International Women’s Day

If you don’t think that there is a need for International Women’s Day, let me just remind you that:

1. Women still only control 1% of the World’s wealth
2. Women only own 5% of the wealth in the U.K.
3. Although women make up 51% of the population, we comprise only 29% of MPs, 22% of professors, 15.6% senior judges.
4. The prevalence of forced marriage/Child marriage: Every day around 25,000 girls under the age of 18 are married, 1 in 7 is under the age of 15. http://www.plan-uk.org/
5. In many parts of the world, baby girls being are being murdered or abandoned because they are seen as a burden to the family.
6. The fact that F.G.M Female Genital Mutilation, still goes on! One of the many oranisations that tackles this issue: http://forwarduk.org.uk/key-issues/fgm/
7. The way that the criminal justice system treats victims of abuse and sexual assault: What was the accuser wearing? If she was wearing something that was deemed to be provocative, then she was sending out a signal about sexual availability. (Can you imagine a man being blamed for being sexually assaulted because he was wearing shorts? What about those men who remove their shirts as soon as the temperature goes over 19 degrees - are they asking to be raped?) How late was she out at night. Was she asking for it? I could write a very long essay about this, so let’s get on to masturbation.

8. If you think that we live in a more enlightened society, here in the West, I’d like you to take a minute to think about masturbation - yes, really think about it. Think about the fact that men freely admit to it but for for many women, it’s still a slightly taboo subject. Yes, there’s giggly, sniggering talk of Ann Summers Rampant Rabbits but for a large part (snigger), it is generally accepted that boys are constantly wanking but that if girls do it, there might be something wrong with them.

At school the conversation around what the (young, schoolkid) couples got up to centred around how ‘loose’ a girl was - ie what she had ‘let’ a boy do to her. There was no acknowledgement of a girl’s own sexual desire, what she herself may have wanted to do, it was all about what she had permitted the boy to do. So, her body was a bargaining tool and the liberties she allowed to be taken, determined her moral standing. The whole slag/stud dichotomy is as old as time, it’s as old as the virgin/whore split.

(If you get the feeling that I haven’t really thought this through properly, then you’d be right. I’ve just done an Internet search for books about masturbation and it came out with plenty of books for women and young girls on the subject - perhaps it's not as taboo a subject as I first thought.)

I think that it’s a really critical design flaw that a woman doesn’t actually need to have an *orgasm to get pregnant, whereas a man pretty much needs to present the goods to keep his half of the bargain.

*We are told that having an orgasm helps with conception but it is far from essential. What the hell is that about, eh!?

At the risk of sounding misandrist (man-hating!) I also think that the male anatomy, in itself, has a very basic design flaw and that everybody would be a lot happier if his member came with a little nodule at the base that stimulated the clitoris during sex. Is this the root of gender inequality, I wonder? The fact that the act needed to reproduce the human race is inherently pleasurable to a man but not necessarily to a woman? I found it both amusing and perplexing that all Christian Grey, from Fifty Shades of bollox, had to do to Ana was to tell her to come and she came! She ‘exploded’ around him. No external stimulation was needed. Thus perpetuating the *myth of the vaginal orgasm. Thanks a bunch for that, E.L James, you cynical, moronic millionaire!

*O.K so it may not be a myth exactly but rather a rare thing, on a par with a four leaf clover.

So, when you are on your tea break at work today, I’d urge you to talk about all the groundbreaking, trailblazing women; talk about Ada Lovelace, the Pankhursts, Sojourner Truth, Rosa Luxemburg, Germaine Greer, Rosa Parks, Shami Chakrabarti, Mary Beard….the list goes on and on. But, also, talk about masturbation - go on, start a conversation about it, I dare you, woman to woman. Don’t talk about diets or last night’s T.V. Start a conversation about wanking (is it still called wanking when women do it?) When did they first start doing it? Who do they think about when they do it? Do they think about anyone at all? I would start the conversation myself but I’m not at work today!

What’s that you say? You think I should bring it up at the school run?

‘Hi there, how’s it going?’

‘Freezing, isn’t it?’

‘They say it’s Spring, but…’

‘No, I haven’t signed her up for any of the after school clubs - she says she doesn’t want to do anything….’

‘Oh, can I just ask you a question? How old were you when you first started masturbating?’

I’ll just leave you with this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leHeUWjGYSA