I swear if I hear "independent ladies" one more time...

I'm out pretty often: parties, concerts, limes, general lolly-gagging in the wee hours. I've only recently embraced the notion that I do work hard (I grew up thinking that hard work had to involve hot sun, perspiration and calloused hands; anything else - even 20-hour days at a computer or in meetings with seats and coffee breaks - was a luxury and a fiasco), and so I should be able to engage in the types of entertainment that I enjoy.

When one is out as often as I am, one tends to notice certain trends in the ways people seek to entertain the masses. And though not as ire-inducing as some other trends, there is one in particular that makes me itch. Shall I present it as a question? I think I shall. Because I wouldn't mind having an answer, if any of you are amenable.

I ask you: what is up with this "independent ladies" bullshit? Were I a betting individual, I would very readily bet all my jewels and livestock that at any given party or stage show, some DJ or MC - in most cases a man - will take the mic and yell something along the lines of "Ladies if you know you independent, you got on your own clothes, you got on your own hair, your own underwear, you got your own house key, bullshit bullshit bullshit, put your hands in the air." Or worse: "Ladies if you know you independent: SCREEEEAM!"

I beg. Your pardon.

First, that last exhortation is a contradiction in terms. The fact that I (and by "I" I mean "Mar". The rest of you may scream in response if you like, although I have never understood it) may self-identify as an independent "lady" (more on that later) means that I do not scream at the say-so of some random stranger on a mic. That's not to say I will never scream in public. I scream all the time. I screamed just Saturday night when Lil Rick performed some of his old dub hits and made a delightful ass of himself on stage - as only he can do - in another one of his lessons on how not to take oneself too seriously as a performer. But I screamed or bellowed or made whatever noise I pleased in the spirit of general noise-making to show appreciation. There is something about a man telling a roomful of women to scream that makes me feel like he's trying to live out some kind of harem fantasy. Worse is when he tells the women to scream and the men to say "Blat blat blat!" So men's voices are to express aggression and gun violence and women's voices are to express either sexual climax or distress. That is lovely.

But even setting aside the general screaming commands, why the preoccupation with "independent ladies"? And what is an independent lady anyway? And who the hell is this subset of women up in the club wearing other people's underwear?

I have some theories. When I was growing up, I dare say that consumerism wasn't the beast that it is today. Yes we all wanted L.A Gear and bodysuits and whatnot, but foreign markets were not as accessible; we as non-adults had limited resources, and all that resulted in the trend of sharing clothes. I can't say whether women over the age of 25 did it, although I'm inclined to think so as they had similar market access issues, but among my friends, it was certainly done. In a time before snapping cell phone pics and immediately uploading them to Facebook so everyone could see what you wore to every event, people were less self-conscious about what their outfits said about their paycheque and status. If your friend had a hot new trend piece and wasn't wearing it that week, it was an option. But, with our matey culture, in which men's dominance is perpetuated by pitting women against each other along the lines of attractiveness, domestic skills, sexual adventurousness, clothes-sharing soon became a further point of comparison that men used. The jig was up. Now, and as consumerism began to take hold more, wearing your 'matey's' clothes was to be a source of extreme embarrassment and proof you weren't an adequate female person. After all, if you were worthwhile, if you cooked well and could make sufficient babies and fvcked like a porn star, surely you could keep a man who would buy your clothes and therefore you wouldn't have to beg and borrow.

From there, as women began to participate more in economic life and it came to be seen as perhaps not the worst thing that could happen, there came a shift from "be proud your man can buy you shit" to "be proud you can buy yourself shit" (although the former maintains its legitimacy in certain ways and contexts). This would not necessarily be a bad thing, except for the following:

1) In this scenario, women's independence or lack thereof is still being used to pit women against each other. The old divide and conquer. So those of us in the fête who are in fact not financially independent, who depend on the income of a partner because such is the division of labour ('productive' vs. reproductive), or because we may be out of a job, or for whatever reason, we should feel like shit. Because not only are women supposed to be fvckmasters and top chefs and supernannies, we are also supposed to be Bill Gates. What? You aren't all those? Leave the fête immediately!; and

2) It reinforces men's resentment of having to continue to contribute economically when they, in their perception, no longer enjoy the other markers of privilege. So some men were happy to maintain 'their' women and children when it was a guarantee that they also simultaneously got to command higher wages for similar work done by women; or be promoted more easily; or have greater access to political participation; or free reign to commodify women's bodies. But for some, we women just have to damn well choose. You want to be independent? Fine. You get to pay your own way. That's the price. And all the attention to "independent ladies" is a bit of a passive-aggressive fvck-you.

An extension of that idea is that financially independent women who remain commodities or commodified in men's eyes are a huge turn-on. It is the Holy Grail of the whole ordeal. It is the reason a man will boast of his sexual conquest of a woman and qualify it with "and I didn't spend a cent." So all those independent ladies in the fête who are still willing to scream on command? Oh man. That in itself is an orgasm. Because it means that as financially independent as you are, you still require my penis to be ultimately satisfied. You still take orders and I'm still in control.

Disclaimer time: first, there are men for whom interesting, confident women who have charted and followed their own career paths are very attractive. That is clear, and not under debate. But I don't think that sentiment is behind the whole "independent ladies, scream" shout-out in the fête. Second, yes, the whole "independent ladies" meme is not unique to men. In fact, it was made quite popular by Beyonce et al, and their treatment of it is not necessarily problem-free, but I would say it is less problematic than this particular treatment of it by men. It works infinitely better as a celebration among women than as a judgment by men.

Here is my bottom line: stop singling out women as "independent ladies" based on some bullshit basket of goods that you determine of value to women: weave and clothes and underwear. All the women in that particular show or fête are independent by virtue of the fact that they are adults with rights. And they don't need to scream at your command to make that so.

Breaking news: police attacks on civilians 'damage public confidence'

We're heading into the long weekend, and your neighbourhood mongoose has been watching with interest but very little commentary the unfolding saga of the latest Met police snafu. Video filmed by a bystander revealed that during the G20 protests, an officer struck 47-year-old Ian Tomlinson as he was walking by with his hands in his pockets, and pushed him to the ground. Shortly thereafter, Tomlinson had a heart attack and died. Events have certainly been shaped into what Sandra Laville and Paul Lewis of the Guardian call the management of a death: without the damning video and photographic evidence hanging over their heads, it seems the authorities would have swept away with vague mumblings all calls for an inquest into Tomlinson's death. And what I also find worrying is this: whether it results in a death or not, this is a criminal act. It is not alright for Metropolitan police to assault a civilian provided it doesn't end in death. Mr. Tomlinson's passing highlighted a heinous act, but based on other accounts, it was one of many perpetrated by police that day.



A clearer shot of the first strike can be seen here.

The officer directly involved has come forward, and as the victim's family and the public await the next moves (a Facebook group has been created calling for justice for Tomlinson), police are once again whining about 'erosion of public confidence'. Yes, public confidence in the police force is desirable. But it's not brain surgery, so quit acting like it's some complicated balancing act, and further, like it's some official goal that is completely separate from plain human decency and treating people with respect. You want to restore public confidence? Try not practicing apartheid in your own ranks; or not telling rape victims to fuck off; or I don't know, not attacking passersby and violently shoving them to the ground. You don't inspire public confidence just by carrying a stick and wearing a funny hat; at the very minimum, you have to establish some distinction between you as a police force and the criminals you're meant to be protecting us from. As it stands, that line is somewhere between blurred and non-existent.

Letter to the masses

Dear zillions of people with smartphones:

Congratulations. You're important. I, though not in possession of a phone that can predict what I want for lunch and beam it to my location, am going to go ahead and keep living anyway. So since I must share this planet with you, do you think you might take your eyes off your phone long enough to realize I am present and not come crashing into me at breakneck speed? (Since whomever you're texting is clearly also on fire and awaiting rescue.) Because even though you mumble a delightful 'sorry' while continuing to look at your phone, I am going to meet your eyes. Yes I am. And then I am going to scowl you right out of your telecommunications-induced stupor. And you will look shocked and scandalized at my rudeness. But I will not be sorry. Because you will have deserved it.

Regards,
The Scowling Mongoose

Listen to soca? Congrats, you're a moron

CalTech graduate student Virgil Griffith has come up with the very poorly conceptualized Music That Makes You Dumb, which, using SAT scores as a proxy, correlates music tastes with intelligence. His methodology is to compare test results with people's favourite bands as declared via social networking sites, and the result is, as would be expected, absurd. Griffith calls them 'hilarity incarnate': apparently, suggesting that listeners of non-American/non-White forms of music (who are themselves often non-American and/or non-White) are intellectually inferior is pure, knee-slapping fun. I would normally not comment on this kind of pseudo-intellectual, self-congratulatory nonsense, but I wanted to show my readers this: cast your glance towards the 'painfully stupid' end of the scale. Recognize that four-letter word? Yep. I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but if you listen to soca music, you are stupid, stupid, stupid.

Now I'm going to ignore most of the problems with this analysis - which are many - as I'm sure you guys, soca-loving though you may be, can figure them out straightaway. They have to do with definitions, the problems of using self-declared data, sample sizes, assumptions, lion and tigers and bears. Oh my.

But even accepting the widely-contested notion that SAT scores are a decent indicator of intelligence, the fact is that most of the Caribbean students I know who took the SATs (and these were many, since I used to teach secondary school) enjoy soca, and they all basically dispensed with the SATs as if they were a word search puzzle. With very little preparation, they took the test, scored high (anecdotally, almost everyone I knew scored above 1250), and got on with life. One might argue that were greater percentages of Caribbean students to take the SATs - if it were to be considered an academic rite of passage there as it is in the US - the results would be different, since those who do seek the test out are already the academically-minded ones who plan to obtain advanced degrees. Perhaps so, but the numbers who do take it still represent enough of a sample to make Griffith's findings bullshitary.

And notice where reggae falls? And jazz? The boy done lost his mind. If you want to take an unscientifically-rendered piece of research, declare it as such, and then have a laugh about it in the proper context, great. But don't present it as science. That just makes you dumb.

Oh em gee! It's just eff bee, ppl!

I’ve been out traversing the streets of London, and that always makes me tired. Although you know you’re not really in a hurry, you can’t help but think you’re out of whatever loop all these other racing people seem to be in, and you get panicked and start marching right alongside them wondering: “Holy crap, am I late for something? Wait…where am I going? Did I leave the stove on? Do I have a meeting? Am I in labour?!” Even though you know none of those things could possibly be true, and you are in fact just going to meet your friend for coffee and to see if Selfridges has the new MAC palette. But you might as well march anyway, lest you get trampled by a pack of children wearing those odious wheely shoes that could only have been invented by someone who has never once met a child.

So, sitting here in my huddled mass, I thought of what I could talk to you about that would not require an inordinate amount of thought or energy. Such effort for my readers, I know. I was going to rant about the wheely shoes, but I need considerably more energy for that. Instead, I decided to stick with the Facebook theme, since yesterday’s entry went over so well with the subject. (He sent me a thesis, I tell you. I didn’t read it, but I could see there were lots of big, angry words and conjecture about what man-related tragedies in my personal life have made me such a bitter hag.)

Today’s is a little more general: it’s about the "25 things" meme that has been circulating for the past (what seems like) 40 years. And about which everyone seems to have an opinion. The NY Times wrote a kind of “detached observation about you silly people” piece that was funny in places if a bit unduly sarcastic. The Time piece was rather more biting, calling the trend “just so stupid” (author’s emphasis), because most people aren’t funny or insightful, and because she, the author, doesn’t care. The funny thing is that some of the examples she uses to exemplify her point are in fact funny and interesting, my favourites being:

“A horse once fell over while I was riding it.” and
“Sometimes I think pee smells like Cheerios.”

While she, in contrast, just comes across as surly and humourless. Most of my friends are hilarious and/or insightful, and a couple of them might take themselves too seriously, perhaps, but that’s fine too. I’m thrilled to read all their 25 things. Most of them make me laugh in one or two places; a few of them make me think; some of them make me yawn; but all of them teach me something about my friends, and make me feel fortunate to have these people in my life. It's a little silly and self-involved, but we're talking about a site that is dedicated to showcasing me me me. Let people have their harmless fun because trust me, eliminating "25 things" is not going to stamp out narcissism in the four corners of the earth. If you’re too cool to write one, then don’t write one; or don’t read them. In fact, you’re probably just too cool for Facebook altogether so you should just delete your account and find that cure for cancer that you’ve been working on.

So, as an act of rebellion against the jaded and the too cool for school, and in the spirit of laziness which inspired this post, I’m going to post my 25 things as I posted them on Facebook. I make fun of the chain letter style introduction at the beginning of mine, but that’s all in good fun. It isn’t in my nature to be as mushy as the original introduction is, so I changed mine. But here are my 25 that I posted a few days ago. Go ahead and judge me. (Incidentally, several of mine follow the NY Times article formula, and this wasn’t on purpose. I guess I’m predictable. There are worse things to be.):

Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged, or as many people as you want because really, no one is counting. You should tag the person who tagged you, but if you do, you won't win the lottery, and if you don't, you won't get leprosy. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you, or I happened to see your name in the drop-down list and remembered that I like you.

1) I get a strong sense of satisfaction from finishing off a product so I can open another, or better yet, try a new one. This applies to everything from body wash to bleach.
2) I hate to sleep. It's a waste of time.
3) Hands are my favourite part of a man's body, and the part I tend to notice most on everyone.
4) I tend to end up liking the wives and girlfriends of my guy friends better than the guys. The same cannot be said of the husbands and boyfriends of my girlfriends.
5) At 5'2", I am taller than both my parents.
6) I once got a job as a cashier just because I enjoy pressing buttons.
7) I don't remember what meat tastes like.
8) I remember everything and everyone (except for what meat tastes like). If I don't remember you, you've either had a face transplant or were wearing a cloaking device when we met.
9) I love shopping and will shop for anything: clothes, food, nails, lumber, colostomy bags...
10) Richard Branson once helped me with my bags at the airport.
11) I always drink red wine. White wine tastes like burp.
12) I have an uncle who makes guitars.
13) I once spent half a night in a dumpster after having been caught on the streets during election riots.
14) I used to have a crush on Johnny Ma Boy.
15) My favourite smells are horses and rain on a hot road.
16) I want to steal Dr. Turk from Scrubs and keep him in my pocket.
17) My 3 most prized possessions were all given to me by the same person at different times.
18) I hate to be touched by strangers.
19) I was once part of an exorcism.
20) I used to have a pet goat named Mars.
21) Bats mortify and disgust me.
22) I don't buy absent-mindedness or forgetfulness as a constant excuse, or get people who say "Remind me ‘cause I’ll forget." You're an adult. Buy a pen and get it together.
23) I hate footbridges that run over highways. I'm convinced someone is going to bounce me and send me plunging to my death. Slow down, people! That is traffic down there!
24) My father can't distinguish my voice from my sisters' voices on the phone. And sometimes in person.
25) After all these years, I still often manage to be struck dumb by the beauty of my sisters, the kindness of my Stein, and my own capacity to heal.

Misogynistic judgements: $0.10/dozen; Madonna-whore complexes: $0.10/dozen; annoying, nonsensical Mastercard-type slogans that try too hard: worthless

I woke up this morning eager to shift the Chris and Robyn (Rihanna) stories down the page because, quite frankly, they threw me into something of a funk yesterday; a funk that was aggravated by the hateful comments of clueless, mean-spirited people in the far corners of the interwebs. But yay(!) for me, I managed to wake up to fresh condemnations of women when I logged into Facebook and saw the following status update from a Facebook friend, NH:

"100 FB pictures wearing next to nothing - $200; 200 FB pictures at every fete in Bim - $400; No FB pictures (or mention) of your kids - Priceless!!"

Robyn was the whipping post of choice yesterday (“she must have pushed him”; “those Caribbean women are mouthy”), and today – in the spirit of egalitarianism – today’s victim is a regular woman who goes to so many parties, it damages NH’s delicate, Facebook voyeurism sensibilities. At least enough for him to employ poor, nonsensical usage of the exhausted Mastercard slogan. (Is $2 the going rate for FB pictures?)

So here we are, almost at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, and women’s good time is still being regulated by men. If you’re a mother, you can maybe have Friday night bingo once a month. Here, take this $10 and enjoy. If you’re a wife and mother, you can have a quarter for the candy machine at the supermarket as your entertainment, but only provided you take the children with you, and your husband has run out of things for you to fetch. But how dare you go to an actual party, on an actual weekend, and have an actual alcoholic beverage? What fresh hell is this?

Also implicit in this status is the notion that if a woman has a family, it must be the principal manifestation of who she is. She must wear her children’s faces on T-shirts and preface every sentence with “Well my husband thinks…” A mother is one part of who this woman is, and one aspect of what she does. She doesn’t, after childbirth, become a giant uterus with a pair of lactating boobs attached. And it is certainly her prerogative to show off her weekend entertainment rather than her children, if she so desires.

I pointed the following out to NH in response to his status:

Perhaps she has made a decision not to put her children on FB to suffer the judgement that she herself is obviously subject to.

This started a bit of a dispute, so now I’m going to try to summarize and counter his various arguments that followed, among which was a “*long sigh*”, because clearly I am a little, misguided lady and he is just the big, enlightened man to teach me The Truth.

It’s not a judgment, it’s merely a commentary.
Well, yes, and if I choose to ‘comment’ that someone is a bad mother, then which of the two is that?

A woman who doesn't take care of her family is nothing less than an animal (and even wild animals are totally committed to their offspring).
I pointed out that some animals eat or banish their offspring. But observe the lack of judgement that was mentioned earlier. I asked him what then is a man who doesn’t take care of his family, because presumably these women are out dancing with someone. This was where the long sigh came in, because I am too dim-witted to understand that:

Balance is a universal principAL (I giggled. I’m sorry. I’m petty, and I accept this) - everything in moderation. If one focuses so much time on hedonism, other aspects of your life will lack the attention needed.
This is true, NH. But the only other aspect on which you commented was her role as a mother. You didn’t say “My! This woman sure parties a lot. I wonder if she manages any teams at work because surely corporate performance will suffer!”

Then there was the due amount of back-pedalling and equivocation:
Men do it too. No one gender is to blame. But please understand that we live in a sexist, double-standard and male-dominated environment. [Please understand, because even though you have lived all your life as a black woman, it might have escaped you.] It's so much harder for women to obtain equal opportunity, and acts like this set their cause back decades.
So women should accept their position as second-class citizens and play by the rules: “You know that we sexists will judge you, so why do you persist in making these poor choices?” More back-pedalling led him to deduce that:

The ratio of absentee fathers to absentee mothers is negatively bias[ed] towards men.
And I didn’t even have to lift a finger on that one. But then the old Madonna-whore affliction surfaces in the last word:

For eons the African woman has been worshipped, revered and idolized as ethereal mother, iconoclast, queen, goddess, scholar, diplomat, scientist, icon, prophet and freedom fighting warrior exalted with and sometimes above her father, husband and brothers. [Insert more wonderful attributes of the African woman. We really are something.] Doesn't the type of behaviour exhibited on Facebook degrade and denigrate her legacy?
Oh is THAT what’s degrading her? Because the last time I went to a party, no one was coming up to me bowing and laying slaughtered goats at my feet. They were all pretty much just trying to rub their members against me and see what combination of lame come-ons and green verbs could get me to go home with them. Or does the veneration start back at their place?

If you want our women to be revered and idolized, why don’t you try starting where you are? I notice you weren’t too disgusted to look at all 300 (was that cumulative? I couldn’t tell) of this woman’s Facebook pictures before you made your condemnation public. So something other than social observation was driving you to click ‘Next’. Surely by picture number 181 you could have surmised that this woman was a harlot and a useless mother. I’m not even going to get into the “maybe she’s with the children all week and takes a break for parties” argument. Because it is irrelevant. We want women to be porn star today, earth mother tomorrow, virgin and whore all at once. It’s getting a little old. I suppose a mother in a fete harshes your vibe and causes your two worlds to collide. Well, that’s your pathology to deal with, not hers.

The photo is by Hansjurgen Bauer. You can view and critique his gallery here.