winning words

The lights come up. The three men look a bit pink, is it the lighting or has someone ordered too many red rads to keep them warm in the cavernous setting? DD has a jaunty tie, like AS and the other one before. The acoustics are great; or awful, depending on your point of view. They are not assisting Nick in his attempt to personalise each answer. He gazes at me, meaningfully. They all say ‘children’ a lot. Stop saying children. Have Dave’s teeth always looked like that? Twitter is concerned over his shiny chin. Gordon has the nicest voice, but to be fair he doesn’t have to share one like Nick and Dave. Dave says ‘damn’. The room heats up. Gordon speaks of pent-up needs and offers help in squalid rooms. Nick Clegg’s words have stopped.. words.. people… person. Breathe, Nick. Someone should wind up that key in his back. Gordon says he will scratch my back, just there, below the surface. Nick offers friends with benefits and promises to respect me in the morning. Dave says that if I have a perfectly serviceable boyfriend, I cannot fuck Nick Clegg. I start worrying about the Swingometer: how will it work in a three horse race? Tax is dull. Whoever gets in, everyone will end up feeling hard done by. Why do the 76 rules not include one for not telling questioners about how much they respect their career choices? Gordon claims that Dave will cut children’s hair to unacceptable levels. Dave says he has some children. Did you hear that? Actual children. Nick splits an infinitive. Gord says ‘millyons’. I love it when he says that. Dave says he loves me, really he does. If I get pregnant he will rub my back. He will keep things fresh between us. Nick says he loves me. Really though. If I get pregnant, he will deliver the baby himself. He will find new approaches. Gordon says he loves me. Millyons. He will pay for an emergency caesarean. He says we match, belong together. Grr. I am exhausted, spent. So many words, so much said. I feel light-headed. Thanks, boys.
p.s. the words in this review may not have appeared exactly as quoted.

you came on your own

I went to see Editors tonight at Brixton.

I feel a lot of the questions they raise could be answered by Professor Brian Cox.

chiaroscuro

Driving through dark
End of winter
Evening draws in
Pulls the sun down

Violet dark
Red lights white lights
Amber glow
Palette of night

Heart through darkness
Fast slow slower
Beats race past
Further than you thought

Dark till home
Thought miles ahead
Gravity holding down
Acceleration forward

Head rushes light
Grey orange blue
Streetlights shop lights
Flashes stop there

reasons to be feminist: 1,2,3

Ok. So it’s International Women’s Day. What do we do to celebrate? Knit a cake perhaps? I’m looking forward to the Women show on BBC4 tonight, not least because it assuages my guilt about how rarely I use that channel, a bit like 6Music, but also because the programme looks interesting, relevant and hopefully will increase my understanding of female history. On Twitter I follow Subtext magazine, who have linked to a review of said programme, which complains in-depth about the lack of black and minority ethnic women featured. Without having seen it, I’m sure it’s an issue worth taking up, however my first response to seeing the topic was exasperation. One of the reasons girls – and women – now don’t want to be classed as feminist is because it conjures up images of nit-picking, humourless, angry battleaxes who find reason to take issue with everything. Sounds rather like a description of Daily Mail readers and surely no good feminist worth his or her salt would want to sit in a boat with them? I have always been glad that there are people prepared to be angrier and more extreme than me (on any subject), as it opens debates and asks questions of us woollier liberals; but let’s see the positives as well as raising those important points. Essentially there is no point in preaching to the converted: appealing to a wider audience does not mean compromise or loss of integrity, just wisdom to separate the issues according to what is appropriate.

Back to the Day in question, what exactly is it for? Something we hear a great deal is that feminism has done its work, basic equality exists; again it is hard to disagree without negativity. In this country, a great deal more equality exists than did when I was born, and a vast amount more than thirty or fifty years before that. There are no dealbreaker issues for people to get excited about: the vote, the workplace, the pill; we have the right to all these. Yet conversely we can see that in some ways this is the least women-friendly time to live in: intellect and strength valued far less than physical attributes; men encouraged to be boorish or risk the inevitable epithet. No-one, or perhaps everyone, is to blame for this. We have all allowed it to happen because, to a certain extent, raunch culture suits both sexes and can be a positive part of sexual liberation. But most men I know, while appreciating the amount of flesh on offer, are not really delighted with a future of vapid, opinionless women with whom to share their beds. And women do not really want to continue with the size-zero permatanned big hair model, paranoid about losing their looks because that is all they have of value.

That’s another blog really. But if we break that problem down, it is made up of small issues, some of them deeply personal. We cannot get angry at the men and women who are happy with the status quo, just keep carving out our paths and finding positives elsewhere in order to be an inspiration rather than a nagging voice in the ear (go Kathryn Bigelow!). Similarly, a recent article on the feministing website covered the issue that if people are not interested in watching women’s sport, tv companies are not going to cover it and pay will remain low. An American website has started a campaign to encourage people to attend live events which seems a more healthy attitude than whinging about it.

Sport is of course not the only area where the pay gap is an issue; in this country women work for, on average, 17% less pay, which the Fawcett Society have a campaign to reduce. Equality legislation has meant that this is less than in the past but further legislation would run the risk of making women worth far less in the workplace than a man. Anecdotal evidence tells us that there are already plenty of employers who will avoid employing women because they will cost the company money in the long run. So to my mind, as above, we need to break it down into reasons why this gap still exists and find many small solutions that build to a whole. The blog I was writing when this one interrupted is entitled ‘Equality for Men’, which may seem a strange subject for Women’s Day but I feel it is essential in the move towards a future where men and women are equally recompensed for their labour.

Aha. But now we come on to what was meant to be the main point of this piece. Brevity has never been my strong point. It’s not Women’s Day, is it? It’s International Women’s Day. And if you want to find something to get angry about, worth fighting for on a big, worldwide scale, try clitoridectomies, try forced marriage, try honour killings. These things happen here and abroad, on all continents, often in the name of religion. As a liberal I am meant to be terribly tolerant of other cultures and religions but the people carrying out these atrocities have chosen to do so out of their extremist interpretation of scripture or history and I feel no need to respect them. I feel, in fact, very angry. To read about the women who commit suicide rather than endure a life of subjugation, the women who run and are caught and tortured, the women who set up help for others and risk becoming a target themselves, is an education. The women who are fighting to eradicate these, who stand up for themselves in the face of rape, violence and mortal danger are the true suffragettes of our day and they are the ones I will be celebrating this International Women’s Day.

environmental

the sky is dark

the clouds are white

below them, shining, business lights

to see the stars

a resolution

to 'Click!' goodbye to light pollution

going places

There is a certain freedom in a full tank of petrol. When I have filled the tank and see the dial swing to full and the display tell me I have 336 miles before the car will come to a quiet halt of its own accord, I wonder how far that would take me (geography's not my strong point) and if one day I might just take the opportunity to drive off the forecourt and keep going until that happens. Ignore the red light springing up around the 50 mile mark and keep going until I find myself wilfully stranded and work out what to do from there.

A lot of people would hate to be in that position but, like a significant minority, I feel the opposite. I like the possibilities to stretch out in front of me in all directions; it makes me jittery to see things mapped out too clearly, speed cameras and service stations marked along the way. I have had to admit the usefulness of a sat-nav device in the car but loved my old method of getting around by following road signs and buying a map in the local area when I get there; it took me a while to get over my reluctance to tech up. To be fair, I used to get lost and late and it probably wasn't terribly efficient but it was educative, a mini adventure and, when there were no external time pressures, it could be quite exhilarating. Perhaps for the same reason, on filling in my tax return today I find I am unlikely to owe Moira Stewart much cash. Time to give in to the clutches of the 9 to 5? Or keep getting lost and seeing where it takes me.

the politics of indecision

I can never understand how people find politics obvious, or easy; for me it's a struggle. Every time I read a news article from either side I have to sift through so many layers to find the place I think it has come from and from there my response to it. By the time I get to that point I am never sure whether my opinion has been in some way clouded by a moral or other subjective judgement. Am I making the decision based on a true instinct, on what I want to believe, or intellectual and objective observation?
I would love to have the passion to believe in a cause, to take something at face value without cynicism or my default reaction of trying to see the alternative viewpoint. It's painful having to spend so much time sitting on a fence. I wish I could march through the streets with absolute conviction in the slogans I am shouting, to adopt a radical lifestyle or to change my appearance to reflect my allegiances. But here I am, the ultimate woolly liberal, keen to believe in anything that brings people happiness. Immigration, gay marriage, free sweets for all. Unsurprisingly, the hardest extreme for me to relate to is right-wing hysteria, the Mail/Express philosophy that health and safety has gone mad and Diana would solve political correctness. Yet I can't buy into the hippy, communist ideology either, no soft-soaping of reality (and no ethnic skirts). My views have bits of both and bits of neither. Earnestness is equal to humourlessness and even those with opinions close to mine, if given with no hint of a smile, can make me itch to bat for the other side. Lazy sexism can sharpen my feminist polemic but reading a po-faced article in Guardian Women can turn me into a laid-back ladette. I become Newton's Law of Motion, trying to ask unanswerable questions, move goalposts, widen viewpoints. Or, as my parents would have said, argue back. It is instinctive, not premeditated or superior, although it is hard to explain or dissect without appearing that way. I suppose we each believe our own understanding of the world to hold more truth than others. Perhaps my understanding of the world is 'it's not as simple as you think'.