Please, Sir, can I have a home?

The most famous orphan of all time has to be Oliver. Dickens’s fictional creation pranced around the backstreets of London, picking a pocket or two, living a life of filthy depravity, while having the rotten-black-toothed audacity to open his malnourished mouth and ask for seconds. Did he think the Artful Dodger was made of slop? Had he worn a dress, tied his unwashed hair in a ponytail and spent less time with prostitutes, he would have been plucked from obscurity and catapulted to a position of comfortable wealth and privilege considerably sooner, according to a recent survey conducted by the British Association of Adoption and Fostering (BAAF). BAAF has found that prospective adoptive parents predominantly favour girls, with boys in some parts of the country having to wait up to twice as long as their female counterparts to be placed with suitable families. Of the people polled, 49 per cent believed that boys would be more difficult to raise than girls. The report will be used this week to highlight the plight of orphaned boys as part of National Adoption Week, in an attempt to eradicate media perpetuated stereotypes of the boy child as being nothing more than an amalgamation of slugs and snails and puppy dog tails, and likely to flourish into a wallet-stealing, gun-wielding, knife-smuggling, cannabis-loving, alcohol-chugging, hoodie-wearing tabloid hoodlum.

BAAFs investigation of adoption agencies across the country discovered that boys are much more likely to be categorised as “hard to place” and sent to an agency than girls, a problem emanating largely from the prevailing belief that while girls are made of sugar and spice and all things nice, boys are likely to be disruptive and troublesome. When local councils fail to place a child with an adoptive family, the child is referred to an independent agency or the adoption register. In 2005-6 around two-thirds of children transferred to the Be My Parent agency were boys. This is a problem bolstered by dropping adoption figures. Last year, 3, 600 children were adopted in the UK, a decrease of 5 per cent on the figures for 2006/07, and boys are being hit hardest simply because would-be-parents are prepared to wait the time necessary to secure a wanted girl child, rather than welcome a boy. David Holmes, chief executive of BAAF, attributes this inconsistency to press coverage:

Our survey suggests that one reason people may think twice about adopting a boy is because of the negative portrayal of boys in the media. Perhaps people have a more idealised image of a girl. We need to confront these stereotypes and try to dispel some of the negative myths.

However, male criminals exposed in newspaper reports have usually reached an age of maturity. They are not tiny tots, attacking big-breasted women to steal milk, nor are they junior school boys, bounding into corner shops, ransacking the penny sweets counter, threatening shop workers with cans of silly string and water pistols before making away with boxes of sherbet lemons and the charity collection box. They are usually in their mid-to-late teens and above, whose inclination towards transgressive behaviour has been facilitated by a number of external factors. They have been part of some form of family network during their formative years, and thus this has in some respect fed into their personal development. Prevailing concerns about the malign of the boy adoptee neglect to realise the part parenting plays in the moulding of a child’s personality and belief systems. Boys are not predisposed to behave badly, in the same way as girls are not inherently sweeter than a sugar pie, although the idea has permeated the national consciousness that boys are likely to be more emotionally ‘damaged’ as a result of being orphaned than girls, despite this having no empirical or scientific foundation. Both sexes are likely to be similarly affected in cases where these feelings are present, yet that some boys may manifest their discontent in external acts of violence or criminal behaviour is somehow considered to be more problematic than girls who internalise their unhappiness, resulting in personal mental anguish.

In 2004, for example, Gill Theophane, 48, a nurse from north London, adopted Rozie, now four, when she was six months old. She said:

The more I thought about it, I realised I would find it easier to relate to a girl than a boy. On a practical and an emotional level, I felt much more able to cope with a girl because I'd been there myself. I was very aware there were more boys waiting and I could have had my pick, but I felt so strongly about a girl that I was happy to wait for a year.

While this is understandable to a certain extent, has adoption become a cherry picking process? Are potential parents waiting like bright-eyed customers as legions of infants and toddlers circle them like sushi on a conveyor belt, having the privilege of inspecting and dismissing the goods before they make their perfect purchase?

Parenthood, whether achieved through natural means or adoption, is characterised by a certain degree of sacrifice. Adoptive parents may find it more difficult to bond with their chosen adoptee than they would with a child they are connected with biologically and so, to a certain degree, it makes sense that adoptive parents should have the option of specifying what they want, not just for their benefit, but to ensure that the child is going to be accepted. But isn’t parenthood, by definition, a learning curve, characterised by hard-work and, at times, heart-ache? Whether a baby is genetically linked to its parents or not has no baring on his or her behaviour, nor does it mean he or she is likely to be a high-flyer, in posession of admirable personality traits and a sense of morality that would make a man or woman of the cloth blush. It is certainly not determined by gender. Assuming from the outset that this will have such a determinate influence on a child’s development reflects unrealstic expectations of what motherhood and fatherhood entails, and suggests the child is little more than a componenet needed to complete the family, a household commodity, rather than selflessly desired sentient being. Little girls are pretty, they look nice, they wear nice dresses and can be shy and bashful. Little boys get dirty, have snotty noses, and are filled with energy. The little girl is considered someone who can be seen and not heard, and therfore she is wanted. These are sweeping generalisations, of course, but unfortunately they are considered as indisputable facts by many. A trip to the adoption agency should not be like chosing a stay dog from the pound, opting for the spaid bitch because she’s likely to cause the least trouble. Ask any expectant mother about the sex of her child, and the vast majority will say she does not care as long as the child is healthy. If the primary aim of adoption is to, likewise, provide people who yearn for a baby with the opportunity to become parents, then shouldn’t the attitude rightly be the same?

But what’s the alternative? Should we implement a system whereby the most in-deed orphans are placed first, regardless of sex, with adoptive parents having little or no jurisdiction over the gender, physical and personal attributes of the child? Preventing people from specifiying the gender or race of their adoptee would doubtless result in less children being adopted. BAAFs study found that heterosexual couples are still favoured during the process, with adoption agencies having to work tirelessly to prove to social workers that single parents and homosexual couples are more than capable of raising a child and providing a loving, supportive home. If these prejudices were dissolved, adoption would not seem so unattainable to people who actually want a child, and thus they would be more inclined to begin the process than dismiss it as something exclusive to the middle-classes. Becoming way-laid by gender stereotypes and cliches suggests, from the outset, a reluctance on the part of prospective parents to truly accept ownership of any child that is not found to be completely perfect. This is unfortunate since very few people can truly be categorised as such, so its unfair that boys are discriminated against for being nothing more than human.

Forcing the Issue?

Sexism in the workplace is endemic. If you have breasts, sit down to urinate, totter around on high-heels and adorn the occasional skirt, then it’s more than likely Bob from IT is taking bets on what size bra you wear, while your fling from last year’s Christmas party continues to entertain the lads around the water cooler every lunch time by telling them how few drinks it took to have you legs akimbo on the Xerox machine, photocopying your ass and “begging for it.” For every year you are employed after 25, your earning potential unofficially begins to depreciate, as you cruise towards the much-maligned “childbearing age.” This is the thorny decade during every working woman’s life when her menstrual cycle becomes boardroom fodder, and is charted with the same diligence as projected sales figures. Alarm bells sound at head office every time some bright young go-getter ovulates, as the managing director closes his ‘hot young sluts’ web page, looks wistfully out of the window wondering “will we lose another one?” before calling the finance office and having her bonus blocked and her pension scheme suspended.

Extreme, huh? Although these are not sweeping generalisations, but instead conclusions drawn from a recent briefing issued by the Fawcett Society on the launch of their “Just below the surface” campaign last week, the premise behind which is to expose latent sexism against women at work. The statistics have been extracted from a number of UK, European and US sources, claiming that 70 to 90 per cent of women are exposed to sexual harassment, full-time female employees earn on average 17 per cent less than their male colleagues, and 16 per cent of men have viewed pornography at work. The cheeky scamps. Furthermore, 52 per cent of employers are said to consider the possibility of a woman getting pregnant before hiring her, with around 30,000 new mothers celebrating the birth of their babies with the receipt of flower arrangements, cuddly toys, their P45s, highlighters and reams of job adverts. How many women were questioned, or how representative these figures are, is not outlined in the briefing, and while empirical information of this nature cannot be digested without some understanding of the context in which it was harnessed, what it does communicate is the extent to which sexual discrimination is still rife in office blocks across the land. To counter this, from 6 October until 17 November, posters emblazoned with the claim “Sexism at work: it’s just below the surface” are being displayed on escalator panels in Westminster, Bank, Barbican, Blackfriars, Farringdon, London Bridge, Liverpool Street and St. Paul’s London underground stations. Goody. Or maybe not.

Some women are still the victims of the basest form of prejudice, overlooked for promotion and their ambitions thwarted simply because they don’t wear a pinstripe suit and a handlebar moustache quite well enough. That cannot be disputed. But while Fawcett’s campaign has centralised this social injustice, their report doesn’t recognise the extent to which female employers are often the biggest perpetrators of discriminatory behaviour. A number of my close friends became embroiled in heated exchanges with their bosses, who barked grittily at them through lipstick stained teeth, when the subject of maternity leave was raised, with the months leading up to the birth of their children marred by vitriolic comments relating to the fact they would be failing to fulfil their contractual obligations by taking paid leave. Similarly, the report fails to explain that sexism can affect both genders. While a man happening to accidentally glance across a women’s chest could facilitate his hanging from the gallows by the short and curlies, should a woman intentionally stare at, touch, or prod a man’s nether regions, or speak to him in a way that could be considered explicitly sexual, not only would he be less likely to file a report for fear of being emasculated, he would probably find it difficult to prove to upper management that this was impinging on the quality of his professional life.

For the next month London commuters will be bombarded with the message that sexism prevails to the detriment of professional women, but to what end? Will it help to counter chauvinism, or ironically reinforce it? Women, those who never considered this a problem, may begin to over-analyse any interaction they have with male colleagues, until the fateful day someone’s line manager accidentally brushes her chest while passing her a company report, and finds himself hurled across blazing hot coals by the ball sack at an industrial tribunal as legions of teary women are catapulted into the hearing to speak of how they, too, were made to feel uncomfortable by his lecherous smile. Something innocent will morph into something sinister. Gender discrimination is serious, but is this campaign potentially more damaging for working women than the behaviour it is purporting to challenge? In homogenising the female working experience in this way, does this scheme disempower us as individuals? And rather than allowing us to progress, sadly begins to undo the threads of equality so carefully woven by our feminist foremothers? We don’t share the same thoughts and opinions. We don’t all have awful stories to tell about our treatment in the professional sphere, but it is understandable how the ethos of Fawcett’s campaign invests employers with a sense of reluctance when recruiting, by inadvertently perpetuating the fear that we may all attempt to hitch a free ride up the career ladder on the politically correct train. Many women are hugely successful, their gender not an an issue, so is it fair a campaign should speak for us all? It’s not that sexism is a problem seldom talked about, but rather it is discussed too frequently, making it lose its bitter bite. Choo Choo.

To a certain extent, this initiative could devalue the genuine experiences of those women who have been badly treated, by bolstering pre-existing beliefs that we are overly sensitive, easily offended, and likely to take recourse to the “is it ‘cos I is a woman” argument should we not feel our professional remuneration and status is proportionate to our efforts. This is because instead of targeting specific individuals who are/likely to be proponents of this brand of bigotry, everyone who happens to use the aforementioned tube stations will be indoctrinated with this message which, while increasing awareness, dilutes the severity of this problem as a cultural malady. Of course, there are still a number of issues that must be addressed to secure equality in the workplace, the need to close the pay gap being the most significant, but what this campaign has highlighted is that direct action is essential, rather than speculation that suggests if you are not being undermined for being a working woman, you soon will be. But it is difficult to get the correct balance when you want to make a difference, and sometimes being reactive is an essential component of a proactive long-term plan: what else can be done?

Kafka Uncut

The Earl of Rochester was a notorious sexual deviant, his crotch a veritable utopia for genital dissolving diseases so lascivious that they killed him. The Marquis de Sade heinously assaulted a prostitute, believing sexual gratification could be heightened by the infliction of severe pain upon one’s person, and was imprisoned for his filthy perversions. George Gordon Byron, ever the romantic, decided it would be inappropriate to give his sister flowers and so, throwing caution to the wind, he got her pregnant instead. Oscar Wilde liked to look at fresh-faced boys dressed in all their finery, have them take their clothes off and watch these nubile young things have sex with each other before slipping out of his slacks to join them. George Sands and Virginia Woolf became despondent with heterosexual coitus and indulged in illustrious lesbian affairs at a time when female homosexuality was still taboo. But let’s not forget German fiction writer Franz Kafka, the manifestation of carnal degeneracy, who, according to a recent report, liked to look at dirty pictures. Furthermore, so enamoured was he with daguerreotypes of women with their breasts and fannies out that he cultivated his own clandestine collection. Dirty, dirty man.

Dr James Hawes, academic and Kafka expert, unearthed this erotic material while leafing through copies of Kafka’s private journals in the British Library in London and the Bodleian Library in Oxford. It has been speculated that Kafka scholars, keen to uphold his formerly untainted public image, intentionally omitted these scandalous pictures from academic records, but not Hawes. He shot his load at their discovery, realising publication of Kafka’s unseen wank fodder would undoubtedly enhance interest in his book Excavating Kafka on its release later this month. “These are not naughty postcards from the beach,” says Hawes “They are undoubtedly porn, pure and simple. Some of it is quite dark. It’s quite unpleasant.”

Yep. Sure it is. So not only did Kafka secretly hoard porn like a horny squirrel protecting gold-plated nuts, he supposedly had a penchant for the debauched and nasty. But whether or not Hawes was genuinely shocked by Kafka’s celluloid masturbatory, erm, lubrications, or hopes to capitalise on the publicity, my curiosity has been aroused to such a degree that I need to see these photographs before my angelic sensibilities are offended, and I know exactly what the fuss is about. They can’t be categorised as extreme pornography, soon-to-be labelled illegal under the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, because if so they, thankfully, wouldn’t be published. So, what can we expect? Black and white photographs of busty blondes sat astride penny-farthings, or the like, breasts akimbo, smiling at the camera as they lick lollipops without a pubic triangle in sight? Or maybe a collection of buxom brunettes, thick-painted lips, sat on luxurious, silk-covered beds, sliding down the tops of their nighties so their boobs tumble out like refrigerated blancmange? It’s hardly German- mistress-defiles-herself-with-a-Cumberland-in-the-sausage-packaging-factory stuff, is it? And considering the wealth of utterly vile, repulsive and degrading material available at the click of a mouse, it’s unlikely to be hardcore by twenty-first century standards. What’s the problem, then?

Pornography is universally acknowledged as a means to precipitate masturbation. Therefore, we are presented with indisputable evidence that Kafka was a fan of self-stimulation. Secondly, there’s a prevailing belief that those who take recourse to pornography as a means of achieving sexual gratification are emotionally vacuous, misogynistic and socially obtuse men, characteristics emanating from their perceived lack of intelligence. It’s a genre (as we understand it) stereotypically embraced by teenage boys who don’t know any better, young men who can’t get laid wallowing in semen-stained sheets, and middle-aged perverts who have disguised their home-made masturbatoriums as garden sheds, slipping away a few nights a week to get it up a for some hot young photo-shop enhanced babe, without thinking of the nagging missus. Interestingly, the vast majority of my male friends (and a few female friends – some girls like porn too) boast impressive porn collections, with not one of them falling into any of the above demographics. So maybe it’s time caricatures of the archetypal porn collector are readdressed, to encompass those people who do not endorse violent sexual assaults against women, children and animals, but who rather occasionally like to look at images of naked consenting adults to help get themselves off? Is there anything wrong with that? Does looking at porn by default make one a pervert?

While pornography does not appeal to everyone, it is now a form of adult entertainment that can be enjoyed by members of both sexes either independently, or as a couple. Yet, it’s still seen as a refuge for the sexually desperate, exploitative and inadequate, even though such claims are not entirely founded. But this is why Kafka’s porn collection is considered newsworthy: because we cannot reconcile our understanding of the typical porn collector alongside our appreciation of a man who has been elevated to a god-like status for his timeless talent. Porn makes him human and fallible. But should this be interpreted as a shortcoming? That academics rallied around for years to safeguard Kafka’s saintly status implies he was perversely corrupt, when what this revelation reiterates is that he was a normal man, with an ordinary sexual appetite, therefore making his genius all the more special. Surely Kafka would not have wanted to beat-one-off on a Sunday afternoon while studying the curvy buttocks of a woman sprawled seductively across a chez-long? Surely he did not concede to his base, lustful fantasies, and could control his innate desire to shag women? But he was human, and, like so many of us, he took responsibility for the satisfaction of his own sexual urges, embracing his sexuality rather than denying it. Kafka is reported to have had healthy relationships with women. He didn’t assault anyone, and we’re not told he made the models pose against their will. He just liked to get his jollies from looking at the female form free of clothing. What’s so wrong with that? If designating specific breaks to toss himself off during his writing schedule helped facilitate his creation of The Metamorphosis, then I don’t see a problem with it. Would his integrity have remained intact if, like Lewis Carroll and James Barrie he’d died a virgin? Do we have unrealistic expectations of our literary heroes?

While it’s close to one-hundred years since Kafka went to the big pornographers in the sky, I’m sure that had he thought his porn collection (something he hid in a locked drawer) would be discovered and discussed by the mainstream press, he would have set it on fire. Although these findings may help precipitate new, fresh interpretations of Kafka's work, what they have also done is centralise the negativity unfairly attached to all those who use pornography. Yes, Kafka liked filthy photographs, but does anyone care?

Hello!

If you've ended up here intentionally, or just happened to surf onto the page, hello! I've been meaning to develop this blog for a long time, but wanted to make sure I could do so when posting frequently would not be a problem. I work in an office to get the green. So..here I am...

I am going to use this as a platform to discuss press reports and issues in the media pertaining to everyday life. I'll try to make my posts interesting, although I am more than aware that I am neither a perfect writer, nor in possession of completely infallible opinions (although, of course, I think they are great!), so hopefully the whole perusing experience won't be too boring for you. (NB: Just remember, where offence may be taken, it was probably not intended.)

I am by night an intrepid (oh, yes!) freelance writer, and am always looking for an opportunity to communicate with those who take the time to read my work and thoughts, so let me know what you think! Praise would be received happily, and presents would be nice. Who doesn't like presents? But criticisms and nastiness...hmm..I'll publish negative comments, and possibly address anything that seems founded in reason, but don't expect me to get embroiled in an argument online. I'm just not that sorta girl...

If anyone wants to contact me directly feel free to do so. Just not if you're expecting me to provide you with bank details so you can transfer big wads of cash into my account. I'm sorry, but I just won't believe you (as much as I would like too. We both hurt.).