Last night's dream - the refugee camp

If it seems odd that I'm posting an article called "Last night's dream" as we come towards bedtime for me, then you're not wrong. I actually meant to post this first thing on waking but I forgot bout it due to various distractions until now.

It won't take long, but I wonder if anyone has any idea what this dream means.

Put simply, in the dream I was part of an aid relief organisation providing food for refugees in Africa somewhere. It was odd, because I could hear the news report voiceover while I moved around the canteen tent. Sometimes it wasn't a voiceover. Sometimes someone was explaining the situation to me; sometimes I was explaining it to someone else. Maybe I was explaining it to the news reporter? As dreams are, it all seemed fairly logical at the time that this voiceover should be there all the time, sometimes delivered by me and sometimes by a disembodied voice and sometimes by a colleague. Unusually for me, I don't recall it being a "lucid dream": I don't recall being aware it was a dream and I don't recall being in control of anything in it.

The voiceover and images went something like this: I saw starving women and children (not so many men; maybe they were refugees of a war in which the men were still fighting - this wasn't explained at any point). They had food, but it was not very suitable: spicy food, or cold baked beans. Even food that was more suitable, they did not eat much but left their plates with lots of food on them, and had to be encouraged to eat. The voiceover explained as these images developed:

They think they will be punished for eating it. They have been told by the Government forces that all food is for the Government, not for them. We have to keep telling them that they are safe here and can eat all they want.

The food is horribly inappropriate, but it is all that the people back home are willing to send. The stuff they don't want any more. And it is better than nothing, so we give it to them anyway.

The dream was, of course, by this point heartwrenching.

I continued working, encouraging people in the food tent to eat their food, serving them, making sure everyone got enough for the basic minimum daily requirements. I saw their fearful eyes, just like I've seen on so many news programmes from drought-stricken, war-stricken, flood-stricken areas. (God, it's sad that I have so many comparisons to make).

Then, there was a baby. In the dream, I knew that she had come into the refugee camp hopelessly malnourished, weak, barely able to move. And she was moving. She was sat on the bench cuddled against her mother's side. Mother may have been scared to eat the food (I had to encourage her, as with so many other refugees). But the baby wasn't scared to eat: she didn't understand about Government threats. But, instead, for the very first time she was reaching for the plastic spoon that mother and I had used to feed her (for some reason, I remember so clearly that the spoon was blue). And as I watched the baby, she managed to grab the spoon, and by her own efforts (unimaginable when she had come into the camp a few weeks earlier) managed to scoop up a baked bean and conveyed it to her own mouth, and she fed herself. It seemed like such a small thing, but in that moment there was such a sense of elation, of hope, of triumph even - that small success, that small developmental step by the little baby girl, meant so much. Just before the dream ended, I looked into the eyes of the mother and saw there exactly the same wonderful emotions as I had felt at witnessing that moment.

Then I woke up, with that elation fresh in my mind.

For all the tragic circumstances that I dreamed there, a friend told me that the emotions are the important part of understanding dreams. So, I have to see it as a positive dream, because of the way it ended. But what it means, what the hope and triumph are about, I have no idea. And why, oh why, a blue plastic spoon?

Channel 4's "How Racist Are You?"

Presented by Krishnan Guru-Murthy, this programme showed footage of an event in which Channel 4 invited British volunteers to participate in Jane Elliott's famous "blue eyes/brown eyes" exercise, which may be more familiar to USAian readers than to British folks. The idea was first introduced to me as a thought-experiment by one of the best teachers I ever had, in a Theology A-level class about Nazism and resistance (or lack thereof) to the racism and genocide. She explained: "Imagine if I started by treating all he blue-eyed people here differently. Worse. Then eventually I took them away. Then if anyone asked where they were, I'd say 'Well, if you ask again, you can join them!'"

Jane Elliott actually conducted an experiment like this, the first one with a class of school kids after Martin Luther King was assassinated. She has, in different contexts and different countries, been conducting the exercise ever since.

I took a few notes as I watched the programme, but really there isn't much to say about it: in the discussions that ensued, Elliott seemed to cover all the key "Racism 101" issues that I recognised from reading progressive bloggers these past few years: the nature of privilege, the issue of "racism=prejudice+power", and so on. As a primer in these issues I thought it was probably a very good programme for people to watch.

What was shocking about it though, was just how heavily entrenched in British white folks, that sense of privilege is. And just how resistant even the brown-eyed whtie folks were to seeing the microcosm of race be examined this way. In clips shown from the exercise conducted in other countries, the privileged white folks placed in the non-privileged blue-eye group eventually caved in, buckled under the pressure provided from Elliott (in her self-appointed role as "The Bitch") and from the PoC in the privileged brown-eye camp. That never really happened to the white folks in the British exercise, and the reason was because they were so heavily imbued with a sense of entitlement that they would not listen to anything about the exercise. This was most clearly evidenced in their attempts to deny racism even exists (and refusal to listen to refutations of their claims).

The most shocking of these claims was, in a way, its own refutation: one white man in the blue-eye section came out with the following remark directed at a Black woman: "I can't even say gollywog any more, and I know it's not offensive to you."

I'm glad I have brown eyes. God knows, I would have hated in any way to be associated with that remark, but it's possible that in that situation I would not have responded if I had been a blue-eye, because oppressed groups (even if it's just for a couple of hours, for an exercise) stick together. If I'd been there as a brown-eye, God knows I would not have held back my rage at him.

One of the most vocal blue-eye Whites was a woman, I'd guess in her 50s, who is a school teacher. If she's the sort of person teaching our kids then no wonder racism is alive and well. When it was pointed out to her that stop-and-search powers are used overwhelmingly against Black people more than White people (eight times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police if you're a Black lad) she had the nerve to say, "oh, you're just coming out with statistics, I doesn't mean anything". When POC explained about what it felt like to grow up in a racist society with skin that isn't white, she claimed that it was no different from her own petty conformities to society. She summed up her opinion with, "I don't think we are in denial, I think you want us to be in denial."

For me, personally, this was a massive wake-up call. I knew racism existed in this country. But I felt that it was far less deeply rooted than in some places. That belief has been completely destroyed - I've seen what the White people of Britain are really like, and we are hideous.

The question remains: could the exercise have been run differently, and in a more effective way. A way that didn't allow what amounted to sabotage (not just by the ultra-privileged Whites in the blue-eye camp, but by some of the White folks in the brown-eye group as well). The observers with Guru-Murthy commented that racism isn't as overt in this country, but more subtle (though just as damaging and hurtful). It occurred to me that maybe a different approach would have been to arrange it so the blue-eyes end up sitting at the back of the class. They are never called upon to speak, if they ask why it's "because I know you don't really know the answers", and so on. If they try to speak anyway they're told not to be "shrill" or "angry-sounding" or "rude". But they're still told they're equal members of the class at other times. The discussion could very well be about the same "Racism 101", and of course the POC would be able to give stronger, better answers (since it's their lived experience). Elliott's set-up was very confrontational (the blue-eyes were set in the middle, flanked by aggressively positioned brown-eyes). To me this actually served to make the blue-eyes the centre of attention. One of the most powerful ways in which oppression works is to make the oppressed into "the other", and marginalised. This is certainly what happens with British racism and I think maybe simulating that better might have helped to get the message through more strongly to the ultra-privileged members of the blue-eye group.

The last thing I want to mention is Guru-Murthy's closing interview with Elliott. As a respected news presenter, he is used to interviewing and is used to being respected by his interviewees (they might get upset, might storm out, but they don't fight back very often). Elliott set out to teach him the same lessons she'd been teaching everyone else, in the same forceful manner. Now, Elliott looks White to me. Guru-Murthy is Indian. I will say, though, that Guru-Murthy was effectively playing the devil's advocate role to elucidate more clearly what Elliott was teaching (at least, that's the way she used him); it did make for some final very forceful points for the viewer at home to consider.

Up the commune: Robert Townsend and communism

This is a further rebuttal of some of the arguments on the political/economic philosophy threads at Ren's. It's quite likely to annoy Roy Kay, but that's not deliberate, and maybe if he reads this he'll see where I'm coming from more clearly and be less annoyed.

If I were to point to any 20th Century writer/thinker to outline how I thought a communist society would look, and perhaps even how it could be achieved, then I would turn not to any of the famous left-wing thinkers (and I'd be more likely to advocate burning rather than reading the famous works of Mao Tse Tung or Stalin or any of the leaders of so-called communist states).

I would, instead, turn to a successful businessman in the Capitalist West: Robert Townsend, and his book "Up The Organisation" (or, better, the later, extended version called "Further Up The Organisation").

Townsend was an advocate of a concept called "Theory Y" management, which had been developed by someone called Douglas McGregor, who was a management professor in the USA. The ideas that McGregor developed, Townsend put into practice and his practical experience with them is what makes "Up The Organisation" so useful. Townsend's work (as outlined in the wikipedia article linked above) is tried and tested, and proved to work.

My aim here is to demonstrate that communism as Marx foresaw it, and as plenty of modern leftwing revolutionists would have it, is in many ways a version of Theory Y writ large - applied not just to an individual company but to the whole of society.

A common term in modern leftwing discussion about the future post-revolution society is the concept of "participatory democracy". Instead of the representational democracy of the modern West, in which a delegate is sent from a community of constituency to the Big House (Federal/State Congress in the USA, Parliament or regional councils in the UK, similar structures in other European countries and so on), in participatory democracy people's voices are heard directly as far as possible; decisions are made directly by those most affected by them.

In the introduction to the "Further Up The Organisation" edition, Townsend writes of his approach, "I call it participatory management, or Theory Y..."

Now, the interesting thing is that he continues thus:

...but whatever you call it - it's not a program to be inflicted on or sold to your people. It's a way of treating everyone from top to bottom as respected adults rather than children or criminals.

Again, this is how I would characterise communism as an idea. It's obviously not what happened in the USSR (or its satellite states after WW2), nor in the East Asian countries that called themselves communist (incidentally, Townsend does quote from North Korean military philosophy at one point - but we can safely say that the rest of their society didn't and doesn't match the description given in that passage). The Bolsheviks, and Stalin in particular as their progeny, never really got this "not a program to be inflicted..." part (and it's probably fair to say that a lot of modern leftwing campaigners don't really get the "not a program to be... sold to..." bit), and they ultimately ended right back at the "Theory X" structure to which Theory Y is supposed to be the antidote.

In some ways it would be easier to tell you to go out, buy "Up The Organisation" (in one form or another), and then I could just tell you which bits I think are not communism, rather than explain in detail how each bit is. For instance, Townsend is very negative about unions, but I think his perspective is coloured by the specifics of how US labour relations have developed and might not be relevant to the way unions work over here, so I think he is wrong in principle (even though he may be correct in the context of the specifics of what has happened in the US).

But the central philosophy is what matters, and what I want to discuss. How that matches with what Marx envisaged and what later Marxian thinkers and campaigners have developed.

Townsend, in his introduction (Memorandum - from: The author. To: The reader) suggests turning to the chapter on "People" first, and here we have Townsend's version of what Theory X and Theory Y are, and how participatory management worked for his companies.

We're in this mess because for the last 200 years we've been using the Catholic Church and Caesar's legions as our patterns for creating organisations. And until the last 40 or 50 years [writing in 1970, so he's counting back to maybe the 1920s] it made sense. The average churchgoer, soldier, and factory worker was uneducated and dependent on orders from above. And authority carried considerable weight because disobedience brought the death penalty or its equivalent.

Since Marx wrote about 100 years before Townsend, it's safe to say he would have disagreed that the pattern made sense even then (except that Marx himself was pretty fierce and probably would have created exactly the same kind of model). Certainly, though, if we look at Protestantism, and Quakerism and a number of other religious organisations, we can see that the model in terms of religion already had plenty of counter-examples or counter-theories going (not every Protestant denomination was devolutionist as Luther's challenge might have prompted, but Quakerism is about as devolved as it can get without dissolving into nothingness!) It makes sense to say that the average factory worker was kept uneducated etc.

Communism in that age was in large part about changing the condition of the working class to become more educated, and less fearful, and that was a big part of what trades unions did.

Moving on:

From the behaviour of people in these early industrial organisations we arrived at the following assumptions [the so-called "Theory X"], on which all big organisations are still operating:

1. People hate work.
2. They have to be driven and threatened with punishment to get them to work towards organisational objectives.
3. They like security, aren't ambitious, want to be told what to do, dislike responsibility.

Townsend presents the following evidence:

1. Office hours 9-to-5 for everybody except the fattest cats at the top. Just a giant cheap time clock. (Are we buying brains or hours?)
2. Unilateral promotions. For more money and a bigger title I'm expected to jump at the chance to move my family to New York City. I run away from the friends and a lifestyle in Denver that have made me and my family happy and effective. (Organisation comes first; individuals must sacrifice themselves to its demands.)
3. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent annually "communicating" with employees. The message always boils down to: "Work hard, obey orders. We'll take care of you." (That message is obsolete by 50 years, and it wasn't very promising then.)

Theory Y is based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which Townsend summarises thus:

These things we know about man:

1. He's a wanting animal.
2. His behavior is determined by unsatisfied needs that he wants to satisfy.
3. His needs form a value hierarchy that is internal, not external:
   1. body (I can't breathe)
   2. safety (How can I protect myself from...?
   3. social (I want to belong)
   4. ego (1. Gee, I'm terrific. 2. Aren't I? Yes.)
   5. development (Gee, I'm better than I was last year.)
   
   

I think it's worth noting that other theorists point to a conflict between "social" and "protection", in that in protecting ourselves, and in particular our sense of self, we draw away from the social "belonging" - because if you belong too closely, then you start to lose ego-identity and become vulnerable to rejection. Our social existence is always a compromise between these two desires - for "belonging" and for "individuality". No, I don't know how best to navigate that when constructing a social/political theory.

Man is totally motivated by each level in order - until that need is satisfied. If he hasn't slept in three days, he's totally motivated by a need for sleep. After he has slept, eaten, drunk, is safe, and has acceptance in a group, he is no longer motivated by those three levels of needs. (McGregor's examples: The only time you think of air is when you are deprived of it; man lives by bread alone when there is no bread.)

As noted on the Wikipedia article about Maslow's hierarchy, some critics question that the needs are hierarchical, and I personally don't believe that the needs are perfectly hierarchical in the sense that people never look to the next one up when dealing with the current one, and as hinted at with my note about social versus independent urges, sometimes I think two different levels can be antagonistic so it isn't a pure hierarchy. But in general, I think it's a very good way of looking at how people deal with needs and desires.

We know that these first three need levels are pretty well satisfied in America's work force today.

The footnote explains that "this book does not come to grips with the problem of America's [x] million poor: it deals with the [y] million psychiatric cases who do have jobs, whether they're poor or not." In 1970, Townsend gave "x" and "y" as 38 and 102 respectively (implying over 25% unemployment in the US back then - the official figures say it was just ~5%).

Furthermore, nowadays it would appear as though it is no longer true that America's workforce has the first three needs met; Morgan Spurlock's "30 Days" experiment of living for 1 month on the US minimum wage revealed that the basic need of safety could not even be assured on the current level of earnings that many working Americans have.

Leaving that point aside, let's assume that the basic wage in a company is in fact sufficient to assure the first 3 levels are met. What conclusions does Townsend suggest?

So we would expect man's organisations to be designed to feed the ego and development needs. But there's the whole problem. The result of our outmoded organisations is that we're still acting as is people were uneducated peasants. Much of the work done today would be more suitable for young children or mental defectives.

Okay, so the ableist language is rather unpleasant and unwelcome, and the fact that he was writing in 1970 doesn't go any distance at all to excusing it (even if it explains why he didn't see anything wrong with it). I guess the point is, the work is unfulfilling and unrewarding in itself, and there are few ways to make it so.

And look at the rewards we're offering our people today: higher wages, medical benefits [answers the first and second of the needs], vacations, pensions, profit sharing, gymnasiums, swimming pools, bowling and baseball teams. Not one can be enjoyed on the job. You've got to leave work, get sick, or retire first. No wonder people aren't having fun on the job.

Before going on to the conclusions that form Theory Y, let's look at that most famous of Marx quotations (no, not "I dont want to belong to any club that would accept me as a member"!) - "From each as according to their ability, to each as according to their need".

Obviously, in the Maslow hierarchy, the second part "to each as according to their needs", is all about answering the body and safety levels of need (levels 1 and 2). Those are the needs that enable a person to function so that they can participate in society (level 3). Marx suggests that we should ensure that everyone in society has their level 1 and 2 needs; that enables us to start answering level 3: "social needs". But what about "ego" and "development"? Well, that's what "From each as according to their ability" is all about. The formulation was from a relatively early piece of writing by Marx, and so the meaning was not fully worked out when he made it, but later references bear this out: Marx envisaged "ability" in its broadest possible sense. It is by performing to our ability that we can see ourselves as successful, and find ourselves confirmed and affirmed: in Townsend's words, 'Gee, I'm terrific. Aren't I? Yes, I am." What's more, if we perform to our abilities, such is human nature that we naturally find ourselves learning new things, acquiring new abilities - becoming better, in other words. So that we can say, "Gee, I'm better than I was last year."

The critics on the threads at Ren's made a mistake in saying that "From each... to each" means that the better workers are supporting the poorer ones directly. In essence, the Marx statement should be broken down into two independent segments:

1. To each as according to their need
2. From each as according to their ability

Although everyone giving of their ability means that it is possible for everyone to receive according to their need, in essence receiving according to one's need is a prerequisite for giving according to one's ability.

We can invert the statement thus:

1. I take from society according to my needs.
2. I give back to society according to my talents, skills and things I no longer need.

Now, perhaps, it is clearer how this feeds the individual's needs right up to the final level of development, encompassing all the other levels. If this sounds a bit hippie-ish, it is perhaps because Marx himself wrote some very hippie-like passages when he touched upon his vision of the post-revolutionary society.

Now let's look at what Theory Y has to say about how humans might be enabled to achieve their needs:

1/. People don't hate work. It's as natural as rest or play.

Well, that is practically lifted from Marx's own philosophy right there. Note, it is not saying that work is its own reward, but rather that given the choice most people would prefer to do some form of work than not (even if that work is relatively untaxing). The sorts of work people would prefer to do depends on the individual preferences, personality, physique, etc. But in general people who have absolutely no work to do are miserable. And it's not just to do with being poor.

2/. They don't have to be forced or threatened. If they commit themselves to mutual objectives, they'll drive themselves more efficiently than you can drive them.

"Mutual objectives", eh? Dang, if that doesn't sound like socialism!

3/. But they'll commit themselves only to the extent they can see ways of satisfying their ego and development needs (remember, the others are pretty well satisfied and are no longer prime drives).

This is to some extent something that gets dropped from discussions on the Left, as far as I have seen them go. But it's really what Marx was all about: building a society whereby everyone's ego and developmental needs are encouraged and met through participation in society as a whole, and in making society viable.

I suspect critics of communism (as it was envisaged, not the perversion created in the "Communist" East) often don't see how to meet their ego and developmental needs within the communal framework, and I think I will have to return to my "Ordinary Commies" series and write some more about how it works (I think I did touch on it in part, and in addressing the questions in comments, with those first two segments). For now, though, I still point to the "Theory Y" assumptions as being a practical demonstration that communism can work, and how it might be done.

Townsend continues:

All you have to do is look around you to see that big organisations are only getting people to use about 20% - the lower fifth - of their capacities. And the painful part is that God didn't design the human animal to function at 20%. At that pace it develops enough malfunctions to cause a permanent shortage of psychoanalysts and hospital beds.

Arguably, "stress" is what happens when people are worked too hard using the bottom 20% of their abilities, and given no opportunity to use the rest of their brains. It involves such things as responsibility without power, being placed in badly-designed structures, and things that either a) stop you doing what's needed to get things done or b) stop you using what you've got to get the job done better.

Townsend writes about the success of Theory Y at Avis:

In 1962 [when Townsend was hired as CEO for the company], after thirteen years, Avis had never made a profit. Three years later the company had grown internally (not by acquisitions) from $30M in sales to $75M in sales, and had made successive annual profits of $1M, $3M and $5M. If I had anything to do with this, I ascribe it all to my application of Theory Y. And a faltering, stumbling, groping, mistake-ridden application it was.

You want proof? I can't give it to you. but let me tell you a story. When I became head of Avis I was assured that no one at headquarters was any good, and that my first job was to start recruiting a whole new team. Three years later, Hal Geneen, the president of ITT (which had just acquired Avis), after meeting everybody and listening to them in action for a day, said, "I've never seen such depth of management; why, I've already spotted three chief executive officers!" You guessed it. Same people. I'd brought in only two new people, a lawyer and an accountant.

...

Why spend all that money and time on the selection of people when the people you've got are breaking down from under-use.

Seriously - imagine if society were run the same way. If everyone were given the opportunity and encouragement to make the very best of themselves that they can, without worrying about where the next meal is coming from or how to protect themselves from disaster. The GDP of the world would skyrocket!

Oh, and if this isn't enough to convince you that Townsend's approach is communism in microcosm, look at this final passage from the chapter on "People":

Get to know your people. What they do well, what they enjoy doing, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and what they want and need to get from their job. And then try to create an organisation around your people, not jam your people into those organisation-chart rectangles. Organisations work when they maximise the chance that each one, working with others, will get for growth in his job. You can't motivate people. That door is locked from the inside. You can create a climate in which most of your people will motivate themselves to help the company reach its objectives. Like it or not, the only practical act is to adopt participative-management assumptions and get going.

It isn't easy, but what you're really trying to do is come between a man and his family. You want him to enjoy his work so much he comes in on Saturday instead of playing golf or cutting the grass.

That, dear reader, is what Marx meant by "From each as according to their ability". And it is also as good an explanation of how that philosophy can work as I have ever seen.

People, I present to you: Robert Townsend, the greatest exponent of Communism the world has ever seen.

(I've more-or-less decided that there will be future posts on other specific sections of Townsend's work, also explaining what they have to do with communism, and how they address the issues raised by the posts over at Ren's, so please stay tuned)

Sorry, radfems, it really isn't...

A piece by someone calling herself "factcheckme" claims that "All porn is rape, all the time". When Ren made a simple rebuttal of the conclusions (well worth reading in its own right) I thought, "ho, hum - same-old-same-old, not getting involved with all that AGAIN for the umpteenth time, cos, like, I have better things to do with my time and energy" (e.g. I still have posts to do about communism, and about the Bible, and about fun things). Besides, Ren did a pretty good job on her own (as I said, well worth reading!). But then Renee @ Womanist Musings allowed factcheckme to put the same article as a guest post over there and since I really respect Renee, I could not really ignore the proddings at the back of my mind any longer. Now, I should point out here that Renee added an editor's note at the end that explains that she does not agree with all the points that FCM made (and flagging up that the focus on het porn is Not Cool), and that her aim is to provoke discussion (which, I guess, she has since I've been provoked to post about it!) so none of this is criticising Renee, whom (as I said) I respect.

So anyway, on with the dissection of FCM's "logic" and "objective analysis" of all things porn:

When analyzing the consent “problem,” straight-away, porn-consent and real-life consent are at odds. firstly, and problematically, in porn, consent is a non-issue. If its considered at all, its presumed. for the porn-consumer, the question of consent never even comes up: a woman’s very presence on film acts as her consent as far as he's concerned. But in real life, a woman’s mere voluntary presence does not equal her consent to anything except being there. And for the male porn-performer, the contractual nature of the transaction–and the industry–acts as the woman’s consent to whatever comes next. Except that, it doesn't.

Premise 1: "For the porn consumer, the question of consent never comes up: a woman's very presence on film acts as her consent as far as he's concerned".

There is one monumental flaw to this statement, and I'll give you a few moments to see if you can work out what it is.

...

No?

The flaw is this: a man (or woman, for that matter) watching porn is not engaged in any kind of sexual act with any of the performers on the screen. In that sense, consent really is a non-issue, because there is no interaction between the two. Alright, I know some weirdos believe that they actually know personally the characters in their favourite soap operas and the like, but seriously - you're saying what? That the porn performer must consent to have sex with the person watching the porn?

"And for the male porn-performer, the contractual nature of the transaction–and the industry–acts as the woman’s consent to whatever comes next."

The problem with this passage is the phrase "whatever comes next". Such a beautiful way to imply that the performer herself (or himself) has no idea what's going to happen! But of course, there is no "whatever comes next", there is a "negotiated scene carefully planned out by a director, a producer, a cameraman and the performers themselves".

Although porn presents the opposite picture, just because a woman initially says “yes” does not mean you get to do whatever the fuck you want to her. The “free-for-all” nature of even mainstream porn is especially problematic, when it escalates, always, to include acts that most people would not willingly participate in, such as gang-bangs, and “rage-in-the-cage” styled death-matches where the woman is presented as being “versus” the man.

Actually, I don't think porn does present a picture whereby "[if] a woman initially says “yes”, [it] mean[s] you get to do whatever the fuck you want to her." And the reason is because what a man sees on the screen when he watches most porn is a situation in which (to use FCM's words from later in the piece) "communications ... take the form either verbal cues (“yes”) or are evidenced by the woman’s enthusiastic engagement with her partner". What most mainstream porn looks like that I've seen is a woman getting as much or more pleasure from fucking as her male partner. And that goes even when it leads to the gangbang, rage-in-the-cage stuff. One might suggest that the fact that "most people would not willingly participate in" such things is precisely why watching women (or men) who do willingly participate in them is such a draw?

Because porn is not sex education, one never sees in porn what happens when one partner says "no" to something because that's not what porn is there for. It's like asking a James Bond film to have long, moving scenes where the families of the bad guys mourn at the graveside. You have different types of movie for that. I think, honestly, having highly explicit sex ed movies where halfway through fucking, the woman goes "sorry, I'm not happy with this", and they stop (it would, of course, also promote safer sex practices). But porn is not supposed to be that movie and should not be judged as if it is.

So, what a guy sees is a woman saying "yes", and continuing to say "yes", until at some point she's saying, "Oh yes, yes, God, YES!!!" (He usually comes a bit later, and goes "gnh hngh grunt!") You might not like that porn doesn't show any other result of negotiation and re-negotiation, but as I said that's not what porn is for. But it definitely DOES show to the viewer at home "constant negotiation and re-negotiation".

Both ethically and legally, without a constant negotiation and re-negotiation of consent, there is no consent. This renegotiation occurs when each party, always, has the option of ending, altering, or decelerating the action, at any time. Consent, by definition, is a living, breathing, thing, and cannot be given prospectively.

As a practitioner of consensual BDSM, I agree. But you know, we have ways and means of doing it so that even though "no" might not mean "no", "RED" can mean "no", and "amber" might mean "slow down" (i.e. "decelerate the action"). Altering what happens is also possible because two people in intimate bodily contact with one another often are aware of what's working and what's not.

the constant renegotiation required in consensual sexual encounters simply doesn't occur when deals are struck, and contracts are signed beforehand.

As a practitioner of BDSM, I have to call BS. In BDSM, these contracts and deals appear in the form of lists of hard-limits, soft-limits, definitely enjoy and so on; sometimes we even have (not legally enforceable) "slave contracts" and suchlike. Sexual sessions, and even whole lifestyle choices, can be and are negotiated in advance, just like a "deal" or "contract". But implicit (or sometimes explicit) in those contracts and deals is the ability to withdraw consent to the contracted session or lifestyle. As noted above, the use of safewords (or safe signals, where verbal communication is impossible) is one very effective way of communicating consent or lack of. In comments on her own thread, FCM says, "i would love to see a legal challenge, not for a breach of contract, but a rape charge in any of these instances where someone claims to have received prospective consent, and thats the extent of the consent given, and see how far that piece of paper gets them in a criminal court." Obviously, not very far, we may imagine. So consent or not to the contract may be re-negotiated and withdrawn, and that is implicit in contract law (since otherwise it would be an "immoral contract" and not enforceable).

[Therefore] consent does not occur, in porn. therefore, porn is rape.

As demonstrated, this conclusion is unsupported by the premises presented, but instead can be shown to be false. Consent can be, and is, constantly communicated throughout a porn shoot, and therefore conforms even with the stringent definition of consent that FCM uses (a definition to which I agree, see above re: BDSM practice).

Furthermore, if the male performer is legitimately to know whether a certain sex act is wanted, that understanding can only occur through constant communication with his partner. In real life, these communications are spontaneous, and can take the form either verbal cues (“yes”) or are evidenced by the woman’s enthusiastic engagement with her partner. but in porn, the woman is acting. That is, her communications to him are inauthentic. He should know better than to engage in this act, then, if he doesn't know whether its wanted, or not. is he no longer legally or morally culpable for rape, just because he is getting paid to do it? In real life, you have to be sure its wanted. In porn, what, you don't? or, it doesn't matter? Bullshit.

In porn, you know it's wanted because the moment it's not wanted there are signals, safewords, etc. in place by which consent can be withdrawn. There will be clear standards by which signals can be made, by which porn companies determine whether or not it even looks consensual enough (e.g. Kink.com will not continue filming if a performer starts to cry, even if she promises she is happy and able to continue). Get this: consent matters in making porn. In legally-produced porn (that is, produced in countries or US States where porn making is legal) it is easier and safer and all the rest of it to make porn with real checks that consent continues to matter. Consnet matters in porn. Continuous consent matters in making porn, and therefore the ability to communicate withdrawal of consent matters in making porn.

Take a step back, and consider: do you believe that stuntmen in movies (often risking their lives if something goes wrong) have the ability to withdraw consent at any moment if they are unhappy with it? Even if they signed a contract to say they would perform that particular stunt? Of course they do. And they have signals and all the rest of it, because very often verbal communication is not possible. Why is it so hard to believe that porn is different, unless it's because you believe that wherever sex is involved, men automatically become teh ev0l?

What we have in porn, then, on both sides of the screen, are men who don't give a shit whether the sex acts being performed on a woman are wanted. We have “consent” that was given prospectively, which means quite literally that it wasn't given at all.

No, we don't. As demonstrated by my dissection of the arguments above.

In other words, we have rapists raping women, and men watching episodes of rape, thousands in a lifetime, but convincing themselves each time that they are watching ”sex.” Somehow, consent has been entirely removed from the equation

Again, no we don't, and no it hasn't. The only people trying to remove consent from the equation (last time I looked, anyway) were the radfems.

The other problem is in bringing porn-behaviours and porn-mentalities and porn-desires into your real life, and most of us acknowledge that men (including men who are advertisers…and fashion designers….and law enforcement) tend to do exactly that. But porn-consumers appropriating rape-mentalities and behaviours are not the only problem with porn. Men who watch porn are indulging rape-fantasies, and can become rapists if they bring these behaviours into the bedroom.

I don't acknowledge the premise. But inasmuch as it is true that some men tend to, then we can take a quick look at the normal ways in which this is done. It's done most often by discussing things with a partner, talking about fantasies, and things you'd like to try. And then the partner either says "okay, we'll give it a go" or else "yuck, I don't fancy that!" Oh, look, it's that whole negotiation thing again!

As for "Men who watch porn are indulging rape-fantasies, and can become rapists if they bring these behaviours into the bedroom" - well, regular readers will know of the infamous post on "And You Thought I Was Sweet" and will know that I have a certain rather unusual and darkly influenced perspective on that particular statement. Suffice to say that I don't believe "factcheckme" has any facts to back this up.

That said, I will make one concession on this point. In one way bringing porn-behaviour into the bedroom can lead to rape, and that's when there isn't negotiation beforehand of "I'd like to try this". It's true: porn generally does not show what it takes to have sex like they do in porn. Porn isn't intended as sex education. So there are problems with the way that porn gets used in society and the way that some people can perceive it as a result. The answer, however, isn't to blame porn for that but rather to blame the fact that (again, to quote FCM herself) "at the same time we live in a porn- and rape-culture, we also live in a puritanical and slut-shaming one." Because that fact means that we don't have proper sex education that teaches how to have consensual sex (with the whole philosophy of "constant negotiation and re-negotiation of consent. this renegotiation occurs when each party, always, has the option of ending, altering, or decelerating the action, at any time. consent, by definition, is a living, breathing, thing"). If anyone were to suggest openly in political debate (as I suggest openly on this blog every so often) that young teenagers be taught about porn and how it's made, and why it is absolutely NOT how to have sex properly, then they would be shot down from all sides. But that's what would answer the problems of porn.

radfems will end up endlessly having to explain ourselves, in the face of self-proclaimed liberal men and the fun-fems who want need their acceptance.

LMFAO

Sorry, honeybean, but really your acceptance or otherwise is of absolutely no importance to me at all (then again, not a "liberal" anything, so maybe that's not about me). To the people whose blogs I read regularly, I imagine the interest in your "acceptance" is equally low. Your relevance is much less than you think.

"-isms" discussed on british TV tonight

First, on tonight's Channel 4 News, a report on rising numbers of homophobic attacks in UK cities. Brian Paddick gave a great interview about the problems that gay folks face when reporting crimes, and pointed out that a report (referenced in the piece by Channel 4 News) had revealed that 75% of those who had been attacked for the sexuality failed to report it to the police because of the homophobia. He also talked eloquently about the ways in which society makes homophobia acceptable (analogous to : the use of "gay" as an insult or disparaging term, the ways in which "gay" is portrayed in various media, and so on.

***

Also on tonight, which will later be available on BBC iPlayer and 4oD as appropriate (I don't know if those can be accessed by non-UK web users), there are going to be two programmes on tonight about the ways in which Whiteness is portrayed as the beauty standard. On BBC1 there will be Make Me White, and on Channel 4 there will be Bleach, Nip, Tuck: The White Beauty Myth. The Channel 4 programme is part of a series of documentaries that Channel 4 are showing at the moment discussing race from a number of different angles, the first one was "Race and Intelligence: Science's Last Taboo", the title of which I find slightly problematic (it's really not that big of a taboo, as even the trailers for the show reveal, since plenty of racist scientists have broached the topic over the decades!). On Thursday there's another called "How Racist Are You?" although the trailers don't make it very obvious what that's going to be about, at least a part of what it will touch on looks to be things related to White privilege.

I don't yet know how much of any of these shows I'm going to watch myself, because I'm very clear that race is not my area (I try not to do racist things, and to be respectful and all that, but it's not something I can go out as an opening batsman for - definitely lower order for me). If I do watch them I'll come back with what my impressions were (the one I am most likely to watch is "How Racist Are You?"). But I just wanted to let people know that this stuff is out there and if people want to take them on, they can.

Ferengi Philosophy and Communism

Renegade Evolution has recently hosted an enthusiastic debate on political and economic philosophy, human nature and the like (because she's grim, grim part 2, The State and human nature, Hard Work.

I have certainly participated enthusiastically, but eventually ran out of steam over there because I felt like, yet again, I was being asked to write out all over again all the arguments of the communist thinkers, for a succession of people who are seemingly unable to leave behind the model of humanity that past generations have bequeathed us (I have another post more directly related to that coming up). So, I am withdrawing from the direct discussion and I'm going to write a bit more about how communism works and can work, from my own perspective and without relying directly on the questioning of others to constrain my thought processes. Or something.

It may seem a bit absurd that my first source text should be from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and be drawn from the fictional free-market capitalist society of the Ferengi, but bear with me!

The concept I am drawing on is called the Great Material Continuum, about which we hear from a young Ferengi named Nog, who describes it as, "millions of worlds, all with too much of one and not enough of the other".

Already, perhaps, the parallel I wish to draw may be becoming clear. This is, after all, the basis of Marx's famous dictum, "from each as according to their ability, to each as according to their need". An ability is "too much of one"; a need is "not enough of the other".

The wikipedia entry linked above elaborates on the philosophy a little further:

...a metaphor in Ferengi culture that describes trade as the binding force of all life in the universe... The Continuum is a river whose current flows from those who have to those who want. According to this concept, there is a finite amount of wealth and goods in the universe, and any goods taken from one part of the "river" must be appropriately replaced or paid for by other methods. Thus, one must be sufficiently knowledgeable of the wants and needs of others to properly conduct business. A Ferengi sufficiently skilled at navigating this continuum will certainly prosper and amass great wealth and power.

If a Ferengi navigates the river properly, he can accumulate wealth and distribute it throughout society, at various points along the river.

Now, this last sentence can be seen as a representation of the "trickle-down" theory by which free-market capital was supposed to make everyone better off and that theorists in the late 1970s and 1980s claimed justified their policies. What trickle-down actually does is widen wealth gaps and discourage workers.

Taken in the context of the whole passage, the meaning looks rather different. Where trickle-down depends on hierarchies of employers and employees, the Ferengi idea looks at people as individuals (or worlds) with their own needs and abilities. The way the "river" works is that, even if the thing or ability I have doesn't match the needs of the person (call this person 'A') who has the thing or ability I need, if I give my ability (or thing) to someone else ('B') who needs it, that person will be able to provide me with something else. That something else might still not be what person 'A' wants, but by understanding the network of needs and wants it should be possible to trace a path from 'A' to me through a series of exchanges of goods or services. Thus, at each exchange, something is returned into the flow of the Continuum. In the episode where Nog navigates the Great Material Continuum, he does so at least in part by temporarily "borrowing" from unsuspecting members of the Deep Space 9 community; but all these debts are repaid in kind through the various trades that Nog is able to perform to reach his goal.

What we see as a result is a system whereby understanding the needs and abilities or assets of a society, favourable outcomes can be had for everyone, that would not have been possible without the medium of trade (as represented by the Great Material Continuum). In this sense, it is a form of the classic justification of the free-market economy, but equally it demonstrates that if all people contribute to the communal "flow", then there would be no need for the medium of the trader at all; through the collective sharing of assets and abilities, the needs could be met much more efficiently and with greater profit for all participants (since less time and energy would be expended in seeking out the correct route through the Continuum).

Communism is simply the most efficient way of getting stuff from those who have too much to those who have too little. But when we say "too much/too little" here, we are not talking about some homogeneous mass called "wealth", we are talking about numerous different types of wealth such that those who have too much are rarely always the same for different types, and the same goes for those who have too little.

On the Anglican/Catholic transfer deal...

...Nell Gwynne @ Merda D'Artista has pretty much summed up my views on the matter.

I suppose if religions were like businesses, then you could say that the C of E as a brand has made something of a mistake here, and allowed a competitor to steal customers away from them because of an attempt to rebrand to attract new customers. But the market doesn't really seem to exist at the moment making the rebranding a mistake, losing market share and conceding ground to the opposition.

But religion isn't like business - market share, whileimportant, is less important than the honest attempt to do the right thing. The RC Church has opted to remain relevant to the 19th Century (and, heck, it took all the efforts of Pope John Paul II to get the Vatican that far!), while the C of E in a bumbling, haphazard, half-arsed way is attempting to catch up to the 21st Century. Eventually. They are, of course, a long way off (as are most institutions, come to think of it) but at least they show willing.

For those who are comforted by the "traditions" of the hate-riddled old structures, they will be happiest in like company, so I have no issue with them leaving or with the RC Church for accepting them as kindred spirits. At least we get to see a little more clearly who is who.

FICTION: Cyborg Sleeps: Part 11

Sorry for the delay in updating on this story, I have had another story idea distract me, been busy on holiday and all sorts of stuff.

In this part, the police get involved. I don't yet know how much more we're going to see of the police officers, but I've given them names just in case I want them to come back later. I kind of have a plan for PC O'Hara, but we'll see how that pans out later.

Part 11

At 2:14am the call came to the emergency services line.

Operator: "Hello, Police, fire, ambulance; which service do you require?"
Caller: "[panting] I dunno, oh God, it was horrible…"
Operator: "What was, is it an accident or a crime?"
Caller: "She just fucking killed them, I mean, I think they're dead… Oh God [sobbing]"
Operator: "Where did this happen? I'll send police and ambulance right away."
Caller: "[deep breaths] The end of George Street, Sandworth – at the Syborn Way end, oh God, my mates, she just killed them… I ran, they're dead, help me… [hyperventilating]"
Operator: "I'm dispatching police and ambulance now. Can I take your name, they'll want to ask you some questions, and then they'll catch the killer."
Caller: "No, no name, just don't let her get me!"
Operator: "Who is she? Do you have a name, a description, I can give the police?"
Caller: "The fucking robot-woman, man! The robot-woman! You've got to believe me, I saw it with my own eyes!"

The operator ends the call, flags it as a hoax or lunatic making a crank call. The dispatch alert already sent by computer to the police and ambulance is followed by a crank caller alert, and the number from which the call was made is recorded to be checked in case a prosecution can be made.

At the same time, Asira is touching her lighter to the kit bag and flammable supplies, and leaving the junction of Syborn Way and George Street.

At 2:19am, a police car arrives at the scene. They were close by anyway when the call came in, and decided to check it out anyway, even after the cancel alert came in. It is instantly clear that something has happened. As Sergeant Nicholls radios the information back to HQ, his partner, Constable O'Hara, sees one of the two bodies move in the headlights. She exits the vehicle, and traces a wide arc around the crime scene, to avoid disturbing evidence. She makes a direct line then towards the prone figures.

In her torchlight, she can see there is no hope for the first man: he has already bled to death from the gaping stab wound in his gut. The other body emits a groan, and she turns her attention to him. He is lying in he front, a pool of vomit near his lips, and an obviously broken nose. He appears to be just coming around from unconsciousness.

O'Hara calls to Nicholls, "We need an ambulance here, there's a survivor!" She kneels beside the victim.

"Can you hear me? I'm a police officer. My name is O'Hara, what's yours?"

The response is indistinct, and may or may not have been an attempt at an answer. As they wait for the ambulance, O'Hara moves the victim into the recovery position, and continues to speak reassuringly to him. From time to time she checks on the progress of the concussed individual. Nicholls cordons off the scene and waits for the scene of crime officer to arrive for investigation to begin properly.

The ambulance arrives first, 2:27am, and O'Hara carefully guides the paramedics so that they will disturb the evidence as little as possible. The victim has recovered some consciousness, although he is still unable to focus his eyes, and his speech is slurred. O'Hara has reassured him that he is safe and not going to be attacked again.

At 2:41am the crime scene investigation has begun. Detective Andrews recognises the face of the dead man, "We've had him in on suspicion of arson against Pakistani businesses down East," he says, "But his gang always gave plenty of alibis, of course, so we could never charge him. But if he's here, I'll bet his two cronies were here, too – might have seen who did it. Might have done it themselves, if they had a disagreement over something."

Nicholls told him about the second man, who has by now been taken to the hospital for treatment.

"Sergeant, do you think that the phone call we got originally might have been from the third member of that little troop? I think we should track him down sooner rather than later, don't you?"

"Sounds smart. I'll get HQ to send a squad car round and bring him in."

"First, get on to the call centre and check the records, if we're lucky he might have called from home, and we'll know it was him and where to find him."

As it happened, he had.

***

At 3:01am, Asira collapsed at the door of the safe house and the agents on duty there began treating her. Simultaneously, Detective Andrews was back at the police station interrogating Grant, the unharmed member of the trio who had assaulted her. It was not going well for Andrews.

Grant stuck to the craziest story Andrews had ever heard, about a robot woman who looked human, and who had attacked him and his mates out of nowhere. They'd defended themselves with whatever they could find, and only Grant had escaped. Andrews initially assumed that Grant and Craig, the concussed individual, had turned on their leader – who had knocked Craig unconscious, but then been stabbed by Grant. This theory was quickly quashed by the evidence at the scene of the crime. Two knives ad been recovered. One was clearly the dead man's, and heavily stained with blood that was at least partly someone else's. The second had fingerprints that on preliminary examination seemed to match Grant's. It had no blood on it at all, but a notch in the blade and a strange residue smeared on it.

To make things worse, the case had already gained notoriety in the station, everybody referring to it as the "robot-woman" case.

O'Hara was at the hospital, and took a statement from Craig.

"Me and my mates were just coming back from a night out, when we saw this Paki chick, right? We just started a bit of friendly banter, like, when she suddenly came at me with a fucking knife! Well, I managed to dodge it, but she must have hit me with a club or something with her other hand, cos I was out like a light. The next thing I remember was lying in my own puke with a broken nose and you asking me who I was. That's all I know, I swear!"

O'Hara believed him that it was all he knew about the actual fight. She did not believe him that it was "friendly banter". She knew the sort of gang this man belonged to probably did not do anything "friendly" to Asian women. But questioning him about it would not help matters. Secretly, she felt some sympathy for the woman who had dared to fight back, and hoped she was okay. Knowing that there was blood from an unidentified subject on the knife the dead man had dropped, it did not take O'Hara much imagination to figure out whose blood it was.

The blood spatter analysis at the scene of crime confirmed O'Hara's intuition that two people had been hurt, and that one of them must be the missing assailant. The detective called O'Hara and told her they reckoned that their unsub (and now chief suspect) had probably been cut along her side, and that it was probably quite a serious wound. O'Hara asked at the hospital whether any such injuries had been taken in that night, and quickly discovered that nobody with those injuries had received medical treatment in the time scale. Either she had treated herself somehow, or she was lying dead or dying somewhere else. O'Hara radioed this information back to the detective, who felt his headache grow even worse. For fuck's sake, he swore to himself, at this rate I'm going to start believing it was a robot, or else a cyborg of some kind!

Somewhere across the city, an agent was finally putting a call through to Director Gattell.

Another name for the roll call...

...of murdered prostitutes, and also of murdered trans women.

Andrea Joanna Waddell.

(Link is the Brighton Argus newspaper article).

The Argus' coverage has been largely quite good in sensitivity over trans and sex worker issues, which is encouraging in terms of media coverage. They organised a tributes page, and only used male pronouns when giving her biography, and then only until they reached the point where she transitioned (I'm not sure about etiquette with that sort of thing; I have heard different trans folk express different personal preferences about use of historical pronouns). While I'm not sure how relevant that biography is to the story, or how likely it would have been that they include it had she not been trans, at least they seem to have declared her as she is: a woman, and nothing but.

Also encouraging is the relatively positive spin put on her career as a sex worker, especially her mother's apparent acceptance (after the initial choice) of her murdered daughter's choice.

None of which changes the raw fact that another woman has died, apparently either because she was a sex worker or because she was trans, or both. I have shed tears in my heart every time a story like this has been reported in the blogs I read, and obviously I care about all of them. But this one was in my part of the world, not 30 miles from my home, in a town I visit regularly. There is inevitably something a little academic about a story in a city across the Atlantic, but this is a firm reminder to me (as if any were needed) that this dehumanising hatred exists everywhere, wherever we may be living someone will be feeling it not too far away from us.

Rehearsing the economic arguments once more...

That is, the economic arguments against criminalising the buying of sex workers' services.

I'm going for this one because it's the simplest, most obvious, anyone-with-a-smattering-of-economics-learning-could-figure-it-out reasoning.

The "Swedish Model" of addressing prostitution through the law is based on two different purposes, depending on who is proposing it and what their background is. On the more "liberal" or left-ish side there is the argument that the prostitutes themselves are not evil, but the men who buy their services are all abusers of women (by virtue of being willing to buy those services) and therefore should be seen as criminals. Which is the most twisted and perverted version of "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" I can think of (and yes, that Biblical passage was Jesus saving the life of a prostitute, so doubly appropriate, no?) This argument is clearly a moralisers' argument, and it is not my target here (or at least, not as much).

The other argument used is more of a "long game" argument, with the desire of ending prostitution altogether by "ending demand". The "End Demand" formulation (which I understand is used most often in US states considering the Swedish Model) comes from two different sources, but looks surprisingly similar when we consider that those sources are supposed to be strongly opposed. On the one hand, there are the self-styled "radical" feminists, whose aim is supposedly to liberate women from sex work; on the other there are the rightwing moralisers who just want to see the Bad Women made virtuous again (or something).

The argument from both these angles goes something like this:

1. Prostitution happens because men want to buy sex.
2. To supply them with sex, bad things happen to women (like having to have sex with (lots of different) men! ZOMG!)
3. If men didn't want to buy sex then women wouldn't have those bad things happen to them.
4. If we make a law against buying sex, men will no longer want to do it enough that they will actually try to.

Their logic is that if you end the demand then those who were providing the supply will just go away and do something else.

Of course, demand is not that easy to end outright. Hell, if it were that easy then there would be no paedophiles, because having sex with children is against the law! As the Swedish situation shows, there are still plenty of dudes there who are willing to take the risk of being caught in order to go out and buy some fucking-time with a woman.

So we're going to have to accept that there will always be some level of demand for sexual services. Whether you take it from the "men who buy sexual services are evil" angle (radfem), or from the "men are beasts driven by their penises" angle (Patriarchal rightwingers) it follows theoretically as well as empirically that demand for paid-for sex will not magically dry up when you ban paying for sex. It may be that by fixing a lot of the other Wrong Things in the Patrairchal memeosphere (by analogy with biosphere) then it could be done away with, but right now it's just not going to happen just because you pass a law. That's not the way the world works.

So, it is given that there will remain some level of demand.

The law of supply and demand says that purchase value of a commodity (such as, in the case of prostitution, sexual services) is given by V=k(demand)/(supply) - that is, value is proportional to demand, and inversely proportional to supply.

Given that demand is always going to be non-zero, and supply at least initially remains the same, then we can observe the following simple fact:

If demand for sexual services falls, then the purchase price for those services will also fall.

In fact, a sex worker wishing to survive in a situation where demand for her or his services is falling, e.g. due to a law outlawing the buying of sex, has 3 options to try to maximise her income from the remaining demand pool:

1. Reduce her prices to undercut her competitors.
2. Offer services that she would not normally offer (including acts that she would normally consider "hard limits").
3. Reduce her safety screening procedures (including being willing to fuck without barrier contraceptives in place, which for some reason some idiotic men are willing to pay more for), in order to minimise the number of potential customers turned away.
   

Any sex worker (indeed, any worker full stop) has certain overheads to meet: rent, energy bills, grocery bills, etc. Some sex workers have on top of that a drug addiction to service (and no, that's not saying it's acceptable that this is the case, but the only way to stop it is to get proper rehab support in place and that costs money that governments don't seem to want to spend on "a bunch of crack whores and junkie hookers" - so it's going to remain the case whatever else we do).

If demand for sexual services decreases due to a law being passed, this will not affect the level of the overheads: rent, groceries, heating, will all cost the same regardless.

That means if the sex worker chooses option 1 "Reduce prices", then she will have to fuck more men per day to make ends meet. If she cannot fuck enough men for cash then she will eventually starve, be rendered homeless, or suffer the consequences of living in an unheated home and eating raw food (which is, eventually, going to be sufficient ill-health as to threaten her life). This woman, in order to make ends meet, will eventually have to resort to option 3 "Take more risks".

The problem with option 2 ought to be obvious: the sex worker who chooses option 2 is placed into a situation where whatever ability to refuse consent she may have had before has been stripped away. She is put into a situation where, in order to make ends meet, she will have to agree to more violent, more abusive, more painful, more degrading and more damaging sex. This may result in injuries requiring hospital treatment (e.g. a torn rectum). It may result in her being a murder victim. Even if she was a willing entrant into sex work originally, her volition has been erased because of needing to pay the overheads. If she was not willing but was forced into sex work by financial hardship in the first place, then she is left even worse off.

Similarly, the problem with option 3 "Take more risks" is that her ability to withhold consent is reduced. Just like with option 2, she is that much more exposed to the risk of being murdered (those risks cannot be reduced all that much anyway by her own actions - but now she can take much less action to do so). She is also that much more exposed to sexually transmitted diseases (because of the pressure to do it without a condom). Precautions that would seem sensible to anyone else are off the cards, because if you want repeat bookings (and in reduced-demand circumstances, you always want customers to come back again) then you have to avoid anything that looks like police surveillance (including having your own surveillance by a friend who can come get you if you are in danger).

Needless to say, if you conduct business anywhere near actual police surveillance then you're going to be out of business very quickly indeed - if all your customers get arrested then a) you get no repeat bookings and b) you get a reputation as a honeytrap.

So, the "End Demand" theory means this:

• Put women in more danger
• Increase the rate of infection of STIs
• Force women to have types of sex they are unwilling to
• Force women to have sex more often than they are willing to
• Damage women's health
  

This is just simple economics.

And if you say that they should choose a different job - well, the theory of the anti-prostitution arguments is that women wouldn't do it unless they had no other choices in the first place!

Making laws against sex work (buying or selling) hurts women. QED.

The 24-hour holiday: family history, ancient history and a nice cup of tea

Yesterday at about 1pm my parents arrived to take me away from this humdrum life. At about 2pm today we bade one another farewell and I came back here. The interim was very pleasant (for the most part - I had bad dreams while I was sleeping, but that's been par for the course the past few days so take no notice of it).

My parents were down this way to watch the opera at Glyndebourne Opera House with my aunt and my mother's aunt and uncle. They booked themselves, and Yours Truly, into a hotel in Alfriston and there we spent a very happy 24 hours.

The first thing on the agenda was that I would explain to my parents all about the family history research that I've been doing into my father's side of the family. My mother's side is quite well-known to us because her father and uncle (the same one as was attending the opera) were both keen genealogists looking up that side of the family tree. My father's side, on the other hand, was only the subject of various family legends handed down from my father's father.

According to Grandad H, his father (my dad's grandad) was a Romany gypsy who married an Irish tinker's daughter and then changed his name and settled down in the Leeds area to escape approbation from his former family for this betrayal of tradition. This then had two branches of legend: my great grandfather's Romany ancestry, and his wife's Irish tinker ancestry. My father remembers gypsy families being very close to his family when he was growing up, so there seemed to be some basis.

However, when I started delving into the census records and racing the family back, the element about the name change just didn't seem to be true: I managed to trace the same family name right back to 1851, and Great-Grandad O's grandfather (Richard). So it looked like the whole story was a myth. But I also bought a copy of G-G O's marriage certificate and found out his wife's maiden name. Great-Grandma Mary B. was the daughter of another Mary B. G-G-Grandma Mary B. was married to a man called Edward, who was a shoemaker. The census records for Great-Great-Grandad Edward B. show a tragic tale of economic catastrophe: he started life as a skilled craftsman, but by 1881 he had been brought low and was living as a lodger with his wife Mary (who had been forced to take work as a domestic servant) and daughter Mary. He was now working a machine in a cloth factory (of which there were a great many in the area) and this menial labour is all he has for the rest of his life. Mechanised methods of making shoes probably drove him out of business, but we can at least relax that it was not this man (an African-American inventor) who did it to my ancestor - his invention was patented only after G-G-G Edward had ended up in the mills.

However, Edward's wife Mary was in fact born in Ireland, and their 1881 lodgings are in an Irish immigrant community in Leeds (several of their neighbours, it appears, were also born in Ireland), so maybe there was some truth to the Irish side of the legend after all.

Then I noticed something strange about the addresses for where Patriarch Richard was living when the censuses were taken: they gave what looked like road names or regions, but no house name or number. The entry in 1851 was just given as "Near Royds" in an area of Leeds called Beeston. So I went looking for more information about what Royds, Beeston (or, as it turned out, "Beeston Royds") actually was, and it turns out it was a field or area of vacant flat land (it's been built on now) - and even into the 1960s it was a place where gypsies would stay! Richard and his family also stayed in a place that was called Osmondthorpe Fold" - I haven't been able to locate this yet, but a "fold" is like a field, and again it has the appearance of referring to a camping site for gypsies (lots and lots of families are listed at the same place). All of a sudden, it looks like the gypsy roots are true as well, just a generation or so further back than the legend originally had it. The only thing that isn't true seems to be the idea that the family name was changed. Even that could be true, if for several generations the family (distrustful as gypsies would have been of any official paperwork) a false surname was given. There's no way of finding out if there was a true gypsy name that my ancestors bore, of course, so that side can never be proven. But the rest all looks pretty solid. In digging through this stuff, I have found children as young as 9 listed as mine workers (pit pony drivers or "hurriers" - children used to push trolley carts of coal). I've found several women working as domestic servants and struggling to make ends meet. I've found one instance where Matriarch Helen (Richard's wife) is widowed, and looking after her granddaughter with the help of her son, the baby's uncle - while the baby's parents are forced to travel far afield to find work (one as a domestic servant, the other down a mine, and both separated from each other by distance).

In another branch of the family tree, I found a story of a woman - the daughter of the girl who was tended by her grandmother and uncle - whose first husband was killed at the Gallipoli campaign (one of Winston Churchill's many vainglorious and utterly pointless military campaigns that wasted thousands upon thousands of young lives); she remarried, had children by her second husband, only to have her son, aged 25, killed in the equally vainglorious attempt to defend Singapore from the Japanese invasion of 1942. Not content with that, fate then took her second husband from her when he was just 59 years old!

The next step is to buy a copy of Edward and Mary's marriage certificate so I can find out what her maiden name (and father's name) were - hopefully, this will enable me to track the family right back to Ireland and find out where they lived before coming to England.

So I explained all about all of these stories to my parents. Then we had a quiet wander around Alfriston, walking about the footpaths through the fields, before returning to the hotel bar for some pub grub.

The next day, we made a planned visit to the Alfriston Clergy House. The doorways were very small by modern standards, and indeed there was a very particular atmosphere about the ordered and well-presented atmosphere that the house and garden had; and it came to me that it had the atmosphere that I associate with Tolkien's hobbits! Indeed, the inn at the hotel was still preserved (although most of the actual accommodation was now in modern buildings added out the back), and it had a similar feeling: I could easily picture it as the inn at Bree in Lord of the Rings. I have a postcard of the Clergy House to remind me of that atmosphere, because it was fabulous.

I did say "a nice cup of tea", but actually I don't drink tea - but the day kind of had that feel, and it rounds it off well enough, so there you go.

Speaking of people not getting it...

In one of those wonderful little moments of synchronicity, after my post about translation errors and frames of reference, Scott Meyer reposted the following cartoon over at Basic Instructions:


'Nuff said.

FICTION: Cyborg Sleeps part 10

Asira escapes, but only just! Not much more to add on this one, except to note that it's obvious here that her injury was worse than at first appeared.


Part 10

Asira used the bandage from the med kit to bind the wound to her side. But she also needed to cover up the cybernetics in her left arm. She used her knife to cut strips from the infiltration headgear to form a binding to go over the damage in her arm, and she hoped that the torn and tattered top would continue to provide enough cover for the rest of her. She was aware she had lost a lot of blood, and was now much weaker than she had expected. It didn't take long to realise that she couldn't expect to carry her kit any further. Fortunately, standard kit provided an accelerant and lighter. She quickly retrieved all the things that wouldn't burn (like her gun) and put them in pockets of her combats, then incinerated the rest. If nothing else had, she felt sure that would attract attention, but she had no choice – she couldn't risk leaving any evidence behind that would definitively prove her existence. The word of the escapee might not carry much weight, and could be covered up. Physical evidence was not so forgiving.

There was, of course, no chance of seeking medical assistance. She would have to make it to the nearest safe house (not the one originally planned) and let things go from there, and she would have to do it as she was now. A search of her memory recalled a house she had used on a previous mission some three years earlier. It might or might not still be there, but she had no other option. In her current state it might take up to an hour to reach it, but it was better than nothing. If that plan fell through, then she would have to break all protocol and make a direct phone call to the hiring agency and ask for help.

As sirens sounded in the distance, heading her way, she staggered to her feet and did her best to run from the scene of the attack. She had no idea how long the first man would be out for; the second might even be dead from his injury by the time medical assistance arrived. She put them from her mind and concentrated on her own survival, and getting from where she was to where she needed to be.

Asira did not give herself much chance of survival when she felt her secondary heart kick in. This artificial pump added into the circulatory system was designed to keep her alive if her natural heart were to be damaged in battle, enabling her to fulfil a mission before dying; there was some hope that it would enable her to receive a new heart by transplant surgery or for her own heart to be repaired. It automatically started if blood pressure started to fall to critical levels, on the assumption that this was caused by some problem with the main heart. Asira knew that this time, it was simple blood loss that was making things critical, and an extra heart wasn't going to help much with that.

Her relief at making it to the door of the safe house was palpable, but she was weak enough that she was only just able to whisper the correct response at the challenge to her knock. As the door opened, she stumbled inside, gasped "Tell Director Gattell, secret's out," and then passed out.

***

The agents on duty at the safe house were equipped to perform blood transfusions if necessary and had several bags of blood plasma on standby. They had already started the transfusion, and re-dressed the wound in Asira's side, when they untied the other bandages on her left arm. They had left them to last because they did not appear to have any blood on them on the outside, which implied any bleeding had stopped.

"What the…?" gasped the one who undid Asira's wrapping as he saw the bloodless gaping hole and, underneath, the limb's metal structures.

"It's prosthetic," the other said knowledgeably, "I bet she lost her arm on the front line, got reassigned after the replacement was fitted. But from the looks of it, it saved her life. If she lost so much blood from the cut in her side, imagine what she'd have lot if this had been a real arm!"

"Why didn't she go to the hospital?" asked the other.

"She had that message to deliver, and came here instead. Goddess alone knows why they sent a disabled girl on an undercover mission, though. I bet that's how they rumbled her and that's why she was attacked. She deserves a fucking medal for her dedication to duty, cos if she'd gone to a hospital there's no way she'd be in this bad state."

Neither of them noticed the vibrations from the secondary heart, so they didn't miss it when the motor stopped and left Asira's heart to do the work itself. They did notice as her blood pressure grew stronger, though. The rough-and-ready stitches in Asira's side, plus the plasma transfusion, seemed to have done enough.

The more "knowledgeable" agent went to check on the code to send a message to Director Gattell (of whom he'd never heard) and make sure he knew that his agent was in safe hands.

Translation errors, conversations and consciousness

I'm currently reading a book called Conversations on Consciousness, published by the Oxford University Press, in which Susan Blackmore interviewed a couple of dozen leading lights in various scientific and philosophical fields about their views on the nature of consciousness, how it works, what relation it has to matter and so on.

I think I disagree with most of Dan Dennett's theories about it all, but there is one passage that struck me as amazingly insightful and worth repeating not just in debates on consciousness, but on just about anything to do with humanity. Susan Blackmore has asked why, when she thinks he writes so clearly, so many people seem to misunderstand his work:

...here's what I think happens. I've caught myself doing this with others, so I can see how they can do it with me too. When somebody tries to tell you something which is initially very counter-intuitive for you, you put your best effort into it and then translate it into your own terms, so that you can understand it. So you're not just listening cold, you're actively translating what you're hearing into your own dialect. But of course, this can horribly backfire. If somebody is trying to put forward something that really is counter-intuitive, you almost certainly get it wrong. You'll throw out the most important part and you'll turn it into one kind of nonsense or another. And if you're not alert to that, you'll think, "Look, I did my level best to understand this person, and here's what I come up with. That's just crazy, so she's just crazy." Nobody wants to hear that maybe your level best wasn't good enough.

I know I do this a lot, except that I generally don't say "That's just crazy, so she's just crazy" - I at least have the wit to see that if it comes out as crazy it means there's something I'm missing. A definite example is the What is it with Paganism? post, which was all about explaining why the things I get from paganism sound to me like "that's just crazy". So instead of saying, "so you're just crazy", I say - "let's see if there's a way to bridge that gap." Of course, the internet being what it is, several people assumed the "so you're just crazy" part and my cunning plan to learn stuff went down the tubes.

I see this sort of thing happening with several debates within feminism - particularly on trans issues, sex work, kink and so on, areas where I have a particular interest. I see it in political debates in general, and so on. I also think there's a hefty dose of it in any discussion on religion, which isn't helped by the fact that of necessity any Truth revealed by God and then transcribed by humans already has translation error built in - but that's a whole different post.

The lesson is, if someone you think is pretty intelligent in general, says something and it sounds to you like "well, that's just crazy!" - maybe there's something that didn't translate properly into your frame of reference. I believe that when two people are aware of such a translation error, it can usually be resolved (not always, but usually) so it may help to discuss further (for instance, it is possible for a man to appreciate the nature and effects of male privilege on women intellectually even though the frame of reference will never be experienced personally). At least at the end if it comes up that you really can't translate it, then you understand that it's not a matter of crazy or stupid, but just a question of seeing the world differently.

For this reason, conversation is hugely important. A friend of Ren's called Vladimir says that we don't need to understand everybody else, but just accept them. I think this is true, but I also think understanding why we don't understand them makes acceptance easier. Not everyone is willing even to get into that, and that is hugely frustrating, but also not a reason to refuse to accept others (regardless of the difficulty it may entail). There again, there are even some people who just do not want acceptance: they don't want to accept or understand you, and either don't care about or actively reject your acceptance of them. That type of person is actually dangerous, always, and has to be challenged or opposed - and we find them in many spheres.

I have always felt that when engaging on the internet I should always assume wherever possible that whatever a person said, if there's a way zie meant it in a non-crazy or non-offensive way, then that's what I should assume they meant. Because the arseholes and wingbats will reveal themselves as such eventually (usually pretty quickly, in my experience) and thus leave no doubt as to their arseholery and wingbattery. So also with an idea that sounds crazy. Maybe it is not crazy and with effort you can come to understand it. Maybe it isn't crazy but you won't understand it because it's based on a frame of reference too different from your own. Or maybe it really is crazy and no amount of "different frame of reference" will render it relevant or rational in the world as it is. The only way to know is to talk about it and see what happens.

FICTION: Cyborg Sleeps part 9

The rest of the story

If you've been waiting for violence and action, this is the episode you've been waiting for.

It's possible that the description of the events may feel triggering to some people, given that the scenario is based in part on real life CCTV footage of gang-on-individual violence that I've seen on television documentaries and news programmes. It isn't my point here to make any political or feminist statement as such, but the fact that this can be based on real life is statement enough, I think.

Serious and Meaningful Comment over, on with the story!

Part 9

Mission accomplished. Asira had changed out of her infiltration clothing of a smooth black catsuit and head covering (the effect of looking like a ninja was not entirely accidental, the art of hiding in the shadows has changed little) and into something a little less conspicuous in public.

It was around 2am in the regional capital city, and young revellers were expected in the streets here. Asira wore combat pants and a loose top, and carried her mini Bergen over her shoulder like a regular backpack that might contain whatever it was young women carried around with them on a night out (she guessed, money, phone, make-up and so on – she'd not had the chance for that stuff herself). Her own bag contained her infiltration clothing, her gun, and everything that ad not been expended on the mission. Her aim was to head for a safe house out in the suburbs, rest there for a few hours and then go back to the base for full debriefing. The route and surrounding streets were memorised and, where possible, steps of the journey had been implanted as part of her mission-memories so that she could recognise the points on her way.

Asira was amused by the clubbers: since they chose their clothing to show off skin more than conceal it, they were not setting of the cryptoscopy spell that had proved so useful while on the mission itself, despite the nuisance it had presented while getting on-target. Their bags and backpacks often pinged it, because nobody wanted others to know where their money was.

So, when on a quiet street something sparkled out of the corner of her eye, she immediately became alert – someone was hiding something. She didn't turn to look, her instincts of fieldcraft and covert action taking charge instead. It had come from a second street just ahead, so when she drew level with it she would be able to take a casual glance and see who was there. Surreptitiously, she slipped her combat knife from the back pocket of her combats where it had been hidden, and keeping it concealed by her hand, arm and body, she maintained her calm, easy-going gait.

As it happened, she didn't need to take a glance – the person, or rather people, announced themselves.

"Hey, hot thing! Why don't you come on over here and give us some lovin'?"

She didn't need to turn her head for her optics to pick up the group. Three skinhead gang members, she could even make out the emblems tattooed on their arms. Their stance was wide, aggressive, showy – not much good for actual fighting, but it made you look big and scary, if your opponents were easily impressed by that. They were carrying plastic carrier bags that set off the cryptoscopy very strongly, and at least two of them were also concealing things in their jeans – and judging by the way they were behaving, they weren't interested in concealing their genitalia. Suddenly, Asira felt that this was a very precarious situation. She decided to ignore them and continue on her way. With any luck, they did this with every woman they saw and rejection would seem normal to them.

Her luck was not in.

Their leader yelled, "OI! Darkie bitch, don't fucking ignore me!" She tensed but carried on walking. Just a couple of steps further on – just far enough that she would now have to turn her head to see them, she heard his command, "Get her!"

Shit.

She started to run, hoping to use her cyborg enhancements to outrun her assailants, but these were organised and the furthest forwards had already been moving when the order came, and had cut her off before she could get anywhere very far. The other two, she knew from the sounds of their feet, had fanned out to cut off the other directions. She whirled around, making sure she had a visual reference for where each of them was. As she did so, she saw in the light of the streetlamp that at least two of them now had knives in their hands, and she guessed that explained why the cryptoscopy sense had kicked in when she saw them.

"Right, lads, looks like we're gonna have some eastern-style lovin' tonight!" snarled the leader, to vicious and hate-filled laughter from his gang.

Asira dropped her kitbag and kicked it aside, wishing now that she had her gun in her hand instead of safely tucked away. No time now to try to release it from its side pocket, by the time she stood up again, the men would be on her and it would have no deterrent effect. Despite the peril she felt, Asira could not yet bring herself to contemplate killing any civilian, even if they might be intent on doing it to her. Her military training and then her cyborg training – not to mention the imperative to keep her nature secret, all insisted that she should do minimum harm and then get the Hell out of there.

To do this, though, she needed to act. She sprinted at the unarmed attacker, aiming a slash at his belly. As she hoped, he jumped back to avoid it, but in doing so left himself bent forwards at the waist and off-balance. With the power of her cybernetic left arm, she planted a devastating blow to the back of his head, pitching him forwards and to the floor. He lay still on the dirty tarmac street, but Asira was fairly sure she hadn't done permanent damage. She was about to set off sprinting, but the other men had been quicker than she thought they would be. Her advance-time sense gave her just enough time to dodge slightly as the leader's knife stabbed at her back. It caught her left side and rent her skin as it did so, the momentum of the brutal blow causing drops of her blood to spray from the wound. The stab was accompanied with a raging snarl, "I'll get you for that, bitch!"

His comrade was close behind him, and aimed a savage swipe at Asira's chest with his own blade, but she saw it coming and fended him off with her left arm, just in time. She used its artificial strength to shove him off her, before turning to face their leader again. He had already recovered his balance and aimed his knife into Asira's gut. The gash in Asira's side had broken through any qualms about the nature of her opponents, and she was now operating on pure instinct honed by training: this time she had read his movements without any need for her advanced sense, and instead rushed him, stepping into his body carrying her knife blade into his midriff as her movement caused his blow to sail past her instead.

His knife dropped limply from his hand as Asira's momentum bowled him over and wrenched Asira's blade back out, his scream of pain echoing from the surrounding buildings as he clutched his wounded belly. Asira turned again to face the last of the three, but found him no longer looking at her in anger and deadly hatred, but in fear.

"What the fuck are you?" he spluttered, scrambling and desperately trying to escape.

Asira let him go, weakened now by the blood flowing from her wound and by the fact that the danger was now past. The two bodies of her vanquished opponents lay around her feet, blood pouring from the belly of the one who had knifed her.

It was only when Asira retrieved the first-aid kit from its pouch on her bergen that she realised that the knife shot she had blocked with her left arm had actually cut her, and sliced through the synthetic flesh to reveal the titanium underneath, glinting with sinister meaning in the orange streetlight.