Late For The Zeitgeist

Debunking the porn myths and jerkin’ off with the boys.

2011-07-16T03:16:00.000-07:00

Why do dykes watch fag porn? Well, for the same reason as anyone watches any kind of porn: to get off! Despite the fact that porn can have narrative, characters and a soundtrack - and occasionally make the bill at queer film festivals - for the most part, porn is porn, not cinema. Porn films have a purpose, and it’s not intellectual stimulation. They can, of course, be watched with friends, on a big screen, and even with popcorn if that’s what you’re into, but generally watching porn is a solo pursuit, consumed at home on laptops after a one-handed google search.

Personally, I’m an equal opportunities, pansexual wanker, who enjoys watching men, women and everyone in-between fucking in various combinations. I’ve given queer porn a go, and though intellectually I’m totally on board with the radical politics of Crash Pad, No Fauxx and the like, queer porn is fun from time to time but it’s not really what I’m into. It’s hot, sweaty man-on-man action that gets me off. And I’m not the only one. Plenty of dykes share my predilection, and no-one I’ve spoken to can give me a definitive reason - our scopophilic urges are as enigmatic as the rest of human sexuality. That this phenomenon seems so counter-intuitive, even to those who are part of it, makes it all the more fascinating.

My own fag porn habit started a few years ago when - and here’s the shameful part - I was still a confused sort-of-liberal feminist. Though I would always have described myself as pro-sex, I still couldn’t work out how to square porn with my politics. I had internalized the assumptions made by anti-porn feminists and the sexually conservative media alike, but my own desires ran counter to these narrow and prescriptive ideas. I was forced to question ideas that have become a worrying kind of common sense in the mainstream feminist movement. Though I’m not suggesting that logging on to PornTube should be a new consciousness-raising strategy or that dykes watching fag porn is going to start the revolution, it’s certainly a pleasurable paradox and contravenes much of the received wisdom about pornography.

Here are a few of the ways that jerkin’ off with the boys might throw expose the flawed logic of the anti-porn brigade.

Myth 1: Women don’t watch porn - they’re just not turned on by visuals.

This is sort of a no brainer, so I won’t dwell, but despite the obviously ridiculous nature of this assumption, most discussions about watching porn are exclusively about male viewers. A surprising number of people still harbor the illusion that if women have sexual imaginations at all, they must be triggered by narrative, characters, satin sheets and cuddling. Fag porn is usually pretty short on plot, but big on action. The best scene in lesbian Hollywood film The Kids Are Alright addressed precisely this point. A teenage boy has the unfortunate experience of finding his lesbian mums’ stash of fag porn dvds. Though the scene is cut short before it can fully explore its comedic or sociological potential, Julianne Moore’s character begins to suggest that it’s precisely the visual dimension that draws dykes to fag porn, with the raging hard-ons an incontrovertible sign of arousal.

Besides which, even almost four decades after Laura Mulvey’s groundbreaking (though obviously flawed) essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, there’s still something exciting about centring the female gaze, particularly when it’s aimed squarely and full of lust at precisely what is not intended for its pleasure.

Myth 2: Porn is instructive.

Anti-sex feminists and their right-wing bedfellows seem convinced that the violence and misogyny found in the most heinous of mainstream porn is more than a reflection of the weirdest and worst of human desire, but is actually the source of those desires. Fag porn is by no means short of fucked up representations, with racist stereotypes in particular being just as ubiquitous as in straight porn, but the sex itself, at least within mainstream fag porn, is much less frequently based on the appearance of non-consent.

I’m not suggesting that there’s never a relationship between what we people see in porn and how they want to fuck, but the relationship between fantasy, representation and what people actually do in bed is a complicated one that can’t be boiled down to simple cause and effect. Dykes watching sex acts that are pretty different (or at least involve different genitals) to the kind they partake in, makes the idea that porn is instructive seem pretty simplistic.

Myth 3: Porn is identificatory.

Anti-porn feminists seem to take it for granted that when people watch porn they imagine themselves within the scene, usually as one of the actors. It’s easy enough to assimilate straight men watching girl-on-girl porn into this theory, as often some dude rocks up and sprays cum all over the two (or three, or four...) women. Even when there’s no man in the frame, the camera is quite explicitly constructed as a stand in for a particular kind of viewer, whose gaze is elicited by the tongue-waggling, head-thrown-back-in-ecstasy fauxbians who look at the camera far more than at each other.

Fag porn usually circumvents this creepy convention, though if that’s what gets you off, I’m sure you can find it!. The men look at each other and often do so with a pretty convincing sense of lust. And as they’re looking at each other, the viewer is free to be a hidden voyeur, with fewer tricks used to direct, shape or gender her gaze.

Human sexuality is a mindfuck, full of kinks and contradictions that we can intellectualise but can never iron out. For me, dykes watching fag porn is one such delightful quirk, forcing us to remember that, try as we may, our desires won’t easily be categorised or contained. Instead we need to build a framework for sexual politics that’s queer, feminist and flexible enough to embrace the unexpected.

This post is also in Dissocia Zine.

You heard it here first, folks.

2011-06-24T07:56:00.000-07:00

In publishing, as in most parts of the entertainment industry, no one underestimates the importance of building internal excitement about a new book. As such, I've learnt to take it with a pinch of salt when someone in the office is waxing poetic about a new book. In the case of Anna Funder's All That I Am however, the buzz feels a bit different. It's not just the Penguin office that's got Funder-fever, the industry press is a-buzz too, and a mere mention of the proofs arriving sent the twittersphere into a frenzy. Partly this is due to Funder's hugely successful debut Stasiland, and I think the title is perfectly pitched too, conveying that 'this-is-an-important-book' quality. More than that though, its subject matter is a source of endless interest. Alan Coren famously said that the key to success in publishing is is books on 'Nazis, golf and cats' and it's certainly true that the appetite for books on the Third Reich is pretty much insatiable. It’s easy to be critical of this and there are many reasons to be – why does rape as a weapon of war in the Congo not garner the same attention? Or colonial atrocities contemporaneous to Nazism? These are big questions, but the fact remains that the rise of the Third Reich has become one of the defining facts of modernity, and as villains go, you’re not gonna find one with greater cultural power than Hitler. There's a lot of rubbish that tries to cash in on this though, so when something comes along that's the real thing, as it were, you can often tell.

And All That I Am is 'the real thing' in more ways that having the potential to win awards and sell a lot of copies. It's a fictionalised account of the life of Dora Fabian, Ernst Toller and their comrades, who fought against the rise of fascism in Germany. Exiled to London, they continued their struggle despite the British government wilfully turning a blind eye to the plight of refugees and of the situation they were trying to expose. I knew nothing about Dora Fabian before reading the novel, and I’m content not to investigate her too thoroughly, as I’m content to keep hold of the heroine Funder creates. Dora is very much the perfect heroine – a beautiful, strong-minded, chainsmoking, promiscuous, fierce feminist.

Though it's very much a novel, Funder was a friend of the late Ruth Blatt, Dora’s cousin, and captured her story as an oral history before she died. While I'm not terribly interested in the veracity of historical fiction, All That I Am is certainly an eye-opener in terms of revealing the outrageous gaps in our collective knowledge even about the most studied period in modern history. The usual platitudes about learning from history, and 'never forget' have been made meaningless by rhetorical ubiquity and a lack of practical application. Funder knows this and allows herself few nods to the echoes of fascist Europe that we see in the erosion of civil rights today, but the scarcity of these references gives them space to reverberate through the text.

Politics aside – though of course we can’t ever separate the two (another blog post to follow about representing protest in literature – do nudge me if I don’t deliver it) – All That I Am is beautifully written and tells a bloody good story. There are a few issues that I expect will be ironed out (I’ve only read an uncorrected proof) but it’s an utterly compelling read, rich and funny and wonderfully observant. And if you can read it and not fall in love with Dora, you must be made of stone.

Lovely autumn weekend

2010-11-14T07:24:00.000-08:00

I've been gearing up to write a snarky blogpost on my current disillusionment with just about everything, as usual zeroing in on the diy/queer scene as a focus for my cynicism, but thanks to the Ladyfest Herstorical Society, I might actually say something positive for once.

The one-off event included an archive of Ladyfest ephemera, lots of cake and mulled wine, an excellent zine collection and some bands, all at the recently-restored Lambeth Women's Project. Even though I hadn't used the space in its previous incarnation (before flooding etc put it out of action for a bit) I had heard good things, and the general vibe of the place is lovely - very inclusive and warm - and was the ideal location for a pop-up Ladyfest. And as it got darker and the mulled wine started to flow, the view from the window was a gorgeous backdrop for the bands.

The event was an alternative to the official Ladyfest Ten event (yes, I know the idea of an 'official' ladyfest is inimical to the fundamentals of a diy feminist project - yet Ladyfest Ten does have the glossy air of officialness, which is perhaps one of the reasons an alternative is necessary) and seemed to be mostly a chance for former ladyfest organisers to get together and reminisce. I've never been involved in organising a ladyfest, so might have expected to feel a little on the outside, but the atmosphere couldn't have been more welcoming.

It was a reminder that within the posing, the good queer/bad queer, the drama and drinking, the uncanny insularity of the scene, there is a community. It's a community in which you can talk about having a mental health crisis without people thinking you're fucked up and you can forget all the words to the song you're singing and no one will mind at all, and you can talk about big ideas - really giant epic ones - without being told to pipe down.

It's not perfect, but I'm gonna stop hating on it (at least for a bit, at least in public) because it's still pretty fucking wonderful.

Noizy Image

2010-10-03T09:21:00.000-07:00

My wavering faith in activism - well-charted by this blog, despite my sporadic posting - was partially restored this weekend, by a fantastic event in Brighton. The night was run by Noizy Image, a human rights charity currently focussed on raising funds for LGBTI safe houses in Africa. I think they were also responsible for the black coffins draped in rainbow flags at a couple of pride events this summer, a rather stark - though certainly fitting - attempt to draw attention to the horrific treatment of queer asylum seekers by the British government. The event in Brighton was the first of its kind that they're put on, and despite the fact that we turned up super late and thoroughly rain-soaked, I was very much impressed.

We caught the harrowing tail end of Mosa, a short film about corrective rape in South Africa; saw the charming and talented poet Dean Atta; and saw another short film called The Kuchus of Uganda, which was sadly terminated by technical problems during a compelling interview.

It was the final performance of the evening though, that really stood out. An incredible musician whose name I didn't catch casually tuned her guitar and played a track - a good one, but I don't fully recall it as what followed was so memorable. She took out a ukelele - my disapproval of which has already been noted in an earlier post and by anyone who has heard my rant about dull East London tweeness - and gave an fantastic rendition of Day-O. Also known as the banana boat song and made famous by Harry Belafonte, then revived in Beetlejuice and slaughtered in an ad for cereal ('Hey Mr Kellogs Man'...remember?). The ukelele complemented rather than detracted from her powerful voice, and the familiar folk song rang out with a kind of melancholic sweetness. It was completely gorgeous.

An important cause, fantastic films, brilliant performers and all wrapped up in an infectious enthusiasm and sincerity that was really touching. So watch out for Noizy Image events, and let me know if you know the name of the singer!

Sita's Rules for Pride

2010-08-23T07:58:00.000-07:00

As many of you will know, I absolutely love Pride. Despite the embarassing commercialisation, assimilationist agenda and the cringeworthy ubiquity of Tory MPs talking about equality, when the pride season starts, I'm always the first to dust off my rainbow flag and take to the streets! As such, I like to think of myself as a sort of pride connoisseur, and would like to use this self-appointed position of authority to advise the following:

1. DJs: do not play the same song twice. There is all of Madonna's back catalogue to get through, and every track makes me smile - including the turkeys - so quit repeating yourself!
2. Don't think about the hangover.
3. Those 118 outfits are seriously out of date (and not in a retro way): go with an old classic (sailor, leather daddy, priscilla) or something totally different.
4. Gaysians: an arranged introduction is not going to fly here - whether you want to make yourself known for romantic reasons or in solidarity, don't send your friends on your behalf.
5. Rad queer parties with food and zines are great, but if you wanna take a night off dancing for the revolution, pride is the ideal time to make the most of sweaty, filthy, mainstream clubs.

Happy pride folks!

DIY arts scene

2010-08-11T03:39:00.000-07:00

With ladyfest fundraisers coming thick and fast, and the anarchist bookfair looming in October, I feel now is the time to get a few things off my chest. I'm too lazy to rant in continuous prose, so here are some lists for your perusal...

Things I Like About the DIY scene
1. The revival of the comedy song
2. Women at events say 'fuck' a lot and for some reason this amuses me. Maybe because they're often quite middle class and so it sounds kind of quaint.
3. That it really does encourage people to put themselves - their art, zines, poems - out there.
4. That there is almost always food. Why is food absent from so many mainstream events?

Things I Don't Like About the DIY scene
1. That everyone is dressed in 'ironic' 50s high femme gear all the fucking time.
2. Cupcakes.
3. The new and inexplicable vogue for the ukelele. What's wrong with a regular-sized guitar?!
4. The idea that knitting is in any way subversive. There's nothing wrong with knitting, but it is not in any way radical.
5. The disdain for 'high' culture.
6. The stench of unwashed activists: if this is what the revolution is going to smell like, you can count me (and my bourgeois ideas about hygiene) out!

Mothers / Bikes / Inspiration.

2010-03-20T10:14:00.000-07:00

What would you call a small-scale project combining skill-sharing, recycling, supporting local charities/community groups and getting people cycling? Exemplary grassroots activism? That's what I think it is, but my Mother - a seriously feisty woman in her 60s and probably the best activist I know - is too busy doing it to think about naming it anything.

A couple of weeks ago my back bike wheel got nicked. While I was umming and ah-ing about whether to get a new one or to buy a new bike, my Mum had got hold of a bike for free (and had offers of several more) and got a friend who used to own a bike shop to do it up, in exchange for fixing some clothes for him. It all sounds so simple and neighborly, just as you might hope life would be in a small, parochial village in East Anglia. Now though, the pleasure gained from this transaction has inspired the retired bike mechanic and my mother to take up the other offers of free, broken bikes, fix them up, sell them for a reasonable price and put the money back into a local organization. No website, no local authority funding, no discussions , about safe(r) spaces - they're just getting on with it.

I spend a ludicrous amount of time in meetings, trainings and workshops. I read books on standpoint theory, community development and anti-capitalism. In short, I talk, read and think an awful lot more than I act.

This probably seems terribly sentimental ('oh! my mum is so inspirational!') but it has completely made my week. It makes it all the more clear that the bubble of activism found on campus is at best intellectually informed but frequently paralyzed by bureaucracy, self-importance and pettiness. I know, I know, student activism seems like my bugbear - I'm always complaining about it yet I am unable to just walk away from it. Graduation is perilously close though and perhaps, freed from the ease with which one can fall into the cosseting arms of campus politics, I'll be able to follow my mother's example a bit better.

Oh, and if you have a spare bike you wanna donate, let me know!

Comics

2010-02-24T02:25:00.000-08:00

So my good intentions didn't last, and this blog post may well be another random blip, to be repeated thrice yearly but never sustained. Alas!

Anyway,I'm blogging because I have a confession to make: I've never liked comic books. I know every self-respecting hipstah has a copy of Watchmen and can wax lyrical about Marvel versus DC, but I just never got into the genre. I used to make an exception for some queer stuff (Dykes to Watch Out For, Flaming Iguanas, cute per-zine comics...) but in truth I pretty much read them as though they were novels, and pretended that the 'graphic' part was just a bizarre idiosyncrasy. But now that I've read Art Spiegelman, consider me a convert. On a whim, I'm taking a module called 'September 11th in Fact and Fiction' and once I got past the corny title, it's proving the best thing I'm studying this semester. It's pretty interdisciplinary - more American Studies than English Lit - and combines photography, government documents, films novels and Spiegelman's incredible comic, In The Shadow of No Towers.

The comics were serialized in various publications around the world, though the mainstream US press avoided it like the plague in the wake of 9/11, and only a Yiddish newspaper would publish it in the states. Now though, as the 'war on terror' so frequently appears in mocking quotation marks, Spiegelman's cynicism is de rigeur. In this light, it is Spiegelman's exploration of the trauma of the attacks, and the sincerity with which he elucidates his fear and anger that goes against the grain.

I think I'm going to raid the comic section of the library, or at least get hold of some Joe Sacco. Any recommendations are welcome!

A missed opportunity?

2009-11-17T15:12:00.000-08:00

Following some virtual (read: Facebook-based) encouragement, I am going to try to resuscitate my ailing and neglected blog. I can't guarantee my good intentions will last - particularly in light of my unwritten dissertation, among other fairly urgent things on my To Do list! Despite my endless protestations about removing myself entirely from all things "student," an edited version of the following review was in the Leeds Student paper last week.

Last Tuesday, I went to see Asylum Dialogues at Leeds University Union. The script was drawn, apparently verbatim, from conversations had with three asylum seekers and their white, British friends. The play traced - mostly in monologue form in spite of the title - how each of these friendships developed, and were fundamental to the asylum seekers avoiding deportation.

From the moment the actors came on stage, I was a little dubious, mostly because they were holding scripts! I relented though; they were professional actors working for free, and though the scripts did detract slightly from the overall effect, they still turned in excellent performances. Other problems, however, soon came to light.

The play sought to reveal the horrific treatment of asylum seekers in the UK, at the hands of various institutions controlled by the home office. It left it to the audience, however, to understand that this treatment is made possible by the fact that asylum seekers are regarded as something less than fully human. The white characters in the play are used to mediate between the asylum seekers and the audience. They don't just sanction the veracity of the asylum seekers' claims, but demonstrate their very humanity. In this way, Asylum Dialogues is an apt reflection of the way in which asylum seekers are viewed in British society, but misses an opportunity to challenge this deeply rooted conception.

The first character to speak, and the one whose story received the most time and attention, was the suitably-named John, a middle-aged, white Brit who admitted that he used to say used to think "send ‘em all home. They shouldn’t be here. It’s an English country. They take all our money." This familiar sentiment is radically altered when he meets Angela, a Jamaican asylum seekers who comes to clean his office. All well and good, but he not only tells his own story (which would be an interesting subplot or detour) but most of Angela's as well, and when she does speak, it is frequently to sing John's praises.

I suppose you could argue that, as the stories demonstrate, a white British benefactor is necessary for asylum seekers to successfully navigate a system designed to fail them. I can't help but wonder though, does this kind of patronage need to be so unreservedly celebrated in the theatre? It had a practically Victorian feel to it; a sense of responsibility to the deserving poor, fused with the colonial trope of white men saving women of colour. Besides, if people want to hear British pensioners monologue about their lives, there is all of Alan Bennett to get through. The narratives of asylum seekers, however, are ignored, assumed to be false or never even articulated. In this case, their stories are told, but rarely through their own voices.

I don't want to dismiss the actions of the Brits in the play: they intelligently use their white privilege to negotiate the complex and corrupt asylum system, and make tangible gains for their friends and for others seeking asylum in the UK. Hailing them as heroes, however, simply advocates personal generosity and charity towards those less fortunate, rather than attacking the political structures that create these horrific conditions and inequalities.

Nonetheless, Asylum Dialogues was moving and interesting; we all know that personal narratives are more powerful than any statistics, and the theatre makes these stories immediate, relevant and moving. Unfortunately, I felt that the many layers of ventriloquism between the asylum seekers and the audience allowed for their struggles to become subplots, playing second fiddle to the bravery and generosity of white, middle class Brits.

So wholesome, so hip...

2009-10-04T12:21:00.000-07:00

It's my final year at Leeds University, and I'm determined to get out of the student bubble. I've been going for bicycle-borne jaunts into the dales, trying to find somewhere interesting to volunteer (suggestions welcome!) and generally avoiding pubs on the otley road.

Today I ventured out into Armley, a little town just west of Leeds city centre. The architecture is much the same as in Headingley, Burley and Hyde Park, but 'rahs' with backcombed hair, smashed glass and people in fancy dress are - mercifully! - absent. I went to Make, Bake and Grow: a Bestival-style, Guardian-readers-wet-dream reinvention of a village fete.

I'll have to show my hipster stripes and admit: I thought it was adorable! I mean, it's sort of absurd, but after twelve months away from the UK, cute, wholesome, village-y fun - complete with morris dancers and a cake competition - exercised a surprising amount of charm.

Language

2009-07-26T23:33:00.000-07:00

Since discovering language theory in a mandatory first year english module, I had laboured under the notion that knowledge was entrapped in or determined by language. This is commonly referred to as the sapir-whorf hypothesis, usually articulated in some horribly garbled manner using the examples of Inuits having multiple words to describe snow, whereas in English there is just the one, thus anglophones can't 't distinguish between different types of snow. In the intervening years though, I've gained a lot more life experience, a lot more theory and a whole lot more language. Critically, I have also gained an increasing awareness of my own embodied knowledge that exists on a level apart from language. Allowing myself to trust my visceral reactions has changed the way I see language; it is no longer the keeper of knowledge but it remains central to how I conceive of the world. Rather than opening windows of understanding (though of course it does still do that from time to time), the right words affirm an understanding I already have, but couldn't articulate in the past. Lacanians refer to the aquisition of language - the entry into the Symbolic - as stage from which we can never return. Once we can discern the world through language, we can't ever conceive of it as we did before. This is both glorious and terrifying. At 21, I can articulate my anger, my passion, my fear better than ever before; I have the lexis now to explain not just what but how and why. My self righteous speeches, in my head or to friends, are comforting but they enflame rather than quell my anger, making me long for the days of shame-filled, seething, silence.

métro, boulot, dodo

2009-05-14T06:31:00.000-07:00

My third year of university is fading into memory; graduation is just a year away. I am surrounded by people who have A Plan; law school, social work, academia, writing, publishing...so many of my friends seem to know exactly where in the world of work they plan on taking up residence. In this context, I guess it is inevitable that my "FuckAmbition, OnlyYoungOnce, Can'tTakeItWithYou" attitude seems increasingly absurd. So with my plan of having no plan at all sounding ever more ridiculous in my head, I have been forced to consider what I might want to do as a career (I still refuse to refer to this as what I want to be). A friend - let's affectionately refer to her as The Cynic, scoffed, "in this economic climate? With Arts degrees? We'll be lucky to be cleaning toilets, sweetheart." She's got a point.

Another problem too - I've realized that I still think of work in the terms that a twelve year old might. That is to say, the jobs that I could list if put on the spot are all things that involve doing something relatively tangible or, at least, understandable: Doctor, Lawyer, Chef, Journalist, Party Planner, Astronaut, Lifeguard, Investment Banker, Computer programmer. And yet, I know that most people don't have jobs like that; most people's job titles sound like they belong in marxist satire about work: Data Audit Manager, System Response Co-ordinator, Resource Fund Operations Analyst, Service Testing Technician Support...you get the picture.

So I'm at a loss. It appears that I can't live forever in this comfy dreamworld of studying, reading, drinking, writing, philosophizing and holding down odd (and I mean that in every sense of the word) jobs for a maximum of a month at a time. I need to get real. Should I be considering Astronaut School? Resigning myself to a sad gray cubicle and getting excited about Dress Down Fridays? Honing my waitressing skills? I jest, but really, any suggestions will be more than welcome...!

The end of theory and the return of equilibrium to my reading diet.

2009-05-10T13:47:00.000-07:00

The end of classes at McGill signaled, once again, the beginning of summer reading. It's not that I don't or can't read while I study, but I definitely find it much harder to really lose myself in the world of novels, and do so without a trace of guilt, when there are essays going unwritten in the world of university. So now I'm working my way through all the books I've had to put to one side during term time in favour of reading theory. I started with Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance. Mistry attempts to even the scales of the intimate and the epic; of laughter and tears; of hope and despair. For the most part, he succeeds with aplomb, in this novel detailing the lives of four people during the state of Emergency declared by Indira Gandhi's government in the mid 1970s. Interestingly, if you wiki the Emergency, there is a section on its representation in fiction. I'm not entirely sure where to go with that, except that it seems to say something about how foundational fiction is to conceptualizing post-Independance India. A Fine Balance is mentioned, alongside the ubiquitous Midnight's Children.

I wish I could articulate an intelligent response to this book, but all of my thoughts on it are so scattered. On the one hand, it doesn't shy from cliches and stock characters, indulges occasional descents into unnecessary bawdiness and toilet humour, and hurtles towards its conclusion, flinging passengers off the roof and out the doors, like in the requisite train scene in every anglo-Indian novel. And yet, despite these critiques, I was totally gripped. The almost Victorian melodramatic tropes were no less effective than they were in the nineteenth century, and had me welling up every twenty pages towards the end. The novel's greatest triumph though, is in Mistry's characterization of the four central characters. The generosity with which they are presented (for it feels like Mistry reveals rather than creates or constructs), makes you desperate for the plot - cleverly made to seem the product of political corruption - to stop its churning and let them be happy. The supporting cast is thoroughly entertaining, and drawn just as affectionately, but it is Maneck, Dina, Om and Ishvar whose voices I can't shake despite having finished the novel days ago.* So I highly recommend getting off the internet, turning off your phone, curling up with A Fine Balance and letting Mistry work his magic.

*That's a little over-emotional, I know, but hey, I'm just taking on the house style, ok?

A little anecdote from work...

2009-05-05T13:17:00.000-07:00

So for about nine months now, my accent has been the source of endless amusement. Strangers stop me mid-conversation to exclaim "oh my God, are you British?!"; Friends mock my elongated vowels; people at parties drunkenly fall into bizarre imitations. Apparently, it is not just that I'm British, but that I'm "posh." So posh, in fact, that some friends came up with the following spectrum:

1. God
2. The Queen
3. Sita
4. The BBC.
5. SG (my housemate; from Hull via New Jersey - think East coast with a northern twang).

So yes, God is apparently British, and posher than both the Queen and I. Good to know. After enduring this torrent of (mostly) affectionate teasing, today my accent was finally useful. I've just started a new job, for a language school that runs TESOL/TFSOL...etc courses, and my boss asked me to leave the message on the answering machine! So, in my best RP (followed by my best-but still terrible- French), I instructed prospective students to leave a message after the tone (le tonalité, just in case you were wondering). The fact that I'm just the general dogsbody around the office, and will be gone in less than a month seems to be of negligible importance.

I wanna sleep with common people...

2009-05-02T09:34:00.000-07:00

I've been having some interesting conversations about class recently, specifically about the bizarre yet enduring phenomenon if middle class young people attempting to appropriate what they consider to be an "authentic" working class experience. For me, a very unsettling example of this is when wealthy university students decide they want to "make it on their own," and thus reject their parents' wealth, in favour of working a crap job, living in squalor and buying clothes from salvation army. This is made about 37496249 times more embarrassing when they claim that this an expression of their newly discovered anti-capitalism. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm in favour of capitalism, or that I'm against all of the strategies employed by white, middle-class activists, but I do think we should at the very least acknowledge that it's a whole lot easier to turn your back on capitalism, when capitalism has got your back.

I also find it woefully short-sighted to think that class position is determined simply by your bank balance. I mean, hello? Bourdieu, anyone? You can't just rid yourself of all of the cultural capital you have accrued over two decades of middle/upper class upbringing because you think that being down and out* has more cache.

As happens so frequently, these conversations can make middle/upper class kids uncomfortable. Implicitly or explicitly, the question is posed: "well, what do you want us to do then?" I don't have much of an answer, except for the obvious - suck it up! The lyrical genius (and proto-hipster?) Jarvis Cocker said it better than I can, so I'll leave you with the one of my favourite songs...

She came from Greece she had a thirst for knowledge,
she studied sculpture at Saint Martin's College,
that's where I,
caught her eye.
She told me that her Dad was loaded,
I said "In that case I'll have a rum and coca-cola."
She said "Fine."
and in thirty seconds time she said,

"I want to live like common people,
I want to do whatever common people do,
I want to sleep with common people,
I want to sleep with common people,
like you."

Well what else could I do -
I said "I'll see what I can do."
I took her to a supermarket,
I don't know why but I had to start it somewhere,
so it started there.
I said pretend you've got no money,
she just laughed and said,
"Oh you're so funny."
I said "yeah?
Well I can't see anyone else smiling in here.
Are you sure you want to live like common people,
you want to see whatever common people see,
you want to sleep with common people,
you want to sleep with common people,
like me."
But she didn't understand,
she just smiled and held my hand.
Rent a flat above a shop,
cut your hair and get a job.
Smoke some fags and play some pool,
pretend you never went to school.
But still you'll never get it right,
cos when you're laid in bed at night,
watching roaches climb the wall,
if you call your Dad he could stop it all.

You'll never live like common people,
you'll never do what common people do,
you'll never fail like common people,
you'll never watch your life slide out of view,
and dance and drink and screw,
because there's nothing else to do.

Sing along with the common people,
sing along and it might just get you through,
laugh along with the common people,
laugh along even though they're laughing at you,
and the stupid things that you do.
Because you think that poor is cool.

*, Speaking of which, Down and Out in Paris and London is a great example. George Orwell went to Eton, worked as an Imperial policeman in Burma, then opted to live on the streets so he could write bestselling books about poverty - bitch, please!

Pleasant/Unpleasant.

2009-04-27T22:23:00.000-07:00

So I'm trying to make money at the moment, but I don't have legal work papers in Canada, so it's a trickier business than you might expect. I'm currently resorting to taking part in endless research studies and just got back from the weirdest one to date. I basically had to put my head in a vice (euphemistically referred to as a chin rest) and then respond to the underlined within pairs of words by clicking different buttons to signal "pleasant" and "unpleasant." It resembled a kind of pathetic attempt at dadaist poetry ( cookie/murder - crisis/flowers - riot/happy) flashing across the computer screen.

Between bouts of testing, the researcher bombarded me with questions about my life. And let me tell you, the only thing more annoying than the ubiquitous "where are you from?" is not being believed when you answer the question. She kept saying "really?" when I said I was from England, and then being equally skeptical when I expressed how much I like Montréal. In fact, she appeared to find everything I said completely implausible! I wonder if she'll be treating my test results with such scorn...

I'm not sure why I'm writing about this, rather than the panel I went to about Sri Lanka this evening. I guess it's just much easier to (b)log these bizarre encounters than it is to try and process ideas about politics at 1am after a beer or two...

Is it just me or...*

2009-04-19T18:19:00.000-07:00

...is there something kind of hilarious about this image? After Christmas, I came back to Montréal with 4 of these in my wallet, 3 of which have disappeared (into a void void void void?) and this one serves as an excellent bookmark. For some reason, I find it oddly funny.

*For anyone who read The Guardian Weekend magazine circa 2005, yes, I did borrow the title from Zoe Williams' column.

"Get off her or I'm gonna splatter your brains all over this nice car"

2009-04-10T07:56:00.000-07:00

I watched Thelma and Louise last night for the first time in a couple of years. I had forgotten how much I love that movie! It also made me think, maybe instead of popular education, instead of protests, instead of legal reform, we should adopt a more direct strategy to fight sexism: every time some dude leers at you out of a car window, just blow up his tires! No?

Criminalising children.

2009-04-07T19:25:00.000-07:00

So some exciting news from across the pond, folks: the West Yorkshire Police are launching the "Channel Project," an initiative to curb extremism in youth. Translation: a new racist, islamophobic witch hunt to criminalize children in the name of fighting "terror." It is tempting this is precisely a way of terrorizing the Muslim community, but frankly, I'm sick of hearing that word bandied about, and want to do away with it all together.

The police are proposing that teachers should take kids aside, if they are worried about them falling prey to extremist propaganda. I can't even imagine how that conversation would go down..."So, I'm concerned that you're thinking of blowing up the houses of parliament...would you like to talk about that?" I mean, really, I can't think of anything more absurd.

And the children that are gonna be pulled out of double maths to be interrogated by the headteacher are going to be those who show signs of "the adoption of bad attitudes towards 'the West,'" as though anything other than worshiping at the temple of liberal democracy is both incomprehensible and dangerous. And anyone who shows an interest in "extremist material" is seen as a risk So basically, if an 11 year old googles al-Qa'ida they're gonna be assumed to be a potential terrorist.

Does anyone else think that this is all going to be a horrible case of self fulfilling prophecy? These racist projects and their hyperbolic media coverage hardly coheres with the police's constant assertion that they aren't targeting the Muslim community. It seems to me that the quickest way to seriously piss off any group, is to point the finger at the most vulnerable of their people.

If the Independent are reporting this story as a legitimate initiative, I can't wait to see what the Daily Mail have to say...

The riddle of representation: a rant.

2009-04-06T22:27:00.000-07:00

So I'm the class I'm taking, Women and the State in India, came to a close today, and the final seminar was on diasporic nationalisms. The professor bought everyone coffee and we watched Gurinda Chadha's Bhaji on the Beach. I wasn't expecting anything especially groundbreaking, but given her later success , I was hoping for something heartwarming and predictable, at least. Unfortunately, this film exemplified everything cringeworthy and disheartening about (relatively) mainstream art produced by the South Asian diaspora, without any of the redeeming features of her most famous film, Bend It Like Beckham .

I'm so tired of issue-based film and fiction. I understand the need to represent, and I admit a bizarre thrill of recognition at seeing the familiar rendered on screen. There is a novelty in seeing masis putting chillis on chips, or hearing characters speak in a comfortable amalgam of Hindi and English. But it is not enough. Every character in the film was a cardboard cut out of an "issue." There was the Asian Feminist Activist; the Good Indian Daughter with a "shameful" secret (Pregnant by her - wait for it - Black Boyfriend); the Modern Indian Woman, ironically from Bombay; the Violent Husband...you get the picture. It wasn't a film so much as a series of vignettes, each attempting to explore a stereotype that it never managed to get beyond the surface of.

I read a collection of short stories recently, that was well written, but afflicted by this same need to represent. Karma by Rishi Reddi was so obsessed with the "problem" of the second generation, that it was totally devoid of any sense of a reality, outside the tradition-modernity, east-west matrix. I understand that these are very real issues for many people, but they can be explored in ways that are interesting, profound, hilarious, honest and transcend this label of the post colonial. The Buddha of Suburbia, for example, has it all - arranged marriages, cornershops, queerness, religion - every "problem" in the book, and yet it is never didactic, and never ends up wallowing in its own self-righteousness. I'd much rather read about a load of brown people fucking and fucking up, than all of this endless trauma about Auntie-ji's disapproval of short skirts.

This evening I saw an art exhibition entitled Self Identities: Self Portraits, at the 2110 Centre for Gender Advocacy. The queer community too frequently seems trapped by the bind of representation. The focus on celebration makes this marginally less depressing than in the case of Second Generation South Asian art, but there are only so many sledgehammer representations of "fluidity" that I can handle, without wanting something more human. Don't get me wrong, there were some great pieces too, but there was also plenty of naval gazing that made me just think, "so what?"

I'm ranting again, and there are gaping holes in this post that is as cliched and predictable as everything I'm critiquing. But it's almost 2am, so I'll leave it until next time (or til my dissertation) to try to sew those up.

Queer and trans zine

2009-04-04T08:48:00.000-07:00

A friend, Sarah, is writing a zine on queer and trans youth resistance, and requested (read: demanded) that I contribute. The brief is as follows:

I’m currently putting together a zine on queer and trans youth as active resisters to the oppressions we face. As part of the zine I’m seeking submissions that are one or two paragraphs long by queer and trans folks on ways they have resisted, either presently or when they were younger. It can be on anything from political actions, art, friendships, organizing/organizations, overcoming an obstacle, blogging, or just staying alive and making it through. Submissions can be as specific or general as you like. All submissions are anonymous and I encourage submissions about how homophobia + transphobia coincides with other oppressions such as racism, sexism, ableism, colonialism, and classism. Send along any submissions, questions or comments to queertransyouthzine@gmail.com

Sarah rocks, and the zine will too, so I encourage you to follow suite, and submit something.

Here is mine - and yes, it is embarrassingly earnest:

I felt connected to queer resistance struggles well before I had acknowledged, even to myself, that I was queer. I remember knowing about Section 28 when I was 11 years old, and being full of righteous indignation about the injustice, and how tangibly it had affected my school life. I followed the story in the news, and celebrated quietly to myself when I heard that it had been repealed in 2003. However, a Conservative local government in Kent, in the South East of England, decided to implement an even more reactionary version of the law. It was at a protest against this law that I had my first taste of queer activism.

My friend Adam and I told our parents we were going to London to get cheap tickets to a matinee, and then heading off to the county hall in Maidstone, Kent. On arrival, I wished we had actually gone to London. The police almost outnumbered the protesters, on this grey and cloudy Saturday in 2004. Perhaps because of our meagre numbers, I had this gnawing feeling of embarrassment: if so few people thought this was important, why were we standing out in the cold and making so much noise? I cringed when people began to chant "We're here, we're queer, we will not live in fear," and I wanted to disappear when someone attempted a rousing rendition of "I am what I am." I realized then that being part of a queer movement meant that I also had to confront my own homophobia.

This was the first time I had heard speeches that now I take for granted. We took a moment of silence to remember FannyAnn Eddy, a Lesbian activist from Sierra Leone who had recently been murdered. After the protest, we decamped to the one gay pub in this provincial town, amusingly called the Queen Victoria. I drank alcopops - coolers to you North Americans - as I had yet to develop a taste for beer, and tried to impress the older, cooler activists.

Bearded bros with souls.

2009-04-03T10:20:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I'm writing about hair again, but this time in a mood of celebration. I am blogging in homage to the beard. I have not spent much time in close proximity to said facial hair phenomenon, so my appreciation is almost entirely in the realm of the visual. That said, if anyone would like to offer up their stylized stubble for stroking...well, I'm down. Ahem...

In my opinion, the ideal facial hair on men is short and well groomed and, preferably, the same length as the hair on their head, so that if they were to be upside down, their chin could almost be mistaken for their scalp. This handsome gentleman is a good example:

Bearded men give off an air of sensitivity: a beard makes the most mediocre of men seem soulful. Last night I went to the launch of an arts magazine called Scrivener. A plethora of bearded men attended. Some played the guitar. I swooned.

DeadWhiteMen, Suheir Hammad and Stating the Obvious.

2009-03-30T21:16:00.000-07:00

So recently I've found myself in the slightly awkward position of trying to defend the canon. I expect that this is a product of the fairly traditional English Literature degree that I've been doing at Leeds for the last couple of years. One of the main reasons I chose to go to the University of Leeds was that the School of English had a huge focus on the post colonial, and yet, so far I have only studied one text written post 1945. In retrospect, I am incredibly pleased about this. I have read plays and poems that I would otherwise never picked up. I have discovered that Eighteenth century magazines are hilarious; that Mansfield Park is, perhaps, the most subtly snarky of all of Austen's novels; and that I like many things that might be described as Dickensian, but really dislike Charles Dickens. Studying English Lit has also imbibed in me a high regard for things written by famous DeadWhiteMen. I can critique, problematise and condemn this penchant, but it makes no difference, I just really fucking love Shakespeare. While this is, of course, not a problem in and of itself, it has meant that I haven't entirely kept up to date with what is being written in the here and now, particularly by living, brown (umbrella term) women.

So, a few weeks ago, I decided that I was going to abandon the canon...no more DeadWhiteMen would grace my bookshelves, at least for a few months. So far, this has been great, and it will merit its own blogpost when I've had more time to read (roll on the end of exams)! However, outside of the world of professionally printed fiction, I frequently encounter work by people that are a million miles outside of the canon. The Montréal activist community, particularly the queer community, is all about DIY culture, self publication and having wanky performance art as the warm up act when all people really wanna do is get drunk and go dancing. As you can tell, I'm not always convinced by the merits of this. Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely in favour of reclaiming print from the big presses, and I'm all about opening up the mics. I'm just not sure we should be so quick to assume that just because it is by a queer person/person of colour/poor person/person with disabilities, it is revolutionary, or even good.

A friend pointed out to me that I was perhaps oversimplifying, that what was implicit was not that art by poor people would suddenly bring capitalism to its knees, but that it might make it easier to live in. I think, on some level, she has a point. I also think, though, that the people who are truly affected by this work are the people who create it. I'm not saying that this isn't valuable in itself, but I'm not sure if we should really be referring to therapy as art.

Tonight I went to see an incredible poet. Suheir Hammad performed at Club Lambi to a full house. At times, I totally forgot where I was - she had my undivided attention. Hammad is a Palestinian-American. Some of her pieces were in a mix of Arabic and English, and in some of them she addressed subjects about which I have no knowledge or understanding. Regardless, I was enthralled, amazed, amused, tearful, hopeful and felt totally connected to her words.

I'm hungry, exhausted and have a headache. This is probably totally incoherent, but i just felt the need to state the obvious:

Art can heal us, if it's great.

A note to McGill student activists...

2009-03-26T21:22:00.000-07:00

Okay, so we all know that student activism can be self-involved, misguided, careerist, paternalistic and pointless. It can also be empowering, hilarious, innovative, and a catalyst for social change (May '68 anyone? Divestment campaigns in British universities?) The student activist scene at McGill (and yes, my friends, it is a scene) has a lot of potential, but seems to be so caught up in the anti-oppression discourse that people are unable to imagine anything existing outside of thes convenient but limiting lexis.

Last week, I was talking to a McGill student about upcoming elections for one of the student groups. She was concerned that the political gains she had ben working on would be lost if the group faced a coup d'etat by people she deemed to be "problematic." This word seems to stand in as a bizarre synonym for another equally strange term: "oppressive." In her mind, people were divided into two camps: oppressive and anti-oppressive; problematic and unproblematic; good and bad.

The whole conversation made me want to scream. Her perspective was so woefully simplistic, and an apt demonstration of the way in which the language of "anti-oppression," in this particular social milieu, has replaced the usual youth vernacular. Put simply, you can't call someone a bitch (that's like totally oppressive and like, patriarchal, y'know?), but you can call them "problematic," and essentially mean the same thing.

This elides two obvious problems. Firstly, if you had paid attention in Intersectionality 101, you may have noticed that we are all already part of systemic racism, sexism...etc. And it's gonna take more than simply asserting that this is "fucked up" for you to claim that you are truly working against the system that got you to this university in the first place. Secondly, you can be as well versed in anti-oppression theory as you like, but it won't stop you being an asshole. Conversely, you can be a wonderful, generous, compassionate human being, who has never attended a seminar on Queer Positivity.

So by all means, have your style tribe; wear your geek chic glasses and ride your fixed gear with pride. Be exclusive. Judge those who don't conform to your linguistic codes. But remember, it really won't make you any less of a wanker.

Inadvertent gender fuck.

2009-03-12T18:34:00.000-07:00

A couple of incidents recently have really helped me to clarify some thoughts about gender and gender fucking that have been brewing for a while. Now that I come to articulate them, they seem rather pitiful and obvious, but I'm going to persist nonetheless.

I went to a talk yesterday by a young academic called Lucas Crawford. The lecture was entitled "One Way to Beat a Straight Flush: Building an Art of Trans-Washrooms." I couldn't resist the cute title, or the promise of some queer cultural studies wankery, and apparently I wasn't the only one: every seat was taken and there was a sense of anticipation normally absent from academic talks. Lucas' sartorial choices (raspberry crushed velvet shirt anyone?) assured us that even if he had taken up residence in the ivory tower, he had no qualms about smoking a joint out of its windows. His lecture was a tour through the history of hygiene; architectural analysis; a stopover at Butlerian performativity theory; and more, all tempered by the dose of Foucault that characterizes pretty much all of the academy's outpouring these days.

Two parts that stood out to me, perhaps because they spoke to ideas that I have been grappling with anyway. The first was that gender neutral bathrooms - so frequently a goal of queer/trans groups, especially at universities - have a kind of (unconscious?) assimilationist implication. The public toilet is a site of bodily regulation that, historically, spatially and socially, has not been friendly to non-normative bodies. That is not to say that we shouldn't campaign to make public toilets gender neutral, but that this should be one of many changes, ad should consider the more subtle ways in which public space is inaccessible.

The second point that I really connected with linked to a pet peeve about the queer community and gender theory's habit of looking to trans people to be embodied deconstructions of gender. This seems to be rooted in the idea that the deviant body willfully interpolates itself into battles to smash gender norms. Moreover, that the trans body's modifications exist in a vacuum, divorced from the adjustments we all make (cis and trans gendered alike) to our bodies all the time.

I had an experience last week that kind of demonstrated a lot of these ideas. I went to have my eyebrows threaded (yup, sorry, it's another epilation story - sorry folks!), and as I sat down, the beautician (threader?) shook her head in disapproval, "you should have electrolysis." I explained that I'd done that and really just wanted threading please, if that was alright with her. And so it went on, as she tried to convince me that my body needed the more expensive, more extreme technology of laser or electrolysis. All of this between a kind of Franglais drone about how "strong" the hairs were ("très fort, très fort"). Finally, her pièce de résistance, "are you taking hormones?" Well, I guess nobody passes, eh? The audacity, the intrusiveness, the lack of logic behind her question...these things were astounding. I left angry and, yes, shameful.

A few days later though, I thought a little differently. So frequently, having a non-normative body is seen a choice; we pierce and tattoo, in part, to queer our appearances. And yet, all bodies require constant modification, regular upkeep, consistent labour, just to keep them in the realm of social acceptability. Perhaps instead of relying on transpeople to bust the binary, to fuck gender and to stand in as the subject of queer theory par excellence, we should try to reframe all bodies in a way that makes apparent the way in which gender and bodily normativity has the potential to (and frequently does) exclude all of us.

Man on Wire - a review.

2009-01-09T06:34:00.000-08:00

I saw Man on Wire a few months ago, at the Cinema du Parc, when my sister came to visit me in Montréal. I've been meaning to post a review ever since, so now that I'm finally doing so, I'm afraid my memory of the film is a little hazy. So this is not quite a review, but a few fractured, half-formed thoughts on an excellent documentary.

Man on Wire reminds us that there are many worlds; that there are endless possibilities that are limited only by imagination and determination. The protagonist of James Marsh's documentary has both of these qualities in abundance, as well as superhuman reserves of charm, charisma, mystery and humour. Through interviews, live footage and recreations, the film charts Phillipe Petit's 'artistic crime of the century' from conception to punishment.

Petit's love affair with the twin towers begins before they are even built, when he sees a picture of them in a magazine in dentist's waiting room. They seem to become embedded in his psyche; irrevocably linking him to this then incomplete and now no-longer feat of engineering. The story of this love affair is intertwined with the story of how he executed his 'artistic crime'; the two narratives explaining and propelling the other to the glorious, magnificent, heartbreaking sight of Phillipe Petit dancing on a tightrope, thousands of feet in the air, on a cold New York day in 1974. The story of how he duped security, not to mention overcame the immense logistical barriers, could be a film in itself, as it unfolds with all of the heart-in-mouth tension of a Hollywood heist movie. It is the footage of the day itself that truly endures, however; the noise and bustle of the city, the police helicopters circling and the knowledge of his wife watching below...all of this falls away as we watch Petit lie down on the wire, as though simply resting his head to take a nap. It is a truly spectacular moment.

The film carefully circumvents any discussion of the event for which the World Trade Centre is now remembered. The narrative is so taut though, and Petit so engaging, that it is all the better for its narrow focus. The audience, however, cannot fail to recall another crime committed in the same place as Petit's carefree dance. 9/11 looms large and ominous, setting up Petit's infectious energy and fascinatingly unexplained desires as a thing of the past. His 'artistic crime' becomes a symbol of another time, a kind of unfallen world in which an underdog can beat The Man through daring, wit and cunning alone.

So if you're suffering from the post-xmas blues - resolutions already broken; no end to work in sight - then I recommend you go and rent Man on Wire, and let yourself be enchanted by one of the strangest, most intriguing characters of the 20th century.

15, gay and pregnant?!

2009-01-01T15:38:00.000-08:00

A study in British Columbia posits that gay or bisexual teenagers are more likely to be involved in a pregnancy than their straight counterparts. I wasn't especially surprised to read this, having heard similar things anecdotally over the years, despite the fact that it appears to be counter intuitive. The reasons conventionally suggested for this conform to all the worst cliches of media coverage of queer issues - essentially, people seem to think that queer teens have hetero sex to 'camouflage' their homo desires. I can see how on the surface this argument might work, but it just doesn't fly with me. I can't come up with a study to back up my skepticism, nor can I really come up with a convincing theses as to why else queer teens are more likely to be involved in a pregnancy - I just know that this is so much more complicated than it seems. To the credit of the articles I've read on this report (links at the bottom), they do offer some other explanations, such as the fact that queer teens are more likely to be homeless, thus more vulnerable to sexual exploitation. That still, to my mind, doesn't fully explain the alarming stats, though at least acknowledges the myriad factors at hand. I guess my problem with the way in which issues like this are discussed is the fact that sex itself is simplified. People seems unwilling to admit that sex can mean countless different things; that people have sex for endless reasons; that is can both disempower and empower; that it can do violence to both men and women; and that queer teenagers may have heterosexual sex for reasons other than denial or abuse. It is more than slightly discomforting to suggest that perhaps young queer people use heterosexual encounters as a way of claiming a kind of power; or as a way of self-destructing. I have seen signs of both motivations, as well as many more. I don't have anywhere to go with this, really, except to say suggest a more open mind, that grants young people some agency, instead of endlessly assuming them to be victims.

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=1082477
http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20081216/BC_gay_pregnancy_081216/20081216/?hub=BritishColumbiaHome

Back in little Litlington...

2008-12-23T04:48:00.000-08:00

The East Anglian countryside is a far cry from the sublime. The hills don't roll so much as stumble; the rivers trickle; lakes are full of farmed fish; and telephone wires mark shadow roads in the air.. Not an endless prairie, nor bottomless gorge; not dried to orange dust in the sun, nor drenched, lush green. There is none of the drama or contrast that makes some landscapes so heartbreaking. In truth, I'm not sure it qualifies as beautiful. It is a picture of moderation; the great outdoors for those who don't like the dirt. It is practically a golf course. And yet, I can't help but feel a sort of grudging affection, borne out of utter familiarity with a place so unchanging that contempt would seem a waste of energy.

I've been for a couple of bike rides since I've been back, and I'm about to throw on some clothes and go for another. I've been cycling the roads on which I learnt to ride; I go past the farm on which I first took off my stabilizers; then learnt to ride one-handed; then - grinning in exhilerated terror - no-handed. Ten years later, I learnt to drive on these same roads.

I'm a city-person, at heart, and will be escaping to the Big Smoke in a few days to return to the noise and anonymity within which I feel so at home. And yet, this boring, damp squib of a place is - undeniably - home as well.

Stuff White People Like - a tribute.

2008-12-01T09:47:00.000-08:00

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this vital star in the Blogosphere, Stuff White People Like is a blog (and now a book) by Christian Lander. It's the sharpest, wittiest and most spot-on satire of white middle-class liberalism I've read to date. However, it's missing one key post about something white people really adore...so here it is, my contribution in homage to the genius that is http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/

Sex and the City is really important to white people. They like to discuss which of the characters they are most like, or they most want to sleep with. As such, it’s good to have an answer prepared, but it’s best to make sure that you don’t say the same one as the most important white person in the group. White people like to feel original.

The one thing white people like, even more than the show itself, is being critical about Sex and the City. They like to talk about how sexist it is. Sometimes they even discuss how it is essentially just a series of advertisements for clothes ‘normal people’ can’t afford. This is an excellent time for them to draw attention to the pea coat they bought from an army surplus store. Join in with their critique of Sex and the City, but be warned: do not mention that despite being set in Manhattan, there are never any black people in the show. This will make white people feel racist.

Poem.

2008-09-26T16:02:00.001-07:00

I smash
a mirror
every night
for one
week

and keep
the pieces
in a drawer.

I look
at them
from time
to time
and

wonder
what
I did
that
for.

That's not my name.

2008-09-21T17:36:00.000-07:00

We all know that names are important. Even if a rose by any other name would smell as sweet (a horrible but - you'll see - fitting instance of misquotation), it's hard to deny the powerful and problematic nature of names. In many respects, to be nameless is also to be faceless, without identity, without subjectivity. What does it mean then, to be misnamed? Or, to be more accurate, to misname oneself? As bizarre as it may sound, I mispronounce my own name. My parents bequeathed to me a name redolent of Hinduism, Indian history and culture, a name repeated in Religious Education lessons around the world, and written under deities in temples. A name that few people call me, and which I do not call myself. My anglo-tongue cannot master the control, the patience for the equally weighted syllables and softed 't', somewhere between 'tee' and 'thuh'. Instead, a long 'ee' precedes a hard 't' and short 'uh' sound. See-tuh.

In the last few week, I've heard my name said correctly. Not by my parents or relatives - who have, of course, always pronounced it that way - but by new people in my life, that I've met here in Montréal. Usually these people are Desi, so have grown up with these sounds that I can hear but not reproduce. I can't help but smile when I hear it said 'right' (these notions of correct and incorrect are problematic, I know) but also feel a tiny pang of longing, for home and for something more complicated.

In spite of my own mispronunciation, I puffed up in indignation today when my housemate asked me how you 'really' say my name, as she was of the opinion that the 's' was to be pronounced 'sh'. It's hard to explain the little flare of anger, at what appeared to be an innocent question, yet I guess it pushed a button of sorts, that it is not 'in spite of' but because of my mispronunciation that I had such a strong reaction.

Victor Victoria - a review

2008-09-21T09:17:00.000-07:00

With its 1930s setting, absurd plot, self-conscious enactment of Butlerian gender theory, '80s gay pride philosophy, Fosse-style choreography and, most importantly, Julie Andrews in drag, Victor Victoria is a few of my favourite things(!) wrapped up into two hours of campery! The plot is paper thin - peniless singer Victoria rockets to stardom by impersonating a man impersonating a woman. On the way, she falls madly in love with King Marchand, the embodiment of heterosexual masculinity, until Victor/Victoria steals his heart. Riots in restaurants, spying from closets, coming out of closets, gangsters and molls and some great song-and-dance numbers ensue, with lashings of sledge-hammer symbolism to boot. As ever, Julie Andrews steals the show, with a great supporting role from Robert Preston as Toddy, as an archetypal aging queen. The film also works as an intertext for some other queer themed films, De-Lovely, Tipping the Velvet and Cabaret to name just a few. So if you're looking for something unashamedly low brow; unforgivably camp and infectiously cute, you won't get better than this kick ass musical.

Checking in...

2008-09-19T18:53:00.001-07:00

I haven't updated this for ten days. Now that I've found somewhere to live, started school, made some friends - basically, built a little world outside of my head - the time and inclination to write have begun to ebb away. I still have ideas, thoughts I want to record, rants I want to have, observations to share, but I now have other outlets, namely, people. Nonetheless, it seems a shame to abandon this project so soon, so here are a few thoughts from this evening.

Firstly, don't randomly add peanut butter to savory foods. It's not apocalyptic, but it's not a good idea.

Secondly, the Mile End is plastered with posters proclaiming 'SITA EST PERDU'. It's strange to read my name writ large and sad - I don't come across it often, and rarely referring to a missing cat. I felt a weird pang when I saw it, unable to stop myself egotistically imagining that I was the lost soul, separated from loving family desperate to find me.

Lastly, for now...this weekend appears to be a return to solitude, at least for a day or so, and this time by choice. I have work to catch up on, and personal projects to begin. I have a To-Do list a mile long. Perhaps a brief return to my head could also spell a brief return to blogging and journalling. Or perhaps just chasing blue writing through the maze that is Wikipedia...

Go Fish - a review

2008-09-09T18:50:00.000-07:00

Go Fish

Go Fish is everything one would expect from a low-budget, ‘90s, lesbian movie. The nod to monetary restraints and film festival distribution can be found in the decision to shoot in black and white, the fashions are a cross between classic queer Americana (chequered shirts, crew cuts) and ‘90s boyband chic (backwards caps, baggy jeans), the plot is non-existent and the sentiment super-sweet. It functions as an obvious precursor to The L Word, employing the same formula of a group of dykes, with all of the obligatory characters and discussions. While, in some ways, these bare some resemblances to reality (who hasn’t discussed alternative words for cunt, or become enmeshed in some incenstuous entanglement with their ex-girlfriend’s ex-girlfriend?), they are repeated ad nauseum in lesbian media, and Go Fish is no exception. I can’t pan it entirely though, not least because Kia (played by T. Wendy Macmillan) is so sexy, and the intentions are clearly so good that at times I could ignore the fact that it could have been made by an A Level Film Studies student.

Two blog posts on the understanding of sexuality.

2008-09-07T15:51:00.000-07:00

Two: Community

I don’t know whether this is something universally felt, or whether it might be the result of being a member of multiple minorities, but I’ve always found the idea of a community rather loaded. This can be particularly true when discussing the queer community, as we connect on the basis of something less solid and more subjective than a shared geography (as with, for example, a Polish community in England). As such, are disparate strangers across the globe truly part of the same cultural space? The answer is, of course, a resounding ‘no’. There are queer communities, rather than a single homogenous group. And yet, there is also a sense of a larger community: I feel an affiliation, sometimes in spite of myself. To give an example: Pride events today are often completely depoliticised, divorced from our history and corporate sponsored with an assimilationist agenda. I am (as you may have guessed) against these changes, but still I feel a certain thrill and a sense of comfort and ease when I walk through Soho or the Village as I weave between rainbow flags and get my dyke-walk on to Like A Virgin.

I don’t know that there’s another ‘community’ that I could write about and use the first person throughout.

Tattoo pic - as promised.

2008-09-06T16:38:00.000-07:00

My Library Shame

2008-09-01T17:44:00.000-07:00

It's not exactly news that I can be a little ditzy. Forgetfulness, a tendency to lose things and a generally lackadaisical attitude to all things practical are all part of the frequently accurate myth of Sita. I have, however, managed to move to a new country, find somewhere to live..etc, which I thought might banish these personality traits, if not from my character then from the mockery I endure at home. And yet, once again, I find that certain things remain immutable. I am still unable to return a library book on time. This appears to be a Balani-family tradition, so whether due to nature or nurture, I don't think i can be held entirely responsible for this particular debt. Still, it is rather shameful that within a fortnight I have incurred a library fine. There goes my student loan...

Inked.

2008-09-01T17:23:00.000-07:00

After at least a decade of admiring body art on other people and a couple of years of umming-and-ahhing about when/where/what I would want to permenantly mark my body with, I have finally got a tattoo! A perfect circle inked in black on my back.

Photos to follow.

The Saga of the Mirror

2008-08-28T16:40:00.000-07:00

Packaged within my new room were several floaty scarves, a bed, a chest of draws, sofa cushions, a table and chair and some fading pictures of Shiva. However, there was something missing. A mirror. While I don't consider myself to be especially vain (though you are, of course, free to disagree with me), a mirror is rather a necessity for eyebrow plucking, getting dressed in the morning and so on. So, a few days ago, after ascertaining that no-one was just giving a mirror away on the pavement (as they do with so many things here!), I went into a second hand furniture shop. I found one that I liked, and today went back to buy it. I was only able to on my second attempt (third in total), as they were closed when I arrived, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, this morning. The owner of the shop was a charming Italian guy, who just oozed a classic 'Nu Yawk' attitude, while simultaneously embodying the archetype of salesman that can be found across the globe. I bartered five bucks off the starting price and was sent on my way. I soon realised that though the journey back to mine was short, the mirror was big. And heavy. A three minute walk became a thirty minute ritual of public humiliation (about which, another post, as it is something of a theme in my life on this continent). Finally, with much puffing, panting and cursing, I made it up the two flights of stairs into my room.

Looking at the results of my hardwork, I realised that I hadn't actually seen myself in the past two weeks. I had caught glimses, of course, in car windows and little bathroom mirrors cloudy with condensation, but I hadn't taken the time to look. I have changed colour! My skin is several shades darker and my cheeks glowed pink from the exertion and, perhaps, a touch of sunburn. A new body for a new place? Maybe. Though now that I have a mirror, my eyebrows are going to be tamed once again!

Two blog posts on the understanding of sexuality.

2008-08-27T08:31:00.000-07:00

One: Coming out.

When people ask the question; ‘when did you come out’, the answer is usually ‘just now’. Because ‘coming out’ is not an event, nor even a process, but is the constant and repeated rebuttal of the infuriating assumptions people make about the nature of one’s sexual preferences. The assumption of heterosexuality is something we all do, to some degree, but that some persist with despite all evidence to the contrary. A very sweet woman in the hostel I was staying persevered in using a masculine pronoun when asking about my love life, despite the fact that I had already introduced a previous lover as ‘she’, until I had to rather abruptly correct her, causing a brief ripple of awkwardness to flutter between us.

House hunting was also a minefield of social etiquette, particularly with regards to ‘coming out’. Obviously, I don’t want to turn up in the house of a group of strangers and start talking about my romantic/sexual life, but I do want to live in a queer-positive environment. Moving in with Jasmin and Valeria was, I imagined, something of a safe bet. They are yoga-practising, intellectual Indophiles and homophobic hippies seem unlikely. And yet, yesterday, Valeria asked me what I thought of Indian men, despite the fact that all of the guys I have mentioned to her have been gay! To my surprise and annoyance, this time I was a little flustered. The language barrier, combined with the fact that I live in her house so I am, on some level, at the mercy of her prejudices, made me uneasy. I couldn’t keep letting it go though, so explained that I date women, and don’t really know any Indian men anyway! It wasn’t a problem, but it’s frustrating to perpetually make that snap decision to do the now dull, predictable and repetitive task of ‘coming out’.

Summer of books continued...

2008-08-24T08:48:00.000-07:00

I recently had a request for book recommendations (one of my all-time favourite activities) so thought I’d do a little Top 5 of my summer reading, and one or two to avoid…

Evelina – Frances Burney. If you only ever read one 18th century novel, make it this one! Burney’s satire is sharp, funny and refreshingly sympathetic, as she charts a young girl’s journey into the upper echelons of London society, via the emerging nouveau rich.
The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri – see review below.
Atonement – Ian McEwan. I know I’m rather behind the times by recommending this (the blog’s title isn’t entirely arbitrary), but having finally read it, I can say that it really does live up to the hype. McEwan seems to polarise people, and among his great work there is some rubbish, but this is close to flawless.
Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier. This is such a great read! Famously unclassifiable, Rebecca is an intellectual debate, a gothic romance, a bildungsroman and many other things besides. To be devoured on a train or a beach in one breathtaking sitting.
Beautiful Mutants - Deborah Levy. The intersecting stories of some truly contemporary characters, Levy dissects urban life in taut, muscular prose. Fabulous – I don’t know why she’s not more recognized.

Don’t bother with…

The Cement Garden - Ian McEwan. I didn’t get past the first 20 pages of this ridiculous Freudian allegory. Dull and predictable – you’re better off actually reading some theory, instead of this dry interpretation.

Tourist – Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal. Only published because he is (was?) married to Liz Jones, Dhaliwal’s sub-Houellebeqian examination of modern masculinity is atrociously written, and a definite contender for the Bad Sex awards. Read Kureishi or Tony White instead.

That’s it from me folks – feel free to post your own recommendations too.

Success at last!

2008-08-22T13:08:00.000-07:00

On the 7th day of my househunt, I've struck gold! Well, bricks and mortar, at least. I have trawled Craigslist, sent countless emails, made endless phonecalls (spending about $10 in quarters, before I got a cell phone) and walked more miles than I thought I could in a week. I have been impressed and horrified by the apartments I've seen and those that live in them. I have made some new friends. I have been perilously close to tears. But I have done it - I have, finally, found somewhere to live. As of 11am tomorrow, I live in a brownstone in the Plateau, Rue de Jeanne-Mance.

My Summer of Books

2008-08-21T08:02:00.000-07:00

My summer of books is drawing to a close - since the 16th of May my mind, time and bookshelves have been my own, with no reading lists, no exams and no pressure. It is perhaps unsurprising that, that in the last three months I have read roughly the same amount as during the last three terms of university. The books, almost exclusively novels, though I dipped into some poetry and theory, have ranged from the classic (L'Estranger) to the obscure (The Conversations of Cow); from magical realism (Rushdie) to gay comedy (Armistead Maupin) and a whole range in between. I have finally read Atonement. And Junky. And Rebecca. I have been able to fall into fiction with the kind of abandon not felt this strongly since childhood, when I would walk down stairs, eat breakfast, brush my teeth, get dressed...all with my eyes glued to the page. Reading in the shop (where I've been working this summer), often the till in front of me and the chair beneath me would slip away as I fell deep into another world. When a customer came in and disrupted my almost hypnotic reverie, I felt heavy and disorientated, almost out of breath from the quick, almost painful, transition between fiction and the mundane reality of retail.

My summer of books was unstructured and liberating, with no system for what to pick up next. And yet, despite this, patterns emerged. I don't mean thematically, which is a given; the vast majority of writers are interested in the human condition, so meditations on sex, love, death and suffering can be found in some form in most texts. In addition to this truism, the same plot devices came up over and over. The world of the novel is one in which letters are hidden or lost; in which death is sudden; in which pregnancy is inevitable, reunions even more so. Nothing is lost or wasted. Genders can change, prison walls can be scaled, blood drips. Prostitutes are ubiquitous.

I am not suggesting that every novel I read was formulaic, employing lazy devices as a deux es machina. The similarities, in fact, seem to highlight the basic facts of human existence (the sex, death, love, suffering...etc) taken to their logical conclusion. For example, every parent has experienced the blind panic of fearing their child missing; fiction shows us what might happen when a child does go missing. We've all wondered what it would be like to pay for sex; Kureishi, Roth, Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal, Helen Walsh and more show us.

With 'school' (as they say here) looming, and my bookmark hurtling through the final pages of Something To Tell You, this summer of books is drawing to its inevitable denouement. A new reading list looms...

La ville de chance!

2008-08-18T11:23:00.000-07:00

Montréal, in the 70-odd hours I have been here, appears to be unusually lucky. Or perhaps, to be more accurate about this, I have had a remarkably fortuitous introduction to the city. Firstly, a wonderful Québécois couple on the plane who humoured my terrible French and gave me a locals guide to the city. Secondly, while queuing at Immigration trying not to look like a terrorist or delinquent, I ran into a friend from Leeds who, even more fortuitously, was staying at the same hostel, so we were able to share a cab. The next day brought another enjoyable coincidence - I had landed the weekend of Pride. I stumbled across La Fierté when I went to explore the village, providing the perfect introduction to the scene. A final stroke of fortune yesterday - with two hours to kill the Plateau after a house viewing fell through, I heard the sound of drums. Following the beat, I came to a park that was playing host to a festival of Dominican culture. I had a gorgeous hour listening to music, taking photos and eating a fit doughnut. Perfect. Oooh, there's one more, I had almost forgotten. The girl on the bunk below mine had also lost one of the immigration documents, so we went to get replacements and the office was just a couple of minutes away from the hostel. All in all, a lovely start. If only some of this good luck would strike my housing situation...

The Namesake - a review

2008-08-17T08:14:00.000-07:00

Jhumpa Lahiri’s first novel wears its heart on its sleeve and its concerns on its dust jacket; as you would expect, The Namesake explores issues of selfhood and cultural identity. These themes, ubiquitous in postcolonial literature, could have easily descended into cliché, in a novel that begins with a reference to Indian food, closely followed by an arranged marriage. However, Lahiri spins a far more subtle, witty and intelligent story than this predictable opening suggests. An omniscient narrator casts an honest and sympathetic eye over Ashima and Ashoke, or to use their petnames Monu and Mithu, a Bengali couple living in New England. A mixture of tragedy and literature results in their first son being called by his petname Gogol, a name he grows up to despise. It is his and Ashima’s stories that lie at the heart of the text, with Ashoke’s providing an intellectual and ideological context.

The most startling element of this text is its accuracy: Lahiri provides an unflinching examination of the tensions between first and second generation immigrants – and perhaps in all families – that encompasses the ugly as well as the beautiful, the bitterness alongside the warmth and the universal via the particular. In the same manner as Nabakov, (a Russian that doesn’t get a mention in Lahiri’s allusive Russophile text) in a single paragraph, she is able to shine torch beams of light into the dark corners of her characters’ lives, only to end with a perfectly tuned sentence or phrase that, with the ease of pulling the curtains open, floods a moment with light, revealing all that was once in shadows. These flourishes can be bathetic or heartbreaking or, at their best, both at once.

In prose that shines with warmth, light and intellectual accomplishment, Lahiri lifts the lid on an American Bengali community and establishes herself as a heavyweight in the ever-growing literature of the subcontinents diaspora.