This old chestnut...

Happy New Year and all that. Personally, I'm hoping that 2014 is going to be a vast improvement upon 2013, which was - to put it politely - patchy at best. I'm going to kick off the year with a feministy rant. Sorry.

I love a daft stock image.

Shortly before Christmas, I spent most of a day writing a piece on whether society still judges women who choose not to have children, as part of a staff writer application (miraculously, they liked what I wrote). Now, normally, I'd be all over that shit. As someone who has always found the whole pregnancy and childbirth thing utterly terrifying, and who has only recently started to think "aww, kids might be fun", it's something I could bang on about for yonks. But my word limit was around the 400-mark, so not nearly big enough. I like to throw all my thoughts at the page and see what sounds good, so small word counts are tricky. I also felt a bit bored by the topic - like "we're really still having this conversation?" But we are. I even asked my mum - not that she's the best person to ask, Mrs Daily Mail - and she shot back straight away "yes, we do judge childless women, without a doubt".

So here's the unabridged result of me throwing some thoughts at my laptop.

For all the progress we've made in a few decades (the vote, education, employment, equal pay - in theory if not in practice - and contraception), feminism's still got things to do*. It's got to deal with all the insidious stuff - the attitudes, the media's representation of women, how women are treated by the legal system - stuff that is, arguably, harder to tackle. If you want legislation changed, there are procedures you can follow - campaigns, petitions, advocacy groups - you get the picture. It might not be easy, it might not be successful, but there are ways and means, paths that have been trodden. To change attitudes, you have to shout into the wind and hope that enough people hear you. You have to call people out when they say things that are narrow-minded, unintentionally offensive or just plain stupid. At best, they might accuse you of not having a sense of humour, and at worst, they might be hostile, aggressive and threatening.

*Despite what Angela Epstein said on Newsnight a couple of months ago, when they did a piece on Everyday Sexism. I didn't know Ms Epstein wrote for the Daily Mail at the time, so I sat there and seethed about how contrary and deliberately obtuse she was being. When I looked her up afterwards, it all made sense.

Anyway, back to the thing. Womanhood and motherhood remain inextricably linked, despite all the progress that's been made. The notion that you're not a fully-fledged human being until you've produced a new one persists - if you're female. Women who choose not to have children, and instead throw their energy and intelligence into their careers, travelling the world, or simply going about their own business - quite happily - still have to deal with questions and remarks that are loaded with judgement:

"When are you going to settle down?"

"Give it time, your hormones will kick in."

"You'll change your mind."

From aging relatives hoping for grandchildren, you might expect it. But I've had the latter two said to me by male friends my own age. In my case, I happen to think they're right - I would like children, it's the personally having them I'm not so keen on. If it was simply a case of planting a tree and plucking a baby off when it was ripe, I'd be all for it. Or growing one in a tank, like Sea Monkeys. It's the giving up my body in order to grow a little human that I have the issue with. And then forcing it out into the world. It's the biggest physical commitment there is, and only women can do it, so when it's men saying "oh darling, you'll change your tune", I get a little riled and want to spit back "how the bloody hell would you know?"

The flip-side of this was pointed out to me by a very wise friend - it's incredibly rare that you hear parents saying that it's not all it's cracked up to be. There must be some people out there who have children and have found that were they able to go back, they wouldn't have had them. You don't hear those stories, because it would be horribly damaging to the children in question to find that out. There are people who never planned on kids but had them, and wouldn't change a thing, but that's a far more socially acceptable position to take. Society needs to catch up and recognise that motherhood isn't something that women have to cross off the list - we need to stop having conversations that run thus: "she's very successful, yeah, top of her field. Never had kids though". Making and raising new humans is such a commitment, such a life-changer, that you have to really want to do it. It's the unwanted children, the resented ones, who will suffer.

One day, women's choices and decisions aren't going to be the subject of endless judgement and debate. One woman's way of doing things won't be seen as representative of the whole of womankind. We will all - men included - just be allowed to get on with things. And let's hope that day comes sooner rather than later.

I don't have a sex playlist (well, not as yet, but you never know) but if I did, this would be on it.

And when I went for a very chilly, rainy run the other day, this song made me feel invincible.

How I feel about Christmas

I'll try and keep this as un-Liz-Jones-like as possible.

A rather fuzzy picture of our tree

I love Christmas. I really do. I'm like a child, almost everything about it excites me - the food, the tree, the fairy-lights, the cheesy films. Mainly the food and the fact that it's ok to start drinking at 11am, but most of it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

I think this is mostly because the Christmases of my childhood were epic. They lasted for weeks, or so it seemed. I lived with my grandmother for the first few years of my life, and even when I was with my mum and stepdad, I still spent most of the school holidays with Gran. She made two Christmas puddings and a huge breeze-block of a Christmas cake every year, and helping her ice it was my job. She wrote dozens of cards, and received dozens back - they'd be hung on string along every wall downstairs, and then we'd run out of room and have to start putting them upstairs. In the last few days before the 25th, she'd drive pretty much all over West Sussex, delivering presents and cards to friends and family. On the day itself, she'd cook one huge turkey, or sometimes two slightly smaller ones, in her trusty Aga (God, I miss that Aga), and there would be at least twelve of us sitting down to lunch. Invariably someone would have to have theirs on their lap, armchair pulled as close to 'the Big Table' as possible.

In the afternoon, we'd open presents - except for my grandfather, who'd be incredibly uninterested in his, and finally get around to opening them in February - and perhaps try and play a game of Scrabble or Monopoly. In fact, about the only thing that did get a response from Gramps was if someone tried to fish the coffee creams out of the Quality Street (I don't think they still do them). That someone was invariably me.

The evening would always find Gran in the kitchen, making people sandwiches with cold turkey or ham, regardless of whether they were hungry or not. She and her younger brother would start on the gin, and that would start them arguing, or energetically 'debating' politics. I always joined them - that's where the ham and cheese were - and sometimes when I'm tipsily debating current affairs with my friends now, I can see exactly where I came from.

So yeah. Those Christmases were brilliant.

Now of course, it's different. A year passes slightly quicker, so it's not such an event - more "oh, it's Christmas again". I've said before that I'm definitely a winter person, so I still have a certain fondness for this twinkly, red-and-gold time of year. I have mixed feelings about it now though - Gran is, naturally, too elderly to be hosting guests and cooking for twelve, and Gramps has been gone nearly ten years. For I think what might be the first time ever, it's just going to be me, the parents and the siblings this year. The last few years, we've had Gran, my aunt and my uncle to ours, but this year, it's just us. In theory, this should mean my mother won't have a stress-induced psychotic break in the kitchen at 11am on Christmas morning - but I know her better than that. In theory, I should be looking forward to it - but as we've never been the kind of family that actually does things together, I don't know how it's going to go. When friends tell me they have plans with their families over Easter, for example, I find myself trying not to look at them as though they're utterly mad. The sheer amount of family-related things most people do over Christmas also baffles me - not because I don't understand that half the point of Christmas is being with one's family, but because the five of us are all so, so different, and rarely do anything as a group. Being with someone who's got four siblings and is part of a very close family makes me both jealous and claustrophobic. (I should note here that his family have never been anything but absolutely wonderful to me.)

On the other hand, though, the idea of being separated from loved ones at this time of year is horrible. I can't imagine being in a long-distance relationship, for instance, or having a relative in the Forces. It must be spectacularly difficult to be parted from those you love at this time, because Christmas brings with it the almost unfightable urge to return 'home'.

I'm quite looking forward to the time when I can look at the Boy in about October and go "OK, where are we spending Christmas this year?" That's going to be good. (And if he ever says "The Maldives, with no-one we're related to" then BONUS POINTS FOR HIM.)

The only Christmas song there is.

I also really want you to hear Thea Gilmore's version of 'The St Stephen's Day Murders', because it's another cracking Christmas song, but I can't find a decent video, so Google is your friend here, I'm afraid.

Girl problems

What's wrong with this poster?

So this is festive.

I wrote about sex & relationship education relatively recently, but in the last week or two, I've stumbled across a couple of articles that only reinforce the worry that our whole attitude to teaching young people about relationships is dangerously out-of-touch. Firstly, there was this, which was found by the Boy when he was doing his thing of reading the headlines on the BBC app on my phone while waiting for me to finish taking my face off and come to bed. As you'll notice, only one of those letters is addressed to a boy.

And last Sunday, the UK media's official troll, the Daily Mail, ran this feature. If you can't be bothered to read it - or as is more likely, you don't want to give them the page-views - I'll summarise: two American women have founded a 'workshop programme' called TRAAP (Teenage Rape Awareness and Prevention), and they're visiting schools over here to talk about sexual violence and personal safety. Here's a couple of quotes from the founders: "[We] want to make things a little bit easier by telling [girls] that it’s always OK to say 'no', whether it’s to a date who’s being too pushy, or a boyfriend who wants you to do things you’re not comfortable with, or a creepy guy at a party..." and: "we don’t want our daughters – or you – to make the mistakes that we did and our friends did". 

You know what? If there is a problem with sexual violence among teenagers, if there is a problem surrounding the issue of consent - and I can believe there is, having been a teenage girl once and having had to explain through gritted teeth that "no" means "stop, and get the hell off" - then women like this are PART OF THAT PROBLEM. Women like this aren't changing things for the better, they're perpetuating them. Why? Because all the time girls are targeted as the gate-keepers, the ones who must be in control, say no, protect themselves, it's not a boy problem.

Newsflash: it's a fucking human problem. (Or, if we're going to be crude, a human fucking problem.) 
  
By framing the discussion in these terms - by saying girls must protect themselves from pushy, sexually aggressive boys - the underlying assumptions are that a) everyone is heterosexual, and b) it's always going to be that way round - that boys are the aggressors and girls must fend them off. Those assumptions aren't applicable to everyone, so we need to stop using them. Furthermore, by telling girls that they're the responsible ones, that the onus is on them to stop bad stuff happening, you take all the fun out of the good stuff. Sex stops being something glorious and experimental and guaranteed to give you a dose of the warm fuzzies and starts being something that has all the joy of a nasty dental procedure.

Taking this approach - and, while we're here, separating boys and girls for sex education - immediately sends out the message that there are secrets to keep, things not to be shared. That sex isn't a collaborative thing. That our bodies are weird and do weird things and that no matter what, we should protect the opposite sex from that. I get that kids are separated for those lessons to spare everyone's giggles and blushes, but it's a short-term decision that has long-term effects. What would be the harm in teaching everyone everything?

The pressure needs to be taken off girls. So much so-called 'helpful' advice is directed at them - be safe online, be safe with your phone, and most insultingly, be safe if you're out alone at night. Why is that insulting? Because it assumes, wrongly again, that most rapes and sexual crimes are committed by strangers. Newsflash #2: the majority of them are committed by someone known to the victim, someone with whom they have been, or are in a relationship. There's no excuse for not knowing that now; the stats on that one have been out there for a long time.

It's quite simple: respect each other. Be considerate. It's boring but it's true - do unto others as you would have them do to you. Just be nice. Don't be a dick. You're going to be a lot happier that way.

The only explanation I've got for having paid actual money for this track is that it's been a very hormonal week, so I've been more susceptible to floppy-haired boys who write sentimental songs (it is quite cute though).

I'll redeem myself  with this one.

Online comments - who are they good for?

On Sunday, I went to a Guardian Masterclass* for aspiring freelance journalists. It was a fantastic day run by industry professionals who were unbelievably positive and keen to share their knowledge. There was none of that "well, print journalism's a sick, dying horse these days, so if I were you lot, I'd stick to basket-weaving or whatever it is mere peasants do to make a living". I can’t fault the event at all, but there was one little thing that bugged me: a Q & A session with Guardian journalist Marina Hyde was derailed by at least four questions on the issue of online comments, and how writers deal with them. One question on it would have been fine, but four? I just don’t think they’re important enough to warrant half an hour of discussion. (A whole blog post's worth of discussion, yes, but no-one's paying for this. Yet.)

  *well, I say that. In order to be in London for 9.30am, I got to the station at half-7. Whereupon I was told "there's a broken-down train at Gatwick, so nothing's going further than there". Four hours, four trains, a brief car journey and seemingly all the stations in Sussex later, I got to Victoria. By some brilliant stroke of luck, I made it to the Royal College of Medicine - where the event was being held - at the first coffee break, so I didn't have to sneak into an auditorium and make a spectacle of myself.

Anyway, Marina Hyde’s perspective on below-the-line comments was fairly straightforward, and ran something along the lines of: “I don’t care, and I don’t have time to read them anyway… I think they should be there, because if I’m pissing on people’s opinions above the line, then they should be able to piss on mine in the comments” (I’m paraphrasing, but she definitely said “pissing”. You can ask her). She mentioned that some columnists don’t think readers should be able to comment at all, and as an aspiring writer, I can absolutely see why.

In theory, the comments section is a safe space for debating the issue being written about above the line, which is well and good and dandy. In practice, however, it seems to be flypaper for headcases. And I don’t mean the genuinely mentally ill, I mean the people whose opinions are a bit… Daily Mail on steroids. “This country’s gone to the dogs” and “back in my day” and the like. People write because they want to connect with readers, plant ideas, raise a smile, provoke discussion, and so to be a writer who is against online comments can be a bit of a contradiction. The trouble is, in the Venn diagram of “people who have the time and inclination to write comments on newspaper articles” and “people whose opinions are well-informed and logically sound”, there isn’t an awful lot of overlap.

There is a tiny voice in my head – and it’s one I’m working on drowning out – that keeps saying, “Is it absolutely necessary that we can publish our every opinion for all to see?” Yes, I’m aware of how that sounds – it’s a bit anti-free speechy, and a bit rich coming from a blogger. But if you look at Twitter, and the amount of abuse aimed at high-profile writers, then you might see what I’m getting at. It’s a related issue – from the safety of a keyboard, people feel they can say anything, and the notion of having to answer for your actions is forgotten. How else do you explain the bomb threats, rape threats and disgusting language directed at Grace Dent, Hadley Freeman, Mary Beard, India Knight, to name just a few? From a distance, it’s easy to say, “well, the people saying this stuff are clearly arseholes, and too childish to bother getting stressed about”, but if you’re facing it day in, day out, while simply trying to do your job, I should imagine it gets pretty fucking old.

I suppose there are measures in place – comments are moderated, offensive language doesn’t usually get through. But that’s only a small part of the problem; it would be lovely if before you could publish a comment on an online article, you had to answer the question: “will your comment improve anything for anyone today?" 

Unfortunately, there will always be ill-informed idiots, and the internet's just another platform for them. I'm still not sure online comments are a complete necessity, but maybe I'm missing something. I'd say I just won't read them, but everyone likes to feel morally superior once in a while, so I doubt I'll be giving up my Mail Online habit any time soon. Which is sad, really.

 

On the Brandwagon

...come on, what else was this post going to be called?

Just another excuse for me to ogle Paxman's beard.

I didn't really want to come in on this one. Enough's been said about it - either by writers going "oh, he's so trivial and stupid" but then proceeding to write 1000 words about him anyway, or by other writers going "yeah, you know what? I almost agree". Everyone else has already been far wiser and more eloquent about it than I have, I'm aware, but still. It's been nagging at me over the last week or so. Because the more I read about our current government - the more I hear about disadvantaged, sick, underprivileged people in the UK today having support taken from them - the more I think Brand has a bloody good point.

I don't agree with everything he said/wrote - his New Statesman essay did go on a bit - because for one, I think if you can vote, you should. People have fought bitterly for universal suffrage, so it seems a bit ungrateful to waste it. And what's more, I'm already looking forward to the next general election - I'll be bounding down to the polling station just so I can do my tiny little bit to ensure we don't have to suffer the Conservatives for a moment longer than absolutely necessary. It was telling that following the Newsnight interview with Russell Brand, Jeremy Paxman came out and said that he understood Brand's unwillingness to vote. And then called the Lib Dems' tuition fees U-turn "the biggest lie in recent political history". Mind you, as long as he's sporting a bit of a beard, Jeremy Paxman can say and do what he likes as far as I'm concerned...

Where was I? Oh yes. In short, voting is good. For now.

It's easy to knock Russell. In the past, he has been a bit of a knob, and he's admitted this. It's also easy to be seduced by him - not literally, though I should imagine that's quite easy too; as an automatic fan of anyone who can do skilful things with words, I do love the way he talks. He can go from silly and facetious to angry and impassioned in the blink of an eye, and is clearly in a torrid love affair with a very good thesaurus. But the fact that he raised the issue of "revolution" - or at least ripping up the current political rulebook and starting again - isn't relevant. The real issue is that someone said it, and it was someone "famous". Because it's what's being said everywhere else: what if we could just rip it up and start again? What if we could simply demand more?

I can't tell you the number of times I've sat with friends in the pub, or at someone's kitchen table, and we've all agreed that the people in power are not the ones with the smartest ideas. Or, to put it another way, the intelligent people who would make a decent job of doing the nation's admin wouldn't touch it with a barge-pole. You have to be a bit odd to want to be in politics.

Brand has managed to plant an idea in the heads of people who might not be that politically engaged, and that idea is simple: what if we didn't have to put up with this? What if we could say "enough's enough of this bullshit"? There's not going to be a revolution; of course there isn't. We're British, our upper lips are stiff, we're not about to kick off and party like it's 1789.

But if I have to read one more article about people on job seekers' allowance getting tricked into being sanctioned (quite a way down in that piece, sorry!), or hear one more story about someone too sick to work getting their benefits stopped or reduced to the point where they cannot afford to live, or read one more piece about some ludicrous thing Michael Gove* has dreamt up, then I'm going to lose my mind. And I know I'm not the only one.

*I Googled "Michael Gove sexting" to remind myself of the full story and find a link. You cannot imagine how uneasy that made me.

 So what do we do? I don't know. I do know that anyone who's ever brought about real, necessary change was called insane when they started, and a hero when they finished. I also know that the 10-point "Initial Statement" released by the Occupy London group in October 2011 makes an awful lot of sense, and that the Occupy movement was something that Brand praised in his interview. I do know that as long as people go on saying "ah well, nothing's ever going to change", nothing will change. Funnily enough.

I don't really know where I'm going with this, and given the haphazard way I'm typing here, I'm sure that's obvious. I think the reason so many columnists and commentators jumped on this "Russell Brand wants a revolution" thing is because it hit a nerve. It hit the nerve that feels, deep down, so many things are wrong right now. Corporations not paying billions of pounds' worth of tax, for a start. A generation of well-educated young people looking out on a job market that can best be described as "hideous". The most disadvantaged people in our society being demonised by the media (stop believing the Daily Mail, Mum!). The cold realisation that the people who are currently doing the nation's admin are doing it mainly for themselves. Christ, that's bleak.

How about some music? That usually helps.

These guys are really good.

And the wonderfully sinister-sounding new one from these guys.