Tuesday 18 August 2009

Anarchy In The UK












On Sunday I went along to a radical ramble in SE1.

Five Things I Loved About It:
1. Feeling of doing something mildly subversive. I'm such a middle class pretender!
2. Hearing stories of the past that aren't the Grand Master Narrative kinda "Histories" taught at school (big wars, great men, small peenii).
3. Seeing bits of London I otherwise never see. It's a good day when I leave N19.
4. Recalling for the zillionth time the beats that this city PULSATES. I am an expat in lurrve!
5. I saw Mary Wollstonecraft's house!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Five Things I Loathed About It:
1. I go to these lefty things to feel kinship. I therefore don't fully get how these supposed right-on humanists can justify not mustering even the slightest bit of warmth towards, er, me. But you know what I mean: that holier-than-thou, judgey mcjudgerson type. I kind of think that most radicals regardless of whatever spectrum they sit at share a personality trait, ie, not having much of one. That's why that feminist=humourless trope fucks me off. Maybe Dworkin wasn't much of a smiler but put me in a room with Jo Brand, Germaine Greer, Janeane Garofolo, Gloria Steinem, Tina Fey, Dawn French, Letty Cottin Pogrebin and Margaret Cho and I betcha there'd be laughs a'plenty.
2.The commemorative stone for Percy Shelley. Now obscured by the directives of a Death to Aesthetics! estate. (See pics for travesty)
3.The unshakeable sense that I was a hypocritical middle class JAP because I'm neither a vegan nor a squatter.
4.The fact that these alternative stories which are rich and dynamic have, like their protagonists, been marginalised to the degree that they are rarely shared outside the few that actively seek them out.
5. The utter arrogance/ historical blindness of the guide who felt the need to highlight Wollstonecraft's "contradictions" in that she advocated for women's rights but not for those working women. Way to project your contemporary agenda onto a brave, progressive thinking historical heroine, dude! While you're at it, wanna slam for Martin Luther King jr for not protesting for gay rights or Gandhi for not having a Twitter account?

Hmmmmm. WWGT? (What Would Gandhi Tweet?)

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