Respect

This is one of the best articles about Nirvana that I have ever read. I used to want to write an article about this band, their complex messages and what they meant to me. I always put off doing it, now I don't think I ever will. Forksplit has said it all for me and more. She is simply a kick ass writer with a voice stronger than most bloggers I have ever read. If you haven't checked her out on my links section yet, then do. If, by any chance you are a Nirvana fan then please read this. You will not regret it. I loved this article because it was written by someone who was genuinely touched by Kurt and whose life he shaped in a similarly deep (yet not always healthy) way to mine. I have not listened to Nirvana in a couple of years, like Forksplit I have majorly overplayed them and they now seem to belong to a bygone era. But reading this reminded me of how much they were a part of the landscape of my life for a long long time. It's beyond nostalgia, reading this made me feel like for a split second I was connecting with all those spine tingling sensations I felt when I first heard the opening chord to Serve the Servants or saw for the first time the famous picture of Kurt wearing too much eyeliner in the markets in southern Spain on a summer holiday and not being able to tear my eyes away. It brought back the memories in a way that some corporate music journalist would struggle to do. For that I am grateful and I might even go and listen to 'All Apologies' in a quiet corner just out of respect for the great man and the way he shaped a generation of misfits.

The Political is Personal.

At the moment I am busy listening to Tori Amos’ latest offering, American Doll Posse. I have been excited by the concepts behind it for some time after seeing and reading interviews with her in different places (including ‘Loose Women’ of all programmes- I don’t think they quite knew what to make of her!) On a first listen I am pretty impressed, but I imagine as with most of Tori’s work, it will be a grower.

Things I like about Tori Amos:

• She is, first and foremost, a musician; a classically trained pianist to be exact. She is also a songwriter, and, when she’s on form, one of the finest ones in contemporary music. This as opposed to being a singer of other peoples songs (usually men’s) like so many world class women artists are, or worse, being foremostly a model or dancer with not much musical talent.

• She is an interesting character with strong opinions about life, art and the world. I don’t always agree with her, I sometimes find her pretentious and annoying, but I can never tear my attention away from her when I watch her perform, or in an interview.

• Her lyrics rock the house. She is a poet who is not afraid to experiment with language, form and style.

• She is unashamedly political.

• She is not afraid to be herself and since ‘Little Earthquakes’ was released has fought for control of her own sound and image in an age where artists are more and more dictated to by record companies. Kudos to someone who would rather turn down their first significant record deal rather than have her record and musical vision massacred.

• She can be silly, whimsical, earnest and poignant within the same song, sometimes even in the same breath.

• She makes me think

• I like her voice.

• She tackles taboos.

• For example: She explores female sexuality in an honest, genuine way. This is all too rare in an age where despite an abundance of page three models and Ann summers shops, an exploration of woman’s true sexual psychology and drive is a deeply taboo subject.

• She has a sense of fashion and aesthetic style that even I can appreciate is interesting.

• She pours scorn on the fickle ‘celebrity’ lifestyle.

• I believe she genuinely cares about her fans.

• She pushes the boundaries of her own music in her live performances, and never plays the same show twice.

I could go on, but won’t. Anyway, when I am excited about an album, especially an album from an artist with a lot of depth, I like to read a bit about it first. So before listening to American Doll Posse I went on Wikipedia to see what it had to say. The thing that really caught my eye was this quote from Amos herself:

‘The main message of my new album is: the political is personal. This as opposed to the feminist statement from years ago that the personal is political. I know it has been said that it goes both ways, but we have to turn it around. We have to think like that. I’m now taking on subjects that I could not have been able to take on in my twenties. With Little Earthquakes I took on more personal things. But if you are going to be an American woman in 2007 with a real view on what is going on, you need to be brave, and you need to know that some people won’t want to look at it.’

Now, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t the first time I have heard this kind of argument. Recently, Natasha Walter wrote an entire book on the subject, and there has been (especially post 9/11) a call from within the feminist world to become more linked with wider issues than feminism has traditionally focused on. More and more articles and books are being written by feminist authors on a diverse range of subjects, including what I call ‘big P’ politics.

I say, right on. To this direction, to all of this.

It’s not that I don’t believe that the personal is political, I blatantly do. If it is already not obvious from the small amount of posts I have written, then I will spell it out: thinking about the significance of my day to day actions is of tremendous importance to me. I believe that the devil is in the detail, as they say, and huge victories can be won by focusing on what might initially seem like small aspects of your daily routine. You know, the whole Rosa Parks thing. The greatest injustices, I have always found, often manifest themselves in a whole range of day to day inequalities and it has only been by reclaiming this personal sphere, and politicising it, that feminists have managed to make the gains they have.

However, I read a lot of feminist blogs and over the last couple of years have been more and more concerned by the fact that the overwhelming majority of posts, especially by young feminists, seem to revolve around traditionally ‘female’ spheres. For example, feminist posts on fashion, makeup, food, family, relationships, motherhood, domestic chores, childcare, body hair and at the more radical end of the spectrum, sexual issues like abortion, pornography and rape can all be found in abundance. But the feminist bloggers and journalists who are writing about law (that’s not abortion law), science, Party and international Politics, global news stories, religion, critiques of capitalism, human rights, war and conflict, technology, space travel, economics, philosophy etc. Where are they? I don’t come across them very often, and when I do it’s the same few names again and again. I find this compartmentalising of the feminist movement very worrying. Life is a rich tapestry, yet the vast majority of the feminist movement seems to just focus on things designated as ‘women’s issues’, and by focusing on such narrow topics we seem to get into such wars amongst ourselves.

Sometimes, the personal can become too political. We get obsessed with tiny little details and lose sight of the bigger picture. We turn on each other and forget that there are different ways to live life, different ways to express feminism. We forget completely the concept of sisterhood, and instead behave more like cliques at a high school, obsessed with dogma, labels and outward codes of behaviour rather than the true spirit of liberation. Anti porn or sex positive, Pro choice or pro life, to wed or not to wed? Yes, the personal is political and I’m not disagreeing that these issues are important to many many women (including me). However, I’m right there with Tori on this one, there is so much more to the feminist vision than simply debating for hours whether having hairy armpits make you an authentic feminist or a hardcore loony that gives the women’s movement a bad reputation. After all, there surely comes a time where you have to say to yourself a hairy armpit is just that. Women are dying and starving all over the world. Atrocity after atrocity is being committed on our behalf and in our names. There comes a time that, as western feminists we should stop fighting amongst ourselves. Then, with or without a Venus razor, we should stand up, united, and do something to help.

In Praise of Omelette Makers

The feminist movement has a slogan, I don’t know who coined it or anything but it’s on a hell of a lot of the T shirts and posters that are out there. It reads: “Well behaved women rarely make history.”

This is one of the truest things I have read and these are words I hold close to my heart. Partly because I believe they are true and partly because I think they hold a great challenge for me in my life.

An incident that happened yesterday can illustrate the point nicely:

There is a woman who I work with (I call it work but it’s really volunteering, and most of that seems to be taken with tea breaks) who is fairly obviously a committed feminist. I’ve never really spoken to her about her beliefs in great detail as the opportunity has never arisen, but all the signals are there. Anyway, I really like her, she’s a good 30 years older than me and whether she’d technically call herself a feminist or not she’s a really good example of a woman who is self reliant, opinionated and totally committed to both her family (she has 6 kids!) and her career. She’s caring and clever and genuinely assertive; not in an insecure loud way but in a solid, self assured kind of manner. All in all, I have come to view her as a bit of a role model. Her independence shines through in everything she does, she’s not afraid to take the lead, crack a bad joke, organise the team, and speak her mind. The funny thing is though, when I first met her she really got my back up. I think she gets other people’s backs up too, it is quite challenging having such a strong woman in our midst. The guys in the group are flummoxed. They hold the door open for her, she waves them in first. They offer her a chair, she firmly refuses it. She won’t laugh at their jokes when she doesn’t think they’re funny, she tells them when she thinks they’re wrong.

Yesterday, one of the guys got quite upset by something she said, which wasn’t anything mean, but was just a forceful disagreement with something he had asserted. As bad feeling settled around the room and she looked blissfully unbothered, it triggered me to look at myself, almost like I was in a mirror. Yes, she’s a lot older than me and has the confidence that age and experience often brings but the differences between us are quite resounding. Whereas I have admired her as a forceful character, which she certainly is, I am more “well behaved” in many of my social circles. Going with the work example, I am well liked within the group. Partly because I am gentle and kind and ask a lot of questions about other peoples lives and then respond with lots of sympathy. Also, I think they appreciate me for giggling like a school girl at many of the bad jokes that the men proudly banter around (the group is 90% male). I often just nod my head and smile even when they are saying ridiculous things. I am afraid to take the lead, to organise, to boss. Very few of them know what I am really like; speaking my mind is usually the opposite of what I am doing. I do not really assert my will onto the group, even when I have an idea that could make it run better. Often, I am too cowardly to even mildly dissent.

Yes, I know there are different personality types. I’ve read Jung, I’ve taken the Myers- Briggs test (I am an INFJ) I also know I we all have different strengths and weaknesses and you can run yourself ragged or even make yourself ill comparing yourself to other people. I am not beating myself up for this, per say. I know my diplomatic nature has often helped further the feminist cause in many other areas, and my empathy and tolerance are qualities that I quite like about myself. But there is a distinct difference between being diplomatic and a doormat. There is something to be said for standing up for your beliefs at whatever cost. I believe it is important to face conflict and say what you really think, even if it offends the other person or could lose you something. I think in some of my social circles I am simply too well behaved, too fucking polite, too scared of the consequences. It’s not just about whether or not I’ll make history, it’s not my legacy I care about. It’s thinking about those terribly cliched but still resoundingly true phrases like ‘all it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing’. It’s about nodding to these, then realising that in a lot of your life you could be doing good work; challenging ignorant opinions, changing minds, really living what you believe when in reality you are simply going with the status quo for fear of rocking the boat.

So, you see, if I were to get a tattoo right now, it would probably read “well behaved women rarely make history”. The message for me is clear and it throws down the gauntlet in a lot of ways. It means stand and be counted, put your money where your mouth is! If you want to change the world, like you so often wish for, you have to resist resist resist and that’s not going to happen by simply writing long rants in personal diaries or publishing a little read internet blog. You have to act in the real world, with real people. You should be taking risks, raising eyebrows, generating anger and if it comes to it, losing real friends. You know the thing about the necessity of breaking eggs to make an omelette, well that’s the truth. At the moment I am carefully carrying my half- dozen free range eggs around with me (each wrapped individually in cotton wool) too scared to commit them to the hot sizzling oil of the frying pan. The problem is that when you don’t break eggs, they eventually rot inside their delicate shells and then what good are they to anyone?

I don’t like conflict but I am so at odds with this society. That in itself is a strange position to be in. There is so much I think is wrong going on right under our noses. I am sure there are many of us who feel the same. Above all, we must learn to speak out against the injustices we see. Being well behaved, whether you be a man or a woman, is the path that they, (the people who are most profiting from all this misery) want you to take. Toeing the line and simply doing as we’re told is paving the way to a fear filled world full of oppression, control, and paralysing terror. We must strive to cultivate a questioning, free mind and learn to say the important word that is ‘no’.

Here’s to all the brave omelette makers of the world who are standing up and putting their necks on the line for what they think is right. I’d like to think that one day, even I might add my eggs into the mix.