When something is a personal topic - when it cuts close enough to the bone to make you wince and panic - it's REALLY hard to write about. The problem of the personal/political thing emerges too, as this is a topic that exists beyond me and yet encompasses my life. I have only recently made peace with my past. I would say that things really turned around in a positive sense about mid-2008 - so yes, it hasn't been long.
I've had it lucky though. I'm a wet, liberal, British Asian. The regretting of my own existence that lurks inside me has damaged, and damages me, but I have been able to find heretics. People who would pull me back to some kind of objective reality just when I thought that 'tradition' would fucking sink me yet. I am certain that a woman of my opinions would go quietly insane in India and eventually kill herself or those around her, then herself. My family have accepted my rebelliousness and unfeminine behaviour in a way that others wouldn't. I CAN COMFORTABLY SAY THAT MY FAMILY WOULD NOT HONOUR-KILL ME, and horrendous though it is that I can be glad of such a thing, I am glad. They've made me cry, they've belittled me, they've made me doubt my grip on sanity - but I have managed to get space enough to see that they do, beneath it all, love me.
To all those people who remind me that it is OK to be me, and that my life is not dispensable just because I am the black sheep third daughter in a family of four children, I must just be intensely grateful for a minute - and I will be for the rest of my life.
Okay, misery memoir moment over. It's time for worthier issues than my own personal ones!
asquith, my favourite Stoke-based person (although he always spells it Sjoke - I may be missing something there?) highlighted this:
Calls for help from victims of forced marriage GOING IGNORED. Sign the petition to keep the Honour Network Helpline going, and also donate to Karma Nirvana, a charity which supports victims of 'honour'-based abuse. Despite being eye-wateringly poor, I am going to donate £20. That should leave me enough to live on for um, another 2 weeks or so... DONE! I would love to actually give them volunteering time, but seeing as I would have to move to Derby, 'tis not a realistic option.
Heresy Corner flags up some unsurprisingly barbaric treatment of a 16-year-old girl raped in Bangladesh. I commented in a fit of fury, but frankly donating time and/or money and signing petitions to support charities that work against HBV, as well as encouraging other people you know to do so, is the best anyone can do.
Walk For India's Missing Girls - a global march against female foeticide. I sadly cannot participate in this as it is taking place in Ireland, Canada, the US and India only (why not in the UK?). Still, it's March 6, 2010 so if you know anyone who lives in any of those countries/cities and who can make it, please encourage them to go while there's still time!
There is now ONE late-term abortionist left in the whole of the United States of America. And this is a nation that considers itself civilised? Fucking terrifying reading for anyone with a brain. Especially if, like me, you fear that we are slowly turning into a smaller, greyer version of America. Just look at the recent news that the rich-poor divide is wider than it was 40 years ago, and the fact that people are less in favour of helping the poor to move on up than ever:
Blair's triangulation was this fabled meritocracy, a feelgood creed where we don't have to be locked in eternal struggle, we just all try our best and end up minted. This took hold – in a study about social equality conducted last year by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 69% of respondents agreed with the statement: "There is enough opportunity for virtually everyone to get on in life if they really want to. It comes down to the individual and how much you are motivated." Without that (pretty groundless) faith in mobility, many of these newly revealed, hostile attitudes to the poor – for instance, only one in five of us now believes that unemployment benefits are too low and cause hardship (53%, 16 years ago) – would be untenable.
Though - oh, yay! - good, old-fashioned British hypocrisy might stop us from morphing into self-made-men with American-style Dreams in the end:
The unbelievable thing is that, even in this mulch of conservatism, this belief that the poor are poor on purpose, 67% of people still think it is the government's responsibility to reduce income differences between rich and poor. As soon as you put the word "redistribution" in the question, everybody's suddenly against it.
Speaking of America, laugh (or cry?) at a tale of a Texan Christian school aiding Haiti victims by praying for them, whilst a public school 'in a poor part of town' raised over $4000! Oh God, is He merciful...
Some things to be happy about - the possibility of Andrew Wakefield being struck off. I would actually pray for that. Just don't pay too much attention to the parents who are 'standing by him' (figuratively and literally - on TV) because then you'll remember how fucking stupid great swathes of the human race are, and want to kill someone all over again. Also, the increasing anger against our globally embarrassing libel laws - I donated to Simon Singh's campaign against the BCA, and I signed this petition - and if you haven't, do the latter at least!
Now to bed, stinking and in need of a vigorous snog. :-D
9 comments:
Good post. The Karma Nirvana thing is especially telling, as they wrote to several MPs, appealing for more funding, and got one reply - from the local bloke who's standing down soon anyway.
And guess who never replied? Jack 'Culture Warrior' Straw. He really is a shit.
That is beyond depressing. Do we actually have to get Jasvinder Sanghera into parliament before the government bothers to give a shit about HBV victims? It would seem so!
Your comment makes me think of that picture in an old Private Eye, of Jack Straw eating langar at a gurdwara. I believe the caption was 'Jack Straw currying favour' or somesuch.
Still, it's only ethnic minority women losing out! And everyone knows we're not fully human anyway.
Join the club - remember, a leading Catholic clergyman pointed that atheists like me aren't fully human. Mind you, PZ Myers interpreted this to mean atheists are the vanguard of a new superhuman race. So far my own superpowers seem to consist of having a decent head of hair in my forties, and losing things that are right there all along...
That's hilarious! Didn't PZ Myers put a rusty nail through a communion wafer or something? Or was that someone else? That made me grin.
As a female ethnic minority atheist, I must be even more superpowered than you. In which case, I would like my superpowers to kick in sometime soon!
Actually, what I WOULD like would be to transmit a kick up the arse to some of the absolute nutjobs on the Internet via their screens. Oh, it would be GRATIFYING.
Aye, "Sjoke" is a bit of a thing at our own expense. (You see how clever it is- combining the place name with "joke"). But I love the place really. Being as I have no other home & wouldn't want one anyway. Might I ask where you live? No need to answer if you don't want to, I was just a bit curious :)
It is a bit disconcerting, when I read about class & then it occurs to be that virtually everyone on the blogosphere seems to be middle- or upper-class. I still can't get my head around how many of the eminent people in just about every field (blogging included- especially conservative & libertarian blogging) is privately educated.
At times like this I feel like becoming a hardcore socialist. But I am not because I don't think the economy, society & culture of, say, Sweden, could ever be transplanted here.
I do hail your strength of charachter. I have never been put to such a test, I wonder what I'd do if I was. I always marvel at women from hardcore patriarchal cultures who manage to come out at the other end, especially those I've named such as Malalai Joya. Don't let us stop you talking about yourself, anyway- I imagine it must be necessary to express yourself thus.
Nice to see you round valdemar- I read some right-wing religious blogs & I just think "This is really strange because I don't believe a single word of what you say. I try to be polite but I reject your entire world view, so there!"
Yeah, I second that emotion. But I'm old. I grew up in that prehistoric era when you talked to people face to face, or - if you were mental - sent letters in green biro to the local paper.
So I actually flinch, slack-jawed, at a lot of the crazier frothing venom in postings and comments. I keep wanting to ask; 'Would you talk like this down the pub?'
I suppose it depends on the pub.
asquith - take a wild guess based on where most UK political bloggers live, and I believe you'll have the answer. I would say, but I get really paranoid.
'I always marvel at women from hardcore patriarchal cultures who manage to come out at the other end, especially those I've named such as Malalai Joya.'
Ahahaha. I cannot even compare to Malalai Joya, or Jasvinder Sanghera, or anyone like that. I have had things so easy compared to them. I've never had the fear of being killed, though I am a bit scared of being shunned. I HOPE I won't be disowned, but I'm not totally certain of that.
I've blogged my sob-story before *cringe*: http://gts-kjb.blogspot.com/2009/07/existence-based-guilt.html so I try not to harp on it too much now. There is something I've been thinking about blogging recently, but it will mean that casual acquaintances can NEVER see my blog, so I will probably leave it.
valdemar - Aha! I'm a very sheltered child and teetotal so I have relatively little experience of pubs. I have heard about green-inkers and pub bores, but not experienced them, thankfully.
Asquith - if it's any consolation I was born in Sunderland, went to the local comprehensive and Poly as was, and now live in Gateshead. I do wonder why the blogosphere is so chock-full of people I'd consider 'posh', but I suspect all the poorer folk are downloading Lady Ga Ga. Or something. Typing out sentences in any context has never been that popular, I suppose.
Re: Sweden and socialism, I get it. Lots of Scandinavian tourists round these parts, all looking healthy, inteligent, happy and sane. They stick out a mile.
Discrimination against women in India (subcontinent) is so ingrained that you can go back as far as the Manu-smriti and read whoever the arseholes who compiled it using colourful metaphors to describe women as fields to be ploughed, etc.
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