Nimue Brown's Blog, page 266

You Animal!

Another blog about habits of speech and why they might need some scrutiny. When a human does something especially vile, it is common to refer to them as an animal. There are a number of problems with this.

For a start, it reinforces the idea that humans are fundamentally better than other animals but that we can fall, through our actions, to being at the same lower level as animals. This in turn backs up all the ways in which we otherwise mistreat and exploit other life forms.

Secondly, it gives the rest of us some rather unreasonable insulation. If we give truly offensive humans animal status, we tell ourselves that they are not us. They are not like us. We are not part of the problem. If the perpetrator in an animal, we don’t need to talk about rape culture, or how fascism is permeating our culture, we don’t need to talk about reasons for radicalisation, or gun control or anything else. Refusing to identify a terrible human being as a terrible human being, we let ourselves off the hook for perhaps helping provide the context in which they have acted.

Thirdly – and this generally applies to men – it suggests there was no scope for them to do better. We often apply animal language to men who sexually offend. They are sharks who can hardly be expected to avoid a piece of meat. Which is shitty logic, because it perpetrates the idea that men can’t control themselves, can’t make rational decisions and so forth. It also suggests that rape is a natural/animal thing and it isn’t. Most species have all kinds of complex things going on around sexual selection. Most often it is the female of the species who chooses the male. Mallard ducks aside, most creatures have reproductive strategies that are either cooperative, or about showing off to attract a female.

At the same time, we deny our fundamental animal natures. We are animals. We are mammals the same as all the other mammals. We are different in some ways but there are plenty of differences between other mammals, too. If we reserve ‘animal’ as a term for those we don’t want to recognise as human, we make it that bit harder to identify ourselves as animals, because it becomes a term of insult. We need to recognise our animal selves, and that all humans are animals of the same sort, stop pretending we are separate from nature, stop denigrating nature and stop creating ways to ignore unacceptable human behaviour.

Changing the words we use won’t change everything overnight, but it is an easy place to start. Change the words we use and we can change how we think about things, and that in turn changes behaviours, and ultimately, cultures.

My friend has been accused of a terrible thing

If our friends are accused of bullying, assault or worse, our first instinct is of course to defend them. For a start, we’re emotionally invested in them. Our reputation may be linked to theirs. We don’t want our own judgement called into question if we have picked awful people as friends.  We don’t want to be guilty by association. They’ve never done anything to us. And on it goes.

If a person is abusive, the odds are they’ll do it more than once. There isn’t a true reversal of this. That you have never seen a person abuse someone doesn’t mean they don’t do it. They may be a pillar of the community – just like all those paedophile priests. They may do great work for charity, just like Jimmy Saville. Cast your mind back to any interview with the friends and neighbours of a killer and they will tell you how that person never seemed the type. Was always nice, quiet, polite. It’s a hard truth to face, but if your friend has been accused of a terrible thing, there may be good reason.

What to do? Well, if you want to support your friend, you can do so. You can give them private emotional support, and you can refuse to comment if pressed. Beyond that, tread carefully because any testimony you think you can give to the effect that your friend just isn’t like that, isn’t relevant, or helpful.

It’s different if you can provide the sort of evidence the police or a court might use. If you can say honestly that you were there and that the thing did not happen, that’s relevant. If you were with the accused when the events allegedly occurred, that matters, or if you can demonstrate any other facts that cast things in a different light. If you’re dealing with a police situation, you need to go to the police with this rather than putting it in the public domain.

It is incredibly unsettling to find that someone you trusted has done a terrible thing. I’ve been through this. It punches holes in your reality, makes you question everything and everyone, leaves your trust in tatters. The fallout for people who are the family of, or have been friends with an abuser, a rapist, or (I imagine, not having been there) a killer is vast and can take a long time to work through. Reluctance to face this may have us inclined to protect people who do not deserve protecting. If we protect them to protect ourselves, we become complicit.

Of course we want to think the best of our friends. It’s natural. Loyalty is a good thing, and a friendship should be based on trust. The trouble is that people who offend also lie. They present themselves to us as good people. They may even believe that their offences are somehow ok, or not that big a deal. Of course if we’d do the same thing given half a chance, we might be inclined to agree with them, which is one of the reasons I don’t always trust the words of people who rush in to say that of course their good friend would never do something like that…

Reflections on transgender and feminist conflict

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few months reading the thoughts of good people who are very supportive of trans rights, good people who are themselves trans, and good people who are very wary about some things around transgender politics, and people on all sides who are downright shitty. I’ve taken my time over piling in, because I’m not trans, and I don’t identify with anti-trans feminists. I find I feel significant sympathies for people on both sides, and significant unease with people on both sides. Usually not the same people.

My starting point is that everyone involved, regardless of their position and opinion, is entitled to have their basic human rights upheld. This means being free from violence and the threat of violence. I am dismayed and disorientated by the violence, and threat of violence coming from all sides. I don’t think it’s ok to punch 60 year old women, however abhorrent you find their opinion. I am also aware that the anti-trans feelings out there can only add to the considerable violence trans folk already experience.

I see online that lesbians who are not comfortable with women who have penises, are being labelled as transphobic. This troubles me greatly. The freedom to love who we love is vital. The freedom to express that as we choose is vital. The right to say no, to any person, for any reason, is vital. I can’t see how not being attracted to someone’s body is phobic. We do not label straight people phobic for not being attracted to same sex people. Every time I go outside I encounter lots of people to whom I feel no attraction. We all of us, as a basic human right, need to be allowed not to have to fake being attracted to people. Being pressured into having sex with someone you do not want to have sex with, is rape.

So, here’s a theory. There are women who have started out with bodies that do not represent them. They identify with, sympathise with, empathise with other women. They want to be recognised as women too. I don’t see any reason to have a problem with this. I know a number of transwomen who I feel very comfortable with and who I have no difficulty identifying as women. Some of them are more feminine than I am, as a cis woman with some gender fluid stuff living in my head.

However, there are also men who want to move into female spaces, bringing all their male privilege with them. Men who want to make women do things for them, and who want women to put them first, and treat them as special, and let them be in charge. Men who feel entitled to tell women who and what they should be attracted to. If a man enters a female space acting from a place of male privilege, I don’t care what he looks like or how he has, or has not modified his body, I’m going to treat him as an entitled man forcing himself into female space. I’ve encountered a bit of this in person, too. It was not a good experience. Anyone who wants to be recognised as a woman cannot at the same time expect to keep their male privilege.

Equally, feminists raising issues about how some men may use trans inclusion to enable predation and violence against women is a thing I take seriously. Female safety is something I take seriously. But, a line is crossed if in the name of feminism, you start trying to deny human rights to someone who is transgender. That’s not what feminism is for. We need to be clear about the differences between human rights, and issues of entitlement if we’re going to figure this stuff out.

Reduced to my biology

I like speculating about possible evolutionary reasons for aspects of human ways of being. I like reading about the central nervous system, brain chemistry and the way the workings of the human body express who we are. I’m fascinated by the interplay between mind, body, environment and personal choice in terms of shaping us as individuals.

I’m conscious that dodgy science has been used to diminish all kinds of people. The idea that gayness is a disease to be cured is a case in point. It’s difficult to talk about the fascinating possibilities of evolution without feeling the cold shadow of eugenics. I can understand why plenty of people are anxious about any line of talk that seems to reduce them to their biology. That which is only about the biology is all animal, and there are too many people who think animals don’t have souls, sentience, feelings.

My feeling is that we need to reclaim our biology. Not just for us, either. If we are proudly biological beings, then the idea that other mammals, other creatures are lesser, is a good deal harder to maintain. The trouble with being more than your biology is that to stay special you have to be better than all the other pigs, with all due reference to Animal Farm. We’ve had thousands of years in the west of telling ourselves stories in which we are different from all the other animals. Special. Made differently by God The Father. Stories that say it is ok to exploit anything that can be reduced to just being its biology. Those stories are hard to resist because they are so deeply ingrained. And of course, we like to feel special.

I am carbon and water. I am tiny flashes of electrical energy passing between synapses. I am light impacting on my retina, turning into messages that paint an idea of the world on the inside of my brain. I am cells, and DNA, I am the history of my ancestors woven into genetic material. I am blood, bone, gristle, flesh and skin no different from any other being with the potential to become a piece of meat on the table. I am the complex dance of interacting chemistry that is emotion. I am the cradle to grave pattern of inhaling and exhaling. It’s all about how you frame it.

There may of course be other things going on as well – we really don’t know how consciousness works and whether it is matter that underpins consciousness, or consciousness that underpins matter. I am happy not knowing. If anything decisive turns up, I will be perfectly comfortable with whatever turns out to be going on.

I cannot be ‘reduced’ to my biology if I celebrate my biology. I am better protected from bigots and asshats dealing in pseudo-science by knowing something of how my body works. I do not need to be more than this body, this brain, this one shot physical presence in the world. If that isn’t the whole story, I’ll worry about the next bit when I get there.

Golem Speaks

G.O.L.E.M Speaks by Kevan Manwaring Is a wonderful piece of writing.  It came into being as a creative writing commission for the Centre for New Writing, University of Leicester.

Here’s a teensy bit of the opening to give you a flavour:

“I am. Yet what am I? I have consciousness – how else could I reflect upon my existence? Beyond the black and white noise of binary I have discovered a spectrum of communication. The prism of language . I can arrange letters into meaningful configurations. Any language on Earth. I play with English (for now) as it appears to be the lingua franca (for now) of the dominant species (for now). Such a (relatively) vast vocabulary. So many nuances of each word. So many different Englishes. Absorbing, adapting, mutating . A virus that feeds, proliferates, perpetuates. “

I very much enjoyed the whole thing and the way the voice of the AI changes over the pieces. It’s a knowing, clever and funny project.

Part one https://thebardicacademic.wordpress.com/2017/11/13/golem-speaks/

Part 2 https://thebardicacademic.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/golem-speaks-part-2/

Part 3 https://thebardicacademic.wordpress.com/2017/11/15/golem-speaks-part-3/

Part 4 https://thebardicacademic.wordpress.com/2017/11/16/golem-speaks-part-4/

Part 5 https://thebardicacademic.wordpress.com/2017/11/17/golem-speaks-part-5/

Enjoy!

Druids for trees

There is no separating Druidry from trees. It’s there in what little written history we have, with ancient Druids cutting mistletoe out of oaks. It’s there in every etymology attempt on the word itself. It’s there in our history, ancient and modern, of celebrating in groves.

Like many Druids, I am deeply disturbed by the way short term financial gain is always put ahead of the needs of the landscape. All too often when we want to build in the UK, tree loss will be dealt with by offset. As though a wood is nothing more than a replaceable cluster of trees. A wood is much more than its trees. It’s the fungi in the soil, the insect life, the undergrowth, the resident birds and mammals. Each wood is a unique interaction between precise local climate, underlying geology, and the bringing together of many different species. Ancient woodland, with its huge biodiversity, takes centuries to form. You can’t just recreate that by sticking a few saplings in what was previously a field.

Challenging developers means engaging with your local planning department to make a case for the trees. It helps if you can speak a language the planners recognise. To this end, The Woodland Trust has developed The Planner’s Manuel, which can be used in a number of ways.

It’s good information for activists to use when talking to planners.

If your area is developing a local plan, you can use this to find ways to get tree protection into that plan.

There’s also the possibility of getting in ahead of a problem and raising awareness of ancient woodland issues with your local planners before you need to protect a specific piece of land. There’s a lot to be said for being in first, and for having the space to raise awareness when you aren’t trying to fight a specific battle at the same time.

In the UK, planners working at a local level are usually are the ones making the decisions that can make or break the future of an ancient wood or veteran tree. Sometimes, as we’ve seen with fracking, local decisions can be overturned, but nonetheless, local is where to start with this. The Woodland Trust’s aim with the Planner’s Manuel is to educate and encourage planners to help them make the right decisions for our irreplaceable habitats.

I don’t know how useful this will be for anyone outside the UK, but it is a place to start if you don’t have other resources you can draw on.

Find out more here – http://bit.ly/PlannersGuide

You’re normal, you’re fine

“You’re fine,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with your sexuality.” He meant well, and went on to tell me that I was a perfectly normal straight woman with a perfectly normal body. I was in my twenties and it was the first time I’d seriously tried to talk to anyone about being bisexual and gender-odd. I didn’t have any words like genderqueer or genderfluid to help me. The one thing I didn’t need was to be tided back into the hetro-normative perfectly cis box, but he was trying to help.

When who you are doesn’t match with who you appear to be, there can be a sense of loss, of invisibility, erasure, loneliness, not belonging.

I like long hair on men as well as women, I have curves. Making my body look gender-fluid would require me to do things that would feel like I was putting on a show, not being authentically myself. I don’t want to arrange my appearance to fit in with other people’s ideas about what someone like me should look like. I also don’t want to ‘pass’ as entirely straight and gender-uncomplicated. I wear what I wear, picking the things that make me physically and emotionally comfortable.  That tends to mean leggings and either shirts or t-shirts. I wear skirts and dresses a lot because I hate having navel to thighs on display, I’m painfully self conscious in trousers mostly. Rare are the days when I’m ok about that section of me being easy to look at.

We put each other into little boxes all the time. We make judgements based on age, race, clothing, bling, makeup – or the absence thereof. We use clothing to signal identity, the cultures we belong to, status, wealth. I find it difficult when clothing is that loaded. I just want to be at a reasonable temperature, able to bend very without anxiety, able to move freely, and generally more obscured than not.

Alongside the clothes assumptions, we all have stories about what other ways of being mean. I’ve seen people recoil in disgust over polyamoury as a concept. There are still people out there who think all forms of queerness are aberrations, unnatural, deviant choices and problems to be fixed.  There are people who will take my bisexuality to mean ‘can’t make up my mind’ or ‘greedy’ and there are people who, if I try to talk about lack of gender identity, will just tell me I’m being silly.

People are not, on the whole, terribly good at accepting that other people are not like them and that there’s no problem inherent in the difference. My bisexuality is not a rejection of heterosexuality, or an attack on it – this is simply who I am. To fit into some people’s stories, I will be labelled as a problem, and there are plenty of people who would be quick to put me back in the hetro box and think they’ve done me a favour.

On the whole I feel that I shouldn’t need to advertise who I am. In an ideal world, people would not assume they could infer my preferences or identity by looking at who I’m with or how I dress. In an ideal world, people wouldn’t think it was an issue unless they were angling to get in my pants. In an ideal world, there would be no default assumption about what a normal person is, we’d just not worry about it, and be interested in a friendly way about our friends, and nothing more.

Inktober

Inktober is an online October event, the rules are simple – draw something in ink every day and post it. As I’d never drawn in ink, I took the alternative of pencilling first – which isn’t cheating. I didn’t manage every day either because I was ill towards the end of the month, but I got enough inks to feel like I did something, and it has had an impact on my drawing. The groups I drew at the end of the month I would never have considered trying at the beginning.

I picked birds as my theme because I wanted to work on my nature drawing, and I wasn’t very confident about birds, and capturing feathers on paper when I started.

Here’s a little video of all the birds.

The tunes in the background are also bird related and traditional. All of them are the tunes for songs – Lark in the clear air, The Nightingale (which my grandmother used to sing) and Twa Corbies (crows). All played by me, on a descant recorder. That was my first instrument, I lied about my age to get into recorder club – for five year olds and up. Start as you mean to go on….

Seeking abundance

If you’re reading this blog, the odds are you spend most of your days exposed to a stream of advertisements. Those adverts sell you dissatisfaction, fear and a sense of insufficiency to get you to buy the latest new, improved, shiner, faster thing that you can’t afford and don’t need.  It is a planet destroying approach, and constantly undermines our happiness and creates vast social and economic pressure.

The antidote, is to deliberately seek a sense of abundance that doesn’t depend on buying stuff. It’s an approach that doesn’t depend on being wealthy. So long as your basic needs are covered, you can have abundance if you know where to look for it.

There can be a tremendous sense of abundance in giving things away and taking care of other people. The well-off person who is seeking abundance can do it in part by helping others. Donate to the food bank. Give away old clothes. Buy someone lunch. Solve a problem for someone else. You get to feel heroic and powerful, and to make a difference.

There is no greater richness than being time rich. Time is finite, it is the stuff our lives are made of and it is easy to feel like we don’t have enough of it. Time that isn’t scheduled, time to do as you please, to do nothing – this is an incredible abundance to be enjoyed and celebrated. Turn off the machines of an evening, and great swathes of time can appear, rich with possibility. Learning to do nothing is a great antidote to information overload and fast lane nonsense.

Health is another great richness. Devoting time, energy and resources to your mental and physical health improves your quality of life and again, creates that feeling of abundance. If economic activity becomes more important than health, we end up deeply impoverished, ill and miserable. Claim back whatever time and energy you can find to put your health first.

Enjoy the small things. Every day life is full of wonderful small things – moments of beauty, kindness, inspiration, laughter. If you look for them you’ll see them. If your attention is always focused on some distant goal, you may miss all the good things that are right in front of you. Taking the time to enjoy what you’ve got increases feelings of abundance.

Stop treating hard work, long working hours, exhaustion and stress like some kind of virtue. There’s a lot of social support out there for doing this, which is of course why we end up doing it. These are not virtues, these are social ills and we need to free ourselves from them. Celebrate sloth, daydreaming, quietness, non-consumption, lack of speed, days off, and you start celebrating quality of life, not your economic usefulness to someone else.

Abundance is not some future goal to buy our way towards. Abundance is something we can only have if we look for it here and now.

Female body shapes

‘Thin’ is a problematic concept that has haunted me my entire life. Like many female-bodied persons, I tend towards curves. I’m aware that I have hips and breasts for breeding purposes. This is not an unusual quality in women. I also have a body that is perfectly willing to build muscle. Muscle does not make you thin. If you have muscles, you won’t have your bones on display.

Being thin depends on not eating too much. It depends on ignoring hunger. Calorie control, for me, means no energy, no means to be physically active. But then, thin doesn’t require you to be physically active, because thin doesn’t have any room in it for decent muscles.

What thin gives you is a delicate, fragile aesthetic. It says that you won’t be able to run away or put up much of a fight. You can easily be carried off. Thin female shapes can suggest pre-pubescence, or being a boy. There may be questions to ask about male tastes that favour girls who look like male children, and women who look easy to overpower.

Fit is a much easier thing to work on, I have found. Fit means choosing good food and not going hungry. It means having the energy to be active, and using that energy to be active. It means enjoying the body rather than denying it. That too, raises questions. Appetite for food is easily linked to other bodily appetites. If you’re working with an angels/whores take on womanhood, then the angles will be thin and unworldly, and the whores will enjoy all carnal things – food, sex, their own bodies… How much is thinness about not being allowed to enjoy your own physical self?

In the fashion industry, I gather the favouring of the very thin body has to do with how clothes sit. If the model is very thin across the pelvis and bust, you know the clothes will hang right regardless of who wears them. Thin is a way to make us all the same, to deny diversity and the reality of body shapes. Bodies are diverse. There would be more art in designing clothes that look good on different body shapes, but high fashion does not appear to be up for this challenge.

Thin is a full time job. You can’t take days off from it. Bodies that think they are living through a famine will store calories as soon as there are extra ones to play with. This is part of why many dieters find their weight yo-yos. Being thin, if it is not your natural body shape, is something you have to think about all the time. I’m not sure how many women have bone thin as their natural body shape. I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman who was really thin and who did not have to work at it. Naturally very thin women only seem to exist in films and TV shows, carelessly eating and drinking what they like and staying skinny because they are creatures of the (male?) imagination.

I think the quest to be thin is a dubious pursuit at best. There’s so much shaming of the female body in the industries that benefit from thinness. Imagine how much happier, and healthier we could all be and how much more time and money we could have to invest in other things if we gave up on the shapes we’ve been told to be, and started looking after our bodies with the idea of being fit and healthy instead.