The Truth about Online Privacy

TECHNOLOGY - A fellow feminist by the name of Julian (I shan't say her last name) recommended to me recently that I be careful about posting things online with respect to men out there who might try to harrass me, stalk me or whatever.

Specifically she was worried about "... Men's Rights guys and other
anti-feminist fools who occasionally like to terrorize feminists."

She recommended something called "HideMyAss", which I presume is software, to prevent people from easily tracking me down.

Well lets just discuss this for a moment...

I don't have a Facebook account (I used to, but I deleted it... thats another story). I think I might have a twitter account, but its been ages and I have probably forgotten the password.

Often I don't use my real name online, instead going by "Glowing Maid" or even "Radioactive Girl". So I don't think its a huge necessity to be hiding every little detail.

And I mean whats the point of being a feminist if I can't express my freedom? True, having my privacy is nice too, but I doubt anybody would be able to track me down. (Camden is a big area and its not like I am there constantly.)

And then there's the Sarah Connor effect... Watch the first Terminator movie and count the number of Sarah Connors who were killed before Arnold finally found the right one. I am certain there are other Suzanne or Suzy MacNevin's in the London area, possibly even a few in Camden... and besides... the address isn't under my name. Its under my lover's name.

So chances are highly unlikely that anyone would ever be able to track me down. I don't get sick very often and I haven't been to any hospitals in the area. I don't have a criminal record. I have been unemployed ever since I arrived from Canada so I am not paying taxes while here either.

Instead I just sit at home and write my book. Sometimes I go for walks and explore London. Sometimes I go to the pet store and look at the kittens. Sometimes I find a nice place to sit and read the newspaper. You get the picture.

I truly doubt I am dropping enough hints that someone could track me down. ie. How many pet stores are in Camden and how many can I look at the kittens?

The real danger I think is morons who send me hatemail. That is just asking for a retort and to be exposed online for being an idiot.

People sending me hatemails = Blog fodder. Go ahead. I welcome the chance to talk about whatever you're complaining about in front of the whole world. (Well not literally the whole world, not that many people read my blog, but you get the idea.)

My advice for women is to come up with a fun and catchy pseudonym / nickname. Don't take Glowmaid, that name is MINE!

The real reason why you should do this is because employers now frequently Google your name online to check what you've been up to. Hopefully nobody disreputable is using the same name as you...

And while you're at it remember to clear your search history. :)

Feminist eZine set for relaunch

So its 6 AM in the morning here and I've been up all night.

I just can't sleep. (If I make any spelling or grammar mistakes here its because I am a bit sleepy.)

Just too dang excited, but do you want to know why?

Its because the Feminist eZine is set for a relaunch of sorts. We're updating all the old website templates, making it easier for the website to navigate, and once all the old pages (all 370+ of them) are updated to the new template we will be redoing the index page in a more "magazine esque" or "wikified" style, instead of the current routine which is just lists of links to feminist articles by category.

True, its easy to find stuff under the current system and we will still have all the links organized by category, but once the main page is in stage 2 of the relaunch each category will include a paragraph or two on the category topic.

There will also be a new section for "recent additions" to the Feminist eZine.

Its all very exciting to me. I've been writing / editing things which ultimately became part of the Feminist eZine for 11 years now. Its good to have a big relaunch.

A big part of this is we're going to be trying to bring in more volunteer writers to the Feminist eZine. We're all volunteers, but we need new blood.

Sad to say it but as we get older we feminists sometimes lose the itch to write. We get caught up with work, children, love, our obsession with healthy eating or something equally fascinating.

Take Victoria Van Dyke for example. She used to be a regular to the Feminist eZine / Lilith eZine. Now she has gone back to university, has "settled down" a bit and has lost some of her radical edge. Keeping in mind here this is the same girl who once jumped in front of a subway in an attempt to kill herself, professed for years to be a cannibal, had herself committed in a mental asylum and later chopped off her little toe, stuck in a jar and called it art. So yeah, to say that she has settled down feels a bit like an understatement.

So yeah, even the most hardcore / die hard / sometimes outright insane feminists eventually settle down. (Although the words "die hard" and "settle down" do seem to contradict themselves, don't they?)

I am sure, deep down, she is just as die hard as ever. The difference is that she doesn't write or make art much any more. Lost the itch.

And that is just the way it goes for some feminists. Like tonight I was browsing a bunch of feminist blogs... some of the blogs date back years ago and the feminist bloggers have since stopped writing. Its a crying shame from my perspective, but its something we have to learn to deal with. The feminist bloggers in question lost the itch.

But the real question is how the torch is passed on... which is why websites like the Feminist eZine are so important. They create continuity between historical feminist writing, especially a lot of the feminist writing from the 1960s to 1970s, as well as more modern feminist writing from the 1980s to 2000s... all the way up to our current era of feminist bloggers / writers.

The Torch of Feminism must be kept lit for each generation of feminists to follow.

Anyone interested in writing / submitting articles to either the Feminist eZine (or to Feminist Truths) can contact me at suzannemacnevin {at symbol} gmail.com

Maybe now I can sleep...

The Truth about Modern Women

Worth another look...



Modern Women Living Alone

The Truth about Working Girls

Worth another look...



See Working Girls, Broken Society?

Toronto police officer fights Texan rapist

RAPE - At the centre of this story is "Ann Doe", age 33, a mother of two from the GTA... She was brutally raped while visiting Houston, Texas on a business trip in July 2008. It changed her life irreversibly.



But what really stings is how when she tried to get justice they all ignored her.



She went to the Houston police.

She went to the Durham police here in Canada.

She went to her local MP.



None of them helped her.



In steps Toronto Constable Shari MacKay.



MacKay and the Toronto police have nothing to do with the case, but MacKay believes strongly in truth and justice. (You go girl!)



MacKay wrote dozens of letters to officials in Houston, everyone from the chief of police to the mayor, and she pushed investigators to reopen the case. MacKay even made approx. 7 trips to Houston.



In October 2010, the rapist John Frangias was convicted of rape and sentenced to 8 years at the Texas State Penitentiary.



MacKay has since won the International Association of Women Police’s Mary Jo Blahowski Leadership Award for 2011.



“Shari saved me,” says Ann Doe simply, without any fanfare. “She took the case under her wings, she went way above and beyond.”



“She [Ann Doe] had no other advocate, there was no one else to look after her,” says MacKay. “What happened was horrific … I wanted to see him convicted for what he did.”



What the rapist John Frangias did is etched in Ann Doe’s memory.



Doe, who ran a consulting business with offices in Toronto and other cities, was in Houston for a conference in July 2008. The Lancaster Hotel was overbooked despite her reservations so she went to the Athens Hotel Suites.



After four days there and on the last night, a Thursday, she was walking down the hall to her room. It was approx. 11 PM when she opened the door to her room and someone shoved her in from behind.



She recognized the man who had been at the front desk, John Frangias, as her assailant. (John Frangias was the manager of the hotel.)



John Frangias grabbed her by the hair, pulled it hard and started groping her breasts.



Then he raped her. The rape lasted approx. 15 minutes, the worst 15 minutes of Ann Doe's life.



Reliving the memory is still hellish. “It takes you right back to those moments. I can feel it, hear it, taste it, smell it … when I talk about it,” says Ann Doe, her voice cracking. “When he left, I was numb,” says Doe. “Like a zombie, I got into the shower and scrubbed every inch of my body to get the stench off.”



Ann Doe's flight back to Toronto was early next morning and initially she tried to forget anything had ever happened. But when Doe landed back in Toronto she confided in a best friend what had happened and they persuaded her to go to the police.



She did, the same day.



Durham police sent her to the hospital where it was established that she had been violently raped. Confirmed evidence of it. Within days, she gave video testimony and everything was passed on to investigators in Houston.



Then the investigation stopped. Houston police were apparently doing nothing.



Meanwhile Doe stopped travelling and she rarely left the house. She was a mental wreck.



Eventually Doe bumped into Shari MacKay. Their kids went to the same daycare together. Their kids wanted a play date and sometime in February 2009, MacKay brought her kids to Doe’s home.



Their children became friends, so did the two women. But it still took another couple of months for Ann Doe to confide in MacKay. “I just wanted an insight into how investigations work,” says Doe. She was concerned why the case was going so slow and there was no response from the Houston police.



When MacKay heard her story, she instantly knew what had happened. Houston police weren't taking the rape incident seriously. A hotel manager rapist was raping tourists (possibly more than 1) and getting away with it. The local police weren't even given the case the time of day.



The next day, MacKay called up the investigators in Houston and was shocked to hear that they hadn’t even gone to the scene and had classified the complaint as “he said, she said. It blew my mind,” says MacKay.



“I was also politely told it wasn’t my jurisdiction.”



So yeah. Houston police are apparently patriarchal bastards who don't take rape seriously.



But MacKay wasn’t about to give up. She wrote dozens of letters to the chief of police, the mayor, the District Attorney’s office. The investigation started again and Doe was asked to come down to Houston. MacKay accompanied her.



“Shari was like a pit bull,” says Doe. “She wouldn’t let go.”



(Again, you go girl!!!)



“Houston cops resisted her … she didn’t let it deter her. I wish we had more police officers like Shari here,” says Alexis Bruegger, assistant DA in Houston.



“He [Frangias] was horrible,” says MacKay. “He had an elaborate story … that [Doe] was impaired and had fallen outside the hotel. The jury didn’t believe him.”



Eventually justice was served to John Frangias, 8 years at the Texas State Penitentiary.



That is simply proof that truth, justice and karma always win in the end.



We KNOW there are rapists out there who have yet to be caught, but they're living in rotting shells of a life. Karma catches up to everyone eventually.

The Truth about Father's Day

The third Sunday of June is Father's Day, a day on which we children celebrate our father's, give thanks to them and remind them how much we care about them.

The first observance of Father's Day actually took place in Fairmont, West Virginia on July 5, 1908. It was organized by Mrs. Grace Golden Clayton, who wanted to celebrate the lives of the 210 fathers who had been lost in the Monongah Mining disaster several months earlier in Monongah, West Virginia.

Since then the idea has caught on globally and it is now a tribute to quality dad's around the world.

And a burning admonishment of those father's who were never there, are now sitting at home lonely and wondering what they did wrong. Or maybe they know what they did wrong and now feel guilty, but either haven't apologized or their apology wasn't considered sincere enough.

Regardless...

What I really to talk about is MY FATHER. Donald or Don MacNevin.

My father was always sort of quiet and reserved, although he did like to talk sometimes and would not stop talking when he really got going. I take after him in that way.

He was traditional in many ways, but he was always supportive of everything I did.

He didn't treat me like a girl. Or a boy either. He treated me like a person. He valued my opinion, especially when it came to clothing. He just didn't seem to have a knack for matching ties to the clothing he was wearing.

Today, even though I am in England and he is over in Canada, I will be phoning him via Skype and it will be the first time he has ever used the device. To him these new fangled technologies are nothing more than a modern miracle and the idea that he can phone his daughter over the internet, across the Atlantic Ocean and see her via a webcam is like Moses parting the Red Sea.

I love my father. I think he is one of the best dad's in the world. Oh sure, he makes mistakes but they're honest mistakes. He's a meat and potatoes, salt of the earth, honest to a fault sort of guy. And he's my dad and I will always be proud of him.

So if you get a chance say so. Lift up your wine glass, beer can, coca-cola or whatever you have handy and give thanks to a parent who was always there, always supportive, always loved you and you loved them back through thick and thin.

Yours Truthfully,
Suzanne MacNevin
Father's Day 2011

150 years until equal representation

POLITICS - After the May elections for local governments in England the representation of women in local government remains stagnant and shockingly low. At the current rate of change we face another 150 years before women have an equal say in government, according to a new report.

The Centre for Women and Democracy report says political parties are key to getting more women into town halls.

‘Representative Democracy? Women in the 2011 Local Government Elections in England’ examines the elections held in May 2011 and found:

1. There was a net increase across over 3,500 seats of just 20 women councillors.

2. At the present rate, it will be more than 150 years before there are equal numbers of men and women elected to English local councils.

3. There were 318 wards where all the main three party candidates were male, 14 times as many as the 22 wards where all candidates were female.

Nan Sloane, report author and Director of the Centre for Women and Democracy, says:

“Only 31 per cent of councillors are women, and this isn’t improving. If the annual increase in women councillors stays as it is – just 20 across the sample of 3,500 seats we looked at – it will be many generations before women have an equal voice in local decision-making. This is shocking, and goes against all the rhetoric that we hear so often about the need for more women in public life."

“Since over 90 per cent of councillors belong to one of the big three parties, their candidate recruitment processes are key. But we also think that it’s astonishing that nobody has responsibility for the diversity of democracy nationally, and we shall be taking steps to ask government, the Electoral Commission and elections officers to do this, both in terms of providing support for the identification and training of candidates through a Democracy Diversity Fund, and by monitoring who is standing for election in the first place."

“In a genuinely representative democracy women would not be regarded as an added extra. They’re 51 per cent of the population, they’re more likely to be both the users and the providers - as employees - of local services, and they pay equal taxes. It’s high time they were equally represented."

Anna Bird, Acting Chief Executive of the Fawcett Society says:

“Nearly a century on from winning the vote, women remain outsiders in the corridors of power. We are underrepresented in town halls across the country and in Westminster – where men outnumber women 4 to 1."

“This report should act as a wake-up call for those who think business as usual will deliver the step change in women’s representation we so urgently need. Wishing and hoping isn’t working, it’s time we took a new approach."

The Truth about Being One of the Guys

FEMINIST - I opened an email earlier today forwarded from a friend in Canada and it started off like so...

"I think they're trying to contact you guys."

What I thought was amusing was that it was an email being forwarded to two women, and yet he had chosen to refer to us as "guys".

Not gals.

Not chicks.

Not Utero-Americans.

Guys.

And I think this is a positive thing, because what it implies is that guys is now an unisex word which means a group of females or males, and there doesn't have to be 1 male in the group.

Unlike French/Francais, in which if there is 1 male in a group its automatically upgraded to the masculine form of the word. We should be so fortunate that in English we don't worry about masculine and feminine words on a constant basis.

But we do pay attention to specific instances, and being referred to as a guy is a positive sign feminism is headed in the right direction.

So now that we femmes are "one of the guys" what should we do next?

Should we also become dudes? (As opposed to dudettes, a word I find annoying.)

Or how about man? As in "Hey man, wazzup?"

I think I shall start calling all my female homies "man" from now on. If I stick with it maybe we can start a trend that spans the globe.

Which begs the question if men and man becomes an unisex term, should we use a strictly masculine word for people with penises? Perhaps 'heman' or 'He-Man'?

Repeat after me...

"Hey He-Man, wazzup?" (Masculine only.)

"Hey man, wazzup?" (Unisex, singular.)

"Hey guys, wazzup?" (Unisex, plural.)

Eff Off Hef!

FEMINIST - British feminists are planning a 2nd protest against the new London Playboy Club. The first protest took place days ago on May 26th and a second protest is coming up June 4th.

Organized by OBJECT and UK Feminista, picketers will greet Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, who is flying over from Los Angeles for the launch of the new Playboy Club, with calls to, “Eff Off, Hef!”

The London Playboy Club is situated on 14 Old Park Lane, Mayfair, London. W1K 1ND. If you want to join the protest please contact: Anna van Heeswijk on 07732 075835 / anna@object.org.uk or Kat Banyard on 07775 855037 / kat@ukfeminista.org.uk.

The new club comes 30 years after its previous location was shut down by a police raid for suspected gambling irregularities. Playboy Clubs are just one many products licensed by Playboy Enterprises, which includes a mix of magazines, films, websites, TV programming, clothing and even children’s stationary. (The latter of which has since been dropped by many stores due to public outrage.)

Kat Banyard, Director of UK Feminista, says:

“When it comes to today’s pornography industry, all roads lead back to Playboy. It was Hugh Hefner who laid the political and cultural groundwork for the brutal, violently misogynistic pornography that now floods society. But sadly for Hefner, you can’t trademark sexism, and Playboy’s retro brand of ‘gentleman’s porn’ can no longer compete with the extreme degradation of modern internet pornography. Hence we see this endless diversification into nightclubs, video games, clothing and even children’s stationary."

“But whatever product Playboy stamps its logo on, the basic brand concept is the same: woman reduced to sex object for man’s sexual satisfaction - and Playboy’s financial gain. Naturally Playboy Club London embodies this brand, offering champagne and sexism. So Eff off, Hef. And take your club with you.”

Anna van Heeswijk, Campaigns Manager of OBJECT, says:

"Far from a symbol of sophistication and class, the opening of a new Playboy club in London signifies a worrying step backwards in the quest for equality between the sexes. It entrenches the legitimacy of a porn empire which makes its fortune out of degrading women as fluffy animals who exist as sexual playthings for wealthy men. It opens the floodgates ever wider to the pornification of our popular culture. And it serves to embed further a porn emblem which insidiously grooms girls into accepting and embracing sex object culture by marketing its brand to children through playboy pencil cases and bed covers."

"It is time to cut through the crap of the Playboy PR machine. Sexualising and objectifying women as bunny rabbits is not sexy and it is not empowering. It is sexist, and everyone knows it. This is why hundreds of women and men across the country are signing up to the OBJECT and UK Feminista campaign to object to the opening of the new Playboy club. Our message is clear - ‘Eff off Hef and stop degrading women!’"

Fawcett Society: Rape needs to be taken more seriously

The Fawcett Society has responded to policy proposals unveiled by the UK Government yesterday around sentencing for sex offenders.

Anna Bird, Acting Chief Executive of the Fawcett Society says:

“Every years thousand of women across the UK are the victim of rape. To suggest that some of those rapes are not ‘serious,’ that there are shades of sexual consent, is offensive and legally incorrect."

“The majority of sexual violence occurs between two people that know each other – partners, friends, colleagues. The stranger in the alleyway scenario is comparatively rare – but remains the most likely image people have of rape. It is not just women who are victims of rape, but also men.

“Far from challenging wrong ideas about what constitutes rape, the way in which today’s policy proposals have been presented by the Minister suggests common misconceptions about sexual violence exist at the heart of government.

“The Ministry of Justice urgently needs to tackle shockingly low reporting levels – almost 90 per cent of rapes are never even reported to the police, and the shamefully high attrition rate – few of those cases that are reported make it all the way to court.

“In the light of today’s events, we call on the government to restate its commitment to tackling sexual violence in all its forms and to clarify that rape is always a serious crime, the perpetrators of which should always face the full force of the law.”