Kate Bush
Feminists like to claim Kate Bush as one their own but of course they’re wide of the mark. She is, in fact, a perfect example of a painful truth – that it’s quite possible to be a straight, faithful partner, a mother and a creative and independent woman without having to be a carping feminist. People such as Kate do more for the female cause than a thousand Steinems and Dworkins. For a start, she’s happy …
School was a very cruel environment and I was a loner. But I learnt to get hurt and I learnt to cope with it.
I had friends but I was spending a great deal of my time alone and for me that was vital because there’s an awful lot you learn about yourself when you’re alone.
1980:
My first Top of the Pops I didn’t want to do. I was terrified. I’d never done television before. Seeing the video afterwards was like watching myself die.
For me, having a child is a really great responsibility because you’ve got something there that is depending on you for information and love until a certain age when it goes to school.
For the last 12 years, I’ve felt really privileged to be living such a normal life. It’s so a part of who I am.
I’ve read a couple of things that I was sort of close to having a nervous breakdown. But I don’t think I was. I was very, very tired. It was a really difficult time.
1981:
What I’ve tended to do is to use my own experiences to get into someone else’s mind, like in Wuthering Heights.
But I don`t have a very good track record with royalty. My dress fell off in front of Prince Charles at the Prince`s Trust, so I`m just living up to my reputation.
I’m so pleased with everyone’s work on this record. There are some lovely performances and I hope you will all feel it’s been worth the wait. Bertie keeps me very busy, he is so much fun.
I think probably the only thing that is around in these songs is that I was really lonely when I wrote a lot of them. But it was really by my own choosing because I was devoting myself to songwriting and dancing and I wasn’t really going out and seeing people.
2005:
I believe in the magic reality of transformation. I believe that in myself occurs a continual mutation — as if from the larva of a nymph, from a chrysalis nymph in the process of sublimation. Music, dance, and art have these powers as well. I dream and I believe that I am able to transmute into a butterfly.
“What do you think of Madonna, Kate?”
Answer (paraphrase from memory): “Well, I don’t actually know much about Madonna, but I saw her on Live Aid, and she was actually quite good, really…” {Lapse into silence and usual polite but enigmatic smile}
Question: “But you do things very differently from Madonna, don’t you; I mean, not selling a sexy image, and all that…?”
Answer: Silence, polite but not-so-enigmatic smile…
I’m not sure if I’m allowed to run these next three pictures. They come from this Flickr page and are family photos. If there’s a problem, I shall remove them:
It’s not important to me that people understand me. [Kate Bush]
I mean, I find it completely ridiculous this obsession with celebrities; the important people are soldiers and doctors and people who actually put people back together and make a difference to people’s lives … why so much attention on something that’s so shallow?
This is part 3 of the “Women who allow Themselves to be Women” series. Part 1a, Part 1b and Part 2 are here. for your delectation, male and female.
Filed under: Politics & economics
She was an icon of my youth. We admired her for her talent, her understated beauty and her determination to keep her feet on the ground in the midst of meteoric success. Age has not withered her.
You’re right. If you watch the 1980 interview [above], the interviewer wants her to say that Babooshka is about an unfaithful man but she sets the lady straight about what it’s really about. At the end of the interview, the camera cuts back to two absolute blockheads in a studio, a bit like that Ross character and the shaggy dog and fellow misogynist he works with [or used to].
Kate Bush was an iconic figure for me too. Her comeback album a few years back was not that great but her early alnums contained some gems
The 2005 video sums it all up really
I think she sounds even cuter in that video than the earlier ones 
Yes, Jams – that’s so. Cherie – she does and age obviously suits her.
Running Up That Hill… never tire of it!
I absolutely love Kate Bush and have done so since discovering her music in the 80s. She was and is a beautiful woman with great taste and wonderful musical talent. I look forward to another album from her soon. Thanks, James, for this post.
For goodness sake, James. She AND the Dworkins and Steinhems have their place in feminism.
Except that she’s about as feminist as I am, Welshcakes. She’s quite critical of many attitudes of women, actually [and men too and paparazzi and everyone].
The difference between her and a feminist is that she is talented, creative and open to men, women or people from alpha centauri, if they’re intelligent, whereas feminists interpret everything in life according to whether men are oppressing them or not. They’re intrinsically unhappy people. Seriously, can you really equate a Dworkins with a well-adjusted woman?
Kate Bush can’t be hijacked by that lot of malcontents to suit their book and she’s very popular with men. Hands off our Kate.
“they’re intelligent, whereas feminists interpret everything in life according to whether men are oppressing them or not. They’re intrinsically unhappy people.”
I think I am intelligent! At least the uni did, it gave me three degrees. I am happily married, with two children, I have had a long and extrememtly happy life, I am also recognised as an expert in my field, and have written a number of highly acclaimed but little read academic books.
I am also a feminist.
I also, dislike generalities used to descredit those who hold different views and attitudes James. So I dispute your interpretation of the word feminist.
Oooops.
Junius – far from generalities. For a start, look at this please:
http://nourishingobscurity.blogspot.com/2007/08/feminism-one-size-fits-all-dystopia.html
Not my words but those of women who are rejecting this scourge all over the world. Then you might like to read this, from a personal point of view – an article by a woman:
http://awomanagainstfeminism.blogspot.com/2007/12/some-thoughts-about-perceptions.html
After that, Melissa Scowcroft asks the question – who is responsible for the breakdown of society:
Christina Hoff-Sommers argues, in Who Stole Feminism: How Women Have Betrayed Women, that feminist misandry leads directly to misogyny by what she calls “establishment feminists” against (the majority of) women who love men.
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese also wrote scholarly and popular works on Feminism itself, and through all of her writings, she alienated many rabid Feminists and attracted many conservative Feminists.”Sad as it may seem, my experience with radical, upscale Feminism only reinforced my growing mistrust of individual pride.” She argued for common snese values between men and women.
Camille Paglia was described as one of the world’s top 100 intellectuals by the UK’s Prospect Magazine, and is a strong critic of much of the feminism that began with Betty Friedan’s 1962 The Feminine Mystique, and compared Feminists — whom she considered to be victim-centered — to the Unification Church.
Judith Levine, in My Enemy, My Love commented:
That is for starters.
Feminism is the scourge which attempts to get men to “relinquish power” in what is a zero sum game, i.e. that there are only so many jobs to go round but it’s far worse than that. It has gone in to schools and rewritten the text books, not just with the extremes which make the news like banning Shakespeare for being misogynist:
It’s not just the insanity – it’s also unmitigated arrogance which produced this introduction to A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare by Dympna Callaghan:
.. but across the board and with what is now selected for library bookshelves. It’s permeated into the curriculum in schools and together with other socialist ideas, has softened the underbelly of the society, corroded its moral basis [which is different to individuals being moral] and created the dire situation between men and women today. It is directly responsible for the increased levels of misandry in western society.
Fellow blogger Teresa summed up such people this way:
How many more women would you like me to quote?
One of the worst elements of it is the man who is its running mate. Usually unread in its damage but on the left in politics and therefore embracing it, he’s the male the feminists point to to show their progress.
They [feminists now] have not made progress since the first wave – they have got the backs up of a substantial portion of society, they are “rabid and carping” precisely as charged because, as Teresa said, they think they know what’s best for women.
Women are now turning away from them in droves, thank goodness and are returning to being a woman, i.e. someone who interacts with men in a normal way, a biological way, rejecting their politics of hatred of men and having to relearn what it is to be a couple.
The next post is about precisely that.
Let’s throw one more in, by Kelly Mac [another woman]:
That’s right. It is not about equal rights at all and one characteristic of many third wave feminists is that they do not even recognize it in themselves. There’s a semi-regular visitor here who can only see a woman’s point of view, not a whole society view yet she hotly denies she’s a feminist. Now, for a start, that’s an admission that it is a dirty word.
Secondly, it is pure feminist in that on the topic of rape, she can see no other side to the question [and there is one] but the woman’s. So there are still many closet feminists who deny they are.
You’ll notice that this blog does not argue for “men’s rights” at all although many women now do. You’ll find no post from me condemning women – quite the opposite. You’ll find many embracing and revering women, agreeing that in a one on one way, the way to happiness is for men and women to interact with each other in a symbiotic way or even two parts of a whole.
Enough for now.
Oh what the heck, let’s throw in another by a former feminist, Wendy McElroy who attempts to define an “ifeminist”:
Feminism does not support women. It makes noises about doing so but in fact, it is destructive for women’s progress. As this post argued at the beginning – it is better for good role models for women be out there for men to latch onto. Someone like a de Beauvoir or whining Steinem or the appalling Dworkin [rest her soul] is an anti-role model and ones who have half of humanity up against them, which is what they really want.
They want gender war. Fine, let’s have it and see women go right back to the stone age in terms of how men view them. Or else we can be REAL feminists, people who care for women in the heart – look through this blog and see the view I have of women, not feminists. I stand or fall on this blog for my treatment of women.
‘I stand or fall on this blog for my treatment of women.’
As I know firsthand the validity of this statement of James’, and as a woman, agree with his anti-feminist views, I am more offended by commenter Junius’ comment and it’s implications.
No one said feminists are all single and uneducated,but nearly all of them ARE blind to the harm to society that they’re preachings create.
To seek equality and contentment, as modern women, is a whole different matter to the harpies who want to divide the sexes and blame their shortcomings and inborn angst on gender issues.
God save us from ‘well meaning’ feminists! They are no more than an organized hate group who jeopardise the well beings of the very people they purport to support whilst alienating everyone else.
And I am content in my single status and consider myself a woman who can stand up to any man and demand respect and equality[without turning it into gender propaganda].