Shattered childhood TV dreams

So Rolf Harris went to prison, and another little bit of my childhood just died. It followed the demise of the other bit that wrote to Jim'll Fix It.

And I doubt I'm the only one who is waiting to hear which other TV presenters from my formative years were abusing the children who looked up to them.

It makes you wonder about all of the other people who appeared regularly on children's TV in the 1980s. And that's awful because most of them were probably very nice people, who just enjoyed the job of entertaining children.

Rolf Harris was a genius who would show you as he brought cartoon characters to life from a single line on a page. Savile was a philanthropist who could make your dreams real.

These two men devastated the lives of the girls and women they abused. For the rest of us, they just shattered our childhood dreams. It's nowhere near as bad, just a little bit sad.

The good news

As with Max Clifford, it's good news for feminism that Rolf Harris is going to prison. It sends a clear message that it doesn't matter how famous and important you are, you can't treat women and girls in this way and get away with it.

Unless you're Jimmy Savile, who did just that. And probably loads of others too.

Well, OK then. It sends the message that it doesn't matter how famous and important you are, you probably shouldn't treat women and girls in this way, because you might not get away with it. You might think you got away with it, but then you get put in prison when you're, like, 80-something.

There's a good chance you won't get away with it. It's a definite possibility. Don't do it.

Women in high places

What's come out of the aftermath of the Rolf Harris trial is that girls and women don't stop being vulnerable to sexual assaults.

He has gone to prison for assaults on girls aged seven to 19. But the TV and radio presenter Vanessa Feltz has made allegations that Harris assaulted her, when she was working on The Big Breakfast.

Feltz wasn't a young girl, she was an important and capable woman in a high profile job. She was at the top of her game, and yet he still managed to take advantage of her.

It suggests that women and girls at all levels of society can be vulnerable to abuse. Being a successful and capable grown-up won't necessarily protect you.

Anyway, I'm off to try to rebuild my shattered dreams.

Shoes for the boys

It's a shame I have to write this. Yet another retailer has resorted to lazy gender stereotypes in order to shift more wares.

This time it's high street shoe shop, Clarks.

Signs in their shop windows read: 'Because boys test their shoes to destruction, so do we' and 'Because girls love comfort and style, we design both into our shoes'.

So boys wear their shoes out by running about and having fun in them, while girls just like to sit around being comfortable and looking pretty. I think a lot of mothers of girls would disagree with this. Girls are just as capable of wearing out their shoes as boys, and boys are just as likely to want their shoes to be comfortable and look good.

And of course, the boy sign was in the inevitable blue, and the girl one the usual pink. Don't get me started on pink.

Clarks

I had a look at Clarks' website (there's no sign of these slogans there), and to their credit, both boys and girls are shown involved in an action activity and something a bit arty - boys on their bikes, and a boy playing a guitar, versus girls with a home-made cart, and one clutching a pile of schoolwork.

It looks like they have tried to get a good balance, and not go all pink princess. So it's a shame they did this.

Maybe they have done some research, and actually have some robust data that tells them that boys generally 'test their shoes to destruction' and girls prioritise 'comfort and style' in their footwear. If they do, then I'd really like to see it.

Online petition

The signs were pounced on by lawyer and parent Emma Dixon, who set up an online petition, asking Clarks to remove them.

There are a lot of online petitions, and you might wonder if they do any good, but this is the kind of simple issue that, by signing a petition, you can send a clear message to a retailer that you don't like what they are saying. And so I think there's a pretty good chance it will succeed. That would be another small victory for feminism, although it's a battle we shouldn't still have to be fighting.

Sign the petition asking Clarks to remove the signs here.

Feminism and peace

This weekend the Leamington Peace Festival rolled around once more.

This is a major annual event in Leamington Spa, the town that I was privileged to call 'home' for 13 years. It's basically a big excuse for a party in the name of peace.

The only tangible presence of feminism at the event was Amnesty International, which took its women's rights in Afghanistan campaign along.

Thinking about the links between feminism and peace, I am surprised that this was the only representation. It made me wonder where all the feminists are.

Peace

The moment that a Suffragette first chained herself to a railing began a war against inequality that is still waged today.

The Suffragettes refused to be appeased until women were given the vote. They were successful and a kind of peace followed, but that was really the beginning of women fighting for the right to be recognised as equal to men.

Feminism has a funny relationship to peace: it both breaks it and makes it. Feminism is a disruptive force which shakes up the discriminatory status quo. While women are discriminated against, then they cannot and should not be peaceful. For this reason, perhaps it has no place at a festival for peace.

But at the same time, we will be closer to peace once we have equality between the sexes - on a global scale. And so feminism and peace are inseparable ideas.

I hope, although feminism wasn't obviously in evidence, that the park today was crammed with feminists of all shapes and sizes who expect to be treated equally to men, and don't feel they could be at peace without this basic right.