I’ve not updated for a while. I’ve got two half written blog entries, that I will post over the next couple of weeks once I’ve had the time to finish them. I have been very busy, which is good. It’s good to be busy during a recession. The other week I was in Northampton dancing at the Bellydance and Burlesque show, a show that nearly didn’t happen but I was very pleased it did. I am writing this now, after sorting out my dance case for a show that my troupe are in tonight. They were performing last weekend too, but I wasn’t with them, and next weekend troupe members will be performing at a local Zumba event. I won’t be there, as I will be teaching….

I will talk about all of this more in future posts, but for now, I am going to post something that isn’t about dance. If I employed somebody to do my marketing, or advise me on it, they would currently be hitting their head repeatedly against a wall, as I know it’s not a brilliant idea to talk about politics in a work related forum, but well, I don’t employ somebody to do my marketing, or advise me, so I am going to talk about it anyway

I, like most of the women in the world, whether or not they know it, am currently engaged in a battle. The battle is social, political, and legislative, and the battleground is my body, and the bodies of every woman on this planet. On the 8 March this year, it was International Women’s Day. You may remember that last year I was heavily involved in local events for the same cause. Entertainers get involved in a lot of charity events. We do it for exposure, and kudos, and sometimes because we genuinely support the charity or cause involved, and in this instance, that was what it was for me. I am very aware that in many respects I am ‘lucky’ to be an adult woman at this time, and in this country, because many leaps forward have been made in the quest for genuine equality. I am also aware that women are still not equal however, and that causes me concern, personally, because I am a woman, and also for the rest of society, and future generations too.

A blog post of mine was reposted by a couple of my friends this week, about body positivity and the effect it has on adults who are learning to dance. This is all part of the same thing. Currently, all of my students are women, and the effect of being a woman in our society can have a massive impact on our self-esteem. The fact that even mouthwash adverts use images of ‘perfect’ naked young women to sell their product is testament to how prolific the message to conform to a certain type of female body is, and how disasterous the consequences of not conforming can be to a the way a woman feels about herself.

But going back to International Women’s Day, I was quite shocked at how many negative posts and comments I saw online about it. I don’t really understand why. International Women’s Day is a celebration of womanhood, despite the problems that women around the world face, purely for being women. Some people responded in a way that made it seem like they were threatened by its existence. This is worrying. These were people (mostly men) my own age, who have been bought up against a backdrop of increasing equality between the sexes, yet they felt that acts and events that increase awareness of women’s issues were a bad thing. They wanted to know when International Men’s Day was (19 November), and they wanted to make sure we didn’t get ideas above our station. They felt it was discriminatory that women should have a special day (I wonder how many women will be posting comments like this on the 19 November about men? Probably fewer…), they also seemed to think that they knew better about making things more equal. We needed to be mansplained to about a few facts.

It wasn’t just me that experienced this. One of my friends posted that any comment or post that questions why we have an International Women’s Day is proof of its necessity. In the Guardian Linda Grant posted about her twitter experiences I was shocked to find that even within my own lifetime, women have not been able to take out credit or store cards, or get a mortgage without having a male signature. Obviously we can’t be trusted with money (and lets face it, men have done such a good job with the world’s finances recently…). Women are still living in a man’s world though, and what a lot of guys don’t understand is that because women are not the dominant power in the world they operate in, they experience the world in a very different way to men. There are all kinds of things that we put up with, or experience, sometimes without even realising it, that men never have to think about. Women are still paid less than men in equivalent positions, there are fewer women in positions of power both in business and government, we are still patronised, and if we are raped, it is our fault and we had better not expect justice because that almost never happens. This is Male privilege and with the deepening global economic crisis, the rise of religious and political tensions in key parts of the world and a general feeling of hopelessness and desperation pretty much anywhere you go, Male privilege is assuming responsibility for women’s bodies, and what they do with it.

This is particularly bad in the USA, but the UK is, I fear, not that far behind. In the USA things work a bit differently to the UK. My impression from reading the press is that all politicians are slightly further to the right than their counterparts over here are. Socialism is a dirty word in the USA, and people work hard to avoid any possible connection to it, even if what they would like to see happening, is within socialist ideology. Heaven forbid you should go as far as being a communist. Also, because the country is so big, there are different laws in different States. Right wing legislators in many parts of the US are trying to bring in horrific measures to do everything from ban abortion, force women who have fallen pregnant following rape to continue their pregnancy, decree that the personhood of a zygote not only exists, but is more important than that of a woman who has lived and breathed as an independent individual on this planet until at least until she is of an age to conceive, or to demand that vaginal ultrasounds be performed before a woman can have an abortion (a measure which is technically classified as rape).

Wonderfully, some female politicians are hitting back. The laws they have proposed won’t get passed, but their purpose is to make the point that these laws that govern what a woman can do with her body are grossly unfair. I can’t help feeling that they may not succeed however, given some of the things that prominent Republicans have said about women.

In the UK, it’s not quite so bad, though we do have some figures like Nadine Dorries who seem hellbent on making sure the UK follows the USA’s example. There has been a high profile campaign against abortion called 40 days for life which has humiliated and bullied women who have already made the difficult decision to have an abortion into changing their minds. There is an evening vigil on the 30th March, at which there will also be a pro-choice rally, campaigning against their tactics. It starts at 7pm in Bedford Square in London. I intend to be there, so I can make it known before it is too late, that it is important for women that a legal and safe form of control over their bodies is maintained, and that bullying women into continuing an unwanted pregnancy is unfair on all concerned, especially that zygote/foetus which isn’t yet a person.

There is still hope though, Cracked totally get it right, it’s like anti-UniLad.