Looks Like Satire

This has no relevance to anything but...

2009-05-27T19:06:00.002+01:00

Skunk Anansie are getting back together! And they're going on tour! And I've got tickets! Nobody in the entire fucking world is more excited than me right now!

(Cross-posted everywhere on the internet that I frequent semi-occasionally)

It's not just me!

2009-05-23T19:18:00.003+01:00

Other people have noticed that Nadine Dorries is a huge lying crackpot!

"According to one Tory source, party officials have rebuked Ms Dorries on more than one occasion for her “increasing tendency to make wild and eccentric statements”. "

Yeah! Damn right! I bet they noticed that when they realised she had her own tag on this blog. Hey, I can dream.

This time, Nadine has been claiming that all the furore over MPs' expenses (I'm sorry, there is NOTHING ELSE in the English press. Except swine flu, which we've already decided is no big deal, and suddenly Madeleine McCann again, whom I absolutely will not write about because the whole saga with the disappearance and the press and the the desperate need for it to be All Someone's Fault depresses me more than I can say, and I just don't have the strength) is going to drive someone to suicide. Nobody in particular, just someone. Which is all our fault, as the baffled and angry public, and if we don't all shut up we'll have killed someone. Nadine is always going around accusing me of murdering people when nobody's actually dead. You can tell me abortion is murder as many times as you like, it won't make it true.

Of course, this may all be a plot by David Cameron to make me agree with him on something. Well done, Dave, it worked. I have a good bit of stuff to say about him in light of recent events, so look out for that soon.

A consensus has been reached! By the admission of her own fucking party, Nadine Dorries IS a huge lying crackpot! Looks Like Satire has accomplished its first goal of what will hopefully be many! Come join me in imaginary wine and muffins!

Lord Foulkes the Blog Troll

2009-05-14T16:31:00.005+01:00

So, the expenses row. In case you’re not aware, the expenses claims of some of our MPs have been leaked and they’ve been claiming for some – ahem – spurious items, such as swimming pool maintenance. I did love the explanation for that one: "The pool came with the house and I needed to know how to run it. Once I was shown that one time, there were no more claims. I take care of the pool myself. I believe this represents 'value for money' for the taxpayer." Snerk. He couldn’t possibly have paid for his own pool maintenance, of course.

That’s not the point. The point is this.

A quick recap: a peer of the realm goes on TV to defend Michael Martin (who could have introduced reforms over the way expenses are dealt with and didn’t, so... zzzzzz. It’s dull, isn’t it? Sorry. This is why I haven’t written about it. Or read about it, excluding amusing anecdotes about swimming pool maintenance. We’ll be done with the dull background stuff in a minute, I promise). He goes on the news to talk to an interviewer about something that has made a lot of people pretty angry. And then he’s outraged that she asks him some questions he doesn’t particularly like.

This is classic:

He added that BBC presenters such as John Humphrys and Jeremy Paxman were paid hundreds of thousands of pounds "to come on TV and sneer at democracy and undermine democracy. The vast majority of MPs are being undermined by you."

I’m really glad he said that, because until now I never knew that 'democracy' meant 'never questioning those in authority'. I sort of thought that the sign of a good democracy was that the men with the power would be held accountable if they misbehaved. Now I know better. If MPs do something that could be considered questionable, we have absolutely no right to question it, because that constitutes undermining democracy. I’m glad that Lord Foulkes is helping me with my vocabulary, and teaching me how to be a better citizen. I’ve obviously got some way to go, because I still think he’s a pillock. Is that wrong?

I’ve worked it out – Lord Foulkes is a blog troll. Think about it:

He said there were "far more important things going on in the world"

Does this look familiar? How many of us have got sucked into an argument with a troll who tells us that we should be ashamed for going on and on about slut-shaming or the abortion debate or sexism in the workplace or appallingly low rape conviction rates because someone else has it worse or how can you waste time on this when such-and-such is going on or you should be ashamed of yourselves. We all know what it means – I am massively uncomfortable! I do not want to think about this! Deflect! Deflect! Deflect!

Perhaps one of these days you'll do a thing about how much the BBC is being paid.

Don’t look at me! Look at yourselves! I’m clearly aware that criticism is well-deserved here, because otherwise I would be answering your questions instead of making inappropriate inquiries about your salary (nobody is complaining about how much MPs get paid, they’re complaining that the taxpayer is funding things that we probably shouldn’t be funding. Like horse manure. No, really, horse manure). There might already be a serious discussion about a relevant subject going on, a discussion which I have come here specifically to participate in, but I, with the breathtaking arrogance of a rich white aristocratic male, am going to waltz in and demand that everyone stop and have the conversation I want to have instead. I’m only pretending to be him as a journalistic device, and I have deep feelings of self-loathing at this point.

You're not at all sorry to interrupt me - every time an MP comes on you constantly harass them.

We all love this guy. You’re harassing me and it’s not fair! The nasty bitchy woman is asking me reasonable questions! Well, I’m a rich white aristocratic tosspot, and I don’t have to put up with that, no sir!

I feel I must also point out that in response to her questioning him on expenses claims as a general matter (and not even his expenses claims), he chooses to inform her that she is not worth her salary. He reduces her career to working three days a week and "talk[ing] nonsense". If anyone is doing any undermining of anyone or anything, it’s Shithead McGee here, the Troll of the Lords. He’s a small-minded, petulant bully. Hear that, Lord? You smell.

On another topic, apologies for the long absence. I just got promoted! Yay for me!

But racism is funny, you weirdo

2009-03-23T14:17:00.003Z

Presented for your consideration, a story in two small parts that has amused and depressed me in equal measure.

Part one is set in a small pub just off the centre of town. Present: your faithful blogger (the Brunette), two of her closest friends (the Blonde and the Redhead – there is a reason I refer to us in joke form), the Blonde’s partner and another couple that the Blondes are friendly with. I have met them both before but barely spoken to either of them.

After complaining about how quiet the pub is, the male half of this couple pulls out his phone and shows us a text message. It's a joke. A joke that he will not read aloud. Can you guess where this might be going? Blonde sees message and laughs. Redhead sees message and makes a small noise of "I do not wish to engage". Brunette sees message. Message turns out to be a variation on the old "Bus full of lawyers goes over a cliff, which is a shame because one of the seats was empty" joke, but invoking a charming racial epithet. Brunette shakes her head sadly. At this, the joker gets his back up.

Joker: Do you not think that's funny?
Brunette: ...no.
Joker: Do you not like jokes like that?
Brunette: ...no.
Joker: Why not?
Brunette: I’m not a big fan of racism.
Joker: Don't say that! People can hear you!
Brunette: That's what it is, though.
Joker: Don’t say it out loud.
Brunette: I can’t believe I'm actually being told off for not laughing at a racist joke.
Joker: Stop saying that word!

The Blonde, I should add, later interprets this exchange as me telling him off.

Part two takes place over MSN. I am, for reasons best known to myself, talking to my ex-boyfriend. I am going to switch names at this point, just to confuse you all.

Ex: I thought of you the other day. I got into a conversation about the feminist aspects of the film Aliens.
Jen: Oh dear, is my influence spreading?
Ex: I don't mind, I always liked your strong views.
Jen: Most don't. I got told off the other week for a) not laughing at a racist joke and b) referring to it as racist out loud.
Ex: Oh! I should have guessed that was you!
Jen: Beg pardon?
Ex: Was it [repeats joke]? My brother has been telling me this story about how his friend Joker was out with this girl and he told that joke and she didn't find it funny.

Not only am I apparently the only person in my ex's general acquaintance who isn't thrown into paroxysms of laughter by racism, but also the racism = not funny thing is so bizarre and incomprehensible that Joker is telling people the story and these people find it so strange that they, in turn, pass it on. "My mate told a random girl this joke and she didn’t laugh." I am amused that I'm so instantly recognisable by my strident attitudes (amused enough that I now want to get a T-shirt that says "Strident Bitch: Don't Tell Me Jokes" and I'm getting my own Strident Bitch tag), but seriously. There is nobody in the entire world that hasn't heard some variation on that joke, so there's no real humour potential in the joke itself. The only reason to tell it is to bond with your fellow pub-goers over how much [insert specialised group] suck, and don't you just hate them (in a totally nice way, of course, but they need to realise that this isn't their country), and wouldn't it be funny if they died? But don't you dare call it for what it is. It's not racist, remember, it's politically incorrect, which is all cool and edgy and shit, and don't call me a racist because that's not fair. You’re totally bullying me by using that word. Whiiiiine.

Oh, and he didn't like it when I put the dampers on his sisters-having-sex fantasy either. Hah.

ANTM Blogging: All Pretences of Seriousness Abandoned Edition

2009-03-16T19:10:00.002Z

I'm going to have to face up to it: I like America's Next Top Model. I wish to write about America's Next Top Model. But the show is fluff, pure and simple, and I cannot keep pretending I'm going to write worthy screeds on its attitudes towards women and how they are reflected or otherwise distorted in our society. Because I'm not.

So, with that out of the way:

My three girls for this cycle (which, yes, I watch on Youtube from England as soon as it's uploaded. I am a little addicted) are Teyona, Fo and Allison. I wasn't so keen on Allison until I saw the last batch of photos - the stupid group shot things with the light-up vibrators - and was immediately drawn to her in every photo she was in. Fo was my earliest pick, so I'm a little annoyed that she's turned out to be one of those "My hair! My hair! I'm nothing without my hair!" types. But I still like her. I'm charmed by her freckles. Teyona I like because she was the only one who pulled off the ridiculous make-up and styling in the promo picture.

I inexplicably hate Natalie. Tahlia, too. I know I'm meant to feel sorry for her, but she just... irritates me. Grrr. I didn't like Jessica, either, and am very pleased she's been booted.

The photoshoots have been a bit crap so far too. The first one was creepy as all get-out. Why, if you are so distressed at the loss of girlish innocence in this world, would you dress a bunch of models in little-girl clothes complete with huge killer heels? I thought it was quite disturbing. And why were the pictures so grainy? I know grain is sometimes a stylistic device, but in a "little girls playing games" shoot? No. And in the second one, they were posing with glow-in-the-dark vibrators. You can't tell me that's normal.

So, I'm pulling for a Teyona/Fo/Allison final three, and worrying a little about the upcoming "immigrant" shoot. Thoughts from other shameful addicts?

Today In Bad Ideas

2009-03-15T18:48:00.003Z

Get married on Juliet's balcony! Yay! The place where two daft teenagers declared undying love and then died before they could change their minds!

Does nobody read anymore?

shudder

2009-03-09T19:24:00.002Z

This scares the everloving shit out of me.

It's all horrible, every bit of it, but what really disturbs me is that the most so-say acceptable reason for hitting a woman is the wearing of revealing clothes in public. What the FUCK? Twenty per cent of people think it's at least sometimes acceptable to hit your girlfriend because... why? Because she's making other men look at her? What is it? I genuinely don't understand.

Also, I notice, it seems to be more acceptable to hit a woman for flirting than for cheating. I can't really think of anything to say about that, except yargh argh grrrrr argh bah scream arrrgggghhh. The more I see of the world, the more I am made to realise that female sexuality is bad and wrong and weird and scary and must be contained by any means necessary.

One of my ex's favourite lines to justify his possessiveness and dislike of my male friends was "Of course I trust you. I just don't trust them." The whole time we were together, this made no sense to me. How could he trust me if he didn't trust them, unless he thought they were rapists? I asked him a couple of times if that's what he thought, and he responded in complete shock that of course he didn't, how could I get that from what he said? So I remained confused.

I get it now. If I'm around a man who could conceivably find me attractive, said man might think about me. And that, right there, is the violation. There are versions of me running around in other people's heads, versions that no stern looks of his or monogamous nature of mine could regulate or control. It's got nothing to do with how I feel, and it's really not got much to do with whether or not said man would ever act on his hypothetical fantasies. The point is (or was) that they're out there. That somebody created a world where I did not belong to my ex. That in the recesses of somebody's imagination, I was being unfaithful. And (and this is the key point) I should not have been encouraging it. I think this is the logic: You know what men are like. You know what men's brains are like. You should know that being around them, wearing make-up and laughing at their jokes and dancing and everything else you do with your friends, will only make it worse. And unless you want them to be having those thoughts, why would you encourage it? And right there is where it becomes Your Fault.

I'm in no way saying that all men are like this. Indeed, I think my ex is an extreme case. But I look at survey results like that, and I have to acknowledge that no, it's not all that strange. He's not the only man who thinks this way, and I have a one in five chance of coming across another one.

It's stuff like this that makes feel justified in snapping at men in pubs who say shit like this then pretend, innocent faces firmly plastered on, that "it was only a joke". It's NOT only a joke. And I refuse to apologise for being a cranky, sexy, difficult feminist bitch. So there.

I was going to end there, but then I realised that I only put the last paragraph there to avoid ending another entry with "I'm really scared". Defiance is an easier stance to take at the moment, and one that won't result in me hiding in a cupboard for the next thirty years. What can you do with fear, except turn it into anger?

Currently Stuck In My Head...

2009-02-04T20:18:00.001Z

I just wanted to have this somewhere. What don't you fuckin' understand... doo doo doo doo doo...

(Women + Money) = (Divorce + Damaged Children)

2009-02-04T15:10:00.001Z

The BBC informs me that we must think of the children. Why, oh why, won’t we think of the children? Whose fault is it, you ask. Well, if you can possibly blame the working mothers, you do, don’t you? We all know the “mothers should be at home with the children” rhetoric, and if that’s what the article said I’d probably have ignored it. But it doesn’t say that.

"Most women now work and their new economic independence contributes to levels of family break-up which are higher in the UK than in any other Western European country."

Yeah, it’s not that we should be at home with the kids. It’s that women having money is causing divorce. If we really want to help the children, we will stop allowing women to have their own money. See, if women are reliant entirely on their husband’s income, then they will have no choice but to remain in unhappy, unhealthy relationships! Then the children will be alright!

I don’t know who comprised this “panel of independent experts”, but the Archbishop of Canterbury is listed as a contributor. Hmmm. These are, perhaps, not experts without an agenda. The thing is, I can understand people who believe that it’s detrimental to a child to have both parents working (usually phrased as “Mums should stay at home”, of course). I would like to stay at home with my hypothetical kids for a bit. I would also like my hypothetical partner to stay at home with the hypothetical kids for a bit. I totally, completely understand the thinking here. I learnt a lot from my parents in my early years (though probably not stuff that Rowan Williams would approve of – I asked my mother why I hadn’t been christened and she said: “that will be your decision to make when you’re older, Jennifer.”). If this panel has been stuffed with bishops and such, I can understand why they’re making such a big deal out of divorce, though I think people at the BBC would do well to bear in mind that correlation does not imply causation. But to say that women’s economic independence is causing divorce and hence harming the children? Can I get a “bullshit”?

The headline worried me, too. Selfish adults damage children. Clearly, they don’t mean selfish adults – they mean selfish mothers. And what does a mother have to do to be selfish? Not a lot. Want a career? Selfish. Part-time job? Selfish. Evening course? Back to school? Selfish, selfish. And god forbid you go out with friends. This is what we’re told. We’re given the impression that our child is so precious that he or she must be given all of our time. All of it. And then, when the child becomes a teenager and starts demanding independence, we are expected to adjust to that in a snap. If we get upset, or panic, we are yet again selfish. What this all comes down to is: women wish to be human. This wish is selfish. Men (of this type, at least) wish us to be quiet, perfect porcelain dolls with no needs of our own and an unlimited supply of unconditional love and nurturing, for which we demand nothing in return. This wish, we learn, is not selfish.

I am confused. I have gone right off the idea of having kids.

A Neat Display of Privilege

2009-02-03T20:04:00.003Z

Carol Thatcher has been banned from a BBC show after making a racist remark in the dressing room. By the looks of it, the BBC didn't want to ban her from the show, but had no real choice since she refused to apologise. Her spokesman said:

"Carol never intended any racist comment. She made a light aside about this tennis player and his similarity to the golliwog on the jam pot when she was growing up. There's no way, obviously, that she would condone any racist comment - we would refute that entirely. It would not be in her nature to do anything like that. It is disgusting that we've had a leak of private conversations in the green room - the BBC has more leaks than Thames Water. Carol is mortified that anyone should take offence at a silly joke. She has summarily apologised."

I'm embarrassed to be so stunned by this. I am stunned that somebody would genuinely argue that it's not racist if the black guy really does look like a golliwog. I'm not stunned that she's done the "Well, I'm sorry YOU'RE SO SENSITIVE, you bunch of losers" apology, or that she's done the "I'm the real victim - that was a private conversation" defence. But the whole speech reeks of a privilege that really astonishes me.

Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and whatever else come, most of the time, from people who say they love the oppressed group in question and are totally all for their equal rights. And because they're all for equal rights, it's fine to call a black man a golliwog if he really looks like one, or call a woman a bitch or a whore if she really is one. And then someone objects, and they are shocked. Oh, come on, they say. Don't be so bloody dramatic. Fight the real enemy, the people who really hate you and aren't ashamed to say it. Go fight them. Leave me and my "silly jokes" alone.

Carol Thatcher is clearly stunned that we have mistaken her for a racist. And I am stunned that people still have to stand up and say: "It is unacceptable to compare a black guy to a golliwog, whether or not you think he really looks like one." And that, I suppose, is my privilege.

Abortion: You Be Her Judge

2008-12-30T18:38:00.003Z

I liked this. I also really despair of some men, sometimes. I'm not going to go into it too much, as the article smacks down the pillocks quite thoroughly, and I have other things on my wandering mind.

I read all the comments on that piece, which I tend not to do on blogs (I don't enjoy trollfights, as a rule), and I continue to be fascinated by some of the arguments that anti-abortionists come out with, as well as those put forward by "centrists" or "moderates". I mean, this one-per-customer idea - what good is that going to do anyone? Once is alright, but twice is murder? Obviously I know why they suggest it, because they tell me. It's about responsibility. We must be responsible for our own decisions. Translation: I feel that I have the right to control your body if I don't like what you're doing with it. It astonishes me that anyone feels they have the right to tell women when and how often to have sex, and then when and how often they can have a medical procedure. The arrogance of it is astonishing. They think they get to decide who is allowed medical treatment. I mean, I don't like smoking - I think it's stupid, a filthy habit, and can only do you damage, but I cannot imagine saying to a smoker, "Lung cancer? That's your own fault. Fuck off and die in the street."

I also find it difficult to take seriously the position of those who believe abortion should be illegal except in case of rape or incest, et cetera. Why? If you believe it's child murder, then why is the "child" who is the product of rape any less of a child and more worthy of murdering? If we take the favourite crappy trope of the forced-birth crowd: Well, You Wouldn't Murder A Three-Year-Old, would it be more acceptable to murder a three-year-old child who was the product of rape? Obviously not. I firmly believe that the majority of anti-abortionists don't give a shit about children. They make the rape/incest exception because those women can still be redeemed; they can still be Good. Those who had sex on purpose are Bad and must be Punished. It's about control of our sexual habits. It's about transporting us back to this idyllic 1950s state that nobody I know remembers actually existing. Since I first became aware of abortion, I've heard people say: well, it shouldn't be used as a form of birth control. And yeah, that would be a bit dumb. We have much better forms of birth control readily available to us (I know this is less true for Americans, who have to pay for the Pill, but we Englishwomen get ours for free). And if "not as a form of birth control" was meant to mean "don't be bloody stupid about it and learn about contraception", fine. But it doesn't, does it? At its most harmless, it means "I judge sluts." At the other end of the scale, it means "I hate sluts and think I should get to deny them medical treatment." We know it's not about abortion being murder, because otherwise they'd object to all abortion, substitute birth control or not.

You don't often come across people (from a British perspective) who will happily announce that all abortion is murder and nobody should ever be allowed to have one. We mostly get "Well, I could never have one" (which is fine), that strange breed of wishy-washy sort-of-Conservative who firmly believes that we will one day be able to pinpoint exactly the moment during gestation when a foetus becomes a child, or those who sort of vaguely think it's a bit icky but don't support either side of the debate. Of course, we do have an occasional whackjob. No, I promise I won't link to Nadine Dorries again, but she is getting her own tag.

So our abortion debates, such as they are, are often led by the second group. Where and when does life begin? We must find it. David Cameron apparently thinks life begins at twenty weeks in the womb. Why? We don't know. He pulled the figure out of his ass. Should we ask him - which I promise you I will, given the slightest opportunity - he would probably make some noises about scientific advances (one of the arguments I hate most because it implies that one day we will have the technology to outlaw abortion), but I bet you his true feelings lie with the third group: he vaguely thinks it's a bit icky. I use David Cameron as an example partly because I still can't stand him and haven't had a go at him for a while, and partly because he's such a good symbol of England in regard to the abortion debate. We think a fertilised egg is clearly not alive and a thirty-nine-week-old foetus is clearly a baby, so somewhere in between is the point where a magical transformation occurs and what is clearly a ball of cells turns into what is clearly a human being. We don't think of it in those terms, of course, because it just sounds daft. We like to make noises about "viability", but what does that even mean? Foetuses can be "viable" at twenty-four weeks because we have some impressive technology these days. And as I said, at some point, we may well have the technology to make all foetuses "viable". Does this mean abortion should be outlawed when we have made such advances? We would still say no, I think. I think we might also say that removing a six-week-old foetus and incubating it for eight months is a little creepy.

Abortion is a hugely contested subject, but most of us have no idea what we think about it. We might know that we're pro-choice or pro-life (hate, hate, hate that term), but for almost all of us there are questions that would make us go "...huh. I don't really know." I don't know what the time limit should ideally be. I know I don't think it should be any lower, but why couldn't it be higher? I don't know. I just sort of defer to the consensus of the medical profession and gloss over it. If I were in America, I wouldn't do that. I don't believe there should be a limit on how many abortions a woman can get, but if I were to hear that a woman had had twelve abortions, I would want to know why. How stupid is that? Why, even in my own head, am I asking this hypothetical woman to justify herself to me? What if she'd had all twelve because she was careless and didn't use contraception? Well, what if? Why on earth should that make any difference to me whatsoever? Why should she have to set out her precise reasons for me so that I may judge her a slut or an idiot? (I hate the whole concept of "slut" so I'd never do that, but I absolutely see myself judging her as an idiot. And maybe she is an idiot, but what has that got to do with me?)

It shocked me a little when I started thinking about this - I throw huge stroppy fits about anti-abortionists judging women for their choices, so why is it alright when I do it? I don't believe that every choice a woman makes is necessarily feminist, or that it must be the right choice because a woman made it, but I clearly think abortion is alright. If one abortion is a personal, private medical decision to be kept between a woman and her doctor (plus partner and/or family if she so chooses), why aren't twelve abortions just twelve personal, private medical decisions to be kept between a woman and her doctor? Why, instead, do twelve abortions carry some heavy statement about the woman's life? The reason she had one abortion wouldn't matter to me, so why would I demand her reasons for having twelve? Is it because most of us pick up a little of this vague "abortions are icky" from society and have to consciously fight against it? Or maybe because we all feel that we have the right, to some greater or lesser extent, to judge a woman for her sexual behaviour? It's probably both. Unless we work to get over it, we look at the gestation of a pregnancy and pick a point between "clearly just cells" and "clearly a baby" as the point where life begins, just we look a woman's sexuality and pick a point between "clearly a prude" and "clearly a slut" as the point where we as a gender should ideally sit. The whole thing is subjective and ultimately pointless, but most of us have 'em, and they slide up and down as we change, as we think we've learned more and therefore it's alright for us to judge these women now because I've learned.

Have you?

Shenanigans?

2008-12-28T21:11:00.003Z

I could use a little help here. Can somebody please explain this to me?

Apparently, Claire Sweeney has purposely gained two stone in order to show the horrible, disastrous consequences of being overweight. I don't see the point, but that's not what I need explained. Take a look at the photos of her at a "healthy" weight and then "obese". Then please explain it to me. Is it me, or does she look exactly the same? She has a slightly bigger stomach (and to be frank, I can create that sort of difference in the size of my stomach by holding in then pushing out), and a bit of a double chin, which most of us can get if we hold our heads in a certain way. Is that what "piling on two stone" looks like? Where has she put it? How has she managed to put on two stone and fit into the same bikini? She is the same damn size. The Mail insists she's gone from a C cup to a G cup. Not in those pictures she hasn't.

I am somewhat tempted to call shenanigans on these pictures. Why does she have exactly the same line running across her lower abdomen? She looks THE SAME. If I lose two stone, is that all the difference it's going to make? Full disclosure: I am fairly close in weight to "Fat Sweeney", and am a little taller. I can't wear a string bikini. I have DD breasts and they will not stay in a top that size. Oh, and that stomach does not contain two stone of weight. It just doesn't.

I feel bad for sitting here and analysing another woman's body like this, but it scares the crap out of me that Fat Sweeney is being held up as HUGE SCARY OBESE UNHEALTHY GO AND HIDE IN THE LETTUCE. I'm also confused by the premise: apparently she travels to Hollywood where she's told she'll never make it unless she loses weight. In response to this, she decides to deliberately overeat in order to prove that Fat Is Bad... why? What was the point of that? We're told that she went on the Atkins Diet a few years ago to try and lose weight, and she collapsed with a kidney infection after four weeks. So she decides to go out and bravely prove that Fat Is Bad? What the hell is going on here? Oh, and in case you hadn't gathered, she looks exactly the same. I've put on two stone before. I did not look exactly the same. Perhaps she genuinely did put on two stone, but they forgot to take Before and After photos so they dragged her into the studio once she'd lost all the weight again and faked it? I don't know. All I know is, I do not get this. I would very much appreciate someone explaining it to me.

You Don't Count

2008-12-24T12:54:00.003Z

I shall attempt to post something festively cheerful later today, but first this needs a little attention:

"Infamous prosecutor Ken Starr has filed a legal brief -- on behalf of the "Yes on 8" campaign -- to nullify the 18,000 same-sex marriages performed in California between May and November of 2008."

YOU ASSHOLE. You nasty, weasly little piece of pond scum. I'm quite happy to fuck up your lives because you're not really people. You don't count.

It really, really pisses me off. These people go on and on about the breakdown of scoiety and how horrible the divorce rate is and why can't couples just stay together and work things out for the children, but they'll quite happily force it on eighteen thousand couples who don't want it. Look through that slideshow. Tell me those people aren't really married. Tell me their love doesn't matter. Tell me they're screwing up our society by doing something that makes no difference whatsoever to you. Tell me any of those things, and I will kill you.

Punching Women Is Funny

2008-12-21T17:16:00.003Z

Since my ex and I split up, I've been processing the past five and a half years and wondering what lessons I can take from this, because I haven't quite managed to shake off my self-help book past. There's a lot of processing to do, because my memory is annoyingly good. And about twenty minutes ago, I remembered this:

We wander into a local pub. We go to the bar to get drinks, as one tends to do in a pub. Standing at the bar with a pint is a cheerful-looking elderly chap. He smiles affably as we approach, and watches us order our drinks. He makes a little small talk. He mentions something his wife said him the other week. Then he says: "I told her if she ever said that to me again I'd smack her."

I do my bug-eyed "Excuse me?!" face. He turns to my ex with a friendly face and a male-bonding laugh. "Eh?" he says. My ex says nothing. Loud, loud silence from him. "Oh," says cheeky chappie, "can't say anything while she's here, I get it!" He still looks genuinely friendly, laughing good-naturedly as though the three of us are enjoying a joke, even though my "Excuse me?!" face has turned into my "I am seriously appalled and must leave NOW" face. My ex lets out a weak laugh and we turn to go and sit outside.

I'm not sure why this little scene should suddenly have popped back into my head, but I remember several like it. Horrible domestic violence jokes or insults about me as a stand-in for all women, usually coming from a source that genuinely seemed to think they were good-naturedly joking around. And (duh) it upset me. Hugely. I would say this to my ex, and every time he would tell me that he knew the jokes were horrible, but he wasn't going to say anything, and I had a choice: either I could back off and let him say nothing, or he would get into a physical fight with the joker. Those were my two choices. Shut up and take it, or tell him to get punching. He said there was no other way to go, because were he to say anything, the other guy would take it badly and want to start a fight. Some of these men were our friends. One was (is, indeed) my friend's partner, and I could well believe that he thought these jokes were welcoming. Were you to respond, I would say, to a joking comment that you are totally screwed now that we're engaged with a smile and "Actually, I'm really lucky", that would provoke nothing more than a grumpily affectionate "Sappy git." No, he insisted, it would start a fight. I know men.

No, you don't. Or at least I hope he doesn't. I don't think he does, but the one thing I've been left with post-break-up is a huge, steaming pile of uncertainty. I've heard a lot of men make those jokes. I believe that had their blithe assumptions that said jokes are funny to all been met with a cheerful yet firm refutation, they would have stopped. I don't think men say these things with the intent to force other men to into fist fights. I just think there are a lot of people who think that on a theoretical level, punching women is funny. And as all comedy fans know, if your joke falls flat, find a better topic and fast. If you make a joke, it's because you're trying to be funny, and only really terrible comedians punch people who don't laugh at their jokes.

Scary, though, to realise that so many people do think this is funny, and scarier to realise you spent five years with a man who thinks that whilst they're not funny, they're certainly reasonable. Misogynistic jokes are a reasonable part of modern life, but isn't it a pain when your girlfriend takes exception to them? Isn't it a pain when she expects you to be bothered too? Bloody women, wanting to go out without hearing how men would really like to punch their partners in the face/tie them up and shove them in the boot of their car? (We had this one too - my ex's response was a long silnce and then "She wouldn't fit.")

Punching women is funny, and moving on is really, really tough.

Oh, David.

2008-12-15T21:00:00.004Z

I'm very upset at having to do this, but I must.

*grits teeth*
*takes deep breath*
*silently apologises to personal comedy gods*

Shut up, David Mitchell.

Ouch. That hurt. I am a great lover of the divine Mr Mitchell - his ranting, his inability to understand music, his ordering of David Cameron to just shut up and do things. Love him. This article, however, I do not love. I can find nothing to love about it. I can't even love that it's ripe for a smackdown, because it isn't. It's so self-importantly smug that it makes me want to hit him in the face, and since I believe that violence is never the solution, I can't go line-by-line on this one. What I can say is this:

I was offended by Brand and Ross. David Mitchell is obviously not offended by Brand and Ross. Fine. If he wished to write an article detailing why he was not offended, I would write an affectionate post asking him to please check his privilege. But that's not what he's done. He's written an article that says, several times, that Brand and Ross were definitely wrong. He then spends four paragraphs patronising us about it - it's so obviously wrong that nobody should have said anything. It's so clearly wrong that nobody should be allowed to complain about it.

Wait, what?

He then goes on to tell us: if you complain about a broadcast, you have no life. If you weren't diligently listening to the broadcast when it was originally aired, you don't get to complain (well, you can, but I will then cover you with a large dollop of Unwarranted Snide. It now comes in strawberry flavour!) Oh, and if you complained, you're an idiot, because Brand and Ross were so obviously in the wrong it would be the same as saying "Post office closures in rural areas cause widespread inconvenience."

Uh, David? People do complain about that. That's how they get them not to shut the post offices. It doesn't always work, sure, but what good will it do them to sit at home and say "No, I'm not going to bother complaining about the post office closing. It's so obviously wrong, they'll think I'm an idiot if I say anything." When we think something is wrong, we complain, otherwise people KEEP BLOODY DOING IT. If there had been no complaints at all about the incident which I will not call Sachsgate or Brandgate or Rossgate or Hahaha-I'm-sweary-and-he-sleeps-with-a-lot-of-womengate, you think they would have got together after the show and said, "You know what we did was so obviously wrong that I now feel heartily ashamed of myself. Let's never do that again"? Do you think? Or might they have thought, "That was funny. We should do that every week. Who else have you slept with, Russell?" And it can't be wrong, can it, since nobody's complaining.

What really irritates me, though, is that he finishes up with that tired old trope about how comedy is all about taking risks and they've been pretty successful in the past so why are we complaining when...zzzzzz. Sorry. First of all, if they knew it was wrong, as you keep insisting, then it wasn't a risk, it was just assholish. Second of all, do you remember that time Russell Brand phoned 999 during a gig and tied up the operator for quite some time pretending he'd seen a man wanted for multiple sexual assaults? Remember when he potentially put lives in danger and took the piss out of women whose attacker was still on the loose? Do I get to complain about that, David? Do I? Even though I wasn't there and it's quite clearly a stupid thing to do? Russell Brand is not a sensible man. He's not "taking risks", he's just doing whatever he feels like and couldn't give a shit if real people get hurt. We have to say No, Russell. Stop it, Russell. We have to tell him no every time. Because he does not get it. Perhaps you haven't noticed?

And thirdly, please see my quote of the year:

"They mocked the weak. You have to aim a bit higher than that."

Perhaps talk to Bill Bailey sometime, David. Perhaps try to understand that just because someone is a comedian doesn't mean we have to accept "I was trying to be funny" as an adequate explanation. We have the right to say no, not good enough. You get paid truckloads for this, go back and come up with something that's funny. We also have the right to say that harassing people isn't funny, humiliating people isn't funny. You would agree with that, right? I mean, it's obvious. But it's not obvious enough to stop them from doing it. It wasn't obvious enough to make either one of them think, "Hang on. Calling up Andrew Sachs and leaving message after message about how Russell Brand fucked his granddaughter isn't actually funny" or "Wow, that would be a colossally mean-spirited thing to do to him and a horrendously disrespectful thing to do to her. Let's not do it." That didn't happen, did it?

So, in conclusion, David, don't you dare talk down to me for stating the obvious. "Kids shouldn't ring doorbells and run away," you say. But they do. So we tell them to stop, and/or complain to their parents. "Post offices closures in rural areas cause widespread inconvenience," you say. Yes, they do. But they're still being closed. So we protest, and we complain, even when we don't use the specific post office in question. "Donkey homelessness is a crying shame," you say. Yes it is. So we raise money for sanctuaries, and we complain when we hear of animal mistreatment. You then go on to imply that anyone who would dare to complain about Russell Brand thinks that drug addicts deserve to be homeless, for which I would really like to give you a clip round the ear, but I can't, because your ear is currently up your backside with the rest of your head. Don't you dare condescend to me like that. Don't you dare call me an idiot for having a problem with something that's wrong. Yes, it may obviously be wrong, but it's STILL HAPPENING. Which is why we COMPLAIN. Yaaaaarrrrrgggghhhh.

I'm being harder on David Mitchell than maybe I should be, but I'm doing so because I'm a fan. And I became a fan because not only did he not need to do the easy-target jokes, he called out other people who did them. He got cross with Angus Deayton for focusing on Ann Widdecombe's looks rather than her highly unpleasant political stances, told off Frankie Boyle for making a "Chinese sounds a bit funny" joke and ranted at a studio audience for laughing at a rape joke and booing a "Peaches Geldof won't have a very long marriage" joke. This is why I love him so much, and this is why I hold him to a higher standard than those who aren't in my Dara/Bill/Ross pantheon. To hear him spew out the comedy-is-risk crap when Bill Bailey so neatly and wonderfully buried that argument in one sentence is somewhat painful. You have to aim higher, you have to be better. Yes you do. And above all, you have to stop using such bizarre logic as, "It's obviously wrong, therefore you shouldn't complain about it." Please, David. I love you. Stop it.

Note: I have decided to add a "Bill is My Guru" tag for such posts as these - when I expect more of someone, be it a comedian, a politician, a friend, or myself, Bill is my guru. This is the new motto of LLS - you have to aim a bit higher than that. I realise this is a fairly lofty motto for a blog that goes on about America's Next Top Model and occasionally stops to pick apart grammar, but I can if I want, dammit.

Ew, Hair.

2008-12-10T22:15:00.002Z

And so to the minor feminist issues, the ones which don't - or shouldn't - really matter, but hell, we know what kind of world we're living in and we have to deal with them.

Body hair, specifically women's body hair, is gross and weird and wrong and should never ever have to be viewed by the human eye. This is what we learn from a pretty young age. We see the world shocked and outraged by Julia Roberts displaying armpit hair in public, and we all know that the shock and outrage goes beyond the shameless display of said hair in public and extends to a misogynistic disgust at the existence of body hair at all.

It's bizarre, when you think about it. A woman raises an arm to wave at a friend, or her adoring public, and the whole world goes, "Ewwww! Hair!" And the world can say whatever shit it likes about reasons of hygiene, but if that had any real weight then men would be expected to do it too. Suggest that to any given man (well, except Len Goodman) and watch him try to comprehend what on earth might possess him to do such a thing. It's really a nonsensical thing to do. But I do it, just like most women do it. My mother is a professional waxer and does my armpits every few weeks. I'm a bit more lax with my legs. I have less hair there, and I'm English. My legs never see daylight. My bikini line is off-limits. I've tried it, it hurts, it's bloody stupid. My mother is also a practitioner of electrolysis, and if you think pouring hot wax on your crotch is stupid, try having an electrical current zapped through it. I only let her do that once.

This is one of those subjects where we all have an opinion and none of us have an answer. I mean, we could all rise up as one and chuck out our wax and razors and blow a giant raspberry at men and tabloids alike, but some women like being hairless. It's also one of those subjects where we all have to make some sort of compromise between the ideal and real life, and I've made mine: I will remove public hair, not pubic hair. I will remove societally-condemned hair that will be exposed to the world in general, but societally-condemned hair that remains a secret between me and my underwear will stay where it is. I'm quite alright with it being there. I don't feel unclean, it doesn't make me uncomfortable, and removing it is a real pain in the arse (or somewhere thereabouts). Any man that has a problem with this doesn't get to go down there. It's as simple as that. I've been fortunate enough never to be with a man who demanded or even slyly encouraged me to get rid of it, but now that I have been thrust back into the world of singledom with a new and fundamental distrust that I will ever meet a nice man who will accept me, I anticipate such an event with a sort of gloomy resignation. And when it does happen, I will tell him to go first. Oh, and get his back waxed. And keep it waxed.

As I've said before, I hate this stupid idea of feminine mystery, and any man I ever go out with is going to know what a time-consuming, expensive, painful and ultimately pointless process I and most other women go through in order to look the way we're supposed to. If no sex is preferable to sex plus hair, I will not go there. I will wax if I'm going to be out in public in a vest top, but I cannot and will not sleep with a man who expects to see shiny hairless me every single time we have sex. Sometimes I have hairy armpits. I'm a person. Deal with it.

Why I Love (and Now Admire) Bill Bailey

2008-11-23T20:06:00.006Z

“You have to pick your targets,” he says. “And I've realised that, consciously or unconsciously, I tend to target multinational companies! The world's richest banks, the world's richest retailers, people who aren't vulnerable. Because I think, of anyone, you can take this, me, some beardy bloke, shaking a fist at you.

“That was the thing about the whole Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross affair. It was just the wrong targets.” They mocked the weak? “They mocked the weak. You have got to aim a bit higher than that.”

From an interview with the Times.

I love Bill Bailey for a hundred different reasons, but this is the big one, which he has now handily summed up for me in a quote. "You have got to aim a bit higher than that." I loved him upon seeing his cheerily bemused comedy stylings on Never Mind The Buzzcocks for the first time, I loved him even more when I first saw his incredible musical talent in a stage show, he had my undying love forever when I saw a picture of him in a "This Is What A Feminist Looks Like" T-shirt. Bill Bailey is possibly the most well-loved comedian in Britain at the moment (I'm having a hard time thinking of other contenders), and on the basis of that he could say pretty much anything and get a laugh. He knows that. When you get as popular as he has, you don't have to try anymore. Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand haven't had to try for some time. They went too far, and will be forced to aim for a higher standard, at least for a while. Bill Bailey does it all for himself. He holds the concept of the "easy target" in contempt, not because he has to but because he is better than that, both as a comedian and as a person.

My love for Bill Bailey has grown into admiration because of what he demands of himself. I don't admire many people (never surprised, never impressed) and I almost wish this weren't a reason to admire him, that most comedians thought like this and the Russell Brands of this world were an aberration, but I know they don't and they're not. Bill is an exception, a rarity. I admire him for expecting more of himself, and for expecting more of his industry. In fact, in his honour I'm going to implement a new Thank You feature.

Thank You, Bill Bailey, for restoring a little of my faith in comedy.

Fun With Names

2008-11-21T21:51:00.003Z

I have a terribly important job doing other people's grunt work. It's a combination of copying things from one place to another and dashing round like a mad thing because a piece of paper has gone missing. As you may imagine, this isn't so taxing for the brain cells, so my mind likes to go somewhere else while my fingers type and my legs dash and my hair goes frizzy. A reasonable chunk of my daily work involves inputting employment tribunal cases to a database (it was actually all my daily work today - grrr, argh, bloody people calling in sick), and I've developed a tendency to invent lives for these people based on where they live, what they've chosen as their email address, the reason they're suing. Of course, sometimes I just laugh at their names. My juvenility has been well-documented here.

Names interest me. Beyond the base level "who would call their child Tangy?" and "hehe, Mr Vincent-Squibb" (I apologise to any Tangys or Vincent-Squibbs that may be reading - this is my problem, not yours), it brings up a lot of gender questions. Often solicitors do not put an honorific on their forms. This leads to many bemused discussions among us grunt-workers: is this a man's name or a woman's name? Is this a male or a female Alex? Is R Jones a Richard or a Rachel? And this, in turn, leads me to wonder why on earth we need to know. I mean, we ask the questions of each other because it affects what we type in - is the salutation Mr Jones or Ms Jones, all that stuff. But why is that necessary? Why do we need to know someone's gender in order to send them a form letter? What, in all seriousness, is the point?

It seems strange to me that in this day and age, we haven't developed a gender-neutral honorific or salutation. It shouldn't, I suppose, since the world hasn't really come round to "Ms" yet. My ex once told me off for putting "Ms" on a form because "that's for divorced women". My mother likes to tell me that "Ms" is ridiculous. No more ridiculous than having to surreptitiously inquire about female colleagues' marital status because I'm not sure how to refer to them in a letter. No more ridiculous than realising you know exactly which women in the office are married but have no corresponding knowledge about any of the men. It's bloody stupid. At this juncture, I'd like to throw in a complaint about "Miss". I hate being called "Miss". It makes me feel eight.

Women have a tricky time with this stuff. Whatever we choose to call ourselves, we will be judged on it. Some people think they can suss out our whole personalities from whether we choose Mrs or Miss or Ms. And then, inevitably, we have to look at the whole surname thing. This is a difficult one to bring up, as any opinions on the subject are bound to piss someone off, and with good reason - names are an intensely personal thing, and we don't want to feel we're being judged negatively when we've done what we feel is the right thing for us. With that in mind, I'll tell you which corner I sit in.

I always assumed, fairly complacently, that I would take my husband's name when I got married. Firstly, I don't like my surname very much, secondly, it wasn't something I thought I had much choice about, and thirdly, I'd heard all those practical arguments - what about the kids? This is clearly the best option for them. During my relationship with my ex, I spun right round (like a record, baby, right round) on this issue. I remember telling him I'd take his name. I assumed I would for several years. Then, when we got officially engaged, my mind started rebelling. That's not my name. I said so to my friends, and all of them laughed at me, but the more I thought about it, the clearer it became. That's not my name. Part of this, I'm sure, was my writer's obsession with symbolism - I couldn't stand the implication that I would be leaving my family, which has always been wonderful, loving and supportive, and becoming part of his, which has never been any of those things. I told my ex, either both of us change or neither of us do. We take a new name or we keep our own. And if we keep our own, then have children, they aren't getting your name. I thought perhaps my stance might soften after we broke up, imagining that it was in large part due to problems with his family, but it wasn't and it hasn't. I do like my symbolism, and I will not change for a man who will not change for me. Simple as that. My mother says I should hold off on making any decisions like this, in case the man I marry has a really nice surname. So what? I bet we could pick a better one.

You hear a lot of arguments for changing versus not changing versus hyphenating versus taking a new name, and the only ones that bother me are the ones that hinge on women as a monolithic group should do, as opposed to what's best for the arguer individually. If your name isn't a big deal, fine. If you wanted to take his name, fine. If you would never in a million years want to share a name with your husband, fine. But don't tell me that name-changing is something wives should do for their husbands. Don't tell me that women who do change are tools of the patriarchy. You think the concept of name-changing is bizarre, fine. You think women who do it are bizarre, not fine. I don't feel like any of us have the right to stomp around telling other people how they should refer to themselves, which is why I will never, ever marry a man who demands I become Mrs Hisname, for any reason. Don't tell me what my name is.

On a global, political scale, this issue doesn't matter that much to me, although I am dying to see a reduction in the various stigmas attached to women's choices in this area, and to men's choices to do anything besides keep their names and have lots of mini-Theirnames. I cannot muster up the indignation to criticise a woman for what she wants to call herself. It's her damn name. But at the same time, on a personal level this is intensely important to me, maybe irrationally so. It is strangely vital to me that you, whoever "you" may be in this scenario, cannot tell me what my name is. It must be something I have control over. I must not become a Jones or a de la Garza or a Snott-Pickling simply because of who I fall in love with. It makes no sense. My name, of all things, must be my decision.

Why Is This News?

2008-11-20T22:56:00.004Z

(I wonder if this may become a depressingly regular feature.)

John Sergeant has left Strictly Come Dancing. For the international reader: a man who can't dance very well has left a show about dancing because he couldn't dance very well. And not only is this news, this is The Biggest Story In The World, Ever. We can't get away from it. John Sergeant has quit! John Sergeant has quit! I could not possibly care less! Please tell me something interesting!

This has been quietly irritating me for a couple of days, but this has just pushed me over the edge. It is filed under "Politics" because a cabinet minister has been remarking on the story on Question Time. WHY is this coming up on Question Time? Is nothing else happening in Britain at the moment? For ages you couldn't go anywhere without hearing about the whole bloody Russell Brand thing (can't stand Russell Brand, the whole incident was terrible, but please don't make me spend any more time thinking about him), and now that's all been shunted away so that thousands of people can complain that John Sergeant has quit. Hey, I hear we're entering a recession. Apparently, America has its first black president. The BNP membership list has been leaked. I want to hear more about that, if only in hopes of more gems like this one from The Times:

"Some of the information is inaccurate, whether by error or design. One possibility is that simple codes have been used to mangle numbers. For example, the mobile for a top English scientist, said to require discretion because of his job, was answered yesterday by an angry Glaswegian who launched into a four-letter torrent of abuse."

Consider this my Quote of the Day (rather, week). I think a lot of interesting ethical questions are thrown out by the BNP member leak, but I can't read about it because no news outlet will write about anything other than John bloody Sergeant. And I quite like John Sergeant, but for fuck's sake. He's a man who can't dance. A man who can't dance has decided to stop dancing. Please stop this now. This is DULL. For the love of God, give me some actual news, or failing that, several pun-filled jokes. Anything other than John bloody Sergeant. PLEASE.

NaNoWriMo Blogging: The Procrastination Starts Here

2008-11-01T16:13:00.003Z

Alright, so let's just say I took October off. Will that do?

So, I'm back, and I'm procrastinating. It's November, which means NaNoWriMo. This will be my fifth year, and I've managed it every year except last year, so I'd like to get back on a winning streak.

I've sort of accepted, given the events of this year, that I'm going to end up writing a therapy novel as opposed to a great work of literary genius. I think I need it, and I also don't have a plot, so what's going to come out is what's on my mind.

I'm having terrible trouble with names this year. It's not usually a problem for me, but I need a name for a guy who's not very nice and I cannot come up with one. I don't want to use the name of someone I know because I am dumb and always feel like I'm casting aspersions. I have like three readers, so I'm probably talking to the air here, but how does everyone else do it?

Just for shits and giggles, a dorky NaNo tally thing:

Word Count: 3446
Junk Food Count: Half a box of After Eights and some Pringles
Dare Count: 2
Pointless Word-Count-Boosting Scene Count: 0
Restart Count: 0
Nervous Breakdown Count: 0

Whoops...

2008-09-27T22:53:00.002+01:00

Sorry for the hiatus. I have a new job and have to get adjusted to the hours. Bloody exhausted. *flop* As such, I haven't really been keeping up with the news and so haven't had enormous amounts of inspiration to write. I will try and get some stuff up within the next week.

Scared, Not Stupid

2008-09-10T22:26:00.007+01:00

I was reading this post at Feministing when I came across a comment that upset me. The article is about women being coerced into sex by their partners and having their reproductive choices denied to them, and in wades a commenter to tell us that this is off-topic but Very Important. What is it? Why, that women who allow themselves to become financially dependent on a man are "100% stupid/dumb". Then they complain when they get abused, silly women! Now, I have no idea whether this commenter is male or female, but why is everything in a relationship assumed to be a woman's fault or responsibility? To an article about the frighteningly high figures of rape and abuse in relationships, this person feels the need to add that these women are stupid? Oh, thanks.

I'm nervous about adding my own voice to this story, because my ex knows about this blog. But since he dismissed it as unimportant when we were together, I should be alright. So here goes: why on earth do these people assume that women walk into abusive or controlling relationships knowing exactly what they're getting into? Why do they assume there was a point when the woman willingly handed over all control of her finances to a man she knew was going to abuse her? Why is the default assumption not that this man is horrible, but that she's dumb? Why have we created a culture in which not only will a woman not be believed if she reports physical violence or rape committed against her by her husband, but emotional abuse is believed not to exist? Why have we decided that emotional abuse does not constitute an abusive relationship? Why does the phrase "I wish he would hit me, so I could leave" resonate with so many women?

I'll talk from the perspective of a woman who has left an abusive relationship. I had to stop myself qualifying that sentence with "emotionally abusive" just in case anyone mixed it up with "real" abuse, because that's what we're taught to believe. Everyone yells. If it scares you, that's your problem, not his. Everyone says things in the heat of the moment, you should learn to brush it off. Everyone gets road rage, and it's not like he's ever hit you, is it? Did he apologise? Well, that's alright, then. And then we get the guilt trip: how dare you call yourself abused? Think of those poor women who are getting beaten senseless by their husbands every night. How can you diminish their suffering by calling yourself abused? After all, it's only a bit of yelling, or a bit of jealousy, or one slap in the face. That's not abuse. Who do you think you are?

We don't quantify anything else this way. We don't tell people they weren't robbed because the burglars didn't smash anything, or because Mrs Johnson up the road had more stuff taken. We don't say the Iraq war isn't a war because World War II was bigger. By calling emotional abuse for what it is, we don't diminish or cheapen women who experience domestic violence. We aren't claiming to have it worse than them. We are simply admitting our own experiences of abuse, and using the awareness of what we went through to help us pick ourselves up and move on.

Women do not walk into abusive relationships knowing that the partner is an abuser. We walk into abusive relationships seeing a charming, sweet guy who adores us. We fall in love, as people do, and we continue to see a charming, sweet guy who adores us. Instead of seeing his jealousy as a form of control, we see it for what he tells us it is - a sign that he loves us, can't live without us, can't bear the thought of losing us. So we cut down on the going out, pull back from the friends who inspire these feelings, because we don't want to hurt him. We applaud him for being so willing to open up to us, for being so unafraid to be vulnerable. We don't see this as control. After all, it's not like he asked us not to see these friends. We did it willingly, because we saw it was hurting him. We chose this.

Women do not walk into abusive relationships intending to relinquish control of their finances because we are dumb and can't be bothered. Maybe it starts with something tiny. He's an old-fashioned gent, he likes to pay on dates. He wants to look after us, to provide for us. Perhaps he begins to tell us not to take money out with us. We don't need it, he pays, we know that. Perhaps we get sick, or lose our jobs. Perhaps he looks after us during that time, pays for us, supports us. We feel grateful for all he's done for us, and he says, no, not at all. I enjoy looking after you. Perhaps when we're ready to go back to work he says, no, stay. I like having you at home. Perhaps we say we want to go back to work and he says why? Don't you trust me to provide for you? Am I not enough for you? Perhaps by this point, we're already a little bit scared of him. Perhaps we've seen him as an aggressive drunk. Perhaps we've seen him scream at someone who didn't deserve it, or hit someone in a bar fight. Perhaps he's never done anything to us, and we think we're safe, but we know he has that unpredictable, violent edge to him. We know that, maybe, it's not so safe to disagree with him. He won't hurt us, but he might hurt someone else, or he might start punching the walls when we fight, the table during breakfast, the pillows when we're in bed. Does it make us "100% stupid/dumb" to just give up? Or does it make us shit-scared? Perhaps you don't think it's wrong to call frightened women "dumb". Perhaps you think we can "just leave". Perhaps you, from your lofty position on the hill, think we should have seen it coming, should have got out earlier or never got in, and because we didn't, it's just our too bad. We got ourselves into this, and we can get ourselves out. Perhaps you see no need for compassion here.

For a long time, I knew that if I got in the car with my ex, I was bound to hear an aggressive round-up of all my character flaws. If he took a wrong turn, it was my fault. If he was in the wrong lane, it was my fault. If I dared to start crying, he would scream. The first time this happened, I was shocked. I jumped out of the car at traffic lights and ran home. He left me message after message, crying and apologising and telling me he loved me. And I forgave him. After all, it was only once, and everyone has their off-days, right? This is why it's so hard to find the red line that says "GET OUT" - we can all forgive someone for fucking up once. When he did it for the second time, it was a year later. That, too, could be written off as an isolated incident. Once it happens for a third, fourth, fifth time and you're sure that this is a pattern and not just a couple of isolated incidents, the impact has gone. You're no longer outraged that he would treat you this way. You've got used to it. Not only that, but you're frightened. This stuff is scary. Being attacked, verbally or physically or emotionally, by someone you love is frightening. Being attacked by someone you know to be violent is frightening. You're confused. You thought you were safe, and he only acted that way to other people. You didn't have a plan for what you'd do if he attacked you. You don't trust him not to follow you if you leave. Your self-esteem is shot. You don't trust yourself. If someone you love can say such horrible things to you, he must mean them. You must really be that bad. He's a saint for putting up with you, really. None of this makes you "dumb". It makes you ABUSED. You don't believe you're abused, of course. You believe him when he says he's just being honest, or he's trying to help, or that he just gets this way sometimes and you just have to ignore him. If you do talk to someone else about it, they tell you you're overreacting. You lose all trust in your own judgement, and begin to rely on his. He's lovely to you in public, then screams at you behind closed doors. He tells you he only has the courage to be honest when he's mad. You trust that. You trust everything he's telling you, because he wouldn't make that up, would he?

We are not "dumb". We are not "stupid". We did not choose this. We did not ask for this. We do not want this. We may be stuck, we may be scared, we may have given up, but we are not stupid. We know that people won't believe us, or will blame us. We will be hysterical women, overreacting to a stupid fight, or we will deserve everything we get. I am proud of myself for getting out. I am proud that I am not that woman anymore. I am not stupid, and it was horribly upsetting and jarring to come across that sort of victim-blaming. So many women have not done what I did. So many women are scared, and stuck. So many women have given up. I pray that one day they will be able to get out. What they do not need is to have sanctimonious tossers calling them "dumb". If you must throw blame around, there is one very logical place to throw it, and that place is the abuser, NOT the abused.

EDIT: The original commenter has informed us that we are far too sensitive and should get some professional counselling if we cannot deal with "opinions" such as "abused women are dumb". This post is not for that commenter. This post is for those who want to understand.

ANTM Blogging: Team Isis Edition

2008-09-06T14:35:00.003+01:00

So, as previously predicted, I am now going to reverse my opinions on most of the girls (including, surprisingly, Samantha, who proved entirely unoffensive). I still love Isis and McKey. I now hate Clark and ShaRaun.

Warning: here be spoilers.

So, I wasn't expecting ANTM to treat their first transgender contestant with any sort of nuanced sensitivity, but nor was I really expecting (and this is my privilege showing, I guess) that so many of the other girls would be so gratuitously nasty. Isis is a woman. Isis has always been a woman. She wasn't legally born a woman, but she was a woman nevertheless. I'm not sure if I'd prefer to believe that the state of education in America (and probably here, too) is so dire that most people don't realise that, or that ANTM purposely brought in some very horrible girls. Over the course of Wednesday's two episodes, I heard "Isn't this supposed to be a competition for girls?" "Isis has no place in this competition", "that man", "drag queen" and "he/she". Actually, that last one comes from an infinitely more frightening sentence, which I am paraphrasing: "I come from a small town, and if a he/she walked down the street in my town, she'd get shot." And this, believe it or not, was said in defence of the bigotry shown towards Isis. I also heard a particularly odd comment about Isis needing to shave and sweat burning off body hair that I really didn't understand, so I'm assuming that ShaRaun is just an idiot. Thank fuck she's gone.

ANTM is my fluff show, my meaningless source of amusement. Tyra Banks always goes on about "controversial" photoshoots and "making the viewer uncomfortable", but this is the first time she's ever actually achieved it. I sincerely hope she has good intentions, though I worry. I know from experience and the Television Without Pity forums that some people will sympathise with Clark and ShaRaun and their bigotry. People are asking prurient questions about what Isis does with her penis (she's pre-op) and saying that of course it's reasonable to take the piss out of her for being trans! Like, hello, free speech! You know what would be a funny nickname? Guysis! Or S/He! Hahaha, aren't I clever? No, you're not. Shut the fuck up.

I am very firmly on Team Isis. Aside from the fact that it takes a lot of guts to come on a reality show and deal with horribly unpleasant people like these, she's also brilliant. She knows her stuff, and her picture was my favourite. She was about the only one who actually got the theme of her shoot, as opposed to standing in front of the appropriate background and prancing. Although, on that topic, "voting is sexy"? Really, Tyra? And what was up with the random "register to vote today" chorus from the judging panel? That might be one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen on this show, which is saying quite a lot.

I'm interested to see how the girls, the judges, and the editors handle this in upcoming episodes. I have to say, I'm not optimistic. Clark is already my least favourite contestant of all time - I am absolutely convinced that she's not just ignorant, knows exactly what she's doing and thinks it will help her in the competition to be a horrible bigoted asshole. It better bloody not, is all I can say.

Rape Is Always Rape

2008-09-01T13:57:00.005+01:00

So, this morning, IMDb says to me (possible trigger warning, it certainly upset me):

Dame Helen Mirren was the victim of sex crimes in her youth - because she didn't have the courage to stand up to men who wanted sex with her.

The veteran British actress has admitted she was date-raped on several occasions, but never reported the incidents to the police because the men involved weren't violent.

In a candid interview with Britain's GQ magazine the actress says, "It's such a tricky area (rape), isn't it? Especially if there is no violence. I mean, look at Mike Tyson. I don't think he was a rapist.

"I was (date-raped), yes. A couple of times. Not with excessive violence, or being hit, but rather being locked in a room and made to have sex against my will."

And the star believes that, although women have every right to say no to men in the bedroom, they shouldn't press charges against someone they were planning on being sexually active with.

She adds, "I don't think she can have that man into court under those circumstances."

What the fuck, Helen? First of all, no, it's not a tricky area. Rape is the absence of enthusiastic consent. That seems pretty fucking simple to me. Second of all, what do you mean, "no violence"? Rape is violence. It does not become more or less "like rape" with the presence or absence of a punch in the face. It's one of the worst and most invasive violent crimes we know of, and the idea that it's not so bad because the rapist didn't hit his victim is vile. Absolutely fucking vile.

But we don't stop there, oh no. Helen Mirren thinks that if we were planning to have sex with someone (and, presumably, if we are already in a relationship with someone), we cannot press charges if he rapes us. That would be unfair. For fuck's sake, Helen! I used to like you. So if I go out with a man I like, and he turns out to be a rapist, is that my own fault? Should I have known better? Do you really think we can pick out which men are rapists and which men aren't? Do you really think that if we consent to sex once, or even plan to consent to sex, we have consented to sex indefinitely? Why the fuck can't we take him to court? Are we just sluts, or should we know better than to ever be alone with a man?

I understand, given that Mirren has been raped more than once, that this might be a coping mechanism. Oh, it's not so bad, I probably would have had sex with him anyway, at least he didn't hit me. Trust me, I understand that. When you feel that you cannot report a rape because you won't be taken seriously, it makes sense to try and convince yourself that there's a reason you won't be taken seriously. The police have better things to do with their time, it's only natural that nobody would believe me, think of the poor women who get beaten senseless before being raped. I sympathise. But for the love of God, don't try and make the rest of us believe it. Don't buy into the slut-shaming culture. Every weekend, people go out on dates with new people. Every weekend, some of those new people turn out not to be as nice as previously thought. Women have been raped this weekend. Some have probably been beaten up, too, and some haven't, but the act of rape is the SAME. The women in the first category have gone through exactly the same experience as those in the second category - the physical assault is extra. It is not part of what makes a rape a rape. The women in the second category have not been "sort of raped" or "had sex and regretted it". It's rape. Rape is always rape. And what these women do not need is to hear more people spouting off about how they weren't really raped, and it was kind of their fault anyway for not being a perfect judge of character and for liking someone who turned out to be an evil rapist asshole. It's not their fault, Helen, it's his fault. It is not a "tricky area". Rape is always rape, and it's always the fault of the fucking rapist.

GAH.

ANTM Blogging: Pre-Show Fluff Edition

2008-08-26T14:24:00.003+01:00

America's Next Top Model Cycle 11 starts next week. I'm embarrassingly excited about it (it's my only reality show), so I'm going to start now with my pre-show impressions. There will generally be more serious stuff in these posts, but this time I'm sticking with fluff. I'll go in alphabetical order because I don't have them ranked in my head yet.

Analeigh - I didn't like her in the group shot, found her oddly compelling in her individual shot and went right off her when I saw the video. She seems nice enough, but she looked kind of ordinary in motion. I'm reserving judgement on this one.

Brittany - She seems to be wearing short, waistcoat-shaped overalls. Why would anybody do this? Lovely face, but I'm not sure I can get past that outfit.

Clark - In the group shot, I loved her. The individual shot is kind of weird. She looks like she's been blown sideways, and it doesn't look anything like the group picture. She's standing in the blown-sideways pose during the whole video, actually - maybe she's stuck like that. Currently not keen, but willing to be persuaded otherwise.

Elina - Absolutely stunning. Both the pictures are gorgeous, but she's apparently a PETA activist, which is, um, troubling. She also has a freakin' huge head in the video. Nevertheless, I think I like her.

Hannah - Boring, yawn, et cetera. A lot of people have been saying she's the most modelesque of the bunch, but I just don't see it. I couldn't stop staring at her teeth in the video.

Isis - She was my favourite in the group shot, I like her individual, but what is up with those earrings? They're about eight foot across. I think she may catch some flack over her teeth - if she doesn't, it's because they don't plan to keep her around long and won't shell out for dentistry. I am worried about how she might be exploited.

Joslyn - I don't like her at all. Nothing memorable about her. So much so, in fact, that they didn't even bother to put up a video for her. The girls I hate never leave early, so look out for her in the final four.

Lauren Brie - Why is she called Lauren Brie? Why did she feel the need to add cheese to her name? I might start calling myself Jennifer Camembert (if you say it with a French accent it almost rhymes!). Her video was one of the most boring things I've ever seen and her eyes scare me.

Marjorie - What is up with the outfits this year? High-waisted trousers with braces? No, no, no, Marjorie. Based on her video, she's either going to be adorable or extremely annoying. I just hope I never have to see those evil trousers again.

McKey - Stupid name, gorgeous girl. Her jaw bothers me a little, but as long as it's less huge than Keenyah's she'll be one of my favourites.

Nikeysha - Has stupid Saleisha hair. Her pictures aren't completely dire, but she looks about forty in her video.

Samantha - Hate. She was quite pretty in the group shot, but her individual has serious bitchface. She looked no better in motion. Probably going to be the girl I hate irrationally whether or not she gives me any reason to, and that means she will probably win.

ShaRaun - I quite like her. She was one of the few that didn't drive me nuts in the video. So she's out first, then.

Sheena - Her face is huge. And, in the video, shiny beyond belief. Don't they have people to deal with that? I'm not keen on her so far, but based on previous patterns she's got a good chance of winning. In her pre-show photos she looks like Mutya out of the Sugababes.

I liked a lot of the girls in the group picture and hated most of them in their individual shots. I'm not sure whether this is me or the Photoshopping. Watch out for the next post, in which I completely reverse my opinions about everyone except Samantha.

CICA Sucks

2008-08-25T18:43:00.002+01:00

So, as if this wasn't bad enough, we now find out that the little girl abused by paedophile Craig Sweeney will get £9,000 compensation. Yeah, you read that right. Nine grand. This child was three years old. Sweeney was on early release for another crime when he attacked her and can seek parole in 2011. Nine fucking grand.

I'd like to put this in some sort of perspective. I once broke my ankle on school property and got five grand. CICA insists that it works on some sort of tariff scheme, grading pay against injuries. I assume this must include emotional injuries, and to that I say what the FUCK? Who wrote this fucking injury list? She was three and abducted by a fucking paedophile, and nine grand is the best you can do? How much therapy is this girl going to need? How many horrendous emotional problems is she going to have thanks to this abuse? How many times is she going to wake up in the night screaming? You cannot possibly tell me this is only twice as bad as broken ankle. For fuck's sake.

You can't compensate the child, clearly. There is nothing anyone could do to truly compensate her. But come on, at least give it a shot. At least pretend like you give a shit. I sincerely hope that our justice system will keep the asswipe in prison for the rest of his life, and CICA, pull your fucking finger out. Jesus Christ.

In Case You Didn't Know...

2008-08-25T16:13:00.002+01:00

Jeremy Paxman is a pillock.

Oh, no! The poor middle-class white men! They've got no chance of getting into TV, have they? He knows of five women - five! - in powerful positions, and so obviously this is evidence that women have taken over the world, because they shouldn't be in those positions at all! How dare they? Why aren't they making the tea?

What is wrong with these men? If there are a hundred people in a room, ninety-four men and six women, women are clearly underrepresented. But the ninety-four men are all panicking because there were only two women last time. It's a conspiracy! There can't possibly be six women who are good at their jobs. Bloody political correctness, grouch grouch grouch.

Jeremy Paxman makes insane amounts of money. He sees an awful lot of middle-class white men on his job. I would wager he sees very few women or people of colour on a day-to-day basis, unless they're fetching his sandwiches for him, so presumably it must come as a shock to have anyone who isn't a middle-class white man speak to him like an equal. Perhaps that's the problem here.

I decided to do a little experiment, using the guest hosts of HIGNFY. In the eleven series of the show since Angus Deayton was fired, we have had:

13 white women
1 woman of colour
3 men of colour
30 white men

Ooh, Jeremy's right! Look at that, nearly half as many women as men! Wow, we really must be taking over. Seriously, though, I really enjoy HIGNFY, but only one black woman (newsreader Moira Stuart, who'd just been fired for apparently being too old. Lotsa jokes there)? I must say I'm disappointed. Mock the Week has had exactly one black man and one black woman, and in every show five out of six of the panellists are white men. I decided to look up the panellists on QI, too - in the first series we have Meera Syal and Peter Serafinowicz, and then no POC at all for the next four series. Wikipedia promises me Lebanon-born Dom Joly next series, but then it also promises an appearance from creepy molesting bastard Johnny Vegas, and I'm afraid that if appearances by Vegas outnumber appearances by all POC put together, I am going to have to go and scream at Stephen Fry.

So, yeah, nice one, Paxman. White men are totally screwed over by British TV.

Shitty Comedian Watch: Him Again

2008-08-22T17:17:00.004+01:00

Dear Frankie Boyle,

I watched Mock the Week yesterday. I was left with the impression that you had stumbled across this blog and were determined to piss me off in every way possible, just to show me that you're better than me. Next time, leave a comment, please.

Jen

In other news, I am now completely in love with David Mitchell. It takes an awful lot for me to watch a show despite presence of Boyle, and that's him. I'm even going off Dara since he gave out points for a rape joke. Bah.

Never Again...

2008-08-20T18:44:00.002+01:00

I was perusing the internet trying to cheer myself up, and I cannot stop laughing at this:

see more pwn and owned pictures

I usually hate this sort of stuff. It inevitably leads to LOLspeak. But "Do not laugh at sign"... Damn, I've started myself off again. Excuse me.

We Must Be Warned

2008-08-20T12:24:00.008+01:00

So, new research tells us that abortion is not as traumatic as the anti-choicers like to claim. And, of course, some people are not pleased about this. The Times presents us with this charming piece by Melanie McDonagh which protests: "But risks! There must be risks! Because it's an abortion! You're killing a baby!"

It's been a while since I've done a smackdown, so let's go through this, shall we?

She starts off by going on about how there's no such thing as "value-free abortion research" or, indeed, "value-free interpreters of the research". What this translates to is: Bias! Bias! This and all previous and subsequent information about abortion is biased! You can't trust any of it! She goes on to reveal which side of this particular argument she's on by referring to the APA report as "meat and drink to the pro-choice lobby". Hey, we're a lobby! You know, she's probably right; I welcome anything that might lessen the potential for guilt-tripping and scaremongering. Odd, that. I bet she'd think I was value-free.

The APA has concluded that abortions do not really impact one's mental health. McDonagh has to throw in a quick scaremonger about multiple abortions. She then complains that this research will be used when the UK Parliament votes on a possible amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill (how poncy are we?), which would require compulsory counselling for every woman wanting an abortion. She's not happy about this report being used, because the evidence is biased. Come on! We need something to counter the truly excellent research of Nadine Dorries! She then refers to journalists writing about their own experiences with abortion (as Caitlin Moran, among others, did) as "snuff journalism". Yeah, snuff journalism. Look at all these nasty murdering women, "bragging" about their abortions. Yes, Melanie, they're bragging. It's not as though they're doing it to break the taboo or reduce the censure that women get if they consider having an abortion. It's not as if they're writing because they aren't ashamed of their abortions and don't believe that any woman should be. Way to demonise women, though. Why aren't they ashamed of it? Shut up, bitches!

Ah, now we get to it: "My chief objection to abortion isn't the damage that it might cause the woman concerned; I mind that it kills the foetus." In case you missed that, she doesn't really care if abortion does cause huge amounts of mental distress - she just wants to exploit that line of reasoning to protect her own world view, and while we're at it, the imaginary babies. But if we are going to take the silly mental distress thing seriously, we must acknowledge some spurious studies that she's thrown in in order to make herself look academic. Apparently, there are a lot of variables. Who knew? Women are people! Excuse me while I pick myself up off the floor. It really irritates me that she then spends the rest of the article pretending to care about our mental health and how important it is to warn us of the risks, when she's already admitted she doesn't really care.

I have to admit to being highly confused by her next bit. She says that a study which concluded that there was increased risk of "depression, suicide and substance abuse" was criticised for not including information about the backgrounds of the women who had these abortions. She then informs us that some other researcher said: "there is consensus among most social and medical science scholars that a minimum of 10 to 30 per cent of women who abort suffer from serious negative psychological consequences". Oh, consensus, is there? That's what Nadine said. Surely if there was consensus, the APA wouldn't have just told us the opposite? What I really don't get about this is that she's just provided us with a handy rebuttal to that quote - what about the women involved? What are their backgrounds? Do they have a history of depression? She does say something about the APA study being criticised by pro-life groups for this and that, but I have yet to come across a pro-life group that doesn't rely on emotional blackmail and slut-shaming to get their points across.

Bizarrely, McDonagh then complains that MPs are susceptible to research from well-respected sources (well, she says "authoritative-sounding" because she is right and everyone else is wrong). And, y'know, I hate to bring up Nadine and her "reasons" again, but your side really doesn't have a leg to stand on at the moment, Mel. This stuff is coming from a highly-placed academic organisation, and countering that with the Daily Mail just isn't going to cut it. Sorry. She then says this:

"Before the recent Commons vote on whether to restrict the time limit on abortion, research was published that suggested the life chances of premature babies had not increased beyond 24 weeks, despite medical advances. This was extensively quoted in favour of keeping the limit at 24 weeks, even though babies born prematurely self-evidently have problems, or their mothers do. The study had no bearing on ordinary, healthy foetuses, yet was used to see off the attempt to change the time limit on abortion."

This really pisses me off. As I've said before, you cannot painlessly remove a foetus from a woman at 24 or 20 or 16 weeks and place it in an incubator for a few months until it's fully developed and is ready to be sent to an adoption agency. The woman has to carry that unwanted foetus inside her. She's stuck with it. She has to give birth to it, even though she doesn't want to. That's what this all boils down to - McDonagh and her ilk want to force women to give birth. Who cares, really? She's pregnant, not a person. You can opt out of any medical procedure. If you don't want it, you don't have to have it. Even if it would save another person's life, like a kidney transplant, you don't have to do it. We do not have to give birth. Leave us alone. It freaks me out that these forced-birth people think the limit should get lower and lower along with medical and scientific advances. I once had a very early miscarriage. Should the day come when I have to bring it into the hospital to see if they can "save" it?

McDonagh then protests that there must at least be a risk of depression following an abortion, mustn't there? All that other stuff is biased anyway. There must be a risk, and "isn't there a case for warning women of this?" ARGH. Jesus, Melanie, we're grown women. We know what abortion is, we know how we feel about it, and we can make our own damn decisions. Just because a woman has gained an unwanted foetus does not mean that she has lost her mind. We who support choice know what abortions involve, we know that we may or may not feel upset over having one. We do not need to be talked down to by some sanctimonious counsellor who wants to make sure that we really understand sadness. She also advocates a cooling-off period, because we all know that pregnant women are irrational, and also five years old. We shall place her on the naughty step until she sees the error of her ways. Then she chucks in a little more scaremongering, just for good measure. You'd better have this kid, you know, because if you don't, your next one might come slightly earlier than it should. Think about that! And, of course, if we have a slightly later abortion, we should definitely be talked down to by a sanctimonious counsellor, because we clearly haven't thought it through at all.

"Come to think of it, has anyone done any research on the effects on men when their wife or girlfriend has an abortion?"

GAH. Fuck off. Seriously, fuck the hell off. "You can't have an abortion because your husband might be sad"? Fuck off, Melanie. Frankly, if he doesn't support me he can go to hell, and it'll be the best place for him. It's my fucking body and no man has any say over what happens to it. Get lost.

Then McDonagh really frightens me by letting me in on her idea of counselling. Remember the guilt-tripping and scaremongering? Yeah, she doesn't want to help us.

"Of course, there is nothing magic about counselling. It depends how it's done. The best and most brutal example of pre-abortion counselling that I can think of is in the film Alfie (the original version, with Michael Caine) when the unfortunate illegal abortionist rattles through all the downsides of the procedure before pocketing his £25, mentioning, if memory serves me correctly, “the injustice to the unborn child”."

She thinks this is "counselling". She also says she'd make a bad counsellor because she'd say "Don't you realise the foetus is human too?" She wouldn't be able to stop herself. This is likely to be much more traumatic than the actual abortion, having some nasty woman call you a slut and a baby-murdering bitch, but what does she care? She has no interest in our mental health - the best form of counselling is the most brutal. If a woman left in tears, she'd be pleased. A job well done, she'd say, and possibly a baby has been saved today. Even though it's not a fucking baby. Hear that? Foetuses are not babies. And nor are pregnant women.

Today in Bad Ideas...

2008-08-18T12:45:00.003+01:00

I would just like to say that I was against the idea of a Rocky Horror remake in the first place, but if they cast Russell fucking Brand as Frank-N-Furter, it will be the most irredeemably godawful piece of shit ever produced. Jo Brand would be better than Russell Brand. Get Anthony Head! I'd watch that. Not fucking Russell fucking Brand. I'm just praying this is like the time when people were claiming that Robbie Williams was going to be the next James Bond, and that everyone will realise how shit Russell Brand is before they go and do anything stupid.

A Personal Note

2008-08-15T20:46:00.004+01:00

A quick note with regard to this post. I wrote this:

"The only thing I can do is refuse to be labelled by the people I care about. I can only promise myself never to get involved with anyone who puts me on any kind of pedestal, who calls me perfect and acts aggrieved when my looks or behaviour are not. I can only refuse to be shamed for being both human and a woman, for liking cake and sex and being picky as hell over both. I can only hope that I have the guts to tell the man who likes mystery to go to hell. I can only believe that I will never put up as being treated as less than human, even if he thinks he's treating me as more than human, and that I will choose to be alone over being someone else's nice girl."

I was writing to myself, and I have taken my own advice. I have chosen to be alone rather than to be Adam's nice girl. It feels like utter shite, to be honest, but it was something I had to do. Your regularly scheduled ranting will soon resume.

Shitty Comedian Watch

2008-08-15T18:59:00.003+01:00

Another new feature that may last three or four posts before I forget about it. I was going to title it "MtW WtF?" but I just can't write that sort of stuff.

For Part One of Shitty Comedian Watch, we have to go back to Mock the Week, which has been an inexhaustible source of horribly traumatising jokes this series, despite presence of the eternally lovely Dara O Briain, who I will shut up about one of these days. A number of people I know have stopped watching it, but I sort of feel the need to keep an eye on it, if only to discover what the BBC considers acceptable humour in this day and age. I was feeling slightly better about last night's episode - Frankie Boyle's racist joke was met with, "Oh, that's alright now, is it? They've got an economy, so the racism is OK?" (I think I might be slightly falling in love with David Mitchell). And then, of course, Boyle gets up to do his little stand-up bit. His horrendously triggering stand-up bit. I'm not kidding, I was almost sick.

So he says:

"Viagra is overrated. You know, it takes at least half an hour for Viagra to take effect. By that time, the woman has usually managed to wriggle free."

WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT??

How on earth is this getting broadcast on national television? I expect shit like this in a comedy club, but on fucking BBC prime time? Ha ha ha, it's funny, see, because you think it's just a sex joke, but then it turns out not to be, and that's funny! Frankie Boyle is so, like, edgy and dangerous with his humour! Isn't he clever?

No, he's not fucking clever. I don't understand this. You can make dumb noises about comedy pushing boundaries or whatever crappy excuse bad comedians always use, but why the hell is this considered acceptable for broadcast at a time when swear words are bleeped out? Why is the BBC continuing to screen jokes about women being imprisoned and raped? Who the fuck is running this operation, and what the hell is wrong with him? It's not funny, it's traumatising. Boyle is allowed to get away with this stuff because some stupid people have decided that being nasty is his schtick, so he can say whatever he wants - oh, he's just Frankie, he does that. That's his thing that he does. It's harmless, really, they say. Hey, guys. When a joke leaves a woman in tears, that's not harmless. When a joke leaves a woman in tears, that's not her fault, that's your fault. Frankie Boyle can say what the hell he likes at his gigs. He's on TV a lot, so we've all to come to know what to expect from him, but on the BBC? No fucking way. If programmes with unbleeped swearing have to begin: "This programme contains strong language throughout", why doesn't a show with this sort of sick-fuck content warn me: "This programme contains potentially upsetting material"? Why doesn't it warn me that I might be triggered when it has to warn people who object to swearing?

I would like a re-edit of this show that contains only Dara and David, please.

At Last, An Excuse!

2008-08-13T19:07:00.005+01:00

The viewing public in general has been informed that one of the contestants on the upcoming season of America's Next Top Model is transgender. Here she is. Fierce, no? I'm very pleased for many reasons, not least of which is that I now get to blog about ANTM without looking frivolous (not that I'm not frivolous, but everyone else is doing Serious Blogging and I feel compelled to keep up). So, you, my dear imaginary readers, are going to be subjected to weekly posts about ANTM. Don't worry, I'll warn you in the titles.

Isis, the transwoman, is my current favourite to win. I picked her out of the promo shot (the first picture in the link) along with a couple of others as Girls I Will Stick Up For No Matter How Bitchy They Get, and coupled with the fact that she's likely to get an awful lot of crap from the media in general and Tyra Banks in particular, I am now enthusiastically rooting for Isis to be ANTM. I mean, I doubt she's got a hope in hell, but I really, really want her to get it. My other favourites, as if you cared, are Elina the Ukranian girl and possibly Clark and McKey, if I can get over the fact that they're called Clark and McKey.

It's All Your Fault

2008-08-12T12:11:00.004+01:00

So, the BBC informs me that the decision to cut a rape victim's compensation because she had been drinking has been overturned.

This is what we're dealing with. Rape victims can get a poxy £11,000 "standard award", but because she'd been drinking they cut it by 25%, implying that the rape was 25% her fault. It beggars belief that our fucking justice system can hand down such a verdict - the attacker was never found, so nobody was busting out the old "you're just regretting consensual sex" line. It's simply considered acceptable to assume that a woman who has been drinking is by default responsible for any sexual crime. A mugger who attacks drunk people is accused of preying on the vulnerable, so why is rape still considered to be a two-way act?

I'm pleased the decision has been overturned, but really, what's eleven grand to this woman? After being brave enough to report her case and take it to civil court, she then has to continue fighting against the assumption that it was her fault. I don't think she cared about a couple of grand, really, but how can get on with your life when you've essentially been blamed for the worst thing that ever happened to you by the very system that's meant to be in place to protect you? I can't wait for the latest Drink Responsibly ad. Hot on the heels of the guy that drives his wife home when he's pissed and kills them both, and the guy that runs up the scaffolding thinking he can fly and falls to his death, we'll have: "Alcohol makes you responsible for rape. Drink Responsibly: don't drink at all."

I cannot believe she had to fight for this. God speed, anonymous woman.

Nice Girls Don't Do That

2008-08-11T23:21:00.005+01:00

I've always shied away from writing about sex, but what the hell. New horizons and all that.

My partner is what we might call a feminist novice. He comes from one of the least feminist backgrounds possible, and whilst he is willing and eager to learn, I'm often surprised at the things he's surprised at. I cannot and will not marry a man who doesn't call himself a feminist, so light lectures often ensue, which so far he's been taking rather well. We had one such discussion in the car the other day, after I told him about a dream I'd had the previous night. In the dream, I was on a TV panel show (I've been watching nothing else lately), talking about the time I did a talk on female masturbation for the BBC, who then cut everything masturbation-related from the broadcast. Everything I said on this imaginary panel show was then cut for being "potentially offensive".

Masturbation jokes are all over the TV at the moment (as it were), and every single one of them is made by a bloke about a bloke. I ranted gently about the fact that masturbation is considered normal for men but some sort of bizarre deviant practice for women (see also oral sex).

Adam: Well, we don't think you do it.
Jen: Why not?
Adam: Because you don't talk about it.
Jen: We don't tend to talk about having a shit either.
Adam: Some men think you don't do that.

Which explains a lot really - the number of times I've come back from the loo in a pub and a man has said, "What do you girls DO in there?!" I probably should have twigged earlier. We don't shit. We just sit on the bathroom counter wielding oversized powder brushes. I always knew that the Nuts crowd consider women's toilets to be arcane and mysterious places, and now I know why - they don't think there are actually loos in there.

The above conversation came as no surprise to me. Adam's biology teacher sent the boys out of the room when the time came to discuss menstruation, and he has long been surrounded by the sort of well-intentioned men who will respond to a fact about rape or sexual harassment with "Really? Are you sure?". We know it's not "feminine" to be sexual, or to talk about shitting, or to eat an entire pizza followed by a huge pudding and a belch. We've learned to accommodate this - we say "down there" and "powder room" and "do you want to split this?" because we're meant to be better than that. Men have these "base desires" and "can't help themselves", and we are supposed be "refined" and "elegant" and "ladylike". All of which translates into: Women aren't supposed to be human.

Since I was very little, I've hated the sort of misogynistic arsehole who refuses to be with his partner when she's giving birth because it "ruins the mystery". He wants to walk in afterwards, when the baby has been cleaned up and the woman is smiling happily and he can pretend that the whole stork thing really is true. If you're having a child together, you're having a child together. She's got the worst of it by far, and putting up with a bit of blood and screaming is the least he can do, really. Referring to the wonder of a woman's "mystery" is one of my top ten warning signs that a man is a git. He wants to believe that you don't fart, or get drunk, or bleed. He doesn't want to know that you shave off or rip out your body hair - you're a woman, so you have to do it, but he wants to think of you as naturally hairless, smooth and perfect. I'll be the first to admit that I don't have the courage to let my armpits go au naturel, but I'm not going to pretend I don't cover them in wax and rip all the hairs off. I'm not going to pretend I'm not hungry. I'm not going to pretend that I don't even notice my period (seriously, fucking ARGH. Whose idea was it to make it so bloody painful?). And I don't see why we have to pretend that we don't masturbate. Blokes sit around and boast about it. Why, exactly, are we supposed to be above it? Why are we supposed to be "nice girls"? And what the hell is a "nice girl", anyway?

Some people think I'm a nice girl. I don't sleep with men outside long-term relationships (partly because I have severe trust issues with strangers, and partly because nobody has ever made me feel inclined to do so), I've never smoked, have no interest in drugs and barely even drink anymore. My friend's boyfriend consciously tries not to swear around me. On the other hand, some people look at me and see a bitch. And, y'know, I'll be a bitch. I don't think I'll ever feel comfortable enough to reclaim "cunt" as a feminist word, but I can deal with bitch. Because "bitch" means "not a nice girl" and if there's one thing I dislike about my drugless, monogamous lifestyle, it's the idea that I will be mistaken for one of these "nice girls" who don't shit and laugh dutifully at bigoted jokes. So I have to make do with being bitchy, because if I talk about masturbation and a man hears me, that's a desperate come-on. Nice girls don't talk about that sort of thing, so since I've said it, I'm not nice - or, in modern parlance, a slut. And we all know that sluts are there to be used, and have no business being discerning. I saw "slut" defined, brilliantly, on Shakesville as "woman who is getting more sex than I think she should", which apparently applies even if that sex is with yourself.

I used to read a lot of really terrible chick-lit (it was my secret guilty pleasure for years), including a series of books in which the nasty bitch was always marked out by a masturbation scene. This told us she was a bitch because a) she was always fantasising about money, or private planes, or something equally ridiculous, and b) she couldn't get a man. In a) we see that even a masturbating woman is not allowed to actually have a sexual fantasy, and in b) we see that women only masturbate if they are single and desperate. Where the hell did this come from? Why can't we be in control of our own bloody orgasms? How come we're only allowed to masturbate if there's a man watching? Why is it never about us? GAH. Sick of having my desires regulated by some sort of bizarre governing body. OFWANK, or something. We're told who we're supposed to find attractive, and it's usually David Beckham, even though he's as dumb as a box of hair. I once tried to write an essay on the rules of attraction, but getting people to admit to unauthorised crushes was damn near impossible. I remember Adam listing several unspeakably gorgeous women and then saying, vaguely, "That's embarrassing for men. Trust me." I have a bit of a thing for John Malkovich, but you try admitting that to people in the pub.

I have no solutions, I confess. I don't know how we go about breaking down this wall that divides us into nice girls and dirty little sluts when none of us are either. The only thing I can do is refuse to be labelled by the people I care about. I can only promise myself never to get involved with anyone who puts me on any kind of pedestal, who calls me perfect and acts aggrieved when my looks or behaviour are not. I can only refuse to be shamed for being both human and a woman, for liking cake and sex and being picky as hell over both. I can only hope that I have the guts to tell the man who likes mystery to go to hell. I can only believe that I will never put up as being treated as less than human, even if he thinks he's treating me as more than human, and that I will choose to be alone over being someone else's nice girl.

Quote of the Day

2008-08-08T17:35:00.003+01:00

"Alan Sugar made his money by building the ninth best computer on the market, and the second-best satellite dish when there were only two satellite dishes. Then he bought Tottenham Hotspur. Who is he to talk about winning?"

- Dara O Briain lambasting one of my arch-nemeses, Alan "I won't hire women of child-bearing age" Sugar.

I still love Dara, but I am sad to report that this week's episode of Mock The Week contained yet another Fritzl joke. Is it me, or is comedy getting lazier?

Upskirting is "Sometimes Annoying"

2008-08-08T15:53:00.005+01:00

This morning, IMDb says to me:

Actor David Thewlis once threatened to attack a photographer - for trying to film up his girlfriend Anna Friel's skirt while she was pregnant.

The Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban star hates it when the paparazzi try to get unflattering pictures of his partner, Pushing Daisies actress Friel.

And he once confronted a snapper who deliberately tried to get an embarrassing shot - when Friel was expecting their first child.

He says, "It's sometimes annoying when a cameraman tries to put a camera up her skirt.

"The only time I've got close to hitting a cameraman is when one tried to put a camera up her skirt when she was pregnant - that's sexual assault.

"I said 'What the f**k are you doing?' I could have understood if she was wearing a mini skirt but to put a camera below a knee-length skirt with a pregnant woman...That's weird. It's illegal I'm sure."

The couple's daughter, Gracie Ellen Mary Friel, was born in 2005.

I'm confused. It's "sometimes annoying" when a guy puts a camera up your partner's skirt? It's only sexual assault when she's pregnant? It's fine for a guy to put a camera up your partner's skirt if said skirt is short?

I see two possible theories here. One, Thewlis regards women as public sexual objects. Of course a photographer will try and take pictures of his partner's underwear, why wouldn't he? She wears short skirts. It's kind of annoying, but hey, that's life. However, when a woman is pregnant, she is not sexual. She is off-limits because she's some sort of holy vessel for his seed, or something like that.

The other theory is that Thewlis has simply got used to this. Friel has been constantly treated like a sexual object (first lesbian kiss on British TV and all), probably since long before they got together. Maybe she said to him, "It's alright, they always do this." So it's not outrageous, it's just annoying. Sometimes. Photographers are permitted to take pictures in public so long as their subjects have no reasonable expectation of privacy, and we've been told again and again that if you're out in a skirt, you can have no reasonable expectation of your underwear remaining private. I find this depressing as both a woman and a photographer - you can be banned from photographing your own children, but not from sticking your camera up a stranger's skirt.

As we all know, things are different for pregnant women. Pregnant women are pure, fresh-faced and shiny, provided they're not chavs, in which case they're sluts and probably have four more by different fathers at home (© The Daily Mail). But decent pregnant women are a class unto themselves - in exchange for automatically getting a seat on the bus, you must resign yourself to your lack of entitlement to personal space from the moment you start to show (taking pictures up your skirt is unacceptable, but grabbing at your stomach is the right of everyone), take advice and stern tellings-off about your diet, exercise, sleeping patterns, reading material and sex life from stranger and friend alike, be bullied about your future sprog's name ("You can't call it Jake/Andrea! I went to school with an evil Jake/Andrea! What do you mean he is/isn't getting the father's name?"), and become an enormous hypochondriac after every single newspaper publishes contradictory reports about tiny things you should or shouldn't be doing, all of which will be cut out and brought to you by someone who's heard you're pregnant. All this you must take with a contented smile because a baby is coming. It's almost as if pregnancy turns you from a slut into a child.

I just can't get my head round a world where a man thinks it's reasonable for people to be shoving cameras up his partner's skirt and publishing the pictures in national media. It's bad enough that women have had to write it off as "one of those things": we know no policeman will bother his arse, and we'll just get a lecture on how some things aren't appropriate to wear in public and next time perhaps we could try wearing some shorts. We know people will roll their eyes at us and tell us it was only a picture of our knickers, let it go, it's not that big a deal. You go out in a bikini, right? We sort of have to let it go, because we're sick of being whacked round the head with the slut-shaming stick. I'm not saying if someone did it to me I wouldn't at least try to stamp on his camera, but if it's already so normal as to be "sometimes annoying", like pigeon shit, what chance have we got? Proper post about "letting it go" coming up soon.

Whether this is Thewlis's issue, or society's, I'm scared.

Who to Avoid, and Who to Love

2008-08-04T20:20:00.011+01:00

As you may know, I spend a lot of time watching stand-up comedy, panel shows and other such things, and I have become aware lately of a huge broadening in what is acceptable (since the BBC now seems to be allowing some quite horrific stuff and yet another upsurge in fawning over so-called "controversial" comedians. I've learned in my time not to bother with controversial comedians - it seems to translate as "this comedian will bully his audience".

I was at this show when the idea of an Avoidance list came to me. The charming comedian in question made misogynistic jokes, painted himself as a serious homophobe and closed with the most disgusting anti-trans joke I've ever heard. It was disgusting enough to make me worry about who was in the audience. Sean Lock will forever be on my Avoidance list, and it's a list I'd like to share and expand.

My list is based on comedians I've actually seen performing stand-up, whether live or on TV, except in extreme circumstances like this. I'm also doing a corresponding Safe list, which is based solely on live stand-up (Sean Lock never said anything triggering on TV). I'm taking suggestions for both lists, if anyone would like to volunteer. I would like to say, this isn't a list of everyone who's ever made a slightly unpleasant joke, and I'm not after censorship, I just want to help prevent comedy-goers being triggered.

This is what I have so far.

Avoidance List
Johnny Vegas (misogynistic sexual assaulter/rapist)
Jim Davidson (probably horribly offensive to most, but especially LGBT)
Sean Lock (LGBT, trans especially)
Simon Clayton (women - most misogynistic show I've ever seen)
Andy Parsons (rape jokes, eating disorder jokes)
Frankie Boyle (offensive to most - rape jokes and ableist jokes particularly common)
Jim Jeffries (women)
Paul Zerdin (LGBT)
Adam Carolla (women, LGBT)
Bill Maher (rape jokes)
D.L. Hughley (rape jokes and associated misogyny)
Jimmy Carr

Safe List
Bill Bailey
Ross Noble
Dara O Briain (his stand-up is totally safe - as you may have noticed, Mock the Week is not)
Eddie Izzard
Gina Yashere
Mark Steel
Omid Djalili
Peter Kay
Kathy Griffin
Margaret Cho
Jim Gaffigan
Brian Regan

They're both pretty short at the moment - I don't want to list anyone I haven't seen and my memory escapes me on some of the particularly bad ones, but I will keep updating.

Update One: Can anyone give me information on Jimmy Carr's stand-up act? From what I've seen on TV he looks like one for the Avoidance list, but I'm determined not to presume.

Update Two: Yeah, Jimmy Carr is best avoided. Has anyone seen Reginald D Hunter or Rich Hall live? Both of them seem pretty safe from what I've seen on TV, but I'd like to know what they're like on stage before I give them the seal of approval.

Link Time!

2008-08-04T17:23:00.003+01:00

Please read this. I have seen little coverage of this horrendous crime (the post may be triggering), and if we discount the articles that use the word "duped" in the headline, I have seen no coverage at all. This doesn't surprise me - wouldn't want to freak out transphobic readers, after all - but even though I am basically a trafficless blog, I can't just shut up and sit down. This is evil, and the general reaction to it is evil too. You don't get to kill a woman just because you think she's icky. No.

That's all I have. As you were.

Why Isn't She Dead Yet?

2008-08-02T13:05:00.005+01:00

I've been meaning to write about this for a while, and was reminded to do so this morning when the BBC reported on Margaret Thatcher's funeral plans. Is she dead? No. Has her health worsened? No. Have any decisions been made as to whether or not she will get a state funeral? Again, no. So, perhaps, this is not technically news. But the BBC has learnt that people love to read about Thatcher's impending death. At the time of writing it's the most-read story on the website. And for a long time, probably since her stroke or maybe before, there has been an unmistakeable whiff of "Why isn't she dead yet?"

I was born during Thatcher's government, and I quite like that I got to come into the world during the reign of the first female Prime Minister (when I was seven or so, I did a quiz which asked "Who was the first female Prime Minister?". Thatcher was the only one I'd heard of, but I was convinced that couldn't be right as there must have been female PMs back in the 18th century, mustn't there?). I was still very young when she was kicked out, so I don't remember much about the way the country was under her, but I was always keenly conscious of the fact that everybody hated her. It was so acceptable to hate her that newspapers could call her a damnable bitch with no fear of complaint - except from a few reactionary Conservatives, but who cares about them, right? - and praying for her death on stage would earn you a huge round of applause. But this was the way the world was, so I didn't think about it much.

This all came back into my head during one of my frequent bouts of insomnia, when I decided to hell with the sleeping and I would watch comedy videos on Youtube. My first port of call was Room 101, with guest Mark Steel. I am quite the Mark Steel fan; he's the sort of comedian who will be invited onto Question Time to make serious points. He makes politics funny, he makes history funny, and he never has to resort to slurs based on gender, race, sexuality or physical appearance, unlike the legions of comedians who think they're being terribly clever and edgy in doing so. Anyway, Steel talked about Bono and Ben Elton and bad teachers, and I nodded and laughed merrily. He then said he would have chosen Thatcher, but that it was "too obvious". He told a story about how he was sitting at home watching the news on the day Thatcher had her stroke - the Very Serious Music played, the newsreader had his Very Serious Face on, and a picture of Mrs Thatcher flashed up: "I must have been one of about a million people who leapt out of their seats and shouted 'Dead?!'" He went on to talk about the disappointment of it being "only a stroke".

In a similar vein, Jeremy Hardy on QI (whom I am not a fan of the way I am of Steel, but he's usually funny and I consider both of them part of Linda Smith's lot, which gets them quite a lot of points automatically) remarked, "Thatcher's grave is going to be a permanent urinal to all decent people, isn't it?" Let's look at that. First of all, Thatcher wasn't the topic of conversation - this was the first thing that came into his head when someone mentioned graves. Her grave is going to be a permanent urinal - she will never, ever, ever be forgiven. And to all decent people - she is so horrible that pissing on a grave becomes not a sign of horrendous, deliberate and malicious disrespect, but a badge of honour, and if you don't fancy pissing on the woman's grave, you're not a decent person. Neither Steel nor Hardy are proponents of the "haha, I can swear and toss out tired old stereotypes" style of what is apparently terribly sophisticated comedy, so I can only conclude that yes, they do bear that kind of ill-will towards Thatcher, and they do genuinely believe that she was such a force of evil that she ruined the country. They genuinely see her death as being 'justice'.

Why? She's an old lady. She has had no power of any kind for more than fifteen years. She is ill and frail, and looks it. Will it be 'justice' to see an old lady die nearly two decades after she last did anything? Tony Blair took us into war under false pretences, but nobody was praying for his death - they just wanted him to leave power. Now that he has, we don't care what happens to him. When he does die, there will undoubtedly be people who say "I'm not sorry he died, he caused thousands of others to die" but nobody will be hanging around his deathbed screaming for him to piss off and die already, we're tired of waiting, you soldier-killing bastard, you Iraqi-massacring bastard, why won't you die? Even from parents of the dead, this would be unacceptable and, well, pretty damn weird. Politicians make bad decisions and we hate them for it, but they're rarely criminals (well, of the non-profiteering type, anyway). Mrs Thatcher was not a serial killer, she was not a rapist, she was not an abductor of children. And I have no truck whatsoever with people who say things like "well, she raped the miners" or "she abducted our children's future" (both of which I have heard recently), because using language intended for violent crimes to describe a political decision you disagreed with is frankly vile.

Is death 'justice'? I don't think so. I can see, however, how some might think that Ian Huntley's death would be justice, or Josef Fritzl's (when they're not pissing themselves laughing about it, of course), or any other real criminals who directly inflict real abuse on others, but this does not describe Margaret Thatcher. It just doesn't. Her policies may have caused great difficulties for great numbers of people, sure, but to compare her to a violent criminal is grossly offensive. "Thatcher did worse things to the miners" is a LIE. And to anticipate her death with the eagerness of Christmas Day, to look upon it as a gift, the shiny toy in the shop that will finally, finally make you happy, finally make you truly believe that Father Christmas exists, is just ghoulish. And yes, whether you like it or not, misogynistic. The same show that laughs at Josef Fritzl's actions talks with unconcealed disgust about Thatcher and the desperate wait for her death. There are few figures in the world, criminals or not, who inspire such gleeful reflections about their eventual death, and it is hard not to conclude that Mrs Thatcher, an uppity woman who dared to believe in power for herself, is in her old age a victim of men who wish they could have cut her down to size when she was powerful and are now taking the opportunity to do so in her weakness.

I believe that there are a lot of lovely men in the world. I also believe there are a lot of down-and-dirty misogynist assholes, who know they are misogynist assholes and enjoy it. The majority of men, I think, believe that they are good guys who love women, but have never dealt with their internal misogyny because they simply don't see it. Most Thatcher-hating men believe themselves to be totally open to a woman running the country, and they hate her that much because she is Just That Awful (Hillary Clinton has seen a similar thing in the last few months: "I've got no problem with a female President, but why does it have to be that bitch? I'm not sexist, I just hate her. Jesus, you fucking hysterical feminists, what's wrong with you?"). But she's not Just That Awful. A man in her position would not be subjected to this. He might have been disliked at the time, sure, but once he got out of power nobody would care. There would be no close watch on his health, looking for signs of the Reaper. There would be no comedy routines predicated on the blissful day when he finally passed on. There would be no large-scale defacings of his image. In fact, his death would be treated the same way as that of any other Prime Minister - we would look in the papers and say: "Oh, is he dead? He was the guy with the miners, wasn't he? That was a bit crap. Oh well." Then we would look at some cartoons.

All this fuss about a state funeral, too - who cares, really? I'm not sure anybody does. People are just frightened that she'll have a funeral in public and nice things will be said. People don't want good things said about her, and crucially, they don't want her to be remembered as anything other than a useless evil bitch. A state funeral is an endorsement. An endorsement of the first female Prime Minister who managed to get elected three times, despite her apparent useless evil bitchery. The Auditor, currently, is a fair picture of "useless" - wasn't elected in, and will probably be elected straight back out again. And if she was an evil bitch, so fucking what? What choice did she have? You can't be a woman in charge and be a moderate, or be "nice", especially if you're in the Tory party, where women are there to make the tea, thank you, sweetheart. You have to fight them all the damn way. You have to take them to war, you have to tell them to toe the fucking line or you'll fire them, no excuses, no nothing. And to the watching public, that's not what women do. The papers tell us that women are embracing their destiny as nurturers, and want to stay at home with the babies. If this is what you're being told constantly, and then along comes a Mrs Thatcher who is going to do what she's decided to do, you can't use human interest stories to appeal to her feminine side, because she doesn't care. She will not have it. She is busy. People perhaps start to think, maybe she doesn't have a feminine side. Maybe she's some sort of mutant. She's weird.

And now the evil bitch is old and sick, withering away. Just getting out of power wasn't enough to satisfy the misogyny that dare not speak. She ran the country, and she ran it like a man. She must be destroyed, utterly and completely. After all this time, the scars run deep. How dare she? I hope I live to see her die, and all decent people will piss on her grave. Well, fuck that. No decent person pisses on anyone's grave. I don't care whose grave it is. And no decent, self-aware person waits with delight for the death of someone they never met. Hate her policies, hate her actions, whatever. But if you're desperate to see her die, you're just a creep.

Grammar Police: Words That Sound The Same Are Not The Same

2008-07-31T19:00:00.004+01:00

So, I'm currently getting small amounts of money from our lovely government, and thanks to this I've discovered the reason Labour are going down the crapper: their grammar is awful. My benefits agreement says:

Must be willing to:
1. Travel at least 1.5 hours to work
2. Except jobs at minimum wage.

Now, where they say "at least", they mean "at most". Otherwise they would have found me a job in Sunderland or Abergavenny. And they would have told me not to apply for a job in the centre, because that's only twenty minutes away and I have to travel at least an hour and a half (I suppose I could drive round and round and round). And where they say "except" they of course mean "accept". They would like me to "accept" jobs at minimum wage. They do not want me to "except" them. They do not want me to come in and say, "Well, this place offered me a job, but it's only minimum wage, so I can't take it. You told me to except those jobs."

Memo to the Auditor: You got lots of points for your non-bigoted voting in the IVF and abortion bills. Please don't squander them with grammar like this. Sort it out.

Rape and Imprisonment - Such a Thigh-slapper!

2008-07-28T23:39:00.004+01:00

Hi! Back. Blogger let me in without throwing a strop, so I'm still here. Pissed off as ever, of course.

The other night, I watched a new episode of Mock the Week, which is the hugely smug cousin of Have I Got News For You, but without the politics. I watch it mainly because of Dara O Briain, who manages to be side-splittingly funny without lapsing into "politically incorrect" and "edgy", which from what I've seen translates as "lazy". I used to watch it for both him and Andy Parsons, but I've gone right off him this series. For a start, he made a "John Prescott is wasting food" joke, which is unacceptable, and actually prompted Frankie fucking Boyle to point out that there is a difference between bulimia and eating so much you throw up.

I also counted several jokes about Josef Fritzl. Because that was HILARIOUS, wasn't it?? He locked his daughter up in a dungeon for 24 years and raped her over and again! Are you laughing yet? Locked up! Raped! Forced to give birth to her father's children! HA HA HA. Ooh, you're so clever. When asked for "Statements that would change the atmosphere at a dinner party", Parsons responded with, "Ignore the banging, she's been in there for 24 years!" I am furious that I paid twelve quid to see this guy. I was mildly pissed off at the time anyway because his entire act was comprised of jokes he'd previously done on the show. Grrr. But anyway, he made the Fritzl joke and people laughed. Because they're like, cool, and get references and stuff.

Here's what really threw me. Frankie Boyle, in the most recent episode, said: "Gordon Brown's wife's autobiography is going to be less eventful than Anne Frank's." And the audience HISSED. Every last one of them. No laughs, just a long, collective hiss. Compared to a lot of Boyle's jokes, this is pretty damn mild, but the audience hissed. I suppose I just don't understand why this - which happened more than sixty years ago - is beyond the pale, but a woman being imprisoned, repeatedly raped, having to give birth to her father's children in a dungeon and only getting out when one of them nearly died is HILARIOUS. Sure, the Anne Frank thing isn't in the best of taste, but Boyle is hardly the first person to make that kind of joke.

I went to see O Briain perform not so long ago, and an audience member attempted a Fritzl joke. We, of course, hissed at him, and O Briain, in his that's-not-nice-but-I'm-still-funny way, said, "Do you not think maybe it's a little bit soon for that?" Apparently, not anymore.

The Fritzl case is not like Anne Frank. It's not going to be high up in the public imagination for years to come. It's as though these comedians are desperate to seize on this particular bit of comedy gold while it's still hot. And the case broke a few months ago now - there are no more revelations, only little bits tucked away at the back, saying the children won't testify and he's looking at ten years max instead of ten years min - but apparently the story is SO DAMN FUNNY that these comedians have sat on these jokes for weeks, waiting for the show to come back on. "Oh, I know it's kind of old news now, but come on! Ignore the banging! I can't deprive the British public of that gem!"

Guys, not cool. Really not cool. I expect some high-quality Cameron gags next week or none of you are getting any of my money again, ever, even the ones that didn't make the jokes. Those that did - never again. I don't care how funny you are.

Dara? I still love you. I can't help it.

GAH!

2008-07-11T01:22:00.003+01:00

I may not be coming back.

Blogger is demanding I switch to a Google account (which, y'know, I have, but I REALLY do not like being forced into this stuff), and demanded it AFTER I HIT PUBLISH ON THE LAST PIECE then refused to let me back in insisting that my account did not exist. I quite like using Blogger, but there are tons of sites for starting a blog and I do not appreciate attempts to gain a monopoly over what I use. If I can't keep the blog on my old Hotmail, fuck it, I'll move.

It's just a blog, it's not a house. You really have no leverage here, Google.

Bootstraps Cameron: It's All Your Fault

2008-07-10T22:27:00.004+01:00

I am becoming extremely nervous about the prospect of this man running the country. I think it's more than likely, given the impression the Auditor has left on the public, but I am seriously considering leaving the country rather than living under Cameron's government. Poverty is poor people's fault. Obesity is all about dumb lazy fuckers stuffing their faces. It's terrible that we don't judge people anymore and we should be all about attacking people. Cameron himself is uniquely gifted to tell us what is right and what is wrong, with no reference to the law whatsoever. Cameron has also got where he is today by sheer hard work, nothing to do with private schools and Oxford and extremely expensive elitist clubs and being wafted into the leadership because he had hair. Good old Bootstraps Cameron, a shining example.

Listen, Bootstraps. Do you have any idea how hard it is to pull yourself out of poverty? When poverty is all you've ever known, you've gone to a substandard state school that failed to teach you anything useful, you left school at sixteen because education held no value for you, you were never encouraged to explore career options and you grow up exactly the same way your parents grew up because that's all you ever knew and all they ever knew, unless you're seriously exceptional, with brains, talent and drive, you're kind of stuck. Not that you would know.

What really worries me is that Cameron seems to think politicians are supposed to dictate a country's morals. This from the party of Jeffrey Archer! Bootstraps says: "There is a danger of becoming quite literally a de-moralised society, where nobody will tell the truth about what is good and bad, right and wrong." Erm, what? No, David. Just because you aren't telling people what's right and wrong doesn't mean the morals are leaking out of the country. We are hugely, hugely judgemental

EDIT: Blogger seems to have lost the end of this one. Not sure why. Bah.

The "20 Weeks" Shootdown

2008-07-07T00:24:00.007+01:00

Nadine Dorries must be stopped. I mentioned this briefly earlier in Feminist Issue Week, but I feel it could use a more comprehensive attack.

So, the site linked has her "20 reasons" why abortion is all bad and wrong and kills babies and shit.

Reason One: "Public, parliamentary and medical opinion is changing on late abortion. 63% of MPs, two thirds of GPs, nearly two thirds of the public and more than three-quarters of women support a reduction in the 24-week upper age limit."

Bollocks: No source for any of this information is provided. Not even a link to highly biased anti-abortion site. For all we know, she could just have made this up. And if 63% of MPs support a reduction, why didn't Dorries' previous limit-reduction bill go through? Could it be that this is a big fat lie? Could it be that the only link marked "evidence" links to an article in the Telegraph written by Dorries herself? No, surely not.

Reason Two: "High profile cases of babies surviving well below 24 weeks like Manchester's Millie McDonagh, born at 22 weeks, and the world's most premature baby, Amillia Taylor, who was born a week younger, both in October 2006."

Bollocks: Ooh, two babies. Two! That's quite the case, Nads. Notice there is no mention here of severe medical problems, or the fact that - hmmm - one cannot in fact painlessly remove an unwanted live foetus from a woman, stick it in an incubator for four months and then put it up for adoption. Women are not incubators.

Reason Three: "High resolution 3D ultrasound images, pioneered by Professor Stuart Campbell, have shown babies in amazing detail 'walking', yawning, stretching and sucking their thumbs in the womb."

Bollocks: So fucking what? This isn't an argument, this is a stupid woolly "oh, but it's a baybeeeee!" line of reasoning. Foetuses are not doing these things in the way babies do them. This is the horrible emotional blackmail of trying to make vulnerable pregnant women believe that as soon as the egg implants, it's a real live baby. It's disgraceful, frankly.

Reason Four: "In top neonatal units, such as in Minneapolis, Minnesota, 80% of babies born at 24 weeks and 66% of babies born at 23 weeks will survive. Recent figures from University College London are similar."

Fucking MINNEAPOLIS. They'll survive in MINNEAPOLIS. For fuck's sake. We're already getting into the repetitive stuff: babies cannot be removed and incubated at this point, which means the woman would still have to go through an unwanted pregnancy for MONTHS and give BIRTH. Also, she yet again links to an article in a right-wing paper in which she herself is quoted extensively. If you're trying to get the law changed, you can't be so fucking sloppy.

Reason Five: "Recent research, such as that by Professor Sunny Anand from the University of Arkansas, has shown that fetuses are well enough developed to feel pain down to 18 weeks gestation."

Bollocks: Yet again, her link is a Daily Mail article which is mostly about her. Not the actual research. Oh, no, we couldn't have that. Also, you can find one person with the title "Professor" who supports any crazy belief. And really, you'd think she could find more than one, because a lot of research goes into this stuff, and why is 80% of her data American? Minnesota? Arkansas?

Reason Six: "Mothers first feel their babies kick at 19 weeks in a first pregnancy and at 17 weeks in a later pregnancy."

Bollocks: That's not an argument. That's stupid emotional blackmail. She just wanted to get "mother" and "baby" into it somewhere. Next.

Reason Seven: "Stories of babies born alive after botched abortions, as young as 16 weeks, are increasingly common and have understandably shocked the public."

Bollocks: All this says to me is that doctors aren't getting enough training. She implies with this that actual live children are produced, as opposed to almost-dead foetuses with no chance whatsoever. Also, this didn't shock me. Frankly, I'd never heard of this, and I keep a pretty close watch on this stuff.

Reason Eight: "The number of abortions carried out between 20 and 24 weeks has been rising in recent years. Lowering the limit to 20 weeks for normal babies will save almost 2,300 young lives per year."

Bollocks: What do you mean "young lives"? It's not a kid, it's a foetus. This one depends entirely on you already believing that it's a kid and has always been a kid. I don't. I'd rather the abortion rate rose than the number of unwanted kids rose. Also, the Telegraph article she links is the most disgusting piece of misogynistic crap. The thrust of it is essentially "women are dirty sluts and unfeeling bitches".

Reason Nine: "Leading public figures including Opposition leader David Cameron are calling for a cut to at least 20 weeks."

Bollocks: Ha! David fucking Cameron is her next reason! I don't even understand why this is important. She's already pretended, sorry, stated using hard, well-sourced and appropriately-linked data, that at least two thirds of everyone supports her campaign, so why does she need to say, "Oh, and he does, too! You've heard of him!"

Reason Ten: "Britain has the most liberal abortion laws in Europe. A termination can be obtained up to 24 weeks of pregnancy - double the limits in France and Germany and six weeks later than in Sweden or Norway."

Bollocks: Erm, so what? Again, this only works if you already think it's an awful, horrible thing. I think this reflects badly on France and Germany (12 weeks? Really? I'd love to know stats for death-by-illegal-abortion from these countries), and it makes me proud that my country is supporting women's rights better than our friends across the channel. It also makes me nervous about the EU, to be honest.

Reason Eleven: "The methods required to abort a post 20 week baby are abhorrent. To avoid a live birth a lethal injection is given into the baby’s heart through the mother’s abdominal wall. The baby is then delivered stillborn or is surgically dismembered and removed from the uterus limb by limb."

Bollocks: More fucking emotional blackmail, and only works if you believe all abortion is infanticide, which it's NOT. Jesus, Nads. Must try harder.

Reason Twelve: "A recent Royal College of Psychiatrists report acknowledges a link between abortion and mental illness. This is worse with late abortions, especially those for fetal abnormality."

Bollocks: What the fuck does that mean? Well, it's a proper link (as in, it takes you to the Royal College of Psychiatrists and not the Daily Mail), and says nothing of the sort. It says "mental disorders can occur for some women during pregnancy and after birth." So, perhaps, it's just that pregnancy can be a pretty bloody traumatic thing to go through. It also says there is no conclusive evidence about links between abortion and mental disorders (NOT mental illness - depression is a mental disorder, but our Nads makes it sound like abortion gives you schizophrenia) and says nothing at all about late abortions or foetal abnormality. She's even spelling 'foetal' the American way, for God's sake. I now know why she hasn't given proper links for any of her other 'reasons'.

Reason Thirteen: "The vast majority of late abortions (after 16 weeks) take place in private clinics but are classified as ‘NHS Agency’ (ie charged to the NHS). Abortions over 20 weeks cost from £1,300 to £1,600 each and there are inevitably financial vested interests involved."

Bollocks: This one is an absolute fucking disgrace. It's like saying that hospitals try to convince you that you need major operations when you don't, because they'll get paid more. This borders on libel, frankly. How dare she accuse doctors of putting off abortions to get more money? Ugh.

Reason Fourteen: "Babies are now undergoing surgery in the womb under 24 weeks, the photograph of Samuel Armas having surgery at 21 weeks for spina bifida has received international attention."

Bollocks: This has nothing to do with anything, except that she wanted to crowbar another real kid in here. That's not a reason. It also reinforces the idea that women aren't really people when they're pregnant, because that must have been a terrible experience for her.

Reason Fifteen: "Very few if any UK graduates are now willing to perform abortions beyond 16 weeks. Almost all doctors performing late abortions in the UK, in BPAS clinics, are from overseas."

Bollocks: And suddenly, we run out of links. How does she know this? Apparently, that's not important. It seems pretty xenophobic to me - "it's those bastard foreigners! You hate foreigners, right?"

Reason Sixteen: "A Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) guideline, supporting an upper limit of 24 weeks, was published in 2004 and needs to be updated in line with the latest evidence on fetal sentience, ultrasound and neonatal survival."

Bollocks: No links to this 'latest evidence'. I maintain that ultrasound is irrelevant, neonatal survival is irrelevant given that the foetus (you're British, Nadine! It's got a fucking O in it!) will generally have to remain in the unwilling woman's body for months on end. I think foetal sentience is bollocks, too, since she seems to relate that directly to the ultrasound stuff. Notice that an actual medical body supported 24 weeks and some crazy MP with no actual fucking work to do is claiming it's wrong. Was she supporting 24 weeks in 2004? I might have to go a-hunting for that information.

Reason Seventeen: "The British Medical Association’s opposition to lowering the limit is not supported by the majority of its members and almost 1,000 BMA members recently signed a petition against attempts to further liberalise BMA policy."

Bollocks: What a confusing sentence. She offers no evidence of the limit not being supported by the majority of BMA members. She does link to the petition, however. The petition invited ME to sign it, and I don't have squat to do with the BMA. This has nothing to do with the Associaton's members at all - it can be signed by any arse on the internet. This woman is such a fucking liar.

Reason Eighteen: "Pregnancy testing kits are freely available at chemists and there is now little excuse for not diagnosing pregnancy long before 20 weeks."

Bollocks: What the fuck? Ooh, because Superdrug sells pregnancy tests, there's 'little excuse' for not knowing you're pregnant. Well, if you're not looking for a fucking pregnancy, that's not necessarily true, is it? Some women don't put much weight on. Some women still have periods. Oh, and you know that foetal abnormality thing? Not so easy to diagnose early. But we can't say that, because then you couldn't blame all the stupid women, could you? Fucking hell, the tone of that 'reason'! I feel like a nine-year-old at a Catholic school being told off by a nun for not doing her homework.

Reason Nineteen: "The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee’s report recommending retention of the 24 week upper limit was heavily influenced by pro-abortion witnesses."

Bollocks: She links to a Times article. The article talks about the report which was published (it also recommended scrapping the "two doctors must give permission" law and allowing nurses to perform the procedure), which two MPs disagreed with. Can you guess the name of the female one? That's right, Nadine is linking to her own opinions YET AGAIN. For fuck's sake.

Reson Twenty: I can't write this one out, because Reason Twenty is a picture of a foetus face.

Bollocks: Nadine has run out of ideas, and has to resort to pictures. Her brain has melted from all this meticulous research she's been doing. A picture of a foetus face is not an argument. The foetus face comes from the Life Institute. That'll convert the waverers nicely, Nads.

Then she says that all evidence points to cutting the limit, and links to her own fucking article. Really, Nadine. If "all evidence" points that way, show me some of it. Show me any of it. "Evidence" is neither your opinion nor legitimate sources which say nothing related to what you claim they say. If you're going to try and wrest control of my body and hand it over to David Cameron, you're going to have to try harder than that.

Out-of-Touch Old Gits: Women are Mush-Brains

2008-07-03T18:16:00.005+01:00

To continue with Feminist Issue Week, I'm going to yell at some people.

In this article, which I strongly recommend, we learn that Theo Paphitis of Dragons' Den fame is an arsehole.

"All this feminist stuff," he said, "are we seriously saying that 50% of all jobs should go to women?" Paphitis went on to note that women "get themselves bloody pregnant and ... they always argue that they'll be working until the day before, have the baby, go down to the river, wash it off, give it to the nanny and be back at work the following day, but sure enough, their brains turn to mush, and then after the birth the maternal instincts kick in, they take three months off, get it out of their system and are back to normal". On the subject of paternity leave he suggested that he thinks "it's a bit soppy".

Yes, this "feminist stuff". It's shit, isn't it? No, of course 50% of jobs shouldn't go to women, it's not as though they're half the population or, y'know, people. Also, women somehow get themselves pregnant (how does that work?). Also notice that he seems to believe it's totally reasonable for a woman to have a baby, jump straight out of the hospital bed and goback to work, as though they haven't actually undergone an enormously painful, body-altering experience and pushed a bloody person out themselves. Note that taking three months off is considered insane and the result of "brains turning to mush".

On top of that, the contempt with which he mentions nannies suggests that even if we could jump out of the hospital bed and go straight back to work, it wouldn't do anything to push up his respect for us as a gender. My partner and I quite like Dragons' Den and I distinctly remember watching an episode in which a woman pitching them made a snarky remark about the nanny doing the work. Paphitis, who has five kids, immediately stopped her and said, "There's no nanny. There's just Mrs P." Two of the other dragons (five kids and six kids respectively) immediately fell over themselves to make clear that they had never, ever hired child-rearing help. For five fucking kids. And Paphitis thinks paternity leave is "soppy" so God knows he's not helping out. His poor wife. Can't get any help from anyone. Looking after the kids is the mother's job and only the mother's job, goddammit. He's big and important and has businesses to run. Including, amusingly, multiple lingerie companies. You'd think it wouldn't be in his best interests, especially taking into account his personal celebrity, to make disparaging remarks about his entire target market. And lingerie shops have to have, well, bra-fitters. The entire staff has to be female, really, and he's so unconcerned with them that he's quite willing to go out and call them mush-brains to the entire world. Guess where I won't be buying my lingerie anymore. I'd write and tell him, but he'd probably assume I was just a pregnant mush-head. Screw it, I'm going to do it anyway. La Senza, Contessa, you will be hearing from me.

Alan Sugar, apparently, thinks it's disgraceful that he's not allowed to hire based on whether or not a woman wants a family (and presumably, if she says no and then gets pregnant, he can fire her), and that to cut all the crap out, he just doesn't hire women. Just in case they get pregnant. I think that might be kind of illegal, but nobody will tell him off because he's on the telly. He doesn't think it should be illegal, because successful businesses can collapse under the strain of having to phone a temp agency and ask for someone who wants six months' work. How useless is he? We all know Alan Sugar is out of touch (email phone, anyone? All the convenience of email with none of that computer/internet stuff! You wouldn't think he made his money in bloody computers), but Jesus Christ. Has the man ever left 1972?

Edited to remove incorrect information.

My Vulva Is Not Your Work of Art

2008-07-01T19:29:00.004+01:00

So, to start Feminist Issue Week, let's go with this one, the empowering vaginoplasty. I was confronted with this over breakfast on Sunday. What we have here is a doctor, apparently known to some as "Dr Sex" (I'm sorry, but he gave that name to himself, I don't care what he says), who wants to help women by cutting up their privates and reshaping them to eighteen-year-old porn star standards. This is so great for women, and he's totally doing it because he cares.

"He wants to talk about his work, which is proudly displayed in a series of ring binders. It is not my usual choice of pre-breakfast viewing. “Look at that — excess tissue along the clitoris. Now, see how clean and sleek that is. The minora: nice and neat.”"

First of all, ew. Second of all, clean and sleek and nice and neat? I'm not a bloody designer vase. But he's very proud of these cloned vulvas. What does it involve, doctor?

“I have procedures that I pioneered, trademarked and have developed over the past 12 years. Laser vaginal rejuvenation, for the enhancement of sexual gratification. Designer laser vaginoplasty, for the aesthetic enhancement of the vulva structures. I also do liposculpting.”

Again, ew. It really, really freaks me out when anyone uses the word "designer" to refer to reproductive parts. And it's always women's reproductive parts, too - men get their share of the surgical enhancement crap, but I've never come across "designer penis" ads. Anyway, this guy is a multimillionaire and charges tens of thousands of pounds to reshape and revitalise.

"A self-styled, can-do crusader for women, he sees his role as one of liberating women from the tyranny of sexual inadequacy and disappointment. By arming us with the tools for total physical dominion over our private parts, he is, to his mind, setting us free."

ARGH. Argh, argh, argh, ARGH. A crusader for women? How are you a crusader for women if you earn your living from telling them the most intimate parts of their body are weird and gross and need fixing? Also, he's not arming us with the tools for total physical dominion over our private parts. By doing this, HE is the one with total physical dominion over our private parts. He's the one with the tools, and he's cutting us up with them, to make us look like his previous works. A ring binder full of identical vaginas. It's like a really twisted version of Argos.

“My customers say, ‘You know what, I don’t like the length of my labia minora. I don’t want the small lips projecting outside the outer lips.’ We can take that excess skin away. They say, ‘I don’t want my labia majora. They’re too flat, I want them full.’ We can inject fat there. Or, ‘I’ve got too much fat in my mons pubis. It looks like I have a penis.’ And we can do that. Or, ‘I’ve had children, I’m too relaxed, I want intense sexual gratification’, so we tighten the muscle. Or, simply, ‘I just look too old.’ Because it's all about youth, youth, youth.”

Oh, for fuck's sake. I wouldn't mind betting that nobody has ever come into his office and said "You know what, I've got too much fat in my mons pubis". Nobody says "mons pubis". The idea that women are actually sitting around with little hand mirrors between their legs, poking their labia and panicking about lack of plumpness, panicking to the extent that they have to call a doctor and pay thousands of pounds to have them fattened up frightens me more than I can say. Whether it's just come from watching porn, or from horrible partners, or from the nagging insecurity that they're wrong, the magazines have told them that so few women have great vaginas, that they have to go and ask a man who knows. A feminist crusader, no less. Am I wrong? Yes, you are. You have flat labia, you ugly bitch, says the feminist crusader.

"He does hymen repair, but doesn’t talk about it since receiving death threats from religious groups."

I'm not sure what the worst part of this sentence is. I can't stand the stupid virginity cult, and since some women legitimately fear for their lives if they don't bleed like hell on the wedding night and give the man something to show for it, this is the one part of the surgery I could, under these circumstances, understand (it's still vile, though). But for a feminist crusader, this seems cowardly in the extreme. Stand up for your damn patients. No points for anybody here.

He also does a rather bizarre procedure called the G-Shot, which involves sticking collagen into the G-spot, or what is assumed to be the G-spot. I don't know much about the existence or lack thereof of a G-spot, because I am lazy and do not research. He reckons this collagen idea is brilliant and 87% of people report more sexual pleasure. The journalist amusingly points out that this figure comes from a study of 20 people. 87% of 20 people? I don't get science.

Some say there is no G-spot, or that it only exists in a certain number of women.

“I would say that every woman does have one. Reports like that . . . it’s as if men want to take pleasure away from women.”

Go Feminist Crusader! We all have G-spots that are insufficiently pleasurable naturally and must have plumping agent stuffed in there! It's totally about our pleasure and not about his profits at all! Hooray!

The journalist asks, helpfully, if this is maybe not about us and more about piling the paranoia on in a world that's already full of the stuff.

“Look, demand for these treatments comes from women,” he says. “I didn’t create it, the market was there, and I discovered it because I listened to women. Every single one of the procedures has been developed because it has been requested. And it’s going international. There is demand.”

You know, I find this remarkably hard to believe. I know that some women are hugely insecure about the way their privates look, and would give anything to have something done about it, but not only is correcting these apparent faults not a helpful or feminist action, but also this man is operating a business. Businesses must have customers. Without vulvas to inject, he's fucked. He needs us, and he must convince us that we need him too. That's what success is all about. He has an enormous vested interest in instilling paranoia, nurturing it and making sure it doesn't die. There is no way in hell he could be a multi-millionaire in a world where women aren't made to feel insecure about this and no alternative route is publicised. He knows damn well what he's doing here.

Apparently he has a couple of UK customers a month, but we have no stats about vaginoplasty over here because it doesn't really happen. He thinks (and this is fucking brilliant) that this isn't because we don't need it, it's because we're weird. He blames our healthcare system. No, he does. And this man is from the stupidly rich nation where people die because they can't afford medical care. I mean, I rag on the NHS as much as anyone, but thank God we're not in America. He, however, thinks we should envy Americans because they can spend all their money on a designer vagina - I hate that phrase with a rhyming passion - and then die of whatever when their money and insurance runs out.

"Also, the mentality of the doctors — they work so hard, they have no life. Doctors here are entrepreneurial, in the first place."

Yeah, our doctors are fucking weird. Wanting to save lives and shit. Who cares if people die, so long as they die with diamond-encrusted genitals? Seriously, this is disgusting. Who the hell thinks like this?

"It isn’t just the fault of the doctors. Some of the blame must also be laid at the feet of British women. Matlock is frustrated by the modesty of his British patients when it comes to that part of their anatomy. “My UK patients are so shy. They say, ‘Women in the UK would never talk about this.’ The attitude is, ‘That’s how it is. You were born like that, so leave it alone.’ That’s why they come here. Here, the culture is 100% different.”"

Well, thank fuck for that. How dare we be modest about it? It's not like we keep it covered up and hidden from view all the time, and only the people we really trust are allowed to see it or anything. Oh, wait. I cannot believe "you were born like that, so leave it alone" is a bad thing in this context.

He goes on about the whole tighter vagina = better sex thing, which the journalist points out is crap. We read a testimonial from a happy customer. She wanted to be like a nineteen-year-old, which makes me sad for her self-esteem.

"Back in Matlock’s office, we’re poring over pictures of a Playboy model displaying what he calls “a beautiful structure”. Matlock's hands-down bestseller is laser vaginal labioplasty, and it’s this kind of image, he claims, that inspires women. “Women bring in this pornographic information — I have drawers of it — and they say, ‘That is what I wanna see.’ That’s what women want to see after rejuvenation.”"

I don't know about you, but I feel sick. Women watch porn, feel inadequate, and come to him. He confirms their fears and takes a huge chunk of money. Women want to look like porn stars. WHY?

"Dr Toby Mayer is a plastic surgeon working in Beverly Hills. “If someone has a functional problem with their vagina, then they should have reconstructive surgery,” he says. “But who can say what a vagina should look like? I am 66 years old. I have never, in all my life, ever heard a man say,‘I saw this woman, she had an ugly vagina.’ Never. To tell someone otherwise is to promote body dysmorphia. What is the mentality of this person? It’s not progressive, it’s entrepreneurial. It’s about money. And doctors should never be about the money.”"

Read that again. And again, and again. Thank God for him. I have not lost faith in all doctors. And, thankfully, even "Dr Sex" himself has to admit that no, men do not care if your vagina looks like that of a teenage porn star. He's quite sad about it, though. We end on some horrible motivational-speaker thing about perfection, and then some even more horrible stuff about French women having toned pelvic floors.

I really hate this wave of people who say and do horrifically anti-feminist things, and then try and pretend they're trying to help us. We've had people who think women shouldn't be working, and tell us that they're on our side, because we don't really want to be working. This "I correct women because they want to be corrected" stuff has been all over the place forever, trying to sell us an image of the person we could be if only we bought this, or went there, or did that. We are supposed to accept without question that breast implants can be empowering if a woman really, truly wants them (and I'm not about to psychoanalyse any of these women, but empowering? No. Confidence-boosting, perhaps) and I am pretty worried that one day soon I will be expected to accept without question that if a woman really, truly wants this man to re-mould her vagina in his signature style, then more power to her. It's inevitable that vaginoplasty will migrate over here, but I wish I could keep it out. Whatever this guy says, we clearly don't need it here, otherwise there would be actual demand for it. We seem to run enough plastic surgery clinics, and if enough of their patients, unsubjected to the hard sell, had asked for this sort of thing, they would have found someone to do it. It's all about profit.

What it is emphatically NOT about is empowering us. It's also not about what we want. This man knows what he thinks a good vagina looks like. It's not like a haircut, or even a nose job - one size will damn well fit all here. There is one image of symmetrical, youthful perfection. What if you like your flat labia? You think he'll encourage you in that, or will he break out his ring binder and say, in wheedling tones, "Oh, but darling, see how much better you could look"? The only reason this is being marketed as personal empowerment is because, by his own admission, men couldn't care less if there's fat in your mons pubis (I don't even understand this one, frankly) - if they did care, the good doctor would be working that angle for all he's worth. We all know that what other people think is far more important than what we think, at least when it comes to our own appearance, and if there was a viable "don't you want to give him this gift?" or "well, you can leave it alone if you want, but it's the kind of thing guys whisper about in pubs" selling point, the empowerment spiel would be out the window. He doesn't care about us, he wants money. Of course he wants money. That's understandable. But for the love of God, admit you're in it for the money. Don't pretend you're in it for us, because you know you're not. You know this is nothing but a breeding ground for insecurity and panic and self-loathing and looking at as much porn as possible trying to work out what the 'perfect' vagina looks like. And then we come to you and you say "Let me help you, I want to help you." And we believe that we're wrong, and funny-looking, and can never have sex ever again because what will he say? And you smile, and you fix us, and you take £40,000. And you get to tell the whole world that you're on our side.

I am not here to be shaped and moulded into someone else's idea of perfect. Not a stranger's, not a doctor's, not my partner's. And whatever the good doctor may say about the woman's decisions, it's not. He gets to reshape and remould every woman to have the "structure" and the "lines" that he thinks a woman should have. I am a person, and I am not your work of art. In fact, I'm one of those Englishwomen you hate so much - I was fucking born like this, so leave me the fuck alone.

It's Feminist Issue Week!

2008-07-01T18:59:00.003+01:00

This week at LLS, I am going to yell at misogynistic arseholes. It'll be nice for my imaginary readers to have a respite from all this bishop stuff, anyway. I'm going to shove in a few links and go more in-depth later.

First we have this from The Guardian, about misogynistic arseholes, including one of the guys from Dragon's Den.

Then we have this from the Sunday Times Style magazine. We learn that vaginoplasty is empowering to women, and more women should do it so that we can we can feel confident with our genitalia. You have no idea how cross I am about this.

I also feel that the 20 Weeks campaign could use a little step-by-step shooting down.

I'm keeping half an eye on responses to the so-called "discrimination bill" which aims to balance out the male/female workplace ratio. If you want to see my favourite headline on the subject, go here. For the link-phobic - "White Men To Face Jobs Ban". Seriously.

And because I just can't seem to leave the poor bishops alone, we learn here that the idea of female bishops (I can't say "women bishops", it doesn't make grammatical sense. Why is it a "male model" but a "woman bishop"?) is so horrendous and awful that they will LEAVE THE CHURCH if women are allowed into their little club. "Screw you, God, I gotta run before the women show up." If female bishops must be ordained, they would like to be exempted from having to take orders from a woman. I promise I won't make this into an entire post, but for fuck's sake.

More to come, with the sad inevitability of a world that just doesn't like women very much. If by any chance anybody is reading this, and has any further links to drop in, please feel free.

Don't Worry Your Pretty Head About It

2008-06-27T14:29:00.004+01:00

I just noticed that I didn't post about it at the time (something I apparently make quite a habit of - your up-to-date news! Three weeks after it's of any use!), but there's some stuff that I think needs saying about the Lisbon Treaty.

As you may or may not know, the Lisbon Treaty was created to replace the rejected EU Constitution, and so as not to have the same trouble again, most of the MEPs decided not to put the treaty to referendum in their countries. The only exception was Ireland, whose laws make a referendum on matters such as this compulsory. And, of course, the Irish voted No. Despite the fact that all member states have to ratify the treaty in order to be enacted, I believe the current EU plan is to pretend Ireland didn't say anything, though some have suggested changing three words and making them vote over and over again until they get sick of it.

I don't understand why the EU is so surprised at the Irish No. The Constitution was roundly rejected and the Lisbon Treaty looks quite a lot like the same old thing in shiny new packaging, and nobody seems willing to dispossess us of the notion in any specific terms. Nick Clegg (aka Cameron 2.0) of the Lib Dems said the treaty was "very different" to the Constitution, and Gordon Brown said the treaty wasn't the same as the Constitution because it said it wasn't (I don't have a link for this, because it's from a speech he made on the Breakfast News). Apparently, the first page of the treaty says something like, "This is not a constitution, because the people said no to a constitution, so this is something else instead." I'm sorry, but that is hair-splitting, manipulative guff. I could say "I don't speak English" but it wouldn't make it true. Writing "Not A Constitution" (I am so sick of typing that word) at the top in big letters doesn't make any difference to the contents at all.

We simply do not trust anything that comes out of Europe these days - I speak of Europe as a Parliament as opposed to a continent - because they simply do not see the need to tell us anything. Oh, they complain loudly about the "misinformation" distributed by the Irish No campaign, but they don't offer any specific refuting evidence. The BBC informs us that the treaty is indeed largely similar to the Constitution (argh), including the same loss of veto powers and redistribution of voting weights, which was a huge problem last time. The BBC, I assume, has read the treaty. I tried reading the (insert C-word) when it first became available for public reference. I planned to read the whole thing, translate it into human language and post it on my website. I got about sixty pages in before my head exploded. It was not written with the intent of being read. I came across numerous ambiguously suspicious passages, but I could not say with any degree of certainty whether a certain passage meant the end of autonomy for national banks or meant absolutely nothing. You cannot read it and extract the intent behind it - it has been written with the express purpose of concealing intent. You have to know what it means before you read it. Were we told what it meant? Were we hell. We were told it was no big deal, just a silly little document, something about trade, don't worry your pretty little head about it. The big men in suits will take care of all the nasty words. And frankly, even if it was just a silly little document with no wider ramifications whatsoever, we do not take kindly to being told that, and we assume, quite sensibly, that they're trying to hide something. Now, I don't think it's necessarily the case that the public has to know everything about the way the country is run. In fact, it's probably a bad idea more often than not. What's also a bad idea is making it quite obvious that you're not telling them ANYTHING. Here it is in dramatised form:

The British public: The treaty is pretty much the same as the Constitution.
The British government: No, of course it isn't. We rejected the Constitution and this is something entirely different.
The British public: What makes it different?
The British government: Oh, this is just a little something about trade, not even important enough for you to vote on. Don't worry about it.
The British public: This is hugely suspicious.
The British government: Suspicious? It's not suspicious! Who's been spreading these lies?

So when the time came for the Irish to vote on it, were they going to trust the people who said, "Don't read it, just sign it!" or the people who told them actual stuff that was actually in the document? Perhaps these people exaggerated, or were scare-mongering. Yeah, maybe. But they were giving out information. The European Parliament could easily have given out a few sheets of easy-to-read facts about the more boring stuff included in the treaty, but they chose to tell us instead that thinking too much will give us wrinkles. So there's really no call for them to be surprised when Ireland decides to take the only information it's got. To most of us, the whole thing smacks of taking the old Constitution round to the tradesman's entrance and pretending it's just the potato man.

Public: We weren't expecting a potato man.
Government: Oh, come on! It's just potatoes! What harm can that do?
Public: Is he going to charge for these potatoes?
Government: Oh, sweetie, we take care of the money. Go and knit a nice rug, that would be productive.
Public: This potato man looks weird.
Government: RELAX! Jesus, you and your damn prejudices.

So, really, guys, let's have a little more respect around here. We're already vaguely suspicious of anything you do because you're politicians. Telling us not to worry about it is both insulting and counter-productive, since we all immediately start wondering what we have to worry about. I am interested to see where we go from here - I want to know exactly how respectful Europe will be towards the Irish No. I could imagine some serious problems if they decide to ignore it, but somehow I really don't see that stopping them. Watch this space - I'll attempt to make it interesting. Possibly with more dramatisations and some one-line comic relief characters.

Why Nobody Should Vote For Cameron

2008-06-27T00:34:00.004+01:00

I just feel the need to make a couple of points in regard to this, which I wrote just after the votes on the abortion limit and access to IVF were cast (both, surprisingly, to my satisfaction). I want to clarify a couple of things, and it also gives me an opportunity to have another go at Cameron.

It is frankly ridiculous that in this day and age our MPs are still obsessed with heteronormative parenting - "Father, father, father!" says Duncan Smith, but I did that last time - and still convinced that abortion is really a bit icky. We're not America, so we don't even attempt (at this stage, anyway) to outright ban it, but enough MPs are willing to go on record whining and crying about the poor little dead babies. That sentence makes me wish I weren't allergic to LOLcat speak, but I just cannot write "teh p00r ded baybeeez" as though it's a reasonable journalistic or literary device. Even after the Bill was defeated, they just can't let it lie and have to get up and hurl themselves at it again. The original Bill offered MPs the option to vote for: no change, limit lowered to 22 weeks, limit lowered to 20 weeks, or limit lowered to 12 weeks. The Times helpfully printed a guide as to which members of the Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet voted for which (and I will try and find it), and the three Labour MPs who voted for 12 weeks were all Catholic. Even most of the Tories shied away from voting for 12 weeks. I just want to make clear that there is a HUGE religious motivation behind this. David Cameron, the Tory leader, voted to lower it to 22 weeks. He also voted for the stupid "father figure" bill.

Now, there is no real reason to vote for this. It is not a medical issue. It is not something our doctors have a problem with, unless they're religious doctors. Since a vote for a lower limit would also be counted as a vote for the 22 weeks, we can rule out Cameron as a religious man hedging his bets. I suspect, too, that Cameron has a smiliar position to Blair on religious PMs (i.e. that we the British public will cease to trust you because you're a nutter, which is true). There is only one message that a vote for a 22-week limit from an aspiring Prime Minister sends out: I Am Willing To Be Persuaded. He won't vote for the very low limits because that will turn off the young women, but it also says to the nutters with their overblown rhetoric and emotional blackmail, as we can see here, that he might be talked into seeing things their way. Reason 20, by the way, is a picture of a foetus-face. I will make a couple of comments on these "reasons": several involve extremely isolated cases of one or two, and one involves surgery in the womb, which must be fucking awful for the woman (yes, there's a woman. The foetus is inside her). Babies can survive at 24 weeks in TOP NEONATAL UNITS such as fucking MINNEAPOLIS. Oh, that's a good idea. Let's just send every pregnant woman to Minneapolis! Fucking hell, this is about British law. Don't bring in bloody Minneapolis. Several reasons are "oh, but it's a baby!" crap, and one of them is that David Cameron supports a cut. Let me explain why.

David Cameron has absolutely no opinions on anything, because opinions are not politically expedient. He certainly has no opinions when it comes to this sort of equal-rights stuff, because some people don't like that and he doesn't want to alienate them. Mmmm... precious votes. My opposition to Barack Obama becoming US President is precisely because he reminds me so much of Cameron, with his vague language and refusal to vote on anything contentious. I once saw a post in support of him comparing his position to that of John McCain, and the first two pro-Obama points were "he has stated no position on this". Classic Cameron. He wants us to believe that he cares about the imaginary babies, but also about the women, which is a fucking lie. Back when he first became leader, he did an interview with Cosmopolitan, in which his reply to all the journalist's questions about women's issues was basically, "I sympathise, but I'm not going to do anything about it." He informed us that he supported the reduction of the abortion limit to 22 or 20 weeks, and that he wasn't planning to do squat about rape crisis centres (my city doesn't even have one) because "we don't have the budget." Look, asshole, if Boris fucking Johnson can find the budget for THREE new ones in London, you can do something about cities without any, OK? Since then, Cameron has not made abortion or equal rights any part of his agenda, waiting instead to jump on the bandwagon of someone like Nadine Dorries. This way, he's not pushing for women to give up control of their bodies, but it slyly shows folks like Cardinal Arsehole that Cameron and the new Caring Conservatives could well be brought around to his point of view.

Ever since Brown took over from Blair, I've been wondering what the hell I'm going to do when an election comes round, because I really don't like Brown. He actually creeps me out, and I don't really trust him. Lies and war and all, it was a reasonably easy decision for me to cast my first ever General Election vote for Blair. Brown? Not so easy. I feel like he thinks of us as being in his way. However, Cameron has made up my mind for me now. I will vote Brown because HE DOESN'T CAST BIGOTED VOTES. He doesn't vote for bizarre throwback amendments demanding that some sort of man be around to help out. He doesn't put himself in this sort of company. He doesn't vote to demand that women give up control of their bodies. Cameron, on the other hand, seems willing to be persuaded that the ownership of a woman's body should transfer over to a foetus until said foetus is done with it. I will not vote for that. It's not even his conviction that that's the right thing to do; he's just happy to allow someone else's convictions to govern his decisions if he thinks it'll get him through that big black door.

Cameron, listen up: I will never, ever vote for a bigot. I will tell everyone I know what a bigot you are, and they won't vote for you either. Your votes have been homophobic and misogynistic, and I cannot and will not support that. If you want any hope in hell of getting my vote, and the vote of young women like me, understand this: It's not a baby, it's a foetus. Until it is no longer living inside the mother, it isn't and should not be considered a baby, from either a legal or political standpoint. Sure, emotionally, it can be a baby, but you are not here to deal in emotional reactions. You are not here to legislate personal ethics. You are here to represent and protect the best interests of the people in your country, INCLUDING WOMEN and not including bloody foetuses (foeti?). My uterus is not a pawn for you to risk in the political chess game. My uterus is not a small sacrifice you may make in order to win more seats. YOU WILL NOT DO THIS. I WILL NOT LET YOU. Last time I wrote about this, I offered the assumption that you were just a nice guy who loves his kids and couldn't imagine not wanting them. I'm still willing to believe that - I'm sure you're basically a nice guy. But you cannot make political decisions based on that sort of fluff. You cannot assume, as I said before, that every man is like you and every woman is like your wife. You cannot think in the sentimental terms of "oh, but it's a baby! Aren't babies lovely!" You may be swayed by technological advancements which can keep premature babies alive, but you're then assuming that any woman who doesn't want said baby can just pop it out at 24 weeks and carry on. No, she can't. She has MONTHS left to carry that thing around. It's painful, it's uncomfortable, it's emotionally devastating for someone who doesn't want a child, and she's stuck with it. Don't chirpily tell her she can just have it adopted. Don't tell her just to hold on when what she really wants to do is scrape it out with a coat hanger. You think she won't? Have you ever known desperation?

When it comes to your vote on the "Father figure" bill, you are out of touch at best and seriously homophobic at worst. A child needs loving parents, but why on earth do they need one of each gender? From what I know of this bill, it comes in part from straight-up gay-bashing and genuine, irrational fear of Child Seeing Gays (stand up, Sir Patrick Cormack), and in part from this strange idea that men are this and women are that. A child needs a woman to give it cuddles and a man to play sports with it, or something. I know it would make things easier for the government, but even if you stretch to name all qualities either masculine or feminine, you will find that in a sample of men and women, none will have all of these qualities and most will have a significant proportion of the other gender's qualities. People don't divide into boxes like that. If you're pro-cute babies, why not allow a couple that really wants one to conceive, instead of forcing a child on a woman who doesn't want one? I assume that as an intelligent man who hopes to run Great Britain would never dare tell a woman that she should have been more careful and must now deal with the consequences. Why can't two women have a kid and raise it together, if they're fully committed to parenthood and the wellbeing of their child? Why not? Why do they have to prove there's a man around somewhere? What is the logic? Seriously, tell me. Then come to your damn senses, you whacking great bigot.

Wow, that was longer than I planned. Next entry will not revolve around my uterus, honest.

My Uterus Is Not On The Free Market

2008-06-16T23:25:00.003+01:00

OK, last one today, I promise.

I'm confused by this. Not the article itself, which makes points that need to be made about an issue that makes me very cross. I'm confused by the comments. Why are so many people saying "Oh, but of course we must respect the free market"? The free market protects your right to open up yet another coffee shop, but this isn't bad coffee, this is medical health. You're not a shill, you're providing the medicine that your customers' doctors have decreed necessary for their health. You are not part of that equation and you do not have the right to tell someone that they cannot have the medication they need. I don't understand why anyone, much less a woman, much less a feminist woman, would defend the right to open up a pharmacy that will not give you your medication. This is not about people being able to choose which supermarket they go to or whether they give their money to Starbucks or Costa, this is HEALTHCARE.

Note this:

"We try to practice pharmacy in a way that we feel is best to help our community and promote healthy lifestyles," said Lloyd Duplantis, who owns Lloyd's Remedies in Gray, La., and is a deacon in his Catholic church. "After researching the science behind steroidal contraceptives, I decided they could hurt the woman and possibly hurt her unborn child. I decided to opt out."

He decided. So what if a doctor prescribed it? This guy looked it up on the internet and he decided not to allow women access to their meds! He thinks you can "opt out" of contraception. No, mate, you're a pharmacist. You don't get to do that.

When feminists, of all people, are arguing for this guy's right to "decide" whether or not women get their medication, for his right to throw misleading information around a field in which he is supposed to be expert and trustworthy, his right to try and conform any woman who walks in to his warped idea of morality, we've got trouble, my friends. Right here in River City. I don't think this kind of thing would fly here (the sheer arrogance of "I decided" is enough to put most of us off supporting him), but Americans are having trouble holding on to their legal abortions as it is. Bush has been eroding the abortion laws, McCain will surely do the same and I do not believe for a minute that Obama will be a pro-choice stalwart (I think he's wishy-washy, light on policy and could just as easily be a Republican if he thought that would work better for him - sorry), so I can't see that this erosion will do anything but continue. And with feminists who make noises about the "free market" when it comes to their own health - if a woman needs contraceptives for ovarian cancer, as is one Feministing commenter's experience, and a scary fake pharmacy steals her prescription and sends her away, the fake pharmacy is not just screwing with this woman's health, it's risking her life. A few people on the thread pointed out how rare pharmacies are in some parts of the US, and for some people "I'll just go to another one" is not feasible. And even if the Pill's only use was pregnancy prevention, so what? We're feminists. We should be defending our reproductive rights with every damn ounce of strength we have, not making stupid weak noises about the "free market". NO. STOP IT.

I think we reach a point where we have to stop saying "but I can see both sides of the argument" or "technically under the law it might be possible for them to argue this, and we should respect that". Anti-choicers are rabid. They will make no concessions to our side. They will just yell that we're bad, we're evil, we're baby-killers, we're corrupting society, we're causing all these wars and deaths and tornadoes and things. So why are we trying to see their side? Of course we want to debate more intelligently than they do, but why can we not tell them they're wrong, they're liars, they're hypocrites, they're doing enormous damage with their deliberate use of misinformation? Why do we have to "see their point" and bend over backwards to make cases of gross malpractice like this fit inside the law? Are we that desperate to be seen as reasonable?

I tell you what, I am so sick of this whole "reasonable" thing. The word is a stick with which to beat women. Call us "shrill" or "hysterical" when we disagree and you've won, because then everything we say is born out of irrational feminine emotion and is hence not relevant. We've internalised that we won't be taken seriously if we are seen to get angry at all over any issue, no matter how worthy of the anger that issue may be, and we try as hard as we can to seem reasonable. Mum and I had the TV on while doing the crossword this evening, and we caught part of a show called Mary Queen of Shops, based on the standard TV premise of sending an expert into a failing business and making it work again. The clothes shop under scrutiny was run by a husband and wife team (mainly the husband, with the beaten-down wife on grunt-work duty), and was doing terrifically badly because the man had no idea about clothes. He also wouldn't listen to a damn word anyone else said, and rejected all the expert's plans out of hand. Repeatedly. She, of course, got frustrated. So he, in the voice of a true git, said, "Now, just calm down. Calm down, relax. I'm trying to explain." Any female blogger knows those words. They're "shut up, you silly little woman, and let the big man explain it to you" words. I've seen most episodes of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, and even though he goes ballistic in most episodes, nobody has ever told him to calm down, or relax. Certainly nobody would dare to invite Ramsay into a failing business and say, in impossibly patronising tones, "I'm explaining it to you, so you'll understand." I've seen people who think they know how to run their own business better than Ramsay would, but I've never seen anyone who thinks they can teach Ramsay a thing or two about cooking. Eventually the git gave in, the expert did her thing and of course made it eight million times better, but I got the sense that the git would have almost preferred to go bankrupt, just so as not to be bested by a woman.

This is what we're up against. We can't be "reasonable" because we are not in a world full of allies. We are in a world full of men who would happily throw our rights away, and powerful but stupid women who would happily help because they don't seem to understand that no exception would be written in for them (I don't get these women. Help would be appreciated). We have to fight loud and hard, and it's not even for progress. It's for the privilege of staying where we are. We're not making hard-won advancements, we're struggling with hard-won stagnation. In the interests of managing, if not reducing, sexism, feminists have to come out in defence of women they despise. I have found myself defending both Ann Widdecombe and Ruth Kelly, both of whose views conflict on almost every level with mine (Ann Widdecombe bothers me on a personal level as well, whereas Ruth Kelly's track record on issues of equality and reproductive rights just make me nervous), and several American feminists talk about the sad necessity of defending someone called Ann Coulter, who is by all accounts rather mad and one of the powerful but stupid women I mentioned earlier. We not only have to defend these women, we have to watch out for opportunities to defend them, because we know how pervasive and insidious sexism is. We also know that we can't be weak about it. We have to make people listen to us, we have to stand up for our cause at every opportunity, we have to fight like hell. We all know this. So why are we so concerned with seeming "reasonable" to the point of defending medical malpractice that runs totally contrary to our belief system? Why are we allowing some man to "decide" which healthcare we are and are not permitted to have, with no medical training at all? Why are we amused by them, calling them "stupid and wrong" in the same dismissive way that we talk about people who used to bully us at school, instead of using more serious words like "dangerous" and "malpractice"? I learnt a harsh lesson when the leaders of the Catholic and Anglican churches over here noticed the power that their counterparts in the US had and started digging in their heels for a little piece of that here (letters to the Times from various reverends state that all this talk by the bishops of Christian-hating and marginalising from the government and the public is rubbish and they haven't noticed anything of the sort). If it happens anywhere in the Western world, it can happen everywhere in the Western world. And when it's happening in your own damn country, you cannot afford to sit back and say "free market". My uterus is not to be negotiated by the church, the government, my family or even my partner, and it sure as hell is not on the free market. Read that guy's speech again. He's denying women their medication because he decided to. The decision isn't his to make, but we're letting him make it anyway. He decided, and we let him.

Also

2008-06-16T19:07:00.002+01:00

This is extremely good. I also want to be sure that I have it linked so that I can go back and read all the links in the article. There's never enough to read these days if you're some sort of word monster like me.

Useless Information from the Big Wide Internet

2008-06-16T15:02:00.003+01:00

Apparently Himmler has an IMDb page. I'm not sure if I find this amusing, disturbing or just plain weird. Is IMDb expanding into war criminals or was Himmler just in a lot of films? I haven't looked at the page - I'd almost rather not know. Partly because it's funnier, and partly because a glitzy database of actors and filmmakers doesn't seem like the right place for a Nazi.

I learnt this from a little news item about The Sound of Music, which I've always had a soft spot for. Apparently someone is planning to turn the real Baron von Trapp's house into a hotel, and Himmler used to live in Baron von Trapp's house (presumably not whilst von Trapp was still there). So for numerous reasons, turning it into a hotel is inappropriate. I agree that it's inappropriate, but I sort of want to go there now. Well, mainly I want to march round the fountain singing, but then I'm terribly juvenile, as we all know.

Also in Creepy House Information, the house that Heath Ledger died in was the models' apartment in season (sorry, cycle) two of America's Next Top Model.

The Internet is weird.

An Epic Rant: Tad Safran is Tosspot McGee

2008-06-12T19:51:00.004+01:00

Tad Safran just wanted to remind me that he is a useless tosspot.

I don't know why he bothered, since my memory of this is still pretty strong in my mind (Safran argues that British women just don't spend enough money making themselves look like eighteen-year-olds, is horrified about being set up with a woman he deems insufficiently attractive and is more horrified still that this ugly beast might still need to be sold on the good qualities he insists that he has - I think I may segue on to this piece, because it reads like a self-parody), but just in case, he informs me here that equal pay for men and women is "inherently unfair". The piece, if you're link-phobic, is written as a conversation of sorts between Tosspot McGee and a "reader". On the one hand, yes, get a woman in to argue with him, but on the other, get a journalist. And if she is a journalist, why isn't she credited as such? Lord knows. It seems to be a series, too, as another link on the side says "Tad and Molly: Why Women Are Sluts and Men Are Studs." I didn't have the stomach to click on it.

So anyway, let's humour him for a minute. Why, Tad, is it unfair to pay women the same as men? Why is it unfair to men, corporations and the economy in general? Do tell.

"Well, in most industries, there is a period of training, which is at considerable expense to a company. With male employees, the expense will be amortised over the next four or so decades because men will work until they die or retire. The majority of women will choose to stop working after a decade or so and the money spent on their training will be thrown out with the dirty nappies."

No, seriously. That's what he says. We should pay women less because some of them have babies and it's a waste of training. He makes no further points in the rest of the article, except to claim that men still "pay for" women (hence, they need more money) and then as his final line, says "I'm starting to think you get paid by the word." Oh God, yes, won't these women just shut up? And isn't he witty! I so want to shag you now, Tad.

I could make several arguments against what he's saying. So let's do that.
1. Tad is living in the 1950s. Men don't stay in the same job (and certainly not in the same company) for forty years anymore. Everyone chops and changes, quits for a better offer, decides it's not for them after all and trains to become a tennis coach instead.

2. Perhaps Tad intends to lock his imaginary wife up in the house with the dirty nappies, but most women actually, y'know, go back to work again. If we go with Tad's theory that the majority of women leave work after a decade, most of them don't stay at home with a thirty-year-old child wondering why they're still changing nappies. We go back, so as not to waste the corporations' precious time and money.

3. What, I wonder, would Tad's reaction be if women agreed to give up having kids in exchange for equal pay? If Tad wants a baby, he can grow one in a damn test tube. I sincerely hope Tad doesn't want a baby, because how fucked-up will that poor kid be?

4. Tad wants to know if it's fair that male and female docotrs are paid the same, since female doctors are more likely to go part-time. Tad, mate: Do you honestly want to be operated on by an underpaid surgeon? What if she is full-time and has been damned by your "all women are the same woman" theory? What if she is insufficiently attractive (use Tosspot McGee scale to determine) to catch herself a rich workaholic husband? What if she has to work eighty-hour weeks to keep herself afloat? Do you want to be cut open by that woman? I'm giving Tad the benefit of the doubt and assuming that he doesn't think women can't be surgeons, more for my sanity than anything else.

5. If a man opts to become a stay-at-home dad, can we ask for some of our money back? After all, he, by virtue of being male, cheated us into thinking he would work FOREVER, and now he's not.

6. Tad says men pay for women. Tad also says that the American women he knows spend about £850 a month all told on beauty and fitness, and remarks with disgust that the British women he knows don't even spend £700 a year on that stuff. Once again I am proud to be British, but Tad cites as an example the old "well, women don't pay in restaurants" schtick. If Tad is spending £850 on women's meals in a month, he's even more fucking pretentious than I thought. Also, if I went out to dinner with him, I wouldn't fucking pay either. He would a) have expected me to spend that much looking attractive enough for him to be seen with (his equivalent is "putting on a clean shirt") and b) have already cost me about half my IQ from having to listen to him all night. As we learn in the last line, Tad isn't keen on women getting chatty when he has some VITALLY IMPORTANT MAN-KNOWLEDGE to impart to the silly little women.

7. Tad is a whiny, entitled little ass who knows full well it makes no difference whatsoever to him if the woman he's arguing with in the article (whose responses I haven't copied out because she is mostly just telling him he's a useless fucker, which is fair enough) is getting paid the same amount he is. It makes no difference whatsoever to him or any of the rich idiots that he knows if everybody operates on the same scale of pay. He knows that, and he's not arguing from any objective position of fairness. He just likes having that superiority. He likes to know that he's earning more than his date, because it means his opinions are worth more and he doesn't have to listen to her. Entitled little brats like to remain entitled little brats, and he doesn't want any uppity woman coming along and reminding him that he's not that special.

As we move on to the earlier and most amusingly parodic of the two articles, I remind you that were Tad not earning more than the women he dates, were he not more so-say successful than them, he would have much less of an inbuilt 'right' to demand that women devote all their time, money and energy into being sexually attractive for him. Well, American women already do that, he notes with approval, but then they spoil it by being - gasp! - shallow. How on earth do you manage to spend £850 a month on your looks and not be shallow (or, at least, Tad's version of shallow)? Let's look at this, shall we?

We start off with: Bridget Jones is soooooo gross. And I bet all you women reckon that you're going to have Hugh Grant and Colin Firth fighting over you, right? Well, you won't, because you're all gross too. Ha! Take that!

Then we move on to: eighteen-year-olds are hot. Why don't you stay eighteen? That's what I'd like. Stupid bitches. I sense that none of this article was directed at me, because I never resembled the "sublime rose" he describes in tones that are, frankly, gross for a man twice the age of these girls. "They dressed as if there would be a prize at the end of the night for the girl wearing the least" says Tad, dreamily. Ooh, yum. Women are Tad's shiny, naked objects. Then he goes to America and comes back and horrors! The gorgeous women have been eaten by fat lager-swilling slobs! No, seriously, that's what he says.

We get into what Tad considers to be "standard beauty maintenance" and a "simple and sensible investment in [a woman's] future". Here's what he lists:
haircut, highlights, manicure, pedicure, waxing, tanning, make-up, facials, teeth whitening, military fitness, spinning sessions, vikram yoga, Pilates, deep-tissue sports massage, personal training, the occasional spa day, a week-long “bikini boot camp” in Mexico at the start of every summer and seasonal splurges on personal shoppers and clothing. Apparently all his female friends in America do all this. I think that's bullshit, largely because I find it hard to believe he has any female friends at all.

Then comes my favourite bit: Tad's disastrous date with a woman not groomed to his exacting standards. "Now, I'm not saying I'm the greatest prize out there..." says Tad modestly, sort of ruining it by making clear in the rest of the article that yes, that is exactly what he's saying. Remember the list of all the things women were supposed to spending money on as he says "...at least I'd put on a clean shirt, shaved and brushed my teeth." Brushed your teeth, Tad? Brushed? Ooh, big spender. Anyway, apparently this girl (whose name he has kindly changed) used to be stunning, but now had the audacity to not be dressed like a slut, not be a gym bunny and not smell the way he would prefer. "I was hurt," says Tad, "that my friends thought I'd be remotely interested in Sophie." He was hurt! Guys, you hurt him! Setting him up with a nice woman like that! How could you! Then one of his friends attempts to show off Tad's successes to Sophie, in order, I assume, to demonstrate that they weren't just competing in a reality show called Who Can Set Up Their Friend With The Biggest Git. Tad, outraged: "I could not believe it. She was selling ME to HER!?" Yeah, I'm totally with him. I mean, obviously she was a moose (I know because Tad told me, in euphemistic language that was presumably meant to be funny), how dare she not grab on to ANY MAN who comes her way? How dare she have standards? I also think it's fairly clear that he was acting like the Biggest Git and the friends felt that some selling of this horrible tosser was needed. He informs us snottily that Americans don't touch carbs after 2pm, which is why everyone in the States is married and nobody in Britain is. It's also why the States is renowned for being the thinnest nation on earth and not at all characterised by the words "fat" and "stupid". He actually blames carbs for Sophie's single status, as opposed to the fact that her friends obviously hate her and keep setting her up with horrible people.

Tad, ever the egalitarian, does go on to blame the friends (well, the woman, as is only right)... for not "managing his expectations, whatever the fuck that means. He calls Sophie an "orc" which might be the least clever insult I've ever seen in print. He then compares Helena Bonham-Carter to Michelle Pfeiffer, calling them "equivalent". Erm, no, dear. There is no such thing as an "equivalent" to Helena Bonham-Carter. He quite hilariously implies that you never see American celebrity women looking rough. Tad lives in a very strange world.

It's all the fault of British parents, of course, for not shaming their little girls about their looks. Tad then talks about going for a manicure (HA! I'm sorry, men can get manicures if they want, etc, but HA!) and nobody wanting to talk to him. Of course they didn't, you asswipe. You were in fucking Britain and you were a creepy man trying to talk to strangers in a manicurists'. You claim to have lived here since you were three - have you learned nothing? We don't DO THAT. Who knows, they might have recognised you. "Oh, fuck, it's Tosspot McGee. Pretend you're Cantonese, quick."

It's also our friends' fault, because we're nice to each other. We don't tell our friends they look like shit, or need to lose weight, or are wearing clothes we don't like. First of all, I have very English friends who have done all three of these both to me and to other people. And no, I wasn't fucking grateful, and you know why, Tad? You know why? BECAUSE I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU THINK. I don't care if you think I'm fat, or unattractive, or dressed badly. I just couldn't give a shit. I'm terribly sorry. When you go on to say that yes, we like shoes, but men don't care about shoes, WE DON'T CARE IF YOU CARE ABOUT SHOES. I have never in my life put on a pair of shoes and thought, "Hmmm, I wonder if these will make me more attractive to that git over there." I've never even thought, "Hmmm, I wonder if my partner will like these shoes." Hear that, Tad? I have never in my life bought shoes with a man in mind, and I don't know any woman that has, unless her man is a fetishist. We may think, "I wonder if he'll like this extremely hot piece of lingerie" (answer: yes. Every time, yes. Even though I've never been to a spinning class in my life), but a lot of us don't even care what you think of our clothes, and we certainly don't care what you think of our shoes. Shoes are for us, not for you, hence all the time and money we selfish Brits spend on them.

It's also just as off-putting if you're absolutely perfect except for one minor flaw. So, Tad, if that's just as off-putting, why should we bother at all? We obviously can't bring ourselves up to your level.

Tosspot McGee concludes by reassuring us British girls that we're miles ahead in the personality stakes, and devotes several misogynistic paragraphs to talking shit about the American women he was praising to the skies at the beginning of the article (remember that? All the way up there? I am pissed off today, I tell you). They're vapid, they have no social skills, they ask too many questions, they're annoying and confrontational and think sleeping with men makes the sexes equal (Tad sniggers a little, because of course nothing could make a woman equal to him), they're grasping, they're shallow, they've all got new faces from the plastic surgeon that they lie about. Ew.

He assures us that we're wonderful, we really are, "[b]ut when it comes to making the all-important first impression, do you really want it to be, “I’ll bet she was really hot ten years ago”? I couldn't give a fuck, Tad. I couldn't give a fuck if your first impression of me was "Ugh, fucking hell, that's a moose and a half." I'll say it one last time: WE AREN'T DOING IT FOR YOU, YOU ODIOUS PIECE OF CRAP. I don't wear make-up in the hope that some loser will think I'm hot. I am not going to starve myself so that some man who thinks he's entitled to a hot girl will think he's entitled to me. Also, your standards are YOUR fucking standards. Most men (I can generalise too) can't think of anything worse than a woman who spends a grand a month on her looks. No woman has to spend a grand a month on her looks to be thought of as hot. Poisonous people like you (and you are poisonous, Tad) try to convince us that we have to do it, no man will want us if we don't do it, but I've discovered the big secret: It's a huge fucking lie. My partner doesn't care if I've waxed or not. He doesn't notice if I put on a few pounds. He doesn't care how nicely-shaped my nails are. Unwaxed, period-bloat, straggly-haired, naked-faced me doesn't repulse him at all; he seems to quite like it. None of this stuff matters to most men. And frankly, if he did tell me to wax, I'd tell him to go first. It's taken a long time learning, and maybe I'm not quite there emotionally, but the logic stands, Tad, that I don't have to do squat to be attractive to men. Nor does this Sophie you were so scornful of. I can guarantee you that out there somewhere are several men who know her and think you're absolutely nuts. WE DON'T HAVE TO TRY. And when we do try, it ain't for you. We buy nice shoes because they make us feel good. We're more likely to put on a face full of make-up for other women than for you.

It upsets me that Tosspot McGee wrote all this, snark potential aside, because I remember being in a place where his words would have stung me, and perhaps he would have been successful in convincing me that I should "take better care of myself" and try to mould myself into his vision of attractiveness, and I am so grateful that I didn't see this then. It upsets me now because so many women still are. And he knows it, the nasty little tosspot. He knows he can convince women to change for him if he can get them to believe that he deserves to get what he wants. If he can pass himself off as someone so utterly wonderful that all women are throwing themselves at his feet - and thereby stand in for all men, who all expect this kind of care and attention to looking the way you're told to look - he can make us believe that he has all the power and we have none. Men like Tad look at the world as if there's only one bachelor left and all the hot women must compete for him. Women like me must stand atop Tad's roof and scream, "IT'S A LIE!"

And I have. My fingers are bloody exhausted.

It's Not Just Me

2008-06-10T20:18:00.003+01:00

Other people are annoyed by whingeing bishops too. I was gratified to see that several vicars had written in to the Times to say that they aren't being persecuted at all and these people are being daft. On the negative side, if the ordinary ministers aren't feeling it, another mark has to go in the "We Want More Power" column. Sigh.

I have some more substantial ideas for posts all ready, but they might need some work. Hopefully tomorrow I can provide some fun quiz facts.

Hmph.

2008-06-08T22:41:00.003+01:00

I found this lying around on a comments page:

"We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits." - (MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 5/1/03)

It has been made clear to me on multiple occasions that this Chris Matthews person is a bigoted craphole, as evidenced by "the women like this war" (who are "the women"? The strange and shady group lurking in the shadows with their love of war and their need for diamond-buying heroes). However, I will have to agree that generally speaking, we can think of nothing worse than being governed by a "hero".

In other news, I am fifty pages into my script and terribly conflicted about it. I don't write action. I'm not an action girl. Since my stuff revolves around people and not exploding buses, I have yet again forgotten to put in any actual happenings. Dammit. I must finish it though, rubbish or not, because I need to get these damn characters out of my head and work out a basic plan for NaNo, which I know is months away, but I'm going to try going in with a plan this time. I win when I know what I'm doing, or someone else has given me an idea. Winging it doesn't work for 50,000 words and I should know that by now.

Sex and the City and Me

2008-06-07T00:17:00.005+01:00

First of all, what happened to the font? It changed. I didn't ask it to. Stupid Blogger.

In small news, there will be spoilers. I warned ya. I went to see Sex and the City despite not watching the TV series ever. Because I'm such a gore-and-violence wimp, I have to jump on pretty much anything else if I want to go to the cinema. I quite liked it, but at the same time it kind of depressed me.

OK, the likes. I liked seeing a film about women. I like seeing a film about women who look like actual people (if very attractive actual people) as opposed to the sort of waxy idols you usually find yourself watching. I liked all the insane clothes. I really liked them all piled on the bed listening to Walk This Way while Carrie tried on a load of her old clothes. I liked the little dig at the iPhone, which looks daft to me. I liked Samantha's story arc. I loved that she bought the dog because it humped things.

The dislikes. Small ones first. The bag Carrie bought for her assistant was beyond gross. I'm sorry, but if she's an extremely poor label fanatic, get her a classic bag. Don't get her a nasty pink/purple/gold piece of ick. I know she loved it, but ew. I didn't like either of Carrie's wedding dresses. Even I, with my extremely limited knowledge of the show, know about her normal taste in clothes. Nicely put, it's 'eclectic', otherwise, it's 'bonkers'. All the Vogue wedding dresses were nasty, but the one she chose was big and white and boring. Yes, she wore a bird in her hair, so what? And when she actually did get married, it was worse. It was boring, it was matronly, it was a bad length on her, and considering how big a deal they make out of Carrie being a label queen, it seemed wrong to me that she got a 'no-name' dress. Even with a pair of blue shoes, it was boring.

I didn't like Big at all. His acting was wooden, his character was stilted and unsympathetic, and were his eyebrows always that pointy? It was really distracting. He looked kind of evil all the way through.

More seriously, I didn't like that the only couple not to break up at some point were barely ever seen together, and I really didn't like that Miranda and Carrie both forgave their errant men. One sleeps with another woman (which everyone else in the film makes out to be not much of a problem), and one pisses off and abandons her at the altar, and they get forgiven because love is all great and stuff. Oh, and it was kind of the woman's fault too, y'know, for not having sex enough and for wanting a big wedding.

I mean, I get that if your partner goes off sex it must be frustrating. But the film was striving to inform me that Miranda had to take some of the responsibility for Steve's cheating. Why? Why did we have to hear "you didn't give me much of a choice" so many times? I have zero tolerance for cheating at the best of times, but if my partner cheated on me and then tried to blame it, in whole or in part, on what I was or wasn't doing, I would kill him. If my friends tried to tell me it was no big deal and I should stop being such a drama queen, they would be in huge amounts of trouble. I get that they have a long history, and a child, but I just do not understand the mindset that adultery is less bad or less significant if you've been together a long time. I really don't understand.

And really, forgiving a man for fucking off on the wedding day? No way. Forgiving a man for fucking off apparently because she had a veil over her face and didn't turn around when he would have liked her to? Really? And then blaming that on the big wedding? I just don't get it. If you're going to say that a wedding is 'girls' stuff' and not get involved, don't fucking complain when it's not exactly what you want. He could have said what he wanted (just the two of them at whatever the American equivalent of a registry office is), but he didn't. He left it all up to her then got snotty when she didn't plan what he wanted. He got all weird because she didn't answer her phone on the morning of the wedding, then left because she didn't turn around. How much effort would it have taken to call to her out of the car window? And she actually took some of the responsibility for it. I saw the film with two friends, and when Carrie and Big made up, one of them started clapping in her seat. I was just disgusted (as was Friend Two, who I suspect would chain me up in a cellar and throw wet sponges at me before she'd let me go back to a man who'd done that to me, and that's far more comforting then you'd think).

I left the cinema thinking Is that love? It's OK if he cheats, it's OK if he leaves you at the altar because he's a freak, as long as you love him? I got the impression this was meant to be a liberated viewpoint, as in it's a huge mistake to leave your husband if he fucks up once and marriage can overcome infidelity in these modern times, and look how happy they were once they dispensed with the traditional marriage, but it came across to me like Doormat Central. If a man can get you to love him, he can do what he likes. If a man ever betrays you, it's at least 50% your fault, for not wanting what he wants, or wanting something he professes not to care about but actually has a very specific plan which you must extract from his mind via telepathy. If men aren't happy, they won't tell you. And if you don't use your telepathy and sort it out, they will act out and shake you to your very core and it'll be your fault for not understanding them. I felt lonely, and kind of insecure and scared. I don't believe any of this stuff, but if such a message catches you off-guard when you're in a vulnerable place, when you've gone in prepared to invest a little bit of yourself in the characters' personal relationships, it can worm its way in and throw you off-balance, and it has, somewhat. I don't believe my partner is a cheater, or a leave-you-at-the-altar scumbag maggot, but apparently if he was, this new liberated world would think it was my fault. My wedding dress is too big, my sex drive is too small, I'm too fat, I'm too busy, I'm not busy enough. My fault.

I obviously have the wrong values for this particular film (which, yes, I am taking too seriously. I do that), but is it just these writers, or is it a trend? Am I going to come across more people who think cheating is not a big deal and/or the fault of the cheated-on? Does the world think I have a responsibility to plan the wedding my partner wants without his involvement? Is it me that's wrong? Should I be thinking, "Yeah, sex once, no problem, doesn't have to get in the way"? I don't know.

I'm glad the film was made, and I'm glad it's doing so well, because hopefully it will start to wedge open some doors for more films based around women's friendships, and proper relationships as opposed to Disney for humans, and also because on a superficial level, I did enjoy it quite a lot. But it's shaken me a little, and I wonder if maybe there's some questioning I need to do.

This post has been brought to you by the Maudlin Society. Sarcastic ranting will resume in a few days. Thank you.

Brits for Hillary!

2008-06-03T01:51:00.005+01:00

I just want to link this to remind myself that it's not just me who doesn't want to see President Obama. He's the American David Cameron, just catering to a slightly different crowd. And Obama's supporters frighten me. Thank Christ Cameron doesn't have supporters (well, I'm sure he does, but we support our politicians by telling them they're crap, which is much less scary).

Despite every news source telling me that Obama has this wrapped up, I'm still pro-Clinton. I don't have eight hundred policy reasons for this, because I'm British and don't really have to. Quite aside from the fact that Clinton has been portrayed as the kind of uppity bitch I expressed my sympathy for here, Obama worries me. He put me off with his "marriage is between a man and a woman, unless I've been blinded by society's prejudices" thing. He then proceeded to piss me off by saying that the mistake pro-choicers make is to overlook the anti-choicers' 'moral' arguments and that a woman's pastor should be involved in the decision-making process. As you know, religion + politics = Angry Jen. He further went on to shock me by interviewing, quite astoundingly, that he once knew a gay guy but liked him because he "wasn't proselytising all the time". What the fuck, man? He sounds afraid that he might catch The Gay. Oh, and after Bush, I would appreciate a candidate with a basic knowledge of human biology. You can't make people gay, ass. It would be like trying to talk someone into switching gender. Or saying, "oh, go on, grow an extra limb! It'd be great!" You just can't do it. It concerns me that he has such a fundamentally flawed view of the human race, and such an apparent fear of so many of the people he's hoping to govern.

Homophobic? How dare you!

2008-06-01T11:15:00.004+01:00

Christian registrars don't want to perform same-sex ceremonies and are complaining that they're being bullied as a result.

"[Ladele] said she was picked on, shunned and accused of being homophobic for refusing to carry out civil partnerships."

This should be fairly obvious, but just in case: She was accused of being homophobic BECAUSE SHE IS HOMOPHOBIC. She claims she was made to feel like a second-class citizen when THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT SHE WAS DOING. I would shun her too, because I don't want to be around someone who uses religion as an excuse to treat other people like dirt. That's her fault, not her colleagues'.

I do not believe that someone doing a job should be able to pick and choose which bits of the job they fancy doing. Christian pharmacy workers should not be allowed to refuse to fill a prescription because they disagree with it. Muslims should not get a checkout job if they don't want to touch pork or alcohol. And no registrar should be allowed to decide who can and cannot get married. Should a racist registrar be allowed to object to an interracial coupling? No. Should a homophobic registrar be allowed to object to a same-sex coupling AND THEN fucking object to being called homophobic? No. Jesus fucking Christ.

I apologise for my overuse of the shift key, but religion should not give you carte blanche to attack those who aren't to your taste, and being a Christian does not make you a special snowflake. This woman is no more and no less of a person than anyone who comes to her to get married, and they come to her for the help she claims to give for a living. I am somewhat tempted, when I get married, to specifically ask for a registrar willing to perform same-sex ceremonies. There will be gay people at my wedding, and I don't want to be united in matrimony by someone who is hostile to them. I wonder, is that discrimination? Would she complain if I rejected her as my officiant on those grounds? Is it acceptable for her to discriminate based on the way people are born but not acceptable for me to discriminate based on her bigotries? It's a shame I don't live in London, because that would be an interesting experiment.

As for her tribunal, I hope she loses. Her manager makes an excellent point but the council representative could well have dug himself a hole with the "she was confused" defence. Simply put, you should be required to do your damn job and flaming hypocrisy such as this must not go unpunished by the cosmos.

Oh, Go and Put Up Some Shelves

2008-05-31T01:42:00.003+01:00

In my time as an active feminist, many things have confused me about the way people respond to the concept of feminism. A lot of them boil down to: Is anything that diminishes feminism automatically supposed to be funny? I don't understand how a hundred men can think that saying "Go and make me a sandwich" or "You're really ugly" or "Oooh, I have a penis" over and over again is somehow really cool and clever and amusing. I also don't understand why "sammich" is suddenly a word.

A helpful troll explains that "it's fun to annoy you and you just don't understand that." No, troll. What I don't understand is exactly how you intend to annoy me with your endlessly repeated cliches and remarks about your genitalia. Is it simply their presence in what is meant to be a feminist space? Is it the repetition? Or is the content supposed to needle us? I'm genuinely unsure. I'm also curious, in a rhetorical sense, as to why these men feel the need to keep emphasising their dicks. I sort of think it's meant to be threatening, though it comes across more as "it's really small", but it's slightly odd. I also wonder how many of these men would say, if confronted, that they were just being funny and can't you take a joke and humourless feminist and what's next on the overused cliche list, and how many would claim that they were, in fact, making a valid point.

In Jessica's screenshot of youtube comments, I find the one that says: "[D]o you honestly think you are smarter than me? You better have an Iq [sic] above 125, stupid bitch" especially funny. Ooh, 125! That's, like, so huge! I'm not sure if that's the highest IQ he's ever come across or it was just the biggest number he could think of. Either way, the answer is yes, I do, stupid little boy, and the fact that you think 125 is so enormous is really rather adorable.

I have to console myself with the thought that all of these men are right to feel threatened by me. Should the troll brigade, through some strange quirk, actually find this trafficless blog, I will warn them beforehand that any comments like those in the screenshot will be made with either "Go mow my lawn, little boy" or "Hahaha, small penis!" Because the power of the internet does not extend to the education of anonymous morons, and I would prefer to amuse myself rather than waste my time.

Sorry, Another Bishop Post

2008-05-28T14:25:00.004+01:00

Oh, for fuck's sake. Now the Anglicans are getting in on it, insisting that Christianity must stick its nose in all over the place or else Muslim state scary terrorists battle against Islam yada yada yada. No, Bishop. People are perfectly capable of functioning without an all-governing religion being forced upon them. We don't need your religion, we don't need their religion, we don't need my religion.

I understand that when faith is such a huge part of your life, you cannot understand other people not feeling it, or not needing it. You probably assume that atheists have a big gaping hole inside them, and having turned aside your prayers for their souls they search in vain for something to make them feel whole. I understand, I do. But it's not true. Music junkies don't believe there can be anyone in this world who doesn't really like music. For my part, I cannot understand people who say they just don't read books. We all have things that are so vital, central to our lives and our beings and our personalities that we have a hard time comprehending that none of these things are essential. I was going to say "Reading really isn't essential", but I can't write that and believe it, although it probably is true. So if you've dedicated your whole life to Christianity, it's probably very hard to believe that not everybody gets their moral guidance from the Bible, and that not everyone feels an intangible ache and emptiness from the abscence of Jesus Christ. It must be almost impossible.

By the way, I use the example of reading and not religion when relating this mindset to myself because in order to find the right path for me I had to separate from what the world told me was spiritually right. It's a silent part of my life, for the most part, and I had to find it through enormous amounts of research and self-questioning. Mostly, though, I choose not to use it as an example because I question it every single day. I will not become one of those people whose beliefs remain rigid merely because that's what she's always believed. If I'm going to grow, I must question. My love of words, however, I have never questioned, not once. Besides my family it was my first love, and I give it at least partial credit for bringing me through some awful times in my life. Paganism, on the other hand, is what I have come out with on the other side - not the lifeline, but the urge to learn to swim. I think that any bishop would credit his religion with having sheltered and strengthened him through the bad times, every knock further solidifying what he knew for sure anyway. This to me is books, not faith.

However. I do not blame society's ills on lack of reading. I might say that lack of education was a factor, just as a bishop may reasonably say that lack of general, not specific, faith, had caused a not-altogether-welcome shift in society. I have yet to find a bishop who advocates any kind of belief as opposed to his (never found a female bishop, either, though I hopefully will soon) very exact faith. This is sort of like me blaming society's troubles on the fact that not everybody went to university and took English.

The bishop in question appears to be arguing that Christianity = Britishness (no, taking the piss = Britishness), that we must use Christianity to "fight" Islam (do we have to "fight" Islam?), that other religions are not adequate substitutes for Christianity (again, I understand, but fuck off), and that Christianity gives us hard principles by which to live as opposed to the governement's vague ones.

I admit to being very amused by this:

"The Bishop of Rochester said Christianity had created a British identity imbued with values such as liberty and freedom of conscience."

followed by this:

"What are needed, he insisted, were the "transcendental principles" of Christianity - the sort of fundamental issues that are raised when people consider what it is to be human, and life and death questions such as abortion, euthanasia and stem-cell research."

So, nothing to do with liberty, in fact. What the fuck is "freedom of conscience" anyway? Especially in this context? It seems to mean "freedom to think what we tell you to think."

I still don't know if there's been an upsurge of bishops and cardinals trying to assert their positions in society or if there's just more being written about it, but even though nothing's likely to come of it, it still drives me absolutely fucking nuts. Why is this news, and why are people listening? Why does it seem like such a threat to me? Don't answer that; I know the reason. In strict hard-line Christian parlance, I am both low and scary and need to have my rights taken away (I am a young Pagan feminist who cherishes her reproductive freedom despite having pretty conservative personal sexual values which means she can't just be dismissed as a slapper, and they have to go back to 'dangerous heretic' which isn't as belittling as they might like).

Note this:

"He is one of three Church of England bishops to back an initiative by a traditionalist Anglican to commit the Church to work explicitly for the conversion of Muslims."

Yup, conversion of Muslims. Assimilation is the goal here. We must not forget.

A Eurovision Plot

2008-05-25T16:47:00.003+01:00

Terry Wogan might quit Eurovision because it's become entirely about the politics as opposed to the music. Hmmm. I remember watching it when I was younger and complaining that Greece and Cyprus gave each other maximum points for being "great neighbours". And most European countries hate the English. We're resigned to that. We smirk upon Europe from afar, comfortable in our superiority. But we ask ourselves: why do we still bother? If it's so obviously rigged, why don't we excuse ourselves? Others say: it's not rigged, we just send in shit songs.

So I propose: Next year, our entry is Bill Bailey. He's said he's willing (I didn't realise we could have had Morrissey last year, but the BBC told him he'd have to audition alongside Scooch and that pillock from The Darkness). If Bill Bailey doesn't win by a fucking landslide, it's rigged. Everyone, including snotty Eurovision judges, knows that Bill Bailey rules all. If this, ladies and gentlemen, doesn't win Eurovision for us, then nothing will:

Please, Think Of The Children

2008-05-22T20:42:00.005+01:00

Yay!

Yay!

Gordon Brown has earned himself two points. He voted for the 24-week abortion limit, and he voted to get rid of the heterosexist guff about a child's "need for a father". Well done, Gordon, you impressed me. The Tories, not so much.

First and foremost, I do not understand how, in this day and age, a man like Sir Patrick Cormack can have anything to do with the running of our country. He said: "A child that is deliberately brought into the world with no desire that there should be a man or a woman who is the parent is brought in with a disadvantage." This makes no sense whatsoever, and I sort of hope the BBC did that on purpose because they hate him, but translated into English, it means, "Lesbians shouldn't be parents."

I sincerely hope that David Cameron, a man whom I royally despise but who claims to be leading the charge to modernise his party, will realise that such sentiments are not endearing the Conservatives to the young generation. I seem to be his target voter; a young, white, middle-class woman. Young, white, middle-class women have no truck whatsoever with this sort of insidious gay-bashing. If Cameron ever wishes to win my respect, he must acknowledge that this ridiculous "need for a father" motion tabled by Iain Duncan Smith (the most useless Tory leader ever, and that ought to tell you something) comes out of an out-of-date view of Britain and is representative of his party's subconscious - or, indeed, conscious, in the case of Sir Patrick - bigotries. "Need for supportive parenting" is exactly the correct way to phrase it. When Duncan Smith and his ilk tell us that children who grow up without a father are more likely to go off the rails, they're ignoring a big chunk of the story. I know a lot of people who grew up without fathers, and they're fine. The ones that aren't fine are the ones whose fathers were present and neglectful, or present one day a month. They're the ones who grew up with abuse, casual insulting remarks tossed out to get them to shut up, and not so much as a card or phone call on their birthdays. These are the kids who feel deprived, who feel they've done something wrong to drive Daddy away and end up with no sense of self-worth, or who just can't get Daddy to acknowledge them and end up in deeper and deeper trouble. This is still a generalisation, but it's far more accurate than "single-parent families fuck kids up."

We will keep our 24-week abortion limit, no thanks to Mr Cameron, who voted to lower it by two weeks. Why two weeks? Lord knows. The BBC is careful to point out that all the Catholic Labour ministers voted to lower it to 12. Yeah, fucking 12. Nice one, Ruth Kelly. Someone called Edward Leigh is yacking on about sanctity as though he's a right-wing American pundit, and frankly he is so insignificant that I have nothing else to say about him. Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor turned up in the Times supporting everything I argue against and vice versa, using the phrase "incremental change". Remember this, ye who value your freedom: this two-week-at-a-time knockdown is part of the plan to erode your rights completely. If, God forbid, he should ever get his two-week knockdown, he'll be out there again arguing for another two weeks. And another, and another. Before you know it, we're in Ireland. You could have stayed there, y'know, Murph.

There are numerous things I could say about these votes, but I'll stick, for now, to this one: in general, the people voting to restrict IVF were the people voting to slash the abortion limit. This strikes me as a wee bit illogical. These people insist that it's absolutely vital that a baby has a mother and a father, but if a woman accidentally gets pregnant, the man pisses off and the woman doesn't want it, well, tough. Why isn't it better for a loving same-sex couple, or a single woman who wants a child enough to go to these expensive and invasive lengths, to have their baby than for a frightened, abandoned teenager to be unable to choose not to? I am feeling charitable, and so I'll assume the best. I'll assume that these men (as the vast majority are in the Commons) are loving and devoted parents who cannot imagine their babies being unwanted, who cannot imagine abandoning a woman pregnant with their child, who help to change the nappies and get up in the night and play football and read stories and consider there to be no greater joy than the laughter of their sons and daughters. Excellent. But guys, not all men are you. Some men cannot think of anything worse than having a baby. Some men will panic. Some men aren't ready, and have the luxury that women don't of just fucking off. Some men are just assholes. I know men who, variously, forget their children's birthdays, dump them with someone else on their visitation days, run the other way if they see mother and baby in the street, deny the child's existence to their friends, yell at the child, hit the child, hate the child. I know men who conceived children in wedlock - the Conservative lucky charm - and after divorcing the mother, try as hard as they can never to see the kids again. I'll assume, also, that your wives were delighted to be pregnant, wanted children, were ecstatic over the prospect of giving birth to your little one. Do you, any of you, have any idea what it's like to be pregnant and alone? To take an equal part in an 'accident' for which you alone are now reponsible? Do you have any idea what it's like to have something growing in you and hate it with a vicious passion, while sanctimonious arses like you are going on about the sanctity of life, and how abortions are 'social' and calling that horrible little ball of cells your 'baby'? It's not a fucking baby.

I wish people would stop going on about 'tradition' and lamenting the loss of 'traditional family'. I don't want the kind of tradition that forces women to have babies they don't want, and forces couples to shackle themselves together for eternity because one night has unexpected consequences. Duncan Smith complains that by removing the "need for a father" clause, we undermine the traditional family; well, duh. Some people aren't wired that way, mate. We're not all born traditional. Some people would love to be parents. They would love to devote themselves to raising a child. And if they happen to be a pair of women or a pair of men, so fucking what? When Catholic adoption agencies were trying to get themselves excepted from the "no homophobia" law - to ask for Government-sanctioned bigotry takes some nerve, I must admit - numerous commentators pointed out that Catholic adoption agencies took on the most difficult, unplaceable kids, and the people most likely to adopt one of these kids were gay couples. Instead of taking a lesson from this, the agencies threatened to shut down. To paraphrase Dara O Briain, essentially their stance was: "If you won't let us do what we want, we shall release the children into the wild."

Memo to Britain: The Conservative party is still nursing its bigotries. Please do not forget this next time Cameron starts going on about recycling in modern Britain.

Memo to Conservatives: For the love of God, move on. It's 2008. We can't still be proposing laws that basically say "Gays are weird".

Memo to Murphy-O'Connor: I still hate you, and everything you stand for.

Won't somebody please think of the children?

In The Stocks: Self-Destructives and Uppity Bitches

2008-05-19T15:57:00.005+01:00

The BBC posts an interesting article about the disproportionate hatred for celebrity women. In a poll, four out of the five most hated celebrities were female, and the man was Simon Cowell, who also appears on the "Most Loved" list, along with four other men. Just as an aside, Gary Lineker? Really?

The British, the poll concludes, love Paul McCartney and hate Heather Mills. We love David Beckham and hate Victoria Beckham. The article doesn't comment on this, but it seems a little weird to me. It's almost as though we pick our national treasures and then unleash hate on their wives. It never seems to happen the other way round - the only times we've come close, oddly enough, are with the other two women on the list. When Brian McFadden of awful Irish boyband Westlife left Kerry Katona of awful English girl band Atomic Kitten, we hated him. Boy, did we hate him, and his new girlfriend too. We hated him so much that he's buggered off out of the country. We were right to hate him, too, I think. I don't trust any man who compares having children with his ex to "having a dog we weren't ready for" (they'll read it, you asshole!), or who bashes the mother of his children to journalists and threatens in the national press to sue for custody then does jack shit about it. I think Brian McFadden is an odious piece of crap. But now that he's off in Australia or America or wherever and most people have forgotten about him, we've decided to hate her instead. We claim it's because she's behaving like an unfit mother, smoking and drinking, taking drugs (or so the delightful Mr McFadden informs us), and generally behaving like - hmmmm - someone who's not very well. Kerry Katona, back in the dark ages, was one of the most popular women in the country. She'd just split up from a man who slept with a lap dancer on his stag night, she'd just won an appalling but highly-rated reality show, and she was down-to-earth and Northern and smiley. We just loved her. She won Mother of the Year twice, and got the Iceland ads on the strength of her being a recognisable symbol for good parenting. My unofficial theory is that when she began to break down, we felt betrayed. How dare she not be the perfect mother? We gave her an award! We were proud of her for moving on from her nasty ex, and we expected to see a marked improvement in her future choice of partner. When she yet again opted for a loser - or someone represented to us by the press as a loser - we got impatient. When we heard that she was smoking while pregnant, we got mad. We're not having that, Kerry! We don't care what your problems are, you're a damn role model! Act like one!

Everything she does is now fair game for bile and ridicule. I can't imagine that she's still working with Iceland, but nevertheless she's still attacked for it. She is, or was, advertising insufficiently healthy food to the nation. How dare she? Whether you choose to attack her on a serious level or just make eight hundred jokes about lard, you're perfectly entitled to do so. I mean, it's her fault, isn't it? When she was subject to robbery at knifepoint in her own house, we took the piss. Relentlessly. Not a word of sympathy for her. And it's her fault, of course, because she let us down.

Amy Winehouse follows a similar pattern. When she really came to our attention with the release of her second album, we fell in love with her, bonkers beehive hair and all. So talented! Such a songwriter! Such a voice! Gather round, boys and girls, this is real music. We thought Simon Cowell had done away with actual musical talent. We were impressed. And then Amy, too, turned out not be perfect. A lot of pop stars like a drink, but Amy was old school and turned up drunk on Never Mind the Buzzcocks. I know people who went off her then, because her speaking voice was annoying and she was all uncouth and spat. Spat! On TV! Then she picked her unsuitable man, and all the drug-taking palaver unleashed itself upon us. And we blamed him. He was a useless smug little man who didn't appear to have a job of any description. Ditch him, Amy, we urged, but instead, she married him. And I think that's when the backlash started. Amy Winehouse's husband is currently awaiting trial for GBH or perverting the course of justice or both, depending on which reports you believe. Her parents blame him for getting her onto hard drugs. He has reportedly refused to go to rehab with her, saying instead, "You can go if you want to," which is classic manipulator's language if I ever heard it. Maybe it was never right to put all the blame on him, but no way in hell can it be right to put all the blame on her. She's self-destructing and needs help, which is NOT a hanging offence, but we blame her because she let us down too. She was our great white hope of British music and shouldn't expect to be allowed flaws and issues too. The day after Heath Ledger's death, I read five separate blogs (all male authors, incidentally) who screeched, "If someone was going to die, why not Amy Winehouse?" That, my friends, is not normal.

A commenter on that article claimed he could understand the hatred for all of them except Winehouse, who is talented. But we don't hate people for being untalented. As I said, we used to love Kerry Katona, and even when she had a singing career we all knew she wasn't any good. We used to love Posh too, and her singing ability hasn't deteriorated to any great extent. I've felt stung into becoming a Posh fan. She may look like Self-Tan Barbie but so fucking what? The reason people hate her and Heather Mills is because they married people the public have decided are too good for them. These women are up themselves. We can't have that. Amy and Kerry married below them and allowed themselves to get screwed up, we hate them for that. Victoria and Heather married above them and made a lot of money, and we hate them for that.

It's a terrible mistake to marry a Beatle. The press and public will hate you for it. They hate Heather now the way they hated Yoko then, and the way they've conveniently forgotten they treated Linda. Oh, she may be a veggie-burger-making saint now, but back then she was a damn outrage. How can she have the nerve, we asked. She must be a gold-digger. Only by being silent and supportive and staying at home and finally dying of breast cancer did she win our love, and turn into what might as well be a fictional character. Carole Malone in the Sunday Mirror wrote, in a short article that Google is currently refusing to turn up, that it's understandable that we hate Heather when we've been used to the wonderful Linda. She then went on to say (in what I was convinced would turn out to be a parody) that Linda stayed at home like a good wife and mother, supported Sir Paul and raised children. Bless her. Not like this bitch, with ambitions and other such shit that has no place in a woman's brain. This is a charming piece of revisionist history that beyond the appalling misogyny the woman is spewing, shows that we think we get to decide who is good enough for our heroes. If a man picks a woman we think is beneath him, we turn on that woman. If a woman picks a man who is beneath her, we wait five minutes then turn on the woman. Again.

Notice, if you will, that the McCartney divorce is perceived to be entirely, 100% Heather's fault. If Paul gets any flack, it's for being "a naive old man", caught by the surreptitious and scheming wiles of a predator. Notice, if you will, that when the story of Beckham's affair broke, he was the only one who got no flack at all. The mistress got a decent dose, and Posh got the rest. Ian Hislop, who is not normally my first point of reference on feminist issues, remarked on how weird it was: "God, her husband's cheated on her! What a cow! She's been humiliated publicly! Bitch!" If he cheated it was her damn fault and there's no use her crying about it now. The press waits breathlessly to this day for them to split up, even though they seem to have put it behind them and are moving on quite happily. Neither of these women get any points for being a mother, though there has been nothing to suggest that either are anything less than highly devoted and attentive parents, certainly more so than either jet-setting father. Heather Mills has made it acceptable to make horrendous jokes about artificial limbs ("no, it's OK, 'cause she's an evil bitch"), and gets villified daily for apparently being a compulsive liar. People don't take kindly to me when they make a nasty remark about that and I suggest that if that is the case, then she's ILL and shouldn't be subject to your judgement.

I think anyone would be surprised to see me defending these women. They're "offensive" and "talentless" and "selfish" after all. Some of the commenters on the article would be astonished to see a woman defending other women because they've decided we don't do that. One even manages to get in a "poor little white boy" whine, amusingly. Those people especially would tell me I'm wasting my time on these women. Why don't I defend someone who's worth it? It makes no odds that I like Beckham and Winehouse, or that I have no strong feelings either way on Katona and Mills. It would make no odds if I hated the lot of them. They are human beings. Human beings who have made choices that we think are inappropriate. They are women who happened to fall in love, or woman who happened to fall ill. They are women with problems that we'd rather pretend weren't real. They are women whose wretched humanity got in the way of our comfortable assumptions, and we're punishing them for it (some of those comments make me believe that we're punishing all women for it). We laugh at, or condemn them for, their misfortunes. We villify them for their mistakes, and for mistakes we asume or believe that they made. Basically, we're hating them for being women who behave in ways we consider "unfeminine". You married up? You must have chased him. You must be ambitious. Ambition is unfeminine, bitch. Drugs are unfeminine, bitch. Bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch. We know how you should behave and YOU'RE NOT DOING IT. You deserve everything you get.

This has been a rant from a pissed-off woman. Thank you.

Two Short Notes

2008-05-11T00:41:00.003+01:00

Dear Dara O Briain,

Thank you. You were fucking brilliant. You have officially restored my faith in paying huge amounts of money to see stand-up gigs. I was getting worried after the homophobic mess of two weeks ago, but you managed to do a two-hour gig without attacking anyone for their inbuilt traits (I'll forgive your disdain for anything even vaguely New Age because I've met some of the people who gave you that impression), and you spoke to us! I was beginning to forget comedians did that. I was impressed that you didn't let the heckler get away with the nasty Austrian comment, and pleased that we provided you with the most bizarre heckle you've ever heard (stigmata?!). Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Jen

Dear world,

If you get the opportunity, you must see Dara O Briain live. Funniest show of the year so far.

Jen

EWWW.

2008-05-09T01:24:00.001+01:00

This story, about a child abuser who's just been caught, contains the most intrinsically disturbing line I've read for a long time:

Judy Stone, a neighbour who worked with him as an entertainer, said he was "the best Santa Claus anyone has ever seen".

EWWWWW. Why did you have to put that in there, BBC? Why? Why make me panic about Santa Claus? That quote is so unnecessary, and disturbing on about eighty different levels. I feel quite sick now.

Lost Cause Says: Shut Up, Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor

2008-05-08T23:39:00.006+01:00

We must respect the atheists! says Murphy-O'Connor.

You first, tosspot.

If one is truly to "respect" the atheists, then one must respect that they are atheists, that is what they have chosen, and it is not one's place to try and convince them otherwise, yes?

No, of course not. "Respect the atheists" means "Give the atheists a cup of tea and a biscuit before giving them a Bible." One must "respect" the atheists in order to make the atheists think that atheism is a stupid idea, no? One must not insist to an atheist that God is a fact of life. Why? Because God is a fact of life and you're all stupid.

Murphy-O'Connor says: "Our life together in Britain cannot be a God-free zone and we must not allow Britain to become a world devoid of religious faith and its powerful contribution to the common good."

Yes it can, Murph. I sincerely hope that one day our life "together" will be a God-free zone. You can have as much God in your own personal life as you please, but that's not what you mean, is it? You want God to come into every little bloody thing, and it'll have to be your damn God as well. If my God (such as it is) were to enter into your interactions with me, you'd have a spiritual heart attack and start lecturing me on morals and values or some such crap. And what on earth does the second clause of that sentence mean? Don't worry, Cardinal, Britain will never become a world devoid of religious faith. Because it's a fucking COUNTRY. Yeesh. Please, for the sake of all our gods, cut down on that horrific flowery prose.

'Last year, he complained of a "new secularist intolerance of religion" and the state's "increasing acceptance" of anti-religious views.'

Shut up, Murph. We all know that when you say "anti-religious views" you mean "the atheists are persecuting me and not letting me have my hardline Christian way on absolutely everything! Waaah!" Jennifer is now complaining of a "new drive by Cardinals to foist their stupid religious views on everyone" and the state's "increasing acceptance" of "interfering old buggers". Also, she prefers not to write in the third person like this and is very upset at having been driven to it.

"I want to encourage people of faith to regard those without faith with deep esteem because the hidden God is active in their lives as well as in the lives of those who believe."

Quick translation:
People of faith: Christians (Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists and Pagans don't really believe in God, y'know)
Those without faith: Anyone who is not a Christian/Evil bastards
Esteem - Patronising, martyred patience
The hidden God - My personal judgement
Active in their lives - You can't get away from me, so there. You may as well just give up now.

I want to know why the Cardinals are making so much fuss lately. Is it because we have a new PM? Is it because Blair came out as Catholic after leaving office and they want to make sure to get as much guilt in as possible in case Brown is the same? Is it because of Bush and the Religious Right in America? I'll make my usual disclaimer that I have no problem with any religion in and of itself, but I will protest to the last second against religious "leaders" trying to advance the encroachment of their, or any, religion on our government and on our essentially secular state. I also feel the need to point out yet again that Cardinal Murphy O'Connor is a leader in the CATHOLIC church. The UK is officially an ANGLICAN nation. Those two are DIFFERENT. The CATHOLICS do not get to interfere with the running of the country because we are technically ANGLICAN. It doesn't work like that, bub. I apologise for all the capitals, but I've had several fights of this nature on the BBC's Have Your Say (I've stopped now, don't worry).

I get particularly cross even at the most innocuous stories regarding cardinals and bishops and their complaints about lack of religion in the public eye, because I know what they want. They rag on the abortion limit, saying that a lot of people would like to see it lowered. First of all, "a lot of people" are not doctors. Most don't even have a rudimentary understanding of the hows and wherefores of abortion. Second of all, most of these people don't want abortion banned. And the cardinals do. If we let them lead the charge of "Just a two-week drop" (though it appears they would push for a 12-week drop to bring us into line with some other European countries. Yeah, twelve fucking weeks. If you haven't been trying, you may not even have notied you're pregnant at twelve weeks), then they'll keep going. They'll keep attacking it a little bit at a time, using "new technology" as evidence - which means that when you can grow a foetus in a petri dish and incubator, they'll call for a total ban on the basis that every foetus is now viable - until we really have nothing left of our abortion laws. You think they'll leave it there? Bollocks they will. They want a Christian nation. They want five-year-olds to be forced to pray and go to church and learn the Bible, on the basis that for every hellchild like me who was put off Christianity by attending church and reading the Bible (it's horrible, guys), there'll be ten who believe what they're told or can at least be frightened into saying they believe.

I am going to make a fuss any time they say anything. I am going to yell about it. I am going to write to every single politician they go to, just to make sure they know that this stupid "women support lower abortion limits" thing is not in fact true. If any of their persuasive tactics begin to work, I will protest. I will make a banner out of a pillowcase and I will go down to London and I will scream my head off. I will not hand over control of my uterus to these men. I will not allow them to dictate what I say. I will not allow them to dictate what my future children do. I will not allow them to force me to act like a Christian and I will not allow them to further push the discrimination faced by those like me. I do not want my religion in schools or dictating law any more than I want theirs to do so. I just want religion kept OUT. Out of the schools, out of the government, out of society's model. I will fight you, Murphy-O'Connor. I went to church for years as a kid and I read the whole damn Bible from cover to cover, and as a result I am truly lost to your cause. Do not underestimate the lost cause, Cardinal. The lost cause is watching you.

You know, if I'd known I'd be doing so much Cardinal-bashing, I would have called this blog the Lost Cause. Perhaps I'll make it into a series instead.

Whose Fault Is This?

2008-05-05T22:46:00.002+01:00

Oh, for fuck's sake. "Beauties for Britain" party? Really?

If Miss Great Britain wants to be a politician, excellent. But what's up with this "ooh, politics is so dry and boring, let's make it sexy" crap?

"I think that people should be proud of Britain and proud of themselves especially the beauties that Britain has produced over the years and I'm very proud to be Miss Great Britain and standing for this."

Did they purposely not put punctuation in this sentence? I don't know if she really speaks like this or if they just want to make it look like she speaks like this. The whole thing sounds like a joke made up by The Sun, who will no doubt apply their usual writing style ("patronising lust") to this story for the next few weeks. If it wasn't the Sun's idea, then whose was it? Who told this girl to go into politics but make sure nobody thinks she's got a brain? After reading that article, I certainly don't think she's got one, which is awful. Does she have any opinions on global credit and Brown's standing in the polls? No, but she could give him some advice on beauty products.

I'm quite conflicted about this story, because I know it makes me angry for feminist reasons, but I can't pinpoint them any more precisely than that. I know someone has really screwed up here, but I'm not sure who to blame for it. I'm wary of blaming her for being a dumbass, or for trying to make everything revolve around her looks, or for perpetuating some seriously irritating stereotypes, but if it's not her fault then it's someone else's, and we get into the whole "women have no agency" thing. So I don't even know if I'd prefer her to be a pawn or a dumbass. Ugh.

A Comedy-Goer's Perspective on Why Johnny Vegas is a Nasty Tosser

2008-05-01T22:10:00.007+01:00

Johnny Vegas decides to sexually assault a woman onstage.

Full disclosure: Johnny Vegas ranks only slightly lower than Jim Davidson in my personal list of Shittiest Comedians Ever. I've never once found him funny. The episode of QI he did is not an exception - it's my least favourite episode. He is a slobby drunken loser with the world's most annoying voice and his routines are shambolic. He can get away with more than Jim Davidson because "Vegas is playing a character! He's being ironic!" Alright, but is he being funny? Well... no. What he's doing is getting audience members to carry a girl onto the stage and then assaulting her.

This story is disturbing enough in itself, but made all the worse by hundreds of commenters claiming that the girl can't have been sexually assualted because a) she didn't slap him in face, b) nobody tried to stop it and c) Vegas hasn't been arrested. I don't think any of these people are inveterate comedy fans. We who go to gigs (no, I did not see this gig - that makes none of my points about assault invalid) know that you don't get up and interfere with the act. You just don't. When a comedian drags you up on stage, you do as they tell you. I saw a woman reduced to tears when she was dragged up on stage at a Rex Boyd gig - she was humiliated, he wasn't funny, but she did as she was told. A shy person at a comedy gig does NOT want the audience turning on them, and chances are, if you screw up the routine, any half-decent comedian will immediately being making cruel jokes at your expense, and provided he's got laughs previously, that's enough to make the audience turn on you. We once saw a comedian we suspected was high on crack during his performance. We KNEW he was high on crack when my friend Jess and I started playing noughts and crosses, right at the front of the stage, and he didn't say anything. A lot of people like witty cruelty, and only a comedian high on crack wouldn't pick on us for blatantly disrespecting his act.

Also, the difference between a comedy club gig with four or five small-to-middling comedians and a show with a household name headline act is huge. Take my review of Sean Lock's abysmal gig on Saturday night. No way in hell would he have got away with that performance as an unknown perfoming third in a night's entertainment at Wolverhampton Jongleurs (I assume there's a Wolverhampton Jongleurs). He would have been heckled, booed, snarked at, people would have got up and gone out for a fag. What actually happened was that we sat there mostly in polite silence, forcing laughter at any joke we found even remotely funny. A few people made quiet, unobtrusive exits during the interval. No heckles. You don't heckle a big-name comedian, unless it's a Ross Noble type whose whole show thrives on heckles (and all those are very much pro-Ross heckles. I miss Ross. Come back to England and save me from all this shitty comedy!). It's an unwritten rule that you don't heckle someone whose audience has mostly come to see someone they recognise from the TV. They don't want heckles and it spoils their enjoyment, even if the heckle makes a good point. You do NOT get involved with an established comedian's act unless he invites you, and if he invites you, you do NOT attempt to swing his routine your own way. I like to think that if I'd accidentally ended up at this particular Vegas gig, I'd have least yelled, "Get the fuck off her, loser" or something to that effect. I know I'd have walked out and complained to the management. But despite what a couple of commenters on that Guardian article have said, established comedians have all the power in that room. They can choose not to prepare, to segue away from their planned material to complain about having to wait for a breakdown truck, to actually include the breakdown truck complaint in their written material (you suck, Lock), to insult the audience, to ignore the audience, whatever they choose to do, and the audience will say nothing. I wonder if these people arguing that Vegas has no power at all have ever disrupted a performance. I wonder if they'd be cross if they were in the cinema with two hundred other people, and someone came in and punched a hole through the screen because they thought it was disgusting. If you disrupt a show, the audience will turn on you. Everyone knows this. As one of the Guardian's commenters pointed out, comedians go to great lengths to imply that their brand of humour is edgy and fashionable and funny, and anyone who doesn't get it is a middle-class reactionary. If you don't get it, you're humourless, you're a prude, you're a member of the PC Brigade. You wouldn't know funny if it hit you in the face. I was certainly told this once when I complained about Bernard Manning (Bernard Manning! Edgy, fashionable and funny! Even he would have laughed at that). Why hasn't Vegas been arrested? Because if this girl was indeed assaulted as badly as Mary O'Hara claims, she's afraid of what people will say about her. She'll be the middle-class reactionary, the prude, the girl with no sense of humour. Johnny Vegas is a nationally-acclaimed comedian, so it must have been funny, and she doesn't want to look like a bad sport. And after all, she went up there. She did what he told her to do. She doesn't have a leg to stand on. And the truth is, she doesn't, even though she should. In her position I wouldn't file a complaint - I'd tell anyone who asked that it was 'no big deal', I'd beat myself up for a while then resolve to be much more careful in future, either stopping visiting comedy gigs altogether or only sitting right at the back where nobody could see me. We still don't consider coercion to be a real thing. We don't think everything described above is coercion, because coercion means "someone held a gun to her head". We say, "if you go to comedy gigs, what do you expect?" Even O'Hara, writing to condemn Vegas, says this.

Well, here's what I expect. I expect a comedy gig to BE FUNNY. Even if we assume that Vegas wasn't assaulting the girl, he was apparently using her to take the piss out of Shakespears Sister's "Stay" (I really hate the lack of apostrophe in that band name. Damn you, Siobhan Fahey). From nineteen-ninety-fucking-two. Jesus Christ, Johnny, try to move in the same century as the rest of us! To think we were scorning Sean Lock for doing a riff on Gail Porter's hair. The standard defence of Johnny Vegas as a "character" is crap, too. When his "character" gets involved with people who are not acting, everything that happens is his responsibility. Not his character's. It doesn't fly that it's alright to grope a stranger's breasts if you "don't really mean it". It's not alright to grope a stranger's breasts because "that's what the character would do" or because "he is trying to portray his character's self-loathing" or because "it indicates to the audience that his character is a loser". The last one is especially off, because if it were okay to grope strangers to show you were a loser, it doesn't really seem to have worked. People now think that Johnny Vegas is a criminal, Johnny Vegas didn't actually do it, or Johnny Vegas is allowed to do it because he's Johnny Vegas. It's not about his stupid fucking character.

In conclusion, Johnny Vegas is a nasty tosser. I'm cross and hate everybody. I will delete any of the following comments:
"But you weren't there!"
"Why didn't she stop him, if it was so bad?"
"Why haven't the police done anything, if it was really assault?"
"OMG you just don't get Johnny Vegas he's soooo funny" (I don't want this person on my blog ever again, thank you)
"How dare you condemn him before you've heard his side?"
"But you're forgetting that he's a truly brilliant actor - his performance in the BBC's Bleak House was exquisite." (This is not relevant and smacks of the 'he's an upstanding member of the community with a steady job' that people use to defend rapists.)
"But people saw her chatting to him afterwards! He said thank you!"
"The journalist hasn't gone to the police, which means she's lying."

Seen all of these, at least four times, and I just can't be arsed with them. Jennifer is not impressed. Jennifer SMASH.

Via Shakesville.

Edited to add: On Chortle, this is quoted:

"...[O]ne seemed to understand the point Vegas was trying to make by saying: ‘Not totally defending him but I'm sure that the point was that pathetic individuals/society are totally enthralled with celebrity and let them get away with murder. She, and others, could have told him to get lost but didn't probably for that reason.’"

The POINT he was trying to make? What the fuck? The POINT??? He wasn't making a point. If I killed someone in public and my defence was "I was trying to make a point", people would think I was a psychopath. You don't fuck with people on stage in order to make a point. Making a point, my arse. He wanted to grope a girl. Jesus. I'm interested to see if he'll make any comment on this at all. I always got the impression he'd like people to think that 'Johnny Vegas' was an idiot but that he himself was really a lovely guy. So, what do we think? Will he apologise, will he say nothing? Or will he claim he was making a fucking point? If he claims he was making a point, he will officially surpass Jim Davidson on my shit list. At least Davidson managed to apologise and admit he might have a problem with homophobia after all those 'shirtlifter' attacks. I never thought I'd see the day when a comedian could be worse than Jim Davidson. Christ.

Ashton Kutcher: Grrrr

2008-04-29T00:08:00.004+01:00

Grrrr.

I really hate these articles. Oh, thank you, Ashton Kutcher, for telling me what you don't find attractive in a woman. It's wonderful "advice". No, really:

Tip One: He doesn't like too much perfume. He warns us not to be "that woman", the one who oversprays and chokes you with her scent. Call me crazy, but eight times out of ten, the oversprayer is a man and his Lynx. This is not a 'woman thing'.

Tip Two: Don't say mean things. It's sexy when a woman is nice and quiet and sweet. Bollocks. I don't trust anyone who never says a mean thing.

Tip Three. My absolute favourite - "Dress how you want to be treated. If you show respect for yourself, you will be respected." GAAAAAAHHHHHH. How fucking dare you? If I have a bit of midriff on show, you get to treat me like crap? GAH. Oh, but you still have to look sexy, you don't want to be Hillary Clinton, now, do you? So Tip Three is essentially "Dress exactly the way I want you to dress. Not doing so gives me the right to be a shithole to you."

Tip Four: Don't wear too much expensive jewellery, because it means you're a gold digger. Yeah, Ashton, women don't ever have any money. You tell Demi Moore not to wear expensive jewellery because everyone will think she's sponging off you? Do you? Seriously, what world is he living in? No woman has any money, and all men have loads.

Tip Five: Don't be selfish. "Don't worry about what you are getting; worry about what you're giving." HAH. So what he's saying is, he wants a nice doormat who won't complain if he treats her like crap. Honey, please. Stop worrying about what you're getting out of this relationship. Selfishness is so unattractive.

Tip Six: Don't drop brand names. "Have you ever heard someone say 'Do you like my new Prada sweater?'" Well, no, actually, Ashton. I don't know anyone who can afford Prada sweaters. Get out of Hollywood, man, your brain is melting. As a side note, I was particularly amused by his assertion that "most guys...couldn't pick a pair of Louboutin shoes out of a line-up" because a couple of weeks ago my father, apropos of absolutely nothing, dropped the name into conversation and proceeded to describe the distinguishing mark of a Louboutin shoe. So sucks to you, Ashton. My fifty-six-year-old brain-damaged father can do it.

Articles like this make me want to throw things. Actually, what I really want to do is get on a plane to La-La Land, find Ashton Kutcher (he's probably hanging out with a unicorn or something), go right up to him and scream, "IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU, YOU KNOW! SOMETIMES, WOMEN DO THINGS BECAUSE THEY WANT TO, WITHOUT ANY REFERENCE TO WHETHER OR NOT A MAN WILL FIND THEM ATTRACTIVE! I'LL WEAR WHAT THE FUCK I LIKE, AND IF YOU CHOOSE TO DISRESPECT ME BECAUSE OF IT I'LL KNEE YOU IN THE SOLAR PLEXUS, YOU FUCKING ARSEHOLE!"

Ahem.

Tip Three is the most straight-up offensive, but Tip Five actually frightens me. It reminds me of Buffy, when Warren programmed his Aprilbot to believe that crying is blackmail and good girlfriends don't do it. Everyone has to be selfish. A man who tells his girlfriend, or women in general, not to worry about what they're getting is a misogynistic wanker. It's one of the things on my private 'abusive man' red flag list. And let me tell you, if that one wasn't there, I would be absolutely fucked now. I hate these articles, but just once I'd like to see one that says: "I like difficult women. I like honest, self-aware women who will call me on my bullshit and do whatever the hell they please with reference only to their own moral code. Not to society's, not to mine. I like women who own themselves." Half-formed wish, probably, but I'll continue to keep half an eye out, just in case.

Worst. Show. Ever.

2008-04-27T15:28:00.004+01:00

I didn't expect to have to write this. I'm not normally a person for in-depth reviews, but even though the traffic on this blog is pretty much non-existent, I feel this should be out there somewhere.

Last night, I went to a comedy gig. I do this quite a lot - I love stand-up. So far, the general rule is that when you go to a comedy club, the entertainment is quite bad. When you go to a comedian's show, the entertainment is quite good. Well, last night, the rule did not hold up. Adam and I went to see one Sean Lock. I normally like Sean Lock. I like him on QI, I like him on Have I Got News For You, I liked his chat show and I liked his sitcom. I thought this would be guarantee enough that I'd have a good time. Wikipedia informed me that he'd been booed off stage at Wembley, but all recent reviews assured me that he was brilliant. So, feeling fairly confident, off we went.

Sean Lock comes onstage looking like the Proclaimers' uncle. He has an utterly shocking widow's-peak combover. Well, it makes me giggle. He then gets off to a terrible start by mumbling, bumbling and rambling. He talks about his voice, and how it makes everything he says sound sarcastic. That's a lie; it makes everything he says sound nasty. It also sounds nothing like his TV voice. He attempts to personalise the show a little bit by mentioning the taxi strike taking place. He asks us why. We tell him. The cab drivers are striking in protest, because the council have painted all the cabs navy blue. He basically says "oh" and moves on. Oh, come on, man! Striking over blue taxis! That's a comic gift! At this point, I really wish I was watching Ross Noble. He'd have had a field day with blue taxis. Sigh. But back to Sean. He rants on about swans for a bit (Adam believes that Sean Lock must have had a previous bad experience with a swan), but it's neither of the funny kinds of rant - the fiery, angry, biting rant or the charming, bewildered rant. It's a man standing on stage grousing. It's a bitter old uncle. His timing is completely off, too - he's not an improv comedian, and the whole show is scripted, but you wouldn't believe it. There are awkward pauses, mumbles and qualifiers like, "So that's the joke." Bristol was not impressed, and Bristol wasn't laughing much. So, as you would, he panics a little bit. For the rest of the first half, every time he gets a laugh he pushes the joke far beyond its funny conclusion, until the audience is staring at him in stony silence. Then he says, "I've put the shit joke at the end again, haven't I?" This seriously happens five times. He then offends me a little by claiming that breakdown rescue vehicles shouldn't prioritise single women. Why not? Because he has to wait for three hours. Loser. This comes just after a right-on bit about racism, so I'm not impressed, particularly when he follows it up with a jab against transvestites. Men who eat salad are transvestites! HA HA HA. More grumpiness about the bits in orange juice. Your lovely reviewer is bored, and wonders whether or not to skip out during the interval. She decides not to. Bad idea.

Sean Lock re-emerges, and my hopes are raised a little when he makes a David Cameron joke (which is very funny but, naturally, he pushes it a few sentences beyond funny). He goes on about the environment, most of which isn't joke-based. It's "yeah, some people really care, I care, but not a lot" for twenty minutes. He smushes the odd joke in the middle (he'd been to America and came to the conclusion that compared to their level of consumption, him recycling was like bringing a dustpan and brush to an earthquake. I laughed), but he seems to lose his place repeatedly. He talks about showing his daughter Finding Nemo without realising that Nemo's mother and siblings get eaten by a barracuda one minute in, and why isn't there a warning? Which, YES! I saw that at the cinema, I was so upset I missed all the jokes! Everyone thinks I'm nuts. He wanders off into Scarface, and I marvel that a show which rips on David Cameron and Finding Nemo isn't even the slightest bit engaging. Sigh.

At this point, I'm still thinking, "Perhaps he's just not cut out for stand-up" and prepare to come away unimpressed, but still with an affection for his TV work. Then he says that a near-death experience can teach you who you really are. He describes sitting on a plane with engine failure, next to an old woman who is very upset. He says he yelled, "FUCK YOU OLD LADY! BLAH BLAH BLAH GOING TO DIE ISN'T IT FUNNY THAT I'M AN ARSEHOLE! HA HA HA!" (Naturally paraphrased because I'm not writing all that shit out).

Huh? No, Sean, I'm sorry. Yelling "Fuck you, old lady" qualifies you as neither witty nor charming. I don't know if you noticed me in the third row, totally silent with a contemptuous look on my face. If not, it would do you well to pay attention to your audience in future.

He moves on. He talks about hair. He stands on stage for twenty minutes flipping his hand about on top of his head. Seriously, twenty minutes. Pretending his hand is some hair. This is a centre parting. This is me on a pier. Be careful if you play tennis. You can literally hear five individual people laughing. The rest of the room stares at him. Just because he acknowledges after fifteen minutes that it's pretty shitty of him to be standing on stage flipping his hand around doesn't make it better or funnier. Your lovely reviewer and her companion are exchanging eye-rolls every two minutes now.

He talks about relationships. He goes to some lengths to prove that he's embarrassed to have any feelings for his partner. This is so 1970s it's unbelievable. He tells a boring, hackneyed story about coming home to find his ex in bed with an old friend of his "And I couldn't remember his name!" YAWN. So, he decides to go on the offensive and tell his ex that he never insulated the loft and is actually the Riddler. He takes off his clothes to reveal a fluorescent long-sleeved Lycra jumpsuit with a question mark on it. No, really, he does. We then have to endure half an hour of him standing in his jumpsuit, looking awkward, giggling at himself and making knob gags. Again, the fact that he acknowledges that knob gags are rubbish doesn't make it any funnier. At this point, he definitely notices me and says, "Some people think it's funny, some people are concerned." Concerned? For myself, yes. He says "I'm glad you like it" eight hundred times, then leaves. Phew.

Oh crap, no, he's not finished. He comes back. He talks about the fluorescent jumpsuit some more. Then he says, "I'm probably one of the straightest men in the entire world." Oh, fucking hell. He's going to try and prove his sexuality. His partner calls him "such a bloke". He does a charming routine which can be summed up as: "Gay men can't do DIY". Then he makes some blow job jokes. Yes, blow job jokes. What is he, twelve? Fucking blow job jokes. Let's mention ladyboys! That's funny. They look like ladies, don't they, but now listen for five minutes while I make very loud orgasm noises. I'm not kidding. We paid thirty-five quid to watch a man have a fake orgasm. Fucking loser. He then says something so disgusting about post-op transsexuals that I absolutely refuse to repeat it under any circumstances. And it was his closing joke! Sean Lock is a serious homophobe.

I've seen a lot of bad gigs, but I've never seen one this bad when I've paid to see a particular comedian. This wasn't the most sexist show I've ever seen (stand up, Simon Clayton), but it was without a doubt the most homophobic. And despite his right-on racism bit, he still made a joke about lynchings. Nice one, Sean. But what bothered me most about this show is that I now harbour a serious personal dislike for him. He's not just a bad comedian. He came across to me as unpleasant, creepy, misanthropic and self-indulgent. At the interval I complained to Adam about the rescue breakdown bit, and he assured me it was just the lead-in to a joke. After the show, it seemed to both of us like a genuine gripe. He is genuinely cross that because women get attacked, he has to wait for rescue breakdown. My only solace was that every time he said something particularly sexist, one guy at the back laughed and clapped all on his own, and Sean had to backtrack a little. You don't want the arsehole in the corner being the only one on your side. You could, I suppose, say that that's his onstage character. If he wants to stick with this "character", he'd better get a hell of a lot funnier. Very, very fast. The show in general seemed very 1970s, and every single one of his references was at least a couple of years out of date (Robbie Williams? Gail Porter's hair? Oh, for fuck's sake).

Before the very end bit, I would have given the show an overall rating of two out of ten. One point for Cameron, one point for Nemo. However, the end bit was the worst ten minutes I have ever sat through in my whole life, and I will hold that transsexual joke against him forever. So, Sean Lock: Worst. Show. Ever. That should be the name of his next tour.

I'm Terribly Juvenile

2008-04-22T00:22:00.003+01:00

HA HA HA HA!

Note: This is only funny if you know the back story, if you don't like Lembit Opik and if you know how disproportionately annoyed he gets when someone dares to make fun of him. I meet all of these criteria, and am feeling terribly juvenile this evening. So: HA HA HA HA! Insert "Touch My Bum" joke here. Snigger.

I do apologise.

Prescott Has Bulimia (and Jen Swears a Lot)

2008-04-20T14:16:00.005+01:00

John Prescott has suffered from bulimia. Good grief.

I'm impressed that he's talking about it. In his position, I certainly wouldn't. "John Prescott is fat" jokes have long been a staple of British political humour (example: "He can't wear a tie and a belt at the same time, or he'll turn into sausages"), and I'll be keeping a close watch on next week's edition of Have I Got News For You to count the bulimia jokes. Because bulimia is funny. It's a fat joke and a vomit joke, all in one handy little package.

He says it was brought on by stress:

"The only break I ever took was to eat. That’s all I did. Work, and then quickly eat something. It became my main pleasure, having access to my comfort food. So what I did was stuff my face with anything around, any old rubbish, burgers, chocolate, crisps, fish and chips, loads of it, till I felt sick - but at least I’d had the pleasure of stuffing my face and feeling really full. Then there would be a weird kind of pleasure in vomiting and feeling relieved."

I had terrible trouble with comfort eating as a teenager. I never threw up, but I was a binger for years. I still find a sick sort of comfort in a giant bar of chocolate. With that fully disclosed, I bring you the comments left on the article, horrible spelling and grammar left intact.

"Ah poor Prescott... not. He ought to be grateful that he could pay the bills unlike the 5 million poor people [blah blah blah fishcakes]."
"All that taxpayers' money down the drain, literally, as you can be sure that the food bills would have been paid out of expenses." Seriously, what does that have to do with it? Why are they harping upon about taxpayers? Gah.

"Even as a bulemic [sic] he is a failure." GAH.

"What a cheek to try and gain public sympathy by blaming the stress of office for his greed and his Neanderthal lavatory etiquette. It seems from some of the earlier posts that a few gullible souls have already been taken in." GAAAHHHH.

"...talk about a Big Girls Blouse." (I feel ever so slightly comforted that none of these idiots can spell or punctuate. Don't ask me why. It's Big Girl's Blouse, ass.)

"Bulimia - what a laugh - who has ever seen such a gross overweight, over eating man like Prescott suffering from Bullimia - what a load of rubbish." Oh, fuck off. Fuck. Off. Take your horrible sentence formation and your nasty views and fuck off.

I'll stop there. I'll ignore the tremendously amusing man who compares bulimia to throwing up a kebab when you're pissed and all the other posts talking about "greed". This really frightens me. He's too fat to be bulimic? Huh? Most of the time I love this country. I love the people, I love our collective attitude towards life. I love that no politician is too high or too important to take the piss out of. The one thing I truly hate about the British is our refusal to have personal sympathy with someone whose professional decisions we don't agree with. It disgusts me that people are proudly claiming they'll never feel sorry for him because taxes are going up (bear in mind the man is now retired and has nothing whatsoever to do with the Auditor's new tax plans), or because he's got more money than them, or because he's got a memoir coming out. "Ooh, what a coincidence," says someone sarcastically, having not bothered to read the article. This is IN the memoirs. That's where the story came from. The memoirs are about to be serialised by this newspaper. Dipshit. I hate these people.

Look, I'm no John Prescott fan. I thought he was incompetent as a politician, terrible as a public speaker - like the wonderful Linda Smith, I suspect language isn't his first language - and awful PR for Labour both as a party and a government. If you're an MP, you don't punch protesters. Even if they have thrown an egg at you (ooh, egg! That's food! Look out for a "Why Prescott Really Threw That Punch" bulimia joke coming soon to a comedian near you!). I thought he was completely useless. I still think that, as a professional politician, he was completely useless. However, it doesn't follow that he deserved to get an eating disorder because he was so useless. His uselessness doesn't preclude my now admiring his courage to be honest about it. He's a 69-year-old gruff Northern man with a big stomach. Eating disorders, in the public imagination, are the province of skinny, whiny suburban teenage girls. A man who gets an eating disorder is pathetic. A fat man with an eating disorder is just asking for it. I intend to make a John Prescott Bulimia Bingo card for my personal use when watching TV for the next couple of weeks.

To John Prescott, I say: Well done, that man. Well done. And I apologise for the utterly shitty quality of this post.

Personal Lexicon: The Auditor

2008-04-18T02:19:00.003+01:00

I didn't want to tack this on the end of my last post, because I'm still pathetically excited about the idea of having a series. So just a short one this time.

The Auditor: Gordon Brown. After Terry Pratchett's Auditors. For when Brown is pissing me off and being a bit scary.

Prime Minister FridgeVoice: Gordon Brown. For when he's pissing me off and I'm feeling especially juvenile.

Thoughts on Gordon Brown

2008-04-18T01:19:00.004+01:00

This... isn't really relevant. I just wanted to pretend Gordon Brown had done something interesting so I could talk about it. But no, he hasn't. He's gone to America, he's spouted a few nice cliches, he just lurves Bush and McCain and Clinton and Obama, he has no opinions that he'll state out loud, and I STILL can't take in a word he says because that man's voice is exactly like the hum of a fridge. I try to listen to him, I really do. I sit in front of the news and I concentrate hard. I take in the first sentence. I'm so pleased that I've taken in the first sentence that I miss the next couple of sentences. Then I realise I've forgotten what the first sentence was. Since he's become Prime Minister, I've tried to listen to numerous speeches he's made, and I've retained two things: "The EU treaty is not a constitution because it specifically says it's not a constitution" (as though that will have any effect on the content, which most people say is essentially the same - I tried to read the proposed constitution when the French were voting on it, planning to do a easy breakdown of it for my website, but they've deliberately made it unreadable. I think I got fifty pages in and went loony. What happened to the notes I made, I've no idea) and, from the other day, "Oh yes, I love American TV." Come on, Gordon, you do not. Unless you mean you love the craftsmanship on the fine American-made TV set in your hotel room.

I have a troubled love for politics. I wish I could be one of those people who think all politicians are the same so it doesn't matter who you vote for. Actually, I kind of do think that. For some reason that makes it worse. It's vital to me that David Cameron never gets within whipping distance of Number 10, even though he'd probably be, for all intents and purposes, exactly the same as Tony Blair. I don't say Brown, because he's a different bucket of aardvarks. I don't hate him as much as Cameron, because Brown actually knows what he's doing. Problem is, I really don't like what he's doing. I've finally worked out why he makes me so uncomfortable: Gordon Brown is an Auditor.

There just aren't enough Pratchett references in political blogging, and I think it's a damn shame, so this is the first of my attempts to correct it. I fully expect to have a lot of explaining to do. Stephen Fry and QI will help me. I love QI. Somewhere in my Top Ten Most Used Phrases is "It's true. Stephen Fry told me." Stephen Fry told me and BBC viewers in general that 90% of the universe is missing. We don't know where it is. It's slightly embarrassing. Terry Pratchett, who is one of the great unacknowledged philosophers of our time (he is. Just because it's funny doesn't mean it should be disregarded) suggests in Thief of Time that "nine-tenths of the universe is the paperwork." Said paperwork is done by the Auditors. The Auditors are basically grey robes, with nothing visible inside the hoods. They have no real voices - should they wish to communicate, the words arrive in the other person's brain without passing through the ears. This is exactly how I feel about Gordon Brown's voice, although I clearly have some sort of reverse Babel fish in my brain which immediately translates everything into intangible nonsense. The Auditors also hate humanity, because humans are irrational and irregular. If they could eliminate humanity, they could get the filing finished.

I would swear that Gordon Brown wishes there were no people in Britain so he can finish the filing. He always seems so affronted when we object to something. Blair would sigh, grit his millions of teeth, and tell us that he understood where we were coming from, but this was very important and we must trust him. And yeah, that was irritating. It's not as irritating as Gordon Brown's "What do you mean, no? You can't say no. I have decreed that this is what will happen. You can't object to it. I'm Gordon Brown. How dare you attempt to disagree with me?" Which, in turn, is less irritating (though scarier) than David Cameron's "You disagree? Oh no! Panic! Well, you're right, of course. Of course you're right, I totally screwed that up. Sorry. We'll try it your way instead!" Repeat ad nauseam when it turns out that not everybody agrees on everything. Dumbass. More about him another time.

Gordon Brown is scary. He's fundamentally scary. His default expression may be, "oh bugger, we're out of loo roll again. Why are we always out of loo roll?" but when he attempts some sort of expression, it always looks like some variant on "man who is going to kill you, probably because he thinks you took his loo roll." His 'happy' face looks like that. His 'angry' face looks like that. His 'neutral but relatable politician' face looks like that, and he's been practicing it a lot the past few days. It doesn't translate well, because Americans don't say 'loo roll'. It was a nice image, him and Bush strolling around together. Bush stole an election, Brown didn't even bother to have an election.

Goddammit, Liberal Democrats, why did you have to draft in Baby Cameron as your leader? Anyone else and you would have had my vote! I'd even have voted for old Ming above Brown and Cameron, and he was a corpse on wheels! Anyone except Baby Cameron! You know I can't support anyone who bears any political resemblance to Cameron! (I'm looking at you, Obama.) Alright, I wouldn't vote for Lembit Opik, but that's because he's shagging a Cheeky Girl and expects us not to laugh. I used to quite like him, but really, a freakishly thin Transylvanian in silver hot pants who was rejected in the first round of Popstars who sang a song called Touch My Bum written by her mother and a twisty-faced Lib Dem obsessed with doom-mongering asteroid theories, and we're not supposed to laugh? He seems to think he's too important to be laughed at. For fuck's sake, Lembit. You're in fucking Britain. One, you're never too important to be laughed at here. Two, you're not actually important at all. Three, it's hilarious! Have some self-awareness, man, yikes. (Sorry.)

Attention anyone who may be reading: For the headline "Thoughts on Gordon Brown", kindly read, "Thoughts on Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Terry Pratchett and his works, Lembit Opik, that whole stupid situation with the Cheeky Girl, and the state of Britain today if politicians forget that their entire purpose is to be criticised and laughed at." Thank you.

Useless Information from the Tuesday Pub Quiz

2008-04-16T00:15:00.003+01:00

Not much to tell you today, because we only got two questions wrong. And really, it's kind of embarrassing. There's a "wipeout" round in the quiz, where if you put down answers for all 10 questions, you get an extra five points if they're all right and no points at all if you get any wrong. This week it was a lyrics round and I essentially got six points for knowing the words to "The Chicken Song". I don't know if this particular piece of magic is an international phenomenon, but the bit most people know goes: "Hoooooold a chicken in the air, stick a deckchair up your nose..."

So this week, I learned that there are five seconds between each chime of Big Ben, and that the word "fuck" is used 257 times in Pulp Fiction. Use this information wisely, my friends.

Hey, Tesco, Leave Our Kids Alone

2008-04-15T17:45:00.004+01:00

Tesco is selling padded bras to eight-year-olds.

Tesco says the bra is "designed to cover up, not flatter", but that sure as hell looks like a plunge bra to me. If it was designed to cover up, it would be a crop top. This is obviously meant for eight-year-olds developing slightly faster than normal (as in, A cup), and at that size you don't need a bra. Really. Making it into a bra, as opposed to a crop top or sportswear, does nothing but draw attention to the fact that the girl is developing. This is what early developers complain about - a bra is a stigma. YOU DON'T FUCKING NEED IT. Eight-year-olds sure as hell don't need an underwire. And if they do? Don't buy a £4 Tesco bra. Jesus.

RIP Mark Speight

2008-04-13T20:34:00.004+01:00

This is so sad. I'm getting all teary-eyed over a kids' TV presenter that I hadn't thought of in years before this whole chain of events began. It was sad enough when his girlfriend died (I am ready to snap at anyone who starts apportioning "blame" because there were drugs involved), but we as a country have watched him fall apart in little article-sized snapshots. He blamed himself, as you would if you'd been taking drugs with your partner and she died. Sometimes you see people unravel due to grief, but he didn't even do that - he just broke. It's taken a while for him to hit the ground, but he's been dead for months. Staying with his dead girlfriend's mother, quitting his job, making noises about a charity concert, and then they find a body. Of course they did. It's not been officially confirmed as his, but dead man he is nevertheless.

Like everyone else who keeps up with the news, I've seen probably thousands of photos of smiling people who are dead now. It's so common that I don't tend to think about it. There's the occasional one that just won't budge out of my mind, like Holly and Jessica, Peter Woodhams, Nick Berg. And with dead celebrities, we've seen so many pictures of them grinning away that even if we were admired them the picture is no trigger. I've been upset at the death of many a celebrity, because I'm a big softy, but the photos don't make me cry. For some reason, this one is different. I can't look at it because I burst into tears. And I don't know why. It's not just tears, it's a real wrench on my gut. Poor, crazy dumbass. Poor, crazy, talented dumbass with such an ordinary story. Girlfriend dies of an overdose and he loses it. There's no trace of celebrity in this story - she wasn't a druggie, it was stupid middle-class cocaine dabbling. I know a hundred people who would do that and think nothing of it. I know a hundred men who would fall apart exactly like he did in these circumstances. There's nothing special about this story. It's just a very human death.

Personal Lexicon: Naderbots

2008-04-13T01:04:00.004+01:00

Look, another Part Two of a regular feature! I'm on a roll this week.

I was reading this excellent Shakesville post a while ago, and my intention was to use it to start a post of my own about the American elections. However, I took a glance at the comments first. Most of them are, for some unfathomable reason, by one guy banging on about Ralph Nader. The post doesn't mention Ralph Nader, but apparently this funny little man has absolutely nothing to say about anything else. Considering the original post was so interesting, this really annoys me, but someone used the term "naderbot" to describe him, and I'm always on the market for funny new words.

Because ScriptFrenzy is in progress (I refer to mine as Rent meets Yes Minister), I immediately thought of a whole chorus of Naderbots who show up at inopportune moments and sing about something irrelevant. They're going into my script as a chorus of protesters who turn up and sing about how great Ralph Nader is, despite the fact that they're in England and Nader has nothing to do with British politics. I foresee the Naderbots as a great recurring feature in my writing (what better way to pad out a Screnzy or NaNo?) - always referred to as Naderbots but given a new subject for each story. In NaNo '08, the Naderbots may sing about kettles. Screnzy '09? Punctuation. Dammit, I really want to write songs about punctuation.

Naderbot is soon to enter my everyday life as a term for someone who, no matter what is going on around him, talks about his chosen subject and only his chosen subject. No segues, no lame attempts to link it to the conversation at hand, nothing. In such a situation, Ralph Nader may be brought into the conversation as shown:

Naderbot: Blah blah chosen subject blah did you know that [insert crap fact] blah.
You: You know who's great? Ralph Nader.
Naderbot: What does that have to do with [chosen subject]?
You: Ralph Nader cares about the planet. How cool is that?
Naderbot: Oh. [chosen subject] blah blah.
You: Nader is awesome on Bacon-lettuce with cheese issues.
Naderbot: ?
You: Nader is not God, because we Nader supporters do not believe in a God, or Gods, or any master real or imagined.
Naderbot: !

Also, please note the original Naderbot's highly amusing outrage that he is not getting props from the feminists despite his support of sex-selective abortion in the third world. I kind of think he's a bored kid who thinks he's a satirist, but I really hope not. I took all the Nader-based quotes except the first one directly from the Naderbot, and I so want to believe there's someone in the world who genuinely speaks like this. I love the Naderbot. I'm having so much fun with this. He keeps referring to "imperialism" and "empire" (Naderbot thinks he's in Star Wars! and Nader rhymes with Darth Vader! Spooooky.) and anyone who disagrees with Nader not only isn't a progressive, but HATES progressives. That's his entire response to any contradiction.

Naderbot fun:
"Nader has sacrificed for us all, yet we show no gratitude."
"Jesus was a socialist, if he could get himself to vote...it would be for Nader."
"Deride, deride me if you must. But you know I speak the TRUTH!"
"Why do you turn your back on Ralph? Is it because he's Lebanese! You racist bastard."
"Your aloofness is very un-progressive. I also like Progressive Rock."
"Dude, I'm not gay, but I would blow you if you promised to vote for Nader."

There will never again be such an entertaining spammy troll.

For Future Reference

2008-04-10T11:43:00.004+01:00

The BNP occasionally seizes upon an issue of the moment - usually immigration or some such - to try and appeal to those of us who are white British. We would never treat you like that. Under a BNP government, you come first. Yes you do. Oh, you're worried about the non-white British? No, we're fine with them [snigger]. It's just those immigrants. We hate them.

I've seen this almost work on a couple of my friends. So I just wanted to link this, just so I don't forget.

"Rape is simply sex (I am talking about 'husband-rape' here)... Women enjoy sex, so rape cannot be such a terrible physical ordeal... To suggest that rape, when conducted without violence, is a serious crime is like suggesting force-feeding a woman chocolate cake is a heinous offence."

That is the sort of stuff that members of the BNP think. These people are racists ("show these ethnics the door?" What the hell was that?) and want non-whites returned to "their lands of ethnic origin". These people know that since they're excluding a large percentage of the population with their policies, it's not within their interests to alienate half their target demographic with such sentiments as the above, but those thoughts are there, within the party. Oh, and Nick? Force-feeding IS a heinous offence. If someone force-fed me anything, even if it was a tasty pudding, they would be guilty of assaulting me. Rape is a crime. Force-feeding is a crime. I'm almost tempted to make a "force-feeding you a knuckle sandwich" joke, but I'll just tell you to fuck off instead. Nick? Fuck off.

So for my future reference: The BNP are racist, sexist, stuck in the past, have absolutely no sense of empathy and must never, ever, ever be allowed within sniffing distance of power. EVER. Thank you.

Useless Information From The Tuesday Pub Quiz

2008-04-10T10:45:00.003+01:00

(Look, a second post in a regular feature!)

A baby oyster is called a spat. As opposed to a regular oyster, which is a spit (I mean, yuck). I don't know who picks these baby names - it can't be the same person who picked "puppy" which is one of the loveliest words in the English language. It just sounds cute and fuzzy. Baby animals should have cute names, even if they're not cute. In previous pub quizzes, we've been asked what a baby pigeon is called. It's a squab. Which is nice, but nowhere near as nice as "pidgelet".

Also, I have no interest in watching Mulholland Drive, but is there really a scene with three women in spangly dresses and two grinning clean-cut blokes singing in what appears to be some sort of diner? I'm just checking, because Cheese has a habit of not checking the answers, and people singing in a diner doesn't tie in with what I've heard about the film. But then, perhaps it's some sort of cosmic lesson. It's probably not right that I retain my position as the team's resident film expert when I've barely seen any films. I read film reviews and have a worryingly good memory for plots and actors and such, but I have the world's lowest gore-and-violence tolerance. Out of the IMDb Top 250, I've seen 25. Ten per cent. That's a bit crap. I really must watch Annie Hall and boost it up one.

Personal Lexicon: The Davidson Effect

2008-04-01T03:11:00.005+01:00

Today, the BBC informs me that there is no point in allowing mass immigration because it has little to no positive effect on our economy. I think this is an interesting subject, mainly because there is absolutely no answer that won't make you a) naive or b) a bigot. For example, clearly if the entire world immigrates to Britain, Britain is screwed. Whilst the entire world is obviously not going to immigrate to Britain, but there will come a point where there are just too many people coming in. If you disagree, you're naive. Someone will do an impression of a floaty, brainless hippy who thinks people can survive with no food is only they love each other. If you agree, you're a bigot. Someone will do an impression of a Nazi.

I do believe, for example, that immigrants should have to learn English. I won't even go abroad without learning at least "hello" and "thank you" in my destination country's language. I wouldn't dream of moving there and expecting them to accommodate me, even though most people do speak English now. Some people thought it was bigoted of Gordon Brown to suggest mandatory English classes for immigrants. You won't often find me standing up for Brown, but how on earth is this a problem? I'd hate to live in a country where I couldn't understand what was going on. If someone offered me free language classes, brilliant. Reading back over that last paragraph, I can see that it may, to some people, appear that I am bigoted against immigrants.

I have a term for this - The Davidson Effect. Named after World's Most Terrible Comedian, Jim Davidson. When writing the above, I worried all the time that my sentiments were ones Jim Davidson would agree with. For those who don't know (lucky bastards), Davidson makes racist, sexist, homophobic jokes (he also hates the disabled, but I'm not sure what the right word for that is), and commits the worst crime of all by not even bothering to make said jokes funny. Some comedians can make nasty jokes of this kind and be hailed as "pushing comedy's boundaries" and "having a refreshing disregard for political correctness". Davidson, however, is regarded as a pathetic, out-of-touch '80s throwback. If a new stand-up's comedy stylings are compared to Jim Davidson's, you can be certain that it isn't a compliment. Jim Davidson's fans are regarded in much the same light as he is. For example, if I were to admit to liking America's Next Top Model (sorry, it really is entertaining), people would just think I was suffering from a lapse in taste. They wouldn't assume that I was everything the show was - i.e. shallow, fluffy, camp and a waste of most people's time - but Jim's fans are assumed to be exactly like him.

In his stand-up, Dara O Briain told his audience that he'd made a very bad joke that had offended the gay community. I think he made it when he hosted Have I Got News For You, and was a really shit joke about Elton John and Billy Elliot. He received an angry letter from OutRage ("For those of you who don't know, one of the previous targets of one of their campaigns was Robert Mugabe. And now me.") and explained that once he realised he'd fucked up, he backed down immediately "because if I hadn't, I might just as well have started playing golf with Jim Davidson." If the joke itself didn't offend you, and the letter from OutRage didn't sway your thoughts, then this line tells you all you need to know: it's wrong because Jim Davidson thinks it's right. Golf has often been shorthand for exclusion and bigotry, and it only serves to ram the point home. If he hadn't backed down once he knew he'd been offensive, he would be a sad old loser with absolutely no place in the modern world. "Playing golf with Jim Davidson" has entered my personal lexicon as the actions of someone who has embraced his or her own bigotry. O Briain was also disturbed to receive a letter of support from some "concerned citizens" who wanted to praise his "comments on the link between paedophilia and homosexuality." They ended by expressing their support for his "stance against the forces of sodomy". Yes, forces of sodomy. O Briain finished reading the letter and added a sardonic, "Yours sincerely, Robert Mugabe", which is an extremely handy phrase to throw into a conversation when someone has said something particularly shocking.

I can't call this a regular feature yet, because I've done that with half my entries so far and haven't yet done a second one for any of them. Oh well.

ScriptFrenzy

2008-03-30T08:11:00.003+01:00

ScriptFrenzy starts Tuesday! I've decided to write a musical, because I am insane. I've never written a song before in my life, so my plan is to write some lyrics, sit in front of my brother's keyboard, attempt to find the key that matches the note I'm singing and write it down. Accompaniment be damned. If I can sing it, it's a musical.

Shit Celebrity Fun

2008-03-30T00:07:00.006Z

I have a question, then.

Being up late and bored, I decided to watch a little Art Attack on Youtube and indulge my inner eight-year-old, who by the way is still throwing a tantrum over its cancellation. So I search "Art Attack" and it gives me some videos and some alternative searches: art atack, art attak, the usual misspelled goodness. However the first one is "mensaje subliminal". Why? Is this a new conspiracy theory? Was Neil Buchanan actually an evil genius putting subliminal messages into his programmes? In Spanish? I suppose it would explain my continued love of the man. He's my favourite shit celebrity ever, just ahead of Roy Walker and Maurice Flynn of BBC Points West. He's only third because of the time I actually met him, which provided me with endless amusement. We were at the Balloon Fiesta, collecting free stuff, and when we discovered that we could get Maurice Flynn's autograph, our Shit Celebrity radars went off. Brilliant! We'd never even heard of him! A nice man informs Maurice Flynn that we want his autograph.

"What?" says Maurice, looking genuinely petrified, "No they don't!"

We assure him that yes, we do, and he signs the photos whilst looking at us partly as though we're insane, but mostly as though we're going to eat him. He then turns bright red and vanishes. I do occasionally wonder if we scarred him for life that day. Poor bloke.

I do want to point out the difference between a Shit Celebrity and a Celebrity Who Is Shit. A Shit Celebrity is barely remembered, but fondly remembered. A Celebrity Who Is Shit is well known but everyone hates them. This particular blog is a Shit Celebrity supporter, and will try not to mention Celebrities Who Are Shit unless they're actually relevant to the national news somehow. I do enjoy collecting Shit Celebrities and might turn them into another regular feature. Yay!

ETA: Oh My God. This is the best thing I've ever seen. Oh, Neil. You do make it so easy for me to love you.

Oh, Good, It's Cardinal Arsehole

2008-03-29T08:35:00.005Z

He's back. And he's still annoying me.

I've done a little ranting about this elsewhere, in times of yore (well, last week, actually). The Embryology bill is getting on my nerves partly because of Gordon Brown - more on that another time - but mostly because Cardinal Arsehole keeps butting his cassock into political affairs and telling Catholic MPs how to vote. This was a particular horror. But Cardinal Arsehole (no, he doesn't get a name. If he wanted me to use his proper name he wouldn't have compared abortion in Scotland to the Dunblane massacre) has been running his mouth about this new bill, particularly in his Easter sermon. Now, I admit that the last time I was in a church for anything other than a wedding or a christening I was nine and in the Brownie Guides, but isn't an Easter sermon supposed to talk about, well, Jesus? Is he not the point of Easter sermons? Crucifixion, resurrection and all that jazz? I have read the Bible, and I'm fairly sure the story doesn't go, "And Jesus said, Fear not, for I shall rise again, spliced with the DNA of an Easter bunny." That's actually not a bad metaphor for Easter, though.

Inner workings of the church aside, why is Cardinal Arsehole now getting to act all magnanimous that he's willing to talk to scientists? Why should they have to convince him of anything, so he'll allow Catholic MPs to vote for the bill? I really don't have a problem with politicians voting their conscience (not in this country, anyway - if I were an American it might make me a teensy bit nervous), but I sure as hell don't want them all voting Cardinal Arsehole's conscience. If you read the article, the guy pushing for this meeting is a Catholic who wants to support the bill. But Cardinal Arsehole needs to say it's OK before he votes for it. NO. Keep your damn religion out of my government. As a guidance for your own personal morals and ethics, fine. If I were an MP I would always keep feminist principles in mind when voting on a tricky bill, but I wouldn't call up Gloria Steinem and ask her what the right answer is. If you're involved in running the country, you should be able to make your own damn mind up.

The BBC's comment page, which is a bit of a breeding ground for ill-informed opinions and improper use of the shift key, had some real gems when Cardinal Arsehole first started throwing his weight around. I won't pretend to know too much about embryonic research, but I have managed to grasp that no, scientists will not be creating some sort of man/cow hybrid which will lumber around in a field and shit on the floor of the bus. The most annoying comment, though, and it recurs a lot, is that "England is not a secular country, so the Cardinal has every right to interfere."

First of all, ARGH. Second, we are pretty darn secular, actually. Third, in case you haven't noticed, Catholicism and the Church of England are DIFFERENT FUCKING FAITHS. The Queen is head of the Church of England. She doesn't have squat to do with Catholicism. Catholics are legally banned from becoming monarch and/or advising the Queen about state and religious matters. Cardinal Arsehole is a Catholic, and so has absolutely no right to interfere with the government. Jesus. Admittedly, I'd be no more impressed if an Anglican leader tried it, and oddly enough everyone was quick to call for his resignation in that case. He doesn't seem to have done that, by the way - I knew I wasn't kicking up enough of a stink for it remain in the forefront of everyone's mind. Please note: dammit.

The British, it has to be said, don't like religion, although we don't mind people believing in God or praying or going to church or what have you. What bothers us is religion in the mind of someone powerful. Tony Blair is Catholic, but he waited until he'd left office to officially convert because he knew we wouldn't like it (just to be clear, nobody could care less now). He said that the English believe if you're religious, you're a nutter, and I'm very happy he thinks so. Particularly as this lovely bishop immediately informed us all that if Blair had been inclined to discuss his faith, it would have influenced a lot of his decisions.

Now, one would assume that if Blair's faith has been so vitally important to him over the years, he would have used Catholicism as a moral guide anyway. Yes? So why is it such a shame that he never talked about it? Why would it matter? I don't think it has anything to do with Blair's personal leadership; it's about the public knowing that He's One Of Us. And you have to admit, he'd have been a much more effective display piece than Ann Widdecombe, who incidentally also made comment about Blair's Catholicism. He'd voted against Church teachings on various issues, such as abortion, and her implication is that perhaps he isn't, or wasn't, a proper Catholic. This is my point: Blair was a pro-choice leader. The only way he could stick to this conviction in public was to keep his Catholicism quiet. Cardinal Arsehole, Ann "Celebrity Fit Club" Widdecombe and other guardians of Catholic decency would have hounded him mercilessly. How can you be Catholic and say that? How can you be Catholic and vote that way? How can you be Catholic and claim that anything is an individual's choice? (sorry, that was snide). They could quite easily hound his minister, who could quite easily start refusing communion just as Cardinal Arsehole recommends for MPs who won't do as he says. It's an easy form of blackmail.

For clarity's sake, I'm not trying to rag on the Catholics here. I don't care what people believe. What I believe, as I said in my first post, is that whatever it is should be kept firmly to themselves. I don't want to have to deal with religion becoming as intertwined with politics as it is in the US. Apart from anything else, when the religions start moving in - and chances are, as the Matthew Parris article up the page suggests, that when one starts all the rest will follow - it pushes out those of us without a man in power to speak for us. Pagans don't have it, atheists don't have it, people who believe in something but have no specified church don't have it. So when this kind of thing crops up, I will get a little mean. But it's Life of Brian all over again - it's not your religion, it's the way you're dealing with it. And I'm not having it. No way.

Gayest Looks For Leno

2008-03-26T22:55:00.002Z

This is just the best thing in the world at the moment. If you care to look, you can spot me.

Open Prisons Are Crap

2008-03-26T16:30:00.004Z

Oh, for fuck's sake. What on earth was this man doing in an open prison in the first place? Especially considering he'd already escaped once before. In light of this blog being entitled "Looks Like Satire", I present you with a few choice quotes from the above articles:

"The court heard Foye had promised not to abscond again [well, that's alright then] and had tested positive for drugs before absconding for a second time." An untrustworthy prisoner! Who'd have thought?

"[MacAskill] again warned that any prisoners absconding in future were likely to be sent back to a normal jail." Now it might just be me, but I am reminded of being caught skipping lessons at school and being threatened with detention "next time". It reminds me of that because we all knew our school didn't actually do detentions. Ever.

No prisoner is going to be sent back to a regular jail because a) it's too much hassle and b) there's no damn room in the regular jails! Remember this? Followed by his imprisonment when he "forgot" or "wasn't told" to sign the sex offenders' register? Until they find some way to sort this prison shortage out - and God knows I don't have any ideas - no prisoner is going to be put off by the threat of regular jail because there's nowhere to put them. They can meet the criteria for transfer to an open prison even if they're classified as "high risk" and likely to re-offend.

I'm not sure I understand the last linked story at all. The investigation says they couldn't have predicted the rape because Foye wasn't in jail for rape in the first place. He had a history of "dishonesty and car crime". Right, but he was in jail for attempted murder, not a parking ticket. He'd absconded before, had a history of drug use and was supposed to be going to Alcoholics Anonymous when he absconded this time. Surely these factors put together resemble some sort of warning signal? It's not as though nobody knew he was violent.

Meanwhile, a young girl's life has been fucked up, and the government can only apologise.

Useless Information from the Tuesday Pub Quiz

2008-03-26T03:14:00.001Z

My first regular feature! Yay! I don't even have any readers yet! And this is technically cheating, because it's from last week's pub quiz, but never mind.

In 2001, the winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Cannes Film Festival was... Melanie Griffiths. Melanie Griffiths? I can think of approximately one film she's done. I know she was Oscar-nominated for it (well, I didn't - I looked it up because I didn't believe this was the right answer), but really. In most people's heads, she's two things: Antonio Banderas's wife and an example of why plastic surgery is a bad, bad thing. Which I suppose is an achievement.

Post the First

2008-03-26T02:34:00.000Z

Hi, and welcome to blog number eight hundred and forty-five. I will probably lavish a small amount of attention on it before moving on to blog number eight hundred and forty-six. I'll warn you now that this is a ranting blog, hence the title: it looks like satire, but is unfortunately not. I don't feel hugely poetic given that it's some stupid hour of the night, so here are a few subjects that will probably recur frequently:

David Cameron. Can't stand him. He's a useless, chinless, gormless pillock with no views of his own whatsoever.
Gordon Brown. Oh yes, I'm one of those. I have no side, just a list of grievances. Anyway, I don't trust Brown, who seems genuinely affronted that when he became Prime Minister he inherited an entire country of pesky people who expect him to listen to them.
Grammar. I am a raving spelling and grammar militant, and if I see bad grammar coming from a professional source, you are going to hear about it.
My own writing. I have some story on the go about eighty per cent of the time, and I have no control whatsoever over a) the plot, b) the characters, c) which genre I'm writing in, or d) which medium I'm writing in. Seriously, I once started a script and it turned into a novella in blank verse.
Feminism. When the day we reach some semblance of equality arrives, I'll stop. Until then, I intend to make a huge bloody racket about it.
Religion. I don't believe anybody's religion is public business, and I get cross when someone tries to make their religion (or in the case of Richard Dawkins, their atheism) my business. For the record, I'm a pagan, and I'll write a full-disclosure post about that in the future in order to clear up any confusion.

There will be other things besides ranting, but I'll tell you about those when I think of them.

Looks Like Satire

This has no relevance to anything but...

It's not just me!

Lord Foulkes the Blog Troll

But racism is funny, you weirdo

ANTM Blogging: All Pretences of Seriousness Abandoned Edition

Today In Bad Ideas

*shudder*

Currently Stuck In My Head...

(Women + Money) = (Divorce + Damaged Children)

A Neat Display of Privilege

Abortion: You Be Her Judge

Shenanigans?

You Don't Count

Punching Women Is Funny

Oh, David.

Ew, Hair.

Why I Love (and Now Admire) Bill Bailey

Fun With Names

Why Is This News?

NaNoWriMo Blogging: The Procrastination Starts Here

Whoops...

Scared, Not Stupid

ANTM Blogging: Team Isis Edition

Rape Is Always Rape

ANTM Blogging: Pre-Show Fluff Edition

CICA Sucks

In Case You Didn't Know...

Shitty Comedian Watch: Him Again

Never Again...

We Must Be Warned

Today in Bad Ideas...

A Personal Note

Shitty Comedian Watch

At Last, An Excuse!

It's All Your Fault

Nice Girls Don't Do That

Quote of the Day

Upskirting is "Sometimes Annoying"

Who to Avoid, and Who to Love

Link Time!

Why Isn't She Dead Yet?

Grammar Police: Words That Sound The Same Are Not The Same

Rape and Imprisonment - Such a Thigh-slapper!

GAH!

Bootstraps Cameron: It's All Your Fault

The "20 Weeks" Shootdown

Out-of-Touch Old Gits: Women are Mush-Brains

My Vulva Is Not Your Work of Art

It's Feminist Issue Week!

Don't Worry Your Pretty Head About It

Why Nobody Should Vote For Cameron

My Uterus Is Not On The Free Market

Also

Useless Information from the Big Wide Internet

An Epic Rant: Tad Safran is Tosspot McGee

It's Not Just Me

Hmph.

Sex and the City and Me

Brits for Hillary!

Homophobic? How dare you!

Oh, Go and Put Up Some Shelves

Sorry, Another Bishop Post

A Eurovision Plot

Please, Think Of The Children

In The Stocks: Self-Destructives and Uppity Bitches

Two Short Notes

EWWW.

Lost Cause Says: Shut Up, Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor

Whose Fault Is This?

A Comedy-Goer's Perspective on Why Johnny Vegas is a Nasty Tosser

Ashton Kutcher: Grrrr

Worst. Show. Ever.

I'm Terribly Juvenile

Prescott Has Bulimia (and Jen Swears a Lot)

Personal Lexicon: The Auditor

Thoughts on Gordon Brown

Useless Information from the Tuesday Pub Quiz

Hey, Tesco, Leave Our Kids Alone

RIP Mark Speight

shudder