The impossibility of love

Over the past few weeks, our newspapers have been full of horror stories from the Middle East about the plight of women – women punished for complaining they have been raped, stoned to death, pregnant, for having ‘illicit relationships’, dragged through the streets naked for stepping outside their homes with men to whom they are not related. Most right thinking people would regard these stories are barbaric, an extreme form of brutal servitude which should have no place in today’s world. These stories are indeed off the scale when it comes to brutality. However, as with most finger-pointing (however justified it may be) there are lessons to learn about our own back yard.

While women here who complain they have been raped do not face the same ordeal, the principle of ‘put the victim on trial’ – as if they were responsible -- is very much alive and well. We are routinely accused of ‘lying’ about such claims – having such a high acquittal rate for rape cases must ‘prove’ that to be the case, after all – as if law and reality were somehow aligned when it comes to women’s rights. Women’s sexuality continues to be commodified through the mass media, and the legal process does not bring anything like the justice to which we are entitled. All too often, women are simply revictimised.

This form of betrayal – which is what it ultimately is – makes the possibility of love for those of us who are hopelessly heterosexual but painfully aware of these issues all but impossible. How can love exist between men and women in a society that displays such profound injustice? How will we know that our relationships are not tainted by the inevitable influences of society’s attitudes? Is it possible to find love amongst those who support such as system either by their active support or acquiesce?

A number of the men that I know who have thought of me as potential partners have, I am sure, asked if I am ‘one of them’, meaning whether I side with ‘my man’ or whether I will reject that system. It is, of course, slightly complicated by the fact that an intimate relationship is meant to involve love and acceptance. However, and here is the bind, does loving and accepting you mean closing my eyes and ears to the injustices faced by women, myself included?

Some women, like me, make a choice not to have relationships with men for this very reason. It costs too much. These relationships are inevitably tainted by the socio-political forces that make up our interactions. By the presumption of inequality, however subtly manifest. My pain will always be secondary to your pain. My ambition will always come after yours. Enough.

A Percipient Irony

I have talked in previous posts about my current struggles and have posted a number of times on the struggles of other women in relation to issues of discrimination. I am meant to be writing a book on (to strip it to its bare essentials) what it means as a woman to be free. However, I have, for some months, been unable to write. I have sat down in front of my computer, trying to will and force myself into this task, but my brain has resisted every impulse. To say that it is because I have been too stressed and unwell is true but I need a bit more of an answer than that if I am going to be able to get through what appears to be this impenetrable writer’s block.

They say that women are inclined to be governed by their emotions, as if men either don’t have them, or if they do, are somehow better able to restrain such tendencies (lazy stereotypes abound). For me, the emotional and the intellectual have always gone hand in hand. I am not able to have one without the other. It should come then as no surprise to me that my current state of emotional stuntedness is having knock-on effects on this creative endeavour. Berating myself only seems to make things worse.

Today, I started to see this for what it was. How can I write a book on what it means to be free when I am being slapped about with all the reasons that women are not free, and being silenced to boot? Such a task cannot materialise whilst in the throws of oppressive manifestations, but can only start to be realised once one starts to move out of that place and feel again, freely; express oneself openly. To put it another way, the freedom and desire to create does not rest easily with the armour of war.

Where does this leave me? With, I suspect, an essentially private struggle influencing a public enterprise.

The only man I can stomach right now...

Sherlock Holmes. The side kick isn't bad either. Nice smile.

Where are the Revolutionaries?

There was an article in yesterday's Times written by David Aaronovitch entitled 'Woman-hating isn't just brutal, it's dangerous: The misogyny that leads to stonings and 'honour' killings also leads to poverty and, ultimately to terrorism'.

Whilst an unlikely convert to feminism, what he writes chimes with what I have thought for some considerable time. You would think that given the extent of female oppression and abuse, that there would have been an uprising, groups of feminist terrorists, freedom fighters. Maybe it is just a question of time before women in the Middle East revolt and start to organise themselves much in the way of other terrorist organisations before them, but here, the extent of the oppression is so severe and the anti-women views so deeply held, that any such thing can only result in a blood bath. Revolutions are sometimes the only way to overthrow a deeply oppressive and dysfunctional system, and that has implications not only for the part of the world that generates it, but worldwide.