Tae Think Again

Here at This is How She Fight Start we like to pride ourselves on always being slightly behind the bleeding edge of the perpetually onrushing buzzsaw that is the 24-hour News Cycle. It’s the Ridcully approach to information management: if it really is important then people will still be talking about it a few days after the fact, and if they’re not, well, it can’t have been that vital anyway. And so it is that I eventually come to put down some thoughts on the Scottish referendum, a mere week after the fact. Next time I’m planning to discuss whether or not we should abandon the Gold Standard.

There It Is

2.    And you give yourself away

I’m talking about class, of course. We can dress it up in words like ‘socio-economic group’ or ABC1s or whatever, but that’s what it basically boils down to. My parents were both teachers, her dad was a civil engineer, we both have post-graduate degrees and this fact is, to our families and immediate circle of acquaintances, nothing special. Dual-income, 2.4 children, nice house with a garden and foreign holidays on a fairly regular basis. We are quite definitely, smugly, appallingly, middle class. The mothers yelling at their kids in the supermarket are not.

All of This is True

3. Romance of the Damned

I’m going to talk about football now, specifically the English Premier League. Don’t worry if that’s not something you particularly care for, I’m completely confident that you can substitute in your home country’s most popular sport and you’ll know exactly what I’m on about.

His Music is Better than it Sounds

2.    I’m just diggin’ you now

So then, Mr. Charisma Man, good luck to you, I say. Go forth and dip ye wick whilst ye may, because who wouldn’t? As long as all concerned are consenting adults, what business of mine is it how other people chose to employ their genitals for their own amusement (cf. Gay Marriage. Why the fuck do you care)?

Looking for Transwonderland

Travels in Nigeria

Noo Saro-Wiwa, 2012

(February 2013)

Noo Saro-Wiwa has more reasons than most to feel ambivalent about the country of her birth. Given that, in the tradition of expats/exiles/diasporans everywhere she’s also very much from but not of her homeland, this would make for an interesting and conflicted read anyway; the murder of her father obviously contributes to that in a way I’m not wholly sure I can isolate, nor am I convinced it’s worthwhile trying to do so.

He's Better Looking Than He Looks

1.    I don’t go to parties, baby

I’m something of an introvert. I realize that a bare few weeks ago I was bludgeoning you (metaphorically speaking) with the throbbing, priapic magnificence of my Brobdingnagian genitalia, so some of you may find that hard to swallow (metaphorically speaking), but it’s true.

You’re not from New York City, you’re from Rotherham

Bright lights, big city.

I had a Jewish friend once. Well, more than one, and I still have some. Friends, that is. And Jews, of course. I don’t ‘have’ Jews, I mean. Jewish friends. Some of my best friends are Jews. No, christ, not like that. I didn’t mean it like that. And ‘christ’? Bollocks, that’s even worse. Err…

Question

“Black people! Very cool!”

How do you respond to that? Specifically, how do you respond to the genki 15-year-old Japanese schoolgirl who approaches you after your first lesson and blurts that out, apropos of nothing? And then, crucially, waits for a response.

Clearly the technically correct and honest answer is: “Yes. Many are. But many are also twats, just like everyone.” But that’s kind of going to pop her bubble, y’know?

Apes on a Train

I tried to be strong. Truly I did. But, lord knows, I’m a weak and venal man and the temptation was just too powerful. I was never going to make it through forty days of the devil whispering sweet nothings in my ear and so I’ve caved. Caved. Collapsed. Folded like a dead-beat poker hustler watching his final chips disappear in an illicit Chicago speakeasy.

Here are my mandatory microaggression posts. I hope you’re fucking happy now.

Hi! My Name is Loco and I am a Racist

Baye McNeil, 2012

(February 2012)

You knew this one was coming, sooner or later. I finally got a dead-tree copy and for once I’m not going to hide behind my usual ‘these are just some of my thoughts’ disclaimer. I’m going to try to do a proper review. Loco’s blog was a contributing factor towards my starting this one. A small one, admittedly, but a real one none-the-less. There’s also a decent chance he might actually read this, so I figure I should do us both justice and take it seriously.

The Psychopath Test

Jon Ronson, 2011

(February 2012)

’It’s a frightening and huge thought,’ I said, ‘that the ninety-nine per cent of us wandering around down here are having our lives pushed and pulled around by that psychopathic fraction up there.’

‘It’s a large thought,’ she said. ‘It is a thought people don’t have very often. Because we’re raised to believe that deep down everyone has conscience.’

(Don’t) Lend Me Your Words

Old joke. English couple on holiday in the south of France. Rent a darling little gîte just outside the most picturesque village imaginable. Visit the shops every morning to pick up freshly made croissants. Eat delectable coq au vin at a charming restaurant on the town square. On their final evening a band start playing. The music is beautiful and finishes all too soon. Desperate for more, but not knowing how to ask, the wife turns to her husband and demands, ‘Quick! What’s the French for encore?’

7 Deadly Virtues – Part the First

Previously, on This is How She Fight Start...

PREJUDICE

Prejudice has got an unfair reputation. It’s not always a bad thing. In fact it’s often useful, and even necessary. We all make initial assumptions about people based on any number of things, including sex, age, dress, accent and race. No matter how fair-minded you think you might be, this stuff all gets accounted for at the unconscious level. I’m male, young(ish. Stop sniggering at the back there), wear a suit to work, speak with a fairly regionless middle-class English accent, and I’m white.

Got a good mental picture there? You realize that it’s almost certainly wrong, of course, but you just can’t help it. There I am, sitting in your head (clean up in here, will you? It’s filthy), half-formed and you’re already coming to opinions about what kind of person I am. Judging me, even though your mother told you not to.