Blue in blue

What's so special about the bluebird?

This track by Sara Bareilles, this song by Christina Perri (less so), this piece by Stanford (so much more so)....

Just askin'.

It's all about the Gaze

What a difference a context makes; I'm sure that the retailer selling the Big Issue in St. John's Wood, surrounded by expensive cars and clothing boutiques, was no scruffier than any other, but not even in Ascot have I seen someone hawking the Issue who looked so out of place. Either way, last week's cover star Dustin Hoffman certainly caught my attention, with a discussion of his preparation for Tootsie. Being the great Oscar-nominated method actor that he is, naturally he spent some time dressed up as a woman, just, kind of, wondering around. One evening he came home to his wife in tears, devastated to find himself constantly given a quick glance and then ignored by men who didn't find him particularly attractive, and evidently assumed that they wouldn't be interested in the "woman" in front of them for any other reason. He related in the article that his tears were tears of guilt at having been such a man for most of his life, though it's not impossible that the unusual experience of being routinely written off based solely on physical appearance had got to him a little.

[this next bit kind of turned into a bit of a "Male Gaze 101" (sorry), so if you don't want that then skip to the paragraph that begins, "But to the point!"]

Perhaps it's not surprising that it hit Dustin Hoffman so hard; no-one knows really knows what it's like to live as someone from a visibly different demographic until they've done it. There's an argument in feminist theory that many of the ways in which the world is presented, be it in advertising, film, or even my copy of the Big Issue, are shown through the lens of a conventional masculine outlook. For example, the slogan "sex sells" is widely used to explain the presence of overtly sexualised  images of women, which are completely uninteresting (sexually) to straight women, gay men, asexuals, and anyone else who doesn't find the socially conventional beauty model attractive. First outlined in the mid '70s by Laura Mulvey, this "male gaze" has been delightfully subverted recently by a group called The Hawkeye Initiative, whose m.o. is replacing sexualised images of women from the world of comics with pictures of Hawkeye in the same pose, highlighting how ridiculous the compositions are. I may have spent more time than is healthy on that tumblr....

The Avengers, but more fabulous - from Kevin Bolk

Sadly the male gaze is a powerful weapon out here in the real world too, as a way of quickly assessing a woman (or Dustin Hoffman) by her physical appearance. And it's not just men who do it; while I've heard my fair share of conversations between men who have clearly exercised their judgement through their eyes (and undoubtedly done it myself), women do it too. Aimed at strangers on public transport wearing "inappropriate" clothes for someone their shape, or in a professional environment to denigrate an unpopular colleague, the gaze has great power in its all-pervasiveness among both genders in casual conversation. Neither is it exclusively something directed at women, though in my experience that accounts for the overwhelming majority of cases. And it's hard to imagine the producers of the X-files considering not casting David Duchovny's character because the actor wasn't enough of a hunk.

But to the point! I think the male gaze has a counterpart - let's call it the female gaze for now and then explode the gender binary later. The female gaze is by default positive, affirming, a way of bonding with other people. It's when you comment on someone's outfit, the book they're reading, their gift shopping. Ok, so it doesn't have to be a force for good, it can be used to disparage and insult, but crucially it is targeted at something which reflects a decision, something that speaks to who that person has chosen to be, not their genetic quirks. And unlike the male gaze, it leads to discussion instead of division, and can be openly directed at friends. [Or strangers - I once saw a friend in floods of tears briefly pause to admire a stranger's tights; impressive gazing!]

Like the male gaze, it does have a gendered association with it. As a straight man I am often told not to try to join in discussions about the clothes someone is wearing, and have been called an honorary woman (or even "a lesbian in a man's body") when friends have found me not unpleasant to go shopping with. The question is how we could make this "female" gaze more universal, preferably at the expense of the "male" gaze. Maybe superheroes can be portrayed with the labels sticking out of their costumes, so we can admire their choice of fabrics? Or pay for covertly taken photos of celebs listening to Bon Jovi, or reading Jasper Fforde (the scandal!)? I don't know. But I'd like to live in a world where Dustin Hoffman was complimented on his earrings, and where I had first spotted how cheerful the Big Issue seller was keeping rather than judging his poverty.

One quick afterthought - conversations about the burqa's purpose often dwell on how it can alleviate the oppressiveness of the "male" gaze, but doesn't it do the same for the "female" gaze?

Love, Honour, and Dismay

It did not come as a surprise that the Church of England has rejected the government consultation on same-sex marriage. While the Church has always been a wide coalition of opposing viewpoints it is currently dominated centrally by a conservative outlook. And if we're not ready to permit women equality with men then giving any acknowledgement to non-heterosexuals is asking quite a lot. And yet, knowing all of this and thinking myself prepared for it, the Response itself has still given me fresh disappointment. 

In its opening paragraphs the document highlights the importance of, "the possibility of procreation" in marriage, an element which is optional to the marriage service and which places a value on the institution no higher than the fertility and compatibility of a couple's genitals. They go on to wheel out clichéd but nonsensical arguments; I have never had it explained to me in what way other people being married changes the nature of marriage for heterosexual couples, nor why the constant and never-ending shifting definition of words is suddenly to create a seismic event.

However, I was most shocked to discover the document defending its stance by arguing that allowing same sex couples to marry, "deliver[s] no obvious legal gains given the rights conferred by civil partnerships". Of all institutions, the Church should be able to acknowledge that the gulf between marriage and the legal trappings that accompany it is as wide as the difference between death and the handling of your estate. A religious marriage is about presenting your relationship to God and to your family and community (whatever shape the latter takes) and asking for their combined blessing and support in sustaining it. A civil ceremony may attempt, sometimes successfully, to capture some of these elements, but it cannot capture all of them, and for members of the Church the legal similarity of the two is completely irrelevant.

It is only since 2002 that the Church of England has officially sanctioned the re-marriage of divorcees (somewhat ironically given the Church's origins). The mechanisms of marriage available to ordinary people has changed a number of times over the centuries, without radically overhauling what that mechanism symbolised to the couple involved (though that has happened too). But all other things aside, for the Church of England to use the standard secular arguments to defend its position is utterly ridiculous. It completely misses the point of marriage, in a way which the Church of all organisations really ought not to. If it is an issue of theology, then say so. If it is an issue of doctrine, then say so. Don't hide behind weak irrelevancies and thinly-veiled prejudice.

The Church of England's website has a page discussing the background to the Church's position on marriage. On it, Rowan Williams says of same-sex marriage, "issues like stigma and marginalisation have to be addressed at the level of culture rather than law". For once, I could not disagree more. The government, community leaders, and yes especially the Church, have a duty to take the lead on such issues and set the tone for culture to follow. It is what we are called to do as Christians, and are in an unusually strong position to do so as an established Church. This Response is cowardly and embarrassing. And wrong.

Justice once was blind, but now it sees.

The US soldier accused of killing 16 civilians in Afghanistan on Sunday has been flown to Kuwait, "based on legal recommendation" from the Pentagon. The excuse is that the US doesn't have the appropriate detention facilities in Afghanistan, and the US military likes to deal with misdemeanours committed by their personnel. They take care of their own, as Bruce Springsteen might say. Meanwhile it's making Cameron and Obama's (Camama?) confidence in the nascent Afghani justice system seem much lower than they would have us believe, as well as smelling of rank hypocrisy. Not only is the prison camp at Guantamo Bay still open, but both countries have previously insisted on people being tried by the people against whom atrocity has been committed, whether that was Saddam Hussein in 2003 or al Megrahi in 2000, whose trial was held under Scots law at a disused US military base in the Netherlands. Apparently it simply wouldn't have been just to try him in a neutral country (as suggested by, among others, Nelson Mandela).

It perhaps isn't surprising that a country with the unaccountability of the USA, and where the chief legal advisor to the government doesn't think that due process necessarily has to involve a court, doesn't feel a need to play by the rules it sets other people. What's the point of policing the world if there aren't any perks to the job? But isn't one of the key things about justice that it's meant to provide a level playing field? That power should not be allowed to play a part in it? Obviously no justice system is going to be completely free of bias (even if that's merely because people with more money can afford better lawyers), but with fairness being so deeply ingrained in our psyche surely such international bullying should be called to account?

And not just international bullying, for nations do not have a monopoly on injustice. A student of Cambridge University has been suspended for 2 and a half years for an entirely peaceful act of protest. The protest was staged against the government's higher education policy by a large group of people who have all freely admitted to being participants, but who are not sharing in the unprecedented and completely disproportionate punishment. And this punishment, which will completely derail the student's study, has been arbitrated by the University internally, without reference to...well, anything, as far as anyone can make out. The University doesn't like protests, but should know to expect them when it invites contentious people to give lectures; when my faculty was closed for 5 days so that the Premier of China, a country with one of the worst human rights records in the world, could give a prestigious lecture, a student took exception and threw a shoe at him. He was tried in a courtroom, and cleared on all charges (allegations that he was only tried due to pressure from the Chinese government were found to be baseless). He did not have to put his life on hold for years as a direct result of protest.

There is a petition to sign, and a protest to go on, and I highly encourage both. This isn't the first time I've moaned about the inner workings of Cambridge University on this blog, and it may not be the last, but this one takes the biscuit. When Mandela was trying to have al Megrahi tried in South Africa, he said that this was because

no one nation should be complainant, prosecutor and judge

and when trying their marine at home the USA might attempt to use this as a figleaf on their hypocrisy. But Cambridge University in this instance is all three. Other people have written eloquently about the absurdity of a university punishing a student for reading contentious poetry, but I hope someone reminds them what they are taking into their own hands. Ruling the roost in your ivory tower is great until the International Anti-Poaching Foundation catches up with you.

Judging a book by its label.

When I left university and wasn't working as a musician in any capacity at all, I had a slight crisis of self-definition. At uni and since (and now (not right now, I'm typing)) I conducted various different ensembles, and used to tell people that I was a conductor. But in this brief interlude in my life I wasn't conducting anyone, and since it really isn't a solo activity I didn't conduct at all. Could I still refer to myself as a conductor?

The answer mostly came back as yes; although this wasn't a career, that was a useful parallel to draw. An out-of-work estate agent would still call themselves an estate agent. But I had always felt that this label was one which should only be used adjectivally, to refer to people who conducted. (Possibly then, my insistence on being called Maestro by everyone I met during this period was a little over the top.)

My friend R just (ok, a week ago, I think slowly) wrote something about the word sexual, as an opposite to asexual. This is a label to prevent those of us who don't belong to a minority group from being referred to as, offensively, "normal", and so gets added to my exciting list of words which I can use to demonstrate that I am in fact The Man you should be sticking it to. R went on to say that many of eir sexual friends weren't too happy with the new label they had been assigned, and went to great pains to stress that not all sexuals are the same, and that in fact it's a stupid label which isn't necessarily helpful.[1]

Kind of like most labels then, yes? In this great breadth of humanity any label is only going to take you so far, and after it's been around for a while is going to come with too many preconceptions and prejudices to be overly useful. Aware that they were wary of some of the associations which they religion carries, I tried to describe someone as a "liberal Christian" recently, only to be told (by the person in question) that they weren't, and much preferred to be called something else (I can't remember exactly what, but it was three words long and the last one was Christian). This person had felt the need to qualify their label, to label it even, to remove or at least challenge some of the baggage that came with it.

And where does the baggage come from? It comes from people who have adopted or been given the label. R talks about eir difficulty self-defining as a feminist because a teacher at school gave em a view of what that meant, which ey has since rejected. Over at Gingerbread Feminists, Clare the Awesome (whose name has been changed to protect her identity) has written a wonderful post about what feminism is or has the potential to be, giving her use of that label a tighter definition, and attempting to free it of extraneous exclusions or assumptions.

I describe myself as a "feminist ally". Some women have told me that men can't be feminists, but I don't think that they're right. And it's not because I'm worried about picking up the baggage either - I do in fact have quite hairy legs. But sometimes, inevitably, I screw up, and do or say things which are decidedly unfeminist. This is hardly surprising, given that I am The Power we are all fighting, but am I less able to assist the movement just because I do not take ownership of its label? I would certainly much, much rather be less useful than I might be than accidentally sully someone else's battle flag, making the label less usable in the future.

Am I wrong to have this much respect for a word? Should labels be kept for pieces of writing, or objects, or actions, rather than people? Or, like my favourite literature, should I qualify every label I take upon myself every time I use it?

And, while you're here, can anyone give me a gender-neutral replacement for, "one-upmanship"?!

***********************

[1]  Given that a few weeks ago I saw Simon Hoggart of Guardian fame getting in a lather after his first encounter with "cis-gendered" (bless him) maybe this kind of concern isn't unusual.

I spy, with my critical eye, something beginning with fail....

The prompt for me to watch the first episode of the new series of Sherlock was seeing a proliferation of blog posts about it's rewriting of the end of the episode. I managed to avoid reading any of the posts before seeing the episode, so all I noticed at the time (not having read the original) was that the ending was a bit pants, and the lead female character, who had been brilliantly written for throughout, wound up looking pretty pathetic. Which was a shame.

A friend of mine who enjoys Harry Potter (and who also gave the most rousing and convincing defence of the Twilight series I've ever heard, for which they get kudos) told me that they are really disappointed, not only by the fact that outing Dumbledore post-publication appears to imply that non-heterosexual relationships are somehow more "adult" than heterosexual ones, but also by the fact that Ginny Weasley's sole raison d'etre is to marry Harry. Which, in spite of rhyming, is not cool.

Another friend (yes I have more than one) has expressed disappointment in discovering recently that a couple of their favourite authors (namely Lois McMaster Bujold and Jared Diamond) are in their own special ways more than a teensy bit racist. Damn.

I really enjoy Steven Moffat's writing. I really like his dialogue, his pacing, most of his characters. I love what he's done with Doctor Who, and I'm willing to sit through a certain amount of potentially dangerous over-simplification / benevolent sexism to enjoy it. I'm also willing to ignore a certain amount of homophobia from the lead characters in Sherlock because I think their relationship is well-written enough to overcome it (Korea disagrees). But is it enough simply to be aware of these problems? Given that I have very little way of addressing them (apart from getting whiney on The Internet), by continuing to enjoy and consume this material I am tacitly endorsing it, and every time I recommend it to a friend I'm potentially propagating it. Should I be giving a list of caveats every time I tell someone about something I like? Because given what a fan of Lord of the Rings I am that could seriously impact on my free time. (There's a deeper argument I quite like here, which sheds some interesting light on a discussion I had a while ago about the rape scene in the Watchmen film.)

In some ways I feel that it's a mark of quality - the fewer caveats I need on something the better it is. I'm currently avidly consuming Avatar: The Last Airbender (a children's cartoon made for the American mainstream market) because it is remarkably progressive regarding gender, race, ability and so on. The number of caveats required in the first series is roughly one half (it also has a 10-tonne, six-legged, flying bison in it, which may explain much of the rest of its appeal). While that's all very well in contemporary media, it doesn't work for much else. Wagner was anti-semitic but still wrote great music (well, arguably great anyway). Gandhi beat his wife, but surely that doesn't invalidate his approach to protest? And obviously we can't discount Stephen Hawking's contribution to physics because, according to the BBC, he spends most of the day thinking about women, who remain "a complete mystery" apparently (poor dear).

Maybe it's about lowering expectations. Nobody's perfect, and even friends' opinions are bound to disappoint at some point. I guess for the moment I'll just keep playing "spot the fail" and then getting whiney on The Internet.

It isn't. It's just the lift.

I first found out that David Cameron had said that the UK was a Christian country because some non-Christian friends of mine were being angry and insulted. Given that he was arguing that a lack of Christian values was leading to the country's "moral collapse" this is fair enough, and my instinctive reaction (as so often on these occasions) was to feel bad that Christians all to often play the part of the oppressive majority. Though I have to disagree with the one who said that Jesus probably would have wanted to punch David Cameron as much as he did (WWJP wrist-bands anyone?!).

But then I thought about it. Mr. Cameron reckons that it is Christian values which make the UK what it is today, specifically values from the Bible. Of course it's difficult to say which values an entire nation does or doesn't hold, but in a democracy surely we ought to be able to get some sort of idea by looking at how the nation's elected leaders conduct themselves?

Obviously the commandment not to kill runs into problems in a nation which continues to prosecute wars around the world, and a judicial system which still by default asks people to swear an oath on a Bible contravenes all sorts of instructions from the Old Testament, though perhaps I'm nitpicking. And it would be a bit ridiculous to expect a modern capitalist nation to cancel all debts owed to it every seven years, right? But then, continuing to demand repayments of loans (made to Mubarak so that he could buy weapons from us) from the current Egyptian government (which came to power because they didn't like being persecuted through the same weapons) seems a bit rich. And can the message of the opening of Genesis, that the Bible considers humans the keepers of the garden God has built on earth, really have been received by a government which continues to underwrite loans used to promote unenvironmental development? Especially when this contravenes the same government's own promise not to, but lying's another matter.

But then, that's the Old Testament. It's not really Christian anyway. And Jesus isn't big on the whole commandment thing. The Sabbath was created to serve humans, not the other way round, and all that. Except, when telling a group of men who brought a woman to be stoned for adultery,

He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

(John 8:7, from the King James Version, the one Cameron was praising in his statement), I can't help thinking that it must count for a man who used to trash restaurants insisting that rioters receive disproportionately harsh sentences. And that one of Jesus' key commandments, to love our neighbours, as jarring horrendously with approaching the Eurozone in financial trouble as an opportunity to get things we want from them.

Ask 4,000 people what makes a Christian a Christian and you'll get 4,000 answers. Trying to do the same for something as abstract as a country is almost ridiculous, but if David Cameron thinks that the answer to the problems he perceives is to take your values and morals from the Bible, then maybe he should start taking these values to heart in the way he conducts policy.

Because from the way it is governed, this doesn't look like any kind of Christian country to me.


EDIT - I just found this. Wonderful.