Two three

 A, maybe the, problem with communism is that it prescribes a revolution and then invites everyone who has been dispossessed by said revolution to live with it. In a world where capitalism still exists, that presents obvious hurdles for the communists. Not least that the dispossessed people won't just live with it and they are going to resist because no one likes to be dispossessed, and they can't be convinced by your very rational and obviously correct political philosophy. So the problem is what you do about them.

posted by Dr Zen @ 8:07 pm 0 comments

Fourteen two

 Meet Joe Black has so much good in it that it floods over you when you try to think of it. Yes, I know it's schmaltzy but I love schmaltzy. I have always believed in the lightning strike. I have always believed in "you were there; you were the guy" and it's all I've ever wanted to be there and be the guy, even if that is an impossible dream.

I adore when Quince, who is borderline pathetic but finds his balls, courtesy of Joe, to rise to the occasion magnificently, tells Mr Black that Alison knows the worst thing about him and he about her and that means they can love each other without restraint, and yes, I believe in that too.

I knew the worst thing about my Alison and yes, I would have loved her even despite that but she has no capacity to be loved. It's so much worse than being incapable of love, or even just being really bad at it. My dad is really bad at it to the point you wonder if he ever has been capable of love. Not infatuation. He can do that. He is and always has been infatuated with one of my sisters, just like Bill in the film. And poor Alison, who is almost a comic figure trying to put together a party to show her love for him while he just cannot be arsed with it and despite being portrayed as loveable, just not being good enough at loving her back even to pretend to care, well, she is a story about what is just enough for you if you cannot get the real love you yearn for.

There are plenty of wrong notes, mostly stemming from Brad Pitt's mannered "acting", which sometimes really works and sometimes, well, just doesn't. But I think you forgive him because of his incandescent chemistry with Claire Forlani, who is magnificent, even if he does get acted into a tiny ball by Anthony Hopkins, who doesn't steal every scene so much as caress it out of the room and off to a quiet place with him. The wrongest note may well be at the end, where Joe's sacrifice ends with letting Susan have what she should have? could have? will come to want? It's just awkward and weird, and you have to wonder whether she really would just go with it. Anyway, films are not after all real life so of course she does, and if you are a lady, I don't need to ask you if you would because you would. He's the guy and there he is.

So of course this is how I spent my Valentine's night. I have no Valentine but I have not entirely given up on ever having one again. I think that I have spent so many years just with what is enough, or even what is nowhere near enough, that I'm not sure I always mind so much. I am just sorry to have been that person for other people. For some, just enough is enough. It always has been and always will be. Meet Joe Black will never be the film for them. But for me, it is. It is the film for me, the dream of the gauche boy, overfamiliar with loneliness and pain, who wants the love with no restraints, off the edge of the cliff and no regrets.

posted by Dr Zen @ 11:42 pm 0 comments

Sixteen one

 Just before Christmas, I had plenty of work. I could train AIs all day and make enough money to live on. I felt that it would be okay.

posted by Dr Zen @ 3:06 pm 0 comments

Eleven eight

 One thing that is wrong with me is that I can't just ride with a convenient lie. That's a particular disadvantage when it comes to politics, where you *ought to* believe a certain thing because of the bad company you're in if you don't.

But stupidly, I'm committed to the truth. And this isn't something you just sit and *do*. It's something that happens to you. So obviously, I know that in the recent furore over the Olympic boxing, the boxer in question is male and shouldn't be supported by right-thinking people. After all, I doin't countenance men hitting women ordinarily, and whatever the reason for that -- probably just the ingrained sexism of a childhood in rural Cornwall -- it's meaningful to me.

Here are the facts as I understand them. Two boxers had aroused suspicion among their opponents. We should understand the world of women's boxing as a fairly closed circle. There's something of a "tour" and the women pop up at events all the time. And look, I'm well aware that there's a bit of a trope in which white people accuse women of colour of being manly, but I don't think this applies to boxers who spend time in each other's company. 

So the IBA asked the two boxers in question for a blood sample, which the boxers freely gave. It was tested in an accredited lab in Turkey and the result came back for both: XY.

The IBA did not straight away ban the boxers. In sport, you are rarely punished for the result of one test. The IBA decided to test them again. But it needed them to be under its "control". They don't have any jurisdiction over the boxers out of competition, any more than any body does. Boxing is not covered by WADA in this respect. 

The IBA told the IOC about the test but the IOC took no action.

So the next year it tested them again in India. Again they were found to be XY. The IBA banned them.

The IOC demurred from action and allowed the boxers to take part. It was satisfied that the national authorities of both boxers certified them as female and that is the IOC's criterion.

These are the facts. Nothing else is known as far as I'm aware. One of the boxer's fathers presented a birth certificate, which I haven't studied. I'm perfectly content that the boxer was thought to be female at birth.

None of this is very interesting. A lot of shit has been talked but the facts seem clear enough. These boxers are males but the IOC doesn't actually care. Some of the boxers' opponents have protested but there's nothing they can do.

***

What's interesting is how much misinformation there is and how quickly it spread and changed.

First, it wsa claimed that the boxers had been tested for testosterone. At one point, the IBA president had said the issue was high testosterone (which in a certain respect, it is) but he was put straight. No, they had not tested the testosterone. They had tested their sex. 

So the story was that they had high testosterone.

Then it was claimed the father had said Khelif, the Algerian, had a vagina. This is very unlikely to be true, but you can imagine that the baby was "sexed" in the same way any child is: the midwife looks for a penis, and if she finds one, it's a boy!

I don't know what condition Khelif has but it's likely one that left him with undescended testicles and a micropenis. That can be interpreted as "female" by an onlooker quite easily.

Anyway, it soon spread that he had a vagina.

Next up, people claimed he has Swyer syndrome. In Swyer, a baby is XY but has a defective or absent SRY gene, so it does not develop any male characteristics and can be considered female.

I should point out at this stage that human babies are not in fact "all female" in the first few weeks. But what is true is that our *default* is female. If the SRY gene does not operate, we develop as females, simple as that. 

Why can Khelif not have Swyer? Well, these are not just words. There are outcomes. Someone with Swyer will present as entirely feminine. They do not produce testosterone at an appreciable level so they will not be at all virilised at puberty. Khelif clearly is. Even if he was a female, he is one that has been strongly affected by testosterone. He is very well muscled, broad shouldered, flat chested. Of course, women can present that way but not women with Swyer.

Nor is he likely to have CAIS, which might have provided him with said vagina. In CAIS, a genetic male is not sensitive to androgens. But again, Khelif very much looks like someone who has responded to androgens during puberty. His voice is broken. His features are virilised, not just "manly". Still, it's not impossible, just extremely unlikely. And I do think we can apply Occam's Razor.

Next up, some claimed he had XXY chromosomes and this meant he would show up XY on a test. This is beyond nonsense. XXY males have Klinefelter's syndrome and are clearly male. They have penises and visible testicles. And they do not have XY chromosomes!

Along with bullshit about his genetic makeup, stories about Algeria's anti-trans stance also spread. Algeria would have killed him! It would not permit a man to pretend to be a woman.

Now, not to impugn Algeria but that's obviously nonsense. There's no reason to imagine that Algeria is either all that integrated in its thinking or unwilling to go with the flow and just accept the gold medal. Algeria has only ever won a handful. 

And no, it's not going to kill its gold-medal helpful, or imprison him, or whatever people imagine, just because he tests male. What it's more likely to do, and Algerians on the whole seem to have done, is simply ignore it, call the IBA racist, and cheer Khelif on to glory. Or just ignore it. I haven't seen anything official from Algeria. Like any place, it's not a monolith. Women do not scuttle around the streets of Algiers in burkas. Or even hijab. It's not Iran (which also does not kill troons).

***

None of this really matters. But it's become a political thing. A lot of people on the "left" have taken Khelif's side and spread this bullshit because the right have of course taken the other side. But sometimes the right are correct about things, albeit rarely, and sometimes the "left" are just wrong. Their hearts are sometimes in the right place but often they just want a good reason for hating other people. Troon bothering has become one of those things.

It's a difficult subject because after all, who cares? There are men who don't like being men for whatever reason. Let them don a dress and call themselves Dolly and why should we care? It doesn't matter if they are following a fad, or have a mental illness, or are just made that way -- whatever it is, who cares? 

But it's not just that, is it? It's a brutal culture war. It's believe this or be burnt. It's get sacked if you don't agree that Sally is a woman. It's my primary schoolkid being taught that she has a "gender identity". It's drugs, surgeries and above all it's people screaming at each other. And above above all it's money. People make a lot of money out of it, pro and anti.

It's become something of a shibboleth of the "left". And you might ask, why do I keep putting "left" in quotation marks? Because there's nothing really left about hyperliberalism. The left traditionally did not in fact favour self-expression particularly. It saw it as a luxury that bougie people had the leisure to indulge in. But that strand of leftism that sees identity as important came to the fore as leftists realised how totally impotent they are, and how little the working class likes them or their politics. Leftism became a preserve of the middle class and became simply a marker of what fine people middle-class liberals are because they don't want to interfere with other people's individual expression.

Now it's become an entirely incoherent worldview that sees capitalism as an inchoate evil that somehow does not exist within people but controls them. A bit like evil in religion. But capitalism is not a simple force for bad. A lot of people have comfortable, happy lives within it. They cannot connect their own happiness and material wealth with the exploitation of poorer less happy people and the "leftists" can't either. Most of them have no answers except to destroy what there is and somehow imagine that socialism will grow in the rubble.

Having said that, there's no point getting all No True Leftist about it either. Leftist thought is worthless in today's world. It is largely too backward -- imagining that postcapitalist economies can be analysed as though they were the emergent industrial economies of the mid-nineteenth century -- or wishful -- don't ever allow yourself to get dragged into a conversation with an "anarchist" about how they will arrange the sewage in their brave new world. It is now itself just a luxury belief, just another way of expressing unease at a world in which you are somewhat, but not much, favoured. 

posted by Dr Zen @ 4:19 pm 0 comments

Ten Eight

I recently watched After Life. Like all things by Ricky Gervais, it's a little uneven, but it was in parts touching. One thing Gervais is good at is pointing at things and saying, Look what this is. Not really insightful but he does evoke recognition.

The main character's grief was not real -- didn't ever really feel real -- but what Gervais got right was the way grief can rob you of something intangible. I have felt it and that was why the show had meaning for me.

It doesn't make any difference that what you grieve isn't real. In the same way that my sisters make up versions of my mum that never really existed, I grieve for a wife I never really had. I have grieved for how she felt rather than how she was.

Sometimes I think about how we should be watching our child grow together, and how much giving that up ought to have hurt. But it didn't hurt her. It broke me in two but left her unmoved.  I don't know how you decide that. I still can't reconcile any of it; cannot really accept who she is.

It feels so important to me to love people that I cannot undersand someone who doesn't. Can't. Never will. I remember vividly her telling me that she had never felt love, and I didn't take that as a warning.

I was vain enough to think I was different. Now I know I'm not.

And when I say I'm not, it's like something in me has been extinguished. My belief in my own worth went out like a pilot light in a hurricane. I feel like my whole self drained away, down the plughole, and I wasn't able to find anything to rebuild it with.

I hoped that given time, I would recover. But maybe that would have needed stability that I just don't have. Maybe I have to accept that the stability is not just a thing others give me -- not just a product of a good job and a girlfriend or whatever I imagined it might have been. It's a thing inside yourself.

***

The worst thing is that it made me feel hollowed out and I couldn't refill myself. So I feel I have nothing to offer. I feel I deserve it. Where once I would have believed I was a stained glass window and pieces of a particular colour were broken and then another and then another, now I just think I'm the same grimy uncared-for glass it seems everyone sees.

In After Life, Ricky Gervais' character is perceived by everyone around him as special. But he isn't. He's not kind, not witty, not willing to be a good talker. There's no reason that people should see him that way but Gervais writes it like that. He responds to other people in the end, proving their belief in him well founded. Or well founded ish, let's say. There is no twist. It ends happily. Gervais is not a particularly good storyteller so it's ultimately predictable that he'll have a happy ending.

Maybe I will. Maybe I need to recover and stop lying to myself that I have recovered first. But I don't know how I can. I don't know how you fill yourself if you've been drained away like so much dirty dishwater.

posted by Dr Zen @ 3:36 pm 1 comments

Twenty-five six

When I recently lost my job, one of my acquaintances rather unkindly asked why I had failed to keep it. Did I just lack people skills? In fact, I do, but that wasn't the problem. I'll tell you about my second day at work and you'll see that my people skills were not the issue.

So there was a dinner. All the middling important coaches were invited and so was I. This was a horrifying prospect for me: to be in a room with 30 people, none of whom I knew. Still, here I was. But I had been told the wrong time and everyone was already there, except my boss, who would turn up late.

I walked in and took a free seat at the end of one of the tables. No one said anything. I didn't know a single person, including the woman who would be my direct boss. I hadbeen introduced to her but she didn't bother saying hello. She hadn't saved a seat for me so she could talk to me about who was there. She didn't acknowledge me then or at any point in the evening. So number one, disrespect starts at the top and drips downhill. My direct boss, let's call her Mrs Boss, had just shown the entire room that I wasn't someone she had any respect for. My job role must be unimportant and I must be worth very little in the organisation. 

She didn't tell me how the food worked and everyone else was being served. So I had to ask a serving person, which was mortifying. They told me I'd have to go to the bar and order. So I walked back out and ordered, then walked shamefully back past a whole room ignoring me. I wonder whether the people skill I lack is the ability to crack jokes as I walked past them.

So Mr Boss turns up, and he gives a speech in which he managed not to thank any of the coaches. He had a weird little rant about how if any of the parents didn't want to fit in with the club, well, they could just go. Then eventually he sits down and then he notices I am there. 

Oh, everyone, he says, that's Dave. Stand up, Dave. (I stand, and smile.) Dave's our communications guy.

And that's it. He doesn't tell them that I'll be doing a magazine, that they should cooperate, anything. He doesn't give them my number, my email, anything. He never did btw. And I was never given theirs either, except one by one. 

Now, I want to do an aside here. It's about being a journalist on a new beat. Which is what this was like. It's hard. It's not something I've often had to do. But imagine being at a new workplace. You're led around, right? And introduced to everyone and they say hi, you say hi. It says to them, here's someone you should welcome. So it's important when you start a new beat that that happens. That people are introduced by a trustworthy person. If not, you have to do it and everyone you try to do it with thinks you're someone who couldn't be trusted or you're of no account.

One way you can do it yourself is you are given a list of contacts. The outgoing journalist/editor hands you a list of people with their numbers. So even if they don't hand over properly, they at least tell you who you should contact. You don't have to guess or scrape around for names. 

When I worked for the newspaper in Ipswich, the previous editor was really angry with the boss. I would come to understand why but the outcome for me was that he didn't hand me jack shit. I had no contacts and I was in a city I didn't know my way around, doing a job I'd never actually done before.

I think I did okay by the way. I phoned what people I could. I didn't have much time because I had to fill the paper. I told the bosses that I needed support so that I could build contacts but they just lied to me about getting more help. I say they; I mean Mr Boss. Yes, he was involved in the newspaper.

So when I started at the football club, it was the same thing. The right thing to do would have been to take me round the club and introduce me to everyone. I mean, they had all the coaches in the room at this dinner. Mrs Boss could and should have taken me from person to person. Worst case, she could and should have given me a list of contacts. (I did say, oh, I'll need a list of numbers for everyone and she said yes, later.) Instead, I just did it. I got all their numbers. They told me what they did -- which was meaningless to me because no one explained the structure. But no one bothered explaining any deeper than that because they had at least subconsciously filed away that I was not worthy of respect. I chatted with a few of them as best I could.

So I did the right thing, I think. I said hi everyone, I'm David and I'm here to tell your stories. Please feel free to share with me what you want our families to know. I don't bite, hee hee. 

Stony silence. And yes, maybe I should have had a card to hand out with my name and number but I didn't think. I hadn't been told who would be there and I was too nervous about going to think about what I should do. And of course I hadn't realised I would need it. I thought Mrs Boss would give me everyone's number. I thought there would be a list.

A couple of months later, I asked Mrs Boss what is going on for Mother's Day, because she'd told me to do a story about Mother's Day. Oh, it's on our social media, she said. I would like to know what social skill would have got her to bother to write me an email maybe even once a week telling me what was going on because she never did. I was supposed just to find it out. And this woman had once been a sports editor, so she knew very well how it works, and she knew this wasn't it.

I wish the dinner had been an aberrance. But it wasn't. I also went to the club's preseason camp. This time, Mr Boss didn't bother even telling people what I was there for. He didn't introduce me to anyone there (none had been at the dinner). I had to just "get talking" to them. People who know me will realise how painful this was for me. If you don't know me, I'm sure you'd find me personable. I'm nice. I can talk about normal things. But I'm not very good at striking up conversations or approaching people I don't know. So I got talking to the head coach, but I didn't understand what he was because no one had explained the structure. Should I have asked? Yes, but Mrs Boss was "too busy. I'll do it later". Later never came. I get that she really was busy. I understand that she just didn't have time for something she really didn't see as important. At this camp, a dude gave a talk. So my boss, obviously he introduced me to the guy so that I could interview him for the magazine, right? Wrong. He didn't bother. When I interrupted them to introduce myself, he mutttered something about how I was Dave, communications, and I smiled and took the guy's number and email. He ignored three emails and eventually said he would be out of town and he'd get back to me. He never did. He never sent me the PowerPoint he'd presented with. He never bothered. My boss had shown I wasn't worthy of respect.

So why do I think I lost the job? Well, maybe there is an element of the fact that Mrs Boss for whatever reason didn't like me. She never expressed anything. But it's possible. Sometimes there's a competence element with people. They have a skill and they don't like other people having that skill because it calls theirs into a tiny bit of question. I don't know if that was a factor but she was the kind of person who hoarded information. It's why she never gave me a list of numbers, I think. So I'd have to ask over and over and over, and she'd be sour about it, as though I should have just found them out myself. 

You can't find things out yourself. I mean, you can, but it takes time. You can't know them on day one. The guy at the newspaper, he thought I should go door to door and ask people what they wanted to see in my paper. 

It's one of the worst things in this life that I couldn't just say, Dave, you're a fucking idiot. Because he was. And so is Mr Boss. But they're idiots who have some money and in this world, that makes them men who can treat you like shit. And my acquaintance? She thinks you should grovel to these people and worst thing is she's probably right.

But the truth is, Mr Boss wanted people to tell him how clever he was that there was a club magazine and not enough of them did. He never acknowledged it. He never told me he'd read it, liked it or even knew of it. I sent him match reports every week. He never even acknowledged receipt. I lost my job because this guy, a three-pound testicle in a one-pound sack, a joke of a man with no knowledge of football and no love of the game, but whose son was quite good at it, has no respect for anything or anyone that doesn't make him feel like a big man. I don't know what people skills can help you with that.

posted by Dr Zen @ 2:05 pm 0 comments

Twenty-two six

 When you have loved people, and it's not been worth enough, or even, not worth anything at all, you start to think your loving is not worth anything at all.

But, you'll say, you have children. You love them. Everyone knows you love them. But then you think, my dad will say he loves me but he doesn't. He just thinks he should. Do I just think I should?

Why secondguess yourself though? You feel it and it's it up to you?

But some people didn't think that was worth anything. You can't escape that. What use is love if no one feels it?

***

Tonight I stroked my baby's cheek and I said, I love you the most, and I meant it.

And she said, I love you too, barely awake.

I remember when that was impossible. For a year and a half, I wasn't part of her life. For another at least a year, I couldn't touch her. I couldn't hug her, not because her mum would claim that I was sexually abusing her, although she might have done, but because I cared that I should never force it.

That was love. You have no idea how painful that was. I would rather A had stamped on my nuts. 

I feel bad when I think about how happy she would be that I am lonely and sad. I don't wish it for her. To be honest, I don't think about her enough. I only ever think about an idea of her. 

She has nothing to do with me and Miggins. I refute her story of Miggins. I deplore her story. Miggins is a charming child. She's a heart tugger. She is not trouble.

Imagine having a child and creating trouble out of it.

***

Sometimes I do think, no one will ever love me again. And that does make me sad. But not as sad as thinking I will have no one to love. 

posted by Dr Zen @ 10:11 pm 4 comments