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'?

Feminism Wept...

Oh my God.

Let me announce this, here and now. I meant to earlier, but it just kept getting lost in the tiny cracks of exhaustion emerging between exams and school, travel and revision.

Whilst preparing an oral presentation in French ('How to reconcile feminism and Islam in France?' Only, in French, naturellement.), it hit me that feminists, like Muslims, have to keep putting up with vicious and untrue attacks on our public image. Like Muslims, we face constant attack by unimaginative and self-serving opponents who would like to blame us for everything-they-possibly-can that is wrong with society today. EXAMPLE. All the different strands of feminism are handily grouped and dismissed, which allows for a very effective form of 'divide and conquer,' whereby feminists such as myself have to say that we're not in agreement with those who really do seem to hate men, and assumptions are made about our sexuality.

A lot of modern feminists find themselves in the position of having to distance themselves from second-wave feminism, because of the prominence and influence of lesbian feminism within it. Feminist-haters continually highlight the misandry that SOME (SOME, not ALL) lesbian and/or radical feminists have shown, using it as a way to shout down the many valid criticisms they make. In fact, they use that as a way to shout down almost any form of feminist critique that doesn't bend over backwards to please them (see most articles even vaguely pertaining to feminism on Cif...). Divide and conquer. It is divide and conquer. They turn on individuals en masse, conveniently displaying the very mob mentality that they ascribe to those same individuals. Those individuals find themselves stuck, or should I say: WE are stuck. We can't acknowledge the huge ideological debt that we owe to second-wave feminism. Like Muslims constantly being harassed as terrorists, we must distance ourselves and say 'Not in our name,' as if it is completely removed from us.

Yet as any fule kno, radical voices are useful and important (as long as they're not generating immediate danger, of course). They stand to inform us both of what we could have, and in the case of more conservative voices, what we could lose, if we remain idle. Let me just say that I am not trying to establish some sort of suffering equivalence with Muslims here. I am so NOT A FAN of the Oppression Olympics. All I am doing is drawing a parallel, one which is in some ways heavily ironic.

It must be said that the public image of feminism certainly isn't done any favours when people who claim to strongly identify with it promote exactly the kind of cartoonish stereotypes that fem-haters love and lap up. Here I must cease, and present you with this. Julie Bindel and Julie Burchill interviewing each other.

It is ghastly. It is so, utterly, ghastly. Yet it's also very clever, because ultimately neither of them gives away anything new in the least about themselves. Burchill's reputation as a giggling, bandwagon-jumping delusionary is confirmed, and Bindel once again comes across as the stereotypical lesbo-misandrist automaton.

Feminism wept. Feminism wept. There is a certain hollowly-humorous irony in Bindel saying:

I much prefer women to men. A lot of them are emotional cripples. Have you not found that? Are we such different feminists do you think?

after Burchill saying:

But part of what makes a man a man is that he never takes offence! When you see sad-sacks like, what was his name, Neil something [Lyndon, author of No More Sex War: the Failures of Feminism]. "Men's Lib" - that's the opposite of a man, to me. Just shut up and take your lumps. And then we can all have a laugh.

It's so lovely that even in prison, men who aren't touchy-feely have to be stopped from beating up rapists - not just child molesters, but rapists of grown women.

This too after Burchill cheerfully hypocritises (neologism alert!) her self-ascribed epithet of 'militant feminist' by saying:

I like men and get on much better with them one to one than I do women, who can be a bit emotional.

and

I don't want to hear about every last thing someone is feeling. I think most men have it about right. All men should be like my dad!

I'm sorry. What the FUUUUUUUCK are you talking about, you stupid bitch? She basically DID just confirm what Bindel said - that men are 'emotional cripples,' because they don't overshare like those annoying women - and then implied that that is how men should be.

Great, Burchill, you stupid fucking bitch. So, a kid who is being bullied should just 'take his lumps,' should he? The likes of you should be spared 'every last thing someone is feeling,' until they walk into a school and massacre a load of people in one go?

As for the men beating up rapists comment - I must reiterate my expletive-garnished question above. The justice system is supposed to deal with individuals, Burch. It's not the job of mobs, or single persons to decide what happens to criminals. Jesus wept, this time.

It is ironic though, this woman is a shamelessly Freudian stereotype herself. 'All men should be like my dad'? Bet you wish you could've married him!

I have revised my opinion on the Grauniad's decision here. I now think it was absolute genius. You have *ahem* an intelligent and dedicated campaigner who generally poses as 'professional lesbian' (I hope she's not really as virulently anti-men as she makes out...) alongside a showy and inexplicably well-paid professional contrarian (not a very good one, either). The latter indulges in a frankly breathtaking display of female misogyny, showing the very real need for conventional assumptions of gender ('masculinity' and 'femininity') to be challenged. The former, perhaps because of her own transphobia and misandry, smiles and lets it pass. Oh, the female friendship! Oh, the uniting nature of the sisterhood!

Truly, feminism wept. I leave you with this thread I found, discussing Bindel's transphobia, which is really interesting. Look out for the post by 'Forced Buy' - in fact, if you ignore all the rest, at the very least read that. It's really insightful, and Burchill enters the equation once again!
This interview with Susie Orbach, feminist author and Dolly Draper's mentor, is also good reading. Also: a thread about whether make-up is acceptable or not. P.S.: My heart bleeds for Kater Andron. It really does, but... I just can't force those tears out. It's sort of like when you want to take a shit, but you can't.

(Given that the 'article' is called 'Julie Bindel talks to fellow feminist Julie Burchill,' I'm starting to wonder if the Guardian, a paper that SHOULD be feminists' friend, doesn't have it in for us too...)

Sikhism and Homosexuality

Firstly, I'm going to brandish my big, big stick and say that if there are any homophobes hoping to get lucky with this blog title: tough titties. VERY TOUGH, DRAGON-SCALY, LEATHERY-HIDE TITTIES.

Now that I'm done with that necessary introduction, here goes. I saw a post on Sikhism and homosexuality a few days ago on Pickled Politics, and the first comment on it made my blood not only boil but STEAM. It brought back in a flood all my rage and fury at the world, all my doubt of God that was born in my teens with the discovery that so-called Sikhs were really not the people they claimed to be.

My parents are a prime example of this. Vivid in my mind even now is the memory of my dad, in response to a BBC news item about paedophiles, spluttering 'Bloody gays and lesbians!'

Naturellement, my ears pricked (or rather, popped), I swivelled round on the computer chair and then got myself into one of those classic, thankless, arguments in which I can never win (I have since learnt to avoid these wherever possible). Instead of engaging with me as an adult is supposed to do, my father shouted at me for daring to contradict his painfully stupid and bigoted beliefs.

Here I am again, wading in where not wanted per se, delivering a Not In My Name. This shit is personal, muddafuckas. Were it not for the shocking bigotry of people like you, I might still believe in a God today. As it is, I can't rid myself of the trappings of Sikh culture just like that, especially not when it carries so many progressive and inspiring role-models and philosophy.

So yeah, homosexuality is NOT counter to Sikhism. There is NO condemnation of it, neither in the Guru Granth Sahib, nor in any of the accounts of the Gurus' lives.

However, there IS a stipulation at the very heart of Sikhi which states that Sikhs should stand up for the downtrodden and the oppressed. Linked to this, as far as I can tell, is Guru Gobind Singh Ji's notion of the ideal Sikh as a 'saint-soldier.' In Guru Teg Bahadur's time, this meant martyrdom to protect the Kashmiri pandits. In a story (which appears to be little known), Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the founder of Sikhism, was brought two pots of sweets by a devout Muslim (who had bowed to the star marking the arrival of a saint on Earth) when he was born, one from a Hindu sweetmaker and one from a Muslim sweetmaker. The Muslim wanted to see which religion the saint would favour. The baby Nanak smiled and simultaneously placed a hand on each covered pot. Maybe it will sound tragic to the militant athiests, but I remember reading that as a child and it gave me goosebumps even now, to remember the picture of the haloed child smiling with wordlessly eloquent love and serenity upon his delighted guest.

Now, I take this personally. Call it megalomania if you will, but I do feel responsible for helping others when I see the possibility arise, and for trying to treat others as I wish to be treated. Not to be confused with 'liberal guilt,' which I feel is intensely unhealthy (guilt generally tends to be, except for in a few instances, such as during mourning...). Which is why I've taken the job here of hammering home the message for the hypocrites and curious bystanders out there. I found this blog, which sums how I feel up:

Hollow Rituals Have No Value
Service to people is service to God.
Rituals, if hollow, value not.


There was a rather impressive bit of sophistry [/sarcasm] in that first comment, which I've also noticed subsequently noticed in followers of other faiths (notably with the idea that homosexuality can be 'cured'). It is a twist on the idea that homo (or bi) sexuality is a choice. What happens is that (hypocritically enough), intolerants lump together the idea that homo (or bi) sexuality is a 'choice' with the idea that it is some sort of perversion which the person can't really help. So, it's a choice because it's not natural, but it's a perversion because it's not normal. Like an illness, and of course, people can't help being ill, now, can they? Aahhh, I understand now.... (not).

How do you solve this knotty paradox when reality threatens to intervene? When people won't just shut up and become 'normal' and heterosexual even though you (and no doubt, to some extent, they) keep telling them to?

Easy. Align their sexual orientation with 'lust' and then tell them, opaquely, sanctimoniously and unhelpfully, that lust is a sin and that we should all try to 'overcome our desires' (near-exact paraphrase of a bit in that first comment!). What you really want to add, but don't, because it would derail your faux-compassion, is that: 'It's OK for people like me, because we have babies and you don't, so you're a waste of time. I mean, let's be honest here, this whole organised-religion business is just a giant popularity contest where we all want the most followers, and gay believers are a waste of time because they have no babies!'

(God, the way these people carry on about gay love. You'd think that all those gay people who want to be able to get married were having sex right in their faces, 24/7. I just love the way they can't seem to distinguish love and lust, mistaking the former for the latter. No doubt, vice-versa too - which sure explains their disgusting attitudes towards rape).

If 'lust' is really so dangerous, then imho, all those Catholic paedophile priests, as well as anyone who's ever abused their religious high position (I'm sure there are gianis and imams and rabbis and so many others who are nowhere near approaching saint level, to put it euphemistically) need to be dealt with fast. Give them electroshock/humiliation/flogging/social ostracisation therapy. Failing that, do as Lost in Showbiz commenters often wish upon celebrities, and have them fired into the Sun by rocket.

Well? I'm waiting!


(Quick and fervent round of applause for faisal, who, ahem, reworked the bigoted comment as follows):

Bigot (referring to self as 'Mangles', I believe 'Mangled' would be more appropriate!):

Guest by my guest and find a faith that accommodates your principles instead of trying to hoodwinkle and tarnish the good name of the SIkh faith and our Great Gurus. A homosexual wanting to be a Sikh is like a Tory wanting to be a communist, no offence to either, but the two do not corrolate.

faisal (in response to Leon, post #16):

Leon by my guest and find a faith that accommodates your principles instead of trying to hoodwinkle and tarnish the good name of the Sith faith and our Sith Lords. A homosexual wanting to be a Sith is like a Rancor wanting to be an Ewok, no offence to either, but the two do not corrolate.

Comedic brilliance.

PP meet-up the THIRD

WARNING: This is a post of incredible mediocrity, as I have spent the whole day doing an essay that I now see in my nightmares, while simultaneously panicking about upcoming exams and work-placement. RUNAWAY! RUNAWAYFAST!

That's right. That's right mofos. Here is the write-up that none of you have demanded, and that even less of you (yes, I know it's theoretically impossible for 'less than none of you' to exist) care about reading.

Pickled Politics, that blog what I read, had a meet-up yesterday, and I went to it. There happened to be civilians ('non-regulars') present and consequently, an equal number of white people and non-white people for once! Though it must be said that the turn-out could have been better... like if the thread for the meet-up had gone up sooner... *coughs and looks deliberately in Sunny's direction*

Sunny, our Lord and Master was of course present. A struggle betwixt his inner Body Clock (set to run on Indian Standard Time) and his better instincts had obv. ensued, as he was only an hour late. He told me to give him a hug as I was staring, half-blinded somewhere in the direction of the sun behind him (I would tell you why if I could work out why myself... For now, t'shall be blamed on a heady mixture of dry-ass brownie (oh, NT, do you know how my heart withered and died with every love-free disintegrating bite of the broken top? The inside was moist. Why then, a top crumbling like old-person foot?), sun exposure, not enough sleep, walking around and being inappropriately dressed for the outdoors. A sausage sandwich may also have been complicit.

So yes, our Lord and Master, living fully and ironically up to his name, commanded me to give him a hug. I lurched to, wondering if by some trick he was going to move and I would end up dangling around his neck like a pendant ( which incidentally, The Libertarian's favourite economist has been accused of being...). The awkward grapple lasted mere seconds, after which I was returned, immensely relieved at having neither incurred nor caused any injury, to TL. The mysterious 'people on the second floor' looked at us from the table, and my sense of irony kicked guiltily in. The Second Floorers were both very slender, probably thinner than me; further down the table, right at the end, were two women of a build closer to mine, who seemed to be enjoying a never-ending meal. Rowenna - the female of our Second Floorers - disposed of them with the polite efficiency of a sort of cross between Uma Thurman's Bride and Mary Poppins. Sonia and I were suitably impressed; then, with TL in tow (of course!) we sat...

... and talked about legalising drugs. Immediately prior to this, Sunny introduced us in customary fashion: 'This is -----, she's a blogger and on Pickled Politics.... What's the name of your blog again? I never remember it.' Thank you, for that demonstration of support, O Great One. 'Get there steppin',' I reminded him sheepishly. TL, Sunny and Sonia then cranked smoothly into action while I sort of tried to arrange my upper body at 45 degrees to the bottom, fuse with TL and generally avoid the suddenly-unfriendly wind. It began with Our Lord telling us about the author of Freakonomics writing another book, which he had brought with him, about being a gang leader for a day. My hood went up. I mentioned The Wire and Ben (with perfect timing and quite possibly taller even than he had been at the previous meet-up) took the piss.

We shifted indoors, and I ended up 'at the head of the table.' However, for a good 10 minutes, I was preoccupied with trying to make myself sufficiently taller than said table so as to be able to feel like an adult whilst conversing like one. I achieved only the former, and only just. I don't know what happens to me at these events. The inner child is awakened, and cries out for satiety. I blame the seats. When you have to fight to keep your chin above the table surface, I tell you, you just can't take discussion of Moldovan election issues quite as seriously as they deserve. Having Ben (who turned out to be 6'3'', and hence the tallest real person (i.e. 'non-basketballer') I have ever met, and that INCLUDES my brothers-in-law) to my right didn't help.

Fighting down the chaos inside, I ventured to make conversation LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE DO, with D-Notice and Ben. However, as seems to be characteristic of every meet-up at the NT so far, a uniquely British band (I think they were blues?) were playing as we tried to have lengthy and intellectual discussions. I say 'uniquely British' because I returned from the toilets to hear the singer bleating 'Too many cooks spoil the stew'. Not the broth - that dodgy foreign word of proverbs and Americans - but stew. Aaah. :-D Neatly-attired old white people sat, enraptured by this lyrical gem, saved from blending into the background by the gentle luminosity of their grey/white hair.

I don't know what happens to me, but every time I'm at the NT for a meet-up, I just want to RUN AMOK. Maybe it's the way I dress. Perhaps my neon-green tights and bright blue miniskirt had somehow infiltrated my bloodstream, and worked their way up to my brain? Lots of old people. With their clutch purses and pearl necklaces. Enraptured to stew. 'Twas all sweetly tragic. Some perverse instinct was urging me to jump on all the tables like a five-year-old and/or draw my rather wordless compatriots into a game of Musical Padded-Stools. Political bloggers are a serious and mature bunch, and I, unfortunately, am not.

Then, I remembered that D-Notice had been regarding me in a perplexed manner and decided to prove conclusively that I am not the freak I in fact am. I made jokes to reassure him and Ben of my (ongoing) sanity. They laughed, and sometimes I even heard what they said! W00t. However, Ben confessed to having read this blog, which was almost enough to make me fall off the tiny tower of scrunched-up Libertarian-jacket, scrunched-up hoodie and Libertarian wallet narrowly keeping me at their chin (if not face) level. Two posts at that. I later revealed to him that I thought Oxbridge people were androids. He then revealed that most of his family were Oxbridge-ites. I conceded that maybe there are some out there who are merely part android. Oh, I learn so much from my blogging associates.

I also tried desperately to complain about the culture of impatience and its effect on blogging to my poor captive audience, whilst wondering what the fuck I was actually talking about. I remember complaining (repeatedly) about right-wing trolls, spelling and syntax (urgh, how original). D-Notice laughed at least twice, reassuring me that the words had left my mouth in the right order if nothing else. Then, contrary to my best wishes, my brain informed me that BIATCH, I was hungry. I tried to continue seeming erudite and civilised as a mental screensaver of different types of cakes began (why? why? I blame that GODDAMN brownie again). Then, the smell of sausages descended. I resisted the urge to bob hypnotically to the wafting scent like a snake being charmed.

Blah blah blah, Sonia told me a lot of very interesting things about hijabi women such as Shelina Zahra Janmohamed (whose book, Love in a headscarf, I highly recommend!). I took the piss out of TL's eating habits to her, and he began to stop having elite political debates, and grin slightly at me. Sonia quizzed him with her usual forensic meticulousness about what he ate. I laughed. Rowenna, overhearing mention of Cambridge, joined us. I asked her about her article on the 'blokeosphere', which I unsurprisingly agreed with, and whether it was designed to elicit waves of absolute nobs proving her point in droves in the comment box. She laughed and explained to the others. I suggested that perhaps such commentators should be diverted towards taking pictures of their penises and posting them in the comment box instead, as that might at least be entertaining. She laughed, but I was serious. Everyone's been going crazy for Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent... It's evidently time for another Internet Sensation.

So, to ease the frustration of all them there Cif-ers who think they're a cut above because they post on the Guardian website, I say this: bring it. Bring the cocktasticness. If you still desperately feel the need to invent creative (read: stupid) names for Gordon Brown or froth uselessly about 'ZaNuliarbore,' feel free. You could Photoshop in a little placard with it on, so it looks like your penis is protesting. Or get it in there in some other amusing fashion. Then, send in separate pictures of your faces so that we can have fun matching up the two. I mean, seeing as how you think virtually all the female writers are 'feminazis' who of course can't by definition be straight, why would we laugh? (Er...) The winner can get a brand-spanking new porn career.*

So yeah, Rowenna was a very nice lady, but today I found out that apparently she is only a year older than me, and now I am terrified of her. Nyrone, who was his usual mellow self, arrived unexpectedly and got on like a house on fire with her for what may have been all of eternity, before revealing that he got a job at Al-Jazeera English. Classy! He also praised me for my honesty when writing (and wasn't the only one to do so!). I ended the evening looking into TL's eye and muttering about enchiladas. On the way home, I proceeded to fight hunger by gossiping about Sunny like a harridan of the highest order. I leave you with this, which was delightedly and pointedly brought up by TL and I. Two words: sexy goatee. HILAAAAAARIOUS!


* career not included.

P.S.: I found out what I would be, were I a pop song - and I didnae even need a fucking Facebook quiz to tell me.

Must... spill... guts...

OK, I'm snapping. I'm officially snapping right here, and right now, and the results may be ugly but really, who gives a flying fuck? I will feel the mad elation of the recently-confessed sinner. Forgive me Father, for I have had bad thoughts about my contemporaries and now I must repent.

Now, I don't know if any of my readers read Penny Red, but I used to link to it, and it's a good blog, no doubt.

I stopped linking to it recently, though. Do you know why? Because I realised, it kind of pisses me off rather a lot sometimes. I feel bad about this - there should be no reason for a well-written, ingeniously-analytical feminist blog to make me get really, really riled up. Yet sometimes it really does. When those 'some' times roll around, I want to stuff a knuckle into my mouth, eyes rolling wildly around like the ungrateful lunatic that I am and choke down the waves of fucking irritation.

See, as per the female stereotypes, I initially assumed I must be jealous. Laurie's slightly older than me - not even a year, really - and much more accomplished.

Then, I got real. Like fuck is it jealousy. Maybe if I were subconsciously my mother, I could safely believe in jealousy as the reason.

No, the reason why they drive me mad is because they seem to absolutely drip with dishonesty. I don't mean that in the sense that she's lying, I just mean that there is something strangely false about the way she writes. An anonymous commenter left this message on the latest post:

Very well-written article. You seem to have two sides to you, one that writes great stuff like this (although I don't agree with a lot of it), and other stuff that comes across as studenty rant. Stick with this stuff, but try to be a bit less old-left. I think the world has moved on from some of the stereotypes you use.

Exactly. Thank you, Anonymous. In many of Laurie's articles, as somebody previously handily pointed out on Liberal Conspiracy (don't make me look for it, you bastards!) you get a lot of good rhetoric - very stirring/rousing/whatever, and when she deals with stuff that is obviously from immediate personal experience - her angry feminist stuff and especially things dealing with female body image - the writing lives. It crackles with the lightning of unbounded, shameless self-expression that makes 'personal' writing (such as blogging) truly 'personal' and captivating.

However, in a lot of other stuff, the rhetoric is just that - empty pretty words, and it does feel 'studenty.' Oh, let's start a revolution on the weekend, shall we? I find myself thinking sarcastically. There's nothing wrong with being idealistic, but if you're claiming to be revolutionary, why don't you be revolutionary? Bring something new to the table instead of blatantly resurrecting the creaking ghost of Old Socialism. That's not to say the socialism is the problem - it isn't. It's the tone that's the problem. Take this article '1984 in 2009', for example, on Liberal Conspiracy. At the end, she says:

We are more than the queue-forming, forelock-tugging, tea-sipping, biscuit-eating, pet-shop-boy-listening people of popular mythology. We are, at the root and bone, a nation of king-killers. I think they’d better watch out.

What utter balls. Who is this fictional 'we'? The people of Britain? The people of Britain are not your fellow socialists, girl. They popularise the Sun and the Daily Mail. For someone who strives constantly to be a Superwoman of anti-prejudice, it's not only the taking the 'us and them' line that surprises (classic 'othering' tactic of racists, misogynists, et al, anyone?) but also the apparently-betraying a certain type of middle-class arrogance. Doris Lessing captures this middle-class arrogance perfectly in The Golden Notebook, showing the irony of a bunch of white, middle-class, Communist twenty- and thirty-somethings all with deeply divergent aims, in Africa trying to propagate Communism during a time of apartheid. One of the characters, Paul, in a moment of cynicism remarks:

'Suppose the black armies win? There's only one thing an intelligent nationalist leader can do, and that is to strengthen nationalist feeling and develop industry. Has it occurred to us, comrades, that it will be our duty, as progressives, to support nationalist states whose business it will be to develop all those capitalist unegalitarian ethics we hate so much? Well, has it?'

- The Golden Notebook, p. 101.

I.e.: your good intentions may be good for you, but not necessarily good for others, do you see what I mean?

I may be seeming a bit unfair here since I've picked out this particular article, but I have read a lot of Laurie's stuff and indeed, y'all may want to go check more of it out. The overwhelming feeling that assaults me, having read a great deal of it, is of somebody who wants so badly to be all things to all men, women, animals, etc. that she could easily end up being an MP a few years down the line. You only go all-out friendly with people if you want to be liked, right? This feeling was strengthened when I met her in person. The red light in my head that is reserved for such occasions screeched 'POLITICKER! POLITICKER!' when I had a chat conversation with her a while after our meeting, and she could barely remember The Libertarian (who she has met thrice). I was absolutely appalled. Shouldn't somebody who is a 'socialist, feminist... queer' who is 'plotting to subtly re-arrange the world to suit her ideals,' remember TL?

'Well, he is your man,' you cry. That wasn't what bothered me. What bothered me is that Laurie embodies her labels - that is, she becomes THE socialist feminist queer (et al) - by way of her lovely rhetoric quite frequently in her posts. Evidently, as I observed, that makes her a politicker - she wants to become 'the voice' of people like her (Rhetoric is the tool of politicians, isn't it?!). Which means she should remember who she networks with and - this is the crucial bit - who she needs to remember. I'm no swaddling babe, I know politickers are ruthlessly efficient socialising machines who remember people as and when they need them. Hold up, though - TL is the embodiment of privilege. He is a white, middle-class male - exactly the sort of person I'd think she's trying to engage in discourse with - and furthermore, sympathetic to her cause. A blogger who blogs on issues concerning 'minority' females, a group that liberal feminists are all agreed, needs reaching out to. Yet he didn't make enough of an impression for her to remember him. After three meetings.

I told TL about all of this, and he wasn't too impressed either. I think this whole thing has opened my eyes significantly. I'm deeply, deeply disappointed that I find myself in a world of clichés with somebody who is supposed to be more intelligent than me. Sometimes she plays 'the girl that boys AND girls like' in the guise of the 'unthreatening! liberal-not-radical! feminist' (as in the most recent post), sometimes she's the 'voice of angry women'... Ultimately, I can see her ending up as an MP or, I strongly suspect, a columnist. I'm repeatedly struck, as I've already said, by the stereotypically feminine need to appease that just radiates out of most of her material (not the journalistic stuff on the whole), anger being brought out only when it's useful. That's what I mean. Dishonesty. Schtick. It pisses me off. If you're a feminist, it should always be OK to be angry. Why, then, that sense of creeping fear? Why the need to appease? Why all the student-revolutionary bullshit, and the liberal guilt?


In a post on the vigil for Ian Tomlinson, she wrote:

When the tealights blew out in what seemed to be the icy gust of a hundred closing shutters, I lit them again. And people started taking pictures of the cute girl in black lighting candles, because of course the image, not anything we actually think, is the important thing.

That's what I meant by 'middle-class arrogance', because I mean, c'mon, you just know that (in bold), that's the kind of sanctimonious bull that'd pop up in a Guardian Cif piece about Jade Goody, or whatever. Maybe the people thought you were a weirdo, maybe that's why they were doing it. Or maybe they just wanted some memories of the event? I also hate the tendency she has to 'novelize' certain events she reports on her blog. No, don't do that, that's part of the problem! We need to fight the 'I, I, I, me' cult-of-personality that seeps more and more into journalism and the reportage of events nowadays. If you're writing something that will end up being used elsewhere (as her stuff frequently is), please, cut yourself out of it as much as possible unless the post is meant to be about you. This was about IT's vigil, not you being moved to sniffle and people taking pictures of you, and I don't give a fuck about any of that.

Do you see what I mean about her? I hope you do. Scratch the surface of the rebel-labels and you get subconscious attitudes, and behaviour, which is nauseatingly conventional. No-one's saying that feminists should become a parody of the 'angry man-hating lesbo femonazi' insult that's so often thrown our way, but if you really believe that 'the personal is the political,' that famous 70s feminist slogan, why not be more honest? You don't have to be good to every online commenter who concern-trolls you. You don't have to try to impress people on Liberal Conspiracy. Tellingly, as I observed, her articles that touch on the genuinely personal are good. The journalistic stuff is again mostly quite good (again, mostly when it touches on the personal, such as her article on anorexia on the Guardian website - oh, look it up yourself). Stuff like this is good.

Two-way connection is necessary, but both parties should lean in for the conversation, if you see what I mean. When I see Laurie trying to be everyone's best friend, it puts the lie to her labels, because you can't please everyone and people won't let you be all those different labels at once! Sometimes, it's not your job to educate the information-starved masses. Put the liberal guilt down, and step away from your pretensions. You are not a 'rebel,' you're a politicker. You've written for Labourlist. You're pretty much a Labour activist. Tell people to take a hike and learn shit themselves from time to time - being a liberal feminist is somewhat paradoxical, and you need to exploit the space that that paradox affords you. Write for yourself a little more.

Finally, before I collapse with fatigue and antihistamine - yes, as a woman, you do have some understanding of being 'second-class.' Yet you're not exactly on the level of a Muslim woman, or someone like me - you have ambition and you have a 'voice' and a platform. Society will tolerate the likes of you far more readily than it will conflicted types like me. It has tags all ready and waiting for you, and surely you must know this. It gives you your 'subversive' tags and you accept them in exchange for the realisation of your ambition. So, get real. You're not the voice of all oppressed women, nor are you the dark, spicy and seedy underbelly of what's respectable. You are inside the system, and that's the only point from which a person can ever work it. Fuck the rhetoric and the labels. Life ain't easy. You're you, and capable of bringing some real good shit to the table - so bring it.


Apologies to anyone who now thinks I am batshit insane. I am just going to blame all this on Doris Lessing.

Easter Monday

What a wonderfully flat title. It imparts factual information (telling you of the day and the date), without hinting at anything within the body of the post. Yet that is just the point. For once, I am writing as I need to. Writing as I used to. I have no game-plan, no conclusion.

I cannot seem to accept myself as I am. I realised the other day that in many ways, I am a desperately lonely individual. I am that 'ivory-tower intellectual,' although of course, I'm not because life is more complex (read: nuanced) than that. I have the humility and apprehensiveness of a religious person trying to live in adherence with a detailed religious code - without the certainty of a Supreme Being. 'Believe, then,' you might say. 'You did once, you can do it again.' I'm not sure if belief and obedience are the same thing. I'm not sure if a desire for stability and genuine religious devotion are the same thing at all. I think it would do the genuinely-devoted a real disservice to claim that they are.

Everyone reads. Even people who boast of never reading a book, or having read very little in their lives, read to some extent. You can't help it now, can you? I read, like a thirsty little sapling drinking in all it can get, when I was younger. A very strange mix - abridged Reader's Digest novels, autobiographies, the Reader's Digests themselves, books for my own age-group, pizza leaflets, recipe cards... If it came under my nose, I would read it. Family (my cousin in particular) compared me to Roald Dahl's Matilda. I always smiled uncomfortably. Keen to learn and imaginative, yes. Child prodigy, no.

That desire to learn, when not checked by the pervasion of specialist jargon (or for that matter, any sort of foreknowledge) or the presence of complicated mathematical figures, has never left me. I still trawl sections of the Internet for articles, for blogposts, in short for literature. I don't get to read as much as I'd like to these days; obsessively swallowing large quantities of text and then being pressed to produce focussed critical analysis at a rate of knots can really leave a bad taste in the mouth. The terror of enjoying a book, and then finding my brain mechanically deconstructing it afterwards, makes the pursuit of reading more complicated than it ought to be.

So yeah, I read a lot of stuff on the Internet. Lest we forget, the Internet is a communicative rather than an educative medium, and so much of what I read is accompanied by comments from ''readers.'' I put that in inverted commas because what strikes me, especially when reading things on Comment is free, but also occasionally on Liberal Conspiracy and Pickled Politics - never mind on other sites - is how little people actually seem able to 'read' now. The smooth and steady process of information does not appear to be happening. What actually happens is reaction. Lots and lots of it. Even those who think they are being witty very rarely are and are simply indulging in smartarsery that brings to mind the big-mouthed kid in the playground who wants everyone to agree how funny he/she is.

To return to what I was saying, I've discovered a new motive hiding away, like a stow-away, alongside my desire to learn. It is a desire for companionship, for agreement - in short for community. My loneliness is amplified by being a solitary individual by nature. I also have an intense need for guidance (being young and confused) which sits uneasily with a distrust of dogma and diktats. I don't distrust authority per se, but I have an absolute horror of groups. This comes from being an 'outsider' within the most prominent group of my life - my family.

So of course, I'm trying to resolve all those paradoxes by creating a new one: finding other 'slippery fish.' Other people like me, who are almost a walking 'stream of consciousness' in themselves. I feel a sense of spiritual kinship with some people I read, people I don't even know, sometimes. I may never meet them, I may not even agree with them completely. Nonetheless, they reassure me that I'm not totally alone. The world is changing, and when I find another, in search of nothing quite so grandiose as truth - just in search of honesty - I feel safer. I am no longer just part of the present, and I sincerely hope that all the knobs who co-opt the writings of others, to grandstand and ridicule them, will become part of the past in time. To them, all I can say is: you don't know everything. Nobody does. I don't. The sooner we halt this ridiculous trend of pretending we all know all there is to know, the better. As Forster wrote, 'Only connect.'

Reading is that most wonderfully paradoxical of things: a private communication. You are inheriting histories, facts, opinions, fears - in short, the distillation of a person when you read, particularly when you read fiction (given that fiction has more room for the personal and the subjective). That is why I find it so ludicrous the way the majority of people respond to articles. They deny the communication. They simply seek space to posture (funny that a lot of them seem to be rather unreconstructed males). It's a World Wide Web, you fools. Not a clean, linear Tube network. Yet even a Tube network goes in both directions.

So a paradox is what frees me, ultimately. Pinning down my thoughts to the (web)page frees me. I read, committing myself to the thoughts of another, to escape. A private pursuit offers me companionship, offers me freedom. And hell, if I like the 'look' of you (and you don't live abroad...), I'll stalk you and make you my friend (just ask Ala...) Scared? You should be.

G20 Protests: The Problem...

I was commenting on a thread on Pickled Politics about the G20 protests, and something suddenly crystallised inside my head. I knew right then and there that I had to write this post.

The problem with the G20 protests, I realised, is that they fit into a common, polarised narrative. The reason this scares me so much is because all the protestors are doing is expressing an anger that most people have about the irresponsible way in which our financial institutions have behaved.

Note the italics. Did you note my italics? I hope so. The reason I did that is because I want to emphasise - perhaps rather pointlessly - that many of us share common ground with the protestors. Even some readers of the Daily Fail.

That's just the problem though. The mainstream media (MSM) - and let me say that in this description, I include the free daily London papers as well - has pursued a dangerously successful agenda of 'divide and conquer.' Sunny pointed out, I think in the comments, how many journalists were busy highlighting the minority of protestors who were violent, rather than focussing on the entirely peaceful Climate Camp protestors.

Going on to any site - PP, Comment is Free, whatever - I am struck how there are a range of 'stock positions' which people fall into. When I went on to Liberal Conspiracy, the commenter 'Letters From A Tory' said the following:

Honestly, Sunny - I have no idea how you can be so naive. You join a mass protest that was always going to attract a violent element, then complain that the police were keen to contain the protest.

I wrote you a letter on my blog this morning explaining why your account of yesterday’s events is at best laughable and at worst idiotic.

This made me angry. The whole thing makes me angry. Why in the fuck was it 'always going to attract a violent element'? Why do we have these expectations of events?

Prior to the events actually happening, there was more of this sort of attitude. I read a frankly infuriating column in thelondonpaper, which I will reproduce when I get back to my flat. I notice this attitude appearing more and more frequently - it was apparent in quite a few of the letters as well. It was the stupid daily column where they get members of the public to write in about something they care about - I think it has to be 500 words or something.

The author of the piece argued that the protests were putting '1 million people at risk' and that '95% of the protestors don't know why they are protesting' (um, how do you know?). He also used the age-old assumption of many a knobhead that the protestors were simply people who didn't have a job to go to (again - how do you know?), and thereby trying to ruin things for those who did.

Behind this blithe shower of bollocks (which I found all the more astonishing given that in that very issue of the paper, there were comments on how many local businesses were actually being closed and people advised not to leave their homes in order to keep them safe - hardly 'at risk') was a common belief that I see on the Internet and in newspapers (often on the Internet versions of newspapers, haha). It was the deformation of those that one does not agree with, the lionising of those that one does agree with - in short, the breakdown of a highly complex event into a battle between two opposing factions.

The MSM has been subtly priming us to think this way in the run-up to this event, and so before, during and after, people fall back into their 'stock positions.' You have the 'amused/contemptuous cynic' (as shown by LFaT above), the 'earnest and frustrated protestor/supportive journalist/victim', the 'misunderstood third party' (i.e. in this case, people claiming to be members of the police sticking up for themselves) and then a whole load of people trying to intercede somewhere between all this.

That column exemplified this 'divide and conquer' strategy that is so often. Most often, it's apparent when right-wing papers talk about non-whites and immigrants. The 'us' and the 'them.' I hadn't realised it was being practised in this instance. I was naive; I never realised that the papers could use such an ingenious method of turning apathy lucrative. People no longer interested in traditional political parties? The Labour/Conservative divide just not working any more, because they seem to be merging into each other? Great! Give the people what they're crying for! Give them division!

It's deeply insidious - I read an interview with the editor of thelondonpaper when I was doing a project on the British and French daily papers last year. He had this to say:

"Free papers acknowledge the realities of young people's lives and, pretty much everywhere in the world, they are politically neutral. All the research shows that young people dislike political bias in newspapers and they are sick of being preached at by journalists. That's why they don't want to read columnists either."

and this

"Our appeal is that we're the antithesis of their 'Little Englander' mentality."

Riiiight - that's why you regularly publish the kind of thing that was in that daily column, and letters like the slew of ones slagging off the protestors. The star letter was from somebody advising people to 'hold up a bar of soap' to the protestors because it would have the same effect as garlic on a vampire, or something along those lines. Bullshit are the free papers neutral. London Lite and Metro belong to Associated Newspapers which publishes - *gasp* - The Daily Mail. Thelondonpaper is published by News International - which publishes The Sun, The Times and The News of the World. Gee, is anyone seeing a theme here? Lord Rothermere, Paul Dacre and Rupert Murdoch - yeah, that's absolutely synonymous with being 'politically neutral' in my book... [/sarcasm]

It's very clever. These freesheets may claim to be neutral by not publishing anything overtly inflammatory - but by ensuring that you highlight the content sent in by your most bigoted readers and laying out your coverage of issues just so - that doesn't sound politically neutral to me, that sounds like you're surreptitiously favouring an agenda...

So yeah, as I already commented, now we have 'ordinary, peaceful, hard-working Britons/Londoners' vs 'jobless/time-wasting, violent protestors,' 'helpless scapegoat working-class City employees' vs 'middle-class protestors who are probably all in charge anyway', 'the faceless and brutal police' vs 'well-meaning but radicalised protestors', 'the trouble-making protestors' vs 'the poor police just doing their jobs'... On and on it goes. Of course, many of these battles are bundled up together, i.e. the first two. It's almost impressive - you can have many binaries operating at once - but somehow, we're not advanced enough to realise that real life isn't a black-and-white binary.

Shades of grey exist, bitches. Maybe it's about time we started taking the joke that all journalists are just failed novelists seriously?

Seriously though, we all need to be alert and wary, for dehumanising is a tactic common to - what? Think about it. War, yes, that's right! Consider that recent story about Israeli soldiers' awful T-shirts which make light of things like murdering pregnant Palestinian women. Think of the war on terror as well, and how the MSM (the right-wing papers in particular) have worked overtime to dehumanise not only extremists, but Muslims in general, as a way to avoid engaging with the fact that the 7/7 bombers were 'homegrown.' Sure, they reported it. However, as any fule kno, reporting an issue and engaging critically and analytically with it are not the same thing. If they were, we wouldn't have comment sections in papers, and there'd be no need for blogs.

Whether we like it or not, whether we'd take to the streets over how we felt about an issue or not - these protestors are 'us.' Bigots, unfortunately, are 'us.' Is there really a 'them'? There will, for the purposes of political manouevre, always be a 'them' but we are the ones who read the papers. We are the ones who feed off these divisions. The scores of annoying, smug pricks who were predicting how the protests would end were smug precisely because they are making the narrative. They know that life is perfectly capable of imitating art, so to speak. We can only try to keep some hope about the whole affair - and remember that everybody is human. Even Josef Fritzl, a perfect example of what happens when we fail to take adequate responsibility for each other. We lock ourselves into destructive cycles and never progress.

This bit:

his mother Maria, who herself had been fostered as a child, had had him "solely in order to prove to the world that she was not infertile" following a marriage which broke up because it produced no children.

"Herr Fritzl was a 'proof child', an 'alibi child'," she said, adding that this "was his only function as a child". "As a consequence he was a burden to her, something she was forced to look after". She said that Fritzl, now 73, struggled throughout his childhood to form a relationship with his mother but that "it was impossible to build up any sort of bond of trust with her".

The fear he felt by her constant absences was never more intense than during the second world war bombing raids on their home town of Amstetten. She refused to take refuge in the air raid shelter near to the family home, insisting on staying in the house and sending her son into the underground shelter instead. "As a result he suffered from an overwhelming sense of anxiety, not knowing when the air raid was over whether or not the only person in the world to whom he had any relationship, would still be alive," she said. "It's the type of fear that over time has a huge impact on a person".

... made me want to cry. I can see clearly how the leap from an unloved little boy to an incestuous rapist was made - and it is essential that we see that, and not tidy this all away as if it has been resolved. It hasn't. Humanity, if it really thinks it's superior to the animals, needs to learn to take full responsibility for itself. Just because we've invented the Internet, it DOESN'T mean we've got any less thick! Sigh...

A music video for cheer-up's sake. YEAH THE BLIND BOYS OF ALABAMA!

An article, which I've just inadvertently realised, plugs neatly into what I've just said.

Man, FUCK the Catholic Church

Seriously, when you think of all the people the Vatican has fucked over and wants to continue fucking over? Totally fair and just course of action. If the Vatican had a basketball team or a barbershop quartet of its own (who knows, maybe they do!), they really should be called the Woman-Hating Wonders (replace final word with Wanderers for the basketball team...).

It's tried to avoid the allegations of child sex abuse victims for years, and as I pointed out in my post on abstinence, they haven't even got rid of some offenders, just transferred them! Classic evasion tactics, vah vah. In further evidence to prove that they will very resolutely do nothing, or at the very least, the minimum possible, the Pope called for 'continuous prayer' to deal with the problem of paedophile priests. Gee Benedict, I don't know... couldn't you ease off on priests a bit so that they don't have to be celibate? That way they might not turn to preying on whoever they can get their hands on (children aren't the only ones... if you've read Karen Armstrong's Through The Narrow Gate or watched The Magdalene Sisters, you'll know that women were/are also, unsurprisingly, victims of sexual abuse by priests). Alternatively, if a priest has had accusations levelled at him - FIRE THE FUCKER. Better safe than sorry, and what with the Catholic Church's antediluvian attitude and image, it might provide some much-needed positive PR.

Child sex abuse aside, let's not forget that the Catholic Church don't believe in contraception (just GREAT for all those male Catholics in poor countries who can keep on knocking up their poor wives, whether they like it or not!) and are rabidly anti-choice (ditto). Let's now look at two very recent cases where the Catholics continue to prove that they should really not have the privileged legal and political status they have. Sarah Palin was roundly and rightly condemned by many for her views, but she was one individual. This is a whole fucking group of patriarchal nutters - AND they have special observer status within the UN, meaning they can stick their oar in on things which don't have anything to do with them, like human rights.

Firstly, the frankly disgusting and horrifying case of Eluana Englaro. The Guardian ran a very thorough article on this which I can't recommend enough. Eluana had been in a vegetative state for 17 years, and her father wanted the tubes to be removed, in accordance with her wishes. The poor man is currently caring for his wife, Eluana's mother, who has cancer. So what did the Vatican - working through Berlusconi, of course - do? Kick up a fuss about it, declaring it 'a crime against humanity' (what about your paedophile priests, eh?! Surely that's 'a crime against humanity'?) and according to this Times article, describing it as a 'monstrous and inhumane murder.'

This is a woman who has been vegetative for 17 years and whose brain is so severely damaged that doctors have stressed that she will never 'come round', as the Guardian article states. That charmer Berlusconi justified his decision by saying: 'I would be failing to rescue her. I'm not a Pontius Pilate' (Clearly he thinks he's Jesus...) and - get this - saying that she couldn't be allowed to die because she is still 'in the condition to have babies.'

Wow. Just wow. I think that's the only appropriate reaction here, don't you? Thankfully, with the quietly diligent work of the doctors, Eluana died before any more meddling could take place, and Italy's own President refused to side with Berlusconi. It is gobsmacking though. I remember reading an aghast comment somewhere about this, saying something along the lines of: 'So who would they get to impregnate her, then? Rapists?' Well, quite. Clearly the Vatican does not have the FIRST FUCKING CLUE about what constitutes 'human behaviour'; they are masters of misogyny (and I believe that the Vatican should be renamed 'The Ministry of Misogyny' or 'Misogyny Capital of Italy'...). Perhaps Berlusconi would perform the deed and then claim it was immaculate conception. Or a virgin birth, seeing as how he thinks he's Jesus.

The latest story to raise my hackles is this, on the rape of a nine-year-old girl. Nine-year-old girl gets raped, most likely by her stepfather who has now been arrested, and becomes pregnant with twins. Her mother takes her to have an abortion, which y'know, makes sense because she's just a nine-year-old child who has suffered sexual abuse. There is absolutely no way she can be made to take responsiblity for this happening to her.

Abortion is only permitted in Brazil in cases of rape and where the mother's life is at risk...

So, clearly one-nil to the Catholic Church in Brazil - their political stranglehold is making life hell for every woman in the country who wasn't raped/in danger of death and wants to make the decision to have a baby or not for herself.

and doctors say the girl's case met both these conditions... The Catholic Church tried to intervene to prevent the abortion going ahead but the procedure was carried out on Wednesday.

So... more of the same humanity, compassion and understanding from our frock-wearing friends! The fun doesn't stop there though, oh no:

Now a Church spokesman says all those involved, including the child's mother and the doctors, are to be excommunicated.

Jesus wept. If I was that girl's mother, I'd be glad my daughter still had a life ahead of her, not bothered about whether some religious nut had excommunicated me or not.

The Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, told Brazil's TV Globo that the law of God was above any human law.

He said the excommunication would not apply to the child because of her age, but would affect all those who ensured the abortion was carried out.

Oh, how generous of you. Who knows, maybe in a few thousand millenia, you won't be forcing women and girls to bear the brunt of male-inflicted rape and abuse! Then again... I won't hold my breath.

However, doctors at the hospital said they had to take account of the welfare of the girl, and that she was so small that her uterus did not have the ability to contain one child let alone two.

Bastards, bastards, absolutefuckingBASTARDS. This bit actually made me want to cry and/or be sick. That poor, poor little girl.

As with the case of Eluana Englaro, I'm absolutely delighted that the Catholic Church hasn't claimed any victory, but really, the Italians must do better. Peter Tatchell's Cif piece was very good, measured and so forth, but really, considering that the Italian taxpayers fund the Vatican's ongoing existence, it's time for a change. It's time the Italians got all 'what the fuck? You're not the boss of us, or anyone else worldwide for that matter, biatch. God's representative, my ass. Oh wait, I think my ass would in fact be a fairer and more reasonable representative of tha Lord than Benny-dick and his befrocked flock.'

To finish, a little game:

A Brazilian archbishop says all those who helped a child rape victim secure an abortion are to be excommunicated from the Catholic Church.

Replace 'all those' etc. with 'all those who damn child rape and sex abuse victims.' Then, take 'from the Catholic Church' and put it after 'all those who'. Replace 'secure' with 'by preventing'. Lose 'an' and put an s on 'abortion.' Finally, lose the whole first part of the sentence up to 'all', and replace 'excommunicated' with 'assassinated.' What do you get? Answers in the comment-box please!


Disclaimer: if you honestly think I am advocating the murder of anyone, then please read my previous post for clarification and get a grip, ferChrissakes.

Gail Trimble and the Guardian

In my previous post, I mentioned how a feminist can encounter misogyny in the most unexpected of places, namely on (supposedly) socially-liberal sites such as Comment Is Free and Liberal Conspiracy (in all fairness, both are generally OK, but the commenters on Cif tend to be prats, and you get the occasional prat on LC too...).

So today children, I'm going to take on the Guardian for some hypocrisy which verges on misogyny regarding the reluctantly-ubiquitous Gail Trimble, 'intellectual blitzkrieg' and female captain of the Corpus Christi college team on University Challenge. As anyone with functioning senses and a tendency to be exposed to the British media will know, she suddenly became an object of interest for her impressive intelligence and then linked to scandal - her team were stripped of their 2009 winners' title after it emerged that one of them was only a student during the first round of the competition.

Now, I have no real idea why on Earth so much has been made of Trimble, but I'll hazard a guess - misogyny, anti-intellectualism, desire to drum up publicity for the show, easy copy etc. I think it is great that sites such as the F-Word came out in defence of her, but to be honest, I think most people could give less of a monkey's about UC and its denizens. Though, as a publicity stunt, making a star out of Trimble seems to have worked - apparently the BBC garnered a 'record' audience of 5.3 million viewers for the final.

I want to take the Guardian to task over this article which is really rather hypocritical.

The stripping of the title from Corpus Christi is an ignominious end for Trimble's rollercoaster ride to fame.

Is just me, or is there a real element of gloating here? Firstly: who cares? Not Trimble herself - as pointed out in an article which appeared just the next day on the Guardian website, they magically remembered that she didn't ask for the attention.

While Trimble hogged the limelight, little attention was given to her team-mates, although of course that has now changed.

No - as the saying goes, a star is made, not born. YOU, the mainstream media, are the ones who thrust her into the limelight. She didn't have any desire to 'hog' it. If no attention was given to her team-mates, that's YOUR problem, not hers.

The article also begins with:

The winners of University Challenge, Corpus Christie College, Oxford – captained by "intellectual blitzkrieg" Gail Trimble

Lest we forget.


This hypocrisy is pretty impressive on the Guardian's part. In an article by the same authors appearing just the following day, they wrote:

Producing a series of barnstorming performances that made her an object of public admiration and anti-intellectual ridicule, Trimble almost singlehandedly propelled her team to victory

Sanctimonious, much? A few bloggers discussed her previously - you lot in the mainstream media turned her into 'an object of public admiration and anti-intellectual ridicule' for the sake of an easy and research-free story. Even if she DID win two-thirds of the team's points, you saying that she 'almost singlehandedly propelled her team to victory' continues rather conveniently to single her out, and all for your own ends. Let me just say that there are currently 38 articles on the website tagged 'University Challenge,' of which 14 directly reference GT. There are probably also a number of articles which mention her in the body of their text.

It really feels like the Guardian is trying to demonstrate some sort of class credentials as well, the way it continues to get mileage out of the Trimble/non-student scandal affairs. As I pointed out, their attitude in that article is pretty gloating, and just to really rub it in for Sam Kay and the Corpus Christi lot, the NINE most recent articles are about them losing their title in some way or another, often mentioning proudly how it was the Observer who found out Kay was not a student. Seriously - WHO CARES?! Pats on the back for a storm in a teacup, or what?! There were also two BBC-bashing blog-posts by one Vicky Frost, one with the smug tagline: 'Manchester's University Challenge team have surely won the PR battle today, proving graceful in defeat', as if CC were somehow being arrogant. It also prompts the question: WHAT PR BATTLE?! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU ON ABOUT?

Just because the Manchester lot aren't as obviously privileged as the CC lot, it doesn't mean they have to gloat - the CC team KNEW MORE. Which was the POINT of this competition. Talk about resorting to reverse-Mail tactics! One, you make a star out of someone to generate easy copy. Two, you then turn a rather minor scandal involving her team into a chance to escalate the storm and generate yet more copy, gloating about CC's fate as if they deserve it because 'they're upper-class, innit'. Three, you then undermine the Manchester University team's reaction by heaping praise on it, thus implicitly suggesting that their getting the trophy needs to be legitimised somehow. Four, you then get some woman whose opinion no-one really cares about to moan about the BBC's reaction - twice and talk about a non-existent 'PR battle', all in the name of generating more hits for the website, I suspect, judging by the tone, the references to all this and to 'Sachsgate.'

Perhaps the Grauniad's online editors have realised the standard of commenter they attract (think the Mail Online, or the type of person who frequents the BBC's 'Have Your Say' section - see here, here or here for details) and have decided to go for the jugular. As Dan Ashcroft would say: 'The idiots are winning.'


Recommended reading for everyone in the world, ever.

Misogyny To The Fore!

Oh, readers. It's not been a good week. Not in the usual emo-meltdown fashion (though there was a little of that), but in a deeper, more depressing way.

A certain listlessness, a fear about the future and increasing consciousness of the speeding-by of Time have set in. Lack of sleep, a lunatic sleep-schedule, awareness of the fact that I am going to effectively FINISH MY DEGREE in about two months' time commenced the deluge. Then, there was guilt over my responsibilities to others. I have been regularly cheering up my friend Colin with long phone chats, and trying to be a source of occasional support to my oft-insomniac friend Trish. (She has huge blue eyes which seem to get even larger as she gets worked up, and make you want, as The Libertarian said, to pat her and tell her to calm down). These moments were rare, though.

I tried to intervene between my sister and parents every now and again, including this evening. Her idiot husband wants to reconcile - so he sent her a 3-page list of her flaws, and then when she replied that she did not want to meet with him, responded with: 'I'm amazed by your reply.' Even now, some days later, he remains 'amazed.' I remain amazed that I have not *headdesk*ed yet. Or *facepalm*ed. I never realised that trying to reconcile with somebody involved systematic and repeated attempts to blame them for your relationship's failings, while also refusing to take any responsibility for anything yourself. Nor did I comprehend that, in essence, it involves behaving in exactly the same way that brought the relationship to a screeching halt. More fool me!

(Somehow, I have graciously restrained my urges to email him abuse, despite even being encouraged to do so by my mother *twitches with this saintly effort* Though if I did, I would say, quite simply: 'FUCK OFF OUT OF MY SISTER'S LIFE, YOU CHILDISH TWIT'. I might also add 'SHE MIGHT GIVE A SHIT, BUT NONE OF US DO, IF YOU NEVER MARRY AGAIN' (As he said to her). Oh Lord, that felt good).

So yeah, I'm antsy like I've bathed in chilli-powder, and have found it really bloody hard to motivate myself to work this week. It doesn't help that misogyny seems to be bearing down on me from all sides. Not just me, of course - laydeez in general, but that doesn't make it any easier to stand.

Let me just link you good people to this and this. The author of both these posts is one Chris Dillow, who I've seen showered with praise, particularly by sites I read like Liberal Conspiracy, presumably for the fact that he is a liberal/left-leaning economist who seems to know his stuff and provides good analyses of stuff. Now, I've no problem with that. What I do have a problem with is the explicitly misogynistic tone of those two posts, ESPECIALLY the latter.

I left an infuriated comment on the LibCon article, which got ignored (unsurprisingly). The thing that really depressed me was that five women disagreed strongly with the bullshit on it, whereas only three men did the same. On t'other post, about 10 people said things which were supportive of women against Dillow's bullshit generalisations; there were other comments that sort of challenged him, but rather weakly. The rest of the comments included such gems as:

Sexist weekend should be a cultural institution:

What do you do if your dishwasher breaks down?

Slap her.

You've got 7 points about women here and sex doesn't appear in any of them: there's something far wrong with you, m'boy.

While I'm a roll here I'd just like to point out that political correctness was invented so that all women could nag all men, not just the ones they are married to.

and finally:

If your basic statement is "There;s nothing less attarctive than a middle class career girl who takes a perverse pride in her inability to cook and considers friday night a good time to stay in and talk about the realtionship" then I'm in full agreement. If women concentrated on buying and wearing attractive underwear the world would be a much happier place.

Only half of the non-misogynistic comments stuck up directly for women. There were quite a few mocking ones from women (not just from women), but I thought the fact that nobody just called 'misogynist' was rather depressing. The best comment came from one James Hamilton:

My experience of people possessed by one form of prejudice, such as yours against people you perceive as posh or public school, is that there's always another form of the same thing in them somewhere. So I've been expecting this. I'm surprised by what it is,though. I expect you'll get off in the same way you usually do - enough people prepared to believe that you don't mean it. I'll give you this much: I do think you're open about these things, and that you do mean it, although I think you lace them with humour. But you're not being ironic, in that crude and misconstrued blogosphere sense. Good luck.

Wherever you are, James - we love you! How accurate your predictions were, with so many people actually engaging with this kind of thing in some form or another in the comments. A poster called Katie (apparently female, then?) posted the following:

In terms of an intellectual exercise, I am not sure this is a success. Some of your points are opinions, while few are supported by evidence. It would be good to see an evidenced four way comparison: boys good, boys bad, girls good, girls bad, with every point evidence to compare for each points.

I felt like saying No, no, NO, Katie! Don't fall into the fucking trap! You should not have to engage with this, and this bullshit disguising of misogyny as intellectual ranting!

It is so shocking, as a feminist, to see this kind of thing in the so-called liberal blogosphere, just as it is in the mainstream media. It makes you feel like a real tool, because you can be quite sure that if a conservative/right-wing blogger had expressed similar sentiments, they would be roundly insulted and criticised. However, when someone like Chris Dillow does it (that post is from last year, by the way, I only became aware of it through the Valentine's post), people will look the other way as much as they can. I never saw any condemnations of that post of his on any blogs I read at the time. So, did most people just conveniently ignore it? It would seem so!

Feminists occupy a particularly ugly position, given that there's nothing that crosses boundaries quite so effectively as miosgyny. Muslims, Christians and Jews can argue about the likes of I/P forever, but many of them will find themselves in sudden agreement on the subject of how to treat women. I would argue that we're perhaps easier to demonise than any other group. There's always a particular minority group that will receive its undue share of media attention, as is happening to Muslims these days, but men of all stripes - gay and straight, black and white, atheist and religious - will come together under the banner of misogyny. It's so depressing.

Comment Is Free, for example, is a platform for Guardian writers to air their views. The Guardian is supposed to be liberal-left. Yet feminist writers are assured of being roundly shouted down when they post on there. Sometimes, as in the case of Julie Bindel and occasionally, Bidisha, this is somewhat warranted. However, even on more moderately-expressed opinions, you'll get loons going 'BUT WHAT ABOUT TEH MENZ'. They also routinely try to use the argument that 'feminism is itself sexist because it's feminism.' As Lily Allen once sang, please fuck off. On an article by Zoe Williams about rape, ferinstance, in which she argued that the fact of having consumed alcohol should not have led to a rape victim's compensation being cut, the first comment was by 'thetrashheap' who lived up to his name by saying:

Better than the editorial yesterday but why just rape?

How can being drunk mean you deserve to get assaulted in any manner [Isn't that the point of the whole fucking article, you numbskull?]. Rape can be less harmfull than a serious assult. I know a man who was much more damaged by nearly being beaten to death than a women I know who was raped ['It is true because I know it to be so, based on 1 or 2 personal experiences']. Yet with the indignation over rape the guardian can say in one of its editorials

"Cuts may be justified when a victim's drinking precipitates certain violent attacks "

[Did you ever consider that maybe they were just reporting something as they were told it, and that's all there is to it?] How does being drunk percipitate a violent attack? [Gee, that's exactly what Zoe Williams is saying right here!] If somebody does an action that makes them partly reponsible for violence then so be it but being drunk isn't a reason.

So why concentrate on Rape and demean assault? Why try and lift rape as a crime above all else? Murder is worse, being left as a cripple can be worse? Being left too scared to leave the house after a serious assault can be worse on a person than a date rape.

The law needs changed but it doesn't need such righteous indignation over one particular type of assault. How many drunk men a year get less compensation for being assaulted? The problem is the law regards alcohol and culpability. Women aren't the only ones who get screwed over by this.

Can you hear the cries of 'WHAT ABOUT TEH MENZ'?! I don't even have any energy left to continue ripping this shit to shreds. This is the worst kind of comment in some ways, where a small grain of truth buried amongst astounding ignorance is inflated into hand-wringing self-righteousness.

Then you have the fucking Mail website, where the most poisonously vicious articles are written by women and published alongside conveniently half- (or, as was in the case of Peaches Geldof, fully) naked pictures of younger female celebrities, so that the women can tut and feel good about themselves, and the men can do the same while having a surreptitious wank. I patently refuse to link to the pictures of PG. I don't like her, but she doesn't deserve to appear naked in the Mail in an article which slags her off for having tattoos. One of the top-rated comments when I saw it was 'What the hell does she think she looks like?'

What the fuck is it to you, eh, armchair-moralist? And what the fuck is it to the Mail? It's supposed to be an outraged comment, but it turns out to be unwittingly insightful, because of course it doesn't matter what she thinks she looks like. Evidently, she likes the tattoos. What MATTERS is that the Mail are on hand 'to do the proper thing' and trash her for them.

To top all of this off, I'm taking a course on 'British Culture In the 1950s' which has all the fun you'd expect - a surge in evangelical Christianity, colonialism, racism... but, reassuringly enough, the thing that seems to unite all the writers so far is misogyny. Don't worry fellas, when you feel that Africans and Englishmen are irreconcilably different, you can always unite in your disdain for women! I've just read City of Spades by Colin MacInnes. MacInnes was openly gay and had a major sexual obsession with black men, especially Africans.

Now, you would hope that a gay man, as a fellow sufferer of persecution, would try to avoid the rampant stereotyping and mistreatment of women that liberally (haha) garnishes 1950s novels (let's not forget, it was the era of James Bond). I got really excited when I 'met' an independent and capable female character early on, who held a senior position in the BBC. I was optimistic about a girl who was quite shy and meek, but by no means a pushover, and her sister who had apparently chosen to live with a Gambian man.

Alas, it was not to be, my friends! The BBC woman turned out to be a frigid bitch who 'discovered' her femininity upon falling in love with one of narrating characters, and then got punished for this by losing her job when she revealed she was pregnant by him in court, as well as losing the baby. Of course, she'd learnt her lesson by this point: 'All I deeply regret... is losing my child.' Yes, because you've seen the light now, and you realise that other than as a mother, you don't really matter. Without your 'fragment of him' that you loved, your life is meaningless.

The shy girl got knocked up and abandoned by the same character - after he had lived off her and perpetually left her by herself at home - just as his father had done to her mother. Her sister turned out to be a prostitute, pimped out by her own husband and last appearing in the novel in hospital because her husband had cut her face up after getting out of jail.

Of Colin MacInnes:

'I didn't like him at all,' says Diana Melly, who was a showgirl at the Cabaret Club in Soho along with Christine Keeler. 'His idea of me was just the wife with young children who cooked lunch all the time. I don't know what gave him the idea that he could get so drunk and be so rude after having his lunch made.'

This peculiarly male-homosexual disdain for women is nothing new to me, it's just really depressing. MacInnes is another one who was 'liberal' by the standards of his time. Why is it impossible for people, if they can stand other races, religions, etc., to not be the same about women?

As a socially-liberal feminist, it feels like the worst kind of betrayal when men who claim to be liberal/left-wing suddenly reveal themselves to be misogynists, or unfurl the handy caveat of saying 'I'm not a feminist.' You feel very alone, all of a sudden. If feminism doesn't have a home within the liberal-left community, then where is there a safe space for feminists? Liberal Conspiracy held a BlogNation event some time back (which I didn't attend, because I didn't 'matter' enough, and I doubt I do even now!), and the subject of trying to engage with the feminist blogosphere was raised by Sunny.

Let me offer a much-belated tip to you, Sunny: why don't you call bullshit on your ilk who profess misogynistic views? That would be certainly preferable to the following dubious comment you left on the Valentine's thread, in response to Jennie Rigg:

You see, the thing is women, rather like men, ARE ALL INDIVIDUALS. We don’t all think the same, and there is no sure fire way to please us.

Well, yes and no. Everyone’s an individual… as everyone likes to think. But people also behave in remarkably predictable ways.

Excuse me? The Libertarian, a white, middle-class man (probably the sort who Chris Dillow would loathe) who initially identified as right-wing (now, he's not so sure, because he's actually socially-liberal on the whole - what do you think I am, insane?!) has proven to be much more a feminist than some people *coughs and glances upwards* who claim to be, even though he didn't initially consider himself one.

So yes, you can bet that I've been disillusioned this week. Though it's been an accumulation of things, not just current affairs. The stuff about 'men are responsible for the banking crisis, bring in more women!' was another stab in the weeping lesion. BRING PEOPLE IN ON MERIT, and yes, we need more females in that atmosphere, but merit needs to come into the equation and we need to start challenging society's assumptions. Banking is a deeply sexist sector from what I've (repeatedly) read, it doesn't surprise me. Women within that field need to be able to know that they won't be forced to go to strip clubs and act like 'one of the boys' just to retain their jobs. I really think that bosses, the people in charge of recruitment and management decisions, should be made to show proof of feminist credentials. Male OR female. It doesn't have to be anything major - just interview the women they've worked with previously, if need be.

Anyway, I'm hauling my tired ass off to bed. I was feeling very low, but then I remembered - hey, I'm seeing The Libertarian tomorrow! How childishly excited I got! I actually wanted to send my friend a text about it as if it were news. I fought the urge to mention it in in my Facebook status. He smiles with his whole face (eyes AND mouth), and what a smile it is. Good God. I'd take his over those of cherubs or female figures in classic art anyday. The Mona Lisa? You are the weakest link, goodbye. Next to green/hazel eyes, rosy cheeks, a freckled nose and the most effortlessly alluring pair of lips I have ever known, the Italian broad can just go hang (oh wait, she is already - in the Louvre *drumroll and crash*). Admittedly, I can't help noticing his lips because the top of my head only comes up to his chin. Still, why quibble? I'm getting feminist-kissed!

Recommended Reading:

Another bigot emerges, seemingly from nowhere.

Intelligence in women - still a topic for debate in the 21st century...

Two really good pieces on women and cinema.

Upskirting - warn all the women you know.

Another woman comes along to tell us that in fact, if we willingly prop up the patriarchy, it can only be good for us. Cheezus.