South African rape survey (BBC)

I don’t think there is one word I could add to this story to make its message any plainer or any more disturbing. These are the cruel realities of life in South Africa.

Some key statements:

• One in four South African men questioned in a survey said they had raped someone and nearly half admitted having attacked more than one victim.
• … practices such as gang rape were common because they were considered a form of male bonding.
• A recent trade union report said a child was being raped in South Africa every three minutes with the vast majority of those cases going unreported.

What?! How long has this been going on, and why has there been no outrage about this before? And why?!

The researcher suggested that:

“… it’s partly rooted in our incredibly disturbed past and the way that South African men over the centuries have been socialised into forms of masculinity that are predicated on the idea of being strong and tough and the use of force to assert dominance and control over women, as well as other men.

Really? Can this adequately be attributed to a patriarchal society and the on-going prevalence of negative attitudes towards women, or do these statistics require a phenomenon all of their own? I can certainly see her point, but this theory still doesn’t explain these staggering statistics when men all over the world have been socialised into those very same forms of masculinity. (And I question, by the way, what a ‘form of masculinity’ is in the first place.) No, there’s something much more sinister afoot here, and I wish I understood what it was. But more than that, and infinitely more importantly, I wish that somebody, somewhere was doing something about it. The responses in this piece indicate to me a complacency about these crimes and an acceptance that this is just how things are in South Africa. I cannot get my head around this at all. And I’m fucking disgusted.

Full piece behind the cut.

In brief: yer all savages

I’m not one to defend the general British public (see forthcoming entry on culture when it, erm, forthcomes) but I feel that I should get my spake in, albeit briefly, about this.

BBC Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman has described the British public as “barbarians” who are too busy working to find time to appreciate art.

I’m not a huge fan of Paxman’s, it has to be said, for I find him more much more offensive and condescending than I do challenging and interesting, and the above strikes me as a typical statement of his.

Here are a few simple sums for you Mr. Paxman: earnings of £XX,000 per year, X children, £XXX,000 mortgage, and £XX,000 in car loans/ student loans/ credit card and other debts don’t leave many of us with whole lot of Xs to play around with. We work all the time, just to make our ends meet. And you wonder why we plebeians spend all of our time working and little of our time perusing art galleries? We’re flipping exhausted!

I would have thought it was f-ing obvious, even to a snob like you who makes considerably more Xs than the rest of us put together, and who doesn’t have to worry at all about where his next paycheck comes from or goes to.

In brief: posting by email

I wonder if that will actually make me post more? (I have been saying, after all, that I think that WP could really, really, really use a post-by-email feature.) We’ll see.

Life continues to be very busy, dear reader(s). Let’s call this a holding post, innit.

Doctor Woefully Awful

It’s not often I break out the old blog these days, although I certainly have a few things in mind that I want to blog about. Let’s start with Saturday night’s Doctor Who. Oh dear God, yes, let’s start there.

I was excited for Doctor Who’s return at the weekend for, with all its faults, it’s a damn good show. And the good outweighs the bad. There’s been lots of coverage, of course, about the new Doctor and about David Tennant’s departure from the role, but I’m rather more interested in changes in the writing team. Now, all due credit to Russell T Davies (RTD) for resurrecting Who after its 15 year break, but my respect for him largely ends there. RTD cannot write. He’s the head writer of a major television production, and he just cannot write. Something isn’t right. Yes, many will argue that if he’s given the time to think through his stories, and he takes the time to scribe coherent ideas, he’ll manage to come up with the goods. But I disagree. I’ve seldom enjoyed an episode penned by RTD, and Saturday night was no exception. Let’s summarise what happened. We had a wooden companion who we were presumably supposed to like, a handful of vacant and pointless characters who served no purpose other than filling out the numbers, and a sloppy story premise which involved – as it always does in RTD’s episodes – the end of the world. Again. Groan. The first ten minutes were wholly derivative of Midnight (another RTD story), while the remaining 50 were a mix of unimpressive special effects and RTD’s trademark ‘cryptic’ prophecies. There was little discernible story arc and there was even less to engage the viewer and make them care. So the world was going to end again or something. Isn’t it always Russell? The whole thing was just embarrassing. I was bored out of my mind.

One poor episode I could forgive, of course – God knows we’re used to them by now with RTD – but my concern is for David Tennant. He’s been the best Doctor, in my opinion (and he’s had some hard acts to follow) and I feel bad for him that this – this inconsequential, lazy rubbish – will be how he finishes out his days in Who. Tennant acts his little socks off every single time he’s on camera, and he himself must feel dejected that he has this nonsense to work with. I look forward to Steven Moffat taking over the writing team shortly, for he is very talented and he never fails to please, but it will be too late for David Tennant, alas. He’s just going to have to put up with these horrendous stories in the meantime and hope that his fans know that he’s better than them. This fan certainly does.

TfTd

I always listen to Radio 4 in the mornings on my way to work. I’m in that demographic now, don’t you know. I’m nearly always leaving as ‘Thought for the Day‘ begins. For those of you unfamiliar with Thought for the Day it is, as the link says, ‘reflections from a faith perspective on issues and people in the news’. I think it would be more accurately described as patronising and sanctimonious reflections from God-bothers full of their own self-importance, but anyway. I find it insufferable.

This morning the Reverend Doctor Middle Class and Vaguely Disgruntled was doing his piece. He started off by recounting a tale of how he tried to help a young lady with her suitcase onto the bus. She declined his offer, and brushed his hand away when he offered again. This reaction, he blamed, on women’s constant quest for equality. If it wasn’t for the equality gained so far, he implied, women wouldn’t think twice about accepting help from a man. He tried to redeem himself, of course, by talking then about the disparities in earnings of men and women – and in doing so ‘approved’ of our pesky feminism – and then came back to the quandary of women not allowing men to help them when they clearly need it.

Seriously, Reverend Doctor Middle Class and Vaguely Disgruntled? Really? If I give you the benefit of the doubt for a moment, and believe that you genuinely thought that telling a story about a woman ‘in need’ would be a good introduction to a discussion about equal pay rights, I have to tell you that you’re a little naive. I know a lot of women – and I’m one myself – and I’m pretty sure that most of us don’t spend our time declining offers of help from men because we’re obsessed with equality. If you really need to know, I rather think that we women feel that it’s intrusive to be approached by strange men offering help (or anything else), that it can often be intimidating to be approached in such a manner, and that we decline because we feel uncomfortable and we would rather not have you near us or our suitcases. Is that unfortunate? Of course it is. In an ideal world, we would all be helping each other carry our butterflies and rainbows around; in a realistic world, we react as we do because we’re conditioned to do so by what we see around us. It’s got nothing to do with equality, or its lack.

But I’m not going to give you the benefit of the doubt. I think that for all your talk of equal pay for the sexes and of narrowing the employment gap, you think we women have got too much equality already. You gave your game away when you mentioned that ungrateful young woman twice in three minutes. You’re thinking, I’m sure, that she should have been happy to take help from you, the Big Man, instead of trying to assert her independence when she was so clearly in need. But the world, thankfully, doesn’t work your way any more. Perhaps the next time you pipe up on Thought for the Day, you’ll remember that it’s not all about you, and that women don’t spend  their waking moments trying to figure out how to get their equality points higher at the expense of people like you.

Naughty little peers, they are

I’m only really posting this because it makes me laugh. Not because I care enormously about it one way or t’other.

Peers respond to cash allegations

Two of the Labour peers at the centre of claims they were ready to take cash to change legislation have responded to the allegations in the House of Lords.

If there was ever a reason to reconsider the effectiveness of the structure of Parliament in this country, then surely this is it. You don’t need a moral conscience when you’ve got vaguely royal blood, it seems.

On the way home this evening, I heard Radio 4 play a recording of Lord Taylor’s conversation with the Times in which he discussed a bribe, followed by Lord Taylor telling the House of Lords that he doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong. The juxtaposition was priceless.

In his defence, he did sound a bit dottery. Well, when he was addressing the Lords anyway. Less so when he was talking cold hard cash. Frankly, I feel he was selling himself cheap for a grand. Apparently, he often gets offered £25,000 to pull a few strings. Marvellous!

Who wants to bet me 20p that the Lords in question get away with it? That’s how it rolls here, no?

If you don’t fancy that game, play this one instead. Get more metaphors into one paragraph than Lord Strathclyde does here. I don’t think it’s possible, myself.

“This House has been mired in a grim torrent of criticism about a culture of sleaze,” he told peers. “If these allegations are true those involved have shamed this House,” he said, adding there were no “grey areas in the paid advocacy rules”.

I love politics.

In brief: it’s an either/ or scenario

Ben Bradley (a friend of the late John F Kennedy) on Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday morning:

Jack [referring to JFK on his election] was half Irish and half an educated and sophisticated man. And he wasn’t sure which one he wanted to be yet. He hadn’t decided which one he wanted to be.

Because, clearly, you can’t be both.

We love the casual racism.

Oh…

… President Obama, I do love you. I don’t care that you noticeably paused for applause and greatly overdid the rhetoric in places; that’s how you Americans do things, and we’re all used to it by now.

You’re still my new hero.

Full text if you missed it.

Repost of another entitled ‘Shall we talk about privilege’

I struggle with my privilege, mostly because I know that I’ve got bucketfuls of it. I’m western, white, straight, middle-class, able-bodied, and educated. The only area I don’t have privilege in is my gender (although I am cisgendered). But I’m not doing too badly, overall. I’m not ashamed of my privilege, but I am conscious of it. Most of my ‘qualities’ afford me a much easier life than others who do not have those ‘qualities’. I suppose, if I’m honest, that makes me uncomfortable. I am aware of my privilege, and I do own it, but I’m not convinced that that’s enough. I was born with this privilege, and I will have it forever. I don’t want to contribute a system of inequality because of it, but I know I do. The privileged always do, whether they are aware of it or not. Simply by benefiting from privilege, we are contributing to a society which embraces it.

I really troubles me.

This blogger says it much better:

Hey you in the back row with the unacknowledged privilege, I am talking to you. That’s right, I am pointing my long black finger at you. It is time to listen up and learn. Privilege is an extremely loaded word. Many will not acknowledge it, preferring instead to focus on their good deeds. Privilege can come in many forms, you can have race, class, gender, western, cis, ability, etc, and it is important to recognize each and every single one of them, they are a part of your being and can not be halted at will any more than you can stop breathing.

I am black, western, straight, middle class, educated, and able bodied, all of these factors combined create who I am and colour how I view the world. Had I been born elsewhere, and were illiterate and poor all of the comfort that I view as everyday occurrences would not exist in my life. If I am hungry I walk into my kitchen. I can kiss my unhusband in public and know that the stares we receive are because of our racial differences, and not because of our sexuality. My education ensures that I will have a good chance at achieving and maintaining good paying employment, and it further empowers me to discuss ideas, concepts and ideologies from a detached academic point of view. This is who I am, and I own all of it.

Owning privilege is not about feeling ashamed, it is about acknowledging the benefits that one receives without having to work for them. It is about realizing that people born to different circumstances will not receive these benefits as a consequence of our skewed understanding of worth and value. It is further about realizing that no matter how many good and charitable works I perform, my body will always exist with privilege. No matter how often I donate my time to food banks or homeless shelters, I cannot undo the class privilege into which I was born. No matter how valiantly I advocate for fair trade, and an end to things like the western fuelled wars in Africa, I cannot undue the damage that my government has done in my name. As sickened as I am about the systemic inequalities that plague humanity, I am privileged and I own it.

It is not acceptable to say, I am not racist, sexist, homophobic etc and therefore any accusation of privilege is misplaced. These privileges are encoded to the body before birth simply because of the society we are all born into. We do not live outside of socialization we are the product of it.

To become defensive and immediately stammer, oh no not me, is a clear indicator of denial. It is this very state of denial that allows privilege to maintain its insidious grip on society. One cannot actively fight against interlocking isms while continuing to deny the effect that they personally have on you. How are you to convince anyone that inequality is systemic, if you as an individual continue to benefit without acknowledgement? It is dishonest and begins ally work from a false groundwork. It’s like saying I’m not racist because my best friend as a kid was black. People see that kind of commentary for exactly what it is.

Understanding and owning privilege does not mean that you must live a life of shame or guilt, it does however mean that you owe a debt that must be repaid. For each advantage that you are given, you must at some point attempt to mitigate some of your unearned privilege. This will never absolve you of said privilege but over time, if enough people equally dedicate themselves to mitigation it will lessen privilege through the changing of ideas of what it means to exist as a specific body.

We spend far too much time saying oh no not me, or feeling shame for things that are out of our control. A dear friend once told me that she felt ashamed and guilty because of slavery. I was actually dumbstruck for a moment before I responded, “you have never personally enslaved anyone, the issue is not history, the issue is how you continue to be advantaged because of history.” This is central to the point that I am trying to make. No one individual can bear the sins of the world, but each individual continually recreates these sins by failure to acknowledge the degree to which we are socialized to accept that certain bodies are somehow less than. There is no righteous person, only righteous thoughts, deed and emotions.

[Source]

All dem Oirish sing lovely so dey do

Some people are horribly naive. And they clearly have no idea that they’re being offensive. Take Rose McGowan for example.

Hollywood actress Rose McGowan has said she would have joined the IRA if she lived in Belfast during the Troubles.

McGowan stars in Fifty Dead Men Walking, an adaptation of IRA informer Martin McGartland’s autobiography.

“My heart just broke for the cause,” she told a news conference ahead of the film’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Ach, her wee heart just broke for the cause (so it did). She ‘would have joined the IRA’ had she lived in Belfast during the Troubles (so she would). Well ain’t that just lovely!

Has this woman ever read a newspaper in her life? Has she any idea what ‘the cause’ was even about? Did she ever even set foot on Irish soil during the Troubles she romanticises so much? What does she think we Catholics in Northern Ireland were doing? Sitting around, signing our Irish tunes, drinking our cups of tea, and smacking the odd Protestant around the head? For ‘the cause’. No, we were hearing every single day of yet another bombing or shooting, we were being stopped by the army every time we left our homes, we were checking under our cars for bombs, we were being evacuated from our homes and schools, and we were wondering when the hell it was all going to end. And if it would end before one of our loved ones got killed. That’s what it was like in Northern Ireland, Miss McGowan. That’s what ‘the cause’ meant to most of us. And the Republican terrorists were no better or worse than the Loyalist terrorists. So why don’t you just take your ridiculous romantic Hollywood notions of the cute wee Oirish and their sweet wee passions and grow the fuck up.