S.C.U.M.

Along with ‘Achilles Heel’ was a copy of ‘S.C.U.M. (Society for Cutting Up Men) MANIFESTO’ by Valerie Solanas.

Published in 1971 she had already shot Andy Warhol and her sanity was questioned. Everything about her that I have read so far, including her manifesto, reminds me strongly of the character Helga in Heimat who joined the left wing terrorist organisation Baader-Meinhoff. She even looks like the actress chosen to play Helga. Always in love, attention-seeking, always intense, mostly angry, her search for the unattainable (in whatever form) drives her into more and more radical paths until she forsakes art for politics and begins killing. Maybe Valerie Solanas had that same restless passionate discontent. I wonder if the character of Helga owed anything to Valerie.

There is a very good introduction to ‘Manifesto’ by Vivian Gornick which is easier to read than the rant itself. This claim for the Women’s Liberation movement particularly interested me:

The Point of Women’s Liberation’ is not to stand at the door of the male world beating our fists and crying “Let me in damn you, let me in!” The point is to walk away from that world and concentrate on creating a new woman who will take no place in that world, a woman who will make that world fall merely by refusing to populate it, a woman who will remake herself - and her daughters - in a far more divine image (i.e. more recognisably human) than the one she now occupies.

If that truly was the point of WL then it has utterly failed. Women are still battering at the door yelling ‘Let me in. Let me do what you do. Provide crèches so we can park our babies. Pay me equally for what doing what YOU do but give me more maternity allowance. Don’t penalise me for being a women (in fact treat me better than men).’ Only young women in extreme situations (Malalai Joya for one ) are challenging the world created (or so WL would have claimed) by men. So far we have bred Margaret Thatcher and Condoleeza Rice. Women doing men’s job’s like men.

Maybe that’s fine too - we’re all human beings struggling to make a living and hack out a life for ourselves and our families. It just gives the lie to what was generally thought back in the day that to give women power would change the world.

The position of women in society never really entered my consciousness and when it did, through the media, it was of academic interest. I hadn’t wanted a career badly enough to care who got more pay than me, I wanted a secure home and a family. My husband was far better suited to provide the security I hankered for than I was, and I was better at cooking. I didn’t mind spending the day watching the infants in the park, getting up at night to see to them etc. and etc. I would have minded having to go out to work and leave them for someone else to look after, which is what so often happens now. Why have the children in the first place if I was going to hand them over to another woman? Added to this I had always perceived women as the centre, the ruling force even, of their world. My mother’s will was paramount in our household. In the homes of relatives and my parents friends I saw much the same thing happening. The women were queens in their houses and everything happened in relations to their wishes; everything rotated around them. The men I came into contact with may have had power in their work life but took a back seat in the household, furthermore the work they did was FOR the household so that meant they were constrained by their wives and the needs of the children to work at whatever job they could find.

Valerie Gornick acknowledges this last point: “However when it’s all over what one is really left with is a deep and widening sadness for all of us - men and women - caught as we all are in the labyrinthine mazes of sexism. For, quite apparently, the men described by Solanas’ fire and ice are as much prisoners as they are jailers, as much victims as they are victimisers, as much the bewildered dupes of their own superior position in the system as they are its profiteers.

It looks from where I'm sitting as if the movement succeeded in its pratical and political aims (rights, pay, creches etc.) but failed to achieve the aspirations of its sub-text. Both men and women seem to be suffering in their roles now - exhausted, stressed, struggling to live up to expectations, their own and those of society, and struggling to make ends meet. It ain't good.

Achilles heel

I'm now the proud owner of the first issue of this organ. It makes interesting reading. I was too busy having babies and being an ex-pat wife to even know of its existence at the time. The story of my lfe. It seems to have run for 7 issues then folded until 1987 after which it ran steadily until 1999. I can't believe that what it set out to do has been accomplished. It aimed to create a discussion forum and support for men in an era when the defining roles of the sexes were blurring, the power of men over women was diminishing and masculinity was becoming a bad word. Inspired by the women's movements of the time and Spare Rib its opening chapter takes example from the tediously gynaecological tone of women's magazines and talks openly, frankly and at length about men's bits. I never knew they were prone to so many nasty infections and problems!

The opulent, succulent, potentate of the vegetable world. (Or is it a fruit?)

Subpersonalities again.

I really should be trying to get some sleep because I’m very tired but the day doesn’t seem complete without a visit to the journal. The new yoga regime is waking me up in the mornings and I get so much done by the time the shop opens that the day seems bottom heavy with activity. When I finally I sat myself behind the counter today I had driven the g’son over to his pony and done an enormous amount of shopping, mostly in preparation for the week with the family in the time share lodge in Ballater. The mother in me cannot let this opportunity pass without lots of home cooking which will have to be done in this house, frozen and carted over there because I also want to be able to help with the babes. My programme of cooking for the next ten days is daunting. I wish I could rid myself of this subpersonality who has to cook for everyone, but she is very strong.

The way these subpersonalities haunt us - that’s turned into a theme for this week, beginning on Sunday when I watched John Cassavetes ‘Opening Night’ in which an ageing actress Myrtle, played by Gena Rowlands, is reacting badly to a new lead role as the older woman. She drinks heavily and generally messes up as she battles with this transition. She is literally knocked around by her younger self in the hallucinatory form of a young girl, a fan of the actress, who was killed in a car accident after one of the performances. It was all too easy to relate to that battle with the young self who is angry at having to die.

On Monday a young friend whose gender foxed me for two days when we first met at a workshop came into the shop. A puckish, funny, self-deprecating creature, she was meant for the theatre I think and hankers to be there, whilst trying to be ‘grown up’ and a massage therapist. She entertained me with a spontaneous performance, quite good enough for the Edinburgh fringe, of her battle with the seventeen year old boy who lives in her, sabotaging her professional mien and generally driving her nutty. Strangely and very sadly a young boy she shared a house with a year or two back was killed in a car crash. That affected her badly and took her a long time to get over.

People’s lives - I see a lot of them from my seat amongst the books. A lovely friendly kindly lady, who is literally a ‘Lady’ but would never ever make anyone aware of that, brought in some books to show me in the hope I could buy them because her children, she is sure, will not appreciate them, have only small houses and, what she doesn’t say but somehow says, have taken paths in life that are beyond her understanding. The son when I last heard of him was clowning (literally) in France. He used to run a restaurant in town rather well and maybe is back in that business, but anyway is an eccentric, very charming. One daughter has lead a colourful, rather frenetic life, often teetering on the edge of looking quite mad, living once for a while in a gypsy caravan; another married a very ordinary local lad and is leading a very normal ordinary life in a small house with several children. None of them however are doing what their mother and father, he the head of a house with a long and illustrious history, might have expected them to be doing. I don’t think she minds, she is just a little bemused.


I did once locate a subpersonality who is a nun but I’ve no martyrdom in my make-up whatsoever. I have so much admiration for Malalai Joya who is speaking out against the ‘war lords’ in her country Afghanistan in the face of death threats. It’s hard to imagine being so motivated to speak a truth that death seems a small price to pay. I don’t even like it much if speaking my truth makes me a bit unpopular. I just hope they listen - Obama et al - but hold little hope. There was so much mulch in the press about the ‘Last Tommy’ dying and the need to keep their memory alive but very little mention of his opinion of war and warmongering.

Enough already...

Something fishy.

Help urgently needed. I was given a very lovely, very long, string of wooden beads for my birthday. They go with everything and I love wearing them except - when warmed by proximity to my body they smell fishy. The first time I noticed it I was holding g'son the 3rd and blamed his nappy. Instructions say not to spray with perfume - which is fishy in itself as I suspect instructions are the result of disturbed owners spraying for the same reason so WHY DON'T THEY CHANGE THEIR GLUE OR PAINT OR WHATEVER??

It's Monday. I'm grumpy. I found out yesterday that anything ending in 'ise' should read 'ize'. Now I thought that was an americanised (sorry, ized) spelling and have been avoiding it for years supercilliously.

That's what you get for watching day-time TV (Morse in this case).

It has stopped raining which is lovely but I have to sit in the shop which isn't and just shows someone is out to get at me personally.

On top of that - my body is screaming. A bit of yoga for a couple of mornings never did this in the past. What is different now?

Don't answer that.

Added later: Maybe Morse was wrong about the 'ise'v 'ize' question. 'ise' seems to be the good old British way, but that's terrible. He solved a crime on the strength of his knowledge of the dic. re ise/ize. (Which dic? Not sure but surely British?) Oh dear. All my foundations are crumbling. My sense of identity is threatened....

The benefits of a slow week.

Whilst my fellow bloggers have been getting out and about I have been sitting somewhat grumpily in the shop so have no photos to show of airy places or fascinating heritage. Oh well. The off-shoot of all this doing-nothing-without-even-a-computer-to-amuse-me has been an effort to return to the morning meditation-and-yoga routine of the olden days. It did feel rather like coming home. The yoga was easier the first day of course, after that the body stiffened and became more resistant. I shall try to overcome my natural distaste for routine and persist. It has the undeniable attractions of being both cost-free and energising.

Yoga is the only excercise I have ever enjoyed. I do love the feeling of stretching my body and getting all the messages from it; also the focus it generates. No competition from anyone else. Lots of satisfaction. This week I was also interested to hear the g'son say about archery that it was his 'best sport' next to riding. Coming from an almost-11 year old who might be expected to want fast-moving, competitive, high impact stuff I thought that was quite encouraging. Archery involves the same sort of body-mind focus as yoga as far as I can tell. To discover the pleasure in that is to have an ever-present resource for satisfaction and renewal.

Memo to self.

Pigs might fly.

I did catch myself thinking that this might be my last autumn/winter on earth as the chances of my lungs coping with swine flu seem remote. However after a chat with the doctor about the availibility of Tamiflu and the onset of a vaccination programme (my turn comes in the third wave) it seems I might not have to succumb. When I'm really bored (as I probably will be at about 3pm today for instance) I wonder why continuing to exist is so important but curiousity pulls one on.

I've been putting a little thought into what I might plinth (it just HAS to become a verb now: To plinth: to express; to communicate; to showcase; to give form; to provoke thought...

Don't hold your breath. So far I have come up with nothing.