Suicide lolz

Can one conjugate 'parasuicide' into 'parasuicidal'? Asking for a friend.

The thing about suicide is that once you've tried once, you can't unknow what you have learned. You couldn't manage x, y didn't work, but z... Your body is permanently changed, and so is your mind. Immediately after, it's common to feel a surge of elation: you survived an attempt on your life! Personally, though, I just felt flat, ground down by the awareness of one more thing I'd failed at; that the acute crisis had passed and not taken me with it. That I might never get up the gumption again and would have to go on feeling this nothing forever.

That and feeling this way is just fucking embarrassing. It's acceptable at 16, even expected; but aren't we all supposed to be over that silly little phase now? What, are you listening to the Manics as well?

(Then again, the nice thing about going nuts at 26, as opposed to 16, is that when you tell your friends they respond with, "Oh no! Can I help? Do you want company/Japanese pancakes/a warm shoulder to lean on/booze/me to thoroughly take the piss out of you?" (Yes to all of the above.) They do not say, "Wow. That's so deep." With age we've finally figured out that mental illness isn't cool and creative and proof that we're such tortured artists, man, it's just sad and difficult and endlessly, grindingly boring. If I hadn't wasted so much time a) being brain-wrong and b) shaving my legs I'd probably be Prime Minister by now.)

I have an entirely psychosomatic ache in my left wrist, a pang that shoots up my arm at times like this. All you can see is a shimmering white one inch scar, a grim memento from a grubby and painful and thankfully interrupted evening back in my teenage bedroom all those years ago. I'd thought the knowledge I'd dug into my arm had faded too, but it was just hibernating.

Suicidal people are information-gannets. Every conversation, landscape, shop window display is mined for tips and hints on how best to go about the deadly deed. Every news article, as well. Research shows that a report on a suicide which goes into detail about the methods used will be followed by a surge in the number of people killing themselves the same way. No, it didn't make them do it - it just showed them how.

(It's fine. I mean, it's not fine, but it's not an emergency. I didn't even attempt the dreaded deed, I'm covered in cake and company and going back to the GP to jump on the meds-tinkering talky-therapy train; management strategies are firmly in place and I am not in need of an intervention. Stand down the guard.)

"Cake or death?"
"Cake, Hannah, CAKE! Give me the butter knife!"
Suicidal lolz.

"She forgot to take her medication today!"

I feel like absolute snakepit crap today. All I am capable of is a) gazing at the computer screen, trying to distract myself with pictures of kittens, b) staring blankly at my book, completely failing to take in a word, and c) shovel carbohydrates into my mouth in an attempt to suffocate my amorphous sorrows in a big bready avalanche, while d) trying desperately not to cry.

Which is partly because I haven't had any time to myself for the last four days. Which is partly because I have got drunk every night for the last three days. (I don't really drink usually, so the resulting hangovers are multiplying with each other like little evil bunnies.) Which is partly because, with this disruption of my routine, I have forgotten to take my medication for the last three days.

"She forgot to take her medication today!" is one of those marginally irritating stock phrases that people use without thinking it through. It's used as a lazy joke for any mistake or failing or mildly eccentric behaviour, and honestly? Most days I wouldn't even give a shit. I might register a vague flash of annoyance and observe that the speaker really needs some new material.

Today, though: ha.

"She forgot to take her medication today!" And she feels like she is literally dying. The effort involved in smiling and saying good morning at the same time nearly broke her.

There's a load of other stuff to unpack - the idea that people with mental health issues have a duty to take their meds, that said issues can only be fixed with meds, that people with said issues do such wacky things, lolz! - but the fact that I haven't taken my medication today leaves me entirely incapable of any further rational thought.

This is a problem that can only be solved by several hours in bed, watching David Tennant Doctor Who, with a duvet on my head. And taking my medication every day. As you were.

Living the dream

So I bought The Most Ethical Bag On The Planet.

BEHOLD.

It is made of organic, recycled, fair trade jute.

It was crafted by women who had formerly been trafficked for sex work, employed by a company which offers these women decently-paid work and support to rebuild their lives.

It probably gives the world's oppressed and downtrodden a foot rub.

On the day of its delivery, I unwrapped it with glee; I admired its construction and aesthetics; I gloried in the fact that it is big enough to fit a book, my lunch, and a medium-sized knitting project, without being heavy enough to trigger my recurrent back problems. I luxuriated in the unimaginable smugness that comes from buying The Most Ethical Bag On The Planet.

But when I opened it up, my heart sank: there is no pocket for keys, fags and lipbalm; worse, no pocket for one's essential-in-this-modern-age suckable-digital-thumb, the smart phone.

At which point I was sent a link to 27 Middle Class Problems.

FUCK YOU SOMETIMES I DO HAVE DIFFICULTY RECONCILING MY LOVE OF HIP HOP WITH MY COMMITMENT TO FEMINISM.

Yep. I am living the stereotype dream. I'm off to weave my own free-range yoghurt.

Yes, another Twilight post: Billy Black's wheels

So I know there are about a million ways in which the Twilight series is the very definition of Problematic. The romanticisation of abusive relationships; the message that having sex with dudes will kill you really dead; the abstinence-only not-before-marriageness of it all; the racist orientalism of having the Native Americans be fucking werewolves; the sly dig at the theory of evolution snuck into the first book... countless words could have, and indeed have, been written decrying its deeply conservative worldview and the gross messages it sends to its intended audience of teenage girls. And the fact that the vampires are just plain rubbish - ooh, they're vampires, but without the sunlight issues, evilness, coffiny cryptyness, or all the stuff that makes vampires COOL.

I mean: "If I hadn't seen him undressed, I would have sworn there was nothing more beautiful than Edward in his khakis." KHAKIS? The vampire wears motherfucking KHAKIS? And we are expected to accept Bella's appraisal of him as the coolest sexiest cleverest kindest bestest most having of the longest boy eyelashes everest and also a concert pianistest never fucked anyone in 100 years because he was just waiting around for Bella manic pixie dream blah EVER? In his KHAKIS?

Huh.

But...

Look, I swear this isn't coloured by the fact that I have a weird fascination with the books (I like trashy novels! Sometimes I am too tired to handle Serious Literature! I have also just finished reading a 400 page treatise on the differentiated origins of food production, animal domestication and technological development around the world! And am getting weirdly defensive about this!), or not entirely, anyway.

I just wanted to take a moment to celebrate the character of Billy Black. He's Love Interest II's dad. Tribal elder. Pal of Bella's dad. Uses a wheelchair. Knows about the werewolves.

I really like the fact that his mode of transport is just... not an issue. It's mentioned in the same way that other characters' walking is: it's just how he gets around. (Plus, with the super-sexy super-elegant super-suave super-speedy super-human vampiric perambulations going on, Billy's wheels are just not the most interesting moves in town.) There's the odd reference to the limitations this places on his freedom of movement - he can't get into the garage, for example - and it's casually referred to in the family in the same way you'd take the piss out of your sister's rubbish car, or celebrate your mum getting her old person's bus pass.

We're never told why Billy uses a wheelchair - whether he was born not being able to walk, or lost the use of his legs from illness or accident - and it's not portrayed as the defining aspect of his personality. He's a minor player who doesn't get a lot of airtime, which could have easily led to his being a one-note character: the local crip. But he wasn't.

AND, I have just confirmed my suspicion that he totally was in Buffy season 2! Ten points and a high five to the first person to correctly identify episode and character without resorting to Wikipedia.

I wasn't talking to you

Manpanion: "What is 'mansplaining'?
Me: "Well. Remember when we first started going out, and you kept saying that the noun 'patriarchy' shouldn't be used with the definite article? That was a prime example of mansplaining. That was basically the platonic ideal of mansplaining, to which all other mansplanations were but shadows on the mansplainy cave wall."
Manpanion: "'Mansplaining' is a really stupid word."
Me: "..."
Manpanion: "'Man' doesn't sound anything like 'ex'."
Me: "..."
Manpanion: "You're going to blog about this, aren't you?"

...

The Manpanion's other beef with the word Patriarchy is that no one knows what it means. So, I suppose, people will read a feminist blog post, nod along, agree with some bits, question others, and then run up against a brick wall: The Word That They Do Not Know. At which point they could either:

1. Highlight it, right click, select "search google for 'patriarchy'", read the definition and maybe a 101 blog post, move on.
2. Get up, go over to the bookshelf, pick up Ye Olde Paper Dictionary, flip to P.
3. Run away screaming, convinced that feminism is IMPENETRABLE.

For reasons lost to the mists of time, I start all conversations with my mum in German. Really bad German, on my side, given that I speak about twelve words of the language, so it generally goes something like: "Mutti! Ich habe sehr lecke, um, pies gemacht! Sehr klein, und so süß! (Wie sagt man 'pie'?)" *

Similarly, conversations with Straight Best Friend tend to begin with a selection from my three Chinese phrases "Wei, ni hao? You mei you xiong mao ma? Wo DA bu hao. Ke lian de Han. Um, what's Mandarin for 'fucking massive hangover'?" **) before reverting back to one of our common languages - English, or Scouse.

* Mummy! I've made very tasty pies! Very small, and so sweet! How do you say 'pie'?
** Hi, how are you? Do you have any pandas? I'm SO not good. Poor Han.

Manpanion has yet to complain that he is being excluded by my cack-handed linguistic forays, because it's understood that a phone conversation is between two people, and only has to be intelligible to those two.

I think it needs to be understood that a lot of posts in the social justice blogosphere are like that: part of a broader conversation between members of a community, which don't necessarily have to be accessible to the rest of the world.

Specialist language, like Patriarchy and Intersectionality and Rape Culture, is not there to shut non-initiates out: it's just to save our own time. Yeah, I could say "a culture of systemic and long-standing oppression of women", but it saves time and typing fingers and word count if I just use the word Patriarchy. My intended audience knows what I'm talking about: why waste their time, too?

You don't eavesdrop on a French conversation class and complain that you've no idea what they're banging on about. You don't read a knitting blog and demand that, if they're going to say stuff like "I frogged my intarsia WIP and am heading over to my LYS to stock up on DPNs and feed my stash", they define each of those terms every time they appear.

So why are feminists and anti-racists and LGBT activists and co expected to conduct our every conversation at entry-level?

Sure, we want to appeal to a wider audience; I don't really think that the world's going to get fixed by a couple of hundred people debating the ideological implications of Vajazzling. But spreading the word is only one prong of the social justice blogging thing. We're also doing it to keep our spirits up, to work through new ideas, to move theory along, and to be able to do that, it has to be taken as read that participants in the conversation have a firm grasp on the basics.

The accusation is frequently thrown that this creates an echo chamber of agreement, a lovely great circle jerk where we all sit around congratulating each other on being so very right on. Which is bollocks. We disagree all the time, on almost every issue; feminism is far from being a monolith and hammering out new ideas can't be done without disagreements. It's just that we don't have to waste our time and energy demonstrating, for the fiftieth fucking time, that sexism actually exists.

Insulting people without prejudice

"FUCK OFF, YOU CUNT!"

Is what a charming Porsche-driving gentleman yelled at me after he nearly ran me over at a bus stop. Which led to quite the conundrum: how to quickly and thoroughly eviscerate him, informing him that I had nothing but disdain for his rudeness, his rudimentary spatial awareness and his lack of willingness to share the planet with anyone other than himself, while making it clear that this was an entirely personal insult, making no reference to the popular stereotype which bizarrely claims that people who share his East Asian heritage are bad drivers? (I think this particular association between ethnicity and wheelmanship is predominantly held in the States, but we're living in a global village, apparently, and racism is nothing like a fine wine: it travels well.)

I went with "GET FUCKED, DICKWAD."

Still, it was nice to have one prejudice thoroughly confirmed: Porsche-drivers are total wankers.

We will laugh the day that Thatcher dies, even though we know it's not right

"Just think, when you wake up tomorrow, Thatcher could be dead!"

Is what I said to cheer up a gloomy housemate, on the tube some time in 2005. Loudly. On the Victoria line. We got looks.


...


...

"Wow, all those people who looked down on Americans for celebrating Bin Laden's death have really lost the moral high ground." In our defence, at least we didn't actually kill Thatcher.

...

Without straining credulity too much, I can make a fairly compelling case for the idea that Margaret Thatcher ruined my life. The polarised political climate put a massive strain on my parents' marriage, along with my dad's redundancy (bad time to work in newspapers!) and the widespread economic uncertainty. (I'm told there was an Economic Miracle in the 80s. No one I know remembers this.)

Meanwhile, the breaking of the print unions, and the rise of the BNP - given respectability by Thatcher's racist pronouncements - both tipped my dad over the edge into mental breakdown, putting the final kibosh on their relationship. (So, brilliantly, I ended up being raised by a single mother... because of Margaret Thatcher. Nice work.)

Then there's the National Curriculum, the obsession with school league tables, the idea that kids are just there to get results to make their schools look good, which tipped me over the edge of sanity a decade or so after my dad went down his own personal rabbit hole.

Obviously, I can't say "Thatcher made me crazy", "Thatcher sent my dad mad" or "Thatcher split my parents up". It's not that simple. But she had a genuine role in all three of those things. Yeah, I was four when she left office, but you know the line about old sins and long shadows, right? Politics matters, and political decisions have ramifications which don't end when the shot-callers leave office.


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After Pinochet seized power in Chile in 1973, refugees flooded out of the country seeking asylum. A sizeable number of them ended up in Southampton. Some of these people drank in the same pubs as my parents. Hearing an immensely dignified Allende supporter, living in exile, explain to me over a pint of bitter exactly how it felt to watch Pinochet be warmly welcomed by the former Prime Minister - after facing precisely no punishment for presiding over the death or disappearance of over three thousand people - was one of those moments when you start to grasp how the world fits together, and how the world sees this green and pleasant land.

A lot of Irish people drank in those pubs, too. I was doing harmonies on songs about the hunger strikers before I'd even heard the national anthem.

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I'm pretty sure that the level of vitriol reserved especially for Thatcher owes a lot to misogyny. Yes, her policies were horrific, her pronouncements sickening, her ongoing effect on this country devastating - but I don't believe that she would have remained such a virulently despised figure (by my parish - obviously not by the entire country) had she been male. It's a tricky theory to test, though, as there genuinely isn't a male politician who's been quite so bad.

Then again, I believe it was Thatcher herself who said that "I owe nothing to women's lib. The feminists hate me, don't they? And I don't blame them. For I hate feminism. It is poison." So I'm not inclined to waste my energy telling people to hate her in the right way.

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We will laugh the day that Thatcher dies, even though we know it's not right

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I'm not saying it's right to celebrate someone's death - though I'm sure as hell not going to mourn. I'm just trying to explain, to anyone who is finding it distasteful, why it is that we can't help it.