The EU Referendum, Hope & Despair

When they announced that there was finally going to be a referendum on the UK's membership of the EU, I thought, "Well, that's it then. We're out."

The European Union is a truly excellent idea, imperfectly - and sometimes badly - put into practice. I felt sure we would vote to leave because it has long provided a political scapegoat for domestic politicians of all stripes - it is rather like an absent wife, who a husband might moan about and use as an excuse for his own inaction and inadequacy. All his mates think he would be so much better off without her, but then one day they actually meet her and wonder how such a woman puts up with a twat like that. Not that she's an angel, mind you. But he is a complete twat.

Whatever happens, the EU will still exist tomorrow and honestly, that is a wonderful thing. My parents have got into their sixties without seeing any outright conflict between the countries of Western Europe - possibly the first generation to do so since people started organising themselves into approximate nations. I grew up at the tail end of the Cold War, but a further conflict between us and one of our close European neighbours has been and still is completely inconceivable, because of an idea borne out of discussions that started at the end of a war which killed around 3% of the world's population. This is an incredible achievement.

But of course the EU is a collection of countries with different political cultures and mostly muddles through, sometimes failing to act on urgent matters, sometimes acting badly. Fairness is an extremely messy question when you're talking about such a diverse group of countries with equally diverse needs and resources. The EU is one of the best political ideas that anyone ever had, but you know, it's not brilliant. It is merely better that we should be part of the effort.

The European Convention of Human Rights has been by far the most successful application of the tenets first written down in the Univeral Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. In principle - although again, far less often in practice - people in the EU have these rights. Our governments can't kill us unless we pose an immediate threat to others. Our governments can't torture us or imprison us indefinitely without trial. They can't interfere with our family life, our religious practices or our private lives in general. I can characterise the government of my country as a twat - I can say pretty much whatever rude things I like about them without fear of interference.

This is amazing. We think it's normal, but it's not normal. It is justice, it is right, but most people in the world do not have nearly this degree of freedom. And it is freedom. Human Rights are often framed as protections - which they are - and of course, most people feel comfortable and comfortable people don't feel they need any protection. But the reason we feel so comfortable is because we are free! And those of us who care most about Human Rights are usually those who are less comfortable or who know that, elsewhere or not so long ago, our lives would be dramatically blighted by governments who would wish to control, silence or eliminate people like us.

And of course, in reality, Human Rights are still abused in Europe, including the UK. There are outright violations like police brutality and abuse, and there are still actual laws on our books which fall short of those sacred tenets. 

And this is relatively young legislation, so there have been some fabulous newspaper headlines about ridiculous cases being brought under Human Rights legislation, with no follow up article when such a case is thrown out of court. But after a bloody long battle, our Human Rights Act remains the most fantastic delicious and brilliant piece of legislation ever enacted in our country.

Whatever happens tomorrow, this is still the case. The EU remains intact, whether we're in it or not and you and I and the rest of the planet will still be better off for that fact. The EU gave us Human Rights and we'll still have them tomorrow. We'll always have to fight our government for them - this one has threatened to scrap ours - because people in power always want more power. The EU has also given us a (metric) tonne of equality and workers rights legislation. It has made us a safer, healthier, freer and more just country. That can't be undone overnight.

Like I said, when they announced the referendum, I thought it would be straight-forward. I have been both gratified and disappointed at how wrong I was. Gratified because an awful lot of people - far more than I imagined - feel as I do or have come round to my way of thinking. Disappointed because the argument has become so ugly. I had imagined any argument would have been about bureaucracy, about future expansion of the EU's powers and about money - how much money goes into the EU and how much comes out. I'm appalled at the racism and hatred I have seen in the last few months. Appalled and frightened.  

Whatever happens, our country needs to do a lot of healing from all this.

We all need to be careful about our bubbles. I've seen a lot of racism (often with a sizeable pinch of homophobia, disablism and misogyny mixed in) because I've seen it on Twitter and because it has been highlighted by anti-racist friends and allies. And I won't say "but clearly, 50% of the country aren't racist" because we live in a racist society and such a statement would wrongly exonerate the other 50% as well. However, many Leave voters will simply not have witnessed this behaviour from their fellow voters. Some will only have seen the debate as reported in a particular newspaper, in the local campaign literature or as portrayed by friends, family and colleagues. Some will not have seen much of the debate at all, but will be voting according to their own values or priorities which have absolutely nothing to do with being scared of or feeling superior to people from other countries and cultures.

So if we vote to Leave, we ought not to despair of our fellow countrymen, women and others. We're in a mess - as I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, there was greater and greater acknowledgement that racism was a problem which decent people tried to combat in themselves and others. In recent years, increasing Islamophobia has twisted that trajectory and in the last few months, I feel that public discourse has taken a firm step backwards. However, whatever happens now, we need to start sorting this out and that won't work too well if we start from the perspective that half of everyone around us is a raging Nazi.

Some people are afraid we're about to swing even further to the right but I think that's the one good thing about this referendum; it answers a question which has been used to stir up anger for the last few decades. That momentum is about to drop away. If we vote Leave, the economy is about to take a dip - even if things work out well long term, this is pretty much inevitable. If we vote Leave, our Prime Minister may resign and there may even be a general election in a few months, but the EU will no long be a factor in that election - why vote for someone offering independence and almost nothing else when that's already been achieved?

That's not to say this whole debacle has not been immensely damaging. It has been by far the most divisive set of political events in my lifetime. It has brought out the very worst in some of us, including some very powerful people who hold significant influence over our lives. The devil is now a regular feature on our TV screens, even though he doesn't yet control their content. 

We will need to deal with all this, whatever. But the EU will still exist, we will still have Human Rights and it would be a great mistake to fall into despair at any outcome of this referendum, given how much work now needs to be done.

Freedom from criticism is quite the opposite to freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech has never been the freedom to speak without consequence. Freedom of speech means freedom from interference, harassment, intimidation, imprisonment or violence. But speech, like anything we do, has real life consequences. There is no freedom of speech if people are allowed to talk and others are not allowed to object to what they've said. 

This weekend, famous philosopher, author and university professor Roger Scruton was relegated to the obscurity of the BBC News website (link to text) and BBC Radio 4 (link to audio) to talk about freedom of speech. He seems about to explore the potential ills of criminalising hate speech before meandering in an entirely different direction, concluding. 

“Of course, we have moved on a bit from the Middle Ages. It is not the man who is assassinated now, but only his character. But the effect is the same. Free discussion is being everywhere shut down, so that we will never know who is right - the heretics, or those who try to silence them.”

I was obliged to study Roger Scuton's work as a young philosophy student, so I feel qualified to translate:

“Of course, we have moved on a bit from the Middle Ages. Outspoken men I personally relate to don't get assassinated, but instead the views of other kinds of people are heard alongside ours, which can make us look ridiculous. Free discussion is everywhere, and views like mine face powerful and articulate opposition.”

Freedom of speech means that Roger Scruton should be free to express his views without harassment, intimidation, violence and so forth. He has arguably earned the right to have far greater access to public platforms - television appearances, newspaper articles and so on – than someone like me. I might disagree with pretty much everything he stands for but that's not a problem – here he is, right now, helping me explain an idea to you. Thanks Rodge! .

What Roger Scruton is absolutely not entitled to is to express his views without criticism. For example, he describes how homophobia was invented (as most words were at some point) and is used to ruthlessly attack, um, homophobia: 

“The orthodox liberal view is that homosexuality is innate and guiltless. Like the Islamists, the advocates of this view have invented a phobia with which to denounce their opponents. Deviate in the smallest matter from the orthodoxy, and you will be accused of homophobia and, although this is not yet a crime, it is accompanied, especially for those with any kind of public office, by real social costs. “

And yet, here is Roger Scruton, on the BBC News website, implying opinions that are already in the public record; to his credit, he overcame much of his earlier prejudice, but he still objects to same-sex marriage or adoption. And yet this weekend, he was still being published on the BBC News website in a piece to be broadcast on the radio. When Scruton speaks of “real social costs”, I can only assume his lesbian friend didn't invite him to her wedding.

(Incidentally, Scruton is the co-author of the article Same-sex marriage is homophobic. So he's right about at least some people abusing the word homophobia for the sake of their own particular arguments.)

This is how history works. When I was a kid, homophobic views were widespread and freely expressed. In 1989, Scruton himself wrote that society was correct in instilling a revulsion of homosexuality in children - some of his contemporaries said and wrote far worse. Section 28, which effectively prohibited the discussion of homosexuality in schools, was not repealed until four years after I had left school. When I was growing up, someone who supported same-sex marriage had the right to say so – they certainly wouldn't have been arrested for it - but they would have struggled to get any kind of platform outside LGBT magazines. Gay and bisexual teachers, let alone people in positions of more significant power and status were still frequently closeted. That's real social costs.

But our society had an argument and the argument was won. Not that we have achieved consensus, but most people either support or are indifferent towards same sex marriage. Conscientious people like Scruton have found at least some of their prejudice to be intellectually unsustainable. This is because gender doesn't make any moral difference to sex, romantic partnership or the creation of families. Homophobia – including, violent homophobia – still exists within our culture, although it is much more often subtle and implicit. Scruton's views are in the minority. He still has a very loud voice. He just can't expect such a great applause whenever he uses it.

To say so isn't silencing him. To bombard him with abusive messages would be silencing. To threaten his peace or his person would be silencing. To hack the BBC News website and take down his article would be silencing. He's not being silenced. 

Scruton may well have been harassed about his views, but he doesn't describe this. He doesn't describe any specific negative effect of speaking out until he arrives at Nobel-prize winning biochemist Tim Hunt. Like the rest of us, Hunt was not entitled to say whatever he liked without his words having consequences. His character was not assassinated – he made a fool of himself, just as surely as if he had turned up to work drunk in his underpants. Nobody accused him of a crime or of any underhand activity other than undermining the status of women in science with sexist jokes said in public.

"A lifetime of distinguished creative work has ended in ruin." is a wild exaggeration; the chap resigned at the tender age of 72, he may well work again and few history books will record anything but his contribution to science. We're still talking about it now because it happened this year and stirred up a lot of existing frustration about the treatment of women in science. To my knowledge, Hunt was not harassed or threatened, but merely laughed at. A lot. He had claimed female colleagues kept falling in love with him. It's no hanging offence, but no-one can say that and not look like a prong.

It's funny Scruton's piece should be published in a week that a very different heretic (and one who has done far more to earn that title) Germaine Greer made a stand for the voiceless by appearing on fringe news outlet, BBC Newsnight, complaining about a petition to stop her talking at Cardiff University, because of her widely published transphobic views. This was a petition – people exercising their own freedom of speech - asking that she should be no-platformed. Student Unions are not obliged to provide platforms and audiences for anyone who feels they have something to say.

Cardiff University said they did not endorsed Greer's views but would not stop her speaking. Greer decided not to go. She would have been met by a far smaller audience than that of Newsnight or the many other news outlets who have published both her complaints about Free Speech, as well as her hateful remarks about transgender women in the last few days (including the front page of the BBC News website, up and left a bit from Scruton).

Greer has the right to say what she likes, but not wherever she likes. Nobody has, but Greer has far more opportunities to air her views to huge numbers of people than I ever will. What Greer has experienced is, ironically, exactly the same minimal harm she claims to be committing against transgender people when she denies their very existence; hurt feelings. 

The fact that people with as diverse views as Greer and Scruton could be making these complaints and so loudly, when nobody who objects to their views is being heard (Show me a prominent article about the ills of homophobia this weekend. Where is the interview with Rachel Melhuish who set up the petition against Greer's talk?), suggests something about the way freedom of speech currently works in our culture.

So let's talk about actual silencing. I write quite a lot about discriminatory language and the media and much of this comes down to people shouldn't say that. Language is tremendously important. The way women, men and minorities are spoken about and represented is tremendously important.

When I say, “People shouldn't say that.” I absolutely mean it. This isn't the same as saying "People shouldn't be allowed to say that." let alone "People should be arrested for saying that." 

However, people should be criticised for saying foolish things - this is part of freedom of speech. Sometimes, public figures should lose their jobs over the things they say – the rest of us run exactly the same risk and are likely to meet with far less tolerance. However, fundamentally, I want to win these arguments. I want to help persuade folk to treat others as they would like to be treated.

This has limits and those limits should be obvious. I didn't think very hard when I became the Goldfish with my painting of a goldfish as an avatar, but over the years I've become acutely aware of the way that I escape the abuse that other women with feminine handles and photos of themselves routinely experience when they talk about any political issue. Young women, women of colour, women pictured wearing headscarves and trans women are targeted with particular bile and there's reason to believe they have less recourse to justice.

Harassment and abuse are always unacceptable and should be far more vigorously prosecuted. These things force victims to change their behaviour and create a genuine obstacle to speaking out. For some minorities – particularly trans people and Muslim women – the high probability of receiving abuse any time they draw attention to themselves may be enough to keep them quiet.

Criticism - even unreasonable, lazy or incoherent criticism - doesn't have this effect. Nobody wants to be called a bigot, and Scruton has personally demonstrated that not everyone uses words like homophobia (or racism, sexism etc.) in a consistent and coherent way, but being told one's speech is prejudiced cannot be compared to threats of violence, personal and sexualised insults and so on.

Meanwhile, this last week, while Scruton and Greer were speaking without opposition in the national press, it was announced that there will be a new register, like the Sex Offenders Register, which would prevent anyone with a conviction or civil order for "extremism" from working with children or young people. Nobody is clear quite what "extremism" is. We already have disasters like the Prevent Strategy which basically monitors young Muslims for signs of alienation or radicalisation, including what they say in public. And earlier this month, not at all famous Bahar Mustafa was charged for offenses apparently relating to her use of the hashtag #killallwhitemen on Twitter*, while the very famous Katie Hopkins, who wrote of refugees as "cockroaches" who should be gunned down or drowned before they reached Europe, faces no criminal action. 

Obviously, I don't mean to suggest that we should only care about certain kinds of silencing, or extreme cases where people are menaced into silence. Nor do I believe that one has no right to complain of ill treatment if someone else is experiencing worse (someone always is). However, I do think it is worth observing that there are patterns in the people and opinions which do get sidelined, shouted down or even draw the attention of the criminal justice system.

Freedom of speech is a vital aspect of a free society and something we may always have to fight for. To reduce it to the freedom for powerful people to express their prejudices without meeting the disapproval and criticism of others only distracts from and undermines the real battle taking place. 

* The nature of this kind of case is that the press cannot report exactly what Bahar Mustafa said that was so offensive, given that it is being described as "grossly offensive" in the charges. It may be that she did say something absolutely outrageous (#killallwhitemen is very difficult to take seriously).

On Adults Living With Their Parents

After I got sick and the prospect of leaving home for Drama School or University came under threat, the prospect of continuing to live with my parents into adult life became a source of ongoing terror. It didn't happen. I left when I was eighteen. Then, eleven years later, I had to come back.

This is a very common scenario at the moment, for a great variety of reasons. Last week, the BBC reported that 1.6 million 20 to 40 year olds were living with their parents because they could not afford their own home. A spokesperson for Shelter is quoted as saying, "These figures paint a vivid picture of 20 and 30 somethings in arrested development."

Since I've been living with Stephen's and my parents, I've become very conscious about the way that adults living with their parents are discussed.  Arrested development?  In a Guardian article from earlier this year, Barbara Ellen put it more strongly:

I could barely suppress the urge to grab someone, perhaps not the 20-year-olds, but certainly the thirtysomethings and scream: "What are you playing at? You get one life and you're living it in your parents' house, as a strangely tall child, presumably with secondary sexual characteristics. Whatever it takes, whatever it costs, however much your standard of living falls, you must save yourself and leave. At once!" 

But then I'm funny like that. I've always believed that people should have one of those things that start with a birth, end with a death and have lots of stuff going on in the middle. You know, a life.

Nice.  Urocyon wrote an excellent post about this a few months back, drawing from other subjects in the brilliant way she does, and quoting from the amazingly thorough Living in His Parents Basement Part 2: The Ideological Image:

...it implies a social failure. It implies a failure because it’s assumed that such an individual either remains under parental control in a substantive way or they ironically exist as an “ungrateful child” who rebels against the rightful and reasonable demands of the parent.

Urocyon pulls together various intellectual strings to make the point that anxiety about adults living with their parents is born out of universalism; the idea that there is one way of doing things, and all other ways are problematic - either morally wrong, or harmful and unhealthy for the people involved.

I think there's even more missing from our narrative about adults living with their parents, so allow me to muse on the subject (after all, it's not my job to put out the bins).


Sometimes it's a choice, sometimes it's not much of a choice.

The idea of young adults not being able to afford their own home in the Shelter Report has two very different connotations in my mind - a fact that appears to be missed in almost all discussion of those forced to live with parents as a consequence of the economic downturn. There will people who are working towards establishing an income (whether from a position of unemployment or low paid employment) which would allow them to rent a place of their own - or simply waiting and hoping that rents will drop to affordable levels. Then there will be people who live with family to avoid rent while they save up to buy a house.

These situations are very different.  In one case, these people would be functionally homeless if they weren't able to fall upon the hospitality of friends or family.  We have a government preoccupied by the needs of "First Time Buyers", whilst cutting Local Housing Allowance across the board and abolishing all housing benefit for those under 25. As I wrote for Where's the Benefit? our government can't get over the idea of the idealised upper middle class family where there's an endless supply of space, love and material resources which any young adult would be a fool to leave behind. This renders young already vulnerable adults even more vulnerable to abuse - both from family, as well as from wealthier or older people who can offer them a way out.

It may be a problem that it's so difficult to get on the property ladder, but it is a much bigger problem that many young individuals, couples and sometimes families with children simply can't earn enough money to put a roof over their own heads.

Other times, it's really not a choice.

The adults I know who have always lived with parents are carers or themselves disabled, and disability is a huge factor in restricting a person's options for housing and living arrangements. Not merely in terms of needing care (even just a little too much to ask a regular housemate level of care can be a huge barrier to independent living), but in terms of finances, accessible and appropriate housing, plus confidence, which is not to be underestimated.

Before the economy sank, it wasn't exactly easy, but there was a fair amount of help, through state and charity schemes, to enable severely disabled people to move out of their parents' homes.  Almost all of this has been pared back or abandoned. And that sucks. Some people who didn't choose to live with their folks can study, work and save with a view to getting out some day. Some people really are stuck.


We are the lucky ones.

There are people in their twenties and thirties who don't have any parents, or whose parents' circumstances or character make it impossible for them to live together.  And these aren't exceptionally unlucky people - I know plenty of people who would have no familial safety net, given a single change in circumstance; a downturn in their health, unemployment or a broken relationship.

It's also worth mentioning that if Stephen were a woman, it would be impossible for us to stay with my parents (and extremely difficult for me to be here, even while it was long distance).  A lot of queer people who are forced back to their parents' homes, as well as people with religious (or non-religious) beliefs that clash with those of their parents, may have significant curbs placed on their social, sexual and spiritual lives.

There's also an assumption that adults living with parents will not have children - that somehow having children means you're guaranteed appropriate council housing and nothing can go wrong. Alas, not so.  And that's got to complicate things a lot further.


But this was normal before, it is normal elsewhere and it has never been particularly odd.

Most of my parents' generation are home-owners and managed to become so very early in life. Same with people a little younger than them. A little older and the story is different; Stephen's parents married and lived with his grandmother for a period of years before getting a mortgage on a flat of their own.  Same with my grandparents (both my sets of grandparents moved from their parents' homes into council houses - no shame back then).

In the generations before that, these arrangements were longer term. My Granny's childhood tales involve multi-generational households, with some adults children moving out and some staying to raise their families there. Back then, almost everyone was renting, so it wasn't a question of any given person or couple's house. Everyone who could, would contribute to the rent and housework, so the issue of dominion gets muddied.

And of course this has been going on in poorer families and families of other cultures always. Urocyon writes;

Where I'm from, it's totally normal to live “at home” until or unless you want to move out, usually when you get a career and a longterm relationship established. [...] It only makes sense, on a practical level, to make sure you have a decent income established before you try to live on your own. [...] That is until people who don’t have your practical best interest in mind, nor even understand your reasoning, start suggesting that you’re really failing at life by not adhering to their ideas about becoming an “independent adult”. 

We tend to see cultures where multiple generations share a home as oppressive and patriarchal, but this needn't be the case.  It can be the case, and I think choice is always what matters; when adult children feel unable to do their own thing because of familial obligations, when abuse continues unquestioned or when women of any generation are treated like slaves; that stuff is a problem.  But clearly, there are and always have been happy homes where several generations dwell together.

These days (for less than a hundred years) our culture expects units of two adult parents and two or three children to be happy workable arrangements for everyone.  Okay, so fewer people might mean less complex dynamics, but the nuclear family gives individuals far less time, money, energy and allies than the live-in extended family.

Today we think living alone is reasonably normal - at least for a while, either just before you marry and have babies or when you're old and widowed.  I'm very happy to live in a world where this is a practical and socially acceptable option for many (in the right circumstances, I imagine I could enjoy it myself), but historically, and in the greater scheme of things, that's far far stranger than living with one's parents into adulthood.  It's so inefficient!


All Families Are Different.  (Really!)

Tolstoy was wrong.  Even happy families can be completely different from one another.

We split our time between Stephen's and my parents' houses and the dynamics in one place are completely different from the dynamics in the other. Neither place is our own, so we have to fit in around other people, but how we achieve this varies a very great deal. We have a different routine, we contribute in different ways towards the cooking and housework and we have completely different arrangements with household expenses. There are different unwritten rules about food, money, territory, noise, privacy and language.

This difference remains a source of fascination to me. Of course I realised that other families could be very different, but I didn't expect to ever belong to any other family than the one I grew up in.  I do and it's really good - Stephen's family offer me all kinds of things I never had before.  I know I have been extremely lucky, but I am not discussing the way to live. I'm talking about ways people can and do live.


Exploiting Mum

In her article for the F-Word Taking Advantage of Mum, Rebecca argues that economic and benefit changes which force young adults to live with their parents place an undue burden of housework on middle-aged mothers:

I find myself falling back into old bad habits. I'll make myself a sandwich and leave the plate by the sink, the day will go by and I'll think to myself, "I really should wash that plate before mum comes home" but then I'll go to the library or to see a friend and when I get back the dirty plate will be sitting in the drying rack sparkling clean.

Rebecca makes an important point (as well as describing the complete absence of choice she has about her and her mother's living arrangements).  However, these family dynamics - where mothers are relied upon even by their teenage or adult children - are created and sustained. Their creation is complex, and influenced by outside forces, but they are not inevitable.

One stereotype attached to adults living with their parents is that the adult children enjoy complete indulgence from their mothers; preparing their meals, clearing up their mess and washing their clothes.
This has got to happen sometimes, but just as it is a sexist world that has conditioned generations of women to take on the greater burden of housework without question, it is a sexist stereotype that middle-aged women are so attached to their earlier mothering role that they will happily treat a twenty year old (or even a twelve year old) as one might a four or five year old, before they're able to dry dishes or make a sandwich.  I can't speak for mothers of adult children in general, but I can guarantee that at least two of them aren't like that.  Even being in receipt of personal care doesn't necessarily make one a burden.

However, Rebecca's mother and our parents are burdened with having us live with them, whether they like it or not.  And none of us particularly like it.


Growing Up / Not Growing Up

In Urocyon's post, she writes about how some models of impairment are based on deviance from "contemporary professional middle class conformism."  Certainly, many diagnostic symptoms of mental illness, autism and other cognitive/ developmental impairments aren't so much about unpleasant experiences (like most symptoms of physical illness), but unconventional behaviour or even unconventional methods of living and learning. An adult who is close to his parents, who is comfortable living with them, may be considered to have something wrong with him because we live in a culture where young people - especially men - are expected to rebel and set out on their own.

Our cultural ideas of maturity are very... cultural. A lot of them are about acquiring the vestiges of one particular lifestyle; a stable salaried job as part of a career, a mortgage, a committed monogamous relationship and a few (not too many) children. Adults who resist these things or find that they aren't realistic options are often told to "grow up".  It's common to see newspaper inches dedicated to a Generation who refuse to grow up, when really we're just doing things differently. On average, younger people are better educated because they're staying in education longer and more readily returning to education. Folk marry later, if at all, but those marriages last longer. Having children tends to be a more conscientious decision and more of us opt out. Young men are even less likely to commit suicide these days (when for ages we treated suicide almost as an occasional side effect of testosterone plus youth). There may be certain problems unique to twenty and thirty somethings, but less mature?  I blow a raspberry at that.

Not got a mortgage? Wow. Nobody told my great grandfathers, each veterans of the First World War, that they were a generation that never grew up because so few ordinary working people ever had a mortgage (and a lot of them came home to live with their parents).

The only common issue I see in among adults I know who have never left their parents' home, is one of confidence. As I've said, disability is usually in this mix. These stereotypes of inadequate adults too lazy or dependent to move out are often internalised, when in reality there's been no option. The same thing goes for romantic experience; if you've been housebound for the last ten years, chances are you've not met anyone in circumstances were you might have struck up a relationship, but it's still tough not to feel unattractive and unwanted.

Meanwhile, I've known people in their thirties and forties who have jobs, partners and homes of their own who really haven't moved on, emotionally, from their mid teens.  I've known people who have relationships with their parents which seem weird, unevolved or even vaguely incestuous, after the kids have lived away for decades.  I've certainly known adults who regularly take money from their parents despite living away and having their own income.  I've known adult men who leave dirty washing on the floor, can't iron a shirt and expect to be waited on hand and foot, but who have an office job, wife, mortgage and two cute children, so the world thinks they're just fine.

We are not our living arrangements.


Then again, maybe I'm just a Middle Class Status Symbol

My Dad has long joked about his children being expensive and always asking for money, despite the fact that (to my knowledge) we've both been financially independent from the end of school and until two years ago, neither of us had lived with them as adults (and I've never been here for more than six weeks at a stretch, and never more than five months total in the year).

When I first moved back in, I was initially hurt, confused and irritated by the way Dad framed it, as if this was a continuation of the heavy yet fictional financial burden his children had placed upon him (particularly as I was merely taking up space). But then I realised that this wasn't about how he felt but how he wanted to be seen. Dad works around much wealthier people for whom a wayward adult child, yet to get themselves together - drifting through foreign adventures, interminable higher education, experiments in self-employment and unpaid internships - is a symbol of magnanimous and bottomless wealth. You have the child or children who've made it to the top of their game by the age of thirty, but you can afford to have the one that's swanning about doing nothing and living in one of your converted outbuildings.

Adults who exploit whoever happens to be around for cash, domestic chores and accommodation are not restricted to any particular class or generation, but only fairly privileged people can afford to boast about such behaviour in their children.

Households where there are fewer beds than people don't tend to complain so loudly. Adults forced to live with their parents as carers, disabled dependents or in dire financial circumstance don't write hilarious memoirs about the experience. Yet these experiences are all but absent from the stories we hear about adults living with their parents.

How to Support People in Abusive Relationships #1 Trust

As with rape, I think that third parties - people who are neither victim nor perpetrator - are often neglected in the stories we tell about domestic abuse.  People outside these relationships can't stop the abuse happening, but they do have some power and that's something hardly ever spoken about. Refuge asks us to look out for signs of abuse in our (male-partnered female) kith and kin, but don't give us much advice about what to do.

Often, nobody on the outside will know that abuse is happening and of course, there are times when friends and family feel someone's partner is bad news, without any justification (or indeed, because they themselves have issues with control).  However, anything you can do to help someone who may be being abused - or is vulnerable to abuse - has the potential of changing, if not actually saving, a life.

This has become two posts, because I have a lot to say (when do I not?).  It splits roughly into two posts because there are two themes.  In order to escape and recover from abuse, a person has to learn to trust themselves and to value themselves. So, first of all:


Things you can do to encourage abuse victims to learn to trust themselves.

1. Never directly question a person's perception of their own situation.

Sometimes, friends and family can plainly see that a relationship is abusive, while an abuse victim cannot.  There can be a great temptation to point out that their whole worldview is topsy-turvy, they're in danger, their self-esteem is rock bottom and they're living with a monster. This would be a really bad idea.

Abuse victims constantly question their own perception of their situation. They have been conditioned to do so.  They have learnt to mistrust their instincts, their recall of events, their very understanding of what's going on around them. They may have been told that they misremember things, make too much of things, lie about their feelings and demand unobtainably high standards of behvaiour from their abusers.

My experience was not a particularly extreme one, but my ex constantly questioned my perception of things, my memory, my friendships, even my beliefs - one notable and regular accusation was that I secretly held religious beliefs; allowing my ex to accuse me of being delusional about something I didn't even think or feel, as well as helping to isolate me from religious friends and family.

Months after I left, he continued to speak as if he knew me better than I knew myself.  During one of his last lecturing e-mails to me, my ex wrote:

"Your perception of the present is just as distorted as your perception of the past and in time you will realise it, and when you do you will no longer feel that you have to disassociate yourself with the last 12 years, or me.  Be wary that you don't make a bed for yourself that you won't want to lie in when that realisation occurs."

I remember this because it was a moment where a penny dropped about what had been going on; you can't trust how you feel now, you can't trust how you felt before, but you will figure this out and then you'll be sorry!  Of course, I probably never will figure it out - although what if my perception of the future is just as distorted as my perceptions of the past and the present?

But this illustrates the point well; ten and a half years (I'm pretty sure it wasn't twelve) of being told that you don't have a clue what's going on or even how you feel about your life puts you in a state of constant self-doubt. In the first few months after leaving, I felt I didn't know who I was, because I had no idea about my real strengths and real weaknesses.  I second-guessed my own needs and desires and found it incredibly hard to listen to my instincts, especially when it came to other people.  But I did know that I had come from a very bad place and any amount of muddle and mess I found myself in was better than that.

Any statement along the lines of “You don't realise this, but you're being abused.” is likely to be about as useful to an abuse victim as the many other statements they have heard along the lines of  “You don't realise this, but you're broken in all kinds of ways and I'm the only one who can fix you.”

(I hope I don't have to warn anyone against the even worse mistake of questioning someone's perception about whether abuse they describe is as bad as all that. There is this just world fallacy within many of us which makes us question the idea bad things could be happening to our close friends and family. There are circumstances when this is hurtful or frustrating and there are circumstances when this is downright dangerous. If you're a member of a jury, you might have to be more objective, but when someone you love complains of abuse, it's best to assume that it's as bad, if not worse, than you're being told.)


Edit 04/01/2014: I want to add a link here to Liam's excellent post about Religious Abuse. The focus is on supporting trans people in situations of religious abuse but most of this applies to anyone who is being abused, particularly within a community or family.

2. Show you trust the person and expect them to be competent.

Abusers treat their victims as if they are not to be trusted. They are often monitored and supervised against everything from infidelity to doing the washing up the wrong way. They are often denied certain basic adult responsibilities and freedoms because, they've been told, it's not safe. This doesn't stop abusers depending heavily on their victims, but this is dependence rather than reliance; they are depended upon, but not expected to get things right. You might be expected to prepare a meal, to extraordinary tight specifications, but then be interrupted for an interrogation about whether you are doing it right, will it be late, have you remembered certain stages of the process and special requests?

After all this, it is quite a shocking experience when someone asks your help or relies on you for something important, treats you like an averagely competent adult, yet alone an adult with areas of expertise and talent.  Most people respond well to being trusted and relied upon, but it is especially useful to people who have been repeatedly told that they are useless, disaster-prone or unsuited to responsibility. Not only does this trust prove that other people value them differently, but being able to help someone or successfully complete a task (and be thanked or praised for it) proves that it isn't just a matter of opinion. 

One problem is that abuse victims often don't get relied upon because they believe that they are incompetent and fail to put themselves forward.  I used to be nervous about making a cup of tea at someone else's house for fear of spillages, broken mugs, accidental poisoning and somehow burning the kitchen down. When people never volunteer, others are often reluctant to ask.  It's worth asking.  Don't press the matter, but do ask. 

3. Take an interest in your loved ones' dreams. Expect them to succeed and celebrate with them when they do.

Abusers are generally very dismissive about and critical of their victim's work, dreams and achievements.  All of those things are threats to the abuser, because there's the potential for the victim to gain self-worth, praise from others and various life opportunities in a way that is completely out of the abuser's control.  Male abusers frequently persuade female partners to stop working altogether and discourage outside projects.  Even when abusers actually depend on their partner's career for money or status, no achievement is ever good enough. 

In British culture, we don't encourage one another's dreams generally.  We certainly assume that if someone does need encouragement and support in their work, it's coming from those closest to them. But the opposite may be the case. Putting faith and taking interest in someone's work and celebrating their achievements is a sure-fired way to undermine abuse. It's much more effective than just telling someone that they're wonderful; it shows them that they are capable in a way that matters to them. It teaches them to trust their own capabilities and any glimmer of self-esteem they have floating around.

As with failing to volunteer, abuse victims often fail to put themselves forward and talk about the positive things they are doing.  On the day I finished my first novel, I had lunch with my parents, aunt and two cousins. We talked about everybody's lives. We talked about the lives of various family members who weren't there. But nobody asked about what I had been up to and I didn't say, even though my news was, quite frankly, somewhat bigger than anything else we spoke about (really, it wasn't the biggest deal ever, but everyone else's life was pretty quiet at the time). I don't blame anyone else, because it was a precedent I had set. I had learnt that nothing I did was of interest or importance, so others had learnt not to bother to ask.

It is always worth it to keep asking, even when you've not dragged much information out of a person in the past.

4. Be a Trustworthy Person

This is important in two respects.  The first is that obviously, if you are a trustworthy person, your friends and family will be able to come to you for help should they need to.  The second is more subtle. Having people in one's life who are trustworthy helps a person to trust themselves, especially if they're realising that they've made a tremendous error in their judgement of character elsewhere. During the aforementioned period after I had left my husband, I had a great difficulty determining who I could trust, whether I was simply an appalling judge of character or whether I was somehow a bad influence on the people around me. To have friends who proved themselves time and again was a great salve to my sanity.

Top tips for being the right kind of trustworthy:

• Keep confidences. I don't believe that gossip is a great evil - talking about other people has an important role in learning about the human condition - but if a friend is giving you information they could have only been told in confidence, you know your secrets are likely to be spread around.
• Keep promises. This is probably better phrased in the negative; don't say you're going to do things that you're not going to do.  If you're unsure about what you can do and when, be honest about your uncertainty.
• Don't make jokes about domestic abuse, violence or rape. There are many reasons not to do this, but one is that the unseen victims of abuse in your family and social circle are unlikely to consider you someone who would take their situation seriously.
• Similarly, don't indulge in victim-blaming and the justification of abuse - any abuse. Casual remarks about all the fuss over bullying in school these days, and how it's part of growing up, may seem unrelated to your sister-in-law beating up your brother, but it's not.  It's all connected anyway, but it is certainly very easy to connect in the mind of an abuse victim, who already feels they need to man up.
• Don't tolerate abuse in your presence. More on that in my second post.
• Set a good example in your own relationships.  Don't mistreat people.  Don't call people names or humiliate them in front of others (or any time).  Don't manipulate people and play games with people's emotions.  Don't tell people what to do.  Don't hit anyone, for goodness sake!  Be honest and realise that whilst love can exist without respect, it will never be anything special. 

5. Abandon all hope of rescue. 

Adult abuse victims need good strong allies, not rescuers.  If you're really unlucky (because it will be a truly dire situation) you might rescue someone from a single violent situation, but adult abuse victims have to choose to leave those relationships. You may get to be Leah or Han when the abuse victim finds their inner Luke, but you don't get to destroy the Deathstar.

The concept of rescuing adults from abuse is incredibly problematic.  For one thing, abusers love these kinds of narratives and it is very common for abusers to believe that they have rescued (or are in the process of rescuing) their victim from something or other - very often themselves. Abusers think in these terms because it removes autonomy from the victim, it demands a debt of gratitude and dependence from the victim (after all I've done for you; you are nothing without me etc.) and it provides an excuse for the abuser to assume  complete control. Even during the grovelling phase, my ex referred to me as the project of which he was most proud. He thought he was Henry Higgins, forgetting where such a sense of entitlement leads.

It's easy for victims to buy into these ideas to a certain extent.  I had one friend who, years later, spoke of gratitude towards a first husband who regularly beat her up, but had rescued her from her small town provincial life and introduced her to a wider, more intellectual world.  It seemed obvious to me that my friend was wrong; she had been extremely young when she'd met this man (who by virtue of the massive age difference knew stuff she hadn't learnt yet), and she'd been thoroughly fed up with her life and immediate surroundings. Sooner or later she was going to walk into a library, catch a bus to the wider world or meet other people who would introduce her to the same things without taking all the credit - if, indeed, she wasn't already on her way. But she continued to understand her younger self in the way she'd been taught to; as a completely blank canvas, passive and unmoving, upon whom someone else had the magnanimity to paint great things. Between assaults.

This is one reason why abuse victims often manage to leave one abuser only to find themselves with another slightly different abuser, feeling indebted to the second abuser for rescuing them from the first (or the mess they were in, having escaped the first).  Meanwhile, people in abusive relationships can sometimes behave as if they are waiting for rescue, because they don't trust their own ability to make radical decisions about their lives.  And of course, it can be fairly easy to steer a person, who is very used to being controlled, towards a course of action that you think is best, even when you mean them no harm.

It's a much bigger and braver thing to trust an abuse victim and support them in finding their own way out.  If good people truly trust and value themselves, they will act in their own best interests, far more effectively than they ever would under someone else's command. It can be very hard to trust someone that much, especially when you are very worried about them, but it is a tremendously powerful act of love and respect.  It's about loving someone for who they are, as opposed to who they might become.

The only person who can end an abusive relationship is the victim.  Even if they do have matters taken out of their hands, through coercion or pressure, they will remain under the abuser's power until they decide take that power away.

Never Been Thirty-One Before

Today is my birthday and I can safely say this has been the happiest and most productive year of my life. This doesn't mean I've not had rubbish health, worries and a fair few minor disasters. Just that there's been so much good stuff packed around the bad. 

So my year in bullet points...

• I absolutely loved being thirty. I hope I will love thirty-one just as much. I have never wished to be another age, but I have particularly enjoyed my age. I do now. I feel like I earned thirty-one. I have a lot of stories to tell, but I've still got everything to look forward to. Oddly, entering my thirties has coincided with being met, for the first time ever, with the assumption that I am younger than I really am. Previously, people were always adding ten or fifteen years.

• This year, things seemed to get done. I'm amazed at what I have just got done this year. Art projects, craft projects, writing projects. This year, it seems, if I put my mind to something, it just happened. Not that I finished everything I started, achieved everything I wanted or didn't have set backs. My health is still pretty lousy and sometimes very lousy indeed. But during good periods, I painted more, wrote more, made more stuff, learnt more than I ever have before in any twelve month period.

• I've embarked on the first tentative steps towards getting my first novel published. This has been terrifying. It is the closest thing I have ever done to applying for a job.  Fortunately, when you try to sell yourself as a writer, qualifications and work experience aren't very important, or else I'd be in real trouble. It's still very scary. It's not even fear of rejection. I can't really explain it.  

• I've written between half and three-quarters of a non-fiction book, which will have to remain under wraps until it's done. And I've started on my second novel, which just now, I'm very excited about.  Just now, I'm thinking, "Well, this will be better than the first!" which I think is a very good thing, given that I had had so many set backs and finished the first against such tremendous odds, and that story wouldn't let me abandon it. 

• I have continued to be brave, in all kinds of ways, many of which remain unbloggable.  However, I am rather proud that when I needed fillings for the first time in my life, I had five of them, in one go, without annaesthetic. Conclusions? Two of them hurt a lot, but it was brief and perfectly bearable.

• I have worked through and overcome so much emotional nonsense that I carried after leaving my violent marriage last year. At the beginning of this year, I had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Now, that's reduced to a bit of a scar which gets sore in damp weather. 

• I've seen three plays, which is fantastic. I love going to the theatre, I always have, but it takes some doing and it was seven years since I'd last seen a play. Admittedly, the productions I saw this year were too long and pain overwhelmed me towards the end. The best was King Lear, performed in an abbey ruin in Wales, complete with realistic storm conditions throughout the second half. It was August, I was very well wrapped-up but I can't imagine I will get as cold as I was then this winter. It was a superb production, but I came to the conclusion that the play itself is overrated - it's often said to be the ultimate Shakespeare, but I can't see it myself. The oddest was Clytenmestra (the Libation Bearers) by Aeschylus performed in Ancient Greek at the Oxford Playhouse (Stephen reviewed it here) and the other, Dangerous Corner by J. B. Priestley, was fairly odd in that neither the audience nor the players seemed to know whether we were dealing with a thriller or a farce – in any case, we laughed throughout.

• The only thing I really haven't done enough of is reading. But I did re-read the His Dark Materials trilogy with Stephen, which was an absolute joy. When we set out to take turns to read it to one another, I thought it would take a few years – especially as neither of us can read out loud for long and both of us are prone to falling asleep when we are read to. But we got through the whole thing in about six weeks. Unfortunately, my Texan accent was so bad that Stephen almost cheered when Lee Scoresby died. We also made a CD of poetry for my nephew Alexander, who is an avid reader but doesn't get exposed to much poetry.  At first he wasn't much interested, but now he listens to it so incessantly that his parents must be thoroughly fed up with Roald Dahl's Red Riding Hood, despite Stephen's critically-acclaimed performance as Grandma.

• I'm so proud of Stephen and everything he has achieved this year. It's been the most wonderful thing to share in his life, and to share my life with him. In the spring, we both spent months totally immersed in Greek Drama as Stephen wrote essays about Aristophanian obscenity in the work of Snoop Doggy Dogg and  prepared for his final exams. He now has a 2:1 BA (Hons) in Classical Studies (Please watch his vlog if you didn't at the time). He then had to deal with both DLA and ESA forms, both of which we managed without too much trouble. He's also whizzing through learning Latin and has learnt how to play the ukulele, very well, in the space of four months. And together we've mastered the art of making Turkish Delight, pain au chocolat, chicken and black bean sauce and the world's best vegetable casserole.

• We're making a success of the whole having to live with parents for the forseeable scenario. Making this work is an ongoing project and there have been times when we've found my parents particularly difficult.  But we're taking responsibility for things, even if we occasionally behave like the desperate parents of children who can't play nice together - like when fed up of their bickering, we sent my folks for a Segway lesson. What can I say?  It bought as a period of peace and harmony.

One of this year's negatives has been that the political situation for disabled people in the UK has deteriorated during a time when I wasn't up to doing much about it. Now, as various bills which threaten our independence and even our lives reach the end of their process in the House of Lords, Lisa has compiled a list of mostly very simple things you can do to help.

But for now, I thank you for hanging around and cheering me on these last twelve months and I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year! 

Your Kicks For Free

Censorship, within the arts, is almost always a very bad thing. Art not only makes our lives much more enjoyable; we use art as a mirror in whose reflection we can better understand ourselves, our lives and the world around us. I don't really need to defend art or variation within it. Where art is stifled by censorship, life itself is stifled.

And alas, art has to mean everything. Everything anybody calls art, music, drama, creative writing, even if to our own eyes it lacks all merit. This is not to say all art must be revered or indeed given any time or space at all, but it must be protected from interference. And freedom of expression is always a too way thing – we have both the freedom to express ourselves and the freedom to access those expressions.

A far more worthy post than this one would be about budget cuts to the arts in the UK, both in direct arts funding and in education, as well as the closure of libraries and all sorts of other heinous crimes against our culture being committed at this time. But I feel I am a blogger in rehabilitation and I need to pace myself. So let me start with Dire Straits.

When I first heard that Canadian radio stations will now only be allowed to play a censored version of Money for Nothing by Dire Straits, I thought it was a bit ridiculous. The song (unedited version here) is about a removals gang who envy and mock the easy and hedonistic life of rock musicians, referring to one of the musicians as a faggot. This context is self-evident from the lyrics. It's rock musicians mocking their own self-image; the irony is not at all subtle. And it is a classic song.

Sparky wrote about this and has been quite upset. Some folk who are against the censorship have used the opportunity to use the offending word repeatedly and mockingly. Others have attempted to defend the word as inoffensive and still others have used the events to attack gay men as tyrannous and over-sensitive - all those classic rants about political correctness. And reading Sparky's considerable discomfort at the debate (if it can be called a debate), I swung towards his position.

And this brings us to an often neglected but vital part of freedom of expression. Part of the freedom to express oneself is the freedom to be silent. Artists have the right not to make art, the media have the right not to publish or broadcast things. And part of the freedom to access art is, for lack of a better way of putting it, the freedom to remove oneself from the experience.

Nobody has a right not to be offended, but people do have a right to opt out, within reason, of listening to or looking at things which offend them. This is why what is allowed on a billboard is quite different to what is allowed between the covers of a magazine – most people who pass have no choice but to at least glimpse the billboard, whereas a magazine must be bought and a page can be easily and swiftly turned to hide offending words or images. All mediums have different responsibilities according to how active or passive a person has to be in order to access the art.

There are lots of situations where you can't opt out of listening to a radio. In various places of work, in stores and restaurants, in taxis, even in the streets in the summer when folk have the volume up and their windows open. So where a word is well-established as being both offensive and discriminatory, then maybe it is fair enough to keep it off the radio? It is extremely easy to access uncensored music, so nobody is really missing out.

But I'm not entirely happy with this. The biggest problem with this kind of censorship is inconsistency. Sparky wrote a bit about this too, and lists some bizarre examples of words which have been deemed unpalatable. It's a very small list of words which are totally offensiveness in any context *. One of the more difficult words for me to hear is bitch, which is often used in deeply unpleasant contexts, but I've never been upset by Elton John or Meredith Brooks singing it, where it is self-referential. Context does matter with many offensive words, if not all of them.

It isn't such a challenge to edit out individual words, but there are songs where the entire lyric is homophobic or misogynistic or otherwise hateful. This is both far more problematic and usually very difficult to define - at what point does a song about a heartbroken man cursing all womankind slip into actual misogyny? Homophobic songs, at least all the ones I can think of, tend to have such a profound lack of subtlety that they are swiftly identified and more or less removed from radio playlists. There are entire genres of music where misogynist lyrics come as standard.

I have to say that I would distinguish between these arguments, about offensive discriminatory words or content, and arguments about art encouraging certain behaviour - like Money for Nothing encouraging people to use the slur within it. I think the argument that some people can't understand the ironic usage and would think it gives them license to use such language is the top of a very slippery slope.

Art is often about emotional extremes, including hate and violent inclination. There have been lots of popular songs about romanticised murder coming through from folk music, sometimes sung from the perpetrator's point of view. Violence has always featured in gripping and moving narratives, without calling us to violence. That issue is not uncomplicated of course, but this issue of art corrupting our minds is more dangerous when it comes to our freedoms of expression.

Anyway, I don't have a particular conclusion here because I'm still pondering it all myself.

Incidentally, this matter is a million billion miles from the nonsense about taking the N word out of Huckleberry Finn, which has been written about very eloquently elsewhere (such as here). In summary, when a book is being used in education, context is everything, and removing the word dilutes a vitally important context

* My wee nephew was singing a somewhat illegible nursery rhyme and I tried to identify it using Spotify. On one album of nursery rhymes I spotted P*ssy's in the Well. Which did make me giggle. Proving that censorship itself can corrupt young minds – chiefly my own.

On Elected Crooks and Other Options

Liberal democracy is still at an early experimental stage. We have to remember this. It's less than a hundred years since we got anywhere close to universal suffrage and less than ten since we've had the Human Rights Act in British law. Much of the world isn't there yet and we may be wrong to assume that it's a matter of yet at all. Just because it's a really good idea - one of our best - doesn't mean that it'll catch on any more than it has, doesn't mean that we won't throw it away.

There are lots of other ways of running things – we've done this in lots of other ways in the past. Or at least, we've had it done to us. That's the thing. Liberal democracy provides us all with a chance to live the kind of lives we'd like and to have our voices heard. All other systems give all the power to just a few people, for fairly arbitrary reasons and usually for very short precarious periods. Liberal democracy is the best system for everyone. Even if, right now, you feel that things should be done very differently, you have a chance to change your country. You are free to make your argument, and if it's any good, others may be persuaded.

This is also the inevitable weakness in the system. You have to allow very mistaken people the same opportunities as the rest of us. You can't ban political parties or stop anyone from speaking out. You can only force people to act within the law and to keep those laws as liberal as possible. It is reasonable to stop some people doing certain jobs which involve upholding the law – members of the BNP aren't allowed to be police officers because under our system, police officers have to sign up to the idea that every one of us has an equal right to peace and justice. I don't suppose you could be a history teacher either, and the CofE has banned BNP membership among the Clergy on account of the fact that Jesus was a decent kind of chap (despite this compelling poster). But they can still speak and run for government office. And that's a good thing.

We're in a bit of a state just now. Not much of a state, but a bit of one. We're in a recession. We have an unelected Prime Minister who well, Charlie Brooker put it rather prettily. And we've had thirteen years of possibly the most cynical government in British history. Not necessarily the worst, but the most cynical. They act like they don't really care what we think - or maybe they do care, they just assume that we're all utterly gullible. We feel we are not listened to. And when we feel we are not listened to at, we begin to suspect that no-one in politics will listen to us.

The scandal over MPs expenses is nothing next to taking us into an illegal war, colluding with torturers and attacking our civil liberties. One or two heads will rightly roll (we'll have paid for the hats on them) but lots of people exploit expenses claims. The real galling thing here is that once again, it seems to have taken an age for anyone to admit that they had done something wrong. Oh and the fact that both the main parties have been so obsessed with us useless eaters and cracking down on benefit fraud (hat-tip to BendyGirl).

But perhaps the most dangerous thing is that they're all in on it. The main political parties haven't been attacking each other on the issue because none of them have clean linen. And so it seems that all politicians are bastards. There have been jokes (at least I hope they're jokes) about how the Queen should dissolve parliament and appoint someone of her own choosing.

It doesn't have to be like this. In other countries in Europe, politians are seen more like public servants. The population of any healthy democracy will engage in both criticism and piss-taking of its elected representatives, power and corruption are never far apart, but other populations are less demoralised than we are just now. Of course some have things much worse than we do - like Italy, who still have this man running both the government and half the media.

Anyway, we have a European Election coming up on the 4th June. At the last European Elections in 2004, there was a less than 40% turnout and 5% of the votes were for the BNP. That's one in twenty of the people who voted, but only one in fifty of the electorate and presumably several people who crossed that particular box had simply missed the one they wanted to cross (let's give them the benefit of the doubt). Okay, so it's Europe, we don't see a lot of what MEPs do, but it's still about power. And maybe, given these scandals, the increase in poverty and hardship over the last five years and the growing sense that some radical change must take place, they'll get even more votes this time. These people could wind up having a tiny bit of power over our lives. And their voices get louder. And like I say, we can't ban them, we can't shut them up. All we can do is keeping winning the argument and vote.

I think it would be good to vote for just about anyone else this coming 4th June. Personally, I think you ought to vote for the Liberal Democrats, but if you strongly disagree with them, there's probably someone else you can vote for in good conscience. If you want out of Europe, there's always UKIP who are at least a liberal bunch. And then hopefully we get to do the same in a General Election sometime in the next year - goodness knows we're overdue one.

We can all vote for flawed people who nevertheless subscribe to the principles of freedom, equality and democracy. At least when they mess up, we can still hold them to account. And then we can continue with the experiment.

On Voluntary Euthanasia #2

That's enough frivolity for now, let's get back to matters of life and death!

The Right To Choose and The Obligation to Interfere

It never made sense for suicide to be a crime (although it was before the 1960s); a person's body does not belong to anyone other than its inhabitant so ultimately, one is free to do whatever one likes with it.Meanwhile, a person who is dead cannot answer for their actions, and the main concern with someone who has survived an attempt on their life is to keep them safe and help them feel better – an objective somewhat undermined by criminal prosecution.

But suicide is the only non-criminal activity I know of which we are allowed to use physical force to prevent. If you see someone about to jump off a bridge, you're allowed to tackle them, drag them away, knock them unconscious if necessary without being charged with assault. It's reasonable force, you understand; deadly force would be to defeat the point.

If you fail to prevent a suicide when it would be reasonable for you to do so, e.g. if you fail to phone an ambulance following an overdose or potentially fatal injury, then you risk being charged with manslaughter. Assisting suicide carries up to fourteen years in prison and even verbally encouraging suicide is a serious criminal offense. Meanwhile, if healthcare professionals believe you to be a serious risk to yourself, then they are allowed to detain and forcibly medicate you.

This does kind of make sense. What it means is that ultimately, you do have the freedom to die if you want to, but the rest of us are going to try and stop you. And the potential benefits of our interference greatly outweigh any harm we can do to you. If you are still alive, you still have the opportunity to choose. If you survive and go on to have a wonderful life, then what a glorious gift that is! If you still choose to die and go on to try again, then you haven't lost anything. But if we butt out, all will be lost in any case.

So it could be said that you have a right to die by your own hand and you certainly have a right to refuse medical treatment (or food, hydration etc.). But if you are not in need of life-sustaining treatment and you don't have the physical capacity to kill yourself, you're kind of stuck.

In most countries which have legalised euthanasia, it is exclusively about hastening an inevitable death. The Swiss example is pretty deplorable; assisted suicide is not a crime at all, so long as it is not done out of self-interest (e.g. you can't be paid). So for example, if your friend is unhappily gay, becomes suicidal about their sexuality and you happen to agree that it is better to be dead than gay, well you can help your friend shuffle off their deviant mortal coil. I think that lfe is worth a whole lot more than that.

And yet, I can't quite believe that a person must be condemned to be alive because an impairment stops them opting out. It's not a right, exactly - since we're talking about another person's (remarkable) participation, assisted suicide could never be guaranteed. Hmm, I don't think I'm going to get any further with that one.

But I completely reject the idea that we shouldn't comment on other people's decisions on this matter. I don't believe in harassing people or threatening them with the seventh circle of hell, but I do believe in trying to make the most fundamental decisions a person can make as informed as they possibly can be. We all have a responsibility to give one another the best shot possible.


The Last Resort

Most people who commit suicide have depression, which is a treatable (if not universally curable) condition. Meanwhile, very many people, including myself, have contemplated and/ or attempted suicide, failed and feel that the whole thing was a ridiculous mistake. Most people know someone who has succeeded and rarely it is anything but an unequivocal tragedy, a terrible waste and one of the most devastating kinds of bereavements for those left behind to come to terms with.

I don't believe that many people want death; what people want is change and it can seem that death is the only way to bring about that change. This is not an easil- corrected mistake; I spent about a year of my life thinking in this way, and it wasn't particularly irrational given my circumstances and my understanding of the world then. Because of illness, I could not have the sort of life that I had always wanted and expected, and while I had imagined myself to be quite open minded and flexible, it seemed that the doors had slammed shut on every other option. I had lost my future.

Meanwhile, I couldn't do any of the things I wanted to do. All the things I liked to do with my time had either been taken away from me or were massively disrupted by illness. All my friendships had been changed by my illness and at this point, I didn't really trust anyone any more – since I was so boring and inarticulate, I imagined the friends who stayed did so out of a sense of duty. I was living in a place I didn't want to live with people I didn't want to live with – which in turn I felt very guilty about.

I've often said that [...] saved my life, because if he hadn't come along, well I had a date and it was coming up very fast. Even so, it took much longer to learn that my life didn't need to have been like that - it wasn't just a question of “snapping out” of it or even a gradual recovery from depression – whilst I did get very depressed, none of the above was fantasy.

If I had died, it would have died because of an inflexible and unimaginative attitude towards education, work and the value of my existence, the stigma of chronic physical illness, the stigma of mental illness, my own disablist prejudice, self-disgust, inadequate pain management, unintentional familial pressure, careless drug prescription, inadequate options for housing, homophobia and living in Ipswich (it is a terribly depressing place). Not because of my physical and cognitive limitations.

It wasn't purely a change in my feelings which changed my mind, but different information. Feelings cannot be either legitimate or illegitimate, but you can have the wrong data. If every other option for improving a person's life and happiness has been totally and utterly exhausted before they decided to die, then it would be difficult to argue with that decision. But there is rarely any clue to that in the way these stories are reported.


Unintended Consequences.

Any change in the law is likely to effect only a small number of people directly, but disabled people are affected by the mere discussion. As it is, the lives of disabled people are not seen as on a par with those of non-disabled people. We are both pitied and regarded as a burden by very many people very much of the time. If society is able to forgive some disabled people for wishing to end their lives, will it be able to forgive the rest of us for wishing to live?

Almost all media stories about euthanasia ramp up the tragedy in ways that they could never get away with talking about disability in another other context. Generally it is pain which makes a condition unbearable, but instead these stories tend to focus on things like the level of personal care people need. Yesterday the BBC news website published an open letter from Lizz Carr to a chap called Noel Martin who wants out (and wrote back), concluding it with a video of the man getting his hair washed. As if this offers the other point of view; Carr says that life is worth living, but look, he needs someone to wash his hair for him!

However, I don't think a change in law could make society value us less. I certainly don't believe in any slippery slope where we begin find ourselves under social pressure to die - or that when disabled people are in despair, that those around us will agree that death is the answer. (Tayi points out in the comments to my first post on this subject that things might be different where there isn't socialised medicine, and illness is far more of an individual economic burden.)

I reckon that debates on euthanasia merely bring to the surface the stereotypes that people have always held - and then allow them to be contradicted. We're getting louder and more visible all the time; a fact demonstrated by the BBC publishing a bit of a debate between two disabled people as opposed to two non-disabled 'experts'. Meanwhile, people sneaking off to abroad to die and recently bereaved people risking criminal status is not doing anything for us at all, let alone what it is doing for the individuals who find themselves compromised in this way.

A small but significant proportion of disabled people will ultimately face a very slow and painful death. Some of us would be able to face that with less fear if we knew that we'd continue to have control of our lives, whatever happened to our bodies. I think the time has come for a change.

But I'm still not terribly happy about the subject!

Morality without God

John Locke was a very clever man who made an excellent and influential argument for religious toleration in the middle of the seventeenth century. This followed a over century of violence in Europe between the old and new denominations of Christianity and a much longer period of resentment and ill treatment of European Jews and Muslims. Locke said that you can't and shouldn't try to make people believe something they don't, because true faith is something an individual must come to by themselves; if they convert to the “right” religion under torture or because they were persecuted, then it doesn't count. What's more, it is sinful to torture or persecute one another so you'll have buggered things up for your own immortal soul in the process.

But despite all this, he didn't trust non-believers. If you didn't believe in God at all, he said, then there was no disincentive (i.e. the threat of eternal damnation) to stop you being naughty.

And this view persists among some people of faith; a different kind of faith is okay, but no faith at all is not. Religious ethics are privileged, in the law, in education and the media above non-religious ethical frameworks such as Humanism. And the really sad thing is when atheists buy into this, and conclude that there are no absolutes and everything is relative. So...

We know that morality exists without the Abrahamic God. We have had many great civilisations who, whilst believing in supernatural entities, did not have anything like the benevolent Father who wants everyone to behave themselves. You might negotiate with the gods, spirits, ancestors or whatever, make sacrifices and give thanks, but there was no one divine law to which everyone had to adhere. What there always has been is a set of social rules to which everyone has to adhere. It is only for certain periods in our history where they have been completely inextricable from religious doctrine.

Of course, not all cultures are equal, but there is no evil unique to societies without God. Nor do monotheistic cultures have the monopoly on freedom, compassion, social cohesion or anything else we might value. So where does goodness come from?

Nephew Alexander has a dreadful book he asked me to read to him, full of religious poems (there's nothing wrong with religious poems, but these were all dreadful). I had to read a poem where a child misbehaves in all sorts of ways. Among other offenses, the child thumps his sister. But in the end he stoped because his mother explains that this is not the way that God wants the child to behave. The poem doesn't explain that misbehaviour harms other people, but merely God.

Now clearly, that's not where morality comes from. Christians don't refrain from assaulting one another simply because they're frightened of the wrath of God. A good Christian refrains from assaulting other people because other people are valuable; their feelings matter. Also, justice matters and violence is unjust. A Christian may add that God loves and feels for all people and justice is God's will, but that merely supports the decision they have already made not to thump a person. I hope.

I don't think you can describe a two year-old as a Christian, but Alexander is most certainly a moral person. His interactive play is very much concerned with working this stuff out. One of his earliest games involved giving and taking. It doesn't really matter what the object is, but he wants to give it to you and take it from you and give it back and so on. Sometimes he offers a thing, but doesn't give it. Sometimes he snatches a thing away. He is very interested in objects that are forbidden; he might attempt a swap or get upset if you won't hand over the thing he wants.

And he exhibits kindness and appreciation for others. He feeds his friend and teddies, he shares thing out. He gives hugs and kisses and says Peas when he wants something – something we've interpreted as please (although quite possibly, he just likes peas). Not yet two years old, Alexander already has a rudimentary grasp of that fundamental rule of all human morality, the Golden Rule, do as you would be done by. *

A small child is in an extreme version of the position we all share; he is dependent on other people. If he was to mess up in a big way, and everyone walked away from him, he could not survive. So his interest in co-operation is as deep-rooted as his fear of loud noises and his pleasure in sweet food. He cannot afford to be neglected or abandoned.

This is not to suggest that we are all born good. Small children must manipulate those around them to meet their needs, whatever that takes. Alexander is learning by example, experience and experiment. He is very fortunate to be finding that kindness is met with kindness, but he has to keep testing. He pushes at the boundaries, he tests patience. He has to find out what's possible. Other children learn other strategies, some not nearly so nice.

We are excellent adaptive organisms in this respect; our instincts are at once selfish and altruistic. There isn't always even a clear dichotomy between altruistic and selfish motives – nor should these be necessarily be associated with good and bad. Someone once pointed out that true altruism, in evolutionary terms, might be to go round pricking holes in condoms, thus facilitating other people to pass on their genes far more often than they would otherwise. But passing on one's genes is not the goal of the individual. It is merely side effect of other instincts we have (sexual desire and the love of children); it doesn't actually make people happy just to be a biological parent.

Christian doctrine acknowledge this, although tends towards the view that all actions motivated by instinct are bad and sinful and good things can only come from spirituality (a rather scathing attack on the designer). In any case, both heathens and theists can at least agree that we are somewhat conflicted.

Morality is the answer to this conflict. I 'm not sure whether to steal your pretty stone; on the one hand I want it, on the other hand I don't want you to lose it. A moral code informs me that it is better not to steal so I refrain. And where does that moral code come from? Well, it's logical. The potential consequences of an action outweigh the potential gain.

Like maths, moral philosophy is partly instinctive; most of us would be naturally able to tell that a group of seven pebbles is greater than a group of six pebbles, but we get a lot further quicker when we are taught how to count and do arithmetic. At this point in history, we inherit a lot of knowledge about both maths and moral philosophy, but none of it is useful if we swallow it raw. We need to be able to understand and to argue for the the things we hold to be true.

If I assert that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two lengths in a right-angled triangle (breath), I don't need to claim this is true because Pythagorus said so and Pythagorus was magic; I can show you that it is the case (here, see). Similarly, if I assert that we should not murder one another, I don't need to justify this because it was written in the Bible and the Bible is magic. The validity of a moral argument lies in reason, not revelation.

And yet morality as arrived to by reason is by no means inconsistent with religious belief. The vast majority of moral philosophers in our history have had religious faith of some variety. God would be logical too, right? However, belief in God is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for knowing the difference between right and wrong.


Congratulations to anyone who read this far on a weekday. Here is a picture of a duck as a reward.


＊In her The Bible: The Biography, Karen Armstrong writes about a Pharisaic sage called Hillel,

It was said that one day a pagan had approached Hillel and promised to convert to Judaism if he could summarize the entire Torah while he stood on one leg. Standing on one leg, Hillel replied: 'What is hateful to yourself, do not to your fellow man. That is the whole of the Torah and the remainder is commentary. [...]'