(In which Grieves decides that he likes this post-feminism stuff.)

I noted at the time of writing it that this article that there was something of a weak flank exposed. A good deal of my reasoning behind the relative weakness of feminism here to across the Atlantic is that women are simply in a better state. To demonstrate this I used the epitome of female success: Thatcher. There is an obvious response to this argument: that she is not a fair case to reference as she is remarkable. This is certainly something which few would argue against: even her harshest critics were aware of her power as a political operator. This is not true of the average woman and simply because she was able to overwhelm prejudice does not mean that all women would be capable of such a feat.

Now let us give this argument its fair dues: there have been three Prime Ministers since Thatcher {as easy as it is to forget Major, and perhaps even Brown} and of them none have been women. This demonstrates a clear bias towards men. But it must be remembered that this position is filled only through members of cabinet who have managed to elbow their way forwards into pole position. Thatcher filled her cabinet with men {besides notable exceptions such as Edwina Currie, who single-handedly crippled the British egg industry and resulted in the deaths of four million chickens} and Blair was easily the superior of Margaret Beckett. Brown’s pursuit of him in power was assured by their dealings. Accordingly there were no real opportunities for women to reach the pinnacle, as a consequence of the one who did and the nous of the two that followed her.

Therefore perhaps a better area to consider would be that of cabinet. It is here where the evidence for post-feminism outstrips that of feminism. Because what the best piece of advice to be offered to any woman seeking political power (besides, of course, as painful as I find this to type, that they join the Conservatives) would surely be not to worry. For such strides have been taking over equality that not only will competent, aptly skilled women be allowed roles in government, but that even those who are only as able as the most incompetent male cabinet ministers can gain them.

Take the notorious case of Ruth Kelly: a Catholic cultist was permitted to be Minister for Women and Equality. The theological hard-liners of Opus Dei were heeded fully, and she ultimately appealed against the reforms of gay adoption laws being applied even and equally. Only the threat of a full-on cabinet rebellion in the tail-end of Blair’s reign led to the policy which was her brief as Minister being arranged against her will.

Could this have been anticipated? Well, her refusal to attend any vote where she would have been whipped into supporting gay rights probably could have provided a hint. As could her membership of a Catholic sect aforementioned, who certainly refrain from taking the soft line upon matters of carnal morality.

Furthermore she is largely responsible for the present policy on bio-fuels, responsible for the exacerbation of widespread starvation in developing nations.

Or perhaps we could touch upon Tessa Jowell, who’s valuable contributions to government (the introduction of OFCOM is notable) are dwarfed by the carnage resulting by her relationship with money. Her husband’s dealings with the avowedly neo-Falangist Silvio Berlusconi generated considerable controversy which she barely escaped unscathed from and it is upon her watch that the Olympics has (predictably) ran over budget to the tune of several billion pounds.

The likelihood is that it shall continue to overrun by several billion more.

But the most notable example could never be any other save Estelle Morris. Despite only serving as Secretary for Education and Skills from June 2001 to October 2002 she managed to make a mess of the education so thorough that her successors have yet to undo much of the damage. The amount of lasting harm she did in a position she spent so little time in is actually quite impressive. She resigned declaring that she felt inadequate for the task, but this was hardly news to many.

Although she had a modest history in education it seems likely that her connections and heritage (her father and an uncle were Labour MPs) influenced her ascent into a role she was entirely inept in. Certainly her present position of Baroness was not warranted by her career. Her unpopularity amongst the NUT was immense and led to her being heavily heckled during a conference due to her desire to implement neo-liberal policy tying pupil results to teacher wages.

However it is her treatment of students that was most dire: displaying a total absence of common sense and empathy she pronounced that children would be too stressed by the AS level in its present form, and instead of spreading out the examinations over the course of a few weeks they ought to be packaged together on a single day. This, as any imbecile could have informed her, resulted in increased stress for students as their exams were staged in quick succession and without opportunities for rest. It also resulted in carnage for revision schedules, that were forced to cover all material relevant to an entire subject at once. The consequences for history were students having to hop mentally from era to era, in a fashion almost begging for errors to ensue through understandable slips of a century or two. Candidates with extra time witnessed their time extended into vast and wearying stretches. This policy has yet to be over-turned, a grim legacy of an inept minister.

Morris later became Minister of Arts, despite openly admitting that she knew very little about contemporary art.

Enough, it is hoped, has been compiled here to demonstrate that women have nothing to fear from any confinement beneath glass ceilings within White Hall. They need not be indefatigable to reach their desired locations, they need not be formidable or remarkable or exceptional to be picked in the stead of men. They need not be titans. They can be as inappropriate for the role required of them or as incompetent in executing it as are many men who reach cabinet positions, yet still be given jobs. A true testament to the success of feminism if ever there were one.

As well as further evidence for the obsolete nature of its central analysis. When it comes to granting positions of power, it would seem, there is only the same meagre amount of talent expected of men anticipated of women in order for them to serve Her Majesty’s Government. If this is a Patriarchy it is a remarkably lax one.

I feel lazy at present. So, this post will act as a musical interlude. We open with the dark:

And move onto the slightly strange and fantastical:

And finally, an entirely superior remix of an otherwise cancerously irritating piece:

A proper bassline makes everything alright, you see.

I am forbid by blog policy from naming the subject of one of BenSix’s recent pieces, but it’s well worth a read all the same. I read the article he targets and found it inexplicably agitating. Ben managed to root out the flaws effectively and with finesse.

I’m certainly pleased that he saved me the bother.

(In other news: if I hear the word “Postmodern” uttered again, I may well have to punch someone. Preferably an intellectual.)

As you are (most likely temporarily) all here and reading thanks to the kind (if wrathful) linking from Jennie you might as well read my Critique of British Feminism to give you something to properly rage about.

If you could stomach that then please do stick around.

Never mind masturbation, let’s talk maths.

Well, compared to this fellow.

It takes quite a dire situation for any Prime Minister to look like he’s in a worse spot than Gordon, but when there’s a strong chance that a court might not only turf you out of power but also close down your party and lock you away then you’ve just about managed it. As I mentioned in this post a defeat for vigorous Islamists actually might not be so great for Turkey: the secularists are largely a pack of vicious nationalists who’ll imprison those who write content condemning Turkey’s history. Which, for a nation which once committed genocide, is a pretty deranged restriction.

If the likely prospect of this party being either shamed or outlawed outright occurs then the secularist nationalists will doubtless profit. This would be an outcome that would lead to further Turkish isolation from Europe and most likely scupper its chances of joining the EU (at least for a decade or so). Whether this is beneficial for the Europeans or not is questionable. For the time being, though, perhaps our own Prime Minister can take heart in knowing that he is not in the most dire position possible. He’ll be shamed, but is far more likely to end up in an interview on the BBC explaining his take on the Tory landslide and its reasons for occurring than banged up in a cell.

There are, however, a few members of government over here that I wouldn’t mind seeing locked up.

Apparently:

The Tories had their own meeting between Obama and David Cameron, at which the senator was overheard congratulating Cameron on ‘all your success’. The two spent 20 minutes chatting about juggling fatherhood and politics and discussing Afghanistan and the economy. Cameron gave him a box of CDs including albums by the Smiths, Radiohead and Lily Allen.

This man’s sinister genius knows no bounds. Obama will listen to our powerful music output and have Cameron to thank for this exposure. Labour members, despair.

Sophie Platt, writing for The F Word, has an irritating but valuable article here.

Irritating because it is filled with typical vindictive puerility:

I would love for them to turn the tables round one night and end a sexual encounter before their partners had come. A friend of mine tried this once, and reported that the incensed rage and sulking that followed could only be likened to that of a three-year-old who has been told Christmas had been cancelled.

Also due to the prejudiced, sourceless bigotry that somehow imagines that an Austen reference that was long ago faded through overuse constitutes a valid substitute for anything beyond the most meagre of anecdotal evidence:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that teenage boys on the whole are more concerned with their own satisfaction than that of their partners

Let’s see if I can give this a go: It is a truth universally acknowledged that Afro-Caribbean men care more about stealing car stereos than raising their bastard children. Does that sound in any way acceptable to everyone? No matter, I shall just generate a false consensus in lieu of an adequete proof and make pretence that my view is that of the entirity of universe denizens. Does this not make a refreshing change from the mainstream press and its ceaseless distortions?

Furthermore her phallus obsession is seemingly total, as well as less than benign:

It’s just that so many are made to look like a penis, some disturbingly realistic, that they seem rather sinister as a tool for us to become better acquainted with our own bodies.

Where to begin with this? Is she stating that she finds real phalluses realistic? Or is it the prospect of women using items which resemble the organ used for the act that they are stimulating with it that unsettles her? Is it really appropriate and wise to label the sexual predilections of others “sinister” in such an article? Or any article? Is it in pointing out her failure to mention the rise of the “Fleshlight” devices for men that are now plastered all over the internet?

More harmfully still she has made a deep error in her analysis of “Raunch Culture”. Platt attempts to stage a forced division, of sorts, between the elements she truly disapproves of (lap-dancing legality, pole-dancing lessons, girls wearing mini-skirts and so on) from those she can not help but muster begrudging respect for (the popularity of a programme revolving around the sex lives of a set of vapid egoist females, the mass marketing and cultural strength of an item designed purely to bring women vast amounts of pleasure, vibrators on sale at Boots).

Such a dichotomy quite simply does not exist.

Both sets of phenomenon are part of a cultural motion away from the moralistic confines of the past and towards a state of personal liberty to pursue physical pleasure via carnal means. They are not divisible and any efforts to consider them along some form of “Pro” and “Anti” patriarchy lines is bound for failure, as are all other strictly partisan assessments. Women pleasuring themselves and feeling no shame and men resorting to bandwidth over charm and discussing without generating horror their nights at lap-dancing clubs are not in the slightest phenomenon which can be held apart. Their origins are precisely the same: formerly residual Christian morality dominated Britain’s views of carnal union, but since this is rapidly disintegrating people are beginning to act far more as they please and are in acceptance of far less restraints or restrictive mores. To divide this tendency into two separate paragraphs and imagine that it can somehow be split apart is the height of foolishness: they are simply differing manifestations within near identical circumstances. But Platt becomes wound up in her tiresomely hackneyed depiction of Raunch Culture:

it has become about appearing to be sexual available simply to please men and not to fulfil their own desires or fantasies.

The rise of so-called ‘raunch culture’ means that for many girls, merely looking ‘pretty’ has taken a back seat for looking ‘sexy’: supermarkets stock pole dancing kits as children’s toys, glamour modelling is in the top five career choices for pre-teen girls and hundreds of girls all over the country are counting the days until they are 18 and are legally allowed breast enhancements. Girls are being sexualised at an increasingly younger age, and it seems to be more about self-esteem than sexual satisfaction. The pleasure that comes from sexual experiences at this age is often the feeling of being thought attractive and being desired by a male than actually getting off.

Has she no conception of the positive effects of banishing shame in exposing more flesh than our present 1950s hang-over hegemony permits? Is she unaware that the frequency of exibitionism has always matched voyeurism? Obviously not: it is required that all shifts be made somehow in favour of the Patriarchy. Thus pole dancing kits suddenly are related to skimpier outfits for young women and are entirely unrelated to alterations that increase women’s pleasure.

As flawed a view as this unquestionably is this article is valauble because Platt has hit the nub of this issue: it is simply not expected of girls that they will entertain themselves, while with boys only (fittingly paired) certain fundamentalist Christians and some extremist feminists would argue otherwise. This is a strange and harmful double standard, in that it denies half of the population the assumption that it is correct to pursue their personal pleasure. The consequences are young (and occasionally even elderly) women who have never experienced an orgasm, a highly unfortunate state of affairs that leaves the men in a strong lead.

It would seem that Platt, then, is excellent at identifying the problem before us but fails in terms of solution. She, for instance, disparrages the shift that has eradicated the near total silence on matters of female pleasuring that reigned previously, through her offensive against the surgingly popular sex toys, now sold by a variety of mainstream stores and chains. For how can something remain a taboo when it is upon the evening news? Having the act she fears girls are not expected to participate in directly alluded to on chemists shelves is surely going to break the culture which she outlines.

The silence is thus effectively already breached.

(It seems that rather than swallowing this post, as I believed it had, Scribo Ergo Sum instead posted it. I rather wish that I had realised this before re-writing the article. Given that the two articles ended up pretty distinctive just give them both a read and see what you think of each.)

And interesting article about a condition that I had also noted as strange but wide-spread in The F Word.

Alas, it comes accompanied with the sort of unproductively vengeful puerility that feminism often utilises:

I would love for them to turn the tables round one night and end a sexual encounter before their partners had come. A friend of mine tried this once, and reported that the incensed rage and sulking that followed could only be likened to that of a three-year-old who has been told Christmas had been cancelled.

while this Austen referencing slab of truist bigotry is simply dire:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that teenage boys on the whole are more concerned with their own satisfaction than that of their partners

but besides this typical failures it does manage to get to the nub of the issue. Teenage girls are simply not expected to begin fondling themselves at all, while for boys it is simply an assumed course of action that is entirely inevitable (or at least such assumptions are made but all save, fittingly coupled, certain fundamentalist Christians and some extremist feminists). This is a strange cultural dichotomy and the double standard denies a considerable proportion of half the population pleasure readily available to them.

However having done so she then commences to make a jumbled analysis of the matter as a contemporary issue. Besides the obvious strangeness of this passage:

It’s just that so many are made to look like a penis, some disturbingly realistic, that they seem rather sinister as a tool for us to become better acquainted with our own bodies.

(Are we left to presume that Platt finds a real penis to look “disturbing” or is it that the notion of an item which resembles a real phallus being used to stimulate the act whereby a woman is penetrated by a phallus disturbing? And can this truly be considered sinister? Is it any more so than the flourishingly popular “Fleshlight” aids for males which are plastered across the internet, yet she makes no mention of?)

there are deeper flaws in her argument: firstly she endeavors to somehow distinguish “Raunch Culture” from the Sex In The City, Ann Summers et al movement she mentions later in the article. Witness this hackneyed tirade:

it seems to be more about self-esteem than sexual satisfaction. The pleasure that comes from sexual experiences at this age is often the feeling of being thought attractive and being desired by a male than actually getting off.

It just seems very bleak, not to mention futile, to summon up so much effort to create the illusion of oozing sexuality, when actual sexual satisfaction, not to mention experience, barely enters into it.

Yet to attempt to somehow divide the parts of recent trends that Platt feels plays to male voyeurism and patriarchal exploitation and so on from the parts which she at least begrudgingly approves of (the parts involving women talking about sex, buying aids towards that end on the High Street, inclunding from Boots, and the invention and mass distribution of products intended to produce vast amounts of female pleasure) is entirely impossible. The two are one part of exactly the same cultural motion: one that leads away from the prudishness of the past and towards personal liberation from the shabby, moralistic confines of the past.

Unfortunately for Platt this movement is cross-gender: while women no longer feel like beasts for enjoying themselves alone men less and less despair at resorting to bandwidth instead of charm or are much bothered about confessing to viewing a pole-dancing session. If there are some parts of this broad development within society which she finds pleasing and others she does not then she should say so, rather than try and treat an entirely fused destruction of the former norms as two seperate bodies of change.

As it happens, to resort to annecdote (it seems par-for-the-course upon the feminist blogs but personally leaves me feeling uncomfortable, seeing as I am using a limited pool of individuals to try and grasp the shifts and tides influencing an entire society), I have found that the erosion of former restrictions on pleasure-seeking have resulted in a larger amount of young women than Platt suggests were willing to during her generation admitting to masturbation. The number of those who refrain is still almost inexplicably high but there is a chance that this may decline.

There is a possibility that the sale of aids and devices to assist pleasure increase the daunting nature of the act that they seek to bring enhancement to but their prescense will surely have a positive net effect. An act which had previously been kept under heavy cultural covers is now alluded to directly on chemist shelves.

The silence has thus effectively been already breached.

I don’t know whether this was intentional, but Brown remaining in power suddenly became far less appealing.