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Returning the compliment

Tuesday 5th January, 2010 in Accepted Social Situations, Sexual Violence by Melaszka | No comments

“Hello, darling!”

The dishevelled man of about 60 years, obviously a little the worse for drink at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, wending his way towards me through the Christmas shopping crowds in the precinct, greeted me like an old friend, despite the fact that he was a complete stranger. As he neared me, he gestured at my feet: “Wow! Lovely shoes!”

I thanked him, admittedly a little apprehensively, in case this turned out to be the warm-up to a sleazy pick-up line. But he’d already moved on down the street. He obviously wasn’t a harassing slimeball – he really had just liked my shoes.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. Several strangers have in the past come up and complimented me on that particular pair of shoes. They’re not Manolos or Jimmy Choos or any other designer. They’re not particularly expensive. They’re not fashionable, They’re certainly not sexy. They’re just a bit flamboyant and theatrical and I must admit I rather like them myself. But usually the strangers who comment on them are female. I always find it pleasant and flattering. Should I feel differently if the complimenter is a man?

No, I don’t think I should and I’m afraid I can’t agree with some feminist definitions of “street harassment” as any man attempting to talk to any female stranger about how she is dressed, or indeed about any topic at all.

Like most (all?) women, I experience street harassment on a regular basis. The stranger who initially approaches me with a reasonable request for directions or the time, but then follows up with a chat-up line and tries to keep a conversation going long after I’ve made it clear that I’m not interested. The stranger who shouts “You’re a dog!” at me as I’m quietly going about my business (as if my only purpose in life is to look sexy for strangers, and if I fail to do that, I have no right to walk on a public street). The stranger who walks very close behind me and whispers “You’re gorgeous and I’m going to fuck you” in my ear. It’s nasty, it’s on occasions extremely frightening, and it’s depressingly indicative of the fact that too many men still view women’s bodies as public property.

And I can understand why some feminists find strangers making any comment on women’s appearance problematic. Women are too often treated as though their looks are the only thing on which they should be valued and perhaps the assumption that female strangers will be pleased if you tell them they’re pretty reinforces that. And women are often brought up to believe they are being “rude” or “nasty” if they don’t reply politely to strangers, no matter whether the comment is welcome or not. Plus, of course, apparently innocent compliments can often be precursors to verbal harassment or sexual assault.

One of the problems is that it seems to me that men in the UK rarely do talk to women they don’t know well unless they’re coming on to them. When I used to live in continental Europe, I was struck by how male colleagues and slight acquaintances would compliment me on my hair and clothes in much the same way as their female counterparts would. There was never any sinister or sleazy subtext – they were just being friendly and polite. Whereas, in England, if a man who’s not a close friend makes remarks about my appearance, it usually does mean he’s trying to chat me up. Or he’s gay. Heterosexual British men do seem remarkably scared of being nice to women they don’t fancy. That’s why I find it so refreshing when a man does approach me to say something nice, obviously with no sexual intent, like the time a middle-aged man stopped me on the street to tell me how lovely my 1940s retro dress was and how I reminded him of his mother.

Another issue is that it’s usually only considered socially acceptable for women to be the recipient of these types of compliment. A woman who tells a male stranger that he looks nice will usually be ignored or treated with bafflement or contempt. If a man tells another man on the street he looks nice, he’ll probably get decked.

As a society, I think we’re already far too buttoned up and insular. In my opinion, we should all talk to complete strangers a lot more, not less. So, as long as they’re polite, avoid physical contact and overtly sexual language and back off if I make it clear their attentions are no longer welcome, I love it when strangers, male or female, comment on what I’m wearing in the street.

But I think we’ll only have true equality when I can go up to a boy half my age and tell him he’s got lovely shoes without being treated like a nymphomaniac or the local nutter.

Thoughts on caring

Tuesday 15th December, 2009 in caring, feminism, Health, Parenting by Melaszka | No comments

When Suzi asked me if I would mind writing a blog about my experience of being a full-time carer for my elderly parents, I thought it would be easy to put my thoughts down on paper. Actually, though, it’s been extremely difficult, not least because I’ve found myself going through several drafts agonising about whether I’ve written too much about me and not enough about my parents.

My anxiety on this point probably stems form the fact that, like many of my sex, I have probably internalised the belief that we women have a special caring gene stamped all the way through our DNA like “Blackpool” through a stick of rock, and that, therefore, if we do not devote every waking moment of every day to others, or dare express any needs of our own, we must be “unnatural”, “cold” and “selfish”.

But we don’t need to internalise this belief, as there are always plenty of people ready to remind us of it. Not long after I first moved down here, I left a post on an internet message board devoted to advice on family problems, asking for tips on how I could build more of a life for myself around my caring duties for my parents, as I was beginning to feel a bit isolated, having moved hundreds of miles from my support network of friends to a more provincial community where there was a lot less going on. I was astonished to receive a response suggesting that I should “get local authority help for them as soon as possible, as it’s not fair that the care of your vulnerable parents should be dependent on someone as incredibly selfish as you.”

Since people like that are going to damn me whatever I write, I therefore make no apologies – this blog entry is focused on my feelings and experiences alone. Not because I don’t think my parents’ feeling are important, but because I’m not them and I can’t speak for them, I can only speak for myself.

One thing which I find very curious and very sad is that, when I tell people that I care full-time for my elderly mother and father, they look at me with sympathy, as if I’ve just announced that I have a terminal disease. It was a voluntary decision – I love my parents, enjoy their company, consider myself very lucky indeed to be spending large swathes of time with them while I still have the chance, and (while I acknowledge that caring for them has meant some very difficult compromises, as well) giving up paid work outside the home to go and live with them has also given me the time and space to do a lot of things I wouldn’t have been able to do while juggling a full-time job – and yet many of the people I meet assume that I feel like the child caught when the music stops at the end of a game of Hot Potato.

This probably stems largely from the societal belief that the only work which matters is paid work outside the home.

As full-time parents, the unemployed and those on incapacity benefit will know all too well, if you can’t answer the question “What do you do?” with something that involves a big salary, then you are all too often viewed as boring, valueless to society, insignificant and possibly congenitally stupid. Carers have little status and few rights in our society – carers’ allowance is derisory and when I do need to re-enter the workforce, probably in my 50s or 60, I’m a bit concerned about how potential employers will view the large “gap” in my CV.

But I’ve found that caring for elderly parents has also really brought home to me the social prejudices that exist about single, childless women. First of all, there was the automatic assumption in my wider family that I, not my married sister, would be the one to care for my parents. While I was more than happy to fulfil this role, it was because I wanted to, not because I thought that it was my rightful duty, and I still resent the assumption that, because I didn’t have a partner or children, there couldn’t possibly be anything at all important in my life that I might mind giving up.

Then there’s the caricature stereotypes that people try to hang on you. While working single women who live alone are often decried as hard-nosed, ambitious bitches, fecklessly ignoring their biological clock in a quest for ball-breaking career dominance and heading for a lonely, unfulfilled old age as their rightful comeuppance, at least people assume they are having some fun in the present. But there’s something about the stereotype of the “woman who stayed at home to look after mother” that has no redeeming features at all. I am presumed to change every night out of my horn-rimmed glasses, hard-wearing tweeds and sensible shoes into my high-necked flannelette nightie, before wistfully dreaming of the man I will never now meet who might have made sense of my life.

I think being a full-time carer for my parents has really brought home to me how narrowly most of society views fulfilment, as being entirely dependent on having a partner, children and/or a high-paid job. And where women are concerned, let’s face it, largely the first two.

People often say to me “Well, obviously, your sister can’t do more for your parents – she’s got her own family to think about.” To which I want to reply “And who, then, are her parents? Strangers?” As a society, we are so locked into the idea of the heterosexual nuclear family as being the only unit that matters, that we are in danger of closing ourselves off to the other relationships and paths that are possible.

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She’s With The Band

Thursday 10th December, 2009 in feminism, gender, Icons, Media, Popular Culture, Uncategorized by Melaszka | No comments

I’m passionate about music and waste away far too much of my time surfing internet music sites and I’m wondering if I’m the only one who regularly seethes at the way that female musicians and fans are often marginalised and humiliated in the fan community?

One expression that’s doing my head in at the moment is “girls’ band”, which seems to be routinely hurled as an insult by male fans of one group at a rival group. The principle seeming to be that if too many girls like a band, that automatically proves that it’s a rubbish band with no credibility, as girls don’t understand music and have no taste.

All too often, on music message boards and forums there appears to be a widespread assumption that if a woman keenly follows a male musician, it can’t possibly be because she understands or appreciates his music, it must be because she fancies him.

This is strange, given that most of the time women get told that only men are visually stimulated and that (if we’re heterosexual) it’s natural for us to choose a partner for his nice personality, not his looks, otherwise we’re “superficial” and “mean”. And yet, when it comes to pop musicians, we apparently become raging balls of hormones who fork out oodles of money for CDs and concert tickets, regardless of the musical content, merely because we can’t resist being swayed by a pretty face. Even if the musician concerned is the wrong side of 50 and looks like Mr Potato Head.

Of course, I’m exaggerating a bit, here. I have also interacted with male music fans on the internet who have been courteous, friendly and genuinely interested in what I and other female fans had to say. But all too often, as elsewhere on the internet, anything posted by a user with an obviously female-sounding user name gets ignored, while exactly the same point made by a male fan a few posts later gets rapturously applauded and fawned over for its wisdom and perceptiveness.

And it’s not just female fans that get patronised or ignored, it’s female artists, too. One male artist I particularly like recently collaborated with a female singer/songwriter. I wasn’t at that point familiar with her work, but I knew she was respected in the industry for her technical proficiency (she was classically trained) and had gained critical acclaim for her debut album, which had been considered daring and innovative. Which of these aspects of her work might have drawn my favourite musician to work with her? Intrigued, I logged onto a fan forum devoted to him, to see what other fans thought.

“Do you think he’s fucking her?” was one of the first suggestions posted by male fans pondering this question, followed by a lengthy discussion of her physical attributes and a debate about whether other male fans would do her, as well, had they the chance. That a male musician might wish to work with a female musician because he was genuinely excited about her work or looked up to her as a songwriter or instrumentalist apparently didn’t even occur to them.

You would think that female artists might at least be safe from sexism from their own fans. You know, fans? People that allegedly like the artist? Alas, no.

While visiting a blog devoted to a little-known, long-deleted female indie singer, I was surprised to see that one male fan had confidently, but completely wrongly, attributed the writing of all three of the artist’s (self-penned) albums to her male accompanist. The most worrying thing is that he seemed a pleasant chappy who was obviously devoted to the artist in question and clearly hadn’t meant it offensively – when corrected on his assumption by another fan, he apologised, explaining “I read somewhere that he played the keyboards on her albums and I was led to the wrong conclusion that he had written her songs”. Well, yes, easy mistake to make, he had a Y chromosome, he was somewhere on the record…a far more “obvious” conclusion, apparently, than that the woman with her name on the front of the sleeve might be capable of a little creative autonomy.

This widespread tendency of fans and journalists to underestimate the creative input of female artists to their own work has been remarked on by many well-known musicians, including Sharleen Spiteri:

“No one ever wants to give the credit. There has to be a man up there pulling the strings.”

and Bjork (thanks to my friend Yoana for pointing this quotation out to me):

“I have had this experience many, many times that the work I do on the computer gets credited to whatever male was in 10 meter radius during the job. People seem to accept that women can sing and play whatever instrument they are seen playing, but they cannot program, arrange, produce, edit or write electronic music.”

Still, if even the god-like genius that is Bjork gets subjected to this kind of crap, perhaps it’s some small comfort to the rest of us, next time our opinions and ideas are belittled because of our gender, to know we’re in such exalted company.

Friends sometimes tell me it’s pointless getting worked up over something so trivial, that there are bigger battles to be fought, that in the scheme of things it doesn’t really matter that much whether my opinion on electropop gets listened to or not. But, for me, this is symptomatic of attitudes elsewhere – just another part of the everyday process whereby women’s experience is marginalised and women’s intellect, expertise and creativity doubted in our so-called “post-feminist”, “gender-neutral” society. And that’s what makes me seethe.

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