Where Have All The Radicals Gone?

Radio podcast from "The F Word", courtesy of the Feminist Media Collective.

WARNING: Andrea Dworkin's talk is extremely triggering. You can always skip that part. 

I'll always be a radical feminist. It's how my political awareness begun, and it's the most useful template I have found to analyze the world in a radical and structural way. You can come to understand why everything is the way it is just by sticking to radical feminist theory. We need to bring it back. Watered down "empowerment" "choice" individualistic, liberal politics won't get us anywhere.

My Experience with Meditation: From Needing To Starting

I had been trying to meditate for quite some time. I’ve long suspected that I really needed it.

Let me see… it must have been some time after I graduated, and after I had started questioning “The Myth of Science”. Somewhere along the way, starting from political awareness and arriving to spiritual awareness, I must have come across the idea of meditation. It must have had something to do with the whole “clear your mind” thing.

So yes, I have known for quite some time that I needed it badly. After discussing with a friend how my attempts at meditating have resulted in utter failure, he reassured me that that was the surest sign that I needed it. But all of this is boring, let’s get to the part when I talk about meditation.

So, one day, I sat down on the bed and tried to clear my mind. It didn’t work. I kept falling from drowsiness. So I tried again, and the same thing happened. Drowsiness; desire to go to sleep. I looked up sleepiness during meditation, and I learned that it was normal, but no mention on how to prevent it.

Time went by and I accidentally stumbled unto Havi’s blog. Havi is a yoga teacher, and she uses a technique called “Shiva Nata”. After reading over and over how good this practise was for bringing “epiphanies”, I decided to give yoga a try. I found some videos.

One was mental. I tried it with my boyfriend, but neither of us could bend so much or stand so still. The other was more normal, more “beginner friendly”. And it had a section on meditation.

The presenter gave this bit of advice, which made all the difference: Sit straight. The spine must be straight, in order for you to channel something or other and root it on the ground. Anyway, he said not to slump and sit straight. So I did.

He also explained how you should breath during meditation: deeply and slowly. After a while, he said that you breathing should, naturally and without any action on your part, become quieter. And mine did, kinda.

It must have been in the middle of this guided meditation when I felt something. Nothing great, nothing life-changing. In fact, I had forgotten about it until just now. The presenter was asking us to imagine the chakras, and when he got to the one in the head, I felt something. Good.

I then went on to keep up with his yoga positions, and eventually gave it up in favour of doing just meditation. I suspect I should be doing both, really, and I'm sure I'll return to yoga when things calm down. But now, I'm in the middle of a process, and I have no idea where it's taking me. 

Review of “Stop Pimping Our Kids”

Penises!!! (because men, like, have them; note: they look just as silly on tv as they do in real life). Sex, sexity, sex. Endless repetition of scenes showing a bunch of mums walking defiantly into Primark wearing menacing t-shirts only to be kicked out by security guys who have learned their lesson from the UKUncut protests. Diamante on the bum. Inappropriate clothing! Padded bras for 7 year olds. They refused to be interviewed. Communication! Sex is sex is sex. Just stop buying from them!

Sorry, that was too close a depiction of what the programme consisted of. 

  

I’m going to focus on the two things that caught my attention about the program.

The first was the “tactic” employed by the producers of walking straight into Primark and demanding they are listened to, which resulted in the whole crew being pushed back out. This caught my attention because it reminded me too much of the tactics employed by UK Uncut. They have been doing pretty much the same thing and getting the same response. Now, do we spot a problem here? Why yes, of course. UK Uncut is a political campaign run by activists. Channel 4 is bloody channel 4. With millions of viewers and god-knows-how-much money at their disposal, couldn’t they think of anything more useful to do? Marching into a store is impressive, but not very effective. What would UK Uncut do if it had Channel 4’s platform and resources at their disposal? Probably not leaving it at “marching into stores”.

The other thing that made me think was the lack of anything that made anyone think; I could easily write a book on the subject! Here’s what bothers me: changing the sexualisation of kids should be the easiest thing to do on the menu. It is worrying that we can’t even achieve that.

The reason why crap is being sold to kids is because of the lack of regulation of companies’ behaviour. Without going into a full lecture on “regulation and the need for it”, I want to emphasize this: throughout history, societies have tried to protect children from the worst consequences of allowing companies to do as they please. The “watershed” for tv is an example, the “ratings” on movies, another. The reason: children do not know what’s best for them. Without the “knowing” they cannot exercise “free choice” and without “free choice” there is not “free market”. So we can’t allow companies to sell anything they want to children, because they will be selling them 100% sugar crunch with flavoured sugar on top. There are regulations, and they are there for a reason. This is why it is, or it should be, relatively easy to walk to parliament and demand that a law is passed to ban companies from manufacturing sexualised products to minors. This is effective.

And yet, it seems nobody is even considering the option. The reason is clear to me: for a few decades now, “de-regulation” has been rampant on every industry imaginable, from food manufacturing, to pharmaceuticals, to banks. Nobody wants to regulate because the propaganda has brainwashed everyone to believe that “letting companies sell and letting people choose not to buy” is infinitely better than “not letting companies sell bad things”. I repeat the word again: propaganda. There is no evidence that this works, and indeed, there’s plenty of evidence that it doesn’t. And it is a desperate sign of our times that we can’t even stop companies from selling things that are bad for kids. Instead we are letting “kids choose not to buy” or rather, we are letting their parents choose.

People focus on “letting the parents choose” because companies know that this approach doesn’t stop them doing what they want. Parents have limited freedom over what to buy for their kids when companies have unlimited freedom to brainwash them. Nobody is suggesting sexualised material is banned outright because that is the only thing that ultimately works.