Men's Memes: Pools reflect on changes in society

Friday, April 21, 2006

Pools reflect on changes in society

As long time readers will know, I am a bit of a fanatical swimmer. My local swimming pool is a fairly large complex just off the beach about a mile from my house. The original part of the complex was built in 1979 then another part - of equal size - was built in 1990, and opened by Princess Diana.

During those ten years some interesting changes had occured in British society, and seem to be reflected in the different designs of the two buildings.

The original, 1979, building consisted of two pools - a child's pool and an adult's 'gala' pool. Both of them rectangular, formal and having a little wall behind which are rows of seats for 'spectators'. The pools had seperate changing rooms for men and women, and as you walked out of the changing rooms you were obliged to walk through a little foot wash of disinfectant liquid. Displayed on the wall in the gala pool used to be a sign which informed people of 'The rules'. This used to fascinate me as a child, in particular the part which demanded that there be 'No petting', accompanied by a cartoon of a man and woman locked in an embrace within a circle with a slash across it. Actually thats the only rule I can remember. I think the others concerned not running, ducking people under water, or diving into the shallow end.

Now, the 1990 development had only one pool (no seperation of children and adults), albeit large, and with a curvy kidney shape, fountains, and a wave machine. There is now a unisex changing area, and no rules or footwash. Swimming is now more fun - perhaps - and certainly more informal. But not quite so hygenic on one's feet.

Curiously, hardly anyone seems to 'spectate' anymore.

And those damn petting couples can get on one's nerves!

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Turn of the tide: feminists begin to regret

Cosmopolitan (The women's magazine that urges women to use men for sex) Editor Lorraine Candy has a change of mind and now urges women not to have "Soul-less sex":

"We didn't feel ashamed about one-night stands...this, we thought, is what feminism is about."

70s feminist Fay Weldon now says:

"It is the fault of me and my like, who... got it wrong.

So were we wrong, we feminists, setting women free? The results have been devastating – greater than we ever imagined.

We steamed ahead, changing the world with too little caution, and I hope the future will forgive us.

The pendulum has swung too far over. But it may yet swing back again. Societies, thank God, tend to be self-righting."

"Once a man could look forward to starting a family and the dignity that came from being the provider. Forget it. At best as a man you're decorative, look after the kids and earn a bit sometimes; at worst you're a write-off. Women are elbowing the men out. The boys get anxious, the girls swagger. The male suicide rate goes up, female down. Twenty-eight per cent of us now live in single person households - a lonely and unnatural state - and most of the 28 per cent consist of young men. It is strange that it is left to a woman to suggest, in the normal nurturing way, that men start some kind of movement to promote their gender's status and self-esteem - call it masculinism, brotherism, machoism, what you want - and some mark of the success of the feminist movement, that it needs to be done."

60's feminist Doris Lessing now says:

"It is time we began to ask who are these women who continually rubbish men. The most stupid, ill-educated and nasty woman can rubbish the nicest, kindest and most intelligent man and no one protests.

Men seem to be so cowed that they can't fight back, and it is time they did."

An excerpt from an interview with Joan Rivers:

"She's not with the feminists when it comes to matters of the heart. For her, they're to blame for the current parlous state of our relationships, as depicted in these television Shows (Such as Sex in the city) and films. "I saw this coming. You cannot be equal to a man, you cannot make a man feel 'I don't need you' or 'I'll take my sex when I want it'. All these shows are so sad."

Camille Paglia :

"Women have been discouraged from genres such as sculpture that require studio training or expensive materials.

But in philosophy, mathematics, and poetry, the only materials are pen and paper.

Male conspiracy cannot explain ALL female failures.

I am convinced that, even without restrictions, there still would have been no female Pascal, Milton, or Kant.

. . . Even now, with all vocations open, I marvel at the rarity of the woman driven by artistic or intellectual obsession, that self-mutilating derangement of social relationship which, in its alternate forms of crime and ideation, is the disgrace and glory of the human species."