Manchester Graffiti

This little cat has been on the sign for over a year on Elizabeth Gaskell Campus think it replaces a real cat who used to sit on the wall and look at people passing by. 

The Death of Stuart Hall – Why Blackness is Best When it is Dead

Here's a little piece I wrote for the Black Feminists Manchester

http://blackfeministsmanchester.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/the-death-of-stuart-hall-why-blackness-is-best-when-it-is-dead/

Vigil in Manchester

#‎bringbackourgirls‬

On the 18th April 276 young girls were abducted and have now been sold in to slavery.

In order to show solidarity and support and that we care about the whereabouts and welfare of these young girls and we want their safe return Manchester will be holding a vigil on Saturday 10th May.

Please wear RED and make your placards.

Date- Saturday 10th May

Time- 1.00 pm -3.00 pm 

Venue- Picadilly Gardens

Link to the facebook event. 

https://www.facebook.com/events/402072226600264/

http://en.minguo.info/blogs/augustin/its_time_for_the_droplets_to_coalesce_into_a_big_river_bringbackourgirls

Twitter campaign - #transpsychfail

My friend started this campaign spread the work and stat tweeting. 

We are collecting critical info about trans* people being failed by the psych establishment, please tell us #transpsychfail

Claire's Wirral Coastal Walk

My friend Claire did this last year. this year she is doing a 15 mile walk. Please donate money for a good cause.

This is a note from Claire. 

Last year I did a sponsored walk of 8 miles to raise funds for St Catherine's Hospice, Preston as they nursed my husband, John, through the final two months of his life. The kind souls who sponsored me helped to raise over £350!!

This year I'm doing a sponsored walk to raise funds for The British Lung Foundation to help finance their battle against lung diseases such as the one (Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis) that killed John.

However, the walk this year is 15 miles! That's twice as long as last year's walk so I'm hoping, in my wildest dreams, that means I will raise twice as much!!

So please do use this page to donate (and don't forget the Gift Aid!). Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity. So it’s the most efficient way to donate – saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

Thank you!

Claire xx

Link to the page where you can donate money.

https://www.justgiving.com/cjrukwirralwalk/

What does it mean to be Trans*gender

I must say I don't understand the issue fully but I am aware that it is still classified as a mental disorder. Being labelled with a mental illness is an unpleasant experience. It also is the only way somebody can transition. Hate crime, misunderstanding and misconceptions about the issue have isolated people in the community. Through this event we hope activists in this field can share their experiences with us. 

The event is free but you need a ticket. Book tickets here  

Happy Easter

Inspired by stained glass in John Rylands Library, Deansgate. Thought Tudor Roses only came in Red and white was happy to see this lovely blue one in the corridor that leads to the galleries. 

Here's the original it's got a luminance to it that can only be captured in stained glass .... I had to try anyway. 

Blessed Maundy Thursday

Indigenous people – because some of us are from mars

I will be very angry is someone throws that term around again. If there are indigenous people there must be exogenous people. It is only a polite term for ‘savage tribal’. The double speak is so obvious in India people categorized as tribal’s are indigenous as if the rest of us came down from mars. The term brings with it all the problems of old anthropology studying people in grass skirts. It is the same today or even worse, these indigenous people are now expected to live like stuffed animals in museum cabinets, unchanging and on display. To be looked at spoken about as one would of an object. We are to conform to an ideal set out by people in power, never masters of our own lives.

What is this culture? What aspects make it authentic? Language, dress, food, music? As if those never change or evolve? What culture has ever lived an insular life never adapting or adopting?

Liberals in the west seem to find our return to nativism charming yet a mention this about their culture and they say that is nationalism. Why this double standard? The language of the liberal westerner mirrors the one spoken by the far right in postcolonial nations. I have said it before but every time I do I get called a racist an inauthentic person, whitewashed. Tears, screaming, shouting or silence follows what I say. This shouldn’t surprise me all I am expected to do is cook spicy curry, talk about spirituality and be poor.

Are we to remain frozen in time petrified on display?

National Preoccupations and Art or Why Aliens Don't Come to India

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Abstract

The idea for this seminar began last year when during a conversation about Indian sci-fi films came up. It started out as a joke ‘would aliens in these films go dancing around trees as they invaded the country?’

I will be looking at the Amar Chitia Katha (eternal picture stories) comics, their origins and content. Issues of a longer more robust culture are often cited for India’s romanticism of its past. Its historical fiction seems inevitable as compared to America a new nation or is it? The subtext of this fiction is reveals what lies at the heart of these stories and the tropes they employ. 

Sonia Soans, a researcher at MMU, will be giving a talk on Indian comics and how they reflect the concerns of the society that produced them. Looking at the Amar Chitra Katha series in particular, her talk will deal with the way that Indian comics reflect stereotypical ideas about the distant past and contemporary anxieties.

Venue - Room G35 in the new business school. The room has disability access and accessible restrooms. http://www2.mmu.ac.uk/travel/allsaints/Parking around the area is usually free from 6.00 pm onwards.

Follow us on Twitter @SoniaSoanspsy  & @MancsterCon

The event is free we need to know approximately how many people are coming. 

click here for tickets

The event will be livestreamed follow the link http://new.livestream.com/accounts/7978295/events/2927644

Tropical jungle

Inspired by Marthe Armitage’s wallpaper and Chagal’s brushstrokes

Why do our men take their anger out on us?.......

The first time I came across that quote from Audre Lorde it felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Somebody understood the power and gender dynamic within which black women's lives operate. I fund this on Son of Baldwin's page today and had to share it.  The article is attached at the bottom of the page. He has summed up my frustration on this issue "We come up with spiritual and political excuses to exempt ourselves from blame. We point out exceptions in order to discredit the rule."  

While racism does exist and it is a problem one injustice shouldn't overide another. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gordon-braxton/this-sexual-assault-victi_b_5125310.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false

My first published review

This is the nicest lunchtime surprise. After a lovely walk around Manchester City Centre with a friend I come back and see this.

https://www.academia.edu/6711919/Psychology_of_Women_Section_Review_16_1_Spring_2014

The journal is free and online. Thanks to the people at the Psychology of Women's Section for publishing my work.  

This is the dance of my people…..

Sitting predominantly white seminars has taught me one thing and that is – I have culture. Sometimes the only naturally dark skinned person is the room I have this unique privilege of having a culture, tradition, history, dress. To some extent, we Indians do play the ‘unique diverse and spiritual culture card’ very well, however it is the same culture that makes us savages.

I am often meant to say something contradictory in these seminars to validate that I have culture. What is culture? Why don’t white people need it? How is it they don’t have it? I am always amazed at the silliness of this lack of self awareness. The only position I can hope to have is one of authenticity to my culture. The term itself is loosely thrown about. everything a person of colour does is understood to be culture and also it’s most authentic expression. We are no longer trapped by ideas of savagery but by culture. White people no longer need to be trapped by this part of their identity they have the freedom of choice. Choosing from a buffet table that is culture they are still the conquerors.

Even the freedom to choose is a cultural identity is culture itself. If white wasn’t a colour, if English wasn’t a language, if shirts and skirts weren’t clothes, if jacket potatoes weren’t food then white people don’t have culture. But as we do know every human group has a tendency to form its own norms culture is inescapable. 

Not such an equal marriage

The seamier side of things

Last night I read two important stories on the internet – UK allows gay marriage, Gay man kills wife when she threatened to expose him.

The first story showed pictures showed happy white people from LGBT groups holding hands, kissing. The other story also UK based was sickening on so many levels. A British  man of Indian origin had gone back to India to find a suitable bride whom he eventually killed. His wife found out he was gay and threatened to leave him this is when a fight ensued and he killed her and burnt her body.

While a certain section of British society is celebrating its freedom another is living with dark secrets. The hypocrisy of Indian society never fails to sicken me. So this couple married presumably to make their parents happy fulfil a role society expects of them and it turned out so wrong. The whole idea of the marriage seemed wrong so he met and rejected girls who he met once- because marriage is a bit like mating dogs. He knew he was gay and decided to marry a woman instead of coming out. The girls family thought it was a good idea to let their daughter marry a man they had only just met and lived in different country.

It is sad that this young woman lost her life in such a brutal way. Looking at comments on Indian news websites most people were of the opinion that this man had the freedom of coming out in a country like UK, he could have moved to another town, he was financially independent the law was on his side. The deceit and cowardice cost a young woman her life.

It also points to the ugliness that surrounds Indians marriages. We marry our children because it is the respectable thing to do. Men and women are introduced to each other through matchmakers after one or two meetings they decide to get married. This comes from an sexually repressed society which frowns upon men and women talking to one another it sees no problem in promoting the idea of institutionalised rape.

While a section of British society celebrates equal marriages another one lives a life of deceit, hiding, disguising and even murdering. While the law in UK on this issue is equal when it comes to colour it needs to be less insular when it comes to LGBT activism. 

The cultural ghetto that Manchester can be.

Don’t get me wrong I love this city but like every city it has its problems. To me the most obvious one is the ghettos ethnic minorities live in or are relegated to. While its nice to have a space of ones own the racial segregation in these localities bothers me.

Drunk students on a Friday night drinking too much out for a curry and vomit. A little taste of the orient in China town. Is that what we are? Cute people of colour who cook exotic food. Is this how culture is to be consumed? Bright shop fronts which hide dark realities of our existence. With segregation comes ghettos, barely a mile away from The Famous ‘Curry Mile’ is Longsight the Asian ghetto, police sirens and ambulances used to greet me whenever I went there (so I stopped going). Similar stories of sleaze and gendered violence can be told in any of these exclusive localities of Manchester.

Manchester is probably one of the few places the world I have met people from so many nationalities but that is an elite migrating population. For the most people who have lived here long enough ghettos are a reality. What's more there is not talk of integration we are meant to remain in our place. We are to remain preserved in time and our cultures preserved. We can't be individuals only a group of people who function as a collective, on display to be used and abused. We are commodities to be served up as hot curries. This separation while amusing to a dominant few is detrimental to these communities that have been carefully preserved. We are exotic others who will never be British living on the benevolence of people who like foreign things. 

To say that crime is a racial thing would play straight into the hands of racists however not to talk about these issues would be as much an injustice. 

Is homosexuality my culture? Why I do not agree with the emotive ‘this is our culture argument’.

In the past few months I have been following the news about section 377 while I think the law will only legitimise hate crime the discussion around it is what bothers me. Either side claiming cultural supremacy on this issue it has forgotten something vital that law in India tries to position itself above culture. Those in favour of brining back the law think of homosexuality as a western disease which will corrupt ‘Indian culture’. Those in favour of legalising homosexuality call for respecting our culture and shedding Victorian morality. While both sides do have a point about culture they forget something vital about this fight- sexual orientation is not cultural choice and that which is cultural is changeable. While the expression of sexuality is dictated by cultural and historical factors these are constantly changing. Surprisingly the same debate about culture is taking Nigeria. Both pro and anti arguments invoke notions of ‘true Nigerian culture’. If legalising homosexuality is not ‘Indian culture’ neither is criminalising it.

What I fear in this debate is that culture will be the focus and not homosexuality and people who are homosexual. In a nation where hate crime by the state are justified the law needs to go above arguments about culture and religious sentiment, after all we are a multi cultural and multi religious nation. The law is not based on personal liking but on ethics. While homosexuality might be distasteful to someone it does not justify violence. Consensual sex between people of the same sex (legal age taken into consideration) is not a crime it does not harm people or society. 

Update on 14th October 2014

I have just heard this lecture by Rahul Rao -The locations of homophobia this sums up my thoughts on why I resist the narrative 'homophobia is not native to my culture'. Nativism is something I resist personally and as an academic discourse. The LGBT issue is a pertinent one however either side builds this historical narrative which does not tackle the issue in the present. I will let you read the the paper and decide for yourself. 

Click the link below for a copy of the essay. 
The locations of homophobia -Rahul Rao

The culture of being offended.

While on recent flight to India I was offered drinks I asked if they served any mulled wine . Promptly I was told this was against company policy as celebrating Christmas would be seen as offensive. ‘To whom?’ I asked ‘to our Indian passengers madam’. I did not bother asking why it is the case of the British speaking for the other as usual. India is a secular nation we celebrate as many festivals as we can, the state even gives us holidays to do so. I have grown up celebrating festivals with friends of every religion. While in recent years we have become intolerant we aren’t trying to annihilate religion in order to achieve some pseudo idea of peace.

Things are not ideal in India religious minorities face persecution, however the state does not deny people the right to practice their religions. We can tell the difference between religion and fundamentalism. In Britain, on the other hand all signs of religion equal fundamentalism and superstition. I suspect this is a cause for a lot of antagonism amongst immigrants who are offended by the lack of symbols and sanctity in public life.

I have grown up learning about religions through festivals. Food offered by neighbours and friends was a way to know them better.  It was an earnest gesture which said look I think you are important enough for me to share my traditions with you. While I wont romanticise religion I wont demonise it either. Yes some wars are caused due to religion some wars are also caused by greed. I found the airlines pre-emptive politically correct stance offensive. I am a vegetarian why not ban meat on the fight? There would have been Brahmins and vegans on the why not ban all animal products then.

The guilt most British people feel for being British never ceases to amaze me. Religion, food, festivals traditions do not racially attack people, people attack people. This suppression of British culture has led to a quiet  animosity against people of colour. While we are to be known by our culture and spirituality the white person must be stripped of these and made to feel invisible. As a friend pointed out recently isn’t white a colour? This stripping away of ones identity also affects the way a person of colour is treated polite on the surface but still thought of as an invader.

What I would personally like to see in the Britain is not pseudo guilt over things that are not offensive. 

Tell me about your childhood

Or the perverts idea of comfort....

Oh my daughter should talk to you she wants to be a counsellor...... all her friends confide in her...... mine too.... I think I have a talent....

If I had a penny every time  I have heard that said ...... The idea that we are all disturbed and can only be healed by a warm loving soul is getting tiresome. I do think human suffering is  problem that needs tackling I am not so sure confiding in these helpers of society is always the right answer. For most part these are people who have barely put their own house in order and seem to take a perverse delight in other people's misfortunes.

If suffering isn't pleasant neither is dealing with it, when someone tells me they enjoy solving other people's problems I suspect their motives. I am suspicious of the fact that they need to boast about it. feeding off another person's misery is the lowest and most ungracious thing to boast about.

It isn't surprising though we live in an era where are expected to reveal all be tormented by secret mental conditions, to discover our true selves.  Our emotions are to be put on display and the magicians who can swish them away are the new powerful class. Directing our every move feeding off our misery  in a self contentment that can only come from a deluded sense of self.

Maybe I am being too harsh but I have had enough of Psychiatry's little helpers.


Adam Curtis did a nice piece about this a while back think it is somewhere on this blog.

I had to add this wonderful quote The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule -H.L. Mencken

The Virgin Mary and books.

Last week I was at the National Gallery in London. Being the medievalist I think I am I couldn't pass up the opportunity to look at rooms full of medieval art. It is interesting how early representations of The Virgin Mary almost always showed her reading. Engrossed deeply in her book almost unaware of the Angel Gabriel about to tell her she is to conceive a child. Even more nurturing  examples of her with baby Jesus almost always depict her with a book in hand. 

The paintings reflect the artists own social climate but also the way they imagine this piece of history. I am a bit tired of the whole medieval women were oppressed and all they did was wait in their helplessness for the renaissance. The evidence is out there. 

These paintings have  an implication it has on our theology and also on the way we constructed gender. Women and their education must have been an issue women reading books must have been an ideal. I am no theologian but those images convey a certain truth about my faith.

Searching through the internet I found this article which explains the symbolism of the paintings better than I would. 

http://campus.udayton.edu/mary/meditations/olbook.html

Case in point. This paintings is from  The Mérode Altarpiece by Robert Campin It was created between 1425 and 1428.