The protagonist, a young woman called Fausta,  is ill with a disease contracted from her mother’s breast milk known as “the milk of sorrow”,  a condition that only affects those women in Peru who were abused or raped during the years of terrorist struggle.  This Grauniad review says “This Peruvian lament examining how distress passes down the generations is subtle and wonderfully moving.”

Here’s the trailer. Please go and support the screening of weird films at Stratford Picturehouse!*

* ‘Weird’ is intended to be entirely complimentary, btw

Farewell from Education For Choice

By Education For Choice | 30 April 2010, 17:30

I’ve lobbied my MP, I’ve waved placards, I’ve donated money. I’ve argued with my friends, my colleagues, with strangers. I’ve shouted into a megaphone. On one memorable occasion I carried a flaming torch around Bloomsbury. I’ll go a long way to defend the principle of a woman’s right to choose. But until I joined the trustee board of Education For Choice I confess I hadn’t given enough thought to exactly who was making the choice, and what the reality of their situation might be like.

One of the things that first appealed to me about EFC was the fact that all their work is grounded in the experiences of the young people they talk to. They speak with absolute authority when they say, as Kate did in her post a couple weeks ago, that much of the information young people receive about abortion is little better than anti-abortion propaganda. Not just partial, not just biased, not just alarming and distressing, but outright lies.

I didn’t know the extent of it. My school sex education was laughable, but we never had any outside visitors stop by to show us horrific photographs (and for that I am thankful as it would have made my job as the only feminist in the village even more difficult). Learning about EFC was the first time I really understood how hard it must be for young women to make choices about pregnancy and abortion, perhaps without support, and in many cases without the facts.

Education For Choice works to ensure that young people can access the information that is theirs by right, and make informed choices about pregnancy and abortion. By directly providing vital facts and resources to fight the frightening myths spread by the anti-abortion movement, they make a real difference to the lives of women and girls across the country.

And I mean ‘across the country’: EFC staff regularly trek around England providing training to equip teachers and other professionals with the practical advice and resources they need to have an open, balanced discussion about sex, pregnancy and abortion, and to allow young people to make up their own minds.

It would be nice if we didn’t have to fight for decent sex education, support for all pregnancy choices and free access to safe abortion every single decade, but that doesn’t look like changing any time soon. After recent talk of cutting the late term abortion time limit, we’ll be hearing a lot more about abortion during and possibly after the election. Rest assured you’ll be hearing a lot more from Education For Choice as well.

The EFC staff blogging here might not want to ask you for money, but a good trustee should also be a shameless fundraiser, so I *will* ask for your support. Education For Choice reaches thousands of young people every year on a shoestring budget, and anything you can give will help to make sure young people across the UK have the facts about abortion. You can make a donation online here.

This is the end of EFC’s month as guest bloggers. Thank you for having us – we’ve really enjoyed it, and we hope you’ll stay in touch. If you’d like more information about our work, or you’d like to get involved, please email Kate at kate [at] efc.org.uk. Also keep your eyes peeled for a notice about EFC’s brand new, very own blog, to be launched soon!

Sarah Jackson is a trustee of Education For Choice.

Jerrie Cobb posing with the Mercury capsule. Note properly ladylike white gloves and high heels.

What *do* you call a female astronaut? These are some of the ingenious words that journalists invented in the early 1960s to avoid having to say ‘astronaut’ when describing Jerrie Cobb, the first woman to pass NASA tests and qualify as an astronaut, although she never had a chance to go into space.

I’ve been thinking about astronauts recently for two reasons. Firstly, a friend of mine lent me this absorbing book about the ‘Mercury 13′ – women including Cobb who were trained as astronauts but never went into space because America wasn’t brave enough. And secondly I discovered a pile of my old school reports in my mum’s flat the other day and was astonished to read that my stated career ambition at age 11 was ‘astronaut’.

I mean, I loved space and stars and rockets – are there any kids that don’t? And I do remember wanting to be an astronaut. But at 11? It makes me wonder how old I was when I gave up wanting to be a knight of the round table…

A dream for boys?

I’m not going to rant about how being an astronaut shouldn’t be a distant dream for a girl. Let’s face it, astronauting isn’t an easy line to get into, it’s a distant dream for most people. Apparently there have been 512 humans in space, of which 10% have been women (Wikipedia has a list of space travelers.) Unimpressive, I agree, but when you bear in mind that we can scarcely get women into the House of Commons (around 20% of MPs are women) getting them into space seems like less of a priority.

What really interests me is that women into space doesn’t really go even as a dream. Of course, there’s been an astronaut Barbie, but the gender stereotypes that so confused journalists back then are still very much in evidence in the aisles of toy shops today, as this post neatly shows. Being an astronaut is a childhood dream for boys only. No surprises there for my fellow Ada Lovelace Day bloggers.

A dream for men?

In fact, even in adult culture  it seems we’re not totally cool with the dream of female astronauts. Here’s a brief, interesting article by Marie Lathers from Times Higher Ed about women astronauts in films, which takes in Alien, Contact, Apollo 13 and even I Dream of Jeannie (astronaut husband). Lathers sees an identification of the feminine with mother earth and nature, setting them in opposition to space and even to science. Given this conflict she suggests that women in space are more frequently aligned with the alien (our old friend the Other) than with the human space adventurer. She sez:

Popular culture representations of women in space reveal a need to “ground” women by keeping them bound to Earth. Woman grounded is woman subjected to the weight of gravity; bodies in space defy gravity. Feminist theory needs to assess the possibilities that rethinking women in space affords. “Extraterrestrial” feminism may provide a way out of the essentialism that bottles us up.

It’s an interesting notion. And one that the arts student in me would like to pursue. However, I wanted to talk about some of the real female astronauts as well as the dream. I’ll just give a few examples from their stories, I couldn’t bear to pick just one of these incredible women.

‘A woman’s place is in the cockpit’

I mentioned poor Jerrie Cobb and the Mercury 13 who so narrowly missed being the first ‘feminauts’. Another fascinating woman is linked to the US Women in Space Program. Without beautician-turned-aviator Jackie Cochran – who held more speed, altitude and distance records than any other pilot in aviation history at the time of her death in 1980 – it may never have happened at all. Check out Right Stuff Wrong Sex for the story of a serious political operator at work.

Russian Valentina Tereshkova made it to first woman in space, in 1963 (beating the US by an appalling TWENTY YEARS) and launched skywards from a suitably proletarian background – she was a textile factory worker and an amateur parachutist who left school at 8 and continued her education through correspondence courses. She spent 3 days in space, and went round the earth 48 times.

Physicist Dr Sally Ride was the first American woman in space, in 1983, and one of our own (feminists, that is). Ride reportedly:

refused to be seen in television downlinks doing food preparation or toilet cleaning, even though these were shared crew responsibilities. She refused to accept a bouquet of flowers from NASA after completing her first space mission. She pasted a bumper sticker to the front of her desk: “A woman’s place is in the cockpit”

Ride went on to found science education organisation Sally Ride Science, which pleasingly promises to be “all science, all the time”. And encourages girls to learn about and enjoy science and maths.

Women to look up to

I think it’s particularly because I’m not from a tech or science background that female astronauts are like superheroes to me. That’s why I love this Flickr set of loosely inspired portraits Philip Bond has done. Obviously they’ve lovely things in themselves, but I like them because they look like collectible playing cards, or stickers. I want Tereshkova on a t-shirt. I want people to ask me who she is so I can tell them.

Valentina Tereshkova by Philip Bond, 2009

You know when I said earlier that getting women into space wasn’t really a priority? Not compared to getting women into Parliament, for example. Well, in a way that’s not true. It’s all a priority. Because real life role models give you the permission to have the dream. Every girl who dreams of being an astronaut won’t become one. But she may become an engineer, or a physicist, a mathematician, a pilot, an athlete. She might teach science to other girls. She may be a leader.

There are exceptional individuals who blaze a trail, like the women above. But I think I can safely speak for most of us when I say it’s nice to have someone to look up to.  Why was I so keen on being an astronaut? I think it was as much to do with Helen Sharman, who became the first British person in space when I was 8, as it was to do with my love of stars. You’ve probably deduced that I didn’t become an astronaut. But I did become a feminist, and it’s women like these that inspire me.

On a final point, I have no idea what to make of this merchandising opportunity. I sort of love it and it sort of makes me want to cry.

Anyway. It all started when I watched a cute documentary on 4oD about the people who build and buy doll’s houses. They are all – you may not be surprised to hear – gently eccentric. It’s lovely, anyway: ‘Hello Dollies’

Which reminded me of three things, as well as delivering a crushing desire to get myself a proper doll’s house rather than the fugly beige plastic 70s disaster I actually had as a child.

1. Phoebe’s excellent DIY doll’s house in Friends, which beats Monica’s posh one hands down. Here’s the clip, with Spanish subtitles for your amusement and education.
2. The wonderful and rather godlike fact that you can buy small bags of trees and shrubs from any good hobby shop. Why don’t I have them all over my flat?
3. A website of modded, one-of-a-kind fantasy / celebrity Barbies which are Quite Something to look at. Here’s my favourite – vampire pirate Barbie.

That is all from me on dolls for now. Over and out.

This is what I sent him, hastily scribbled in my lunch break. I was trying to capture the most important things I’ve learnt in my five years at the non-profit comms coalface:

Inspired by the medieval mystery plays, this modern drama is rooted in the history of Bankside – London’s “outlaw borough” – mixing Bible stories with local folklore and contemporary humour.

Crossbones Graveyard Gates

It’s not Shakespeare (although he is in it, and Chaucer too – both had strong ties to the area) but it should be an entertaining performance.

The play stitches together symbols from across the centuries, from high art and street scurf, and it’s full of church spires and rags, goddesses, whores, history and magic.

It was inspired by the discovery of the Crossbones Graveyard in Borough. The play was written partly to restore a voice and a memory to the 15,000 nameless people buried there outside consecrated ground – prostitutes and criminals, the sick and the mad.

The whole project is an amazing example of modern myth-making, of a community of misfits and an urban space reclaimed for the non-specific spiritual. One day I’m going to tie a ribbon to the gate and commemorate one of the thousands of born-forgotten women who are buried there.

Liberty conducted a ComRes poll in December and found this startling result: the British public support human rights. 96% believe it is important that there is a law that protects rights and freedoms in Britain. However only 11% of respondents remember receiving or seeing any information from the Government about the law that does (source).

Our campaign aims to increase understanding and respect for human rights values, and to give people a chance to learn about the Human Rights Act and what it means for them. Please help us by sharing the link www.love.commonvalues.org.uk as widely as you can, with your friends, colleagues and networks, and share the love for our Human Rights Act.

There were some really stunning pieces, beautiful and mesmerising, some were creepy, or witty, all intelligent. It was packed when we went, and the abundant duct tape, neon, chatter and clanking of machinery gave the impression of being jostled through some kind of intergalactic souk.

Given the subject matter and the crowd you might expect the show to attract, *everyone* was taking photographs, liveblogging, podcasting, or filming the artworks, so there’s lots for people who didn’t get to see it, this video by Rainycatz takes in a lot of the really eerie lovely stuff that was going on.

There’s also a ton of Kinetica pictures on Flickr which are well worth a browse. Here’s a short video I took on my phone of some serenely spinning solar-powered glassy blue discs, which made me think of an otherwordly orrery: Kinetica – Orrery

I will add the title of that piece and the artist when I can get their website to work – it is clearly not futuristic enough to handle my OS + browser combo (oh snap!) Ok, have tracked it down, it’s called ‘Multiple Organism’ by Daniel Chadwick.

Other favourites include ‘Tease’ by Kathy Taylor, which has really grown on me. It has more layers than might be apparent at first glance, and it’s gentle play with a political/social theme appealed to me. As well as the ‘oooh flying teabag!’ reaction, of course.  You can see the movement in the video above.

The Most Unsettling Work award goes to ‘Memory’ by Mital and Papadakis, which was eerie in the extreme. Plus I’m a sucker for neurological imagery in art from Keats onwards. From ‘Ode to Psyche’:

In some untrodden region of my mind,
Where branchèd thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,
Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind

Wow, I am the culturedest!

There were others, but they have been eaten already.