Nothing to do with all our strength

I'm not sure that the vote in the Commons went the wrong way. But it didn't go the right way. And I don't know how it could have.

So much of the discussion has revolved around comparisons to previous conflicts. Labour were quick to say how much they regret Iraq and were keen not to repeat the mistake, but this isn't very similar. Surely it's more like Libya; long-distance, targeted strikes, designed to help rebels who we've finally come out in support of. Are we looking nervously at new developments in Egypt, and deciding that maybe this sudden outpouring of "freedom" wasn't such a good idea after all? Individual MPs may protest their reasons for voting one way or another, but many outlets have been quick to highlight that this wouldn't be a "popular" war. In the face of what is being presented as a moral choice, is it our national war-weariness which is the most powerful motivator?

What is most upsetting though is that this whole discussion is only happening now. For months and months and endless months a government has been at war with a section of its people, and bystanders have died and their homes have been destroyed, and well over a million people have fled their home to go...nowhere. A country which was a safe haven for refugees from the Iraq war now wreaks devastation upon itself, and we only feel compelled to even discuss acting because the method of death-dealing has changed?! "But kill them gently!" we bleat, while we act as a platform for the international arms trade, and defend our insistence on selling arms to the conflict zone by arguing that we need to make it a fair fight. Have we learned nothing about the price of conflict? Even as fresh warnings from Sri Lanka ring in our ears? A repeat vote on military intervention has been ruled out; what about other forms of intervention? The government is clearly happy to contribute financially to the conflict, can we please send something to the humanitarian relief?

There has been hand-wringing about our "role in the world". The USA does not seem fazed by our lack of involvement, turning instead to the erstwhile cheese-eating surrender monkeys for support (if, in fact, they need any at all). Maybe now we can get over the idea that we are a "great power" in the world; is it too late to form closer alliances with other neighbours? To build new bridges in light of our new-found irrelevance?

Or perhaps we can take on a greater responsibility; do more for the world than just making explosions when one side of a muddy conflict turn a darker shade of grey, having sat on our hands for so long. Because our utter inability to do anything effective at this stage, whatever the result of last week's vote, is the greatest tragedy. Not a tragedy for us, but for the entire nation of Syria.

Dear British Press

Here are some things which you keep telling us about the EDL (no, not that EDL).

What you say: Tommy Robinson has changed his name.

What you think it means: Tommy Robinson is a sneaky and devious character, who can't be trusted.

What it actually means: Tommy Robinson has adopted a pseudonym for his activities with the EDL (no, not that EDL). People are allowed to do this; it is after all his name that we're talking about. You don't mention Sting's birth name every time you run an article about him. Or the Queen's.

What you say: Tommy Robinson has been found guilty of crimes.

What you think it means: Tommy Robinson is a Criminal, and the EDL (no, not that EDL) are all thugs.

What it actually means: Tommy Robinson has committed crimes. A small difference perhaps, but constantly defining people who have committed crimes by them gives very little incentive or opportunity for reform.

What you say: The EDL (no, not that EDL) are bad at spelling.

What you think it means: These people are stupid and uneducated. Laugh at them!

What it actually means: Either the (presumably) English education system doesn't teach everyone good spelling by the time they can or do leave it, or not everyone thinks spelling is as important as people who write for a living do. Either way, using this to sneer at (predominantly) white, working-class men isn't going to help the fight to prevent the far right from hijacking this demographic's sense of identity.

What you say: The EDL (no, not that EDL) are like the Nazis.

What you think it means: They are evil, like the Nazis.

What it actually means: You haven't heard of Godwin's law, and don't know anything about the Nazis. The Nazis were always a politically-orientated group, with clear goals and targets and a charismatic leadership. The EDL (no, not that EDL) are not.

Now can we please get on with demolishing their ideology, instead of repeating the same clumsy attempts at character assassination? It shouldn't take long.

Thanks.

Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

When I was in America a couple of years ago, I took with me a short book on American  history (A History of the United States by Philip Jenkins]; I figured that actually being there would be a good excuse to break me in to a subject I knew next to nothing about. I was explaining this to an American at a party, when he completely cut me off.

"Whatever book you're reading, throw it out and get a copy of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. It's just amazing."

Well, it's taken me two and a half years, but I eventually took his advice. And it was really good advice.

Through a dense 600+ pages, Zinn overturns the conventional narrative of American history, and tells the stories of the people who found themselves on the wrong side of the powers that were, and consequently of the history that they wrote. He opens by challenging Columbus' legacy as a great man, using the explorer's own words;

[The Arawaks] brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things...they willingly traded everything they owned. They would make fine servants....With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.

Zinn goes on to spend the rest of the chapter examining the first trans-Atlantic slave trade (as European ships sailed empty to Hispaniola and were packed full of islanders to take back), and the initial callous brutality meted out by these and other early pioneers.

This approach to history, that of giving the often voiceless pride of place rather than relegating them to a footnote¹, is carried through the book up to the early 1990s, but it wasn't this which struck me most strongly, or which prompted me to keep it overdue from the library so that I could write this blog post (I've already renewed the book twice). Instead, I kept feeling that the situations Zinn described were remarkably mirrored by those going on today.

As an example, political protest is (inevitably, given the author's chosen perspective) a recurring theme of the book. In 1780, the Founding Fathers denounced a series of protests led by a group known as the Regulators (who argued that the revolution hadn't changed anything for ordinary people) for using tactics which they themselves had used during the Civil War, just as the new Egyptian regime has been undermined by popular protest in Tahrir Square, the birthplace of that country's Arab Spring. After a protest in 1837 turned violent, the media denounced the protesters (now labelled rioters) and everything they stood for, just as elements of the press in Britain cover the slightest disturbance at a modern rally and nothing else about it. Political opposition to a coming war became almost impossible the moment it started in 1846, and citizens on both sides were urged to put aside all other grievances for the national good during the Civil War. There was even a (initially) left-wing politician called Tom Watson, just as there is now.

"You're a miserable pipsqueak of a man, Taft!"

Social movements don't seem to have changed too much either. In the mid-nineteenth century, women were urged by conservative religious leaders not to wear more practical clothes in order to preserve their feminine mystique;

Woman, robed and folded in her long dress, is beautiful. She walks gracefully....If she attempts to run, the charm is gone....Take off the robes, and put on pants, and show the limbs, and grace and mystery are all gone.

Attempts by the oppressors to help the oppressed were ham-fisted back in the 1830s too, as Zinn reports that southern black leaders "had to struggle constantly with the unconscious racism of white abolitionists". He also of course relates the ever-present problems of those facing intersecting prejudices, as well as disagreements within movements which in some ways were all striving for the same things, and in other ways really weren't. And of course there's apathy, or the perception of it; Alice Rossi's quotation below could come from a 1992 newspaper column, or indeed a 2012 opinion piece from someone who isn't reading the right blogs.

There is no overt anti-feminism in our society...not because sex equality has been achieved, but because there is practically no feminist spark left among American women.

It in fact dates from 1964, three years before a new rash of women's lib groups spread across the States.

What I found most distressing, though, was the appearance of instantly recognisable themes in war and conflict. It turns out that the most eloquent argument of the futility of renewing Trident amidst a massive removal of state support for the most vulnerable was made by Martin Luther King in 1968;

We are spending all of this money for death and destruction, and not nearly enough money for life and constructive development...when the guns of war become a national obsession, social needs inevitably suffer.

At the other end of Zinn's timeline, impoverished white settlers were repeatedly encouraged by the authorities to settle on land occupied by native tribes, leading to friction and conflict. This was used as a pretext to send in the military to "defend" the American citizens, while boundaries were "renegotiated" with the people who had lived there for centuries, and treaties were signed promising the sanctity of the new boundaries in perpetuity. A few years later white settlers were encouraged to farm that land as well, and the cycle started again. Though in fairness to the fledgling USA, I didn't read anything suggesting that they had built a giant wall around tribal areas / through native villages. Later, when the army was supposed to "manage" the forced migration of the remaining native peoples east of the Appalachians into the West, instead they outsourced the job to private contractors, who forgot to provide enough volunteers for the Olympics did everything as cheaply as possible, contributing to a sharp decline in the quality of healthcare provision and huge numbers of deaths².

It was disheartening to read a long history of battles which are still being fought today, or governments which have not learned from their mistakes (and perhaps do not want to), or the continuity of oppression over a long span of time. Is this the lesson to be learned? Or should I be encouraged, enjoying a new-found solidarity with people throughout history and across a continent, who have fought fights mirrored in today's world and have sometimes triumphed? Still living through the aftershocks of the global banking crisis, a speech beginning, "Wall Street owns the country" and dating from 1890 (yes, 1890) suggests that not much progress has been made (unless you work in finance), but it also points to people who have always rejected the idea that business should be bigger than humans, that "companies are people, my friend" (Mitt Romney), that economics should always be in the driving seat of policy making.

It remains, however, the best book on American history that I have ever read (and I have read slightly more than two). In the last chapter, written in or around 1996, Zinn dares to hope for a popular uprising of the 99% of people who own a less than obscene amount of the country's wealth. In fact, he uses the phrase "the 99%" so repeatedly that I started to look for connections between his work and the Occupy movement (I failed; the man was clearly simply prophetic). Either way, though allegations of bias might be levelled by people who support the great American narrative, it seems that if we do not know Howard Zinn's history, then we are indeed doomed to repeat it.

Also, does anyone know Haringey library's opening hours? I have a fine to pay.

¹ Presidents, industrialists, and other establishment figures are also mentioned in this book

² I of course appreciate that a comparison like this over-states the significance of coalition outsourcing in modern Britain, but it was interesting to see that it is nothing new

Blue in blue

What's so special about the bluebird?

This track by Sara Bareilles, this song by Christina Perri (less so), this piece by Stanford (so much more so)....

Just askin'.

It's all about the Gaze

What a difference a context makes; I'm sure that the retailer selling the Big Issue in St. John's Wood, surrounded by expensive cars and clothing boutiques, was no scruffier than any other, but not even in Ascot have I seen someone hawking the Issue who looked so out of place. Either way, last week's cover star Dustin Hoffman certainly caught my attention, with a discussion of his preparation for Tootsie. Being the great Oscar-nominated method actor that he is, naturally he spent some time dressed up as a woman, just, kind of, wondering around. One evening he came home to his wife in tears, devastated to find himself constantly given a quick glance and then ignored by men who didn't find him particularly attractive, and evidently assumed that they wouldn't be interested in the "woman" in front of them for any other reason. He related in the article that his tears were tears of guilt at having been such a man for most of his life, though it's not impossible that the unusual experience of being routinely written off based solely on physical appearance had got to him a little.

[this next bit kind of turned into a bit of a "Male Gaze 101" (sorry), so if you don't want that then skip to the paragraph that begins, "But to the point!"]

Perhaps it's not surprising that it hit Dustin Hoffman so hard; no-one knows really knows what it's like to live as someone from a visibly different demographic until they've done it. There's an argument in feminist theory that many of the ways in which the world is presented, be it in advertising, film, or even my copy of the Big Issue, are shown through the lens of a conventional masculine outlook. For example, the slogan "sex sells" is widely used to explain the presence of overtly sexualised  images of women, which are completely uninteresting (sexually) to straight women, gay men, asexuals, and anyone else who doesn't find the socially conventional beauty model attractive. First outlined in the mid '70s by Laura Mulvey, this "male gaze" has been delightfully subverted recently by a group called The Hawkeye Initiative, whose m.o. is replacing sexualised images of women from the world of comics with pictures of Hawkeye in the same pose, highlighting how ridiculous the compositions are. I may have spent more time than is healthy on that tumblr....

The Avengers, but more fabulous - from Kevin Bolk

Sadly the male gaze is a powerful weapon out here in the real world too, as a way of quickly assessing a woman (or Dustin Hoffman) by her physical appearance. And it's not just men who do it; while I've heard my fair share of conversations between men who have clearly exercised their judgement through their eyes (and undoubtedly done it myself), women do it too. Aimed at strangers on public transport wearing "inappropriate" clothes for someone their shape, or in a professional environment to denigrate an unpopular colleague, the gaze has great power in its all-pervasiveness among both genders in casual conversation. Neither is it exclusively something directed at women, though in my experience that accounts for the overwhelming majority of cases. And it's hard to imagine the producers of the X-files considering not casting David Duchovny's character because the actor wasn't enough of a hunk.

But to the point! I think the male gaze has a counterpart - let's call it the female gaze for now and then explode the gender binary later. The female gaze is by default positive, affirming, a way of bonding with other people. It's when you comment on someone's outfit, the book they're reading, their gift shopping. Ok, so it doesn't have to be a force for good, it can be used to disparage and insult, but crucially it is targeted at something which reflects a decision, something that speaks to who that person has chosen to be, not their genetic quirks. And unlike the male gaze, it leads to discussion instead of division, and can be openly directed at friends. [Or strangers - I once saw a friend in floods of tears briefly pause to admire a stranger's tights; impressive gazing!]

Like the male gaze, it does have a gendered association with it. As a straight man I am often told not to try to join in discussions about the clothes someone is wearing, and have been called an honorary woman (or even "a lesbian in a man's body") when friends have found me not unpleasant to go shopping with. The question is how we could make this "female" gaze more universal, preferably at the expense of the "male" gaze. Maybe superheroes can be portrayed with the labels sticking out of their costumes, so we can admire their choice of fabrics? Or pay for covertly taken photos of celebs listening to Bon Jovi, or reading Jasper Fforde (the scandal!)? I don't know. But I'd like to live in a world where Dustin Hoffman was complimented on his earrings, and where I had first spotted how cheerful the Big Issue seller was keeping rather than judging his poverty.

One quick afterthought - conversations about the burqa's purpose often dwell on how it can alleviate the oppressiveness of the "male" gaze, but doesn't it do the same for the "female" gaze?

Love, Honour, and Dismay

It did not come as a surprise that the Church of England has rejected the government consultation on same-sex marriage. While the Church has always been a wide coalition of opposing viewpoints it is currently dominated centrally by a conservative outlook. And if we're not ready to permit women equality with men then giving any acknowledgement to non-heterosexuals is asking quite a lot. And yet, knowing all of this and thinking myself prepared for it, the Response itself has still given me fresh disappointment. 

In its opening paragraphs the document highlights the importance of, "the possibility of procreation" in marriage, an element which is optional to the marriage service and which places a value on the institution no higher than the fertility and compatibility of a couple's genitals. They go on to wheel out clichéd but nonsensical arguments; I have never had it explained to me in what way other people being married changes the nature of marriage for heterosexual couples, nor why the constant and never-ending shifting definition of words is suddenly to create a seismic event.

However, I was most shocked to discover the document defending its stance by arguing that allowing same sex couples to marry, "deliver[s] no obvious legal gains given the rights conferred by civil partnerships". Of all institutions, the Church should be able to acknowledge that the gulf between marriage and the legal trappings that accompany it is as wide as the difference between death and the handling of your estate. A religious marriage is about presenting your relationship to God and to your family and community (whatever shape the latter takes) and asking for their combined blessing and support in sustaining it. A civil ceremony may attempt, sometimes successfully, to capture some of these elements, but it cannot capture all of them, and for members of the Church the legal similarity of the two is completely irrelevant.

It is only since 2002 that the Church of England has officially sanctioned the re-marriage of divorcees (somewhat ironically given the Church's origins). The mechanisms of marriage available to ordinary people has changed a number of times over the centuries, without radically overhauling what that mechanism symbolised to the couple involved (though that has happened too). But all other things aside, for the Church of England to use the standard secular arguments to defend its position is utterly ridiculous. It completely misses the point of marriage, in a way which the Church of all organisations really ought not to. If it is an issue of theology, then say so. If it is an issue of doctrine, then say so. Don't hide behind weak irrelevancies and thinly-veiled prejudice.

The Church of England's website has a page discussing the background to the Church's position on marriage. On it, Rowan Williams says of same-sex marriage, "issues like stigma and marginalisation have to be addressed at the level of culture rather than law". For once, I could not disagree more. The government, community leaders, and yes especially the Church, have a duty to take the lead on such issues and set the tone for culture to follow. It is what we are called to do as Christians, and are in an unusually strong position to do so as an established Church. This Response is cowardly and embarrassing. And wrong.

Justice once was blind, but now it sees.

The US soldier accused of killing 16 civilians in Afghanistan on Sunday has been flown to Kuwait, "based on legal recommendation" from the Pentagon. The excuse is that the US doesn't have the appropriate detention facilities in Afghanistan, and the US military likes to deal with misdemeanours committed by their personnel. They take care of their own, as Bruce Springsteen might say. Meanwhile it's making Cameron and Obama's (Camama?) confidence in the nascent Afghani justice system seem much lower than they would have us believe, as well as smelling of rank hypocrisy. Not only is the prison camp at Guantamo Bay still open, but both countries have previously insisted on people being tried by the people against whom atrocity has been committed, whether that was Saddam Hussein in 2003 or al Megrahi in 2000, whose trial was held under Scots law at a disused US military base in the Netherlands. Apparently it simply wouldn't have been just to try him in a neutral country (as suggested by, among others, Nelson Mandela).

It perhaps isn't surprising that a country with the unaccountability of the USA, and where the chief legal advisor to the government doesn't think that due process necessarily has to involve a court, doesn't feel a need to play by the rules it sets other people. What's the point of policing the world if there aren't any perks to the job? But isn't one of the key things about justice that it's meant to provide a level playing field? That power should not be allowed to play a part in it? Obviously no justice system is going to be completely free of bias (even if that's merely because people with more money can afford better lawyers), but with fairness being so deeply ingrained in our psyche surely such international bullying should be called to account?

And not just international bullying, for nations do not have a monopoly on injustice. A student of Cambridge University has been suspended for 2 and a half years for an entirely peaceful act of protest. The protest was staged against the government's higher education policy by a large group of people who have all freely admitted to being participants, but who are not sharing in the unprecedented and completely disproportionate punishment. And this punishment, which will completely derail the student's study, has been arbitrated by the University internally, without reference to...well, anything, as far as anyone can make out. The University doesn't like protests, but should know to expect them when it invites contentious people to give lectures; when my faculty was closed for 5 days so that the Premier of China, a country with one of the worst human rights records in the world, could give a prestigious lecture, a student took exception and threw a shoe at him. He was tried in a courtroom, and cleared on all charges (allegations that he was only tried due to pressure from the Chinese government were found to be baseless). He did not have to put his life on hold for years as a direct result of protest.

There is a petition to sign, and a protest to go on, and I highly encourage both. This isn't the first time I've moaned about the inner workings of Cambridge University on this blog, and it may not be the last, but this one takes the biscuit. When Mandela was trying to have al Megrahi tried in South Africa, he said that this was because

no one nation should be complainant, prosecutor and judge

and when trying their marine at home the USA might attempt to use this as a figleaf on their hypocrisy. But Cambridge University in this instance is all three. Other people have written eloquently about the absurdity of a university punishing a student for reading contentious poetry, but I hope someone reminds them what they are taking into their own hands. Ruling the roost in your ivory tower is great until the International Anti-Poaching Foundation catches up with you.

Judging a book by its label.

When I left university and wasn't working as a musician in any capacity at all, I had a slight crisis of self-definition. At uni and since (and now (not right now, I'm typing)) I conducted various different ensembles, and used to tell people that I was a conductor. But in this brief interlude in my life I wasn't conducting anyone, and since it really isn't a solo activity I didn't conduct at all. Could I still refer to myself as a conductor?

The answer mostly came back as yes; although this wasn't a career, that was a useful parallel to draw. An out-of-work estate agent would still call themselves an estate agent. But I had always felt that this label was one which should only be used adjectivally, to refer to people who conducted. (Possibly then, my insistence on being called Maestro by everyone I met during this period was a little over the top.)

My friend R just (ok, a week ago, I think slowly) wrote something about the word sexual, as an opposite to asexual. This is a label to prevent those of us who don't belong to a minority group from being referred to as, offensively, "normal", and so gets added to my exciting list of words which I can use to demonstrate that I am in fact The Man you should be sticking it to. R went on to say that many of eir sexual friends weren't too happy with the new label they had been assigned, and went to great pains to stress that not all sexuals are the same, and that in fact it's a stupid label which isn't necessarily helpful.[1]

Kind of like most labels then, yes? In this great breadth of humanity any label is only going to take you so far, and after it's been around for a while is going to come with too many preconceptions and prejudices to be overly useful. Aware that they were wary of some of the associations which they religion carries, I tried to describe someone as a "liberal Christian" recently, only to be told (by the person in question) that they weren't, and much preferred to be called something else (I can't remember exactly what, but it was three words long and the last one was Christian). This person had felt the need to qualify their label, to label it even, to remove or at least challenge some of the baggage that came with it.

And where does the baggage come from? It comes from people who have adopted or been given the label. R talks about eir difficulty self-defining as a feminist because a teacher at school gave em a view of what that meant, which ey has since rejected. Over at Gingerbread Feminists, Clare the Awesome (whose name has been changed to protect her identity) has written a wonderful post about what feminism is or has the potential to be, giving her use of that label a tighter definition, and attempting to free it of extraneous exclusions or assumptions.

I describe myself as a "feminist ally". Some women have told me that men can't be feminists, but I don't think that they're right. And it's not because I'm worried about picking up the baggage either - I do in fact have quite hairy legs. But sometimes, inevitably, I screw up, and do or say things which are decidedly unfeminist. This is hardly surprising, given that I am The Power we are all fighting, but am I less able to assist the movement just because I do not take ownership of its label? I would certainly much, much rather be less useful than I might be than accidentally sully someone else's battle flag, making the label less usable in the future.

Am I wrong to have this much respect for a word? Should labels be kept for pieces of writing, or objects, or actions, rather than people? Or, like my favourite literature, should I qualify every label I take upon myself every time I use it?

And, while you're here, can anyone give me a gender-neutral replacement for, "one-upmanship"?!

***********************

[1]  Given that a few weeks ago I saw Simon Hoggart of Guardian fame getting in a lather after his first encounter with "cis-gendered" (bless him) maybe this kind of concern isn't unusual.

I spy, with my critical eye, something beginning with fail....

The prompt for me to watch the first episode of the new series of Sherlock was seeing a proliferation of blog posts about it's rewriting of the end of the episode. I managed to avoid reading any of the posts before seeing the episode, so all I noticed at the time (not having read the original) was that the ending was a bit pants, and the lead female character, who had been brilliantly written for throughout, wound up looking pretty pathetic. Which was a shame.

A friend of mine who enjoys Harry Potter (and who also gave the most rousing and convincing defence of the Twilight series I've ever heard, for which they get kudos) told me that they are really disappointed, not only by the fact that outing Dumbledore post-publication appears to imply that non-heterosexual relationships are somehow more "adult" than heterosexual ones, but also by the fact that Ginny Weasley's sole raison d'etre is to marry Harry. Which, in spite of rhyming, is not cool.

Another friend (yes I have more than one) has expressed disappointment in discovering recently that a couple of their favourite authors (namely Lois McMaster Bujold and Jared Diamond) are in their own special ways more than a teensy bit racist. Damn.

I really enjoy Steven Moffat's writing. I really like his dialogue, his pacing, most of his characters. I love what he's done with Doctor Who, and I'm willing to sit through a certain amount of potentially dangerous over-simplification / benevolent sexism to enjoy it. I'm also willing to ignore a certain amount of homophobia from the lead characters in Sherlock because I think their relationship is well-written enough to overcome it (Korea disagrees). But is it enough simply to be aware of these problems? Given that I have very little way of addressing them (apart from getting whiney on The Internet), by continuing to enjoy and consume this material I am tacitly endorsing it, and every time I recommend it to a friend I'm potentially propagating it. Should I be giving a list of caveats every time I tell someone about something I like? Because given what a fan of Lord of the Rings I am that could seriously impact on my free time. (There's a deeper argument I quite like here, which sheds some interesting light on a discussion I had a while ago about the rape scene in the Watchmen film.)

In some ways I feel that it's a mark of quality - the fewer caveats I need on something the better it is. I'm currently avidly consuming Avatar: The Last Airbender (a children's cartoon made for the American mainstream market) because it is remarkably progressive regarding gender, race, ability and so on. The number of caveats required in the first series is roughly one half (it also has a 10-tonne, six-legged, flying bison in it, which may explain much of the rest of its appeal). While that's all very well in contemporary media, it doesn't work for much else. Wagner was anti-semitic but still wrote great music (well, arguably great anyway). Gandhi beat his wife, but surely that doesn't invalidate his approach to protest? And obviously we can't discount Stephen Hawking's contribution to physics because, according to the BBC, he spends most of the day thinking about women, who remain "a complete mystery" apparently (poor dear).

Maybe it's about lowering expectations. Nobody's perfect, and even friends' opinions are bound to disappoint at some point. I guess for the moment I'll just keep playing "spot the fail" and then getting whiney on The Internet.

It isn't. It's just the lift.

I first found out that David Cameron had said that the UK was a Christian country because some non-Christian friends of mine were being angry and insulted. Given that he was arguing that a lack of Christian values was leading to the country's "moral collapse" this is fair enough, and my instinctive reaction (as so often on these occasions) was to feel bad that Christians all to often play the part of the oppressive majority. Though I have to disagree with the one who said that Jesus probably would have wanted to punch David Cameron as much as he did (WWJP wrist-bands anyone?!).

But then I thought about it. Mr. Cameron reckons that it is Christian values which make the UK what it is today, specifically values from the Bible. Of course it's difficult to say which values an entire nation does or doesn't hold, but in a democracy surely we ought to be able to get some sort of idea by looking at how the nation's elected leaders conduct themselves?

Obviously the commandment not to kill runs into problems in a nation which continues to prosecute wars around the world, and a judicial system which still by default asks people to swear an oath on a Bible contravenes all sorts of instructions from the Old Testament, though perhaps I'm nitpicking. And it would be a bit ridiculous to expect a modern capitalist nation to cancel all debts owed to it every seven years, right? But then, continuing to demand repayments of loans (made to Mubarak so that he could buy weapons from us) from the current Egyptian government (which came to power because they didn't like being persecuted through the same weapons) seems a bit rich. And can the message of the opening of Genesis, that the Bible considers humans the keepers of the garden God has built on earth, really have been received by a government which continues to underwrite loans used to promote unenvironmental development? Especially when this contravenes the same government's own promise not to, but lying's another matter.

But then, that's the Old Testament. It's not really Christian anyway. And Jesus isn't big on the whole commandment thing. The Sabbath was created to serve humans, not the other way round, and all that. Except, when telling a group of men who brought a woman to be stoned for adultery,

He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

(John 8:7, from the King James Version, the one Cameron was praising in his statement), I can't help thinking that it must count for a man who used to trash restaurants insisting that rioters receive disproportionately harsh sentences. And that one of Jesus' key commandments, to love our neighbours, as jarring horrendously with approaching the Eurozone in financial trouble as an opportunity to get things we want from them.

Ask 4,000 people what makes a Christian a Christian and you'll get 4,000 answers. Trying to do the same for something as abstract as a country is almost ridiculous, but if David Cameron thinks that the answer to the problems he perceives is to take your values and morals from the Bible, then maybe he should start taking these values to heart in the way he conducts policy.

Because from the way it is governed, this doesn't look like any kind of Christian country to me.


EDIT - I just found this. Wonderful.

You want the truth?

How on earth one of the country's most senior politicians manages to repeat a complete misunderstanding (while adding, "I am not making this up", which is at least accurate inasmuch as it was someone else who made it up) in a speech at her party's annual conference is a bit of a mystery. I mean, we've all said things which weren't true because we were repeating a story that we had heard or misheard, but most of us don't have fact-checkers poring over our words all the time. A full debunking of the story can be found here, but what for me is even more remarkable is that the Daily Mail, which had previously reported the story and been corrected on it by the Press Complaints Commission, is continuing to report the story as if it is true.

Can they seriously not know that this story is false? Can they just not have properly researched it, and are happy to take the Home Secretary at her word? Because surely they wouldn't deliberately publish a story which they knew to be false? Is the veracity of the story less important than the fact that it confirms their worldview, or that it can be used as an evangelistic weapon?

It's a story that panders to many important right-wing principles of the moment; that there are too many immigrants, that, "human rights" are a farcical idea, that European legislation is threatening British sovereignty. Believing it to be true is self-affirming for the Mail and their readership, in the same way that I follow blogs that make me laugh smugly and feel superior about my enlightened outlook on life the universe and everything. Don't we all? Seek out people and communities that reinforce our own opinions and the way we live out lives? And isn't it easier to overlook inconvenient truths than to discard a highly useful piece of evidence which affirms and strengthens the rest of the evidence you've already gathered?

Perhaps this kind of deceit is terrifyingly human. And perhaps it's more common than we realise.

There's fighting in the streets.

As the violence in London spreads across the city (and out from the cover of darkness) it is easy to forget how it all started. A peaceful protest of about 200 people at the police shooting of Mark Duggan - and the subsequent lack of communication from the Met and the IPCC with his family - swelled as the police refused to speak to anyone from the protest. Watching it unfold on the BBC, I heard community leaders saying that they were not surprised that something like this had happened, that the lack of police engagement with the community had led to a huge amount of underlying frustration, and that police were still perceived as the enemy in many quarters. The police station on Tottenham High Road was described as being, "like a castle" in the community. As The Guardian reports;

Stafford Scott, a community organiser, said police were "absolutely" culpable for not responding to their requests for dialogue.

While the police claim that they are engaging sufficiently with communities, and that the perpetrators of violence were not representative of these communities, on Saturday night the people rioting were the community. Since then, media claims that the riots have become a more widespread excuse for looting and violence may or may not have more credence - it's impossible to say.

The police don't have a good track record of non-confrontational engagement. Responding to criticisms of insufficient policing of an earlier march, the student protest on 24th November 2010 was kettled and charged by officers on horseback after the looting of an empty police van left conspicuously unprotected along the march route. A protester I met later that evening was very clear that, "We were set up". Beyond protests, the police team in Cambridge established to "engage" the street life community only succeeded in harassing and arresting more of them for sleeping rough, if members of that community and the volunteers who worked most closely with them are to be believed.

Is this confrontational approach an inevitable element of policing? If the police exist to maintain law and order, it is certainly simpler to do this with the threat of force and punishment than with reasoned argument and inspiring altruism. Even more so against the back-drop of 20% cuts, as Paul Deller of the Metropolitan Police Federation explains,

it is the so-called "soft" services like youth clubs and initiatives that help keep young people out of trouble...which nationally the Education Select Committee says have been cut more than any other.

Maybe the police aren't doing a terrible job. At the time of writing there have been no deaths as a result of the riots, and tragedies during protests such as the death of Ian Tomlinson are fortunately incomparable to the pre-constabulary era Peterloo or St. George's Fields Massacres. And yet there are better ways of engaging, rather than simply dealing with, people from the other side of a conflict. Perhaps David Cameron could learn something from the community charities which survive his cuts about peace building without preparing for war. Because asking people who are justifiably angry not to become violent when confronted with aggressive policing is ridiculous. And then to call them "mindless" is hugely insulting.

We're not Judge Judy and executioner.

Well, looks like we finally got him. Osama bin Laden has been killed by American special forces in Pakistan, identified and buried at sea all in the blink of an eye, after 10 years as America's bogeyman-in-chief. And the world wants to celebrate! Americans feel as proud to be American as we did to be British just last Friday, while our very British newspapers fall over themselves to publish photographic evidence of bin Laden's death, so that we can all have a good look and tell ourselves how evil he was and how much he deserved what he got. Maybe the Sun will get to reuse it's most infamous headline tomorrow morning. The other two men killed in the raid are a mere footnote, as is the woman who was reportedly, "being used as a shield". Presumably someone decided a few more deaths was a price worth paying.

Because it has to be a price worth paying, right? We know that he killed all those people on September the 11th, we've been told so for 10 years. Never mind that he denied responsibility for it for 3 years (only claiming credit for the attack in an October 2004 attempt to discredit George W. Bush's re-election campaign), or that the British government's "September 11 attacks - Culpability document" concluded only that bin Laden headed the organisation responsible, or that al-Qaeda is not an organisation with a top-down command structure. Given that the perpetrators died in the attack, we needed someone else to be angry at, and the media repeatedly directed us to him. Who needs a trial? As Bush put it, "There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty".

This is all pretty troubling, but what on earth does this action say about our foreign policy? Obama at least is being consistent, having promised in his election campaign to pursue bin Laden into Pakistan with or without the permission of their government (and having spent so much time criticising operations in Iraq as having "taken our eye off the ball" that he's probably going to do extremely well out of this), and as yet it is unclear whether Pakistan even knew that the raid was coming - at the time of writing, the "Death of Osama bin Laden" Wikipedia page states, "the government of Pakistan was not notified of the planned raid", though this has yet to be cited (or even tagged, "citation needed"). To have assassinated a man without trial in the territory of an ally but without their permission?

What if America had tried this in North Korea? Or if it had happened in Pakistan, but executed by Indian troops? There are two first strike scenarios for Joshua to run right there. Should we now expect a series of surgical operations against other people America has reason to hate? Can minor states expect to get away with policing the world in this way? And what merits this kind of special attention, is it the number of people killed or just the number of Americans?

At what point did the world's most powerful nation decide that it was acceptable to mete out punishments of which it deemed people were deserving, without recourse to anything resembling a judicial process, the approval of the international community, or the knowledge of those on whose soil this was being carried out? It's not as if killing him does anything for his victims, proven or alleged. And what about the three people who died with him?

What a load of baloney.

Not such a weird weekend.

I didn't enjoy watching Louis Theroux's return visit to the Westboro Baptist Church, though to be honest I didn't expect to. I knew already that they are bigoted, that they use language which they know to be offensive, and that they court publicity because they believe they are called to. I was still shocked and upset by some of the publicity that they produce (which I don't really fancy describing here, I'm sure Google will tell you if you ask nicely), but I sort of expected to be. I didn't expect to get upset at the presenter.

That outward expression of human emotion is a good thing is almost axiomatic to modern day society, and certainly seemed to be to Theroux. However, many of the people he spoke to considered these feelings to be opposed to their faith and to be a temptation, and were consequently trying to suppress them. Self-denial of some sort or another has been an element of the Christian faith since it began (even Jesus refused to succumb to his desire to eat in the Wilderness), and while argument can be made about how emotionally healthy this form of denial is, many of those to whom Theroux spoke believed axiomatically that not carrying out their mission was against the will of God, even if that meant attempting to rejoice in the departure of a child rather than mourning it.

Many of them admitted that they struggled with this. The parents of the girl who had left the group were clearly upset by it. A group of young women said that they had wept as they explained to a friend that they believed he was on course to hell, yet it wasn't enough for Theroux to hear them admit to these feelings; he repeatedly attempted to provoke an emotional reaction from his interviewees. One member of the church, himself a former documentary-maker, even told Theroux that he was coming from a humanist perspective and that he was refusing to hear the people he was talking to, but that didn't seem to help.

In his conclusion, Theroux said that the church seemed "to live life in denial of the most basic human emotions" and that "they felt entitled, even compelled, to trample on those of other people", and he was right. But at no point did he give any sense of even attempting to grapple with the fact that these people honestly believe that they are acting as third parties for an omnipotent and punitive God. He came to the conclusion that they are angry and self-deluding, rather than trying to understand the motivation behind their actions.

I don't condone or agree with the Westboro Baptist Church, but I do think that they need to be understood more completely than that. Politicians talk about "tackling extremism", but without the realisation that there are people whose most basic beliefs are completely at odds with our own - not through ignorance or stupidity, but as a conscious choice - we'll never get anywhere. There is so much demonisation and dehumanisation of people who think differently from us, because it's easier and quicker to write them off than to try to explain them. Louis Theroux's programme could have helped with that, and it didn't.

How to direct action?

I couldn't make it to the protest in London last Saturday (stupid charity meetings), though I understand it went quite peacefully. For my part this comes as good news as it means that none of my friends got beaten up (as far as I know, haven't actually heard from everyone who I know was there since Saturday...) though not everyone agrees. This post describes itself as "an intervention in defence of direct action", thought it is specifically defending the tactics of the "black bloc" protest movement.

I'll come to the tactics employed by different groups in a second, but I feel that the poster starts badly, by describing their fellow marchers as, "supposed comrades" [emphasis mine]. Surely it makes sense to embrace, not alienate these people, for as long as we have a common cause? Especially when 138 of the 147 protesters being charged by the police were involved in the peaceful direct action at Fortnam & Mason. While the poster argues that, "The dichotomy between “protester” and “anarchist” or “troublemaker” is entirely false" these words are not synonyms (neither UK Uncut nor the TUC is anti-capitalist), and if politicians and capitalist commentators can still disagree on the very nature of the situation but still protest under the same banner, are the anarchists really unable to? It seems like a shame, especially when UK Uncut specifically ask them to. And did the poster really expect everyone who came to the march to get involved in violent direct action? Even those who brought their kids, or came in their wheelchairs, or to protest at cuts to their pensions?

Putting any such considerations aside though, what would be the ideal level of protest? If the protest really has had no effect on government policy, even those of us who want to work with the current system must surely acknowledge its limitations? Perhaps it serves well to raise awareness, but if as Vince Cable says the government is consulting with trade unions does this make us the suffragettes to their more-effective-but-less-glamourous suffragists? UK Uncut claim to be hitting organisations where it hurts (their wallets) by closing business for a period of time, and acts of peaceful disobedience to the law have a long-established and respected pedigree - Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jnr. And clearly they're rattling cages, or the police wouldn't have made so many arrests.

But what for those of us who want to change the system, not its current manifestation? Violent resistance has an equally long list of heroes - Judas Maccabeus, Robin Hood, Malcolm X - and the tactics of the black bloc are very clearly deliberate, down neither to "mindless hooliganism", nor to being "out of control", nor even to a wish to "vent frustration", all of which I've seen suggested in the past few days. The police are the obvious body to be the target of this violence, and our poster considers the police operation have been a success because they "[meted] out so many more injuries to protesters than were sustained". But the Police were protesting too, and here again is the risk of alienating potential allies in the current battle of a longer campaign. So is this form of violent protest wrong? And if it's wrong in the UK, why are we supporting it in Libya?

There are peaceful ways of changing regimes, but they are longer and slower. If anarchists believe that the current system is causing suffering then they may see themselves as having a duty to act as quickly as possible, but that doesn't mean that other methods don't work, or that they should be dismissed and ridiculed. People exercising the power they have to effect change within the constraints of the law should be encouraged not reviled, or else they'll stop. As Alice Walker said, "The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."

Still no size 15 heels though.

I'm not averse to standing out for a good cause. A few years ago I dressed as a clown for Comic Relief (and so that I didn't have to do any work for the day). A couple of years ago I spent a day wearing an orange jumpsuit for Amnesty International (and to embarrass my sister and assorted Archbishops). Pictures of both are available on Facebook, if anyone cares to look.

This year for Comic Relief the staff and pupils at my school were invited to wear something red for Comic Relief. I had been planning to revisit my clown outfit, but found that it is with my parents at the moment, which didn't actually leave me with anything red in my wardrobe. Which was disappointing. Fortunately, some of the other male staff had already agreed to have themselves made up by the girls during morning break, so I joined in to raise more money. The girls had provided red lipstick, red nail varnish and glittery eye make-up (as well as red hairspray, which I declined on the grounds that my hair is already red, and that it would clash. Which would have looked ridiculous).

This was, of course, a lot of fun. The first thing we all did was to traipse off late to staff briefing, leaving the Headmistress standing open-mouthed mid sentence, which was entertaining. She later stopped again to tell me, "Nik, I've just noticed your eyes...", which someone later swears was accompanied by a coy flutter of the eyelashes. Not convinced myself, but hey. The rest of the day went in much the same manner - girls who I was teaching gawped for a while, a singer who I was accompanying at a recital that evening stopped herself mid-sentence to ask what was going on, and even my French housemate asked me somewhat tentatively when I was still wearing it the following day (funnily enough I don't own any nail polish remover myself).

But what really got me was my own reaction to the nail varnish. It turns out that hands are a body part which we see quite a lot, and almost every time I did I did a mental double-take, trying to work out whose hands they were. Putting on a seat belt, drinking a pint, but especially playing the piano or organ. At the organ, as well as getting a thumbs up from one of the RS staff for playing The Kinks' "Lola" as a recessional, I kept having short internal dialogues which went something like this;

"Playing a hymn, playing a hymn..."

[glance down]

"Oh. I wonder who's playing the organ. Must be my Mum or my boss."

"Oh no, wait, it's me. I remember."

It wasn't long enough to disrupt the playing (I don't think), just a very strong inability to mentally identify them as my hands, because they so clearly belonged to a woman. They're big and not especially elegant, but the red nails clearly marked them out as female. This sense of disassociation was obviously very unnerving, far more so than fielding questions from the girls about being gay or being a "tranny" (and yes, I did correct their use of language in that instance). I was slightly nervous about going to the pub after the recital, and about going to Tesco, but not enough to make me reconsider going. But briefly glimpsing the hands tying my shoelaces? Stopped me in my tracks.

There aren't any answers or questions here, just musings. And I'm not saying that it would stop me doing it again of course...but I really didn't like the lipstick. Felt all manky. And I had to take it off to play the bassoon anyway. Maybe I should just stop at the eye make-up.

Excuses excuses.

Eight years after the start of the Iraq war, International forces (surely calling them, "Western forces" is nonsensical while Qatar is considering getting involved?) have become involved in Libya. Precipitated by the breaking of a declared ceasefire, both Barack Obama and David Cameron have emphasised the unilateralism of the action, the latter stating, "British forces...are part of an international coalition to enforce the will of the United Nations." He also underlinedthe legality of the action, presumably to head off any comparisons with the Iraq war. He mentioned the support of the Arab league, as well as the UN.

So is this wide-ranging agreement the tipping point? Cameron postured but didn't interfere when Gaddafi's troops marched steadily eastwards, with the Colonel talking about taking Benghazi (the heart of the uprising), "house by house". But nobody has interfered in Bahrain, in spite of Saudi and UAE troops being brought in to suplement the Bahraini military quelling protests against the regime. The UN human rights chief has condemned the reported "arbitrary arrests, killings, beatings of protesters and of medical personnel, and of the takeover of hospitals and medical centres by various security forces", but there has been no emergency summit to draft resolutions. Neither has anyone interfered in Ivory Coast, where President Laurent Gbagbo who lost a democratic election has refused to step down. His supporters recently shelled a market killing dozens of civilians, an action with the UN has now called a "war crime".

So if the condemnation of the UN isn't the green light, what is? Cameron has further justified action in Libya by saying, "We have all seen the appalling brutality meted out by Col Gaddafi against his own people", adding that it is a "just cause" and in "Britain's best interests". I'm not convinced that the "appalling brutality" has much to do with it. Where is the action against North Korea, which has a ridiculously long list of human rights violations, including (according to Human Rights Watch) "routine public executions [and] the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of people, including young children"? What about a country whose treatment of asylum seekers is so bad that it has to use tear gas to subdue their protests, as Australia did this week? What about countries which stand accused of colluding in the torture of its own citizens, like the UK? Do we really believe that we are fighting in Libya because it is a just cause, and we are not fighting elsewhere because there are no others?

Which leaves us with this conflict being in Britain's best interests. Both Obama and Cameron were elected on a promise to withdraw troops from existing theatres of war, so this long-range support for an already existing military force is an easy way of being the good guys. The UN resolution does not talk about regime change, but about enforcing the will of the Libyan people, and while Hilary Clinton has talked about a "unified" Libya, and Cameron about getting rid of Gaddafi, the military means to carry this out has not yet been discussed (publicly at least).

Perhaps we shouldn't be interfering at all. We've supported militia groups from a distance before, whether the defeated Nationalists in the Chinese Civil War or the victorious Taliban in 1980s Afghanistan, and to say that it turned out well would be something of a lie. But if we are going to get involved we have to know why we are doing it, and what we are doing. Hypocrisy has been a terrible sin for thousands of years, and life being unfair is almost the first complaint we learn as children.

In the meantime, my thoughts and prayers will be in Libya; not so much with the foreign military in their modern technology and at their great distance, as with the people on the ground, who will care about the long-term political implications of what is happening as much as we will care who buries them.

Hoping for more of the different.

I don't like the current government of the UK. I don't like the policies they are implementing, and am terrified by the speed with which they are implementing them. I have marched in protest, and expect to march again. People are talking about the imminent collapse of the Liberal Democrats, about left-wing voters fleeing in their droves to the Labour Party to take refuge under a banner that is indisputably red. Yet in spite of the twinges of betrayal and the slight feeling of naivety, I continue to support the Lib Dems. I'll even risk wearing the cuckold's horns a second time, because there is something larger at stake.

In its most prominent outward expressions, the Westminster system of Parliamentary democracy is, as systems of Parliamentary democracy go, crap. It is oppositional rather than constructive, with little room for considering what your opponent is bellowing at you from across the table. It is macho and swaggering rather than collaborative and consensus-building, with witticism and rhetoric more important than well-reasoned argument. I often feel as if PMQs feels more like two dogs competing at covering the despatch boxes with wee than a debate. And it's not as if there aren't alternatives; I'm a long-standing fan of the German electoral system, but both the Scottish and European Parliaments are committed to more constructive debate and policy building, at least in principle. Westminster is no longer, "the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried".

One of the reasons that I have always voted Liberal Democrat at national level is because they represented the only real chance for a shift in the way Westminster politics was conducted; not only because changing the electoral system has been a manifesto promise since the party was founded, but because a strong third party was the only effective answer to the combative style of government which the UK Parliament so proudly epitomises. AV is not the ultimate solution to this problem (though I'll vote for it), but a demonstration to the people of the UK that there can be other ways of governing would be a powerful step. As Jimmy Carr put it, "I'd vote for AV, but it wouldn't be my first choice".

As I said, I don't like the current coalition, or the compromises (to put it politely) that the Lib Dems have made for it. But I do believe that having a wider range of parties represented at the highest level is a good thing. There will always be governments I like more or less than others, but I'd feel happier either way the more representative of the wishes of the electorate they are.

I hope the Lib Dems survive. I hope they are able to take advantage of the Tories' waning popularity and a Labour leader perceived as weak to remain an electoral force, because this future is bright. We all love a good Portillo moment, but while the Lib Dems being in government is the louder headline and Lembit Opik is more popular with the media, I am proud to say that I was still up for Lucas.

Just a quick one.

Is it rude to stare at blind people?

Not people who are partially sighted, but people who literally can not see at all. I watched a man yesterday stop so close to another that had his cane swept back any later he would have walked into him (proving just how well he'd got the timing on that tuned to his walking speed!). But is the rudeness of staring in the fact that the other person might notice that you're staring, or that it draws attention to them for other people?

Talking is cheap, but comment is free

The publication of however many bejillion Facebook users' data recently has prompted the usual panic about online security, with people in the know tutting and shouting "I told you so" at anyone who happens to walk past, and people not in the know desparately trying to figure out how any of this could have happened. I get the impression though that we tend to assume that things on the internet are more private than they actually are. The internet is brilliant for bringing us into contact with people who think like we do, dress like we do, enjoy the same films and music and books that we do, but who may well live in completely different parts of the world. Why then is it so surprising when we also encounter people from closer to home who may well completely disagree with us? And do we have the right to mind?

A Friend of mine (who reads this blog, hello) recently had a problem on Facebook, when one of their friends started trolling on my Friend's status. Friend is a committed feminist, who got angry at Troll making jokes about Doctor Who spanking his assistant. Troll either didn't realise they were being offensive, or were enjoying causing the upset. Friend made an excellent stab at teaching Troll manners, but among other things said, "This is *my* facebook status, not a public domain" [emphasis theirs]. How true is that though? Troll has at some point been accepted as a friend by Friend, giving them the capacity to comment on anything Friend posts in their status. Doesn't the expressing of an opinion by Friend in that way therefore provide an opportunity for, if not prompt or even invite Troll to pass judgement on it by commenting? Should Troll have refrained from doing so knowing it would upset Friend, or should we be talking about Troll's right to free speech? Should Facebook's settings be flexible enough that it controls who is able to comment on things, as well as whether or not they can see them?

A similar thing happened to a LiveJournal post about comedy. Poster marked the post as both triggering on a range of issues and suitable for 18s and over only, and went on to use examples to illustrate what they considered to be appropriate and inappropriate humour. Someone commented on the post that they enjoyed Roy "Chubby" Brown's humour (who Poster didn't mention), and Poster's Partner responded by saying that the Commenter was, "not welcome here". Given that the post wasn't made as part of a forum or ongoing discussion it's quite difficult to view the online community which surrounds the post, and although the general mood of the comments would agree with Partner can Commenter really be labelled unwelcome just by virtue of being in disagreement with other members of the community? Does Poster's decision not to moderate this comment not imply that anyone is welcome to throw in their $0.02?

I spotted a third example of this on My Fault, I'm Female, a blog dedicated to publishing examples of sexism in the modern world (and well worth a read in my opinion). Here the community targetted is made explicit by the introductory comments in the side bar on the right, but again there seems to be little moderation of comments. This leads to frequent arguments about whether certain posts actually constitute sexism at all, and much consequent defense of the people who have submitted the stories. One such defense runs as follows;

This is a safe space for women....We’re allowed to own our anger, and this is one site set up to do just that....This is OUR place for discussion, OUR safe space.

But how can it be a safe space for women when anyone is allowed to comment? Indeed, in an online community how could such a safe space be created, without requiring gender checks at the point of entry? Unlike my first example this very definitely is a public domain, though the lack of welcome to certain types of comment is much clearer here than in the second. But since part of the mission of the blog is "to highlight what is still an entrenched problem", wouldn't excluding the very people who are posting these comments restrict the success of what is a key aim of the authors? It is worth pointing out that the introductory text does state that it intends to be non-judgmental, which clearly these comments are not.

So are we back to the issue of causing offence being the deciding feature? Should we be protecting vulnerable people from hearing things which wrongly undermine them? Or should we be welcoming the opportunity to hear views which jar with ours, whether to give us a chance to reassess our own worldview or to set someone else straight about theirs?

It is with some trepidation that I welcome comments....