Ignorance was bliss

A friend of mine wrote the following blog post and asked me to publish it in my blog. Since I tend to agree wholeheartedly with her assessment of the situation, I didn't hesitate to say ABSO-FREAKING-LUTELY! And so, without further ado...

Ignorance was bliss

You know what I’d like? For the world to be fair. This morning I arrived in town for work and decided to go for breakfast at a lovely little café near to my office. This was idyllic, until I made the mistake of picking up a newspaper.

This newspaper informed me that, at this very minute, South Africa’s esteemed president,  Mr Jacob Zuma, is having his houses and offices revamped to include, amongst other things,  a steam room, a dressing room, wooden window frames and doors, and  a larger swimming pool. The reported amount that will be spent for this varies, but it hovers around R190 million. I kid you not.

YOU are less important than me.

This for the man who, more than anyone, has a responsibility to be aware of the situation in which the majority of his constituency find themselves; jobless, homeless and with no prospect of any help from the government. It was pointed out in the article that the money spent on the revamping of two already far-from-modest houses could have been spent on thousands of RDP houses for the millions of South Africans living in deplorable conditions in shacks, wendy-houses, or on the street. People who have had their names down on lists for these aforementioned houses since the dawn of democracy (ha ha) in 1994, but who have been told that there has been no money nor manpower to build the houses. And yet, for our dear president and his who-knows-how-many wives and mistresses (yes it’s a cheap shot, but bear with me) it seems that the money, builders and chandelier-fitters are in abundant supply. And let’s not pretend it will take fifteen years for this job to be done.

On the next page, we have ANC Youth League President Julius Malema, the county clown, spewing yet another racist insult, this time at Indians. Heck, at least the boers get a break. Oh, wait, what? No, it appears he found time in amongst the speech-making to sing a little song about killing white folk. Phew.

But poor people are just so BORING.

This isn’t the first, nor the last time that Juju has poured forth about how much he hates…well, everyone who doesn’t look like him, really. Remind you of something beginning with N and ending in P? Julius’s job seems to be to go out into areas of greatest need in South Africa, tell the people what they’re missing, rile them into a frenzy of anger (it’s understandable; they live, undeservedly, in squalor), tell them what they deserve, equip them with a sense of entitlement and rage…and then leave. After all that mud slinging, a vindicated Malema heads off back to his none-too-shabby abode and eats something expensive, while the frustrated people sit outside their shacks, still poor, still hungry, still jobless, and even more frustrated. Malema has told them what they already knew, but repeatedly fails to address any of the problems, even when he seemingly has the influence, power and finances (how many designer suits?) to make a change.

Shame. He doesn't know who he is.

My wish for these two, and indeed anyone who abuses their powerful situation, is for them to be regressed. Remember when you were a child (think back, aged ones) and you got a bit uppity, or tried to bully the smaller children? What happened? Someone bigger than you, presumably your parent, teacher, or the weedy kid’s scary older brother, gave you a klap. Or detention, or the cane, or a stern talking to, depending on how lax corporal punishment laws were when you were young. Either way, you emerged feeling rather sheepish, rather sore, and rather disinclined to do it again.

But when one is at the top of the proverbial food chain, no effective structures exist for discipline. Who is there to klap the greedy head of state, the potty-mouthed Youth League leader, the insane dictator (yes, Mugabe, I’m talking about you) or even the abusive Man of the House? Perhaps by the time they have reached that lofty perch, it is too late for them to be brought down. Perhaps in this case, prevention is better than cure. So if you happen upon a child shouting down his smaller friends in the sandpit, remember; your hand might just save the nation. Just try and explain that to his mother…

Serious Post

There are a number of posts that I have been meaning to write, and most of them are based on blog posts that my friends have been writing. One of them in particular is going to have to wait until the final HP movie arrives in Grahamstown and I get to relive the 11 years of HP love by going to watch it.

In the meantime, however, I thought that I would write a blog that is hopefully not going to be too long or too bitchy. This one is inspired by two posts that I find are pretty connected. The first blog post was mentioned to me a couple of weeks ago by my boyfriend. It was a video posted by Skepchick blogget, Rebecca Watson. The video, which can be found here, mentioned very briefly an encounter that Rebecca had within an elevator. The video is long, the mention is brief (if you want to listen to it, you can jump ahead to 4:30 and it ends at 5:50), but I thought I would summarise the situation for anyone who might be reading this.

Rebecca was a speaker at a conference in Dublin, and she was on a panel where she spoke about sexism in the Atheist community. After the panel was over, she spent a good deal of time with people at the bar and ended up announcing that she was tired and leaving. A man then followed her from the bar to the elevator and, once inside, said that he found her interesting and wanted her to have coffee with him in his room. Rebecca explains that this made her uncomfortable and is not something that men should do. And I completely agree. Even if he had the best intentions at heart, it is just plain creepy. There are better ways to go about asking people to have coffee with you - invite them to have coffee somewhere public the next day, for example. But approaching a single foreign woman at 4am in an elevator where she cannot walk away is not a good plan.

Now, I am not a Skepchick follower, and probably never would have heard about any of this if Grant hadn't told me. See, Grant is an awesome awesome boyfriend and a feminist supporter, and got incredibly upset about the reactions to the video, including a rather sexist approach from Richard Dawkins, someone who Grant greatly admires. In any case, I heard about it, it pissed me off a little, and then I carried on with my everyday life, grateful for the fact that I have an amazing boyfriend who cares about feminist issues.

A couple of days later, Amy posted a blog about the Slut Walk in Seoul, and she posted a picture on the top of her article which I found to be incredibly appropriate and which reminded me a lot of the Rebecca Watson scenario.



I absolutely love this poster. I think that it takes a completely different approach to assault, and I think that it is something that needs to be said. A lot of the comments that Rebecca got from her video were people saying that she shouldn't have been out until 4am, that she was in the wrong somehow, that her behaviour (or previous behaviour) led him to believe that he might have had a chance. It reminds me of the "men" who says that women who wear short skirts are asking to be raped or that a women who stays after having sex and asks for breakfast and taxi money must have had a good time and therefore cannot have been raped. The onus is always put on the woman to be careful, to be demure, to make sure that their integrity is kept in check so that they do not get raped, but what about the men who do the raping? Why aren't they being targeted? Why aren't people telling them how to behave to ensure that they do not rape or assault or harass someone?

Now, as I said earlier, the guy in the elevator could have had completely harmless intentions. He really might have found her opinions interesting and wanted to sit up and chat with her for a bit. And there is nothing wrong with that. But there are ways to approach people, and approaching someone who just from a conference where she discussed sexism and is clearly aware of her sex and how it affects peoples perceptions of her, in an elevator, alone, at 4am and then asking her to come back to your room for coffee is not a good way to do it. Hell, approaching anyone alone in an elevator and asking them to come back to your room for coffee is not a good plan. Especially if you do not know that person and have never spoken to them before. It is creepy as all hell, and whether his intentions were good or not, that doesn't take away from the creepiness!!!

Anyway, that is my ranting done. Hopefully HP will be coming out in Grahamstown this weekend (I am holding my thumbs so hard that they hurt) and I will be able to post my HP love post very very soon. Until then, I will be trying my hardest to stay awake.