[alienation] couldn't care less

The Pub Philosopher brings our attention to the appalling young woman who did this:

Sitting through a murder trial listening to an iPod, hidden under a hijab, shows nothing but contempt for the judicial process.

He was referring to this:

A Muslim juror was thrown off a murder trial when she was caught listening to an MP3 music player under her headscarf.. Ruhela Khanom, 20, was exposed by another juror who spotted headphone wires around her neck. At the time of the discovery, the defendant was giving evidence from the witness box. Legal experts described the incident - which took place 13 days ago - as 'astonishing' and 'unique'.

The prosecution went on to say:

"If contempt is upheld, I would have thought that prison would be the likely outcome."

Before I even looked at the article I surmised it was a young woman. The hijab reference told me it was a Muslim but that was hardly relevant. The thing is, most regular readers know I'm dealing with upwards of 100 girls a week in this age range and the signals were so clear that this was one of those.

I have a lot of good things to say about young people today but I also have some negatives. One of those is the change which is coming over girls of 19 to 22 now. I see it everyday. It's a combination, it seems, of two things:

1] Alienation from the mechanisms of society so that the girl is now reacting more than ever in a closed circle only of other young people where certain behaviours are acceptable. It's a conscious resistance to the "old ways", to the grandparents, to the old traditions and then it slides into a sort of self-contained self-centredness of looks and clothes, music, shopping as an end in itself and the "it's all too much trouble-why do you bother me with your demands" way of operating.

2] It's a lifestyle bereft of constraints - sexual, in mores, in responsibilities - in other words, the life of a teenager is being prolonged past a reasonable age into the 20s and when the adult world makes demands, such as jury service, these demands are met by a teenage mind. She doesn't care, she's not part of it all, she has her ipod to keep to her reality. She's so easily b-o-o-o-ored, you know. She really, truly, believes she's done nothing wrong but will burst into tears that people are being "mean" to her.

Where do we start? Parents and teachers throwing up their hands and crying, "Kids today!" without actually getting down and doing what is necessary - bringing the kids up with strong societal values, making constant demands with no apology, insisting they take their place within the family and so on and so on.

And where are the parents? Out working. And why do the teachers do nothing? Because the majority are PCers who are too frightened to insist on things with the kids [this is a former head teacher saying this]. Too frightened they'll cease to be seen as "cool" and relevant without recognizing there must be some distance.

Once insist on kids toeing the line and accompany that with a clearly loving, caring, interested attitude and kids react positively in most cases. It's the wishy-washiness they meet with which gives them no parameters, no limits, which is the destructive force here. Then they are met with downright hostility and withdraw even more.

Again - firm constraints and a loving, caring, interested attitude are all that's necessary.

So no, it's absolutely no surprise or shock to read this. I feel sorry for the girl and that will sound strange after what I've written so far. I feel sorry because she grew up with conflicting values and like a kid, chose the easy way. Shut out responsibility.

Look about you everyday - ipod in one ear, mobile phone on the other with the new mouthpieces which hang round the neck ready to use. It's a complete world within an outer world.

Though I'm sympathetic to how she got to where she now is, still an example must be made of her. If only to underscore the seriousness of some aspects of life. I'm not talking hanging her up on a gibbet for public persual but a term of incarceration is certainly in order here.

Just as it was essential that Paris Hilton was put away and should have served her full time, this one needs to be incarcerated too for some time. It will do more than any words can to convey the message.

This rant will get too long if we start on the conflicting values themselves swirling around society so that's for another time.

[the oldest game] paradigm shift urgently required

A girl to fight for - a goddess in her own quiet way

The comments in the last post just have to be answered. If your model for relationships is:

There's absolutely no way I'm going to stop living the way I do until someone REALLY DOES offer me a special something. And I want to see real proof first. That's fair, isn't it?

... then this represents the modern approach [post 60s] and is ultimately doomed. All the disappointments, broken homes, divorce and the breakdown in society we see in Britain and America can be brought back to this. It's the root of hedonistic self-centredness and is the road to hell.

Everything else is just symptomatic of the core problem.

The old paradigm was for both genders to cast their net widely and pounce on the partner they'd finally decided on [The Stone Ponies' Different Drum is about this]. I'm speaking of the majority here, not the ones publicized in film.

There was a culture, based largely on the Christian ethic, which valued women's virginity as the last citadel but in effect this created all sorts of good things, especially for the woman.

This gave her true "empowerment".

What a joke that the more the Feminists have screamed since the late 60s of legislating for men to respect women, the more they gave away their best bargaining chip for that respect. I don't blame the women - I blame Them, who progressively broke down the old societal ethic and replaced it with the hedonistic selfishness you see in the quote at the top. I don't blame the quoter either - he knows no better, having grown up in the new society of undelayed gratification.

Women got this crazy idea into their heads that if they lusted for Money and Power, just as the men did, this would give them Independence and Equality and would force men to Respect them. Ha! Do men respect them more today? The hell they do.

The old paradigm ran like this: Kids were brought up to have respect, love their neighbour and all that. There was a culture of "delayed or deferred gratification", in other words - self control.

So, Steve got it bad for Susie and did all sorts of romantic things to come onto her, as did Bob, Paul and John. She was the centre of a whole lot of boys' attentions and could pick and choose, let this one in this far, let that one in not so far and so on. In other words, there was respect and she ran the show.

Do you prefer to see it all up front or would you rather have to imagine what's underneath her elegant halter top and plan how to get inside it? [Photo courtesy Beaman's Bazaar]

The boys knew they had to play her game and her refusals trained them how to respect women. It didn't occur to them to just rape her - there was a slight fear of her inaccessibility.

Her mother used to advise her that her greatest power was in using her bargaining chip and it was tough to do because she'd fall in love and want to give it all to him straight away.

Now the mother seems not to give any advice to the daughter.

Steve and his mates want to bang so they gather the girls whom they know say yes and they overnight party. Susie has no choice but to go along with it or else be marginalized from the group and with the addition of porn at the flick of a switch she has to go further and further now, earlier and earlier.

The girl who says no these days is marginalized and not wanted - she knows the ground rules are that she must bang and she's grown up with no constraints on giving it all away. It's even becoming group in the living room. Don't ask how I know.

It's a boys' paradise and she's lost all empowerment she's deluded enough to think she might have. What a joke that women are trumpeting about equality and how the woman chained to the kitchen had no power, when the truth is the opposite - she has zero power today, zilch, nikto.

Do I wish to see women chained to the kitchen again? Hell no - I want them to regain their real empowerment as desirable and mysterious people, not the pseudo-empowerment they're bent on today. A Real Woman can have all the power she desires, just by being a real woman. She needs no legislation.

To return to the quote at the top - wanting to see the real proof first.

How on earth can there be any sort of real proof or any relationship when it's all about self-fulfilment and nothing about fulfilling the other person? What long term chance has any relationship got where both are judging the other against a check list of whether the other "satisfies" them?

And you mean, Boyz, you can't find proof unless you've banged a girl? Where have your antennae gone? Where are your receptors? This is the Viagra mentality - that satisfaction in a relationship is tied only to the bang. To hell with Friendship, Romance and Love - the Bang is god.

More fool her for giving it away like that. Poor kid if she's grown up in this culture.

Unless she becomes rich and famous, [and how many girls dream dreams of this elusive power they'll never have], she has only herself to negotiate with and now comes the joke on her. The more she's slept around and given the boys all they wanted, the less they'd consider even looking at her as a long term partner. She'll cheat throughout a marriage.

And the joke that you have to sleep with many men to know which one you want - oh really? You can't tell that by kissing and cuddling then keeping him hanging on? Tiberius Gracchus just ran a post on a girl who kept a king hanging on for seven years.

No one ever said she was beautiful. She just played the game, the love arts, to their maximum. She made herself exotic, desirable.

Where the hell has romance gone? Why are the words 'gentleman' and 'lady' mocked today?

Ditto our Susie, who plays it cool and rations out her charms - she ends up with the biggest prize because it isn't her Paris Hilton star quality they respect but Her herself. She has Self-Respect and demands that anyone who is going to sample her wares is going to have to give.

And not money but they have to give themselves. The poorest peasant girl can be rich beyond rubies. No riches in the world can buy this. The lady in this article said beautifully what I'm trying to.

In other words, she makes herself into a Real Prize. Other girls with less self-respect can play the town tart but she's the Princess on the Pedestal, the one all the boys would have if only they could, if only she would.

That's why hundreds and hundreds of kissed girls in my life have translated into just six women I've eventually had [so far]. It's the Groucho Marx approach - please accept my resignation, I don't want to enter any vagina which will openly accept me.

Or, to put it even more crudely as they did in Puberty Blues, "Hey, I don't want to go slops," to follow the well worn path to her shaved garden, to get stuck in peak hour traffic.

And the number of women measuring their true value by the number of men they've laid - is this low or is this low? A woman speaking of her lovers [plural] - ugggh!. Does she feel that numbers confer some sort of kudos on her or does it seep into her brain that perhaps it turns good men off?

The thrill is in the chase. The bang at the end should be just the confirmation - does the tail wag the dog? Still, it has to be done well - lousy coffee after a top meal is a let down - but the whole package is the pleasure. To mix metaphors - do you eat the icing from the cake first or the cake first and then the icing?

I mean - for crying out loud - today you only have to take her to a cafe, do a bit of dancing and she's in the sack or on the living room floor. Who needs it? And who was into her last night when she wasn't answering the phone?

The way she dresses too. If she shows her open cleavage - big deal. I've seen it all before. But if she hides her breasts then I can only dream what they'd be like to kiss and I plan to find out. If she lets it all hang out with her open top and hipsters - yawn. But if she goes all coy, then bells ring - I want in and I want in now!

Where's the old challenge gone where you had to plan out a military campaign on her to break her down step by step? Where's her resistance these days? Where's the chivalry gone? Why doesn't she expect the doors to be opened for her anymore, the cloak to be laid in the puddle so she can step across it?

My white armour is in the cupboard rusting and my trusty steed is nibbling grass in the backyard. They haven't been needed for years.

The paradigm needs to shift right back again so that a culture exists where men don't know every square centimetre of a girl's anatomy from internet porn but would really like to unravel her mysteries. There has to be some sort of Mystery again which forces men to act out of respect and [temporarily] unrequited lust. The more modestly a girl dresses, the more elegantly, the more I want her so badly.

For goodness sake, girls - don't you want the men to fight over you anymore? Are you so far into your own sexual hunger that you've lost all self-respect?

For your eyes only - if you treat me right. Who's the Prize here - Roger Moore or Carole Bouquet?

And guys - wouldn't you prefer a girl with you who was hard-won and every man and woman around knows you have an absolute prize looking into your eyes who gives it only to you? The Carole Bouquet principle: For Your Eyes Only.

Am I off the planet in valuing these things?