Fuck you, you white supremacist, racism-qualifying, self-important, jumped-up FUCKER.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/14/martin-mcdonagh-race-row-broadway
Excuse me while I go figuratively break some things. Apparently now being black whilst being offended at 'artistic' racism against black people is being 'racially intolerant'?! WTF.
Posting will resume (sorta) when I clear up the spattered fragments of my brain.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Friday, January 29, 2010
The second-class status of women in India...
and elsewhere, is a subject that I always want to blog about regularly and comprehensively, but for a number of reasons, I don't. The chief among these are that other people do it far, far better and that I get SO ANGRY.
When something is a personal topic - when it cuts close enough to the bone to make you wince and panic - it's REALLY hard to write about. The problem of the personal/political thing emerges too, as this is a topic that exists beyond me and yet encompasses my life. I have only recently made peace with my past. I would say that things really turned around in a positive sense about mid-2008 - so yes, it hasn't been long.
I've had it lucky though. I'm a wet, liberal, British Asian. The regretting of my own existence that lurks inside me has damaged, and damages me, but I have been able to find heretics. People who would pull me back to some kind of objective reality just when I thought that 'tradition' would fucking sink me yet. I am certain that a woman of my opinions would go quietly insane in India and eventually kill herself or those around her, then herself. My family have accepted my rebelliousness and unfeminine behaviour in a way that others wouldn't. I CAN COMFORTABLY SAY THAT MY FAMILY WOULD NOT HONOUR-KILL ME, and horrendous though it is that I can be glad of such a thing, I am glad. They've made me cry, they've belittled me, they've made me doubt my grip on sanity - but I have managed to get space enough to see that they do, beneath it all, love me.
To all those people who remind me that it is OK to be me, and that my life is not dispensable just because I am the black sheep third daughter in a family of four children, I must just be intensely grateful for a minute - and I will be for the rest of my life.
Okay, misery memoir moment over. It's time for worthier issues than my own personal ones!
asquith, my favourite Stoke-based person (although he always spells it Sjoke - I may be missing something there?) highlighted this:
Calls for help from victims of forced marriage GOING IGNORED. Sign the petition to keep the Honour Network Helpline going, and also donate to Karma Nirvana, a charity which supports victims of 'honour'-based abuse. Despite being eye-wateringly poor, I am going to donate £20. That should leave me enough to live on for um, another 2 weeks or so... DONE! I would love to actually give them volunteering time, but seeing as I would have to move to Derby, 'tis not a realistic option.
Heresy Corner flags up some unsurprisingly barbaric treatment of a 16-year-old girl raped in Bangladesh. I commented in a fit of fury, but frankly donating time and/or money and signing petitions to support charities that work against HBV, as well as encouraging other people you know to do so, is the best anyone can do.
Walk For India's Missing Girls - a global march against female foeticide. I sadly cannot participate in this as it is taking place in Ireland, Canada, the US and India only (why not in the UK?). Still, it's March 6, 2010 so if you know anyone who lives in any of those countries/cities and who can make it, please encourage them to go while there's still time!
There is now ONE late-term abortionist left in the whole of the United States of America. And this is a nation that considers itself civilised? Fucking terrifying reading for anyone with a brain. Especially if, like me, you fear that we are slowly turning into a smaller, greyer version of America. Just look at the recent news that the rich-poor divide is wider than it was 40 years ago, and the fact that people are less in favour of helping the poor to move on up than ever:
Though - oh, yay! - good, old-fashioned British hypocrisy might stop us from morphing into self-made-men with American-style Dreams in the end:
Speaking of America, laugh (or cry?) at a tale of a Texan Christian school aiding Haiti victims by praying for them, whilst a public school 'in a poor part of town' raised over $4000! Oh God, is He merciful...
Some things to be happy about - the possibility of Andrew Wakefield being struck off. I would actually pray for that. Just don't pay too much attention to the parents who are 'standing by him' (figuratively and literally - on TV) because then you'll remember how fucking stupid great swathes of the human race are, and want to kill someone all over again. Also, the increasing anger against our globally embarrassing libel laws - I donated to Simon Singh's campaign against the BCA, and I signed this petition - and if you haven't, do the latter at least!
Now to bed, stinking and in need of a vigorous snog. :-D
When something is a personal topic - when it cuts close enough to the bone to make you wince and panic - it's REALLY hard to write about. The problem of the personal/political thing emerges too, as this is a topic that exists beyond me and yet encompasses my life. I have only recently made peace with my past. I would say that things really turned around in a positive sense about mid-2008 - so yes, it hasn't been long.
I've had it lucky though. I'm a wet, liberal, British Asian. The regretting of my own existence that lurks inside me has damaged, and damages me, but I have been able to find heretics. People who would pull me back to some kind of objective reality just when I thought that 'tradition' would fucking sink me yet. I am certain that a woman of my opinions would go quietly insane in India and eventually kill herself or those around her, then herself. My family have accepted my rebelliousness and unfeminine behaviour in a way that others wouldn't. I CAN COMFORTABLY SAY THAT MY FAMILY WOULD NOT HONOUR-KILL ME, and horrendous though it is that I can be glad of such a thing, I am glad. They've made me cry, they've belittled me, they've made me doubt my grip on sanity - but I have managed to get space enough to see that they do, beneath it all, love me.
To all those people who remind me that it is OK to be me, and that my life is not dispensable just because I am the black sheep third daughter in a family of four children, I must just be intensely grateful for a minute - and I will be for the rest of my life.
Okay, misery memoir moment over. It's time for worthier issues than my own personal ones!
asquith, my favourite Stoke-based person (although he always spells it Sjoke - I may be missing something there?) highlighted this:
Calls for help from victims of forced marriage GOING IGNORED. Sign the petition to keep the Honour Network Helpline going, and also donate to Karma Nirvana, a charity which supports victims of 'honour'-based abuse. Despite being eye-wateringly poor, I am going to donate £20. That should leave me enough to live on for um, another 2 weeks or so... DONE! I would love to actually give them volunteering time, but seeing as I would have to move to Derby, 'tis not a realistic option.
Heresy Corner flags up some unsurprisingly barbaric treatment of a 16-year-old girl raped in Bangladesh. I commented in a fit of fury, but frankly donating time and/or money and signing petitions to support charities that work against HBV, as well as encouraging other people you know to do so, is the best anyone can do.
Walk For India's Missing Girls - a global march against female foeticide. I sadly cannot participate in this as it is taking place in Ireland, Canada, the US and India only (why not in the UK?). Still, it's March 6, 2010 so if you know anyone who lives in any of those countries/cities and who can make it, please encourage them to go while there's still time!
There is now ONE late-term abortionist left in the whole of the United States of America. And this is a nation that considers itself civilised? Fucking terrifying reading for anyone with a brain. Especially if, like me, you fear that we are slowly turning into a smaller, greyer version of America. Just look at the recent news that the rich-poor divide is wider than it was 40 years ago, and the fact that people are less in favour of helping the poor to move on up than ever:
Blair's triangulation was this fabled meritocracy, a feelgood creed where we don't have to be locked in eternal struggle, we just all try our best and end up minted. This took hold – in a study about social equality conducted last year by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 69% of respondents agreed with the statement: "There is enough opportunity for virtually everyone to get on in life if they really want to. It comes down to the individual and how much you are motivated." Without that (pretty groundless) faith in mobility, many of these newly revealed, hostile attitudes to the poor – for instance, only one in five of us now believes that unemployment benefits are too low and cause hardship (53%, 16 years ago) – would be untenable.
Though - oh, yay! - good, old-fashioned British hypocrisy might stop us from morphing into self-made-men with American-style Dreams in the end:
The unbelievable thing is that, even in this mulch of conservatism, this belief that the poor are poor on purpose, 67% of people still think it is the government's responsibility to reduce income differences between rich and poor. As soon as you put the word "redistribution" in the question, everybody's suddenly against it.
Speaking of America, laugh (or cry?) at a tale of a Texan Christian school aiding Haiti victims by praying for them, whilst a public school 'in a poor part of town' raised over $4000! Oh God, is He merciful...
Some things to be happy about - the possibility of Andrew Wakefield being struck off. I would actually pray for that. Just don't pay too much attention to the parents who are 'standing by him' (figuratively and literally - on TV) because then you'll remember how fucking stupid great swathes of the human race are, and want to kill someone all over again. Also, the increasing anger against our globally embarrassing libel laws - I donated to Simon Singh's campaign against the BCA, and I signed this petition - and if you haven't, do the latter at least!
Now to bed, stinking and in need of a vigorous snog. :-D
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Rape culture + pornification (pt. II)
Just to address some things lingering like a bad smell from the previous post (I know, I know - shoulda done it sooner):
I got this dumbass comment from Alex:
What would Michael Kyle say? 'Ah... nah.' This is an utterly false comparison - porn is not used in the same way that other genres of film are. Most people (especially on the Internet) don't sit down and watch a snippet of oh, I dunno, Star Trek with the express aim of *ahem* 'interacting' with what's on the screen, now, do they? Even if you watch a film for the car chases, you're usually going to have some interest in the overall story. Usually when people do get to the stage of putting up their 'favourite scenes' or whatever on YouTube, it's because they've watched the film or series episode enough to be able to isolate a particular section.
Whereas people don't watch porn for the storyline, they watch it because it turns them on. Why else do mainstream porn TV channels keep promising 'more fucking' and less storylines? Because it's the SEX that people want to see! I have a tendency to pay proper attention to porn sometimes, and it is usually a terrible mistake:
'Oh my God, that man is so tanned he looks like beef jerky, and he is wearing tinted swimming-goggles - wait, are those sunglasses? And why do all the European actors wear those weird little necklaces? Haha!'
Paying attention to porn actresses' expressions (facial and verbal) tends to make me burst out laughing and completely kill my horn. The huge amount of ridiculous pouting and very obviously fake arousal usually provokes hilarity, but sometimes makes me quite depressed, that some men can be so thick (or jaded) that it gets them going. Especially common is the businesslike efficiency of so many porn actresses which, I'm sorry, often makes me think of seasoned prostitutes.
Let us not forget that the Internet has developed on the advance that porn studios discovered with DVDs: people can now slice out, tag and distribute individual scenes involving this or that actress/actor or this or that sex act, tweak the angle/lighting/whatever they want, and so there is even less need to care about the background information. You want a POV scene of Jenna Jameson masturbating? You got it! You don't need to remember that film's title and watch it until you find the right scene unless you're absolutely hell-bent on it - a quick search of a porn site will often point you in the right direction without too much fuss.
No, the only other entertainment form that porn can remotely be compared to (given the way that it is designed to be used), is gaming. It's interesting to note too how much the 'do video games cause violence?' debate mirrors the 'does porn cause rape?' debate, as the more astute among you have hopefully already realised.
This brings me to my other point: a few men (surprise!) immediately leaped on the 'you can't assert a causal link between rape and porn usage' bandwagon, both here and on PP. Erm, no - my wording maybe wasn't unambiguous enough, but I said that I know there's no evidence for it, and I don't believe it. When I said that they were linked, I meant that there is a similar attitude inherent in both. Rape, and the overwhelming majority of porn, reflect a male desire for absolute dominance, translated into a desire to totally dominate women. Just because you and I use it doesn't mean that this can be denied. I'm not going to get into the debate over whether porn can be made feminist or whatever, but I am also not going to be disingenuous and deny what goes on in most porn. It's not a coincidence that women in porn are almost always completely submissive. It's not a coincidence that porn's representations of lesbian sexuality show a form of lesbianism which is all about women wanting to be men, with the strap-on cock and the dildo and when these aren't present, the women are usually young and nubile and conventionally attractive. Just because the cock is not there doesn't mean that the cock can be forgotten! God forbid that porn should show a lesbianism that isn't all about male desire and 'manliness' (read: penises) in some way.
Morons may say (as one did in fact on Pickled Politics):
i.e. 'What about when men are getting fucked? Isn't that, like SUBVERSIVE, and also possibly feminist, because I am a scroteburst and don't understand feminism or feminists?'
Well, now. If you've got the time and the inclination, I would say head over to Bitchy Jones's blog and read a whole lot of posts, starting with the Best Of. It's certainly not for the faint-hearted though. I am just going to quote from a couple of posts: 'subs are not meant to secretly run the show. That’s a lie. If the sub is in charge you’re doing it wrong.'
As Bitchy so astutely observes, even porn which pretends to be about female domination (i.e., giving women the power of the penis) is not really, because it is aimed at satisfying male desire, just like the rest of porn. The depictions of femdom in mainstream porn are obviously going to adhere to this, but she notes it in the dominatrix industry and 'proper' BDSM femdom porn as well:
I got this dumbass comment from Alex:
But at the end of the day, porn is nothing more than a genre, and it's silly to bemoan the general pornification of society in the same way it'd be silly to bemoan its scifiification or actioncomedification.
What would Michael Kyle say? 'Ah... nah.' This is an utterly false comparison - porn is not used in the same way that other genres of film are. Most people (especially on the Internet) don't sit down and watch a snippet of oh, I dunno, Star Trek with the express aim of *ahem* 'interacting' with what's on the screen, now, do they? Even if you watch a film for the car chases, you're usually going to have some interest in the overall story. Usually when people do get to the stage of putting up their 'favourite scenes' or whatever on YouTube, it's because they've watched the film or series episode enough to be able to isolate a particular section.
Whereas people don't watch porn for the storyline, they watch it because it turns them on. Why else do mainstream porn TV channels keep promising 'more fucking' and less storylines? Because it's the SEX that people want to see! I have a tendency to pay proper attention to porn sometimes, and it is usually a terrible mistake:
'Oh my God, that man is so tanned he looks like beef jerky, and he is wearing tinted swimming-goggles - wait, are those sunglasses? And why do all the European actors wear those weird little necklaces? Haha!'
Paying attention to porn actresses' expressions (facial and verbal) tends to make me burst out laughing and completely kill my horn. The huge amount of ridiculous pouting and very obviously fake arousal usually provokes hilarity, but sometimes makes me quite depressed, that some men can be so thick (or jaded) that it gets them going. Especially common is the businesslike efficiency of so many porn actresses which, I'm sorry, often makes me think of seasoned prostitutes.
Let us not forget that the Internet has developed on the advance that porn studios discovered with DVDs: people can now slice out, tag and distribute individual scenes involving this or that actress/actor or this or that sex act, tweak the angle/lighting/whatever they want, and so there is even less need to care about the background information. You want a POV scene of Jenna Jameson masturbating? You got it! You don't need to remember that film's title and watch it until you find the right scene unless you're absolutely hell-bent on it - a quick search of a porn site will often point you in the right direction without too much fuss.
No, the only other entertainment form that porn can remotely be compared to (given the way that it is designed to be used), is gaming. It's interesting to note too how much the 'do video games cause violence?' debate mirrors the 'does porn cause rape?' debate, as the more astute among you have hopefully already realised.
This brings me to my other point: a few men (surprise!) immediately leaped on the 'you can't assert a causal link between rape and porn usage' bandwagon, both here and on PP. Erm, no - my wording maybe wasn't unambiguous enough, but I said that I know there's no evidence for it, and I don't believe it. When I said that they were linked, I meant that there is a similar attitude inherent in both. Rape, and the overwhelming majority of porn, reflect a male desire for absolute dominance, translated into a desire to totally dominate women. Just because you and I use it doesn't mean that this can be denied. I'm not going to get into the debate over whether porn can be made feminist or whatever, but I am also not going to be disingenuous and deny what goes on in most porn. It's not a coincidence that women in porn are almost always completely submissive. It's not a coincidence that porn's representations of lesbian sexuality show a form of lesbianism which is all about women wanting to be men, with the strap-on cock and the dildo and when these aren't present, the women are usually young and nubile and conventionally attractive. Just because the cock is not there doesn't mean that the cock can be forgotten! God forbid that porn should show a lesbianism that isn't all about male desire and 'manliness' (read: penises) in some way.
Morons may say (as one did in fact on Pickled Politics):
One genre omitted was the ‘Bend Over Boyfriend’ stuff which features a woman with a strapon subjecting her boyfriend / husband to some rough play.
i.e. 'What about when men are getting fucked? Isn't that, like SUBVERSIVE, and also possibly feminist, because I am a scroteburst and don't understand feminism or feminists?'
Well, now. If you've got the time and the inclination, I would say head over to Bitchy Jones's blog and read a whole lot of posts, starting with the Best Of. It's certainly not for the faint-hearted though. I am just going to quote from a couple of posts: 'subs are not meant to secretly run the show. That’s a lie. If the sub is in charge you’re doing it wrong.'
As Bitchy so astutely observes, even porn which pretends to be about female domination (i.e., giving women the power of the penis) is not really, because it is aimed at satisfying male desire, just like the rest of porn. The depictions of femdom in mainstream porn are obviously going to adhere to this, but she notes it in the dominatrix industry and 'proper' BDSM femdom porn as well:
Dominant women are beautiful. And that’s why the guy gets on his knees. That is what he worships. Her beauty.
I don’t just mean in porn – I mean the whole ’story’ of femdom runs along these lines.
It’s pretty interesting that, where men have decided to allow women to have ‘power’ for their own wanky needs, that this is the kind of power they choose to give her. The power of being desired. A completely passive power.
And I’ve told you before dominant sexuality is all about *desiring*. Dominant sexuality is active – not passive.
*Wanting* not being wanted.
*Demanding* not being demanded.
But the beautiful Amazon thing is woven into the fabric of femdom (black PVC – since you ask).
This is my major problem with porn: it's all about men. Even when they're the ones being fucked, the focus remains on satisfying male desire. I hate the way it makes me end up feeling like I have some sort of sexual split-personality disorder. You're always led to identify with the penetrator - the man, or the male-proxy lesbian - yet as a woman, you know deep down that you're supposed to be the penetratee (yup, not a word, don't care). Where the man is getting penetrated, I just find myself agreeing with Bitchy and thinking 'But I don't want to screw a man! It might turn him on, but it doesn't turn me on! And it doesn't turn her on, either, by the looks of it.' This takes me back to why feminist porn may not be possible; like Simone de Beauvoir, I fear that 'the women's effort has never been anything more than a symbolic agitation. They have gained only what men have been willing to grant; they have taken nothing, they have only received' ("Introduction" to The Second Sex (1952), p.19).
Let us not forget that the greedy hand of mainstream porn has reached into BDSM culture and taken practices which usually occur after much discussion between sexual partners, and stolen them. Your average hardcore porn video does not show the man asking the woman if she is really, truly, 100% OK with any form of auto-erotic asphyxiation, the couple establishing any safe words or limits, or anything such. In short, mainstream porn removes all the pesky 'responsible behaviour' that actually underpins any extreme sexual practices and just hands you the sexual practices on a plate. This is yet another example of heteronormativity in action. Extreme sexual practices were roundly demonised and ignored by the heterosexual majority for ages. However, now that heterosexual culture is 'bored' and needs novelty, it has 'graciously' decided to legitimize BDSM, sort of, by stealing from it. Only, conveniently enough, it ends up making BDSM look worse because it does away with the whole 'safe, sane and consensual' ethos that distinguishes it from actual rape, torture etc.! God forbid that 'vanilla' heterosexuality ever be seen as anything other than THE true and right way (because of course, y'know, the majority have vanilla heterosexual sex, so anything else is weird and probably evil). Anyone who thinks I am on that conspiracy shit wants to remember that the majority of porn users in America belong to, that's right, the bullshit party (who make it their business to argue against ALL sexual activity that isn't 'Christian') and that in the UK, you can now be prosecuted for being in possession of 'extreme porn.'
Ultimately, I'm finding that I've come full circle - I'm doing my best to stay away from Internet porn and just occasionally watching some of those cringeworthy erotica films that come on certain Sky channels late at night. These still promote female stereotypes and female sexual stereotypes enthusiastically, but at least they hold back from the violence that is implicit, and becoming increasingly explicit, in so much porn. They also often try to connect sex and love to some extent, by putting in some kind of romance. Loving couples can have good sex too, you know! While I understand that the fantasy of completely no-strings/anonymous sex is exciting - SOMETIMES - porn is OBSESSED with it, and it gets really boring.
The repetitiveness of porn is damaging, but for a critical mind, it is also revealing. Most porn consumers want to be the 'daddy' fucking girls old enough to be their daughter (eww) or they want to fuck their mums (eww), or both. All very Freudian and distinctly pathetic. It's no secret that they are largely insecure and unattractive (often, but not always, physically as well as emotionally) men, compensating themselves by being able to get their way all the time and 'have' anyone they want who wouldn't normally look twice at them. They don't want to be anyone's beloved equal, they want to be SPECIAL SNOWFLAKES, goddammit! Me, me, me! Bor-ing - and this is precisely the message we DO NOT need young male teenagers high on hormones to be embedding in their already self-centred brains.
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
Sunday, January 03, 2010
Thursday, December 31, 2009
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
... And that's all there is to it, really. If, like myself, you will be seeing it in in a religious setting, make sure you drink enough caffeine-based stimulant of your choice in advance so as not to get bored senseless by the tragic attempt to link God and what is essentially the chance for THE ultimate piss-up.
Wow, that was snarky! Sorry, I don't know why the atheist in me reared up like that. Maybe because my sister just told me to pray as much as I can between now and half-eight because, due to the lunar eclipse, I will get ten thousand (or something) times the returns.
CAN I GET AN EYE-ROLL AND A CHORUS OF SNIGGERS?
Thank you. Even when I believed, that kind of thing made me think: 'Oh, good Lord. What is this, the human version of Super Mario Flash? If I hit that ? box more than once, I'll get four times the coins?'
I cannot wait to come out as an atheist and be all 'If God wants to make an appearance, BULLY FOR HIM. I am not going to subtly blame myself for chance ill-fortune through lamenting my 'kismet' (destiny) and then sit back and wring my hands when I CAN act, going 'God will tell me what to do.' God - the ultimate absent father. Let's not even GO THERE with religion...!' Anyone who agrees with me should also read this: http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2009/12/agreeing-with-god.html
Basically, my feelings about God are best summed up by Jesse Custer of the fucking amazing Preacher. If you haven't read it, read it. Run, screaming and howling, like a possessed loon to the nearest website/bookshop/geek store at the nearest opportunity and buy it. When I grow up and somehow accrue wealth, IT WILL BE BOUGHT. Go on, you know God would want you to. ;-)
The mad atheist rant ends here. Much love, don't get too pissed and if you need to have a nap before the clock strikes twelve - DO IT. I will be pretending to be both devout and awake. A plus!
Wow, that was snarky! Sorry, I don't know why the atheist in me reared up like that. Maybe because my sister just told me to pray as much as I can between now and half-eight because, due to the lunar eclipse, I will get ten thousand (or something) times the returns.
CAN I GET AN EYE-ROLL AND A CHORUS OF SNIGGERS?
Thank you. Even when I believed, that kind of thing made me think: 'Oh, good Lord. What is this, the human version of Super Mario Flash? If I hit that ? box more than once, I'll get four times the coins?'
I cannot wait to come out as an atheist and be all 'If God wants to make an appearance, BULLY FOR HIM. I am not going to subtly blame myself for chance ill-fortune through lamenting my 'kismet' (destiny) and then sit back and wring my hands when I CAN act, going 'God will tell me what to do.' God - the ultimate absent father. Let's not even GO THERE with religion...!' Anyone who agrees with me should also read this: http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2009/12/agreeing-with-god.html
Basically, my feelings about God are best summed up by Jesse Custer of the fucking amazing Preacher. If you haven't read it, read it. Run, screaming and howling, like a possessed loon to the nearest website/bookshop/geek store at the nearest opportunity and buy it. When I grow up and somehow accrue wealth, IT WILL BE BOUGHT. Go on, you know God would want you to. ;-)
The mad atheist rant ends here. Much love, don't get too pissed and if you need to have a nap before the clock strikes twelve - DO IT. I will be pretending to be both devout and awake. A plus!
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Libertarians and dumb shit
I really should know better at my age (and educational state) than to be wading in to a debate that looks like it could be BLOG BEEF in the making, buuuuuuut...
On Pickled Politics this eve, after strenuous charades and serving of food/washing/loading of dishwashers for about 20 people or so, I sees this.
Now, I guess I have to comment because:
a) my boyfriend is a white libertarian and
b) he's demonstrated this kind of frankly depressing ignorance before.
Though I would like to hope that since that evening, he's going to think a little bit before he does it again. I keep reminding him of it every now and again so that he doesn't get complacent, and he fact-checks me. It's a great partnership. :-D
I don't actually mind libertarians at all. Barring the ones who are actually just selfish, semi-deranged conservatives who use 'libertarian' to mean 'extremely bigoted and misanthropic conservative-in-disguise' (or Randies, as one might term them, since these are also usually the kind of libertarian who thinks that 'not leaving poor people to die' is a crime against their god, the free market), libertarians are OK. I was about to say: hey, I married one.
Um, anyway. Charlotte Gore is OK. I'm not sure that my linking to her is really all that... necessary, but yeah, there you go. I don't really read her or anything, but she doesn't seem to be totally clueless. I mean, she seems to understand what 'racism' is (for anyone who was wondering, racism = prejudice + power) better than most other libertarians I've encountered online. Barring my bf who, let's be honest, is something of a miracle. I would elaborate, but I don't want to give away his identity wantonly.
However, as I've said to him, I often can't help agreeing that libertarianism is for rich, white people, or in the parlance of this country, white middle-class people. The problem is that so many of them argue from this cloud cuckoo land vision, where the world is all a beautiful place and nobody needs help to get anywhere. I know that they're not stupid per se, they're just ignorantly idealistic white liberals. If you are white and middle-class, you have had both racial privilege and class privilege handed to you throughout your life. Racial privilege, for me, is the bigger issue, because it's a lot harder to lose than is class privilege. You can 'downsize,' take a less high-flying job, or be 'an old Etonian on the median wage,' as Devil's Kitchen claims to be. However, if you're non-white, you can't dye your skin - or your family - white. I can pass for white occasionally, but I feel a strong affinity to parts of Indian culture that just isn't there for some parts of English culture. Give me the Mahabharat over the Bible any day.
Which is where my gripe comes in:
Firstly, as LeftOutside points out in this EXCELLENT post, DK totally misunderstood what Sunny was talking about when he said 'class war.' He also misunderstood the definition of 'class' being used.
Secondly: FAIL. As I mentioned above, you can change your economic classification (which is how I generally understand 'class' as well) but you can't dye yourself white! Not that that stops the skin-lightening industry!
This is where the cloud cuckoo land bit comes in:
(All quotes from here).
Um, excuse me, but I am a non-white female. As in, I am one of them who is often figured as the step above the Ultimate Imaginary Victim in bigots' mythology of racism - the one-legged black lesbian, with the implication that I, like she, doesn't exist and that if I do, it doesn't really matter.
Last time I checked - EVERY time I have checked - it was either right-wingers or self-proclaimed 'liberals' who practised racism (quick Q: is 'mild' or 'subtle' racism, as opposed to 'race hatred' OK then?) and the demonisation of religious difference (i.e. if it's non-Judaeo-Christian and it's making a fuss - BAN IT!). The practice of 'divide and rule' was also famously used in India (and Africa) by the British, and oddly enough, none of them were particularly left-wing by any stretch of the imagination. Just ask the Imperial War Graves Commission... What was it the British colonial authorities in Nigeria said when it was suggested that descendants of Africans killed in WWI might want proper graves when they were 'civilised enough to appreciate them' in 200-300 years' time by the then-head of the IWGC (apparently a liberal man for his time)? 'No.'
Misguided lefties in the SWP and Respect have been known to ally with Islamists in a desperate and moronic 'marriage of convenience,' it is true. Still, I would like DK to show me as many properly non-racist right-wingers or libertarians, as are among the regulars on PP, at least. When the debate about libertarians has reared its ugly head between my partner and I, even he struggles to name more 'positive' libertarians than himself and DK (and perchance, Gore?) and he is the only libertarian I've encountered who even remotely understands how much of a handicap - psychological as well as otherwise - not being white is.
I actually kinda like DK, even though I don't read him particularly, or necessarily agree with his views. I mean, it's about as white/male privilege as you can get to know that you can go and have a huge angry-child tantrum on your blog and have scores of white men come to make consoling, pacifying noises because, as with almost everything else, white men think and act like they are the powerful majority (as opposed to just one group of people) on the web (and in political blogging, they sure are). I was particularly impressed by his wife showing up on PP to upbraid Sunny for not using better language than him - nice one, Bella! Do you think you could have a word with the hubby too, though? Thanks.* But dumb shit is dumb shit, and really, there's little excuse when the Net is at your fingertips.
*(Side note: Oh my God, she reads I Blame The Patriarchy too! But she spouts Latin at random! I think I might sort of hate-love her).
Now my legs are aching fit to fall off, so I'm-a haul my freezing self under the covers and hopefully have a crying-free night of sleep. BYE, my pretties!
On Pickled Politics this eve, after strenuous charades and serving of food/washing/loading of dishwashers for about 20 people or so, I sees this.
Now, I guess I have to comment because:
a) my boyfriend is a white libertarian and
b) he's demonstrated this kind of frankly depressing ignorance before.
Though I would like to hope that since that evening, he's going to think a little bit before he does it again. I keep reminding him of it every now and again so that he doesn't get complacent, and he fact-checks me. It's a great partnership. :-D
I don't actually mind libertarians at all. Barring the ones who are actually just selfish, semi-deranged conservatives who use 'libertarian' to mean 'extremely bigoted and misanthropic conservative-in-disguise' (or Randies, as one might term them, since these are also usually the kind of libertarian who thinks that 'not leaving poor people to die' is a crime against their god, the free market), libertarians are OK. I was about to say: hey, I married one.
Um, anyway. Charlotte Gore is OK. I'm not sure that my linking to her is really all that... necessary, but yeah, there you go. I don't really read her or anything, but she doesn't seem to be totally clueless. I mean, she seems to understand what 'racism' is (for anyone who was wondering, racism = prejudice + power) better than most other libertarians I've encountered online. Barring my bf who, let's be honest, is something of a miracle. I would elaborate, but I don't want to give away his identity wantonly.
However, as I've said to him, I often can't help agreeing that libertarianism is for rich, white people, or in the parlance of this country, white middle-class people. The problem is that so many of them argue from this cloud cuckoo land vision, where the world is all a beautiful place and nobody needs help to get anywhere. I know that they're not stupid per se, they're just ignorantly idealistic white liberals. If you are white and middle-class, you have had both racial privilege and class privilege handed to you throughout your life. Racial privilege, for me, is the bigger issue, because it's a lot harder to lose than is class privilege. You can 'downsize,' take a less high-flying job, or be 'an old Etonian on the median wage,' as Devil's Kitchen claims to be. However, if you're non-white, you can't dye your skin - or your family - white. I can pass for white occasionally, but I feel a strong affinity to parts of Indian culture that just isn't there for some parts of English culture. Give me the Mahabharat over the Bible any day.
Which is where my gripe comes in:
OK. So, my class must be defined by my parents; Sunny's race is defined by his parents. I can no more help the income of my parents than Sunny can affect the race of his.
So, there is an equivalence: yes?
Firstly, as LeftOutside points out in this EXCELLENT post, DK totally misunderstood what Sunny was talking about when he said 'class war.' He also misunderstood the definition of 'class' being used.
Secondly: FAIL. As I mentioned above, you can change your economic classification (which is how I generally understand 'class' as well) but you can't dye yourself white! Not that that stops the skin-lightening industry!
This is where the cloud cuckoo land bit comes in:
Once again, we see how the Left prefers to label people by their differences—and why? So that human beings can be kept at each others' throats—through the generation of class envy, race hatred, religious differences. This is an old, old tactic which I call divide et impera—divide and rule—and I have written about it extensively.
It is better for people to be labelled, put into boxes and the differences between them emphasised—rather than uniting them in the realision that we are all human beings together—because that causes problems and tensions.
(All quotes from here).
Um, excuse me, but I am a non-white female. As in, I am one of them who is often figured as the step above the Ultimate Imaginary Victim in bigots' mythology of racism - the one-legged black lesbian, with the implication that I, like she, doesn't exist and that if I do, it doesn't really matter.
Last time I checked - EVERY time I have checked - it was either right-wingers or self-proclaimed 'liberals' who practised racism (quick Q: is 'mild' or 'subtle' racism, as opposed to 'race hatred' OK then?) and the demonisation of religious difference (i.e. if it's non-Judaeo-Christian and it's making a fuss - BAN IT!). The practice of 'divide and rule' was also famously used in India (and Africa) by the British, and oddly enough, none of them were particularly left-wing by any stretch of the imagination. Just ask the Imperial War Graves Commission... What was it the British colonial authorities in Nigeria said when it was suggested that descendants of Africans killed in WWI might want proper graves when they were 'civilised enough to appreciate them' in 200-300 years' time by the then-head of the IWGC (apparently a liberal man for his time)? 'No.'
Misguided lefties in the SWP and Respect have been known to ally with Islamists in a desperate and moronic 'marriage of convenience,' it is true. Still, I would like DK to show me as many properly non-racist right-wingers or libertarians, as are among the regulars on PP, at least. When the debate about libertarians has reared its ugly head between my partner and I, even he struggles to name more 'positive' libertarians than himself and DK (and perchance, Gore?) and he is the only libertarian I've encountered who even remotely understands how much of a handicap - psychological as well as otherwise - not being white is.
I actually kinda like DK, even though I don't read him particularly, or necessarily agree with his views. I mean, it's about as white/male privilege as you can get to know that you can go and have a huge angry-child tantrum on your blog and have scores of white men come to make consoling, pacifying noises because, as with almost everything else, white men think and act like they are the powerful majority (as opposed to just one group of people) on the web (and in political blogging, they sure are). I was particularly impressed by his wife showing up on PP to upbraid Sunny for not using better language than him - nice one, Bella! Do you think you could have a word with the hubby too, though? Thanks.* But dumb shit is dumb shit, and really, there's little excuse when the Net is at your fingertips.
*(Side note: Oh my God, she reads I Blame The Patriarchy too! But she spouts Latin at random! I think I might sort of hate-love her).
Now my legs are aching fit to fall off, so I'm-a haul my freezing self under the covers and hopefully have a crying-free night of sleep. BYE, my pretties!
Monday, December 28, 2009
Brink o' the new year post
Suuu, I am currently addicted to Super Mario Flash. It's really bad, I have only been hooked for the last 3 days or so, and I keep getting to Level 3 and dying. Level 3! Terrible.
It has been too long since I last posted. A nice, manageable level of crisis has prevented me from having anything of interest or importance to say.
For no apparent reason other than OMG, THE MARIO, MAKE IT STOP, here's a list of Old Year's/New Year's realisations/resolutions:
1. Do not put a rape alarm near a photo album and/or cookbook. You will live to regret it as the Godforsaken, cuckoo-put-through-a-woodchipper shriek threatens to wake your on-call, early-starting sister and generally break the minds of all those dear to you and within a mile radius. Including yourself.
RESOLUTION: For God's sake, tidy my room more so that rape alarms go where they should: away from anything that will ever be used, touched or moved in some way. Also, go to more feminist 'stuff' (i.e., events) so that hopefully, in some semi-utopian future, rape alarms are NO LONGER NEEDED! So what if women scare me (especially ones my age) and I am afraid of being the only non-white one?
2. I have no money, and subsequently no life.
Make the most of my sort-of job that I currently have. Also, get another job and go to the Careers service and tell them you have absolutely no life direction/marketable skills/blaggability and beg for miracle solution/new personality/suggestions. Also, TALK TO PEOPLE AROUND ME. I cannot be the only person out there who sucks at life.
3. I find it hard to talk to people and establish friendships, even when there seems to be common ground.
Enquire about people more; ask questions and don't think about things so much that talking comes a Sisyphean task.
4. Listen to more music. Also, watch more of the various TV shows I have amassed and waiting to go... I'm hoping to sink my teeth into True Blood soon (wah wah wahhhh).
5. I'm fat. Find local classes/ unexortionately-priced gym, join. LEARN TO SWIM AND RIDE BIKES!
6. My mind sometimes feels like it'll never be clear... blog more!!!
Right, I am too knackered to do more of that right now. Had a mass family get-together earlier... Indian/Punjabi snacks... warm glow of cousinly affection... three hours of charades... It's time to try to adhere to one more resolution:
7. I'm always tired and sometimes find it near-impossible to be motivated. Drugs are not the answer! Put down the tea-cup and step away from the chocolate! GET THEE TO BED ON TIME as is beneficial to the nature of an early riser, though I have only really been that by accident since I was about 15.
I want to wave my fist and shout angry, semi-coherent nonsense like some random hick out of My Name Is Earl or The Simpsons, but I think it will have to be in another post. Or tomorrow.
By the way, I love you all. You are probably not regular readers any more, but hey, you were once - and some of you will return (occasionally) - and I appreciate it!
It has been too long since I last posted. A nice, manageable level of crisis has prevented me from having anything of interest or importance to say.
For no apparent reason other than OMG, THE MARIO, MAKE IT STOP, here's a list of Old Year's/New Year's realisations/resolutions:
1. Do not put a rape alarm near a photo album and/or cookbook. You will live to regret it as the Godforsaken, cuckoo-put-through-a-woodchipper shriek threatens to wake your on-call, early-starting sister and generally break the minds of all those dear to you and within a mile radius. Including yourself.
RESOLUTION: For God's sake, tidy my room more so that rape alarms go where they should: away from anything that will ever be used, touched or moved in some way. Also, go to more feminist 'stuff' (i.e., events) so that hopefully, in some semi-utopian future, rape alarms are NO LONGER NEEDED! So what if women scare me (especially ones my age) and I am afraid of being the only non-white one?
2. I have no money, and subsequently no life.
Make the most of my sort-of job that I currently have. Also, get another job and go to the Careers service and tell them you have absolutely no life direction/marketable skills/blaggability and beg for miracle solution/new personality/suggestions. Also, TALK TO PEOPLE AROUND ME. I cannot be the only person out there who sucks at life.
3. I find it hard to talk to people and establish friendships, even when there seems to be common ground.
Enquire about people more; ask questions and don't think about things so much that talking comes a Sisyphean task.
4. Listen to more music. Also, watch more of the various TV shows I have amassed and waiting to go... I'm hoping to sink my teeth into True Blood soon (wah wah wahhhh).
5. I'm fat. Find local classes/ unexortionately-priced gym, join. LEARN TO SWIM AND RIDE BIKES!
6. My mind sometimes feels like it'll never be clear... blog more!!!
Right, I am too knackered to do more of that right now. Had a mass family get-together earlier... Indian/Punjabi snacks... warm glow of cousinly affection... three hours of charades... It's time to try to adhere to one more resolution:
7. I'm always tired and sometimes find it near-impossible to be motivated. Drugs are not the answer! Put down the tea-cup and step away from the chocolate! GET THEE TO BED ON TIME as is beneficial to the nature of an early riser, though I have only really been that by accident since I was about 15.
I want to wave my fist and shout angry, semi-coherent nonsense like some random hick out of My Name Is Earl or The Simpsons, but I think it will have to be in another post. Or tomorrow.
By the way, I love you all. You are probably not regular readers any more, but hey, you were once - and some of you will return (occasionally) - and I appreciate it!
Sunday, October 25, 2009
At Last
Good grief, perhaps there should be a health warning against mixing your media. I've spent the whole day (more or less), and the last few weeks since the end of September, doing reading for my Master's. Today's reading has been a mixture of First World War Poetry, Mrs. Dalloway and an essay by Michèle Barratt - all on the theme of shell-shock. Just now, as I waited for my NEW LAPTOP (hurrah!) to come to life, I ceded to temptation. Having put Etta James's Best Of on my IPod, I allowed myself to play At Last (super-awesome version with clips from Funny Face on it) on my speakers...
... but what was this? As the music filtered deliciously through, I stiffened, feeling a sudden wave of frigidity shoot up my spine, and seize my nipples. My whole body was soon subsumed in this tingling cold as the lyrics soaked deep into my thoughts. Every nuance of her voice, her sentiments - the hope, the barely-restrained pleasure mingling with the violins' plaintiveness, all bound in a rough, caustic tenderness - irrigated my brain. The melancholy beneath her long wait had become my own. As the song hit me, I dimly felt a memory of The Libertarian scroll across my mind -
My heart was wrapped up in clovers
The night I looked at you*
and I was shivering, almost rooted to the spot. As Etta lingered to the close of the song, I realised my eyes were filled with tears. The next song began, but my body was still in its heightened state of chilled distress. I put At Last back on, and freed the tears that had gathered. After that, I returned (mostly) to normal. My temperature still seems to be unstable, though, and whilst listening back to the song on Youtube (trying to pinpoint the exact effect certain phrases had on me), I wept further.
While it can be embarrassing to admit to reactions like that, I don't feel it too much. It was a uniquely transcendental experience - and ironic to boot. Earlier today, I read an interview with Bill Bailey, in which he responded to the question 'Attitude to drugs?' with:
To which I thought: 'Y'know Bill, I agree - in fact, being a drug-free AND alky-hawl-free zone too, I HEARTILY AGREE. However, why do I seem to be having so few 'life experiences' at the moment?'
Well, you get what you wish for. I couldn't help wondering if many of the Modernist writers and artists I read about had a similar reaction to Wagner - and what they would think of my reaction to Etta James. Would Theodor Adorno approve of her, I wondered. I decided that he would probably be unsure at first and then, once I described to him the implicit sense of narrowly-averted heartbreak and tragedy, the hint of a death richly merited 'at last' ('And here we are in heaven/ For you are mine/At last') and the overriding, persuasive magic of Etta's voice, he would have NO CHOICE but to agree. (For anyone who doesn't know what 'Modernism' is, or who Adorno is, or simply doesn't care - don't worry, I'm just being a saddo literary nerd).
The reasons for that sudden moment are likely to be as follows:
a) TOM has 'come around.'
b) I'm in love.
c) I was really looking forward to that song, since yesterday! I love romantic songs that are truly universal, or sung with loads of soul.
d) It's freezing.
As the song hit me, I dimly saw images of The Libertarian scroll across my mind ('Oh, yeah when you smile, you smile/Oh, and then the spell was cast'). Yesterday, I spent a whole 7 hours with The Libertarian - it was incredible. We did virtually nothing. We never do anything much of interest; it's not like my ex who shepherded me to gigs and exhibitions (and vice-versa) constantly. We do go out together, but we're very happy to sleep beside each other as well, and hug (yes, I know - stop vomiting). Given my state, there's been a suggestion of tense fractiousness whenever we debate - and a week or so ago, we narrowly avoided a smackdown over the issue of experiences of racism. This has made me especially careful to appreciate him for all that he is; a shockingly generous and tender soul who somehow manages to be sensitive, pragmatic and adorable all at once.
So, at 7 p.m. I gave up all pretence of doing my reading (the reason for going to his house) and climbed into his chair with him, to spend a whole hour hugging, kissing and talking. My family have been getting on my nerves a fair bit recently. My parents (my dad in particular) have had to do a lot of refurbishment work and as they are both pretty close to retirement age, it tires them out. I've been doing a little housework, as always, but work and a desire not to get drawn into the web that snatched my second-eldest sister makes me hold back from trying to do lots. Essentially, I haven't been hugely helpful, but I haven't been that bad either, and when my parents asked me to come and do some hoovering and cleaning, I did it without too much fuss.
However, what happens in instances like this is: my mother will complain constantly about having loads of work and 'no support.' My dad will mention (separately) every now and then about how tired he gets. My mother will step up her complaints. I arrived back from university about 8.00 p.m. last week, and because I hadn't really slept, sat on the sofa with my eyes shut briefly. My mother arrived and began angrily lambasting me for being tired, saying that she and my father were doing all that work at their age. However, being my mother, she was neither complaining of her workload, nor asserting her right to ask our help, nor saying I shouldn't be tired. No, it was a confused mess of the three, which culminated largely in an attack on me for having the nerve to be tired, with a sort of jeering undertone. I got up and went upstairs, refusing to be subject to her vindictive resentfulness and resolving not to come down again in a hurry.
Normally, in a non-premenstrual state, my mother's rage-fest would be easier to cope with. This, however, came in the wake of weeks of fear and feelings of inadequacy, laced with a sense of bitter disappointment and cynicism, at my course. I've learnt by this point not to invest too much hope, but TL assured me that I would find the people at Master's level more to my liking; more serious and mature. Throughout undergrad English, I bitched many a time about how many of the students there didn't really understand or appreciate the money that they were spending to study.
He wasn't wrong. Week 1 of the core course left me reeling in terror; everyone else seemed to be either a) obsessively knowledgeable of Modernism, or b) derangedly devoted to becoming thus, especially if they were a mature student. I was really hoping that the mature students might come through for me! Guilt set in - was I unappreciative of the course because I hadn't had to pay? At the last moment, a long-hoped-for miracle came through and I was awarded a bursary to cover the full cost of my fees. I started to feel certain that I wasn't worthy of the money, and that maybe I didn't deserve to be there, as everyone else clearly knew much more than I ever could. What was worse, I realised, was that I didn't actually like Modernism all that much from my brief encounters with it last year. It had been terrifyingly knotty, all T.S. Eliot and James Joyce, 'breakdown of language and form,' and obscurity. Did I deserve to be there?
After having a short period of emotional alienation from TL as a result of being absolutely unable to talk - for some reason, I could not talk to him at all - we fought and the release brought tears and awareness. The realisation of what each of us had nearly lost in the other propelled me back to full sanity and I gave my course a bit more opportunity to 'stick.' I chatted to some of the other women on my course; yes, they were nice enough. That week and the next brought new understanding: it wasn't because of their knowledge that the other students put me off. It was because history was repeating itself. At undergrad, there had been the deadly-serious (like myself, I guess) and the rest, with a few 'nice enoughs.' Now, the deadly-serious and the 'nice-enoughs' had come together - and I had changed substantially.
I have always been the sort of person who, by virtue of shyness and a natural tendency towards solitude, never makes friends instantly. I often find myself befriending one person, who is attached to others who are much cooler towards me, and vice versa. This happened all over again with one woman who was genuinely warm and friendly (R), but who appeared to be fast palling up with a more aloof, intelligent-yet-overly-brisk breadstick. Yet I didn't care - and why not? Was this because I'd reached that stage where I was tired of making the effort, tired of having to fight to be liked and appreciated, tired of playing the clown? Ye-es. Listening to the two chatting though, watching their camaraderie, it hit me hard and sudden what the real issue was.
They were regular students. To them, the MA was one of the most important things they were doing, or would ever do. It was to me, but I was uncomfortable about the way we were being rather unsubtly shoe-horned into PhD-prep. I loved the subject, yes, but... Even in Week 1 as two students tussled over time in Marx, I watched them under a throbbing head, aghast. What the fuck were they on about? Why the fuck were they getting so worked up? Couldn't they both be right? What was the fucking point?
During the induction day, six days previously, I had discovered that I was Best of the Web on Cif and persuaded a lecturer to let me use his Internet and check, very quickly, because I thought it was going to be taken down the next day (by which point, I wouldn't be able to see it with my own eyes as I was going to be out till 9 and then bedding down early for work the next morning). I assumed he knew about the Terence Kealey thing. He didn't; I explained. He commented that he didn't really get involved with that kind of thing (blogging etc.) because he couldn't handle the abuse (someone had left me a very unpleasant comment).
At the time, I thought nothing of it. Yet as the first three weeks sloped along, I suddenly and starkly recalled this incident, lit up against my general observations of the seminars and conversations with some of my other lecturers - and then I saw that I had been very blind and stupid. The department (and by extension, the world of English academia) was not the dry, self-contained hive it (and others) used to be - no, it had expanded, all right. It had expanded as students demanded their money's worth, to this level of curricular and extracurricular mixing, this new world of blurred boundaries that Kealey's 'satire' was meant to address...
... and there it stopped. I had always assumed that my lecturers were avidly interested in the 'real world,' that somehow they found time to follow the general thrust of current affairs beyond reviews sections and TV biographies. For some reason, I thought that they, like I, were always reflecting on what they discussed, on how to apply it to the real world, on what it all meant and mattered outside of literature and the seminar room. I was wrong.
Not only were my lecturers perfectly 'white middle-class,' I realised, but now, so too were my fellow students, most overwhelmingly. In our particular MA group, there was myself, a black student, a Japanese international student and 'Roz' who appeared to probably be of Pakistani or Bangladeshi background, but certainly wasn't trying to own it. When I mentioned this and the fact of being the only ethnic minority student in my other seminar group, TL demanded a population count and then returned the verdict that anyone else non-white and 'ethnic minorities would be overrepresented,' spectacularly missing the point.
None of them were, or even remotely seemed, particularly political. They didn't really need to be, not like I do. I recalled a conversation in which my parents had (inevitably) surfaced with a group of my peers, and the absolute gulf it created as always. R and I ended up conversing afterwards, and she tried to relate to me by discussing an ex-boyfriend of hers who was from a strict Greek background. I could not really talk about my situation properly, and the whole conversation brought to mind a half-wet beach. Something was missing. I could not understand what, or why, but something made me feel fundamentally unable to relate to these people. Not only unable, but also unwilling - alongside the general tendency of people in London to rapidly form cliques, and my own immense antipathy towards groups, something else was at work.
A 'teachable moment' with TL - the row about racism - helped me make some sense of it, as did a conversation with a long-unencountered acquaintance. TL protested that he did not like the way that I called him 'white middle-class' sometimes, but that he put it down to my being angry and TOM. I asked him why he didn't like it. He spluttered that it was because he couldn't help being that way, that I made it sound like some kind of accusation. He then went so far as to say 'it's like racism, really.' I had maintained a position of amused detachment, an ironic curiosity, while my innards broiled at his remarks. At that point, a world of rage cracked about my shoulders. I felt like Kali-Ma, towering, ready to bring about the destruction of solar systems with a hard, little smile.
'I cannot believe you said that,' I whispered, hurrying downstairs out of earshot, 'that is fucking appalling.' I tried to explain to him that racial privilege was poisoning his brain and that the pang he felt was what ethnic minority people feel constantly once they realise that they live within a racist system. He tried again to assert that my remarks were a form of racism.
'Racism? How is this racism?' He tried to 'explain.' I cut right to the heart: 'Did I say that you were inferior because you are white?'
I'd got him there. I repeated myself, for emphasis and to get through fully to him. 'No...'
'Well, how the fuck is that racism? Is there a concerted campaign - a campaign stretching over YEARS AND YEARS to portray white people as inferior, savage, backwards or effeminate by virtue merely of being white?'
As a historian (a very fine one at that), he could not of course assert that there ever was, or had been.
'I did not mention that you were white and middle-class because I have anything against whites (I wouldn't be dating you) or middle-class people (I'm probably middle-class myself). Did I say, implicitly or explicitly, that you were inferior, because you are white middle-class? NO. I mentioned it because you ARE white middle-class; as you said, you were born that way and I was trying to show you that you are a product of that.'
'But,' he was almost supplicant now, and I could see this coming, just like I'd seen the rest coming but couldn't believe it, 'I campaign against racism. I write on it; I write about honour-based violence and things like that, you know -'
'Yes,' I said, 'but just because you are not racist and campaign against racism, it doesn't mean you know how racism feels. It does NOT mean you understand the experience of racism. That is what so many ethnic minorities wish that white liberals of all stripes would understand. Not being racist and campaigning against racism, does not mean that you fully understand the experience that we go through.'
He had the nerve to ask me how much racism I'd experienced - I responded in as dignified a manner as I could, but I was angry about that and I let him know later on. That whole thing put me in mind of how rape victims still have to demonstrate evidence of some sort of physical struggle to be taken entirely seriously.
THAT is the huge, great sinking realisation that I have so often been working towards in these last two years of my life. The discussions I've read about unconscious racism within in the feminist community and silencing behaviour on a whole range of American feminist blogs, has given me the key to a whole new kind of awareness. I saw the full, shattering rawness with which interracial relationships can be so easily soured and destroyed. I understood more than ever why so many ethnic minority parents feel less than delighted about their children entering into interracial relationships or marriages.
More importantly, I understood why anti-racist feminists (and other campaigners) despair of overcoming the final hurdles in combating racism. Those white people who are 'on our side' don't always realise the harm they do, when they appropriate our experiences by trying to empathise without fully understanding the need to STFU and LISTEN, and/or when they react childishly and thoughtlessly to the awareness of their complicity in the racist system that they've never had to face before. What with that AND the newer delusions of 'majority victimhood' perpetuated by the likes of the BNP and far too many of our daily papers (I'm looking at you, Mail, Sun, Express, Telegraph and Standard... and London Lite and the Metro... and Sky News...), being able to reach full equality and acceptance seems painfully remote.
I was lucky in that I could predict my partner's responses and respond to him clearly - and lucky in that he's the type of guy who LISTENS when I need him to. (The type of guy whose love makes me cry to Etta James! Haha). I will probably post some more on this in time, but for now, my nose hurts and the memory of all this is greatly demoralising.
*Lyrics to At Last here.
... but what was this? As the music filtered deliciously through, I stiffened, feeling a sudden wave of frigidity shoot up my spine, and seize my nipples. My whole body was soon subsumed in this tingling cold as the lyrics soaked deep into my thoughts. Every nuance of her voice, her sentiments - the hope, the barely-restrained pleasure mingling with the violins' plaintiveness, all bound in a rough, caustic tenderness - irrigated my brain. The melancholy beneath her long wait had become my own. As the song hit me, I dimly felt a memory of The Libertarian scroll across my mind -
My heart was wrapped up in clovers
The night I looked at you*
and I was shivering, almost rooted to the spot. As Etta lingered to the close of the song, I realised my eyes were filled with tears. The next song began, but my body was still in its heightened state of chilled distress. I put At Last back on, and freed the tears that had gathered. After that, I returned (mostly) to normal. My temperature still seems to be unstable, though, and whilst listening back to the song on Youtube (trying to pinpoint the exact effect certain phrases had on me), I wept further.
While it can be embarrassing to admit to reactions like that, I don't feel it too much. It was a uniquely transcendental experience - and ironic to boot. Earlier today, I read an interview with Bill Bailey, in which he responded to the question 'Attitude to drugs?' with:
People try them, and then most people realise life experiences exceed the experience drugs give you.
To which I thought: 'Y'know Bill, I agree - in fact, being a drug-free AND alky-hawl-free zone too, I HEARTILY AGREE. However, why do I seem to be having so few 'life experiences' at the moment?'
Well, you get what you wish for. I couldn't help wondering if many of the Modernist writers and artists I read about had a similar reaction to Wagner - and what they would think of my reaction to Etta James. Would Theodor Adorno approve of her, I wondered. I decided that he would probably be unsure at first and then, once I described to him the implicit sense of narrowly-averted heartbreak and tragedy, the hint of a death richly merited 'at last' ('And here we are in heaven/ For you are mine/At last') and the overriding, persuasive magic of Etta's voice, he would have NO CHOICE but to agree. (For anyone who doesn't know what 'Modernism' is, or who Adorno is, or simply doesn't care - don't worry, I'm just being a saddo literary nerd).
The reasons for that sudden moment are likely to be as follows:
a) TOM has 'come around.'
b) I'm in love.
c) I was really looking forward to that song, since yesterday! I love romantic songs that are truly universal, or sung with loads of soul.
d) It's freezing.
As the song hit me, I dimly saw images of The Libertarian scroll across my mind ('Oh, yeah when you smile, you smile/Oh, and then the spell was cast'). Yesterday, I spent a whole 7 hours with The Libertarian - it was incredible. We did virtually nothing. We never do anything much of interest; it's not like my ex who shepherded me to gigs and exhibitions (and vice-versa) constantly. We do go out together, but we're very happy to sleep beside each other as well, and hug (yes, I know - stop vomiting). Given my state, there's been a suggestion of tense fractiousness whenever we debate - and a week or so ago, we narrowly avoided a smackdown over the issue of experiences of racism. This has made me especially careful to appreciate him for all that he is; a shockingly generous and tender soul who somehow manages to be sensitive, pragmatic and adorable all at once.
So, at 7 p.m. I gave up all pretence of doing my reading (the reason for going to his house) and climbed into his chair with him, to spend a whole hour hugging, kissing and talking. My family have been getting on my nerves a fair bit recently. My parents (my dad in particular) have had to do a lot of refurbishment work and as they are both pretty close to retirement age, it tires them out. I've been doing a little housework, as always, but work and a desire not to get drawn into the web that snatched my second-eldest sister makes me hold back from trying to do lots. Essentially, I haven't been hugely helpful, but I haven't been that bad either, and when my parents asked me to come and do some hoovering and cleaning, I did it without too much fuss.
However, what happens in instances like this is: my mother will complain constantly about having loads of work and 'no support.' My dad will mention (separately) every now and then about how tired he gets. My mother will step up her complaints. I arrived back from university about 8.00 p.m. last week, and because I hadn't really slept, sat on the sofa with my eyes shut briefly. My mother arrived and began angrily lambasting me for being tired, saying that she and my father were doing all that work at their age. However, being my mother, she was neither complaining of her workload, nor asserting her right to ask our help, nor saying I shouldn't be tired. No, it was a confused mess of the three, which culminated largely in an attack on me for having the nerve to be tired, with a sort of jeering undertone. I got up and went upstairs, refusing to be subject to her vindictive resentfulness and resolving not to come down again in a hurry.
Normally, in a non-premenstrual state, my mother's rage-fest would be easier to cope with. This, however, came in the wake of weeks of fear and feelings of inadequacy, laced with a sense of bitter disappointment and cynicism, at my course. I've learnt by this point not to invest too much hope, but TL assured me that I would find the people at Master's level more to my liking; more serious and mature. Throughout undergrad English, I bitched many a time about how many of the students there didn't really understand or appreciate the money that they were spending to study.
He wasn't wrong. Week 1 of the core course left me reeling in terror; everyone else seemed to be either a) obsessively knowledgeable of Modernism, or b) derangedly devoted to becoming thus, especially if they were a mature student. I was really hoping that the mature students might come through for me! Guilt set in - was I unappreciative of the course because I hadn't had to pay? At the last moment, a long-hoped-for miracle came through and I was awarded a bursary to cover the full cost of my fees. I started to feel certain that I wasn't worthy of the money, and that maybe I didn't deserve to be there, as everyone else clearly knew much more than I ever could. What was worse, I realised, was that I didn't actually like Modernism all that much from my brief encounters with it last year. It had been terrifyingly knotty, all T.S. Eliot and James Joyce, 'breakdown of language and form,' and obscurity. Did I deserve to be there?
After having a short period of emotional alienation from TL as a result of being absolutely unable to talk - for some reason, I could not talk to him at all - we fought and the release brought tears and awareness. The realisation of what each of us had nearly lost in the other propelled me back to full sanity and I gave my course a bit more opportunity to 'stick.' I chatted to some of the other women on my course; yes, they were nice enough. That week and the next brought new understanding: it wasn't because of their knowledge that the other students put me off. It was because history was repeating itself. At undergrad, there had been the deadly-serious (like myself, I guess) and the rest, with a few 'nice enoughs.' Now, the deadly-serious and the 'nice-enoughs' had come together - and I had changed substantially.
I have always been the sort of person who, by virtue of shyness and a natural tendency towards solitude, never makes friends instantly. I often find myself befriending one person, who is attached to others who are much cooler towards me, and vice versa. This happened all over again with one woman who was genuinely warm and friendly (R), but who appeared to be fast palling up with a more aloof, intelligent-yet-overly-brisk breadstick. Yet I didn't care - and why not? Was this because I'd reached that stage where I was tired of making the effort, tired of having to fight to be liked and appreciated, tired of playing the clown? Ye-es. Listening to the two chatting though, watching their camaraderie, it hit me hard and sudden what the real issue was.
They were regular students. To them, the MA was one of the most important things they were doing, or would ever do. It was to me, but I was uncomfortable about the way we were being rather unsubtly shoe-horned into PhD-prep. I loved the subject, yes, but... Even in Week 1 as two students tussled over time in Marx, I watched them under a throbbing head, aghast. What the fuck were they on about? Why the fuck were they getting so worked up? Couldn't they both be right? What was the fucking point?
During the induction day, six days previously, I had discovered that I was Best of the Web on Cif and persuaded a lecturer to let me use his Internet and check, very quickly, because I thought it was going to be taken down the next day (by which point, I wouldn't be able to see it with my own eyes as I was going to be out till 9 and then bedding down early for work the next morning). I assumed he knew about the Terence Kealey thing. He didn't; I explained. He commented that he didn't really get involved with that kind of thing (blogging etc.) because he couldn't handle the abuse (someone had left me a very unpleasant comment).
At the time, I thought nothing of it. Yet as the first three weeks sloped along, I suddenly and starkly recalled this incident, lit up against my general observations of the seminars and conversations with some of my other lecturers - and then I saw that I had been very blind and stupid. The department (and by extension, the world of English academia) was not the dry, self-contained hive it (and others) used to be - no, it had expanded, all right. It had expanded as students demanded their money's worth, to this level of curricular and extracurricular mixing, this new world of blurred boundaries that Kealey's 'satire' was meant to address...
... and there it stopped. I had always assumed that my lecturers were avidly interested in the 'real world,' that somehow they found time to follow the general thrust of current affairs beyond reviews sections and TV biographies. For some reason, I thought that they, like I, were always reflecting on what they discussed, on how to apply it to the real world, on what it all meant and mattered outside of literature and the seminar room. I was wrong.
Not only were my lecturers perfectly 'white middle-class,' I realised, but now, so too were my fellow students, most overwhelmingly. In our particular MA group, there was myself, a black student, a Japanese international student and 'Roz' who appeared to probably be of Pakistani or Bangladeshi background, but certainly wasn't trying to own it. When I mentioned this and the fact of being the only ethnic minority student in my other seminar group, TL demanded a population count and then returned the verdict that anyone else non-white and 'ethnic minorities would be overrepresented,' spectacularly missing the point.
None of them were, or even remotely seemed, particularly political. They didn't really need to be, not like I do. I recalled a conversation in which my parents had (inevitably) surfaced with a group of my peers, and the absolute gulf it created as always. R and I ended up conversing afterwards, and she tried to relate to me by discussing an ex-boyfriend of hers who was from a strict Greek background. I could not really talk about my situation properly, and the whole conversation brought to mind a half-wet beach. Something was missing. I could not understand what, or why, but something made me feel fundamentally unable to relate to these people. Not only unable, but also unwilling - alongside the general tendency of people in London to rapidly form cliques, and my own immense antipathy towards groups, something else was at work.
A 'teachable moment' with TL - the row about racism - helped me make some sense of it, as did a conversation with a long-unencountered acquaintance. TL protested that he did not like the way that I called him 'white middle-class' sometimes, but that he put it down to my being angry and TOM. I asked him why he didn't like it. He spluttered that it was because he couldn't help being that way, that I made it sound like some kind of accusation. He then went so far as to say 'it's like racism, really.' I had maintained a position of amused detachment, an ironic curiosity, while my innards broiled at his remarks. At that point, a world of rage cracked about my shoulders. I felt like Kali-Ma, towering, ready to bring about the destruction of solar systems with a hard, little smile.
'I cannot believe you said that,' I whispered, hurrying downstairs out of earshot, 'that is fucking appalling.' I tried to explain to him that racial privilege was poisoning his brain and that the pang he felt was what ethnic minority people feel constantly once they realise that they live within a racist system. He tried again to assert that my remarks were a form of racism.
'Racism? How is this racism?' He tried to 'explain.' I cut right to the heart: 'Did I say that you were inferior because you are white?'
I'd got him there. I repeated myself, for emphasis and to get through fully to him. 'No...'
'Well, how the fuck is that racism? Is there a concerted campaign - a campaign stretching over YEARS AND YEARS to portray white people as inferior, savage, backwards or effeminate by virtue merely of being white?'
As a historian (a very fine one at that), he could not of course assert that there ever was, or had been.
'I did not mention that you were white and middle-class because I have anything against whites (I wouldn't be dating you) or middle-class people (I'm probably middle-class myself). Did I say, implicitly or explicitly, that you were inferior, because you are white middle-class? NO. I mentioned it because you ARE white middle-class; as you said, you were born that way and I was trying to show you that you are a product of that.'
'But,' he was almost supplicant now, and I could see this coming, just like I'd seen the rest coming but couldn't believe it, 'I campaign against racism. I write on it; I write about honour-based violence and things like that, you know -'
'Yes,' I said, 'but just because you are not racist and campaign against racism, it doesn't mean you know how racism feels. It does NOT mean you understand the experience of racism. That is what so many ethnic minorities wish that white liberals of all stripes would understand. Not being racist and campaigning against racism, does not mean that you fully understand the experience that we go through.'
He had the nerve to ask me how much racism I'd experienced - I responded in as dignified a manner as I could, but I was angry about that and I let him know later on. That whole thing put me in mind of how rape victims still have to demonstrate evidence of some sort of physical struggle to be taken entirely seriously.
THAT is the huge, great sinking realisation that I have so often been working towards in these last two years of my life. The discussions I've read about unconscious racism within in the feminist community and silencing behaviour on a whole range of American feminist blogs, has given me the key to a whole new kind of awareness. I saw the full, shattering rawness with which interracial relationships can be so easily soured and destroyed. I understood more than ever why so many ethnic minority parents feel less than delighted about their children entering into interracial relationships or marriages.
More importantly, I understood why anti-racist feminists (and other campaigners) despair of overcoming the final hurdles in combating racism. Those white people who are 'on our side' don't always realise the harm they do, when they appropriate our experiences by trying to empathise without fully understanding the need to STFU and LISTEN, and/or when they react childishly and thoughtlessly to the awareness of their complicity in the racist system that they've never had to face before. What with that AND the newer delusions of 'majority victimhood' perpetuated by the likes of the BNP and far too many of our daily papers (I'm looking at you, Mail, Sun, Express, Telegraph and Standard... and London Lite and the Metro... and Sky News...), being able to reach full equality and acceptance seems painfully remote.
I was lucky in that I could predict my partner's responses and respond to him clearly - and lucky in that he's the type of guy who LISTENS when I need him to. (The type of guy whose love makes me cry to Etta James! Haha). I will probably post some more on this in time, but for now, my nose hurts and the memory of all this is greatly demoralising.
*Lyrics to At Last here.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Libel: science VS the law?
Well, this has been a week to burn and boil with sheer fucking rage. On Thursday, I attended a panel debate with TL and one of my best friends. It was titled 'Science Fact - science journalism and libel law' and it was taking place to inaugurate the new Science Journalism MA that has been launched at City University this year.
I have followed the case of Simon Singh and the BCA (British Chiropractic Association - they manipulate spines (and reality!)) for quite some time, and tried to tell whoever I can about it, to get people to do SOMETHING. Heresy Corner is one good source of information on the whole thing so far, but Googling 'Simon Singh BCA' should bring up links to many a blog, and Bad Science is also excellent.
Listening to Simon and Ben Goldacre discuss their respective cases, and explain the libel laws somewhat for young, clueless, sheltered types like me, was electrifying. I wanted to throw myself bodily before the House of Lords and shout about the lack of shame. All the panellists were excellent, although I noted with amusement that Duncan wasn't really able to cobble together a credible defense of our libel laws, beyond the fact that 'they're OUR libel laws' (erm, riiiight, Duncan).
Some of the things I learnt: damages rarely ever cover the full cost of having to defend yourself in the first place (which I knew, but had to be reminded of), cases are often dragged out so that they cost the defendant even more and effectively seek to crush their spirits and of course the rise of the use of 'super-injunctions' in conjunction with libel writs means that someone can sue you and NOBODY CAN KNOW. Any details about the trial can't be made public! Presumably the idea behind this is to stop the 'Streisand Effect', where a story explodes beyond previous expectations as a result of attempts to suppress it. It's one of the things I love about the Internet.
It cost BG and the Guardian 'in excess of' £500, 000 to fight his case against Matthias Rath (read all about it here! Tell everyone you know!). He won - but in the end, only about £363, 000 or so (or was it £336, 000? Damn tired brain!) was paid by Rath. Given that the Guardian had a lot of suits against it at the time (Elton John's one over Marina Hyde's column, Simon Singh's...) and is a loss-making paper anyway, it's a lot of money to put up. With the clarity and simplicity so characteristic of those who have to mediate between widespread public ignorance, and skilled academic expertise in science, Ben and Simon put the case against our libel laws very well.
Think about it - if someone sues you for what is increasingly turning out to be 'hurt feelings' rather than actual loss of reputation (consider the fucking Elton John case!), you have to PAY TO DEFEND YOURSELF. You have to pay for the right to establish that you are not a liar. In Ben's case particularly, this is like a hideous joke. He challenged a man who claimed that vitamin pills cure HIV and that anti-Aids medication doesn't! Surely, you think, there must be some 'public interest' defence available, right? FUCK, NO! I for one agree with them that there bloody well should be. I wish there was also some way to prosecute newspapers and media in general over 'endangering public health and safety' given cases such as the MMR hoax, the assertions that a teenager who died of an undiagnosed tumour died of the cervical cancer jab (yes, really!), the repeated claims that people who died of underlying health conditions actually died of swine flu and - lest we forget - the news that men are more likely to rape sober women, because women who drink 'ask for it.'
Duncan made a good point about how we need to beware of the growing pernicious influence of privacy and copyright law, but sadly that doesn't really detract from our libel tourism problems. Under English libel law, the burden of proof is on the person being sued. You are guilty till proven innocent. If we put this in the context of a company, or a magnate or an association suing an individual, how is that fair? The body of people will almost always have more money and access to the best legal counsel, than the individual will. In cases such as Ben's and Simon's, it undermines the very foundation of science to prevent criticism of your ideas by other people.
I don't believe that the law should be 'above all', especially when we have seen time and time again that it does NOT always work in the common interests of humanity, but in the interests of the richest motherfucker. It should certainly not be above science. Science might be influenced by humanity, and developed and enriched by humanity, but it exists independently of us and predates us. Cells will respire whether we realise it or not; evolution will slope slowly on and osmosis will regulate the water and ion content of our cells without our peering eyes' presence (whoo, A-level Biology! Yeah!).
The law, however, is man-made. It might be admirable and even sacred, but it is not inherent. It does not exist independently of human beings, unless we're thinking of 'natural law' (and we aren't. So there). The incredible thing about our attitudes to the law, is the mix of optimism and sheer fucking cluelessness. People really believe that laws are going to back them up, much of the time, that 'we are all equal before the law,' despite proof since time immemorial of a lil' mechanism called corruption. They assume that the law is something that will magically make itself understood to them, that they will be able to fight their own case or get a good lawyer cheap. Uh... nah? The law only works for us if we work to change it.
Our laws are certainly not terrible, but society changes very quickly and law doesn't necessarily always keep up with it. Just look at the battles that get fought about Internet content. There are people out there who want to be able to sue bloggers for remarks that may have been made totally independently of them, in comments threads. This is the 'taking offense' I mentioned earlier (and that somebody mentioned on Thursday) - and people should not be allowed to use libel laws - which seek to prevent lies from damaging a person's reputation - to silence all criticism of them. Especially not when the criticisms are actually TRUE, and when journalists are laid off right, left and centre and investigative journalism inevitably suffers. We NEED somebody to hold people like Rath to account.
Furthermore, free speech needs to be safeguarded. It's heavily ironic, because bigots often hijack the idea of free speech without, as TL remarked, actually understanding what it means. Free speech, even more ironically, is invoked by racists, misogynists and 'alternative' medicine-obsessed freaks, as exactly the opposite of what it is. They seem to think it is the right to make baseless assertions and morally and ethically unsound or abhorrent judgements, frequently without credible evidence - and have their tender feelings protected into the bargain. In short, they want to be lauded and patted for being thicker than is humanly tolerable. Whereas the whole notion of constructive free speech is that you say what you think, and if you're wrong, you get taken to task.
As I said, the astonishing hypocrisy of unpleasant people means that freedom of speech gets misunderstood a lot. I do love how bigots rail against religious ethnic minorities getting offended by anything, for example, but when their crap 'thoughts' get demolished, they go into offence overdrive. If you say what you think - rather than just saying what you feel - then hopefully you can live with what you say being rigorously challenged. And no, 'rigorously challenged' does not automatically involve rudeness and/or arrogance and sarcasm, as so many online seem to believe. Anyone who gets too offended to go on living as usual really shouldn't, in my opinion, be living in the first place. Unless, of course, we're dealing with a delightful individual like Matthias Rath, or the ever-charming Paul Dacre and his glorious goblin horde at the Daily (Hate) Mail.
Before I go to sleep (it's only Diwali tomorrow! I mean, today), I'll take up the cry that BG issued yesterday. SUPPORT DR. PETER WILMSHURST! It would also be awesome if you could: a) keep up to date with the Simon Singh campaign (he's been given leave to appeal, as his lawyer Jack of Kent reports, and may even have been defamed by the BCA!) and b) get people to sign up to Sense About Science. I have signed their petition; hell, I even donated a tenner to Simon's campaign before Justice Eady, that truckfucking privacy-law lover, turned the judgement on him.
I don't have a chequebook, or if I do, God knows where it is, so I will hunt it out this weekend/email Healthwatch UK, who are supporting Dr. Wilmshurst, and ask if I can send cash. I can't give much - poor student and all that - but I will try!
Just before I head off - read this for a warm, fuzzy feeling of love. Twitterers aren't twits after all, baby! Also, make sure you complain to the Press Complaints Commission about homophobic bee-yatch Jan Moir's Hate Mail article about the death of Stephen Gately. Charlie Brooker has all the details. Unity rides in on a pixellated white horse to suggest how we could reform our libel laws. P.S.: I just pulled this big metal spike - like about nearly two centimetres - out of my mattress when it nearly slashed my ankle. That's pretty scary, isn't it?!
I have followed the case of Simon Singh and the BCA (British Chiropractic Association - they manipulate spines (and reality!)) for quite some time, and tried to tell whoever I can about it, to get people to do SOMETHING. Heresy Corner is one good source of information on the whole thing so far, but Googling 'Simon Singh BCA' should bring up links to many a blog, and Bad Science is also excellent.
Listening to Simon and Ben Goldacre discuss their respective cases, and explain the libel laws somewhat for young, clueless, sheltered types like me, was electrifying. I wanted to throw myself bodily before the House of Lords and shout about the lack of shame. All the panellists were excellent, although I noted with amusement that Duncan wasn't really able to cobble together a credible defense of our libel laws, beyond the fact that 'they're OUR libel laws' (erm, riiiight, Duncan).
Some of the things I learnt: damages rarely ever cover the full cost of having to defend yourself in the first place (which I knew, but had to be reminded of), cases are often dragged out so that they cost the defendant even more and effectively seek to crush their spirits and of course the rise of the use of 'super-injunctions' in conjunction with libel writs means that someone can sue you and NOBODY CAN KNOW. Any details about the trial can't be made public! Presumably the idea behind this is to stop the 'Streisand Effect', where a story explodes beyond previous expectations as a result of attempts to suppress it. It's one of the things I love about the Internet.
It cost BG and the Guardian 'in excess of' £500, 000 to fight his case against Matthias Rath (read all about it here! Tell everyone you know!). He won - but in the end, only about £363, 000 or so (or was it £336, 000? Damn tired brain!) was paid by Rath. Given that the Guardian had a lot of suits against it at the time (Elton John's one over Marina Hyde's column, Simon Singh's...) and is a loss-making paper anyway, it's a lot of money to put up. With the clarity and simplicity so characteristic of those who have to mediate between widespread public ignorance, and skilled academic expertise in science, Ben and Simon put the case against our libel laws very well.
Think about it - if someone sues you for what is increasingly turning out to be 'hurt feelings' rather than actual loss of reputation (consider the fucking Elton John case!), you have to PAY TO DEFEND YOURSELF. You have to pay for the right to establish that you are not a liar. In Ben's case particularly, this is like a hideous joke. He challenged a man who claimed that vitamin pills cure HIV and that anti-Aids medication doesn't! Surely, you think, there must be some 'public interest' defence available, right? FUCK, NO! I for one agree with them that there bloody well should be. I wish there was also some way to prosecute newspapers and media in general over 'endangering public health and safety' given cases such as the MMR hoax, the assertions that a teenager who died of an undiagnosed tumour died of the cervical cancer jab (yes, really!), the repeated claims that people who died of underlying health conditions actually died of swine flu and - lest we forget - the news that men are more likely to rape sober women, because women who drink 'ask for it.'
Duncan made a good point about how we need to beware of the growing pernicious influence of privacy and copyright law, but sadly that doesn't really detract from our libel tourism problems. Under English libel law, the burden of proof is on the person being sued. You are guilty till proven innocent. If we put this in the context of a company, or a magnate or an association suing an individual, how is that fair? The body of people will almost always have more money and access to the best legal counsel, than the individual will. In cases such as Ben's and Simon's, it undermines the very foundation of science to prevent criticism of your ideas by other people.
I don't believe that the law should be 'above all', especially when we have seen time and time again that it does NOT always work in the common interests of humanity, but in the interests of the richest motherfucker. It should certainly not be above science. Science might be influenced by humanity, and developed and enriched by humanity, but it exists independently of us and predates us. Cells will respire whether we realise it or not; evolution will slope slowly on and osmosis will regulate the water and ion content of our cells without our peering eyes' presence (whoo, A-level Biology! Yeah!).
The law, however, is man-made. It might be admirable and even sacred, but it is not inherent. It does not exist independently of human beings, unless we're thinking of 'natural law' (and we aren't. So there). The incredible thing about our attitudes to the law, is the mix of optimism and sheer fucking cluelessness. People really believe that laws are going to back them up, much of the time, that 'we are all equal before the law,' despite proof since time immemorial of a lil' mechanism called corruption. They assume that the law is something that will magically make itself understood to them, that they will be able to fight their own case or get a good lawyer cheap. Uh... nah? The law only works for us if we work to change it.
Our laws are certainly not terrible, but society changes very quickly and law doesn't necessarily always keep up with it. Just look at the battles that get fought about Internet content. There are people out there who want to be able to sue bloggers for remarks that may have been made totally independently of them, in comments threads. This is the 'taking offense' I mentioned earlier (and that somebody mentioned on Thursday) - and people should not be allowed to use libel laws - which seek to prevent lies from damaging a person's reputation - to silence all criticism of them. Especially not when the criticisms are actually TRUE, and when journalists are laid off right, left and centre and investigative journalism inevitably suffers. We NEED somebody to hold people like Rath to account.
Furthermore, free speech needs to be safeguarded. It's heavily ironic, because bigots often hijack the idea of free speech without, as TL remarked, actually understanding what it means. Free speech, even more ironically, is invoked by racists, misogynists and 'alternative' medicine-obsessed freaks, as exactly the opposite of what it is. They seem to think it is the right to make baseless assertions and morally and ethically unsound or abhorrent judgements, frequently without credible evidence - and have their tender feelings protected into the bargain. In short, they want to be lauded and patted for being thicker than is humanly tolerable. Whereas the whole notion of constructive free speech is that you say what you think, and if you're wrong, you get taken to task.
As I said, the astonishing hypocrisy of unpleasant people means that freedom of speech gets misunderstood a lot. I do love how bigots rail against religious ethnic minorities getting offended by anything, for example, but when their crap 'thoughts' get demolished, they go into offence overdrive. If you say what you think - rather than just saying what you feel - then hopefully you can live with what you say being rigorously challenged. And no, 'rigorously challenged' does not automatically involve rudeness and/or arrogance and sarcasm, as so many online seem to believe. Anyone who gets too offended to go on living as usual really shouldn't, in my opinion, be living in the first place. Unless, of course, we're dealing with a delightful individual like Matthias Rath, or the ever-charming Paul Dacre and his glorious goblin horde at the Daily (Hate) Mail.
Before I go to sleep (it's only Diwali tomorrow! I mean, today), I'll take up the cry that BG issued yesterday. SUPPORT DR. PETER WILMSHURST! It would also be awesome if you could: a) keep up to date with the Simon Singh campaign (he's been given leave to appeal, as his lawyer Jack of Kent reports, and may even have been defamed by the BCA!) and b) get people to sign up to Sense About Science. I have signed their petition; hell, I even donated a tenner to Simon's campaign before Justice Eady, that truckfucking privacy-law lover, turned the judgement on him.
I don't have a chequebook, or if I do, God knows where it is, so I will hunt it out this weekend/email Healthwatch UK, who are supporting Dr. Wilmshurst, and ask if I can send cash. I can't give much - poor student and all that - but I will try!
Just before I head off - read this for a warm, fuzzy feeling of love. Twitterers aren't twits after all, baby! Also, make sure you complain to the Press Complaints Commission about homophobic bee-yatch Jan Moir's Hate Mail article about the death of Stephen Gately. Charlie Brooker has all the details. Unity rides in on a pixellated white horse to suggest how we could reform our libel laws. P.S.: I just pulled this big metal spike - like about nearly two centimetres - out of my mattress when it nearly slashed my ankle. That's pretty scary, isn't it?!
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Kealey: More burkas, please!
Academic pervert Terence Kealey has written, for the Times Higher Education magazine that:
Normal girls – more interested in abs than in labs, more interested in pecs than specs, more interested in triceps than tripos – will abjure their lecturers for the company of their peers, but nonetheless, most male lecturers know that, most years, there will be a girl in class who flashes her admiration and who asks for advice on her essays. What to do?Enjoy her! She's a perk.
She doesn't yet know that you are only Casaubon to her Dorothea, Howard Kirk to her Felicity Phee, and she will flaunt you her curves. Which you should admire daily to spice up your sex, nightly, with the wife.
As in Stringfellows, you should look but not touch.
Outraged overachievers everywhere called for the pervert academic's head for insinuating that 'normal' girls ought to disrespect their lecturers and just go out constantly, saying: 'First, A-levels are easy enough to be sat by monkeys, and now this. He's effectively saying that only the most abnormal of females actually cares about interacting with the people who have been paid to teach. Caring about what degree classification you get makes you a freak. Why doesn't he just ship our bright young women over to America, India and China himself?'
An unnamed female student at Buckingham University said: 'Actually, this is all the result of a terrible misunderstanding. The reason most of the class abjures his company, is because this pool of saliva forms on your desk if you happen to ask a question whilst being female. And he has really bad breath, and is often incoherent because he can't stop licking his lips and keeps jumping in the air and yelping whilst rubbing himself.'
She added: 'I would also like to categorically deny that I, or for that matter, Lucy - yeah, she's a friend of mine - 'flaunted our curves.' What's a girl to do when she forgets her glasses and has to go up to the lecturer to ask what the hell that weird squiggle on the whiteboard says?'
When contacted to clarify his remarks, Kealey insisted: 'What I said was highly moral. And you can't pin anything on me anyway, because the fault lies with the females. Everyone knows that a human woman higher education student is exactly like a female cat in heat. When she asks you for suggestions for her dissertation, EVERYONE knows she might as well be a pussy-cat lying back and showing you her bits. She WANTS IT.
And if she will insist on asking me to perform the duties for which lecturers are employed in the first place - well, I will have no choice but to imagine her face superimposed over that of my wife's. Spanking my Johnny. Nightly,' he added, twitching. 'Yes... it is good to think about the firm, white mounds of Lucy Norris each night... Night in, night out... Forgotten my glasses, she says! Got to check her final essay, the dirty minx!'
After a sudden, inexplicable 30-second break, Kealey resumed in a somewhat different tone of voice. 'Of course, my advising people to become obsessed with female students because it's better to constantly masturbate - I mean, copulate - to them rather than just listen to what they're saying, is common sense. Naturally, the way to avoid sexual liaisons *guffaw* is to encourage male lecturers - don't make me laugh, there aren't any 'female lecturers'! Ha! Ha! Ha! - to think non-stop about the foxy girlies. Look but don't touch - unless you're touching yourself.'
Adopting a sterner tone, he said: 'As I said, it's all the fault of the females really. I do so wish they would stay indoors. 'I want an education,' honestly. Still, if they WILL insist on intruding into the male public sphere, they could do worse than adopt the policy many of my female students appear to have taken up recently. That is, they dress in these frightfully practical black sheets so that you can only see their eyes. I sometimes wonder if there is always a woman under there. You know, it's not always clear by voice alone! Still, I get my job done without any stresses or hassles. Jolly good!'
Saturday, September 19, 2009
On a point of principle
I am writing this in a boiling fucking rage. My already glowingly rosy cheeks are aflame. They say anger doesn't necessarily make for the best writing, but you know what? I COULD GIVE A FUCK. For the first time in a long time, I commented on Liberal Conspiracy on a Rowenna Davis article, mostly to give her some support in the face of people refusing to engage with what she wrote in any kind of sensible or useful way.
Naturally, this meant that my comment was not prize-winningly clear and accurate in what it stated. See what you think of it here. This meant that a passing fucktard wheeled himself erroneously onto the thread to abuse myself and otherwise and just generally be the kind of posturing asshole that almost makes you hate men, particularly those on the Web. Those kinds of people - sadly far too common on the left as well as the right, as Cif bingo demonstrates - make me almost wish I could email myself through their screens to hand them their asses. I contented myself with shooting his assumptions about me down in flaming pieces:
Naturally, this meant that my comment was not prize-winningly clear and accurate in what it stated. See what you think of it here. This meant that a passing fucktard wheeled himself erroneously onto the thread to abuse myself and otherwise and just generally be the kind of posturing asshole that almost makes you hate men, particularly those on the Web. Those kinds of people - sadly far too common on the left as well as the right, as Cif bingo demonstrates - make me almost wish I could email myself through their screens to hand them their asses. I contented myself with shooting his assumptions about me down in flaming pieces:
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As I clicked 'post comment,' it occurred to me that I was perhaps using my race (or rather, my religion and the implication of my race) as a weapon. Is it fair that non-whiteys like me are tricking these morons into showing themselves up as the prejudiced fuck-cunts they are? I mean, this fellow was trying to catch me out in the crime of being middle-class. However, I caught him out in the process of being an entitled motherfuck.
Then, the thought settled in my mind like a peaceful pigeon. Sites like Pandagon have had discussions on online racism before, and people on there were mentioning the fact that commenters' attitudes to them (not necessarily on Pandagon) changed visibly once they revealed themselves to be non-white. Someone may have remarked on how white dudes, liberal and otherwise, try to perpetuate the 'real world' power structure online by assuming (with typical entitled ignorance) that everyone they engage with is a white (middle-class, but not always) male.
In the light of that, I say we non-whiteys use this to our advantage. If people want to rant their prejudices, use the power of intersectionality against them. Any attempt to discuss racism in the British public sphere that appears on Cif, is usually met with some bollocks along the lines of 'this is what happens when identity politics gets taken too far.' The posters saying this almost always claim to be white working-class males.
Now I find this laughable. Fuck you, you hypocrites. Sunny wrote this marvellously sensible piece a while back, from which I must quote:
I think this is important. I can't help wondering if, with the tireless work of anti-racist campaigners, people have realised that certain prejudices are more 'acceptable' than others. It's OK to wantonly abuse people if they're middle-class. Their class placing outweighs their gender or ethnicity. Now, how fucking stupid is that?
I'm not calling for some free pass on anyone who sounds 'middle-class', but the fact is that people shouldn't get away with using that kind of knee-jerk stereotyping. Are all people who are middle-class exactly the same? Or, let's rephrase: are all working-class people exactly the same? Are they all benefit-scrounging, early-motherhood-reaching white trash chavs, or overly-fertile Somalis? Obviously not - but then again, the only 'middle-class' people who suggest that are the likes of the tabloids as well as the Telegraph and probably to some extent the Times as well.
Putting aside the fact that a lot of these so-called 'working-class' white males probably aren't (I mean, people on the right and left have made much of the BNP's attempt to court this particular demographic, but Nick Griffin's hardly salt of the earth, is he?), times have changed. The stupid class stereotyping that people fling around says a lot about them. In many ways, they remind me of first-generation Asian immigrants desperately trying to force certain values on their children because 'that's our culture.'
Groupthink - whether it's a group of conservative elderly Asians or the 'white working class' - is dangerous. I can't help suspecting that a lot of it is basically the same desperate attempt to project unity that you see in all oppressed groups. Still, I can't really forgive it. All working class people are individuals, just like everyone else. Same with middle-class people. I am not going to be ashamed of the fact that my parents came here and have worked their asses off for 30-odd years to allow us to lead a better life than we would've had in India.
Anyone who tries to tell me that I'm 'middle-class'; what the fuck are you talking about? Seriously, what do people even mean when they say things like that? Our class distinctions are highly outdated now - 'working-class' usually seems to mean 'poor.' I want to know what is behind the flinging about of this accusation, because really, for the most part I and other non-white people (even if we're considered as 'middle-class') are not holding the white working classes back. It's mostly the white middle classes that are doing that, thank you. Who writes for the tabloids and right-wing 'quality papers' that routinely demonise white-working class people? Gosh, there are so many non-white BBC senior execs, you can't move for them! Let's not even start on those City banks, those elite Oxford and Cambridge and public-school associations that heave with non-white faces...
I'm tired now, so I'm going to stop this particular rant here (the effort of not screaming while my mother criticised me at length during a walk just before this post - I believe it was for about 20 minutes running or so - was majorly knackering). Sam Leith had an article a while back which was slightly irritating - in an inevitably knee-jerk way - but once I got over the gut instinct, I really couldn't help agreeing with a lot of it.
He's got a point, and you know it!
In other, non-ranting news, I am doing my utmost best to put into practice a technique that the counsellor told me, of 'feeding back' to my mother when she victim-blames. Unfortunately, just as I thought I might've got the hang of it, my mother has moved to attacks on me instead. These are somewhat harder to deal with, as you might expect.
However, I realised two things about my mother: part of what makes her (and my other family members') attacks so effective are two things. Firstly, that she doesn't actually do them in an unreasonable or overly harsh tone of voice. I clocked this like a lightning bolt whilst describing one incident to The Libertarian on the phone. Suddenly, I thought 'Hang on - she never actually sounds like this when she's speaking to me. She sounds almost... normal. I parody her, but she's far more subtle than I've been giving her credit for.' Secondly, they come out of nowhere.
Textbook example: The other day, while waiting for a friend to arrive at the station near my house so that we could go collect her, I sat and watched the end of an old Bollywood film. One character was fat, but it looked odd, as if he had maybe padded out his middle instead of real weight. Without really thinking, I began aloud: 'Wow, he's really fat, but -'
'... but it doesn't look real'. Before I could finish, my mum suddenly proclaimed: 'You are really fat!' She sort of prod-pushed my arm and smacked my thigh, going 'Look! Look at you, you're all thhul thhul! I'm worried about you, you know. You're young, you should be slim.' I don't remember exactly what she said after that, because I was too busy reeeeling. 'You need to start watching what you eat,' she said. 'I know you go to the gym, but maybe you're not doing the right exercises? You need to do something to make your stomach smaller.' I asked her what I ate that was so bad that I needed to cut it out, and she said 'Well, I don't know, but...' I had to resist the urge to ask her if it wouldn't be prescient to just stop eating altogether.
The day after, I got up in the evening after a nap, with a headache. My sister's divorce was being discussed in the kitchen. I kept myself pretty much out of the way, coming in and out of the kitchen. Then, some devil impulse made me drift towards my mum who was standing in a corner and turn my back, so that I was leaning against her. She put her arms around me - and grabbed my stomach. 'See?' she said. I disengaged myself immediately and left the room.
Today, she went on at me about the need to have the life skill of dressing up for parties so that people who I would hate anyway, don't think that I'm stupid and prevent their sons from marrying me. She compared me unfavourably with my cousin YET AGAIN, saying that I need to learn to get all saji-baji the way she does for weddings. Spending the whole week/day shopping for said event/deciding what to wear/getting ready as if for a catwalk show is, according to my parents 'a life skill.' My mum eased the blow, though, by saying that my brother and I were 'simple' and 'naive'. Basically, it's not my fault I'm inept and unkempt - it's just my nature! Hooray! My father told me that I needed to 'be a good cook' and 'cook for lots of people.' Somehow, I didn't knife him.
UPDATE: GO FORTH AND COMMENT ON THE LIBCON THREAD! Despite my explaining that my vegetarianism is a result of growing up Sikh, the guy is too thick to process it. I ended by saying:
P.S.: Read this, it's BRILLIANT! Malky Muscular satirizes the whole Nick Cohen & Clive James Vs Western feminists foolishness. MM, I love you. Also, this post 'What Would We Do Without White Privilege?' over at Womanist Musings is THE WIN.