Sacha Jones's Blog, page 19

Face off (Muslim women on the burka ban)

'All religions cast women as sinners and temptresses.' 'Like a half-naked woman, a veiled female to me represents an affront to female dignity, autonomy and potential. Both are marionettes, and have internalised messages about femaleness.'

'The claim that veils protect women from lasciviousness and disrespect carries an element of self-deception.'

'The Koran enjoins all Muslims – whether male or female – to dress modestly... Beyond this general instruction, the holy book... contains no mention of the burka...the hijab, or veil.'

'I am not assuming that the coverings all represent simple oppression. What I am saying is that many women who take up the veil, in any of its forms, do so without delving fully into its implications, significance or history.'

'When the Taliban captured Kabul and seized power over most of Afghanistan in 1996, they made it compulsory for all women to wear the burka.'

'All religions cast women as sinners and temptresses. Conservative Islam has revived the slander for our times. Women have to be sequestered or contained lest they raise male lust and cause public disorder.'

I have taken these quotes from a variety of Muslim women expressing their views on the recent debates about banning the burka and burkini. I think these women should be leading the debate which has taken some bizarre and unhelpful turns of late.

As a feminist who has studied and fought against the oppression of women in all its complicated, yet often, all too simple and predictable forms, I think the attention given to this issue is progress in itself, unless it makes light of the issues or makes them about something other than the worldwide feminist fight for the rights of girls and women to freedom, dignity and equality.

Being told by law or custom what to wear, or what not to wear, beyond basic decency, is, in my view, a violation of these core rights. And as it currently stands, as well as throughout history around the world, many more women are told to cover up, be modest, hide yourself, don't speak, leave the public sphere to men, etc., than to undress and wear less.

Thus, my sympathies are with the women trying to fight for their right not to have to cover up and be ashamed of their faces or bodies, much less to dress modestly for the sake of preserving men's freedom or 'honouring' some ancient mythical male figure of worship.

However, I do think that the pressure that is on women in western societies to dress in a overtly sexual (busty, slim, youthful, pretty and pouting) way, especially those hoping to make a career as an actress or entertainer, are also inconsistent with the pursuit of gender freedom and equality.

Western women who are fighting against this pressure are fighting the same fight that Muslim women are fighting in resisting the pressure to cover up. It is the same fight against the same age-old, male-imposed double standard that sees females controlled and restricted for the sake of male power and freedom.

I am a man

I'm writing about America at the moment and came across this image today during some research into the civil rights movement, which I couldn't leave behind. I hadn't seen it before.
The sharpness of those bayonets - because a bullet is not weapon enough - got to me, as did the steady hand and focus of the men pointing them at close range at the men merely walking past, with their simple protest: I am a man hanging from their necks, but otherwise unarmed. Indeed it's the guys with the guns who are wearing the protective head gear. And let's not mention the Tienanmen Square-like tanks. 
All this in the so called heart of the free world, and in the 1960s, when black American men were fighting and dying for the US in their thousands in Vietnam.
The white guy doesn't need the sign; the world knows he is a man. That is pointed too. He looks at the soldiers, a casual, even smiling challenge on his face, while his black comrades look away, defiant  and a little afraid. 
They're all men, yes, but in this picture it is clear that only the men wearing the signs really know what that means.  
The I am a man protest goes back as far as the 1780s in Britain and America, but in America, the most recent police shootings of unarmed black men, and ongoing imprisonment of black men at a much higher rate than white men, suggest that that country still hasn't worked out what it is to be a man.
To be man, surely, is not to kill or threaten to kill, bearing a weapon against unarmed people, but to fight with words and courage for the right to live freely. 
That's what this picture says to me. Lest we forget.

Spring begins

As if a spring

on timer set
has been uncoiled
to win the bet
that Spring should come
on day one
of this southern
month of September.

And to behold
the colour burst
on bare branch first
then buds of all description,
on the day
the planners made
for the very purpose,
seems exactly that.

A canny bet
was won it seems
as if with nature
we can agree
to get things right
to reach for the light
and end the chill of winter.

House of No Trumps

Now I don't know if you're bridge players or not, but appreciation of my cunning play on words here relies on knowing that 'no trumps' is a suit in the card game called bridge -- odd name for a card game, but never mind. It also relies on knowledge of the last name of the current Republican candidate for president of the US (he who shall not be named), as well as the name of the 2013 Netflix TV series 'House of Cards'  .

To explain why I bothered with this tortured play on words, I will say that having come to 'House of Cards' late and just finished season two in which Kevin Spacey becomes president, a season that aired in early 2014, I have decided that what with the timing being about right and the candidate who shall not be named having a penchant for TV -- and a profound lack of his own ideas -- it is more than likely that he got the idea to run for president himself from Kevin Spacey. Stranger things have happened, especially in America.

It makes perfect sense, really. Hollywood seems to have a much better grasp on reality than what passes for the 'real world' of American life and politics. So why wouldn't Americans take their cues about how to act from Hollywood? I know I do.

Kevin Spacey has a lot to answer forStill, I would recommend 'House of Cards', if only to get an insight into what the 'real' world Republican candidate, who shall not be named, is going to do next.

Not having finished all four seasons, and I believe there is a fifth in the making due out in 2017, after the 'real' world election, I can't tell you what ultimately happens to Spacey. But if the producers are paying attention, and, like many Americans, DON'T want that candidate who shall not be named to win, they will bring the release date of the fifth season forward to before the election and ensure that Spacey comes to fitting end. Perhaps he could throw himself off of a tall building with his name on it. Or, he could get stuck climbing a very high wall, crying out: 'I'm stuck! I'm stuck!', with no one, on either side, willing to rescue him.

No trumps is a hard suit to play, but played right, there are the most points to be gained.    


 

Louie and Me

Technically he's Louis C.K. , but Louis doesn't rhyme with 'me' and his sitcom is called Louie , so never mind. I'll call him Louie. I think that's how the cool people pronounce -- and spell -- his name, anyway.

I have to confess I am yet to see Louie, but my kids have seen it and assure me it is fantastic, that the guy is a comic genius and an all-round fabulous person. And these are clearly sentiments shared by many people around the world.

And I agree -- to a degree. Comedian/Masturbator is funny, especially as 'masturbator' is not even a word, at least according to my spellchecker. It should be. Next to it you could write: Louis (or Louie) C.K.

But last night, Moose and I tuned in to watch Louie's 2015 stand-up that has just come on Netflix and I have to say, it wasn't altogether fabulous and funny.

Warning: Feminist analysis incoming...

But first, give the comedian/masturbator his due. His joke about how, being middle-aged, he now makes the sound when he pees that he used to make when he was climaxing, and visa versa, told with a convincing and entertaining demonstration, had us both in fits of laughter, though perhaps particularly Moose, who can identify. He does the same.

His joke about not caring how unfit he gets just so long as when he dies people still ask what he died of and don't just take it for granted that he died because he was overweight and unfit, was similarly very funny.

The best humour, no doubt, is when we make fun of ourselves and our 'kind', as these jokes do so well.

But... and it's a big but, his extended skit, with detailed and drawn-out demonstration, on how to make a 'girl rat' come by lying her on her back, tickling, blowing, licking his finger, spitting, etc, with the obvious point of mocking the female orgasm, was not so funny. If he'd made fun of how he failed to make a girl rat come, now that could have been funny. But he chose instead to make fun of the very idea of female orgasm.

Really? Does the clitoris have to be such a joke to men still? Couldn't some of them, those as smart as Louie with a platform to move us beyond clitoris humour and hate, give women a break and recognise that some things done to women by men, not least the amputation of the clitoris performed on millions of young African girls, is the extension of this kind of male mockery that reflects the general distaste of female sexuality by so many men who clearly don't want to have to think about giving women pleasure; and some, who don't want women to have pleasure?

I'd like to think they could.

No need for the whole hyenaBut perhaps not Louie. Because in this same show he went on to pronounce sexism and racism 'fundamentally different.' Racism is bad, no argument, we must do better, he says. But 'sexism', that's just women and men giving each other a hard time, as it has ever been and always will be.

Hopefully he eventually figures out how wrong he is. He has two daughters, after all.

To help, I recommend he studies hyenas, the species with the proportionally largest clitoris of all the mammals and the most successful species in the jungle. Amongst hyenas, males pleasure females, lower females pleasure higher females, but females never pleasure males and males never pleasure males. Males don't get any pleasuring at all, in short, apart from sex itself. I'm not sure about rats.

I don't think we need to go the whole hyena and flip the gendered hierarchy in terms of human sexual pleasuring that far the other way. But I would like Louie, and all the other men who doubt the importance of the clitoris to know, and to think hard about, the fact that there is a reason female humans have a clitoris, for their own sake, as much as for ours. Because those men who figure out what that reason is, will be, ultimately, the most successful men in the jungle. Masturbation is all very well.
 

   

Martians and me

Okay. So this is not an exact likeness of Matt Damon as 'The Martian' but it's close enough. You get the general idea of a dude stranded alone on a planet of orange aura and none too happy about it, the essence of Damon's martian. This dude seems perhaps a little more prepared for life on Mars than Damon was, though Damon did quite well to survive for many hundreds of days (I lost count) considering he would die instantly if exposed to the atmosphere. This guy's skin seems a little thicker. 
But my problem with the film is not that Damon's character is not a realistic martian. He is not meant to be. He is meant to be a realistic man stranded on a planet where nothing grows, for hundreds of days, because the commander of his spaceship, a woman, left him for dead, having been ordered to do so by another woman back on planet Earth. This is my problem. 
This gender distribution of labour is neither realistic nor progressive, though it appears to be trying, which somehow makes it worse. In 2015-16 we are trying to improve the representation of men and women in film and other art forms, or so we say, but we are not succeeding and if anything, are making matters worse. 
The Martian is a classic example. It is so obvious that the female characters are added as a clunky affirmative action afterthought, with roles that are not only secondary but stupid and, of course, sexual. Meanwhile, there is an endless list of male characters, from Damon down, strutting their stuff, being heroes against all odds, wielding real power and generally saving the day, to make up for the original mistake made by the female characters. 
I think we should, and could have done better. Never mind that the film is based on a book with a male lead. Many films are and end up looking nothing like the book. It can be done, the author still gets paid. And The Martian, though an okay film in other respects about a fairly neat concept of a human left behind on the orange planet, could have been a great film if 'the martian' had been a woman left behind by a male commander to fend for herself, a truer to life scenario after all. Men leave women to clean up the shit way more than women leave men. And women are pretty good at dealing with the shit they're left with -- they've had a LOT of practice -- as well as being keen gardeners.  
Ridley Scott of all directors should have known better. Ripley made Ridley and gave us all hope of cinema to come that doesn't assume, as all religions and cultures do, that men are primary and women are secondary, stupid and sexual, if not sinful. The Martian reverts, despite it's apparent efforts, to pre-Alien gender stereotypes and perhaps that's what this alien here is so pissed off about. Perhaps this alien is a She. Now there's a concept for a film. 

Extreme vetting?

So, what is "extreme vetting" --

a) A good name for a band?

b) The lengths certain particularly committed animal-care workers will go to to ensure the animals in their charge are comfortable and well?

c) The latest attempt by a desperate and deranged man to get elected president of the United States?

d) All of the above.

Strangely, and a little sadly, it is d: all of the above.

But don't worry, I don't think it'll work for all. My money's on the band.

Misogyny 101: All you need is hate

The writing magnified by last night's second (ahem!) glass of vodka and coke is from a book I won at the open mic night on Wednesday, a collection of short stories and opinion pieces by a popular New Zealand writer -- who shall remain nameless.

The writing is funny, when the author is making fun of himself and other men, but predictably, if mildly, misogynistic when his male characters encounter girls and women.

In this story, the adult male narrator gives a sly wink to a young boy who punches his sister because she says he is dumb and won't let him on the computer, at least that is his story. When the boy punches his sister (which he freely admits), she gets off the computer to run and tell her mother. Mission accomplished. The narrator, a casual observer, unrelated to the children, clearly thinks the sister got what she deserved, and happily shares his sympathies with the reader in this sly wink.

The writing is fairly current, published this century, but a few critical years before the latest wave of feminism has begun to make progress in exposing the more subtle forms of sexism that this is a good example of, the kind of mild misogyny that left-wing, educated men, have specialised in perpetrating for many a long year and century -- well before computers, indeed, but not before boys punched girls to get what they wanted and were forgiven, if not congratulated.

But, as in response to each previous feminist wave, there is resistance to this latest one. And one of the most pernicious, because not that obvious, faces of resistance to the fourth wave of feminism is the systematic, and wildly popular sabotage of Hillary Clinton's run for first woman president of the United States by Bernie Sanders and his supporters, male and female. An attempt that almost succeeded, and may yet succeed in a fashion, by handing over the United States to one of the biggest fools, and there have been a fair few, to take the reigns of power with a penis.

One of Sanders supporters  who now actively supports Hillary, has recently admitted that his readiness to believe the hate campaign against Hillary was due to his own knee-jerk misogyny that, until now, he had failed to acknowledge, much less to confront. Because he respected some women, as left-wing men invariably do, he figured he wasn't a misogynist and that his distrust of and even hatred of Hillary, was just about her. She wasn't to be trusted, nothing to do with other women. She was being a bully, she wouldn't let the good guy on the computer. So she could justifiably be punched and got rid of, a fight that had nothing to do with her being a girl.

Unfortunately there are still so many others, men and women, who don't get that their distrust of Hillary and shared sympathies with that little boy in the book, etc, is the face of modern misogyny and the ongoing, never changes much, resistance to feminism and gender justice. Indeed it is a type of resistance that is potentially much more harmful than the Trumpet misogyny and online death threats to women who speak out against misogyny that is the far easier to take down misogyny of the right-ring.

So thanks, Michael Hulshoff-Schmidt, for admitting you were wrong about Hillary, and about feminism, and about yourself. If there are more like you who come out of the woodwork now, and in the future, to put pen to paper to own up to misogyny and admit that it is much more pervasive and pernicious than we think, then I might not need that second (fifth) vodka in the future. Cheers! Let's hope, for my husband's sake, that there are.

Open mic fright

So. I nearly didn't go. When nature serves up the perfect-storm of miserable weather on a weary week night, as it did last night, it's hard not to see that as the perfect excuse for staying at home in the warm welcome house, rather than going out into the cold cruel night, much less for going out to deliver your first open mic performance, something most people say they'd rather face a firing squad than do.

And I understand, at least with that, it's over with quickly. At least with a firing squad you don't have to say anything, unless you want to and, by all accounts, people don't. 'Just shoot me,' they might say, but don't have to; it's implied, which makes things a whole lot easier.

Not so in front of an open mic. Nothing's implied with an open mic, other than that the person taking the microphone has something to say and can say it, the hardest of all things to prove in public, or so it seems to me; I've made as many excuses for not taking the open mic as anyone.

I've spoken in public before, sure, most recently for the launches of my book, but those events were prearranged at least partly by others and couldn't be got out of without disappointing them. But this open mic session was all on me, nobody but me (and Moose) would be let down if I didn't show up, nobody would even know, indeed. There's always next month, and the one after that and the one after that...

But, as I eventually decided last night, I'm getting too old for giving into fear and putting things off. There's no surer firing squad than biology, after all, and my body and brain are increasingly conspiring together to make sure I know it.

So last night I did go out into the cruel cold, though complaining (to Moose) all the way, and thinking about turning back when the traffic was heavy, when we couldn't find a park, when we couldn't find the pub-cafe location, when there weren't many people there when we did find it, when it looked nothing like I'd imagined it to look, etc, etc. But the host was welcoming and there was another novice there who she introduced me to and so I stayed, and put my name down to speak fourth.

And, after another forty minutes of anxious waiting, I heard my name called, stood up, walked to the front of the room, opened my book, took a deep breath, and began to speak into the mic to a now full house, reading the prologue and part of the first chapter of my book, embarrassed not to be speaking from memory, as the other, more experienced poets and writers who presented their work before me had done. But getting a fair few laughs nonetheless, I gained in confidence and was able to leave the page at times and address the audience directly. They appreciated that and applauded generously.

Indeed it went very well altogether, much better than expected, and afterwards I felt a relief and warmth you can't get from staying in by the fire. And that's the difference between a firing squad and an open mic, the before might be similar, but the after is completely different. With the open mic there is an after, for starters, and even if you fall flat on your face as if having been shot, there's surely the relief of knowing that you can get back up, and in due course, learning from what went wrong, have another go, likely being less nervous the next time.

Whether my open mic talk sold any books, which was kind of the idea, is another matter. It probably didn't, but there's more to life than money. As they say, you can't take it with you when you fall flat and final, whatever takes you down.



 

Poked eggs

"Nell Whittle poked you' -- was the first message I received today upon switching on my computer, even before having my breakfast (poached eggs) and uninstalling my laptop keyboard (which I've poked to death) to begin my daily poking of the more hard-boiled mechanical keys. Let's see if you can unscramble that!

Curious, never having been poked before, and not having communicated with, much less been poked by Nell for some time, I opened up the poking notification, only to have it suggested that I poke her back. Charming. It's a Sunday. We should all be at church praying, not poking.

But the inappropriate poking didn't stop there. It was also suggested to me that I 'poke' various other Facebook friends, whose names and smiling, unsuspecting faces duly arrived on my screen with a 'poke' button next them.

It was tempting, in each case, but no. I want to maintain the pretence that we're still friends and as I understand it, poking is not the friendliest of things to do to someone, though it can be, in my part of the world, very friendly indeed, but I don't think that's the sort of poking Nell had in mind.

I could be wrong. I'm going to have to look into it further. To have a good poke around. Get the Moose whisperer (and Moose) onto it. Those antlers could be just the thing; they ought to be good for something.