Bookish Spinsters is Being Postponed

This is an announcement to say that Bookish Spinsters is going to on break until the New Year. I've had some really bad news recently, and unfortunately, I'm just not able to put the passion and thought into these posts that not only I would like but I feel is required for this link-up. I'm hoping those who read the posts will bear with me as I get myself together, and will come back to reading my Bookish Spinsters posts in the New Year.

Thanks for understanding.

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Bookish Spinsters: Equality in Sport

Bookish Spinsters is a weekly link-up where we discuss feminism based on a topic/question/prompt, and other feminist book bloggers and book tubers join in with their response. Feel free to join in at any time, I just ask that you link back to Bookish Spinsters. For more info and the list of future Bookish Spinsters topics, go to the Bookish Spinsters page.

This week's topic is Equality in Sport.

I have very little interest in sport. I don't play sports, and I very rarely watch it. But there are a lot of women and girls who are really interested in sport, and yet we very rarely see anything on TV for women's teams competiting. The only thing I can think of where we often see women taking part is in tennis, especially when Wimbledon comes around, yet the focus is still mostly on the male tennis players. And a lot of the talk about the female tennis players I hear is focused on the grunts they make or masculine people perceive their bodies to be. Because obviously we can't just concentrate on the match when women are involved. We also see more women when it comes to the Olympics, but in general, we hardly see any coverage of women in sports.

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Bookish Spinsters: Revenge Porn/Non-Consensual Pornography

Bookish Spinsters is a weekly link-up where we discuss feminism based on a topic/question/prompt, and other feminist book bloggers and book tubers join in with their response. Feel free to join in at any time, I just ask that you link back to Bookish Spinsters. For more info and the list of future Bookish Spinsters topics, go to the Bookish Spinsters page.

This week's topic is Revenge Porn/Non-Consensual Pornography.

This is something that gets me so mad. So mad. Because, again, it's another way for people to blame women.

First up, what is revenge porn/non-consensual pornography? According to Gov.uk and The Ministry of Justice's Be Aware B4 You Share campaign, it's "the sharing of private, sexual materials, either photos or videos, of another person without their consent and with the purpose of causing embarrassment or distress."

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Bookish Spinsters: Rape & Sexual Assault

Bookish Spinsters is a weekly link-up where we discuss feminism based on a topic/question/prompt, and other feminist book bloggers and book tubers join in with their response. Feel free to join in at any time, I just ask that you link back to Bookish Spinsters. For more info and the list of future Bookish Spinsters topics, go to the Bookish Spinsters page.

This week's topic is Rape & Sexual Assault.

I had written a really long post for this, and then it all disappeared on me and I couldn't get it back. So this is the shorter version, with the hopes that I can share my thoughts of what I originally wrote in the comments, if we can get a discussion going.

I talk about rape, sexual assault and rape culture for the next week or so as part of Sex in Teen Lit Month II, so today, instead of giving my thoughts generally on this topic, I want to talk about something in particular. On 2nd November, BBC aired Is this Rape? Sex on Trial (from the date this post went live, there are 18 days left to watch the programme on BBC iPlayer). In the programme, 24 male and female 16 - 18-year-olds are shown a three part drama of a party, a sexual encounter at the party, and the aftermath, and are asked to discuss, at the end of each part, what they saw, and answer a specific question. I knew this programme would annoy and anger me, but I also found it really interesting. The teens were so confused over what constituted rape, and what constituted consent, and various opinions on what they saw. What was interesting to me was how they were given the opportunity to explain why they thought the way they did, and it was so eye-opening as to how little understanding there is about rape and consent. It's a hugely important programme, one I hope you watch by clicking the link above, and discuss with me in the comments.

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Bookish Spinsters: Motherhood & Children

Bookish Spinsters is a weekly link-up where we discuss feminism based on a topic/question/prompt, and other feminist book bloggers and book tubers join in with their response. Feel free to join in at any time, I just ask that you link back to Bookish Spinsters. For more info and the list of future Bookish Spinsters topics, go to the Bookish Spinsters page.

This week's topic is Motherhood & Children.

I am yet to have children, but even so, I'm aware of the grief women get when it comes to children. Everyone seems to have an opinion on the best way to be a mother, and no matter what a mother does, someone's going to think she's doing it wrong.

We live in a world now where women are can work. We also live in a world where the cost of living is quite expensive. For many families, this means that the father and mother both have to work - whether they want to or not. There are also mothers who enjoy their job, and want to get back to work once their maternity leave is up. However, society seems to be of the opinion that working mothers are bad mothers. We still seem to have the old, antiquated idea that mothers should be home and looking after their children, which harks back to the idea of a woman's purpose and role as the care-giver; you raise your children, you care for your husband, you spend your life in the kitchen. The idea that mothers shouldn't work but be at home with their children has no bearing on whether they're bad mothers, because that's simply not the case. It's just an idea rooted heavily in sexism about A Woman's Place. There are going to be some mothers who would love to be at home with their children, but work because they simply can't afford to. They don't need the extra hassel of being made to feel others think they're doing something wrong when they don't have a choice.

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Bookish Spinsters: Sex & Female Sexuality

Bookish Spinsters is a weekly link-up where we discuss feminism based on a topic/question/prompt, and other feminist book bloggers and book tubers join in with their response. Feel free to join in at any time, I just ask that you link back to Bookish Spinsters. For more info and the list of future Bookish Spinsters topics, go to the Bookish Spinsters page.

This week's topic is Sex & Female Sexuality.

This is a topic that I'm quite passionate about, because women are so badly sex-shamed! I think it's generally more acceptable than it used to be for a woman to have a healthy attitude towards sex, in that that she knows herself and what she wants when it comes to sex, and is quite happy to seek it out. Women having casual sex and one night stands are, as I said, generally more acceptable now, and I think this is great! It's not unheard of, it's quite common, and for the most part, it's ok.

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Bookish Spinsters: What Is Feminism?

Bookish Spinsters starts today, and I'm so excited for us all to get talking about feminism!

Bookish Spinsters is a weekly link-up where we discuss feminism based on a topic/question/prompt, and other feminist book bloggers and book tubers join in with their response. Feel free to join in at any time, I just ask that you link back to Bookish Spinsters. For more info and the list of future Bookish Spinsters topics, go to the Bookish Spinsters page.

This week's topic is What is Feminism?

What is Feminism?

For me, feminism is equality. There's a misconception that feminists hate men, and want a world where women have the power. This is just not the case. Feminism is all about equality; it's about men and women being on equal footing. It's about losing the sexism and the double standards. It's not about women being valued more highly than men, but being valued just as much as men, and having the same opportunities as men.

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Announcing Bookish Spinsters!

I was really inspired by Am I Normal Yet? by Holly Bourne. In the book, the three friends, Evie, Lottie and Amber discuss how they're not a fan of how the word "spinster" has such negative connotations to it - the old, haggared, lonely cat lady nobody wants - when the male counterpart, "bachelor", only has positive connotations. They decide to reclaim the word, and give it new meaning; to them, a spinster is, in a nutshell, a strong, independant feminist who knows her the worth of women. They form The Spinster Club where they get together to discuss sexism and feminist ideas. This whole idea was on my mind a lot as it's so awesome! I began talking with some fellow bloggers and booktubers about it and an idea I have to create something that we could do online, and Bookish Spinsters was born!

Inspired by Top Ten Tuesday as well as Am I Normal Yet?, Bookish Spinsters is a weekly link-up to discuss feminism and feminist ideas. Every Friday there will be a different feminist topic for bloggers and booktubers to respond and reflect on. To find out more about about the link-up and for the schedule, head to the Bookish Spinsters page.

The first topic is What is Feminism?, and the link-up will go up next week, Friday 30th October.

Please feel free to comment or tweet me @JoanneStapley with suggestions for topics, questions or prompts, and please get talking about Bookish Spinsters, using the #BookishSpinsters hashtag, so more people can get involved!

I'm really looking forward to reading all your posts!

Note: There will be a graphic, it's just still in the works. I'll tweet once a graphic is available.

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