I use the F* word. Do you?

Feminism.

Eeeep.

It's the kind of word which can stir up an evening. It brings responses ranging between the passionate zealot and the dismissive optimist - invariably everyone will have something to say about it. Are "womans issues" an imaginative construct or a reflection of years of chauvinism?

The problem with feminism is that it isn't just one issue and the mere matter of being a man or a woman isn't enough to define it as an idea. And gorillas come in more forms than one.

"I use the F*word, do you?" is an campaign from women's magazine Cosmopolitan with the ambition of closing the pay gap between men and women:
"Laws on equal pay have existed for more than 40 years, yet woman working full-time in the UK are still paid on average 14.9% less per hour than men... ....we, the undersigned, call on government to make equal-pay auditing compulsory from 2013 for all companies who employ 250 people or more."

This is Cosmopolitan. Let me summarise some of their recent stories:

• Who needs a groom anyway? - the woman who plan weddings without waiting to be asked!
• Trend on trial - pictures of outfits female celebrities have worn for court appearances assessed for "fashion"
• Staycation style - 16 pages of pictures of a skinny girl in bikinis

Of course, I have been selective in the articles I have chosen above, and I haven't mentioned the multitude of brave, adventurous and inspiring stories contained in each 250 page publication (probably because they're so hard to spot amongst all the adverts #thatsanotherstory).

 

And Glamour magazine, Britain's No.1 Women's Magazine, allegedly. Glamour are also supporting the "I use the F*word, do you?" campaign. But what did I see in their June 2012 edition:

• (Sl)easy money - as the recession bites, more and more women just like you are finding there's one economy still booming: the sex industry

And so follows 4 pages of villification of women supplementing their income by sending used pants to the highest bidders, working on sex chatlines and working as escorts. This of course followed by a supplementary "of course we wouldn't recommend this course of action, but if you do choose to....." disclaimer.
This couldn't possibly been an article looking at the reasons why women are losing out in the recession. Why are women adversely impacted by the spending cuts? Is it because women don't make a contribution to economic growth? Why don't they? (64% of women are employed in the public sector). Who do so many women work in the public sector?

Wouldn't it be great if women's magazines could act as custodians for feminism in everything they wrote?

Their readers are ambassadors for women, and their editors set the tone for the debate.

If they really do use the f*word, why is it kept in a box on page 117?

Dead Poets Society

Today a previously unpublished poem written by Ted Hughes on the death of the poet and novelist Sylvia Plath, was made public following it's discovery amongst his papers after his death.

Do we have a right to read this?

Of course, there is no way that the former Poet Laureate could know that he was going to die shortly after publishing the book Birthday Letters in which he, for the first time, released poems written to his ex-wife. These were poems of deeply personal nature:

"I look up--as if to meet your voice / With all its urgent future / that has burst in on me. Then look back / At the book of the printed words. / You are ten years dead. It is only a story. / Your story. My story." Taken from 'Visit' by Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters, 1999

Up until this point. the relationship between the two literary powerhouses following Plath's untimely death had been something which Hughes dealt with in silence, despite constant literary interventions and 'cultural tabloid' excursions into their family life.

Releasing hitherto undiscovered writings of the Poet Laureate is in the public interest for the purposes of furthering knowledge and sharing literature of the highest calibre. Lord Bragg described it as the missing keystone of the Birthday Letters sequence of poems addressed to Plath by Hughes.

This may well be so, but when Birthday Letters was made publicly available, Hughes provided the exception which proved the rule. When selecting the contents of his final collection, he made a conscious decision not to include this letter.

We do not know the reason why this poem didn't make the final cut, perhaps it was not thought to be of sufficient quality to be included, or perhaps - and more significantly - it was a piece of personal literature that the author wrote for himself.

In the absence of any discernible right to privacy it seems that the desire for the dissemination and desecration of personal papers overrules any decision to withhold this text. Upon death the legacy of the life defining decisions erodes in the clamour to reveal the most closely guarded thoughts. Dust to dust. Nothing is sacred.

Information is Beautiful

Turning a good point into a well made point

Something stood out from the standard Gorilla coverage of the ICC (and police) investigation of members of the touring Pakistani cricket squad as a result of allegations of match fixing:

"Cricket fans in the eastern city of Lahore threw green tomatoes at donkeys labelled with the names of the players embroiled in the investigation." (Tuesday 31 August 2010, The Times)

At a time when the country is fighting a war on multiple fronts - against terrorism and against a terrible humanitarian crisis - these fans have found an inelegant beauty. A humanity which detracts from the grim of one more tale of corruption in the 'istans. Disgruntled by yet another failure of their nation's representatives, these fans resorted to gentle humour so revered in the cricketing world to make their dissatisfaction known. Once heroes, nothing brings a cricketer down to earth like being paraded as a donkey in the face of rotten vegetables.

Simple actions can make an incredibly strong point. When Muntazer al-Zaidi threw a shoe at George Bush, it was a strong statement because of the comparative symbolism of how Iraqi's who once hit the fallen statue of Saddam Hussein with their shoes to show their disrespect, felt the same about the leader who would argue that he was their liberator.

Fathers 4 Justice dressed in superhero outfits and descended on British landmarks in order to raise their profile in the eye of the public. Were the superhero outfits necessary? Absolutely. Children look up their parents, believing them to have superhuman powers and these were fathers wanting their children to look at them as though they would move mountains just for the opportunity to be their parent.

When a mass climate/peace camp descended on Parliament Square in July the impact was negligible bar none, and served to negate the impact of important messages as the actions of the protesters overawed any coverage of the point. A flash mob consisting of a clique of professional protesters setting up home failed to challenge a new audience with an engaging point and packed itself away when it realised its own irrelevance.

We all have the right of freedom of speech, but we also have a responsibility to use it wisely to say something. Be it a searing editorial, a gentle protest or a bold statement the key is to reach a new audience with a relevant and innovative approach; make a good point, make it well and know when it's been made.

William Hague's SpAd resigned to media shambolics

Mid-week has been dominated by the news that William Hague's (Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs) Special Adviser (Christopher Myers) has resigned as a result of rumours circulating Whitehall and Fleet Street about the nature of their relationship. This as a result of a well connected media hack's comments regarding photos of the pair taken over a year ago.

What has been remarkable and consistent across the majority of news outlets has been a sense of unease about covering the story. With the broadsheets trying to focus the story on whether the Secretary of State's judgement is sound and the tabloids switching tack at the drop of a statement to 'Hague's heartache at struggle for family', it is self-evident that this is not concrete news. All of this was picked up by every outlet in the mainstream media as a top story with no evidence further than a dated and unrevealing snapshot and some internet gossip. In an attempt to justify coverage there has been a nuanced suggestion of homophobia in the new Government - but with several gay members of the Ministerial team this line alone is not nearly robust enough.

That a Cabinet Minister was so overwhelmed by comments emanating from the blogosphere as to his sexuality that he - a notoriously private person - felt the need to publicly disclose intimate details about his marriage is an outright demonstration of how senior public figures are unduly influenced by the perception of them, not in the public (as there is little evidence to suggest that this was a widely held belief), but in the media.

With MPs sent away by the Prime Minister to relax after an arduous election campaign and first session of Parliament; Westminster and it's lobby groups have largely rung silent. This has left news outlets struggling to find anything newswothy to talk about, for example Alex Thomson of Channel 4 visibly squirmed as he attempted to fill a 3-minute segment on Sunday evening with a report on the nefarious content of his own Tweets. Why hasn't the media used the let up in relentless press releases as an excuse to broaden news coverage on other, less media savvy issues. The role of the media is to tell a story, not to wait for press offices to control the news cycle.

Something largely uncommented upon is the appointment of Special Advisers - David Cameron issued new guidance at the start of his term stating that each Department is permitted to appoint two Special Advisers. This rule was wavered by the Prime Minister for William Hague to enable him to appoint a member of staff with no knowledge of foreign affairs and little parliamentary experience. The Prime Minister is driving to increase accountability of government, including appointments, yet seems to have little concern about the lack of merit required to be appointed to a position which steers the direction of major policy at the expense of the public purse.

The coverage of this story is not news, and so-called political journalists should be ashamed of succombing to regurgitating a story that is neither of political, nor public, interest.