Angela Carter

Today was the second meeting of my book club, and we discussed The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter. I won't bore you with a review--it is a collection of popular fairy tales reimagined and adulted. The revision is subversive. For instance, the beauty turns into a beast, in one of the stories. The female characters are not submissive, they are wild, autnomous and sexual. The male characters are mostly beasts--wolves, bears, tigers, lions--but they are not black and white either. Many of our members appreciated her  portrayal of female desire. What I also found interesting was her conception  of female beauty. Some of her heroines were deathly pale, had talons in place of fingers, were half-human, half-animal enigmas. In contrast, in the real world, females who have even a distant resemblance to animals are considered anything but beautiful. Horse-faced isn't a compliment. The less a female is like an animal, the more beautiful she is. But, this wasn't the case in Carter's stories. It seemed as though the character's pure unadulterated desire conferred a raw beauty on them.
I wouldn't say it was among my favourite books, but I've never read anything like it and I don't think I would have unless I had joined the book club. I also quite enjoy the company of smart, attractive and articulate women. And, I don't want to date any them (releasing yourself from the obligation of  chasing everyone who is attractive and available is liberating). I do feel uncomfortable and out of place at times, but, to be honest, I am used to it. I feel out of place in most situations in my life--the perpetual outsider who has an aversion to cliques and thrives on individual rather than group connections. 

Coming to Terms with Privilege

At the Cafe Philosophy meeting last week, one of the women said white men had no idea how privileged they are. I silently applauded her for having the courage to say that because I didn't. But, the issue got me thinking about the many-layered concept of privilege. In my opinion, the only people who think about privilege are the underprivileged. And, as the woman in the discussion said, most privileged people don't realize how privileged they are. I can understand why a white man who isn't professionally successful or doesn't get attention from the opposite sex doesn't see himself as privileged. I personally became aware of my  privilege as an upper-caste Indian male when I moved to Europe and was treated differently than I am at home. I am not sure I would have otherwise although I am sure more reflective and sensitive men don't need to experience lack of privilege to acknowledge their privileges. 

Of course, an experience of discrimination need not sensitize one to other forms of exclusion or discrimination. It can lead to reactions, such as "I or my group deserve to be treated better" which is well and good, until it leads to you discriminating against people who are less privileged than you or underprivileged in different ways. For instance, white feminists who discriminate against people of colour. When it comes to white heterosexual men, I imagine it is really difficult to understand privilege. Those who are unhappy with their lot in life consider themselves underprivileged, and those who are happy think they, as individuals, deserve it. 

Of course, listening to other people with an open heart and mind is also an option. You don't need to experience someone's pain to empathize with them. You don't need to put yourself in someone else's shoes. 

To Intervene or Not to Intervene

I read a twitter stream yesterday by a woman who had called out a drunk man harassing another woman on the London tube. On being confronted, the drunk man had turned his toxic stream on her, and none of the men in the compartment, even the strong-looking ones, had intervened. The writer was clearly pissed about that. In the comments section below, a man had said that had he been there he wouldn't have intervened either because he didn't want to be punched. The drunkard was more likely to react violently to a man than a woman and at least in this case, he hadn't been violent.
Which was untrue, of course, because he had been verbally violent and abusive. But, it does raise the question of whether the men should have intervened or not. Most men these days aren't primed to fight and even the strong-looking ones might go to great lengths to avoid a physical confrontation. But, I don't think we men realize what it feels to be sexually harassed. To us, they are just words, as long as he didn't touch them, his behaviour was, of course, deplorable, but not dangerous.
I remember the time I was stopped and searched by two policemen in Holland. That was my first experience of racial profiling and I felt quite shaken up, even though the policemen hadn't been rude and had only searched my bag, not my person. I imagine being sexually harassed or sexually assaulted is much much worse. I guess we men don't appreciate the courage it takes most women to go through everyday life without losing their minds--dodging potential assailants, mostly tolerating misogyny because its exhausting to respond to every instance of it. Maybe the least we men can do is show some courage and solidarity on our part when the time comes. Of course, easier said than done. I imagine if I intervene in the situation I will be racially abused and possibly assaulted. Hopefully, I will be able to remember all the brave women that I know and know of who endure much worse for speaking up or speaking out. 

Free Speech

I just got back from a discussion on free speech with my philosophy group. I quite enjoyed it although in the beginning I felt my free speech was being restricted because I was struggling to get a word in. It is tricky to know when to start speaking because you run the risk of either cutting someone off or waiting too long and losing your turn because someone else started talking. But, I finally managed to get a word in. There were many interesting points made but I can't remember any of them apart from the ones I made. My main point was that if one believed in the right to free speech then one must necessarily believe in the right of other people to get offended and say that they are offended. That is an element of free speech. I said that mainly in response to white men moaning about political correctness and how that was restricting their free speech. I went on to say that free speech also gives people the  right to say that you shouldn't have a right to speak on a particular topic because they find your views unacceptable. If in a group, one person says that, it won't make a difference, but if many people say that they can shut the speaker down. Which is why free speech cannot be dissociated from questions of power, and the speech of some people is freer than others. Free speech also has different consequences depending on how much power you wield.
There were interesting points raised by other people but I can't for the life of me remember even one. Maybe they will come to me in the coming days.
I like the discussions, although I do think they are male-dominated. Women never seem to have a problem listening. But the people are all reasonably intelligent, open-minded and welcoming. A lot of people also speak from personal experience which is important as otherwise philosophical discussions can either get too abstract or logical, in which case the arguments are blindingly obvious. I also like that I can relate with people without any expectations that the interaction will lead to friendship. It is so liberating to be able to appreciate people in the moment.

Nature or nurture

In my previous post about Cambridge Analytica, I wrote about how those incensed that manipulative algorithms had swayed susceptible voters towards Trump and Brexit were ignoring the structural issues that had made the voters susceptible in the first place. Over the weekend, I read a piece which said psychographic targeting is nowhere near as effective as it was being made out to be and that Cambridge Analytica had a pretty spotty record of success. Even before I read the article, I had become skeptical of the whistleblower Christopher Wylie after I watched his testimony to a British Parliamentary committee. When asked if Cambridge Analytica's work on Vote Leave could have affected the results of the referendum, he replied that when an athlete dopes he is banned outright, without splitting hairs over how much had he doped, etc. He was before the committee as an expert witness and not to wax on with his political views or what should be done next. The more I saw of him and the Guardian's fawning coverage of him, the more he struck me as either a grandstander hoping to stretch his five minutes of fame or the protagonist of a plot to force a second referendum.
I know too little about technology or psychology to have an informed opinion on the matter, and I admit I initially believed that Cambridge Analytica had succeeded in manipulating the vote. When we don't understand something, we bestow it with great powers in our minds. But, I think this episode raises an interesting question about the primacy of structure or agency that has befuddled social scientists for ages. Do a person's political views depend more on her personality or her circumstances, on her psychology or her sociology? If you think it depends mostly on psychology than you would tend to agree that psychological manipulation can be quite effective. If you think it depends more on her social circumstances and life experiences, you would be much more skeptical of this claim.


P.S. I have been doing some more critical reading on Cambridge Analytica and the upshot is this: It is difficult to predict personality traits from facebook behaviour, it is even more difficult to estimate political orientation based on personality traits, and it is insanely difficult to change political orientations, which is what Cambridge Analytica is accused of pulling off.

Rude Food

I always thought I had very low standards when it came to food. To be sure, I have a healthy appetite, but I am not very picky about how it is satiated. I would make a rotten food critic because I couldn't tell the difference between decent, good, great and mind-blowing food. 

After moving to England, I have realized that I am not that indifferent to the taste of food. I quite dislike the ready-to-eat meals in most supermarkets, most of the food in my university cafeteria, and the food in most restaurants I have been to is quite mediocre as well. 

I have also discovered that bad food can ruin my mood. Today, I had cooked lunch to carry to uni, but as fate would have it, I forgot to pack it. So around lunch time, I ambled over to the only restaurant within walking distance of uni and ordered some pancakes. The sun was out and I was in a chirpy mood, notwithstanding the fact that I was eating alone in an almost full restaurant, which could have been grounds for awkwardness and melancholy. 

The pancakes took their time arriving and I wish they hadn't bothered. They were dry, tasteless and the toppings were a joke. To make matters worse, they were tiny. Most people would be glad to have small portions if they  don't like the food. But my logic is different. If you are not going to tickle my taste buds the least you can do is leave me feeling full (unless the food is rank terrible, of course). So ordinary or bad food in small helpings is a double fail.

I have actually started believing that  British people hate food and would dispense with it completely if they could. If only humans could survive on wine and ales. Nowhere have I seen so many people have a sandwich for lunch. Just a sandwich, and some chips and a soda maybe. Even college boys who ought to be at the pinnacle of  their pigging days. When I was their age, I had to wolf down mountains of food to feel even half full.

I have actually started preferring food that I have cooked myself to outside food, and I am by no means a good cook. I have some talent but still need years of practice to hone it. The only times I eat outside is when I am too bored to cook, or squeezed for time. 

Blogging Fatigue

Blogging has started feeling a bit of a chore lately, which is apparent from the length of my recent blogs. I have been struggling to find stuff to write about and feel unsatisfied with what I come up with. Until a few weeks ago, I used to feel a warm glow of satisfaction after writing a substantive (in my opinion) post. This blog isn't supposed to be explicitly therapeutic, but all writing, and especially writing of a personal nature, is a bit therapeutic, I suppose. Maybe the reason I am struggling to blog is life has been quite calm for the past few weeks. I am taking a break from online dating and am learning to interact without expectations, which I find liberating. Maybe angst is good food for thought and when angst levels fall, so does the impetus to write. Not a bad thing at all, but I hope my writing is adopt to these circumstances, because I really enjoy it.
XXXXXXXXXXX
In the past few months, I have read a few articles lauding the single life, written by "alpha singles". The articles were intelligent and balanced, not pretending that the single life was a blast. But, the authors were invariably female, white, pretty, successful and had a large circle of friends as well as admirers of the opposite sex. Can you be an alpha single if you are not all or even any of those things? I hate the world alpha single because it has a normative connotation--that if you are single you need to be an alpha single, someone eminently desirable, but picky. But, I feel like it is still possible to be comfortably single without any of the above attributes. This is the most comfortable I have been with my single status in years. And, I am not white, female, pretty or having to fend off hordes of girls who want to date me. I don't even have a good friend in the city where I live. I just feel like I have become better at living life on my own terms and having fewer expectations of myself and of other people. At living in the moment, and not thinking about how I can manipulate the moment to achieve a future goal. At not judging interactions by their potential to turn into a friendship. And, this might sound like a cliche but it is liberating to be the master of your own time.