Equality yet

Recently, I've been studying some of the women involved in what has come to be known as the first wave of feminism, which occurred during the 19th and early 20th century. The rights they fought for on behalf of women have given me the opportunities I have today. They have been directly responsible for my personal freedoms as a woman; amongst other things, the right to own property, the right to have a profession and earn and retain my own wages, the right to an education equal to that of men, the right to vote. I could go on.

These things have enriched my life and I am in the enviable position of being able to take these things for granted. Yet, even in this era of enhanced rights, women are still objectified. I've blogged around a similar topic before, but the recent events with Caster Semenya have shown another side to this.

Those first wave feminists set out to prove that femininity is no barrier to what women can achieve. But, the recent Semenya story seems to show that we feel it's fine to condemn women for not being feminine enough. How long will it take us to understand that these preconceived notions of how feminine a woman should be simply hold us back? There should be no benchmark on womanliness, we must embrace our individuality. I firmly believe, we are human first and women second.

Those notions of femininity are a learned behaviour, socially constructed and anachronistic. Until we see this, I fear we can never completely gain the equality we deserve.

Split Personality - time for a completely new blog

It seems to me I have a propensity towards a split personality when it comes to my online world. I have places I go where I do work-related stuff and places I go to do personal stuff - and those two very rarely meet. For example, I use Facebook to hook up with my family and friends - these are people I know 'in reality', friends I actually know in person - and then I use Twitter for conversations based around my work, and those are people I may or may not have actually met.

When I first realised I was doing this, I thought it probably meant I was old-fashioned and outmoded. It's taken me some time, and numerous informal conversations with other people, to decide that I'm not outmoded and, in fact, many of us do exactly the same thing - we keep different parts of our lives separate, and not just online either. I was involved in an interesting conversation at a conference a few weeks ago with a fellow from another university who said he'd spent time observing his teenage son's online activity. His son, at any one time, might have three or four methods of communication open - he'd be using a gaming console and chatting with his online opponents, he'd have his mobile phone for texting close friends, he'd have email and chat windows open on his computer for other friends. And, all of these things, he would simply switch between depending on who he was speaking to and the task he wanted to achieve.

That definitely made me feel a lot better, I can't be outmoded if I use different tools because, if that teenager is anything to go by, younger people than me do it as well.

All this is apropos to the fact that I've decided to have more than one blog - one for personal stuff, where I can blog about all sorts of different things, and one for stuff that's somehow related to the work I do. Plus, having two also means I get to try out more than one blog platform.

This blog is my personal one. So, if you're reading this and wondering why it's all poncy/unstructured/touchy-feely somethings and nothings, then have a look at my work-related blog instead.