“Tableaux of women pounding grain decorate the dimly lit lobby of the Rwandan parliament, but in the debating chamber inside there is a less familiar sight: rows of women MPs are seated on the black leather chairs alongside the men.”
Next up after God’s War, I’m going to look into writing a novel that involves me doing a lot of research into the genocide in Rwanda. It’s been an interest of mine for some time.
“Boys should be taught in single-sex schools with strong male role models to help a ‘lost generation’ of fatherless young men find their way in life, the Tory leadership contender Liam Fox says today.”
I’ve never been a fan of the single-sex school idea. I think it helps form a really strict gender polarity that ain’t good for anybody involved. In real life, we’ve gotta interact with many different people, of different cultures and genders. The sooner we get used ot it, the better.
And, to be honest, being a “lost generation” likely doesn’t have much to do with whether or not you went to school with boys (note the implicit assumption that only men compose this “lost generation”).
“Shoes,” Sheila Jeffreys says, “are almost becoming torture instruments. During a woman’s daily make-up ritual, on average she will expose herself to more than 200 synthetic chemicals before she has morning coffee. Regular lipstick wearers will ingest up to four and a half kilos during their lifetime.” We are talking about Jeffreys’ latest book, Beauty And Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices In The West, and she is in full flow about the horrors of what she calls “the brutality of beauty”.
What I enjoy about really, really radical feminism is that I can pick and choose what I want to pull away from it, look it over, interrogate it, say “Cool, that’s interesting, I can use that,” or “shit, she’s a dingbat,” and move on.
You’ve got to have voices from the far side of every debate acting as anchors for the rest. Radicals are fun.
Ok, back to drinking and writing. Still behind. Got some good stuff done today, but… yea… still behind.
And feeling nicely buzzed.
Ah, Friday.
