A walk to Manchester Cathedral and back

Cyril Wray Sock Appeal at Manchester Cathedral.

Heard about this at Manchester Cathedral. This sounds like a good cause and one that wont cost you much. This winter looks like it's going to get a lot colder and a pair of socks can help provide a lot of warmth. Please share this widely.

Christmas roast potatoes

This is a recipe I tried a few weeks ago. It is a standard recipe for making roast potatoes but I have taken a few liberties with it.

Ingredients
Potatoes
Garlic cloves
Oil
Salt
Nutmeg powder
Black pepper
Cinnamon powder
Fresh rosemary

Chop potatoes in a uniform size and dunk them in a pot of boiling water with a little salt and a twig of fresh rosemary. Boil till potatoes are tender.

 Drain and cool. It is important the potatoes are dry.

Heat oil in a baking dish dunk the potatoes in with the spices and garlic. Turn occasionally, and bake till golden brown. These are best eaten hot and fresh but if you need them for another day cook till only slightly brown then heat them when you need them. 

Garnish with fresh chopped rosemary

Christmas lights to add a little festive sprit to the dish. I like these with cheese or sour cream but feel free to eat them with a topping of your choice.

Merry Christmas

Inspired by embroidery on the frontals of St Ann's Church, Manchester

Marginalised identities and marginalising

Recently an LGBT activist had a go at me for talking about racism and feminism. Race he argued doesn't exist and we are all human. He went onto assert that race was made up by anti racist activists who kept the issue burning. Race is apparently only a reality because it is structurally embedded. This is not the first time an LGBT activist has claimed that other marginalised groups don’t have a valid reason for their discontent. I find the deliberate silencing by one marginalised group by another worrying.

I have heard the theory that race is a concept and not a biological reality that would be fine except race does exist biologically our physical differences are indicative that race exists. It has also been argued that homosexuality does not exist as it has been invented. These explanations would be fine except discrimination associated with the protected characteristics is still a reality.

These are examples from things several transgender women said to me –

You can’t call yourself black you are brown get the langue right (if you can self identify so can I)

Are you allowed to eat pork I assume you are a shade of brown so you are Muslim or some such faith that doesn’t allow you to eat pork or meat.

Hey I know transphobia exists, racism exists too in this day and age? Really who is racist anymore are you sure?

People who have been marginalised know deep down when they are being discriminated some of these experiences are violent some verbal. In all three incidents the people involved were fully aware of their marginalisation and how that played out in their daily life. What they weren’t willing to admit to was how another group of people were marginalised and had similar struggles. This is true of LGBT people of colour who experience discrimination on two fronts – race and sexuality. Does this come as any surprise then that white gay men dominate the Canal Street area in Manchester? I have seen LGBT people of colour being spoken to in derogatory ways. I have seen race, gender and sexuality clash in ugly ways in an area that is meant to be for people who have had a rough time in mainstream society. This observation is not mine alone several LGBT people of colour have noted this.

It is understandable that one marginalised group doesn’t know how to address another but to outright deny their existence  speaks of identifying with the privilege of your oppressors. In the wake of Ferguson protests it is hard to argue race does not exist 

Women and madness- the relationship women’s bodies occupy with regard to evolving social systems

This is an excerpt from a lecture I delivered at University of Salford today.

Images of mad women in popular art and literature have become tropes. Both these categories i.e. women and madness inhabit inferior positions in our society. When conflated they produce a voiceless subject whose exploitation is often ignored. 

Gin Lane are  print issued in 1751 by English artist William Hogarth 

Women’s bodies are politicised spaces on which patriarchal structures exert pressures to conform and normalise. Madness silences those voices and relabels them as dangerous to society. It is widely documented that women’s bodies are in constant fear of being harmed physically. In the case of the mad woman the process is institutionalised.  What constitutes madness is still a contentious issue. 

Looking at the past one can point out the obvious errors of mislabelling conditions affecting women as misunderstandings of a society that is not as advanced as ours. Take for example hysteria a condition whereby a woman’s uterus was thought to wander in her body which drove her to madness. Medicalisation of female biology has predetermined female inferiority. Immersed in our present culture psychiatric explanations seem unquestionable and even natural. I would like to argue it is harder to see discrimination in our own time, which is not very different from a previous era. Through examples of current mental disorders that pathologise women I will attempt to show how the spectre of the ‘mad woman’ still haunts our society through biologised understandings of madness.

Psychiatry has been described as system based on social control, although in a more insidious manner. Kvale (1992) asserts Psychology- all of it - is a branch of the police; psychodynamic and humanistic psychologies are the secret police". The power psychology exerts on the way we conceptualise the world around us is often unchecked. Often reifying existing prejudices in society. Women are a target population of this system. It is a well-known fact that women are not equal in most societies around the world, these inequalities are often justified by pathologising women or singling them out.

Long before David Rosenhan conducted his experiment investigative journalist Elizabeth Jane Cochrane’s conducted a similar experiment. In 1887 she published the book Ten Days in a Mad-House. It was based on her experience in an asylum for ten days. She deliberately presented  herself as a stereotypical mad woman. Conditions in the asylum were far from satisfactory. 

Here is a link the Rosenhan Experiment 

                                       

Part 1 of Ten Days in a Madhouse, audiobook

                                       

Part 2 of Ten Days in a Madhouse, audiobook

Reference/ Suggested reading:                                                                                                    

Chesler, P (1972). Women and madness. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

Davar, B. V. (2008). From Mental Illness to Disability Choices for Women Users/Survivors of Psychiatry in Self and Identity Constructions. Indian journal of gender studies. 15(2), 261-290. Available at http://ijg.sagepub.com/content/15/2/261

Foucalt, M.(2006). History of Madness.  Edited by Jean Khalfa translated by Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa. London. Routledge.

Foucault, M.(1979). Disciplined and Punish The Birth of the Prison Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage/Random House.

Foucault,M.(1975). The Birth of the Clinic An Archeology of Medical Perception. Trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Vintage/Random House

Kvale, S. (Ed.). (1992). Psychology and postmodernism (Vol. 9). Sage.

Lorde, A. (1978). Uses of the erotic: The erotic as power (No. 3). Crossing Pr.

Here is a the same essay in video format

Masson, J. (1992). Against Therapy. Glasgow. Fontana.

Plath, S. (2013). The bell jar (Vol. 50). GoodBook LLC.

Wetzel. J.W. (1991).Women's Experience Universal Mental Health Classification Systems: Reclaiming. 1991; 6; 8 Affilia. Retrieved from http://aff.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/6/3/8

Terms to look up

Sylvia Plath effect                                                                                                                           Neurosexim                                                                                                                              Psychologisation                                                                                                                                  Hysteria

  Women and madness -Activity.

Think of the last time you saw images or heard jokes about mad women think of what ideas were being conveyed. What impact did this have on you?

Think of the way the ‘crazy cat lady’ image/joke is used and how do you think it regulates women and their lives? Think of the many ways this image is used. 

To what extent do you think your understanding of both madness and women’s nature has been determined by psychology in the mass media. 

The black guy always dies first.

My flatmate is a fencer and  loves the sport. One of his fencing friends gave him a lovely umbrella for Christmas with the handle shaped like the hilt of a sword covered in a cloth cover. It’s a lovely present I said to him this morning you should take it with you when it rains it is a big umbrella ‘I can’t carry that thing around I am back and the cops will stop me’ came his reply. That is such a painful realisation knowing you have to look a certain way so that you aren’t stopped by the authorities. Being a black man isn’t easy as bell hooks said society expects black men to be more righteous than everyone else and holds their failures up as an example of their inferiority.

My flatmate is a black man and yes he likes fencing as much as his white friends do but none of them will be stopped by a policeperson, their youth and sense of irony will never make dangerous or suspicious to the authorities. This is not the first time this has happened though, a few months ago we caught a bus one night and my flatmate got in first and found a seat for both of us the white woman opposite him cringed and tensed up till I came and sat down next to him she looked at both of us didn’t seem pleased but was pacified with my presence.

People say racism is dead do they realise there is more to racism than shouting out rude names? It is in the silences, the quiet exclusion, and the institionalised misrepresentation. Racism of the 1960’s was very different and was very obvious but a quieter racism exists now. I have seen a black academic being shouted down at an anti racist conference by people who claimed they spoke for him. My flatmate and I have a running joke between us whenever we watch a film I ask him was it one of those films where the black guy dies first. It is a terrible joke but it is based in a painful truth. We have only seen black men as disposable commodities who get in the way of white society. It doesn’t help that fiction on screen is similar to events off screen. Black men no matter how young or old are a much-vilified group.

Racism embodies our deepest fears. Knowing your teenage son can be shot at for being suspicious, knowing your education, good manners will not protect you in such a situation is a very deep seated and realistic fear. Don’t tell us we are paranoid don’t tell us we are being hysterical don’t tell us we are looking at things too deeply. Isn’t the Ferguson case and countless cases before and after it indicative institutionalised racism. I am not saying every white person is a racist or goes out of their way to attack people of colour the system is a lot deeper, its working very insidious. Just like sexism, homophobia, and other inequalities are deeply ingrained our society so is racism its in the law, it remains in society even when the law changes. It is in the everyday life of people. Knowing you have to constantly negotiate your place in society to be accepted to be respectable in the eyes of dominant groups is an inequality.

The fact that my flatmate’s first thought was I will be stopped by the cops is indicative enough of a system that has ingrained a very real fear in him. It doesn’t matter how much my flatmate likes his umbrella or how many assurances he gets deep down he knows the minute he walks out of that door he will be stopped. It wont matter that he lives an honest decent life and wouldn’t hurt a fly in the eyes of the world he will always be a dangerous black man. 

India and ET

Studying the history of Indian cinema has taught me things I was not previously aware of. The film ET for instance has Indian origins….. and no I am not one of those people who claim everything comes from India. An unfinished project by Satyajit Ray was the basis of the much loved American film. Personally I didn’t think aliens and sci fi films were subjects we were preoccupied with India but there you go. 

Manchester Cathedral on a crisp cold day

Black people fear racism white people are scared of looking racist

I was listening to a presentation on world hunger tonight and all the images of hungry people were people of colour. The white people in the pictures were helpers. One young white woman asked an uncomfortable question 'I was at Gorton a very poor region in Manchester and some of the people didn't think we should give aid to Africa as we don't have enough ourselves.' Everyone shifted uneasily in the room. This was a room of 26 people 20 of whom were white middle class university educated people in their early 20’s, the rest of us were non-white. Only one woman of African origin sat there feeling uncomfortable. As usual the presenter gave a vague answer about being human, helping, about love. 

I wasn't disappointed by the answer I almost expected it. It is more important not to look racist than be racist or let it fester. While people like my friend are at the receiving end of these comments and in lots of cases violence white liberalism prefers to take the moral high ground. It is easy to say to the person of colour we don't think of you as less human - this is patronising, our position and our protests come from experience. We have experienced discrimination; sometimes it is a slight twitch, an uncomfortable silence or even a patronising comment spoken slowly. When all you see of yourself is as a hungry person all the powerful see of us is our hunger and helplessness it forms a deep association in our mind. Images are powerful and subconsciously affect how we perceive the world around us. For those in non dominant positions those images are the only representations they see of themselves and if they are negative representations they create an

I live in a poor neighbourhood full of poor white people who are constantly vilified and called lazy none of which is true. I can see why they hate me, I am the new toy in the hands of the liberal, and I know I will be discarded similarly. It hurts me that something as simple as this is never explained but left to fester.

I don’t hate or fear the people of Gorton they have very real concerns which I feel must be answered rationally without  resorting to mere sentimentalism. 

Protest against cuts in 'Violence Against Women' services - Manchester 10 Dec

Vegetarian Udon Noodle Soup

This recipe is vegan and has no oil at all. It is very filling and one portion can feed about two people or one very hungry person.

Ingredients

A packet of Udon noodles
A small slice of ginger
A clove of garlic
Edamame beans - I have found bags of this stuff in the frozen section shelled and ready to be boiled.
Spring onions chopped fine
A few pieces of bell peppers
thinly sliced mushrooms

These are the vegetables I have if I had them I would add carrots, sliced onion, bean sprouts and broccoli. I didn't have any tofu either which I bake (see previous post).

Miso paste
Soy sauce
Since I was craving a spicy soup I added a little gochujang to the recipe

I chopped the ginger and garlic finely and added them to the pan with some soy sauce and a few table spoons of water and let this boil for two minutes i added more water and let this boil for 5 minutes before I added the rest of the vegetables, leave a few spring onions for garnishing. I don't like overcooking my vegetables so I cooked them for 3 minutes. Boil the udon noodles for 2 minutes in hot water or dunk them in a dish of hot water and cover. Rinse them in cold water to make them chewy.

To serve get a deep bowl with the miso paste at the bottom put the noodles on top pour the soup over this and sprinkle with the remaining chopped spring onions

Transgender Day of Remembrance

Every year Transgender people are killed or allowed to die across the world. Some are kicked out by their families. Exploited and abused their lives are in danger. This violence must stop. Killing people is wrong. Killing people because we don't understand them is wrong. We need to accept people for who they are if you believe kindness wont change people neither will cruelty.

To my transgender brothers and sisters out there you are not forgotten. You will be missed. 

Here are some images from the memorial service at Manchester