In which I get all serious about sexual violence and sexual threats
Posted by: alisonmay on: February 24, 2012
A slightly disturbing incident got me thinking this morning. I answered the phone to one of those computer maintenance scammers. I work mainly from home so this is a fairly common event. For those of you lucky enough not to be familiar with this scam, there’s a discussion of the details here on the Money Saving Expert Forum.
Now I take a fairly dim view of this sort of call. Most of the time I just hang-up, but sometimes, when I’m bored, I play along for a while just to see how it works. Today was one of those days. I went along with the caller until we got to the point when he wanted me to bring up a Windows command prompt and type in his instructions. I politely declined, at which point he asked if I was a bitch-whore. I said no, and he replied that he was going to rape and sexually abuse me. At that point I laid the phone handset down on the other side of the desk and let the caller rant to himself until he ran out of steam and hung up about two minutes later.
Not a happy phone call, obviously. Not desperately scary though. The call seemed to originate overseas, so the threat, in this case, was very obviously just words, but it’s the choice of words that I want to get out in public and have a jolly good look at. Here we had a man who was slightly irritated by a woman, and chose a really specific set of language to threaten her with. The language was explicit, violent and sexual, but, sadly, it wasn’t unusual.
Female writers and bloggers talk about receiving sexual threats and abuse here. Social networking sites host pages of misogynist “humour” – you don’t believe me? Hop over to facebook and try searching for “rapist” to see just a few of the pages of rape jokes available. If you feel like doing that would rot your soul, you can read the BBC’s take on the story from last year here. The particular page discussed in that article has been taken down, but there are plenty more still live. Similiarly take a look at the youtube comments under any video featuring a female performer. Comments on the woman’s fuckability and the willingness of commenters to force themselves on her are not uncommon.
So sexually violent language is out there on the internet, and, it turns out, potentially coming down the phone lines into your home. It’s also in print. Some of the language in the mainstream lads’ mags is so extreme that readers can’t differentiate between the views of women expressed in those popular magazines and those espressed by convicted rapists. Websites targeting young men use the same language and express similar views. The recent closure of the UniLad website was noted more for the fact that the site apologised for an article lightheartedly advocating rape, than for the fact that they published the article to start with. Even after the website owners apologised, some of their readers took the view that the only problem with the article was that women couldn’t take a joke.
And rape jokes are increasingly mainstream. Comedians including Jimmy Carr, Russell Brand, Brendan Burns and Sarah Millican have all included rape-jokes in their live shows. Now I don’t want to get into an offensiveness of comedy debate here. In principle I don’t think any subjects are off-limits for any art form, but with comedy there’s an issue about whether we’re being asked to laugh at something or someone or to laugh alongside them in a way that normalizes and condones the activity being discussed. So in Jimmy Carr’s joke “What do nine out of 10 people enjoy? / Gang rape” it doesn’t feel like the joke is at the rapists’ expense. It feels to me like we’re being invited to laugh with them, not at them. Plenty of people would say that doesn’t matter. They would agree with those UniLad readers and say that a joke it just a joke, and that to suggest any wider significance is uptight in the extreme.
So are they right? Does the use of sexually violent language in jokes or at an anonymous distance from the recipient necessarily matter? Does it translate into realworld threats? End Violence Against Women have looked in depth at realworld experiences of sexual threats and violence. They found that nearly 1/3 of 16-18 year old girls had experienced “unwanted sexual touching” at school, and around the same proportion of teenage girls have experienced sexual violence from a partner.
Sexual threat and sexual violence are real. They’re not unusual, and our criminal justice system’s record in addressing sexual violence is pitiful. Around 6% of reported rapes lead to a successful conviction. I’d suggest our attitude, as a society, to sexual violence is at the centre of that low conviction rate. If we believe that a woman who flirts can’t really have been raped, if we believe that a woman who’s been drinking can’t really have been raped, if we believe that a wife can’t really be raped by her husband, then those women are less likely to contact the police; they’re less likely to follow the process through to trial; and a jury is less likely to believe them, because juries are us. They live in the society that we create. So if we believe that sexual violence is not such a big deal, that’s what the jury will believe.
Joking about sexual violence, saying we’ve been “fraped” if a mate logs into our facebook, using words like whore and bitch to describe women helps create that society. It makes sexual aggression feel normal, feel ok, feel like an irritation we’re expected to make light of and soldier past. And it’s not. It’s not ok, and the more of us, women and men, who are prepared to say so, loudly and repeatedly and without fear of being told that we’re uptight and just not getting the joke, the better.
In which I get all abstemious
Posted by: alisonmay on: February 21, 2012
So today is Shrove Tuesday, on which people across the nation will gorge themselves on pancakes, and then promptly give up pancakes, not just for Lent but for the whole damn year, or at least until they have cause to eat breakfast in America, at which point they will mutter, “These aren’t proper pancakes… hmmph…” and prod the bacon suspiciously with their knife on the grounds that the bacon is not proper either, and has no place on the same plate as a pancake. And thus, a great religous cultural tradition continues.
But it’s the part of the tradition after the pancakes have been flipped, and the Jif lemon chucked back onto the funny little shelf on the back of the fridge door where nothing else really fits, that I’m concerned with today. It’s the tradition of giving something up for Lent that’s preoccupying my pretty little head.
I had a phase of giving things up for Lent during my teenage years. Chocolate was the favourite form of self-denial. And this year I’m going to try it again. From Ash Wednesday to Easter with no chocolate. No chocolate bars. No chocolate cake. No chocolate biscuits. No hot chocolate. Strangely, the more detail I write down about this plan, the worse the idea seems. However, it’s still better than my first idea which was to give up alcohol. That’s a plan I was fine with until I realised that alcohol includes wine. Even rosé, apparently.
The religious notion of Lenten self-denial comes from the biblical story of Christ being tempted by Satan in the wilderness. I will follow Son of Man’s example by being tempted by Maltesers in Sainsburys. It’s really very similar. Actually this form of self-denial has no particular religious resonance. I’m doing it because my well-intentioned weight loss has plateaued somewhat and cutting down on the sweets and puddings might reboot the diet plan.
So why pick Lent? Why not give up chocolate on the third Wednesday in January, or on a random Thursday during June? Well, just because “giving something up for Lent” is a notion that exists in my English-Christian educated brain. It delivers a feeling of cultural rightness that giving something up on another self-selected date just doesn’t provide. Somehow by picking Lent you get a gentle cultural shove that tops-up your motivation with two thousand years of learnt behaviour.
And it has the added benefit of potentially irritating a wide-range of evangelicals. On the Dawkinsesque evangelical-atheist end of the curve you can be irritated by my choosing to observe an ancient church tradition, which I’ve already acknowledged has very little to do with my personal reasons for this particular act of abstention. On the evangelical-Christian end you can be irritated at a religious observance being taken over by the wider popular culture and reinterpreted for reasons of weight loss and, indeed, vanity. And here on the broad and friendly centre-ground you can just nod quietly and go, “Oh,” and then cheerfully get on with the rest of your day. That is all.
As always, please subscribe if you like what you read. I’d really love to build the number of regular readers of my somewhat scattered and random musings, so if you already subscribe, why not take a minute to give me a little plug to any of your friends who might like it here? Any tweets, facebook mentions, or simple old-fashioned telling peoples are very very much appreciated.
In which I embrace a life of crime
Posted by: alisonmay on: February 20, 2012
A long time ago, but right here in this particular galaxy, on this particular blog, I extolled the virtues of reading widely. This was a good and clever thought, and one that, quite correctly, prompted my even gooder and cleverer sibling to point out that for all my wise words, I very rarely read crime fiction.
In order to redress this balance she, and my good friend Holly, prescribed a literary diet of psychological thrills and physiological gore, the opening courses of which I have now consumed and will review forthwith for your blog reading pleasure and enlightenment.
In reverse order my top three recent crime reads were:
3. Ruth Dugdall, The Woman Before Me
This novel won the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger Award prior to being published, and for a first novel, it’s an accomplished book. Dugdall’s main characters are a probation officer tasked with assessing prisoners’ suitability for release, and the prisoner she is assessing, currently incarcerated for killing a friend’s baby.
The idea of prison setting means that the crime story unfolds in flashback and through diary entries and probation interviews, rather than in present narrative. Generally, this sort of overly complicated narrative structure floats my boat, and the idea of the probation officer as detective, piecing together the past after the whole investigative and judicial process is, apparently, over, is an interesting one.
I have a couple of small quibbles. The book concentrates heavily on the prisoner’s psychological state, which, although well-written, I could have lived with a bit less of. I would also have preferred to see the reveals of what actually happened in the past drip-fed more slowly through the story. There’s one big surprise held back for the ending, but, apart from that , I felt like I knew pretty much what had happened from about a third of the way through. Holding a few more plot details back might have added to the suspense in the story and pushed this book even further up my chart.
2. Michael Robotham, Shattered
Joseph O’Loughlin, the detective character in Shattered, is a psychologist who starts the story failing to dissuade a woman from throwing herself off the Clifton Suspension Bridge. This apparent suicide sets the tone for the rest of the story. When is suicide not suicide at all?
For me this book did manage to balance the internal character exploration and the external plot. Joseph is a Parkinson’s Disease sufferer and we see his inability to apply his psychological insight to his own attitude to life, his body and his disease. We also get an, unusually well-handled, take on the traditional detective’s dysfunctional homelife. But what really keeps this story ticking along is the suicide/murder plot itself. It’s well-paced and in places it’s properly scary.
Minor criticism – perhaps the closing couple of chapters when the threat (slightly predictably) moves closer to Joseph’s personal life aren’t as well handled as the rest of the story, but overall, I genuinely enjoyed reading this one.
1. Dissolution/Dark Fire, CJ Sansom
So I’m cheating a tiny bit by having a joint number one, but these stories form part of the same series, by the same author, featuring the same lead character, so I think it’s allowed.
This is crime meets historical fiction. The setting is England under the rule of Henry VIII, which makes these book a tough sell for me. I generally avoid historical fiction set in the 16th Century as that was my specialist subject at university, which leads to a certain tenseness about tiny historical inaccuracies.
However, I loved both these books. The period setting felt real (and feeling real is so much more important than being insanely detailed). The stories follow a detective plot; in this case our detective is a lawyer under the patronage of Thomas Cromwell. The first novel centres around a murder at a monastery during the process of dissolution. The second entwines the killing of a child of a wealthy family with the political plot to bring down Cromwell. In both Sansom builds engaging plots around known events without completely throwing out the historical reality to accomodate the story.
These are big thick meaty books which you can dive into feeling confident that you’re going to be absorbed into a story. And there are more in the series, so the enjoyment isn’t over yet.
Overall, I seem to like crime fiction best when it’s driven by plot, rather than focussing on the psychology of the criminal mind. I also prefer my gore kept under control, but I am known to be a tad squeamish about these things. To put it bluntly I’m a fainter. I’ve fainted at blood tests, at other people getting their ears peirced, and, indeed, at child-friendly Christmas theatre productions. (Yes. All those things are genuinely true.) I don’t really want to add “reading novels” to my list of activities that are high-risk for loss of consciousness.
Come back later in the week when I’ll be getting all Lenten and talking about abstinence (unless something else interests me more in the meantime). And, as ever, comment, subscribe, follow me on twitter, or, if you prefer, just go read something.
Where I talk about why I won’t be self-publishing soon (which is not the same as ever)
Posted by: alisonmay on: January 13, 2012
- In: Writing
- 8 Comments
This week I’ve been thinking a lot about self-publishing. The ability of Amazon to capture books in their magic butterfly nets and trap the words inside their lovely Kindles means that writers have a realistic alternative to wading through the months of submission and rejection (a process which, almost invariably, ends up with them having nothing published, but having contributed considerably to the coffers of the nice people at Rymans who sell the Big Envelopes). More and more writers are thinking why bother? And there are good reasons for feeling that way. The perception is that mainstream publishing is getting increasingly risk-averse. Publishers are prepared to spend money on books by posh girls with famous sisters and even more famous bottoms, but not so happy to risk an outlay on a new novel by an untried writer.
If your book doesn’t fit easily into a neat marketing box, there’s even more encouragement to go it alone. Across web forums, writer’s conferences and writing courses, new writers are repeatedly told that they must be able to describe their book in a single sentence. To attract the capricious attentions of a mainstream publisher you have to have that instant-appeal marketing hook.
I’ve also been told, by an editor for a major publisher, that she expects writers to be able to explain what genre their book fits into and where it would sit in the market. That is just one person’s view, but a person who should know of what she speaks. So, if you’re writing a sort-of literary rom-com based on Shakespeare but with added maths, for example, you might decide that it’s easier to sell your novel directly to readers than to jump through that particular hoop. It’s a problem a lot of writers face – two others describe their own responses to this particular publishing headache here and here.
The economics of self-publishing, at least in e-book form, are also looking increasingly enticing for writers. Advances from publishers for new writers tend towards the modest. Publishing directly to Kindle through Amazon gives you a much bigger share of the cover price. In principle, it’s perfectly possible to make more income from e-publishing a book independently and selling fewer copies at a lower price, than if you published through a traditional publisher.
Despite having made a stunningly convincing arguement in favour of self-publishing, I still don’t wanna. In traditional “Alison does like a numbered list” style, here’s why:
1. It’s possible to make better money, but possible is not the same as easy.
I’m a totally unknown writer, and I’d be publishing without any marketing support behind me. Now there’s stuff I could do to promote a book at very little cost. I can tweet. I can blog. I can bully close personal friends into buying it. I reckon that between this blog, Facebook, Twitter and good old-fashioned real-life (you know where your parents and the old people live), I can put information out directly to somewhere in the region of 1000 people. Now, they won’t all buy the book. 1% of those people buying it would be 10 people. 10%, which is probably ambitious, would be 100 sales. That’s charming, but several orders of magnitude below what you need to get a book to the tipping point where word of mouth sends it on its way.
So I’d try other stuff: getting reviews from friendly blogs, encouraging Amazon reviews, making myself a proper glossy website, making myself a lovely shiny Amazon author page, trying to get some local press coverage – realistically I’d have to do a lot of that if I had an agent and mainstream publisher too, but I wouldn’t be doing it entirely on my own. And, at the risk of sounding overly focussed on the money, I’d be doing it while eating marmitey-toast paid for out of my advance.
2. There’s no such thing as a free-to-publish (and good and successful) book
So marketing is one problem. What about the actual novel itself? I could write the book, edit the book, draw myself a lovely little cover in Paint, and stick it up on Amazon. The problem there is that what I’d have published probably wouldn’t be a very good book.
To get a book to publishable quality involves a bit of cost. I’d definitely want a professional cover design. I’d probably want the book professionally edited. That’s expensive. Even non-commercial critiquing services (like the RNA‘s fabulous New Writer’s Scheme of which I’m a very proud member) aren’t free. To self-publish a properly finished, professional-looking book, even as an e-book only venture, involves some investment, and, unless my numbers come up (which would involve me buying a lottery ticket, which I don’t because I, y’know, have a basic understanding of probability) I’m not really in a position to fork out that money.
3. Good enough isn’t good enough (for me)
Without the costs described above, particularly professional editing, would I be confident that my novel was good enough to put out there? Writers develop – I definitely hope to be a better writer in the future than I am now. The book I’d be e-publishing at the moment is my first completed novel. That inevitably means that I’ll look back on it in the future and see lots of things that could be improved, but I don’t want to look back and wish it had never been published. It might be a novel that I’d be proud of on the day I sent it out into the world, but would I still be proud in two or three years time?
Part of this is about my personality. I’m a perfectionist. I have high standards – that’s part of the reason that I’m good in my regular money-earning job as a trainer. I have high expectations of students, and generally find that if you set a bar just above what people think they are capable of, they will exceed their own expectations to achieve it. It also means I set high standards for my own work, and I do still see acceptance by a traditional publisher as a validation that I’ve achieved a particular standard. It’s would be a massive shiny gold star on the star chart inside my head. Perhaps the fact that that’s important to me is a weakness. Perhaps it’s just a view that’s getting out of date, but in my gut, it’s still how I feel.
So that’s why I won’t be self-publishing my first novel, and am, instead, about to embark on the long tortuous journey to repeated rejection. I applaud, wholeheartedly, all those people who are braver than I, and are going it alone, and I’d love to get your comments on the self-publishing quandary. I’d also love to hear from anyone who’s decided against, and from anyone else who thinks anything at all really about things. Comment away! And why not subscribe or follow the blog while you’re here? Good-o.
In which I look forward to the shiny new year
Posted by: alisonmay on: January 5, 2012
- In: Writing
- 4 Comments
So this is 2012. It seems perfectly resonable so far, although it was trailed as a bumper exciting year, what with Olympics and Diamond Jubilees and The End of The World. Compared with the spoilers the opening week could be seen as just a tiny bit dull.
To brighten up the boredom, it is traditional, at this point in the calendar, to take stock of one’s life and make resolutions for its improvement. Now, lots of people don’t hold with resolutions. They point out that you always end up breaking them by about mid-January and then you get downhearted and end up doing worse that you were before you made the resolution. These people think they are being mature and sensible, when actually, they are fools. They are allowing their experience to override their hope. Hope should always be allowed to win in these little internal debates. Hopeful people may be disappointed more often, but I suspect they are still happier overall, and they’re definitely more fun to be around.
So, supressing my inner Eeyore, I have made three resolutions for 2012.
1. Get fit. Get thin.
I’ll not bore you with this one. If you’ve read the blog before you’ll have heard all about it here. If you’ve not read that already then just click back there, where it said here and away you go.
Being fit is good. Not having a heart attack when you’re 40 is good. Not having to buy a whole new wardrobe every year because you’ve gone up another dress size is good. Being able to walk up small hills without turning blue and making death noises is good. For all these reasons and more I’m very focussed on losing weight this year.
My aim is to get down to somewhere below 10.5 stone by summer, and (and this bit’s important) still be the same weight by the end of the year. I’ve managed the losing weight bit before. The big challenge this year is staying at a healthy weight once I’m there, but it needs to be done, and so it shall.
2. Get some writing (apart from this lovely blog) out there into the world
There are two parts to being a writer pursuing publication. There’s the writing, and then there’s the pursuing publication. Sadly, the two activities don’t really require the same skills. One is all about sitting in a lonely garret and trying to type more words into Word than onto Twitter. The other is about venturing out into Big World and thrusting your precious manuscript into the hands of agents, publishers, publisher’s cleaning ladies, agent’s manicurists, and any other poor sod who gets in your way. That part of the deal is all about covering letters, having a killer synopsis, networking and the truly horrendous sounding Elevator Pitch.
This year I’m going to be getting my increasingly svelte derriere into gear on both fronts. The novel-in-progress which has already been in progress for far too long will get it’s final spit and polish and will be winging it’s way out to be rejected by Easter. My second novel will also be completed and out there landing on slush piles by the end of the year. And finally, I’ll have written a first draft of number three before it’s time to get all Auld Lang Syney at each other again. Oh yes I will.
3. I’m going to learn to drive.
“Hang on!” Some of you are probably shouting (those of you who know me in the Real World TM and are also odd enough to shout at your computers without shame), “You can already drive.”
And the weird shouting people are correct. I passed my driving test in 2008, at a very respectable second attempt. Admittedly the first attempt wasn’t that respectable and did involve a certain amount of trying to pull away in 3rd gear, but no-one normal passes their driving test first time, so that’s all good.
Unfortunately, since then very little actual driving has occured, to the point where I now don’t think I’ve driven for over a year. This is largely to do with the driving terror. I properly detest driving to the point of almost being phobic about it. I get genuinely scared at the idea. If I think I might have to drive the next day I won’t sleep the night before. Add that fear to a lifestyle where I live within walking distance of a city centre, do most of my paid work in central Birmingham where it’s much easier to get the train, even if you like driving, and you end up with a girl who has never got over the initial driving nerves.
This is silly. I know that I’m a perfectly reasonable driver. A little inexperienced, but still less scary that lots of other people who hop in their motorised vehicles without hesitation. So this year, I am going to get over the driving fear, even if that does involve going back to the driving lesson stage with all the irritation and expense that entails.
This, I suspect, is the resolution I’m most likely to break. The first two are things I desperately want to achieve. This is one I’d quite like to achieve, but mainly is something I think I ought to do. And I can be a pig-headed little madam – being told I ought to do something (even by myself) rarely works as a motivator. Nonethless, I will try.
So those are my resolutions. They probably should include something about increasing my amount of paid work, but I’m responding to the low levels of freelance work out there on the horizon by making a happy face and hoping something turns up. (Anyone looking for a adult trainer in the Midlands area and/or online, please do get in touch though… I can train on advice skills, managing volunteers, welfare benefits, employment law, social media, training skills…)
Any thoughts on my aims for the year? Any resolutions of your own you’d like to share? For example, you might want to resolve to stay up to date with lovely Alison’s lovely blog by following or subscribing. I think that would be a very good resolution indeed.
In which I look backwards to Christmas and last year’s desert island.
Posted by: alisonmay on: January 3, 2012
Christmas, I think we have to acknowledge, is over. The decorations are still up but they’re starting to feel weirdly out of date and inappropriate. There are still leftovers in the fridge but no-one can really face eating them anymore, so they’ll sit there a couple more days before being thrown away with lots of comments about how chucking food out is bad and how we’re going to shop more carefully in future and only buy what we absolutely and definitely need.
So, how was your festive season lovely readers? Please do feel at leisure to tell me all about it in the comments. Mine was good in a traditional family oriented sort of a way. We did the usual couple compromise of my family at Christmas and his at New Year, with a 24 hour “just us” break in the middle. And that’s probably enough about that. I don’t want to turn into the sort of blogger who witters on about random personal details like what I had for breakfast. Marmitey toast, obviously. I’m not uncivilised.
But a very long time ago I did blog about a Desert Island Discs party and then totally failed to tell you what I’d actually picked. So belatedly and with apologies, here are my choices:
1. Tim Minchin, White Wine in the Sun
I love Tim Minchin. I don’t totally agree with all his lyrics here. Regardless of religious persuasions I don’t see how anyone could prefer the idea of hanging out with Richard Dawkins over Desmond Tutu. Tutu just comes across as jollier, and definitely more like to have anecdotes about Nelson Mandela that end, “Of course, we were both very very drunk…” However, I endorse the sentiment. Christmas is commercialised and gaudy and should be terrible, but I really really like it.
2. Jools Holland & the Rhythm and Blues Orchestra, Enjoy Yourself
A top song for a desert island. It is important to enjoy oneself. This is also the track Jools Holland usually ends live performances with, so has good associations for me of outdoor summer gigs with friends, alcohol and little sausage rolls. Very few situations cannot be remedied by the addition of friends, alcohol and little sausage rolls.
3. Pure, Lightning Seeds
This is me and the Boy’s official Song. We picked it on a car journey to somewhere in the early years of The Relationship. I believe we’d decided that if we were in a Relationship we ought to have A Song. And so we do, and it’s sufficiently unsoppy not to cause nausea, which is also nice.
On the music front honourable mentions should go to Semisonic’s Secret Smile, The Danse Macrabre by Saint-Saens, Tim Minchin’s Not Perfect, and pretty much everything by The Beatles. On another day any or all of those might have made the cut.
That just leaves a book and a luxury item to select. I wimped out on book, and went for The House at Pooh Corner. I call this wimping out because it avoided picking between all the incredible grown-up books. I could have picked one (if I had it would probably have been between Margaret Attwood The Blind Assassin and Kazua Ishigura Never Let Me Go – at least until someone gets round to publishing all the Discworld novels in a single massive volume) but that would have felt like I was rejecting all the other books and I couldn’t do it. Anyway, In Which Tigger Comes to the Forest and has Breakfast is a work of unadulterated genius and I would lift my mood during any low desert island moments, so Winnie-the-Pooh it is.
And for my luxury, it would have to be paper and pens (which would somehow magically never run out) so I could write write write. Only having one book to read would be a personal nightmare, but if I could write I might just manage it. There are lots of elements to trying to become a published writer that are a real pain in the behind, not least the actual trying to get published part. Editing and proof-reading can also be something of a bind, but the ideas are things of pure joy, so if I could live half on my island and half inside my own imagination I might actually be quite happy.
So comment away below on all things Christmassy or desert islandy, and please come back later in the week when we’ll be talking New Year’s Resolutions. Probably. Unless I see something more interesting before then and end up writing about that instead. Farewell.
Where I try to make the Internet pick my Desert Island Discs for me.
Posted by: alisonmay on: December 21, 2011
It’s Christmas! This means that party season is upon us. Fatness is growing (yeah, I know what I said here, and I’ll totally get back to that in January. Totally), and hungoverism is becoming the order of the day.
But internet I need your help, because tonight’s Christmas meal has A Theme. Desert Islands Discs, albeit a cutdown dinner party friendly version. So I have to select three tunes, one book and one luxury item that make me appear cool, witty and interesting by this evening.
This is a challenge. I’m not, generally speaking, a massive muso. I play music as a functional exercise to take the edge of the quiet, usually when I’m supposed to be writing and the crushing silence of an extended lack of typing becomes oppressive. So, for me, thinking of three tunes at all is a bit of a stretch.
And one book? ONE book? I own several hundred books, possibly into the thousands, and my favourite is generally whichever I’m looking at right now. How can I possibly be expected to commit to just one book for the rest of forever? The rest of forever is, potentially, ages.
And a luxury item. That could be anything. Am I allowed to pick a person? John Cleese picked Michael Palin, but specified that he would have him stuffed. I’m not sure that really helps. If I’m not allowed a person then what? I could be all dull and writerly and demand paper and pens, but that is very boring, isn’t it?
So help me out Internet? Three tunes. One book. One luxury. What would you pick? (And if you want to hear what I go for in the end, just subscribe or follow and you’ll get a little notification as soon as I get around to letting you all know).
When is an outrage not an outrage
Posted by: alisonmay on: December 14, 2011
We’re fond of a nice bout of outrage every now and then, us humans. It’s not a particularly new or modern trait. Human communities the world over, and throughout history, have shared a tendency to proscribe certain activities. The resulting shared exclamations of indignation when the rules are transgressed are one of the things that bonds societies together.
However, we live in a society with newspapers and television and websites and blogs and social networking, and somehow, it does seem to me, that we might have let our outrage-ometer get a bit skewed. We are bombarded with scandals, shocks, and, apparently offensive behaviour. So in a given week or month you might have to choose whether to spend your affrontedness quotient on ill-judged comments by a motoring presenter on a tea-time talk show, a youtube video of some ranting on a bus, or polar bears being filmed in a zoo for a nature programme. It’s a lot to think about, so, for the sake of all our mental health, I’m suggesting we should just calm down, and learn when not to bother getting outraged.
Here are my top three situations where it’s really not worth getting worked up:
1. When you didn’t actually see the thing you reckon you’re offended by.
So Jeremy Clarkson said a ridiculous thing? So Rhianna wore a tiny tiny amount of clothes on the telly? If you didn’t watch it, then you weren’t offended by it. If you click on the link to watch it after the event on youtube because you’ve been told it’s shocking, then you’re choosing to be offended, and normal rules cease to apply.
2. When the outrageous thing only affects a tiny group of people directly involved in said outrageous thing.
So a footballer has an affair. Are you his wife? His child? The partner of the person he had an affair with? You are? Ok then. Continue to be outraged. You have every right. If not, then really, this behaviour is absolutely none of your concern. Please feel at ease to continue with your day undisturbed.
3. When you can only tell the thing is outrageous because the describing words in the newspaper/website report tell you it is.
If you need the describing words around the actual story to explain that it’s outrageous then, believe me, it’s really not. Genuinely shocking things don’t need to be dressed up. For example:
Around 4000 children die every day because of lack of clean drinking water and sanitation. (Save the Children; http://www.savethechildren.net/alliance/media/newsdesk/2010-03-19.html)
Do you see how there’s no need to jazz that up to make it sound horrendous? It just is.
Now take for comparison: “‘Organic’ celebrity gardener sparks eco row after saying ‘it’s good to use peat in your garden’” (Daily Mail; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2074027/Celebrity-gardener-claims-organic-sparks-eco-row-saying-good-use-peat-garden.html#ixzz1gWWJyoU9)
This story is about Gardeners’ Question Time regular, Bob Flowerdew, who has come out (so to speak) as a user of peat-based compost. The key phrase in the headline is “eco row”. Clearly there has been some sort of big outrage over whatever Flowerdew said. I care about the environment. Maybe I should be outraged as well? Let’s read on.
“One of the country’s leading organic gardeners has outraged green groups by championing the use of peat.
Bob Flowerdew, 58, has admitted that he relies on peat-based compost to grow plants.
But his comments have outraged conservationists, who complained that they would encourage the destruction of wildlife-rich peat bogs by amateur gardeners following suit.”
Right. Well in three short paragraphs we’ve heard twice that conservationists are outraged. This must be a big deal. Otherwise they surely wouldn’t have had to note the outrage twice in such a short piece of prose. If this was mere mild irritation, we could have taken that in with a single mention.
I wonder what those conservationists actually said. And, if you’re reading along with the article, you’ll be wondering for a while. It’s a full 11 paragraphs before we get any specific comments from a representative of the environmental lobby, and then a spokesperson from Friends of the Earth says they are “disappointed” by Mr Flowerdew’s statement. Disappointed. Not outraged. Not livid. Not obviously spoiling for a fight at all. Simply disappointed.
If you thin this article down to the actual quotes alone, what you have is some people who disagree about peat-based compost. They don’t even disagree that extremely. No-one is advocating sprinkling peat liberally on your cornflakes. Mr Flowerdew’s original comments also touch on issues of sustainability. This isn’t a row. You’d struggle to call it a spat, but somehow the story has still made it into more than one major national newspaper. The Daily Express version of the story is, if anything, more sensational.
Why? So far as we can tell no-one is actually outraged here. There might be a genuine story for the environment or lifestyle pages about peat-based compost. How environmentally damaging is it? Is any level of production sustainable? What are the alternatives for gardeners? etc But that’s not what either of these versions of the story are about. They’re both about a fight, a row, in the Express headline writer’s terminology, “A Big Stink.”
The underlying problem is that confrontation and outrage are seen as selling papers, so if no outrage exists it’s in the interests of the press to create one. Then other papers and broadcasters can report on the outrage that’s been reported, creating further outrage, which can itself be reported. Social networks feed into this process. As a journalist, you no longer have to wander into the street to find a person to express consternation at a given event. You simply open your laptop and do a little search. Between Twitter, Facebook and the blogosphere you can pretty much guarantee that someone will have said something about the subject you’re writing up. There’ll probably be at least one comment that suggests disagreement. Ta-dah! Instant row generated. Now you just have to type it up and wait for the outrage to spread.
So let’s all agree not to play. Let’s all agree that the next time a TV personality says something stupid, or a popstar wears tiny shorts, we’ll just roll our eyes and not comment. If you must comment I’ll permit a non-commital sounding, “Meh,” noise, but nothing more. And then let’s get really outraged about something that matters. I don’t know if you’ve heard but, across the world, 4000 children die every day because of lack of drinking water and sanitation. 4000. Every single day.
In which democracy isn’t working
Posted by: alisonmay on: December 6, 2011
There is a well-known political saying, variously attributed to Joseph De Maistre, George Bernard Shaw and Alexis de Toqueville (if you’re a proper pedant, I *think* Toqueville is right, but feel free to correct me in the comments) that “In a democracy, the people get the government they deserve.” Looking at our current rulers I find this depressing. So just in case any of you were feeling prematurely bouncy with festive cheer, I thought a nice little blog post about the inadequacy of government might bring you all back down to earth.
Here’s how a representative democracy is supposed to work. Some people have ideas about how stuff should be and make those ideas public for the masses to consider. The ideas are scrutinised by other people with different ideas who point out the potential pitfalls. All of these people’s ideas are further scrutinised by an independent and rigorous free press, and by an informed and interested electorate. That electorate then pick the people whose ideas seem least likely to bankrupt the country. The winning people form a government and have a go at putting their ideas into action, all the time having their most foolhardy excesses checked and exposed by the opposing people, the judiciary and that lovely free press we heard about earlier. To break my own rule about never quoting a talking advertising animal in public, “Simples.”
But that whole system seems to have broken down. Rather than having politicians who believe stuff, we have a generation of politicians who see their role as being to identify what voters want and then present an impression that they agree, regardless of whether they do or not. We have no bravery in politics anymore, no willingness to say “I think this. Here’s why it’s a good idea,” and accept that if people don’t agree you won’t win.
We have reached a position where the suggestion that a politician has a definite ideology is seen as a weakness. Ed Milliband, for example, was elected Labour leader largely because he was seen as being willing to move the party back to the left of UK politics. That viewpoint won him considerable support amongst the trade union wing of the party, but he’s spent the months since trying to disassociate himself from the “Red Ed” tag. He hasn’t supported public sector unions on strike action. He’s been largely absent from the debate on cuts in areas like welfare benefits and legal aid. Reading his press coverage it is increasingly difficult to identify what Ed really thinks.
I’ve picked on Ed Milliband here. I could just as easily have gone for Dave or Nick or George or even Tony. None of these are politicians interested in standing out, in looking or sounding different, in making an impassioned case for a particular set of ideas. They’re interested in being elected. They may have passionate ideas about what they’d do if they were elected, but they don’t us to know what those ideas are.
And that’s not entirely their fault. They are the babies of an informal system of political education that irons out difference and passion at every turn. We have a generation of politicians who attended the same schools, the same universities, worked in the same politics-related consultancies, and entered parliament with little or no work experience outside the Westminster bubble. They sound bland and samey because they are bland and samey.
A generation ago our Prime Minister was a grammar-school scholarship girl, who studied Chemistry and worked as a research chemist in the food industry whilst unsucessfully candidating in Dartford. Somewhere alongside the job and the political campaigning she also managed to qualify as a barrister. Voters also knew where she stood. She was, in my opinion, pretty much as wrong as one can be about most things, but at least you knew what she thought.
But that’s all changed. Telling voters what you think is no longer considered important. Getting the most favourable coverage, causing least offence and not making a gaffe are the new priorities. In political debate, meaning has been the primary casualty of the new media-savvy approach. Politicians are concerned about things like “hard-working families,” “the squeezed middle” and “creating a Big Society.” The broader the brushstrokes, the less specific the message, the less likely it is to offend.
And political reporting isn’t helping. Rather than questioning and scrutinizing politicians, journalists often simply copy and paste the pre-approved quotes from the press release and crack on with the rest of their day. There are reasons for this, ranging from commercial pressures in the newspaper industry to individual networks of friends and contacts too precious to displease, but too little political journalism is currently focussed on scrutinizing policies and ideas. (There are some exceptions – I know I’ve bigged it up before, but please allow me another quick plug for C4′s rather brilliant FactCheck blog).
Where people outside the mainstream political parties attempt to throw open the discussion, news coverage still tends to engage more with the people and the side-controversies, than with the content of any real debate. Thus, coverage of the Occupy London camp focusses on whether the protestors really are using their tents overnight, which members of the St Paul’s clergy have resigned, and what legal action is being proposed/taken, rather than on what the protestors are asking for and how/if politicians are responding.
There are options to how we fix this inadequate state of affairs. We could jettison the whole democracy thing and just have a dictator. I’m more than happy to volunteer for the role, providing I can be known as Queen Alison, rather than President or Prime Minister. It just sounds so much foxier, and implies ownership of good jewellery, which I like.
However, populaces all over the world are currently rising all up and getting a bit fighty to try to win for themselves the voting rights we have taken for granted for too long, so maybe we should give democracy another shot. To make it work you all need to agree to make yourselves informed voters. It’s tricky but doable. Google will help you. Even mainstream newspapers will help if you teach yourself to read them with a critical eye (Andrew Marr’s book My Trade has a great section on how to sift the content from the fluff in an average newspaper article.) I’d also warmly encourage you to ask questions of your own representatives. We can all do this. Come the revolution I’ll be at my computer sending a tersely worded email to my MP.
At the same time, journalists need to start doing some actual journalism. Between us we might be able to start to pressure our elected representatives into saying what they really think.
Finally, our politicians need to collectively agree that, on balance, they probably ought to get out more and talk to people who don’t look and sound just like them. They could all agree to get jobs for a few years and only stand for future election after a full decade of doing something completely different. That might give them time outside the Westminster pressure cooker to grow a personality and, maybe even decide what they really think.
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