SNOW!

Everybody gets a snow day, but not me. I work from home.

We Hate Children.

This is a topic that I have posted on before, but it has been highlighted today by a report showing how much we hate our children. Apparently more than half the UK population think that children behave like animals; more than a third believe that the streets were ‘infested’ with children and 43% thought that adults needed to be protected from children. The report coincided with an advert to raise awareness of our attitudes to children, using phrases from websites that describe children as ‘vermin’, ‘animals’, as walking in ‘packs’. And, as if to illustrate the point, a visit to the comments on the article highlighting this news on the BBC’s website, includes an invective of hate towards children. A couple of examples include:

‘Curfew for school aged kids NOW.’

‘Do some children behave like animals? No - animals tend to behave better. I have never seenan animal that would smash your car for no reason, make false accusations backed up by lies and manipulation. Yes children are more 'dangerous' than before because (a) their behaviour is worse (b) they are protected by an absurd system of 'human rights'. The Barnados video was accurate except for one fact - the hoodlums roaming the streets were about 20 years too old.

Even those comments which try to take a more moderate perspective comment that it is not ‘all’ children that behave like this, or that if we could just discipline our children more, then ‘bad’ children would not exist.

Our hatred of children is enacted everyday, not only in comments to websites, but in our attitudes to children. I mean, what is the problem with children playing on the streets or even hanging round street corners. As a society, we have become so intolerant to children that if we seem them in groups we condemn them, regardless of what they are doing. Of course, we should condemn vandalism, bullying and anti-social behaviour, but being visible is not a crime. Even in the [probably mythical] Victorian period, children should be seen and not heard. Yet, even to be seen is now a crime. We complain if our children spend too much time in front of the TV or computer, but chase them outside and we condemn them as lazy, useless, and a nuisance. Time and again, we hear complaints of children ‘hanging around’, of ‘being on buses’ [so what?], of blocking doorways- only very occasionally do such complaints actually involve actual anti-social behaviour [and are young people not part of society- do they not get a say in what is anti-social?]. We remove spaces for children to play and hang around; we cut funding for initiatives to provide young people with place to go; we even are increasingly intolerant of children in productive roles, prohibiting them from working, and allowing their exploitation through the refusal of a minimum wage for under 18s and a lower minimum wage for under 21s.

We criminalise behaviour that in past years would have just been perceived as ‘childish’. Despite a belief that children go unpunished in the twenty-first century, studies suggest that children are more likely to receive a criminal record now than ever before and that a much broader range of behaviours are now dealt with by youth panels and the court than ever before. This is not because children have got worse, but because we are more inclined to use the state as a form of discipline for the young.

We also increasingly expect all parents, including single parents and both partners in a couple, to work, a policy actively pursued by the Labour government through tax benefits and restrictive benefit allowances, but provide nothing for children. We saw no corresponding increase in child-care facilities to provide for the children left unsupervised by such a policy. We saw no extension in school hours, or even after-school activities to compensate for absent parents. The state chose to turn a blind-eye to the needs of the next generation. This, of course, made parents lives more difficult, but how much more did it reflect the complete disregard we have for children that they didn’t even feature in our thinking on an issue that so directly impacted on their lives.

The fact is that concern over the behaviour of children is not new. Read any newspaper for the last three hundred years and you will find an article bemoaning the youths hanging around street corners, pick-pocketing and robbing stores. Concern over knife crime is not novel; the anti-duelling legislation of the eighteenth-century arose out of a belief that groups of young men were swarming the streets challenging honest citizens, left, right and centre, to duels, which inevitably ended in death or severe injury.

Young people are scary because they are a social group whose rights we are reluctant to recognize. They are human beings with personalities, attitudes, opinions and needs. Just like misogyny arises out of a fear of women exercising their human rights; hatred of children arises from our wish to subordinate children. Why we have a need to subordinate youth is less clear. Is it from a fear of the new: new ideas, new attitudes, new fashions? If so, we shouldn’t be too concerned. Most children are actually surprisingly conservative in their values; after all, they take their values from their parents [it takes a bit of life experience to open your mind to new ways of thinking- which of course some children have]. Is it from a need to repeat the hatred that was enacted on us in our childhood; a reactive belief that we are right and to produce people like us we need to behave as our parents did? If so, perhaps it’s time for change- hating children is hardly a healthy way to live.

Recognition of children’s rights is a step forward for humanity, because children are us; they are our future and they are a product of our imput into them. If we want to have our human rights recognized (and we do), then we need to recognise theirs. If they behave badly, chances are it is because we taught them to behave badly. If they reject us, it is because we rejected them. If we want them to have good values and good behaviour, then it is on us to teach them. If you have a problem with young people, then it is probably your problem.

I'm Back!

Back online after a month! BT has a lot to answer for. I mean, I must have lost a stone through being forced to things other than sit online. On the other hand, it seems I find it very hard to work without the internet to tie me to my laptop. So what’s happened on this rainy, rainy month? Well, I have learned through avid watching of the Olympic Games that communism is always bad and unnatural (unlike capitalism); that television pundits agree that its racist to try to talk English in a ‘Chinese’ accent, but that to condemn a country’s entire political system and culture with a sweep of the hand is perfectly acceptable; that (because communism is bad) it is perfectly fine to report the Russia/ Georgia conflict in terms of ‘evil Russia’ and ‘innocent, weak Georgia’; and what is saddest of all is that we seem to have forgotten that economic systems are human creations not natural entities and thus can be debated and discussed.

After watching Dispatches on Channel 4 the other night, I also know that even documentary makers seem to lack any sense of how the economy works. In ‘The Bank Never Loses’, I discovered that ‘irresponsible and careless’ bank CEOs are having their mistakes shored up by our taxes, with the implication that if the banks can’t run themselves effectively, they should go bust. Making me think that the documentary makers obviously have no concept of how devastating it is to an economy if a bank goes bust, because it isn’t just one business, but the savings, mortgages, and loans of hundreds of individuals and business that lose out! Seriously, think about it (television) people.

What else? Oh, yeah (I am sure this is being said elsewhere in the blogosphere, but I ain’t been online), how offensive is Kate Perry’s ‘I kissed a girl’? On the other hand, I am quite enjoying Ida Maria’s ‘I like you so much better when your naked’.

Ok, hopefully, I will get back to some regularly scheduled posting after I have caught up on all my reading!

Busy, Busy.

Sorry for the lack of posting, but the whole moving house and packing and changing utilities and getting a letting agent to rent my house and buying new furniture and a new car (because new house is rural idyll and requires driving), etc, has taken all my time.

And, it gets worse, my new house will not have internet for about a week! So probably no posting!

Hope you are all enjoying the summer!

Sexuality and Desire.

During my holiday, I read Jed Rubenfield’s The Interpretation of Murder, which places the psychoanalysts Freud, Jung, Ferenczi and Brill together in a hotel in New York to solve a murder mystery. The combination of characters inevitably leads the book to feel like it’s a bad joke and you are forever waiting for the punchline, but it got me thinking about psychoanalysis.* As a postmodern, social constructionist, I tend to treat psychology with a reasonable dose of scepticism, but the nature of my subject area has required a working knowledge of the field, or at least requires me to dance around it. But, as I read Rubenfield, it reminded me (and to be fair I think this is Foucault’s argument) that it was Freud who place sexuality and sexual drive at the heart of human nature.

It certainly seems to be the case that earlier centuries did not place the same types of importance on sexuality and many past societies separated sexual acts from any innate behaviour or drives. Sexual acts were not driven by any need or natural force, but were active choices or, if driven by anything, it was by a person’s sinful nature and therefore no different than any other behaviours. Today, sexuality (in no small part due to Freud and his followers) has moved to be a central part of our identity and as such is frequently explained in terms of the body/ nature/ drives. Sexual behaviour became both naturalised (sex is normal) and yet of key importance to humankind so that it becomes the main marker of what it means to be human. It is interesting then that I have also read recently (although for the life of me can’t remember who wrote it) that freudianism and feminism evolved at the same time.

It makes me ask, who benefits from a model of humanity where sexual drive is key to being human, and sex is more than just another behaviour? Who benefits when we cannot conceive of relationships between people without being blinded by sex? Who benefits when the idea of platonic friendships (between men and women, but also increasingly between men and men, and women and women) are considered to be unachievable or even laughable concepts (a convenient dividing tool if ever there was one)? Who benefits when rape and objectification can never be fully criticised or rejected, because a sex drive is ‘natural’? Who benefits when we cannot reconfigure sex and sexuality to be something new, different and better for women, because we cannot challenge the idea that sexuality is what drives us as people?

It used to be said that humans were social animals, but increasingly ‘social’ has come to mean ‘sexual’, and again I have to ask who does this benefit? Because, maybe it’s just me, but current social conceptions of sexuality and desire seem to be screwing women over.

* The murder mystery is actually quite compelling, but the characters are very flat; the psychologists become little more than their published texts (which I believe is exasperated by the fact that they quote their own works throughout in response to questions). The author also tries to set up different characters to be the murderer in a rather heavy-handed (and unconvicing) ways, which is annoying. But otherwise I thought this was an ok read.

Visiting the Family.

That's my family in the distance (the picture above silly).

I will try to get back to some regularly scheduled posting this week, but I am officially moving house next week, so will also have to pack up this one and do all the tedious change of address, new utilities, etc, stuff- so things might be a bit slow. (It seems that I have over a thousand books- how did I not notice this before?) I also need to find a tenant for my house, as I am not selling right away.

The joys of a new job, eh?

Away Again.

Sorry for the quiet week, but a combination of technical problems and offline life has kept me off the internet. Let's see, this week I have looked for a new home in new location (and fingers crossed found one- the joys of a new job); looked for a new car (but not found one in budget with eco-friendly stats); celebrated with friends (between the group of us and over a few nights) three new jobs, two submission of thesises, one graduation, and a birthday; in lieu of moving house collected my numerous library books and books lent by friends and took them to work (and/ or distributed them back to owners); photocopied a pile of reading; backed up my entire hard-drive from laptop to allow it to go for repair; fretted about the lack of writing I am doing; cleaned my house; worked my non academic job; went to the gym; visited in-laws to distribute birthday presents (three in the one week!!); possibly arranged some teaching for next year; bought some new clothes that I probably can't afford (yeay for summer sales, including a pair of shorts for my holiday- optimistic much?); went food shopping; packed for next week; ignored the internets.

And for any avid readers, another quiet week to follow as I am once more off on holiday: this time to visit my siblings. I will be away for a week and probably won't get any interneting done. (That reminds me- pack camera!). See you next week.