Knickers are an 'important part of women's lives'?

[schroeder]

Link Are they? Are underpants an important part of men's lives? These people are supposed to be feminists, but I think it's so patronising.

Knicker bunting is clearly pants . . .

(sorry, childish, but irresistable).

Like Dittany said above, smacks of someone exploiting the whole supposed titillation (sp?) of knickers to some get media coverage.

Watched the piece in the OP

For me - as a piece of art - OK fine. As some kind of feminist statement - what? What does it mean? Why? Nope sorry.

It's stereotyping to say men wear boxers and women wear frilly knickers yes but I don't think it's sexist or bad really, it's light hearted and to some even humorous.

"it is about celebrating women and the pants we come in"

Me too Yuno [blush[] :o

I agree with SQ - knicker bunting, why not? It's pretty and different and says something about the people whose things made it. A bit like a patchwork quilt really. But feminist? Not specially! More like "yippee, knickers!". It's more a burlesque type alleged feminism really.

Plus, all those knickers were very naice weren't they? Nothing with holes in, faded black with dodgy elastic and maybe a washed-out bloodstain? Bit too real, that.

When we visited Washington DC a few years ago there had been some event (I presume to do with breast cancer but it might have been something entirely different, presumably with a female bent) which involved bras. They stretched all the way down the ornamental pond from Lincoln's temple to Washington's obelisk, and really did come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and styles. My children were fascinated (although really they wanted to paddle in the pond).

Not sure my pants say anything much about me, as they are standard M&S knickers chosen purely for comfort. They really aren't a big part of my life - if someone told me that their knickers were an important part of their life I'd probably think that they were rather odd, not that they were a feminist activist.

Well women's lives are so very trivial, just like women, that it makes perfect sense for knickers to be an important part of their lives.

Hi, I'm Ann Kaloski, one of the organisers of a carnival of feminist cultural activism (and named earlier in this thread), and I?ve read this discussion with interest.

The knicker bunting does seem a bit silly at first, I agree, but through talking with the artist, Julia Triston, I became convinced of the power of focussing on an item usually seen as either mundane or overly sexual. Plus it?s worth remembering that much of the power of this work comes from the stories sent in with the knickers (of illness, body size, first love and so on). And many of the knickers are quite raggy!

As for the carnival, I?m sorry some people thought the content was boring ? be happy to discuss here or elsewhere what you?d be interested in for a carnival of feminist cultural activism 2?

myxd - thanks for posting. I would have been interested in coming but found it too expensive. The sliding scale thing was not wide enough imo, for the weekend it started at £50. That's not something a low earner can afford. tbh I didn't then look much further as to what was on after that.

Thanks vm for this feedback AliceWorld.

Alongside the sliding scale we did have a 'sharing feminist funds' system (people donated money, those who couldn't afford the costs emailed and asked for an amount that would make a difference to enable them to attend). Many participated in this, but if some didn't notice this, it clearly wasn't completely successful, so this is useful info for next time.

myxd - thanks for posting!

Can I ask if there are any photos of the finished bunting? It did look like not a real representation of women's knickers. Like Elephants said, there were no washed out, grey knickers or maternity knickers, or the big ones you buy for after you give birth. They were all very pretty, the ones they showed on the video.

Hi, yes there are some pics on our new Facebook page if you are part of that network, and I will be putting more on the carnival website as soon as I can.

But you're right that many of the knickers were 'pretty', which was strange and a tad disappointing for me as this wasn't my memory of the first knicker workshop when I was introduced to the idea - short review here: tinyurl.com/6gple3n.

I guess that's the nature of some community art - it can be a representation of people's overt ideas and behaviour, and not always a more radical interpretation of how people live -- that interaction between 'community' and 'art' can be tricky indeed, especially for observers. Having said that, my experience of 'doing' community art is that it can make a huge difference to your way of thinking.

And some knickers were definitely big and/or baggy and bought for the bloody times (mine, for instance!).

Dittany/Aliceworld - what is this 'feminism in the academy thing' you are muttering about?

Notenoughsocks - my very basic understanding of it, as I don't really recall a long conversation about it more snippets here and there, is that academic feminism these days talks more about 'gender' rather than 'women'. So it's an analysis of gender, which obscures the fact that the discrimination is against women. At my uni we now have a gender network, rather than a women's network. And unis teach gender studies rather than women's studies. It obscures women as being the point of the study. I'm not sure I've explained that well, as I'm not that articulate about it myself.

I also think there's more to it than that, but that was what I was referring to.

I once went to my gender network. The female speaker finished, and before the female chair could step in to ask whether there were any questions from the audience, the only man in the room launched into his questions. Such an utter lack of self awareness.

was there a creche Myxd?
that's the thing that would have made a difference to me; a lot of women from here were enabled to attend the Feminism in London conference by the fact that there was a fabulous creche/activities for children of different ages.

dittany (and others): You're right, socks wouldn't cause as much debate as knickers, so in my opinion socks are not the best focus for debates about women's lives in this time and culture (and of course the knicker bunting was just one element in fifty carnival offerings).

Some thoughts inspired by this mumsnet discussion: What do women lose and gain by accepting that knickers are trivial, or sexual? Is accepting mainstream understandings of 'women's things' a more effective strategy for improving women's lives than delving in and creatively explore those meanings, even if this process involves participating in the very meanings we want to critique?

I guess, ultimately: How do we know what we might know if we don't risk the silly, the weird, the personal as well as the more obviously political, legal and social? I think this is one of the strengths of feminism (and women?s studies) ? to change the basis of knowledge and therefore of action.

From the knicker bunting I have learnt: that some women cannot touch other women's washed knickers, even though they would have no problem staying in a hotel sleeping on laundered sheets which have presumably also been saturated with many bodily fluids; that many of us find it hard to hang our knickers with the rest of our laundry on an outside washing line; that talking about knickers with other women is a really good focus for discussing bodies, clothes, economics, sexuality, fantasies, and much more.
....
And in answer to the last question, no there wasn't a creche. We were much smaller than Feminism in London and had very little money, so this was one hard decision we made. It's one we would actively revisit for carnival 2.

dittany, we obviously have different views about the relationship between meaning and action. To take one example - it is only by changing the meaning of rape that laws have been changed and police intervention made possible, and the meaning of rape is only changed by working on all the myriad of ideas and representations that make up what it means to live life as woman and as men.

And, no carnival attendees received payment for their carnival work. It was a grassroots event that ran on the good will, hard work, and dedication of artists, performers, academics, activists, and organisers, who all donated their time, expertise, and ideas to come together with other women and men to experience and discuss ways to continue to improve women's lives.

Feminism has always been made up of many ways of thinking about and bringing about change, and real attempts at understanding difference has to be part of this, don't you think?

What I find quite funny about this, is that this thread has garnered almost no attention - presumably loads of MNers have gone "knickers? nah, boring, let's read something else". I think to be frank women have a negligible level of interest in other women's knickers (and hardly more in their own).

Should men be thinking more about other men's boxer shorts? Or devoting time and attention to celebrating their own? I mean - fine, if they want to. But it's hardly a pressing concern is it, or likely to excite much in the way of earth-shattering debate or revelation. Yet in a way that would be more interesting/innovative than this women's knickers thing, because women are constantly asked to devote time, attention, care, conversation and money to their clothing choices. Whereas men don't have shops on the high st flaunting sexy boxers in their faces because it's their duty as men to decorate themselves from skin level up.

In a way this strikes me a sexified, non-scary version of the vagina monologues.