standing beneath the shard

I stood beneath the Shard and watched its peak disappear into the clouds and lamented a life spent on the ground. Where the colours are too bright, the focus too crisp, where people move with all the ungainliness and imprecision you'd expect from someone trying to force their way through a game they were never taught the rules of.

I stood below the Shard and my heart raced, my skin turned pale, my breathing rasped and fluttered.

The Porn Wars never ended: why we're still getting it wrong decades later.

In an effort to bring the sexual proclivities of modern Britain in line with the Tory vision for society – middle class couples with 2.5 children spending their Saturdays gardening and their Sundays performing the ritualistic once-a-week missionary position– Prime Minister David Cameron is looking to restrict access to internet pornography.

Lining up meetings with four top Internet Service Providers, Cameron is pushing for an ‘opt-in’ scheme to access adult content. Ostensibly the scheme is to protect children from being exposed to porn.  Faced with the cheek-scalding embarrassment of having to discuss your Sunday evening masturbatory habits with Sal in the BT Internet call centre, however, it seems likely that scores of people will essentially be goaded into locking themselves into a no-sex contract. Not a problem for a government that aims to recreate Victorian Britain, work houses and all: dismantling the welfare state and relying on private benefactors; leaving the poor to languish in gutters and beg for loose change; and making sure no-one thinks about, let alone takes part in sex that isn’t for the sole purpose of producing children inside a stable marriage.

It would not be unfair to suggest that a desire to instil a stiff-upper-lip-and-not-much-else attitude to sex might have something to do with the proposals. This is the party that introduced Section 28 – banning the discussion of homosexuality in schools – and recently attempted to make sex education optional. Essentially, they sent a message to a whole generation that you should only hop on the good foot and do the bad thing within the confines of a heterosexual monogamous marriage – and even then, you shouldn’t really talk about it.

 This proposal is another step in a long line of prudish and unhealthy proclamations and laws around sex that only serve to directly hurt thousands of people and make millions more unhappy.  HIV infections amongst the heterosexual population have skyrocketed because of consistent scaremongering around homosexual transmissions in the 1980s. Section 28 undoubtedly led to confusion, depression, and isolation for gay children and teenagers seeking legitimacy from teachers instructed by law not to provide it. Chlamydia infections amongst the under-25s in Britain have soared as a result of chronically underfunded sex education.

I certainly don’t want to argue that pornography is on a par with sex education and anti-discrimination laws in terms of what it can teach us about sex. Much mainstream pornography teaches teenagers that women love being doused in semen without being asked first; that the female orgasm happens in five minutes through penetration alone (not the case for 70% of us); that a man’s role in sex is to be a disembodied penis slamming relentlessly into a shaven vagina. The proposal, however, is non-discriminatory; videos of foreplay, (actual) female orgasms and real, sweaty, smelly sex between two consenting adults is made as taboo as the grotesquery of Barbie-style plastic porn.

Sadly, prominent critiques of the proposal in the Guardian this week by Brooke Magnati and Anna Arrowsmith have veered down an equally worrying road – for entirely different reasons.

In pieces for Comment is Free, both women draw attention to what they call ‘content theft’ – in other words, the online distribution of mainstream pornography through peer-to-peer file sharing, and YouTube-style user-generated porn sites. They argue that this is the real problem, as it allows teenagers to access porn online as well as reducing the profit margins of directors and producers. Arrowsmith asserts that “they need to take down the (handful of) porn torrent sites, which give teenagers free, easy access to hardcore scenes – scenes whose copyright has been stolen from the producers”. The women are essentially calling on the services of Mr Cameron to prop up huge pornography firms. It’s a clear-cut case of capitalist moralists versus capitalist pornographers; and it stinks. The issue here is not that teenagers are accessing porn, nor that content is being stolen from pornographers turning over a huge profit margin. The fabricated binary of sex being hush-hush or garish, boring and secret or loud and crass, means the biggest danger is that children will grow up with an entirely distorted vision of sex. A confusing garble of facials and profit margins; taboo and desire; shame and repression.

Imagine that instead of this mad crusade against depictions of sex, we had properly funded and comprehensive sex education in all schools; that diagrams of the female reproductive organs labelled the clitoris; that Personal Social and Health Education lessons in schools discussed active consent instead of encouraging students to wait until marriage, as my Catholic school did. And imagine that instead of sleazy shaven hugely profitable pornos, we had something which vaguely resembled real life.

Instead of engaging in a moralistic frenzy, or fretting about profit, we should give our teenagers the tools to successfully navigate a sexual minefield of commodification and shame.

The Kensington Hamster Massacre; or, a trip to the Science Museum

Tim Jones was exhausted after dragging himself up seven flights of stairs to his family flat. The fox-powered lift was out of order - the skinny buggers you get scrambling round inner-city estates just weren't up to the job like the fat fuckers you got in the countryside. Instantly cheered by the mushroom risotto his wife Lucy was prodding on the stove (luckily blood supplies were pretty high round here, especially given the recent spate of gang fights, so the cooker was less temperamental than the lift), he flopped down in front of the TV. Justin Beiber, he opined to just about anyone willing to listen, was the best Doctor yet, and at 73 he'd really broken out of the roles usually available to older men.

"Oh, for cocks sake,", he growled under his breath as the telly cut out yet again - bang in the middle of a climactic fight scene between Beiber and the Daleks - "I'm not the fucking hamster fairy- why doesn't anyone else in this house clean out that bloody dispenser?". Grumbling and muttering, he heaved himself off the armchair and fumbled around in the dank cabinet underneath the bookshelf until he struck gold, pulling out a small box full of the scurrying little bastards.
Taking the opportunity to stock up for a few days and avoid the hassle tomorrow evening, he upturned the whole box into the pulveriser. After those few seconds of frantic squeaking which he'd just about learned the trick of unhearing, Tim was once again absorbed in the Doctor's fearlessness in the face of danger.



Today's dystopic vision has been proudly sponsored by Shell, Siemens and Merril Lynch for the London Science Museum!


......no, really. [Well, minus Justin Beiber. Dramatic licience.]

I gathered, from the corporate-logo-plastered posters advertising the Climate Science exhibition, that it might not be the full, in-depth exploration of the technology and challenges surrounding climate change as I might like. But I had a free day and a man in tow, so off we trooped to peruse its seedy pleasures. (FYI, dates at the Science Museum are cool. You can count that as official party diktat).

A quick glance proved this was an exhibition primarily aimed at kiddies - *adorable*, and such fun given the Bank Holiday rush of concerned parents ensuring that Amelia gets some responsible education with her fun.

Incidentally, a giant circular electronic display showing the public's answers to hard-hitting questions like "What do you think about having a wind farm next door to you?" flashed up a truly vomit-inducing 140-character snippet from a six-year old; in response to the question "how can we tackle unequal consumption of energy?", he apparently replied "With a global carbon trading system, with carbon credits for underdeveloped countries". Right. I'm sure Mummy thinks she's doing a fantastic job imparting rationed, liberal thought to her poppet, and I'm sure he'll grow up a responsible citizen who always offsets the long drive in his 4x4 back from central London to the Home Counties after spending the evening ostensibly in a meeting but really shagging the low-paid female employee he keeps around for eye candy whilst professing a commitment to 21st century feminism, but it would have been nice to have a day out at the museum without being forced to swallow my own sick.

But, back to the fictional hamster genocide alluded to above. I had naively assumed that this would perhaps be a slightly-too-objective, catious, but ultimately factual presentation of the realities of climate science by, well, scientists. I hate to invoke repition to make my point but I was, in fact, inside the Science Museum. What confronted me was a garish jumble of interactive games, touch-screen fact finders and faux-art masquerading as an object with something important to impart.

The most disturbing aspect of the exhibition by far, however, was a trip into the future to investigate the possibilities for energy generation once our very finite pool of fossil fuels finally bites the dust. The exhibition in question introduces us to the Jones family and the innovative ways in which they navigate power in a post-oil world, and it looks like a vision of the 2000s by a wonderstruck producer in the 1960s. You can almost hear the RP voiceover exclaiming "in the future, cars will fly and humans will take all their meals in one small pill; not for the busy 21st century family the stress of eating!".

Sidestepping such irrelevancies as the invention of water, wind and solar generated energy, I learnt that in the future televisions will be powered by hamsters, electricity will be produced by blood in teddy-bear shaped bags ('to make it less scary'- of course!) and children will be forced to become a walking advertisement for their parents hydrogen home brewery. Below are some choice reproductions..

Of course, we don't mind destroying both animal and human life when we mine tar sands; but feeding hamsters to your TV in a fictional universe? Woah, soldier, that's one step too far!

I think my personal favourite here is "all the scientists we asked were sure that Tom and Tim's animal-eating, blood-drinking machine would never happen"...."but that didn't stop us from including this rampant scare mongering in our climate science exhibition, because hey, it's not actually based on science!"

I found the poo section particularly disturbing given that we had just had an extremely enjoyable jaunt around the psychoanalysis exhibition, which implored us to think about our relationship to fecal matter and what it meant regarding our unconcious mind..

And hey, why not instill some good old capitalist ethos in the kids whilst they're here? They sure as hell won't have learnt anything else on their trip to this godforsaken corporate island.

And this one is just to prove that they really did posit that the future entails evil televisions snaffling up baby hamsters...

I hope you're all suitably disturbed by this exclusive insight into the demonic minds of Shell's corporate executives, and implore you to avoid this pile of shit (quite literally) if you're in South Kensington. Instead, you should gaze upon this fantastically phallic sculpture in the Psychoanalysis section, which manages to create the shadow of a double-faced head from a craftily-lit sculpture made from casts of the artist's hand and (really quite large) penis. Brilliant. 

Lady Gaga: That's Not What a Feminist Looks Like

Originally published at Counterfire in March 2010

As someone who picked up on ‘geek chic’ about two years too late, who has only recently discovered the joy of cardigans and fell belatedly into the trend of spiky, shaved haircuts, it’s no surprise that it’s taken me so long to watch the new Lady Gaga and Beyonce video; the much-discussed, supposedly seminal, blockbuster of the year.

Ms. Gaga has been touted as the new Madonna; the provocative, exciting and edgy face of pop. I was promised by many a daring, queered-up feminist riot of a music video, accompanying the new single ‘Telephone’. Imagine my disappointment when, filled with wild expectations of the return of feminism to popular culture, I found nine long minutes of leather bikinis, a barrage of booty-popping and breasts, copious grinding and gyrating and more than one lingering shot of disembodied groins and fishnet-clad legs.

A strange amalgamation of scenes follow Lady Gaga being locked up and then rescued by Beyonce, whereupon they embark on a mass homicide involving maple syrup and rat poison, before eloping into the sunset with the police hot on their tail. Too much is wrong with this video to fit into 800 words, so let’s look at the most controversial clips; Gaga and the penis scandal, the lesbian kiss, and that sandwich.

After Gaga is thrown in jail, we see her vagina exposed as she’s undressed, and again as she rubs herself against her cell bars, prompting a guard to remark “See, I told you she didn’t have a dick”. There’s been a huge furore in the world of showbiz blogging over her purportedly ambigious genitalia, prompting remarks that she is trans, intersex, or a drag queen. Until now, she’s taken this whirlwind of gossip with the characteristic playfulness we’ve come to expect of her; telling reporters that she has a ‘huge donkey dick’, and posing for GQ with a strap-on down her trousers.

This is great: it’s funny, silly and a big “fuck you” to the hounding mobs of gossip weeklies that attempt to devalue her by suggesting she’s not a ‘real woman’. Rubbing your vagina through cell bars for a captive audience, however, is none of those things. It’s a capitulation to that very same pack of papparazi, who can now triumphantly hold up Gaga’s labia minora as their proof that she fits a binary mould of woman/man, and is willing to ‘get it out’ for the cameras along the way. Not exactly a triumph for challenging gender constructions.

When Gaga, bound in chains, is escorted out into the exercise yard, she proclaims her audacity and deviancy by engaging in that great taboo, the lesbian kiss. This has been the subject of much gleeful proclamation, the idea being that Gaga is taking lesbianism into the mainstream and ushering in an age where the gender of two people having a cheeky snog doesn’t matter.

Of course better representation of LGBT people in the media can only be a good thing, but in this context it’s about as liberating as T.a.T.u. dressed up as schoolgirls kissing in the rain: gratuitous shock-value porn that exists to boost video hits and not much more. Not quite a campaigning tool for the local LGBT group.

So far, it’s all been a little bit doom and gloom, so let’s look at the one aspect of the video that merits a bit of praise; Gaga eating a sandwich. Twice. Now, this might not seem like a rallying cry for celebration, but I seriously can’t remember the last time I saw a woman on the screen actually eating a meal that didn’t consist of a lettuce leaf and a couple of ‘naughty’ olives. Of course, in both of these scenes Gaga and Beyonce are either engaging in a little light domination fantasy (Beyonce), or dancing around in see-through vinyl with bondage tape crossed over their nipples (Gaga), implying that it’s only okay to eat if you’re making an effort to look hot at the same time.

Regardless, this is actually an interesting and perhaps even slightly progressive move in an industry that tells you that it’s not okay to eat, ever, full stop; lest you become a morbidly obese armchair-bound slob. Sadly though, this is not enough to save a video steeped in boring misogynistic femininity tropes.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect all pop videos to be genderqueering, femineering, domineering masterpieces. I’ve come to expect that much of the pop industry is happy to churn out the same tired sexist stereotypes day in, day out, and if I complained about every one of them I’d be wasting my time. But when the most liberating thing in a video touted as a feminist masterpiece is someone eating a sandwich (and not even the whole sandwich at that) then we need to seriously re-examine our notions of liberation and emancipation.

Panorama: The Cuts - How to Fight Back

Originally published at Counterfire in May 2010

BBC Panorama has, in recent years, bought us treats such as ‘Immigration: How we Lost Count’ and ‘Muslim First, British Second’ – so you would be forgiven for assuming that anything it beams onto your TV screen is likely to be a reactionary pile of frothing Islamophobic drivel.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, you’d probably be right. This week, however, seems to be the exception that proves the rule.

The Cuts – How to Fight Back , whilst not quite providing the ten-point plan it seems to promise, is an inspiring tour of successful campaigns fought by local residents against savage cuts to local services – if you can ignore the Dad’s Army theme tune that the patronising producer has inexplicably inserted every time an old person appears on screen, that is.

We begin, as ever, in London –  Barnet to be precise, where the Tory council has decided that a live-in warden is not a necessary part of sheltered housing for OAPs. Apart from begging the question of what then differentiates sheltered housing from the local estates, this move is fairly repulsive – as a resident points out, this means that there is nobody to visit them, or to assist them if they become suddenly ill, meaning that they are increasingly likely to be put into a residential home.

For a party that proclaims the values of self-sufficiency and savings, paying for healthy OAPs to be put into a nursing home they don’t need seems fairly counter-intuitive. Thankfully the residents organise, petition, march and demand the re-instatement of the warden, finally mounting a legal challenge and winning.

A whistlestop tour ensues, where we see various councils dangling the butcher’s knife over music lessons, community centres and road repairs. The award for most vomit-inducing council without a doubt goes to Northamptonshire, where officials mount a roadshow survey of residents asking them which public service they would like to see cut (it goes without saying that ‘none’ is an answer not represented here).

As an insightful resident argues, “it’s a con, it’s all cut and dried before they come to ask us. It’s like a murderer asking his victim, would you sooner I strangled you or smothered you?”.

Paul Blantern of Northamptonshire Council, effectively tells residents that they need to choose between safe roads without potholes, care for the elderly and money for local schools – whilst earning a salary of up to £130,000. Anybody who isn’t hopping up and down and screaming at the telly by the end of this sickening tirade should seriously re-examine their political principles.

Whilst scenes like this might test your capacity for self-restraint, there is hope; the packed meeting halls, angry demonstrations, committed residents and petitions you could fill Downing Street with show us that the next round of savage cuts promised by the coalition government (or the ConDemNation, as angry tweeters have taken to calling it) will not be accepted in silence – they will be resisted and resoundingly rejected.

When they ask us to bear the brunt of the financial crisis by giving up our local libraries, swimming pools, community centres and parks our answer should be loud and clear – can't pay, won't pay!

No Justice for Ian Tomlinson - Police Not Charged

Originally published at Counterfire on 22nd July 2010

The police officer implicated in the assualt and death of newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests last year will face no charges, the Crown Prosecution Service announced today.

Angry protests greeted the decision not to press charges, with the United Campaign Against Police Violence warning last night that this outcome would mean “stepping up [their] campaign for justice”.

The CPS defended their decision by arguing that the medical evidence was inconclusive and could not prove that Tomlinson died as a result of the blow administered to him by the police officer.

Interesting then, that two of the three post-mortems conducted into Tomlinson’s death agree that it was caused by internal bleeding. As even the BBC’s Dominic Casciani points out, that means 2/3 of the medical evidence points towards the police officer in question being directly implicated in Tomlinson’s death; more than sufficient for the CPS to proceed with the case.

Shockingly the officer – originally to be charged with manslaughter – also escaped the lesser charge of assault, despite clear evidence from the Guardian and other sources showing that Tomlinson was attacked unprovoked by the armoured officer.

This is not the first time that the police have evaded justice – the cases of Jean Charles de Menezes and Blair Peach can tell us that, as well as the scores of young Asian men imprisoned after the Gaza protests last year whilst the police officers who beat them were never brought to court.

This serves as yet another clear example of the disparity of power in society. Physically resist being kettled and attacked by police officers and you’ll be up in court for assaulting a police officer. Beat an innocent man with a truncheon until he dies from internal bleeding and you’ll walk out of court and straight back into the police force. Fiddle your benefit forms because £70 a week is nowhere near enough to live on and you’re the worst kind of state-scrounging scum; dodge corporation tax when you’re churning out billion-pound profits and you’re a thrifty, responsible entrepreneur. The list goes on.

The particularly galling aspect of this case, though, is the absolute brazenness of it; there’s no attempt to build up a narrative about the difficulties and responsibilities the police have to bear, or an appeal for understanding from a man who made a bad decision. There are simply out-and-out lies, outlined above, and incompetence – the officer can’t be charged for assault because the offence carries a six-month time limit, but there were no moves to prosecute him within the time frame after the attack.

But public anger towards police seems to be growing and growing -  in recent years we have seen police shoot an innocent man seven times in the head; brutally attack Climate Camp protestors chanting ‘this is not a riot’ with their hands in the air; and most recently set free Raoul Moat, a man who warned numerous times that he would shoot his ex-partner upon release. Protests against police violence have been sporadic but determined, and justice campaigns for those murdered by police continue. Public sympathy is waning and waning. With the anger and hurt expressed by the families of those murdered by the police, and the renewed determination from organisations defending the right to protest, perhaps this public antipathy can be turned into an organised resistance to police brutality and the lies that accompany it.

Rihanna and Eminem: Love the Way You Lie (Review)

Written in collaboration with Jo Gough. Originally published at Counterfire

Eminem and Rihanna's latest chart-topper, Love the Way You Lie, tackles the painful and prominent issue of domestic violence without resorting to shallow stereotypes.

The song follows the story of a violent relationship, narrated by the abuser. We are privy to the twists and turns in logic that run through the abuser's mind as he attempts to justify his behaviour – “but your temper’s just as bad as mine is”, he pleads.

Interestingly though, we also glimpse the moments of clarity – the shame and the galling realisation of what it means to be a woman-beater. And it is this that makes Love the Way You Lie both fascinating and instinctively repulsive – this is not the ramblings of a deluded maniac but of a troubled man struggling to draw lines between love, fear, hate and anger.

Rihanna is noticeably absent for the majority of this track, coming in only for the chorus:

“Just gonna stand there and watch me burn; well that’s alright, because I love the way it hurts.
Just gonna stand there and hear me cry, well that's all right because I love the way you lie."

This is, to say the least, uncomfortable – a song about domestic violence in which the only female voice is reduced to painfully affirming, over and over, how much she loves the beatings.

This has led to commentary that it glorifies domestic violence and makes it acceptable. Indeed, the video (directed by Joseph Kahn and starring Dominic Monaghan and Megan Fox) begins with the woman hitting the man, and throughout there is an interplay between sexual passion and violence, which could be seen to be promoting the idea that the victim 'provokes' or in fact enjoys the violence.

This is where the role of Rihanna is key. The photo of her horrific domestic violence was shown throughout the world. She asserts it happened to her; she did not cause it. Initially she went back to her perpetrator, but then left him because, "When I realized that my selfish decision for love could result into some young girl getting killed, I could not be easy with that".

The idea of the loving relationship is why so many victims return, and through the chorus repeating that she loves the hurt and lies it highlights the psychological hold within violent relationships. Love is used as a reason for both the violence and for staying together.

There is a quiet strength to Rihanna's singing, and coupled with the ironic undertone of the lyrics, the chorus could also be reaching out to perpetrators. Of course the woman doesn't love it, and no matter how much he excuses or gets her to excuse the violence, it is not justified.

From 3.13 in the video there appears to be a a point of no return; it only takes a look from the man to stop the woman leaving, and Eminems lyrics push through his excuses and show his acceptance of his violence and power, culminating in the lyrics,

'I know I'm a liar, if she ever tries to f**kin' leave again, I'ma tie her to the bed and set this house on fire'.

Rihanna's soulful chorus chimes in straight after, and we know the fate of the relationship.

The video ends with Eminem and Rihanna looking at the burning house, and then a repeat of the first clip of the couple lying in bed. This both emphasises the cycle of abuse and the need to leave the relationship at the point where it becomes abusive.

The song and video leaves you with a haunting insight into the cycle of domestic violence and where it can end up- and gives the message to leave the situation before it is too late. The song's message is for both the victim and perpetrator, sung by a victim and perpetrator who are no longer in abusive relationships. It sends out the message that there is a way out.

Rihanna was able to leave her situation because the abuse was in the spotlight and she had the financial means to physically get away. The court took it further than she wanted because it was such a high profile case- and even then Chris Brown felt he'd been let off easy due to his status. Recently a TV executive got only 18 months for killing his wife, after an argument over a joint of beef, because the judge deemed it a 'tragic accident'. For victims to feel able to leave and be safe and for perpetrators to get appropriate help, domestic abuse services and just prosecution are essential. 

One in four women and one in six men in the UK will be the victims of domestic violence during their lifetime. Two women a week are killed by a current or former male partner. To get advice on or help with domestic abuse you can:

talk to your doctor, health visitor or midwife
call 0808 2000 247, the 24-hour National Domestic Violence Helpline
run by Women's Aid and Refuge (calls from a landline are free)
call 0808 801 0327 for the Men's advice line

call Respect on 0845 1228609 (www.respect.uk.net) - advice and
information for male perpetrators of domestic violence.
call the Mankind Initiative on 01823 334244 (www.mankind.org.uk)
treatment for female perpetrators of domestic violence.