Let's not get derailed in discussing violence against women

Originally published at Liberal Conspiracy: http://liberalconspiracy.org/2011/06/24/lets-not-get-derailed-in-discussing-violence-against-women

It’s the same every time. A feminist politician or campaign group proposes a patently sensible idea, and the derailing begins.

The End Violence Against Women (EVAW) report is a comprehensive study on the massive prevalence of violence against women and girls, calling on Michael Gove to make a priority of educating against sexism in schools.

Great stuff. Simple common sense, even; unless you are generally in favour of violence against women. But developments like these are a starting horn for discussion derailers.

Here’s one we’ve heard before, ‘but men are victims of violence too!’ Another derailer chips in, ‘and what about female perpetrators of violence?’ We might even hear a bit of, ‘Why focus on women? Shouldn’t we just be educating children about violence generally?’

I recently saw a column by the Somalian women’s minister derailed in this way. It was outrageous, apparently, that a women’s minister should dare to write about the abominable problems specific to women in her country.

When the derailers get going, the debate takes a sudden turn to the right. Instead of discussing the part of the proposal which calls on Gove to develop schools in which girls are not subject to abuse, rape, sexual harassment, bullying or shaming, we are arguing about whether it is right to take gender-specific actions at all.

For the last time, YES, people of all genders perpetrate violence. YES, people of all genders are victims of violence. YES, there is domestic violence between same-sex partners. Now can we go back to EVAW’s proposals?

The derailers are univocally, universally missing the point. Education about violence against women cannot be simply subsumed under education about violence against people generally, and to suggest it should be deliberately ignores the scale of the problem of violence against women.

Consistent evidence demonstrates that it is disproportionately men who enact violence, and disproportionately women who are subject to it. If you want to contest this, go away and do some research.

So don’t get it twisted. The fact that other kinds of violence happen doesn’t negate the need for feminist education to combat the virulent combination of institutional misogyny, equation of masculinity with violence, and culture of sex negativity which makes sex a commodity that boys ‘get’ from girls, not something that all parties enter into consensually.

Violence against women is normalised and perpetuated when sexism goes unchallenged, but if young people are taught better across the board I’d be willing to stake my right arm, left leg and favourite hat that we will see cultural change.

No one denies that men and boys are also victims of violence. But do you know how it feels to be a woman, or a girl, where the sexual harassment, abuse and shaming starts at school and carries on into adulthood? If you don’t, talk to your girlfriend, female friends, mother, sister. They’ll put you on track.


More to look at:

http://www.endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk/

A wolf in sheep's clothing (just a little rant)

"Peer pressure is a key contributor to early sexual activity in our country. Society is focused on sex. Teaching a child at the age of seven to apply a condom on a banana is almost saying: 'Now go and try this for yourself'. Girls are taught to have safe sex, but not how to say no to a boyfriend who insists on sexual relations."

- Nadine Dorries MP

Deceptions. Fictions. Dogmatic idiocy. Conservative MP Nadine Dorries is certainly a controversial figure. Tonight, Political Correctness Goes Mad takes an undercover* look into the sexual politics of the woman some call 'a psychotic, sexist lunatic' to find out - what the fuck is she thinking?

Hey, if we don't teach them about sex then maybe they will just never do it until they get married to nice vanilla heterosexual male-bodied people?

Last week Nadine Dorries MP managed to slime through a 'Ten Minute Rule Bill' on abstinence sex education. For girls only. I'm aware that there is not a hope in hell that this bill will become law, but still, the fact that it passed (67 to 61) is staggering.

Nadine Dorries MP's method is a little bit backhanded. She doesn't go directly for what she believes, having come to the rational conclusion that anybody with a brain cell will oppose the infliction of her prejudices onto wider society.

In this vein, the above quotation is strange. If not for the absurd and evidentially incorrect idea that teaching children how to put condoms on bananas will lead to an uncontrollable spate of young banana-rubbering hobbyists, one might even agree with it. Peer pressure does contribute to 'early', whatever this may mean, sexual activity. Girls are not taught how to say no to a boyfriend that insists.

Sure, we are taught that saying no is an option, but we aren't taught how to do it. We aren't taught how to say no when you're attracted to the other person and you want to fuck them but you don't have any means of getting protection. We aren't taught how to say no when you sort of want to, but you sort of don't want to, and you sort of think maybe another time might be better but you don't want to reject the other person completely and you don't want them to get angry. Dorries is also right insofar as we aren't taught to say no when the other person wants to and you totally don't. That's still a problem, and a serious one.

But we also aren't taught how to say yes, and this should be equally important. There are no lessons on saying yes when you want to have sex so badly and blood is pumping around your body and your cunt is a more pH neutral version of the Thames but you don't know how to convey to your (willing) partner that you also want to. Its difficult to know how to say yes when you're scared of being rejected, or called a slut, or that they might tell their friends at school.

Perhaps its different now, but in my day sex education focused solely on the conveniently erect penis going in the mysteriously self-lubricating vagina. ('When the penis goes in the vagina, the vagina becomes aroused and moistens') Really, sex education in 2001? What if your vagina prefers vagina, or what if you don't like penetration that much, or what if you need a bit more than that to get you off? Where in god's name is the discussion of the clitoris? What if you like to be tied down and spanked with a portrait of George Elliot whilst free jazz plays in the background? (this has nothing to do with my sex life, by the way)

Ok, so Nadine Dorries MP's conclusion from all these difficulties with navigating sexual exploration, is not that children need to be more comprehensively educated, but that we should attempt to stifle their burgeoning sexualities by TEACHING ABSTINENCE.

Sorry Nadine Dorries MP, but being taught to say no when you mean no, and yes when you mean yes, and how to do it differently when you need it to be done differently, has nothing to do with abstinence. Being taught abstinence suggests that sex is dirty, or wrong, or evil. This kind of 'education' has a counterproductive effect, heightening occurrences of rape, unwanted pregnancy, STD transmission, and generally unsatisfying sex because you haven't been taught how to do it at all, let alone how to do it well. This kind of ideology can't even really be described as education. It is the opposite to everything education should stand for: regressive, dogmatic, and ultimately, very very sexist.

That Dorries tries to wrap up her odious beliefs in slightly palatable seeming policy is all the more reason to oppose her. It is staggering that there are 67 people in Parliament who thought her ideas were reasonable rather than self-evidently GROTESQUE. We need to be constantly aware that these people still exist.


*Please note, by 'undercover' I mean that I'm writing this in bed. Now, back to practicing condom application on this bunch of phallic fruits.

What values should govern, what’s the use of higher education, and when can we start liking Nick Clegg again?

Originally published at Labour Uncut: http://labour-uncut.co.uk/2011/04/13/what-values-should-govern-what’s-the-use-of-higher-education-and-when-can-we-start-liking-nick-clegg-again

From Urban Dictionary: 'To Clegg is to betray everything you once stood for in a dash of opportunism and stupidity.'








The Liberal Democrat spin machine has gone into overdrive during the last week. Nick Clegg’s sympathetically candid interview in the New Statesman seems almost like the beginning of a public rehabilitation. The message seems to be that we’ve torn him down, and now, in time honoured media tradition, it’s time to build him back up again. Even the Telegraph’s take on the interview, beneath with the ostensibly mocking headline, “I cry to music and even my sons ask why everybody hates me”, inspires a quick flicker of – what is it – guilt?

The question arises, are we justified in continuing to hate everything Nick Clegg represents, or have we turned into massive playground bullies, continuing to flush our victim’s head down the toilet?

Almost a year into coalition government, it is still worth holding onto the memory of those Liberal Democrat manifesto pledges, embodied by Nick Clegg, that led to a barrage of student protests, vociferous journalistic bile, effigies on bonfires, and his own set of entries in Urban Dictionary. Nobody who can understand that £27,000 is a ludicrous amount of money for three years of lectures and library access will forget the tuition fees betrayal in a hurry.

On the other hand, the commodification of higher education wasn’t cooked up solely by this government. The infamous, idiotic Browne report, leading to the decision to officially mandate university courses solely according to the market-governing value, economic “use”, was commissioned by Labour. It was Peter Mandelson’s hand on the helm when the initial push came for the reconceptualising of degrees as useful business contracts meted out to student-customers paying through their tightly clenched teeth for the privilege. “Listen, professor, I’m paying for this degree: now explain to me how this ‘Beauvoir and existentialism’ essay will be directly relevant to changing demands of the job market (none of this ‘transferable skills’ bullshit), or I’m buying a different course”.

Most damagingly, it was under Labour that the higher education department was moved into the business department, foreshadowing this government’s “reforms”. Accusing the Tories and Lib Dems of acting “ideologically” is one of Labour’s better catch-phrases of the moment. As Dominic Lawson points out in the Independent, most people believe that acting according to ideology is a bad thing. But Lawson is wrong to argue that Labour’s assertion: “the Tory cuts are ideological”, is an accusation simply of Thatcherism, or one borne out of jealousy. Rather, it is the quite fair charge that the Thatcher-esque policies of the Tory-Lib Dem government are being enacted dogmatically, that they are not supported by the available evidence.

That is why it is important that we continue to fight for higher education to be seen as good for other reasons than economic utility. Without graduates in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, we will not know what it is to speak of other values than use; we will not know anything of the philosophy behind politics, nor of politics itself. We will not know why it is important that we should know these things. Without an understanding of these ideas, the ascendant ideology of economic utility will go unchallenged.

We have already seen a concentrated assault on the idea that as far as governing values go, if you can’t easily quantify it, you should get rid of it. If use is the only value we admit of, we will not know that it is just one black and white, up and down, right and wrong field of thought – in a politics that should rightfully admit of grey.

Tempting though it is to hate Nick Clegg’s guts until the end of time, the reality is that he probably isn’t the arch-villain we would like to think he is (that sentence was very difficult to type). He did deliberately canvass the student vote on a policy that he never intended to keep, but he probably isn’t completely evil. Like Darth Vader, there might be some good left deep inside him, in spite of the fact that he would condone building a massive Death Star with which to destroy higher education, the welfare state, the public sector, our rich artistic culture, and everything else that is valuable.

Yet, somewhere, there must be some good in him, after all, he does cry alone in his room while listening to music, and what Radiohead fan doesn’t understand that?