Mistress Manifesto: THE ECCENTRIC and HIGHLY OPINIONATED LADY COLIN CAMPBELL (GEORGIE ZIADIE) : MISTRESSES WERE UNDERSTOOD A CERTAIN WAY

LADY COLIN CAMPBELL

(Georgia Arianna Ziadie)

Hello!

I know my followers are wondering why I'm featuring British-Jamaican aristocrat and BabyBoomer Lady Colin Campbell here at Mistress Manifesto. I admit at first thought it's a stretch but hear me out. No, I do not think she has been a Mistress. Yes, I think she has some important things to say. In fact I have arrived at respect for this eccentric and highly opinionated - and rational - woman.

One of the purposes of this blog is to explore the real lives of past and recent Mistresses - Kept People - Courtesans - an Alternative Lifestyle that may no longer depend on women not being allowed to be educated or unable to financially support themselves another way. This lifestyle no longer depends on adultery for its definition. Nor is it always a heterosexual relationship. No, while we use the term Mantress with fragility, we also realize that men, both gay and straight are experiencing being Kept, even when gay marriage is legal. Sometimes a Mistress (or Mantress) of 2024 is supporting themselves but accepts "help" of some sort from her or his person rather than be the Classic Mistress who is entirely supported financially - sometimes very well - by a man. We also know that a person who has become a Mistress can also be transgender.

Lately, as it seems that Democrats and Republicans take opposite sides to the question of medical and psychiatric treatment of children who believe themselves to be born into the body of the wrong gender, we tend to think that this is a modern issue. Well, Georgie was born intersex and the decision was made to raise her as a boy which she was until the early 1960's. She felt she was a girl and the issue emerged again as she went through puberty.

And her dad - her uncle - and other men like them - had a mistress. And her mother knew it but accepted it.

I was following the Duke and Duchess of Sussex controversy and drama. I noticed that among those with strong opinions about them was Lady Colin Campbell, born George William Ziadie, eventually changed to Georgia Arianna Ziadie, and is called Georgie or Lady C. She has a distinct way of speaking, forthright, creative with words, detail oriented and thought provoking. It's fair to say that she does not think well of the Sussexes. Though I do sometimes listen to BBC as well as some of the more tabloidish publications and broadcasts on YouTube, Lady Colin Campbell is an especially fascinating character herself. She is not only considered one of many "royal experts" and the guest on various televised programs but runs her own YouTube station. (The link to it is below.) She says that she gets her information from people she is connected to within the aristocracy.

When I discovered that she was a book author noted for the book The Real Diana, a 1992 New York Times Best Seller List title, that was the first to reveal Diana's unhappy marriage, I searched my Hoopla subscription for her books. I discovered Daughter of Narcissus, a memoir that focused on her childhood as part of the British elite of the island of Jamaica, which has much to reveal about what race relations were there. Perhaps when it comes to the question of the British Royal Family being racist, she might know quite a bit about racism having been raised on an island where white people and people of color most often had employer-employee relationships.

Lady Colin Campbell's memoir proved to be a powerful, can't put it down read. I cancelled plans to keep reading.

She was raised by abusive parents who were not challenged by other family members or those in their employ. She knew her father and his brother and men of their status were what we call today predators, sexual harassers, even rapists, outside the immediate family. Inside it, as she and her three siblings were being raised to adulthood, there was tremendous physical and psychological abuse. Her mother was what we would call today a Malignant Narcissus, lacking empathy, plotting, attention seeking, turning every story around so that they could be the star. Her father went into rages - beating servants - breaking doors down. Both parents were excessively concerned with their public reputation.

As I will reveal in excerpting this book, the primary reference for this month's posts, Lady Colin Campbell's father likely had a mistress named Mrs. Powell, and, well, Lady Colin Campbell liked her. In fact, Lady Colin Campbell thought that the mistress, a much-younger-than-her father employee she calls Mrs. Powel, may have provided a respite from his marriage and a sense of actual civilization to the errant Michael Ziadie.

Her mother's personality disorder damaged everyone's lives. Her father was an older man with a personality disorder himself who allowed his wife to be treacherously abusive and was cooperatively and independently abusive himself. Lady Campbell was raised in a family in which she and her siblings were unfairly and cruelly punished by parents who gave one impression as members of high society and a drastically different one where matters were considered to be private. I suspect that as the girl Georgie, being raised as a boy, was already invested in getting to the truth of every situation. Since divorce was not generally considered an option, her parents settled into their dangerous domesticity. Lady Colin Campbell, while advantaged materially, is a survivor of much.

One review of this book from Goodreads was: "Daughter of Narcissus is a stunning analysis by the author of the serious personality disorder of narcissism through her own dysfunctional family, positioned at the heart of international society from the middle of the 20th century to present day. Dr Anna Brocklebank considers it one of the most significant and inspiring books ever written on the subject of narcissism and believes it should become a medical reference book as well as a popular best seller."

If you are the child of a parent or parents who were so mentally ill that they took it out on you, this book may be a must-read. (And if you realize you are abusing your own children, or you're letting your partner or their parent do so, I beg you to have courage and get psychological treatment first for yourself.)

Now, before we begin this month dedicated to her, I want to mention more fascinating things about Lady Colin Campbell.

Born in 1949, she is now in her 70's. Lord Colin Ivar Campbell, her now longtime ex-husband, was a son of the eleventh Duke of Argyll. Lord Colin Campbell has said he wishes she would stop using her name - which is unlikely. Well, she obtained it fairy, through marriage, even if their marriage was brief, and either way she was born into the aristocracy. They married after knowing each other only five days but it took months before they started divorce. She had met him because she was great friends with his sister. He too was severely abusive, even bashing her face in requiring corrective surgery, and then focusing on her body. He was an alcoholic and addict and mentally ill. He took from her financially. He and his lawyers - his family - threatened to ruin her reputation and more thoroughly out her as having been born intersex. Lady Campbell kept the name thinking she would remarry in a year or two, for she was quite a young woman when she divorced, but that never happened. She had boyfriends but was hesitant because of all the abuse. Fortyish with a best seller that earned money and some independent income, she decided what she lacked was her own family. She adopted two sons from Russia and raised them. (The boys are not biological twins as has been reported elsewhere,)

The story of her understanding of her birth defect and resulting gender issues and the horrors she went through with her parents and doctors is something anyone who is interested in today's issues of transgenderism needs to read. The decision that she be raised as a son had been made at her birth and until she reached puberty it seemed as if her siblings and other relatives in the know and the doctors were accepting of that decision but she was considered an effeminate boy. She was given hormones to masculinize her as well as shock treatments circa 1963. She felt that her mother in particular had set her up to be her lifelong companion rather than correct her gender so that she couldn't marry: She references instances in British Royal Family that may have been the same issue. By 1967 she was threatening suicide if her parents did not allow her to correct her gender to female and was being promised treatment in the United States.

Trouble with teenage classmates lead her to skipping school and applying to Fashion Institute in New York before the age of 18, not only because she loved fashion but to escape. Her father wanted her to stay home as company to her mother. He warned her that no one would want to marry her siblings when they found out that their sister was a "freak." They were selfishly emotionally blackmailing her.

Being a woman who did want to earn her own living, but also compelled by socio-economic and class considerations unique to her status at birth and sexism in general, she worked in fashion for a while, but turned to writing. Now she is a commentator.

Are you ready for the excerpts from her book that focus on the attitude towards mistresses - and the husbands who didn't consider sexuality outside of their inescapable marriages to be anything worth divorcing over? Not even the cruelty of a mother to her children? Well, consider yourself a member of my unofficial womens study college class here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot!

Missy