Patriarchal societies

Every day in the news there is something that just reinforces what a shocking Patriarchal world we live in.

The latest horror story is from the Sudan where a woman – who is a doctor and eight months pregnant, has been sentenced to death for Apostasy – she supposedly converted from Islam to Christianity and married a Christian. BUT her mother was a Christian and her father deserted them both when the girl was 6. So, the absent father is the one who decides the religion? Oh how wonderful.

I do wonder whether this woman being a Christian and a doctor, and in Sudan where 88% of women are sexually mutilated, has spoken out against the practice (which is not written about in the Koran) and has annoyed the Imams who see female genital mutilation as a way of controlling women’s sexuality. It is shocking that in the world today someone can be sentenced to death for converting to Christianity. The Death Sentence itself is barbaric- but for “changing” your religion when it is your mother’s anyway? I haven’t heard Justin Welby say much about this. Or our government threaten to cut aid to Sudan – and the UK is the second largest provider of aid (to a country where 88% of women are sexually mutillated) Oh, but I forgot, our government is mostly made up of men, who have a more fortunate time with Sharia Law.

Surely Aid providers have a bargaining tool?

Surely as a tax payer I too have a say how my country uses its money?

There have been lots of petitions, which I have signed, on the internet. Thank goodness for Social Media – it does force the politicians to address certian issues the public care about… (However, I do wonder if we are living in the Paradise Age of the internet at the moment and soon all this freedom and power will be constrained – as it is now in China and North Korea…)

So women still belong to their fathers in parts of the world today…

Interestingly enough on Woman’s Hour Caroline Criado-Perez was talking about Marriage Certificates. These date back to 1837 – when English women belonged first to their fathers and then became part of their husband’s chattels on marriage.

This piece of paper work hasn’t been updated since.

On a Marriage Certificate it is required to put the name and profession of the father only – with no provision for the mother. I had forgotten this: it was such a big deal to everyone when I got married that I wasn’t going to change my name that if I had kicked up a fuss about that aspect of the Marriage Certificate my husband’s family would have probably walked out! Anyway, Criado-Perez is challenging this and working for change ( 1837 most certainly calls for an update). She refuses to get married in England or Wales until this is revised and altered but interestingly she can get married in Scotland where both names can be added. I am half Scottish – perhaps my millitant female awareness is from these genes. Indeed my mother has her own mother’s maiden name in her own name and when she married my father, she refused to have ” love, honour and obey” mentioned in the service! Well, certainly not the obey bit.

A lot of people have said to Criado- Perez, “It is only a piece of paper!”, but this isn’t the point.

Women are no longer a man’s possession in the UK – but they still are elsewhere in the world. We need to change all aspects of our culture that relate back to female enslavement in the hope we can influence other societies and cultures. Women do need to stand up and challenge the system – otherwise nothing ever changes.

Change only happens if the system is challenged.

No one likes to be challenged and the people who challenge are disliked.

So the Challengers need to be strong.

And I must finish my degree before I start the challenging…

This morning first thing I rang Ipswich Plastics to get a price for Acrylic, but I still was quoted about £500 for the pieces I need so I persuaded William to come with me and see what cheaper products they have.

Well, the default size of 8 X 4 ft( imperial rules still) could work. I could have 3 sheets of it and shuffle the prints up a bit at their edges.

So, I went up to my space and taped out the area with masking tape and then laid the prints withing the restrictions of 8 x 12 feet.

They did look a bit higelty-piglety and the maths of how much each print should overlap was doing my head in. I got feed back from my tutors . The concensus was that it would be better to remove a row of prints rather than compromise them by overlapping them.

Then David suggested that I made the piece central to the floor, rather than having it tucked under a wall with a space where, undoubtedly, people would chose to walk.

The prints are to be walked over. The metaphor of “the down trodden” and “the walked over and abused” needs to be exercised.

From the door, if the prints are central and facing out that way, there is an initial impact of a red carpet, until the work is then examined.

Once I had laid the prints like this, I suddenly felt relaxed. I will sleep tonight!

I have my 90 prints – in rows of 6 by 15 deep. I can use 4 sheets of the 8 x 4. That will leave enough space at the edges to be taped down with duct tape and as they will be central on the floor, people will have to walk over them.

I wonder if they will feel uncomfortable doing so?

And perhaps more so when they realise what the piece means…

As my prints will be on the floor and have the pressure of people walking over them, I turned my attention to the state of that. I started to chisel off lumps of blue tack which had been painted down last year and all manner of splodges and raised bits from this year. Getting a smooth finish will be a challenge – but I had a good go at it.

Next I need to take in some heavy duty polyfilla to even up ans smooth out some of the valleys and gouges!

The Newspapers are full of boko haram, ( they do not deserve capital letters), and their shocking arrogant admission about kidnapping over 200 girls and casually saying it is their right to sell them as slaves. Hopefully they have over stepped their mark and they will eventually be stopped and the Nigerian government forced to tackle them.

Apparently there was 4 hours warning of the attack on the school and the government did nothing. No wonder the arrogant, insane leaders of boko haran behave as if they are unstopable…

Education is everything. Everyone knows that. By keeping women out of education, as the tailban and boko haran are trying to do, they are kept poor and powerless – just where these crazy, fundamentalist Islamic groups want them.

This is where my project began almost a year ago – with the shooting in the head of Malala who dared speak out for girls’ rights and needs to education….

Today I went to B&Q to look at acrylic for covering my pieces. Perspex is going to be too expensive. My piece on the floor is 255 x 382cm. I cannot even get a piece that big through the doors into the studio! It will cost me about £500 in perspex, for 2 pieces, which is far too much.

What are my options then?

I could put a border around the piece on 3 sides so people could walk around it – still walking over it but not all the way.

But would someone step off the covering and onto the prints?

( at this point , do I care?)

I need to ring up Ipswich Plastics and ask about acrylic sheets, sizes and prices…

Oh dear, the flaffing around about showing them on the floor has taken more time and angst than creating the work in the first place.

Such is life at the moment…

The Degree show looms. I have decided that I am just showing my 90 pieces and also a book of prints of The Patriarchal Society. So, now I am working on the book and it is time consuming!

I think I have sourced my perspex for the show. It will cover all the prints – protecting them and allowing people to walk over them. I want this metaphor of the flowers as downtrodden, walked over and trampled upon. The victims of of the Patriarchal Society.

Nothing seems to change. Everything just reinforces my view that women’s rights for equality haven’t made that much progress in the last 45 years. Look at those poor girls in Nigeria:

<http://edition.cnn.com/2014/05/05/world/africa/nigeria-abducted-girls/>

The leader of Boko Haram – which means Western Education is Forbidden – says:

“There is a market for selling humans. Allah says I should sell. He commands me to sell. I will sell women. I sell women,”

adding:

“Girls, you should go and get married,”

So these poor girls who were taken over two weeks ago have probably been sold into a vicious form of eternal islamic slavery called forced marriage.

Imagine how distraught their families must be. They wanted their daughters educated so they had a chance in life, and now they fear their daughters face a pitiful life ” married ” to leaders and sympathisers of a barbaric terrorist group.

Finally, after this amount of time, America and Britain are helping. The Nigerian Government asked for help.

What kept the Government from appealing before? Perhaps they didn’t care. Perhaps they thought it would blow over. Perhaps they just thought it was a bunch of school girls. Thnk god for social media which doesn’t let these things blow over. Since then another 8 girls have been kidnapped.

I hope the outside governments can help..

So Education is dangerous for girls.

Isn’t this where I began – with Malala being shot in the head because she wanted an education?

It makes me feel so dispondant.

More women are needed in Parliament – in office everywhere. The childish Etonians who dominate our politics put most women off and in other countries – like Afganistan, they turn off womens’ microphones – so no one can hear them.

I have finished printing my 90 flowers!

Some of these I printed onto wet Somerset paper and some onto dry. Where the paper was dry I also splattered water so it made the silkscreen inks bleed and this effect was transfered to the paper below when I squeegied the inks through.

I have a considerable variety now of flowers. Some are bleeding , some are mutilated, some have been sewn up too.

After I had finished, and armed with all my dry prints, I went up to the Studios and laid them down in the biggest space I could find. I asked people for feed back. I mentioned that I was thinking of sewing the prints together and hanging them on a wall, but people thought they looked good on the floor! This was an interesting idea.

If I put them on the floor, I would like to protect them so people can walk on them if they like.

This adds another dimension: The Down Trodden, the Repressed. Being walked over is another form of violation, both literally and metaphorically.

I cannot put glass over the prints – for obvious safety reasons – but I could put perspex! As there will be joins in the prints, it doesn’t matter if there are joins in the perspex/it is not all one piece.

I need to find out if the White Space is free – or if I can put them on the floor in the Studio.

What also came to mind was the last line from W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) poem, “He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven”

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

In a way this is relevant because with the mutiliation of a woman’s sexuality, a whole dimension of human experience is lost to her.

People walking over the perspex and prints are walking over a symbol of the murdered sexuality of young women. Often their very lives, their health and their power.

The poem by W.B.Yeats is very beautiful:

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

It is a love poem. Is it irrelevant?

Not really, as love and sexual passion go together and women are mutilated so they never experience passion, therefore their experience of love is also diminished.

Their dreams are dashed, they are walked over – they are disempowered.

In the space I do get, I could perhaps have the title on one wall:

Do Not Cut The Flowers

If people are walking over them, then on an opposite wall I would put:

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. W.B.Yeats (1865-1939)

I have also writen to our Ipswich MP, Ben Gummer asking him what he is going to do so that FGM is not practiced in Ipswich. From past experience I know that MPs always reply on Common’s paper. I could frame his reply.

I could also do a print of the statistics of FGM in the various countries. Either as a silkscreen or as a reverse print transfer.

And a separate one for the UK , France and other European countries – or perhaps just keep it to European countries?

If it is against the law and happens here, it somehow makes it WORSE.