Objecting to definition of depression given by “expert” psychiatrist (from the Transactional Analysis school) at a training session at work, getting angry, talking about Churchill, then Spike Milligan, Tony Hancock, John Clees.
Initially, there was no substance to the objection, but then it moved on to this woman talking about how depression was some kind of lack of a sense of humour, or a lack of ambition. This objection wasn’t so key. It developed only as a trigger to the real animus, the angry rebuttal and the walking out.
“I can see why this Transactional Analysis school is so popular with the anthroposophists given as it all flies in the face of reason and rationality. It’s just another cult.”
* * *
Watching am, the Politics show with Jeremy Vine I had a reverie of being a member of the panel on a Question Time-like show (a real regular for me), and talked, once again, about pornography and the exploitation of women in strip clubs and the like. As usual, I disagreed with the various PC responses and with a hardline feminist line by saying that dancing in a nightclub naked in an of itself is no more exploitative than stocking shelves or working on a till and doing other such jobs which invariably a bi-passing of the intellectual faculties for rote tasks. Such work need not be incompatible with respect for individual dancers and with decent working conditions. Sexual desire is a natural human need and such places need not be seedy and sleazy and associated with the underworld an myriad forms of criminal activity. Neither is there any reason for spectators to see girls in a negative light. The disrespect and poor conditions associated with such work in the majority of occasions is a result of a deeper misogyny in society that has its malign effects even higher up the notional hierarchy. I used France as a place where it may be that such burlesque shows as I once saw as a thoroughly awestruck teen in Paris escape such associations, having rather a sense of glamour surrounding them.
I condemned the conditions which do persist, however, and talked of people trafficking and the conditions in a majority of strip clubs.
It pays to remember, I said, in terms of the non-trafficked women who work in the sex industry and who choose it, perhaps getting into glamour modelling via a boob job to escape a mundane life as a checkout girl or on the dole in some grim backwater town, that this is not exclusively an issue of misogyny and males with a lack of imagination and incapable of forming relationships. Essentially, it is also a mirror image of men joining up and going to fight in Afghanistan or Iraq, risking their lives for oil. The majority of these men have chosen to go, but it was something of a Hobson’s choice for lads stuck in shitty little towns with few or no unskilled jobs that could grant them a tolerable lifestyle.
This time I did not talk about how much I move looking at women. At their legs, at their breasts, at their hair, the gentle curves even of their face. Nor about how it is widely misunderstood how men look at women and that there are many kinds of beauty and indeed a whole spectrum from sexy to pretty to beautiful, and that a man can appreciate being with a pretty or a beautiful woman and talking to her without giving a thought to her conquest and whilst respecting her and having a lot of time for what she has to say. Nor did I relate how I found a number of my fellow panelists very attractive. This I have done numerous times in the past.
*There are, of course women there fighting with as much courage as the men and at equal risk, and indeed more women involved in the armed forces than men involved in exploitative areas of the sex industry, even if in other ares, such as eating disorders which may be attributable to our image-driven culture, men are rapidly catching up, but the vast majority of those shipped back in body bags are men