Some people are gay. Get over it!

So, there are some adverts on the sides of buses, and there were going to be some responses but Boris Johnson has stopped them, and then there was some reaction. There are a few salient things to learn from this.

Firstly, we can always count on politicians to exploit some controversy to make themselves look good, especially less than a month before and election (when did Boris last speak out, let alone act, over homophobic, transphobic etc adverts?). Secondly, the level of understanding around queer identities demonstrated by the mainstream media and their bloggers is woefully inadequate. Thirdly, we have learned that there is no point being moderate in an attempt to avoid being divisive.

I sincerely cannot think of a slogan that is more benign and inoffensive to sum up the current state of gay acceptance than ‘Some people are gay. Get over it!’. Perhaps ‘Some people are queer’, so as not to ignore people who are not part of the heterosexual hegemony but do not identify as ‘gay’ (this issue is an essential criticism of much of Stonewall’s politics). One could argue that the exhortation to ‘Get over it!’ is somewhat confrontational (if, that is, one had a particularly sheltered impression of political confrontation) but really it just provides a basic solution to the issue of homophobia; no change of attitudes, no education, no pressure not to be homophobic – simply to get over the fact that some people are gay. On some level, while a poster campaign lends prominence to the debate, the actual message seeks to take the fundamental questions of homophobia and queer identities off the table. This is not, in and of itself, a bad thing; a simple, concise message which provides a practical political solution of social tolerance and making homosexuality an unremarkable personality trait has some value; rather than saying ‘your attitudes to homosexuality are wrong’ the campaign suggests the more pragmatic ‘homosexuality need not be an issue’ (leaving aside debates over who the target audience is).

In spite of this seemingly deliberately inoffensive simplicity, when the (inevitable) homophobic response appeared there were those who acted as though Stonewall had invited it by picking the wrong message. This, too, was inevitable. There will always be those who, purporting to be sympathetic to the struggle of oppressed groups, will criticise them for being too aggressive in their methods and rhetoric. What we can usefully learn from this obnoxious response is that there is little point in trying to be moderate, inoffensive and concessionary. There is always an urge when presenting political campaigns against bigotry to be appear nice and relatable and non-aggressive. People are often timid about seeming too militant, for fear of ‘losing the PR war’. This needs to be seriously questioned. I have no interest in meeting bigots half way. If reactionary conservatives and condescending liberals are going to condemn a campaign approach no matter how many steps one takes to mitigate any offense caused, campaigners need stop being so accommodating.

I quote Graham Linehan’s tweet at the top of this article not because I agree with it but because it demonstrates a fundamental aspect of this kind of political dispute. Stonewall’s pro-acceptance posters are treated as part of a broader dialogue and, because the involvement of the homophobes has made it all rather unsavoury, it is one that many people would simply like to go away. Things would be much simpler, it is implied, if Stonewall hadn’t been so provocative with their adverts; the homophobes would never have responded and the whole thing could have been avoided. I’m not suggesting that Linehan is homophobic or seriously wants pro-acceptance bus adverts to be banned (and I beg you not to get in touch with me about this), but that this illustrates a common response; the idea that victims of persecution should try to avoid inviting further abuse. Needless to say, this is the wrong approach. These adverts did little more than assert, visibly and prominently, the existence of gay people. If this invites criticism for being divisive, if this invites criticism for provoking a homophobic backlash, then it has been demonstrated to us (again) that there is no point pursuing this capitulatory liberal agenda of inoffensive moderacy. Be bold, radical, militant, aggressive. If assertiveness offends, be offensive.

 

The NHS, Protest and Guilt

A few very obvious points on the NHS:

The Health and Social Care Bill is going to pass and over the coming years it will have a catestrophic effect on the quality and provision of healthcare in the country. Even if Labour are elected in 2015 and Andy Burnham makes good on his promise to undo the legislation, the damage will already have been done and the wheels of privatisation (which were, yes, set grinding under the previous Labour government) will be spinning too fast to stop. The NHS is a political anomaly and I don’t believe it could exist again. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

 
The bill is going to pass. The bill was always going to pass. The government has a three line whip, which supersedes public pressure. The bill is going to pass because by this stage its failure to do so would be a defeat the Coalition could not recover from. The bill is going to pass because its proposed reforms are already being put into place and there’s no going back. No amount of writing to MPs and Peers, no amount of signatures on a petition, no amount of candle light vigils, no amount of protests and rallies are going to change this.

This has been obvious for some time (though the more terrifying details and confirmation of our more pesimistic fears have been coming thick and fast in recent weeks). So, where was the left? There has been a lot of talk about how ashamed we should all be for our failure to stop this bill. ‘How will we look our children in the eyes and tell them that we failed?’ etc. There has been a lot of talk of people ‘doing everything they can’ (which in practise usually means writings to Peers and signing a petition). Out of this have come an entirely undeserved sense of sanctimony from some, and an equally undeserved sense of guilt from others.

Some people’s frustration over this political inevitability has manifested itself in a poorly disguised contempt for the public for allowing this to happen. ‘If you’re not prepared to fight for it, you don’t deserve free healthcare’ the hateful mantra runs. This is bullshit. To lay the blame for this toxic legislation at the feet of those who have tried to oppose it, or those who didn’t know it was happening at all, is dull and obnoxious. The government (in collusion with private health firms) wrote this bill, they are forcing it through, they are to blame. Many people I know are afriad of what the future holds which, frankly, is sensible, but too many of us are compounding that stress with guilt for failure to act. All of the forms of protest we have available to us to stop a piece of legislation being passed can be boiled down to simply asking the people with the power to act in as we want them. If they choose not to listen (as they have done, consistently), we have no further way to compell them.

Part of the desire to blame ineffective campaigners rather than an uncaring government may stem from a refusal to accept powerlessness within our Parliamentary system. It’s preferable to think that we just dropped the ball this time around than that we never stand a chance of winning, perhaps. The truth is, the government doesn’t need our approval to get things done. If you don’t like the government’s NHS reforms, don’t vote for them again at the next election. That’s it; that’s your democratic power; that’s the recourse that’s open to you if you work within the system. It’s in three years time. How many staff and patients will have had their lives changed in that time?

If this farcical travesty of a legislative process can be good for anything, let it be that we can no longer have any delusions about our power within a representative democracy. Stop blaming ourselves; we never stood a chance. This was their battleground, they set the terms and they always win. If we really want to fight them, we need to think, dream and act much bigger.

Can Men Be Feminists?

Can men be feminists?

[This is a question which rolls around from time to time and, loathe though I am to contribute to the decades of speculation on the issue, I hope a blog outlining my thoughts may excuse me from having to do so as frequently in future.]

First and foremost, I regard the question as one of semantics. No one is sensibly arguing that men cannot challenge sexism, attempt to understand feminist gender politics and so forth; indeed, it’s rather expected that they should. The question is how we refer to men who do so.

The reason that the word ‘feminist’ may be inappropriate is that, according to some, a feminist understanding of the world must be informed by explicitely female experience. A man, because his experience of patriarchal society is necessarily different from that of women, is incapable of reaching such an understanding. Various alternate phrases, like ‘supportive of feminism’ and ‘feminist ally’ exist to fill the gap (which I personally think sound uncommitted and somewhat patronising, though your mileage may vary).

It is arguably true that only those who have been on the receiving end of misogynist oppression can fully understand it, but is the ability to understand misogyny in this way the only definition of feminism? Is feminism not simply a body of ideas and schools of thought like any other, and ‘feminist’ simply a name for its adherents?

Considered another way: Feminist arguments made by women are often dismissed as being subjective (according to the prejudices proscribed by patriarchy; generally because the woman is emotional, hormonal, irrational or stupid). Of course, good feminist arguments stand objectively, regardless of who is making them, and (though they may be reached through uniquely female experience) can be comprehended, accepted and put forward by anyone. Yes, a man’s capacity to contribute to feminist discourse will at times be necessarily different to that of women (and often of less usefulness), and yes men should not crowd women out of feminist discourse, but an awareness of and attempts to challenge one’s own privilege is surely something we should expect from any feminist, regardless of gender.

The degree of commonality in female experience is itself debatable, especially when sexist oppression intersects with other forms (racial, homophobic, transphobic, ablist and class being the most obvious). It seems flippant and evasive to respond to any issue of gender politics by disputing the inherent essentialism, but it is never the less worth considering that any attitude which relies on a ubiquitous female experience is likely to fall foul of other, more nuanced, feminist thought. Our gender should not define our intellectual or political identity.

A significant contributing problem, which demands more consideration than I’m going to give it here, is a habit of reducing all things to uncomplicated labels which we can then chose to apply to ourselves or not. Therefore, several centuries of probing, ever developing, frequently contradictory critical thought are reduced to a binary of political identity: one is or is not a feminist. Similarly, concern over whether or not one is a Marxist, an anarchist, a post structuralist etc are often unhelpful. These are schools of thought from which one may take what is useful and consider it without redefining one’s own political identity. These ideologies, rather than describing who we are, enable us to describe what we are thinking.

I argue, often, from a feminist perspective. Feminist ideas inform my interpretation of my experiences, which informs my thinking, and that thinking informs my actions. I consider myself a feminist.

Notes from a Pessimist

“And, my friends, in this story you have a history of this entire movement. First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.”

From a 1918 US trade union address by Nicholas Klein

It is important to stay optimistic during sustained bouts of political activism, because it is a tiring and frequently dispiriting endeavour. It is important to find things, even minor ones, to be optimistic about, because the intellectual and physical drain of combating deeply entrenched injustice must be met with a defiant strength of purpose. It is important to stay optimistic because it is so easy to lose a grip on one’s mental well being that we sometimes don’t notice it happened. However, in the spirit of avoiding the disappointment and disheartenment, and of maintaining one’s optimism, it is important not to be naive.

While much has been made of the validity of a campaign with no initial specific demands, it is important to have some idea of what victory might look and feel like. For the occupy movement, victory is change; be it reform in the highest echelons of the banking and finance industries or total restructuring of society’s political and economic relationships. Some of the following might be good, some are arguably essential, but it’s a long road to a perfect world and none have ever walked it, so some perspective is important. Despite persistent belief to the contrary, these are not victory:

• Getting positive attention from the media
• Getting negative attention from the media
• Getting support from passers by
• Obeying the law while the state is breaking it
• Getting arrested
• Getting stopped, disrupted, kettled or beaten by the police
• Performing the most impressive banner drop, street theatre or spectacular stunt
• Mass mobilisation
• Kind words from leaders
• Placatory compromise
• Getting ignored
• Getting ridiculed
• Getting attacked
• Getting burned
• Having monuments built to you
• Enjoying yourself