Some Ex-Victims

Some ex-victims are like some ex-smokers.

They see a person with a cigarette, and they don't say "Yes, I feel for you, nicotine is such an evil and addictive thing, it is horrible to be trapped like that and hard to escape."

Instead they say
"I gave up faster than you. If I can do it, you ought to do it. You are disgusting and weak."

What is it about human nature that, when we escape something wrong, instead of standing up and helping or encouraging others, some turn on those who are still trapped? Why do they do it?

Every woman who has ever been in a scary relationship will recognise that so called friend, that one person that you get close to telling, to asking for help or advice, even manage to get talking on the general subject, yet never tell. You don't tell because this woman shows total and violent disgust at women in bad relationships.
"Oh, I wouldn't take it, I wouldn't stand for it, I have too much self respect, I'm this and this and all that and a bag of chips."
It becomes, in their heads, almost as if the sufferer is the one with all the options. Addiction ceases to exist, in their minds, as does 'being trapped' in any undesirable situation. All they can do is pour scorn.

So you keep quiet. All it does is make you even more afraid to admit your fears, or your inability. In the case of abuse it makes you terrified to let your secret out, convinced now that you would only be running from the taunts of your aggressor, to the taunts of the whole world instead.

People like that 'friend' (whether the subject is abuse, or cigarette smoking or anything else that involves a sense of helplessness) are a real part of the problem. They actively make it worse, they give you one less person you can talk to. They try to make you believe that all upstanding people feel the same. They actively work to increase your sense of isolation and reduce your self worth.

The thing is,

looking back,

now that I have been in a trap and out of it,

I really don't think those poeple are free at all. I think they are the most trapped souls going, and to be pitied.

All they are ever doing is projecting their own disgust with themselves. Others have to be weak and disgusting because they are convinced that they themselves were weak and disgusting. Their only escape from this self-made hell is to say 'at least'. At least I'm not as bad as you/them/him over there.

Poor, trapped, guilt ridden sods; there's nothing 'ex' about it. They are the biggest victims going.


P.S. Someone accidentally pushed my buttons to trigger this post, so if anyone can relate, please say so!

From Daughter, 9, For Zilla

Daughter, 9, had wonderful fun performing the task set by Zilla. She also, for that purpose, had control over my computer all this afternoon.

We don't have a (working) scanner, we don't even have batteries in the digital camera, although this was a good thing. It meant the only medium available was Paintbrush, keeping the whole exercise on the computer. I am an evil mother not mentally geared up for playing with PVA glue and pasta on a Sunday afternoon.

Anyway, Zilla, one for your collection, with love. (P.S. from D(9): Please note the detail on the gloves and tights - that took ages.)

Seasonal Disaffection

Feeling a bit blank?
Tempted to take a long walk off a short pier?
Thinking 'Sod this for a game of soldiers?'
Got a snowball's hope in hell of staying in one piece?
Has the world got you arse over tit?
Feeling a sandwich short of a picnic?
Feel as much use as a chocolate poker?

Well now. It could be S.A.D.
It could just be well deserved exhaustion.
It could also be a grumbling subconscious outrage at meaningless consumerism
and the rush like lemmings to be seen to be having a good time.It could be your soul trying to ask you "Why are we doing this?" or more pertinently "Why am I doing this?"
That's not such a bad thing, it means you already know what should be done first, instead.

Handy Hint: The peace that passes all understanding is a by-product of the same state that inspires faith, hope and charity.

Faith: Know you are working for the best for others, so that faith that things will work out is not in spite of what you are/are not doing.

Hope: Do what you can to cheer the next guy so you have the right to hope. Everyone's hope for this life needs somebody else to actuate it, things don't normally fall from the sky.

Charity: There is no 'why' to seeking out and helping someone worse off than you, excepting that you know a little of how they feel, and that little is bad enough. None except that faith and hope are hollow and meaningless if you are not prepared to be part of the solution.

But there is one wonderful side effect. If you feel the cloud over your head is as black as it gets, then all it takes is to settle alongside a darker one, to start to make out the silver lining that was there all along.

Dedicated to Doris, Zilla, Fineartist, ME Strauss, Badaunt, Jane, Milt, Bart, Ally, Astryngia and - don't let me do a Gwyneth - the list goes on. You know who you are, or I pray you do. You have built me up all year, never mind Christmas and if I could dish out Peace Beyond Understanding as a Christmas gift, well you know you'd all be on my list. Thanks, Guys.

[POLLYANNA MODE: OFF]

Aaargh Culture Shock!

You know I could get pretty snarky (or superior, or possibly both) that the British Harvest Festival transmuted into Thanksgiving in America.
The shared history is one of thanks to God for the harvest, although whilst in America it involves a sort of pre-Christmas Christmas with roast turkey and all the relatives round and booze and all that, here in the UK it has become a quiet affair.

Hey, we eat the turkey on Christmas day and finish it off on Boxing day and in our house the tradition on the 26th is cold turkey, egg and chips (fries) and the essential Branston pickle. After that we all pray to not even catch sight of a turkey for another two or three months. I think I'd still be off the idea come 25 December, if I'd had to cook or eat any the month before.

Harvest Festival is a religious thing acknowledged by churches and schools and still 'celebrated' in early September at roughly the time that the crops are all in. It lasts about half a day, involves some good hymns and filling a shoebox with tinned goods for the less fortunate. Each school or church will then visit old peoples' homes or the nominated homes of people living on benefits, and hand them a gaily (and usually badly) beribboned shoebox or the like filled with dry goods and, inevitably, the jar of something bizarre and exotic that sat at the back of someone else's cupboard for a year. You know, the sort of stuff that goes to raffle prizes the rest of the year. Pickled turkey. Never mind the actual humiliation of the knock on the door in the first place.

Still, instead of this burgeoning jealousy masquerading as pity (on account of all the work involved, see,) I am beginning to feel genuinely sorry for my American friends.

Shock, horror, disbelief and projected disappointment......no Christmas Crackers on the Christmas day dinner table?

No paper hats that either fall down over the eyes or rip as you try to force them to balance on your head?

No scraps of paper with inane rubbish printed on them, claiming to be a motto or a joke?

No awkward ten minutes as you take turns around the table to read the one you got, out loud, with everybody else obliged to fake jovial laughter like they'd never heard it before or found it witty or funny?

No tantrums amongst the kids when Uncle Fred reads his first and they've got exactly the same one and now its all spoiled?

No subtle positioning for favour, looking to avoid being the one who has to wait, arm extended in hope, for someone to pull the other end of their cracker?

No elbows in gravy as you try to reach the proffered hand?

No arguments or crawling round the carpet trying to find out whose plastic favour went where and whose is which?

No subtle negotiations and blackmail for favour swapsies all through pudding?

No row between Uncle Bertie for refusing to wear his green and orange crepe paper, crown shaped party hat and Aunty Gina who tells him he is always a miserable bloody old fart and he's spoiling it for the kids (who don't notice because they are still under the table hoarding lost favours and trying to hurt each other into giving up the best one?)


Bloody hell guys. Poor you.
You have NO IDEA what you're missing.

What Is A Feminist?

Thats a serious question, because I am trying to work out if I am one, or not.

I was brought up as a 'me' - my first sniff of sexism was at sixteen when I wanted a motorbike and my parents vetoed. Two years later my brother got one for his sixteenth birthday present, and the reason I was given was that a man could still get ahead in life with a scarred face or legs.

I went on to become the first ever female trainee Quantity Surveyor with a long established firm in Victoria W1, with a couple of OBEs in amongst the Directors. Having failed my A levels in the comfort of an all girl Grammar School, it was a harsh learning curve, even the males of my age aspired to the condescending attitude of the older generation without any real eye on the manners that 'went with'. I left to work for the BBC, which wasn't half such a rarified atmosphere.

Anne (of the 100 Monkeys) gave me the link to this:Wonderful. I don't feel things are quite as bad as that these days, but not much better, and for that its still a truism and funny.

What isn't funny to me any more, however, is The Secretary's Prayer. I had it on a bookmark once, and at that point in my life it seemed to epitomise the attitude of adult men in general. Obviously I completely missed what it said about me:

Dear Lord,

I NEED HELP. Help me to be a good secretary, and help me to have the memory of an elephant, or one at least three years long. Help me by some miracle to be able to do six things at once, answer four telephones at the same time while typing a letter that must go out today. And, when that letter doesn't get signed until tomorrow, give me the strength to keep my mouth shut. Never let me lose patience, even when the boss has me searching the files for hours for data that is later discovered in his desk.

HELP ME to have the intelligence of a college professor; help me to understand and carry out all instructions without being given clear explanations. Let me know always just where the boss is, even though he left without telling me where he was going. And when the year ends, please let me have the foresight not to destroy records that he will ask for in a few weeks, even though I was told to destroy them all.

HELP ME to keep a level head and my feet on the ground, so that my secretarial performance will be a proper reflection of the pioneer women who made a place for me in the business world, and those who established me in a profession.

At one time I honestly believed that women, like politicians, had to be perfect, with watertight standards to stand a hope of a half nod of approval from the men in an office. If you can't see the inherent sexism in that, then I guess you still read the 1960s papers, scan adverts announcing that the birth of women's liberation came with the invention of the Singer sewing machine, or watch TV as a housewife sings about giving her son and husband 'the best' in the form of Shredded Wheat, or dances lovingly around a new refrigerator; happy men and the possession of kitchen white goods being the ultimate in female ambition.

So, feminism has done good things. In fact it's done so many good things that the parts that make me choke with disbelief in the following snippet are now nothing to do with womens rights at all:

Within a generation the working class had switched allegiance from the Liberals to Labour, especially after 1918 when women over the age of 30, and women over 21 who owned houses or were married to householders, got the vote as well. Finally, in 1928 all women over 21 were given the vote on equal terms with men. In 1969 the voting age was reduced to 18, and in the same year Northern Ireland, finally, received the vote without the need for property qualifications.

I hesitate to call it racism, probably more like Imperialism, but - having to be a homeowner or part of a homeowning couple to vote? What does that say about keeping the tenants, the employees, the majority of the population 'in its place'? Okay you were penalised for being female, but not so much as you were penalised for being Irish, and the severity of the penalty relied upon income and status, across the board.

I guess thats why I'm not a feminist. I believe in equal rights, period; and I believe in equal rights for people. Not just women, who sometimes have it quite cushy, but for whoever is the underdog du jour. Humanist, as a title, has already been nabbed. So what to call it? I haven't a clue.

Lets call it nothing. Lets not find a name to rally to. Whenever a group of people get together under a banner, however much of a point they have, it causes an 'us and them' situation. I prefer to just go on being a me. A human being, who incidentally happens to be female and freckled. The two truths should have an equal lack of bearing on whether I speak sense or total rot, so I shall go on living as if thats true. Others can stand and shout, but I prefer the company of those that shut up and do.

Betty Page's Bum

The End?

Butts and Bozos

Was going to do a blog with Betty Page's bare butt in it. Hers was feted. Hers was also bigger than mine, which is somewhat reassuring. Wrote it twice, got bombed out of blogger twice. I can take a celestial hint, you know - if it bashes me across the head two or three times.

It was Segue's comment at Zilla's that got me Googling to find a nude picture of said lady. Happy Birthday, by the way, Segue.

On the school front, I am more and more prepared for the meeting with Son's new teacher on Monday. In spite of supposed careful hand over from year to year it seems that:

• She has eradicated use of his three level stress warnings, used by his previous TA and teacher to great success, to educate him on how loud he was becoming, as he has little volume control. Now he just doesn't know he's pushed it too far until its too late and he's in trouble.
• She has allowed him something to fidget with as an aid to concentration, but has insisted that when she is speaking to him he is to stop fidgeting and look at her face. In other words she has no bloody understanding of his neurological issues at all and is actually forcing him into a pattern of behaviour that makes it much harder for him to hear what she is saying. He needs to be looking away and doing something vacant to occupy the rest of him, in order to clearly hear her instructions - reduce stimulus from the eyes and allow his fingers to hear her words. He has to be moving to absorb info.
• She has had several stern words with him about not saying 'sorry' with enough sincerity. Without home school communication when this happens I can't say whether he is being facetious (He could out Bertrand Mr Russell) or whether he is genuinely saying sorry. When he is genuine, the voice is flat and a little clipped and there is no eye contact. I know which scenario I suspect.
• Last week another special needs kid, one that Son counts as a true friend, threatened to commit suicide, even running scissors up and down his forearm. He got a half hour detention for it. Son, not understanding the mechanics of that decision, was so distressed that he ran from the room, found a table and chairs in an isolated corner under some stairs, built them into a cave and hid under them. He was still muttering to himself to calm down over half an hour later, got in trouble for doing that in class, and got a half hour detention for trying to walk out of class when he felt unsupported. Obviously the teacher sees it differently, but neither incident was even mentioned to me by the school, whereas last year or the year before I would have had an instant phone call, to allow me to work through the issues appropriately when he came home.

The more I ask him, the more I begin to suspect I have an 'old school' teacher here, that what goes (punished but) dismissed and unreported to either me or the SENCo, all adds up to show what a great job she's supposedly doing and how the essential strategies built up over years arent necessary in her class because she's Mrs Super. It appears she has no idea of, or interest in his differences and sees herself charged with pressuring him into behaving like a neurotypical kid, as if, if she just keeps being stern, somewhere in his head the penny will drop.

She doesn't seem to have even considered that he might be in torment - her main concern seems to be that whatever is going through his head, success means that he sits still, shuts up and doesn't take her attention or complain.

Never mind that for five years the top goal on his ILP was to put his hand up before speaking.

And there she sits, believing that close home school communication is a sheet full of sad or smiley faces recorded each lesson and shown to me at the end of the week.

How many teachers are fixated on behaviour as a boon or disturbance to the way they like to educate? How many feel that the limit of recording behaviours should be to show whether they did or did not comply with classroom standards, with no explanation or investigation of where the 'wrong' attitude came from, or whether their teaching methods actually allow every child to access the lesson content?

This is why so many Aspergers kids go into senior school and promptly show signs of OCD and clinical depression. I'm damn sure its got less to do with puberty as a hormonal and chemical condition than it has to do with puberty being the start of adult self respect and the increased need to fit in and stand up for oneself. Faced with confusing, depressing, disinterested teachers like that, where nothing I said was heard as I meant it, I think I'd go doolally. Actually I think I'd start throwing things.

Which probably explains why still, in this all caring and knowing and beneficient school system of ours, one in four pupils on the autistic spectrum still end up being expelled.

I have a meeting with her on Monday. I've already told her I am not on the attack - just seeking to work together. All I have to do now is depress this righteous anger and resist the urge to shred her to pieces with all the ammunition she's given me. I have to wangle this to make her feel that this is 'us' making forward strides, with her, as the expert, in the lead. I know thats one treasured emotional minefield of hers that would take a dozen counsellors and a year of therapy, so I am forced to work with it instead of challenging it. I am going to have to manipulate her, basically; to make her feel that reinstating all the tools and attitudes that the school has had up until her class is not only a good idea, but possibly also her idea.

I have to work out how to couch the condemnation as 'I'm just a dumb mum, whats your idea Mrs Expert?' and soft soap her social climbing ego out of damaging my kid. I don't like treating people like idiots, even when they are.

God help me.

Any ideas, I'm all ears.

I Wish

• I wish I'd used the word 'obliged' instead of 'raped' all through that other post, at least as far as it relates to me. It means the same thing, in context, but one word has more shock value and accords more victim status. The last thing I am, these days, is a victim, and I meant to explain a train of thought, not shock people, so, sorry.


• I wish I'd done one even longer post and kept that attached to the bit that was meant to be part one of the same thing. There are more and more reports of female violence these days. We've never had a monopoly on moral restraint. Nowadays as girls are brought up convinced of their equality to men, it simply becomes a matter of who they choose as role models, because the choice is there from either gender. Men, please don't apologise for being male, it’s like apologising for having brown hair.


• I wish I could get this picture out of my head (thank you, mommyguilt) of 'riding someone until they straighten their knickers'! Can a graphic mental image also be an oxymoron, or is that just words? ROFL!!


• I kind of wish I ran an anonymous blog. I believe there is more strength in heavy issues when the people who speak can be identified. I am in no way ashamed of who I am or anything I've seen or experienced and I think I could say all of the same things to any one of you all over again, face to face, over coffee, without even a twitch of an eyebrow. The timing and appropriateness would be about your reactions, your emotional distress, not mine. It’s just that, as you can't see how unphased, how healed I am, I am feeling spotlighted by all the support and attention. Guys, it’s cool. Not remotely cool if you're going through it, I admit, but if I had any major issues left, I'd have been way too ashamed to say a word. OK?

Am I bothered?