The Joy of gender-neutrality
By alice on January 4, 2009
I rather liked this New Yorker article about the new Joy of Ess-Ee-Ex (which may be more paranoid a spelling than strictly necessary to avoid today’s robo-spammers, but better to be on the safe side). It’s not without fluff, but raises a few points about how old-fashioned sexism has been replaced by modern gender-free namby pamby and very un-ess-ee-exy universal dullness:
The hairiness has been eliminated, and the attractiveness gap between the man and the woman has been bridged. But the people in these pictures do not look as if they were in any kind of sexual ecstasy. Rather, they have the smug smiles of a couple whose 401(k)s have just appreciated. They look as if they were in a Viagra commercial, which is to say that they look like two people who have never, ever had sex.
All because It isn’t easy watching beauty get pawed by the beast, apparently.
Now look, I realise not every attractive straight man necessarily has to have a face and attitudes of a Victorian archduke, but is it mere coincidence that when you wipe out all sense of difference other than the fleshy appendage thingies, the results are somewhere less than earth-movingly scintillating? No it is not, and many a woman will tell you so from her own romantic experience, if she is honest. Let us stop asking “why do women always seem to fancy nasty men?”, that old chestnutty wimpy-guy complaint, and start asking “why are all the nice men so unappealing?” I won’t start on that or we’ll be here all day, but feel free to expand upon that wild generalisation if you like.
Younger men seem to be onto this masculinity-gap these days, they are all growing beards now so presumably it must work on the girls. Ironic, really, that the J.O.S. man gets erased just as his yeti-like appearance (a werewolf with a hangover, the N. Yker says) has resurged back into fashion. They probably haven’t noticed that yet in New York, though.
update So bearing in mind Shefaly’s comment below, perhaps the young men are more interested in serious long-term marriage than in strings of anonymous dates? Figures, as we’re always hearing about the conservatism of divorce-traumatised Gen Y.
two approaches to improving safety
By alice on December 29, 2008
note: this post is specifically NOT about the rights and wrongs of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is a discussion I don’t find very productive, for reasons that should be clear from its content.
This is from a column in The Times:
Many observers object that the airstrikes are disproportionate: the weekend body count was one Israeli killed, more than 290 reported dead in Gaza. The Israelis will counter that those who start a war on civilians are in no position to demand restraint.
It seems to me that there are two approaches to conflict resolution, which we need to differentiate more carefully in order to make real progress. One approach is moralism, which tries to find out what is right and what is wrong, decide on how to make reality match up better with how things ought to be according to that analysis, and then attempts to enforce it. Another approach is pragmatism, which tries to figure out what best to do in order to further the interests of the person or people seeking to bring about change.
The Arab-Israeli conflict seems to be characterised by plenty of complaints and judgements on all sides, and very little progress towards peace. The good thing about pragmatic conflict resolution, however, is that anyone can adopt it as an approach without needing consent from the other side, and further their own interests thereby.
The bad thing about it is, the solution is unlikely to correspond with your view of what is “fair” or “right”, as those which do are only going to happen if you possess the necessary authority to bring them about (enormous respect from the other party, or massive use of force). Pragmatism is about solving problems as best you can in the real world, which starts with accepting your own lack of omnipotence.
My source for ideas about approaching conflicts pragmatically rather than judgementally is the wonderful book The Gift of Fear by Gavin De Becker, which discusses the reality about how to protect yourself from violent attack. It is much more difficult to apply those ideas to entire states that consider themselves victimised by other states for various reasons, but I think it could be done- with the huge benefit that it doesn’t matter who really is the victim, as positive actions on all sides would help things anyway.
I don’t have answers- the sort of thing I’m talking about is a process, based on long-term ongoing work focussed on the specific goal of living in the same world as your (perceived) attacker, but in the safest possible way, using real knowledge about why they are (or may be) attacking you in order to minimise it.
Usually “understanding” the other side and furthering your own self-interest are regarded as opposites. This is a false dichotomy! The pragmatic approach is about using understanding of the other side/person/people to further your own interests- because it works where force and good manners very often both fail. For instance, women being pursued by violent men often take out restraining orders. This often fails as a protective technique, because the orders are not backed up either by respect or physical enforcement, so restraining orders are broken all the time, sometimes with results more dangerous and lethal than if those women were not lulled into a false sense of security due to their belief in this ineffective legal action.
Maybe the IDF and Hammas are already both experts in this field, although I doubt that. But any time a side falls back on complaints about its own victimhood coupled with insistence that the other side must behave more fairly, the results are unlikely to be positive. The Jewish people were not saved by international forces during WWII, and they are unlikely to find themselves supported in their military attempts to destroy Hammas now. Nor will Hammas find itself being backed up in its rocket campaigns by American or European armies. So either or both is better off looking at what methods they can use to protect themselves better from the constant violence of the other side (from their points of view).
I’m not saying any of this because it is right, “right” or what I personally believe to be right. It just seems a more workable approach than continued arguing over who is right, which seems an ineffective approach to violence-reduction for any side. Right now everyone thinks they have “run out of patience” and is entitled to do “whatever it takes” in order to “win”. Which really does seem completely unrealistic as an approach, because nobody has the force to make it happen.
Of course, there is no particular reason why people living outside any conflict should feel inspired to do anything other than judge and judge some more: it’s a lot easier to do that than to find pragmatic approaches that really improve a situation of conflict. But if at least one side involved were to take that approach consistently, things could get better.
The question to ask is: from a purely pragmatic point of view, what can be done to increase safety and protect one’s own side? In order to answer this question, understanding of the other side’s motivation, both explicitly and as an aggressor/”aggressor” is required. Then sort of understanding that De Becker provides in his book, covering a wide range of different psychological profiles and their behaviours, but applied on a bigger scale.
People don’t just “snap” and become violent, says de Becker, whose clients include federal government agencies, celebrities, police departments, and shelters for battered women. “There is a process as observable, and often as predictable, as water coming to a boil.” Learning to predict violence is the cornerstone to preventing it. De Becker is a master of the psychology of violence, and his advice may save your life.
If I had more faith in any of the governing bodies involved in this conflict, I would qualify the above by mentioning that perhaps it has been done already, and what we have now is the best anyone could have achieved (other than through stronger use of force, or better propagandizing of one’s own moral perspective to the other side). But I don’t see consistently good, or even consistent per se, political decision-making in this conflict.
Tags: politics, society, violenceIn Memoriam Harold Pinter
By alice on December 25, 2008
(I twittered this, but then it made me laugh enough to repost here. But it is under 140 characters!)
So. Farewell then
Harold Pinter.
You were an atheist
But you wrote a poem about the afterlife
When you were dying.
Which is understandable.
(It helps if you have know the work of the pseudonymous E.J. Thribb of Private Eye fame.)
(In my view pretty much anything you do while dying is understandable, and understanding is more important for the future of the human race than judgement, which is my last word for now on the euthanasia debate below)
Canaries in coal mines and David Mitchell on euthanasia
By alice on December 13, 2008
While British gays continue to display a reckless disregard for the fact that they may not be married, only civilly unified, many ruthlessly using the M word to describe their connection anyway, American humans continue to show little or no interest in the media-friendly issue of euthanasia (which for practical purposes means, enabling a loved one to commit suicide or being present while they do so without being prosecuted).
(Not sure why I am linking those two issues together, but if there’s anything offensive about it, that wasn’t why!)
As a younger person, I was vehemently in favour of a person’s human right to die when they chose especially if they were suffering enormous agony from lethal conditions. These days I must admit that the whole enthanasia hoo-hah makes me feel much more nauseous. David Mitchell rather cleverly sums up what may be a very important point indeed:
The main argument cited against legalising assisted suicide is that it may cause people to be put under pressure to end their lives prematurely - pressure, it is implied, that will be exerted by younger relatives who tire of an old person’s ill health, moaning, money-hoarding, racism or smell. But I think it’s worse than that - I think we’d end up putting pressure on ourselves.
Anyone who plans slightly obsessively - who thinks about packing days before the end of a holiday, puts their coat on during the last scene of a play or leaves football matches early to avoid traffic - is at risk of seeing death, in a society where we control its timing, as merely another job to get done. It’s the last thing on the ‘to do’ list and their organised natures may make them feel duty-bound to ‘get it done’.
This would be horrific. One of the few advantages of death is that it’s not something you have to get round to doing. It will happen anyway. You’re allowed to hang on as long as you can: indeed you’re supposed to, so there’s no need to be organised or grown-up about it. It’s ‘eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we may die’ not ‘I’d better get an early night because I’ve booked it in for 9am’.
If you thought that was too long to read and bleeped right over it back to my own unitallicised wit, try this later section on for size instead:
Millions of pensioners already dutifully sell their houses, move into care homes and take out insurance policies to pay for funeral expenses: they don’t want to be a bother or a financial drain. It’s not going to take much to make some of them give everything up - give up - just to be selfless and tidy.
That’s a pretty sickening thought.
I was thinking about canaries down coal mines earlier this evening. There’s that famous poem where “They” come and get everyone in the end, by gradually working down the list of marginalised minorities. But what if there’s a whole other early-warning system of human sacrifice built into the ways of the world, one that can’t speak for itself?
Canaries aren’t powerful enough to organise themselves in groups big enough to make a fuss- they just die without a tweet. The point, though, is to tell everyone else to backtrack out of the mine. What mine? I haven’t got so far as to identify that yet; but there are always mines. Mines are part of life.
Tags: society, UK, USon sales and writing
By alice on December 10, 2008
This is the best post I’ve read today, by Gwendolyn Zepeda. Well, best post for a while, really, and best written for even longer than that, which is what you would expect from a good and successful writer with 5 books! You should read her psot because it’s funny, and talks about grackles.
But also I’ve been thinking a lot about artists and publicity lately (where “lately” means “about two decades”), and Gwen says:
Doing publicity for yourself is like a whole other job, in addition to your writing and to your day job, if you have one. And in addition to your parenting and your household-running and your girlfriend-being. Most writers don’t like that part of the job very much. (I think it’s because most writers are introverts. Do you agree?)
and,
But I’m getting over those petty peeves, with the help of self-directed cognitive therapy and the daily horoscopes of Mr. Rick Levine. Like I said, I’m not complaining. I’m just telling y’all how I feel so that you authors can empathize, and you aspiring authors can know what you’re in for.
The publishing industry seems to be in a certain amount of disarray and plenty of writers and artists these days are taking on their own publicity in new and exciting ways, which are good for them and their audience. Here’s an interesting and clever example of an author who did self-publishing as well as publicity (hat tip Nancy Rommelman). It’s not so weird that introverted artists should have to go against their own characters in order to thrive and survive, just a very human challenge.
For instance, Van Gogh: was his genius before its time, or was he just a terrible self-publicist? There comes a point where one has to assume some kind of responsibility for these things, and chasing Gaugin with a razor blade does not seem the best way to do it. And Van Gogh started selling very nicely practically the moment he was dead, ie. out of the way- perhaps he just needed to be nicer, and, especially, more understanding and tolerant of other people’s dumbess (and inferioir artistic vision)? Perhaps he was too insecure to be likeable.
Of course, there is always the option of becoming a superstar marketing genius, learning to sell everything from wine to Microsoft, making people love your cartoons for free then selling your art to those who already know and love you. For most of us that’s an impossibly long way round, but gapingvoid is a law unto himself. Maybe there’s a lesson about following your own star there, though. More choices, more artists in control of their own careers, more confronting reality whatever your individual needs are as an extroverted self-publishing unknown genius or an introverted bestselling German phrasebook-writer; doing what works for you, always best, now more possible than ever. Well, I hope so 
(I don’t quite believe in the old-fashioned introvert/ extrovert differentiation, but it can be useful in discussing people’s variable talents and preferences.)
Wordsworth- positive psychology genius
By alice on December 9, 2008
There’s something ironic about the way scientists are now proving that being in nature calms your brain-waves and deliberately recalling happy memories induces a state of inner peace: these are wellbeing strategies that used to be well known in other areas of life before positive psychology was invented (religion, literature, art). Last night I was reading some instructions in this book about how to tackle bad habits down by focussing on happy memories whenever you feel anxious or negative, then picked up The Art of Travel, and immediately came across identical ideas from William Wordsworth (1770-1850):
there are in our existence spots of time,
That with distinct pre-eminence retain
A resonating virtue…
That penetrates, enables us to mount,
When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen.
But Wordsworth was not just advocating hill-walking and positive recollection therapy: he also believed that poetry itself could have this effect, standing in for what Martha Beck calls “treasure-box memories”. He thought the entire point of poetry was to spread this kind of happiness across humanity, so you could open up a book and the uplifting beauty of the world would be revealed to you.
Alain de Botton’s book is about travel, not the meaning of literature, so he goes walking in search of daffodils etc rather than staying home with some poems. But he definitely doesn’t give the impression that just reading Wordsworth has the same impact as physically experiencing the lovely nature scene that finally gets him transported. I find it hard to get that from Wordsworth too. He’s too clunky for me:
For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood
They flash upon that inward eye…
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.
But is other poetry capable of plugging you into the life-force? Sure.
These things come in trends- when Wordsworth started out, everyone thought he was nuts, but after a few years the bed-and-breakfasts in the Lake District were packed with poetry-and-hiking fans. Funny now though, how we should be so very into the psychology/philosophy and so very uninterested in the artistic implications of Wordsworth. Not many people consider good poetry to be as invigorating as swimming with dolphins or doing your positive psychology exercises, do they? Why not?
I think we’re a bit mean with our intellectual investment these days- in such a permanent hurry that only things that offer immediate, literal results seem worth doing. We will climb a mountain to get spiritual and go on a course to get happy, but appreciating literature is a specialist subject even though we can all read (not that going on a literature course would teach you how to appreciate literature anyway- there too, the approach is literal, philosophical, historical etc these days. Nobody believes what Wordsworth believed anymore.)
But fifty or a hundred or more years ago middle-class educated people (with far less formal learning than we have today) still had the time to immerse and learn the language of literature, classical music, genres much more complex and intellectual than the art we know today. And increasingly, we are gaining control of our time, which really ought to give us more of it, allowing us to achieve the same thing. If we want to. I think it will happen.
Tags: art, books, poetryAlain de Botton on Flaubert’s hatred of his homeland
By alice on December 7, 2008
As a person with a somewhat mixed relationship with my own birthplace (the only time England felt like home was when my kids were small, probably because anywhere would have been home with them around; I grew up wishing not to be English, checking out every new country I visited for potential resettlement qualities), I was especially pleased with de Botton’s account in this book of Gustave Flaubert’s despisal of his birthplace, Rouen. He fantasised about the Orient, and did visit Egypt after his father’s death made a long trip financially viable.
Flaubert’s first development of the idea that he belonged somewhere other than France came in a letter he wrote as a schoolboy, on his return from a holiday in Corsica: “I’m disgusted to be back in this damn country where one sees the sun in the sky about as often as a diamond on a pig’s arse. I don’t give a shit for Normandy and la belle France… I think I must have been transplanted by the winds to this land of mud; surely I was born elsewhere”.
Although many people emigrate during their lives, it seems to be for reasons of convenience or wellbeing rather than emotional passion- geographical/cultural love or loathing. Bad relationship with your birthplace is considered a bit like a bad relationship with your birth family: a manifestation of inner turmoil, psychologically unbalanced unacceptance of your identity, rather than just a negative opinion. Which is really very silly, as there are plenty of people with little or no connection to their place of birth or childhood, and plenty of places to be born that are frankly not that nice. Did your parents grow up there too, tending generations of oak trees and breeds of cow, building a decades-old family business based on the innate talents of your blood-line? Well, then. Maybe it’s just a place- maybe the other people there don’t love it passionately either.
Most of what Flaubert didn’t like was the manners of the French bourgeoisie, which is understandable for an extremely bright artistically talented kid. If he was American, he would have left the mid-West and gone to NYC or something. But Flaubert never left his home-town permanently; maybe the syphillis he contracted during a somewhat dodgy romantic life was to blame. You can see where Madame Bovary comes from though, knowing all of that.
I think some people have a strong need to be located in a place they love, while others are not so bothered and make their choice based on family, job opportunities, affordability etc. Not sure whether the love of place is mostly about people, culture or geography: probably all and any.
Tags: books, Europe, UKThe Mighty Boosh on creativity
By alice on December 5, 2008
It took me quite a long time to “get” these people and if you’re not British already, you probably have better things to do with the next few months. However, it was worth it in the end; they’re genius poets as well as cult hits, in my view (do all poets have to be Shakespeare? exactly). Today’s working definition of poetry: words with more meaning than you think, which, on many repeat hearings, acquire more depth/ beauty rather than fading to nothing. Prose doesn’t achieve that very often, but these guys do, and that’s why people love them. In fact lots of comedy is poetic rather than polemical/ straight- about enjoying the language, how it sounds and what can be found in it that you weren’t expecting.
Not that I expect all that to resonate from the one clip above- it got picked because of the creativity theme. I like the way the Booshes lose their mojo as a result of being harrassed by the dopplegangers. Of course, they look pretty stupid already by most people’s standards, but as artists the idea is to remain ignorant of how dumb you look because self-consciousness is death to inspiration. And these two are actually performing in their own BBC TV show, so it’s convincing. The argument again: deflating self-criticism is a bad idea for artists, who need a bubble of happy delusion in order to create and succeed. The other side of the coin of the tortured artist stereotype. Any successful genius artists out there dis/agree?
Tags: art, comedy, videoswallpaper music of the day
By alice on November 29, 2008
This is a 1978 disco version of the Dr Who theme, recommended by my son. It gets repetitive around the 2:20 mark, which is what 70’s disco 12 inch records were supposed to do. These days you’d probably mix it yourself with a bunch of other records to come up with something more interesting at that point.
Tags: music, videoswhy families move to the suburbs: the myth of “best”
By alice on November 29, 2008
Ben Casnocha posted about this and I commented there, but had more to say: the issue of whether you are better off moving out of the city once you have kids is as tricky as the issue of whether any family make any particular personal choice, because it isn’t really about the “should”: the “should” is just a disguise for the “I want to, and I don’t want any hassle for it”.
What do I mean? If you’re 25 and moving to a new place, then you don’t have to come up with other excuses than wanting to see more of the world. You will need a new job when you get there, but it’s perfectly OK to look for the job because you want to see New York or Paris or the Outer Hebrides. And I think it’s even (though this happens less often) OK to move because you want to be somewhere bigger, or smaller, with more young people, with more art and architecture, or closer to the seaside. If you can fund it, you can do it, and on the whole others are not going to complain except insofar as they have a personal interest in keeping you where you are/ close to them, which is understandable but that doesn’t give them the right to run your life for you.
But when you have a family, you suddenly become a public concern. Not only does everyone in your extended family and very often your circle of friends start considering your children and future children’s wellbeing to be their concern too; everyone you talk to about your future, including other young families, speaks about the choices as a matter no longer focussed on what you want but instead based around what’s best for the children. Nothing big you do is considered to be about your preferences, needs or dreams anymore: it’s all what’s best for the children. If you have kids, you must hide your dreams behind a real or pretend “story” about improving the lives of the little ones. (This is probably much worse for women than for men, but as men continue to “feminise” their parenting, no doubt it becomes increasingly true for them too- watch for the backlash in the not-too-distant future).
I am being a little rhetorical here. The above isn’t a great tyranny that society imposes on parents. There is a certain amount of inappropriate, disrespectful, boundary-bashing parent-attacking out there, for sure. But the people who would need to stop the charade of best for the children are the parents themselves: instead of doing this, they continue to use the idea as an impermeable excuse to do whatever on earth they want without opening it up to serious discussion or analysis. For instance, “It’s best for children to go to school!” “to be homeschooled!” “to live in the country!” “to live in Chelsea!” “to eat vegetables aged 6 months!” “to be nursed for three years!” ad infinitum. Instead of looking at things reasonably, everyone goes around making sweeping generalised judgements about what is supposedly best for everyone, as if having a family is a simple matter of rightness plus a bit of arithmetic, and everyone who doesn’t see your version of the obvious is a moron. Because it’s easier than thinking about things properly and all of us respecting each other and our different choices.
Once upon a time, there was a principle of parental choice based on the general acceptance of the authority of the parents as the best-placed people to understand deeply what is best for their own family. Then at some point it seemed as if everybody and their neighbour’s cat took upon themselves this new responsibility for knowing what’s best for everybody else’s children. Which is pompous and impossible.
It’s also unnecessary, because children don’t require what is best. They’re not kings and queens who will chop your head off if anything in their life is sacriligeously sub-optimal. In fact, children have a couple of other completely different prime directives: to learn, and to follow the path of their parents. I’ll come back to those in another blog, as the second one especially is massively misunderstood due to the modern what’s best for the children meme. But I do think that bring up the kids as little monarchs is a really bad and dangerous idea for the future of humanity. There are bigger more important things in this world to live by than even little Johnny. “What’s best” for all of us is a massive, deep subject, and one we should talk more about as the wars of ideology continue.
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