Patriarchy

Dear Sir,

I am addressing this exclusively to men, and in fact to a special kind of man who I know exists because I've read his comments on various websites, listened to him laugh at women MPs while she takes her turn in speaking, guys who specialise in intimidating their new female colleagues, making sure she never feels that comfortable at work. Men who clearly have done fuck all research on the sexism they are dogmatically, absolutely pontificating on, but have a second hand observation that trumps all other arguments. Yes, even the people who are reporting their experiences in the first-person, where they cite extensive academic studies, surveys, official reports and basic, everyday, right-in-front-of-you facts, even these people can't stand before the almighty authority of this one guy's anecdote. Yes, your "observation" from that one time, made a comprehensive fact in the present simple tense, that is all you have to say on the matter. No listening, no researching, no understanding. Doesn't want to. Self preservation must come first.

Because if you dare admit that things aren't fair, if you stop telling us that we are whiny bitches for wanting fair treatment, if you just say "yes, we are not on a level playing field, men have an advantage over women in almost all parts of life and we need to change it," if you were to do any of that, you would condemn yourselves.

Not men in general. No, men have such an ingrained advantage over women, culturally, economically, politically, I actually think true equality may never be possible - our collective ideas are too entrenched, they are too reinforced by the rotation of our daily rituals. Mankind is absolutely fine, strong, ahead of their female partners forever (which is a real shame for men. I will go into the benefits guys get from feminism in a later post.)

You, however, you as an individual man, are utterly fucked.

You're asking why. I think you know why. Allow me to speculate about you.

You make it obvious when you try to flip it. Most of the time, when someone is getting a raw deal, people don't insist blindly that the victim is meant to suffer because "it is the way it is," or that the crime isn't even happening or that they aren't really the victim in the situation: imagine if the white people of the deep south in the 60s tried to insist that it was actually the black people oppressing them. It's not idiocy, it's calculation. These guys explain away inequality as a gut reaction, desperately trying to squash these voices that keep telling their stories.


The more women become equal, the more of us you're running against, the lower you get ranked. Not on a basis of gender, but on a basis of skill. 50 years ago, your male elders only really competed against other men - specifically, other white men. Women and people who weren't white were relegated to offstage roles, unfit and unsuited to the working world of dogged rivalry and triumph over others. When you insulted the others, you feminised them, because to be a woman was to be weak. It must have been really, very easy to win in those days - the scale of talent must have been really, very limited.

But now, we are running exactly the same race as you. And many of us are actually doing better than you, much better than you. Actually talented guys aren't worried, they are happy to have us on their teams, their skills have stood up to the extra competition and they now see past that to the actual, desirable result of having a greater range and standard of skills.

Their confidence is fine.

 But you, Mr. Misandry-Online, are horrified - before the 70s, you would have profited from the limited talent pool, your barely-there ability made to look better by an optical illusion. Now, the sheer number of players drives you down from the top to off the radar. The men who were better than you were always going to do better, but may be before you could have become their right hand man, there wasn't a lot of choice after all. Now it is statistically impossible for you to claw your way out of the mediocre middle. Women, before quiet and non-existent in the world of work, have humiliated you by outstripping you with such seemingly natural ease.

So when women say to you, "you know, we've not got a fair deal" it makes you explode.
Give them a fair deal?! You mean they've been doing as well as you or even better with less to work with!? Christ, what would it be like if they fucking WERE equal!

And so you insist it doesn't happen, that it isn't such a big deal, that you too are being victimised by the system.

You want to perpetuate inequality.

Fear forces you to refuse. Humiliation compels you to insist it's the other way around.

And the entire time you make us feel bad about ourselves, you abuse us, tell us our looks are our currency, call us an aggressive bitch if we are too easily sailing past you. It must sting that we keep doing it, despite being hindered by history, that we so effortlessly render your obsolescence.

Night.

Racist rant/rant about racism

So, as I mentioned in my last post, which is one of the most depressing things I have ever phlegmed-up, I mentioned that I am now at university. Again.

It's been a while, 3 years, in fact, and like trying on a pair of trousers that used to be your favourites back when you were 22, there is an uncomfortably sad moment of realisation that you've changed shape in some way that stops the trousers fitting you like they used to, a reality-based moment which still can not bleach-clean your initial delight of finding the blessed relics in the first place. In short, although I'm freaking out that I have changed a lot since I was at university, I'm utterly delighted to be back in a place that has such holy connections for me.

Hang on, I'll get on to the main point in a tic, I just want to make an observation. Moments that are special to us often get that holy-like quality, becoming symbols of everything that we wish life were like, all the more giddily-held because of the fact that they ACTUALLY HAPPENED while we were ACTUALLY THERE, the living specimen that proves our theory correct. But because it was so long ago and far away, the details drop out of focus. We stop seeing the pointilist detail and instead think the experience was pure, concentrated fantagasm. We do this collectively, on a historical basis too. My generation is often knocked by the one before it as being the laziest, most feckless there is, even though the shit-poor economic situation started when we were sequestered in schools, universities or low-end jobs. And this sneerful attitude is formed by the fact that certain individuals of that generation cannot reflect with accurate, mirror-like perception on the errors of their own lifetime. I would go into more detail on this, but I want to talk about something else.

I'm living in halls, and living in halls comes with the caveat that you will be co-habiting with a bunch of randomly selected other students. Sure, on the application form you had to specify if you were an early-to-bed or a late-to-bed, but besides everything else, there is no common factor between you and your new halls-buddies. This isn't necessarily a problem, but anyone can appreciate some....issues that may arise.

In my halls, there are 3 English people, including myself, and the rest are Chinese people.

Guess who I have a problem with








Ok, that's enough time.


The two English girls I met I find difficult to like. For the purposes of this account, let's call them Liz and Carys. Because those are their names and no one actually reads this.
Anyway, my problems with them so far;

1.) When I first moved in, they had both been here for just under a week, and they were BFFs already. I am very awkward around people, and I always have been, but as I get older the awkwardness is materialising more as wariness. I'm not so much anti-social, as I was 10 years ago and a teenager terrified of the concept of human interaction. Instead, now I know how to get friends, I'm very very selective regarding who I leave my books, my computer and myself for. And I can't help but feel a sort of suspicion for people who can form a sorority/fraternity-like bond with people they don't really know.
2.) The first day I moved in, they showed me the cupboards (which I'd already figured out, thanks. I know how cupboards work,) and then followed it up with a synchronised whinge about how the Chinese don't occupy the maximum amount of space. For what felt like 10 minutes of me nodding, and saying "yes, that's annoying." A few hours later, after buying some plates and things, I found about 2 whole cupboards, full of nothing. These cunts took up my time, bored me solid, made me feel all nervous about a possible confrontation divided along race lines, because they can't fucking open a cupboard.
3.) I'm not entirely sure if I'm being overly PC, but I think they're racist.
First warning sign,  they kept emphasizing how EVERYONE in our flat was Chinese. Ok, it may be a bit surprising, but after the 40th mention, I get it. Ok, I understand. It's a surprise how there does seem to have been a bit of racial grouping by the university, but it happens. Then Carys said (all together now)

 "We're not racist, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut.........................


all the non-Asian people have been looking for each other to connect with."

I can't help but feel that this is a racially charged sentiment, and naive to the point of idiocy.

 "All the non-Asian people have been looking for each other."

Well, in an English city, in England, in Britain... Shouldn't be too hard, but what makes you think you'll like the non-Asian people? I fucking detest the ones I've just spent time with.

The concept that I will bond with you because I share a nationality with you would make sense in what universe?
 The only example I can think of is when I was in France, the anglo-phones DID associate with the
other anglo-phones, because yes, I admit that there is an element of "oh fucking good, you're an English speaker.." But those circumstances were totally different, in being national aliens in a country whose language we don't share! There is a real sense of relief from this experience, which you can only experience from actually spending a significant amount of time alone in a foreign country. Because even if the Information Guy at Gare de Nord does speak English, if you're panicking about your health insurance, it's so much more comforting to here what you need to do in a thick London accent, given by a wearied veteran traveller with a sense of  "I know where you're from, I understand how it's different where you're from, and here is how you need to adjust."

That is a position where hearing your own language, spoken in your own accent, is a fucking godsend.

We are categorically not in that position. The Chinese flatmates ARE in that position. Which would explain why they would have been stand offish and shy. Which they totally haven't been, btw, they have been fucking lovely, polite and generous at every opportunity.

Oh, and at a pub quizz, about 7 of these English people cheerfully named themselves the "committee of non-Asian residents." When called up on this, one of them actually said something along the lines of:

"we had this segregation forced on us."

Except they really haven't: they have been placed in a flat which is (at a guess) 60% Chinese, probably less, and you have been placed in here in these dormitories, at a ratio of 5 to 3, maybe more, maybe less. You really, really have not been segregated.

Quite the opposite.

In your native country, in your English-speaking city, where most people are white natives, you are living in the most racially diverse bit. You have been integrated, and you are rejecting said integration.

.....

Is this racist? Should people be entitled to live in buildings where they are not outnumbered by other nationalities? Is the anger I feel these people have, when talking about the encroaching Chinese property in their cupboards, when haughtily disregarding our uncomfortable observation, is this justified? Should I talk to someone official about this?

Oh deary me...

I have really neglected this blog.

When I first opened it, I was encouraged by the wonderful blogs of people like Jenny Trout, or my friends Eliott and Mouse, who write screamingly funny and photocopier-paper warm entries about all the utterly lovely things they are doing and all the utterly lovely people they are meeting . That was about 6, 8 months ago.  A few embarrassingly pitiful posts on a film I saw, something I wrote into the dead cells of my computer when I was mildly pissed and pissed off, and really contrived pieces where I try to force my personality out of the screen like Samira from The Ring, but more uncomfortable gawkiness than terrifying greasy hair. I guess I gave up because whenever I try to write I leave the building embarrassed that I even tried.

The reason why I feel so inadequate, oh stranger-who-is-probably-up-at-2am, is that my writing always comes across as so much more dull. I love reading the blogs I've mentioned because they have a real zestyness about them. Put simply, these people are doing things, and then reporting the done things. They are having the time of their lives, talking, meeting, they take photos of their intrepid fun-having, and they post it online. Their unbelievably good looking expressions make a trip to the supermarket seem like the most hilarious thing us ugly fat kids could never get in on. And if you think I sound bitter, well, fucking of course I'm bitter!! Looking at their photos makes me suspect that all that enjoyment and socialising was natural for them. They didn't fake their smiles, not once. They didn't have to wait to see how the other people spoke to know which words to use. They never came away from social gatherings shamefaced for reasons they couldn't explain, but which boil down to the thick sludge of revulsion they have for the world, their peers, and themselves.

And yes, this is the blog of someone with recurrent mental health issues. I won't specify what's wrong, or not right with me, because tbh it doesn't really matter  and if you've had any experience with that unrightness in your brain or anybody else's brain, you'll understand.

 It's getting better as I get older, but I am in my mid-twenties now, and I have hit the granite block of reality, and that is I never will fully get over it. I will never be 100% ok with who I am. There will never be a time when I will forget to be nervous around the happy, light-hearted people, the sort of people who fill their blogs with photos of waving children and unusual food. I have had so many social engagements where I try to reorganise my mind to be fun, to forcibly, consciously pump in happy hormones from my pertuity gland, just so I can relax and stop my brain, the treacherous little shit, convincing me I am a soul sucking black hole of stupid remarks then awkward silence. The cold blue area on the infrared camera. No wonder really, why my blogs seem so down, when I'm so internally focussed. While the others look out at the world, at each other, I am looking desperately inward, scrambling to push these shitty feelings inside, keeping an eye on the others' behaviours so I can mimic them and pass as a real person.

And from time to time, there is a mathematical certainty that I will want to kill myself. Not from the tragedy of it. No Opheliac scene with a willow and river. Just a moment of clarity and the sudden understanding that it probably would be better to die. I don't know if anyone who's also experienced these feelings before also felt it like this, but whenever I've wanted to die, it comes to me so rationally. Like a business someone deciding to withdraw shares from one company and invest in another, because it makes sense long-term, because the time is right, because your gut tells you that of your dwindling choices, this one's best. Like I said before, it's not the poignant tragedy of "I shall break like a bough," and it's not an emotional frenzy (although in the past the calm decision of suicide has followed a breakdown or two.) It's a decision I'm making with a plus and a minus column, with no particular feelings on either side.

Stoker, and the evolution of Nicole Kidman

Anyway, now I've that off my chest, Stoker was a better film than I was expecting. Its got Mia Polishname in the lead, Ozymandias from Watchmen as a creepy uncle, and Nicole Kidman as the simpering mother.

The main problems the film has isn't the script, the story or the dialogue. It's the cast.

The first is that Mia Wasikowska (is that right? Wikipedia....Awesome, first attempt!) is playing 18 year old high school student India, and to me looks her real age, which is mid-twenties. It's a minor thing, and films do it all the time, but normally the actor makes up for the gap by acting like a teenager. The main point of India's character is that she is sombre, withdrawn and quiet, with a sepulchral outlook on things. She reminds me a bit of Winona Ryder's character in Beetlejuice, except without the blatant goth posing and pontificating, which results in her just appearing mature. She does a damn good job in the lead, though, and by the end I didn't mind that I could have just as easily believed she was 30.

The other problem was not so easily forgotten, and affected the entire tone of the film for me.

Matthew Goode (Ozymandias from Watchmen) plays the sinister, mysterious Uncle Charlie. The way the music goes when he's on screen suggests that he's meant to be foreboding, handsome but dangerous, sexy and fatal all at once.

This is Matthew Goode.

Not bad, right? Handsome, but still murdery. A man who looks best either chatting up a girl with a martini, or with a chloroform-soaked rag. And he's an actually pretty good actor too.

It's not his fault, that to my mind at least, he strikes an uncanny resemblance to this man:

This is Jake Shears, of the Scissor Sisters, in the only headshot photo that does their resemblance any justice. Jake normally looks like this:

It might just be me, but this really interrupted what was meant to be a heightening tension in the film, as the audience became privy to the unsavoury intentions of evil Uncle Charlie. Whenever he was on the screen, instead of feeling the mounting danger, I just kept thinking "Christ, he really does look like Jake Shears."

It just made it sort of funny for me.

So when we have a suspenseful scene full of implied feelings of barely restrained incest, like this one:

"Nothing wrong with a bit of piano foreplay with your niece.."

I think:

Nothing is more dangerous than a sailor. An incestuous sailor.

Despite this, I don't think it damaged my enjoyment of the film in the slightest. In fact, it made it better, because it reminded me of the Scissor Sisters, and I love the Scissor Sisters. And like I said, both Mia Wasikowska and Matthew Goode do a pretty fantastic job throughout.

The last problem I had was with the last main cast member, so we've sort of got problem per actor.

This problem is Nicole Kidman.

There was once a time when Nicole Kidman was my favourite actor. Right around the Moulin Rouge time, in fact.

My expression whenever I see my landlord's girlfriend.

Just look at that expression. You don't need to know anything about that film to have a guess as to what is happening in that scene. Satine (Nicole) has just heard something that is quite alarming but she can't express said alarm outright. But Ms. Kidman's beautifully groomed eyebrows tells us just what Satine is thinking (which I imagine to be along the lines of "you're kidding!", "the fuck?!", "I'm going to talk to Zidler about paying extra for this sort of shit," whatever you want).
If you have not seen Moulin Rouge, please do and watch how much fun Nicole is throughout the entire film.

Play a game with the next group of pictures, and see if you can see what sort of emotion Nicole is portraying.

First:

There she is, the Sparkling Diamond!

I'll play too, although I have seen this film before, so I will always win, which is how I like to play.

First answer: Fuuuun!

I like nice little poet, right after supper!

.

The emotion: secret lust.

Poetic enough for you?

Feigned, OTT lust.

"DON'T LEAVE ME THIS WAY!"

Sheer desperation and pleading.

Just going through the Google Image search results for "Nicole Kidman Moulin Rouge" has reminded me of the mad love I had for that film, and Nicole, when it first came out (I refuse to google the actual date, lest it make me feel old.)

Since Moulin Rouge, Nicole Kidman has had less opportunity to show off her range. Look at these screenshots from her films since Moulin Rouge, and play the same game.

Cold Mountain:

She's angry, and serious.

She's serious. And maybe angry.


Australia:

Happy?
Seriously, I had no idea what she was meant to be feeling throughout the duration of that entire film.

You get the idea, she hasn't been quite as expressive as she previously has been, and her characters have seemed weaker for it.

In Stoker, her character is meant to be flighty and unstable, and so I guess it's a sign of Nicole's ability when she irritated the sh*t out of me.

But even when she had more emotional scenes, like the one below:

Angry, sad, murderous? It has gotten more basic with ol' Nicky

I just felt a bit  bored, and nostalgic. She has played so many bland characters, it's starting to imprint on my brain now.

"Oh look, Nicole Kidman, being bland," is basically my reaction when I see her.

She's joined a growing group of other actors who are talented, but keep picking naff films, or turning in naff performances (cough cough, Milla Jovovich.) This is particularly weird for Nicole, because she tends to do more arty films than other actors, which normally is a "oooh, interesting" thing. But even in those films, she has basically the same reactions and emotions, and keeps talking in that soft, little girly voice to everyone.

Please Nicole, please go back to being awesome. We all know you can.


So, erm, is Stoker any good? The short answer is yes, it's probably the most thought-provoking and well done thriller this year. 

I hate cleaners

I saw Stoker the other day. I'm going to post my review of it in a bit, but first I want to talk about what led me to see it.

I only saw it because my landlord's girlfriend is one of those women who wasn't told that "house elf" is no longer a requirement for being a good partner, and was feverishly cleaning the flat, on her first ever visit. As in, she has never been here before, and her first reaction was to clean a perfect stranger's flat, and then leave.

Unable to cope with somebody cleaning the other side of my bedroom door and making the handle shake like a serial killer with slippery blood-hands, I sloped off out, cursing the invasion of Dobby under my breath.

I genuinely hate people who clean like that, for a number of reasons that I will probably blog about at a later time. But in particular, I hate the fact that it is always women who have this desperation to cleancleancleanCLEANCLEAN!!!
Like I said above, there is something pathetically old world about it, as though they are try desperately to conform to the traditional role of a woman. And I can't help but feel this lady is looking at me as competition, as someone who needs to be out-femaled, somehow. Luckily for her, I am very easily over-womaned, by my lifelong aversion to cleaning, cooking and children (the three C's).

More than once, I have heard women refer to themselves as "obsessive compulsive", as though it is a good thing, or refer to something needing "a woman's eye," as though women's eyes have some sort of infra-red for dirt. It's a kind of self-stereotyping that supports the position that the gendered subtext of everyday life leaves a much bigger imprint on individuals than is readily apparent. I never hear men talk about cleaning like it's some sort of achievement or raison d'etre, because to them it isn't. Cleaning is in no way connected to the way society judges them , or how they value themselves. Cleaning is just something you have to do from time to time, to keep certain nasties at bay, to make the place look basically presentable to humans, and to make it just pleasant to live in.

There is a genuinely sad thing about this, as in it makes me sad for the human race. I am not the stereotypical woman, and that's not a surprise, because we take up literally half of the human race, how is it possible to generalise about such a huge, intrinsically diverse section of humanity. Which makes me wonder why we have a stereotype of "woman" in the first place? And why do some women feel desperate to upkeep these clichés? Is there a stereotype of "man"? If I say, "I saw a man the other day," what is the picture you have? What do you picture if I say "I saw a woman?"

Right, rant over. Night night.

What I wrote last night while really quite drunk.

It’S very late tonight. Being awake as you sober up is the worst thing. Lying in the dark naked, masturbating intermittently, I am not in the most focused of moods. I have been in a state of feline-heat for about a week, and my mind flits from one fantasy to the next, trying to find the scenario to help the itch be scratched. You know what I’m talking about.

Oddly, as I change my fantasies in my head like changing channels, adjusting the progression of one for another, something swims into my idle brain. Not arousing, at least not anymore. A memory of a boy I had sex with when I was.. what was it, 18 or 19? I genuinely can’t remember. I remember his name and face. I remember being annoyed after, as he totally cut off contact after. I wasn’t offended, I figured that he believed some erroneous thing about girls wanting commitment immediately following sex. I had wanted to keep up contact, not because I saw the sex as an important step forward, the very idea was laughable – I had no relationship of any meaning with this boy. I had only wanted to have sex again with him as I had enjoyed the first time.

Odd. I do not find this memory satisfying in anyway. It does nothing for my heat. It was a rather unwelcome memory that really only irritates me. I am wondering at the minute what happened to the boy. By the morning I’ll probably have forgotten him for another 2 or 3 years.

My day today

The brain, it exists, attached to the rest of the body through strings of nerves. It is directly connected to our eyes, and vision is our most important sense. If there is a me, I would think it's my brain, and my eyes. How I know the world.

Today was strange, it started and it carried on but I stayed where I was. The day cycled around me, but I stayed a dry rock in a river.

And if I do not voice words to the others, I feel guilty. I should be like them, chatty and normal, their lives in a steady and straight ascent. 

But my brain stayed at the back of my skull, not just shy but disconnected from my eyes and ears. Not pre-occupied, just not playing. I close my eyes and nothing is different.

And the day ran like a black and white film on a never-ending projector. It will run and run and run, and participation is expected, but difficult. How are we meant to break through the veil that separates the film from us?

Not quite human, really.