I'm as Mad as Hell

Network is a movie made in 1976 that features Peter Finch as Howard Beale, a deranged TV news anchorman.  In a sublime moment of madness Beale speaks to the nation at large, clearly striking a cord.  This is the wonderful “I’m as Mad as Hell”, rant;

We know things are bad — worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is: 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'

Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get MAD! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot — I don't want you to write to your congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. [shouting] You've got to say: 'I'm a human being, god-dammit! My life has value!'

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell: I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!

I want you to get up right now. Sit up. Go to your windows. Open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!...You've got to say, I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE! Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first, get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!

Well, then, I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.  I was as mad as hell on Valentine’s Day, taking part in a One Billion Rising event in London’s Parliament Square.  One Billion Rising, if you’ve not heard of it - and lots of people have not - was a world-wide day of action intended to draw attention to the problem of sexual violence towards women and children across the globe.  The Billion in the title is intended to emphasise that one in three women will be raped or beaten in their lifetime, that’s approximately a billion human beings.

My first article of 2013 drew attention to the appalling rape case in India, where the victim was butchered as well as assaulted.  Sexual violence is an issue I feel strongly about, an issue that is simply not taken seriously enough by so many politicians, lawyers and judges, evidenced by the asinine comments of an applicant for a senior legal position in Indonesia, something else I drew attention to (Damming Daming, 27 January)

One Billion Rising, marked in 160 countries, was inspired by Eve Ensler, the American playwright responsible for The Vagina Monologues.  I should say that the day had no particular political overtones, and it was not specifically for women; for sexual violence concerns us all, men and women alike.  The inspiration for the day was Ensler’s outrage over the remark last year by Todd Aitkin, a politician of a particularly dense cast of mind (mind, what mind?) to the effect that some forms of rape could be defined as ‘legitimate.’ 

As I say, I was at the London gathering.  So, too, I’m delighted to say, was Bernard Jenkin, the Conservative MP for Harwich and North Essex, showing that campaigns of this kind are not simply the preserve of the political left.  He later explained his position in a blog on the Huffington Post;

Why did I go? Violence against women affects men. These women are our mothers, sisters, partners, daughters. No man would dismiss this campaign whose life has been touched by violence against someone he loves. But I went because men have to be part of this campaign. We cannot leave women to try fix this problem on their own. Men commit most of the violence. Men still run so many of the institutions - the police, the judges, the courts system - which historically were poor at addressing the causes of violence against women - or dealing humanely with the victims.

The central event of the Parliament Square gathering was the release of 109 balloons, a poignant occasion, each balloon marking the life of a woman lost to male violence in Britain last year alone.  That same day there was a debate in Parliament on the need for better sex and relationship education, something I personally feel passionate about.  The ‘zero tolerance approach to violence and abuse in relationships’ was approved without a vote. Unfortunately the government us still refusing to commit to definite measures here.  In my own way, from my own corner, I will keep pressing. I would rather speak than lapse into silence.

We simply can’t be silent.  This is an issue that won’t leave us alone.  We cannot or should not retreat into quietism, hoping for peace as the world gets tighter and tighter, drawing ever closer to our own thresholds.  We are all human beings and our life has value.  Time to stand and shout – I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.  

Sister, my Sister

I feel ashamed.  Late last month I was loosely aware that some horrible crime had been committed against a woman in Delhi, the capital of India.  But I looked no closer.  I was too full of the joys of life.  I was getting ready to host a party in London; I was looking forward to a family Christmas in the country; I was preparing for my annual skiing holiday.  What was happening in my own life was more important than what had happened to some unknown female in a place as far away as Delhi.

I’m now back to reality, my eyes wide open.  I now know exactly what happened to this twenty-three year old physiotherapy intern, so far unnamed.  If you are at all sensitive to these matters it might be best if you read no further.  She was gang raped, horrible enough in itself, but the details of what was inflicted on her, the violence and the mutilation, are almost beyond any horror that I have the power to conceive.  What happened had nothing to do with sex and desire.  It was an act of atavistic and sadistic hatred.  It was an act that goes deep into India’s heart of darkness.

It was the evening of 16 December.  The woman, let me just call her Sister, was on her way home with a male friend, an engineer.  They had been to the cinema together to see The Life of Pi, something countless numbers of couples were doing that day across the Earth.  They hailed a chartered bus, a private vehicle used to ferry schoolchildren by day.  That night it was being taken on a joyride.  Six men were on board, all members of staff. 

Sister and her friend got on, after being told by one of the alleged perpetrators, a seventeen-year-old youth, that the bus was going in their direction.  No sooner was it underway than the taunts and suggestions began.  The bus had large tinted windows, so nobody from outside could see what was going on. 

Sister’s male friend, trying to protect her, was beaten unconscious with an iron bar.  She was dragged to the back of the bus, beaten with the same bar.  Then the rape began, five men taking turns as the sixth drove the bus around the city streets.  The sexual assault was violent enough.  Making it even worse was the torture. 

Later medical reports show that Sister suffered serious injuries to her abdomen, her intestines and her genitals.  Doctors also report that a rusted iron implement had been thrust into her.  Part of her intestines was pulled out.  She was then almost completely disembowelled.  According to police reports, the youngest of her attackers, the seventeen-year-old, pulled out her intestines with his bare hands.  Later in hospital she was found to have only 5% of her bowels left inside her body.

The couple were then dumped into the streets from the moving bus.  The perpetrators allegedly tried to run Sister over, but she was pulled aside by her male companion.  Both were later found bleeding on the sidewalk and taken to hospital, where doctors struggled to save Sister’s life.  With her condition deteriorating, the decision was taken to move her to a specialist hospital in Singapore. 

It has to be said that the motives here were political and not medical.  She was going to die and the government, already embarrassed, did not want her to die in India.  She did die.  She died on 29 December, when I was skiing on the slopes of French Savoy.

As the details of the horror became public the mood in India turned toxic.  There were widespread public protests in a country where rape and violence against women is commonplace.  Not only that but the law is notoriously slow in dealing with accusations of sexual assault.  There was only one conviction from the 635 cases of rape reported in Delhi between January and November of last year.

Most of India’s rape victims are poor and generally of a lower cast.  Sister was different.  She was a child of India’s emerging middle class.  Disgust at the callousness of the attackers turned to disgust against the government.  Across the country Indians, women and men, protested at the incompetence of the political classes.  As I celebrated the arrival of 2013 half a world away a more sombre mood settled.  Writing in the New Statesman, Soumya Bhattacharya said “We were shamed and chastened, united in grief, and the notion of revelry was not something that figured in most people’s minds.”

Deeply unsettled, the Indian government has promised to introduce harsher laws against rape, including thirty year jail terms, chemical castration and the setting up of fast track courts.  In the meantime shock over the incident led to anti-rape protests spilling across India’s borders to the rest of the Subcontinent.  There were demonstrations in Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.  Even Ban ki-moon, the Secretary General of the United Nations, was moved to make a statement, saying that “Violence against women must never be accepted, never excused, never tolerated. Every girl and woman has the right to be respected, valued and protected.”

Sister was cremated on 30 December in accordance with Hindu custom.  Her fate may, I stress may change attitudes towards women of all castes and classes in India. I certainly hope so.

Sister was my sister.  She is your sister, your mother, your daughter, your cousin, your aunt; she is Everywoman. 

My Life as a Dog

Amina Filali was a sixteen-year-old Moroccan girl. I say was because she is now dead. She killed herself last weekend in a particularly horrible manner – she swallowed rat poison. Why? Because she had suffered a double violation: she was raped by a man and then raped by the law of her land. She was forced to marry her violator.

Under Article 475 of Morocco’s Islamic penal code, a rapist, even the rapist of a minor, can escape prosecution if he agrees to marry his victim. It’s a way, you see, of preserving the ‘honour’ of the violated woman’s family.

Amina’s attacker originally refused to marry her, only doing so to avoid a possible ten year jail sentence. She then had to endure five further months of ‘marriage’ before she killed herself. During this time she complained to her mother repeatedly that her husband was beating her. She was counselled to be patient.

There is now a campaign in Morocco to have this invidious law revoked. There is also a Facebook petition, accompanied by a perfect storm of tweets, all expressing horror at this girl’s fate. Fouzia Assouli, president of the Democratic League for Women’s Rights, said “We have been asking for years for the cancellation of Article 475 of the penal code which allows the rapist to escape justice.

Rape is always a difficult issue no matter where in the world it happens; difficult for the victims, who often carry the sole burden of proof. It’s particularly difficult in Islamic countries. Not only are women prejudged by law to be second-class citizens but if an accusation of rape is raised and not proved they risk being prosecuted for debauchery. Last year a woman in Afghanistan was jailed for ‘adultery by force’ after she was brutally raped by her husband’s cousin. She was only released by presidential pardon, after a wave of revulsion swept across the world.

There are places in the world where it is better to be born a dog than a woman.

March of the Women

In January, 1911 Votes for Women, the paper of the Women’s Social and Political Union, an organisation campaigning for female suffrage in Britain, announced a new song which it described as a hymn and a call to battle. This was March of the Women, composed the previous year by Ethel Smyth. That same month it was given its first public performance by the Suffrage Choir in Pall Mall, introduced by Emmeline Pankhurst, head of the WSPU, as the suffrage movement’s new anthem.

I love it. It’s one of the most stirring songs ever written. If I had been alive then I would have been a militant suffragette alongside Emmeline and Cristobel Pankhurst, two of my all-time heroines. Yes, I would have sung those words at the top of my voice, those wonderful, heroic words;

Shout, shout, up with your song!
Cry with the wind, for the dawn is break-ing;
March, march, swing you a-long,
Wide blows our ban-ner, and hope is wa-king.
Song with its sto-ry, dreams with their glo-ry
Lo! they call, and glad is their word!
Loud and lou-der it swells,
Thun-der of free-dom, the voice of the Lord!

Long, long -- we in the past
Cowered in dread from the light of heaven,
Strong, strong -- stand we at last,
Fearless in faith and with sight new given.
Strength with its beauty, Life with its duty,
(Hear the voice, oh hear and obey!)
These, these -- beckon us on!
Open your eyes to the blaze of day.

Comrades -- ye who have dared
First in the battle to strive and sorrow!
Scorned, spurned -- nought have ye cared,
Raising your eyes to a wider morrow,
Ways that are weary, days that are dreary,
Toil and pain by faith ye have borne;
Hail, hail -- victors ye stand,
Wearing the wreath that the brave have worn!

Life, strife -- those two are one,
Naught can ye win but by faith and daring.
On, on -- that ye have done
But for the work of to-day preparing.
Firm in reliance, laugh a defiance,
(Laugh in hope, for sure is the end)
March, march -- many as one,
Shoulder to shoulder and friend to friend.


Such brave words for such brave women, women who fought so tenaciously in the face of hostility and hardship for something that we now consider to be a fundamental right. I’m no great enthusiast for specifically female causes, or for the forms of women’s liberation that emerged in the States from the 1960s onwards, but the campaign over the suffrage was something different, something all women could feel strongly about, no matter their class, politics or religion. Oh, bliss was in that dawn to be alive but to be young, and a woman, was very heaven.

Daughters of Diana

I love hunting, I have since I rode to hounds for the fist time when I was twelve years old. I’ve also enjoyed a spot of rough shooting now and then, small game. It’s just a thrill; I offer no excuse or justification beyond that; I have absolutely no guilt or regrets. I like to think of myself as one of the daughters of Artemis, Diana, if you prefer, one of strigae, the wild women who followed the goddess in the hunt. But through the ages, at least until modern times, the practice of hunting has been seen as the preserve of men. It pleased me to read a nice corrective to this assumption, an article by Richard Almond entitled The Medieval Huntress in the latest issue of the BBC History Magazine.

Although hunting in the medieval period was universally popular among men, there is little or no mention of female hunters in the texts that have survived from the period. But taking a wider view, looking at illuminated manuscripts, tapestries, paintings, carvings, engravings and prints, women, women from all social classes, can be seen taking part in all sorts of sport. There, at one level, are the great ladies of court, pursuing deer on horseback or shooting driven game, while at the other level peasant women net birds, ferreted rabbits and even poach venison.

Most often these women are depicted alongside male companions but they can also been seen hunting or hawking on their own or with other women. In a miniature from The Romance of Alexander, held in the Bodleian Library, women are depicted hunting on foot. On the left two are shown hunting hart with dogs, one with a hunting horn, the other thrusting a cross-hilted spear into a beast caught by one of her hounds. One the right another two are shown hawking, one recalls her bird with the aid of a lure, while two further hawks swoop down on a duck.

Perhaps the greatest Renaissance huntress was Diane de Poitiers, mistress of Henry II of France, who was portrayed as Diana herself, reclining on a hart with one of her favourite hounds in marble as The Diana of Anet. There are other depictions of her as the goddess in several portraits of the period.

Certeine wicked women following sathans prouocations being seduced by the illusions of diuels, beleeve and professe, that in the night times they ride abroad with Diana, the goddesse of the Pagans, or else with Herodias, with an innumerable multitude...

Great is Diana of the Ephesians; greater still is Diana of the huntress. :-)

Being Nicer To Women-Change Comes to the Kingdom

I have no great enthusiasm for the message of Freudian psychology, the contention that neurosis is reducible to forms of sexual sublimation and repression. I have no liking in particular for the social psychology of the likes of Wilhelm Reich. Still, there is something to be said for the argument that he advances in The Mass Psychology of Fascism, that certain forms of political enthusiasm, forms of fanaticism, are really misdirected libidinous impulses. George Orwell essentially says the same thing in Nineteen Eighty-Four. In his dystopia the Anti-Sex League is a symptom of the state’s suspicion of any activity that leads away from worship of itself.

I brought these examples to mind on reading a recent article on women in Saudi Arabia in Time magazine. The point is made that fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, a country where a conservative version of Islam, high unemployment, limited democratic rights and an archaic attitude towards women helped feed a mood of unchecked radicalism among young men, people who accept the prospect of ‘martyrdom’ because this world, their world, is frustrating and unfulfilling. This is not the Anti-Sex League; this is the No Sex League, the No Women League.

Whether King Abdullah is mindful of this possibility or not is of no matter. What does matter is that Saudi society is changing, if by slow degrees. Women are beginning to make an appearance. Mixed gender workplaces are now more common, some with women in senior managerial positions. The government is expanding educational opportunities for women by building dedicated universities as well as encouraging more women to enter the workforce. Women have even been appointed to the Shura council, the advisory body appointed by the King.

There are other changes too, big and small, that show the Kingdom is at least trying to make some progress into the modern age. Norah al-Faiz, the Deputy Minister in charge of girls’ education, the fist woman ever to hold a cabinet-level post told Time that “Fifty-five years ago there was no education for girls. Fifty years ago people didn’t accept the idea of women working. Now everyone wants their girls and or wives to work or go through higher education. I don’t think these kinds of changes have happened in any country as quickly as here.”

It would be wrong to read too much into these signs, wrong to overestimate the rate of change in a country that remains deeply conservative, the home of the Wahhabi branch of Islam. But even in this sensitive area, the area of religious fundamentalism the government is taking action against the more obvious perversions. Extremist websites have been shut down and people calling for a jihad muzzled or arrested. The religious police, moreover, are no longer acting in such an overbearing fashion, even attempting to be more ‘people friendly’, if one can imagine such a thing. On TV and billboards a campaign has been launched urging men to be nicer to women.

Yes, by slow and careful degrees change does come. I would like to think that all the misdirected passions channelled into a debased form of religious passion, into a debased form of jihad will also come to an end. The point is to understand the Muslim world, not to hate it.