions. Kathleen Kennedy produced the Jurassic Park films, and is now running Lucasfilm while George Lucas chills on a beach with Howard the Duck and Jar Jar. Women like Kennedy are comparatively few and far between, which results in fewer female voices behind the scenes, fewer female directors given opportunities in the blockbuster landscape, and fewer films made from female perspectives. We all su er as a result. We should strive for more range and more honesty in the media we consume, and the fact that this is mainstream entertainment is no excuse; the responsibility is far greater when you’re reaching such a wide audience. A person who is wrong will tell you that films with female leads just aren’t marketable. Recently, The Hunger Games series has seen massive success; as blockbuster action pictures with a female lead (a properly textured and motivated one at that), they made masses of money, so there’s simply no excuse. Yes, lots of blockbusters with female leads have failed at the box office, but this is due more to the fact that a lot of them are shit. This is because they are mounted by producers and filmmakers who have little to no idea of what makes a good, resonant film. Take Catwoman (2004), for example. A Catwoman film is a good idea, but the film itself came from the incredibly sexist perspective that women wouldn’t watch an action film unless it was about make-up. Therefore, make-up plays a large role in the film’s plot (the villain becomes indestructible via judicious application of super-moisturiser). The whole thing has such a patronising tone towards femininity that it’s almost as if Director Pitof felt that
us more female leads the best way to appeal to women would be to produce the most vacuous and preposterous bit of filmmaking imaginable. He was very wrong and most consider Catwoman not just among the worst films, but among the worst things that humanity has ever produced. There are plenty of awful films with male leads as well, of course, but because there’s so many more of them people don’t irrationally blame the fact that they have men in them as the reason they failed. Unfortunately, female leads are very unusual. And when criticising a film, most people look to the most identifiable surface-level thing because they are unwilling to engage the film thoughtfully, so the narrative becomes “Women don’t make good leads.” In short; something is rotten in state of big budget filmmaking. Female leads are often pigeon-holed within romantic comedy and are rarely allowed to play in the other genres. This is a system that has survived for decades, but thanks to films like The Hunger Games, it may be approaching its sticky Bond-villain-caught-in-a-turbine demise. I don’t just want female led romances, I want cop movies, crime movies, disaster movies, historical epics and the rest to frequently feature women in the lead because that reflects the world we’re in, and that’s what popular art should be: a reflection. It’s time for big films to start being reflective. This year has been a great one for blockbuster movies, but there is still a cavernous lack of female representation. Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Godzilla, Transformers 4: Age of Extinction, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Dawn of The Planet of the Apes, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Edge of Tomorrow, Noah, Need For Speed and Transcendance – all have male protagonists. That’s fine and dandy for them but as for big films with female protagonists, we have Maleficent, Divergent and Lucy. This is, of course, not saying that the above films with male protagonists are misogynistic works (well, Transformers 4 is; worth watching if you like your robot movies to have jokes about statutory rape in them). However, the pattern is as it has always been: male dominated with a couple of female driven films thrown in. Even though there is change on the horizon, we still have a long way to go. -CB
The angry grrrl persuasion
‘Silence Yourself’ by Savages
Anger is a product. It can be packaged, marketed, sold and sanitised. From punk to grunge, once it broke the mainstream the major labels were only too happy to buy as much disa ection as possible. However, grunge retained a sense of irony and distance about anger, an awareness that it can be used to entertain and thrill. It’s a lot easier to be ironic about a feeling than it is to fully embrace it in seriousness. Savages are a serious band, made up of four women based in London and they are very, very angry. Silence Yourself contains no irony or pretence; even the front cover acts as a manifesto for the band. It dissects some of the album’s themes; namely, the dichotomy of others silencing you as an act of oppression and silencing yourself as one of empowerment. “THE WORLD USED TO BE SILENT / NOW IT HAS TOO MANY VOICES”, states the opening lines, describing the chaos of the digital age. On social media, the combined strength of voices can bring power to the dispossessed in new ways. IF THE WORLD WOULD SHUT UP EVEN FOR A WHILE PERHAPS WE WOULD START HEARING THE DISTANT RHYTHM OF AN ANGRY YOUNG TUNE
The stripping back of everything to a single “angry young tune” is the essence of punk. Savages play and sing with precision about what it means to be a woman in the modern world. They take the familiar aural palette of post-punk, with its prominent rhythms and tight guitar, and make it sound totally modern and fresh. The anger played by Savages is the wild noise of punk sharpened to a knife edge. No sound feels accidental or misplaced, whether it’s the tight ri s of ‘Husbands’ and ‘She Will’, or the squalling noise at the end of ‘Waiting for a Sign’. Those last two songs provide the album’s centrepieces, especially ‘She Will’, whose lyrics deal with the sense of self lost in sex: She will kiss like a man She will forget her name She will come back again Get hooked on loving hard Forcing the slut out
The narrative presents a woman forcing out the role of the “slut” whilst forgetting her own name. The song may seem to present this scene negatively, as the woman has to bring out an archetype from herself. Savages present a conflict between the power of choice and their consequences, which may be why the chorus tells the listener that “You’ve got to get used to it / Give your heart a little kick”. As the personal becomes increasingly political, all we can do is kick ourselves into making our choices firmly, “Coz she will”. Silence Yourself is a constantly compelling record; sometimes brutal, sometimes contemplative, but never boring. I love this band for daring to make a statement and for stripping back that statement to its barest metaphor. “Can’t you see we’re losing” Beth sings in ‘Marshal Dear’. Her answer? “Silence yourself”. -CH
CLAW The claw catches me. The animal tries piercing my skin, I’m trying to evolve to find myself. Who I am Why I am I’m human Skin, bones Able to walk, talk on a phone Voice box allowing words to tumble from my lips. I’m human, Heart pumping. Life, living. In existence. I’m bleeding, red blood. Veins pumping, working, electric. Burning through my skin. This body. This body, I’m in. No choice. This the vessel I exist within. The fiery eyes, they’re shining behind. My fingernails slowly detach. Hands callused from the harsh dirt. Barks of trees I’m trying to climb. Escape, escape, escape. In progress. This isn’t a correlation on Darwin’s graph. This is pain my feet are cracked. Where to now? There’s certainly no going back. -VS
t-shi
rt ma king
We recently had our first Jar Belles event; a feminist t-shirt making night. The group designed t-shirts covering a diverse range of issues including: famous feminists and why they’re awesome, calls to end page 3, rape culture and patriarchal society in general, gender equality and sexuality acceptance, and simply, that women are lovely. It was a breath of fresh air to talk and work with like-minded people, and it was a chance for someone like me to learn more about feminism and why groups such as ours are needed. I feel there are so many of us out there who believe what I used to - that there is no longer a need for feminism. I don’t want to be antagonistic (I’m still going to be, anyway) but YOU ARE WRONG! If anything, the situation is getting worse and attitudes like that let issues go ignored! We need to take action. For all the women who have been sexually abused, for all of the women who have been overlooked for a job because one day they may want to have children (a womb is biological, not a choice, dickheads) and for all the women who deal with day-to-day oppression. For those who are heckled in the street, who are pressured into being a size zero and who notice a colleague receiving a higher salary because of what he’s got between his legs. How are we supposed to just shrug and go, OK? How are we supposed to let all of this slide, just because some men will complain that, for the first time, they’ll have to play on an even field?
WE NEED FEMINISM.
-ARG
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beautiful books and why to read them No idea if this is any good, but I can’t wait to get my teeth into it. What the fuck should we be telling them? -KL
This scathing, furious and well-deserved slamming of the media is at once eye-opening and a irming. If you want to borrow it let me know -KL
Even my dad reads the Everyday Sexism Project. Perfect for directing skeptics and idiots to when they challenge your need for feminism. -KL I’ve heard a lot of great things about Laurie Penny, and her sharp and bright writing is exactly what we need to unearth the real truth about our society and the sexist world we live in. -KL