Diary of a Goldfish

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Disability in Breaking Bad

Don't forget to sign up for Blogging Against Disablism Day

It's a very rare thing where a television show or film handles disability in a way I cannot fault. It's also much easier to blog about what's wrong with something, than what's right, but here, I have to do it.

There are very many things to recommend Breaking Bad (at least in its first two seasons), an American television series charting the moral downfall of a indebted high school chemistry teacher, Walt, who is diagnosed with lung cancer. Wishing to leave his family something after his death, he decides to team up with a former student in the manufacture of Crystal Meth.

Walt's teenage son, Walter Junior, has Cerebral Palsy. The character is played by a gorgeous young man called R J Mitte who is not just cute, but proper teenage heart-throb material who has apparently been romantically linked with Miley Cyrus. And guess what? The guy actually has CP. He crips it up a wee bit, but his performance completely outshines attempts by the likes of Daniel Day-Lewis or those young men from Inside I'm Dancing to portray the condition. It's so realistic! It's almost as good as S. Robert Morgan's impression of being both blind and black as Butchie in The Wire. .

Walter Junior's CP is not entirely incidental to plot. When the senior Walt describes the dire situation his family is in, he does mention his son with Cerebral Palsy. When Walter Junior is mocked by young men in a clothes shop, Walt's response demonstrates his hidden capacity for aggression in protection of his family. But otherwise, his family attempt to ignore or even downplay his condition. At one point, his uncle explains the boy's crutches as being for a football injury. During a driving lesson, Walt senior pressures him into using one foot for the clutch and brake pedals, leading an exasperated Walter Junior to explain, "My legs just don't work that way."

However, the CP is incidental to character. Walter Junior is a loving but gently rebellious teenager. In fact, regardless of disability, this is an unusually realistic portrayal of the kind of teenage boys I grew up around - neither the non-communicative, sexually-frustrated creature, teetering on the edge of criminal aggression, nor the sweet, responsible and ever reliable young man of parents' dreams. Walter Junior tries to buy alcohol under age and rejects his father's name in preference for the handle Flynn, but he loves his parents, eventually setting up a website to raise money for his father's cancer treatment.

As I mentioned before, Walt (played by Bryan Cranston - the dad from Malcolm in the Middle) has lung cancer. I have no idea how realistically the cancer itself is portrayed - knowing the wide variety of ways and severity cancer manifests itself, I'm guessing it would fit someone's experience, although so far, he just coughs a lot when he gets upset. What I do know is the reactions of family and friends to his cancer are powerfully realistic - the way that a person who had received a diagnosis can be several steps of reasoning ahead of those who love him, with a completely different gauge of what might be worth gambling or sacrificing in the hope of more time or an improvement in health. The way that, depending on what decisions someone makes about treatment, they may be hailed as a hero or condemned as a coward - and often in the space of the same conversation.

Walt is not a sympathetic character. His family will be poorer once he dies, but you're not sure that they're going to be worse off in any other respects. Walt's motives for cooking meth are changeable and inconsistent and he allows his wife to worry about his absences and suspicious behaviour. Most of all, I think, Walt's response to his illness is one of cold constructive anger and that's something you rarely see in drama. You see sick people having a tantrum about it, but that's not really them, and it's entirely forgivable. You see sick people becoming bitter about their illness and pushing everyone away. But you don't often see sick people sustaining anger about their illness and using that anger constructively.

I'm not especially pleased with this post. I've hardly told you a thing about Breaking Bad, which is a fantastic show and one which I partly regret having begun to watch before I could access every season right up to the end. However, it's so rare that a show handles disability so well, on top of everything else, that it is worth singing its praises.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Blogging Against Disablism Day will be on 1st May, 2012

Blogging Against Disablism 2012 is now underway. Please click here for this year's event.

Blogging Against Disablism Day, May 1st 2012

The seventh annual Blogging Against Disablism day will be on Tuesday, 1st May. This is the day where all around the world, disabled and non-disabled people blog about their experiences, observations and thoughts about disability discrimination. In this way, we hope to raise awareness of inequality, promote equality and celebrate the progress we've made.

How to take part.

1. Post a comment below to say you intend to join in. I will then add you to the list of participants on the sidebar of this blog. Everyone is welcome.

2. Spread the word by linking to this site, displaying our banner and/ or telling everyone about it on blogs, newsgroups, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and so on. The entire success of Blogging Against Disablism Day depends entirely on bloggers and readers telling other bloggers and readers in advance.

3. Write a post on the subject of disability discrimination, disablism or ableism and publish it on May 1st - or as close as you are able. Podcasts, videocasts and on-line art are also welcome. You can cover any subject, specific or general, personal, social or political. In the previous six BADD, folks have written about all manner of subjects, from discrimination in education and employment, through health care, parenting, family life and relationships, as well as the interaction of disablism with racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination. Every year I have been asked, so it's worth saying; the discrimination experienced by people with mental ill health is disablism, so naturally posts about that are welcome too.

You can see the archives for previous years here: 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011.

Blogging Against Disablism Day is not a carnival of previously published material. The point about doing this around one day (or there abouts) is that it is a communal effort and all the posts connect to one another. You can of course use your own post to promote other things you've written in the past as you wish.

4. Come back here to Diary of a Goldfish on the day to let everyone know that you've posted and to check out what other people have written. I shall post links to everyone's posts (slowly) throughout the day, creating an archive. However, I do need you to comment and leave the URL of your post or else I shan't find your post and won't be able to link to it.

This year, we have a Twitter account @BADDtweets, where there will be tweets about posts and updates to the archive during the day.

Accessibility

Naturally, Blogging Against Disablism Day invites contributions from people with all variety of impairments and none at all. You are welcome to contribute with podcasts, video-blogging or anything else that allows you to take part. And whilst May 1st is when this all takes place, nobody who happens to have a bad day that Tuesday is going to be left out of the archive.

If anyone has any questions about web accessibility, I recommend the Accessify Forum. I am not an expert on web accessibility myself, so if there are any suggestions about how I can make this day more accessible, please e-mail me at diaryofagoldfish at googlemail.com

The Linguistic Amnesty

Whilst discussions about language and the way it can be used to oppress or empower us are more than welcome, please respect the language that people use, particularly to describe themselves in their own contributions. We all have personal preferences, there are cultural variations and different political positions which affect the language we use. Meanwhile, non-disabled contributors can become nervous about using the most appropriate language to use, so please cut everyone as much slack as possible on the day.

At the same time, do not feel you have to use the same language that I do, even to talk about "disablism". If you prefer to blog against disability discrimination, ableism or blog for disability equality, then feel free to do so.

In 2008 I wrote a basic guide to the Language of Disability which I hope might explain some of the thinking behind the different language disabled people prefer to use about themselves.

Links & Banners

To link back to this post, simply copy and paste the following code:

These banners have seemed popular over the last couple of years and I am yet to think of anything better. If anyone fancies editing these images or coming up with something new, then please do so. You are free to use and mess with these as you like, so long as you use them in support of Blogging Against Disablism Day. If you already have the banner, you just need to change the URL that it links to from last year's BADD. Otherwise, you simply need to copy the contents of one of these boxes and paste it on your blog, in a post or on the sidebar as you like. The banners come in two colour combinations and two sizes. The sizes are a 206 pixels square or 150 x 200 pixels.

This is the black and white banner which reads "Blogging Against Disablism". Here's the code for the square one:

And here's the code for the narrower one (which can be seen here):

This is the colourful banner which reads "Blogging Against Disablism". This is the code for the square one:

And here's the code for the narrower one (which can be seen here):

Please leave a (comment including the URL of your blog) to let everyone know you are joining in and I shall add a link to you on the sidebar. Also, if you have any questions, please ask.

Monday, March 26, 2012

The Undebateable Undateables

Last week, a poster appeared in London advertising a TV show called The Undateables, which reads "Love is blind, disfisgured, autistic..." I'm not going to talk about the poster and the programme here; Matthew has already, Sarah has, Lisa has twice, the second time at Liberal Conspiracy. There's also been a timely article at the Guardian on disability and on-line dating. But I wanted to talk about how the discussion of things like "How The Undateables is the most offensive piece of Channel 4 advertising since Bigger, fatter, gypsier." gets stuck when we begin to address the problems of disabled people in finding love.

Being romantically irresistible is part of my impairment. It is embarrassing and it sometimes makes it difficult for me to be with other people. They often swoon, break into song, or tear roses from nearby bushes to make into thorny and often bloody bouquets to give me. As a result, I have been single for precisely four days since I was eighteen and even that can be put down to a particularly painful period.

However, I have had reason to contemplate my place in the mire of dating and romance over the years. Before my impairment was properly diagnosed, back when I thought people were staring because of the wheelchair and that light of my life was just another term of casual affection between strangers like pet or sweetheart, I thought I was likely to spend a big chunk of my life single. My ex-husband often told me that he was going to leave me (my condition is very difficult for any partner) and detailed many unattractive attributes in an attempt to reassure me that I wasn't quite as lovely as medical science seemed to suggest. When I looked towards the future, I imagined that I would probably end up being alone.

In a way, this was a helpful exercise. I knew I couldn't live alone and the obvious solution would be to live with friends. Because I'd talked about this with my friends (in the context of if, not when), I had more than one offer of a place to live when I finally decided to leave. Well, two serious offers, one "There's woodland at the back of my house where we could build a den!"

The other way in which it was helpful was that I thought a lot about the prejudices that get between disabled people, romantic happiness and sexual fulfillment.

Attraction is largely involuntary - no individual can be castigated for who they fancy or fall in love with - but there are very few universals. There are one or two around body-shape, but we only see this in data using responses to images, rather than sexual or romantic behaviour. In general, we learn what attractive men and women are like through culture; how fat or thin, how tall or short, what kind of hair they should have on their heads and bodies and how they should behave. This stuff varies a lot around the globe.

So prejudice like disablism and racism certainly interferes with this stuff. It's just impossible to say how much and in what way. Famously, the Observer Sex Survey in 2008 found that 70% of people questioned said they would not have sex with a person with a physical disability. I've used this figure myself, but personally, I think this expresses more about disabled stereotypes than behaviour. After all, most disabled people I know are partnered. I could be wrong, but I reckon if you showed people flattering images of disabled people with a mixture of physical impairments, smiling and having fun, and then asked the question, the response would have been far more positive. If you got people to have a five minute conversation with a selection of specially-selected extra-charming disabled people and then asked the question, you'd almost certainly get a minority expressing a preference.

As it was, many people may have simply thought, “Would I have a sexual relationship with Stephen Hawking?” and the answer came back the same as my response: Astrophysics has no place in the bedroom.

One of the problems dissecting the issue is the way discussions of disability and romance tend to pan out. When someone complains that they feel they're not getting sexual or romantic interest for almost any other reason, whether it's race, weight or age, something religious or cultural, the job they do or being a prince, then there are almost always people there to argue that they are hot and it's not such a big deal. There are always people who come forward to say, "I'm in the same boat, but I've found love and am living happily ever after." or "Well, you seem lovely so I'm sure you'll find someone soon." or even, "Could this all be down to a lack of confidence/ luck/ opportunity?"

But when say, a wheelchair-user talks publicly about problems finding love, the responses tend to come like this:

"I am also disabled and have given up on love. Everything you say is true. Nobody wants us. Everybody hates us!"

"I am disabled but I am lucky enough to have found a partner who is prepared to put up with me, without once suggesting a romantic weekend in Switzerland. I am so very very very very grateful to them, for without their compassion and no small degree of masochism, I would be entirely unloved and alone like you!"

"I find wheelchair users highly attractive, but you people are always so frosty when I send you e-mails detailing my wheelchair-related sexual fantasies. Then you complain nobody is interested!"

"I'm really sorry to read your experiences, and hope that one day you might meet someone who is prepared to see past your impairment, to see past any equipment you use, to see past any body parts that are at all iffy. In fact, to see past your face, body, brain, any idiosyncrisies of your mind and personality, through to the real, beautiful, non-disabled person who is somewhere trapped behind all that. Good luck!"

"It's much harder for disabled men, as men are supposed to be tough, strong and physically active, and we're supposed to go out and earn a living. Women can be physically weak and not work and still be considered attractive."

"It's much harder for disabled women, as women are supposed to fit a very narrow standard of physical beauty, and we're supposed to be able to have energy for looking after other people. Men can be physically imperfect and need some looking after and still be considered attractive."

"Why don't you think about dating other disabled people? They're bound to be more understanding. Simples!"

"@lastcommenter Why should disabled people date disabled people? Other disabled people are completely hideous! Just because I'm disabled, why should I be content with someone who looks a bit funny and can't get up stairs?"

"Have you thought about using a sex-worker? When money is involved, it's much more difficult for someone to say no and they're all good at pretending to like you so they can get the whole thing over with quickly. It's your right to have sex!"

"You think you've got it bad? I have only one eye, so not only am I rejected all the time, I have trouble gauging just how far a person has walked away from me. There are loads of examples of sexy wheelchair-users, but when do people with one eye get a look in?"

"Evolution dictates that disabled people just can't get laid. That's why disabled people never ever marry or have children."

And so on. Of course, most comments will be empathetic, but few people will actually argue with the idea that the disabled person can't find love because they are disabled (unless they launch into complete denial that it makes a difference to anyone apart from a rare and obvious bigot). Sometimes, especially when it is someone I know and like, I get very tempted. But it is very difficult to say the right thing.

The dangers are:

Coming across as patronising. Disabled people are used to being patronised and most disabled people have a very finely-tuned patronimeter. At the best of times, it can be hard to reassure someone that they are sexually attractive without seeming to patronise, even when you mean it (unless you're prepared to make love to them on the spot. Even then, it's not fool-proof.)
Coming across as creepy. Disabled people often encounter creeps of various kinds, some deeply sinister, others simply disconcerting. When someone is lonely and at a low ebb, there's no kind of creepiness, even accidental, that's going to make them feel less than awful.
Coming across as questioning someone's experience. Disabled people are used to having their experiences called into question. A lot of tact is required to help untangle someone's genuine experience of rejection, or statements people have made about their supposed unattractiveness, from whether or not they are fundamentally undesirable.
Coming across as dismissing social injustice. Which we're also quite used to. There are some political circumstances which really do complicate relationships and potential relationships for disabled people, as Lisa outlines.
Coming across as playing Privilege Top Trumps. If I wasn't romantically irresistible, it would be immensely difficult for me to form romantic relationships. I'm rarely able to leave the house, I can't drive or self-propel a wheelchair and I can't use my powerchair for long periods. I couldn't date anybody and very few people would be interested in working round that stuff in order to get to know me. But even if it wasn't for my clinical loveliness, I could never say to anyone, "Well, I found love and I'm a lot worse off than you are." because impairment and prejudice is so complex. I know I do have some advantages over Lisa, for example, (e.g. my impairment had little effect on my physical development and my bisexuality gives me a much larger pool to work with) or the pseudonymous Stefano (e.g. I'm better at avoiding inadvertent innuendo - "apart from one thing, very low maintenance" - he he he).

And yet, this subject is important. Not everyone is interested in sex or romance and many people are happy being single (although usually, happy people feel it's a choice). However, for anyone capable of sexual or romantic feeling - single or attached - to feel undesirable is a terrific blow to one's sense of self-worth. That's not vanity or anything shallow, it is part of our identity which feels damaged, inferior. It makes us more vulnerable to creeps and abusers (experience makes me shudder when I read those comments about the immense gratitude some disabled people feel towards a partner just for not abandoning them). It makes us feel less valuable altogether and makes all the battles we have to fight for survival and social progress so much tougher.

I think I may have to write a second post on how we might combat this, apart from the usual, "Magic some confidence from somewhere, damn it!"

Thursday, March 22, 2012

The Graduate

Stephen did his degree with the University of London International Programmes, working entirely at home, taking his exams by himself at the local college. So there was a big question about whether he should even attempt to attend his formal graduation, at the Barbican Centre, in the middle of London.

Stephen in his graduate gear. A very handsome young man
in black gown and mortar board, looking wistful.
(He was actually watching the parakeets).

Well, last week, we did it and it was great. It's so difficult when you do any kind of work or study from home to get the full warm fuzzy from a job well done. Because of the modular nature of the course, and because he lost a year due to a downturn in his health, only one of Stephen's student friends finished the degree at the same time as he did. When he got his results last summer, we drank a bottle of Welsh champagne, but the enormity of six years work, finally complete, didn't really sink in (unlike the champagne).

You can see the very moment that Stephen graduates if you go here and fast-forward (goodness knows I wished I could have) to 278 minutes. He looks very serious, on account of his gravitas, now he has a BA (Hons) after his name and all. You'll also notice that he got an extra loud clap, on account of how well he did. Or possibly because of the wheelchair. After all, it is notoriously difficult to study Classics if you can't personally re-enact the twelve labours of Heracles.

In order to manage this, we had to get into London, stay over night, then get home after the graduation the next day. We're in Surrey at the moment, so we paid for a hotel in the middle of London - less than an hour away, in good traffic - with a heavy heart. As it was, the traffic wasn't great and we took a scenic detour (wrong-turning), an experience which reminded us why we couldn't have possibly done the whole thing in a day.

When I was a kid, London was a terrifically romantic and exciting place and when I was a teenager, the city felt like destiny itself. I was going to go to drama school in London. I used to look at the Tube map and street maps of London, planning trips to the important places I should visit. London was at the centre of everything I was interested in, such a lot of creative work going on, so many interesting stories unfolding on every street corner, thousands of creative minds coming together to create the hippocampus of the British cultural hive mind. In Ipswich, where I grew up, a town of over a hundred thousand people, there were few book shops, let alone art galleries and no professional theatre for much of my youth.

Part of me still feels that way. Part of me was silly-excited about going into London, just to see it and be in its midst for twenty-four hours. I often have stretches of weeks or months when I don't leave the house, so in one hour in a car in London, I see more people than I might normally see in a year. What's more, I've always come into London from the North before, so there are all kinds of things I've never seen, coming in from the South West.

But it's massively inaccessible to me. I don't know how sick people cope with living in London at all. I don't know how an otherwise healthy person could survive a cold, if the symptoms started in the middle of the city. Too much is going on, too much noise, too many people moving way too fast - you'd lose all sense of direction, collapse on the pavement and get trodden to death! The only reason the pavements of London aren't strewn with the bodies of people who have died from minor infections or dizzy spells is that there are so many people passing through that the corpses get completely broken down and washed away real quick.

Sinister wheelchair picture! Two wheelchairs,
strewn with ladies' underwear.

I'm also disturbed by the contrast between conspicuous wealth and conspicuous poverty. Goodness knows that rural England and Wales have plenty of both, but when the two sit so physically close together, it makes me nauseous. And the dirtiness of London - far dirtier than any other city I know - exacerbates this contrast. You get these posh shops and hotels with freshly-polished glass doors with gleaming brass handles and immaculate hulking doormen stood outside, but if you look up to the higher floors, or down the side of the building, there's dirty walls, broken windows, rubbish floating about and occasionally far-from-immaculate people sifting through that rubbish.

Being a car passenger, in London, is wearying enough. My back and neck were thoroughly done in by the sudden jolts and halts as other drivers changed their minds. I tried to ignore what other people were doing around me, much as I do when I'm being pushed in a wheelchair through a crowd. I tried to ignore that, in London, there are billboard ads which refer to the fact that the viewer is most likely stuck in traffic. They have slotty ones which change the ad every few minutes, on the basis that you're going to be sat there long enough to take in several adverts.

Anyway, we somehow made it to a Travelodge which was very well placed for us, had a staff who treated us like we were staying in a five star hotel and a lovely big accessible room with soundproofing on the windows, a wet room and a big bed. We had a picnic tea and slept pretty well considering that, despite it being a Monday night and the room overlooking a back street, the traffic and noise of people on the streets outside never quietened down.

Stephen, graduated. The same
handsome young man holding
a glass of champagne and smiling.

The next day, we trundled along to the Barbican, parking just along from Princess Anne's Bentley (she's the chancellor of the university). We had our photos taken and Stephen was fussed over by a small regiment of staff who didn't know quite how or when to get him onto the stage. At one point, in their confusion, they thought we were both graduands, and I almost saved a great deal of time and money by being graduated at the same time. Trouble is, I couldn't make up my mind quite what I wanted a degree in. Divinity sounded like fun.

They planted Stephen and his Dad on the stage and left them sitting up there for about twenty minutes, in front of a full auditorium, entirely by themselves. I've been on the stage at a few theatres, but never anything so grand as the Barbican. I once saw the Royal Shakespeare Company do Romeo & Juliet there. It was dreadful, but even so.

When the graduation did get underway, it was as tedious as I imagine most graduation ceremonies are, except for the bit when Stephen finally got to cross the stage. It was an extremely international affair, being the International Programmes, and it was great to see so many different ideas from around the world of what you wear for a graduation. It was also quite funny to hear the English woman, who announced each person, struggle with names from all corners of the globe. As a result, when she did have an British-type name to work with, she said it with ten times the volume and confidence.

Me, looking tired and proud. A woman
with a glass of champagne and a very
lovely tartan jacket.

On our way out, we pinched the free booze and cupcakes, which Stephen's sister became so enthused about that she planted five on Stephen's lap before escaping to the carpark. Stephen is gluten intolerant and allergic to dairy. I think each of us could write a book about "Things I have had other people place on my lap, when using a wheelchair." I've certainly had small children, electrical appliances, rolls of wallpaper and important documents. Perhaps one day, I'll have cupcakes.

Oh and Stephen left his walking stick on the stage. He e-mailed the Barbican after to suggest they donated it to the props department, by way of thanks for accommodating him so well.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Five Reasons Why Science Fiction Fans are Better Dressed

Ever wondered why science fiction fans are so extraordinarily well turned out? While crime buffs lurk about in outdated rain macs, romance lovers entangle themselves - and one another - in bows and flounces and action movie addicts ruin perfectly good outfits with mud and blood, it is science fiction types who balance practicality and style.

Not that I prefer science fiction above other genres of fiction and film, but the future and outer space are where I learnt how to dress. One rough night, I came up with the following list:

1. Today could be the day that the Doctor shows up.

When I was a child, I talked as a child, I thought that I could be the Doctor but when I became an adult, I put away childish things and accepted that I wasn't a Timelord. Doctor's companion, however, remains a possibility (although a possibility perhaps fast diminishing with age).

Martha Jones (beautiful young black woman)
in a russet fitted leather jacket.

Some Doctor's companions have been pure eye-candy, others have been complex and powerful characters and one or two have outshone the Doctor himself. But like the different incarnations of the Doctor, part of what makes the different companions memorable is their unique style. Which includes bad style, the epitome of which is the recent Rory, who did up his top button and tried to look like Man from C&A a full decade after that store shut its beige and button-down-doors.

I have a coat like Martha's. Except mine is longer, has lots of buckles on it and is green.

When I've had days when I can't get dressed, I've sometimes worried that I might hear the familiar whir of an approaching Tardis when I'm still in my nightclothes. However, watching as much science fiction film and television as I have, I know that outer space is simply awash with aliens who wear dressing-gowns all day long. And Arthur Dent got on all right.

2. Time Travel demands style, not fashion.

If you are going to travel in time, by whatever means and in whichever direction, being well presented is far more important than being on trend. Of course, fashion comes in cycles, and I dare say trouser-bottoms will still be coming in and out millenia from now, collar-widths and skirt-lengths will continue expanding and contracting, much like the universe itself. But even if you're going back in time and you know where you are going, you have to be careful - I've seen photographs of ordinary people in the 1960s and not everyone looked like Austin Powers. Only the men.

Whether you're heading for the past or the future, you won't want to be seen in a t-shirt with a slogan on it. Written language changes over time sometimes even more dynamically than the spoken word - Chaucer makes no sense written down, which is why they make students read him to stop English Literature being too much fun. Also, I know you might not believe this but few people find those slogans funny even now. In a hundred years time, it'll be a bit like when people alive today watch Last of the Summer Wine.

Modesty is also important (although most Time Travel stories completely ignore this issue). Many people in the past and almost certainly some people in the future will be shocked, offended and/ or inclined towards a lynching, if you turn up in micro-shorts and a bikini top. Especially if you have a lot of chest hair.

3. Once Bitten, Forever Shamed

There are superb zombie movies (Dawn of the Dead), there are terrible zombie movies (the remake of Dawn of the Dead) and there are zombie movies which manage both awesome and awful in the same undying breath (Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town). But what all zombie movies have in common is the deep pathos they inspire when we see people condemned to shuffle around for eternity in outfits they would never have chosen if they knew they'd never get changed again.

Whenever I sulked as a child, my Mum would inform me that, "If the wind changes, you'll be stuck like that!" Now that's just not true. However, when I think about putting on a dress like this, zombie movies taught me that I might live to regret it. Or at least, might die to regret it. Or at least, my friends who have to decapitate my reanimated corpse might be doubly embarrassed for me.

On the plus side, in every zombie movie, there's always one lucky zombie bride, literally immortalised in all her glory. Well, some of her glory. Somewhat gory glory.

4. Superheroes teach us the power of accessories.

Superheroes and their enemies (who are often disabled role models) demonstrate the transformative power of costume, make-up and accessories. Ordinary if slightly better than average-looking men and women by day can metamorphise into Christmas Tree decorations with the clever use of primary colours, lycra and a few well chosen hats, shoes, gloves, masks and other accessories.

Consider Clark Kent's glasses. Everyone knew what Superman looked like - Lois Lane more than most. But put those spectacular spectacles on and nobody had a clue. They were amazing. My Stephen has tried doing the same - taking off his glasses when carrying out superhero activity, but he only flies into things. I reckon Clark Kent wasn't even short-sighted!

Superheroes can also teach us cautionary tales about the compromises involved in being stream-lined. When I was about ten, I thought this sketch was the funniest thing ever.

These days, of course, it doesn't seem funny at all. Much.

5. In the future, we're all in uniform anyway.

Science fiction has shown one possible future where everyone is dressed by Jean Paul Gautier (Fifth Element), another where everyone wears a lot of yummy green corduroy (Brave New World) and another possible future where alien races have all the great clothing design (Babylon 5). But for the most part, the future seems full of uniforms with very little room for self-expression indeed. So we might as well enjoy choosing our own clothes while we have the chance.

Admittedly, some uniforms are better than others. Obviously, most dystopian futures involve us all wearing boiler suits or shaving our heads, but we're determined to avoid those - the lose of individual style choices being just one among many good reasons to fight tyranny. Early Star Trek uniforms are at least colourful and let you know your chances of survival, but the skirts are very short. Later Star Trek uniforms are too snug for comfort or flattery. The uniforms of Battlestar Gallactica, Starship Troopers and most of the clothes worn in the Alien films are just jazzed up modern military. It's like some people are determined that the future should be altogether more muted and utilitarian than the past, rather than more sparkly, which is what it'll be if I have any say.

I was going to say that I could simply stick with my dressing gown and become a Jedi knight but then I realised it was "A long time ago in a galaxy far away." so that's not the future at all. All this time-travel is making me dizzy. I think I best go back to bed now and watch a DVD. Perhaps a Western or something...

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

What's Wrong - and Right - About Trigger Warnings?

The idea of Trigger Warnings is to provide a heads-up to readers who may experience dramatic mental health symptoms (e.g. flash-backs, panic attacks or the inclination to self-harm) in response to imagery or the discussion of traumatic events, usually intimate violence and self-injury. The word trigger is typically used to describe stimuli which may set off the more dramatic effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (whether diagnosed or not), but is also used to describe things which, for some people, increase the temptation towards self-injurious behaviour (e.g. purging, cutting or even suicide).

There are a lot of problems with Trigger Warnings. Over the years, I have been all for them, dead against them and now I believe that they are a good idea only if they are done properly. For me, that means not using the term Trigger Warning at the top of a post.

The first problem with Trigger Warnings is that they can seem deeply patronising and sometimes even manipulative. Even if you know what happened to them, you don't necessarily have a clue about the triggers of someone with PTSD, although they are likely to include seemingly random and frequently benign things; an innocent turn of phrase, a smell, a harmless noise etc.. Meanwhile, reading about traumatic events similar to their experience can be helpful to recovery, at the right time and in the right circumstances.

Similarly, someone inclined towards self-harm or unhealthy behaviour around food, is likely to receive challenging messages from all over the place which make it difficult to cope. There are no safe places. Folk are able to make choices about the relative risks they take reading any new material, but no writer can protect their readers. You could write a light-hearted piece about your pet rabbit which, for all kinds of complex reasons, tips a reader over the edge.

This is not to say so throw your readers to the lions. Writers do have responsibilities.

In an old but memorable post in which she rails against the concept of “Safe Spaces”, Robyn asks

“What makes you qualified to inform me I can’t handle the subject matter?
Good point if I say so myself. What else?
It smells like a set up. Are you warning me or priming me?
And It’s a directive? Trigger warning as a sneaky way to tell me how I should respond to your post.
And if I ignore the hint?
This is getting dark. It seems so very well-meaning. You should know about this trigger, dear, it’s attached to my gun. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Sometimes you can feel that Trigger Warnings are there to advertise a post, in the style of old horror movies: "Viewers of a nervous disposition, look away now!" or "My words are so powerful, they just might make you sick." Other times, it can seem to provide an excuse for unnecessary, sometimes even titillating detail of other people's trauma, as if the author believes that a Trigger Warning relieves them of the responsibility to ask, “Is this really necessary? Am I enjoying this too much? Am I using other people's gruesome experiences as a rhetorical device?"*

The second problem is that Trigger Warnings are often done very badly. Examples of bad Trigger Warnings include:

Superfluous Trigger Warnings, or the May Contain Nuts problem. The title of a piece is "Monster Attacks Continue To Terrorise Villagers" then it reads "Trigger Warning: Contains description of monster attacks". This is extremely common.
Over-specific Warnings/ Teasers. The Trigger Warning reads, "Trigger Warning: This piece describes a green scaly monster with blood dripping off its huge fangs and eyes like pineapples and talks about how the monster strode into the village, crushed houses with its fists and tore the village traffic warden limb from limb." when "Contains description of monster attacks" would do. Again, it's hard to tell whether the writer is over-eager to inform, or merely trying to draw the reader in.
Extremely vague Trigger Warnings. I won't link to them because they were making (some sort of) an effort but I recently saw a post, whose difficult subject matter was evident from the title, whose warning used the exact words "Trigger warning for trauma."
Warnings which use the word trigger which are all about offensive content.

This leads to our third problem. The language of mental health is frequently absorbed into the language of everyday emotional experience; "Traffic was manic today." ; "I was feeling depressed until I heard Jedward will be back in Eurovision this year." etc.. Perhaps inevitably, people have begun to use the word trigger for things that deeply upset and offend them.

There's nothing wrong with objecting to and avoiding things which upset and offend you - in fact, it's very important to do so at least some of the time, or you'll make yourself miserable. And in a way, Trigger Warnings have come about because of an inconsistency between what the media considers potentially upsetting, like swearing, blasphemy, nudity or comic book violence involving lots of blood and gore, and what can be, for some people, so very upsetting it makes them ill. As Louise puts it in n excellent post which explains the benefits of Trigger Warnings at greater length than I have:

All trigger warnings do is acknowledge that there are different sorts of horror, and they're not all measurable by things like age. If a record label is going to warn me that Eminem will use a swear word, why not warn me that he's going to depict a rape scene? If Facebook is going to protect people from breastfeeding images in case we find those offensive, surely they could warn us if we're about to click on a page with vivid rape stories, in case that makes us unwell?

And for this very reason, I'm inclined to drop the Trigger Warning and just warn people of all potentially upsetting subject matter in one go. It's not like people vulnerable to triggers are inclined to skip disclaimers if it isn't labelled with a mental health term. Meanwhile, who isn't upset by reading about child abuse, domestic violence, eating disorders, self harm or suicide? What kind of person doesn't feel at least deeply uncomfortable when they hear a rape joke?

You don't have to belong to the unhappy club of experience to find that stuff far more challenging than two men kissing or whatever's the latest thing to attract the attention of actual censors. We should be working towards a point where intimate violence is assumed to be a sensitive subject for everyone, not just survivors. If it was, maybe there'd be less of it about.

Otherwise, the word trigger offers power, and inevitably people will abuse that. One recent example was during a discussion I was reading where a straight cis woman stated that she found homophobic slurs "really triggering" and so it was impossible that any of those words could be reclaimed. It may be that she had experienced trauma involving that language (almost all victims of playground bullying are subject to those slurs), but I suspect she meant she found them discomforting and couldn't imagine a time when she wouldn't cringe to hear words like queer or dyke or whatever. However, the problem with homophobic slurs isn't that, for some people, they are associated with massive trauma (which they certainly are). The problem is that homophobic slurs are part of, and help to uphold, a massive social injustice.

Yet the minute someone effectively tells you that language is making them ill, you've kind of got to stop talking about it. Which is fine if you're talking with your friends and you can move swiftly on to this year's Eurovision line-up, but not so much in a public debate.

So, by now, you'll be wanting my person criteria for the perfect Trigger Warning (You're not? Oh well).

It isn't there at all if the subject matter is in the title, or in the first few sentences of the piece. Few news items would need Trigger Warnings because headline-writers tend to get to the point (or at least the most extreme point).
It doesn't say "Trigger Warning". It says "Disclaimer" or "Warning" or simply says "Contains discussion of..." at the top of the post or article.
It sums up the potentially problematic material in as few words as possible, but makes it clear.

I don't think many writers I read regularly gets this too far wrong - the bad examples, or the ones that feel patronising or manipulative tend to be found in places I visit once and don't return to. However, I think Aliquant sets a particularly good example, because she writes a lot about mental illness, self-harm and the medical abuse of people with self-inflicted injury. Yet you always know where she's heading from the title or the first few lines. She occasionally uses warnings, but in the two examples I can remember, she pitched them just right.

* I don't think anyone is capable of crossing the line when talking about their own trauma.

Monday, February 27, 2012

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.