Grounded by the Body

Abstract

The modernizing wing of British Conservatives has espoused neoliberalism and, apparently, feminism. Proclaiming the importance of more women in public life appears to be the zeitgeist of the elite. The same elite also condemns ‘testosterone-driven’ men in the financial industry. As the essence of neoliberalism is the small state, women have to make progress into public life without state aid—but with plenty of lawyers. Women who can pay for childcare may benefit from these arrangements. They obviously do not represent women collectively. Most women are not professional and most working women are paid less per hour than are men. The only thing all women have in common is our bodies. In spite of the neoliberals’ modernizing speech, a patriarchy exists in which women's sexual power is appropriated by men. Even in post-patriarchal societies, there remains an unspoken belief that men have the right of access to the bodies of all women—as represented by the Sun newspaper's notorious Page 3. The literal underside of this is the gothic horror of women being imprisoned in cellars for the purposes of rape and torture, while their keepers continue upstairs life as normal. The slogans of individual choice and freedom do not give power to women to change the circumstances which trap, or humiliate, or impoverish them.

Keywords:

• neoliberalism
• women's rights
• sexual politics
• the feminist zeitgeist
• (in)equality

Acknowledgements

With thanks to Helen Carr for invitation, corrections and encouragement; to Anoushka Bamping for information and ukulele playing; and to Google, without whose services this could not have been written.

Notes

¹Christopher Hope, ‘Fears That Cameron Ignored Women in Cabinet Reshuffle’, Telegraph, 4 September 2012.

²For example, Centre for Women and Democracy, ‘Sex and Power 2013: Who Runs Britain?’, 2013, at www.countingwomenin.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Sex-and-Power-2013-FINALv2.-pdf.pdf.

³See Office for National Statistics, ‘Datasets and Reference Tables’, n.d., at www.ons.gov.uk/ons/datasets-and-tables/index.html?pageSize=50&sortBy=none&sortDirection=none&newquery=women+men&content-type=Reference+table&content-type=Dataset.

⁴Office for National Statistics, ‘Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2012 Provisional Results’, Statistical Bulletin, 22 November 2012, at www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/ashe/annual-survey-of-hours-and-earnings/2012-provisional-results/stb-ashe-statistical-bulletin-2012.html.

⁵Danny Dorling, Fair Play: A Reader in Social Justice, Bristol: Policy Press, 2011.

⁶Robert C. Clark, ‘Why So Many Lawyers? Are They Good or Bad?’, Fordham Law Review 61:2, 1992, pp. 275–302 (p. 275).

⁷Harvard Law School Program on the Legal Profession, ‘Analysis of the Legal Profession and Law Firms (as of 2007)’, 2007, at www.law.harvard.edu/programs/plp/pages/statistics.php.

⁸Simon Rogers, ‘How Many Solicitors Are There in England and Wales? And Who Are They?’, Guardian, 4 April 2011.

⁹Sue Himmelweit and Maria Sigala, ‘Internal and External Constraints on Mother's Employment: Some Implications for Policy’, Working Paper No. 27, January 2003, at www.leeds.ac.uk/ESRCFutureofWork/downloads/workingpaperdownloads/fow_paper_27.pdf.

¹⁰‘Women at Work’, You and Yours, BBC Radio 4, 12 March 2013, at www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01r5lmv/You_and_Yours_Women_at_work/.

¹¹For the full transcript, see David Cameron, ‘Speech to Conservative Party Conference 2011, Manchester, 5 October 2011’, New Statesman, 5 October 2011.

¹²Jon Cohen, ‘Gay Marriage Support Hits New High in Post-ABC Poll’, The Fix, Washington Post, 18 March 2013, at www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/03/18/gay-marriage-support-hits-new-high-in-post-abc-poll/?hpid=z1.

¹³Michele Barratt and Mary McIntosh, The Anti-Social Family, London: Verso, 1982.

¹⁴Ned Simons, ‘Gay Marriage: Edward Leigh Fears the “Merciless Prism of Equality”’, Huffington Post, 5 February 2013, at www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/02/05/gay-marriage-edward-leigh-merciless-prism-of-equality_n_2622916.html.

¹⁵Steve Doughty and Jason Groves, ‘Heads of Church Told to Get Help from Mediators amid Growing Anger over Vote against Women Bishops’, Mail Online, 21 November 2012, at www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2236579/PMs-rebuke-women-bishops-vote-Cameron-tells-Church-programme.html#axzz2K139o1JM.

¹⁶ Today, BBC Radio 4, 5 February 2013.

¹⁷Justice for Men and Boys (and the Women Who Love Them), at http://j4mb.wordpress.com/.

¹⁸A Voice for Men, at www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/government-tyranny/fighting-feminism-lets-get-political/.

¹⁹Sylvia Ann Hewlett, ‘Too Much Testosterone on Wall Street?’, Harvard Business Review Blog Network, 7 January 2009, at http://blogs.hbr.org/hbr/hewlett/2009/01/too_much_testosterone_on_wall.html.

²⁰‘What Traders’ Testosterone Tells Us about Markets’ by Mark Buchanan, published 10 June 2012 on Bloomberg (online) news service at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-10/what-traders-testosterone-tells-us-about-markets.html.

²¹‘Maybe the Meltdown's a Guy Thing’ by Judith M. Dobrzynski in New York Times, 16 November 2008, where it was captioned ‘GUNG HO Making bids at the Chicago Board of Trade the morning of Oct. 24’.

²²Andrew Hill, ‘Work–Life Balance Is Not Just for Women’, Financial Times, 11 March 2013.

²³Sir Matthew Hale (1736) cited in D.E.H. Russell, Rape in Marriage, New York: Macmillan Press, 1990, p. 17.

²⁴His study is: Richard Davenport-Hines, An English Affair: Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo, London: Harper Press, 2013.

²⁵Law Commission, Criminal Law: Rape within Marriage, London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1992, at www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/hc9192/hc01/0167/0167.pdf.

²⁶Gwilym Dodd, ‘The Birth of Parliament’, British History, BBC, 17 February 2011, at www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/middle_ages/birth_of_parliament_01.shtml.

²⁷‘IMF Chief Denied Bail Remains in Custody in New York’, Merco Press, 16 May 2011, at http://en.mercopress.com/2011/05/16/imf-chief-denied-bail-remains-in-custody-in-new-york.

²⁸For this and subsequent quotes, see Clare Short's website, at www.clareshort.co.uk/node/12.

²⁹David Wooding and Tom Worden, ‘“Fat, Jealous” Clare Brands Page 3 Porn’, Sun, 27 July 2007.

³¹James Moore, ‘“Time for Quotas” to Put Women in Top Jobs’, Independent, 28 December 2012.

³⁰See Hannah Arendt, ‘Authority in the Twentieth Century’, The Review of Politics, 18.4, October 1956, pp.402-417, reprinted in Between Past and Future, New York: Viking, 1961, revised ed., 1968.

³²‘Philip Hollobone’, Wikipedia, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Hollobone.