The Delicate Parent-Child Relationship

I said I would discuss headscarved girls in a forthcoming post; once I can remember what on Earth I might have been out to say, I will get round to it.

Greetings, dear readers. I apologise for my habitual flakiness and my prolonged absences, but the Real World does call me forth for most of the week, so unfortunately my blog doesn't always get the love it needs. The upshot of all this is that y'all don't have to hear me bitching about work and career quite so much any more. I have decided to yield to nature and am hoping to become either an academic or a teacher. If I become an academic, I'll consider becoming a lecturer too.

I must just briefly highlight a blog post which has inspired this very post. It occurred to me that after 'the death of God,' many have been looking to replace (or perhaps, supplement) the notion of a Supreme Being by falling back onto other models. I will venture to say that this has happened more so in the Western world than in Africa or Asia or the Middle East. However, I am not making any judgements there. I am not trying to cheerlead for any part of the world.

The reason I stipulate this is because I am wary of falling into the trap of sounding like my father. 'Oh, the West had its advantages and it progressed, but now look at it, it's all coming to nothing, people want things to be how they were in the good old days.' Trans: They done gone and lost their values! Followed by: 'India is becoming a superpower, China is becoming a superpower, America is going to stop being so powerful. Just like when the British Empire came to an end - nothing lasts forever!' Add 'It's India's turn now!' to finish. The common sense and logic in this, which I agree with - that nothing lasts forever - gets unfortunately drowned in patriotism, a hint of racism and some good ol' conservatism. The West thought it knew best, but WE have values because we're still religious and we have shame, and so soon we'll make up for all those years of Whitey's rule!

That kind of thing makes me uncomfortable for so many reasons, which should be fairly apparent to anyone who's read me more than twice. Life is NOT simple, and the sooner the people of the world get that, the better. I'm aware I sound patronising, but I really could give less of a fuck. The older we get, the lazier we get, wishing to regress back to the times when our lives broke down into simply-moralistic narratives of 'good' and 'bad'. We often conveniently forget that even in childhood, we were being fed those narratives. Children are not 'little angels,' they can be perfectly cruel and thoughtless. That's because we human beings are flawed and complex (I would dare to say, thankfully so).

So on to challenge one of society's last-remaining bastions of respectability. I am a believer in D.H Lawrence, as I believe I might already have said, in the notion of challenging ideals. Ideals and institutions can be instructive in the sense of offering an 'Average' - a yardstick to measure conditions of material need by - Lawrence argues, but we must remember that the Average is just that - a fiction created to assess need. When this Average is taken to be representative of real people, we have a problem, because everybody is different and their individuality needs to be accepted. Lawrence doesn't think we need to celebrate or explain it in any way - just accept the fact of our 'otherness' to everybody outside of ourselves.

Now, I find that eminently sensible. The problem is that Lawrence was startlingly visionary, because the Average DID come to be seen as representative of more than just material need. We (humanity), began to take the beast known as Aspiration further and further. Aspiration is not essentially bad when it comes from within. However, with the 'Average' - it came from without and that was just the problem. It has been happening since before Lawrence realised it. When people talk about our 'broken society,' and cite any number of bullshit reasons, I just want to laugh in their face and tell them to read 'Democracy.'

A lot of all our problems - and this is the whole world over - come from this very tendency to hold ourselves up to others and judge unfavourably; to see what they have and think to ourselves: 'the grass is greener' or 'Must do better.' Nobody's immune, and it covers all areas of life! It's been used to keep people in check for years, from any number of religious texts to 19th-century America to the modern day.

So, I am going to make a daring proposition. If we're always judging people anyway (and come off it, we all bloody well are all the time), then why do we stop at the family? Why do we have such a reluctance to enter into that arena? 'It's a question of people's private lives,' you cry. 'We can't tell them what to do with their children.'

Errr... yes, we can. Groups of people have been (tacitly or otherwise) trying to control or influence the actions of others for absolutely forever. So let's stop with the hypocrisy, shall we? I am going to suggest here that the sort of people involved in Puritan Neighbourhood Watch (another delightful feature of 19th-C America where you could report your (married) neighbours for having had sex) are generally the sort of people who gravitate towards religion. The sort of people who need a Supreme Being, aka a giant authority figure, to complete them in some way.

(Not that all religious people are crazy or bad, mind).

For these religious people, the irony is not apparent. I'm speaking of the irony of the omnscience of God. God really is everywhere for them - because they put God everywhere. They attempt to give a sacred veneer to many parts of human life, causing a great amount of damage in the process. It is terrifying because these people with their conservatism, become God. They exercise the Supreme Will of the mob mentality, and then it almost doesn't matter what God might think of things because they have sat in judgement and delivered their verdict. 'God' might as well be the name they give to their ego, because they are busy assigning sacredness and profanity right, left and centre.

Talk about missing the point. It makes me laugh, but the way I see it: that's religion for you! I'll explain myself a bit more. In an increasingly cynical modern world, conservatives and the religious (I might as well change that to 'religious conservatives,' mightn't I?) have created a series of 'lesser gods' to which they lend the tint of holiness in a bid to stave off the ugly reality of change and progress. DO NOT BLASPHEME, or you will repent.

One of these 'lesser gods' is parenthood. There have thankfully been some writers such as Lionel Shriver who have attempted to humanise parenthood to some degree by revealing that it's not all unconditional love all the way and that parents ARE people too, you know, prone to resentment and frustration. However, much of the religious brigade HATE that kind of thing. My own parents told me that 'Your parents are a form of God'. Errr... no, thanks.

Why can we not admit this reluctance to accept that families are, after all, composed of human beings? I don't buy all that 'there has to be a mother and a father' crap either. Generally if the child has a male or female role model of some sort to help them through adolescence and plenty of love and support, why should there be a problem? It is reluctance to accuse families of being in the wrong that leads to situations such as that of the 'British Josef Fritzl' (the article I link to is highly recommended, particularly the last section of it, which probably partly inspired this). The family, and especially the nuclear family, is not 'untouchable,' the more this is clung to, the less people want to intervene when such things happen, because it makes the ugly truth resurface before us.

In seven out ten instances of rape, for example, it's committed by someone you know. Apparently, it came out in 2005 that it's most likely to be someone you know stealing your identity. Yet again, the narrative doesn't split easily into 'us' (family) and 'them' (rest of the world). Even if crimes aren't committed, your family can still emotionally abuse you, control you and mar your confidence for life. Trying to speak up about that and gain some perspective can be even more difficult, in fact, if your family were bad to you but not in a easily-stereotypable pantomime-villain way. Think about how bad it must be for women who suddenly become 'honour'-killing victims or get forced into marriage as a result of this last taboo, that of speaking against your family.

'Don't go telling your friends about what happens in the family,' my parents used to say to me every now and again. I think now that somewhere subconsciously, they had acknowledged that they weren't behaving in a totally acceptable way, and hence the guilt made them try to keep me in check, even when I wasn't telling anybody.

Despicable situations such as incest, abuse and domestic violence occur because we want to persist in keeping an aura of respectability about the families. Nothing else is left! the likes of the Mail-deluge cry. Nothing is sacred any more!

Quite right, and as I've said before, why should it be? Until we can come up with absolute, conclusive proof of God, the only thing that we can be sure of is that the ludicrous ideal standards being applied are our own - i.e. human. Even if they don't begin as our own, they become so in time!

It is your so-called loved ones who can hurt and manipulate you worse than anyone else, and that is why the familiar becoming unfamiliar (Das Unheimliche) continues to haunt us even though Freud has been and gone. Look at Fritzl and his 'British equivalent', look at Baby P, you morons, and get some perspective. I especially loved the nebula of hypocrisy surrounding the latter, where the social workers were essentially blamed for the parents' negligence while no-one mentioned that the sort of 'AARGH, NANNY-STATE POKING ITS NOSE INTO ALL OUR LIVES' screech was probably partly responsible for the social workers not intervening sooner. Oh wait, a dude on the Telegraph did (shock shock, horror horror, shock shock horror!) as did Liberal Conspiracy (unsurprisingly).

(See? The Telegraph talking sense. The world ain't simple fo' sho).

Speaking of fear, rearrange the second and third letters of 'sacred' as I often do in error, and there you have a diagnosis of carping Mail/Sun/Express-types worthy of a Freudian slip :-D. 'Scared' is all they ultimately are, like pathetic children in the grown bodies of adults. Children trying to play at paternalism, wresting the freedom of others away in their chubby snatching at authority! Freud would have had a field day, especially with the likes of Comstock (whom I can imagine hitting it off with Paul Dacre). I would say give them a slap and send them home crying, but they'd probably find a way to blame 'ZaNuLab' for this not happening... ;-D

(Il me semble que j'aie trouvé un mari futur! Scary or wot?!).

To quote the man MF Grimm: 'I love you all, till we meet again / My weapon is the pen / Same agenda, no snakes alive in the end'. (I don't take myself that seriously, but his anger is eloquently, elegantly infectious).

Reclaiming Feminism.

I have had enough. I HAVE HAD ABOUT FUCKING ENOUGH. Why the fuck are people so fucking dumb? How did the misogynists come to win so easily? Feminism was somehow ascribed the signification 'of female supremacy' and now women everywhere are shirking it if possible, having to explain and/or mediate it (as I do: 'I'm a feminist-egalitarian... Well, I'm a feminist, but people generally get the wrong idea so I have to say I'm a feminist-egalitarian... I want everyone to be equal, but feel that we need to deal with the oppression of women first and foremost... do you get what I mean?!') or, worst yet, they proudly proclaim themselves as not feminist, as anti-feminist even.

The reason I'm so irritated is because of this interview with one of the Loose Women presenters, Carol McGiffin. Is it just me, or does she look decidedly Satanic in the picture? Maybe I'm ascribing Satanicity (my coinage!) to her based on what she said. I am going to quote it so that I can do my nut accordingly:

Are you a feminist?

Deep down, yes I am. But I have to really question what feminism is now. If being a feminist means I want to be totally equal and the same as men, I don't. I don't want to compete with men, I've got no problem with certain things that a lot of staunch feminists have problems with - the fact that men should share household chores and things like that. I don't buy that line. I don't mind if blokes want to help out, but if they don't and they can't, then I've got no problem with picking their laundry up off the floor. So if that makes me a non-feminist, then I'm a non-feminist.

Are there really any men who "can't" pick up laundry from the floor?

Yes, I know ... unless they're completely unable to move, or they've got no arms. But the damaging thing about feminism is that the man's role is completely confused - women want them to take on certain women's roles.

What is a woman's role?

Traditional women's roles: looking after a family, men and children. We argue at work about this: Denise and Andrea [Welch and McLean, McGiffin's co-stars] get blue in the face trying to make [their partners] Tim or Steve do things that they're never going to do, and I say to them, "Why don't you just do it, because your life would be so much easier?" Why can't they just accept that they are men? Yes, they're lazy and they're rubbish, but they married them, now stop trying to change them. So yes, my view on feminism is slightly flawed, but I would say deep down that I'm all for women's rights.

*weeps* You stupid, stupid, FUCKING STUPID BITCH. I'm sorry, I know it's terrible to swear so much, and probably none too indicative of a 'shared feminine spirit' or whatever, but... Christ. What really hurts me is that there are loads of ignorant women like Carol McGiffin, who don't really know jackshit. I must hand it to her for saying 'I have to really question what feminism is now.'

This woman could be my mother. This woman IS my mother - hence my classifying her, too, as Satan. What kind of passive bullshit is that, anyway? 'I have no problem with men helping, but actually I don't think they should, because then they'll be taking on women's roles and then we'll get confused OMG OH NOES HERE COMES THE SEXUAL APOCALYPSE.'

We live in an age where our understanding of transvestism and
transsexuality has developed to the point where enough outrage occurs at a lesbofeminazi (sorry, I really wanted to use that just once!) who attacks transfolk to spur 150 protesters at the Stonewall awards and where a transsexual gets on to America's Next Top Model. We have a long way to go, sure, but you'd think those little things would show people that gender roles are not sacred and set in concrete. Like pretty much everything else that makes up humanity, they are *gasp* able to be changed and destabilised!

So, Carol McGiffin, I'm sure people like yourself (and oh, I do fear that there are quite a few of them out there) find it hard to wrap their tiny minds around this, but: BULLSHIT to traditional women's roles. How about the traditional role of the bitch-goddess, huh, Kali Ma and her equivalents? The notion of the fertile-yet-destructive pagan matriarch? THAT'S a 'role' that's been around almost as long, and funnily enough you don't hear anyone trumpeting that to us. I also really hate the myth that she and many many others perpetuate, which is that feminism and compromise are somehow separate and/or incompatible: 'I've got no problem with picking their laundry up off the floor.' Well, neither have I, love, but I won't stand for being told that I 'should' do it because it's 'my role'. Especially not by you. And yes, there will be be days when he will bloody well do it himself - that's what I call compromise - being flexible and having each other's backs.

This bit was great too, and I feel, comprehensively disqualifies CM for 'feminist' status: 'Why can't they just accept that they are men?'

Well, honey, by turning around and making the mistake that a lot of women do - of saying 'Boys will be boys,' like my mother always did - you're not only insulting feminists and disempowering yourself, but doing the 'men' a disservice too. All men are not the 'lazy,' 'rubbish' figure perpetuated by Hollywood slacker movies, disenchanted mid-life divorcees and the likes of *ahem* Loose Women. I happen to think that by saying things like that, you are being as unfair as if you turned around and said that all women are hysterical and have a father-fixation (Oh wait, somebody did, and it was a man - Freud, that light of illumination who prescribed 'cocaine therapy' and advanced the ingenious theory that non-white cultures were a primitive, 'savage' form of Western culture - a view inherited from the 19th-C colonial romance and R.L. Stevenson...).

Men and women are supposed to be equal under feminism, and the only sense in which they are equal for McGiffin is in her dismissal of both by reducing them to one-tack performers of a gender role. Get a clue, people! The clue's in the word itself: role. A word tied up with theatre, loaded with performative connotations. If you really want to try and assert your views as if they're law, you could at least try and be a bit more scientific about it and say 'function' instead...!

Granted, her point about expecting people you've married to change (and that too, after years upon years of marriage) is fair. This bit, though: 'I don't want to compete with men.' Biatch, it's a bit late for that. See, if everyone thought like you, you wouldn't be on TV on a show like that right now. That's because people used to think that a woman's role precluded any entry whatsoever into the 'public sphere.' You wouldn't BE on ITV, somehow eking out your 15 minutes of fame (I had never heard of her before this, and I looked her up to find out she was a radio DJ or something...?) without feminism. Yet there you are.

'So yes, my view on feminism is slightly flawed, but I would say deep down that I'm all for women's rights.'

As Michael Kyle from My Wife and Kids would say: 'Ah... nah.' You're not, dear - you're just a product of the same mindset that spawns WAG-wannabes and tabloid kiss-and-tells. That would be the 'I'm a lazy-ass who doesn't want to work, so I'm going to exploit gender stereotypes to my advantage and find myself a rich man.' Then, when you break up, you think you're leaving with half? Bitch, you trippin'. Except that ol' Carole is of the much more common 'I'm a lazy-ass who doesn't want to think, so I'm going to claim the advantages won by a previous generation while simultaneously undermining said advantages by implying that everyone should just shut up and do as they're told' breed.

See, at this point, if I were a Mail/Express reader, I would start pulling out my hair and screaming that the end is nigh. Instead, I'll go right on and make it a Julie Bindel bumper special by drawing your attention to this interview with Sheila Jeffreys about prostitution. Such an interesting read that my faith in humanity was revived (by Julie Bindel an' all! Imagine!). I didn't know who this Sheila Jeffreys was, but I wanted to marry her! (pun intentional...).

Another bitch is necessary, however. In an interview with ballet dancer Natasha Oughtred, the interviewee says:

[Do you have any style icons?]

No one in particular jumps out. Audrey Hepburn looked beautiful - everyone says that about her. When you think of that era, the stars were all so flawless and they never had a bad day.

What utterly banal rubbish! It makes me burst out laughing when you see this kind of mindless 'soft' conservatism, a thought-free, easy idealising of the past. Of course they were fucking flawless - the gossip industry, if it could even be viably considered an 'industry' back then, wasn't able to insinuate itself into the minutest details of slebs' lives like it does now. Of course people had bad days, they just didn't get papped! Whereas now, it seems that if people want to maintain any measure of privacy, they have to disappear from public life for large chunks of time at a pop, like Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Philippe.

I'm not trying to say that we should rein in the paparazzi or anything (or maybe we should, who knows?), but people need to stop being so fucking facile. Don't go bewailing the lack of demigods when you're daily falling upon the pantheon of performers and associated hangers-on and ripping the shit out of them. People with brains know far better in this age of ever-penetrating inquiry. When the whole point of performance is to act a role, why would you want to risk placing your own person within the gladiatorial arena?

By all means, throw us the scraps - the Peaches Geldofs and the Cory Kennedys (hey, I'm British, I'm susceptible to the underdog and sceptical of people who don't seem to have any job! :P ;)) - but models, actresses etc... the whole point of these people is to be unreal. This bullshit about looking at them in Heat when they're having a bad day and feeling better in yourself is just that - bullshit. It's a temporary fix, not a long-term solution, and it only feeds the ludicrous comparison-culture which is (in my view anyway) what will probably bring about the end of the world. So women of the world, though I know you won't listen, I entreat you to STOP reading Closer and Heat, Star and OK! and so forth, and GET OUT of the gossip matrix.

Feck me, I'm tired! I leave you with this rather amusing selection of quotes from Sienna Miller, who seems like a fun sort if you ask me, and the simultaneously heartwarming ('Yay! Yay for the still-single guy! You're no freak AT ALL!') and depressing Private Lives section (next week's problem made me want to cry and give the lady in question a big hug and take all her pain away, but sadly I'm not God...). I think I was partial to the bloke because he sounds a lot like my man might have done, had he ever written to the Guardian and not been snapped up by me (or some other exceedingly lucky girl) before reaching his late twenties... Mwahaha.

Finally... sleeping around from Chaucer to Castro and a really interesting piece on sex and 'our culture of excess' (which I will read tomorrow because I am really tired). HAPPY WEEKEND, ALL!