Today I met with my lovely supervisor, and as expected I need coherence. I need to make decisions about purpose in order to structure effectively. Some people find structure easy, when it comes to a poem, I can do this. I can feel the need to metre my feet, but the discipline of structure within chapters is so abstract for me, that I need to develop a system.
In poetry my ideas cascade and then I slowly shape, and reshape. I let the words collapse around me, and I pick them up, turn them around, and they begin to form. The words and the ideas are conjoined, one is born from the other, and I am never quite sure which way around this is.
So now, I need to develop the discipline of a social scientist. With headings, and subheadings, and if I imagine these as branches, and allow the words to bud and grow, then maybe they may bloom? Or maybe I need to just abandon my words for a little while, and re structure my brain to think in tracks of sequential thoughts? I need whalebones, a corset for the mind. I struggle to wear matching socks, how can I ever think in matching thoughts?
A PhD is rather a grown up way of thinking for someone who has a scattered head.
So my lovely, and clever supervisor has suggested a duel write; a document for the concrete, and a simultaneous one for the random, abstracts which always arrive whenever I go near words. That really is the best idea I have heard all week, so this week I will give it a go. Who knows I might actually manage to maintain the 'purpose' for a full page...
Friday, 7 February 2014
Thursday, 6 February 2014
Flops and fish cakes...
Flop.
I am in a complete flop.
Number four child is walking across the room singing, no more wawwwwing. Think Clint Eastwood and Western movie soundtracks...wa, wa, wa, wa, waaaaaaaa. Waa, waa, waaaaaaaaa.
Child number six is running back and forward, trying desperately to find somewhere to hide, and has now crashed under child number one's shirt. Child number one is technically an adult, although anyone listening to him fuss about her feet in his ribs would dispute that.
Child number five is pretending to be a cushion, hoping his dad won't notice he is still clicking on the laptop past his allocated time.
Number three has commandeered the dining room table for her art project. Well, to doodle on a pad while singing out of key to the tunes plugged into her head.
Number two is currently at his band's 'practice'. He may crash in at any moment, and stagger like Frankenstein with guitar slung across his back, and amp dragging him floor-wards.
The cat is prostrate across the living room rug obliviously.
The man who helped me produce the cacophony of minions in the first place, is now also producing food. Fish cakes, one of their favourites.
While I sigh, and think in my flop, that today was a turning point kind of a day. Today we found out that the cooking man will not actually be dying of a brain tumour any time soon.
Thank God because my fish cakes are crap.
I am in a complete flop.
Number four child is walking across the room singing, no more wawwwwing. Think Clint Eastwood and Western movie soundtracks...wa, wa, wa, wa, waaaaaaaa. Waa, waa, waaaaaaaaa.
Child number six is running back and forward, trying desperately to find somewhere to hide, and has now crashed under child number one's shirt. Child number one is technically an adult, although anyone listening to him fuss about her feet in his ribs would dispute that.
Child number five is pretending to be a cushion, hoping his dad won't notice he is still clicking on the laptop past his allocated time.
Number three has commandeered the dining room table for her art project. Well, to doodle on a pad while singing out of key to the tunes plugged into her head.
Number two is currently at his band's 'practice'. He may crash in at any moment, and stagger like Frankenstein with guitar slung across his back, and amp dragging him floor-wards.
The cat is prostrate across the living room rug obliviously.
The man who helped me produce the cacophony of minions in the first place, is now also producing food. Fish cakes, one of their favourites.
While I sigh, and think in my flop, that today was a turning point kind of a day. Today we found out that the cooking man will not actually be dying of a brain tumour any time soon.
Thank God because my fish cakes are crap.
Tuesday, 4 February 2014
Teen bodies and angst fuelled mothers
I have just read an article about teen body awareness, in fact I have read many such articles in the last month. Not because I am a teen; far from it. But because my eldest daughter is. And just as I researched and obsessed about almost every stage of child development, I find myself also meticulously studying this element of child development too. However, while 'toilet training', or 'speech development' were almost abstract concepts, this creeping towards adult issues which are pertinent to the female psyche takes on a whole new dimension. I want to understand how the world is being presented to her, but why? So I can micromanage her development? So I can protect her, steer her, and guide her towards my view of a confident being? Or because I am her Mother, and I just want her to grow up to be as happy, content and fulfilled as she can be?
But I do wonder how this media fuelled generation, a youth fed a diet of confused, juxtaposed messages can ever get to the point where they feel 'worthy'. In a society where even a 'zit' - that natural phenomenon and hormone fuelled bi-product - is portrayed as a ghastly abhorrence to be fought mercilessly, where every pore, blemish, strand of hair, limb, torso is marketised and analysed. How can any young person ever develop a sense that they are quite perfectly beautiful, just as they are?
But I do wonder how this media fuelled generation, a youth fed a diet of confused, juxtaposed messages can ever get to the point where they feel 'worthy'. In a society where even a 'zit' - that natural phenomenon and hormone fuelled bi-product - is portrayed as a ghastly abhorrence to be fought mercilessly, where every pore, blemish, strand of hair, limb, torso is marketised and analysed. How can any young person ever develop a sense that they are quite perfectly beautiful, just as they are?
Policy and procrastination
Seems another large 'gap' has appeared between postings. I truly am flaky.
My meeting has just been cancelled, normally I would do something productively student facing. But today, I feel a little off kilter, like my internal gyroscope is rotating out of sync. So I have just been using that time by reading, 'Stalking Ableism: Using Disability to Expose 'Abled' Narcissism by Fiona Kumari Campbell. Usually at this point, I would jot down some thoughts. I have piles of these, scattered like a gust of withered leaves in autumn. My hope is that like the detritus of decomposing leaves, the seemingly useless, will eventually create food and growth. I acknowledge that this is essential. I know this as fact. Yet, I don't actually seem to believe that at the moment. Like a failed Catholic, I know the mantra, mouth the word of the prayers, but that core of faith is a vast and empty space.
On Friday, I will attend confession, and will submit to the Hail Marys that my lovely supervisor gives. She will feed me the sermon, the one I regularly preach to students, about the phases of learning, about the need to read, read and read some more, about the need to get stuff on paper. The need to create a plan, to write to this plan, to give the scattered thoughts shape and form...she will explain how research is filled, blighted even, by these pot-holes. That along the journey we stumble, or we meander off course, and that at times returning to the discarded leaves is essential. And I will nod and agree, and knuckle down. I will rewrite the shoddy mess that occurred last week, and I will turn that narrative meander through a pile of mismatched leaves into some coherent thought. I know this, I don't believe it, but I know it.
But today, reading Campbell's article again, I almost realised why I have this feeling of 'stuckness'. The decomposition has almost formed into an elusive, and frail skeleton of thought.
I am writing about 'policy'. Interesting you all cry! Yet, not matter how I recount these historical, and sometimes contemporary events, it never seems quite right, it stays narrative. It feels like a compression, as if I am squeezing chunks through a tin can squasher. There is too much to say, and so I try and rush, and squash and squeeze...yet I feel no interest in expanding. I know there are uncited chunks (horror, shock, gasp). I know I have omitted , I know I have made vast, gloriously sweeping statements. I know I have made points, not arguments. I have laboured this for the last two months, and all I have produced is 5,500 badly written words. If it was an undergraduate assignment, I would be struggling to scrape a pass. And if you asked me about these policies, I could tell you precisely nothing.
Who knows, by Friday, it may even have turned into words.
Maybe by Friday it will have digested into something actually worth saying?
My meeting has just been cancelled, normally I would do something productively student facing. But today, I feel a little off kilter, like my internal gyroscope is rotating out of sync. So I have just been using that time by reading, 'Stalking Ableism: Using Disability to Expose 'Abled' Narcissism by Fiona Kumari Campbell. Usually at this point, I would jot down some thoughts. I have piles of these, scattered like a gust of withered leaves in autumn. My hope is that like the detritus of decomposing leaves, the seemingly useless, will eventually create food and growth. I acknowledge that this is essential. I know this as fact. Yet, I don't actually seem to believe that at the moment. Like a failed Catholic, I know the mantra, mouth the word of the prayers, but that core of faith is a vast and empty space.
On Friday, I will attend confession, and will submit to the Hail Marys that my lovely supervisor gives. She will feed me the sermon, the one I regularly preach to students, about the phases of learning, about the need to read, read and read some more, about the need to get stuff on paper. The need to create a plan, to write to this plan, to give the scattered thoughts shape and form...she will explain how research is filled, blighted even, by these pot-holes. That along the journey we stumble, or we meander off course, and that at times returning to the discarded leaves is essential. And I will nod and agree, and knuckle down. I will rewrite the shoddy mess that occurred last week, and I will turn that narrative meander through a pile of mismatched leaves into some coherent thought. I know this, I don't believe it, but I know it.
But today, reading Campbell's article again, I almost realised why I have this feeling of 'stuckness'. The decomposition has almost formed into an elusive, and frail skeleton of thought.
I am writing about 'policy'. Interesting you all cry! Yet, not matter how I recount these historical, and sometimes contemporary events, it never seems quite right, it stays narrative. It feels like a compression, as if I am squeezing chunks through a tin can squasher. There is too much to say, and so I try and rush, and squash and squeeze...yet I feel no interest in expanding. I know there are uncited chunks (horror, shock, gasp). I know I have omitted , I know I have made vast, gloriously sweeping statements. I know I have made points, not arguments. I have laboured this for the last two months, and all I have produced is 5,500 badly written words. If it was an undergraduate assignment, I would be struggling to scrape a pass. And if you asked me about these policies, I could tell you precisely nothing.
Who knows, by Friday, it may even have turned into words.
Maybe by Friday it will have digested into something actually worth saying?
Thursday, 18 July 2013
Feminism – the great oppressor
I have reaped the benefits of those radicalised women who paved my way, I have the right to work full time, to acquire an education, to own property, to make decisions. Without doubt, I would argue that I am a ‘true’ and ardent Feminist. Such a sweeping statement requires quantifications and I will therefore define MY personal version of Feminism:
Feminism – my definition:
A belief in, and a passion for, equal rights for all human beings within each and every context and sphere;
A celebratory view of womanhood, and a pride in all that this means
I am a person, with agency, with power, with…well, well an axe to grind, because in the realms of the great and mighty sisterhood sits a dark, unholy secret.
The collective consciousness of the right-on Feminist, equates to the collective conscience of oppression of the ‘right’.
By right, I do not mean politically, because the collective conscience champions victims of oppression, those marginalised peoples exploited by the political right. The parody being, that in forging this collective identity, the marginalised female, she who does not subscribe to the collective conscious view of womanhood, becomes the victim. She becomes that which Feminism purports to support and defend, she becomes the marginalised, bullied into a fear of wearing lipstick, or God forbid, a short skirt.
A colleague, recently informed me that I was Mothering badly by engendering my daughter, that I was subjecting her to societal values of ‘princessness’ and therefore forcing an oppressive identity upon her. At this point may I interject? My subjective position is that I am a Mother of six, four categorised as boys, two categorised as girls, I have been a primary and early years educator, I have studied, among other things, child development and pedagogical theories of education and socialisation. I have also, unsurprisingly met my own children. The colleague who knows better has no children; she has however embraced the Feminist stereotype to empower her own agency. She also has nieces, she therefore feels suitable qualified to sit on cloud, and without ever meeting my children, cast judgement on their environment, upbringing, and my parenting methods.
What she does not have the ability however to do, is to understand that while socialisation, and environmental practices influence a personality, my child is in fact, an individual. Her sister chose to wear multi-coloured dungarees, 2 of her brothers chose to wear long hair, she however, chooses to wear a dress. And surely a fundamental principle of Feminism is choice?
No.
At a recent departmental occasion, another female colleague’s choice of a dress that sat above the kneeline was criticised by a different Feminist, the simple look and comment ensured she spent the rest of the evening sitting self-consciously and wishing she had never attended.
I have heard Feminist friends declare that women wearing miniskirts cause other women to be raped…erm, Judge Pickles, you have nothing on the oppressive practices of the archetypal and stereotypical Feminist. I know women who will not wear lipstick to work, although they want to, for fear of derisory comments. A simply said, ‘ahhh, so you’re wearing lipstick today?’ causes them to declare wildly, ‘lipchap, I have chapped lips!’
This, my esteemed stereotype embracing colleagues, is not Feminism, it is bullying, it is oppression, it is enforcing your views of sisterhood onto the shoulders, and down the ears of others. It is actually, no different from the Barbie adverts that cause me to switch the television off, because while the original motive may be admirable, the pressuring and judgementality is consistent with the oppressive practices of social conformity you claim to despise. Unwittingly, an entire clan of sisters have become so deeply entrenched within the system of oppression that they can see no other means of being, other than judging and criticising and conforming to a stereotype of sandals, baggy clothes and a cleanly scrubbed face. That, sister, is your choice, I do not criticise this, I do not sit in staff meetings and sneer at the gossamer thinness of your cotton shirts, I do not criticise your appearance and make reference to the stereotypical, and overt sexualisation of your make-up-less face, dishevelled hair and beads, and comment on how you looking like a woman at Woodstock, rolling naked in the mud causes women to be raped, because I am more than aware that such an overt simplification of complex phenomenon would be both hypercritical and unfounded.
So when I sit with my Feminist colleagues, with their superior knowledge that their value system is correct; their quickness to comment over other women’s appearances; their speed to lay-blame at every Mothers’ feet; their unwillingness to respect a woman with a different view; I feel a shudder of unease, because somewhere, somehow, that ideology which has the potential to change the world for good, has been hegenomised, and I look at my stereotypical Feminists and realise, that you have all become 'men'. In emulating the power practices of the dominant discourses in society, they have disregarded the fundamental principles of compassion, and they have also forgotten that a woman has a right to celebrate her own identity, however she may choose. Without discursive analysis of this position, and an acknowledgement that for some, Feminism is a crenellation behind which they can hide and excuse themselves while they cast poisoned arrows at the women below, then Feminism becomes yet another oppressive institution. A territory where many women fear expressing individual opinions, and where a new generation of Feminists will not identify with archaic principles analogous to the more subtle, and desirable oppression marketed via Barbie adverts during their childhood television viewing.
Monday, 19 November 2012
Tell me then, who IS the sexiest?!
This week I have mainly been reading articles on ambivalent sexism; yes we all have our hobbies and among the interesting and thought provoking, I stumbled upon a few things I generally ignore...mainstream, glossy articles.
In the interest of research, I read a few. Wow, this is a strange and uncharted territory. Don't get me wrong, I have flipped through women's magazines at the doctor's and dentist's waiting room. But I think it was probably 1989 when I last looked inside the cover of Cosmopolitan. However, the article which really interested me, was this one in Marie Claire, Australia.
http://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/marie-claire/features/reports/article/-/6530219/you-tell-us-who-s-the-sexiest/
Now I do understand, that most people will be familiar with this article and it looks as though it has, 'done the rounds' it was written in 2009 after all. But as I said the other day, I realised at an early age that I was destined to discover 'new' things which the rest of the planet already knew about!
Now, call me sad, but what a peculiar piece of propaganda this is. Using objectified female bodies, to confirm to the female readership that objectified female model-size bodies are in fact, not attractive.
The psychology of the body language used and the positioning of the people is constructed to ensure there will be only one possible outcome - the size 12. She is standing in the, 'I find you attractive' stance and also creates the 'full stop' in the 'reading' of the body sentence. I really do find such overt manipulation insulting! Couple with this the fact that the women are not the sizes presented...yes I took out a small scale ruler and measured and cross referenced the width of their frames as confirmation that this is a piece intended to manipulate me, the reader and I took offence! If these women are the size we are told, they have been stretch, or shrunk to conform to a standardised height and this has skewed the perception of the form. And that is just cheating! The size 8 model has the same width shoulders and hips as the size 12...ummmm. seems rather unethical to me!
If we are going to use pejorative and damaging journalism to undermine the beauty of women, or in fact to make 'beauty' the only goal worthy of attainment, at least make it an ethical photograph!
Now I am all for women celebrating beauty, as someone who has spent most of my adult life lacking body confidence and with issues around being labelled, I am fully supportive of articles which make women and men question their preconceptions about everything really! But why must we have one form of beauty as superior to another?
What a juxtaposition and bizarre contradiction these magazine-things are. Packed full of labels, real women are the most attractive being the sub-text of one article and how to lose weight and look like a rake the sub-text of another.
I tend to think that this media works so well at turning women into warring factions, and while we symbolically scratch each other's eyes out over a size label, we also subserviently don bras and knickers and line up to be 'compared' and 'contrasted' in the beauty stakes. The fact is, that while we all bitch about the vital statistics of Victoria Beckham or Kate Winslet, we won't be questioning society or demanding to be given the same career opportunities, or even expecting that other women will actually judge us for how we behave, rather than for what we wear.
In the interest of research, I read a few. Wow, this is a strange and uncharted territory. Don't get me wrong, I have flipped through women's magazines at the doctor's and dentist's waiting room. But I think it was probably 1989 when I last looked inside the cover of Cosmopolitan. However, the article which really interested me, was this one in Marie Claire, Australia.
http://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/marie-claire/features/reports/article/-/6530219/you-tell-us-who-s-the-sexiest/
Now I do understand, that most people will be familiar with this article and it looks as though it has, 'done the rounds' it was written in 2009 after all. But as I said the other day, I realised at an early age that I was destined to discover 'new' things which the rest of the planet already knew about!
Now, call me sad, but what a peculiar piece of propaganda this is. Using objectified female bodies, to confirm to the female readership that objectified female model-size bodies are in fact, not attractive.
The psychology of the body language used and the positioning of the people is constructed to ensure there will be only one possible outcome - the size 12. She is standing in the, 'I find you attractive' stance and also creates the 'full stop' in the 'reading' of the body sentence. I really do find such overt manipulation insulting! Couple with this the fact that the women are not the sizes presented...yes I took out a small scale ruler and measured and cross referenced the width of their frames as confirmation that this is a piece intended to manipulate me, the reader and I took offence! If these women are the size we are told, they have been stretch, or shrunk to conform to a standardised height and this has skewed the perception of the form. And that is just cheating! The size 8 model has the same width shoulders and hips as the size 12...ummmm. seems rather unethical to me!
If we are going to use pejorative and damaging journalism to undermine the beauty of women, or in fact to make 'beauty' the only goal worthy of attainment, at least make it an ethical photograph!
Now I am all for women celebrating beauty, as someone who has spent most of my adult life lacking body confidence and with issues around being labelled, I am fully supportive of articles which make women and men question their preconceptions about everything really! But why must we have one form of beauty as superior to another?
What a juxtaposition and bizarre contradiction these magazine-things are. Packed full of labels, real women are the most attractive being the sub-text of one article and how to lose weight and look like a rake the sub-text of another.
I tend to think that this media works so well at turning women into warring factions, and while we symbolically scratch each other's eyes out over a size label, we also subserviently don bras and knickers and line up to be 'compared' and 'contrasted' in the beauty stakes. The fact is, that while we all bitch about the vital statistics of Victoria Beckham or Kate Winslet, we won't be questioning society or demanding to be given the same career opportunities, or even expecting that other women will actually judge us for how we behave, rather than for what we wear.
Tuesday, 13 November 2012
Obesity Epidemic
Well I decided I would start blogging regularly, so here I am again.
Today I went back to work after three weeks off sick to find myself sitting in an office, checking emails until about one in the afternoon. I fully admit, there were intervals, the odd ten minutes speaking to colleagues, a walk to the toilets and back...even a walk to the water dispenser.
At one, I ate my lunch (at my desk) while reading a student's assignment. Then I downloaded and printed a research paper, before answering another two emails in the afternoon and had a telephone conversation with a lady who wants a 'report'.
So that's half eight until one, then another half an hour of time consumed by virtual communication...5 hours of a 7 hours (ish) working day!
Now all this communication makes me wonder and the question is 'why'? Okay, I acknowledge, time off sick generates a full in-box, but my reply system was set for 'out of office' and so the box wasn't as full as it could have been...but I have lots of days like this.
Days filled with non-working-work. All this time tied up with pinging, sentence-long dragged out conversation. It can take a few hours of sporadic pings to arrange a meeting which would take 5 minutes over the phone.
There's talk of, 'information obesity' maybe it's also, 'communication obesity' we need to fear, so much time consuming, meaningless froth, which fills our time and leaves us interaction empty. Rather like a convenience meal - it tastes bland and you'll still be hungry at the end of it, but it piles inches on the waistline and hardens those arteries.
We spend so much time engaged with this constant stream to instantly demanding chatter, that we cease to seek conversation with meaning. In face, so full am I today with 'communication' that by bedtime, I am asking my chatting children to 'just shhhh, just one minute please'! The only worthwhile conversations today, dismissed, because my head is so full of ready-meal ping!
Today I went back to work after three weeks off sick to find myself sitting in an office, checking emails until about one in the afternoon. I fully admit, there were intervals, the odd ten minutes speaking to colleagues, a walk to the toilets and back...even a walk to the water dispenser.
At one, I ate my lunch (at my desk) while reading a student's assignment. Then I downloaded and printed a research paper, before answering another two emails in the afternoon and had a telephone conversation with a lady who wants a 'report'.
So that's half eight until one, then another half an hour of time consumed by virtual communication...5 hours of a 7 hours (ish) working day!
Now all this communication makes me wonder and the question is 'why'? Okay, I acknowledge, time off sick generates a full in-box, but my reply system was set for 'out of office' and so the box wasn't as full as it could have been...but I have lots of days like this.
Days filled with non-working-work. All this time tied up with pinging, sentence-long dragged out conversation. It can take a few hours of sporadic pings to arrange a meeting which would take 5 minutes over the phone.
There's talk of, 'information obesity' maybe it's also, 'communication obesity' we need to fear, so much time consuming, meaningless froth, which fills our time and leaves us interaction empty. Rather like a convenience meal - it tastes bland and you'll still be hungry at the end of it, but it piles inches on the waistline and hardens those arteries.
We spend so much time engaged with this constant stream to instantly demanding chatter, that we cease to seek conversation with meaning. In face, so full am I today with 'communication' that by bedtime, I am asking my chatting children to 'just shhhh, just one minute please'! The only worthwhile conversations today, dismissed, because my head is so full of ready-meal ping!
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