On silly atheists and a complete English Literature fail

Yes, it’s that time again. Rant time! Huzzah! What is it now, I hear you ask, what’s she gone and got her knickers in a twist over this time? No, it’s not all the slow people in the street getting in my way (though they still cause me spasms of rage, it’s true)…. Nor is it the man on the MTR the other day who, when the train arrived, decided to walk *around* me, as I was politely queuing and standing near the front of one of the four legitimate ‘channels’ on either side of the train doors, in some ill-advised attempt to get on the train first, during the peak of rush hour, onto a Tsuen Wan line train at Mong Kok, where the only victory he achieved was about a few pathetic centimetres of distance in front of me and the dubious honour of blocking the path of EVERY single one of the horde of about twenty people trying to get off the train so the rest of us – who were politely queuing to the side – could get on. OH no. It’s not about that. (But that was also very annoying.)

I want to rant about something which my good friend Tilda recently ranted about in a Facebook note. I read her note, and it annoyed me. I read it again and it annoyed me even more. In fact, in annoyed me so much that I even had a totally lame waking dream about it the next day, in which I was telling Tilda in person how much reading her note really annoyed me. (See? LAME.)

Here’s the original note for those who are interested:
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150424455985751

For those who can’t read the note or can’t be bothered, it’s about a teacher training workshop Tilda led at a HK secondary school which was about using drama and storytelling to teach English. As part of this session, Tilda gave the teachers an unseen poem, with no introduction or instruction, to discuss and analyse in groups in preparation for a drama exercise. The poem was “Blessing” by Imtiaz Dharker (http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/english/poemscult/blessingrev2.shtml) – those of who you did the AQA English Language GCSE and studied “Poems from Other Cultures” (or “Poems from Different Cultures”, as it is now titled) may be familiar with it.

The poem is a simple one, told in free verse and split into four stanzas, and in it, Dharker narrates an incident where, in the vast, sprawling slum of Dharavi in Mumbai, in the midst of a relentlessly hot and dry summer, a municipal water pipe bursts and brings great joy to the inhabitants.

Like Tilda, I like this poem. I find it moving in its simplicity, and the final image of the “naked children” – standing apart from the “frantic hands” of the others collecting the precious drops of water, and “screaming in the liquid sun, their highlights polished to perfection, flashing light, as the blessing sings over their small bones” – always stuck with me. It simultaneously inspires dual feelings of happiness and sadness – happiness at the unrestrained excitement and joy and innocence of the children, and sadness at the fragility hinted at in the mention of their malnourished, tiny bodies, their “small bones.”

Ultimately though, this is a poem of celebration. Water is portrayed as precious (“suddenly, the sudden rush of fortune” / “silver crashes to the ground”) and a gift. The latter meaning is mainly conveyed through a series of religious images and references – the title “Blessing” and the use of the same word as metaphor in the last stanza; the metaphor of the imagined drop of water as “the voice of a kindly god”; and the description of the crowd of people gathered around the pipe as a “congregation”. Tilda already mentions in her note the fact that no ‘God’ is mentioned – it is perhaps significant that the only appearance of the word ‘god’ has a lowercase ‘g’. This merely suggests that the water is so special that it can be compared to a god – and given its life-giving qualities, that’s hardly surprising.  As for the words “blessing” and “congregation”, which have both secular and religious meanings, these simply reinforce the twin ideas of worship and celebration. The water is a precious gift that brings joy and solace to the people who, previously, had to endure unspeakably harsh conditions where “the skin cracks like a pod”.

I realise I went off on a bit of an English Lit commentary and analysis tangent there, but there’s a reason for that, as you’ll soon see.

Basically, Tilda (and later I) got annoyed at the response of one of the teachers to this poem – the only Native English Teacher at the school, a British man in his 30s from Norwich.

This is what Tilda overheard him say:

“Well it's got religious overtones and talks about 'god' and 'blessings' more than once. As an atheist, I don't think it's right. I don't agree.”

Apparently his tone when speaking these words was very negative and disgruntled.

Wow.

Seriously?

“As an atheist, I don’t think it’s right. I don’t agree.”?

…

What kind of lunacy is this? If somebody wrote that in their GCSE exam when asked to analyse and comment on religious imagery or the significance/portrayal of water in the poem “Blessing”, they would FAIL, I’m pretty sure of it.

I don’t know what annoys me more. Is it the idiotic hypersensitivity of a self-proclaimed atheist who rankles at the slightest mention of anything to do with religion, regardless- no, in spite of the context? What does he do when he overhears someone say “Oh my God!” on the street? Go over to them and say, “Oh, excuse me, your invocation of a superfluous, false deity and your consequent irrational belief in something which has no scientific basis in fact OFFENDS me. As an atheist, I don’t think it’s right. I don’t agree.”?

I bet you he’s not a pet person. Can you imagine? “Yeah I don’t like cats so much. The Egyptians used to worship them as gods, didn’t they? Oh, but I dislike dogs more, though. 'Cos, you know, dog is ‘god’ spelt backwards, and frankly, as an atheist, I don’t think it’s right. I don’t agree.”

I know that’s a bit ‘reductio ad absurdum’, but I am honestly baffled. It’s the sort of completely irrational knee-jerk reaction that I’m sure he, ironically, finds so offensive in so many religious people whom he no doubt looks down upon with sniffy, snooty disapproval and derision.

It also shows a complete failure to appreciate and understand the poem, and therefore, by extension, literature in general. All it does show is his own extremely petty and narrow prejudices – and if that is a reflection of his general attitude in life, I hate to think how that kind of negativity impacts on his English teaching and his students.

I am not religious. I would probably describe myself as an areligious agnostic – I don’t believe in or subscribe to any particular religion, but I also don’t believe that such a thing as God does not exist, because you cannot prove He/She/It does not exist any more conclusively than you can prove that He/She/It does exist. And we’re only human and we have small brains and there is, no doubt, much in this wonderful, magical universe of ours that we cannot even begin to comprehend.

Granted, I do have quite a bit of distrust of organised religion, mostly because of the myriad nincompoops who give religion a bad name by using it to assert control and their perceived superiority over others. And let’s face it, so many world religions just seem to be engaged in a hugely unattractive, thousand-year pissing contest with each other (MY God is the best. MY God is the One True God. YOURS is false and WRONG and pants. I’M going to heaven and YOU are not. BURN IN HELL, INFIDELS!! etc.).

BUT. And this is a big but. The main problem I have with religion is crazy religious people, and the problem I have with them is their craziness, not their religion. Crazy religious people bear all the hallmarks of stupid people. You know the ones I’m talking about. They’re the ones who are arrogant, judgemental, preachy, small-minded, irrational and annoying. The ones who think we should ‘burn the gays’. The ones who prevent or actively sabotage distribution of condoms in countries where AIDS is endemic and killing thousands of people, and where prevention really could be the cure. The so-called family friends who publically decided to boycott my sister’s wedding because they believed it was ‘not legal in the eyes of Allah’ and therefore not real or acceptable. (Oh, Bengali “community”, you do yourself no favours when it comes to making me respect you or listen to you in any way).

And I think this is the crux of why this teacher and his comments really got under my skin. He says he’s an atheist. But he’s also clearly a bit crazy and irrational. And the fact is, small-mindedness and ignorance are ugly wherever they are found. Especially in English teachers. (:P)

Shame on you, French Vogue

Time for another rant, and so soon after the last one! But it won't be as long. And it's not on the riots, either (still too depressed to rant about those).

Basically, has anyone seen this?

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/w_MindBodyResource/10-year-models-grown-high-fashion-high-risk/story?id=14221160

Does it make me a wishy-washy, hand-wringing liberal to express my dismay and borderline disgust at this photo shoot, which appeared in the Tom Ford-edited January issue of French Vogue? I hope not. I have to agree with Chloe Angyal - this isn't 'art' it's just plain creepy. And even if they were just trying to make some sort of edgy, provocative, 'subversive', thought-provoking statement about the sexualisation and fetishization of young girls in the fashion industry, I really don't think sexualising and fetishizing a 10 year old girl is the way to go, no matter how up for it she and her mother seem to be (and by the way, said mother has since defended the shoot, saying, "The only thing that shocks me about the photo is the necklace that she's wearing, which is worth 3 million Euros." Fantastic.). 

Look at the photos. Look at them. Tell me you don't want to pour bleach into your eyes, especially if, like me, your first reaction was something along the lines of "Wow, she's hot! Oh wait, she's TEN?! Shit. Can I just mention that I am not a paedophile?"

Aaaarrrrrgh!

Why can't we have pictures of young girls reading Enid Blyton books and climbing trees and playing badminton in the garden and drinking lemonade in magazines, instead of sultry come-hither stares, parted lips and high heels?? It pains me to think that a photoshoot of this nature might now actually be a shocking, ground-breaking, game-changer. In my opinion, the only vaguely come-hither look a 10 year old should be giving, if any, is to a 99 Flake draped seductively in raspberry sauce on a hot summer day. I feel like how the hobbits must've felt as they traipsed through Middle-Earth through the clouds of smoke and the senseless killings. Is there no GOOD and INNOCENCE left in the world, Mr Frodo?? Must... look at... pictures of Hobbiton.

Ahh, that's better. When Sam was stuck on a rock with Frodo as the world was collapsing into ash and flames all around them, he wasn't thinking of 10 year old Thylane Lena-Rose Blondeau draped seductively on a tiger skin in 6 inch leopard print stilettos, he was thinking of (a significantly older) Rosie Cotton dancing, with ribbons in her hair.

Sometimes I wish I were a Hobbit.

A rant about 'rape'

Earlier today I posted a status update on the Book of Face which was a mini rant about being shoved on the train during my commute to work. It was quite amusing really. This small, Chinese lady dressed all in pink battery-rammed me out of the way with her stupidly large pink handbag, and all because the girls in front of me didn’t move into the carriage fast enough. (Dawdlers are a common source of rage to me in this city, but it’s fun ‘cos I get to mine the comic potential from the rage that festers deep within my soul.) Anyway, a friend then replied saying that being at Admiralty station during rush hour is how they ‘imagine it feels to be gang-raped’.

My response was something along the lines of: o.0

We then exchanged a couple of additional comments where he apologised for going too far and I apologised for my sense of humour fail. No hard feelings, and all was well again. But it got me thinking. This isn’t the first time I’ve felt uncomfortable or even disapproved of a male (and I've found it usually is a male, not a female) using the word ‘rape’ in an unexpected context. You know, like, “I got totally ass-raped at work today”. Mostly though, I’ve noticed, it comes up in relation to gaming. A synonym could perhaps be ‘owned’, or ‘pwned’, or ‘destroyed’.

I guess the main point of this post is to help me unpick just why this bothers me so much. Firstly, ‘rape’ is one of those words which kinda gives me the heebie jeebies. The connotations for me (arising from its actual, primary meaning) are fear, horror, pity, revulsion. So first, what is rape? Without looking up a formal definition, I would probably say that rape is primarily a form of sexualised violence. It happens to both men and women but I don’t think I need to look up any statistics to back up the assumption that it happens mostly to women. It is not only a sexual act but an act of power, of dominance, of subjugation, of humiliation. Besides murder and child abuse, it is also theft of the most invasive, psychologically damaging kind. The rapist takes what he or she wants from their victim, and then leaves. If someone breaks into your house and steals your shit, you might feel sad, angry, shaken up, scared. But eventually you move on. You install some new locks. You grieve the old shit. You possibly buy new shit to replace the old shit. But rape? God forbid, but if it were ever to happen to me, then it might take me a lifetime re-learning how to ever trust another human being again.

There are other forms of horrendous violence and violent acts committed by those with power against those who have little, or none. But we don’t hear those appropriated for the sake of jokey lad banter. People don’t go around saying, “Aw man, did you see that? I got totally gas-chambered.” Or, “Dude, that was the worst exam I’ve ever done, it molested the child out of me.” Or, “Shit man, you fucking KKK’d my black ass.”

And maybe that’s why it pisses me off so much. Because for a guy to use the word ‘rape’ in a stupid, jokey, gaming context, whether that’s in reference to football or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 or whatever (which is a GAME and therefore in the realm of FANTASY and therefore NOT REAL) is like me wandering into Bangladesh during the middle of a famine complaining about how I was totally FOIE-GRAS’ED in First Class on the plane journey on the way there. “Oh God, yeah, the food just kept coming, it was MENTAL. How many courses was it? 4? No, it was 5, or 8 if you include all the littleamuse bouches… and the champagne! There were positively rivers of it, seriously. Oh my GOD I think I need to undo my trousers, I’m not sure I can ever eat again. If someone were to put a gun to my head right now and tell me that if I didn’t eat a plate of steak or roast dinner or my mum’s lamb biriyani or whatever I think I’d just ask them to shoot me.”

What a wanker! :P But yeah, it’s that kind of nonsensical, ridiculous, insensitive, knobby ignorance of privilege – the boys who talk flippantly about ‘being raped’ probably don’t spend a lot of time thinking or worrying about being actually raped in real life, just as both the fictional, obnoxious version, and the real version of me don’t spend a lot of time thinking or worrying about how famine would affect me in real life. I’m privileged enough not to have to worry about it, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t. Real people do suffer from famine. And real people get raped.

These jokey-lad-banter-boys probably don’t wonder whether they should pop that rape alarm their dad gave them in their pocket before they go on a night out in case they need it on the way home, or worry about what randoms might try to approach them or follow them or harass them as they try to walk down the street, wishing that they could disappear into themselves or somehow become invisible. I feel my heart rate rise every time I see an Indian man in the street, or in a shop, or in a bar, because I don’t want to have to deal with their unwanted stares, or whistles, or leery hellos, or feeble attempts to make conversation, or thinly-veiled attempts to connect with ‘another fellow Asian’. Mostly because I can’t be arsed with the annoyance, but a lot because I’ve had so many bad experiences before that it just becomes utterly disheartening and demoralising to have these encounters, however brief, with these men who give you every signal imaginable to indicate that you are merely there, that you exist, purely for their diversion/enjoyment/pleasure, and that whether you actually want their attention or not is completely irrelevant, because you are a woman, and your job is to look pretty and make them happy and do what they want you to do, and you could not possibly have thoughts or feelings or opinions of your own that do not align with that narrow, pathetic world-view. Or if you do, they just don’t give a fuck. You say no, you say you’re not interested, you say you already have a boyfriend, you even say ‘Look, you are making me feel very uncomfortable,’ but the advances still keep coming. Because secretly the answer is yes, they just have to be patient enough for you to say it. Newsflash, morons: the answer is always, and will always be, no. But every time you keep asking you demean me and belittle me and ruin my day/evening/night. So thanks for that.

And for anyone who is thinking at this point (and I genuinely hope no-one reading this does) that I ought to ‘loosen up’ and ‘get a sense of humour’ I’d kindly request you punch yourself in the face so I don’t have to. Go join those Indian men in the corner, I’m sure you’ll get on handsomely (or greasily, rather).

Wow, that became a completely different rant! Or did it…?

Oh dear. I did not intend this to be a man-hating rant. Nor am I pointing fingers at those jokey-bantery-boys… well, I am a bit, but not in a jabby eye-stabby sort of way. I’m sure many of my male friends, who I love and respect, are guilty of questionable rape similes just as much as I and some of my girl friends are guilty of questionable gay similes (e.g. “Twilight is so gay” i.e. lame). I do that. But I guess the point is I/we should know better.

Cher Lloyd - New Single

So Cher Lloyd, the outspoken teen ‘gangsta’ from last year’s X-Factor who pretty much polarised viewer opinion, has finally released her first single under the monolithic and possibly evil “Simco Limited” label. If I said I’d been waiting anxiously with bated breath to see how little Cher would reinvigorate the British teen music scene with her cool rapping and fresh hip hop flava, I’d be lying. I haven’t. And I didn’t have any particularly strong opinions on her during X-Factor either. But here it is:

First impressions? Oh dear. It’s a desperately narcissistic and, frankly, embarrassing offering.

“You can't stop clickin 'bout me, writin' 'bout me, tweeting 'bout me,” she insists, swagerringly, à la Gwen Stefani in “Hollaback Girl” or Fergie in “Fergalicious”, with a smidgen of ‘I really want to be Nicki Minaj’; then later, with supreme self-assurance she further insists, “You can't stop youtubing me, on repeat, running this beat.” Erm… I haven’t even started, luv, let alone stop.

And then there’s the awful sampling of the American western folk ballad “Oh My Darling Clementine.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzCSTMWix3g) Who came up with that gem of an idea?

Another ‘why’ is her hair. She looks like she suddenly decided that her new style icon was going to be Chewbacca. Look! They could practically be style sisters:

And then there’s the title: “Swagger Jagger”. What does that even mean? IT MAKES NO SENSE. It seems that Urban Dictionary have got it right with their definition: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=swagger%20jagger

To conclude, I did not have particularly strong opinions on Ms Lloyd before, but I can’t help but come out there and say, with supreme self-assurance, that I think this single is pants.

Your thoughts?