usually fairly calm about these things

The Catch-All Privilege Checklist!

2012-01-05T12:20:00.003+01:00

I saw this female privilege checklist. But I thought it wasn't racist enough, and that homophobia and transphobia were only really hinted at, so here it is:

The Anyone Who Isn't Identifiably Straight, White and Male Including by Birth Privilege Checklist

In no particular order:

I can encourage a child to put my nipples in its mouth without being labelled a paedophile.
When I talk about the oppression of people like me, everyone will find it easy to keep a straight face.
I am more likely to be a better dancer.
I can wear pretty dresses without fear of being called a faggot.
I can call someone 'my nigger' without sounding racist.
Automatic door priority.
I can suck another man's cock without fear of being called a faggot.
Girls will like me because I'm all exotic and foreign.
I am more likely to smell better.
If I fall on hard times and have a webcam, I can make money just by masturbating.
I can own several, even very large, dildos and vibrators without fear of being called a faggot.
I can stop being bothered about competitive sports without fear of being called a faggot.
I am never starved of affection as people will call me 'brother' or 'sister'.
My partner is likely to want anal without any kind of pressure.
Nicer hair.
If I am stopped by police they are unlikely to have the right guy.
Kids' TV presenters are likely to be either the same gender as me or at least a bit camp.
Nobody laughs, EVER, at the rap song I did at the school talent show.
My public toilets are lickably clean, nor do I ever miss the bowl/urinal when drunk.
I do not have to worry in case balls touch.
You know what they say about Black men? People will finally say that about me.
I can meet someone I am attracted physically to in a public toilet or changing room.
A changing room for fuck's sake! They might even be naked!
I get to have babies.
I can want cuddles without fear of being called a faggot.
Members of the opposite sex will assume I do not fart - therefore allowing me to do so with impunity in front of them.
Girls will like me more.
I do not have to wonder what it's like to have boobies.
People might think I'm cooler.

Politics of Envy

2012-01-02T13:18:00.000+01:00

One day, sitting at home, you get a phone call. It's from your friend. Her flatmate has moved out and left a whole fridge-full of delicious food. She's atrocious in the kitchen, but she knows you and your three flatmates are very good, and makes a suggestion: The four of you come round, make something amazing out of her food, she'll throw in a couple of bottles of wine and you'll all eat it together. It's a lovely idea, you all go round together, but as soon as you get to her flat, you need the toilet. And the thing is, though you're a pretty good cook yourself, all your flatmates are even better, and by the time you've finished your business, washed your hands and come out, they're all busy making dinner.

So you ask "Is there anything I can help with?" No, it turns out. They're all fine, just sit down. So you sit, you chat to the hostess, but you feel awkward. So you ask again, again nothing. A few minutes later, you start asking them individually, can you chop that, is there anything you can help with, why don't you take over that so he can have a turn sitting down, but to be honest, you feel like you're getting in the way more than anything. Soon, dinner's ready, it smells delicious, and you're just about to tuck in when your flatmate goes "wait!". He's staring you right in the eye. "Wait a second. I don't see why you should get any. You've not lifted a finger to help. What makes you think you deserve a share of the meal we've spent the past hour and a half slaving away on?" You go home, hungry.

Now, obviously you're partly to blame for having moved in with Ed Miliband. Tories and the Labourites that ape them are very concerned about the long-term unemployed. Your housemate was obviously very concerned about "idleness" and "something for nothing culture", and is damned if anyone's going to get something if there's nothing he actually wants from them in return. These people get very upset at the idea of someone never having a job. It doesn't seem to bother them that if 2.5 million people are unemployed and there are only half a million vacancies, then however you arrange it, at best there would still be two million people unemployed.

I can sort of see the objections to taxpayers' money going on benefits. But something for nothing, long-term joblessness, none of these cost us any extra money. Whether the two million leftover unemployed are idle because they're between jobs or have never had one because they're too shy, whether they would desperately take any job offered or just plain can't be fucked with it, it doesn't cost the taxpayer an extra penny either way, because there will be the same bloody shortfall in jobs. Two million jobseeker's claimants going idle is two million jobseeker's claimants going idle, and "choosing" a lifetime of it doesn't cause any net increase in idleness. I'm not saying it's not right to get people off benefits, that getting a job isn't a solution. I'm just saying that without full employment it's blatantly only going to work for a fraction of the people you yell it at.

So why do we care? Why do we get so fucking angry about people getting bare subsistence wages for nothing, when as a society there's nothing we want them to do for us anyway? Capitalist society's wife spends weeks and weeks asking "what do you want for your birthday?", and then after spending all that time saying "oh, nothing at all", capitalist society is pissed off with her for not having got it a present.

This is the real politics of envy. When us lefties get accused of it, our "envy" really amounts to condeming policies that create or perpetuate poverty, to wanting life opportunities for children to be earned and not bought, for incomes to be acquired by earnership and not ownership. Ours isn't envy, it's the urge for justice.

Right-wing envy though, is pathetic. Yeah, it's awful getting up to go to work. Mornings are shit. Commuting is shit. Jobs are shit. Bosses are shit. If we liked it we wouldn't have to be paid for it. But destituting other people won't get you a lie-in on a Monday morning. Right-wingers envy dole claimants for getting less than £70 a week to live on. Even though there's nothing they want from you, they hate and envy you for not giving it to them. Your housemate stares at you, burning with envy, because you're going to get the exact same portion as him. The only way to placate these people, who want nothing from you and resent you for it, is to pretend to be ~~busy~~ actively seeking work.

Long-term idleness is a problem. But it's not a problem for me personally. It's a problem for those that are stuck on it. Yet the "squeezed middle" who Tories, Labour and LibDems desperately chase round don't see that. For them, the victims of idleness are not the people condemned by a shortfall in jobs to low incomes and low social status. No, they are the perpetrators. The greasy, rotund, Burberry-covered perpetrators. The victim, as always, is sad middle-class tossers who have to look at poor people. And your housemate, Ed, would have rather you put the wooden spoons in alphabetical order than sit there having a chat. Which makes him sound an awful lot like Bill Hicks's boss.

Her and Her Boyfriend Defeated Norsefire. What the Fuck Have You Achieved?

2011-12-05T18:29:00.016+01:00

So obviously, as No Shave Movember started, a load of tossers on twitter started squeaking that it's not for ladies lololololol. And then obviously body hair and its removal became a hot discussion topic in the sections where people have half a brain between them. Some people are firmly in the pro-body-hair camp. One of them rhetorically asked what men who like shaved women see in it. And whether it was "the prepubescent look". This is a bit silly.

Aside from the potentially very interesting alleyway of how we don't bat an eyelid if men shave the post-pubescent hair off their faces, I've blogged before about how narrow and restrictive definitions of Proper Heterosexual Manlitude are. What I failed to mention was how these restrictions on masculinity, specifically men's tastes, are used to police women and their bodies. In my experience, with hair and breast size, particularly.

The thing is, not everybody grows hair the same way in the same places. And some adult women naturally don't have pubic hair. I mention breast size because hair-down-there is a symbol of adult womanhood, and its removal is associated with artificial immaturity and paedophilia in a very similar way to flat-chestedness. We're very keen to attach a moral dimension to this. Flat, hairless women are infantilised, their thinness a product of anorexia (simultaneously a mortal sin and a martyred affliction) and designed to keep women too frail to run away. In fact, it's so important for Real Women to have curves that flat-chested women have to have curves photoshopped onto them.

Most people are dimly aware that this restrictiveness isn't exactly nice to women. People with eating disorders are expected to look the part [Edit]. Violetta Crisis writes beautifully about what it's like not having a full crop of hair. Charlotte Roche's Feuchtgebiete/Wetlands (highly recommended) has a heartbreaking passage about the flat-chested protagonist's desperation to swap with her best friend Corinna. And tumblr always has a knack of being succinct.

But men are also involved in this. What hypothetical lads' mag readers do or don't prefer is used to tell women what kind of body they should have. The earnestly faked concern and frowny-faced moralisations, in turn, tell men what kind of consenting adults we should and shouldn't fancy. It's a really odd implication that sleeping with an adult woman in any way makes you gay or a paedophile, but even worse is the implication in turn that if you have alopecia, A-cups or a history of eating disorders, not only are you a failure as a woman and an adult, but only deviants, closet poofs and controlling misogynists will ever love you. And it's daft. I've always fancied bald-headed, small-titted, pretty shrieking genius Skin from Skunk Anansie and, frankly, if she's not a "woman", then "women" are just shite.

I get it that paedophilia is bad, I really do. I understand that eating disorders have the highest fatality rate of any mental illness and those that look like they might have one need some sense shamed into them. But we're piggybacking on these taboos to wrongbody grown women and wag our fingers at consensual adult sex. Our culture has more than a little trouble working out the difference between sex you don't want and sex you're not supposed to want. And frankly, I think you're seriously missing the point if your main problem with paedophiles is their breast and pubic hair preferences rather than the bit where they rape children.

In fact, and this is perhaps an extreme position, but, I actually think it's preferable if, rather than engaging in horrific and traumatising acts of sexual abuse, a paedophile enters into a mutually respectful, consensual relationship with an adult who happens to look enough like a child to satisfy them. This might even be a good thing in a way, I don't know.

But the bottom line is this: Women's bodies vary. This is slightly distinct from patriarchy and child abuse. For fuck's sake get over it.

A Short Typology of Rape Jokes

2011-12-01T20:46:00.006+01:00

Ok, I've already done a short thing on types of offensive humour, but I'm gearing up for a pretty long thing on rape jokes and metaphors, and so I'd more than welcome any feedback on the models I'm going to use for it. I'm not going to give examples of actual rape jokes here, as you probably didn't come here to read that sort of thing, and if you comment I'd ask you to do the same or give fair warning.

I count two ways of looking at humour. The first I'm going to call the Chuck-Flav Model: There are serious statements and there are silly ones. The purpose of the silly ones is to lighten the mood after a serious statement. Famous users include, of course, Public Enemy, but also classical Greek literature and when Johann Hari puts in a godawful pun before a serious, leg-stroking sentimental assertion. The second is the Isn't-Žižek-Clever Model. Very clever philosopher Slavoj Žižek tells a joke, but that joke, by drawing attention to absurdity, is a serious philosophical statement as well. Famous users include Woody Allen, Sigmund Freud, Stephen Moffat and Bertolt Brecht. Possibly also Jesus and the Babylonian Talmud.

I'm a firm believer in the second model, and these are the four types of offensive jokes I'm working with:

The Unspeakably Sick Joke: It's absurd to say it but it's ok to think it.
E.g. women, eh? Eh? Amirite?
The Unthinkably Sick Joke: It's absurd to say it because it's absurd to think it.
E.g. leave the ladder where it is and just turn your wrist. You can change it on your own now.
The Unreasonably Sick Joke: It's absurd to say it as some kind of rational opinion, even though it perfectly describes common behaviour.
E.g. most of the jokes where a dog (Wilfred, Brian, Dean Spanley) describes doggy thought processes.
The Unfunny Sick Joke: It's absurd to say it because it's not funny. It's absurd to even think it's funny. So why am I laughing?
E.g. Orange you glad I didn't say banana.

I also count four levels of rape jokes. They don't really get better or worse with depth, just, er, deeper:

The Rape!-LOL! Rape Joke: This is the simplest one. Rape is a taboo subject. So just saying the word is enough of a taboo-break to get a laugh. While this looks like Unspeakable humour, it’s more Unthinkable/Unfunny. It is absurd to think rape is funny, therefore to joke about it is absurd, and absurd is funny. Not that this lets this kind of joke off the hook: rape is sex as well as violence, and so is quite often taboo for the wrong reasons.
The Ridiculous Idea Rape Joke: An Unthinkable or Unreasonable claim about rape, which is funny because it’s ridiculous. When feminists use irony, sarcasm or any other kind of humour, for example running a reductio ad absurdum on victim blaming, this is the joke they're telling. Of course, what ideas about rape you find absurd enough to laugh at say an awful lot about how you see it, and it this kind of joke is also an excellent medium for being an arsehole.
The Going-Too-Far Rape Joke: The trouble is, not all ridiculous statements are ridiculous because you think the ideas they’re based on are ridiculous. I’m sure any feminists reading are well aware of the heinous crime of taking things too far, and that the people taking a stand against it are usually all for equality in principle. What’s Unthinkable with this kind of joke isn’t our basic cultural assumptions about rape, but failure to impose a limit on following them through, and failing to keep it reasonable and centrist. It has less to do with challenging ideas to do with rape than it does with staying comfortably close to the status quo. It resists movements in either direction, but suffice to say feminists won’t get much use out of this kind of rape joke.
The Rape Joke In Front of a Feminist Rape Joke: Now this really is Going Too Far. Your statement about rape isn’t Unthinkable or Unreasonable, and isn’t obviously different enough from your real opinion to even seem like a joke, ruling out Unfunny. But if it’s obvious a feminist is listening, expressing this kind of opinion is Unspeakable, because they will call the thought police or get you sacked for sexual harassment or turn you into a newt or whatever it is they do. Of course, once she’s gone, this opinion is no longer Unspeakable and the opinion you just expressed is no longer laughable. You know when you go on a woman’s blog comments section and explain exactly what should be done to her? This is the joke you’re attempting to make. If you were a bit scared when these jokers found your home or work address, it obviously went over your head.

To make it a bit clearer through mild equivalents, the Rape!-LOL! Rape Joke is sort of equivalent to shouting “BUMS!” The Ridiculous Idea Rape Joke is sort of like saying that, just because they sound the same, a door is a jar. The Going Too Far Joke is sort of like how Jeremy Clarkson wants striking workers to be executed except he doesn't really and a far milder punishment would suffice. The Rape Joke In Front of a Feminist Rape Joke is like shouting “BUMS!” in front of a vicar or a maiden aunt.

Anyway, suggestions/additions/criticisms most welcome in the comments. Being a dick less so.

Public Transport Racists: Spot the Difference

2011-11-29T16:59:00.007+01:00

Right, I'm sure we've all seen Racist Tram Woman and her amazing Tram Racism. If not, she's here:

But I wonder if we've seen Racist Tube Lady and her amazing Tube Racism. She gets off at Liverpool St, by the way.

You might be wondering why one racist woman got her own personal twitstorm and a visit from the Old Bill and the other didn't. After all, they're both whining about forruns to anyone that'll listen. But they're whining in very different voices. While Racist Tube Lady is careful to pronounce all her 't's and 'l's, Racist Tram Woman is all glottal stops and syllabic 'w's. And they both swear, but one of them is at least middle-class enough to apologise for it and would most likely never say F-U-C-K if there were impressionable wee kiddy-winkies present.

Let's not pretend we don't, as a society, have a slight problem with racism. When I twat about this yesterday, Puffles drew attention to hidden discrimination. You can't see the racism, but you know it's happened somewhere along the line or they'd be far more Black and Brown people in the Houses of Parliament. Obviously sometimes, you can see the racism, like in the aftermath of the England riots - where our first reflex was to blame Black people, even where White people were involved. We were so quick to see the riots in terms of Black stereotypes like gangs or BOBGC, and believe the Met's lies about Mark Duggan being armed, despite neither of them being true. And that's just our home-grown racial punching bags. While we like to pretend locking foreigners up solely for being here looks like this, it's usually a bit more like this.

What Racist Tram Woman was kind enough to do was to give us a scapegoat for our racism. We bang up some gobby fuckwit with a working-class accent for her racism, and suddenly we've proven to everyone that we care ever so much about fighting racism. And I'd even scratch my chin a bit that this all happened at the same time as the Stephen Lawrence trial, where we're getting a painful reminder of the murderous, mendacious racism that goes from top to bottom in our society.

But she's also done us another favour. By finding an unpleasant member of the dolecriminal underclasses to scapegoat for our society's racism, we can go on pretending that Nazis are inebriated plebs who look like this and not Cambridge Blues who look like this. We can pretend that our society's racism is not a systematic component of the UK which enriches the private sector while driving innocent men to suicide, and pretend it's just a proletarian faux-pas like baseball caps, putting the milk in first or ordering Stella Artois.

And this is, of course, total and utter fucking horseshit. The way to fight racism is this, and it's a lot harder than just this.

How I Memorised My Bust Card

2011-11-08T21:18:00.006+01:00

Ok, ahead of the student demo tomorrow, here's my mnemonics for the numbers on your bust card. Please comment with any ways you have and I'll stick them up here as well if I like them:

Bindmans Solicitors

02078 33 44 33

Ok, so this is a company, which means it has two things:

A fixed landline number, in London
One of those deliberately catchy numbers with doubles and stuff

The other thing you notice is they're greedy lawyers and as such want to have it both ways: The two area codes in London are 0207 and 0208. They have both, though at least they have them in order: 02078

And obviously they like numbers that are next to each other, because the rest is 3s and 4s, doubled up, and going up first then down: 33 44 33.

Green and Black Cross

07946 541 511

Bit harder this one, but not much. This isn't a company, so if you can't remember which is the landline, it's not this one.

Ok, loads of mobiles go 0794 or 0796. This one, like those greedy solicitors, has both, and, again, they're in order: 07946

Then, you've got two sets of three numbers, going down. 5-4=1, and 511, like 911 but different because

the last thing you want is more police
That's the American number anyway and we're not in Kansas any more, Dorothy

This is possibly the rambliest, silliest thing I've blogged, and obviously you can always write it up your arm, but it works for me and it passes the time when I'm walking.

ANYWAY, you could do it with Live and Kicking, you can do it for this. Good luck!

That Funny Picture

2011-10-27T19:06:00.006+02:00

I think we've all seen it. Hahaha Occupy Wall Street. You twats:

Now, I'm not 100% sure, but it seems to be listing things that are made either by corporations or out of capitalism, with the implication that opposing any action by corporations or under capitalism while using these things makes you some kind of ghastly hypocrite. Especially coffee. God help you if you drink coffee. So I'm just going to do a quick rundown of who some of these things are actually made by:

Social Networking - programmers.
Smartphones - engineers, programmers and factory workers.
Wireless carriers - engineers, technicians and programmers.
Clothes - designers, weavers and sewing-machine operators.
Cameras - engineers, programmers and factory workers.
Cars - engineers and factory workers.
Buses - engineers and factory workers, driven by bus drivers.
Bicycles - engineers and factory workers.
Shoes - factory workers.
Starbucks coffee - Baristas (famously).

Not to mention all the farmers, miners, riggers, factory workers and so on that provided the raw materials, and the builders, cleaners, caretakers and handymen that maintain the places where they're built. Oh, and put your hands up if you shuddered a little bit when you got to the bit about clothes.

Now, I don't want to go down the "corporations are people" route, but corporations are people, ok? Or rather, all of the work that corporations do is actually done by people. All those brilliant ideas were thought up by people. Your iPhone wasn't made by a fruit, or a trademarked name, or a picture of a healthy half-eaten snack, or even by Steve Jobs himself. It was made by people. All "Apple" did was give them money for it. Sometimes even a reasonable amount. This is how branding works. When we look at our iPhone, we see the Apple name and the Apple logo which we associate with a pretty sound, endearingly hippyish guy called Steve, and we think "Apple made this". They didn't. Labour made it. Labourers made it.

Before capitalism, cleaners still cleaned, farmers still farmed, people still mixed hot water with ground-up beans and gave it to other people to drink. People would still be able to write code or operate machinery or design trainers if they weren't employed by corporations. And a lot of these people, especially the farmers and factory workers, might be a little better off if corporations didn't get the credit for their work and the wealth it generated, and if capitalism didn't enable that situation. Maybe they wouldn't. That's the debate we should be having.

Love and Mates, Ducks and Foxes, Tender and Gentle Bumming

2011-10-10T14:04:00.006+02:00

Confession: Whenever I hear a woman complaining about being called "love" or "darling" by strangers, one of my first thoughts is "what about the mens?". But yeah, what about the mens?

If you've lived in Britain for any length of time, you'll have noticed the weird thing we do with pretending to be your bestest buddy evar when we've actually never met you. Sometimes, like if we're selling something, it's transparently mercenary, but at others it's, perhaps even more disturbingly, just our way of being polite. Where I come from, the address is "me duck", for both men and women, and you'll hear "pal", "darling", "chuck" and all kinds of others, but the most common seems to be "mate" or "love", and it tends to be a more working-class turn of phrase. I'd like to say it's because the usual formal politeness sounds too icy and snobbish, but then there's the clipped middle-class "mate", with the overpronounced 't' and dripping with sarcasm and veiled aggression. It's not so much the use of "darling" that's sexist, it's the social act of using this address.

The thing is you see, the word isn't gendered. I've been called "love". I've heard women casually use "love" to address both men and women. Which is why I wonder what about the mens. The only usage of "love" or "darling" that is properly taboo is a man using it for a man. Even two gay men can get away with it as we can, in these matters, legally assign them woman status. Women can hug men, men can hug women, women can hug women without any kind of over-enthusiastic backslapping necessary. Anyone in modern Western society can wear trousers, t-shirts, jackets and ties, but a man has to be very, very Scottish to get away with a skirt. All manner of progressives might have put a lot of effort into lifting social restrictions on women and gay men, but in the meantime, we straight men were restricting ourselves more and more.

We, as a society, are fine with women loving each other. You go round with a bottle of wine, cookie dough ice cream and a Sex and the City box-set when her boyfriend dumps her. We've managed to get our heads round men and women loving each other as friends without wanting to fuck, and it's especially easy if only the woman is straight. Obviously if two gay men want to do fully-clothed emotional closeness together in the privacy of their own homes, we're even fine with that. But straight men don't love. There are only three ways for straight men to directly express affection for each other: as a joke, if we're drunk and therefore joking, and in a gay way possibly as a joke.

It's easy to treat this odd little tendency as homophobic, but that doesn't quite cover it. We've all got fairly used to the idea of two gay men having sex with each other, but two straight men at it either freaks us the fuck out or makes a charming punchline. Speaking of which, flick through this fifty-minute compendium of gay jokes in Friends. The first thing you see is, contrary to what I've said before, how much the three men, especially Joey and Chandler, love each other. The second thing you notice is that a lot of the jokes aren't about homosexuals, but about straight men being afraid of their own potential gayness, especially when they're expressing this love.

What this actually is is bi-phobia. When a straight man gingerly slides his hand down the front of another straight man's trousers, they're not deviating from societal norms but from their own. We can make an exception to the golden rule of Man Goes With Woman, but only for recognised permutations such as quirky sitcom lesbians, Katy Perry and those adorable pet gays you can take shoe-shopping. Heterosexuality isn't about fucking women, it's about not fucking men - though naturally you might have to fuck some women to prove you're not secretly gay.

And oh look, Liam Fox has got a really good friend who he really seems to care about. As with when William Hague shared a room with that man, this obviously means they're buggering together. Not to say that there's anything wrong with that, just that it's scientifically impossible for them to be that close any other way. As I've said before, we're so threatened by the idea of two men just being really good friends that we'd rather imagine Andrew Werrity sweating, grunting and grasping Liam Fox's throbbing manhood as he spurts his hot seed into his quivering arse than ever picture them hugging, saying "I do love you sometimes you know" and then sitting down without tongue-kissing. Not only that, we're so utterly bamboozled by the idea of heterosexual man-love that two happily married men fucking seems more likely, compared to two prominent Tories attempting to make money, consolidate power and expand their personal sphere of interest. What is it about the thought of two straight men together that makes our brains go so downright silly?

Schrödinger's Punching Bag

2011-09-29T01:49:00.006+02:00

Odd how in the past couple of years the two minutes' hate has slowly shifted from refugees and asylum seekers to those awful disabled bastards. Difficult to say who has it worse - today's hate has to be shared with Muslims and bankers and the Greeks, but then what with the recession there's much more to go around. Also difficult to say who deserves it more - on the one hand we actually have to pay the disableds enough money to live on and even fund their wheelsticks or whatever, but on the other they do at least have the common decency to be British.

Anyway, this presents us with a problem. Victimising people just for fleeing persecution makes you seem a bit of an arsehole, but verbally abusing people for not being able to walk or see as well as you seems even worse. Yet it's obviously very important to us as a nation to keep doing it. Luckily, arseholes are full of surprises and there is a way you can do it. And it's brilliant.

ONLY HATE THE FAKE ONES

Now, even with a system so skewed against your potential victims that 20% of failed bids for asylum and 70% of fit-for-work declarations being overturned on appeal, this may still seem too limiting. But don't worry. The thing with bogus asylum seekers and faking wheelchair-people is that nobody knows who's genuine and who isn't. This effectively means they're all bogus fakers.

Now, obviously we don't mind the genuine refugees and ESA recipients sponging off the taxpayer like the lazy scroungers they are, but the idea that anyone can just waltz in acting gay or carrying a walking stick and get what they want, well, it's just not cricket. And it's not like spiteful resentment of vulnerable members of society is easy to aim. So we have to hate the whole bloody pack of them. Although we couldn't possibly hate and resent people in genuine need [pats a special-needs affectionately on the head, hugs a black man], have you ever tried nuanced scapegoating? It's fucking impossible.

Besides, what is it they say? Better kill a hundred innocents than let one guilty man get a penny in state handouts. And I've been saving this dog dirt for a really deserving letterbox.

Angry Young Alex: A Personal Apology

2011-09-16T00:46:00.004+02:00

I’ve written so many articles over the years laying bare and polemicising against the errors and idiocies of other people. This time, I am writing an article laying bare and polemicising against the errors and idiocies of myself. If you give it out, you have to take it. If you demand high standards of others, you have to be just as damning when you fail to uphold them yourself.

I did two wrong and stupid things. The first concerns some people I interviewed over the years. When I recorded and typed up any conversation, I found something odd: points that sounded perfectly clear when you heard them being spoken often don’t translate to the page. They can be quite confusing and unclear. When this happened, if the interviewee had made a similar point in their writing (or, much more rarely, when they were speaking to somebody else), I would use those words instead. At the time, I justified this to myself by saying I was giving the clearest possible representation of what the interviewee thought, in their most considered and clear words.

But I was wrong. An interview isn’t an X-ray of a person’s finest thoughts. It’s a report of an encounter. If you want to add material from elsewhere, there are conventions that let you do that. You write “she has said,” instead of “she says”. You write “as she told the New York Times” or “as she says in her book”, instead of just replacing the garbled chunk she said with the clear chunk she wrote or said elsewhere. If I had asked the many experienced colleagues I have here at The Independent – who have always been very generous with their time – they would have told me that, and they would have explained just how wrong I was. It was arrogant and stupid of me not to ask.

The other thing I did wrong was that several years ago I started to notice some things I didn’t like in the Wikipedia entry about me, so I took them out. To do that, I created a user-name that wasn’t my own. Using that user-name, I continued to edit my own Wikipedia entry and some other people’s too. I took out nasty passages about people I admire – like James Iha, David Attenborough, the drummer from Hole and that kid who translated a Harry Potter book into French in two days. I factually corrected some other entries about other people. But in a few instances, I edited the entries of people I had clashed with in ways that were juvenile or malicious: I called one of them anti-Semitic and homophobic, and the other a drunk. I am mortified to have done this, because it breaches the most basic ethical rule: don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you. I apologise to the latter group unreservedly and totally.

If it was the other way round – if a journalist I disapprove of had done something analogous – I’d be withering. I’d say, it’s not hard: get your quotes right, and don’t be mean about other people in a way you find painful when it’s directed at you. Spare me the self-pitying excuses. Plenty of people have your problems and pressures and none of your privileges, and they don’t do anything half as awful.

After it emerged that I had done this, some defenders of the powerful people I had taken on over the years for their wrongdoing saw an opportunity to try to discredit what I had written about them. Amid legitimate criticism of what I had done wrong, there were lots of untrue statements, but I’m hardly in a position to complain that some people saw it as an opportunity to take a free kick.

In 2007, I travelled through Market Harborough to report on the fact Oadby and Wigston Council had been bombing the borough. An anonymous claim was made that I had exaggerated the extent of the Oadby and Wigston bombing, and that I had fabricated a quote from an Oadby soldier on the ground. Two representatives of the NGO that I travelled with came forward to The Independent’s investigation into my journalism and they said my description of the bombing damage was entirely accurate, and that they have photographs of it. They also explained that they witnessed me speaking to several Wigston soldiers when the person making these charges was otherwise occupied.

The worst part of this for me has been thinking about two sets of people. The first are all the readers over the years who have come up to me and told me they like my articles and believe in the causes and the people I’ve been championing. I hate to think of those people feeling let down, because those causes urgently need people to stand up for them, and they need their defenders. The second are the people here at The Independent, whom I have watched for the past eight years working phenomenally hard to get their stories right and to produce world-class journalism. I am horrified to think that what I have done has detracted from the way they get it right every day. I am sorry.

But offering words of apology is not enough. Christopher Hitchens once wrote: “If you don’t want to sound like the Pope, who apologises for everything and for nothing, then your apology should cost you something.” I agree. So first, even though I stand by the articles which won the George Orwell Prize, I am returning it as an act of contrition for the errors I made elsewhere, in my interviews. But this isn’t much, since it has been reported that they are minded to take it away anyway. (I apologise to them for the time they’ve had to spend on this.) So second, I am going to take an unpaid leave of absence from The Independent until 2012, and at my own expense I will be undertaking a programme of journalism training. (I rose very fast in journalism straight from university.) And third, when I return, I will footnote all my articles online and post the audio online of any on-the-record conversations so that everyone can hear them and verify they were said directly to me.

In my work, I’ve spent a lot of time dragging other people’s flaws into the light. I did it because I believe that every time you point out that somebody is going wrong, you give them a chance to get it right next time and so reduce the amount of wrongdoing in the world. That’s why, although it has been a really painful process and will surely continue to be for some time, I think in the end I’ll be grateful my flaws have also been dragged into the light in this way. I would like to apologise again to my readers, my colleagues and the people hurt by my actions. I know that some of you have lost faith in my work. I will do everything I can now to regain it. I hope, after a period of retraining, you will give me the chance.

A Few Obvious Statements Following the Riots

2011-08-23T21:19:00.010+02:00

Ok, so this is going to be a long one, but there are quite a few things to discuss, all of which are fairly obvious in their own ways. The political meaning of the riots, our general attitude to victimhood, the "Black community" and gun crime, the effectiveness of a law-and-order response, the overall conclusionary significance and a predictably common phenomenon in the language of the riots.

1) Different Events Are Different
I don't know why I need to point this out, but Michael Gove is right. Stealing a plasma TV is not a political act. It's also, though this might go over his head, an entirely separate action to the political protest that sparked the riots, to the riots themselves, and to every other theft that went on around the same time. Different things happen for different reasons. Likewise different things are articulate to different levels, which is why, no, burning down an EMI warehouse is not a concerned and carefully-worded musing over the disappeareform* of EMA. So let's not make the mistake of assuming the riots and the looting and the 26th March Anti-Cuts Rally all have to mean the same thing.

As Laurie Penny rather nicely points out:

Riots are about power, and they are about catharsis[...]People riot because it makes them feel powerful, even if only for a night. People riot because they have spent their whole lives being told that they are good for nothing, and they realise that together they can do anything – literally, anything at all.

Obviously the protest outside the police station meant what it claimed to mean - "what the fuck, Metropolitan Police Force?" And obviously the looting generally meant "that's a nice crate of water, I'll 'ave that" and nothing much more. And obviously the looting was at least partly made possible by the police being occupied or blocked by rioters, in turn made more rioting feasible, if you can even draw a fine line between "looting" and "rioting". But the riots meant something. Every riot means roughly the same thing: "I AM ANGRY TO THE POINT WHERE I SMASH SHIT UP AND BURN SHIT DOWN".

Now, we can only speculate as to what the rioters might be angry about, but I reckon it is possible to speculate quite efficiently as to that, and without even having to condone them first. I think some of the 16-18 year-olds might have been angry about their disappearing EMA. I suspect that some of the suspicious-looking and/or Afro-Caribbean ones might have been angry at their bumf-drawer being full up with stop-and-search receipts. I suspect some of the poor ones might have been angry at poverty. Maybe some of the more chivalrous ones were angry hearing about a teenage girl get beaten up. Who knows. Like I said we can only speculate, but anyway, shorter non-psychotic Left:

"The fact that they were wrong to express their anger that way doesn't mean they weren't right to be angry".

*I'm coining this mother-lover

2) Victims: Bollocks to The Twats, Really
This might not seem that obvious initially and it's a bit of a tangent, but I'm going to come back to it later. Since Millie Dowler's phone got hacked, since Anthony Walker's mother unforgivably offered to forgive his murderers and made us all feel uncomfortable, since we really got into blaming raped sluts for failing to prevent crime against themselves, it's starting to look like we don't care about victims quite so much as we like to tell ourselves.

Fact is, we hate criminals. We hate criminals because they do awful things, they attack our precious concepts of law and order and respect for our fellow man. We're right to. Rapists, murderers, muggers, they're cunts. Massive cunts. But it feels a little unsavoury when our hatred of criminals overshadows or even contradicts our concern and respect for their victims.

Frankly, I'd say first and foremost among "victims' rights" is the right not to share your victim status with every sadistic ghoul who read about it in The Sun and felt affronted. Closely followed by the right not to be used as a pathetic pretext for tabloid to wank out their perverse revenge fantasies about dismembering paedos. In short, to be seen as human beings who've had their lives ruined in ways most of us could never imagine, as opposed to spokesmen and -women for the penny dreadful industry. If that wasn't obvious, it bloody should have been.

3) Black-on-Black Gun Crime Cuts Both Ways
Funny how we never see JFK or John Lennon as victims of White-on-White gun crime. Or Leon Trotsky as of Marxist-on-Marxist ice-pick crime. You never read about Kristallnacht as "a sad case of German-on-German brick crime", or Max Brod's refusal to posthumously burn Franz Kafka's oeuvre as "member-of-a-Prague-circle-of-German-speaking-Jewish-writers-on-member-of-a-Prague-circle-of-German-speaking-Jewish-writers legacy-betrayal crime", or MOAPCOGSJWOMOAPCOGSJWLBC for short, but there's obviously something I'm missing in how we define these categories.

Anyway, I heard some self-important white cock on the radio a few days after, you know, who thinks he'll always be spokesmen for the working man because a comfortable salary, leafy suburban house and pitiful bourgeois sense of paranoia can always be cancelled out by an affected estuary accent? Him. Anyway, he said, roughly, that

The fact that there's a whole police operation to deal with Black-on-Black gun crime, what does that say about the Black community?

Well, two things: Firstly, the Black community seems to be prone to committing gun crime. (A scientician would tell you that the gun-crime gene is carried on the same chromosome as cool dancing, rap-hop, calling people "blud" and forgetting to say 'is').

But Black-on-Black gun crime is a two-parter. This can be logically inferred from the fact that the word "black" occurs twice. Black Britons seem to be more likely to be victims of gun crime. If we assume a victim-to-perpetrator ratio of 1:1, then the very worst we can say about this community and gun crime is that it breaks even. If we then think about how the danger of gun crime might push impressionable and frightened young people into getting guns themselves and at least seeming ready to use them, and that if their bluff gets called then whatever happens they've basically thrown their life away, it suddenly becomes harder to see BOBGC as a crime by The Black Community against decency, values and anyone that has to read about it in the paper.

The job of Operation Trident, as much as anything, should be to keep young Black men safe from gun crime. When we see a young Black man with a hoodie and South London accent, we should think "that guy is potentially at risk of being gunned down" at least once for every time we wonder where he's stashed his piece. But we don't. We police poor, fairly black communities where we should be protecting them in equal measure. We police them for fear that their crime will spill over into affluent, mostly not-black communities. And we just learned how much we really care about victims.

4) MOAR LAW! MOAR ORDER!
Ok, so it's patently obvious this approach is daft. For all the desperate, vengeful squealing for ELECTRIC TEAR GAS! FLAMING WATER CANNONS! SHOOT ON SIGHT WITH ATOMIC BATON ROUNDS THEN DEPORT THEIR BENEFITS! it only takes a minute or two to work out this won't even work.

People riot when they think they can temporarily overpower the police. They carry on when they think they can outmanoeuvre and evade the police/army/SAS/cybernetic beefeaters/whatever you want to throw at them. People loot when the police can be evaded or distracted long enough for you to grab stuff through the broken window. The Big Society Vigilante Service is all well and good if you live on a street of arse-kicking Sikhs and massive-balled Turks and Kurds, but it's basically only useful for protecting the Big Society Vigilantes' own areas. However strong, vicious, vindictive or downright spectacular your repressive measures are, they won't work where they aren't. It doesn't take a genius to work out that lawlessness happens where the law isn't, not where it's so hampered by PC Gone Mad it can't even slaughter them all with jagged cyanide-axes.

The second half of this though, is justice. Justice is essential to law and order, and not just because criminals need punishing. For all the bellowing and table-thumping for reprisals, it's just as important for deterrents that innocent men get to go back to their unimmolated homes. That you aren't evicted from your home because your brother committed a crime. That you don't get splattered with indelible ink from a water cannon aimed at the crowd of looters you're rubbernecking or accidentally stumbled into. That you don't get banged up for six months for rubbernecking outside Argos. If you can be punished not for rioting but for the riots themselves, if you can be punished for anything other than your own actions, then the punishment is obviously no incentive to change them.

This is one way the disproportionate use of stop and search might have contributed to the violence. People are left feeling that they could be harassed because of the way they speak, dress or produce skin pigmentation, not whether they're actually doing anything. Just look at this letter to the Evening Standard (Wednesday 10th August 2011, David Gilbertson):

Junior Officers claim that the youths involved are largely the same youths they stop and search on a daily basis but who are "always" dealt with leniently by the courts or cautioned. As a result they consider themselves invincible.

Or even, thanks to meddling liberals, allowed to walk free simply because they hadn't done anything this time. No wonder people might feel they won't affect their guilt, let alone their treatment by the police, by their behaviour.

This is why polite, middle-class suburbanites don't torch panda cars. We see the police as allies, for good or ill. Sure, they may bang our kids up for youthful indiscretions such as entering an upmarket department store with intent to sit down and shout, they may harass anarchists or God-fearing motorists and homophobes, but overall we know they're necessary to protect us, or property and our social position. If you're left feeling that law and order isn't there to protect you, just to limit your lawful and unlawful activities alike, law and order becomes an adversary, and it's a lot harder to take the police's constant misbehaviour lying down.

5) Some Obvious Conclusions on Obviousness
Ok, so overall it's silly to say "these kids have no stake in society". Most of the things they own, use or eat are made using division of labour. Their streets get swept and maintained and their jobbies flushed away. But they didn't torch a sewage works. A riot is a rebellion against a specific aspect of society - law and order. And if the values of law and order and respecting property that is someone's livelihood are not ones you benefit from, you have nothing to gain from upholding them if there's a free TV going.

We're too quick to use these riots to hate on more criminals, especially the criminal underclass. The underclass, criminal and law-abiding, just had their neighbourhoods wrecked. The council house evictions, the squealing about stopping their benefits, the general sentiment that they should be punished extra for being poor and ungrateful shows how we still don't want to quite drop all our venom for the chavvy victims just because they've had a little bad luck. Instead, we just them to draw a line round the Bad People, point at it, and tut at how bad they are.

Ok, so a lot of this stuff isn't obvious. But it should be. And the fact that it's not is a lot of the reason the riots happened and similar things will happen again.

6) A Brief Musing on the Naming of the Phenomenon
I should like to use a song lyric, maybe the Smiths, for the title. Any suggestions would be most welcome.

Button My Collar Down, Flip It and Reverse It

2011-07-30T12:57:00.004+02:00

Well this is odd. A slimy little city-boy gets turned away from a fashionable London club for being overdressed. The lightning rod seems to have been the tie. And the Evening Standard says this

The club chain was accused of inverted snobbery after sending out warnings to members to be "cool not school".

Broker Howard Wheeldon also calls it "reverse snobbery to keep City suits out of the club".

Now doesn't this strike you as odd? Being denied entry to a club for not wearing a tie, or wearing jeans or trainers or anything too chavvy - this is a matter of course. This kind of non-inverted, non-reverse, dog-bites-man snobbery is fine - so fine it's taken as a fact of life. Wheeldon is also rather preoccupied with the class-ridden concepts of "standards" and "respectability".

This story is basically a club imposing a dress code and reserving the right to refuse entry. The implication of any kind of outrage, of even bothering to report it outside of the and-finallies, is that this snobbery is wrong because it's inverted and reversed, because it inconveniences the powerful and not the uncouth. "Snobbery" is still fair game, provided it's the right-way up and the right-way round. Just don't be so naive as to try and fuck with the rich guys in suits.

Extra thing I thought of in the shower: Inverted snobbery, reverse racism, misandry, heterophobia - all of these are interesting. When you hate on gays, you kick down the pecking order. When those bad feminists hate men, they hate up. Downwards, having whole systems of privilege and institutional discrimination behind it, is far more dangerous. Upwards, however, is far, far more noticeable because the established prejudices blend into the natural order of things with the skill of Nazi stick-insects. So when some pathetic little minority rails against you for swinging your big, white, woman-liking cock that you were born with round your expensive house, just remember you're only noticing it because it's harmless.

Porridge Pots Within Porridge Pots

2011-07-09T00:42:00.002+02:00

Imagine you're a climate scientist, working on climate change. One day in early August, you give a paper at a prestigious conference at Oxford University, and spend the afternoon relaxing in the college grounds. As you unwrap your summer salad under a cloudless sky, a man approaches you. It's James Delingpole. You make small talk, and your field of study is mentioned in passing. He notices the umbrella protruding from your bag. Suddenly he's all accusations. You obviously have no faith in your own science. You expect rain every day in Britain, even on a glorious day like this, despite all the so-called evidence you put forward that it's getting sunnier. You try to explain that you carry an umbrella “just in case”, but for all it's worth you might as well tell a golden retriever that the mean man is still holding the stick.

Now imagine you're a feminist, trying to talk about the potential threat of rape to Pete Hague, who opens his polemic at 22m46s with this

Over the years, I have genuinely tried to be sympathetic to the feminist movement.

You can tell it's going to be good, can't you? As we quickly discover (and as I've previously pointed out), Hague's two favourite words to use in his section are “rational”, to refer to himself and feminists who agree with him, and “silliness”, to refer to feminist opinions he does not share. If one was a man-hating harpy with fuzzy armpits and a chip on her shoulder about phallogocentrism, one might be inclined to find that condescending, even mildly misogynistic, in the old-fashioned hysteria-and-emotion-and-that-time-of-the-month fashion. Despite his frankly enormous rationality, Hague's own weakness is exceptionally poor reading comprehension, and I shall be repeatedly and often tediously belittling him for it as the post goes on, while referring to my own arguments as “I get it Pete, but you'd understand this much better if you spoke six languages”.

We first see these reading skills in action when a nasty feminist says “Men still have no idea what 'no' means”, which Hague seems to interpret as meaning the same as “are rapists”. This doesn't just apply to perpetrators, but to judges, juries, prosecutors and random punters reading about it in the newspaper. Even a lot of women. Society has a confused understanding of what counts as consent. Many people think it can be expressed through some kind of weird thigh-and-cleavage semaphore (hence SlutWalks). Pete hasn't really thought about that.

Speaking of victim blaming, he doesn't seem too happy with Rebecca Watson either

She made a video in which she mentioned in passing that this was a creepy way to approach her, and this seems to have kicked off a bit of a shitstorm, far beyond what the original incident, or Watson's comment on it, would seem to warrant.

The 'this' seems to refer to her making the video, which implies that it was her innocuously, friendly and downright fucking useful advice that caused the shitstorm and not, say, an arrogant know-it all bursting in, swinging his massive cock and balls all over the place and

belittling Watson's experience, in the context of the suffering women have to endure in less developed countries.

Again, he's also misread Dawkins. Dawkins refers quite specifically to Muslims, including Muslims in the West who live in households “dominated by Muslim men”. Perhaps he wants to make Dawkins sound less aggressive towards Muslims and more sympathetic towards poor people, perhaps he'd just understand this better if he spoke six languages. Either way, he's misrepresented the very man he was trying to defend

He was bitingly sarcastic, but I think he had a point.

Yes, he was. Bitingly if not that artfully. But Hague assumes all the bloody feminists are angry about is the sarcasm, rather than, say, the biting contempt for women, Muslims and especially Muslim women.

The Feminists disagreed though, and hit back hard, often citing Dawkins' privilege, race, wealth and gender

I don't think he's quite got the point of “privilege”. Being alone in an enclosed space with a strange man isn't a threat to Dawkins, because he's a man. It might be a bit more for a woman. He has no more personal, lived experience of this than I do, and this may or may not affect his ability to understand Watson's point. Many feminists are white and privileged themselves. It's not an expression of hatred, and Hague is missing the point by calling them “ad hominem” attacks.

Possibly my favourite bit is where he tries to explain it in Anglo-American “cultural differences”, because their rate of sexual assaults is 2% higher than ours, and because all feminists are Americans and look like this.

I do agree with him that it's unfair to label him a sexual predator when, from the story, all we know is that he was blithely inconsiderate. But I can't help wondering if half the time they weren't talking about “predatory behaviour” rather than labelling him

The apex of this silliness was reached by Amanda Marcotte, who claimed that any approach made by a man in a confined space is a conscious decision to use the threat of rape to increase the chances of getting a positive response. This absurd idea claims [...] an insight into the mind of every man on the planet

What she actually said was: “In sum, men who corner women know what they're doing. And yes, they are relying on the fear of rape to grease the wheels towards getting laid”. This doesn't refer to “every man on the planet” but those who “corner” women, who understand that they are doing so. What she says about fear of rape is not that they consciously use it, but that they benefit from it, knowingly or not. It's not only very different in substance, but he has drastically, changed the tone – not just to make himself sound more serious, but to make this sound like a calm, considered, theory-heavy argument from academic literature, rather than a simplified, throwaway clarification.

This he links to

something that many men have always feared about feminism: the “thought police” aspect. Again, like man-hating, I had always assumed this was a thing reactionaries made up about feminists.

This is where he really reveals himself. Pete Hague is saying absolutely nothing new. He's regurgitating the same old and tired anti-feminist goatwank that people with reading skills have refuted time and time again. He just modernises it by opening with“I really want to support them and believe they're not all man-hating mind-Nazis”, which is at least a more nuanced version of “I'm all for women's lib, but...”.

Then he gets onto Schrödinger's Rapist, and his English teacher starts to have serious concerns and contacts his parents. The post

treats unknown men as wave functions, with the potential to collapse into either a rapist or a non-rapist state.

Straight up, he's missed the idea that it might refer to the cat metaphor, as opposed to the actual physics.

A nice little solipsist metaphor that completely disregards the notion that men might have any intention or agency of their own.

He doesn't really get that the thing about the cat is that we don't know if it's dead or not. He seems to think that the “all men are potential rapists” means that as x% of men commit rape, there is an x% chance that you, as an individual man, will commit rape RIGHT NOW. If he spoke six languages, he'd probably realise that it just meant there's an x% chance of this complete stranger being one of the ones that rapes people. Complex, I know.

The bad astronomer described this situation as a “potential sexual assault” without any proof at all that this man had any such intentions.

This is the very interesting part. Largely, I think, because he's misunderstood it as being about the specific man, and partly because of his paranoid fantasies about the Thought Police, he sees the entire situation purely in terms of the man. The idea that the woman's perception and interpretation might be equally important, equally valid and, yes, equally rational doesn't even cross his mind. A friendly chat about privilege before recording could have set him straight before he started being all bullish and condescending about it.

He then pulls out the “what if you said this about a black person?” argument, thinking, genuinely I believe, that this will end the argument once and for all. I find this argument initially quite alluring, so I'm going to tell you another story or two:

You're a man. You get on a late-night tube, going to a not-particularly-interesting area of London. The only passengers in your carriage are you and another white man. At the next stop, he gets off and a gentleman of colour takes his place. To pass the time on the tube, you usually play with your Very Expensive SmartPhone. You know people who've been mugged for these, so you're naturally a little wary about being alone with strangers at night. But only a little.

You're a lady-girl. You get into a carriage on a late-night tube, going to a not-particularly-interesting area of London. The only passengers in your carriage are you and another woman. At the next stop, she gets off and a gentleman takes her place. You have a vagina. You know people who've been raped, so you're naturally a little wary about being alone with strangers at night. Often more than a little.

Now, Pete, in the second scenario, while the woman is still unlikely to be harrassed or assaulted (very unlikely in fact – we're only potential rapists you know!), I'm sure you'd agree she is under more threat from the man than she was from the woman, even if it's only a rise to about 0.005%. This is for the following reasons:

If we take Kinsey's estimate that around 10% of people are less than entirely straight, this means this means the man is nine times more likely to want to have sex with her than the woman, even we completely disregard any possibility of bisexual or heteroflexible men.
Should the man wish to have sex with her, and should he also be willing to even without her consent, he is significantly more likely than the woman to be able to physically overpower her.
Even if she believes she could best him, a man is more likely to believe he can overpower her, and therefore more likely to try in the first place.
Cocks. Useful if not essential for rape, I've heard.
Due to social conventions about making the first move, a man is more likely to approach her, and so the risk of an aggressive reaction to a 'no' is a greater danger.
To my knowledge, lesbian sexual assault is not particularly prevalent, though this may be a grossly unfair myth.

So Pete, if you consider these situations at all analogous, which you do, this obviously means you believe it to be at least nine times more likely, though probably much more so, that a black person will steal your mobile that a white. Please tell me you didn't mean that, and that you'd just utterly failed to read Schrödinger's Rapist properly or think about the issues in any kind of depth.

Anyway, he blames the victim a little more and a little harder, and wags a token finger at Dawkins:

Watson reporting this was kind of tactless and, as some have suggested, it had an element of bragging to it, which didn't help. Dawkins probably shouldn't have made such a sarcastic comment. But this incident does need to be put into perspective with the horrors that women suffer around the world.

And then, for the first time in the podcast, with a sigh that would make Johann Hari proud, he manages to make me feel condescended to:

And feminists. If you want support from men, then please stop calling us rapists, or potential rapists, or anything else like that.

I am a man. I support feminists in an awful lot of things. Not only do I do this after reading Schrödinger's Rapist, I actually treated Schrödinger's Rapist as advice on chatting up strange women without scaring them, in the confidence that I'm not any kind of a rapist, nor had that been implied. The reason I can reconcile this with my penis is because

I understand what a “potential rapist” is.
I take the time to try and understand the feminist arguments that bamboozle me slightly or initially come across as a bit man-hatey.
I speak six languages, and so am able to understand relatively simple concepts written in plain English.
Through intense research, I can now even distinguish between a man (head, two legs, two arms, one winkle, usually) and a situation (location and set of circumstances, no winkle, usually).

So anyway, I think the moral of the story is to read once quickly for gist then again more slowly for details, that direct quotes are safest and indirect reported speech is for people with some vague comprehension skills, and that you should always make sure you actually vaguely get what a thing is about before you get all hot and bothered and 1970's retro-sexist about it.

Update: Comment off the man himself:

Magic Porridge Pot

2011-07-06T23:51:00.009+02:00

A lot has been said on this Dawkins thing. This is good and full of links if you missed it. But I think we're all focusing so much on the frantic, privileged screaming that we miss the extra reasons why you were right to hate Dawkins. Also why this Skepchick woman seems really sound and quite lovely. Firstly, watching her account of the situation (here, 4m30s-ish), you notice her tone and her attitude towards the guy who approached her. She didn't call him a rapist. Or a harasser. Not even a potential rapist or harasser. As she points out herself, her most vicious condemnation of his behaviour is "guys, don't do that". This is a woman who receives rape threats as a matter of course, and that's the most venom she can muster.

This is how to deal with privilege. Privilege is invisible to the privileged. The guy in question probably doesn't worry about being assaulted in lifts very much, so the idea of that kind of threat probably didn't cross his radar. The rule of "don't sexually proposition women in a confined space without exits" had crossed my mind, but not before reading Schroedinger's Rapist, and lifts had never come into it. Now I have*. Thanks Richard. I've learned. Calling out privilege isn't, and shouldn't be, about making someone feel uncomfortable about who they are and what they don't even know they don't know. It's about wondering if that person has ever considered this and saying, well, "guys, don't do that". Calling out privilege isn't an attack. It's a lesson. In this case, it's a lesson on how not to massively intimidate a woman you want to have sex with you.

So Richard Dawkins is basically attacking a woman for giving out really useful pulling advice. You'd have thought that'd satisfy the guy's daily quota of being an arrogant cockgraze, but no.

Dear Muslima

Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and . . . yawn . . . don't tell me yet again, I know you aren't allowed to drive a car, and you can't leave the house without a male relative, and your husband is allowed to beat you, and you'll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with.

Only this week I heard of one, she calls herself Skep"chick", and do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. Of course she said no, and of course he didn't lay a finger on her, but even so . . .

And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about! For goodness sake grow up, or at least grow a thicker skin.

Richard

Note, first of all, that this Muslima (Richard Dawkins is frightfully clever and knows the Arabic for a Muslim lady. Let us not forget this) isn't a specific one or even from a specific country, she's more of a generic hodge-podge of all the things Islam does to women, and there's probably only one or two places in the world where you'd get all of them at once.

More importantly, note how the generic hodge-podge is of things Islam does to women. Women do not, for example, make up around fifty per cent of Islam, nor are they in any way important to its reproductive cycle. Richard Dawkins would like you to conveniently forget this person is a Muslim. So, Muslima, if you're listening: Richard Dawkins hates you. Richard Dawkins thinks you're a delusional, superstitious moron. He finds you revolting in your stupid fucking bin-liner. He thinks you're a "great evil". Obviously it's sad that you get cut and stoned and beaten, but the important thing right now is that a feminist gets put in her place.

I've seen this kind of solidarity before. You know the kind where the real victim is the pampered Western liberals. Richard Dawkins strikes a blow for women of colour, by grabbing one by the leg and beating a white feminist repeatedly on the tits with her.

Afterthought: Dawkins' later dismissal of the come-on as "only words" is just as thick. A major failing of language is to look at speaking and listening as one-way streets. You say what you mean, and if they understand it the wrong way, they fail. But the game is much more involved than that. When we speak, we constantly anticipate the other person's understanding based on conventions and context. We stick -ed on the end, safe in the knowledge that they'll interpret it as a past event, passive or hypothetical. We understand instinctively that saying "tea?" means more in a kitchen than in a swimming pool. We avoid big words around small children. If we fail to understand how our language will be received, we've failed to use it properly on the most basic level.

It's the same with speech acts. Inviting a person for coffee-which-probably-means-sex is an action. A verbal one, a communicative one, and an entirely non-violent one, but an action nonetheless. Lift Bloke made Rebecca Watson aware and conscious of the fact that he wanted to knob her. He didn't - because he couldn't and because no-one can - make her aware that he had no intention of raping her. He failed to read the context, and failed to anticipate how he would change the context by speaking. I'm quite willing to believe he did this innocently, in the same way you wouldn't hold it against me if I accidentally offended some Americans by misusing 'fag'. But he did it all the same and so richly deserves to be taken aside and given some friendly advice.

And for Richard "Shit Off Jesus" Dawkins to completely dismiss the complex linguistics of human pre-fuck ritual, it's, well, a bit dogmatic and unscientific if you ask me.

*What I've concluded is that the best approach is probably to pretend she's not there all the way up, and then as she gets out on her floor and the doors are open, go "oh, by the way...". Pretend like you were too nervous to talk or something. This is in everyone's interest as, if she says 'no' straight away, you'll have to stew in the awkwardness all the way to your floor until you wish you'd just farted in there instead. But also she's less likely to be scared of you and thus want to hump you less.

Cupcaeks and Ponys and Chainsaws and GUNZ

2011-07-02T17:44:00.007+02:00

Just twat this with my twitter:

It's great being male. I can bake whatever the fuck I want without making any kind of a statement about my attitude to feminism.

and got pointed to this article by this lady.

It's a weird article. It links to this blog post, which starts off vaguely feminist but (seriously) turns into a venomous diatribe against "cold, indifferent", "eerily reptilian and unfeeling" non-bleeding birds. It advises young women on their posture and punctuation. It's also peppered with stereotypes about adult women and men:

Let him take you out on a date, maybe not on a walk or an Xbox session, even if you are, God help you, addicted to LA Noire. Meet your friend for wine instead of fro-yo one night.

Apparently women only play video games as a favour to men, and I never had to drag my ex off Spellforce 2: Shadow Wars at any point in our time together. When two women get drunk together, they under no circumstances drink bitter. And old women are, of course, unseamly:

Nobody's asking you to be matronly. Laura Bush is no longer in the public eye-as I write this, she's cheerfully douching somewhere far away, in private. You can make your own modern womanhood-there's no need to fear the dowager.

And it's just generally got this air about it of screaming "YOU'RE THE WRONG KIND OF WOMAN" at anyone she thinks is too childish.

Anyway, I'll concede. Cupcakes are bollocks. I hate the texture of icing and the sound of meringue is like fingernails on a blackboard to me. But cooking and eating cake are both highly enjoyable pastimes, and this may go some way to explain the motives of cupcake feminists. Rather than this theory

It's all to the same ends— women are trying to broadcast to men that we won't bite their dicks off. It's just that now, instead of lipstick, we're wearing glittery lip gloss, or that shit you get in the drug store that tastes like Dr. Pepper.

I suspect that, in a manner similar to the sex-positive branch of feminism, a key factor underlying the tendency to bake cupcakes is because creating and devouring delicious foodstuffs is a fucking brilliant hobby.

Besides, you want to see the infantilisation of men. Girls, you're way, WAY behind. The fact is, I don't see My Little Pony being made into a multi-million dollar film-franchise, and this might be because women are infantilising themselves to mirror us. So why do we do it? Well, it's partly a reaction to pop-feminism. If women are all intelligent and mature and serious and career-oriented, then surely manly qualities are silliness, childishness, pisstaking and neglecting work for Call of Duty 2. The pantomime drag of masculinity sends women a message saying "Look! I am a heterosexual! If you were to fancy me, there is a serious possibility I would reciprocate. Therefore consider me from the outset as a potential sexual partner". Which is handy. Capitalism associates maturity with professionalism and ambition, so the best retreat from your soul-crushing job is retreat into childhood. Also, and perhaps most importantly, it's fun.

The thing is, for someone who describes herself as "in general, a Funny Lady", Julie Klausner is taking this whole process very seriously. Most people who actually take part in it don't. Probably the best example of this is Hyperbole and a Half. Much of the time, it's hilariously, heartbreakingly cute. But it's also peppered with supermanly awesome, not just to take the piss, but also terrifying monsters and death blood killing attacks. It's self-infantilising, deliberately, consciously and to both genders to the point where it's often hard to distinguish one from the other. And it's funny, because irony and stuff.

And, as I constantly blather on about, irony means a lot more than we give it credit for. One of the most pathetic, wrong-headed, essentialising things I've seen for a while was the Real Men Don't Buy Girls campaign, and look how much mockery of traditional masculinity they deploy in their mildly amusing videos. The campaign genuinely seems to believe in Real Manly Manhood for Actual Real Men as something worth aspiring to and a serious way of promoting a serious issue, but still ironises images of masculinity through hyperbole. It's also a keystone of German humour. The reason we can get away with it, the reason Ashton Kutcher can entrench prescriptive masculinity while simultaneously sending it up, the reason a German can call you a big girl's blouse while mocking the entire concept of big girl's blousehood, is because it's part of the game. Perhaps more so in America than here in the Kingdom of the Sarcastic Understatement, but ridiculous hyperbole is a masculine quality going back as far as the Mesopotamians. Irony, flippancy and not taking your sexuality seriously are all straight masculine qualities. Women are disadvantaged by it. Queers struggle to accept and define it. Transpeople reject it yet still have it nailed to them against their will. But if you're a boy who knobs girls, gender identity is all good clean fun.

The fact that women are not acting like Serious Grown-Up Feminists, that they're dabbling in pastel-pink, cinnamon-dusted, kitten-soaked femininity is not necessarily a sign of disadvantage. If anything, it shows confidence, like gay men who publicly and semi-ironically play up their gayness. It shows women no longer have to assert themselves by taking womanhood seriously. They're joining men on the fun, flippant side of the gender binary because, well, it's a lot better than the serious, professional one. Though I'm still not sure if it's all a good thing. Do we joke about it because we're all so mature about sexuality these days that nobody takes it entirely seriously? Or have we just updated our model of gender to allow ourselves room to arse about exaggerating, so long as the underlying message of Men Are Tough and Women Are Pretty gets through? Anyway, I suppose the moral of the story is this:

If you like cupcakes and enjoy cookery, bake cupcakes. If you dislike either, don't. Ignore feminism.

Abuse and Taking Advantage

2011-05-21T15:43:00.005+02:00

I don't normally wade in on thieving Tory gobshite-in-residence Nadine Dorries, but this quote reminded me of something even worser.

A lot of girls, when sex abuse takes place, don’t realise until later that that was a wrong thing to do … Society is so over-sexualised that I don’t think people realise that if we did empower this message into girls, imbued this message in schools, we’d probably have less sex abuse.

Why us boys don't need to be "empowered" a bit too also confuses me - we're also under a wee bit of pressure to get laid whether we want to or not, and we don't even have the crippling terror of being called a slut to balance that out. I for one would have liked to be told I wasn't a failure for not having all the exciting teenage sex I imagined my peers were having. But what could be worse than Nadine Dorries, you wonder. Why, Westlife of course. And what could be worse than that? The one with the annoying face going solo.

I like you just the way you are
Drunk as shit dancing at the bar.
I like it,
and I can't wait to get you home,
so I can do some damage.
I like you just the way you are.
Jump in the back seat of my car,
cos I like it
and I can't wait to get you home
so I can take advantage.

Cath Elliot was quick to call this a "date-rape ditty". Obviously "do some damage" is, at best, a pretty fucked-up way to describe sex. But "take advantage" is ambiguous. Even if we assume it's taking advantage of the woman and not the situation, is he taking advantage of her because she's too drunk to consent, or because she's drunk enough to consent? He says "your imagination takes full flight" and "even if you go too far", and she quite specifically "jumps" into the back of his car, so the woman (meant to be his wife I think) seems to be an active and enthusiastic participant. At what point is your mental capacity reduced, by alcohol or anything else, that you forfeit your ability to consent? This is why "taking advantage" is such a sticky concept. It could be raping someone in a vulnerable state, or it could be in the more rakish, Victorian sense of persuading a woman to have sex when her cross-legged, Angel-in-the-House decorum is somehow lowered. Either makes sense, as long as there is advantage to be had.

In the same way, Nadine Dorries is fairly cagey about what "abuse" actually is. Stavvers' raises an important point:

On Planet Dorries, sex abuse is caused by girls not saying no.

There is a curious logical somersault here, the idea that rape can be prevented entirely by saying “no”, although it plays in perfect harmony with the popular notion that rape is only rape when the victim (always a woman, apparently) says “no”. No no, no rape. Dorries has taken this to its logical extreme: that uttering the n-word will magically vanquish all rape.

I'd take this further and say that anyone even vaguely feminist should stop saying "you can say no" and start saying "you don't have to say yes", what with rape being based on consent not refusal and all. But Nadine Dorries isn't particularly interested in rape here. Her "abuse" still has this strange implication of getting girls to consent to sex. Yes, two people fucking too young because they think that's what they are meant to do is a bad thing, but it's rather condescending to pretend that a 15-year-old boy isn't going to be just as confused about what he wants as his girlfriend.

Both the concept of "taking advantage" of an inebriated or enamoured woman and Nadine Dorries' idea of "sex abuse" are based on the assumption that there is sex women and girls shouldn't be having, regardless of whether they want it. Fierce moralisation over women's sexuality, policing their bodies, and the hangovers these leave in our language confuse the issue of consent. Not only does this mean soft-headed religious conservatives can pull off the deft backflip of invoking rape so as to tell girls not to consent, it makes it possible for predatory fratboy shitehawks like McFadden to bypass the distinction between horny-drunk and non-consenting. These concepts don't draw a line between willing and unwilling participants, but between good girls and sluts, between women who are fucked and women who aren't. Consent is sort of irrelevant.

The A-Z of Political Correctness

2011-05-15T22:49:00.003+02:00

By James Delingpole, aged 12¼.

A is for Alphabetised Lists
Of course, as I found out writing for the Telegraph AND Mail, you're not allowed to say a WORD against so-called Political Correctness unless you do it in the form of an alphabetised list. Political Correctness gone mad!

B is for Blacking Up
Call me racist but I really don't see the problem with this.

C is for Cunts
Though I suppose we have to call them “feminists” these days. Listen love, you've got the vote, now sit down and stop trying to influence politics.

D is for David Attenborough
Compare his earlier series in the sixties to his work now. See how Politically Correct tyranny has aged him.

E is for European Union
Even the name sounds positively Orwellian.

F is for Facial Cumshots
When I was but a priapic young adolescent passing round a sticky VHS tape, the actors would spend their wad in her mouth, on her vadge or up her arse like normal. Why do the likes of Bonnie Greer and Trevor Phillips feel they have to force this bukkake nonsense on us?

G is for Gryffindor
I think I hate the sanctimonious little do-gooders more than the pseuds in Ravenclaw and those Hufflepuff morons combined.

H is for Hitler, Adolf
Would have loved Political Correctness. Enough said, you'd think, except the PC Brigade will call “Godwin's Law” on you if you dare to point this fact out.

I is for Incorrect, Politically
I am one of the few courageous journalists who can honestly claim to be COMPLETELY incorrect in every column I have ever written.

J is for Jif
You have to call it Cif now. WHERE WILL IT END?

K is for Kestrel
You can't say “windfucker” any more. Pathetic.

L is for Lost
What the fuck was going on with this whole series? It made no fucking SENSE! And don't get me started on the ending of Inception.

M is for Magnets
Science has yet to produce a satisfactory explanation for how these work. Explain that.

N is for Niggers
You have to spell it 'niggaz' now or else they get offended.

O is for Old Rope
Is it just me or has the price really plummeted on this stuff?

P is for Political Correctness
You need only read this excellent article to understand how insidious the creep of Political Correctness is. It affects so many disparate aspects of our lives you'd think it was completely made up by right-wing fantasists to embody their worst, most vivid visions of what the Left gets up to.

Q is for Quran
It says on page ONE for Christ's sake, “Kill them all and rape their toddlers”, yet the likes of John Snow and Krishnan “Hussein” Guru Murthy just hum and haw and wring their hands.

R is for Russian Roulette
Banned in schools now. They claim for so-called “health and safety” reasons, but it's almost certainly on the say-so of the Ukranians.

S is for Scientists
Islamo-Marxist quislings, to a man.

T is for Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles
NEVER got a Leonardo that Christmas, did I? Had to make do with Raphael. Toys R Us had “sold out” of Leonardo, my dad said. Sold out to the EU's pro-red propaganda more like.

U is for Universities
Seems now all you need to get into Oxbridge is three or more A grades at A-Level, a glowing interview, plus genuine skill, dedication and interest in your subject. I hate to imagine the chavs that are now flooding the place.

V is for Vaginas
Have you ever seen one? Terrifying.

W is for Winnie the Pooh
As a bear of very little brain, long words bothered him, and so like your esteemed author he would certainly have little truck with Political Correctness.

X is for THAT BITCH RUINED MY LIFE, YET SHE HAS THE FUCKING AUDACITY TO PUT A RESTRAINING ORDER ON ME
What do you mean do I want a tissue? Just fuck off. Yes, you you cunt, fuck off. Leave me alone alright? I'm fine.

Y is for Your Best Porno Mag, Your Mom Threw Away
Too long have we taken this right for granted. I for one am quite willing to fight for it.

Z is for Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
I could never find all the bastard skulltulas. Never. What the fuck, Nanny State?

A Man's Man's Man's Word

2011-05-12T02:09:00.003+02:00

A few more semi-coherent, largely reasonable but provocatively-worded points about this SlutWalk thing:

If you dress like a slut, you will be treated like a slut
Being a slut can get you raped
Men can't be sluts
Feminists like Cath Elliot have no claim to the word
There is no justification for promiscuity

If you dress like a slut, you will be treated like a slut
Or, more to the point, it's not actually necessary to be a slut to be labelled one. Just as hyperassimilated second-generation Christian converts fell foul of the Nuremburg Laws, just as Sikhs suffer Islamophobia, just as straights can get queer-bashed, sluttiness isn't something you choose. It's something slut-shamers allocate to you. To become a slut, all you need do is be labelled one.

Please note that there's not a specific way to dress like a slut. It's fashionable for women's clothing to suggest availability, so there's a fag-paper's breadth between slut and fashionable. The way to dress like a slut is to be a slut, and wear clothes. Don't flatter yourself, sluts, that you have any say in the matter.

Being a slut can get you raped
Obviously, as mentioned above, there's not actually anything you can do to avoid becoming a slut. Deciding whether you are or aren't one isn't really your prerogative. But try to avoid it all the same, as it's a known fact that sluts can't say no and therefore being one may be seen as constituting consent.

Men can't be sluts
You might say that gay or even straight men can get called "sluts" too. But, I wonder, is there a history of gay men using deliberately feminine terms for themselves and each other? Even slut? Could you maybe call a straight man a slut in a feminising sense? As in "a man who puts it about in the manner of a distasteful woman"? Just being used on men doesn't remove its reference to women, the amusing absurdity of using it for a man showing how clearly it refers to a woman. So if anything a little humour can help entrench it.

Feminists like Cath Elliot have no claim to the word
I'm thinking specifically about what she says here

Because of their history, and because I’m a feminist, ['slut' and 'cunt'] are words I would never use to describe any other woman, just as they are words I would never ever use to describe myself.

Which is reasonable enough, but I've never trusted avoidance tactics. Even if anyone had any particular moral right to determine how other people use their own language, good luck persuading hardline misogynists to use more feminist terminology. Good luck switching off the linguistic auto-pilot of the people who don't read feminist blogs. Language is not shaped through sitting round deciding what words are ok and which aren't. Language is shaped by usage, and words belong to the people who use and understand them. If you decline to say a word, you forfeit any ability to shape its meaning through the contexts you say it in. If she really means that "feminism is about liberation, not capitulation", she just capitulated a perfectly good four-letter combo to woman-haters.

There is no justification for promiscuity
Aside from that, the problem with 'slut' isn't like the problem with, say 'Nigger'. It's not a word for an ok thing to be that has been given nasty connotations through several centuries of slavery, violence and systematic discrimination. The signified, not the signifier is the problem. Someone who grew up being called 'dyke' or 'faggot' can try and reclaim these words, because their objection is mostly to the set of sounds or letters. 'Slut' goes deeper. The very concept of 'slut' is rotten. A slut is a woman who is too promiscuous. Sometimes we like it - I believe pornography tends to get excited about "sluts" from time to time - but I doubt anyone would be surprised that our attitude to sex leaves room to have no respect for sluts as human beings, but still like the idea of fucking them. "Promiscuity" shouldn't exist. Without us specifying a normal sexual appetite or number of partners, promiscuity and sluts just wouldn't make any bloody sense. I mean, we don't have a word for someone who scratches the end of their nose too much.

On balance then, I'm in favour of the SlutWalk. Even though absurdities like sluttiness need to be ironised, misapplied and generally mashed about until they mean precisely fuck-all, this relatively straight-faced use of the word still has its purpose. We don't just need to break the word. We need to break the word's connections to rape. We need to break the connections between dressing like one and being one - and dressing up like a slut for the purpose of serious frigid-feminist hairy-armpit demo action is going to bollocks up all kinds of fun preconceptions.

But let's not get bogged down with the word. This isn't really about sluts, because sluts don't exist. It's about lots of sex, multiple partners, revealing clothes and provocative behaviour. It's about asserting women's right to do them, and the right for them not to be considered consent. Once we've sorted that out, what we call it should be largely academic.

PS Oglaf is good at the word 'slut'.

Rushing Dehumanisation

2011-05-11T00:05:00.004+02:00

A weird aspect of the death of Osama Bin Laden that I've noticed. Naturally, we went all out to dehumanise him. If not pretty, it's fairly unsurprising. Obviously dehumanisation is bad for what it allows us to do to anyone we perceive as less than us. But also if we pretend to ourselves that those who do evil things aren't human, we will only ever underestimate the evil that we as humans are capable of, and so probably won't be that good at preventing it. This is why I don't like dehumanisation: it lets humanity off too lightly.

But that's not what I found weird. The first weird sign was The Sun calling him a "beast". Dehumanising, yes, and ten points to Slytherin for that, but it's dehumanising in the wrong way. "Beast", to my ears at least, is not appropriate for terrorists. It's for dehumanising sex offenders and people that steal Billy Bunter's cake. I doubt Bin Laden had time for either. Plus aside from that, "beast" is a bit of a mild term for a mass-murdering religious fucknut.

Second was the man on Question Time (at around 18m13s, there may still be time to see it on iPlayer), who said

I just wanted to say that I'm very offended by Mr Ashdown's referral to Osama Bin Laden as a "man"

Aside from the fact that he later uses the term himself, this is strange, especially followed up with "let's tell it like it is", which you might expect to be vaguely scientific and take into account his human DNA.

What disturbs and slightly baffles me about both of these is that dehumanisation has become the norm. We've obviously been doing it too long. It's not enough to demonise your defeated enemy, to show him as less than a man. To even refer to him once as a human is offensive (we may have been over how easily ultra-PC right-wingers take offence), while the quality of dehumanisation can go utterly to pot, just so long as nobody has the audacity to call Osama Bin Laden what he was - a (shitty, shitty) human being.

We're no longer at the point where it is acceptable to see our enemies as less than people. We're now not allowed to do anything else.

Asking For It

2011-05-08T00:40:00.003+02:00

What with the Slutwalk, which I reckon looks interesting at least, I thought I'd have a look at an argument I've seen for rape victims bearing responsibility. I'm sure you've seen it before. It goes

"Ok so imagine you park your car in a dodgy area right, and you leave it unlocked yeah, and the keys are in the ignition, and the car's in a really short skirt and stuff. Obviously it gets nicked right, and your reaction is like "awww I'm such an idiot, it's my fault for parking it there, unlocked, drunk, and with a history of promiscuity"

And of course, there are things women can do to avoid getting raped, like staying at home all the time, ideally tied up in a sack with their vaginas removed and kept in a safe. And should they leave the safe unlocked, yes, they are by their own actions, slightly increasing their own chances of being raped.

It's true that there's something icky about using a crime against property as an analogy for a crime against a human, but I don't think that's the problem. After all, we'll justify all kinds of things with an analogy about a bloody omelette. It's also true that only the rapist is to blame for rape - though perhaps the reason this is often ignored is that the criminal's responsibility for the crime is too obvious to bother mentioning. Where this analogy falls down is that it's a little too apt. Say (for the sake of argument, as it's actually bollocks) that excessive drinking puts women at greater risk of rape, in the same way as parking your car in a dodgy area puts it at greater risk of theft.

Would your stupidity in parking your car like that diminish the thief's criminality?
Who's going to say "well, there's no point in pressing charges, as you were asking for your car to get nicked"?
Who's going to say "well, you can hardly blame the joyriders for stealing it, seeing as it was unlocked"?
What counsel for the defence is ever going to argue "my client cannot be held responsible for the theft of said vehicle, given its position, its being unlocked and the presence of the keys in the ignition"?
And don't think you, as the victim of the car theft, will have to answer a single question about what cars you might have owned in the past.

But does blaming the victim actually shift some off the rapist's shoulders? Would rape victims who "asked for it" feel discouraged from pressing charges? Would excuses be made for their attackers based on the victims' dress or behaviour? Would the perceived sluttiness of a rape victim be used to discredit her case and might she, possibly, have to answer a couple of minor questions about her sexual history?

It strikes me that this car-theft analogy works far better as an argument against the victim's responsibility. So much so that it must have been invented by a feminist, and borrowed by victim-blamers who thought it sounded clever. They can't have thought it up themselves, given how much they struggle with figurative speech. Because generally, the idiom "asking for it" - be it theft, murder or a slap in the face - is understood as just that: an idiom. A figure of speech. Yet for some reason, when a woman asks for it by smiling at you while having nice legs, suddenly the metaphor gets taken very, very literally, to the point where it basically counts as consent. Well, I'm afraid it's not how blame works. It's not how analogies work, it's not even how cars work, and it's definitely not how consent works.

PS This song is awesome.

When You've All Wiped Yourselves Down

2011-04-30T11:50:00.008+02:00

I came home yesterday, after carefully avoiding everything, to find that there's a facebook page dedicated to roughly sodomising Pippa Middleton. More searching of the terms 'smash', 'back', 'doors' and 'in' reveal there's a similar one to her title-heavy sister. There's also one for the lovely Cheryl Cole. I'm pretty sure most of the major female celebrities have had a smash-your-back-doors-in page dedicated to them at some point.

Now, whether or not these women would like having their back doors smashed in or not is sort of irrelevant. Even if they would, they'd probably be - as well as obviously very flattered as anyone would be - a little bit creeped out at the thought of over a thousand randy internet-gnomes formulating action plans over pictures of their bottoms.

"Ah!" you might say, "but if you get rich and famous off the back of your fantastic arse, then surely your arse has to give something back to the community in the form of boisterous anal sex fantasies". Which is arguably true. Cheryl Cole probably puts an awful lot of gym-work into her arse and other bits, knowing their importance to her professional career. Her Future-Maj probably wanted to join the royal family, even if it was only secondary to marrying her boyfriend. But Pippa Middleton. I'm not sure how Pippa Middleton asked for her fame. Pippa Middleton has been catapulted into some rather intimate, slightly degrading, and disturbingly public sexual fantasies and why? Because she went to her sister's wedding in a nice dress.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I'm a republican.

More Bollocks About Real Men

2011-04-13T13:53:00.006+02:00

A friend just stuck this up on her bookface.

This, I find in parts infuriating and in parts relieving. Relieving because I no longer have to feel the slightest bit of guilt about the hellish human trafficking industry. I own a penis. A real one, made of actual penis flesh and penis blood, with which I was born. So now I realise I'm off the hook for the abhorrent transportation of young women, often children, for a lifetime of sexual slavery, which is perpetrated exclusively by women, transmen and replicants.

But then I also find it offensive, counter-productive, personally offensive and, above all, bollocks. The problem with men who use trafficked prostitutes isn't that they're not "real". It's that they are nasty, rapey, self-centred little shits. The insinuation of "real men don't buy girls" and "real men don't rape" is that, because a man can't acquire the free, consensual use of a vagina for an evening, he's somehow failed at his own gender.

The theoretical problem with this is that it conflates all sex work with trafficking - "buying" women as slaves with paying women for sexual services. This feeds into a general hostility towards sex-workers themselves which even a lot of feminists buy into. But it is also incredibly offensive and insulting to me personally. I'm not very good with women. I've had one, in total. I'm probably worse at getting laid than most of the Fake Men who rape or use prostitutes. I never quite learned the whole pulling/seduction thing, and I'd be lying if I said this made me happy. But, since I'm flat broke and limit myself to consensual sex on ethical grounds, this basically translates to me not having sex. If Gerard Butler and all these other halfwits are to be believed, my moral failing is the same as that of someone who pays to rape people, and that the main thing wrong with the people trafficking industry is that it fails to fly the penis flag high enough. So don't look for a picture of me with a sign any time soon.

Edit: Quiet Riot Girl has some fairly sound ideas about it too.

Me Me Me Me Bloody ME

2011-04-12T00:22:00.006+02:00

So they've done it then. The French have gone and banned the burka, and it's probably only a matter of time before The Generic Republic of Muslamistan retaliates with a ban on berets, stripy sweaters and stinking of garlic. So why have they bothered, apart from crude electioneering and appeasing their far right? Obviously we can rule out actual freedom and dignity for Muslim women as, well, how the fuck does it actually make anyone any freer? Are any oppressed housewives really going to be saved? If they've adopted the full veil of their own accord, then how does it save them to force them to strip it off? If they've been forced into it by their husbands, then their relationship with their husbands isn't going to be changed by whether or not we can see their nose, except they might just stop leaving the house at all. As I've said before, it's a ban on a symbol of oppression, not oppression itself. A ban on the outer, public signs of misogyny that does nothing to make it go away. Ok, so maybe the odd wife-beater will realise the black eyes will show up in public, but let's be honest with ourselves, and look who it is getting handcuffed for freedom.

This reminds me of the Daily Star's take on the humanitarian crisis in Lampedusa:

ITALIAN Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi last night effectively gave 20,000 Arab refugees free passage to the UK.

There's another clue if we look at why we're not banning it here: it would run "contrary to British instincts". Our tabloids can't look at sickening fear, desperation and poverty abroad without worrying about our ethnic purity being soiled. Our government declines mandatory face-nudity, because it's not quite compatible with our petty, sense of arbitrary national identity. The French are so outraged by women's oppression that they demand not to have to look at it any more. We see the injustices suffered by Arabs and Muslims the world over, and the first thing we think is "how can we stop it affecting us?".

We really are a ghastly bunch of self-centred cunts in Europe, aren't we?

Like Irony, but without the Irony

2011-03-10T23:42:00.005+01:00

No means yes and yes means anal, apparently. I'll sheepishly admit to finding it vaguely funny - I'm a sucker for well-crafted dark humour, and this is a wickedly pithy way to say "I am an impressively abhorrent and misogynistic excuse for a human being". Mark Kimmel's analysis:

This chant assumes that anal sex is not pleasurable for women; that if she says yes to intercourse, you have to go further to an activity that you experience as degrading to her, dominating to her, not pleasurable to her. This second chant is a necessary corollary to the first.

Thanks to feminism, women have claimed the ability to say both “no” and “yes.” Not only have women come to believe that “No Means No,” that they have a right to not be assaulted and raped, but also that they have a right to say “yes” to their own desires, their own sexual agency. Feminism enabled women to find their own sexual voice.

Sometimes, as in the case of the now-famous Karen Owen at Duke, they can be as explicitly raunchy as men, and evaluate men’s bodies in exactly the way that men evaluate women’s bodies. (I agree with Ariel Levy that women imitating men’s drinking and sexual predation is a rather impoverished style of liberation.)

This is confusing to many men, who see sex not as mutual pleasuring, but about the “girl hunt,” a chase, a conquest. She says no, he breaks down her resistance. Sex is a zero-sum game. He wins if she puts out; she loses.

That women can like sex, and especially like good sex, and are capable of evaluating their partners changes the landscape. If women say “yes,” where’s the conquest, where’s the chase, where’s the pleasure? And where’s the feeling that your victory is her defeat? What if she is doing the scoring, not you?

Thus the “Yes Means Anal” part of the chant. Sex has become unsafe for men–women are agentic and evaluate our performances. So if “No Means Yes” attempts to make what is safe for women unsafe, then “Yes Means Anal” makes what is experienced as unsafe for men again safe–back in that comfort zone of conquest and victory. Back to something that is assumed could not possibly be pleasurable for her. It makes the unsafe safe–for men.

What Kimmel doesn't really emphasise is that this chant was intended as a joke, and this important. The fact that it is a joke doesn't make it harmless and devoid of meaning. If anything, it adds a couple of layers of meaning. Kimmel's is a brilliant analysis because it shows that even ironically offensive jokes still mean something. Just because you phrase it as a joke doesn't necessarily mean it's not also your real opinion.

Probably Not Equals

2011-03-07T22:02:00.006+01:00

Equals. I didn't really like it. Ok, so I approve of the broad message of "is there bollocks sexual equality these days, does anybody actually believe that?". But there is nothing in this world annoys me quite as much as a point I agree with made badly, and this was a shambles, for the following reasons.

It opens with M telling Bond "we're equals, aren't we, 007?". You're not. You're his boss. If my boss opened a conversation with "we're equals, aren't we" I'd hold out my hand for the P45.
There's something slightly ludicrous about a man being lectured about the pay gap by someone who probably earns more than him, or being told about his increased professional chances by someone who, although not strictly in "political office" or a "company director", is probably one of the most powerful people in the country.
The majority of women do not terrify men. Judy Dench has made a living out of the most terrifying voice in British drama. Not really representative.
An point about women being judged for perceived promiscuity is slightly undermined if you follow it up with a sly dig at 007's promiscuity.
It's a bit callous telling a man he has "hardly any chance of falling victim to sexual assault" when he's been stripped, hogtied and genitally tortured with strong implications of homoeroticism and feminisation.
There's slight distinction between considering what it might be like to be one and dressing up as one.
He doesn't even dress up as a very good one. He looks like Daniel Craig in a wig and a dress. Not even the kind of slutty designer cocktail dress a lady 007 would obviously wear.

This might seem a bit silly, but they all undermine M's statistics.

It's pantomime. Parody is not empathy and there's precious little dressing up as women goes on in sympathy. There's a reason they call it travesty.
It's fairly obvious why they've picked Daniel Craig/James Bond for this. He's a Man's Man who plays a Man's Man in such a Manfully Manful way that what Manly Man could ever fail to Man Man his Man-ness? MAN. Feminism is telling me to be her friend because it's the manly thing to do. Straight-faced.
And what if I am a bit manly already? What if I wear Doc Martens, drink beer, do press-ups, eat inedibly spicy food and refuse to understand jack shit about fashion or make-ups? If this video is to believed, any kind of solidarity with women involves me putting on a dress - giving up my innocuous masculine signifiers in favour of an equally arbitrary feminine one and, frankly, looking a fucking tit for it. At the same time as it tells me "it's MANLY to be a MAN-feminist", it's also telling me I can't be a Real Man and a feminist really.
(Edit for clarity) Yeah, this short film is actually appealing to heteronormative gender binaries, while simultaneously telling sympathetic men that they can't really be proper feminists without buying into the binaries and dressing up a bit.
This is not a short film in favour of equality. While it might make points in favour of sexual equality, it's still the uncomfortable sight of someone being belittled by their boss. This is not the voice of the women who do two thirds of the work for a tenth of the pay. This is the voice of a rich, western woman with a cut-glass accent and at least 7 licensed killers under her control. While the voiceover rightly condemns one form of inequality, one almost universally frowned upon in Britain, the use of well-known characters exploits the much more acceptable power structure of employer and employee, while simultaneously denying that any kind of inequality exists. One form of dominance being used against another. This is middle-class, liberal, white-woman's feminism at it's most embarrassing.

The statistics being read out should speak for themselves. I don't need to be fobbed off with a drunk misogynistic, neo-imperialist film-character to shed my embarrassment at agreeing with wimmin's rights. Men who do need Daniel Craig to be feminists probably won't be particularly good at it.

Solidarity, Islamophobe Style

2011-02-16T08:06:00.004+01:00

Ok, so I've blogged before about how much sympathy the Fash have with so-called "victims of Islam" when worthless little cunts have the temerity to be Muslim too. But now they can't even raise a bit of outrage when a white woman gets raped. Come on now, if you want to manipulate racist sentiments, this one's gold.

(Hat tip to Natalie Dzerins)

A Short-Lived and Probably One-Off Feeling of Positivity towards Top Gear

2011-02-06T21:09:00.008+01:00

Most of what we need to know about Top Gear's attitude to offensive "humour" has been said by Steve Coogan. Everything anyone will ever need to know about Top Gear in general has been said by Stewart Lee. But I don't think that actual Mexican joke they told, and their delivery, has been pulled to bits enough. Too much Big Waggy Finger of Tut-Tut and not enough Interesting Screwdriver of I Wonder What Its Little Cogs Do.

But before I pin the frog down and dig out my rusty old scalpel, here's something I noticed about Top Gear recently. After Richard Keys and Andy Gray got their P45s, Clarkson claimed on the Evening Standard front page, that they'd have been "sacked 100 times". They've not even been sacked once. What this implies is that hardly anyone takes their opinions seriously. The point of Clarkson is to be an offensive cunt, we watch Top Gear because it's funny to watch an offensive cunt be offensively cuntish, but then afterwards, we switch off thinking "Well, that was offensive. What a cunt". Even when the joke amounts to expressing their real opinions and sniggering, it's still treated as a joke. Though this brand of unspeakable humour might still be nasty, nobody is nearly as worried by it as we are by straight-faced opinions with no entertainment value. I can't help wondering if Jeremy Clarkson's rousing defence of free speech isn't at least partially motivated by jealousy, that nobody gives enough of a shit what he thinks to sack him too.

Anyway, Richard Hammond opens with this:

Cars reflect national characteristics, don't they, so German cars are very well built and ruthlessly efficient, Italian cars are a bit flamboyant and quick

Already there's a clue as to what's going on. Cars can be efficient, or efficiently engineered, but ruthless? It makes no sense! If I didn't know better I'd think he was throwing in a little nonsense for humorous effect. He goes on:

a Mexican car's just going to be lazy, feckless, flatulent, overweight...(laughter)

Again, these are all entirely standard ways for a half-arsed racist to describe a Mexican. But a car? No. None of them make sense. He's mocking the stereotypes. While we might associate German and Italian national characteristics with tendencies in their respective automotive industries, and with roughly 80% accuracy, when it comes to the stereotypes we have of Mexicans, it all falls apart. Not convinced? He winds up:

leaning against a fence asleep, looking at a cactus, with a blanket with a hole in the middle as a coat.

What he's done here is made the stereotypes ludicrously specific. He's invoking classic static images of Mexico that even Top Gear viewers won't take seriously, and that couldn't in anyone's imagination apply to a car. He structures it very cleverly, moving on from believable human stereotypes that don't work for cars, to a slightly silly one no-one takes seriously (fence), to complete nonsense (looking at a cactus), and finally a more familiar stereotype, but as an amusingly unwieldy phrase (with a blanket with a hole in the middle as a coat). It's a incisive, observant and downright funny satire of national stereotypes, and precisely the way they should be countered - using friendly belittlement to point out the enormous flaws in their logic.

Defending a Top Gear presenter has made me feel a little dirty, so it's lucky for me they couldn't keep it up:

May: It is interesting, isn't it, because they can't do food, the Mexicans, can they? Because it's all like sick with cheese on it, I mean... (laughter)
Hammond: Refried sick!
May: Yeah, refried sick.

Suddenly, the hilarious banter isn't about stereotypes about people not working with cars. It's about how shite the food is over there. It's gone from sly satire to three pathetic, unadventurous Little Englanders whining about ghastly foreign food which has the audacity to actually fucking taste of something. The best Hammond can come up with to follow it up is a vague attempt at a play on words, and all May can do is say "yeah" and repeat it. It's actually pitiful. This then descends into straight-out abuse:

Hammond: I'm sorry, but just imagine waking up and remembering you're Mexican: 'awww, no'.
Clarkson: No, it'd be brilliant… because you could just go straight back to sleep again.

It's pretty pathetic here that Jeremy Clarkson has to step in to save the exchange with some actual humour. He does a moderately witty call-back to the earlier stereotypes, but naturally without any kind of identifiable irony.

What I find fascinating about this exchange though, is that, of the three out-and-out deteriorations, one is by James May, and the other two are Richard Hammond (Clarkson, for all his undiluted prejudice, at least uses some kind of humorous mechanism). Quite a clever joke which undermines national stereotypes quickly descends into unfunny, jingoistic abuse which reinforces them. What seems to have happened, mixed with an expectation of deliberate offensiveness, genuine disdain for basically all other countries and most of this one, and his legendary cowardice, is that Richard Hammond told a joke that not only went over his colleagues' heads, but was actually too clever for him as well.

Tory Jew Eat Yet?

2011-01-31T22:04:00.004+01:00

It happened to Alvy Singer. It happened to Jonathan Hoffman. Now NUS leader Aaron Porter has allegedly been called a Jew in a contemptuous, pejorative way. In all three cases, most obviously the first, it didn't make a lot of sense in the context. "Jew eat yet?" makes very little sense. Hoffman was heckled following a speaker who quite openly referred to herself as Jewish. Since Tony Blair, "you're a Tory too" has been just below "Westlife-loving Nazi paedophile" in the left-wing insult armoury. (I could add at this point that Aaron Porter isn't actually Jewish, but as I've argued before, anti-Semites don't much care if you like lokshn or gefilte fish, what religion your mother was or if you still go to shul).

Trouble is, the word 'Jew' is a very, very simple one. It's basically two phonemes: /dʒ/ and /uː/, or in non-language-geek's terms, the 'j' and the 'oo'. The 'oo', /uː/, is a very common, very recognisable sound and an easy one to draw out. The /dʒ/ is not only common for 'j', 'g' and 'dg', but also for /dj/, when you have a 'd' next to a 'y' sound. Say "good yoghurt" quickly a few times. So you can find the word Jew in a contraction of 'do you', a kind of jitsu, the wet stuff on the ground in the morning, the wet stuff in oranges, a massive planet and two months of the year - including the anti-Semitic smear "Jew lie".

It all seems very obvious, but it's just naturally very easy to hear the word Jew where it's not there at all. A lot of words sound a lot like it, and a lot of jokes have grown out of this. And so, for want of a longer name, never in human history has a people suffered so many half-arsed puns.

This Gay Agenda is Fucking Stupid

2011-01-28T10:50:00.004+01:00

A few words on the gay agenda to turn all our kids gay. Since lesbians confuse and frighten me, I will limit my analysis to gay men, but the principle applies to both.

I am a straight heterosexual man. It is, therefore, in my interest that there be as many heterosexual women about as possible, and as few heterosexual men. Basic numbers game. It is in my interest that, ultimately, there is one woman superfluous rather than one man, because, let's face it, with my levels of charisma, that man could well be me. Furthermore, the greater the superfluity of women, the more desperate they will be, which obviously works in my favour. Making sure young girls turn out normal is vitally important. This is without even taking into account three-ways.

The same does not hold for gay sex. Requiring, as it does, no women and at least two gay men, simply increasing the pool does nothing. Think about it. You convert some taut young chicken, but what's to say he'll proffer his lovely smooth buttocks to you and not your drooling civil partner? Unlike with heterosexual numbers, the number of potential partners increases in perfect lockstep with the number of competitors for them. Simply put, recruit two or more gays outside the school gates, and the chances are they'll just bum with each other. They are younger and perkier than you, after all. The optimum number for gays is not maximum, but even (or divisible by your preferred orgy permutation).

So for heaven's sake, stop this silly campaign to turn our kids gay. It does no-one any favours, least of all yourselves. By all means attack homophobia - not only will it make drunk straight boys potentially more curious, but if you do find a specific young man you really want to

do it with, it'll probably help if he doesn't kill himself with remorse or enter into a long and sexually unfulfilling sham marriage. But stick to that, and only convert kids if you need to make up the numbers.

You got that lads? Limit your agenda to cocks, other men's bottoms and even numbers. You're wasting your time turning our kids gay. I can barely believe you're doing it at all!

Ideology

2011-01-25T16:18:00.006+01:00

Ok, we're all familiar with this Melanie Phillips thing, right? Professional shrieking anti-gay hate-fountain shrieks a fountainful of hate at gays. Then there's the customary Twitstorm, because half of Twitter are unable to contain their rage and the other half, well, we like a sadistic giggle at the sight of a terrified old woman having a brainal meltdown in print. Yet, I don't begrudge our Mel her spurts of paranoia at the modern world, as it's pretty much her job and she's doing it very well. She made the mistake of an apology though, for free on her own time, and it's one of these beautifully desperate attempts to save face that I can never resist.

Highlight:

As for the issue of the teaching materials I would have thought that, given your readers’ concern for civil liberties, they would be disturbed by any manipulation of the school curriculum to promote a particular viewpoint about any group.

Look at this funny bit about "promoting a particular viewpoint". Now, I would have said a school mentioning exclusively straight, birthsexual, sexgendered couples into strictly vanilla shit is kind of promoting a viewpoint. It's making a tacit point about what kind of fucking is normal and what kind should be swept under the rug by anyone with the slightest shred of decency. Melanie doesn't notice the promotion of this particular viewpoint, because this particular viewpoint is a) the established arrangement of the world and b) hers.

The same process happens with "political correctness" politicising language, as if there was not a shred of politics in the way we speak before Germaine Greer founded the Politically Correct Brigade in 1986. For those dedicated to enforcing normality, language is only "political" when the politics are politics of change, and someone else's. Unfortunately, this isn't limited to paid Daily Mail reactionaries. We see it as well when demonstrators opposed to the cuts refer to them as "ideological", as a synonym for "unnecessary". The belief that cuts need to be made is "ideology", as is the belief that they need to shit on the poorest and most vulnerable to work properly. The belief that the deficit needs to be reduced is also "ideological". So is the belief that a society needs a healthy economy to function. So is the belief that education is beneficial, that the earth goes round the sun, or that eating food every day is good for you.

Ideology is not a synonym for "stuff wrong people think is true". Ideology is stuff anyone thinks is true. All truth is ideological, even the bits that are almost certainly true. Ideology, you see, is one of those funny irregular nouns that only gets used in the third person:

I take a stance
You hold beliefs
He subscribes to an ideology

Simply describing the cuts as "ideological" is not enough. We need to say exactly what this ideology is and why it's wrong. We need to spell out our ideological agenda and why it's the right thing to do. When ideologues like Phillips accuse us of trying to insert our ideologies into the national curriculum, we point out that it's already fucking dripping with theirs. An ideology with a bit of power becomes invisible, which is why Mel's Martyrs notice B&B owners in court, but not Bishops in the Lords. So the first thing we need to do to challenge any ideology is point it out. Meanwhile, if, in the horrifying paranoid delusions about gays and Muslims you put yourself through to pay the mortgage, you see ideology in the national curriculum, you can rest assured it's nothing to be scared of.

Update: the presenter on this week's really good episode of Horizon just said non-scientists' contributions to scientific debates might be "ideological". Forgetting that pretty much everything he or any of his colleagues has ever achieved is thanks to the ideology of empiricism. Ingrate.

Ellipsis and Privilege

2011-01-04T22:05:00.008+01:00

By way of an introduction I'm going to geek out a bit here. One of my favourite things about learning foreign languages is getting to grips with a different system of ellipsis - different conventions about what can and can't be omitted. This can be words, as in Wikipedia's example - John can play the guitar and Mary (can (play (the guitar))) too. But we can also omit information, and especially in English we frequently do. The word 'have' can be used for anything from 'possess' to 'eat' to 'do' to 'conceive and give birth to'. It gives the bare minimum of information, but, when you say "I'm having lunch", does anyone really need to be told what you're doing with it?

One way this differs in German is if you take the sentence "I drink a cup of coffee in the morning"/"Ich trinke morgens eine Tasse Kaffee". The usual (but by no means only) way to say this in English is "I have a cup of coffee in the morning", whereas in German, you get "Ich trinke morgens einen Kaffee" - "I drink in the morning a coffee". Germans aren't idiots. They don't need to be told about the cup, as if you might drink your coffee out of a shoe or something. Similarly, we don't expect you to pour it down your trousers, and there's no need to specify drinking in English.

That's cups of joe. With cups of char it's a whole different matter. You don't even need to mention the drink in English. Say "a cuppa" to anyone in Britain and we'll know you mean tea. Say "brew up", "put the kettle on" or "milk, one sugar?" and we'll know what to expect. It's quite obvious that, so entangled are Britain's routines with our quaint leaf-drink, that in any situation with a hot drink, tea will be assumed. Bearing this in mind, only a complete fucking idiot would believe that we say "cuppa" because we are embarrassed about our culture, hate tea and have given over our heritage to pro-cocoa extremists.

Which brings me to the Daily Mail. Winterval getting old, they've got a little bee in their bonnet about "Season's Greetings" now. Despite being no strangers to ellipsis themselves, the Mail and its arsewit readers have eagerly laid into John Reid, David Cameron and the world at large. In the last one, we see the process in action:

Would anyone dare tell the Hindu and Muslim minorities that they can't say 'Happy Diwali' or 'Happy Eid' but have to say 'Season's Greetings' as well?

The question though, is not could you tell them not to, but could they if they wanted to? If a Hindu says to you, in Britain, around mid-November "Season's Greetings", are you really going to assume he means Diwali? The reason Christmas can be omitted from greetings and cards, the reason you can take pretty much all of the Christ out of Christmas and still have the secular festival everywhere from October onwards, is because everyone knows what season merits the greetings.

There's a festival this season that has a monopoly on seasonal festivities. Clue: It's not Hanukkah. Failing to state something outright is not a sign of hate, discrimination or embarrassment, or else Christian Voice would never even mention gays. We ignore things we take for granted. The fact that straight, white, C of E males, with fully functional bodies and minds, the genitals they were born with and the sexual identity to match, the fact that they're so often omitted is proof positive of their privilege, because no-one's favourite crisp flavour is fried potato and nobody talks about wallpaper.

Hope you had a good one.

Checkmate, PC Brigade

2010-12-27T19:54:00.003+01:00

Come Fly With Me. Sheer genius. Not like, comedy genius, obviously, but tactical genius. I was all ready to differ with Anton Vowl and say yes, actually, it is a teensy bit racist. The way so many of the jokes were based on ethnic stereotypes, and instead of the characters doing something surprisingly, amusingly and unpredictably out of keeping with the stereotype, the joke was that they fulfilled it? Yeah, I'd have said that was a little bit racist.

That was before Ian Foot, the airport's Chief Immigration Officer, came on. You know the hilariously lax one who lets middle-aged South Asian men in on blatantly false passports? That was before I heard him saying "I have been accused of being racist, but...". This is clever, I thought. This "but" may prove to be a red herring, and he may subsequently prove to be a racist anyway. I was, it turns out, proven right, and he continues "...if being highly suspicious of all foreigners makes you racist then yeah, I mean, sure".

This presents the liberal left with a problem. Lucas and Walliams might have just spent half an hour (with another two-and-a-half to come, yummy!) wanking tired, unfunny stereotypes dry, parroting tedious tabloid myths about porous borders and ripping off the most racist bits of Bo Selecta, but, crucially

THEY MADE FUN OF A RACIST FOR BEING RACIST

Aha, I thought, what if they're racist but don't know it? Or they're slyly pretending not to be racist when they are? No dice Alex

THEY MADE FUN OF A RACIST FOR SAYING HE WASN'T RACIST WHEN HE CLEARLY WAS RACIST

I mean, they couldn't be not-racist-butters themselves if they make fun of not-racist-butters. Not-racist-butters have no self-awareness, and smart, well-thought out, original comedy is all about self-awareness. Nobody would have the gall to take the piss out of a racist's lack of self-awareness while being a racist with no self-awareness themselves. No-one good enough to be on BBC1, anyway.

I'm on the ropes here. I would have thought an embarrassingly shite sit-com based largely on crudely belittling Blacks and both types of Asians would be an open goal, but then they parry my bullseye and ace me with this UKBA character. There's literally no way we can recover from this kind of snookering, and Lucas and Walliams, I hereby apologise for ever thinking your comedy was half-arsed, as subtle as a car-bomb and brimming with contempt for anyone whose Whiteness quotient comes to Irish or less.

Important Lesson

2010-12-11T14:07:00.004+01:00

What can we learn from Facebook hate? A lot, it turns out.

Kalum Dyson, of Frances Street in Brighouse, created a group called "Pakis Die" on the social networking website. The 21-year-old also posted messages including one which said: "Help me shoot all the Pakis." [...] But he also said he was not racist, claiming he had "black" friends.

I know these days we have a tendency to stretch "not racist" to include almost anything, but Dyson's pushing it a bit trying to cram full-on genocide fantasies in. So what I'd like to do here is kick the black-friend get-out clause in the bollocks once and for all.

Not minding people of one race does not cancel out hating people from a different race.

"Ja so I killed a few Jews, Blacks, Slavs and Gypsies solely for being Jews, Blacks, Slavs and Gypsies, but I'm not racist! I have Japanese allies for fuck's sake!"

See the Victims Suffer! Suffer Victims, Suffer!

2010-11-22T23:21:00.010+01:00

Not being Jewish, I can't begin to imagine how utterly fucking embarrassing it must be when the Nazi stooges in the EDL decide they want to be your friend, just because a country that's sort of yours even if you've never been is blowing up the right kind of brown people. When the ideological descendants of the people who slaughtered half your family start rubbing themselves against you like an amorous pitbull. So of course this is so unsurprising it almost hurts.

So I thought it might be interesting to look at another leg the fash have started humping, just so we can see what the Jews can expect from their new-found friends*. I am of course talking about the long-suffering women of Islam. They have a hard time, do these poor creatures, which is why we're going to play a game called "Muslimah Martyrs vs Ghastly Bints".

We all know it's terrible how Muslim women are oppressed. One of the worst examples is the brutal capital punishment meted out to those found guilty of adultery. Look at the admirable way the world has rallied round Sakineh Ashtani. Score one for Muslimah Martyrs.

Oh, but then Yasmin Alibhai Brown has to open her big brown mouth. Stone the ghastly bint! One all.

And then, you're poking round facebook watching the EDL go trolling, and just when you thought Muslimah Martyrs could pull ahead again:

POW! Ghastly Bints whips out a deft equaliser!

It's like fucking clockwork. Concerned about women being forced to dress a certain way? Force them to dress another way. It's no use just being weirded out by the symbols of patriarchal oppression. You've got to show some solidarity.

I don't know how they manage it. It must be so hard to stick up for fanny-bearing Muslims when you hate them with such a murderous, hungry vengeance. What I'm trying to say, I suppose, is the bacon test doesn't just cut one way.

You did the right thing Israel. They don't love you. They only want you for your fighter jets.

*Not like, friends-friends. Friends like the weird guy you say hi to by the nibbles and he keeps trying to engage you socially for the rest of the evening while telling really offensive jokes.

Nice Guys vs Creepy Guys

2010-11-05T00:37:00.004+01:00

Saw a great text-your-mercifully-brief-opinion in the Evening Standard the other day. Went a little something like this:

Why do women react so badly if you try to start up a conversation on the train? We're not all creeps, some of us are really nice guys!

I love it. I think it's perfect. I like how the guy imagines "creep" is like a job or something. Or that creepy people are required by law to wear a dirty raincoat on public transport. And that creepy people never, ever, ever incorporate being nice to their prey into their creepy, creepy plans.

But he's hit on the major problem with the Nice Guy. Nice isn't a species. It's something you do, not something you are. Same with creepy. A Nice Guy is someone who habitually does, or is currently doing, nice things for other people. A creepy guy is someone who habitually acts, or is currently acting, in a sexually inappropriate way. A Creepy guy who's being genuinely nice is a Nice Guy. A Nice Guy who's being Nice in a creepy way is a Creepy Guy.

But I don't think it quite stops there. Notice in this guy's scenario, both Nice and Creepy Guys talk to an attractive women on public transport. Since the text didn't mention anything like "when I just fancy a chat about the weather", I'm going to assume both of them are chatting to her because they want to fuck her. Now, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with wanting to fuck someone, any more than there's anything intrinsically wrong with making inane chit-chat with strangers. But isn't it interesting how they're both doing the same thing?

So here's one Nice Guy's theory. Nice Guys and Creepy Guys seem different - a Creepy Guy leers all over you, and you can practically see the reflections of his perverse fantasies in the drool, while a Nice Guy is too timidly respectful to even hold suggestive eye-contact, let alone pluck up the courage to kiss you. But we're both symptoms of the same disease. We can't judge what will be an appropriate balance of sexual forwardness and basic respectful decency. We can't weigh up the woman, the place and the situation and decide what will be pervy and icky, and what will be effectively seductive enough for it not to matter. When we do judge it right, we've often overthought the fuck out of it, and it comes off either stilted or calculating - loserish or pervy, depending. We also ignore women's sexual desire for us. Either we highly doubt such a thing exists, or we treat it as existing solely for our gratification.

Of course, there's no clear dividing line - other than that happy, happy limbo where you do the right thing at the right time and have a passable love-life. Nice Guys become Creepy Guys and visa versa. Creepy Guys, I'm sure, draw the line somewhere, but no-one ever notices when they do because it means they just sit there and text the Evening Standard. With Nice Guys, it's a more observable process. At some point, drunk, despondent or disappointed with ourselves and our own timidity, we decide to be a bit more forward. We worry about being creepy, but, if we're drunk, despondent or disappointed enough, we think "fuck it, it's only other people" and go for it. Trouble is, we've only solved half of our problems. We might no longer be too timid, but we're still clueless. I've done it. I've done it more than once, and I'm really really Nice.

And this is where so many creeps and pervs come from. We start off respectful, timid, Nice. It doesn't work for us, because we don't know how to do human courtship and, probably, because we're thinking "God I'd like to have a girlfriend just once before I die" instead of about how the target will interpret our advances. Eventually, for a variety of reasons and general disappointment being just one, we try being forward. We overshoot. It's awful, and, worse still, it doesn't work any better. But, eventually, we have limited success. A smile, a kiss, an actual shag-plus-long-term-relationship. And when that's over, we've learned a valuable lesson: doing something is more effective than doing nothing. Going too far is more likely to make us happy than not going far enough. Creepiness. Works.

This is how patriarchy functions. There isn't a perv gene attached to the Y chromosome. Misogyny is perpetuated among men wherever erring on the side of respect for women is less effective than erring on the side of getting sex-objects naked. The fact is, where being a shit to women is in any way in men's interest, then when in doubt, we will tend towards it. Societal trends and power structures acting on an individual level. And yes, I am arguing that the Creepy Guy on the tube may just be a Nice Guy who's fallen victim to the System. I'm also arguing that Nice Guys are just Creeps who have yet to grow the balls to do it properly. But mostly I'm staring at my own reflection in a text to the Evening Standard.

You Don't Have to Be X to Be X-Bashed

2010-10-24T19:55:00.005+02:00

President Bazza's done an "it gets better" video. Wow. You can't really beat that for a weighty voice behind your campaign.

Here's a weird bit though: he says, in a matter-of-fact, of-course-we-all-know-that tone of voice

I don't know what it's like to be picked on for being gay

which strikes me as decidedly odd. Being gay isn't like being fat, or black, or ginger. You can hide it. Which means anyone could be hiding it. Which means anyone could be secretly gay and therefore anyone can be bullied for being gay.

You don't have to fancy other boys for the other boys to call you gay. I got called gay for having long hair (because it meant I wanted to be a woman, which of course meant I wanted to put my cock in other men). Other symptoms of gayness include not liking football, drinking halves, and at primary school, holding hands with a girl. You don't have to be gay to be bullied for it. You don't even have to deviate from the straight and narrow to be bullied for being gay. You just have to be thought of as gay.

Homophobia doesn't compare well to racism. It's more like anti-Semitism, Islamophobia or any other religious prejudice. Saying that because you're not gay, you're obviously not going to get bullied for it is irrational in the same way as "The Nazis killed six million Jews", when probably a good proportion of those people did not have Jewish mothers, did not practice the religion or culture or (Germany being the seat of the assimilation movement) just plain didn't consider themselves Jews. Pretending not to be a Jew was just one of those sneaky things Jews did. The EDL aren't averse to smashing up Hindu temples or beating up Sikhs for being Muslim. Paranoid anti-Islam blogs have the taqqiya get-out clause - Radical Muslims are required to hide their religion in order to take over the world, therefore any Muslim who claims to be a moderate may still be an extremist and anyone who denies being an Muslim may still be one, therefore anyone you accuse of Radical Islamic Muslimism is either guilty or guilty of taqqiya too.

Which brings us back to Obama. He may not have experienced being picked on for being gay, but he has experienced what a lot of ever-so-slightly effeminate kids have, which is persistent untrue accusations, with their own mechanism to prevent them being refuted.

Whether that hurts more, less or the same amount in different ways as factually accurate homophobic bullying I couldn't tell you, but actual homos have no monopoly on homophobia, and it still kills.

Wait, What Was the Pretext Again?

2010-10-03T12:29:00.006+02:00

The Mail shows its true colours on Halal meat. Obviously the Mail is very very angry that it might be SECRETLY FORCED TO EAT A HALAL, but why?

I can see the arguments against Halal slaughter, which is why, as a vegetarian I don't eat Halal meat. So I trawled through the article to see if they actually mentioned the slaughtering process. Here it is:

A spokesman for Tesco said: ‘Pre-stunned meat produced to halal standards conforms to all our stringent hygiene and animal welfare standards.’

Well, there you have it. Barbaric, I'm sure you'll agree. So let's not pretend the Mail gives a shit about animal rights here. Or at least not big enough a shit to actually mention them. The only party that actually does mention the contentious pre-stunning bit is Tesco, who still come across as horrible dhimmi badmen despite their racially tainted halal meat being no less humane.

Now since they can't be fucked discussing the actual bit they're meant to be objecting to, I wonder why they're so scandalised. Surely it can't just be an excuse to rail against Muslims and hammer dysphemisms like "Islamically slaughtered" into common parlance. Aha:

Patricia Dunton, 67, from Totteridge, North London, said she had been shopping in Waitrose for more than 30 years. Speaking before the Waitrose announcement, she said: ‘As a devout Christian, I won’t buy Duchy Originals lamb ever again, and I won’t buy lamb from Waitrose.I don’t like the fact that an Islamic prayer has been said over it. It should have been labelled so that I know what I am buying.’

Last night a spokeswoman for the Prince, who will become Supreme Governor of the Church of England when he becomes king, said he was unaware the Duchy Originals lamb was being killed according to Muslim law.

Worried they'll catch Islam. I see.

English Defence Lulz

2010-09-29T14:09:00.010+02:00

Some wag has made a fake facebook for the UAF's Weyman Bennett. It's very revealing. Shall we have a look? (Click for bigger)

So, of course, the first thing you notice about it is the bizarre obsession with not washing [Fig. 1]. Not sure where this whole "the UAF don't use soap or deodorant" thing comes from, unless you can't tell the difference between the smell of soap and the smell of stale lager. I think there might be a hippie in the train of thought somewhere, but really, I'm stumped. You can also see quite clearly that they've not even told their main joke very well. Come on lads, "Soap Dodger in Chief" as a job title would have been almost amusing.

Secondly, the gay joke [Fig. 2]. Don't these pigshit-thick Nazi stooges have an LGBT division? Isn't it specifically our dirty poofs that they want to protect from the militant Asian-looking people? Using "haha ur gay lol" as an insult, well, looks a bit like you've put the queer-bashing on hold so a few slow-witted homosexuals might help with the paki-bashing. Jewish division, take note.

Finally, the chimp [Fig. 3]. Now, I have it on good authority that the EDL is definitely NOT racist, and has no problem with the Blacks and Niggers, just the Pakis. So if they're going to pull off this "Black and White Unite Against Brown" thing, it might help if the light-skinned side of the equation tried not to call the 0.0002% dark-skinned side monkeys.

All in all, my advice to the EDL would be this: If you don't want people to think you're racist, homophobic Nazi dullards using "militant Muslims" as a lightning rod ("militant" here meaning "anyone that looks like"), try not to act like racist, homophobic Nazi dullards. A good start would be cutting out badly-crafted playground taunts aimed at sexual and ethnic minorities. Try it. It might work.

PS report it as fake it if you haven't already.
Update: GONE NOW.

Burning Books

2010-09-08T15:48:00.005+02:00

I've never particularly seen the significance of burning books. It's a symbolic act of destroying information, but the wonderful thing about the written word is that, especially in the digital age, it's not tied to a physical object. Burn as many of a book as you want, and as long as there's one copy left, it can be reproduced exactly. The written word, human language and our capacity to reproduce them are an not only awe-inspiringly beautiful, but astoundingly resilient. The pages and the size and the smell of books are nice and all, but that's really nothing compared to the text itself.

So I think this coming Saturday (the 11th) should be Everybody Burn a Great Book Day.

I think I'll burn 'To Kill a Mockingbird', as I remember sitting in my room, aged sixteen and halfway through my GCSE English Literature, and realising for the first time, during the courtroom passage, that reading great novels isn't just homework. It's interesting, it's gripping, it's thought provoking, it's fun, and that's what they were actually written for. I also have a spare charity-shop copy that only cost 79p. So on Saturday, to show how Harper Lee's words are more than ink and paper and stronger than fire, I will commit a classic of American literature to the sky and ashes.

PS. If you do burn a book on Everybody Burn A Great Book Day, make sure it's one you like, as we'll all assume that's the case.

Edit: PPS. Oh nuts, just realised it conflicts with someone else's book-burning event. I hope this doesn't get awkward.

William Hague? Really Chris?

2010-09-04T19:09:00.004+02:00

A few things spring to mind about the William Hague gay thing.

Firstly, looks-wise, if William Hague is gay with Christopher Myers, he's punching way above his weight, and it's the really other guy who should be making embarrassed denials.

Secondly, he'd have to be a fairly fucking stupid gay. I know, if I was in his gay shoes (and they'd be amazing shoes, because I'd be a gay), the last thing I'd do while trying to conceal my gay affair with a younger man from my female, vagina-having wife, is book a shared room with him. Book a double and a single, say you need the double for your bad back or some such shite. Cheese-on-toast man, you're a politician. A Tory politician no less. You should know how to have an affair.

Finally: again with the gay jokes? I've wondered before, but, with a couple of notable and silly exceptions, why can we not get our head around two men

being fond of
sleeping in a room with
spending more than ten minutes that don't involve drinking, punching or casual misogyny with

each other without assuming anal penetration? We let girls saunter off to the fucking toilet together without assuming one's going to end up on her knees, but if two men so much as hug with insufficient back-slapping, we expect they'll both crack a semi-on. I can almost get that we, as a society, can understand sweaty bareback man-love better than emotionally intimate, platonic man-love. But is tight-fisted, pragmatic man-room-sharing really that hard to grasp?

Edit: I have to confess, I once shared a room with another heterosexual man. For well over a month. To save money. Didn't get so much as a hand-job.

Oh Libertarians

2010-08-20T15:19:00.003+02:00

For my hundredth post bonanza, I have yet another fucking arsewit by the name of Serkan Toeran, from the FDP (German "Libertarians") who thinks "freedom" means "I like my money" and "state" means "other people get to have my money".

Women who choose to wear the burqa voluntarily cannot be accepted either, because individuals cannot control human dignity.
[...]
The burqa is not a religious, but rather a political symbol against our state order and a means of suppressing women

There are arguments for banning the burqa. I get that. But "liberal" parties and libertarians don't get to put them forward. We've had this before on minarets, but I've never seen it with this kind of language.

Friendly advice, you daft cunt. If you're going to pretend to be a party of freedom and very, very small government, maybe don't do down the individual or bang on about "state order". Otherwise people will start thinking libertarians and right-liberals are just a gaggle of skinflints, reactionaries and petty fascists throwing a wobbly about taxes. And that's meant to be a secret.

Not The Barnet of a Straight-Talking Man

2010-08-06T20:49:00.009+02:00

Interesting piece by Anwyn Crawford on Nick Cave, and why he's a woman-hating arsewart.

There are two main thrusts to her arguments, both of which are correct. The first is that Cave is a pretentious helmet. The second is more sophisticated and much more informative:

‘She’s wearing those blue stockings, I bet,’ Cave muses, an intriguing detail. She’s a smart woman, self-reliant; she doesn’t need him nearly as much as he needs her. ‘This desire to possess her is a wound,’ Cave croons, and then his voice turns hard, ‘and it’s nagging at me like a shrew.’ So the desire for a woman he can’t possess nags at him like the ultimate possessive, scolding woman. And now Cave arrives at the formulation of a paradox that has fuelled his entire oeuvre with increasingly tedious and puerile results: ‘But I know that to possess her is therefore not to desire her/ So that lil’ girl will just have to go!’ He shouts out his conclusion and the song shifts into a hideous death rattle, with Cave’s yelps sounding as strangled as his poor victim’s. He’s probably garrotting her with the stockings.

for Cave, as for his predecessors, women are both far better and far worse creatures than he – but whether they’re saints or sluts he has to kill them.

Basically, Nick Cave's songs display a rather, er, eccentric attitude to fanciable women, where both they and the desire to possess them are at once hated and fetishised. Fanciable women in Nick Caves songs also tend not to make it to the end of the song. Disturbing and intriguing, and probably exactly what the boy was after.

Cath Elliot has similar reservations about Eminem and Rihanna's new one:

My biggest issue with it is that so much of this “story” is told from the perpetrator’s point of view. We get to hear how awful being such a violent abusive bastard is for him, and how ashamed it makes him feel to be such a vile, despicable human being. And what with me being such a man-hating femnazi and all, I have to say my reaction to that level of self-pitying whining from a perpetrator of domestic violence is always going to be “Well boo fucking hoo mate, now shut the fuck up and let’s hear how the victim feels.” The problem here of course is that we don’t. We only get to hear, very briefly in the chorus, how much she enjoys it.

It's odd, while I'm not exactly pro-domestic abuse, I'd say the exact opposite: what the quintessential victim feels - pain, fear, anger, hate and so on - isn't that difficult to work out. I'm far more interested in thought-processes I can't identify with: people who abuse loved ones, and people who enjoy being abused by their loved ones. It's easy to think of yourself as the victim - questioning your own thought processes lest you become the perpetrator is a lot harder, a lot more socially necessary, and makes for much more exciting art.

Both writers are confusing two different debates: one feminist and one literary. "Should anti-heroes be given first-person narratives?" is a valid question if an old one, but not the same as "is it ever ok to punch your wife in the face?" and not one Cath Elliot addresses. It's also telling that she doesn't include any of Eminem's actual lyrics in her analysis. Anwyn Crawford does address, indirectly, the idea that it might not be Nick Cave but his characters speaking, but largely as a straw man and without any analysis of how this irony might work.

Ah, but Cave’s defenders like to point out, you are forgetting about the man’s exquisite humour! His delicately honed irony! He is a moral satirist without peer! (The subtext to this defence often being, ‘Lighten up, bitch!’). The notion that Cave is being ‘ironic’ has been used to excuse many of his worst indulgences, up to and including his pimp’s moustache. It is simply not true. As anyone who bothers to look up Cave’s press history will discover, the man takes himself seriously, very seriously indeed, and will threaten to break the legs – or worse – of any writer who dares suggest that his work is not nearly as good as he himself is convinced that it is.

The lighten-up-bitch brigade always assume that "it's just a joke" or "it's still a good song" somehow make it mean the opposite, or that "it's ironic" means disgusting attitudes can't be expressed through irony. Unfortunately, when the bitches they want to lighten up reply, they tend to mirror this, which is sad, as, in contrast, they're usually not complete idiots. Apart from the irrelevant pimpiness of the moustache, Crawford mistakenly assumes three things: firstly, that Cave doesn't pretend to take himself ludicrously seriously as part of yet another persona, secondly, that if he does take himself that seriously that it's not as a humourist and user of irony, and lastly that Cave's use of irony is humorous. It's not. It's gothic. Scroll up and look at his hair. It's gothic. End of discussion. Gothic.

Just like offensive humour, the gothic is a way of exploring and breaking taboos under controlled conditions. If we assume anything Cave says/sings/writes is him peering into a disturbed mind, it works the same as laughter: it says "this is not my opinion, but an abhorrent one I am pretending is my own for purposes of entertainment". Dark humour is the best example of this, but it works so well because both dark and humour rely on the same mechanism: looking closely at stuff you know to be wrong. Whether the gothic counts as proper irony is fairly irrelevant: it works the same way and is powerful in the same way. Crawford hits on this when she says:

I can still listen to The Birthday Party and find Cave’s sordid fantasies of woman-pie, kewpie dolls and six-inch gold blades stuck ‘in the head of a girl’ exhilarating and disturbing in equal measure.

I can't say for sure, but I imagine that, like most fans, if she found them less disturbing, she'd also find them a lot less exhilarating. There's an expectation of Nick Cave and, in this context at least, Eminem, to sing points of view you wouldn't agree with. Audiences come knowing not to agree with anything said, and if they do, to be unsettled by it.

What Nick Cave's defenders argue is "irony" is even simpler. Nick Cave is saying things that aren't his personal point of view, to an audience who know and expect exactly that. Writers do it all the time. Speaking in the persona of a violent misogynist doesn't make him or Eminem anti-woman, any more than writing Watership Down made Richard Adams a rabbit. This may not be healthy. It may be crass and tedious. It may still be misogynistic as fuck. But the gothic interior monologue is, to all intents and purposes, ironic, and irony is backwards. Nick Cave says things by saying the opposite. Eminem is clearly doing some kind of dialogue. To be fair, I think there probably are a lot of genuinely fucked-up attitudes to women in Nick Cave's music, and the less said about Eminem the better, but this demands a lot more analysis than "he sings about killing them". For fuck's sake, Murder Ballads averages 6.7 deaths per song. Misogynist or not, he's not a man who sings about things he finds pleasant or ethical. So let's instead look at what kind of women and treatment of women he finds unpleasant and unethical. He might still turn out to be a prick. There's still time.

Edit: The heartbreaking upshot of this kind of thinking is that PJ Harvey might actually be sane. I'm going to try and pretend that's not true though.

Those Who Have Been Hurt

2010-08-04T00:12:00.002+02:00

So I unfollowed Cunt of the Day on Twitter. The last straw was the inane, what-are-you-for pointlessness of giving the award to Ian Huntley, six years late, but what really made me decide that the occasional insult to neo-cons wasn't worth the massive, tedious reactionary streak was this. Specifically this:

The cuntishness of these two is far greater than that of Vicar Alex Brown who today has been found guilty of conducting hundreds of fake marriages

He did what? The dastard! The utter cunt.

Let's take a step back and look at what this awful, awful cunt did. He... he... Oh GOD I can barely bring myself to say it... he... [sniff]... he married people. To each other! Ah, says the cretin, but in doing so he facilitated illegal immigration.

Well then. Let's take a step back and look at what this awful, awful cunt facilitated. So controlled immigration of people we like is ok, obviously, but this is different, this is illegal immigration. It's a crime. They're basically criminals. Well, technically it's a civil offence. But still. Against the law.

What is it they're actually doing illegally though? Well, firstly, they've not got the right forms and permission slips. Secondly, apart from the ones that outstay their visas or do bogusasylumseekering, they enter the country illegally. And stay. Illegally.

Basically, the grievous offence of illegal immigration pretty much boils down to moving house without the proper paperwork. It's a victimless crime. It's victimlesser than a victimless crime. It's a crime where the only victim is the perpetrator, who is systematically fucked over by the society who despises him for arriving to be fucked over. If you can get your head round what a pathetic excuse for a crime that is, just think how mind-bogglingly harmless aiding and abetting it is. It's the victimless crime of victimless crimes, and Father Alex Brown doesn't deserve to be called a "bit of numptie at times", let alone a cunt.

Which brings me to my favourite bit. In the Guardian.

"We are particularly sorry for those who have been deceived and hurt by the actions of Father Alex Brown"

I can say with some authority that nobody has been hurt by the actions of Father Alex Brown. Anyone who has been hurt by the actions of Father Alex Brown deserves to be hurt. Hurt emotionally, hurt financially and hurt in the face with a big garden strimmer. If anyone who has been hurt by the actions of Father Alex Brown would like to get in contact with me, I will personally introduce them to what real pain is by tapping them gently in the groin with a small feather and rubbing their face with a silk cloth.

My Bestest Bum-Chum Nick and His Soft, Soft Mouth

2010-08-03T22:17:00.008+02:00

Ok, so I don't want to hammer this "feminists/gays/Muslims/[insert put-upon minority group] don't get jokes" meme, but I have to take issue with Laurie Pennie's latest-but-one. It's not so much a case of humourlessness, or not getting jokes, nor is it at all limited to any of those groups, but a very general failure by most people who analyse the politics of jokes to actually get to their message, or to separate the message from whether it's actually funny.

Anyway, Laurie takes issue with the nudges, winks and titters over the Con-Dem coalition, specifically the implication of David Cameron tenderly pushing his engorged penis up Nick Clegg's gently dilating anal opening. She largely sees the assorted innuendos as homophobic, saying:

Playground gay jokes have been employed across the political spectrum to cast aspersions on the new government from day one.
[...]
The conceit is dazzling in its banality, substituting genuine political analysis for sniggering dick-jokes: it’s Carry-On commentating, and it manages to belittle all parties involved while failing to enlighten us one iota about the reasons for the fractures already emerging in the new government.

The discomfort underlying all the "Eton fag" and "Brokeback partnership" catcalls is multifarious, but it’s hard not to get the impression that a coalition government is somehow not daddy enough for us; that political partnerships and electoral reform are somehow not manly enough for the tough, thrusting, winner-takes-all tradition of British politics. As any 13-year-old boy can tell you, anything with the slightest hint of hetero-abnormality is gay, and gay is, like, completely rubbish. Obviously.

The thing is, the theme of effeminacy doesn't seem to have come up much. The butt of this joke is not that they're gay, or a gay couple, it's that they're rather a mismatched gay couple. They're also really, really similar in appearance, background and demeanour, so the idea of them snogging another version of themselves is quite funny, especially since I'm pretty sure Dave would if he got the chance. Also, does anyone actually need enlightening about how a Tory/Lib-Dem coalition sank like a fucking rock?

There is a reason that the joke has to single out gays, and that's that it can only work because we know it not to be true. A heterosexual man and a woman as coalition partners wouldn't attract the same jokes because the jokes could quite feasibly be serious speculation, and therefore not jokes. Two heterosexual men probably aren't going to get together. Most importantly, the joke doesn't hinge on the idea that gayerism isn't normal, but on the idea that it is. Sure, it's nowhere near as normal as normal sex, but it's a normal thing that normally happens in normal life, just not necessarily between fully normal people leading fully normal lives. Fact is, we have got used to them being here and queer, even if that makes some of us even angrier.

Modern gay jokes are weird, anyway. Male characters copulating seems to be the punchline in an awful lot of Family Guy gags, and I'm not sure if Drawn Together even has any other plot devices. But just pointing at man-sex and tittering has just lost its punch. What both programmes have in common is that one, if not both, eager participants are clearly straight. The deviation we're meant to laugh at isn't from the societal norm of heterosexuality, but from the character's personal norm of heterosexuality and the societal norm of picking one or the other and sticking to it.

We're now at the point where homoeroticism is a - fuck it - the standard pisstake explanation for masculine closeness. Bush and Blair, Tim and Mike, Bert and Ernie (even though lovers tend not to sleep in separate beds), Sam and Frodo (even though it's clearly the reclusive old queen Bilbo and his "favourite nephew"). Any friendly relationship that gets too close to be normal gets upgraded to a sexual one, where that kind of closeness can be normal. What we shy away from is not two men loving each other and fucking, but two men loving each other and not fucking. Normalisation does take place, and I'm still confused as to why we're so threatened by fully-clothed masculine closeness, but homosexuality (or maybe just sexuality in general) seems more like a tool here than a threat.

Red hot Cameron-on-Clegg action isn't funny because poofs are funny, or a dismissal of their actual political relationship. It's funny because irresistible sexual desire is actually a far more plausible explanation than any political one for why either would go near the other, let alone form a government. It's also great gross-out humour, not because two men together is gross, but because these two men together is completely fucking rank. Polished, rubbery, pristine-haired, used-car salesman RANK.

Eurabia-Mongering Part 2: Demographic Warfare

2010-07-21T23:11:00.002+02:00

You know what’s quite good? The BBC’s More or Less. Since I blog slow and steady and the episode I want probably isn’t up any more, there’s a brief summary here and bonus details here. Basically, the ‘Muslim Demographics’ video gets a sound debunking.

Now this video really, really worries me. Not because of that creeping Islamicisificationment shite, but because of a nasty, nasty trend that seems to come with the territory of representative government: demographic warfare. Now I would partly put our quaint obsession with demographics down to our sense of community no longer being tied to location, the age of capitalist marketing and mass communication, but I don’t think it can be separated from the brass tacks of democracy. The system depends on balancing the interests of voting blocs and sections of the population against each other, and unfortunately the stronger a party’s grass roots, the more in touch both politicians and the system they represent are with the population, the more demographics and social grouping become an issue. Growth of a particular group is a boon to any other which shares its interests and a threat to anyone whose interests conflict. When this comes from social or economic change, for example an increase in unemployment or social mobility, it’s a rather neat, if indirect and probably deeply flawed and unreliable, mechanism for adjusting the ruling set of ideas to current conditions, or at least the way they seem.

The Muslim demographic conundrum is different. This group is not a product of social or economic factors. The reaction against this demographic change will not and cannot involve the practical circumstances that produced it. The sole reason for this demographic change is the people that constitute it, and so backlash will be, and can only be, against them. We should expect this to become more of an issue as the twenty-first century goes on, as more and more couples limit themselves to children they want, as international migration becomes (practically if not legally) easier and more desirable and as Europe adjusts to the children of immigrants. And as this attitude comes directly from representative government, expect it to become stronger, not weaker, as the liberal-democratic consensus settles in and groups who still hold power beyond their numbers and think they deserve it become ever more scared and petulant. And if we look at their fears, it is not of an illegitimate, external takeover, but of a group and ideology within Western society, and with the inalienable right to participate in it, increasing power alongside their numbers. Fear of Eurabia is fear of democracy, plain and simple.

Funnily enough, this idea of a sort of racial, sort of religious group hatching a logistical nightmare of a secret plot to take over the world, well, it seems disturbingly familiar. Pankaj Mishra:

This expectation of identity suicide has a rather grim history in enlightened Europe...Accused of mistreating their women and proliferating with devious rapidity, and goaded to abandon their religious and cultural baggage, many Jews in the 19th century paid an even higher cost of "integration" than that confronting Muslims today in France...As it turned out, those Jews who suppressed the Torah and Talmud and underwent drastic embourgeoisement became even more vulnerable to malign prejudice in post-Enlightenment Europe's secular nation-states.

Of course, the mistreatment of the Jews in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was often overtly racial, whereas Eurabia-mongers are careful to focus exclusively on religion and culture. But claims that this is not at all about race start to crack when you remember this isn’t about immigration or assimilation but birth rates. This is an objection to natural-born citizens being born to natural-born citizens.

And there’s something about the Eurabia theory that’s inherently even more despicable than the old skool religious/racial conspiracy. The Elders of Zion take over the world by manipulating the banks, infiltrating and corrupting the culture and gaining a stranglehold over the government and media and yadda yadda you know the drill. In other words, in order for his dastardly plan to work, the Foul Fiend Finkelstein actually has to get off his matzoh-munching arse and do something, even if it’s just polluting a couple of flaxen-haired Nordic lasses with his mongrel seed. The Muslims, on the other hand, simply need to sit there and maybe knock each other up a bit. Just find a fanny to pop out of, Abdul, and you’re away. There’s something terrifying about the idea that not the actions, but the very existence, of human beings is a threat. And the other fundamental difference between worries about immigration and worries about birth rates is the practicality. Closing our borders will not arrest Muslim population growth. Worse still, as many of Europe’s natural-born Muslim citizens might not be eligible for citizenship in their “countries of ethnic origin”, even the racist’s favourite mass-deportation is unworkable. So what we end up with is a sizeable minority group whose very presence terrifies us, but who we can’t just send away.

Of course, imagining that the statistics are true, and not deftly pulled from some swastika-tattooed arse, there are some peaceful solutions. Firstly, we can adjust to the demographic change by extending a political and cultural olive branch to Muslims and hoping that, when they inevitably come to rule the world, they look on us as friends and not enemies. Secondly, we can hope that by promoting secularism and civic equality in our societies as much as possible, we will secularise our Muslims. Then, inshallah, they’ll find our beer, bacon and bikinis so enticing they stop bothering with all that implausible sky-wizard stuff. The fundamental problem with both these approaches is that, if you even hint at them to a Eurabia-monger, you get called a ‘dhimmi’ and laughed off. (‘Dhimmi’, pronounced with a /d/ instead of a ‘ﺫ’, is derived from the Idiot word for ‘quisling’).

But that’s assuming, wrongly, that these figures aren’t a shoddily-fabricated crock of lukewarm arse-piss. Someone has completely made up some terrifying statistics, to which the major solutions seem to be suspension of democracy and jus soli, perhaps with a spot of mass ethnic cleansing. I wonder what they could want.

Part 1

Gandhi, King and Palestine

2010-07-11T16:52:00.003+02:00

Nicholas D. Krystof reckons the Palestinians would be much better off following Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.'s example, and just should just quit all that naughtiness about suicide-bombing and firing cheeky rockets at Sderot. Alas, he's a nowt but a dreamer, as we all know they're incapable of pulling it off:

But then a group of Palestinian youths began to throw rocks at Israeli troops. That’s the biggest challenge: many Palestinians define “nonviolence” to include stone-throwing.

See what I mean? They're never going to manage. Too temperamental, no self-restraint. Sad, really, as it means they'll all have to get blown up some more.

The straight fact is, The Palestinians will never, ever achieve this because The Palestinians aren't a person. All it takes is one bloke who doesn't believe in it, and the nonviolence goes out the window. Adopting nonviolence doesn't make other people's violence disappear, any more than being vegetarian is going to abolish meat. And let's not pretend it was any different with Krystof's examples. While King might have been all about the peaceful civil disobedience, Malcolm X was still around and well up for any means necessary. For all Gandhi and friends' refusals to fight back, Sir Michael O'Dwyer still wound up with a cap in his ass. Even when Mandela renounced violence, he couldn't renounce it on anyone else's behalf. Looking back at successful nonviolent movements, almost universally hailed in hindsight as deserving and justified, we don't blame the pacifists thronging behind Gandhi, King and Biko for the violence of militants who shared their cause. But, as always seems to be the case, Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians find themselves squashed into one homogeneous brown consciousness, with Mahmoud Abbas as the hive's bloated queen, serviced by randy Hamas drones and popping out rock-slinging, mouse-watching, self-exploding larvae by the hundred.

For both morality and effectiveness, I'm firmly behind nonviolent movements, but it's ridiculous to suggest there's such thing as nonviolent peoples. Krystof is not comparing like with like, and invoking King and Gandhi is both inaccurate and underhand. Look what happens only one paragraph after those hot-headed Arabs start chucking rocks:

Soon after, the Israeli forces fired volleys of tear gas at us, and then charged. The protesters fled, some throwing rocks backward as they ran. It’s a far cry from the heroism of Gandhi’s followers, who refused even to raise their arms to ward off blows as they were clubbed.

Expecting "The Palestinians", as a bloc, to totally renounce violence is blatantly unworkable, and the fact that "they" inevitably can't manage it then justifies whatever human rights violations and collective punishment nonviolent protesters and bystanders then suffer. Obviously Israel doesn't want to kill innocent people or violate basic freedom of assembly, but what choice does it have when troublemakers insist on ruining it for everyone else? Oh well, we did our best. Lock and load boys, and try to hide those erections.

Ban This Banful Ban on Bans

2010-06-24T20:37:00.004+02:00

Found this on Tabloid Watch.

Something's just gone horribly weird here. Ok, I read the papers, I know Eurocrats are always banning shit, but I'm sort of baffled as to what's going on.

Is this, like, a ban on a ban? Is this a case of horrible dictators dictating what we can and can't dictate? How dare they restrict our freedom to restrict freedom! How dare they ban our ban! It shouldn't be allowed! It shouldn't even be allowed for it to be allowed! Why are we permitting them not to permit us to stop permitting this?

Having said that, it might be one of those bans that actually liberate women. This ban on banning a ban on banning bans (I think), unlike other bans, is actually reducing ban-freedom. These bureaucratic EU Eurocrats are not just forcing us not to force women not to be forced into something. They are LITERALLY forcing us to force them not to be forced not to force themselves into being forced into forcing us out of forcing them, by FORCE into the burkah! Or niqab. Hijab. Whatever. Something foreign. I'm confused enough as it is.

Rape Jokes and Equal-Opportunities Offensiveness

2010-06-08T02:17:00.007+02:00

Bear with me for being over a year behind on responding to this post, I’m afraid that’s how I fucking roll. Highlight:

For example, for at least a decade, comedians have been doing “white people are like this” and “black people are like this” humor. On the face of it, this is “equal,” but in a society that is organized around whiteness, the effect is not the same. Jokes about how lame uncool, stiff, or stingy white people are simply don’t have the same consequence as jokes about how blacks are lazy or prone to crime.

The article misses a more straightforward business point: some t-shirts will sell better than others. I’m willing to bet that offensive attacks on Arabs, Muslims and (assumed to be) illegal immigrants will prove more popular than light-hearted digs at whitey’s embarrassing dancing.

But the article also seems to have missed a wider point. They seem to read “offensive” and “socially damaging” as synonyms, which is a massive oversimplification. Taboos do not, cannot, be established simply by avoiding them. They have to be discussed, and shown, and there are several ways of doing this:

The Comeuppance: Oedipus goes mad and blinds himself, Mark Renton dives into in the worst toilet in Scotland for his methadone, Gene Hunt had got it all wrong, Bill gets killed.
Association with more established taboos: after raping the female-to-male transsexual, they murder him. Saying something stupid or evil within his first five minutes on screen. Doing something utterly evil and getting away with it.
Being played by Alan Rickman or having certain foreign accents.
The medium itself: if it’s in Grand Theft Auto or a Marilyn Manson video, this is a context where you expect taboos to be broken, and every transgression announces a taboo.

I’d even say computer games are popular precisely because they allow you to do things you can’t do in real life – not just shoot hookers, but leap several times your own height, fly a jet, lead armies of little blue-and-green men over a cliff, have several chances at life and so on. If you’re enjoying a video game, you might as well take it as a sign that you can’t, or shouldn’t, do this in real life. That’s why I’m unassuming and non-violent in real life, but turn into a murderous psychopath the moment you put a joypad in my hand.

It’s a truism to say that context is everything, but with humour, as with any treatment of taboos, it’s fairly important. Taboos are established and strengthened by breaking them under controlled conditions. With humour, this could be that it’s on an offensive t-shirt, that the character saying it is stupid or obviously prejudiced, or that the person saying it is Jimmy Carr. The Sick Joke is an important social institution which states quite clearly, “humour: do not express in seriousness”. This seems to work with most humour – the expectation of laughter officially states that this is not the speaker’s own opinion. Even with the most childish puns, the joker breaks and establishes the taboo assumption that because ‘ajar’ sounds like “a jar”, if the door is ajar it’s clearly not a door. I count four reasons not to say in seriousness what you might say in a joke:

The Unspeakably Sick Joke: You can’t say that because it’s socially unacceptable. You can think it, but please keep your opinion to yourself.
The Unthinkably Sick Joke: You can’t say that because it’s quite obviously a completely stupid opinion to hold, and absolutely nobody will agree with you. Change your mind as quickly as possible.
The Unreasonably Sick Joke: You can’t say that because, even if it does reflect the way that you think and act, the way you think and act doesn’t bear enough rationalisation to talk about.
The Unfunny Sick Joke: Aka the sick cracker joke. You can’t say that because it’s a bad joke that we’ve all heard a hundred times before. You do anyway. Everyone laughs, and wishes they weren’t laughing, which is even funnier.

The best satire usually involves the Unreasonably Sick Joke. You observe someone’s attitude or behaviour, and reformulate it as if it was the product of a conscious, rational thought process. The best belly laughs mix the Unthinkably Sick Joke and the Unfunny Sick Joke. Someone expresses a ludicrously offensive, stupid opinion. You laugh, thinking “God, that’s not even funny”. Which is funny. The Unspeakably Sick Jokes tend to be the most unfunny, smug and self-congratulatory and, scientifically speaking, the most closely equivalent to wanking in front of the mirror. Everybody thinks gays are disgusting, women are useless bitches and black people are all criminals. But what with PC and stuff you’re not supposed to say these things. I am though, because I’m a hero. This kind of joke is traditionally followed with “Am I right?”, which roughly translates to “This isn’t really a joke, laugh if you agree with me.”

So now I’m going to analyse some Sick Jokes, which, obviously, will not only be offensive and potentially triggering, but also pretty lengthy, so I won’t be offended if you skip to the end, carefully avoiding reading anything or clicking the links.

First, I’ll translate some t-shirts The Social Image objects to.

It’s not gay if you beat them up afterwards

Unreasonable. “Macho closet cases who use violence to sooth their feelings of self-doubt are fucking idiots”

Stop abortion: Kill sluts

It’s pretty self-contradictory, so at first I tended towards Unthinkable. On the other hand, avoiding hypocrisy has never been the pro-lifer’s strong point, so I’m going to go with Unspeakable. “Only sluts have abortions, and as such forfeit the right to life”.

[Crucifix] Men who wear sandals get what they deserve

Unthinkable. “Yeah, sandals are gay, but it’s not quite serious enough to kill people for it.”

[People fucking in hospital] Coma Sutra

Unfunny/Unreasonable. “Coma and Kama sound similar! Raping women in their sleep is a laughing matter!”

Slavery gets shit done

Unreasonable, sort of. A blunt way of saying “slavery, as an economic system, is immensely beneficial for the slave owner”. People who are offended by this should avoid history books like the plague.

Kill yourself: all the cool kids are doing it

Unreasonable. “Teenagers who kill themselves often do so partially out of concern for their image.”

Swallow or it’s going in your eye

Unspeakable. “Women should be required to swallow semen and, if necessary, threatened with physical pain into doing so.”

I’ve had it up to here with midgets

Unfunny/Unspeakable. “‘To have had up to here’ can be interpreted both literally and metaphorically. Midgets are lesser people.”

If a fat girl falls in the forest, do the trees laugh?

Unspeakable. “Fat girls are lesser people. It’s natural to laugh at them.”

[Man on bog] The Koran: Now in two-ply

Unspeakable, if that. “Islam is bollocks and Muslims should be regularly belittled”. Rule of thumb: if you can imagine people wearing a t-shirt unironically, it’s not just incitement to religious hatred, it’s also not actually a joke.

[Woman with utensil] I should be in the kitchen

Unspeakable. “Women should be in the kitchen”.

Arrest Black babies before they become criminals

Unreasonable/Unspeakable, can go either way. “Black people are (unfairly characterised as) criminals. This is obviously (not) genetic.”

[Stripper] I support single moms

Unspeakable. “Single mothers are often driven to demeaning sex work by poverty. I am not exploiting them but helping them.”

What about all the good things Hitler did?

Unthinkable. “We focus too much on all the war and genocide.” I ruled out Unspeakable as everyone and his dog mentions Autobahns and reviving the German economy all the fucking time. On the other hand, some people do confuse “never talking about” and “talking about all the fucking time”.

I [plane] NY

Unthinkable/Unfunny. “The ubiquitous heart symbol can be replaced with other things. I intend to fly a plane into the World Trade Centre”.

While it’s not actually humour (or funny, or good), Cath Elliot and Lady McScamp get understandably upset by a Marilyn Manson video where he sings meaningfully into the camera about being sensitive and heartbroken for three-and-a-half minutes, before bludgeoning an attractive blonde girl in her underwear to death. The standard response is along the lines of

If the viewer didn't previously think beating & raping women was sexy Manson sure wants them to think it now

Of course, it’s a Marilyn Manson video. Anything that happens in a Marilyn Manson video is deliberately crafted to shock you and so not something you should attempt yourself. Marilyn Manson knows this, his fans know this. But this video works two ways. He’s still a taboo-busting Gothic shock-rocker, but he’s also an empathetic artist/musician who pulls a face like a kicked puppy while he sings about loss. Is this ingeniously-crafted ambiguity, between emotional sensitivity and emotional overreaction, challenging our ideas of empathy and exposing the fine line between navel-gazing and psychosis? Or is he just trying to look sensitive to sell his power-ballad to the lucrative emo market without alienating his core fanbase?

Then there’s Ricky Gervais’s rape-jokes:

I've done it once and I'm really ashamed of it. It was Christmas - I'd had a couple of drinks and I took the car out. But I learned my lesson. I nearly killed an old lady. In the end I didn't kill her. In the end, I just raped her.

Unthinkable. “Raping old ladies is not as bad as drink-driving.” This one is ambiguous though – is raping old ladies unthinkable because old ladies are weak and vulnerable and rape is an awful, awful thing to do to anyone, or because old ladies aren’t sexy? Which aspect you find unthinkable (and therefore laugh at) determines quite reliably whether you need to be hit in the face with a shovel.

[Lengthy exchange where the inventor of a sex-machine pretends to test it on a female volunteer, but actually uses his own penis]

Unreasonable. “Men will often use subterfuge to have sex with a woman who wouldn’t let them otherwise”. It’s not a pleasant way to say it, but it’s true, and it’s not like you end up admiring the inventor.

From The Invention of Lying
[Tall, thin, pretty, blond, white woman is walking down the street and passes Gervais.
Gervais: The world's gonna end unless we have sex right now!
[Woman whips around and she looks at him, VERY frightened and frantic.]
Woman: Do we have time to get to a motel, or do we need to do it right here?!

Unspeakable. “Making women think they will die if they don’t have sex with you is something we’d all do if we got the chance.” What’s nasty about this is not that it’s a rape-joke, not that it condones rape, but that, in the trailer at least, it seems to pass people by as a light-hearted fantasy.

Right. Those are the jokes that didn’t make me laugh. Except that first t-shirt, I think I smirked. It’s quite clever, though I wouldn’t wear it. These are some Sick Jokes I do like.

PETA demo: Semi-naked women packaged as meat.

Unthinkable. “Women are meat”. Though PETA are usually godawful shite, this is clever. It plays on our entirely justified objections to treating women like meat, and makes us think about how we treat meat. If you’re offended at the objectification of women, good, so you should be, now get offended at your dinner, carnivore scum. PETA exploit the social function of “offence”.

Anal Cunt. Anal Cunt are fucking genius. Any opinion expressed by Anal Cunt is not the opinion of Anal Cunt. Any opinion expressed by Anal Cunt is probably not the opinion of anyone. Anyone whose opinion is expressed by Anal Cunt is an arsehole and a cunt. Some highlights:

your band is fucking awesome,you have the best sound
you're really really good, you're the best band around
[chorus:]hootie and the blowfish

Unthinkable. “Hootie and the Blowfish are a talented and inventive band and just the sort of thing Anal Cunt like”

[Of a potential rape victim]
I saw you wearing a 311 shirt and reading French poetry
To your lesbian lover who was wearing a beret

Unreasonable. “People who like 311, French poetry, sex with other women or wearing berets are socially objectionable, and deserve to be raped”. Apart from the (AC-standard) 311 dig, berets, French poetry and lipstickless lesbianism are somewhat frowned upon in certain circles, and let’s not pretend rape is never used to express disapproval of women.

You shouldn’t have been a woman
You shouldn’t have had a cunt[...]
You should’ve worn a chastity belt
You should’ve volunteered to fuck him
You should’ve been ugly
I hate you because you’re a woman

Unreasonable. “Rape victims should have modified their behaviour. Rape victims are partially, if not wholly to blame. Rape victims are to blame because they are women and it is possible to rape them. I hold these opinions because I hate women.” Don’t tell me anyone would ever un-ironically express that attitude in those words. Don’t tell me that people don’t have that attitude anyway.

Lastly, one of the many neo-Fascist closet-cases the BNP put up for election a while backsaid

Rape is simply sex. Women enjoy sex, so rape cannot be such a terrible ordeal. To suggest that rape, when conducted without violence, is a serious crime is like suggesting that force-feeding a woman chocolate cake is a heinous offence. A woman would be more inconvenienced by having her handbag snatched.

Feminism 101’s reply wasn’t outrage or condemnation, but sarcasm. They took him at his word. They made their readers envisage being force-fed chocolate cake. It’s pretty harrowing, and absolutely spot on. It’s also very funny. When some gobshite says if sex=chocolate cake, rape=walk in the park, yes, he’s drawn the wrong conclusion, but it’s much funnier, and much more effective as an argument, to point out that his premisses are sound and yes, force-feeding a woman her favourite dessert is a pretty effective way to ruin her life. You see, the thing nobody wants you to know about feminists is, for all their bluster about rape-jokes, they do them fucking brilliantly.

It’s not enough to just dismiss offensive humour, however offensive, simply because it’s offensive. Joking about something is just an oblique way of talking about it. Rape jokes tend to be considered the most offensive (and so to their fans, the most hilarious) because we’re still cagey about talking about rape. We’re still cagey about joking/talking about rape, not because rape is bad (we joke about war and death and all manner of serious stuff), but because, either straight-faced or as jokes, people say abhorrent and stupid things about it. And what people say about rape in jest is nowhere near as damaging as what misogynist cunts in in fuckwit-wigs say in all seriousness. Joking about rape is not a taboo because of how bad rape is, but because of how reluctant we are to discuss it, and how flippant certain people are about it in perfect seriousness.

Both the thin-skinned maiden aunts saying “that’s not funny” and the self-satisfied wags saying “calm down, it’s a joke” have failed catastrophically to understand the first thing about humour. It may well be a joke, but if the joke’s message is cuntish, you’re still a massive cunt. It may well be very funny indeed, and you may be a massive cunt with a fine turn of phrase and split-second comic timing, but I’m afraid that’s still a massive cunt. Ok so I'll snigger at your joke because it's good, but if you ever catch fire, you can piss on yourself laughing boy. Sorry.

Shouting About Sex

2010-06-07T22:18:00.005+02:00

Inspired by a twitter thingy, I thought I'd put a few thoughts down on shouting/talking about sex.

If you talk, people may talk back. If you shout, people pretend not to hear. Shouting minimises the risk of reply, engagement and conversation. Caribbean slaves would shout secret or subversive messages to each other, and be told off for form, not content.
If you're not doing it, thinking about sex can be quite frustrating. Talking, and then shouting about sex, externalises and escapes the frustration. This is why those who do it least talk about it most.
Talking about sex stops you thinking about sex. Shouting about sex is how you avoid talking about sex, and falling into conversations that will make you think about sex again.
Of the things that come with sexual relationships - kisses, cuddles, foreplay, physical and emotional intimacy, fucking - it usually hurts least to go without the last one. Or at least it's an itch you can scratch on your own. This is why only the most misjudged and sadistic porn films show kissing.
Thinking/talking/shouting about sex is a reflexive way to avoid thinking/talking/shouting about the other things you may be missing out on. Shouting about sex is rarely just shouting about sex.
It's easier to tackle difficult subjects indirectly. Shouting about sex is an indirect way of talking about relationships. 'Fucking' may well mean 'making love'. 'Felching' may mean 'kissing' and 'anal fisting' may mean 'absent-minded caresses'. 'Sex' is a euphemism for 'being intimate together'.
If you're not having sex, you're limited to shouting about the sex you're not having. It's far less painful to shout about the sex you don't want to be having anyway. This is why that guy makes all those jokes about bestiality, rape and skullfucking and why straight men pretend-flirt.
Talking about sex no-one wants to hear about is a massive conversation-killer. Sometimes the conversation turns to sex you don't want to hear about if you're not doing it yourself. Sometimes the conversation needs a bullet right between the eyes.
Sex and sexuality are a major part of how modern Western society communicates. Like with sex dreams, shouting about sex usually involves shouting a whole load of metaphors for things that are nothing to do with sex. Talking openly about sex is a great way to avoid talking openly about sex.
Shouting about sex is a fascinating exercise in translation.

Israel's Tralfamadorians

2010-06-06T01:57:00.005+02:00

Career fucknut Netanyahu on the Rachel Corrie:

We saw today the difference between a ship of peace activists, with whom we don't agree but respect their right to a different opinion from ours, and between a ship of hate organised by violent Turkish terror extremists

Now, our Bibi has missed one fundamental factor, that one event happened after the other. Obviously he (and his bullshitter in chief Mark Regev) have trouble thinking fourth-dimensionally, so I'll explain why this is significant. You see, while the people on the Mavi Marmara had no idea what would happen to the Rachel Corrie, the people on board the Rachel Corrie knew that when the Mavi Marmara had been hijacked, people who resisted were liable to get shot in the face at point blank range. This is caused by complex chronological stuff that most lay people would struggle with, but suffice to say, the Rachel Corrie knew to sit down and shut up or die in a way the Mavi Marmara did not.

To those acquainted with advanced physics, clocks, logic or calendars, this seems the most plausible explanation. However, those of us who don't buy into all that anti-Israel nonsense about learning from the past will understand that the ONLY difference is that one boat is owned by a vaguely respectable White, Western European country, and the other one was crammed sky-high with dirty Turks just itching to get martyred because that's what their monkey-god wants from them. Don't let the PC brigade tell you otherwise.

PS: Lenin has a characteristically excellent analysis of the situation (though I take issue with his exoticising, tacitly anti-Semitic use of "hasbara and chutzpah" where "propaganda and brass balls" would have done just as well).

Update: savages, it turns out.

Those Jammy Palestinians

2010-03-04T12:14:00.004+01:00

Came across this embarrassing effort in the FT yesterday. There's some fairly stupid shit in there, as you'd expect from a rambling tirade about questioning Israel's legitimacy that conveniently forgets the Nakba, and that thinks "no more rogue than America" qualifies you for a fucking medal or something. But here's the highlight:

There is simply no parallel between apartheid South Africa – where the white minority wielded power over the black majority – and the occupied territories, taken by Israel only after it was invaded by its neighbours. To make such a link is not only inaccurate, but offensive. If Arab Israelis were deprived of civil and franchise rights, that would justify such hyperbole, but of course they have the same rights as every Jewish Israeli.

I've seen this excuse trotted out a few times. The Palestinians can't claim Israel's racist because Arab Israelis have the same rights as proper ones, that sort of thing. Lovely little sleight of hand there. It's so easy to see this conflict in terms of Muslimarabpalestinian vs Jewisraeljew that we miss the distinctions, and so "Arabs have more rights in Israel than in any Arab country", if you're not paying attention, sounds an awful lot like "Palestinians have nothing to complain about". Until you remember Palestinians don't fall under Israeli law, are not Israeli Arabs and do not enjoy their rights. Just one to watch out for.

Why You Shouldn't Torture Children (Advanced Beginners)

2010-02-15T21:22:00.003+01:00

Bruce Anderson is one of the most disgusting cunts alive and the Independent is fucking doomed. We've all known this for a long time. Barely seems worth mentioning, to be honest. So Bruce, being the Indie's token psychotic neo-liberal, has decided to play the "I don't condone torture but..." game, which he gets about nineteen gold medals for by saying we absolutelyfuckinghavetodoit asmuchaspossibleateveryopportunity rightnowRIGHTNOWRIGHTNOWBEFOREILOSEMYHARDON.

Bruce weighs in with the tried-and-tested ticking bomb. Torture should be allowed because, facing the 100% certain outcome of a terrorist attack that could kill millions, we should suspend moral principles. At first glance, it's hard to argue. At second glance, it's utter bollocks. For a start, what terrorist with no fear of death plants a fucking time-bomb? There's also more sophisticated arguments. What if he didn't plant the bomb himself, but just knows someone who knows someone who's hiding and has the secret code? How certain do you have to be before you can torture someone? Will 99% do? 80%? 50/50? You know it's one of the thirty you hauled in. Torture them all for good measure? Come on! Clock's ticking!

The whole scenario is also incompatible with torture as it is actually practiced in these cases. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in a month. That was clearly not to force information out of him. Like the psychological experiments Naomi Klein talks about in The Shock Doctrine, the point is not to squeeze out vital leads, it's to disorientate the victim to the point where they let it slip out accidentally. The "torture doesn't work" arguments fall down here too: this is an entirely different method, which might well work, given the chance. All it takes is a method of torture that yields results and civilisation is fucked.

It's not just practical issues though. As well as ludicrously improbable, the ticking bomb is also immensely inconsistent. There's a bomb under Manhattan. Would you go paedo? If not, you're not making the utilitarian argument you pretend to. You're just using an emotive scenario because you want it so good people get to do bad things. Would you use torture if you knew you'd hang for it? Say no, and you're a coward, a hypocrite and condemning thousands, millions, billions of people to dirty-bomb death. Say yes, and there's no need to suspend the rule of law along with our moral principles. Once you've decided you absolutely need to torture someone, is it alright if you enjoy it? Is a full-on chubby permissible, or only a semi?

I'd thought of another, even better counter-argument, but Sydney Kentridge got there first. Bruce Anderson:

I once argued that if there were a ticking bomb, the Government would not only have a right to use torture. It would have a duty to use torture. Up sprang Sydney Kentridge... "Let's take your hypothesis a bit further. We have captured a terrorist, but he is a hardened character. We cannot be certain that he will crack in time. We have also captured his wife and children". After much agonising, I have come to the conclusion that there is only one answer to Sydney's question. Torture the wife and children.

This is where we see Bruce is a true pro at the game. The wife and kids argument is a clever one, because it exposes torture fans for what they are: pragmatic utilitarian realpolitikers, like Anderson, who are (understandably) willing to suspend moral principles to save innocent lives, or sadistic hypocrites with none to start with.

LibCon/Pickled Politics and Henry Porter rightly jump on him, but for all the wrong reasons. The fact that Bruce Anderson condones torturing children is not what makes him a horrible little shit who needs nailing to a cactus. It's the closest he will ever have to a redeeming feature. He's at least honest and consistent and if he could, he would save everybody in the world from super-hyper mega-terrorism, whatever it took. He's a horrible little shit who needs nailing to a cactus because he condones torture full stop.

Everybody's gut reaction to this article is utter, utter horror. Even Bruce Anderson's. An innocent woman and her child are about to go through horrific agony and abject terror which they have done nothing to deserve except marry and be born to the wrong man. But saying it's wrong to torture innocent people who don't deserve it is an awful, awful, stupid, suicidal awful, stupid argument. It's a tacit admission that some people do deserve it. It makes the moral questions of torture into a sliding scale, with Bad Men With Beards are at the underwater end. If you argue anything other than "torture is always wrong", then you're also arguing torture is sometimes right. And what that means in practice is: torture is always right when I want to do it. I just need to find the right situation.

Muslimface

2010-01-04T20:13:00.009+01:00

A fair few people seem to be recommending profiling Muslims, and the idea seems to be that it's NOT racial profiling, because Islam is a religion, not a race. Which is true, and who knows, it might just work. Thing is though, maybe I'm missing something really big here, but how exactly do you actually do it? I mean, I don't have my religion on my passport, so I could quite easily lie about it if someone asked me. If I had a really Muslim-sounding name, I could pretend I was an Arab Christian or a convert to atheism or something, or even travel on a false passport. Have a look at Old Holborn's picture of blatantly obvious Muslims.

I've been staring at it for like five minutes, and I still can't see the Islam. All I see is a load of brown people.

All in all, possibly the most inept attempt at an I'm-not-racist-but I have ever seen. Whatever happened to fucking standards?

The Most PC Thing You'll Ever Read

2009-12-21T01:49:00.009+01:00

Go on, have a look. It's basically a guy whining that Rage Against the Machine don't deserve to be Christmas #1 because he doesn't share their opinions. How so?

They have "images of books" on their website. He doesn't like the books in question.
They also like Che Guevara, Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore.
Their guitarist, among other things, once said "A great song should destroy cops and set fire to the suburbs", which Edmund Standing takes very literally indeed

You'll notice in the article, there is zero analysis of Rage's music or even lyrics. You wouldn't expect similar for the fucknut right's artists. You don't hear Edmund Standing laying into W.B. Yeats for his politics, or Wagner for his fruity views on Jewish people. Does he refuse to watch Briget Bardot films because of her disgraceful views on Muslims? When he was at university, did he start yelling in the lectures every time someone mentioned Heidegger? I imagine if we were getting 'Peaches in Regalia' to Christmas #1, he wouldn't be condemning Frank Zappa and listing the faults of libertarianism. His objection to Chomsky is especially nasty, slandering him as a "pseudo-academic" despite the article he links to, '200 Chomsky Lies', only making one passing reference to linguistics. Would he also refer to Chris Brand as a 'pseudo-psychologist' because of his views? Actually, speaking of racist gobshites, hasn't Dannii Minogue said enough stupid shit to disqualify the X-Factor from another Christmas #1?

This is a textbook case of what the right-wing call 'political correctness'. Getting all oversensitive about certain opinions, making some athletic leaps of logic and then coming over all censorious towards anything associated with anything they disagree with. Deciding who should be where in the charts based on their politics, using a bad Brecht play you saw a few years ago to dispute Marxism, that sort of thing. That Chomsky one's a classic actually, I've come across that before. Some horse's arse with zero interest in L1 acquisition disputing his professional credentials because of his privately held beliefs. At least when Kilroy got sacked, he'd had a shit chat show anyway.

I always wondered why these people saw 'PC' everywhere, why they were so disgusted at writers like Polly Toynbee, who they seem to imagine as fifty feet tall with Communist lasers for eyes. Now I know. It's because they imagine we lefties think just like them, and are just doing exactly what they would do in the same position. The only reason they're ever upset about PC is because it's happening to them.

Of course, I've just completely failed to mention Rage's music or lyrics, so I should point out that 'Sleep Now in the Fire' has the best lyrics (which, isn't really saying much from my point of view) and (apologies for the youtuber visuals) 'Ashes in the Fall is just generally an awesome, awesome piece of music. Especially the Gang of Four-ish bit in the middle.

Exploiting Misogynist Killings Like a Rat up a Drainpipe

2009-12-20T23:55:00.005+01:00

What did I tell you? WHAT DID I TELL YOU? Three days and already the Goren murder is being exploited. Read the post, look at the quotes it highlights. One accuses the government of ignoring a root cultural cause:

The Government has also been turning a blind eye to the problem [of fundamentalism], which only makes things worse.

This one also seems to miss the point a little, as I'm not convinced this was a particularly fundamentalist family.

A few speculate as to why the government is failing to prevent honour killings:

It’s a betrayal of these women to be PC about this. Look at the figures. Asian women in Britain are three times more likely to commit suicide than their white friends.

instead of looking after the human rights of vulnerable young women you get accused of doing down the Asian community.

Is this because forced marriage is not a problem in those areas, all of which have some of the largest Asian populations in Britain? Or is it because authorities there are failing to use the powers for fear of creating offence? I am afraid it is the latter.

And this one actually specifically mentions multiculturalism and diversity:

Serious crimes are being treated as a matter for diversity officers rather than for the police and the courts… stop trying to excuse forced marriage as just a price to pay for multicultural diversity.

But, notice, only as red herrings, only as reasons why honour killings are tolerated, not actually as problems.

All the articles quoted were pretty good, and I basically agreed with most of all of them. But look how the overview read them:

Campaigners against so-called honour killings have spoken with one voice against multiculturalism after Tulay Goren’s father was jailed for her murder.

So-called honour crime, and the alien value systems that breed it

the murder of Tulay Goren has uncovered yet more criticism of the multicultural doctrine and political correctness

It is time for campaigners and politicians who question the benefits of multiculturalism to join forces

There's even a cheap shot blaming Labour.

We even get a bonafide iylismwdyglt when a verbose commenter goes even further:

Namely; people who wish to live in the UK or elsewhere, should be in no doubt, not even a shadow of a doubt, that entertaining such slave, misogynist attitudes have no place or business in the civilized world. And should they wish to act out their way of life, just to feel at home [...] they shall be removed right back to wherein they came and where such attitudes are acceptable and obviously such an “honorable” way of life for them. Better still do not come here in the first place. It is that simple! [...] All cultures are very far from being equal.That is a fact of life, take or leave it! Everyone, with the exception of children, mentally under developed and the out dated advocates of PC/MC creed know that much.

A few articles speculate about why our society fails to protect women from honour killings. A (Tory?) blogger twists it a little way so it's about multiculturalism. Along comes your comment monkey, suddenly the issue is who should and should not be allowed to live where, whose culture is best and whether right of residence should be tied to personal values.

I'd also like to explain why I don't put the bunny ears when I talk about honour killings or consider the term some kind of deformation of the language. I'm not particularly bothered about whether the killings were honourable. Apart from good old-fashioned sabres at dawn, I can't think of an occasion where any killing ever was honourable. It should be taken as read that we don't agree with any crimes, that we don't ever confuse motive and justification. But that's the implication of any objection to the term 'honour killing'.

On top of that, there's a reason Mehmet Goren would have preferred to see his daughter dead than married to the wrong man, while almost nobody in Europe is holding their duelling wounds open to get a better scar. 'Honour', as a concept, is valued and defined differently in different cultures. In the West, it's largely seen as outdated and subordinate to reason, rule of law, personal freedom and loving your children. Hence settling our disputes verbally in court and letting our kids marry whoever they want. We could only achieve this by devaluing honour as a cultural value, something we should obviously be encouraging as much as possible in cultures that kill for it. Acting as if honour is always good and needs to be protected with punctuation is tacitly devaluing the seriousness of the crimes committed in its name, like claiming Osama Bin Laden is not a "real" Muslim. Accepting that honour is just one of many shifting cultural values and declining to pass judgement on them lets us examine motives without approving of them. It allows us to separate our judgement of someone's actions with our judgement of their values, and so we should, as in the end, it was her father's actions and not his cultural values which killed Tulay Goren.

Watch

2009-12-17T20:30:00.003+01:00

Well, I reckon this story will trigger a fierce debate about honour killings, women in Islam and "multiculturalism". By which I mean a bunch of people will use this as a stick to beat Muslims with. Now, I've mentioned this before, and it'll be good to see it in action. We all know this is going to trigger anti-Islamic sentiment, but watch how it works.

Basically, behind the killing were Mehmet Goren's Southern Turkish/Islamic cultural values of family honour and paternal authority. Watch how quickly the debate shifts from the second half of that to the first. Watch how the opposition switches from feminism and individual rights versus honour and patriarchy, to mono- versus multiculturalism. Watch how disgust at the killer, sympathy for the murder victim and admiration for the courage of the key witness become sidelined by rage at the culture they shared. Watch how discussions of culture shift from what to whose values. And watch how professed concern for Muslim women soon reveals itself as masked hatred.

Epic Xenophobia Failure

2009-12-05T20:52:00.002+01:00

Switzerland, Switzerland, Switzerland, if you're going to pretend your attacks on Islam aren't just about Islam, don't try and do it by laying into the Jews. Surveys consistently confirm them as the most popular darkies and heathens among far-right not-racists across Europe, and have done for decades.

Besides, normally when the PC brigade do the Jew test on not-Nazis, you can just say it's crass and Muslims and Jews aren't comparable. Trying to be consistent by chucking in some anti-Semitism just does our job for us. Idiot.

I'm Confused

2009-12-02T01:23:00.003+01:00

You know what Libertarians like? You know what they fucking love? Absolutely bum to bits? Banning shit. Yeah, take THAT, pointy tall symbol.

In other news, the Communist blogosphere is erupting with support for the bankers, prominent Zionists have pledged their support to cancelling the whole Israel thing, and nothing makes sense any more.

PS: Pigdogfucker has more.

Vague Weapon

2009-12-01T01:27:00.003+01:00

Oliver Kamm spouts some libellous wank about MediaLens. He uses the phrase "genocide denial", which I think is quite clever. Of course, one problem is that what he's accusing them of:

We sparked off "several hundred e-mails" - perhaps as many as 500 - affirming that Chomsky had +not+ denied there had been a massacre in Srebrenica.

Technically, of course, this is genocide-denial-denial. Another problem is that well, it's not like Holocaust denial or Srebnica denial, or any other denial of specific historical events. Basically, you can accuse almost anyone of genocide-denial so long as there is one genocide they don't think really happened. This can, if you want, include the Thetan genocide or any you happen to make up. It's vague.

The awesome thing about it though, is that it's not like Holocaust denial or Srebnica denial, or any other denial of specific historical events. Basically, you can accuse almost anyone of genocide-denial so long as there is one genocide they don't think really happened. This can, if you want, include the Thetan genocide or any you happen to make up. It's vague. And it sounds almost as bad as Holocaust denial, and makes your victim sound like a far-right conspiracy-nut, even if all they've done is claim the Alderaan genocide to be fiction.

Incidentally, recent historical sources show quite clearly that Oliver Kamm perpetrated an act of genocide on Belgians in 1885. Ask him. He won't deny it.

Dear Nick Cohen: Please Defend to the Death

2009-11-25T22:58:00.007+01:00

Nick Cohen is very angry at a Muslim:

[John] Denham is entertaining Inayat Bunglawala of the MCB, who gave a taste of the 'progressive' policies Labour is encouraging when he wrote an article defending Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a preacher who recommends wife-beating, genital mutilation of girls and the murder of apostates and homosexuals. Earlier this year, the sheikh said of Adolf Hitler's massacres of the Jews: 'This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers.'

I like that. "Wrote an article defending". Classic smearmonger sleight-of-hand from Cohen there. I can disapprove of the death penalty for shoplifting without being pro-shoplifting. Every day, batsmen across the world defend the wicket without sharing its opinions. Who's to blame for this world where anyone thinks this kind of bollocks smear is worth printing? I'll tell you who: shit Voltaireans. You know the ones. Not read a word of his work except one thing he didn't even say:

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Thing is, a lot of people these days - especially racists and homophobes - use it exclusively for people they who they don't disapprove of. So instead a doctrine of universal free speech that says "I personally disagree, but you can say it if you want", we get the far less universal "I personally agree entirely, so you can say it if you want". And now Nick Cohen thinks (or expects his readers to think) that 'defend' means 'wholeheartedly agree with'.

Let this be a lesson to you. Every time you use that quote for someone you agree with, you're breaking it. You confuse the slow readers of the world, and you make it easier for shameless dick-waving journos to run their petty, spiteful guilt-by-association shtick on proper human beings.

Of course, I defend Nick Cohen's right to say all this, but please don't take that to mean I don't think he's a hackish bag of dicks.

More of the Same, Please

2009-11-04T02:08:00.004+01:00

Lukewarm on the heels of bloodless genocide and non-violent Jihad come the verbal pogroms.

Is it just me or when fucknut culture-warriors like Griffin, Delingpole and Phillips put forward their most apocalyptic visions of what the left is inflicting on their people, does it actually sound like the utopian fantasies of the world's most extreme pacifist?

I eagerly await the tea-and-biscuit Holocaust.

Problem With Question Time

2009-10-23T12:08:00.002+02:00

Short post to follow a long one.

Question Time last night: everyone except the BNP themselves seems to be gushing about how Nick Griffin got torn a new one last night, but I'm inclined to disagree. They said he was a wolf in sheep's clothing, but I don't think we ever really saw the wolf, although the sheep's clothing slipped a few times, like when he continued to evade questions about his Holocaust denial even when the Justice Minister told him he was safe. But there were three moments when I think everyone involved did abysmally:

"White": Instead of telling the audience and people at home that Griffin meant 'White' when he said 'indigenous' it would have been far more effective to simply press him on it until he admitted it himself, for example by asking him to clarify what "non-indigenous" meant. Just shouting "white" looked like a smear, and let him pass himself off as a witty anti-racist, with the retort that skin-colour doesn't matter.

Benefits of multiculturalism: Nick Griffin asserted that multiculturalism has been foisted on us by a liberal elite and has "given us nothing but tax-bills in return". He wasn't picked up on this, even in pure economic terms.

Wicked and vicious faith: Some idiot in the audience asked him about this and gave him a chance to go off on a rant he's probably been rehearsing since he got on the plane out of Libya. He wasn't picked up on his claim that "it says so in the Quran", as if you can just extrapolate from there, with no history of interpretation, what all Muslims actually believe.

The Yes-Platform types insisted that letting the BNP expose themselves would be the best strategy, but that's not what happened. I still don't know why Nick Griffin changed his mind about the gas chambers, and his neatly-worded, reasonable-sounding spiel about why Islam actually is a wicked and vicious faith was being repeated, uncut and unchallenged on the Today programme.

On the other hand, "The leader of a Ku Klux Klan, and almost entirely non-violent one" is a brilliant bit of backtracking.

Quote Me As Saying I Misquoted Myself

2009-10-23T10:31:00.003+02:00

Man, Jan Moir is an terrible, terrible liar. Here's her attempt to justify making an utter arse of herself in front of the internet.

Last week, I wrote in this column about the death of Boyzone star Stephen Gately.

I've included this first line just to show that not everything Jan has written here is complete bollocks.

To my horror, it has been widely condemned as 'homophobic' and 'hateful'. Obviously, a great deal of offence has been taken and I regret any affront caused. This was never my intention.

This excuse never ceases to amuse me. You didn't intend to offend anyone because, being an insensitive, halfwitted cow who writes for one of the most cynically mendacious and manipulative publications in the country and doesn't understand Twitter, you thought you were addressing an audience exclusively composed of polite, middle-class homophobes who wouldn't be offended.

To be the focus of such depth of feeling has been an interesting experience, but I do not complain.

This is one of the best preambles to a lengthy complaint I've ever seen. Is there an award for this or something?

To them, I would like to say sorry if I have caused distress by the insensitive timing of the column, published so close to the funeral.

This is pretty good as well. The article was spot on, it's just, well, maybe she should have given it another week.

That's just the beginning of her bollocks though. She then reels off lie after lie after lie about what she said in her original column:

The point of my article was to suggest that, in my honest opinion, Stephen Gately's death raised many unanswered questions. What had really gone on?

They're only "unanswered" if you ignore the coroner and persist in asking questions about other people's private lives.

Absolutely none of this had anything to do with his sexuality. If he had been a heterosexual member of a boy band, I would have written exactly the same article.

even though he could barely carry a tune in a Louis Vuitton trunk

It is not disrespectful to assume that a game of canasta with 25-year-old Georgi Dochev was not what was on the cards.

the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see.

What had been reported about that night is that Stephen and his civil partner Andrew Cowles went to a nightclub and brought back a Bulgarian man to their apartment. There were also reports of drug-taking. Following this, it was reported that Cowles went to the bedroom with the Bulgarian, while Stephen remained on the sofa. I have never thought, or suggested, that what happened that night represented a so-called gay lifestyle; this is not how most gay people live.

Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael. Of course, in many cases this may be true.

Do you really hold your readership in such contempt you don't think we'll understand the difference between 'most don't' and 'many may not'?

My assertion that there was 'nothing natural' about Stephen's death has been wildly misinterpreted. What I meant by 'nothing natural' was that the natural duration of his life had been tragically shortened in a way that was shocking and out of the ordinary. Certainly, his death was unusual enough for a coroner to become involved.

Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one. Let us be absolutely clear about this.

After all, Stephen was a role model for the young and if drugs were somehow involved in his death, as news reports suggested, should that not be a matter of public interest? We were told that Stephen died of 'natural causes' even before toxicology results had been released. This struck me as bizarre, given the circumstances.

I should apologise, as that second one isn't from the original article, but from the same embarassing excuse-fest. I would have thought Jan Moir would draw the line at lying about what she said in a separate article, but she obviously doesn't even trust Mail readers to remember ten seconds ago or scroll up.

The point of my observation that there was a 'happy ever after myth' surrounding such unions was that they can be just as problematic as heterosexual marriages.

Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael. Of course, in many cases this may be true. Yet...

Indeed, I would stress that there was nothing in my article that could not be applied to a heterosexual couple as well as to a homosexual one.

Canasta, Jan?

And, of course, she misrepresents the reactions:

This brings me back to the bile, the fury, the inflammatory hate mail and the repeated posting of my home address on the internet. To say it was a hysterical overreaction would be putting it mildly, though clearly much of it was an orchestrated campaign by pressure groups and those with agendas of their own.

Ah, agendas.

However, I accept that many people - on Twitter and elsewhere - were merely expressing their own personal and heartfelt opinions or grievances. This said, I can't help wondering: is there a compulsion today to see bigotry and social intolerance where none exists by people who are determined to be outraged? Or was it a failure of communication on my part?

If by "failure of communication" you mean 'lie', then yes, it's several unconvincing failure of communications.

Certainly, something terrible went wrong as my column ricocheted through cyberspace

Was it that you wrote it?

It is worth stressing that the version of events I recounted in my column had already been in the public domain, having been described in detail in several newspapers.

The facts were never an issue in your article. The tens of thousands of people who complained about your article were based on your ham-fisted attempt to bring them together and speculate about how they might have killed him.

unread by many who complained

I think this is maybe why she thinks she can get away with such shameless lies. She genuinely doesn't think anyone read it, and obviously they won't be able to now, as they'll probably have thrown their print copy away by now.

Their view, and mine, was that it was perfectly reasonable of me to comment upon the manner of Stephen Gately's death, even if there are those who think that his celebrity and sexuality make him untouchable.

Revealing sentence here: the idea of him being untouchable because he wasn't even in the ground and his family were still reeling from the shock didn't cross her mind. This would go a long way to explain the other awful ghoulish shite this horrible, horrible woman has put her name to.

Can it really be that we are becoming a society where no one can dare to question the circumstances or behaviour of a person who happens to be gay without being labelled a homophobe?

I love this excuse as well. Hopefully her next column will go "No-one can even dare purposefully distort the facts without being labelled a liar".

Finally, I would just like to say that whatever did or did not happen in Majorca, a talented young man died before his time. This, of course, is a matter of regret and sadness for us all.

Except for you. You get paid by the word.

Poor Jan Moir

2009-10-17T21:33:00.008+02:00

I'm a bit late with this, so I'm sure you've all read the offending article and its fuckwit follow-up. So I'd like to ask you a question: how much do you know about Stephen Gately? Obviously fans will know a shitload more but let's face it, he was a fairly normal member of a band I don't like, who generally kept a low public profile. In fact, like most non-fans, I'd pretty much forgotten about him until he died. You can't expect me to know that much about the guy. But here's everything I do know:

Boyzone
Irish
Gay
Dead

That's more than enough for someone who isn't interested in Boyzone or where famous people put their willies. And if I hadn't known a single thing, really, neither of our lives would have been in the slightest bit different. But I'm not a journalist. My income doesn't depend on expressing spontaneous opinions on stiffs I never knew

Jan Moir's does. She's a professional journalist. When Gately inconsiderately died on her, she had to write something or else she would have been one of the people who didn't write about him. But Jan Moir is not just not that bright, and probably knows even less than those four facts. She desperately needs to link something to his death, or, well, what would she write? It's like when they kept finding those girls in Austrian cellars. I mean who the fuck knows anything about Austria for fuck's sake? So you've just got to link it to the Nazis. Always happens when you have to cover a story you know fuck all about. The serious uninformed journalist must strike a balance between free-association and uninformative whiffle. "Yewhat? Either you're joking about a man's death or you're serious, and I don't know which is worse" or "What the fuck was the point in me reading that then? I knew he was dead already so why don't you tell me something I don't know you pointless, overpaid cow?" Jan Moir, being particularly vulnerable to accusations of being a pointless, overpaid cow, must tread especially carefully. The untimely death of Stephen Gately has, therefore, three possible explanations:

Irish: You know, you could pull this off maybe. Heart conditions can be exacerbated by drinking, and everyone knows how the Irish like a drink. A few Irish people might complain, but it's not like they dodged that bullet anyway. It might look racist, but then you can always play the PC card and shout "You can't even insult someone because of their race without being called a racist". The only problem with this approach, really, is that we've been making Irish jokes for so long nobody takes them seriously.
Boyzone: See, you could pull off "The Curse of Boyzone" if one of them had died or gone off the rails before. In fact someone's probably got one all written up ready for the next one. But it just doesn't work on the first fatality. That's still an 80% survival rate. You could maybe insinuate that, instead of a few rounds of canasta, they had invited the other guy round for three-part harmonies, but that would have been a bit of a busman's holiday.
Gay: It's the only rational choice. Gayness, unlike Boyzone, is something people generally do in private, so you have absolutely no idea what it really involves. Also, very few people genuinely believe stupid shite about the Irish these days, but there's still a lot of people believe a lot of bollocks about gays, how they bum and what they do (drugs) when they're not bumming or doing their gay jobs. Yeah, there'll be complaints, and you'll finally prove to the world what a sorry excuse for a human being you are, but people will read your article and find it vaguely informative and stimulating.

Best of all, you won't have had to do a blind bit of research, you can just let stereotypes and readers' own prejudice do all the work for you, leaving you free to carry on championing gay rights.

But it looks like the Mail will have the last laugh anyway. Take that twitter! Man, I bet the blogosphere is quaking in its boots.

Interesting Oxymoron

2009-10-10T10:55:00.002+02:00

Odd. I've always found the things a bit silly. Either they're clever ways to describe something absurd (like 'living dead' or 'best worst movie'), silly puns ('same difference' and 'civil war'), or they're complete nonsense. I've found very few that anyone would actually use in a normal sentence without either a heavy dose of irony or a zombie apocalypse. There are some, like 'old boy', which probably started off as pithily ironic descriptions but carved themselves such a rut in the language we no longer think of them as such. But I could never think of one that had come up organically, with no attempt at contradiction.

Then I found one. It's pretty nasty. "Enemy civilian". I mean, if someone's doing something that makes them your enemy, they're not really a civilian and if someone's not actually fighting, then they can't be your enemy. Yet you see this phrase all the time. Especially from pro-Israeli types around Christmas last year.

I searched for it a bit and found this nasty piece of work:

Israel has often endagered its own soldiers in war for the fear that using superior firepower may cause civilian deaths among those who indiscriminately kill our civilians without batting an eyelid.

Now I have fairly strong opinions on this. I also didn’t like this dubious caveat:

I have no pleasure when truly innocent enemy civilians are killed

implying that just being a civilian isn’t enough to make a Palestinian innocent (I doubt he'd say the same for the long-suffering people of Sderot). But I'm not really interested in any of that. I'm interested in what he means by "among those". Who are "those who indiscriminately kill our civilians"? Are they Hamas or Al-Aqsa fighters? Clearly not, there are no civilians among fighters, by definition. So this "group" is quite clearly Palestinians. Cosmic X holds Palestinian civilians responsible for the actions of Palestinian combatants, and therefore reckons they are less deserving of life than Israeli civilians.

And this seems to be fairly typical of the kind of people who use this oxymoron regularly. The very idea that whether a civilian “belongs to” your side or theirs should affect the moral or strategic value of murdering them in cold blood is utterly revolting. The idea that their lives may be worth less, the idea that Palestinian civilians dying instead of Israelis should be slightly better because it might annoy Hamas are not ones you should be able to hold without getting regularly kicked in the groin, yet both seem to permeate these kinds of debates, and both are horrible, horrible attitudes that people get away with expressing on a daily basis. It astounds me how such a murderous, racist, not to mention nonsensical phrase slots so neatly into our language, and it says a lot about our attitudes.

Another Fake String to His Rubbish Bow

2009-10-02T22:53:00.002+02:00

MAN this is good. Rod Liddle is a feminist. As well as a socialist, of course.

In other news, Richard Barnbrook is a lifelong Black Panther.

Actually, Rape-Rape Is Exactly What It Is

2009-09-29T22:21:00.003+02:00

For those strugglers at the back, Whoopi Goldberg is an idiotic fucking disgrace.

But jaw-dropping apologetics for forcibly fucking drugged kids in the arse don't just happen. Fuckwits don't take place in a vacuum. How do you get to the point where having sex with a minor against her will doesn't count as rape? Well, it's because it's both. Polanski was charged with rape because the girl was thirteen at the time. Because she couldn't give consent at all, the fact that she repeatedly asked him to stop was immaterial.

Statutory rape is sort of a different matter in that sense. The problem isn't the coercion, it's the numbers and the perviness they imply. This is, I reckon, our principle objection to having sex with children is that it's perverse and wrong and paedoey. Thing is, I'm not exactly for paedophiles getting their rocks off, but, as a problem, it's sort of dwarfed by people too young to understand what they're agreeing to being pressured, tricked or forced into having sex. Adult-on-adult rape sets off our sexual-violence emotional alarm. A 44-year-old raping a thirteen-year-old sets off our prurient-obsession-with-other-people's-orgasms alarm, which is louder than our sexual-violence alarm, but which we've trained ourselves to ignore for fear of being curtain-twitchers and Victorians.

What Whoopi Goldberg seems to have meant by "it's not rape-rape" is that it's only rape because of the girl's age, and because he drugged and forced her into it. Which, I admit, would move it into a slightly different moral area if it wasn't for the minor fact that both are the case. So, in the sense that it's rape on two counts, "rape-rape" is sort of exactly what it is. Maybe she just fumbled her words, and meant to say that the two rapes cancel each other out.

Glenn Beck the Shit Magician

2009-09-24T18:13:00.003+02:00

Watch this clip of Glenn Beck throwing a frog into boiling water. Watch it carefully. Watch when nothing comes out of his hand. Wind back. Watch when he goes to pick up the frog and it jumps out of his hand after he's closed it. This guy makes Gob Bluth look like fucking Gandalf.

Literally in a Figurative Sense

2009-09-18T14:23:00.004+02:00

Via Unspeak again, I came across this concerned citizen complaining about "literally". This is a bone I've had to pick with the world at large for a while, and I pick on Jeff Strabone because he seems to have summed up most of the arguments and a couple of the failings around the word.

Firstly, he gives a good example of, what is in my opinion, the only merit of prescriptivism: pragmatism, saying that

If we lose the literal meaning of 'literal', we would be depriving our language of one of the two words, the other being 'figurative', that most help us understand how language does and does not work.

And he's basically right. The opposition between 'literally' and 'figuratively' is a highly useful one. And in 'literally' acquiring a figurative sense, it basically falls prey to the exact kind of semantic shift that makes it necessary. But we're not dealing with a binary here. People can use metaphors in several senses, and just two words doesn't cut it.

I'll give you a couple of examples: 'to drink someone under the table' has, ostensibly, two meanings - the metaphorical sense of outdrinking someone, and the literal sense of outdrinking them to the point that they slump under the table. But the metaphorical meaning is itself ambiguous: did you carry on drinking after your opponent had thrown in the towel, or did you just get more in before closing time? 'To laugh your head off' means 'to laugh a lot' in the figurative sense, in the literal sense, nothing. But, being naturally prone to exaggeration, people might say they laughed their heads off for levels of hilarity well below the average for that idiom, in the same way someone sitting with a face like a slapped arse might type 'rofl'.

How to distinguish between the two? 'Figurative' announces metaphor, hyperbole or both. 'Literal', in its old sense, declares no hyperbole, no metaphor. What do we say when there is metaphor, but no hyperbole? "I was literally laughing my head off" could not possibly mean decapitation by hilarity, it could only mean "I was laughing hard enough to merit this colourful figure of speech". But what about drinking under the table? Here we have three possibilities: outdrinking, outdrinking with a clear victory and outdrinking with the opponent physically slumped under the table. One is clearly literal, one is clearly figurative, but what about the one in the middle? Well, have you ever met anyone, anywhere, ever, who would say "I literally drank him under the table" and leave it at that? When you hear where the losing inebriate ended up, and believe me, you will, then you know what kind of 'literal' you are dealing with. Nine times out of ten, the context and the intelligence of the listener is enough to clear up most ambiguities.

So let's take Jeff's example:

Now, normally this redtape is a nuisance. We work through it. It is inconvenient. It is a nuisance. But we just sort of move through the redtape of Government. But in this case, it is literally a noose that is around the necks of people, of business owners, large and small, family members—strangling their efforts to recover their communities that were devastated.

Jeff adds

Is it time for Northern troops to occupy Louisiana again as they did during the Reconstruction? Is someone literally lynching people down South with nooses made of literal red tape? Senator Landrieu seems to think so.

No, because that would be ludicrous. Would anyone seriously interpret it that way, even for a second? What Senator Landrieu seems to be getting at is this: "Many politicians, possibly myself included, would call this bureaucracy a 'noose' when it is really just a nuisance. This is not the case here. Though not actually a noose in the physical sense, it is serious enough to merit the comparison".

From the supposed degeneration of 'literally', we've actually gained a handy tool against the degeneration of other words and idioms. Jeff seems to think 'literally' has swapped places with 'figuratively', but that's clearly not the case. 'Literally' has found a niche in the clarification of figurative speech. However, because this inevitably ends up strengthening the idiom, prescriptivists and pedants often assume it means nothing more nuanced than 'really'.

Jeff adds:

One of my standard parlor tricks (no, not a literal parlor) in the classroom is to de-familiarize everyday figures...My favourite is 'planet', thought today to mean a big chunk of matter that orbits a star. The Greek word for those bright lights was 'planetos', literally 'wanderer'. They called them wanderers or wandering stars because they moved idiosyncratically against the backdrop of the celestial sphere of all the other fixed stars that rotated as one. Thus, when we call a big chunk of orbitting matter a planet, we are using a dead metaphor, for the word literally meant 'wanderer'.

This is a rather charming etymological fact and a clear illustration of just how necessary this distinction is. But I can't imagine how general ambiguity in the word 'literally' would introduce ambiguity to this specific context. The rest of this QI-nugget makes it clear what information should be expected - a meaning of the word which is literal in the old sense. Even with the false assumption that the new sense of 'literally' is purely emphatic, that makes no sense in this context. In the same way, there is no ambiguity if I ask whether the Greeks literally believed the planets to be wandering. Emphatic belief makes no sense here.

Aside from that, language is often enriched by ambiguity, and can easily survive it. Even a word like 'literally' can. Not convinced? What does 'planet' mean literally in English? Is it a big, round space-rock, which is not true to its Greek origins, or is it a wanderer, in a sense which is never used in English? Does 'month' literally mean 'moon'? Is a porcupine "literally" a spiny pig? Discuss. 'Literally' seems to have a third sense involving etymological regression which nobody's ever had a problem with. Go back to "He said he was literally laughing his head off." I'm sure you'd agree that's literally impossible. But does that mean it's utterly impossible? Or does it mean it is impossible to do literally? And other, similar words and phrases have coped with the same ambiguity. "I'm not exaggerating, I laughed my head off" works much the same as with 'literally'. 'Actually' and 'really' can both mean both 'literally' and 'emphatically', as long as there's context and intonation to help distinguish.

But even if you don't agree, it's not really any of your business how other people use words, and besides, it's happened now. Complaining about it somehow seems as much use as shouting at the waitress to take the milk out of your tea. So why not learn to love milky tea and start using the figurative sense of 'literally' to your advantage? If there's one thing I love about language, it's that it shows how intelligent, resourceful and witty people can be when left to their own devices. The English language is a testament in itself to how naturally human communication adapts to any kind of change, so I'm sure we'll muddle our way through. Look up. When I wanted to clarify 'literally' I found myself using 'physical' twice. I like to think it worked. Or we could try playing games with 'quite literally'. Either way, I for one am both curious and optimistic about how this will pan out.

Go On, Shoot the Messenger

2009-09-16T17:32:00.006+02:00

This PDF gives lots of useful tips on whether to believe health stories in the press.

Now I've always had a fairly cynical attitude to the press. I remember one time when I was a kid I saw an advert for some lucrative prize draw in The Sun and asked my dad why we didn't get that particular newspaper. I can't remember his exact words but they were along the lines of "it's full of bollocks", though with more temperate language. I spent the whole second year of Uni fuming at Daily Express headlines (this was during their "NOW ASYLUM SEEKERS ARE HITLER WITH YOUR MONEY" phase, before they discovered Muslims). But until I started reading the Bad Science blog and got my mum the book a year or two ago, me and my dad had a theory.

This theory explained why there was always something new causing/curing cancer in the headlines. I'm sure we've all had this theory, and it was along the lines of "Some scientist, right, wants an excuse to drink more red wine or eat more chocolate or something, so he does a study to show it cures cancer, then goes home and tells his wife". It didn't explain why forgetting anniversaries or fucking your doctoral students was never found to cure cancer, but we're both literature graduates, so go easy on us. Anyway, Dr. Goldacre's explanation, that the papers are feeding us bullshit on a daily basis, made more sense. But to this day I can't understand why that never dawned on me, that it might be the press, which I knew was full of shameless, cynical lies, was actually at fault and misrepresenting research. I just sort of bypassed that and went straight to speculating about the scientists. Weird how, even if you know not to believe everything you read, sometimes you mentally cut out the middleman and don't even notice you're doing it.

Meanwhile the BBC is at it again, this time attacking an innocent academic for using the un-PC "insect" label.

Ian Pilmer: Utter Delingpole

2009-09-15T23:53:00.002+02:00

Ian Pilmer, climate change sceptic and coward, has, as yet, failed to answer George Monbiot's questions on scientific claims made in his book. He's also failed to answer his own (ludicrous) questions, even with ten quid sterling up for grabs. Mounting evidence that literally anyone James Delingpole agrees with is a horse's arse.

Unspeak Returns

2009-09-14T20:01:00.007+02:00

Little more than a month hanging up its hat, Unspeak is back. Now I might be jumping to conclusions, but it looks like this sudden and hopefully permanent return was brought about by a Johann Hari cash-in. This ended up as basically a potted summary of his journalistic output. There’s some very good points (about the “politics of envy”), some borrowed points that deserve an airing (the practice of labelling fair, rather than unfair, trade), some old grudges aired, some rather silly points that nonetheless raise an interesting point (that stuff about the Queen), and then some utter car-crashes of ham-fisted hypocrisy. Stephen Poole tackles most of the latter, concluding that

Hari is confusing “honest” with “argumentative, but on my side of the argument”.

Hari, in fact, seems to be unspeaking the term ‘unspeak’, using it not for words that ~~deliberately distort language~~ contain an unspoken argument within them, but for words he disagrees with. Which an intelligent, rational person who understands the term would never do.

You also get the classic Hari move of making a good point, then bollocksing it up (as I also mentioned in the Unspeak comments):

“Out of context.” I would allow this phrase to be used, but in highly restricted circumstances. Sometimes, a quote is taken out of context, but if you are going to make that accusation, you should be required to give the original context, and explain why the quote was wrong.

Absolutely great. If you’re going to claim you were misquoted, give the real quote. If you think someone got you wrong, put your money where your mouth is and set them straight. Give the context, and we’ll make up our minds if that makes it ok. It’s a great point, and Hari could have left off there and come off well. Unfortunately, he didn’t:

For example, when I revealed that Jake Chapman said his art-works performed "a good social service, like the children who killed Jamie Bulger," he simply said this was "stripped from the proper context." How? I have read it in context repeatedly and can't see his argument.

I haven’t read it in context [pdf] (well, I did ages ago but I forgot it) and I know exactly what he means. The Chapman brothers piss people off. They’re sort of upmarket hate-figures, for members of the chattering classes who consider all that child-murderer stuff a little too plebeian. And they do it very artfully, playing on the peculiar and irrational sensibilities of bourgeois art punters, scratching away at fetishes like “originals” (like with the Goya etchings) and “authenticity” (like with the African Ronald McDonalds), and by saying deliberately provocative things. Hari doesn’t get this. Hari also got very annoyed when his artistic sacred cows got satirised. But Hari also considers printing this context beneath him. We can read what the context wasn’t, if we’re really curious:

It wasn't preceded by a sentence saying "If I was an attention-seeking fool who didn't take anything seriously, I would say..."

But otherwise we have to keep the faith and assume that, because he read the quote in context and failed to understand it, he must be right about it.

But there was one interesting little story caught my eye. Hari’s take on it is that bland, statistical terms like ‘infant mortality’ don’t do them justice, which Stephen Poole makes short work of. But the story is:

In Malawi in southeast Africa, the country's soil became badly depleted by overuse, so the democratic government there adopted a sensible policy of subsidising fertiliser. The nation's hungry farmers were given sacks of it at a third of its real cost – and the country bloomed. Then the World Bank damned this as a "market distortion" and said that if Malawi wanted to keep receiving loans it had to stop them at once. So the subsidies stopped, and the country's crops failed.[...]Three years ago, the Malawian government finally told the World Bank to stick its loans, and subsidized fertiliser again. Now nobody there is starving, and the country is the single biggest exporter of corn to the World Food Programme in southern Africa.

Now, what we see here, is the triumph of rationalism over superstition. You have to remember, we’re dealing with a group with a very strong belief system and who can get quite aggressive and petulant when confronted with evidence to the contrary. This primitive people live in terror of what they call “market distortion”, which, they believe, brings bad luck and can make you uncompetitive.

I Wonder Why...

2009-09-12T00:22:00.004+02:00

Notice which class of arthropod this video on the BBC focuses on. Why could this be?

Edit: Just thought about a bit more and realised it's because the BBC is inherently biased towards spiders. Should have been obvious really.

Eurabia-Mongering Part 1: Textbook Stupidity

2009-08-21T18:09:00.001+02:00

I suppose you’ve all been thinking “Isn’t Alex clever for thinking up a term like ‘Eurabia-monger’. Well the first thing you need to do is read this article. Once again I’ve found most of the things I wanted to say written in one lengthy article before I got round to saying them. Things like:

Restrictive immigration laws passed since 1973 have generally upheld the conservative idea that, as the German philosopher Carl Schmitt put it, "a democracy demonstrates its political power by knowing how to refuse or keep at bay something foreign and unequal that threatens its homogeneity".

In The Politics of the Veil, the distinguished scholar of gender studies Joan Wallach Scott explains how the banning of a small piece of cloth that covers the head and neck affirmed an "imagined France", one that was "secular, individualist and culturally homogenous" and "whose reality was secured by excluding dangerous others from the nation".

[Young Muslims’] choices in turn depend on how quickly and readily their "hosts" will make them feel at home. Strident invocations of the Enlightenment or some other historically and eternally fixed essence of Europe seem increasingly symptoms of intellectual lag and cultural defensiveness. Multi-ethnic Europe is an immutable fact, and needs, appropriately, a more inclusive, open-ended identity, one derived more from its pluralistic and relatively peaceful present, and supranational future, than its brutishly nationalist and imperialist past.

The second thing you need to look at is this self-important arse, because, apart from the statistics, he manages to cram most of what’s stupid and hypocritical about the Eurabia myth into one small article.

Delingpole’s main beef with Muslims is that he can’t go swimming at certain times without having to cover up his navel and knees, saying:

If parts of that community feel unable to use those facilities for religious or cultural reasons, well that should be their problem and no one else’s

Which is all well and good, except I imagine that one way they might tackle that problem is to club together and book the pool one night a week. Does Delingpole also smell a global conspiracy when his local is closed for a private party, or when he sees an empty taxi with the light off? And no, it shouldn’t be anyone else’s problem, but in areas with large numbers of sexually conservative religious folk with money to take elsewhere, it does rather become the swimming pool’s problem too. Now the Telegraph might go out of its way to alienate Muslims, but I imagine most businesses consider waiving good money for the sake of of political incorrectness a bad idea. Delingpole is either immensely stupid, or is objecting to the very existence of the Green Pound as a market force.

There is some good Eurabia-monger sleight of hand in here as well. Opening with the classic faux-Feminist argument, Delingpole begins his justification for demanding women strip off. You see, the purpose of the burkini is

to enable women in thrall to extreme Saudi-style dress codes to go swimming on beaches and in public baths without incurring a beating or instant divorce from their characteristically tolerant and cosmopolitan menfolk.

Naturally any Islamic taboos about nudity are only felt by the men. The women themselves are simply mindless, powerless, blank slates onto which the savage Muslim male will forcibly project his cultural ideals unless a magnanimous Western government beats him to it. Neatly sidestepping any kind of female agency, Delingpole hoists the weighty burden of telling women what to do onto his rippling white shoulders and, with his heroic pisstaking, original pop-culture references and throbbing boner for Brigitte Bardot, he strikes a mighty blow for Feminism across the faces of long-suffering Muslim women everywhere.

But I digress. Delingpole isn’t particularly interested in the rights of the Burkini-wearer. He simply uses her, with a token nod to something vaguely progressive, as a weapon against her husband, father and brothers. Hoisting her in the air, he swings her about his head like a morning star, before bringing her crashing down on the turban of the invading Turk:

So the Burkini is part of the honey campaign: all those parts of the Islamist war on the West that have nothing to do with killing people. This campaign includes everything from schoolgirls fighting legal battles (with the help of one Cherie Blair) to fight for their inalienable right to go to school dressed like a sack, to Muslim supermarket workers trying to dictate the terms of their employment (refusing to sell alcohol), to the ongoing campaign (apparently endorsed by our own Archbishop of Canterbury) for certain civil decisions in the Muslim “community” to be made under Sharia law.

Firstly, he actually admits, straight-faced, that this part of the “war on the West” doesn’t even involve killing people. Just picture it: instead of using military means to spread civil democracy, using civic and democratic means for military goals. There clearly must be something in all that “religion of peace” stuff after all, if Islamists can even fight wars without killing. Put alongside bloodless genocide it almost sounds like a line from ‘Imagine’.

And note his three examples: wanting to choose what you wear to school and using the civil courts, adding conditions to your employment contract, and using a system of civil arbitration for which the legal framework has long existed. Now these are all fairly reasonable things to do. More to the point, these are reasonable things to do that middle-class white Judeo-Christian/atheist types do do, quite reasonably, every day. Of course, Delingpole probably has no general objection to legal challenges to school uniform, or to individual contract negotiations, and was probably entirely oblivious to arbitration laws allowing for religious courts when it was mostly Orthodox Jews using them. Delingpole is actually offended, terrified even, of Muslims going about their daily business, in case they do it Islamically. His next post will probably detail how Muslims buying bog-roll, yawning or polishing their glasses on the hem of their veil is all part of the honey-trap.

And what is this “West” of which he speaks? Women’s lib, freedom of speech, free enterprise, the rule of law, democracy and human rights, all of these things are worth defending from a backward religious ideology. But the Eurabia-monger doesn’t really believe in any of them. Not for other people, anyway. Ok, feminism’s fine as long it means bare thighs and midriffs for us to look at and not the right to sexual privacy, and as long as you’re not picketing the troops, free speech is very important. Free enterprise is also ok when it makes us rich, but it can be abused by Muslims to hire pools and dictate the terms of their contracts, as can the law courts to make demands on the government. More insidiously, by increasing their numbers at literally impossible rates, Muslims can skew democracy in their favour, while human rights laws only serve to tie our hands. The superior ideals of the West are not there to be applied, they are there to exist in theory and demonstrate our ideological superiority in the big game of identity politics. And the threat comes from Muslims using them. Protecting “universal values” from Orientals basically leaves you with “Western values”, and protecting them from the exercise of those values basically leaves you with “the West”. So what are we protecting at the end of the day? A vague direction that seems to lead largely to white people, under threat from Muslims standing around doing nothing. Excuse me if I don’t fetch my rifle just yet.

Part 2

Who the Fuck is Gordon?

2009-08-11T21:12:00.001+02:00

Quite a good article on banks. It says very clever things like:

The taxpayer has to guarantee high street bank customers against default on their own personal savings. Because history tells us that modern economies simply cannot operate if everyone keeps all their savings under the mattress.
But that is no reason to guarantee a bank's liabilities to its wholesale creditors. They are mainly other banks and professional investors, and they should be required to consider the risk of default before ever committing funds. If they get it wrong, they should take the hit.

and this

Neither Labour nor Tories are intending to do it.
Why not?
Because the bankers have scared the living bejeebers out of them. The bankers have threatened to leave and the politicos don't have the nerve to call their bluff.
So the playing field remains heavily tilted. Against us.

Unfortunately it also says this:

Meanwhile, every BBC bulletin is headlined by news of yet more banker bonuses, and demands that the government step in: bonuses should either be capped, or better still banned altogether. And while we're at it, shooting a few bankers outside the Mansion House wouldn't be a bad idea either.

So why is Comrade Brown so reluctant to act?

How do you manage it? First explain how the mob is clamouring for some rich fuckers to go to the wall, or at the very least not be allowed to get so rich. Then cast the PM as a Commie for not going along with it. I mean how? How accustomed to this kind of unimaginative knee-jerk smearing do you have to be to drop it into this context?

Unless I’ve missed something. Maybe this guy is a big fan of Gordon Brown and is desperate for an election so he can vote for him and extend his democratic mandate from one to two. Maybe he’s a Communist and – being a particularly thick Communist – thinks Gordon is too. Maybe he’s under the impression that because Brown does a little mild tax-and-spend, that he’ll be well up for shooting some Tzars in the woods. And so maybe he’s a little disappointed that Gordon hasn’t been doing the whole Scientific Socialism thing properly, and wonders why so-called “Comrade Brown” isn’t living up to his moniker. Or maybe he’s one of these tax bores who bandy the ‘Comrade’ gag about so much that they’ve forgotten it’s a just silly nickname that they made up.

Even More

2009-08-07T13:31:00.001+02:00

When I made the 'spiderwatch' tag I thought I was joking. Clearly not. What is it with the BBC and mf spiders? I just don't get it.

Birds are cleverer, anyway.

Shhhh

2009-08-04T16:50:00.001+02:00

The English invented Haggis and the Jews invented Fish and Chips. Don't tell the BNP!

Completely Fucked-Up

2009-08-04T16:44:00.003+02:00

We think torture is a good thing and the BBC should give more time to our opinions. Jesus.

Total Individual Freedom (Within Reason, of Course)

2009-07-28T21:13:00.000+02:00

I’ve been avoiding the right-wing blogosphere for a while because it’s largely uninformative, because it makes me angry and, well, because it’s shite. But I dipped a toe and found that Biased BBC – as ungrateful as ever, by the way – have got angry at the BBC seven times in one month, once in the standard fashion, once predictably, once melodramatically, once unremarkably, once generously, once
quite openly, and once, best of all, as a brief afterthought to a lengthy rant about something entirely unrelated to the BBC for the same reason. Why? Because the BBC dedicated some airtime to an opinion, or even just allowed an opinion to be expressed, which they didn’t like. None of these seven posts actually analyses the coverage, or mentions alternative points of view that were omitted. Each one simply complains that these ideas were given time, that prominent elder statesmen or internationally respected organisations who hold these ideas were given time, or that someone might be considering possibly giving these ideas time. Now, it’s perfectly reasonable to want extra publicity for your opinions, but wanting the state broadcaster to suppress ideas and even whole religions that you disapprove of is, well, it makes you feel a bit manky.

Meanwhile a “Libertarian” titles an article ‘What does it take to get a film banned?’ and some bummer-fearing God-botherers get censorship and insufficient censorship confused. And this isn’t the first time I’ve noticed this sort of thing either. Which all makes me wonder why the right-wing, champion of small government and bastion of individual freedom, is so concerned with controlling and limiting what we can watch, read and hear on the radio. Did I miss a meeting? Has the Libertarian party decided it’ll just concentrate on the particular liberties its members exercise and not bother with any others? Does freedom now mean freedom to ban stuff and boss people around?

R.L. Stine on Israel

2009-07-22T21:10:00.003+02:00

Ben White’s got a book out on how Israel’s policy in Gaza and the West Bank constitutes, by the UN’s definition, apartheid. I’ve not read it, but Eric Lee thinks it’s anti-Semitic. Pigdogfucker has cut his article down neatly, in both senses, but in time-honoured A-Level Eng Lit-style, I’d like us to look at how Eric Lee, as an author, manages to create an air of plausibility and an effect of not-being-a-big-long-bollocks-whine in the text.

Among other inaccuracies about police behaviour, there’s some lovely sleight-of-hand in here:

Earlier, I had noticed several officers of the Metropolitan Police present and overheard a conversation between them and War on Want staffers in which Hoffman's name came up.

Now was that “Nah, don’t mind him, he’s just ________” or was it “Here’s a tenner. Give ________ a Tomlinson special, if you know what I mean”? We don’t know, because Eric Lee wasn’t listening properly, but he managed to extrapolate the second and we’re meant to do the same. I suppose the proof of the pudding is whether Hoffmann got moved on or not. There’s no sentence stating “Hoffmann was then promptly escorted from the premises”, so I’m going to do some extrapolating of my own and say he probably wasn’t, as the man himself seems to confirm.

The classic pro-Israeli argument-bender isn’t that conspicuous but it is there. How it works is you try to simplify the debate and push it towards Israel’s Right to Defend Herself. You make sure you relate every argument back to the danger Israel faces and, while your opponent might ask how, why, when or in response to what Israel should defend itself, you treat everything as whether. As soon as your opponent gives in and engages you on that, you’ve won. Then they’re left arguing that Israel should just roll over and die, which means Jews going into the sea and incidentally how come it’s only Israel you think shouldn’t be allowed to defend itself? It’s a neat way of sidestepping anything to do with proportionality, human rights or any of that wishy-washy stuff where countries with big guns don’t get to do whatever they want with them, and on top of that, you switch positions with your opponent, and seem like a pragmatist fighting absolutism when the opposite is the case. Justification is required for something of Israel’s critics don’t believe and never argue: that Israel is different and so should not be allowed to defend itself in any way or for any reason, and everyone forgets to ask for justification for something a lot of Israel’s supporters do believe and regularly argue: that Israel is different and so should be allowed to defend itself in any way or for any reason.

Eric Lee sneaks this in with a classic combo: A “What About...” Argument with the left followed by “Baddies Are Really Bad” Argument from the right. The “What About...” Argument doesn’t work full stop, as Johann Hari points out quite well. Though the fact that Lee even what-abouts the Holocaust in, as if it needs to be mentioned for everything someone Jewish might have sneezed on, is particularly hackish. The “Baddies Are Really Bad” Argument is, I would say, fairly reasonable in certain contexts, for example in a pragmatic argument on when and to what extent Israel should return fire. But in a book about how to classify Israeli policy, it is largely irrelevant, in the same way that whether a latte macchiato counts as proper coffee doesn’t depend on how thirsty you are. Unless I’m wrong and the book is actually full of references to ANC atrocities and how Nelson Mandela was a terrorist. Aside from that, pointing out how bad Hamas are is a waste of time, as hardly anyone in the West needs telling, except as a tokenistic gesture to neutrality. Bringing Hamas into the discussion simply turns it away from Israel’s treatment of Palestinian civilians and towards Israel vs. Hamas, away from how Israel deals with a terrorist presence and towards if it should at all. The fact that Lee considers Hamas even slightly relevant to the Israeli apartheid debate also stinks of anti-Arabism and Islamophobia. It implies that the actions of certain individuals within a population should determine the rights of that population as a whole. That racial segregation isn’t that bad – or at least isn’t racist – as long as you really need to do it and the race in question really deserves it.

But here’s the money shot:

Two Jews stood up during the discussion – the only two who made an issue of being Jews – and represented themselves as coming from tiny grouplets with names like “Jews Against Zionism” or something like that.

I'm sure that War on Want has no problem with Jews like that.

This leaves the question open, what kind of Jews does War on Want have a problem with? Well, assuming Lee means anti-Zionist Jews, I guess that leaves all the others, i.e. pro-Zionist Jews and Jews that sit on the fence or have never really thought about it. So what he’s implying is that War on Want have a problem with Jews that actively believe in something they oppose, and also with Jews who have no opinion on an issue they consider important, although they have no problem with Jews who agree with them. In fact, if Lee’s assertion that War on Want have no problem with Jews who share their priorities and principles, that’s pretty much proof that they’re not anti-Semitic.

Not sure? Let’s try removing all references to Jews and Jewish stuff and see how the quote sounds. I reckon this will work with almost any prejudice as well, racial, religious or partisan.

Two people stood up during the discussion – the only two to make an issue of their particular religious/ethnic background – and represented themselves as coming from tiny grouplets with names like “People Opposed to the Very Thing that War on Want is Currently Criticising”.

I'm sure that War on Want has no problem with people like that.

Just for fun, let’s put some other stuff back in. I went to a Libertarian-funded conference on cutting taxes and ranting about DDT the other day.

Two black people stood up during the discussion – the only two who made an issue of being black – and represented themselves as coming from tiny grouplets with names like “Black People Against The Insidious Creep of Statism” or something like that.

I'm sure that the Libertarian Party has no problem with blacks like that.

It came as a shock to me, writing that last sentence, to realise just how nasty and racist the Libertarian Party is. I’m actually starting to rather enjoy this game, and I reckon you can play it with pretty much anything except Christians liking Jews for Jesus. Now if I imply that Libertarians have a problem with black people who advocate higher taxation, or that Jeremy Clarkson has a problem with people from Kibworth Harcourt who install speed cameras, I’m not technically lying. In actual fact I’d imagine most Libertarians are too busy getting angry about other people touching their money to notice creed or colour, and I’ve never heard Jeremy Clarkson specifically rail against Kibworth Harcourt. But, being a rather naïve species, we naturally assume that if someone mentions something, it’s actually in some way relevant to what they’re saying. This despite ten years of Family Guy.

So for the record, I have no problem with Jews like that either. In fact, one of my best friends is a self-hating Jew. I do, however, have a problem with Jews who believe in stuff I strongly disagree with and Jews who don’t care about things I think they should. I especially have a problem with groups of Jews who walk really slowly right in the middle of the pavement, and three abreast so I can’t get past when I’m in a hurry. Oh, and Jews who don’t like Soundgarden, I can’t understand them at all. But Jews who share all my tastes and opinions exactly and who are considerate to the people around them in the ways I actually notice and care about, then no, provided that they don’t do things I’m proud of doing better than me, I have no real problem with Jews like that.

That's MY Opinion

2009-07-10T15:04:00.004+02:00

So I’d got my opinions on banning the Islamic veil all worked out, and was already to do a big fat blog post on them. Then I find out some Frog’s nicked all my ideas five years in advance.

Now my main objection was that hijab is, essentially, a differing standard of nudity. Therefore a ban is nothing more than forced self-exposure. Alain Badiou says:

Clear something up for me, please. What exactly characterizes Republican and feminist rationality on what is to be shown of the body in different spaces and at different times, and on what is not? As far as I understand, nowadays still, and not only at school, neither nipples are shown, nor pubic hair, nor the male member. Do I have to get angry that these parts are “withdrawn from the sight of others”? Must I suspect husbands, lovers and eldest brothers?

Which is basically what I’ve always said. Badiou goes further though:

It used to be taken for granted that an intangible female right is to only have to get undressed in front of the person of her choosing. But no. It is vital to hint at undressing at every instant. Whoever covers up what she puts on the market is not a loyal merchant.

Let’s argue the following, then, a pretty strange point: the law on the hijab is a pure capitalist law. It orders femininity to be exposed. In other words, having the female body circulate according to the market paradigm is obligatory. For teenagers, i.e. the teeming center of the entire subjective universe, the law bans any holding back.

My other, more general, objection is that the best way to liberate people maybe not placing restrictions directly on them. Badiou thinks similarly:

Grandiose causes need new-style arguments. For example: hijab must be banned; it is a sign of male power (the father or eldest brother) over young girls or women. So, we’ll banish the women who obstinately wear it. Basically put: these girls or women are oppressed. Hence, they shall be punished. It’s a little like saying: “This woman has been raped: throw her in jail.” The hijab is so important that it deserves a logical system with renewed axioms.

The only thing I can add is that banning a symbol of oppression is like giving firefighters a great big fan for blowing away smoke. Bloody French.

Edit: Not sure about the translation mind.

Lads and Losers

2009-06-23T15:56:00.001+02:00

Imagine a group of drunk men sitting round, watching pornography together. Imagine the jokes they tell to distract from the fact that they’re sitting in a room full of other men, all with erections. Now imagine 150 illustrated pages of it. This is known as a “lad-mag”. Not only is the writing shit, they can’t even publish their artistic photography without putting a joke caption on it. Not a funny caption. Not even a caption intended to be funny. A caption that readers will simply recognise as a joke, therefore rendering any semi-on sustained by the reader ironic. What I’m trying to say here is, I don’t really like lad-mags. My old flatmate’s Maxim still ranks as the worst document I’ve ever read. I don’t like them. They’re shit. Really shit.

So Feminazery. Brace yourselves. You’ve got an open goal here. Please don’t fuck it up. I mean, look who you’re up against: Piers Hernu, who says his teenage readers are being

slowly broken in, as it were, to the harsh realities of the sexual world

The harshest thing I’ve ever seen in a lad mag was the revelation that not every woman will have anal sex with you whenever you want it, and, well, I don’t think reality has ever really featured in his publications. So not only are we playing with a tennis ball here, he’s throwing it very gently to you, under-arm. And don’t think this is going to be an allusion to girls being rubbish at sports. This isn’t really cricket. This is intellectual debate. You’ve got Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler and Monique Wittig waiting in the pavilion, he’s got a plastic bat from Woolworths, held upside-down. You can do this, Feminazery, you can do this. And with 98% of the population on your side, you could even get away with cheap “you-wish” gags, snobbishly writing stuff in a plebeian accent, confusing ‘sexually explicit’ with ‘sexually arousing’ and mocking your opponent’s body-shape. You could even save quality one-liners like “me tarzan, you fuckbucket” for the comments section and you’d still be doing fine.

Oh, but you trod on your stumps. Nice one:

An airbrushed, submissive, surgically-enhanced, Aryan model flaunting her knickers and knockers isn’t sex; it’s wank-fodder. Wank-fodder, no less, for the spotty teenager who can’t get a real girl because he doesn’t know how to – and Nuts and Zoo sure as hell aren’t going to teach him.

Pretty much everybody masturbates. I had one friend at school who claimed, claimed not to. And if someone tugs one out over Nuts it’s probably not because they can’t get a real girl, it’s probably because they can’t get better pornography. So, why the cheap dig at spotty teenagers who don’t know how to pick up girls? Is it so hard to maintain a light-hearted, humorous tone without laying into some outsider or other? Would you respect them more if they were better at procuring the use of a vagina? And let’s be honest, “How to Make Every Girl in the Room Beg for It” and “How to Make Her Come like a Steam Locomotive Using Only Your Knees” run in alternate issues. While that might not get you the kind of woman who writes Feminist media blogs, I’m guessing they must have a reasonable success rate to get churned out so regularly. So even the expression of sympathy tacked on at the end doesn’t work.

I boggled when I saw that quote, I really did. And I almost never boggle. Is a so-called ‘Feminist’ blog really using “can’t get a real girl” as a casual insult? Is its supposedly progressive author really equating male social worth with sexual conquest? Because it looks an awful lot like it. And this isn’t just stupid in terms of theory, it’s a colossal strategic blunder. The involuntary celibates who the writer, Who Knows, looks down on from the privileged position of ever having had a sexual partner, are natural allies of the Feminist movement. They’re not only outsiders to the system, they’re conscious victims of it. Really conscious, trust me. Feminists and Daily Mailists might worry about teenage girls with low-self esteem seeing the women in FHM, but I rarely see concern for the teenage boys being indoctrinated to go through bisexual lingerie models like James Bond, or their self-esteem when they inevitably fail to do so. Because lad-mags abuse men, and especially boys, too. More so in fact – as well as bombarding us with fantasy images of women we can never have, they push an ever-narrowing definition of masculinity on us, limited to guns, cars, sports, gadgets, fucking and drunken banter. What’s oddest is that Who Knows goes on to say that

if we really had a problem with “sexually repressed morality”, we might have less of a problem with teenage pregnancy

Now come on: do you want your teenage boys fucking or not? Will you chastise them for losing their virginity too early or disdain them for losing it too late?

Anyway, speaking from experience, us losers can go either way as regards gender equality. On the one hand, we end up resenting other men as competitors: successful, undeserving and secretly, if not openly, disdainful of our failures. Even other losers become rivals, as we hope and pray they don’t find happiness before us, leaving us still further behind. On the other hand, after repeated rejection you can find yourself hating women more than life itself. So we don’t really feel we have any allies. Now do you see what this is Feminazery? This is a group of people, disgruntled with the state of things, hostile to typical masculinity, resentful of the effect binary gender identity has had on their lives, feeling largely under-represented and, to be honest, with a lot of extra time on their hands to read stuff and think about the world. This is another under-arm tennis ball sailing slowly towards the middle of your bat. You just have to pick your approach. You can argue that prescriptive norms of gendered behaviour are the root of our frustrations, or you can use potential allies as an offensive byword for male inadequacy. But just remember, we’re emotionally fragile creatures, not to mention horny, and your opponent’s offering pick-up guides and naked breasts.

Compulsory Nationhood: “Cultural Imperialism” Part 2

2009-06-15T15:16:00.002+02:00

What with nationalist parties both extreme and petty making such gains in Europe recently I’ve dusted off an old ramble on their bizarre modern creed.

What country was Otto von Bismarck born in? If you said a country beginning with G that he is famous for creating and that therefore, by definition, didn’t exist at the time, dock yourself five points. You tried to define another, historic region in terms of your own, modern, nationalist one. You do it all the time. We are taught that for over a hundred years, France and England fought bitterly over land in France, but in reality, the fight was between French and English (or rather Norman) kings and their private armies, as that was largely how these things worked back then. We see Columbus and Da Vinci as Italians and Kafka as a Czech, despite these places not existing during their lifetimes. We sometimes use the phrase “in what is now” to pay lip-service to historical accuracy, but the idea of the nation state is so deeply entrenched that when we look at history, we can’t help but draw our modern borders on a sheet of mental tracing paper and tape it over the map. This notion is deeply entrenched in Western culture, and more so than ideas of free-market capitalism or republican democracy – while we’ve slipped into dictatorships, protectionism, monarchies and planned economies, no country in Europe has abandoned nationhood except to allow the secession of further nations. Even the Soviet Union and its allies quickly slipped into Nationalism, often more so than the capitalist lands. Since having the idea of nationalism, the West has both expected and forced everyone else to adopt.

Let’s start with the Middle East. Ba’athism has been largely Arab-led and often anti-Imperialist national movement, Iranian nationalism draws on the country’s long history, Turkish and Kurdish nationalism are similarly home-grown. However Ataturk consciously copied European republican values, and Ba’athists drew heavily from European Fascists and proto-Fascists such as Fichte (fatuous as comparisons between Saddam and Hitler always are, they are rooted in truth). The European concept of nationhood has essentially spread to this region by the book rather than the sword, but there are notable exceptions. Lebanon, Iraq, Israel, three of the countries most marred by inter-ethnic and sectarian conflict were all invented by Europeans: French imperialists, British imperialists and a largely Austro-German colonist movement respectively.

Africa is a more straightforward example. Its conflicts and corruption are quite often blamed on “tribalism”. Africans bring their problems on themselves by favouring petty tribal divisions over loyalty to their unified country’s governments. Is this not imposing our standards? Africa is supposed to abandon its own irrational divisions between human beings, and start using ours. And these are very much our irrational divisions – Africa’s national borders were drawn by European imperialists at the height of European imperialism, and have remained as Africa tried to integrate itself into the international community. It is quite obvious then that this is imperialism, but in light of what has happened Rwanda and the Sudan, is it such a bad thing to force Africa to abandon its savage ways and join the twentieth century? Well, look at Germany and Yugoslavia. Little is different – national borders were drawn by the Belgian and British crowns, Bismarck and the League of Nations, and encapsulated several tribes within them. And just as the ruling Sudanese Arab tribe slaughtered the Black Sudanese tribe within its borders, so the ruling Aryan German tribe slaughtered the Jewish German tribe within its rapidly expanding borders, so as to adapt the real, living German population to the invented idea of the German Nation. How many of Africa’s difficulties with ‘tribalism’ are down to the inherent backwardness of the system and how many are down to its incompatibility with the nationhood it was actually forced at actual gunpoint to adopt? I’m honestly not sure where to start with that one. But I imagine having a state with starkly split ethnic identity – or rather a government whose jurisdiction is arbitrarily extended over several disparate self-identifying groups – can’t be healthy, especially when one group acquires power over the other. Ethnic cleansing is an extreme example but provoking distrust for and favouritism among the government would be more banal problems. This is hinted at in articles by the BBC and New York Times, and this African writer says pretty much the same thing (though I’d advise him that lemonade is sweeter than lemon juice). And I know that, despite the horrific and brutal ethnic conflicts that have scarred the continent since independence, primitive African tribalism has caused far, far less division and bloodshed than our modern, civilised model for arranging tribes.

There are of course exceptions – the racism of Imperial Japan was not, as far as I know, imported from Europe, South American Bolivarian nationalism and the USA’s flag-wavers were far more a reaction against “old” Europe, indeed the latter inspired our values far more than it aped them. But cultural imperialism even penetrates into post-Imperial Europe: in our dealings with ethnic and religious minorities. We expect them to “integrate” to the culture of their adoptive nation. Very often, this is stupid and petty, for example Norman Tebbit’s infamously stupid “Cricket Test”, and in Germany, a match against Turkey in the recent European Cup was considered an “Integrationstest”. We’re so fascinated by female Muslim hair that we constantly discuss how to make them show it us. However we also focus on practices that even the most tolerant Islington liberal would not accept: female circumcision, violent homophobia, honour killings, brutal Sharia punishments and so on. The focus of these debates is seldom feminism, sexual liberalism or human rights, but in terms of integration and the culture of the host nation. Rather than expecting foreigners’ oppressive traditional values such as chastity, manliness, honour and piety to give way to our modern, liberal, secular ones, we expect them to be sacrificed for petty national loyalty. We do not expect them to take on our values of tolerance, equality and individual rights, but one single value of the homogeneous nation state. Naturally, we use the contrast between illiberal and reactionary aspects of immigrant cultures and our own civilised sensibilities to drive the debate, but we tend to do so to further our demands for assimilation, rather than openly using integration as a means to promote our progressive values.

When it comes to things like human rights, open government, religious freedom, women’s liberation or outlawing child labour, we hum and haw and wring our liberal hands about imposing our cultural values on other parts of the world. Yet for some reason the most divisive, irrational and consistently destructive cultural value in European history, our arbitrary method for dividing people into peoples, has got under the radar and imposed itself indelibly upon much of the world.

Part 1

Blocking Ambulances

2009-06-13T11:32:00.003+02:00

A Leicester woman has gone to prison after blocking an ambulance and, probably indirectly bringing about a man's death.

Why am I not expecting similar sentences for this?

Which Wing?

2009-06-11T17:22:00.001+02:00

A lot of internetting about whether Brussels’ shiny new Hitler wannabes are far-left or far-right. Some detailed and rather scary, some zany metaphors, some pragmatic, some self-entitled and demanding and one spot on. Predictably, all the left-wingers are claiming that the BNP are extreme right-wingers and all the right-wingers are claiming they’re extreme left-wingers. The left-wingers also seem to be arguing it as well as claiming it. But generally, everyone’s chucking in those all-important caveats about how the BNP have a mixture of some right-wing and some left-wing policies before hitting their usual opponents over the head with them.

At the root of this debate is the inability to define left- and right-wing. Each side has its own criteria for the divide, based on its own rhetoric and core values. The modern, libertarian-leaning, capitalist right, despite flirtation with traditions and identity and so forth, defines itself largely in terms of freedom, almost exclusively freedom from large government. It therefore sees the left as controlling and statist. The left, as ever, defines itself in terms of equality and sees the right as maintaining and encouraging inequality. What we have with the racist authoritarians of the BNP is quite a conundrum. Their beliefs, if not their policies too, basically amount to state-enforced inequality. We’ve got a party that openly embraces the two concepts that left and right most abhor. So it’s expectable for both sides to try and push the British definitely-not-Nazi Party off on each other. But defining the split exclusively in your own terms is not just silly and ineffective, it’s also getting unbearably tedious.

Aside from that, their ‘left-wing’ policies – nationalising the railways, bringing the troops home and something that looks a bit like homesteading – are generally fairly moderate. Their “extremism” is largely expressed in their attitude to immigration, crime and Islam. So perhaps “centre-left-cum-far-right” would describe them better. Even the BNP’s moderate rhetoric betrays it. Their bugbears are Marxists and political correctness. When anti-fascist protesters delivered Nick Griffin’s breakfast directly to him, it was mostly Labour he alleged to be conspiring against him. Richard Barnbrook has dedicated his life to never shutting up about the ‘liberals’ and they smear their opponents as unpatriotic, self-hating and active supporters of anything we fail to hate sufficiently. So even if right-wingers consider them left-wing, I expect the BNP would disagree rather strongly. Must be left-wing then.

Bad Humanities

2009-06-09T20:39:00.002+02:00

I like Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science. I think it’s one of the best and most important blogs on the internet, with a really good set of well-updated links. I think the scientific method and post-Enlightenment rationalism are quite easily the best and most reliable ways to understand the world, and I agree that where there are limitations and human error involved, for the most part it is scientists who are the first to acknowledge and fight them, for example with double blinds and high sample-sizes.

But a lot of its readers, and occasionally its writer, have fallen for the post-postmodern backlash. Now I’m a humanities graduate, French and German language and literature, and as such I wouldn’t dream of claiming another branch of humanities, say, Women’s Studies, was all bollocks because I didn’t understand it. Nor would I criticise the Russian department for not taking into account French grammar. I certainly wouldn’t have the danglies to wade into something as far removed from my field as the sciences by, say, reading one or two bad nuclear physics texts then claiming that the entire discipline was smoke and mirrors/the Emperor’s New Clothes/mutual mental masturbation because it used big words I didn’t know. Yes, I’ve put forward tentative theories about physics, but I’ve not actually rubbished the entire science, and to my knowledge I’ve never used ‘scientist’ as a synonym for ‘cretin’ as has been done for ‘humanities graduate’.
But there’s a nasty little thread running through, for example, this nasty little thread, that levels exactly those accusations against “postmodernism”. For example:

I always wonder whether people writing this type of thing mean what they say - or whether it is just an exercise in wordplay. Or maybe i'm just not clever enough to see the point.

Which is why science is the greatest of human achievements and pomo is a ridiculous verbal construct, a bunch of words (many of which are given arbitrary or false meanings) masquerading as philosophy. Oh, and these guys are professors and assistant professors for the same reason Chomsky is regarded as a linguistics expert and homeopathy degree courses are offered. All narratives are equally valid... Whether intended or not, that's exactly how post-modernists present themselves, and in an obfuscatory literary style that so befits the pointless idiocy of the term "post-modern". It's what happens when physical reality becomes too difficult or distasteful to follow and it becomes necessary for some to invent alternative "realities" and delusions (fairytale castles of which to elect themselves King). The Emperor's new clothes...

The telling part in that last one is the “pointless idiocy of the term”, basically a self-righteous admission that you don’t understand. Like shouting at your waiter for speaking Spanish. A couple of posters also demonstrated a clear lack of understanding of the entire branch of academia that they were railing against:

Just noticed that the paper's first author, Stuart J Murray (PhD) is: "Assistant Professor of Rhetoric & Writing" and "Trained in philosophy and rhetorical theory and criticism"
- I think "rhetoric" is the word that stands out here. The whole thing reminds me of nothing so much as the kind of convoluted and turgid speeches the old Iron Curtain politicians were wont to give.

This one has confused the older, more academic sense of ‘rhetoric’ as a part of the medieval Trivium and the newer, popular sense of ‘empty but pretty speech’. And is rather smug about it.

“What are the current social and political conditions under which scientific knowledge appears to be ‘true’?”
Eh? If we elect a new government will medical treatments stop working? Is that the kind of thing they're getting at? Will gravity stop working and pacemakers fail to keep heart attack victims alive? I think what they are saying is there is no such thing as absolute truth and the views we have of EBM are wrong, because the evidence actually depends somehow on what state the country (or the world, I suppose) is in and if things were different then the evidence would therefore show us a different truth. The truth is bent to (or by) political considerations and social conditions. Possibly. Sounds like bollocks to me, anyways.

This one seems to have oversimplified and misunderstood the whole idea of subjective truth, and assumes that the evidence will change rather than our reading of it, and that postmodernists think the earth and sun moved differently in relation to each other when the Catholic Church had Galileo under house arrest.

They seem to be arguing against Evidence Based Medicine using philosophical wordplay without providing any concrete examples of it's failure or any example of something better.

I have picked up the occasional sociology text and once struggled my way through a Foucault primer. I have to confess I struggled with it, it just seemed to be a collection of anecdotes used to inform an argument that made unprovable assertions.

But these two have made a more subtle mistake. The discipline they are attacking is not about drawing conclusions from data, but applying principles to texts or observations. It might not seem very scientific, but it’s not exclusive to “PoMo”. You could just as soon demand statistical evidence for the Platonic Ideal or Hegel’s dialectics.

The Sokal affair, incidentally, makes a similar mistake. The scientific accuracy of his essay was, unsurprisingly, not so important in a humanities journal. The principles he puts forward are consistently and rigorously argued in relation to physics, and furthermore, he had taken a particularly unorthodox point of view. While it may not be acceptable in the sciences to say something unusual and provocative purely to open debate, this is common in the humanities, Social Text’s open editorial policy even actively encouraged it. The humanities place far more emphasis on rebutting and refuting arguments than the sciences, publishing an ineptly-argued or shoddily-researched essay in a Deconstruction journal is equivalent to publishing a failed experiment in Nature, though not factually accurate, it is still a valid contribution to the discourse. He has in fact shown, explicitly and tacitly, that he doesn’t really understand postmodernism. What he and many other anti-postmodernist scientists do by this, is criticise the humanities for not using their methods. Or, in more PoMo terms, he has falsely presented his social norms as universal, and become confrontational after suffering severe culture shock.

Basically, what we’ve got here is a large number of scientists, first getting angry at a branch of the humanities for criticising science without understanding it (in their defence, the specific abstract they were discussing did seem to know very little about science), and then attacking a very wide branch of the humanities, and sometimes the entire department, because they don’t understand it. Sometimes, of course, they don’t bother waiting for the humanities to criticise science. This massive display of hypocrisy taps into one of the particular problems facing science and evidence-based medicine, and one of the areas where alternative medicine, homeopathy, snake-oil and nutriwoo have an advantage.

There are no limits to what science will investigate, to what, in theory, can or can’t be disproved with dispassionate, empirical investigation. Science is, in that sense (the philosophical, rather than the political), totalitarian in its aims, in that it claims to apply to the totality of human thought. For those less familiar with its usage in postmodern discourse, the word can seem a lot more aggressive and critical than it actually is. But the obvious limit to what empiricism can prove is the validity of empiricism. Claiming that evidence-based medicine has been proven to work is as pointless, tautological and circular as arguing that evil is bad, that sexual perversion is immoral, or that the Bible is true because it says so in the Bible. Basically, any argument in favour of science is either pragmatic or entirely epistemological, and so has always been the territory of philosophy. The problem with empirical science’s dominance in this area is that it has developed as an entirely different mode of thought, and scientists, as a rule, do not concern themselves with the philosophical mode of thinking as part of their profession. Alternative healers do: philosophy, magical thinking, associations and spirituality are usually key to their methods in one way another. This means they are usually better schooled in the epistemological argument and thought needed to debunk and defend medical practices than proper doctors.

Rubbishing areas of the humanities because you don’t understand them is not just ignorant, arrogant and unscientific, it’s bringing a knife to a gunfight because you think guns are an illusion. Ben Goldacre, and especially his more arrogant readers, need to remember that Bad Science is not actually a science blog, but one on media studies and politics, and that they are basically scientists wading into the humanities. Although Goldacre generally does a very good job, this wilfully ignorant disdain and distrust for any recent development in the humanities (as one poster put it, ‘postmodernism’ is “a bit of a catch-all phrase for anything, well, after the modern times of the 80s”) does neither science journalists like Goldacre nor the cause of evidence-based medicine any favours. If you don’t believe me, try thinking up a logical, evidence-based counter-argument to this.

BBC Bias

2009-06-09T20:37:00.006+02:00

Yet more mounting evidence that the BBC is insidiously pro-spider.

Update: Even more!

There's a Surprise

2009-05-31T15:35:00.012+02:00

BNP in only pretending not to be racist shocker. I suppose that's why he's stopped saying stuff like this:

Edit: It's a good thing they're shit at it.