They say you find things happening more often once you’re aware of them. Great recent examples: I’ve noticed Emirates a lot more since I’ve been to Dubai; I’ve seen a couple of travel features on former-Yugoslavia since reading Veronika Decides To Die; and since purchasing Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel has somehow wriggled her way into my life. I hadn’t even heard of her before!
Another thing that keeps cropping up time and time again is something that I started thinking about a while ago. As far back as January, when I started gathering ideas and writing what I would call an e-book – about something that had been bugging me for a while in feminist circles. There is very little discussion of inequality with regards to men. I don’t agree with MRAs at all, but I think there is some truth – requiring acknowledgement and warranting discussion – in the stats thrown around. Men are more likely to commit suicide, men die at a younger age, etc.
There’s an interesting article on the Guardian today about a new book coming out, called The Second Sex – it argues men are actually now the victims of prejudice. And Laurie Penny just last month wrote about listening to men on certain issues. Not to say I agree with either. But I think they are looking at things we should be discussing.
So it’s a fairly zeitgeist thing, this thinking about men and how to achieve genuine equality for all in terms of gender. I spent a long while deliberating over this and at last I’ve written something on the topic. I’m quite proud of it as a piece of writing, though unfortunately it’s not going to be published here, and I’m not sure when it will be published. I don’t want to say much more about it because that would ruin it – but when it’s up, I’ll put a link to it here.
When I was younger I was hyperlexic – I had a reading age far older than my own. I avidly read everything I could get my hands on and I was always found buried in books, reading about whatever interested me in that moment. (Stand-out interests I can remember include learning facts about dinosaurs, and a ridiculously early obsession with William Shakespeare and the Elizabethan era). I more or less stopped reading for fun when I hit my teens. I think this new fascinating thing called The Internet was more interesting to me than the bland pages of a book – I could interact with people, and… Well – the rest, as they say, is history.
Even at university, I rarely read – not even for my course. Nothing kept my attention enough and I “didn’t have time”.
Recently I’ve realised that I have significant gaps in my knowledge, and I don’t spend enough time reading. I have a whole (albeit small) library in my room – lots books that I haven’t read but I’ve bought because I was interested in them. It occurred to me I should probably read them – after all, I now work and I have to take the tube there and back, which affords me at least an hour of leisurely reading time.
But it also occurred to me that I might have missed out on some really cool books. So the other day I asked my friends to recommend me some books to read – some of them are for fun, some of them are literally just reference books or purely for learning. Most of them sound really interesting. I bought the following:
Make of that list what you will! I was looking for variety – things of historical interest, things I’ll definitely learn from where I have severe gaps in knowledge, or ‘must-read’ books. As it happens, I got a lot more suggestions, like The Looming Tower – that I haven’t yet bought because I think I have enough to get on with now!
I might try and briefly review them on here if I get the time…
Veronika Decides To Die
One thing I did want to mention was about a book I had on my shelf for years that I’d not gotten round to reading. I bought it at the same time as I bought The Alchemist, which I was inspired to buy after watching a stage version of it. I thought The Alchemist was good, and it’s my intention to read it again. Veronika Decides To Die is at first a fairly bleak read – a young lady decides to kill herself. Why? Because she’s bored- that’s literally it. She has done all she feels she’ll ever do and she is quite happy to die. She is a fairly boring young lady but the book does lead her on a path of discovery about herself. It’s a bit cheesy, and about a third of the way through I knew exactly what was going to happen at the end, which is disappointing. But sometimes it’s not always the ending which is important but the way by which we get there.
What I found especially interesting about Veronika is that she is 24 – I am 24 this year – and she seems to suffer from the same sort of thing that I do. I can’t count the amount of times I have considered ending my life because this is ‘all there is’. But one quote from the book really stands out for me, and really made it worth reading and thinking about:
Veronika hated everything, but mainly she hated the way she had lived her life, never bothering to discover the hundreds of other Veronikas who lived inside her and who were interesting, crazy, curious, brave, bold
She hadn’t even given herself a chance, before writing herself – and her life – off as useless and boring. She hadn’t bothered figuring out and pushing her own limits; she didn’t think about discovering all those different facets of herself. She just didn’t like herself as she thought she was – but she didn’t realise that through experience she would learn about these other Veronikas that are very different. This strikes me as pertinent because I am going through my same need to ‘discover’ myself – after all, that’s what your 20s are for, no?
I’m not sure it’s a book for everyone’s tastes, really. It is a little bit cheesy and predictable. It is a bit shallow, how she finds love with someone she barely talks to. But I find that shallowness fairly representative of a young woman in that sort of state anyway. So for me it’s almost more believable that something so preposterous could happen.
I am now reading Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton, and I am quite enjoying it so far – though it does remind me of High Fidelity in the way that it presents a view of how men see women they are attracted to. I found High Fidelity to be kind of banal, really. (I was given it and told that this is ‘how every man feels’ or ‘is’ – if so, all I learned was that men are whiny, ineffective human beings)… I hope they don’t have too much in common!
I didn’t vote in the local elections, and this apparently means I am a prime target for spontaneous abuse on Twitter. “You didn’t vote, you can’t moan”, “You’re part of the problem”, and so on.
As it happened, my not-voting was not actually a political statement – I don’t have faith in the political system but I still usually bother voting, because in a world where one tick in a box every few years does actually have a significant effect on you (however resentful that is; and it is), I think it’s important to participate. Not that I really need to justify my position but I had come back from holiday the night before, been given some bad news about my family, and I was working that night – I was too busy to be concerned about something I am not especially passionate about. It literally just slipped my mind and I forgot – I didn’t see any of the papers referring to the elections and frankly, it speaks volumes that someone such as I (who has enjoyed and exercised my right to vote since I could) would simply ‘forget’ to vote.
I said last night on one of my twitter accounts that the election was ridiculous, and that the election figures themselves were ridiculous. It is evidently unthinkable that I could possibly say such a thing, because I hadn’t voted myself.
Quick explanation of what a ‘right’ is, for those who are confused: A right is something you have the option to do. This means you also have the right to not do it. It is not compulsory – that would be forcing people to vote, and in itself, by definition that is authoritarian and not ideal really (think of all the uninformed voters you’ll have!) I have the right to enter into a civil partnership with a woman. Does this mean I have to? No. Does this make me homophobic if I don’t? Er, no. You see where it becomes problematic berating people for not exercising their rights?
Not to mention that it’s heavily ironic that people are exercising their right to free speech to tell me I need to exercise my right to vote, otherwise I have no right to free speech. The mind boggles at this level of logic.
What we should be doing, rather than berating and dismissing people who do not vote, is engage them. Why do they not vote? What would make them vote? This is far more constructive and instructive when we look at low turn out – maybe we could start by asking, why is low turn-out a problem? In other countries where turn-out is higher, why is low turn-out not such a problem? Does compulsory voting really work? How can you better inform people? Can you make the voting process easier – vote by text, by tweet, by email, or on the phone – less effort for people who don’t have the time to go down to the polling station? What classes are most unlikely to vote – what gender, what races – why aren’t they being engaged? Are we speaking to all aspects of the community or just a single slice? We should be asking these questions rather than dismissing the majority of people (who didn’t vote) as apathetic or uninterested. Maybe we should be interested in what they have to say.
For my part, it slipped my mind because none of the candidates grabbed my imagination – it was 2008 all over again, and I knew that Boris would get back in. I couldn’t particularly think of anyone I’d rather vote for. Give a man the choice of which way to die, and he’ll gladly pick one. But he’s still going to die, which he doesn’t want at all. It’s a false choice. I feel the same about elections, really. Which flavour of shit sandwich would I most like to chow down on? Hooray for democracy.
I saw some girls on the tube yesterday on their way home from a JLS concert – I imagined them to be around 14/15 years old (with, presumably, one of their mothers) and they had JLS glittered on their cheeks. I realised how different my life used to be. At 14-15, I:
- Went out drinking most weekends
- Got my nipple pierced
- Went to underground, over 18s gigs with dodgy ska bands
- Hung out with dodgy ska bands and got certain *ahem* parts of my anatomy signed
- Did drugs
No wonder the prospect of having children scares me – I don’t want a miniature me! I knew a lot of dodgy people who didn’t want what was best for me, I was manipulated, I grew up too fast. Not everything was good. But I lived and I learned.
I think if Past Soph were here today, she’d think Present Soph is terribly boring. She’d be angry and disappointed and shouty.
I lost a significant part of myself somewhere between 18 and 19 and I never got it back. A-Levels were hell for me – I wanted so badly to take a gap year but I was talked out of it, went straight to university, and within 3 months I’d had a complete mental breakdown where I kept dreaming about the best way to kill myself. I cried myself to sleep every night without fail. Friends stopped talking to me because I was perpetually gloomy (and who wants to be around that!) No one thought to gently explain to me that I might be seriously ill.
I think people underestimate how much mental illness affects people. It takes everything from you. Your identity, your confidence, your self-respect, your respect for others. You are just not the same person in any way; it massively alters your life and your perspective on it. I could go on but I won’t – it stripped me bare and left me a husk of my former self. I wasn’t fun at all during that time. I fought it for two or three years, with little recognition from friends, little sympathy, and little help. Like it has always been, I dealt with it alone. My struggle. My triumph. It’s only in the last two years, really, that I’ve started making progress and getting my life back on track. Feeling like I’m in control again. Realising that depression is a significantly different animal to ‘me’ as a person; that I can be fun and people can like spending time with me. That I am worth something to others – and actually that, even so, being of value to others isn’t the extent of how I should define or view myself.
Now, five years after my first experience of university, I’ve graduated from a different degree course and I’m working in my industry insofaras I can be… Yet, I’m faced with the stark realisation that I’m still not where I wanted to be. I never particularly envisaged myself as being or doing something specific. I just never wanted to be here. I never wanted things to stay the same for so long – I’ve always wanted to be constantly on the move. The idea of settling scares the hell out of me. Becoming stagnant and stale (=boring) is my biggest fear, I suppose.
All these years I lusted for adventure, wanting to push myself (because I think I’ve figured out that’s how I thrive – like a really awesome but tiny plant in a storm). I wanted to be able to do things that few other people could say they’ve done. I wanted to find things that excited me, to find some reason to get up in the morning and exist. I wanted a sense of purpose – even if that purpose is thinly-disguised, selfish hedonism and self-pleasure through-and-through. So what – I’m young!
I have spent so long looking at places to travel to, making vague plans in my head – “I’ll go paragliding and diving with great whites in South Africa” “I’ll go back to Romania and see how much its changed” “I’ll go skiing in Europe” “I’ll sit under the rainforest canopy in Peru at dusk and count the number of different animals I can see”.
I had so many little ‘plans’ in my head. None of them ever happened. Maybe I was unrealistic – work is/was hard to come by and I couldn’t afford to go away as much as I wanted. But also I’ve always seen myself as completely alone in these imaginary scenarios. None of my family would want to come with me. None of my friends would. I don’t have a partner.
But that scares me too. The feeling that I am perpetually alone (and I am – the older I get, the more I realise no one is going to care about me as much as I care about theirs, or indeed my own. I know this is pretty much fact. I just can’t deal with how utterly horrifying a realisation that is, and consequently I haven’t really come to terms with it). I had vaguely hoped I might ‘find’ – as if the pursuit of love/companionship is a game of hide-and-seek! – someone by now. Even if not the ‘right’ person, or a ‘soulmate’, I thought I would have found someone who loves me even a fraction of what I deserve. Nothing.
I think you live life one of two ways – you try to fit in, or you do things your own way and you don’t care what everyone else is doing. I sort of thought I might eventually somehow magically mould to fit in with everyone else, be universally accepted and adored, and feel like what everyone looks like they feel like. But maybe that’s where I’ve been going wrong. Maybe I should just go with my gut feeling – do what I want, when I want, on my own. I try to, within reason. I preach it, but I don’t honestly believe it. I don’t feel like I’m quite there yet – like my heart isn’t really in it. Like there’s some unfinished business in my life at present, unresolved issues. I want to leave and do my own thing, I want to grow as a person and have adventures and feel carefree again… It’s harder than it looks, even for someone with zero official responsibility. I have been trying to find opportunities to, but it’s proving difficult to do so without strings attached, and it’s made so much harder by my current situation.
Maybe I’ll get there. Since 2010 I’ve been trying to do little things that are challenging, experiencing little glimpses of what I think I’d like to do, and doing my own thing. There have been moments where I’ve been genuinely carefree, or genuinely happy – those little moments when you just stop what you’re doing and you have a huge wave of self-awareness. When you are overcome with a feeling of Everything Being Right, and you think “Jesus Christ, I am so unbelievably lucky to be here, in this moment, experiencing this”. Looking out over Coogee Beach at dawn. Watching Dubai Fountain for the first time. Walking Darwin’s path in the Blue Mountains. Watching the sun rise from a plane. Leaving the noise behind, sitting outside by yourself and realising just how many stars you can see in the night sky when you’re in the New Forest. Simple, small, beautiful things that make you grateful you exist.
I guess feel a bit like I grew old and jaded and cynical, far too young. Like my heart died when I was about 18, and I never got it started again (or at least, it took me so long):
And this makes me feel like my time has been all the more wasted…
Too often it feels like I am engaged in some kind of gender battle whereby I’m fighting for the wimminz and having normal relations with men feels like sleeping with the enemy. Literally. It feels like I’m constantly fighting to try and stay true to my what I genuinely believe (you know, the whole Patriarchy thing and actually taking a hard line on The Issues), but also not be a raving sexist. Is this even possible?!
I had been thinking that perhaps post-feminism or a post-feminist view of the world might help allay this battleground feeling, and I wondered the benefits of straight egalitarianism as opposed to feminism. I’m not convinced that egalitarianism, or indeed a ‘post-feminist’ outlook, helps at all.
The risk with anything ‘post’ is that it seems to suggest that we are somehow ‘over it’ – ‘post-racism’ means we’re beyond racism being an issue and implies institutionalised or systemic racism is no longer a thing. We’re beyond it and everything is cool. Except, we’re not. We aren’t beyond needing feminism – if anything, we need it now more than ever: People working at UK Feminista counted and “found the number of grassroots feminist groups has doubled in the past two years… It shows what a resurgence there’s been in feminism and how people across the UK are fighting back against the attacks on women’s equality.”
While on the one hand it would be great for me to not frame the issues into very specific and narrow contexts, it’s extremely difficult to talk about them without any context at all, without acknowledging gender as an issue, or without attempting to separate the two genders. Because gender is inherently an issue – without referring to official statistics, I know off the top of my head that men are broadly more violent and aggressive than women, for example. Is this biological, a result of hormone differences? Perhaps. (Cis)women (and transmen) are the only ones who can physically give birth. Should I ignore this very simple and straightforward, undeniable biological fact? Or should I try to pick apart the which traits/behaviours are biological and factually unchangeable, how much is socialised and internalised, and how much cannot in fact be accurately applied to half the world’s population and is simply a different personality/view?
All this talk of egalitarianism and being fair to all genders brings me to a really important point that I think has needed saying for some time: We need to make a space to discuss men’s issues – exclusively. Feminists talk of derailing tactics when they discuss issues – “What about the menz?” – and this is a valid and frustrating thing that comes about time and time again. But at the same time, when is it appropriate to talk about how the Patriarchy shafts men too? Where are the spaces for all genders to discuss scenarios where men really are worse off?
Some will think in response to that, that I am calling for masculism or that MRAs perfectly plug this gap. They don’t. Most MRA boards, blogposts or websites that I have come across are nothing more than a thinly veiled, highly misogynistic and vicious attack against women. Many men in those spaces call for the rape and aggressive oppression and domination of women and this is clearly not on. There is rarely any critique of the Patriarchy as it screws men, and far more bitching and whining about how the be-breasted of society don’t have sex with them enough. Or something. I’m not really sure.
I have yet to see a discussion about men’s issues that I am concerned about in those spaces – the issue of genuine reproductive/parental rights and protection, for example. Do men have real control over reproduction? They can father children and not know for years, if ever. Is it fair that, should they genuinely not wish to have children, they can be ‘forced’ to – and then end up paying for the child they didn’t want? Of course it isn’t. How the state could possibly protect against unwillingly becoming a father, I don’t know, but this is just one of the things I think needs to be looked at and seriously considered.
Masculism for me isn’t an ideal response because it seems to ignore what I feel is the real issue. The Patriarchy. Too often I hear “men go to war to fight for women” but I find this to be a disingenuous connection – rarely in history do we find that women have been the leaders in war scenarios. Men kill men. What we are skirting around is the fact that this is symptomatic of a Patriarchal society, not one in which women lead or have any means of systematic control. Ultimately, egalitarianism is the goal here, and I’d like to think that can be achieved through feminism – I seriously doubt much can be achieved through masculism as is – and I think that while a post-feminist outlook is great on an individual basis (so you don’t judge people on gender! Wonderful!) it’s not at all useful for critiquing the society we currently live in. And this is necessary for progress.
The Mail Online is one of those really annoying news outlets that you can hate more than anything else, and still have a bit of admiration for. I admire the MO, because it knows what its readers want, and it delivers time and time again, without fail. It is a tremendously ridiculous, runaway success story, and one that other newspapers look at with a mixture of envy and annoyance: How do they do it? It is vile – and badly written. More curiously, why is it so popular with women?
Here is something of a shocker for you: The answer is the patriarchy. You see, from a young age, women are implicitly relayed information through culture, MSM, other people that tells them roughly the following:
- You are not skinny/fat/loud/quiet/smiley/dour/round/hour-glass-shaped/bubbly/housewifey/etc enough.
- Everyone else is. Look at the front pages of magazines! These are what real women look like. Get a grip on yourself, girl.
- In order to be less inadequate you need to invest. Invest everything. Invest in make up, invest in skincare products, invest in bodycare products, invest in shoes. Bags. Plastic surgery. A little black dress. Suitable-for-work skirts – not too long, not too short either. Buy a cute dog. Even the dog has to look good – get it groomed every 6 weeks. Cut your hair every six weeks. Dye your hair the second it starts going grey – it’s unsightly and makes you look old and no one wants to put up with that in their face every day. In short, look good, but not too good because otherwise men may not be able to control themselves and may accidentally rape you.
The Mail Online does this whole patriarchy thing so well. Where else would you find horrified articles about the size of someone’s arm/leg/part of their body, alongside a certain Liz Jones bemoaning her latest facial doesn’t actually make her look ten years younger – or an outraged piece about how young girls are wearing less clothes and it’s disgusting (complete with several gratuitous photos, of course) next to, I don’t know, some article about a burns victim saying that no one talks to her anymore and she gets stared at in the street.
It’s just a smorgasbord of bizarre put-downs and lift-ups, really. On the one hand, some bits are inspiring – on the other, we all know deep down inside that we are worthless and we quite like being reminded of that. (Remember: you are brought up taking certain ‘facts’ for granted, that are actually fictitious, and it takes a long while to re-wire your brain to realise that things are in reality very different!)
I imagine the people that read the Mail Online and take it very, very seriously, look like this:
At Fem11 last year, Sandi Toksvig said something that has stayed with me and rattled around my brain for a while. She said, isn’t it funny how, before the invention of the written word, women were treated equally, or at least not with the contempt they are treated with even now. Isn’t it funny how men have rewritten history: Florence Nightingale is the passive “lady with the lamp” – whereas she was known in her time as the “lady with the hammer”, because she broke into cabinets for medical supplies etc.
According to Toksvig, before the written word and the development of language, history and traditions were passed down orally – usually through women, to their children. The role of the woman in this society was highly valued – they were integral to the ongoing survival of the tribe/society. They gave birth to children, they taught them about their cultural roots and where they came from. They taught them how to survive.
Not much of this, in actuality, has changed. Women still give birth. Women still pass down information, skills and education to their children – albeit much less so. They tend to be primary caregivers still, too.
What has happened now, I think, is that we are now valuing synthetic successes above evolutionary needs (for obvious reasons). That is, we care more about man-made money, man-made success – short-term goals, as opposed to evolutionary or long-term ones. We are not really too concerned about the future in terms of the future of mankind as a species, and we are not really too concerned about our pasts or where we came from. The future has been neglected worldwide – children are devalued on a constant basis, alienated from their own society, and made to feel like their opinions are worthless. Point me in the direction of a young person who feels truly valued by Western society. Point me to any facts and figures that say we are succeeding at diverting very real and imminent environmental crises. And in terms of our past, we keep seemingly forgetting where we came from, and the mistakes we’ve made before. We must do, because we keep making them.
Thus the role of the woman has not in itself changed, but the meaning society gives to the role, has. It has been taken for granted that women will want to procreate with men, that women will be primary caregivers, that women will allow themselves to be subjugated in every different way.
Is this ‘present hedonism’ an altogether male phenomenon – is it cocksuredness and arrogance? Or just a symptom of modern life and a nasty side-effect of technological development?
Some of you may remember, or know (as I keep going on about it) that I went to Dubai last year. I meant to write about it at the time, and then I felt a bit sheepish about it; I worried what people would think of me – for I knew that my overall impression was positive, and that largely, people don’t really like the idea of it being remotely positive. People actively wanted me to have a bad time there. Even if they hadn’t been there themselves. This is due in part to bad press, but also actually due to a very generic, all-encompassing western view that everything we know and grew up with is – well – ‘All There Is’. The One Way to do things. Anything that might not fit into that view is terrifying and Very Bad Indeed.
So, Dubai. I’ll be brief: I loved it. I met loads of people – people who have travelled or come from all kinds of places, who were doing different things. (Talking to them made me realise I have not done enough with my life.) I felt very safe most of the time I was there. I liked the sun shining (mostly). I liked the amazing, incredible architecture which is literally everywhere. Nearly every building is remarkable in its own way. It’s very American. It feels American on the surface. But its roots are Arabian, and I like that. I love eating out and going to bars, and Dubai is not short of restaurants or drinking establishments – I think only once I was a bit disappointed with food. The rest was gorgeous. There are some world-class views to be had there. Some amazing experiences, sights, and idiosyncratic/surreal things – like going skiing in a shopping mall in the middle of the desert. Or seeing a tiger hanging out of a car window. It mainly lacks culture in appearance, but it is there, bubbling just underneath the surface if you dare to scratch it. Then there’s the record-breaking Dubai Fountain, the immensity of which took my breath away… In short, it is not like any other city I have ever visited, and I don’t think it is like any other place on earth. Really.
Of course, there are negative aspects too, but I’m not going to dwell on that here. Google it or something.
Four months down the line, I’ve realised that it was a big learning experience for me. I’ve always been of the impression that – sorry, gap year haters! – going abroad really widens your horizons, and every new experience helps to shape you as a person. I could easily list a few off the top of my head:
1) Romania, 2 days after my 17th birthday, taught me that I could dive into the dark on my own, and still survive.
2) My first university taught me that sometimes, things don’t work out, and that it’s okay to fail sometimes.
3) My first job made me realise that I genuinely love working. Far, far more than studying.
4) Australia in 2010 taught me that I can be happy, that I can be fulfilled, and that I can be the life of the party if I truly want to.
5) Dubai taught me that I need to look at the bigger picture, that open-mindedness works both ways, and that it’s not possible to see things as they are until you, ummm, see them as they are.
It is this bigger picture part that has finally, finally started to make sense – that experience has suddenly collided with previous experience and now I feel a bit more sure of myself and where my life is going.
It’ll take a while to explain because it’s been a long time coming: When I was at University, we did a unit called Global Current Affairs, which I didn’t really like at the time, but got good grades on. That summer of the second year, I went to work experience at an FT magazine about Africa (TIA), which was exclusively about news in business, entrepreneurialism, trade and finance on the African continent. I really, really enjoyed it. It was niche, it was about something that was, to me, far more exciting than UK news, and I was able to put into practice a lot of what I learned in GCA. I don’t think I ever felt like I was really learning much from my degree, so it was nice to finally have something I could point to and say “THIS helped me”.
Anyway – every journalist worth their salt knows they need to have some kind of direction, some kind of passion or area they want to go into. I had previously said something along the lines of “I dunno really – whatever drops out, I’ll take”. But that’s not the most convincing answer to the question “What do you want to do with your life?” So I realised that finance and business journalism is probably where I wanted to go – I’d been nudged in that direction unintentionally, and really enjoyed it. It pays well. Finance and business will always be around, so it’s a relatively stable job. That sort of thing.
But I wouldn’t really be that happy doing that here. To me, it’s boring. I want to know about what’s going on in a bigger way – like Dubai – going there really opened my eyes to the possibilities the Middle East has, just like TIA did with Africa. They opened my eyes to the idea that maybe, just maybe, there is more to life than the western world. I want to know why Russia and China are blocking UN resolutions on Syria. I want to know how much of Africa belongs to China, and what they’re doing with that land. I want to know who else has been investing in Africa, where Brazil comes into the picture. I’m not really interested in small details anymore. Perhaps I’m being remiss, but I feel a bit like London, the UK even, isn’t big enough a stomping ground for me anymore.
I’ve finally decided I want to do international journalism, or at least business/finance – elsewhere and not here. It’s a bit of a weird one because it’s taken me a few years to really realise this is what I want to do. I’ve always wanted to travel loads, and since I can remember, I’ve never seen myself settling down. I like the idea of minimalism and scaling down, and making-do and being on the road. I like the idea of waking up to a different place and different experience every day. I feel like I’m doing something positive then, and I feel more connected and purposeful. I can’t sit around and feel sorry for myself when I’m busy.
Things are changing in my life and in my little corner of the internet. It’s a necessary move, and you’ll all understand in a short while. I’m not sure if I’ll keep this blog, even. But I feel reinvigorated, and a lot better than I have been in the recent past. I feel a bit like things are finally happening, even if its just mainly me figuring myself out – and this can only be a good thing.
I’ve just read this Telegraph article (can’t find strength to find the actual piece you wrote). Let me start by saying I disagree with the concept of unpaid work experience full stop. I would love to say that my work experience thus far has been paid, but it hasn’t. HMRC’s reluctance to sort this out – when they know which companies are doing it, when these companies are extremely easy to find out about, and when these companies don’t even pay expenses – is indicative of how very little consecutive governments over the last decade or so actually care about individuals. In fact, it’s telling that this neat little industry arrangement benefits huge corporations, and governments can retain their confidence.
I digress. I am against the “Workfare” scheme because it is not about improving the individual at all – it is about providing a source of free labour for organisations – at the expense of the taxpayer, no less! I am currently on Job Seeker’s Allowance and I have been tactfully informed that I “may as well” apply for any jobs going at the centre (ones with literally no connection to what I have done in the past, no connection to my degree, and of no use to me or my career) because I will be forced to take something that comes up in a few months, or I risk losing my benefits.
“Short term work experience placements lasting a few weeks are of immense value to young people looking to get a foothold on the job ladder”
They are rarely of value. I don’t see how working in Tesco stacking shelves – for which other members of staff are paid – is going to be of any use to me when I am looking for a job in journalism. Do you? Especially not when you consider that I have already worked for a large supermarket chain for over a year. I worked there when I was doing my A Levels. I later worked full-time for my local authority. I have worked. I have experience. I am the opposite of workshy, Mr Grayling, but having been to university – something all young people are now being funneled into regardless of suitability for their career needs or wishes – I have graduated and found the economy in a devastating state. I have worked for free in many, many places over the last 8 years, in pursuit of the career I want – but I just don’t think that working for Tesco in exchange for money which I already receive is reasonable or at all justifiable.
“The critics are job snobs. The Guardian newspaper publishes stories attacking big retailers for offering short-term unpaid work experience placements for young people. But that same Guardian newspaper advertises on its website – yes, you guessed it – short-term unpaid work experience placements for young people.”
It’s not snobbery. Nobody is against anyone working for Tesco – the issue is that they are unpaid, but also that they are mandatory and thousands of people nationwide are being forced into work experience schemes that are not relevant to their line of work. You must realise that these unpaid work experiences are hugely harmful:
a) these workfare people on JSA are performing a function that could be performed by another member of staff, therefore they are actively harming the job market and exacerbating already-dire unemployment rates by reducing the amount of paid work available.
b) in the time that these people are working unpaid, they cannot look for jobs that are actually in their line of work, so they are effectively breaking their own contract with the job centre to comply with what the job centre says.
The work experience you mentioned at the Guardian and BBC Newsnight is voluntary and undertaken on the basis that the individual knows from the start it is unpaid, but they will gain valuable experience that will help them in their career. The workfare scheme touted by the government is nothing of the sort. People are being forced into these situations because they have been told if they do not comply, then they will lose their benefits. Benefits that they have received because they need a subsidy to live as they cannot find work. Pulling the carpet out from under people and telling them that they chose to sit on the floor is hugely disingenuous and lying about it, or pretending to equate workfare with genuine work experience opportunities is an insult to any right-thinking person.
I am intrigued as to how you still feel, what with companies dropping out of the workfare scheme like flies, that this is still a reasonable situation to put unemployed people in – especially when the economy is in such an awful state. But please do let me know if you find someone else who agrees with you.
I’m not really sure what the last straw was for me, but I’ve been ignoring 38 degrees for a while now, having at first been a rabid supporter of everything they were doing. They have done some brilliant campaigns in the past, but more and more I started to noticed that what they were concerned about, wasn’t what I was concerned about. In fact, a quick glance at their website shows where their campaigning interests lie:
- The Big Switch (people being ripped off by utilities companies)
- Tax Dodging
- The NHS
I am concerned about the welfare reforms. I am worried about disabled people and the impact that will have on their lives. I’m worried because I am unemployed, on JSA (and have been tactfully told if I don’t find anything soon I will be more or less forced to work somewhere anyway), I identify as disabled (though not affected as not on disability benefits), and I’m acutely aware that at any moment I could become disabled.
We are currently going through what seems to be to be an extraordinary period where things will change in a massive way. It occurred to me that: a) there is no mandate for this change; b) this will affect millions of people in the UK, some now, some later; c) there’ll be no political will in the future to change it back. So we need to fight this now, and we need to be fighting hard, exposing lies and fraud where we can and telling the truth about what the health bill and what the welfare reform bill will actually do to people’s lives.
What is disappointing is that 38 degrees, once so on-the-ball, has now created those campaigns that no longer represent my views or interests. What’s more, they no longer represent the views of a lot of people I know. Yes, people being ripped off by utilities companies is bad but not as bad as disabled people being forced to work for free on a permanent/long-term basis, in return for benefits they should be entitled to regardless. Tax dodging is bad, but there are already other organisations dealing with this, and making more headway than 38 degrees – I am, of course, thinking of UK Uncut and associated regional activist groups. And as for the NHS, yes this again is another thing that needs to be done but it’s also being done in a much better way, by a whole host of other charities and organisations. The NHS story is a huge topic of interest at the moment, so people are already aware of what’s going on.
The other thing that is interesting to note is how much of their campaigning is puff. They want money, and they want signatures. Money to run ads or do something-or-other, and signatures and letters to give to MPs. I hope I am not the only one who can see that this sort of activism has well and truly had its day, and that clicktivism is dying out. If it isn’t, it should be. I’m no expert but I can’t remember any time I had a truly satisfactory response from my local MP or indeed anyone I have written to, asking for them to reconsider their views.
It is kind of sad, really, that an organisation is taking on already-popular and already well-known issues. I would have expected them to take the welfare reform bill to pieces and really go for that, because it is a really big change and will have huge repercussions. Is it possible that they are simply taking the easy way out?
With membership numbers presumably dropping (quick mention on twitter created ire from friends, and a lot of them felt the same as me. I can feel a palpable sense of exhaustion at clicktivism and writing letters to MPs) I don’t expect they will enjoy the popularity they experienced in 2011 this year, somehow.
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