I recently attended the feminism debate at the ’6 Billion Ways’ event in London, where these threats also alarmed at least one speaker. Pragna Patel, from Southall Black Sisters, who as a secular feminist condemns religious fundamentalism (of any description) and the ‘war on terror’ equally as the two main threats to women’s rights today. I’d add a third: the collusion of those on the left who seek to make allies of fundamentalists. What fundamentalists – of any persuasion – hold in common is a hatred (and fear) of women and on the basis of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ we are seeing an alarming convergence that also threatens women’s rights.

Perhaps of even more concern are the words of Joni Seager, the 2009 atlas editor, who asks, ‘Where is the outrage?’ Not only outrage at these major threats but at the thousands of ‘smaller’ everyday ways in which women’s rights, identity and equality are threatened.

Put them in their place

Do we still need an International Women’s Day? Many years ago, I’d have said ‘no’, at least not for women in the west – the educated, working women. Why did we need an international day, we’d smash through the glass ceilings on our own, thank you. Perhaps, we only needed an international day for the sake of solidarity.

These days I’m not so sure. For middle class western women, open sexism and misogyny, though still around, has largely been replaced with something far more insidious and difficult to confront (though any feminist blog with ‘open comment’ is soon flooded with the bitter bile of misogyny). I also realise that I’ve played a part too, in keeping my own ‘mind-forg’d manacles’, in Blake’s words, intact.

‘Meanwhile, gorgeous, pouting Gail Trimble, Corpus Christi’s famous know-all team captain, is inconsolable at losing the University Challenge trophy. “Too upset to comment,” say friends.

There, there, luv. It’s only a game.

Try imagining you’re Jade Goody, still talking to the media on the brink of death. That’ll restore your sense of reality.’

Paul Routledge, Daily Mirror

The hoo-hah over Gail Trimble seems trivial compared to the struggles faced by women in Iran or the fact that here in the UK an incident of domestic violence is reported every minute and that for women, aged 19-44, domestic violence is the leading cause of death. That in South Africa it is estimated a woman is raped every 83 seconds. Or that ‘domestic violence is the most ubiquitous constant in women’s lives around the world’.

But for me the headline ‘Why University Challenge star Gail Trimble has a lot to learn from Jade Goody’ sums it up – in one all encompassing soundbite. All of a sudden Trimble is compared to the red tops’ new tragic heroine Jade Goody and found wanting. If the patriarchy can’t get you one way, they’ll find another.

Routledge’s words prove the rule – what women have always known – that we just can’t win or more importantly come in equal. Criticised for our looks and our brains, the only escape is a terminal illness. What could diminish us more than imminent death, except perhaps death itself, the final extinguisher of who we are.

Speaking to a woman friend yesterday about the hypocrisy in the Routledge article, we both admitted we’ve always pretended to some extent that we’re not as clever or as capable as we really are. ‘Pretended’ is perhaps not the right word, it’s been more a slow and subconscious process – one of conditioning and erosion. By the time we’d reached our early teens, we’d worked out that most men (in our experience) are threatened by women, especially clever and capable women. If you’re clever, capable and fit the western formula for ‘beauty’ then there’s no hope for you.

This is not a new phenomenon. Has there ever been a time when women have not had to play the game, toe the line, act in certain ways that please, entertain, placate or favour men? If we don’t go along with the facade, we’re ‘ugly’ and ‘bitter’ shrews and harridans; if we do then we’re equally as damned – dismissed as ‘little girls’, ‘sluts’ and ‘bimbos’. That’s how it is in the west. We are not going to be put to death for being raped, forced to leave school at 13, or married off at 12. But I don’t think the west should be congratulating itself for these achievements, when all it’s done is find slyer ways to control women and their bodies.

The tyranny of beauty

‘There are few places in the world untouched by the commerce of beauty’

‘In the US 42 per cent of girls in grades 1-3 want to be thinner’

The Atlas of Women in the World, 2009

Khaled Diab wrote recently of the Trimble affair in the Guardian: ‘Some men define themselves by which part of the female anatomy they prefer: breasts, legs, arse, etc. Personally, I’m more a brains and face kind of guy. I’ve always been attracted to intelligent women with beautiful facial features, and my wife ticks those boxes for me.’

So it’s okay to be brainy as long as you are beautiful? Does Diab really believe this is any less prejudiced than what The Sun or the Daily Mail write? What if his partner was in a car accident tomorrow and permanently disfigured? Brainy but no longer beautiful? Would this somehow diminish her ‘value’? I’m also sad for men, if they truly do ‘define themselves by which part of the female anatomy they prefer’.

That, as I write this, my fingers briefly twitch to type that I’m not ugly, tells me something about the insecurity that this kind of statement by Diab creates. But I’m not going to do this – you can believe I’m a bespectacled, greasy-haired slob or a supermodel with Barbie-like proportions, it’s no concern of mine.

Smoke and mirrors

‘Girls are still held back by presumptions that educating them will be a ‘waste’ … that girls are less capable than boys.’

The Atlas of Women in the World, 2009

A recent Times article about Trimble said: ‘Britain has a problem: we are overproducing something that we have little idea what to do with. We can’t get rid of it, and many loathe it unless it’s disguised as something else. The product? Clever women.’

And there’s the rub, the need to disguise cleverness as something else. ‘Although Miss Trimble rarely makes mistakes, she had, in fact, made two: first, she was clever, and second, she was not clever enough to hide it behind a makeover. “I very much think this would not be happening if I were a man. People would not feel it necessary to comment on my looks so much,” she said.’ (The Times)

So clever women have always kept up this pretence because as The Times also reports, ‘A study from the University of Chicago examined thousands of people’s online dating preferences: it showed that men had an overwhelming bias against women who were more educated than them.’

Gail Trimble has refused to play along – I hope she never will. Her ‘mistake’, is only a mistake if you believe that we should sacrifice ourselves for the sake of the male ego. What good is any relationship – with a friend or lover – based on such pretence; eventually you become weary and bored. And contemptuous of the need that drives such a folie à deux.

Over the years, I’ve learned that the patriarchy and – through this – women themselves conspire to place limitations on the way we should act or even think. That the need for approval determines the appropriateness of how we dress, sit, walk, talk, behave. At the 6 Billion Ways feminism session, one of the handful of men in the audience intimated that perhaps it was how women dress that plays a part in how we are treated. Tell that to the women in parts of Africa, which still has the lowest standards of education for women across the world. I doubt very much it’s how they dress that plays a part in this.

His comment was met with laughter by the rest of the audience; he’d entirely missed the point. The laughter also showed that here were women – of all ages, all races, and all classes – who will no longer give in to the constant pressure to be approved or to seek approval.

Long may this continue and until such a time when there is no oppression, no rape, no female genital mutilation, no glass ceiling, no poisonous anti-abortion lobby, no religious tyranny, so too must International Women’s Day.

That the ‘Sound of Young America’ became the soundtrack for the civil rights movement and political change was something never envisaged by founder Berry Gordy, whose dream was to create the perfect crossover music when he set up the label with an $800-dollar loan in 1959. ‘We are not going to make black music. We are going to make music for everybody. We are going to make music that has great stories and great beats. We are going to write great songs.’ And it worked. Because of Motown, black music became the mainstream: in 1966, more than 75 per cent of its releases made the charts.

But the times were changing. Over the next year or two, the war in Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, rising racial tensions and riots across US cities called for a different soundtrack, one that Motown’s sweet sounds of love couldn’t supply. Artists like James Brown with ‘Say It Loud (I’m Black and Proud)’ pushed black consciousness higher up the charts. And at a Black Power rally in Detroit in July 1967, Black Panther H Rap Brown said that if Motown didn’t come around, ‘we are going to burn you down’.

Much to Berry Gordy’s horror, H Rap Brown was also to use the Vandellas’ hit ‘Dancing in the Streets’ as the backing track to many of his speeches. It became the sound of protest, riots and freedom, even if Martha Reeves was no militant. Nor was Marvin Gaye, at least not then. ‘Marvin Gaye wrote that song to quench riots, not to incite them. He didn’t mean to instill anything but love,’ says Reeves. But the times were changing for the complex, damaged Gaye too.

‘In 1969 or 1970, I began to re-evaluate what I wanted my music to say. I was very much affected by letters my brother was sending me from Vietnam, as well as the social situation here at home. I realised that I had to put my own fantasies behind me if I wanted to write songs that would reach the souls of people. I wanted them to take a look at what was happening in the world,’ said Gaye of the reasons he wrote his classic protest song, ‘What’s Going On’.

At first Gordy refused to release it. ‘I said, Marvin, why do you want to ruin your career?’ he later recounted in an interview. ‘Why do you want to put out a song about the Vietnam war, police brutality and all of these things? You’ve got all these great love songs. You’re the hottest artist, the sex symbol of the sixties and seventies …’

Gaye was not the only songwriter to have his songs rejected as too political by Gordy. Gordy also initially refused to release ‘War’, the blatantly anti-Vietnam song made famous by Edwin Starr, which had originally been written by Normal Whitfield for the Temptations. Despite Gordy’s fears of alienating a conservative audience, ‘War’ went to number one in 1970 and Whitfield’s songs began to take Motown in a darker direction, one that better represented the paranoid, dysfunctional and fearful world of crooked politicians, Vietnam and race riots. The Motown spin-off label Black Forum was also created in 1970, releasing spoken-word records by Martin Luther King Jr, Stokely Carmichael and black poets Langston Hughes and Margaret Danner.

If the earlier hits were to make Motown the embodiment of black economic entrepreneurship and a cultural force not just in the black community but across the world, then it was this tougher, angrier sound that made Motown not just the soundtrack but an active force in the politics of the time.

Myself and Alberto Acre, a Spanish journalist, have been to the border village of Sirej, near Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip. We had driven there with the mobile clinic of the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees. The clinic regularly visits exposed, frequently raided villages that are far from medical facilities.

We were interviewing residents about conditions on the border. Stories of olive and orange groves and family farmland, bulldozed to make way for a ‘clear line of sight’ for the Israeli occupation force watchtowers. Israeli attacks were frequent. Indiscriminate shelling spraying homes and land on the frontline of the south eastern border. One elderly farmer showed us the grave-sized ditch he had dug to climb into when Israeli soldiers would shoot into his fields.

Alberto was interviewing a family that had survived an Israeli missile attack on their home last month. It had been a response to rocket fire from resistance fighters nearby. Four fighters were killed in a field by the border. Israel had rained rockets and M16 fire back. The family, caught in the crossfire, have never returned to their home.

I was waiting for Alberto to return when ground shaking thuds tilted us off our feet. This was the sound of surface to air fired missiles and F16 bombs slamming into the police stations, and army bases of the Hamas authority in Gaza City, Diere Balah, Rafah, Khan Younis and Beit Hanoon.

We zoomed out of the village in our ambulance, and onto the main road to Gaza City, before jumping out to film the smouldering remains of a police station in Diere Balah, near Khan Younis,

Eyewitnesses said two Israeli missiles had destroyed the station. One had soared through a children’s playground and a busy fruit and vegetable market before impacting on its target.

‘During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for. But, my lord, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.’

Nelson Mandela, Rivonia Trial, Pretoria Supreme Court 20 April 1964

Recently, I was struck by a busstop billboard for a well-known teenage brand, stating that using its product will help you go ‘from zitty to pretty’ and be ‘clear-skin gorgeous in only four hours’. There’s no hidden meaning, it’s a simple message: if you have spots, even the slightest pimple, then you are a drop-dead ugly loser in the teen stakes.

Sophisticated consumers

You might not need to be Barthes to interpret ‘zitty to pretty’ but most postmodern advertising is about riding the zeitgeist of kids too cynical, sophisticated and savvy to fall for a simple sales pitch. It’s not the company sponsoring Coronation Street or even product placement you need to worry about (invasive as they are), but where advertisers are disguising their sales messages by becoming the film and game makers, editors, novelists – and even your best mate.

This is advertising that plays on our cynicism and panders to our familiarity with advertising techniques. They deconstruct their own message, use stealth pitches to blur lines between entertainment and marketing and are now appropriating new media at an alarming rate.

Anti-advertising advertising

‘Cultural jammers’ (see Red Pepper print issue, May 2004) are part of the fight back against advertising, playfully parodying and changing ad messages like semiotic Robin Hoods. The Billboard Liberation Front (BLF) and Adbusters work on the principle that if images can create a brand then they can destroy it too. But one thing the advertising boys have that cultural jammers don’t is money and they’ve been quick to adapt antiadvertising techniques.

Companies now spoof their own ads on YouTube and Flurl – even doing spoofs of spoofs, such as last year’s ‘Tango Clear’ spoof of the Sony Bravia ad.

Tango dropped fruit, instead of coloured balls, through the streets of Swansea and the mess left behind so upset Swansea residents they set up a protest and petition on their Swansea North Residents Association website saying ‘Swansea North Will Not Be Dumped On!’ Except they didn’t; their website was created by the ad agency (http://swanseares.org.uk/news.html).

The memetic buzz

The Swansea story is a relatively unsophisticated example of how we are all being ‘tango-ed’. The buzz is now over memes. Richard Dawkins’ theory of memetics hypothesised that, as with genetics, information and ideas (memes) can be self-replicating and spread from brain to brain.

Ad agencies are appropriating the best media possible for this – the mass media of social networking sites, blogs, emails and even RSS feeds – to ensure their message lives on after the advertising campaign has ended.

Word of mouth (WOM)

Agencies are also employing actors to spread the word. Next time you hear an overly loud conversation about a great skin cream or find a swarm of random ‘tourists’ using a particular cameraphone, it could be a gaggle of resting actors.

Individuals are paid to talk about their cool new product, the great film they’ve seen, or even how a certain politician is ‘really for real’. By using peer-to-peer networking routes such as blogs, myspace and facebook profiles, chat rooms and forums it’s becoming much harder to detect the ‘puff’. Sometimes these ambassadors from ad land are not even paid; the ‘social currency’ of being the first to try a new product is enough.

Hyped as ‘genuine’ and underpinned with the argument that these best friends ‘don’t have to say anything positive if they don’t want to’, the new-style WOM advertising is both free and effective – that is, until the public wises up.

Fight back

Don’t be a walking billboard; get rid of the tags and logos from clothing and other items. Remove brand packaging and brand names from your appliances, computers, TVs and CD players.

Get rid of spyware – use programmes to remove it at www.safer-networking.org

Reduce or eliminate junk mail. Sign up to opt out at the Mailing Preference Service at www.mpsonline.org.uk

Start your New Year’s resolutions early and give up presents for Christmas. The Buy Nothing Christmas website from adbusters includes tips and hints to get through the seasonal consumerfest without spending a penny. Try out the downloadable gift exemption vouchers at www.adbusters.org/metas/eco/ bnd/bnd_xmas

Sponsor Trees For Life

The Olive Co-operative, in partnership with Zaytoun and the Palestine Fair Trade Association, recently launched ‘Trees For Life – Planting Peace in Palestine’. For just £20 you can sponsor five trees and help offset the 500,000 olive trees that have been destroyed by Israel since 2000. Each new tree sponsored represents a long-term source of income for Palestinian families. www.olivecoop.com

Become a car-sharer

Only 5 per cent of people share a car journey to work. Yet car sharing can save you up to £1,000 annually, as well as reducing pollution and the overall number of cars on the road. Freewheelers is an international organisation with an online database that hooks you up with drivers and passengers across the world. Liftshare has over 100,000 people registered in a UK-wide car sharing sheme and also works with local authorities and employers to create lift sharing schemes. Join up at www.liftsharing.com and www.freewheelers.co.uk

Meat is murder (for the planet too)

Changing your diet is critical to the health of the planet – and even you smug non-intensive meat, free-range chick types shouldn’t get too comfy. Along with raising your cholesterol, meat consumption raises atmospheric CO2 levels. University of Chicago researchers recently compared a standard vegan diet to a US-style carnivorous diet, and found the average meat eater (not a super-sizer) diet emits the equivalent of 1. 5 tonnes more CO2 every year than the standard vegan diet. It takes at least 7kg of feed to produce one kilo of beef, 2kg for every kilo of chicken, 4kg for pork. Never mind the extra land, water, energy and chemicals used.

Clothes swapping

Stop buying new clothes (especially cheap ‘bargain’ clothes).

While the UK is presently too cold for all-out naturism, cutting out synthetic and non-organic fibres makes a big difference. Over 20 human and environmental rights abuses go into just one standard clothing item – from pesticide spraying and cotton dying to worker and animal exploitation. Polyester is made from petrochemicals; synthetic and non-organic cotton fabrics are treated with pesticides and formaldehyde; and nylon accounts for up to half of UK levels of nitrous oxide. Pledge to recycle your old clothes by holding clothes swapping parties with friends or donate to charity shops. www.whatsmineisyours.com

Give up money

Bypass the money economy and join your nearest LETS (Local Exchange Trading Scheme). More than 40,000 people participate in LETS across the UK. People exchange skills, goods and services without the need for filthy lucre. www.letslinkuk.net

Join a ‘green gym’

Improve your health and the environment with British Trust for Conservation Volunteers (BTCV) green gym groups. The groups meet at least once a week to do between one and four hours practical conservation and gardening work. It can include anything from coppicing to building a community garden. www2.btcv.org.uk/display/greengym

Give up flying

The Flight Pledge Union (FPU) says giving up flying is the single most effective individual action you can take to combat climate change. The FPU offers two types of pledges: gold and silver. In the former you pledge not to take any flights in the next year, and with the silver not take more than two return short haul flights or one return long haul flight (except in an emergency). Sign up online at www.flightpledge.org.uk. To plan your trip using trains, see the Man in Seat 61 website at www.seat61.com

Dig for Green Victory

Resolve to cut down on your food miles. As well as buying only local products, get an allotment, turn part of your garden over to organic veggie growing or even just get a compost bin.