Why I'm Not a 'Feminist'

I am concerned with issues which affect and hurt my fellow woman kind. I am deeply emotionally and intellectually invested in the social discourse which keeps females bound up in uncomfortable confines; the glaring rules which state a woman has no worth unless she fits the physical and behavioural mold this cruel world has undertaken to construct. (You only need to read my former blog posts to see this) However –I cannot call myself a FEMINIST. This is because this title has become a dirty word with connotations that leave me overly perturbed. If it ever used to be, it is now not simply a noble description of any person who is concerned with promoting the value of the fairer sex. It is now synonymous with assimilating base human characteristics, gender division and male bashing. Feminist writer Germaine Greer spoke my feelings well when she lamented that the ‘feminism’ of today is not what feminists of her generation wanted. The ‘feminism’ of today has women trying a bizarre role reversal and appropriating men’s worst behaviours in a game of anti-social one-upmanship. Girls are increasingly binge drinking, displaying promiscuous behaviour and acting ‘laddish.’ Germaine and her peers didn’t want this –women emulating classless men- they wanted women to be able to be something better. I can only find a strange ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’ unease when I see how women who feel they are displaying a righteous contemporary feminism express it. This feeling followed a comment made by one of my university lecturers who is a respected Spanish feminist. She was speaking about misconceptions and stereotypes. “People think because I’m a feminist I must not have a boyfriend,” she said. “Well I do. Y tiene un culo esplendido.” (meaning– and he has a fantastic bum!). The class of young women laughed and I even heard one encourage “Go on girl!” The hypocrisy of the situation almost physically hurt my tender heart. Imagine if a male lecturer were to say that about his female lover! There would be outrage. Yet a woman can reduce her male partner to his taught gluteus Maximus and it’s an acceptable joke. I know this type of thing is a response to the humiliating sexist belittling women have endured since the beginning of forever, but copying what men have done doesn’t make anything better. It spits on the whole point of what I thought feminists originally wanted –both genders being treated with equal value and respect.

Here is a perfect further example of things which justify my perturb-ment. A song parody currently being promoted by a trio of irked feminists. R’n’B crooner Robin Thicke has had a popular single out called Blurred Lines. The song has a video of naked models prancing around and lyrics which talk about a woman as a helpless sexual creature. In response to Mr Thicke’s objectifying ditty, three law students from Auckland created a female version humiliating men. They talk of ‘emasculating’ the man and proceed to slap the bums of hunky males wearing briefs. Why must your ‘feminism’ be about emasculating and denigrating men? There is nothing noble or intellectual about that. It’s an immature game of getting men back by trying to do to them what the worst of them have done to us currently and historically. It’s all so silly. This topsy-turvy faux-feminism malarkey. That’s why I can never call myself a ‘feminist.’

The love I have to give may be too much for you.

The love I have to give may be too much for you. It will bend you out of shape. You won’t recognise yourself once it has entered into your tiny little world, spoiling everything like a hurricane. It will sweep away the silly things you used to hold dear. And the silly thoughts you kept like twine strung around your half dormant mind. It will fill you and frighten you. It will ruin you and make you all at once. It will show you that though you held much in your hands, you were simply a pauper. And blind. And deaf. And dead. And pitiable. It will make your colours brighter. It will force you to hear the minutiae of the universe’s music. You will be over-awed. It will destroy everything you thought you knew and everything you thought you were and leave you without foundations, no walls, no handles to hold on to. Just it and you, slowly merging and reforming; like larvae eating up the death held in rotting limbs. I suppose I shouldn’t blame you for running from me. The love I have to give you may be too much.

Our Internal Stories

I was out amongst the shops the other day. ‘Among the shops’ is one of my favourite places to be. Ashamed as I am to admit that I so often resort to fulfilling the materialistic, first world female stereotype. But that’s by-the-by… So, I was in a market and a clamour was building a few yards behind me, like a small unpredictable whirlwind…A small-ish lady was shouting at one of the stallholders to ‘give me my money back,’ and the aplomb with which she vented her aggression gave the impression this was no novice in the field of scene-making. A veritable ‘scene’ was created, with people watching, commenting and a couple of brave souls coming to the aide of the stallholder who held his own as defiantly as the small-ish lady. The situation escalated. She descended. She screamed abuse at him with a few general terms of offense sprinkled with some choice racist slurs (the lady was white, the stallholder Asian) Another male stallholder came to the defense of his friend and told the vociferous woman to get out. She turned on him and it got physical. She threw blows and spat at the man. He restrained her with another female stallholder who intervened, maybe seeing it was more appropriate that another woman handle her and not a huge guy. They held her to the ground as she thrashed and screamed; it was like something you’d see in a disturbing TV program on life in a high security correctional facility. I left the market and crossed the road to continue with my everyday business. I was in the spot long enough to see police arrive and take the girl outside to talk to. I am one of life’s observers. From the other side of the street, I took the chance to observe the girl more closely than I could inside the market. She stood with her face defiantly away from the officer as he spoke to her. Her whole stance was defiant, she stood with legs shoulder distance apart as I notice boys do when they are trying to look ‘hard.’ Her manner in general was very 'masculine'. She had her hair cropped close to her head, and wore baggy clothes usually seen draping from teenage boys going through that Justin Bieber phase of trying to look 'street' and tough. I noticed the large Celtic cross tattooed on her neck. I noticed the smattering of street slang in her language; terms such as ‘nah blud.’ I noticed her seemingly more timid yet similarly dressed friend who’d been waiting outside for her. In life’s little moments it’s so interesting to realise what our internal commentator makes of the whole thing. Mine always creates a backstory for people I come across. Sometimes it’s good to realise everyone has a story and has been through things that make them who they are. It makes us less quick to judge and condemn. It may be the natural born writer in me that uses situations to let my mind venture. But sometimes creating stories for people may just be patronising assumption. Mine was probably the latter. It went like this; ‘This is probably someone who has grown up in care home. Probably been locked up before, as is statistically all too common amongst ‘institutionalized’ children. She probably learned to be this way as a defence within the dysfunctional environments to which she’s been subjected. She must hate being made out to be weaker than men. It must have rocked her to rage when she was being held down on the market floor like that. She’s probably been restrained in a similar manner at some point in her life, in the institutions she’s been in, because I’m sure this isn’t the first time she’s manifested that violent temper’ –and so on. I don’t entirely know what the focal point of this post is. I guess it’s just intrinsic to want to write about daily experiences. This blog is ‘The Conundrum of Self’ –maybe I'm just trying to analyse the way my mind interprets environmental happenings. Anyway, bless you if you read all this. Love x

7 ways to be instantly happier (Life-stuff one learns)

(1) Forget about looks. If you buy into the notion that one must look a certain way to be desirable or happy, then you’ve instantly choked down the potential for your own complete happiness and ease of mind. You will constantly be judging yourself and others by a pointless and unrealistic measuring rod of a kind of beauty ideal formed by the heads of cosmetic companies. ********************************************************************* (2)Remember people are human. When we forget our humanity and that of others, we end up becoming pompous and always looking down on those who are different than we are. When you remember that every person has been through something, has a back-story and things which have influenced who they’ve become, it makes you understanding, compassionate and less quick to harshly judge. ****************************************************************** (3) Distraction is your WORST ENEMY. Whenever you are trying to achieve, whether it is a life-goal or just a daily task, just be aware that the deadly beast of distraction will come your way to stop you. Always. It’s as though you have a secret, silent enemy that will just send you stuff to try and stop you from getting anywhere. But once you are aware of this, you can reign in your focus and not allow this enemy to defeat your potential brilliance! ********************************************************************** (4) It may seem a random point, but in this day and age of rapid and vapid communications this is apt; Don’t take texts too seriously! They say ninety per cent of communication is non-verbal. Through a text you not only don’t see the person, you can’t hear their voice, you don’t see enough words to get the full nuance of what they want to say. Not only that, but you have the issues of mis-spelling, mis-sending, mis-understanding etc. I love texting, it has its uses, but I don’t judge whole situations from them. And... there could be a million reasons why that person didn’t text you back. Too much assumption goes on around textual relations. ********************************************************************* (5) Value the ‘little’ things. Appreciate what you have. When you decide to actively ‘count your blessings’ you’ll be surprised that you actually have a lot of them. ******************************************************************** (6) Don’t depend on feeling. Yesterday you felt like a beautiful superstar. Today you got up feeling like mulch and looked in the mirror and felt you also look like such. Yesterday life seemed like a bunch of kittens and roses. For some reason, perhaps the fluctuation of serotonin in your noggin or whatever, today you think life hates you. Just be rational and know that feelings are ephemeral and sometimes lie. Decide to ignore those sudden nonsensical feelings of rubbishness. ********************************************************************** (7)Realise your place in the world is very important; yet, the world does not revolve around you. I guess this is a question of having a healthy, balanced outlook. You have no grounds to see yourself as insignificant, inconsequential or value-less. Yet at the other end of the spectrum, there are those who have an elated sense of self-importance. We all have special-ness. Those who are deluded enough to think they are somehow so much greater than others will be unhappy because life will always offer situations where our inflated egos get slapped down. That is all. xx ********************************************************************************************************************************************* *Proverbs 16:18 Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall*

Built on Bad Foundations

Okay. let me be serious today. Take a dose of 'tough love', if you will.. Woman. One of the major reasons why your daily living is permeated with insecurities and abstract anxieties, seasoned with a sprinkling of crippling self doubt, is because you are building yourself on shaky foundations. YOU, your average 21st century western woman is fed all manner of destructive fodder from the age of first understanding societal language, until most probably death. You are fed foundational beliefs such as 'you must be pretty',‘you must be pretty to be happy/desired’, ‘you must be thin to be happy/desired/socially acceptable’ , ‘you must compete with other women’, ‘you must work hard at stuff to have something to show that you are worth anything’, ‘buy this beauty product, lose those tummy rolls, have a house like this...and you will finally be happy/desired/worthwhile’ etc etc. And so the poor, little rich western woman has a whole trough of life-lies to unceasingly, unrelentingly work towards. This is a sad, hopeless state of affairs. Yet..hmm. Is it so hopeless? For if the disease is caused by feeding the womanly soul with mental junk food, surely it can be quelled by changing the diet of base media intake and advertising companies’ guilt-feed? Cheesy as it may be to say, I find that L.O.V.E is the solution to basically everything. For e.g. sake, let’s take that face you have, that waist you have, that laugh you have –they are YOURS. So...you may as well go ahead and make yourself love them despite what the world around you is teaching. The alternative is constantly deriding yourself on how ‘inadequate’ they are and wasting your life on a sad pursuit of constantly trying to change them to fit some nonsensical –one-size-fits-all ideal of what constitutes beauty, attractiveness and even the right to be happy. To the people who love you, you are much more than eyes, hair, a waist and skin. They love you just because you are their precious, daughter, sister, wife, friend, niece etc etc. They love you just because of love. And I’m sure there is nothing they would change about YOU materially. So...sad, ever-shadow-chasing, shallow reduced western woman, let me advise you with this...forget what ‘society’ is pressuring you to be. Build your confidence and focus around the only thing that matters when all else in this fickle world crumbles ---Love. Matthew 7:24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man which built his house upon a rock.

The Problem with the Hurt

Hurt is inevitable in the human process of living. Yet some people take it as an extraordinary happening that solely occurs so sorely to them; using it as an excuse to wallow in victim-hood and self-pity. This is often those of us who are self-righteously inclined, and who are forgetful to the fact we’ve also caused hurt before and have needed to be forgiven.

What else should we do to deal with the hurts in a healthy way?
Respect time. It really does seem to heal. So don’t throw away a potential lifetime friendship for something that may have been said in 30 seconds of folly, no matter how much it may have pierced you at the initial moment.

We also need to learn how to accept that going through some roughness in our lives is not only inevitable, it is valuable and necessary. Interestingly in biblical times, newborn babies were salted before being wrapped in swaddling. This process was to toughen up their skins against the things they would henceforth be facing in this germ ridden, rough-and-tumble world. It is inevitable as we grow older in years and essential for growing as people. Let us even learn to say 'hurrah', for (learning to deal with) the hurts!




Colossians 3:12-13
12 Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering;
13 Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also [do] ye.

The Spirit of Anarchy

During the past week, the country has experienced a growing deluge of rioting, looting, nihilism and civil unrest heretofore unprecedented in this generation of English youth.
It began several days ago, stemming from the peaceful protest of the family of a young black Londoner, who had been shot dead by police in unclear circumstances. This was just a spark in catalyzing a great fallout of youthful rebellion, violence and anarchy on city streets.
There are a good few key factors contributing to these troubling scenes played out before us. Here are three:

Disillusionment
There is a crippling recession. People feel helpless. Employment rates are disparaging. People are angry at politicians –they seem to get away with so much.
Respect for authority feels pointless. People are fed up with all sorts.

-Look at societal history- bad government and economic misery always leads to social unrest.

The age old, universal angst of youth
In this kind of mass movement of people, there is also a perverse sense of camaraderie. Adolescents are collecting side by side for a –albeit negative- common cause.
These are things commonly sought after in human nature, no matter the walk of life. If it were only poverty and working-class disillusionment that made us act out, you wouldn’t have seen middle-class wannabe rebels such as rock star son Otis Ferry publicly displaying anarchic, anti-establishment behaviour in the notorious student protests earlier this year.

Greed and materialism
“Don’t underestimate the desire for a free pair of Nike trainers.”
-Timothy Spall on This Morning in reference to the looting

‘Nuff said.


And basically, if the people at the top were performing their duties with integrity, we people at the bottom wouldn’t be suffocating in such resentment.

Proverbs 29:2: When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.