Posterous theme by Cory Watilo as adapted by Jamie Graham

Mansplaining feminism

written on Saturday 14 July 2012 and filed under [feminism] [posts that are too long and need an editor] [smash everything]

What is feminism? There's no easy answer, since any term that a couple of billion people would use to describe themselves is clearly going to have a multitude of meanings that are each only shared by a minority at any one time.

Let's try a different question: what does feminism mean to me? Or, why am I a feminist? I'm a feminist because I fundamentally believe that all people are equal. Every one of us, regardless of our sex, colour, sexuality, belief or whatever else you might like to pick as a division. I choose to judge each person I know on their individual merit, rather than by some arbitrary dividing line.

I'm a feminist because I believe that women, the majority of the population, are ill-served by society's norms in the West (and worse elsewhere). Women are equal to men, but men have the power, because men have the money and also because most men have actual physical power - the power to beat up and/or kill most physically smaller females at their will.

It is, however, worth noting that most men don't. Most men wouldn't even consider it. Most men would cut their own arms off before they struck someone physically smaller and weaker than themselves, regardless of their sex. But a tiny minority don't have this bar and it is (partially) because of them that I am a feminist.

Because I'm a feminist (and an anti-racist and so forth), I try to watch my language. The ball-and-chain sometimes complains about how politically correct I am, especially after I've barked his name at him sharply when he's used a word I don't like. I'm actually not very "politically correct" as some people define it. What I strive for is also known as "bias-free usage". At the first approximation, bias-free usage means not using adjectives that are irrelevant to the subject at hand. So the person who drove my bus was a person, unless their sex or colour or whatever was relevant (it rarely is) and the story I'm telling requires I mention something like that. And yes, that does mean I suffer from The Dimbleby Problem: the person in the green shirt, no the woman in the green shirt, no the black woman in the green shirt. I can live with the fumbling that bias-free usage can force on you.

Now, how far does bias-free usage go? Well, I don't expect it of others per se, but I will pull people up when they use badly biased words (as I define them, obviously). I'm more comfortable with writing and speech that uses "their" instead of "his" or "hers" - I'm afraid I don't hold with the "xe/xis/xeir" neologisms when "their" is available (although I do use "s/he" at a push). If forced by style to give a gender pronoun in writing, I'll generally use "she" rather than "he", but I'd rather avoid doing it at all.

By now, a proportion of the people reading this will have given up, fed up of the rules I'm scattering in their path. But these rules are no harder than the ones on commas and apostrophes (and there's only one: don't use commas and apostrophes like an idiot). By all means use "he" when you mean a person in general if it sounds better. Just be prepared to defend it. It's like rape jokes or jokes that take the piss of disabled people: I actually don't mind, even if the joke in question makes me uncomfortable. But you've got to be prepared to defend it, and not in a Ricky Gervais "well, my fans aren't offended and I'm best friends with Kevin Spacey" type of shit way either. There are actually no rules when it comes to word use, other than the speaker/writer being able to plausibly defend what they've said/wrote. If you've said it ironically or sarcastically or to make a point, then fine. If you've said it unthinkingly, then apologise and we'll move on, both wiser. If you've said it because you don't care or because you wanted to wound, even if you wanted to wound an individual rather than a perceived mass, then, well, we've got problems we need to discuss. Or you need to get the fuck out of my Twitter feed. Either is good.

Are there exceptions? Sort of. LGBT people can make jokes surrounding the words "queer" and "poof" and so forth. Women can call each other whores (except in the Daily Mail, because... well, we all know *why* you're saying it, you holier-than-thou turd). Black people can use the N word. But again, context is king. There's a difference between an LGB person saying "I'm surrounded by queers" and an LGB person saying "I hate and want to kill queers". It's a fine line, often hard to spot, but there is one, albeit surrounded by a lot of smudging.

What about oppressed minorities using derogatory language about the oppressors?

Well, it's awkward for a bleeding heart liberal to take on the language used by the oppressed against their oppressors. But I'm not actually a bleeding heart liberal. I'm a strident socialist with Marxist tendencies who happens to be a born social liberal. If you're using derogatory language against those you think are oppressing you, then fucking stop it. You're playing their game. You're giving the Daily Mail ammunition. You're putting off the vast majority of the rest of the population of the world who are on your side. I know why you're doing it, but you're being counterproductive. You're failing at what you hope to achieve and you're making the oppressor feel better about their oppression (they're oppressing you out of fear, not because they hate you for any rational reason).

And now we come back to feminism. Is the neologism "mansplaining" okay? According to a considerable number of my (now) ex-followers on Twitter, yes it is. Attacks on the oppressor (men) by the oppressed (women) are perfectly fine. Because they don't mean *you*, they've excepted *you* from that attack. They mean every other man. So that's okay then. When you point out the flaws in this insane argument, you're (I'm) a misogynist. I'm siding with the oppressor. I'm a man and have no idea what discrimination really means (coz deaf gay guys with arthritis never experience discrimination). GBT men don't live with *daily* discrimination like women do, so women are entitled to attack men verbally.

I thought the flaws in those statements were obvious. But the Guardianistas I follow(ed) didn't. I was repeatedly declared a misogynist for complaining about the word "mansplaining" and then blocked. Ho hum: it doesn't matter, since I don't follow sexists anyway so I'm well shot of them and their sexist attitudes.

At the heart of this kerfuffle was how to define "oppressed". When pushed, the ones who didn't like me objecting to the word "mansplaining" said that only the oppressed themselves could define who was oppressing them. I pointed out that the total fuckwits in the so-called "English Defence League", an off-shoot of the old National Front, defined themselves, wrongly, as "oppressed". If we follow that logic, it means we're not allowed to challenge the far-Right's language and beliefs because they are oppressed (as they define it). But challenging their language and beliefs is something I believe in doing as often as possible (I can't pass a so-called "Christian" with a selectively-quoted placard condemning gays to death without offering a heartfelt and sincere shout of "fuck you!" in response).

Sadly, a mention of the morons in the EDL was enough for some (otherwise sensible) people to declare loudly that they had been compared to the EDL by a misogynist. Really: if you need the word "compared" explained to you, then you have bigger problems than attempting to defend your use of neo-hate speech from fellow feminists. Then they and their followers blocked me en masse.

The experience has left me slightly hollowed out. I probably won't draw attention to the use of anti-male language in future, so score that one as a victory, people. But then I probably won't draw attention to the use of anti-female language either. But perhaps that's a victory too. Perhaps there *are* feminists out there who truly *do* believe that it's better to silence a fellow feminist they disagree with than to listen to what he has to say. I'm just glad I don't have to mix with them, whatever sex, colour, sexuality, nationality, locality, religion or class they claim to represent. I'm happy sticking with the majority for once.

 

Seb Coe can suck my cock

written on Friday 13 July 2012 and filed under [london 2012] [olympics] [this isn't how the internet works you idiots]

  1. Links to the Site. You may create your own link to the Site, provided that your link is in a text-only format. You may not use any link to the Site as a method of creating an unauthorised association between an organisation, business, goods or services and London 2012, and agree that no such link shall portray us or any other official London 2012 organisations (or our or their activities, products or services) in a false, misleading, derogatory or otherwise objectionable manner. The use of our logo or any other Olympic or London 2012 Mark(s) as a link to the Site is not permitted. View our guidelines on Use of the Games’ Marks.

Here's a link to the ill-planned, over-priced, fascist-inclined, civil-liberties-destroying, corporate-minded disaster in the making that is this joke of an Olympic games website.

Now sue me, you fuckers.

Of fraud and fraudsters

written on Saturday 23 June 2012 and filed under [fraud] [how to ruin my entire week] [nhs]

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Photograph by ell brown on Flickr. Creative Commons licence

If you, like me, have something incurable but treatable that, without treatment, would leave you unable to work, the NHS in England is grudgingly willing to let you have your prescriptions for free.

They don't make it easy for you to find this out. You need to either wade through dozens of forms and leaflets offering you ways of paying in advance or in instalments, or, as happened to me, pay for prescriptions that were keeping me alive for about a year until my GP casually asked if anyone had told me I could be having them for free.

For five years the NHS has been pumping an increasing number of pills in to me (mostly to counteract the side-effects of the previous set of pills, as far as I can tell) and it hasn't cost me a penny. Which is good, because otherwise it would be costing me over £40 a month just to stay alive. There have been times recently when I simply didn't have £40 for such non-essential luxuries as medicines to stay alive, so I'm grateful to Dr Botherway for mentioning the existence of the card in the first place.

These cards last 5 years. I've just reached that milestone and have been through the tortuous process of applying for a renewal - go to your GP, get a form, pick between the two types of hypoparathyroidism mentioned without really knowing which one you have, sign the form, return it to the GP, get him to sign it and post it, wait for anything up to 3 generations for the new card to come back from Newcastle… the usual experience when dealing with any bureaucracy that hates its customers (that is to say: all of them).

So I was very pleased to see an NHS envelope on my doorstep this morning. That was quick. Oddly large, bulging envelope… can't feel the card in it. Hmmm. Have they changed formats? Are they bombarding me with leaflets to get me to eat less meat… again?

Oh, if only. I opened the envelope and was confronted with two Penalty Charge Notices, for £88 each. Two badly (impenetrably) written covering letters. Two photocopies of the back of two prescriptions. Two identical two page forms asking for information they hadn't got (like my NI number and my NHS number… now that's worrying). And one envelope designed to take one very large cheque.

There was no "please explain how…" or "our records don't appear to show…" or any other attempt to communicate. Just the awfully written letter telling me that they had made rigorous checks of my February 2012 prescriptions and had discovered that I was defrauding the NHS of vital funds and must pay up immediately. This was annoying on several levels, as I'm sure you can imagine.

First, the letter is clearly actionable as it accuses me, baselessly, of fraud against an organisation that I'm loudly proud of and have attempted to defend - our NHS. That's defamation.

Second, I have to prove to them my innocence of these baseless charges. They don't make that easy, either, providing little or no space to write information like "I'm holding the fucking exemption card in my damn hand NOW, you berks" or the like. I also have to go out, get two photocopies made of my card and return it within 7 days… in a second class prepaid envelope. The clock on this started ticking when they posted the Penalty Charge Letter second class on Wednesday. The post around here is so slow, it won't get to them in time.

Third, the prescriptions themselves don't have a place to write the number of the card. No, really. You tick a box, but you don't provide proof. You can show the card to the pharmacist, but about 2 years ago they were told not to ask for it any more and when you do show it they show no interest whatsoever. One of the prescriptions has the number scrawled on it. The other is stamped "evidence not seen". So the evidence was seen, just very reluctantly.

Fourth, I now have a permanent record, as far as I can tell, sat on a file somewhere in the NHS saying that I'm a fraudster. One day I might go crawling to the NHS for some help, you know, dying or something trivial and a doctor ro administrator or receptionist will pick up the file, see "DEFRAUDED NHS PHARMACY FEBRUARY 2012" on it and let me slip to the back of the queue (this type of thing does happen: seven years ago a homophobic doctor kept pushing down the queue for investigations and operations because she felt I'd brought the symptoms of bowel cancer on myself with all the poky bum sex I wasn't having because I had the symptoms of bowel cancer).

Fifth, it would be really helpful if the NHS didn't spring nasty surprises like this on people who are on medication for disorders that are made worse by stress. I'd've hoped that was obvious.

Sixth, the cost of all of this. A letter to me, saying "Our records show you ticked this box but we can't match it to your card. Please write the number of the card here:" sent second class with a return envelope would cost comfortably under a pound and would offend nobody. An A5 envelope with 10 sheets of paper, 2 staples, a return envelope, a covering letter, photocopies and the whole swirling back room admin of trying, albeit not very hard, to match the prescription with the card plus going to a higher officer for permission to fine me, opening a file, maintaining it and all the rest can't come in much under £20, if not a whole lot more.

Sure, they'd make that up if I was indeed a fraudster. But they won't this time. Or, judging by this performance, most of the time. Instead this is just money that has washed down the drain (along with the billions in sweeteners to the private companies the Tories are selling the NHS to).

As ever, it remains true that our NHS could use a great deal of reform. But not this insane Tory/Liberal privatisation nonsense. Not the constant rearranging of the boardroom chairs and the merry-go-round of managers, managing directors, commissioners and all that shit. What our NHS needs is the simple application of common sense in all the things it does, from prescriptions to prognoses, from gynaecology to geriatrics.

Sadly, however, when was the last time you saw any politician with even a tiny grain of common sense?