I’ve always been empirical, seeking out facts on which to formulate opinions. I didn’t realise it until a couple of years ago; I called a writer out for what I thought were a couple of infelicities. Not only did she put me right, but she diagnosed me as ‘empirical’. Anyhow, the story involves ‘flatware’, and this isn’t the place for it.
As important as being empirical is the ability to question the assumptions, even to recognise the assumptions for what they are. It’s a common trick today to start an article with a proposition which seems reasonable, but which actually has no factual foundation; and from this to construct an argument which happily and conveniently concurs with the author’s previously held convictions. It’s difficult to disagree unless you can see the falsehood upon which this is all based.
It’s said that Andrew Carnegie had this motto in his library, though the original may be older:
He that can not think is a fool,
He that will not think is a bigot,
He that dare not think is a slave
So, remember: challenge the givens!
When it comes to the ‘givens’ in law in the western world, what is and what is not a crime, much has developed from ‘Christian’ morality. I have ‘Christian’ in quotes because the morality is based on the ideas of the early doctors of the church rather than from Jesus. Of course, there are some crimes that are self-evidently crimes in most circumstances; murder and theft, for example; but we can all think of exceptions to these. And then there are crimes against ‘morality’, often crimes involving sexuality. Homosexuality used to be illegal; adultery used to be illegal, and people were tried, convicted and hanged for them. Prostitution is illegal in the US, that self-designated fount of democracy and civilisation; and the (direct) purchase of sexual services is illegal in Sweden, somewhere we used to think of as a very liberal country. Whether you agree with these positions is not relevant here; but you should be informed about their origins. The ’Swedish model’ is based on a form of feminism which wants women to have total control of their bodies, a not unreasonable position you might think, and which seems to include access to contraception and abortion, but which excludes activities which the feminist cannot approve of. If it was originated as an ‘anti-trafficking’, you might well approve, for the trafficking that you and I conceive of is no more than slavery. And if it’s been hailed by it’s founders as a success, you might, reluctantly, admit that it was a ‘good thing’. However, there is a basic problem with the data which show reductions in such slavery; there are no comparable statistics for the time before the ’Swedish model’ was introduced. For it’s propagandists, this is no more than a minor technical detail.
Anyway, this is a diversion; I’d like to bring to your attention some of the thoughts of the doctors of the church which influenced, and still influence, policy today. Curiously, you aren’t going to find many people who agree with these sentiments actually crediting the sources. And not just the early church doctors; Martin Luther doesn’t seem to think much of women.
Musonius Rufus
(Thought) “sex in marriage was just about permissible for the purposes of procreation; sex for pleasure, and especially extramarital sex, were anathema”
Philo of Alexandria
(Thought) “all the ills of civilization stemmed from the indulgence of sensual pleasure, and had nothing whatsoever to do with greed, slavery, tyranny or greed”
St Paul
(Thought) “celibacy as the ideal state for ‘mankind’”
(Thought) “women as ‘naturally’ inferior beings; they were a kind of afterthought”
[Saw man alone as] the image and glory of God
[Woman is but] the glory of the man
Let a woman learn in silence with full submissiveness. I do not allow any woman to teach or exercise authority over a man; she is to remain silent.
The man is not of the woman, but the woman is of the man
(As an aside, you should search on-line for Thekla or Thecla, and discover her relationship to St Paul; and then wonder why so many people have difficulties with female bishops.)
Tertullian of Carthage
Dripping breasts, stinking wombs, and crying babies
Woman is a temple over a sewer
[Women should wear perpetual mourning to atone for] the ignominy and odium of having being the cause of the fall of the human race
Clement of Alexandria
Every woman ought to be filled with shame as the thought that she is a woman
Amongst all the savage beasts, none is found so harmful as woman
St Jerome
Regard everything as poison which bears within it the seeds of sensual pleasure
St Augustine
I know nothing which brings the manly mind down from the heights more than a woman’s caresses and that joining of bodies without which one cannot have a wife
Suppress prostitution, and capricious lusts will overthrow society
Proverbs
Do not hearken to a wicked woman; for through the lips of a harlot are like the drops from a honeycomb, which for a while is smooth in thy throat, yet afterwards thou will find her more bitter than gall, and sharper than a two-edged sword
Martin Luther
And if a woman grows weary and at last dies from child-bearing, it matters not. Let her die from bearing, she is there to do it
(Thought) [sex was] unclean
Jean Calvin
(After Deuteronomy) If a man be found lying with a woman married to a husband, they shall both of them die
Vincent Nichols (Catholic Archbishop of Westminster)
The moral teaching of the church is that ‘proper use of our sexual faculty is within a marriage, between a man and a woman, open to the procreation and nurturing of new human life’.
Some more modern quotations, not from doctors of the church:
William Blake
Prisons are built with stones of law, brothels with the bricks of religion.
Balzac
A sewer is a cynic. It tells all.
(Vide supra)
Bertrand Russell
Nine-tenths of the appeal of pornography is due to the indecent feelings concerning sex which moralists inculcate in the young: the other tenth is physiological, and will occur in one way or another whatever the state of the law may be.
DH Lawrence
If a woman hasn’t got a tiny streak of a harlot in her, she’s a dry stick.
GJ Nathan
Like hatred, sex must [be] articulated or, like hatred, it will produce a disturbing internal malaise.
Shakespeare
Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance.
RB Sheridan
Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible.
Are you still so certain of your views? Are you still so convinced that what's you've been brought up to accept has a real basis in life?
Now, go and think; challenge the givens!
(This is a modified and expanded piece, first published a few months ago; it’s a response to Maggie McNeill’s call for support.)
13 September 2013
28 May 2013
History Lessons
Long, long ago when I was at school we studied English history. Which was odd, as we were in N Ireland, and didn’t learn our own history, except where it impinged on what the English did. And this English history began spontaneously in 1485 and went through to 1714, though there was a minor detour to 1815. Our curriculum was wholly based on what was required for the examinations. And if history ended in 1815, it was, perhaps, because the death in childbirth of Princess Charlotte, and the subsequent scramble to produce a legitimate heir might have been too shocking.
History involved the rote learning of all the important dates in the monarch’s reign; it didn’t involve learning what these events were about, it was enough to learn the dates. We understood that James II got thrown out, but we never understood who this William was, and why some Dutch prince should get the crown. Nor what William’s wife, Mary, had to do with it all — she was merely an adjunct, even if they were supposed to be joint monarchs.
And if we understood that Henry VIII had problems getting a proper heir, just what difficulties he had in this aim, how the Church of England came into being, why the monasteries were dissolved remained unexplained, just dates to be memorised.
And history certainly wasn’t integrated with english literature; though we did Richard III, the Wars of the Roses were outwith our history, as were A Tale of Two Cities (mostly) and Oliver Twist (definitely). And we certainly didn’t do any background to Pride and Prejudice.
In those days there was no Google, no Wikipedia, not even any Cliff’s Notes or other cog sheets. We were on our own.
It took me a long time to realise that history wasn’t a series of dates, but that history was about people and what they did, and why they did what they did. And to realise just how much of what we were “taught” ignored this; how much was simply bowdlerised, sanitised; and that women played hardly any role — other than the production of heirs.
Sex, of course, didn’t exist then, so in retrospect it’s no real surprise that we didn’t learn just how much Henry VIII’s problems were related to it; or that he actually had a “natural” son, whom he made a duke. And Charles II also had a “natural” son, also made a duke, but no “legitimate” one. And we most certainly didn’t learn that the position of “Official Mistress” was recognised at the French court. As I said, sex didn’t exist, so obviously SRE didn’t exist either.
And women were only incidental, introduced as a desperate measure when there were no men as proper actors. Mary was “bloody”, and Elizabeth didn’t like her cousin, so had the Queen of Scots executed, as you do.
Did we ever hear of Mary Wollstonecraft and A Vindication of the Rights of Women? No, we didn’t; that would have been unthinkable.
What and how we were taught reflected the values of the time; everyday sexism, racism, bigotry, paternalism and prudery: memorisation without understanding. All the values of the Victorian age, even if we were told it was a “new Elizabethan age”. And yet there’s plenty of evidence that so many people didn’t live by these “values” even if we didn’t hear of it at the time, or if what we heard was shrouded in circumlocution.
Our teachers, if they weren’t quite old enough to be Victorians, had certainly been brought up by parents with Victorian ideals.
History involved the rote learning of all the important dates in the monarch’s reign; it didn’t involve learning what these events were about, it was enough to learn the dates. We understood that James II got thrown out, but we never understood who this William was, and why some Dutch prince should get the crown. Nor what William’s wife, Mary, had to do with it all — she was merely an adjunct, even if they were supposed to be joint monarchs.
And if we understood that Henry VIII had problems getting a proper heir, just what difficulties he had in this aim, how the Church of England came into being, why the monasteries were dissolved remained unexplained, just dates to be memorised.
And history certainly wasn’t integrated with english literature; though we did Richard III, the Wars of the Roses were outwith our history, as were A Tale of Two Cities (mostly) and Oliver Twist (definitely). And we certainly didn’t do any background to Pride and Prejudice.
In those days there was no Google, no Wikipedia, not even any Cliff’s Notes or other cog sheets. We were on our own.
It took me a long time to realise that history wasn’t a series of dates, but that history was about people and what they did, and why they did what they did. And to realise just how much of what we were “taught” ignored this; how much was simply bowdlerised, sanitised; and that women played hardly any role — other than the production of heirs.
Sex, of course, didn’t exist then, so in retrospect it’s no real surprise that we didn’t learn just how much Henry VIII’s problems were related to it; or that he actually had a “natural” son, whom he made a duke. And Charles II also had a “natural” son, also made a duke, but no “legitimate” one. And we most certainly didn’t learn that the position of “Official Mistress” was recognised at the French court. As I said, sex didn’t exist, so obviously SRE didn’t exist either.
And women were only incidental, introduced as a desperate measure when there were no men as proper actors. Mary was “bloody”, and Elizabeth didn’t like her cousin, so had the Queen of Scots executed, as you do.
Did we ever hear of Mary Wollstonecraft and A Vindication of the Rights of Women? No, we didn’t; that would have been unthinkable.
What and how we were taught reflected the values of the time; everyday sexism, racism, bigotry, paternalism and prudery: memorisation without understanding. All the values of the Victorian age, even if we were told it was a “new Elizabethan age”. And yet there’s plenty of evidence that so many people didn’t live by these “values” even if we didn’t hear of it at the time, or if what we heard was shrouded in circumlocution.
Our teachers, if they weren’t quite old enough to be Victorians, had certainly been brought up by parents with Victorian ideals.
27 May 2013
A Waste?
There was a small family gathering at Korhomme Towers recently. My sister, who lives in Australia, was visiting; we haven’t seen one another for something like twenty years. Several friends of the family drifted in and out.
My daughter was here, and invited M to join us for lunch. Now, M is one of today’s essentials for a twenty-something woman; a gay BFF— a ‘best (boy) friend forever’. He’s as good and helpful as his designation; he took other visitors to the airport, saving me the trip; he said he lived nearby. His idea of ‘nearby’ isn’t quite the same as mine. No matter.
After he’d gone, we were chatting.
“What a waste,” said my sister.
“A waste?”
“Yes, a waste. A waste to women.”
I think this was meant as a compliment. Perhaps.
My daughter was here, and invited M to join us for lunch. Now, M is one of today’s essentials for a twenty-something woman; a gay BFF— a ‘best (boy) friend forever’. He’s as good and helpful as his designation; he took other visitors to the airport, saving me the trip; he said he lived nearby. His idea of ‘nearby’ isn’t quite the same as mine. No matter.
After he’d gone, we were chatting.
“What a waste,” said my sister.
“A waste?”
“Yes, a waste. A waste to women.”
I think this was meant as a compliment. Perhaps.
Contributory Negligence — Not.
Nick Ross got into more than a spot of bother because of an extract of his forthcoming book in the Mail on Sunday on 26 May was interpreted as rape apology. His publishers posted the full chapter on-line, and you can read it here.
He sort of compares rape* with a couple of other scenarios. In one, he leaves his laptop in the car, and when it gets stolen, feels that he has contributed to the theft. Indeed, many people would say that he brought it upon himself — and this is the same logic that is applied to “victims” of rape — through their dress, or by getting drunk, they have only themselves to blame for what happens to them.
However, this thinking isn’t correct. Certainly, there is a concept of “contributory negligence” in common law; but it is usually applied to civil actions for damages rather than in criminal cases. To use the laptop example, were Nick Ross to try to get compensation from his insurers, they would be likely to reduce or deny his claim because of his negligence.
But, if the laptop thief were to be caught, Ross’s negligence wouldn’t stop a prosecution for theft, a conviction for theft and subsequent punishment. A theft is a theft; yet somehow, a rape isn’t always a rape. What’s the difference?
And that’s the problem with arguments about whether rape is rape, and whether all rapes are equally serious. You might well think that the woman was somehow responsible for getting raped, but this is a moral judgement, not a legal one. Either a crime has been committed or it hasn’t.
There are other difficulties with convictions for rape; the woman is simultaneously the accuser and the primary witness, and her testimony does have to be legally tested through cross-examination. This is often harrowing — and until recently the alleged rapist, defending himself, could be quite brutal in his questioning. And, her previous sexual history can be explored — certainly this was the case until recently, I don’t know if this has changed. Quite how this previous history was supposed to directly help convict an accused isn’t obvious; the accused is the one charged, he doesn’t have to relate his history of previous accusations or convictions, but, in a sense, the woman does — seemingly to prove just what a “slut” she is, someone whose word cannot be trusted in any way because she is a “slut”. Being a “slut” is another moral, not legal, argument. And, during directions to the jury, judges have, in the past, made some very crass statements — “no” can mean “yes” and the like. (I read an account of a rape trial where the accuser, whose occupation was withheld by express direction of the judge, seemed to have been designated a “slut” because of a tattoo on her abdomen. The accused was found not guilty; but the expressions on the faces of the jury changed when it was revealed that she was a barrister.)
Accusations of rape are sometimes made after some time has elapsed, with the accuser relying on her memory. This is tricky — not just for rape — because what we think we remember of an event is largely fictive. It’s a combination of bits that are accurately remembered, and bits that have been invented, with the whole presented more as the way we wish to remember things, rather than a literal transcript. Identification parades can be quite unreliable.
Politicians haven’t help to clarify the problems around rape and securing convictions. Recently, in the US, one talked of “legitimate rape” as being one where the body “shuts down” and pregnancy becomes impossible, claiming that he’d been told this by physicians. Today, we think of this as utter rubbish. But, in the time of Henry VIII, it was believed that, for a woman to become pregnant, she had to have an orgasm. If she complained that she had been raped, but was found to be pregnant, it was “obvious” that she had enjoyed the experience, and therefore couldn’t have been raped. Incidentally, the necessity for an orgasm to precede pregnancy was said, at the time, to be the reason why Henry had such difficulty in getting his wives to conceive.
A couple of years ago, a Canadian cop gave a talk to a group of young women, advising them not to dress as “sluts”. The response was immediate; “slut walks” were organised in many cities worldwide, women protesting to be allowed to dress as they choose. The cop was well intentioned; but before you foam at the mouth with rage at the insensitivity of his remarks, remember that in the UK you can get the Crime Prevention Officer to inspect your home, and advise on security measures. Again, what’s the difference?
*For simplicity, I’m only considering men raping women; I do know that things are much more complicated.
He sort of compares rape* with a couple of other scenarios. In one, he leaves his laptop in the car, and when it gets stolen, feels that he has contributed to the theft. Indeed, many people would say that he brought it upon himself — and this is the same logic that is applied to “victims” of rape — through their dress, or by getting drunk, they have only themselves to blame for what happens to them.
However, this thinking isn’t correct. Certainly, there is a concept of “contributory negligence” in common law; but it is usually applied to civil actions for damages rather than in criminal cases. To use the laptop example, were Nick Ross to try to get compensation from his insurers, they would be likely to reduce or deny his claim because of his negligence.
But, if the laptop thief were to be caught, Ross’s negligence wouldn’t stop a prosecution for theft, a conviction for theft and subsequent punishment. A theft is a theft; yet somehow, a rape isn’t always a rape. What’s the difference?
And that’s the problem with arguments about whether rape is rape, and whether all rapes are equally serious. You might well think that the woman was somehow responsible for getting raped, but this is a moral judgement, not a legal one. Either a crime has been committed or it hasn’t.
There are other difficulties with convictions for rape; the woman is simultaneously the accuser and the primary witness, and her testimony does have to be legally tested through cross-examination. This is often harrowing — and until recently the alleged rapist, defending himself, could be quite brutal in his questioning. And, her previous sexual history can be explored — certainly this was the case until recently, I don’t know if this has changed. Quite how this previous history was supposed to directly help convict an accused isn’t obvious; the accused is the one charged, he doesn’t have to relate his history of previous accusations or convictions, but, in a sense, the woman does — seemingly to prove just what a “slut” she is, someone whose word cannot be trusted in any way because she is a “slut”. Being a “slut” is another moral, not legal, argument. And, during directions to the jury, judges have, in the past, made some very crass statements — “no” can mean “yes” and the like. (I read an account of a rape trial where the accuser, whose occupation was withheld by express direction of the judge, seemed to have been designated a “slut” because of a tattoo on her abdomen. The accused was found not guilty; but the expressions on the faces of the jury changed when it was revealed that she was a barrister.)
Accusations of rape are sometimes made after some time has elapsed, with the accuser relying on her memory. This is tricky — not just for rape — because what we think we remember of an event is largely fictive. It’s a combination of bits that are accurately remembered, and bits that have been invented, with the whole presented more as the way we wish to remember things, rather than a literal transcript. Identification parades can be quite unreliable.
Politicians haven’t help to clarify the problems around rape and securing convictions. Recently, in the US, one talked of “legitimate rape” as being one where the body “shuts down” and pregnancy becomes impossible, claiming that he’d been told this by physicians. Today, we think of this as utter rubbish. But, in the time of Henry VIII, it was believed that, for a woman to become pregnant, she had to have an orgasm. If she complained that she had been raped, but was found to be pregnant, it was “obvious” that she had enjoyed the experience, and therefore couldn’t have been raped. Incidentally, the necessity for an orgasm to precede pregnancy was said, at the time, to be the reason why Henry had such difficulty in getting his wives to conceive.
A couple of years ago, a Canadian cop gave a talk to a group of young women, advising them not to dress as “sluts”. The response was immediate; “slut walks” were organised in many cities worldwide, women protesting to be allowed to dress as they choose. The cop was well intentioned; but before you foam at the mouth with rage at the insensitivity of his remarks, remember that in the UK you can get the Crime Prevention Officer to inspect your home, and advise on security measures. Again, what’s the difference?
*For simplicity, I’m only considering men raping women; I do know that things are much more complicated.
07 March 2013
Neither a doormat nor a whore
I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.
— Rebecca West
I’ve been trying to get my head around the concept of “feminism” for a long time — its been sitting in my Drafts folder for ages without making much progress. I can follow the early story well enough, from the earliest stories of the nuns through Mary Wollenstonecraft to the suffragists. I can see the story against the background of male domination and the idea that, legally speaking, a married woman didn’t exist. I was surprised to find that in those days a man’s fiancée gave up her rights to him — her rights, under copyright, that is. Her ideas, his property. I can understand what Votes for Women was about — even if my viewpoint is limited to parts of the Western world. (And the paradox that a male lunatic or criminal could vote, but a single, property owning, tax-paying female couldn’t.)
Yet it begins to get murky for me from around the middle of the 20th century. If the suffragists were “first wave” feminists, the “second wave” confuses me totally. If there was a common thread to this, it’s lost me. There seem to be so many varieties of second wave feminism, so many agendas and no obvious, apparent common purpose. Parts of feminism turned into “Women’s Liberation”, though I’m still unclear what it was that they wanted to be liberated from. (And before you say it, it wasn’t their bras.) Other parts — or perhaps the same parts — seem to be primarily men hating; given the millennia of male suppression, I suppose that was inevitable.
If feminism is about “equality”, then I’m still puzzled. Equality of what? Opportunity, perhaps, and equal pay for equal work. (I was fortunate that in the professional parts of the NHS there was equal pay.) But then, you must accept, that there are occupations that don’t equally favour men and women; the difference between strength and compassion. (Yes, I do realise that there are strong women and compassionate men, I’m simplifying, not patronising.) I don’t hear, for example, anyone saying that women should have the same (reduced) life expectancy that men have. And though women are safer drivers, and were rewarded with lower insurance premiums, the EU has determined that there should be “equality” of premiums. And I expect that this will also apply to annuities. In both cases you can argue that women lose out on “equality”. Sometimes “equality” almost seems to mean “more” or “better”, but not equality.
I’m drawn to the conclusion that (absolute) equality is impossible, a myth. Yet I realise that if I say that, then people may well say that I’m an unreconstructed patriarch. I’m trying hard not to be; if equality is an unrealisable dream, what ought I to think today?
Equivalence is one suggestion; the idea that men and women aren’t directly equal, but have concurrent values. You could say that male and female are complementary, that the one can’t exist without the other; that both are necessary for full expression. Equivalent complementarity isn’t exactly a phrase that trips off the tongue, but (I hope) best expresses the real and desirable position today.
Back to feminism. I realised I’d lost it when I read about something that happened in the late 60s or early 70s:
An early conference was split — improbable as [it] may sound — by a bitter quarrel between lesbian feminists and Maoist feminists.
05 March 2013
The Cobb and Chesil Beach
Lyme Regis is today a small town on the Dorset coast; it was once a major port, gaining the suffix Regis as recognition. It’s a place for tourists today, together with the Jurassic coast, famous for fossils. The harbour is guarded by a mole, The Cobb. Chesil Beach is nearby, a shingle bar extending to the Isle of Portland. Despite this pleasant location, the area has a sinister reputation in literature; awful things happen there, far out of proportion to its size.
In Jane Austen’s Persuasion, Louisa Musgrave falls while being rather silly on The Cobb, and is unconscious for quite a while. When she recovers, she has changed from a flirty air-head to a much more sober young woman. Personality changes are common enough after serious head injuries, reflecting damage to the frontal lobes. People may change considerably, though usually they become temperamental, often violently so; a change “for the better” is distinctly unusual. But then, that’s the sort of thing that novelists are allowed to get away with — and it confirms Jane as a well read author.
Sarah Woodruff, the eponymous French Lieutenant’s Woman is first seen on The Cobb, as if looking for her (presumed) lover; she is regarded as a “fallen woman”. There’s fossil hunting too. Of course, John Fowles is playing with us — even to the extent of providing several different endings. This book was the first of the neo-Victorian genre; novels which strip the classical works of their homilies, euphemisms, circumlocutions and hypocrisy.
A more recent book is The Hand that first held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell; it won the Costa Book prize. Again, The Cobb is the background to a tragedy; but you will have to read it, I don’t want to spoil it for you.
Chesil Beach features in Moonfleet by J Meade Falkner, a very popular late-Victorian romance for boys. There’s a murder and a drowning, lots of improbable coincidences, and a happy ending. (She waits for him.)
On Chesil Beach by Iain McEwan differs from the others; it’s the fact that nothing happens that is so awful. And I’m not telling you what doesn’t happen.
Just what is it about The Cobb and Chesil Beach that makes them so suitable for tragedies?
[Edit] The ITV series Broadchurch is filmed around the village of West Bay on the Jurassic coast. Just reinforces the impression that this isn't a good part of the world.
In Jane Austen’s Persuasion, Louisa Musgrave falls while being rather silly on The Cobb, and is unconscious for quite a while. When she recovers, she has changed from a flirty air-head to a much more sober young woman. Personality changes are common enough after serious head injuries, reflecting damage to the frontal lobes. People may change considerably, though usually they become temperamental, often violently so; a change “for the better” is distinctly unusual. But then, that’s the sort of thing that novelists are allowed to get away with — and it confirms Jane as a well read author.
Sarah Woodruff, the eponymous French Lieutenant’s Woman is first seen on The Cobb, as if looking for her (presumed) lover; she is regarded as a “fallen woman”. There’s fossil hunting too. Of course, John Fowles is playing with us — even to the extent of providing several different endings. This book was the first of the neo-Victorian genre; novels which strip the classical works of their homilies, euphemisms, circumlocutions and hypocrisy.
A more recent book is The Hand that first held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell; it won the Costa Book prize. Again, The Cobb is the background to a tragedy; but you will have to read it, I don’t want to spoil it for you.
Chesil Beach features in Moonfleet by J Meade Falkner, a very popular late-Victorian romance for boys. There’s a murder and a drowning, lots of improbable coincidences, and a happy ending. (She waits for him.)
On Chesil Beach by Iain McEwan differs from the others; it’s the fact that nothing happens that is so awful. And I’m not telling you what doesn’t happen.
Just what is it about The Cobb and Chesil Beach that makes them so suitable for tragedies?
[Edit] The ITV series Broadchurch is filmed around the village of West Bay on the Jurassic coast. Just reinforces the impression that this isn't a good part of the world.
04 March 2013
Getting my finger out in the shower
I have about fifty topics stewing in my to-do section (Drafts) of Scrivener. Some of them were started so long ago that I’ve forgotten what I was going to say, and why I was going to say it. Others are no more than a few keywords and a collection of links; they were topical once, but no so now, and I don’t know whether it’s worth the effort to complete them.
I do have some that are more or less finished; yet I’m uncertain whether they properly reflect what I mean, whether you will understand what I’m trying to say. And so they sit there while I ponder. It might be better if I tried to rewrite them, but then I’d be unhappy about the sunk costs.
Some of them have complicated mind maps connected to them; more a collection of random thoughts than something which is thought through. I’d excuse myself by saying that I have these random thoughts in the shower where I can’t write them down. And by the time I’m ready to write, I’ve forgotten the half of it. Getting my finger out in the shower is an art I haven’t perfected.
I’ll try to complete some things in the next days and weeks. In the meanwhile, this is the sort of thing that I’m faced with:
(Click to enlarge.)
I do have some that are more or less finished; yet I’m uncertain whether they properly reflect what I mean, whether you will understand what I’m trying to say. And so they sit there while I ponder. It might be better if I tried to rewrite them, but then I’d be unhappy about the sunk costs.
Some of them have complicated mind maps connected to them; more a collection of random thoughts than something which is thought through. I’d excuse myself by saying that I have these random thoughts in the shower where I can’t write them down. And by the time I’m ready to write, I’ve forgotten the half of it. Getting my finger out in the shower is an art I haven’t perfected.
I’ll try to complete some things in the next days and weeks. In the meanwhile, this is the sort of thing that I’m faced with:
(Click to enlarge.)
30 January 2013
Caul
Holden Caulfield is the troubled, adolescent narrator of JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Caulfield is a common enough name locally; there’s a small village called Castlecaulfield a few miles away. And there’s this over the front door here:
Holden begins his story:
And David Copperfield does start just as Holden describes it. David says:
The start of childbirth is usually announced by the “waters breaking”, that is the amniotic membrane ruptures with the release of amniotic fluid. Very occasionally the membranes don’t rupture, and the neonate is born within the amniotic sac, which had to be opened by the “gossip” or midwife. It was thought that being born in a caul was lucky, preventing death from drowning; sailors used to buy them as a precaution, a lucky charm.
Nowadays, at least in the westernised world, being born in a caul is very rare; if the waters don’t break, the membranes will be ruptured artificially. (The membranes are delivered in the third stage of labour, with the placenta.)
So, if “caul” implies luck, what about “field”? It might be over-thinking things, but perhaps field refers to batting away questions — with the unvoiced idea that the questions aren’t answered. Perhaps. If so, Caulfield is a cratylic.
(The spelling as Caulfeild was correct at the time.)
Holden begins his story:
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all that before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it.
And David Copperfield does start just as Holden describes it. David says:
I was born with a caul, which was advertised for sale, in the newspapers, at the low price of fifteen guineas.
The start of childbirth is usually announced by the “waters breaking”, that is the amniotic membrane ruptures with the release of amniotic fluid. Very occasionally the membranes don’t rupture, and the neonate is born within the amniotic sac, which had to be opened by the “gossip” or midwife. It was thought that being born in a caul was lucky, preventing death from drowning; sailors used to buy them as a precaution, a lucky charm.
Nowadays, at least in the westernised world, being born in a caul is very rare; if the waters don’t break, the membranes will be ruptured artificially. (The membranes are delivered in the third stage of labour, with the placenta.)
So, if “caul” implies luck, what about “field”? It might be over-thinking things, but perhaps field refers to batting away questions — with the unvoiced idea that the questions aren’t answered. Perhaps. If so, Caulfield is a cratylic.
04 January 2013
Theologians and women
If you’ve ever wondered what (male) theologians thought about women, here are a few quotations and some thoughts; and offered without any commentary by me.
Musonius Rufus
(Thought) “sex in marriage was just about permissible for the purposes of procreation; sex for pleasure, and especially extramarital sex, were anathema”
Philo of Alexandria
(Thought) “all the ills of civilization stemmed from the indulgence of sensual pleasure, and had nothing whatsoever to do with greed, slavery, tyranny or greed”
St Paul
(Thought) “celibacy as the ideal state for ‘mankind’”
(Thought) “women as ‘naturally’ inferior beings; they were a kind of afterthought”
[Saw man alone as] the image and glory of God
[Woman is but] the glory of the man
Let a woman learn in silence with full submissiveness. I do not allow any woman to teach or exercise authority over a man; she is to remain silent.
The man is not of the woman, but the woman is of the man
Tertullian of Carthage
Dripping breasts, stinking wombs, and crying babies
Woman is a temple over a sewer
[Women should wear perpetual mourning to atone for] the ignominy and odium of having being the cause of the fall of the human race
Clement of Alexandria
Every woman ought to be filled with shame as the thought that she is a woman
Amongst all the savage beasts, none is found so harmful as woman
St Jerome
Regard everything as poison which bears within it the seeds of sensual pleasure
Nothing is filthier than to have sex with your wife as you might with another woman
St Augustine
I know nothing which brings the manly mind down from the heights more than a woman’s caresses and that joining of bodies without which one cannot have a wife
Suppress prostitution, and capricious lusts will overthrow society
Proverbs
Do not hearken to a wicked woman; for through the lips of a harlot are like the drops from a honeycomb, which for a while is smooth in thy throat, yet afterwards thou will find her more bitter than gall, and sharper than a two-edged sword
Martin Luther
And if a woman grows weary and at last dies from child-bearing, it matters not. Let her die from bearing, she is there to do it
(Thought) [sex was] unclean
Jean Calvin
(After Deuteronomy) If a man be found lying with a woman married to a husband, they shall both of them die
Vincent Nichols (Catholic Archbishop of Westminster)
The moral teaching of the church is that ‘proper use of our sexual faculty is within a marriage, between a man and a woman, open to the procreation and nurturing of new human life’.
Musonius Rufus
(Thought) “sex in marriage was just about permissible for the purposes of procreation; sex for pleasure, and especially extramarital sex, were anathema”
Philo of Alexandria
(Thought) “all the ills of civilization stemmed from the indulgence of sensual pleasure, and had nothing whatsoever to do with greed, slavery, tyranny or greed”
St Paul
(Thought) “celibacy as the ideal state for ‘mankind’”
(Thought) “women as ‘naturally’ inferior beings; they were a kind of afterthought”
[Saw man alone as] the image and glory of God
[Woman is but] the glory of the man
Let a woman learn in silence with full submissiveness. I do not allow any woman to teach or exercise authority over a man; she is to remain silent.
The man is not of the woman, but the woman is of the man
Tertullian of Carthage
Dripping breasts, stinking wombs, and crying babies
Woman is a temple over a sewer
[Women should wear perpetual mourning to atone for] the ignominy and odium of having being the cause of the fall of the human race
Clement of Alexandria
Every woman ought to be filled with shame as the thought that she is a woman
Amongst all the savage beasts, none is found so harmful as woman
St Jerome
Regard everything as poison which bears within it the seeds of sensual pleasure
Nothing is filthier than to have sex with your wife as you might with another woman
St Augustine
I know nothing which brings the manly mind down from the heights more than a woman’s caresses and that joining of bodies without which one cannot have a wife
Suppress prostitution, and capricious lusts will overthrow society
Proverbs
Do not hearken to a wicked woman; for through the lips of a harlot are like the drops from a honeycomb, which for a while is smooth in thy throat, yet afterwards thou will find her more bitter than gall, and sharper than a two-edged sword
Martin Luther
And if a woman grows weary and at last dies from child-bearing, it matters not. Let her die from bearing, she is there to do it
(Thought) [sex was] unclean
Jean Calvin
(After Deuteronomy) If a man be found lying with a woman married to a husband, they shall both of them die
Vincent Nichols (Catholic Archbishop of Westminster)
The moral teaching of the church is that ‘proper use of our sexual faculty is within a marriage, between a man and a woman, open to the procreation and nurturing of new human life’.
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