This is a pretty creepy Peter Pan, isn't it? Yet never has an unwittingly sinister Creative Commons picture been more apt for what I am about to write about; the refusal - or, perhaps more charitably, the inability - to grow up.
I'm 24. They have been, to put it mildly, a colourful couple of decades, and (to quote Sandra Bullock in 28 Days) "I have enough stories; I would like a life". I feel I know as much about myself as I'm ever going to, though I also acknowledge that I'm still only comparatively young, and that I could look back on all this in ten years' time and wonder, much as I do now about my teenage penchant for hair mascara, "what were you thinking?"
So why are so many people old enough to know better (and certainly better than my own years allow) so incapable of this? It's a truism that teenagers are difficult; indeed their hormonal and neurological attributes have been compared to a kind of inherent, inevitable madness. But there comes a point, as an uncle once put it, when potty-training stops and you just have to get on with it. Charmed lives ain't what they used to be, and I imagine most of us have experienced the bases for more than a few chips on each shoulder. Most of us probably still carry them, albeit perhaps in more manageable microchip form as time goes on, and we know it. That is not, shamelessly mixing metaphors, to say we never listen to the devil on our shoulder, leading measured lives of self-aware virute, but we know deep down what we might never back down to admit to someone else, and that's fair enough.
I have never imagined humans to be particularly rational beings, much less particularly liable to change (I'd challenge anyone who has worked in Social Services to clutch at such a rose-tinted view) but lately I have been truly astounded by quite how blindly and determinedly ridiculous some of us are. This is thanks in part to two individuals, one of my own age and one in her mid-30s, both (to use the scientific term) totally batshit crazy.
The first (I'll call her Maureen - it suits her somehow, as insulting as that is to any genuine article) is a friend of a friend. Well, I say "friend" - excise the "r" and you're nearly there, with considerably less sympathy for the devil than Mick or Keef could muster. Perfect friends are few and far between, but there is usually a trade-off of some kind - passive but loyal, disorganised but interesting, bitchy but entertaining... This girl, however, genuinely possesses no redeeming features. She is neither nice, nor fun, nor loyal; outspoken but passionless, blunt but disingenuous, and most of all, nasty. She is rude, cutting, critical, throws strops and tantrums to rival a toddler, and even punched our mutual friend the last time we went out, for no other reason than Janet trying to include her in conversation. I understand why Jan puts up with it, from a clinical if not subjective perspective, but what baffles me the most is why Maureen thinks it possible to get away with.
Apparently Maureen likes me. We have, on paper, a fair bit in common, particularly where politics and music are concerned. She has never been anything but nice to me (even when being vile to other people) and the same goes for another mutual friend, Jo, who has known her about the same amount of time. I do put this partly down to the radar all bullies have of who will or will not give as good as they get if provoked, but something else is at work too; a mindbogglingly low EQ. Both Jo and I sense a strong desire not only to avoid crossing us, but also for us to like her; and therein lies the rub - she doesn't seem to realise that how you see someone behave is what informs your opinion of them. Nobody in their right mind (and certainly nobody worth being friends with) could see the way she treats mates and think, "Oh well, if she's nice to me it doesn't matter that she's consistently horrible to close friends of mine" - yet that is exactly how she expects it to work.
And then this week, there has been Emily. Or rather, Emilia, as the world is mysteriously expected to intuit, even on first meeting and from a class list on which "Emily" is printed. Roll up ladies and gents for Exhibit B, Petra Pan at 35, attacking a university course (on Psychology, no less) with all the reflexivity of a turnip. Having known the woman only two-and-a-half-days, one might expect to know where to start - but I don't.
Oh alright then, with the class list: Lecturer: And is Emily here? Emily, cantankerously: It's Emilia! Lecturer, reaching for a biro to correct the list: Oh, sorry, it's down on my list as Emily. Emily, in the voice of teenage DUH, rolling her eyes: That's because it's on my birth certificate.
Well, perish the thought that anyone call you by your own name, which you personally supplied, clearly without bothering to specify your pretentiousness in the "Preferred name" box on every application form. Within the next gruelling half-hour, she also proceeded to demand to change classrooms ("There's another room with nicer chairs, why can't we go there?") and set our lunch break ("I've been here before, and the food in the canteen is really crap, and it gets soggier and crustier the longer it's left out"). She hijacked every discussion with arrogant stupidity (slamming your bottle of water down on the desk and squawking, "THERE, THAT's a bottle of water, OF COURSE I know that" doth not an ontological or epistemological argument make) and bizarre unwanted insights into her personal life ("I run a rhythmic dance class on top of teaching").
This wouldn't be so bad (well, maybe it would, but this makes it considerably worse) if she didn't think the light of Research Methods shone out of her arse every rare second that she's not speaking out of it; in mere hours, she corrected not only her fellow students, but also the lecturer and the entirety of Renaissance philosophy, with some haughty insight into inter- and intra-personal skills thrown in for good measure.
Of course both these women objectively cut quite pathetic figures, in the truest sense of the word; they are clearly deeply unhappy and angry, and it's a shame. But what troubles me is how they are still so unhappy and angry, and so aggressively so, in integrated adult life. How, but how, do you reach your twenties (let alone your thirties) with such infantile conduct so imperviously intact? I have encountered no shortage of Difficult People - bloody hell, I'm one myself - but how the hell do you make it through both school and university into competitive paid employment (which both this veritable Tweedledum and Tweedledee have) behaving like that?
And yet they have, and since we already so rarely fix it if it's broke - let alone if it seems "ain't" enough to provide an apparently viable MO in ostensibly successful young professional life - it seems unlikely that the Maureens and Emilies of this world will ever change.
It's at times like this I long to swap stats for crack.
You get a lot of shit for being a feminist, but the oddest kind is definitely sandwhich shit. For those of you unacquainted with this fantastic phenomenon, this is roughly how it works:
Feminist: *Rational argument* Idiot: Yeah, well, make me a sandwich, bitch!
Sandwich strikeback has long formed an important part of the misogynist's armoury, but it came to notable attention today as the impotent death knell of what had otherwise been an actual dialogue. As is so often the case (I suppose even (tw)its advocates realise it would sound silly out loud) the exchange took place over the internet, on Facebook to be precise. To be even more precise, it took place in Facebook's 10, 000, 000 AGAINST DISGUSTING JAPANESE RAPELAY RAPE SIMULATION GAME! GLOBAL group, on the moronically-titled thread, "I don't see the problem".
As in any such "shock" thread, metaphorical fists flew from the first, but one exchange embodied the Sandwich Theory most hilariously (subversive font colours blogger's own):
Every girl I have ever met, has a rape story.It seems there's a lot of it about :-O That, or some women like to rewrite history to make them less responsible for their own sluttiness. Who knows? It could be either.
"That, or some women like to rewrite history to make them less responsible for their own sluttiness. Who knows? It could be either."really, and what fantastic incentives exactly do you think there are for women to "rewrite history"? the sympathy and empathy they'd get? the way people would believe them instead of the man? the fantastic conviction rates? oh wait, none of those apply.
"really, and what fantastic incentives exactly do you think there are for women to "rewrite history"? the sympathy and empathy they'd get? the way people would believe them instead of the man? the fantastic conviction rates? oh wait, none of those apply."Erm, we werent talking about court cases, it was about anecdotal cases, in which case:Sympathy and empathy they'd get? Yes. I dfind that they do, from women and from men.The way people would believe them instead of the man? Yes- Of course you're going to believe your female friend, over a Bad Man, that you've never met.The fantastic conviction rates? Well, who's to say that the 6% conviction rates(since you brought them up), arent a result of women making things up to make themselves look more virtuous? They mightn't be, but we werent there at every case, so who is to say? I'm not blaming women entirely, it's our fault as a whole, for making the double statdard of "Man sleeps with many women= stud, woman sleeps with many men= slag". And for making women ashamed to be sexually agressive/promiscuous.But a lie is a lie. And a man accused of rape has his name dragged through the courts and the newspspers, and his life ruined. The woman accusing him, gets to be known as Miss X.I like the way my uberfeminist pals tend to gloss over that last fact.
"Sympathy and empathy they'd get? Yes. I dfind that they do, from women and from men."&Of course you're going to believe your female friend, over a Bad Man, that you've never met. people may like to think they are sympathetic to rape victims, but it is often very different in real life. if you get jumped by a stranger in an alley with a knife, then people will indeed be sympathetic. but most rapes are acquaintance rapes - how much sympathy do you think women get when they're not talking about a stereotypical bogeyman, but a popular, friendly guy that their friends know socially and can't believe anything bad of? then it turns straight into, "he must have been really drunk, i can't believe he would have done that on purpose, are you SURE you didn't really say yes", etc etc.the fact is, most rapes are not perpetrated by "a Bad Man, that you've never met" that you cite, and that's a huge problem for any woman disclosing such an attack, either formally or informally. as for, "who's to say that the 6% conviction rates(since you brought them up), arent a result of women making things up to make themselves look more virtuous?" i can't even be bothered to reply to such a load of vomitworthy shite. if you knew anything at all about this issue from anything more than an uninformed, defensive angle you wouldn't be able to come out with a sentence like that. I think you should shut your whore mouth, and decamp to the Kitchen Area, where you'll find sandwich making material.Chop chop.
i think that's a poor stab at insult and/or sarcasm, and an even poorer substitute for a rational response. you poor, limited individual.
I'm hearing words, I am not tasting sandwich.Didnt they teach you how to sammich at university?
no, they didn't; i, unlike you, didn't need to learn.
I mean, really, what the fuck? How is this regarded as a normal way to react to a woman arguing with you in the 21st century? Equality ain't fucking nigh...
As you may or may not have heard, old BoJo is reneging on his election promise to provide Londoners with anything approaching reasonable sex crime victim support - so much so, in fact, that we are now at risk of losing the city's one and only remaining Rape Crisis Centre in Croydon. Please help save it! To that end, any and all promotion of the campaign and coming fundraiser on June 9th is greatly needed and appreciated.
"You know how some people who can't have children go to parks and want to steal other people's? - Do you think that's what we're doing with dogs?" So spake Leila on Hampstead Heath the other day, and to be fair she has a point.
My road to animal ownership seemed arduous as a child. At first, I wasn't allowed any; I therefore cultivated an interest in woodlice, to the point where my mother feared opening matchboxes lest they housed one of my many invertebrate wanna-pets. I acquired a canary by fluke when the florist across the road gave me one an old lady had left to him in her will, but little did little Cheepside know that he was to change my world forever with rabbits.
Birds were just a gateway, you see; rabbits would soon become my pets of choice after one leapt into my arms in the pet-shop where we used to buy bird-seed. I promptly presented the creature to my mother, who uttered the fatal words, "No, you can't have one, they're social animals" - which of course I interpreted as a mandate to get two. To my surprise, it worked, and we returned home that night with the inspiredly-named Peter and Benjamin.
Rabbits are quite simply the best pets in the universe. Even from the vacant Cute Factor angle, their wonder never wanes; I defy you not to go as gooey over an adult rabbit washing its face as over a baby grooming itself - "I suppose this is the equivalent of watching an old man shaving", my mother once mused, watching Benjamin perform his ablutions at the age of six. But rabbits aren't just cute and fluffy ("no", interjected a long-suffering friend the other day, "they're really cute and fluffy") they are a delight in ever-changing, unique ways. With a hundred times the personality of a guinea-pig, they are the most engaging, dim-but-not-as-dim-as-you-think animals you could hope to meet.
Rabbits are not stupid. They are certainly not as stupid as any pet manual makes out. But they do exercise their wits in the most footling ways, as perhaps best illustrated by the late Mary Rabbit. Few animals enjoy being given medicine; most will probably try and spit it out. But only a rabbit could keep a pill in their mouth for twenty minutes, only to spit it out when they thought you weren't looking. Nothing if not pragmatic, her techniques for avoiding home-time at the end of a day in the garden were similarly protracted. While the other rabbits scampered left, right and centre before eventually capitulating wherever the broom herded, Mary would instead position herself in some nook or cranny from which, levering with all your might, you would only be able to prod her forward of by about an inch. Yet at the same time, she would regularly stick her head under a leaf and expect the rest of her (rather corpulent) form to be rendered similarly invisible. Rabbits inhabit an axis of logic starker, but not dissimilar, to our own - and that is why I love them.
I have now however been petless for some years, something strange is happening; any animal will do. I used not to like cats; now I hail them in the street. I chirrup at birds I've never met before; I tried to persuade my mother and step-dad to get a dog before they were even officially a couple. Of course, I always knew I liked animals (well, rabbits) but I never realised how very bereft I would feel without them. I am not at a stage in my life where I could fairly commit to the purchase of another, but I swear I am actually getting broody for it - I've gone as far as debating a hamster, and I don't even like the bloody things.
I'm holding out for a rabbit, though, a few years down the line. In the meantime, at least one of my office's executive perks is a rotating cast of dogs I can pretend are mine for five minutes while I make the tea.
This post was going to be about bitching, but life was the proverbial and got in the way, in the form of new work. I have recently started volunteering at a Women's Centre which deals, amongst others, with prostitutes - but now I come to think of it, maybe this won't be too far off the original topic after all.
Prostitution is, undeniably, a feminist issue. But that's where it gets bitchy, isn't it? I have always been of the opinion that we should all try and stick to the dictionary definition of feminism as much as possible; however we may each interpret "advocacy of the rights of women (based on the theory of equality of the sexes)", to quote the OED, any feminist position must be justified in reference to this most basic premise.
A lot of the time, in the West at least, we do, and most arguments you hear about feminism follow the tawdry "feminism means hating men"/"no it doesn't, it means wanting equality" binary. If you are lucky, your interlocutor might accept this fact; if you are not, they will most likely bang on about what feminism "really" means, unbeknownst to either actual real live feminists or indeed the Denizens of Dictionaries. But what of feminist factionism?
Let's say we're all reasonable dictionary-abiding feminists who don't want to round up All Teh Menz and shoot them in the penis. Surely we should, by and large, be able to agree on general principles? Not when it comes to sex, we can't. I am not about to essay a treatise on the entire prostitution debate - for one, it's been done a million times before, and for another, I really need to pack for a festival tomorrow - but rather a plea for peace concerning an issue that has played increasingly on my mind in recent weeks.
For many of us, female and male, sex work is an unpalatable concept. But whether one finds it immoral or simply unimaginable, the fact remains that many women do it. Whether they're Happy Hookers™, Crack Whores™ or the "single moms" moronically featured on many a T-shirt, they do it. And while they're doing it, they risk abuse from their punters to the public and everyone in between. So what do we do about it?
And this is where it gets bitchy again. There is a sizeable and vocal mainstream feminist movement against sex work - and I can perfectly see why. Popular culture already sees (or perhaps rather, resolutely depicts) women as a sexual commodity. Women sell everything from cars to deodorants to ourselves, and the everyday effects of this range from the dumb to the disturbing; from endless media commentary on Michelle Obama's arms to my flatmate being followed home by the man who asked, "How much? 50? Come on, you and me, how much?" when we were 19. In fact, Natalie wasn't a prostitute. She was wearning jeans and Converse (you try unlacing them in hurry!) and a jumper, she was walking briskly through a safe part of town nowhere near a red light district, and she must have repeated, "No, I'm not for sale", a hundred times.
What freaked her out the most was that this was not some macho-muppet showing off in front of his friends or trying to intimidate her, but a smart, otherwise polite, man in his 20s genuinely trying to broker a mutually agreeable fee. You can't help feeling in situations like that, that if so many other bloody women weren't for sale, men wouldn't assume you were. Certainly my main problem with the sex industry is not its commodity, but its connotations; what I dislike most about the idea of such transactions is not the (already somewhat alienating) concept of one human being selling their body to another, but the fact that it is so utterly culturally one-sided. Intellectually, I know that prostitution is about much more than "letting the side down", but emotionally, in our current society, that is how I feel. In that sense, prostitution does indeed impinge on any progress towards the "rights of women" as a whole.
But what about the rights of women, to puerilely plagiarise Pegg, as a hole? A woman's rights are inseparable from women's rights, and sometime the twain must meet. A prostitute lets down the side by perpetuating the perception that women are sexual commodities; a campaigner against her local brothel lets down the side by forcing its staff out onto the street, where they run a tenfold higher risk of attack. Ideologically, they are both right; practically, they are both right and wrong.
I personally have no desire (rather the attavistic opposite) to prostitute myself; nor do I believe that it is always or even often a genuine career choice (especially if you happen to be a genuine crack-whore looking to fund your next rock). But nevertheless, the broader, louder, better-funded campaign for Women's rights with a capital "w" cannot afford to... ride? tramp? - sorry - roughshod over women's rights in lower-caste lower-case. It is not enough to dislike prostitution; what we should dislike is the culture that creates it, that empowers it, that requires it. Like countless other feminists, I would love to live in a world where no woman ever had to rent her body out to her landlord in lieu of rent - but that can only happen in a world in which the very wheeze never crosses the landlord's mind. If prostitution is to end, it must do so organically, as part of wider (more important) social change; try to stamp it out, and you're only trampling its agents.
If it is not, I can only hope it will evolve, with society, greater gender equality (it has always struck me as somewhat anti-feminist to campaign for equality through an assumption that equality can never exist in some areas, such as sex work). In any case, there are no easy answers - yet, at least. Meaningful change will take time, perhaps longer than I will live to see. But if we are to make any progress, for Women capitalised and disenfranchised, we must work around, if not across, our differences. For sex workers' and non-sex-workers' sakes alike - as long as they still get it on, can't we all just get along?
24F, London, seeks NSA blogging where she can say what she likes. WLTM anonymously. LIKES: music, gigs, people, pints, hampstead heath. DISLIKES: many and varied. GSOH essential to sanity.
This is a pretty creepy Peter Pan, isn't it? Yet never has an unwittingly sinister Creative Commons picture been more apt for what I am about to write about; the refusal - or, perhaps more charitably, the inability - to grow up.
