Facing up to anti-Muslim sentiment among Sikhs

So to another Pickled Politics thread. I thought I'd entered a parallel universe when I read the comments on the latest piece by Jai, titled 'British Sikh and Hindu groups release joint statement condemning EDL.' Besides the self-explanatory bit, Jai also provided some context with reference to the Sikh BNP and EDL members and set up a spiritual death-match between Guramit Singh of the EDL and Guru Gobind Singh Ji, the tenth guru of the Sikhs.

The first comment was by our dear Rumbold:

Jai:

While it is good that Hindu and Sikh organisations are condemning the EDL, as the EDL is trying to split Hindus and Sikhs from Muslims, a fair number of ‘mainstream’ Hindus and Sikhs are anti-Muslim; in my narrow circle I know three Hindu and Sikh girls who have been cut off by their families for dating/marrying Muslims. It would be nice to see these organisations attempt to tackle this bigotry too (which is, as you point out, against the teachings of the Gurus).

This is a perfectly fair point, and as someone who came to where I am now through witnessing the stunning bigotry of self-professed 'proper Sikhs,' I do agree wholeheartedly with it. I can't even fault the wording of it, really.

Which is where the parallel universe element came in, in comments in response to Rumbold. Firstly, Leon:

@ Rumbold,

I’m not sure why you’re raising this now, if I didn’t know you I’d say your comment looked like spite at best and at worst an attempt to spike the conversation.

There are issues within the Sikh and Hindu communities but there is also some very good work done within those communities as Jai has rightly shown here.

We need to support them when they’re doing right, and put pressure on them when they are doing wrong, but doing both at the same time just confuses the issue at hand, and sadly plays right into the hands of fascists and rightwing nut jobs like the EDL.

This comment left me aghast for a number of reasons. Earwicga endorsed it, saying 'What Leon said.' With admirable composure, Rumbold responded, touching upon a point I would go on to address:

Leon:

So groups release a statement condemning an Islamaphobic group. Good. I then wonder what they are going to do to challenge Islamaphobia in the wider Sikh and Hindu communities. That seems a reasonable point given the wider battle against anti-Muslim prejudice.

To return to the problems I had with Leon's post... I can fathom why he might have responded as he did (I'm not saying I'm right, merely speculating) - Rumbold being a white, middle-class man, could be seen to be effectively appropriating Sikh/Hindu/Asian concerns and voices. It seems almost as though Rumbold is being accused of concern trolling.

However, while Rumbold certainly cannot speak as a British Asian Sikh - neither can Leon, nor Earwicga. Leon is mixed-race and Earwicga is white. One way in which allies of minority communities - whether they're white, OR of another ethnic minority community - can fuck up is by enthusiastically shooting down people they perceive to be attacking a particular minority so that they, too, end up speaking 'for' that particular minority.

I am a British Asian Sikh - still in many ways culturally Sikh, if not religiously - and I am going to speak in that capacity, with full awareness that I do not represent every Sikh. I do, however, as a woman, represent a section of my particular minority group whose voices are barely tolerated, ignored, silenced and in many cases our opinions are just assumed. Being religion-free is even an advantage here, I would say, as it means I have no overriding interest in protecting 'the community'.

I've addressed the first point in Leon's comment - the defensive reaction to Rumbold's criticism, and I'll now address the second:

There are issues within the Sikh and Hindu communities but there is also some very good work done within those communities as Jai has rightly shown here.

This lazily trades on stereotypical assumptions that Pickled Politics itself started out trying hard to combat, with its fight against self-proclaimed 'community leaders'. There are no 'the Sikh and Hindu communities.' There are no closed, monolithic groups of Sikhs and Hindus as this statement implies. The reference to 'issues' is deliberately minimising - there are many 'issues' in Sikh and Hindu communities, just like there are in all communities, and reference to 'good work' is vague - so what? Christian missionary groups do 'good work' of various kinds - does this mean that they can't be criticised? I think not. A much more honest and accurate statement would have been to say:

There are issues with anti-Muslim sentiment within Sikh and Hindu communities but there is also some very good work done to combat it within those communities as Jai has rightly shown here.

The problem, of course, which both Rumbold and myself pointed out, is that actions do not necessarily equal words. As anti-racist activists and womanists know, it's easy to release a statement condemning the most extreme examples of bigoted behaviour in a community without addressing much more common casual bigotries. We are constantly told to take white people's condemnation of the BNP, KKK, etc. as proof that we are 'post-racial', for example, which is absolutely fucking laughable when you consider that there is an established, overwhelmingly white movement in the US to discredit the black President by claiming that he was not really born in America and is not therefore American and also that a bunch of middle-class white men on an inexplicably-popular BBC show recently made the most appalling comments about Mexicans - straight out of the Republican playbook - and got away with it in the name of 'humour.'

White people fall over themselves to defend racism (and other bigotries) on the grounds of 'humour,' 'irony', and sometimes evoke the current trendy dead horse, of 'privacy' as in this shockingly shit piece by Charlie Brooker. The fact that the people that they are belittling are equal human beings never seems to count as a serious point worthy of consideration, should make it clear that we are not, in fact, equal human beings. I have seen and heard members of my family make 'humorous' anti-Muslim comments, but on the whole, the anti-Muslim sentiment that I've seen in Hindus and Sikhs comes from deficient self-awareness, massive, massive ignorance about Indian history and the lack of a secular political discourse in India. I probably won't elaborate just now - I'll save it for another post - but these are things which need addressing quite urgently. Since organised religion is about the religious group, not just individual belief, the signatories to the statement need to make sure that they are actively working to combat anti-Muslim sentiment in their communities wherever possible, not just by (in the case of Sikhs) pointing out how important Muslims have been in aiding the Gurus in Sikh history, but by encouraging Sikhs and Muslims to interact socially and not treating religion as a zero-sum game. Just because the Abrahamic religions all have a tortured, competitive relationship with each other, does not mean that Sikhs need to play that game - can we not just set ourselves apart, in the way that Buddhists seem to have done?

On to Leon's final point, while left me utterly enraged. I've split it into two parts:

1) We need to support them when they’re doing right, and put pressure on them when they are doing wrong 2) but doing both at the same time just confuses the issue at hand, and sadly plays right into the hands of fascists and rightwing nut jobs like the EDL.

1) Who the fuck is this 'we', and who the fuck are 'them'? Just who speaks for who here? If, as I suspect, Leon's 'we' refers to the likes of Rumbold, Earwicga etc. - then I would say - good, you see that NONE of you has the right to frame this debate. It comes across as unbelievably patronising - somewhat reminiscent of cultural relativism. We don't really understand the Other, and we don't want to be seen to judge, so let's hold our noses and let 'them' self-regulate! I thought Sunny and PP's good work combating community leaders was supposed to expose how contentious all this 'we' and 'they' BS is. Do I not belong to 'they' because I am an atheist? Or because I am a woman? It's just that, the kind of people who have the official authority to issue these kinds of media-friendly statements, don't generally get to where they are by giving a shit about people like me. They generally try to discipline and/or disown me - I have had this happen with the Sikh commenters on PP as well as in 'real life.'

2) Reading this, you would think that the EDL have some kind of direct line to every media outlet, imminently on the verge of being voted into office/picked to present Desert Island Discs/hired to write for the Daily Mail. As Jai's post points out, these are people who are so thick that, despite having a non-Muslim of Indian descent in their ranks, they couldn't tell the difference between Muslims and Hindus:

The EDL’s previous claims to be opposed “only to militant Islam” are further thrown into question by the fact that, for example, in October 2010 they held a large demonstration in Leicester, a city where the majority of British Asians are actually Gujarati Hindus. Furthermore, the rally was held during Navratri, a major annual Hindu festival which is of particular importance to Gujarati Hindus and which occurs just a couple of weeks before Diwali itself. I expect an “anti-Islam” rally by the EDL outside the Hare Krishna temple in Watford is next; and yes, I’m obviously being sarcastic, but you get my point.

While the bigotry of such a group should never be underestimated, we British Asians should also not have to carry with us the perpetual fear that 'something might happen.' This is our country too and we have just as much right to it as fuckwit bigots - our parents and predecessors took on racists more shameless and violent than this, in a public climate vastly less favourable to them (I think it was mentioned in the Sanjeev Bhaskar episode of The House That Made Me that during the Southall anti-NF demo in which Blair Peach died, the police were protecting the racists - I wouldn't be surprised). Central to that is not just highlighting the odd PR moment of 'unity' and trying to educate people about religious history, but acknowledging that people do say these anti-Muslim things in our community and taking them on. Failing to do so simply encourages a 'business as usual' approach where people provide the odd utopian soundbite and then go back to segregated lives of fear, ignorance and communalism.

I have also come to have a major bee in my bonnet about this 'you can't do two things at once' bollocks. It reeks of culturally-relativist arguments, as I said above, laden as it is with the sense of giving cookies. Let me explain the feminist concept of 'giving cookies' (WARNING: no actual cookies involved):

A feminist cookie is the term for the reward some men seem to be seeking for saying or doing something feminist. (There are equivalents for, eg, white people and being anti-racist or straight people and being anti-homophobia.)

In short, when people ask for cookies, they are essentially seeking credit where it's not really due. It's like when my brother thinks he should be thanked for loading the dishwasher, when my mum has done it every day for over 20 years. Even when people/groups aren't or don't seem to be seeking cookies, that doesn't mean they should be given. This goes back to what I was saying about Leon's comment being patronising: why t-f should we give these prominent Sikhs and Hindus cookies for releasing a statement?! How many people in their congregations are going to actually read or process it? Furthermore, how does effectively saying 'Islamophobia is bad, it hurts us all, I despair of it' actually translate to standing with our Muslim brethren? If there are actually going to be efforts in place, from here, to increase understanding between people, then great. My parents and family know that anti-Muslim sentiment is bad, which is why they get so defensive when I contend that Muslims are people too - it doesn't stop them from making bigoted throwaway remarks and going on lengthy rants about how Muslims are 'taking over' which verge on BNP/EDL rhetoric.

As a result of the way I was raised, I had a lot of pre-conceptions about Muslims and apprehension about social contact with them. A co-worker and students at my university helped me to start dumping the dirt from my mind, and then I met ACTUAL MUSLIMS via another job and Pickled Politics and a former Islamist is now one of my best friends. I still have my issues with Islam, but I have TRIED to challenge what was presented as reality to me. That is the kind of thing we need if we want to make a difference.

Ironically, given the reference to 'divide and rule' in the statement itself, Leon employs that classic tactic against dissent when he says that:

doing both at the same time [praising and criticising Sikh and Hindu groups for their reaction towards anti-Muslim sentiment in their ranks] just confuses the issue at hand, and sadly plays right into the hands of fascists and rightwing nut jobs like the EDL.

As I said in my angry comment in the thread - this tactic was used against women during the nationalist movement. Indian men emotionally blackmailed women in the emergent women's movement, presenting them with a choice between rights for women and rights for the nation as if the two were incompatible with each other. The idea of women as a transcendent political grouping threatened the oppressive edifice that nationalism was built on - the bodies of women imprisoned within the home, Indian clothes and domesticity. Thus Gandhi could present himself as being on the side of the suffragettes, while he promoted deeply regressive ideas about women that reduced them to a male-created ideal of femininity even whilst fetishising this ideal. The result, as Geraldine Forbes points out, was 'the development of [...] 'feminist nationalism'' in which female activists and their energies were co-opted to the national cause - exactly as happened with British feminists during the First World War.

Furthermore, it is not the '70s and '80s any more. A lot of British Asians feel comfortably settled here now, and the urgency that drove them to overcome their prejudices and unite with people they are normally so dismissive of - blacks, Muslims, etc. - isn't pressing any longer. There is never a 'right time' for criticism, as the Egyptian protests show - you just have to seize your moment, and a moment when cookies are uncritically being given to organisations for being seen to be 'doing' something is just perfect for me. Shocking though it is, I think we are all adult enough to handle the idea of communities as being permanently complex and multi-faceted, not lurching between 'doing right' and 'doing wrong' and capable of doing only one or the other at once. Implying that questioning - not even criticising - the groundwork beneath a PR gesture, is somehow selling everyone out to the racists, is rather low.

I'll try and return soon to elaborate on the problem of anti-Muslim sentiment among British Asian Sikhs (and Hindus), and consider the misunderstandings that fuel it.

Earthquake - Little Boots

I can't really think of a title for this post, hence my using the title of the song that I'm listening to RIGHT NOW. It's quite an apt song though, as part of the chorus lyrics are: ' Every little earthquake/Every little heartbreak, going unheard/Every little landslide/Catch it in my hand, I won't say a word.' I feel like this MA year, I have just been sort of burnt-out and struggling greatly to manage any sort of original/independent thought.

Yet - o cruel irony! - I recently realised that I would actually quite like to become an English lecturer. Don't confuse that with 'feel I have the right to' or 'have absolutely decided to.' I need regular routine - going out of it seems to annihilate me. Despite it being a full 12 days since I handed in the two final MA essays remaining, I have struggled to get through The Discovery of India. There is an utter failure of time management happening. Ideally, I should be sailing through, pursuing the stacks of secondary reading that have waited patiently on my desk for two months. Yet spreading through the heart of everything like a stain, is fear. Fear has destroyed me for the last three weeks or so. Where am I going wrong in building friendships? What are my career prospects? Do I have any real skills?

I never thought I would write the following, but worrying about my professional future has kept me awake at night for quite a few nights recently. The sleep deprivation hastens the spread of the stain. Seeping through everything, is the incessant chorus of questions: where is the meat of my dissertation? When will that quiet faith that my supervisor has in me, apparently unshakeable, be realised?

I need to leave my parents' home, and yet historically this is a terrible time for people in my position. Young people like myself, jobless, nearing the end of full-time education with looming icebergs of debt that would freeze anyone to the core... This only reinforces all the oldest and most noxious fears that overwhelm and engulf, like carbon monoxide, until nothing else remains. The fears of failing, of proving them right - that would make me lose a lot, maybe even all, faith in the world. It's very hard to maintain hope and remain poised when you live a concealed life, frequently fearing personal attacks from your family. When they all form a consensus and you disagree, guess who's paying? Less than an hour ago, yet another moment which should have been trivial snowballed into farce. I feel that perhaps I need to stop responding to anything but the simplest of questions.

Foolishly, I voiced my objections to being repeatedly sworn at yesterday by my brother for having the temerity to - wait for it - be in the same room as him whilst he played Nintendo Wii! As far as I could tell, he wanted my seat (swivel chair) rather than the stool he was on. For that, he thrust his middle finger in my face, called me a bitch, told me 'get the fuck out' and similar, and feigned hitting me with his controller repeatedly.

Am I wrong to be upset about that? If I had been rude to him when I came in, it might perhaps have been warranted. I'm sure I told him to shut up, or get lost, and probably swore too, in response. My tone with him is automatically sharp - the product of my second-eldest sister's influence and the long and bitter history I have with him. Yet I think I had a right to be upset at being sworn at repeatedly for no apparent reason. He swore at me again today when I mentioned that I wanted to watch something at 9 p.m., 20 minutes beforehand. Hence my complaining to my mother. She was utterly shit as usual, making the usual empty promises ' 'When he's finished his exams, I won't take anything from him.' Right, great for you, mum - how does that make any difference to now? I got rather irritated at her, and also asked her not to embroil me in any further 'situations' with my father, something she's done a lot recently. Since I am studying Indian nationalism to some extent (Gandhi and Nehru), I am reading nationalist writings and my parents (my dad in particular) seem to feel the need to tell me what to think. I don't take very well to that, especially since I have read the very words of the people they claim to know better about. Unfortunately my parents, my dad especially, don't really do 'listening' or 'calm, rational engagement.' Yesterday I was dismissed as having 'fixed views' for having pointed out that there is no evidence to support certain conspiracy theories about 1984. The sheer fucking irony, the injustice of it, stung me. I could not stop myself muttering 'Fixed opinions, me? That's rich!' though I luckily wasn't heard as my dad continued in his burst of self-important defensiveness, just like a spoilt child.

Both my father and brother are spoilt children, and my mother simply encourages it (like so many Indian women!). Having drawn the parallel angrily, I refused to say anything more and retreated upstairs, coming down for the +1hr repeat. Good fucking God, halfway through I heard my mother and brother discussing me during an ad break. I burst into the kitchen as my brother reiterated a belief he has embraced (with 0 evidence) that I have somehow destroyed the family Internet. As usual, I wasn't being listened to and I returned to my programme. I hoped it was going to end there, only to receive, 10 minutes from the end, a deputation consisting of my brother working his best 'I'm contrite, me' face and my eldest sister radiating such a powerful wave of patronising pomposity, it was all I could do to keep my eyebrows under control.

Despite my making it clear in a variety of ways that I found the proceedings utterly contemptible, my sister was not to be deterred. I had to succumb, but there was a feeling of desperation of me, which came out both verbally and non-verbally. What exactly did they want from me? The black humorist within wryly noted the mounting, ill-concealed aggression in my sister's voice as she kept telling me that my brother was sorry and that it took genuine guts to come and apologise. 'Such guts that you had to lead him here like a cow on a lead?' I thought, but didn't say. My brother's not-so-concealed aggression also increased as I failed to be a good little girl and take my cues. I had no fucking idea what I was supposed to be doing, or what exactly they wanted from me, as the issue I was directly addressing - the Internet - was apparently not the issue at hand.

Having achieved the objective (which it would seem was wrenching the all-important acknowledgement of my brother's apology from me and making me feel like I was the one in the wrong), my brother mawkishly pronounced that 'I'm prepared to be your brother if you act like my sister.' Yet the mawkishness was tempered by the hint of something vastly more sinister - what the fuck does he mean by that? That I should act more like a regular girl (i.e. my mother and to some extent, my sisters) by treating him like the centre of the universe? He also swiftly regained his composure by admonishing me for talking about 'family issues' to my friends. He claimed that he didn't care if I talked about him to my friends, but that he kept family things within the family. This was of course a most inviting bandwagon for my sister to jump on - and she did. I said that of course I was going to talk about things that concerned me to my friends, and I didn't see why I shouldn't. The fact that I didn't see the problem with that was apparently indicative of my own problems (or somesuch), she claimed. Horror swam freely through me at this point; I provided whatever acquiescence was required of me, sat rigid as she kissed me and unwillingly kissed her cheek. I then feigned desperation to watch the rest of my programme, but the horror was rife in me.

Now, tone is everything. Had they asked me to refrain from badmouthing them to my friends, I might've reacted better. Yet the way they exchanged glances, the way they talked about 'keeping it in the family,' - 'They are outsiders and they will never be your family,' and the neat détournement of my contention that I have a right to talk about my own life to my friends - all that fills me with horror. Because (bad grammar!) it is not about them fearing for their reputations - it is about control. That refrain is an eternal one, one that I have heard ever since I became a 'problem.' Another sinister remark: when I declared that my brother's assertion that I somehow broke our Internet was not based on any sort of evidence, you know what my sister said? She looked at me and said 'What is this, a court? Listen to you - 'facts' and 'evidence'. You sound like a gori!' My brother, alert to the dog-whistle, then seized the opportune moment and furthered the charge of treason by mentioning that I speak to 'outsiders'.

It just all left me appalled. My sister's tone was oh-so-reasonable, as if we live in the sort of parallel household where I can actually assert my opinions and be listened to, and dissent can be organically resolved. Bullshit - bullshit was what it all was. I had at no point asked for an apology, much less an apology for the sake of an appearance of domestic peace; what I wanted was for my parents to DO THEIR FUCKING JOB and make my brother query whether it is normal to become so aggressive whilst playing Mario Kart, and whether it is acceptable to use that language full stop, let alone with your older sister. When the horror permeated through me, however, I felt a re-emergence of one of my few 'good' fears. This particular fear urges me to do what I can to stop myself being subsumed and taken over, to protect my awkward and inconvenient views in whatever manner possible. I knew then that I would have to write about this, and I know I have to write much more about these things, because people for the most part cannot and will not, give me succour.

Dear Robert Fox,

Fuck you, you white supremacist, racism-qualifying, self-important, jumped-up FUCKER.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/14/martin-mcdonagh-race-row-broadway

Excuse me while I go figuratively break some things. Apparently now being black whilst being offended at 'artistic' racism against black people is being 'racially intolerant'?! WTF.

Posting will resume (sorta) when I clear up the spattered fragments of my brain.

The second-class status of women in India...

and elsewhere, is a subject that I always want to blog about regularly and comprehensively, but for a number of reasons, I don't. The chief among these are that other people do it far, far better and that I get SO ANGRY.

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

At Last

Good grief, perhaps there should be a health warning against mixing your media. I've spent the whole day (more or less), and the last few weeks since the end of September, doing reading for my Master's. Today's reading has been a mixture of First World War Poetry, Mrs. Dalloway and an essay by Michèle Barratt - all on the theme of shell-shock. Just now, as I waited for my NEW LAPTOP (hurrah!) to come to life, I ceded to temptation. Having put Etta James's Best Of on my IPod, I allowed myself to play At Last (super-awesome version with clips from Funny Face on it) on my speakers...

... but what was this? As the music filtered deliciously through, I stiffened, feeling a sudden wave of frigidity shoot up my spine, and seize my nipples. My whole body was soon subsumed in this tingling cold as the lyrics soaked deep into my thoughts. Every nuance of her voice, her sentiments - the hope, the barely-restrained pleasure mingling with the violins' plaintiveness, all bound in a rough, caustic tenderness - irrigated my brain. The melancholy beneath her long wait had become my own. As the song hit me, I dimly felt a memory of The Libertarian scroll across my mind -

My heart was wrapped up in clovers
The night I looked at you*

and I was shivering, almost rooted to the spot. As Etta lingered to the close of the song, I realised my eyes were filled with tears. The next song began, but my body was still in its heightened state of chilled distress. I put At Last back on, and freed the tears that had gathered. After that, I returned (mostly) to normal. My temperature still seems to be unstable, though, and whilst listening back to the song on Youtube (trying to pinpoint the exact effect certain phrases had on me), I wept further.

While it can be embarrassing to admit to reactions like that, I don't feel it too much. It was a uniquely transcendental experience - and ironic to boot. Earlier today, I read an interview with Bill Bailey, in which he responded to the question 'Attitude to drugs?' with:

People try them, and then most people realise life experiences exceed the experience drugs give you.

To which I thought: 'Y'know Bill, I agree - in fact, being a drug-free AND alky-hawl-free zone too, I HEARTILY AGREE. However, why do I seem to be having so few 'life experiences' at the moment?'

Well, you get what you wish for. I couldn't help wondering if many of the Modernist writers and artists I read about had a similar reaction to Wagner - and what they would think of my reaction to Etta James. Would Theodor Adorno approve of her, I wondered. I decided that he would probably be unsure at first and then, once I described to him the implicit sense of narrowly-averted heartbreak and tragedy, the hint of a death richly merited 'at last' ('And here we are in heaven/ For you are mine/At last') and the overriding, persuasive magic of Etta's voice, he would have NO CHOICE but to agree. (For anyone who doesn't know what 'Modernism' is, or who Adorno is, or simply doesn't care - don't worry, I'm just being a saddo literary nerd).

The reasons for that sudden moment are likely to be as follows:

a) TOM has 'come around.'
b) I'm in love.
c) I was really looking forward to that song, since yesterday! I love romantic songs that are truly universal, or sung with loads of soul.
d) It's freezing.

As the song hit me, I dimly saw images of The Libertarian scroll across my mind ('Oh, yeah when you smile, you smile/Oh, and then the spell was cast'). Yesterday, I spent a whole 7 hours with The Libertarian - it was incredible. We did virtually nothing. We never do anything much of interest; it's not like my ex who shepherded me to gigs and exhibitions (and vice-versa) constantly. We do go out together, but we're very happy to sleep beside each other as well, and hug (yes, I know - stop vomiting). Given my state, there's been a suggestion of tense fractiousness whenever we debate - and a week or so ago, we narrowly avoided a smackdown over the issue of experiences of racism. This has made me especially careful to appreciate him for all that he is; a shockingly generous and tender soul who somehow manages to be sensitive, pragmatic and adorable all at once.

So, at 7 p.m. I gave up all pretence of doing my reading (the reason for going to his house) and climbed into his chair with him, to spend a whole hour hugging, kissing and talking. My family have been getting on my nerves a fair bit recently. My parents (my dad in particular) have had to do a lot of refurbishment work and as they are both pretty close to retirement age, it tires them out. I've been doing a little housework, as always, but work and a desire not to get drawn into the web that snatched my second-eldest sister makes me hold back from trying to do lots. Essentially, I haven't been hugely helpful, but I haven't been that bad either, and when my parents asked me to come and do some hoovering and cleaning, I did it without too much fuss.

However, what happens in instances like this is: my mother will complain constantly about having loads of work and 'no support.' My dad will mention (separately) every now and then about how tired he gets. My mother will step up her complaints. I arrived back from university about 8.00 p.m. last week, and because I hadn't really slept, sat on the sofa with my eyes shut briefly. My mother arrived and began angrily lambasting me for being tired, saying that she and my father were doing all that work at their age. However, being my mother, she was neither complaining of her workload, nor asserting her right to ask our help, nor saying I shouldn't be tired. No, it was a confused mess of the three, which culminated largely in an attack on me for having the nerve to be tired, with a sort of jeering undertone. I got up and went upstairs, refusing to be subject to her vindictive resentfulness and resolving not to come down again in a hurry.

Normally, in a non-premenstrual state, my mother's rage-fest would be easier to cope with. This, however, came in the wake of weeks of fear and feelings of inadequacy, laced with a sense of bitter disappointment and cynicism, at my course. I've learnt by this point not to invest too much hope, but TL assured me that I would find the people at Master's level more to my liking; more serious and mature. Throughout undergrad English, I bitched many a time about how many of the students there didn't really understand or appreciate the money that they were spending to study.

He wasn't wrong. Week 1 of the core course left me reeling in terror; everyone else seemed to be either a) obsessively knowledgeable of Modernism, or b) derangedly devoted to becoming thus, especially if they were a mature student. I was really hoping that the mature students might come through for me! Guilt set in - was I unappreciative of the course because I hadn't had to pay? At the last moment, a long-hoped-for miracle came through and I was awarded a bursary to cover the full cost of my fees. I started to feel certain that I wasn't worthy of the money, and that maybe I didn't deserve to be there, as everyone else clearly knew much more than I ever could. What was worse, I realised, was that I didn't actually like Modernism all that much from my brief encounters with it last year. It had been terrifyingly knotty, all T.S. Eliot and James Joyce, 'breakdown of language and form,' and obscurity. Did I deserve to be there?

After having a short period of emotional alienation from TL as a result of being absolutely unable to talk - for some reason, I could not talk to him at all - we fought and the release brought tears and awareness. The realisation of what each of us had nearly lost in the other propelled me back to full sanity and I gave my course a bit more opportunity to 'stick.' I chatted to some of the other women on my course; yes, they were nice enough. That week and the next brought new understanding: it wasn't because of their knowledge that the other students put me off. It was because history was repeating itself. At undergrad, there had been the deadly-serious (like myself, I guess) and the rest, with a few 'nice enoughs.' Now, the deadly-serious and the 'nice-enoughs' had come together - and I had changed substantially.

I have always been the sort of person who, by virtue of shyness and a natural tendency towards solitude, never makes friends instantly. I often find myself befriending one person, who is attached to others who are much cooler towards me, and vice versa. This happened all over again with one woman who was genuinely warm and friendly (R), but who appeared to be fast palling up with a more aloof, intelligent-yet-overly-brisk breadstick. Yet I didn't care - and why not? Was this because I'd reached that stage where I was tired of making the effort, tired of having to fight to be liked and appreciated, tired of playing the clown? Ye-es. Listening to the two chatting though, watching their camaraderie, it hit me hard and sudden what the real issue was.

They were regular students. To them, the MA was one of the most important things they were doing, or would ever do. It was to me, but I was uncomfortable about the way we were being rather unsubtly shoe-horned into PhD-prep. I loved the subject, yes, but... Even in Week 1 as two students tussled over time in Marx, I watched them under a throbbing head, aghast. What the fuck were they on about? Why the fuck were they getting so worked up? Couldn't they both be right? What was the fucking point?

During the induction day, six days previously, I had discovered that I was Best of the Web on Cif and persuaded a lecturer to let me use his Internet and check, very quickly, because I thought it was going to be taken down the next day (by which point, I wouldn't be able to see it with my own eyes as I was going to be out till 9 and then bedding down early for work the next morning). I assumed he knew about the Terence Kealey thing. He didn't; I explained. He commented that he didn't really get involved with that kind of thing (blogging etc.) because he couldn't handle the abuse (someone had left me a very unpleasant comment).

At the time, I thought nothing of it. Yet as the first three weeks sloped along, I suddenly and starkly recalled this incident, lit up against my general observations of the seminars and conversations with some of my other lecturers - and then I saw that I had been very blind and stupid. The department (and by extension, the world of English academia) was not the dry, self-contained hive it (and others) used to be - no, it had expanded, all right. It had expanded as students demanded their money's worth, to this level of curricular and extracurricular mixing, this new world of blurred boundaries that Kealey's 'satire' was meant to address...

... and there it stopped. I had always assumed that my lecturers were avidly interested in the 'real world,' that somehow they found time to follow the general thrust of current affairs beyond reviews sections and TV biographies. For some reason, I thought that they, like I, were always reflecting on what they discussed, on how to apply it to the real world, on what it all meant and mattered outside of literature and the seminar room. I was wrong.

Not only were my lecturers perfectly 'white middle-class,' I realised, but now, so too were my fellow students, most overwhelmingly. In our particular MA group, there was myself, a black student, a Japanese international student and 'Roz' who appeared to probably be of Pakistani or Bangladeshi background, but certainly wasn't trying to own it. When I mentioned this and the fact of being the only ethnic minority student in my other seminar group, TL demanded a population count and then returned the verdict that anyone else non-white and 'ethnic minorities would be overrepresented,' spectacularly missing the point.

None of them were, or even remotely seemed, particularly political. They didn't really need to be, not like I do. I recalled a conversation in which my parents had (inevitably) surfaced with a group of my peers, and the absolute gulf it created as always. R and I ended up conversing afterwards, and she tried to relate to me by discussing an ex-boyfriend of hers who was from a strict Greek background. I could not really talk about my situation properly, and the whole conversation brought to mind a half-wet beach. Something was missing. I could not understand what, or why, but something made me feel fundamentally unable to relate to these people. Not only unable, but also unwilling - alongside the general tendency of people in London to rapidly form cliques, and my own immense antipathy towards groups, something else was at work.

A 'teachable moment' with TL - the row about racism - helped me make some sense of it, as did a conversation with a long-unencountered acquaintance. TL protested that he did not like the way that I called him 'white middle-class' sometimes, but that he put it down to my being angry and TOM. I asked him why he didn't like it. He spluttered that it was because he couldn't help being that way, that I made it sound like some kind of accusation. He then went so far as to say 'it's like racism, really.' I had maintained a position of amused detachment, an ironic curiosity, while my innards broiled at his remarks. At that point, a world of rage cracked about my shoulders. I felt like Kali-Ma, towering, ready to bring about the destruction of solar systems with a hard, little smile.

'I cannot believe you said that,' I whispered, hurrying downstairs out of earshot, 'that is fucking appalling.' I tried to explain to him that racial privilege was poisoning his brain and that the pang he felt was what ethnic minority people feel constantly once they realise that they live within a racist system. He tried again to assert that my remarks were a form of racism.
'Racism? How is this racism?' He tried to 'explain.' I cut right to the heart: 'Did I say that you were inferior because you are white?'
I'd got him there. I repeated myself, for emphasis and to get through fully to him. 'No...'
'Well, how the fuck is that racism? Is there a concerted campaign - a campaign stretching over YEARS AND YEARS to portray white people as inferior, savage, backwards or effeminate by virtue merely of being white?'
As a historian (a very fine one at that), he could not of course assert that there ever was, or had been.
'I did not mention that you were white and middle-class because I have anything against whites (I wouldn't be dating you) or middle-class people (I'm probably middle-class myself). Did I say, implicitly or explicitly, that you were inferior, because you are white middle-class? NO. I mentioned it because you ARE white middle-class; as you said, you were born that way and I was trying to show you that you are a product of that.'

'But,' he was almost supplicant now, and I could see this coming, just like I'd seen the rest coming but couldn't believe it, 'I campaign against racism. I write on it; I write about honour-based violence and things like that, you know -'
'Yes,' I said, 'but just because you are not racist and campaign against racism, it doesn't mean you know how racism feels. It does NOT mean you understand the experience of racism. That is what so many ethnic minorities wish that white liberals of all stripes would understand. Not being racist and campaigning against racism, does not mean that you fully understand the experience that we go through.'
He had the nerve to ask me how much racism I'd experienced - I responded in as dignified a manner as I could, but I was angry about that and I let him know later on. That whole thing put me in mind of how rape victims still have to demonstrate evidence of some sort of physical struggle to be taken entirely seriously.

THAT is the huge, great sinking realisation that I have so often been working towards in these last two years of my life. The discussions I've read about unconscious racism within in the feminist community and silencing behaviour on a whole range of American feminist blogs, has given me the key to a whole new kind of awareness. I saw the full, shattering rawness with which interracial relationships can be so easily soured and destroyed. I understood more than ever why so many ethnic minority parents feel less than delighted about their children entering into interracial relationships or marriages.

More importantly, I understood why anti-racist feminists (and other campaigners) despair of overcoming the final hurdles in combating racism. Those white people who are 'on our side' don't always realise the harm they do, when they appropriate our experiences by trying to empathise without fully understanding the need to STFU and LISTEN, and/or when they react childishly and thoughtlessly to the awareness of their complicity in the racist system that they've never had to face before. What with that AND the newer delusions of 'majority victimhood' perpetuated by the likes of the BNP and far too many of our daily papers (I'm looking at you, Mail, Sun, Express, Telegraph and Standard... and London Lite and the Metro... and Sky News...), being able to reach full equality and acceptance seems painfully remote.

I was lucky in that I could predict my partner's responses and respond to him clearly - and lucky in that he's the type of guy who LISTENS when I need him to. (The type of guy whose love makes me cry to Etta James! Haha). I will probably post some more on this in time, but for now, my nose hurts and the memory of all this is greatly demoralising.


*Lyrics to At Last here.

Libertarians skewered

Um, I may be lying to you. Or not so much lying, as omitting to mention the fact that I will not, obviously, do a Marina Hyde-style takedown-in-detail of the faults of all libertarianism EVARR. I also miss the French language, so prepare for my inserting it at random in a pretentious and untidy manner (I would quite like to skewer and lightly roast some libertarian ass, but all the wafting scent of deluded privilege would probably make me forcément rediscover my former vegetarianism de nouveau).

Also, I am for some inexplicable reason quite upset. It has a lot to do with a runaway, organic, nearly-fuckin'-THREE-POUND Stilton. Not even bought for myself - I would've been less upset if it had been! Getting thoroughly soaked, and then travelling like a Tube-bound pancake, may also have contributed.

For a laff, I went to the online home of what sometime-commentator here asquith hilariously refers to as 'LURPAK'. Although I must say, that would do Lurpak's firmness something of a disservice. Battling back the cattiness (oh, so nobly!), I took LPUK's 'Are You A Liberal?' test and sat back, lips quivering, in anticipation of the result.

It was oddly fitting - apparently I am '50% liberal'. I read through the sanctimonious breakdown of the results - green ticks for where I was liberal and 'right,' and red crosses for where I was illiberal and 'wrong.' Let me make it clear to anyone who may have been fooled - I didn't actually care about the results and what they apparently said about me, I was more interested in what it said about LPUK. The results did not disappoint!

Take this gem:

We should get rid of the minimum wage?
Your answer was illiberal

The minimum wage is an illiberal restriction on free trade. It also places an artificial value on the cost of labour which makes it more difficult for low skilled workers to find work, and therefore gain experience and training.

Now, I know that SOME libertarians have suggested replacing minimum wage with a Citizens' Basic Income, which sounds good to me. Otherwise... what the fuck? Ensuring that people who do the shittest of the shit jobs get paid a fair wage 'makes it more difficult for low skilled workers to find work'? If they mean that it makes it harder for businesses to employ whoever they want at shit rates, and that this is somehow bad, then they ought to say that.

Maybe they mean that the minimum wage is somehow bad for immigrants, because it denies them the opportunity to undercut local people? In which case I must say: darlings, most of the immigrants don't undercut them because they want to - they usually do it because they are at a racial disadvantage, desperate for money and there's no other way.


Et puis:

It should be illegal for members of the public to own guns?
Your answer was illiberal

In a liberal country people can protect themselves as they see fit. Remember if someone owns a gun it does not mean they will murder anyone. In addition it is very dangerous for a people to allow their state to have a monopoly over weaponry and therefore force.

What about accidental injuries sustained through use of firearms? What about children and firearms? See, I would have no problem with introducing guns if there was some way to educate people about how to store firearms responsibly (or somesuch), so as to avoid incidents like these. Somehow, though, I imagine such a suggestion would not sit too well with LURPAK - sorry, LPUK, as it would be 'authoritarian' or 'assuming people are inherently bad'. Or something.


The state should make people change their behaviour to tackle climate change?
Your answer was illiberal

In a liberal society the state will not force any law abiding person to behave in a certain way as this is an infringement on freedom of thought and action. This is an especially acute issue when you consider there is still great debate about whether climate change is caused directly by human action. People should note that the state have a lot to gain in terms of social control from climate change catastrophe. Along with large corporations who will find it easier to cope with environmental regulations than their smaller competitors.

This is really laughable, since the state doesn't really do much to 'tackle climate change' as it is. Maybe once we face that scenario, we can judge better. I personally feel that getting people to sort their recycling and generally give a shit about the planet on which they exist and the generations ahead of them (as well as those in other countries likely to be sooner affected by climate change, such as Bangladesh) is hardly an infringement of their human rights. Maybe if the state beat them up for not doing so... but it doesn't, and I find it unlikely that it would. Meanwhile, large corporations can use libel suits and professional intimidation to silence critics and whistleblowers. Unjust, much? However, I have just spotted the denier dog-whistle:

there is still great debate about whether climate change is caused directly by human action

Er, maybe among the LURPAKers. The more sane and reasonable and unselfish among us have moved beyond this kind of debate-halting stalling tactic and on to trying to do something about the stuff that IS happening right now, like the retreat of the polar ice sheets. I'm no hardcore greenie, I'm sure I waste energy and have committed environmental crimes, but I am genuinely trying to STOP MYSELF DOING IT.


In the tradition of rhetoric, the third and final head-'splodey bit:

It is wrong for democratic nations to overthrow foreign dictators?
Your answer was illiberal

It is illiberal, and a sign of gross arrogance, for one state to impose their will on another in this way. These issues are for the people of said state to resolve themselves with their leader(s).


Pardon me while I have my Exorcist moment, and spit in French. Que c'est facile à dire pour vous! If we think of this in terms of Iraq - well, I agree entirely. That was totally illiberal. However, what about when the said dictator was installed with the help of 'democratic nations'? What about when the local people WANT outside help? Putting those two aside - what about when the people 'of said state' are in no position to resolve the issue with their leaders? An apparent case in point being Iran. This whole bit smacks powerfully of cultural relativism.

Obviously, one needs to be careful in such situations. What will you do, for example, if a certain state treats its citizens so badly that lots of them leave and make a bee-line for your state? I hate making this argument, because it veers into classic racist territory, but it is a genuine question. It's the whole current 'deserving VS undeserving' immigration debate summarised and I'd like to see the LURPAK's answers. Some of them are going to have trouble integrating and want to be recognised as different. Not even treated as special, just acknowledged as different but equal. What then, eh?

This is the beauty of being a libertarian. It's tailor-made for rich white middle-class types, men in particular. You can shrug your shoulders and repeat platitudes about seeing the good in people and believing in meritocracy. You can argue, de votre certitude béate de suffisance, insupportable, that to intervene in the affairs of another nation in any way is unthinkable.

Sadly, it doesn't change the fact that a load of white, mostly rich and mostly male people went around the world and exploited the people and resources of other countries for the benefit of their own countries and themselves. Hell, the slave trade turned people into resources. I would really like to believe in a lot of the nonsense that libertarians spout. However, I always have the urge to ask them to do one tiny little thing. Go to failing inner-city-London schools and tell them that we live in a meritocracy. Go to the mother of a teenager who has been killed in a gang attack and tell her:'Remember if someone owns a gun it does not mean they will murder anyone.' And, let us consider the Forced Marriage Act and its application in other countries, as in the case of Dr. Humayra Abedin. Without it, she may have died; Lord knows if she could have escaped alone.

It's all just so laughably naive. You can almost smell that it's coming from the perspective of people who have had either class, gender and race privilege, or the first and last if not the second. I can imagine many libertarians would go 'Yeah, but we're not disagreeing about the FMA...' or 'Well, gang murders only prove that guns should be legal, because they'll always find their way onto the streets...' However, I just want to laugh and go 'Well, of course you don't dare to disagree with this. However, why has the Libertarian Party never highlighted solutions to these? Why does it acknowledge, but not engage with, such things as forced marriage? Forced marriage is surely one of the greatest affronts to one's personal liberty. As is rape.'

And that is where the humming and hawing would start, because if you ACTUALLY wanted to address such problems as forced marriage (and rape), you have to act. Forced marriage in particular shows the callousness of the 'shrug my shoulders, if it's not MY personal liberty being threatened, then I don't care' philosophy. Rescuing women is not a 'public good,' why should people be taxed to pay for it? Also: poverty. If more libertarians actually saw that many ethnic minorities have to work twice as hard because of racism, they might understand why their ideology has such limited appeal. If libertarians really gave a shit about poverty, they would have to ask why (for example), there are so many poor Bangladeshis. Are they just racially genetically inferior? Are they not trying hard enough? Or *shock horror* might they be forced to acknowledge that racism and snobbery still exist in force, and that waiting around for the 'natural good' of white (middle-class) people to emerge, just isn't going to cut it for many people?

My own Libertarian is inherently quite sensible and generally diverges from the magical thinking of the others on a lot of these issues. Still, I thought that a blasting of libertarians was long overdue. I often rant about how most of them are simply deluded conservatives to him (which is patently obvious to most people), but really, the privilege overload I got today just had to be addressed. Dear Lord, deliver me from the day when I care more about 'illegals taking my tax' and 'the illiberal restrictions on free trade, that are ensuring decent conditions for workers.' Seriously, let me be run over by a Chelsea-tractor-driving, LURPAK-subscribing delusionary before I do such a thing!

AAARGH! Lars Von Trier's Antichrist

AARGH. I've heard about this film a bit, which to be honest, sounds like a lot of extremely self-indulgent bullshit.

What I must flag up, though, are the following comments from Xan Brooks at the Guardian. Particularly infuriating bits in bold:

Is Antichrist a misogynistic movie? That, inevitably, is in the eye of the beholder.

Couldn't help thinking: Translation: It features a woman mutilating her own genitals, but she's doing it so that's OK. No misogyny here, folks!

Here is a film that explicitly confronts the director's intertwined fears of primal nature and female sexuality. But does a fear of femaleness automatically equate to hatred? I'm not convinced that it does. Yes, the "She" character is anguished and irrational; a danger to herself and those around her. And yet for all that, she proves more vital, more powerful, and oddly more charismatic than "He", the arrogant, doomed advocate of order and reason

AARGH! AAAAAAARGH! Where do I start?!!

First off, where the fuck does this male writer get off, deciding what misogyny is?! Especially when he has just admitted the director's 'fear of female sexuality'?

And look at that - 'primal nature' and 'female sexuality' are intertwined. Gosh, how convenient. Says a lot, doesn't it? Women's sexuality is so GODDAMN PRIMAL. It's some huge, sweeping animalistic thing, that carries not a small hint of madness. Xan himself says: 'the "She" character is anguished and irrational; a danger to herself and those around her.' Wow, a crazy sexy woman - that's NOT a stereotype AT ALL! I can't help thinking here of countless VICE Dos & Don'ts, where they go on about how crazy girls are so much better in bed that 'normal' ones. Because, you know, it's up to a male to be the judge of a woman's mental state, whether he actually knows anything about her (beyond sleeping with her) or not!

Where have we seen 'crazy sexy ladies' before? That's right, kids: in Freud, of course! The idea of female hysteria predates Freud, but he took it much more mainstream. He thought that women who were 'hysterics,' were sexually repressed and/or had been abused in childhood. So you know, tying 'sex' and 'mental illness' together in a way that is both a) bullshit b) rarely done to men.

I find it bitterly ironic as well that in an article which hints at a feminist question and has the address:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jul/16/antichrist-lars-von-trier-feminism

that the first fucking person to be commenting is a male. Seeing as how feminism is meant to be about the equality of women, wouldn't it have been a NOVEL IDEA to put a woman's comments first? Instead of having Xan Brooks perched at the top, like he's the authority on whether a film is meant to be misogynist or not? Y'know, because not being a woman, he is so aware of what misogyny feels like...

I would apologise for the anger, but frankly, it feels good. I haven't been this clear-headed for a while. It is repeatedly disappointing to see the Guardian claiming to champion feminism in some ways and shying away from doing so properly in others.

I don't have a problem with Xan Brooks's opinion being sought - I just dislike the way the Guardian is putting him first as if to show how, even when a feminist Q is being posed, we are expected to put men's opinions first. On the up-side, it's a perfect subconscious reflection on who has the power in our societies. I can imagine people going 'Well, he is the associate editor of the Guardian website' and he does appear to have compiled the review. He could however have pushed a LITTLE further and not put himself top of the pile...

One thing I really can't forgive Mr. Brooks for as well is his literalist understanding of misogyny as 'hate of women.' This old chestnut:

But does a fear of femaleness automatically equate to hatred? I'm not convinced that it does

has been used, far less hesitantly, by sexist and misogynist pricks online, often on feminist articles or blogs, as a way to silence women. It is another form of 'it's all in your head.'

You see, these clever clever boys (and I wouldn't be surprised to find, some women too) go: 'Well, misogyny means hate of women. I don't HATE women, because some of my friends happen to be female and I like sexing them. Ergo, I win and you talk crap because you are referring to fear.'

This is of course nonsense. Fear and hatred go hand in hand, and why people won't acknowledge this more, I don't know. They don't necessarily ALWAYS go together, but in many cases they do. Look at racists, for example, who frequently combine the language of hatred with emotive stirring-up of fear about the Other. Hence it was that during the time of slavery, black people in America were brutally depicted as dumb savages (what is dehumanisation if not the putting-into-practice of hate?) and simultaneously depicted as animal rapists, keen for the delicate white woman's body. Urgh.

People think of 'love' and 'hate' as absolute points. Points which must be worked towards. This is, of course, nonsense. You can grow up having prejudice subtly and more directly instilled into you, and become a hater - it's not necessarily always a choice. Neither are hate or love exactly like the sort of things we read, see or hear in books and films and music. For example, the depictions of love as some sort of tornado or whatever - somewhat inaccurate to say the least. Most of the time, love is so subtle that we don't even realise when it actually kicks in, until it reaches high levels. That doesn't mean that love hormones haven't already started pumping and fixing our attention on that 'special someone.'

I think hate works the same way. When sexists say 'I don't hate women,' they are not completely lying. They are partially engaging in self-deception by using an absolutist understanding of 'hate.' 'I haven't killed or raped any women; how can I possibly hate them?' Well, refusing to treat them with the respect you accord to yourself IS hateful, mate! You're dehumanising them. At least be honest and say: 'Well, according to me, I don't hate women - I just strongly dislike them.'

Some men have managed to avoid this by simply claiming they hate feminists instead. Oh dear. I can't even go into the lack of intelligence this shows. Suffice to say, sorry, you ARE still a misogynist even if all your closest friends are women. Though I'm sure that when you tell this to these women, in your head, they'll back you to the hilt. 'Cause, you know, collaborators can't be misogynists, they're female! Yay! NOT.

Let us think about it on as elementary a level as sports. Often, you - reader-person - may come across a sport or activity that you struggle to do. Did you ever convince yourself that you hated something because you couldn't do it, despite trying repeatedly? I know I have; I feel that way about making chapattis. You blissfully ignore the existence of said activity, until it emerges in your face and you can't get away from it. You feel fear - will I be humiliated? and anger - I hate it, why do I have to do it?

Naturally, not everyone will react with fear and hate/anger together, but it is likely that the more you are confronted by this activity - say, you're at school and you have it every other day - the more you will hate it. Just because you don't kill or maim the person teaching you, that's hardly proof that you *don't* hate it, now, is it?

This is precisely what happens with feminism. The more feminists dare to challenge men on their privilege, the more prickfaces turn up to feminist blogs and demonstrate their misogyny. It is really laughable, the way so many of them put the lie to their deranged belief that 'feminists rule the world and want to kill all men.' Right - they're so powerful that their blogs are hugely mainstream and read by millions. NOT. Right, they care about men so much - that is, hate them so much - that they (feminists) discuss topics with each other peacefully, whilst YOU (misogynist males) turn up unwanted in THEIR space, getting in their face and trying to troll and intimidate.

Then, steadfastly REFUSING to listen or engage whilst loudly demanding that others do to you - the trolls claim victimhood when they are inevitably banned. God, my heart breaks for you - so much so that my tiny violin is playing itself.

I must just return to Antichrist and that review. Joanna Bourke, who (bless her) acknowledges yet tries to play down the film's misogyny, contradicts herself elsewhere:

Despite the erotic beginning, Von Trier has little interest in desire; his focus is on Sadeian extreme pain and enjoyment

But - de Sade wrote his stuff in order to get off, and you say VT is inspired by 'Sadeian extreme pain and enjoyment,' so how is there 'little interest in desire'?


Then at the end of the interview we get:

Von Trier has admitted that, of all his films, Antichrist "comes closest to a scream". It exposes us to an untamed erotic and aggressive aesthetic without redemption.

So... the film is erotic after all?


Linda Ruth makes an excellent point, calling our tabloids on their hypocrisy:

If only tabloids campaigned against real clitorectomies, done on real baby girls, rather than fabricated ones done in fiction movies.

but then comes out with this:

Of course, Von Trier probably doesn't "mean" any of it.

Oh, well, all dandy then!


A belated round of applause for Jane and Louise Wilson:

Unfortunately, this film leaves you quite unfulfilled. It's pretty damning about the whole of human nature. And, of course, the woman gets it in the end. Of all the to-dos you could have, there's a demonised mother, a witch who seems to prioritise her own sexual fulfilment over the safety of her child.

STICK 'EM BACK IN THE FUCKING KITCHEN! Wow, von Trier, that sounds like a revolutionary sentiment to me.

In which La Roux is speared and BG thanked.

Well, I am back from my 5 days of holiday in the North of England. I spent FIVE DAYS in the constant company of another human being, even sometimes not getting enough sleep as a direct result of said human being's presence. Yet I did not swear at him, or cry. He got up waaay too early one morning, to unblock his nose, at which I apparently told him, semi-consciously, to take an antihistamine. I have vague memories of awaking to find him awake, hugging and kissing him, telling him I loved him, and then falling asleep again. I even deliberately forced myself awake twice, once to rub some cream into his chest, once to rub a cramp out of his leg. I think I'm getting the hang of this 'love' business.

It [ze holiday] put a not-unremarkable amount of life back into me, which was swiftly diminished by a) coming back home and b) the number of idiots who continue to (sadly) blare on the Internet about how Islams are all evil and call themselves 'climate science rejecters' - YES, REALLY.

What is needed sorely, very very sorely indeed, is a lengthy rant. I have been in danger of seriously losing my sense of humour as I attempt to break into the dubious world of adulthood. Doing this post is a concerted effort on the part of something survivorist in me. I cannot continue to let the atmosphere of the family home (and family) subdue me.

Firstly, I must give props to Dr. Ben Goldacre for this Bad Science column about PR and prejudice, centring on the misreporting of a study about rape. As one of the most well-known and influential scientists out there in the British media at the moment, it is good to see him giving victim-blaming his characteristically dismissive short shrift. Theoretically, feminists should not give male supporters too much credit (or 'cookies') for thinking women are people. Practically, however, there are many many men out there who can't even seem to check their racial privilege, let alone their 'superior male' status. That includes 'liberal dudes' just as much as it does right-wingers. Sooo... thanks, Dr. Ben!

Secondly, I must move onto the all-important business of slagging off La Roux. I will just declare my interest here: I was vaguely intrigued when I saw the woman who fronts it, Elly Jackson, and I like their song Bulletproof. I may also like the song Quicksand, but this is looking less and less likely with each play of it.

I know 'tis deeply unfeminist to say it, but by God, I don't half want to slap that girl one. I was pretty unimpressed when I checked out La Roux a little more. Then the F-Word posted this article, where Elly Jackson reveals herself to have some pretty unpleasant views. What disgusts me about this woman is her graspingness. It comes across not a little in the article, and in other interviews with her I've read, such as one in the July issue of Asos magazine. With the finesse of a seasoned publicity piranha, she has eagerly latched onto the coverage from various quarters which proclaims her as something 'new.'

New? New? OK, let's run through the checklist here. M/F pair in which the man does the 'real work'/wields the power - check. They claim to be a duo who share things '50/50' but let's not kid ourselves here - as the producer, he's the one who provides the necessary foundation for her ludicrous posturing. So, y'know... an 'equal partnership' in which the male's role is more important? Yeah, that's NEW.

Trying, really blatantly, to be a mishmash of people from the '80s, while being barely old enough to remember said people? I'm sure she LOVES their music or whatever, but n***a, please. You're MY AGE. Blatantly ripping off/'paying homage' to a past decade whilst pretending to be new... God, that just HASN'T BEEN DONE BEFORE.

Let us not forget that this is a white, middle-class, slim, Beauty2k-compliant (as Twisty would say) young woman. Let us also not forget that La Roux did not get where they are through the sweat of their brows; they did so through Jackson's parents giving her a 'small allowance' to pursue her music career and through her father passing their CD to a well-connected music industry friend. Wow, nepotism. SO NEW.

In fact, let us not forget that were it not for pure LUCK, La Roux probably wouldn't be where they are today. 'But they're in the top 10,' you cry. Well, yes. That's because EJ isn't totally stupid. Talented, she isn't particularly (her wailing style of singing grated subtly upon my nerves, until I realised I could only stand the songs where she was barely audible). Ambitious, she is - and an opportunist.

Y'see, there's a recession on, and what fashion needs is 'something new.' When repeated sales and portraying overpriced luxury goods as an 'investment' doesn't work, you need SOMETHING ELSE. Elly Jackson is a fucking GODSEND in this instance. As the Asos interview did, fashion and style mags and newspapers can fawn over her, and turn her into an icon to sell clothes. She gets clothes, they get free advertising. Whilst pretending to be feminist, because, look! She has red, short hair! She's pale! And she doesn't wear dresses! Yeaaah.... not new - just different.

The Quietus interview with her is equally embarrassing (and misogynistic). It plays up the stereotypical tactic of pitting superficially similar female artists, emerging around the same time, against each other. 'Girl on girl,' if you will. Luke Turner also refers to Lady GaGa as a 'fashbitch.' Luke, you are a gigantic wanker. Sadly, EJ capitulates totally to this because - wait for it - SHE'S NOTHING NEW. She's just another entitled, spoilt, attention-seeking wannabe celebrity-spawn brat.

Note how she goes on about what a 'real woman' is (how the fuck do you know? You're only fucking 21!):

If you're a real woman you can turn someone on in a plastic bag just by looking at them. That's what a real woman is, when you've got the sex eyes.

Um... so does that make you a real woman, then? Because you don't have 'sex eyes' as far as I'm concerned. You just look like a moody, self-important git.

Perhaps I am being harsh - EJ was apparently a victim of bullying - but it is a bit hard to feel sorry for somebody who eagerly trots that out in interviews whilst claiming that she ''feel[s] sick just talking about it". Also hard to feel sorry for someone who thinks that she is 'someone out there for girls to look up to who doesn't have boobs and a tan and high heels.'

Because, you know, the most important thing about women is HOW THEY LOOK. Screw unimportant little things like talent and hard work! Sod those fake-tan, abusive-man-attracting breasty bitches! What really matters is SEX EYES. Yeah, that whole thing about her offering 'something new' for women? Like, you know, judging them on their looks, just like our misogyny-steeped society does every day? BULLSHIT. Goodfuckin'lordalmighty.

We musn't forget, however, that being judged on her looks is what got lil' Elly where she is today. EJ is a symptom of the celebrity-obsessed culture that we live in. Young people nowadays, even when they claim to have some sort of purpose to their attention-seeking (as she has just claimed there), feel entitled. In EJ's case, that is, entitled to fame and success. She's getting it - but not because she's talented and fresh, but because she's opportunistic and connected. Ah, that sweet, fresh collaborator attitude, new since the dawn of time!

Check out this rant of hers against R&B, for example. She slams girls for selling records 'half naked' - but if she didn't attempt to rebel against that very aesthetic, would anyone give a shit? Hmmm. It's debatable. I certainly don't think the music on its own would hold up.

Typical white girl fucking ignorance, she says that:

"Lyrically it's just like really really bad - I think a lot of it just doesn't mean anything.

"I think a lot of it is, 'Baby I love you, I want to kiss you'. It's just like what are you on about? Shut up."

Wait - isn't that what you sing about? Yet in more pretentious terms? Have you ever heard of Jill Scott, Raphael Saadiq, Lucy Pearl or D'Angelo? No. No, you fucking haven't. Because you're NOT some wizened authority, you're a puffed-up little 21-year-old middle-class English whitey. Clever girl though, she's perceived that people have become saturated with too much of the same. RECENT R&B has been like that - and who better to fill the gap, but another white, pretty, young woman who sings about her love life and pouts? Talent and smarts are secondary. I mean, she managed to fail at getting the bloody band name right - it should be LE ROUX or LA ROUSSE, not 'La Roux.' I can imagine French friends being sardonically amused by this latest example of Anglo-Saxon self-important blindness. She also came up with this genius line, which I had to look up to make sure that I'd heard right:

'And what are feelings without emotions?'

Like I said, not new - just different. For now.

Putting Things Right

A while back, I had a go at Laurie of Penny Red. I feel pretty bad about that now, to be honest. Not that there wasn't some truth to what I said - but really, what was I expecting? That she should be able to represent the likes of me? Of course she can't; and it's totally unreasonable to expect such a thing of her. Furthermore, although I hope she ends up as an investigative journalist (I imagine she'd be super-duper at that!), she can do what she likes in the meantime. The whole thing did perhaps come off harsher than intended; essentially what I was saying is 'you can do better than this' when it comes to some of her writing...

But who made me an arbiter of what is good? Who am I to tell someone else (especially someone who ain't listening, haha) to 'do better'? This - this post right here - is about me trying to put things right. There's a lot that needs to be put right. This v. good and simple post on PR has inspired me to try and begin to do so, if nothing else.

What I was expecting of her is the same thing I expect of myself. To do better. To strive for perfection. To achieve consistency all the time, blah blah blah. As her post so ably describes, we are all prone to this tendency. It is worse in some ways for women, than it is for men. They're not free of it either, though.

I appear to have indulged in classic projection and lashed out at a fellow struggler rather than stopping and thinking about why I did that. Having said that, I do still want her to go on and become a Socialist Superwoman, and I sincerely hope that she won't lose sight of herself in striving to achieve success. That is a genuine warning, because in trying to sell an unpopular cause to people, one can find oneself unexpectedly compromised. Everyone knows that... I am also developing some rad-fem tendencies, thanks in large part to this blog (and the assholes on Cif but also seemingly EVERYWHERE ELSE on t'Interwebz!), and so I got a bit unfair on someone who I felt didn't have to be quite as 'feminist' as me.

How stupid is that, eh? You live and you learn, though, I guess. I think that is true of many Asian feminists though - there is quite a gulf between what they, and their white (middle-class...) counterparts are concerned with. That is nobody's fault. We have to deal much more with really barbaric things like honour-killings, and the pressure of being sandwiched between liberal society (not free of misogyny and sexism for all that...) and conservative families.

For example, Laurie mentions in her post how:

I've just been watching Meera Syal's documentary about self-harm, in which she asks, amongst other things, why Asian women in particular are so very high-acheiving and yet so desperately unhappy - being the group statistically most likely both to graduate with high honours and to deliberately hurt their bodies.

There you go. We have more freedom to work than is still permitted in India, Bangladesh, China et al (though those countries ARE, in some cases, getting better for women...) yet in many cases, our cultures don't sensitively adjust to this. Instead, it is expected that women will work full-time - AND be perfect slave housewives. It's not just the job market, but also the marriage market, we have to grey our pretty little heads over. British middle-class society also still has this mindset in many cases, but not in the same way as the Asian community.

Paradoxically, no-one wants to touch with a bargepole any woman who doesn't have a high-powered degree (that means I'm out of the running, eh?) - think Biomedical Sciences, Accounting, Medicine, Law... teaching as well. Yet in most cases, she also has to be a housewife. Getting 'lucky' involves all or any of the following:

a) Your husband doesn't hassle you about housework (for the most part) and/or sometimes even HELPS (aka my father).
b) You don't live with your mother-in-law.
c) Your mother-in-law doesn't expect you to become her.


Quite simply, you're not allowed to be thick, dark, rebellious or lazy. Given that I am both rebellious and lazy, my mum actually used to mutter: 'Thank God you have fair skin.' My mother has also tried repeatedly to break my spirit, claiming that she's just preparing me for my mother-in-law. Alongside this, she harangued both my sisters to learn Indian cooking (including how to make a full dinner in one go, even though NOBODY I know, us included, ever eats that). Despite both successfully doing so, she subsequently tried to blame all marital problems, especially my eldest sister's, on cooking.

So, my second-eldest sister and I have a lengthy discussion with my mum about how our brother-in-law is a psychopathic abuser, who enjoys publicly humiliating my sister and refuses to either let her come see us, or come to see us with her. This may last 20 minutes or longer. Mother nods agreeingly and even participates. Two minutes later, she is ranting about how it is all my sister's fault, and talking about cooking. (Although she dropped cooking-as-cause after about a year-and-a-half of ongoing strife...)

The thing is: my mum means well. 'Nine times out of ten,' she informed me with a faded bitterness, 'the woman must bend.' It didn't matter that I actually had a boyfriend at the time who cooked for me and shared the housework (at one stage when he briefly lived with me, just before finishing his degree, he was actually preparing every meal and doing all the washing-up while I worked on a project). She had seen what it is like for us Punjabi women, the sham of Sikh equality, and she wanted there to be no hope to so cruelly give way, treacherously feather-light, to betrayal and disappointment.

Despite having a decent boyfriend at the time, I could see myself falling into the patriarchy's tentacles. I sincerely believed that I would never make it to 21, and that if I did, I would find myself in a marriage that would eventually drive me to suicide. How could I continue my mother's cycle, and raise children that I resented? Why would I want to raise another child like myself, plagued by self-doubt and devoured by the family pack?

I was so hellishly afraid of this happening to me that I clung to my now-ex, despite not being happy. The fact that he largely didn't mean to upset me became a handy guilt-trigger, for when I wondered how the hell I could ever love him. I went through my degree, picking up Firsts and even winning a prize. The initial hostility of my family to my education choices gave way to a less-antagonistic but not-much-more-satisfying complacency. They told me 'Well done,' and then would add that I SHOULD be getting marks like that. Their congratulations were always severely compromised by the fact that they neither understood, nor particularly cared, WHAT I was good at. There was also an underlying assumption that what I was doing was not really that difficult or worthwhile.

This last attitude infected me deeply. It birthed in me a painful and schizophrenic feeling. I regarded my mute and detached contemporaries in seminar rooms with a kind of superior hatred. How many of them had been told that they would study English 'over my dead body' by their sisters? How many of them had earned the right to be there, like I had, and were capitalising on it feverishly, like I was?

Even as I felt like this, I kept myself 'humble' by reminding myself always, in a back corner of my brain, that I wasn't doing anything useful or important. But I was also doing French! But I wasn't going into business with it. Even though I hated the French part of my degree at times, it gave me a further edge over the other losers. Were they struggling like I was struggling? Did they have to dilute their favourite subject, just to be taken remotely seriously?

The evidently gigantic chip on my shoulder was carved into deeper by this 'humility' I enforced on myself. One of my best friends inadvertently contributed to it when she joined in with my mocking of other students saying that to those kinds of people, she would say: 'I'm doing SCIENCE, bitches.' I must never get above myself because literature was not essential to the world the way science was. Yet this attitude allowed me to mock those who were fanatically devoted when I didn't understand things - they were out of touch. They didn't see, like I saw, that science mattered more!

Ironic, really. I had tried to take science at A-level, had found it a nightmare (though definitely interesting) and then made a defiant show of taking arts at uni, because other people got to, so why shouldn't I? Deep down, though, I had internalised my family's beliefs and knew that I had failed at perfection. It was bad enough that I was lazy and rebellious, aware of the sexual inequality around me. Now, I had to mess up the career thing too. I was not ambitious enough to reply 'journalist' quick-fire when well-meaning people Qed me about what I would do afterwards.

The one thing that galvanised me above all else, was injustice. Especially the treatment of women by our community. I knew this wasn't exactly a 'career choice' though, and I resented that it was so deeply embedded in my being. I resented others, as just described, because they were normal. I superficially belonged to their world, but behind the facade of shared interests and economic/educational status or political views, lurked That Bloody Awareness. My aunt abandoned. My cousin, believed to be murdered. My other cousin, forced into marriage then deceived and abandoned. My sister, pushed into marriage when she was not, and might never be, ready.

These women were in me and with me, and I couldn't relax and make small talk like normal people. I'm still very socially inept.

[Interlude: My mother just came down because I am STILL up, and when I told her I was writing and that I had to do it, called me 'weird' and said 'You'd better come down to Earth, you're flying around in the clouds.' Thank you, mother...]

I was, and still am, wrong wrong wrong. Odd, and wrong. I'm the lightest in the family. I'm the only one who didn't pursue a science degree. I'm the first child (and until my brother, the only one) to have lived away from home. I'm also the only agnostic, and the only one to date two very 'wrong' men. One, a non-6-foot, non-Punjabi atheist. The second, a 6ft, fair-skinned, believes-in-God dreamboat... only he's a) white b) a historian, with a penchant for reasoned debate on just about everything. Given that my parents like to subscribe to Daily Mail worldviews and a, er, 'Sikh-centric' view of history, it's going to be interesting (i.e., the other day, they were watching a man talking about how Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was a saint, and totally right to agitate for a separate Sikh state...). If they ever meet.

So ja, I am a spectacular failure. I plan on raking myself over the coals some more in later posts (ooh, what fun!). Even my body is all wrong for a supposed 'Indian' woman. I'm slightly taller than a lot of the Indian girls I see (despite being about average for a British woman), and I don't really look Indian at all. I'm most frequently mistaken for Iranian and Greek, but also Spanish. I'm not tiny and petite and delicate-looking. To quote Laurie again:

I weigh almost nine stone; I have fat on my upper arms... I have d-cup breasts, which I despise, and a tummy which no amount of sit-ups will flatten.

Sorry, Punjabi Sikh community of Britain! Sorry British society! I don't fit either of your notions of 'conventionally attractive.' Believe me, the shops have drummed it home by now that an apple-shaped body is NOT GOOD. I'm not Kelly Brook, and I'm not Freida Pinto either. I didn't trade in my plait and glasses for feathered/layers and contacts as soon as I hit 16. I want to aim for more than a car, a house near my parents and a husband that doesn't hit me. I won't pretend stoically that the guilt and shame that keep us locked into deceiving our parents and beating ourselves up are to be respected or tolerated.

Call me pathetically feminine if you will, call me 'coconut' and 'posh' and whatever else. I will cry in your faces about the fact that I have been, and still am, hurting. No 'put up or shut up.' How about 'fess 'up, or fuck off'?