last night jonno and i watched “avatar”. not at the cinema, after paying £20 and dealing with the crowds and transport on a saturday night, as one might generally expect, but from the comfort of our living room.

yep, we download. and i don’t even feel a little bit guilty about it.

in fact, i’m quite glad after seeing “avatar” (which i found trite, formulaic, and downright corny [not to mention insulting on some levels]) that i did not spend an hour plus getting to and from the theatre. i’m quite glad that i didn’t have to worry about us not getting seats together. i’m glad i didn’t have to sit through a full *quarter-hour* of advertisements, and another 15 minutes of previews. and i’m quite glad that i didn’t fork out £20 for the ultimately disappointing experience.

all of these are factors which hold more and more sway in my decision about my movie-going (or not going) habits. it’s all become such a hassle. it’s all become so shamelessly overpriced (£10 for a ticket and another £5 for some popcorn and soda?!). it’s all become more about the marketing than the actual movie.

and it’s a model which no longer works. it’s outmoded. twentieth century. the idea that the filmmakers have a god-given right to hold you hostage and milk you for every penny in order to subsidise ever more ridiculously budgeted movies – well in the age of the bit torrent, i resent it, and i don’t have to put up with it. i’m voting with my bandwidth.

as are millions of others. a few years ago, bit torrents were the domain of the technically savvy. today, bit torrents are completely mainstream. sure, the enforcement agencies continue to try to crack down on torrent sites, with some success (mininova and the pirate’s bay having both recently gone under). but like a many headed hydra, more spring up to take their place.

and it’s not a new conundrum – the music industry has also faced the same issues. so one might ask, do i also download music?

no. and why would i? why would i spend time searching through dozens of torrent sites for a single well-seeded torrent of an album when all i want is one or two songs? why would i use peer-to-peer programs which are rife with bloatware and malware? why would i take the risk of downloading a virus from some unknown computer out there?

why would i do any of that when there’s itunes and amazon and emusic that allow me to easily download exactly the songs i want for an extraordinarily reasonable and addictive 99p per song? without risk, without hassle, without a second thought.

so here’s what would make me stop downloading movies: a digital rental of up to £5, that allows me to decide if i want to stay in to watch a film, that allows me to watch indie movies which i might otherwise have to wait for mainstream distributors to release on dvd to see, that doesn’t leave me feeling ripped off if i actually didn’t care for the movie, and that doesn’t try to fleece me with millions of unwanted adverts. and where nearly everyone has an “on demand” feature from a cable box, or has the ability to stream content over their computer, there is absolutely no reason this model can’t be done. it would cut also down on piracy and give the independents a wider audience.

what it *wouldn’t* do is force me to subsidise the next £300 million James Cameron piece of rubbish.

and i’m okay with that.

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so they say the third time is the charm.

this is the third time i’m entered to run the edinburgh marathon, taking place on 23rd may. twice previously, i became injured and had to withdraw – last year, just a few days before the race.

however with the help of some physiotherapy and my natural stubborn streak, i am running again, and determined to complete my fourth marathon.

and as i’m going through all the trouble, i thought i’d try to fundraise some money for an organisation very near and dear to my heart: the elephant nature foundation.

those who know me well, know just how strongly i feel about the work that the elephant nature foundation does. Lek and and her team work tirelessly to save the asian elephant, rescuing one ellie at a time. Lek is also a brave and outspoken advocate of eliminating traditional abusive training methods.

having seen first hand the dedication work of Lek and her team, and having experienced the beauty of an “elephant haven” where ellies can spend their days just being the gorgeous creatures they are, i cannot recommend this organisation highly enough.

lek and the elephant nature park have been recognised for their work by the humane society of the united states, national geographic, and time magazine.

but don’t just take my word for it – read more about Lek and her respected foundation in the news here. watch videos of the ellies they have rescued here.

a hundred years ago, there were 100,000 elephant in Thailand. today there are fewer than 4,000 Thai elephants left.

if you haven’t already read about our experience at the elephant nature park, you can do so here, and see more pics here.

they are magnificent, sentient beings, and lek’s commitment and drive are an inspiration to me. if she can dedicate her life to saving the ellies, in the face of incredible odds, then i can certainly try to run a few hours and raise a few bob to do my part.

a world without these amazing creatures is not a world i want to live in. please consider sponsoring me at my justgiving page.

thanks in advance.

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valentine’s day sucks. there, i said it.

it all starts out innocently enough. in early grade school i remember the required annual arts and crafts projects, where we’d all fashion giant envelopes out of stapled manila folders, sloppily glue on red construction paper hearts and glitter, add our names in big block letters, then hang them off the sides of our desks. in the weeks before the holiday, we’d have to have our parents take us to buy a box of cheap drugstore valentines – the pressure to select the “right” kind weighing heavily. the teacher would have already distributed a list of class names, and in an attempt at inclusion, we were supposed to write a card out to each and every child. some did, some didn’t, and those of us whose parents made us write one for everyone on the list would still allocate the “worst” of our cards to the kids we disliked. on valentine’s day, we shoved them all into a big box on the teacher’s desk at the front of the room, hoping desperately that at least a few in the pile had our names on them. finally, late in the afternoon, we’d have a party, eating cupcakes and crisps at our desk while the teacher distributed the cards into everyone’s named and decorated folders.

to see some kids’ folders bulging with cards, while some kids’ envelopes held just a few token, parent-enforced valentines … that’s where my dislike of the holiday began. it was a popularity contest, pure and simple. i was always somewhere in the middle, but i always feared being one of those kids whose thin folder told the world they were a loser.

in middle school and high school, it only got worse. the schools (in a brilliant stroke of fundraising) offered carnations (or for high-schoolers, roses) that you could purchase and have sent with a note to your “valentine”, for the whole school to see. as in grade school, there were always some girls who went home with their arms full of flowers, and many, like me, who felt hopelessly uncool because we had none. the pressure to be “in a relationship” on the day, just so someone would be obligated to send you a flower, was intense. if you weren’t “dating” someone, you were unsophisticated and inexperienced. and god help you if you happened to be gay – the social isolation already experienced by those kids was only brought into sharper focus by a holiday which emphasised just how different they were. they weren’t just shy and inexperienced – they were outcast non-participants.

as an adult, all the gut-instinctive things i hated about the holiday as a kid have only been reified. the obligation to spend money, the perpetuation of heteronormative stereotyping, the portrayal of women as wanting/needing to be showered with prescribed gifts of diamonds/chocolates/roses/childish teddybears, the pressure to publicly display affection, the cheapening of genuine sentiment by demanding it be expressed on a given day, and the social exclusion of people who are either not in a typical monogamous romantic relationship, or (horrors!) not in a relationship at all… it all adds up to a big giant yuk.

so i’m boycotting valentine’s day. we don’t need more flowers, cards or chocolates in this world …we need more real love, understanding, and acceptance.

and what i want to know is, where’s the holiday for *that*?!

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i pass this poster every day, twice a day. plenty of people see this and think it’s a sensible advert.

i see it every day and it makes me irate.

it reminds me of this wonderful advert that the police put out at holiday time:

it is not my job to make sure unlicensed mini-cab drivers don’t rape me. that is the job of the *fucking police*.

funny, i don’t see any drinking or mini-cab adverts aimed at warning men. and if there’s an expectation that men should be safe drinking, and taking cabs, and can do so free from assault, then shouldn’t we hold the same expectations of safety for women?

we don’t make people or society safer by telling women they shouldn’t do what men do. you know, drink. and take cabs.

in a nutshell, this is the problem with ads like this: you *cannot* make women reponsible for “protecting themselves” without also implying that the corollary is then also true – namely, that if you *don’t* “protect yourself”, then you are somehow responsible if something happens.

it does not make sense on any logical planet to say, “we’re not victim blaming… but just in case, you should avoid becoming a victim”.

even worse, trying to scare women into never taking cabs or never drinking *does not make us safer*. it does not put rapists behind bars, and it does not innoculate us from harm.

i’m sick of seeing horrible, sad depictions of women who “should’ve known better”, crying with regret and shame because they didn’t heed the warnings, and now have been raped. (after all, don’t they know if they’d just been more cautious, they would’ve been safe ? but they were too brazen! and now look – they’ve been violated instead! look at them scream!)

vomit.

no. what i want to see is rape conviction rates that make it into the goddamn double digits. what i want to see is women who are unafraid to do the same things men do – walk the streets at night, drink (sometimes too much, even), take cabs alone. what i want to see is a society that no longer tells women they need to protect themselves from potential rapists, but that demands laws and policing that truly protect *everybody*.

take every last penny put into “sensible” victim-blaming adverts like these, and put that money towards stopping rape.

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one of the things i have come to truly appreciate about the u.k. is that it is, by and large, a pretty secular country. that’s not to say that people here do not practice religion – but that even without the benefit of any constitutional provision about separation of church and state, religion plays a infintesimally small (if any) role in politics, policy-making, and the public conversation at large.

and that’s just the way brits like it.

even so, i’ve been utterly surprised at the size of the furore over the pope’s recent comments in advance of his imminent visit to the u.k. the pope strongly criticised the u.k. equality laws which are designed to prevent discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender… even in the employ of the catholic church.

The pope said: “The effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal [of equality] has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs. In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed.”

turns out, the british public very much dislike being told what to do by a figurehead of another country, much less a roman catholic one. see, britain’s official church is the church of england – they did away with the pope a while ago when he and king henry had a falling out over the granting of his divorce, and haven’t had much use for him since. between a quarter to one half of the country consider themselves to be of “no religion”, depending on which poll you believe.

additionally, given the perceived influence of the catholic church on the recent u.s. healthcare reform palaver, and the general distaste for the role religion plays in so much of u.s. policy (stuff like “don’t ask, don’t tell”, the abortion wars, and fundamentalist congressional evangelism just do not happen here), and the pope’s comments have made him almost instantaneously persona non grata.

the backlash and condemnation has been swift and loud.

and immensely, immensely gratifying.

as an atheist who grew up in a tradition of church and belief, i understand how and why people want and need religion in their lives. i may not want or need a religion, but i would never begrudge others theirs. i understand how people feel divine guidance is important in their daily existence. while i haven’t believed in a god for many years now, i understand what it feels like to do so.

what i do not, and have never understood, however, is a belief in any higher power who views some individuals as lesser humans because of who they are. what i do not, and have never understood, is the need to try to dictate others legal rights based on a very personal spirituality (or lack thereof). what i do not, and have never understood, is the sheer hubris of those who believe that *their answers* to the greatest of life’s mysteries are *the* answers to the greatest of life’s mysteries. what i do not, and have never understood, is the audacity of those in positions of power who would use their belief systems to reinforce their power by stripping others of theirs.

so i have no love for the pope, who seems to feel threatened because our laws take away his right to discriminate against gays, women, and people of non-catholic persuasion. i have no love for the pope who uses his bully pulpit to tell our government how to run our country. i have no love for the pope who as the leader of billions of believers, still espouses a hurtful message of exclusion.

and for once, i am surrounded by compatriots who feel the same.

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(see here for my blog for choice entries from 2009, 2008, 2007)

“This year, we are dedicating Blog for Choice Day 2010 to the legacy of Dr. George Tiller. Dr. Tiller often wore a button that simply read, “Trust Women.” As we reflect on Dr. Tiller’s contribution and the current state of choice, our question to you is this: What does “Trust Women” mean to you?”

this really resonates with me. last year, in the wake of dr. tiller’s horrific murder, i found myself arriving at some surprising conclusions – that “trust women” extends far beyond the issue of abortion rights.

to live in a fully realised egalitarian society means that we must trust women:

-to control their own lives
-to control every aspect of their own bodies
-to make decisions that are right for them
-to make decisions that are right for their families and relationships
-to exercise the same kinds of autonomy, freedom and choice that are afforded to men

..and trust that doing so will lead to stronger societies for us all.

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you know, i guess i’ve been pretty lucky so far – for as long as i’ve been a massachusetts voter, i’ve had the luxury of knowing that my two congressional senators were champions of most the things i hold dear as a self-avowed bleeding-heart liberal. i’ve known that my two senators were in favour of women’s rights and choice, social services and benefits for the poor, environmental causes, full civil rights for all races/sexualities/gender identities, and protection of individual’s rights to privacy and speech. i knew, without even checking, that ted kennedy and john kerry were always on my side of the vote.

and now, i’ve been lumped with a representative whose politics i not only disagree vehemently with, but who will be actively voting against my interests as a woman, as a progressive, as a humanist. that sets me on edge just thinking about it.

worse than that, though, is that this vote was a proxy vote for the rest of the country. and that fills me with despair. it has taken nearly seven years living outside the u.s. to realise just how conservative and insular so many americans are. they don’t care about healthcare for all, they care about taxes. they don’t care about gay rights, they care about protecting their own hetero-normative mythologies. they don’t care about women’s rights, they care about their own patriarchal religious beliefs. they don’t care about global warming, they care about not spoiling the view from their condo with wind turbines. they don’t care about the american dream, they just want to make sure someone’s not stealing their dishwashing jobs.

ted kennedy must be turning over in his grave.

i was there for the obama election. i dared allow myself to hope that people wanted a kinder, gentler society. i’ve often felt alienated from my countrymen over the past seven years, and i’ve often thought that because of that, i could never go back. turns out, one-in-five obama voters supported brown.

today, what i know is this: there is one less vote for the kind of america i want to live in, and my hope was too fragile to sustain this kind of blow.

so fuck you, massachusetts. if you don’t care about me, why should i care about you? a friend recently posted this on their facebook profile, and it’s so apt that i’m quoting it here:

“elections belong to the people. it is their decision. if they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will have to just sit on their blisters.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

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under the bush administration, i used to hear from a lot of people who said they wanted to move to the u.k. because they thought it was “more enlightened”.

to those of you who imagined that britain is some sort of liberal utopia, i present to you three news items from today:

5 convicted in Britain over protest at parade

LONDON — A court found five British Muslim men guilty on Monday of harassment and using insulting language during a protest they had staged at a parade welcoming British troops home from Afghanistan. The men had shouted slogans describing the soldiers as “murderers,” “rapists” and “baby killers.”

The highly unusual trial, in a district court in Luton, a town with a large Muslim population 30 miles north of London, was seen by the defendants’ supporters as a rare test of Britain’s liberal free speech laws. Lawyers for the men argued during testimony last week that they had been justified in the words they displayed on placards and shouted at the soldiers because they were speaking “the truth.”

But the district judge, Carolyn Mellanby, found five of the seven defendants guilty of offenses under Britain’s public order laws, specifically of using “threatening, abusive or insulting words” and of “behavior likely to cause harassment and distress.”

now here i have to take exception with the n.y. times characterisation of britain’s free speech laws as “liberal”. in fact, as i’ve pointed out here many times before, there is no such thing as “free speech” in the u.k. – only that speech which has not been made illegal. and “hate speech” which is thought to be unduly inflammatory or potentially provoking violence, is illegal.

which brings me neatly to exhibit b:

britain moves to ban controversial islamic group

LONDON (AP) — The British government banned an Islamist group notorious for glorifying al-Qaida and tied to terror plots at home and abroad, but its Lebanon-based spiritual leader promised to reorganize under a different name.

The group, Islam4UK, will be banned starting Thursday after its British leader, Anjem Choudary, threatened to bring hundreds of people marching in protest through the streets a small market town known for honoring the British soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

The latest ban puts the group in the same league with terror organizations such as al-Qaida, and the Tamil Tigers. It could lead to the arrest of anyone meeting under the Islam4UK name or using the group’s insignia.

The group, previously known as Al-Muhajiroun, was banned before only to change its name and resurface again.

nope, no freedom of assembly here either! setting aside the obvious inanity of “banning” something which can simply reform the following day under another name, you’d assume that if they were actual terrorists, they could be arrested under the terrorism act (rather than just oh, “banned”), right?

oh, wait. someone already said that.

“‘Shouldn’t we, as a democracy and a country which upholds the rule of law and order, be banning individuals who break the law rather than banning organizations?” spokesman [for The Muslim Council of Britain] Inayat Bunglawala said.

and speaking of the terrorism act:

stop and search powers of the terrorism act ruled illegal by the european court of human rights.

Police powers to use terror laws to stop and search people without grounds for suspicion are illegal, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled.

The Strasbourg court has been hearing a case involving two people stopped near an arms fair in London in 2003.

It said that Kevin Gillan and Pennie Quinton’s right to respect for a private and family life was violated.

Home Office Minister David Hanson MP said he was “disappointed” and would considering whether to appeal.

those are the same laws which have in the past few years pretty much allowed any police person to stop and search any person anywhere without reasonable cause… as long as they record it in a notebook. they’ve made excellent use of this law – using it for everything from trying to get knives off the streets to harrassing climate change protestors to intimidating news photographers and tourists from taking photos of tourist attractions… but not actually catching many terrorists.

so tell me again what kind of “enlightened” society i live in?

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a british man in china was convicted of drug smuggling and put to death this morning.

that, in itself, is sadly not shocking in the least. china has long had a history of summarily executing people for non-violent crimes – something which the international olympic committee chose to overlook last year, and which most western countries, even those with the death penalty themselves (united states, i’m looking at you), choose to excuse in the name of global economics (or indebtedness – united states, i’m looking at you).

what i’ve found shocking is the number of britons who are either apologists for it, or chiming in with agreement.

the comments in most op ed pieces, or online polls, are truly shocking. to me, anyway.

here i thought i lived in a country which (along with the rest of the EU) had long since condemned the death penalty as a barbaric practice which has no place in modern society. and outwardly, politicians will tell you that’s true. but scratch the surface of that genteel british veneer and you find people saying stuff like:

“I’ve seen the dark side of drugs and what they do to a community. There is NO punishment too harsh to counter the evil that comes with drugs — especially heroin.”

“A dose of chinese justice would not go amiss in the treatment of drug smugglers in the UK. This execution will benefit sick chinese people who will receive vital organs transplanted from the criminal. No damage to the vital organs is ensurred by a precise shot to the back of the neck. Thus out of evil some good is obtained.”

“They should do the same thing with murderers over here in my opinion, for the same reason – it sends out a powerful message that there are some offences that are so bad that, if you commit them, you will pay the ultimate sanction.”

“the chinese made the RIGHT decision. pity the british government dont follow suit and make a dent in the uk drug problem!”

“Maybe if we had a legal system like China we’d have less problems with ferral drug addled layabouts in this country.”

“A good drug smuggler is a dead one.”

(and lest you think these comments are culled from the right-wing daily mail or sun, they’re from the guardian and bbc websites, every one of them.)

now, perhaps that’s not representative of the british public at large, but i have to say that my sense is that it’s more representative than i would like to admit. much like the backlash which has garnered the bnp so much support recently, i believe the same is happening here.

people are dissatisfied with the status quo – and expressing it in some truly ugly ways.

it’s typical, really. when we can’t figure out how to really solve a societal problem, we revert to advocating the most simplistically crude and unthinking course of action possible: killing.

it’s so discouraging – i thought that having left the u.s. (where the popular alternative of locking up drug users and dealers alike en masse is nearly as stupid and useless) i would no longer have to endure the kind of bloodthirsty and vengeful arguments for the death penalty that are so common there.

more fool i. the public are disgusted with their government. people are clamouring for change. and the pendulum will continue to swing to the far right until they have it.

* and the post title is a nautical saying to remind sailors which side to keep of the buoys, but it sprang to mind today as being alliteratively apt.

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another year, another post about world aids day.

year after year, i write about the global aids statistics. year after year, they tell the tale of how this virus ravages those who are most vulnerable – the poor, the young, the weak.

this year, though, there is some good news mixed with the grim: although there continue to be more and more people living with hiv/aids, the global pandemic is officially in decline.

unfortunately, even in the face of some of the best news since this epidemic began, there is a very sobering statistic : the world health organisation reports that hiv is the number one killer worldwide of women of reproductive age.

that means all those public health policies that work to combat hiv/aids disproportionately affect women – they are policies about women’s health. women are more at risk for hiv/aids for both biological and sociological reasons, and there is “strong evidence of the link between gender based violence and hiv”.

and therefore the funding cuts looming in this shaky economy will disproportionately affect women, and threaten to undermine the hard-won gains that have been made.

now, more than ever, it’s important to keep fighting. after decades of campaigning and fundraising and marching and wearing ribbons, we finally have some progress to show for our efforts – we can’t allow it to backslide!

i’m going to try (again) to run the edinburgh marathon this coming may, and will be fundraising for the hiv/aids fight.

isn’t there something you can do? it makes a difference to so many.

2.7 million people were newly infected last year, and 2 million people died.

but where there is help, there is hope.

if 2 million is too hard to wrap your brain around, this year remember just one person.

and then do something for them.

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last night, my friend amity and i attended a reclaim the night march, as i’ve done off and on since university. it’s a way for women to demonstrably protest the culture of sexual violence which makes the streets unsafe for women.

so we’re marching along in the rain through the centre of london streets. several hundred women, surrounded by dozens of police escorts, chanting, holding placards, drawing the attention of tourists and onlookers. there are guys who feel the need to boo or mock us – which is par for the course, really. some mentally unstable guy spat. whatever.

and then, out of nowhere, in the middle of leicester square, some guy cuts through the crowd, walks up to my friend amity next to me, gropes her breasts, and slips away into the crowd. in the middle of hundreds of women, in the middle of dozens of police.

after the initial shock wore off, i found myself getting really emotional.

it was a massive fuck you. more so than if he’d made some snarky remark (like some men did), more so than if he’d booed (like some men did), more so than if he’d laughed (like some men did).

it was a bold statement: you think you’re safe, you think you can fight back, you think you can reclaim the night… well i’m going to prove to you that i can do whatever i want to you, whenever i feel like it.

you are never safe.

it really shook me. i nearly abandoned the march at that point. after all, if a guy can do that anytime he wants, just because he feels he’s entitled to – then what the fuck is the point?

but as i continued clomping along in my wet boots and bedraggled hair, my sodden sign wavering, my voice having escaped me…

i began to get angry. i mean white hot fury. that “fuck you” was *supposed* to completely dispirit us, make us feel vulnerable.

i will not let that happen to me. not ever. and certainly not because some fucking arsehole managed to momentarily catch me off guard.

fuck you, motherfucker. if you meant to scare us, you failed.

still – if there was ever any doubt that we still need to reclaim the night, that was a perfect example of exactly why it’s so important. why i will continue to participate even when there’s rain, or in-fighting amongst feminist groups, etc.

because until that culture of sexual entitlement changes, nothing will change. until every single person is free from sexual assault, none of us is.

until the streets are free of those who would mock us, or undermine our safety, i’ll keep marching.

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i’ve been thinking a lot about pornography lately. it’s a topic i find hard to grapple with because it’s something that i’ve always had a difficult time reconciling with my particular personal brand of feminism. my brand of feminism, i guess if i had to describe it, is based in a largely pragmatic view of the world at large, but with my efforts funnelled towards those causes i think can have the greatest impact. in my personal brand of feminism, i don’t like to spend a lot of time railing against everything (though one might not guess that from some of my posts here!), but there are key changes needed which i believe are fundamental to the advancement of women’s equality. i believe that, like all fights for rights, the war is a long one, and change is slow, so you have to pick and choose your battles, and wisely consider where best to invest your energies.

pornography is a thorny thing for feminism in general. there are credible arguments from feminists that porn is empowering for women. there are also credible arguments from feminists that porn is truly harmful for women. which leaves me (and others) feeling somewhat stranded between a rock and a hard place.

as someone who has viewed and enjoyed pornography before, i have a hard time condemning porn outright. i’m not a prude, and i don’t have any particular objection to men or women taking pleasure in watching sexual acts, as part of a wide continuum of sexual expression. additionally, i am not an idiot – pornography is nothing new. from the early days of human representational art, sex has been depicted visually in various forms from religious to erotic. film and photographic porn is, in some ways, simply an extension of this.

in other words, porn is not, in and of itself, bad.

the difficulty for me arises from the fact that modern pornography is created, marketed and sold within a particular context – a context from which the end product cannot be extricated or innoculated. a context which is problematic in many ways.

the first and most obvious difficulty is that women involved in porn usually arrive at a place where they are getting their kit off for money because there are not exactly a plethora of other options available to them. in a nutshell, no little girl thinks “i want to be a porn actress when i grow up” – they just don’t. that’s not to imply that women in the porn industry don’t have free will – because many do participate willingly. but selling one’s body as a means to earn a living is not usually someone’s preferred choice of career. for many women, their socio-economic status still restricts the opportunities for earning a living wage. so pornography is an industry which makes its profits off of women who, via various paths, have come to see their bodies as a commodity which they sell, because at a practical level, it made the most financial sense out of the choices available to them at the time. and no matter how you dress it up with hugh hefner’s smoking jacket or cute little bunny ears, that amounts to economic exploitation. exploitation which there is considerable financial incentive to continue to propagate.

which leads us to problem number two: the reason women come to view their bodies as a saleable commodity is because our society is saturated with messages that reinforce that belief. every advertisment which pairs an image of a sexy woman with either a service being sold, or a glossy inanimate object we’re supposed to want to buy, reifies the underlying subtext that women are something you can either obtain or use for money. much like pavlov’s original experiment paired salivation to a bell, this is precisely what happens in the media and advertising world. women’s images are used to sell burgers, cars, lightbulbs. the overwhelming objectification and fetishisation of women’s sexuality (i.e. “pornification”) as part of our mainstream societal wallpaper is not a new phenomenon, and one i’ve written about before here, so i won’t belabour the point. it is, however, that same social context, where everything and everyone has a invisible pricetag, that makes pornography a viable option for women in the first place.

the third big contextual problem with pornography is that is exists in a society which still tolerates (and in some cases condones) sexual violence against women. this ties in with the pervasive mainstream objectification, because a side effect of the women-as-sexualised-objects culture is that it encourages the women-as-sexualised-objects-for-the-enjoyment-of-men culture. men who are taight to view women as objects lack empathy for them as humans – a detachment which can be dangerous. it creates the potential for a sense of sexual entitlement amongst men who have a propensity for violence. historically, women’s bodies have long been objects for the sexual gratification of men to use as they pleased – something which was long embedded in legal and societal mores in western countries. but even in westernised countries where modern-era women’s rights have been been rooting for 50 years, one in four women will still be victims of gender based violence in their lifetime. set against that horrifying backdrop, the pornography industry, whose model and medium is still overwhelmingly male-dominated-women-subjugated, is, at a minimum, not helpful.

so where does that leave me? as someone who staunchly supports a woman’s right to control her own body as a basic human entitlement, i end up conflicted. on the one hand, i want women to feel free to express themselves sexually, and i would never presume to tell anyone what they should or shouldn’t do with their body (including monetising it) – whether i agree or not. i want women to be fully empowered sexual beings. yet on the other hand, we have a society which continues to devalue women’s bodies as something to be used and abused. where women feel selling their body is the best of the bad choices. where women are still not free from sexual violence.

in an ideal world, i could support porn… but we don’t live in an ideal world. yet the pragmatist in me knows that pornography is not going anywhere any time soon. i don’t want to demonise erotica as anti-woman, and i don’t want to waste my time trying to eradicate something that will never go away. so i supposed that the best i can do in the meantime is continue to support changing the context. to continue to advocate for women’s education and employment opportunities which give them choices. to fight against the objectification and stereotypes of women which are so prevalent. to work to end sexual violence and hold perpetrators accountable.

and that suits my particular brand of feminism to a tee.

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i’ve held off on commenting on the stupak-pitts amendment to the healthcare bill which was passed by the u.s. house of representatives this week in part because i’ve found it difficult to put my feelings into words, and in part because i feel others have said it sooo much better than i.

(if you haven’t been paying particular attention to the political machinations around this issue in the states, here’s a quick recap:right before this version of the healthcare bill was to be voted on, some right-to-life republicans and democrats [oooh, i accidentally just typed demoncrats - freudian slip?] attached a last-minute amendment which forbids any health care plan, private or public, from offering abortion services if they wish to accept even one federally subsidised customer. since the overwhelming majority of new customers who will be purchasing plans are the soon-to-be-subsidised poor who currently cannot afford health care, this effectively forces providers to choose between any new business, or covering abortions, *and* prevents any poor people from accessing abortion services as part of their mainstream reproductive health coverage.)

the phrase “thrown under the bus” has been tossed around a lot, and that encompasses some of the sentiment that i feel. women were definitely run over here in the name of expediency and pragamatism – those voices that continue to try to convince us that the “compromise” was necessary to get any kind of bill passed.

but what comes closer is this: pure unadulterated ire. how dare you. how very fucking dare you. this was no compromise – a compromise is when you give away some of what you want in order to get more of what you want. the failure here is the lack of recognition that abortion rights do not fall into the “want” category. *rights* are not *wants*. they’re not pie-in-the-sky wishes – they are full-fledged-constitutionally-enshrined-and-protected rights. they are not, therefore, something which can be put into the pot as ante. they are not political capital to be traded away like marbles.

they are womens’ *rights*, damnit, and they are mine and hers and hers, and you can’t just take them away when it suits you. but when only 76 of the 435 representatives are women, i suppose it’s easy for the rest of them to forget.

abortion is the single most common surgical procedure carried out – the idea that health plans not only should not, but *must not* cover it because 64 democrats (62 of whom were men) said so is completely out of touch with reality. are these same providers banned from covering vasectomies because of the religious views of a few? i don’t even need to check to know that they’re not.

the most reprehensible bit is that it is the most vulnerable women that are subjugated to the moralistic dictates of others – poor women who cannot afford their own private-pay healthcare, who likely then cannot afford their own private-pay abortion… yet are somehow supposed to be able to afford to raise a child? the courts have said that a woman’s right to privacy entitles her to primacy over her reproduction. but 64 democrats think as long as *they* hold the purse strings, that right is superceded by their own religious beliefs, fuckyouverymuch. in other words, if you’re dependent on the government for help with healthcare, then we will tell you what their god says you can and cannot do with your uterus.

it’s hostile paternalism of the very worst kind – the kind where games are played with people’s legal rights and doctors are bent to the political will of a few, because a group of 64 representatives think they above all others, know what’s best for women living in america. dangling a woman’s right to control her own body like a playtoy on a string, just out of reach… unless you have the cash to buy an indulgence. rich women don’t have to worry about anyone else’s god but their own.

so really, “thrown under the bus” isn’t the half of it. poor women have been put back under the jackboot of the morality police, and stripped bare of their most basic civil right – the right to control over their body. i’m furious at the newest reminder that my rights and hers and hers and hers, all hang in the balance of just a few elected individuals. i’m angry that once again i’m forced to sit here and stew while hoping that someone else is brave enough to stand up for me and her and her and her. it’s a special kind of torture to have to watch your autonomy twist in the breeze. and that’s not sacrificing women voters for the sake of practicality or compromise – that’s creating a women’s-only fucking abu ghraib.

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kimberly munley is the cop who shot the suspect in the recent Fort Hood tragedy. and instead of just praising her for being a brave *cop* and doing her job in a crisis, under pressure (as she was trained for countless hours to do), the media keep using gag-worthy phrases like “tough cookie”.

really? “cookie”? how sexist can you get?!! and by focusing on her sex as if it’s somehow extraordinary that a woman should be brave, they completely undermine the heroic achievement of a lifetime. in hamhandedly trying to honour her, they completely demean her.

because when you focus on the fact that she’s female (yes, cnn, i’m pointing at you), the implication is that even in 2009, people are still surprised that women (who’ve had the exact same training as any man in that job) could enter a dangerous situation with an armed suspect, and respond exactly as she’s been drilled to: shoot to kill.

the crazed episode itself is obviously newsworthy. the fact that she is a woman is not. can you imagine an article about a man using the word “cookie”? or emphasising his “toughness”? or calling him “aggressive”? no. in fact, what they say when these kinds of articles are written about men are:

they were just “doing their job”.

yet our stereotypes about the “weak woman” are so thoroughly embedded in our social consciousness that we often don’t even realise it. i’m absolutely sure that those people who are calling her a “tough woman” don’t realise that by doing so, they’re actually perpetuating the idea that women aren’t *expected* to brave, competent, steel-nerved cops. that even when they are doing the same risky job as a man, the public don’t expect them to do the *really* risky stuff.

we see it repeated nearly daily in the media – the stories about the women soldiers, and the handwringing over the children they leave behind (as if the fathers are expendable) when they end up killed or hostage. the particular emphasis on “women and children” whenever casualties are counted -as if women and children are somehow equivalent in their innocence and helplessness, but men are supposed to die. over and over, the reification of the subtle but persistent idea that women are the “gentler” sex, that women should be protected first and foremost because they are less able to protect themselves, that women should be shielded from the brutal, nasty, dirty, risky stuff of living.

and now for something that may, at first glance, seem like a complete tangent: this is part-and-parcel of the reason i cannot stand to have a door held for me, or to have people pay for me, or to have people allow me to go first in the queue. it’s all a subtle and pervasive way of reminding me (whether consciously, intentionally, or not), that society still sees me as a less able person than a man. it’s a hard leap for many men to understand – they have often been indoctrinate to show “manners”. they don’t understand how i can see being “chivalrous” as incredibly insulting.

to which i’d say, if you truly respect me, you’d see me as your full equal, and not needing any deference or assistance *simply because i’m a woman*.

so every time a newspaper calls someone a “tough woman”, it’s a reminder that that is somehow surprising or exceptional. and every time you offer to pay for me, it’s a reminder that i’m not expected to have as much money. every time you hold a door for me, it’s a reminder that i’m expected to be weaker. in short, every time you offer me help or protection i don’t need, you remind me of the stereotypes that pervade our entire culture, and which i have to battle against every day.

and every time a woman cop or solidier is hailed as being a “tough cookie”, it’s a reminder that in spite of doing the same job as any man, in spite of being a trained, skilled, focused professional who gets paid to put her life on the line…

underneath it all, she’s still just seen as a “cookie”.

eta: even the ny times falls into the habit: would they ever describe a man as a “ball of fire”? or contrast his ” fierce love of hunting, surfing and other outdoor sports” with tending his garden and playing with his daughter? ugh.

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and in a move which will live on in ignominy, yesterday maine became the second state to rip full marraige rights out of the hands of gays and lesbians.

i don’t often agree with andrew sullivan, but he manages to nail precisely why this defeat hurts so much, why it’s so important. and why love *will* prevail in the end.

The truth about civil marriage – why it is the essential criterion for gay equality – is that it alone explodes this core marginalization and invisibility of gay people. It alone can reach those gay kids who need to know they have a future as a dignified human being with a family. It alone tells society that gay people are equal in their loves and in their hearts and in their families – not just useful in a society with a need for talented or able individuals whose private lives remain perforce sequestered from view.

This is why it remains the prize. And why our eyes must remain fixed upon it. In my view, the desperate nature of the current tactics against us, the blatant use of fear around children (which both worries parents and also stigmatizes gay people in one, deft swoop) are signs that what we are demanding truly, truly matters.

…

But guess what? Civil marriage is already here. It exists in several states already, it exists in the consciousness of an entire generation. It exists abroad in America’s closest neighbor and in America’s closest allies. The speed of the movement towards it is unprecedented in modern civil rights movements, even as it may seem crushingly slow to those who live under discrimination’s weight. These defeats – even narrow defeats as in California and Maine – should not discourage us. The desperation and fanaticism of our opponents proves they know that this is the crucial battleground. And they’re right.

But civil rights victories, the final and enduring ones, are always built on the foundations of defeats. Sometimes, the defeat of a minority’s sincere aspiration to equality helps reveal the injustice of the discrimination and the cruelty of the marginalization. Sometimes, it helps show just how poorly treated we are, and galvanizes a community to fight back more fiercely as we saw in that amazing march on DC last month. That has certainly been true of previous civil rights movements. It is just as true of ours.

So congrats, Maine Equality. You did a fine job. Congrats, HRC. You helped. No congrats to Obama who is treating this civil rights movement the way Kennedy first treated his. But we don’t need Obama.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. And we will win in due course, with a good spirit and keen arguments, and with passion and conviction in our hearts. We will win.

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remember that episode of “friends” where monica’s credit card is stolen by a bon vivant, and used for all sorts of fun things?

[Monica is examining her bill. Rachel emerges from her room]

Rachel: Oh, Monica. You are not still going over that thing.

Monica: This woman’s living my life.

Rachel: What?

Monica: She’s living my life, and she’s doing it better than me! Look at this, look. She buys tickets for plays that I wanna see. She, she buys clothes from stores that I’m intimidated by the sales people. She spent three hundred dollars on art supplies.

Rachel: You’re not an artist.

Monica: Yeah, well I might be if I had the supplies! I mean, I could do all this stuff. Only I don’t.

Rachel: Oh, Monica, c’mon, you do cool things.

Monica: Oh really? Okay, let’s compare, shall we.

Rachel: [Yawning] Oh, it’s so late for ‘Shall we’…

Monica: Do I go horseback riding in the park? Do I take classes at the New School?

Rachel: [Yawning] Nooo…

Monica: This is so unfair! She’s got everything I want, and she doesn’t have my mother.

yeah. so what happens when someone clones my debit card? they spend £900 on purchases at a garden centre and driving lessons.

what does that say about my life?

been caught stealing – jane’s addiction

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remember a few months ago when i raged about the latest odious invasion of the big brother police state? police files on people who have no criminal convictions but are seen as “potential troublemakers” because they show up at “too many” political demonstrations?

well the “spotter cards” have made it into the public domain this week.

the police say:

“This is an appropriate tactic used by police to help them identify people at specific events … who may instigate offences or disorder.”

which, considering that these people have no official offenses, seems to be a conclusion based on nothing more than their imagination.

but call them “domestic extremists” and suddenly it all sounds a little more credible, doesn’t it? certainly well-worth £9 million. never mind it has no legal basis in definition or fact.

so they take your photo at a public and peaceful protest and log it in a giant database. oh, and think those speed cameras are innocuous? they track your car registration too.

the guardian has done a great series featuring interviews with subjects of the “spotter cards” here.

it’s oppression of free speech and free assembly through bully tactics… you might also recognise it as a key hallmark of those harsh dictatorships around the world which we decry. you may think that a facile comparison, but if you’re too intimidated by the police to exercise your right to protest in the first place, isn’t the chilling effect just the same as those who would intimidate and suppress opposition through brute force?

the information commissioners say:

“We do have genuine concerns about the ever increasing amounts of information that law enforcement bodies are retaining. Organisations must only collect people’s personal information for a proper purpose. We will need to talk to Acpo to understand why they consider it is necessary to hold lawful protesters’ details in this way, before considering whether this meets the terms of the Data Protection Act.”[...]“Individuals have the right to request information that is held about them and can challenge organisations about whether, and for how long, the data should be retained.”

he misses the point entirely: trying to use the data protection act to challenge an infringement of basic civil liberties is like trying to put out a forest fire with a waterpistol. and, i would hasten to point out, is only useful if you happen to know you’re on a super-secret database *in the first place*.

a society without the right to peaceful protest and civil disobedience is a society where all our rights hang in the balance. a society without the notion of “innocence before guilt” is a society where the laws and judicial system have lost their footing. without the means for dissent, or the ability to demonstrably demand change from our government, we are all captive – whether we’ve been caught on police camera or not.

updated: you can follow the excellent guardian series on surveillance and civil liberties here.

requiem for dissent – bad religion

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in what has now become international news, a louisiana justice of the peace denied an interracial couple a marriage license:

“I’m not a racist. I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way,” Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. “I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else.”

Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry them, he said.

Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.

“There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage,” Bardwell said. “I think those children suffer and I won’t help put them through it.”

If he did an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all, he said.

“I try to treat everyone equally,” he said.

my first husband was (is) black – we were together for nearly 10 years and never faced any real hostility. part of that was living in urban areas where interracial relationships are much more commonly visible. part of that was luck. part of that was probably choosing not to see certain things. but i know, and have always known, this kind of bigotry existed.

everyone is all up in arms. i feel like i should have something to say about this – shock! outrage! condemnation!

the fact is, i feel none of those things. the world is crawling with prejudiced people – we all see them, we just never confront most of them. they keep their voices low, or preface their statements with, “i’m not a racist, but…” they rarely ever get called to account because, let’s face it, who’s up for the challenge of taking on that kind of argument? few people ever say anything in the face of racism – it’s easier to let it slide.

admit it – you’ve sidestepped racism before. i have too. like the pile on the sidewalk, we walk on and pretend it wasn’t there. life is sometimes easier that way.

so no, i’m not surprised that in this day and age, someone sees fit to say the kinds of things this man has said. he’s admitted to blatantly turning down interracial couples many times before – he’s been a justice of the peace for 34 years! how many colleagues knew about his practices or views? how many friends or family?

and who ever called him on it before? no one, that’s who.

so when the aclu calls it “astonishing” that this would happen in 2009, i can’t agree. i’m not astonished in the slightest.

as long as well all continue to turn a blind eye, this kind of thing will continue to happen. that’s just the truth of human nature.

and that doesn’t shock me or enrage me – it just saddens me a little.

until i sidestep, and move on. like it wasn’t even there.

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barbara ellen gets it spot on when she says katie price is like other women who’ve been raped who are afraid they won’t be believed.

If even the revelation that she’d been raped couldn’t do it, one wonders if there is any situation that could lead to people feeling sympathy for Katie Price?

Or is the mood against her so far gone that a plane could fall out of the sky, right on top of her head, and there would still be members of the British media and public muttering: “Well, she deserved it, didn’t she? Publicity-seeking trollop. Look at how she treated Peter Andre!”

Something has to explain the bizarre attitude of some parts of the media regarding Price’s account of being assaulted. Always careful to toss in a caveat (”Anyone who’s been raped deserves sympathy”), too often this would segue into a (surely irrelevant?) diatribe about Price’s character and behaviour, followed by baiting over her refusal to involve the police. Irresponsible, if not downright suspicious, seemed to run the rationale.

Well, not really. If anything, with her fear of involving the police and the courts, Price was behaving like a typical rape victim.

Doesn’t this, the omnipresent culture of automatic disbelief around sexual assault, serve to highlight why Price, and many other victims of rape, are so loath to come forward? Indeed, doesn’t Price’s obvious lack of faith in the legal system mirror the torment of many other rape victims, ordinary women, who fear they have little chance of being believed?

the comments beneath the article only serve to illustrate the point: that we seem to think it’s perfectly acceptable to judge the veracity of a woman’s rape allegation based on her dress/comportment/interaction with the media.

it’s the same sort of disgusting stuff which gets dragged into the courts in an attempt to discredit the victim – a variation of the tired old chestnut of “she deserved it”. no wonder she doesn’t feel any desire to prosecute – the public is doing the defendant’s job for them by spit-roasting her at every turn.

the idea that her looks/attitudes/actions have anything to do with “context” in which we should judge her allegation is ridiculous. after all, where’s the “context” for the rapist and his crime?!

once again we focus on the woman, rather than the perpetrator. the anger and disdain is aimed squarely at her instead of the criminal, and we make judgements about her character and her status as a victim based on how likeable she is. somehow it’s her burden to prove to the public that she really was violated, and there’s more outrage about her status in the gossip mags than there is about the fact that there’s a rapist walking around out there.

millions of women do not report rapes to the police. nor do they have to (though i wish they would). they do not do so precisely because they are afraid of the kind of condemnation on full display for Katie Price. the court of public opinion on rape is so often crueler for the woman than the perpetrator. no one seems in the slightest bit bothered that the social environment all but ensures that Katie Price will not believed and that a criminal is possibly going free – they’re too busy reviling her because they don’t like the fact that she makes money by blatantly using her sexuality and from doing interviews with OK! magazine.

the vitriol is, quite frankly, repugnant and depressing. that women who are raped (whether famous, infamous, sexually explicit, or “nice”) still have to overcome the immediate knee-jerk cynicism and critique of their personality, dress, activities, drinking habits, etc. in order to be taken seriously is a gross failing of our society. until we conquer those prevailing attitudes, how can we expect a rape victim to take them on?

________________________________

PSA: off for another week of holiday, see you when i’m back

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I could write about September 11th, but I don’t want to.

what I want to write about instead, is the kind of day today might have been. a day without the memorial services and moments of silence. a day without the flags and yellow ribbon stickers and “support our troops” signs draped off overpasses. a day without the gloom and grey weather that matches the sombre mood. a day without two wars being fought in foreign lands, and a more nebulous war of ideologies.

I want to write of a day like September 10th 2001. an ordinary day, so unremarkable that i couldnt tell you where i was or what i did, never mind recount every vivid emotion and detail. a day unencumbered by grief and missing. I want to write of a time of peace and security that no longer exists, except in the memory of anyone over the age of 8.

I want to write of what once was, and what will never be again. a nation without scar, a day without fear.

I want to write it and have it be true.

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i watched caster semenya blow away the competition in the 800 metre world championships last night.

and then i watched the race commentators and the iaaf blow her personal dignity out of the water.

since bursting onto the scene last month, there has apparently been quiet speculation about semenya’s gender.  last night that quiet speculation became widespread international rumourmongering that semenya was one of a growing number of known intersex or transgendered atheletes.

gender verification has been carried out in international sport since the 1930s.  from its first crude beginnings, it has, fortunately become much more sophisticated (by comparison) – taking into account physiology, genetics, hormones and psychology.  it has also become much more socially and politically sensitive – transgendered individuals are allowed to compete in their newly-identified gender after a period of two years, and intersex individuals are also allowed to compete.

what hasn’t apparently become more sophisticated or sensitive is the media.  the fact that semenya has spent her whole life as a woman and identifies as a woman, has now been openly called into question, in cruel fashion – it seems as if reporters around the world now feel it is perfectly fair game to speculate on the state of this woman’s genitals.  it’s perfectly okay to discuss in print whether or not this woman “qualifies” as a woman.

for better or for worse, we live in a world where the vast majority of people line up nicely on either side of (what we like to imagine as the neatly binary) “man” “woman” divide.  by default, then, anyone who falls in between those two descriptive categories, is seen by society as unusual.  that doesn’t, however, mean we should allow people to treat them like freak shows.  and surely an organisation as familiar with this territory as the iaaf, could do much to pave the way in this area – rather than singling out those athletes people are whispering about behind their backs, why not establish baseline regulation and guidance for all athletes competing at an international level? determine people’s eligibility for competition before, rather than after? take measures to qualify all athletes, rather than just the gender-bending few?  gender testing was initially done away with in the late 90s, specifically because it is invasive and provides no clear answers.  so is that proposal an easy, cheap, or less controversial way to do it?  of course not – but in the current climate, it’s the only *fair* one.  after all, if you’re going to subject some people to humiliating and invasive screening, there’s no reason the same standards shouldn’t either be applied to all athletes across the board, or be ruled out entirely.  i can’t see anyway around it: either you err on the side of qualifying all, or you decide you will qualify none.  the iaaf said they wanted to deal with this matter “discreetly” – at which they failed spectacularly, with earth-shattering consequences for the woman in question.  so rather than discriminatorily pulling a select few behind the curtain based on scepticism and nasty mutterings, they could seek to implement a proportional and sensitive framework for decision-making before the fact, that applies to all equally, and does away with the tabloid-type talk and treatment of those athletes that “aren’t pretty”, (as a bbc commentator so disgustingly described semenya).

otherwise, (and this is the question which must be answered), why do it at all?  to strip those who don’t “qualify” as women/men of their achievements?  it may seem crude and wildly impractical to suggest that all athletes undergo some kind of process before they compete, but how much more barbaric is it to publically strip-search those individuals like semenya? because that’s what this amounts to.

this is an issue which will only become more common – as it should.  people of all genders and genetics must be allowed to compete in all arenas of athletics and daily life.  we need to identify a way forward for dealing with identity which is not based on “outing” the exceptions to the rule.

last night caster semenya managed to put the rumour and sensationalism behind her… and just be sensational.  it’s a shame the media couldn’t see past her gender, and view her for the true woman she showed herself to be.

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