A Femanist View

What to do with the memory of your worst?

2012-01-31T23:31:00.001Z

Trigger Warnings for rape discussion and description of severe mental illness symptoms

Renee @ Womanist Musings cross-posted my piece discussing some of the issues around the existence of abuse within the BDSM community and how we (fail to) deal with it.

A couple of commenters whose names I don't recognise arrived and dragged out the "but he's a rapist!" claim, albeit here the claim was more accurately worded. They were, of course, referring to this post, in which I recount a terrible episode of my depression in which I did, indeed, come close to assaulting and raping a woman. On the plus side, I did not commit any such crime and nobody would have been any the wiser had I not chosen four years later to write publicly about the experience and mental state that I was in, and what the consequences were.

I've made no secret of the existence of that post, and I have made several posts during the history of A Femanist View in which I have linked to it, and to this post, in which a regular commenter interviewed me by email concerning that, and some of the other more disturbing writings on And You Thought I Was Sweet? AYTIWS is searchable by Google, so presumably if you put the right terms in, you can find it. I want it to be findable, because its primary purpose is to say that it is possible to choose not to rape, and to encourage men who feel like they might be going down a path that leads to rape, to choose a different path, and to seek medical help if they need it. I clearly did need it in 2004, but I hadn't got it, and was at that stage still undiagnosed with depression.

And that brings me to the crux of this post. That period, and the period in August 2007, were the times when I suffered most from depression. Except that in 2007, I knew I had depression and I knew that I could get treatment. In 2004, I didn't. So 2004 was when I was at my worst in that respect. And the things that I contemplated doing at that time were the worst I've ever been in that sense, too. These things are a part of my past and a part of the memories that led me to where I am now. I can't change them, or say that they don't exist, because they do. If someone asked me specifically, "I can change time so that you were never in that mental state, and those things never happened, should I?" then I would accept with barely a moment's thought, but such magical cures for our pasts are few and far between, except in fairy tales and movies. The only thing over which I have power, is what effect they have on the present day. How I deal with them, and how I use them. To be absolutely clear on this: we are talking about one of my most painful memories, from a period of great suffering in my life. A memory that within half an hour if it being formed, caused great turmoil and grief, even though no real harm had been done to anyone. The memory of me, at my worst.

One option, perhaps the it would have been the best, certainly it seems like the safest, would have been to bury the memory forever, and shut down anything that threatened to bring it to light. This is what I call the "Bluebeard" option, after the fairy tale in which the title character has a secret door behind which are the beheaded corpses of his previous wives; when his new wife (the heroine of the tale) discovers them, he promises to add her to them (her family arrive in the nick of time to save her).

But Bluebearding my emotions was part of what led me to that day and the burden of those memories in the first place. I resolved instead to let it be a huge warning marker for myself, to help keep me from straying into such dark territory again.

In 2008, once I had got into the knack of blogging, and with "extreme pornography" censorship on the horizon, and a host of other reasons, the story was brought to mind and I thought I could see some good that could come from it. I believed that the fact that I had after all not raped anyone, even though I had been so close to doing so, and the fact that (had I been aware of them), there were better and healthier paths to follow such as treatment for mental health issues, meant that my story could be used as an example to say, "Look! Men can choose not to rape. If you think you might be in a space similar to mine, you can choose to get help instead of being a rapist." I decided that it would not be a secret, but hopefully a tool to help prevent rape.

This was a much riskier path. I knew at the time that there was a strong chance that people would see it and judge me based solely on that one piece of writing. I decided that the hoped-for benefit outweighed the feared cost. It also meant that I would face head-on the memories I bear and deal with how to integrate them into my understanding of myself. Partly, I've done this by remembering that depression made me literally "not myself" at the time, and partly by recognising how the form of my destructive urges reflected parts of who I am; and more recently by accepting (on the advice of a friend who's a trained counsellor) that maybe porn wasn't the explanation for my choice not to rape, and maybe there was still some part of me deep down that refused to go there. And I cope with the memory by knowing that I have all the tools and more that I could possibly need, to avoid ever going to a place like that again. By being open about this, I seem to have benefited in terms of my own emotional balance from a "Sunlight is the best disinfectant" effect. That, in turn, has benefits for those close to me emotionally.

More generally, though, I don't know whether my decision was really the best course. Maybe for the majority of people, it would have been better to keep quiet, keep it to myself, make it a secret. Maybe putting the story out there was a mistake. I don't know, and I've done the best I can. I know at least one blogger has vowed to make sure that the text of the original post remains available online even if I delete that post, so I can't go back on the decision now. But every time someone (like that blogger with the vow) brings up this episode of my past as an attempt to discredit me or say that my thoughts and ideas have no value, or no place in the feminist blogosphere, I wonder if I would have done better to be silent.

How do you deal with these moments in your past when you were not yourself, when you were at your worst ebb and thinking and acting in the worst ways that you ever have done? If you have some incident like mine that you know messes with your own head, and will certainly be a source of judgement and will disturb others, then what do you do with it? In every relationship I've had, I've had to ask myself what the appropriate time is to bring up this matter, because it's out there on the internet, and sooner or later she (or, potentially, he) would find it themselves. How much does this person trust me, that I won't ruin everything? How much do I trust them not to use it to hurt me? How do I broach the subject and open a conversation? If I decide not to tell my partner, to what extent will keeping a secret like this poison my relationship with her, and how much damage might it do if she finds out some other way? Of course, I kind of have that issue anyway as soon as I let on that I have this blog, because of those links back to the other one - it's always possible she'll find out before I tell her, I recall that SNS had read that post before we got to the point where I wanted to talk about it, and made up her own mind about what it meant before she decided to meet me.

In the end, I still believe that it is best that people can find this information if they choose to look. For I hope obvious reasons, I view the post as very personal and very painful, so I don't want to encourage people to look particularly, but it's there for those who need it or who want to know. For these reasons, I was quite upset that someone chose to copy-paste a large chunk into comments at Womanist Musings, but they had their motivations.

If they are going to judge me for it, then they can make up their own minds about what, if anything, it means about the person I am today and whether or not they want to interact with me, or what amount of credence they want to give to the things I choose to say about life, sex, politics and all the rest of the stuff that I post here. If they don't want me around them, or don't want me posting at their blog, or whatever, then I can understand that and accept it. In the end, I can't (and probably wouldn't if I could) stop people bringing it up, if they think it will win them an argument (or, if they just want to shut me up or hurt me). I made my decision, now I make decisions on how I deal with the consequences of that decision, and so life goes on.

What happens when it is abuse? BDSM culture, safewords, and the abusers within

2012-01-30T01:00:00.002Z

TRIGGER WARNING: discussion of sexual assault and (especially in the Salon article linked) rape apologia.

I've seen this mentioned in several places today, and feel that I cannot allow it to go past without making some comment.

Salon has a piece up which is about women within the BDSM scene campaigning to have the problem of abuse in BDSM recognised by the community.

I have read the original piece by Kitty Stryker that is referenced in the article, and been sickened by it. Sadly, I am not surprised by the allegations she makes (except, perhaps, that she hasn't met any submissive women who haven't been victims - but if she says that it is so, then I believe her). I have been a reader of Maggie Mayhem's blog and something rings a bell about what the Salon article says, so I may have read another piece by her about these issues, referencing her experiences.

I cannot comment on the "Bay Area scene", except to say that from other reading and descriptions elsewhere, it sounds a lot different from the scene with which I am familiar. That doesn't mean that there are not similar problems in my area.

I believe their stories because I believe that there are abusers in every subsection of society, because there are abusers in society at large. Any culture that has power dynamics will have abusers seeking to acquire power and then abuse that power. That's how come there turn out to be a lot of abusers in the Roman Catholic Church, for example. It may seem contentious to say this, but I don't think that the Roman Catholic Church is anything unusual. [EDIT TO ADD: Infra in comments pointed out NicholeShield's comment @ Salon, which is a brilliant and succinct explanation of how this works.]

So, there's a problem, and stuff needs to be done about it. My big problem with this is that my instinctive reaction when I read something like Stryker or Mayhem's criticisms is to say, "Well, I'm not like that! Don't blame me!" As I'm sure you can see, that is a very unhelpful response. I may not be like that, but the question instead is what am I doing to stop others being like that, and I have to admit, not a huge amount. In fact, the biggest thing I am doing is just believing the stories when they're told. In mitigation, I am somewhat marginal in my local area scene and just don't have the opportunity to witness abusive behaviour in it very often, and therefore to do anything about it. The other thing I do is try to drum home the message about "enthusiastic consent", the importance of a safeword, and so on. And I am vigilant with myself to see that I do not screw up and break someone's boundaries (and if I make a mistake, I realise quickly and apologise, and back waaaay off). This is not enough, but I feel like I haven't the wherewithal to do much more at the moment.

As Stryker admits, it is very hard to be vigilant against abuse in the community when people are constantly trying to shut the community down with the accusation that BDSM by its very existence is abuse. It's pretty hard when the law in this country is still officially that SM play is illegal.

One thing that I think is really important to recognise and to counteract, is the culture that inhibits safeword use. Whatever the naysayers' claims, I know and have seen (and have encountered first-hand when playing with previous partners) the belief that to safeword is somehow "wussy", "not submissive enough", or even, "topping from the bottom". A lot of the time, I feel as though this is something that bottoms bring with them and with their preconceptions of the power-exchange dynamic. But I think there are many ways in which community standards actually seem to send the signal that a safeword is an unfortunate necessity, rather than a valuable tool that should be used. And, of course, those abusers in Dom's clothing will work subtly (or not so subtly, in a lot of cases) to send the signal that using a safeword is not quite the "done thing". That is something that really does need to be countered.

I forget which sex educator it was (it may have been Maggie Mayhem, it may have been Clarisse Thorn, it may have been someone else) who wrote that when a sub uses hir safeword, the best way to respond as a top is to praise hir for doing so. The purpose of a submissive having a safeword is not simply to "tap out" and "withdraw consent", but to communicate a problem (whether physical, emotional or whatever) to hir partner, to enable hir partner to break out of role and deal with the problem, and then renegotiate the scene (or else conclude it there). That means that when a submissive partner uses hir safeword, zie is helping hir partner perform hir role more effectively. When a submissive does something right, it is good practice to let hir know so!

With all my partners, I have effectively conducted "safeword drills" before serious play started, asking them to practice it so I know they can say it confidently. I have not always been ideal on praising, but I have never given the impression that a safeword was a negative thing.

That said, a safeword is not some "magic bullet" where, if you have one, then nothing can possibly be bad. A lot of people, unfortunately, seem to believe this myth that simply having a safeword is protection enough, and that it somehow absolves the top of responsibility for hir bottom's safety. Several of the naysayers mentioned in the Salon article exemplify this problem:

One critic, Janet Hardy, author of several popular BDSM books, including “The New Bottoming Book,” tells me, “My general thoughts are that it is tremendously important to build a safe word culture but that bottoms have to hold up their share of that responsibility,” she says. “A bottom who refuses to safeword when he or she has actually withdrawn consent has just turned me into a rapist or assailant without my consent, and that is not OK.”

There are many reasons why a bottom might not safeword when zie needs to. One of these, as mentioned above, is a fear of somehow letting down hir partner, or of revealing hirself not to be "true" enough (the problem of "twueism" being part and parcel of many of these issues of violated consent). Zie may not realise hirself that zie is in trouble. Zie may have become non-verbal through subspace or other extremely intense emotional/psychological states. Zie may, in the heat of the moment, have forgotten what the safeword is. There may be other reasons that elude me at the moment.

A top has a duty of care, in my opinion, with regards to hir bottoming partner; it is the top's responsibility to ensure that the bottom is brought back from whatever brink is approached during play, and is restored well. That, above all, means being alert and aware of what is happening with the bottom. A safeword is just one tool to enable such awareness, but it is not a substitute for any of the others. If in doubt, a top needs to stop and check in with hir partner (I sometimes think it would be good having a "safe-timeout" signal for tops to use when they are unsure of the situation; some people have clear "check-ins", but I can imagine scenes where a clear check-in could be misread as an in-character thing instead, just as "no" might not mean "no", necessitating a safeword).

What can we, the BDSM community do? As described, we can work to get safewords understood and valued properly. We can start to believe the word of those who claim to have had their boundaries violated. I am inclined to suggest that most bottoms are bright enough to know the difference between a badly negotiated scene, and one in which the negotiations were subsequently ignored, and we can trust them to report accurately which of these was the case. I'm not saying that we should automatically accept every accusation, because I am sure that a small minority of accusations will be malicious and false. I am saying that we should trust a person to know what happened, and therefore that we don't try to pick apart events to see where zie went wrong and thus excuse the top by implication. Let's not do the abusers' work for them! Instead, at the very least let's pick apart what the top did wrong to miss the signals that should have told hir that this was time to stop.

It can be tricky to sort the evil from the merely incompetent, or the falsely accused. And there has to be a tendency against assuming evil. But equally, there has to be a tendency against assuming evil on the part of the accuser; if there's no clear reason why a bottom should make a false accusation, then should we not at least entertain the possibility that the accusation is real, and that something needs to be done?

And if there is something that goes wrong and it really is a case of a misunderstanding, then the culture needs to be against defensiveness, and in favour of accepting responsibility: if, by some failing, I were to be responsible for violating a bottom's limits, then the only appropriate thing I could do is admit that I screwed up, apologise, and take measures to prevent a similar screw up in future. We should always be wary of the top who tries to blame hir bottom for a miscommunication.

One final note: I've tried to stick to the gender-neutral pronouns, because I vaguely recall seeing at least one account of a male submissive being violated by a female top, so I assume it happens in all gender combinations. However, I do not know what the ratios of each would be, and it is important to remember that the initial article was focussed on female submissives being the victims of abuse.

Bits I wrote elsewhere

2012-01-29T18:24:00.001Z

There were some things I posted this week at other bloggery type places that I thought might be of interest to readers here, but for one reason or another didn't quite feel fit on this blog.

For your benefit, so you don't feel you missed anything:

At And You Thought I was Sweet? (which is NSFW, and basically a BDSM sex blog, so trigger warnings for various taboo sexual topics):

I discussed my recent interest in sexual wrestling porn, which may interest folks because of my analysis of the symbolism I noted.

The differences between BDSM objectification/degradation play, and actual objectification, picking up from an advert image that was presented as an example of objectification and why I didn't get the same read on it. So, again, an analysis of symbolism and roles.

At Snowdrop Implosions (tumblr blog, often reblogging sexual/BDSM images, but not in this link):

I thrill to the Ting Tings' sheer bloody stubbornness. Of interest just because the interview piece is hugely fun.

Forced masculinity as humiliation/submission: a missing fetish?

2012-01-28T21:17:00.001Z

I had been pondering a post about this topic for a couple of weeks, and the topic came up on the Informed Consent BDSM community website discussion boards (you might need to be a member to read it there):

Masculinerised subs?

I know that some male subs seem to like the idea of being feminised and depending on your views, this may make them seem more submissive for the Dom/Domme.

However, is there a female equivalent? i.e. making a femal sub more masculine and would this have a similar effect or the reverse?

Rather than write my own post, I'm just going to post here what I wrote over there (with a little extra feminist analysis in the first paragraph) and ask people for their thoughts, suggestions, analysis and views to be posted in comments.

***

It's one of the things that really bothers me about the way crossdressing as a sub tends to be portrayed: it's as though people think it is inherently humiliating to be viewed as more feminine. Needless to say, that's a hugely sexist way of thinking and it disgusts me (it also keeps me from exploring me feminine-submissive interests, because I really really do not do humiliation from the bottom - it's a hard-limit). So I want there to be an inverse form. If not in actual usage, then at least in concept, so it can actually be used to unpick the knots of Patriarchy. It really is a problem that the worst insults to use to a man are to liken him to something female.

One thought is the inverse of sissification being "slobbification" - enforced dressing down completely and sitting in slouchy poses and such. Not sure what the sexual thrill would be for the top in that, but who knows - there's probably someone out there for whom it would be a turn on.

Another thought is to focus on other experiences of masculinity - having to knuckle under to an ungrateful and uncaring boss to keep a boring and laborious job you don't really want anyway but you've got to pay the bills: I can see that as a roleplay option.

Other "lifestyle" options might be recreating master/servant roles as a mirror of feminised "maids": you could have "masculinerised" farmhand/serving staff/mechanic/etc roles with the whole forelock-tugging routine and so on, with grubby overalls or butlering outfits and so on: think class as well as gender as a mimicked axis of oppression to produce the power-exchange and/or humiliation aspects.

***

It's worth noting that several commenters on that thread said they thought that masculinising someone would surely be to put them in a more Dominant, powerful role - you can see above how I thought that ties into class assumptions of male roles as well, imagining that masculinising must mean either uniformed services or wearing a smart suit symbolising a powerful social position.

One thing I forgot to mention in that first comment (I've now copy-pasted this section into a new comment over there!) is that masculinisation of the type discussed above would also involve on some level making the target of the fetish feel de-sexualised: there are plenty of porn images of women doing traditionally male working-class roles but dressed in skimpy outfits and flashing their bits at the camera. That's not a masculinising fetish. Masculinisation would involve stripping away the sexual and sexualising content (at least, for the bottom) and involve some element of sexual denial fetish as well (which is quite a common kink for both men and women as bottoms). One version might involve using some kind of slow vibrating toy to maintain a certain level of arousal in the masculinised woman throughout, but no opportunity to explore it.

Hmm. I now have a fantasy of a sex toy designed like a feeldoe but with a floppy external "penis" to mimic what a man has when he's not aroused, and the wearer has inserted a stiffer dong that shifts and rubs as the external thing wobbles and shifts in her pants through walking and working, to create a frustrating sense of arousal and awareness of her dick.

Pick-up and transgressing the barriers between us - the vast social barriers!

2012-01-26T02:02:00.000Z

After the prolonged hiatus in my attempts to figure out how to start talking to women out there in meatspace, I decided this week to get back to the most basic step of all - saying "hello".

Specifically, saying hello to someone I don't know. Even more specifically, saying hello to someone I don't know but I might like to get to know better, because she's female, attractive appearance, in my age range and much more than that you can't tell just from looking.

Saying "hello" doesn't sound hard, right? Although given that my typical performance hasn't been good, maybe that's too optimistic. But the thing is, what I tend to struggle with is what to say after saying "hello" - the thing that explains why "hello" in the first place.

So, the plan was this: say hello to an attractive woman walking the other way, as we pass on the pavement, and just keep going, no looking back. No "what to say next" need come into the equation, and no need to worry about what I'm going to say to start things off (I actually decided to say, "Evenin'" as in, "Good evening") either. One word. How hard could that be?

The more astute amongst my readership may have guessed that there wouldn't be much of a story if it was easy. And indeed, it was a lot harder than I imagined.

Here's what happened: I espied the woman to whom I would say "Evenin'" with plenty of time to recognise that this was the opportunity for which I had been preparing. It was evening, and so dark, but plenty of street lighting and other people milling around. Zero worries.

And yet - I still felt a tight knot start to grip in my stomach, and anxiety start to rise. What the heck was going on, what on Earth could cause such a reaction in this zero-pressure situation?

Then I remembered my parents talking about how when they moved from Yorkshire to the South East, how they were struck by how nobody said "'ow do" down here. "Up Home," as Papa calls it, it was commonplace for random people to greet each other in passing. In these parts, not so much. And I grew up round here. So there was a social barrier because it is not "the done thing".

So I resolved to be more like Papa, and play by those rules.

All in the space of a second or two. So, I did say, "Evenin'!" to the attractive woman walking the other way. And, lo and behold, she said "Evening!" back (what else would she do?) I had successfully crossed that barrier, transgressed it, if you will, and had not been struck down by lightning or anything else for that matter. This is what the advice I have been reading on pick-up seems to emphasise and start with: whatever you're imagining as the awful consequence of saying something, it's highly unlikely to be as bad as you think, and in fact most often will be quite pleasant (such as, exchanging a wish of a good evening in the street with a passer-by). The idea that I took on board back in the summer was that you want to build up as many of this pleasant little experiences as possible to boost the confidence levels and then once you get comfortable with "hello", you can start to think about the next step. I struggled to get going with that in the summer, but who knows, maybe 2012 will see a change in that?

One other thing that occurred to me as I walked away from the encounter was that I am also definitely an introvert; I like to live in my head a lot and don't like intrusions that much; I find company exhausting (even when I'm enjoying it). So it's entirely possible that another source of the anxiety and reluctance to make even that small move was that my nature creates stronger barriers for me in that sense, and so for my introverted brain it was a bigger transgression than for a more extroverted person. If so, then I guess if I want to have success with meeting women, I need to get used to making that step, because the feeling won't go away.

The things for which they'll respect you

2012-01-24T15:59:00.000Z

Sharideth @ A Woman's Guide To Women: A Blog For Men has a post called "How To Be An Alpha Male: Part 2" that raised an interesting question or concept, which will be the main point of this post. First, though, I want to clarify that I extremely dislike the language of "alpha male/beta male" because I think a) it's a distraction from living life well, and b) it's the language of competition rather than communication, and it's the language of commodity value rather than human connection. A third reason would be that they inevitably point to a type of performative masculinity that I have rejected. I loathe the terms and rebel against them and what they stand for - and, like the crew of Serenity, I aim to misbehave.

I attempted to articulate some of my specific rejections, and why I don't see them as counting against me (in particular, the distinction I drew between providing security for a partner or being secure for a partner seemed to get lost, I'd be interested to know if my readers can see what I'm getting at with that one). That did not go so well, and last night I lost my temper a little (one woman assuming I'd be interested in her with her kinkphobic attitude while at the same time wanting me to be a mindreader to make decisions for her without canvassing her thoughts... but I digress). To illustrate this distinction, Sharideth said, "got a girl on the line? go fix something that’s broken at her place without being asked." I said, "the type of woman I want to date will either ask me to fix that broken thing at her place, or will get angry at me for doing it for her when she had plans to do it herself next weekend. If she didn’t get angry at me for doing it without her asking, then I would start to lose interest in her." Of course, it's possible to ask in an oblique fashion (e.g. "I have this broken thing and it's really bugging me, I wish I knew someone who could fix it" type of thing)! And yes, it is kind of nice to have the opportunity to be all, "Here I am to save the day!" every once in a while. But I'm not going to make it my business to save the day, that's too much like an unequal partnership. But once again, I am digressing.

The title of this post is, "The things for which they'll respect you." "Respect" is one of the things that Sharideth says marks out an "alpha male" from all those other Greek letters (no one ever talks about an omicron male or a nu male, do they?) Specifically, she says:

your perceived value goes way up when it’s obvious other people respect you. easy way to gain respect? be respectable. duh. there are million different things people can be respected for. it can also vary depending which circles you run in and the value system of each group. Craig is a good example. in music circles, he’s the man when it comes to engineering. with our Christian friends, he’s the go-to theology guy. at a bar, he’s the one to beat at pool and compare beards with. but he consciously does something that a lot of men don’t. he decides what’s important to him and gets good at it. there is no half way with my boy. his pursuits might be few, but he actively makes the most of them. that’s respectable.

The point that sprang out at me was, "he decides what’s important to him and gets good at it." Now, I could take issue on the grounds that it's not always possible to get good at something, no matter how important it is to you - biology and genetics being what they are[1]. (There's also the issue that with some types of thing, that can actually lead to problems, for example, deciding that "staying/getting thin" is important and "getting good" at it can lead to anorexia nervosa or similar problems.) I want to leave those quibbles to one side and think about the underlying idea in the statement, which I think can be characterised as "dedication". As Roy Castle sang, "Dedication's what you need, if you want to be a record breaker!" Not everyone with dedication will get to break records, but you're rarely going to break a record incidentally or accidentally (Basic Instructions notwithstanding).

I think it is true that, in general, people respect those who work at something, and dedicate their efforts to developing some skill or talent. They may not think much of the choice (for example, I don't see pool as being a particularly worthy thing to which one might dedicate oneself), but they tend to respect that achieving expertise takes a certain approach.

And, if you get good at something and people have some connection to that something, then they will look to you for answers (or at least, suggestions) in circles where those things are important, just as Sharideth described.

Now, I have had a problem with choosing what to get good at (or to attempt to get good at). For a large proportion of my life, I was told I could be anything, and couldn't choose between the various options until (arguably) it was too late. That's not very respectable (and, in writing a song about it, I broke one of Sheila Davis' rules of good lyric writing, which is always make your central character someone people will respect - but I also wrote a song inspired by the fact that at various times some of my favourite lyrics broke all the rules that Davis gives, so that shows you how closely I follow that advice!)

That said, I decided to sit down and look at my life and my choices as they are now, and see what are the things that I focus on, that I find important, that I aim to be good at, and for which people might respect me and my accomplishments?

The first thing that springs to mind is my music. Although I am not a hugely talented musician on any of my instruments, I have nevertheless worked and practised to get to the levels I have reached. I have dedicated myself to figuring out how to make nice noises and being able to express myself through guitar, ukulele, mandolin and double bass. I treat the tin whistle, recorder and harmonica as hobby instruments, but I still make the effort to know enough that I can play reasonably well on them. It seems odd that this should be the case, because when I started learning them I never really saw it as something more than a hobby, but now it's an important part of my life and what I do. I doubt I will ever be the person other musicians turn to for advice, but when it comes to social music, being able to do more than just join in is appreciated, and people ask me to perform for them (and I still tell the story about earning a pint, and a train fare, by busking at a pub having returned from the Fame Academy auditions). I still hope to have that dedication pay off, maybe with success at the X Factor in 2012, if they make a series this year.

Along with the skills to be able to play reasonably well on my instruments, I dedicate myself to writing music and songs (as noted above, I've read a lot about the craft of lyric writing, even if I don't always care to follow the guidelines!) For this, I definitely am respected by others. The highlight so far being that I was chosen to compose a piece of music especially for the bridal entrance at my sister's wedding, based on some of the other instrumental work I've done. I would like to have more time free to focus on songwriting, and in particular on finishing some of the fragments that I have jotted down. But even if I did have more time, and finished those ones, then in between finishing them I would make more idea-fragments, and wish for still more time to complete those...

Writing in general is something that I pay a lot of attention to. I may seem to bash out these posts in a quick half hour or hour at the keyboard, allowing my mind to wander where it will (see above re: "I digress" more than once), but I spend a lot of time thinking about what I want to say and how I intend to say it. Sometimes I'm still not happy with the result after I hit "publish", but if I'm truly not satisfied then I delete the post without publishing. More generally, I write a lot of fiction (of which you can see my ongoing saga "Cyborg Sleeps", presented in raw, first-draft format, on this blog) and spend a lot of time and effort on crafting where I want my stories to go, how best to develop things and so on. Even on Cyborg Sleeps, I put this work in, despite the fact that I view it almost as a throwaway thing that I'm doing for fun and not putting in the proper redrafting work for it before sharing. I take pride in what I do with my writing, and I hope it shows. As I mentioned at the start of the year, I am now putting serious effort into finishing the first, "discovery" draft of my novel. I think, because most of the stories that people see that I write are presented as the throwaway 1st draft format, maybe people don't respect me for this as much as I would wish, but my belief is that when the hidden work is completed on the stuff that I really care about (like the novel) then maybe that will change.

Then there's my BDSM. I take the duties of a top pretty seriously, and there are skills and abilities that take dedication to learn. While risk is a present factor in any BDSM, as the top particularly, it's my duty to keep the risks to an acceptable level, by minimising them without disrupting the play. I may never have all the skills and competencies of some other tops with more experience and more access to learning resources than me, but I make sure that when I do something, I know what I'm doing with it. I think I do better at the mental aspects (understanding, communication and so on), because in general as well as in BDSM I have put a lot of effort into becoming better at these.

In a work setting, or rather, on those occasions when I've had work, and in the meantime in my mindset in what I want to do with work, I am dedicated to customer service, in being as helpful as I can to the customer to help them find exactly what they need to fit their criteria. I am not so dedicated to sales, so I won't try to sell something extra that might be nice but isn't actually on their shopping list (I might not even recognise the opportunity to do that). I'm about helping, not selling, and if that is a reason I am still out of work, then so be it. My admin roles also, I bring that same thing of helping others to my identity: I want things filed properly so the next person who needs it can find it; I want the forms done properly so that people who need the info can read it easily; and so on. Keeping things moving smoothly is about making life easier for those around me in that sort of role, and that's what I dedicate myself to. When I have had the chance to demonstrate these, I do believe I have earned respect for it.

So, dear reader, what about you?

What are the things to which you dedicate yourself, and for which you believe you win respect?

[1] Although I would say also that if it's important to you, then biology and genetics are no reason for you not to do all you can to get as good as you can at it, even if "as good as you can" is still rubbish (eg Don Quixote and "To Dream The Impossible Dream" etc)

Feeling like you're failing when you're not: political blogger edition

2012-01-23T00:45:00.000Z

I was all geared up to write a blog post about how I had ended up writing a dating blog (by someone who hardly ever goes on dates!) and how this was originally intended to be all political and gender activism and stuff and now look at me...

So, I decided to get some figures to back up my argument. I decided to have a look at how few posts focussing on politics I had written in the past year and then do that whole "woe is me" thing.

Thing is, it didn't quite work out that way. In the past year or so, I wrote about 200 posts; in the same time, there were 23 posts labelled with the "politics" tag, although one of those was an episode of Cyborg Sleeps, so probably not about real world politics as such. That's roughly 1 in every 9 posts was labelled "politics". The thing is, a lot of posts that aren't to do with protests, campaigns or electoral politics, still relate to gender and sexual politics through the whole gender and sex thing - about which I write fairly frequently and a fair amount of that writing makes some form of political point or other relating to those topics. So in fact, it might be 1 in 5 or 1 in 4 posts. By comparison, there were 40 posts tagged "dating" (and generally, even tangentially related topics got a "dating" tag), which is exactly 1 in 5. So the best guess is that I've been posting about equally about the originally-intended topics for this blog, and about the more personal feelings I have about the world of dating (and it's possible that there is some overlap). It does rather leave the question of what the other 3/5 of my posts in the last 12 months were about, but frankly, that's not the point. The point is, in my mind I had the idea that my dating posts heavily outnumbered my politics and gender related posts, and at worst it's only a ratio of 2:1, and a fairer guess might be that they're evenly matched. So, why the big difference between perceptions and reality?

As mentioned, I started this blog to talk about sexual and gender politics, with a particular interest in kink, trans* issues and feminism. A few months after I started it in 2007 (it feels weird to think I've been doing this for nearly 5 years now!) I entered severe episode of depression and made the decision to use this space to talk about those personal issues as well, and the blog has more-or-less had that shape ever since, with the balance between political and personal shifting according to the shape of what's going on politically, and what's going on for me - my number of available "spoons" also dictating to a certain extent which topics I took on at which times. But in the back of my mind there has always been that feeling that this is "supposed" to be a political blog.

Since May this year, I have been exploring in a somewhat cack-handed way the world of dating, "pick-up artistry", and so on, seeking some kind of structure and principles that gel well with my personality and my political convictions re: feminism, gender equality and all that stuff. And, of course, being kinky an' all. Naturally, that exploration has been recorded regularly on this site.

So, each "dating" post seemed like it wasn't what this blog is "supposed" to be about, and sticks in my mind as an aberration; but each political post has seemed like a normal (and therefore less significant) event. So, I remember all the dating posts and ignore or forget all the political ones (I honestly thought in the past 6 months I'd only done about 5, and it's at least twice that). So I feel like I'm "failing", because I'm doing stuff I shouldn't, instead of stuff I should.

Which is, of course, baloney - not only is it perfectly okay to be writing about the dating issues (if only because, hello, gender and sex issues?!) - but also, I have been writing a reasonable amount about politics, too. It is true that my dating posts in total over 4.5 years numbered 113 to date, of which 40 came in the last 12 month, leaving 73 in the previous 3.5 years, but when you work it out, that's actually still roughly 1/3 of the posts in the previous 2/9 of the lifetime of the blog, which isn't that far off! On politics, there is more of an imbalance: it's closer to 1/8 in the past 2/9 of the blog's lifetime. However, when you run the numbers through a calculator, it turns out that on average I've been posting 3.3 posts per month on politics in the last year, whereas on average across the previous 3.5 years, I have been posting roughly 3.1 "politics" posts per month - in other words, the difference is about one post every month. Since I'm blogging about 16 times a month in total, that's not a big difference!

It's very easy to trick yourself into thinking you're doing more (or less) than you really are. I have felt a certain amount of downturn in my political blogging since the end of 2010: the all-out assault on the poor and vulnerable by the coalition government just beat the fight out of me (I ran out of spoons to keep up the struggle). But really, I have not been as lax as that made me feel. I have not been failing, I have just been expecting to fail, and I have been selectively remembering things in a way that matches that expectation. Checking the figures as I have done here, is a really good wake-up call. This is why I like SMART targets for my New Year's Resolutions, for example.

In the Tao of Pooh, there's a line about asking yourself, when you say, "I never get anything right" or similar things, "Is that true - or even possible?" This post is about asking, "Is that true?" when you think you're failing.

Frustrations of online dating: part picky

2012-01-21T22:44:00.000Z

There are times when I will read a woman's profile (usually a woman's, anyway) and somehow feel that it's just not right. And the thing is, I have a hard time deciding to act on that feeling of not-right-ness and to click the "back" button without sending a message.

What I'm talking about is those situations when there are no clear "red flags", no "deal breakers", not even obvious "turn-offs". There may even be some of the "would be nice" features listed in that post. And yet, somehow it's just not right.

And it seems slightly churlish of me to say, "You tick the right boxes, and yet the answer's still no", especially when my field of dating interest in not that wide to begin with. (For clarification, I'm not saying that to her in an email/memo, but mentally saying it to the inanimate profile that she's put up on my screen through the dating site search engine.)

Now, I am sure PUA types would characterise that as "beta" type thinking, and I guess it is. The unstated premise is that I should be grateful for anything I can get, because supply is limited, I'm not that hot that I can just pick and choose, and all that kind of thing. That's definitely a valid angle to take, but the antithesis of those ideas ("I'm hot, and have plenty of opportunity to pick and choose") isn't really all the helpful as far as I can see, except perhaps for people who need that explicit confidence boost just to get started. Ultimately, though, that attitude to me still seems to be focussed on what others think of you, and on a marketplace mindset that (to me, anyway) seems harmful and takes away from the actual value in having a relationship.

Instead, I approach it from the perspective of what I hope to gain. Not how others see me, but how it feels. I want to be in a relationship, but in particular, I want to be in a relationship with someone whose company will make me happy, whose spirit seems to resonate well with mine - and when they're discordant, we have the foundation to resolve that or get through it. Basically, if I get the feeling from a profile that there's something discordant from the beginning - that is, that happiness is not likely with this person - then it's not going to be worthwhile contacting her, even if, "on paper", she looks like a good match.

It's often hard to pin down exactly what seems discordant in a profile, although I guess it's often some sense I get of implied divergent values or life expectations. Maybe something about he personality just seems like we'd rub each other up the wrong way (do your own double entendres there...) or something. But the point is, I have to keep in mind that the point of this is to find someone who will make me happier, and not someone who will only cause more grief. Reminding myself of this reminds me that it isn't churlish of me to choose not to contact these profiles, and ultimately, those deal-breakers/turn-offs/would be nice/must -haves aren't a neat shopping list or algorithm for finding a partner, such that all women who meet those criteria are eligible. They're the parameters for the search area is all, and in that search area there are still other, intangible, factors to take into account (some of which, I listed above).

And this is also what I have to remind myself of when I reply to women's profiles: just because I seem to tick all the boxes that they put on their description of "the man I'm looking for", it doesn't mean that the intangibles are going to work out for her.

On negotiating the parallels and divergences of kinkphobia and homophobia

2012-01-19T17:59:00.000Z

In the past couple of weeks, I've been feeling somewhat battered and bruised by LGB people (no trans* folks that I noticed) making assumptions about BDSM (which seems ironic, since as I understand the history, the idea of a BDSM community grew up out of the leather SM scene in gay communities).

There is a tendency, I think, among BDSM activists to want to see LGBT activism as automatically our allies, because we see that they have fought many of the same battles that we are going through or have gone through, and it is the easiest thing in the world to borrow a lot of the language and ideas that they used in their battles, to express our concerns about oppression of kinky folks. When people are familiar with how an idea or trope of the oppressors have affected LGBT folks, it seems easiest to say, "it's like that thing that gay people had/have".

There are lots of ways in which homophobia and kinkphobia are not comparable, so this isn't always a good thing in terms of negotiating alliances. We want to say, "look, we've got the same problem as you, let's work together", but sometimes what we hear back is, "yours is not an oppression, go away and stop stealing our stuff".

Equally, it is important to be aware that BDSMers can be just as heteronormative, and our spaces just as unsafe for gay folks, as any other space that isn't gay-only: not all kinky folks are good allies.

Back in mid-2009, Clarisse Thorn wrote an excellent post about BDSM as a sexual orientation, and complications of the orientation model. At the beginning of this month, a self-identified lesbian called Heather made the following comment:

I feel that calling S&M an orientation is taking the “sexual” word in “sexual orientation” too heavily – as though I’m a lesbian because I like tits. It gets so tiring to have my orientation reduced to that and it’s been decades and decades of attempting to convince those who have taken my rights away that it is not in fact all about sex.

For the S&M crowd to appropriate the term “sexual orientation” is to display an incomplete, arrogant, and frankly bigoted understanding of the term. People who are into S&M aren’t the only ones with innate preferences. Some lesbians prefer butch women and always have, some prefer tall women, some short, femme women, some androgynous women. We are all lesbians. As long as I can remember, I’ve been seriously turned on by lipstick and the idea of having it all over me. That is not my orientation. That is my taste. S&M is your taste. If you want to make it into a lifestyle, that’s your choice, but this is as ignorant as saying you’re of the “Catholic race” or the “submissive gender.” Frankly, your privilege is showing.

To which I replied:

Frankly, I think your vanilla privilege is showing. You sound very ignorant of the realities of BDSMers’ lives, feelings and realities.

You want to equate BDSM desires as equivalent to preferring a taller or shorter partner, and that is just flat-out WRONG in my experience of my sexual identity.

What, in your opinion, is the distinction between a “taste” and an “orientation”? Is it a difference in degree (that is, a “taste” is somehow less compelling than an “orientation”), or is it a difference in kind (if so, what is the basis for that difference)?

I identify as bi, with a strong preference for female partners over male. However, trumping that is my preference for a Submissive partner. If my partner is submitting and letting me do my sadism and bondage and Dominance on them then hir gender is really of much smaller concern to me. As noted above, I tend to prefer women as my partners but for me, that is closer to a “taste” for taller or shorter partners, than it is to an “orientation”.

You say, “It gets so tiring to have my orientation reduced to that and it’s been decades and decades of attempting to convince those who have taken my rights away that it is not in fact all about sex.” But now you are doing exactly the same thing to me: you are trying to reduce my orientation to “just sex”, and that is not acceptable to me. It is not true of me. Your vanilla privilege is showing.

I’ll be honest, I have doubts about the “orientation” model, but it comes the closest to describing how I feel and experience my sexuality as a sadist and a Dominant. I don’t know if it is prenatal or postnatal in its origins, I don’t know whether there is some life experience when I was young that turned me this way, or if I was born like it, or if it was just my weird destiny planned out by God above, for His/Her/Its/Their grand Purpose. It really doesn’t matter to me what the reason for it is. I am the way I am, and it is NOT a “taste” or a “preference”.

I've done some thinking about those questions about my orientations, and I'll probably sit right down and write a new post immediately after this one to talk about that (I composed both posts before posting, and that one actually precedes this one, so I can put the link in here). For now though, I just want to point out the word "appropriating" used in Heather's comment, and the feeling I felt of being rendered invisible or dismissed by her, that I responded to.

Also at Clarisse Thorn's, on a post about "submissive skills", a commenter dropped a link and asked for people's thoughts.

It described someone who had used BDSM as a response to the aftermath of sexual abuse, and who had felt damaged by that use (and by the ways in which some other BDSMers described their successful use of BDSM to deal with those things - such that she characterised their life stories as "propaganda"). This person had used a technique the description of which culminated in:

Once I separated the fantasy from the feeling, I’d consciously impose other powerful images on that feeling – like seeing a waterfall. If they can put SM on you, you can put waterfalls there instead. I reprogrammed myself. Instead of having to say “I’ll do anything you want,” I would see a waterfall and have the same intensity of feeling.

And you know what? I'm happy that that worked for the person in question and that she felt healed by doing it. But (apart from the implication, that the author has now denied intending, that BDSM is a symptom of being abused as a child), this still felt very bad.

I dimly recalled someone writing about this issue elsewhere, and it turns out that it seems to have been in response to the same story (albeit quoted in an entirely different blog), and her personal response to being given a similar narrative as that presented by the woman quoted above. She wrote:

I spent so much time worrying about my sexuality not changing, of waterfalls or whatever else not replacing my self, that I didn't allow myself for years to take pride in the actual progress I was making toward healing. I became obsessed with the idea that my sexuality wasn't changing and therefore there was something wrong with me, even as I slowly felt better about myself, less inclined to self-harming (again, maybe to you the desire to do SM and to self-harm are the same, but in my experience they are very different), etc.

She added:

In a nutshell, that's my major problem with both reparative therapy and anti-SM "radical feminism": this theory that you're broken, and if you just pray enough or "examine your desires" enough you'll heal, but that if you don't you must just be too hurt, too broken, too weak, or too easily seduced to get over it.

I made a similar response to the commenter at Clarisse's blog, based on my vague recollection of the above example, using the term "pray away the gay" to refer to reparative therapy and similar approaches.

At an entirely different blog and thread, a gay rights activist took exception to someone else drawing parallels between "pray the gay away" and the thought stream in some therapists' approaches and in a lot of feminism, that by purifying oneself (of trauma, or of Patriarchal thoughts or whatever) one can "cure" oneself of BDSMness. Again, this was characterised as appropriation. In turn, I felt the language with which he expressed his objection was dismissive and saying that kinky folks don't suffer as a result of this type of thinking. (In the future, I will use the term "will yourself normative" to refer to the general type of thinking instead of drawing the analogy; it should also be noted that the person who originally used the analogy has apologised for that usage).

"Will Yourself Normative" is something that I think underpins a lot of sexual oppression, and it finds different modes of expression depending on which angle it's targeting; homophobia has strong roots in religious institutions, and there are lots of organisations that either tackle it, or embody it. Kinkphobia is often more tacit, and is more likely to be found institutionalised in law and in mental health (although that is, thankfully, changing, there are such provisions in things like the "Dangerous Pictures Act", requiring people learn not to have evil thoughts after having looked at "extreme pornography"). And, of course, there are the political attitudes exemplified by (but not, I think, unique to) the radical feminist ideology discussed in the earlier quotation and linked post. Those remarks are based on reading I've done and (with respect to kinkphobia) lived experience. I hesitate to talk about WYN in respect to transphobia, and I don't think I've seen it discussed, but I would imagine something similar does exist.

I'm trying to think what the point of all this is. It probably comes down to this: that it is important, when drawing parallels, to be aware of the ways in which things are not similar as well as they ways in which they are, and to be sensitive to the particular meaning and significance of others' terms. Equally, it's a plea for others not to take the tools of the oppression that they have suffered from, and turn them on others.

When did I realise I was straight? Kink, orientation and gender

2012-01-19T17:48:00.000Z

In thinking about my BDSM as an orientation that functions alongside of, or instead of, conventional gender-based orientations, I started to think back and wondered, "when did I realise I was straight?"

This is also kind of like my musings on the question of when I realised I was cissexual. Here's what identifying as cissexual feels like for me, taken from a piece I wrote maybe 5 years ago (I forget where or if I published it online):

I was born with a willy and testicles, and on that evidence, the doctors and my parents declared me a boy. Being far too young to question their decision, I guess I've been stuck with it ever since. Not being much of one to raise a fuss, most of the time I've gone along with it as the easiest option.

Being cis male was just a thing of not having any particularly strong pull in any particular direction. Except, of course, that sometimes when it comes to gender I do feel a strong (albeit sporadic) pull in the other direction. It just took me a long time to heed that call.

So, asking "when did I realise I was straight" is slightly the wrong question. As it happens, people will note that these days I identify as heteroflexible or bisexual (my choice of which term to use tends to be political, or even rhetorical). But my predominant preference is for female-identified persons. As far as my actual sex life goes, I am what might be termed "functionally straight" - I've only ever had sex with women, and spend most of my time actively seeking female partners rather than male.

In that, there lies a clue as to what I found out.

As I sent my memory back, seeking for the feelings surrounding sexuality, I realised that I couldn't really think of a time when I started noticing the girls or women around me as sexually attractive "as such". It would have been about age 14 when I started thinking about asking girls out and that sort of thing - "having a girlfriend" and so on. can't unravel in my mind ow much of that was pure peer pressure, how much was "well, this seems to be the thing that boys do", and how much was my actual self-originated desire. In my discussion of my relationship with pornography, I talk about starting with the lingerie pages in mail order catalogues as my introduction to the female form as sexual. It clearly did work, because I got aroused enough to learn to masturbate, so I guess there is something innate going on there. But it definitely feels to me like a lot of what I did back then was "following the path of least resistance".

For example, from my "introduction to dating" post:

Sex was something we were first taught about in science classes when we were 12-13, I think. Dating wasn't covered until a year later. By that stage, I was beginning to get interested but was also painfully shy about the whole thing, convinced I was unattractive and hopelessly naïve. I remember Vanessa asking me to have sex with her when we were 14 and being a) convinced she was just teasing me and b) not actually that interested in having sex.

(Emphasis added to highlight the relevant part).

In that same post, I discuss being interested in a couple of women on television from about 10 or 11, and also more about not being that interested in sex (with girls) until a bit later. Somewhere around age 15 it started to become something I actually wanted, but until then it seems to have been just "going along with it". Elsewhere, I described my reaction to Vanessa as being "I panicked and fled", because mentally that's what it felt like.

It really seems like I learned to be attracted to women, because that was the dominant discourse around me as I grew up and went through puberty. When I started to question the assumption of my heterosexuality, I found that some guys are sexy and I have no difficulty with the idea of having sex with a man: the origins of my hetness seems to be more a question of convenience, and I wonder now whether it might be possible, if I wanted to, for me to reprogram myself to be not interested in women - not that I can think of any reason why I would want to, and frankly, the experiment would be extremely damaging and risky, especially if it turns out that no, I can't. It's just that the idea that my gender preferences seem to be flexible, while my kink really isn't so much, seems to make that question possible.

Perhaps it is more telling that the earliest sorts of images that excited me, that told me what sexuality is for me, were "damsel in distress" type images: the female sidekicks in tv shows needing to be rescued from bondage and peril situations, such as death traps, tied to the railway tracks and so on. It seems to me that that is why I am as straight as I am. I am left wondering what my sexuality would look like if society had been different, if the tropes on those action serials had been differently gendered, and so on.

Don't break the internet, USA!

2012-01-18T15:00:00.002Z

Several of my favourite webcomics and one or two of my other regular haunts, have blanked out, or offered "temporarily unavailable" comic screens today, in protest at the US government's current proposed laws SOPA and PIPA, which are claimed to be aimed at stopping internet piracy but which seem in fact to be aimed at stifling creativity, protest, fair comment and other good things that the internet helps us do. It's no accident that when the protests in Egypt started, the government there shut down the internet; now it looks as though the US is doing the same kind of thing.

EDIT TO ADD: Here's a Guardian piece that explains it better than I can.

Most businesses are still trying to function on a business model that simply does not take into account that people like to SHARE stuff, and that, far from being a problem, people sharing your stuff with one another can actually be a good thing. This legislation seems to be an attempt to shore up the failing, 20th century model. Some of the webcomic artists who are opposing SOPA and PIPA are people who make their living from their comic, and whose business model works to exploit rather than be harmed by the tendency to share. They, as producers of original content, would find themselves harmed, not helped, by the provisions of SOPA and PIPA.

Normally, I tend to steer clear of talking about US law. It's an alien culture over there on the left bank of the Pond. But SOPA and PIPA directly impact everyone, not just USAians. Many sites are hosted in the US, and subject to US laws; whether or not we non-USAians publish content via them, we almost inevitably make some use of them. The provisions that require site owners to check every single link posted on their site, whether as part of the design or by users, mean that those sites could be slowed down to a stop.

Moreover, IIRC from when I looked it up last year, it's also got provisions to prevent USAians reading sites hosted overseas, and to seek prosecutions against overseas website owners who breach the terms of SOPA or PIPA. It looks like a huge attempt to override the sovereignty of other nations, and the freedom of speech of the entire world.

This isn't something where I can stand on the sidelines and say, "Huh, look at those krayzee Yanks." The Wikipedia "about" for their own blankout says that non-USAians should write to or call their their nation's relevant minister (I didn't see a title that I recognised from the UK government, so I emailed my MP asking him to contact the right person) so that our governments can communicate our concerns about freedom of speech, about fair comment, about right to protest and so on. And, of course, about the encroachment on our sovereignty implied by SOPA and PIPA.

EDIT TO ADD: here's the Avaaz petition.

I'm not mucking about with my blog to try to do my own blankout (I might break it by mistake) but I thought I would give a list of links to some of the places I like that have done:

Wikipedia, who gave us this advice.

Maybe Days, Maymay's tumblr-style blog

Fetlife (I'm assuming you'd need to log in to see their announcement page, but the link's there anyway for those of you who are members)

Those webcomics I mentioned:

XKCD (shift your angle of view and you may see the hidden message behind the censorship)

Basic Instructions

Girls With Slingshots

Something Positive

There are thousands of other sites taking part, but these are the ones that I regularly read.

Pulling Snowdrop

2012-01-17T21:38:00.000Z

It's occurred to me that I have written quite a lot of advice over the past couple of years on how best for someone else to set out to "pull" me, either from "first interest" or from "first date" situations where it's assumed that I made the first approach.

It also occurred to me that it might be a good idea to have all of them under a dedicated tag so, should anyone be interested in learning how best to win me, they've got a handy-dandy pocket-sized RTFM available, right here.

Of course, for me now, the tricky part is at what point I give the link to a potential partner...

Questioning obedience

2012-01-17T20:33:00.001Z

Recently, a friend of mine whose husband has recently taken her as his "slave" in a Master/slave BDSM relationship (her idea: she's been training him up for the role for a while) asked me my opinion about something that was bothering her in her relationship. Her Master/Hubby had set up a scene in which she was "loaned" to another man. She was turned on by the scenario, and the acts were ones that she found enjoyable, but she was unsettled by it all the same. She told me that, even though she was unsure, and even unhappy, with the set-up, she obeyed, "because that's what I want to do".

Then she hit me with the doosra: "Do you think this makes me less of a submissive?" She was wondering if the fact that she wasn't leaping without hesitation, and with full abandon, to do her Master's wish, that this meant she wasn't "truly" submissive enough. This is someone whom I have tended to find very together and with-it when it comes to the mental side of D/s, so I was baffled that even she could have such questions. I told her truthfully that having doubts but obeying anyway (when obedience is what she wants to give, and it's not coerced) is surely a deeper form of submission than doing it without a moment's thought. Unquestioning obedience is not what I want, I said. I basically reassured her in her role and her self-identity, that she could have doubts and still be a "good" submissive, or a "good" person.

But if "unquestioning obedience" isn't what D/s and M/s are about, then what is it instead?

I think we have to recognise that obedience is a big part of the deal. As a Dominant, I certainly want to trust that when I give an instruction, that my Submissive partner will perform it, so long as it falls within the boundaries set by the negotiated parameters of the relationship (e.g. limits, home/public boundaries etc). But that means that "unquestioning" has to change, and if so, into what?

In my "5 Golden Rules" for a D/s relationship, Rule #2 is that "A Submissive may ask me any question, but I might choose not to answer." In this, there are several implicit statements: First, it is implicit that there will be times when I expect a Submissive to have questions that zie needs answering before zie can carry out my wishes; or to help hir understand the nature or purpose of my plans. Second, it is implicit that when such questions exist, my partner is supposed to ask them (an alternative phrasing would be "A Submissive must ask any relevant questions zie may have.") Third, it is implicit that I might have legitimate reasons for not wanting to reveal my hand: the purpose of the rule is to enable my partner to acquire information that zie needs, but if the information is not needed then I do not have to give it. Fourth, it is implicit that the rule does NOT allow for "arguing back": the fact that I do not have to give an answer means that I can simply say, "Because I said so. Now do it." And that would be as much answer as I am required to give.

So, that fourth implication of Golden Rule #2 reveals that "questioning obedience" doesn't mean questioning the Dominant's will or intentions. A legitimate question might be to raise concerns about what is going to happen, and in so doing avert disaster by bringing to the Dominant's attention some crucial information (and then, if the Dominant has already taken it into account, zie can legitimately say "trust me" - some kinds of scenes involving emotion play or mindfuck play require such tricks). But the point is not to change the intention, it is to avert something that would ruin the intended outcome.

It is the first and second implication that reveals the sort of questioning I like to have from a Submissive partner: I like it when zie does not accept blindly an instruction but wants to understand the purpose behind it: it's a good way to become better at carrying out future instructions, and to get to know the workings of each other's minds more intimately. It proves that zie is as engaged in the scene, and in me, as I am in hir.

In this sense of "questioning", then one could phrase what I'm describing as "engaging obedience", or even "learning obedience" - "learning" in the same sense as a student or apprentice might obey in order to learn a new skill, for example. This is a type of obedience that has its own investment in the actions or in the purpose behind them, and it does not purely take place for the benefit of another, who has "power-over". So, my friend may not have wanted to do the things she was told to do, but she definitely did want to obey (and, paradoxically, doing something she didn't want to do can make doing it seem exciting even when the act itself is not). She had her own investment in the act, and in the obedience. For all that there is use of objectifying language, and of objectification as a type of emotion-play, in BDSM - most of the time, a Submissive or "slave" is understood as an entity with hir own engagement in the scene and with hir partner; zie is not merely a tool to be told "do this, go there", zie is understood as a subject with hir own involvement and investment in doing things or going somewhere (though the payoff may not be revealed until later in a planned scene). BDSM obedience, I would hazard, is generally set at this involved, invested, engaged level where (if the payoff is not ultimately forthcoming) obedience could be rescinded (i.e. the relationship is broken off). For my friend, the way she described it, the payoff was in the very act of knowing she was doing her Master's wishes, and in the feeling of being "forced" to do it (even though she willingly obeyed). It also came afterwards in the form of reliving the scene in her mind and enjoying it without the associated wobbles that she had felt at the time.

All of that deals with "questioning" on a person-to-person level: I've talked about how I, as a Dominant, like to have my Submissive partner question me, and how I see (in general) such questioning working in good BDSM.

But the situation, and worry, that my friend had was not about her questioning her Master; it was about questioning herself. She questioned her own desire to obey, she questioned how comfortable she was with the set-up with which her master presented her, and she questioned her ability to live up to certain standards (and whether those were appropriate standards to live up to). It is sometimes said that the only enemy one need truly fear is oneself, and this questioning is that kind of enemy. But at the same time, when one has these questions and faces them, and is still able to follow through with one's commitment to obey, or to carry out some other self-appointed task, then one has truly triumphed and has self-mastery.

When I talk about power exchange in BDSM, I talk precisely about having the power first, before being able to give it to another. If one has not self-mastery, how can one give mastery of oneself over to another? But, without this questioning, how can one truly master oneself? So, "questioning obedience" is not just about a form of robust and healthy communication between partners in a D/s or M/s relationship; in another sense it is also about being robust and healthy in oneself.

This is also the way that I approach religion. I do not offer unquestioning obedience to God; I don't think I am able to do so even if I wanted to. But instead, I question both internally my faith and my internal will to do God's will; and externally (that is, in my prayers and listening to God) I question what God's plan is leading up to for me; sometimes God answers, and sometimes God smiles enigmatically and says, "You will see in good time". And I trust God to guide me well, even though God does not always allow me to see the path ahead so clearly.

As a final word on the value of questioning one's superiors, I leave you with O'Ren Ishii:

Politically Incorrect BDSM Play (trigger warning for discussion of forced-sex fantasies and slave roleplay)

2012-01-14T02:55:00.001Z

Via Role/Reboot:

Salon.com has an article titled "BDSM: It’s less transgressive than you think", based on Margot Weiss' latest work, discussing the BDSM scene in the San Francisco Bay area. I have seen Weiss' work on BDSM sexuality referenced in a few places around the web, where social justice and kink are discussed in parallel. She's also used as a reference in Staci Newmahr's description of a north eastern US BDSM community, my responses to which are discussed at length in this series of posts.

The problem I have had with these references to Weiss' work is that I have felt as though it is coming from an outsider, who does not really "get" BDSM. I don't know how true that impression is, but it has put me off wanting to read her works to find out in more detail. Newmahr, by contrast, directly engaged in the community and its activities, and as I wrote on reading the first few pages, I felt, "OMG she's writing about me! She gets it!" The words quoted in the Salon article still feel to me like this is an outsider preaching, and even finger-wagging at BDSMers from an assumed position of authority.

Nevertheless, I think that the points raised are important to examine. There are things in BDSM that are directly linked to "politically incorrect" tropes.

This scene from a BDSM “slave auction” — before a predominantly white audience – makes for one of the most viscerally challenging passages in “Techniques of Pleasure,” Weiss’ book-length investigation of San Francisco’s kink community, although there are other examples, ranging from father-daughter incest to Nazi guard-prisoner scenarios. These encounters aren’t described in much detail — instead, they’re used as passing evidence of the depths of politically incorrect play that she observed, or heard about, during the three years spent observing this world.

The slave auction has a Black woman in the role of slave.

Now, I am aware of all these, and more. They do not trouble me in the way that they would in the real world. MArgot Weiss rejects the "fanatsy world/real world" distinction, thus:

Most kinksters see such “scenes” as standing apart from racism, sexism and all manner of ugliness that happens in the real world — but Weiss does not. “The fantasy of the scene as a safe space of private desire justifies and reinforces certain social inequalities,” she argues. The truth, she says, is that S/M “depends for its erotic power on precisely these real-world relations, within which it is given form and content.”

Oddly, this reminds me of why I think it's okay (or rather, why it can be okay). Some of these ideas are present in Newmahr's work, when she discusses BDSM as emotional edgework. It is like another area of BDSM play that is considered extremely politically incorrect: that of the rape roleplay, or forced-sex fantasy. BDSM presents a space in which these incredibly harmful types of experience or roles can be addressed directly in which the experiences may be taken and in which there is, at the bottom line, the option of control over it A rape victim cannot make the rapist stop; but in roleplaying it, she (or he) can use a safeword or other signal, and be safe. Some people who have been victims of rape have used rape roleplay in just this way; others use it to work on that safe/unsafe emotional edge that Newmahr discusses.

Similarly, Nazi roleplay (apart from those incredibly cool uniforms - aesthetically, they knew how to dress for domination *ahem*) can be used to confront and overcome what cannot be overcome in real life; incest roleplay (I hope that it was roleplay to which the article referred!) is the same. I have read about people with disabilities wanting to use BDSM in ways that directly target and "abuse" them for their disabilities (I wish I could remember where I read that piece, but alas the link eludes me).

I cannot speak for the POC in the SF Bay Area scene as to how they use these slave auction scenes or interpret them. Weiss said, in an interview with the article's author:

Most people that I talked to didn’t see S/M slavery play as having anything to do with historical slavery in the United States — but none of the people of color I talked to thought that this was the case. I talked to an African-American woman in the scene who’s well-known for doing race play and she said, “You know, I don’t think these white people ever think about handcuffs and whipping and the slave auction as connected to histories of slavery, but I can’t help but think about that when I play.”

What I don't see there is any discussion of what that thinking involves, and what it does with those issues - to me, it's an unanswered question. I don't pretend my idea above is "right" on this, but I think that it is points like this where Weiss comes across as an "outsider". Maybe, if I read her book, I would find this addressed more fully (the article says that, "Weiss looks at how particular scenes, whether it’s a slave auction or make-believe child abuse, affect the people participating, watching or (here’s looking at you) reading about it.") However, I feel from this representation of the work as though Weiss is putting her spin on it from the outside, and is declaring how it affects people rather than learning how it affects them, despite her stated aims:

There are scenes in my book that really do open up people, get them to think differently, provide a new vantage point for thinking about inequality, but there are other scenes that don’t. The very same scene has different effects on differently positioned people.

The other point I would make is that I'm from the UK, so "slavery" for me immediately means Ancient Rome: that's the cultural reference that feels closest to home, and that I see referenced most in BDSM roleplay of slavery [Edit To Add: I am aware that this may just be my privilege talking, of course]. This makes it hard for me to appreciate viscerally how deeply the 18-19th Century slave trade is embedded in US consciousness or how to read the apparent denial of it in the SF Bay Area scene's attitudes (while Britain was, of course, deeply involved in that business, and British Afro-Caribbeans living here today are descended from victims of that trade, as part of the national consciousness it seems to be much lesser). This comes across especially in the fact that White people are more likely to be "sold" as "slaves" in BDSM events than are POC, simply by the fact that (as Weiss discusses) the BDSM scene tends to be very White, with low representation of POC in it. I know that some BDSMers set up scenes to be deliberately referencing certain periods of history, and I know one or two do roleplay plantation owner/slave scenes.

I think it is very important for BDSMers to think about what the meaning and ideas are that we play with, including the language, lifestyle and scene-based roleplays of slavery (some prefer the term "slavehood" to distinguish between the consensual lifestyle, and the non-consensual rape or theft of labour that real slavery involves).

However, Weiss states that she isn't looking so much at the representations in the roleplay itself, but rather in the actual BDSM community.

The subliminal (to the privileged White folks, like me) racism that pervades society also pervades BDSM communities. This should come as no surprise to us, although mentioning it often feels (again, to us White folks) like it's a criticism of the community specifically (it sort of is, in that we (like everyone else) aren't doing enough; it isn't, because we are just as bad, we are not worse than, the rest of the society of which we are a part).

She also zeroes in on the contradictions of kink: “On the one hand, SM is figured as outlaw: as transgressive of normative sexual values,” Weiss writes. “On the other hand, SM is dependent on social norms: practitioners draw on social hierarchies to produce SM scenes.” The mostly-white, mostly-middle-class community is itself an example of real-world social inequality: ”These [sexual] experiments are more possible and more accessible to those with class, race and gender privilege: heterosexual men playing with sexism, white bodies at a charity slave auction, professional information technology (IT) workers with several rooms filled with custom-made bondage toys.”

Speaking of toys, she further questions S/M’s “outlaw” status by painting a portrait of a social network built on capitalism and consumerism: Just consider the rainbow’s array of classes (on everything from spanking to rope bondage) and fetish toys (from handcuffs to latex vacuum beds) that practitioners can, and are to some degree expected to, invest in. BDSM is not as transgressive as most assume, says Weiss.

Now, it is possible to transgress in one area (sexual activities) and be entirely normative in others (race, gender and class representation).

On race and gender, I tend to fall into the privileged categories: I'm White, and mostly male-identified with body to match. It is intriguing to note that Newmahr described a form of "incidental androgyny" in her study, in which gender is not an axis on which BDSMers' bodies support a great deal of privilege.

The thing that gets me is that Weiss seems to approach this as something people choose to do. We would consider it somewhat homophobic if a person were to write of gay people:

It was definitely not what I expected. ... They were wearing not the most cutting-edge fetish outfits — they weren’t all black leather and riding in on their motorcycles. I realized then that these were people that I was comfortable with, they were professional-class people. They weren’t the radical people I expected to find: They were more like my colleagues or like my parents.

That's how Weiss described the BDSM community she entered. (The snipped sentence read, "There were way more heterosexual people and they were older than I thought they would be" - in which there seems to be a hangover from the 1970s and 80s of assuming a link between symbols of the gay scene and of the BDSM scene mixed in with Weiss' prejudices.)

It is still a very open debate on the extent to which BDSM is something innate and to which it is something that is chosen or learned as a lifestyle (Newmahr describes how she learned it, making it seem like a choice; but many practitioners feel as though it is something more deeply rooted than that). Given these questions, it feels very insulting and privileged of Weiss to come with these ideas about people choosing BDSM in order to transgress society. This is an issue that has been debated in the UK scene, at least, about whether we would still like it as much if it weren't seen as socially transgressive - people come up with different answers depending on their own attitudes to it. For some people, yes: it is a mode of rebellion, on some dimension. For others (like me) it is just a mode of being, and frankly, I would be very glad if society would get off my back about it (it seems as though the UK may be drifting in that direction, with internet hardcore gay BDSM porn apparently no longer deemed "obscene" by a jury of 12).

The most interesting part for me, was Weiss' discussion of class as a dimension of privilege in BDSM. I am better off than a lot of people, and in some ways my lifestyle could be described as middle class. Nevertheless, I number among the long-term unemployed, and have struggled on a low income for many years. The key disadvantages I have experienced as a result of this are mobility, and partly resulting from that, a lack of opportunities to participate in the public scene. there again, I haven't felt a great desire to do so (indeed, until the smoking ban came into force, I would have been excluded from most BDSM venues because of the tobacco smoke anyway).

A lot of the things that Weiss discusses as a seat of consumerism and capitalism within the SF Bay Area BDSM community, are just things that haven't affected me. I don't know how much of this is a difference in the culture between south eastern UK and San Francisco, and how much is just down to me being creative: for instance, I have very few toys that I have bought, but plenty I have managed to improvise or make myself for a low budget. I can't afford the types of bondage furniture that are discussed, but I don't know many who can, either: some do invest in vastly expensive toys of that nature, but most are happy to tie a partner to an existing piece of furniture (for instance, I have attached sturdy rings to my normal bed and can now use cuffs to restrain a partner there).

In Newmahr's book, she seemed to describe many more seminars and classes (workshops) than I am familiar with seeing advertised in my region; this is another aspect of what Weiss describes that seems like an aspect where I have not been all that disadvantaged. There are some skills that I could, perhaps, benefit from learning through such a source but in general, my reading and experiences have been sufficient, and also, sufficient to enable me to engage (when I choose to) with the rest of the community in public ways.

I think Weiss raises some very important issues, and I am by no means stating that racism, sexism and classism do not exist in BDSM in this country, because they undoubtedly do (for instance, I don't think I've met in person a kinky POC, and their representation on BDSM websites seems to be far below the UK national population percentage, so that issue is clearly present here). We need to be aware that BDSM communities are a subset of the wider community in which they exist, and any -isms that exist in the wider community will be found represented in various ways within the smaller community. Questioning where and how we use ideas from history and the wrongs of wider society is a part of that and a part of the personal and emotional work of becoming better at "What It Is That We Do".

At the same time, I am finding that with these exposures to ethnographic research such as Weiss' and Newmahr's, that BDSM is as varied in its expression as are the societies in which it is sited. The US scene, it appears, is something very different from what I hear about the UK scene (and what I have participated in). I get the impression, moreover, that there are significant differences in expression between Newmahr's "Caeden" and Weiss' SF Bay Area. This at once puzzles and heartens me, because it says that BDSM is not something separate from normal society, but is a part of it in various ways. My impression is that Weiss may be trying to get at that thought too in her work.

New Look "View"

2012-01-12T19:22:00.000Z

As you'll have noticed by now, I have decided to redo completely the appearance of my blog.

There's no significance to this change at all, except that I finally felt like having a different colour other than pink to work with. Green seemed nice, so I went with it. Spent the last hour or so fiddling around with different things, trying to get it to look brilliant, and I hope I've done a good job.

If you are having difficulty with the new colour scheme, please do let me know in comments and I'll have a look to see what feels good and also solves the issue - although, if you're having that much trouble, you won't be able to read this anyway, so it's pointless my saying it!

I ditched a couple of the gadgets in the sidebar that I wasn't using (nobody ever bought me anything of Amazon, for example, you stingy lot! ;-) ) and chose a new description. The new photo shows my folded arms clipped from the cookery pics I did in February last year.

Please do let me know what you think of the new set-up.

Andrew Flintoff on depression and sports

2012-01-12T00:59:00.000Z

Just finished watching former England cricket star Andrew Flintoff (nicknamed "Freddie") exploring the issues of depression in the field of professional sports, through meeting and interviewing several other sportsmen who have also suffered from depression. Flintoff started out by explaining that part of this was about learning about his own experiences and what was going on, and why depression can affect people who are perceived to "have it all". He described it as an "invisible injury" that sportspeople can suffer, and wanting to "understand what depression can do".

This was quite a painful programme for me to watch, not because it got anything wrong but rather because I recognised so much of the pain and harm that the people in it have experienced from my own struggles with depression.

He started by talking to his team mate Steve Harmison, who was talking in this programme for the first time publicly about his experiences with depression as part of the England cricket team.

Many of the interviews brought out similar stories. Harmison was one of the more aware ones, it seems, he talks about realising he needed to get help to fix things when it started to get very bad, but still he was experiencing panic attacks and "dark days" before he sought help.

Neil Lennon spoke again about his experiences, and how, "All of a sudden I became this insular person I didn't recognise." He outlined some of the ways in which depression has physical effects as well as the main mental health symptoms. He said that his approach now, as a manager, is to view depression as being like any other sporting injury: you have to give it time to heal, and he knows what to watch for in his players to make sure their mental health is as strong as their physical health. he talked about making sure that he players know they can talk to him about these things as well, and helping them cope.

Later in the programme, Flintoff spoke to Shane Warne, the great Australian spin bowler, who was renowned for his "sledging" - the use of taunts and other verbal remarks during a game, to try to put a batsman's mind off his game. Warne said that sledging is one thing, but if he knew a batsman was suffering with depression he wouldn't use that to help him, describing it as being like a physical injury: "you don't want to see someone get hit" (making an analogy to aggressive bowling and the risk of injury). He viewed depression as being similar to a sporting injury and believed that you shouldn't aim to cause that kind of harm.

This led Flintoff to ask what happens when you play a solo sport, as opposed to a team sport? He spoke to snooker player Graeme Dott about his experiences, and Dott spoke about what depression medication does, and the fact that he will probably be on them for the rest of his life.

Dott said that meds are not "happy pills", but rather "they make you feel normal". For Dott, if he fails to take his medication regularly, he can end up in a downward spiral again. But the point of them isn't to make you feel happy (as I know very well, and Dott explained, they generally don't) but rather to make you able to function in the world. Dott described some severe symptoms, that I can also recognise: uncontrollable crying, paranoia, and complete lack of interest in anything. The pills keep those things at bay and help you see the world a bit more clearly, is all.

The next sportsman Flintoff spoke to was Barry McGuigan, who is Chairman of the Professional Boxing Association. McGuigan spoke of having a strong support network with his roots and his family being close, but recognised that a lot of other boxers don't get the support they need. He talked about seeing fighters going into the ring when they were "not 100% psychologically right" - echoing Neil Lennon's words about depression being a type of sporting injury like any other. McGuigan talked about how he would encourage a boxer to seek help if he spotted symptoms of depression, and if he felt the boxer was not coping well with it, would pull them out of a fight rather than send a person into the ring when they were not in good mental health.

McGuigan also raised an issue that was another common theme in Freddie's interviews: the need for professional sportsmen to put up a "front" and never to be perceived as "showing fear". Too many people view depression, or admitting to depression, as a sign of weakness. For players who are seen as the "heart and soul" of a team, or "happy-go-lucky", such as Freddie Flintoff, Vinnie Jones (interviewed later in the programme) or Ricky Hatton (also interviewed later in the programme) all these players felt like showing "weakness" or admitting to struggling with depression, would send "shockwaves through the dressing room" (a phrase from the Vinnie Jones segment).

This type of pressure - focussed on how other people are affected by you - comes across particularly in Jones' comments. Vinnie Jones described reaching a low point at which he took a gun into the woods, intending to kill himself. He said that he felt, "You feel so degraded in yourself ... why do all these people have to go on putting up with me?" and listed his wife, family, team mates etc. He said also that the thing that brought him back from the edge was thinking "what if it makes it worse for those left behind?"

Another key aspect of depression, and the problems that are related to it, was raised by Flintoff and Ricky Hatton, both of whom turned to alcohol to try to self-medicate the problem away. Of course, alcohol and depression are actually a very bad mixture and the consequences are usually much worse, and simply heighten the depression. For heavy drinkers, such as Flintoff was renowned for being (an image he felt he had to maintain as the "happy-go-lucky" "life of the dressing room") it got even worse, and Flintoff referenced his "pedalo" incident when talking to Piers Morgan about the press' relationship to sporting depression.

Morgan argued that the press have no responsibility to be gentle about players' mental health, citing as normal and even necessary, the "brutal relationship" between sportspeople and the media. He suggested that it was the responsibility of the managers or team captains to look after their players and not to put them on the field when they were at risk of psychological injury in this way. Morgan went as far as to point the finger at Flintoff, who was captain to Steven Harmison, in failing in this responsibility.

More interesting was Morgan's description of his developing understanding of depression in professional sports players. He talked about not being able to comprehend the idea of being "depressed" (which he understood as sadness) when you had stuff that most people can only dream of, and would do anything if it meant they could have a go. However, he also talked about getting to know some players as people, once they'd retired, such as Flintoff. he said that he'd then come to realise more about depression as an illness. He also mentioned that cricketers have the highest suicide rate among sportspeople, and being shocked by it.

The symptoms that came up time and again were:

Lethargy, or the feeling of not wanting (or being able) to do anything
Crying (uncontrollably, as Dott put it)
Suicidal feelings
Panic attacks/hyperventilating
Physical sensations of discomfort or pains
Paranoia/"everyone's talking about/looking at me, waiting for me to fail"

The extra pressures from being a successful (i.e. gained a professional deal) sports person came with the need to appear "strong' and "not show any fear"; the year-round cycle of training and playing that makes one's sport, and one's sporting success of failure, a part of your identity; the media spotlight; and having to maintain a public persona.

Flintoff spoke with a sports psychologist about how attitudes have been changing in sport, again, focussing more on recognising the sports player's mind as being an important part of that player's game, and how good mental health is just as important as good physical health and fitness. The psychologist also mentioned a figure that "10% of the UK population in each year experience anxiety or depression". Seeing it more in sports people comes about as we become more aware of what depression actually is - an illness, not a "mood".

Flintoff finished the programme with two messages of hope.

First, he visited Arsenal football club, who run a scheme to use sports to help people overcome depression. To Flintoff, who had experienced (and had been talking to those with the same experience) sport as a cause, or exacerbation of, depression, this seemed like a paradox. He spoke with some of the people attending, including one person who told Flintoff he'd been diagnosed at age t10, and still needed treatment to help him. He discovered that, as well as th ebenefits of physical exercise, there was also a support group, the chance to make new friends and to get advice, that all worked to help those involved.

He was also reminded of the value of people like himself, who have media recognition through sports or whatever, to talk about what they've been through and to raise awareness of depression as something that's an illness and that needs treatment - for people to get help.

The other message of hope was for Flintoff himself. In his closing remarks for the programme, he talked about how it was giving him the strength to be not "Freddie the party-animal", but simply to be himself. He said that his conversations with the various people in the programme had helped him confront and tackle, and make sense of, the things that he had experienced himself.

That's a very important space to reach, I feel, and over the past 4 years or so I have been on that journey too, though not perhaps with the same illustrious names as Flintoff can associate with! It is very important to me that awareness should be raised in the general population, too. For years I struggled on thinking depression was just a matter of getting the right mood, and I believed the myths - I, like Piers, couldn't understand how a rich, famous, sports star could be depressed and put it down (both for them, and for me) as self-obsessed melodrama and we should just get over it. Of course, now I know that that's bullshit, but that's just it: too many people don't know.

Identifying with Ricky Williams, the loner

2012-01-11T13:28:00.000Z

This piece from Yahoo! Sports paints a fascinating picture of NFL player Ricky Williams, who is perhaps best remembered, at least in this country, since he's immortalised in Mike Carlson's catchphrase, "and that pass was high, but not in the Ricky Williams sense," referring to the player's use of marijuana.

It talks about him being diagnosed with "social anxiety disorder", although I see so many traits here that just remind me of my own introversion, and I am very suspicious of things that take a condition or way of being and label it as a "disorder". But the lived reality is what's important.

Inside the Baltimore Ravens’ locker room the air is alive. Players argue about a bean-bag toss game they play after practices, then mock a teammate who has inexplicably decided to do an interview naked. Music thumps. Giant men laugh, and their laughter rattles off cinder block walls in the symphony of a football team that feels invincible.

Only Ricky Williams sits alone.

He is huddled on a stool in front of his locker, sweat clothes on, ready to leave. It’s a strange image, loaded with contrasts.

...

He’s here because he isn’t ready to give up the game, because there is still a private joy in walking into a room like this, pulling on pads and standing on a Sunday sideline.

I can definitely identify with that, although I don't have the achievements or prowess in any particular field (and certainly not sports) that Mr Williams has. But the quiet pride private joy of doing the job as part of a team, even though not feeling in the team, is something that I recognise and carry with me whenever I am working with people. Similarly, although I will start off in a big celebration, I quickly need to sit out, and would prefer to be the Ricky Williams figure as described there.

I was also fascinated to read of Mr Williams' interest in Carl Jung (I like reading Jung too!), and wanting to be a psychiatrist once his sporting career has ended. It sounds to me like he really wants to be able to help others - support the team effort, without having to be part of the Team.

The article explains:

Williams is friendly with the other Ravens players but there isn’t a great connection.

...

On another team, one with greater expectations for him, he might be uncomfortable. But the Ravens’ locker room is always carefree and Harbaugh has a boyish enthusiasm. Everybody seems secure. The coaches don’t yell much. And that fits Williams at this point in his life. Here he is content to fade into the background.

...

He doesn’t fit the box the game makes all the players squeeze inside, but the Ravens aren’t trying to box him. They leave him alone. He can be whatever he wants just as long as he’s there to spell Rice when the situation demands.

I'm kind of jealous of that relationship with an organisation (there again, being jobless at the moment makes me jealous of anyone with gainful employment!)

I'm going to close with two snippets of life wisdom from the article:

“I don’t feel [the fear],” Williams says. “I was talking to my doctor about this the other day. And because I have found something that I love and that I want to do when I’m done I’m sure I’m going to miss it, but because I’ve been able to look that monster in the face I’ll be better prepared. Some people are afraid of it so they try to delay it as long as they can.”

Then he remembers something John Mackovic, his coach at Texas, said when he told him he was staying for his senior year. “Don’t ever have any regrets,” Mackovic said. “Make a decision and stick with it.”

Shyness, introversion and dating

2012-01-11T03:30:00.000Z

The old chestnut "A guy who's interested in you will always ask you out" has resurfaced at Evan Marc Katz's dating advice blog. More to the point, a client (Angelina) asked him if it's true and his reply, though focussed on her specific scenario, kind of said yes. Those links I've given above should make it perfectly clear what I think of that.

Now, in the specific case that EMK answers we're talking about a friend who hasn't made any kind of move to date her in 10 years, despite all kinds of suggestive remarks he's made. Basically, Angelina admits to it being, "I fooled myself into thinking that my friend of 10 years had feelings for me".

I'm going to say that after 10 years either a) he never was interested in you or believes he cannot give you what you want/need, or else b) you're totally in his "friend zone" now, and even if he started off interested, he has trained himself not to any more; instead, you are someone it is safe to joke around with, because you are unavailable and uninteresting. Either way, trying to change the rules is going to lead to an experience that is familiar to many men (most of us/them the "Average Frustrated Chump" of PUA lore): painful rejection. Which is what Angelina experienced, and wanted reassurance about.

But the specific advice concerning Mr. 10-Yr-Friend is not something you can generalise to all men, or all "should I ask him out?" type scenarios. It's possible that had Angelina been bold and made her move when she first got to know the guy, then she would have had a happy outcome (I am also slightly concerned that it looks as though the only reason she made a move was that she thought he was interested, not because he was inherently interesting to her, which would be why she had waited so flippin' long to make her move). We just don't know.

But the thing that has prompted this post in particular is that EMK goes on to talk about the guys who don't tend to ask first in somewhat disparaging terms:

The first thing that I can think of is that he’s not some shy beta male who had a crush on you for ten years and was too embarrassed to make a move.

I’m guessing that maybe 25% of guys are that way. Maybe more, but I don’t know too many men like that. Guys who are the way I was in high school – befriending all the pretty girls in hopes of getting close to them, only to discover that you’re in the friend zone.

...

I’m guessing, Angelina, that your guy was in the top 75%.

It's strange that this is remarkably similar to the often-quoted figure for Introverts versus Extroverts. It turns out that that figure is a myth:

an old estimate from the early 1960's by Isabel Myers of the Myers-Briggs organization. It was just a personal guess with no real statistical data behind it.

She estimated that 25% of the population of the United States were introverts and 75% Extroverts.

...

The real number based on the first stratified random sample by the Myers-Briggs organization in 1998 showed Introverts 50.7% and Extroverts 49.3% of the USA.

It's worth noting also that a lot of people mistake introversion for shyness, and ascribe negative connotations to it, just like EMK did to the failure to ask a woman out. And he's ascribed similar negative connotations.

Several of his commenters (and some of EMK's own further remarks) implicitly reference the Nice Guy approach, and some even say that the only type of guy who doesn't make the first move is the Nice Guy type who ends up developing contempt, possessiveness and/or other symptoms of sexual entitlement (and therefore is Very Bad News). We cannot ignore that those people exist, and that there are even quite a lot of them. There may even be a significant overlap between them and guys who are genuinely shy. As the first link above explains, I used to be a "Nice Guy", but thankfully I saw where I was going wrong and got better.

Leaving aside the appropriately negative characterisation of the "Nice Guy", EMK and his commenters still ascribe to the reluctance/failure to ask first the characteristics either that he's not interested, or else he's "shy", "beta", "the bottom 25% of men", "insecure". But reluctance or failure to ask first could just be due to introversion, meaning that constantly being the one to "reach out" is very hard work and might not be worth it (unless you've got absolutely unequivocal signals already). As noted above, people often mistake introversion for shyness, or indeed "betaness". And let's face it, a lot of very successful and very pleasant guys are introverts, so they really aren't all that "bottom strata of men" - it's a mistaken perception. And, as noted above, around 50% of guys are likely to be introverts, some of whom are going to be a whole heap of bad news for other reasons (perhaps that they have a severe does of Nice Guyism), but a fair proportion of whom - probably a similar proportion of extroverts, anyway - will be very good boyfriend/husband material. But there's a much greater chance that you'll only find out if you ask them first.

One commenter on EMK's post all but stated outright that "women aren't supposed to get rejected, men are supposed to get rejected, women shouldn't have to face that kind of pain." (I'm paraphrasing and reading between the lines somewhat liberally, but it's the clear subtext of her remarks, and she does state outright that only men should have to brave being rejected.) Obviously, I think that's a narrow-minded and short-sighted view; and I feel it's also really quite vicious and hate-filled towards men. We shall say no more about such nonsense and I shall leave those opening links as my testimony in that regard.

All of which serves as preamble to the main point I wanted to make, which is to describe how come I know that - when it comes to dating - shyness and introversion are NOT the same thing, and that either can be the cause of not making the first move.

To begin with, I am going to quote Nathan's comment from EMK's comment thread:

A few of the women here have seriously skewed views of “shy” men. Insecurity can appear in anyone, regardless of how outgoing, charismatic, etc. they are. Furthermore, the way Flower White writes, you’d think all these guys are helpless and need to be handheld through the entire process. As someone who hovers in the middle of the introvert/extrovert scale, I’ve experienced both sides of the story. I have been the guy who makes the bold move, and I’ve been the guy who isn’t sure, and has waited a fairly long time to assess things. But I’m talking weeks or months; sure as hell not ten years.

We're talking the weeks/months timescale here - as described above, if it's a years timescale then even if I was interested to start with, I have put you firmly in the friend zone by that stage.

Let me take you back to the first ever date I went on, which wasn't even officially a date, except that we met up for a meal and a drink, and made special plans, and our only real purpose was to meet each other. It was a date.

We met through the Informed Consent kink community website; I put out tentative feelers, got a response, we gradually developed a rapport and about a month after we started chatting daily on IM, we agreed to meet. That's the introvert part. That's how it works best for me (phone, Skype, etc are also good ways of chatting in that introductory phase). She travelled down from London, I bought the food and drinks (see my rules about who pays - she wanted to go Dutch, but I refused).

Here's the shyness bit: apart from to confirm my identity when she got off the train, all the way from the station to the restaurant I was unable to speak. I was that shy. Completely tongue-tied. This is a woman I had been having occasionally sexually explicit conversations with for about a month. That's fear, insecurity, shyness, "betaness" for you. It had nothing to do with being an introvert, because one-on-one situations work pretty well for me with my introversion generally. But I was shy.

I think my shyness and my introversion are related, in that being introverted means/meant that I didn't get the same acclimatisation to other people that some people do; and that led also to fear of others. Hence, shyness and insecurity.

That was nearly 7 years ago now, and saints be praised, I have come a long way in overcoming that particular social handicap. It's not that I am no longer shy, it's that I have dispelled a lot of it and have techniques to deal with the rest, although it's obviously still there. I am not the shy, helpless, fearful little man that I was back then ("little" here being figurative; I was still a tubby bitch back then). It's odd that just 19 months ago when I wrote this post it seems I still felt the shyness quite strongly as well (though definitely was getting better).

However, nothing has altered the introversion I experience, which both a) makes it difficult to get to know someone (and it takes me a while to do so) and b) makes it difficult to judge a situation well enough to make a first move. Typically, if I am getting to know someone generally then by the time I know I am interested in her then we are already well towards the friend zone, because it takes that long to guess. Making "cold" pick-ups has so far not met with any success, so the other way I get to meet people is through dating sites (which at least means that we know this is not "making friends" - there's an agenda to be pursued!)

I still, even with my new-found confidence, very much prefer that a woman who is interested in me should make it explicit before I am forced to try; and I am still sufficiently unsure of implicit signals for it to be a risk to make the first move (doesn't mean I won't, but it takes me longer to do, and I may feel the moment has slipped away, putting you towards the "friend zone").

I really reject the "beta" classification that so many people seem to think goes with some of my personality traits. If I'm honest, 2 years ago it would have been pretty fair. But after last year especially (and before that, my relationship with SNS) I simply don't think it is any more. I am not the emotional wreck I once was (although the joins are still visible where I've pieced myself together again). The things that I can control in my life, I do, and though I am not "successful" in all my endeavours, I am successful in actually endeavouring. And who knows, maybe this is the year I get a decent job? I have confidence, strength, purpose - I have, in many ways, a sense of "alphaness". I just don't perform it in quite the way that people seem to demand I should.

If a guy seems to have the qualities you value, then you should go for it and brave the risk of being hurt (it's no more than you would demand of him in return, no?). It's possible he may not have thought of you that way, but your approach changes his mind; it may be he was interested and didn't yet feel sure to approach; it may be that he is a good guy but currently still at a "shy" stage in his life. It may be that he's just not interested (and indeed, it may be that he would have approached if he was). That's the risk you take. It's a fact that the vast majority of relationships are going to end in heartbreak anyway, so it is a part of living and loving and dating that it should hurt from time to time. Shying away from that is a good way not to find love at all, whether you do it while seeking, or at the start, or while you're in a relationship. And by not being willing to make the first move, you could be shutting out 50% of the great men out there (and seriously - if a guy is put off by the fact that you are clear about what you want, then do you really want to be with such a wimp in the first place?)

Distinctions between gender, sexuality and kink

2012-01-10T02:59:00.001Z

Biyuti, posting @ Womanist Musings, has a piece titled The distinction between gender and sexuality about how the traditional Trans* 101 argument that "gender and sexuality are separate and not the same thing ... at all" is constructed by society, and in particular, Western society, such that, "if this statement has any truth, it might only true in the Western discourse on gender and sexuality."

Biyuti states that:

Different societies will have different constructions. This seems like a basic understanding, but since the West likes to think itself the centre of the universe, this is rarely emphasized as strongly as it should be. Even more rare are those who recognize the basic normative and imperialistic notion of asserting that all gender is distinct from all sexuality.

This is not my truth. Just as I do not experience my race as distinct from my sexuality/gender, my sexuality and gender intersect and overlap. Perhaps, they are even the same thing. I'm not quite sure and I'm not really concerned with working out the exact boundaries between the two (if they are even exist).

Two things struck me as potent about my relationship to this point, and they were these:

I haven't really stopped to think about how I conceive the relationship between my sexuality and my gender identity, even though I have thought a great deal about both
The dilemma struck me as being similar in kind to another one relating to my sexuality, which is "is BDSM just kinky sex?"

The first point struck me particularly when I read the commenters who described buying into the Western division-classification system and I realised that I didn't even know if I had or had not bought into that mode of thinking! I think I have done, inasmuch as I have tended to think about them separately, but I think I have not inasmuch as I have been aware that expressions of one have shifted the other (I have just not focussed any thought on what's going on in that respect).

Which leads me to my first conclusion - just scratching the surface of gender and sexuality pretty much reveals that there's more to it than meets the eye. In 2008, I wrote a series about "geometry of gender", in which I talked about an "orthogonal model" in which maleness and femaleness are independent variables, and talked about different "axioms" by which people are gendered - including sexual orientation and, distinct (though not necessarily separate) from that, partner choice. (I'm not at all sure I still believe what I said back then, although I still think those thoughts are useful in helping to investigate these relationships.)

With feeling almost but not quite a man, and the variable gender identity/expression that goes with being Lady Rosenthyme et al, and with being "bi-curious" or "heteroflexible", there certainly seems like a whole load of stuff about gender and sexuality to be explored. When we look at the fact that BDSM orientation trumps gender in my choice of partners (though people I find sexy tend to be more likely to be female), it gets more complicated still (and also points to why I thought of the BDSM dilemma in relation to Biyuti's post).

I can't really untangle this knot very easily. I still conceive of sexuality and gender as being distinct from each other, but they are also clearly interwoven and intermingled such that tugging on one inevitably leads to questions about the other, when I start trying to think it through.

Because I experience my sexuality and gender(s) as being embodied, and all of them are in the same body (mine) how can they help but intermingle and impact upon each other? The desire I have to feel a thick, hard cock in my cunt (it's such a shame I don't have one for it to be in!) is an embodied wish despite that non-existence issue - I can feel exactly where I perceive my non-existent cunt to be, right at the base of my prick, and I try to imagine the sensations that such penetration would cause. But I also imagine fucking a girlfriend with a strap-on (sometimes I wonder if I could use a strap-on even given that I already have a natural dong of my own). Inevitably, those are different types of fantasy or experience from those of having sex as a man. Somehow, I feel as though I would be more evenly split in my sex-partner choice (i.e. more evenly bisexual) if I were female-bodied, though how much of that is Patriarchy-induced sex-class attitudes steering my thoughts (I know that I was the only guy who said I would be straight if I was a woman, all my guy friends said they'd be lesbian).

On the BDSM front, this is similar to how I feel about the relationship between sex and BDSM. They are deeply intertwined, and in many ways similar (for instance, in being embodied experiences) but still seem to me to be distinct. However, they cannot and perhaps should not be separated. It is possible to analyse one in isolation of the other, but to do so some reference must still be made to the other in order to make sense of anything. My experience of (shifting) gender keys directly into my understanding of both in ways that cannot be simply extracted one from the other - Lady Rosenthyme, Sucha and SnowdropExplodes are three different gender expressions (it's worth noting that I am much more fluid and less discrete in my conceptions of them nowadays) and also three different ways of approaching BDSM and sex, and that's intertwined in curious and hard-to-fathom ways.

Certainly, as embodied experiences, BDSM

Single in my 30s, and some dating maths.

2012-01-07T16:23:00.003Z

Nathan @ 21st Century Relationships has a piece (originally from 2 years ago) about the questions/accusations/comments he gets as a single person over the age of 30. I also am single and over the age of 30, and while I probably don't socialise enough to get these questions to the same degree, I am aware of the social assumptions and beliefs that lie behind them.

Here's the list of questions:

There must be something wrong with you if you're not coupled by now.
What about children? Certainly you want or have children, right?
Are you gay? Maybe even just a little bit?
Aren't you terribly lonely? How do you do it?

I want to focus on what #1 means to me, but for the sake of completeness, let's run through my answers to the others.

2/. Don't have children, kind of feel it would be nice one day to have a child. As Nathan points out in his remarks, "there 6 billion plus people on the planet, and hundreds of thousands of unwanted children languishing away in orphanages, group homes, and other places." Nowadays, they reckon the population has passed 7 gigapeople, and there are not enough resources to provide a decent standard of living for all of them. While I would very much like to have genetic offspring, adoption also seems like a rational approach, should I feel the urge to try my hand at fatherhood, and while some people say that there's a thing about protecting your own genes, I just don't see how I could love one child less than another based on whose sperm fertilised the egg, y'know? But for me, that's an endeavour to be undertaken as a team, not a solo effort - and preferably when my financial circumstances are rather better.

3/. Well, as it happens, I am a little bit gay - or rather, bisexual. But my preferences tend to be for women much more than men, so it's not a big whoop. Also: gay folks (male and female) get MARRIED these days. There's long-term pair-bonding between them, so being gay and being single is hardly a strong correlation. (Of course, they don't call it marriage legally here, they call it civil partnerships - I'm in favour of scrapping marriage as a legal instrument and going for civil partnerships across the board - marriage can be left to the churches.) It's not beyond the realms of possibility, if I fell in love with a guy and we liked each other enough and the sex was good and all, that I wouldn't go that route myself (but it might be deemed highly improbable).

4/. Yeah, I get lonely. I feel self-sufficient emotionally in my life, but equally, it feels like I'm missing something - not a part of me, not something essential, but that one piece of the story that makes everything make perfect sense, if you see what I mean. I feel like I'm designed to be pair-bonded, and when I'm not, although everything is right, it's somehow not quite. That is to say, I don't need someone. But I need (the right) someone. And that's how I do it (i.e. cope). I don't need someone to feel complete in my life, even though there's this pull that says I do. As Nathan says, the question assumes that, "people want to be coupled at all times, and can barely handle it when they are not." And that really doesn't reflect what goes on in my heart.

Okay, so... wrongness. Some things that definitely have been wrong with me for a good part of my teens and twenties: Suffering from depression. Cripplingly shy (which yes, I do see as being an illness in my case, though not for everyone). Some things that aren't wrong, but some people think indicate wrongness (or are a form of wrongness): Living with parents (until almost 27th birthday). Introverted (which is not the same as being shy). Sadist. But really, the big thing is that my field of choice is somewhat narrower than most. That's not something that's "wrong" with me, although some of those false wrongnesses key into this fact.

So I sat down and started figuring. First up, as noted above, I am "a little bit gay", but mostly attracted to women. I'd say that as a proportion of people I find attractive/would like to have sex with, it's probably something like a 90:10 or 95:5 split in favour of women. Now, in 2000 the NATSAL survey showed "8.1% of (UK) men have felt a sexual attraction towards the same sex at least once in their lives." The Office of National Statistics in 2010 reported that 2% of the adult UK population self-identified as either lesbian, gay, bisexual or "other" (although only 95% said they were heterosexual - 3% either didn't answer or said they did not know - and it's worth noting that some groups dispute the figure on various grounds) Given an even distribution of men I find attractive across the population, the chance that a given man would be gay or bi, and also attractive to me, is between 0.25% and 0.81% (and that's assuming that all the people who didn't tick "heterosexual" are gay/bi in some form or another). That's between 1 in 400 and 1 in 124. Let's call that a negligible quantity for the time being, and focus instead on my dating women.

Now, according to local government statistics, there are roughly 25,000 women between the ages of 25 and 44 living in my local region (give or take a few because my local region doesn't really match exactly the boundaries of their survey areas). I set my dating field age range as about 24 to 42, so we can take that 25,000 figure as a fair guess. Not all of them will be within reasonable travelling distance of where I live, but let's keep that figure for now.

The biggest limitation on my dating field has to be the fact that she must be kinky, or at least, open to exploring kink, as the submissive partner. In fact, I pretty much need my partner to be submissive most of the time (although still regarded and treated as an equal, with an equal say in shaping the relationship). Orlando C. at Kink Research Overviews has collated some evidence on the prevalence of BDSM in the wider community, concluding that:

about half the population, regardless of gender, seems to incorporate some kind of mild pain play (e.g. biting) into their sex lives
roughly 15%-35% of the population (or one in three to seven people) has some recurring fantasy or erotic impulse about BDSM
Somewhere in the neighborhood of 10%-15% of the population has at some point acted on these desires in a way that is more extreme than biting or, probably, spanking.
between 1.5% and 3% of the population (or one in about thirty to sixty people) acts on these fantasies with some degree of frequency.

Now, looking at the figures on the link, the tendency to submit/bottom is split somewhere between 50:50 and 65:35 in favour of women bottoming. Let's go with the latter figure, to improve my chances somewhat. Let's also look at people who have thought about or fantasised about, BDSM, as being those who may not be kinky now, but have the potential to be with the right partner. so, that's 65% of 35% (again, giving me the best chance possible, here). That comes to roughly 23% of the population of women might be compatible on a BDSM level with Yours Truly. My suspicion is that there will be an age-related dimension as well there, but I wouldn't have a clue how to correct for it.

Next, my biggest deal-breaker is tobacco smoke. The Cancer Research Fund in 2009 reported that roughly 20% of women in the UK smoke, which leaves 80% who don't. In the south east region, the figure is slightly better: 18% smokers meaning 82% non-smokers. The probability of a woman in the south east being a (potentially) kinky non-smoker is therefore roughly 19%.

Next, there's political views. It's obviously very hard to judge what proportion of the population holds a particular mindset about politics, but going from the 2010 election results, and saying that people who voted for the Tories, UKIP or the BNP are not going to be compatible with me, it turns out that in the south east, 49.9% voted Tory, 4.1% voted UKIP and a disturbingly high 0.7% voted BNP. That comes to a total of 54.7% whom I would not be happy dating or being in a relationship with. Or, potentially, 45.3% whom I would date. The proportion of women in the south east who are left or centre politically, kinky, non-smokers is now roughly 8.6%

According to the most recent available census information (2001), roughly 40% of people were single, divorced or widowed in the areas I'm looking at (i.e. "available to date" or "already dating but not officially tied to a partner"). So, the best estimate now of the proportion of women who live in my area who are single, left/centre politically, kinky, non-smokers is now 3.4%

So the best guess is that around 1 in every 29 women I meet (or see on a dating website) might get past these deal-breakers. That's before we get to "physically attractive", "good/compatible personality", "shared interests" and all the other stuff that most people seem to use to decide whether they want to date someone. So it's not that I have anything wrong with me, it is just that my field is maybe 10-15% of what other peoples would be (I'm allowing for other people's dealbreakers there, and assuming others are also looking for single people to date).

Now, remember that 25,000 figure I mentioned before? The good news from my perspective is that 3.4% of 25,000 is still 850 so there might be well over 500 women out there who would be good potential partners for me and within a reasonable radius of where I live. Out of whom, I need to find someone with compatible interests, a good personality, and I find attractive - and she thinks I have the same. The big catch is that 1 in 29 sounds good until you remember that I'm an introvert and it's questionable whether I've spent any time at all talking to 30 people in the past 5 years (extended family excepted), let alone 30 women between the ages of 24 and 42! I'm not really sure where I would go to do so, either. That said, it brings home quite clearly why it is that talking to people is pretty much going to be essential for me to take any value at all from the PUA advice, dating advice and so on that's around. (Of course, I have been sending out messages on dating sites - over 300 in the past 3 years, in fact).

So, what's wrong with me? Nothing, it's just there aren't as many people out there for me to choose from.

New Year, new resolutions, and how did I do with the last lot?

2012-01-01T12:09:00.000Z

So last year at about this time, I came up with three SMART resolutions for 2011 - which means it's time to figure out how I did with those. It's also time to set some new resolve for 2012.

Last year's resolutions were as follows:

Continue being pro-active in seeking a partner. (Measured by whether I maintain the same amount of initial contacts, and whether or not I manage to pluck up the courage to make a first move in r/l situations)
Investigate and find a way to get into adult movie performing
Join at least one local sports team (the cricket club and possibly a pub football ('soccer') team)

With my forays into investigating and even trying out some pick-up artistry, I'd call #1 a resounding success. I may not have ended up with any partners during 2011, but the things that were measurable and achievable and down to my own efforts, I have actually done.

While I have definitely investigated and found possible ways into adult movie performing for myself, I have to count #2 as only a partial success, because I never actually explored those possibilities. I can't claim to have found a way in, because I never knocked on the door. Partly this has been due to health issues (specifically, I developed a verruca on my toe and it seemed unlikely that that would be welcome on a porn set!) and partly because I focussed on some other stuff in 2011, including working towards resolution #3.

#3 is another resounding success in that the things that were in my control, I did. I exercised, I went to the nets practices of the local cricket club, and I tried out for an amateur soccer team. In that vein, although I don't view it as sporting because I'm not doing it against anyone or with a team, I have also started reading and trying to get at least a basic grasp of, some kung fu. Over the year, with a modicum of portion control and a little bit of vigorous exercise every day plus the regular walking up and down hills that goes with living where I do, I have managed to lose 1.5 stone in weight, which if I recall correctly equates to 21 pounds. Steady, sustainable, weight loss has to count as a good thing, I think.

So, I did #1 and #3, but whiffed on #2. As Meat Loaf sang, "Two Out OF Three Ain't Bad". Let's go for something better in the next year!

After having the relationship-pursuit resolution two years running, it now feels like a regular part of life: I don't need that one any more. The sports resolution is also something I don't feel like putting as a target this year, although I may (again) pursue it when the cricket nets season comes around again. For now, I'll focus on my exercise regime and those kung fu books and keep those going. I also don't want to make a specific target out of my adult movie ambitions, although with the research I've done, if my health holds out then I may well follow that up in 2012 as well.

So, what have I decided to go for in 2012?

I have two SMART resolutions this year:

Perform for the talent show "The X-Factor"
Complete one chapter per month of my novel's first draft

For #1, I have already applied to go on the show. I cannot control whether or not the judges will pick me to go through to the finals - I can't even control whether the editors will pick my performance to include in the audition shows. What I can control is how well-prepared and practised I am when I appear on the stage before the judges. So, I have started choosing songs that I know I can sing confidently and well, I have selected one for the audition, and the rest are options for if I have the (mis)fortune to be put forward to the later rounds. I have been practising singing them both solo voice, and accompanied by my guitar (I also have started programming backing tracks for my practise on Garage Band). As the saying goes, the more I practise, the luckier I seem to get.

For #2, I know that I usually manage about 1,000 words in an hour, and my chapters are usually around 4k words long. So, once a week sitting down at the computer and typing for an hour ought to get me through a chapter a month. I have been slacking, or spending my words on Cyborg Sleeps or random porn-writing, recently. My intention is to get a bit more focus and get my Big Story Idea onto paper (or at least, digital storage). I doubt I will finish the novel in 2012, but if I get going then maybe I will end up going more quickly than I imagine.

I also have a non-SMART resolution that nevertheless I feel can be performed successfully. I consider it non-SMART because it is not specific or measurable in the way the others are. That resolution is picking up on a trend I noticed in my life during the past year and so the resolution is to maintain that trend through 2012. In various ways, I found myself testing myself and going beyond my comfort zone. Therefore, resolution 3 for 2012 is as follows:

Continue to seek ways to push my boundaries and explore my limits

Some of the ways I did that in 2011 were by going on the family holiday in December, by going to the football practice in September, by following through on some of the pick-up artistry stuff (although I haven't maintained that recently), by having my hair cut short (I'll need to get back to the hairdresser once the seasons turn back to spring again).

So, my three resolutions for 2012:

Perform for the talent show "The X-Factor"
Complete one chapter per month of my novel's first draft
Continue to seek ways to push my boundaries and explore my limits

Back from the B... Clan get-together (now I can have a break!)

2012-01-01T01:41:00.000Z

So, a week of enforced proximity to lots of people is over. Well, I say enforced - I chose to go, but once there there was no realistic escape route for me. The B... Clan is made up of some truly lovely people (well, at least, I like my extended family members, so it's all good). But I definitely feel that this is one of those good things of which I can definitely have too much. It was truly great to see all those people again, and even to join in socially for a bit, but I arrived on Friday afternoon and by Tuesday I was all out of figurative spoons. I spent most of the rest of the week hiding in my bedroom playing my guitar or reading (a David Baldacci and a Ruth Rendell, if you're interested).

Even though it was tough, I am glad I did it (although this is definitely a "never again!" type of thing!) because I couldn't even have contemplated it a year ago. It's three and a half years since my breakdown and this feels like I'm finally fully operational again (or as close as I've ever been before or after). I'm an introvert. It was, at times, hell for me to be around so many people. But I did it, I didn't break down this time, I came back feeling well and healthy, and only once came close to tears (and even that was easily averted). So, yeah: feeling fine, just settling back in at my own home and private spaces, and recovering from the trial. Heck, I know top-class endurance athletes need to recover after a race or a game before they can go again, however much the enjoy it. This is kind of the same thing for me.

Best Xmas gift, definitely the DVD boxset of Firefly - I hadn't seen it before although I kept wanting to and somehow missing it when it was on telly - now I can choose when to watch and won't miss anything! I've kind of had mega-spoilers from having already seen Serenity but really there's enough here that is new to keep me very happy. I'll probably rewatch Serenity after this just to see what nuances I pick up now that I missed on previous viewings.

My father has a new codename on this blog, after the term used by my nephew (i.e. his grandson) to refer to him: "Papa".

I got to dance for the Wii, as Cyndi Lauper and Debbie Harry - I was also MC HAmmer for one go (I seemed to be the only guy willing to give it a whirl, so I was dancing off against the womenfolk most of the time).

This is the video I managed to get of the second half of our performance of "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks", which involved the song being performed simultaneously to two different tunes commonly associated with it: "Lyngham" (often used for "Oh For A Thousand Tongues To Sing") and "Cranbrook" (better known as the tune of On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at) The B... Clan womenfolk (my aunts and mother) for whose shared maiden name the clan is known, being the more trained vocalists, and more deeply steeped in musical tradition (both ecclesiastical and secular) knew the former tune best, while the menfolk (including me) being well-educated by Yorkshire nationalist Papa, knew the latter tune rather more thoroughly, so the division of voices was largely by gender for those cultural background reasons.

By the last verse, I think we managed to get it together well enough for the potential of this concept to be apparent, but the quality of our performance was somewhat disrupted by the fact that our voices were affected by being close to laughter through most of it (and the fact that Papa is perhaps less talented at finding the pitch of a note than most).

I may also add some pictures at my tumblrs when I have sorted through the 180-odd snaps I took (what did we do before digital photography!? Posed more shots, IIRC, to be sure not to waste frames).

Tomorrow, I should have a post about New Year's Resolutions.

Stress Fest

2011-12-20T14:47:00.000Z

I now am halfway through an epic episode of high stress levels, although the good news is that the hard half is finished, and there should be a substantial payoff to be taken from the second half.

As mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I am going away to see my extended family (the "B[redacted] Clan" as we are known internally, though some members, by virtue of being members by marriage not birth, use a different name to refer to us). This will be from tomorrow (21st) and I get home on the 31st, so ten days - although only 7 of those will involve large numbers of people, the first 2 and last 1 will be just my parents and me. Still, as much as I love and enjoy being with my family, lots of people for 7 days at a time is going to be HEAVY stress load.

Not to mention the run-up to going away for that long, and the organisation to make sure I have enough clean clothes to take with me and to come home to.

However, that would normally only be a few days at most. What really made this the epic stress period in the run-up as well, is that I had to go to London for a job interview, too.

This is the pic I uploaded to Tumblr, which shows the starship landing clamps outside the building where I went for the job interview, with a landed flying saucer in the background. (Or, if you prefer, disused docking cranes and the Millennium Dome - but I think my version is more fun, so I'm saying that that's the real truth :-P )

The interview was to work on the Olympic Games in 2012, which even though it would probably be a basic customer service/admin role, it could be those things in terms of, for instance, making sure athletes get on the right bus to go to the right venue at the right time t take part in their event (kind of important, when you think about it!)

Travelling to an interview involves planning to make sure I have all the necessary paperwork (for instance, proof of ID and eligibility to work in the UK), that I know the timetables and how to get there on time - and then actually doing so! Making sure I have a freshly ironed shirt, and so on. Travelling to London, even more so on the travel arrangements; and also, making sure I have enough money to get there. Because it's a £20 round trip, and I get about £67.50 a week to live on (JSA), I also had to find out if I could get my travel expenses refunded. The London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games weren't going to refund costs (although if I get the job, they will reimburse travel costs for doing the work). So that meant going to the Jobcentre, who told me that I have to go to the RBLI folks who currently run my "Work Programme" (which comprises of advice on how to get back into work, mostly).

All of which interfered with my steady progress towards getting ready to go away for a family break.

Meaning that right now, I am wasting time typing about all this stress instead of doing any of the jobs that I need to get done today in order to be able to pick up my stuff tomorrow and go.

I am experiencing some of the uncomfortable physical symptoms of stress, with aching muscles (particularly my shoulders and upper back) and tensed hands and fidget-y feet and buttocks as no position feels properly comfortable. Julie Fast's book "Get It Done When you're Depressed" says to expect these symptoms and I do, and I know what they mean. Doesn't mean they'll go away just by knowing what they are! Typing, at least, keeps my fingers busy and the requirement of quite smooth movements to shift from one key to the next is helping to relax them a little. Soon, I will be going to the shop to get last-minute supplies, and hopefully that will have a similar effect on my feet, legs and buttocks.

But the worst thing is, just being ready and getting going will not be an end to the stress. As mentioned, there will be an ongoing payoff from the stress that s still to come, but it will still be there - I don't really expect much relief from the symptoms in the near future. The most relaxed I will be will be on the trains as I head up to my parents' home, and that's assuming the trains are running on time and don't have any problems.

The good news is: the last few years, I couldn't even have contemplated attempting attending one of these family Christmas gatherings. The fact that I'm here and undergoing all this stress is actually a measure of how well I'm doing generally in coping with depression and stress and so on.

It is also a measure of how much I enjoy my family's company that I think the stress is probably worth it, and I haven't bugged out and decided to stay here instead.

On the other hand, I will soooo be looking forward to getting home again and spending New Year's Eve and New Year nicely, quietly, and on my own. NYE parties? Always sound like a complete nightmare to me!

Race, size and economics in "15 Million Merits"

2011-12-18T13:42:00.001Z

**TRIGGER WARNING** for discussion of rape/coerced sex, and minimisation of its significance.

**SPOILERS** For Black Mirror episode 2 ("15 Million Merits")

NB: I'm going to use role-identifiers instead of character names - partly because I can't remember the names clearly, and partly because the allegorical nature of this episode seems to have made all the characters seem a little one-dimensional so that the names seem quite irrelevant (and how many times does it seem I used the word "seem" in this sentence?)

***

Channel 4 are currently showing a miniseries called Black Mirror written by comedian and comment-maker, Charlie Brooker, and I have recently been catching up with the series online via 4oD.

Charlie Brooker is one of those people with whom I don't always agree, and sometimes get quite annoyed, but I respect his intelligence and generally I respect the principles behind his position (though not always). "Black Mirror" is described on 4oD as:

a suspenseful, satirical three-part mini-series that taps into collective unease about our modern world

The third episode will air later tonight.

Some general notes: both episodes so far have had an undercurrent of non-consensual sexual activity to them - in the first episode, called "The National Anthem", the central premise is that the Prime Minister is blackmailed by a hostage-taker into performing "an obscene act" on live television, otherwise a member of the royal family (who's presented as being a new "Princess Di" type of public icon) will be executed. In the second episode, the subject of this piece, the theme returns in a different form and I'll get to that later.

The episode's title is "15 Million Merits". Channel 4 describe it as, "a satire on entertainment shows and our insatiable thirst for distraction set in a sarcastic version of a future reality."

The set-up gives us some basic information: people live in cubicles where every wall is made of a large video screen. These present a virtual world (such as a virtual cockerel to wake you up in the morning) and also feed video games and television channels, or streams, to the inhabitant while he or she is there. Most interaction between people happens through their "doppels" - their avatars in the virtual world of these screens. However, periodically, adverts for other features such as the TV channels (and, in the male central character's case, these are often the porn channel called "Wraith Babes") will appear. Skipping these adverts costs merits. Covering one's face results in a high-pitched and loud "torture tone" and an angry red screen saying "view blocked, please resume viewing". These adverts also appear from time to time on surfaces that double as bathroom mirrors.

Another frequent advert is for "Hot Shot", which is the talent show of the society, a version of The X Factor, Britain's Got Talent, Next Top Model etc.

The majority of people's days are spent on exercise bikes arranged in large hallways in a vast building (it's hinted that there are other such buildings), and viewing another screen where the material advertised earlier can be viewed, or the cyclists can view a "rolling road" screen where their doppel cycles along a cartoon-like rendition of a country road. It eventually transpires that the exercise bikes generate the power to run the machinery on which the society depends, such as the lighting, computers and the ever-present video screens. Pedalling earns merits, which turn out to be the currency of this world. Everything else costs merits - food, avoiding adverts, viewing television, modifying one's virtual world and/or doppel - and centrally, appearing on "Hot Shot".

There are three strata in the society: the vast majority appear to be the cyclists. There are then above them, the media stars who do not have to pedal to earn their living (membership of this class can be won by impressing the judges on "Hot Shot"), and the service staff, who are people who ran out of merits due to not pedalling enough and consuming more than they could afford. They are an object of hatred and derision for the people who are in the pedalling class, and are marked out by having to wear yellow jumpsuits.

***

This brings us to the first fail that bothered me about this episode. I am willing to believe that Mr Brooker's intention with this is to satirise the treatment of the unemployed and the attitudes towards fat people in today's society, but he seems to fall well short of his intended aim if that's true. There simply isn't enough criticism of the prevailing attitude in the society he's created to make that work, so instead it appears to support rather than detract from, the attitudes expressed. In the "15 Million Merit" society, fat people are fat because (a) they don't pedal hard enough (i.e. they're lazy and don't work or do exercise) and (b) they consume too much (i.e. overeat, or eat the wrong things). This means they end up with no merits, and therefore deserve to be despised for sponging off the hard work (pedalling) of the other people.

Unfortunately, those are the attitudes of a lot of people nowadays as well, and while I say again that I think Mr Brooker was trying to satirise that, I think he failed to criticise it. He does manage to highlight that the attitude exists, and that it is related to the way people view unemployment as well, but that alone does not count as helping; at no point is the attitude challenged or unpacked, and all the characters operate within the paradigm so that all speech reinforces the idea that it is okay to hate fat people for being lazy overconsumers.

***

Back to discussing the fictional society. Almost all non-virtual items are disposed of as soon as possible, and it's implied that all foods are synthetic ("grown in a Petri dish"). The society thus appears to be entirely self-contained.

However, it's hinted at during the exposition phase of the programme that people come in from outside, and that the age of majority is 21 - you grow up somewhere else, and then at age 21 you are placed into the cycling halls. The "love-interest" character reveals that she had hoped to go to a different one (where she had a sister) but "there weren't any spaces there" (she's introduced as she replaces someone who runs out of merits and thus is relegated to cleaner duties). It's revealed at the very end of the programme that there are lush, green forests outside the building in which the protagonist lives.

That's all the information we're given.

The first thing that I notice is that it is extremely middle-class focussed. We get some hint about how the non-producing success stories live (the media class), but nothing about how the underclass (the cleaners) live, outside of their duties as cleaners. What matters is the virtual lives of the cyclists. I found myself wondering if, to a certain type of personality, the conditions (though not the hatred) of that life might not be preferable (since you could get away from the ever-present screens!)

The second thing that puzzled me was that there seemed to be no means of reproduction available. "Love-interest character" at the start makes reference to her parents (and there's that porn channel, to which I shall return) so we are led to believe that sex still happens in this society (babies are not grown in Petri dishes, apparently, or at least, are raised as though they weren't). However, there seems to be nowhere for it to happen, and nowhere for parents to raise their children. This implies that there is a fourth class of person in the society: the "child rearing class", and presumably there is a way in which one graduates from cycling to parenthood.

That leads to the third puzzle: what are the long-term prospects for the cyclists? Do they continue until they reach a certain age and then graduate to another mode of living conditions, or do they just keep going until they die of old age or are no longer able to pedal hard enough to pay for their food? We're told that Lead Character had a relative (brother, IIRC) who died and left him 15 million merits, but we're not told anything else about advancement, except the hint that the Hot Shot judges tell contestants that, "you'll never do anything else except ride a bike, unless you accept our offer".

I was particularly confused over the healthcare system in this society. Presumably people occasionally overdo things on the bikes and have muscle injuries. They might fall over and hurt themselves. We're shown Central Character becoming violent in his cubicle and eventually cutting himself on some broken glass of one of the screens. Injuries must happen, and some of those injuries might be serious enough to stop one pedalling for a while. What happens then? Also, given that everyone inhabits an enclosed space, what about infectious diseases? Cleaning duties and hygiene do seem to be a priority in the society (although left to the society's most hated inhabitants) but still, one would expect that viruses and bacteria still exist within the bodies of the inhabitants, and can be spread by various modes of infection including airborne. Given the close habitation in the cycling halls, it seems as though diseases such as influenza would spread astonishingly quickly through the population and could conceivably cause a vast shut-down of the power production!

The final question in my mind was simply, "is it possible to opt out of the system?" The apparent presence (revealed at the very end) of a verdant and apparently fertile world beyond the confines of the building seems to suggest that it would be at least feasible to exist and survive outside the realms of the society in which the story is set, so the question is whether there is a way out of the building and to survive (by hunting/gathering or by farming) in the world beyond it. Could you choose a real life over a virtual one? If yes, do people do so? if no, then why not? Arguably, of course, the media-obsessed world that Mr Brooker presents would never hear about those who did opt out; the people who run the streams would never let on that there could be another option. However, the question must surely have occurred to other viewers. There again, this might be like the "If I were a... then I'd..." trope, or the "Why didn't she just leave her abuser?" question. Maybe similar issues would be relevant to those living in the virtual society?

Now, I promised that I would talk about the theme of non-consensual sex, and the porn channel in "15 Million Merits". The astute will no doubt have already guessed that these are linked. Sadly, they are also linked by the word in the post's title that hasn't been addressed yet: race.

One of the key events in the story is when Love-Interest Character, having been gifted the 15M merit entry fee for Hot Shot by Central Character, sings in front of the judges.

The Black man on the judging panel, as soon as she steps into the spotlight, says something along the lines of, "get your tits out". It transpires in the following sequence that he is Mr Wraith, the owner of the Wraith Babes porn channel. My heart sank, though, at this presentation of a Black character (other than Central Character, who is also Black, but mostly seems to speak in a very cultured and "British" accent, and might be coded as "acceptable blackness"). My heart sank because this played so heavily into the stereotype of Black men as sexual predators.

After Love-Interest Character sings, she is told that she's above average but "there are no slots available for above-average singers". White Dude Judge says instead that "Mr Wraith's got it right. Your suggestion of worldly innocence would fit right in on his channel. You can go and be a Wraith Babe." It's at this point that she is given the ultimatum that she can ride the bikes for the rest of her life, or she can appear in porn. (We're not given any hint as to what happens to media people when people stop choosing to view their media, so what would happen to Love-Interest Character after she loses her sex appeal is not clear, so it's not obvious how much this offer really means.)

LIC is then pressured (people are pedalling to keep the spotlight on you and you're dithering, wasting their effort!) into accepting the deal, even though she's a shy and demure person (the very qualities the sexual violation of which are deemed attractive to the porn-viewing audience).

Now, sadly, the world we live in is such that porn, or sex work in general, is very much like that (see, for example, what I discovered from talking to some performers on Live Jasmin). This is Not Okay. Coerced sexual activity of any kind is not cool, even when the coercion is financial in nature. Even sex workers' rights campaigners want sex work to be voluntary!

So I feel comfortable in saying that the Love-Interest Character's coerced involvement in the porn industry of "15 Million Merits" is basically "rape as plot point". It's the advert for her debut porn video that triggers a reaction in Central Character (who no longer has enough merits to skip the advert) to drive the conclusion of the episode. Apart from that, we know absolutely nothing about her after she accepts the offer from Mr Wraith. We have no idea how she feels about her new life and her duties as a Wraith Girl. We have no indication of how it affects her. The only thing that matters is how it affects Central Character.

That made me very angry with Mr Brooker because, in his apparent attempt to satirise and criticise the porn industry, he has accepted the premise on which such exploitation is based. Love-Interest Character exists in the story only in terms of how she relates to the male characters (the two male judges, and Central Character), and not in any other way - such as being a person with her own will and direction (all the other characters are background characters anyway).

So there you have it: "Black Mirror: 15 Million Merits" - fail on race, sizeism, and gender issues. Raised some interesting hypotheticals about the society it presented.

"Cheerleading? That's Women's Work!"

2011-12-18T11:20:00.000Z

Via Yahoo News:

A high school cheerleading squad from Michigan has been disqualified from competition because one of their members is a boy.

Before I go further, I should point out that, despite plenty of US media references that are ubiquitously available in the UK, the idea of cheerleading as a competitive sport seems a bit weird to me (I understand it more like Eliza Dushku's character in "Bring It On" does, who only joins the cheerleading squad at her new school because there's no gymnastics programme there). That said, taking the culture on its own terms, and accepting that it is a competitive sport - and going by those cultural references - I intend to comment.

The rule about school sports states that girls may compete on a boys' competitive athletic/sports team if there is no girls' option available, but boys may not compete on a girls' team if the opposite occurs. The reason for the rule, according to the governing body (MHSAA), is that, "Schools have adopted this position to preserve participation opportunities for the historically underrepresented gender."

Which is fine when you think about most sports and athletic activities played competitively. It is true that most sports have a heavy focus on the male forms of those games (to the extent that, this year, the BBC Sports Personality of the Year shortlist was ten names long, and consisted of ten men - see some commentry here).

That said, cheerleading appears to be an exception to that tendency. Any representation of cheerleading pretty much shows women or girls in the role (although there are male cheerleaders in Bring It On, the only explicit reference to them is derogatory, by a sleazy choreographer).

The boy at the centre of the current controversy had one sporting ambition: to be a cheerleader:

Brandon Urbas is like many other American teens: He spent much of his youth dreaming of being a high school varsity athlete. The only difference was the sport he hoped to compete in: Urbas wanted to be a cheerleader.

In 2011, Urbas achieved that dream, joining the St. Clair Shores (Mich.) Lakeview High varsity cheerleading team. Despite being the only male cheerleader on the squad, Urbas said everything was going swimmingly throughout the football season.

...

"I cried," Urbas told WXYZ. "I felt like they were taking away my dream of being able to do it in college and getting scholarships."

The consequence of enforcing the rule in the way that the governing body has done is to say that cheerleading is women's work, that women alone should do. The classic response would be to say that this constitutes sexism against men, but that would be mistaken. This reinforces traditional gender roles, and specifically it reinforces women as the object of male gaze while diminishing their agency. How so? Because cheerleading is a form of display sport (like ice dance, or gymnastics): it's something you look at, but there is no purpose beyond the performance. When a football player (whether that's NFL, Football Association, RFU or RFL, Aussie Rules or Gaelic) performs a great-looking move, he or she may perform that with a mind to the viewers and make it look good, but the ultimate purpose is to score for the team (or prevent the other team from scoring). There is an intended effect on the world (or at least, the game's microcosm of the world). In a display sport, the only intended effect is on the viewer, to attract them and excite them aesthetically, but not to change the nature of the game's world.

By creating a clear divide in the gendered nature of cheerleading (girls do it, boys don't), the MHSAA is reinforcing the traditional divide in gendered roles: "boys do stuff, girls get looked at". It does so in the negative way: "boys don't get looked at", which is one of the themes that lies behind male-on-male reinforcement of homophobia, and such a deeply ingrained trope in the patriarchal memetic biosphere (memeosphere?) that it underlies a lot of the attitudes about dating and gender relations in general.

While the spirit behind the rule involved here seems very laudable, the decision to stick to the letter rather than that spirit seems to be somewhat less so.

One thing that is interesting to me, though, is this little snippet:

Urbas fit in with the rest of the squad, and he even said that the Lakeview football team had stepped forward to support him, offering "to get his back" if anyone taunted him or gave him trouble.

I mentioned homophobia in the above passage, but it looks as though at Lakeview, there is not much of a problem with (explicit) homophobia or transphobia, or of stereotyping around these things. The report doesn't actually say anything about people not assuming that Mr Urbas is gay or transgendered, but when you write a "discrimination" story, you usually want to get in as many "-isms" as possible, right? So perhaps it is instructive and encouraging that it also doesn't once mention that anyone did make those assumptions. I am tired of, and obviously from the fact that I am making these comments I am used to, having to say "desire to do X doesn't make you gay, except where X is 'get hawt with people of the same sex'" Stepping outside of defined gender roles also does not make one trans*. This time, I didn't need to say that with direct reference to the article, and hopefully that will become the norm in future so I don't have to (and so that this kind of "thankfully I didn't have to..." message becomes redundant and doesn't have to appear).

On being a Facebook holdout

2011-12-14T13:04:00.000Z

Via Yahoo News, a piece by Jenny Wortham of the NY Times talks about the fact that Facebook are finding further growth more and more difficult, now that they have 2/3 of the US population signed up to the site. Some people, it seems, just don't want to be involved with it. Ms Wortham writes that they are now spending more effort (and advertising cash) on targeting Asia and Latin America. The main thrust of her piece, however, is looking at the various reasons people are giving for not signing up.

Since I am a Facebook holdout myself, this seems like an interesting topic to write about. I'm not a US citizen, but 58% of those online in the UK (and just under half the total population) are also members of Facebook, which is close enough - and I have certainly experienced some of the phenomena described in Ms Wortham's piece.

The first example was a man who encountered for the first time a woman who, by chance, happened to be a Facebook friend of some of his friends, and through that tenuous connection, he already knew a huge amount about her life and recent activities. That experience of knowing so much about someone despite never having talked to them, or even met them, before - freaked him out, and he quit the site.

Developing from this, Ms Wortham reports:

One of Facebook’s main selling points is that it builds closer ties among friends and colleagues. But some who steer clear of the site say it can have the opposite effect of making them feel more, not less, alienated.

“I wasn’t calling my friends anymore,” said Ashleigh Elser, 24, who is in graduate school in Charlottesville, Va. “I was just seeing their pictures and updates and felt like that was really connecting to them.”

To be sure, the Facebook-free life has its disadvantages in an era when people announce all kinds of major life milestones on the Web. Ms. Elser has missed engagements and pictures of new-born babies. But none of that hurt as much as the gap she said her Facebook account had created between her and her closest friends. So she shut it down.

And then there are the inevitable privacy concerns.

Those who study social networking say this issue boils down to trust. Amanda Lenhart, who directs research on teenagers, children and families at the Pew Internet and American Life Project, said that people who use Facebook tend to have “a general sense of trust in others and trust in institutions.” She added: “Some people make the decision not to use it because they are afraid of what might happen.”

Another reason for resisting is the "social overload" factor:

Erika Gable, 29, who lives in Brooklyn and does public relations for restaurants, never understood the appeal of Facebook in the first place. She says the daily chatter that flows through the site — updates about bad hair days and pictures from dinner — is virtual clutter she doesn’t need in her life.

“If I want to see my fifth cousin’s second baby, I’ll call them,” she said with a laugh.

***

It is true for me that privacy is a major part of why I do not have a Facebook account. Given the nature and candour of some of my blog posts here, at And You Thought I Was Sweet? or on my tumblr, some people might find that a strange concern to have; but I at least try to keep my birth name out of the internet as far as practical, and try to maintain some kind of barrier between that and my use of Snowdrop Explodes as a name. There are, of course, things here that maybe it would not be comfortable for some of my family members to know about and perhaps a Facebook page on the "other" side of the divide would be better, but there are some real life people who straddle that divide in real life, who know me by both names, and whom maybe I would not want confusing how open I am here with how open I might wish to be on Facebook.

The point raised by Amanda Lenhart on this is an interesting one. It is true that I distrust many big organisations, especially those that are run with a profit motive. However, had Facebook done better with privacy in the past, then I might not be so sceptical about them now; also, had I the option to choose a pseudonym, I might feel more secure about my privacy and the ways I choose to live my life. This is a case of feeling that Facebook have lost my trust, rather than starting from a position of distrust. However, having seen reports of similar issues with sites such as Fetlife, I am inclining much more strongly towards distrust as the default stance.

However, my strongest reasons for being a Facebook holdout are closest in kind to those of Ashleigh Elser and Erika Gable.

I like the closeness I get from talking to folks on the telephone, or even from writing personalised emails to friends, family, etc. I don't particularly like the idea of having updates flashing up from all over the place, and I especially don't like the idea of updates flashing up from people I hardly even know! I am pretty strongly introverted, and so my comfort sphere in terms of friendship is to be close-knit and small. To be regarded as my friend, rather than just an acquaintance, takes a lot of time and trust, and shared experiences/talking about life, the universe, and whatnot. Most people I know, even most people I am quite close to, are still "acquaintances" in my mind, although I might in casual conversation call them "friends", imitating the way I see other people sue that term. But to "friend" someone on a site, I pretty much need to feel like I know them reasonably well, and have some basis for trusting them at least on the acquaintance level. Even that circle of contact is a pretty limited sphere, and that's the way I like it thankyouverymuch.

I kind of feel like to get very much use or value out of being on Facebook, I would need to put in more information about myself than I am comfortable with doing, and I would need to "friend" more people than I have any interest in befriending. I really don't need to know that stuff.

This is a variant on why I won't use Twitter (I actually signed up for it, but decided against using it). I am convinced that if I actually used it, then I would have no time or braincells left for anything else - or, there would be so few people I could be bothered following that I would get almost no use out of it. Plus, I really don't feel the need to update the universe on my doings throughout the day! If there's something interesting that happened and I want to share it with people, then I will phone, text or email the people I want to share it with.

Both Facebook and Twitter are, for me, "virtual clutter" that I don't need in my life (to borrow the phrasing of Ms Gable, quoted above).

Ms Wortham's piece then discusses the consequences that some folks experience from not being on Facebook:

Will Brennan, a 26-year-old Brooklyn resident, said he had “heard too many horror stories” about the privacy pitfalls of Facebook. But he said friends are not always sympathetic to his anti-social-media stance.

“I get asked to sign up at least twice a month,” said Mr. Brennan. “I get harangued for ruining their plans by not being on Facebook.”

I have had this too, although nowhere near as often as Mr Brennan describes (perhaps because I have such a small circle of friends anyway). However, my response is pretty direct, and yes, I have said this to people before:

"If it matters to you that I be there, then you'll take the time to remember I'm not on Facebook, and make sure you invite me by some other means. If it doesn't matter that much to you, then I probably don't want to be there anyway."

I imagine that I could lose friends like that, if I weren't so restrictive in whom I will count among my friends. It may be that the small size of my friends circle is in part because of this type of attitude, and people misreading it as aloofness or arrogance. It isn't either of those things, it is introversion (or even, in some people's terminology, "lonership"). I am happier on my own, and always will be, even though I do enjoy company every so often, and in manageable doses. So if I am not particularly wanted, then I am probably happier not being a part of a gathering or event where (I feel as though) I am only really there to "make up the numbers" to suit the hosts. If you want me, then make me feel wanted - I don't need to be the centre of attention (in fact, lonership/introversion being my thing, I will probably just want to sit in a corner on my own for most of it!) but I do want to feel like I am contributing something that is valued. For want of better words, it basically boils down to, "I want to feel wanted" (see also, my attitude on dating and who does the chasing...). There is also the fact that, for me, attending any kind of social gathering requires heavy effort, and frankly, I'd like there to be some kind of effort made in return to acknowledge that and show that it's valued that I should do so - inviting me personally, instead of by some general Facebook update, goes some way to making me feel that.

Susan Etlinger, an analyst at the Altimeter Group, said society was adopting new behaviors and expectations in response to the near-ubiquity of Facebook and other social networks.

“People may start to ask the question that, if you aren’t on social channels, why not? Are you hiding something?” she said. “The norms are shifting.”

This is something that I have already seen referenced a few times on the dating blogs that I read nowadays, with some people thinking it's some kind of "red flag" if a potential date doesn't have (or at least, says they don't have) a Facebook account, because of that feeling, "what are they trying to hide?"

As it happens, the article mentions this, with Erika Gable (quoted above) saying that it's the one thing she does use Facebook for - she gets friends to look up her potential date for her! On the other hand, Chris Munn says that it's easier to date because you still have stuff to talk about to find out about each other, instead of reading it all on Facebook beforehand.

As discussed, I kind of am hiding something by not being on Facebook, but I'm open about that, and by the time any potential date is genuinely a potential date and not just "some woman I emailed on OkCupid/Plentooffish/some kink site", then it's likely that Google will have brought her here already, or I will have volunteered the link myself (on the kink sites, I actually offer the link already, since the kink stuff is the main thing I hide and the fact it's a kink site pretty much tells the would-be date that I'm kinky already!)

I also kind of view it as a screening technique: in a version of the "I want to be wanted" argument used for expecting folks to let me know by other means that they want me at their party or event, I feel as though not having a Facebook account is a way of making sure that those potential dates that progress to being actual dates actually care about me as a person, and aren't just looking to tick things off a checklist before deciding, "you'll do!" I like to talk a lot before going on a date, either by email, IM or telephone, so if you have your checklist handy then you can try to do it that way. I just want the personal touch, to feel like it is actually me you're interested in.

So, there you have it: I am not on Facebook, partly out of concern for privacy but mostly because I prefer the personal contact of actually talking or writing to someone.

On the benefits the rich really get from paying higher tax

2011-12-13T00:11:00.000Z

Over the weekend, I watched on iPlayer Nick Robinson's programme "Your Money and How They Spend It", which was a look at the UK budget and why there's a deficit. In the first programme, he looked at government spending, and in the second he looked at taxation. It's the second programme that I intend to discuss here.

I have a fairly dim view of Nick Robinson's analytic skills, and my usual reasons for that view were again on show in this programme, and that's why I wanted to write about it. The reason being that the errors of analysis that Mr Robinson makes are pretty common in people's thinking. For those whose education or jobs don't cover these sorts of matters, that may be excusable, but Mr Robinson is the Political Editor for the BBC's news service, and might be expected to have a broader and more in-depth understanding of these things than most.

A brief synopsis of the programme may be helpful to provide the context for my criticisms and thoughts.

Mr Robinson opened by describing tax as "governments asking us to give them money, for them to give to other people". (This is my first point of contention.)

He then showed a computer graphic illustration of where the UK government gets its tax revenue:

Income Tax
National Insurance
VAT

Corporation Tax
Fuel Tax
"Sin" taxes:

alcohol
tobacco
etc.

Council Tax (based on size of property)
Stamp Duty (percentage of house sale price)
Inheritance Tax

He also mentioned something to do with air travel, but I don't actually know the name of the tax involved there.

He gave a history of income tax, and how it was originally a "temporary" tax introduced to plug a budget deficit brought about (IIRC) by some war or other.

After that, he discussed who we mean when we talk about "the rich". In a "vox pops" piece (with my usual caveat and scepticism that any clips of someone saying the wrong thing is left on the cutting room floor), it transpired that most people at Newbury racecourse (a place populated by people in very expensive-looking suits, it seemed) seemed to think that "rich" was always someone else whose income was higher than their own. When presented with a range of options, most people seemed to think that being "rich" meant an income of around £120,000.

This is interesting, when taken in conjunction with the 1% versus 99% message that the Occupy movement(s) use, because it turns out that only 1% of the UK population earns £120k or more.

He then gave another graphic this time showing the proportions of incoe tax revenue provided by those segments of the population above or below certain income levels:

less than £10k - 0.5% of income tax revenue
Bottom 90% of earners - 47% of income tax revenue
More than £48k (top 10%) - 53% of income tax revenue
Top 1% (i.e. £120k+) - 27% of income tax revenue

This is remarkably close to the graphic I saw on one Occupy leaflet about how the wealth in the UK is divided up (a quarter to the top 1 % another quarter to the rest of the top 10%, and half for the bottom 90%) Without having the leaflet to hand, I can't check what their source was, and it might have been the same.

Mr Robinson then discussed proposals for taxes to help plug the deficit. First, the idea of a higher top rate of income tax, for the extremely rich. The debate, said Mr Robinson, was more about "what it says about Britain" to introduce such a tax, than how much the tax would actually raise. Those arguing for it said that it "says Britain stands for fairness", those arguing against it said that it "say Britain is against aspiration and rewarding success". (This is another point I intend to discuss).

The ways that tend to get used are more often targeting the "comfortably off" - that next 9%, effectively. Often, these involve cutting benefits such as child benefit that are received by these families.

After that, Mr Robinson explained about National Insurance (NI), and VAT (where the rules now extend to 3,000+ pages concerning which items are liable for VAT and which are exempt).

Mr Robinson showed us another graphic, taking the 10%-wide income bands and showing what proportion they paid of tax revenue against what they received from the government in direct benefits, and in pensions, healthcare and so on. Not surprisingly, the top 10% of earners paid in massively more (as a proportion of the whole) than the rest, but received somewhat less in benefits, healthcare entitlement, etc. Mr Robinson stated that the bottom 60% receive more than they pay, but the top 10% pay 5 times what they put in. This is the point over which I have the strongest disagreement, and the main focus of the argument I wish to make in this post.

Finally, Mr Robinson talked about tax avoidance, and how extremely wealthy individuals can afford to spend time overseas to avoid tax liability in this country, and big business can afford to make their affairs and accounts so unfathomable that it becomes almost impossible for politicians and civil servants to track the money down and thereby tax it.

***

I highlighted three things I wanted to discuss from that, which were Mr Robinson's assertions that:

"Tax are the way that governments take money from one and give it to another, maybe even back to us when we're unable to work, or sick, or old."
The top 10% put in 5 times what they get out

I also wanted to address the argument that high rates of tax for the very richest people send a message that "discourages aspiration".

I'll start with "aspiration".

Many people aspire to be successful sportspeople. Obviously, the fact that the most successful sportspeople are paid enough to put them in the top 1% (and probably top 0.01%, though that's just a guess from me) i part of the attraction, but we'll look at the aspiration to excellence to start with, and deal with aspiration to financial success a little bit later on in this analogy.

Now, someone aspiring to be successful as a sportsperson needs to practice, and train, and work hard to achieve success. The level of success is generally contingent upon the amount of effort (work) that one puts into it. Professional sportspeople have to treat their sport as a full-time job, because that is what it is: it's how they earn their money.

Now, consider this: For each extra unit of effort you put into your training and playing, do you expect to gain the same amount of advancement? I think probably not. I think, you expect it, in general, to cost more effort for the next level of advancement up the rankings in your chosen sport. I think, when you reach the top, you are putting in the same amount of effort, but only making very small advances in your performance and success levels (but knowing that if you didn't train and practice, you would lose it all).

Is it not fair, then, to think that maybe after the first £100,000, it might be a bit harder to get the same advance in pay after tax? But why would that discourage aspiration, or the drive to financial success? Just because it costs more to get more? But that is the same whatever your chosen field of aspiration. I chose sports above, but I could just as easily have chosen musicianship or any other field of endeavour. Do some people give up their aspirations to sporting prowess because it is hard? Of course! Do some people give up their ambitions of a musical career because it is difficult to make it? Definitely! (Or they seek a short-cut by applying for talent shows...) Does that mean that these fields "discourage aspiration"? Bollocks! Of course it doesn't! How absurd!

And that's why I give that argument short shrift.

On to Mr Robinson's statements. In a way, my contention with them both is the same concern. Mr Robinson treats us as atomised individuals operating utterly independently of one another, except for this curious system of transfer called "the government", that "takes from one" and "gives to another, or back to us". It seems as though we have no other contact with one another except that, in the political worldview that Mr Robinson inhabits.

This, incidentally, is the thesis that underlies modern free market or "liberal" capitalism, the idea that we are all separate and independent of one another, only meeting in order to trade. Capitalism defies the purest exposition of free market economics in various ways (and the requirements of no hidden costs, and perfect information, also make FME impossible to achieve in real life) but the idea is still the same. It is disappointing, and frustrating, that a political editor for a highly-respected news business such as the BBC's news, should be so blinkered as to believe that this is the only way things can be. It is not surprising that the general populace should believe it, because capitalist hegemony makes it hard to see outside of the box, but for someone whom one would expect to have some knowledge of other political viewpoints (even if he didn't share them personally) to present it that way is just shoddy work.

So, what's the alternative? Well, Marx and Engels wrote passages that reflect this concept, and I know other philosophers before them touched on these ideas as well. We can start with the oft-quoted line from John Donne, "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;" By interacting with others, we are woven together and could not exist fully but for the existence of others. Indeed, these days, we could not continue existing but for the efforts of others. We rely on others' work to provide us with the benefits of living in a society. We are not an archipelago, but a great continent woven together by common experience and - yes - by common trade.

What that means is that none of anyone's income is theirs alone, by their own efforts produced. All of us depend upon the effort of someone else to be able to earn a living.

Taxation is not "taking from one to give to another", but rather, is the cost of keeping society functioning so that we can enjoy the results of living in society.

In his first programme, Nick Robinson did not just talk about pensions, healthcare, and the benefits system (although he talked a lot about those things). Taxes also pay for defence, for policing, for infrastructure, education (without which, of course, there would be no healthcare, and precious few highly-paid jobs!) and so on.

Take away the roads and rail, and suddenly your money counts for very little. Take away the defence or police and just anyone could come and take over. Take away the education service, and sooner or later you'll find that there's no one to help you stay alive, or at least, no one able to get you what you want (because they don't know how). Some time ago now (several years, I think), the comedian Jo Brand appeared on Question Time along with a bunch of politicians. They were debating taxation, based on a question from the audience. Jo Brand made one remark that has stuck with me ever since: "Taxes aren't there to punish us. They're so that the government can buy us nice things." Now, we might think that the things they buy for us are not up to scratch (for instance, the NHS computer system that was recently abandoned after the people who designed it botched to job) and we might be angry that tax revenue is thus being "wasted", but that doesn't make taxation a bad thing. And, let's be honest, what makes any of us think that we are better at avoiding cock-ups such as buying the wrong sort of tea by mistake, or failing to get the very best possible bargain on light bulbs? It's just that when a government does it, it tends to involve sums that make the mind boggle, instead of just £2.50 or whatever.

And we all know that bulk, wholesale, purchases tend to be cheaper than buying things at retail prices. That's one reason why we have a government so that we can club together and get those nice things at wholesale prices. When people buy private healthcare or education, what they are really doing is buying retail instead of wholesale, and paying over the odds (this is another topic, for another post, however).

Taxation isn't really about the transfer from one individual to some other individual(s). It's about the membership fees for a club - Club UK, if you like. Membership of this club comes with certain benefits, among which are the benefits of having a relatively safe place to do business of various kinds, and the maintenance of a functioning society that makes it beneficial to carry out those businesses.

So, what do rich people (that top 1% earning £120k or more a year) actually "get back out" of government, when they pay in their top rate taxes?

Well, it's not just the benefits, healthcare entitlement, pensions etc. It's not just the defence and the police. It's not just the infrastructure. It's everything they get as a result of those things being in place. In short, it is everything they earn from any business conducted in the UK. Whether that's by salary, or investment, or whatever. What you get out is, in fact, everything that you didn't pay in.

When you look at the excess not just over the tax costs, but of the "what you get out" over "what it costs to stay alive" then the proportion of income that can be spent on luxuries becomes much greater. Some people tend to add in a much bigger food bill, but that's because the nature of the foods they are buying are luxury rather than necessity.

When you get vastly more out, and when what you get out is actually greater in proportion to your other costs, it seems perfectly fair that a greater proportion of that should go to helping the club that benefits you disproportionately compared to the rest of its members, running.

The fighting Snowdrop

2011-12-10T03:48:00.000Z

So a few years back at the hospital fête (I think) I got hold of a bunch of kung fu instruction books, and this week I dug them out and decided that (in the run up to the season of peace and goodwill to all - the irony does not escape me) this was the perfect time to start trying to learn a bit of them.

I have books on T'ai Chi Ch'uan (that's the fighting form of tai chi), Wing Chun (or Wing Tsun as it's also spelt in Roman alphabet) and Hung Gar. The Hung Gar and one of the Wung Chun books are both from a US publishing company called Ohara.

I recently learned that Earthbending in Avatar: The Legend of Aang was based on the Hung Gar kung fu, and having tried out some of the basic stances, I was instantly reminded of the earthbenders' stances in the cartoon. It was rather intriguing to notice the connection (albeit having been primed for it already).

I have started with looking at the first couple of exercises in the Hung Gar book and the two Wing Chun books (both of which reference the same origins, but one, by Dr. Leung Ting, spells it "Wing Tsun"). At the moment, I am mostly interested in understanding the basic principles behind the physical ethos of the forms, but these overlap quite clearly with the philosophy guiding the arts, and I read the introduction passages about those for each before attempting anything else.

I was fascinated to learn that Wing Chun is credited to a woman, Yim Wing-Chun, who learned and developed the form from the teaching of a Buddhist nun and abbess, and went on to defend herself against unwanted sexual advances using the form. The Ohara book describes how Wing-Chun adapted the form to avoid confrontation of a stronegr force but utilising it; the Dr. Ting book describes this in practical terms of confronting an aggressive and unknown enemy, in which you cannot know for sure what strengths the enemy has and thus confronting him is foolish.

I like the Wing Chun philosophy, both the version described by Dr Ting and the Ohara book's version. It is curious that have noted differences already in the teaching styles of the two books, with Dr. Ting seeming to place much more emphasis on feet placement in the stances, and also a more external, practical focus. However, the diagrams are quite bemusing at times with a lot of angles listed that obscure rather than reveal (for me anyway) what the body is doing; the Ohara book uses a lot of photographs with detailed descriptions, and I am finding that easier to get to grips with. I hope that by using two sources, I will get a better idea of the concepts, or at least, be able to understand why the two books differ on them.

This is really my logic in choosing two different forms to learn at the same time: by learning two fighting forms with differing styles and philosophies, I hope to discern what general physical concepts underpin the fighting body, or to understand each better by comparison and contrast with the other. I will also be able to get a better sense of what works and what is right for me.

The solid, physical set of the Hung Gar kung fu seems to suit my build quite well in some ways, but some of the very low stances I struggle to complete because I seem not to be able to get the balance right. This is frustrating and I suspect that it's one of those things where book-learning is not going to be enough; I would need an instructor to show me how to do it better. I like the breathing element, and the sense of rootedness that the form involves, and it seems to sit well with my more stubborn side of my character, and the "red beast of fire" in my soul.

As mentioned, the Wing Chun philosophy seems to match my natural sense of self, and it also seems to match my sense of bodily positioning (I found that when I tried out the first couple of stances, I was automatically doing what the Dr. Ting book recommended, without needing to read what it says "most people" misunderstand about the stances). On the other hand, I feel as though my size and strength are more of a liability than an asset with the art (that may prove to be a misconception once I get deeper into the forms and routines of it). It suits the white beast, and my more mild-mannered character.

The Hung Gar and Wing Chun approaches seem very different, strongly contrasted, but the principles of a solid, balanced foundation in the various stances seems to be common to both. As noted above, I think each one reflects a different side to my personality and I may well end up finding that I have ways to utilise each in my self-expression and (should it come to that) self-defence, depending on the situation.

For the time being, I am gradually adding the exercises from the books into my daily exercise routine (such as it is) and we will see where it goes!

Pick-up lack of updates

2011-12-07T04:10:00.000Z

It occurs to me that I haven't given any updates on my pick-up progress in the last couple of months (although the telephone interview is tagged as "pick-up updates", that's because the experience struck me as being relevant to my pick-up project, not actually a part of that (ongoing) saga).

I haven't forgotten the project, and it is still something that is active in my mind and on my agenda. However, for the past 9 or 10 weeks I have just been finding other things to be fulfilling and worthy of investing my effort and attention into them.

It doesn't help that I seem to be really short on suitable locations for pick-up approaches that are in easy reach of my home. Opportunities just don't arise a lot for me, and introversion is undoubtedly a major drawback when it comes to socialising (in that, I just don't enjoy it a lot of the time!) Then there are the shortening days and colder weather that take some of the oomph out of going out rather than staying in.

None of which is reason to give up, or to stop trying. Just because something is hard to do, does not man it can't be done, and does not mean that there is no value in making the effort. At the moment, however, my efforts are focussed elsewhere.

This seems to be going for internet dating as well. In the past couple of weeks, I have become less regular about visiting the sites where I'm a member (including the BDSM ones), and this is because I have been spending my time on other projects and things. I don't know for sure when this will turn around, but I suspect it will not be until the new year, because it seems unwise to try contacting a load of new people when I'm about to go away to spend time with my family over the Christmas/New Year period - I don't know what the internet access will be like, but I don't really plan to be online while I'm away (although possibly playing video games on my own when the socialising gets too much for me).

So all-in-all, this may be a slow period for my dating/pick-up explorations. Here's to hot dates in 2012!

Things that are generally true should not be treated as specifically true

2011-12-06T13:36:00.000Z

If I were to offer advice to the tune that, "All women like to breathe in and out", I would like to think that most people reading that advice would be of a mind to say, "Well, duh, Snowdrop! All people like to breathe in and out!" Indeed, breathing is a pretty basic function of what keeps us alive and respiring.

While that same essentialness is not a quality of most of the advice that I can find on dating and so on, there is a lot of advice that seems to fall into a similar trap of suggesting (by omission or implication) that things that are true of one sex are specifically true of that sex, when in fact most people regardless of the gender expression, have a tendency towards the same sorts of behaviour.

An example that came up recently was "mixed signals". A blog called "Compatibility and Love" posted a youtube video from a pair called Matt and Tamsen about "how do you tell if he's into you?" (I won't post the video myself, the gender-essentialism in it is OTT, just follow the link if you're curious) - with a smattering of the blogger's own commentary basically echoing the statements in the video:

...if a bloke starts to like you – whether he realizes this or not – at a subconscious level he’s going to feel like his heart and his head are in the blender. He won’t know what is up with himself even. I’d go so far to say that his inconsistencies even take him by surprise.

But how many times have you read female characters by female authors describe themselves as "head and heart are in a blender" or similar words? I'm pretty sure that is a staple of the teenie mag advice columnists' in-trays, too. That is, women feel the same way, and act inconsistently, and all the rest of it, just as much as men do!

For the record, the bit I snipped at the beginning of the sentence was, "Guys fear commitment, so..." and what that is is someone putting a gendered explanation on behaviour that is in fact common to both sexes.

Interestingly, a recent post by Evan Marc Katz ("Dating coach for smart, strong, successful women", no less! Somehow, that tagline always makes me giggle) pretty much addressed the same question: why do people seem to do "push-away" type dumb things just when they're really getting into the other person? (The overall topic of the post was actually about first dates, and not letting every little flaw become a "deal-breaker")

He starts off by apologising for the monumentally boneheaded antics he's got up to, and for the boneheaded antics of all the other (heterosexual, dating) men out there in the Big Bad World.

But his examples are all drawn from the behaviour of his (female) clients (he does give some of the stuff that he's done, but those are so extreme, they weaken rather than strengthen the point):

Consider, for example, my client, Amy, a marketing executive who always speaks her mind. So when she got comfortable talking to Scott about her four-year-ex-boyfriend who broke her heart, it didn’t even occur to her that she was rambling for about 30 minutes uninterrupted.

Or take Tina, who had an awesome 4-hour first date with Don, which ended up with a fifteen-minute makeout session. Needless to say, Tina was excited. Which is why she asked Don before he left the car, “So, when are you calling me again?”

Tina’s not wrong for wanting to see Don again. But in Don’s mind, a woman who asks him out at the end of Date 1 appears weak and needy. That’s not an attractive quality to most men and it’s often going to affect his opinion of you.

Finally, there’s Melissa, a 37-year-old with a strong, vivacious personality. So she didn’t think much of it, when, after 3 drinks, she told her date that she liked it “rough” in bed. Check, please.

The point is that sometimes we let down our guard and say or do something that is simply embarrassing.

Seriously, is it not terrifically easy to see from this how similar behaviours are as common in men as in women? EMK says later on:

You are undoubtedly doing JUST as many things “wrong” as he is. Would you like him to dissect you for being 5 lbs overweight, a bit nervous or shy, or for talking about your organic garden for too long?

Now, those examples may be just a teensy bit more gender-stereotyped than the last lot (and again, don't women judge men similarly for doing the exact same things - being less than perfectly buff, being too shy/nervous, talking about their hobbies (which may include gardening) for too long?) but the point is there.

As mentioned, EMK was talking more about first-date slip-ups that really shouldn't be dealbreakers but too often are treated that way. The "Matt and Tamsen"/"Compatibility and Love" deal was talking about a little bit further down the line, and the push-and-pull behaviours that "men" exhibit. The thing is, women do the same things too. We are told that women have to "play hard to get", and how is that anything but confusing, mixed signals? Not to mention that a lot of the time, the same "fear of commitment" (though typically spun differently depending on gender) exists on both sides of the equation, and sometimes all it takes is one confusing signal from one person to produce confusing signals in the other as well.

In general, then, I think it pays to take any form of dating advice and flip the gender roles to see if it still holds true. If it does, then the advice shouldn't be gendered in the first place (and it's probably a pretty good idea to throw out any gendered explanations of why people behave in those ways, too). If it doesn't, then in the vast majority of cases, I've found that the advice is not applicable to all people of the described gender-presentation and may not even be applicable to the majority (it only looks that way because people try to conform and perform their assigned gender roles).

My general expectation is this: If it's generally true of one gender, then it's probably true of all the others, too; if it's true only of one gender, then typically it either isn't true at all, or else it's actually only true of a specific (and limited) subset of that gender.

Occupy TW: Latest news

2011-12-04T18:39:00.002Z

Following my last post, concerning the inaugural General Assembly to plan Occupy TW, it turned out they did, that very night, set up a camp, outside of St John's Church on the road towards Southborough.

The latest news is available here.

Will we "Occupy Tunbridge Wells"?

2011-11-30T20:42:00.000Z

Given that Tunbridge Wells (in the words of Wikipedia) "has a reputation as being a bastion of the middle class and a typical example of 'Middle England'," it might seem surprising that an "Occupy" camp might be set up there. It happens to be the most local planned or existing Occupy site, so I went along today to the inaugural General Assembly, held in the centre of town, and timed to coincide and show solidarity with the public sector workers' strike.

I turned up half an hour late, to find that they were only just beginning to sort out the spray-painting stencils to create a protest banner (somewhat bland, using the established Occupy slogan: "We are the 99% Occupy Tunbridge Wells") and people looking like they didn't know what was going on. This, it turned out, was because most of them didn't know what was going on. One of the people who had helped plan this event admitted to me when I turned up, "It's a shambles."

A jovial copper from Kent Police popped by a few times to see that everything was in order and was warmly received by those present - he might be the very antithesis of the pepper-spray/tear gas approach to policing. But then, nobody was actually trying to camp anywhere at that point.

Eventually, with the banner more-or-less completed, there was an attempt to run through the way that the consensus/General Assembly process is supposed to work, and then get started. Then we had to go through the process and hand signals again for those who hadn't turned up, then there was a proposal to break into smaller groups because it seemed as though people weren't paying attention but chatting amongst themselves anyway. Then they got the megaphone working properly so people could hear better (it was a small group, and we couldn't get consensus on whether or not to use the Human Microphone or not, because some people wanted to make quite detailed points that they felt would be hard to get across in small enough bites, and surely everyone can hear okay anyway?)

At last, everyone seemed to be involved and the GA began. And then people didn't seem involved or wanting to talk, so we got a few speeches about how bad the cuts and austerity measures are, and boo-hiss to the government, from a couple of the people who I gathered were "usual suspects" around the organisers (well, I say "organisers" - I didn't see much evidence of organisation except for the minutes of a "planning meeting" held the day before!)

The points that were to be discussed:

Shall we set up a camp today?
Where shall we set up an Occupy TW camp?

People seemed to be somewhat uncertain about both questions, and so the discussion did not remain terribly focussed. With no clear facilitator (the role seemed to shift several times, depending on which of the organisers was having most input in other respects to the conversation) the two questions kept switching over, and then got derailed by someone asking whether there would be alcohol allowed on the camp, which led to a long discussion (that started with the words, "that's a different debate, we can leave it for another time"...) about drugs and alcohol policy (most people saying "keep it off-camp").

After wrestling the conversation back on-topic, there seemed to be some agreement on one site in particular (not giving any clues) and the general sense seemed to be that yes, we should occupy straight away if we have enough people willing to be there on the first night tonight. However, no one ever put the proposals to consensus, so nothing was actually formalised!

About halfway through, during a break in the GA, a young reporter from the local paper (the Kent & Sussex Courier) came along to find out what we were all about, and a few people were happy to chip in with their explanations. At one point, when she asked for names to quote, she was told, "It's a leaderless movement." Hopefully out of earshot, I muttered under my breath, "...and rudderless, it looks like..."

If anything, this is the stereotype I have in my mind of "Middle England" - lots of earnest ideas, but hardly any organisation to sort them out. To be honest, it's a wonder how we English ever managed to rule an Empire with territories in just about every timezone! (The dinner party in the finale of Carry On Up The Khyber really does resemble the way the British do things, historically and in regards to the current financial crisis - although waving our knobs at the bankers and financiers who are carrying us to hell in a handbasket probably isn't going to be as much help to the 99% as it was for the 3rd Foot And Mouth Regiment!

It was a lot of fun, but very little seemed to be achieved. Eventually, after about 3 hours (I'd been there 2 1/2), people started to drift away and there was finally a proposal that won unanimous consensus - "Let's move the organising committee into the pub!" I opted to head home after that.

I suspect that with practice, the Occupy TW bunch will get better at holding GAs and running them smoothly (appointing a facilitator, and having a process meeting to draw up an agenda would really help! The planning meeting really should have done that).

As I write this, I have no idea whether or not there will be a camp set up tonight, but I do know that they plan to try a similar meeting and GA tomorrow lunchtime in the same place and maybe arrive at some kind of conclusions this time!

~***~

In other Occupy news, more camps have been shut down by the police in the US. It beggars belief that you would need 1,400 officers to arrest 200 protesters - the report says they operated in teams of four or five per protester, arresting them one by one. There was no use of violence by either side, and the protesters did not, it appears, attempt to resist arrest (which raises the question of why you needed so many officers to restrain each protester - if you need that many to make an arrest, why do most TV shows show cops only going around in pairs?!) This is about a show of force by the police, it seems to me, and an attempt to intimidate those who think about protesting against the government, just the way "kettling" tactics are used to intimidate law-abiding protesters in the UK. More to the point, it's about showing off to the media that "you can't trust these rebellious scum to play nicely" (hence, also, wearing riot gear and biohazard suits).

Was I just flirting?!

2011-11-29T17:53:00.000Z

So today I had a telephone interview for a job working on the London Olympic Games next summer. This was just the initial phase of the interview process, and in general it went well (apparently, I need to focus less on my negatives in interview, but I kind of knew that already). I know it went well, because I got through to the face-to-face interview stage, which will take place over the next 6 weeks or so (I have to wait for the system to update, and then book my slot - so exciting!)

If you bothered to read the heading for this post, then by now you will either be wondering what this has to do with flirting, or else have leapt ahead to the conclusion that at some point in the interview, something happened that afterwards I thought might have been, or be taken as being, flirting.

Indeed, when I played back the interview in my mind, I wondered if somehow practically the entire interview had been me in "flirt" mode. If it was, then it's a bit of a shock because I really didn't think I had one. If it was, I don't think it quite matched the descriptions of flirting that you'll find on a lot of dating and/or pick-up advice sites, but it felt somewhat flirty anyway.

Yes, the interviewer was a woman. What happened was, I had booked a slot in the middle of the afternoon so that I knew I would be at my peak performance levels when they called (that part seems to have worked perfectly). Because I knew when to expect the call, I was sitting by the phone ready for it. The phone rings at the appointed time. I pick it up. What I hear is a woman laughing uproariously. This left me somewhat nonplussed (I mean, who rings a random person just to laugh at them?) I realised very quickly that this was some unfortunate timing issue for the interviewer. Then she explained that this was what it was, saying: "I didn't expect you to pick up the phone so quickly!"

After she checked that I am who she's expecting to speak to, we get into the interview, and I am at my bright, breezy, witty best - humour, intelligence, the lot. Some of the humour is self-deprecating (like, "Hey, I'm just reading my answers off the screen right now!" when she asked if I was good with computers - it was only half-true!) but talked about all the good stuff, and I was having fun. Evidently, I pushed all the right checkbox buttons for the interview process, because I got through to the next round. I also got the feedback that I need to focus less on the negative, as well as her feeding back her assessment of my performance (funny, friendly, approachable - NICE words! I assume that "hot" would have been among them had that been appropriate for the context ;-) ).

The interview concludes, she tells me I'm through to round 2, we say goodbye. I hang up. I frown for a moment, and say to myself, "Was I just flirting there? That felt like flirting!" And it did - or at least, it felt like how people say flirting is supposed to feel, rather than how it usually feels to me!

So if it was flirting, or at least, a mental state similar to flirting - then that raises some questions:

How does this "flirt mode" relate to my usual self/manner/mode of thinking/behaving?
Why does it seem that I get into this "flirt mode" in a telephone interview, or at the supermarket checkout, but not when I'm actually wanting to chat someone up?
Is there a way that I can get into this "flirt mode" by choice, so that I can use it in actual flirting situations, and not just telephone interviews etc?

I think one of the key features of the flirt mode state of mind is that I am projecting myself out there. It's not like an acting role where I am consciously displaying X,Y,Z characteristics, but it's also very definitely not "my usual self" as I am when I am happily going along, minding my own business and generally being the introvert that I am. It is not even a conscious decision to "be myself" (as the hackneyed advice goes) - because that, too, is an acting role where the characteristics X,Y,Z are ones that one thinks belong to this fictional character of "myself". It isn't a conscious mode-switch, but at the same time it is a definite response to the situation and results in a change of role. It's still "me", but somehow more outgoing, and the mental image I have is like a cinema projector sending an image onto a screen (which seems to make the other person into the screen onto which I am sending this projected version of me, which I am not sure is an image that suits, but may be useful anyway). It might be described as me faking it as an extrovert but I don't think that works, because that is a conscious effort when I do it.

As for why it happens in some situations and not others, that question is really hard for me to figure out. I am sure that if I told any PUA/SC guru about it, they would come up with some version of Approach Anxiety as taking me out of that confident, projecting zone, which isn't right; or that somehow I wasn't trying to impress the company on the telephone (Um, hello? It's an interview for a JOB! The whole purpose is to impress them so they want to hire you!)

One clue may be that I think I do this projecting quite often when on the phone, regardless of who I'm talking to. Maybe, therefore, something about face-to-face situations changes how likely the projecting "flirt mode" might be. But in that case, what about the checkout episode, linked above? Another thought is that I function better when I have a clear beginning and social context. A telephone call starts in a definite way (i.e. [Brrrr...brrrr... **click** "Hello?" "Ah, hello, may I speak to so-and-so please?"] - or in the interview situation [brrrbrrr **pick up phone** "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, sorry, I wasn't expecting you to pick up so quickly, is that {my birthname}?"]) It also has a clear context and purpose to the call (usually). Likewise, at the checkout there's a clear social context to the encounter. So, put me in a situation where the clear social context is to get to know members of the opposite sex, and in theory, I would be on top form, just like I was in the interview (especially if I remembered to not display lower value).

I think there is some foundation to the idea that it's something to do with telephone versus face-to-face, because I think part of it may be that I look for feedback a lot from the other person. I just can't figure out how to buy into the whole "she has to want it more than you" mentality that is pushed by a lot of PUA types because at least initially, I have to be wanting it more than her, otherwise I wouldn't be making the move in the first place! So, given that I want a response from her, I'm going to be looking for feedback to see if I'm getting that response. You get more feedback from facial cues, and that means it's easier to see yourself falling flat on your face, making it harder to project and reach out, for fear of over-reaching and overbalancing. On the telephone, you get the vocal cues but not the visual cues, which may make it easier for me to be confident and fearless about my manner and self. Which sort of raises the question of maybe trying a pick-up while blindfolded or with my eyes closed or something! Not sure that's a good idea in general, because good eye contact is an important part of appearing confident and not creepy (although possibly a suggestion for a stunt by SimplePickup, but I won't link to them because of the racism, sexism, ableism (which makes me very wary of suggesting blindfolds to them!) and many other -isms that their youtube videos portray, you can Google or search on youtube if you're curious).

Now, the final question was "how to get into flirt mode when I want it?" and that suggestion of "close my eyes to chat up women" crossed over into that territory. But, as mentioned, it's probably not a good option in practice! Might there be other ways to get at the projecting self and be able to engage on that level?

I don't honestly know the answer to that one. The best bet is simply to have a situation where it's set up deliberately to be chatting each other up. The immediate thought with that regard is speed dating, except that 5 minutes feels too short for me to get a handle on whether I like someone or not (according to Wikipedia, research has shown that most speed-daters make up their minds in the first 3 seconds, which seems odd to me). But having a situation where there's some automatic impetus or cause for the conversation, and it's understood that chat-up is the name of the game, seems like the most likely situation where I would get to use "flirt mode" while actually flirting.

In defence of "So..." and other clichés

2011-11-23T16:47:00.000Z

Via a link by a commenter @ Basic Instructions, I become aware of this little snippet from the BBC "Today" Programme on Radio 4.

Regular readers may be aware that I have, on occasion, used "So" to start a blog post, which means that I perhaps have an interest in answering back the criticisms of the tendency that are articulated by Messrs Rentoul and Humphrys. That is to say, I think there is a specific and useful purpose to the way in which "so" tends to start sentences.

After hypothesising that it comes "from the internet - comments on blogs" and possibly from "imitating academics' usage", Mr Rentoul expresses his explanations for its use as:

Drawing attention to what is being said
Draws the listener into membership of a private club, by implying a continued discussion and assuming shared knowledge

While I think that these have some weight, I think that Mr Rentoul has missed the actual structure of what is being said in a lot of examples. Mr Humphrys and Mr Rentoul laugh about their made-up examples of redundant usage, but I couldn't see those as realistic forms, unless you continued the statement further. In the example clips played at the beginning of the snippet it was also hard to gauge, because we didn't hear much of what followed the "so".

I looked back at some of my most recent posts beginning with "so", and looked at the way in which I was using the term, and considered whether that reflected what I think I hear in other people's usage. I think it does in a lot of cases. I think one or two of John Humphry's clips on the radio programme hinted at it as well.

Here's what I think is happening: "So" has effectively moved from being a conjunction to being an introduction.

Messrs Humphrys and Rentoul laugh about people saying, "What's the weather like?" "So, it's sunny at the moment." I don't think I've ever heard that usage. What I tend to hear/read is usage like this:

"So, it's sunny today. I think I'll go for a walk."

Effectively, this is a reordering of, "It's sunny today, so I think I'll go for a walk."

Sometimes you get repetition of "so", like this: "So, it's sunny today so I think I'll go for a walk".

"So" becomes an indicator of a preamble to the main point. The main point in the above examples, is "I think I'll go for a walk". The preamble, giving the context for that statement, is "it's sunny today". "So", in this usage, therefore has a meaning similar to "given that" or "because".

The only example from my earlier posts that doesn't seem to match this pattern is the one about dreams, where the real preamble/context element got placed inside brackets instead of as part of the opening sentence (a better construction might have been, "So I was nervous about my upcoming interview, and had a weird dream. I'd like to describe it to you.")

I suspect that this is also the way in which "so" is used in academics' speech. After receiving a question, the academic introduces their answer with the word "so" and the basis for the answer - the underlying principles on which the full explanation will depend.

There is an exception to this classification, which is what might be called the "chat-up 'so'", which is typically, a longer, drawn-out word, thus:

"Soooo, are you having fun tonight?"

This I think falls into the category of "drawing attention" that Rentoul picked out, and I think it generally works still as an indicator of a preamble, though this is like a conversational preamble - it alerts the other person that you wish to speak, and gives them time to switch their attention to you and it introduces the opening question or comment that is designed to start a conversation without necessarily being a direct part of that conversation.

For instance:

"So, do you think it will rain today?"

"It looks like it'll be fine."

"Cool. How about we go to the beach?"

The aim of the conversation is to discuss plans for the day. While the weather question might impact on those plans, it isn't the central theme, it's used to open a conversation. In my mind, I read the above example as hinting (through the use of the "so") that the first speaker feels nervous around the second speaker either because the second speaker has higher social status, or because they don't know each other well yet, or because this is actually first speaker asking second speaker on a date.

All-in-all, I think that makes the sentence-opening "so..." a useful part of speech, and a helpful qualifier in written language.

***

Mr Rentoul is identified as the author of a book called "The Banned List: A Manifesto Against Jargon and Cliche". However, jargon and clichés come into being for very sound and useful reasons.

Jargon is simply language that has developed within a community with common frequent references that need to be made. Spelling out the description each time becomes laborious and unnecessary within that community. For instance, within the BDSM community, "safeword", "vanilla", "CBT", "CFNM", "top", "bottom", "twue" etc. Of course, some terms have other uses outside the community (for instance, you don't want to get your cognitive behaviour therapy mixed up with your cock and ball torture!) Some are unintelligible to those who aren't in that community. If you don't need the terms, you generally don't learn them! It's the same for any trade or profession, or subculture. Does it serve to "exclude" people, as suggested by Humphrys and Rentoul towards the end of the clip? Of course it does, and I think some people do do that deliberately. More often, though, I think use of a community or profession/trade's jargon comes about because the user is used to doing so and forgets to shift gear for the non-member audience. Jargon is needed, and because it is needed, it can't be eradicated and people will, by mistake or on purpose, use it in general speech and not just specialised speech.

Clichés have a habit of becoming clichés because they are useful, and they are common tropes or circumstances that need to be expressed. Some words, or word-combinations, happen to fit those feelings or needs really well. Those words or phrases then become clichés through being used for that reason.

Mr Rentoul identifies "Any time soon" and "moving forwards" as particular pet-hates, but I can't think of another way to say "any time soon" that is as succinct and carries the same meaning. Thesaurus-brain says you could have "at some point in the near future" to mean the same thing, but that's a bit of a mouthful compared to the snappy, short, and instantly understandable "any time soon". If there is a problem with "any time soon", it is only that its shortness can make the person seem short-tempered: given the wrong inflection, it sounds like an accusation. Similarly, "moving forwards" is a cliché because it expresses something pretty fundamental: the idea of a project or situation progressing in the near future. It can say "we're in the middle of something and we need to work out what to do next", or it can say, "We've completed phase 1, so what's phase 2 and how do we start on it?" This makes it very useful indeed!

Clichés can be the product of lazy thought and lazy writing or speech. But they are very useful structures, so avoiding them often just becomes clumsy. Often, when the aim is the most effective and immediate communication, cliché is the best option, especially if you are confident that other people around you are familiar with the cliché. (This is not the same as "indirect language" because those forms are just a subset of cliché. Many, if not most, clichés are actually presented in direct language.)

So, moving forwards, can anyone see us losing these speech forms any time soon?

Impressions from my visit to Occupy Brighton

2011-11-22T00:48:00.000Z

Last week, I made a couple of posts raising questions about the validity of the claims of the Occupy movement to openness, horizontal rather than hierarchical governance, and effectiveness. In a spirit of challenging my own beliefs, and because the questions I had could only be answered by experience, I decided to go to Occupy Brighton and see what an occupy camp looks like in practice. I also had a few conversations with some of the camp members, focussing on some of the questions I jotted down to ask them.

These are the impressions I got, the answers I was given, and my overall feelings about what I saw.

The first thing I noticed was that the camp was racially diverse. However, when I arrived I only saw 2 or 3 women present (including one WoC); it had quite a masculine vibe. The people mostly resembled the people I have seen at progressive movement and "alternative" events for the past 15 years or so.

I also noticed that there was one major exception to the "no drinks or drugs" rule, and that exception was tobacco/nicotine. Several camp members were bumming smokes from each other, and attempted to bum some from me (but since I don't smoke, this was unsuccessful!) When I said I don't smoke, a majority of the ciggie-seekers said "good for you!" in a tone of voice that suggested I was to be congratulated for not smoking. This aside, most people who spoke to me did so to welcome me. However, their manner was one that I again found familiar from many other "alternative"/"progressive" movement events and that I found quite aggressive or off-putting. That may be to do with my own insecurities or my introversion in general, but it was the impression I had.

I spoke to three or four people about how the camp worked, and what they saw as the "long game" for the Occupy movement. One in particular (who introduced himself as Ben), was willing to talk at length with me about these questions. I also spoke with a man in the Info Tent (whose name I've forgotten - I didn't really catch most people's names, hearing them only once or not at all), who was in fact the first person I met on-camp, really.

I opened my questioning by mentioning that I had read about the Bank of Ideas in London, and he volunteered that he had been there at the weekend. As the Brighton delegate? Yes. How was he selected? General Assembly nominated and approved him, in his absence, as the Brighton delegate (laughing, he agreed that he would have blocked the vote had he been there!) He told that he had been surprised that he was expected to give a talk about how the Brighton camp worked, "to a room of 600 people." This implied to me that he had not been given any particular instruction on how to represent the Brighton camp, so I didn't follow with that question.

I then got onto more challenging questions. When I asked, "Who, out of the 99%, aren't (represented) here?" I got a rather too quick answer, "No one." They told me that everyone is represented, "We're very diverse." I questioned further, and they explained about internet involvement, including trying to set up a livestream of the General Assemblies so people who can't attend in person are also a part of the debates. I wasn't really satisfied by the explanation, but moved on to a related question.

I wanted to know how they made sure that all voices are heard, particularly in reference to the shy or people averse to large gatherings (such as me!) The Info guy took this one for those specific suggestions, by referring to his own experience: he was shy himself for his first couple of GAs, but then there was a comment that he just couldn't ignore and he just had to put his hand up to speak. He felt that this would be a tendency for most people who attended. I questioned further, and he added that there was a kind of unofficial policy of prompting those who remained silent, to get their feedback. I was satisfied with this answer. The broader questions of accessibility overlapped with the previous question of "who isn't here?" At about this point, I raised the question of those who maybe don't feel invovled enough or don't have the energy to participate on the level that the people at camp did. One of the few women on site rattled aoff a list of heavy duties she had (single mum, full-time job, student, and I think a couple more) - and concluded "And here I am!" Thinking of my battle with depression, or of people who work a 9 hour day plus long commutes and just want to slump and relax when they get home, I suggested that not everyone has the same energy levels. I was slightly nonplussed when they said that basically, people who didn't tune in online or turn up at the Gas were "excluding themselves, we don't exclude them". I settled for suggesting that it is important to be aware that there may be silent people who aren't reached or involved, even if the movement doesn't have any way to involve them - that it is important not to pretend to include everyone if there are some people whose voices are not yet involved. In general, this is a question that nags me about participatory democracy: can people in general, as opposed to activist-minded people, be expected to want to be in on everything, or to invest time in stuff that for many may seem like minutiae or irrelevant to their own lives? Many people feel that way now, it seems to me, about things that actually do have a strong impact.

Ben spoke with me at length about his personal views on how scalable direct/participation democracy is, and what the movement's "long game" might be. He spoke about the current moves to start unifying the global Occupy movement through stronger communications. Having seen the How To Occupy site's description of their planned Global Occupy Assembly, it sounds to me like the sort of thing that is one of the big reasons I do not participate much on social media sites (even the ones that I am a member of!) I envisage overload and introvert freak-out even at the remove of the computer screen for that one. In my initial "Ordinary Commies" post, wrote:

Politically, there wouldn't be a "state" as such, because democracy would be completely devolved, with decisions being made and power being wielded at the lowest possible levels. In a way, if we consider Plato's Republic, with the "Philosopher-Kings", then that would also be a way of looking at a communist society – except that everyone would be a Philosopher, and everyone would be a King. Participation in democracy would not be a once-every-2-years affair, but would be almost daily, with the real chance of seeing one's own thoughts become developed into policy that spreads throughout society.

This was an attempt to describe the type of democracy that the local General Assemblies seem to be aiming to be. The key point I want to pick out from that passage is, "power being wielded at the lowest possible levels." My concern is that I do not know whether "Occupy Britain" (the Bank of Ideas conference and whatever follows from it) or "Global Occupy Assembly" will tend towards making a central government of "Occupy" and draw power away from the local GAs by establishing an overarching, unified, policy. I don't know if any experts on US history and the US constitution might be able to draw analogies with the issue of States' Rights versus the Federal Government in these kinds of matters?

I was more interested in asking about expanding membership and involvement of the local communities. I was told that they had spoken with a couple of thousand local people, and only two had expressed disagreement with the aims of the Occupy movement. I feel like I didn't really express my thoughts very clearly on this: I was more thinking about making more GAs, that were located in the communities and owned by them, but Ben and the others who were listening in at that point seemed to be focussed on the Occupy Brighton GA as being the centre or focal point for it all.

My last question was, "What's the long game?" or, "What do you hope/expect the Occupy movement to achieve?" In my conversation with Ben, this got narrowed down to a specific concern or question, which will be familiar from the "Could you govern a nation like that?" post. I said that I had seen two different strands of thought online: the first was that Occupy, with its participatory democracy, should become the new way of governing things, while the other was that it should be essentially a way of governing the protest, and that results eventually in a list of demands presented to the people with the power - "take power" or "negotiate with power" would have been a more succinct way of putting it, but I didn't think of that in the conversation.

Emphasising that it was his own point of view, but backed up by Info Guy and one or two others, Ben explained that he viewed it as a false dichotomy. He described a political structure whereby the General Assemblies acted as an advisory or consultant body for those who actually made the final decisions, presumably having power of veto or recall or something, if those holding the strings disobeyed too heavily (that last clause is me reading between the lines). His idea was that GAs would neither be sovereign bodies of government, nor temporary bodies of protest, but an integral part of the political structure.

To me, that sounds like a "negotiate with power" option with some bells and whistles, when I prefer something closer to a "take power" approach. That said, it seems quite realistic, and not all that different from the structure I outlined in "Ordinary Commies" (see quoted passage above).

I think I found this part of my conversation with Ben to be the most useful, perhaps because I was not coming with a direct challenge but more curious to know what answer I would get.

***

I returned to attend the camp's General Assembly in the evening. I counted maybe two dozen people in attendance, and maybe half a dozen women (give or take one or two). With that error margin, we're talking between 20% and 33% female representation at the GA, with my best estimate being 25%. UK Parliament has 22% representation of women. There were several POC there, including at least one for whom English was a second language (by his own admission). However, the predominance was for White (or at least, I read them as White), male, apparently-cis folks (I didn't ask anyone about sexuality!) I did not see any BSL interpreter present, I don't know if there would have been someone available to interpret had a D/deaf person wanted to be a part of the GA.

Before GA started, it was announced via Human Microphone that GA was running "fashionably late", as people were still eating their food. A lot of what I saw in terms of camp maintenance and food provision was familiar to me from the holidaying Folk Camps that I used to go to with my family, if not in detail then in ethos. However, I felt quickly as though I would feel "forced" into socialising (again, introvert, so please no!) if I were a regular/long-term member of the camp. What wasn't familiar was that food seemed to be quite "ad hoc" even though there was some communal catering; the folk camp tendency to sit down together at tables did not apply here, and people milled around holding a plate in one hand and a fork in the other, from what I could see.

One thing I noticed and found interesting was that the Human Microphone was not very strong in amplification while I was there. Typically, someone would call out "Mic Check!" and get a strong response. Then zie would give the actual message, and only a few voices would be heard to pass the message on (if I heard it clearly, I was one of those). Part of me wonders if there is something of the "bystander effect" involved here: people know what is expected when they hear "mic check" but the repetition of the message is less clear, and people tend not to act out of character with their neighbours - they need to feel confident the person next to them will repeat the message just as loudly, and a lot of the time it seemed as though most people didn't feel that way.

So, eventually, General Assembly started, with one of the few effective Human Microphone uses that I saw. I shall get onto why I think that is later. Ben acted as facilitator for the GA.

After running through hand signals, and outlining the agenda for the meeting, things got under way. Pretty soon, Ben was apologising to the newbies (such as me) that "it isn't normally like this". One person was interrupting speakers and making a nuisance of himself. Another was (by his own admission) very sleep-deprived, and raised his hand to speak but seemed to go off-topic, repeating issues that were to be dealt with later in the agenda anyway. At times, Be was reduced to the role of teacher in charge of an unruly class. In fact, once or twice I almost felt like his role resembled Griff Rhys Jones' character in the "Hey Wow" sketch by Not The Nine O'Clock News (starts about 2'30"):

There was some interesting debate, and I added a comment of my own, that seemed popular but didn't move things forward as I had intended it to, because it maybe didn't address what others thought was the issue or something. Anyway, most of the time I sat as an observer, with occasional show of "like" or "meh" fingers. I heard the same points batted back and forth a few times, and once again it felt very familiar from other progressive movements I've been a part of over the last 15 years. Eventually, Teacher Ben had to move things along.

Early on, the woman sat next to me asked if I minded if she smoked and, because I do mind smoke in general, I apologised but said I would mind. A little later, this question was asked by someone else in the form of "what's the rule on smoking in the GA here?" Ben said, "okay as long as no one objects". I lacked the confidence at that point to say loudly, "I object", partly because I could see no one else raising an objection and several people already reaching for their tobacco and lighters. I said it, but not loudly enough to be heard. I needed a "temperature check" to be called explicitly, then I could have made the silent gesture of "blocking". As it happened, the smoke wasn't too bad and I was able to tolerate it for as long as I was there.

Now, in my previous post, I suggested that all groups have leaders, whether or not they are recognised/identified as such. In the GA, I saw about 5 or 6 people who spoke with the sense of privilege and "I expect to be heard". Not, it should be noted, delineated along the usual lines of race/gender but present anyway. These people were sure of their footing, and of their role. In addition to these "leaders" there was Ben as facilitator. Even before he was appointed/allowed to take this role, his role as leader was apparent. Remember that effective Human Microphone? That was his call, as an instruction to the seated group, that we were to echo. People followed him as a leader. Ben seemed very comfortable with the role and the business of maintaining order. Now, I think it is true that there was not a great deal of overt influence that he had, and I saw direct challenges occasionally to his debating position, but I think it is important to notice these things and see that hierarchical relationships do seem to crop up in these groups, despite the theoretical/ideological desire to avoid or mitigate them.

I had to leave after the first couple of discussions to catch the last bus back home, and it is also valid to say that one example does not form a strong foundation to draw conclusions about what the movement is "really" like. This post is just to report my findings from this particular visit. I shall probably have more thoughts after the Occupy Tunbridge Wells initial meeting which is planned for November 30th, and is also within striking distance of my home.

At the moment, my feeling is that there is potential for Occupy to be something positive, but at the moment I am not sure that it is fully-fledged yet.

Occupying something!

2011-11-18T21:30:00.003Z

Well, on Tuesday I wrote a piece complaining that the Occupy movements seem mostly to have only succeeded in occupying lawns and patches of grass.

In the early hours of Friday morning, Occupy London took over an office building owned by UBS, one of the banks that received public money in the big bailout.

Admittedly, it was an unused building, not one where anything is being done or where the protesters might strike directly at the heart of the "1%", but in a sense this is even better, judging by what they say they aim to achieve by doing it.

The following video explains a bit more about it, with shots explaining how they got in, the notice that they are claiming squatters' rights (a squatters' rights activist group helped with planning and executing the occupation), their first press conference, and a walk around talking about their plans for the building.

I like very much this news, and it looks like Occupy London at least are looking for the bigger picture, and trying to make something change directly.

From the Guardian report (linked above):

In contrast to Occupy's existing camps in the capital – next to St Paul's Cathedral and on Finsbury Square – the new outpost will not be primarily residential but aims to act as a forum for ideas and meetings.

Called by protesters the Bank of Ideas, the buildings, near Liverpool Street, will hold an inaugural conference of Occupy movements from around the UK this weekend.

...

"The Bank of Ideas will host a full events programme where people will be able to trade in creativity rather than cash," said Sarah Layler of the group. "We will also make space available for those that have lost their nurseries, community centres and youth clubs to savage government spending cuts."

In keeping with the queries I had regarding how participatory versus representative/elected democracy could work on a national scale, I am curious about how the conference of UK Occupy movements is going to work, in terms of determining who turns up, how the concerns of the different Occupy constituencies are adequately represented, etc. Again, I am excited that Occupy London (and, I guess, "Occupy UK") is going to be confronting and dealing with those issues, by virtue of actually going ahead and trying to do it.

One question I want to raise, because this is a feminist blog an'all, and because it's an issue that I care about quite deeply, is the question of whether they are going to (be able to) use the occupied building to help victims of domestic violence? It was reported back in March that services to help them were to be hit severely by the cuts. The "to be able to" qualifier is there because I don't know whether the needs of DV survivors might require a separate building or not (for instance, due to concerns about sharing a building with male-identified folks - the footage in the video seems to show quite a restricted entrance/exit as the only one in use, which might induce very negative emotional problems). I also don't know if they would have the necessary counselling skills available to help survivors. Hopefully, they can make women's issues such as these a priority, even if they can't actually offer the practical requirements for a DV shelter.

Be all that as it may, it is a very encouraging step.

I am slightly amused at the way it was done, because it strikes me as terribly stereotypically English the way they've gone about this:

An attempt by the Corporation of London to have the St Paul's camp removed is set to reach the high court on Wednesday. The Finsbury Square camp is on land owned by Islington council, which has privately told activists it does not have the money to pursue a court case.

UBS, however, could apply very quickly for legal repossession of the buildings and request bailiffs, backed up by police, to move in. A spokeswoman for the Swiss-based bank said: "We know they're there, and we're taking appropriate action."

...

At a hastily-arranged press conference inside the UBS building, about a dozen activists answered questions while sitting on a stained blue office carpet in front of a vast Occupy London sign. The group said it hoped to avoid confrontation with police and had asked UBS about agreeing temporary use of the site. UBS said it had no comment on this offer.

In the video, the Occupiers were at pains to emphasise the above-board nature of the occupation: first, talking to the police outside, they quote the relevant section of the legislation that allows them to stay (and as the policemen walk away, a protester calls to them from the window, "Thank you very much"; then, at the press conference, they say, "There was no criminal damage, and, this is a completely legal occupation."

So, they take occupation of the building and then say to the owners, "Can we arrange a temporary use of this building?" How stereotypically English is that!? Heck, the only thing spoiling it is that they all look like New Age layabouts - if they had either shaved and cut their hair, or just worn smart business suits (not both - you need some kind of visible badge to say "we are hippie-ish protesters") then it would have been the most English-looking protest ever!

But, I love it. It's how you win this battle, I think. They do everything above-board, politely, and as law-abidingly as they can, but they still make their point, use the force that is necessary (and no more), and they take practical steps to try to make the changes that they want to see. This is what I felt was missing when I wrote my piece on Tuesday. This is what movement looks like. This is excellent.

They want the idea to catch on, too - in the press release (read out in the video), they say:

We hope this is the first in a wave of public repossessions of property belonging to the companies that crashed the global economy.

This could be the start of something big.

Now, the hard work begins: they have to repair and clean up the building they've occupied. They have to sort out the legal position so that they can actually put on the programme of events that they have planned:

There is a slight potential conflict between the protesters' stated intention to make the building a public space and its status as a squatted building. This will be overcome by designating visitors "friends" or "guests".

In the interim, the building remains shut to outsiders, making it a different prospect to the open-to-all ethos of the other camps, where passersby and local workers have been welcomed.

But this is how change comes about. If I had the freedom to go and help out, then I would, because I am not afraid of hard work when there's something worthwhile involved (like a revolution! ;-) ). What I hope is that an Occupy... movement closer to me will start up, or will occupy a building near me, so that I can get involved directly. In the meantime, I'll cheer from the sidelines. And hope. And maybe make a suggestion or two... But I'm not volunteering to organise anything (been there, done that, suffered the mental breakdown...)

***

EDITED TO ADD:

The ambitions of the direct action organised by Occupy Wall Street in New York, aimed at shutting down the New York Stock Exchange, seem to have come to nothing, but the ambitions remain:

Protester Fran Agnone said it did not matter that the demonstration had not achieved its aim of shutting down the stock exchange. "That will come another day," she said. "All that matters is we're changing people's ideas. It started well, and we've still got a long day ahead of us."

Protesters did succeed in marching to commemorate 2 months since the Occupy protests began.

There were protests in St Louis, Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon, and other cities around the United States to mark two months since the Occupy movement set up camp in Zuccotti Park in New York.

Government-approved slavery in Britian: aka "Work Experience".

2011-11-16T15:09:00.002Z

Via the Guardian:

Britain's young unemployed are being sent to work for supermarkets and budget stores for up to two months for no pay and no guarantee of a job, the Guardian can reveal.

...

Young people have told the Guardian that they are doing up to 30 hours a week of unpaid labour and have to be available from 9am to 10pm.

...

"I was told [the work experience placement] was mandatory after I'd attended the [retail] open day," said Reilly.

She said she felt she had to do it because, "without my JSA, I would literally have nothing".

...

But including similar schemes such as "mandatory work activity", sector-based work academies and the work programme, which is mainly run by private companies, the government expect hundreds of thousands of young people to do weeks of unpaid, and forced work experience for big companies.

I think the title I've provided for this post tells you what I think this is equivalent to, and for the record, I've been there, done that, and hated every fucking second of it. The utter fear for one's livelihood that is used to motivate people in this, is disgusting. JSA is calculated based on "what the government says you need to live" (using the language of my notifications at the end of each tax year of the change in my benefit) - it is barely enough to get by. They might as well lock these young people up in cages and give them basic food for subsistence and have done with it. (Now I've said that, of course, the Daily Mail or Daily Express will probably think that's a great idea and start campaigning for it **shudder**)

Now, I am currently not being jerked around in quite this way, despite being officially on the Work Programme. For one thing, I've shown myself to be pretty good at sticking up for myself (Letters of complaint? I can haz moar skilz in writing them!) For another, the guy who's overseeing it for me (he's from G4S/RBLI - yes, there's a link between G4S and the Royal British Legion, and they run a programme for the Jobcentre) has said directly to me (at my last appointment with him 2 weeks ago, in fact), "We are not in the business of people trafficking," when describing to me PRECISELY the problem that the Guardian article highlights, and saying that he does NOT want to be responsible for doing that. He wants there to be a realistic chance that any placement I am given will lead to a long-term, sustainable job, and that the promise of an interview is also a promise of there being a job to interview for. So, I have an ethical person to deal with, making me one of the lucky ones.

See also my posts: Young and out of work (based on another Guardian article) and Degrading Work.

Could you govern a nation like that?

2011-11-15T21:30:00.001Z

In my last post, I asked what the Occupy movement has achieved. One thing that at least shows promise from it, while not directly affecting anything concrete at the moment, is the experiment in direct participatory democracy.

At the Occupy LSX protest, Tina Rothery, the first video presented here, describes it thus:

We may debate for 4 hours on the siting of a loo or the agreement of anything, but you know what it is? It's not the thing we're discussing that's important, it's the unity and democracy we're building on our way to get there, and the fact that we don't leave a voice out, and that every voice is heard. And then, when you're caught up in that - yeah, we do get caught up with our own form of bureaucracy and at first I rejected it, and thought, "God, give me a benevolent dictator. You know, someone who will push this through!" But then, you've done it often enough, and you're like, "Wow, I actually trust this!"

This kind of thing is something that I think would be the foundation of a genuine social and economic revolution leading to a post-capitalist (i.e. communist) society. As I understand it, similarly participatory democratic systems have been set up in the other "Occupy" camps, for example in the US. However well the system appears to be working, I do have some concerns - things that as far as I can see from the outside, do not seem to have been solved yet.

The first question I have is one that I have heard mentioned in the resoundingly negative by various campaigners for minority rights: "What are you doing to make sure every voice is heard?" Or, put another way, "How can you be sure every voice is being heard?" While I understand that there is a system to prioritise the voices of women and minorities in the "stack" (queue of people waiting to speak), I am unclear as to how it is ensured that there is a representative sample of such voices joining the stack in the first place. I am also unclear on what the reception is like for those voices and whether they are actually heard as openly as privileged voices are.

There are also the issues of shyness or introversion that might make a person reluctant to be involved in large group debates for various reasons (fear, in the case of shyness, just overwhelmed by peopleness in the case of introversion). There are people who are just quiet in general, for those issues or others, who need to be directly prompted to share their thoughts, even when they perhaps feel quite strongly about something, or have something very valuable to put into the debate.

From what I have read about previous experiments with participatory democracy or programmes (and seen in certain classes at school where these were supposed to take place) is that these people are easy to miss unless there is someone who is alert to their silence - people who are, in effect, in charge of the debate and can direct the appropriate question at the quiet person to ensure that they speak next. I have seen groups, or been in groups, both where the teacher/chairperson did this job very well, and also been in groups where they did not do it so well, and either I have been the quiet one who missed out, or else I have spotted a quiet person and tried to draw attention to their voice so they could be heard, by asking from the floor what they feel or know and wish to say. I have had to self-teach the art of being vocal, and in fact in one fairly recent group I was someone who had to be told to pipe down so that the quieter voices could be heard.

Another issue is with the scalability of direct participation. Occupy LSX takes 4 hours to reach a decision. I don't know how many people that involves, but I'm guessing we're talking in the low hundreds for the biggest gatherings? The town I live in has a population somewhere in the low tens of thousands. How are we to govern that many people through their own self-government via direct participatory democracy? How long would it take to make a decision? How many decisions can be reached in a day, and how many do you need to make in order to run a small town like where I live, function properly? While people are making these decisions, who is doing the necessary work to put the last lot of decisions into practice?

At some point, it seems, a shift from direct democracy to representative democracy would be inevitable just to keep things from becoming bogged down. Either that, or participatory democracy becomes a form of peer pressure in which not all opinions are freely voiced or fully heard.

This video from MsNikkiyork highlights some of the concerns I have about this:

MsNikkiyork starts by explaining the hand gestures that are used to signify assent, dissent or veto during a debate. After describing the veto gesture, she notes that,

In the beginning days there used to be a lot of people jumping up and going like this [makes the gesture] ... but it's a very diverse movement ... so you gotta actually be able to voice YOUR voice. Because the intention of that movement is to speak as one voice.

Which is the first hint I get that maybe freedom of speech isn't as free as they imply. And, personally, I am a stubborn bitch when I think I'm right. It sounds as though there's not much space for persuasion by argument (which is what you need to do to get me to shift).

Then we get a gesture for "direct question". Again, MsNikkiyork says:

When it was a smaller movement, that happened a lot, so people talking back and forth, now it's hardly possible to do that, but I guess it still happens.

After explaining the "human microphone", which is the system whereby people nearer the speaker repeat loudly the speaker's words so that people further back can hear them, and so on, MsNikkiyork also describes the General Assembly:

You go to the facilitator and have yourself put on stack ... with any opinion you are having. You could go there as a racist Nazi and say whatever you want. What you would have to face is that people go like this [dissent gesture] or this [veto gesture], but you know, that's up to you. So, it's very direct.

So then, you can talk, and with the human microphone, it becomes very obvious you can't just talk bullshit, because everybody has to repeat what you're saying.

So it becomes very disciplined, what people are saying. It also becomes very disciplined in the sense that people stop saying things that not everyone will agree with, or feel well with. So that makes it really, very basic, but also very strong.

So that sounds like the typical thing of dissenting voices actually being discouraged from speaking.

It also sounds like deeper, more developed, philosophies are also discouraged from being transmitted or expressed to the larger group. It is all very well having a few broad stroke ideals that you talk about a lot, but at some point you need to be able to get deep into the beliefs that uphold them, and into the practical consequences of them, and how you're going to resolve those. As near as I can figure, the committee/working group system is an attempt to resolve detailed issues in various specific areas of policy and action, but at that point not everyone is involved in those debates, and it seems to me that the depth and breadth of political thought must be restricted by such a system. Sure, a wide range different positions might be held, but there's no opportunity to get right into them and challenge and develop ideas together.

The danger I see in all this is a tendency towards groupthink - though MsNikkiyork says it's okay to disagree on things, there seems to be implicit in what she describes, a tendency to limit the scope for people to disagree and a tendency to lose nuance in the debate.

One more concern I have, not directly mentioned yet in the stuff I've read, is to do with the whole "no leaders" thing. Put simply, I don't believe it. While I believe that there are no appointed leaders or officially recognised authorities, what I also believe is that in any group there will be people whose voices are heard more frequently and with more support than others, and who may end up by force of personality or strength of their apparent support base, carry others along with them. I believe there are also people in any movement whose perceived knowledge, experience or confidence in some area will make them the de facto authority on that area, and culturally people start to defer to their opinions as well as to their knowledge, on those issues. Thus, leaders and authorities do exist in any group, whether they are recognised as such or not. Such people have the tendency to shape things around themselves in various ways, not necessarily by conscious will but simply because they are heard more frequently, and with greater support or deference, than others. Sometimes this is simply because that person tends to voice what others are thinking but not voicing, so the people's ready assent is not anything directly influenced by the leader, but rather zie starts to accrue an aura of leadership through repetition until you get to, "I agreed with hir last time, so this must be a good idea".

The concern to which this gives rise is a concern about accountability and power. When you know who your leaders are and who is influencing opinion strongly, then you can watch them and keep an eye on how they use the power that they have been given by the people around them. If, however, you claim that there are not leaders, and everyone is an equal part of the group, then the influence still happens but now we cannot see directly who has it and how they are using it. It becomes much harder to hold them to account for the effects that they have, because "everyone is equal".

Since I haven't been to an Occupy site (I may investigate the Occupy Brighton site next week, as the only one in easy travelling distance for me), I am not making these points as any criticism. In fact, I am making them in the hopes that they can and will be answered by the developments in participatory democracy that take place in Occupy groups - or have already been answered. Maybe, for example, my belief in the existence of leaders in any group is mistaken, and can be proved wrong by people who are there. Or maybe, ways have been found to keep leaders from acquiring power and followers where none are meant to be.

The point of this is not to say that the Occupy... experiments in participatory democracy have failed. I think that they do show that some system that functions at least as well as what we have now, could be envisaged. The point is more to say, "Can this be scaled up to a national government?" and "Can it be made to be something definitely better than what already exists?"

Occupy the lawn!

2011-11-15T16:07:00.000Z

With the eviction last night of the "Occupy Wall Street" camp, I am left asking myself what, exactly, the "Occupy" movement has achieved so far. I have been thinking about this for a while now, in fact, but as ever, events have prompted me to get off my metaphorical arse and write about it.

First, I want to write about the eviction itself. It is clear to me that the purpose of the eviction of protesters from Zuccotti Park has been conducted in the manner calculated to cause the maximum distress for the protesters. It is a clear and unambiguous act of harassment and an attempt to discourage protesters from future action.

Mayor Bloomberg (also, the eviction notice) has told people that the purpose was to remove health, safety and fire hazards, that were supposedly impinging on the protesters and people in the surrounding community. He argues, strangely, that these concerns trump the US Constitution's provision of free speech rights. He added that, "Unfortunately, the park was becoming a place where people came not to protest, but rather to break laws, and in some cases, to harm others," and "We could not wait for someone to get killed." Be that as it may, the main aim, and the aim cited on the eviction notice handed out at 1am local time, was "sanitation" and health and safety.

So, I thought about what the rational thing to do if my aims were, as Mayor Bloomberg says, "guaranteeing public health and safety, and guaranteeing the protesters' First Amendment rights." I would think that the best option would be to give plenty of notice, probably 24 hours at least, at a time when people are capable of taking it in coherently (i.e. not the middle of the night). This notice would explain the exact concerns that justified the need for sanitation action, and would allow provision for those willing to vacate the space temporarily to do so without confrontation. It would also allow the possibility that the occupiers might correct the issues themselves.

Here's what Bloomberg says about the reasons for the timing:

This action was taken at this time of day to reduce the risk of confrontation in the park, and to minimize disruption to the surrounding neighbourhood.

From the sound of the reports of the aftermath of the eviction, the second aim spectacularly failed and perhaps an orderly clean-up of the style I envisaged would have been better at avoiding disruption! They also did not avoid confrontation, because a core group of protesters resisted the eviction anyway, which is probably what would have happened whatever time of day the eviction took place.

Bloomberg's justification only makes sense if you view protesters as an unreasoning mob who must be treated brutally and put back in their place. It is clear from his remarks about lawlessness that this is exactly how Bloomberg views them. The aim is to make protesting seem as unpleasant as possible, so that people with legitimate grievances will not voice them. The media blackout on the event by the police, preventing reporters from witnessing what actually took place during the eviction, also speaks volumes about how they view freedom of speech and information. (Again, health and safety trumps freedom of speech - Bloomberg says it was out of a duty to "protect" reporters...)

So, I am disgusted at the actions of authorities in New York, but hardly surprised.

With the second Occupy Oakland eviction in recent memory, the ongoing stand-off in Occupy LSE, and the fact that winter and cold weather is creeping in (making camping outdoors seem like a bad idea in general), I am left wondering what this has actually achieved beyond a big dose of media attention that, while obviously helpful to get people talking, doesn't actually make anything change for the better.

Ultimately, my frustration is this: when I see a movement called "Occupy", I expect it to bloody well occupy** something. By which, I mean something a bit more significant than a lawn. Alright, a park is a BIG lawn, but it's still basically a lawn: a bunch of grass growing in a patch. If it wasn't a lawn, you'd have a bit more trouble pitching tents there!

When I first heard the name, "Occupy Wall Street", I thought naively that the protesters were actually going to go into the buildings and institutions that make up the centre of capitalist finance and occupy them, preventing them from being used and perhaps even either using their devices to remake the system, or else trashing the joint. That's an occupation. That's occupying. That's a protest that has an impact. Similarly, when you call yourselves "Occupy London Stock Exchange", what I expect you to do is get inside the building and occupy it, denying it to the oppressors. But no! Their highest ambition was to camp outside and when they were told "no", they sat outside St Paul's Cathedral instead.

It may just be a quirk of media reporting on the issue, but I really cannot think of a single concrete change in policy or legislation or behaviour by the governments or private businesses that are the supposed targets of these protests. I have heard a lot of weasel-words from them, but nothing concrete seems to have changed. Indeed, it seems more often that friends of the protesters have been brought down by virtue of their resigning over disagreements with their bosses.

I have argued before on this blog that there is no such thing as peaceful protest, because by-and-large, protesting peacefully doesn't do anything, and more often than not if there's a chance it might, then it gets treated as though it is violent protest anyway. I sat down and thought about the last time that an organised (or even, disorganised) protest actually effected change in government policy in this country. It's now just over 20 years since the last one I can think of: and that was the Poll Tax Riots that led to the toppling of the then-Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher (although her party remained in power, and there is some reason to believe that they may have rigged the 1992 General Election, but that's just conspiracy theory, right?) and the abandonment of the tax. That was not a peaceful protest. I can't even think of a successful peaceful protest that had a significant effect in this country. Wikipedia informs us that "suffragette" is a term that, used correctly, only applies to "those who used violent protest". In general, it seems as though the rule is, if it changed something, then violence (or at least, the credible threat of violence) was involved somewhere.

So, the question arises again: what has the "Occupy" movement actually achieved? What have they done, and what movement have they created? They haven't occupied anything (see footnote again re: North America). They haven't moved anywhere or moved anything either: indeed, the whole thing is a misnomer as far as I can see!

The freedom of speech that is so vaunted in the US, seems to add up to very little at the moment. What is the right of protest, if protest does nothing? It is only this: you have the right to whinge. You have the right to choose a tyrant for the next few years, and then you have the right to complain about that tyrant until you choose the next tyrant. If the tyrant in question owns or runs a multinational corporation, then you only have the right to choose your tyrant if you buy shares in the business. Sure, you can set up your tents, wave your banners, play your drums and whatnot, if it makes you happy. If it clears your conscience to say, "Look, I said I wasn't happy, so you can't blame me for this mess." But if the mess is still there in the morning, then what good did you really achieve?

** I'm approaching this from a more Eurocentric perspective, with the European socialist understanding of occupation; I recognise the contextual inappropriateness of the term in North America due to the occupation of lands belonging to Native groups by European settlers.

My spirituality

2011-11-15T04:36:00.000Z

I started to think about this consciously tonight after watching a documentary about George Harrison, and in particular about his explorations with Eastern mysticism.

One thing that struck me in particular was a clip where he and the other Beatles were talking to an interviewer about what the purpose of a mantra was in meditation and they all said that the idea was to stop thinking or having thoughts, and if you notice yourself thinking you repeat the mantra over and over to blank out the conscious thoughts and get back to "not thinking". That contrasts somewhat with my own spirituality, and I'll explain exactly in what way in a moment.

So, anyway, because I feel myself to be a very spiritual person in one way or another, I started thinking consciously about what my own spirituality was, starting with this sense of comparison against that one thought and then spreading out to think about the other stuff that I've learned or developed ideas about through my living.

That word, "living", struck me as being a pretty important one in terms of understanding what spirituality means to me. My spiritualism is above all an embodied and experience-based spiritualism. Feelings, awareness, thought, meditation, even - all these things that are a part of a soul, spirit, mind, whatever you want to call it - are to me things that relate in some way to a body, and that body relates back to them.

This is not to say that we should focus on the sensual realm to understand the spirit: rather it is to say that, while some pleasures are undeniably sensual, those pleasures do not reside only in the body but in the soul as well: because the soul is where pleasure is experienced. Equally, some pleasures are spiritual in nature, but unless I'm doing ti wrong, these pleasures bring a feedback to the body and feel good in the embodied self as well: tensed muscles start to relax, breathing becomes easier, and so on. There are bodily changes, as the spiritual pleasure is experienced. We cannot divorce the body from the spirit or vice versa, and neither can we understand them as antagonistic or contradictory realms, as St Paul seems to view them.

Which leads me more or less to my differences with the meditation that was discussed in the George Harrison documentary. The idea of leaving earthly things, and of "not thinking" seems like an odd thing. Not impossible - I believe people who say they achieve it through meditation - but ultimately rather pointless. Of course, when the laser was invented they thought it was also a pointless exercise building such a thing, and now look at what lasers are good for, so it could just be a blindspot in my understanding. But to me, the aim of non-thought seems rather like building a musical instrument and then nobody ever plays it (or perhaps, writing a wonderful tune and then never playing it on the instrument it's written for). Instruments are meant to be played, and tunes are meant to be played on instruments (where instrument includes voice, or hands, or whatever).

There is also a personal thing: for me, the idea of aiming for non-thought feels just a little bit too much like the experiences of depression that I have, which for me involves feeling cut off from my body in a way that deadens the spirit as well (you can see where some of my view of spirituality comes from, perhaps!) There is research that suggests depression really does leave perception of the senses dulled and weakened. Thinking itself becomes sluggish and reluctant, almost, "why bother?" To aim deliberately for a state that sounds like that but taken to extremes, seems absurd. George Harrison talked about a feeling of bliss from his meditation, and I have no reason to doubt his reports of his experience. I just do not believe that it would feel that way to me.

But, I have tried meditating, or at least, something that to me seems like what meditation involves, after my own fashion. For me, the aim is something more like tuning the instrument in the previous analogy. It's about focussing on simple things of awareness, and experiencing my embodied self purely as a body at rest, with maybe just one or two sensations going around and really "listening" to my body in itself.

Another thing for me is that spirituality is about being open to the moving of one's own spirit. Most people when they talk in terms of spirituality seem to have a hierarchy of more acceptable or less acceptable feelings and sensations, with the acceptable ones being "spiritual" and to be cultivated and the less acceptable ones being "mundane", and to be avoided. You can see what St Paul thought about those by following the previous link!

I tend to be less picky in that way: I believe anger, fear, pain, and so on, can all be positive things and feelings to which we should listen and of which we should be spiritually aware and welcoming. Not in all cases, though, but then, there are cases when it is mistaken to be welcoming of pleasure, calmness, love, etc. Love can lead to very harmful actions where it is not understood (by the person feeling it) or it is misdirected. With both these things, it is important to listen and understand that link between the embodied emotions and the spiritual element. Being aware and alert to one's own state, I have found I have sometimes felt emotions and realised that something was misleading me; examining and looking for what lay underneath the emotion, I could find out why the potentially harmful feeling was there and dispel it or redirect it constructively. But sometimes, being aware and alert just allows me to give myself to my emotions confidently, or to deal with them.

Given my BDSM leanings, it may come as no surprise that my spirituality reflects, and is reflected in, my kink and how I relate to it. BDSM is embodied stuff, and also works on a mental level. It is very much the case that when I have a partner tied up and I'm beating her so that she cries out in pain, that I am being violent, I am being sensual, I am being embodied. But it is also a spiritual experience and, though there are those violent emotional components, in that moment I am typically also very calm, very aware, and indeed, in a form of blissful state on a spiritual level. Likewise, when I am the masochist and/or sub role, experiencing the pain brings embodied reactions, and there is a "negative" side to it, but there is also bliss, joy, release, and lots of the stuff that goes with "positive" spirituality.

I couldn't understand a spirituality that tried to separate the two, that said that there are feelings that are always bad, or say that the "earthly" things need to be left behind. There can be no transcendental without the mundane. The best things happen where the two meet. Yes, there are feelings that cause harm, and need to be understood and redirected or dissipated; but those cannot be classed as "hate is always bad, love is always good", because sometimes hatred is what motivates us to make things better, and sometimes love leads to us holding onto things that no longer help us but hold us back.

Boiler Suit as fashion? Why Not!

2011-11-11T19:59:00.000Z

One of the rather less feminist-y things I watch on television (or iPlayer) regularly is James May's Man Lab. James May is one of the comic presenters on Top Gear (another shameful thing that I watch regularly) and in Man lab, he sets out to reinvent masculinity by finding masculine things that men used to be able to do, or he feels we should aspire to do, and explaining them.

The most recent episode had James May visiting Savile Row and a bunch of fashion students in order to reinvent and redesign the boiler suit as something that isn't just for dirty work, but that could be pulled straight from the wardrobe, put on, and serve as everyday wear, evening wear, or indeed any purpose. These designs were then presented at the big student fashion week (the name of which escapes me).

Annoyingly, the only clip available from the BBC has the rather basic versions, modelled by May and his producer:

Youtube contributor slashgirl71 was a part of the show, and although their video only features the same two designs, the response is nice to see:

Of course, the full segment of the show concludes that the idea won't catch on, but I liked it, especially the evening wear version that pretty much makes getting ready for a posh do so much easier. It struck me that a smart one-piece suit would go a long way to solving my issue of feeling like a performing monkey when I have to dress up for an interview or whatever, and one or two of the designs in the programme seemed to me to be ideal. And, some of the more fancy pieces looked like a lot of fun to wear in the right context, too.

I was left wondering, though, what the female fashion equivalent would be. Or indeed, if such a thing is impossible because most fashion for women is already designed with display in mind, even when it's supposedly about practicality?

FICTION: Cyborg Sleeps Part 22

2011-11-11T17:58:00.000Z

In which Director Gattell and Dr McDonald reveal more of their control-freakishess.

Part 22

When Doctor McDonald removed Asira's girdle and dressing back art the medical centre, she was relieved to see that the stitches had not, after all, been torn. The wound had seeped considerably, however, and the dressing was soaked through with Asira's blood.

“You're very lucky you didn't do worse,” Orla chided the cyborg agent, “As it is, you are going to have to spend a few more days with limited movement. You said you'd be 'just about permitted to shuffle to the toilet and back', well thanks to your irresponsible behaviour that just about sums up the restrictions I'm putting on you now. I am going to recommend that you be considered restricted to quarters, where 'quarters' means this med bay. If you make sufficient progress in your recovery then I will consider lifting that restriction in a few days' time. Is that understood?” The doctor's anger was a surprise to Asira, who had never seen her in that mood before. It may have been simple professional pride that caused it, or a deeper concern for her patient, but either way, it showed a steel to Orla's temperament that was new to Asira's understanding of the doctor. From her memory, she dredged up the fact that Orla had in fact earned the rank of Captain in military service, and it was now apparent that she had the spirit still of a field commander.

***

The atmosphere in the Director's office was tense. Doctor McDonald had placed a call to Gattell as soon as she had made sure that Asira was adequately restrained. She had not been joking when she said that Asira needed restricted movement to be allowed to heal, but right now there was no doubt she was also being prevented from rebelling further, at least until the decisions had been made here.

The Director was frustrated and showing the signs of stress, Orla noted, and knew she was in for it.

"So the Agent was allowed to run off despite being seriously wounded and under your care? How?"

"She is a professional, sir, as is everyone on this base. I expected her to wander a little because it would be good for a soldier like her not to be too heavily confined. I did not expect her to head off into the wilderness. As you see, I am now requesting an armed guard placed on her until I declare that she is fit enough for light training to begin. I will not allow this to happen again."

"Yes, I agree. Agent Asira has been less stable since her injury than normal and we must take that into account. I have another concern, however. You say she met another of the Agents?"

Orla made a mental note that the "we" probably referred to herself at least for the short-term.

"Yes, sir. Charles V, it seems, was doing his pre-mission practice in the firing range when Asira Y went to try to obtain a weapon there. You can get a more detailed description of the encounter from those present, or wait to interrogate Asira Y in person when I am satisfied that her medical condition is suitable. Right now, I think she needs to stew for a bit in as solitary as we can manage while still treating her injuries properly."

Gattell was the second person that day to be caught out by the doctor's mean streak.

"You mean to use this to punish her for escaping from you?"

"Yes, sir. I think this may just bring home to her again that her actions have inevitable consequences, and in this case there are serious medical consequences that require treatment and, unfortunately, those will require her to stay where she is and see as few people as possible until I say otherwise."

"I see. I will arrange to have soldiers posted outside the medical centre to stop her from leaving. Contact me when you have decided to declare her fit to leave. That is all."

"Yes, sir."

Orla turned and left without a word.

***

After the doctor had departed, Director Gattell sat at his desk for a moment. He did not know what to make of the development that Agents might start to form relationships with each other. It was not an issue that had ever arisen before, with Agents spending so little time awake on base under normal circumstances. There had, of course, been Agents requiring medical treatment before, but they had generally been healed quickly or else requiring such serious treatment that rehab took place entirely within the medical centre and gym. There just wasn't much opportunity for meetings to happen. He sighed. "I should probably have realised that they would get together sooner rather than later," he muttered to himself. It was just typical that a potentially unstable Agent would be the first one to contact another Agent outside of the initialisation process.

The cyborg Agents were supposed to be the ultimate professional special forces/espionage soldiers but Gattell now wondered what ideas about their status and role they might form if they got together. However much he needed them to believe that they were accepted, he knew that their experiences and lives were so different from what a normal person could have, even from a normal soldier could have. Both Asira Y's mental state and this new spectre of cyborgs interacting with each other added new unpredictable elements to his job. There was nothing he could do about it right now, but he would make sure he monitored the situation and hopefully he would be able to head off any trouble that might ensue before it did any damage to himself, the project or the base itself.

He picked up the phone and made the call to set up the guard on Asira.

Whatever happened to sex and drugs and rock'n'roll?

2011-11-09T16:19:00.000Z

I have, to my shame, been hooked by this years X Factor, and my pick for the overall winner has to be Misha B, who just seems awesome almost every week.

However, I have absolutely loved it for Frankie Cocozza's rock'n'roll style, and the fact that he actually lives the lifestyle properly. At the risk of sounding like an old man, I can just about remember there being a time when you weren't doing it properly unless you did all manner of drugs, sex and other crazy stuff.

But Mr Cocozza's "wannabe rockstar antics" (that seems to be the phrase that journalists like for it) have got him kicked off the show.

This video explains more:

Essentially, the voiceover explains that there are "golden rules" - a list of "showbiz commandments" - that contestants have to stick to to stay on the show. There is speculation (reported by some sources as fact, but that's what tabloids do...) that Mr Cocozza boasted (within earshot of people working on the show) about taking cocaine and having sex - apparently, these are things you don't get to do on the X Factor.

Ofcom apparently also criticised ITV when Frankie swore on the results show at the weekend after being told he'd survived in the competition, and his behaviour has been alleged to "glamorise alcohol consumption". For fuck's sake, what else are rockstars supposed to to do?! More to the point: rockstars' tendency to break the rules is a part of what makes them, and their rule-breaking, seem glamorous in the first place.

You can't have a show called "The X Factor", seeking performers who have the "X Factor", and then turn around and say to someone who shows it, "Um, well, we quite like your 'factor', but can you tone down the 'x', please?" If what you want is safe, nice, take-home-to-meet-your-mother type performers, then call it "The Safe Factor" and have done with it.

Like I said: Frankie Cocozza is doing what stars are supposed to do, and my opinion is that the guy has the stage persona to carry it off. If Misha B is the finished product as a singer and artist, then Mr Cocozza is the finished product when it comes to rock'n'roll. I am convinced that if you give him a good backing band he will fill big venues, and sell records, because he has that "something".

What I fervently hope for now is that some record company or artist management company will contact Mr Cocozza and offer him a deal, and get this fella out there and in the attention of the music-buying public. I want my nostalgia for the good old days when popular music was brash and annoyed the older generation. (I almost typed "like me", but at 33 I'm not sure I qualify yet for "older generation".)

All of which is not to say that I think taking drugs is a good thing, or something to which people should aspire. Rockstars are not supposed to be role models for our own behaviour, but I think, part of our way of living vicariously and allowing ourselves the fantasy of being bad. We need people like Frankie Cocozza, who can go out and choose to skate on that edge for us. trying to make life, music, whatever, be all clean and lovely and "nice", erodes the very things we have famous people for in the first place.

FICTION: Cyborg Sleeps Part 21

2011-11-05T01:57:00.000Z

In which Asira is found, and Orla is cross.

Part 21

The Priest running the finding spells called Orla McDonald fairly quickly.

“She didn't want to be found, Doctor,” he apologised, “It's making everything much less precise. However, here's what I've got. She's somewhere near the perimeter fence, and probably now trying to return. I tried dowsing the map but only got an approximate reading. She's somewhere in the region of this grid reference.” And he gave the coordinates as they appeared on the base maps. “I would say maybe a couple of hundred yards in each direction.”

“Thank you, Priest, I appreciate your work.”

McDonald immediately called the lieutenant and passed on the information from the magical search. The lieutenant in turn radioed his search parties to direct them to the right area. Unfortunately, he had sent them to points some distance from the identified grid reference and it would take up to an hour for them to get to the area where they needed to be. McDonald was worrying now. The fact that Asira was missing this long seemed to her to increase the chances that she had done something to undo the healing that had already started. If she had ripped the stitches open again, she could even be bleeding to death right now. Some would call her melodramatic for that, but Orla knew that a stubborn streak meant that Asira was likely not to take it easy, and that increased the chances of her having done serious damage to herself.

***

Two squaddies responding to the lieutenant's radioed call to change the search area jogged across the rolling countryside inside the base.

“I think it's just a fitness thing, I bet there's no 'bot out here at all, they're just making sure we're up to spec.” said the first.

“Yeah. Why else would they send us all that way and then drag us back over here? At least they chose a nice day for it, could be pissing it down with rain. That's what they usually like to do.”

“Too right!”

They were slowing down, not taking the call and search seriously, but also not really wanting to be the ones who found the cyborg first. Although their CO had told them there was no threat, they figured that if the cyborg needed finding then it must have gone rogue and they were just trying to keep it quiet and not alarm the whole base. That was if it was true. Some of the guys had suggested that it was a training exercise for tracking an intruder, and now these two had decided that it was purely to check their fitness levels. So although there was a tinge of fear to their attitude, nobody was really taking it seriously.

Right up until they stumbled – almost literally – upon the prone body of Agent Asira Y. She was in the middle of lifting herself back up to her knees to resume shuffling towards the base.

She reacted first:

“What the fuck... Look where you're fucking going, arseholes!” she swore, the impact of the cursing lost as her voice croaked and gave out.

The squaddies sprang their standard-issue assault rifles to their shoulders to cover the injured cyborg, not realising that had she really been any kind of threat their slow reaction time would probably have meant they were already dead before they did anything.

The first squaddie radioed back to the lieutenant, “We've found your rogue cyborg, sir, threat is contained.” The lieutenant didn't bother to correct the soldier right there, but instead called the medical centre.

“Set a charm beacon and protect the target,” ordered the lieutenant, “Inform the target that Doctor McDonald is coming to collect her now and the target is under orders to wait and rest until the doctor arrives.”

He was somewhat careless in his manner as he obeyed the instructions: “Hey, 'bot! The Doc says you're to stay put until she gets here!”

“Fuck you!” sneered Asira, angered at the slur and frustrated that she couldn't in her current state do anything to punish the man for it. She rolled herself into a sitting position, and with difficulty crossed her legs, gazing with contempt back at the nervous soldiers who watched her and twitched at any hint of sudden movement. Asira wanted badly to scare them further, but despite the radioed orders (Asira had overheard them, of course) the soldiers were more intent on protecting themselves from her, and she knew that if they got too jumpy then a bad twitch of a trigger finger could be disastrous for her long-term prospects.

***

It took fifteen minutes for the jeep carrying the paramedic crew, accompanied by Doctor McDonald, to arrive on the scene, using the signal from the charm beacon to head straight to the point much more precisely than even a map reference could give.

McDonald told the squaddies to head back to base as she hopped out of the jeep, because she could see that they were not handling the situation well. Almost without drawing breath, she turned on Asira.

“If I have to strap you down in future to stop you doing this kind of thing, I will. And right now, you ARE going to be strapped to a stretcher, you ARE going to return in that fashion to the medical centre, and we ARE going to check just how much time you've added to your recovery time.” All the worry and stress of the previous few hours went into her voice as anger. For once, Asira did not have a quick retort, although she wanted to resist as the paramedics laid her back on the stretcher and, just as Orla McDonald said, strapped her to it before lifting her into the back of the jeep.

The doctor did not immediately start to investigate what Asira had done to herself, that would wait until they returned to the medical centre and the ride back would not be smooth. Webbing cushioned Asira from the worst of the uneven ground but it was still not conducive to good medical care.

Orla regarded her seriously.

“I mean it, you know,” She said, “I really will have you strapped down if I feel I can't trust you to stay out of trouble like this. Your duty now is to obey my orders and get yourself fit for service as quickly as possible, do you understand?”

Asira gritted her teeth, barely able to bring herself to give the answer. “Yes,” she finally spat.

They passed the rest of the short journey in silence.

Young and out of work

2011-11-02T21:14:00.000Z

The Guardian has an article made up of young people (under 25) talking about their experiences of looking for work. now, I'm not that young any more, but I was once, and to be honest, the challenges I face now as an unemployed person are still very similar. So much of what they say rings true for my own experience.

For example:

The job-seeking system isn't really set up for graduates, or people with a lot of previous employment like me. All the training and support they have is fantastic if you're 16 and haven't many qualifications. But the jobs they point me towards – and I have to apply for them – often aren't particularly suitable.

You get to the point where you get up every day and you've got nothing to do because you've got no money to go anywhere, and you sit in the house all day. You lose energy and drive, even though I've always been quite ambitious.

There's too much negative stereotyping of unemployed young people. They say we're lazy and slacking – and the constant barrage gets you down. I'm looking for work, and I'm getting constant rejections. My friends are all so downhearted because we can't get a job even though we've got all these qualifications and experiences.

I could copy-paste a whole load more passages to show the situation and why the system is basically setting the unemployed against each other and those who already have jobs. But you can read it for yourself, you can see the intellect and eloquence that the people have (even the ones without formal qualifications) and make up your own minds.

Talis Kimberley sings "The Steps of St Paul's"

2011-10-29T01:06:00.001+01:00

The awesome folk/filk singer/songwriter Talis Kimberley (see also my review of her album from last year, and my cover versions of one of her songs) has written a song about the competing values of the "Occupy" protesters at the Occupy LSE camp outside St Paul's Cathedral in London, and the business minds of the people running the cathedral. Whatever my suspicions about the inclusiveness or effectiveness of the protest, I'm in agreement with Talis on the curious priorities of a church whose name comes form a guy who supposedly kicked the moneychangers out of the temple...

She asks for the song to be made as widely available as possible, so I'm also linking to the free download Bandcamp page for the rough recording she's added there.

SPOILER ALERT:

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The "nonsense lyric" she sings in the middle and at the end, is actually Morse Code for BBC...

More on "Occupy" and not having nice things

2011-10-27T00:36:00.002+01:00

When I wrote this piece about why Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street was just nasty and wrong, and why trying to justify it by talking about your erection was even nastier and wronger, I thought (hoped) I was being rhetorical when I wrote:

And women have an issue, which is sleazy dudes perving over them and viewing them primarily as sexual stimuli (whether visual or tactile). This is a problem, because it is about feeling one's boundaries violated and it is about feeling one's physical safety threatened.

Renegade Evolution has collated a few stories to show that, in fact, women's physical safety is not only threatened, but violated, and Mr Greenstreet and his kind are quite happy to promote that. Women who experience sexual assaults are coming under heavy pressure to "not bring the movement into disrepute" by reporting these crimes against them. I have read enough stories posted by women about this kind of thing happening to them at so many Leftist/progressive/intellectual events, I sometimes despair.

I would like to imagine that the "Occupy" event in London is not like this, but I have no basis for or against it, and because of the pressures not to report the crimes, I might not hear about it - partly because I view the "Occupy" protests with a tinge of suspicion and distance anyway, and partly because I may very well not come across places where they are reported. My abiding suspicion is that this stuff is highly likely, because men of "the Left" so often do act like privileged arseholes on a regular basis.

Once again: this is why the Left can't have nice things. It's why protests fail. It's why solidarity on the left is a myth, or worse, it's a story used to oppress people who should be on our side! Until the automatic assumption is that the rapists and sexual assaulters are the ones bringing the movement into disrepute, there can be no forward progress.

Heck, Daisy Deadhead has a recent tale about being sexually harassed by a lefty dude because he disagreed with her on an issue!

We - the Left, that is - need to get our own house in order before we start whining about the shit that corporations pull. Anarcho-Leftyism is all very well, but somebody has to organise it and somebody has to keep this shit from happening. Otherwise, the society you build will be another case of "meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

[Edit To Add: it turns out that the Occupy Glasgow organisers called in the police as soon as the allegation of rape was made]

Jirka Väätäinen, Disney princesses, and "realistic"

2011-10-26T14:24:00.002+01:00

Jirka Väätäinen is an art student at Bournemouth University, and Yahoo News service shows me that he has used photo manipulation to render versions of the Disney princesses as if they were "real life" women. He's posted his images at a blog here.

This interested me a great deal, so I wanted to have a quick look at the original cartoon images, and JV's images, and see how realistic they look. For initial reference, here's a "group shot" drawing that has several of the princesses featured in Väätäinen's work:

Let's start with Princess Jasmine:

This is Väätäinen's rendering of the princess.

Have a look at Disney's version here.

What differences can you spot?

There's one glaring difference, which is the difference between the drawing's waist size and the "real person" waist size. It was interesting that when I googled to find the Disney image, I found several cosplay practitioners displaying their Jasmine costumes proudly, and a few looked really very similar to the JV image (although some were obviously White). None of them looked remotely like the drawings.

Curiously, I couldn't find any images showing Princess Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) dressed the same way as she's shown in JV's image of her - I did see several children dressed in a version of the outfit, and that one "group shot" drawing of the princesses together displayed above, but no scenes from the movie, which surprised me.

One thing did surprise me about Väätäinen's Sleeping Beauty, which is that she's blonde. From the famous telling of the story, the wish was for a daughter whose hair was "as black as ebony" [EDIT TO ADD: it's been pointed out to me by a couple of commenters @ Womanist Musing's crosspost of this piece, that I have got confused between Sleeping Beauty and Snow White with this reference. Make of that what you will, and feel free to do your own research to see if you can do better with finding comparisons]. She's also got a longer torso than the drawing and, in her corset, actually looks less curvy than the drawing as a result. Although you'd have to argue that Sleeping Beauty the drawing is probably more realistic as a real person's proportions than Jasmine, she's still upholding an improbable (if not impossible) ideal.

Pocahontas, who's next on the sequence from Yahoo, is where we don't need a comparison piece from Disney to see that there's something... not quite possible about the body shape ideals that they display:

It looks as though her upper torso is becoming separated from her lower body!   Yahoo comments that it looks like she's "working some Barbie-like proportions", which really just goes to show how impossible it is.   Looking at the stills from the movie, you can see why JV has this problem.   The proportions of the drawing actually resemble those in the photo manipulation.

Not only is it a body shape and body ideal that is impossible to achieve naturally, it looks as though here, it's impossible to achieve unnaturally and make it look real.

When that's what our kids have to contend with, what chance have they got?

One thing that I found worthy of note, is that Pocahontas seems to be another one where it's grown-up cosplay more often than children.   One such image was very adult, ifyaknowwhatImean...

Yahoo next shows us Belle, from Beauty and the Beast.   Leaving aside the extremely dodgy relationship model that the story gives us, what about the images?

Disappointingly, we don't get a full-body image from JV, so we can't compare proportions in that way. Google images mainly focuses on Belle in her yellow princess' gown, while JV has again chosen her more workday clothes as his model, so finding comparisons was harder. This was the best I could do, and to be fair, it doesn't look that bad for proportions - and JV's image is pretty close. SInce I've started commenting on this - the google image search this tim had a fair number of both children's versions and grown-ups, with some apparently falling into the "sexy" category that typifies US commercial women's Hallowe'en costumes (a trend that I was dismayed to notice this year has crossed the Atlantic).

Next up is Esmersalda from The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

What is going on with that shoulder!? Her left arm also looks twisted into an impossible position (I don't know if a double-jointed person could manage it).

Here's a comparison still from the movie:

All the stills I could find featured Esmeralda in a corset or bodice, which doesn't appear in JV's image, and of course her waist is slimmer in comparison to the rest of her body as a result. It may also go some way to explaining why JV's image seems to have a weirdly twisted torso. The above image (and several others) have Esmeralda's breasts lifted and squeezed by her costume, and it looks as though JV has attempted to match that, leaving a strangely distorted figure. If anything, I think that this comparison shows the torturous and tortuous lengths ot which women are expected to go to look beautiful, rather than the impossibility of achieving a particular body shape.

For the record, I found only two cosplay images, both of them relatively unrevealing. No kiddies pics.

Ariel, "The Little Mermaid", next.

While one might quibble about the twisted arm position, JV's image is remarkably normal-looking** (if you ignore the fish tail!) - but it looks nothing like this:

There doesn't seem to be room in her body for her internal organs! That's really all I need to say on that. Costumes were mainly children's costumes of Ariel's human form.

I'm skipping over the Sea Witch image, because (apart from the fat-shaming point that she's evil and not thin) there's not a lot to say on that.

That leads us to Megara, a character from Hercules.

Looks real, although quite slim, doesn't she?

Let's look at the original:

Dear God in Heaven, you could scale JV's image by 50% sideways and still not be close! And his image was on the slim side to start with. A lot of young adults seem to like dressing up as Megara, playing with their "norty" side, we may surmise, perhaps?

The last princess that Väätäinen has rendered thus far is Mulan. Like Belle, Mulan is not a full-body image, just the upper torso and head. Here's an image for comparison. I don't have any obvious remarks to make, although the body shape of the movie image's lower torso seems almost as if her sash has been pulled extra-tight to make her thin enough!

Again, there seemed to be mainly adult cosplay versions of Mulan, I didn't see very many children dressed as her.

**Normal here meaning "inside the standard deviation of the normal bell-curve"

BDSM and "Miss Insecurity"

2011-10-25T22:28:00.005+01:00

Sharideth @ A Woman's Guide to Women: A Blog For Men writes about how to handle ethically a situation where the girl you're in a relationship is insecure, and seemingly has no idea of her own self-worth. A personality type she calls Miss Insecurity.

The second link talks about 4 steps to take to help her build self-worth. The first link talks about something else:

this is about avoiding a serious temptation when it comes to an insecure girl. the temptation to mold her into your own image…of what a girl should be.

And this post talks about how those intersect with the Dominant/submissive relationship dynamic within BDSM.

The first thing to spot is that a Mr or Miss Insecurity could be either Top or Bottom in a relationship. It's highly unlikely that zie would make an effective Dominant, although to please hir partner zie would probably try to do it. The need for affirmation and approval would, however, most likely make for a very unsatisfying experience for the submissive partner, and/or there would be rampant topping from the bottom.

I am going to be focussing on/using the pronouns for, female submissives who are also Insecure (as used by Sharideth), because a) Sharideth writes about Insecure women specifically (though the advice probably works for Insecure men as well) and b) I want to draw on my own experience and, as a mostly-straight male Dominant, dating female submissives is where most of my experience lies.

The structure of D/s is such that there is an inherent tendency towards the "moulding" of the submissive partner in some way - training her to the desires and will of her Dominant partner - whether it is "lifestyle" D/s or "scene-delineated" (i.e. bedroom-only), there is this idea of obedience and surrender. Indeed, many people in the lifestyle talk about it in terms that are similar to Sharideth's description here:

she will willing hand over her entire identity to please you. she’ll be anything you want her to be.

And yet, "Miss Insecurity" and "Ms Submissive" are not talking about the same thing. It is possible to be both or neither, or either one. A lot of subs in BDSM are quite adamant, "I'm a submissive, not a doormat" and by doormat, they mean something like Miss Insecurity. The difficulty is, sometimes it's not that easy to spot the difference.

Sharideth says:

it will be crazy flattering how far she’s willing to go for you, but up until you, everyone has taken advantage of her.

Now, one of the big buzzes of being a Dom in a D/s relationship is that "crazy flattering how far she's willing to go" deal. The distinction is that a sub doesn't allow people to take advantage of her (unless, of course, she is Insecure as well as being a sub). But that does make it hard to tell the difference and to know when you are with a sub or an Insecure woman. That is, to tell the difference between Dominance and taking advantage.

That said, there are telltales. One BIG red flag is the "no limits" sub. Limits are things a bottom will not do - a hard limit is "under any circumstances", a soft limit is "maybe, once I know you well enough and I'm in the mood to really be pushed beyond my usual boundaries". A sub who has no limits at all is someone who is saying she will do literally anything (and, in some cases, if you ask her hypothetically, "alright, how about if I want to nail your tits to the kitchen table?" she'll say "yes"...) When you get that sort of situation, you can pretty much be sure there's something going on and being Insecure may or may not be the only thing behind that. In general, being too eager to please early on is a sign, and I think the tendency to seek more praise is another. There is also the thing that Sharideth mentions, of:

her lack of self-confidence can range from mild embarrassment when given a compliment to laying out a well rehearsed laundry list of why the nice thing you said about her simply isn’t true.

So, you can spot the Insecure sub as oppposed to the submissive sub. It is just that being particularly vigilant is helpful.

Bearing this in mind, let's look at Sharideth's advice on how not to mould your Insecure girlfriend (submissive), and see what the issues might be when this is played in a D/s context:

1. say no – she will offer to pay for things, to clean your house, to do your laundry…she will all but beg to please to you. say no. assure her you have own your finances, personal hygiene and home maintenance under control…whether you actually do or not. physically restrain her if you have to, because your refusal just might send her into a panic attack thinking she’s not good enough to wash your socks or clean your gutters.

Well, let's get the obvious joke out the way about it being easier and expected to physically restrain a partner in a kinky relationship. Right, that's done. It has a serious application, though: the D/s dynamic makes laying down the law easier to do - it makes the Dominant partner's "No" easier to say in some respects. In others, it is harder, because very often domestic duties may be part of what is set out as the submissive's role, and it may be what she expects from previous relationships. It is hard to refuse a sign of submission from someone who is supposed to be submissive, especially if it appears to give her pleasure to do it, and you are used to accepting such gifts. However, in a D/s context I would describe the Insecure sub as attempting a subtle form of topping from the bottom when she does this. She is trying to define her place instead of letting you define it for her and, paradoxically, to avoid moulding her, you have to mould her. You say, "In my house, this is NOT your place to do these things. Your place is what I say it is." (That's where "physically restrain her" comes in).

2. reassure her – keep your voice kind and patient and with a bit of humor in it. she’ll be freaking right out, so make sure she knows it’s really not necessary for her to paint your kitchen. seriously, she’ll be coming out of her skin.

I think the kind, patient and calm voice - while remaining in charge - is key to a lot of Domhood, regardless of the personality type of the submissive partner (there are some who want/need you to force them and be loud all the time, but most respond well to the quiet Dominance at least some of the time). "...it’s really not necessary..." - Again, I think this is about defining boundaries and roles within D/s. Letting her know that she can serve and please simply by being herself in a passive way without having to do things for you, is an important part of D/s training, especially when you're dealing with a Miss Insecurity. In some ways the D/s dynamic makes this easier to do: because you can frame it in language of service and duty, there is a way to let her feel that she is still fulfilling her desire to please, while still giving her the space to be herself and not have to do things to please you. On the other hand, that same "helpful" thing makes it harder to make it genuinely her being herself for herself, because she is still behaving in a way she thinks you want her to.

3. serve her – do something good and manly for her. get her oil changed or do it yourself for extra man points. make her dinner or get take out and put it in your own dishes to pretend like you cooked it. if you do that, make sure she sees the take out boxes so you can both laugh and break the tension she will most surely be feeling by not being the one cooking you a six course meal.

Now, it sounds paradoxical to tell a Dom to serve his sub. That said, I am a Christian and my Lord, God himself became human so as to serve us - Christ Jesus knelt to wash the feet of his followers. So I am familiar in my cultural beliefs with the concept of the servant being served by the Master (regardless of what you accept or reject about religion, that imagery is still powerful within the Church).

How does that translate in D/s terms, though? Well, I talk about service and submission a lot with new partners, and one thing I talk about is the bathing ritual scene. When I bathe her, dry her, and tend for her, she is my submissive and I am making sure she is in good condition, and enjoying being in control because I direct where she goes, and she isn't allowed to do things for herself. When she bathes me, she is my submissive because I don't have to do anything for myself, but make her do what I want. In more general terms, when I appear to be serving her, I am really only doing it because that is the best way for me to get what I want from her.

Making dinner is one such thing, and it is a good one for me personally, because I enjoy cooking for its own sake, so her role in serving me is simply to be appreciative of my efforts.

4. protect her – she never says no. to anyone. ever. if someone is asking too much of her or taking advantage, step in and say no for her. shield her from those who would use her innate generosity and fear of rejection against her. and hold on to your dangly parts, because those people are going to be pissed.

This one, because of the language of possession that gets wrapped up on D/s and M/s relationships, has a ready parallel in BDSM culture, even where Insecurity is not involved. Staci Newmahr identifies this as the Benevolent Dictator archetype (which I discuss as being largely a given at some level in all D/s, and also compare to Mother as well as Emperor archetypes). It is also helpful because the possessive language of D/s gives a much stronger permission to say no to others: "my Dom/Owner/Master doesn't allow me to..." is a permission to say "no" and to set boundaries, while handing off the responsibility to another. Since Sharideth's advice is also about letting the "no" be handed off to a loving partner, this is similar. It does raise the problematic issue of "she's saying no in order to be pleasing to me", but at the same time, it means she is making a conscious choice to please one person over another.

5. watch your words – she is going to be listening INTENTLY for any clue that you might want something about her to change to suit you. continually reinforce those things about her you are attracted to. shore up who she is as her own person and the value there is in just being her.

This may just be the hardest of Sharideth's points to follow as a Dominant partner to Miss Insecurity. So much about being Dominant seems to be expressing one's will so that it can be obeyed and so she can change to fit that will! And yet, it is just as important and valid as the rest of it, even in BDSM. This is about supporting who she already is and the things you already like about what she does. Reinforcing her self-identity and personality in this way is a good part of the person-maintenance that an attentive lover or Dominant will do for hir partner regardless of Insecurity issues. This requires a balancing act that at once does that maintenance and keeps her fundamentally her, but also expresses what her role as your sub is.

6. be patient – this is all going to be very new to her and she will not take it well initially. she’d probably be more comfortable being held at gunpoint. it will be so foreign that it just might terrify her because she won’t understand her role. find ways to calm her down, to redirect her fear. help her to breathe. remember when Aragorn first meets Brego and the horse is losing his shit? it’ll be like that.

The specific thing of D/s and control makes this easier: as a Dom, having someone trust you to tie them up and do "nasty" things to them tends to give you some idea of handling nerves (and, if you've ever switched, then you'll have some idea of what those nerves can feel like as well). Control, again, means that, "she doesn't understand her role" is something you have a ready answer for. The manner of fulfilling that role is strange and unsettling, but the D/s structure, the concept of "slave training" and so on, gives a ready language for letting her know it will all be okay and that you'll be there to help her get the hang of this new thing.

7. be her partner – she is a natural helper. she needs to be contributing. plan times to work together on things. preferably something you have to give her instruction on so she can’t take over and do it all herself. because she will try. it’s important to let her know you are a team. that you do not expect any more from her than you do yourself.

"Give her instruction". Heh. What is D/s except "giving her instruction"? (Don't answer that - the answer could fill an encyclopaedia!) But things like protocol, ritual, postures to learn, and so on, are projects in which a sub can be expected to take direct instruction and can be brought back gently if she tried to pre-empt instruction. They are, however, somewhat one-sided: I instruct her and guide her to learn the new routines, but she does all the actions. It does emphasise the "team/roles" nature of D/s, but the issue with D/s is very often that what is expected of the sub partner is different from what is expected of the Dom partner, and often the sub is meant to "do" more and the Dom is meant to "decide" more. That's not how it's framed by some partners, but I'm running with what I'm familiar with.

So how do we deal with this in D/s? Probably the simplest thing is to do vanilla things of the type that Sharideth suggests. I think also talking about the philosophy of D/s as a partnership, and teamwork, helps.

Let's turn to "how to build her up" now:

1. teach her to say “thank you” – seems simple, right? wrong. she’ll hate it. at first. do not allow her to duck her head and mumble or qualify it. a direct, look-you-in-eye, thank you. after a while, she’ll find she likes the feeling of being complimented. this will translate into other areas of her life.
2. do not let her put herself down – stop her as soon as she starts. just don’t allow it. don’t be afraid to use a bit of force either. it could be good for her to know that devaluing herself upsets you. eventually she’ll look back on that and smile.
3. help her understand that “no” is not a dirty word – girls who have self-esteem issues can’t say no to anyone for fear of disapproval. it’s exhausting for them. beware though. you have to be strong enough to back her up and be there when she’s crushed by the hateful reaction she gets from those who are use to taking advantage of her. if you are serious about this girl, you may even have to shield her from her own family until she’s strong enough to do it on her own.
4. remind her that she is stronger than she feels – the need to remind her will start to become fewer and farther between. but for now, knowing that you believe in her will be what she needs to lean on.

My first girlfriend/sub was definitely in this bracket - you can read posts that reference her story under the tag Julie. I used all the above techniques with her, with a D/s slant to them. Here's how they worked:

As a Dom, I always lay down 5 rules that I consider vital. The 5th is:

[My submissive] will receive as much or as little punishment or praise as she deserves and needs, and must not ask for more.

This refers to point 1, and tangentially to point 2. It is about insisting that she accept as valid the praise I give, and also about insisting that she should not insist that she has failed when I say otherwise. If I say she deserves praise, then to reject it is to go directly against this rule. If I say she doesn't deserve punishment, then to insist she does is also going against this rule. I constantly had to remind Julie of this rule to start with, and make sure she did give proper thanks.

I also pointed out that by putting herself down in any way, she was casting negative aspersions about my judgement and ability to spot a good thing. She was not to prejudge my opinion by using negative terms about herself, but let me make my own mind up (which would, invariably, be positive - because that was precisely what she deserved and needed, as per rule 5). This, effectively, became rule 5(a). Thus, I pretty much laid down the law on the matter, in just the way Sharideth's point 2 suggests, with all the authority that my Domliness could wield.

Now, when it comes to D/s, "no" pretty much is a dirty word - within the negotiated confines of the D/s relationship. But that very fact often heightens for D/s practitioners the value of "no" in any other circumstance. For Julie, therefore, although "no" was not permitted with me in our relationship, the importance of "no", and setting the boundaries between what was acceptable and what was unacceptable (e.g. by use of a safeword), was emphasised heavily. The link I gave above is to a page called, "How a girl learns to say no"!

Finally, on point 4, this is exactly where I have been. Julie talked explicitly about feeling so weak, and I told her, "It is when we feel weakest that we are really proving that we are very strong."

The outcome, again, is for all to read on that link - she left me and found the strength as her own person to say "no" to jerks who wanted to take advantage of her. Last I knew, she was very happily with a Dominant partner who treated her properly and gave her loads of the BDSM she needs.

***

PS - this topic reminded me of this song:

(I don't recommend the attitude of the narrator in the song!)

What's my number, and what exactly is it?

2011-10-25T16:10:00.000+01:00

Pretty much for as long as I have had an interest in dating as an adult, the sources I have read have talked about a person's "number", which is the number of people they've shagged - and what (if any) significance that number has.

One thing that doesn't seem to be mentioned often in the same context is what we actually mean by the number, when people talk about it in the dating context. After all, there is even debate about "virginity" even means (presumable, virginity is when your number=0).

It is a known phenomenon that men will tend to claim more things "count" as sex than women do, when asked in surveys. There's some speculation that the reason for this is that men are socially expected to be more sexually active, whereas there is social pressure for women to be less sexual. Thus, a narrower or wider definition helps to feel more socially acceptable. If fellatio, cunnilingus and dildos don't count as sex, then a woman can have orgasms with 100 men (and give them orgasms), and still claim that her number is in the single digits, because that's how many of those men she allowed to put their penis inside her vagina. Similarly, if they do count as sex then a man can claim that each of the 100 women whom he's gone down on, even if only a few of them returned the favour, or cuntwrapped his penis.

So, these two similarly-experienced people (arguably, the woman is the more experienced) might meet, start dating, ask each other their numbers, and the woman says "half a dozen" and the man says "a hundred"! Assuming they then have sex along the lines that they've usually done it (so, he uses his tongue, and maybe a dildo, to stimulate her; she uses her mouth on him), then only one of them has their number go up!

I can make my number equal anything from 0 to 4, depending on how you want to define "sex".

0: The number of times I have ejaculated from partner's stimulation (here's why that hasn't happened)
1: The number of women I've slept with as well as had sex with
2: The number of women with whom I have shared PiV sex
3: The number of women with whom I have had any form of penetrative sex involving my penis (also the number of times involving her vagina)
4: The number of women with whom I have had penetrative sex involving either my penis or her vagina, or both

The more logically-minded will notice that there is some overlap between the items listed as my 3 and the item listed as my 4, and should be able to figure out by reference to my 2 that there is one woman out there who has had some part of me that wasn't my penis, inside her; and a different woman out there who has had some part of her anatomy that wasn't her vagina wrapped around my penis. To clarify these points: the part of me that wasn't my penis, was my fingers; the part of her that wasn't her vagina was her mouth.

So, what is my "number"? In mathematical notation, it could be expressed as [0 .. 4]. That is, it falls within the integer interval from 0 to 4. To narrow it down any further requires a more precise question than "how many people have you had sex with?" or "what's your number?"

When lyrics make you flinch - trigger warning for discussion of domestic violence

2011-10-24T15:26:00.000+01:00

I've been meaning to mention this little niggling thing I have, for a while now, but never quite seemed important enough to get on with. it seems like such a little thing.

But now, I find that Yandie @ Inspiration strikes. In the Kneecaps. has written about a similar thing:

She writes:

just a random thing that sucks...

listening to a really awesome song.. then pausing to listen to the lyrics and finding that they're.. um.. well, a bit rapey.

She gives a couple of examples over there, and what I have been planning (or vaguely considering) is writing about something similar, which is lyrics that seem a bit domestic violence-y. There's one in particular that I wanted to mention, but I'm going to get to that in a minute.

A commenter @ Yandie's post noted the DV implications of The Beatles' Run For Your Life, and frankly, there are a lot of very misogynistic lyrics in The Beatles catalogue, both in terms of violence against women, and in terms of reinforcing gender roles.

Some songwriters write directly about DV, some of them write to highlight the problem and accuse society of not doing enough to stop it (Tracy Chapman's "Behind The Wall" springs to mind); some seem to revel in the idea of it.

The problem I have is with a song that is not obviously about DV (maybe that's why it makes me flinch particularly), and in fact, the line that hits me in the gut with it and makes me flinch isn't one that necessarily would get to everyone. Some people would hear it and think it perfectly innocent, maybe even sweet. It depends, I suppose, on what sort of context your mind provides for the words.

The song is McFly's "All About You". The lines are:

And...
I would answer all your wishes/
If you asked me to/
But if you deny me one of your kisses/
Don't know what I'd do

So hold me close and say three words like you used to do/
Dancing on the kitchen tiles/
It's all about you

Most of the song feels quite sweet, and the image of dancing in the kitchen together also, pretty romantic and lovely, I could love that. I love the song, I really do. It's just that one line: "If you deny me one of your kisses/ Don't know what I'd do". It twists and changes the meaning of the rest of the song for me, because to me, it sounds like a threat. I think my impression is coloured that way partly because the song has a crescendo for that passage. The stresses on "you", "don't know" and "do" in the performance, also may be adding to my feeling of it being a personal threat.

Some people, I am sure, hear that line and think, "Aww, he'd feel bereft and hopeless." I hear the same line and think, "Oh shit, he'd feel angry and violent, enough to break any boundaries of self-control."

When it's followed by "Say three words like you used to do ("three words" often means "I love you" in pop song terminology), my understanding of the song starts to slip from "wow, romantic, it's all about her" into "scary possessiveness, it's all about her". This line, in the context of the threat that I hear in "don't know what I'd do", now sounds to me like, "Why don't you love me like you used to? You should be a better girlfriend/wife/lover!" Then the image of kitchen tiles shifts from a bright, sunlit, rom-com movie scene barefoot waltz, to a forced interaction, and possibly her landing on that hard, tiled, floor after he hits her for not being responsive enough.

Even, "I would answer all of your wishes" becomes, in this context, "So you should be fucking grateful, bitch! You OWE me, because of what I'd do for you!" If taken as a whole, with this colouring, the romantic tone of the rest of the song just completes the picture of an emotionally and potentially physically abusive relationship.

Now, all that shift in perspective comes just from the strongest association that my mind produces for the phrase "If you deny me ... don't know what I'd do." Those words feel violent and threatening to me, and so a song that I really like and is quite beautiful in other ways, makes me flinch every time that line comes around.

On "Everyone knows that 'x' = 'sex'" and (not) taking the indirect route

2011-10-23T15:52:00.001+01:00

In the past couple of weeks, an idea has come up again in my PUA/dating advice research. It's one that I reject quite vehemently, and at its worst I feel it ties into rape culture (but I don't want to talk about that so much). It's also one of those tropes that ends up making me feel like an alien.

A couple of weeks ago, a commenter at Clarisse Thorn's linked to this video from the RSA Animate series:

Steven Pinker is talking about direct versus indirect language, and how he thinks that works and reveals stuff about human minds. I disagree with almost all of it! Again, I don't really want to talk about the whole video and why I disagree with Pinker (if anyone wants me to explain my disagreements, say so and I'll do another post and we can debate it there).

What I want to talk about is the specific point at 1:45 in the video (also referenced at 6:30-ish):

"Would you like to come up and see my etchings?" That has been recognised as a sexual come-on for so long that in the 1930s, [a cartoonist whose name I don't catch] drew a New Yorker cartoon in which a man says to his date, "You wait here and I'll bring the etchings down."

...

People aren't naive and it's hard to believe that any grown woman could be fooled by the line about the etchings. None-the-less, there is something that is more comfortable about asking to see etchings than asking for sex. So what is going on there?

The deniability is not really plausible.

Well, I didn't (and generally wouldn't) recognise it as a sexual come-on (and, frankly, the 1930s cartoon doesn't make sense to me in that context - is he suggesting he'll just shag her where they are?) According to Mr Pinker, I guess that would make me "naive", and I guess it's just as well that I am not a young woman with an interest in etchings, otherwise I might end up with someone raping me (okay, so I am discussing the rape culture thing a little...)

A different commenter at the same thread on Clarisse Thorn's blog, writes:

An invitation for an intimate time alone with eating or drinking is the polite lie like the previously mentioned bait. It’s how we pretend that we’re not talking about if we like each other enough to be physically intimate – like we pretend that we’re going back to someone’s house to look at their antique camera collection, or ‘for a coffee’. Or that ‘My roommate’s out for the weekend, come over and watch a movie, I’ll cook dinner’ isn’t an invitation to have sex on the couch.

Similarly, Charlie Nox's "Feminist PUA" site (tagline "Refuse to Choose Between Being Nice and Getting Laid") has the following advice in a recent post:

“Hey, we haven’t done a movie marathon in a while. Want to come over and catch up on our bad 80′s movie watching?” Would be a perfect example. This is a version of the – “why don’t you come up and have a night cap.” No one involved is fooled – everyone knows that sex might happen. But that’s the important difference. Sex MIGHT happen. It’s not certain, no one is committing to anything, there’s no pressure.

Even in CN's watered down "might" happen version, I'm not with it.

Without being given these primers, I would never have found out on my own, except by virtue of being sexually assaulted (sorry, again with the rape culture reference), that "dinner and a movie" meant "shagging".

In a live situation (as opposed to theoretic discussion, where I have now been given these primers) I would STILL not get it. If my date says, "I have the flat to myself this evening, come over and watch a movie, I'll make dinner," then I expect to be watching a movie and eating dinner. I don't even consider the possibility of sex, if that's all that's done. Two exceptions spring to mind: one is that she and I have already discussed shagging together, and maybe have already done it, so I already know that it's something that might be established as a pattern; the other is that the invitation is given with enough non-verbal cues (as in, VERY obvious nudge, wink, air-quotes around "movie", etc - don't expect me to get it from vocal cues, I need exaggerated visual cues to get this). In either of these cases, I'm still likely to check my read of the situation - "So, should I bring condoms?"

There is a third option, which is exemplified by a scene in the movie Brassed Off (I forget the characters' names, or who speaks which lines):

A: Would you like to come in for coffee?
B: Sorry, I don't drink coffee.
A: I haven't got any.

Or, "Sorry, I don't like etchings" - "That's okay. I haven't got any."

Or, "I'm not really into movies" - "That's okay. I haven't got anything to watch them on."

Basically, if it's an offer that can't even possibly be genuine, then I'll look for the ulterior motive (i.e. sex), but otherwise I probably won't get it.

Let's flip this around: I don't get that "etchings"/"dinner and a movie at mine" is supposed to be code for "sex". I only know "coffee" is supposed to be because I have seen that one before and had it explained to me. So, when I offer to cook dinner and show my date a movie, and she says yes, then what? Well, I'm not going to be offering her sex, but she thinks that I am. CN offers the following manoeuvres as possibilities:

Mutually pretending like you aren’t planning to have sex is exciting! There is the tingle when he touches your arm (was that on purpose? accidentally? should I touch him back?). There is the rush when she puts a pillow on your lap to watch the movie (should I stroke her hair? touch her back?). People like the thrill and fun of building up to sex (when done well of course).

Now, given that I'm not planning to have sex if I've made that offer, but am a tactile and cuddle-loving person: touching, and "pillow on the lap" (I'm guessing the implication here is that she then puts her head on the pillow, but I could be wrong!) seem to be natural steps in a perfectly chaste but loving situation; and I would have no problem cuddling/caressing my partner and feeling it meant nothing more than that we were sharing an intimate and pleasurable time while watching the telly. I would not interpret these moves as sexual, unless (as already mentioned) we already had established in some explicit format (either discussion, or doing) that we had a sexual relationship.

So, what happens? Either a) she pushes it further, trying to make a non-sexual situation into a sexual one (because she thinks it already is one), and thus making me feel uncomfortable (which kills the mood), or b) she goes away thinking I must not find her sexy because I invited her for sex and then didn't make a move on her. CN says that the "dinner and a movie at mine" line is a good way to ensure there's no pressure, but for me there's far more pressure, because I am expecting one thing (dinner and a movie) and my date might be expecting something else (sex). That leads to tension, which is a form of pressure.

In short, if I'm "pretending it's not going to happen" then as far as I'm concerned, it's not going to happen.

Back to the RSA Animate video: At 7:40, Mr Pinker discusses economists' and logicians' concept of mutual versus individual knowledge, where individual knowledge is stuff that everyone knows for themselves, and mutual knowledge is stuff that everybody in the situation knows that everyone else knows.

It is supposed to be mutual knowledge that "coffee/etchings/dinner-and-a-movie-at-mine means, 'let's have sex'" (Steven Pinker discusses this at 9:45 in the video). If it's true that everyone knows that, then it is also true that the person you're inviting for coffee/etchings/dinner knows it, and therefore that if they agree, then they are agreeing to sex with you. But there's no guarantee that they know what it "really" means. These codes are socially-constructed and require someone to be familiar with the social context of the statements before the meaning is grasped. I had to learn what "coffee" meant. Until I saw these posts and comments, I didn't know what "dinner-and-a-movie" meant, and I never knew about "etchings" until I watched the RSA video. "Mutual knowledge" that is not explicitly stated is only an assumption, it is not true knowledge. In fact, I would argue that there is no euphemism 'x' for which it can be said that "Everybody knows that 'x' is code for 'let's have sex'", and certainly, that is the only way I feel able to proceed with wanting sex.

For this reason, unless I have clear and incontrovertible evidence that this particular dating partner, in this particular situation, knows that I intend "dinner and a movie at mine" to mean "I am setting up a situation in which sex is on the cards", then I am not going to assume that she has any idea or any clue that that's what it could mean, or that her "yes" means that she is open to the idea of sex with me.

So, sticking with the assumption that I was using this ruse to set up the possibility of a sexual scenario, I'm going to feel compelled to read her touch or her pillow on my lap as being chaste moves, just the way I would interpret them if I hadn't had an ulterior motive.

CN implies that the uncertainty is exciting and part of the sexual thrill of setting up this sort of situation. But for me it's the complete opposite. It completely kills the mood, kills any sense of sexual excitement, it just makes me feel dirty and wrong (and not in a good, sexy, way - in a creepy, horrible way).

CN says:

If what you want is to sleep with someone, coming right out and suggesting they come over to shack up is rarely a good strategy unless you have a pre-existing no-strings attached, call me up anytime agreement for sex. But if you want to have sex with someone you are dating, or a friend, or an ex, you will be far more effective if you employ a little strategic obfuscation of your motives.

As discussed above, a pre-existing sexual relationship is about the only time when I could feel confident and sexy while using obfuscation! With "dating, or a friend, or an ex" then anything other than an explicitly stated sexual motive (or understanding of my sexual motive) is going to result in me assuming they don't know, or don't want, sex to be involved. (Not to mention that, frankly, if my relationship with an ex is on a level where I feel I can't come out and say that I'd like sex with her, then I wouldn't want sex with her anyway.)

Now, CN does admit that:

Now, will this strategy guarantee you sex? Of course not. There are plenty of other ways you can make someone awkward and uncomfortable. And, if you don’t frame your invitation right, the other person may have NO idea what you’re suggesting. If this is the case, you’ll have a lot more work to do before something sexual will happen between you two.

That at least acknowledges the issue when I'm receiving the invitation: although when it comes to Yours Truly, "framing your invitation right", as discussed above, effectively means being explicit about something - either, we're already explicit about the sexual objective of the relationship, or we're explicit that the invitation isn't genuine (by use of nudge/wink/"air-quotes", or by admitting that the pretext is false - "I haven't got any"). What it doesn't recognise is that I'm never going to be confident that my non-verbal cues (or "I haven't got any" line) is going to clear up the situation for the other person; and anyway, I would feel as if making those sorts of gestures would creep out the other person far more effectively than just coming straight out with what I really mean!

Another thing it doesn't recognise is whether or not I feel awkward or uncomfortable in a situation, which is what I've been discussing here for the most part.

But this strategy will be much more likely to result in you being alone with the target of your affections. And being alone with them gives you a statistically greater chance of getting in their pants, than if you lay on your cards on the table and get met with a dial tone, a dodging joke or a firm declaration of friendship as your response.

Eh, I'm really not interested in having sex with a statistic, so "statistically greater chance" doesn't impress me.

And, I think it's important to be aware that my reaction to a sexual come-on after I've invited a date to "dinner and a movie at mine" is much more likely to be the personal, face-to-face conversation equivalent of "a dial tone, a dodging joke or a firm declaration of friendship" than it is to be either of us getting into the other's pants.

Now, that's all very well, blasting the idea that "everyone knows 'x' means 'sex'", and the idea that you can use 'x' as a strategy to build up to sex with someone. But there's a clear truth in the above statement by CN: it certainly is much more conducive to getting sexual with someone if you can get alone-together time with that person! So it's fair to say, "What's the alternative? What could I do instead?"

Now, to date, all my sexual encounters have come from a straightforward "lay your cards on the table" situation. However, those were also situations where the possibility and desire for sex had already been discussed explicitly beforehand and it was just a question of when we would feel ready and how it would happen. So we can put those to one side and think about a hypothetical situation, and put me in it and see what I might try:

Hypothetical: I've been dating a woman for a bit, we've gone on a few dates together, cuddled, kissed, maybe a little bit of more serious fondling after that most recent date or two - I think it's time to test the waters and see if she's looking to get fully sexual with me. So, how do I deal with that, without laying cards on the table (because I feel like she might be the type to react as CN describes)?

What I think I would do is make it a totally open-ended. That is, I would not offer any "pretext", but also would not mention sex. It would just be, "How about coming over and spending the evening with me?" It sets up no non-sexual expectations so I don't need to fear that she expects 'x' and only 'x'; but it still allows the pretence that it is some unspecified non-sexual activity that is proposed. Now, let's assume that she's cautious and thinks saying "yes" to such an open-ended invitation is still a little bit on the slutty side - a bit too obviously a pretext for a sexual situation. So she responds, "To do what?" At which point I say, "Let's see what we feel like," and give a couple of genuine possibilities (most likely including "I'll make dinner and we watch a movie", but I'd say that meaning "watch a movie"...) and add another vague term with a bit more of a hint, e.g. "or whatever we feel like" or "or something more, if you're lucky" - trying to pitch the vague term based on the tone of voice with which she said, "to do what?" If she still pushes for specifics, then (again, based on tone of voice and how it feels) probably make a joke out of the ulterior motive - "Ah, you got me, I really just hoped to get you alone and shag your brains out, but how about that movie?" Ideally, it wouldn't go that far - I'd hope she said yes after "let's see what we feel like", because it's still open-ended when she arrives, and we can then have a conversation, see how body language, touching, etc develops, maybe let the talk get sexual, and go from there... or, if she's not actually up for it (or we're just going slower than that), then because there were no promises either way, I can get out the DVDs or whatever and see what develops. (Although, as noted above, uncertainty about motives is not a good or sexy thrill for me, it feels creepy, so it needs to be judged very well indeed by her if that's the way she wants to go.)

That's about the only "obfuscation" approach I can see being comfortable with using myself.

Here's the TL;DR bullet points:

There's no such thing as "everybody knows [x] means 'sex'."
Uncertainty is not a turn-on for me
I'll take you at your word if you invite me for dinner and a movie - if I don't make a move on you, it's not that I'm not interested in you sexually, it's because I didn't realise you wanted it, and probably didn't even bring a condom (and regular ones are too small, so having your own supply might not help there)
If I invite you to mine for dinner and a movie, keep the flirting light and fluffy - it DOESN'T mean sex, and if you overdo it you might drive me away instead; but if I invite you over for "whatever we feel like", that's your cue to go for it, if you want to.