Crazy People Think Black People Can Get Away with Murder

Ah, Right Wing Watch. The staff there have the unenviable job of tracking everything that the crazy wingnut far-right of America say or do. Mostly so that there's a record of every incitement to violence, or mental conspiracy theory, or boycott, or outright racism.

Falling into the last of those categories is Brian Tashman's post Horowitz: Obama 'Would Never Be President if He Weren't Black'. Yes, there are the obvious statements of unremitting hatred, the lies and the conspiracies in there - go read for yourself - but one comment of Horowitz's did catch my eye [emphasis mine]:

Cornel West is just symbolic of the corruption of our culture and not unlike Obama who would never be president if he weren’t black, no white person with his resume and his thoughts and curious background and radicalism would ever have been nominated, let alone elected president if he weren’t black. So Cornel West is an empty suit who has twenty honorary degrees and he’s taught at all these prestigious universities but is basically an airhead, most people who’ve seen him on TV they’ve noticed. Part of the racism of our society is if you’re black you can get away with murder.

If you were looking for an explanation for why he hasn't been indicted yet over those drone strikes in Pakistan...

Abortion and Disability

(h/t @stfumisogynists)

The Telegraph today published a letter from anti-choice groups which argued that in the wake of the Paralympics, abortion laws should be tightened and the freedom of people to decide the fates of their own bodies reduced.

Putting aside the allegation (which I haven't personally checked) that not a single signatory to the letter was from an actual, y'know, group representing disabled people, it seems pretty clear that the religious are happy to shoe-horn anything into their rhetorics if they think it will advance their cause.

But pro-choicers, such as myself, need to be careful on this topic ourselves. Talking about this issue can very easily fall onto the question over whether people should or should not get abortions, rather than whether they can or cannot. Anybody saying that living with a disabled child is too stressful for parents (and hence that pregnant women should abort foetuses which would be) is just as bigoted as denying abortion rights to women on the grounds of your own low redefinition of life.

s. e. Smith, a month ago, hit this on the head - far better than I ever could. It's so easy not to be a total arsehole. Living with the crazy idea that other people are actually fucking people, rather than pawns in your own political narrative, is one that comes so easily when you actually give it a try.

The question is not whether people should abort a foetus which presents symptoms of future disability, but whether people have the right to choose to abort, for their own reasons, or not abort, equally for their own reasons. Take it away s. e. Smith:

In a world where people, yes, celebrate and honour disability, our lives would be valuable and we would  be considered on equal footing as nondisabled people. And in that world, people wouldn’t talk about disability in terms like ‘suffering’ and say that parents have a moral obligation to abort to ‘avoid inflicting suffering.’ They’d say that all parents have the right to make decisions about what happens inside their own bodies, on the basis of as much information as possible, and those decisions are private and not subject to public discussion and judgment.

Ken Ham, so near and yet so so so far

Ken Ham sometimes manages to cut so close to the truth it almost hurts. Today is one of those days. If you haven't heard of Ken, he's the homophobic, woman-hating and, oh, yeah, young-earth creationist head of Answers in Genesis ministries. AiG are, for want of a better word, the leading young-earth creationist group - their Creation Museum (presumably) has visitors, and their website looks like a mongrel cross between Scientific American and Watchtower, the Jehovah's Witness periodical. The Ark Park, a proposed Kentucky amusement park which will combine all the fun of an inundation-themed day out with a hefty dose of biblical literalism, is going to be built just as soon as they can find enough morons to fund the thing. Or, failing that, Republicans.

So, it's not really possible for a person to be more openly wrong about the origins of the earth and life on it. Evolution? Didn't happen, too difficult. Earth more then 7,000 years old? A scientific conspiracy to destroy faith in the bible. Dinosaurs? Lived in the garden of Eden.

But there is one fact on which he and I agree. His ideas about the Bible make more sense than liberal Christians'. Don't get me wrong, wooly-minded accommodationist Episcopalians are my natural political ally within that wide, wide range of beliefs that is Christianity. But I can't help feeling that ken Ham has a point when it comes to reading the Bible:

In the sermon, the pastor challenges the accepted definition of inerrancy, claiming that the Bible has no original autographs.

There is no such thing as an original autograph of the Scripture, and to claim such a manuscript is the basis for the inerrancy is intellectually dishonest.

While it is true that we do not possess the original manuscripts today, Kremer is arguing that they never existed. He even goes so far as to claim that “the Bible is not a history book,” “the Bible is not a philosophy book,” and “the Bible is not a science book.” With all those caveats, what exactly can we trust in the Bible? More importantly, how can we trust all that it has to say about Jesus Christ? Well, that’s an exception, says Pastor Kremer.

When you come to talking about the character of God, the Bible is indeed inerrant. When you’re talking about the revelation of God in Christ, we can trust that information with perfect confidence.

My question to Dr. Kremer is this—“Who decided you can trust this section but not the rest? On what basis did you determine this? Or is it just your fallible human opinion?”

And here it is: a legitimate question. The Bible is a book filled with disgusting morality, with obvious scientific inaccuracies and with the odd bit of good stuff. How can we honestly reject the shit stuff while accepting the good stuff on the strength of the Bible alone? We can't. To effectively decide what is and is not moral in the Bible, we need another source of information. We need something else to tell us what is good and what is not. And since godless bastards like me have a perfectly good moral compass (gays: great, women: great, people of colour: great, everybody else: also great), I might go so far as to suggest that Biblical accommodationists are imprinting their own morals upon the Bible and claiming their ideas are divinely inspired.

At least old Kenny is honest, and submits all of his judgement to some random book plucked out of history rather than just the bits he happens to agree with. After all:

After all, if we take secularist Richard Dawkins’s views of evolution and millions of years to the Bible, why not take his views that reject the Resurrection and Virgin Birth and reinterpret the Bible too?

Quite.

Either the Bible is inerrant truth, or it isn't. If it is, then there should be no real evidence against its account of history. If it is, then every tenet of the Bible must surely fall under scrutiny. That's not to say that every passage is wrong, just that we should no longer consider any of it 'sacred' and beyond real criticism.

Ken Ham is so close to the truth - if we reject literalism, we have so many good reasons to reject the whole thing. He just fails to reject literalism.

Open Letter to Barclay's

Hi Barclay's,

I know this is going to sound petty. I know that you've probably had tons of letters about the LIBOR scandal, and your PR team are trying to find a way to minimise the damage from that little snafu. And if I'm honest, I know this is petty too. I know there's all the problems with the rape culture in Western society. I know there are people homeless because banks like yourselves collateralised debt to obscure how risky your investments really were. And yes, I am aware that Zach from One Direction has quit Twitter and there are now hundreds of young teenagers weeping softly into their pillow just like I did when PJ and Duncan left Byker Grove.

But this issue has been sticking in my craw for too many years to remain silent. No longer will I allow this to silently continue without opposition: Why are you incentivising people to unnecessarily use up paper? Why, when the rest of the world is try to reduce their environmental footprint, are you encouraging people to waste resources?

Let me make my complaint clear. Actually, let me compare you with a competitor. I bank with the Cooperative. When I happen to pass through Narnia, where my nearest branch is located, I can withdraw money from a Coop cash machine.

Would I like an advice slip with my cash? "We take environment seriously" says the machine, "are you sure you need a receipt?" If I were to select yes (I never do), I'm confident the machine might get a bit annoyed at me. "Really?" I expect it to ask, "You had a receipt yesterday. Do you really want to have a hand in destroying the world?"

No, ATM, I'm sorry, I don't, but I need to know my balance. "Well excuuuuse me," replies the ATM, rolling its eyes, "I guess you were too stupid to see the 'Check Balance' button when you withdrew your cash. Maybe, once you know how much money you have, you'd like to murder a badger. Or cause an oil spill by encouraging poor safety regulation. YOU BASTARD! THE DEATH OF THE ENVIRONMENT IS ON YOUR HEAD! Have you seen the competitive interest rates on a Coop Savings Account?"

The point is that the Coop really want you to use their online banking system. And really don't want you to waste paper.  As you may be able to guess, anonymous Barclay's employee, I'm about to launch a comparison bomb at you.

Yesterday, like a selection of previous days in the last four years, I withdrew cash from a Barclay's ATM (sorry, Hole in the Wall™). I would have used a Coop, but this was London so I was about 10 miles away from the nearest branch. I withdrew the big-spending £20 I needed without issue, but before I could receive my money I was asked the following question:

"Would you like an advice slip? Check the reverse to see if you've won a pair of Premier League tickets!"

I get it. You sponsored a bunch of overpaid borderline psychopaths to run around doing not very much at all. Presumably the execs missed the obvious irony in that gesture as they took their 7-figure bonuses. And now you have more Premier League tickets than you know what to do with. Bravo for giving them away.

But surely there must be a way to do that without getting football fans to use up otherwise unnecessary receipt paper. I know there are only so many executive days out you guys can take off before the economy gets ignored so hard it actually starts to improve, but why not do an independent goal of the month competition online, with real prizes like match of the day used to?

Hell, why not donate them to the hard working volunteers who try desperately hard to keep our kids playing sport instead of playing truant? Or throw them off of a balcony over Oxford Street and enjoy the spectacle of the proletariat duking it out over yourhand outs. Maybe that one's more up your street.

But please. Please, please, please stop wasting paper like you don't give a fuck. And while you're at it, if you wouldn't mind not fucking the public for the financial gain of just a few, even just for a month or two, I think we'd all appreciate it.

Yours sincerely,

Tim Ballantine

PS. I think there's a joke about a Coop ATM and a Barclay's ATM (sorry, Hole in the Wall™) walking down the street. Maybe the Barclay's ATM (excuse me, Hole in the Wall™) litters and then the Coop ATM goes mental and murders the Barclay's ATM (ugh, did it again, should be Hole in the Wall™) with a rusty switchblade.

I don't know, maybe you guys can be funnier with it than me. After all it was your ex-CEO who said that the banks should stop apologising for the crisis after conspicuously never apologising in the first place; presumably you guys already understand humour.

Examiners ask Stupid Question in GCSEs

But politicians fail to understand why.

The Telegraph article Pupils asked 'why do some people hate Jews?' in GCSE exam highlights a huge mistake on the part of AQA. Asking such a politically, racially and religulously charged question of a fair few thousand 16 year olds is clearly in poor taste. It's in poor taste for many reasons, not least of which at least a few of the kids answering the question will already hate Jews themselves and might unsurprisingly give some pretty hateful answers.

An answer along the lines of "Because they run a secret cabal which rules the Earth on behalf of their shape-changing alien lizard overlords" is not especially enlightened, but is pretty damned enlightening for anyone who might read it. Additionally, there is a fair amount of scope for people who would feel pretty offended to have to explain, however briefly why some people hate one another for no good reason. For some, it's okay, and for others not so much.

So the really dumb part is not necessarily the question (which I'll get to later), but the fact that 16 year olds are being essentially forced to answer it. If you're going to require participation in an exam, probably the best thing to do is to leave questions which remain highly charged in the world of today out of it.

But, predictably, Michael Gove and I don't see eye-to-eye:

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, branded the move “insensitive”.

He told The Jewish Chronicle: “To suggest that anti-Semitism can ever be explained, rather than condemned, is insensitive and, frankly, bizarre. AQA needs to explain how and why this question was included in an exam paper.”

"Insensitive" is indeed the word that describes the actions of AQA, but our agreement stops there. In fact Michael Gove's second paragraph is kind of inexplicable. The only way I can make any sense of it is to assume that he can't tell the difference between the words "explain" and "justify". For example, the text of the exam question is:

Explain, briefly, why some people are prejudiced against Jews.

When what I think Michael Gove read was:

Justify, briefly, why some people are prejudiced against Jews.

Now, the difference between these two is crucial. The former is asking for the real reasons why people think something which is very very bad to think. The second is asking people to support the prejudice itself. Michael Gove's statement applies well to the latter question, but not so much to the former. Both questions, as I've already said, are not really appropriate for an exam question, but his statement is not just wrong when it comes to this discussion among adults, it's blatantly counter-productive.

For example, were I a world-reknowned social and political scientist (I am not), and I wrote a paper with the following abstract (I have not), I would be perfectly justified in suggesting that anti-Semitism can be explained: 

An explanation into the motivations of anti-Semitic belief. The following paper, using interviews and polling data from the US population, investigates the fundamental vehicles for the inheritance of anti-Semitic beliefs. In modern society, open anti-Semitism justifiably has pariah status, and yet many continue to openly profess such beliefs. This paper concludes that a combinations of religious belief and political motivaton of group leaders often act as catalysts for such beliefs, and that other group members undergo conformative biases in order to fit in with their group. Once such a belief is expressed openly, the very nature of the belief encourages its holders to retreat to enclaves of anti-Semitic communities, causing groups to become even more closely knit and exacerbating the in-group/out-group hostilities which often arise.

The paper further concludes that greater integration, particularly during primary and secondary levels of schooling would act as a powerful factor in reducing the incidence of such beliefs as they cross such in-group/out-group lines and allow children the capability to see people from different backgrounds.

The point is that explaining a belief is a good thing, even if the belief itself is unjustifiable - understanding why people become anti-Semitic would help us learn how to improve things. We can hope people with stupid beliefs change, but the only thing each of us truly have the power to control is our own actions, and searching for explanations for why other people behave abominably informs us on the best steps we can personally take to reduce such behaviour.

Compare and contrast, for example, the reactions to the London riots last year. Gove, and the rest of the Tories, were quick to dismiss all who took part as part of a feral criminal underclass who can't be saved. Anyone who suggested that we investigate why they did it was met with scorn: "How dare you suggest it is our fault?" they would scoff.

Of course it's not our fault, responsibility for criminal behaviour lies with the criminal behaver. But once again: we are not trying to justify the actions of the rioters, only explain them. The riots began for a reason, and all governments have the power to do is change the way the government itself behaves. So the only questions we can ask following the riots is what the government can do differently to prevent more riots, and we can only do that by understanding why it happened in the first place.

IDS's Twisted Priorities

Ian "Dunkin'" Smith has made page 40 of today's Evening Standard with the news that he is trying desperately to save a greyhound racing track which is going to be shut down to make way for flats. In fact, not just any flats: a housing scheme on behalf of the council. True social housing it ain't, but it's much needed homes in the London area. Why, you might ask, is he supporting this?

He has written to Boris Johnson urging him to use mayoral powers to throw out a housing scheme on the grounds that the stadium and its famous neon sign are a vital part of the nation’s cultural fabric.“The track is listed not only due to the nature of its architecture but also due to its use and the importance of this both locally and more widely,” argued the MP and former Conservative leader. “Perhaps most importantly, the vast majority of my constituents and local residents are passionately opposed to the scheme and want to see the return of greyhound racing.”

Oh, okay, that seems pretty well thought out and reasonable. Wait, WHAT? This is the man who said people in Merthyr should catch a bus to Cardiff to find work, when there were already 9 unemployed for every job in Cardiff at the time. The man who more recently pledged to take £10billion of people's disability benefits.

It's nice to see what Irritable Bowel Syndrome thinks are important in today's society: disabled people being able to afford the cost of living? Fuck 'em. Overbred, exploited greyhounds being forced to run around a track for a baying crowd of bloodthirsty idiots hoping desperately for a return to the days of bear-baiting? Priceless national treasure.

Are wealthy MPs at a disadvantage?

No.

This post from Left Foot Forward puts forward the idea that a study shows that voters find excessive riches distasteful. And then tries to spin it into a narrative of the rich being discriminated against in parliament.

I was just thinking that we don't have enough millionaires in Parliament. Maybe we should try to shut the poor out of politics to even the balance? Throw in a few unpaid internships to make sure that only the rich can afford to join the legislative class. We're overwhelmed by the poor in politics and I, for one, want to see an end to it. What happened to the days when our aristocracy had a divine right to treat us how they pleased? I'm pretty sure we were all happier then.

AN END! To the poor and the middle-class in politics! This is our mantra! Who wants elections these days anyway? What an absurdly excessive spending of public funds, when we could be passing on the savings as tax breaks to fracking companies.

Or maybe they should all just fuck right off. Left Foot Forward is supposed to be a blog of the left. The mainstream left make me sick.

The Trayvon Martin Shooting

Being here in the UK, some of you may have missed the Trayvon Martin furore. This would be because there's been essentially zero coverage of the whole thing. You'd be shocked at the date that the actual shooting occurred (26th of February) given that only now are we hearing about it.

Others have explained far better than I the facts of the case (here's a good starting point), but I wish to begin with a brief talk of the UK media's reaction.

None of the mainstream UK media covered the case until mass protests began.
The first BBC News TV article, as far as I can tell, was on the day of the protests. First, that proves that protests do work, and that protests have value beyond making lots of noise. I didn't see a newspaper article on the subject until the day after. Granted, I only read the Guardian, the Times and the free commuter papers, but surely at least one of these would cover it...

Every article is repeating the lie that Zimmerman was a neighbourhood watch volunteer.
Read James Fenton's article, the relevant BBC article on the subject. The truth is that Zimmerman wasn't a member of any neighbourhood watch scheme - he was a self-appointed neighbourhood watch volunteer. And he's made massive numbers of calls to 911 pointing out suspicious (i.e. black) characters. He was also carrying a weapon, which he's not supposed to do if he's in the neighbourhood watch, and he followed the guy. That's not just something neighbourhood watch officers aren't supposed to do, it's the thing he was explicitly told not to do by the 911 operator.

Zimmerman's actions have been condemned by the National Sheriffs' Association which sponsors the US's nationwide neighbourhood watch programme, a crime prevention scheme that allows local volunteers to patrol the streets. 

It said it had no record that the community involved was registered with the NSA programme, calling Zimmerman a "self-appointed neighbourhood watchman". 

“The alleged participant ignored everything the Neighborhood Watch Program stands for and it resulted in a young man losing his life. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family of Trayvon Martin during this terrible time,” said Aaron D Kennard, the NSA's executive director.

Bastard.


The far-right wing seem to think Obama's involvement made this falsely about race.
This is an America article which the far-right blogosphere in the UK is currently circulating. There's a couple of things in here which are just wrong, and I found it pretty instructional to understand them - it helps me understand the mindset of the far right a little better.

A Hispanic man shoots a black kid where no one knows the exact circumstances in which the shooting occurred and where we are likely never to know what happened. Instead of waiting for the facts, narratives have replaced truth and we have a full blown racial incident when it isn't even clear that race was a factor.

Again - this kid was armed and ready. With a bag of skittles and a drink. He was 17. He was alone. He was followed by a man with a track record of making 911 calls to police of other suspicious (once again, i.e. black) characters.

He was followed by a man who was carrying a 9mm handgun (or as I call it, a "magic death button"), and shot dead. He put up the hood of his hoodie because he was scared he was being stalked. We have that from a tape of him with his girlfriend.

How will he look if it comes out that the shooter was justified in defending himself?

We know better - besides, what could he possibly be defending himself from - are the red ones in a Skittles packet particularly dangerous? Obama has weighed in because of the massive outcry that justice has not been done. Nobody has even tried. Obama came down on the correct side, because a man has shot an unarmed child, and has not even been investigated by the police. This is sick. This is exactly the institutionalised racism that we in the UK think has gone away now we've convicted Stephen Lawrence's killers.

It has not.

Football, Racism and Tragedy

The tragedy of Fabrice Muamba, which is now thankfully turning out to be far less of a tragedy that it could have been, has brought some fantastic aspects of football, and sport in general into light. I know a lot of people who dislike sport, "on principle", and it kind of makes me sad to know that it takes an in-game heart attack for the great parts of sport to appear in the professional version of the most popular game in the world.

1. Sport brings people together.
   It kind of goes without saying, at least within teams. A team of players come together to perform their best and push themselves to their limits. But it also brings spectators together: anyone who's ever stood in the stands will know how that works.
   But sport does more than that. At the amateur level, it's a fantastic way of meeting people, of staying fit, keeping healthy, and of developing a better appreciation of other people. Sport is inherently non-partisan, there's no choice who might be in your league, and for most amateur players it's in your best interests to get on with your team mates and opponents alike.
2. Sport is a true meritocracy.
   This isn't always true. At a coaching level the old tropes about institutionalised racism still abound, and of the major sports only American football has done something about it, with brilliant and beautiful consequences. But players earn their salary by performing, not by the colour of their skin. And that's good.
   Fabrice Muamba is a perfect case in point. He entered the country at eleven without speaking a word of English, and was a hero at Bolton long before his name became synonymous with Saturday's incident. He's only ever played for English national sides, having identified as English since the day he arrived here. He represents everything immigration is supposed to be about - cultures coming together and melding into one, until the only national distinction is geographical, not cultural.
3. Sport draws out the best in people.
   One need only look at the #prayformuamba hash tag to see people, often traditionally rivals, come together. The message is clear: the man, a life, a livelihood, is more important than the game. It's an admirable message, and one I can only wholeheartedly support. It is this humility that allows sport to be so great, a combination of high drama, and the knowledge that the result is less important than the game itself.

But for each of these highs, the Muamba case reminds me of all of the things we still need to do. All of the improvements we still need to make. All of the ways in which my lofted ideals fall short in reality:

1. Sport pulls people apart.
   How, in sport, can there still be Old Firm hatred in the city of Glasgow? Rivalry is fantastic, and caring about the result is great, but violence? I have seen internet commenters saying the most hateful things, simply because the topic in question concerns a rival club. I'm a Liverpool fan, and when they aren't playing us, I back Everton: they're a great side with a manager who ensures they always punch above their weight.
2. Sport is not a meritocracy.
   Name one openly gay footballer. I'll give you a moment.
   
   Okay, time's up. Anton Hysen. Heard of him? Probably not, he's in the fourth division of Swedish professional football. He is the only openly gay footballer in professional football. And there's no reason why he should be the only one beyond an institutionalised and, frankly, medieval homophobia which still holds the game in thrall. We still have a long way to go.
   Outside of football, the very papers who are celebrating Muamba (rightly) as a beacon of British pride, would be treating him as the worst kind of scum. After all, he arrived in England aged 11 with no English whatsoever. The Mail, the Express, the Sun; all of these would be livid at the idea he were even able to enter the country had he not developed a talent worth tens of thousands of pounds a week.
3. Sport draws out the worst in people
   Luis Suarez, John Terry, Salman Butt, to name a few. Institutionalised hatred: see points 1 and 2 above.

The goal is there, we just have to reach it. I look forward to a day when sport can be competitive without being damaging, and passionate without being hateful.

Football and the Cheating Problem

Weirdly, I'm actually about to come out in favour of cheating, of a sort. I've just finished reading an article in the  sport section of the usually execrable Evening Standard. It got me thinking about Suarez, and his infamous handball against Ghana in the 2010 World Cup quarters:

I'll get on to why I don't see much wrong with what he did in a second. But first I'm going to briefly explain a couple of the rules of basketball which will hopefully illuminate my point.

In basketball, the rules on what constitutes a foul are very strict - other actions are considered violations rather than fouls and so do not count towards this total. To give a very common foul in basketball, we have the shooting foul: make contact with a player's arm while he shoots and you have fouled him. The penalty is free throws and an extra foul to your tally.

The definition is deliberately specific and makes no mention of severity - merely to touch a player's arms is (technically) a foul. It makes calls far more black and white than in football. A referee in basketball can get a call wrong, and replays may be inconclusive as to whether a foul occurred, but we never see the absurd example in football where three experienced pundits with all of the necessary data to make a decision still unable to come to a consensus.

The law in international football is extraordinarily vague - a foul is a 'careless' tackle. What the fuck does careless mean? If I spill me tea while making a tackle is it an infringement?

One big consequence of basketball's rules on fouling is that of the deliberate fouls - they occur all the time. Often there is a tactical advantage to committing a foul, but the important thing to note is that these infringements are considered a part of the game. If a player deliberately fouls, the rules are structured in such a way as to allow him to do it safely.

My point is that when a player fouls, and accepts the consequences of those actions, he is not breaking the rules but playing the game entirely within them - just as putting the ball out of bounds results in losing possession to the other team, fouling gives the other team free throws.

Okay: back to Suarez. I argue that Suarez did not subvert the rules of football. In fact, not a single thing occurred within that entire video which is not explicitly laid out in the rules of football. Nobody got hurt, and the rules of the game were followed to a tee. Again, just as it is 'against the rules' for the ball to leave the field, it is against the rules for Suarez to handball on the goal line; each action has consequences which benefit the other team.

Suarez felt that handballing on the goal line was an action worth the consequences and it turned out to be. I have no problem with that at all, although his attitude was bit arsey. 

Contrast and compare Gareth Bale and the diving issue. The question is: is this cheating? Absolutely. A deliberate foul should make no attempt to subvert the rules - it plays entirely within them. The question of cheating lies in the question "Would a magical referee armed with a Palantir, or a video replay, call the action differently?" And with diving, the answer is absolutely yes. Simulation uses the imperfection of referees to mock the rules of the game itself.

A fuller post on diving, and eventually a comparison with capital markets and financial responsibility, will follow.

Why Feminism is a good thing for men, too

I was heading out to the London Dungeons with my girlfriend last Sunday. We had a lot of fun and the actors were mostly very good, although for some it's not too hard to see why they're not West End stars yet. There were a few moments which were pretty good for making you jump, but all was child friendly and the dialogue was occasionally inspired.

However, the thing which has stuck with me was a tube poster - an advert for SurvivorsUK, a charity helping victims of sexual assault and professionals who work with victims of sexual assault. All very admirable, and always worthy of praise and support. What made this stand out against other charities is that SurvivorsUK, as you will already know if you have clicked on the above links, is a charity for male victims of abuse.

It is a singularly sorry state of affairs that support for male victims of abuse is so rare that I feel it worthy of special comment. But it is. This almost sounds like I'm about to turn this blog post in to a heavy-handed, misogynistic "what about teh menz!!1!" type rant and that the title of this post is merely an unsubtle bait-and-switch, but before you judge me, check out the poster itself:

Yes, this is aimed at the rugby-playing, beer-swilling "real men" who would, if given the opportunity, describe themselves as "beer chugging, banter loving, footie watching, womanising man - a LAD". It is aimed at the people who believe that getting raped, or admitting weakness, or showing emotion, or treating women like other human beings instead of walking, talking vaginas are somehow not proper men.

This is aimed at the men who feel the need to add "No homo" to the end of any internet comment which is in any way not entirely critical of another man. This is aimed at exactly the kind of men who oppose the feminist movement. It is aimed at them because misogyny is hurting them too.

About halfway through writing this post I noticed Jason Thibeault has a great post about this topic, which I recommend reading. His feeling is that the use of the phrase "real men" is reinforcing a harmful stereotype of men:

The “talking about it takes real strength” line does in fact undermine that toxic stoicism. But reinforcing the idea that there’s a Real Man archetype, and it involves being strong, is kind of terrible to those men who do not see themselves as strong enough.

And I agree with that point - but the ad is trying to reach a specific subset of men. And it's the one which has  already fallen for the real man party line. They make websites crowing about it. Before we can help people, we need to reach them. This is one small way of doing so, but it all fits in with the larger idea of feminism.

I am a feminist because I wholeheartedly support equality for women. But (somewhat more selfishly) I am a feminist because a world without feminism is one with gender roles such as these for men, which ultimately are unbelievably harmful. How many men are harmed by this? According to SurvivorsUK's own website:

About 3% of men — or 1 in 33 — have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime.  (National Institute of Justice & Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. Prevalence, Incidence and Consequences of Violence Against Women Survey. 1998)

So quite a lot then, and if these go unreported because of a rape culture in which only women who dress like sluts get raped, then our society is much the poorer.

Animal Rights

It's a fraught issue, I think... To be honest, I only started giving the animal rights thing a lot of thought after my little sister came to visit. She's not a deer or anything, it's that she's just gone vegan and joined some animal rights group at her uni (I think it's the ALF [although, now I've finished this piece, I've found out that I'm actually wrong on that front: it's a small Kent-based group who're a bit less crazy-nuts bonkers]).

You see, as an argumentative and scientific-minded sort, I found something to disagree with on my sister's assertions that all creatures have a right to exist and [something something something...]. I stopped listening after a while. But my sister definitely got me thinking, so I suppose she succeeded in at least one sense. Since I'm basically a geek, my curiosity got the better of me, and lo and behold I found myself reading animal rights law at 2am on a work night. After a little research, here's what I found:

The Law as it Stands

The first thing to note is that the Animal Rights legislature in Britain is actually fairly up to date. The last major paper, the Animal Welfare Act, was introduced in 2006 (2008 in Scotland, with a few changes). Its remit is for the care of domesticated and farm animals, and is actually pretty strict. What it doesn't cover is laws on humane slaughter for meat, minimum space requirements for kept animals or using animals in scientific procedures or experiments.