Confessions of an Egalitarian

In his brave Edinburgh show, journalist, poet and wit, Lloyd Evans, opines that the most offensive thing you can say to a feminist is: 'Congratulations, you've won!'
You can do what you want, go where you want and be who you want (ie: what more do you want?).

I have been mulling over this ever since. I take his point that the point about a cause is that it should seek to obsolete itself, not turn into an entity in its own right which then has a territory to preserve and this has also previously crossed my mind.

For example if Cancer Research ever succeeds in finding a cure, you would expect them to close their offices and start refusing any further donations within days. You would hope the same with Oxfam, once they had solved world hunger, etc.

And yet it seems that causes really do prefer to become permanent entities and fixtures in our lives rather than seeing it as their moral duty to bring an end to the need for their existence, and as quickly and efficiently as possible. Rather, they seem to expand and expand with more and more highly-paid staff who appear to do less and less, except find ways to keep their jobs going indefinitely.

And I am still not entirely convinced that feminism is any more preferable to chauvinism as neither gender claiming superiority over (or denigrating) the other equates to equality, much though I acknowledge that the female race was once so disadvantaged that we did need a campaigning vehicle to 're-advantage' it. However in this country I think those days are gone and an individual should get a job because they are the the right person for the job rather than to fill an artificial gender quota, irrespective of their fitness for a role. Some disastrous female appointments have ensued, which just make our gender look bad. Then again there have been disastrous male appointments throughout history, so how bad should we really feel?

One curious fact that Mr Evans neglected to use in his show is that 'being female' has now become desirable enough for increasing numbers of men to undertake surgery to become us! Imagine that happening in Victorian times (even if the surgical expertise existed), when women were but the property of men, with even the wealthiest living lives of unbelievable societal and professional stricture. We were corsetted in more ways than one!

I am a grateful recipient of all the suffragettes and feminists have achieved since those days, enabling me to have total freedom of expression, the vote and all the opportunities and choices I now enjoy. I for one, am happy and content. The only person who has held me back in my life is me and that is a fact of the past now.

As for other countries, is it our business to act as if we were still an empire and dictate to them how they should run their society? Or is it up to the women of each society to do what the women of Great Britain had to do to win what human freedoms they seek? I have so many qualms about us interfering in the affairs of other nations, no matter that I might disagree on a personal level with how they run their countries and treat their citizens.

Panda Awareness Week etc

What better week to return to blogging than the first ever world Panda Awareness Week?

Who would have thought our OxFringe show Panda Pride! would have led to it and BamBam and BooBoo's world dominational aspirations weren't just a pipe dream?

; - )

Seriously, it was a most enjoyable debut show and made the Oxford Times, but I doubt it held quite that much sway! Besides which, our pandas rather prided themselves on their rarity, and being lazy, decided they rather liked captivity and having 'servants' (aka zookeepers) too. If only they could get their paws on more doughnuts (the proper ones with jam in, that is), their lives would be complete. Well almost.

Anyway, Panda Awareness Week - surely more uplifting than National Continence Week, though personally speaking, I like to hope I celebrate that particular week every week!

Funny how some charities/causes get a day dedicated to them and others a week, a month or even a year. I wonder why that is. Who decides which cause merits what?

Following our brief surfing of the panda zeitgeist, aside from sorting out and amalgamating my many hundreds of electronic files from over the years into meaningful folders and subfolders and binning the rubbish (can't believe I used to be so untidy!), I have begun work on a World War I screenplay which I hope to have finished in time to attract TV commissioners for the centenary of the outbreak of WWI. Am not going to say too much about it at this stage for obvious reasons except that it is inspired by an aspect of the Home Front which has seldom been covered before, but owing to this factor, requires many times more research time than writing time.

Another reason for my recent blog-lag is that so much terrible stuff has been going on with the banking crisis/recession, I didn't want to pen any more depressing posts about it, looking at the more-than-enough postings I have previously written on this subject. Suffice to say that my own bank accounts and credit card are well away from the big 4 banks and have been with the Co-Op for some years, so I reckon the most positive contribution anyone can make is to vote with their feet on the matter and kick these financial institutions in the bottom line! Notwithstanding, I may have to revise my policy following the recent Co-Op funeralcare scandal. Are there no companies left with ethical credentials to be trusted I wonder?

I once started writing 'The Armchair Anarchist' about all the things an individual could do to make the world a better place if they were as lazy as me, but somehow it never got finished surprise, surprise, and meanwhile the world became a great deal more complicated as derivatives and hedge funds and Russian-doll like bodies which swallowed one another until the original could no longer be seen, let alone held accountable for anything, became the norm, among many other fiendish schemes designed to scramble our brains into spaghetti as we try to keep a grip and make sense of it all. Perhaps 'The Armchair Analyst' would be more useful now, to share tips on how to stay sane when all around us has gone mad.

So, I am going to try and raise the number of more positive postings from now on, though I cannot promise to forego the odd rant entirely!