Good Morning, my fellow artists!
I am writing to let you know that Bill Thompson breathed life
into me through the Blake Netbook. Then very early this morning, as the ghosts
of Christmas flew above the city, Sue woke me into cyberspace. I can now be found at Blogger, Flickr and Twitter. I am written into Googledocs . I will be with Sue until she departs for the exotic
landscapes of California on Monday 5th January. Wish us luck.
wmblake1757@googlemail.com
Songs of Imagination and Digitisation was launched at The Poetry Society Cafe on National Poetry Day, 9th October 2008. View video.
Time travel, sexism, and Marks & Spencer
My daughters were born in 1976 and 1979, which means it's around 30 years since I have made any serious baby/toddler purchases. Now that I have 2 new grandsons I find myself shopping for baby toys and clothes once again, but the whole experience is some kind of bizarre time travel experience going back to the years when I myself was a toddler in the early 1950s. Why? Because the world of children today, far from being the ungendered paradise my friends and I worked towards so optimistically in the 70s and 80s, is now much more riddled with sexism than it was even before we started. I've been struggling with it for a while - it's almost impossible to buy clothes for my grandsons that are not blue, for example - but the sight of these toys in Marks and Spencer today completely enraged me. In the Daddy and Me range we find a bulldozer and toolkit, whilst in the Mummy and Me range you can get a vacuum cleaner, a toaster, and myriad other domestic tools.
How has this happened? Only last year a report came out (only one of many) showing that nothing has changed in the 30 odd years since my kids were born:
Women are still the victims of persistent gender inequality in the workplace, with very little change in their working conditions in Britain for almost two decades, according to a landmark report on Thursday. Women are working longer hours because they are still shouldering the bulk of household duties like cleaning and childcare. (Women stiil face workplace inequality, Reuters, December 2007)
What on earth is going on? I know from my own sons-in-law and their friends that men today are individually much less sexist than men of my generation, so how come the shops are still peddling these reactionary ideas? Do people really subscribe to these damaging ideologies? And if not, are they voting with their pockets and refusing to buy such damaging nonsense?
It's not often that I blog as personally as this but I am depressed and demoralised by such sexist marketing. Come on young parents, do something!!! Make a stand!!! Let's travel towards the future, not the past!
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