Just driven to Edinburgh Airport while listening to a programme about Hard Power and Soft Power on Radio 4. There is much to debate in working out whether a society actually needs both – even if the soft variety feels more subtle than the hard. But why link the difference to the politics of gender? And then go on to suggest that if Condy and Mrs Thatcher are examples of hard power, it is because they had learned to act like men in a man’s world. By the time I reached the contra flow at Kinross, I was getting really irritated that some women seem to feel that it is all right to speak of men in general in terms which one would not now dare to apply to black people, members of the gay community, Jews ……. And just while I am having a rant, when did the default position for the toilet seat get fixed as DOWN?
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“when did the default position for the toilet seat get fixed as DOWN?”
About the time we women got stuck being the ones to clean the things.
I think ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ contrasts are the flavour of the moment. David McWilliams in Ireland has started talking baout ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ economics.
Ah yes. Men, women and clergymen – and only some of us are old women!
Too true about the men – listened to invective today from a lady prishioner about ‘ALL men are b…….’ etc etc. Didn’t seem to dawn on her that I was one – but then again perhaps priests inhabit a misty middle ground?
Hard power seems to come along with phiosophies ending in -ism. I think it was David Watson who remarked that in time all ‘is-ums’ become ‘was-ums’! Bodes ill for Anglicanism!