My sweet little boy...

What makes a boy a man? Is he supposes to father a son, build a house and plant a tree to become a manly man? Of course not. Nowadays, we can rent a repair crew or the whole company to build a house. Also, more and more people are living in crowded cities, so it is quite impossible to plant a tree if you are not a member of Greenpeace. Finally, having just the daughters is not a shame.

A lot of boys expect that the sexual initiation would make them adult. However, there are still boys, but the boys who have sex. If a girl gets pregnant, basically they run away. When I was working with the teenagers, most of them admit that that special moment made them adult. It was not important if they could give a pleasure to a girl – that was not their objective. “I just wanted to f**k, because I want to be respected by my friends. They are thinking that I am a pathetic little boy”.

The definition of true men has been changing during last decades. Firstly, in 50’ the man had to be: head of a family, hard-working, emotionally inaccessible, patriot. He couldn’t cry. But after a war in Vietnam the situation changed. The 60’ made the boys discover their sensitive nature. They become more respectful to women but also less engage in life (family and political). Men don’t want be oppressive for a partner, so they become passive.

The lack of father results in creation of radical feminist (who basically hates all men) and lost boys who do not understand the notion of manhood.

Robert Bly present the vision of manhood which do not criticize the achievements of feminism, but at the same time in show the way that every boy has to pass to become a man. “Iron John: A Book About Men” would be an unpleasant lecture for every Peter Pan.

It is so easy to juge

People hate other people. That emotion is unstoppable and vivid.

The descendants of immigrants hate the country where they have been born. They don’t like the way they live: lead a life without the perspectives. All their friends do drugs, steal, cheat, don’t study and do not have enough money to go to the university. They don’t know different life.

Why? Maybe this is a fault of French government who didn’t let the Algerians buy houses in the city center. As a result, there were more and more apartments around the city which became a ghetto. There are some places close to Paris where the white people do not enter. On the other hand it is just funny that on the suburbs you can find the aristocracy living in their mansion or poor immigrants. There are some small, bourgeois cities like Maison-Lafitte (well-known in Poland thanks to Giedroyć) or dangerous places like Saint- Denis but rarely you can there find a mediocre place. The division between the richness and the poverty is overwhelming.

So again, why do people in France have problems with immigrants?

“La haine”, a French movie from 1995 explain this phenomenon and you could understand it in an altogether different light.

Are the terrorist the natural born killers?

Yesterday, a Belgian writer Frank Andriat was at our university. Basically, he is a French teacher in a good high school and he started his career, because he just wanted to understand his student’s problems. What a banal story, isn’t it?

Once upon a time, he was watching the news about a hideous attempt in Belgian metro. The journalist described a whole story and he did mention the family name of a terrorist responsible for this terrifying crime. Andriat couldn’t believe in it. That was his old student’s name. After checking some information, he found out that it was a brother of his student. A brother of a wonderful kid and sportsman who is banned to go to the USA for the championship, because of his brother crime.

One of the ways to become a terrorist is being a good, muslin boy without a lot of friends. They will organize a charity association which helps homeless people. They will say: Look, you are useful, merciful and nice boy. You make a world better. Maybe we want to help us brothers in faith in Syria? And step by step, you will be becoming a terrorist.

This is not a “crème de la crème” of French filmography, but if you understand how a normal boy becomes a cold blooded murder, you should see “La Désintégration” of Philippe Faucon and read a teenager book called “Je t'enverrai des fleurs de Damas”.

Bonne lecture.

Refugees have three heads

We don’t know Afghanistan and the Near East, because they don’t teach us about this part of the world. As a result of watching television, we considered this country as a hell. All the people are miserable there because of the poverty, fanaticism and the war. We should emphasis that Afghanistan has suffered from not only the international war with Soviet Union but also from a civil war between lots of tribes.

We are afraid of terrorists, so everybody does, but unfortunately that fear close us up. Europeans don’t want to invite any refugee, even orphans, because we are too scared by the danger of the terrorism. But seriously… why? Is a fear the only reason to not help another people? Maybe, we just should present them as a normal people to encourage the Europeans to support them?

“Rose afghan” is a Frank Andriat’s book about Afghanistan. Belgian writer destines his book to teenagers to get them familiar with a misfortune of Afghans. We see the world by the eyes of teen girl who just wants to live in peace. She doesn’t know the true meaning, because she was born in country where the war lasts from years. She is so lost, sad and desperate that we would like just to help her.

Ps. Frank Andriant will be this week at our university !

Am I pretty ?

One week ago, my cousin was coming back from a trip to Hawaii. As a client of American Airlines she ordered a coffee and was enjoying her pleasant flight. The stewardess’s served her a coffee and after that, se notice something: the average of age of the stuff was 40 years old. It could never happen in the Europe. Every time, she has been taking a flight, a stewardess was nice-looking, smiling, very young girls, but she has never met a mature woman.

Why in the magazines even a woman who is 50 years old, looks like a 30-year-old woman or someone after a plastic surgery? Why could we accept a face without a facial expression (Botox), but we could not accept a TV woman presenter with the gray hair?

Naomi Wolf in “The Beauty Myth” explains the entire problem connected to the cult of beauty and youth in our Occident society. The profound researches prove the sources of inequality and the impact of this on women.

It is vital, especially for a young girl who enters in the adult life that the ideal woman exists only on paper. We should encourage that girls to study, travel and focus on spiritual and emotional development instead of being obsess with her body. The “beauty myth” causes anorexia, bulimia, complexes, lack of self-confidence etc…

BTW : It’s worth going to the CK Zamek in Poznan to see an exhibit called “ZŁe kobiety”.

All that sex

Nowadays, the lack of sexual education takes us back to the Middle Ages. The young people, specially in Poland, acquire the knowledge the field of sexuality due to porno movies or the “fairy-tells” of their friends. It is not possible to talk with parents about it, because the love making is still a taboo. Moreover, most of the society is reluctant even to talk about their bed problems with a partner. According to the researches, a lot of woman are faking orgasm to please her man and because they are too ashamed of it.
Why don't we want to solve this problem and we are pretending that everything is just fine?

Let’s analyze the polish language: How do we call “vagina”?

Cipa – it is very vulgar
Cipka – it is less vulgar, but is still a bad word
Kaczuszka/ muszelka/ pierożek – it is so childish
Wagina – it’s way too medical
Srom – it has a connotation associated with a shame ("sromota, sromota, wstyd!")

As we know, our perception of reality is based on language we used. To sum up, without an adequate vocabulary is hard to start a conversation…
I would like to recommend “Sztuka Kochania – historia Michaliny Wisłockiej” to all people, young in particular. We should break this ridiculous taboo and teach our polish society to talk about love making.

Break the taboo

The division between highbrow and lowbrow (culture) exist in the common view. Let’s revise some examples from the history just to prove our point. Firstly, on the south of France in the Middle Ages, the troubadours created poems for the pleasure of Occitan aristocracy and the juggler performing to amuse some people gathered in the market. Of course, the troubadour couldn’t be a juggler, because the major part of poets comes from the royal court and the jugglers were the penniless fouls.
Secondly, we are capable of noticing this division in music: the jazz music against the classic music! The second one is considering as the better because is more sophisticated and, at some level, touch our souls. The jazz is more accessible and people are listening to this in the lousy bars to have fun. What is more, they are dancing! According to common view, the contemplation is above the dancing. However, to our astonishment, this kind of separation is visible even in the dancing… Waltz against tango.
There is some art intended to be sophisticated, performed to the people from the society and the second one. Moreover, this is a question of a social taboo.
The greater people from XX century like Susan Sontag or Umberto Eco emphasis the absurdity of this artificial separation. Fortunately, I hope that the attribution the Nobel Prize to the Bob Dylan will break this horrible taboo.