Dealing with things 'manfully'?

Story from the BBC about a heroin addict who died after jerking the steering wheel out of his wife's hands when she wouldn't drive him to buy drugs.

The BBC reports:

The coroner said Mr Grindley was a young man who had grappled "manfully" with heroin addiction and his death was a tragic loss.

What I would like to know from the coroner is how exactly one grapples "manfully" with an addiction? Does it mean bravely or courageously? If so, perhaps one of those words or one of their synoyms would be more appropriate than assuming that to be strong and brave is to do things like a man.

Also interesting to note that the reporter feels it necessary to mention Mr Grindley's private school education and his introduction to drugs by a former girlfriend, all in the same sentence. Given that two clauses in a sentence are usually linked in some way, what is the connection here? Are we supposed to infer that he had a private education but his aspirations for happy, well-behaved middle class life were ruined by his rebellious former girlfriend? Who knows.

Dear me, I seem to be having a very critical afternoon. Think I'm just still angry after reading about the recent Johnny Vegas incident where he may or may not have taken advantage of a young woman onstage. Nice one.

Girls vs. Women

So guess what? I'm annoyed at the news again. Nothing changes!

I bought the Independent while I sat down for a coffee earlier, largely because it only costs 30p from student outlets and has a couple of sudokus in it (and no I don't know if that's the right plural, and I don't care). To be honest, I rarely find much of interest in there but for 30p you can't go far wrong. I'm wishing I went for the Guardian now though - I think they were featuring something about Sylvia Plath.

Anyway.

You can read the story that got me annoyed here. Obviously I was annoyed at the whole 'spending thousands of dollars on prostitutes' business...not only is it horribly unpleasant because he's married and it'd also be quite nice if he set a good example, I don't believe anyone that blindly insists that every prostitute in the business is a happy, successful woman who won't feel any emotional consequences and is doing it out of her own free will just to make a bit of extra money. Don't be so stupid. But that's a huge debate which I won't go into now as I'm lacking in time and expertise.

The point I was actually going to make was actually not about the story itself but how it was reported. I recognise that 'call girls' is a widely used euphemistic name for the job that these women do, and I know that this can then be shortened to 'girls' when referring to them. And maybe it's fair enough that the Independent therefore sees fit to use both terms in its article (both online and in print). So my upset here is a general point as well as one about the article today. But here's the thing - they are NOT girls. They are women. In English, we tend to be very squeamish about calling males 'boys' as soon as they're past early teens. The only scenario when you might refer to males as 'boys' is usually along the lines of 'going down the pub with the boys'. For females on the other hand, they are often referred to as girls well past their teens. They themselves perpetuate it by calling themselves 'girls' for decades afterwards, and can pretty much be referred to as such by any man who is older than them. I know this sounds biased because I get annoyed about this stuff, but if you think about it I think you'll realise that is how it works. And, of course, there's the research to prove it...but I won't bore you with that now.

The point is that 'girl' and 'boy' are terms for young females and males. So calling either gender by this 'young' term when they are no longer young is diminuitive. I put up with it, normally. At 19 I feel that emotionally, physically and legally, I am not a 'girl'. I'm a woman, end of. But I usually won't object to it because I am still relatively young and, as such, I can't be bothered to get too insulted. And, coming from those close to me, it can be quite sweet - it can be used as a protective, affectionate term too. Of course, that doesn't mean that any man (or woman) that I don't know should assume I don't mind them using the term 'girl' to refer to me. Stuff political correctness...as far as I'm concerned, it's misleading to call me that, so don't.

The crux of this, if you've made it through this far, is that the women mentioned in the Independent story are just that: women. They aren't girls. I can grit my teeth and get past the 'call girl' title for the time being, as it does refer to a particular role. But, dear newspaper writer, they are not 'girls'. They are all adults, as far as your reporting indicates. So no more 'girls', please. Don't use the diminuitive, because it makes them sound less than they are. They regularly have rich, powerful men paying them to obey and oblige. That's a scary enough power dimension to start with, so please don't go along with it. I know I probably sound uptight and picky to you, and I know you're just trying to do your job, but think about it. Thanks.

Put your red dress on

So, what, to get women to take up the opportunity of health screenings it is necessary to entice them with the chance to see pretty dresses? Apparently so.

Riiight.

But on a different note, the Fratellis album is good. I do love a good bit of indie. And kudos goes to Amazon as the CD arrived 4 days after I ordered it, which is unprecedented to my mind, especially considering our mediocre postal service in halls. Nice one.

On another random note - man, I need to work on my coherence! - I watched The Queen last night and was really impressed. I don't know that I would've understood all of the context and background stuff without one of my housemates commentating, but I guess inserting any more info into the actual film would've made it too documentary-like. I thought it portrayed Blair very well, and it got me thinking that 10 years is a very long time to keep working hard at that job. It was quite sad at points, though we were all debating the hype from the public over Diana's death. It's a hard one because she clearly did have a huge impact on the British people, but behind all her stoicism the Queen rightly pointed out that they were grieving for someone they didn't know, not someone that was the mother of their grandchildren. Some interesting points were raised, and I'd like to watch it again!

Told you so

It made me smile in a rather big-headed fashion that over at the f-word they've also talked about Patrick Moore's comments about the BBC.

Though this feeling of gratification is marred somewhat by the embarrassing experience of finding out that I really should have known who he is. Ah well. From the sound of it, he wouldn't like me anyway.

Encounters of the debatable kind

I was in the gym just now and while on the cross-trainer I was recalling a conversation I had with a friend last night, and I suddenly saw a different side to it. I got so distracted thinking about it that I then managed to knock myself across the knees on the rowing machine. Twice. You can't say I don't take this stuff seriously!

So the other night we were in an 'alternative' club which I hadn't been to before. The fact that it's 'alternative' basically means that the music is more Fall Out Boy than Five, there's more black clothing, it's darker and dingier than your average club, and there's less lipgloss when you look around. I feel at home! The alternative nature tends to also mean, for reasons I'm not entirely sure of, that it's a bit less touchy-feely. Which can only be a good thing. So I was there, after we'd been there a while, dancing with this guy. And I'm aware of my mate dancing near us, and she's obviously looking over to check I'm alright or whether I want her to interrupt. We were joking about this last night, saying we should work out a secret signal to say "yes I'm ok" or "no, come and drag me away". I mean, I'm perfectly capable of walking away from someone when I want to go back to dancing with my friends (and as a rule this takes about 2 minutes to happen) but it doesn't mean that you don't meet guys - usually at the bar, bless 'em - that are a bit persistent.

The thing which occurred to me earlier was that I can't imagine your average bloke going through the same process. Sure, I've seen girls drunkenly throwing themselves around, and it isn't pretty. But the impression you get is that power on the dancefloor is the male prerogative. To take a more extreme example, there certainly are some men that will go up to two women at the bar, or whatever, and offer them money to kiss. But I have never ever seen or heard of a woman going up to two men and offering them money for the same reason. Because that's not what we do in society, is it? In prostitution, where money is offered for sexual favours, 'prostitute' is an unmarked term for a female. 'Male prostitute' is the marked term for a man. This is significant in linguistics, because it's one way that inequality is embedded in language without us realising - if someone says something about a prostitute, you will tend to assume it's a woman that's being referred to. Granted, I believe there are more females in prostitution overall. And, whether they come to prostitution through trafficking or not, I can only assume that the reason there are more women involved than men is because there is more demand for them. Indeed, to take a current example about the 2012 Olympics, the BBC paraphrase the Home Office in this article as saying that "An influx of young male sports fans, such as happened during the 2006 World Cup in Germany, could see a rise in demand for prostitutes".

I know it's a bit of a stretch of imagination to compare clubbing culture to prostitution, and obviously I'm aware that plenty of couples meet in clubs and it's all happily ever after. And my night out never gets spoiled by a bloke...I'm hardly suggesting that I can personally relate to the pressure or environment that prostitutes face! It's just that I've never really thought about it so much before. I mean, a guy coming onto a girl in a club isn't noticeable. But a girl making a move on a guy is a lot more likely to get comments about it.

Pffft, I just thought I'd have my little debate with myself on this one! I should probably add that student culture is always a bit of a world of its own. And I'm not protesting at people being able to openly admit that they're attracted to each other. It didn't work for the Victorians so I'm not suggesting it will now. But, you know, it just feels a bit one sided these days. And, to be honest, a bit more grace and respect all round wouldn't go amiss. It feels a bit trite to moan about guys making moves on girls, and I know that not all of them are hoping to get sex out of it. But I feel that it's a relatively harmless level in a bigger scale of things. Abusive relationships. Date rape. Prostitution. Trafficking women. Trafficking children, for that matter. One blog that I read recently, which I sadly can't find the link to, talked about the problems that come up in date rape cases because the (typically female) victim may have consented to one sexual act but not another. There is controversy over this, with the courts often seeming to imply that consenting to one act means that the other must have also been consented to. Or, put differently, that saying 'yes' to one act means that the woman is expected to be happy with another. The feminist blogging circuit understandably argues that this is simply not how relationships work, and a woman should not have her rape case thrown out because she consented to some level of foreplay and then wanted to stop there.

Of course, there is a flip side to everything. Women manipulate men into things too. Women domestically abuse their husbands too. We know that. But, as far as I'm aware, the stats say that it is women that bear the brunt of these kinds of problems. And anyway, it shouldn't be happening to anyone, regardless of gender, age etc. This inequality business makes me want to change things, but until I figure out how to I can at least articulate my feelings, right? Good good.

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Listening to: Ta-Dah - Scissor Sisters
About to: Cook chicken with chopped tomatoes, red pepper, peas and rice
Next task after that: Find my Charmander on Pokemon Yellow