Carnivorous Cow

The Cow whumped down into her chair and sighed loudly. She was feeling just a little depressed from all the unhappiness around her about How Things Were vs How Things Are. Specifically the growth of the Culture of Silence. The passing off of "debate" as debate, and the lack of debate on real issues.

"Well," Gramsci suggested, "the Transformation Agenda blog has suggested that 'the university must remain a place for debate and interaction - for the dialogic interactions that create new knowledge and constantly challenge assumptions'. So perhaps there's hope?"

The Cow snorted. "How can the University 'remain' something it long ago ceased to be?" she asked. "If what's suggested is that it remain as it is, well..." she sighed dramatically.

"Maybe," shrugged Gramsci. "But perhaps more telling is the irony of calling for debate and interaction in a blog post - and then switching off comments to preclude the possibility of anyone actually trying to do that!"

The Cow was intrigued to read that girls prefer pink, after all. Given the metrosexual flurry of pink shirts, she'd always thought it was girly men rather than real girls who liked pink. But the findings of the study did not really make sense to her.

"Isn't it assumed," she asked Gramsci, "that a preference for pink, by girls, must be counterposed by a preference for blue, by boys?"

Gramsci nodded. "I'd have thought," he agreed, "that 'girls prefer pink' meant, 'to blue'. But that doesn't seem to be what the study found, at all. It seems that girls prefer red to green. And that everyone prefers blue to yellow. That doesn't justify forcing girls to wear pink rather than blue!"

"No," the Cow concurred. "If everyone prefers blue, everyone should wear blue. And no one should be forced into yellow, and girls should not be forced into green. And should be given red, rather than wussy pink, honestly!"

Gramsci chuckled. The image of little baby girls in flaming scarlet appealed, somehow.

The Cow was looking perplexed, though. "But what do you think it means," she asked, "that the Financial Times prints on pink paper? Do you think it's appealing to a girly readership, or a girly men readership?"After all, she'd spotted Mr Timberland reading it on more than one occasion.

"Perhaps it's ideological," Gramsci suggested. "Like the ruling party, they're trying to disguise their right-wing fast capitalist neoliberal orientation by a thin verneer of left-looking smoke and mirrors?"

The Cow blanched. The ANC had had significant success with that deception, and she worried about how easy it seemed. Critical, or even close, reading seemed a thing of the past.

"Mind you," she muttered, "things are clearly not what they seem. Even Terry Eagleton reads the Torygraph, after all..."

The Cow was accustomed to hearing tales of downside of unrequited lust - the drunken late night booty calls, the VW Beetle parked for days outside while neighbours grew fearful of the occupant's personal hygiene, the fixed stares across crowded rooms that burned laserlike through all in their path... stalking, tears, protection orders - hormones had a lot to answer for.

But she was a little taken aback when Gramsci pointed out an article to her that went a little beyond all of that. It appeared that an Ozzie sheila had found herself on the receiving end of some attention from her pet camel... and had, in the ensuing communication of said interest, karked it, as the Ozzies say.

"Who'd have thought?" the Cow muttered. "Camels always look so stand-offish!"

"Perhaps they're just shy?" suggested Gramsci. "That's often mistaken for aloofness, isn't it?"

"It's an interesting symmetry, though" the Cow remarked. "Given Ozzie men's predilection for sheep, I've always wondered what the women do."

But Gramsci's attention was elsewhere. "The report leaves out the most important fact!" he exclaimed crossly.

"Which is?" enquired the Cow.

"Whether it was a Dromedary or a Bactrian camel."

The Cow looked perplexed, so Gramsci helped her out. "Well, as you know, Dromedaries have only one hump, whereas Bactrian camels have two..."

The Cow was rather bemused to read that 8% of those who sleep naked pray before going to bed. It was not a correlation she'd have thought of making, but given that someone else had, she pondered it at length.

"What you you think they're praying for?" she asked Gramsci.

"To get lucky?" Gramsci replied, off-handedly. Stats was never his strong point, and combined with religion...

"Surely if they're already in bed, it's too late for that if it's not already on the agenda," objected the Cow, "unless of course they're married, in which case they're wasting their time anyway. They should rather pray for something that is at least theoretically possible, like Thabo Mbeki having an epiphany that HIV causes AIDS, or Arnold Schwarzenegger leaping out of the closet."

"Perhaps they're praying that they don't freeze to death?" shivered Gramsci.

"Surely it's easier to dig out the flannel nightie - or switch on the electric blanket?" replied the Cow. "After all, this is UK research, where cold weather is hardly unknown!"

"Hmmm..." pondered Gramsci. "Perhaps it's linked to some of the other findings? Perhaps they're praying that their bed mate won't object to their sleeping with a stuffed animal? Or that their husband's snoring won't keep them awake?"

The Cow was not convinced. "Perhaps they're praying that their wives earplugs - to block the snoring - will also block out any names they mutter in their sleep? I really feel there's too little information here! But what do you make of the figures that show people from more liberal political persuasions are more likely to take stuffed animals to bed with them?"

Gramsci snorted. "Oh I think the findings are pretty clear," he retorted. "It shows that some statisticians have wayyyy too much time on their hands!"

The Cow was intrigued to hear about another Stellenbosch residence burning down, leaving its inmates with only their pyjamas.

"At least when it happened to us," she muttered to Gramsci, "we didn't have to worry about saving computers with our work files. Our work was in paper files, which added nicely to the glow of the bonfire."

Gramsci couldn't picture the computers of those days fitting into a res, never mind a res room, but wisely refrained from saying so.

"I gather they've referred to Huis ten Bosch as the 'Women of Fire' res since", he remarked.

"Gmf!" spluttered the Cow. "I'll bet none of the current students have the faintest idea why. Unless, of course, there are musty newsclippings up on some noticeboard somewhere!"

And given the rigours of doop, the Cow could quite easily picture the HK making Boschluise memorise the contents until word-perfect. Probably in the form of a song. With appropriate sound effects. While dressed in funny clothes, with a raisin on the nose. Clutching a rotten egg in a plastic bag. She shuddered.

"The irony is, though," she continued, "that recently Huis ten Bosch and Eendrag had to pair up for jool. And the theme of their float? 1dragonfire. Eendrag on fire, geddit?"

Gramsci flinched. But if the Cow had seen it on the internet, it had to be true...

 (More)

The Cow was feeling grumpy. It was Woman’s Day, and she was still laid up ill in bed, hypoxic and depleted. Which meant her brain was starved of oxygen, unable to process anything beyond drivel – which was where the problem started.

Gramsci, tentatively enquiring after her health, was rewarded with a wheezing tirade.

“I’ve decided,” the Cow spluttered, “that my biggest issue with the current glut of Confessional Sex Blooks is not the appalling quality of the writing, nor the neurotic narcissism of their bourgeois, Northern, white women authors, nor even the mundane inanity of their contents! ‘Secrets of a Sexual Adventuress’ indeed!”

Gramsci sighed empathetically. “Publishing something in a national newspaper does tend to disqualifies it as a ‘secret’,” he agreed.

“Pah!” coughed the Cow. “The only evidence of anything ‘adventurous’ I could find in the book was the publisher’s gamble to reduce another rainforest in the book’s creation. – No. It’s the disservice they do to female sexuality that most gets me.”

“But they’re written by women!” protested Gramsci.

“That’s the point!” agreed the Cow. “They purport to be authentic – or at least, ‘reality-based’ – which has moral and ethical issues of its own, and they claim to be outré, defiant, norm-busting. Which is exactly my problem!”

Gramsci didn’t get it. The Cow rambled on. “Publishers choose works that show women ‘behaving like men’ – enjoying sex, with several partners, separating sex from love – as they believe these will sell.”

“They must do,” suggested Gramsci, “or publishers would cease doing so. After all, it must be reassuring for a woman whose lust is denied by society to affirm her 'normality' in the pages of such a blook! And it must be comforting for men to see their behaviour as acceptable, after all, because even women do that!”

“But that’s the problem!” insisted the Cow. “These blooks are not being published because they’re ‘normal’; they’re being published as some kind of sensationalised freak-show, reaffirming the stereotype that although there are indeed some women who ‘behave like men, the examples are so few and so notable they’re worth drawing attention to. If this was 'normal', why would anyone need to publish it and draw attention to it?”

Gramsci paused. “You have a point,” he conceded. “There are well written, erotic sex blogs out there – which are not blooked. The reason, perhaps, is that they are written by men. While women ‘behaving like men might sell, men ‘behaving like men’ – enjoying sex, with several partners, separating sex from love – wouldn’t cut it. It’s ‘normal’, after all, and books about brushing teeth every morning hardly sell!”

“Indeed!” the Cow agreed. “But it’s a little more complex than that, too. The flip-side is that stereotypical ‘normality’ is indeed celebrated in these Confessional Sex Blooks – the women authors invariably are, at their core, looking for Mr Right to save them and whisk them away to a happily-ever-after: once, that is, they’ve found the perfect pair of shoes for the occasion.”

 (More)

The Cow was gobsmacked on reading a report on people's motivation for engaging in sexual behaviour. "Surprise, surprise," she announced to Gramsci. "It's because of lust!"

Gramsci looked up. "You mean," he asked incredulously, "people are having it off with other people... because... they want to?"

" 'Fraid so," admitted the Cow. "The study definitely seems to indicate that sexual attraction is what makes people want to get down on it."

Gramsci shook his head sadly. "What is the world coming to?" he sighed. "Sex as pleasure, not as obligation. How on earth would uMalume's argument fare in a court with that kind of knowledge available?

"Well," the Cow paused, "the researcher did admit that 'Men were more likely to be opportunistic towards having sex, so if sex were there and available they would jump on it, somewhat more so than women. Women were more likely to have sex because they felt they needed to please their partner...' - even if the differences were small. She suspected that the differences might be larger with a more elderly sample - which is where uMalume would fit in."

"Ah," noted Gramsci. "The socialising effect of age?"

"Perhaps," conceded the Cow. "But then again, there's a comment by a Dr Goldstein that 'the vaunted differences in the genders may only be among people with sexual problems.' Perhaps that may be relevant in uMalume's case, too? After all, he did peg 'normal' at fifteen minutes....?"