I Hope That It's Because It's S***

As you're undeniably aware, this week, Amanda Knox, the wrongly accused murderer of Meredith Kercher by the Italian authorities has finally been acquitted of the charges, and, clearly shaken, disturbed, most certainly fragile, she has bravely returned to face the media circus - which had long settled upon the assumption of her being a crazed killer, her love of 'sex games' causing the tragedy - to speak about her ordeal. Speaking in Seattle on her return, signs point towards Post Traumatic Stress, as she quavered through half sobs and darting eyes:

'I'm really overwhelmed right now... I was looking down from the aeroplane and it seemed like everything wasn't real... thank you to everyone who believed in me... my family is the most important thing to me, and I really just want to go and be with them'

The event has shown up the cruelty and anti-feminist practices in action of many members of the press and their organisations, although, for the usual suspects, this has been approached with severely dubious tact; The Daily Mail took an unusual perspective on the story, distancing themselves whilst not entirely rejecting their earlier vilification of Knox, going with:

'She has matured into a very different young woman from the unappealingly self-absorbed figure we first saw smooching with her boyfriend when Meredith’s body was barely cold.'

Again, kudos to David Jones of the Daily Fail for going with: What now for Foxy? Dreams of being a mother, Hollywood millions and a new life as a professional martyr to injustice. Very observant Jones! More than me I must say, because I could have sworn she said she just wanted to go home, but I must have missed out on the subtle indications of dreams of sex, money, motherhood and sacrifice. Just as well since that's what you originally said she was all about... well, perhaps without the motherhood bit, but you were probably doubting that she could be allowed with children.

It's an unusual way to seem supportive, when all it makes me think of is William Thomas's The Unadjusted Girl (1923) which argued that because of men and women's unavoidably different biological personality traits, (because all women act like ladies... which really even in 1923 is a heap of BS - note the caught on camera Suffragettes of 1912) women are too busy wanting to lie on their backs and think of England to engage in criminal activity. When, however, a woman hasn't had enough attention and love, they use sex to get what they want, recklessly throwing aside dreams of domesticity for thrills, cash, and luxury; so if Jones argues Knox is a 'professional martyr to injustice', she sure still seems like a criminal.

It's long established Criminological fact that in criminal cases, where a woman is believed to have committed a crime which suggests she has stepped outside the roles of femininity, particularly if it represents a significant breach of normalcy for the submissive nature of motherhood and daughteronomy she is hit with the full, furious weight of the law. It is interesting to look at what even high class media publications such as Vanity Fair decided to select for print when the case broke in 2008, for the media's judgement of Knox has been in this case the more belligerent and insidious arbiter of the law, passing their verdict early on non-existent evidence. Painting her portrait from a combination of vague confessionals, Judy Bachrach uses Knox's 'high school drama teacher's confession, 'Let's lay it out: she wasn't a dazzler.', to Diya Patrick Lumumba - the oft described as 'innocent' man Knox would later under pressure implicate in the crime - happily telling Vanity, that in the bar she worked 'she spent most of her time chatting up guys and flirting'. Perhaps her lack of attention and love early in life meant she had to pursue sexual attentions and criminal actions? Gosh that profile seems to fit time and again...

Adding further to the profile of general weirdo, 'one of' Kercher's friends would tell the police to be printed in Vanity 'the first time I met her we were eating in a restaurant, when all of a sudden she began to sing in a loud voice. It was very strange and out of place.' I don't know about you reader, but if spontaneity and liberated expression is a legitimate precursor to 'extreme sex murder' (all VF btw ) then someone ought to either sew me up, or lock me up now.

Unsurprisingly, the ever wonderful Julia Kristeva can express my point more poetically than with my fresh annoyance on the point of this portraiture of a weirdo/criminal/sex fiend for strengthening the patriarchal order in About Chinese Women:

'If a woman cannot be part of the temporal symbolic order except by identifying with her father, it is clear that as soon as she shows any sign of that which, in herself, escapes such identification and acts differently, resembling the dream of the maternal body, she evolves into this 'truth' in question. It is thus that female specificity defines itself in patrilinear society: woman is a specialist in the unconscious, a witch, a bacchanalian, taking her jouissance in an anti-Apollonian, Dionysian orgy.' (154)

As Victor Burgin, less poetically, but perhaps more succinctly summarizes of Kristeva's philosophy of 'psycho-cultural otherness' in a description where Knox's transformation from the 'mousy' brunette scaring girls and luring men like a Siren in the bars of Italy, to 'Foxy Knox' (which will bring me back to my title, honest) is incredibly apt:

'... the woman in society... in the patriarchal, as perpetually at the boundary, the borderline, the edge, the 'outer limit' - the place where order shades into chaos, light into darkness. The peripheral and ambivalent position allocated to woman, says Kristeva, had led to that familiar division of the field of representation in which women are viewed as either saintly or demonic - according to whether they are seen as bringing the darkness or as keeping it out.' Geometry and Abjection 115-6

It seems that Knox has experienced this media transformation from 'bringing the darkness' to 'keeping out', from depraved 'unappealingly self self-absorbed' sex criminal to 'martyr to injustice'. Strangely then, the only figure who has had to make a public apology for his representation of Knox, is the ever enlightened Matthew Wright of The Wright Stuff who ran with Foxy Knoxy: Would Ya? on a recent episode in profoundly bad taste.

Wright's show not only served to play into this dialectic of psycho-cultural otherness, but served to severely attempt to undermine the entire question of double standards for women's position in law and media by reducing her to the level of sexual object, cruelly removed from any of the trials and tribulations which have reduced her to a traumatised and a confused woman, who once worked hard to meet her aspiration of becoming a teacher. It is not what Wright said, or more to the point what my lover Murdoch's Channel 5 sanctioned (indeed, Wright only apologises for 'the on-screen title was wrong, no doubt about it') that worries me, it is that Ofcom only made an investigation upon the basis of 15 complaints, an appallingly low amount of protest. This finally brings me back to my title, why is it so low? The choices surely are that either The Wright Stuff is a terrible programme for which 15 viewers would be an impressive amount, leaving a potential 100% complaint rate; and one could certainly argue this point quite strongly, or that simply his comments were simply out of time.

Considering the remaining memory of the Royal Wedding was Pippa Middleton's posterior, for which I have come across almost no complaint, it is only that Knox is now a recognised victim that the discussion was out of order, not that women should be belittled so much, their private bodies considered so much as publicly owned that there is nothing wrong in this discussion. I fear that this is in fact the culprit for the paltry amount of complaints, that the dialectic which exists of judging whether a woman is seen 'as bringing the darkness or as keeping it out' upon the basis of her looks (do I need to explain how this relates to Susan Boyle's 'transformation'?) is so well subconsciously accepted, that a woman must be a freshly traumatised individual to even elicit 15 complaints. Knox is a particularly vulnerable victim of this dialectic, but it is only her particular vulnerability which suggests that the conversation must be stopped. Women's bodies, lives, wounds are rightly there to be questioned, observed, and abused. Apparently.

What a Legend.

Freedom and the Dialectic

One of the greatest sources of shame I find as a Feminist, indeed, almost daily, is the problem of language. To be precise, my usage of language. The invasive and self protecting manipulation propagated by malestream media makes words which should be unconditionally offensive and oppressive; fair lexical choices.

One particular argument I frequently come across in relation to this point, and has often plagued me with indecision when it comes to what constitutes offensive language, as a woman and a feminist,, is that of subverting 'original' meaning, thereby transforming it into something amusing, or reasonable to use. It is in the hope of eventually removing the hostility surrounding the pattern of letters, that I most often come across these offensive terms be used. This is an argument which I could not in good conscience say I never let affect me, as, as much as I realise I should not, often my friends, programming, comedians pepper conversation with vocabulary from the misogynistic stock cupboard, 'slag' (exaggerate the 'a' for particular comic effect) 'hoe', 'tit' etcetera, mostly making me laugh. It's not just women this problem is restrained to, this same 'Language guilt' (for the lack of a better term) is often a topic of debate with homosexual friends of mine, who despite being very sensitive and supportive about complex gay rights issues, will often describe negative things as being 'gay'.

Louis C.K takes a rather insightful, and very amusing take on the topic in 'Chewed Up', making the point that childhood introduction to these stock offensive terms without understanding what they precisely meant can lead to life long habits of using the word, in spite of being clearly aware of what it means. It seems then logical that rather than shying away from talking about what these words mean from children, they should be openly explored, giving a full explanation of why it is offensive, who it targets, and therefore why it should not be used; it takes nothing more than common sense to work out that if you let a child know that something is naughty without telling them why, it simply becomes an easy way to gain attention.

The psychology of a Western child and of Western culture seem at times to not be as distantly distinct as it may seem: both are largely needs driven, often impulsive, and with fragmentary thoughts. I realise this is a rather sweeping generalisation, but let the point be considered as a metaphor for grappling the argument, with so many conflicting influences, ideas, and desires, how can one hope to be unwaveringly dogmatic and succeed?

In light of this conclusion, the remedy I more recently have hoped to experiment with in my life, seems both perfect, and impossible. In a malestream, Capitalist society, where a myriad conflicting influences, aspirations and origins of knowledge exist within each member, perhaps one cannot hope for a wholesale grassroots reinvention of individual words (a process which would almost inevitably never conclude) but rather to change the mode in which we describe the world around us, and more particularly the people in it. Labels, titles, minimizers of the essence of our humanity and eradicators of any traces of the individual are destructive, and impossible to fight. Just like the scientist attempting to fight a virus which has a different code within every carrier, they may succeed in one case, but the very next carrier is a different set of codes to crack; so is the futility of challenging individuals on their language choices. The only answer that I therefore can seem to comprehend is to rethink your own, and my own entire language patterns where labelling becomes an irrelevant or carefully managed system whereby people are not described in terms of gender, sexuality, race, religion, or any other corner of society oppressed by offensive labels. If we wish to label, it should be based on behaviour, characteristics, what we know of the individual, avoiding at all costs to begin to use any labels until we do.

I believe there is a innate desire in human psychology to label; it allows easy conclusions for elaborate thoughts, provides amusement, but it most importantly keeps us detached from strangers, simple to those who know us, and shackled in chains by our oppressors.