The law on smacking is there to protect those who are parented by people who don't understand too far. Don't understand the fine line between loving parenting and a quite correct intent to teach a child who is struggling with right and wrong via verbal channels and subduing and damaging. Who don't understand that leaving a red mark (or worse bruising) can leave damage years after the bruise has faded.
The law is there to protect the vulnerable.
If you remove that law, you remove protection and the line which has been drawn in the blurry murky water of what is 'acceptable to society' as punishment and what is 'acceptable within a family' as punishment.
I do not believe that the State should legislate against all eventualities when it comes to parenting. I do believe in protection for those unfortunate enough to be born to the wrong people.
We should be looking to teach those struggling with errant children and violent teenagers how to deal with them better, how to be better parents, without resorting to smacking. I believe there was a time when smacking was an acceptable form of teaching right from wrong. I do not believe we exist in that time any more.
I believe we should be offering parents who are honest and brave enough some form of assistance. We should be examining why social constructs collapsed and continue to collapse.
We should tackle the root of the problem. Not 'slap' a sticking plaster over the top of the bruising and hoping it all goes away.
Monday, 30 January 2012
Monday, 9 January 2012
The modern feminist
I consider myself a modern feminist, generally. What does that mean?
Well, it means I'm probably going to get shouted at for this post, but here goes nothing.
A modern feminist, to me, is:
Someone who recognises it is possible to be a feminist whether you are a mother or not
Someone who recognises that not being a mother is not dysfunctional or weird or strange; but that being a mother is not either.
Someone who understands that women are, on average paid less, but that there are contributory factors to this which need to be addressed as well as landing all of this in the laps of the 'patriarchy' including literacy and numeracy levels, combined with likely genders of carers of parents/grandparents mixed with part time working mixed with....you get the picture.
Someone who understands bras are nothing to do with it.
Someone who recognises that women at the top (and at the bottom and the middle too) leads to a more balanced workforce with mixed outlooks, backgrounds and life experiences.
Someone who understands that sex can and is frequently used as a weapon, that situations that are not intimidating for men can be for women for this reason and that suggesting visiting a lap dancing club as part of business entertainment is so massively inappropriate it is not funny.
I deliberately didn't specify gender. Anyone can be a feminist. Anyone can have an opinion. We're all in this together, right?
Except then I come to read Helen Lewis Hasteley and Zoe Stavri discussing Steven Moffat and intimating quite strongly that he has a problem with women and I despair.
Of all the people to attack, for a start, for their attitude to women. Surely there must be better targets to devote ones time to in calling out on their attitude. Then there's the treatment of Irene Adler.
Irene Adler is redepicted in Steven Moffat's version of Sherlock as a dominatrix. Now, this profession comes in for some stick normally anyway, being as how half the feminists I know think dominatrices are a betrayal to the gender and the other half think they're taking power back and using it to have some fun and make some money while they're doing it. Lets not even get into a discussion about whether a dominatrix who is paid can ever enjoy her job - I'm simply not going there.
Where I do want to go is the assumption that switching Adler into this role took power away from her somehow. Did I imagine the scene where she beat Sherlock to the ground? Did I imagine the at least hour long sparring of minds as each tried to get the better of the other? Perhaps I misinterpreted the scene of execution as one where an agent who had failed was paying for her failure in exactly the same way as a male agent would be expected to do in that country. Was I not supposed to laugh at the changed ring tone which paid hommage to a certain film, was I not supposed to recognise the power struggle between two fiercely intelligent people, both striving continuously for the upper hand and both finding it amusing and satisfying both to be winner and runner up because neither is actually failure at all?
I don't think I have misread this episode. I have had, as evidently the two ladies discussing Moffat in the article have not, had the pleasure of adding Baskerville to my viewing arsenal when assessing Moffats attitude to women - is it accidental that the female main lead aside from the psychologist is yes, the one who is a mother and accidentally mixed up her glow in the dark rabbits but also, as it happens, is involved in unravelling the final solution to the tricky conundrum?
No. I don't think Moffat has an issue with women. I think Moffat actually understands women all too well. He paints them in variety, just as we are, as mothers, as smarter than some and less smart than others, as dominant women but also as biologists and psychologists.
What I believe requires more acknowledgement is that there is a very obviously Aspergers character on our screen being beautifully and eloquently depicted by someone who isn't, and who is being given lines and situations which highlight wonderfully the confusion, frustration and recognition of being 'other'.
I think that Sherlock is something to be celebrated, not berated.
Well, it means I'm probably going to get shouted at for this post, but here goes nothing.
A modern feminist, to me, is:
Someone who recognises it is possible to be a feminist whether you are a mother or not
Someone who recognises that not being a mother is not dysfunctional or weird or strange; but that being a mother is not either.
Someone who understands that women are, on average paid less, but that there are contributory factors to this which need to be addressed as well as landing all of this in the laps of the 'patriarchy' including literacy and numeracy levels, combined with likely genders of carers of parents/grandparents mixed with part time working mixed with....you get the picture.
Someone who understands bras are nothing to do with it.
Someone who recognises that women at the top (and at the bottom and the middle too) leads to a more balanced workforce with mixed outlooks, backgrounds and life experiences.
Someone who understands that sex can and is frequently used as a weapon, that situations that are not intimidating for men can be for women for this reason and that suggesting visiting a lap dancing club as part of business entertainment is so massively inappropriate it is not funny.
I deliberately didn't specify gender. Anyone can be a feminist. Anyone can have an opinion. We're all in this together, right?
Except then I come to read Helen Lewis Hasteley and Zoe Stavri discussing Steven Moffat and intimating quite strongly that he has a problem with women and I despair.
Of all the people to attack, for a start, for their attitude to women. Surely there must be better targets to devote ones time to in calling out on their attitude. Then there's the treatment of Irene Adler.
Irene Adler is redepicted in Steven Moffat's version of Sherlock as a dominatrix. Now, this profession comes in for some stick normally anyway, being as how half the feminists I know think dominatrices are a betrayal to the gender and the other half think they're taking power back and using it to have some fun and make some money while they're doing it. Lets not even get into a discussion about whether a dominatrix who is paid can ever enjoy her job - I'm simply not going there.
Where I do want to go is the assumption that switching Adler into this role took power away from her somehow. Did I imagine the scene where she beat Sherlock to the ground? Did I imagine the at least hour long sparring of minds as each tried to get the better of the other? Perhaps I misinterpreted the scene of execution as one where an agent who had failed was paying for her failure in exactly the same way as a male agent would be expected to do in that country. Was I not supposed to laugh at the changed ring tone which paid hommage to a certain film, was I not supposed to recognise the power struggle between two fiercely intelligent people, both striving continuously for the upper hand and both finding it amusing and satisfying both to be winner and runner up because neither is actually failure at all?
I don't think I have misread this episode. I have had, as evidently the two ladies discussing Moffat in the article have not, had the pleasure of adding Baskerville to my viewing arsenal when assessing Moffats attitude to women - is it accidental that the female main lead aside from the psychologist is yes, the one who is a mother and accidentally mixed up her glow in the dark rabbits but also, as it happens, is involved in unravelling the final solution to the tricky conundrum?
No. I don't think Moffat has an issue with women. I think Moffat actually understands women all too well. He paints them in variety, just as we are, as mothers, as smarter than some and less smart than others, as dominant women but also as biologists and psychologists.
What I believe requires more acknowledgement is that there is a very obviously Aspergers character on our screen being beautifully and eloquently depicted by someone who isn't, and who is being given lines and situations which highlight wonderfully the confusion, frustration and recognition of being 'other'.
I think that Sherlock is something to be celebrated, not berated.
Wednesday, 26 October 2011
Dear interwebz,
Dear interwebz,
You taught me how to hold my own.
You taught me how to persist in making my voice heard.
You taught me it's okay if half what you say is random - as long as the other half hits the nail on the head.
You taught me girls can have opinions.
You taught me those opinions might be right (or wrong, depends).
You taught me to show my feelings and no one would laugh.
You taught me passion and enthusiasm were positives and not negatives.
You taught me people can be shallow. Thank you. I will avoid those people in real life, the same as I now do online.
You taught me people can be magically awesome. Some people have single handedly changed my life. Yes, you.
You taught me to aspire.
You taught me to believe. In myself. In my capabilities. In my dreams. In my strengths, that I have some, that they are of worth.
You taught me to occasionally sparkle.
You taught me occasionally to despair.
I am, finally, comfortable with who I am.
Took a while. Got there in the end. We all do.
Saturday, 27 August 2011
Letter to an unknown rioter
I'm going to call you Jamie because I know the Jamie I used to know would have been right in the middle of the crowd in Hackney. Because you were always in the middle of everything, weren't you? Had to try everything, push every boundary. No authority figures button was unpressed either and that included me - you were a handful and no mistake. The only person you'd ever listen to was your advocate but you wore her down so much her relationship with her boyfriend started to suffer. And then you discovered she was self conscious about her weight, went on the attack verbally one day because you had to see how far you could push her and you found out. She quit advocacy altogether.
People like you, I can understand. I don't condone your actions. I don't agree with the way you live your life, I think you're wasting an obviously bright mind - if you applied half the energy you devote to stealing to fund your drug habit to running an advocacy service, a social enterprise to try and stop more kids ending up like you, then you'd be a very very very successful man.
Instead, you walk into a pharmacy every morning at the same time and collect your methadone script. It doesn't stop the clucking when you run out of the real stuff but it at least makes it vaguely tolerable. And that's all you expect of life, really, that it's tolerable. Occasionally your mum emerges from her drunken stupor to enquire from the prison service, the probation service, the social workers if you're ok, but not often. Not often at all. She still lives in the flat where you were raised. Water runs down the bare plaster on the walls, there's graffiti scrawled on the walls, the carpets are threadbare and the door is hanging on for dear life - just like it's owner.
I'd say it was inevitable, how you now live your life, but I know it's not. You chose. We all choose. And as a result of your small part in the recent chaos, suddenly everyone is interested in why you chose. When you chose. How you chose. Who made you choose?
Your mother was invisible. Unless she wasn't and then it was painful. Your teachers gave up and social services lost you because you simply gave everybody the slip and your mother never noticed if you were there or not when she was really drunk. You got free rides wherever you wanted on the DLR because the conductors were too scared to challenge your big group you travel everywhere with - there's safety in numbers. You had social workers but they left, went off sick, moved. The only structure, routine, cohesion and predictability in your life has come from the inevitable flow of police-court-prison that your life revolves around.
To me, it is inevitable that some people from your background will end up the way you did. You don't have friends, you have a pack. You don't have the luxury of security or ever letting your guard down - your mother can't hurt you any more but other people can and with far more lethal things than fists. Your life is wrapped in fear, crack smoke, needles, dead friends.
I never once heard you laugh.
I never once saw you enjoy something simply for what it was.
I saw you let your guard down occasionally with your advocate, but not very often.
I very rarely saw you smile.
I never saw you do something for someone simply because you could or should unless there was something in it for you.
I understand. But I don't have the answer. Because the answer lies with your mother and how do we break the circle and the cycle? How do we intervene? Were the social workers any help? Did you get any advice from youth workers or school? Did you ever feel safe anywhere? Did you ever go somewhere where you felt safe enough to smile and laugh and let your guard down?
We need to talk to you Jamie.
But you know, deep down I know you're dead from an overdose, from an infected needle, from one fight too many, from a bad batch of heroin, from someone who you gave too much lip to who was carrying more than a knife.
And that too, feels inevitable.
People like you, I can understand. I don't condone your actions. I don't agree with the way you live your life, I think you're wasting an obviously bright mind - if you applied half the energy you devote to stealing to fund your drug habit to running an advocacy service, a social enterprise to try and stop more kids ending up like you, then you'd be a very very very successful man.
Instead, you walk into a pharmacy every morning at the same time and collect your methadone script. It doesn't stop the clucking when you run out of the real stuff but it at least makes it vaguely tolerable. And that's all you expect of life, really, that it's tolerable. Occasionally your mum emerges from her drunken stupor to enquire from the prison service, the probation service, the social workers if you're ok, but not often. Not often at all. She still lives in the flat where you were raised. Water runs down the bare plaster on the walls, there's graffiti scrawled on the walls, the carpets are threadbare and the door is hanging on for dear life - just like it's owner.
I'd say it was inevitable, how you now live your life, but I know it's not. You chose. We all choose. And as a result of your small part in the recent chaos, suddenly everyone is interested in why you chose. When you chose. How you chose. Who made you choose?
Your mother was invisible. Unless she wasn't and then it was painful. Your teachers gave up and social services lost you because you simply gave everybody the slip and your mother never noticed if you were there or not when she was really drunk. You got free rides wherever you wanted on the DLR because the conductors were too scared to challenge your big group you travel everywhere with - there's safety in numbers. You had social workers but they left, went off sick, moved. The only structure, routine, cohesion and predictability in your life has come from the inevitable flow of police-court-prison that your life revolves around.
To me, it is inevitable that some people from your background will end up the way you did. You don't have friends, you have a pack. You don't have the luxury of security or ever letting your guard down - your mother can't hurt you any more but other people can and with far more lethal things than fists. Your life is wrapped in fear, crack smoke, needles, dead friends.
I never once heard you laugh.
I never once saw you enjoy something simply for what it was.
I saw you let your guard down occasionally with your advocate, but not very often.
I very rarely saw you smile.
I never saw you do something for someone simply because you could or should unless there was something in it for you.
I understand. But I don't have the answer. Because the answer lies with your mother and how do we break the circle and the cycle? How do we intervene? Were the social workers any help? Did you get any advice from youth workers or school? Did you ever feel safe anywhere? Did you ever go somewhere where you felt safe enough to smile and laugh and let your guard down?
We need to talk to you Jamie.
But you know, deep down I know you're dead from an overdose, from an infected needle, from one fight too many, from a bad batch of heroin, from someone who you gave too much lip to who was carrying more than a knife.
And that too, feels inevitable.
Wednesday, 27 July 2011
I made a promise
I made a promise inside a tube which banged loudly and was horrifically claustrophobic. I made it last year. I made it because I thought briefly I was skating on the edge of bad diagnoses of bad things, bad things with bad futures and bad pain and bad everything.
I promised I would do what made me happy.
That might sound selfish. It might sound self indulgent. It might sound plain impossible.
I thought I was going to die. The dye ran around my brain and in the end what they thought they'd seen was not. I was lucky. There might be a next time. I might not be quite so lucky next time. I do not want to get to 80 and regret anything. I do not want to waste a second. This week we have been on holiday and people ask when we're going to stop.
The answer is, when I'm 80. That's when I'll stop. When I can't ride or climb or dance or run or hike or scramble or slide or swim or wriggle or marvel or aspire or inspire or dream, anymore.
Everyone says life's too short. Some know it is, to some they're just words to be thrown away, lip service. People laugh at me for this attitude, laugh at the determination to experience absolutely everything, absolutely right now. They think nothing bad will ever happen. That the 1 in 4 will always be someone else. That running the Race for Life will always be for someone else.
I made a promise. Don't waste it, don't get blasé, don't assume, don't turn your back, don't ignore, don't laugh. Both hands, fingernails, fingertips. Hold on as tight as you can, for as long as you can, see everything, fear nothing, breath deeply and laugh.
So I'm asking a pretty big question this week. I've been asking it for a long long time. Am I good enough? Am I any good at all? Should I just give up and go home?
Because there's got to be a question, and the answer has to be yes. Yes, I am happy.
I promised I would do what made me happy.
That might sound selfish. It might sound self indulgent. It might sound plain impossible.
I thought I was going to die. The dye ran around my brain and in the end what they thought they'd seen was not. I was lucky. There might be a next time. I might not be quite so lucky next time. I do not want to get to 80 and regret anything. I do not want to waste a second. This week we have been on holiday and people ask when we're going to stop.
The answer is, when I'm 80. That's when I'll stop. When I can't ride or climb or dance or run or hike or scramble or slide or swim or wriggle or marvel or aspire or inspire or dream, anymore.
Everyone says life's too short. Some know it is, to some they're just words to be thrown away, lip service. People laugh at me for this attitude, laugh at the determination to experience absolutely everything, absolutely right now. They think nothing bad will ever happen. That the 1 in 4 will always be someone else. That running the Race for Life will always be for someone else.
I made a promise. Don't waste it, don't get blasé, don't assume, don't turn your back, don't ignore, don't laugh. Both hands, fingernails, fingertips. Hold on as tight as you can, for as long as you can, see everything, fear nothing, breath deeply and laugh.
So I'm asking a pretty big question this week. I've been asking it for a long long time. Am I good enough? Am I any good at all? Should I just give up and go home?
Because there's got to be a question, and the answer has to be yes. Yes, I am happy.
Saturday, 23 July 2011
{void}
Death is always pointless, isn't it. No one gains, except if the person dying was in pain before and then, perhaps.
I hate that I feel that it would somehow have been better, that I could somehow understand, that I could reconcile, if it had been caused by the usual suspects, if there had been some kind of terrorist group behind it. I could understand the co-ordination, the planning, the brutal efficiency in dispatching as many people as possible.
Instead I'm left back at a question I have been asking for most of my life, which is if someone has mental health problems so severe that their personality is changed beyond all recognition, that religion or whatever other conduit is focused on and as a result of the mental illness becomes warped and broken, who are you forgiving for their actions? The person they were or the person they are? Who do you mourn the loss of\? Who do you grieve for?
Is it wrong to even mention grieving for the man who orchestrated all this? Is it okay to feel sympathy for his family and a deep sense of loss in humanity that we didn't spot someone so broken yet again, that yet again, yet another country can be added to the list of ones who fail the mentally ill.
We are there. The US is there. And now Norway. There may be others, I can't think. This is not reporting and these are not facts, these are questions I might be alone in asking, but I don't think so. I think there will be others who can't read the details because it breaks their hearts.
Death on this scale is normal in war. War is brutal and expected. Those caught within it are often times trained to cope to be within it. They feel fear, of course they do, but they are prepared for it, it is acknowledged, it is defended against as much as the mind can be taught to defend against such things.
So when I read the BBC front page headline 'MP tells of escape from island', I can't read it. It's the stuff of my nightmares and I don't want to. I don't want to know and I'm sorry if that makes me somehow less of a person in your eyes, I'm sorry if this is some kind of perjury that we are expected to make in exchange for not being in his position but I can't.
I have finally found the thing I cannot be dispassionate about because it is written down. These were the things I didn't write after London, because I had no where to put them but I would have. I felt the same feelings of confusion and anger and despair. Now another country will go through the same process.
I am sorry, so very very sorry. We are failing and we must do better.
Friday, 22 July 2011
Voyeurism, commentating & real time reporting
Voyeurism: An obsessive observation of sordid or sensational subjects
We are the consumers. We are the voyeurs. The people who demand to know and right now and who cares if there are body parts and blood dripping and mothers utterly distraught. Who cares if there are pictures of dismemberment and destruction. It's not for the sake of worried families we are shown this, that we view this - words could assuage fears just as easily.
They are for us.
Oslo just exploded. Or, rather, a building within Oslo has just exploded. And as the national TV station opens its doors to the world and allows us all in, so does Twitter allow us into the hearts and minds of those directly affected by such events.
It's like watching real time moral erosion. Everyone scrambling to 'play their part'. Everyone scrambling to be the authoritative commentator/collator. And it's not just the news agencies, any more, because the news agencies can't react as quickly as citizen journalists on the ground and so suddenly, we have people reporting in real time with no training and almost, I believe, such an obsessive focus on documenting that any decision which once would have been made that something was somehow 'too much' to show on TV, is suspended.
Social media has almost made it impossible to pause for long enough to consider content, and instead has become entirely focused on 'absolutely everything and right now'.
Of course, that implies the fault lies with the citizen journalists. Which it does not, because, quite simply, no one would bother if no one was watching. And where once upon a time news was consumed locally and nationally and then internationally as Reuters did its job, now we have no filter, we have no unbiased news agency, the role of Reuters has almost become unnecessary. So essentially, the drivers for this constant feed of news, from social media and from 24 hour news channels, is us.
All of us.
We are the consumers. We are the voyeurs. The people who demand to know and right now and who cares if there are body parts and blood dripping and mothers utterly distraught. Who cares if there are pictures of dismemberment and destruction. It's not for the sake of worried families we are shown this, that we view this - words could assuage fears just as easily.
No.
They are for us.
And can we please, please, please all have a bit of a think about that and decide whether we are entirely comfortable with that? Because I am not. And if I am alone in that, then fine, I concede and promise to keep quiet. If I am not, then can we self moderate just a little?
Ta.
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