A few guidelines

Portrait of Ms Ruby May, Standing by Leena McCall

I'm on my back, I've assumed the position.

Soothing pan-Asian lift-music drifts over from the iPod by the door. 

Deep breath. Tchah. Sharp breath out.

Me

Did you see that story about the 

portrait of a woman Mall Galleries 

moved out of sight because it 

shows her pubes?

Beautician

 [laughs] 

No! That's ridiculous! Just move 
your leg slightly there.

Me

 Yeah, apparently it's 'disgusting and 

pornographic'. 

Beautician

Kind of ironic. 

Me

I know! Porn is one of the places

 you're least likely to see pubic hair.

Beautician 

Yeah. My women all do this for
 themselves, rather than...but I 
do think there's a trickle down 
from porn to 'the Hollywood.' 

Me

Mmhmm. I wonder how much of all 

that 'we feel cleaner' shtick is 

psychological.

Beautician 

It's actually more hygienic to keep 
the hair.

Me

[raises plucked eyebrow]

I sometimes feel like if I was a 

proper feminist I would go back, 
that I should grow it back... 

Beautician 

I think it's fine to have a full seventies, 
but you should still trim it - I was at a
training thing and this woman had 
a full seventies and it's just suddenly
 - boing - and it's a bit 'woah'. And I'm 
just thinking 'that poor man'.

I'm staring at the serene Buddha statue, wondering about our different uses of the word 'should'. I'm wary of sentences that contain the word 'should'. 'Should' is what someone else thinks. 'Should' is a truth handed down to you rather than lived experience.

Beautician

 ... and it turns out that the friend Cameron 

Diaz told Graham Norton she'd pinned 
to the bathroom floor and'clipped' was 
Gwyneth Paltrow.

Me 

Really? That sounds a bit brutal... 

Have you read Caitlin Moran's How 

to be a Woman?

Beautician

 Caitlin who? No.

Me

She's good on women making their 

own calls about this stuff- There's

a really funny bit about sanitary 

towels...

Beautician

I saw Cameron Diaz has got a new book 
out about women learning to love
their bodies. So she's completely 
contradicted herself. Do you want any 
more off? I've just followed the guideline, 

but we can make the strip thinner.

Me 

No thanks, that's my line.

Monsters Inc

So Rolf Harris is the latest to be declared 'a monster'. 

David Sillito reports for the BBC:

"During his trial prosecutors said Harris was a "Jekyll and Hyde" character who took advantage of his fame."

Jane Peel talks of Harris': 'Dark side revealed under court's spotlight'.

I find this gothic language unhelpful: it's another way of making abusers 'other', another way of pretending this sort of thing is down to a few objectionable individuals, rather than something our culture facilitates. It was the same with the Elliot Rodger case: a kid declares his hatred for women because not one of us had offered ourselves to him, and he goes out and shoots at people, killing six. However the news stories are of a 'virgin killer' (like that explains anything) or even more worryingly fixated on his asperges as a means of  discounting the misogynistic intent of his attacks. 

If you listen very carefully you can hear the thrumming bass line beneath this kind of reporting 'notallmennotallmennotallmennotallmennotallmennotallmennotallmen...'  

Thing is, it's much more terrifying than that: you don't have to be a monster to be an abuser, you just have to decide to do it.

On the other end of the spectrum we have Charles Saatchi, pictured throttling his then wife at a ritzy London restaurant, now hosting artistic depictions of said assault on his company's website: enacting that very capitalist tactic of absorbing the opposition in order to smother it. And if there's one thing Mr Saatchi knows, it's the role of buying and selling in defining an artefact's cultural worth.

I'm not for a second implying that the acts perpetrated by Harris, Rodger, Saatchi and their fellow abusers aren't monstrous, but I am also saying: 'nice' men harrass, groom, molest, hit, strangle, manipulate, assault: nice men rape.

I've been thinking a lot about shocking truths supposedly 'hidden' in plain sight. I've written a show that is partly about how we only see what we are pre-disposed to see. It's a show about how our misogynistic culture plays out in our intimate relationships. It's also a show about Pick up Artist forums. For the uninitiated: the Pick up Artist industry teaches men techniques and behaviours to employ in picking up women. Despite the fact that these techniques are often highly reductive, predatory and manipulative, PUAs are largely written off as losers who can't pick up girls (sad little monsters). These have spawned reactionary 'anti-PUA' sites which refute the notion that men should have to use techniques or behaviours to get sex from women: not because these techniques and behaviours are often highly reductive, predatory and manipulative, but because women are only good for etc etc (shouty scary monsters). Seen in this context Rodger's actions are the logical end game for misogyny.

'notallmennotallmennotallmennotallmennotallmennotallmennotallmennotallmen...'  

Recently a very wise and very dear friend accused me of making 'middle class' art. As I baulked at this over my g'n't it clarified something for me about where I'm positioning this piece, and the media's infinite ability to be shocked by revelations of another nice man we all trusted before putting him in with all the other monsters...

Discounting is an unconscious minimisation or exaggeration of circumstance, relating to the self, others or a shared reality.
There are four accumulative levels of discounting:
1) The existence of a problem: nice men don't rape
2) The significance of a problem: ok, nice men do rape but it doesn't affect me
3) The possibility of change: ok, nice men do rape, this is bad for everybody but what can we do, it's the way they're wired, or something. 
4) Our personal ability to effect change: ok, nice men do rape, this is bad for everybody, the ability to decide what we do with who we are is what makes us human, so I'm going to...  

My answer to that last one was to write my show. 

I've had to graciously concede that I'm not making proletariat revolutionary art. In fact, it's worse than what my dear, wise friend suspected, I might even be making art for the ruling classes. I wonder whether the four levels of discounting are also mirrored in how to make 'revolutionary' art according to our class system? And for this definition of revolution I shall appeal to the etymology of the word: to revolve, to roll back (the shutters, perhaps?):
1) Make the people at the top aware of the existence of a problem. No bread you say? Let them eat cake...
2) Cause a commotion with the people in the middle that cannot be ignored, which means we cannot flick past it in the Sunday Supplement: and suddenly EverydaySexism means #YesAllWomen.
3) Let the people at the bottom know that it does matter, and it is shit and it doesn't have to be like this...
4) Revolution.

Or perhaps (and this is my vain hope) you can make something that contains enough for all four to happen, quietly and personally. Perhaps you can make something that enables one person to be shocked that nice men rape, and another to see that they can do something to effect change. I sincerely hope so, because that's what I'm spending my summer attempting to do.