Galactic Teabag

Horror Stories

2011-10-14T17:53:00.002+01:00

Ok, so a lot of people have been posting about the Mississippi Personhood Amendment, which is pretty damn sickening in itself, but I've just come across another utterly horrific piece of legislature under consideration in the states.

That would be the H.R. 358 Bill, which, among other things, overrides something called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. Under EMTALA, hospitals must stabilize a pregnant patient who, for example, is facing an emergency obstetric condition or life-threatening pregnancy and either treat her--including an emergency abortion--or if the hospital or staff objects, to transfer her to another facility that will treat her.

Even the staunchest anti-abortion people that I know (or have argued with on the internet) will make exceptions for situations where the mother's life is at stake. And yet this bill is attempting to overturn current legislature which guarantees that.

Quite seriously, if this bill were to become law, it would be completely legal to leave pregnant women in labour to die, rather than perform an abortion that would save their life.

I'll let that sink in.

Now try this one: This bill has PASSED in the house of Representatives.

It has not yet gone before the senate, and Obama has (quite rightly) said that if the bill lands on his desk he will be exercising presidential veto, but the fact that this bill has, not only been proposed, but has gone this far is an enormity beyond words.

Rape Apology Bingo

2011-07-09T12:42:00.002+01:00

Further to my last post, my lovely friend Captain Bitchface made me this...

All just a little bit of History Repeating...

2011-07-05T18:13:00.004+01:00

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Julian Assange v2.0.

Or should that be Polanski v3.0?

Yet another story about how if you're powerful or rich enough, you can get away with... well, not actually murder, but certainly rape. Which is at least a similarly heinous act.

And this isn't the first time he's done it either!

This guy is described - even by this woman's *mother* as "otherwise warm, sympathetic and extremely talented"... honestly, this guy tries to rape her daughter, and she still thinks he's a decent guy for the most part? It's just sickening, the whole idea that only "good" people can be raped, and otherwise "good" men can't be rapists. News flash, people - rapists are not some special kind of person who can be easily identified because of their stench of evil and horrible behaviour at all times...

Dear God... I'm half tempted to draw up a bingo square of cliches surrounding rape, and see how many this case checks off, just to keep from banging my head against my desk in despair.

The whole thing is another (as if we needed another) example of how victims of rape are pilloried - or at the very least disbelieved.

The writer, who was a close friend of Strauss-Kahn's daughter Camille, said she was forced to fight him off. "It finished badly ... very violently ... I kicked him," she said. "When we were fighting, I mentioned the word rape to make him afraid, but it didn't have any effect. I managed to get out."
Explaining why she had not pressed charges, Banon said "I didn't want to be known to the end of my days as the girl who had a problem with the politician."

People who go on about how a charge of rape ruins a man's life should take heed. When a) someone brings up as a reason for not reporting a crime that they, not the criminal, will be branded with the stigma of association forever, and b) the threat of being reported for rape has no effect at all, we really need to take a good look at our preconceptions here...

I'm sorry this post hasn't been as coherent as usual, but I'm very tired of having to bang the same drum again and again and again and again ad nauseam. This has got to stop.

Oh, and I would have posted this link on my facebook while I was having a discussion about these issues earlier, but I think I would have ignited a flame war from people who wouldn't appreciate its tongue-in-cheek-ness, and its value as a thought experiment.

I know this trick

2011-04-17T10:15:00.002+01:00

Wait, where have we seen this before?

I have a horrible sinking feeling that what's going to happen here is much like a trick that an unspecified person I knew used to play on her parents as a young teenager.

What would happen is she would go to a clothes shop with her mum - who was somewhat conservatively minded - and pick out the worst thing she could see in the shop. Her mum would immediately go balistic; "you can't wear that! That skirt is too short/ neckline is too low / that's far too expensive / you'll look like a street walker!" at which point said friend would look crestfallen, reply with an "ok mum..." and then would bring out the clothes that she actually wanted. And she would get them. Because, ok, the skirts were still a bit too short for Uber Conservative mum, but at least they weren't as bad as the first lot, and she felt guilty enough that she couldn't say no a second time.

I have a horrible feeling that the NHS reforms are going to do something similar. There's been massive outcry with what's been proposed, so, ok, they decide not to do that... but what are they going to propose next? And are we going to have to like it or lump it, because they've already changed it once, like we asked, and we ought to be happy because they've done what we asked - despite the fact that they may well just make it worse.

Not. Enough. Expletives...

2011-03-27T13:08:00.005+01:00

What the FUCK!!!???!?!?!?!?!?!?!

"The AHRC was told that research into the "big society" was non-negotiable if it wished to maintain its funding at £100m a year."

WHAT???!!

WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY IS THIS PIECE OF EXCREMENT??!!?

HOW THE FUCK HAVE THEY BEEN ALLOWED TO GET AWAY WITH THIS??

Ok, let's take the caps-lock off for a minute, and look at this a little more sanely.

Academics are said to be furious (YOU'RE DAMN RIGHT THEY'RE FURIOUS - THEY HAVE BLOODY GOOD REASON TO BE!!) over the fact that the AHRC funding - which any PhD student will tell you is like gold-dust made from hen's teeth at the best of times - is now only contingent on academics researching what the government wants - ie this Big Society BULLSHIT to try and give it some sense of legitimacy. THAT'S FUCKING BLACKMAIL!!

Seriously, Camoron (BASTARD, FUCKING BASTARD) and his cronies have "clarified" - yes, the Guardian are using scare-quotes here - a major piece of principle (The Haldane Principle) which says that they aren't allowed to dictate what research money is spent on. And by "clarified" we mean "trashed".

In the words of one Cambridge Academic (professor Peter Mandler):

"The government says they have rewritten the Haldane principle but they have junked it, basically. They say it is now their right to set the priorities for how this funding [is] distributed. They have got the AHRC over a barrel and basically told these guys that they cannot have their money unless they incorporate [these] research priorities. Willetts was negotiating nominally, but the word is that it has come down from the secretary of state for business, innovation and skills, Vince Cable. Almost everyone who hears the story is upset about it."

And in the words of another (A principal at an Oxford college, who did not want to be named) :

"With breathtaking speed, a slogan for one political party has become translated into a central intellectual agenda for the academy."

I just... I'm so angry I can't even speak coherently.

This is not, as one individual who is not going to be named, has said "the government's money" - if it were, I would have less of a problem with this. I would be happy to see David arsewipebastardshitforbrains Thatcher Camoron digging into his own overly-deep pockets and providing funding for whatever research he likes, thus keeping people in much needed employment, but that's never going to happen. This is taxpayer's money he's wielding like the sword of Damocles. And how DARE he. He - and this government, quite frankly - is wreaking havoc upon our society, with no fucking mandate to do so. How long before he starts attacking democracy itself, so he can stay in power? It would be a supreme irony to have helped out in Libya, all the while not noticing our own little home-grown fascist bastard of a leader.

Ethnic Minorities Can Wear Wellies as Well...

2011-03-16T12:58:00.003Z

I was going to do a big old post about this debacle - but I think most of what's wrong with True-May's statement has already been adequately covered by the article.

I just want to add one little thing.

Culture and "the media" plays a massive role in, not just reflecting societal norms but creating and enforcing them. The images we see around us every day help to form our attitudes and prejudices. If we see a sleepy little English village on TV, and the Kumars on the corner and Mr Smith the (black) GP, are an integral part of it, then we are going to start seeing this as normal - and crucialy as acceptable. And can't we all agree that this is a good thing? Ethnic minorities are, and have been for a long time, part of England, and valuable contributers to this country. They have as much right to be a representative part of it as closeted, bigoted, middle-class, white dudes.
I don't care if the countryside is still mainly white* and MM is "just" a reflection of this - The Media has the opportunity to challenge social norms and the duty to be inclusive.

It all comes down to this: Do we want to challenge racism in our society? Yes? Then include non-white people in our culture to the extent that we want them included in society.

*Actually, I do care; I would love it if rural England was seen as welcoming to people of all colours and creeds, but that wasn't my point...

Boys will be girls

2011-02-25T12:26:00.005Z

Ok, I have to admit that this worries me.
Not because I have any problem with transvesticism or androgyny; I'm a supporter of both, and I think on many levels it's a great thing that Pejic is able to express that side of himself in his chosen career. I have no problems with what his success means for men - quite the opposite - but I am concerned about what this means for women.

Statements like " Pejic has captivated designers, with his build regarded as nearly perfect for modelling high fashion looks. Couture wear is made for the tall, twiggy and flat bodies that most women, even models, don't have. Essentially, the clothing is quite suitable for a lean man or even a boy" are a stark admission from the fashion world that female beauty is not good enough. That women aren't "the right shape" to model clothes, because they are women. Because they have hips and breasts and it's a rare woman who can manage 5'11''. (I'm the tallest woman of my aquaintance and I'm still only 5'10''. Plus I have hips like a cello and thighs a baby elephant could be proud of.) Those things that make women women, and not men or children, are the things that the women's fashion industry can't stomach.

And that is a very damaging trend to be encouraging, not least because it encourages the dangerous dietary habits that have seen models actually starve themselves to death, and promotes a fashionable ideal of beauty that is damaging to the self-confidence and self-image of over 90% of women exposed to it, but also because of the latent mysogyny it exposes. I don't even think mysogyny is the right word, because this kind of admission seems to betray such a hatred and loathing of women's bodies that in order to make them palatable they have to be shorn of everything that makes them distinguishable from a pretty boy, and I think that goes a step or two beyond what I feel the word "mysogyny" encompasses.

People wonder why there aren't so many women designers in the fashion industry - I want to say that's because the industry isn't about women any more. It's about men, designing clothes - really - for other men.

What about Teh Menz in Football!

2011-01-28T10:39:00.002Z

Am I the only person who thinks, in the wake of all this uproar about Grey and Keys being deservedly sacked from Sky, that it is either indicative of our society and all its ingrained sexism, or at least highly ironic that the Guardian, most lefty of newspapers, has put out a call "Men... Have your say on Sexism!". Because they're really the most un-biased of people on this issue, and the ones most likely to understand how sexism operates in the real world, and may even have been targets of sexism themselves giving them a unique insight into today's gender politics.

The views that actually come out of that call aren't too bad. They certainly aren't brilliant, but they're not too glaringly awful. The general thrust is mostly in the right place - though one commentator does start whining What about teh menz with his piece about how negative male stereotyping is widely tolerated. For the record, yes, I think men are stereotyped badly in the media and it is something we need to tackle, BUT a) most of those stereotypes actually hurt women just as much, if not more than men*, b) the fact that NMS exists does not mean that we shouldn't also tackle prejudice and actual discrimination against women and c) This is totally off topic. I agree that NMS needs to be discussed, but it's not relevant here, and is just derailing.

The other thing that came up, and seems to be coming up a lot at the minute, is this idea of "banter". That something is "just banter", and hence Ok. Thing is, that's like saying that there are some forms of prejudice that are socially acceptable - and that's just not right at all. If something is prejudiced and wrong, then it's prejudiced and wrong, no matter what context it's in. You cannot use the excuse that "it was just banter" or the fact that you are among friends who ostensibly feel the same way (or at least talk the same way) to excuse your own complicity. It's just fostering a culture of Public PC, Private Prejudice, which is just as bad, if not in some ways worse.

I'm going to have to quote my favourite post again:

every time you don’t tell your buddies it’s not okay to talk shit about women, even if it’s kinda funny;
every time you roll your eyes and think “PMS!” instead of listening to whya woman’s upset;
every time you call Ann Coulter a tranny cunt instead of a halfwit demagogue;
every time you say any woman–Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Phyllis Schlafly, Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, any of us–”deserves whatever she gets” for being so detestable, instead of acknowledging there are things that no human being deserves and only women get;
every time you joke about how you’ll never let your daughter out of the house or anywhere near a man, ’cause ha ha, that’ll solve everything;
every time you say, “I don’t understand why thousands of women are insisting this is some kind of woman thing”;
every time you tell a woman you love she’s being crazy/hysterical/irrational, when you know deep down you haven’t heard a word she’s said in the past 15 minutes, and all you’re really thinking about is how seeing her yell and/or cry is incredibly unsettling to you, and you just want that shit to stop;
every time you dismiss a woman as “playing the victim,” even if you’re right about that particular woman…

You are missing an opportunity to help stop the bad guys.

You’re missing an opportunity to stop the real misogynists, the fucking sickos, the ones who really, truly hate women just for being women. The ones whose ranks you do not belong to and never would. The ones who might hurt women you love in the future, or might have already.

‘Cause the thing is, you and the guys you hang out with may not really mean anything by it when you talk about crazy bitches and dumb sluts and heh-heh-I’d-hit-that and you just can’t reason with them and you can’t live with ‘em can’t shoot ‘em and she’s obviously only dressed like that because she wants to get laid and if they can’t stand the heat they should get out of the kitchen and if they can’t play by the rules they don’t belong here and if they can’t take a little teasing they should quit and heh heh they’re only good for fucking and cleaning and they’re not fit to be leaders and they’re too emotional to run a business and they just want to get their hands on our money and if they’d just stop overreacting and telling themselves they’re victims they’d realize they actually have all the power in this society and white men aren’t even allowed to do anything anymore and and and…

I get that you don’t really mean that shit. I get that you’re just talking out your ass.

But please listen, and please trust me on this one: you have probably, at some point in your life, engaged in that kind of talk with a man who really, truly hates women–to the extent of having beaten and/or raped at least one. And you probably didn’t know which one he was.

And that guy? Thought you were on

his side."

What you say in private matters.

I'm going to state for the record that I take people's right to privacy very seriously, which is why it's even more important for people who are publicly prejudiced to be called on it. And even more important than that is the everyday work of undercover Male Feminists**, calling people out over the unacceptability of Private Sexism. The fewer forums we have where prejudiced "banter" is acceptable, the fewer prejudices we will be handing down and around to other people.

Some people have been going on that it's not fair that these two have been pilloried like this for one little slip up - but let's not forget that this isn't just one little mis-timed comment; this is a comment that belies an attitude that is just not acceptable any more, and needs to be publicly seen as such. No, it's not fair. There are plenty of other people, more sexist, more racist, more despicable than them who ought to have been pilloried first, it's just bad luck that these guys got caught first. But what's even less fair, is that women should have had to put up with sexism from these two -or anyone - in the first place.

On one final note though, I think we have to end. Let's not overlook the fact that Grey and Keys are out. Football - that "dark spot in the universe that feminism is furthest from" - has taken a step towards saying publicly that Sexism is Wrong. Ok, I do worry that it's more of an exhortation of "don't get caught being a sexist prick", but it is progress. It's only a bitty baby step in the right direction - but look where it is.

* ie stereotype "men are all lazy slobs" is just as much about promoting the ideal of female domesticity as anything else. Yes, it's insulting to men to suggest that they can't clean, but look a little deeper at the implications...

** And white anti-racists, and abled anti-ableists, and everyone else who works against discrimination in all its forms, who are able to participate in private discourse and shut down the avenues of prejudice. Right On, people.

Oh Nick...

2011-01-17T13:24:00.002Z

Be still my heart... it seems Mr Clegg has some Lib Dem principles in there after all! And here I thought he didn't have any more to betray.

As you can tell, I'm utterly stoked about the plans to reform paternity leave... though Nick isn't quite back in my good books yet after the whole tuition fees/Education mainatainance payment fiasco. Mostly because the immediate reforms aren't enough, and though he sounds like a principled dude, whose ideas on this tally with my own, that could all just be honeyed words, and we'll have to wait for the further reforms he says he's planning to wheel out by 2015 to materialise before I'll let him off the hook just yet.

Political crying rape?

2010-12-09T11:38:00.006Z

Ok, something that's bugging me (and my friend Captain Bitchface) today is the whole Julian Assange case.

Now, many other bloggers have already covered this issue, and I'm reading through them, but one thing strikes me that hasn't come up yet.

Most of the stuff I'd read before today was suggesting, hinting, if not downright accusing the USA government of trumping up these charges in order to slam the prominent whistle-blower. Now that's disturbing.

Let me just say, for the record, that I have no idea if this guy is a rapist or not. I do not know if these charges are true or not, and for the purposes of this article, I don't care: either way, we lose.

If he's guilty, then the amount of liberal support that he's been getting is... frankly concerning. It's as if we're happy to sweep the whole sex-crimes issue under the carpet for people we like... Look at how different, and yet how similar, this is to the Polanski case.

How fucked up are we as a society that we immediately jump to the defence of sexual offenders (sorry, those accused of sexual offences) based on whether we admire their politics or art? That we believe "oh, he's a nice person, he can't possibly be a rapist"... NEWS FLASH: Criminals do not always look like criminals. They are not required to carry neon signs stating as much. Rape does not become irrelevant just because you are otherwise a good person. You don't get a free pass.

If he's innocent, on the other hand, that still is not a win. Because that means that the US government has just equated rape with the non payment of income tax. It means that sex crimes in the US are treated with such blase disdain, that they are happy to throw around false accusations of it - adding to the growing pile of "evidence" that keeps getting trotted out to suggest that women always lie about rape, especially for revenge, or when they have something to gain by it. Thank you US government! For doing exactly what women all over the world keep getting disproportionately accused of! This blogger has it right on two points (though the rest of the article... hmm... no.); when he says:

The tabloid press creates an impression, by sensationalising the trials of those few women who make proveably-false fake rape claims, that lying about rape is a common thing. It isn’t, and the impression that lying about rape is common hurts rape victims and poisons the discourse about the whole subject.

And:

It utterly demeans the ordeal of women who are actually the victims of sex crime. And it’s a cold and cynical way of exploiting the horror that sex crime understandably provokes in the eyes of bystanders to silence someone...

Even if it's just, as a friend of mine put it, "suspicious timing", it's still enough to muddy the waters over questions of consent, ideas surrounding rape, and it's horrendously insulting and disingenuous to women everywhere that consideration of their rights to bodily autonomy have been dismissed and ignored as not-as-important as consideration of the sacred right to Freedom of Speech. Let's not fool ourselves that this would have played out exactly the same were this not so high-profile a defendant. The case would not be pursued with the vigour it has been - which suggests that rape is not enough to bother with in and of itself, but when it's someone that the US government wants silenced it provides a convenient excuse. The experience of these women has been co-opted in order to serve someone else's political ends.

The US government is behaving despicably. They've been caught with their pants around their ankles and now they're crying rape, and pushing women everywhere under a bus because of it. Charming.

I hope that this wont cause problems for the two women specifically involved. I hope that the trial doesn't get polluted by all the politics, and these women, and Assange, actually get the justice that they all deserve. God knows the USG won't.

With Apologies to Percy Shelley

2010-12-04T12:35:00.007Z

An old, mad, blind, despised, new government,--
Leaders, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,--mud from a muddy spring,--
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,--
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,--
An army, which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,--
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless--a book sealed;
A Senate,--Time's worst statute unrepealed,--
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestous day.

It is said that those who do not know their history are condemned to repeat it.
I wonder, just how many of the current cabinet are History graduates? Because history is most certainly repeating itself.
Labour campaigns warned us that Cameron would be taking us back to the 1980's... and that backfired horribly, thanks to the success of Gene Hunt and the BBC's Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes series.* But on the surface of it, labour do seem to have been uncharacteristically prescient. A conservative government, police brutality, awful fashion, worse music, recession, unemployment, "greed is good" fat-cat city-types... Where oh where have I seen that before?

Actually, do you know where I've seen this before? Way back at the beginning of the 19th Century, when the above poem was written**. It's called England in 1819. And in a lot of ways, things aren't that different now from what they were then.
England had just been engaged in an expensive war. Unemployment was massively high, and poverty among vulnerable sections of society was being exacerbated by governmental policy, which at the same time benefited the already rich. Parliament was rotten to the core and in desperate need of electoral reform. The poor stayed poor and the rich just got richer, and the system was in place to keep it that way.

Today we see the predominantly peaceful student protests, where the police have been "kettling" protesters (God, we have a word for it now? We're dressing up torture - because that's what it would be called if these people were in custody, not out on the streets - in fancy words again, so people don't realise what it is...) Well that just makes me think of Peterloo.

But let's not forget what came next back in the 1800s
Reform acts.
Reform of parliament, of working conditions in factories and mines, social reform.
And how did that all happen?
Because some people worked bloody hard to change things, and didn't give up. Politicians like William Wilberforce, and Earl Grey, social reformers like Josephine Butler, writers like Dickens, and just good old public pressure, finally forced change through. It wasn't easy - far from it*** - but there were enough people pushing bills through parliament, campaigning for a cause, pushing back the boundaries in their own specialised areas (such as Florence Nightingale's contributions in the medical field) or just raising awareness and writing about it all, that change happened.

It's easy to look at the 19th century as a whole and see just how much was accomplished in that period... it's less easy to stand at the beginning of a century, looking at the state of things and how much there is still left to do, and stay optimistic. In an age where we've got used to instant gratification, it's hard to remember that change on this scale can take years to manifest, and you've got to be determined and keep at it.

The cynical part of me which enjoys conspiracy theories might wonder if this is why Arts and Humanities funding is being so drastically slashed right about now. So no-one will wonder, or point out, that this has all happened before, that we don't have to roll over and take it, and that if we work hard enough at it there is still hope of a change.
Because there is another lesson to be learned from history on this point - totalitarian governments always attack the intelligentsia first, so there is no-one to speak out against further injustices when they come.

Cheer on those students, support them however you can, because if history is right, and if we're persistent, we may see some change come of it. Or if not... you could well be next.

*In itself a bloody good example of how BBC TV is quite patently not going down hill, and should continue to be funded. Imagine spoiling that with adverts. Or the American version.... (shudders)...
** I've changed 3 words, and missed out one. That's how little I've altered it.
*** I'd recommend reading some of the links if you want to see just how hard people campaigned for things back then. Puts our current politicians to shame, it really does.

Friends and Perfect Strangers

2010-11-20T22:48:00.000Z

I never thought I’d end up ever feeling like a character played by Michael Gambon, but sometimes life surprises us.

The character in question was from the Steven Poliakoff drama Perfect Strangers; Raymond Symon, a grumpy and eccentric old git, dragged along (against his inclination) to a family reunion, where the family in question has not seen him for quite some time. Not, in fact, since before his company went bust and he suffered a nervous breakdown. It’s a fascinating piece – much more interesting than I make it sound – and well worth a look in its own right. But for some reason, this weekend I have felt a strange affinity with this one particular character, and this one plot thread in an exquisitely woven tapestry.

Last weekend, I had a depressive episode. The first one in quite a while, and it rather knocked me for six. But worse than that, it happened when I was visiting friends in Oxford; friends who, until then, had never actually seen the worst excesses (or indeed any excesses) of my depression. There may even have been one or two there who didn’t actually know I suffer from it. And I had rather intended to keep it that way.

Because there’s still a stigma attached to mental health problems. And while I’m happy to try and break that stigma and the surrounding taboos by talking about it, both here and in person, I’m still too English to want people to see me at my worst. It makes me feel like a burden to have to ask people to cope with me. It feels like a failing to admit that I need help, or let people see me cry. (And yes, I know it’s messed up that I, or anyone else already suffering, has to feel guilty and weak because of, and in addition to that suffering. That’s depression. It’s a bitch. And it’s one of the reasons a lot of people don’t seek help as often as they should. And I know all that. Doesn’t make me feel any different.)

This weekend, I went out again – this time to a friend’s birthday party. And the thing is... I think I noticed a difference in the way I was treated by the people who were in Oxford the previous weekend, and those who weren’t. One guy in particular, who, he confessed to me, I had rather worried at the time. There was a concern in his voice that wasn’t there before, and I felt like I was being handled delicately; like glass or porcelain.

I don’t want to single this guy out so much though, because it’s not an uncommon reaction when people learn I have depression. Heck, I’ve had it from my own family. That sense of them not knowing what they’re supposed to do, how they’re supposed to treat me now. Like I’ve suddenly grown an extra head, and they don’t want to appear rude by staring. It’s like in Perfect Strangers; everyone so delicately asking Raymond if he’s alright, but not wanting to mention the gory details of exactly what happened. So concerned, but so English about it.

It’s not so bad when you can talk to people about it, or when they only know about the depression in an abstract sense, and I’m still normal old me around them. They don’t have to adjust, and it becomes something like a hip replacement: something to be asked after, sympathised with, but not something that impacts them at all, that they have to do anything about. But sometimes something unavoidable happens, and I can’t keep my friends and the illness separated any more. Normal old me suddenly becomes miserable, crying, walking-out-into-traffic me, and yeah, I can see how that’s scary, no matter if you know me a lot, or only a little. If they’ve never seen that from me before, I’m not surprised people react like they do.

But I wish they didn’t.

Fetch me my Stamp of Satire!

2010-11-18T15:14:00.002Z

Seriously, people in this world are becoming so moronic that I honestly wonder if some people of our parent's generation started mating with vegetables as part of the 70's Free Love movement...

Either that or the internet really does give stupid people a licence to air their misfortune to a wider audience.

Earlier in the year I expressed my annoyance at Depression Facebook Statuses that did nothing, and were fucking disengenuous to boot.

Then later I got pointed in the direction of this article, by a friend of mine, and recognised the similairites. Full disclosure here - I particpated in the handbag one; mostly because I can't resist a good double entendre, and though I'd like to pretend to be the epitome of what it means to be a feminist in this day and age, even I mess it up on occasion and engage keyboard before brain. *headdesk* mea culpa.

Then, we get onto Movember. And actually... well, this one seems quite well thought out. The concept of Sponsorship has reared it's head, and the idea of actually doing something fun that also benefits others.

And then finally we get this.
Dear sweet Jesus... please tell me this is Satire. Please tell me that this is the same vein as the F-word article... please tell me that this is taking the piss out of the notion that the only valid contribution women can make to charity is via their breasts or vaginas, and not espousing that notion in the first place...

I mean, obviously it is satire. Obviously. But I still want to get a big rubber stamp out and slam it down over the video just so there's no doubt whatsoever. Because the world is full of morons, and people like me who occasionally engage keyboard before brain, and Dear God do I *not* want people to take this seriously...

Oh, and those ones about people being eaten by dragons, or killed on the Death Star? Funny the first time dudes. Getting very old now.

Of Poppies

2010-11-11T12:55:00.000Z

Today is Remembrance Day.

I have qualms with calling it “Poppy Day” or even sometimes “Armistice Day”, because I’ve always felt that was missing the point.

This is the day we Remember, and as fewer and fewer of us are left who actually do remember from personal experience, it is becoming more and more important that the torch is passed on to those generations born after 1945.

This isn’t a day of tribute. We, in this country, do owe a debt of gratitude to those soldiers who fought and died to keep us British and free of foreign rule, but we also owe the same debt to almost everyone of that generation. The contribution of non-combatants; those ambulance drivers, medics, code-breakers, munitions factory workers, Land Girls, and everyone who kept the country running while the soldiers were away; cannot be discounted. Yet we have a day to remember those who died... and a lot of people have forgotten why we do that. Not because they deserve more thanks than those who survived, but because it is important to remember the toll that warfare takes. It is important to remember how high is the price that can be valued in human lives.

The best way we can pay tribute to those men and women who have lost their lives to conflict is to make sure that no-one ever has to pay that price again. And for us to be able to do that, we need to remember the horror, not the glory of warfare. Because it’s all too easy to see the ritual, and the Last Post in the same light as all the other ceremonies and rituals we have in this country – something in the nature of a school assembly that must be endured before we get a half-day holiday.

This year, back in September, I went to Europe, and while I was in Poland, I spent a day at Osweçim – the little town that we know by its German name: Auschwitz. The experience was a harrowing one, but one I am glad that I had. You hear about it in history lessons, but hearing about it, and actually seeing the gas-chambers, the rows upon rows of huts and places where huts once were at Birkenhau, the tiny cramped cells in the prison block where people were made to stand five at a time without light and barely any air, the scaffold and the firing wall, the piles of personal effects still kept in the museum, the piles of clothing and human hair, it is a very different experience. I can’t even imagine what it must have been like before liberation, and even attempting is painful.

Poland is a beautiful place. The countryside in September is almost like Britain. You can walk around the little gravel streets between the red-brick huts, down the rows of trees and grass, and for a moment think that this is just another Autumn day. And then you remember. You are standing in the place where, literally, millions of people were murdered. Not one by one, but en mass. This was a cold, clinical, destruction line; a factory for death. It is chilling to think that such atrocities happened in a place that so looks like my home country. The thought that struck me most was; if it could happen here, it could happen anywhere. And that is why we cannot become complacent. We cannot think that it can’t happen, wouldn’t happen here, not here, because it did. It happened in a place just like home – which was home to some – and we cannot forget that, or else it will happen again.

I have heard that the experience of seeing the battlefields in Belgium is a similar experience, and I hope one day to see those as well. Because it is important that we understand, and more importantly, that we Remember.

Quick Fix

2010-11-08T15:18:00.002Z

Ok, so I've just been reading This little article about relative harms of drugs, legal and illegal.

A few points to think about:

1. Because Alcohol is much more "harmful" than other drugs, does this mean that we should tighten up control over alcohol, or relax restrictions on other drugs?

2. Is the amount of harm caused by alcohol partly to be explained because it's more available than other drugs?

3. Could the amount of harm caused by "soft" drugs be reduced even further were they subject to the same amount of control and licensing as alcohol and tobacco are now?

Answers on a post card please...

Not Dead Yet

2010-11-08T14:28:00.002Z

Ok, so it's been a while... and sadly, I don't think this post is going to signal a return to regular updates either, though there's a few bits and pieces that might be turning up here soon.

In my time-off, I've been to Europe, which was fantastic, finally got some counselling, which has also helped things, made more friends, been more busy, and generally got one of these Life things that people have been going on about.

I've started doing a bit of writing for an online magazine called Sabotage, which is well worth a read, though I've only got one article up there so far. If I can get myself together, there will be more.

In terms of shouty feminism - I'm trying to lay off; pick my battles, and not get too involved in stuff I can't change right now, or I will bash my brains out on that brick wall. My opinions haven't changed, but I'm trying not to court opportunities for me to express them quite so much.

Though, having said that... There was this article in the Guardian...

I don't think I even need to explain why that is so badly wrong, and utterly, utterly counterproductive to any idea of increasing the rate and accuracy of rape convictions.

In terms of shouty politics... well, let's just say that the Con-Dem Nation has been giving me plenty to go on. Not least this latest suggestion that the long-term jobless should be forced into "work" (at what works out as less than minimum wage) or see their benefits cut.
You see, that could have been a great idea - give the unemployed a chance to boost their CV with some voluntary work, whilst still on JSA* so they can support themselves whilst still working towards their career.
But no. This is the usual Tory bullshit which assumes that all people on welfare are scroungers and Chavs, and we shouldn't have to pay for them to be layabouts, so we'll make them pick up litter until they get a proper job.
Oddly enough, even the people on the BBC's Have Your Say section (not usually noted for being a bastion of common sense) have actually some sensible things to say about what a pathetic idea this is. And when even they're starting to sound more sensible than a government proposal, you know something's wrong somewhere...
Even the Archbishop of Cantebury's chipping in on this one (though the link isn't working for me to link to), and as usual is being eminently sensible.

I think there's plenty of comment out there without my needing to chip in my $0.02, so I'll leave it for now. Suffice to say that when asked to list my 4 biggest Turn-Offs in a man, one of the first things I thought of was "Tory".

Anyway, life goes on, tum te tum...

*I keep thinking of this as Justice Society of America, and getting visions of Clark Kent in the dole queue... You can tell I spent too long working on a PhD in Comics...

Sea Change

2010-08-02T18:39:00.002+01:00

Ok, so, this last week has been a hell of a ride, as weeks go. There's been a whole load of shifts, and some pretty big decisions made.

Among them has been the decision to drop the English PhD that I've been working on, and instead, make a go of it writing full-time.

I realise I'm in a really privileged position to be able to do that, and, without sounding like an aknowledgements page, I'd like to say that I couldn't do this without the love and support of my friends and family, to whom I'm immensely grateful.

As far as this blog goes, this will probably mean a slight shift in focus away from quite so much loud and shouty feminism - simply because I'm not going to be exposed to as much.
There will, however be more arts-and-writing related stuff; (which is what this blog was originally set up for) and there may even be reviews and possibly even some original fiction.

Inasmuch as I have readers here, I hope you guys stick with me. Who knows? You may even enjoy it...

I should have had these toys as a kid...

2010-06-24T13:48:00.003+01:00

The New Bromantics

2010-06-24T11:33:00.002+01:00

I've discovered a new word that I hate!

It's "Bromance" defined in Urban Dictionary as: "Describ[ing] the complicated love and affection shared by two straight males."

The word itself might not be in the OED, but the concept it embodies is not as neologous (sp?) as the term. Male/male friendships, with that degree of intimacy, have only recently (I'd guess around the late 1890s...) fallen out of fashion. I'd need to consult someone who actually knows more about Queer theory than me to be sure. But just to take one example, there are quite a few M/M friendships depicted in Shakespeare which later productions have chosen to depict as homosexual (Sebastian/Antonio, Romeo/Mercutio, Antonio/Bassanio) despite one of the two men later going off and getting married. Not that I'm saying such an interpretation is wrong - I think it's just as valid as any other - but I see such pairings as being more akin to today's "Bromances". At any rate, the concept has been around forever.

This is not, I wish to point out, that I deplore the concept - quite the opposite - I think it's great, and if we can start expanding the definition of masculinity to include the ability to be intimate, to show emotion rather than bottle it up, and to consider and rely on other people, rather than having to stand as an island on your own all the time, then so much the better.

But do we have to call it a "bromance"?

Do we have to call it anything, in fact? Because giving such friendships a special name - one that specifically conjures up romance, only to shut it down - betrays such latent homophobia it's unbelievable. It's suggesting that men can only ever be close to someone if they are sexually attracted to them (the male/female version of which is also popular - When Harry Met Sally, anyone?) which is firstly rubbish, and secondly it's saying that such a sexual relationship between two men is so wrong that people have to distance themselves from even the possibility that their own close M/M relationship could be percieved as such, by using this inelegant little neologism.

***

In other news!

Australia has a new PM :)

And despite the title, the media actually seem to want to talk about her politics rather than her gender. Which makes me a very happy person.

Wet Wet... What?

2010-06-15T11:34:00.002+01:00

Ok, just spotted this on the news this morning.

I think I've gone over the shameful way that celebs seem to be given a free pass when it comes to rape, DV and even borderline child abuse (Roman Polanski, anyone?) so I'm not going to dwell on that aspect too much.
Suffice to say, why is it that DV offenders seem to always get reffered to counseling or other psychiatric programs, rather than prison/something that's actually punishment, when the same injuries sustained in an assault/GBH/ABH case would result in a jail term? What's so special about DV that it should be treated so leniently? Oh wait, it's because they hit a woman, and women aren't really people.
Not that I'm saying that advocating rehabilitation rather than retribution is a bad thing necessarily, but the way it seems to be being applied here is problematic to say the least. Apart from anything else, it sends a really screwed up message about the relative severity of DV as a crime. And the threat of being made to attend a few seminars is hardly much of a detterent.

Actually though, the bit I wanted to look at was the closing remarks of the article:

Sentencing, Judge Shani Barnes ... said: "It is shameful that you should come before the courts at all - let alone for using such violence against your partner.

"I have no doubt that you are a mild-mannered gentle man by nature.

"Domestic violence is never acceptable, even if the young woman gave as good as she got, the injuries she sustained were far more impactful than anything she could have done to you."

I'm sorry... what??

"I have no doubt you are a mild-mannered gentle man by nature"?? To someone who punched his wife in the face??
Aside from the obvious disconnect there, that statement has a lot of worrying implications. The obvious one being, if he was so mild-mannered, what (or should we say, who) provoked such a violent response? And that's one step away from outright victim-blaming in my book.
The other thing is; criminals don't obviously look like criminals. Often don't behave like criminals outside of their crime. And that goes double for crimes commited within the household, like DV and a lot of sexual abuse. So to say that Mitchell is a gentle man (apart from when he decides to hit his wife) is really not helpful, because it perpetuates the myth that otherwise "nice" people don't commit attrocities. Which is what makes it so hard for victims of abuse to come forward. Because everyone thinks that that lovely bloke you know who lives round the corner couldn't possibly be beating his wife because he's such a nice guy. I'm sure he didn't mean it, maybe the silly bitch was asking for it... etc etc etc.

Also, the rest of that comment; "Domestic violence is never acceptable, even if the young woman gave as good as she got, the injuries she sustained were far more impactful than anything she could have done to you" shows an utter ignorance of the circumstances under which DV is usually perpetrated - where the woman has usually been isolated and had her self-confidence broken down to the point where she doesn't feel able (or sometimes justified) to fight back. And wtf? Is that chivalry I see coming out of that last part? Don't hit women because they're weaker and can't hit back? As opposed to don't hit women because they're people too and violence against other people is never the answer?

Really, seriously, I think we should expect more from the judiciary. And if there was ever a case for judges to specialise in the kind of crimes they are equipped to deal with, then how much more evidence do you need, your honour?

New Things!

2010-06-12T12:08:00.002+01:00

Ok, so this post is a special Multi-Purpose post!

Mostly, it's to let everyone who reads this know (who didn't already know) that I am still alive, and will be angry and articulate enough to write something here soon.

Secondly, it's to point out - just in case you missed it, y'know - that this blog is being updated and given new shiny things, like a background that isn't just blue. So if it suddenly starts changing around a bit, don't worry. Or do worry if you're the kind of person who hates change. In which case, what are you doing reading my blog?
For the minute I've decided to go with a stars at night kind of theme, to more acurately reflect the whole "galactic" element to the teabag. I was toying with a couple of other designs though, so I may try each one out for a bit, see if I like it better.

The third reason for writing this post, and will probably explain why I've tried to take as long as possible to tell you that the blog is changing around a bit, is that because of the new layout, the previous post - the one with the YouTube links to the awesome Twingo ads? - Those Twingo ads are now flopping over the sidebar, and you can't read it. And since I am a technological muppet, with no clue how to remedy this, I'm trying to write a nice long post that will push the Twingo down, so you can actually see the stuff in the sidebar, like links and archives.

There.

Hope that's done it.

:)

Almost makes me want to buy a Twingo...

2010-05-28T21:36:00.002+01:00

Dear Mr Troll

2010-05-18T00:55:00.003+01:00

As some of you may be aware, I've been having a little problem recently with some rather offensive posts on my facebook status, on the subject of "domestic violence and how some women get off on it". Said posts have now been deleted, and said person de-friended. After that, I wrote a letter - not necessarily to send to the person involved, (though I still might do that) but as a sort of form-letter to send to all future trolls, annoyances, MRAs, and other people whom I have just had to give up on for one reason or another; usually because I lack the time or the sanity.

Please, if you are having a similar problem with trolls and the like, and do not want to waste the energy on them, then please feel free to copy and edit this letter as best fits. Then you can get back to whatever else you were doing, which was almost certainly far more important.

...

Dear Mr Troll,

We all hate losing arguments. Especially when we are so sure that we are right, and the other person is wrong, but when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, either something has got to give, or people are going to just get hurt and upset.

As it is, I think our argument is getting nowhere, and I do not have the time or sanity to spare to continue it, nor to put up with the personal attacks leveled at me, which have nothing to do with the argument in hand.

It is obvious that I am never going to change your mind over this, since you have demonstrated repeatedly that you either do not understand, or do not care about my opinions. From what I can see, you have made no effort to see things from my point of view, or even contemplate the possibility that other people's opinions might be as valid, or even more so than your own.

I have tried to explain why your argument is unsound, insulting, and quite possibly dangerous, but still you keep insiting upon it, as if repetition would make it true. I have provided you with sources which will explain again, in a more comprehensive and eloquent fashion than I can. And I now feel that I must leave it up to them to continue where I find I am forced to leave off - not because I conceed defeat, but because it is increasingly obvious to me that you will not, and I do not wish to spend the time fighting a lost cause. If you truly want to learn and debate this topic, then please return to those sources, read until you fully understand the position, then come back and talk to me about it.

While I would love to think that the force of my (and their) argument is enough to make you challenge some of your preconceptions, go away and reassess your position on this issue, I do not hold out much hope.

I don't particularly care about "winning" or proving a point. I merely want to help people to understand. You either don't or won't. And I have better things to be doing than trying to help someone who is more focused on the winning. I am now going to go off and do them.

Yours, unapologetically,

Ms Teabag.

Con-Dem Nation*

2010-05-12T10:12:00.002+01:00

Ok, so I'm resigned to the fact that we will have a mostly Tory government for the next few years. Amd my dearest hope at the moment is that the Lib-dems will be able to curb the worst of any social conservatism. In fact, if we do get what some people are predicting - a socially liberal, economically conservative government - I think we might well be onto a good thing.

Even if we do have to put up with gitface Cameron as PM.

There is only one problem. One Major problem that I'm looking at. Take a look at the new cabinet. Do you see any women? Do you see any ethnic "minorities"? I can't really say about sexuality, because that's not something you can necessarily tell just by looking at people, but I'd be willing to bet they're all straight as well.

Come on people! This is the 21st century! Why is it that the only people who can represent us at the highest levels of government have to be older, straight white guys? I can sort of understand, (though not condone, I'd like to add) in a predominantly caucasian country why there might not be much in the way of racial diversity, but I'm sure we could manage better than this. And there should be absolutely no excuse whatsoever for there being no women in cabinet. We make up 52% of the country, there should be no shortage of us. We've been supposedly equal for about half a century, why the hell is this not reflected in our governing body??? Sorry, but if you want proof of inequality, the fact that under the previous government less than 14% of MPs were women, and that number is set to go down with this new lot should be conclusive enough.

The other news that's getting me down today? Harriet, despite having been made acting leader of the Labour party (and consequently winning my vote) she has apparently ruled herself out of the running to replace Gordon (thus my vote is lost again).

*sigh*

* Thanks must go to Sam for providing me with the title of this post. :)

VOTE!

2010-05-06T08:39:00.003+01:00

If you're British, not in jail, not sectioned under the mental health act and not the Queen, then there should be no excuse.

Go out and vote.

I'm not lobbying on behalf of any particular party, just on behalf of the democratic process. Even if you spoil your ballot - do something with it. Make it count.

People died for this y'know. And I'm not being funny - people, less than a century ago, actually died fighting for your right to vote. People are often complacent about it, seeing their right to participate in democracy as a given, but it's not. It's surprisingly recently aquired - for some more recent than others. Please don't take it for granted. Please don't think there's no point, or that your vote doesn't matter - if everyone thought like that then nothing would ever change or get done ever. It does matter, it does count, and it is important.

Also - it is my considered opinion that if you don't vote, you don't have a say in how the country is run. And if you have opted out of having a say in something, then your opinion of it obviously doesn't matter much. Thus I will be ignoring all coments and complaints about politics, and all political opinions from anyone who doesn't vote. If you don't want to make your voice heard, well, I for one will stop listening :) And if you want to complain about the electoral system itself, and how it's no longer fit for purpose, then there's still no excuse to sit on your hands - vote Lib Dem because they're planning on reforming it.

"Galactic Teabag says enough is enough..."

2010-04-30T12:35:00.002+01:00

I nearly wrote this piece late last night, but settled for a facebook status instead. I am, however, still mad about it in the cold light of day, so I'm going to do the post anyway.

Today I am mad about this:

"Depression is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign that you have been trying to be strong for too long. (Put this as your status if you have had or know someone who has had depression. Most people won't, but it's mental health week and 1 in 3 of us will suffer at some point in our lives.)"

It's a facebook status update that was doing the rounds last night - and it's by no means the first one I've seen. And, it may be a controversial oppinion, but they piss me off.

I'm fine with the ones that are actually trying to do something positive, like promoting an event like this one from back in January:

"Put this as your status if you or somebody you know has suffered or is suffering from a mental illness. Mental health is a BIG TABOO, so break the silence to support all those that are or have suffered. Most try to cope alone. Come along to the Mental Health Network meeting on Mon at 6.30pm in the [student's union]."

or even ones that have the courtesy to link to a website such as this one.*

But last night's? Just a big fat no. thank you.

It's problematic in so many different ways. Firstly, it's difficult posting anything like that to start with. Because of the taboo, there are many, many people out there who don't *want* to admit that they've suffered/ are suffering from depression, or who just aren't ready to talk about it yet. Encouraging people to get help and trying to break the silence is one thing, but pressuring people into owning up is another.

Secondly - "depression isn't a sign of weakness", fine, yes, great. It's an illness that is more common than you think, and which isn't your fault if you get it. "it is a sign that you have been trying to be strong for too long"... Um.... what now? So all depression stems from life events? Way to simplify a complex issue which can have many different causes, symptoms and presentations, and way to tackle the stereotype that you can only be depressed if you've had a hard life. It's that kind of attitude that actually stops people like me from seeking help because they think that no-one will believe them, because from the outside their life looks fine, and there are plenty of people far worse off. That's not a deep insight into mental illness - that's a trite halmark gift card. A motivational poster slogan. An idiotic pronouncement on an electronic post-it.

Thirdly - something like this is a great way for someone to look socially aware and sympathetic** without actually doing something about the problem. Its me-too-ism. The equivalent of jumping on the band waggon of "Yes! I too have been affected by all these issues! Why? Because I have a depressed friend!" and it's insulting. It's fetishising mental illness, not seriously trying to solve the problems of its stigma. One of the facets of which is the idea that a lot of people "only do it to get attention"***. Again - not helping.

I'm not asking people to stop with all of these posts because it's annoying and I wish they would go away, so I can live my life pretending the issues don't exist - I live with the issues anyway, so that would be impossible - I just think that, well intentioned or not, sometimes they actually do more harm than good. I would therefore ask people to please, think before you post.

*I'd even be happy if it was linking to a personal blog post on the subject (not that I'm plugging or anything...)
** Not that everyone who puts this up isn't socially aware and sympathetic, just that posting this as your status doesn't actually count as being saas in itself.
*** As if attention was a bad thing? As someone who's been ignored and excluded more times than I can count, it gets old very quickly.

Can't Take the Credit, but Wish I Could...

2010-04-28T12:27:00.003+01:00

This is the most amazing piece of writing, and something that I wish I had written so much I'm going to re-post it here. It's by Jaclyn Friedman, and was written in response to This story (and others like it) which I quoted a while back.

...

Dear Mysogynist College Newspaper Columnists:

Congratulations. You have written a column encouraging dudes to rape drunk girls, and it's now earning you 15 seconds of internet fame. Well played. I hope you're making the most of your moment.

Here's the thing though: you're using my body to do it. Your "edgy" little missive does more than puff up your resume -- it also tells the world that if I (or any woman) drinks in public, I've irrevocably consented to pretty much any sexual act with any guy I might make eye contact with, regardless of what I actually want to do with my own (admittedly drunk) body. So suffice it to say I take this a little personally, and I've got a few things to say about it.

First, don't kid yourself into thinking you're groundbreaking or even original. People have been telling women who "misbehave" that they deserve/secretly want "whatever happens to them" since the dawn of time. The threat of rape is one of the main ways women have been controlled throughout history. So, way to go on telling drunken sluts they asked for it. It's been such a taboo subject for so long. In Opposite Land.

Second, you really think poorly of straight men, don't you? Do you honestly think most guys can't tell the difference between a woman who's into having sex with him, and one who is freaked out, passed out, or too drunk to consent? Or is it that you don't think most guys care about the difference? Either way, that's cold. And, according to good research, it's also false - most rapes are committed by a very small minority of men, who know exactly what they're doing. The rest? They prefer to get down with women who are actually enjoying themselves. But why be bothered by a little thing called research when you're busy making a name for yourself on the internet?

Third, your editors should be ashamed of themselves for publishing your flimsy victim-blaming crap. Free speech is a legal standard, not a journalistic one. Journalists are supposed to, y'know, have ethics. And fact-checkers.

Fourth, and lastly, please go directly to hell. I have just as much right as any man does to go out and have a few drinks without having a violent felony perpetrated against me. I am sick to death of my body being used for the amusement of jackasses like you, even theoretically. You may think a scandal is good for your ego, or your career. You may even be right about that. But trading women's safety for a little notoriety is a deal with the devil if I ever heard of one. And I hope you pay.

...

Thank you, Ms Friedman, you officially rock.

Shakers

2010-04-27T14:45:00.002+01:00

Ok, so has everyone heard about this pile of drivel? Yep?

Ok, has everyone heard about yesterday's responce to that: the Boobquake?

Good, then I can talk about it and we're all up to speed.

See, when I first heard about this event, I was thinking Johnathan Swift, I was thingking "A Modest Proposal" I was thinking this was hysterical. Yes, why shouldn't we have a pseudo-scientific "test" of this utterly stupid, bigoted attitude and prove how wrong-headed it really is? Even the suggestion - silly though it was - was a satirical point in and of itself. Merely suggesting that we take this theory seriously enough to subject it to scientific rigour was enough to hold it up to ridicule and show that there was no way it would ever stand up to any kind of scrutiny, without needing to actually follow through on the proposal. What a beautiful piece of satire; Bravo.

And then I read the comments on the facebook event, to the tune of immature (male) morons shouting about how awesome it was that they get to see teh boobiez. And I saw a friend of mine - who will remain nameless - posting as his status an exhortation that his girlfriend should take part, despite the fact that she is a teacher - a post that I read as she would like to participate, but was not comfortable dressing unprofessionally in front of a classroom full of people who wouldn't get it, and who would instead take the opportunity to perve on her. And I suddenly started feeling really quite sick and skeezy.

Because that's the problem. This should never have become anything more than a Modest Proposal. Because, let's face it, we in the West have our own issues around the female body. We don't see women's bodies as any the less "slutty", we just have different ways of expressing it. And yet we also have the whole Girls-gone-wild phenomenon whereby our culture constantly tells us we have to show off our bodies. The message we get all day is: Be slutty, but not too slutty, because no-one likes a prude, c'mon girl, lets see some skin, but of course when you cave to the pressure and do show off your assets you are slutty and shouldn't be surprised when you get treated badly, you slut... etc, etc, etc.*

And sadly the whole point of the Boobquake went and got lost in amongst the howling of "get yer kit off". See, this is the bog problem. The idea that women have to perorm sexually in order to get any positive attention whatsoever. In which case, our message is going to get undermined by the methods by which we promote it.

"Everyday women and young girls are forced to “show off cleavage” and more in order simply to be heard, to be seen, or to advance professionally. The web is already filled with images of naked women; the porn industry thrives online and many young girls are already vulnerable to predatory abuse. Violence against women and girls has a direct correlation to the sexualisation of women and girls. The extent of their sexualisation is evident in the hundreds of replies that pour into the “Boobquake” Facebook page where women write, apologetically: "I don’t have boobs, not fair" or "Hey, I only have a C cup… ” and “what about those of us who no longer have a cleavage? they sag too low.”" **

Boobquake became a joke. And that took the sting out of the satire.

Which brings me to a piece that I found in the Grauniad the other day by David Mitchell - who has suddenly gone up in my estimation.
Quite appart from containing the wonderful phrase: "But, as this election campaign is demonstrating, when it comes to sexism, "PC gone mad" is a long way from power – it's still a minority party compared to "chauvinism gone senile"" the article has a very good point or two to make on the subject of "empowerment". Sorry "Empowerment". And how publicity isn't always good publicity, despite what the maxim would have us believe.

So Boobqake? I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to pass on this one. At least until "science" has decided I have a voice, independant from my breasts.

*This whole thing has been gone over, and over, and over more times than I can count. If you want to know more, start with: Ariel Levy's "Female Chauvanist Pigs" then try Natasha Walter's "Living Dolls" or Courtney Martin's "Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters" - all of which I would encourage you to read anyway because they are awesome. And that's just for starters.

** This from one response to Boobquake - Brainquake

Quick Airbrush fix...

2010-04-24T14:59:00.002+01:00

Ms Magazine have got in on the body image/ airbrushing debate. Interesting read.

I think I have to highlight this quote though, from Samantha Moore, because it's an important thing which I've tried to say, but which she says much better than I did:

"While boosting women’s self-confidence is peachy, it cannot be a successful driver of social change. What we really need to contest is the beauty myth—the illusion that female beauty standards are natural, inevitable, and backed by some concrete “truth” about optimum femininity."

Followed by this quote from the end of the article itself:

"Images that fall outside the limiting standard can’t produce change when millions of taken-for-granted images constantly cultivate our expectations and solidify the standard. Publishing unadulterated images every so often, with great fanfare, does not successfully challenge the normative Eurocentric image of ideal beauty, which includes vast amounts of alteration. Rather than promoting real change and creating a critical dialogue that explores the creation and maintenance of unrealistic, confining and, often, dangerous images of beauty, the announcement of these unaltered photos can easily become a spectacle designed for publicity and ratings."

Of Black Dogs and Blogs

2010-04-24T00:09:00.001+01:00

Kate Harding and Jay Smooth have something to say here:

Ok, so go away and read/listen to those two links that I posted up there before you come back and read this. It’s ok, I’ll wait.

Ok, back?

Right. This is more of a get-stuff-off-my-chest post than the usual Opinion piece that I tend to post. I’m actually writing this now on a WP, rather than straight to blog, because I don’t even know if I’m going to put this out there. But here goes:

I wrote one of the comments on that particular Shapely Prose thread, and even that half-hearted attempt was bloody hard. Even now, I’m struggling not to write out a list of what sucks about me, how I’m an awful, useless person – or qualify every single good thing about me with a “well, but so-and-so is better” or rather “I should be better.” I think it’s a really interesting discussion that should be had, and which I might start later – why women always feel they have to respond to compliments with a denial, or qualifying sentence – but it’s not the one I want to have right now.

See, I found that comments thread wonderful and painful to read at the same time. It’s amazing watching people be happy about themselves for a change, and acknowledge all the good things about themselves that make them awesome people. And not one of those posts seemed to me self-aggrandizing or boastful or stuck up.

But then I felt like crying, because I was thinking – why can’t I be like that?

Why can’t I be a published writer, instead of just an amateur? Why can’t I be a great singer, instead of just a mediocre one? Why can’t I be a great cook, or keep a spotless house, or do stand-up, or fix computers like a pro, or speak four languages like a native, or be someone or do something awesome like everyone else?

Why can’t I even do the things that I’m supposed to be able to do well? Like finish my novel(s)? Or send some short stories or poetry off to a magazine to get published? Or, hell, finish my God-damn PhD?

And then my “little hater” comes out and starts telling me that maybe I was never any good at those things that I supposedly do well. That I’m not just in a rut; I’ve actually reached my limits. That I don’t have what it takes, and deep down I know it, and the reason I can’t put pen to paper right now is because I’m putting off that moment of failure when the manuscript is finished and I send it off, and publisher after publisher rejects it, and I have to give up on the biggest and only worthwhile dream I have ever had in my life – to be a writer – without which my life is mediocre and dull, and just not worth anything anymore.

See, my “little hater” is called Depression. And right now it’s winning.

I’m not fishing for compliments here, or sympathy, so please don’t feel you have to post any. Nor do I, at the moment, need advice on how to cope, since I’m already taking steps in that direction. I just wanted to put that out there.

I don’t really think there is a conclusion to this. I want there to be a happy ending, or an uplifting sentiment for me to end on. Some sort of affirmation that we are all awesome and that I don’t hate myself really, but while the first bit of that is true, it would be disingenuous of me to lie and say the second half. The best I can come up with is this:

Mental illness is still a huge taboo in our society. Not enough people talk about it, or even acknowledge it. So I’m going to. It might be that the one way to get myself up and going and working again is to bleed this poison out of my system, and if that helps other people understand just a bit better, if it breaks down just a bit of that huge silence, and gets people talking, well that’s all to the good.

Expect more posts on this, and related topics.

More on Airbrushing

2010-04-13T16:49:00.002+01:00

Ok, so some of you might remember my post on airbrushing in magazines from back in February, which seems to be generating a lot of comments at the moment. Most of the comments I've been getting there and elsewhere seem to agree with me (though often for widely different reasons) that merely pointing out that a picture has been airbrushed is not going to do a lot for female body confidence as a whole.

The next question would then be, so what is going to make a difference? Well, how about this for a solution. It seems that, over in the States, they've just introduced a new bill, called " The Healthy Media for Youth Act". You can read a bit more about it and what it entails over at Feministing, or read the whole thing here, though like anything of that kind, it's a bit on the dense side.

I do just want to quote this big specifically, from the Feministing version, because I think it's a huge step forwards if it gets through:

In addition, the GSRI has put together a set of Healthy Media Images Standards, a set of guidelines that are essentially a blueprint for creating feminist media, including:

• Feature and value girls and women with varying body types and ethnicities
• Show girls in age-appropriate attire
• Do not sexualize female bodies to sell products or amuse male customers
• Include a diverse cast of female characters in active and ambitious roles
• Feature females in traditionally male roles, such as CEOs or action heroes
• Feature girls and women who have confidence in their abilities and appearances
• Show equality and mutual respect between female and male characters
• Feature positive relationships between girls and women, showing them cooperating with each other
• Feature male characters who value female characters in their talents, intelligence, and overall personalities, not just their appearances

That makes me very happy.

Funny vs Offensive

2010-04-09T17:59:00.004+01:00

Finaly a defnintion that makes sense.

I would just like to add my own $0.02 to MacInnes' working definition, which is probably the best one I've come accross so far. I don't think it can be stated strongly enough; "the powerful and rich should be subjected to greater mockery than the poor and underprivileged." You do not mock those who are less fortunate than yourself. You don't take the piss out of kids with Downs Syndrome - the world has already given them one of the shortest ends of the stick it has to offer, and they have quite enough in their lives to struggle against without "transgressive" "commedians" perpetuating further prejudice against them. Same goes for anyone who's been dealt a crappy hand in this world. How fucking childish is that kind of behaviour? Worse than childish. Seriously - if you had kids, and they started making fun of the one kid in the playground with learning difficulties, or the one with one leg, or the one Indian kid, you'd be horrified, and your kid would be grounded for the rest of his/her natural life. We punish children for this kind of behaviour, and yet laugh at adults who should be old enough to do better? No. Not funny, Frankie.

At the same time, I think it's also a question of relative power - not an absolute. Essentially - it's ok to make jokes when you are doing it compassionately, and from a standpoint where your privilege is not making you into a patronising git. As an example - Eddie Izzard joking that there are benefits to being dyslexic - because it meant you were a killer at I-Spy... "'S' is for 'Ceiling!'" etc. I have heard some really great jokes that were teetering round a whole load of -isms, but which managed to be handled properly and in an empowering way. The problem comes when straight, white, able-bodied men (and most of the time it is S,W,A,M, but I feel forced to add "or anyone else in a position of privilege" just to cover the small percentage of cases when it isn't) decide to make comments about a minority without knowing what the fuck they're talking about. They haven't lived it, and they haven't a clue how to handle it. That's not "alternative" - that's the dominant perspective. And again, that's not funny.

I will however leave you with something that is funny. Courtesy of my mate Nik who sent me the link. And who also has some insightful questions on the original subject here.

And something that will definitely make you smile, even if you didn't like the above.

Spitting mad. Again.

2010-04-07T16:11:00.004+01:00

It's usually the Daily Fail, or something from America that gets me really worked up, but nope, this time it's The Telegraph. Specifically this article.

Essentially, it's explaining how being assertive at work and in the home, and expecting your SO to do his share of the housework, and let you have your say in how the house is run is turning him into an emasculated man-child who can't do anything because he's scared of doing it wrong.

Here's the anti-feminist buzzword bingo for you:
"Ballbreakers" - check
"traditionally masculine/feminine traits" - check
Any reference to "hunter-gatherers" or cave men - check
"male instinct to protect/ provide" - check, on both counts
"unfashionable truth" about "biological/ innate gender difference" - yup - (please, dear God go read Natasha Walter's "Living Dolls" before you go spounting that old chestnut...)
"Biologically programed/ hardwired" - check
"emasculation" - check
"feminism" - Nope.

Women today,"demand total equality at home." And why the hell not? but according to Ms Woods (the article's author) "It's by no means an unreasonable expectation – but it is an unwise one." Unwise? Unwise?? Why?
Because apprently men will be unable to do the chores up to the female standard; and then when women have to clean up after their SO, "By taking over every household task, women are effectively colluding in their partner's lack of involvement. Women are better multi-tuskers and so when our partners don't come up to scratch we complain bitterly as a parent would, and end up doing the job ourselves, infantilising them in the process," she says. (The "she" being Francine Kaye, aka "The Divorce Doctor") "We end up labelling our men lazy, because they have to be told what to do and nagged into doing it, but the truth is, we have pushed them to the point where they are afraid to take the initiative, because they feel they can never get anything right"

Her solution then? Massage your partner's ego, and he will become a Real Man again. Apparently, "To get our relationships back on track, we women must try to rein in our control-freakery and rediscover our femininity, which will (theoretically) reawaken our partner's dormant masculinity. We must praise our partners, thank them for taking us out to dinner (even if we split the bill) and generally massage their tattered egos." Instead of telling our men-folk to stop being such whiny children, suck it up, and get on with it the way women have been doing for centuries?

At least Woods aknowledges at the end of her piece that "It's a bitter pill to swallow for those of us who have spent our working lives striving for parity," and "If you find yourself slack-jawed in horror at the prospect of letting your partner off the hook so easily, then welcome to the club," but she still seems to be coming down on the side of Kaye's poison... why? because apparently it works. Yes, like decapitation solves your dandruff problems.

The thing is, if it was just about appreciating one's partner for being supportive and helping out, (never mind that this should be normal - do you ever thank your SO for not being a murderer? no! because not-being-a-murderer, like being-a-supportive-partner-and-doing-your-bit should damn well be the default state...) I might just be able to contemplate it. On the proviso that we women got appreciated just as much for doing our 50% (which we don't, and yet we still manage to get on with it...) but this is more than that. What is being advocated here is a massive step backwards. I'll leave you with the closing remarks, just to illustrate:

"My female clients are invariably amazed at how much impact an appreciative approach can have on their partner, and how quickly he responds when they show their more feminine side," she says. "It's not a case of being all helpless and girlie, but of being more feminine. If you behave more like a woman, your partner will act more like a man."

So yeah. The best solution would be for us all to toddle back to the 1950s, like good little girls, and just act more feminine. Who's betting we still get saddled with the washing up?

My Playground, My Soap Box.

2010-04-02T23:05:00.003+01:00

Ok, so here's a question I'd like to add my $0.02 worth to, apropos of very little at all.
Is moderation censorship, and at what point can we tell trolls and oiks to shut the hell up and go away without compromising freedom of speech?

It's something that happens to a lot of feminist bloggers - or at least any of them who write about anything as controversial as their feminism, and happen to be lucky enough to get read by a decent sized audience - there will be people coming along, and instead of participating in the debate at hand, start trolling, being abusive, trotting out tired old misogynies and mansplaining. I even warned a friend of mine off* writing a blog post where she planned to discuss something very personal and sensitive, in case she got this kind of jerk turning up and directing abuse at her in the comments. It sucks, and so some people decide to have agressive moderation policies, and just filter out the unproductive crap and ban persistent offenders. And that's fine... until someone shouts "censorship" at you**.

See, I don't think it is censorship at all if I delete your comments on my blog, in the same way that if you excreted in my sandpit I would be well within my rights to remove the mess so that I and my friends could play safely. You may disagree. You are perfectly allowed to do so, and if you like you can go away and write your own blog post detailing how I am wrong and you are right, and no-one is stopping you from doing so. But see, this is my soapbox. You don't like it? Get your own. Kate Harding says, pretty much, exactly the same on her blog, which has, supposedly, a very draconian comments policy***.

This gets a bit different when the blog you write is one for a bigger organisation than just you: for example The Sexist blog, over at the Washington City Paper, which has fairly recently been asking whether they ought to tighten up their comments policy. In situations like that, because you are writing for a public institution, the assumption is that you ought to provide a public platform (that is, if you provide a platform - comments section - at all). And while that is true to an extent, I will go back to the playground analogy just for a bit. In this case, there are loads of kids, playing in the playground, under the watchful eye of a responsible adult (the mod). As long as they can all play happily, anyone can come play in this playground - no one is excluded... except for the one kid who can't play nice, who keeps stealing people's toys, hogging the swings and beating the other kids around the head with a barbie-doll or tonka truck. That kid? The Troll who keeps being abusive? They are banned. Because whilst we all have the right to freedom of speech, the blog-owner also has a responsibility to their readers to create a safe environment for comments and discussion. The reader's right not to be attacked trumps the troll's right to say what they like. ****

And this is different again to when you are the editor of a paper or similar, and one of your columnists decides to write something... disagreeable. It worrys me, it really does, when the chief editor of any publication (even a student one) feels she cannot cut or (ffs) edit a column for fear of "censorship". That's not censorship. That's being discriminating - and I mean that in the sense of being able to distinguish good writing from drivel; in the sense that one can have a discriminating palate. For God's sake, that's the JOB of an editor, to decide what goes in the paper and what doesn't. What should be printed, (and thus given weight) and what you don't want to put your name to, and yes, by all means have a "letters" column, and print everyone's views. All the above comments apply. You have to balance columnist's rights with the paper's responsibility, and remember, at the end of the day, that it's your sandbox and anyone who is not prepared to follow your rules can get their own.

See, what this all comes down to is platform availabilty. It is sensible discrimination and moderation when you simply refuse to share a platform with someone (or, rather, refuse to let them share your platform) and it is censorship when you actively prevent them from ever having a platform of their own - and sorry, but this is something only governments, or anyone who has a monopoly on media outlets can do with any degree of efficiency. And when that happens, then I'll start complaining... if they'll let me...

*Didn't actually say that she shouldn't do it, just that she ought to be prepared for this kind of thing if she decided to go ahead with it.
**And if they're American, citing whichever ammendment to whichever historical document it is that protects their freedom of speech (I'm not American, it's late at night, someone please remind me what it is I'm thinking of?)
***And still some hateful shit occasionally filters through. However, what with Ms. Harding's regular readership not only allowed but encouraged to take pot shots at the Trolls, that can actually end up being amusing on occasion. I fully expect to see Troll-baiting become an internet blood-sport soon.
**** Oh, and just to clarify, this isn't people being offended by "edgy" humour or political viewpoints or the like, this is people being personally insulted, degraded and threatened. See also. Just so we're clear.

Drunk in Charge of a Penis, and other Rape Metaphors

2010-03-16T00:55:00.003Z

I've been diving into the Blogsphere recently, mainly at awesome places like The Sexist - a blog I think everyone should read - and there have been quite a few posts about rape*, and why it is or isn't a lot like X. And I'm noticing a few themes here. Aside from the usual victim-blaming crap, or at the very least, perpetrator-excusing crap **, there seems to be the disturbing tendancy to compare women to money or goods. I cannot count the times that I've seen a woman's wearing of a short skirt, or getting drunk, or making a bad decision (or several) being compared to someone openly displaying property. Even by feminists and allies.

I think just about everyone will be familiar with the "Jut because someone is flashing their wallet doesn't mean they are asking to get robbed" analogy (or its odious cousin which claims that they were asking to get robbed) but how about the Shop window full of goods, or the parking your car in the wrong place, or this one:

"Let’s say a short skirt is “sexually provocative.” If so, then putting a “for sale” sign on your car is also provocative. If you put the sign up, that means you hope someone is going to be interested in buying your car. That doesn’t give them the right to steal your car, nor does it oblige you to sell your car for any price they offer just because you “provoked” the car-buying public into making offers in the hopes that someone would propose a deal you thought was worthwhile" (post 39)

Why do, even people making the right kind of point, still have to return to the same stupid mindset of the people who coined the word "rape" (which, as etymologists will tell you, originaly meant the same as "theft") to try and convince people that it is wrong, no matter what the circumstances. All the time we seem to come back to this idea that rape is a property crime (or at least analogous with one). Why is this? Why not use a comparison with, say, murder? It's not person A's fault if person B murders them, even if person A was being deliberately (or accidentally) antagonistic and "totally asking for it" - and I think we can all agree on that. So why is it any different if person B rapes person A instead? Why do all those "they were asking for it" arguments get given so much weight now? I think that's pretty clear cut. But people get upset when you equate destroying another human life with "just"... well, destroying another human's life.***

So how about this one; let's stop equating the woman with property, and try a little role reversal. Instead of saying that a woman is a car who shouldn't be parked in a bad neighbourhood, let's equate a penis with a car; and why not - men do it all the time :).
If you get run over by a car, or are a passenger in a car when it crashes, is it your fault you got hurt, or the driver's? I'm going to say, (and I think the laws of the land agree with me here) that it's going to be the driver's fault - ie, the active participant. Over at The Sexist again, they agree with me, and Amanda Hess has done a great piece which includes a section about how driving is a privilege, and in some cases, while legally pedestrians have right of way, this sense of privilege tends to mean that drivers ignore the law and as a result people get hurt... (sounding familiar anyone?) only no-one would ever think to blame the pedestrian in this scenario, while we blame rape victims all the time...

I came up with a few others - the passenger-in-a-car one, explaining why it's often difficult to say "I want to get out" when your friend is driving dangerously, or the "flirting" one explaining that consenting to being given a lift home is not the same as consenting to being in a car crash, or the drink-driving one suggesting that even if your judgement is impared with regards to who you accept a lift from, it's still not your fault if the driver crashes - But the thing is, while I enjoy making up metaphors like this (and the drunk-in-charge-of-a-penis jokes that follow), the sad thing is that no metaphor can ever really do justice to the fact that rape is a hideous, heinous, horrific crime, and no-one should ever have to be blamed for it happening to them. I may complain about the kinds of metaphors being used to teach people that victim blaming is not ok but truth is, it's even sadder that we need to use metaphors, indeed that we have to explain this to some people at all.

* Yes, the "Alex" in the comments is me on this one...
** Not always the same thing - this one usually comes up in the "rape as natural disaster" analogies.
*** I never know if this is disengenuous or not towards rape survivors - is tying someone's life (and the destruction thereof) to their bodily integrity (and the violation thereof) trivialising the person? Or is it trivialising the suffering to say that rape does anything less? Suffice to say that I think rape has the potential to destroy someone's life and/or mental wellbeing - or at least f**k it up beyond recognition.

Fun thing!

2010-03-04T12:33:00.001Z

This Post Has Been Airbrushed

2010-02-26T12:24:00.002Z

Ok, so this is something that's been rattling around in my brain for a while - the arguments over airbrushing in magazines and the effect that it has on women's self-image.

I think we can all agree that being constantly shown images of perfection which, not only are unobtainable for you the reader, but which haven't been obtained in the first place by the model/ celebrity you're looking at, is a bad thing for your confidence. It contributes to this culture which demonsises anyone above a size 10/12. My concern is with what people are proposing to do about it - which is essentially just full disclosure. People at the moment are pushing for laws that require magazines to put a stamp, or a little notice on the bottom of the picture saying "this photo has been airbrushed".

How is that going to help?

Women (for the most part) are not stupid and/or blind to the world around them (and I wish people would stop trying to pretend that we are). We know that the pictures we are seeing have been airbrushed - we're told often enough at the moment. There are even magazines that have deliberately unairbrushed paparazzi photos of celebs not looking their best held up for women to mock (which is a fairly disgusting practice in it's own right), so we know our idols don't look picture perfect all the time in real life. Women are not stupid, so telling us something that we already know, or could probably guess, is not going to help one iota.

The problem is not that airbrushing is undisclosed - the problem is that people feel the need to airbrush at all. What magazines are doing is promoting an ideal. It may not be a real one, it may not even be a possible one (though women do tend to kid themselves that it is; whether or not they have proof) but it is held as an ideal. I don't care if they're telling me (or showing me) that such body types are achievable, they are telling me that such body types are admirable, possibly even the only ones which are even acceptable. They are saying 'look at these celebrities and models. They were gorgeous to start with, but even then they are not gorgeous enough. We must make them "better", we must, in fact make them conform to our standards of what is beautiful, what women should look like. We must bring them up to scratch, and hold them up before you as the standard to which you must aspire.'

Who cares if that standard is achievable or not? It is still being touted as the standard. In effect, by acnowledging that all their pictures are airbrushed, all these magazines would be saying is that no woman will ever be good enough. No women's bodies can ever be beautiful in their natural state - that all women, in fact, are ugly and sub-par. So we have to air brush them to make them better. Only when airbrushing stops, when real women are lauded for their real beauty (whatever size that comes in) will women start being able to accept themselves for who they are.

Another Reason To Love Margaret Atwood

2010-02-20T12:00:00.002Z

I got pointed at two Good links for writers this morning by Neil Gaiman, and found this list by Margaret Atwood. I've read quite a lot of "advice to young authors" bits and bobs over the years, but this is the first one that's really struck a chord and made me laugh at the same time.

1 Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can't sharpen it on the plane, because you can't take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils.

2 If both pencils break, you can do a rough sharpening job with a nail file of the metal or glass type.

3 Take something to write on. Paper is good. In a pinch, pieces of wood or your arm will do.

4 If you're using a computer, always safeguard new text with a memory stick.

5 Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.

6 Hold the reader's attention. (This is likely to work better if you can hold your own.) But you don't know who the reader is, so it's like shooting fish with a slingshot in the dark. What fascinates A will bore the pants off B.

7 You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you're on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.

8 You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You've been backstage. You've seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.

9 Don't sit down in the middle of the woods. If you're lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.

10 Prayer might work. Or reading something else. Or a constant visualisation of the holy grail that is the finished, published version of your resplendent book.

There is some good advice there from other authors, so the rest of the link is also well worth a read. I just wanted to share this little gem.

In Defence of Reading Into Things

2010-02-12T12:44:00.005Z

Something that I seem to be hearing a lot in comments threads, arguments and discussions of all sorts of things is the accusation that someone is "reading too much into" something, that the original something was "just a joke" or was somehow too frivolous to warrant anything more than a surface analysis.

So when a group of feminists complain about a facebook group called "GTA taught me if you kill a hooker, you get your money back." the response from a lot of people (as well as the usual hate speech from a couple of users who I hope get banned sometime soon) was that the feminists were overreacting, because the group's category was "just for fun - in-jokes", and this was about a game not real life. (Never mind that the title itself uses the wording "taught me"- thus suggesting that this is learned behaviour, and that people take what they have learned in the game into the rest of their life. The title is suggesting there is a link.) But because it's not explicitly saying "go out and kill hookers because you'll get your money back" people feel they can say "you're reading too much into this" - which, reading into that statement itself, essentially means either "there is no context to this, no meaning beyond the explicit, so stop looking for it. This should be taken in absolute isolation." or "I wrote it, so the only meaning in it is what I say there is," or just "there is no ill intent here, so you can't blame us when you get offended when you look at this."

Now, I'm an English Literature graduate. I have done (and am still doing) several degrees, the entire point of which is "reading into things". I have been taught that there is no way you can take anything in isolation from its context, literary, historical or social. I have been taught that one should look beyond the surface meaning - always. I have even been taught to look at a text divorced from what it's original author intended, and my reader response is as valid as that author's intent (if not more so). Anyone who doubts that last statement should look up a guy named Roland Barthes, and an essay he wrote in 1967 called "The Death of the Author". So naturally, I feel I have to step up here, and defend... well, let's face it, the principle which my entire university education is based on.

I think it's fairly obvious to anyone who visits the aforementioned facebook group that it is full of vile little hatemongering misogynists, who have proved the aformentioned feminists' point for them quite ineloquently, but I'm not arguing the toss over freedom of speech here (I'll save that for a later post) I'm arguing why things that are ostensibly jokes, or otherwise frivolous comments (or called so by their creators) are actually no less meaningful than something meant seriously.

What it comes down to is this: no-one owns the English language. You do not, and cannot claim ownership of words, even words that you yourself say or write, to the extent that you can dictate what they mean. Words are very egalitarian in that respect. They mean what we all agree them to mean, and while that can change, the process takes years of continual usage and gradual change, not one isolated post, or one person suddenly deciding otherwise. You can choose what you want to say, you can choose what words you use, but you cannot choose what everyone understands those words to mean. You cannot possibly divorce words from context, because context is the only thing that gives language meaning in the first place.

What this means is that all the stuff that anyone chooses to read into a text (be that oral or written) is there. The author may not have realised, may not have intended that to be the message they wanted to convey, but that message has been conveyed, whether they intended it or not. The reader cannot help it if they are a better reader than the author is a writer. Essentially, if I get offended by something you say, then I'm bloody well offended whether you meant to offend me or not. You may have meant me to laugh at what you said, but it's not my fault if I don't find it funny.

And if someone does get offended by something you have said, then you have two options; stand by what you say and not care if you offend, or appologise. You can say that what you said wasn't what you meant to say, but what you cannot do is pretend that what you just said doesn't mean what I took it to mean. Because that's not up to you to say. You, the author, are deader than a GTA Hooker. (only joking!)

And here endeth the rejoicing

2010-02-02T10:40:00.002Z

Despite being a Christian, I'm not a Catholic. For several very good reasons. Now I have another one.

I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. And saddened. And horrified. And downright blasphemous; to whit - what the fuck is such a backward, twisted, homophobic, bigoted, insane asshat doing in charge of one of the largest religious communities on the planet???

Ok, firstly the Biblical prohibition against homosexuality is confined to (and correct me if I'm wrong) about 3 mentions total. All Old Testament. I don't believe Jesus said a thing about it. However, He did say an awful lot about discrimination - essentially that it's wrong, don't do it guys, please. The message Love Thy Neighbour is all through the Bible, it's the second most important Commandment that Christians are supposed to believe in (the first being Love God). I don't remember there being a caveat; Love thy Neighbour (but only if he's a straight white male...).

The only thing I can do now is hope to God that the bill is too far through the process of being passed that there's not a damn thing that can be done to stop it.

And the Happiness just keeps on coming

2010-02-01T11:23:00.002Z

Good for Harriet :)

Seriously, if that woman ever becomes leader of the Labour Party, I'm voting for them.

Happy Post

2009-12-28T15:14:00.003Z

Firstly, here's hoping that everyone had a very Merry Christmas; I certainly did, despite the mega amounts of things trying to stress me out this year.

One thing in particular that made me smile I'd like to share with you: it got sneaked in the news late at night on the 23rd, so I nearly missed it, but hip hip hooray and God bless Harriet Harman, she's done it. She's got the equality bill passed. :D

Here's the link for full discussion of what it will mean when the legislature comes into force, but in summation:

1) Banning pay secrecy

2) The definition of harrasment has been extended and consolidated: now defined as "unwanted conduct which has the purpose or effect of violating a person's dignity or creating an intimidating or hostile environment" which may or may not be related to a "protected" characteristic, such as race, age, gender, sexual orientation etc. It also covers harrasment on the grounds of an employee's connection to a person with a protected characteristic, and harrassment from a third party.

3) Private sector employers will be required to publish information about differences in pay between male and female employees.

4) Employers are allowed to positively discriminate, and take a "protected characteristic" into account when making recruitment or promotion decisions, all other things being equal.

5) Employment tribunals which uphold harrasment or discrimination claims may make recommendations to an organisation to prevent future discrimination.

Awesome. Just Awesome. Best Christmas present this country's had in a long while.

A post of very little sympathy

2009-11-03T11:26:00.004Z

This article, and another one (trackback) really pissed me off today.

These stories should just not be run. It perpetuates the idea that those falsely accused of rape have such a hard time, the unspoken conclusion of which is that we shouldn't be bringing them to trial at all. Because you're *Ruining* these poor young men's lives!
Sorry, but Boo, Hoo.
Callous I may sound, here, but I don't really care. Mr Bacon can go away, re start his life (didn't even have to be in Malaysia) under a new name, and escape. What about the woman who was raped? Does she have that luxury? No. She has to live with what happened for the rest of her life. To make a comparison, the man in such a situation has had his name trashed. He can get another one. The woman has had the same thing done to her body. It is a private trashing, but therefore more personal, more immediate, and most importantly, irreversible. She cannot go down the council offices and get a new body, like he can get a new name.

Why, why, why are people (mostly men) so hung up on the idea that it is worse for the wrongly accused than for the victim(/survivor)? And then use the fact that a small percentage of men might possibly get wrongfully accused/convicted etc as an excuse for why we should not toughen up rape laws, and bring justice to the One in four* women in the Western world who will be raped at some point in their lives. Or prove wrong the 60% of rape victims/survivors who do not report their rape because they feel they will not be able to get it to court, let alone get a conviction.

Yes, it must be hard for someone to be accused of a crime they didn't commit. But please remember that more people report false claims of grand theft auto than rape. And that false claims make up less than 2% of all reported rapes.

The idea of concealing the accused's identity as well as the plaintiff's is, on the surface, quite an appealing sop to those who want it both ways, but as Ruth Hall from WAR (Women Against Rape) points out, "Most rapists are serial rapists. Many rape cases could be won if more than one woman came forward to give evidence." And if the defendant's identity is kept hidden, then these other possible victim/survivors cannot come forward.
The only scenarios in which this would not apply is if a) this is a first-time rapist (and we all know that all rapes are reported, and we always convict the bastards the first time) or b) we know the defendant is innocent (in which case, why the trial?) or c) All rapists only rape one victim, ever. And if c), then let's take another look at that troubling stat - that 1:4 women are raped at some time in their life. Lets take the lower estimate, the 1:6 even. Now, I can't find the exact stat for the gender split between men and women (I know there's ever so slightly more women in this country), but if we take it as 50:50, then that means, if every rapist only rapes one woman, that one in six men is a rapist.
So let's run through that scenario again, shall we? To argue that we should keep a defendant in a rape case's identity private (something denied to a defendant in any other crime), you are arguing that either a) we have a perfect system where all rapists are caught once they've committed rape, b) there is no such thing as rape, c) 1:6 men are rapists, or the much more likely scenario of d): it is more important for a man to preserve his reputation than it is for a woman to see justice.

Another terrifying thing is that the jury in this case took only 45 minutes to declare Mr Bacon innocent. And look at the circumstances - a woman too drunk to give consent, he carried on... where have I seen this before? And in 45 minutes, 12 people have decided that a man's right to pleasure trumps that of a woman's to bodily integrity. That men shouldn't have to go through all the bother of obtaining consent, of making sure a woman is really into it, if it's too much bother because she was drunk. That consent must be assumed, unless a woman is sober enough, rational enough, and brave enough to give a loud and clear "No!" (preferably accompanied with fighting him off, and then being found afterwards crying and showing obvious distress.). That rape is not rape, essentially, if she was drunk.

I admit I don't know all the facts here. There may be other factors to this case that I haven't considered. But this is the impression that is given out to the public in cases like this: women, if you're drunk and raped, it was your fault for getting drunk. When the message we should be sending out is: Men, if you don't want to be accused of rape, don't take advantage of women when they've been drinking. Never, ever, ever, presume consent, or that you are entitled to sex. No matter how many drinks she's had. No matter how many of them you bought her. No matter how short her skirt or low her neckline. No matter whether or not she's been flirting with you. No matter if she was happy with kissing. Not until she is getting the condom out of her handbag and passing it to you - or even better, she's asking you, actually saying those words "would you like to have sex with me?" can you presume consent. Follow that rule, and you'll never be accused of rape! Simple!**

*An oft quibbled with statistic. Which does apply to America, and is sometimes reduced to 1:6 (troubling enough even then, n'est pas?).

** and in fact much more simple than the current "rule" for women, which seems to be: don't get drunk, don't wear too short a skirt, don't draw attention to yourself, don't be sexual, don't flirt/kiss/otherwise encourage/talk to a man you don't intend to have sex with, (don't, in short, have fun or go out. Ever.) don't walk home alone at night, don't stay in the same room alone with a man, don't act/look/think in any possible way that could be interpreted as provocative, and.... well, you might still get raped. But if you followed all those rules, and told him no, screamed and shouted, tried to fight him off, and looked suitably upset afterwards, and remembered his face, and he isn't a lying f***wit as well as a rapist and doesn't fake an alibi, and you're lucky enough that the jury doesn't believe him anyway and think you're a lying little slut (because your previous sexual conduct must also be absolutely spotless) then you might, just might get a conviction. Which won't be Justice, (because he'll be out in a few years) but it might provide a tiny bit of solace and comfort while you try to put your life back together.

One law for the Goose...

2009-11-01T20:47:00.006Z

Ok, now I'm all in favour of criminals being rehabilitated, and made into productive members of society again, but this article really made me feel ill.

How come footballers can get away with this? They already get far and away too much money for what they do, and now they're being let off something like this with, effectively a slap on the wrist. This man has 13 previous convictions - THIRTEEN!! That would bar most people from being able to get a job anywhere, but because he's a footballer, he's going to get away with an 18 month sentence (of which he'll serve... how much...? Bet you not a lot.) and then he'll be back as normal. HOW is that supposed to be a detterent for him, or anyone else, to continue such crimes?

The worst bit is just how cosseted he's going to be when he comes out. Gordon Taylor, from the PFA is quoted as having said: "Everybody in life can have big problems to face and this is probably his biggest and I hope he's able to overcome it and if he needs help to get his life back on track I assure you we'll be there for him."
It's as if he's been falsely accused. Or people are treating him as if his prison sentence is as bad as what he has done to this woman, worse even. When let's face it, it's probably less than he deserves. I think a quote from his victim sums it up perfectly: "King's defence moaned that the sentence would lose him £1 million in earnings - but I've lost my face." (italics mine.)

This is the real meaning of "privilege" - Private Law. And I'm not sure if it's male privilege, or celebrity privilege, (In either case, I'll draw parallels with Polanski) but, as a society, we have GOT to stop thinking of it as a good thing.

Not Feminism for a change!

2009-10-22T15:51:00.003+01:00

I'm just taking some time out from rushing to finish my MA dissertation and reading Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth, to discuss some current affairs. The big news at the moment, other than the postal strike, seems to be the fact that Question Time are proposing to give racist bigot Nick Griffin some airtime.

Now, I happen to think that the BNP have almost certainly used up their allotted oxygen quotient, and I would be quite happy if they all took a collective long walk off a short pier, BUT, I don't think this excuses the rest of us sane individuals in this country to resort to censorship.

There's the obvious quote from Voltaire, that whilst one may disagree absolutely with everything someone says, one should defend to the death their right to say it, or whilst I could refer readers to a wonderful blog post by Neil Gaiman about freedom of speech sometimes meaning that one has to defend the indefensible, I'd rather not just be glib and let someone else write my argument for me.

The BBC has long held a reputation for impartiality. Up until the Hutton Report and that whole whitewashed mess, it was taken for granted that the BBC was free from ties of government and political bias. Now, that reputation has been tarnished, but not to my mind destroyed. Censorship on a program such as Question Time would be, for me, another blow to that reputation, another example of a media institution not willing to put itself in the line of fire, for fear of not being politically correct. And I mean that just as much in the sense of not ascribing to some notion of "correct" politics. It's the job of a free press to report everything, not just the bits of politics that we find acceptable. Otherwise, we're no better than a banana republic, trying to keep its citizens happy and complient, by only telling them the authorised truth. We're above that in this country, and despite total f*ckwits like Griffin, we ought to remain so.

And I don't like the idea of people saying "we don't have to give the BNP the same rights as we'd give anyone else, because they're not a "real" political party". That's one step away from saying "I don't have to listen to you because you're a member of this group, and therefore not a real person." Slippery slope, perhaps, that's how these things start. Plus, of course, we'd be behaving just like the people we ostensibly hate. How much of a validation would that be for the BNP if we adopted their own tactics of bullying and prejudice in order to combat them?

If we didn't invite idiots like this into our media, if we demonise them and refuse to listen, that gives them further "proof" of the liberal media pandering to the governement, excluding them, etc. It gives them the opportunity to act the martyr, and makes this a debate about freedom of speech, not about what it should be about - the unacceptability of casual racism in British politics. We're being distracted by the ephemera into arguing about tangenital subjects, where the BNP are on much stronger ground. We are giving the BNP more publicity and recognition as a result of the controversy than as a result of having them on the BBC in the first place, (where at the very least his views are engaged with, and not allowed to go unchallenged while we dance around talking about the freedom of the press). As Griffin said himself: "I thank the political class and their allies for being so stupid. The huge furore that the political class has created around it clearly gives us a whole new level of public recognition."

On the other hand, if we stop this debate being about issues such as freedom of speech, this could actually be a fantastic opportunity for all opponents of the BNP. Their policies are shit. Not just the casual racism (though that's horrific enough), but the fact that they haven't really got a political standpoint on anything other than immigration. Challenge him on this and other issues, and people will see that they really, really don't want him or his grubby little party anywhere near running the country. The people who are going to be enthused by this are the people who would have voted for the BNP anyway. The moderates, on the other hand, might very well be alienated once they've actually had a chance to hear what the party's got to say for itself. So yes, drag Griffin in front of the cameras, have David Dimbleby and the pannelists grill him within an inch of his life, and I promise you he will be exposed for the racist, bigoted, half-witted, spineless little demagog he really is. His policies cannot stand up to reasoned debate, and his appearance in any legitimate forum will, far from conferring its legitimacy on him, show up, by contrast, just how little he deserves to be taken seriously. As the saying goes, give him enough rope and he'll hang himself.

Not engaging with an issue may save us the risk of accidentally legitimising it, but it allows Griffin's views to go unchallenged. We shouldn't be ignoring the problem and hoping it goes away, we should be fighting back, providing the counter arguments that often people don't hear, because they're hearing the BNP's views in isolation. Distasteful as it might be, sometimes we need to parade shit around, so people can see for themselves how badly it smells.

And of course, if you still don't agree with me, then you can always take comfort in one of my favourite quotes from Ferdinand Mount:
"One of the unsung freedoms that go with a free press is the freedom not to read it...."

Men on the Internet

2009-10-12T17:43:00.005+01:00

Harassment on the Internet is a women's issue.

Oh, and have a look at this one (warning, may make you feel sick to your stomach/ ashamed of any testicles you may posses)

But, also contained in that first post is another of these wonderful nuggets. It's one of those things that gets to me when I can SEE the problem, just can't see the solution. So when a summation of the problem occurs that inherently contains an obvious solution I want to jump for joy.
This, I believe is one such:

I get that you don’t really mean that shit. I get that you’re just talking out your ass.

And that guy? Thought you were on his side.

And On that Subject...

As I've said before, and will keep saying, here and elsewhere: Men can be feminists. Men are in fact some of the most important feminists, because they are the ones with the power, they are the ones who can most easily effect change. Bollocks to anyone who says that men can't understand (or can't be explained to enough so they do understand), or aren't allowed a say because of their lack of personal experience, or can't be "proper" feminists because they have a penis. That's being as patronizing to them as they have been to us. We need men to stamp out this misogynistic shit at the roots. Some men are the problem. The rest of men need to be part of the solution.
In essence:
Men! the Feminist Auxilliary Force needs YOU!

And if you want to join, start by reading This

And then This.

Spread the Word, people!

Follow Up on Schrodinger's Rapist, and Equality by Reduction

2009-10-12T15:37:00.004+01:00

I think I already linked to the Schrodinger's rapist post previously, but looking back on the comments that have appeared on that blog and others subsequently has been almost as interesting as the post itself.
If you want to read the debate, go read it, but I'm just going to quote one small passage from this blog

I think discomfort in inevitable in dismantling privilege. Guys are used to a lot of advantages that they don’t think of as advantages — they got to talk more in meetings, get interrupted less, and their views are not as easily dismissed. If those advantages go away, it “feels” unfair to them because they thought their privileged state was “normal.” And the longer term advantages of dismantling an unequal system are harder to see in the immediate term.

What cis het men see is the loss of the privilege to intrude on women’s solitude, and I think all the whinging is simply rationalization around reflexive defense of the privilege.

In fact, I think guys only come to grips with the loss of male privilege when they take a broader view of what is to be gained and lost. IME, either because they have self-interested reasons for thinking patriarchy sucks for everyone; or because they come face to face with what it does to women and can’t tolerate it. The latter is probably the easier sell, and that’s why exercises like getting high school boys to list the steps they take to walk to their car in a dark parking lot (and then hearing women’s lists — I got that from the Shapely Prose thread) are effective.

Beautifully put. And one of the biggest problems that feminists in this day and age face.

I also want to add another long quotation from this wonderful post here, about why respecting women's boundaries in this way is SO important.

If women are raised being told by parents, teachers, media, peers, and all surrounding social strata that:

it is not okay to set solid and distinct boundaries and reinforce them immediately and dramatically when crossed (”mean bitch”)
it is not okay to appear distraught or emotional (”crazy bitch”)
it is not okay to make personal decisions that the adults or other peers in your life do not agree with, and it is not okay to refuse to explain those decisions to others (”stuck-up bitch”)
it is not okay to refuse to agree with somebody, over and over and over again (”angry bitch”)
it is not okay to have (or express) conflicted, fluid, or experimental feelings about yourself, your body, your sexuality, your desires, and your needs (”bitch got daddy issues”)
it is not okay to use your physical strength (if you have it) to set physical boundaries (”dyke bitch”)
it is not okay to raise your voice (”shrill bitch”)
it is not okay to completely and utterly shut down somebody who obviously likes you (”mean dyke/frigid bitch”)

If we teach women that there are only certain ways they may acceptably behave, we should not be surprised when they behave in those ways.

And we should not be surprised when they behave these ways during attempted or completed rapes.

Women who are taught not to speak up too loudly or too forcefully or too adamantly or too demandingly are not going to shout “NO” at the top of their goddamn lungs just because some guy is getting uncomfortably close.

Women who are taught not to keep arguing are not going to keep saying “NO.”

Women who are taught that their needs and desires are not to be trusted, are fickle and wrong and are not to be interpreted by the woman herself, are not going to know how to argue with “but you liked kissing, I just thought…”

Women who are taught that physical confrontations make them look crazy will not start hitting, kicking, and screaming until it’s too late, if they do at all.

Women who are taught that a display of their emotional state will have them labeled hysterical and crazy (which is how their perception of events will be discounted) will not be willing to run from a room disheveled and screaming and crying.

Women who are taught that certain established boundaries are frowned upon as too rigid and unnecessary are going to find themselves in situations that move further faster before they realize that their first impression was right, and they are in a dangerous room with a dangerous person.

Women who are taught that refusing to flirt back results in an immediately hostile environment will continue to unwillingly and unhappily flirt with somebody who is invading their space and giving them creep alerts.

People wonder why women don’t “fight back,” but they don’t wonder about it when women back down in arguments, are interrupted, purposefully lower and modulate their voices to express less emotion, make obvious signals that they are uninterested in conversation or being in closer physical proximity and are ignored. They don’t wonder about all those daily social interactions in which women are quieter, ignored, or invisible, because those social interactions seem normal. They seem normal to women, and they seem normal to men, because we were all raised in the same cultural pond, drinking the same Kool-Aid. [...]

She didn’t fight back because you told her not to. Ever. Ever. You told her that was okay, and necessary, and right.

Please, please go and read the whole article. It's Here, just so's you don't have to scroll back up.

Oh, and another thing....

2009-10-08T13:02:00.002+01:00

I would also like to add:

What kind of a f***ed up precedent is THAT going to set, if a guy can GET AWAY WITH CHILD RAPE because he was rich and famous??

Thank-you to all of you wonderful writers, artists, actors, directors etc, etc, etc who have NOT signed these stupid petitions, or have come out opposed to the whole thing (Yet another reason for me to love Neil Gaiman, and a reason for me to overlook, on this occasion, Chris Rock's annoying voice. - Seriously, great dude, I just have to listen to him in small chunks.) and believe that the artistic community should be held to the same legal standard as anyone else.

Great Art does not give you a get-out-of-jail-free card. Would you have excused Hitler if he'd been a slightly better painter?*

*Actually, my theory on this one is that if he'd been a good painter, he might have got laid a bit more, and not had to go into politics and become a "mass-murdering f**khead" (in the words of Eddie Izzard) - but then I'm being a bit facetious at the moment...

Frothing at the mouth

2009-10-07T23:05:00.003+01:00

I kid you not, my Dad actually referred to me as a "Rabid Feminist" the other day.
Rabid? Really? Must have missed that fox bite last time I was on the continent. And I was wondering why I seemed to be going insane and frothing at the mouth a lot.

Oh no wait, that last one must be because of all the stuff I'm reading.
I've just discovered the people at Feministing and The Sexist, and am having a big ol read. And because I'm female, when I read, my brain tends to overheat and explode*.

And in some cases this is a good thing - like when I suddenly discover that contributor "Courtney" is the same one who wrote the book I've just finished reading - Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters.

In other cases, it's more stuff that I wish I could include my PhD to cover (but can't because at this rate it'd never be done...) such as the idea of "Force Fantasy" and why women of today don't buy it.

Also a track-back (ish?) to my post of 17th August about men who get rejected and then decide that appropriate countermeasures include escalating the war-of-the-sexes to actual violence. Here's another collection of them. With a title that just wouldn't be the same without the exclamation point.

An interesting question (with responses, which are sound, accessible, and frankly essential reading if you're in this situation) about how to explain male privilage to an intelligent man. (Also why there's no such thing as "Female Privilage", at the wonderfully named Finally Feminism 101)
And a tongue in cheek article about how to teach your daughter about feminism.
And a post about why we still need feminism at all.

Also, until today I had not realised what this word literally means. Or rather, I knew what a douche was, but hadn't actually connected the dots. And on that note... another example of "But I WANNA Ice-cream!" logic (I will explain if anyone ever posts a comment what I mean by that last statement.)

And finally, because I think this has been quite a long enough round-up, I want this hat.

*As a consequence of the content of the reading material, not the quality of my brain. The management refuses to accept claims that female brains are more shoddily constructed, or are more prone to overheating, and instead suggest that the user is at fault for operating a female brain in close proximity to a patriarchal society. Such operational conditions can frequently cause female brains running at high levels to overheat, explode or start a blog.

Yes, I know it's from the Daily Fail...

2009-09-26T13:10:00.002+01:00

... but this article pisses me off.

I've ranted before about the inequalities caused by women having to pay for things like childcare (because God forbid they have a househusband to deal with that...) thus decreasing their effective earning potential compared to men, who often have wives who are prepared to support them at home. Now I get another chance to rant at how even when women find innovative solutions to this problem, they're penalized by a government completely unsympathetic to their needs (because parliament's full of men) who, by upholding the letter rather than the spirit of the law, are attempting to be politically correct, and end up offending more people than if they'd let it go. Not to mention destroying the working lives of the two women involved.

However, because this is the Daily Fail, I also have to point out the amusing irony (not sure if it's really irony, but it's in that general ballpark) of the comment by one Canadian reader:
All I can say is, "wow"! It's beyond belief some of the stories I read in this newspaper. People of the UK - you really need to rise up against this kind of fanatical governmental interference in everyday life. Absolutely ridiculous!
It is absolutely beyond belief... but not for the reasons you think!

Why so young?

2009-09-01T10:32:00.001+01:00

There's not much more I can add to this...

Round Up

2009-08-17T12:37:00.003+01:00

I Actually started this post about half-way down, but then I read this link and decided it should have Prominence.

This Should Be Our Manifesto.
"Let us name the problem for what it is, without insisting that we acknowledge you."

It is one of the most insulting and patronising things, for me, as a feminist, when I try and tell men about the kind of atrocities committed by men on a daily basis, and they respond "But we're not all like that".
I know. Otherwise I wouldn't be talking to you - I'd be out there with a gun destroying every Y chromosome on the face of the planet. If I didn't genuinely believe that there were good men out there, that men are not irredeemable scum one and all, then honest to God I would be trying to rid the world of them, not convince them to stand up with me and help me do something about the ones who give all the others a bad name.

Don't blame me for bringing the problem elements of your gender to your attention - blame those members of your gender who have made the problem in the first place.

I can get it that you might be feeling a bit insecure - you have, after all, just had a large, intelligent feminist vehemently and accurately degrading a large portion of your gender in front of you for five minutes - but please don't try and dismiss the problem because you aren't part of it. By doing so, you make yourself part of it.

Please realise that I'm not stupid. I'm not lumping you in with the problem elements. If I was, like I said, my reaction would be different. I'm asking you to help me, to get angry with me. I'm not yelling at you. I'm inviting you to yell with me.

Remember: ALL IT TAKES FOR EVIL TO TRIUMPH IS FOR GOOD MEN TO DO NOTHING.

***

And here's another collection of things that are bugging me at the minute:

Man shoots women at gym because he couldn't get a girlfriend

Article showing how our misogynist culture implicitly condones him

***

Two Articles about "pick-up artists" and the kind of culture that believes
a) women are stupid and can be tricked into having sex with you, if you know the right moves, and
b) it's ok to "blame all of womankind for viewing our bodies and lives as for ourselves, instead of for the pleasure of men."

One wonderful comment on the first article says:

"Having sex with ANYONE is not my, nor any other person’s, “price” for staying alive, for being female, for being attractive, for going to the gym, for wearing “slutty” clothing and/or high heels, for ANYTHING. Furthermore, I am not a sex worker, but if I were, I would have the right of any businessperson to refuse service (in compliance with applicable nondiscrimination laws, etc.)

Seriously, do we have to print up T-shirts with the above statement? I hear NoSweat’s got a sale going on."

***

Moving from that to discussions of "the game" and PUAs in general; specifically the idea of "the neg" (criticizing a woman you're interested in, in order to get her to sleep with you; sounds counter intuitive, I know)

One person on there (also called Alex, sadly) mentions that:
"isn't the idea that the "neg" is some sort of device that exploits natural female vulnerability kind of sexist in itself? That most women are so insecure and dependent on the opinions of strangers that a passing mild insult from a stranger in a bar is enough to drive them into said strangers bed?"

Well, yes it is. But the problem isn't that it's a woman's "natural female vulnerability" which is being exploited - it isn't natural at all. It's the product of a culture which is based on "negging"
women, making them feel incomplete without a man, and suggests that their self-worth should be based on their ability to attract the opposite sex.

And talking of Alexes (kind of)
A beautiful comment on the first neg-article by another "Alessandra"

"Degrading a woman and breaking down her confidence is an easy way to gain power and influence over her. This has been done for centuries, albeit with a bit more rape and violence. Old habits never die.

If the object of the “Dating Game” is to screw as many women as possible, then yes, his technique works well. If it’s a matter of “conquering” women, like you do enemies or rogue countries, then anything you can do to break them is a win.

People who think with anything other than their genitals find other things to hope for"

***

A beautiful, if short, article, spoiled by the last two lines. And something that I promise to talk about later. The interaction of religion and feminism is something that's been building up for me as a while, and I think it's going to all come out soon.

***

And Finally, a little gallows-humour light relief.

How is this Liberation?

2009-08-16T17:32:00.001+01:00

Too. Damn. Angry. To. Speak.

Couldn't have put it better Myself.

2009-08-05T22:05:00.002+01:00

Seriously, criticize Harriet Harman for the mess that is the NHS, but don't knock her on this one. Honestly, the one thing that would ever EVER tempt me back to voting Labour would be if she was heading the party.

Sorry it's been a while, but...

2009-07-29T10:50:00.002+01:00

Oh my sweet God in Heaven, this is bloody marvelous.

God Bless Robert Peston for having the brains to work it out, and the guts to say it despite his Y Chromosome.

I won't go into it further at the moment, because I don't want to spoil the big grin running all over my face right now...

:D

Reading between the lines

2009-06-11T10:41:00.004+01:00

Ok, just a brief one (at least intentionally, but these things tend to grow...) to point out a particular piece of reportage

Now, just to clarify, I don't want to comment on the whole Labour CTD* issue. I' just commenting on this particular article.

Firstly I'm concerned about an accusation that women in the Cabinet are "Window dressing" (Flint's words not mine) which, considering she herself has recently been involved in a photo shoot for some glossy fashion magazine (unspecified), plus the official reason for her resignation was that she didn't feel she was trusted by Brown, does seem to have a scary ring of truth about it. Are our female ministers just vote-winning "window dressing"? hmm.... Now you can accuse me of having watched too much Yes Minister recently, but it would be worrying if absolutely nothing has actually changed in politics, whilst at the same time the illusion has been created that some things have moved on...

Secondly, I'm concerned at this section:

"The week had also seen the resignations of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, Communities Secretary Hazel Blears and some other ministers before Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell walked out on Thursday evening with an open call for Mr Brown to quit.

This was widely seen as part of coordinated attempt to challenge Mr Brown's position as Labour leader, but Ms Flint said she was not part of any plotting.

She said "negative briefings" from Downing Street had wrongly attempted to suggest she was part of a group of senior Labour women ministers wanting to unseat Mr Brown."

I'm sorry, a conspiracy of women? Who form considerably less than 20% of the government? Being able to de-stabilize the PM? Surely not.

I've been looking, and can't at the minute find a comprehensive list of all the people who've resigned from Labour over the past few weeks, but looking at the quote above, I'm starting to worry that it's not disproportionately the women who have been leaving. If it is actually them making a decision to leave, then fine, it almost suggests that they have principles, but if it's them being forced out, made into a convenient scapegoat (and isn't it telling that both Blears and Smith are out - the two most prominent (powerful?) female politicians that we had...) and quietly got rid of in order to preserve this lovely little boys-club that is parliament...

Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, but it's at least as likely as saying there's a plot against the PM coming from "senior women ministers". I'm not going to draw any firm conclusions at the minute, but as the facts stand, we have a lot of senior women in government "resigning", one amid an acusation that women in parliament are merely "window dressing" and that the PM doesn't trust them. Is it too much of a leap to suggest that maybe women in government aren't particulalrly welcomed by their male collegues?

*Old doctor-slang.

Yay! I'm not alone!

2009-05-25T23:41:00.004+01:00

There are other people out there blogging about the same kind of thing.

On livejournal, but let's not hold it against them...

Charm/Offensive

And the Post that Spawned it

And another one. My favourite quote from which is from the comment at the bottom:
"The best option available [to prevent rape] is to teach everyone from a young age that female bodies aren't public property, to hold rapists responsible for raping people, and to stop holding girls and women responsible for not getting themselves raped."

This is almost a post for my own sake, rather than for anyone reading (helooo... Is there anyone out there....?) but still, they make good/angry reading.

Follow Up

2009-05-19T13:36:00.002+01:00

BBC Documentary asking "Why can't women succeed in the workplace?"

Solution, from my point of view:

6 months mandatory paternity leave.

Wont go down easy with bosses and chiefs of industry, but it's absolutely, 100% the easiest/best/only option. The others being:

Women stop having children. (downsides would include destruction of human race)
Women go back to the home. (About as fun an option as above)
Being able to control the female "biological clock". (we don't yet have the science)

We need to get more men in the home. Simple as. Men find it easier to succeed because they don't have the pressures of family - they have a wife to take care of that for them. Women find it immeasurably harder to do the same as men if they don't have the support network that men do (ie a wife/unpaid domestic labour*). In order to get more women into careers, you have to get more men into the home. Once it's seen as "normal" for men to stay at home if they want to (or if their wife needs them to) then it should follow** that it will be seen as "normal" for women to be bosses. We need to dissociate gender-roles from biological sex.

Interesting point raised about half-way through, is that women in investment banking are eminently desirable, because it would probably stabilize economic trends. High levels of testosterone are responsible for the boom-and-bust phenomenon, as men take more risks. Women as women (not women behaving like men - see previous post) are better at assessing those risks, and while they wouldn't "boom" quite as often, they'd be far less likely to go bust.

* The "unpaid" being the important part. Most women find there's no point in earning a top salary if most of it has to go on hiring the nanny, chef and cleaner. If they could get that for free, they'd most likely keep working instead of staying at home.
**I say should, but there's a bit more to it than that.

Entitlement

2009-05-17T11:16:00.005+01:00

A couple of things in the news at the minute that caught my attention.

Women, even in the same job as men, still earn less.

It's not going to get better for another 180-odd years.

Apparently they don't earn as much because they have less of a sense of entitlement than men do.

Though I see an interesting correspondence with this, and wonder whether or not the women claimed as much as the men... interesting

And an interesting article about how even other people view men with more of a sense of entitlement than women. (ok, it's not quite about that, but I wanted to make it all fit nicely.)
Seriously though, if anyone has any doubt that women are still treated like second class citizens in this world, take a look at some of those comments under the article. Plenty of straight-up woman-bashing like:

"What exactly stops women forming their own corporations and filling their boards with women? Oh no that's too hard, easier to legislate yourself onto boards that don't want you"

"Half the cabinet wouldn't be there but for all women quotas."

Commenter1 : "the woman filling the post has to have at least the same skills as a male applicant."
Commenter 2: "I disagree. Rather, the same or better!"

"If a man is currently filling a post, then a woman replacing (displacing) him must be at least as competent and qualified as the person she is replacing, if not more so." (my italics)

Lovely. A woman has to be better than a man to get exactly the same job. This is, and has been the status quo for decades. My Mum had to get better grades at A-level than her male peers just to get an offer at a university, and that was thirty years ago, give or take. You'd never see that today, and yet as soon as it gets beyond education and into the actual jobs market, that's suddenly fair? Hmm...

Oh, and of course the whole bell-curve IQ argument gets dragged up again. In summary, for those of you who don't know, there has been research done to suggest that the spectrum of IQs runs like this:
Women: Very pointed bell curve; Lots of women in the middle range of IQ, not a lot at either end (so not many really stupid women, but not many exceptionally smart ones either)
Men: Flatter bell curve; generally wider distribution of IQs with both ends higher than the female line. (So the bulk of very high IQs are male, but also the bulk of really low ones)
Never mind that the standard IQ test is a highly artificial way of measuring intelligence, people keep trying to suggest that this is a good thing for men; that because most of the high IQs are male, that men in general have a higher IQ than women. Wrong. Firstly, the average IQ (taking either the mode or mean average) is higher for women (using the medium, it's exactly the same). Secondly, that top section where men do better is only the very top end of the spectrum. In general, people being hired for board management are somewhere below that, so actually, women are still going to have better IQs at that level. And thirdly, statistics can be manipulated and presented in a way to show anything you damn well like, so really, I wish people would stop using this argument to try and suggest something it doesn't.

When it comes down to it, I'm actually in favour of this kind of quota as a temporary solution. Because the only other way, it seems, for women to get into top jobs is to act more like men. Once you have a good percentage of women at the top (rather than one or two token females), the criteria are going to change - You're going to have people at the top who can recognise the positives in typically female traits, and how they can be an asset to your business, people who can understand that soft-spoken is not the same as lacking confidence, that there is not just one set (male) way of doing things. And this is the clincher: they can hire women who are as good as men, but not, as the case is now, exactly the same as men. People have got this confused. They judge success by a purely male yardstick, and so in order for women to succeed in companies where men get to set the standards of merit, they have to behave like men.

It wouldn't surprise me that some people will think, with a quota system in place, that women at the top got there purely because of the quota. Yes, people are going to think that. But just because some people take a prejudiced view isn't a reason not to impliment a measure that could be immesurably beneficial.
People are going to see what they believe to be less-qualified women promoted above more-qualified men, but what they don't realise is that these women may actually be more qualified than the men but their positive qualities are not being recognised and, in fact, that at the minute being a woman in itself is a positive quality. The unpalatable thing to accept is that a woman in a top position is (at present) intrinsicly better than an equally qualified male candidate simply because she is a woman, and because she can start re-setting the yardstick to include the typically feminine merits that are currently being overlooked by men in charge.

I don't see quota having to be in force for long. A generation at maximum. Just enough to make people see that women can be successful and can promote success in their orgnaisations without having to behave like men. The thing is that if we don't, at the pace change is coming, we aren't going to see equal gender representation until 2225. And I don't even see that. Because unless we do something radical now, even the women at the top in 2225 are all going to act like men, because that's what they had to do to get the job.

We need quotas, no matter how unpalatable they may seem. Unless there is another measure we could take that allows women to succeed without having to compromise their identity and integrity, but at the minute I can't see one.

Dont Panic!

2009-05-01T11:48:00.003+01:00

So the big story to hit the headlines at the minute is this Swine Flu problem. Which probably isn't as big a problem as all that. Only the BBC and to a certain extent the WHO* seem to be trying to make it worse. Yes, scandal and fear sell papers, but really BBC, I expected better.

The thing is, when you look at the actual facts, we have a virus which has, outside of Mexico, been very mild, and outside of the Americas has had less than a handful of cases. It's no worse than the average dose of human influenza. And lets face it, human flu is a bit of a crap virus. It makes you feel grotty for a few days, maybe a week, and then you make a full recovery. The only problem with that is when you get a secondary infection, such as pneumonia - which is treatable, but which can cause deaths in people whose immune systems are already compromised, or people who are less robust, such as the very young or the very old. I would be prepared to bet that the majority of deaths in Mexico aren't actually down to Swine Flu, but down to this kind of secondary infection. It doesn't help that Mexico doesn't have the healthcare and resources that Britain or the US have. Even if Swine Flu does start spreading among the UK populous at large, I highly doubt we'll see more deaths from it than we would see in the average year from regular human influenza.

But when you get the press jumping up and down on a story, you get terror and panic, and that just ends up causing more problems than it solves. Being the massive hypochondriac that I am, phrases like "There are numerous cases elsewhere - the highest number outside Mexico is the US - and Europeans have been told it is certain there will be deaths." really, really don't help anyone.
From the same article:

"It really is the whole of humanity that is under threat in a pandemic."
and
"It is not a question of whether people will die, but more a question of how many. Will it be hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands?"

And it's not just the press who are fueling this - the first quote was from Director General Margaret Chan, of the WHO, the other from Robert Madelin the European director-general of health and consumer protection. These are really people who ought to know better. I have no problems with telling people about the risks, I don't condone lying, but phrasing things in such an emotive way is just as bad as lying because you're giving them a false impression of the situation. Now is NOT the time to panic, and comments like that from officials, supposedly in the know, are just going to exacerbate an already tense situation.

The other thing is that people are splashing around the word "Pandemic" without telling people what it actually means. So you can see why Joe Bloggs on the street is confusing it with "apocalypse". When another WHO person is saying that "Clearly we are on track for a pandemic in the coming months." might it not be a good idea that we know what he's talking about?

A pandemic, just so everyone is clear on this, just means an infectious disease, with human to human transmission, affecting people on more than one continent. Stage 6 of the WHO guidelines require "increased and sustained transmission in the human population". So there's actually a few pandemics already going on without us noticing, we've already got an HIV pandemic going on, for example. And a TB one. And they're much more serious than the flu.

Really, right now it's time to take advice from Douglas Adams...

*Be careful to pronounce this "double-you aitch oh" not "Who", or you might get the same thing I did, which was my fiancee thinking I was accusing Keith Moon of scaremongering...

Furious

2009-03-31T09:42:00.002+01:00

This made me so mad when I read it on the bus the other day.

Now let me get this straight; he claims she consented because
""I thought she gave me the come-on - the body and eye contact was there and she did not give me the brush-off.""
and "she did not stop him helping her take her jumper, bra, tracksuit bottoms and underwear off"
and, worst of all
"he thought that the woman had enjoyed the sex.
"She groaned," he said. "I'm not saying she had the time of her life, but she was there," he told the police. "She gave the impression she was enjoying it.""

So from this we can deduce: firstly, if a woman looks at you, or touches you, and doesn't make it explicitly clear that she does not want to have sex with you, she is giving you a come on, and it's ok to have sex with her.
If she does not attempt to stop you taking her clothes off (no matter whether she is capable of stopping you or not), then she wants to have sex.
And finally, a woman enjoys sex if she was "there". So any sex where the woman is present, she enjoys. And therefore there's no such thing as rape.

This is the problem when you assume consent until told otherwise. If the woman is then not capable of making herself clear, because she is drunk, or drugged, or whatever, then according to this judge and jury, she cannot be raped. Well thank you very much Patrick Hooton, your honour. You prick.

According to him "the woman's comment that she could not give consent because she was drunk was "completely wrong".
So I take it he was off sick the day they covered "diminished responsibility" in law school?

And Ms Kahn, the defense lawyer obviously skipped that class too, if she can say "there was no evidence that the woman had given consent or not, and that drunken consent is still consent." ... so, there was no evidence that she had consented either? But because of the way our stupid, stupid law is at the moment consent is presumed until proven otherwise.

What if this woman had been unconscious in a hospital bed, instead of drunk? Or if she'd been severely autistic? Or there was some medical reason where she could not give informed consent? What kind of sikko would he be portrayed as then, taking advantage of her? Why is this any different? Because she consented to getting drunk. Not sex, getting drunk.

It is still seen as the Woman's responsibility to a) not get into a situation where she can be raped, and b) if she does, issue a loud and clear "NO!" to the man involved (whether she is capable of doing so will not be taken into account.) It's practically Biblical - Deuteronomy 22, v24. "The woman is to die because she did not cry out for help"

Sadly, the woman was not right when she said "'the law has been changed for f like you, if you are too drunk to give consent it's rape', or something along those lines',", but she should have been. And it's worrying that a solicitor could have made such a mistake. If she could, who else could have? How many women are there out there who've been getting drunk, believeing that the law offers them the same protection as it would if they were sober? Because that's what this ruling says. It says you are no longer protected by the law if you are drunk.

And the worst part is, the guy is now complaining that his life has been ruined because of a false rape charge hanging over his head. Well surely, the solution to that would be don't f***ing sleep with women when they are pissed. It is called "Taking advantage". Guys, if you're really concerned about being brought up on rape charges, then it's really simple: think to yourself, "Does she really want sex, or is she just doing this because she's drunk? Is my need for sexual gratification more important than her physical and emotional wellbeing?" and if there is any doubt at all on the first question, remember the answer to the second is always, always No. If you respect a woman as a human being, and not just as a walking vagina, you will have nothing to fear.

Seriously, do you care that much about getting sex, and that little about the woman involved that wou're willing to take the risk that she might not actually want this and sleep with her anyway? She collapses on the bed, fully clothed, completely hammered, and any normal person would tuck her in and let her sleep it off. Instead, he decides to undress her and have sex with her?? And doesn't think this is in any way a violation of her rights?? That is rape, no matter which way you cut it, and to think that this man has been aquitted??? I feel sick.
Seriously, I've been that badly drunk once or twice (and I've known boatloads of men who get worse drunk regularly, and have nothing to fear from it) and right now, I'm just counting myself lucky that all the guys who've walked me home in that state have been kind enough to plonk me on the bed, leave me a bucket just in case, and quietly let themselves out. Because apparently, if they had decided to rape me instead, they'd be getting off scot free.

If I honestly thought anyone reads this who has any power to change things, I'd be down on my knees right now, begging them to campaign to change the law, so that consent is not presumed, and women can have a little bit of justice for once.

Mens Rea

2009-03-16T13:02:00.003Z

I have often argued that in rape cases (and only rape cases) if it comes to court, the burden of proof should be on the Defense.

My main reasoning for this being it's much easier to prove that something did happen than it didn't - ie in cases when it's already been established that sexual intercourse did take place, it's easier for the defense to prove that the woman did give consent than it is for the woman to prove that she didn't.

The whine then comes from every section of male society (even some of the nice ones) "but if we actually make it easier for women to secure a conviction after they've been raped, then what's to stop all women who've had a one-night-stand and regretted it the next morning from hauling that poor little innocent man in front of the judges and ruining his life?" (I paraphrase, obviously.)

There seems to be this paranoia from men that if female consent is not presumed whenever they have sex, and must explicitly be given, then women in their thousands will start vindictively ruining men's lives on trumped up charges of rape. Guilty conscience/ fear of revenge much?

Why is it so hard for men to just suck it up and deal with the fact that women are not just there as something to stick the vagina to? What is so hard about treating women with respect, and making sure that sex is something she actually wants before you do it with her? Apparently it "kills the mood" - well sod that! Any man who puts "the mood" ( ie his pleasure) before a woman's safety and/or wellbeing isn't worth the time of day (I have a similar argument for men who won't use condoms). Similarly, if a woman's obviously drunk - what is wrong with, I dunno, not taking advantage of her?? Is a man getting his jollies really that important?

Presume non-consent until proven otherwise, and no-one's going to try and convict you for rape. It's that simple. The onus should NOT be on a woman to stop herself getting into a situation where she might be raped, it should be on the man to not create such a situation in the first place.

And even if a change in the system would lead to abuse - and I don't believe it would - I don't care. That is a problem for another day, and not an excuse to not change the system which is already open to horrific abuse, only the other way around. It is vanishingly rare these days to get a conviction on a rape case. Go look at the stats if you like, they're not hard to find. Sorry, guys, but with a system as crappy as this, you have no right to whinge that a positive change for women "might possibly be open to abuse". Boo fricken hoo.

But here I have it, the one piece of evidence that should finally shut men up about this "open to abuse" "problem": Mens Rea.

It means "guilty mind" (and not "men's excuse", as I would love to joke...) and means, in British Law, that if a man honestly believes that the woman was consenting, he is not guilty of rape. Seriously. Check it out on the 2003 sexual offenses act.

Now stop whining.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

2009-03-10T09:21:00.003Z

Evidence grows to support the former theory - that I am, in fact, plain stupid sometimes. It's long enough after the event that I can say this without ruining it for anyone...
I tuned into the first episode of the new season of Heroes* just a bit late. And by that I mean I caught the last, say, 5 minutes. The scene - some sort of flying craft, many characters from the show in orange jumpsuits, strapped to their seats. The hull of said craft has just been accidentally breached, and air is rushing out at an alarming rate, we see inside the cockpit, the view out the front, they're about to crash horribly... roll credits.

My reaction? "Wow! Heroes in Space!"

I am politically blind, sometimes. Orange jumpsuits still say to me "astronauts" rather than "Guantanamo". I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

...

In other news, Microsoft have delved to a new level of moral cowardice.
I was discussing this with a friend, and he pointed me towards this further example.

Now, I don't know about you, but I think this kind of attitude is absolutely abysmal. It comes down to Microsoft and Blizzard and similar organizations actively condoning homophobia. You just do not ban anyone from using your services because they're openly gay: that is called discrimination, and as far as I am aware that is illegal, never mind completely unethical. It's like saying "no, you can't eat at my restaurant, you're openly black" - you see how prejudiced this sounds now?

This kind of homophobic attitude seems to be endemic on the interwebs. I've even seen some dude on Youtube suggesting that being harassed online is the gamer's fault for self-identifying as gay, and she should expect that kind of prejudice. Oh, and that if you have to tell people you're gay, then you obviously have no personality. Most people seem to think that a blanket ban on all references to sexuality is ok online, because it avoids the issue entirely... well, no it doesn't. As Lambda say in the above mentioned article "although preventing harassment is an admirable goal, a requirement that LGBT people remain invisible and silent is not an acceptable means of reaching that goal."
And it doesn't seem to apply the other way at all, despite what Microsoft may claim. Seriously, go onto any online MMO like WOW or X box live or similar, and you will find people regularly using terms like "gay" or "fag" as perjoratives, and no-one's pulling them up for it. To use my previous metaphor - do you really think this would be ok if they were yelling stuff like "Shit! I lost a life! That is so Black!" or, "Dude, you killed me! You are such a nigger!"... Something tells me Microsoft wouldn't be quite so blase. And yet apparently it's ok to bash queers. Joy.

I find it really odd/cowardly/abysmal that when a woman complains that she is being harassed by other gamers for being a lesbian, she is the one who gets banned. They're effectively condoning the actions of the bigots. What Microsoft are doing is saying that this woman asked to be harassed because she told people she was gay. That's a lot like saying a woman asked to be raped because she was wearing a short skirt. It's exactly the same logic, and it's disgusting.

I can see how it must be easier for the big companies to do that - I mean, what's easier, tackling one lesbian, or a whole crowd of bigots? I've heard suggestions that it's almost impossible to effectively police harrassment online, that "considering that it's an environment in which almost all communication is over unmonitored and unmoderated voice channels, there is nothing they can to to prevent anonymous Nazis from being vocally offensive - you can report a player but with no proof they can't take any action." but that didn't seem to stop them when someone reported Theressa for identifying as gay. Or when Andrews was plugging her LGBT friendly guild in, again, an unmonitored chat channel. People reported them, and the companies took action. Obviously they have the ability to prevent harrassment, but the moral cowardice to tackle a prejudice that has become endemic on their systems.

As someone famously said: All it takes for evil to triumph is for good [people] to do nothing.

...

In happier news, chimps might be conscious.

...

Also went to see Watchmen at the weekend. It's good.

It's probably the most faithful adaptation of the Graphic Novel possible - a lot of the dialogue and shots are lifted almost verbatim. Obviously they had to change a few things, but that's understandable, and thankfully, what they did change wasn't too glaring - it was only in retrospect when we were all sitting around afterwards that we started to notice some of them.

As a film in and of itself, it's fab. Beautifully, beautifully shot, but then from the director of 300, you'd expect that. You can definitely tell he was behind it. He does like his slo-mo, but in context it does work, and the colours and the choice of shots show so much care and attention to detail, it's stunning. It really captures the look of the book, if anything even more gritty and dark, because you can do more with shades of dark colours on film than you can in print.

The actors are absolutely fantastic, some stunning performances - none that stand out above the others, but no weak links either. It really is an ensemble piece.

The only possible point where it lets itself down is in the music. It's all fantastic music (with the exception of the worst rendition of Hallelujah I have so far heard.) but it's just not always appropriate to the scene. It's not quite as bad as having Live and Let Die at a funeral (Shrek III... oh dear) but it's stuff like that Hallelujah over a rather gratuitous sex scene - a little distracting, and doesn't quite work. And All Along the Watchtower as Nite Owl and Rorschach are approching Veidt's Antarctic base. At the same time, there are a few moments where they get it spot on - The Times, They are a Changing over the opening credits, which are in themselves The most stunning montage I have ever seen on film. Ever. Without exception. And there are a few moments that I thought it worked, but I'm sure people would argue with me over - Mozart's Requiem near the end, and The Sound of Silence at Blake's funeral (much more appropriate than Live and Let Die...)

A couple of things bugged me - mainly to do with the Sally/Blake stuff, in that the film comes out much more apologistic than the book - I'm sure for some naffy PC reasons that suggest someone just didn't think it through - but I'll leave that for a later date. I'm actually quite happy, in some ways, that they did what they did - simply because it gives me more to put in my thesis :D

Also, I think the focus of the film has changed a little from the book. Whereas the book is very much about universal decay and collapse, because of time restrictions, and the fact that the film has to focus soley on the protagonsits (I want to say Heroes, but no...) it comes out a lot more about individual tragedies. Which makes the end feel a little tacked-on, but there you go. It still works as a film, and I'm still going to see it again (partly because the Thesis demands it) and will almost certainly get the DVD.

*First Episode of volume 4, which I think is something like the beginning of season 3, or half way through it, or something.... It's complicated. But it's the first one of the new lot they've just started showing in the UK

Either I am stupid, or Comma need to link properly...

2009-02-12T17:59:00.001Z

Alicia Flagged this up on Wednesday; apparently I am actually published online. It's just a bit difficult to find the link from the Comma Website.

And the answer is...

2009-02-03T18:56:00.002Z

Groucho Marx.
Though I was actually thinking about Noam Chomsky when I wrote it. Perhaps you had to be in my head...

I get the feeling that I should be posting more often than monthly - perhaps I will when I have more on the writing front to report. Though in that vein - I was really happy to have been shortlisted for the Comma Press short-story competition a while back (should have blogged that one when it was more relevant) but am slightly concerned that there seems to be nothing about the competition, the translations or the winning story on their website. Hmm...

I'm just putting the finishing touches to the "Hall of Mirrors" short story which I'm thinking of sending to comma, and wondering what I'll do for the Bridport this year. Have been doing a bit of research into stage-magicians and illusionists. Perhaps there's some material in there...

I note that there's been a lot of tailing off my paragraphs today - perhaps it's something to do with the fact that I'm craving ice-cream...

Time Flies like a Banana

2009-01-05T10:18:00.003Z

I have to start getting up earlier.

This is not because my Mum keeps saying so, nor because The Fiancee's mother keeps saying so, nor because both of them are up at 6:00 am to walk the dogs, practicing what they preach and making me feel guilty.

No, this is because I don't have time to read everything that I ought to, and still have time to do everything that I want to.

I've never managed to see how the average busy person can ever read the entirety of the paper before work, unless it's the Metro (and I'm not knocking that publication by any means, simply because it is free [a point I now actually want to discuss - so will come back to it] and easily digestible in the space of a 2 minute bus/metro ride to one's place of travaille.) Perhaps this is because I've never really had to spend longer than 20-30 minutes traveling to get to school/uni/etc except during bad traffic getting to a 9AM lecture at Warwick, when the road between campus and Leamington Spa was just one long queue that, if it hadn't been so cold out there, I would have decided to walk faster than.

The other possible option is that I am a product of the digital age, which means that (supposedly) I have no attention span, and can only concentrate on one thing for a fraction of a second, and a whole wodge of paper like a novel or a newspaper has to be digested in teeny tiny bites (or bytes) but I think it's fairly safe to say that this is bollocks.

I have actually come to the conclusion, that my inability to read an entire newspaper (assuming that these days I went out and bought one, instead of just looking at the BBC website) is because I don't get up early enough in the morning.

Neil Gaiman always seems to have loads of links to things like articles and newsworthy stuff and interviews, and I keep wondering how he finds them to post. I have decided it is because he too is part of the getting-up-earlier brigade, and must, like anyone who reads the newspaper, get up slightly earlier, just to find out what's going on in the world. And that is admirable.

So, - and this is not a New Year's resolution, because I don't make them (except for the one I made this year, which is to finaly pass my driving test, preferably before The Small Sibling does) - I intend to start getting up earlier in the morning. This should be made easier because The Fiancee is starting a new rotation at the hospital which means getting up at 7:00, and I have requested that I be kicked out of bed at the same time. It kind-of worked this morning, in that I got up, showered and out of bed (not necessarily in that order) by 8:00... only it's now 10:49 and I still haven't done any work. But I feel pretty well caught up on what's happening in the world: Detox diets don't work (surprise surprise) Kids are depressed (no sh1t, sherlock - but that's a rant for later) and Wedgewood have gone bust (shock horror!) I'm not entirely sure why people are having blood tests done at ASDA, but apparently it's happening, oh, and if you missed the Johnathan Creek special over Christmas, fear not.

On a more fun note - I'm very much liking the stuff they have over at Threadless.com, especially TypeTees. Apparently The Small Sibling got me this one for Christmas. It just hasn't arrived yet.

I am also wearing my lovely new gloveses today, which, what with the cold, and the fact that I am also huddling on the sofa, surrounded by piles of paper and wrapped in my snowman fleecy blanket, makes me feel like a very well-dressed bag-lady.

PS) 10 points to anyone who can get the titular reference.

Sorting out the Pros from the Cons...

2008-12-11T12:34:00.002Z

Having just read this article from the NY Times, I've been having a think.
For anyone who wants a quick precis (you lazy person) the article is putting forward the suggestion (albeit not entirely seriously) that too many people are writing nowadays more because they want to be a writer than because they actually enjoy writing. Consequently, publishers are suffering from what the article calls "snow blindness" - there is too much coming in for them to be able to cope and sort out the good books from the heaps and heaps of manuscripts in their slush-piles, and so this author is suggesting that the government offer salaries to this kind of writer to stop writing - much in the way that the EU subsidizes farmers to have set-asides.

The thing is though, I don't honestly think it's necessary. At least, not if the aim is to get rid of the people who just want to be the next JK or Dan Brown. The recession will probably do that for us. It's hard enough for writers-on-the-make in the best of times. Almost every writer that ever there was has had a day-job first, and when you're working hard all day to support yourself it takes a special kind of someone to sit down at the computer for another few hours every evening and tax their already overstretched brain just a bit further to write another thousand words of the novel. In a recession, those with jobs will be working just a bit harder and tightening the belts just a bit more, and it'll be just a bit harder to sit down at that computer every day. Those without will be even more stretched to make ends meet, and since we all know that writing isn't the most well paid of jobs, not at first at any rate, you would have to be an idiot (or more optimistic than really justified) to try and depend on that as your only means of income in difficult financial times.

In the end, if you don't love writing, you don't need any subsidy to force you out of the profession; the profession will do that for you. I've heard so many people say they've had great ideas for a book, or they'd love to write one someday but they just don't have the time, that if you gave me a pound for each one, I wouldn't have to write to support myself. Everyone, it is said, has at least one book in them, but not everyone has it in them to write it. You've got to need to put pen to paper, more than just wanting the money or the fame (because they will be a long time in coming) and it's only that which will keep you going through the bad times as well as the good. If you don't have it, well... you won't even get as far as someones slush pile.

Contented

2008-12-10T11:45:00.002Z

"This is a public service announcement
This is only a test"
- Greenday, Warning

It's always difficult to know what to put for the first post of a new blog - this is the post that will define the blog, it's functions, will provide justification for the whole endeavour, will set the tone for all the posts to come... maybe. There's certainly a tendency not to bother.

The rest of my website is almost finished, however, which is good news. The first chapter of Zombie Nation is getting there, and may actually be finished to deadline as well, which is also good news. The PhD on the other hand... but let's not dwell on it.

Instead, here's a warning for anyone on Facebook; Beware!
Actually, much as I may scoff (who, these days, ever downloads anything they don't know what it is?) but I got taken in by one of these not that long ago. When a virus is pretending to be from a friend that you trust, sometimes you'll just click the link without thinking. Best advice - it never hurts to just message your friend and check that what's been sent is legit.

And here's a fun thing for the day, and a great Christmas present idea for the Geek in your life.