Single vision

I've been living with Jenny for so long I sometimes wonder how I would behave if I were living on my own again. Would I still be so well-organised and domesticated, or would I be a total slut, letting everything slide into chaos and squalor?

After all this time as a couple, I really have no idea how little or how much Jenny influences me. Is she constantly changing my attitudes or do I carry on moreorless as I would have done anyway?

Before I met Jenny, I lived in a tiny bedsit that required the absolute minimum of maintenance, so it's hard to know how I would shape up if I had a whole house to look after.

Would I be so overwhelmed that I just moved into one room and ignored all the rest? Or I would I become ultra-houseproud and be hoovering from top to bottom at 6 am?

And would I eat properly? When Jenny worked in Glasgow for a year, we assumed she would be knocking up cordon bleu treats while I got by on snacks and packets of crisps. Oddly enough, it was the other way round and I was the one cooking decent meals.

And would I be happily socialising, looking up all my old friends and busily making new ones, or would I turn into a disgruntled hermit, refusing to answer the door and cursing humanity?

In my pre-Jenny days I was sociable enough, so I suspect the extrovert would win out over the recluse.

The fact is that if you live with someone, you do subtly modify each other's behaviour without always being aware of it. You're unconsciously motivated by the desire to look good, or be well thought-of, or make a good impression, and you may be faking it a bit. So how can I be sure what I'm really like?

Naturally I hope I never have occasion to find out. As Jenny is ten years younger than me, she's likely to outlast me. But you never can tell.
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I've turned off the wordcheck. It's driving me nuts, especially the word in black and white that's virtually impossible to read. Hopefully I won't get a deluge of spam.

Slut Walking

A Toronto police constable who made an off-the-cuff remark about women who "dressed like sluts" must be mortified by the global notoriety he inspired, not to mention a whole new movement, Slut Walking.

He's doubtless not the only cop to have said "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised" but unfortunately for PC Michael Sanguinetti his remarks were publicised by the law school students he was addressing and a worldwide furore broke out.

Angry women held a Slut Walk in Toronto, in which they dressed like "sluts" and said they were reclaiming the word as something jokey and inoffensive rather than a term of abuse and contempt.

They also criticised Sanguinetti for suggesting yet again that if women are attacked by men it's their fault, that the way some women dress or behave is supposedly "asking for it".

Now there have been similar rallies across Canada and the US, and others are planned in cities around the world.

I'm all in favour of the protests, and the idea of cleaning up the word "slut". But a surprising number of journalists and feminists are opposed, saying the word has such universally scathing and vicious overtones that it's beyond redemption and shouldn't be used at all.

That seems rather defeatist to me. Surely if enough people decontaminate the word, then it has to lose some of its negativity, in the same way that the word "gay" has been turned into a simple description (even though some people are trying hard to turn it back into an insult).

And the implications of the word "slut" are a great focus for debate on why women are attacked and why the victims are blamed rather than the attackers. Why does having a lot of sex or dressing in skimpy clothes make you a "slut"?

And why are women referred to in such aggressive terms as sluts, slags, slappers and tarts, when men who bed every woman in town are affectionately known as womanisers, seducers, or libertines?

Michael Sanguinetti has inadvertently done a great service to feminism by sparking such a passionate argument about this toxic word.

British Justice Minister Ken Clarke has started a similar furore by referring to "serious rape" as opposed to other types of rape. Not surprisingly, there was an immediate outcry that rape is serious whatever the circumstances.