Losing Ambiguity

Recently, I began watching modern adaptations of two of my absolute favouritist books in the whole wide world ever; the new BBC adaptation D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love (which turned out to be a heretical mash-up of the book of that title and The Rainbow) and the 2008 film of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. Truthfully, I didn't finish watching either and yes, that means I'm not allowed to review them. They might be okay - sometimes film-makers do magic with a book by ripping it to pieces and sewing it back together again (e.g.,Trainspotting where the film is ten miles better than the book). I'm afraid these two books were a little too precious to allow me to persist.

Both adaptations, as far as I saw them, wound me up in various ways but there was one thing they had in common. Both books have a major bisexual male character (Rupert Birkin and Charles Ryder) and in both adaptations, their sexuality was changed. Birkin becomes a homosexual who dabbles with women, and Ryder becomes a heterosexual who dabbles with (horribly caricatured camp) men. It is as if, in the early twenty-first century, we are less able to cope with sexual ambiguity than in the mid-twentieth when these books were published. Or indeed the late twentieth when we saw Alan Bates and Oliver Reed wrestling naked and a young Jeremy Irons gaze longingly and lovingly at the beautiful Anthony Andrews.

Our culture seems to struggle with sexual ambiguity and fluidity, outside the context of an attractive young women who might be prepared to swing both ways for our titillation – but that's sexual performance rather than sexuality. Apart from Captain Jack, bisexual men are almost totally absent from film and television drama. Everyone must be gay or straight and easily identified as such. Even if a character has sexual or romantic relationships with members of more than one gender, they must always turn out to be one way or the other.

I guess there are a few things going on here. One is our cultural obsession with labelling. Trouble is, there are contexts in which labels are essential, to help us talk about our experiences and most especially in the context of addressing social injustice. But people try to make our labels more than they are.

For example, take being gay man - there are, after all, far more gay men in films and drama than any other queer people.

In real life, being a gay man does not equal

• being partnered to a man
• finding most men sexually attractive
• having sex with lots of men or indeed
• having ever had sex with any man
• having never had sex with women or indeed
• never being sexually attracted to women

and that's before we get onto being flamboyant and sensitive, having an interest in fashion, musical theatre and the rest of the stereotype. Being a gay man only means that the people one is sexually and romantically attracted to are overwhelmingly men. Roughly. But even then, I'm thinking, it's not that simple. Even so, sexuality does not equal sexual behaviour, let alone social behaviour – in fact, historically, many people have lived their entire lives without expressing their sexuality at all.

Neither Lawrence nor Waugh used the word bisexual, but the characters of Rupert Birkin and Charles Ryder both had deep romantic and sexual feelings towards both men and women. Ryder has a romantic affair with a man and later has a romantic affair with a woman, who he wants to marry. Birkin is somewhat in love with his best male friend and gets a tremendous kick of physical contact with him (as his friend does) as well as other men. But he is also properly in love with a woman, even if he is a bit sexist and will insist in over-thinking it all (Birkin, the merkin, over-thinks everything).

I wonder sometimes if there is even more scepticism about bisexuality or pansexuality now than in days of yore when homosexual behaviour was unacceptable. Many gay people experience hopeful disbelief from family members that perhaps they just haven't found the right man/ woman, but I think there is more general scepticism around non-binary sexualities – even among gay people. Of course, many male public figures have describes themselves as bisexual before later coming out as gay, which doesn't help. But there is also this utterly bizarre cultural presumption that men are so hot that androphilia is the default. Bisexual women are generally presumed to be particularly adventurous straight women and bisexual men are presumed to be closeted gay men.

It seems that we have become especially wedded to the idea that there are two paths of masculinity and no cross-over; there are men who love women and there are men who love men, who are completely different in every conceivable way. In films and television drama, they play very different roles, they frequently walk and talk differently for ease of identification, they have very different motivations and interests. Bisexual men would mess up this binary – what's the chap going to do? Is he going to blow up the building or merely replace the curtains? Is he going to to fall for the helpless blonde or the geeky male sidekick? A dramatic world in which there are no gay heroes (unless they are very very tragic or very very comic) limits what everyone is allowed to be and eliminates bisexual characters altogether.

And this wasn't always the case. Big Hollywood movies force some degree of simplification and come from a different country anyway - here, gay characters from books, even history books, are frequently straightened out. But I honestly wonder whether our culture has stopped exploring gender and sexuality. British cinema of the sixties and seventies, and much of British television drama through into the mid-nineties featured all kinds of different masculinities – often, in fairness, neglecting any variation in femininity. But it's not like women's representation in films and drama has improved in leaps and bounds during this period of masculine stagnancy – our screens are still abound with worlds in which the only women who matter are young, white, pretty with the same motivations as the young, white and pretty women of the 1950s (except they had natural curves).

When making adaptations of sixty-three and ninety-one year old books means simplifying and sanitising sexual matters, then I think that we're not nearly so sexually progressive as we imagine we are.

-----

Being published in 1920, Women in Love is out of copyright and is on Gutenberg and Librivox. Brideshead Revisited was published in 1945 so we have a few more years, but it is absolutely delicious and well worth paying for.

Throughout this post, I've used bisexual when that's not exactly what I mean. See Generbitch's excellent post on Bisexuality, Binarism and Why Everyone Has It Wrong. Unfortunately, I wasn't sure how to phrase this more accurately without using a lot more words and possibly a glossary. But this is the trouble we have; labels which liberate in one context, are frequently inadequate to describe the subtleties of human experience. And when we lose these subtleties, we leave some people and their experiences out.

On Naivety and Renewed Hope

Cross-posted at Where's the Benefit?

Three years ago I wrote a terrifically naïve post for the BBC Ouch! Blog entitled Who's afraid of Wellfare Reform? At the time I believed that there was some real fear-mongering going on, brought about by conjecture on the part of a desperate unpopular government heading into a financial crash. I thought that it was all rhetoric – categorising unemployable people as employable makes for bad statistics. A financial crash was coming and in the next few years, the last thing any government would want to do was risk an artificial rise in unemployment.

I have to counteract the humility with which I admit to such a mistake with the only explanation I have; I am smarter than the government. It's not exactly a boast. Even if I shared the current administration's contempt for people without alarm clocks, the assault on disability benefits is becoming a political disaster. If things are allowed to carry on as they are going, hundreds of thousands of unemployable people will be added to the already record unemployment. Further hundreds of thousands, who they government is spending money on trying to support into work, will never get into work because either they are totally unfit for work or there is no work flexible enough to employ them. And then there is the shift in the media and public feeling, as the human cost increases.

There are three dominant narratives in our culture about disability; triumph, tragedy and villainry. Disabled villains are self-pitying wretches who frequently exaggerate or even fabricate their impairments in order to manipulate others. Thus the media's love of disability benefit fraud - the more audacious, the better. And thus the Daily Mails's recent glee in spinning disablity benefits statistics to make unremarkable facts, like some people have been disabled for more than ten years, sound scandalous.

But that can't last. Until recently, everyone had an anecdote about their friend's uncle's neighbour who claimed Incapacity Benefit for an ingrowing toenail, had one of those mythical free cars and spent half the year skiing on the Costa Brava. Increasingly, everyone has an anecdote about someone they know who has a serious chronic illness, but who has been denied disability benefits, is being subjected to months of stress as they appeal, isn't able to leave the house any more because they can't afford the energy and expense, isn't getting the practical care they need to keep clean and eat properly and so on.

Some people are in deadly danger. Only being a notch or two smarter than the government, three years ago I wrote “All we can be subjected to is yet more hassle and insecurity - not good, but not disasterous.” It was very clumsy to suggest that any increase in the hassle and insecurity we have always experienced wouldn't be disasterous for some of us, but I can't berate myself for failing to imagine that things could be handled this badly. There has always hassle and insecurity - this autumn I was dealing with DLA renewal forms and divorce papers at the same time, and I really couldn't say which was the greatest source of stress. But it is as if the holes in the safety net are widening and falling straight through is becoming a serious prospect for people who don't have the resources or the energy to reach out and cling on. Our most vulnerable have become so much more vulnerable.

It was a matter of time before the tragedies associated with the disability benefit cuts became the story. This has already begun, chiefly in the Guardian and the Mirror. And this government have done as much as they could to turn the public against disabled people – hate crime which includes a reference to DLA simply cannot be unconnected to government rhetoric on disability benefits. But they have forgotten that disabled people are the public. Disabled people are the public's friends, neighbours and family members. Disabled people are what non-disabled people frequently become with age. Disability benefits and the public services we rely upon are part of the deal that everyone has been paying tax for, so that if they or those they love have the need, the support will be there.

Thanks and good wishes to everyone marching today from those of us whose impairments prevent us from doing so. If you're at home today, you can still participate in the DPAC virtual protest and follow the @wheresbenefit gang on Twitter.

My young man is a feminist

Of course, Stephen was always a feminist. Feminism is simply the acknowledgement that there is social, cultural and political inequality between the genders and although that can hurt everybody, this is especially disadvantageous to women. Stephen already knew all that, but he didn't imagine that he could be called a feminist - even after I pointed out that he shares a birthday with that great he-feminist and father of liberalism, John Stuart Mill.

I have always called myself a feminist and it was very late in the day that I realised that many people who share this world-view nevertheless find the word problematic. And they give similar objections to those that Stephen raised:

1. Feminists believe that men and women have exactly equal attributes and abilities.

Stephen thought this because he had encountered self-proclaimed feminists who really did believe that.

Feminism rejects gender essentialism – the idea that there are fundamental physical, intellectual and psychological differences between all men and all women. There are approximate physical markers when we talk about sex, but all these differences are about typicalities – typical combinations of X and Y chromosomes, typical shape and function of reproductive organs and so on. Sex is biological and messy enough, but gender is a social construct and much much messier. (See Sex and Gender: An Introduction, which gets daily hits from people looking for the "gender" of their goldfish.)

When it comes to non-reproductive attributes and abilities, again, there are some typical differences. For example, a typical man can run faster than a typical woman of his age and equivalent level of fitness, but a younger woman is likely able to outrun an older man and an athletic woman can outrun most men. This means that out of any group of people, your fastest runner is likely to be a man, but it wouldn't be remarkable if it turned out to be a woman.

There also appear to be some subtle differences between a typical man and a typical woman when it comes to intellectual and psychological attributes. However, it is impossible to say which of these, if any, are innate, because gender programming is all-pervading and starts at birth. It is very difficult to study gender without inadvertently encouraging participants to live-up to gender stereotypes within tests.

But popular science, especially sound-bite science in the news media, loves stories about how gender stereotypes are either being proved or dramatically disproved, frequently missing the point of the original research in order to exchange a knowing “Men, eh?” or “Women, eh?” with the reader. From the last 24 hours we have Modern Men Prefer Powerful Women, some research by a gaming company, Women as Likely as Men to Enjoy Casual Sex, some research which spoke only to men and women who did enjoy casual sex, and Losing Virginity Makes Women Feel Less Pretty, more thorough but depressing research which concluded that over the course of college, everyone's self image deteriorated.

This is not to say that there are no innate intellectual or psychological differences between the typical man and the typical woman. There may well be lots. But, they will be subtle, there will be a great deal of variation and it seems extremely unlikely that any difference will ever justify unequal treatment or opportunities.

2. Many feminists hate men.

This is a very difficult area, because (a) the idea that feminists hate men is the basis for all lazy refutations of feminist arguments (b) feminist arguments are frequently misconstrued because the most extreme position is the most attention-grabbing one and (c) some feminists probably do hate men. There are a lot of troubled people in the world and feminism is yet to exercise an effective vetting program.

The idea that feminists hate men is an (ironically) ad hominem argument which people get away with because to hate men is a ludicrous, irrational and immoral position. If you're disagreeing with man-haters, who wouldn't be on your side? But feminism is not a position on what men are like - in fact, in rejecting gender-essentialism, the sentiment that all men are bastards (or cheats or rapists or whatever else) is decidedly unfeminist.

Which brings me onto misconstruction. Marilyn French was the feminist who is often accredited as stating that “All men are rapists.” Only she didn't. A fictional character (complex and not wholly sympathetic) in a novel she wrote, The Women's Room, said, “All men are rapists and that's all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws and their codes.” So not only the words of a fictional character, but one talking about metaphorical rape. It was years after having read The Women's Room that I realised that this was the context in which that famous "feminist" sentiment was uttered. And yet all over the internet this and other sentiments are attributed to feminists, paraphrased and out of context.

I have, however, occasionally encountered female feminists who have such a profound mistrust of men that it is prejudice. This is a problem for feminism. However, in all my reading and listening, the worst any misandrist feminist wishes on a man is distance. This cannot be compared to the misogynists of this world who never want distance from women. They want to control and dominate women and often feel that violence is justified against those who deviate from their ideals. All hatred is bad, but some hatred is more dangerous than others.

3. Feminists are unconcerned with ways in which gender inequality effects boys and men.

My favourite feminist group blog, The Pursuit of Harpyness, helped me correct this misconception with three posts from the last few weeks:

(a) A blogger reports on a news article which makes titillation out of sexual exploitation of male prisoners by female prison guards in NY Post sez Prison Sex is Romance, Not Rape

(b) One blogger's husband is driven to desperation by unemployment and the cultural expectations of the masculine provider and protector in On Shaking It Off and Moving Forward

(c) A male blogger talks about his frustrated desire to be a father and the lack of sympathy he gets from those around him in Guy, Interrupted.

Anything which hurts women hurts men and vice versa. The whole point of feminism is that we are all human beings, all equally deserving of respect, freedom and protection, socially and politically. There are ways in which men and boys are disadvantaged by dominant ideas of masculinity and femininity. There are even some ways in which things are getting worse -like the problems of boys, especially black boys, in education. But feminism isn't doing that.

Gender equality or inequality are not travelling on a smooth trajectory, powered by feminism and always heading in the same direction. Overall, things are improving, here and throughout the world. But sometimes things get worse for women, sometimes things get worse for men and it all matters to feminists.

Whether feminists talk about the problems of men enough, I really can't say. But lots of people feel marginalised by that vague entity of mainstream feminism, the sort of you see in major blogs and newspaper columns, which tends to focus almost exclusively on the experiences of middle class, highly educated, heterosexual, white, young, non-disabled, cis-gendered women. But if something isn't being spoken about enough, the only solution is to start talking about it.

[Image description: A black and white image of a handsome young white man with dark hair and spectacles pulling a very silly face, as if suddenly alarmed at the realisation of his lifelong feminism.]

Being, Doing and Nothingness

Recently, I've been feeling rather positive about my health. I'm not used to thinking about my health at all, except in terms of how much can I do today and when something changes. But recently, a little hope has crept in. My health is not improving dramatically, but I am now in a better position to really take care of myself than I have been for as long as I have been ill. As a result, I feel a very great deal healthier. Functional impairment has barely shifted, but my skin is clearer, my muscle-tone is wonderful by my standards and I haven't had so much as a cold in eighteen months. I am more robust than I can ever remember being.

It's an alarming thought that I have been sick for approaching fifteen years, and up until the last six months or so, I have always lived in a very physically and psychologically difficult environment. I have never really had a chance to look after myself properly.

One downright dangerous thought to follow this would be how well might I have been now if things had been different? But therein lies madness, or at least profound silliness – some of the the journey was no fun at all, but I wouldn't have wanted to change the destination. Much.

I hadn't noticed how much the way I experience illness has changed until the random but substantial dip that I'm climbing out of now. For many years, there was tremendous pressure, both internal and external, for me to be as functional as possible. To be able to do things. To be able to study or write or keep house or look after other people. This meant I was in the habit of pushing through things until I collapsed, sometimes literally. I took the existence of this pressure for granted - I thought it was an inevitable part of the reality of living with chronic illness. I took the constant questioning of what my limitations were to be an inevitable consequence of living with another person whilst having chronic illness. And then suddenly, the pressure lifted.

If I am under any pressure at all at the moment, it is to look after myself. Not so that I can get well enough to be able to do more, but simply so that I am okay. Because I keep moving about the country, there are up to five people at any one time, who are highly invested in my being as comfortable, calm and contented as possible and nothing more than that.

Even so, it is difficult to shake off the idea that to be more ill is to be in people's way, holding them up, making work for them and inviting the suspicion that I'm milking it and that my perception is not to be trusted. And this makes me a difficult patient. Pushing myself, expecting to be ignored and apologising for everything makes people worry and fuss. It is a revelation to me that, if I'm hurting a great deal and struggling to stay awake, the best thing I can do for other people is stay still and ask for the things I need.

A part of me thinks that I am being spoilt in my current situation, because I am being looked after, unconditionally. And I know it is a lucky position to be in. But the idea that there is anything wrong here only works if you believe that every individual must fend for themselves, practically and financially. And most people don't. Most people live and work in teams of some sort or other, disabled or not. I have my dips, but so do everybody.

Yes, a bit of a ramble. But so much is changing in my life at the moment, I feel inclined to put some of that down. But of course I am living mid-story and I'm still not terribly awake.

More nonsense about the Work-Shy

I guess I'm letting myself get a bit wound up by things in the news in order to get back to writing regularly.

Another problematic BBC News article UK needs to adopt tough US stance on earning welfare - another opinionated assertion posing as a news headline. From the main site, this was linked to as simply Workshy Britons. The article itself neither explains why the UK needs to adopt a tougher stance, nor does it demonstrate that there are any work-shy Britons.

Lawrie Mead, a US academic, visits Liverpool and laments how unemployed people feel entitled to having enough money to stay warm and have something to eat. Some telling sentences are

“One initial surprise was that the city did not appear down-at-heel.”

and

“The parents and children I encountered in Anfield seemed to me upbeat and well-organised. The community did not manifest the deeper disarray that one often encounters in poor areas in America.”

Thing is, being unemployed in the UK is a very different thing to being unemployed in the US. People are impoverished, but most people are not made desperate. The UK welfare state has been historically based on the idea that everyone pays into an insurance scheme and when someone does fall on hard times and need to claim from it, they do not have to give up their self-respect. Benefits are relatively generous and things like the National Health Service means that people don't so easily fall through the cracks. The vast majority of people who claim benefits work most of their lives and claim only briefly before returning to work. Just now, there are a lot of hard-working people on benefits because jobs are being lost all the time. These people do not need to be made to earn benefits – they already did. They simply need to be supported until such a time that they can earn a living and recommence paying into the pot

Another reason why impoverished parts of the country aren't so bad as impoverished parts of the US is that we have a minimum wage. It is illegal to employ people for less than £5.93 an hour (for those over 21). So if people are to work for their benefits, they cannot be expected to work more than 11 hours a week. That's just over two hours a day for the highest rate of Job Seekers Allowance.

But the biggest practical problem for getting unemployed people to work for their benefits is that there is no work. If the state had work that needed doing, it would surely employ peopl? . Unless of course the plan is to save the state money by first cutting public sector jobs, then forcing all these newly unemployed folk to work for illegally low pay under the guise of giving the work-shy incentives to work... well, it's a plan, I guess. Mead continues

“More important is the fact that many people still believe in entitlement - this is the idea that you have a right to get benefits if you qualify under the income rules, and you should not have to work for them.”

But you do. As a British citizen, you do have this right. Just as you have a right to claim on your car insurance if you have a bump. Everyone is entitled to claim benefits when they are out of work.

Something that really bugs me about the recent rhetoric around benefits is that there are lots of different ways in which the welfare state can work. There are lots of ways in which things could be reformed, made fairer, where we could guard against fraud and abuse and so on. There are even some ways in which costs could be cut.

But the principles underlining the benefits system are fundamentally fair. It is not a charity pot. The people of this country are not divided into hard-working tax-payers and work-shy layabouts. And just now, when more and more tax-payers are needing to claim from the pot – our pot - this rhetoric is particularly insulting.

ADHD and DLA Fraud

cross-posted at Where's the Benefit?

There's an article on the BBC News website is entitled Unscrupulous parents seek ADHD diagnosis for benefits

The evidence for this assertion is that two anonymous headteachers claim this to be the case.

"Susan" has asked to remain anonymous, because she knows what she says is controversial and does not want to stigmatise the parents of every child with a diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

Not sure how anonymous sources make any difference to the stigmatising effect of the article. ADHD is already a massively stigmatised condition. Many people, including teachers, are sceptical as to whether the condition isn't simply a way for bad parents to excuse the bad behaviour of their children. I have heard it theorised that ADHD is a problem caused by middle class parents who aren't prepared to smack their children and demand a label when their children struggle at school, or that ADHD is a problem caused by working class parents who feed their children junk food and abandon them to the television. Bringing benefit fraud into this can only add to the stigma.

Psychiatric diagnoses with subjective criteria are always tricky and identifying abnormality in children's behaviour is particularly fraught, so there are bound to be misdiagnoses. But for children with these impairments, attempting to navigate the world and an inflexible education system, a diagnosis of ADHD can be a tremendous gateway, not to extra cash for their parents, but to proper treatment and the help they need to succeed. DLA can be used to buy time, peace, practical adjustments and special arrangments so that these children and their families can have as full and normal life as possible. Which in turn promotes normal development.

Their anonymous source continues

"Every child I have on medication, we are asked to fill part of the forms that they [parents] submit as benefit claimants, to verify they have ADHD, so it goes hand-in-hand."

As the article later points out, both NICE and the Royal College of Psychiatrist believe that Ritalin should only be prescribed to chlidren with severe behavioural problems. Therefore, it follows, those families whose children are actually prescribed Ritalin are likely to be in greastest need for help.

Only of course, there are only 328,000 people on DLA under the age of 16, including all those with mobility and special care needs, whereas there are many more children taking Ritalin (I can't find a figure that agrees, but somewhere past half a million). Ritalin prescription and DLA do not go hand in hand.

Then finally,

Abuse of the Disability Living Allowance by parents is one reason the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is discussing reform.

No, it's not. It has been said before, but it has to be said again and again, DLA fraud is reckoned to stand at 0.5%. There are only 328,000 people under 16 claiming DLA, including all those children with mobility and special care needs. Presuming that fraud is as common amongst parents and guardians claiming for their children than amongst adults claiming for themselves – which seems extremely unlikely given the much stricter criteria for under 16s – then that's about 1600 cases in the country. The DWP are not reforming anything for the sake of 1600 fraudulent parents.

This article rattled me because it is such weak reporting and by the BBC, from whom I'd expect better. Disability fraud and the urgent need for reform has become a bandwagon, where an argument is built up around the word of anonymous sources who have no expertise beyond their anecdotal experience. Because there must be fraud. There must be massive fraud or else the government wouldn't be able to justify the cuts and increased stress and scrutiny in store for everyone on disability benefits.

The website article relates to a radio piece on this matter at 9pm tonight (Sunday, 6 February) on BBC Radio 5 Live. No, me neither.

Muscular Liberalism and Stories About Islam

"Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism." - David Cameron, speaking about Islamic extremism at the Munich Security Conference.

Liberalism is jolly hard work. It means arguing for a society in which, inevitably, sooner or later, you will hear something that upsets or offends you, or a false statement on a subject that matters. People will behave in ways that unsetttle you, and yet you have to keep fighting for their right to do so. When I hear a phrase like muscular liberalism from a serving politician, I would expect something like some adjustments to our recent terrorism laws which criminalise various non-violent behaviours and allow police tremendous powers to interfere in the lives of those who come under suspicion.

No such luck...

“We must ban preachers of hate from coming to our countries. We must also proscribe organisations that incite terrorism - against people at home and abroad. Governments must also be shrewder in dealing with those that, while not violent, are certainly, in some cases, part of the problem.”

Cameron spoke to the EU in Munich today about Islamic Extremism and the failure of multiculturalism, the day after the anti-Islamic English Defence League took to the streets of Luton. The timing was appalling, but the rhetoric was worse.

“So when a white person holds objectionable views - racism, for example - we rightly condemn them. But when equally unacceptable views or practices have come from someone who isn't white, we've been too cautious, frankly even fearful, to stand up to them.”

Common narratives around race, religion and immigration are extraordinarily dangerous. We like stories. We also like simplicity, irony, colour-coding, heroes and villains. So stories about the way things are that appeal tend to stick better than stories which are true.

Privileged groups have been using the “one rule for them, another rule for us” complaint forever. I daresay a Pharoah once complained, “When a Hebrew kills an Egyptian overseer, he gets a burning bush and a pat on the back. But when an upstanding Egyptian accidentally drops a few thousand babies in the Nile and enslaves their parents, God goes and sends ten bloody plagues! It's political correctness gone mad!”

And it is blatantly untrue. There may be some people who imagine that outrageous views held by a member of a minority are somehow okay, or even part of their culture and therefore worthy of respect. But a Muslim only needs to moan about Western culture as much as the average pub bore and there is mass media coverage. Anjem Choudary, who appears to represent nobody but himself, is rarely out of the news. Yesterday, two Muslims made the national news by silently abstaining from a standing ovation for a man who had won the George Cross (please don't make me link, it was in the Daily Star).

It's almost a shame that the story isn't true, because it would make some sort of sense. Like Jack Straw's comments about sexually frustrated single Asian young men preying on white girls because Asian girls are sexually unavailable. Would make some sort of sense if it wasn't for the fact that the Asian men recently prosecuted for abusing young women and children were married, in their late twenties and anyway, rape has little to do with sexually frustation. But these stories have great appeal, they make some kind of sense of something in equal parts complex and horrible. But they do so at the cost of a scapegoat, at the cost of these communities who are always being spoken about in the third person.

We cannot ignore crimes committed by anybody, and terrorism is a very serious crime. But I think that as white folk, we have a greater responsibility to confront white voices who preach hatred and falsehood (and thus, provoke hate in others) than we do to confront non-white haters. We're the majority, we have the privilege and these people frequently claim to speak for our interests. And it's a very watered-down, cowardly liberalism that resorts to banning individuals who only want to speak. Even if what they have to say is as vile as vile can be.

This is a bit of a ramble but I've been struggling and I went and pressed publish by accident again half way through - so folks on feed-readers already got a preview.