Boredom is Counterrevolutionary

This is what a Young Feminist Looks like Blog Carnival

Hello, my name is Thomas French, I’m 22 and I’m a young feminist.

To me, feminism is important. More important than cheese on toast.

At the age of 18 I was a nursing student, by 19 I was a feminist. I was bullied, ignored and made to feel very small, all because of my gender. Having experienced sexism, I felt that it was something that needed to be stopped, no one should be judged due to their gender. But all I had to do was leave nursing and pretty much, never have to experience that again. Most women experience that everyday, throughout their lives.

That isn’t fair and needs to be changed.

I try to be as active as I can within the feminist community, campaigning, protesting and rasing awareness at the gender gap that exists. From simple acts of wearing feminist t-shirts, tweeting on twitter calling passive sexism where I see it, writing letters to companies that promote sexism to working with Amnesty International for Stop violence against Women campaign and other feminist groups to try to make real change.

One of my favourite acts so far is working with Amnesty International and the Black Sisters for the No Recourse campaign. We conducted a mass lobby of the UK Parliament, talking to many MPs, putting in an early day motion and creating a big media buzz. It was successful and when ever I see it reported, I feel very proud to have taken part.

It upsets me when conservatives and the like say that feminism isn’t an issue, because it is. Laws have been passed, boundaries have been crossed and times have changed, yet feminism still is as important as ever.

They say the population of the world is about 6,864,700,000 and about half of that is made up by women. Curiously, women don’t share half of the world, not even a large chunk. I guess it takes a World of billions to hold a gender back. I hope you enjoyed the public enemy joke, feminism and hip hop are not the best bed fellows. I also hope you enjoyed the blog about reading about what a young, male, feminist looks like.

The Oily Truth

This ad was paid for by Amnesty International volunteers to raise awareness about the unethical actions of Oil Company Shell. It was meant to be printed by the Financial Times today, but at the last moment, it was pulled. The Metro and Evening Standard have no problem with this ad, it is just the FT that has seen fit to censor the truth about one the world’s biggest and perhaps most unethical oil companies.

Tim Hancock, Amnesty International UK’s campaigns director, said:

“The decision by the Financial Times is extremely disappointing. We gave them written reassurances that we would take full responsibility for the comments and opinions stated in the advertisement. The money to pay for the advertisements came entirely from more than 2,000 individuals online, who we’d asked to fund an ad campaign targeting Shell’s AGM – and it really caught their imagination. And I am sure these supporters will share with us our sense of deep disappointment.”

Shell’s $9.8bn profits come at a terrible cost for the people who live in the Niger Delta, who have to drink polluted water, breath in air that smells of oil and gas, eat fish that are contaminated, tend and farm land that is unfit and spoilt due to Shell’s actions. Shell refuses to adequately clean up oil spills and take care of the over damages that the company does while working in the Niger Delta.

Shell needs to clean up its act and it will only do this from pressure from the rest of the world. The FT should have printed this, the FT and the rest of us need to do more to make Shell responsible for the actions in the Niger Delta.

For more information please go to the Amnesty International Website

http://www.protectthehuman.com/campaigns/demanddignity