It had to happen, I suppose, in this era of self-identification. Lately, I have come to identify as the Duke of Edinburgh, a man famous for barging around the world insulting the locals. I also say the wrong things, although I try to avoid out-and-out racism. To a visually impaired woman with a guide dog, the Duke once said: “Do you know they’re now producing eating dogs for the anorexics?” He is lauded as the don of the Clarkson-Littlejohn truthtelling variety rather than a rude git. Can I say “git”? I love the word git.
As I live with a social justice warrior (a teenager) I feel increasingly Dukey. I am in constant trouble for the things I say. When referring to somone as gay the other day, she yelled that I was “biphobic”. It all ended badly, with me informing her that the difference between a straight man and a gay man was half a lager. I shouldn’t have said that. I should have said craft beer. We made up with a takeway. She ordered a potato curry with her masala dosa. When I said: “That’s a lot of potatoes,” she called me racist, because she is half Irish.
This is not a rant about political correctness, which to me is basically good manners. Its fine to ask people what they want to be called and correct to call them that, but language is changing very fast. The divide now is not merely between generations, but through tertiary education. Checking one’s privilege means checking one’s vocab. If I make a remark about what my daughters are wearing, I am informed that I am the worst feminist of all time. This is hardly the first time this accusation has been levelled at me.
However, the fragmentation of identity politics into shards of language that always seem to hurt someone else troubles me. This is not about snowflakes versus gamey old gals. Words matter. Words connect the ideas that make up the unequal status quo. Language is self-seeding. Of course disabled people are right to challenge the words that have been used to describe them. I used to call Donald Trump a “gimp”, but I was informed that this is a disablist term, rather than something from BDSM practice. I am not sure if I should continue to use “div”, which derives from prison slang; the least intelligent inmates were employed to put dividers into cardboard boxes. Please don’t take my favourite word, pranny, away from me.
We need to connect the words to the lived experience of their concepts. I think LGBTQIPO is too long to get on a badge and I don’t see what omnisexual can bring to the party that the other initials can’t.
There has been so much focus on the correct word for sexual identities, but political correctness is needed around the language of politics. Refugees/migrants/asylum seekers: these words matter. One of the things I hate most about Brexit is its wilful destruction of the language. I hate the words Brexit, remain, remoaner, remaniac. I maintain that remain would have won if it had not chosen such an idiotic, passive, emotionless word for its stance.
I look at the new language of the Corbyn crew – “melts”, “slugs”, “gammon” – and see a discourse of contempt. I wonder then about what inclusiveness might look like. Or even solidarity. Words can include or exclude us. Many of us are a bit bewildered and we don’t know the words. But that doesn’t mean we can’t hum the tune.
Matthew Parris’s mistake? Telling women how to do feminism
One can still feel the waves of the #MeToo backlash lapping against one’s feet. The moment any woman anywhere speaks her truth, you can guarantee that a man somewhere will accuse her of wallowing in victimhood. Of course, victim-blaming is not a gendered issue. A lot of women would like a lot of other women to shut up, because they have “just got on with it” or put things to the back of their memory and don’t want to be reminded. Still, it was galling, to say the least, to see the brilliant Matthew Parris tell women to stop being victims. He has been stalked and is now just hunky-dory so … you know, what is the problem?
Now that stories of abuse, from Rotherham to Haiti to Weinstein and Westminster, are finally being told, a “pull your socks up, chaps” attitude is absolutely tone deaf. Parris wrote that feminism is about empowerment, not pity. Yes, I agree: feminists should not look like victims. So, read the accounts of girls who have been drugged and raped by grooming gangs. Read the stories of powerful women who were attacked by Weinstein; of women who tried to blow the whistle at Oxfam.
Parris writes: “If someone gropes you, kick him in the balls. That’s what feminism looks like.” But, the thing is, chaps, you don’t get to tell women how to do feminism. I suggest, in fact, that you cover your groin.
Ray of Light still shimmers, even after 20 years
Twenty years on, Ray of Light still sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? I remember having to review it and feeling a bit worried. Madonna had had a dodgy few years and a baby. Would she be even more of a control freak? But she was not just surfing the zeitgeist – she went deep. She sang of trading fame for love, of being diminished in relationships, of being selfish, of her dead mother. Her voice was deeper. In William Orbit, she found someone who could give her music space and depth. She could breathe. Her friend, the late designer David Collins, told me she was delighted with what I had said: that she had let herself go. I danced around my kitchen to that news. She remains a marvel and Ray of Light, which I am listening to now, still shimmers.