when dates go wrong

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

Some of you probably know that my last date - my first since breaking up with my last girlfriend four months back - ended in an argument over pop music. She thought that liking Girls Aloud made me a misogynist, since they were obviously selected by a gang of perverted old men just to look good, and who cared about the music? My arguments, when she would listen to any, which was basically never, were that a) no they weren't, they were selected by Pop Idol voters, overwhelmingly young women, and b) that didn't stop the records being great. She then cited an even worse example: Tatu. "Their new album is fantastic," I said, by this point very much wanting the date to be over. This made me a rabid homophobe, since they are clearly not real lesbians. I was rather losing what thread there was to these arguments by this point - and the one thing that kept being repeated, as if it was self-evidently linked to my misogyny and homophobia, was that they were manufactured disposable pop. I realised I've been living in a sheltered world the last few years, and forgot that such thinking was still out there. (The woman expressed a fondness for Jeff Buckley and k.d. lang, who is clearly a proper lesbian.) ((Also, hello, I just joined.))