Creations - Lucy Blogs About Amnesty, I Sit on the Sofa And Crochet

My eldest was born with a sense of social justice. It's one of the things I admire about her.

Click through to read some information about Amnesty International. Their online petitions are one of the simplest ways to take meaningful action on issues of social justice.

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As for me, I'm obsessed with crochet. Am I becoming more shallow as I age ? Possibly.

All I know is that hooking those trebles is deeply satisfying.

Anne Summers would scorn me. She thinks mothers like me, who choose the domestic sphere for an extended period of time, are ungrateful, irresponsible dilettantes. Whatever.

I mostly like what Summers has to say. I'm just getting a tad tired of the...hmm..assumption that women who don't 'attach themselves to the workforce' are stupid, and in need of a lecture from Mummy. I'm pretty clear on what I've given up. It definitely involves money and status. It doesn't involve self-determination or personhood or my brain.

Now I Get It - Melinda Tankard Reist and the 'F' Word

I move through some pretty conservative circles - home educating will do that to you - but it isn't just conservative or religious women from whom I hear this: I'm not a feminist.

I grew up in the 70's and 80's. To hear smart, thinking women declaring themselves not to be a feminist, whatever their politics or religion, is a little shocking.

However.

And this is where Melinda comes in, Melinda Tankard Reist. And the drama in the blogosphere over the legal action she has taken against a blogger who declared her to be a Baptist ( shocking, I know ) and deceptive and duplicitous about it to boot. It's all here.

So I waded in, but mostly because a friend rang me to tell me I had a commenting double on a feminist blog, who not only shared my name but my outlook on these things. I expected a discussion in the comments. Perhaps a sort of civil disagreement. Whilst I'm not keen on the suing of bloggers and generally in favour of revealing one's influences and ambivalent on MTR's stance on reproductive rights, when she speaks in the media about the damage done to our society by porn and about the sexualisation of girls and young women, she does speak for me.

From that first dismissal of bourgeois feminism - you know you're a bourgeois feminist if you are white, educated and middle-class - or as one fem-blogger put it - a woman who listens to the ABC  ( that's like NPR if you're American ) - I realised a civil discussion wasn't on the agenda.

There's a line, don't you know, and you cross it at your peril. Bourgeois women, it's best not to try lest you get a theoretically sound slap on the hand and demotion to Feminism 101. There is no grey.

There appears to be a vested interest in ridiculing and dismissing MTR's girl-respecting activism. 'Sex-hating' is how one male 'feminist' blogger described her. And I notice her 'high profile supporters' mentioned in the SMH article aren't exactly known for their commitment to the kind of feminism that sees the sexploitation of children for commercial purposes as a problem. 'Wowser' is a word they use a lot. We're in trouble if the 'theoretically pure' can't work out the difference between sex-hating and the exploitation of girls, and cast it as a second order issue, of concern only to a certain type of (privileged) mother.

So now I get it. Those not-a-feminist-women aren't anti-women at all. They just don't see themselves as part of a gated community.  I get that. If the discussion I had today was a feminist discussion, I guess I'm not that kind of feminist either.

I'm more the Rebecca West type. And the next time someone says to me "I don't see myself as a feminist" I guess I'll understand why.

If you do see the exploitation of girls and their sexuality for commercial purposes as a first order, women's and mothering issue, you might like to sign up at the The Collective Shout. They don't mind a typo or two. And they won't ask you for your credentials on the way in.