His belt was over his penis and a feminist rant

My Grandma is 90. She has a degenerative eye condition which means she cannot see very well but she is also a prolific knitter. At the moment she is knitting toy figures (fireman, policeman, footballer etc) for her sister (aged 89) to sell for charity.

Given her eyesight, she often gives fiddly bits, such as sewing on belts to my Mum to do. My mum had sewn one such belt onto the last fireman she had made.

We were sitting in an Italian restaurant in Helston and she suddenly announced to the room,

“I had to sew that belt on again, it was too low, it covered his penis.”

“Oh, that’ll never do,” I like to gently tease her at times.

“Well no, it covered his thingimy jig. I couldn’t send him off like that.”

“I know,” I smiled at her, “if you want a job done properly, you should do it yourself.”

“The point is dear,” she continued, “I can’t see to do it myself.”

I’ve long known that my Grandma’s eye condition is subjective. I don’t doubt for a minute she has difficulty seeing, but there are times when her eyesight is remarkably good. For example, I’ve worn clothes with holes when visiting her, on the basis that she wouldn’t be able to see them. But she always does. Maybe it’s a kind of sixth sense of the elderly – know when your granddaughter is not properly attired for a visit and know when a belt is sewn over a fireman’s penis.

However, I was also curious. Maybe she does knit little penises for her dolls, maybe, they are in fact some weird sex toy. I checked Jack’s when I got home and was relieved to find it sexless. And how’s this for being a bad feminist, I’ve only just realised I never questioned why the fireman was a man.

Which is also a serious point because it makes me realise how many times in a day we accept gender stereotypes without question. I’m not one of those activists that yells “patriarchy” at everyone and everything, but it is still important to recognise the number of times gender stereotypes are enforced every day of our lives.

At the moment this is painfully clear in the media portrayal of the female sailor captured in Iran. Once again, we are shown that we must be treated differently if we are women. Anything happening to women is more outrageous than if it happened to our male counterparts.

She’s a mother, don’t you know. So fucking what? She knew she was a mother when she agreed to go to Iraq. She knew the risk she was taking and she must have believed it was worth it. Whilst I completely disagree with her politics (and whilst obviously I have no idea what her politics are, I can make a pretty sure bet that anyone who joins the navy is going to have pretty much opposite views to an anti war anarchist), she obviously felt what she was doing was important enough to leave her child to join the fight.

As an activist, this is a struggle I know well. I have to weigh up the choices each and every time I go on an action. Are the benefits worth the separation from my child if things go wrong? Usually they’re not and this is reflected in the type of activism I’m involved with. I’m not going to risk anything where I could go to prison for ten years or more because I don’t believe it would be fair on Jack. There is nothing I could achieve which would be worth separating a son from his mother.

And where are the fathers in all of this? Fathers are never criticized for doing dangerous things, never given preferential treatment because of the parental status. Why not? Father’s should be just as important in a child’s life and the decisions attached to being a father and undertaking dangerous actions should be the same.

I'm left thinking how on earth do I bring up my son so as not to fall into all these gender sterotypes? And I think it's impossible. All I can do is help him question assumptions, especially the assumptions made everydy in the media, assumptions we are supposed to accept without question.