Do I blame the patriarchy?

A long time ago, well, not so very long ago in the grand scheme of life, I sent my eldest brother an email. It was around the time when we all knew the USA was about to start bombing the living daylights out of Iraq on the pretext of a hunt for weapons of mass destruction.

I am not going to start debating that here, but my view was, and always has been, that the job should have been finished the first time and that the second time, UN procedure should at least have been followed. Too late for that argument now, we and they are there and the most that anyone can do is attempt to hold them accountable for their actions.

Anyway, all that is beside the point, really. At the time, I was getting about a hundred emails a day with links to sites of pressure groups, e-petitions, templates of letters to send to MPs and the like. As a student, I was in front my PC writing a lot of the time anyway, and the best of those I received I, too forwarded. I sent them to my parents and to friends who weren’t involved with the same combination of groups as I was.

At one point, my Dad said something like:

“You’re sending me all this stuff. M’s sent me the same stuff. You should just send it to M.”

Here’s the background: M is my eldest brother from my dad’s first marriage, thus he’s a half brother, really. Since childhood there had been a bit of hero-worship on my part. No-one I knew was as cool or as worldly as my big brother who had spent years living in a bus, had two children with someone he lived with but wasn’t married to (at the time that was a bit of a statement, but I don’t find it such a statement now that I have two children without having been married to either of their fathers), and had travelled throughout Africa. I thought he was amazing.

M, though, had snubbed me when I was a confused pre-teenager. That didn’t stop me trying, though. Every so often I’d give him a call, just to say “hello” for no reason other than that he was my big brother and I wanted him to fit that role. Each time there would be silence on the end of the phone and eventually I’d say goodbye.

When my dad was coming up to his seventieth year, I organised a party for him. Not knowing where to start I replied to a group email Dad had sent announcing his new email address. M was in that group and where everyone else had responded kindly, offering apologies or help, M said:

“I was unaware that he was 69 and to be honest I knew his birthday was in July sometime as is my mothers and brothers.

As you say this is at very short notice. It is now three weeks till the 14/7 and I am sure that this date has been rushing up to suprise you for your entire life.

I (M only) will be in the New Forest for the stag party of an old friend with whom I spent a year in Africa. I have been committed to his stag weekend and wedding for many months and can't imagine for one minute that I will be that presentable.

You say "HE" wants a party. He was here for a huge barbecue all last Saturday and most of the night at which he had ample opportunity and yet failed to mention this desire to either J or myself.I don't want to be negative but your father has never been of a gregarious nature amiable though he is! I think it nieve to expect to raise a spontaneous party for him from his friends (very few, extemly well dispersed, hard to find) and family (several who have no apparent interest in him), at this time of year. It could result in a very very very depressing experience where almost none will turn up.

Remember if you're popular and have a reputation for throwing a good party only half of those who say they will actually turn up

Of course if you have a rush of replies from more than a handfull of people please correct me, one of the most depressing things has to be too few turning up and I couldn't stand talking to you for too long.

I suggest you rethink this idea and call it a suprise 70th birthday set the date anytime three months in advance (at least) maybe September after the summer holidays and make a plan or get someone else to and make it a suprise for him invite him somewhere or get someone else to for whatever reason and suprise him.

If for some reason i.e. iminent death the date can't be moved then I guess I'll come to what would naturally be a depressing party.

M”

First I have to say, I copy/pasted this in. The spelling mistakes are all his own.

I saved the email he sent. I was surprised at how vicious it was. He made it clear he wasn’t interested in being involved with the party. It really hurt.

The party ended up being well attended, with many friends from teaching connections and Navy connections, my other brother and his wife dealt with the food, the venue was perfect for a mixed age group and there was a genuinely good feeling to it. M turned up, seeming to be drunk, or stoned, or something. I don’t know, but he didn’t behave badly and took one third of the credit for the party, which I let him.

I was hopeful that it meant that maybe we could be friends. When Dad recommended that I forwarded some of the peace stuff to M, I was doubly hopeful. I thought that maybe here there would be some common ground: a connection, perhaps.

In the event, now that I check, I see that the email I forwarded wasn’t even particularly political, but an Oxfam one, of the same ilk as many of the inserts in weekend papers. Having done joint collections with Oxfam when I was chairing an Amnesty student group, I was not ill informed about Oxfam’s work and knew several people who had held voluntary and paid positions within its network who all spoke passionately about Oxfam’s development work. But that is beside the point.

Mike said:

“I have taken the time.
While you may not be entirely stupid, you are very nieve.
I have ears and eyes and despite what you may have been told or assumed, I have an IQ that is way way beyond that which is considered adequate or even healthy.
I can assure you that NGO's without exception are run as businesses, I have drunk and been drunk with them all.
If they had used the money they had been given as the donors had intended, instead of in expensive restraunts or lost it all on the stock market they would be prepared for whatever disasters may occur.
Now all they want to do is raise there TV profile to raise more money to secure there cushy chauffeur driven lives.I had a girlfriend who's mother was the head of a very big British NGO and I can assure you they are having a laugh on everyone.
The people who run these organisations exist on another level, way beyond anything most people, even you, could even begin to comprehend.
Call me cynical but there are almost no areas where you could have any influence whatsoever, even Tony the day after that massive world wide march turned around and snubbed every single person who got of their arses to demonstrate by pointing at a group of Iraqi refugees and saying that their voices really counted. I suggest that perhaps the terrorists may well be doing the only thing left that can work and now I'm talking about a method of releasing their frustration.
Suicide bombers are not making a sacrifice the are purely releasing their frustrations, curing their pain, they have no other means of expression.
Until the main powers can take on a true proportional democracy bombing them is all you can do as they will always manage to manipulate themselves into power.

All emails from this address have now been blocked.”

Again, I have to stress that the spelling and grammatical errors are his own.

Nice. And that was it.

Even revisiting that folder in my email account stings.

Fast forward a few years, six years, in fact and my niece, his eldest daughter, is trying hard to get to know her father. She is a lovely young woman, with insight and integrity. She’s creative and intelligent as well as beautiful and stylish and I am very proud that she’s a member of my family. For that she has my absolute support and I have no intention of letting her down.

Spending a day with her, one of the subjects that came up was M’s total and utter dismissal of me as ‘crazy’. Now, this doesn’t really come as any surprise and I would like to be able to say that I don’t care at all. I do care, though: certainly less than I used to, but I care. It also troubles me that this means I know nothing of his youngest daughter, my niece, and she’s unlikely to ever attempt to get to know me, because after all, I’m ‘crazy’.

My lovely niece said that M had mentioned to her that it was because I bombarded him with political emails. I had to think about this and check it back through the folder I have saved of his electronic communications with me, because it was long ago and really, a very small interaction.

I sometimes wonder whether, by saving the emails in a separate folder I bearing a grudge. Possibly yes, but I never look at them. They are there to remind me, should I be tempted to call or write (as my emails are all blocked), of my likely reception.

This is all neither here nor there, but for Dad recently talking about his will. Obviously, I love my dad very much. In many ways I’m like him, according to Mr ONIS. I can see it, easily, we both have idiosyncratic ways and are equally exasperating correcting others’ mistakes. As a child I found it embarrassing but I have grown into someone similarly pedantic. All that, though, is by the by, I put in time and effort with him, even though he can be a miserable sod at times, he’s also kind, in deed if not word. I love my father for all that he is and all he has bestowed upon me.

Recently, though, since he stated that his will says that M and I have to be on good terms in order for either of us to inherit anything when he dies. Dad is fond of talking about how well M has done with his various businesses. He often tells me about M’s lovely house and car and garden.

I, on the other hand, am broke. I have always been broke. It’s like an old friend. I have very little and can do very little of practical use. I’m over it: I know I’m no cash cow.

But there is an imbalance there, between who needs an inheritance more and who has tried harder to make friends, to be a brother and sister. Also between who makes the effort to speak to Dad, on the telephone or in person, daily, which I do for two reasons: one is so that he’s not too lonely, the other is to make sure he hasn’t had a stroke, a fall, a heart attack or dropped down dead for any other reason.

So recently, it came to light that the reason M cites for my ‘craziness’ is the fact that I sent him an email link. The email was recommended by Dad. Despite the fact that I am the only one who has ever made any effort, ever, somehow the animosity has come from one person – me. Now, it seems that Dad engineered the situation and is overlooking his own role in M’s irrational hatred of me (I have barely spoken more than two sentences to him in nearly twenty years, since I was twelve). And I’m the one that is going to be punished for it.

I’m not the type – I gain nothing from nastiness and grudges. I don’t know what sort of type I am – in a lot of ways I’m useless, I forget birthdays and often I’m running late, but I’m not the type to not look after and love my dad.

But in purely cost benefit terms, I might as well have been a bitch.

Fathers and Daughters

My relationship with both my parents is deeply special to me, but right now, this is about my Dad and me and my brother and my niece.

They are both complex men, different and similar all at once. My brother thrives on a reputation of being open minded and wayward, yet can surprise with the conservative nature of some of his values and beliefs. My dad is the opposite, like a picture in negative, his conservative reputation is important to him, yet every now and again he surprises me with his open mindedness.

They both have strongly misogynist streaks. Where has this come from? With my Dad I think it’s clear. He was married twice for nearly twenty years each time: his first marriage was to a woman who left him and their children while he was on a naval tour of duty, returning to port to find his car keys and a note with the Harbour Master. His second wife, my mother, was a woman who excelled in her field and earned more than him after he left the armed forces and retrained as a teacher. She eventually left him and took up with another woman.

With that in mind, I can delineate my Dad’s feelings about women reasonably easily. I know less about my brother’s experience, but he was one of the kids his mother left, which must obviously have had a huge impact, leading him to behave badly which resulted in my niece’s mother leaving him. She left without warning him and without notice. He just came back from work one day and she was gone.

(I confess a sneaking admiration for this. If you give warning and discuss it beforehand then it becomes an ultimatum and gives the soon-to-be-ex a chance to falsely improve their behaviour, which never lasts and only confuses matters. As such, I think this is how it should be done and she managed it, off to another country, with a baby and a toddler in tow. She’s a pretty impressive lady.)

Undoubtedly being dumped so abruptly had a massive impact on my brother, but one of the reasons she left was the ways his pre-existing misogyny played itself out.

He is also generally unpleasant.

So, my niece and nephew who are now in their twenties were brought up in their mother’s country of origin in a stable environment with grandparents, uncles, aunts and family friends over generations close by. They are distinct personalities, both creative, both intelligent, very much like their mother. They were not without male figures in their lives but they were shielded from their father. At no point was he denied contact, it was just stipulated (wisely) that their mother had to be present.

For the last twenty years, my brother’s ex has gone to great lengths to ensure that she remained in touch with our family and that both children had the chance to spend time with us and meet us. It’s only now that I spend time with my in-laws that I realise how difficult this can be, even when you get on well.


My brother, Mr WeeWeeHead, turned this into denial of access and then denial full stop. My Dad followed his lead, identifying wholly with his son. For years, the subject of his grandchildren was taboo and he denied their entire existence.

Meanwhile, Mr WeeWeeHead had a fling with a woman he met on his travels, she got pregnant and had their baby: a little girl. When he caught up with them back at home they got together, he moved in them and has been a father to their daughter.

I struggle to figure out whether this is a good or a bad thing.

This was the status quo for fifteen years. The eldest two didn’t exist and he has come back to be with his youngest daughter. It all changed earlier this year when my niece got in touch with him. Immediately he made the huge offer to take her on a skiing holiday for two weeks.

That’s big, generous, but it’s a fraction of what he owes her.

She feels that their holiday was amazing, like she had a real connection with him. He was clearly moved by her being there and proud of the young woman she’s become. He emailed my Dad photos of the two of them and for the first time in many years, my father began to accept her existence. My brother was eager to tell my niece what “really” happened, his version of events which leading up to that point. My niece is a smart girl and has spent hours around people who think about the differences in the ways those events were perceived and why that might be. He said nothing that surprised her, though uncharacteristically she didn’t respond or point out the inconsistencies. She nodded silently while she listened to his tale of woe (I have little sympathy for him) and gave herself a panic attack instead.

During the worsening panic attack, my brother told her ‘Daddy will sort everything out’ a doctor was called, and then an ambulance and she ended up in hospital, just for a while, but exhausted from the sedatives. Everyone was scared. The curious thing, though, was that at one point, my brother began to develop his own panic attack in sympathy with her and had to leave the room. This, my niece felt, bonded them, and they spent time getting to know each other and his pride in his daughter was obvious.

The difficulty, though, came when everybody went home. They went back to their normal selves. In my wee-wee head brother’s case, that is someone who is self-righteous, arrogant, dismissive, self-absorbed who spends more time in the pub than with his family. He puts time and effort into maintaining this image. Inevitably my niece called and tried to talk to him but was puzzled by his lack of enthusiasm and even interest for anything she has to say.

On the phone, that means she’ll keep talking. We’re alike in that respect, if it’s quiet, we need to fill the space.

On her next visit, a six day trip, he worked, she spent time with his partner and their daughter. She came to see me. We had a lovely day, but from what she told me, it seemed that she was discovering the other side of my big brother. I know that this is going to be a bumpy ride for her, but one that only she can take and she’s entitled to. The only thing I can do is to listen to her. I can’t bad mouth my brother, that would be inappropriate, however tempting.

The other thing I can do, and have so far done with success, is negotiate her pocket money from her grandpa. She insists that she’s an adult and has her own money. It’s true she’s an adult and has a job, but she is still my father’s grand-daughter, still a child of this family, and frankly, it’s the least he can do.