Sometimes I'm just too bouncy...

I'm in Year 3 at primary school. I'm in the Juniors now... I'm not supposed to ever ask to leave class for the toilet any more... Our bladders should be made of steel apparently, I think this rule is ridiculous.

We're learning to write 'joined-up'. Last year we were the first year to do the Year 2 SATs pilot. I was in an extra class for the "gifted and talented" pupils in the class... Handwriting went towards the level so we were taught to join up...

I enjoyed joining-up in pencil.

But now I'm in the Juniors and I've been given a pen... And apparently I'm not managing very well with it... My teacher wants to teach the whole class to do joining-up... So I'm told to stop joining-up my way and do it his way... It's difficult and I can't read what I've written.

I'm often told not to rock on my chair... Apparently I'll fall backwards and crack my head on the floor, or a table, or something. I've been rocking on my chair, I've been shuffling on my chair... We're meant to be quiet... We're writing something (22 years later I'm not sure what exactly is was we were writing) but my teacher has had enough of my rocking and fidgeting, and my talking, and fussing, and general exuberance. And I'm going to have to do without my chair for the rest of the lesson. If I can't learn to sit still I can see what it's like with no chair at all...

Everyone else still has their chair...

I try not to cry, to not be totally embarrassed, but I am, I'm flushed and angry, and I really was not rocking on my chair just to annoy the teacher.

I try writing while standing up and but I'm taller than every other girl in the class.. And I'm taller than the 6 boys as well.... I'm the tallest and I'm trying to stand at a desk and carry on working and everyone is looking at me.

Tall and chair-less...

I decide that I'll have to crouch I tuck one leg under the other and I spend the rest of the lesson balanced... I am now definitely being defiant... All I can think of is annoying the teacher because he embarrassed me. So I'm determined to balance AND do my work... Balancing and being able to write become the most important two tasks in the world... And I think that the teacher should know that I'm perfectly okay WITHOUT my chair... And so I tell him so... Not a good idea... He's more exasperated than ever and even though I get my chair back, eventually however, it's clear that I'm just too bouncy.

Later on I'm in Year 6... My parents are good friends with the teacher of the parallel class and her husband (he and my father were colleagues.)

I'm now the tallest girl in the school, I still talk too much, I still have too many opinions, I still shuffle about on my chair and don't finish my work. But still seem to learn everything I need to... Other than correct spelling, punctuation and handwriting. I have yet to finish a whole book from the reading library... (In the whole school year, I read two books, eventually)

It's Christmas, I'm at school late a lot for rehearsals and events... The night of the Carol Service, it's late (past 9) and I'm still going strong, I've played my flute, I've played my recorder, I've sung, we're all standing around... Mum, Dad, Jackie (the teacher) and John (her husband) and I am involved in the adults' conversation and I am being polite, but voicing my opinions and (for some moments of peace for my parents) I'm sent to fetch some mince pies.

I return to the circle and Jackie says (because it's the end of term, and they are all teachers and teachers work crazy hours)
"Aleks, I don't know what you're on, but I think we could all do with some!"

I'm 10... I am not entirely sure what she means, but I'm pretty certain that she wouldn't... I seem to elicit an "Oh no, 'too much Aleks'" response from most adults and even though they think I don't understand I'm like an over-wound spring, I totally do, I just can't do anything about it.

This morning I arranged to meet a friend, someone I've known for years online, but have never met in person. We meet at 10... I have a coffee and then something to eat and another coffee.... For the two and a half hours I talk almost nonstop... I talk with my hands, I draw invisible diagrams on the table with my fingers and I'm vaguely aware that I'm jiggling my own legs occasionally. But I'm engaged and the time flies by, and soon we're walking down the high street, and hugging, and saying "Goodbye" and "We must do this again soon."

I do some shopping and come home and still have buckets of energy... And I realise I need to pace myself.

Today is my first day working for myself. Not to make money or to become famous. But to be able to balance out the requirements of my work, with the requirements of my own life and wellbeing.

Now I'm 30, I can go to the toilet when I wish, if I want to rock on my chair, I can, no one is going to mark my handwriting. As long as I harm no one else I can, within the shape of my Friday every week, work towards my own goals and objectives. And I'm overwhelmed and I'm so bouncy... I am occasionally 'too much Aleks' even for myself. But it's good harness-able bounce... Energy that, if I spend it wisely, can make a difference in the world.

So I'll try, and even if I can't change the world it will make a world of difference to me.

#ThinkThanks... It begins!

[Pre-Script: I like Gilbert and Sullivan... I sang some as I entered the church when I married my AMAZING HUSBAND in August this year... They sometimes gave their works alternative titles the alternative title for this blog is as follows...]

How I got to be grateful for some really odd stuff (and other stories from friends)

I am grateful for some really odd stuff. Some things especially about myself which I have come to love.

I am really grateful, for example, that I'm relatively shy when it comes to dating... I wouldn't have met my husband otherwise. We met online our friendship and subsequent relationship was kindled across vast distances and we didn't spend a great deal of time in each others physical company... this was ideal for us... we grew together slowly and deeply. It's an oddity we each have that has been the making of our most precious and joyous marriage. How amazing is that?!

I'm grateful I'm tall I can wear beautiful long dresses and I am always first to spot my friends when meeting up somewhere, plus a quick glance can tell me if a restaurant or cafe is too full.

I'm grateful my mother made me stick at the piano lessons when I was six... I am still a terrible pianist, but I can play well enough to write my own music and then I get to hear people who are far more talented pianists than I am perform it!

I am grateful for Facebook and Twitter. Most people could live without social media.
I could, however the internet generally has brought me some of my strongest and closest friendships. If I had never met some of the folks I have over the years I would never have grown in all the unexpected ways I have done. I have found reserves of kindness and goodwill within the words and gestures of people from all over the world. I have been tested and challenged and have seen others share their brightest and darkest days with me in trust. I feel greatly privileged to be part of the lives of so many other souls out there in the world.

Rainbows always make me grateful!

And that brings me to the second part of my title I'm inviting other people onto these hallowed pages for the month of November. It's a month when many people I know practice gratitude with the USA Thanksgiving day falling in this month and the year feeling like it is drawing to a close it seems an apt time to consider those things which cause us to feel joy, and delight and say thanks.

I have for a while been a long distance friend of a community in London known as New Unity. And during November they are cultivating gratitude with a great hashtag as a reminder...

#ThinkThanks.

Those catchy eleven letters encapsulate an attitude I want to grow myself.

The act of thinking of thanking for many things... small things, large things, things which comfort me, things which scare me and those which force me to change.

And so I've invited other people to share in writing my blog for the rest of the month.

• There are going to be posts for EVEN days only (so there is less pressure on myself!)
• Posters are going to be from my wide circle of RL (real life) and online friends.
• Some may post under their own names others may make anonymous contributions
• Everyone will be talking about thanks/gratitude
• And anything (within reason) goes...

I am incredibly grateful that some friends have already signed up but if you want to have a go yourself please get in touch.

That's all from me for now... I may post alongside others contributions as the month unfolds... As always I look forward to learning lots and having fun doing it!

Why it's important to fight stigma

Below are a few extracts from a, then private, email to my now fiancée I sent over 7 years ago. I was 22 we were dating long distance and things should have been really good, but I'd started on a college course I was really struggling with and I knew things weren't going to get any better. In some ways writing this email saved me, it started me on a journey that I'm not sure will ever end... Because the honesty I expressed to the recipient of this letter has been solidified and strengthened.  Now I am in a place where I think it would be useful to talk about the practicalities of needing and seeking help, without stigma. I know this is something that needs to change in our view of mental health. I'm sharing this because it is obvious reading it back now how frightened I was of the possible repercussions in my future of being honest about my struggles.

The course I was on at the time was a PGCE a postgraduate certificate in education. I had already dragged myself through an undergraduate degree in a cloud of disarray and confusion. I truly believed that anyone with a history of depression would be considered unsuitable to work with children so my actions,  or rather inaction was affected by this position.

The email...

"I am so sorry I haven't been able to be happy and smiley.... it's called depression and I've been here before and if I get diagnosed with something like this I may never be able to get a job and that's before I've even finished this course. This wouldn't be the first time you see... it's on my medical records as mild depression.... just a low and fuzzy feeling... it's not you that makes me unhappy"

"I need you to understand that I get depressed... proper can't feel much past desperate but won't admit there is anything wrong or maybe I just can't get out of bed... I need to know that it's part of me and that you'll still love me and try and understand and that if I push you away it's not because I want to but it's because I'm scared... I'm scared of hurting you with my words and actions so much that I'll want to  not speak to you one minute just so I can feel the happiness of making up because I can't find the feeling otherwise. I am going to talk to the doctor about these things, but I need you to understand I'm not making it up. I have stood on train platforms holding back tears with a thread of reasonability and common sense telling me that  too many people would not get to work if.... well you see.

I have a tendency to put things out of proportion.... hence the 10 phone calls in 3 minutes.... I panic.... like anxiety kind of panic where I can't breath and can't think about anything else."

I didn't go to the GP...  As far as I remember I was too frightened of loosing my place on the course, of admitting failure. My hand was forced eventually, when I was in serious jepody of failing my placement and I was completely lost. I got a little help, but I refused medication when it was briefly mentioned in a dismissive and unhelpful manner by the locum GP that I saw just once. I thought that this would make it more obvious that something was wrong with me .
My college tried to help and I had a couple of conversions with a useless college counsellor who handed me some photocopied sheets about self esteem and recommended some herbal remedies. And I was allowed to defer my college work until the next term when I could try again.

That was the sum total of my treatment until late last year when a friend persuaded me that suffering was not really preferable to getting help and I had fallen so low that I was past the stage of caring what any one else thought of my decisions.

If when it had first gone on my records aged 20 that I should be followed up and I had been offered some talk therapy maybe things would have been very different. I am not asking to change the past I am wanting to change the future of treatment of mental health conditions in young people.

The stigma is embedded in our society, those closest to me unfortunately encouraged me to not talk about it,  to keep it quiet and to "be okay" rather than be honest.  They were trying to help because the stigma is as real as the illness, but everything has still had to be dealt with eventually.

Mental illness is already a hidden ailment, with most people who are suffering simply going about their daily lives and making adjustments where they can, but we must begin to talk about support and help for those who need it when they need it.

Just lately I have been very lucky to have come across the right people at the right time and the internet has been an invaluable source of support, but assessment by mental health professionals much earlier could have saved my time and strength.

The literal cost of stigma is written in the pattern of our society like letters through a stick of rock. Those who need flexible working,  those who can't work, those who have been hounded out of jobs with no understanding or support. This has both a financial cost and a human cost which is quite frankly too high and things should be very different.

Speaking out now is something I can and must do.

It's time to change.

So I've been quiet... I've been in here thinking....

Firstly this post is going to be a little personal, if you've read back through my posts or you will do... I never intended this blog to be so personal. I hope that in the future it needn't be so revealing and that I actually have some more local and community based stuff I am involved in to shout from the roof tops about.

But for now I want you to consider these three statements:

• I want to change the world.

• The world changes. I change.

• I already change the world a little every day.

I want to take a few moments of your time to think about perspective.
Now I am a person who deeply agrees with the first statement.
Many of my friends are too... on the whole that's why they are my friends, but most of us share more than that drive to make a difference.
We also share something more important and vital to how we view the world.
We're human and we struggle with our human brains... now this blog isn't about my mental health per say... although being ill has been the reason I've been so quiet for the first part of 2014 despite having plans to have written about six or seven posts on various things which have come up and begged to be written about!
It's a LOT of burden to want to make a difference... many of us unfortunately feel we're going against the current cultural norms if we speak out or stamp our feet... we shouldn't feel like this... we need to carry on talking AND listening.

Consider the second statement. Essentially we can't stop change... try as we might time moves on, we get a day older, we live, we grow etcetera etcetera! The world is dynamic... constantly changing and moving... and it takes us with it whether we want it to or not. Embrace this shifting... we're on a ride that isn't going to stop moving... so learn to relax into it... don't fight it... jumping up in the air doesn't defeat gravity... gravity is much bigger than you and constant jumping just makes you tired! :)

The third statement for me brings things full circle. I am already making a change.... if I'm thinking and acting in a changing way I am impacting my community... the ripples are already spreading and I don't need to make HUGE waves.... because if we all just ripple a little more BIG things can happen... but they don't need to... because small things do just as well.

I know this probably sounds like a weak answer to the worlds BIG problems! But you know what? It's really important to realise you can't solve them all alone... it FREES you up to actually start changing the things you can change.

I smile a lot... I am a VERY cheerful person... going back to my mental health for a minute... I often have a hard time with people believing I could possibly ever be depressed at all so sunny is my general disposition!
I make a point to smile AT people... and say please and thank you... and even... BLESS YOU in response to just normal stuff not just sneezes! It creates a connection between those around you, it also gets smiles returned and they get passed onto someone else because you just lightened the receivers world a little.

I want you to know how much changing that perspective makes a difference... recognising you already make a difference makes a difference. So put away the stick you're using to beat yourself up for:

• not completing all those projects you started
• not having cooked all the recipes you collected from last month's magazines which looked AMAZING
• not having found time to plant the seeds/bulbs/plants you bought last summer/autumn/winter
• anything else you just didn't do yet!

Spring is here NOW... and it's going to turn into the Summer somehow... be it a wet or dry, hot or cold.
Go out into the world and create some ripples.

Welcome to 2014- An Individualist Like Me

I have been racking my brain lately... or rather it's been racking itself. Recent events in my life have kind of picked my head up and given it a shake. Therefore I have found the contents rattled and spilling out at various points into conversations and meetings with others. Many of my friends are great listeners, many of them understand. But sometimes something just needs to be written as concisely and eloquently as possible and sent out into the world where it can live on it's own.

I have a serious problem with a word...

Freak- as defined in a Google search in these terms-

a person, animal, or plant with an unusual physical abnormality.
"a few freaks have been discovered, one amazing cat tipping the scales at no less than 43 lbs"

synonyms: aberration, abnormality, irregularity, oddity, monster, monstrosity, malformation, mutant;
freak of nature
"the mouse was a genetically engineered freak"

informal
a person regarded as strange because of their unusual appearance or behaviour.
"her books offer us the independent girl as something of a freak"
synonyms: oddity, eccentric, eccentric person, peculiar person, strange person, unorthodox person, individualist, free spirit, maverick, misfit; crank, lunatic; queer fish, oddball, weirdo, weirdie, nutcase, nut, nutter; odd bod; wacko, screwball, kook; case
"they were dismissed as a bunch of freaks"

My reasoning is this... I've been called this... I've been called lots of things, but this one hurts to remember and for some reason memories including this word are more vivid than most. It was used to describe me and my twin sister by some particularly idiotic members of my school community.

I think the reason it hurts so much is that as an insult it's true... I could ignore other words... like whore... or even the boys who found it ironic to shout.. HEY SEXY! I took these as untrue and therefore easily dismissed. But by definition my sister and I were and still are an irregularity... we're identical twins... we're rare and we're odd. We look and sound the same and once in our school uniforms despite our differing heights you'd have to know us very well to tell the difference. We also relish each others company, we're close and a conversation with my sister is even more rewarding to me than a conversation with any other person in the world. We talk we, philosophise, we share our separate spheres of knowledge knowing that the other will almost instantly understand if not accept our point of view.

The other parts of the definition that fits us very well is our unusual appearance. We're taller than average... especially me... and we're of Polish extraction which means in our case fair hair, extremely high cheek bones, piercing blue eyes, a pronounced nose and a strong jaw line... I recently described this to a friend in the following terms. "You know when you look at a Polish woman that if you mess with her she'll break your spine."

But the reason I'm writing this isn't to bemoan the bullying of my teenage years hurtful as it was. I'd like to reclaim the definition... I particularly like this chain of synonyms in the definition... individualist, free spirit, maverick

Being individual is hard for anyone. People can fail to separate your identity from that of your family or friendship group, but for me as much as I love my sister we really struggled with developing separate and distinct identities. With a few of my traits this meant almost suppressing things about myself in order to make myself different from her.

She was markedly alternative so I tried my hardest to be as "normal" as possible...
She was the Goth... I was the one in Marks and Spencer clothes
She was alternative and Pagan... I was the mainstream Christian
She was gay... I was straight
She did a science degree... I did an arts one

However I think that as get older I discover that really I am just as individual and unique as I choose to be. I like to dress in my own style and to suit my own shape. By beliefs are wide and varied and take in many different views and traditions. I'm bisexual and also pretty uninterested in living alongside any predefined gender stereotype either. And after my Music degree I studied IT instead and now spend my work time divided between training systems and using the creative technologies to design learning packages.

I guess those who called me a freak were right... but not for the reasons they were thinking of. Prejudice and fear is the root of many scenarios that result in bullying and insults, however I've moved on so far from where I was when I was 11 that I think that in my 30th year I intend to embrace my real self and be free-spirited and maverick. It's really the only way to make a difference.

Closing Doors Report- A Level Physics

On Monday a report was published about the gender bias of advice and encouragement given to girls to study those subjects traditionally studied by boys. From the Institue of Physics (IOP) website-

Professor Peter Main, Director of Education and Science at IOP, said, “For the first time, the full picture of the effect that gender stereotypes have on students’ subject choices is becoming clear and the results are very worrying.
“We are highlighting these findings to encourage schools to think seriously about gender balance. Leaving these stereotypes unchallenged creates unfair and unnecessary barriers and stops students achieving their full potential.”
The report investigates six subjects – physics, maths and economics, as three that show a male bias; and biology, English and psychology, three that show a female bias.
Although individual teachers are clearly important, the evidence strongly suggests that it is the school culture that determines whether the damaging effects of gender imbalances are overcome or at least reduced.

The statistic which was quoted on BBC 6Music News throughout the morning was "1 girl to every 4 boys studying A Level Physics". I can relate to this, I kicked up a fuss to get a second Physics class to run in the correct options block at high school so I could take both Physics and English! (My other three subjects were Chemistry, Music and Maths- I was part of that great experiment/total f*ck up known as AS levels ;) )

I was the only girl in my class of six.

I did feel like there was an expectation I would never be top of the class or excel in the subject, that I had to prove myself, to my male teachers, to my peers in the class. More was expected of me too- I was a girl- I had an example to set in terms of behaviour and standards, my work should have been tidier and I wasn't expected to easily understand the maths to do the mechanics equations!

The report highlights that it is generally the school environment that affects the choices young women take, and my school, though it had an exemplary exam record and was often highly praised for many things, did have quite arcane views on gender equality. I had been encouraged to study Physics by my lower school science teacher Mrs Gwillam, who unfortunately had left by the time I got to the Sixth Form. She was a wonderful and inspiring teacher who gently took her time to tell me that I would do well at Physics and I shouldn't be put off by the obvious and wide spread male domination of the subject.

I did, as I said before take English Literature as well in my AS (lower sixth) year... a fact that one of my teachers and I used to enjoy joking about since he had gone back to college to study it later on. Although as I progressed through the modules I, more than once, found my exams for these two subjects scheduled in the same date and time slots... statistically the combination of these two subjects is so rare that it's not seen as a problem to the exam boards to sit them in the same period.

That said there are two shining moments of acceptance from my male colleagues which really stick out for me.
Once in the first year when we had a quite frankly dozy newly qualified teacher. One day while he was on a course he left us some work from the textbook. We were already struggling as a group to catch up after his confusing and unstructured lessons, so my classmates were bamboozled by the task and asked me if I would teach them what I understood. I stood up in front of the class and explained the principles on the board to our group. It won me a huge amount of respect from my peers and they began to come to me for help. It was nice... Although they rarely called me by my first name... I was Zig... One of the boys.
A similar exchange happened in our final term... One of our teacher's decided to ask us to bet if we could answer a question using a stack of monopoly money... I stood up and explained an equation from the astrophysics module of the course. The rest of the class were agog... They just couldn't see how I'd worked out the answer so quickly. I was of course a girl... so I was allowed to be confusing... my sex could be used to dismiss my ability as quickly as praise it!

I did for a short time consider studying a combined degree of both Music and Physics as there is a huge and significant overlap in the subject, but it's not a widely offered combination and in the end I was genuinely put off by the male bias I encountered. When I did finally get to study Music I did find that in the first year of my degree I was at a slight advantage to the rest of my Practical Music Technology class in the understanding of how sound is created and recorded. I was also significantly more advanced in my expectations of technology than my arts peers, but by then I was up against a whole new set of prejudices against those who wish to study music and not focus on performance with the goal of becoming famous/professional musicians!

If I had my time again I would go back and apply to study Physics at one of the best Physics schools in the world! So if you're a young woman and you're reading this don't let your school put you off enjoying Physics... you're most probably brilliant at it and you should totally study it. Your brain is just as fantastic and inventive as any man and even though I love The Big Bang Theory physicists aren't all like Sheldon Cooper!

Everything's coming up violets- Change resistance and gardening

If you've come looking for something deep and meaningful today, sorry I'm all out! I have frivolous and opinionated and probably wildly wrong instead... this post is going to ramble... sometimes I just have to.

My room/view sometime in the early noughties!

I feel deeply connected to certain places... I loved the house I grew up in. In particular I loved two things. I loved the view from my window and I loved the garden. My room was a shrine to flora! The 1990s had brought me a fabric with ribbons and bows and imagined flowers set on a yellow and white stripe. When IKEA had that advert where they encouraged Britons to chuck out their chintz I believed they had my fabric in mind!

My room looked out over a large back garden. The fortuitous plot which the natural incline of the hill had provided gave me a view straight into the trees from my bed. And when I stood by the window I could really only see greenery unless I was compelled to open the window wide, crane my neck and snatch an almost hidden view of Dudley Castle!

Now my parents had created from scratch pretty much everything I could see below my window. The garden, when they had moved into the house in 1983, was just a post construction muddy slope with no topsoil and more importantly NO WORMS! I was born in the spring of 1984 and my parents had set about planning a garden which tried to bend the strange and unusual shaped plot to their will. As that garden grew so did I... parts flourished, some things over grew, they changed, they adapted. It once accommodated an entire playset- swing, slide, see-saw, climbing frame. One hot summer my grandfather built us a never completed brick Wendy House in one corner. I learnt from my father about soil composition and how to dig, hoe, edge lawns, and plant seeds. I learnt about the various creepy crawlies that dwell beneath our feet and even now I have the most beautiful and vivid memory of, as a small child, singing gently to the butterflies as they rested on flowers and truly believing they heard me. 

18 months ago my parents moved from my childhood home forever, a place I loved and I'll never see that view again. That which was once my haven will never be again... and for many reasons lately this has made me feel a deep sense of loss.

I am as resistant to change as the next person. We fear the unknown, it is what makes us prejudiced, it is what makes us wary of others. And in the 21st Century in particular I believe it is often the reason we don't know our neighbours. I moved from my parents home in 2007 and I live on an estate... I'm surrounded by other houses. I once made a rough calculation of how many households lived within a 100m radius of my front door. I got to about 90 households and then sort of gave up with the scale of it all... That could easily be 300 to 500 people living right on top of where I am and I have no idea about who most of them are! Most of the time I try not to think about it, doing so might make me go a bit bananas, but every so often it bothers me. Occasionally an ambulance will stop on our block and someone might be in trouble, or I'll hear a child crying or some other reminder, that behind our closed doors we're all living our separate lives.

And so I come to my garden at the front of my house.  British households tend to garden their back yards

and leave the front of the house to itself... unlike many of our American cousins who have porches and sit out front in a neighbourly way. If you started occupying a seat in a suburban front garden in the UK people would comment, it's just not the done thing! And this is why I love my front garden so much, I intend one day to put a seat out front, just to be subversive. Because when I garden the quite frankly meager patch of earth between my kitchen window and the pavement something magical happens. I see children playing, people stop and comment on how pretty things are looking. Dogs leap up to say hello and their owners stand and talk a while if they wish. I want to see a tiny revolution take place where I live... I want to see more people out in front of their houses. I want to be able to walk through my neighborhood and stop and chat with them about their flowers and their planting.

I've been out there today trimming the lavender and starting to sweep up leaves and put the place to bed for the winter. I've noticed something quite interesting in the past few weeks, considering we've reached December... my garden is resistant too. It's been resisting autumn... a couple of spring and summer flowering plants have had another go at waking up again before the winter... and very soon we'll get a hard frost one morning or some snow and all thought of them staying up all through the cold will fall quickly away. I am always deeply amazed by the skill of plants... from the tiniest origins they form into so much... stuff! The sweetly scented cuttings of lavender filling my green waste bin every December are testament that fact.

This winter everything is coming up violets for me. I planted some violets the summer before last and there doesn't seem to be part of the garden... pot or flowerbed which they don't seem to have infiltrated via their tiny light weight seed spreading! I love this, it feels like nature is helping me garden, adjusting my vision for the space, bending my will slightly. And so as I grow to love a new place and it grows for me I find myself settling season on season to find joy in the small changes I can make to my surroundings. And I attempt to become less resistant to the changes which are enacted upon me.

If you want to see pictures from my garden check out my Pinterest for some captured close ups of how I see my garden. http://www.pinterest.com/alezed/my-urban-paradise/

Girls- Why their opinons really matter

Disclosure warning- please be aware that the later paragraphs of this post are pretty personal but these things needed saying.

Today Girlguiding has published their annual report about how girls within the movement perceive various issues that matter to them.

See the video below for a quick round up of some of the key facts-

 

Now lots of people may be wondering why this matters so much. I'd like to shed some light on this personally regarding the questions the girls answered about everyday sexism.

The report says this:

Three quarters of girls and young women feel that sexism is so widespread in our society today

that it affects most areas of their lives (75%). Of girls aged 11 to 21, 87% think that women are

judged more on their appearance than on their ability. Of those aged 16 to 21, 60% have felt

patronised or been made to feel stupid because of their gender. This is true for a third of all girls

aged 7 to 21 (36%)

You might feel you could dismiss this, 'it's okay to judge women on their appearance'... that when a girl wears make-up, does her hair, puts on a skirt... she's giving others the right to make a value judgement on her. When I looked at the world around me when I was aged 16 to 21 I would say that I felt the same as the girls and young women in this survey do, and that feeling hasn't changed in the last eight years.

 Now I'm not your typical woman... I rarely wear make-up, I can do DIY... I took Physics A Level because I was good at mechanics. I really just want to be taken seriously however I choose to look, but I'm not... I feel an immense pressure to have my nails done, and my hair coloured and put on layers of makeup, not because I want to but mainly because I am bombarded by imagery that says I should... and when everyone else does anyway it can make someone feel pretty excluded in they don't join in. I'm not saying it's not nice to do those things... and of course sometimes I dress up but I shouldn't HAVE to be taken seriously.

I've been made to feel really uncomfortable just for being a young woman, and it should stop.

Another of the most shocking statistics for me is the percentage of girls who have experienced unwanted touching- 28%.

Do you need that rationalising for you? That's more than a quarter of girls. In a class of 30 where half are girls that's four of them. And if it's happened to them once it will happen again because it makes them vulnerable... and then there are those at the girls of the survey group who felt so embarrassed and ashamed that they couldn't answer the question truthfully.

I know this because it happened to me, on the school bus and on more than one occasion. The aggressor was usually a much older boy 15-17 who wanted to show his friends how cool and edgy he was, I was about 12 or 13 at the time and I wish with all my heart now I'd felt I had a voice to speak out.
It would happen in front of a crowd of other people, boys and girls so it wasn't even a private shame... and it exposed me to some of the worst pain imaginable, not only was I being assaulted but other people where watching and knew exactly how vulnerable I was and there was no where to go to get away.

What you may find shocking, (and so you should) is that these acts are more than often dismissed by teaching staff as normal teenage stuff, boys are hormonal goes the logic... girls are wearing short skirts, you can expect some sexual tension. What I experienced has certainly affected my personal and sexual relationships, it's sometimes affected my ability to work and most importantly it wasn't my fault, there is nothing I ever did to provoke this behaviour.

I hope the opinions of girls start to get taken seriously, because I believe that when we let our young women get mistreated in this way and we turn a blind eye we're actively preventing them from reaching their potential.

(I've been updating spelling mistakes I've spotted during the day, I was pretty emotional when I wrote this so I hope you excused my poor spelling)