Reading Student Journalist’s blog reminded me of the ridiculous things people have been searching for to find femineye. Having got intimate with statcounter, I can reveal these gems:

donkey penetrates to woman
donkey penetrates girl
breasts, gardening
las vegas march 2009 call girl
tits?

Should I be proud to think of these people putting their search terms in and ending up on a feminist blog? I think it’s one of those laugh-or-cry situations. Feminist sex blogger Zoe Margolis, aka Girlwithaonetrackmind just wrote on her twitter about… the obscenities people reach her blog with. I guess that’s one form of SEO.

Other things statcounter has told me: 1,200 visitors, 23 countries, typically spending under 5 seconds on the blog. Let’s hope that’s speedreading..

I recorded a podcast discussing my thoughts on the G20 spouses. You can listen to it here (links away from Femineye) Femineye Podcast One

The big story of the week has been the G20 summit, and the majority of the pictures in the press have been provided by the group of G20 ‘wags’ who were entertained by Sarah Brown along with a group of hand picked high profile women including JK Rowling and Kelly Holmes. Parts of the coverage have made me cringe – descriptions of the ‘Girls’ Night In’ while the Men (and two women) do real business up the corridor, and so much focus on clothes and shoes often makes you despair in search of some respect for their brains and achievements, which are seriously impressive, according to No.10. But then Michelle Obama turned it all around when she spoke at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson school, giving such an inspirational speech. Overall I think it’s positive to have so many brilliant women in the public eye at the moment.

Nestled among the many men given acolades at the British Press Awards last night is one of particular interest: Quentin Letts himself, he of casual homophobia and misogyny, bigotry and ocassionally a very bad pun. They obviously didn’t agree with my piece in The Guardian‘s Comment is Free. Letts won Political Journalist of the year. Doesn’t really inspire me to sharpen my political pen and head for Millbank.

In honour of the anxiety created by this question, I put a couple of students on the spot. Let’s just say they didn’t exactly rock the boat.

No means no poster - from bicyclebob

There has been a lot of coverage of the story of the chef who was accused of raping a drunk girl and then cleared this week. Of course it is a harrowing experience to be accused of a crime you didn’t commit. I can understand the frustration for this man that his name was public, while the girl’s was kept anonymous.

However, the way in which the tabloid press have revelled in the reporting of this story sticks in the throat. Not to mention this amazingly uppity and thoughtless comment piece by India Knight in the Sunday Times. Why must she spend her column inches focusing on this one case, spinning it out to have a good dig at all women who have the cheek to get drunk and have sex everywhere.

Drawing attention to these minority cases when rape conviction rates are at an all time low is damaging: women are even less likely to go to the police if they think they might be accused of lying, or if it emerges that they were very drunk at the time, when they will be publicly derided. There is something about the very term ‘date rape’ that softens the crime at its core: as if it is a half rape, a drunk rape, a ‘mis-rape’, an accident. Rape by another name is still rape, and the media have a duty to manage the way it covers such incidents.

So incensed by Quentin Letts horror piece in the Mail, I wrote a piece for Comment is Free, and they published it. Here’s what I wrote. The link to the article is below (where you can read the ‘engaging’ comments).

Oh, Daily Mail. You do tease with your flagrant offensiveness, your gall, your misogyny, your persistent building up and bringing down of women. But all that’s nothing new – you don’t need the feminist lobby knocking at your door to make you realise what you have been proudly doing for years.

The anger that you incense is exactly the kind of response you seek. You may argue it’s a bit of fun, and sure, the odd polemic never did any harm. But this is a step too far. A national newspaper should not be allowed to get away with such damaging bile and call it journalism.

Today’s Mail contains two articles that bait their female readers and entrap them in the abusive relationship that the newspaper has maintained for so long. The first, which lists a Spanish newspaper’s online poll of the hottest female MPs in the world, is sure to print as many images as possible of the youngest and most nubile female MPs, and also bemoan the lack of British MPs. The second lets Quentin Letts loose on all British female MPs, accounting for their absence from the list by describing their frumpy nature one by one.

I don’t need to describe the misogyny bound up with these articles. It does not need to be detailed that a piece bemoaning the lack of “knockout lovelies” among British female MPs, that calls Harriet Harman “butch” for wearing a suit jacket instead of, like Christine Kelly, newly chosen as France’s Minister for Overseas Territories, being pictured all over the papers in a bikini (Letts jibes: “One slightly doubts she[Harman] even owns a bikini”) is offensive and degrading.

What is so galling is that a British national newspaper can maintain an editorial policy that allows this humiliating rubbish to be spewed out. Why is it acceptable to openly bully both the women described and those that read the piece? It must have thrilled Tom Worden to be able to re-print the list of women voted on the Spanish newspaper’s site and underline the absence of British women. But to give Letts free reign with his diatribe is deliberately cruel.

On top of his flagrant misogyny, there is casual homophobia – Alan Duncan, one of the only openly gay MPs in parliament, is called “easily the poutiest, most fragrant figure on the Tory benches”, and Treasury minister Angela Eagle is described as “not one for the chaps…looking increasingly like a bloke, dressing in two-piece business suits”. Chris Moyles has been rapped on the knuckles by Ofcom for what has been deemed homophobia on radio, but Letts will no doubt receive a pat on the back for his funny “banter”. The PCC should step in: could such an offensive article be published about any other such section of society and abide by its code of practice?

The Mail has always catered to a large female readership, and it does so through persistent humiliation. The Femail section is often laughed off as a self-knowing bit of fun and fluff, home to light gossip, dodgy paparazzi photos and heartwarming stories, but pieces like this demonstrate a much darker side. The Mail did not make the online poll of female MPs itself (a fact I’m sure it regrets), but it has grasped the opportunity to revel in its objectification. We can no longer allow this ill-informed writing to be given such a platform unchecked.
Ruth Lewy: A piece bemoaning the lack of ‘knockout lovelies’ among British female MPs is offensive and degrading | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

Lesbians in South Africa are being raped and killed because of their sexuality, a shocking new report from Action Aid has revealed.
The report found that there are an estimated 500,000 rapes, hundreds of murders and countless beatings inflicted each year. It also highlights the fact that for every 25 men accused of rape in South Africa, 24 walk free.
Action Aid are calling for South Africa’s criminal justice system to recognise hate crimes such as ‘corrective rape’ as a separate category to increase conviction rates.
The Guardian have interviewed victims in a video investigation here.
Sometimes its easy to forget what freedoms we take for granted with regards to basic human rights.
Read more in the The Telegraph and elsewhere.

HT to @iduncan for sending me the link

Working Girls: Top 50 Las Vegas Prostitutes!

How do you solve a problem like prostitution? Police in Las Vegas have turned their attentions to the “working girls” on the strip by publishing a list of what they call the “most prolific prostitutes”. Neatly called The Vice Enforcement Top Offenders (VETO) list, it names fifty women arrested for prostitution-related criminal offences.

It is nothing new for police to compile lists of wanted offenders – but in this case the names, details and photographs of these women have been published in the Las Vegas Review Journal, and posted online in a handy gallery. Who is this meant to be useful for? What is the benefit in posting images of these women, ranging in age from 20-41, online – so we can gawp and giggle at their bleached hair, drawn faces and drawn-in eyebrows? Perhaps to give those of us who have never seen a real prostitute up close the chance to have a good look, run our eyes over their faces, checking for signs of promiscuity or sin. Or to allow those who are all too familiar with “working girls” a check list so that next time they are in the neighbourhood they can play who’s who.

The majority of the women haven’t actually been charged with prostitution, but trespassing and loitering – returning to casinos from which they’ve been barred. They are the public-facing side of prostitution, but by no means the most prolific in the area: an investigation by the LA Times found that the majority of prostitution in the area is arranged though online, phone, or newspaper adverts. Instead of using police resources to tackle this most typical prostitution, which is largely hidden, they are vilifying and humiliating those who walk around the casinos playing for business.

Prostitutes loitering in casinos can’t be nice for your average tourist – although they are in Vegas, where selling sex is hardly an alien concept – and it is right that the women should be arrested or moved on if they are illegally trespassing. But their actions do not merit public vilification and humiliation. Their details should not be posted online as an example for do-gooders to feel smug about, or perverts to stare at, or worse, a violent nutcase to carefully pencil down each name and age and head out to the strip to tick them off, one by one.

If we’re going to be in the game of naming and shaming, perhaps the fifty men who had been arrested for buying sex the most in the past year should be photographed and humiliated online. They could have one-liners under each mugshot about why they were buying sex. Then we’d know who to watch out for when hanging out in Vegas.

Due to the nature of the web, we should also face up to the fact that this list is basically a curious kind of free advertising for the services of these women. They are mini celebrities now – celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton has posted a link talking about how ugly all the women are. The police have managed to simultaneously glamorize and vilify these working-cum-poster girls.

In order to give these young women a place in society where they are able to be economically independent and live a productive life on the right side of the law, the last thing we should be doing is holding them up as social pariahs, or worse, models of intrigue to be gawped at. Las Vegas police should leave the freakshows where they belong, on stage in Sin City.

Feministing drew my attention to the horrifying spectre that is Donkey Punch - the movie. For those lucky ones who haven’t heard of a Donkey Punch, it’s the name for the sex act where a man penetrates a woman from behind and punches her in the back of the head as he ejaculates. Nice. When explaining this to a friend she asked me to clarify what exactly the woman is meant to get out of it. Quite clearly, nothing – apart from a healthy dose of humiliation and probably concussion.

Rewind to summer 2008 and we find this British film centred around this degrading sexual violence – except here, the girl agrees to it, does it (or rather has it done to her) and then dies. Dying turns out to be the most active thing she does in the event. It’s not clear from the trailer if the death is an unfortunate mistake or rather a realisation of the ultimate fantasy.

Admittedly this film, as you can see from the trailer above, is unlikely to make it into the cinematic canon, and went by largely unnoticed last year. But you have to question what the hell was going on in the original pitching session. How can one sex act become a whole movie? And who would agree to fund a film where the overarching question being asked of the viewer is…”Have you ever heard of a Donkey Punch?”

Dollface HT Soapstar D'Lux

Delighted to find out that it’s not just me who is offended by the Harley Medical Group adverts on the tube – it’s not just the terrible typography but the assertions that:

breast enlargement surgery will make you feel more confident and feminine again.

When I’m sitting on the London Underground I don’t want to be shown false breasts and fake tans and be told that this is the answer to my happiness.
somewhat strident have started a guerilla campaign and have put up a set of stickers for people to download. Up to you what you choose to do with them, of course – they are specifically not encouraging people to go and put them over the posters on the tube. Some are a bit silly, but my favourite is the short and sweet

You are normal, this is not

The collective effort of the strident people is harmless, positive, uplifting, confidence boosting…just like a boob job, eh?
One such offending ad:

Harley Medical Group Ad on the tube

HT Soapstar D’Lux and @robertwrobinson