Thirty-Three

Ten days ago, my old friend Emma died. She was one of the most passionate and courageous people I have ever known, one of the very best friends I've ever had. Without her, I may not have survived the first years of illness. She had a brain aneurysm, then a stroke and died at the age of 32. 

Today is my thirty-third birthday. I had decided against posting my usual review of the year, but then it would be wrong to behave as if this has ruined the year. Emma was around for most of 2013. She won't be around at all in 2014, which makes 2013 an altogether better year in this respect. Death is a permanent absence, not a dark blot on a timeline, even if there is a particular point when it is more painful than it will be in the future.

In the end, I decided that the thing I can't do is write about the lows of the year, which have been numerous and some remain ongoing, but since none of them involve the death of someone I really love, they're all pale and pathetic just now. Meanwhile, I am very lucky and an awful lot of good things have happened for me this year.

Thus, the positive aspects of my year, in bullet points:

• From the middle of February to the middle of March, we rented a cottage on the Norfolk Broads with a friend, to see how we got on living together. We got on very well. It was a beautiful place and there were several days when we watched a Barn Owl hunting up and down the adjacent field. It wasn't meant to be a holiday - we tried to carry on as normal - but it was as good as a holiday and a very nice one it was too.

• In April, Mr Goldfish and I got legally married, amid an unseasonable blizzard. This was supposed to be a very quiet bureaucratic affair but, with the help of a small invading army of only-vaguely-invited family, ended up being really rather special. We became demi-husband and demi-wife.

• On May 1st, we held the eighth Blogging Against Disablism Day. 

• Throughout the summer this year especially, we were lucky enough to see a lot of niblings Sophie and Alex. They're wonderful kids, if in completely different ways.

• In June and early July, Stephen and I made my wedding dress from scratch, from used neck ties.

• In July, we had our wedding in my parents' back garden. This was extremely special. We were quite nervous about doing everything differently and effectively leading the service ourselves, but apart from a slight panic the night before about whether it would be possible to broadcast on-line, it was everything we had hoped for and more besides. Thanks to all of you that helped make it so special.

• In early August, we celebrated my Granny's 90th birthday. Granny is an amazing woman and we all feel extraordinary lucky to have her around. 

• About a week later, we embarked on what turned out to be a six week honeymoon in Ceredigion. This was blissful. I swam in the sea. I wrote and wrote. Stephen did some woodcarving. We both painted a little. It was wonderfully peaceful after months of stress and excitement.

• During our honeymoon, we became a media sensation after Suffolk Police issued a press release about my pencil. At one point, my face appeared on the front page of Cambridge News. We were discussed on Heart FM. Google suffolk police pencil - it got all over East Anglia. Charting the progress of our media fame through a intermittent mobile connection was both surreal and hilarious. Especially as, when I told my folks about the first newspaper we were in, they wouldn't believe it.

• I have done a hell of a lot of writing this year and have been generally feeling very good about it. If I hadn't been so ill in the last few months, I would have almost certainly finished my second novel. As it is, it's coming along very well.

• My favourite cousin had a baby and quite unexpectedly, we got to spend an afternoon with them both soon after. New babies are always fascinating.

• I guest-blogged for the F-Word during October. 

• In mid-October, we celebrated my Mum's 60th birthday. She was terrified that we were planning a surprise party with all her friends and family there, despite explicit instructions not to and our reassurances that we wouldn't. So, as it was, the quiet gathering was a little like a surprise party, in that Mum had convinced herself she was in for something much worse.

• Early in December, we learned that there's a good chance that we should be able to move out from our parents' houses into a place of our own at some point in the new year. This is very exciting news, only slightly complicated by the various and significant complications life holds at the minute.

Next year will be completely different. Right now I have many many feelings. They're not all bad, by any means; I count my considerable blessings. It is also impossible to lose someone so brilliant without reflecting on your tremendous fortune for ever having them in your life, for their good example and all the lessons they taught you. 

I hope you all have a super Christmas if you celebrate it, a lovely break if you don't and an extremely happy New Year. Thanks for reading, commenting and generally being around in 2013.

10 Reasons A Marriage Tax Break is a Dreadful Idea

1. People have and always did marry for silly reasons. The proposed marriage tax break provides another very silly reason. People who marry for silly reasons don't tend to stay happy or married for long.

2. There's a mixed message about childcare here. Impoverished lone parents are under greater pressure than ever to find full-time work as soon as their children are on solid food. The principle beneficiaries for the planned tax break will be married couples where one partner stays at home or works part time. If you're into social engineering (and there is no other term), then you at least need to be consistent.

3. It's quite complicated. It's to do with transferring part of your unused tax allowance to your spouse. I'm not sure I even know what that means or how it will work, and I'm guessing there'll be eligible people who never see a penny.

4. As with all political moralising about the merits of marriage, rhetoric around the tax break fails to understand why people who aren't married aren't married. There are perhaps four categories of people who aren't married:

(a) Single people.  Single people may or may not like to be married, they may or may not have been married in the past, they may believe that marriage is the bedrock of civilisation, but marriage is not a reasonable lifestyle option open to a single person. Because there's only one of them.
(b) Committed couples who can't or don't want to get married just now or perhaps ever. Reasons may include a conscientious objection to marriage (see point 10 below), deeply personal reasons, legal or financial obstacles, an uncomplicated disinterest in the subject and, very often, plans to marry in the future. Unmarried couples are not necessarily unmarrying; most married couples were once cohabitees.
(c) Groups of more than two people who are in love and can't have a legal marriage that includes all parties.
(d) (Much more commonly) Couples who aren't entirely committed to each other. 

The elevation of coupledom as the place we all want to be, the first class arrival lounge of adulthood, means that a fair few people are in relationships which aren't really working too well. People in these relationships may be restless, discontented or they may be desperately unhappy but afraid to leave. Such couples should, under no circumstances, be encouraged to marry. The trouble is that some people do think fairy dust is sprinkled over couples at marriage - as with having a child (which is worse), some people believe that a wedding is just what a struggling couple needs to sort themselves out.

The rhetoric around this tax break encourages unhappy couples to marry. The message is that married relationships are better, which can easily sound like your relationships would be better if you were married. It won't be.  It will be roughly like it is now, only harder to get out of. 

5. £3.85 a week is not a great deal of money to most working people. The scheme is expected to cost the state £550 million and not make a great deal of different to the lives or incomes of anyone. 

6. In fact, the administrative cost of marriage is just over £100.  If you want to wear fancy clothes, invite your family and have a nice meal, it's going to cost a few hundred more.  At £200 a year (the maximum tax break), a marriage will take between six months and several years to pay for itself. 

7. Cameron says, "Love is love, commitment is commitment." but marriage is a not a necessary or sufficient condition for love or commitment. For example, former MSP Bill Walker, on his forth marriage having violently abused his first three wives, would still be theoretically eligible for this tax break (if he was working and not in prison). Meanwhile, the most conservative-friendly hard-working jam-making war widow one can imagine would not. 

8. It is very much cheaper to be part of a couple than it is to be single. This is especially the case for couples or single people with children. It is therefore ridiculous to give any kind of subsidy to a group of people who - presuming married people generally live, sleep, eat and socialise together - are already blessed with lower living expenses that many other people.  

9. This policy really feels like it is about making certain people, those lucky enough to have found someone they love, those privileged enough to have been able to afford marriage, those where one person earns enough for another not to have to work full time, to feel superior and smug about a lifestyle that landed in their lap.

10. One of the chief reasons people object to marriage is the idea that it is an institution that belongs to conservative moralisers and religious zealots. The sort of people who say that marriage makes for superior relationships. The sort of people who grit their teeth through decades of domestic conflict, sexual frustration and deception just so they can call their marriages successful.

It strikes me that policies like this are exactly what gives marriage an image problem.

People Are Strange #3897

A woodland path in late summer; leaves slightly yellowing,
sun low in the trees.

So Stephen and I were on honeymoon in West Wales, coming out from the woodland path, both of us on mobility scooters. A slim anoraked woman in her mid-forties was walking down the road and, although we were moving at casual walking pace, she startled and stepped back. Then she said, "I thought you were a rat!"

Most people in the world might respond to this with a mixture of bafflement and offense.  But we're English. We apologised.

"I just saw a rat up the road," she went on to explain. "I thought you were another one, about to jump out at me. It was dead and everything!"

Of course; two tall adults using mobility scooters could easily resemble a rat. Particularly a dead rat. Just like the dead rats that often jump out at people on country lanes in broad daylight.

I have no clue whether the scooters were a factor in our rat-like appearance - we may have been mistaken for a rat by this eccentric person whilst on foot. In fact, had we been standing up, the sight of all six foot of us on our hind legs may have caused the woman to scream and run back up the road.

We had a wonderful honeymoon; exciting, relaxing and productive in equal measures. I got a great deal of writing done, we watched in wonder as this little story took the East Anglian press by storm and Stephen went a little bit wild:

Video description: Stephen (a handsome young white man with dark hair, dark glasses and a funky hat) zooms down a steep slope on his mobility scooter, holding a bubble sword (a plastic loop) that creates a modest cloud of bubbles in his wake. 

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.

Sex, Looks and Obligation.

Louise Mensch (groan) has courted controversy (it's what she does for a living) with a series of blogs entitled What Men Want, which is absolutely everything you're afraid it might be. The reason Mensch gets any attention for this is that she repeated refers to herself as a feminist. Mumsnet published a debate between Mensch and the brilliant Glosswitch, in which Glosswitch takes care of business, but something Mensch said in this debate made me particularly cross:

"It's bemusing to me that you frame the notion of making an effort to look good for your man in terms of domestic abuse and passivity. This is not something I suggest men demand of women - any man who makes such demands should get you running away fast - but something that a loving female freely offers her man."

All abusive relationships are based on this sort of thing; if you love your man, you will do X. That is a demand. Since the absence of X, freely given, shows that you're not a loving person, what choice do you have?  Put on that dress or admit to being a heartless bitch.

I couldn't care less about Mensch and her version of feminism based on women being rich and getting richer (as she recently stated, she earned her privilege!).  But I am interested in commonplace messages which mess with people's lives, and this is one I'm both very familiar with and slightly removed from. I'm not a straight woman, so I've never felt any particular concern around what men want as opposed to what the people I fancy want. As such, my life experience and study of psychology has lead me to the radical yet bloody obvious conclusion that people want to be loved and beyond that, well, we're all different.

Yet we live in a world which attempts to apply capitalist principles to human relationships. Men and women in love are seen as entering into a mutually beneficial contract, where each provides a distinct set of goods and services to meet the other's desires in a series of orderly transactions. These desires are seen as distinct and complicated, which is why people (whose names sometimes begin with L) are able to make money talking about it, rather than people just talking to one another for free. It's all absolute bollocks of course - if it wasn't, we'd all know answers by now and there'd be no more money to be made.

However, apart from the self-help and wind-up industries, this stuff ruins lives. It is the foundation stone for abusive relationships (same-gender partners, parents, all abusers believe that their victims have natural obligations towards them, but heterosexual abusers are more regularly affirmed). It ruins sex because individuals are made to feel that there's a role to be performed. It makes many folk believe that they have little to offer because they're not minted, aren't cover-girl beautiful, can't bench-press a baby elephant and can't prepare a three-course meal without breaking a sweat and Auntie Eve's best china. It undermines some of the greatest sources of human happiness available to us, by making long-term romantic love seem like a mortgage deal.

So here is the truth about sex, looks and obligation, since I am as qualified as anyone else:

• Your looks are part of your identity. They may be a small part or a big part. It is really important to come to terms with what you look like, at the earliest possible juncture. As your looks change, try to come to terms with those changes. Our culture will get in your way, but do what you can.

• Wearing nice clothes helps in coming to terms with what you look like. Nice clothes are clothes you like the look of and feel comfortable in. Comfortable can mean a lot of things. You may feel comfortable in high-heels and a corset. You may feel comfortable in tweeds and a cravat.  You may feel comfortable in a floral print onesie. It's all fine.

• Similarly, looking after your appearance. Please wash sometimes. Beyond that, it's up to you.

• The physical appearance of others is important to the sexuality of most people, to a varying extent. Men tend to have their sexualities wired to the visual, exposed to multiple images of naked or partially-naked women from an early age (boys who don't fancy women naturally seek out other images). We know it's programming, because the kinds of women who are seen as sexually attractive vary between cultures and over time, and some secondary sexual characteristics - like under-arm hair - can be seen as unattractive despite its evolutionary origins. If the whole world were blind, we might have more sexy dolls or even bottles of womanly scent for men to discuss, critique and aid masturbation, in which case we would declare that men were intrinsically tactile or olfactory when it comes to sex. 

• The reasons this doesn't happen so much for women are multiple, but they include (a) the history of Western Culture is heavily dominated by straight men and what they wanted to see, (b) women aren't supposed to masturbate, (c) women are taught that for them, an investment in the looks of a potential partner is shallow, (d) women are taught to be more concerned about other aspects of a potential partner (and does he have a car? Aha, aha, aha...). Despite this, some women are extremely visual, enjoy visual erotica and care very deeply about their partner's looks. 

• There are absolutely no rules about what any given person of any gender will find physically attractive in a partner (let alone their clothes). There are very general rules around geometry and the faces and bodies we consider beautiful - the same applies to paintings and flowers. But look around you. Look at the couples you know. See? There is absolutely no accounting for taste.

• When two people are in love, they tend to find one another physically attractive. If this love endures, they will continue to find each other physically attractive through fluctuations in weight, pregnancy and the aftermath, hair-loss and all seven signs of ageing that Oil of Olay propose to protect you from (cardigans, Countryfile... I forget the others). People don't usually fall out of love because of issues around physical appearance - not appearance itself. Appearance may symbolise something - age, for example, or social standing (these things don't have to be reasonable) - and it is not on to have a Union Jack facial tattoo without consulting your partner. But love never died because someone's hair was a mess.

• The best way of making sure that your partner is happy is to look after them, demonstrate an ongoing interest in them, comfort them in sadness, support their endeavours, celebrate their triumphs and make sure that they know they are loved. There are no guarantees, but it is the best any of us have got to offer.  

• Sex is not something women give to men in exchange for affection, physical help, money or anything else. It is not a kindness. It is something that two or more people come together to do for their mutual enjoyment. It uses up a lot of energy and can make quite a mess, so if you ever find that you are trying to "make sex as pleasant as possible", I do wonder if it's worth the bother. Scrabble is pleasant.

• Being beautiful is not something women give to men in exchange for affection, physical help, money or anything else. But...

• Everybody in love cares how they are seen in the eyes of their lover (I mean this both metaphorically and literally). When they genuinely stop caring - apart from when their priorities are sensibly elsewhere, such as when unblocking a drain or suffering from a rotten cold - they are perhaps no longer in love. But this is the thing; (a) this care could mean a million different things, few of them involving a hair-dryer (Mensch seems really into blow-drying) and (b) it's not exactly a conscious effort. People in love act to please their partner, people in lust act to turn their partner on. This isn't owed, this isn't a duty or a kindness. That's the thing about things done "freely". You don't have to tell people what they need to do if they're already doing it freely. 

• Some people are turned on by nuns, some people are turned on by dressing as a nun. Some people are so turned on by the way their partner looks at them when they're dressed as a nun that they love dressing as a nun. Some people are so turned on by the way their partner behaves while dressed as a nun that they love their partner dressing as a nun. Some people just don't get the nun thing - they don't want to have sex with a nun, they don't want to dress up as one - but that doesn't mean we can't all have fun. That's all you need to know about pleasing a sexual partner through clothes and appearance. 

This is the truth. Anyone who tells you otherwise, gives you rules about love or sex, or about men, women and imaginary debts between them, is either (a) a liar (b) trying to make money out of you (c) trying to defend their own choices by pretending they are universal or (d) an abuser.

Marriage, Surnames, Legitimacy & Gender

When I got married for the first time, I did not seriously consider changing my surname. My ex complained about it beforehand, but when the time came I think he congratulated himself for being so modern.  There was one person in my circle of acquaintance who had a problem with it, complained to my mother and insisted on address me as Mrs Ex's Surname from there on in. This annoyed me, but we weren't close. Meanwhile, everything was straightforward - much more straightforward than if I'd changed it. I didn't have to change my name with any companies or institutions. I sometimes didn't bother correcting strangers who addressed me as Mrs Ex's Surname but then, I didn't always bother before we were married, same as I don't bother correcting every time I'm called Miss or Mrs instead of my preferred Ms. There are only so many hours in the day.

I'm sure other people, in other communities, experience far more hassle than I did or maybe feel more offended at the misnaming. Personally, I have had far more trouble maintaining a consistent title - with one bank account, I had Ms on my debit card, Mrs on my cheque book and Miss on my bank statements!

This marriage is completely different - I feel like I need to say that a lot, not as a defense (the first one doesn't count; this is the real thing.) but because I think folk need to be aware of the fact that these things can be so completely and utterly different that it's hard to use the same words to describe them; love, romance, even marriage. Abused and otherwise miserably partnered people often feel that any given person will always have the same kind of relationships, with roughly the same dynamics, and the same kind of problems. Abused and otherwise miserably partnered people often buy into the fairly widespread cultural meme that Love Hurts and folk - especially men and women - can never have both passion and peace with one another. This is not so.

However, this has nothing to do with the fact that the surname thing is looking very different this time.  It's not because I am more in love (I am perhaps in love for the first time) or more committed (I was very committed, but this time I am certain*). It's about other things which have nothing to do with the quality or strength of this marriage, but matter a lot to us. They include:

1. It's something we're talking about together. The whole subject is completely different when two people who are getting married ask the question, "What shall we do about our names? Shall we share one? What shall we call ourselves?"  Frankly, I swung back and forth about what I should do until the conversation became about our choice. This changes everything. 
2. Stephen's family have welcomed me in and offered me all manner of unconditional things I have never had before.  I feel a tremendous closeness and affiliation with them.  There's a part of me that really likes the idea of sharing a name with them, almost like taking the name of an adopted family. 
3. At this point in my life, I am known by very many names; The Goldfish, Deborah, Deb, Ms Kelly, D H Kelly, Auntie Deborah, Agent Bum Bum, Love, Sweetheart and all manner of more personal petnames and nicknames (in English, Welsh and Latin). Changing the name I am known by in some contexts would not be the same as changing my identity. In fact, it provides the possibility of another identity.  I like being all these people.  It actually feels like an opportunity to have another name, another identity to do things with. 

(1) isn't a reason to change names, but a starting point from which everything is on the table. But see what (2) and (3) have in common? Immensely personal. To do with us, our families, where we are in life.

Here's another personal thing. I would never consider changing the name that I write under.  Even though I have little published work out there, I like being D H Kelly.  It is a good name for a book spine.  Even as a child, I wrote stories with by D H Kelly under the titles.  However, given that I am working towards a career where this name is associated with a body of work, I quite like the idea of having another name for other things I want to do in my life. Often living with two surnames in use is presented as a compromise, but I think that's only because it's something men nearly never do. Having spare names can be useful.

There are folk who think that a woman changing her name upon marriage is necessarily making an unfeminist decision (all stats US - I'm sure keeping names is both far more common and acceptable in the UK, unless I roll with an extraordinary crowd).  This really bugs me, for several reasons:

For one thing, feminism is not about individual women and the personal decisions they make - personal decisions that some women will necessarily find easier and more desirable than others.  Feminism is all about removing social and political pressure, so that women (and others) have a real choice.  Naturally, women who make certain choices set a good example to others (it is possible to do this another way, even if the world suggests otherwise), but the choices themselves are personal, complicated by personal circumstance, and so haven't got much to do with a social and political movement. Women shouldn't have to apologise to our sisters for the personal choices we make around identity - in fact, feminism is all about relieving such a burden.

Most same-gender married couples I know have a shared surname. They presumably arrived at that through mutual discussion, weighing up their options, the individual feelings and any professional factors around the names they had. This is how it should be done.  Every couple, upon marrying or having a child should have a conversation which begins "What shall we do about names?"  It could be a very short conversation, it could be an ongoing discussion over a periods of months.

But  even if we all did this, unless we do away with the custom of familial surnames altogether, around half the couples who share a surname would share a husband's surname and around half of all children would take their name from a father. Sharing a husband's name is not wrong; the problem is that women feel under pressure to do so and couples often don't consider the other options.

Meanwhile, the reasons that there isn't a completely free choice relate to two far bigger, far more problematic aspects of sexism which we need to address head-on.

The first is about legitimacy.  As demonstrated by my own experience, some relationships are stronger, more committed and generate more love, happiness and creativity than others.  Some are utterly miserable and still others are dangerously awful.  However, we cannot see into people's hearts and there are very few external signs which might indicate what kind of relationship two people might be having.

Yet in our culture, we raise romantic partnerships above all other relationships; we see lasting romantic love as something both necessary and sufficient for happiness, particularly for women.  Then we set about judging whether or not someone's relationship is legitimate according to very specific and ever-changing criteria. For some couples - for example, those where one partner is coming through the immigration process - the subjective legitimacy of their relationship is a very serious matter. For other couples, legitimacy is an on-going issue among family and friends. Some examples for criteria would include:

• Whether or not a couple live together (even when they have work in different locations). 
• Whether or not a couple are married (and when this happened, how this happened)
• Whether or not a couple have children together (especially if they have children by other people)
• Whether or not a couple consists of a man and a woman (preferably straight and cis gender)
• Whether or not a couple are monogamous (or at least seem monogamous)
• Whether or not a couple are well-suited in superficial terms (same background, culture, age, disability status, earnings bracket etc..)

And so on and so forth.  I have heard folk cast doubt on the strength and potential longevity of a second marriage because the second wife wasn't as pretty as the first.  People are odd.

For some folk, marriage itself is about making a relationship legitimate - it is about a public declaration and celebration of a commitment.  Some people choose not to marry because they feel affronted by the idea that they need to prove their love in a public way. When it comes to personal choices, we do what feels right, which is so complex and personal it could never be neatly analysed by anyone on the outside.  Some non-religious people feel the need to marry in church; this may be about their parents or community, ideas about a proper wedding from childhood or for reasons they don't fully understand. This is absolutely fine.  I would only criticise someone (e.g. the Catholic Church) who claims that marriages outside church are less legitimate**.

And this is exactly where the pressure on couples to share the husband's name comes from; it's something that, for some people, renders other people's marriages legitimate or not. I'm sure that, despite the general grooviness of our social and family circle, some people would see Stephen and I sharing a surname (mine or his) as a sign of my greater commitment to this marriage. And that's a problem. But not one we can personally solve with any choice we make.

The other issue is about gender and relationships.  As with so many more significant lifestyle choices - being partnered, getting married, having children, the distribution of domestic work and childcare - we talk about this stuff as if women are making unilateral decisions.  We talk about a woman choosing to keep her name or take that of her husband, as opposed to a couple choosing to keep their own names etc., in the same way we talk about women choosing to marry, choosing to have children, choosing to stay at home or go to work etc.. In reality, whilst individuals have a personal veto (and we're still fighting for all women to have such a veto), when it comes to relationships, reproductive choices, childcare and paid work, we're often talking about a completely free choice that nobody has.

Romantic relationships involve many factors of complex chance and at least two ready-formed people whose life circumstances will be as muddled and messy as everyone else's. Women don't just make this stuff happen. Neither do men. But we live in a culture where these subjects are spoken about in these terms;  relationships and children are women's responsibility. Women must make the right decisions. Women must look after their men and their children, whilst resisting the loss of their own identity (which to some means a professional identity, and others means a youthful, sexually available identity). When a couple takes the wife's name on marriage, I should imagine that the wife, rather that the husband is the target of any criticism - how could it have been his idea?  Whilst we expect men to pursue sex, they are treated as weirdly powerful yet passive entities in long-term romantic relationships.

The name thing is a rather small matter - not many people get to learn our surnames, let alone how we acquired them - but any argument for or against a particular course of action on the part of women plays into this model. If we want to change the historic bias towards patronymic surnames, we need to stop talking about a woman's decision at marriage and start talking about couples and the pressures they face.


* Quite honestly, when I married my ex, I didn't expect it to last. Part of my motivation to get married was to have legal protection, because he frequently threatened to leave and take everything. Yes, this was an utterly stupid reason to marry - one of many utterly stupid reasons involved. But I just wanted to make things better and failed to even entertain the (now) obvious strategy for doing so.

** One odd aspect of the Catholic Church's rules against divorce is that previous marriages outside the Catholic Church don't count - if you previously married in a registry office or a synagogue, you may have this marriage discounted and remarry in the Church (it's not as simple as that, but it is possible). It is as if nobody who didn't marry in the Catholic Church is married at all.  However, I am yet to meet a Catholic who actually sees it that way. Meanwhile, I know Catholics who were abandoned or abused by spouses who can never marry again within their faith, without a lucky lightning bolt taking out their exes. 

How Marriage Became More Meaningful

The Modern Man: Stephen fields calls from his investors whilst
ironing out deconstructed neckties for my wedding dress.

Equal marriage means so much to me.  Given that I'm a woman about to be married to a man, I don't think anyone realises just how much it matters.  It's so I can get married and not feel like a fraud.  It means I can have a wedding which doesn't make me feel closeted, because people like me can only marry if they happen to have partners of a certain gender. Not just yet, but soon enough, I will be able to marry whoever I like.

There's a certain type of social conservative who enthuses about marriage, but worries that it isn't what it used to be, weakened by decades of social change and legal reform.  To me, this is counter to everything I feel and observe about marriage. As an institution, I believe that marriage is getting stronger and stronger.

Things that have made marriage stronger and more meaningful include:


1. The ease of divorce means that folks are less likely to stay together in unhappy, loveless or abusive marriages because they can't get out of it.  Divorce is not easy. In court fees alone, with no legal advice, the least complicated divorce costs a little under £400 and will take about six months - marriage costs a little over £100 and can be carried out within 16 days. Divorce law is complicated, so if you're not on excellent terms, if there's money, property or children involved, the whole thing gets extremely difficult and costly. But it's doable and it's (largely) socially acceptable.

Marriage had to be far less meaningful when it was more commonplace for people who were unhappy together to be married. Where divorce was inaccessible, it wasn't uncommon for people to move on and start new relationships, have new lives and families whilst still being legally married to someone else because of the shame, cost and complication of divorce - the legalisation of divorce in the UK was brought about by a moral panic about people living in sin because they had separated from spouses, started again with new partners, but had no option to remarry.

Marriage could be made stronger by... no fault divorces.  In England and Wales, a couple may divorce on the grounds of separation after two years apart, but to get divorced any quicker, it has to be somebody's fault. I have known amicably splitting couples lie about adultery in order to speed things up. The only bar to no fault divorces is the idea that two adults, in the absence of adultery or ill treatment, might not know their own minds about the end of a relationship.

2. The social acceptability of cohabitation. The option of cohabitation means that most people know what they're getting into before they make a permanent commitment, folks can freely experiment with living arrangements and fewer people rush into marriage just because they're madly in love and need a social licence to spend all their time together for however long the passion is burning - even if it fizzles out within a few months. Meanwhile, couples who feel that marriage is not for them for whatever reason are no longer obliged to choose between biting the bullet of social convention or else meeting with stigma and discrimination.

My mother often described the anti-climax of the first months of my parents' marriage.  During those first few months - a particularly cold winter - they had to discover what it was to live independently from parents and what it was to live with one another, all of which would have been cool except that they'd had to promise forever before they got to experiment, negotiate and learn about themselves and how to get along. So they felt under tremendous pressure.

I reckon the acceptability of cohabitation has made things better even for people who don't cohabit before marriage, usually for religious reasons, because they seem to have learnt so much from the rest of us. In my parents' day, few people lived together before marriage, but there was no discussion about it either, you got married and worked it all out as you went along. These days, folks who want to jump into the deep end on their wedding day are encouraged to have thorough discussions about how they're going to organise themselves in everything from finances to sex.  And that's a good thing.

Marriage could be made stronger by... allowing some legal contract, other than marriage for people to become one another's next of kin.  This would benefit lots of people who are not married, whether they are living with a romantic partner, a friend, a sibling or if they are estranged from their official family (or don't have one) and want to nominate someone else to make decisions for them in an emergency, automatically inherit from them and so forth.


3. The (gradual) demise of the nuclear family as the ideal living arrangement.  So much focus of the resistance to marriage reform comes from the idea that the nuclear family is a great ideal. It's not. It was a short-lived middle class notion; working class people, who have nothing much to pass on and can't necessarily afford to move out of parental home or pay outsiders for childcare and other help, have always had a far more flexible attitude towards family. It's partly to do with blood, but also geography, history, circumstance, as well as love. Your uncles and aunts are not necessarily your parents' siblings. Step families prosper with less emphasis on biological relationships. Of course, poor people have poorer outcomes in education, health, employment and pretty much everything else. But they have tended to have a pragmatic attitude towards family; family are simply the people around you.

The nuclear family places the sole responsibility for children on two parents. It shuffles the rest of the family completely out of the way. If people don't marry or don't have children, they are not part of the club, a club which is isolating for those both within and without it.  It depends on everyone having enough money to live such an isolated life, which of course, fewer and fewer folk do.

I'm not about to celebrate the economic downturn or in particular, an economic shift which falls disproportionately on younger adults, who simply won't have the same opportunities as their parents. But it has forced us to be more flexible. Multi-generational households are suddenly much more common. People live in houseshares which become familial (not all are like that, but some are). Middle class people now speak of their "chosen family", which is what a lot of working class people would simply describe as "family".

All this makes marriage stronger, because it makes marriage supported and supportive to others. Couples do not need to sail out alone in the world and hope to sustain each other. When someone joins a family (formally or not), they become important to several people, not merely a partner for one individual.

I'm not sure I've explained this at all well, but never mind.

Marriage could be made stronger by... a cultural shift away from the idea that happy people come in units of two and single people are fundamentally alone in life. We drastically undervalue other relationships, friendship most of all. Romantic love is a truly wonderful thing, but it isn't radically distinct from other kinds of love, and love is what really matters. Happy people are people who have love in their lives, and that can come in many different forms.


4. Increasing Sexual Equality.

People have argued a lot about the origins of marriage in human society and what marriage is naturally about.  Clearly, nature is not a part of this; marriage is something people invented.  Fundamentally they invented it to organise and celebrate pair bonding and I'm sure in many cases, especially among ruling classes, property or children (principally, which woman bore which man's children) were a priority. But most people in the history of the world didn't have a lot of individual property and childcare tended to get shared out in the most convenient way within a community. Marriage exists because people have always partnered off - not everyone, and it's not our only sexual strategy but it is something humans do.  And since this is a fairly big deal in people's lives - like being born, becoming an adult or losing a loved one - people have tended to celebrate it and use the language of permanent change.

There are some folks who think that marriage is about men and women, because man is one kind of animal and woman is quite another and somehow, despite massive differences in comprehension, ability and desire, they somehow work well together (if they buy the right self-help books and listen to the right kind of religious leaders or relationship gurus - otherwise, the whole thing is hopeless).

But the truth is that private relationships between men and women can be condemned by a society where such expectations exist, where men and women don't have the same freedoms and opportunities. This isn't to say that there's an ideal feminist marriage in which both partners play exactly the same roles in every context which, if only we all subscribed to, we'd be sorted. But the more freedom - legal, financial and social - that both parties have, the more likely they are to negotiate and discover an arrangement that suits them. The less likely they are to believe that they can't really talk to each other about their needs, because people of their partner's gender are incapable of understanding. The less likely there is to be violence or abuse on either side.

Marriage could be made stronger by.... a cultural shift away from the idea of marriage or relationships as a goal and overarching source of fulfillment for women.  As it is, this places tremendous pressure on women to find a partner, exact commitment from them and then, single-handedly, manage the inevitably two-person job of a happy and healthy relationship. Women can stay in miserable relationships because they hold themselves responsible and fear being alone. Women can feel miserable about good relationships because their lives are unsatisfactory and they believed that marriage was supposed to fulfill them. Having a partner in life is not the same as a partner being a life.

Basically, marriage would be so much more meaningful in an egalitarian universe.  On which subject...

5. A growing acceptance of romantic and sexual diversity, Civil Partnerships and soon, coming to a wedding venue near you, Equal Marriage. 

There was time, not all that long ago, perhaps up until the mid-eighties, when it was extremely common for exclusively gay men and women to marry straight people.  Some of those marriages were mutually convenient arrangements between close friends but others, I'm sure, were absolute hell. Straight marriage got a lot more meaningful when being gay no longer necessitated complete secrecy. It got yet more meaningful when gay people began to have some options for becoming parents. These days, it is only those from extremely zealous religious backgrounds who feel the need to use straight marriage as a closet.

Equal marriage will mean that marriage is no longer even slightly about being straight. A marriage certificate will no longer be a certificate to say that your relationship is valid and superior to other relationships between people with the same strength of feeling and commitment towards one another.

If your a woman who finds a man you want to spend the rest of your life with, you climb up to the top of the nearest office block, church spire or silo and cry out "We're in love!". You don't cry, "We're so straight!" or as some Tory MPs seemed to think you might, "It would be typical for two people of our respective genders to have baby-making potential for at least the earlier portion of our adult lives, regardless of whether we're still young enough, each have the necessary equipment and chemical capacity or indeed, the slightest desire to have children! Hooray!" (People on the ground could never comprehend such a long sentence). 

Marriage could be made stronger by... ditching the gender binary in legal language around marriage (Why? Why on Earth is it still there now?) and trans folk who had their marriages dissolved as part of the gender recognition process, getting to have their marriages back (here's the tabled amendment).


My marriage will mean so much more to me because I could marry anyone.  It removes the element of straight privilege that only belongs to me by a double coincidence. It makes me part of something which is now so much more inclusive.  This is not the be all and end all of queer rights (not nearly) and marriage is by no means a perfect institution.  But in the last few weeks, the world has become a slightly better place. 

Down with Coupledom, Up with Love!

People don't have a whole lot of conscious control over romantic love.

You can, of course, enjoy the state you're in and work to maintain that happy state. So for example, if you prefer being single, it's best not to sign up for uniformdating.com. But if you want to be absolutely sure, you've also got to avoid lingering eye contact with strangers on buses and in book shops, avoid making new friends with people of romantically-compatible genders and orientations, and ruthlessly ditch old friends at the slightest change in your feelings about one another. You can have sex, but only with deeply unattractive strangers, and even then there's some risk that you might get talking, find that they have a dazzling personality which cancels out the warts, and that third eye, though not matching the others in size or colour, has a certain sort of bloodshot charm in the first cool light of morning.

So however much you love the single life, if you are capable of romantic feeling, a mutually-electrifying bolt may strike.  It's perfectly healthy to work on the basis that it won't, but if it does, your choice will be significantly diminished.  If two people are in love and want to be together, it is unlikely that they will prefer any life without the other.

This is why when I see the phrase single by choice, I wonder.  Some people are, of course, aromantic or not particularly inclined to romance, and others have phases in their life when they're not interested, but that stuff's not a choice either.  However, it really doesn't matter. For one thing, some people can exercise romantic preference in ways others cannot and maybe I can't understand. For another, we live in a culture which privileges the heterosexual couple above all other combinations of adults and family units. Single people are certainly not the most reviled sexual minority (I mean, how?!) but our culture is constructed in a way that makes being single - a state that most people will experience for at least some years of their adult life - tougher than it ought to be.

What gives me the willies is couples who behave as if they have made a choice. It makes me worry that they did. These are the sort who believe that life is always better lived in pairs and that everyone, absolutely everyone would be better off if they were to follow suit.  Due to my medical condition, I have only been single for four days since I was eighteen, so I've never been subjected to the mean things said to single people, but I do hear things said about them. Obviously, there's the universal assumption that single people are lonely, unfulfilled and actively looking for a partner, but the other great offenders include

• "She could easily find a partner if she wasn't so fussy." You can be too fussy about food when you're eating nothing but baked beans and white bread. You can be too fussy when shopping for a pair of winter shoes when it's already November and you're still wearing sandals. You can even be too fussy when applying for a job you only need as a stop gap.  You can't be too fussy when it comes to love or sex or any significant emotional investment. This stuff is about joy!  In the absence of the joy potential, what's the point?  And how precious is romantic love if you're not extremely fussy?  "I love you, but any number of people would do just as well."

• "If only she met someone, maybe she'd be able to lose weight."  I've also heard meeting someone as the solution to mental illness, financial hardship and simply being a little bit odd.  I don't know how common the weight loss one is, but I have a family member who says this about any woman who is both fat and single, whatever her life circumstances.  As well as the assumption that all fat people want to lose weight and the assumption that love will do that (what with all those full English breakfasts in bed, boxes of chocolate, romantic restaurant dinners, champagne celebrations, tiramisu-flavoured body paint etc.), it reminds me of a time that pregnancy was recommended to me as a way of boosting my immune system. Not a responsible attitude towards major life events!

• "He'll settle down once he meets a nice girl."  This is usually heard about young men who are in some kind of trouble or aimlessly drifting, but can be heard about men of any age who haven't met other people's standards of growing up and settling down.  It's this idea of men as naturally a bit savage and useless and women as a civilising force. To me, it begs questions such as, would such a man want such a woman? Would such a woman want such a man? Might the two of them not make one another dreadfully unhappy, given that one is apparently a Neanderthal and the other is a Homo Superior?

Much of any critique of the single life or coupledom is about gender stereotypes. When attached people lament the plight of their single friends and family, it is often gendered; women need someone to look after and men need someone to look after them - and sometimes vice versa, but always in very gendered ways; a man providing money, a woman providing someone to be ambitious for etc.. When the BBC asked for readers stories about single life, some men wrote about their freedom from controlling women and some women wrote about their freedom from infantile men. Several readers felt compelled to mention that they weren't gay or anything. Single, but not gay - who could have imagined such a thing?

(Weirdly, I observe that missionary marrieds are particularly moved by the plight of their single gay friends, and try to set them up with even greater desperation. If straight Susan is single, they'll try hooking her up with the postman who is roughly the same age, shares her love of Thai food and has a cousin who was an extra in Susan's favourite movie (although he's never seen the film himself).  If lesbian Laura is single, they'll try hooking her up with a woman they met on holiday in Brazil, who still lives in Brazil, is thirty years older than Laura and already has a wife.)

Coupledom is, of course, completely overrated and our culture acknowledges this fact at the same time as thrusting it upon us as a model of normality.  You only need to watch your average ad break to see what our culture depicts as normal couples, not getting on very well, resenting each other and buying stuff to make them feel better. The Dulux paint one is my favourite - look at the exchange of looks between these two at the end!  It started out so nicely with the sexy red walls, but now their life has become - like their walls - grey.  It's a fate worse than magnolia! 

There are various practical and financial advantages to pooling your resources with another person. And the idea is that it is nice to have someone else around to listen to your troubles and to be able to have sex without so much as putting your best shoes on.  That's the idea, but it is awash with complexity and trouble unless you genuinely, sincerely and consistently delight in one another's company. After all, you have to listen to their troubles, and maybe they have a headache - or a shoe fetish! Meanwhile, apart from the sex part, all of this could be achieved with close friends or family members (or what s. e. smith describes as a queerplatonic partner), without all the cultural expectation of exclusivity, permanence and the dedication of most of your free time.

Because being in a romantic relationship with someone who isn't even your friend has got to be far lonelier and more humiliating than being single, especially when you've been led to believe (by your culture and perhaps your partner too) that this is a great deal better than the alternative. Lonely people often live in terror of increased levels of loneliness. But here's something I learnt.

After I left my first marriage, I considered whether I had wasted ten years of my life being miserable and lonely. And at times, I had been desperately lonely, have many unhappy, humiliating or frightening memories from being with my ex. However, I also have many happy memories from this period of my life. I didn't see nearly enough of them, but I did have very good times with friends and family. I lived in interesting places and enjoyed the world around me. I read a great number of books.  I learnt to play the guitar. I made stuff, I sewed, I painted, I started this blog. I studied. I listened to a lot of music and watched lots of films. And against incredible odds, I wrote my first novel (which is now prize-winning, if as yet unpublished).

And had I been single, I might have done a lot more of all that and would have been a very great deal happier. Of course, I don't have a clue - genuinely - how I would enjoy being single. I wouldn't live alone because I couldn't, and so long as I found somewhere comfortable to live, I imagine I would be cool with it.  Being mutually head over heels in love (despite the collision and entanglement of legs) makes me extremely happy, but putting all this time, energy and emotion into somebody who is anything less than fantastic? Never again. I have fantastic friends. I have fantastic family members. I am, myself, fairly fantastic. Stephen gets my time, energy and love because he is super-fantastic, and gives me much more in return.

Love is underrated.  Romantic love is underrated, and treated with cynicism in our culture. I think it's tragic the way that the idea of coupledom, a state of gender-based mutual irritation and tolerance, has become the dominant model of what romantic relationships are like.

But all the other kinds of love, and especially friendship, are even more underrated and undervalued. Love is a big part of what makes any of us happy, but it comes in many different shapes and flavours, and rarely involves a conscious choice. 

Feeding Christians to the Homophobic Lions.

Being queer and being Christian in our culture have a fair few things in common at the moment.

For example, there are people who disapprove of Christians and/or LGBT people who believe that

• it's something people ultimately choose to be and therefore could reason themselves out of. 
• it's a fact that reflects on one's whole personality, one's hobbies and interests and especially one's politics.
• it's something that fills one with smugness about one's superior lifestyle. 
• it's something that one is compelled to spread around at every opportunity, encouraging if not coercing other people to be the same. 
• it's something that makes you a bad influence on children.

Yet queerness and Christianity are often spoken about as if they are not only mutuality exclusive identities, but as if the rights of one contradict the rights of the other.  This isn't true.

The people who argue that this is true are predominantly Christian homophobes, who would very much like it to be true.  Homophobia is becoming increasingly unacceptable and, in certain contexts, illegal. For some people, this presents all the righteous indignation of being persecuted and a sense of justification in their hatred, without anything very bad actually happening to them. Which is a bad thing for queer people and good Christians alike.

Now, there are many obvious differences between sexuality and religion, where these things come from, how likely they are to change in a lifetime and how much power we have over them.  Clearly, some religious ideas are actually wrong and we can reason them away, whereas, there is no right or wrong - nor rhyme nor reason - about who we love and how we love them.

However, all this is mostly about love that others find confusing. Love for a God who may not exist.  Love for a human being of the same gender. Some folk, who have never experienced these things themselves (and a few folk who have and wish they hadn't) find it so strange they think it must be wrong.

There are also big differences between the way that Christianity and queerness are treated within our culture.  In politics, queerness is a much less acceptable and Christianity is almost default; the Conservative Party has precisely one out homosexual MP and Nick Clegg is the very first leader of any political party to be an open atheist. Our head of State is also the head of the Church of England and there are twenty-six places in the House of Lords reserved for C of E bishops. All kinds of political events as well as legal oaths, decrees etc., invoke Christianity by default. (Historically - such when I was a kid - these privileges were much greater; Christian assembly at school every day, non-church goers banned from adoption, blasphemy laws etc.. I can't think of any other group who have lost quite so much social and political privilege, quite so rapidly.)

In popular culture, Christianity is not at all cool.  It is far more acceptable to mock Christians than gay people on TV (I mean Christians, not Churches which, like many institutions, deserve mocking and in some cases, outright condemnation). In popular entertainment, it is easier to be openly gay than Christian. In British fiction, especially television drama, Christians are almost universally aggressive, delusional zealots or effete figures of ridicule. Writers and artists continue to use Christian religious imagery combined with sexual, violent or scatterlogical imagery to make their work shocking (I realise some artists use religious imagery as part of self-expression, but it is at least often about garnering attention.)

One trouble is... how things are in the US.

To most Britons, religion in the United States is baffling, hilarious and deeply disturbing. Of course, we only hear about the extreme stuff, about TV evangelists, creationists, people who bomb abortion clinics and people who use God to justify gun ownership and capital punishment. Their laws allow people to picket funerals to shout abuse at the mourners because they think that's what God wants. They have large groups of people being persuaded that the world is about to end. And religion really really matters in US politics. Politicians talk about God all the time, in the most bizarre contexts. In the UK, politicians sometimes mention faith or Christianity specifically (e.g. "This is a Christian country."), but never ever mention the old man in the sky.

Often, Christianity in the UK is criticised as if it was operated in the same way, or had the same political power, as it does in the US (worse, a caricature of the way things are in the US). I would say that the different ways in which Christianity is understood are a particularly profound illustration of the massive cultural differences between our two countries.

Another trouble is... The Catholic Church

Not Catholics. Blaming Catholics for the considerable sins of the Catholic Church would be like blaming the people of an undemocratic country for the sins of the current administration. Sure, they could leave their country, but they love their country and anyway, that's where they grew up, where their family is and where they feel at peace.  However, senior members of the Catholic Church are still trying to wriggle their way out of responsibility for decades of covering up for and enabling child rape and other abuse. They are still spreading myths about condoms to people for whom HIV/AIDS and overcrowding are the two greatest threats to health and happiness. And they are still talking about homosexuality as if that's a worse thing, worse than all this - worse than climate change!  The Catholic Church is in big trouble, both morally and in terms of its place in the modern world.

I don't know about Catholics around the world, but British Catholics are certainly not represented at all well by their Church.  However, Catholics and their church are frequently lumped together, with Catholics assumed to be guilt-ridden prudes, obsessed with what other people get up to in the bedroom.

A third trouble is...

There are people who get very angry about Christianity - not just angry at the bad things done in Christianity's name, but angry at its very existence -  and in my experience, they're almost always people who with few natural predators when it comes to freedom and social justice.  People who genuinely think that in the UK, in 2012, calling oneself an atheist is a daring act of rebellion against society itself.

Yes yes, there are contexts, families, certain work environments, school catchment areas, where this can be genuinely uncomfortable. But atheists, agnostics and other non-religious people are not subject to nearly so much religious-based violence or harassment as even Church of England Christians, let alone other groups. This may be partly because we're not so easy to identify; there's no non-religious clothing or symbols and we don't congregate in and around prominent landmarks, but even so. My atheist church organist brother-in-law is frequently invited along to Christian events with church friends who add, "It is quite a religious thing, and we wouldn't want you to feel uncomfortable."

And then there's homophobia.

Homophobia is often presented as the preserve of religion - specifically Christianity, in most contexts within our culture - for a number of reasons. These include:

• It's a picture that appeals to the news media, who tend to see only the word sex in sexuality. If it's Christians complaining about gay people, then that's sex and religion in the same story and if you can somehow throw politics into that mix, you've as good as struck gold!
• We're all inclined to simplify the stories we tell about people and behaviour. Religious oppression is a much easier story to tell than the complex social, cultural, sexual and religious reasons why a proportion of the population is still homophobic.
• If it was all down to religion, it would be much easier to sort out. 
• If it was all down to religion, then all non-religious or not-especially-religious people could wash their hands of responsibility for homophobia.
• Some vocal Christian homophobes talk about their homophobia if that's what their religion is all about - that bars to hate speech and discrimination against LBGT people are bars to their religious expression.  

By some queer fluke of my social circle, about half the Christians I know are gay.  The rest are a mix of egalitarians and social conservatives. Yet none of my socially conservative Christian friends or family members have ever said anything homophobic in my presence. 

As far as I can make out, none of them understand homosexuality to be some great bane on the human race. They may see it as wrong, but wrong in the same way other consensual sexual behaviour can be, like infidelity or having sex with a member of UKIP - a private wrong, and something that is between a person, their partners and their God, not something that decent people pass judgement on in polite conversation. Many of my friends are ethically vegan or vegetarian, but I don't hear them telling others that meat is murder. I think most people who object to homosexuality on religious grounds see it a bit like that; believing that this not the best way of doing things, but it's kind of up to individuals to work that out for themselves. 

This must be one reason why the Church of Scotland, having sent out 200, 000 postcards for church attendees to simply sign and be sent to the consultation on equal marriage, got a little over 10% back; either most church-goers are in favour of equal marriage or they simply have more pressing things (like poverty and deprivation at home and abroad) to concern themselves with.

This, compared to the bonafide homophobes I know. People who make lewd jokes about LGBT people, who use gayness as a insult, a mockery, who make sweeping statements about what queer people are like, the damage they do, who don't want queer people near their children and who spend a hell of a lot of the time worrying about whether anything they do might possibly be perceived as a little bit gay.  The ones I know are too polite to shout at people in the street or throw bricks through windows, but it's all in that same infected vein. 

And these people are not religious. They are people who grew up anxious about sexuality, because we have live in a world obsessed by but disgusted by sex and sexual expression. They are people who grew up anxious about gender roles and the near impossibility of fully conforming to them. They are people who grew up with a sense that love is precious in a way that means it should be rationed. They are people used to blaming perceived outsiders - pretty much any perceived outsiders - for the social and economic problems in their own lives. They are people whose humour is very heavily based on mocking other people - again, especially supposed outsiders. They are people who very easily adopt a position of victimhood in the face of changing social attitudes, which they call political correctness.

If they were religious too, they'd claim it was a position of faith and throw a few Bible verses in there (if they'd actually read the book) but it couldn't make it any worse.

I think everyone needs to get behind equality, and religious tolerance is part of this.  It would be ludicrous to make concessions to discrimination law - or indeed, common behaviourial standards of any kind - on the grounds of religion.  But Christians are not the enemy of queer people.  Homophobia, in all its weird and horrible forms, is.

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I know this post is all about Christianity and a lot of the same things apply to other faiths, but there are some major differences (like Christianity's unique place in our culture and history), and Christianity is the religion I know by far the most about.

How to Support People in Abusive Relationships #2 Valuing Oneself

My first post on this was about helping someone to learn to trust themselves.  This bit is (roughly) about encouraging an abuse victim to learn to value themselves.

This isn't about getting a person to feel good about themselves, so much as encouraging the fairly fundamental idea that neither they, nor anyone else, deserves to be abused. It seems very strange now, that from time to time over a period of years, I would worry that my partner would strike me too hard, at the wrong angle, and I would fall against the wrong kind of surface and be seriously injured or killed. And whilst, as I say, the risk occurred to me, it wasn't an urgent matter. And yet I thought I had reasonably good self-esteem.

Some abusers do make their victims feel very good about themselves, but very briefly, very occasionally and often only in the direct aftermath of violence or betrayal. Victims end up living for those highs of praise or affection, appreciating them all the more for the contrast between that and the usual coldness and criticism. Oddly, Fifty Shades of Grey (yes, yes, I've read some with Jennifer Armitrout's commentary) illustrates this very well, with the heroine's inner goddess leaping about at the slightest compliment and during sex, when the rest of the time (which is most of the time) she is angry, puzzled, dejected, jealous, doubting, creeped out and very often actually afraid of the person she thinks she's in love with. (Incidentally, I don't think this means anything about the people who enjoy this book, except that this is probably the first porn they felt they had permission to read. Nor do I think it's an even slightly good reason for the book to be burnt.). Anyway...

There are many ways of making our loved ones feel valued, which in turn helps them value themselves. I hope most of those things are obvious, so here are some which may not be...

1. Don't think your disapproval will help at all.

Isolation is a huge factor in abuse. Abusers sometimes attempt to cut their victims off from friends, family and other sources of support, but failing this, they'll merely attempt to undermine all the victim's other relationships by whatever means. Outside disapproval is a gift to them, so much so that they may well make it up if it doesn't actually exist. They will work hard to spin whatever's been said or done so that the victim can think

• This person doesn't respect me or my choice of partner. 
• They don't understand me. 
• This person says these things because they want to control or hurt me. 
• I can't expect my partner to spend time with this person, who obviously hates them. 
• Any time I spend with this person is a kind of betrayal to my partner. 
• I must always put the best spin on my relationship in order to prove this person wrong. 
• If I ever so much as hint that we have problems, this person will say “I told you so.”

When I first got together with my ex husband, my parents were understandably upset – I was very young, in a very vulnerable position, both physically and mentally unwell and my ex was almost twice my age. They were having a tough time in their own lives and (in common with most abusive relationships) things moved very quickly. So they handled it quite badly. There was no element of my parents' disapproval making this man more attractive - their disapproval meant I had nowhere else to go.  I felt I had to keep spinning the relationship like it was all roses in the garden.

Years later, long after my folks had chilled out and made a massive effort to include my ex as part of the family, my ex continued to use the idea that they didn't like him and didn't respect me. In the comments on #1 post, Kethry described how her abusive ex went one further and attempted to portray her parents as abusers.  Even after I finally left, it was only when my ex started being a problem to them that I decided to tell my folks the truth.

Expressing an explicit objection to specific behaviour is a million times better than expressing general disapproval through hints, passive aggression and excluding the abuser from family events. Perfectly nice people are sometimes ostracized by disapproving in-laws and jealous friends. Abusers are likely to lie about what has happened but "They hate me because they don't think I'm good enough for her." requires less creative spin than "They told me off because I called her a stupid bitch in front of them."

On which subject...

2. Do object to abusive behaviour when it happens in plain sight.

It is okay to make it clear when things you see and hear are not acceptable. Reacting to this stuff demonstrates that we care about our loved-ones being in a bad situation. It doesn't always mean that we can do something about what is happening, but the expression of concern matters so much.  It undermines the bubble in which the victim is living, where abuse is a  normal occurrence.

Top tips:

• Address the abuser, if they are present.  It is their problem.  You and I know that what you say probably won't make any difference to them, but you owe it to others to treat abusers as if they are grown-ups, capable of taking responsibility for their actions, as opposed to the missing stair.
• If the victim is the only one around, give them sympathy rather than a telling-off.  I used to hear, "You shouldn't let him treat you like that." as if there was something I could and should be doing about it.  Far better was when I heard, "I'm sorry he did that. You deserve better."
• Object to the abuse, not the abuser.  The temptation to say "Stop being such an arsehole." is best resisted in favour of "Please don't do [specific behaviour]." 
• Be specific. For example, try to repeat the exact words they used rather than objecting to their tone or manner. Specificity makes it more difficult for the abuser to twist later on.
• Be as brief as possible and perhaps most importantly, 
• Don't get into an argument about it.  This is a very difficult trick, but is perhaps the most important. Abusers aren't any good at arguments, but they are pretty good at derailing them and twisting them into something else.  End the conversation with your objection.  Move on.  Either change the subject or walk away.  If you're not allowed to change the subject, walk away.

As human beings, we owe it to each other to object whenever we see bullying or mistreatment.  Sometimes someone is having a bad day, but they still need to be told.  Vulnerable people around us (to say nothing of any children present!) need to know when behaviour is not okay.

Meanwhile, when abuse happens in company and nobody says a word, it is very easy for the victim to imagine that everyone feels the same.  My ex used to lecture me on various of my supposed inadequacies in front of other people, and I realise now that usually, folk were simply too embarrassed to speak up.  It's  probably worth knowing that that's not always what it looks like. 

3. Talk about abuse.  Talk about abuse with everyone. 

There's a part of me that feels that, now life is so good, maybe I should stop talking about and writing about domestic violence. But quite obviously, domestic violence is a very common experience and a very damaging one.  If one person learns something which helps someone avoid or escape an abusive relationship, then it is worth rabbiting on about until the cows come home.

When I was being abused, I inevitably read or heard about domestic abuse from time to time. When I did, I found reasons why these stories were absolutely nothing like what I was going through. When friends and family told stories - even though few had any clue of my own situation - they were somehow more vivid and struck home.

Some examples of the stories I remember effecting my perspective:

• A couple in my social circle had had a very difficult time; the girlfriend had something of a breakdown amid all manner of personal and professional pressures. During this time – which was short-lived and over by the time the boyfriend told me about it – she had verbally attacked her partner and accused him of all kinds of ridiculous things. He told me, “I learnt for the first time how a man can actually be tempted to hit a woman, but you'd have to be a complete monster to actually do it.”  I was pleased that my friends were both physically safe, and wondered why I was not. 

•  A rather macho friend described abuse he had experienced which culminated in his being stabbed. He spun this story in a particular way – all the violence was down to the girlfriend's mental illness, and his reasons for staying with her were sympathy and concern for her safety. I don't know the truth - I really don't - but I suspected that (a) he had been manipulated, to at least some extent, in order to stick with her when she was regularly violent and (b) mental illness was a poor excuse for attacking someone once, but no excuse at all for doing it after the first time. 

• A gay friend telling me about the abuse and violence he suffered at the hands of his ex-wife. Years later, he still partly blamed himself because he was gay and couldn't give her the kind of marriage she wanted, despite wrestling with his sexuality and undergoing a series of exorcisms (seriously) to try to straighten him out.  I was shocked that he should blame himself and while the marriage must have been a bit of a disaster, that didn't make the violence somehow more reasonable.

•  My mother telling me the story of her young colleague coming into work, looking very upset. She said she'd broken up with her boyfriend and didn't seem to want to talk about it, but everyone rallied around to look after her. Later in the day, strengthened by the support of her colleagues, she lifted her skirt and showed the entire office a horrible bruisey carpet burn down the length of her thigh. Her boyfriend had pushed her down the stairs and so she had finished with him. I understood immediately the power of what this young woman had done and wished I had such strength. 

It's probably not a coincidence that three of these stories involve abused men.  For various reasons to do with my psychology - but probably not uncommon reasons - I have always perceived other women as being more vulnerable than I am. I tend to feel protective of other women who are in trouble, rather than relating to them (although I've got better at this). Meanwhile, the way stories of domestic violence are often told in the media and in fiction makes victims hyper-feminine; young, pretty, quiet, modest, nurturing and often from traditional backgrounds. I struggled to relate such cases to my own circumstances. 

Gender may be a fundamental factor in the way we are treated at times, but it is not a fundamental factor in life experience. This is one reason why I think it is very dangerous to talk about abuse as something that men do to women - it can alienate women, quite apart from people of any other gender. This is not to say that it's somehow sexist to discuss abuse within a specific gender dynamic. Discussing the experiences of abused women does not cause a problem for abused men - the absence of discussion about men's experience of abuse, and the very poor provisions for abused men is the problem. Similarly for people of other genders, those abused in queer relationships, adults abused by people who aren't their romantic partner and so forth.

All the stories matter for everyone's sake.

And on this subject

5. Don't be sexist

Seriously.  Almost every long-term abusive situation I have ever witnessed, heard or read about has featured gender as a weapon. This includes abuse within same-gender couples, mothers abusing daughters and fathers abusing sons.  The stereotyped flaws of men and women (e.g. men are rubbish at expressing their feelings or understanding the feelings of others), as well as stereotyped ideas about what men and women should be like (e.g. a real man never shows his emotions) provide a large and reliable arsenal of abuse available to any abuser, in any context.

Sexism is, of course, inconsistent, so these stereotypes can be applied inconsistently; one moment, I would be a disappointment as a woman, because I was fat and ugly, no good at multi-tasking and failed to meet my ex's bizarre standards of housework and tidiness. The next moment - and any time I was upset - I was chided for being a typical woman; over-emotional, unforgiving, demanding, talking too much etc.. My ex questioned my stated feelings if they contradicted what he thought a woman should or would naturally feel about sex, sexual jealousy, marriage, having children, family, friends, work and money. Sometimes he wanted me to be more like his idea of a normal woman, sometimes he wanted me to be less so.

The trouble is that these stereotypes are the foundation for lots of people's ideas about gender and certainly the basis for a lot of our humour and social bonding.  Having been looking at poems and other readings for our wedding next year, it's quite terrifying how many readings suggested for weddings, contain jokes which present men and women as creatures so inadequate and incompatible that it sounds to me like code for "This will never work out, so let's have a laugh about it while we can."

I know that lots of happy egalitarian couples make jokes about each other, playing on gender stereotypes.  Sometimes it means nothing at all.  Sometimes, it is a gentle way of negotiating one another's faults, particularly faults brought about by upbringing.  I know I am sensitive to this stuff.  But I became sensitive to this stuff, because during the years I was abused, part of my mind was always saying, "It is not fair that I should be treated this way, that I should be characterised this way and expected to perform this role." and part of my mind was saying, every time I heard so much as a sexist joke, "Well, everyone else seems to be cool with it. Even if I'm right, I'm pretty much alone on this."  This is to say nothing of jokes about domestic violence.

The same goes for all kinds of prejudice - any difference that the schoolyard bully would pick up on will be used by adult abusers.  But sexism has to be the big one that effects absolutely everyone.

6. If you are scared for someone, express your fears.

It is always a good idea to tell people you fear for exactly what you're afraid of.  At the very least, this begins a conversation the two of you need to have, even if it doesn't change their course of action.  Knowing that your loved-one has a vague sense of unease about your situation isn't much help at all (Parents really need to know this - some parents, not just mine, are very good at letting their kids know that they don't like a situation, when the kids don't have a clue what their actual concern is.)

The state of Maryland in the US have reduced their domestic homicide rates - rates that tend to remain stable over decades - by introducing a "screen" used by police officers called out to incidents of domestic violence (ht @pseudodeviant):

The first three questions concerned the most important predictors of future homicide: Has the abuser used a weapon against you? Has he threatened to kill you? Do you think he might kill you? If the woman answered yes to any of those questions, she “screened in.” If she answered no, but yes to four of the remaining eight questions, again, she was in. Among these were other, less obvious indicators of fatal violence: Has he ever tried to kill himself? Does she have a child that he knows isn’t his? 

The officer would then present her with an assessment: Others in your circumstances have been killed; help is available if you want it. If the woman agreed, an officer would dial the local shelter from a police cell phone (to prevent the abuser from finding out about the call) and hand it over. 

If you're worried that someone you love will end up badly injured or dead, let them know.  Don't catastrophise; abusers of all kinds are much more likely to commit murder than people who are not abusive, but that doesn't mean that the sister-in-law who calls your brother names is at all likely to end up killing him. She might, however, damage his self-esteem, his mental health, and will provide some very problematic messages to any children they have.  And it is okay for you to voice such a concern.

As with objecting to abuse, don't blame the victim "You'd be stupid to stay with him!", try to be specific, be brief, only say it once and make it clear that you're not going to say it again and again.  If you offer help (and it's generally a good idea to offer some very serious and flexible assistance to someone whose life you fear for), make sure that help is unconditional, with an open ended time-frame.  If you're offering to take someone in, also offer to contact refuges and support your loved-one through finding emergency accommodation elsewhere.

And make sure they know that you will continue to support them whatever they do.  It can take an abuse victim many attempts to leave an abuser. Zero-tolerance is extremely difficult. They may have false starts.  They may get scared or be moved to forgiveness and go back on their own accord.  But at no point does a person stop needing support.