ABSTRACT
A great deal of work on equal opportunities and anti- sexism has already been done both inside and outside school. Women teachers (for there are lamentably few men) have worked exhaustively in re-writing materials, making videos and restructuring ways of teaching so that girls have more space in schools. It is now not difficult to gather together lists of contacts and places where further information can be gained about the sorts of initiatives underway (Whyld 1983; WEDG 1983a). There are also groups of women outside schools who campaign against rape, pornography, violence against women, media images of women, sexual abuse of girls, sexual harassment at work and so on. Attempts have often been made to silence what amounts to a feminist fight-back (Wilson 1983). At the forefront of this counter-movement are the usual accusations of totalitarian censorship and prudery. Carol Jones (1984) speaks for many of us when she says:
By focussing only on ‘censorship’, writers who wish to defend ‘video nasties’/ pornography seem to insist on aligning feminists who are critical of male violence on the screen with the increasingly alarming ‘right wing’ ideology of a Tory Britain (Raynor 1984). I see this as an attempt to silence women who are angry at the butchering of women yet who are also disturbed by the increasing power of the right. It needs to be made clear, here, that feminists campaigning against male violence do not share any political sympathies with the Mary Whitehouse campaign or ‘moral majority’ (in fact quite the opposite) but that does not mean that we must keep silent about the mutilation of women.
