2013-06-20T05:32:56-04:00 Sian S. Rathore http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=sian-s-rathore Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Sian S. Rathore Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2537689 2013-01-23T19:05:51-05:00 2013-03-25T05:12:01-04:00

Sian S. Rathore http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sian-s-rathore/ this week in Independent Voices, has identified the problem with young women today; discussing the pornification of everyday culture, irresponsible role models for our children and how technology plays a role in the easy distribution of pornography and hastily taken nude photographs. However, having read the article and considered her opinion, I found - as maybe others will - it's all rather more complicated than that.

It's easy to decry the problems of today's youth with a voice of condescension that harks back to the good old days but conversely it's also easy to forget the problems of the past when using this line of debate. Indeed, Dent's article is full of problems symptomatic of the modern age, and rightfully states how technology and it being a vehicle for the distribution of exploitative pornography has indeed caused an irrevocable change in how men view women, and how young women view themselves. That cannot be argued, and it is very true that it is now much easier for people to access hardcore pornography, teaching young men that all women love orally and anally entertaining several men in turns, and that this is expected of young women. This is an irrefutable point to make and to attempt to argue against it would be ridiculous. However, Dent's issue seems to be with the women, and the girls, but not the men, and the boys. She describes Rihanna as a "hero" with an "inability to wear knickers" amongst young women, but also that her highly publicized relationship with Chris Brown is making our teenage sisters and daughters believe they need to be in an abusive relationship.

Indeed, the same people who cried outrage when she released the song S&M (which included the lyrics: "sticks and stones may break my bones / but whips and chains excite me") went so far as to complain that she was promoting abuse (these are of course the same people who believed that 50 Shades of Grey is made all women want to be quite literally chained to the cooker and kicked in the face with a hob-nailed boot whilst having their nipples tweaked because a handsome billionaire might throw them an iPad).

Now, I'm sure there are a lot of women who enjoy the BDSM subculture and even a submissive role in sex, but this doesn't justify abuse within a relationship. In the same respect, I doubt somehow that after seeing those horrific pictures of Rihanna with her face swollen and bruised at the hands of her abusive partner made young girls think: "That's what I want! That's exactly what I want to do with my life!". The press coverage of Rihanna's injuries did not glamourize her struggle, it did not make domestic violence acceptable. It highlighted the evils of it, the lowliness of Chris Brown, but now, apparently, the fault that lies at the hands of Rihanna. In some circles this is known as "slut shaming", and most female popstars have fallen at the hands of it. Remember when Madonna released her infamous book 'Sex', and how slut-shamed she was? I don't believe it made a bit of difference, save for dividing women up again into groups of women who think for themselves, and women who think for other women. It is also known as victim blaming, placing the responsibility in the hands of the victim. Sure, Chris Brown might have knocked her about, but hell, she can't keep her panties on and she sort of did go back to him, so what on earth does she expect if he roughs her up a bit again? Besides, she wrote that song didn't she? Well there you go, then. She probably enjoys it.

Another piece of slut-shaming that occurs in this article is that of Tulisa, who most people will know as a judge on X-Factor, but some (those of you who have The Internet, perhaps) will know as the unfortunate woman who made a consensual, sexual video with her ex-boyfriend, who then leaked it to the general public. Again, Dent shames her and places blame directly into her hands for the problem with women today. This could well be my naïve opinion as I'm only young and only just about remember VHS players and disposable cameras, but is Dent suggesting that if the technology were not around back in them days, more women wouldn't have made a cheeky video to add spice to a relationship with someone with whom they were in love? Did Tulisa at any point say she was forced to do the things she did in that video? Did she tell other young women "I did this to show him I loved him"? No, she didn't. So how is it her fault, that a man betrayed her and made this video public? And how does she now bear the massive burden of responsibility to teach all young women not to make her mistake (that she made long before her sudden rise to fame)? And how does that same responsibility fall to Rihanna? Yes, they are very much in the public eye and interest but does being famous mean you are not allowed to be vulnerable? You are not allowed to fall prey to an abusive partner, and you are not allowed to make any mistakes whatsoever?

So, even if it's not the fault of popstars, surely it's the fault of the modern age. Of course, back in the good old days when we'd never had it so good, there was no such thing as BlackBerry Messenger (an instant message service used on a popular smartphone), there was no Snapchat (a new thing the kids are using whereby one can send a picture to another recipient, and that picture deletes itself shortly after), there was no YouTube (a video streaming service which blocks all pornography) and there was no Tumblr (a blogging platform which does not block any pornography). We had no 'What Happens in Kavos', no 'Sun, Sea and Suspicious Parents'. Dent references a shocked 90s generation, looking at what them kids are getting up to these days in disbelief. One must then assume that booze cruise holidays didn't exist in the 90s, that all of those 18-30 reality shows that were on in the 90s weren't actually on, and maybe we imagined them. 'The Word' didn't actually have a section called The Hopefuls which saw people licking armpits and bathing in cows' urine just to get onto television, and Eurotrash didn't actually caricature the darker and stranger recesses of human experimental sexuality (well, it might have, but it was on past 9pm so there was no way the kids could ever watch it). Sure, the 90s were a chaste and sensible decade.

Now, Dent might accuse me of being "a particular breed of post-feminist numpty who'll scream "I have the right to text my vagina to anyone I want"" but actually, I do, and should I choose to I'm not doing so because Lady Gaga told me to because I read in Smash Hits that Katy Perry does it too (Smash Hits is still a thing, right?). Furthermore, I would grant young women today with rather more credit than to go blindly following things seen on television or The Internet. Sure, there will be followers, but this is no new thing. We are also living in the age of Laurie Penny and Ellie Mae O'Hagan. We have the social platform of Twitter where outrage at shirts or websites that encourage rape culture can be decried and shouted down quicker than ever before, we have blogs such as The F Word and Jezebel. As I said at the beginning of this article, it is very easy to look back onto the past with a great deal of condescension, and it is also very easy to pepper an article with hyperbole and histrionics for the sake of entertainment, but both of these things are also very dangerous, and don't seem to be sending us forward with excellent new knowledge and power, but very far backwards indeed.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1666075 2012-07-11T15:48:02-04:00 2012-09-10T05:12:03-04:00

Sian S. Rathore http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sian-s-rathore/ This post may contain spoilers.

A couple of weeks ago, I did not know what 50 Shades of Grey even was. I'd heard it was soft porn for women, with an unlikely romance at its centre, written around the framework of what was originally Twilight fan fiction. I avoided it for as long as I could, then I read the first half and decided it was awful, and vowed to never return. When you're a writer who takes themselves far too seriously, you make a point of studiously avoiding whatever the nation has been swept up in. I read maybe two chapters of Twilight before losing interest, even Harry Potter has never really done it for me. I scoffed at The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, eschewed the Tragic Memoirs boom we saw in the early noughties and remember turning down the offer to borrow Memoirs of a Geisha from friends at school because I didn't want to be a part of the wave. However, when my partner revealed he was reading 50 Shades, I found myself waiting until he'd reached the point I'd discarded it at, and dipping back into it only to prove a point to myself and the world that I had opinions that needed to be heard. Being a writer myself there is always some envy that fuels this criticism, a certain snobbery that comes with being unsuccessful and impatient, and I was all too quick to decry its literary merit than to look at any other factor of the book.

My favourite novel is predictably Wuthering Heights. It is a horrible book, no matter what anybody tells you, and should not be seen as a suitable comparison to a real life romantic endeavour. Nobody should want to be part of the force of nature that is Cathy and Heathcliff. Women who read Wuthering Heights and fantasise about being in that situation are surely deluding themselves: who would want to be with a violent sociopath who maybe raped his wife and maybe murdered many men in the three years he went missing? Who would want to be in love with someone whose true passion is hate, who can never love you as much as he loves himself? Well the answer is none of us do, but it is a fantasy we women sometimes escape to. I am one of those women. I admit that my love of cold-blooded, stone-hearted men in literature is a completely irrational and undesirable one. Whenever I read Wuthering Heights I swoon each time at Heathcliff's dark features and vicious temper, I imagine I am the Catherine he has caught in his grip, insane at the thought of losing him, dying on the moors and shivering with madness when he finally admits his sincere love. Another favourite of mine is Patrick Bateman of American Psycho; whether he actually did commit those foul, disgusting murders or whether he was a raging lunatic at the peak of a psychotic delusion, there is something about him that I like. I like him, and Heathcliff, because they are unrealistic. They are hyperreal, sexed up and romanticised versions of the monsters we walk amongst. I don't actually want to be with a murderer, and I'd be very happy if for the rest of my life I never met a man who thought he was Heathcliff, but I like to escape to a world where I am the tragic heroine, and he is the embittered megalomaniac. It's this world of opposites that affords my escapism. I am a proud feminist, and maybe this fetish for fictional villains is the dichotomy to my living in a world where women are unsafe. In real life it is me who likes to be in control of my own heart. In fiction, I like to take a backseat to my own wants and needs. For this reason, I started to fall in love with Christian Grey and - in the spirit of discarding my own wants and needs - stopped caring that the book wasn't written the same élan as most books I indulge in.

As I'm sure most of my readers will know already, Christian Grey is a young, handsome and very wealthy man working in Mergers and Acquisitions (like Bateman) and a mysteriously troubled past has made him sadistic and unreasonable to a world that doesn't understand him (like Heathcliff). He begins on a relationship based around a vaguely sinister contract with a virgin called Anastasia, in which lots of exciting talk of "hard limits" and "soft limits" is discussed. Over the course of their affair, Christian teaches Anastasia how to enjoy her body and his together, how to pleasure herself, and how to find the joy that well-timed, measured pain can give. Somehow, he becomes completely enchanted by Anastasia, but that doesn't mean the relationship is easy. As predicted, just as Christian gives he also takes away, and whilst he can furnish his new doll with a car and expensive gadgets, he cannot give himself to her, and most of all, he cannot let Ana touch him.

Not wanting to spoil the ending for the three people left in the world who have not read it, Ana and Christian's relationship had become very affectionate, and in one of the final scenes where Christian starts to become romantic and emotionally open - I found myself screaming in my head: "He MUST be manipulating her, this CAN'T be right". I was disappointed every time Christian gave himself to Ana. Let down every time he made a compromise for her. Suddenly, I found myself getting angry whenever it seemed that Ana was the true dominant in their relationship. Finally in the last scene I fought my way back to Mr. Grey, who at this point had become more and more the Byronic hero and less and less the heartless psycho. However, distaste at those scenes I soon found was not borne of my love of Christian. It was borne of my intense dislike for Anastasia Steele.

I can suspend my disbelief far enough that a handsome billionaire would fall in love with a common student. I can even suspend my disbelief that the gorgeous Mr. Grey would also be a talented pilot, piano player, wine enthusiast and also disarmingly well-endowed. What I cannot believe is that Anastasia has him simply enchanted, whilst being so wet behind the ears and oblivious to the world and its complications. Many times Anastasia will drive Christian wild with envy when she talks to a male friend. She will have Christian torturing himself mad over her indifference. Christian will follow her thousands of miles across America - but what I don't tend to believe is why. I found, when reading, that Ana simply gets what she wants, and this is never explained. Where is the storm and stress? Where is the justification for this wild relationship? How is Christian Grey so maddened by someone whose only responses to erotic situations are limited to a woman who constantly refers to her vagina as her "sex" and can only utter an internal "Oh, my" at Christian's every whim? Even more, how am I supposed to believe that Ana is the first woman to ever tell Christian "No"? When she is not talking about how beautiful he is, she is talking about how shy and retiring she is, and how often so irrationally jealous. Of course, Christian bows down to her insecurities and reassures her things are okay.

Maybe it's just me. This book is porn for women, that much is true. However I'm the kind of woman who needs to believe the porn is feasibly real. I don't like seeing videos of mindless hardcore sex because if I can't suspend my disbelief long enough to believe that the naked bodies on screen both want to be there with each-other, then I can't see how I can extract any eroticism from it. It is the same with literature. If I want to escape into a world of passion and turmoil then I need to believe I can somehow identify with the female lead so that the pictures can come alive and leap about in my head joyously. With 50 Shades of grey, I just can't quite get there. Why would I want to be like Ana? Surely I would rather be some unmentioned other female character, the one who lures Christian away from this easy target.

I have downloaded the rest of the trilogy to my Kindle and they are sitting there in my reading list attempting to draw me in. I thought what would offend me about this book would be how it's written. Sure, some of the language is a little questionable and some of the dialogue confusing, but that doesn't matter - it is after all porn - and it is not porn's job to be artistically beautiful. What disappointed me was I read 50 Shades of Grey because I wanted to read something arousing and gripping, and something was very much missing. If the spoilers I have read online are to be believed then I cannot see myself falling in love with Mr. Grey, who is changed by Anastasia, who ends up marrying him and having children with him, taming the beast. Didn't EL James' mother ever tell her that you must never try to change the man you fell in love with? Because after all, when he is changed, what is there to love?]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1465010 2012-05-01T19:00:00-04:00 2012-05-01T17:32:13-04:00

Sian S. Rathore http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sian-s-rathore/
I have been a critic for much longer than I have been a poet. I saw criticism as my 'way in' to literature. I realised early that I am much better at having a discerning eye for detail than I am at delivering work that is of the standard that I expect of others and I can admit that without any hint of humour or irony. It takes a certain kind of person to be a critic, and it is true that a critic is often a frustrated version of the very thing they are criticising, and I am that kind of person. The outrage at a bad review is often: "Yes, well I'd like to see YOU try to do this" and begs the question: can restaurant critics ever actually cook? Can music critics ever write a game-changing hit? Could Simon Cowell get up on stage and deliver a stirring performance of Someone Like You pitch perfect? Most importantly, can literary critics actually write?

The answer to this is, it isn't important. Even when given that most writers looking to pursue a career in poetry or fiction will first become critics, it is not important. The job of the critic is to see things the writer can't, to check over the work and to give people a rough idea of whether or not it is worth their money and attention, and since in the world of literature writers have long since given up on the idea that any money will be made at all, attention makes the world go round.

Releasing a book must be scary. Throwing your innermost thoughts out there to the world and expecting people to at least acknowledge it with a few kind words, or any words at all. In order to write a book you will have had to spend hours and hours editing, deleting huge chunks of what you thought were important parts to your narrative. You will have had to have found a publisher, and maybe you'll have been given an advance. This will have given your ego a huge boost because you will of course know lots of writers who would give an arm and a leg to actually have their name affiliated with a house. Maybe you've simply released an ebook but that itself required a process. You will know a lot of the right people, you will have spent a long time networking and getting to know who's who in order to get noticed and then suddenly, this heady journey comes to an abrupt anti-climax when the book itself is flung out there into the wide world without so much as a by-your-leave. All you have left is your computer, a reliable search engine, and the willpower to not refresh the page every five seconds to see if your efforts have been picked up by the critics yet. You will have sent your book to a few of the main magazines of criticism and you will have to wait whilst they sift through their endless backlog until it is your turn to be reviewed, and even then you have no idea whether they'll like it or not.

Sometimes, if you are that worried, you might even contact a critic directly. If you are a writer then you should take away from this article this one piece of advice: never, ever do this.
Many is the time I've logged into Facebook of all places to find messages in my inbox kindly requesting that I give their book a once-over and offer a favourable opinion (this is normally unsubtly inferred in the body of the message, that the review has to be good). Most of the time, I will read the things I have been sent and if I feel strongly stirred either way, I will write back to them with a review they can use, or ask them if I can submit the review to one of the magazines I write for. However recently, I was sent a message by a young author asking me for a nice review. When, four days later, he hadn't heard from me, he launched a tirade of het-up tantrum talk all over my Facebook and Twitter page. I doubt this is the last time this will happen.

It made me think, however. It is true that now everyone is a writer, but not everyone is a critic. The balance has changed now and everyone feels they have something creative to give to the world, and this is no bad thing, though as a writer I believe you must develop a thicker skin than most. You are throwing yourself at the mercy of the critics, those who believe their opinion holds some sway, as you wonder which way their thumb will turn and what this means for your future career. It is perhaps not a good idea to try to influence the critics, it is a worse idea to antagonise them, and even worse still to display that your one weakness is the fact that you can only gain self-validation through the words of others. Even without the critics, you will have people say things to you on any of the myriad social networks you will no doubt be attached to that you may not like. You might get an inflammatory "@" reply on twitter, or someone might write something sarcastic on your Author Page on facebook.

As I said at the beginning of this article, being a writer is tough, and being reviewed isn't everything, and probably most people don't even read those things anyway. But if you're the sort of writer who needs reassurance (which most of us truly are), it is best not to antagonise the critics, or give a rise to those who have irked you. When you write something for public consumption you have created a piece of art that you want people to engage with, but above all, you have written something that makes you feel joyous for having created. If anything supersedes this joy, you ought to give up immediately. Not because you don't have the skill, but because you will eventually drive yourself quite mad.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1405774 2012-04-05T11:21:56-04:00 2012-06-05T05:12:01-04:00

Sian S. Rathore http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sian-s-rathore/ Guardian recently published this piece about creativity and suffering. It is true that over the years we have associated madness and despair with creative output, somehow linking creativity as a condition comorbid to most mental disorders; there is a myth of the beautiful mind, of the unique insight that a person in mental distress has that enables creativity that those who have not suffered cannot possibly achieve.

We all know about the insanity that Van Gogh, Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath lived with, and we perhaps are guilty of believing their work is made more beautiful because of our knowledge of their suffering. However I tend to wonder if we overlook the integrity of such works in light of their illness, and how condescending this really is. I sometimes wonder what else we know of Sylvia Plath, other than the fact she was a depressive poet who killed herself. I wonder if she was much more than poster girl for introspective depression we paint her as, much more than the stiff-starched collar of misery we make her wear.

The question of there being a link between creativity and mental illness has been the subject of much debate for a long time now. So much so that mental illness has almost become fashionable amongst the creative elite to the point where mental illness is not subtly inferred, more audaciously proclaimed. It is now not unusual for writers to mention their prescriptions and diagnoses openly in poetry almost as if they are badges of honour. I am not arguing that mentally ill people should not be allowed to use their struggles in their art, far from it: creativity is cathartic and a lot of community mental health teams and psychiatric inpatient / outpatient services offer music and art therapy, and perhaps the obsessive thoughts that come with conditions such as mania, depression, anxiety disorders, psychotic disorders etc. lend themselves to the creative process, however the presence of these disorders should not be the foundations upon which people build their creative careers.

I feel there is a pressure on the "sane" amongst us to dwell upon problems that don't exist in order to be taken seriously as a "struggling artist". There is nothing glamorous about mental illness, there is nothing to be glorified. Certainly, being mentally ill is not something any artist should aspire to, and it breeds a culture of Wikipedia psychiatry and offensive self-diagnoses on the part of the otherwise mentally healthy creative community. However this is not a new thing.

Salvador Dali's Paranoiac-critical_method was a famous technique employed by surrealists in which the artist induces a state of paranoia within himself in order to create something tinged with the delirium and distress of delusion, to make something truly creative, truly unique. More recently famously bipolar Daniel Johnston admitted in the 2005 documentary about his life and work, that sometimes he would sometimes skip a few days of his antipsychotic medication because it made him more creative and energetic, this way he could produce a huge output of work and perform with the blistering heat of bipolar mania. After all, any bipolar person will tell you that the beginnings of a manic episode (before the hallucinations and delusions kick in) are fantastic for creative output, so much so that the person living with mania often will not seek help, because they cannot see a problem in how they are functioning when their creativity suddenly rockets into brilliance.

However, one should not build a writing career off the back of a diagnosis of severe and enduring mental illness, or assume that a diagnosis will somehow bolster their chances of being known on the scene as another suffering poet. For the mentally ill, creativity can often be an escape, or an outlet used for exorcising mental abnormality. For the creative, mental illness is not - and should not be - a pre-requisite. ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1227002 2012-01-24T08:00:59-05:00 2012-03-25T05:12:01-04:00

Sian S. Rathore http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sian-s-rathore/ Nikolai Duffy's in Manchester. Most of the crowd were friends and colleagues of Duffy's, some of us students, many of us students of English and Creative Writing, most of us poets ourselves. Duffy's work was an innovative collection of poems with an over-arching narrative which explored grief, loneliness, and had a smack of eccentricity which gave the collection a very British feel, which was no bad thing.

Throughout the evening looking around everyone was recognisable in some way, either due to having recently published a collection, started editing a magazine you read, or are at least teaching you and / or someone you know on a Creative Writing program. For students of English and Creative Writing, you know and respect everyone because everyone around you is somehow successful and well-known, and more importantly you know that you yourself will remain a relative unknown during, and for some time after your Creative Writing course.

The problem of the Creative Writing course is expectation and subsequently impatience - during such courses students often learn which small presses to tap up, how to write publishable work and perhaps the most intimidating factor - students have their writing endlessly shaped by workshops with their peers, and now assume that if you are not publishing your first collection before you are 30, you are a failure.

This push is apparently what makes you a good writer, and indeed it is true that a lot of the writers I respect and admire today have graduated from and usually are teaching on Creative Writing postgraduate degrees. The problem is however that the Creative Writing degree is a monster which feeds itself.

It seems that it is the degree rather than the writing it produces is the most important factor when trying to get published, as if the readers are somehow going to be fooled that bad poetry is good just because someone managed to earn a degree in the art of its craft. Even mentioning that it is a study in progress can bolster a young writer's chances of being published, at a lot of magazines where seemingly tradition and formality reign over innovation and experimentalism.

I say this loosely, as England does boast many a small press whose purpose is to champion innovation, but they are severely outnumbered by those perpetuating poems which could have been written 40 years ago. As a student poet myself I have fallen at this hurdle many a time; to write poetry as you expect a poem ought to be written, rather than to write poetry the way you want the poem to be written. This is down to the popularity contest feeling surrounding the poetry world, surrounding the stars of Creative Writing degrees, to write something populist and be liked is one thing, to write something innovative and to struggle is another.

It is my personal choice to eschew a Creative Writing degree as I don't believe it can help me personally grow as a writer. Recently at the launch of an anthology I was published in the editor asked me if I studied creative writing. I said no. Her immediate response was: "Why?" - again I realised I was in a room full of Creative Writing MAs and PhDs. But not me. I still choose to study English, but I study the theory and criticism of novels and poetry rather than the direct construction of them.

One of the most productive aspects of an English Literature course is the endless reading. Your reading list is full of books you have to read and know in order to write your essays and pass your exams. I sometimes wonder if a Creative Writing course demands such knowledge of past and present literature? It must do, as many students of Creative Writing fall into the trap of emulation, and before even speaking with the poet you can tell they are a huge fan of (most commonly) Sylvia Plath, or Ezra Pound, poets still describing themselves as "imagist" nearly a century after Imagism.

Nevertheless my decision to break with Creative Writing as study may work against my progression as a poet. I can't drop anyone's names when submitting to magazines; I'm not studying under any poets the magazines already like. My work has not been workshopped by my fellow students, the only feedback I receive is the level of applause I can gauge after each performance, the less the applause, the more that poem needs.

My advice here is not to avoid Creative Writing courses as I do believe for some people they are the best route to take, and can give a young writer the confidence to reach their fullest, most impressive potential. My advice here is to not assume these programs are your only way in. Things will always be slightly harder if you are not studying Creative Writing as you're not constantly surrounded by poets but maybe that's a good thing. Give yourself some breathing space, and don't try to rush to the finish line before you can recognise Imagism from Flarf.
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