Your children are boring

The further along my 20s I move, the more clogged my social media newsfeeds become with posts and pictures about the children of people I used to know and people I know now. I can guess your reaction at the moment and it will probably fall into one of two categories:

1. Turn off your computer/phone – then you won’t have to deal with it.

2. No ring and no babies, hey? Jealousy is not a good look on you.

Allow me to respond: I don’t spend that much time on these sites, and I do genuinely like many of the people who post yawn-inducing information about their pooping machines, but as they become increasingly common, it makes me wonder how fascinating these people really believe their children to be. I am one of those ‘freaks’ who doesn’t want children, but would prefer a career, spit-free clothing, time to myself and the freedom to get drunk on weekdays to the time-demanding and positively knackering route of motherhood.

I have respect for the people who make it through parenthood with their sanity and house (vaguely) intact. Well done. But I also note that there’s a double standard running through our culture at the moment: choose to only post pictures of yourself/your holiday/the view from your hotel/an update about how you completely nailed all your work that week and deserve a pay rise, and there are many who would denounce you as self-absorbed, or a show off. Complaining about the unrepentent narcissim of the younger generations is the third most popular past time of the over 40s. But parents have been harping on about their sprogs for GENERATIONS and they demand expect you to coo and marvel at their ability to produce tots that can walk. And laugh. And fall over. (Although watching kids get wiped out by footballs/cats/other kids can be pretty entertaining.)

I never have the guts to tell these people just how tedious I find constant updates of little Joshy’s growth spurt, so instead I have compiled a list of things which have more entertainment value than other people’s children:

1. This adorable rabbit:

 

2. This shocking, error-based statistic:

3. David Cameron looking like an idiot:

4. This shot of Edward Miliband playing cricket with an invisible ball:

5. A roast:

6. This stick:

7. This picture of Phil Neville, (a man labelled as the most boring commentator on TV) taking a picture on his iPad, of something I can’t see:

8. This pack of cotton buds:

9. This picture of a corridor. Look, it has doors coming off and everything:

10. This stick. Again.

I do wonder how parents feel if every single person around them doesn’t jump to attention and immediately begin cooing whenever their child shits itself or hiccoughs. But then again, I’m not a parent, so I just wouldn’t understand, even if they told me…

The 2014 Winter Olympics and Stephen Fry

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Mr Fry, allow me to begin with a little context:

Stephen John Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television and radio presenter, film director, activist, and board member of Norwich City Football Club. As you may be able to infer from that list of achievements, he’s intelligent and articulate. And he’s gay (this is important, trust me).

On his website today he has published an open letter to David Cameron and the International Olympic Committee asking them to support a ban of the 2014 Winter Olympics to be held in Sochi. His argument is founded on the tyrannical anti-gay laws recently passed in Moscow, but there are additional objections too.

I won’t reproduce the entire letter, just a few excerpts, the full text can be found here.

Putin is eerily repeating this insane crime [Hitler’s persecution of Jews], only this time against LGBT Russians. Beatings, murders and humiliations are ignored by the police. Any defence or sane discussion of homosexuality is against the law. Any statement, for example, that Tchaikovsky was gay and that his art and life reflects this sexuality and are an inspiration to other gay artists would be punishable by imprisonment. It is simply not enough to say that gay Olympians may or may not be safe in their village. The IOC absolutely must take a firm stance on behalf of the shared humanity it is supposed to represent against the barbaric, fascist law that Putin has pushed through the Duma.

He is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews. He cannot be allowed to get away with it. I know whereof I speak. I have visited Russia, stood up to the political deputy who introduced the first of these laws, in his city of St Petersburg. I looked into the face of the man and, on camera, tried to reason with him, counter him, make him understand what he was doing. All I saw reflected back at me was what Hannah Arendt called, so memorably, “the banality of evil.” A stupid man, but like so many tyrants, one with an instinct of how to exploit a disaffected people by finding scapegoats.

I am gay. I am a Jew. My mother lost over a dozen of her family to Hitler’s anti-Semitism. Every time in Russia (and it is constantly) a gay teenager is forced into suicide, a lesbian “correctively” raped, gay men and women beaten to death by neo-Nazi thugs while the Russian police stand idly by, the world is diminished and I for one, weep anew at seeing history repeat itself.

If you have been unaware of the shocking brutality currently being dealt out in Russia then a quick internet search will tell you everything you need to know. Whilst I wholeheartedly agree with Stephen, I fear that nothing will stop it from happening. Big sports, global sports, bring big bucks. And where there is money and power to be played for, there is generally corruption. FIFA stands as the biggest example of an organisation whose upper echelons have been accused of numerous wrong doings, yet nothing really seems to be different. (Perhaps it is and I simply have not heard about it.)

Russian riot policemen detain a gay and LGBT rights activist during an unauthorized gay rights activists rally in central Moscow on May 25, 2013. AFP PHOTO/ANDREY SMIRNOV/Getty Images

The Huffington Post reports that ‘last week Vitaly Milonov, one of the politicians behind the bill, has said gay athletes and supporters at Russia’s 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games could face arrest.’ Yet the IOC insists it will do everything in its power to ensure that those involved in the games are treated without discrimination. Good intentions, yet this creates a divide – between those gay athletes and spectators who are part of the event and Russia’s gay citizens who are not.

In his letter Stephen Fry states: It [sport] does not exist in a bubble outside society or politics… The idea that sport and politics don’t connect is worse than disingenuous, worse than stupid. It is wickedly, wilfully wrong.

What seems most ironical to me is that we expect the athletes who participate in these sporting events to be fair, to play by the rules. To compete honestly and perform with integrity. To be role models. Yet the government of countries in which these events are held do not uphold the idea of fairness themselves.

Russian police push gay rights activists away from the march in Saint Petersburg to prevent clashes with anti-gay protesters. Photograph: Anatoly Maltsev/EPA

I don’t believe there is any hope of Russia not being allowed to host this event, that certainly, is too late. I think the best we can hope for is a boycott, by sponsors, countries, individual athletes, spectators, whoever. Your sexual orientation doesn’t affect how far you can throw a ball, how skilled you are at skiing or how fast you can run. But in modern-day Russia it will determine how free from persecution you are.

(Note: At the time of writing this post, Stephen Fry’s website has crashed, so maybe try again later if you can’t see the letter.)