Ranty Rant Rant

Ooh, but there are a lot of things making me angry today.

It all started quite early this morning when I read on Annie Slaminsky's blog about Boris Johnson's new sidekick saying that black boys should have black, male teachers.

I know absolutely nothing about the reality of what it's like being a teacher in inner-city London, but I'm deeply suspicious of any attempt to segregate people of different racial origins, I'm deeply suspicious of any attempt to articulate 'being black' with a propensity to commit crime (black people don't commit crime: poor people commit crime*, and if a disproportionate number of poor people are black then perhaps that ought to be the focus, just saying), and I'm deeply suspicious of any suggestion that what a given profession needs is fewer women in it.

THEN I open the newspaper to read that the Burmese junta is impounding food aid and not allowing foreign aid workers in, which just beggars belief. What are they going to do with 38 tonnes of biscuits, for fuck's sake - throw a big tea party for all their junta chums?

THEN (and I realise we are descending quite rapidly in order of importance here) I happen upon an article in the Telegraph about female bloggers who have got book deals and newspaper columns and agents and sitcom deals, which is great and all, but why must they all be either sexbloggers or mums? Are we *ever* going to get beyond the idea that our bodies and motherhood (or 'childcare and gynaecology' as our old chum Mary Dejevsky put it) is all that women are able or qualified to talk about?

And on that same note, my ongoing anally-retentive project to count how many letters published in the Guardian and the Observer are by men and how many by women is starting to really depress me too, especially as I have a sneaking suspicion that it actually over-represents the number of women who write in to the paper. And now I'm thinking that maybe the reason we don't write to the papers is because we're programmed to think that our bodies and motherhood are all we're able or qualified to talk about, no thanks to you, THE TELEGRAPH.

Crikey. I think it might be time for a little lie-down.


UPDATE: Now I've had a little lie-down and feel a bit calmer, may I say how much I enjoyed Alexis Petridis's review of the Nick Cave Hammersmith Apollo gig. 'He has developed a style of keyboard-playing that Little Richard would have rejected as slightly florid: legs splayed, knees bent, head back, one arm skyward and, at particularly dramatic moments, fist shaking at God. The overall effect is at once viscerally powerful and coolly ironic, both hilarious and utterly gripping.' Excellent. The world will be a poorer place when the boy Cave eventually pops his apocalyptic clogs.


* Anonymous pulled me up on this in the comments, quite rightly. What I meant was, if you're going to commit a crime, it's probably got more to do with your economic and social circumstances (i.e. stuff that can, theoretically, be changed) than anything else. But Anonymous reminded me that very rich people also commit crimes, and then I spent a long time thinking about all the different kinds of crimes that people commit, and the underlying reasons for them, and I accept Anonymous's charge of being ridiculously simplistic. That's the trouble with ranting; it's never very rational.