Monthly Archives: April 2006

On other media

Appearing on ‘Life Matters’

April 17, 2006 – 12:34 pm

Australian readers might have been surprised this morning to hear something sounding familiar on their radios – I did a long interview (which covered a lot of ground about the Carnival of Feminists and other blogging topics) on Radio National’s Life Matters.

You can find the podcast, or listen through your computer, here.

I am not sure that I will listen to it – experience suggests that I will think on every second sentence “Could have said that better”, and of all the things I should have said but didn’t!

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Carnival of Feminists

Final call for the Carnival of Feminists

April 16, 2006 – 11:46 pm

Don’t forget that you’ve only got a day to get in your nominations for the Carnival of Feminists No 13, which will be posted on I See Invisible People on Wednesday.

The theme of the issue will be “Feminism and Challenges – physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.” Possible topics including: self-determination in health and mental health care, disability issues, transgender issues, issues of aging, integration of religion and feminist beliefs, economic issues, etc.

Nominations can be sent to ISeeInvisiblePeople AT gmail.com or through the online form.

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Friday Femmes Fatales

Friday Femmes Fatales No 52

April 16, 2006 – 7:41 pm

Late again this week. Sorry. Am I regretting putting a day of the week in the name? Yes. Have I been a journalist so long that I should know better? Yes. Sorry. Will do better.

So, the ten brilliant posts, and ten new (to me) women bloggers worth waiting for…

First up, a huge find, (thanks to the latest History Carnival), The Old Foodie, who has a daily posting about food and history. Friday was – what you didn’t know? – St Lidwina’s Day, and her herb is borage. The Foodie not only tells us all about its culinary and medicinal properties (it might, modern science says, be useful against eczema), and a recipe – not any old recipe, but one from the “first English cookbook”, from 1390, from Richard II’s cooks.

Staying on the food theme, want to know how to make your garden into a feast? On Eat Your History, Deborah offers her practical, spectacular example. (Although the California climate must help.)

And while on gardens, on The Ethel Experience, a wonderful range of pictures from the Chicago Botanical Gardens. No 1, 2, 3 and 4. The swans (No. 2) are in there to make up for the fact that I didn’t get to take any pics of the many I saw while cycling the Thames path today. (I was too busy just keeping up with the group.)

Moving into the workplace, Simplicus, on the group effort Blogging the Renaissance, has a post that will have resonances for academic readers (in fact for anyone who socialises professionally). She reports on the social traps and frustrations of the academic conference. On The Hag’s Mouth, The Hag reports on staff from failed but cool companies who use them as models at staff meetings. (I’ve been reading a fictional account of the dotcom crash, so this really resonated.)

Turning to books, on Between an Oxymoron and a Redundancy (what a great name!) Lucyrain starts to read Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and finds a sentences that speaks volumes to her. Then, getting artistic, Lisa on Digital Medievalist (no, not a contradiction), offers thoughts on the National Gallery’s attempt to buy a portrait of John Donne.

Turning personal, Caron on Women Creating the World is hoping to create a community of debate. She’s looking now for thoughts on dealing with difficult family relationships.

Then OK, The Chronicles of Hermione Granger Reed is a dog blog, but it is a very classy dog blog, not written in the dog’s voice, and this post has an hilarious twist in the tail… it involves Harvard Law school and mange.

Finally (and this comes with the warning that it might be upsetting to some), two shattering posts about itinerant thinker’s gradual discovery of the extent of health problems of her foetus Annabel, starting with the 19-week ultrasound. Part 1 and Part 2. (The story has not yet been finished.) Those producing hysterical vitriol about “late” abortions should be made to read this. (Not of course that they will – might interfere with some of their comfortable preconceived notions.)

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If you missed last week’s edition, it is here.

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Please: In the next week if you read, or write, a post by a woman blogger and think “that deserves a wider audience” (particularly someone who doesn’t yet get many hits), drop a comment here.

It really does make my life easier!

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Cycling

Spring on the Thames path

April 16, 2006 – 7:15 pm

Well, having managed not to fall off my bicycle and into the Thames, I’m back from my jaunt. The Thames path is gorgeous in many places and the English spring was doing its stuff: the new lambs were gambolling, the daffodils were blooming in the churchyards, the coxes at Henley-on-Thames were bawling at their crews, and the flocks of parakeets were swirling. (Those of you who find the last of that group odd; yes they were originally Australian, but escaped pets are apparently naturalising very successfully, and in large numbers, in the south-east of England.)

There was also a hovering raptor, but I wasn’t close enough to the front to hear the identification. I wasn’t Tail End Charlie ALL day, just most of it. This was a group I would never have kept up with were it not for the large numbers of otherwise irritating stiles that dot the path. We made it from Reading to Windsor (and some people set off to cycle on to London – though not on the Thames path, since it had taken us from 10ish to 4 to get that far.)

That was at least 35 miles, about half of it on non-sealed paths, forest tracks and straight out rough fields – and those soft and spongy river meadows are damn hard riding. I may have done a bit more than that – the juddering shook loose the speedo magnet; my knees are swearing it must have been at least 40 miles total for the day, and they might even be right.

UPDATE: in case you should think this means I’m a “real” cyclist, read this post to discover what real cyclists do.

SECOND UPDATE: Thanks to Barry, the organiser, I learn that the raptor was a red kite, “Very rare a few years back…now spreading”.

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History

History carnival, and an apology…

April 16, 2006 – 8:16 am

First the apology, to those who’ve asked and those who haven’t: yes Friday Femmes Fatales is running late again this week. (Hopefully it will arrive tonight.)

Now the excuses: Green campaiging (1,000 newsletters out in the past two days, and 2,000 sitting reproachfully on the floor that should mostly be delivered before postal ballots go out at the end of this week for the May 4 election), and I’m working on an all-new, shiny Philobiblon. There’s nothing but a rough layout yet (no content), but it is philobiblon.co.uk, for anyone who feels like being a design critic.

And today I’m off on a jaunt – to cycle the Thames (well as much of the Thames path as I can manage).

But would I leave you without anything to read? Of course not! History Carnival No 29 is up over on (a)musings of a grad student. I haven’t had time for a proper read, but it looks like a cracker.

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Feminism

Four per cent of domestic attackers jailed

April 15, 2006 – 2:56 pm

It really hasn’t been a good week for women’s view of the “protection” of British law. After the “cautions for rape” cases earlier in the week, today it emerges that only 4 per cent of men convicted of domestic violence are sent to jail. Fifty-nine per cent are fined, which strikes me as a particularly stupid penalty, given that it inevitably penalises the victim as well as the attacker, in affecting the family budget(directly, if the couple are still together – as sadly they all too often still are, or indirectly if the father is providing child support); surely if you are going for non-custodial sentences a community service would be more appropriate?

Now I’m not, even on an issue like this, a Daily Mail “lock ’em up and throw away the key style person. Jailing should be rehabilitative purposes and, where necessary, for the protection of the community. (And that protection might be particularly necessary if the couple are still “together”.)

But I’d like to see a comparison between a group of “domestic” assaults and “non-domestic” ones, grouped by the seriousness of the injuries caused to the victims. I suspect this would show that domestic assaults are still being treated as “less serious”, and particularly that “respectable”, relatively wealthy men who can present well in court are getting away with them, with a fine that will have little or no real meaning.

The government reflex of “make a new law” is not, however, likely to deal with this problem. The problem is not the law, or even the magistrates and judges, beyond the fact that they represent their societies. What needs to change are attitudes that make victims feel this is “just life”, or “their fault”, and attitudes among police, juries, lawyers – in fact everyone, that something “domestic” is somehow different to a random attack in the street. (Something that is actually statistically highly unlikely.)

To put this in context:

The annual BCS [British Crime Survey] estimate says that there were about 401,000 incidents of domestic abuse in 2004-05. However, the special BCS study points at more than a million victims each year, with 15.4m incidents involving threats or force happening each year in England and Wales. Researchers say the number would be even greater if the many sexual assaults that take place within the home were also included.

It should not be forgotten — indeed it should be celebrated — that we have come a long way in only a couple of decades in at least recognising that these assults are crimes. We still have a long way to go in treating them with proper seriousness.

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