Worrying about homophobia in schools? Don't be so gay...

Zoe Williams has got a particularly irritating column in the Guardian today where she argues that the routine use of the word gay as an insult in schools today should just be accepted as a done deal.

Apparently because school children do not mean ‘homosexual’ when they call their peers gay but rather ‘crap’ or ‘stupid’, then use of the word is fine! If we try and challenge it we’ll just make it worse, so best just walk away and let them get on with it.

I’m not gay but I am female and I know that when people use the word ‘girl’ or ‘woman’ in a pejorative term, as one of the young men sitting near me did the other day, when he suggested that his football team played like a bunch of girls, I find it pretty offensive. I like being a woman and I enjoyed being a girl, I think it’s a pretty cool thing to be (pay and power gap notwithstanding, obviously). I certainly don’t like my sex or gender being conflated with a rubbish team of footballers!!

As one of the commenters points out in her column Zoe Williams manages to reduce bullying and prejudice to semantics. Yes, language changes and I’m all for a living vibrant language. But changes in language do not happen by coincidence. I think the fact that gay, in the playground, now means rubbish, crap or broken is as a result of homophobia. What about those teenagers who are gay and hurt by these insults being thrown around? What about the gay teachers and adults around them? Did Zoe Williams consider them when she suggested that we all give up because teenage ‘yoof’ culture will win out in the end.

I know that teenagers use language to shock and rebel; but what if we’re not shocked by it? Then it just becomes common place and I don’t want to live in a world where using words such as gay, girl and woman, words that are used to describe groups of people, are everyday insults.

What is it with adults today? Are we so much in thrall to the concept of youth that we must follow teenagers lead, even when we’re being led into the world of the playground bullies? Teenagers are not fully mature and both those hurling the insults and those receiving them may not have the ability to understand the nuances between gay being used to mean homosexual and gay being used to mean crap or rubbish.

I don’t have children myself but I do mentor a teenager. Part of that mentoring is about providing him with an insight into my values and setting him boundaries of behavior, as well as listening to him and being his friend. But when the chips are down, I’m the adult and it is my job to guide him through the grey areas of what is right and what is wrong, not his to guide me. So, from taking things to lost property when you find them in the playground instead of pocketing them, to not sneaking underneath the tube gates without paying and, yes, to showing him how words can hurt, I help provide him with a set of values which I hope will make him into a sensitive, thoughtful and honest adult.

Sure, I can’t stop a teenager from using gay as an insult, but I can give him my opinion of it when he or she does; it’s just as much my language as it is his or hers.

Because it is an uphill struggle doesn’t mean I’m going ever think it is OK to use the word gay as an insult. Zoe Williams can argue that trying to challenge the use of the word is pointless but I’d rather stick with Stephen Williams and the Lib Dem campaign against homophobic bullying in schools. Of course it is up to teachers to set the boundaries for children’s and teenagers behaviour in schools just as it is up to parents, youth workers and other volunteers to do so out of school. Where are young people meant to learn about kindness and sensitivity if we, as adults, get too caught up in the semantics of language to bother?

Calling all men who don't like violence

Saturday was International Women’s Day. I didn’t get any flowers, or a cup of tea in bed or anything like that. Am I not an international woman?

And I didn’t even get to go to the Million Women Rise March in London because I went up to the Liberal Democrat Conference for the weekend. I did though comfort myself with the Women Liberal Democrats (WLD) fringe session in celebration of the day. I would like to thank Cllr Bobbie Chettleburgh for bringing up the issue of domestic violence in the UK in the session; I had been preparing this blog on rape and domestic violence for some days and it was good to know that I wasn’t the only person up there getting more and more concerned.

Although I didn’t make it to the march this Saturday, I did go, with my Mum, on the Reclaim the Night march last November. My favourite slogan was:

“Whatever I wear, wherever I go
Yes means yes and no means no”

Which in a country, like ours, where the conviction rate for rapes hangs around the 5.7% mark is something that clearly needs repeating; and I did, very loudly, all the way up Charing Cross Road that Saturday night!!

5.7% It’s an appalling statistic, isn’t it? And a statistic that the police know that they’ve got to improve on, as much of the problem is as a result of victims dropping out of the process:

“research shows that attrition - or cases dropping out - happens at every stage from initial complaint to trial. But Yates said the biggest attrition rate was with the initial police investigation. If inertia followed a complaint, "what was always going to be a difficult case can often become an impossible one"

By the time the police have got involved, it’s already too late, the crime has been committed. Our aim should be to stop the crimes in the first place.

All types of violence against women, not just sexual, is very, very common. One in four women will experience some kind of domestic violence during their life time. (I realise domestic violence is a far wider category than rape, but stick with me for the moment).

And if that many women experience domestic violence it means that there are a lot of men out there being violent towards women.

So, how many? Well, I don’t know and nor does anybody else, because it’s not the kind of thing we talk about in polite company. But what if it was, for example, a 3:1 ratio to account for say more than one woman being subject to violence from the same man or the few women who receive violence at the hand of another woman? That’s still millions of men and that really is shocking. I can hardly believe that number myself and I don’t find domestic violence hard to imagine at all; I know women who have experienced domestic violence and I’ve witnessed it. Yes, me the epitome of middle class, female professional!

Violence towards women is one of life’s great levelers; in both victims and perpetrators it crosses class, income group, educational attainment, colour, nationality, race, religion, political views, language and age.

And it makes me wonder, how many people have to be doing something before it becomes a cultural norm?

It’s not a new fangled thing, sweeping the nation like bird flu could. I think it has always been ‘acceptable’ to be violent towards women, behind closed doors.

I think the situation may even be improving, it’s hard to know. What is good is that the police now take it more seriously and don’t stand there like a bunch of lemons, as they used to in the seventies, in people’s driveways refusing to come across the threshold because ‘it’s a domestic’ and therefore none of their business.

Improving it may be but it’s not gone. Making something illegal doesn’t change whether it’s culturally acceptable. Proactive prosecution of the crime, when it comes to light is definitely a start but we need more than just the law.

Silence about something, not mentioning it, like we don’t mention the prevalence of domestic violence, is tantamount to being complicit.

And this is, of course, where the solution lies. Last year, I blogged about the White Ribbon Campaign. I was very excited because this is a campaign by men to stop male violence against women. Domestic violence is too often treated like a women’s issue. But it’s not a women’s issue, it’s a man’s issue. And whilst men are the problem they are also the solution.

The White Ribbon Campaign aims to get men to create the new cultural norm that it’s not acceptable to be violent towards women. It works by getting men talking about it and promoting that there is nothing masculine about hitting women.

You know, I am pretty sure, that me blogging about the fact that it’s wrong to hit women isn’t really going to have any impact on a man’s behavior, if he is that way inclined. He probably already knows that women don’t like it; but if he overhears, perhaps at the pub or in the office, another man start talking about how unacceptable it is, how unmanly it is, then that might just make a difference.

So back to the issue with rape.

I was interested to read on PC Bloggs how many of the commenters on a recent post about rape were concerned about the inability to work out what has happened if the woman is say, drunk or not. But this I think is missing the point and ignoring what consent is.

Positive consent is not the absence of dissent. It should be very clear to a man when a women is consenting to sex, there should be no mistake. If a man waits for a woman to give positive consent to sex then he is not in danger of raping her. There should be no waiting for a woman to say no. If she can’t say no, because she’s too drunk, then she can’t say yes, can she? A woman who is playing hard to get is not giving positive consent.

As the chant goes, it doesn’t matter what a woman is wearing only yes means yes and no most definitely means no.

Again, the solution is in changing the norms of behavior or in other words the prevalent culture that finds an absence of dissent a case for assuming there was consent. It is men who need to be demand positive consent from their sexual partners and not go forward without it, not women who need to be clearer. It is men who are the solution.

So, to all you guys who have read as far as this, I say: Please, don’t think because you would never dream of being violent towards another person or not getting anything less than positive consent that you have no part to play in changing these pernicious norms of society. Even though you may not be aware, it is likely you will know women who have experienced domestic violence and probably the men who have perpetrated it.

I am looking at those men, who know that violence is wrong and who understand what positive consent means, to help spread the word to all men what is and isn’t acceptable.

If you want to find out how then join the White Ribbon Campaign and pass it on.

A really fantastic start

Some days you hear something and, rather than just rolling your eyes and then having to go off to 'ventblog', you can smile and whoop for joy about progress. It doesn't happen very often, as if I thought the world was just going swimmingly and I could leave the people in charge to get on with it, I wouldn't actually be involved in politics at all.

The last time I felt such optimism was when I heard about the sensible effort of Ram FM in Israel; but now it is Turkey and it's efforts to produce a progressive Islam by having another look at the Hadiths.

This is fantastic, because it is in the Hadiths that the majority (although not all0 of the more misogynistic rules that blight the lives of so many women. In fact a blight on many men's lives as well.

This is a great start and I commend the brave people who have got the government of Turkey to take this move. Maybe there are cynical reasons behind Turkey doing this but, hey, on balance I think it is a good thing. Islam gets a lot of bad press that it doesn't deserve but not all the practices that we condemn countries like Saudi Arabia for are just cultural, some of them can be found in holy texts.

It's just the start and like the reformation will take many years to truly percolate through society. There will be battles ahead but it is a start!!! A start!!!

One of the commenters (is that a word?) in the BBC Have Your Say web site, says this:

"When will the world's people stop believing in fairly tales that were dreamt up thousands of years ago to control the masses and start thinking for themselves?"

Of course, I don't believe in god and religions either but I rather suspect it will be a while yet before I am joined in that belief by the majority. In the meantime I will find great hope in the fact the we are at the start of a very long journey that will make millions of men and women free from the misogyny and cruelty that can be found in so many of the Hadiths.

Hooray; what a day!!

What's all this cultural relativism about then?

Gillian Gibbons is freed and the Sudanese Government hasn’t made any contribution to the idea that Islam is a peaceful religion and that followers of Islam are not all fanatics ready to take umbrage at the slightest slur to their religion.

In the UK, it has been pleasing to see that the majority of people commenting, irrespective of their religion or lack thereof have been appalled by the actions of the Sudanese government; at all points there were choices both around the interpretation of the offence and the law and at every point the Sudanese establishment chose the most extreme action.

There has been though, throughout this, whether on BBC comments, Blogs or Any Answers a significant minority of people who have suggested that Gillian Gibbons only had herself to blame, as she should have known the law. She was in fact naive.

I think there is an enormous difference between causing offence and invoking the displeasure or irritation of whoever has been offending (and therefore being marked out as someone you wouldn’t want to spend time with) and being put in prison or lashed for it. The naming of a teddy bear does no physical harm to anybody.

I’m pretty much an atheist and don’t have much time for religion, but I’ve no real interest in going around deliberately causing offence to other people for the sake of it; I think that’s a waste of time, energy and just not very nice. But I believe passionately in free speech and therefore in my right to cause offence without being punished by a state for it.

I’ll give you an example from my own experience where, as an acutely left handed person, I am in danger of causing offence every time I go to the Middle East and without realising it pick up my bread to scoop up some food with my left hand. This is really, really bad table manners; I mean I might as well start picking my nose at the table (in fact, it’s much, much worse than that…but I don’t want to put you off your dinner). Should I be lashed or sent to prison because I have, with no malicious intention broken, in Meral Ece’s words, ‘a few of the cultural 'rules' we learn to live with’,? Sure, don’t invite me to dinner again, suggest I use a knife and fork rather than my hand (as people have) or just tell me plainly not to use my left hand (as an ex-fiancé’s brother once decreed), explain to me the error of my ways, but please don’t send me to prison for it!

Another analogy: this time looking the young woman the other week in Saudi Arabia who was sentenced to 200 lashes for being in the company of a man she wasn’t related to ahead of being gang raped. Now, she is a Saudi, not just a visiting teacher, she surely knew the law? Do we all then sit back, fold our hands on our laps and say: ‘Well, she knew what the law was…how naïve of her!’. No, we don’t, because we know that her punishment under that law is an infringement of human rights, just as the response to Gillian Gibbons was by no means reasonable or just a harmless cultural difference. I make this point not out of a lack of respect for the rule of law in a given country but out of my greater respect for human rights.

Perhaps if Gillian Gibbons had got the lashings she was at risk of, instead of a very short prison sentence and pardon, then not as many people would have found it so easy to slip back into an ‘oh, well, it’s different there’ mentality; but remember it’s not just western primary school teachers that have no freedom of speech or apostasy in Sudan, is it?

Lots of people, from all religions or none know and understand this, I am sure, but lets not forget that human rights are for everybody, absolute and not subject to cultural relativism.

Cosmo 'Man of the Year': one for the boys.....

On Tuesday night I went to another WAFE (Women Against Fundamentalism and for Equality) seminar at the House of Lords. As always these events are thoroughly engaging but always leave me in the confusing state of feeling both uplifted and despairing at the same time.

There were as ever many very interesting women speakers about whom I will blog later (especially the Finnish MP Johanna Sumuvuori; and no, not just because we share a name!).

We also had Chris Green, the Executive Director of the White Ribbon Campaign (UK) come to speak, who has in the last few weeks been named as Cosmo Man of the Year, no less!! Who is this man, I hear you gasp, and what has he done to deserve such an accolade? Surely some sort of sex god? Well, no perhaps not quite, but he’s something much more compelling and a man that I am very grateful is around campaigning today.

The White Ribbon Campaign is a global campaign to ensure that men take more responsibility for reducing the level of violence against women. It is not a campaign about bashing men but instead asks those men who know that it is wrong to hit women, pledge never to commit, condone or remain silent about violence against women. The stats on male violence against women in the UK are truly shocking.

I find it an attractive campaign on two counts: firstly, it is about creating a norm in society that makes it quite clear that this type of behaviour is unacceptable and that to ignore it is almost as bad condoning it. Secondly it places emphasis for action onto men, as something men can resolve, as men listen to other men; especially young men. It does not leave it to women to solve and resolve the problem over in the ‘women’s issues’ corner.

And as the blogosphere is so overwhelmingly male I have the perfect audience to highlight this campaign!! Sunday 25^th is the UN’s International Day to End Violence Against Women, worth taking note of because, even in the UK, 1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence in their lifetime.

This means that you will almost certainly know a woman who has experienced domestic violence, even if you’re not aware of it; it’s not the sort of thing a woman sings from the rooftops or you can tell from just looking at her. This then also means, the chances are, you may know a man who has either been violent towards a woman or thinks it’s OK to be so.

Personally, that’s a thought that sends shivers of fear down my spine; but when I heard about the work of Chris Green and the White Ribbon Campaign (all volunteers) I felt utterly inspired by the humanity of the campaign and the men who sign up to it.

Is mysogyny on the rise across the world? And how would we tell if it was?

Chris K , Rob Knight on Liberal Review and Jonathan Calder have all blogged on the horrific news that a gang rape victim had her punishment, yes, her punishment of 90 lashes increased to 200 for having the cheek to appeal her sentence.

And last week, we heard reports from the Chief of Police in Basra that 42 women in the city had been murdered between July and September for not covering up; which makes me wonder how many women had been beaten or assaulted for the same ‘crimes’? This is not just happening to Muslim women but Christian women as well.

And there! We can see the game is given away; because this sort of behaviour towards women is not as a result of religion as often assumed, but, as a result of militant misogyny.

The UN undertakes country comparisons related to Gender as part of their reports on Human Development. There is the Gender-related Development Index (GDI) and also the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM). The GDI measures all the same things as the Human Development Index but just splits them by gender, male and female. The second, GEM, looks at the proportion of women that work as political representatives, or are managers, senior officials or work in professional or technical positions. Now, it very easy to pick many, many holes in these two measures and some of the assumptions around what is deemed as being ‘developed’; but they’re there and they’re better than nothing.

But they miss out the day to day impact, which the two examples of rampant misogyny above, have on normal women’s lives. ‘Cos, you see, wonderful though it is that 33% of Iraq’s MPs are women (just under twice as many as in the UK), that doesn’t seem to be helping the women of Basra right now. There will be no direct reduction in the GEM of Iraq as a result of these killings even though, I would suggest that women are seriously less empowered now than they were 4 years ago, as a result.

And of course, Saudi Arabia doesn’t allow women to be empowered at all, but there is a different between a woman getting gang raped and given 90 lashes and one being given 200 lashes. Again, I can’t see where this sort of degradation in women’s rights and quality of life are being measured – although, if anyone does, then do let me know!

I think its time we have a different sort of measure of women’s freedom and rights; one that measures the qualitative impact of misogyny on women’s lives. So one might be able to see that in recent years, Afghanistan’s has gone up as women are at least now allowed out of the house but Iraq’s has gone down because of the type of thing that is happening in Basra. I am not suggesting that this would be easy to do, but we need more than a clutch of newspaper reports to measure these things.

And in the UK, well how does the fact that so few reported rapes actually end in any sort of conviction (5.3% this year, when it used to be 33% in the 70’s) figure in any UN measure of women’s empowerment? Or the fact that so many people think that a women who goes out late at night holds some sort of responsibility for her rape, if she is raped.

Next Saturday, 24^th November will be the ‘Reclaim the Night” march in London at 6pm; last time over 1200 women marched in support of women’s right to go out onto the street free from fear of violence or rape.

Our misogyny may not be hard coded into our penal system as in Saudi and thankfully the women of London are not subject to militia’s going around killing us for being ‘inappropriately dressed’ as in Basra but there’s still plenty of misogyny here, if 1 in 8 men think it’s Ok to hit a woman if she’s been nagging or if a third of us, both men and women, think a women is partly responsible for her own rape if she flirts, has been drinking or is dressing sexily.

Sometimes, it feels to me that as Liberal Democrats see feminism as surplus to requirements, because as liberals we would not discriminate against anybody of whatever sex; but on days like today I know that if we are going to achieve better lives for women all over the world we have to be clear and say that feminism has a vital role to play and has a long way to go before misogyny is overcome; we need to be proud to be feminsts!! Laws (of the legal rather than the David kind) help but they are not enough.

Reclaim the Night

In a couple of weeks there will be the 2007 ‘Reclaim the Night’ March from Euston to Soho. It’s a girl’s only gig, followed by a mixed rally at the University of London Union.

The march will highlight the fact that women have the right to be able use public space without fear. These are our civil liberties at risk; it is not good enough for society’s response to rape to be to tell women they can’t go out!

My Mum’s coming down to visit that weekend, and she doesn’t know it yet, but, she’s about to embark on her first political protest. Still, it's not as if it's in the middle of the night..it starts at 6pm and there'll be plenty of time to go and have dinner afterwards!

Why do people always think they are the exception?

Ok, Mr McClintock, which bit of the word legislation do you not understand? It is the law that you are not allowed to discriminate against people on the basis of their sexuality. A law that every one of us is subject to whilst we are in the United Kingdom.

What a person chooses to believe, and Christian beliefs are a choice thankfully not predetermined biologically, is not a good enough reason for the law not to apply to that person. For goodness sake, why do ‘committed’ religionists always think that exceptions should be made for them? You choose to believe it; you interpret your book in that way, nobody is making you and nobody should be making an exception for you!

Grrrrr……

On a more positive note I've finally worked out how to deal with the increasingly 'anti-atheist/agnostic' comments that have been cropping up on Thought for the Day; I now make sure I'm blow drying my hair at about 7.50am and I don't get to hear them at all!

Of course, this completely crews up my critical path on the major project that is getting me from my bed into my clients office looking vaguely presentable and professional, but it is worth it.

Better to be into the office 10 minutes later than be continually offended each morning; we only have the one life and it's far too short for that kind of stress!!

Focus on the Congo

Many of you will have listened over the last couple of mornings to the Today Programme’s reports on the Congo.

If you have you will know how harrowing they are, if you didn’t then go along to Radio 4’s listen again feature; this morning’s report was on at about 7.40am. In it a young woman from the Congo told of how, amongst other abuses, she’d been raped by 19 men in one ‘session’, been forced to hang her own child and watched as the Rwandan militia killed her brother for refusing to rape her, his sister. For the four months that she was held by the militia she was naked; no clothes at all, not even rags.

Deemed too harrowing for us to listen to, were the descriptions of forced cannibalism and worse (although I’m not sure I can imagine what that could be).

You can find details of how to help at Oxfam, where there is also a link to the Arms Control Campaign.

My point, in bringing this to your attention, is to make sure, as we are all agog at the transfer of power from Tony to Gordon, that we remember what their and our job is. On the Radio 4 PM Blog this afternoon, one blogger made the comment that it was time to for the UN to get off their backside…they’re right of course. But the UN works to the priorities of the member states and particularly those of the Security Council.

Our government seems currently to be more focused on its own party political navel and dealing with the ‘blowback’ from their foolish and illegal decision to go to war in Iraq.

The Middle East is important (I know, what an understatement) and if peace were to be brought to that region the world is sure to be a safer and more stable place. But, always hard to do, I am not sure it is possible to compare even what is happening in the Middle East & Iraq, to what is happening in Africa. It seems that as the atrocities in Africa get worse and worse we stop up our ears and hope nobody tells us any more.

It occurs to me that we might do this through a sense of colonial guilt. If we find out too much, our sense of guilt might just be unbearable; so better out of sight and then it will be out of mind. But if that’s so, then it is stuff and nonsense. I am not responsible for the actions of my ancestors of a hundred or even fifty years ago. Although, obviously, I must be is cognisant of the fall out from their actions and the effect it has had on mine and others life. But I am responsible for what is allowed to happen now and it is up to us as human beings to make sure that this barbarism in Congo stops; by supporting the UN, by supporting the NGOs, by not ignoring it or feeling too overwhelmed by it all and putting our leaders back on the hook.

So, Mr Brown, who has made so much about his concern for Africa…what are you doing about the Congo?

I cannot begin to imagine the unbearable pain of the parents of the little girl gone missing in Portugal. I can, however, imagine that the pain now coming out of Africa is multiplied a thousand fold. I only wish that our outrage and concern, as evidenced by the media, was as proportionate.

Girls are humans too!

The Johann Hari column in the independent this morning, got me going again…I have hardly been blogging of late but every now and then a topic comes up that inspires in me the hopeless desire, in an almost Liberal Polemic type way, to write a series of essays on a subject – an urge almost completely missing from my university career more’s the pity!

There are lots of things in politics that get me quite excited, especially when I am applying them in a practical sense, for example, as a school governor instead of just proselytising on them. BUT there are two subjects that to me a so big and important that I metaphorically pace up and down in my head, I get so worked up about them. One is the current assault on our civil liberties (and anybody else’s, for that matter) and second, and related, is human rights and specifically the lack of human rights that are attributed to women all over the world.

Hari makes a compelling case for the fact that too much respect for multiculturalism makes us blind to what is often a blatant disregard and contempt for the human rights the female half the world. So often our analysis of a situation is based on the experience and sensibilities of men; the experience of a woman is invisible or silenced. But in every oppressed, minority or dispossessed group or culture, the women will be there, at the bottom of the pile.

One of the courses I took at University, as part of my degree in International Relations, was entitled ‘Feminist Theories of International Relations’; at the time it was the only course available in the UK on such a subject. In fact I must have been writing an essay, after all, because I remember my Step Dad’s surprise, as he looked at my pile of books brought home for the holidays from the university library, that it was possible to find enough to say on such a subject to fill one book, let alone the six that were on the kitchen table.

That was during the first round of the Balkans wars and only then was rape becoming recognised, in mainstream as opposed to just feminist dialogue, as a bona fide weapon of war. Of course, it always has been from the Vikings to the fall of Berlin, but it’s only in the last 20 years or so that academic discourse has included it along side analysis of, say, military hardware and intergovernmental organisations. Until that point the experience of women in war, beyond keeping the home fires burning and knitting socks, was yet again invisible.

It’s not just war; a different set of human rights standards exists in everything - from the fact that women in Iran often spend far longer in jail for political crimes than men (see www.wafe-women.org for more info on this topic), for no other reason that I can identify other than a deep seated misogyny, to the approach to educating women in countries and cultures, we may consider as highly educated. It is often just the elite that is so; I have a friend, from the Sinai, whose sister was taken out of school aged 9 to help her mother look after the rest of the kids, whilst he went off to university to study English. Such an education is an impossible dream for her as she can’t actually read. When travelling in Egypt, much is made of experiencing traditional Bedouin culture. I’m sure there’s not many women tourists who would really like to experience it, in all its glory – there’s a lot more to it than camels and tea!

And then, don’t even get me on to the topic of Saudi Arabia! We are all so rightly repulsed by the idea of BAe bribes, hardly blink at their human rights record as it pertains to women, but again are rightly outraged when a western contractor is flogged for smuggling in alcohol.

Human rights and respect for others cultures includes everybody, women and men…and, as Hari points out, we must not allow any fear of appearing racist or intolerant of other cultures get in the way of that.