On Marriage Equality

Two young women wearing bridal veils kissing amid what looks like a Pride March. Caption reads:
"Threat: Homosexuals in bridal veils kiss in the street. Such communions would jeopardise
the stability of our country."  

Taking a break from advocating welfare cuts on the grounds that their architect is a “Committed Christian”, former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey has offered his support to The Coalition for Marriage, a small, vague but vocal organisation which opposes equality in the marriage law for same sex and mixed sex couples. Writing in the Daily Mail last week, accompanied by chilling photograph of something which threatens the stability of our country (right), he explained about how marriage is the bedrock of society, but not because it increases the sum total of human happiness, brings families and communities together or because To love another person is to see the face of God.

No, of course not - it's because only certain people are forbidden from marrying the love of their life.

Throughout his article, Carey frequently refers to the general public as if it excludes both queer people and everyone else who supports marriage equality.  This got me riled.  Then it got me stewing. Now inevitably, a week later, I blog.

So to Carey's arguments:

1. Marriage is so very very old, you can't change anything about it.

"The honourable estate of matrimony precedes both the site and the church, and neither of these institutions have the right to redefine it in such a fundamental way."

Marriage has indeed been going on for a very long time, but is anything about it timeless? For most of history, marriage has been entirely informal or else formalised by a ritual particular to a small community. Legal marriages in England didn't require paperwork or a priest until the 18th century, after which point English romantics merely eloped to Gretna Green, Scotland being far less hung up on formality - up until 2006, two people could have married rights simply by having lived together, shared a surname and be treated as if married by their community.

Many marriages, throughout the world today as in our own history, are nothing like the traditional marriage that Lord Carey would recognise. Polygamy and polyandry aren't merely the far end of the slippery slope anti-egalitarians warn us about; they are also ancient traditions in various parts of the world. The practice of keeping a wife plus one or several concumbines is as commonplace throughout the Old Testament as it is in modern France. Various royal dynasties married brothers, sisters and the occasional rose bush.

Today, as throughout history, many men and women – but especially women – are forced into marriage entirely against their will and treated like property rather than willing partners. In some parts of the world today and in our own history, children are forced into marriage. Even in modern Britain, marriage is sometimes a form of sexual and domestic slavery, with defiance punished by imprisonment, violence and death.

Is all this a reason to chuck out marriage? Some think so. Does this defeat the idea that marriage has always been and thus must always be a willing, life long partnership between a man and a woman?  Definitely. Marriage has changed in far more dynamic ways that allowing people of the same gender to wed.  Treating men and women as equal parties within marriage strikes me as a far more radical change, which effected far greater numbers of people but failed to destroy the institution.

Meanwhile, within modern British culture, marriage has different meanings for different couples. I could speak to ten married couples I know and get ten different reasons for their getting married. These would include romantic reasons, pragmatic reasons around finance or immigration, religious or cultural reasons, reasons around family and children as well as marriage being a jolly good excuse for a party and a John Lewis gift list.

There's no way of enforcing any single ideal model of marriage. There's no way of enforcing even the fundamentals, which aren't, as the Coalition for Marriage would have it, about the contents of a couple's respective underwear, but things like mutual respect and love. But we know that most people enter into marriage because they believe it will make them and the people around them happy. Marriage equality merely provides the same opportunity to a greater number of people and their families.

So to the next argument:

2. Civil Partnership is Marriage by a different name so there's no need for change. 

“Civil partnerships were brought in to give same-sex couples  the rights that they said they  badly needed. These rights are  virtually identical to those of married couples.” 

If the language of marriage didn't matter, nobody would be trying to preserve that magic word for a certain group of people – the group Carey's coalition website describes as “the rest of us”.

For some people, the word marriage doesn't matter and for others, the word is highly problematic. I've known people who don't wish to get married because of the baggage that word carries with it. If it was completely opened up, I expect many thousands of same sex and mixed sex couples would opt to have a Civil Partnership rather than be married.

But out of all the same sex couples I know who have civil partnerships or are getting civil partnerships, the majority speak about marriage, about husbands and wives. Friends describe the great offence caused when they refer to their husband or wife and are corrected with, “Don't you mean Civil Partner?” People who prefer the terminology of “partner” have generally not got married. I really struggle to imagine someone introducing their spouse at a party with, “This is Rani, she's my Civil Partner.” It's an administrative term. It's a bit like introducing your adult child as “This is John, he's the Executor of my Will.”



3. Marriage Equality undermines Traditional Heterosexual Marriage. 


Although Carey doesn't really out-line why, the whole piece is supposed about how

"[Marriage Equality] threatens to fatally weaken what is still one of our country’s greatest strengths – the institution of marriage."

There are things which genuinely do undermine marriage. Mea culpa. I got married for all sorts of bad reasons, as well as misplaced love and way too much pragmatism. I talked about it as a piece of paper. When I blogged about it, I even posted a photo of Chamberlain waving his piece of paper. My marriage lasted only a few years longer than Chamberlain's peace, although, you know, I can't pretend my divorce was quite as involved as the 1939-45 conflict. He didn't have Legal Aid.

People who marry for money, for passports, for the meringue dress and the photo album, they undermine marriage. Celebrities and the occasional non-celebrity who seem to marry every casual boyfriend or girlfriend and divorce to marry someone new every few years undermine marriage. But those who really threaten the institution of marriage as most of us understand it? People who use other people in marriage, who force marriage on others, who use marriage to justify rape, violence and slavery. They exist in our culture. Those are the people we should all be crusading against.

Marriage equality promotes marriage. The desire that same sex couples have to get married demonstrates how highly the institution is regarded. When it becomes an institution that everyone has the opportunity to be part of, then it is bound to be regarded more highly. At the moment, it is tarnished for many mixed sex couples as a badge of straight privilege (which is, of course, the very thing some people wish to protect).

I don't know that marriage is the bedrock of society, but it brings people together, it brings families and social groups together. Weddings are lovely! They're not just fun, but they're deeply moving. I love weddings and I want more of my friends to be allowed to have them – I want to attend proper weddings in my friends' places of worship as well as registry offices and stately homes and the like. How is it that gay people can get married on a submarine and they can't get married in their own Church?


4. If we achieve Marriage Equality, people who are against it will not be able to express their views. 

 “We know what will happen, for we have already had a taste of it – it will encourage religious discrimination. A marriage registrar from Islington believed in traditional marriage, and was disciplined by her employers for it. The elderly owners of a B&B believed in traditional marriage, and were successfully sued for it. Numerous Roman Catholic adoption agencies believed in traditional marriage, and were closed down for it.” 

These slippery slopes are just everywhere you look, aren't they? A change in marriage law makes no difference to the existing anti-discrimination legislation, which has indeed proved problematic for people who want to exercise their prejudice in certain kinds of workplace.

What a change in law will do is make it less and less socially acceptable to air homophobic views. This is something that has been happening throughout my lifetime, but has steadily increased with every bit of legislation which has moved LGBT people towards a position of legal equality.

As soon as Civil Partnerships came into being, people who couldn't imagine how same sex couples could enter into something like marriage began to see that this was perfectly possible. People talk about the gay people in their lives more and with greater pride. Previously, a middle-aged conservative friend might refer to their son who has a (mumbled) boyfriend. But since she got to be mother-of-the-groom and buy a fancy hat, got to meet the boyfriend's family and they seemed so nice, and it was such a lovely day, such a moving ceremony and no small number of tears were shed, now, she has a son who lives with her husband. A wedding is one day of your life, but it is a day can change lives (it doesn't have to, some people's don't want that, but it can).

And when non-political straight people are prepared to refer casually about their gay family member's husband as a son-in-law, grandson-in-law, brother-in-law, uncle, stepfather or whatever, then it becomes much more difficult for people around them to use slurs, tell revolting jokes, talk about the gays taking over and similar nonsense. But that's not a freedom of speech issue. It's an advance in our civilisation.

Niblings & Siblings

An fuzzy ultrasound image of a fetus at approx. 12 weeks.

Can you tell what it is yet? No, me neither, but apparently this is a mass of tissue fast developing into a second niece or nephew, ready to depart the Mothership sometime in August.  Check out that brain symmetry! The fetus is obviously a genius.  Well, we do share about 25% of our DNA.

To be honest, it's all a bit weird for nephew Alexander. He is tremendously excited, having lobbied for a sibling over the years, but he'll be six in the summer and he is so very used to being the centre of everyone's attention. He is the only grandchild for both sets of grandparents and has many non-familial uncle and aunt figures who have no children of their own. He lives on the grounds of a boarding school full of older children who treat him as a mascot. He's expressed nothing negative about the new baby - except his fear that he or she may eat his Lego - but he's began to misbehave.

A toddler (Rosie) looking slightly anxious as she holds
a crying baby (me), circa. New Year 1981

So I made a book for Alex about what it means to be a big brother or sister, with photographs of my big sister and I and a rather romanticised account of our childhood together. I included radical gender politics such as

"The main difference between being a big brother like you or a big sister like your Mummy is that brothers and sisters wear different kinds of clothes."

illustrated with photographs of my sister in a ballgown and my sister dressed up as our male school music teacher (even Rosie can't remember what she was doing). My own phase of transvestism was far more prolonged. I wore bow-ties, all the time. Sometime I even wore a cravat.  But then what nine year old girl living in a suburban terrace doesn't experiment with that look? I think I thought I was James Bond.

A small girl (me) makes a face from
behind an older girl's shoulder.

I unearthed a great number of photographs which revealed a lot about both our relationship and the foundation of our different personalities. Rosemary is not a very serious person, but is demonstrably more sensible than I am, and is frequently posed in a sober fashion while I'm pulling a silly face or, more times than I care to admit, posing in a state of undress. I really did like to take my clothes off as a child. Well, Saville Row tailoring can so easily overheat one.

The book naturally omitted the bitter feud between my sister and I which started with a torn poster of Kylie Minogue in1989 and continued unabated for the next six or seven years. Of course, I didn't tear the poster. Why would I? She threatened to dismember my panda unless I confessed.

Illness brought about our eventual entente. In the book I wrote

"When I was almost grown up, I got sick and never got better. Your Mummy helped to look after me. She took messages to my friends and teachers at school.

"Although I couldn't walk properly, I didn't want to use a wheelchair in case people stared at me. Your Mummy encouraged me to use a wheelchair and pushed me in it so that I could go out and have fun again. If people stared at me, your Mummy stared back."

Two small girls and their father with a small canon.

Rosie came through for me, after I got sick, while my folks were still floundering. We'd squabbled throughout our teenage years up to that point, but after that point we rarely argued (the notable exception being one occasion where she made a very hurtful remark and I promptly poured a glass of water over her head). Rosie invited me to spend the weekend with her at university in Southampton and suggested I borrow a wheelchair from somewhere so that she could take me Christmas shopping. I was very nervous but reassured that I wouldn't encounter anybody I knew, or anyone I'd have to meet again. My parents continued to flounder somewhat, until they came to pick me up and the four of us went for a walk in the park together. After that they were sold that a wheelchair was not like a coffin, a symbol of lost hope, something you never got out of, once you got in.

Two teenage girls and their father with a canon on the
ramparts of a fort or castle somewhere.

Having found the above picture of us playing with a canon, I wrote on the next page

"Big brothers and sisters stand up for their little brothers and sisters. If anyone is unkind to me, your Mummy fires a canon ball at them." 

And lo and behold, as I made my way through the photos of a decade later, I found this, another of Rosie lighting an imaginary fuse.  My sister is not only prepared to fire a canon, it's something of a habit with her. So watch out.

Stephen's ESA Migration Experience

Several of our friends and contacts are being migrated from Incapacity Benefits to the dreaded Employment & Support Allowance at the moment and a lot of people are anxious. Stephen has been through this and decided to share his experience in case it is helpful for people facing the same process.

 Cross-posted at Single Lens Reflections

Link to the MP3 for download

Transcript:


Form filling is one of the most destructive parts of life as a disabled person. In order to fill in a form properly, you have to look at your life and pour your heart out onto paper, listing all the ways you don't measure up, only for that to be judged by an annonymous force of terror (who probably wears black and cackles all the time). I'm recording this to share my experiences and hopefully to de-mystify the process. Deborah, also known as the Goldfish, helped me with all the stages of my transfer to ESA from Incapacity Benefit, and it is she who has come up with what we think are the four most useful points to pass on to other people. She's cleverer than I, so I'm going along with it all. OK, so starting at the beginning.

The first point is that we were ready for an epic saga with dark nights and long battles. Frankly, I thought ESA would turn into a bureaucratic version of the Lord of the Rings. People are being turned down all the time. When you see this, and people being placed in the Work Group when that's inappropriate, it's hard not to imagine yourself in that position. This is made worse when the condition from which you suffer is one which is invisible or subjective or both. I have ME and this causes me extreme chronic pain, fatigue, neurological symptoms etc. Aside from looking a wreck, there are no tests that can be done to prove or disprove this. And, indeed, there are people with ME who have different, less severe symptoms and whom recover from it in a relatively short space of time. There are many conditions which put people in the same boat.

Meanwhile, because of the particular luxury yacht in which we sail, we are often people who live quietly at home and who only deal with the medical profession when something new or interesting occurs. I saw a pediatrician for many years, but since I turned eighteen, I've had very little to do with doctors at all. As such, I don't have the backup of a team of specialist doctors who understand every aspect of my health, my lifestyle or my abilities (or lack thereof).

So you can see why I was in a bit of a state. But I can tell you now that I was very lucky. I have been placed in the Support Group, and I didn't even have an interview. This was the very best case scenario, and I couldn't have dreamed of it happening. So that's a positive point that others facing this transition should take comfort in; I may be more ill than many people on incapacity benefits, but from past experience and the experiences of others, Deborah and I considered me vulnerable to being turned down and messed about with. Yet none of my fears were realised.

You'd think, then, having been put in the support group without interview, that all the communication I had with ATOS would have been stress free and easy. Alas this was not the case and given that lots of people are worried about the transition, you should be warned about this.

The first telephone communication I had (to change the phone number on which they'd contact me) was very easy and pleasant. The second phone call (to check I knew what was going to happen) was likewise pleasant. However, it was at this point that I raised the issue of face to face assessment. I knew I'd not be able to travel to the assessment venue and so wanted to arrange for a home visit where I could be at my best and have others present to support me (something which I'd had previously). I was told that this would be no problem and that I should just write on my form that this would be necessary and they'd take it from there. So the form came and we took our time. It was posted off and seemed to take an age to get any response. I began to worry in case it had not got to them. Deborah even phoned to ask if they'd recieved it, but they couldn't tell us anything other than it might take a while.

Finally I heard back from them, but this came in the form of a phone call to arrange a face to face interview despite my having specifically said that this wasn't possible in my form. "Oh, no problem," says the ATOS chap on the phone "You just have to make an appointment for the interview anyway and get your GP to fax a letter in the next few weeks to say you won't be able to make it. Then we can set about making the arrangements for a home visit." As you can imagine, this was rather a shock. It was impossible to arrange an phone appointment with my GP in time, so I had to send a letter asking the doctor to write a letter to ATOS and then fax it to them. Given that my GP only works a few days each week, I had to do this straight away in order for there to be any hope she could do it. I simply wasn't well enough to write a letter that day, so Deborah had to rattle one off there and then, a feat which cost her the rest of the day.

Of course, the implication was that if I couldn't get my GP to write this letter, I would lose the benefit for failing to attend the interview.

My next communication from ATOS was a confirmation of my appointment at the interview venue. It even included a helpful print off of the public transport journey to the venue (90 minutes including 35 minutes of walking). That didn't help stress levels. The final communication came, however, in the form of a phone call to say that they had recieved a letter from my GP (which I presumed to be the confirmation that I wasn't able to attend the interview, but which turned out to be the original confirmation that the information I provided with my ESA form was correct and that I had ME and was in as decrepit a state as I'd declared). Because of this, they'd decided to move me straight into the Support Group and that was that.

What's the point of this saga? Well, whatever position you're in, you're likely to recieve communications which suggest that no one believes you're ill. To be given a route with 35 minutes walk when I'd written in my form that I couldn't walk more than 20 yards? To seemingly ignore my request for a home visit? It seemed a personal attack. In reality, though, it's just a terribly designed system that treats people as guilty at a base level. 

My final two points are advise with the actual form filling. Firstly, the form isn't helpful. Impairments are broken down into either physical and sensory or intellectual and emotional. There is no real place for the problems surrounding fatigue, cognative dysfunction etc. It is up to you, therefore, to work those issues into the answers you provide in the text boxes. We took a long time formulating answers, and did the whole thing on the computer (finally printing the answers and sticking them in, in a process not disimmilar to a primary school project book. If only we'd been able to use glitter...). Anyway, the point is that we had to be careful to write out these detailed answers so people can understand how damaging these symptoms are and how they render work impossible. We believe that fatigue and cognitive dysfunction is a major incapacitating factor for almost everyone with a chronic condition, be that physical, mental or both. So it's extremely important you not let it get lost out in a form which seems not to have a section for it.

Secondly, the law is very clear that in order to be able to do something, whatever that something may be (walk up stairs, use a telephone, discuss an issue with a stranger, etc), you need to be able to do it "reliably, repeatedly and safely". Can you answer the phone and talk to a stranger? Maybe you can. Can you answer the phone and talk to a stranger several times over, as you might have to if you were working as, say, a receptionist or someone working on a call centre? Well, that's a very different proposition. The form does not even hint at the importance of "reliably, repeatedly and safely" at any point. That means that you have to make it obvious in your answers. I can make a phone call. However, I have to be very careful when I do. I have to set aside energy. I have to limit the time on the phone (or else get a headache and neck/shoulder/arm pain) and if it goes on too long I'm likely to not make much sense. I cannot make several phone calls in any given day, or even any given week. If I had to make a phone call this afternoon, or any afternoon when I've used the day's energy on something else, it could not be done.

You must explain always thinking 'if I were in a job, in what way would this symptom be an issue'.  Spell it out and be brave.

So if you are, or will soon be, dealing with the ESA quest, remember to keep your sword sharp and your shield high. And if possible, keep hope in your heart. I wish I'd tried harder to heed that advice, but luckily I had Deborah to keep me safe and hopeful. But I'm not sharing her.

Heart-Shaped Plectrum

(Click the CC button for Closed Captions).

I wanted to write a blog post about ukuleles, so Stephen and I spoke about what photographs we could take to accompany the post - ukuleles being very beautiful instruments.  This conversation evolved into a great deal of messing about and all of a sudden (many weeks later) we had produced a music video. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I'm still going to publish the ukulele post, but for your information, the first ukulele is a concert uke, the second is a soprano we made ourselves in the summer of 2010 from a kit like this and the third is a tenor.

The great picture of the rock-hopper penguins is by Liam Quinn.

Heart-Shaped Ukuelele Plectrums can be bought from this eBay shop.


Stephen says: Love's a funny thing. It can drive you to do all manner of strange things.

 I think the thing about true love, though, is that once you've done that thing (even if it's taken weeks) and you've had time to look back at it and understand the mind-boggling oddness of it all, you still feel proud. It still warms your heart and gives you a sense of completeness.

That said, if you haven't yet made your peace with the infinite, then I suggest you think twice before pressing play.

So, I hope that whoever you are, and whatever it is that you love (a special person, pet, food-stuff, view, group of people, artwork etc), that you spend the day cuddled up with a comfortable... comforting... sense of the oddness of all things and the truly humanising effect of affection.

Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Say

For the most part, it is very easy to avoid disability-related slurs in British English. Nobody ever needs to say spaz, cripple, retard, mong etc.. People are clumsier with other language such as wheelchair-bound (outside an S & M context) or saying able-bodied when they mean non-disabled, but there are few excuses for the words that really sting.

In American English, things get a little trickier when you want discuss the common and unrelated matter of stupidity. Psychologists ruined several serviceable words for foolishness by categorising people with intellectual impairments (including categories of people to be forcibly sterilised) as dull, moron, idiot, even stupid itself*. The FWD (feminists with disabilities) blog did a number of Ableist Word Profiles which discussed some of this language. 

In British English, foolishness or stupidity is all about behaviour and to my educated by not infallible knowledge, stupid people have always done stupid things, regardless of their IQ. When it came to not looking after people with intellectual impairment, we used imbecile a fair amount, but otherwise stuck to pleasant euphemisms such as feebled-minded, half-witted, backward and as one friend was cast in his youth, educationally subnormal. Special needs, basically.

There is, however, a problem with the language of mental health and the language of - I struggle to come up with a neutral term for the thing - outlandish irrational behaviour? For now, let's pencil in craziness. I feel this shouldn't be any problem for me - I have plenty of experience of mental ill health, I studied psychology and am acutely aware of the way diagnostic labels take on a cultural meaning which may have little bearing on what it's like to live with any given condition. As a disability activist, I'm also aware that people with mental illness are among the most vulnerable disabled people, not least because they're often left outside discussions of disability. I feel I should be able to talk about the world without any fear of using problematic language, but I'm not sure I can.

Yet this other thing is something we do have to describe. It's usually in the negative, although my choise of craziness is frequently used to describe positive exuberance or else a kind of higgledy-pigglediness; crazy in love, football-crazy, crazy paving, crazy quilting, crazy golf, crazy discounts in our mid-winter sale, “Oh we're never going to survive unless we go a little crazy”, etc.. People describe themselves as crazy when they mean quirky, fun-loving, impulsive and a bit annoying (well, maybe they don't mean annoying, but people who describe themselves as crazy often are). There are companies with crazy in the title, which just isn't the case for most slurs around mental illness – you could have a shop called the Crazy Pet Store, but the Psycho Pet Store? Not so much. Although I'd totally shop for a hamster there!

Usually when we reach for words to describe craziness, we're wanting to describe something which is not only bad but baffling in its wrongness, an extreme behaviour which defies all logic, common sense and decency. As well as a strong cultural tendency to explain heinous crimes in terms of mental illness, to tidy away messy and monstrous behaviour with neat labels and expert speculation, we reach for words which condemn in tone as well as vaguely-pathological definition; psychopath, psycho, sociopath, unhinged, deranged, maniac, mental etc.. Words which reference mental illness but get mixed in with evil, monster, freak. When we mix up the words, we mix up the ideas and leave people with mental ill health extremely vulnerable to fear and hate.

The opposite of craziness is also something we need to describe. When I talk about my experience of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, I have to phrase it in terms of the jolt I received when I became sane. This sanity does not equate to mental health – clearly not, given that it co-incided with a psychological disorder – but only after I escaped and began to value myself, did the full horror of my violent marriage catch up with me. Even while I felt very sorry for my ex, my brain began to respond to thoughts of him, let alone contact with him, with abject terror, flashbacks and panic attacks. And although those things were disproportionate – I was perfectly safe by then, after all – it is completely sane to be terrified of someone who has frequently assaulted you and felt justified in their actions.

Although legally, sanity and insanity have specific definitions which refer to one's state of mind, none of these relate directly to mental health. For example, most people with even severe mental illnesses can vote, sign legal documents, and indeed, be held culpable for any criminal acts they commit – even if they have had their freedom taken away for safety reasons (psychiatric patients can be denied all these rights and responsibilities, but it's not a default thing). It's very rare indeed that people with chronic mental ill health slip over to being insane. Insanity is about losing touch of the fundamentals, particularly right and wrong.

There are lots of criminal acts which suggest insanity but, like the vast majority of crimes, are committed by people who have no diagnosable mental health condition. So for example, there's a very great deal of debate about the sanity of the Norwegian mass-murderer whose name I refuse to remember. The question of whether he was sane when he murdered seventy-seven people seems separate from the question of whether he had a mental illness.

Yet as I see it – and I'd really love to be corrected on this – the common usage of our language doesn't truly differentiate. Crazy is still a word which has great significance for many people with mental ill health, who have been dismissed, feared and attacked as crazy. As well as the impulsive fun-loving “crazy”, some people with mental illness identify themselves as crazy, as others identify themselves as mad. Sanity is still talked about very much in relation to mental health.

So where are the words we can use which don't muddle the medical with the non-medical?

(By the way, I don't mean to suggest that disabled people only have to worry about disability-related slurs. I don't think any of us think of a fool meaning someone with intellectual impairments, but recently this word was shaved onto the back of an unsuspecting man's head. I strongly dislike the word stupid because for years it was used to berate me for my poor co-ordination and cognitive dysfunction. Stupidity is a thing, but I do hate to hear anybody called it. Disabled people are called plenty of nasty names which have nothing to do with us.)

* Happily, the pain-stakingly categorical language of the mostly American psychologists and eugenicists did lead to Aldous Huxley coming up with classes of supposedly inferior people such as the “Epsilon Minus Semi-Moron” in Brave New World, which does roll off the tongue rather nicely when dealing with unco-operative broadband providers. Not really – as I recall, the Epsilon Minus Semi-Morons were very good at their jobs! No, really, of course, I don't call people names. Much.

Let The Right One In / Let Me In

Let the Right One In (2008) was the best horror movie of the last decade. It manages depths of character and visual beauty that few films rival, let alone films within a genre dominated by archetypes and little more than padding between the shocks and thrills. You know sometimes you connect with a film on a romantic level? Well, I did. It comes very close to perfect. Stephen reviewed the film as an adaptation of the original book last year.

You can guess how I felt about the news that they were making an American version. But it was being directed by Matt Reeves, who made the excellent Cloverfield, and the buzz about the remake was that it wasn't quite as awful as it could be. So we had to take a look.

I didn't decide to write a review in which I slate one film for being a pale imitation of another. I decided to write a review because in many ways, everything that's wrong with the American remake Let Me In (2010) demonstrates what is so right about Let The Right One In.

Both films are about a twelve year old boy, who meets a new neighbour of the same age, who turns out to be a vampire and helps him stand up to his bullies. Between them, these two films showcase four excellent child actors, who all did brilliantly with what they had to work with. None of those kids can be faulted. Some other things can be.

Let The Right One In is a brilliant study in how to paint character with very few brush-strokes. We understand the protagonist Oscar, we understand his relationship with his parents – including his love for them and his profound sense of betrayal by them, without more than a few glimpses into his back story. We understand his helplessness against his bullies and the raw impotent rage this draws from him. We know something of Eli's relationship with the man who goes out to murder for her, although there is ambiguity here. We know that he adores her and is not a natural killer - he's a bumbler. The American version was far more efficient, creepy and altogether less likely.

There are very few films that really invoke how it is to be a pubescent child (or at least, the kind of child I was). The intrigues and frustrations of that age, where your own fantasies have taken the place of second-hand make-believe and the world grows a little darker and richer for it. At twelve years old, we knew what we have largely forgotten since; There are dangerous people in the world and some of them are children.

In Let The Right One In, the bullies are sadists, monstrous: ordinary kids. It doesn't matter to us or Oscar what made them that way – unlike his American counterpart, Oscar never needs to ask if there is evil in the world because he encounters it every day. In Let Me In, the bullies talk too much.  Their greater size and strength, together with their preoccupation with masculinity – constantly taunting that their victim is a little girl - make them pathetic rather than menacing. As a viewer, I'm well aware that I am grown up and could shrink them down to size with a few cutting words. I'd also ask their victim what was so wrong with being a little girl? 

But then, apparently, femininity sucks in 1983 America. The boy's father informs him that his mother is sick and has funny ideas about things. We see no evidence of this so I'm not sure if we're supposed to believe it – we never see the boy's mother's face, and we're not given any clue as to how he feels about her either way, just that he can't turn to her in his struggle against the bullies. We know she's religious – perhaps from that we're supposed to assume that she's an intolerable harridan? Elsewhere, we're treated to the horror movie convention that if you've seen a woman's breast, she's thereafter fated to die a horrible death without getting a single line of dialogue. 

All ambiguity around gender and sexuality has been painstakingly removed by the American film-makers. Yes, this is a hobby-horse of mine, but it matters! It's hard to tell ninety minute stories which reflect the full range of gender and sexual variation, but with ambiguity, you feel like you might be being represented in there somewhere.

Twelve year old sexuality is almost always ambiguous. You're twelve! Your own body becomes mysterious to you, let alone other people and their bodies. In Hollywood, this isn't allowed to be the case. On the one hand, they weren't comfortable, as the Swedes were, for the camera to linger on a half-naked twelve year old, because you know, that would be weird – you can only show naked people that the viewer is allowed to lust after! But then, moments after we've first met the boy, we see him using his telescope to spy on his neighbours' making love. So we can see the naked breast of Sexy-Bound-To-Die-Now-Lady. So we can see the boy is normal, because he infringes upon the privacy of people with breasts.

Whereas when, in Let The Right One In, the beautiful androgynous Eli asked Oscar if he'd still like her if she wasn't a girl, we sense the question has two meanings: What if Eli was not human? What if Eli had a different gender?

Later, we see a fleeting glimpse of a genital scar on Eli. The American vampire is unambiguously feminine. She's blonde, conventionally pretty and romantic and never even bedraggled. When she attacks someone, her face changes shape, in true Buffy tradition, because you can't have pretty girls do monstrous things whilst still looking like a pretty girl.

Finally, Let The Right One In is such a beautiful film. You can smell the fresh snow and taste the cold night air, feel all the textures as well as the warm breath and cold touch of the characters. The Scandavians know how to film snow. Snow and Fairisle jumpers. There are long periods and big wide shots of stillness or relative stillness, but never any drag. Although there is blood, gore and pretty awful (as in both severe and ropey) burns injuries, these moments are chosen and handled carefully. The climax of the film is horrific, shocking and wonderful and involves bright lights and very little blood indeed.

The Americans decided to represent the early 80s by making the whole world a little bit dingy. Despite the snow, there was more a sense of damp than the dry cold of the Swedish film. They did some things very well – in particular, there was a new scene with a fabulous tracking shot, with a camera mounted inside a car as it crashes and rolls down a hill. They did however enter the running for my new film award category "Most superfluous use of CGI in a scene that might have been scary otherwise" when they decided that a small child clinging to a grown man as she sucks the blood out of his throat just isn't scary enough. And although there was much similarity to the original film's climax, they reduced the light, added gore and (literally) threw in a severed head.

I can't discourage anyone (except those who just don't like scary films at all) from watching either movie. The trouble is that of its genre, Let Me In isn't a bad film by any stretch of the imagination.  It's just that it's an Americanised, simplified and straightened-out version of an absolute masterpiece. 

The Welfare Reform Bill: What's wrong with time-limiting contributory ESA?

Another summarising primer on these issues for people who aren't necessarily aware of what's going on with UK disability benefits. If you know all about this already, click here for what we need to do about it today.

There are a few reasons why ESA has not become a national scandal, and one of those is that it sounds complicated. But it is vitally important, if you live in the UK it effects you and I am to try to keep this simple, so please bear with me.

Employment Support Allowance is replacing all the old incapacity benefits. It is awarded to people who are considered unable to work due to illness, injury or disability. There are various different levels of benefit, depending on one's level of impairment and National Insurance contributions.

The most serious issue about ESA in the Welfare Reform bill is that for most people on the benefit, there will be a time-limit of one year. These are people who

• (a) are considered unable to work but not considered incapable of work-related activity (people in the "Work Group"). Most people on ESA fall into this category, and it includes people with all manner of severe, chronic and even life-threatening conditions.

• (b) have paid enough National Insurance to be put on the "Contributory" rate. So all of these people have either worked and paid taxes for many years or else became disabled at a very young age. Most people who become incapacitated for work do so in middle-age, so most people on ESA, as with the old Incapacity Benefit, had worked for most of their lives up until that point. 

After a year, all a person's benefit will be means-tested. This means, if they have a working partner or any savings, then they will not have any income of their own. Those disabled people affected by this change were informed last April, before any parliamentary votes on the matter, that they would lose their benefit after one year. This is going to start effecting people's lives in three months time.

There are four very serious problems with this proposal

1. Hardship

Wealthier people, whose partners have well-paid jobs are unlikely to experience real hardship. Single people without savings will not become much poorer. However, the Disability Alliance calculates that on average, a person on this benefit will lose £50 per week. Many people will lose closer to £100.

A partner's income begins to effect benefits at £7500 a year - that's about a twenty-four hour working week at minimum wage. That's still a rather poor household, who cannot afford to lose a penny.

Benefits for people out of work due to ill health have always been higher than unemployment benefit because

• (a) Disabled people have very limited opportunities to improve their situation, which is likely to be longer-term or lifelong - the government's own statistic is that 94% of the ESA "Work" group will not be in work by the end of their first year.
• (b) Disabled life is more expensive. We have fewer opportunities to live frugally, such as turning down the thermostat, washing ourselves, our clothes and bed linen less often, cooking from scratch, selling the car etc.. Meanwhile, partner's of disabled people often can't afford to take on extra hours or a second job, even if they are not an official "carer". 

Often, people dismiss arguments about hardship on the grounds that poor people get “their rent paid” and all sorts of other goodies. First off, if you don't qualify for a means-tested benefit, you don't automatically qualify for Local Housing Allowance, Council Tax Benefit, Free Prescriptions and so on. Not all poor people rent - they may have a nearly-paid mortgage at the point the main breadwinner gets sick. And these days, social housing is extremely hard come by and Local Housing Allowance isn't stretching to cover many private rents, especially not accessible accommodation. When the cuts kick in, there will be a shortfall of £150 a month between the cheapest place I could physically live in my area and the amount of Local Housing Allowance I would be eligible for.

2. Hopelessness


Becoming incapacitated for work involves many losses and a loss of income, together with a more frugal lifestyle is inevitable. Nobody asks that those unable to work should be paid anything like what a person could earn in work.

However, some disabled people have savings or money they've inherited.  People affected by the time-limit will face the prospect of having to live off this money, which either they or someone else had worked hard for, resisting all the temptations they might have spent it on.

There has always been some irony in the disincentives to save money for people who might end up on means-tested benefits, but for disabled people, who crucially, have no other means of improving their situation, this seems particularly unfair. Especially, when the three most common scenarios for a disabled person with savings would be either

• (a) They worked very hard for many years and lived very frugally until they became disabled or
• (b) Because of their care needs, they were unable to move out their parents' home, so had low living expenses and chose not to squander their low incomes or
• (c) Someone else, feeling that the disabled person's future looked bleak, gave or left them a lump sum towards their future security and independence.

3. Pressure on Sick People.

There's no condition in the world, physical, sensory, mental or intellectual, which might benefit from a ticking clock. In fact, I believe the presence of a time limit could be deadly dangerous in two ways:

• (a) An increased risk of suicide. When my physical health has been so bad that I have felt like giving up, I have often found deadlines useful. I have thought, “If it is still like this next month, I will kill myself and it'll all be over and done with.” I have experienced depression at times, but usually such deals have been made on the grounds of being thoroughly fed up. Friends with chronic mental illness have talked about doing the same thing in order to put off that terminal decision, whilst leaving the option open for later. However, I also know people who set a date and then proceeded to make a serious attempt on their lives. And this is when the deadline merely signified, “It's gone on too long now.” rather than, “It's gone on too long and I am about to lose all my income."

Last January, Aliquant wrote this post about how, feeling cornered by the benefits system, suicide seemed quite rational. It's a powerful post because Ali was so articulate; she simply couldn't cope with the risk of more homelessness, further hardship or having to jump through any more hoops. Soon after, 5 Quid for Life was set up, a charity to help people like Ali survive when things go wrong. Since then, the benefits situation has been implicated in at least ten suicides.

• (b) A disincentive to self-management. Looking after your health, when your health is poor, is jolly hard work. Taking unpleasant medication, getting the right amount of exercise, preparing and eating the right food, resting and sleeping when you need to, visiting the appropriate healthcare workers, getting new complications and injuries treated and resisting naughty behaviours that will set you back, can feel like a full-time occupation. If you know that after a year, you're going to lose all income, unless your health significantly deteriorates, then you've got another major disincentive to look after yourself. I don't believe for a minute that anyone would choose to make themselves more ill, to suffer more and to deal with more health-related rigarmorale, even to shorten one's life expectancy. But a system is being created where being a good patient, hard as that is, could actually cost you money. 

I actually find it very distressing when people with far more energy than me fail to look after their health, although looking after is subjective and it is absolutely none of my business anyway. It's probably natural to worry about things that have happened to me happening to other people. However, as some disabled people involved in anti-cuts activism work themselves into the ground and expend twice as much energy in a week than I have in any given year, I am able to reassure myself that, as long as they stay alive, they'll probably wind up too sick to be effected by the time-limit. This situation is all kinds of wrong. There shouldn't be any advantage to getting sicker.


4. Damage Caused to Relationships

Money can't buy you love and poverty doesn't destroy it, but relationships can become a lot tougher when when one partner has literally no income and crucially, no means of bringing in money if they want to. I see three effects of this:

• (a) The time-limit interferes with the future relationships of single disabled people. Lisa has written about how the combination of poverty and disability dramatically reduces one's romantic chances, and the prospect of complete financial dependence will make this worse. Means-tested benefits force claimants to either restrict themselves to very casual and discreet relationships or else to place themselves in complete financial dependence on a partner the moment they begin living together – a moment which is rarely well-defined. 

• (b) The time-limit threatens to undermine existing relationships. Sue has described her fears of becoming a burden on her husband. As Shana Pezaro described, desertion is not an uncommon experience in the face of chronic illness, especially among heterosexual women, and the prospect of total financial dependence will only add to this problem. Some families, especially those with children, may even find that they would be financially better off if they occupied two different households. 

• (c) The time-limit makes disabled men and women, who are already more likely to experience domestic abuse, even more vulnerable. Disabled people are already twice as likely to experience domestic violence. If you have no income at all, then it becomes easy for an abusive partner to completely deny you access to money, to complain about or restrict your expenditure, whether on food or phone calls, bus fare or medicines. It becomes easy for an abuser to tell you what a burden you are, and how you owe them or deserve to be mistreated, when you are both financially and practically dependent on them.   

Unemployed single parents of small children have long had this problematic status, where benefit rules prevent them from having romantic relationships which progress out in the open and at their own natural pace and where the prospect of complete financial dependence can make a person feel as if they are less valuable. This is one of the major reasons that make such families particularly vulnerable to dysfunctional and abusive relationships.


The government's motives for this are deeply cynical.


Years back, when ESA was first discussed by the then Labour Government, the disability blogosphere and messageboards were awash with anxiety about sick people being pressured into work that they just couldn't get. I wrote a post on BBC Ouch! explaining that logically, we had nothing to fear. If Employment Support Allowance was to have a "Work Group", the government simply had to get these people into work. If vast numbers of us were placed in this Work Group, who didn't have a hope of getting a job, we would become bad statistics.

The Conservative Government came up with a way round this, which is to make these people disappear. Anyone on this band of ESA with savings or a working partner will simply disappear after twelve months.  They will not add to the unemployment statistics because they have been declared unfit for work. They will not be claiming any benefit at all.

Here is the link I gave you at the top: This is what we need to do now.


(A draft version of this may have appeared in your feed-reader last night - sorry about that! I was so confident that I couldn't accidentally publish my drafted post in the new style Blogger (as I often did in the old one), but hey, I found a way.)