Tuesday, July 24, 2007

'She was created to be the toy of man, his rattle'

We live in a world full of division. The rich are divided from the poor. The Black are divided from the White. The Christians are divided from the Muslims and the theists are divided from the athiests.

It has been a good few decades now since the women's liberation movement was in full swing and yet, without doubt, women are still divided from men. Women still earn less than men. Women still do most of the housework. Women are still expected to do most of the child rearing. Women are still socially excluded from men's activities. I don't think that the feminist movement is dead yet and I believe it still has some way to go in both the developed and less developed worlds.

In Europe "Women still earn 15% less than men on average, compared with 17% in 1995, despite being better educated"1. Europe could be said to be the most socially liberal area of the world and yet in six European countries (including Brtiain) women still earn 20% less than men. The problem of women lacking education has been well and truly adressed (60% of university graduates in Europe are women) but a glass celing seems to have lingered in our male dominated societies. In Europe only 19.6%2 of parliamentarians are women. A lot has been done since Germain Greer wrote the Female Eunuch and Betty Friedan wrote the Feminine Mystique but many of the problems they discussed still stain our society today. It is a myth that feminism has done all it can in the developed world. I believe that men and women in Europe and the rest of the developed world need to stand together to demand equal rights for women but that is not all.
Germaine Greer talked of the social condition inflicted upon young women and girls from an early age, she talked about the sexual submission of women, she talked about the lack of freedom allowed to women and yet we see the same problems today.
Girls are still told that they must look beautiful to be accepted. Mums still fuss over their daughters appearance more than their sons, they still overprotect their daughters and don't allow them from having the same ambitions as their male counterparts. A promiscuous male is still admired by his peers but his female counterpart is still rejected, called a slag and often left friendless. Girls still suffer accutely from eating disorders3, weight related depression and are constantly being bombarded with ways to improve themselves or, more accurately, how they look to others. Why is it that women (and more and more men) pay thousands to have their bodies changed surgically?

From a personal perspective: I have never met a girl who doesn't worry about her weight. It scares me how often girls think about how they look rather than who they are and it scares me more that men (including, though i hate to admit it, myself) still often judge a girl on their looks first and everything else after. Men are bombarded with the message that a 'fit', 'buff' or 'hot' girlfriend is better than a clever, funny or sporty one.


"Girls are constantly exposed to images of very thin women, a body shape that is not normal or healthy, and strive to obtain this shape, which in most cases is not attainable." Dr Jones. University of Toronto.
In the developed world we face the same problems that Germain Greer faced. It is not that women don't have the rights, in general they do. It is the aftermath of centuries of patriarchical oppression that still needs to be revised. Women have the power and possibility to make the 'final leap' to equality and men must also play their part. The country I live in is not right until women truly enjoy the same privileges as men, until pay is fair and until all women (and men) can be loved and love themselves for who they are and not what they look like.
I wish I knew exactly what to do, but I don't. Maybe my best chance is to have kids. ha!
The world at large is far behind the West in terms of female emancipation and I think it is time that 'Women of the world Unite' and stand up to patriarchy, to female circumsision, to the death penalty for adultory and to the compulsory wearing of Hijab. No one anywhere should have laws dictating the type of clothes they should wear. The world should not rest until those 80% of female prisoners in Pakistan,who have been convicted of 'Fornication',4are released. Women all over the world and men next to them must say 'NO' to unjust laws and patriarchical society.

I would like to leave you with a final piece of infomation, provided by the United Nations:

'In the world as a whole, women compromise 51% of the population, do 66% of the work, recieve 10% of the income and own less than 1% of the property'

1)http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6904434.stm


3) http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/e/eating_disorders/stats-country.htm

4) The Economist, May 19th 2007.

Monday, July 09, 2007

The Daily Mail- Insightful as always

Glanced at this by chance on the net. Reckon the Author might be a bit of a cock but it's nice to hear a differing opinion once in a while...I think.

"Women thought the last victory of equality was to make men more 'sensitive'. The bitter irony, says this male writer in a piece that will infuriate the opposite sex (including his wife Liz Jones), is women don't like wimps after all...
At a dinner party recently, I encountered the depressingly familiar sight of a dynamic thirty- something woman accompanied by a nerdy male sidekick that she'd browbeaten into proposing to her.
The mismatch in power was obvious. She was successful, ambitious and confident; he was a diffident, overweight, shrinking violet who measured every word he spoke in case he said anything remotely contentious that might offend her.
On her wedding finger was the most enormous, glittering engagement ring. A mutual friend later told me she'd initially been presented with a less garish but more exquisite diamond but had told her fiancÈ to return it to the shop and get her something bigger.
That huge diamond was his declaration of surrender in the sex war. But I didn't feel sorry for the stupid sap; he should have been man enough to tell her to get lost and find some other dummy.
Instead, he'd been sucker-punched into a lifetime of nagging and neglect, and looking at his bossy wife-to-be parading her huge rock, I felt a shiver of pre-emptive schadenfreude.
Her smug smile might have given the impression that her glossy-magazine-inspired life was all going to plan, but I could see the tragedy to come.
One day she'll realise how dull and unfulfilling it is to have a man who doesn't answer back, who offers no challenge or danger - but by then she'll be over the hill and stuck with him for fear of being left on the shelf. Sadly, this is the state of many marriages today.
Back in the Nineties, emboldened by the successes of feminism, women sought to slay the dragon of patriarchy by turning men into ridiculous cissies who would cry with them through chick-flicks and then cook up a decent lasagne.
Suddenly, women wanted to drive home their newfound equality by moulding men to be more like them.
This velvet revolution was reflected in a series of broader cultural changes. After decades of uncompromising movie heroes like Marlon Brando and Clint Eastwood, we were asked to fall for stuttering, floppy-haired fops like Hugh Grant; touchy-feely and hopelessly embarrassed around women.
No doubt at the time, millions of misguided single women thought that having a man who could feel their pain and emote for Britain was a Good Thing.
Now, over a decade later, women are waking up to the fact that these men are drippy, sexless bores. The feminisation of men hasn't produced the well-rounded uber-males women were hoping for.
Instead, women are now lumped with flabby invertebrates, little more than doormats, whom they secretly despise but are too proud to admit it.
Rather than partnership, professional women tend to seek dominance in a relationship. They map their lives out early on and pursue their dream of 'having it all' with cold-blooded ruthlessness.
Young women have a crystal-clear agenda: they want the career, the wardrobe, the smartly furnished house, the 4x4 and the cute kids they'll ferry in it to expensive schools. No man is going to get in their way; and the men they choose for themselves are pliant and feeble enough to facilitate that programme.
Concentrating so much energy on work and family matters requires these women to pick a man who is predictable and secure, who won't upset the apple cart by pursuing dreams and instincts of his own.
These are cardboard cut-out men who gush with empathy whenever their wives and girlfriends need to dump their professional stresses and female angst on them: weak and soulless men who haven't the guts to make a mark themselves, who take the passenger seat in their women's juggernaut journey to post-feminist Nirvana.
But having ticked off the various items on their life checklist, women are left with a nagging sense of dissatisfaction. Where was the drama? Where was the passion? Where was the stimulation and growth?
It was all forsaken for an anodyne, materialistic shopping spree that is a Good Thing. ultimately a poor substitute for a real life. These women consider themselves to be alpha-females, but they are nothing but a pathetic sham.
A true Amazon couldn't stand the company of a supplicant male, let alone marry one. Real alpha-women are the ones who can more than hold their own with an alpha-man.
Deep down, women love men who stand up to them, who won't be pushed around. They love men who will look them in the eye and tell them to shut up when their hormonal bickering has become too much.(course they do mate, afterall they can't work things out themselves-ahhhh)
They love men who will draw a line in the sand and walk out on them when they've had enough. They love men who know their own minds and are man enough to stick to their guns.
I'm always telling my wife, the writer Liz Jones, to shut up. She gets into a prissy huff about it, but I know she respects me for not indulging her neuroticism. Long ago, I realised it is unhealthy for a man to embroil himself in arguments with women.
While men want an argument to make sense and have a rational conclusion, women solely want the argument itself: it's a pressure valve for their emotions, and once they get started there is no stopping them.
I have a very low boredom threshold; I can't bear having protracted discussions about where my wife and I 'are going'. Nor can I bear to listen to the gossipy, highly detailed 'He said, she said' monologues that women drift into when telling you about their day.
I deal with these elements of the female personality with impassive indifference. People might call me a sexist pig, but I am the opposite. I love women, and I love my wife because she is brilliant and incredibly strong.
I am a true feminist, because I only want to be with a powerful and capable woman. No sexist could cope with having a wife as intelligent and independent as mine.
Our relationship would never have worked had I been an effete New Man, desperately wanting to sympathise with the female condition.
My wife would have grown to loathe me for my fawning cowardice. She is a warrior and she needs to be with someone who is a match for her. Knowing the limits of what I will deal with in a relationship, I maintain my self-respect and, accordingly, gain hers.
Men are now generally terrified of women. They hold their tongues for fear of being misinterpreted as sexist; they constantly attempt to secondguess their partner in order to avoid giving offence.
They preen themselves with groaning shelves full of beauty products so they won't incur derision and scorn. They suppress their masculinity and present themselves as cuddly Mr Nice Guys, and won't project self- confidence in case it's regarded as unreconstructed machismo.
This backfiring feminist conspiracy has, of course, developed hand in hand with the march of raging political correctness in Britain. The two have combined like some potent chemical reaction to explode in the faces of a generation of women who thought that a 'moulded' man would make for a desirable one.
In recent years, men have been trained like circus seals to be inoffensive to women, and no longer know how to entice them and turn them on.
But women secretly long for a man with swagger, who is cocky and selfassured and has the cheek to stand up them and make fun of their feminine foibles.
They long for the rakish charm of a man who knows there's a whole ocean of fish out there, who isn't afraid of being himself in case he is rejected.
The truth is, a real man doesn't care what any woman thinks of him. He doesn't care what anyone thinks of him: he answers solely to his spirit.
Real men don't pretend or even try to understand women. They simply love them for being the mysterious, capricious creatures that they are. And they don't take them too seriously, either. They know the vicissitudes of the female mind, its constant insecurities and the fluctuations in mood.
Rather than pander to them, they simply watch them drift by like so many clouds on the horizon. They don't get entangled in a woman's feelings and listen to her prattling on and on until she's talked herself out. Such strong and stoic men are exactly what women need to anchor themselves amid the chaos of their emotions.
Sometimes my wife bemoans my detachment and laissez-faire attitude to our marriage and wishes I were more wrapped up in her. I tell her she would soon get bored of it, because men who put women on a pedestal can't make love to them in the way that women want.
A man who is too in awe of his woman isn't going to tear her blouse open and ravish her on the couch; he isn't going to pull her hair and whisper profanities in her ear. Whenever my marriage is at a crisis point, and my wife's ego and mine are jostling for a position of supremacy, we inevitably have strenuous, battling sex.(Painful?)
My wife is older and more successful than I am, but the bedroom has always been the arena in which I have brought her down to earth.
The female orgasm is the natural mechanism by which men assert dominion over women: a man who appreciates this can negotiate whatever difficulties arise in his relationships with them.
Last Christmas, my wife threw me out after discovering I'd been cheating on her. On the night we got back together, I made strong, passionate love to her. Unfaithful as I'd been, I was not going to let her have me over a barrel for the rest of our marriage. I needed to keep a sense of self and not allow her to mire me in guilt and a desperate quest of forgiveness.
I needed to let her know what she would be missing if we broke up for ever. I gave her a manful bravura performance that night, and at the height of her passion, I asked her: 'Who's the boss?'
The question threw her. Initially she wouldn't give me a reply, but I enticed it from her. 'You are,' she finally gasped. 'You are!' I am a very difficult man to be with. (yes it sounds like it-this is my least favourite bit) I know I have caused my wife great pain and anxiety. But she is an adult, and ultimately it is wholly her choice whether she wants to be with me or not - I cannot be anyone other than myself.
I don't believe in working on relationships and making artificial efforts to give them substance. I believe in people being themselves and following their hearts towards whatever destiny lies before them.
When women choose to be with New Men, they are choosing a life that will be only half-lived. I think a lot of them are finally waking up to that fact. Relationships between independent and assertive people will always be fraught with tensions, but they have enormous creative energy.
Despite the many problems my wife and I have endured, we have both come a long way since we first met six years ago.
We have challenged one another to grow - professionally, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. This would never have happened had she flaked out and gone for a softer option in her choice of partner.
Bring back the real men, girls. You might just remember why you loved them in the first place."

A Message for you...

It's Madness:
I never thought I'd miss you
Half as much as I do
And I never thought I'd feel this way
The way I feelAbout you
As soon as I wake upEvery night, every day
I know that it's you I needTo take the blues away
How can it be that we can
Say so much without words?
Bless you and bless me
Bless the beesAnd the birds
I've got to be near youEvery night, every day
I couldn't be happyAny other way
As soon as I wake upEvery night, every day
I know that it's you I needTo take the blues away
It must be love, love, love
It must be love, love, love
Nothing more, nothing less
Love is the best

Sunday, July 01, 2007

Vegetarianism and me

Vegetarianism

Vegetarian: a person who does not eat or does not believe in eating meat, fish, fowl, or, in some cases, any food derived from animals, as eggs or cheese, but subsists on vegetables, fruits, nuts, grain, etc. (Dictionary.com)

I am a vegetarian. Well to some extent. I don't eat meat or fish but I do eggs and dairy both of which I am slowly trying to faze out of my diet.

It might be the question I am asked most. Why are you vegetarian?
Maybe it is because I just like to be different?
Maybe it is because I just love cute little fluffy animals? Like Cod?
Or maybe there are many reasons to be vegetarian and I just couldn't resist:

Let's clear something up straight away. Being a vegetarian is easy, especially in Britain. It is rare to be in a position, out or in, where there is nothing to eat without meat in it. Nearly all restaurants- even steak houses and kebab shops provide something for the 5% (over 3million)1 of Britons who choose not to eat meat. Supermarkets and even local grocers stock wide varieties of meat substitutes and alternatives. It is true that, being a vegetarian, you won't have the same texture and taste as meat provides but you will have plenty of other choices.

Another myth that must be disparaged is that being a vegetarian is unhealthy. It truly doesn’t have to be. Meat eaters often announce that vegetarians do not have enough Protein or Vitamins but, with a bit of care, vegetarians and Vegans can have a perfectly healthy diet.

‘Vegetarian diets typically have sufficient protein intake as long as a variety of plants sources are available and consumed -- it is rare for vegetarians in developed countries to have insufficient protein intake' 2

Vegans in particular have to watch carefully what they eat. A deficiency of vitamin B12 is common although this very rarely manfiests itself into a noticeable health problem. As Vegetarianism becomes more mainstream we are learning more and more about how and what to eat in order to have a blanced diet. Being a vegetarian can actually help you live long by as much as ‘an extra 1-1/2 to 2 years'3. The American Dietetic Association states that vegetarians have “lower rates of death from ischemic heart disease; … lower blood cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and lower rates of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and prostate and colon cancer”
With care vegetarianism and even veganism is a healthy way of life.

‘We feed more than 70 percent of the grains and cereals we grow to farmed animals, and almost all of those calories go into simply keeping the animals alive, not making them grow. Only a small fraction of the calories consumed by farmed animals are actually converted into the meat that people eat.'4 The meat production industry is inneficient and environmentally damaging and in a world where it is our duty to try and live a sustainable lifestyle vegetarianism is a good place to start.
‘Animal agriculture is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases — responsible for 18% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalents... By comparison, all transportation emits 13.5% of the CO2.'5 Climate change, caused in a big way by a rise in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, is one of the biggest challenges ever to face humankind and by being vegetarian we can all do our bit in the fight to save the planet. This is the reason I am a vegetarian, above all others.

‘Nearly half of the water and 80 percent of the agricultural land in the United States are used to raise animals for food'6

Let us not forget animal cruelty. Humans have an amazing thing; the abilty to be rational and to think for themselve. We have the abilty to think ‘I CAN live without hurting another creature so I WILL live without hurting another creauture.’ Those who say vegetarianism is not natural must also believe that are ability to rationalize and be humans is unnatural. I do not believe this.

‘The green pastures and idyllic barnyard scenes of years past are now distant memories. On today's factory farms, animals are crammed by the thousands into filthy windowless sheds, wire cages, gestation crates, and other confinement systems. These animals will never raise their families, root in the soil, build nests, or do anything that is natural to them. They won't even feel the sun on their backs or breathe fresh air until the day they are loaded onto trucks bound for slaughter.'7

Meat and Egg production are a cruel business. No matter how humanely an animal is killed we must not dismiss the fact that they have been locked up for their whole life, often in small cages and fed drugs so they grow to our specifications. To me, this is not natural. If we are to eat eggs, as I do, they must be free range by law, simple as that. Write to your MP and ask them.

The reasons for being a vegetarian are clear for all to see (and there are more). I urge everyone to at least try it. For one day a week, for a week or a month and see how you do and what you can cook. Get a free recipe of the net (see below) and just give it a shot. You’ll feel better afterwards.

1) http://www.vegsoc.org/members/history/150hist.html
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism
3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism
4) http://goveg.com/environment.asp
5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism
6) http://goveg.com/environment.asp
7) http://goveg.com/factoryfarming.asp

Vegetarian websites:
http://www.goveg.com/
http://www.vegsoc.org/
http://www.vegcooking.com/