Women and girls

Mikki writes about the International Women's Day.

In fact, many Finnish bloggers did yesterday since that's when it was celebrated. Strangely or not, no one mentioned it here. Maybe that tells something about this society, maybe it tells us something about Finns and their culture. There was however a short playful discussion about women being called girls on the radio this morning where writer and broadcaster Bonnie Greer and the Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe had been invited to talk about the subject (not that they mentioned International Women's Day).

Now I'd hate to agree with Ann Widdecombe on anything, but I guess in this case I do. I don't generally mind being called a girl - or more precisely, being "one of the girls". I guess the difference here is that singular makes it personal and condescending as in - "Hey, you girl over there", whereas it's quite common that women themselves talk about "girls' night out" - almost eluding to some kind of "sisterhood". I often talk about "girls" when talking about my female friends and myself.

Bonnie Greer's point was that we should think about how society portrays and talks about women at a time when great inequalities still exist. The cause it good - but whether this is the way to further the cause I'm not sure. Also she's originally from US where the girl-culture doesn't exist (as in women don't talk about themselves as girls) so I can imagine that against that background it can feel a bit weird.

So when does a word or a saying become an insult then? As I said, if "girl" was directed directly at myself I would probably take it as a some kind of attempt for the other person to belittle me. (Funnily enough in Japanese - a very polite language - it's a very big insult to use words like that when addressing older people) Or when does harassment become harassment? This is one of the times where subjectivity is really important - if it feels bad to me, it's bad. These kinds of issues are really difficult to define beforehand - my boss calling me a girl would (most likely) be a bad thing, my dad calling me one would be ok. I would let some person touch me without a problem, another one doing I might feel harassed. It's not even about intention of the offending person - they might not wish to offend by smacking me on the bum but think of it as a compliment, whereas I would most likely take it as harassment.

But really, Mikki writes about some real issues concerning women's rights, and does it better than I can - so go and read his entry if you haven't done so already. I, after all, live in a civilised country where I can go outside without my husband, go to work and own property instead of being it. I can write this blog and talk about things that bother me in my own trivial scale.

I think I will take Mikki's advice and go and give some money to Amnesty.

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