Rest easy, Jim.

My friend has died.

We hadn’t spoken in probably 8 years, but knowing he is gone, knowing he isn’t somewhere now, I cannot bring myself understand it.

Jim. Jim was his name, and he was the sweetest fucking guy. I met Jim on September the 12^th 1999. It was my first night living in Hull; I’d only been once before, on the Uni open day in spring. It was the only university I’d visited, the rest were too far and too expensive to go and see. It wasn’t even Hull Uni, but the “Scum Uni” next door- an ex-polytechnic so embarrassed about itself that it literally changed its name and moved 50 miles to escape the legacy of what it was when I chose it, but when I chose it, it had blossom trees, and squirrels, and Hull had the cleanest city centre I’d ever seen. Me and my mum were deliberately separated onto student and parent coaches, and given a tour of Hull, them being told about landmarks and beaches, us being told about pubs, and an unnecessarily obsessive inventory of frozen food shops. I met Dave on that bus. He was older, and like me had not come straight from school or college, and like me he lived on his own, he was going to study Computing, and he was vegetarian; Dave was like me, and he gave me hope that I‘d not stick out too much if I did come to Uni, and we hung around together for the rest of the day, then said goodbye with a big hug, not knowing if either of us would ever come back to Hull.

In September, everyone arrived on Sunday the 12^thto move in to Halls. I’d lived out of home for years, but decided to go in the on-campus halls to make life easy for myself in my first year; I’d got 2 GCSEs, dyslexia, and a level 3 in computer animation, I knew it was a huge leap for me to do a BSc in Games, Simulation and Virtual Reality Programming, and the last thing I needed was a commute. Everyone else was unpacking from family cars, but my mum had come with me from Liverpool on the train. I’d got one massive suitcase, and a couple of carrier bags. My mum ran across the road to the shop from Hull station and bought me a radio alarm clock/tape player. She’d already bought me a raspberry pink towelling bathrobe, and a pair of purple satin pyjamas, but she got me the tiny music system too, and we took turns carrying it under our arms as we went to find a taxi to the University.

We picked up my keys, unpacked a few of my things, walked down to the shops and back, and had a beer in my room with the door propped open so we could wave as folk went by. As it got towards late afternoon, my mum went to get her train home, and I went back to unpacking my room. My one suitcase was perhaps still over-optimistically filled for the tiny capacity of that room in halls. It had a single bed, a tiny desk, a tiny one door cupboard, a chair, a tiny corner sink, a window and a door. The campus had three halls, each with three floors, each with a cluster of toilets, a bathroom and a shower room half way down, and with a couple of pay phones in the far end near the stairs. I was in the last room before the doors to the stairwell at the far end of the corridor of the ground floor of Fisher Hall, I think it was L15. Opposite me was a really loud funny northern lass called Louise, who was the first one I waved to that day. She later went on to intermittently take me on as a project when I didn’t understand girl-things, and she ironed my top for my first formal date with the guy I met on the rail-replacement bus from Selby. I didn’t know all that on that Sunday though, only that I was 128 miles from home, and I didn’t really know a soul.

We went out for a first Halls meeting on the grass outside Fisher Halls around 6 I think. Our hall warden, Andy, read us a list of Do’s, Don’ts, and Really-really-don’ts, and then handed us over to some massively overenthusiastic volunteers from the Students’ Union who were taking us on a pub crawl. We all sat there on the grass while we listened, all acting grown-up and relaxed, not realising we probably looked like a bunch of terrified year 7 kids on a non-uniform day. I, in my usual pattern of overreacting to situations where I might stand out, had dyed my hair purple, done my undercut in zebra print, and gone as 90’s Nu Metal as I could muster; I imagine the spare fabric from my baggy jeans could have made another 3 pairs as least.

I don’t remember many people from that meeting; I remember there were lots of very nice, mostly blonde, very pretty looking girls sat together; we later (probably unfairly) christened them the Nivea girls, because they always smelled good, and wafted around with nice hair and make-up… even during middle of the night fire-drills; I once went into the toilet straight after one, and was astonished to smell actual roses… it was like the fairy tales were all true. I also remember the big bloke, the one with the wrap-around shades. He had some kind of designerish clothes on, big jewellery, and exuded the biggest pile of giving no fucks of any of us. He looked like a 25 year old dealer at a kids party. That turned out to be Suddy.

It was a gorgeous warm summer’s evening, and we were herded by the volunteers in bright t-shirts down to the first pub of a planned lengthy pub crawl. I walked into the Gardener’s Arms 20-odd minutes later, and there was Dave. God bless Dave. I ran to him, and he gave me I think the biggest hug I’ve ever received. We sat in that pub, refusing to be herded for the rest of the night, chatting shit and getting drunk, until it was time to wend our way back to halls. At some point we had also acquired a large man named Raj from Birmingham who, now outside on a cool September night, was cold. He complained of this so persistently in the first 5 minutes of our 25 minute walk home, that I offered him my top, which to everyone’s surprise, he gladly accepted. So Raj put on my Korn hoodie, leaving me in a vest-top, and we zigzagged onwards. A little way down the road, we were loudly hailed by a smallish chap with spikey hair who ran up and introduced himself to Raj; he was Jim. He proclaimed that he loved Korn, and started listing other bands he liked, to his entirely bemused but welcoming audience of one; I don’t think Raj even realised the conversation was linked to his (my) jumper. We walked onwards, with Dave utterly incensed that Raj would take a woman’s jumper, and with us both laughing about Jim’s incredibly enthusiastic but doomed attempt to engage Raj in chat about alternative music. When we got to Halls, Raj gave back my top, and Jim invited us all to his room to continue our party; he was in a room in the middle of the bottom floor, near the toilets, same side as me. I think it was L6.

Jim’s Freshers’ night party was everything you needed to know about Jim. Everyone was welcomed that night, specifically and enthusiastically as he dragged in so many people there was almost no room left for clumsy drunken feet to cross his tiny space, but somehow we all crammed in. Suddy was there too, although a little gouched due to having been slipped an elephant from behind as he repeatedly told us all to our bafflement. Jim’s room was a little haven for all of us, with Jim’s warm friendly chaotic life-force at its centre. A huge smile, an open invite, and easy conversation for anyone who wanted it, even if they just wanted to sit rocking under his sink like poor Suddy. There was no judgement in Jim, no justifications needed, no barriers, just a warm open friendship you could roll in.

Jim was from Evesham in Worcestershire, and to my Liverpool-trained ears his accent sounded almost pure farmer. Despite being later christened (amongst many other things) “Indie-Jim” he liked all the music, and was happy listening to whatever was going on, as long as it was fun, and loud, and being washed down with good company and iffy booze. He loved festivals. For years he was happiest in a field full of wreck-heads, with a cider in his hand, surrounded by mates, making up ridiculous catchphrases, and sleeping where he landed.

There was a carefree warmth to the man that warmed your bones just by proximity to him. I never heard him say a bad word about anyone, literally not even once. He was the most accepting, friendly, sweet and forgiving human I think I have ever met, and I never even questioned that when I was with him. It was just Jim. Despite his naturally positive temperament, he wasn’t always laughing and joking, he had a quieter side too; he’d had some really rough patches in his life, and he understood sadness and pain and loss as much as anyone. I remember when I came into the canteen for dinner, and had to tell the table that I’d lost an old friend from my home town; I saw the sadness in his face as my news brought back his own not too distant loss, and he sat near me, with me, in absolute silence while I pushed my food around my plate. He didn’t try to console me, or compare hurts, or move away from my awkward introspective bubble; he just sat with me as other people slowly continued their own conversations and went back to their dinners. It was a really welcome understanding silence that let me just experience my loss and not be on my own. I never thanked him for that. When Jim was sad, he rarely let it show and more usually retreated a little back to his own space, then when he was ready, or sometimes if Suddy, Ste, or Ben launched a rescue mission, he’d bounce back, and re-emerge with a laughand a smile, and a can of ‘Bow.

When he was out having fun, Jim was incapable of saying no to any stupid idea for some drunken challenge or feat of daring; that’s why he ended up folded double in the common-room bin within the first week or so in Hull, there was a very real risk of spinal injury, but he just laughed and laughed until someone retrieved him. He was just open to everything that life would throw at him; and if he ended up so pickled that he blocked his tiny sink with vomit, he’d just push it down the holes with a pencil and carry on chucking up. That’s just who he was. 

I spent a fair bit of time with Jim in my 4 years at Uni, even went all the way down to reading to meet up with him in festival season once. He was always warm, he was killingly funny, he rolled with every punch and mostly seemed to just bounce through life with an enthusiasm and open-mindedness that seemed effortless.  I used to go round to his house in second or third year, and listen to music, and chat shit, and laugh, wending my way home in the early hours of the morning, if I didn’t end up falling asleep there. I can’t remember exactly when I stopped doing that, but then not long after, Jim got together with Lou, and life moved on, and everyone started drifting off to get their heads down to uni, and then find work, and some people moved, and I stayed in Hull, and after the Graduation Ball I didn’t really see many people many more times. We all kept in touch nominally on Facebook, and we were all at Keith’s wedding- she was the perfect bride, and me and Nye drank 7 bottles of white wine after not speaking for years, and I crashed with Ste and Suddy somewhere near Donny, having to be renditioned home the next morning in a state of utter desiccated ruination.

I don’t actually know when the last time I saw Jim was, possibly because he’s always felt so present. I knew he married Lou,an incredible woman. I followed his facebook, watching his family keep growing to include four beautiful boys, I saw him becoming a father, becoming a fireman, I saw him still at festivals and gigs and things with Suddy and some of the others over years. I knew he was probably still doing that fucking awful thing with his eyelids as a party-trick. He was still there.

That’s why I can’t understand that he’s not there now, except to come to terms with that he is here instead. He’s always felt close and present, because he’s left himself with everyone who knew and loved him.

He’s the stories, and the anecdotes, and the catchphrases, and the music, and the cider, and hugs, and the laughs, and the fucking awful eyelid thing, and the security of a friend you know would always just accept you no matter what. The warmth he radiated can’t dissipate, because he will always be there, remembered, held, present; I didn’t even set out to write this, it just started tapping at the inside of my brain until I had to put it somewhere. I had to put the bit of Jim I had somewhere where I wouldn’t ever lose it. The bit of Jim I have frozen in time here is only a scrap of who he was, and I knew him far less than so many others; his legacy will live on with his beautiful family, and the unfathomably huge number of people who loved him.

Lou, you and those boys have an army behind you; an army that will be here when you need us, and will make sure those boys can get to all the bits of Jim that we carry with us, so he lives on for them too.

Jim, we’ve got this mate, you rest easy.

Everything you love is shit (or “He’ll always be Cedric to me” )

Tags

Bullshit, Fanfic, Feminist, Mary Sue, Robert Pattinson, The Batman

I didn’t start the weekend planning to go on a lengthy rant about Robert Pattinson, but here I am nevertheless.

I’d spent all last Friday reading tweets for and against the casting of “Rpatz”. He is rumoured to be under strong consideration for the eponymous role in “The Batman” movie, scheduled for summer 2021 release and directed by Matt Reeves (War for the Planet of the Apes, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes).

Great. You like Batman? Here’s some more! Happy? ……   …… erm…No?

No. The internet (read as mostly men on the internet) went batshit.  Robert Pattinson? The Sparkly one from Twilight? “We don’t want that big-square-chin guy known for playing someone with superhero type powers, having loads of money, strength, and doing lots of night shoots peering moodily down from tall places, who won the Brooding Olympics 2009” the dudes cried out.

But why? What’s the problem?

Well I’ll tell you, it’s women.

Specifically young women and girls. Robert Pattinson got his start in two franchises which had huge followings, which contained a disproportionate amount of women, young women, and girls; and everybody knows that everything that women and girls love is shit.

I’ll show my hand, I’m not hugely invested in Batman. I liked the 1960s TV show with Adam West and Dick Grayson as a kid, I’ve seen some of the films, I’m not a huge Batfan. I don’t really care who plays him in The Batman, I’m not that bothered.

I’m not hugely invested in Robert Pattinson either; I’ve seen some of his films, I’ve heard some of his music, he gave a strong nod to James Dean in Twilight-adjacent photo shoots, I will not be personally affected if he doesn’t play The Batman. As an aside, I am very impressed that Mark Millar called this casting with pinpoint accuracy on twitter in 2017.

What I do care about is the ways in which women are vastly exploited as consumers, while having their taste and interests constantly derided and undermined.

Look at the very basics of marketing: The car industry has been built around making men feel powerful; the cosmetics industry has been built around making women feel shit. Boys are hard-sold sport, and superheroes, and high-status careers (Doctor, Engineer, Astronaut); Girls are hard-sold low expectations, domestic servitude, and reproduction. Gender roles are in place at a terrifyingly early age, and the constant message is that girls are less than, their things are less than, and that boys who like their things are lowering themselves, embarrassingly.

From an early age, if a girl plays with a boy-toy, it might be remarked upon, she might be reminded it’s not for her and nudged back into her lane, but unless she makes the full leap to attempting to experience the world in a way similar to boys (maybe wanting to be a Doctor, Engineer, Astronaut?) then she might escape ridicule. If a boy, no matter how tiny, picks up a doll, or dresses as a nurse, says he likes My Little Pony, or grows his hair, there will be other children, and grown men, and grown women, queuing around the block to point, laugh, comment, dissuade, and enforce the golden societal rule: Everything Women and Girls Love is Shit (and you are humiliating yourself by association). It all ties effortlessly into wider homophobia and transphobia, but at its core is base misogyny.  The message is clear: DO NOT LOWER YOURSELF.

You don’t have to look far into the grown-up world to see the ripples of this phenomena. I will clarify, obviously, that what women and girls actually like is as broad as there are women and girls, and includes particle physics, politics, sport, real ale, and not being fucking pigeon-holed, but what I’m talking about here are ‘Things that are associated as being For Girls’.  There is a special vehemence to the vitriol heaped upon, for example, “Boy Bands/Girl Groups”, “Chick Flicks”, “Chick lit”, or “Mummy Porn”, as just a few amongst many.

I’ll give you a hint before we even start as to why it’s always “Chick” or “Girl” on everything, never Woman.  Chick, or girl, is smaller. Smaller, girlier, and less threatening. The diminutive title bestowed for the sole purpose to make sure it is absolutely clear- this is not man stuff, and it is shit.

Music should be a broad church. No two people will agree on the exact same best 100 songs, or enjoy music in the same way, but the derision and rage directed at commercial pop, and specifically at the kind which attracts crowds of screaming teenage fans really is next-level.  I’ve never been a pop music fan, I have commercial radio in my car in the mornings because it blends into the background in a vaguely upbeat way, my son likes it, and I don’t have to pay it attention; It doesn’t set my mood. I wouldn’t buy or stream 99.5% of what I hear, but I don’t hate it, it’s just chewing gum for my ears. I don’t like Jazz music either; my partner does, my sister does, but to me it sounds like a bad anxiety attack in a wanky lounge-bar. I don’t think less of people who like either though- It’s not for me, I am not the intended demographic. Unless the music, its content, or its creators suddenly challenge some aspect of my political or moral compass, I do not have to invest my energy in it.  I can let people enjoy things.

You will find though, that some people hate (particularly) Boy Bands, or pop music made for or by young women, with a relentlessness that I feel exposes them. Why do they feel challenged by a handful of sulky teenage boys singing? Why so angry? I’ve heard it over and over, it’s manufactured, it lacks integrity, it fails to have even a single redeeming feature; I don’t think this quite explains their very visceral reaction. For these people it is no longer a matter of taste, it is objectively shit, and these people will tell you all about it. Those same people will also tell you how they never listen to it, and know nothing about it or its creators, because it is shit. So mostly all they actually know is that it is popular, and aimed at women and girls.

Similarly, in cinema, any film in which there is a romantic or romantic comedy theme, probably not too smutty, probably with a female lead or female narrative, is automatically assigned “Chick flick”. If someone non-female does like it, it will probably become “comedy”, not a chick flick at all. You can probably define a chick flick as any film perceptibly designed to be enjoyed by women. Of course Dudebros can watch any old shit they like, without it being typecast as gender-relevant or instantly pushing their combined favourites into a guilty subsection of the film world. I am all astonishment.

In comedy, we have the endlessly repeated “Women aren’t funny” doesn’t matter that it’s bollocks. It doesn’t matter that woman comedians have to fight twice as hard to get booked, that if there is already one on the line-up they might not get booked so as to avoid it looking like some kind of political statement or specialist fundraiser. Doesn’t matter if four fifths of all the line ups ever, and much more beyond are all average white guys…  you cant unbalance the bill with too many specialist acts. Doesn’t matter that women have to fight the automatic reaction of men to speak over them on panel shows (more on this later), or the perception of the audience that they are being gobby and domineering when taking up less than their fair share of speaking time (more on this also). Women are told they are shit at comedy before they are even heard.

And in literature we have “Chick lit”. Wikipedia tells us ‘Chick lit […]is genre fiction, which “consists of heroine-centered narratives that focus on the trials and tribulations of their individual protagonists”. So what is the rest of the sum of all literature? Dick Lit? This writes-off literally every book whose central character is a woman. Any written work in which women might find relatable content as the central feature is subdivided off.  Not only are things for women and girls shit, but things about women and girls (excluding those specifically designed for the male gaze) are also shit.

Look how early we learn this; in a broad Study of children’s literature-

• Up to 100% of kids books contain a male character, up to 100%. That is to say, as little as 0% contain solely female characters.
• 25% contain no female characters at all.
• Out of a Times listing of the 100 best children’s books of all time, only 53 had a female character that spoke, let alone a central protagonist.
• Across children’s literature, only 19% of female characters had a job or career aspiration, vs 80%+ for male characters.

So from the very first representations we show our tiny girls, they are excluded, under represented and silenced. They are shown that people are not interested in stories about women. Girls’ aspirations are as boring as they are ignored; be a princess, or be fucking invisible.

As women grow, there are other areas of culture which do not represent their wants or needs. At this point let us not forget pornography, erotica, adult fiction, whatever you want to call it.  In 2011 50 Shades of Grey was published. In total the trilogy sold 125 million copies worldwide; to put that in context, that’s double what Michael Jackson’s Thriller Album sold ever, and over a far shorter period. Rather than men stopping to look at what is was, who it was for, or why women were enjoying it, derision was instant, and a new phrase was coined; “Mummy Porn”.

It was written by a woman in her late 40s, it was published for women, its central character was a woman and the narrative voice was hers. Women were buying it and talking about it, and talking about the sex in it, and liking the sex in it, and it was horrifying. It was not of course horrifying to the women, they were just adult humans reading a dirty book, maybe getting off on it, and talking to their friends about it- but fuck me, did it horrify the men. Men suddenly found out their mums liked sexy things- actual sexy things and not just a poster of a singer or film star (probably a “shit” one). The wives, sisters, aunts, daughters, and partners of men were suddenly reading this book, and the number of stories that were told about how disgusting it was that (insert female in family or social circle here) had read it were incalculable. Not even talked about it, just read it. Disgusting.

Now we all know women are not allowed to either not like or like sex too much. Blah blah Madonna-whore etc., but the hypocrisy here was genuinely staggering. This book wasn’t just sniggered at by cultural Neanderthals, this was universally derided by almost every man I heard, saw or read talking about it. This was 100% definitely, absolutely, unequivocally and universally shit. Its plot was shit. Its writing was shit- including the grammar, the characterisation, the pace, you name it. Its gender politics were also shit.  Even pro-woman, pro-erotic expression, feminist men were saying this was shit. Not because women liked it you understand, but because it was low quality.

Now think about the last bit of Man Porn you saw.  Boy Porn. Dad Porn. Be it the “readers wives” stories from the back of a 70’s Jazz Mag blowing from bush to bush in the 80s playing fields of history, or the sex scenes in 90% of popular culture, or the hard-core videos that are passed freely amongst phones, and across the internet. Think about their content. Think about the level of their artistic integrity, or the quality of their plot or prose.

Most of the content of online pornography is actively dehumanising to women. Most of it is actively violent toward women.  The vast, vast majority of it is entirely unconcerned with the experience of the women depicted- either within the narrative or specifically the actresses or wives or girlfriends actively involved.

The Porn Industry is worth billions, is watched by millions each and every day, and every day, it involves the real world rape, torture, murder, and sexual slavery of women and girls globally. If you include economic enslavement the numbers are mind-boggling.  It incites violence against women and girls. It objectifies, belittles, and diminishes women and girls. The violence in it is not pantomime violence, it is real, even in the “consensual” scenes, women are sustaining life changing physical and psychological damage.

This. This porn. This isn’t shit. This is fun. This is Sexy. This is Cheeky. If all the things we’ve looked at are “for women” then this is definitely “for men”. This is what boys (and girls) are taught that sex should be like; hairless, loveless, joyless, consentless. Unless someone is being “destroyed”, unless someone is being banged in all holes, unless some poor fucking woman is getting a shot to the face at the end of it, it’s not even worth watching.  If you haven’t bleached your arsehole then don’t even show up.

But 50 Shades? What of that? Well, it turns out, women like rough sex. Women like to fantasise about being sexually controlled. Women like the story of a mysterious, aggressive, protective but dangerous man, with model looks, claiming them sexually.

Again, When I say “women”, I mean the ones who did like this book. There are over 2.5 billion adult women globally, and even if every copy sold was read by two women, that would still only be 250 million women reading this book- and many of them possibly thought it was shit. What about the ones that did like it? What about the ones who found it sexy, who enjoyed it? Well, it contains many of the same things as much Man Porn; hairlessness, dubious consent, the joyless humping of two people not personally know to the audience; the things it has which differ from Man Porn are notably

1. A slow build up
2. A female narrative

As you are inside the head of the female protagonist (“Chick Lit”) then the reader can see how the character feels about it all, if she is turned on by it, if she wants it to stop or go harder. We get to know the characters and motivations of the protagonists. There is familiarity, tension, and delayed gratification. This is different to watching a real woman getting gang-banged in a concrete warehouse by real men, and suffering real violence. Women can read it and put themselves into that character, and immerse themselves in BSDM sex that isn’t cold, or exploitative of real women, or focused on the pleasure of the man involved (the sex is, but the narrative isn’t); but it is 50 Shades that we should be embarrassed to have read or watched. It is Mummy Porn and must be singled out as awful. That’s the worst and most embarrassing porn, laughed at, even by intelligent feminist men, because it is so utterly shit. We know it is shit, because women like it. The phrase Mummy Porn only works because it is a dog-whistle for misogyny. If not just women, worse, mature women like this, it must be derided, it is embarrassing, it is low quality, it is objectively entirely without merit.

It doesn’t matter that it encouraged women to openly discuss the kind of sex they liked, or the kind of porn they liked, or that they liked either of those things t all. It doesn’t matter that almost the entirety of Man Porn is violent, dehumanising, and without any shred of artistic or literary merit. 50 Shades is embarrassing because she bites her lip a lot, because your mum might have knocked-one-off to it, because it promoted unhealthy relationship dynamics. Good job nobody is holding up erotica to wildly different standards based solely on the target demographic here eh? I bet the first thing men think when they spit on their palm and click play on “Barely legal step-daughter does X” is “I’m glad this is promoting healthy relationship dynamics.” isn’t it?

Finally, while discussing recent tropes around gender in media, I’d like to bring in the “Mary Sue”. This is a term which comes from Fan-Fiction- a whole cottage industry of fans writing their own stories as extensions, reinventions, and interjections to their favourite narratives of TV, Film, and Literature. These can range wildly from just writing a straight up extra episode or 20 of your favourite show, to bringing together all of your favourite cartoon characters, or Film heroes, and writing explicit and elaborate (usually gay) porn about them. I first became aware of it when I read an article called “Nookie with a Wookie” in an anthology of essays on women enjoying things that they shouldn’t. It was startling, because

1. I’d never heard of it, and it seemed really unlikely
2. most of it was really graphically sexual in nature, and a huge percentage of that was focused on gay sex between ostensibly straight male characters, and
3. because over 75% of people on fan fiction sites both reading and writing, are mature straight women- who we know can only have a sexuality if they are Samantha off Sex and the City.

Again, as with 50 Shades vs Man Porn, most women aren’t going to get off on a picture of a cock and some balls. Women tend to favour context, familiarity, and personal interaction in their preferred fantasies- there is a big difference between the type of autopsy-photography featured in old-school porn mags, and the idea of a hot guy or gal, who you like, approaching you personally. Also, apparently, a lot more women than you might expect like imagining Luke Skywalker getting bummed by a wookie…. , so now you know

As another aside, what some people don’t know is that 50 Shades was written, in full, all three parts, and released online for free as a Bella/Edward Twilight Fanfic. It’s author EL James exactly fitting the common demographic of a fanfic writer… but I digress. Back to the Mary Sue.

A Mary Sue, is a particularly flimsy and transparent shell character or plot vehicle used to insert an obvious representation of the author in (his or) her favourite fantasy. So it would feature a fan fiction, with a very average protagonist, in an average setting, suddenly happening across, for the sake of argument, Jason Momoa, and he realises she’s the only one for him, that she (despite being average and having a surprisingly specific list of confidence-infringing barriers to love) understands him better than anyone else could… and so he ravishes her on the office photo copier, after dissing her work-place nemesis in public, and then taking her away from all this in a private boat to the Seychelles forever. Its key signifiers are that the story centres around the gratification of the protagonist, and therefore the author, that it is usually very poorly constructed, and usually it is entirely unlikely even in a world full of sparkly vampires or ewoks.

Mary Sue is recently being used very differently. It is being used to try to undermine a variety of strong female characters in film and literature, because of their gender. Mary Sue is being used to describe Rey, it is being used to describe Arya, it is being used by men to describe female characters which men feel do not earn their screen time or accolades within the narrative.  A man can appear on screen as a fully formed superhero, or fighter, or astronaut, without presenting their CV at all, but a woman must be seen to train, to learn, to gain acceptable motivation to fulfil their character. “Mary Sue” is demanding a deeper level of proof and commitment of the fictional characters within a fandom, exactly as male fandom-gatekeepers demand of any real life woman who says “oh, I like X fandom” and is forced to undergo some sort of rigorous quiz to prove her knowledge and devotion. Even where a fandom starts out as woman-shit, if men begin to enjoy it, value it, or become interested in it, then it can be reclaimed, it’s history re-written, and its borders re- defended by men of the internet and beyond; this phenomenon has recently been given the title Mentrification. You are welcome.

We are so unused to the female voice across the arts, business, or in any public space, that men (and sometimes women) genuinely cannot even accurately assess what an equal contribution looks like, and it appears men are pre-programmed to interrupt women and speak over them when they do try to contribute. When women speak at all, providing a fraction of the input of men in public spaces, they are frequently believed to have dominated the discussion by both male and female listeners, even where men spoke more than twice as often as the women present. The female voice and narrative is so jarring to the public ear that it seems intrusive, and overbearing, even where it is in the minority. Women in public spaces are also often aware that they can seem pushy, and often self-regulate, by speaking for briefer periods, or speaking up less in class if they contributed frequently in the last lesson.

So as these girls grow, the ones who have seen no representation in kids books beyond mute princesses, if all books which feature women or have them in leading roles, are written off under diminishing category headings, who are seen as pushy just for speaking in a mixed group,  we are not only saying everything you love is shit, and everything for you is shit, everything that arouses you is shit, everything that empowers you is shit, that you are not welcome to contribute equally or at all, and that the things which you enjoy alongside men, or before men, belong to men and must be protected from the shitness of you liking them and thinking that you can just join in unchallenged.

We are saying literally everything “about” you is shit.

As collateral damage, a bystander in this gender war, Rpatz never stood a chance. He played a character in Twilight, which women and girls liked, it was Chick Lit, with a female narrative and protagonist, the books were universally derided (sometimes hilariously such as This by Charlie Booker, or This by The Oatmeal),  I’m sure I could find equally well written and disparaging accounts of books liked mostly by men and teenage boys, because their literature is held to a similar standard of scrutiny, aren’t they?

Not only that, but his character inspired the most famous Mummy Porn of all time, 50 Shades- and (some) Women liked it.

He is literally dripping in girl-“like” and it leaves him forever tainted by association. Doesn’t matter if he’s made other films, even sweet ones like Little Ashes in which he plays Salvador Dali, or Water for Elephants about a young vet in the 40s who joins the circus; neither were big or commercial, and both were credited with decent performances.  He’ll always be that sparkly vampire guy, that gay-kind-of-vampire guy, not the really butch vampire type guy (not like Alex Winter, with his big hair, hanging by his toenails in The Lost Boys)

This feeble defensive patriarchal bullshit is so absolutely endemic in everything we do that it goes entirely unchecked. It’s not misogyny to pull apart literally the only erotica you can name that women are publicly enjoying, it is critique. It is politically savvy. Congratulations. Hopefully women will eventually learn from this, be cowed by it, and ensure they never masturbate to bad sentence structure again.  In the meantime, heaven forfuckingfend Batman is played by Robert Pattinson.

Are the shades of Pemberly to be thus polluted?

 

 

Death by Mobius Strip

Tags

High Court, Human RIghts, Jean Charles de Menezes, Jess Phillips, Self Defence, Stand Your Ground, Tamir RIce, Treyvon Martin

MP Jess Phillips cares so much about self-defence and the prevention of unnecessary violence, that she would shoot a stranger in the head, ten times. She also cares so much about making her party electable, that she would knife its leader, in the front no less- or at least so she claimed in her recent interview with Owen Jones. This puts her squarely in line policy-wise with David Cameron, but not for the reasons you might think. I’m unaware that David Cameron has ever threatened to ”Knife [Jeremy Corbyn] in the front”, but he is a great believer in disproportionally violent and potentially lethal responses, so therein at least we apparently find a new cross-bench accord.

“If a man walks down your street, with a big gun, and he’s going to kill you, and he’s got a bomb strapped to him, […] we will shoot him in the head immediately, ten times.” This is what Jess Phillips, MP for Birmingham Yardley, stated with Palin-esque zeal that her constituents wanted, during her chat with Owen Jones. Luckily for Jess, and all of her bloodthirsty residents, that is approximately what would happen in that situation under our current shoot-to-prevent-mass-murder-or-any-murder-and-kill-if-you-feel-you-have-to-to-achieve-that policy. Don’t believe me? Ask Jean Charles de Menezes, the innocent Brazilian Electrician who was shot 7 times in the head at point-blank range 10 years ago because he looked a bit foreign, may or may not have jumped a ticket barrier, and the UK was in a post-terrorist frenzy which Jess Phillips would be proud of. He wasn’t who they thought he was, he wasn’t doing what they thought he was doing, they didn’t take enough time, they didn’t hesitate, they shot to kill. They shot him in the head immediately, seven times. After three they must have been pretty much shooting at soup, but if you’re going to shoot an innocent foreign man without any due cause at all- don’t make it half-arsed.

 As soon as it is Policy to kill people, people will be killed. We don’t have the death penalty in the UK, we don’t have the right to judge people deserving of death, we only have the right to try and prevent injury or death by using reasonable force- and that law applies to all of us. Are we saying we wish to waive the possibility of a criminal trial if a firearms officer may have unreasonably killed someone? To have grossly overreacted, or used disproportionate and unnecessary force? Once shoot-to-kill is policy, then how do we hold armed police to account? More importantly, how do we prevent an avalanche of the judicial protection system leading us into the cess-pit of liberty, justice, defence, and murder by cop which is currently prevalent in much of the USA?

You see, in that one interview, Jess Phillips advocated a policy of immediate potentially disproportionate force against those who would wish us harm, and threatened to knife an aging pacifist in the front… that could kill him, couldn’t it? Can we stand idly by while she preaches hate and threatens to bring her draconian medieval justice system to our shores? No we cannot, and I have just the policy to address the issue.

On the 16^th of November 2015, BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg asked Jeremy Corbyn “If you were Prime Minister, would you be happy to give the order, to the police or military, to shoot to kill on Britain’s streets?”

To which Jeremy Corbyn replied “I’m not happy with the shoot-to-kill policy in general – I think that is quite dangerous and I think can often can be counterproductive”

There followed a predictably ill-informed media scrum in which the press went berserk, the political right-wing went berserk, the right-wing press went completely berserk,  and Jeremy Corbyn was forced to “Backtrack on shoot to kill policy”, according to the BBC, which actually consisted of the clarification: “But of course I support the use of whatever proportionate and strictly necessary force is required to save life in response to attacks of the kind we saw in Paris.”

The reason none of this media frenzy makes any sense at all, is because we do not have a shoot-to-kill policy to defend or attack. We only have proportionate response, which has always meant proportionate, up-to-and-including shooting to kill. United Kingdom law (Summarised here by Wikipedia ) allows the use of “reasonable force” to make an arrest or prevent a crime or to defend oneself; however, if the force used is fatal, then the European Convention of Human Rights only allows “the use of force which is no more than absolutely necessary”. Firearms officers may therefore only discharge their weapons “to stop an imminent threat to life”. ACPO policy states that “use” of a firearm includes both pointing it at a person and discharging it (whether accidentally, or negligently, or intentionally). As with all use of force in England and Wales, the onus is on the individual officer to justify their actions in court.

 On Friday 15^th January 2016, the High Court has ruled to uphold the 2013 adjustment of UK criminal law to allow victims the right to use “disproportionate force” (by ruling that this is not at odds with the European Convention of Human Rights) to defend their homes from intruders, first proposed by Chris Greyling in 2009. The family of Mr Denby Collins, who was left in a coma after being restrained in a headlock by an occupant of a home he had allegedly broken into, believe that previous to the amendments, the householders would have been charged with violent offences for their actions against Mr Collins. David Cameron championed the law which changed “reasonable” to “not grossly disproportionate”

In 2009, we had been hearing a lot about the case of Munir and Tokeer Hussain; a (wealthy) family had returned from their mosque and discovered intruders. Several members of the household were tied up at knifepoint by the masked intruders, but their teenage son escaped and fetched his uncle, Tokeer. Once Tokeer arrived, the intruders ran away, but the brothers pursued and caught one of them- Waled Salem. The man was then subject to a sustained and savage beating with a metal pole, a hockey stick and a cricket bat. The attack was of such ferocity as to leave Waled Salem with a fractured skull, and the cricket bat in three separate pieces. Three. He was also unfit to plead  at his trial because of the lasting damage caused. If my family were being held at knifepoint, I would certainly do almost anything to save them from potential harm, I would not stop for a second to consider if in doing whatever thing I did, I was committing a bad crime; but I do not believe I would chase the perpetrator down the street and undertake a sustained, (and while calorie-burning) relentlessly savage, vigilante-justice-deployment upon them with a hockey stick.

The differentiation which the law as it stood provided, was that the family were saved, and the intruders had fled prior to the intervention of the brothers and their array of “chance weapons”. The inference of news coverage at the time, and the rhetoric from David Cameron, was that these decent men, the brothers, were being punished for defending themselves (I would provide links, but most of them would lead to the Daily Mail website, and I won’t give them click-revenue). Now, I’m not a Criminal law specialist, but from my understanding of the newer relaxed legal definitions, this would still seem to me to be pushing the boundaries of “Defence” even if the attack were deemed “Disproportionate” but not “Grossly disproportionate” as the law states (albeit based  on the level of danger the defending party deems themselves to be in at that moment); the ruling on Friday concluded that a calculated action of revenge would not be covered, so perhaps it would fall to whether The Hussains chased Mr Salem and beat him nearly to death on instinct, or had time to think about it first.

The Hussein-Salem case brought up many of the arguments posed initially in the Tony Martin case of 1999. Mr Martin disturbed some intruders at his extremely remote farm, and fired three shots at them with an illegally held pump-action shotgun as they ran away. 16 year old Fred Barras was killed and his older accomplice was injured in the attack. These men were not running at Martin, they were not armed, they were not holding anyone’s family at knifepoint, and yet a 16 year old was shot in the back while fleeing. Initially a murder charge, the sentence was later reduced to manslaughter when Mr Martin was discovered to have ongoing mental health issues and a reduced mental age.

It is my belief, that the un-amended self-defence laws were perfectly adequate; a belief upheld by CPS data stated in 2012 that “There are relatively few prosecutions of householders who use force against intruders. An informal trawl by the CPS suggests that between 1990 and 2005 there were only 11 prosecutions of people who attacked intruders in houses, commercial premises or private land. Only seven of those resulted from domestic burglaries.”

In the UK, self-defence law has long held that proportionate force was lawful. If you believe someone is going to hurt you or another person, you can hurt them to prevent that. If you believe your own or someone else’s life is at immediate risk, you can kill in order to prevent that; the “Reasonable force” only ensured that people were protected from people doing significantly more harm than was required to prevent the risk. The basic principle being , if you can remove yourself or those at risk, do, if you can’t then you have the right to defend yourself. This subtle shift from “proportionate response” to “not grossly disproportionate” is the first step towards the “Stand your ground” system which allowed an unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin  to be shot in the street in Florida, USA, with impunity. His killer believed he was at risk, a young black man in a hoody was walking through his gated community. The hooded man in question was a 17 year old whose father’s fiancé lived in the community and who had been out to the shop for sweets.

The Story  of Treyvon is heart breaking. His killer, George Zimmerman, had seen a black man in his area, taking a shortcut through the trees. Zimmerman called the police, but then ignored their warnings to stay inside, he pursued Treyvon, an older man chasing a teenager through darkened streets, and challenged him; he called him a “Fucking Punk” and resulted (after his continued pursuit and aggravating behaviour), in Treyvon pushing Mr Zimmerman to the ground. Once Mr Zimmerman was pushed he felt it proportionate to defend himself by fatally shooting Treyvon. The only action Treyvon had initiated which led to his death was the act of going to the sweetshop. As with Jess Phillips, Mr Zimmerman’s defence has one (literally) fatal flaw; if George Zimmerman can not only Stand His Ground (lawfully meeting force with force, including deadly force) and not retreat from perceived threat, but he can chase perceived threat. If George Zimmerman can perceive risk based only on his own entirely racist presumptions and act as an aggressor based on those flawed presumptions, then why can’t Mr Zimmerman, or any law abiding and racist resident of a gated community in the state of Florida, pursue and kill any black male teenager? Or black male? Or whatever group their ignorance focuses within its myopic beam? Well it looks like they can. It looks like the police can too. If you think someone, based on racist stereotypes, profiling and prejudice, is likely to be a risk to you or your community, then you should shoot them in the head immediately, ten times.  The statistics and stories are utterly heart-breaking; innocent black people killed by law enforcement professionals in broad daylight, not occasionally but daily. Here is a video of police in Cleveland, Ohio, shooting 12 year old Tamir Rice within two seconds of arriving at the park he was playing in; they said he looked older, they said he was tall for his age, they said his toy gun looked real.

Only Cleveland, as I understand it, is in an Open-Carry state, you can lawfully carry a gun, the only thing you can’t do is conceal it. So in the 2 seconds in which the police saw this child’s “gun” (indicating he was clearly not concealing it) they decided he was unlicensed and sentenced him to death.

This is where shoot to kill leads, and more importantly this is where “not grossly disproportionate” will end. You see, these laws are never applied evenly. Mr Zimmerman has declared open season on law-abiding black children- if he sees one, at night, he will potentially chase them down and shoot them. If I were a person who wanted to prevent crime, a person who was willing to use one good bullet to save a life, I’d have every reason to aim that good bullet at George Zimmerman if I wanted to prevent his potential race-hate-fuelled killings, wouldn’t I? In his home state of Florida, I’d just be standing my ground, wouldn’t I? Somehow I’m thinking I wouldn’t, not if I was a young black man, or a black father of a young black man who I wanted to defend from a potential racist hate crime. I have the distinct feeling I would not be standing my ground, I’d be the attacker- despite having a more viable proof of threat than George Zimmerman could hope to provide- but then he wasn’t walking while black.

The UK is at a legal crossroads. We’ve had “not grossly disproportionate” in terms of home defence voted into law, the next step would be to extend that “protection” outside the home, let’s remove the requirement to at least try and extract yourself from the risk of harm whilest awaiting the police, let’s call it Stand Your Ground. Let’s give the police not only a mandate to shoot suspects in the head, let’s give them an order, a blanket policy. Let’s start talking about it like its already happened and have the media accost anyone who doesn’t support our imaginary legal system, but first, let’s check with Tamir Rice, or Jean Charles de Menezes, or Trayvon Martin; let’s ask them if pre-emptive disproportionate violence is justified where there is a perceived threat of harm to someone with a gun and a whole world of racist shit piled up in their brain shall we? Let’s check with them if an initial pause to assess the situation, a moment of due concern for how one’s actions may be perceived by the gaze of an unweighted justice system, and without a frenzy of media pundits clamouring for blood, should remain enshrined in law; let’s ask them if we  should take this next step.

Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived- A Ladies’ Tale

Tags

Hackney Council, Homeless, shit, Toilets

I have an unusual relationship with our Finance and Facilities Manager, Malcolm. I like him; he’s a nice man, a peaceful man, a quiet and unassuming man. He’s based in the very far corner of the office, near the window and tucked away behind the widest array of devices to hold sheets of paper still that I have ever seen. When you approach him, you can confidently wait the moment or two it takes to finish his last task, and then he’ll look up and calmly wait for you to ask your question. There are two main things I go to Malcolm about; project budgets and problems with our office building. Around reporting time, I often have to go and ask for increasingly detailed spreadsheets so I can track our spend, apply to change budgets, or just print out the numbers to include in reporting; very occasionally, it’s needing a new phone, or desk alterations, or updating our training room. When I don’t have a report due or something to install, I mostly speak to Malcolm about bodily functions.

We moved into a shared building a couple of years ago, it meant Malcolm had less outdoor space to worry about (we’ll get to that later), it meant the little shits who always stole the lead off our roof on a weekend so the rain got into everything before we were back in the office to fix it were no longer our problem, but it also meant we no longer fix (or don’t fix) buildings things ourselves. When things go wrong, we report them to Malcolm, and then he reports them to someone, then someone else puts in service requests, then jobs get estimated, then they get booked (or not), then sometimes, just sometimes, fixed. Often the system works well, other times not so much.

I’d been working on the upper floor of the new building for about two months when I first had to trouble Malcolm with my lady troubles. There are five stalls in the Ladies’ toilets on our floor; there is space for six, but one is a weird cubicle sized block, tiled to match the walls and with no obvious service hatches or access panels. There is a sanitary bin in one of them- the fourth from the right. As the floor was previously less occupied, and we have an unusually high ratio of women in our very egalitarian regime, I’m sure it was a new issue which I had the dubious honour of bringing to Malcolm’s attention: the bin, the one sanitary bin, did not get emptied, or not as far as I could tell. Month one, it was fine, month two it was a little difficult to open the flop-down plastic lid; I thought maybe someone had jammed the bin with other rubbish, but a cursory attempt to lift one end proved it was very, very heavy. I told Malcolm, he looked appalled- but only in the same way I was. Month three revealed that the lid wouldn’t actually open, I was reporting on it monthly, but only because I don’t try shoving my hand into sanitary bins unless I have to, and I only had to roughly every 3.5 weeks. I told Malcolm again, he was appalled again, and asked me to check it more often if I didn’t mind. With some additional diligence, and an increasingly terse Malcolm to deal with, whoever sorts these things out rectified the situation, and an at least a monthly routine was established. From this initial Lady Problem I learned two things:

• Common-use sanitary bins being emptied even weekly is not necessarily a thing- even posh office ones and even in the middle of a really warm summer.
• Some sanitary bins (and Malcolm provided this fact by way of a swap for my alarming updates to him) are emptied by Rentokil. I will leave that thought with you.

From that point forward, I found an odd pattern emerge between me and Malcolm; I seem to be one of the only ones to report things that are sensitive in nature, and when I do we acknowledge that we talk about an array of extremely grim and unusual topics. I’ll often approach and say “One day, Malcolm, you and I will have nothing to talk about, and perhaps we can take a turn around the park instead… but this, this is not that day:” and then I’ll tell him that there’s a turd the size of a spring lamb blocking trap one, or whatever that day’s scatological hijinks entails.

The most recent problems started when trap two from the right started to sing. When flushed, the pipes would hum and reverberate and produce a doleful lament to the passing of time and stools alike. This was well and good, until the airlock in the pipes started to make trap four vibrate violently whenever trap two was flushed, and the sombre hum became a violent dirge akin to the foghorn on the QEII. This was briefly resolved, but then the hum returned and the toilets would only flush in an unfathomable sequence which we could not determine. Soon trap five stopped flushing altogether just after someone had taken a crap in it; Malcolm was off, nobody knew who to report it to, and the turd lived with us for over two weeks.  It was half an hour into Malcolm’s first day back at work that I had to tell him about the lodger in Five; he noted it with good grace, along with vibrating Four and humming Two.

Those of you with a keen eye will have noticed that trap three is keeping a low profile; I can inform you that Three is for emergencies only as it has no light (The bulb isn’t faulty it has no light, when they designed the bathroom, one wasn’t included). It’s not entirely pitch black mind, but it is dark enough that it is not a place where a discerning patron would go for a slash by choice.

With Malcolm’s administrative intervention, trap five once again was made to flush, albeit sporadically and only in The Sequence, which we are still yet to decode. Trap four may still be vibrating, but we don’t know because about two weeks ago a yellow “Wet Floor” sign appeared in the doorway with a note taped to it warning not to use the toilet as it leaks all over the floor (perhaps shaken loose from its moorings by the songs of its compatriot).

It is this cast of porcelain villains which lead to me, having nipped for a wee on my way out of the building one night, returning to the main office from my parting piss and telling Malcolm that from right to left: One was clogged with poop, Two was still singing the song of its people whilst constantly running water into the pan, Three clearly still has no light and more recently also had no lock- perhaps having been opened hastily by a scared-of-the-dark inhabitant, Four still had the yellow sign and as such was holding the sanitary bin hostage, and Five was now the only port in a storm for a whole floor of mainly female staff. We could use the men’s, but it often inexplicably smells of fish, and the men might not be comfortable with us popping in. He smiled, nodded, and made some notes; it takes a lot to rattle Malcolm.

The thing about Malcolm is, you don’t get to be a manager in the 3^rd Sector without some grit. There’s no such thing as a fixed remit when cash is tight, the services offered change with the passing wind of funding, or governments, or trends of investment from umbrella organisations. It’s not many senior management jobs that come with first week challenges including a homeless man shitting down the narrow alley which the staff have to walk down in the dark to unlock the building in the morning- but it’s not uncommon when you work in un-serviced cheap-rental city centre building and you don’t have enough staff to have a dedicated shit-scraper. There is also the issue, when you work advising the homeless, that there’s not a lot you can or would want to do about the shitting itself: you ask regulars not to “Use” the alley (for sleep or otherwise) because our staff have to get down it in the dark, but in your heart you know that if there was a better place to sleep, or to shit, they’d be using it. Nobody hangs their bare-arse over a mid-winter concrete wall into the 2’ path they sometimes sleep in, and takes a massive, loose, and vigorous shit without needing to. If Councils hadn’t closed most public toilets, and if all commercial ones didn’t have “patron only” policies, then the homeless could shit somewhere else, and yeah, they might also take drugs in those spaces, or drink in them, or make a mess while they try and sort themselves out for washing, or whatever else scant remnants of human routine they attempt to maintain, but you can’t blame them- or not until you have provided them with a wider range of suitable places for them to do all those things in separately. I say you can’t blame them, but Hackney council apparently keep attempting to do just that; in June last year there were celebrations when Hackney Dropped the threat to fine rough sleepers £1000, the protesters and advocates of the homeless community felt they had fought their case and won, Hackney would not penalise the already destitute and vulnerable for being no more than exactly that. The problem is that they are still attempting to.

This was taken in Hackney in mid-November 2015, I believe it has now been taken down again, but they’d clearly hoped that once the fuss died down they could just carry on as intended.

If you have nowhere to sleep, you have nowhere to shit, if you shit in your pants you are far less likely to be approached if you have to resort to begging for food money, and you are really just asking for a benefit-sanction when you try and attend your work-focused interview for Job Seekers Allowance; claimants get sanctioned 2-4 weeks for smelling bad, even as a rough sleeper, so actually shitting your pants could mean long-term sanctions of up to 3 years with no benefit. Picture it: you have no money, or very limited money, and it costs loads to buy food, or keep warm and clothed on the street- because you can’t keep anything, or heat anything, or stay dry, or get dry if you do get wet… but if you choose shitting down a dark corner of a seldom used road, or sleeping on a bench, then your council, the one with the duty to house the vulnerable (albeit in increasingly limited circumstances) could fine you £1000. You could pay that then, couldn’t you, instead of having £1000 worth of access to places to sleep or shit? Apparently for Councils, ensuring societies most vulnerable have less options is their best strategy for not having streets covered in vulnerable people, and their shit.

That first week of Malcolm’s, when we nearly stepped in the puddle of human excreta, the puddle which was a 3D sculpture down the wall and across our back step, we didn’t even think of trying to penalise the previous owner, we just had to make sure nobody stepped in it, and that’s when you need a robust Finance and Facilities Manager with a pair of rubber gloves, a stack of glossy advice leaflets to use as shovels, a carrier bag, and a bottle of bleach. We sometimes tried to get the dudes to come and get some advice, see if we could find them a bed or a toilet, sometimes we book people a bath at the local swimming pool, but we’d do that even if they weren’t pouring us a fresh steaming rink every morning.

In our new office, with its serviced outside steps (not entirely immune to being shat upon despite a much more open aspect- as the building manager discovered when he skied in a heap and left a 2’ skid of it down the street early one morning), we have a lot less of other people’s literal shit to deal with, but inside the women are still facing a rapidly decreasing number of functional places when we need to go. However, even with all of the leaking, singing, clogging, vibrating, clotting, poorly lit and undefendable problems facing The Ladies, it is highly unlikely that my colleagues or I will be forced to shit on the floor outside, and even if we were to, not living in Hackney, we’d be extremely unlikely to be fined £1000.

So next time you need to go and pop for a cup of coffee to facilitate a comfort break, or next time you are allowed to use the ones in Marks & Spencer’s because you look like a customer, or next time anyone complains to you at having to pay 30 Pence in a train station, have a think on this- those 30 pences and patron-only rules aren’t there to stop you pissing, they’re not even there to raise money for the stations or encourage shoppers to spend, they’re there to make it one more place where you can’t shit or get a  wash, if you have so little money that you have to choose between a seat to crap through and breakfast.

In Spiritus Veritas

I just read “Charles Kennedy remembered by Ian Hislop“

I miss Charles Kennedy, and I miss him more the longer I observe politics. I wish he was alive, well, and still there being a real live human in Westminster.

There are extremely few humans in politics whom I would trust to watch my house plants, let alone my country, Charles Kennedy was one. Tony Benn was another, Dennis Skinner is an underrated voice of sanity- mainly because he says important things in often ridiculous ways, then there is Jeremy Corbyn. I believe that Mhairi Black will join this list, but it is still a little early to call.I voted for Kennedy in the first election I could participate in. I saw him on a late night programme when I was 17, and he was instantly captivating. I can’t remember what he said, or what the programme was, but I remember him being five times cleverer than any current politician I’d seen speak, and that he spoke with a razor sharp focus and integrity that was utterly mesmeric. It was Charles Kennedy at his absolute best. He was probably under the influence of alcohol, almost certainly in light of his alcoholism, but I’d always have chosen him drunk over 99% of other politicians drunk or sober. I followed him from that day in 1998, until his Political assassination in 2007.

With Kennedy gone, I voted for Clegg because I hoped enough of Charlie’s memory lives on in the party if not the leader. I didn’t want to vote labour because of the Iraq war, and their increasingly right wing policies. Seeing them acquiesce on core Labour policies, desperately clinging to the middle ground at the expense of the vulnerable, the working poor, and the legacy of the incredible achievements of previous Labour governments was too much; That and Ed Milliband was utterly utterly uninspiring. I couldn’t give a fuck how you eat a bacon sandwich, but nothing Ed Milliband ever said had a mental half-life of more than three minutes. I would later regret not backing this uninspiring but generally decent man; but none of us could have known that the Liberal Democrat leadership with half a whiff of power could be so easily turned against everything their voters held dear. Seeing Nick Clegg justifying support for Cameron’s policies was like watching the puppies in Orwell’s Animal Farm being brought back out of the barn.

After the Dickensian cluster-fuck of the coalition years, I joined the Greens, and voted Green during the #GreenSurge because I wanted to show, and discover, how many people wanted to vote green if they didn’t have to pick the lesser evil every time. The answer was sadly not (yet) enough.

Now a card carrying Labour supporter for the first time (despite being a life-long left-winger) and I can only hope Corbyn will remind people that leaders should be inspiring. Leaders, if we are to have them at all, need to be able to demonstrate the attributes of being a good human being, before being allowed near office. They should be clever, and kind, and remarkable, and human. In these times of need, and imposed environmental and financial calamity, we need spectacular humans to find ways to make the world better, not sly porcine robotic overlords and their dim-witted psychopathic cronies divvying up the country like post-election party bags for their mates.

It seems Charles Kennedy was always destined to be of the Angels’ Share of decent British politics; the best and purest 2%, inevitably lost to the process, but it doesn’t stop me missing him.

“Women’s Problems to solve women’s problems”- or “Caravans just aren’t that absorbent”

Tags

Luxury, Tampax, Tampon Tax, Women's Problems

Women’s Problems to solve women’s problems; I’m amazed they didn’t use that as the speech headliner. So, tampons, still taxable luxury, still echoing the decadence of a Ferrero Roche ad as you peel back the wrapper, still the sleazy saxophone of an 80’s flake advert as you insert, still less essential than razors, alcoholic jellies, caravans, crocodile meat, bingo, flapjacks, Tunnock’s tea cakes, boat moorings, garages near boat moorings, airplane maintenance, edible cake decorations, and famously- Jaffa cakes.
You’d think we were insisting on stemming the flow with a slack-handful of After Eight mints.
So how does this shambling band of privileged misogynistic pricks soften the blow? By using the insulting, unfair and grossly sexist tax to help pay for women’s problems; you know, like rape… That’s a women’s problem, and domestic violence- definitely a women’s problem…. In fact, what could be more heart warming when you’ve been raped and/or beaten by someone in your household than knowing you’ve already paid for your support services?
Woman Insurance- relax, you’ve already paid the financial price, now all you have to deal with is victim blaming, a misogynistic patriarchal justice system where the perpetrator of your attack will be treated as a victim of his circumstances while you are treated like a war criminal (if it even gets to court), and that if you end up as a single mum, or suffering anxiety or depression as a result you can be punished by the benefit system too.
Welcome to Osbourne’s Britain.

Independent 25/11/2015 by   Holly Baxter