#HeForShe or How to avoid saying 'Patriarchy'.

Oh for fuck's sake.

Emma Watson's speech at the UN.

Look, it's bliddy scary, putting your head above the pulpit, and for that I salute her. But before we crack open the Lady Grey and English muffins, Hollywood poster boys holding up homemade placards is so not the point. 

We have to invite men not to be dicks now? We're extending an invitation not to be a dick? That's our plan for how to make feminism palatable? 

Side note - why are we worried about feminism being palatable? More than a million women in Britain suffering domestic abuse a year isn't palatable. 400,000 (reported) sexual assaults. 85,000 (reported) rapes. These aren't numbers that slink down the throat as you swallow them whole. These are numbers that keep you up at night with fire in your belly and raging acid reflux. (Trigger warning: the metaphors are likely to get worse from here). 

Why has the word feminism became an uncomfortable one? Because feminism is holding up a big shiny mirror to society and reflecting uncomfortable ideas like power and violence and oppression back at a world that would prefer to think of itself as having dealt with all that in the sixties. 

And breathe.

Never mind asking men to take our hands like waifish debutantes, how about asking them to take their hands off for starters? If someone is holding me down and punching me in the face, I'm not inclined to wait for his RSVP to STOP BEING A DICK.

Yes, men are hurt by inequality between the genders, but not as much as women are.
That's how inequality works. And yes, it's uncomfortable.

Don't get me wrong - the show I keep banging on about looks at how one man's definition of being male wreaked misogynistic havoc on his sexual relationships. A feminist show about being a man - hoist me on my own petard why don't you? I couldn't agree more that confining men to stereotypes of what it is to be male forces those of us who are not male to interact with them in reductive ways. That said, Owen Jones' assertion that 'Men are being killed by our sexist society' made me want to kick things.
Again, not because he isn't right to link male suicide rates to 'oppressive expectations of manliness' which stop young men seeking help and talking about how they feel, but because there's a difference between deciding to take your own life and someone else beating you to death.
And before you hang me out to dry with the other 'old-school man-hating bra-burning feminists' of the pre-Watson era, YES, I agree that mens' 'decisions' are shaped by social and cultural forces… It's just that women also live in a world that slaps reductive gender expectations on us that instead of making it more likely that we'll kill ourselves, make it more likely we'll accept as 'normal' situations in which we're over-powered and over-ruled, paid less, sexually assaulted, punched in the face… killed.

You're right, awareness is a good thing. Projects like Everyday Sexism are a very good thing. Hell, if it helps demystify the potential for men to be feminists, then even a brand spanking new celebrity-endorsed hashtag can be a good thing.

#DontJustTweetItBeatIt 

The culture has to change. That doesn't happen if you put a selfie on social media and then swan back onto a movie set where you are paid more than your female costars/outnumber females across both cast and crew/portray stories that perpetuate the stereotypes. And, lovely Emma, it doesn't change as a 'natural consequence' of men becoming 'free' of gender stereotypes. It's so much harder than that, and if you're the one giving up power, you're not going to enjoy it all the time. 

Patriarchy has to start punching itself in the face, and that's going to hurt. The fuzzy feeling of doing the right thing might wear off when it means you're taking a pay cut, or having to share more unpaid domestic work, or sharing the time away from your career for child rearing or turning down work because that project/company/organisation support the misogynistic status quo.

But it's still worth doing, because we do all benefit from equality. This isn't an invitation,  I'm just going to assume that if you're reading this, you're ready.

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. 

Some Brand new thoughts. Some good. Some bad.

Before we change the world, we need to change the way we think

I’ve really tried not to say anything about the recent re-branding of a certain verbose celebrity hair-raiser. But I’m sorry, I can’t help it, Brand new revolutionary rhetoric is everywhere and it’s stirring something that makes me feel conflicted, like I might be betraying myself or the sisterhood or something.

He was right, what he said about social injustice and the disenfranchisement of anyone outside of the spam-head political classes. That’s all true, and the way he said it, it has a charm: the multisyllabic clackety clack of that Essex jaw, has a certain je ne sais pourquoi vous utilisez tous ces grands mots quand un ‘bonmot’ ferait le travail, mais vous aller, Monsieur. Is he casually sexist? Yes. And what follows is not an apologist ‘but I like him anyway’ whine, so if it feels that way please stick with it, until it doesn’t.

We don’t get to pick our heroes. They choose themselves first, and thrust themselves into greatness (with all of their inadequacies) by being brave or arrogant enough to stick their coiffed heads above the parapet.

Am I surprised and appalled that a man of the media said something sexist as a flippant joke? You’re having a laugh aren’t you? Sexism is endemic in our culture; it is simply part of the fabric of life: like tea drinking, and oppression of the poor. Spend ten minutes on the @EverydaySexism feed if you need further convincing. Do I think that’s ok? Of. Course. Not.

But, we’ve got to stop reducing everything to a Hollywood binary of goodies or baddies, or we’re never going to get anywhere. It’s pretty tricky to march on the opposition when you’ve shot yourself in the foot, twice.

People do good things, and people do bad things, most of us dabble in both. Welcome to the complexity of human endeavor. We need to get used to this so we don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater – or the revolution with the personal transgressions. It is possible for someone to do something great, like, found Wikileaks, and also be accused of forcing non-consensual sex. Does that make him any less heroic for taking the risks he did to expose one of the world’s superpowers? No, I don’t think it does. Does it also make him (if the accusations are proven) an abusive shit? I think so, yes, but for some people it just makes him a ‘player’. And come the revolution, it’s that mentality I want up against the wall.

Russell Brand demeans women with cheap gags because he can, because he is rewarded for doing so. Contract after contract, column inch after column inch, because our culture thinks it’s ok for women to be objectified. So who is he, a mere dandy, to oppose time held tradition? Except that’s what he was on Newsnight to do, right? Oppose the order of things? That’s what his guest editorship is about, surely? A call to arms, a time for change, enough is enough…

Russell, babe, I couldn’t agree more.

1 in 3 women will be raped in her lifetime. 85,000 women reported rape in the UK last year. The rapists I know of have never been reported on. Oh, we all know rapists. Let’s get used to that idea as well. If 1 in 5 women (aged 16 - 59) in the UK have reported experiencing some form of sexual violence since the age of 16 it follows that there are enough abusers to go round. Like I said, fabric of society, like the banks and honest coppers on every corner.

So I suppose what I’m saying is this. If we’re going to have a revolution, can we start again on an equal playing field?

And in the meantime let’s drop the ‘oh well, that would’ve been nice but he’s not perfect (despite the self-styled Messiah complex) we best ignore everything he says’. Make like magpies people, take the shiny-shiny and leave the congealing old shit for the likes of UKIP to feather their nests with. Reward the good behavior: yes Russell, social change: good idea.

And educate on the bad stuff: because of an attractive woman Russell? That wasn’t very funny, call yourself a comedian? In fact, come to think of it chevalier, it’s pretty fucking ironic – there you are, doing your best schpiel on oppression of the powerless and you’ve kicked the whole thing off with a joke to the detriment of – HANG ON A MINUTE. Could that be the pungent tang of irony I detect? Sharp on the nose, but a complex floral bouquet wafting about in the background. Could you have been playing up to your own well-documented relationship with sex, and the expected perception of you – to ‘make like capitalism’ and absorb the expected criticism before it becomes a real threat. Huh. To answer the inevitable question ‘what are you, Clown, doing speaking of serious things?’ before they’d even asked it. Ok, that might be a bit funny, clever, even. I note the BBC saw fit to caption him ‘Russell Brand – Comedian’ and not ‘Russell Brand – Guest Editor of the New Statesmen’ when that was the capacity within which he was being interviewed.

Am I giving him too much credit? Very probably.

Does it matter? If we’re going to have a revolution, we need symbols, icons, something to attach the ideas to - and here we have a presumptuous court jester reeled out to speak of kings and things on a national platform. Someone who stands on the outside of the current system – he doesn’t even vote – but looks in from under his coxcomb and allows the rest of us to see the madness in our method.

This is not altogether fool, my lord.