On Difference, Snowflakes, and Alan Bennett

Hector: The best bits in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours. 

(Alan Bennett, The History Boys)

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I am not sure why, or when, I first read The History Boys.

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individual

   unrelated 10 adj.

   nonuniform 17 adj.

   original 21 adk.

   self 80 n. 

   special 80 adj. 

   unit 88 n.

   one 88 adj. 

   person 371 n.

(Roget's Thesaurus) 

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Although the history of snow is as long as the history of water, and hydrogen, and oxygen, the history of the snowflake could be said to begin with Wilson Alwyn 'Snowflake' Bentley, born in Jericho, Vermont, who dedicated his life to photographing snowflakes. Having taken a few pictures of the reticent crystals, he proceeded to take another 5,000 images, just to make sure what he was seeing was correct. What he was seeing was perfect individuality, and he went on to record that individuality over and over again, receiving the American Meteorological Societies' first ever research grant in honour of his work, awarded in recognition of 'forty years of extremely patient work'. In the quest to prove that total, inexhaustible individuality is possible, one can afford to be patient. 

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After beginning university, and realising how dismally average I was for my year-group, I printed Psalm 139, NRSV version, and blutacked it to the side of my wardrobe. O Lord, you have searched me and known me. Jeans, tee-shirt, socks. For I am fearfully and wonderfully made. 

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individualism

   particularism 80 n.

   independence  744 n.

   selfishness 932 n. 

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I saw The History Boys performed twice on stage. I had also seen a play at the National Theatre, so I felt that between the two, I had essentially seen the original History Boys. By the second time I saw it, I had read the play and worked out the french parts, and enjoyed myself laughing at the jokes in schoolboy french while the other students from my school looked puzzled.

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I want to light up with the zest of the words.

I want to wear a proper tragic mask.

I want to have an excuse for drama. 

(Joanna Hollins, poem, c. 2009)

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The story of snowflakes does not begin with Wilson A. Bentley because he photographed snowflakes. He was not the first person to see snowflakes. The story begins with Bentley because he published them. Shortly before he died, he published a book, Snow Crystals, which made the snowflake, in all its minuscule glory, available to the public. The eye becomes the microscope, and what was once homogeneous falling snow became a whirlwind of infinite individual flakes.

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I date my first recurring nightmare, where I shrunk away from myself, and felt the universe shatter into infinite pieces, from the age I first learnt about atoms.

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In The History Boys, the students begin with the basic conviction that whilst they are individuals, history is one fixed story, to be learnt and memorised. The new teacher, Irwin, teaches them to think of history as individual perspectives, but that their own individuality is a lie - something to be constructed with care. The narrative is speckled with 'gobbets' taught by Hector and used by Irwin: fragments of poetry, mainly, but also philosophy, history, linguistics. For Hector, each piece given is a liberation, a sign of individuality. For Irwin, they are a tool to disguise the lack of it. In the play, Irwin's methods win out. By using individuality as a tool, a way of questioning the narrative, each boy is able to win his place at Oxford. Yet the play is successful because it is quotable, because it can be broken down into memorable 'gobbets', to be holed up, memorised, brought out at opportune moments. 

'It is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours...'

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When I write my university application, I restrain myself to only one History Boys quote. However, I take Irwin's advice seriously; any method invented by a 20th century playwright to describe a group of grammar-school boys advancing to Oxford in the 1980's will clearly work for me. On this basis, I spend my sixthform years reading as widely and esoterically as I can, or at least, as I perceive. I reference Mark Steel in my history A level. Quote the Old Testament in English Literature. The highlight of my university application is a reference to George Orwell's Keep The Aspidistra Flying, whereupon I compare myself to the eternally miserable Gordon Comstock.  

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individualist

   free person 744 n.

   egotist 932 n.

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The website KnowYourMeme.com dates the phrase 'special snowflake' from the 1999 film Fight Club. At this point, 'snowflake' is synonymous with 'individual'.

It is also synonymous with a kind of education where children are taught that they can, and should be individual, like snowflakes, and then punished when they fail to attain these standards. 

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31st January, 2012. Question and Answer session with the Education Committee. 

Chair: One is: if 'good' requires pupil performance to exceed the national average, and if all schools must be good, how is this mathematically possible?

Michael Gove (Secretary for Education): By getting better all the time. 

Chair: So it is possible, is it?

MG: It is possible to get better all the time. 

Chair: Were you better at literacy than numeracy, Secretary of State?

MG: I cannot remember. 

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If the only mark of achievement is distinction, and every student achieves well, then there can be no distinction. There are three solutions to this. One is to limit the amount of students who can achieve, thus increasing the distinction of those who do. One is to diversify the number of ways in which students can achieve, and the types and forms of distinction. In this way, many students will be able to achieve moderate levels of distinction, at the expense of a system of objective value. The other is to accept that the only distinction worth having is achievement itself, and work blissfully and invisibly into nothingness.

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Shortly before starting university, I read A Very Short Introduction to Marx. My purpose in reading it was to avoid having to actually read Marx, but improve my ability to argue with my Oxford-educated and rather good-looking history teacher. I learnt that under communism, individuals aren't important; we matter as part of the whole. This conflicted strongly with my innate Christian belief that our intrinsic worth is tied to our individuality. Being a contradiction in terms made me feel more individual, so I spent my first year of university loudly announcing that I was a Catholic Marxist.

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individuality
   essence 1 n.
   speciality 80 n.
   nonconformity 84 n.

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Thinking about it now, it seems all a matter of perspective. How far you zoom in on the microscope. 

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The insult 'special snowflake' can be broken down thus:

firstly, the word 'special', from 'special needs', used to create negative associations around disabilities and then to negatively associate the subject with disability;

secondly, in the connotations around snowflake, which are:

fragility and weakness, and therefore femininity, with a hyper-masculinity that does not melt, yield, or break in antithesis;

infantility, in that the perception that individuality exists and should be valued is naive, and what is naive is infantile; also in the association with the schoolroom and the teacher who tells her class that they are all valued for who they are, before the world teaches them that this isn't true

and waking one day unable to distinguish themselves, believe that the best recourse is to knock down those who still perceive themselves as individual;

and thirdly, in combination, as an expression that to express individualism, and take pride in it - or defend it - is to be abnormal, and inferior; a suggestion that being differing from the collective identity is reductive.

This all depends on the existence of such a collective identity.

And of course, the perception that such an identity would be superior. 

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Shortly before leaving for university, my best friend and I went to the theatre to see another Alan Bennett play, called The Habit of Art. 

The Habit of Art is a very erudite, meta-play. A second stage is erected on stage, and the play concerns a group of people putting on a play about Auden and Britten, who were the only memorable characters. The dialogue flickered rapidly between play and meta-play with no chance to get into either. We left disappointed, but it took me a few months to admit I'd disliked it. 

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Ironically, Wilson A. Bentley was killed by the collective; he caught pneumonia after walking home in a blizzard. 

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Later on in my degree, I had the first of a series of conversations which would go along the lines of this:

me: Gosh, you know, I quoted The History Boys in my personal statement. I thought it was ever so clever back then. 

them: Oh yes! I did as well.

me: Ah, really?

Of all the crushing realisations, the realisation that the document you had written to prove your individuality constructed from quotes about a play about constructing individuality is particularly crushing. 

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For it was you who formed my inward parts;

you knit me together in my mother's womb. 

(Psalm 139.13-14)

Am I the sum of my parts? And if I add more parts, am I more likely to be individual?

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Identical snowflakes were first proven possible by Nancy Knight, in 1988, and created in laboratory conditions by Kenneth G. Libbrecht around 2015. Smaller crystals form similar base shapes, growing more individual as they become more complex. Under perfectly identical conditions, perfectly identical snowflakes can be created.

With this stunning revelation, every argument ever which placed value on identity simultaneously collapsed, and everyone agreed that we were just 'humans', and should probably stop all this nonsense with racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and classism, and we all settled into perfect peace until someone picky pointed out that one of the snowflakes was on the left, and the other the right, and this was a fundamental difference between them, at which point we went back to bombing the hell out of each other and insulting minor differences in identity. 

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There came a point in my third year of university, when I had eventually realised that I was average for what I did, achieving without distinction, when I decided to stop worrying about being an individual. My faith taught me that I had intrinsic worth purely by merit of existing, and if I didn't think about that too hard, it wasn't an entirely terrifying concept. I had also decided to stop writing essays as if I was Alan Bennett. 

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I have always been terrified of individuality, because it felt like a challenge I could fail at. 

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This is not an individual experience.

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Not being individual is not the terrifying thing it was made out to be as children. Sometimes, once in a million billion times, one snowflake may brush another snowflake who looks a little like it. 

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Thousands of pounds and tens of thousands of photographs have been used to make this point. 

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When the phrase 'special snowflake' is used as an insult, the speaker is using the term to express their own fear at failing, and their hatred of anyone who embraces being different, or believes that different identities require different treatments. Rather than coming from a belief that individual identity is valueless, this comes from a strong belief in individual identity: their own, which is justified by the claim that their identity is part of the collective identity. Strangely, these kinds of people rarely react well to situations where their identity is not part of the majority.

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In a blizzard, as the unfortunate Bentley discovered, it does not hugely matter if snowflakes are completely unique, or if they may have some similarities. 

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The students of The History Boys were all remarkable characters in their own right. Rudge with his golf and dark humour. Scripps and his faith. Posner, with his anxiety and biting sarcasm. Dakin, with his rampant sexuality and excessive self-consciousness. Timms. Akthar. Crowther. Lockwood. All innately part of the play. Desperate to stand out from the crowd, they are forced into a homogeneous character, the sarcastic, doubtful scholar, churned through Oxford in order to claim the same, identical mark of distinction. The play I had thought for so many years was about becoming an individual turned out be about destroying individuality, and it nearly took me with it. 

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The reason why we know that most snowflakes are unique, but once in a million crystals, some can be made to look similar, is because humans love and are fascinated by snowflakes. Their difference is something to be celebrated and encouraged. It doesn't matter that sometimes their differences are minute, that many are broken, that they are fragile. The whole is made by their variations. Being the same and being individual is only a matter of distance. 

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Bentley's book sold because it was beautiful. 

Quitting P.E. Lessons (six years after I stopped taking them)

To My Old Physical Ed Teachers,

(a letter from the fat, asthmatic kid)

When I was younger, I used to hate you. 

You almost certainly already know this. Day in and day out, you get to fight with uncommunicative, unfit kids who haven't brought their trainers or don't want to play hockey and it exhausts you. Like every teacher you are required to tick boxes and fulfil government requirements and after hours spent on your feet there is nothing more frustrating than having to wait outside the changing room, during your short valuable lesson time, for the kid who won't take their school jumper off. Even if you are the most patient, gentle P.E. teacher in the world, you will have had the glare of death from a pupil at least once a week. 

And let's be honest: you probably hated me too. I held your class up. I always seemed to be unable to breathe when you wanted me to do something difficult. I argued back. I never met the targets you set for lessons, and I was always one of the slowest to change. I was not an ideal pupil, and believe you me, my teachers let me know about that. 

School is over for me now. I'm a graduate with many friends training to become teachers (and I have to admit - I'm even considering it myself). There's not one of them who won't make an excellent teacher, and a great colleague for you. What I'm trying to say is that I'm seeing things from your perspective, and I appreciate what you do, and that teaching sport is not as easy as it is made out to be. 

But I can't forget what it was like being that fat, asthmatic kid in the classroom.

I cannot forget the teacher who screamed at me to keep running whenever I stopped, out of breath, despite the fact that this contravenes all guidelines on how to manage students with asthma in sports lessons.

I cannot forget watching the 'top set' learn interesting sports - javelin, hurdles, hockey, tennis - while the bottom set ran round the field again or 'circuit training' while you looked at your phone. 

I cannot forget being shouted at for being the last changed - because the popular kids wouldn't let me have a space on the bench to get changed in, or because frequent taunts and people grabbing at my bra straps often made me feel so insecure I couldn't get changed except in one of the few toilet cubicles. 

I cannot forget being laughed at by the sixth formers who marshalled the cross-country race as I pounded around the track in a solid 237th place, desperately out of breath. 

I cannot forget you telling me to get on with it even when it would have been dangerous for me to do so.

I cannot forget you literally turning your back on me when I approached you to talk to you about what I needed to be able to achieve during your lesson and what I needed you to know about my asthma. 

I cannot forget the look on the faces of the two popular team captains you picked as they stared blankly at the scrawny kids and the fat kids and the unpopular kids left on the bench.

I cannot forget that you classed cricket and rugby as boys' sports, so I was twenty before, thanks to my six nations' loving housemates, I discovered that I really love rugby. I cannot forget that you taught us that healthy female bodies are slim and light, that I never learnt that heavier, muscular bodies are sporting bodies too. I cannot forget that you allowed a culture of bullying and victimising to thrive in your classroom, and that you let one set of insecure students play their insecurities off on another. I cannot forget that we only talked about the human body in terms of what was wrong with us and how we could correct it, and never celebrated what we were already good at. I cannot forget.

And this is why I cannot forget.

I cannot forget because everything you taught us stayed with me. When I swim I imagine you are standing at the end of the pool, shouting at me to go faster, calling me weak when I rest. When I'm working as part of a team, especially physical tasks, I go out of my way to look busy and seek continual affirmation that I'm doing the right thing because of the fear of letting my team down, and being laughed at - or worse, looked at in disgust. If I'm buying clothing or equipment for any physical activity, I go for inconspicuous, skin-covering clothes, because your lessons taught me to dread being noticed while exercising, and the unchallenged attentions of my peers taught me that my body was ugly and to be ashamed of. I cannot forget because that embarrassment and shame is with me in every mirror I look into. 

But you've had too much of my life, and you've almost had my physical fitness. Moving to university, I found a pool where I wouldn't be approached by creeps and a community where personal fitness is encouraged across a range of abilities and sports. Although I wasn't brave enough to go to a class or join a team (and I wanted to), I have managed to start taking control of my asthma and my fitness. I know what works for me and best of all, I've started enjoying exercising, away from judgement and grading. I am the largest I have ever been and also the fittest. My asthma is far worse than it was at school, partly thanks to a year in a damp and mouldy house, but I've learnt a lot about what I can do and how to look after my condition. 

If I had to go back to one of your classes, I would suck, unquestionably. This is the place I've been mentally every time I have exercised since I stopped P.E. at sixteen. 

Things are changing. You never saw me swim at school (only the Top Set got to visit the pool), but actually, I'm not bad. I snap on that lycra and polyester like it's my own superhero costume, complete with bug-eye prescription goggles, and head out the door on my own, because I want to. And from now on, you are no longer welcome to come with me. 

'Entryism', or, 'The People are Voting'

After several years of indecision, I have finally joined a political party. It's something I've been threatening to do since the Conservatives won the 2010 general election, but in the last few months, something has changed. With the election contest open to equally balanced votes from all members (thank you, Ed Miliband!), the Labour party has inadvertently offered members of the public a motivation to become politically active, with a minimum of effort.

Basically: oops.

Because this is not what the Establishment is meant to be doing. Rousing ourselves to vote is about as much as ordinary people should be involved - the rest is for the hardcore, loyal campaigners, the old wealthy families, the influential businessmen and trade unions who make up the small body of acceptably political beings. For the rest of us, we're not supposed to do much beyond listening to the news and voting. We're cattle, to be chastised when we move with the wrong herd, when we tramp from one dry pasture to another. (Run with that metaphor. it's heavy handed but there are worse concerning political parties. Definitely worse.)

Labour's simple membership deal challenges that. It's simple, it's accessible, and it doesn't require further commitment - three pounds, one vote. (Or less if you go for youth or student membership, which is a pound a year). There are no tricks, no traps, few rules; ordinary, semi-politicised people like me have a change to help create the party we want to vote for.

And there's the problem. Because ordinary people aren't, well, really meant to choose and control national politics. I'm grateful that we live in a democratic country, but democracy is only a ballot-box process; it doesn't shape the sociological and historical trends which elect the candidates on the voting card, it doesn't remove the social and economic pressures which discourage poor and disadvantaged people from voting or otherwise being heard, and it doesn't create results which are mysteriously acceptable to everyone. 2010 demonstrated that democracy doesn't always provide answers; I think 2015 will demonstrate that even when it does, they're not always good ones. But if more people are engaged in politics, we can't help but move towards a more balanced system, more likely to provide answers that will work; answers that will reflect the needs of the people, because they come from close engagement with a wider, more engaged public.

But what if what the public wants unsettles the establishment? What if it rocks the boat, maybe knocks a few of the privileged into the water? Well... then it must be illegitimate, because nothing is meant to really change in politics. So an influx of the public supporting a leader who might bring that change can't be legitimate, and someone digs up a neologism from political theory: 'entryism'.

Before I started writing, I did a quick google to check my definitions. Here's one from the Oxford Dictionary:

'entryism': the infiltration of a political party by members of another group, with the intention of subverting its policies or objectives.

It's a pretty serious accusation. The intention, of course, is of undermining the Labour leadership race, and principally Jeremy Corbyn, with the secondary intention of convincing the country that support for socialist-leaning left-wing policy is far lower than the polls, news, campaigns and publicity surrounding Mr Corbyn make it seem - a for-sure sign that the right wing are actually concerned that, well, that the movement might be genuine.

But, for the moment, let's say that the accusation is true, say that people who aren't born and bred Labour supporters are registering to vote. The assumption in the accusation is that this is a negative thing; we're meant to stay in our tribes. The Conservatives want this because after the disastrous election, the natural Labour support base is pretty small, made up of centre-ground Labour members who will happily vote in a Blair-lite leader who can be knocked down repeatedly for the next five years. If people from outside this tribe vote, they could be facing a far bigger beast - say, someone with actually policies.

I'll give this a paragraph to itself: traditional voters give traditional results. Claiming 'entryism', even with some genuine suspicion that it is taking place, does not come from a desire to make politics fairer or cleaner: it comes from the fear that the Establishment will lose control and the masses start genuinely influencing the direction of this country. tl;dr: they're trying to keep us quiet. 

So let's look at the entryists. Some of them are people like me, who might have been nominal Labour supporters or floating left-wing voters; the £3 supporters membership and vote is natural expression of support, but doesn't have the same level of commitment as full membership. In a climate where more and more people are 'floating voters', this is both an appropriate way to engage suitable supports and a way for the Labour party to slowly increase their voter support base. Some of these people will have voted Labour before, others might have voted Liberal Democrat, Green, Independent or not at all. Their votes are legitimate, though, not because they have or have not voted labour in the past but because they have a real interest in voting Labour in the future.

The argument against their validity as supporters is that, coming from other parties, the Labour party of the future would have had its 'policies or objectives subverted' by these incoming voters, seeking to use Labour's established role in British politics to push through their own agendas. It might become the Green Party in red ties (oh, what a terrible thing that would be...).

Three counterpoints. Firstly, I do not believe that any of these incoming voters would care enough to vote unless they already had some sympathy with the Labour party and its' objectives. Secondly, this attitude comes from an idea that political parties should stick consistently to their ideological ground, whether or not time and changing populations have moved their original support base away from them. All of our main political parties have drifted left and right over their history; even if the Labour party is about to be pulled left by the democratic vote of potential voters, as Corbyn and his supporters hope, it will still be in ideological ground which has at some point been covered by the Labour party. Thirdly, the position of a political party ought to be determined by the modal average of its' members beliefs; incoming support not only increases the control group, but may help correct the sense of alienation between the public and politicians. Incoming supporters might move the party, but as concerns those who are genuinely interested in supporting Labour, their support can only make the party better attuned to where it ought to be.

Then there are the 'entryists' from other parties. They do, seemingly exist; the news reports vague but unspecific examples of their presence, and of course, the news is always accurate and unbiased. Their existence is being used to negate the reality of serious, Labour-supporting new members. Already in this increasingly wordy blogpost I've argued that this is a trick the establishment is playing in the hopes of undermining real, grassroot democracy. However, even where true - where right wing or far-left wing are voting in the hopes of undermining a change for the left to choose the best leader - I do not believe that it is so great a problem as it is made out to be. Firstly, the risk of being expelled from your own party if discovered is great enough to discourage those in positions of power; those with significant authority or connections risk a double-page spread in the Sun if caught encouraging others to register to vote. There are, probably, some lower-level supporters engaging in 'entryism'. Where this means opposition parties voting for the candidate they believe will best undermine the Labour party, this is problematic. However, where people are voting for a candidate closer to their own policies - say, a Terrifyingly Left Communist Type voting for Jeremy Corbyn - they too are exerting their democratic right to be represented. It is easy to forget that, even as party members, we are not just represented by our own party; we are represented by whoever has power and influence to change our lives, and I see nothing underhand in a Green member or a LibDem, for instance, voting for a leader who may have power over their lives as PM. The more people we can have represented by our political system, the better. In the end, this isn't a chance for a revolution: we're picking from pre-selected candidates, selected by people in the heart of the establishment. No matter who is elected, they have all been given the green flag by Labour itself. 

The real 'entryists' are not unregistered Labour supporters or sneaky Conservatives, though. They are the literal 'entryists' - the people making their entry into the world of politics for the first time, who are for the first time getting a chance to be heard. So what should the papers, the Tories, the Labour leadership candidates do? Shut up and listen.

To a Secular Friend: This is what I wanted to say

Disclaimer: This post is not aimed any one person, or group of people. I have written it first person to second person because it felt appropriate for what I wanted to say in the piece. The 'you' in this piece is a representative figure, and I understand these generalisations may not be representative of you and your beliefs.

It's been a good evening so far. We're at a house party, probably, or maybe just all out together for coffee or drinks or a film, and chances are we've probably had a drink or too (caffeine or booze). Conversation is flowing and everyone is getting on well, and somehow, we find we're talking about religion. It gets dropped in by accident, and you all say ordinary, acceptable kind of things about rationality and reason and tolerance, about it being very well in its proper place.

You almost certainly know that I'm a Christian. You probably know that I'm a Catholic because I like to joke about it, and you also know that on most things I think the same way as the rest of our set. We're casually left-wing art students with casually left-wing views. So you're not expecting it when I tell you that I'm pro-life (even though I give it heavy disclaimers, mostly so you don't associate me with extremists). You're not expecting it when I talk about living in a world with a real, tangible devil, or when I describe a book I'm reading for class as blasphemous. You can't believe that I'm saying these things because somehow these aren't the views of our set, our world, our friends. And yet I'm sitting in front of you. I'm drinking real ale, we've been talking about how to make the socialist utopia come about for the last half-hour, and I have just casually mentioned believing in the Immaculate Conception. Way to make things awkward, I can see you thinking.

There's a particular look in people's eyes when you mention these things. A kind of embarrassment, sometimes with a flash of anger, sometimes disbelief, but mostly just confusion. If you're clearly too embarrassed to talk about it, I make a joke about it and steer us back onto safe waters. But sometimes we do talk about it. And here things get interesting.

The first thing I want you to know, in this conversation, is that I am a rational, thinking person who has arrived at her faith logically and constantly evaluates her beliefs. This is probably the reason why I have started gabbling on about Canon Law or the schisms of the Early Church. You probably don't care, but please bear with me. I'm attempting to prove that I don't live on cloud cuckoo land, and that we can have a rational debate about this where I will understand your points and respect them. One thing I have found is that a lot of people assume that as a Christian talking to a non-believer, my initial response will be judgement, or attempted conversion. They assume that I cannot imagine a world beyond my brainwashed ideology and will not be able to talk about my faith on a theoretical level. I hope very much that they are wrong, because talking about my faith theoretically seems to be the only way to get people to respect it. The language of faith is increasingly alien, and the only way to make headway in conversations, like this one we're having now, is to translate it into academic concepts that we can detach from our instinctive emotional reactions. This also means that we're less likely to ruin our friendship arguing over determinism at 2.30am.

The problem is that I'm trying to prove myself by presenting faith in secular terms for a secular world, and increasingly, I feel that as a person of faith, I am living in a different world to people without. The mechanics of my world are different; yours runs on 'Science', whereas 'science', in mine, is just a part of the machinery, a descriptor of the divine whole. Last term I took a module on one of my favourite types of fiction, Gothic Literature, and in class we had some fantastic and broad-ranging debates about interpretations and world-views, of ideologies and sub-text, but somehow there was one ideology that only seemed to be visible to me: the idea that the monsters could be real. Even though you can discuss this as a theoretical concept, you can't really imagine it, because in your world God is dead. But not for me. For me, we are in the middle of a cosmic battle between good and evil, a battle declared won in the transformation of bread and wine where times touch and the victory is at hand. I live in a cyclic time marked by festivals moving us through the journey of our faith, through the agonies of sin and pain to redemption and glory. I believe in miracles and angels and visions, and even though I can discuss rationally the influence of medieval superstition or pre-Christian thought on the development of my faith I am still an alien to you when I talk about this world.

Alien. Aliens, especially religious ones, threaten you and the secular balanced world you believe in. The game at the moment seems to be divide and rule; turn us against each other, especially minorities or people whose lifestyles or beliefs go against the cultural norm, wait for retaliation, then play the blame game. So we're fighting on two fronts; we're fighting against the extremists who give faith a bad name at the same time as fighting for our faith to be taken seriously. And this is terrifying. If a commentator risks telling you that they cannot say #JeSuisCharlie because they find Charlie Hebdo's disrespect towards Islamic beliefs callous and offensive, then they risk being identified with the evil committed on that day. It's like this on a smaller scale when we talk. I want to prove that I am rational and intelligent, but I also want to stand up for my faith, which in your eyes, does not belong to the rational and intelligent world. How can I do both? In the end we drop the conversation and go home, wishing it had never been mentioned.

I want you to understand how much it hurts sometimes, trying to be a person of faith in your world. When you take the name of my Lord in vain, it's like you're using the name of my kid or one of my parents as a slur, except it's worse, because you are being offensive about someone I love more than I will ever love any person. I want to stand up for my faith and tell you to stop, but I also want to let you say what you will because I don't want to suppress your rights to free speech. When I was in my teens I thought that any conversation on faith could be 'won' by just providing better and better arguments, but these days, I'm more convinced that the only victory is that the conversation ends on a note of respect. I've acknowledged that your beliefs have a sound basis, and that I can respect your right to have them, and you have done the same for me. It's not exactly Preaching The Gospel, but I don't believe that anyone ever comes to faith through arguments. If we're arguing, I am not trying to convert you. I just want to talk.

Yes, I do want you to become a Christian. It would be strange if I didn't. But in this conversation I just want to talk honestly about faith. If we're in a seminar I want to show you an academic perspective that it has opened up for me. If we're talking teleology in the pub or 17th century politico-religious symbolism at 2am, then I want to talk about teleology or religio-politico-symbolio-ism. Just that. But more than that, I don't just want your tolerance of my faith, your awkward permission to believe it ('But...'). I want your respect.

Book Review: The Fault In Our Stars

[Warning - may contain spoilers. I'll try to keep them to a minimum.]

The Fault in Our Stars
John Green, 2012. Published by Dutton Books, available pretty much anywhere. 

It is now only a few days before the long-awaited film of The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green, is released in cinemas in the UK. This morning my housemate marched down the stairs, placed the book firmly next to me, and demanded that I read it before we see the film. 

I wasn't sure if I'd like the Fault in Our Stars, so I started reading nervously. More than nervously: guardedly. I almost wanted to dislike it because it's so popular, and I'm not a fan of most of the big, easy-read popular books out there - the Twilight Sagas and endless dystopian novel series being churned out at the moment. However, I've been following the Vlogbrothers on youtube for some years now, and John and Hank Green both stand out to me as intelligent, kind men, and ideal role models for young people. They know what they're talking about, and who they're talking to, and they encourage and inspire their fanbase to act responsibly and think independently. Even without the media hype and the film, John Green's name on the cover is pretty much a guarantee of thoughtful, intelligent writing. 

The book opens with a dedication to Esther Earl, a nerdfighter (the name given to the Vlogbrothers' fan base) who died of cancer some years ago. John met her before she died, and nerdfighters celebrate #EstherDay in her honour - a day to promote love, positivity, and tolerance. As such, John's foreword, reminding readers that the story is entirely fictional and that he does not wish readers to attempt to place facts into the story, is particularly needed. It would be easy to search for Esther and John in the story, especially in the troubling relationship between Hazel and novelist Peter Van Houten, but this would undermine the relevance and autonomy of the story, and risk fictionalising Esther. TFiOS is not a novel that pretends to be real; the bands and books within the story are invented, and the story stays within its confines. It exists in a small world; it doesn't pretend to be anything more than a story for teenagers, working around the conventions of its genre. 

Yet this acceptance is not a limitation, but rather the brilliance of the novel. Augustus Waters struggles throughout the novel with his own insignificance, whilst Hazel accepts that living her own life, and doing ordinary things, is okay. 'Okay' is an important word in TFiOS: it is the word that stands for acceptance of what life deals us, and more than that, a firm belief in beauty in small things, everyday occurrences. Being 'just a good book' or 'just a normal kid' is okay. 

But okay doesn't mean simplistic, or patronising. The story itself is refreshingly simple: the plot runs in chronological order, with one strong, reliable narrator, and a small cast of detailed characters, giving it readability and easy emotional access. The 'stars' of the book are arguably the secondary characters - Isaac, Peter Van Houten, Lidewij, and Caroline Mathers (oh, wait till you find out about her. That bit broke me.) I thought it took a while for Augustus to become a fully fleshed out character, and he often irritated me - pretentious beyond even the average lit student, and far more open about his love for Hazel than any seventeen year old I've ever encountered. But Green's writing, again, is clever and critical: the character of Augustus is a comment on perception and portrayal of the heroic, male love interest, working through the clichés to the painfully real, vulnerable character who appears in the last third of the book. It's worth sticking with his pretentious 'I am not in the business of denying myself simple pleasures' nonsense to hear what he has to say in the final pages. Green works with the conventions of character writing in young adult fiction, using them to establish boundaries and relationships, and then breaking them to great emotional and structural effect. 

The real strength of the book is not just in the plot, or characterisation, but in the questions raised between the conscious questions asked by the characters, and the questions raised in the structure and authorial decisions shaping the story. Green's pacing is gentle, but never sluggish, and he allows enough 'everyday life' to creep in to make the story realistic, but not overweighted with detail. The main weight of the plot is philosophical, rather than physical; instead of hefty medical terminology, the plot centres on poetry and existential questions. Although occasionally wearying, Green's resistance of sentimentality makes this tactic bearable, and sometimes thought-provoking. 

The most obvious issue raised is the question of how to portray the life of a child with cancer, whilst resisting the mawkishness of channel 4 documentaries or sentimental eulogizing; the problems of how they want to be remembered, and of how to prioritise and reflect on their lives is a crucial question for the main characters. Green treads through this question lightly, resisting the temptation to tell the reader how to feel or sentimentalize situations. Where a character or event could become cliché, he is honest: Augustus, for instance, is as good-looking as any love-interest ought to be, but he himself knows this, and it doesn't dominate his character or become a symbol of his innate good nature, a fault of the Twilight genre. Green also resists the temptation to indulge in pity for Hazel and the other cancer sufferers; he confronts the issue on every page, but he doesn't let it rule the story even though it rules Hazel and Augustus' lives. Personally, I think this act of literary defiance is a far better tribute to cancer sufferers than any amount of sentimentality over the awfulness of their situation.

In some stories about kids with cancer, the question of the novel is how they survive, how they cope, how their families react (and so on), and the answer is almost formulaic; the tragedy, the pain, the resolution. As satisfying as this might be to a spoon-fed readership, Green has more respect for his readers, and for kids like Esther and the reality of their lives, to write another book of this ilk. In TFiOS, cancer is not the answer but the question, and the answers aren't always predictable. Rather than going for big, overdramatic twists, the structure of TFiOS is gentle curves, with believable and powerful revelations lowered slowly into the story. In other words, it punches below the belt; it isn't a book that can be closed halfway through if the reader doesn't like a plot change. Aside from a few clangers such as 'I never took another photo of Augustus Waters', there is little in the way of foreshadowing; instead, certain catch phrases and repeated events hold the story together. I won't spoil the ending, but I will say that to my mind, it's a technical masterpiece. Content-wise, it brings together several themes and ideas from the story, and is deservedly emotional, but not overdone, but best of all, it's not a satisfying ending. In satisfying stories about kids with cancer, everyone goes into remission, the couples get each other, and they all go off to college and have kids who grow up to be ballet dancers or marine biologists or firemen, and because they are brave and good, cancer never pops its ugly head up again. Throughout TFiOS, the characters are preoccupied with the ending of a particular book, and its lack of resolution (which Green consciously has Hazel describe as 'literary'). Is it literary to lack an ending, or is that just real life? Should stories be complete? In the end, TFiOS is neither of these things. The ending doesn't fully satisfy our need to complete all the stories, but what we are given is perfect in its own, self-contained way. In the end, Hazel acknowledges that 'forever' can exist within 'their numbered days', and although that is really not okay, it can be okay - a decision mirrored in the ending, with its mixed sadness and acceptance, the lack of What Happened Later details. It doesn't satisfy, but it's right - respectful to the real struggles of cancer sufferers, respectful to the readers, and to the novel's question of what makes a good ending. Perhaps Green's refusal to fully end the story is an answer in itself: the best endings are not really ends at all. 

Feminism: Did I Really Say That?

Trigger Warning: I do discuss my views on the pro-life/pro-choice debate later on as an example

About a year ago, I wrote a blog post trying to work out my feelings on feminism. I received quite a few responses - some agreeing, some disagreeing, and some offering me information and sources to look into feminism and expand my knowledge and understanding of the issues surrounding it.

Since then, I have been trying to understand more about the feminist movement and gain a clearer picture of what is happening in it today, as opposed to the fuzzy picture of its past I'd been basing my opinions on. One year on from that conversation with my tutor where I refused to call myself a feminist, I would probably be happy enough to stick it in my Twitter bio. I follow most of the right feminist on the Twitter-sphere, I've engaged in the debates about sexual consent in the YouTube community, I've searched the right terms in Tumblr. There is a right (or should that be left?) way to to Feminism on the Internet, and I think I've got it sorted.

The first thing  I learnt about feminism is that sexism is still around. Following @EverydaySexism on Twitter has been an eye-opening experience; sexual assault is real, and sexist prejudice occurs frequently, in both minor and major ways. Often the perpetrators are unaware that they have done anything sexist, having been poorly educated about gender issues or raised with sexist opinions as part of their cultural norm. A year ago, I reckoned that women's lot was basically 'all-right'. As I sat in the back of a taxi stuck in a traffic queue and tried to ignore the man in the next car masturbating whilst staring at me, I realised that I might just be wrong.

Another thing I've learnt is that feminism isn't just about women's rights, a common misconception I held a year ago. Although women's rights are obviously the core of feminism, feminists recognise that you cannot support the rights of one oppressed group whilst ignoring another, or even allowing them to be oppressed to further your own ends. As a result, good feminist practice means supporting other movements for equality, acting against ableism, racism, and class prejudice. Ableism is a new word, and a new concept, to me, and possibly to itself. It replaces more negative words describing anyone with a disability, preferring to talk more positively in terms of ability, rather than lack of it - a term which removes the dividing wall between 'able' and 'disabled', classifying us instead on a spectrum of ability. Work against prejudice against disabled people has been around for a few decades, but the ableist movement is encouraging people to look beyond the obvious - e.g. allowing disabled students to go to university - and challenge assumptions and practices which disadvantage disabled people. The feminist movement seems to have stood staunchly behind this, especially where the two intersect. Indeed, intersect is the appropriate word here - the correct term for the union of these separate movements is Intersectionalism. I had to Google it the first time I saw it, and this awesome blog post came up - check it out if you'd like more information. It means that no-one acts alone; not only do we stick together, we watch out for ways in which our group maybe committing other types of prejudice, e.g. white woman taking precedence over coloured women at a feminist meeting.

Discovering Intersectionalism has given a name for something I've always felt, the sentiment of Martin Niemöller’s First They Came. But the application of Intersectionalism within feminism seems to be complicated. Phrases like 'check your privilege' and 'calling someone out' are the warning signs. 'Check your privilege' is basically the sentiment of the opening of The Great Gatsy ('just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had'), but reversed - remember that you are privileged, and that your background is the same as the oppressors. 'Calling someone out' means that if someone means publicly correcting someone because they have inadvertently said something ableist, or transphobic, or without awareness of their privilege in speaking, etc. I respect the good intentions of these actions, and agree with their basis, but in practice it seems to lead to a lot of feminist in fighting, squabbling, and divisions. People feel hurt as they fall out of the clique, having forgotten to use a neutral pronoun or dared to write an article from a man's perspective or disagreed with a statement about the glass ceiling in the workplace. Sometimes these issues are huge and should be noticed, and the feminist community should rightly feel proud that it is highly accountable and self-critical.

However, the result of this accountability and criticism seems to have been that a 'right' and a 'wrong' way of doing feminism has emerged, and some feminists will pounce on anyone doing the wrong type of feminism, and forbid them from calling themselves a feminist. This attitude rightly frustrates most other feminists, who are more interested in the practical application of feminism to the world. Laurie Penny, one of my favourite New Statesman writers, had a fantastic rant on her Twitter page this morning about 'Is it feminist to ...' articles. Although we're good at criticising victim-blaming and slut-shaming, we're even better at feminist-shaming.

Firstly, men. Male feminists can be 'Allies' but have to respect that there are certain arguments and places they must have no voice in, and no presence thereof, partially so that women can speak and not fear oppression, partially because they are descended from that great race of oppressors, the Male Species.

As a woman, I'm a bit better off, but a white, cisgender (the opposite of transgender), heterosexual woman I have to watch pretty carefully in case I throw my privilege around. I understand the importance of this; in so many places, the voices of the cultural norm overshadow and dominate the voices of the minority. I don't know what it is like to feel oppressed. However, at times the preoccupation with our differences, especially ones we have no control over, seem to hinder rather than help the feminist discourse. We're so obsessed with breaking down the rankings that we risk creating an alternative social hierarchy, where the right to speak and have a voice is negated by your lack of pre-determined privilege. I'm being careful making this comment because it is the exact same argument that Daily Mail (or Daily Male, right?) readers make when they claim that only asylum-seekers with twenty children get council houses, and that people ought to feel sorry for us poor 'indigenous' white Brits. That argument is clearly balls: my feeling here is that we haven't struck the right balance yet. In an ideal world, oppression would be historic, past disadvantages would be readdressed, and people of any sex, gender, race, ability etc would be able to discuss issues with equal voices. Until that happens, protecting the voice of minorities is important - I just feel that we haven't worked out a good way to do this without alienating anyone who happens to be in the majority, which is particularly galling if as part of the majority (white/cis/het) you're becoming feminist to stick up for the rights of someone in the minority. People get alienated for stupid reasons. I'm not personally offended, but it doesn't exactly make me want to get involved in feminist activities either.

The thing that really causes me problems within feminism, however, is how certain opinions - opinions I don't, and can't hold - have become set-in-stone feminist doctrines, and disagreeing with them seems to reduce the validity of your status as a Feminist. Although one of the principles in feminism is free debate, a little experience tells you instantly which argument will be taken up as the 'feminist' voice, and which the voice of the outsider and oppressor. For instance, I believe that women should have the right to wear the Hijab, so long as they do so because it is part of their personal belief system, and not being forced on them by men. Some feminists agree here, but those who disagree do so aggressively and angrily, labelling pro-hijab groups anti-feminist.

Let's take an even-worse example. I am pro-life. As a Christian (and a practising Catholic!) life is sacred to me from conception onwards. I think that pre-conception contraception is fine, but any form of abortion is unacceptable. This is my personal opinion, and I would not force it on anyone else, but in this case, my faith dictates that I have a moral duty to stick up for my belief, and for unborn children. I chose to do this by supporting better contraceptive advice for teenagers and more support for pregnant mothers etc rather than standing outside abortion clinics with placards, believing that it is better to treat the cause rather than the symptom, and that those kind of tactics are unpleasant and abusive. However, the loud voice of Mainstream Feminism seems to consider that to be pro-life is to be anti-woman, and a form of oppression over women's bodies. Men cannot have a say in what women do with their bodies; their foetus' do not count - in fact, only the woman in question does. It's a valid argument unless you believe in the sanctity of unborn life, which I do. Yet because I hold this opinion, I am seen to be siding with the Oppressor, the continuation of male and societal control over women's bodies. I'm not writing about this to start the pro-life/pro-choice argument, even though I know people will message me complaining about my views. The point is that feminism can be exclusive and restrictive, to its detriment.

Over the last year, my opinions and perspectives have been challenged in many ways, and I hope will continue to be challenged. I've found things I like and things I dislike about feminist, people I admire and people who frustrate me. I've also realised that I, and people like me, need to be active and aware of the complex social issues around us, fighting against prejudice in all its forms - whether that's black people sat at the back of the bus or the local radio playing Blurred Lines. Feminism is a shifting and dynamic movement, and yes, it's imperfect. But you know what? So were all the other movements that made a difference. We look back on the Civil Rights movement or the early gay-rights protesters or Emmeline Pankhurst and the Suffragettes as perfect examples because their cause was just and they succeeded, and we whitewash the flaws and the divisions in their campaigns - but that doesn't mean they weren't there. For all its stumbling blocks and cliques and in-fighting, today's feminist movement could be the successor to the glorious movements of the past, achieving monumental change not just for women but for society as a whole. It's worth baring the hitches and virtual-slapping and bitching to be part of that.

One year on from the pretentiously titled 'A Conversation With Feminism' blog post, I'm finally having that conversation - with myself. In my last post, I asked: 'Am I a feminist?' Today, I can finally answer: 'Yes.'

Joanna.

Dear Joanna: You Look Okay (TW: Eating Disorders)

Trigger Warning: In this letter I talk about body confidence and eating disorders. 

Dear Joanna,

Of all the letters I'm going to write to you, this one seemed like the most important, because it was so important to you for so long. 

At the moment you are thirteen and one of the tallest girls in your year. You are what they call an 'early bloomer' - people often thought that you were a year 9 student when you were only in year 7, which you kind of liked. Your problem is that although you are as tall, and sometimes as mature, as someone in their mid-teens, you still have a child's body shape. You have puppy fat, with big apple cheeks, wide arms, and a stomach that sticks out, especially when you slump, which you have a habit of doing. 

Around this point, you start to realise that some of the other girls in your year look a bit different from you. They have proper breasts and hips, and boys fancy them - and no-one fancies you (that you are aware of. Actually, a few boys do, but they don't tell you till much later!). You become increasingly self-conscious. Around this point you start wearing baggy clothes to hide your shape, and moaning to your friends about how fat you are. Then you discover the scales. 

The record of how much you weigh is scattered about in your diary. The day you tip from nine stone into ten, I remember, is particularly dismal. I remember, around fifteen or so, having to listen to a boy in your class moaning about how he weighed nine stone; you sat there, hating him, but hating yourself more. I remember your joy after you had flu for a few weeks and your cheeks hollowed out a little. I still pinch my cheeks, trying to decide if they're any chubbier than they were the week before.

During the summer before you turn fourteen, you decide to take action. Whilst you're off school, you make your own breakfast and lunch, and as you get up after your parents have gone to work, it's not hard to hide it when you start skipping meals. You have to eat dinner because you eat as a family, but soon you're surviving the rest of the day on an apple and water. You weigh yourself obsessively. The weight is not coming off. After about two weeks of your secret diet, the whole family goes to visit your grandparents, where your Grandma cooks a beautiful roast lunch. You force yourself to eat it, dreading the weight you'll put on. When it gets to pudding, you refuse to eat it, and at Grandma and Granddad's, pudding is not optional. You almost cry. 'I can't do it.' Mum takes you outside and tells you that she'd rather that you were obese than that you had an eating disorder. You talk for a while, then go in, and eat pudding.

Of course, it doesn't end there, even though you do start eating breakfast again after that week. A few months later a girl who starved herself to death is in the news. She weighed under 5 stone, and you looked at her and thought, 'I wish I was as strong willed as her. She went a bit too far - I could stop before I kill myself.' I think you knew that anorexia doesn't work that way, but you convinced yourself that being anorexic meant that you were in charge of your body, not destroying yourself. I can still see that photo of the dead girl. You could see every bone in her body.

At the time, you thought the thing that was stopping you was your lack of will power, and you hated yourself for it, but the real thing that stopped you was your faith, and your family. In God you found the certainty that even though, in your eyes, you were fat and ugly, you were loved and your life had a purpose. It didn't matter what you looked like as long as your were living for him. You were also scared of hurting your family, especially your parents, and so you fought against all the stupid urges, and they supported you, as they still do and always will. 

Of course, you still compare yourself to other girls, and feel large. The honest truth is that you're not skinny, and you never will be - you have a large bone structure, and natural curves, and that's okay. Most women look like you, and most men are alright with that - and the ones that aren't are not worth your time! After a few years your weight stabilises and you slowly get your adult figure, and you'll feel a lot more confident in your body. One of your worst fears was that you'd keep on ballooning into Joanna the Inflatable Girl, a female Dudley Dursley, and it doesn't happen; at 20, you're roughly the national average. You stop growing at 5"5 too, so don't worry about towering over people - you actually spend a surprising amount of time feeling short...

Here are some things I want to tell you.

Firstly, one of the secrets to looking good like those confident girls in your year, is believing in yourself and your body. Wear clothes that make you feel happy and confident, hold your head up high, and believe in yourself. When I look back over my teenage years there's a clear dividing line between the places where I was confident, and had plenty of friends, and the places where I hid and was an onlooker, on the outside. The more you act as if you believe in yourself, the more other people will too. 

Secondly, you need to wash your hair more. Grease is SO not attractive. At thirteen you're hitting the hormones badly. Don't stress - you'll survive it, and one day, you will have a pimple free face. Mostly. 

Thirdly, stop weighing yourself. Instead of concentrating on all the bits of your body you dislike and how much they weigh, try and look at yourself as a whole. Remind yourself of the things you like about yourself: you have nice eyes, your hair is getting really long, you look good in your new jeans. 

Fourthly, stop reading calorie information on labels. Eating healthily means thinking about the balance of food you eat over the entire day, not just restricting yourself from eating anything with more than 150 calories. 

Let me tell you about the turning point, so you have something to look forward to. 

Age fifteen, you go to Florence with your family and visit the Uffizi, which is a very famous and beautiful art museum. Walking around in quiet awe, you notice that the women in the pictures aren't the stick thin women you've looked up to for years. At Titian's Venus of Urbino and Botticelli's Birth of Venus you stare at the female nudes, comparing their rounded forms with your own, and you have a revelation. Once upon a time, beauty meant having curves, having a figure. These women have breasts and hips; their stomachs stick out, their arms are wide. And yet the artists chose them for the women who were the epitome of all beauty: Mary, the Virgin Mother and most holy of all women, and Venus, the goddess of love. Compared to them, the models and ideals of the 21st century seem insubstantial: these women have lasted and will last long after the 'thigh-gap' or 'visible ribs' goes out of fashion. Over the years this will become a point of consolation for you: when you look at yourself and see fat and hate your curves, you will force yourself to think of these girls, and tell yourself that you are a Renaissance woman, and that is beautiful. 

Lastly, I want to tell you that you're happy with your body now, but that wouldn't be true. You are still self-conscious, and sometimes you let it get to you. Last December, when you were struggling with your workload and general health, you stopped eating properly for around two weeks, and lost at least 6 pounds, if not more - and you were happy about it. It's easier to hate yourself rather than doing something proactive to improve your health, and sometimes you give in to those feelings. It is getting better though. You are happier with your body, in general, and you do try to exercise a little more, and eat healthier (most of the time...). There are ups and downs. Mostly you eat what you want, and don't care, but sometimes, like this morning, drinking a glass of milk feels like pouring a glass of fat onto your hips. Maintaining the balance between a healthy consciousness of your health and an unhealthy obsession is tough, but it gets better.

Most importantly, you understand that the old adage 'it's what's inside that counts' really is true. You have friends who love you for who you are and wouldn't care less if you had blue skin and horns, and who you love in the same way. Work on who you are inside, and the outside will take care of itself. Nice people have their own kind of magnetism; they light up rooms; people are attracted to their personality. Faces grow to suit their owners. In the end, your body is just a tool you use for moving your spirit around. Remember that, and look after it, but who you are inside will always be more important. 

Joanna

P.S. You look good today.