That’s right folks Atta Girl returns on the Saturday 24th March at the usual haunt of Island Bar we have a guest DJ travelling from afar (details soon) and the usual fever of all girl vocalist tunes all night long! AND LOLLY POPS! Plus Los Campesinos are playing at the rainbow so seeing as we play their lady vocals tunes every month we’re the perfect place to continue the dancing at IT’S YOU IT’S ME AND THERE’S DANCING! xxx
We had a splendid last Atta Girl of the year, it certainly looked like you all did too!
Check out the photos on our facebook page
daaamn those halloween cocktails were good xxx
Our next Atta Girl will be on halloween Saturday, 29th October upstairs at Island Bar.
After the success of August’s massive turn out Island Bar are having a little renovation, they’re putting up permanent hooks for us to hang our Atta Girl banners on! AND they’re also getting a new sound system in there!!!
There will also be a special Zombie based halloween cocktail menu for the night. Expect cocktails like the Corpse Reviver on this special offer menu.
The event is FREE ENTRY before 10pm, £2 after.
Fancy dress is utterly encouraged but never obligatory. We’ll all be halloweening it up day of the (walking/living) dead style!
Facebook Event: Here
Together we raised £110 for Birmingham Against Rape, with the 5% of the bar, 50p from charity cocktails bought and the raffle tickets sold! B.A.R will be giving 25% of their funds raised to a local sexual violence/ rape survivor service and the rest will help create a zine/ information leaflet to offer advice on healing and support for survivors.
Hollaback also had a successful night with many contributions from you all these will be up on their website soon: http://birminghamuk.ihollaback.org
We also experienced an all time record turn out for Atta Girl! We had so much fun, every single person who turns up spurs us on to keep putting on these nights. If you enjoy them then we enjoy them! I think Friday night’s clubnight was testament to a girl tune clubnight being very welcome in Birmingham. It’s also been just over two years since we started! SO THANKYOU! It was also fun saving back the rest of our badges and handing them out at the end to all those that carried on dancing til gone 2am (YES! We went over the official lights on kick out time!).
We love you!
See you halloween! Sat 29th Oct at Island Bar and pop your photos on facebook.com/attagrrl (tag us) x
It’s nearly time for Atta Girl!!! We’ve just finished pinning all our brand new badges to our flyers to give out on the night. So best pop along early if you want to grab one for yourself.
Atta Girl – A Clubnight of Girl Tunes – This Friday:
What have we got in store?
In our last post we told you all about B.A.R. Since then we’ve also got Hollaback Birmingham onboard who launched their website last week. Here’s what they’re all about:
Take action against street harassment: don’t just walk on… Hollaback!
Hollaback Birmingham! is part of the growing, international movement of Hollaback! to end street harassment against women and LGBTQ individuals.
The term Street Harassment covers any kind of intimidation which women and LGBTQ individuals often experience in public places such as on the street or the bus. Including being leered at, shouted at or even physically touched, flashed at or even masturbated in front of. The list goes on…
Hollaback! Birmingham is all about today, about engaging with contemporary women and LGBTQ individuals through the power of the Internet and your phone. If you experience any kind of street harassment which makes you feel uncomfortable, undermined or just plain mad– you don’t have to ‘put up with it’.
Hollaback instead by sharing your story on our official website (which launched on August 10th) But like many others have, you can share your stories on our Facebook Page too.Our site is a resource to allow people to share their stories without being victims, as well as to highlight just how often it happens, and to work on what we’re going to do about it; together.
Knowing that you are not alone, and that this behaviour is not just something you have to ignore, is the first step to making it unacceptable. The current social situation perpetuates the idea that women-identified bodies are public property, are somehow on offer, and that harassment, abuse, assault and daily fear is just the price we pay for being female or being outside of the heterosexual bracket.
At Hollaback Birmingham! we were inspired by the work of Hollaback! around the globe, from the US to India and almost everywhere in between, fighting to combat the reality of street harassment in its many and varied forms. We saw how the movement had spread to both London and Manchester and felt that Birmingham, officially the second city, was desperately in need of a movement like Hollaback! to combat the street harassment many face on a daily basis.
Hollaback! Birmingham believes that everyone has the right to feel safe, confident and attractive; guilt free. Working alongside other community, rape and domestic violence groups based within our own communities, we hope to combat the attitudes that lead to this behaviour and the outdated cultural norms that some say make it ‘okay.’We are here to abolish the cultural acceptance of street harassment and we can only do it with your help! Share your story and start confronting street harassment today!
Find us on Facebook as ‘Hollaback! Birmingham’. Here is the link: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hollaback-Birmingham/178152425576893
Add us on Twitter @ihollabackBrmUK
A summertime Atta Girl!
19th August
Friday
FREE ENTRY!
DJs playing you the finest in girl tunes all night long and this time it’s FREE ENTRY!
With a fine display of bunting, banners and free sweeties!
We’re raising funds for Birmingham Against Rape. Every drink you buy at the bar gives 5% towards them, so the more you drink the more we raise. But to tone down the booze fest they’ve also arranged a raffle with top prizes of:
● £50 Selfridges voucher
● London theatre tickets vouchers
Hence the free entry, the more people that pop along even just for a one off drink, the more funds we raise (please note this only applies to drinks bought in the upstairs bar).
What is Birmingham Against Rape?:
A group that formed out of the 18th June 2011 Birmingham Slutwalk. Slutwalk’s objective was to say to the world:
“We have had enough of survivors being blamed for being raped and shamed into thinking rape was their/our fault”
The group is a place to campaign and challenge blame culture and work towards making sure that every survivor has quick, easy, access to whatever rape or sexual violence/assault service they need.
I… I…. I… wow! To think they played at Atta Girl cor blimey hey.
Go check out more about Fever Fever here http://feverfever.co.uk
Love ‘em or feel indifferent about them, Robots in Disguise do write some lovely pop hits. I listened to last weeks theotherwomanmusic.blogspot.com interview today. Rather love ‘em actually. I sometimes wonder if they are ignored because everyone concentrated on the Noel Fielding connection with Dee Plume in a kind of “oh well they’re only famous because of..” blah blah blah lets marginalise another girl band with the power of sex shame yeah! As Dee Plume says in The Other Woman’s interview “I find it foul..it’s anti-women.” with regards to the media invading her private life.
“One thing I saw recently was a whole section on Pippa Middleton’s bum and how to achieve the perfect bottom. And I just thought quit with this pressure! Nobody is perfect really and why the fuck should we be anyway, as women. You very very rarely see pictures of a mans bum.” – Sue Denim
I’ve been hooked on their single Turn It Up in particular for ages. But their new song Chains sounds SO exciting (from the snippets on TOW blog) it has the same chilling feeling I got from listening to The Lost Boys soundtrack, which I found at a carboot sale for 20p when I was about 13. I love their mix of bare electro-pop-punk, simple danceable tunes. I hate talking in genres but if I had to settle on one for RiD it’s that!
Their new album Happiness V Sadness is released 11th July 2011 and in their words “I want to win the Mercury simple as that… It’s about time an all female band won the Mercury prize” (the preview and pre-order is on itunes already)
… Is tomorrow!
SATURDAY 17TH
2PM CENTENARY SQUARE
“There will be a ‘Slutcamp’ where we can get to know each other and hopefully build a working group to lobby for a Rape Crisis Center for Birmingham. Bring a picnic, bring an instrument, let’s make some noise and demand an end to victim blaming and shaming.” – Slutwalk Birmingham organisers
The council haven’t granted permission for a march (thanks Birmingham). So bring on the rally which might actually prove a more productive space as they’re hoping for your support and involvement to form a working group to lobby for a Rape Crisis Center in Birmingham.
twitter: @SlutwalkBrum #slutwalk #slutcamp
* warning, triggers *
“That girl thinks she’s the Queen of the neighbourhood, well I’ve got news for you SHE IS. They say she’s a slut, but I know, she is my best friend”
- Bikini Kill
So yesterday, once again, we saw another example of this ingrained belief that rape isn’t a serious crime, how society believes that some women “are asking for it” that the onus is on the woman to prevent it, never the man to not do it. With Ken Clarke suggesting date rape isn’t the same as a “serious rape”, a “serious” rape? That wording aside what really concerned us was that he defined serious rape as “with violence and an unwilling woman” which suggests that other rapes involve willing women?!? (Never mind that it also suggests only women are raped).
We need to stop thinking that a survivor can hold responsibility due to the way they dress or the way they act and that this can lessen the severity of the crime. For one if you really believe there are levels of rape seriousness (we don’t) then by even saying some were “asking for it” you are damaging all survivors and their ability to cope with the aftermath of such a traumatic experience. Imagine, if you can, trying to come to terms with a violent act upon yourself, the human psyche tries to rationalise what happened tries to see what they did, what they could’ve done for that not to have happened. But that’s the problem, we live in a society where a victim genuinely believes that they had some sort of control, that they deserve some blame. And words like “serious rape” or his other phrase “classic rape” reinforce this. When the truth is simple NO MEANS NO.
So what is Slut Walk about?
Well first lets clarify the media spin (who clearly haven’t done their research) it is NOT about telling women to be “sluts”. It’s about readdressing that word, the beginnings of reclaiming that word (a long process, which words like “queer” have just about reached) and thus dissolving its power. Part of reclaiming a word is to say “yes, I am a [word]“, it takes the power away from the user. But Slut Walk is more than that. To call a woman a slut is such a cutting insult, we grow up in fear of being publicly shamed with this word. It’s not just men that use it, we “slut-shame” on one another too. Using the word slut is another way of justifying rape. Once again – NO MEANS NO.
So how did it start?
Certainly women’s resistance to the word is nothing new and Slut Walk shares a common theme with other annual women’s marches (see end of article) of ending violence to women. But the online outcry started in Canada after a policeman in Toronto said “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized” – Jan 24th, 2011. Since then Slut Walks have happened all across Canada, U.S, Australia, Europe with more set to happen.
Here is a video of a speech at Boston along with excerpts to explain Slut Walk:
Full transcript can be found on Feministing.com
“No more. We’re here to testify that this ends TODAY. It ends because there is truly nothing – NOTHING – you can do to make someone raping you your fault. It ends because calling other people sluts may make you feel safer, but it doesn’t actually keep you safer. It ends because not one more of us will tolerate being violated and blamed for it. And it ends because all of this slut-shaming does more to us than just the violence of rape. As if that weren’t enough. The violent threat of slut-shaming also keeps us afraid of our bodies and our desires. It makes us feel like we’re wrong and dirty and bad – and yes, very very unsafe – when all we want is to enjoy the incredible pleasure that our bodies are capable of. And that theft of pleasure – that psychic mugging, that ongoing robbery of the gorgeous potential of our souls – that ends today too.”
“I want to send a thank you note of my own, to those of you standing here today under the banner of sluthood who don’t identify with that word at all, but understand why we must come together to reject its power. There has been a lot of misunderstanding about the meaning of the SlutWalk, and none more egregious than those who claim our agenda is to encourage all women to be sluts. Whatever that means, our mission could not be further from that. Our mission here today is to create a world in which all of us are free to make whatever sexual and sartorial choices we want to without shame, blame or fear. If you dress and experience your sexuality in decidedly unslutty ways, and you know that there’s nothing we can do to make someone rape us, the SlutWalk is your walk, too, and I thank you for ignoring the hype and standing with us today.“
The word slut has too much power, it’s a hard word to reclaim and we don’t necessarily have to try to or even identify with the word. But what all of us have to do (and that’s all genders) is reject the concept that a woman can be controlled, that she’s yours to do what you want with and that calling her slut, whore or any other shame word means you can violently attack her. The fault lies with the perpetrator, not the survivor.
“Yes I wore a slinky red thing, does that mean I should spread? For you, your friends, your father, Mr. Ed?” – Tori Amos
Other marches that have happened and are normally yearly regarding violence against women:
Million Women Rise
International Women’s Day
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