It has been a hard but rewarding week for political bloggers here in the UK. I remember feeling much the same sense of relief when watching the Major government fall apart. The horrible Jonathan Aitken – who I liked marginally better as an aristocratic spiv than as a charismatic christian – was in a different style the same kind of creature as Damian McBride and the other New Labour horrors.
But then we got Blair, who was worse than a Tory. There’s a lesson there somewhere.
Anyway, today we are going to have a day off and, because you’ve all been very good, I am going to blog about sex.
I received an email from a Josh Peters accusing me of being a racist misogynist for my post yesterday on Ayesha Hazarika. I recall being attacked as “Anti-semitic” in the Times by crazed neo-con David Aaronovitch. In fact I think I am genuinely blind to race. Not just some but most of my close friends are not caucasian. I don’t think anyone who actually knows me would consider me in the least racist.
I am not, however, blind to sex. I attack people in positions of power where I feel there is an abuse, and most of the time I find I am attacking men. I don’t think yesterday’s attack on Hazarika, Toynbee and Harman was motivated because they are female, but their sex did come into it because they had indulged in a very expensive “Gender equality” jolly to Ghana funded by the taxpayer.
But while I feel there is no issue to address with the accusation of racism, I do have an issue which I need to square – with myself – over my attitude to women.
If you look through the amazing reader reviews for Murder in Samarkand on Amazon, you will find a repeated theme, even from people who loved the book. They dislike my attitude to women and the sexualised way I portray them.
All I can say in defence is that the book honestly reflects the way I think and feel. When I see a young woman, my mind instantaneously runs a sexualised check on her physical appearance and, if I find that appealing, I start acting in the way I can best calculate to enhace my chances. All that happens more or less subconsciously, or at least without any need for conscious initiation on my part.
I always rather presumed that all heterosexual men went throught the same process all the time. Apparently I may be wrong.
In a less clinical way, the process is described several times, sometimes more and sometimes less fully, in Murder in Samarkand when I describe looking at various girls, most notably of course Nadira. Plainly many people find this off-putting.
I would say this.
I accept that it may appear that I pay more attention to sexual attributes than is the accepted norm.
But I do not accept that this in any way means that I undervalue women’s other attributes.
I may find a girl very sexy. But that does not mean in any way that my perception and appreciation of her intelligence, determination, work-rate, courage, dignity, humour etc is any less. Or their opposites if appropriate. In fact in both Murder in Samarkand and The Catholic Orangemen, I give concrete examples of women whose careers I believe were unfairly held back by glass ceilings, particularly in the FCO, and write a great deal about the rights of women and my work to prevent abuses.
In short, I do not acept the thesis that it demeans women to fancy them. It demeans anyone if you only fancy them.
None of which addresses the issue of my tangled love life and the infidelity which has brought much pain to many people, most of whom did not deserve it. I also have to face the fact that I have told many lies to people in my love life, yet I am almost pathologically honest in any other context. What is that about?
I do not give the following as the answer. It is neither explanation nor excuse. It is, I think, nonetheless interesting.
My entire adult life I have suffered from what used to be called manic depression, and now is known as bipolar disorder. By and large I have struggled against it very successfully, and really major depressive episodes have only kicked in when there is a very big real world problem to act as a trigger. But there have been plenty of very bad days over the last thirty years, at both ends of the swingometer.
I took lithium as a student for a short while, but I felt that the changes to the chemical balance of the brain were making Craig Murray disappear, and were replacing him with someone much too bland. The outbreaks of incredible energy and capacity for work, of wit and intellectual vim on the highs were invaluable. I am NOT trying to put myself in their league, but if I give Winston Churchill, Spike Milligan and Stephen Fry as examples of famous manic depressives, you will get some of that feel of genius bordering on madness. A famous psychiatrist (whose name escapes me at the moment) said that if Churchill hadn’t been manic, he would have known the situation was hopeless after Dunkirk and sued for peace. Instead he had that vision and energy to lift a whole nation.
So I have lived on willpower my whole life, a feeling of intense concentration like permanently walking a tightrope of mental stability. You get tired.
I have also avoided psychiatrists as much as possible. Doubtless if I ever have to ask for unemployment benefit, I will therefore fall foul of Purnell’s reintroduction of the concept of the undeserving poor. Anyway, it is probably because of this avoidance of the medical profession that I was told this week for the very first time that my behaviour was subject to “bipolar infidelity” and “hypersexuality”. Apparently this kind of sexual behaviour is so very frequently part of bipolar disorder, that it is actually one of the diagnostic tests as to whether you are bipolar or not.
So there you are. I now know that my presumption that most men think about women just like me might well be wrong. I do not intend to use the existence of the terms to justify or even continue my behaviour. That sounds to me akin to a plea of guilty but insane (only a joke, mental illness campaigners). I am extremely happy with Nadira, with my children, and the prospect of our new baby. I am being faithful. This post does not presage a plunge into priapism.
I am not sure that I even really believe in “Bipolar infidelity”. But I will remember the phrase, “I suffer from hypersexuality.” Sounds like a brilliant chat up line…
Nice post, but really Bro…sometimes you think with your dick instead of your brain…that is what I like about you !
Pick any source you want, he was given a refined form of cocaine, ie “crack” for what ever reason over prolonged periods.
The drug laws really have changed a lot, hell our pilots were on benzadrine, the german grunts were on speed. Yes to call it crack is pushing it but cocaine in a refined form all the same. We still use it now in hospitals, albeit as a local anesthetic.
Sorry not prolonged as in all the time, but every once in a while over a period of time, as it were.
Source: Queen Victoria’s Diary also includes recorded recreational use with WC.
Sorry not prolonged as in all the time, but every once in a while over a period of time, as it were.
Source: Queen Victoria’s Diary also includes recorded recreational use with WC.
No, I won’t “pick any source I want”. You made the allegation; you provide the substantiating evidence from somewhere else than out of your own head.
You’re an honest as well as brave man Craig.
How refreshing.
We’re all here because of the sexual impulse.
How refreshing.
The disappointing thing about the trolls here is that they don’t even check their rubbish diatribes. Harrys_Revenge makes the following slavish adulation:
> Gordon Smith and Jacqui Brown work
> hard to protect the British people.
I suspect Jackie Brown is probably a better description of the Home Sec than the poster realises: innocent people get killed, and the Special Adviser on shooting members of the public is Quentin Tarantino.
Erm, how about the knowledge in my head that it was available as an over the counter throat sweet until 1914 and after that continued to be used with a prescription?
I’ll get you a source sometime later today as you please, I thought this was common knowledge?
And the source won’t constitute a youtube video or link to another blog either. You’ll let me have Hitler as a smack head though, right? Just checking
I’m perfectly well aware of the pre-1914 supply position regarding drugs.
What you said was “Chruchill [sic] was on crack, Hitler was a smack-head.”
What I am asking you for is independent evidence as to those two people. Stop wriggling.
Also – just to clear the point in advance – the fact that someone takes or is prescribed a legal medication occasionally for a sore throat, as a painkiller, or whatever, doesn’t mean they are “on” it [i.e. addicted].
So what evidence do you have that Churchill was “on crack”? If you don’t have any, it’s just a smear, isn’t it?
“The nature of the erection and orgasm are actualized by the interplay of the psyche and hormones; I put it to you that it is impossible to achieve boring sex, as the erection and orgasm both require sexual excitement.”
Ah, I think I see your issue. Let me assure you, JimmyGiro, that it is indeed possible to have boring sex, and from the sounds of it you probably have plenty of unintentional experience.
“And at what point do we privileged Neanderthals exploit sex:
…
(b) at the point of purchase?”
Yup, that’s the one. You made that pretty easy, didn’t you? It’s the point where you reduce any sexual activity to a financial transaction where the woman ‘gives it up’ in response to your power play. Where you, intentionally or otherwise, reduce every sexual encounter you have to that of a whore and a john.
I mean, there are many other points too. There might be the point where you take too long to realise that the woman in the bar doesn’t want to come back to your hotel room after all, the point where you monopolise her attention because you think she just needs more convincing, the point where you drone on about your biological necessity to fuck as if that justifies any action, the point where you react aggressively to someone saying that women are people too by claiming that we’re the ones equating sex and rape (wheras I always thought I knew the difference which is why I never had any problems with excessively aggressive overdefensiveness about the issue).
Pretty much all of this is straight from the narrow pit of rage that is male privilege, which goes far beyond sex. It’s telling that your reaction to being told that society is set up to value you more simply because of your gender, in myriad ways that are obvious if only you’d look, isn’t even “that’s lucky for me!” or even “that does seem a little out of kilter, now that you mention it,” but rather to get angry and shout “no it iiisssn”tt. That’s just how we’re made. We’re nothing but animals! We can’t control how we behave at all! That’s why it’s totally unfair for people to tell us we’re behaving badly! And women who don’t like it are just frigid sexless bitches! Men who don’t like it too!”
Or, in other words, resort to throwing poo like the unevolved primate you insist you are.
“Your estimation of men seems to be based on their ‘sexual problems’ of having heterosexual desire; do we grow up in your feminist estimation by handing ourselves in to the nearest police station for having carnal desire.”
What an insane, strawman argument. I did wonder if I was being a bit harsh on you earlier, now the sheer aggressive defensiveness makes me think I probably erred on the side of caution in judging you an embarrassment to the gender.
Let me reiterate: it’s apparently you who doesn’t know how to tell the difference between sex and rape, not me. If you weren’t a sexual incompetent you’d be aware of things like “consent” or “female agency”. You might even be aware that sex isn’t so different from any other form of social interaction, inasmuch as it flows much better when there is mutuality between interested parties. Clodhopping buffoons who drift through life feeling as if their interest in women is a) something as natural as eating, that they nevertheless b) have absolutely no control over, but c) it’s fine because women should feel it a privilege to be desired, and d) therefore make no attempts to pay any attention to the object of their desire beyond their attempts to engage in carnal activities with them are not, my dear boy, doing anything wrong by being heterofuckingsexual. What they are doing wrong is being ignorant and boorish, which is not part of the standard definition of “heterosexual” although it is a definition of a very particular kind of overprivileged but immature straight male.
You might want to learn to tell the difference between your biological impulses and the way it is now expected that evolved beings behave in civilised societies. Every sexual creature has a drive to reproduce, as dreolin so elegantly points out. However, I don’t think it’s very flattering to the males in the room to so explicitly compare them to dogs who can’t control which leg they hump.
Everybody fucks. But everybody (allegedly) has a brain and should have been taught how to treat other people with respect too. If your biology begins to override your socialisation that is politely referred to as a Bad Thing.
I don’t know whether it’s a surprise to some of the male participants in this thread that women will quite often have sex with men even if they are not tricked into it or bought. Not that I’m opposed to prostitution, especially since for some men it may well be the most honest sexual encounter they ever have. If nothing else, I find that talking to women about sex as if they are equals in the sexual relationship leads to all kinds of interesting discoveries about sex that go beyond the mechanics of getting an erection and ejaculating at some point afterwards. I can do that much *myself*.
Can I just ask, the lot of you pseudo-alpha-males in here, how do you get so clueless as to go into a thread where someone is struggling with a mental illness and say “RIGHT ON, HURR!” That’s like going into a thread where someone’s dealing with depression and saying “don’t let a psychiatrist tell you not to top yourself, that’s your god given right, stick it to the establishment. With your penis!”
It seems that any inference, no matter how slight, no matter how much it can be reasonably claimed to not apply to them, that some male somewhere should modify his sexual behaviour to be less aggressive is met with the staunchest resistance imaginable. That’s insane in itself, when you think about it for even a second. Not that I’d accuse the pseudo-alpha-males here of doing something as unnecessarily feminine as ‘thinking’.
Also, what’s with the bizarre revisionism of anticant? I mean, not whether Churchill was on crack or cocaine or not, but on the idea that suggesting such a thing would have been a “smear” during WWII. The moral panic over stimulants is a relatively new fad, and I’m sure it will pass soon enough.
You rather miss the point. I was around during WW2 [you probably weren’t]. Everyone knew Churchill kept afloat on copious amounts of brandy and other potent liquids; no-one thought any the worse of him for that. After all, he was keeping all the rest of us afloat at that time and we’d probably have sunk without him.
Suggesting – without any evidence – that he was a cocaine addict is something else. If he was, he wouldn’t sink in my estimation, though he might in a good many other peoples’ – which is the intention of the smear.
If asking for reliable proof of baseless assertions of that kind is “bizarre revisionism”, I suppose objecting to the squalid tosh cooked up by McBride and enthusiastically endorsed by Draper is too.
Some folk have an odd sense of values.
“Every sexual creature has a drive to reproduce, as dreolin so elegantly points out. However, I don’t think it’s very flattering to the males in the room to so explicitly compare them to dogs who can’t control which leg they hump.” –McDuff
Just a sec, Mr McDuff. The context was sexual manipulation. I referred to peacocks’ tail feathers, i.e. behaviour designed to attract attention. I didn’t mention dogs or humping or anyone not being able to control themselves.
Given your latest “essay” up above, you seem to prove my second point: that some of the most obsessive feminists are male. And you know what? They’re boring.
Peacocks tail feathers are only sexual manipulation if you have a brain the size of a pea hen’s, Dreolin. I assume you are not so biologically illiterate as to imagine it’s a comparison. By all means wear nice clothes and make yourself look pretty, my dear. But if you can’t work out the difference between that and the kind of manipulative action mentioned above then it doesn’t reflect well on you.
The “not being able to control oneself” was, of course, in response to another commenter. I gather that would have neutered your indignation though, so the oversight is understandable.
And of course you find feminism boring. You’re just a man and you’re not really interested in it, I wouldn’t expect you to be able to wrap your pretty little head around anything that nuanced.
‘Bipolar sexuality’ indeed!
Craig, the only difference between you and Mr Average is that you are refreshingly honest about it (clearly not always to your own advantage or to that of your now ex-wife) and have had a little more opportunity to taste the variety of life than those who gravitate from home to workplace to pub. But, given that -as with any appetite- there are some who can control their urges better than others, you don’t seem to be a rapist or even a sexual harasser and that’s to your credit. Many of your critics will be precisely that in their more secretive private lives. How do I know? Ask any woman. Your -and my- former colleague Clay Freud had a rather unpleasant side to him there. You’re a lucky man to have a new life with a woman who understands and shares your – bursting urge for a fling. Don’t let the jealous hypocrites convince you that there’s something wrong with you. There isn’t. There’s something wrong with THEM.