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Funeral...

2007-01-10T01:03:34+01:00

Today was the funeral of a good friend and former colleague of mine. She'd died 24th December during her sleep, and of pneumonia. She wasn't even aware she had the illness.

I will miss her a lot.

Comments

joke of the day

2006-12-30T15:39:50+01:00

Hallo?

Hallo vennen. Det er pappa.
Er mamma i nærheten av telefonen?

Nei, hun er oppe på soverommet sammen med onkel Paul.

Etter en kort pause sier pappa:
Men, vennen min, du har jo ingen onkel Paul.

Joho, det har jeg, og han er oppe på soverommet sammen med mamma akkurat nå!

Kort pause.

Jaha, okei da. Dette er hva jeg vil du skal gjøre:
Legg fra deg telefonen, løp ovenpå, bank på soveromsdøra og rop til mamma at pappa akkurat kjørte inn i oppkjørselen.

Ok, pappa, bare et lite øyeblikk.

Noen få minutter senere kommer den lille piken tilbake i telefonen. Jeg gjorde det pappa.

Og, hva hendte da vennen? spurte pappa.

Jo, mamma ble kjemperedd. Hun hoppet ut av senga uten klær på og løp rundt og skrek. Så snublet hun i gulvteppet, slo hodet i kommoden og nå rører hun ikke på seg i det hele tatt!

Å herre min Gud! Hva med onkel Paul?

Han hoppet ut av senga uten noen klær han også. Han hoppet ut av bakvinduet og ut i svømmebassenget. Men jeg tror ikke han visste at du hadde tømt ut alt vannet i forrige uke. Nå ligger han på bunnen og han rører ikke på seg heller!

Laaang pause.

Pappa:
Svømmebasseng? Er dette 48 65 73 19?

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"I'm not homophobic, but...."

2006-12-23T16:24:08+01:00

A handful of laughable common comments:

I'm not homophobic, but I think Section 28 shouldn't have been repelled.

I'm not homophobic, but I don't think gay people should be able to marry/ adopt

I'm not homophobic, but I think public displays of affecion (e.g. holding hands) are inappropriate

I'm not homophobic, but I have my own legal, moral, relgious reasons for not accepting everyone is not heterosexual

Why is it that people feel the need to comment so often on (homo)sexuality? Furthermore, why is it these are usually always the people who say "I'm not homophobic. That means fear of homosexuals. I don't fear gay people"
Oh puuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurlease!

I fail to see how anyone can claim the above statements (and yes, i've heard them all said!) are any more acceptable than declaring:

I'm not raicst, but I don't think black people should have the same rights as white people

Whether you are morally, legally or religiously opposed, we are here to stay... just as you are.

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Receiving Religious Hate Mail...

2006-12-16T16:40:15+01:00

...In the form of begging letters.

This is what happened to me today. I received a letter from The Christian Institute. In it were a series of case studies of 'injustices' done to people who they claim "exercised their right to free speech". Free speech, it would appear, is only fair game providing it's one way traffic. i.e. if it weren't criticising religion.

Examples given include a couple local to me infact, in Fleetwood. They claim one morning were greeted by two police officers, who interrogated them for 80 minutes over a complaint they had made to their local council about 'it's promotion of homosexuality'.

As any half wit knows, by using inclusive language/ actions, we are not promoting homosexuality, we are accepting diversity. The church can happily remain in its bubble of perceived hierarchial ignorance, but since this country separates church from state, the actions of these type of religious hate campaigns should have little impact on the steady progress being made.

The final section of the letter attachs a Martin Luther-King quote Judicial decrees may not change the heart; but they can restrain the heartless" It's final sentence informs us that "with your support we can help restrain those who are unlawfully harassing christian believers".

Though mildly annoyed by this letter, I feel empathy towrds those christians (or indeed believers of other religions) who are disregarded and de-humanised by these type of organisations/ campaigns and their followers.

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Murder Inquiry: my friend

2006-12-15T20:21:10+01:00

On 27th Novemeber, my friend's uncle went missing from his home in Preston. The news vaguely followed the story, reminding us earlier this week that he has not been found.

Today, her mum (the missing man's sister) picked up the local newspaper to find on the front page the following article:

Three held in pensioner murder probe
Three people have been arrested on suspicion of murdering missing Preston pensioner Brian Hartley.
The two men and one woman were being questioned by detectives on Friday about the disappearance of the 71-year-old from Adelphi House, Adelphi Street.

He has not been seen since around midnight on Monday, November 27.

Police have stressed that no body has been found and are still treating the case as a missing person inquiry.

Earlier this week, they released the last-known CCTV images of Mr Hartley in the Church Street area of the city.
15 December 2006

As his next of kin,it hardly seems fair to publish this without informing family first.

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Sick Jokes

2006-12-14T23:23:45+01:00

In light of ongoing news of the murder enquiry in Ipswich, Suffolk, I have already received three separate jokes about this tragic situation.

Is it that people de-humanise these women and make sick jokes because they are prostitutes?

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I need to get out more.....

2006-12-09T23:34:41+01:00

Copied from Safriz. This is cool. I want to see more of the world. Someone donate to me a round the world ticket!!

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I live in Sex Attack City :(

2006-12-06T11:26:06+01:00

How depressing...

City's shocking toll of sex attacks on women
Preston has one of the highest rates of sexual attacks on women in the North West, shock new figures reveal today.

A report from the North West Public Health Observatory shows the city has the third highest rate of sexual assaults in the region.

Between 2001 and 2006 there were 1.11 sexual assaults for every 1,000 women in the city. Only Blackpool with 1.4 and Manchester with 1.8 had a higher rate of incidents.

It means there has been more sexual assaults in Preston than crime hotspots such as Liverpool. And the shock figures put Preston above the North West average of 0.85 offences. The England and Wales average is 0.88 offences.

Preston MP Mark Hendrick today said the findings were worrying.

He said: "I'm very concerned about these figures. I think we need to look more deeply into the statistics before coming to any conclusions, but I would be interested to see how they relate to figures on alcohol abuse."

The North West Public Health Observatory said higher figures have been seen in more "deprived" areas of the North West.

Prof Mark Bellis, who co-authored the report, said: "These indicators paint a clear picture of the challenges the region faces, especially in its poorest communities."

The figures are more favourable in other parts of the county. In South Ribble there were 0.6 sexual offences, in Wyre there was 0.44, 0.38 in the Ribble Valley, 0.63 in Chorley, 0.58 in Chorley and 0.48 in West Lancashire. In Lancaster there were 0.82 and in Fylde 0.58 per 1,000 women.

05 December 2006

http://www.prestontoday.net/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=73&ArticleID=1914087

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Male Rape Victim Speaks Out

2006-12-05T15:57:20+01:00

Another horrific story...

Male rape victim speaks about his ordeal
Read Aasma Day's full and frank interview with a man who was raped and deliberately infected with HIV.
The 49-year-old Preston man says his life has been wrecked after he was raped by a man he trusted who drugged his drink.

Peter Robinson, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, admits that if it were not for the support he received from the Sexual Assault and Forensic Examination (SAFE) centre based at the Royal Preston Hospital, he would have taken his own life.

He has described the harrowing experience which left his life in tatters.

Peter recalled: "It was a 45-year-old man who I had met through my work and I had been out for a drink with him on three occasions.

"We had mutual interests, such as cycling and walking, and seemed to get on well.

"It was on the fourth occasion when we arranged to meet up for a drink and he changed the arrangements and said that he would come to my house instead.

"We had a few drinks, watched a film and were planning to order a takeaway. I went into the kitchen to get the takeaway menus and came back and topped up our drinks.

"I suddenly began feeling dizzy and sick, and the feelings began to intensify. I became alarmed and told him that I thought I needed to ring for a doctor or go to A&E.

"He just looked at me and smiled and said: 'Don't fight it. Just go with it.' It was then that I realised he had drugged my drink."

As Peter drifted into unconsciousness, his final thoughts were that the man planned to rob him and ransack his home.

It was only when he came back round that he realised the true horror of what had happened.

Unable to hold back his tears, Peter said: "My head felt like it had an axe in it and I felt very nauseous.

"I knew immediately then that he had raped me.

"The pain was incredible and it felt like I had a burning poker inside me."

For several hours, Peter lay slumped on the floor unable to come to terms with the horrifying attack.

Peter said: "I was utterly devastated and I knew I should call the police as this man should not be able to get away with this brutal physical violation.

"But I realised I had nothing on him as he had been amazingly clever and planned everything carefully with military precision.

"I had trusted him and it was the ultimate betrayal.

"I had no way of identifying him to the police as I did not know where he was from or even his real name. He had been very evasive with all his answers."

Peter did not confide in anyone but bottled his emotions. He spent the next few months hiding away from the world.

But just when he thought things could not get any worse, he was dealt a devastating blow.

He said: "A few months later, I became very ill with food poisoning and was put on a course of antiobiotics which gave me thrush.

"I went to a clinic to get it checked that it was thrush and I was offered others tests.

"When the results came back, they confirmed the man had given me HIV.

"My world just collapsed. He had left me with a permanent reminder of what he had done.

"At that moment, I just wanted to die."

Peter went through some very dark days and spent hours of each day sobbing.

His HIV consultant realised Peter could no longer suffer alone and put him in touch with the SAFE Centre based at Royal Preston Hospital.

The centre provides a service for forensic medical examination as well as comprehensive counselling and support for women, men and children who make a complaint of rape or sexual assault.

Facilities at the centre include a police interview suite.

The centre serves the whole of Lancashire and is a joint venture between Lancashire Constabulary, Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and was initially supported financially by the TJH Foundation, a major local charity.

Peter said: "I spoke to a counsellor and released some of that awful burden. She was just so lovely, understanding and non-judgmental.

"I felt such a feeling of relief that there was someone who understood and cared as the mental strain had got too much for me to bear."

Peter has continued to receive counselling and support from the SAFE Centre and has slowly built his life back.

He has since reported the rape to Lancashire Police who believe the man deliberately infected him with HIV.

Peter said: "Without the SAFE Centre, I would certainly have ended my life. I was right on the edge and they brought me back.

"I wish I had known about the SAFE Centre when the rape happened, instead of a few months after.

"I have now told my family and my closest friends about the rape. They have been very supportive, but people do not know how to react when they hear a man has been raped.

"Men are supposed to be the protectors and providers and when you are raped, you feel you have failed.

"For ages, I kept asking myself what I had done wrong to make this man rape me.

"But the fact that he drugged me gave him the power to do it.

"I have recently discovered that as well as HIV, he gave me hepatitis C and I will now have to have treatment for that too.

"I feel a lot of hatred, anger and bitterness towards this man. I want him to die a slow and painful death. He put me through so much physical and mental suffering.

"No human being has the right to violate another human being in such a way."

Men are less likely than women to report rape to the police and are too afraid to even tell other people.

The SAFE Centre dealt with 673 referrals of people who had been raped or sexually assaulted from 2005 to 2006 - and only 54 of these were men.

But the Lancashire Male Rape Association hears from around 30 calls from men every month - and around 10 of these are from Preston alone.

DCI Kath Thundercloud from Lancashire Police said: "Very few men report rape or sexual assault to the police and we do know there are a lot more offences taking place than we know about.

"We encourage anyone who has been raped or sexually assaulted to come forward to the police and they will be looked after and listened to.

"But if people do not want to report it to the police at the moment, they can self refer themselves to the SAFE Centre and do not have to tell the police at all as everything is confidential."

Anyone who has been raped or sexually assaulted can contact the Safe Centre on 01772 523344. Men can ring Simon at the Male Rape Association on 07932 898274 or email malerapemrsa2001@yahoo.co.uk

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16 Days of Action: Domestic Violence

2006-11-29T23:32:12+01:00

From 25th Novemeber - 10 December each year, 16 Days of Action against gender violence takes place.

During this time, activites, parades, workshops, etc take place. I'm usually actively involved in the organising of events in my area, but this year, unfortunately, my time has been limited I will be attending the final day parade however.

Here's an article from UK's Amnesty International Website:

16 Days of Activism against domestic violence

Domestic violence happens everywhere. It affects someone near you. At least 1 in 3 women has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Usually, the abuser is a member of her own family or someone known to her.

Get active against domestic violence as part of the 16 Days of Activism.

Kicking off on November 25 - International Day Against Violence Against Women – make the human rights of women your business. For 16 days, until December 10 - Human Rights Day – you can take a different action every day. Tell the world about this human rights scandal and make governments act on their obligations to women.

Be an activist against domestic violence!

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Another clarification... comments on blogs

2006-11-29T22:39:23+01:00

Just to clarify.... for anyone who reads beauty comes naturally's blog (spelt beaty-comes-natrualy , it appears that someone has written the following on her tags:

"I'm fervid. I want to lick her minge" and "I want her lv fervid"

I have NOT written these and would never write these on anyone's blog, especially the blog of a 14 year old child.

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Quotes

2006-11-28T13:09:48+01:00

All those who believe in psycho-kinesis, raise my hand.
________________________

If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
________________________

To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
_______________________

Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

-Steven Wright

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Systematic torture of women in Congo

2006-11-28T00:17:01+01:00

This is a difficult read.

More Vicious Than Rape

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15704030/site/newsweek/

The atrocity reports from eastern Congo were so hellish that Western medical experts refused to believe them—at first.

Nov. 13, 2006 - Warning: do not read this story if you are easily disturbed by graphic information, or are under age, or are easily upset by accounts of gruesome sexual violence.

This is about fistulas—and rape, which in Congo has become the continuation of war by other means. Fistulas are a kind of damage that is seldom seen in the developed world. Many obstetricians have encountered the condition only in their medical texts, as a rare complication associated with difficult or abnormal childbirths: a rupture of the walls that separate the vagina and bladder or rectum. Where health care is poor, particularly where trained doctors or midwives are not available, fistulas are more of a risk. They are a major health concern in many parts of Africa.

In eastern Congo, however, the problem is practically an epidemic. When a truce was declared in the war there in 2003, so many cases began showing up that Western medical experts at first called it impossible—especially when local doctors declared that most of the fistulas they were seeing were the consequence of rapes. "No one wanted to believe it at first," says Lyn Lusi, manager of the HEAL Africa hospital (formerly called the Docs Hospital) in the eastern Congo city of Goma. "When our doctors first published their results, in 2003, this was unheard of."

It had been no secret that nearly all sides in the Congo's complex civil war resorted to systematic rape among civilian populations, and estimates were as high as a quarter million victims of sexual assault during the four-year-long conflict. But once fighting died down, victims began coming out of the jungles and forests and their condition was worse than anyone had imagined. Thousands of women had been raped so brutally that they had fistulas. They wandered into hospitals soaked in their own urine and feces, rendered incontinent by their injuries. "Pastors would say to me, 'Jo, I can't preach because the church is too smelly," says Dr. Jo Lusi, a gynecologist and medical director at HEAL. (He and Lyn Lusi are husband and wife.) "No one wanted to be around them. These women were outcasts even more than rape victims usually are. They would say to me, 'Dr. Jo, am I just a thing to throw away when I smell bad?' "

The rapes—and new reports of fistula damage—have not stopped. Even now, "It is still happening, even today," says HEAL's medical director, Doctor Lusi. "Every space we have in the hospital is very, very busy with people." Most of the dozen or so militias in the country have signed on to peace terms, and their battles with each other and with the Congolese Army have mostly stopped since the arrival of United Nations peacekeepers. But many of the armed groups—even those that have made peace—continue to attack civilians, especially in rural areas. "They won't go ahead and fight each other, [but] they attack that village that supports the other group," says Lyn Lusi. "This is a horrible perpetual movement of militias. They join after their families are killed, sometimes right in front of them. They see their women raped, and then they go and do the same thing. It's a cycle of violence."

Ordinary rapes, even violent ones, do not usually cause fistulas, although it's not medically impossible. Doctors in eastern Congo say they have seen cases that resulted from gang rapes where large numbers of militiamen repeatedly forced themselves on the victim. But more often the damage is caused by the deliberate introduction of objects into the victim's vagina when the rape itself is over. The objects might be sticks or pipes. Or gun barrels. In many cases the attackers shoot the victim in the vagina at point-blank range after they have finished raping her. "Often they'll do this carefully to make sure the woman does not die," says Dr. Denis Mukwege, medical director of Panzi Hospital. "The perpetrators are trying to make the damage as bad as they can, to use it as a kind of weapon of war, a kind of terrorism." Instead of just killing the woman, she goes back to her village permanently and obviously marked. "I think it's a strategy put in place by these groups to disrupt society, to make husbands flee, to terrorize."

The worst perpetrators call themselves the Federation for the Liberation of Rwanda. They were the Hutu militiamen—also known as the Interhamwe—who carried out the 1994 Rwandan genocide. That bloodbath ended when the Interhamwe were forced to retreat across Rwanda's western border into Congo, where they remain to this day, deep in the forests, armed, deadly and with nowhere else they can go. But the tactic of violent rape is used by many of the other armed factions in the area, including the Congolese Army, according to relief workers and United Nations officials. "It has been used as a weapon of war for so long it's become almost a habit," says Ross Mountain, the U.N.'s humanitarian coordinator for the Congo. "All sides are doing it, and the national army is by no means immune from that." "All the armed men rape," says Doctor Mukwege. "When we see a lesion, we can tell who the perpetrator is; there are special methods of each group, types of injuries. The Interahamwe after the rape will introduce objects; a group in Kombo sets fire to the women's buttocks afterwards, or makes them sit on the coals of a fire. There's another group that specializes in raping 11-, 12-, 13-,
14-year-old girls, one that gets them pregnant and aborts them." The youngest victim of fistula from rape his hospital has seen was 12 months old; the oldest, 71.

The fistula wards at HEAL Hospital are overflowing, with two women to a bed and patients tucked into every possible corner in the 150-bed center. Doctors there say two-thirds of their hospital's fistula cases are the result of sexual violence. Since 2003, when the hospital had to be completely rebuilt after a volcanic eruption buried the town in lava, HEAL's doctors have seen 4,800 rape victims requiring medical treatment; last year alone, surgeons there performed 242 fistula-repair operations. Panzi Hospital, in the town of Bukavu, some 70 miles southwest of Goma, is an even bigger medical center specializing in fistula surgery and treating rape
victims. Its surgeons did 540 fistula repairs last year; its two fistula wards, 25 beds each, are usually full. Doctor Mukwege estimates that 80 percent of his hospital's fistula cases are the result of sexual violence, either directly from sexual assault or from rape-induced pregnancies that were forcibly aborted in the bush; the rest were normal obstetric complications. "It's an epidemic," he says.

Panzi is running at capacity, with 250 to 300 admissions a month due to rapes, most of them new cases. Other hospitals run by aid groups in eastern Congo report similar statistics; the Medecins Sans Frontieres Bon Marche Hospital in Bunia, in war-torn Ituri province, northeastern Congo, normally admits between 10 and 20 rape victims daily—a minimum of 300 a month—again, mostly new cases, according to MSF officials there. "IRC and its partners in South and North Kivu provinces registered 40,000 cases of gender-based violence [since 2003], and we're not even counting everyone," says Brian Sage, a coordinator for the International Rescue Committee, which helps support both Panzi and HEAL hospitals. "This is just the tip of the iceberg." Many more cases take place in the interior where aid workers still haven't reached. When Doctor Mukwege sent a mobile team under U.N. protection to the village of Nzingu, the group was prepared to treat 200 rape victims. Instead, 1,400 women came forward asking for medical help.

The only hope for these women is a difficult operation. It usually takes several hours, followed by a recovery period of two or three months. Even then, the doctors may have to try again. Sometimes the surgeons never manage to restore the patient's continence. "We've had a hundred fistula cases where there's no hope of recovery," says Doctor Mukwege. "We tried and tried but were unsuccessful. Psychologically, it's difficult to bear these cases. They come in here with great hope, it's very difficult for them but also for me, they come full of hope, it's so difficult to bear." Last April, he says, a 5-year-old girl was brought to him. Her tormentors had raped her and then fired a pistol into her vagina. She was operated on twice at Panzi Hospital without success before being sent to a hospital in the United States where surgeons tried twice more to repair the damage. They failed, too. She'll spend the rest of her life with a colostomy bag.

The doctors have a hard time coping with the anguish they see every day. "I no longer question the women about what happened," says Doctor Mukwege. "It's hard to listen, it's very hard to see them—children without vaginas, without rectums, their bladders destroyed. The questions they ask. The girls say, 'Is it not possible for me to have children?' 'Why don't I have menses?' These are questions to which you cannot answer."

But those questions are relatively easy. The really difficult question is posed again and again by fistula patients like 20-year-old Bahati: Why? When she arrives to be interviewed in an examination room off the main fistula ward at Panzi, she is carrying a basin; which she keeps at her feet as she talks. Her fistula has left her incontinent. She and the other patients interviewed here were chosen to speak by a counselor who believed they could benefit from telling their stories.

Late one evening a group of Interhamwe gunmen raided her village in South Kivu, killed 10 of the men, and abducted 10 women and girls. She says she and the other captives were kept chained except when they were unbound to be gang-raped. She became pregnant after five months, and her captors gave her a crude abortion by shoving something into her—she says she doesn't know what they used. Her doctors say the abortion probably caused the fistula. Eventually she escaped and found her way back to her home village after three days. At the Interhamwe camp, sometimes as many as 30 men would rape her, she recalls. Whenever she resisted, she was beaten. "I'll never understand why they could do that to me," she says.

Benga, 16, and Masoro, 17, ask themselves the same thing. The two friends were abducted along with their mothers from the remote South Kivu village of Nzingu. Their captors dragged them to an Interhamwe camp. "When we got there," Masoro recalls, "they said, 'This is a horrible place where girls and women suffer, and you will suffer also'." They were kept tied to trees except when they were doing domestic chores or being raped. Their mothers were raped in front of the girls. Benga bursts into tears recalling the experience. "Their purpose is simply to ruin people, to rape people," she says. "I don't know why."

No one can say why. The answer is almost too awful to consider, and impossible to understand.

Comments

Breast Feeding in Public

2006-11-24T20:02:27+01:00

Why is this non-issue such an issue to some folks? Breast feeding is natural, so why do prudes insist on sexualising it? The primary function of the breast is, after all, for feeding, not for the titilation ~~of men.~~

Mothers Protest Woman's Removal from Flight for Breast-Feeding

Mothers, fathers, and children gathered at 30 airports around the country yesterday to protest Delta Airlines’ removal of a mother from a flight last month for breast-feeding prior to take-off. Emily Gillette was flying from Burlington, Vermont to New York when a flight attendant asked her and her family to disembark from the plane after Gillette refused to cover the baby’s head while breast-feeding. Gillette was sitting in a window seat with her husband on the aisle to afford some privacy. According to Gillette’s lawyer, the flight attendant told Gillette, "You need to cover up. You are offending me," the Washington Post reports.

Protesters staged a "nurse-in" yesterday at airports across the country by gathering in airport terminals and openly breast-feeding. Some carried signs with slogans such as "Best in-flight meal ever," "Don't be lactose intolerant," and "Breasts – not just for selling cars anymore," the Associated Press reports. The activists were trying to "show people that breast-feeding is completely normal," according to one mother quoted in the Washington Post, as well as highlight the importance of mother-friendly airline policies and federal legislation supportive of nursing mothers, such as the legal right to breast-feed in public.

Said one protester about the demonstration: "It's about raising consciousness about our culture’s sexualization of the breast. Breast-feeding needs to be supported wherever and whenever it happens," reported the Associated Press. Currently, all but twelve states have laws protecting a woman’s right to breast-feed in public, according to the Los Angeles Times.

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Quote du Jour....

2006-11-24T18:42:09+01:00

It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.... Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.

~Susan B. Anthony

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Scrap the career Vs family arguement

2006-11-23T20:23:19+01:00

Even in 2006; a time when some would say feminism has done its job, women are criticised through one medium or another to choose between career or family. Why is it perceived as greedy to have both?

When is a man confronted with this 'dilemma?'

Why is it still assumed that women will be the primary care giver of their children by default?

The above are outdated social constructions. The idea of "family" is also changing. Family structure has changed, and will continue to change. Deal with it. Or go crawl back under your rock.

Here's an interesting article I found:

Life in the Top Jobs
Is Worth the Effort
November 20, 2006; Page B1
Reach for the top -- and don't eliminate choices too soon or worry about the myth of balance.

That's the message successful female executives are telling young women in school and in the workplace. For years, many ambitious women were ducking criticism that a high-powered job meant they cared only about their careers and would never have a family -- or have one that was neglected. Now, women who have climbed high up the corporate ladder are asserting that they have a lot to celebrate and nothing to apologize for.

The word "balance" should be banished from women's vocabularies, said Carol Bartz, executive chairman of the board of Autodesk. "Balance equals perfection, which none of us are, so I think we just have to get over it, otherwise [women] spend all their time being guilty," which causes stress and limits their goals.

Having both a demanding career and children are not mutually exclusive -- as long as women stop trying to evenly balance these spheres all the time.

Ms. Bartz and five other female executives who participated in a Wall Street Journal panel discussion earlier this month (see transcript excerpts in today's Women to Watch section), said they have been disheartened to hear how many young women believe a leadership job will be soul-deadening or ruin their chances for personal happiness.

The women acknowledged having to work long hours, suffering jet lag from constant travel and having to meet multiple demands on their time. And they listed their sacrifices. Frances Aldrich Sevilla-Sacasa, president of U.S. Trust, said she has missed many of her three kids' school events and several wedding anniversaries.

But all the panelists concluded that their achievements ultimately were worth the tradeoffs. After all, plenty of women toil at much lower-level jobs and work just as hard, but don't get the big rewards of their high-placed counterparts -- from substantial compensation to the chance to make decisions instead of just following them.

These business leaders wield enormous influence inside as well as outside their companies. "We get to see the world, we're paid well, and our families enjoy a lifestyle they wouldn't [otherwise] enjoy," said Ursula Burns, president of business group operations at Xerox and a corporate senior vice president.

Andrea Jung, chairman and CEO of Avon Products, who has two children, adds: "If you're comfortable with your choices, that's the definition of peace." She travels frequently overseas, where Avon does 70% of its business, but often takes red-eye flights to curtail the time she's away from home.

Nancy Peretsman, managing director and executive vice president of Allen & Co. the investment bank, recalled a recent dinner with a group of senior-class women at Princeton, her alma mater. Many of the young women said they expected they'd have to curtail their ambitions if they wanted fulfilling lives. "They're already compromising themselves at 22, and that isn't OK," said Ms. Peretsman.

She thinks women at the top should do more to urge younger women "not to wave the white flag" and give up so easily.

"I know my choices wouldn't be right for everyone," she said, "but we need to get out there and say it's possible -- and worth it" to aim for powerful jobs.

While climbing the corporate ladder, they've learned there are times when they must focus primarily on work and times when the emphasis must be on their families and personal interests. "We have to let go of external expectations of what it means to be a successful mother, wife and business person, and each define that for ourselves," said Ms. Burns, who has been married for more than 20 years and has two teenagers. "No one will die if you don't show up at every business meeting or every school play."

What advice can these executives offer to newcomers?

Women entering the workplace should explore many opportunities and avoid either/or choices, the panelists noted. People can be lonely, get divorced or have troubled kids without having a great career, so why torpedo your chances of success before you've even tried?

Ms. Jung counseled the importance of picking a company or industry that you love, because, as in any relationship, you can't fake it. The hard work and sacrifices required are only possible if you are fully engaged in your company and enjoy what you do.

Getting to the top requires setting goals and persevering -- along with a willingness to seek stretch assignments that challenge and yield broader experiences, said Laura Desmond, CEO of Starcom MediaVeset/the Americas.

That is how men advance. And, like their male counterparts, women must learn to stop listing their shortcomings when an opportunity arises, and to give themselves time to learn a new job.

Mostly, women have to guide their own careers and not expect their manager -- or manager's manager -- to do that for them. "You're the only one who cares about your career -- except maybe your mother," joked Ms. Bartz.

Email comments to inthelead@wsj.com. To see past columns, go to CareerJournal.com.

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Setting the Record Straight: PLEASE READ

2006-11-22T14:19:52+01:00

Hi! This is my new blog.

I am no longer www.superkween.blog.co.uk

I have noticed that Safriz (maleist) has taken it upon himself to reserve the name and post on the blog, aswell as comment (presumably on my behalf) as "superkween".

Should you receive any comments on your blog with this username, THIS IS NOT ME!

I had posted a comment yesterday on Superkween's blog explaining this, only to find it had been deleted.

Cristina

Edit: I come back to the blog only to find the fuckwit is now linking the blog that no longer belongs to me, to this blog.

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