Monday Music: the “I want my freaking headphones back” edition

When my brother left for camp earlier this month, he cleaned the flat out of headphones. Seriously. The one pair I could find is weirdly deformed  and does not allow me to listen to my iPod unless I hold it a few inches from my face. Instead of listening to, say, Tori Amos’s new album on the bus, I get to listen to some guy on his mobile telling his mother that no, he doesn’t know what happened to Aunt Tamara’s pig (I don’t either; I do hope it’s OK, I like pigs).

It’s Ramadan in the Muslim world, which means that I’m… drinking arak in solidarity with everyone fasting. Seriously, happy Ramadan! I Ramadan is a good opportunity to spend more time with family, and a part of me wishes I was back in Amman. Another part doesn’t. The parts have been having bloody, protracted fights.

Sleepyhead (remix) – Passion Pit
Mea Bletnasir – Sigur Rós
A Whiter Shade of Pale – Annie Lennox
La Primavera – Manu Chao
Lo Que Vendra – Astor Piazzolla
Glass – Bat for Lashes
Searching – Hanne Hukkelberg
Subterranean Homesick Alien – Radiohead
Wind in the Wires – Patrick Wolf
He Thinks He’s In Love – Eleni Mandell

“And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale…”

I do like the Annie Lennox cover of this Procol Harum song. It’s appropriately ghostly. Here is Annie, performing in glittery Mickey Mouse ears:

How can you not love a woman like that? And how can you not love this song? It basically has a modern Greek chorus to go with it. Which is in itself amazing.

“No more ” I love you’s ”
The language is leaving me.
No more ” I love you’s ”
The language is leaving me in silence.
No more ” I love you’s ”
Changes are shifting outside the words.”

🙂

Yes. Decent healthcare is “bad” because THOSE people might benefit.

On the subject of certain Americans’ virulent contempt for even a slightly more egalitarian healthcare system:

“They don’t want racial minorities and people without means sharing spaces with them, and especially not when they’re sick and being reminded that they’re the same flesh and blood as everyone else. The idea that a 14-year-old immigrant might get service first because she needs it more, and that there’s no way to pull rank? That’s the sort of thing that keeps the nutters up at night.”

You nailed it, Amanda.

I once got into a healthcare debate with the mother of one of my friends in North Carolina. It got a little heated, and she said something like, “well, I don’t want those IMMIGRANTS coming over and getting their paws on our system, and that’s what will happen if we let just anyone get healthcare!”

*pause*

“You know I was an immigrant, right, Mrs. [last name redacted to protect the guilty]?”

“Um, yes, sure, Natalia, I know that. But… you’re not anything like those irresponsible people, you know?”

Of course. I’m white. And went to a posh school.

Mrs. [last name redacted to protect the guilty] shouldn’t worry so much. As it stands right now, I sure as Hades can’t afford healthcare in the States anyway. And people like her would fight to keep it that way. And call me a traitor (as a charming e-mailer did recently) because when I see a 29-year-old woman with lupus, retroactively dropped from her insurance policy and facing a $700,000 debt, I want to do something about it.

Germaine Greer: still glowin’, still crowin’, still transphobic as hell

Exclusive picture! Bending space-time, Germaine emerges from my couch and tries to devour me. Run away! Away!
Exclusive picture! Bending space-time, Germaine emerges from my couch and tries to devour me for all those times I've made fun of her.

We all know that the natural world is subject to certain rules. Seasons change, for example. Stars die. Eclipses occur. And Germaine Greer spews transphobic bile.

In writing about runner Caster Semenya for her latest column, Greer slipped in this little gem:

Nowadays we are all likely to meet people who think they are women, have women’s names, and feminine clothes and lots of eyeshadow, who seem to us to be some kind of ghastly parody, though it isn’t polite to say so. We pretend that all the people passing for female really are. Other delusions may be challenged, but not a man’s delusion that he is female.

I don’t know about you, but when I read this paragraph, I was overcome with a serious case of the sniffles. Poor Germaine is being prevented from harassing trans women! Good God, what is this world coming to?!?!? I, for one, won’t stand for such blatant oppression! I’ll… I’ll… I’ll shake my fist in righteous indignation, that’s what I’ll do!

Of course, this wouldn’t be the first time that evil trans people have made Germaine’s cozy life at the top of the cultural critic foodchain a veritable nightmare. Rachel Padman, for example, insulted Germaine horribly by merely existing. She really shouldn’t have been a little more thoughtful than that, this Rachel Padman. Tsk.

Neither would this be the first time that other people’s bodies have irritated poor Germaine. Just look at what she has to put up with from Cheryl Cole, who walks around being all skinny n’ stuff.

Honestly, I think it’s time we liberate Germaine from the terrible bondage she has found herself in. Civilization is simply too oppressive a system for her to participate in. Her talents are wasted on us, for truly. Plenty of attractive desert islands still left in the world, on the other hand…

Jim Fitzpatrick, gender segregation and multiculturalism as two-way street

I follow Jonathan Fryer on Twitter, which is how I found out about MP Jim Fitzpatrick’s wedding debacle at the London Muslim Center. Basically, Fitzpatrick and his wife were invited to a Muslim wedding, walked out when they realized that it would be segregated by gender, and Fitzpatrick later followed up the incident by saying that gender segregation is not appropriate in this day and age and that it is damaging to community cohesion.

Now George Galloway, ever cognizant of a good scandal, is calling for Fitzpatrick’s head.

Fitzpatrick represents half a borough in which there are tens of thousands of Muslims. Alienating your constituents, people who are already pretty damn alienated to begin with, is never an awesome move.

However, I also believe that what’s mere gender segregation to some people is pure gender apartheid to others. What’s being buried in this story is that not all Muslim weddings are segregated by gender, and not all Muslims believe in gender segregation as a rule, and merely saying that Fitzpatrick unequivocally “harmed local and national community cohesion” is too simple and pat.

Fitzpatrick and his wife had every right to walk out of that wedding. There was no way they should have sucked it up and pretended they were loving it for the sake of “multiculturalism.” Multiculturalism is a two-way street. If we agree, for example, that Muslim women in non-Muslim majority countries need to be left in peace when it comes to veiling, then Fitzpatrick’s wife ought to be left in peace if she and her husband decide that gender segregation is not their cup of tea.

It is Fitzpatrick’s remarks after the wedding that have needlessly politicized this entire issue and consequently turned it ugly. If he had framed it as a personal opinion, and not made a sweeping statement that implied that gender segregation should simply not be tolerated in British society in general, I would have supported him all the way. I do, however, agree with the groom that a celebration was being turned into a political clobbering tool either way you look at it. This must be a very bitter lesson for this family, and I don’t envy their position.

However, Fitzpatrick was not being “ignorant” either. There is nothing at all ignorant about stating that “separate but equal” is not something that you personally approve of. Gender segregation at mosques, for example, is already a big issue in the West. You can’t and you won’t make everyone agree on it. Cohesion? Hah. You might as well try to get a bunch of Duke & UNC fans in one room together, and ask them to remain “cohesive.”

The one time I went to a gender segregated wedding, I had a blast. It had nothing to do with gender barriers, however, and everything to do with the company, which was warm, welcoming and relaxed. When you’re surrounded by good people, you have a good time. It’s as simple as that, and politics don’t really matter in that moment.

At the same time, you realize that many of the women who are in the room with you wouldn’t necessarily attend your own, mixed wedding, because they would be uncomfortable. Their discomfort is valid – as is the Fitzpatricks’ discomfort. I personally refuse to privilege one feeling over the other here. You may say that Fitzpatrick is already pretty privileged – being a white male politician and all – and I would agree. But how one feels about an issue as contentious as gender segregation is still very much a deeply personal decision, and you can’t place value on it as easily as you can place value on someone’s social position.

Everyone has their own principles, and sometimes, you can’t avoid stepping on another person’s toes, no matter how hard you may try. The great illusion of multiculturalism is that it promotes a “love thy neighbour” mentality. Well, it doesn’t, not really.

Stuck inside of Kiev with the Charlotte blues again

I have a confession to make. I hate, HATE, the way autumn rushes into Ukraine, like a guest who shows up to early – and already filthy drunk. The blue of the sky gets deeper, the wind has a damp undertow. Autumn here smells like mushrooms and earth and every single bad thing I’ve ever wanted to forget. It’s much more civilized in North Carolina, by comparison. Everyone complains about the heat well into September. Most of the clothes you buy during the end-of-summer sales can remain relevant into mid-October. And chestnuts and memories don’t come down to whack you over the head. At the very least, you can go on ignoring autumn for a good while – smiling at it politely, and nodding, and not really giving a damn either way.

At this time, I remind myself that Pushkin loved autumn. And then I think that he loved it because he was fundamentally batshit. Autumn itself is batshit. It gets under your clothes like a pervert on a dark stairwell. It’s beautiful in the way that pure white cocaine powder is beautiful. Autumn is dumpsters and graffiti and dogs getting wet in the rain. It’s inadequate footwear and dead moths.

Seasonal depression much? – You’re thinking right now. Probably. And terrible, terrible recollections dappled with yellow and browns leaves too. Some of it is just that strange alchemy of childhood, the little miseries that have been beheaded in my mind, rendered meaningless but no less ugly. And other, more concrete stuff. Dark rooms, groaning floorboards. That sort of thing.

My cousin has rather testily pointed out that I can easily bugger off to Amman, where I have very few memories, and where it stays hotter longer. But I don’t want the desert. Especially this year, with Ramadan being so early, and people fasting in the heat, and me being such a huge distraction n’ stuff.

I was with a TV crew from New Zealand yesterday (I don’t know if I made an ass out of myself talking about Ukraine, feminism, and boobs – but I probably did), and damn, New Zealand is looking pretty sweet right now. I have got, count ’em, ZERO memories in New Zealand. Oh, and Southern Hemisphere? Hello? It would be pretty ideal, to split the year into two hemispheres, and never let autumn find me. The vast amounts of money required for that are, uh, just a teeny hurdle.

I don’t know what it is about the year 2009 in particular (or maybe I do know), but goddamn. Goddamn! I suppose listening to country music doesn’t help. “Gone, gone with the wind, ain’t nobody comin’ back again,” and all that.