LET’S GO PC, BABY!!!

She came in fuming and she came in angry. She slammed the door shut and threw herself onto the couch. She pushed away her violin case, crossed her arms and made an attempt to look indignant. It meant only one thing – ‘Minuet and Trio’ by Schubert was not going to happen any time soon. I knew I will have to hear what she has to say regardless of whatever I had in mind for our lesson.

‘Ok’, I said. ‘Tell me.’

‘I’m done with boys in my life. Never again…Over and out’.

I sighed and sat down. That was a dangerous territory. I am a violin teacher. I’m not supposed to discuss boys with my teenage students. I’m not qualified to solve relationship conflicts. Also, this is 2023. One wrong word and I’ll be reported to the relevant authorities, lobotomised, chemically castrated and sent back to Siberia.

It didn’t look like I had a choice though, so I sat down, ‘Go on then, shoot’.

‘They don’t need a girlfriend, they need a mommy, that’s it. They don’t care, they are all users and they all so immature!’

‘And…?’

‘They don’t behave like men, they are little girls, and they expect you to care for them..’.

‘And…?’

‘They can’t even pay for the coffee when they take you out’.

‘Oh, I see’.

‘No, you don’t. It’s annoying. Was it always like this? I mean when you were young?’

‘Well….. Thanks for reminding me that I’m an old fart and no, fifty years ago boys were boys and girls were girls, as far as I remember.

‘Did you have gay people?’

‘We did. They were persecuted in some places, sometimes they had to hide, but yes, there were plenty. My mother had a whole bunch of gay friends. One of them was a soldier who beat up his sergeant and ran away from the barracks. My mom found him sleeping on a bench outside her house, brought him home, fed him and gave him some money. From this moment he became one of her most devoted fans. Also he became my pal and protector…. sort of. I was a skinny boy who got beat up on a regular basis, so ‘Sashka-podruzhka’ (a girly name for Sasha) decided to teach me how to defend myself. A knuckle in the eye, a thumb under the Adam’s apple (repeat as necessary), a pencil in the ear, this sort of thing. You know….a usual gay thing. At one occasion he told me that with enough practice it is possible to pop someone’s eye out of the socket without ripping it out completely. Then, if you try to rotate it slightly, the ‘client’ will have a unique view of himself for a few seconds. His eye then can be pushed back into the socket, so no permanent physical damage will be done.

‘Trust me’, he said. ‘Nobody would ever want to hurt my sweet little boy again.’

An interesting character this ‘Sashka’ was. Born in Kazakhstan, built like an ox, full makeup, mascara, lipstick, earrings, nails, all works, tough as Clint Eastwood but at the same time as dramatic as a little girl. He could take someone’s head out with one blow, but would burst into tears at the sight of a homeless kitten. A typical Soviet gay, I’d say.

I didn’t try his trick of taking someone’s eye out yet. I’m not gay enough. Next question?’.

‘Did you have any trans people?’.

‘Well, I did have a teacher who had a moustache. She had a deep voice, thick arms and looked like a crocodile…..not sure how she identified herself though’.

Step by step, carefully avoiding traps and land mines, I managed to extract her main reason for being angry. One of her former boyfriends decided to start identifying himself as a …. I wouldn’t even try to pronounce it. He would still be ‘he’ but he would function as a female. ‘He’ would be in a heterosexual relationship, but would require to be treated as a girl, for example he wouldn’t have to pay for his coffee. That’s as far as we got. I started to feel completely out of sync with the realities of modern life.

It wasn’t the first time I got myself into the dangerous territory. This time I got lucky. I managed to pacify her somehow and not to be sent to Siberia at the same time. We even had a go at a Comrade Schubert.

I wonder what would dear old Schubert make of this conversation, by the way.

As I said, it wasn’t my first rodeo. I got burned once and now I know when to keep my mouth shut.

Gender fluidity, sexual orientation, social constructs etc. That was never an issue. I grew up surrounded by LGBT dudes and dudettes. My dearest friend’s son is gay and I love this boy to bits, I work and play music with gays and I find them to be the most creative people on the planet.

Trans people? Well, I told you about my teacher with moustache. Couldn’t care less. And anyway, it’s not my business what people do with their own lives, what they identify with, who they have relationships with and how… unless it’s forced, violent or includes kids, God forbid. That would be me taking a leaf out of my ‘Sashka’ lessons and taking someone’s eye out. Completely.

My problem is the atmosphere of total dictatorship surrounding those matters.

My problem is a political correctness taken to the extreme and to the point when it starts affecting lives.

Many years ago I was invited to give a series of masterclasses to a group of teachers who were on a brink of a mental collapse as they were not able to deal with their students. Modern kids, full of energy drinks, zombified by social media, computer games, news and virtual reality, totally disconnected from their parents and real world, lacking any moral and ethical guidelines and boundaries. You know the type, I’m sure. Not their fault, by the way. We made them this way and we bear full responsibility for their state of mind, spirit and our own inability to deal with it.

Now, there’s a scenario. In order to deal with anything you have to be aware that there IS a problem, you have to understand WHAT is the problem, you have to identify correct reasons for this problem, you have to be willing to deal with this problem and then you have to be ready to learn how to deal with it. You’ll need resources, information, guidance, training, courage, you’ll have to have a very clear idea of what you want to achieve and to be realistic about the situation and your own abilities. That’s just for starters. Pedagogy has some answers and gives you some understanding of the ways of communicating and teaching. In this beautiful country which I love with all my heart, most of the teachers don’t even know what pedagogy is. In most of the schools you’re not required to have a degree in pedagogy and it results in a number of young depressed and exhausted teachers who simply don’t know how to cope. That was my audience.

I did a lot of homework. I brought my iPad filled up with statistics, quotes, graphs, pictures, samples etc. I prepared eight hours of lectures. I had a questions/answers part, I spoke about interactive games, sang a song or two, did a little dance and even demonstrated how to put a student in a headlock when you are safely out of sight. I told them how to identify the troublemakers, how to deal with bullies and how to beat up violent parents without getting arrested. We spoke about spiritual aspects of teaching and God knows what else. We did breathing exercises, we were activating our ‘chi’ energy, we were trying to understand the most common causes of ADD, the lack of trust between the  children/parents, students/teachers and techniques which would help them to create a productive and harmonious atmosphere in a classroom without any casualties. Everything was going well and I started to feel that I’m doing a great job. My manager told me she is going to promote my masterclasses in other branches of her organisation countrywide. (There is a reason I am not giving you a name of this organisation, by the way). I already started to plan my holidays. All was going well, and then I made a fatal mistake. I did something which put me in dog’s house and now I have to consider myself lucky I’m still allowed to teach children without wearing a Hannibal Lecter face mask.

We were talking about the key points in a relationship between kids and adults and about some of the factors which result in kids getting confused and starting to distrust adults in general. One of those factors is a PC culture, something which might’ve started with the whole lot of good intentions but turned into a culture of lying for the sake of some unidentified higher purpose. Kids are simple creatures. When they see an apple, they see an apple and they call it an apple regardless of what a certain minority group finds offensive about the word. Imagine there’s a feminist group somewhere who decided that an apple which was given to Eve is a symbol of a sexual oppression and therefore should be banned from the face of the Earth and anyone who dares to call it an apple should be beaten up and sent to Siberia. The fruit itself might have to be called a ‘red potato’, or better still, all orchards will have to be burned, destroyed and re-seeded with something inoffensive. Now, imagine trying to explain this to your kid. How much trust would he put into your words after this?

You think it’s funny?

Three or four months ago I was giving a radio interview in Germany. It was all about music, culture, positivity, creativity, bringing people together, breaking borders and so on.  At one point during the interview our host asked me how I started to play music and what was my biggest influence. I said, ‘I was born and raised in a Gypsy family, so obviously my first and biggest influence was Gypsy music’. Suddenly I saw our producer jumping from his chair and making frantic gestures to the host. My microphone was muted and our sound engineer hit the button which filled the air with the most horrendous German folk music you can imagine.

Our host turned around and whispered, ‘No! You can’t say ‘Gypsy’, it’s a bad word….’.

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What’s the problem? I AM a Gypsy, I play Gypsy music, it’s written on my albums and even in my Soviet passport’.

‘No, you don’t understand…..it’s a bad word, it’s a derogative word, it’s an insult, it’s not politically correct!’.

‘So’, I asked, ‘I can’t even call myself a Gypsy?’

‘No, you must not!!’.

Still think it’s funny?

Getting back to my infamous masterclass. After mentioning Political Correctness, I made even a bigger mistake. I said, ‘Also, there’s something else which gives children a false sense of security. All this business with gender fluidity can and is unconsciously used by kids as a means of escape from their issues, especially if there’s no sympathetic and knowledgeable adult to talk to. Of course there are genuine cases, but as we all know, kids often use extreme ways to rebel. In most cases it’s a cry for help, ‘Talk to me please. I am a human. I need attention. I need to be taken seriously. I matter! My opinion matters. I need love. I feel alone. Help me!’.

Most of the ‘problematic’ kids I teach have only one thing in common….nobody is talking to them.

They are given food, bed, clothes and instructions. Their parents don’t have time to talk to them, they are busy working, paying bills and putting bread on a table. It’s not a modern problem, it’s as old as the world itself, but only now we have this beautiful idea that you can deal with your psychological issues by simply changing your gender or ‘social construct’..

If only it was so easy, I’d put a ‘Ferrari’ badge on my Ford ‘Focus’ and pretend it can do 300 miles per hour. Unfortunately, teenage issues require more complex approach and understanding.

I just came from the tour in Scotland where I had a conversation with the young boy who is going to be a piano teacher. He is studying hard. He will have to learn where the ‘middle C’ is, and he’ll learn why it has different names in each country. He will learn why Tchaikovsky was banned from the Syllabus and Beethoven was not. He will learn how to convince his students that they will be able to make a decent living after they graduate and many other useful things. But the most important thing is – he will have to memorise ALL gender definitions.

Chris Drew (PhD), in the article published on a ‘HelpfulProfessor.com’ claims that at the moment, there are at least eighty different terms to describe gender constructs. I repeat. Eighty!!!

Well…..good luck to you, my friend. Good luck.

The part of the problem is that those definitions are not permanent. They are somewhat fluid.

You can change your gender profile at any moment and Got help your teacher who didn’t learn about your status change in time. In USA professors are being routinely sued by their students and are thrown out of colleges and universities for accidentally mixing their pronouns.

Another part of the problem is that sometimes it doesn’t require anything at all to change your gender status, just a decision based on whatever is happening with you at the moment. About a year ago I had an enlightening conversation with one of the mothers whose son suddenly decided to become bisexual. The boy was 8 or 9 at the time. I asked his mom, ‘Did he have a girlfriend? Did something happen?’.

‘Oh, no!’, she replied, ‘what girlfriend!? He’s too young for that. He just….feels bisexual, you know how it goes’.

‘No’, I said, ‘I don’t, really..Did he have a physical contact with someone? Did he get intimate?’

She got horrified, ‘You mean sex? Jesus no!!!’.

I gave up.

Back to my lecture again…..

As soon as I mentioned PC culture, one of the teachers started to give me an evil eye. Being an absolute pleb, I didn’t pay any attention. This particular lecture was dedicated to children and I thought we all were on the same page. As soon as I mentioned the number of gender definitions, he lost it. He jumped up and accused me of being sexist, racist and a patronising arse. The rest of the group, not wanting to get involved went silent. Funny enough, there were two ladies who rushed to my defence, one of them was a 70 years old violin teacher and the second one was a very young and a very pregnant no nonsense redhead. They put a ‘God’s fear’ into my accuser, but he didn’t bulge. I tried to calm everyone down but they wouldn’t. They tore into each other and it took 10-15 minutes for them to stop shouting and to get back to their corners to lick their wounds. I had to show them an old Yoga exercise in order to restore their breathing. The rest of the lecture was somewhat uneventful.

Next day all my ladies were present, but the male teacher was absent.

In the evening I got an email from our manager, saying that I should stay away from any ‘potentially controversial subjects and anything that might sound offensive to any of the sexual or ethnic minorities’. In other words anything which is not politically correct was not to be mentioned. My next and final lecture was boring, neutral and absolutely useless. I got paid a substantial sum of money but was never contacted again.

Why did I feel I need to put it all into writing, you might ask?

Here’s why.

I applied for something recently, and I am not going to tell you what I applied for or which organisation was involved. I put a lot of work into my proposal and I was certain I will get it approved. I got an email two days ago. It said, ‘Dear Oleg, I write to thank you for your proposal and to inform you that unfortunately you haven’t been awarded a commission on this occasion. Panel felt that a strong sense of artistic identity came through this proposal, and there is an artistic maturity evident in his application. However it was noted that …., no female authors/female centred experiences were included.

With good wishes for your future composing and musical projects’.

So, my application was refused because of something which had absolutely nothing to do with my music….. I didn’t include any ‘female centred experiences’.

Wow.

There’s still a glimmer of hope for me though. A good friend of mine, an extraordinary musician, composer and educator (no name, obviously), saw this mail and said, ‘Here’s the thing, you did it all wrong. Nobody cares about your ‘Artistic maturity’. I’ll tell you what to do. We’ll put an application together. Nobody will dare to refuse. Even if you propose to build a sculpture from the cow manure in the city centre, they will have no choice.

You see, you are a Gypsy, I am gay. We both are minorities. I’d love to see anyone saying ‘No..’.

If it’s not enough, we’ll get a one legged single lesbian mother from Romania’.

I love Irish musicians.

God bless you all!!!