Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

In a series of blowing minds pieces for the Graun.

Either that or a hard-hitting year-long series about how adopting a Burmese baby requires lots of paperwork.

But you can easily fit 3 of them in a suitcase.

I don't know the woman at all (and I really, really hate the Cocktail Girl persona her editor, a woman, encourages PV in) but I'm guessing that it's easy to sit in judgement of women's reproductive choices when you're a man, as everyone here criticizing her seems to be. This is one of those times when I feel like bitch-slapping you guys with a rag-eared copy of From Reverence To Rape or similar.

There's a lot about internecine struggles between women that men either just don't get, or allow to slide because they win if women are fighting each other, especially if they're doing it on the sly (none of my friends who are mums do this). When women who have children do a passive-aggressive number on other women who don't have them or cite MY CHILD in power struggles with female colleagues (it's happened to me; similarly when interrogated about not having kids I feel like my privacy is being invaded) it's hard to have any righteous comeback without coming off as a total churl.

Suzy I'm completely down with choice I just hate people who make a fetish of child-hating. Also the internecine politics bit is kind of lost to the outside world when you air it in the cobblers lifestyle section of a broadsheet, just like fighting with yr friend over their wedding list.

suzy absolutely otm.

Suzy IS Polly.

No-one on here (as far as I can see - I haven't read the whole thread) is slagging off her choice to have or not have children but rather the fact that that article is a pile of crap (warmed over crap at that).

I'm surprised that people care whether or not you have kids. Lots of my friends have simply said they don't think they want any and I can understand that - no idea why it should be a big deal or even 'the norm' to want/have kids. Is this really the general consensus or a PV strawman?

(I'm quite interested in all this as how people choose whether or not to reproduce is a bit of a fascinating thing for me)

Typical Kate response: I agreed with every word she said. Maybe not the tone in which she said it, because that cocktail girl personna wears thin on me, too.

I get this feeling quite often on this thread, when I'm reading the vipituousness with which ILX0rs attack the Guardian writers, that I agree with said writers far more than I agree with the other ILX0rs. And I don't know if that's my gender, or my class, or simply that I'm the kind of nasty person that you would all hate if I had a newspaper column rather than a blog.

But I'm with Suzy on this one. You have NO IDEA of the kind of societal pressures that women face on this issue, so your criticism of the harshness with which a particular woman may strike against it seems... ungrounded.

i.e. if you got the kind of continual public invasive criticism of your reproductive status that women are subjected to, you might snap back with the kind of fierceness expressed in that article.

kate also otm

Sure, the article was a little over-the-top with "me me me", but turning "personally I don't want kids" straight into "child-hating fetish" (with all sorts of assumptions about what a terrible self-important hypocrite would say such a thing and how such a monster will have to change her mind in ten years' time) kind of doesn't fit with claiming that it's no big deal and what's all the fuss about.

(spacecadet is not even 30 yet and still undecided regarding children and already feeling kind of got at with various bombardments of how totally selfish and disorganised and medically reckless it is that I haven't managed to sort out my life sufficiently to want or be in a position for the breedings)

You have NO IDEA of the kind of societal pressures that women face on this issue

Mmm, absolutely. I never talk to my partner of 10 years about any of this, or indeed to any other women at all, childless or otherwise; it's never once come up in conversation with anyone else ever (perhaps because my penis is blocking my ears, or something); and indeed, I should refrain from discussing reproductive or other sexual issues -- let alone terrible journalism -- because that aforementioned penis keeps getting in the way. Come on, give the male posters on this bit of this thread some credit for not being total wankers, eh?

Ned sums it up: it's the tone of the thing that sticks in my craw, rather than the fundamental point she might be trying to make. "I was certainly a bit sensational, a bit flippant," she says of her previous article ... oh, right. Always a good way to deal with an issue in print, that. "No one ever asks a parent why they have kids" ... do you do any research, Polly? Less than two months ago, hacks were all over this and it would have been an interesting springboard to use for something that might have been worth reading.

Kate, you say it's a "fierce" piece: I don't see that at all. I see unnecessarily snippy, but not fierce.

When women who have children do a passive-aggressive number on other women who don't have them or cite MY CHILD in power struggles with female colleagues (it's happened to me; similarly when interrogated about not having kids I feel like my privacy is being invaded) it's hard to have any righteous comeback without coming off as a total churl

This is a more interesting and salient point as it pertains to the workplace: I've bitten my tongue at work a few times in situations like this precisely -- oh, the irony! -- because I think, well, as a (childless) bloke I don't want to risk causing offence by saying something like: "Look, millions upon millions of other people are getting on just fine raising their children without making a big deal of it every five seconds, so what makes you so special?" Once again, though, this is about particular individuals: just as my criticism of that PV article is nothing to do with "women who choose not to have children" -- I'm living with one, remember -- but about "self-centred journalists who confuse themselves and their poorly expressed opinions with wider issues". Oh, hang on, that's so much contemporary opinion-journalism in a nutshell, isn't it?

This might be key, though:

I agreed with every word she said. Maybe not the tone in which she said it

I just can't see past the tone. It reeks of smugness and entitlement.

I'm thinking PV must be jealous of all the attention (and a regular column) Zoe Williams got out of being preggers.

(I'm joking sisters)

and how such a monster will have to change her mind in ten years' time

Way to twist things, dude. Who said "will have to"? My -- admittedly sneering and nasty -- comment was more about the vacuous self-centredness this writer displays, rather than about societal notions wrt children. Fuck's sake, the western world would be a billion times better if people thought -- long, hard and fucking carefully -- before they bred. I've said that here passim. With PV -- and indeed so many other columnists on so many other papers -- though, thinking always seems to come second to "ooh, can I turn this into a drivelly piece of writing?"

PV shouldn't worry about missing out on DVD box sets, it must be said. I'm a new dad and have gotten through the first two seasons of Homicide, both season of Breaking Bad, the entire 24-episode run of Nowhere Man, and watched an untold number of movies.

I can certainly sympathize with feeling baby pressure, I'm sure it's not fun. Her column doesn't examine her own feelings at all though, which seems weird. Surely there's some level at which she feels conflicted? Surely that's the interesting, difficult bit? I guess she'd tell me it was patronizing to even suggest that but Christ, if she was that impossibly self-assured, why write a moany column about it?

Because deadline was approaching and some poor hapless sub was sitting there with a fucking great hole to fill? Why else does "journalism" like this exist at all?

carry on with the taliban tea break, chaps.

(no real "defences" being offered here beyond the standard "some of my best friends are..." trope of the prejudiced)

grimly, yes. It's just strange to me that for a column that's all about her, to not really examine herself at all.

xp Because ad hominem attacks are much better right Dingbod?

I just can't see past the tone. It reeks of smugness and entitlement.

Which is exactly the columnist's point, isn't it?

That so many parents see having a child as their free pass to smugness and entitlement. To me, the tone is a way of throwing back this attitude straight back in their faces.

Not saying that *all* parents believe this ^^^^^^^ but clearly enough for it to provoke a reaction and be commented on.

(xposts) Sorry grimly, went a bit overboard with the paraphrasing. But apart from the admittedly irritating and vacuous "me! like Cameron Diaz!" tone, it seemed a fairly innocuous point of view which was promptly greeted by "BABY-HATER" remarks, and "I bet that a woman who expresses this belief will do something wasteful to the contrary of it in a decade" seemed a bit of an assumption, to me.

(Though I suppose it was really "I bet that a woman who has an opinion as un-examined as this one seems to be on a time-sensitive subject" etc etc, which, well, OK, it does a bit, but I am heading for that point while not daring to think about it myself)

Still, I haven't read her original piece and it sounds like I'd probably be a lot less inclined to stick up for her if I had. Also I am cranky this morning, but you could tell that already.

xpost

Marcello, you're being unusually gnomic and irritating here. Are you seriously saying that we're all woman-haters because, umm, we happen to think that one particular hack is talking pish? Because that would be beneath you. Bottom line: if Polly Vernon was able to articulate herself even half as clearly as Kate or Suzy has here, we wouldn't be having this conversation at all.

We really need an ILX meme for the kind of article people read solely so they can rant about it on this thread.

That so many parents see having a child as their free pass to smugness and entitlement. To me, the tone is a way of throwing back this attitude straight back in their faces

OK, I see what you're saying. I guess I'm just an equal-opportunities curmudgeon who sees smug parents and smug non-parents as equally loathsome (and I'm pretty sure I've been the latter myself; I'd like to think I've grown up a little).

Actually, strike that. I just hate 99% of metropolitan newspaper columnists :)

vernon is basically a nihilist/misanthropist type, wouldn't pay her too much mind.

I like my lifestyle, my career, my body, my capacity to run off to New York at short notice if the opportunity arises. I like that my money is my own to squander. I like that my weekends can be slept away, or drunk away, or read away; that I am not sleep deprived, or if I am, I can remedy that easily. I like how last-minute my time is, how disorganised, how guilt-free.

good for you, enjoy it while it lasts, etc.

Marcello, I was just pointing out that all the critics of PV's opinion piece were male ad I just felt a bit 'what's your damage, Heather?'

The column is reactive: it's about what others think, and the foisting of their opinions on the writer. Doesn't make it good or interesting, but you can bet your left kidney 600 men have left misogynist comments on the Graun's site (this seems to be the way they judge the success of their female columnists and anyway, what's the male equivalent of Polly Filla?) so the writer and topic are set up for life.

Now, I have met this woman's editor in socially fortuitous surroundings and may do so again. I'd quite like to write for those Obs mags in question.

I just hate 99% of metropolitan newspaper columnists

I could get a little bot to post this for me on the thread once a week and save a bunch of time.

what's the male equivalent of Polly Filla?

phil space

dave spart

'a taxi driver writes'
'a doctor writes'

disgusted of Tunbridge Wells

Will Thisdo

http://www.lovelibraries.co.uk/images/tp.jpg

Hate the tone of the PV piece but saw someone on the train today reading a fertility scare story in the Mail which ends thus — "A career is all very well, but it can never match the sheer joy of seeing a little face crack into a wide smile just because you've walked into the room" — which made me realise what she's up against.

Although I wish female broadsheet lifestyle journalists didn't have to fall into the same tired old camps: Glenda Slagg, Polly Filler or a little of both.

Most, not all, I should say.

PV's disingenuousness is really something. "Was I antagonistic? Possibly. I tried not to be." Oh yeah, you tried real hard.

is it professional misconduct for a guardian journalist to badmouth another guardian journalist on a public messageboard?

No, I don't think so.

Categorically not. We're all citizen journalists now anyway, aren't we?

A career is all very well, but it can never match the sheer joy of seeing a little face crack into a wide smile just because you've walked into the room

Well, a career dealing ecstasy to dwarves covers all bases then, doesn't it? Next.

i was gonna say, that happens all the time in my career

is it professional misconduct for a whatever-the-hell-marcello-does to spend this much of their time save-a-ho'ing on the internets?

Is it professional misconduct for me to be spending so much time fucking all your mums?

(Sorry, just keeping with the general tone here)

For them it is.

Grimly F's post is funny!

'A career is all very well' - what a daft, sleepily vague thing to say.

and people wonder why so few women post on ilx.

oh well, carry on with the dismal cocktail of misogyny and envy, gentlemen.