Last night I went to a Bristol Festival of Ideas talk at The Watershed by Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism Project. The project first came to my attention by the Twitter hashtag #everydaysexism, where people were tweeting examples of their experiences. You can also add experiences to the website.
I scribbled some notes and drawings during the talk:
I grew up in the 1970s/80s – still an extremely sexist era when it was routine to hear sexist statements and to experience sexism. Naively, I thought that surely the situation must have evolved by now, so I was shocked to discover that, especially for schoolgirls, things seem a lot worse – certainly compared to my own teenage years. To hear examples, such as being told to ‘get back in the kitchen’ when putting their hands up to speak class, left me in dismay. And that was a mild example. I’m reading Betty Frieden’s The Feminine Mystique, which is set post-war to 60s, and I’m sorry to say that some of the examples I heard last night reminded me of the content and subject matter of this book.
Laura made it clear that the project is about human rights, rather than women’s rights alone, and she also gave examples of sexism against men, especially in the workplace with regards to paternity leave. And she encourages men to write in with their experiences. The audience was largely made up of young women, and, I’m happy to report, some men and a teenage boy or two. Laura is a fantastic role model for young women. The abuse she receives as a result of her public profile is truly horrendous, only highlighting the need society has for projects like this.
Sadly our government recently chose not to make PSHE classes compulsory in schools – classes which could highlight sexism and teach young people how to deal with it. When girls are dreading the idea of a future sex life because of the normative nature of the type of porn they are exposed to, someone needs to assure them otherwise. Thankfully, Laura does talk about the ESP in schools.
I walked home clutching my keys, as I’ve been doing since my 20s, (good for breaking collarbones – I refuse a curfew). I thought about the sexist incidents, past and present, throughout my own life. I won’t write them here – I’ve already put one or two on the ESP site. How I wish there had been an ESP when I were a lass…
Paula Knight Illustrator-Writer 