Why I am in the Fetal Position

Condemnation without understanding won’t change anything. Call the poor and desperate “scum.” Call them “thugs,” and “feral” and “rats”. You are free to. Make the call that the police who shot a man dead just days ago should be more brutal, and give them weapons. Fifty-two people die every year in police custody; fine, make the call regardless. It is the call many are making, and if the fires on the street are fed by social divide, so are yours. Yours are fed, too, by racism, by hatred of the working class, of the poor, of the young.

You will have to watch it keep happening. You can keep it down, you might seem to have stopped it, but that desperation will remain, and it will resurface. More repression than suppression, and I’m sure you’re familiar with the “bottling up” analogy that pop-psychologists love so much. It explodes.

Or, you could do what only a few are trying to do: figure out why. There is not a gene for social disruption, there is not a gene for rioting. What there is in abundance is poverty. There is poverty, and the idealisation of possession, the argument made in advertisements that you are what you own. There is demonization, because you have been making these same claims for years. You have already called these people “scum,” and “feral,” and “thugs.” The ASBOs were used to limit their freedom of movement, and the headlines about “hoodies” have made them feel already unhuman. There is a lack of education, and the recent cut of the EMA will mean that even fewer will continue their education past sixteen, because they will not be able to afford to. Those who will are deterred from applying to university by the threat of larger debt than ever. There are no jobs. Those who live on the job seeker’s allowance are further demonized and criminialized.

It’s still not right, and my thoughts are with those threatened, with the firefighters, with the family of the young man who died earlier today in hospital. But there is no line between the members of the community who riot and those who do not. They are all suffering, and we have to fight for all of them.

But without understanding where it comes from, it will never end, and your sweeping, discriminatory condemnations will make things a whole lot worse. That you are claiming again, and again, and again, that this is not political is absurd. What is political if a response to oppression is not? Those who are on the streets are there because they have nothing. They are not scared, as Cameron earlier today warned, of “ruining their lives.” What lives? 

So the reason I am curled in a ball is not that I fear those rioting. It is that I am fearful of what will come as a response. The social divisions- the demonization, the poverty- will be worsened. The police may well be given new powers. The BNP and the EDL and other such racist organisations will use it to boost their membership numbers. The Conservatives will come down hard, in an attempt to be seen to take control- if they are thought to have lost that, they will lose the next election. What has happened will be used as an excuse for many things, it is likely. And it is likely that they will not be fun. 

The Thing I Hate Most About Sexism (crossposted to Tumblr)

Women are taught that their primary source of power is sex. Through images of men being reduced to unthinking wrecks when faced with an attractive woman (an image, it is worth noting, that is damaging to men), we are taught that being attractive can control men. Women who get good jobs are accused of getting them because they are attractive, or because they had sex with their boss. Female superheroes are not just badass, but badass and sexy, with the emphasis on the sexy. Women are said to be better treated by strangers because of their appearance.

This is reinforced by the constant attention paid to women's appearances. Women's appearances are analysed by the media, condemned for one extreme or the other, criticised for flaws and celebrated for perfection. Life is presented to women as one long beauty contest, with the favour of Paris as the source of their power. Women's magazines promise women great things- largely employment, love, or orgasms depending on the publication- in return for restrictive dieting and the liberal use of moisturising lotion. Stripping and porn is said to be greatly empowering, a celebration of feminine sexuality (implying that feminine sexuality ends with performing sexuality.)

And then, we are told that this same thing makes us terribly and nakedly vulnerable.
Women are cat-called and harassed for dressing "provocatively" (loaded term, much?), or just for existing. Women are told that they are likely to be raped not by those they know as a power trip, but by strangers, driven out of control by the legs and hips and breasts that are supposed to be the woman's way of getting what she wants. Women are told that they are raped because of their bodies, turning it into their responsibility. Wearing a miniskirt is raised in court as if it implies consent.The reasoning seems to be that if women use their attractiveness to get what they want, which is sometimes sex, then if they are attractive, they must be communicating a want for sex, and thus giving them it cannot be rape. Who was it who used the analogy of force-feeding a woman chocolate cake?

The woman must hold two ideas about her body in her mind at once: it is a great manipulative tool which can get her anything, and it is something that makes her vulnerable and weak and at risk. This contradiction is at the heart of objectification and the sexist society's view of the feminine body, and it is damaging and harmful in a thousand ways, with victim-blaming being only one.

This is why I'm marching in Slutwalk. The contradicting messages about how to have a female body that we are bombarded with leads to victim-blaming not only amongst the media but in court, and the statement made by the Toronto police officer is a perfect example. The march will not change the ridiculous ways society talks to us, but it is a start. So come fight with us tomorrow. 

People who follow me on Twitter and/or Tumblr, I'm sorry.

People who don't, I'm sorry. 

(Please answer truthfully. I want to know just everything about you.)

TECHNICALLY

I am not abandoning this blog, but things are way more interesting over at Tumblr these days, and this is mine. Seriously, though, join and follow people, because there are some amazing conversations going on about gender and Libya and privilege and hipster mermaids and how much everybody wants James Franco and all sorts of revolutions and abstract concepts. Oh, and there's Coke Talk, and she's just the best thing.

Chilli and Sweet Potato Hash Browns.

Chilli and Sweet Potato Hash Browns

1 sweet potato

half an onion, finely chopped

1 clove garlic

half a teaspoon of salt

one and a half teaspoons of paprika

dried chilli flakes to taste

an egg

Roughly grate the sweet potato onto a tea towel and squeeze it to get rid of excess liquid. Put the potato in a bowel and do the same with the finely chopped onion. And add the salt, chilli, paprika, and garlic (feel free to use a different amount of any of these), and stir. In a measuring jug, beat the egg, and add a little to the mixture, stirring, until it sticks together- you want to use about half of the beaten egg.  

Heat up a thick-bottomed frying pan and add a glug of oil. How you cook the hash browns is up to you: you can throw it all in and stir, or throw it all in and smooth it so that it forms a sort of cake, making sure to flip about half-way through. I tend to make small balls of the mixture and cook them in batches. But they're all good. They're incredible with bacon, and they'd do great with eggs. They're great: kind-of-healthy but still hash browns.

Fuck yeah.

In which I overuse the word trite, and also attempt to catalogue time, and then end up talking about people instead.

I had this very emotional post about adding ginger to biscuits written out, but now those biscuits have been eaten and the ginger seems trivial and the emotion seems trite. Besides, while we were eating them at Geek Corner yesterday, I was reminded of the tradition of end-of-year blogging, which is as important a post as it is overly long. So, having neglected to tell you about Secret Vegetarian Festive Dinner, and having blurred over the entirety of November, and having not mentioned the dozens of small gatherings, protests, meals, and such that have been taking up my time recently, I suppose I owe myself this much. I should try to stand far back enough from Twenty-Ten to understand what it was, ascribe some almost empty and arbitrary meaning to the nonsensical plot arcs of life. I like that metaphor, though, turning today into the season finale. Tomorrow, a new arc starts, although I think my subplot will stay largely the same. Can Saoirse stay in school? Other people's plotlines are perhaps more interesting- although in many cases that is not because they are superhappyfuntimes- but mine has room for character development, and the big bad being June exams is something I can handle.

I guess the first half of this year's plotline was more like a fun and wacky spin-off. Bookmarks! A hilarious ensemble cast, a work-place based sitcom. That's where I'm writing this now, and you know what? It's a subplot I enjoy. The thing is that I really, genuinely, and despite myself, love the goddamn customers, as well as my colleagues and the books and the tea. And so what should have been stressful and difficult- dropping out of school and working almost-full-time was instead enriching and enjoyable and very quickly ordinary. I thought I was taking time off from school so that I wouldn't get kicked out, but I needed the break, needed to not be in the strange spiralling curriculum for a while.

And then it was September, before I knew it, and hello, a return to high school drama. Cliques and teachers and essays and the awkward of me. The year I invaded turned out to be built of darlings and sweethearts, of course, and I can't help but love the whole learning thing. Still, I seem to be bad at showing up to school and doing the whole normal student thing, and if it wasn't for how universally incredible my friends are, how insistent they are in waiting in the cold or even just tweeting at me angrily, I might be one hell of a lot worse off. It occurs to me that I will not entirely be able to claim any A-Levels I get as my own. They will be, more than most, the outcome of how crazily supportive the people I know are. There are people I owe. There are people I should thank. There are people I should bake more for.

Which is the point- not the baking, but the love- of it all. The passing of time, and school, and work, and history essays aside, at the end of every year I stand having had it proven to me once again that the thing that gets you through the doldrums and the dire depths of perseverance are people. People you love, people who care about you, people who are kind of jerks but hey, people who are cute customers who keep coming in looking for Terry Eagleton, people who aren't, people who are impressive or inspiring or hilarious or something else. I don't know: it all sounds soppy and sentimental, some trite recital of how love saves you, but that's not what I mean. We care about each other, always, and the people you love come to define you, even the absent ones. And bad things happen to them, and bad things happen to you, because that is what happens: bad things, sometimes. So you go hand in hand through it, you keep on surviving and then, afterwards, you tell each other dumb jokes about it and that is very, very, very important.

Oh man, I am bad at writing posts that have a point.

Not November

So let's not talk about November- not talk about getting over DF, not talk about how it is three years since my dad died now, not talk about the protests and the work and the work and the work, not talk about what makes it better, not talk about what gets us all through the strange and difficult day-to-day, not talk about love- let's talk about food and books and music and blogs and food again because that is more interesting than blogs. And let's do it tomorrow instead of today, because today there are essays to write.

And maybe the day after tomorrow I will be able to get my head around November.