The myth of prejudice, fear and ignorance.

Audio for this blog post is here:

I grew up with the idea that at the origin of all prejudice was ignorance and the fear of difference. Something like,

Those people look different, they act different, I don't understand them and so I am afraid!

It is natural to fear strangers, people would say, but as civilised educated people who know we have nothing to fear, we overcome it. People who fail at this and hate people who don't look, dress or behave like themselves are simply ignorant and more easily afraid.

I had some doubts about this even as a child because as a British white non-disabled child, I was not in the slightest bit afraid of people of colour, people with foreign accents or disabled people. I met people at school – a family of Bangladeshi sisters with albinism, a teacher with cerebral palsy - who looked, dressed, walked and/ or talked very differently from anyone I had ever seen before, even on television or in books. I didn't feel afraid of them in any way. Nobody did.

Meanwhile, the children I saw picking on their black, Asian, fat, skinny or bespectacled classmates did not seem to be afraid, they did not lack information about the children they bullied, nor had they missed out on any of the lessons about tolerance than I had received.

And yet the idea that prejudice was a natural impulse we must learn to overcome held a rather romantic message; for example, as a white person who felt no animosity towards non-white people, I must be a particularly good person. I watched movies where characters who looked a bit like me – although admittedly usually men – were able to rescue groups of black, Asian, Native American or Jewish people from their white or gentile oppressors, occasionally even from one another. In such stories, the villains usually looked a little like me, but the heroes looked and thought like me. These days, there are even versions of this movie, such as Avatar, John Carter and Game of Thrones, where a white hero saves an entirely fictional, fantastic non-white people because this is the way it works.

The idea of a world divided into the good guys, the bad guys, and the helplessly haplessly oppressed in need of my rescue appealed to my childish mind. It was an idea that gave me power.

Every now and again, a disabled friend will be shouted at in the street. Very often (although not always) the assailant is drunk in the middle of the day. Usually, the words shouted are about benefits, accusing the disabled person of being a scrounger, lazy, faking or some variation on this theme.

The victim will post about this experience on Twitter or Facebook. Folks are entirely sympathetic, but there are almost always comments along these lines:

“People just don't understand.”

“People believe everything they read in the papers.”

“People need to be educated about invisible disabilities.”
"People are afraid of what they don't understand."

“People need to spend a day in a wheelchair and see what it feels like.”

“People fear us because disability reminds them of their own mortality.” (Really.)

Street harassment of disabled people has risen steeply in the UK since the Welfare Reform Act of 2011. Political rhetoric sought to justify removing benefits from thousands of people with the idea that a whole load of people were either pretending to be disabled or at least exaggerating their conditions for cash. Hate crime and political rhetoric are undeniably connected.

But this is not because a bully on the street has come to the conclusion that the next person he sees in a wheelchair almost certainly doesn't need it. Nor does a bully look at a passing wheelchair user and feel a cool chill of existential angst as he realises that one day his own beleaguered body will fail and die.

A bully sees a disabled person and he sees a mark. He sees someone who appears physically vulnerable and socially isolated (folk rarely have these experiences in company). All that crap in the papers about scroungers doesn't give this guy a motive to abuse us; it gives him permission. People who shout at us in the street almost certainly have a lot of fear in their lives. But they don't need to be shown stats about benefit fraud. Their fear has nothing to do with us.

In the aftermath of the EU referendum, there was a massive increase in racist and homophobic hate crime in the UK. Nobody became more ignorant and these crimes were not being carried out by people - like EU migrants resident in the UK - who suddenly had something to fear. As a Brit, one of the most painful aspects of the unfortunate US election result was knowing that the same and worse was about to happen over there. Not that the election result made people more racist or homophobic (and the rest), but it made them believe that prejudiced sentiments were more socially acceptable to express in public. This perception literally shifted over night.

This is because prejudice is primarily about power.

We have a limited capacity to know and understand all those who are different from us but such knowledge and understanding are not necessary for respect and compassion. We know that all other people are as human as we are, that they have their strengths and weakness, loves and hates, fears and their desires and that members of any given group – even one brought together by a shared political belief – are not all the same. We know this but applying this at all times is a challenge.

Complaints about “people who...” do annoying, hypocritical or awkward things are common conversational currency – folk unite against a common outsider, however superficially they are defined. I enjoy the BBC TV show Room 101 where celebrity guests talk about their pet hates (rather reduced from Orwell's original), which are very often “people who...”. It's fun and funny because it is playing with this power; part of the joke is to ridicule a certain kind of person but the other part of the joke is the righteous indignation of the celebrity guest about a rather petty subject. It is a safe way for someone to say to a crowd, “Let's wipe people who eat noisily in the cinema from the face of the Earth!” and for that crowd to cheer their assent, united in their faux-loathing. And anyone present who knows that they eat noisily in the cinema can laugh along (or rustle their toffee-wrappers) and has absolutely nothing to fear.

Only usually, we're not joking. Sometimes we're half-joking, but other times we enjoy our righteous indignation with a totally straight face. Sometimes we complain about people who have done or do something wrong - rude, hurtful or harmful - but very often not.

When I first heard discussions about people wearing pyjamas at the supermarket, even I had a taste of smugness about the whole thing. Most days I struggle to get dressed, but only a medical emergency would draw me out of my home in my pyjamas. And thus I had a moment where I enjoyed a warm glow of superiority over people who shop in their sleepwear. Am I offended by this behaviour? Not one iota, but it made me feel good to think that I have risen above those uncouth wastrels by rarely ever leaving the house.

Now that's an ugly confession. We're not supposed to show our pleasure in feeling superior to other people – we're not supposed to admit to a world-view where some people are better than others. So instead we pretend to ourselves and others that we have other motives. It's a scandal! It's very disrespectful! And then we can build on this using our rich arsenal of cultural prejudices.

Okay, so many of the discussions about pyjamas in supermarkets had some humour mixed in, but not nearly enough. Very quickly you could see and hear folk reaching for sexism (this is about women shopping in their pyjamas, women breaking the rules!), fatphobia (these are probably fat and lazy women!), sexism against mothers in particular (these women set a dreadful example to their children!) and social class (these fat crap mothers are undoubtedly chav scum!).

When this January, one Tesco shopper published a picture of two women wearing sleepwear in a store on the Tesco Facebook page, the subjects of that photograph later said they felt they had been targeted as travellers. That's very likely the case; prejudice against travellers is rife and it would have provided yet another reason for some twerp to feel superior to them.

None of this is about the question of whether wearing sleepwear in a supermarket is disrespectful to the people who work there – a question worth asking, but hardly worthy of national debate. This is about taking pleasure in passing judgement on folk who are seen to have transgressed.

So let's imagine if Philip Hammond, our Chancellor of the Exchequer, was seen shopping in the supermarket in his pyjamas. We could criticise his arrogance, but we'd struggle to find much to say besides that. Being very powerful and a millionaire doesn't mean (I hope) that you or I could not consider ourselves Hammond's moral superior, we just don't have the language to back that up. We don't have the language to bring a rich straight cisgender gentile non-disabled white man down without casting aspersions on one of those identities. This is why even someone who is as morally repugnant and personally tragic as Donald Trump is mocked as having small hands or a small penis (not manly), drawn kissing Putin (not straight) or described as mentally ill (not non-disabled).

The pyjamas thing may seem like a trivial example, but when the aforementioned Tesco shopper posted that picture of two traveller women wearing sleepwear in a store on the Tesco Facebook page, he asked the supermarket to stop serving “such people”, adding that, “It's bloody disgusting!”

By which he meant, “I feel so superior to these people that I think I might single-handedly stop them being able to use a supermarket at all. It's bloody amazing!”

But that doesn't mean he wasn't genuinely angry about it. The anger that accompanies righteous indignation is absolutely real. I'm sure this chap felt that he was trying to correct some great wrong in the world and that his actions were public-spirited. He's probably a perfectly nice bloke the rest of the time and may well regret a deed which took just a few moments of excitement.

This is a big problem. We would like people to be on one side of this or the other; good guys and bad guys. Not just because it's simple, but because you and I can be on the right side. As I say, it's a romantic idea, and I believe it is more romantic the more detached you are from the realities of prejudice (which, as a young non-disabled girl who imagined she could grow up to be Indiana Jones, I once was).

We are very social animals and we are constantly concerned with our place around other people. We all have access to a variety of strategies for interacting successfully with other human beings, including very nice things - like sharing our resources, making ourselves useful, making others feel good – then mutual self-interest and the exertion of power; deceiving folk, threatening folk, undermining folk etc.. There are also strategies we employ not as individuals, but as groups. Groups of people bond over common causes and goals, shared experiences, shared jokes, but also belittling, hating and fearing outsiders. Human beings are so very social that we far surpass all other animals in our capacity for destruction and cruelty - but only when our friends are looking on.

Like other primates and many other mammals, we have access to all these strategies, and – when successful, however fleetingly – all of these things feel good. Obviously not all of us use all of them. We make choices based not only on what we've got (if you're very small, physical intimidation may not be your thing), but also on what makes us feel comfortable and good about ourselves.

But just as almost everybody will have felt a violent impulse from time to time, almost all of us have it in us to wish to exert power over others. And when we do so – especially when we're angry or insecure (because fear does play a role in this), it is easy to slip into the patterns our culture has dictated. On the rare occasion I feel a real loathing for someone, I find myself thinking of really insulting and often amusing ways to describe their physical appearance. This despite the fact about half of everything I've ever written might be vaguely summarised as “Don't judge people by their appearance.”

Debbie Cameron wrote recently about the tendency for egalitarian folk to pull apart the grammar and spelling of bigots. I understand and share this impulse; it's funny and satisfying, but it reinforces some of the very cultural hierarchies we are attempting to dismantle. There's a lot of this sort of thing within egalitarian politics, where folks who wish to end prejudice of all kinds nevertheless employ prejudicial language (most often disablist slurs) to insult their political enemies.

This is a point we keep missing again and again. I think folk are afraid of this truth partly because it is unflattering to almost all of us. But mainly, I think, because it makes bigoted behaviour even scarier when you understand that folk take pleasure in placing others as inferior; people and groups enjoy feeling powerful. People and groups enjoy exerting power.

There are other things I want to write about power and prejudice, but I will conclude this post with a very positive example of how this stuff can get better.

Among straight people in my social circle, the short ten years between Civil Partnership and same sex marriage revolutionised attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people (even though trans* people cannot be said to have full marriage equality even now). A wedding is an occasion of collective joy, usually involving many more people that just the brides and grooms. It is a really big deal to refuse a wedding invitation, whether it is for your only son, an old college friend or your great-niece twice removed – people notice, people know about it, people wonder how anyone can be so pig-headed. It is a really big deal to put a dampener on a wedding – not just for the couple but for any member of a wedding party – by making foul jokes about it or insisting it shouldn't be allowed. Even if you are so far removed from things that it's just your colleague that's the mother-of-a-bride, you are socially obliged to smile and coo at her new hat, and afterwards look at the photos and agree that the couple look incredibly beautiful and happy. Anything else is a potential bridge-burner.

Marriage was not a priority for all LGBTQ+ people – some folk object to the whole institution - but it caused the ground to shift. Straight people got to truly celebrate same-sex relationships, to take them seriously (no more of this “Johnny's special friend” to mean Johnny's spouse), to associate these relationships with the formation of family and the consumption of cake, while homophobes increasingly looked like killjoys and bigots. This did not happen overnight and it was not magic – we've not nearly begun to see the end of homophobia, transphobia and the rest. But I've had conversations with folk since 2014 which would have been inconceivable in 2004 and vice versa, because queer people started getting married. 

This happened not merely because people's minds were changed by reasonable argument (although that's part of this), but because of both positive and negative social pressure; it's nice to be participate in other people's good news, fewer people were going to laugh at those jokes or nod sagely at those bigoted remarks and more people were prepared to object. All this can work, not just to silence increasingly unpopular views, but to change people's minds, to knock the wind out of the sails of their prejudice and bring them around.

People will hold onto prejudice when it gives them power. Remove that power, all of it, and folks do let go. 

On Cupcake Fascism & Class War

The only cupcakes I've ever eaten were stolen. They were stolen, they were sticky and they were sweet. That's the first thing Tom Whyman gets wrong in What is Cupcake Fascism?; cupcakes are all style and little substance, but over half that substance is buttercream. They are neither dry, nor wholesome, no lacking in goo, but rich, sickly sweet and impossible to consume without getting one's fingers sticky. Unless you can open your mouth really, really wide. This is both metaphor and truth.

Meanwhile, in another piece on class, The Working Classes Don't Want To Be Hard-Working Families, Selina Todd writes,

"Sit my extended family around a table and you'd have white- and blue-collar workers, the sick, the old, people in council housing, and families with two cars and a nice house but large debts to pay for them. This is replicated all over Britain. There is no static "underclass" and neither is there a robust middle class: instead, there are a lot of people who have to work for a living and, because of that fact, choose to identify as working class."

This a world I recognise. It's hard for left-wing commentators to admit this, because it's much harder to get to grips with than a binary world of gin-swilling middle classes versus the pasty-munching working people, but we're pretty much mixed in. The one massive flaw in Grayson Perry's truly excellent 2012 series on social class and aesthetic taste (do watch it if you didn't) is the tremendous leap between the working and supposedly middle class folk he spoke to - a gap which could be represented by years of education, multiples of annual income, several degrees latitude and in fact, most of the UK's population.

And you know the thing that makes this stuff even harder? We're mixed in but not at all blended. Class still exists and it still matters. There is rising wealth inequality. The possibility of home-ownership is more or less hereditary now. We're being governed by toffs who were born into wealth and use their positions as public servants to generate more for themselves and their friends.

That's why Tom Whyman wants to call middle class culture fascist and takes aim at the unmissable target of nostalgic twee. I get class hatred. I was part of the Assisted Places Scheme. Being a precocious child who asked such questions, my mother informed me we were, "Lower-middle-class, fallen on hard times."

The mothers at school intimidated mine, so I observed their vulgarities. In those days, posh women wore Alice bands ("Grown women, wearing Alice bands!" my teenage self would sneer). They had handbags with thick gold-coloured chain instead of a strap. They often wore necklaces, generally pearls, outside their blouse collars or polo-necks - jewellery outside their clothing, for crying out loud! They wore a lot of make-up, some of them had had cosmetic surgery and they drove the first family-friendly 4x4s, the ridicule of which was clear to me, years before anyone called them Chelsea Tractors. These women seemed like characterless china dolls next to my wild-haired Mum, who dressed sensibly and practically and cycled everywhere.

Whyman isn't moving far beyond my teenage self as he sneers at modern middle-class hipster aesthetics. I don't entirely object to the sneering (although I do play ukulele). The tea parties, Liberty prints and shelfies of middle-class culture are routinely privileged as clever and tasteful, while the clubs, leopard prints and magazine racks of working people are not. The Guardian publishes dazzlingly sycophantic pieces like this about a very wealthy young woman using her wealth to get wealthier like that's somehow a worthy and interesting creative exercise.

I really enjoy The Great British Sewing Bee, The Great British Bake Off and BBC Three's Hair, which was barely spoken about but applied exactly the same format to amateur hairdressing (three challenges over two days each episode, the second day dedicated to something fancy). I like this format - I like to see ordinary folk showing off what they can do. I'd like to see a woodwork version next, please.

Despite the identical format, Hair was punctuated with random pop music and presented by Steve Jones, a sort of Welsh Father Dougal who asked what a quiff was, despite having a rather impressive example directly above his frowning forehead. Hair was not the subject of newspaper review, speculation about who deserved to win or any declaration that hair-dressing was the new black. Sewing and baking are fairly classless activities (although wealthier folk often have more time to muck about with more expensive materials, without needing a practical purpose or special occasion), but apparently, hairdressing - at least as skillful, creative and useful as baking or sewing - just can't be packaged as gentle and genteel.

Thus, as I say, I don't entirely object to the sneering. Sewing Bee played Doris Day to introduce an anorak.

But this sneering is always aimed at feminine aesthetics. It is the mob baying for Marie Antoinette; demands to strangle the thirty-five year old in bobby-socks and fairy-wings with her own designer bunting. Another crack in Whyman's argument is that, of course, feminine fashions (which is what cupcakes are) are very often infantile. At once point it was impossible to buy an adult woman's jersey nightdress without a big teddy on the front and a slogan about snuggle-time or feeling sleepy-woo. In the 1970s, a lot of women seemed to dress like Little Bo Peep.

And then Whyman gets it completely wrong about the 2011 London Riots. Yes, they were kicked off by the police killing of Mark Duggan, along with austerity measures that place the overwhelming burden on the poor and the young - it wasn't a random occurrence. But the riots were a nightmare for many ordinary people in London, especially poor, vulnerable, disabled and older people. Attempting to clear up and make things better was not about passive-aggressively asserting middle class values, but trying to put things right, tidying up one's own backyard after the storm, taking care of one's neighbours. People who want peace on the streets are not automatic supporters of the regime.

Meanwhile, what those rioters did? The young poor (and a fair number who weren't so poor and weren't so young) were exploiting a situation of over-stretched resources to their material advantage. Rather like, you know, our senior politicians. Except, of course, the kids got punished.

A busty 18th century lady with a ship on her head,
admiring a rather large cupcake.

Marie Antoinette once had her hair done up with a silly great ship in it (a look, incidentally recreated on BBC Three's Hair). She never did tell anyone to eat cake, but she lost her head for looking like a ridiculous hedonist at a time of national hardship and frustration. She never had an significant power. Nautical hairstyles were not the reasons for poverty and oppression in pre-revolutionary France.

There are political attitudes in our country, many class-based, which are causing us big problems; the belief that a person's value is measured by their wealth, and that wealth-creation is the highest possible virtue. The very middle-class belief that charity, rather than welfare, is a sensible way of providing for people in financial difficulty (it feels so good to help out). The belief that poor people are lazy, feckless and dangerous. Whatever belief you'd like to attribute to the fact that youngsters received custodial sentences for petty theft during the 2011 Riots, while Maria Miller stole £5800 and didn't even get the sack.

The cupcakes I had, even with the elicit thrill of having stolen them, weren't that special. My Granny, baker and cake-decorator extraordinaire was scandalised when my cousin had cupcakes instead of wedding cake ("They're mostly just buttercream!"). So we're agreed, I feel, that people should eat more substantial and flavoursome baked goods.

But twee is background; stage dressing. It is an aesthetic, not divorced from our social and political problems, certainly not immune from critique, but not to targeted in place of the widening wealth gap, increasing poverty, deteriorating working conditions and political disenchantment.

Plus it's hard to believe someone who uses the phrase Cupcake Fascism can really mean it when they conclude, "you are just not thinking about the matter dialetically enough."

Also, how can you possibly illustrate an article with the phrase Cupcake Fascism with anything but a cupcake with a swastika on it?  I found some on a site promoting the swastika as a positive symbol we should reclaim from Nazism. But someone could have at least drawn one.

Oh and if you're interested/ bored enough to get down this far, you might like Is 'cupcake feminism' all empty calories? from 2012, which discusses some of these topics from a different angle.

On Feeling, Acting or Being A Creep

Having tweeted a link to this excellent post from Dr Nerdlove: Socially Awkward isn't an Excuse, I entered into a silly circular argument with a friend. My friend expressed confusion and frustration; despite her best efforts, she was always perceived as creepy whenever she had told anyone that she found them attractive. Nobody had explicitly told her she was creepy, so quite foolishly, I entered into an argument about whether this inference was a reasonable one. I should know by now that forcing someone  to argue for their own deficiency doesn't lift anyone's mood.

But the subsequent discussion made me think about the difference between feeling, acting or being a creep.

Feeling like a Creep

There should be a term which is the opposite - the unhealthy polar opposite - to sexual entitlement. Feeling like a creep is close; regarding oneself as physically and mentally disgusting, considering one's existence as a sexual being, an imposition on the rest of the world.

Radiohead's Creep was my theme song from its release in 1993, when I was twelve years old, throughout the following decade or so. I felt that I was a creep, I was a weirdo. WTF was I doing there? I didn't belong there.

There are lots of us who approach sexual maturity in the belief that there's something wrong with our sexuality. Not necessarily wrong as in sinful - although that's often in the mix - but wrong as in damaged or damaging. Words frequently associated with homosexual desire in the media and my household included pervert and predatory. It was more or less against the law for a teacher to discuss the subject of my particular sexuality throughout my high school career.

At school I knew, for sure, how any female object of my desire or affection would feel if she knew, because we did have one out lesbian in our year group; a very tall, dramatic young women whose name wasn't Petronella Conquest but it was pretty close. The worry was, what if she fancied you? After all, girl's a lesbian, she could fancy any of us. And then what? How disgusting would that be? Not that I ever heard any rumour of this girl even flirting with anyone. The fact of her attraction - the fact of her potential attraction - was enough for cries of disgust and outrage to fill the form room. And Petronella was slimmer, more confident, more sophisticated than I and didn't have spots.

So even though I kept everything firmly under wraps, I felt like a creep, like many closeted queer kids in high school; I felt that my desire was predatory, deceptive, a betrayal of my friendships.

And before I got the chance to leave school, set out into the world and find my people, I got sick and grew to like my body an awful lot less. Believing my body to be disgusting made this ten times worse, as if I had no right to sexual pleasure, even in fantasy. In this context, I got together with my first husband, who made me feel better by tolerating me as I was (agreeing that my body was, in fact, quite gruesome), then treating me with the disgust and contempt that I thought I deserved. Until I didn't.

I don't know if straight women are often made to feel creepy - I've not really heard anyone describe that. Unwanted, unloveable or ridiculous, undoubtedly, but I don't know if straight women ever think that their attraction could, if revealed, make someone's skin crawl.  This is how I felt, and how I continued to feel - on and off - for most of my twenties, whether it was about the women or the men I was attracted to; they were all much more beautiful in body, mind and soul than I was. I was the haggard lumpen troll in the shadows, looking on with lecherous eyes.

Nobody should feel that way. It is never true, whoever you are, whatever you look like, whoever you fancy. Even if you fancy someone genuinely inappropriate - it's what you do (or please, don't do) about it that counts.


Acting or Coming Across Like a Creep.

People can come across like a creep inadvertently for three reasons; the things they say and do, the past experiences of the person they're approaching and prejudice.

Everyone - not just the socially awkard - can fluff up in small and big ways that sometimes leads to upset and awkwardness, especially when it comes to flirtation, or conversations that might be read that way. Add alcohol into the mix and things can go very wrong.

My own gaffs have never been terribly dramatic, just being needy and over-keen at times when I've been desperately lonely. But I do remember one due to abject exhaustion: When saying goodnight to a new friend at the end of an evening, I kissed her on each cheek, as the French do. No idea what possessed me -I hadn't done this since the two weeks I spent in France as a child. Then I hugged her, just for good measure. It wasn't an excuse for physical contact - it was as if the contents of my brain had been largely emptied out such that I no longer knew how people of my own culture say goodbye to one another.

However, the effects of social mistakes are usually very short-lived. They can occasionally damage relationships, but this is because of awkwardness, embarrassment, confusion and annoyance - not because someone feels threatened or intimidated in any prolonged way. If you realise you've made a mistake, you apologise (if that doesn't compound things) and try to put it right. There's no argument about what happened. Nobody's left looking over their shoulder all the way home that night.

Things get a little bit worse when others have past experiences of harassment and sexual aggression. Sometimes, an act can seem creepy because it bears some similarity to other acts of sexual aggression. For example, if a woman routinely experiences sexual harassment at the bus stop, then she may prefer that nobody ever speaks to her at the bus stop, because however friendly it may seem at first, she's seen it blow up in her face before. All men run the risk of seeming creepy talking to women they don't know well. I'd still say it's worth trying to talk to one another (well I think so, but I have never lived in a city).

However, sometimes we seem creepy just because of who we are.  Sometimes, this is about the big prejudices: homophobia, disablism, classism and racism can all make people perceive others as creepy. In movies, I have seen German, Eastern European and Russian accents, stereotypically Arab features, effeminacy in men and butchness in women, plus impairment - especially albinism, facial scars, withered hands, limps and so forth - all used to signpost that a character is sinister. Also, men who are very thin, very fat or very short are often seen this way, as if non-standard bodies render any sexual feelings they have something depraved or predatory (in fat, old and short women, sexual desire is rendered comical rather than threatening).

The little course in cognitive poetics we're doing has talked about the personification of Uriah Heap - the literary archetype of creep - but when you reread the text, the greatest part of his initial creepiness is the fact he is very pale, thin, ugly and fidgetty. He is a kiss-ass who behaves very badly, but that comes much later; at first, we hate him mostly for what he looks like.

Some adult straight men are nervous of gay men, for the same reason my classmates were nervous of Petronella. Disabled people are perhaps especially vulnerable to this because we are often seen as sexless - to assert our sexuality, even in the most gently flirtatious remark, might make us appear to be something other than what we seemed - like the cherub-faced child in the horror movie that suddenly says something knowing about tracker mortgages.

Then there are the lesser prejudices. I grew up with the idea that men in long grey raincoats are creepy, even though I've never encountered a creepy man in a long grey raincoat. Some people find goths creepy, as well as punks and geeks, horror buffs, taxidermists, antique dealers, folk who love reptiles and spiders, butchers, abattoir workers, criminologists, Daleks, undertakers, Bronies or adult Beliebers (okay, so maybe they are).

The trouble is, with all of the above, we can't ever be sure why someone else might think us creepy. We can rarely be sure that they even do. We just have to watch our behaviour, because that's the one thing we're responsible for and the one thing we can change if we mess up.

However, because we're all decent people, we accept rejection. Romantic or social rejection, whether grounded in high ideals, the lowest form of bigotry or pure whim, is not something that can be argued with. Real creeps don't get that. We do.


On Being A Creep.

Being a creep is about entitlement. It's not always entitlement to sex; it is sometimes about romantic attention or social power, but there's often a sexual element. Entitlement doesn't necessarily coincide with social confidence, but creepiness (meant here to mean that underhand, passive aggressive strain of sexual aggression) often coincides with a sort of arrogance of the underdog. Doctor Nerdlove focuses on this as an issue within geek culture, but Eleanor Brown tweeted this newspaper cutting, which demonstrates the same kind of thing elsewhere:

It reads: Rush-Hour Crush. Love (well, lust) is all around us, as is proven by the messages left by our commuter cupids.

Cappuchino One Sugar. If you're the girl I think you are, I'm often in the queue behind you at Letchworth Garden City station's coffee shop. I've tried flirting but you're too busy trying to get the attention of the guy behind the counter. I'm training to be a barrister, you're ignoring me for a barista. Please turn around so we can discuss my briefs.

Shiny Shoes, English Breakfast Tea.

This chap is a creep. He is addressing a young woman who, despite his efforts, demonstrates zero interest in him. In Shiny Shoes' universe, this is not right or fair. The girl is wrong. What she needs is:

• To be told that she is making a ridiculous mistake.
• To be shown he is deserving of her attention, because of the job he does/ is training for.
• To be encouraged with a very sexual joke. The law is a rich ground for puns. He could have said, "Turn around and judge for yourself." or "Let's discuss this case." or even "You've got a lovely a posteriori." which at least keeps things to a level of outer clothing and appearance. 

Notice the lack of compliments. The guy doesn't even offer to buy her a coffee. 

Now this ad is unlikely to have deeply upset the young woman. In my mind, the woman and the barista both read it, their shared mortification brings them together and this cutting will eventually be pasted in the back of their wedding album, so they can tell the story to their kids.

However, some people act this way in the same room, when you are alone with them or in private conversation on-line, and sometimes while making physical contact with you. The message is always the same; 

My sexual, romantic or social desires are right. I am deserving of love, sexual gratification, friendship and status. People should pay attention to me. People should want to be with me, on my terms. People should laugh at my jokes and be flattered by my attentions.  

Your feelings are misguided or you're fooling yourself about how you really feel. The boundaries you've established - by drawing a line, rejecting me, or ignoring me in the coffee shop queue - are flexible. Your verbal and non-verbal communication is open to any interpretation I like. If you react badly, it is because there's something wrong with you, you stupid bitch.

Some people have argued that the use of the word creep might be regarded as the male equivalent of slut, and that calling a man a creep is shaming him for his sexuality. This is not the case at all. The big difference is that the word slut, even in its more pejorative sense, does not describe someone who is imposing her sexuality on others. She might be a corrupting influence (according to the spirit of this slur), but she doesn't coerce.

Meanwhile, women can be creepy. Women can force lingering physical contact on people who didn't ask for it - I've seen women plant themselves on men's laps without introduction, I've had women touch me far more than I'd like. Women can react very badly to rejection, become angry or simply ignore what is being said to them. Women can believe that they are magically worthy and deserving of sexual attention, love or social power. And I don't think women are any less capable than men of arguing that the people who reject them are at fault; they're shallow, prejudiced, lying about their sexuality, or are capable of handling a real woman.

Yet out in a world where men tend to have greater social capital, are more physically threatening and are often sold narratives where all good men, including the underdogs, are rewarded with female attention, the worst of this behaviour is most often committed by men.

Thanks to Lisa, Mary & The Morningstar for the discussion about this.

On Love, Stationery & Law Enforcement.

When I was 8 years old, I wanted to be a detective.

Television had taught me that children could achieve almost anything by writing letters, so I wrote to Suffolk Police offering my services as a detective. I thought I could help out - that really is how I phrased it. I also offered the services of my older cousin because crime-fighters generally come in pairs.

A Police Range Rover with my nine year old self
at the wheel. 

The police were unable to find a position for me at that time, but they did take my cousin, myself and a boy who'd had the same idea, for a day at the Suffolk Police Headquarters at Martlesham, at the end of the Christmas Holidays, in January 1990. I had just turned nine.

This was amazing. They picked us up in a police car. They shows us the control room where they receive emergency calls. They took our fingerprints. I got to sit on a police motorbike. I got to sit in a police Range Rover. They showed us a private museum of criminal paraphernalia; weird weapons, benign-looking objects with secret compartments for smuggling drugs.

The best bit was sitting in the back of an ordinary-looking car while the driver demonstrated advanced driving skills; speeding around and skidding all over the place. Scary and brilliant in equal measure.

That day was one of the most exciting days of my young life and it influenced me in two significant ways:

1. Unsurprisingly, I carried on wanting to be a detective, right up until an adolescent need for attention and self-expression beckoned me onto the stage. Thus, I kept looking at the world with a view to solving its mysteries. I noticed curious behaviour. I watched people. And I've never really stopped that - I still notice people who don't quite fit and briefly fantasise about their criminal story.

I always wrote stories, as soon as I could spell enough words (or at least, I could spell some words, and build a story around them). However, I'm not sure I've ever written any piece of fiction which wasn't about some kind of mystery. This is, apparently, what I do.

2. I basically trust the police. I report crimes and encourage others to do the same. When asked for information, I've always been forthcoming (except once, when I had the most inappropriate fit of the giggles*).

Three children and a police officer in front of an ordinary
looking white car which can go faster than you'd think.

I know some people can't trust the police and I understand that; if you've been dismissed or belittled in your most vulnerable moment, if you have been repeatedly treated with suspicion because of your race, impairment or the place you live, then trust would be an unnatural response. I also know that some people enter the police force (together with certain other professions) because they enjoy wielding power over others.

However, that day at the Suffolk Police Headquarters established a fundamental trust in the police which has remained largely unshaken by adult experience.

Anyway, my most beloved souvenir from my day with the Suffolk Police was my Suffolk Police pencil. Well, obviously - you use it to write things down!  I used to write stories, but also to collect the number plates of suspicious (or at least unfamiliar) vehicles, to note the strange comings and goings at Number 52 and to record general observations in the hope that one day, one of my neighbours would be brutally murdered, and I'd be able to work out who'd done it.

Then one fateful day, I was on a school trip to West Stow Anglo Saxon Village. I was dressed as an Anglo Saxon, casing out one of these reconstructed Anglo Saxon dwellings for signs of underhand Viking activity (why no Anglo Saxon literary sleuths? We've got Falco, a Roman, then no detectives until medieval Cadfael?).

I dropped the pencil.

I don't recall my visit to the Anglo Saxon village as well as I do my trip to the police headquarters, but I can tell you that when Anglo Saxons built a house, they first dug a deep hole for foundations. I know this because I watched helplessly as my pencil rolled through the gap between the floorboards (no tongue and groove for those Saxons) and fall down to the floor of the pit the house was built over.

I could see my pencil, but there was no way I could reach it. Also, it was really going to confuse future archaeologists if the settlement got buried again by the sands of time, only to be dug up again, featuring authentic Anglo Saxon buildings and artifacts and one graphite pencil with Suffolk Police printed on it.

I don't generally get too attached to objects, but I was fairly gutted about the pencil.

My nephew has been to West Stow himself a few times and has always brought back a pencil. "It's to replace your Police pencil!" he declares (he knows the story but being six, he may have forgotten the fact he'd bought me a pencil on previous visit. After all, when I asked him what year he thought the Anglo Saxons lived at West Stow, given that it had to be a very long time ago it was, his guess was 1998).

Anyway, fast forward to our wedding day, last Monday. Stephen gives me a long velvet box, the sort you might display a bracelet in, or perhaps a fountain pen, or perhaps... a Suffolk Police Pencil! Exactly the same pencil!

Me holding a white pencil with an eraser on one end and
"Suffolk Police" printed in blue on it.

I am stunned. Delighted. Curious. Surely they're not selling these things on eBay now?

In May, Stephen wrote to Suffolk Police - sent an e-mail entitled "NON-EMERGENCY - a request" and told this story. He used what he had learned of the language of policing from TV and Films, referring to Suffolk Police as Suffolk's Finest (like New York's Finest, only with many more incidents involving pigs). He even concluded the story with "Can you see where this is going?" just like on The Wire when they've presented incriminating evidence to a hoodlum.

This e-mail traveled through departments at Suffolk Police over a period of some weeks before landing with a public relations officer. They no longer have pencils (they probably give away USB pens these days) but they had a rummage in their stock rooms and found two. Two Suffolk Police pencils. And they sent them to Stephen, along with a compliments slip congratulating us on our wedding. Suffolk Police congratulated us on our wedding.

A man and a woman in fairly fancy clothes:
Mr Goldfish & myself on our wedding day.

And so, now you know. Now you know why I still think the police are basically a good bunch who will be there for anyone in their time of need. And now you have a tiny taste of why I married Stephen.


[The school liaison officer who took us around the Police HQ that day was a PC Howlett, who also came into our primary school to advise us against playing on railway lines and the like. He was an engaging speaker and some of the stories he told (fun stories about feckless criminals, rather than stories about children getting hurt) stuck in my mind, regardless of everything else. Just saying on the unlikely chance he should google himself. ]

* They were door-to-dooring following a very serious crime on the street where I was living (this was the North Yorkshire police, or the NYPD as I'm sure they prefer). Anyway, the officer handed me two sheets of paper, one of which had an outline of a car, the other the outline of a man - a person, I suppose, but definitely a mannish figure. The idea was to draw or write in any details you remembered. The whole situation was so serious, but this outline of a man struck me as very funny - there were just so many silly thing you could - and people probably would - do with it. So I had the giggles. I expect the police are used to that. I expect they have gigglers even when folk are identifying bodies. Especially if someone has died in a comical way.

Sexual violence & the practical presumption of innocence

Includes discussion of rape and childhood sexual abuse.

Sorry to launch back on such a subject, but this is a source of great frustration.

There's a principle in social justice that is important, but sometimes badly worded and often misunderstood. The principle is usually worded something like this:

If someone says that they have experienced rape, we should believe them.

I have written before about the importance of believing people when they talk about their experiences, unless and until you have a good reason not to. This particularly matters when it comes to sexual violence, because our trust can make the difference between a dangerous abuser being allowed to continue, committing worse and worse crimes, and that same person being brought to justice and taken out of circulation, discouraging others who would follow that path.

Yet our society is particularly bad at this. We are skeptical about rape. We are over-anxious about the idea that innocent men* may be subject to false-accusations. Sometimes, our principle is read as

If someone says that they have experienced rape, we should condemn the suspected perpetrator. 

This sits against one of the most important principles in law: a person is to be presumed innocent, until they are found to be guilty. Although this is usually a pernicious misinterpretation, some people actually word it like that. Some people do, for example, believe that we should condemn all the famous men arrested under Operation Yewtree, because they must all have been accused by someone.

There then follows an argument, which pitches the rights of a rape victim against those of a person accused of rape. This is a really big problem, a thorn in the side of any constructive discussion of justice and sexual violence, so I'm going to try and unpack it.


We've moved beyond trial by combat.

In days of yore, if a chap had been assaulted, had his cattle rustle or had someone trample a crop circle in his field on a drunken Saturday night, he would be given a big heavy stick. The person accused of these crimes would be given a similarly heavy stick and they'd be expected to decide the case by fighting it out. People knew it was a very stupid system, even at the time, but they were superstitious about lawyers and saw little alternative.

There is nothing that resembles this in UK criminal law. We have an adversarial trial system, where lawyers actively argue with each other, and sometimes with witnesses (another big issue around justice and sexual violence) but criminal cases do not pitch the accuser against the accused.  The victim of a crime (who may not be accusing anyone in particular) goes to the police. The police investigate. If they find enough evidence, they consult the Crown Prosecution Service, who may decide to take the suspect to trial. It is then the Crown that prosecutes, not on behalf of the victim but on behalf of the state, since a crime against one person is a crime against us all.

Yet so often, when rape and abuse cases are discussed, they are spoken about as if the victim and the suspect are two sides of a naturally ambiguous legal dispute. Folks argue for the anonymity for rape suspects or the removal of complainant anonymity in order to establish parity between the two parties, as if their respective positions can possibly be compared. They cannot.


Anonymity is a very simple issue, so let's clear that up. 

People who report rape and sexual abuse are given anonymity - that is, nobody is allowed to publish or broadcast their name or other personal details - for three very good reasons:

• Even if we could do away with the colossal stigma, sexual violence effects people in uniquely personal and complicated ways, and should be treated like the most private medical information. Lose anonymity and reporting would plummet.
• Rape victims are extremely vulnerable to intimidation and coercion, especially when they have been raped by people they know or by people with power and influence. Even without anonymity, many rape victims drop cases because they have been explicitly or implicitly threatened by their rapists and their allies. Lose anonymity and this would be even more commonplace.
• A rape victim who has reported a rape that didn't result in conviction is more vulnerable to experiencing rape again, and less likely to report another attack. Lose anonymity, and provide rapists with easily identifiable potential victims who are much less likely to report.  

Complainant anonymity is not about making rape victims avoid embarrassment, but is a tool for justice which helps protect fundamentally personal information, makes rape victims more likely to report and follow through the legal process, as well as helping to prevent rape happening again.

Anonymity is not awarded to adult suspects, outside exceptional circumstances (e.g. those involving state secrets), although the police and courts make decisions about releasing names to the media. It would be a particularly bad idea to award anonymity to rape or sexual abuse suspects for two very good reasons:

• Most rapists have multiple victims, each of who tend to believe that they are the only one. Especially in cases where a rapists has power and influence, evidence around a single instance may not be enough for a conviction. As soon as a name is published, other victims know they are not alone and have the opportunity to come forward and a stronger case is forged. 

(This doesn't mean the media handle such information at all well, and their mistakes can not only permanently damage the reputation of innocent people, they can jeopardise a fair trial and undermine the legal process.)

• The percentage of reported rapes that result in conviction is rather low. If suspects were granted anonymity, a rape victim would have a choice between effectively awarding their rapist lifelong anonymity on the chance he or she might be convicted, or else side-stepping the legal process and maintaining the freedom to discuss their own experiences in whatever way they saw fit.

Thus, granting suspect anonymity would result in less reporting, fewer convictions and, since rapists would feel altogether safer, a higher incidence of sexual violence.

Presumed innocent until proven guilty does not mean treated as innocent.

When someone is suspected of an offence, they will be obliged to speak to the police and they may be detained in custody whilst being questioned.  If a person is charged for an offence, a court will decide whether or not they should be allowed to be released on bail. Some people - still innocent in the eyes of the law - will be imprisoned for months awaiting trial.

Outside the criminal justice system, there are obvious steps that other people need to take when someone is suspected of a crime, whether the police are involved or not.  As human beings, we observe and listen to folks reactions, thoughts and experiences with other people all the time, and we'd be foolish if they didn't influence our behaviour.

Whether or not the police are involved, there's a big leap between treating a suspected rapist with caution - allowing their alleged victim distance from them in social settings, for example, not leaving them alone with potential victims - and organising a lynch mob.

In fact, there's a difference between believing someone when they say they have been raped and believing an accused person to be a rapist. After all...


The innocence of an accused person and the honesty of an accuser are not mutually incompatible.

Rape victims cannot always reliably identify their attackers, whether it is because they are complete strangers or because alcohol, other drugs or head trauma are involved.  In such cases (when they are taken seriously), the police are likely to question many innocent people; people who drive certain vehicles, people who were at a particular party, people who look a little like the attacker. People are occasionally charged with rape due to straight-forward mistaken identity.

Meanwhile, and especially with childhood sexual abuse, we have issues around memory.


Someone with inconsistent memories is not necessarily a liar.

Imagine someone was abused by her uncle as a child in the 1970s.  Nobody knew at the time, so she buried it in the back of her head.  She never spoke about it, so never called it abuse, and now, forty years later, she doesn't really remember why she doesn't like the uncle she sometimes still sees at family occasions - it's just like a very strong gut feeling. She may have other PTSD symptoms, but as they have been going on since childhood, they are a normal, part of who she is.

Then the news about Jimmy Savile hits.  She reads other people's experiences of abuse which chime with her own.  She sees images and hears descriptions that remind her of that time, of her childhood, accompanied by stories of abuse. Everything she buried so thoroughly has been stirred up.  Memories begin to come back, only in a form that she can actually cope with. If she was abused by a famous man she once met, then she will be validated by a shared experience that she's heard so much about. She can get help. She can even tell her family and friends without breaking anybody's heart or splitting the family. So it comes out like that.

This is not to say that this will be happening a lot, but over hundreds of cases, it will be happening a bit (and the police know this). Many victims of child sexual abuse know exactly what was done to them and by whom, but because it is such a bloody awful thing to happen, usually committed by trusted and influential adults and often kept secret for years, many children's minds produce (or are guided towards) more palatable versions of events.

Sometimes, something like this can happen when adults are raped.

There is only room for one overarching principle for lay folk and it's not "Innocent until proven guilty"

We have no moral obligation to remain impartial - we can't police our instincts and opinions, only choose what to do about what we believe.  We have no moral obligation to presume that a person is innocent, until they are proven guilty. We have no moral obligation to believe a story which does not ring true to us. But...


We do have moral obligations around what we say and do. 

To tell someone who has been raped that they are lying about their experience is obviously a tremendous and wanton act of cruelty. It discourages reporting, it discourages victims from confiding in others, let alone pursuing justice and it makes the world a much safer and more comfortable place for rapists.

Whenever someone expresses doubt about a specific rape or reported rape in general, you run a very high risk of doing the above. In a public forum, you can guarantee that's what you're doing. This doesn't mean that folk can't defend an accused person's character (that's fine) or talk about false-reporting, but we absolutely have to take steps with language and generalisations to make sure that rape victims know you're not talking about them. These steps are rarely taken; protestations that a man is innocent almost always hinge on a defamation of the alleged victim's character and discussions of false reporting make sweeping statements where anyone but the perfect victim (nun held at knife-point by stranger) could feel discredited.

This isn't just about people's feelings, it is about justice and crime prevention.

Meanwhile, there's precisely nothing to be gained from letting a false-accuser know you're onto them. Anyone who reports a rape knows that some people will not believe them - the same must apply to those who haven't been raped.  So there's really nothing to be gained from that, and everything to be lost.

See Also: Some Things We Could Actually Do To Prevent Rape

This is too often about protecting men and masculine sexualities.

In fiction, only very evil men commit rape. Good men are often sexually forceful, but that's always somehow okay - because they're good! Men themselves cannot be raped, because sex is always a good thing for them. Our entire culture is invested in masculine sexuality - particularly heterosexuality - being a great thing, a source of both humour and pleasure, an expression of desire, love and all that is good about being a man.  And to the greatest extent, it is. It's no more magical than the sexualities of other genders, but most things most people do sexually are about pleasure for all concerned. Sex is wonderful. Sexual organs are both amusing and beautiful, according to context. Sexual desire doesn't hurt anybody, and most people's sexual behaviour is entirely positive, often loving, sometimes creative and occasionally procreative.

Unfortunately, bad behaviour is not as exceptional as our culture would like to think. Our culture is automatically skeptical about rape, and especially skeptical about the idea that a likeable man, or even a man who doesn't have any scales or horns in view, could behave monstrously in this way. Some people call this skepticism Rape Culture, and it certainly runs deep.


If a close friend or family member of mine was accused of rape, I would be instinctively skeptical.  I would need an awful lot of proof (although I wouldn't seek out the alleged victim and demand it from them). In some cases, I'd perhaps never believe it to be true.  This is not a bad position to be in.

However, if you have the same instinct about almost any story of rape, then that's probably programming.  We grow up with that.  We learnt that rape is a terrible crime and being falsely accused of such a crime is very nearly as bad.. But rape is rare and false accusations are perceived as so very common that the subject should be raised every time sexual violence is mentioned.

This is borne out by responses to Operation Yewtree. Despite the fact that the police and Crown Prosecution Services have acknowledged that Jimmy Savile was a prolific paedophile who should have been put away long ago and the confessions of Stuart Hall to various acts of child abuse, I have seen it said that:

• This is a "Celebrity Witch Hunt"
• These historic allegations are driven by compensation culture. These people just want money.
• These historic allegations are driven by attention-seeking behaviour. 
• The 1970s were a less politically correct time, when all men committed a variety of sexual crimes and nobody minded - we can't judge what happened then by the standards of today!
• Too much time has passed - if these allegations were true, we'd have heard of them by now.
• Too much time has passed for any of this to matter to anyone. Victims need to get over themselves.
• The entire inquiry is about some kind of twisted sexual purity movement that seeks to persecute any innocent rich old man who happened to molest a nine year old in his younger days. Lower the age of consent! Remove complainant anonymity! Problem solved!

(This post is just about the possibility of false accusation; we're equally programmed to seek out extenuating circumstances on behalf of a rapist: What was she wearing? Was she drunk? Was she flirtatious? This is stuff that many of us have had to unlearn.)

But this is sometimes just about power.

There is great power to be derived from treating a vulnerable person, desperate for validation, with doubt and disbelief. Way too many people get a kick out of that, whether they are expressing doubt to the face of an individual victim, or expressing doubt in a public forum or a newspaper column where they know victims will be reading.

Sometimes, people really do express disbelief because they want a slice of the power a rapist has. Sometimes, it is alarmingly obvious what they're doing.





* The reason this is mostly about men being accused of rape when women may also commit rape and be accused of it, is that we don't take women rapists seriously at all. If a woman is accused of rape, we don't worry about her reputation being damaged - in fact, when female teachers have been convicted of raping their male pupils, there are comments of "Wish she was my teacher when I was at school." and so forth. All this is terrible, and all of it is interconnected. Our terrible attitudes to rape - of whoever, by whoever - come back to our expectations of masculine and feminine sexuality.

Domestic Violence & The Welfare State

It's one of the most cynical propaganda moves this government has taken, to use a bizarre crime that lead to the deaths of six children to justify cutting the incomes of the poor.  Mick Philpott accidentally killed six of his seventeen children whilst attempting to frame his ex-girlfriend for arson, with the help of his abused wife and their male lover.

This crime is about domestic violence. Philpott was violent and controlling towards the women and children in his life and the arson was part of this. The judge summed this up brilliantly and Polly Neale from Women's Aid wrote about the absence of "domestic violence" in the media discussion.

There is, in fact, a link between the welfare state and the deaths of the Philpott children.  Although domestic violence can effect anyone, from any walk of life, people in poverty are more likely to experience domestic abuse.

Sometimes, this is explained as if being poor adds more pressure on relationships (it certainly does) and this pressure leads to violence.  This is a tragic oversimplification. People don't become violent when they have less money. What poverty does is makes people more vulnerable to being abused and abusers - whatever their income or class background - prey on the vulnerable.

If we really cared to, there are various ways in which this problem could be addressed:



1. The benefits system is likely to make a person more vulnerable to control and manipulation.

Given that the Chancellor of the Exchequer effectively argued that Philpott's children should not exist, it should be no surprise that poverty and the welfare system can easily wreck a person's self-esteem. It can often feel that your money is not really your own, that you are a burden on others, that you are failing to make a contribution. You are surrounded by materialist images of happiness which are entirely unattainable. If you are working, you are likely to be in unstable, insecure employment. If you are not working, you may be locked in an increasingly desperate hunt for work, taking rejection after rejection. If you unable to work through ill health, caring responsibilities or other circumstances, then it can feel like your life has come to a dead end, that you have failed as a person, as a partner, as a parent.

Much of this is instantly solved with a higher minimum wage.  Most benefits claimants below retirement age are in work - as both Mick Philpott's partners were - but not earning enough to live on. As Louise McCudden writes, "We shouldn’t be ashamed of having a welfare state but we should be more ashamed of what it represents. The amount we spend on benefits is a measure of how much poverty and inequality we are, as a society, prepared to tolerate."

Even when it is providing an adequate income, the benefits agency treats people badly. The language letters and agency workers use is often accusatory, untrusting; they've got their eye on you. You are constantly asked to justify yourself, your limitations and, often enough, made to argue with decision-makers who say that you (your family, friends and even your doctors) are being dishonest.

The language the government and media use about benefits claimants - all of us - is even worse. Is there any other group of people in our society where a newspaper could print a photograph of six children, victims of arson, with the headline describing them as a "Vile Product" of anything?

Groups like young single mothers have been stained by this rhetoric for years - much longer than the current more widespread assault on those who need state help to live.  Impoverished single women with babies, especially if they are (or could pass for) teenagers have long been condemned as roundabout prostitutes; girls who, despite their extreme youth and vulnerability, cynically set out to have unprotected sex in order to have a meal-ticket child that they will treat like a shiny new doll.  Single mothers and their children are particularly vulnerable to abuse, not because these women are feckless and promiscuous and let any man into their homes, but because years of poor treatment, media rhetoric and the judgement of their neighbours has made them feel pretty rotten about themselves.

And so when someone is nice to you, says they love you despite all this, but occasionally hits you and uses the same derogatory language as our leading politicians...


2. Factors which make a person vulnerable to domestic violence also make them more likely to be poor. 

Disabled people, including those with mental ill health, single parents, adults who have grown up in the care system, adults who were abused as children, trans people, immigrants, people who have experienced massive disruption in their lives such as serious illness, injury, bereavement or desertion are all more vulnerable to domestic abuse regardless of their financial situation. But they are also much more likely to be poor, to have low or unstable incomes or to be unable to work or find work.

This doesn't happen by accident.  This is caused by inequality, prejudice and discrimination within our society. There will always be richer folk and poorer folk, always be folk who lack confidence and are more easily taken advantage of.  But it is completely unnecessary that disadvantage and vulnerability should be so often packaged together like this, that superficial factors about a person's identity should make it possible to predict one's chances of falling victim to a particular kind of life-altering violent crime.



3. Our welfare system takes an all or nothing approach to live-in romantic relationships.

If you share a bed with someone on a regular basis and need to claim an income-related benefit, you will be considered living together as if married. You will also be treated as if you share financial responsibility for any children you have. If one of you is earning, that could mean the other person is no longer entitled to financial support, or has that financial support greatly reduced. This occurs regardless of the nature of your relationship, the commitment you have, the things you agree to between yourselves.

Single claimants who live in shared houses, especially with housemates of other genders, frequently have to prove that they are not, in fact romantically partnered.  Couples who are getting together must inform the benefits agencies as soon as they begin to live together, as if there is a single magic cut-off point between complete independence and complete interdependence.

This causes all manner of problems, but it makes people significantly more vulnerable to domestic abuse in various ways:

• It causes victims to be financially dependent on their abusers.
• It causes abusers to be financially dependent on their victims. This does not necessarily put victims in a position of power, especially when a situation of financial dependence hasn't been chosen by either party. 
• It causes victims and abusers to be bound together in any situation of fraud. An abuser may outright refuse to be honest about her income, she may be working for cash that she keeps for herself, or have money stashed away that only she may access. A victim may be in a position where he must either commit fraud or have no money to pay the rent.
• It complicates step-parenting relationships.  A parent's partner is condemned to be either completely informal or at least partly financially responsible for a child, this relationship determined by the state as opposed to anybody's feelings or level of commitment.
• It fosters artificial progressions within a relationship. Abusive relationships tend to progress very quickly as abusers try to achieve the maximum amount of control over their victims as soon as possible; moving in together, becoming financially entangled, getting pregnant and so forth. The black and white model forced upon the relationships of benefits claimants make this much easier; there's little room for gradually getting together and experimenting with living arrangements.
• It isolates people in their relationships. Because financial dependency kicks into place the moment a couple moves in together, it places pressure on claimants to keep their relationships quiet or even secret - sneaking a partner out the back door in the morning - until the couple has come to a position where they are happy to live together permanently and become financially intertwined. In some cases, if an abuser insists on moving in but refuses to contribute financially, a victim may be forced into outright lies about their relationship, making it extremely difficult to seek help.  Abusers thrive on such isolation. 

All this makes people on benefits and their families much more vulnerable to abuse. It makes children more vulnerable to abuse. This is another major factor effecting the statistics which suggest less favorable outcomes of the children of single parents.

It is tricky to work out how this is solved - clearly, it is much cheaper for two people to live together as a family unit than to live apart and an unemployed person with a working partner isn't so badly off. However, a situation of instant and total dependence should and could be avoided. For example, it should never be the case that a disabled person, twice as vulnerable to domestic violence as a non-disabled person, should become completely dependent on a partner if they cannot work, as many are today.


4. In the absence of talent or privilege, abusers are often unemployable. 

Abusers tend to be narcissists, angry at a world which will never treat them with due deference, gratitude and material rewards appropriate to their greatness. There are some very rich and powerful narcissists about, but they have been very lucky, talented in a particular way or born into wealth and privilege. Even then, they will never quite get the treatment they believe they deserve, and tend to fly off the handle if a partner, child, employee or populus doesn't behave exactly as they'd wish.

Lower down the social scale, narcissism is a bigger problem for the individual - after all, they deserve to be wealthy, successful and admired, so something's gone wrong if they're not (and that has to be somebody's fault). It's hard to hold down a normal job because it's beneath them, their colleagues and bosses are all idiots, everyone they deal with is stupid and weak. They are not ordinary people with ordinary problems; they are the smartest, wisest, most generous people in the world, so their potential is completely wasted if they are not in charge, not telling everyone how things should be done.

Mick Philpott was able to make himself a little kingdom to rule over; so many children, multiple partners whose lives he micromanaged, isolated from the rest of the world - in part, by their fame as a huge polyamorous family living in a council house (described as workless, even though it was only the patriarch who didn't work). But although the sheer size of his family is extraordinary, it's not an extraordinary tactic - it is amazing to me that anyone could assume he wanted more children in order to claim more benefits (You can't make a profit out of having babies for benefits). He simply wanted to control his women and expand his dominion.

We all know poor but abusive people who can comfortably consider themselves Caesar in their own homes, and maybe one other safe environment; the local pub, a church, an on-line forum - places where their charm works well enough and, for whatever reason, expectations of decent behaviour and competence are low.

And that's not the fault of systems, only the fault of society which allows such people to operate, which prefers to talk about a man's unemployment rather than his domestic violence when it is his domestic violence which has killed six children. A society which condemns an entire family - not just innocent children but innocent dead children - because of the unemployment of the man who happens to be in charge. A society where many people seem to think that those kids died because of the social class they were born into as opposed to an act of violent revenge perpetrated by their abusive father.