You are what you jerk off to
Violent pornography has become part of our cultural language. Its conceits are used to sell everything, from clothes to cars to women’s underwear. But is censorship the answer?
A recent article of mine on The F Word in response to new UK porn laws laid down by the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill 2008 generated a surprising amount of controversy. In brief, part of the Bill sets out to ban various forms of ‘extreme’ pornography, including bestiality, necrophilia and some ’snuff’ porn.
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Barely legal
A victory this week for the Safety First Coalition, as legislation attempting to further criminalise prostitutes was thrown out, once more, by the House of Lords. The legislation, which would have involved forced rehabilitation or prison for repeat offenders and greater powers given to the police to arrest and incarcerate hookers, has been officially axed from the extremely dubious Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill. (Keep your eye on this one).
Call me sally-state-the-obvious, but when a person is in the sort of situation where prostitution starts looking like a viable career option, the fact that it might be illegal is probably going to be the least of their worries. Right, I’m going to take a job which is widely seen as degrading, unstable, hugely dangerous, exposes me daily to disease and isolates me from my friends and family – no, but wait! I might get a criminal record!
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The god squad bites back
So, the Prime Minister has decided that MPs should be allowed a free vote on “ethical” aspects of the upcoming Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. I can only think of expletives in response to how quickly this govt has capitulated to pressure from the Catholic Church. And its not the bloody Tories who are the main problem here but the Labour god squad in the form of Des Browne, Ruth Kelly and Paul Murphy. Coerced helpfully by mad rantings by the Catholic Church, naturally.
They. Must. Be. Stopped. I can’t put it better than Polly Toynbee or David Aaronovitch did yesterday.
More from:
Dave Osler: Embrylogy bill: in defence of liberation biology
Shiraz Socialist: The Fertilisation Bill: the rational counter-attack
Stroppyblog: Politicians And Their Consciences
On this bill, I also agree with Dominic Lawson on why deaf parents should be given the choice to have deaf children. Oh, and the nutjobs have come up with another campaign website.
Why don’t men wear skirts?
The other day I asked readers of my blog how they felt about men who wear skirts and/or make-up.
I’m a man. I’ve worn skirts, dresses and make-up on occasion in the past. I imagine I’ll do so again at some point in the future, but I wouldn’t dare to wear a skirt out in public (or at least not outside certain ’safe’ public places) because I value my personal safety too much. Whilst I will concede that there was an element of deliberately doing so to be ‘different’, my choice was primarily based on the same simple reason I wear anything: because it was comfortable and I thought it looked good.
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Check your privilege here
An interesting meme to identify class privilege has been doing the rounds of the US blogs. Originally designed to make university students think about how class impacts them, the meme requires you to tick off items such as “had more than 50 books in your childhood home” and “you were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family”.
In some ways, this list is probably insufficient to reflect our particular class system in the UK (perhaps someone will be inspired to write one specific to us). But at the same time, it is still a useful exercise. You can find the full list at Social Class & Quakers, the blog which seems to have kicked off this meme.
At the same time, these privilege lists are not a new idea – Barry Deutsch has compiled a list of these lists ranging from white privilege to non-trans privilege. Deutsch’s has also added his own take on this idea – the male privilege check list, which my fellow F Word blogger Louise has reminded me of this morning. (Number 14 – “my elected representatives are mostly people of my own sex. The more prestigious and powerful the elected position, the more this is true” – might be of particular interest to some of the commenters on Gracchi’s post earlier this week).
Feel free to experiment with these memes in the comments section.
London pro-choice protest tonight
A quick reminder to London readers: Abortion Rights is calling for people to come out in force this evening, for a protest against efforts to restrict access to abortion and “as a proud public reminder that those who support a woman’s right to choose are in the overwhelming majority”.
The protest has been mobilised to counter Ann Widdecome’s ‘Not on your life…’ roadshow, which the Tory MP is dragging up and down the country to promote ‘pro-life’ amendments to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill that would chip away at women’s rights.
Similar protests will take place when the roadshow hits Liverpool, Coventry and Cardiff – see the Abortion Rights website for more info. The group has also produced a detailed briefing on the bill’s progress through Parliament, and efforts to tack on anti-abortion amendments.
Here is a flyer with directions and more information.
This was cross-posted at The F Word
A new coalition on prostitution
A new coalition to put forward a feminist perspective against prostitution is to launch on Monday 11 February. The launch is a public event, with the invite extended to “all those who believe in real women’s-rights rather than men’s right to buy women”.
The meeting is at 6.30pm in the Amnesty UK Human Rights Action Centre in New Inn Yard, nearest tube Old St.
Of course, watchers of UK politics will be aware that the launch comes at a time when ministers are putting serious thought into a shake up the prostitution law along the lines of the Swedish model, to make the act of buying sex explicitly illegal – so women will not be charged for selling sex, but the men who buy their bodies will face prosecution. Today we learn that 52% of Britons agree with this approach and 65% agree that buying sex is an act with exploits women.
The Swedish government pioneered this legislation in 1999 and, although the move has not been without controversy, it has apparently produced a drop off in the number of prostitutes on the street, and perhaps on the numbers of women trafficked into the country.
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‘Iron my shirt’ as political commentary
[UPDATE: American readers can sign this petition to keep sexism out of the media's election coverage]
Robert has already explained why we should be unapologetically covering the US election, despite being a UK blog. So I don’t think we should let pass without analysis the hysterical level of sexism that has been directed at Hillary Clinton during the campaign. Of course, this will all be very familiar to Clinton – back in August last year, we already had the Hillary nutcracker on sale for $19.99.
However, this seemingly gut-level-misogynist reaction to her campaign reached a new low in the run up to her win in New Hampshire, when she was interrupted by men shouting “iron my shirt”. You can see the photos here and AP has the story, although it strangely describes it as a “seemingly sexist” protest. The mind boggles as to what would need to happen to get them to describe it as definitively sexist.
Ready to dismiss this as a couple of extremist nutters? Well, think again. The US feminist blogosphere is buzzing with outrage at how the media has covered Clinton’s campaign. Feministing points to a Washington Post blogger who says she needs an electric shock collar; Wonkette notes that Chris Matthews – a host on the political TV show Hardball – pinched her cheeks (it’s not an exact equivalent, I suppose, but in a UK context this might be roughly similar to Paxman coming over and pinching Brown’s cheeks – or perhaps give him a friendly tickle); Melissa McEwan of Shakesville notes that New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd accused Clinton of “playing the victim” – unwittingly casting a light on the gender politics of that particular newsroom in the process.
This has nothing to do with her political stance. Nothing on this list – all from the last two days – has anything to do with her position on any issue. And regardless of our views on Clinton’s specific politics, it’s truly been flabbergasting to see the reaction she has garnered simply for being a woman seeking power.
A version of this post was cross-posted at The F Word
Honour and shame: two sides of the stigma coin
I had a conversation yesterday with a friend about domestic violence within the Muslim community in the UK and the issue of why some Muslims resist discussing what they know is happening in the company of non-Muslims.
In my friend’s view, challenging Muslims, and Muslim men in particular, about domestic violence in such an open space, where non-Muslims are present, is problematic because of the current socio-political climate within the country, including widespread Islamophobia. She felt that a public naming of the problem would be hijacked by those with a racist agenda to further demonize Muslims in the eyes of the UK public, for instance by accusing Muslims of having barbaric cultures.
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Working for nothing
This is the first in a run of stories in which this liberal lefter asks: Why are so many people taking strike action?
Where is New Labour at with the low-paid people that the Labour party was established to represent?
Why does the UK still have some of the most vicious anti-union laws in Europe?
In the London Borough of Barnet, a large number of careworkers who work for a grim outfit called the Fremantle Trust are planning another day of strike action this Saturday. Their dispute isn’t a Grunwick yet, but it’s on the road.
Fremantle careworkers Carmel Reynolds, Anne Quinn, Lango Gamanga and Sandra Jones say they knew their working lives were about to take a turn for the perverse when Fremantle management began talking about cutting careworkers’ sick pay and holiday allowances late last year.
It didn’t take long for the talk to evolve into policy. “It went from ‘we’re going to have to take your holidays and your sick pay’ to ‘we’ll do all that and we’ll freeze your pay and cut your weekend enhancements,” Reynolds says.
She and the other careworkers had been worried about their salaries and terms and conditions ever since Barnet Council outsourced its care contracts to Fremantle and transferred staff to the trust’s employ, but the council had fallen over itself to reassure careworkers their new employer would be as great as their old one. God knows those of us on the union circuit have heard that one a million times in the last few years, but unfortunately, there are hundreds of consultants out there who can still make it sound fresh at negotiating meetings, and even more local councillors who are dopey enough to fall for it, so it’ll be a factor until such time as leading members of the New Labour cadre stop privatising public services (fat chance) and/or decide to legislate to consolidate worker protection (ditto).
“Oh yes,” Reynolds says. “They said it was all going to be super-duper and we were going to be fine.”
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