The Return Of The Pedestrian

After losing my house I had no option but to live with my parents or be homeless.  As I have noted on this blog over the past few months, I took the first option.  Though it proved to be stressful it was less debilitating than living on the streets or at some council's pleasure in a bed & breakfast.  That delight will probably come when I am bullied at work again and my parents have died.  Anyway, after weeks of searching for a room; being rejected by the bulk of them because I was too old (at 45) or too male or was impudent to ask that there was heating that worked, I finally found the room I mentioned.  I am a sub-tenant of a Lithuanian family in a house with another lodger plus the family of two adults, a child and a dog.  The dog only understands Lithuanian and looks at me with a bewildered stare whenever I speak to her in English.  In contrast, the child flicks between both languages with immense ease. 

In London it is expected that you commute to work.  My parents live 30Km outside London and the route I took meant I could do that in 30 minutes.  I was offered rooms that were 18-19Km from my workplace but with the trains being radial rather than around the circumference and the traffic in so many one-way systems between these rooms and work it easily too 2 hours to cover this distance.  I was fortunate that the room I ended up with is less than 3.5Km from where I work.  Since losing the house, my weight had risen by 3Kg.  My mother had kept trying to persuade me at least to walk around the town where they live, for exercise.  However, having been bullied for ten years in my childhood, there are very few corners of the town which do not haunt me with memories of being humiliated or physically assaulted.   The neighbouring town is a little better as it has been do smashed around by developers in the past thirty years and continues to be altered that there are few structures left from my memory to remind me of what happened: the library where I was punched has been levelled, the swimming pool where I was held under the water is now replaced by a car park and where the other pool, the one at which my trainers were stolen, used to stand is now a landscaped bank of grass and flowers.

I had never visited my new district ever before, so I can walk through it with no ghosts tugging at my peace of mind.  Like much of London, though the area is generally wealthy, there are pockets where ordinary people live and abruptly you can turn a corner and see a very different society from the street you just left.  It reminds me of London Below in 'Neverwhere' (television series 1996; cassette/CD 1996; novels 1996 & 2006; graphic novel 2005) which I have just recently re-watched on DVD.  It is more like 'London Beside'.  The same applies to the architecture.  I am fortunate on my walk to pass large Victorian town houses, 1930s blocks of flats and semi-detached villas, 1950s bungalows, 1960s blocks of flats, 1990s fake versions of the Victorian houses and terraced houses that could have come from any period in the past century.  I suppose this is better than a route that took me alongside a dual carriage way for kilometres.  There are small shops and pubs on the way, some with a very old-fashioned approach - one chemist advertises that it develops films and one post office closes on Wednesday afternoons.

Walking I see the same people, some occasionally, some almost daily.  Many, of course are oblivious to me, tied up in the sounds and images emerging from whatever device they are grasping.  Conversely, I am watched eagle-eyed by parents.  This is the fate of any man walking within 500 metres of a school.  Everyone no matter how smart or shabby looking is perceived as a potential paedophile.  It is very unpleasant, but something that seems unavoidable these days.  I try to skirt going too close to any school, nursery, playgroup or even college, fearful that some mother is going to thrust an assault alarm at me and have me dragged off for lynching because I simply look 'odd'.  I am jumping ahead of myself as before the parents, thrusting us off the pavement with vast pushchairs, there are the sports fanatics, filling up the park with styles that look like they belong in the Eighties as they run and exercise.  There are also the dog walkers, even more demanding than pushchair pushers as their dogs scurry in multiple directions threatening to snare your knees in their leashes and it is always your fault.  From this you can tell the prosperity of the area.  The poorer the area, the earlier in the morning people head to work, something you can witness if you take a  tube train from Mile End at 06.00.  There are the cyclists, looking like left over domestiques from the Tour de France, in top team kits, with more equipment than I have in my car.  It is only at 07.30 that the locals begin to head to work, appearing like the Eloi in 'The Time Machine' (1960) in this case as if summoned by some silent signal.  Literally five minutes can be the difference between an empty street and it being filled with apparently sightless zombies, only zombies who march and brook no-one else in their path.

Apparently a quarter of adults walk for less than two hours per week; I do four to six hours; the recommended is one hour thirty minutes.  I now walk 6.5Km per day, averaging about 6kph.  As occasionally I drive and sometimes I go out at the weekends too, I cover 25-38Km per week.  However, having my health reviewed by my doctor recently, this was deemed to be 'inactive'.  Thus, though I feel healthier from walking apparently it is far from being enough actually to make me healthy.  I have noticed that the stress brought about by idiots driving has been reduced.  However, I would contest the suggestion made in the reports that came out in May, that walking benefits your mental health.  The time you are left to ponder life and to think that I am in a job that I can only afford two suits and I live as a sub-tenant with an immigrant family, is not cheering.  In addition, living in such a prosperous area I see so much arrogant behaviour even of people walking and cycling, let alone the car drivers who regularly try to kill me on the Zebra crossings.  I often arrive at work or back home thoroughly dispirited by seeing how unpleasant people are and knowing that I will never own a house again, not even one of the small, mid-20th century terraced places.  Perhaps I need to put my brain into an ipod or a smartphone to avoid such daily mental challenges.

I did aspire, briefly, to be a flâneur.  This term these days usually means someone who is pretty much a layabout going back to its 16th century routes.  However in the 19th century in France it took on a more proactive sense of being someone who strolled in order to explore his/her urban environment. The ideal flâneur was seen as an individualist, not willing to fit into the category of the 'badaud', i.e. someone who simply gazed without thought at what they were passing, perhaps like the modern 'rubber-necker'.  The flâneur seems to be having a bit of revival, perhaps not in South-West London but in West London by Will Self, author, raconteur and now professor, who is apparently renowned for his peripatetic lectures, i.e. lectures while walking, an approach in theory dating back to Aristotle (384-332BCE), though that view may stem from a mistranslation.  Self's approach in turn seems to have been highlighted by his book 'Walking to Hollywood' (2010) stemming from his obsessive compulsive disorder and obsessions going back to the early 2000s of walking great distances out from London.  Like myself, he did not find the walks curative or beneficial for his mental health.  From what I have heard from an old friend of this blog, his colleague, John Francis, seems to be developing the flâneur concept in terms of lecturing and in exploring the urban environment, perhaps, it has been suggested, stemming from his background in film studies.  This sense of people walking through London and other urban locations equipped unlike any flâneur of the past to challenge, check and capture the scene is an exciting one.  However, I imagine like running and cycling it will be taken and made into a colourful pose activity with expensive clothing that you simply must buy in order to be into it properly.

The flâneur, even on a daily walk, is exploring the town/city, being alert to its history and its changes even day-on-day let alone over the seasons, years and centuries.  It is seen as then leading on into street photography, not only witnessing the urban scene but capturing it.  Wikipedia refers to Susan Sontag in this respect, but I would go back to Robert Doisneau, who has brought street scenes of his Paris in that era to many people in succeeding decades.  Thus, I equipped myself with small camera and dreamt of having the tools to look at the spaces I walked through an augmented reality application on a smartphone, even adding to the elements available online from my walk.  Yet, it has failed.  Even when I got passed the blood-filled blisters, I found that I simply moved like the blind zombies, in fact not even marching at their pace.  I move furtively, seeking to avoid being close enough to a school to be shouted at for being a potential molester, dodging the cyclists on the pavement (despite the minimal traffic on the roads I walk beside), heads down, the world blotted out by the iPlayer.  Getting to work is a physical and mental survival course.  I am not excited by the day-to-day changes and I am depressed by the streets that show me everything I can never have and more.

My walking saves me some money in petrol and that saves the planet some milligrams of pollution.  I guess the stress is not as bad as when I drove and perhaps my chances of being injured or killed have fallen now I am on suburban pavements rather than the M25.  However, it has shown me that not everyone can be a flâneur.  You need to be rich enough and have sufficient prospects not to be overwhelmed by the weight of other people's opportunities.  You certainly need an arrogance to face down the arrogance of those unhappy at you being in the space they want to move into.  It probably helps if you are a woman so that you are not considered a potential burglar, rapist or paedophile at every step.  So I guess the flâneuse it possible in this world.  Perhaps then you can get some benefit from walking through a city.  For me, there are no mental benefits, bar the fact that I am not pursued by the ghosts of my hometown bullies.  Even the doctor's system claims that there is no physical benefit and that walking 25Km is insufficient to render me anything more than 'inactive'.

Catherine Hakim's Ancillism: The Darkness Beyond Post-Feminism

Back in January 2008, I wrote about my concerns for the position and behaviour of both women and men in British society as a result of the growing prevalence of post-Feminist views: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2008/01/hazards-of-post-feminism-going-awry.html  My concern, which does not seem to have been contradicted by anything which has happened since, was that with the dismissal of Feminist attitudes as too austere and inappropriate for our hyper-consumerist age.  Consequently, girls and women were feeling that they needed to return to old fashioned views of femininity evoking a submissiveness and domesticity, yet, contrary to previous decades, shot through with over-emphasised sexuality encompassing body shape, plastic surgery, sexualised clothing and behaviour, rather than a demure attitude.   Conversely boys and men are increasingly re-subscribing to outdated modes of masculinity particularly involving violence and the treatment of women as simply sex objects, needing protection, but ultimately disposable.

Some of these things seemed to have retracted a little in the intervening years.  Total pink now seems to be less de rigeur for girls and their mothers, but other elements such as platform-soled shoes with dangerously high heels as office wear and the return of skin-tight leggings across the age ranges suggest that while the issue might mutate it has not gone away.  Then I came across the work of Catherine Hakim of the London School of Economics.  Her book released last month is entitled 'Honey Money: The Power of Erotic Capital'.  From reviews it seems poorly researched and repetitive.  However, what is alarming is that it creates a kind of ideology for the extreme elements of post-Feminism that I had highlighted before.  I guess this needs a new terminology as I imagine that even ardent supporters of post-Feminism would feel alarmed at going as far as Hakim.  She talks of 'sexonomics'.  Perhaps more accurately it should be termed something around female servitude, disempowerment, deference, let me propose 'Ancillism', taken from the Latin word for 'slave girl', ancilla.

Basically Hakim feels that British and American women, as opposed to French women, have entirely 'forgotten' that a way to success for them is to draw on their 'assets' to create a 'striking effect' (a term she takes from philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer).  She builds on Pierre Bourdieu's views of personal capital, i.e. those things that help us get on in life such as money; our intelligence, knowledge, training, education; and networks with friends, family, contacts, etc.  To this Hakim adds the blatantly titled 'erotic capital'.  Now, apparently, this has been used by American sociologists before, referring to physical appearance and sex appeal.  On top of those attributes Hakim adds charm, sociability and sexual 'expertise' into the mix. 

Her entire list includes, as journalist Zoe Williams noted in 'The Guardian': 'beauty; sexual attractiveness; social skills like grace, charm and discreet flirtation; liveliness, which is a mixture of physical fitness, social energy and good humour; social presentation, including dress, jewellery and other adornments; and finally, sexuality itself, competence, energy, imagination.'  Now, a few of these sound like you might have expected from a finishing school, especially charm and sociability, but the others, especially a need to have 'competence, energy and imagination' in terms of sex, are where Hakim takes the steps way beyond Post-Feminism.

The reason why Hakim feels that women alone need to boost their erotic capital, is because of the imbalance in sexual desire between men and women, what she calls the 'male sex deficit'.  Consequently her simple premise is that the reason why women are not progressing well in business or in many cases to even get a job is that they are too frumpy and thus are not attracting male interest whether to be employed or be promoted.  As Will Self sharply noted in 'The Guardian' this suggests that Hakim feels that to get on women should stop focusing on their education or their networks and should simply focus on physical appearance and how they project themselves in a sexual manner.  This means that they will then be appealing to aged men with power who are desperate for easy sex and are willing to reward women for providing it.  Does the model not sound rather like prostitution?  At the minimum it seems to be the motives behind those women who aim to become a Playboy 'bunny' and end up married to superannuated Hugh Heffner. 

Despite Hakim's inclusion of 'competence, energy and imagination' in terms of sexual skills, these are all to be tailored not for the greater pleasure of the woman or a shared pleasure with a partner, but purely towards the needs of a man.  Why should not the man need 'competence, energy and imagination' when engaging in sex?  This is why I feel Hakim is putting the woman very much into the slave girl role: entirely a provider with only the man as consumer.  The thrust of Hakim's thesis also suggests that clothing, jewellery, other adornments (not clear what she means, does this mean cosmetics? Tattoos?  Branding?) and beauty itself however augmented are purely to allow the woman to 'buy' provision from the man, nothing about the woman herself potentially enjoying these aspects of herself.

Hakim's philosophy seems to be consumerism taken yet another step.  It is probably unsurprising that Self ends up quoting Marx in terms of sexual usage.  She is incredibly dismissive of overweight women, blaming them entirely for their condition.  To quote Lucy Kellaway in the 'Financial Times', Hakim's view is that '[o]besity is self-inflicted'; 'has no benefit and destroys erotic capital' and '[f]atties deserve no sympathy or special treatment as their girth "is unnecessary and indefensible".'  Apparently Hakim feels too many women, not simply the overweight, simply do not make 'enough effort' in how they appear and claims that they lose 10-15% of the income they could be earning as a result. You just wonder why she did not stop there and question whether it is right that women and not men, have salaries dependent on how much they sexualise themselves. Again it brings me back to the slave girl analogy.

Naturally as you can see by the references I make, Hakim has been condemned by a string or reviewers, Claire Black in 'The Scotsman' is another.  Hakim seems quite robust in challenging those who challenge her.  Williams notes that after interviewing Hakim, she telephoned Williams's boss questioning about Williams frame of mind, assuming that her negativity to her ideas must stem from a relationship break up.  To a great degree, something very bad for an academic, Hakim has sunk so deep into her view of the world that she has real difficulty in even envisaging what a different perspective on her ideas might look like.  I have not noticed 'The Sun' newspaper with its daily photo of a topless woman and the common advice to women who find their man losing interest to be more sexy for him, picking up on Hakim's work, though it seems to fit in perfectly with their philosophy towards women.  Whilst the 'Daily Mail' apparently warmed to earlier comments from Hakim that women need to be more ambitious and 'marry up' to achieve financial success (as if we all lived in the era of Jane Austen), they do not seem to have embraced this further step down the post-Feminist road to Ancillism.

This is not to say that in the media Hakim has been without support.   Bryony Gordon writing in 'Daily Telegraph' has bought right into the philosophy, even making changes in her own life, having her hair styled, running to make her buttocks more trim and shopping at LK Bennett whose opening webpage says 'Exude Glamour' (though in fact their styles are very old fashioned looking like they have arrived from somewhere between 1955 and 1983).  She claims in her youth she was tutored that to appear sexy as a woman was to reduce one's IQ and now seems to be a convert entirely to Hakim's line.  She feels  Nigella Lawson, Tamara Mellon, Samantha Cameron and Miriam Clegg fit into this category too.  When the latter two are the wives of the prime minister and deputy prime minister you do wonder if it will be long before post-Feminism if not Ancillism, becomes government policy, as it seems to have become under the Berlusconi administration in Italy. Gordon feels Hakim's philosophy should be made part of the curriculum for school girls.  More support comes from Sarah Vine writing in 'The Times'.  It is probably unsurprising that the right-wing press support Ancillism, for them having ranks of deferential, nubile young women servicing wealthy men, rather than spending the money to offer women real opportunities, probably seems some kind of solution to 'broken Britain'.

Of course, Mrs. Cameron and Mrs. Clegg have adopted the traditional, pre- and post-Feminist approach of getting on through marrying rich men.  They like everyone in the public eye these days, have been packaged by image consultants.  In addition, possibly because they have no need, do not seem to tap into Hakim's list of attributes women should foster.  Perhaps this is because women make up more of the electorate than men.  The trouble is, not for those women like Gordon and those she mentions but for the everyday woman, trying to start a career or progress in a career in an ordinary business.  With people in the media supporting Hakim and suggesting other leading women do too (even without their consent) and her ideas seemingly coming with academic credentials, then a bright young woman could not be criticised for thinking she has to increase her 'erotic capital' through dressing, adorning, behaving and becoming expert in the ways that Hakim lists. 

On these bases one does wonder what 'employability' on university courses of the future might include if this insidious attitude takes?  What then for the women who do not have the chance of university?  In the context Hakim is trying so hard to foster, will they see no alternative but to comply, that offering themselves up to appeal to some man with a 'sexual deficit' is the only way to survive?  It is interesting that the image heading Self's review was not of a string of successful women in smart dresses but of Indonesian prostitutes, from whom apparently the term 'honey money' derives.

While I do not believe in censorship, we need to see quickly and vigorously ideas and statements that challenge Hakim's Ancillism if we are not to see young women already advised that their best bet is to become a domestic drudge to some man, take further steps and commodify themselves just as Hakim advices.  It seems incredible that in the space of forty years we have gone from women being told to aspire to be prime minister to being told that their best hope is to prostitute themselves.