Not a post

At the moment, this is me:

I've spent the day doing relatively little (baked some avocado and bacon muffins, watched the Great British bake Off, helped H with her dissertation), but in the last few hours I've done lots of washing up and tidying so become tired and warm, and the warmth is making me more tired, and I'm also hungry and waiting for food to arrive. So I'm definitely not feeling up to writing a blog post, damn it. So much for my proving I'm organised by updating regularly. Because this isn't really an update, this is me saying that the post scheduled for today will arrive on Friday most likely, or the following Monday.

And to think I was toying before with the idea of starting a food blog as well. Ha!

Not 'decisions and dissertations'

I remember thinking to myself about an hour ago, "Hmm, I should definitely name today's blog post Decisions and Dissertations. It will make perfect sense."

But I'm afraid I've forgotten what I was meaning by decisions. What decisions have I had to make recently? Or is there something I have to choose in the near future? I can think of a number of little things, but nothing that might have sparked the need for me to specify decisions in the blog title!

So today was the first day back at uni. It's not really a proper start, merely an introductory meeting regarding third year - changes to submission procedures, quick hello to our personal tutors, that sort of thing. Lectures don't start until next week, and as they will be "Welcome to the course" lectures, tutorials (and the proper workload) won't start until the week after. Probably. So we've got a few weeks to ease into things.

A few days ago I felt like this:

I now feel more like this:

*Sigh*.

Having spent most of the summer feeling fairly relaxed about life and certain that this year is going to go swimmingly (because I'm going to do so much work in advance and get everything out of the way and be on top of everything and... yeah, no.), I'm now no longer feeling like that.

I have just one year left in university, and I remember how scarily quickly last year went by. This year I not only have to pass my exams (with hopefully good grades), but write a dissertation and come up with a plan for once I graduate. The only thing that is certain is that I'll have a house until the end of July. After that, if I can't find the money, I have to move out of London. And that is something I do not want to do. I think.

So... decisions. What decisions do I have to make?

The first one, weird as it might sound, is what order to read books in. Yeah, I know, that shouldn't be top of the list. But in a two metre radius of me, there are 8.5 unread books and a kindle with about 50 unread books on it. Slightly further away is a bookshelf with more unread books on it.

So there are four types of books I could read. There are those relevant to my dissertation, those non-fiction books I read for general interest, fiction I read for fun, and the book I have to read for my mother-daughter book club (members: me and my mother. That's it.). I'm in the middle of reading Fasting Girls (because I took a break and read Henry VIII), but after that I'm unsure what to read. Should I start reading stuff for my dissertation? But if I do that, I might not read the chapters for the Feminist Book Club in time, or Still Alice - the book I'm reading with my mum. Yeah, I know. They're all really cheery subjects. But they're interesting.

I also have a book I took out of the uni library today: Practising Identities: Power and Resistance edited by Sasha Roseneil and Julie Seymour. That I can have for a week, and is both a dissertation and a general interest book.

I have too many books. That's what I'm taking from this. Far gone are the days where I could receive a book, read it, then wait a week or so before getting a new one (re-reading old ones in the meantime). I now have more books I want to read than days in the year.

Anyway, other decisions?

I suppose picking what societies to join this year counts as a decision. I want to join some for two main reasons - firstly to show that I've had interests and done something about them, and second to meet new people. I'm in my third year living in London and I still only really talk to my house-mates and ex-flatmate. The way things in first and second year turned out, I just didn't meet that many people or see the same people enough times to strike up a friendship. It happens. But I'd like to socialise a bit more.

So I have to pick things that don't ask too much of me so that I can keep them up, and that are relevant to my interests. There have been a number that I want to look into, more than I can do. These included Film, Theatre, Backstage, Writers, Sign Language (this one I will do the lessons but not the socialising), Gender and Feminism, Hiking and Walking, and that's without me having been to the society fair yet! It's going to be a tough decision. Some might end up clashing with each other, so obviously there I'll just pick the one I prefer.

I will be sociable this year though. I will.

My final decision is the big one... what do I want to do when I finish university, and how can I prepare for it?

This isn't really a decision to be made - I think I already know. Whilst I toy with the idea of doing a MSc in Medical Anthropology (preferably at either Oxford or Amsterdam), I know I'm not going to go into healthcare or academia. There's nothing career-related about me doing a master's, only interest-related. I know not everything has to be career-related - in fact almost nothing I've ever done has been in pursuit of a job, but it's a lot of money to pay and a year out of my life, and for seemingly no reason? If I'm still interested in the subject there's no reason why I have to stop reading anthropology books / papers.

Maybe I'm just apprehensive about leaving anthropology behind. I have really enjoyed my degree, and it has been instrumental in shaping the way I view the world. But how much am I going to use anthropology afterwards? If the answer is not much, have I wasted several years? I know university isn't just about the academic experience but the social experience, but as already stated that hasn't been wonderful.

I think I'd like to go into TV and film production. I miss being involved in productions, whether that be helping organise them, being back stage, performing in them (music / theatre / dance), anything. I've enjoyed the few occasions I've worked with friends to create little films (don't judge - it was written, filmed and edited in four hours one slightly-bored afternoon on holiday many years ago), discussed creative projects, advised on the editing of some of their videos. But I don't know exactly what I want to do in production. I'm not one of those people who has had an overwhelming desire to be a writer (although I have written things and want to turn some of my ideas into published stories one day), nor a director, nor a film editor etc. I am very aware that there are hundreds of jobs in production, but those are "careers" with ways to show your interest and develop your skill. Interested in being a writer? Write something. Interested in being a director? Direct short films. But just "being involved"? That's a tricky one.

So I'm going to apply to get on the BBC PTP at the end of the year, with the hopeful goal of getting onto their Production Trainee Scheme. It'll be super-competitive though, and I need to prove the following:

You will have a drive to be creative and demonstrable evidence of your passion for using media to tell stories.
Must haves: Evidence of your passion for telling stories
Evidence of your organisational ability
The willingness and ability to work flexibly.

So... using media to tell stories. I have a project in mind that could show that... a small Youtube TV series that H and I have been discussing for ages. I would very much like to get some of the episodes made! How else can I do this? Evidence of passion for telling stories... I think that means I need to write some more. Housemate L suggested I give them a link to some of the fanfiction I've written in previous years, but erm, No. I don't think we'll be doing that. Unless I made a creative writing blog and included both fanfiction and original work? That way I'd be sure to have more content. So long as there's enough original stuff they probably won't judge me too much for the fanfiction? I like what I've written, but I'm not sure how appropriate it would be.

I think the best way for me to show evidence of organisational ability would be to get a job and to keep this blog regularly updated. Yes? Obviously what would be best is if I got a role in one of the societies I join that helps with the organisation, but I doubt they'll change those roles around soon enough for it to make a difference.

So there's many things to think about. Life seems to be speeding up and I have far too much to do.

This is me.

So there we go. Hopefully back to / starting regular posts again. I should have one up on Wednesday and another up on Friday, but we'll see how we go. Until then, adiós mis amigos.

Update: I just realised I spent this entire post talking about decisions, and not about dissertation. The dissertation was mainly linked to the books - I need to get a move on with reading and research!

Stupid speech marks (because I couldn't think of an alliteration for quotation marks)

Well, six days between posts isn't as bad as it could be is it? It's not been a week just yet. Although I'm not sure that this counts as 'regularly' updating.

On the one hand, this is bad, because over the last few days I've done the following:

1) Finished this:

2) Started this:

3) Watched this:

4) Travelled to London, back to Liverpool and then back to London (last two by six-hour coach journeys), with the back to Liverpool being yesterday and the back to London being today.

5) Slept a lot whilst travelling.

And I'm having trouble with thinking what else I've done. Well, that's not entirely true - I have got several errands ran and started learning to drive, but generally I've not done a great deal. I have been extremely tired though, probably due to all of the travelling. Anyway, I've had the unfortunate problem of being completely blocked when thinking about what to post here, even though I have five or six draft posts with topics all ready and waiting for me to complete. I just couldn't think of anything whenever I tried to sit down and write. Not that I did that too many times - I've just been so tired! Which is probably the main problem.

It is a problem which has been solved however, when I came across this article today.

I now know what to talk about! Although this is definitely going to be a short one, it again may not be a very eloquent one.

I don't like that the author put quotation marks around the word asexual. At first, I didn't like that they mentioned it at all - why point out that an asexual did this strange, slightly gross thing? It's made clear later on why they mentioned his orientation when it states that the event was held to raise awareness of "sexual minorities, x-gender, asexual people".

Mate, I have every sympathy with you wanting to raise awareness, but I definitely do not agree with the way you went about it. Some people might have enjoyed eating your flesh, but most of the world just thinks it's very strange, disgusting, and disturbing.

And that's the problem I have. The article, in my opinion, focusses on the fact that the man in question is asexual, and links that to what he did. No, it doesn't say "if you are asexual you do weird things". It says "this man did weird things, he identifies as asexual, he's facing criminal charges" and then goes into detail about the case. Why did they feel the need to mention the asexuality right at the start? They could have just mentioned at the end that the event was hosted for the purpose of raising awareness of sexual minorities. It might even make a bit more sense.

But I think the quotation marks are the most irritating thing about the article. We wouldn't say, person x, who identifies as "straight" or person y, who identifies as "gay", so why are we doing that for asexual? It's a very valid sexuality, albeit one that doesn't receive much public attention. For that reason, I imagine there's already enough misinformation and ignorance about the orientation flowing around as is, such as Steven Moffat's remarks on asexuality (that it is essentially boring) when discussing the BBC's Sherlock.

We put quotation marks around random words like that when we're being derisive, think they're silly, or it's not the term we'd use but it's the one the other person is using. It's not a positive thing to do. So by saying "The 23-year-old self-described "asexual"" you're either implying he's not asexual but is just saying he is, or suggesting asexuality isn't a valid sexuality, or suggesting that it's a weird thing for a person to be.

And no, most people won't pick up on that. But that's the beauty of language and the written word. People won't notice the connotations of putting speech marks around the word, but they'll still feel its influence. They'll still pick up on the tone of the piece. It's why people should think carefully about the connotations behind what they say before they say it.

Also, I was very impressed at how he made sure to follow all laws, and if showing genitalia to consenting people constitutes indecent exposure, then how do people go to the doctor or have sexual relations with other people? I'm not sure if the guests did have any warning about what body parts were being served, but considering they were all up for cannibalism and it was a sexual awareness dinner, I'm pretty sure they could guess.

So that's that. I'm cold and I'm tired and I need to go and make a cup of tea. I'm also probably meant to go the gym, but that might have to happen a bit later.

This just entered my life. I feel the need to share:

Bodies: A Critique (Part II)

So, part two of my post on Bodies by Susie Orbach. Hopefully this will be a little better than last time, as it's earlier in the day, I'm feeling slightly more productive, and I have a cup of coffee with me. Although that's starting to make me feel a little sleepy for some reason, because I react in strange ways to stimulants and depressives. This probably won't be a very long post as I'd like to get back to reading Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa with a slice of cake.

The mention of cake conveniently brings me back to Orbach. From these quotes, can we guess what I might want to say?

"When a British Cabinet member responsible for Children, Schools and Families erroneously compares the scourge of obesity to the danger posed by climate change without being ridiculed, we see the confusion and panic about the body today that create an ignorant and gullible stance, in this case towards the myth of obesity." (p24)
"Literature that looks official and scientific, but has in fact been prepared by the public relations firms employed by the pharmaceutical companies, is placed in doctors' surgeries in the United States to extol the efficacy of this or that drug, as though a disease entity - obesity - existed that needed treating." (p98)
"To read the figures put out by the International Obesity Task Force, one might believe we were in the midst of an obesity epidemic which will swamp our health service and ruin the lives of the next generation. We are told that by 2050 half of the children in the UK will be obese. Without being glib we need to both question - as we shall see - and contextualise this prediction." (p98)

Considering one of Orbach's most popular books is titled Fat is a Feminist Issue, it's probably not all that surprising that she was going to talk about weight a fair bit. I am surprised by these comments though. I don't think there is a "myth" of obesity. I think it is a very real problem. Most people I know are overweight. I am overweight, and trying to change that. It's not the size itself that is the problem, but the health issues that go along side. Since January I have lost about a stone (14 pounds / 6.35 kg), and I can't begin to tell you how much better I feel. More energetic, less lethargic, less strain on my chest when exercising, less out of breath from just going up the stairs... I'm more inclined to do exercise, because it feels easier. Obesity is linked to strokes, heart attacks, diabetes, and a lot of the time makes you feel generally more miserable. That's me extrapolating a bit, but think about how much easier it is to walk up hill without a full backpack than with a full backpack. The extra weight makes you tired and cranky if you have to lug it around everywhere.

Now that's not to say everyone who weighs more is unhealthy. I'm also very aware that there are plenty of people who exercise a lot, and more of their weight is muscle than fat. If you're living healthily then the risks associated with obesity are minimised. But a lot of overweight people aren't living more healthily - a lot are consuming far too much fast foods and sugar etc. I'm rather thankful that I was put off from eating McDonalds at a fairly young age. I remember watching an advert on tv for their chicken nuggets, and at the end some writing appeared on screen with the words "Now made with real chicken". If they were only now using real chicken, what on earth was in them before? I also feel awful after eating junk food. It can be very tasty, and I eat it from time to time, but eating food made with fresh ingredients that you recognise all the names of is so much more satisfying and leaves you feeling better.

Sorry, we're on a food talk. I'm going to stop here before I take it too far. I love food. I love cooking. I'm aware not everyone feels the same as me, so I'll stop before I start to preach.

There probably is an element of media hype exaggerating the obesity problem. It's what the media likes to do, and coupled with society's ideal of thinness of course news about an overweight epidemic is good scare tactics. But I just feel like Orbach is trivialising the problem, or suggesting that it only exists in the minds of people who want to be thin. She uses figures to back herself up:

"In fact on the National Institute of Health's reanalysis of its own figures, one in fifteen children are seriously overweight in the US and some 26,000 will die from obesity-related diseases. Contrast this with the US figures for smoking-related deaths per annum of 600,000." (p101)

Seriously? That's how we're going to argue against an obesity problem? Comparing the figures to smoking? First of all obesity poses different health risks than smoking does. The health risks regarding obesity are to do with additional strain on the body, leading to things going wrong. It also only affects the person who is obese (unless a person is injured whilst trying to assist the overweight person). Smoking on the other hand is harmful because you are putting many poisonous, toxic substances into your lungs where they don't belong. Some of these chemicals cause mutations in your cells. You're not giving your lungs the oxygen the body requires, you're giving them smoke. You are just asking for problems. But aside from that, it's not only the person doing the smoking is at risk. Anyone who breathes in the cigarette smoke is at risk, and look at all these effects of second-hand smoke. Because people often smoke around other people and smoke moves through the air, far more people are going to be affected by one person smoking than they are one person being overweight.

Also, selective figures much? One in fifteen children might be the case, but the Centers for Disease Control and Protection website claims that over one third of US adults are obese. That paints a completely different picture of the problem than one fifteenth.

I did agree with some parts of Orbach's discussion on obesity however. For one, she points out the uselessness of using the BMI to judge how healthy your weight is. All BMI takes into consideration is your weight and height. It doesn't take into account whether that weight is made up of fat or muscle (and remember, muscle weighs more than fat), nor does it take into consideration any other factors such as how much you exercise or what your diet is like.

Another quote:

"The fat body could be challenging our overpowering preoccupation with image. It might signal a dismissal of childhood eating regimens. Or it might be more a statement about consumerism and the impossibility of so-called 'choice'."

Yeah, this is where we see things in different ways again. I don't know that you have to have an underlying psychological reason for having fat. It could be a societal influence - in Fiji "a variety of traditional cultural norms and social mechanisms strongly support robust appetites and body shapes in the ethnic Fijian population. For instance, the importance of food preparation and feasts as facilitators of social exchange and networks supports consumption of relatively calorie-dense foods. Even routine meals are accompanied by somewhat extraordinary efforts by hosts or family to encourage appetites, including a noteworthy
frequency of pro forma and quite genuine entreaties to eat heartily (e.g., “kana, mo urouro,” or, “eat, so you will become fat”) (Becker 1995). In addition, similar to other Pacific Island populations (Gill et al. 2002; Pollock 1995), robust bodies were traditionally considered aesthetically pleasing. In Fiji, this was in part because a large body reflected both the capability for hard work and also indexed care and nurturing from a dense social network (Becker 1994)." [Becker, A. 2004: 538]

Oh Anne E. Becker, how we do so love to reference your article. I find you so very, very useful.

Orbach does go on to briefly mention the link between aspects of society and the increase in obesity such as the prevalence of "long shelf-life foods saturated with fats, soy and corn syrup", and "it is also the case that the rise in obesity statistics coincides with our increasingly sedentary lives and the preponderance of images of the incredibly lean" (p102). Here, I completely agree with her. I don't see why this has to be tacked on to the end in a sort of defensive way (at least, that's how I saw it).

Hmm, I've written a first year essay worth of content on just my first point. I'm really not very good at keeping things short am I? At least I didn't bother waiting to finish this before eating the cake.

My next point is a rather small one. On page 120, in the chapter on sex, Orbach has been discussing the sexual development and insecurities of young girls. She then goes on to say,

"Their acts express the sexual confusions and conundrums of late modernity in which sex is for show. They may also in part be a consequence of the way in which sexual hygiene is featured on a school curriculum: in sex education classes girls learn how to put a condom on a partner rather than how to locate and relish their own sexual pleasures."

I think Orbach might be missing the point of sexual education classes in schools. Learning to put a condom on a partner is not because girls have to learn how to please a man, but so that they know how to prevent STIs and pregnancy. Yes, it is male-bias - there's no reason why girls (and boys) shouldn't learn about female methods of contraception, and I'm sure many do (unless they teach abstinence-only sex education, which is really, truly idiotic). On a slightly related note, I'm not sure why boys and girls are often separated for the sex education talks. When I first had the school talk I was in the last year of primary school (or it might have been second-to last year, because I was in the same class for both years) we weren't split up. We discussed one sex and then another, and the chalk drawing of a uterus was left on the board for about three weeks. I remember someone from a younger year coming into the classroom one day and being told that it was a sketch of a cow's head. It might be to save time, so that girls can learn about the things they'll go through as the boys learn about the things they're going to go through, but I think if everyone was told everything together there'd be less awkwardness between girls and boys over natural things everyone goes through. Like teenage boys knowing very little about menstruation and the girls not liking to mention it around them. It's life, it happens, it shouldn't be seen as something embarrassing or shameful.

Off-topic.

I do also agree with Orbach that girls are not taught or told to locate and relish their own sexual pleasures. It's a male-dominated world, where girls who have multiple sexual partners are "sluts" whilst guys are not. No one wants to be called a slut, so I think girls are less likely to explore what makes them happy. There's also possibly a lack of male exploration beyond the obvious because of the dictates of masculinity, but that's something that we might go further into at another time because I need to move on with my points.

Go and read Oedipus Revisited: Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male Today by Shere Hite in the meantime. That being said, don't expect too much from the book. I gave it 2.5 stars out of 5 and the following review:

I didn't like it enough to give it 3. A lot of this book was an interesting read, and the author poses some good ideas, but there was too much in it that annoyed me for me to rate it any higher. Mainly three things: 1) I felt she generalised far too much about things not necessarily answered by her survey and didn't provide any evidence to back these generalisations up. 2) Too much repetition. This book could have been half the length. Occasionally I'd read a sentence or two and realise I'd read the exact same sentence just a page or two before, or a chapter before. Sometimes she didn't seem to answer the questions she posed, just repeated things she'd already stated. And 3) being just plain scientifically wrong over some things. I didn't pay too much attention to the footnotes, but the one chapter I looked at, she gave two incorrect scientific "facts". One of these was a "correction" to a man who in the survey had actually got the thing right. I can understand getting obscure scientific facts incorrect, but some of the things she got wrong were basic facts that a secondary-school student could tell you.
Overall this was interesting but sloppily written and too long. Maybe good as a first draft.

Look at that - I've complained about generalisations again. And I'm not really selling the book to you. So don't buy it, just get it out of the library. It's only short, and as I said it is an interesting read. It just makes you want to read a better written book on the same subject.

I feel the need to break up this wall of text with one of my favourite comic strips.

http://oglaf.com/fountain-of-doubt/

Page 123 states that "once our bodies were used to make things - to build dams and stone walls, plough fields, paint frescoes, scrub clothes, gather the needs of daily life. Now those who work with their bodies many hours a day are a class apart." Well, yes and no. Yes, we did used to all do a heck of a lot more physical labour. At the same time, we didn't evolve into anatomically modern humans and suddenly be doing all of these things. We didn't plough fields until just over ten thousand years ago for starters, despite being anatomically modern for about 200,000 years. Our bodies then were used much more to hunt and gather, which I suppose you could claim is making things (it's certainly using them a lot more than most of us do today), but Orbach seems to only be focussing on what we used our bodies for maybe a century or two ago. What we did a century or two ago isn't really relevant for what we do today. I mean, yes, we're influenced by it, but just because we used to build dams by hand and now we sensibly use machines to help us out doesn't mean that we're using our bodies the wrong way. We weren't designed with the purpose of building dams. Not that we were designed. You know what I mean.

Page 111. "The body is experienced as menace. [...] we feel that the problem lies in the ineptitude of our individual endeavours. We have failed to create the body as it should be or how we want it to be. We have only a temporary peace, with the next opportunity to take "it" in hand and attempt to keep refashioning it medically, emotionally and physically around the corner. There is no such thing as a body that can simply be."
Again, I would like to quote Shilling (1993: 5 in Klesse, C. 1999: 20), "In the affluent West there is a tendency for the body to be seen as an entity which is in the process of becoming; a project which should be worked at and accomplished as part of an individual’s self-identity". I don't agree that the body is necessarily experienced as menace, and I'd like to see the data Orbach has to back her statements up. I don't think it's a feeling of failure to create the body how it should be, I think it is more a tendency to see the body as an unfinished creation that can always be worked on. Because of the ideal of "thinness", that work might be us trying to make ourselves thinner, in which case we might get annoyed by our biology and experience it as menacing. But I don't think there's a general sense that our body is a menace. I also don't think that it is this "failure" which makes us use medical and physical refashioning - I think that's more related to the way we view the body, as machine-like and malleable.[1]

"There has never been a 'natural' body: a time when bodies were untainted by cultural practices" (p134). Good. Even chimpanzees show evidence of cultural differences of using the body.[2] If that is the case, why were you complaining earlier about 'once our bodies were used to make things' etc, suggesting that you were dissatisfied by the way we use them now? To be fair, Orbach might not have been suggesting she's unhappy - I may be reading too much into her words. But reading into things is what people do, so this is entire post is a response to the way I took it.

I've written down the quote "post-modern myth of self-invention" without adding the page number, and I can't be bothered looking through the whole book to find it. What I will say though, is why on earth does Orbach throw around the word 'myth' so much? Ignoring the traditional stories definition of myth, dictionary.reference.com gives us the following definitions: a) any invented story, idea, or concept. b) an imaginary or fictitious thing or person. and c) an unproved or false collective belief that is used to justify asocial institution. So Orbach is essentially saying that the post-modern idea of self-invention is a load of nonsense. Why? Just because you disagree with an idea doesn't invalidate it. Plus the idea of self-invention is everywhere in Western society. If it weren't, we wouldn't try to express ourselves through our clothes, our houses, our lifestyles, our hobbies etc.

"May well be the last generation to inhabit bodies which are familiar to us" - again I've not noted down the page number. Actually, glancing through the remainder of my notes, this is becoming common. But yes, this is not necessarily the case. As we've already discussed, how we relate to and interact with our bodies is culture/society-specific. There is no reason why we, in future generations, will not inhabit familiar bodies. Unless you mean the bodies of those in the future will seem unfamiliar to us in the present. In that case, yes, they might. But you're also assuming that our bodies today would be familiar to those in previous generations, and that's possibly not true. For example, anorexia nervosa is a modern illness [see Fasting Girls mentioned above for explanation why]. The body of anorexia sufferers would not be familiar to those living a few hundred years ago. The prevalence of tattoos and piercings would also not be familiar, and whilst people have bleached their hair for a good few generations now, what about those who dye their hair bright, unnatural colours? They have unfamiliar bodies to those a few generations ago. So Orbach's sentence here is a bit meaningless, or pointless.

At some point (again, I don't want to search through the whole book, but I'm pretty sure it's near the end) Orbach claims that perfecting the body is a recent thing. This just isn't true. Is Orbach conveniently forgetting corseting, foot-binding, head-binding, Spartian training, eugenics to name just a few?

At another point she references the Anne E Becker reading I mentioned above. Again, A. E. Becker, you are infinitely useful. It really is a fantastic paper.

On page 138 I had another "seriously?" moment, as Orbach says that women "can't help but participate in a kind of self-mutilation and violence" as we "engage with the highly restricted visual language available to us". Two issues with this: 1) generalising, see my previous post, and 2) you get the impression that she doesn't believe men participate in self-mutilation and violence. We focus on women being influenced by cultural images, but men are also affected. Think of how many men in the media have well-defined muscles, how they wear particular styles of clothes, how they interact with each other. The way men are portrayed in media affects the way men behave in reality, we just don't notice it quite so much as we notice women being affected. I know more men who visit the gym regularly and wish to change their physical appearance than I know women who are engaged in shaping theirs. Sweeping statements are just not my thing.

I'm going to disregard my next two notes on the book, as I can't figure out what problem I had with the statements, so I'll move on to my final point. Page 145 - "Our bodies should not be turned into sites of labour and commercially driven production" and "We need bodies sufficiently stable". Why should our bodies not be turned into sites of labour? Why is the way we create our identities inherently wrong? And what on earth do you mean by a sufficiently stable body and why do we need one? You can't just throw around statements like that without explaining yourself. I'm not saying that our attitudes towards our bodies are good ones, or that I agree with the way we use the body as a work site. We might all be much happier if we didn't care at all about the way we looked, how much we weighed or whether we'd be able to run a marathon or lift a piano. But our bodies are such a big part of ourselves that I think we are unlikely to change in our wanting to use them and change them any time soon. Especially since 'attractiveness' has always been an important part of mating behaviour cross-species. It's just what constitutes attractiveness that changes cross-culturally.

To conclude, my general feelings about this book can be summed up pretty much by this:

[1] See Good, Byron J. and Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good. 'Learning Medicine: The Constructing of Medical Knowledge at Harvard.' Medical School in Knowledge, Practice, Power: The Anthropology of Medicine and Everyday Life. Eds. Shirley Lindenbaum and Margaret Lock. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. and Sweetman, P. (1999) 'Anchoring the (Postmodern) Self? Body Modification, Fashion and Identity', in Body and Society, Vol 5 (2 - 3): 51 - 76.

[2] Boesch, C. and Tomasello, M. 1998. "Chimpanzee and human culture". Current anthropology. Vol. 39(5). pp. 591-604

Bodies: A Critique (Part I)

I'm learning many lessons whilst writing this blog, even though I'm still in the very early stages of its (hopefully long) life. One of these lessons is that I need to write up posts as I think of them, or very soon after, especially when they're about books! I'm finally getting around to writing about the book I mentioned a few posts ago, but because it's been nearly two weeks since I read it, the thought of trying to remember everything I wanted to talk about feels a little like this:

However if there's one thing watching Wartime Farm earlier today inspired in me, it's that we're not going to give up. We're going to grab the trusty page of notes we made on the subject, make sure I have the book next to me at all times, and do this thing!

Hells yeah!

So... the book.

Bodies by Susie Orbach

Rather than talk about the book in the order that it mentions things, I'm going to raise points in the order that I wrote them down in my notes. After the first few points it pretty much runs in book-order anyway, so it won't be that untidy. I hope.

Also I started typing this post on Tuesday. It is now Friday night. I'm tired. Why do I leave things so late?

Anyway, to start with, I really did enjoy reading the book. I'm just going to throw that out there from the start, because I'm very aware looking back over my list of comments that I might not specifically say anything positive about it. I thought it was really interesting and worth a read, so if you need something to add to your book list, I recommend you give this a go.

That said, there were some problems. For one thing, Orbach does like her generalisations, doesn't she? Take this for instance:

"[Re: Plastic surgery] Whereas I continue to think of surgery as something best avoided unless a medical condition absolutely requires it, younger generations have a very different view. Softened up by TV programmes, they save up for it. They get excited by it. And, as Baker-Pitts shows in her studies, they see it as a right. Sandra, a thirty-three-year-old mother of two from Brooklyn, New York, illustrates this point..." (Orbach, S. 2010: 86)

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I really don't like when people generalise at all. First of all, where is your evidence that "younger generations" have a different view? Secondly, how on earth can you possibly think all members of the younger generation think the same? I am a member of the "younger generations", and whilst I'm not claiming to speak for us all (as that would also be generalising) I have never got excited by the thought of plastic surgery. In fact, it is something I would never do for cosmetic purposes (unless I became completely covered in second or third degree burns or something) and I don't know anyone my age who is at all interested in it. I only know one girl who has had it done, and that was only after she had won a beauty competition and became more in the public eye. Well, I say know. She was in my year at school.

In looking up what degree burns was the worst I came across a picture of fourth degree burns. I am going to be extra careful around flammable substances from now on and I need something to make me feel better.

That works.

Ok, so if you're going to claim everyone thinks a certain way, first of all you're delusional, and second of all, give me some proof. I agree with your softened by TV programmes comment but that's because I've read around the subject and so I'm extrapolating from your words something that other people might not. You can't just say "oh, people watch television and suddenly want plastic surgery". It doesn't work like that. I realise that it's a matter of trying to make the whole section concise, but I still don't like it. I have yet to read the Baker-Pitts study. Give me a few minutes.

Ok, it's a book. I'm not going to get that read before I continue with this. I'm still going to disagree - some people that Baker-Pitts studies may see plastic surgery as a right, but not all of the "younger generation" does, and the ones that do probably are influenced by other social factors. Finally, "this one person illustrates a point and therefore represents millions of people" DOESN'T WORK.

Wow. I'm getting far too wound up about this. I'm sure she wasn't meaning to imply that her statements apply to everyone. But generalisations are bad. I can't work out whether I'm generalising when I say that. Hmm.

Now I need to find the other main generalisation that irritated me. All I've written down is "young girls". I hope it's soon after the cosmetic surgery quote or this is going to take me forever.

Found it. It's in the chapter on sex. Of course it is. This next quote is a long one.

"Of course girls don't only seek this recognition from boys. They seek it from girls. As a gaggle of girls make their Saturday night preparations in front of the mirror they advise each other on outfits, hair, make-up, shoes, bags, jewellery, perfume: the external accoutrements of femininity. They are making personal the exigencies of visual culture. With energy and excitement they enlist one another to overcome the insecurities that have been imprinted on their body sense, whether these have come primarily from their mothers, [...], or through cultural image saturation. They savour creating a fashionable look while being idiosyncratic and personal. Theirs is an often joyful engagement, not one that they would describe as oppressive. They are trying to make a body that feels attractive and they relish the process. No wonder. They aren't isolated in their own bedrooms dealing with their private dismays. They have one another to help them emphasise their good points and provide hints to minimise what they don't like. It's a new world for girls in which beauty, as we have seen, and sexuality become important early on." (Orbach, S. 2010: 113).

What about the many, many girls who don't do all of this? Who don't focus on learning how to do their make up, who don't spend their time working out how to look sexy from an early age? I can very well picture the sorts of girls who are being described in the above passage, but I know plenty for whom the image doesn't fit. Most of my female friends you were more likely to find in any old clothes just as likely hanging out with the guys as the girls. I'm not saying that these girls didn't feel any pressure to look attractive or sexy from society. There's always going to be that pressure, especially when "who's dating who" starts to seem so important. But not all young girls spend their time with other girls learning how to look sexy. Which is why I'm nearly twenty-one and I still have no idea how to apply make-up or do my hair in anything other than a pony-tail.

Ok, so again with that particular passage Orbach might not have intentionally been meaning all young girls. But in general, that's the way her comments throughout the book read. She talks about "girls do this", "older people do that", and it all builds up.

Most people probably wouldn't notice. I was talking to my mother for a while after reading it, and I decided that I think it annoys me because we look at all the issues (Orbach and I) from two different perspectives. She looks at it from a psychoanalytical perspective, and I from an anthropological. I'm very wary of sweeping statements and I also think a person's experience depends on the social and environmental situation a person is living in. Orbach sort of agrees, but in a different way. A lot of people's problems, according to Orbach, can be related to how their primary care giver treated them as a child (ok, here I'm definitely generalising, but you get the gist), whereas I like to think about their home life, their wider social circumstance, their home, their belongings, their environment, their society's history, their everything. How someone chooses to externalise a problem and experience an illness depends on the society they live in.

I need to become better at explaining things. I'm feeling tongue-tied, literally, which is very strange because I'm thinking these words and not trying to say them out loud. Look at that, I'm experiencing mental discomfort through a physical sensation influenced by a turn of phrase used in my culture. Life is interesting.

Urgh.

I really have a lot of respect for you if you're still reading this. One day I will write enough that I will improve and my words will be more concise and eloquent.

Oh dear god, this might have to be a part one and part two thing. I've got so many more things on this list. Hopefully they won't take too long - this post is long enough as is.

Right. Page 88, good sentence, I agree. What is on page 88?

"Now there is an almost worldwide dissemination of common imagery. [...] We search out the brands and the signs that we know, and as we engage with these images we are not only reassured by the familiar but we make them our own, using them as a means to belong and to show our belonging."

Yes. Good sentence. I agree. There's a few fantastic books written by one of the anthropology lecturers in our department, Daniel Miller. He's been jokingly called the department's resident celebrity because some of his books have become slightly more mainstream, as unlike most anthropology texts, they are fairly easy to read.  He's just been given a grant that allows him to take a five-year sabbatical apparently. Nice life for some. [Not just apparently: "Daniel Miller is on research leave until September 2017, following an ERC award for research on the impact of social media in seven countries"]

The books in question are called The Comfort of Things and Stuff, and they both talk about our engaging with images and items and how what we interact with says things about us. I recommend you have a look at The Comfort of Things especially - it's a fascinating book. He also wrote a really interesting anthropological study of Facebook. In short, check him out.

"Plastic surgery has become a consumer item - a treat, like a holiday." p 86. I agree that plastic surgery has become a consumer item, but I disagree that it is viewed in the same way as a treat or a holiday. As I quote in an essay I wrote the year before last, “In the affluent West there is a tendency for the body to be seen as an entity which is in the process of becoming; a project which should be worked at and accomplished as part of an individual’s self-identity” (Shilling, 1993: 5 in Klesse, C. 1999: 20). Surgery is used as a means of engaging with the body. It is also a consumer item because we live in a society that is immersed in a "consumer culture". It might be easiest for me to just include the link here to part of my essay. It's only part because my computer broke and I ended up finishing it on someone else's laptop and saved it to the hard drive, not the internet. And I'm still in Liverpool and the paper copy of the essay is still in London, so I can't complete it just yet. If I remember next week I might update it to the complete essay.

My next note makes me think I was wrong about the generalisations. "Sex and young girls .... again only looks at one aspect of society - plenty of girls aren't like this, but spend time on games, reading etc." In fact, I think that makes me very wrong about the "young girls" section of the generalisations. So read above for my thoughts on this bit?

I wonder what the "young girls" generalisation point was then?

Hmm.

I can't find anything to jog my memory. Maybe that was related to generalisations. Argh, my brain hurts. I also still have thirteen notes left for this post. This is definitely going to be a two-parter.

In fact, here might be a good place to end part one, as it's nearly midnight and I have been working on this since shortly after nine. I must have got distracted by something at some point because there's no way this could take me that long and yet I can write a bioanth essay in under two hours. I'm also losing track of what I'm saying.

Part II up tomorrow. Probably.

Until then, I'm going to leave you with this. Which is completely unrelated to anything I've said today, but oh well.

http://xkcd.com/1104/

Darn it. It's now Saturday.

I can't think of an appropriate title

I found the "vaguely-remembered quote from a source that I annoyingly can't remember" from yesterday, completely by accident in fact!

http://www.eddplant.com/post/30162951938/when-youre-a-girl-growing-up

Tumblr is very much a mixture of profound, interesting and silly. I like it. It meant that directly above a post changing the lyrics to "Be a Man" (Mulan) to include Doctor Who references, I saw this post:

http://becauseiamawoman.tumblr.com/post/31338500467/except-you-cant-show-a-topless-woman-on-tv-and

I had no idea about that at all. Neither did my mum. I'm half tempted to start researching what other medical symptoms that people think are general are male-biased. Except that if I do that now, I won't get the other stuff done that I've planned to do today (possibly do some coursera work on gamification, read more Anna Karenina so I possibly finish it by the weekend, carry on with Fasting Girls, actually write something, the list is endless...). So I'll add it to the ever-increasing "look into" list.

On friends and feminism

This blog post is brought to you by actually caring passionately about a subject, caffeine, and hyperactivity, which means that whilst it's one step up from being ill it's probably not going to be the most precisely worded blog post in the history of posts. Or maybe I just can't write for toffee. Either is equally plausible.

It was originally going to be a critique of Bodies by Susie Orbach, the book I mentioned last time. I finished it on the way home from something, which I don't remember. I just remember reading it in the car waiting for my mum to get back from Tesco's. Actually, that's a lie. I remember. It was a family day out, accompanied by parent's friends and sister's friend from uni. Off to a woodland for a walk, followed by breakfast in the cafe. Or lunch as I called it, since we'd already eaten breakfast and it was midday.

Tumblr is the most amazing place to get gifs to decorate blog posts with.

Off-topic.

Anyway, I both enjoyed the book and found it immensely irritating, and I wrote many notes down so that I could write a comprehensive blog post on the topic. I still will - that will be the next post most likely, and it probably won't be as comprehensive as I would like, more likely a deluge of random words followed by me complaining about my own illegibility.

What I want to talk about today is feminism. This may be a long one, so if you want to go and make a drink before coming back to this, I'll wait.

So, feminism.

The reason this post is coming before the book one is that I've been talking a lot about feminism to various people recently in the last few weeks, and I've come across a number of discussions in the media about it. It is one of the few topics that I stop feeling slightly apathetic about, which is probably due to something I'll expand on later.

The discussions about feminism and women in society started with a discussion several weeks ago with H regarding her dislike of Steven Moffat (of Doctor Who and Sherlock writing fame). Her main problem with Moffat had nothing to do with feminism and all to do with the plot of Doctor Who and how (apparently) obvious the build up to the finales are since he has taken over. She then moved on to discuss how Amy is probably her least favourite of all the companions, because aside from her memory problems (again, related to plot formation), she doesn't seem as able in her own right as the others do. All she does is follow the Doctor, and doesn't think much independently. Or something along those lines. We also discussed the pro-s and con-s of writing Irene Adler the way she was written in Sherlock when compared to the tiny amount she is in the book, but I'm not going in to that now. Now before anyone starts complaining about the above re: Amy, let me tell you now that I'm only on series three, so I have no idea if any of this is the case. If you want to know more about Moffat and sexism, I suggest you read this post and this post, both from the incredible blog Martin Freeman is Not a Hedgehog which is a fascinating read and you should all go there immediately (or after you've finished reading this).

A couple of years ago, I hated the word. In fact I didn't start to call myself a feminist until a few months ago, I'm ashamed to say. The reason? Well I suppose I was sort of scared off by the word. I'd heard of feminists who spend their time hating men, arguing that you're a bad woman if you wear make-up and high heels etc, and I didn't want to be a part of that. I like high heels. I've never worn them to make me attractive to the opposite sex, I've worn them because I think some of them are really pretty, and I like pretty things. I don't wear make-up because I'm lazy and don't like having to wash it off before sleeping, but I don't think anything against people who do. I sometimes think more guys should wear eye-liner. I also watched a tv show on the feminist movement, and a number of women talked about becoming lesbians not because they were attracted to other women, but to show that they didn't need men. I thought it was insane. I didn't agree with half of the things they were saying. It wasn't equality, it was pure anti-men-ism. At the same time, I didn't like saying I wasn't a feminist, because I'm aware that these are stereotypical views of feminists and not the reality, and I also firmly agree with equality for everyone. Except sometimes I don't want the vast majority of people to be able to vote, but that's more to do with how annoyed I get when reading the comments sections of news articles than actual not wanting voting equality.

So what happened a couple of months ago to change my mind?

I had one awful, awful night that left me a little like this:

No, I wasn't attacked, I wasn't abused, I wasn't shouted at, no one did anything to me personally. What I did do was spend the evening browsing the internet (as I spend most of my days), and I had the misfortune of coming across four of the most vile anti-women things I've ever come across online all in one night. Now this was several months ago, and I didn't save the posts, so I can't completely remember what they were. I remember one was a horrible sexist youtube comment, and another was a post pointing out all the flaws with women and why they're unfit to do anything other than serve men, make sandwiches and spread their legs. A woman had copied the post, written notes all over disputing everything they said, and the original poster had written comments onto the commented-on copy re-stating everything they originally said and pouring out some vile abuse. I also came across an anti-women thread on 4chan, which again showed me that I should steer clear of /b/, as if I didn't know that already.

As I said, I can't remember what it was I actually saw, but it was hurtful, and horrifying, and traumatic, and it made me want to cry. It wasn't necessarily the one-off posts - I know there are plenty of idiotic people out there. It was more to do with all the comments I saw agreeing with these threads. And then seeing minor comments, like "go make me a sandwich", after seeing those? It was very much a "I don't want to live in the world anymore" moment. I think I rang my mum up to ask how can we change a world that is so cruel and unfair, a very similar conversation to the time I found myself in tears after reading this article on homophobia and teen suicides. The worst thing anthropology has ever done for me is to make me interested in the world. Ignorance is most certainly bliss.

So screw it. I'm a feminist.

Why this has come up so much recently, I'm not sure, but I want to talk about a few conversations I've had with some of my friends recently.

Well, the first one is not so recent. When I first started university I became friends with a girl we shall call E. It was a friendship more of convenience than anything, because we lived close by and were on the same course. Once I made other friends and realised how little effort she put into ours, we sort of stopped talking. But that's besides the point. One day we were walking from one lecture to another (or to lunch, I remember we were walking and where, but possibly not the reason) and the topic turned to D/s relationships. Don't ask me how, I really have no idea. She started arguing that it is ok for a woman to be a dominant and/or a sadist in a relationship and for a man to be submissive and/or a masochist (and/or because D/s and S/M do not have to go hand in hand), but it's not ok for the relationship to work the other way around "because men dominate women physically anyway".

I took great issue with this. Yes, men have a natural tendency to be physically more powerful than women due to differences in our biology, but D/s relationships aren't about who is naturally more powerful. Each relationship is individual and is about the people involved in it and their likes, dislikes, sexual preferences, mental preferences and personality. I think it's utterly wrong to say that a couple should act a certain way because "insert gender" is always "insert statement" anyway.

As Natalie Dzerins wrote in The F Word:

"Some people like being "degraded" (OBVIOUSLY there are limitations to this which I will return to), and no more can you "pray the gay away" than can you "feminism the sub away" (I tried to make it rhyme, but nothing rhymes with "feminism"). These desires don't mean that said woman has been "coerced" or "brainwashed by the patriarchy", and to try to dismiss them in this way is removing women's sexual agency. This is A Bad Thing."

This past week I've been on holiday in Lanzarote with friends that I used to go to school with (got back in the wee hours of this morning in fact, and apparently turned Scottish during that time - since when do I say wee?). There were four boys and two girls (myself included), down from the eight boys and three girls who went on holiday last year. Whilst people have joined and left the group over the however many years we've all been friends, there has always been many, many more males than females in the group. But you know what? I've never felt there to be a male-bias in discussions that relate to gender before. Once when we were about fourteen one of the females in the group said she didn't think women were capable of leading a country, and rightly the boys stuck up for us girls. Thankfully that girl has since changed her mind and was very receptive to my pro-feminist talk when we met up for lunch the week before last, even encouraging me to tell her more next time I see her.

A comment this week though nearly had me tearing my hair out.

J, one of my closest friends, brought up over dinner a few nights ago that he'd heard of a pill in development that men could take that would act as a contraceptive. Well, not in development - he said there'd been tests done on mice and that they're wanting to develop one, and he posited the question that if one existed, how would the other guys around the table feel about taking one? (Ooh look, I found the article.) One of the guys said he probably wouldn't want to take one and pointed out all the possible side-effects for female pills and hormone-related mood swings etc, and said that didn't appeal to him. That was fine - we talked about how many women don't want to take the pill because of the same reasons, and he was fine with that. Then C (who is actually another J but I know far too many Js so we're going to expand into the rest of the alphabet) said that he wouldn't take one because he's fine using a condom but after that it's the woman's responsibility not to get pregnant.

The woman's responsibility.

B (the other girl) and myself instantly had this reaction:

It takes two to tango.

I was reminded of a conversation I had with J about six months ago when watching Dirty Dancing and he said it was the girl's fault she got pregnant because she should have known what time of the month she was fertile. I got mad. However I'm also aware that he was partly saying all of this to wind me up, one of his seemingly favourite activities, because a) he told me he was trying to wind me up, and b) he's pro- male contraceptive pill.

So yes. C was saying that as it is the woman who gets pregnant, at the end of the day it is down to her to make sure it doesn't  happen. He tried to throw a positive spin on this, possibly along the lines of it wouldn't be right for a man to stop a woman becoming pregnant if she wanted to have a child (which is another thing I take issue with, because a child doesn't just have a mother, it has two parents and both are equally as important. Although I'm taking issue with that sentence as well - it sounds overly heteronormative, and I don't mean it in that way. I mean it in a "a man is allowed to not want a sexual encounter to turn into a child" sort of way.) He might not have said that last thing - my memory is a little hazy due to it being several days ago and alcohol having been consumed. But I do know that when I was talking to J afterwards, we both thought it gave the impression that C might one day turn to a girl who accidentally got pregnant and say "it's nothing to do with me, you should have been more careful". B and I were asking why on earth should it be down to the woman to mess with her body, and argh! A long debate about male and female sexual rights followed. There was also a discussion on rape and how he'd have to believe a guy was innocent if there's one person's word against another and no physical evidence that she was tied up or hit or etc that I'm not going to go into now because it'll wind me up and the what is / what isn't rape and how can we prove it debate is much too big to fit in here.

I think one of the most annoying things was that the day previously I had been talking to C and another friend (who damnit, should be called C, but now I've used that letter. So until he is mentioned again, will remain "another friend") about sex / gender equality and the difference between feminism and anti-men-ism. C said he believed in equality, but didn't like it when things were taken too far. We talked about glass ceilings in some businesses, and he told me that I shouldn't have a go at the individual businesses (which I wasn't) because it's just how society is.

Yes. Unconscious sexism. I was so glad he agreed. Until he started saying that you can't change society and it's based in evolution.

He may be a historian, but NEVER say that to an anthropologist. Change society?

If societies never changed, we wouldn't live the way we do! Look at how women's rights have changed over the years in Afghanistan. Look at the fact that we now don't kill people for sport. That in the West we believe in education for all. That America has a black president. That WE DON'T LIVE THE SAME WAY WE DID FIVE YEARS AGO, let alone never change!

And I'm sorry, but you study history. History is fascinating, but it's usually written by the winners. And it's based on surviving sources. I'm not claiming to know more about historical events than C does, but you can't use historical evidence as the be all and end all for things. I have heard people using "universal historical morals" as an argument against gay marriage, then give Ancient Greece as an example of "universal historical morals" - usually meaning attitudes towards freedom and education etc, completely ignoring the fact that many Greek writers wrote about homosexuality and pederasty {wiki definition: socially acknowledged erotic relationship between an adult male and a younger male usually in his teens} was fairly common (and developed from a highly homosocial culture) [1] [2].

I am both going off topic and starting to ramble. I apologise. I am now rather less hyper and just generally tired.

I'm not even going to get started on the evolution argument. I could discuss it - one of my modules last year was Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology, which was fascinating and looked at human behaviour (such as marriage practices) from an evolutionary point of view. I might end up with a blog post on it one day. I might not.

The point is, don't throw around words about evolution and society and culture if you've never studied it and you're talking to an anthropologist who has studied both. J tried to tell me yesterday that I'm not allowed to try to make anthropology relevant to every conversation (apparently it's less relevant to conversation about what people do than theoretical astrophysics... don't ask me how). If we're talking about what people do and why they do it, then yes, anthropology is very relevant. He can shush.

Anyway I'm going to wrap up the rest of what I was going to talk about quickly now, because this is long and I need to do other things. I wanted to mention J saying that in his ideal world the eldest son would inherit (they do now, but H told me hopefully the law will change soon and she can get her father's title rather than it going to her brother), and C saying that if he were Emperor and could pick his own heir, if his son weren't up to the task he would groom the most suitable boy for the role, rather than giving it to his daughter if she were capable.

People have been making me very angry about equality recently. That's basically the point to this entire blog post. And the fact that I've spoken to many people, including women, who say that there is no inequality nowadays is insane. And scary.

Three things I wanted to work into this article somehow but have not worked out how to do so:

1) This article and this article talking about the sort of abuse a lot of female bloggers receive. I mentioned this to C as well, and all he could say is that people write abuse on men's blogs. I agreed that people can be horrible on both, but there's definitely a different type of abuse. In the words of the second article: "While I won't deny that almost all bloggers attract some extremely inflammatory comments -- and LGBT or non-white ones have their own special fan clubs, too -- there is something distinct, identifiable and near-universal about the misogynist hate directed at women online. " If you take nothing else from this entire post, read that second article.

2) I arrived back in Liverpool last night at 1.20. For various reasons, none of my friends could house me for the night, and I live a fair distance from the airport so getting a taxi was going to be expensive. Mum and dad had already told me they couldn't pick me up because they had to go to work today, and I was fine with that. I was also fine with the idea of either sleeping in the airport until normal transport was available or getting a taxi back despite the expense. Mum didn't want me to get a taxi by myself that late at night, so dad picked me up, which he said he was happy doing. When discussing it with mum over lunch (because O took serious issue with me causing the parents to be awake so late), I pointed out that I have got a taxi by myself at night before, that a lot of people do, that C got a taxi back to his house by himself and that not all taxi drivers are like this:

If they were, it wouldn't really matter what time of day I got a taxi, but that's besides the point. She said that it was fine for C to get a taxi back by himself, because he's male.

Sigh.

I know she's only worried about my safety, and that in some ways she has a point, but in others... well this vaguely-remembered quote from a source that I annoyingly can't remember (I'm going to start noting down everything that ever interests me just in case I ever need it here) came to mind: we tell girls to be careful when they go out and beware of men, we don't tell boys to be aware that a girl on her own might feel vulnerable and so don't do anything that might make her uncomfortable. SOMETHING ALONG THOSE LINES.

Finally, I am going to take part in the women's forum this year at uni. I wanted to last year, but I was far too shy and isolated myself too much so never went. I also saw mention of a gender and feminism society, which I'd really like to join, but when I went on the union website it wasn't listed under the list of societies, so I'm not sure if it exists. If it does, I'll join it.

So that's it for now. In all likelihood I'll revisit this topic several times. Maybe part of the problem with people's dislike of "feminism" is that it's about equality (in my opinion) but the name is pro-women, which I think a lot of people take to mean anti-men. Maybe we should all just be equalists and be pro-equalism? I have no idea.

I'll leave you for today with this picture of Bill Bailey.

[1] I have to point out that all my information here is from the internet. I don't actually know to what extent homosexual relations were widespread in Ancient Greece since I didn't live there, but I do know that Plato definitely wrote about them in Symposium, one of the few ancient texts I have ever read for fun. I was thirteen. Younger me did read the most random things.

[2] I'm also aware that the short section on the phrase "universal historical morals" doesn't really have anything to do with the previous point on using historical evidence as a be all and end all, but c'est la vie.