Category: Stuff that just happens

Be your best

Daughters doing GCSE’s: three down, one current, one to go. Bloody exams. Learning by rote. Mind maps. Another new syllabus. Stress. As a parent I have got very used to the saying, ‘do your best’. It’s not my place to add pressure, it’s my job to be the support team – the one who offers sympathy and comfort food. All I am asking of my daughters is that they give it their best shot. That they don’t let themselves down by a lack of planning. They all have differing abilities. They are all leading very different lives under the same roof, but this one expectation fits all: do your best.

In my Taekwon-do teaching, particularly when a grading is imminent for a student or a competition, I will also tell them to, ‘do their best’. Across their entire Taekwon-do journey, I want them to ‘be their best’. It’s such a personal journey and one that should not be compared with another student’s.

As humans, we are hard-wired to compare. It’s completely natural and yet deep down we know that on the whole it is unhelpful and irrelevant. As parents we are generally at our comparing worst. We find ourselves doing it, even if we’re not voicing it, we’re thinking it. Sometimes I have parents apologetically approaching me and asking why one student is grading and their child isn’t, when to the parent their standard looks the same. I don’t blame the parent for asking what others are probably thinking. As I said, it’s natural and therefore entirely understandable.

Yet what also needs to be understood is encapsulated within the context of that phrase: ‘be your best’.

There is no Taekwon-do ‘type’ that everyone has to conform to in order to progress. I have been teaching Taekwon-do for nearly 30 years and throughout that time I have taught naturals and unnaturals, disabled and able-bodied. Special needs students. Males and females, young and old. There are no barriers to any of these students progressing. Their journey, their goals.

On paper, just like the GCSE’s and other exams, progression to the next belt is the fulfillment of specific criteria. But just as it is with people sitting public exams, amongst the candidates there is a plethora of differences. A whole host of different things going on in their lives, in their bodies and in their minds and these things aren’t always visible.

I truly believe that it is the job of the examiner and teacher to take these differences and guide each individual student along their own path. This path is the one that is allowing them to, ‘be their best’. Not compared to the student who stands next to them in class. Not compared to the student they watched nailing a pattern on You Tube, or winning gold at a competition.

‘Their best’ is different to these people’s best. Not necessarily better, not necessarily worse, but that isn’t what actually matters. It’s just different.

So as parents and teachers I think that it is important to remind ourselves that whilst it is quite normal to compare, it is ultimately irrelevant. Because if we truly believe in the mantra, ‘be your best’, then we truly believe that the journey is personal and that it is this individualism that actually makes life so great.

 

Grass roots

Three things collided on my social media feed today: an article showing that despite girls outperforming boys at school, the statistics against them in terms of equality go steadily downhill from there. The second was a video from Finland that clearly depicts how young boys see girls as their equals and feel they should get the same rewards for doing the same job as they do and the third was a friend on Twitter, whose 11-year-old son had asked her what a feminist is and once she’d explained he replied, “oh, so I’m one then”.

All these elements can on one level give us hope, but at the same time they are extremely depressing. Because whilst girls are born equal to boys, there’s immediately a whole load of gender stereotyping that is shat right upon them.

It takes a huge amount of parenting in a particular way, a mountain of good teachers and a strong will to shovel your way out of the crap as a female.

In my book, ‘Raising girls who can Boss it’ I talk about the importance of bringing up our daughters to be confident, self-assured individuals. I teach Taekwon-do and when I have a girl in my class who is displaying a bit of attitude, I am pleased. It may challenge me as a teacher, but when channelled, it is exactly what she is going to need to boss life.

Of course the boys need strength of character developed and channelled too, but because of the patriarchal way society is set up, it’s vital that as teachers and parents we are hammering home to both sexes, that boys and girls are equal. It is too easy to get drawn into traps.

Parenting is bloody hard work and we don’t necessarily feel we have the mental capacity to be waging the equality battle. It’s so easy to not notice the gender stereotyping that underlines most things and is all set to sabotage us when we are knackered and wrung out.

I really do believe that the only way we are going to achieve gender equality is by mass education of the young. By the time they leave school the statistics are clearly telling us that it’s too late. The damage has already  been done.

I worry that we sense that little boys are emotionally vulnerable and want to protect their fragility, whilst simultaneously seeing their physicality and wanting to enhance it. Or perhaps we are suffocating boys’ emotions, as we perceive them to be weak. Either way it may leave the boys confused.

Boys, just like girls, are emotionally vulnerable, but the way society reacts to this is perhaps the crux of the problem with gender inequality in the adult world. Maybe boys just aren’t sure what they are supposed to be. So while we are telling girls to ‘boss it’, we aren’t quite sure how to deal with the boys and where there’s uncertainty, the familiarity of societal norms and stereotyping prevail.

We have to teach our boys at every opportunity that boys and girls are equal and our expectations of them must reflect it, in the same way as should our expectations of girls. I often get comments from young boys in my Taekwon-do classes that suggest that the girls in the class are weaker. I make sure that I use every comment made like this as an opportunity to educate .

We know that the task for parents and teachers is massive. It’s daunting too. The media is a force to be reckoned with and as it controls our society it is a huge beast to fight.

In sport the experts are always talking about, ‘grass roots’. That is the key to Olympic success. That is how our sports teams will win major tournaments. Train them young. This is how champions are made.

Well I think the same is true of the fight for gender equality. Grass roots is where it has to start for us to win and achieve success.

Born fighters

From the moment a female is conceived, she is already at a disadvantage. She is already labelled in pink: on the cards people buy to congratulate her parents, the clothes that she wears and the gifts that she’s given. From conception a fighter is born.

Women are born fighters. In fact, it’s so inbuilt that we don’t even notice we are fighting. Growing-up we take a lot on the chin. It takes a big hit to knock us down.

We call these knocks ‘life’ and we live our lives to the full. Perhaps to our detriment we put up with a lot. With harassment and discrimination, with being made to feel less worthy.

We fight on. We are emotional warriors. We wear our hearts on our sleeve. We feel compassion and anger. We feel empathy and pain.

Women are always fighting something. Even each other. Contrary to the weak, mild-mannered stereotype, we were born to fight. The irony of the label ‘the weaker sex’! We were not born weak.

Weakness is learnt. Weakness is a societal demand. Weakness is thrust upon us to make others feel strong and in control.

But we were born to fight. Women are fighters with their hearts and with their voices. This is what we want our girls to be.

It’s in our blood.

#InternationalWomensDay

#NoVictim

For anyone thinking that the #MeToo campaign is about women playing the victim card, implying that women are actually saying #PoorMe – I really do believe you are wrong!

There’s three main definitions of ‘victim’: one is being harmed/injured/ killed by an event/crime/accident, one is someone who’s tricked and one is someone who ‘feels helpless or passive in the face of ill-treatment’. Funnily enough, by the very nature of women sticking their heads above the sea of inequality that exists in this world and stating #MeToo, these women are not fulfilling the definition of the passive victim. Yes, they are victims, but not in the way that many are trying to suggest. They have felt harmed and are using their voices and actions to make people aware.

I’m getting really irritated by the negativity surrounding the #MeToo campaign. Today I read in the Times, the journalist Clare Foges mockingly referring to the Oscars as a ‘carnival of sanctimony in honour of #MeToo’. I’ve heard talk of the hypocrisy of actresses wearing black at award ceremonies, when they are happily profiteering from and exploiting their own sexuality. Last week Weinstein’s lawyer said women are deciding to have sex with producers to advance their careers and so on and so forth. Some people are trying to undermine the importance of the #MeToo campaign.

Well of course they are! Isn’t this just the normal run of things? A woman dares to use her voice and suddenly it’s not a perfectly valid point, it’s a hideous whine that needs silencing. Oh, it’s ok if she has actually been raped, comes the caveat, then she can legitimately complain. But if she is just feeling like a victim of some minor inequality or other, then she should shut the fuck up with her #MeToo drone.

#MeToo is, according to some, making all men feel bad. Tarnishing the male population with the same brush.  Making the male species afraid of asking a woman out for a coffee. Insinuating that women play no active part in sexual encounters. Lionel Shriver says it’s, ‘demonising all male desire’. Basically, they’re saying, it’s anti-male.

What a load of bollocks! I’m getting frustrated that people are trying to undermine the biggest campaign waged against sexual harassment and inequality in my lifetime, by choosing to focus on the grey areas.

I feel we need to see #MeToo as the big picture. Yes, women flirt and some may exploit men and use their sexuality to gain a advantage. Yes, a brush on the knee is not as bad as being raped. But the point of #MeToo as I see it, is the much bigger picture: the vast canvas of inequality that it is bringing to everyone’s attention. The wider, difficult issues that exist around male dominance and power.

#MeToo is giving us a wake up call, a non-sexual kick up the bum. It’s telling us that problems are endemic. It’s teaching us that we need to bring up our children to understand specific behaviours that they need to conform to. Undoubtedly the key to real change is to educate the young.

The #MeToo campaign is only ‘toxic’, ‘mass hysteria’, ‘man-bashing’ and ‘a narrative of victimised women’ if you fail to see it as representative of something much bigger even than the sum of all its parts.

Unfortunately, for all the grey areas and for all the negatives it has provoked, it is needed. It is needed for our children. It is needed so that the pendulum of inequality swings the other way and settles in the middle. Feminism isn’t achieving enough. Hashtags are indeed an irritating concept born out of social media, engulfing great swathes of thought into one phrase. But however much it is pissing people off, however much it can be ridiculed and picked apart and however much it can be seen as going too far, #MeToo is shining the spotlight on something that was previously lurking in the shadows and for my daughters’ sake, I’m pleased.

Blowing in the wind

Watching the Winter Olympics in complete awe of the bravery, determination and talent shown by the competitors, it upset me to hear that the female ski jumpers had to fight for years to finally be allowed to jump in the Sochi Olympics four years ago (apparently one argument against it was that their reproductive organs may get damaged on landing) and even now they only get one event, while the men get three.

There are still, as we know, huge inequalities in sport across the board: from prize money, to coverage, to access…it makes for depressing thoughts and until there are more females holding top positions on boards, progress will continue to be slow. Women are underrepresented and therefore open to exploitation and abuse.

The female snowboarders competed in horrendous winds in Pyeongchang a couple of days ago and most people, including the competitors, felt it should have been postponed as it was dangerous. Yet the message that came across was that the female athletes hadn’t made their voices heard. That they hadn’t wanted to make a fuss, to rock the boat. To me this mirrors the bigger picture of where female athletes see themselves in the pecking order.

Women need to have a voice in sport – they need to make themselves heard!

As I was pondering this inequality (and I ponder it often, as my daughter is a footballer) I thought about how important it is that we get girls into sport and keep them there! The vast majority give up sport as teenagers.

Teenage girls are incredibly self conscious and I’m convinced this is one of the main reasons why they quit sport: the outfits, the gear, the sweat, the performance- it all draws attention to them at a time when they prefer to hide behind screens with filters and two hundred takes for that perfect look.

How do we convince our girls that sport will rock their self-esteem far more than 100 likes on Instagram and more than comments such as ‘beaut’ and ‘hotty’ ever will?

How the hell are we going to convince them, when actually there’s not enough action coming from the top? This is the problem.

IF we are going to get more girls into sport, we’ve not only got to smash stereotypes at the ground level, we need to get a huge momentum going at the top end of the sports themselves.

Yes, we need sportswomen as role models, we need females in the boardrooms, we need female coaches, we need a VOICE!

The struggle is real. Sadly I think that we are years away from big change. As an International female Taekwon-do competitor, as a Taekwon-do coach, as a mum to a female International footballer, as an avid spectator of sport, I see and have seen terrible inequality.

In my sport I teach people how to fight in the ring. As a female it can often feel as if every step towards equality is a fight. Not all women are taught to fight. The ‘fight’ response is often quashed by gender stereotyping at a young age. While boys are told to ‘man up’ girls are conditioned to be ‘like a girl’ – both are wrong.

But the fight is on!

We must all play our part. We must not allow our voices to get lost in the wind.

      Stepdaughter fighting in the ring

What if?

Whenever a debate opens up about female objectification, the waters always get muddied with ‘what if’s’: what if I want to compliment a woman on what she is wearing? What if I want to wear skimpy clothes? What if there were male grid boys? What if I want to ask a woman for a coffee? What if a 60 foot banner of David Beckham in pants is adorning Piccadilly Circus? What if the grid girls enjoyed their job? The list is endless as the debate goes on.

Yes, muddy waters.

#metoo has now become muddied. People are asking if it’s gone too far? Is the movement sexist towards men?

At a time when the heated debate around the inequality of women is moving on a pace (faster than any meaningful action) I think we need to rewind and consider history.

Women have always been and still are unequal to men. But let’s for a moment rewrite the history books.

What if men as well as women had always been objectified? Human nature loves a beautiful form (beauty, of course, being subjective). Women are sexual beings with huge sexual appetites. Women love to lust over semi-naked males. Women are apt to flirt, to tease and to touch. So what if the male form had, since the beginning of time, been championed as something to openly admire? What if there had always been grid men and males in speedos telling us what round it is in the boxing ring? What if products aimed at females had always been sold by the objectification of the male?

Because women love that too – right?

If we rewrite history, where would we be now? Would there be equality? Would women have always been paid the same as men? Would girls not be growing up thinking that their feelings matter less than men’s? Would women be less harassed?

We’ll never know. It’s complicated. It’s muddy and ‘what if’s’ seem a little pointless.

History has been written in a tangled web of words, emotions, actions and conditioning. It is going to take years to untangle the mess it has become.

100 years ago women stood together and gained the right to vote. 100 years on and women are arguing with other women about the meaning of equality. Sometimes accusing each other of jealousy if they don’t agree with women wearing bikinis and parading as eye candy for men. Suggesting that fellow females are exaggerating harassment or criticising them for not speaking out. Some are saying that women’s rights have been taken away by the end of the grid girl.

So, what if we focus on our children? What if we teach our sons and daughters that they are equal? What if we reflect this in our actions? What if we don’t limit a girl’s potential by always referring to her first by her looks? What if we tell her that it’s what she thinks and feels that matters most and not how someone reacts to her? What if we tell our boys that ‘no’ means ‘no’ and girls that it’s ok to say it? What if we stop telling our sons to ‘man up’ and stop crying ‘like a girl’? What if the future, 100 years from now is a more gender balanced place?

‘What if’ doesn’t have to be pointless.

Click on the link:

Not just ticking boxes

When I did my teacher training (PGCE) over 20 years ago, we were encouraged to plan our lessons to the minute. To set out our objectives to the students at the beginning of the class and to summarise what they had hopefully learnt at the end. All of this is important, and yet through this admirable meticulous planning I think that sometimes, something gets lost, perhaps forgotten. That is the very people who we are going to teach. Our students.

You see, as we are focusing so intently on our lesson plans, we are perhaps seeing the lesson through our own eyes. We are imagining how we are going to teach it. How we are going to get our points across and how we are going to make ourselves understood so that boxes can be ticked.

Through many years of experience I have come to realise that this isn’t the way.

When I blog I use my own voice, but as I write I imagine the reader. I think about how they are receiving my words and what it will mean to them. I try to put myself in their shoes as the receiver, rather than concentrating on myself as the giver, the planner, the font of the knowledge. I took the same approach when writing my book. I wrote it as if I was the consumer, which tragically meant laughing at my own jokes!

When I teach my Taekwon-do classes, I see every student as an individual. Everyone has a different goal. Even those students who are grading for the same belt will be approaching it in very different ways. This is why it is so important not to just tick the boxes. This is why meticulous planning must remain flexible and it is why Instructors must approach the lesson from the student’s viewpoint and not just from the point of view of what they want to get across.

This approach, although it sounds sensible and obvious, actually takes a flip in the Instructor’s head. It probably takes confidence that perhaps comes from experience. It means that every time I address a student, I am trying to think about what I am saying from their point of view and not just thinking that what I am saying is imparting great knowledge.

Each student hears things differently. Each student walks in to the dojang with a different agenda. No student fits in a perfect square box. When I take the time to immerse myself into each of my students’ heads, then I know that their goals will be reached and their individual boxes will be ticked.

Photo credit to Radnor House

 

 

Like good girls

I’ve just opened the paper and there are two articles on one page relating to sexual harassment. The first has the headline, ‘I struck a deal to escape Weinstein, says star’ and the other is headlined, ‘Minister is named on secret chat group about sex pest MP’s’.

It strikes me that the main theme that these articles share is not just harassment…it’s fear.

Fear is allowing sexual harassment to perpetuate. I mean, how crazy is it that there needs to be a WhatsApp group for women working in Westminster, on which they share information on MP’s with a reputation for sexually inappropriate behaviour? Seriously. Why the hell do us women feel the need to keep it amongst ourselves? Why aren’t we shouting this stuff out, rather than keeping it in the confines of WhatsApp?

Why?

Why are we muttering quietly to each other about intolerable and unacceptable behaviour, which is allowing that behaviour to carry on?

Why did every woman who put #metoo on her social media feed, not feel able to expand? Why did many women who thought it, not put it?

Fear. Fear and shame.

Women aren’t supposed to have a voice. We’re supposed to be nice and kind. When we get angry, people get very nervous. It just doesn’t sit right. We’re supposed to be the epitome of calm and control and really shouldn’t lose our shit. Society brings us up knowing this as it’s seemingly better that way.

There are so many reasons for our fear: fear of losing or not getting a job, fear of being disbelieved, fear of being ignored…perfectly legitimate reasons for fear. Then the shame – shame that we didn’t leave/shout/retaliate/say ‘no’ more forcefully.

Fear and shame are the two reasons why men are ultimately in control. We don’t like to admit it, but it’s the truth.

This is why we must bring our daughters up to have a voice.
This is why they must not feel shame.
This is why they must face their fear.

Because we are failing to.

Where are their role models? Whispering and silent. That’s where we are. Hiding the truth to keep the peace…like good girls.

Why give a f**k?

I think the advertisers who are withdrawing their advertising from Mumsnet (no doubt clammy, shaking and requiring therapy) are seriously missing the point. An advertiser is surely looking to scoop up its largest target audience. If you are advertising on Mumsnet then one would presume that your target audience is, well erm, mums. I think it is frankly hilarious that the advertisers in question must think most mothers are Mary Poppins. Well, I really hate (love) to burst their advertiser’s bubble, but Mary fucking Poppins we ain’t.
I’m so sorry if you find it a little bit scary hearing the ‘f’ word, but after a few (hundred) sleepless nights, it does tend to slip out. Christ knows we were nuns before we had kids, but now the little fuckers (oops, look at me…there I go) push us to voice our thoughts where we feel we can. At Sunday lunch with the MIL, rocking in the corner saying, ‘fuck, fuck, fuck’ under your breath, isn’t deemed appropriate. So we turn to a forum for mum’s, who we know won’t mind the odd expletive. In fact, they’ll actually love it! Because funnily enough, the majority of us mums go through our entire mummy life saying, ‘fuck, shit, bollocks, wankers’ under our breaths on such a regular basis that when the nursery teacher turns to us and asks why our little darling uttered a swear word today, we can only hang our head sheepishly and admit defeat.
But defeated we aren’t! Because places like Mumsnet come to the rescue and bind all of us together (and sometimes against each other) in a communal pool of understanding.
And so, dear advertisers: more fool you if you shun the opportunity to reach millions of fairly like-minded souls. No-one actually gives a fuck.
Image result for shocked face

Have you ever?

Have you ever been in a situation in which you know a person’s behaviour is just so incredibly wrong, but you feel completely helpless? When your children are being put at risk and there is nothing you can do? When your child is being manipulated and emotionally blackmailed by people who should know better? When these people then turn on you and tell you to “shut up and listen!” When they tell you that you are ‘disturbed’ and ‘disgraceful’. When they tell your children that you are a ‘control freak’ in order for them to try to keep their tight grip around them.

Have you ever wanted to tell everyone you speak to about the injustice? To see their shocked faces? To hear the disbelief in their voice? To hope they can give you a solution?

Have you ever thought to yourself that something can’t be happening, but you know that it is? Turning thoughts over and over in your mind to try to make sense of nonsense. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, where there is no doubt that they are wrong.

Have you ever had someone try to crush you? With actions and with words. Try to twist the truth so much that you are looking the distorted picture in the face and thinking, ‘how did we end up here?’ And ‘why?’ Have you ever had people try to turn your loyal and innocent children against you? To involve them for a plotted end game.

Have you ever been told by someone that you are, ‘deeply unhappy’? When in their arrogant and misplaced wisdom, they are so deeply wrong.

Yet more importantly, have you ever risen? Heaved yourself up when you were exhausted by the emotional fight. Watched the confusion from afar. Almost pitied those people for what they’ve done. Have you ever found a resolution through composure? Through sense – common and good. Have you ever stood on the higher ground and smiled?

Have you ever?