Disillusionment, Part Two.

Disclaimer: I’m trying to be as queer/non-gender binary inclusive as possible with my language. I have had to use the term ‘women’ in this post; however, when I refer to people having abortions or being pregnant, I am speaking in reference to cis women, trans men and anyone who does not identify within the gender binary. Just take me as referring to ‘anyone with a uterus who is capable of conceiving children’. My apologies for only using the term ‘women’ – I feel it is important that we relate these issues in terms of women. However, if you find my language, and/or this disclaimer problematic or non-inclusive, just leave me a comment.

This is the second and final part of this series of posts. I’m going to be more general in this post, and also talking about issues that don’t necessarily directly relate to Nicaragua.

Something I didn’t even mention in my previous post is the religious Fundamentalism of this country and its horrifically damaging effects. Although officially, The Republic of Nicaragua endorses no religion, the Church evidently has a dominant, pervasive presence here. Access to information about contraceptive methods and contraception is incredibly limited. This is entrapping women in the domestic role of wife and mother from a very early age. Women also have a lot of children (I’ve been told about families with more than ten children here) – ultimately, if contraception is either not available, or forbidden according to Catholic doctrine, women will be transformed into tools of reproduction who are obliged to continue giving birth to children and be confined within the private domestic sphere of the home. Abortion is still illegal, demonstrating a complete indifference to the human rights of women. The blanket ban on abortion of course applies to rape survivors too. Women have to resort to illegal and unsafe methods if they wish to have an abortion – this is killing them. It is completely backwards to prioritise a fetus over a woman’s life – and, of course, it has its roots in Biblical teachings.

According to Psalms 127:3-5, children are ‘a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.’ This actually only carries the implication that a fetus is the same thing as a child. You would think born children would matter though, right? However, I also found this nice contradictory (surprise surprise) gem:

Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up. (Hosea 13:16)

I guess God has the right to kill actual born children. Let’s just forget all the rules!

Essentially, the Church is just one of the institutions upholding men’s hegemony – keeping women out of the public sphere, which remains dominated by men.

In my previous disclaimer, I talked about the importance of remembering that all women are oppressed (I’m not looking to say that women are ‘more’ or ‘less’ oppressed in certain countries). I’ve been reading an essay by Marcela Lagarde, a Mexican theorist, and she phrases things pretty perfectly when it comes to this. She talks about countries where the social and cultural conditions, in terms of gender, are more ‘advanced’:

[…] países donde las condiciones sociales de género y la cultura de género es mucho más avanzada, mucho menos patriarcal […]

She doesn’t actually define precisely what this means, although I read it as places where there is more awareness, on a national level, of the existence of patriarchy and necessity for social and cultural change – together with how effectively or to what extent these methods are implemented in a way that is conducive to improving conditions and attitudes towards women and their role in society. It seems that it is possible to talk in these terms (although what constitutes more ‘advanced’ social and cultural conditions is pretty abstract) whilst remaining clear that women who live in societies that are more advanced in this nature are not ‘less’ oppressed, as they are still subject to the same patriarchal forces and social pressures.

At a time when homophobic attacks have been occurring in France, I thought it would be relevant to mention a conversation I had quite recently with someone who tried to tell me that human beings are ‘naturally heterosexual’; he also insisted that he was not being homophobic.  This has made me reflect on all the straight people who will throw a Wikipedia definition of homophobia at you, together with the assertion that your definition of homophobia is wrong. Honestly, is a straight person going to know what homophobia is better than a gay person? Homophobia is not just physically harming somebody because they’re gay, nor is it just throwing insults. There doesn’t need to be a form of overtly manifested hatred or dislike. It’s not a ‘fear’ of gay people, as the etymology of the word would suggest. Homophobia takes many forms. Somebody making a comment on human ‘nature’ as heterosexual is placing anyone that isn’t heterosexual as deviant from the norm and deeming them abhorrent in some way. There is, I believe, a link between this, and the idea of trying to establish and investigate why people are gay. Why not investigate why people are straight? Compulsory heterosexuality results in anyone who deviates from the heterosexual paradigm to be classed as warranting ‘investigation’. Heterosexuality is a violent political institution that I will be exploring and discussing in my subsequent posts (with the help of Adrienne Rich, of course).

I’ve also recently been encountering claims of heterophobia existing. Homophobia is a term that relates to oppression, and throwing around the term heterophobia is equating the two. Heterophobia – ie, a structural, systematic oppression of straight people, does not exist. There is no such thing as ‘compulsory homosexuality’. It enrages me when people claim that heterophobia exists, as it devalues what homophobia actually is, and suggests that straight people have to face a version of what gay people do. I’ve been told that terms like ‘breeder’ are slurs that can make straight people feel ‘really bad’. I admit, the term ‘breeder’ can be potentially problematic (in terms of women, not straight people – coming up in my next post), but a straight person can go back to the heterosexual world which will welcome them with open arms. The straight person who feels pushed out of, or unwelcome in queer spaces is not oppressed; they are not a victim of heterophobia. The very reason we have created queer spaces is in order to have a safe space away from heterosexual society. Straight people can go anywhere without the fear that they are going to be attacked because of their sexuality; the world is their domain. Queer people create their own space and there is an immediate outcry. Persecution complex much? I want to emphasise here that bisexual people who are attacked or criticised because of ‘heterosexual’ behaviours are not victims of heterophobia, but biphobia. It is a major issue, as they often receive biphobic comments both from the LGBTQIA community and the heterosexual community.

The idea of heterophobia links very well to misandry, and the MRAs who insist that women are oppressing men. To end this post, I’m going to direct you to a brilliant article and also a blog post.

I’ve covered a lot today; I will, I envisage, be devoting some future blog posts to examining specific issues (such as rape culture). That’s all for now. Hasta luego! 🙂

Disillusionment, Part One.

Disclaimer: I am aware that the culture here in Nicaragua is not my own, and I don’t want to come across as though I’m claiming to know anything about it. Within the context of this country, I come from a position of privilege and a history of colonialism. As a result, there’s a very thin line between criticising a culture that is not mine to criticise, and actually achieving what I’m intending to do – that is, to place what I have experienced, as a woman, in the context of patriarchy. If I’m drawing comparisons, I’m only doing so based on my personal experiences – and I’m aware that personal experiences only have a certain degree of (if any) validity. Lording my privilege over others, and stepping over the line is not, and never will be my intention; that does not of course mean that I may not be liable to do it. If you feel like this is the case at any point, please let me know. I will acknowledge any criticism I receive without even giving it a second thought.

In this post, and I imagine in posts to follow, I’m going to be talking about machismo and street harassment. If I make comparisons regarding how much street harassment or general sexism I have been subject to, this does not equate to me saying that women are ‘more’ or ‘less’ oppressed in certain parts of the world. (Drawing conclusions from my personal experiences would be problematic in itself). Wherever we may be, women are subject to the same forces of oppression. There’s no question here of who is ‘more’ or ‘less’ oppressed; women are an oppressed group, and that’s all that needs to be stated.

If I’m proposing how we could be concentrating our efforts in the feminist fight, I’m not saying that I am either right, or that my proposal is the only possible solution. I try to make it clear with my language that these are purely things that I believe. I come from a specifically Western (as well as cis, able-bodied, middle-class, lesbian) context. I am only one voice within a very big and intersectional movement; if it seems that I am stating what I believe to be possible solutions as facts, leave me a comment.

I know I haven’t posted anything for a very long time, but I thought this was the moment to at least attempt to get this blog up and running again. After the broken promises from my time in France, I’m going to try to keep this updated regularly (but don’t hold me to that). I moved to Nicaragua about two months ago, and am living in a sleepy town called Condega. It’s taken some getting used to (mainly because it’s a town, and I don’t do towns – where are all the people?) but I’m having a brilliant time here.

I’m working for an organisation called Mujeres Constructoras. They have two programs – one technical program which involves teaching and training women in domains that are typically dominated by men – carpentry, electrics etc, and another, which I’m involved in, called the Programa de Incidencia. We give workshops about gender and sexuality, and reproductive health and rights to young women between the ages of 13 and 16 who generally come from the communities around Condega, and have very little access to information as a result. I haven’t actually been involved directly in giving the workshops, although I’m planning to go to some of them. I’m currently devising a methodology, and coming up with topics that are going to be taught in the next set, beginning in August, after I’ve left the organisation. It’s pretty much exactly what I wanted to be doing here.

In keeping with my previous blogging method, I’m not actually going to be describing many things. I’m going to be concentrating more on relating and analysing my experiences, as well as current (and maybe not so current) topics from a political/feminist perspective.

There are a few things I’ve been wanting to write about since I arrived. Firstly, machismo is, to me, off the scale here. I’ve been a victim of street harassment in Europe – but here, it’s pretty unbelievable. I have never before been in a situation where I know I’m going to get harassed every time I leave my house. Of course, I’ve known for a long time now that there is always a big chance of it happening – ultimately, I am a woman – but knowing? The inevitability of it occurring on a daily basis has made me despair. The aspect of it that I find somewhat morbidly humorous is that this town is so small that everybody knows each other. Having the same men harass you every day really shows that there is not even a suggestion of shame or self-reproach surrounding this; I’ve always drawn a connection between harassment and anonymity – that men do it in the knowledge that they will never see you again. Perhaps I was wrong to make that assumption in the first place, or it’s possible that this just doesn’t apply in the context of this small town, where maybe it’s simply supposed to be perceived as some harmless fun from your friendly neighbours (barf).

Speaking generally, harassment is something that’s so normalised that it feels to me that, if anything, for a man not to harass a woman represents a deviation from the norm. My experiences have only served to confirm for me the fact that street harassment is about power – a way for men to affirm their predominance in patriarchal society by intimidating us. It’s a physical demonstration of their desire to show that they will sexualise us, in order to reassert their position as the active subject, and ours as the passive object.

I’ve drawn some links between my recent feelings of disillusionment and my geographical situation. As I’ve said, misogyny is a lot more evident here; this is not to say that it necessarily exists less in other places – it is simply something that manifests itself in more physically, or visually, evident ways than I have previously experienced.

I’ve been adopting, and generally do adopt, this ‘Fuck the world. Fuck patriarchy’ attitude, which is all well and good – patriarchy is a malevolent force that we need to rid ourselves of, ultimately, but there’s something that is just absent for me lately. I want to see tangible results, and I think I’m going through the process of getting rid of (well, losing) the idealism that I have possessed in the past, that I’ll necessarily see things change, in a globally significant way, any time soon.

The knowledge that I’ve provided people with a safe space, raised awareness, or contributed to someone becoming a feminist will always be something that gives me fulfilment. However, I’m still coming to terms with the fact that I probably won’t see many (if any) concrete widespread changes in my lifetime. The pervasive nature of cultural sexism, which affects women in so many domains, means it can be impossible to know how much is actually changing. An aspect of our fight has become focused on something more abstract than a form of legislation, which makes it very difficult to monitor concrete progress. This could never lead to apathy; don’t get me wrong, this is a fight and a movement I will be involved in for the rest of my life, and it will always be an intrinsic part of my identity. If anything, the fact that I am fighting for changes I may not see or benefit from first-hand gives my cause substance, and affirms my true investment in it. I maintain the belief that we need to challenge traditional paradigms, but also focus on the institutions themselves. Deviating from gender norms and expectations does not mean an escape from the systems that surround us. The very fact that we have to act against anything is the issue at hand here. I don’t believe true liberation can ever occur until these forces no longer exist.

I’m not going to make a conclusive point in this post, so it may seem like I’m ending abruptly. I will, however, be expanding on what’s been said here in part two of this series, which will be going up shortly. This has actually been a lot more personal than my previous posts have been. I may not be continuing in this vein in the future, as I prefer placing things in a wider and less personal context. So don’t stop reading if you don’t like this shift of focus (if you’re reading at all)!

Hasta luego 🙂

Journal de Bord.

Well, it’s been a while. In my defense, I have been busy doing lots of things to talk about here! To make myself feel like a better person, I’m just going to post up my first Journal de Bord entry (a diary/blog that I need to write for my uni assessment), to buy myself some time to write something long enough to make up for being so lazy with this blog. It’s pretty much a very controlled French rant. So here we are:

J’habite en France depuis plus de 4 mois, et je veux partager mes expériences et réfléchir à ce que j’ai appris.

En ce qui concerne mes compétences en français, je me suis efforcée de lire tant d’articles que possible. J’ai découvert plusieurs nouveaux sites tels queEgalité info et Le cinéma est politique, ainsi que des blogs politiques et féministes. J’ai bien sûr continué à lire des sites comme Le Monde pour me tenir au courant. En outre, je lis des documents officiels au bureau, ainsi que des dépliants que j’ai reçus.

Mes compétences en français parlé étaient ce qui m’inquiétaient quand j’étais arrivée en France.Comme (je crois) chaque étudiant de langues sait, parler dans un environnement contrôlé, comme une salle de classe, est une expérience complètement différente de parler avec un habitant du pays. J’ai tendance à me tromper plus ici – simplement parce que je suis nerveuse et mon cerveau refuse de fonctionner ! Heureusement, mon français parlé a beaucoup amélioré, et j’ai trouvé qu’au fur et à mesure que j’ai plus de confiance en moi, mon français est plus fluide (et compréhensible). Je travaille comme assistante de projets, et je communique tous les jours avec mes collègues et avec les traducteurs. Je parle au téléphone presque tous les jours. Quant à mon français écrit, j’écris des mails tous les jours, et je fais des notes en français au bureau. J’ai commencé également à écouter des podcasts sur des sites tels que France Inter.

Le vocabulaire, pour moi, est essentiel, et j’ai essayé d’apprendre de nouveaux mots et de m’habituer à utiliser certaines structures telles que ‘arriver à faire’, ‘se tenir au courant’, ‘faire en sorte que’, et ‘peiner à’. Les idiomes que j’ai appris m’amusent beaucoup, mais je n’oublierai pas qu’ils ne sont pas à utiliser en situations académiques. De surcroît, j’ai remarqué quelques erreurs dans mon français parlé – en particulier, le fait que j’ai presque complètement arrêté de prononcer les ‘ne’ dans les phrases négatives – un problème que je vais résoudre avant ma rentrée !

Et maintenant, les actualités – j’ai tant de choses à dire ! Je suis allée à un festival féministe de documentaires il y a quelques semaines. J’ai vu plusieurs documentaires couvrant des thèmes qui concernaient la situation et l’oppression des femmes partout dans le monde, et leurs luttes. Un qui m’a particulièrement touché s’est agi de l’avortement clandestin en Argentine.

En outre, j’ai participé à la Slutwalk (La Marche des Salopes) – ce qui était une expérience magnifique. C’était une journée qui m’a donné l’occasion de vraiment m’engager et me battre pour une cause qui me tient énormément à cœur. Le harcèlement de rue est beaucoup plus évident ici (à Paris) qu’à Sheffield (je veux garder la plupart de cette information pour mon Rapport de Stage, dans lequel je mettrai l’accent sur le traitement des femmes et les attitudes qui existent à l’égard des femmes ici). Cependant, je ne peux pas parler au sujet du harcèlement sans faire mention de l’abrogation de la loi sur le harcèlement sexuel en mai (avant mon arrivée en France) et l’introduction en août d’une nouvelle loi. Des collectifs féministes locaux (comme Osez le Féminisme) ont bien apprécié l’introduction de la nouvelle loi – compte tenu de mes expériences personnelles à Paris, il existe beaucoup d’hommes qui traitent (et voient) les femmes comme des objets. Après l’introduction de la loi, j’avais lu et entendu l’opinion qu’on ne devrait pas essayer de changer un aspect intrinsèque de la culture française – c’est-à-dire les hommes Français qui sont ‘romantiques’.Les femmes qui ne considèrent pas les remarques lancées dans la rue comme un compliment sont stigmatisées.

Je voudrais parler du verdict rendu par la cour d’assises du Tribunal de Grande Instance de Créteil il y a quelques jours; dont les quatorze accusés de viols collectifs de deux jeunes femmes, dix ont été acquittes et quatre autres ont été condamnés à des peines allant de trois ans avec sursis à un an de prison ferme. Ce verdict est écœurant et réfléchit une atttitude répandue à l’égard du viol comme crime, et des femmes qui se font violer et qui portent plainte – cependant, je dois garder des idées pour mon Rapport de Stage, ou pour ma prochaine entrée  (il y a une manif le lundi) !

Un moment clé pour moi a été ma participation à la Marche des Salopes. C’était une opportunité de me faire des amis féministes et de m’exprimer. Comme j’ai dit, il m’a été quelquefois un peu difficile de parler en français sans me sentir un peu mal à l’aise. Mon but est de pouvoir bien communiquer mes idées sans hésitation – j’ai acquis beaucoup de vocabulaire utile – la seule chose qui me reste à faire, c’est d’apprendre à communiquer toutes mes idées clairement.

That’s all for now, but I’m about to get going on a draft post that should be covering the verdict of the Creteil case, my thoughts on Slutwalk, the anti gay marriage protests that happened throughout France – and that kiss in Marseille!

Feminist love ❤

Adopte Un Mec: Une Vraie Inversion des Rôles?

The opening of the Adopte Un Mec boutique in Paris a few weeks ago prompted me to do some research into where it had sprung from. It turns out, Adopte Un Mec is a dating site where you can ‘buy’ men. It advertises itself as a place where women will find a form of empowerment through the reversal of adopted gender roles:

Le concept d’adopteunmec.com est simple. Le client est roi et, en l’occurrence, il est reine.
Honneur aux dames.

Au supermarché des rencontres, les femmes font de bonnes affaires.

Interesting concept right? Objectification of men! I can hear the cries of horror from the various MRAs (in case you don’t know, Men’s Rights Activists, lol – see post about them here) and their insistence that this, yes, this is proof that feminism is about dominance and hating/killing men etc etc.

Having thought about it for a while, read around, and heard other peoples’ opinions, I’ve figured out that in my eyes, this website and boutique actually perpetuate a culture that causes the suffering of women. Inevitably, I’ve found that if something affects men negatively, it will always affect women far worse. Firstly, the fact that the relationship between men and women is being reduced to a transaction immediately reminds me of prostitution. If we put this in the context of prostitution – woman=client, man=prostitute. An inversion of what is generally the case – but what does that matter when we’re being presented with the idea that someone can be ‘bought’, and we’re meant to see that positively? I find it impossible to take this damaging concept lightheartedly. The website, and the boutique that has sprung off it, are perpetuating marchandisation du corps, the view that people can be reduced to objects. Who is this going to affect worse, in the big picture? Women. Just looking at advertising alone, women face a form of objectification that men do not. Here’s a wonderful bit of objectification from PETA, who really seem to like combining misogyny with animal rights.

This website can be seen as a one off, in terms of men – but, it’s establishing that it’s okay to view people as objects. Women are *already* seen as objects in wider society, so all this is going to do, if anything, is to encourage it. It’s also reinforcing the idea that a relationship between a man and a woman is never based on equality. In other words, one must always have dominance over the other. It’s telling us that nothing needs to change concerning relationships between men and women – we can, and should, continue to work under an enforced dichotomy of dominant-dominated. Instead of advocating something that would have been truly subversive – relationships in which both people are equals – all this website is doing is carrying on the seemingly inevitable pattern of inequality within heterosexual relationships.

My next point is that this website is taking our attention away from the fact that women face oppression under patriarchy, instead presenting them with the illusion that in fact, they are the ones who hold power and dominance. Just to clarify, I’m not saying that this would be good. Feminism is about equality (contrary to various beliefs that I’ve come across). The sexism that women face from men is miraculously supposed to disappear on the website. (Although, from some first-hand accounts, men are still as entitled to make misogynist comments as in any other context). As I said before, it’s an illusion. If women are told that they have power, and that they are not only equal to, but in some cases more powerful than men, it’s counterproductive to actually enacting change. A quote from Rosa Luxemburg seems pretty appropriate here:

Those who do not move do not notice their chains.

If women are presented with the false idea that they have power over men, it is one step away from them realising that they are oppressed, and one step even further away from progression towards equality.

The website itself is distressingly heteronormative. It caters only to women seeking men to ‘buy’, although in their FAQ section it is stated that a gay and lesbian website is a possibility for the future:

AdopteUnMec.com est un site de rencontres entre hommes et femmes exclusivement. Une version gay et lesbien est actuellement à l’étude

This website’s attempt to empower women seems to have failed miserably. I can easily see what the creators had in mind – a bit of lighthearted fun where we subvert the way things are supposed to be! That’s ironic though, right? It’s considered to be lighthearted and fun because even the suggestion of a woman, rather than a man, being the active person in the act of objectification is pretty funny. Women’s objectification and degradation, on the other hand, is something that surrounds us, and is so normalised that people accept it. Cue sexist adverts:

Seriously?

Time to stop before I’m sick.

At the end of the day, Adopte Un Mec is not changing anything – if anything, it is causing a regression in views, whilst giving a lot of anti-feminists cause to believe that this is what feminism is about. By equating women’s empowerment to women’s dominance, they are completely missing the point. Equality is the answer, not an attempted reversal of gender oppression.

Sometimes I just need to rant.

It’s been over two weeks since my last post, it doesn’t really surprise me, I’ve never been very good at updating things regularly. Rather than doing a blow by blow recap of what I’ve been doing (which is what this really should be about), I thought I’d focus on some specific issues. Just a warning/disclaimer before any of you read this (if anyone is reading this), I’m coming at this from a position of (productive) anger, it’s my approach to most things political.

About a week ago I read an article about a ‘Day of Prayer’ that was held on the 15th August against gay marriage and adoption. This whole desire to ‘protect traditional marriage’ is just an excuse to promote inequality and hatred towards LGBTQ people. People are getting far too mindlessly caught up in the dogma of the Church without actually, seemingly, thinking about what they’re saying. I’m an atheist, so the whole ‘you will go to hell if you do not follow the doctrine’ issue doesn’t play any part in my everyday life. Praying isn’t something I do. I couldn’t help but laugh though, if there’s going to be a collective day of prayer, make it about something worthwhile surely? Honestly, just stop. In all seriousness, this is a product of institutional religion, and just confirms why the institution of religion (not necessarily encompassing individuals who practise it – I’ve met some pretty cool religious people) is something I’m so opposed to. I’m not even going to try to empathise with the supporters of this, partly because I don’t have the time to present an opposing argument here – nor do I really want to. Go ahead and call me a liberal who is so close-minded in my open-mindedness that I don’t want to hear other ideas. I’m sorry, but promotion of hatred is wrong. End of story.

I’m going to continue on the LGBTQ theme now, but focus more on the L with this one. I went to an awesome boat party in the middle of the week. This was the first time in over a year that I’d been on a night out where I was presumed straight. I’ve stuck to gay clubs for a long time, and what happened just confirmed why. I kissed a girl there; were we doing it for other people’s entertainment? No – we were doing it because we wanted to, something that a lot of people didn’t seem to quite understand. A close friend of mine told me a while ago about how whenever someone who is not straight is in the public eye, particularly when there is a telling sign that they are not straight (eg, they’re holding hands with someone) they have to adopt something which he termed ‘the third eye’. In other words, you always have to be on the look out for people who will be offended/confused/bothered/aroused (creepy), because it affects their life so greatly *sarcasm*. As soon as we started kissing, my third eye was out – and not without reason. The amount of men (and I don’t want to gender this, but it is an issue of gender relations) who came up to us, and either tried to join in (again, creepy), came onto one or both of us, or who found it necessary to tell us how ‘hot’ it was should have astounded me; the truth of the matter, though, was that it didn’t. I’ve heard stories of similar things happening to other people, and it used to happen to me a lot, before I gave up on the straight scene completely.

I thought it was really important to mention this, as I feel there’s a lack of awareness amongst those who have never received comments because of their sexuality, about how it feels. The attitude I’ve received from some of my straight friends is that it’s ‘not that big a deal’, and they seem to think I’m just being stubborn and purposely awkward when I don’t want to go anywhere except gay clubs. There tends to be the implication, too, that all I want to do is get with people; something so far from the truth it’s laughable. I go out to have fun. It reaches a point where you’re no longer having fun because of the comments you’re getting – and even if you’re not, the fear of what *could* happen is always there. I want to be in an environment where I feel safe and free to behave however I want without fear of repercussions.

I mentioned earlier how this was an issue of gender relations. To expand, what I experienced as a woman was not only because of my sexuality, but also because of my gender. I placed emphasis on the fact that the advances were perpetrated by men because this just illustrated the way women are viewed by men in wider society. The fact that it happened in a situation where people were not sober makes no difference. These men thought they had the right to do what they did because, whether they realised it or not, they ultimately viewed us as passive objects to be sexualised because we were women. Two women kissing is seen as ‘hot’ because it involves not only one woman, but two *gasp*. However, it’s only seen this way for as long as men are under the illusion that it is a) for them and b) just leading onto one or both of the women involved having sex with them. Also, I felt that we were meant to take the comments about it being ‘hot’ as a form of affirmation, and therefore a compliment. Women are expected to seek affirmation that they are attractive to men. My aggressive rebuttals to the men who came up to us shocked them, they had expected me to appreciate their comments. In a heterosexist world, the idea that some women actually aren’t straight seems to escape a lot of people.

Every day of their lives, women (straight or otherwise) experience sexism, and they experience it everywhere. Sexual objectification, for example. This isn’t just encompassed by the media portrayal of women (a commonly used example) – it can range from continuous unwanted and often increasingly aggressive advances in clubs to catcalls in the street. Anything from sexist jokes, to the view that a woman who has a lot of sex is a ‘slut’, but a man can do the same and be considered a ‘legend’ (sexual double standard) demonstrates that patriarchy exists and women are the oppressed group.

I could go on for a long time on this point about sexism alone, but, if I continue for any longer, this post will never end and the majority of you will probably wonder what I’m on about. So, I’m going to direct you towards a blog called Wipeout Sexism, where myself and Eli write posts dealing with various issues. We also run a Facebook page here. To clarify, I’m not trying to plug the page or blog, but a lot of things I mention here will be expanded on in more detail there.

Going back to my personal experience of this though, I thought about it for a while, and realised that what had happened wasn’t just homophobia or just sexism. It was lesbophobia. In the past, I’ve been somewhat opposed to this term, as I’ve found it too exclusive. When I first moved to France, I went to a film screening and debate about lesbophobia run by the feminist group Osez le Féminisme. It cleared up a lot of issues for me, as it defined lesbophobia as a combination of homophobia and sexism. What happened was exactly that. I feel that the term is necessary, as it acknowledges that what happened to me, as a lesbian, was different to what would have happened if I had been a man. Men do not experience gender-based oppression. Women do – and they are ultimately seen as inferior and passive. I experienced the creepy sexual advances because I was kissing someone of the same gender, and also because I’m a woman. This stemmed both from misogyny and heterosexism. I am *not* saying that all men are sexist. I’m talking about institutional oppression and misogyny – but, on an individual level, behaviour demonstrated by men reflects the broader picture of the situation. Osez le Féminisme are currently running a campaign called ‘Stop Lesbophobie’. An article about it can be found here, and the link to their official campaign, where you’ll find a lot more details about what I’ve mentioned, is here. My apologies if my explanations are difficult to understand. I’ve tried to keep things simple, which is difficult, and I will probably be raising this issue again in other posts.

I’ve added a tab on the main page with all the links I’ve mentioned. I might add other ones before mentioning them, as well as some I don’t have time to talk about, so keep an eye on it if you want. I was planning to talk about street harassment in this post, but I’m going to have to save that for another time! I definitely digressed today. I feel like it was a worthwhile digression, and I hope you do too. I’m also realising that my year abroad blog is turning into something completely different from the other year abroad blogs I’ve read. I find it impossible not to place a feminist lens on things. I’m hoping this is raising awareness about the broader picture of things, even if it’s really not saying much about what I’ve actually been doing. The day I post some pictures on here and talk somewhat objectively, you’ll probably think there’s something wrong 🙂

A bientôt (or not so bientôt, considering my track record).

Two months late, because I’m lazy and that.

I know the idea of keeping a year abroad blog is to document the year abroad experience from start to finish, but, I thought I’d be edgy. I moved to France in June, and have been so caught up in the frenetic whirlwind of Parisian life that I didn’t even think to start a blog until quite recently. I’ve been having an incredible time these last two months. A lot has happened, so I’m just going to loosely go through the main highlights. Honestly, I will be writing in coherent prose in the future.

– Arriving at 11pm at Charles de Gaulle airport: The first French words to come out of my mouth were corrected (ce qui ne m’a pas choqué). Note for the future, ‘ordonner un taxi’ does not mean ‘book a taxi’, unless you’re prescribing it as a medical treatment.

– The hour long taxi ride from the airport to my studio by the Parc des Buttes Chaumont: The driver was a pretty irate guy who seemed to be having some problems. I listened to him talking about someone who I presumed was a former partner, and how all she wanted was ‘la vie de dehors’. I was pretty disoriented, and didn’t quite register what was going on. The fact that he was on a hands-free made things pretty awkward, as I didn’t know whether he was directing his comments at me or not for the first ten minutes. Good start!

– The first weekend: I was too scared to leave the flat, and it kind of dawned on me that I was actually in France. I really wanted to go home, and didn’t really know how I was going to cope. Also got a bit ill.

– My first day at work: after the horrendous weekend, I’ve got to say I was pretty apprehensive about my first day at work – but also excited to stop being the mopey slob I had been for the past two days. I left at about 8.30 for a 10.00 start (just to be safe for time). I got there about half an hour early, so decided to go for a walk. Bad idea, considering that my sense of direction is pretty terrible. I ended up getting lost, and having to run to work to get there just about on time. I didn’t make the best first impression, but they haven’t fired me yet! I was introduced to everyone in the office, whose names I knew I was never going to remember, then given a copious amount of reading to do. It was a fun day, I met the other interns who I got on with really well. Since then, I’ve managed to settle in properly at work. It’s a stressful job with long hours (10 till 6), but very rewarding – and it’s done my French a world of good.

– Paris pride: AMAZING. That is all.

– Seeing CocoRosie: If you know anything about me, you’ll know I love CocoRosie. As a not so very well hidden ‘surprise’ (I didn’t even disguise it as a surprise, to be fair), I got Eli and I tickets to see CocoRosie here, who conveniently happened to be playing around a month after I moved. Incredible.

– Crêpes. Crêpes. Crêpes. I think I may be developing an addiction. Just down the road from my work there’s a place that sells these crêpes that are just out of this world. It’s become a bit of a ritual for me to go there all the time (can you class that as a ritual, or is it just an unhealthy eating habit?) Jambon fromage? Yes please. I’m becoming a regular now, which is pretty embarrassing, but totally worth it.

– The ridiculous amount of money I’ve been spending: Paris is expensive. Not ‘oh there are ways around it’ expensive – just plain expensive. I don’t know how I’ve managed to acquire no material goods, but spend so much money. To be fair though, I do eat a lot of crepes (see above).

– The worrying levels of sexual harassment that I’ve been subject to/witnessed: I’m going to be expanding on this in a later blog post. Horrific.

– A new sexual harassment law. Again, I’ll be expanding on this in a later blog post, as it merits a good explanation. Basically though, the existing sexual harassment law was repealed in May for being ‘too vague’, meaning that all pending cases of sexual harassment were never dealt with, and sexual harassment was technically legal. It’s taken three months to implement a new law, which is pretty appalling.

– The realisation that I’ve actually settled in and am surviving: To end on a positive note, I’ve finally managed to adapt to living here. It’s taken some time, and I’ll never be truly Parisian (my clothes are too bright for that), but I’m happy living here. I’ve met a lot of people, and this is really proving to be an opportunity for personal growth which I’m going to be making the most of.

Plenty more has happened, and there are a lot of seemingly trivial but somewhat significant things that I haven’t mentioned, so don’t take this as an accurate representation of what’s happened over the course of the past couple of months. It seems like I’ve done nothing otherwise! I know I’ve skimmed over everything quite considerably, and my writing is by no means parfaite, but I just wanted to bring things up to the present day. As I said, I’ll be focusing on some specific events/experiences I’ve mentioned here, and blogging about them in more detail later. I’m going to be writing in a combination of French and English – and will probably be introducing new features. I’m thinking article/significant political event of the week; but we’ll see how that goes. Until then..

A bientôt! 🙂