Articles by Melaszka

You are currently browsing Melaszka’s articles.

Stranger Danger, People-Pleasing and Neurosis

Tuesday 9th March, 2010 in Accepted Social Situations, Politics, Violence Against Women, feminism by Melaszka | No comments

I recently advertised for a language exchange partner on the internet. You probably know the kind of set-up I mean – they are native speakers of the foreign language I’m trying to learn who live in my town and want to improve their English, and the idea is that we meet up on a regular basis to practise our conversational skills in each other’s language. I soon received a number of replies to my ad, including one from a couple in their 20s who seemed very friendly, lived close to me, and it didn’t take us long to set up a date to meet.

The thing is, I’m well-versed in internet safety etiquette. I know all the rules backwards: don’t give away too much personal information about yourself online, never give out your home address, never take what strangers say about themselves online at face value and, above all, never meet up with someone you’ve met online in real life in a private home. Always set up the first meeting in a public space, like a pub or café. And yet, when my new online pals suggested we have our first meeting at their flat, I immediately agreed, even though the idea made me feel anxious and uncomfortable.

I think one of the reasons I didn’t insist on meeting on neutral ground is that I do tend to be a tad on the neurotic side – I’m the kind of person who goes through a nightly ritual of checking the inside of the wardrobe and under the bed for intruders and regularly exits an Underground carriage the minute a young man carrying a rucksack gets on, just in case he happens to have a bomb in it. It’s a side of myself I’m trying to battle with, so I didn’t want to indulge my paranoia here.

And maybe I was being overcautious – after all, while my love life is solidly vanilla, my more sexually adventurous friends seem to spend half their time in the bedrooms of people they’ve only just met and no-one’s taken an axe to them yet.

But deep down, I suspect that the real reasons I completely ignored the ground rules I’d decided to set were because:

(a) like – I’m guessing – a lot of women, I have a horror of seeming rude, of putting people to any inconvenience. They preferred to meet at their home – who was I to say different?

(b) I am also reluctant to be viewed as the local nutter. I know through personal experience that women who insist on taking taxis short distances at night instead of walking, refuse to open the door to strangers or demand to see IDs from tradesmen, tend to get treated like they have acute psychiatric problems, even those are all things which we are officially advised to do.

On my way over to my language partners’ place, my anxiety grew. As I walked the couple of miles to their address, I mentally replayed what I knew about this couple and all sorts of innocent things they’d mentioned in their e-mails suddenly seemed to take on a sinister significance. They’d seemed very eager – suspiciously eager? – to set up a meeting as soon as possible. They’d made a big deal about the fact that they were a couple and had attached a photo, but that’s exactly the kind of thing a solitary rapist or people-trafficker would say to try and put his potential victim at ease and the photo could have been of anybody – any idiot with a search engine could find a picture of A Random Couple and pass it off as himself and his non-existent wife. After my first e-mail, they’d Googled me and found my Facebook page, which hadn’t seemed odd at the time, but now started to appear macabrely stalkerish. And, come to think of it, all their e-mails had been in English, so I had no proof that they even spoke a word of the language which they claimed was their native tongue. Before long, I could hear Kirsty Young’s voice in my head, appealing to the public to help solve my murder on Crimewatch.

Well, I eventually reached their block of flats and, as you’ve probably gathered from the fact that I’m here writing this blog, they weren’t axe murderers: fortunately, they were exactly who they said they were. They were, in fact, utterly charming, I spent a highly enjoyable couple of hours with them and I’m hopeful that the language exchange partnership will go swimmingly.

But this experience has, yet again, underlined for me how, despite talking the feminist talk and knowing the theory, in actuality I’m incredibly easily swayed by media crime scaremongering, yet equally easily convinced that, as a woman, my right to set boundaries which make feel safe and comfortable is negligible and that I am obliged at all times and in all places to accommodate others.

I wonder how many other women feel continually torn between two totally unreasonable and utterly conflicting societal dictats – on the one hand, we’re taught to be people-pleasers who shouldn’t inconvenience others with “selfish”, “neurotic”, “rude” demands, on the other we’re bombarded with victim-blaming propaganda that suggests that if we fail to observe a 24-hour curfew and apply for a full CRB check on anyone we speak to, should something untoward happen to us, it is somehow entirely our fault.

I’ve ad enough

Tuesday 9th March, 2010 in Accepted Social Situations, Media by Melaszka | No comments

As an avid Spotify user, I am currently being subjected to the Dell Mini 10 Notebook advert several times a day and with every listen I am increasingly awestruck by how many crass stereotypes they manage to conflate into one short audio ad.

For those of you fortunate enough not to have heard it, it’s promoting a new mini-computer (I think) which comes in a range of pretty colours. And that’s the main angle they’re putting on it – the colour choice. So far, so inoffensive. Doesn’t seem much of a USP for a piece of technical kit, but that’s up to them. To demonstrate the different colours, they play the same song in various styles. Black is a male singer fronting a metal band. Blue is a laidback, male blues singer. Pink is…and I’m sure you guessed this… synthetic-sounding girl-fronted bubble-gum pop.

To give them their credit, it is a resourceful attempt to solve the difficult problem of how to convey colours in an audio ad.

BUT, they’ve confronted us with a whole ganglion of simplistic equations. Pink = female = in the minority = cheesy bubblegum pop = fluffy = not serious…

Maybe I read too much into this. After all, it’s just one tiny drop in the ocean of patronising gender stereotypes that constitutes modern advertising. And, in any case, I almost prefer totally blatantly sexist ads to the kind of faux feminism of adverts like that one they had on before Christmas (I completely forget what was being advertised, but I’ve a feeling it could have been a supermarket? or perhaps a stock cube?), where the man was left flummoxed, faced with the arduous task of serving dinner to his children one evening, while his partner went out to a party/evening class/some other social event, calling “You’re babysitting!” with a cheeky wink as she sashayed out of the front door. Fortunately, help was at hand, as here’s one she had prepared earlier – said partner had put a shepherd’s pie/casserole/whatsoever in the oven before she went. But the hapless chap’s troubles with assertive women aren’t over, as, when he tries to pass the dinner off as the work of his own fair hands, his primary-age daughter rolls her eyes and looks at him patronisingly. “Wow!” We’re obviously supposed to think. “Girl power! Feisty mother and kick-ass daughter shoved it to him good and proper!”

Except, hang on a minute…since when has LOOKING AFTER YOUR OWN CHILDREN constituted “babysitting”? The advert seems to posit as some kind of glorious, amusing victory for womankind the fact that they can cajole/manipulate/order their menfolk into taking on domestic responsibilities once in every blue moon. And once again, in an apparent compliment to women’s capabilities, male uselessness at domestic tasks is constructed as a basic fact of biology – flattering women into believing that unpaid domestic work will inevitably always be their job, because they possess a shepherd’s pie gene which men sadly lack.

Still, for me, the nadir of bone-headed advertising has to be the Christmas 2008 campaign for an allegedly low-calorie (=small) chocolate bar under the charming tagline “Goodwill to all women”. Right, Because ALL women are always permanently on a diet and NO men ever are? And ALL women adore chocolate? Tossers.

Sex, Lies and Misogyny

Monday 11th January, 2010 in Uncategorized by Melaszka | No comments

I feel a bit like I’m stating the bleeding obvious here, but I think there are some quite misogynist elements about the way that the recent controversy surrounding Iris Robinson has been reported in the media.

Obviously, there are legitimate legal and political questions to be raised about Ms Robinson’s conduct in failing to disclose her financial dealings in the Members’ Register of Interests. Coverage of this aspect of the case is clearly in the public interest.

Many liberals will also feel that a hardline Christian fundamentalist, who has in the past issued the most intrusive and offensive attacks on other people’s sexuality, deserves to be publicly pilloried for having an extra-marital relationship, because she has broken the rules by which she has herself harshly judged others. I happen to disagree with this view – to misquote a phrase from an Ian McEwan novel, if it’s OK to have an extra-marital relationship, it’s OK for a homophobe to have an extra-marital relationship. What’s not OK is to be a homophobe – but I can understand the reasoning behind the alternate view.

But what flabbergasts me is that, to read many of the media reports on the subject, you’d think that the most morally questionable thing about Robinson’s conduct was the age of her lover. The words “her lover” rarely appear in reports on the case without being separated by “teenage” or “toyboy”, as if that were the most salient point about the controversy.

The media usually accepts men dating women decades their junior as natural and normal. These men are often depicted as objects of envy. Where they are viewed more critically, it is often in the “There’s no fool like an old fool” tradition, with the man viewed as a vain and credulous sap and the female lover cast in the role of manipulative golddigger.

Yet when a woman dates a much younger man, she is frequently accused of something morally reprehensible. The Daily Mail’s headline when artist and film-maker Sam Taylor-Wood began dating a 19-year-old actor was “A bit late for the school run, Sam?” Now that she has announced that she is pregnant by said 19-year-old, the tabloids and celebrity blogs are full of implications that she has done something weird and twisted, or that she has trapped a barely pubescent child into life-changing adult responsibilities for which he is patently not ready (despite the fact that the man concerned is a sentient adult who appears delighted with their joint decision to start a family).  And yet when Ms Taylor-Wood’s former husband recently dated a celebrity 22 years his junior (almost identical to the age gap between Taylor-Wood and Aaron Johnson), there was barely an eye batted in the media.  And when middle-aged male celebrities impregnate teenagers, there is rarely any moral indignation. There is certainly no sense that he has “stolen her youth”, although having a child is likely to have a far heavier impact on the woman’s life than on the man’s.

Admittedly, in cases of real child abuse, the double standard often operates in the opposite direction, with abuse committed by a woman portrayed in the media in a trivial, salacious way, as either comic or erotic or both, as long as the children involved are over the age of about eleven. But, nonetheless, sexual stories about women are treated very differently in the media from those about men.

The other thing which concerns me about the Robinson media coverage is the way that Iris Robinson’s behaviour is perceived to reflect on her husband. Again, I accept that the question of whether he knew about her financial dealings and failed to report them is salient (although I do find the assumption that a husband must have total knowledge of his wife’s business affairs somewhat archaic). But I am deeply disturbed by implications from some commentators that he should have had better control over his wife’s behaviour (as if she were some kind of unruly pet, rather than a autonomous human being with the right to make decisions on her own) or that her sexuality is some kind of conduit for the family honour and that he is thus somehow “tainted” by her having had an affair.

This puts me in mind of the Sachsgate controversy last year, when neither Russell Brand’s critics nor his supporters seemed to question that, by publicly bragging about having had sex with Sachs’s granddaughter, he was insulting and humiliating Sachs (rather than breaching the trust and privacy of the young woman concerned). One side seemed to think that Brand’s behaviour was vulgar and wrong, the other found it justifiable because it was “edgy” and amusing, but neither seemed to take issue with the basic premise that it was all about Sachs. Both sides seemed to take it for granted that Georgina Baillie had no importance as an autonomous human being – merely as some kind of Sachs family property, whose sexuality could be used to shame her menfolk.

Remind me what century we’re in again…

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 Health, Parenting, caring, feminism 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.

She’s With The Band

Thursday 10th December, 2009 in Icons, Media, Popular Culture, Uncategorized, feminism, gender 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.