Here's a hand to lay on your open palm

Holding one another's hand in public is a privilege Stephen and I rarely get to enjoy. Of course, there are a tragically large number of lovers in this world who cannot hold hands in public without fear of antagonism, abuse and even arrest. Thankfully, our obstacles are mostly practical.

You can't hold hands between two assistant wheelchairs, unless you can co-ordinate the pushers (neither of us can self-propel). You can't hold hands between powerchairs unless the controls are on alternate arms (although Stacey and Mia offer one beautiful solution to this). Scooters, however, provide the possibility of riding alongside one another and holding hands. I'm not all that great with a scooter, but just now we have access to two scooters and a broad and fairly lonely path between us, the woods and the beach.

There is a special art to holding hands whilst driving mobility scooters. Not only do you have to be closely synchronised with the other person, but you have to gauge and respond quickly to the subtleties of the other scooter. Different machines slow or speed up more or less on a gradient or on different terrain. And nothing brakes or turns as quickly as an ambulant person can, even if you have the same reflexes (which I certainly don't). So in other words, it takes far more concentration and is ever so slightly hairy. We meander a great deal. And of course, we take up space. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Stephen is more self-conscious than I am, having been subject to a fair amount of harassment and hostility when out and about. He's lived in less friendly places and maybe as a young man, he is considered especially fair game to those kinds of people (not that disabled women are immune by any stretch, in fact we seem to get it nastier if less often). So Stephen is more conscious of the fact that we might be judged. That some people will find it a novelty to see disabled people together, let alone being romantic, in public. That some people will find it cute and some people will find it weird. That people will undoubtedly gossip about us. Stephen says there are places where it would be a bad idea for us to hold hands because of other people - and not just to avoid crushing their toes.

I know this is true, but I also notice advantages. So far we've always been out together in a fairly rural environment where lots of people speak to us, yet nobody has made comments about speeding (ha ha ha) or learner-drivers (ho ho ho) or any such thing - even when Stephen has been using the bright yellow borrowed “power trike” which looks very cool and can go very fast (you can't hold hands with that either, as it has manual brakes).

My hope is that together we exude confidence, and people don't feel the need to say a thing about our wheels. Either that or they have merely been terrified into friendliness and courtesy.



Incidentally, Wheelchair Dancer has written a little about the possibility of intimacy in being pushed, at the end of a post about the crapness of being pushed the general crapness of being pushed.

Funk to Funky

The trouble with so much life going on, especially life plus ill health, is that everything I do takes at least twice as long as I feel it ought to – which, given my usual snails-pace standards, is a very long time indeed. I'm getting on with stuff, writing stuff, painting, making things, and I'm well used to working around involuntary hiatuses, but just now is a spell where things are taking so long that I begin to feel that I've forgotten how to do any of it. I know, this is not an unfamiliar subject for a blog post, and I don't know how many times I've written this post myself. But there's a reason why it is worth writing, because it does at least mean I'm writing something.

When things take too long, they lose their vitality. They get checked over and tweaked too many times. But time is also a cipher to confidence, and then you're tempted to check over and tweak, or leave it for now and wait for a time to check over and tweak, which means the whole thing will take twice as long. I can't do anything about life plus ill health, but I have to hold onto my confidence, especially when the life bit is giving me so much. I have to lay my brush down when I think a painting might be done, I have to share my writing sooner and press publish directly after the next sentence.

And no, I'm not apologising for not blogging more often, but I thank you all for your patience.

Audio Blog on "Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die"

cross-posted at Single Lens Reflections

Full Transcript:
Deborah: Hello there. Today we're going to talk about the BBC documentary, “Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die” which was on on Monday night and is available to viewers in the UK on BBC iPlayer until next Monday night, that's the 20th June.

Stephen: The programme featured a number of different people suffering from different conditions, all of whom were either supporters of, or in the program to be helped to kill themselves. We are both somewhat ambiguous [sic.] when it comes to assisted suicide. That doesn't mean that we have any moral or ethical issues with suicide in general, certainly no religious problems with the idea. And we completely understand how severe illness can produce a situation in which you want to end your life as soon as possible rather than suffer any more than you possibly have to.

However, there were problems with the programme, which is difficult for me to say because I'm a huge fan of Terry Pratchett and his work. But there are many things to talk about and that's what we're here to do.

D: That having been said, I think we both have very serious concerns about assisted suicide and the way it is presented in the media, especially as far as the representation of disability is concerned. The idea that there are some lives which are less valuable than others, and that some lives are less liveable than others just because of a physical difference.

My problem with the assisted suicide debate is what appears to be an assumption that a physical disaster – a physical health disaster – has a special status, where if you become paralysed, if you have a degenerative condition, that's different from experiencing a major depression, becoming bankrupt, getting divorced, having some of your dreams destroyed in some way other than a physical illness. Physical illness and injury have a special status that means that people aren't expected to get over it, people aren't expected to find new ways of living within those limitations and it seems that our culture thinks that's a legiti...

S: That's not a degenerative condition, that's just how she is and I do not wish her to kill herself just because she can't say legitimate.

D: Legitimate. The problem is there does seem to be a special status of having a physical illness or a physical injury which is seen as a legitimate reason to kill yourself whereas all manner of personal disasters which lead people to suicidal ideation are not.

S: Well said. I think perhaps we should go through the characters we meet. Characters is perhaps the easiest way to see them because, over the course of the programme, we do see one of them die and hear from one person who also dies although we do not see their death. So it is not easy watching. It is not light-hearted evening viewing, so be warned if you're going to watch it.

First of all we saw Peter Smegly?

D: Smeadley.

S: Smeadley. Sorry, that's Red Dwarf for you. Peter Smeadley, whose family had got money through canning goods, who had Motor Neurone. He was not apparently hugely disabled by the Motor Neurone already. I think that's fair to say?

D: Um, not by our standards.

S: Not by our standards at least. He would struggle to get up but his struggling was on a level with our own at times and he was not obviously using many mobility aids, despite his family money which would have paid for a great deal of help which isn't necessarily available to everyone, although it should be. He is the man who we see die and we'll talk about him more in in a minute.

We also meet a chap called Andrew, who had MS. He was not a member of a canning empire and he seemed, at least, to live quite a quiet and lonely existence.

D: I think the worrying point about Andrew was he was crawling about the house, he said he got out of bed by falling out of bed and crawling from room to room.

S: On a bad day.

D: On a bad day. But even so. His accommodation wasn't really suitable for him, he really should have been using a powerchair, I would say. But whether that was simply unavailable to him, or not, I mean the fact is he didn't have the adaptions which would have made his life a lot more liveable – or at least one would presume it would do. That's perhaps not a fair thing to say but

S: I think it's fair to say because we all need the correct environment in which to live our lives properly.

D: Yeah, but he might have still been completely and utterly miserable

S: Yes indeed.

D: But you'd think that would, that should have been tried first. And it should be the case that he'd have the support to try that first but not knowing his personal circumstances I don't know whether that stuff had been

S: It's difficult to say, as is much as what we'll say during this podcast. We must say this is our own opinion of seeing what must have been quite a heavily edited collection of interviews.

D: Yes and it was – the programme was certainly edited for pathos. Lots of soaring music. We saw a lot of Peter, the chap we saw dying eventually, struggling to get up and struggling to sit down again and a lot of camera time on the point that he had a physical impairment.

S: I must say it reminded me a lot of the Disability Living Allowance forms that we've just got to, which are, if anything, a good starter in your quest towards suicide. Where they ask you do you have problems getting into and out of chairs, or they used to, I dont think they have that question now, but it was a bit like watching our answer in the form, and the answer to the form was that rather than being given benefit or using money to enable to live your life with joy and accomplishment and so on, you can just kill yourself.

D: I think it's a subjective matter. I think that there are real differences, things that aren't spoken about in the public domain because of the negative representation of disability, because of the idea that if you've got physical limitations your life must be pretty rubbish. I think there are real differences with conditions, with the things that can be utterly demoralising and soul destroying and the things that aren't. And of course that varies a great deal from person to person. But in many ways I had far more sympathy for, no sympathy is the wrong...I had sympathy for everyone, but I had far more sympathy with the desire on the part of Terry Pratchett not to go on throughout the entirety of Altziemers, because having experienced cognitive dysfunction and confusion and disorientation and memory problems too, that stuff is far worse than most physical pain, obviously physical pain after a while, but fact is I dont think I've ever had physical pain where there wasn't a drug that couldn't touch it even if I didn't have access to it at the time. But that stuff is far worse than physical pain and far worse than physical limitation. And of course with a condition like Motor Neurone Disease which Peter had, there is that possibility that he would lose some of his cognitive faculties. And I think that's much more distressing for the individual and his family and I can understand, in fact I think that is the one thing where if my illness became much worse again, that would be the one thing that I would have a lot of trouble adapting to.

S: I think at this point, rather than talking about Alzheimers, which we'll leave for a minute, because there was another person as well as Terry Pratchett who was – or who had killed himself, having suffered from Alzheimers. There was another man who had Motor Neurone, who I think was the most interesting point of view on the entire programme. He was called Mick, he was an ex-London cabbie.

D: Who demonstrated the fact.

S: Who demonstrated the fact and did this properly by asking for payment at the end. He was a really charming chap. And he had a good sense of humour and despite being much more disabled than the Motor Neurone than Peter, he was, I would guess, pretty much confined to his electric wheelchair.

D: He was in a hospice.

S: Yeah. He had moved to a hospice and Terry Pratchett said that, you know, there are other ways of dealing with things and some people move to hospices to die. I think he was wrong. I think that Mick had moved there so that he could enable his living and his enjoyment of life for longer. And he really showed this off. He was bubbly and expressive. And yet he was pro-assisted suicide. Which I almost wasn't expected. But his was a very rounded opinion. He wanted to live his life as long as he possibly could and as well as he possibly could. And he was using every resource he possibly could in order to achieve this. And I found that admirable, in a programme like that.

D: Yeah, it's quite funny because – well, not funny, funny peculiar. It wasn't funny.

S: Ho ho!

D: There really wasn't very much funny about this programme at all. What was funny peculiar was that after Peter has taken his life, Terry Pratchett says that he's the bravest man he's ever met. And in many ways I think Mick may have been the bravest man he'd ever met. And bravery is a very difficult issue.

S: Especially with disability. Especially in the current political climate.

D: And I certainly wouldn't say that Peter had taken a cowardly path. I don't think that is an useful concept either. But I think Mick had chosen to live and I think choosing to live can take an awful lot of courage. And considering that he was in favour of assisted suicide and it was something he had thought about himself and he had been in touch with Dignitas himself, but then he chose the other way, I think that was a brave thing to do.

S: Another incorrect statement, I felt, given by Terry Pratchett was that Peter's death was a happy thing because he got to decide when he died, etc. But I disagree and I think that Deborah disagrees as well.

D: Yes, I do.

S: That the death were not happy. There was a death described that we'll get to eventually which was certainly beautiful but it wasn't happy. None of the deaths were happy. Happy would have been achieving joy and all manner of other things. These were releases from fear, sometimes a release from pain, certainly a relief, but they weren't unhappy. They were just an end.

D: Two of the things I find disturbing about the assisted suicide debate in general is firstly the idea that there's nothing like that going on, that it's a common experience to suffer in agony unnecessary until you naturally die, when in fact I think probably most cancer patients in the UK die of diamorphine overdoses – I think that's a very common thing, that pain relief kills people, because we do prioritise people's comfort over people's lives at the end. But also the idea that “the happy death”, the death that people “choose to have” - that anybody can really choose a particular kind of death. I don't think that a millionaire would have chosen to die on an industrial estate on the outskirts of Zurich. I don't think that was the death they would have truly chosen. Both the idea that suffering is commonplace and we do keep lots of people – I mean, there are people who are alive after they want to be, but there are very few. And also, the idea that any death can be what someone has chosen and everything is exactly how they would like. I think there are better deaths and there are worse deaths, but none of them are happy and none of them, we have an awful lot of control over. Even when people take there own lives, I think, you've still got a very limited amount of control and if we did have assisted suicide in this country, it would still have to be terribly controlled. Terry Pratchett said he'd like to die in the sunshine, which is a lovely romantic idea, but if we had assisted suicide in this country

S: It would be in the hospital.

D: It would presumably be in a hospital – you couldn't just do it on a hillside. Although if we had -

S: Unless he slipped.

D: Slipped? I'm not

S: He's getting a bit frail, top of a hillside, slips.

D: But that's not

S: Assisted suicide because someone gave him a nudge.

D: This a very dark and sober subject.

S: Indeed. I think perhaps it's time to finally mention Hugo Klaus, who was the other man with Alzheimers. We never got to meet him, sadly. He was a Belgian author and we only got to meet his widow. He had died at – I think it was at the Dignitas Clinic?

D: No, because

S: Was it not? No because it was legal

D: It was in hospital in Belgium.

S: Yeah, because it's legal in Belgium for people to be helped to die but not for foreigners to be killed, to – sorry, for them to be assisted in their suicide. This is a problem I have because I don't see a great difference between the two. I know that many people would see a difference between the two and I fully accept that. Anyway, he had Alzheimers and his death was the rather beautiful one where he sang a song, having drunk a glass of rather good champagne and smoked a cigarette. He sang a song with his wife while he slowly died, and died singing. Which, you know, as authorial deaths go, is quite an impressive one. And this, I feel, is where the big problem comes in. That Alzheimers and other forms of dementia are really difficult. They are the things that scare us, the idea of cognitive loss, or losing oneself, of being lost in a nightmare. I certainly saw my grandmother destroyed by dementia and there wasn't anything happy about her death but it certainly was a relief. I was somewhat horrified to realise that Terry Pratchett would have to arrange his death with Dignitas, prior to becoming completely destroyed by the Alzheimer's, because he has to have enough cognitive function to say, “I want to die, I want to die, I want to die” - because they keep on asking you. I find it hard to imagine, having this option available to – even to people, what was the term that they were - ?

D: About twenty, I think they said 21% of the people who die at Dignitas don't have a serious physical disease, or perhaps not a disease at all, but they have become “weary of life”

S: “Weary of life”. Isn't that beautiful and happy? So I don't see how people who are “weary of life” can go to a place and be helped tyo kill themselves and somebody who has previously said, when I get to a certain point in my life, I want to die, that they cannot be helped. And I suppose this then becomes an act of killing as opposed to an act of suicide because someone has to actually inject them with a drug, rather than handing them a drink, if they can't then swallow it.

I find this really difficult and I think it's a big flaw in the process. And actually it makes me quite upset because I don't think people should be in that situation. As much as I find the idea of a legalised assisted suicide in the UK quite troubling, in many ways, and I would rather see greater care, it's Alzheimer's and Dementia where I see a real need for assisted suicide and yet it's there where there isn't, apparently, the option.

D: I can understand that because it's all about consent. If somebody's gone beyond the point where they're able to give informed consent, then they shouldn't be harmed. That makes utter sense to me because you've still got a person there even if they're not able to communicate. But the issue of consent brings us round to mental capacity and mental illness. Because assisted suicide in the UK is such a huge leap from where we are now. It's only decades since attempting suicide was a criminal offence and currently assisting suicide is a criminal offence, and if you see someone who is trying to kill themselves, you're allowed to assault them, you're allowed to break all manner of rules, just as if they were committing violence against another person, in order to stop them and prevent harm to them.

Meanwhile, if you repeatedly attempt to commit suicide, you're likely to get sectioned and have all your freedoms taken away from you. We take this very seriously. We assume that people who harm themselves are not in their right mind when they do so, and we tend to see this as a massively negative thing.

I think that it's extremely difficult to define when somebody could be in their right mind, when facing death. There might be people who have chronic mental ill health who are not able to manage in the way that all the people I know with chronic mental health – chronic mental ill health even, chronic mental health? There are people who may have been unhappy all their lives and may have made several conscientious attempts to kill themselves, who, on their final success, everyone who knows them may feel that they have got what they wanted, and nothing could have been done for them, and life could not have been improved for them. But for the vast majority of people with depression – whether they've got a chronic depression or whether they've got a reactive depression because life has gone wrong for them in some way – we have a cultural assumption that there is help and there is hope and it's about changing their life and changing their mind as opposed to simply opting out.

One of the most disturbing, well actually in my opinion, the most disturbing case of assisted suicide by a British person was a few years ago, a 23 year old lad, who was quadraplegic, took his own life at Dignitas in Switzerland, with the help of his parents, only 18 months after he had the initial accident that left him paralysed. And that's really scary for me. Lots of things go wrong for 23 year olds, and when you're that age, you do tend to take things in the worst possible way and you can feel like your life is over, because of the end of a relationship, because you started on one course of a career that suddenly you realise it's not going to work out the way you thought it would, because of financial problems – all kinds of things can go wrong for you. But given enough time, you sort of work it out. And certainly with illness and injury, 18 months is no time at all. The sort of peak of my feeling that my illness couldn't be lived with was about three years in, before the point where I thought, well it's not actually going to get any better and it could get a lot worse than this, then I really wanted out for a while. 18 months is no time at all.

And I think that's the scary thing, that whatever else might have gone wrong for that young man, any of those other things, people would have said, “Well, something will come up.” or “You will find another way of doing things.” But because it was something physical

S: And it sounds like it was a sporting family.

D: Yeah, I think so. I mean, this is one of the difficult things about the way that different impairments effect people. There's perhaps something especially tragic about Alzheimer's effecting a writer.

S: Hmm.

D: And when paralysis effects a sporty person, somebody who lives in their body a lot, that's perhaps worse than when paralysis effect someone whose intellectual. But even so, I struggle to see, but I feel that if we ever did put this in place, we would have to have some sort of system of defining how long and what options had been explored before people make that ultimate choice.

S: And who makes that decision? And who makes up the board that oversees who gets the chance to kill themselves? And who doesn't?

D: Yeah, I've always thought that perhaps some sort of tribunal that included a sort of pro-life disability activist, to sort of offer all the alternatives. Or an occupational therapist to sort of say “Well, you know, you feel you can't...”

S: I don't see how anyone with Motor Neurone who is in a better state than Mick, from the programme, could possibly kill themselves having seen what he achieves in his capacity in the hospice.

D: I mean, in fairness, I think one of the problems with assisted suicide and Switzerland being the only option for people in the UK, is that there's this issue of travelling and this issue of how far it gets along. Cause I mean, Motor Neurone Disease can go downhill quite quickly and people can reach the point where travelling becomes extremely difficult to do. And I think

S: And also the issue of cost.

D: Yeah. Well, yeah I know but that doesn't change when people do it.

S: Well, it changes whether they have the option to do it, which doesn't seem fair to me.

D: So you think it should be legal in the UK?

S: On the NHS. I don't know if it should be available on the NHS but I do have a problem with any service that is only available to someone who has the capacity to pay £10K for it.

D: Anyway, my point was before, about travelling, was that when people are forced to travel, they are forced to make a decision in advance of falling severely ill. And I do think that fear is such a big part of terminal illness. The fear that it's going to move beyond point. Last year I lived with friends, one of whom had emphysema and was heading – he died at Christmas in the end. But he was very frightened about what the end could be and in the end he had a very gently passing. But he could have effectively drowned to death and that could have happened quite slowly. So he longed to have some means of getting out if he could. Some days he wanted to just die because he was unhappy, because to be honest he was quite depressed. But I think, if he had had some means of getting out, it would have made him feel safer and more comfortable in facing his natural death.

I think it's Oregon in the US where you can effectively get a prescription for deadly drugs, and many of these prescriptions are filed but very few of them are actually taken, because once people have the means to get out, if they want to, they generally end up facing natural death. Because I think, as I said, with palliative care as it is, there are very few natural deaths which are these nightmare scenario of being locked in a body in agony for days or weeks or months, without being able to communicate with others, etc.

S: And I can't help but think, and it might just be the Yorkshireman in me thinking this, that if you've travelled all the way to Switzerland and have paid £10K, that when you're sat there, being offered a pair of drinks that are going to end you, you're not going to say, “Oh, on second thoughts, perhaps not today.”

D: Well yeah, this is a bit like the argument against prostitution, the idea that if you involve money, then consent isn't 100% pure any more. And the poorer you are, if you're spending £10K, you're going to go through with it. And of course, there's also the problem, one of the big arguments against assisted suicide is the fact that disabled people can become very costly, to the state and to their families, and in the case of elderly disabled people, they may feel like they're using up the inheritance they meant to pass on. And that becomes a big problem when you give people an out, because people in our culture are made to feel like burdens. I mean, especially in the political culture at the moment, we're really made to feel like Ballastexistenz.

S: And with that, I think we should leave it. I hope that wherever you are, and whatever you're doing and whatever you're feeling, that you're not wanting to die. And that listening to this has not made you any more eager to pop your clogs. So listen to us next time, we'll try to be a bit more cheery.

D: We should write, we should do some sort of podcast about the Joys of Life

S: Choose Life! Next time.

Looking After Yourself as Radical Political Activism

In the last year or so, the world has turned out to be a much better place than I thought it was. This despite the fact that the political situation in the UK has begun to deteriorate sharply. In fact, just a year later and I would have been in a far worse position and may have struggled to escape my violent marriage – not merely in terms of financial insecurity, but in terms of whether I would have had the practical and legal help I needed. This frightens me.

With their decimation of the welfare state and public services, this government is implicitly repeating the messages of my abusive ex and everyone else who seeks to abuse and oppress others. My health doesn't really matter, my happiness doesn't really matter. My relationships with friends and family don't really matter. My dreams don't really matter.

And obviously, I have to do something about that. Two things. One thing speaks for itself. The other is rarely spoken about but is actually more important. It is the cornerstone of every struggle for equality and social justice. It is a necessary condition for making a difference.

Looking after yourself is radical political activism.

It's radical because this is a message you are unlikely to receive anywhere in the media or from culture. You may receive messages advocating material self-interest. You may receive messages advocating a healthy lifestyle, but very often these messages come with a dose of shame and angst for your inevitable failure to follow all available advice. If you watch television, read the news or step outside in a built-up area today, you will receive lots and lots of messages. None of them will tell you that you matter and you need to look after yourself. Many of them will suggest reasons why you don't really matter.

The only people likely to give you this message are your friends and family. They might not - they might not think it even needs saying. But even if they do, you may be inclined to think that they are over-invested, that they think you matter more than you actually do. But they don't. They're right. You matter at least as much as that.

Looking after yourself is an act of modesty.

No need to get big-headed about this business of mattering. Projects and movements are often bigger than the individuals within them, but the point about this is not that it doesn't matter if you get flattened – it means that if you step back, it carries on without you. If something matters, there are always other people around to step up and help out. Often there are other people around who won't step up until you step back. You have to be very careful if you ever get to think that you're the only person who can fulfil a certain mission. Sometimes, I suppose, somebody might be. I've certainly never have been, so I wouldn't know.

Looking after yourself is a necessary condition for looking after others.

Over the years, I have often pushed myself to achieve something – battled through an afternoon at the cost of a week or three in bed – and this has sometimes been worth it. But times I have run myself into the ground, got myself into terrific debt with the Spoon Gods, costing me a long-term deterioration in my health? It has never been worth it. Not only because I suffer too much, although that matters. But also because then I render myself less useful, and for periods of time, pretty much useless. If I wreck my already damaged health, I am certainly no use as an activist, but I'm also less useful as a friend to people who need me.

Looking after yourself is setting a good example to others.

Looking after yourself gives permission to those around you to do likewise. Self-sacrifice is not a personal virtue that one can claim for oneself without harming others. If you don't rest, it makes it jolly hard for people around you to rest – and they may need it even more than you do.

Looking after yourself is an act of feminism, disability equality, queer pride etc..

As women, we're supposed to put most of our energy into looking after others and what is left into keeping ourselves attractive. As men, we're supposed to be putting individual success before everything. As disabled people, we're supposed to be constantly triumphing over adversity and as such, we're supposed to keep pushing, no matter what, to avoid being overcome by the tragedy of our existence. As queer people, we're supposed to be proving that we have wonderful perfect lives and relationships and nothing than needs working out or working on. I'm too white to talk about the demands placed on other ethnic identities which make it harder to look after oneself but I know they exist.

And yet...

Looking after yourself keeps identity politics in its place.

The goal of egalitarianism is a world where there are far fewer contexts in which we'd be forced think about our gender, sexuality, disability, the colour of our skin and so forth. In a world where this stuff comes up as often as it does, we need to spend as much time as possible just being people. I don't mean we should ever avoid the subject (it won't avoid us), but that we should spend time with ourselves and with people who would use words to describe us that have nothing to do with social and political constructs.

Looking after yourself is an act of courage.

Two of the most frightening social interactions are saying “No” and asking for help, despite the fact that other people usually respond very well to both. It's not all that courageous to carry on regardless and fall into a hole – in fact, self-neglect is often the path of least resistance, involving a downward trajectory and all.

Looking after yourself defies your enemies.

Very few people or organisations are actually invested in our suffering, but there are certainly those – including our current government – who are invested in our powerlessness. Political injustice is so often a matter of attrition rather than victimisation; things are made to be difficult not so our lives fall apart (that's collateral damage), but things are made difficult so that we give up. And it is entirely understandable when people do.

It is radical political activism that we take steps to keep ourselves in a position where we can cope with our own battles, have as good lives as we possibly can and hopefully have some energy left over for contributing to the bigger picture. We need to work on living the lives we want, even when we're still fighting for the right to live them.

Catfish, Lies & On-line Identities

cross-posted at Single Lens Reflections

Full Transcript:

D: Hello. We've decided to do an audio-review of the film, Catfish, in order to test out Stephen's new microphone. The film Catfish is one where there's no way to review it without major spoilers, so if you want to watch the film and enjoy it in its completeness, you need to stop listening now.

S: Quite right. And thank you very much for the microphone. It's very beautiful, thank you.

D: You're welcome. Would you like to tell the listeners – I was about to say “viewers” - would you like to tell the listeners what the film is about?

S: I don't think the microphone is that good.

D: No.

S: The film is about – it's a documentary following a photographer, who has an office in New York, who strikes up an on-line friendship with “Abby” who is a seven year old girl from an American state beginning with M.

D: Michigan.

S: Michigan. I keep on forgetting this. We've had a trial run and I came up with Massachusetts and

D: Demure

S: Des Moines. Even I know that there isn't an American state called “Demure”

D: There isn't an American state called “Des Moines”.

S: Is there not? Is that a city?

D: I don't know but I know there aren't any

S: I so want to Google it and I can't really do an “Excuse me a minute while I get out my phone”

Right so, Michigan.

D: It was Michigan.

S: Michigan. And he was in New York and apparently there is quite a large space between those two places.

D: Cause it's in America.

S: Cause it's in America and America is big.

D: It's all spaced out.

S: Is it? News to me. Okay. So they strike up a friendship via Facebook. She paints his photos that are published in various magazines.

D: Makes paintings from his photos.

S: Yep, paintings of his photos. And he then becomes friendly with her mother Angela and her sister Megan and in fact the relationship with Megan becomes very romantically-inclined.

D: Yes, I think he thinks he's in love with her.

S: Yeah. And the thing is filmed by his two friends who both use his office space. But the documentary starts out as really looking at his relationship with this family. They call it the Facebook family because he “friends” them all on Facebook. And we see all of these lives meshed together. A brother who worries about how he's treating Megan. And it's quite in depth and detailed. But the action takes a bit of a tumble when he realises that a song that Megan claims to have produced within about twenty minutes or something - he requests a song

D: Yeah, he requests a cover of a song and suddenly

S: Tennessee Stud, I believe it was.

D: Yes it was.

S: Yeah, see I can remember that. And Tennessee is somewhere in America.

D: And uh, yeah. No it wasn't, it's the name of a playright, Tennessee Williams.

S: Oh I see.

D: I think perhaps they named a place after Tennessee Williams.

S: It makes sense.

D: It's a bit like Denver and John Denver.

S: And Denzel Washington.

D: Yeah, I don't know, I think perhaps Washington was there before Denzel Washington.

S: Okay. So, this song. He receives this song as an MP3 or whatever. And I can't remember why but they go looking for other versions and they actually find the song on Youtube.

D: I think it was a different song. They were getting lots of songs and it was a different song that they searched for but they realised that the recording sounded exactly the same as a cover on Youtube.

S: So they'd recorded the audio stream from Youtube and then sent it on to him. So initially he thinks, “Oh no, this love of my life is a plagiarist.” But the story unravels more and he ends up with his friends – because they're relatively near to where these people live – going and dropping in on them and so the secret unravels.

Now we were, prior to this point, or certainly you were convinced that this was a “Mockumentary”.

D: Not a Mockumentary! I thought it was a “Blair Witch” style fake

S: A spooky unsettling horror type thing.

D: Or “Spinal Tap”. I thought it was a drama pretending to be a documentary. And it is beautifully done.

S: Yes it is beautifully done. The filming, some of the scenes

D: The use of technology, the use of Google Earth when they're moving about

S: And Street View to kind of focus in on these places

D: Really nice use of tech, which is still quite rare in films, to use on-line technology that looks like the on-line technology that we all use. But it just, it is real. It really was real. I think we realise this, without a doubt, when we finally meet the character of Angela.

S: Or the person who is really Angela.

D: The person is really Angela, who doesn't look anything like the photographs we've seen. And turns out to be responsible for all these identities.

S: Twelve separate accounts on Facebook.

D: Which include the daughter. She does have a daughter, but the daughter doesn't resemble – well she physically resembles but she isn't a painter, she isn't this bright spark that has been having this e-mail correspondence with the photographer. And the older daughter, who the photographer believes himself in love with, as well as a brother, some cousins, some friends. And she's fabricated the whole thing. And we were talking about the way that that's changed. You know, having been on-line since the late 90s, I think we feel a lot safer with the people we meet on-line now because we are so interconnected.

S: Yeah, the evolution of social media has created a smaller degree of separation. Just the other day on Twitter, someone I follow who is involved in electric vehicles ended up retweeting from someone I am aware of through disability activism so the reality of both people becomes more solid as they're both linked together.

D: And the people, certainly the people I know. I mean, I don't use Facebook but the people I know through blogging and Twitter and all of that, there are sort of strange connections between people. But you're not having to appraise one person who could be fooling you, if they're fooling you, they're fooling a lot of people. Because they're interconnected. But of course this woman had created an entire network of people, all of which were backing up this narrative. I mean, she was a frustrated novelist really, she didn't know that that's what she should have been doing with her time. But she was managing twelve Facebook accounts and presumably Twitter accounts and things, as well as having two mobile phones so she could pick up the phone as herself and she could pick up the phone as her imaginary daughter. And the whole thing, all these characters and interactions and everything they were doing amongst themselves were an entire fabrication.

S: And she had been the person producing these paintings. Really out of a love for this

D: She was very much in love with the photographer.

S: He was – I think with his interest in dance, which she shared and

D: They did have a lot in common.

S: They did have a lot in common and they seemed to get on very well.

D: Except for the fact that she had obviously deceived him in a terrific way. She'd made him fall in love with someone who didn't exist. And she was terrifically in love with him.

S: Whilst being a married housewife. But we begin to understand her situation as we begin to her house in – what I would say was a very isolated community?

D: It's difficult to judge.

S: It's difficult to judge, but. And looking after, it would appear looking after full time, two young men who were both physically and mentally disabled. And she seemed to have a very empty life? Is that fair?

D: I think she had a very frustrated life. She obviously had a lot of time on her hands. And I think, compared to the life of a photographer working in New York, going to all kinds of Arts things, I think she felt very frustrated. She didn't have the access to that kind of art. She had a very frustrating life.

S: And this had driven her to trying to create something better, something richer. Which I think is a symptom of society that reduces a degree of social care which is necessary. People need the connections she was creating. People need rich lives.

D: She was one of these characters that you do know – I think, when she appeared, you knew straight away that there was no doubt that this was a genuine documentary because she was not a character you normally get in films. She was a compulsive liar really, but she wasn't a crafty criminal mastermind type. She sort of – she was a very sympathetic character, you felt quite sorry for her even though you could tell that she was

S: And even the break down of her life on film was heart-breaking.

D: It was.

S: Because she's confronted very gently. They did do very well. They weren't angry with her.

D: I think they were a bit angry but they were keeping it under control.

S: They weren't vindictive, sorry.

D: No, they weren't malicious or... They could have humiliated her or just bamboozled her with what she'd done.

S: Yeah. But the truth is relatively gently brought to light. And she's given the opportunity to almost come clean. She doesn't quite get there, she does produce quite a few more lies.

D: One of the things that really shoke – was very familiar was um... She had very long hair which she was very proud of. And she'd sent them a photograph that was supposed to be her and the only similarity between that and her was that the woman in the photograph had very long hair. She was complimented on this and she said, “Well, I won't have it for long because I'm on chemotherapy.” Which really kind of struck a chord because, of all the sort of stories that you hear of romances that turn out to be other than they are, on-line, cancer does seem to be a recurring theme.

S: And it also does stop any further conversation because it is the topic to end all topics.

D: Yeah. In the late 90s, the very first one I came across was a friend, a sort-of friend who had this girlfriend who was supposedly in hospital dying of cancer, although she had internet access, which seems unlikely given the time. And she had a PO Box address which seemed a bit suspect. And it seemed unbelievable then to everybody. Most of us hadn't been on-line very long and we just couldn't see how someone could get sucked in like that. But the guy felt himself in love.

And then a couple of years later there was another friend who was exactly the same – well not exactly the same thing happened. But again there was this guy who had seemed to have had a very tragic life and then he had cancer and there wasn't much time and so the whole relationship was very intense. And of course people do have cancer and people do have very intense relationships at the end of their lives but it does sort of, it is a bit too familiar, isn't it?

S: So this was the film. It was quite shocking. We were both – we chose it because it would be – we had a choice between this and Titus Andronicus and I think we went with the lighter option.

D: I still think it was probably the lighter option than Titus Andronicus.

S: Well you say that. Yeah perhaps okay. But we were both quite shocked.

D: Could we do like a Facebook version of Titus Andronicus?

S: Um, well Livinia does have her hands cut off which would limit her options for, anyway. So we were both quite shocked by the end of the film and as well as wanting to test the microphone, we wanted to talk a bit about it because it moved us.

D: Yes, it was very moving. And we talked about, I mean we've both been on-line since our... I don't know, how old were you?

S: I was a teenager still.

D: Well, I was a teenager still. I was going to say late teens and I thought perhaps it was your mid teens.

S: It may have well been mid-teens.

D: When you were young and naïve.

S: And I was called “The Very Cowardly Lion”.

D: That's really – the very cowardly lion?

S: The very cowardly lion. I know, it's really sad isn't it? But anyway.

D: [pause] Yes. Um.

S: That's a bit of a stopper, isn't it? Sorry.

D: That's a bit of a stopper.

S: I wasn't. I was just called Stephen. That was what my username was, it wasn't the Very Cowardly Lion. And I didn't go onto very early chatrooms and not say much apart from “Hello, I'm the Very Cowardly Lion.”

D: Yeah. I can't remember an awful lot of my old usernames and things.

S: That's probably for the best, I now feel very embarrassed. In fact I may cut this bit.

D: I don't think you should. Because people will want to Google it to see if there's any evidence of you.

S: I bet there isn't. That was in the days of Netscape.

D: Wow. So were you ever tempted to be someone you weren't?

S: Well I almost signed up for Second Life, after a friend of mine joined. But I think there's a desire often with, especially people who are ill and could be – aren't very satisfied with there lives, to try and create a new, more fulfilling existence. And the internet's a wonderful tool for this, because you don't have to show you're physical form. You can build a physical form that works with your idea of what you want to be.

D: Amanda Baggs, who blogs at Ballastexistenz. She is non-verbal autistic and she is a wheelchair-user and she's talked about using (bless you) using Second Life and that experience being completely different, because she is non-verbal, to be able to talk and interact and not be a wheelchair-user and her whole experience of life is completely different.

S: And it allows an extra dimension to life.

D: I don't think that is on any level pretending to be other than you are. I mean, Second Life, it is to do with a version of yourself, I don't think it's even an idealised version of yourself.

S: It depends on the person.

D: Yeah. It's a bit like in the Matrix when he incorrectly says, I think he says, “It's a mental picture of your digital self” when he really means – it's one of those many points in the Matrix when he gets his words wrong.

S: I did have a Yahoo chat account with several different identities. And I used them for times when I didn't want to be contacted.

D: I think organised crime is another issue altogether.

S: Yeah, back in the days of the Yahoo Mob, yeah. No, that was when I wanted to. When I was unable to socialise and yet wanted to be around some form of people.

D: Like in a petri dish.

S: Yeah, when I used to experiment on these poor tormented internet souls. I used to a put on a disguise to just sit quietly. But I didn't use that to become someone else. I just had one that was a Latin term and one that was actually a couple of words from a Portishead lyric, both of whom allowed me to sit quietly in a room and not be bothered.

D: Was that “Machine Gun”?
S: Um, no. It was “slave to sensation”. Which, if you've ever been to Yahoo chat, makes you sound like, um...

D: I think we know what that makes you sound like.

S: And so you never ever get bothered, which is wonderful.

D: I'm quite surprised you don't get bothered. I'm quite surprised people weren't interested in what particular sensations you were slave to.

S: Anyway, that was a long time ago. And uh, sorry, I have forgotten where I was.

D: I've pretended to be a man on-line.

S: Have you?

D: Yes, I put on a deep voice like this. [convincing masculine voice] Hello. Hello darling. [resumes feminine voice] That's my

S: It's very convincing! I can almost hear the chest hair.

D: But I've not actually

S: Just a warning to anyone who hasn't watched the film and yet is still listening to this, in which case shame on you. You do see an awful lot of chest hair. He has, he has got an awful lot and you know, in this society where chest hair is banished from the front of magazines, it is quite shocking.

D: Okay. I have pretended to be a man on-line but not actually, to be honest I didn't really try hard. I just let people refer to me in the masculine and call me mister and so on, and not challenge them. Especially when I was younger, I think I very much felt that people – especially on political matters – I felt people took me more seriously if they thought I was a man. I wouldn't do that now.

S: I'm glad.

D: Because I think the sort – I mean it's an implicit bias, so it's not actually people who are horrendously sexist, but at the same time I think it's better that I might be taken a little less seriously but that people see that my point of view is that of a woman.

S: Yes.

D: A lady. I think it's particularly interesting for people who

S: have some sort of internet existence.

D: Yeah and also know people who are – I have know people who are – I mean we've obviously both been isolated at different times. But people who are isolated who turn to online communities to resolve isolation and there's nothing unhealthy about that in itself. But I think it sort of demonstrates where it can go.

S: The power of honesty. The importance of honesty. And the inevitability of lies.

D: Because you meet people and you don't believe who they are. I mean you meet people in real life and you don't buy, you know, there are lots of people who are full of...

S: Yeah.

D: We need a word that isn't a swearword to describe...

S: I do have that Bleep App on my phone. But I'd have to go and get my phone.

D: Yeah. Okay, how about you go “Beep” and I say it? There are people who are full of b....

S: [silence]

D: You've got to beep! There are people who are full of b...

S: I think you're all very glad I didn't beep, aren't you? Because that was far more funny as it was. I think they get the point.

D: There are people who are full of [beep]. Can we beep that afterwards?

S: There are indeed. There are people who lie, and we do have to be careful. But we also have to be caring because often people lie for a reason, a reason that is... well no, often don't, some of them are just idiots.

D: But lots of people do tell lies for a reason. Unfortunately though, they do tend to carry on lying, in experience. I think this is the thing. I think they get found out and, because it's a defence mechanism and as such it is very difficult to help people who tell lots of fibs.

S: So I think that's just about it.

D: Yes, I think it is.

S: So thank you for listening.

D: Yes, thank you. I hope we haven't wasted too much of your day.

S: And if we have, tough luck.

D: Yeah, you should have spent it on Facebook. [phone noise] Oops! Sorry.

S: And with that beep of modern technology, we bid you Adieu.

D: Goodbye.

Abstinence, Victim-Blaming & Female Empowerment

So if anyone had any doubts how messed up we are about sexual violence, this was the week to learn otherwise.

Earlier this month, a bill passed through the preliminary stages of parliamentary process to teach abstinence to 13-16 year old girls in UK schools. The bill is unlikely to become law as it was proposed by Nadine “70% Fiction” Dorries who has throw a lot of issues around porn in newsagents, sexy children's clothes and all sorts into the debate about Sex Education. Then on Monday, she gave an interview on daytime TV in which she said

“...one of the reasons for [the push for abstinence] is that some of the evidence that I’ve heard is that if a stronger just say no message was given to children in school that there might be an impact on sex abuse. Because a lot of girls, when sex abuse takes place, don’t realise until later that that was a wrong thing to do. [...] Society is so over-sexualised that I don’t think people realise that if we did empower this message into girls, imbued this message in schools, we’d probably have less sex abuse.”

which didn't so much take the biscuit, as gobble a whole packet of ginger nuts. And a box of crackers. And half a dozen custard-creams.

Much of what needs to be said about this was covered by last Monday's post about Slutwalk, except before Monday, Dorries wasn't talking explicitly about rape - although the implication of her proposal to teach abstinence to girls only is that girls are gatekeepers and boys are beasts and so it is up to girls to take responsibility for everything.

Some bloggers have written about their experiences of childhood sexual abuse and how very deeply offensive – and damaging – such comments are. To have a serving politician suggest that there was something these children could have done which they failed to do, to throw discussion of sexual abuse in with girly magazines and masturbation is utterly perverse. This especially in the light of recent major child rape scandals like say, within the Catholic Church, where children undoubtedly talk of nothing but putting condoms on bananas.

It is difficult not to get very very angry with this individual. But I'm sure she didn't really think about what she was saying – she's thrown in so many issues in with her crusade against our over-sexed society that she's probably lost track (I know I have). She also has a history of tackling highly emotive subjects without research and she will probably issue a statement along the lines that what she says in interviews is 70% nonsense (fiction suggests at least a modicum of creative process).

Instead of getting angry (or more angry than I am), I wanted to talk a little about empowerment.

When it comes to child abuse, the single most effective way of protecting any given child is by instilling him or her with confidence and trust in other people. This isn't to say that confident and trusting children will never be harmed, but they are difficult to manipulate and silence and are thus very unattractive to abusers. The same goes for adults. One of the great tragedies for abused children is that they are much more likely to be abused as adults. Similarly, once a woman has experienced rape, she becomes statistically more likely to be raped again. This isn't because abused people take undue risks, but because these people are vulnerable, their self-worth and trust in others is damaged, and such vulnerability is very attractive to abusive people.

Cultural anxiety around sexual behaviour – including sexual abuse – can be damaging to the children it seeks to protect. And this is where a cultural obsession with sex is a problem – but Dorries is part of that problem. Attitudes like hers makes sex into a big bad shameful thing. When you grow up understanding sex to be dark and shameful, it is unsurprising when you have sexual experiences which make you feel unhappy and ashamed. The message that girls are corrupted little temptresses for whom sexual expression is dangerous is a very useful one for abusers. This is one of several reasons why abuse carried on for so long in the Catholic Church; if sex is horrible sinful thing, then children can be made to feel guilty and thus silent and co-operative about anything sexual that happens to them, even when it was utterly against their will.*

Our culture has messed up with this stuff too. The level of anxiety around paedophilia, the amount of scrutiny levelled at adults – especially men – who work with children, as well as things like the “no touch rules” which discourage supervising adults to physically comfort children might not be doing any good. Children who have good relationships with a variety of adults and experience appropriate touch from people other than their parents are going to be quicker to identify relationships and behaviour that don't fit. There's anxiety about a lack of male role models for boys, but I think they are just as important for girls – girls who have good relationships with men growing up will better know what men are like (i.e. they vary a great deal and anyone who mistreats you and excuses himself on the grounds of gender is a problem).

But when it comes to those things that girls do have control over, we need to teach girls that there is much more to them than sex. To use an old feminist concept, Dorries condemns woman to being the Sex Class every bit as much as the padded-bikinis and the sexualised images of women we see everywhere. A girl can either have sex or abstain from sex, and what sort of girl she is, what sort of life she has, depends on that decision. Sex is all about girls and girls are all about sex.

The single greatest thing we can do to help girls and women avoid making bad choices is to empower them in every aspect of their lives. When I was a teenager, the principle difference between those female friends of mine who became sexually active early on and took risks (the two did seem to go together) and those who waited longer and were then very careful was how they saw themselves – it had nothing to do with their knowledge of or interest in or moral ideas about sex.

Some of my friends had ambitions, hobbies and a lot of things going on as well. It wasn't that they were being kept busy or that they were any less hormonal and horny, but the way they saw themselves meant that boys might be lovers and some of these relationships were serious, but none were all-consuming and having a child was utterly unthinkable that side of twenty-five. For some of my friends, boyfriends and the soap opera style intrigues of teenage sexual shenanigans were all that was going on. One such friend said, aged fifteen, “Of course I don't want to get pregnant, but if it happens, it happens.” Poor lass needed something to happen.

Another difference between these girls? Massive social and socio-economic privilege on the part of that first group of girls. Not intelligence or temperament, but big difference in education and thus life prospects. But that's a rather trickier political matter than “Just say no”.

* Obviously part of that scandal was the great number of children and their families who weren't silent but were ignored anyway, but my point still stands. I should also add that I realise that very many Catholics think sex is a wonderful heaven-sent gift.

Slutwalk, Victim-Blaming & The Demonisation of Straight Men

I have a few reservations about Slutwalk, but not nearly so many about the media coverage. The project has inadvertently provided newspapers with an opportunity to publish pictures of pretty young barely-dressed white women before opening on-line “debate” about whether or not such women are asking for it. Most of the participants, like the cop who originally warned women not to dress “like sluts” take the view that the compulsion to rape is a natural part of male heterosexuality and it is up to women to avoid rape by removing the temptation. Recurring analogies seem to be all about car theft; sometimes a sluttily-dressed woman is a car left with the keys in the lock, sometimes she's a shiny new cars versus an old rusty one. And of course, there are plenty of comments about how the women photographed aren't up to standard and thus in no danger of rape anyway.

But of course, the temptation to rape has almost nothing to do with sexual attraction. Because, guess what? Most men who are sexually attracted to women are not rapists. Most straight and bisexual men are capable of experiencing an infinite amount of lust and longing without turning to violence. It's not that rape doesn't have anything to do with sex – I think a lot of the solutions to rape are about female sexual empowerment. But the compulsion to rape is not a sexual one.

To say that rape is mostly about power is not just an abstract feminist analysis. We know this to be the case because sometimes straight men rape other men as a punishment or assertion of power; the rape of male prisoners of war is commonplace and the men who rape men in prisons are frequently heterosexual on the outside. We also know this because those women most vulnerable to rape are not those who are considered most sexually attractive – for example, disabled women are more likely to be raped than non-disabled women, despite our lack of conventional attractiveness.

Meanwhile, men who admit to rape (in crafty studies where they phrase questions around physical aggression, sex and consent, so not to actually use the word rape) are not generally sexually-frustrated, but typically men who have a lot of sex with a lot of people. The number of famous sportsmen convicted of rape demonstrates this point very clearly; it is not that these wealthy, famous, often physically attractive young men have any trouble getting consenting sexual partners, they just get nasty when they find that they can't do whatever they like to whomever they like. This comes from entitlement, arrogance and an utter contempt for women. And of course, if rape was matter of lust, then there wouldn't be such variation in rape statistics between cultures. There are entirely non-sexual reasons why in the US, a woman is one and a half times more likely to experience rape than in the UK.

Rapists use sex as an excuse and the rest of us often prefer a narrative of sexual provocation and frustration because it somehow makes rape less horrific than it is – it puts rape on a spectrum of regrettable sexual behaviours and indiscretions. Even rape victims can fall foul of this. At the height of the Julian Assange scandal, I read a blogger writing in Assange's defence, describe her own experience of being physically forced into sex despite objections and physical resistance as “just something that happens between men and women, which is sad, but it's not a crime.”* Which I found very sad indeed.

We also know that women are statistically less vulnerable to rape alone on a street or around strangers than they are indoors with a date, a male friend, boyfriend or husband. Thus, according to the numbers, a woman in a short skirt and high heels walking alone down a dark alley is not creating nearly such a good opportunity to a potential rapist as a woman in baggy jeans and a sweatshirt sitting at home with her boyfriend. The scantily-clad woman on the street has places to run to, maybe people to call out to, probably a phone inches from her hand. And if she is attacked, then there's less confusion. It may even possible she has more chance of conviction than the girlfriend of a rapist, I don't know.

The idea of masculine heterosexuality as something out of control, compelling men to take every opportunity for sexual contact with women, lets straight men off many social hooks. There is still a double standard about sexual morality, whereby girls and women are expected to take responsibility for sexual decisions, contraception and so on, whilst the idea that boys will be boys is used to excuse almost anything, up to and including the rape of children by adult men. There's absolutely no doubt about the effect this has on women's lives, our sexual and mental health, our freedom of movement and expression and our relationships with men.

However these same ideas demonise the sexuality of straight and bisexual men. It removes the value of men's sexual choices, it diminishes any sense of their free will. It makes the sexual assault of a straight man by a woman impossible, since no real man would ever say no to anything. It places a great deal of pressure on boys and men to be sexually active whether they want to be or not, whether they want the available kinds of realtionships or not. It alienates men who are shy, romantic or uncertain about sex, let alone those have religious beliefs around chastity. It makes male celibacy into something deeply sinister. And of course, it makes male sexuality out to be inherently dangerous, leading to a culture of suspicion towards men who work around children and other vulnerable people.

It's not an accident that straight men perpetrate the vast majority of rapes, but it is not because being a straight man makes you bad. This is all about power. And it is up to straight men to take the power away from those within their ranks who use these excuses for violence.

Hannah has written a very good review of some of the more reasoned coverage and discussion around Slutwalk, the reclamation of language, whether it is a feminist movement and so on. I've read other good things written about it, but just now the only thing I can remember is the Germaine Greer piece in the Telegraph, which gave the rallying cry, "If they're to be liberated, women have to demand the right to be dirty. By declaring themselves sluts, they lay down the Cillit Bang and take up the instruments of pleasure."

*I paraphrase for anonymity.