June 21, 2010
Blond Babble
I had hoped that after the election Phillip Blond would fade back into obscurity. Unfortunately he seems to be lingering around like a bad smell, recently polluting BBC1′s The Review Show with prejudice.
Of all the nonsense Blond spouted (including a segment inviting him to plug his incoherent, ignorant, printed delusion of grandeur), his 5 minutes on feminism were certainly the worst. However they also provided a masterclass in how to do modern anti-feminism, so unlike most of what Blond says it’s actually worth a quick analysis.
Start off around 16.50mins. Blond brashly declares that the problems facing women in 21st century Britain are “much more profound” than the institutional disadvantages identified (albeit with trademark inaccuracy and rantiness) by Germaine Greer. The root cause is in fact…”the type of feminism that’s made its way into public policy debates”.
It’s classic Backlash tactics. The problem for and with women’s empowerment turns out to be…women’s empowerment. The reason that women are faced with disadvantage and inequality turns out not to be because of oppressive cultural structures, or economic systems that combine with these to unfairly disadvantage one gender rather than the other. No, the women’s movement is to blame.
But what exactly is this “type of feminism” that Blond so laments? Er, “it is essentially, first wave, women as men, non-relational feminsim”.
Ouch.
Let’s deal with this bit first: “women as men, non-relational feminism”. Yep, you guessed it, this is pure unadulterated Blond Babble. Buzz-words pronounced with gravitas as though no idiot could possibly misunderstand their significance…except that if these words are to mean anything substantive at all, Blond has to define them as technical terms. Which of course he doesn’t do, because Blond doesn’t do definitions or analysis. Just self-serving Blond Babble.
But what’s actually funnier is the “first wave” reference. Anybody with any knowledge whatsoever of feminist thinking knows that “first wave” feminism refers (broadly) to the early 20th century campaign by the suffragette movement demanding equal rights for women with regards to, for example, the vote. At this stage, feminist thinking demanded a set of basic legal rights and some equalities. It did not (generally) advance philosophical theories of gender being a social construct, or the other forms of more counter-intuitive (but important) thinking Blond later aludes to. First wave feminism demanded that (some, generally wealthy) women be granted some of the basic rights of democratic citizenship. Yet according to Blond this is “the type of feminism” that has disastrously undermined women’s progress in the early 21st century.
Stop sniggering at the back, please.
Moving swiftly on, Blond prepares to let us all in on a secret. Like Mel Gibson, Phillips knows exactly what “women want”: “to have their families and their relationships, but also have a career”. Which admittedly seems reasonable enough. After all, it’s what most men want and indeed the vast majority correctly take it for granted that these things are perfeclty compatible goals…for men.
But apparently “until we can have a new type of feminism”, “that is pro-family” (as oppose to those evil vote-demanding suffragettes who simply hated the family!), women (unlike men, note) cannot have both a family and a career. And whose to blame? The women’s movement!
It’s a classic display of anti-feminist backlash thinking. The tried and tested trope – that women “want to have it all” (i.e. baby, family, job) but that this is a false promise of the women’s movement – is used to indicte the women’s movement. Yet it should be blindingly obvious that if men can “have it all”, but our social expectations and economic structures conspire to ensure most women have to choose between family or career, then something is wrong with our social expectations and economic structures. To blame the women’s movement for this inequality is a little like blaming anti-slavery campaigners for the continuation of slavery in the days before abolition.
But that’s exactly what backlash thinking does, and does with such aplomb because its central tenet (“the women’s movement is to blame for the problems facing women”) has been so successfully inculcated from the 1980s onwards.
One outstanding question: how much does Blond consciously intend to do this? There’s no doubt that his colossal ego makes him an intellectual poster boy for the Dunning-Kruger effect. And given his hilarious ignorance of the basic history of the feminist movement, and his chucking-around of straw-women feminist terms, I’d say this indicates simple ignorance rather than conscious undermining.
But then that’s what we’d expect from a really successful backlash movement: for it to be taken as an obvious common-place that women’s empowerment is to blame for the problems faced by women, because really everyone knows that wimmin were better off before they got words like equality and fairness into their silly little heads.
May 21, 2010
Abortion and the Ethic of Ultimate Ends
“But even herewith the problem is not yet exhausted. No ethics in the world can dodge the fact that in numerous instances the attainment of ‘good’ ends is bound to the fact that one must be willing to pay the price of using morally dubious means or at least dangerous ones – and facing the possibility or even the probability of evil ramifications.”
- Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation
That’s right folks, it’s another post about Weber. Though this time not regarding the glories of charismatic leadership, which some friends have expressed concern about my interest in. Today I want to consider Weber’s conception of “the ethic of ultimate ends”.
For Weber, this meant the having of deep-seated, thorough-going moral principles that direct and inform one’s actions. Despite the slightly misleading terminology, Weber was not referring to simple “consequentialism”; that one must seek to bring about certain specific states of affairs. Rather the ethic of ultimate ends can apply just as much as somebody upholding the maxim fiat justitia ruat caelum – let justice be done though the heavens fall. The point is to have genuine ethical commitments that one truly believes in and lives by.
It is essential to possess such an ethic, Weber thought, or else one turns into a faceless bureaucrat or a mindless machine politician, carrying out orders but with no sense of value or purpose. And that, if unchecked, leads to nihilism and mass social emptyness and horror. Yet an ethic of ultimate ends is not enough: because “the decisive means for politics is violence”, one must confront the truth that whenever one seeks to advance an ethic of ultimate ends, one will be forced at some stage to use violent (or violence-inducing) means.
This is the demonic truth of politics, and indeed all attempts to direct social action which affects the lives of others. The truly mature ethical agent, for Weber, realises this tragedy and accordingly approaches political life with the utmost gravitas and care.
Yesterday Laurie Penny wrote an excellent piece at CiF regarding the attitude of the anti-abortion lobby and its righteous anger at the launch of adverts for an abortion advice helpline. One thing that Laurie notes is that anti-abortionists appear blind to the observed fact that making abortion illegal or inaccessible simply does not lead to women not having abortions. What it leads to are back-street abortions and desperate attempts to do the job alone, often leading to women sustaining horrific injuries. An estimated 20million illegal – and unsafe – abortions a year, and 80,000 female deaths, are the actual results of making abortion inaccessible to women.
Laurie and I will disagree with the anti-abortionists about the moral status of abortion itself, of course. We think a woman’s right to control her own fertility and body vastly outweigh considerations given to non-sentient clusters of cells. But that’s not what I’m interested in today.
What I’m interested in is how groups that describe themselves as pro-life ignore-away 80,000 female deaths a year, and reconcile that with the fact that making abortion illegal (or effectively illegal) does not actually stop women having abortions. The answer, it seems, is that they possess an ethic of ultimate ends – abortion is wrong and therefore the state should outlaw it – without an ethic of responsibility – that making abortion illegal is but the taking of a moral stand whilst disregarding the deaths and suffering that follow.
And here’s what Weber thought about that sort of thing:
“Surely, politics is made with the head, but it is certainly not made with the head alone. In this the proponents of an ethic of ultimate ends are right. One cannot prescribe to anyone whether he should follow an ethic of absolute ends or an ethic of responsibility, or when the one and when the other. One can say only this much: If in these times, which, in your opinion, are not times of ‘sterile’ excitation – excitation is not, after all, genuine passion – if now suddenly the Weltanschauungs-politicians crop up en masse and pass the watchword, ‘The world is stupid and base, not I’, ‘The responsibility for the consequences does not fall upon me but upon the others whom I serve and whose stupidity or baseness I shall eradicate’, then I declare frankly that I would first inquire into the degree of inner poise backing this ethic of ultimate ends. I am under the impression that in nine out of ten cases I deal with windbags who do not fully realise what they take upon themselves but who intoxicate themselves with romantic sensation. From a human point of view this is not very interesting to me, nor does it move me profoundly. However, it is immensely moving when a mature man – no matter whether old or young in years – is aware of a responsibility for the consequences of his conduct and really feels such responsibility with heart and soul. He then acts by following an ethic of responsibility and somewhere he reaches the point where he says: ‘Here I stand; I can do no other.’ That is something genuinely human and moving. And every one of us who is not spiritually dead inside must realise the possibility of finding himself at some point in that position.”
May 19, 2010
Sex Work, The State and Respect
As emerged in yesterday’s comments, some national press have reported that government job centres are advertising vacancies for women over 18 to work as sex line operatives, with the possibility of nude webcam roles. Indeed, a spokesperson for the (previous) Department of Work and Pensions admitted:
‘If a vacancy is legal we have to carry it. However, adult entertainment jobs are clearly marked as not suitable for people aged under 18 and are only discussed with people who inquire about them. We are currently consulting on the rules to see how we can tighten them even further.”‘
I think most people would find the offering of sex work (for that is what talking dirty to men on phone lines is) at government Job Centres unacceptable. That women who refuse such work could in turn have their unemployment benefits withdrawn, under planned ever-tougher rules, will strike many as appalling.
It is, however, worth thinking carefully about why we might justifiably react this way. I’ll start off, however, by narrowing my target as I want to keep this blog manageable by zeroing-in on a few particular issues. Specifically, I want to set out some reasons why I think it would be wrong for the state to withdraw benefits from women who turn down work as sex-line operators, leaving aside the larger question of whether these positions should be advertised in the Job Centre at all. My conclusions and reasonings can be extrapolated as you see fit, or not.
Firstly, however, I don’t want to argue – as some do here – that there’s a slippery slope to close off; that women who start off as sex-line operators will fall into full-blown prostitution and see their lives slip out of view. To begin with I think that’s a tenuous argument; I’m sure most women can and will draw their own lines about what they are prepared to do, and are autonomous and self-governing enough to do that without paternal figures benignly watching out for them. But more importantly I don’t want to rely on speculative consequentialist arguments which may or may not obtain in practice. I want to identify what is specifically wrong with withdrawing benefits from women who refuse to work as sex line operators, in itself. Accordingly, I think the action is on the point that working as a sex-line operator is especially and unacceptably degrading and unpleasant on a number of metrics.
Now, some will say that beggars can’t be choosers; that women on the dole should damn-well take whatever they are offered. But I think that’s straightforwardly wrong. The state surely has a responsibility to respect citizens in a fairly thorough-going way, and there are some things it should not ask of them regardless of whether those individuals are the recipients of welfare support. I want to say that sex-line work is the sort of thing that the state cannot push women into doing (by withdrawing their benefits) whilst consistently respecting them as citizens.
Working as a sex-line operator will be found especially unpleasant and degrading to a great many women for a great many reasons. Firstly, sex to most women is an extremely personal and intimate thing. It is not something they want to share – or even discuss – with strangers. Connectedly but more strongly, most women will therefore find the idea of talking to strangers in ways designed to arouse those strangers a masturbatory aid utterly repulsive. Indeed, it will make them feel bad about their work, and bad about themselves as well as making them feel disgusted in a pretty thorough-going way.
Furthermore, many women looking for work will be married or in relationships with men or women they love and care about. Given that sex for most women – and their partners – is an intimate and private thing, the idea of one partner engaging in sexual work will be distressing and hurtful to both. The fact it will be done out of the necessity to make money will only add insult to injury. Even for single women, it is again worth noting that having to undertake this sort of work for the necessity to make money adds an extra dimension of insult, as well as unpleasantness, because it emphasises the dependency and powerlessness of the woman undertaking the work.
Finally, I would also stress the worrying state of affairs whereby the state actively coerces women into pursuing employment that contributes to the general objectivisation of women, caricaturing them as convenience appendages delivering sexual services to paying (and therefore more-powerful) men, and the further detrimental effects (in terms of self-esteem, working pride, etc) of such objectivisation upon the specific women forced into such work. Internet trolls who spend all their lives in mummy’s basement often don’t realise this, but in real life most women do not want to be leered-at and slobbered-over by drooling men, they want to be respected as persons and found attractive in a tasteful manner that remembers they are human beings with feelings, not pieces of meat to be selected and consumed.
Now, I don’t want to deny that there are some women out there who (might) like nothing more than to talk dirty to unknown men cracking one off down the phone. It’s a big world, and it takes all sorts. But firstly let’s be careful about how important the quality of respective choices are and how important context is when making value assesments (i.e. read this post about prostitution and choice). Secondly, let’s also remember that women who want to do sex-line work are not the object of discussion: we’re talking about those who don’t, but are faced with a choice of sex-line work or benefit withdrawal by the state.
At this stage, my opponents have a tired, tested rejoinder to throw: that sex-work may be unpleasant, but then so are lots of others jobs so why should sex-work be treated differently? The favourite supposed counter-example is of being a bin man. That’s a rubbish (s’cuse the pun) and dirty job, but surely nobody’s going to suggest that it should enjoy some privileged status whereby the state doesn’t require people to take the work if it’s offered?
I enjoy this particular rejoinder because it’s illustrative of a multiple myopia. For firstly, being a bin man actually isn’t viewed across society with the same sort of haughty disdain that sex work usually is. A working class friend of mine once pointed out that on the estate where he grew up “doin’ the bins” was a very respectable job: it was regular, honest, and paid OK. There were plenty of worse things you could do, and that many did. The “You wouldn’t want your daughter to be a refuse-collector either, so what’s so special about sex work?” rejoinder therefore misses that prejudice against people who empty bins is likely to be far more class based than usually assumed.
But returning to the issue of sex work, it seems to me overwhelmingly obvious that this falls into a different category of stigmatised employment. To illustrate this most effectively, let’s recall that ours is a society that positively vilifies female sexuality and sexual activity. That’s why we have a powerful array of condemnatory words to throw at women who transgress the sexual mores of female modesty, as well as those we just happen to feel like insulting and hurting. Try: slut, whore, slag, hooker, prosie, slatern, tart, floozy, harlot, hussy, vamp, tramp and so on. (Also note that these insulting words broadly lack equivalent counterparts for the male of the species). There is something especially and thoroughly stigmatised about female sexual profligacy in this society, and as most of those words attest, it is especially stigmatised for women to conjoin sex with money.
But some will at this stage dig-in their heels, denying any qualitative distinction between female sex work and other forms of unpleasant employment. They will claim that we don’t live in a society that vilifies sexually-active women who are paid for their services. That in fact there would be nothing essentially different between little Jenny going to school and saying “my mummy cleans bins” and “my mummy says naughy things to dirty old men whilst they wank themselves off”. Reaching this point, however, I’m reminded of one of my favourite passages of recent(ish) philosophy. It comes in Bernard Williams discussion of certain philosophical manoeuvres made by dogmatic utilitarian thinkers:
“Such arguments may involve some interesting points on the way, but their strategy is shamelessly circular: utilitarian rationality is made the test of what counts as happiness, in order to remove that sort of happiness which constitutes an objection to utilitarianism. All that is needed to counter this at the theoretical level is a suitable unwillingness to be bullied.”
My sense is that, as with Williams’ utilitarians, all that is basically needed to resist those who would deny that sex-line work is a particular – and especially, perhaps even uniquely – degrading form of employment for women is a sufficient unwillingness to be bullied.
For most women, sex-line work will be deeply objectionable in the ways I’ve tried to enumerate above. Furthermore, we should find this utterly unsurprising given that we live in a society that not only promotes the valuation of sex in the lives of healthy functioning adults as something private, intimate and deeply emotional, but which also vilifies and castigates women who break the social rules of female modesty, especially when that involves the receipt of money.
Accordingly, I would say that it is obvious to anyone with a halfway decent attitude towards women that for the state to threaten to withdraw benefits from women who do not take sex-line work is for it to fail to show those women the basic concern and respect that all citizens are due from the state.
Having said that, a number of people without halfway decent attitudes to women patrol this blog semi-frequently, and I’m sure we’ll be hearing from them in due course.
April 25, 2010
One Way to Rape and Get Away With It
There’s an interesting review by Neal Ascherson in the latest LRB (behind the pay wall). Ostensibly it’s of Koestler: The Indispensable Intellectual by Michael Scammell. But the essay reads more like a summary of Arthur Koestler’s life, and discusses Scammell’s biography only to agree with it in heaping lavish praise upon Koestler.
Few now know of Arthur Koestler, but suffice to say he was one of the infamous globe-trotting intellectuals of the mid 20th Century. A zionist, then a communist, imprisoned – and tortured – by Franco, he later denounced the evils of Stalinism (particularly in his acclaimed novel Darkness at Noon) and established the first radio station in America broadcasting anti-Soviet propaganda into communist Europe. Jumping from country to country, he spent some time in post-war France in the company of the great intellectuals – Satre, Camus and Beauvoir – arguing politics and taking lovers.
Except, “lovers” isn’t the right way to describe it. At all. As Ascherson’s review makes clear Koestler, the great intellectual and freedom fighter, was a rapist. Or rather, a serial rapist. Here’s some extracts from the essay:
“On separate occasions, a drunken Koestler blacked the eyes of both Mamaine and Camus and punched Beauvoir into bed (she, at least, never forgave him)”.
“Brutally bullied, treated as a secretarial slave and a sex slave when [Koestler] felt like it, Cynthia meekly submitted to a string of abortions over the years”.
“It was now, in 1952, that he apparently raped Jill Craigie, the wife of Michael Foot, on her Hampstead kitchen floor. Scammell is uneasy about this scene, which Craigie didn’t reveal until the mid-1990s, and remarks that ‘the exercise of male strength to gain sexual satisfaction wasn’t exactly uncommon at that time.’ True enough, but rape it pretty clearly was, and – as Scammell’s biography shows – Koestler had abundant form in that particular ‘exercise of male strength’”.
So far, so stomach-churning. What you might expect is for Ascherson to condemn Scammell’s biography as being too forgiving. For effectively offering-up an apologist’s account of the Great Koestler’s deeds, masking his brutality behind the facade of intellectualism. Instead, we find Ascherson colluding:
“A pretty woman was not there to be admired, but to be instantly besieged and rushed to her destiny in his bed”
“Women fell too. Koestler was insatiable, lusting especially for upper-class English girls, and he was frank about enjoying a bit of rough. ‘Without an element of initial rape, there is no delight’, as he put it. Most of his conquests seem to have hated that part, but forgave him for the sake of his charm, the electric excitement of his company.”
Koestler was evidently a serial rapist, a man who belonged not in the cafes of Paris but in a jail cell. Yet Ascherson prefers to mitigate his crimes, turning attention to the pretty women who had a “destiny” in Koestler’s bed, where they no doubt secretly enjoyed the “bit of rough”, “conquests” duly forgiving Koestler thanks to his irresistable charm.
Ascherson’s remarks are immersed in such depths of rape-apology that they recall to mind the words of High Court judge Glanville Williams. Commenting upon the possibility of marital rape in 1991 (that’s three years before it was outlawed in the UK, believe it or not) Williams pontificated:
“Occasionally some husband continues to exercise what he regards as his right when his wife refuses him, the refusal most probably resulting from the fact that the pair have had a tiff. … The fearsome stigma of rape is too great a punishment for husbands who use their strength in these circumstances.”
This kind of rape apology has a long history. That women are just complaining about nothing; that “real” rape is conducted by unknown strangers hiding in the bushes at night. When it comes to fêted intellectuals, however, there is a marked tendency for the self-congratulating intelligentsia to airbrush sexual crimes, focusing instead upon the shining genius of the dazzling protagonist. Thus we have Ascherson opening and concluding his article with these choice gushes:
“[F]linging dazzling light into dim minds, Koestler’s career left scorch marks and illuminations across the 20th century. When it finally stopped and the flames died, the darkness suddenly seemed absolute.”
“Elizabeth Jane Howard, who had a brief affair with [Koestler], called him ‘a noble little goblin’. She wrote after his death that he was ‘entirely brave; had courage on every level, physical, moral and spiritual…His capacity for indignation – that invaluable ingredient for making things happen – remained with him always.’ Koestler, who often hated himself, would have been consoled by that epitaph”.
One doubts that the scores of women brutalised by Koestler would have been likewise so consoled. But who cares about them when the intelligentsia is out with its buckets of whitewash? And look, a woman can even be found to write the glorious epitaph. Want to be a serial rapist and have posterity laud you? Just make sure you’re a risqué intellectual first.
April 20, 2010
Prostitution and Choice
I’ve been mulling over this review of Peter de Marneffe’s Liberalism & Prostitution (h/t Peter). The book tackles the vexed and complex issue of legislative attitudes and approaches towards prostitution, in light of the (apparently) basic liberal tenet that the state should not prohibit freely-chosen activities even if those activities are harmful to the individual choosing them.
But talking of prostitution in these terms makes me uncomfortable. It’s not just academic liberal philosophers who do this – though they do it with the best of intentions – it’s trolls on comments threads too (cf. CiF). We’ve all seen a discussion derailed by somebody playing the “women choose to be prostitutes, so shut up” card.
The problem as I see it can be boiled down to the claim that not all choices are equal. Allow me to explain.
Some prostitutes undoubtedly must choose to be prostitutes in the way Billie Piper’s Belle de Jour character does in the nauseating Secret Diary of a Call Girl. I’m sure that some women out there are in that situation: intelligent, good looking, connected and deciding to take money for sex because they would rather do that than be a lawyer or a consultant or a doctor (or, as with the real-life Belle de Jour, to fund their PhDs). The world is a big place, and it takes all sorts.
But that’s manifestly not the way it is for most women selling sex.* The vast majority of women – even excluding those who are directly controlled by pimps or criminal gangs, for they cannot be said to be choosing – working as prostitutes do so because they are desperate. They would rather work as lawyers, or consultants, or doctors – or perhaps even check out girls and cleaners – if they had the skills and their circumstances made it possible, but they find that the only way to get the money they need (be it to feed a child, a drug habit, or whatever) is to sell their bodies.
Of course these women are still choosing to be prostitutes. Faced with not having the money they earn from prostitution or having it, they choose the latter. But manifestly this is not the same sort of choice as our Belle de Jour types. And it seems manifestly wrong to treat them as the same.
Though such an attitude of equal treatment is not without precedent in the history of philosophy. The great English thinker Thomas Hobbes put forward a revolutionary view of freedom to support his absolutist political theory: that one is free so long as one is not physically interfered with and makes choices without being physically controlled. You threw your goods overboard in a storm to avoid drowning? That was a free choice – it’s irrelevant that you wouldn’t have thrown those goods if the weather had been calm. You submitted to a conqueror at the point of his sword? You have consented to his becoming your Sovereign, regardless of the fact you wouldn’t have done so had you won the battle. Accordingly, there’s a view that might go: you became a prostitute to feed your child? You chose to be a prostitute, regardless of whether you’d have done so if you had a job in the City.
Now, modern liberals are not Hobbists and many of them possess theories of freedom considerably evolved from (and sometimes in opposition to) the Hobbesian vision. Yet Hobbes stands somewhere pretty foundational in the genesis of modern liberalism, and that’s worth thinking about.
What’s also worth thinking about is that the Hobbesian view of choices being free and equal so long as no physical compulsion is involved is highly unattractive in the case of prostitution. From what we know about prostitution, vast numbers of women involved in the trade suffer drug addiction, physical abuse by others, suffer a very high risk of physical harm and of contracting sexual diseases, struggle to integrate into mainstream society (and thus struggle to escape prostitution) and struggle to form long-term emotional bonds.
On top of that, there’s also an oft-overlooked but very important point. For most people, undertaking acts of physical intimacy with complete strangers because one needs their money is a doubly unpleasant experience. Firstly, because having sex with people you wouldn’t otherwise want to have sex with is unpleasant in and of itself (at least, to most people). Secondly, because of the relationships of power and domination – and the risk of violence – that are background conditions to most prostitution outside of the Billie Piper fantasy. Of course, some women may like nothing more than having sex for money with men they find physically repulsive whilst being in situations of systematic danger and potential violence. But it’s hard to imagine that many do.
That long description is important. Firstly, it correspondingly looks suspicious to say that women like Piper’s Belle de Jour choose to be prostitutes in the same way as those who go into the trade because their circumstances are utterly desperate. When assessing choices, it is right and proper to assess the quality of those choices with reference to the contexts in which they are made. Secondly, and connectedly, it seems not only suspicious to talk in a blasé fashion about (all) women (simply) “choosing” to be prostitutes, in the cases of those who fall back on this desperate option because they are in dire straits it appears positively insulting to say “ah, but you chose to be a prostitute, so on your head be it”.
Contra-Hobbes, the relevant counterfactual is important when we make ethical and political decisions: that a woman would not be a prostitute if she had other options to make the money she needs is highly morally relevant. And a big reason why it’s highly morally relevant is that most women who end up as prostitutes lead lives characterised by extreme amounts of suffering.
Accordingly I’m uncomfortable with an over-emphasis on questions of whether the state should respect women’s “choices” to be prostitutes even when that leads to them experiencing harm as a result of that choice.** For lurking in the background seems to be a Hobbesian picture of free choices, and I’d like to turn the spotlight more onto suffering and what the state can and should do to ensure that women are free from that. Choice is important, but it doesn’t seem to me to merit the status of first-priority in our thinking about this issue – and that’s not because I’m necessarily some anti-liberal paternalist, it’s because I think the question of liberty and choice is far more complicated than the “negative freedom” of the pure Hobbist, and we do a serious disservice to thousands of women trapped in appalling circumstances if we lose sight of that.
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*And undoubtedly many men who are prostitutes too. But more women than men sell sex, and the discussion usually focuses on them, hence so does this blog.
** Which now means I’m caricaturing the review of de Marneffe’s book, which really isn’t my intention.
April 11, 2010
Bristol Palin and American Class Consciousness
Turning away from the tedium of British electioneering, cast your eyes to the ever stranger circus of American politics. As we all know, abortion and teen sex are enormously politicised issues over the pond. So perhaps not a surprise that Bristol Palin – daughter of Sarah – has joined a campaign to discourage teen pregnancy. She knows all about it, I suppose. What with getting pregnant at 17. Whilst umarried.
Actually, I’m not all that hostile to the Palin advert. The Young Turks are going for the jugular, but I’m not overly bothered about Bristol’s potential hypocrisy. Perhaps it could be interpreted as a hypocritical lecture of “I’ve had sex, but you fools can’t”. Alternatively, it could more charitably be viewed as helpful advice from somebody who’s learned from their own mistakes. Personally, I’m sanguine on this front.
And I’d have more of a problem with the campaign if the organisation Palin is working with was one of the more offensive outfits. The sort that promote abstinence only approaches to teen sex, in a country where abortion has been made effectively impossible for the poor in many states and where ignorance of contraception leads to unwanted pregnancies and sexual disease when young people (almost) inevitably give in to temptation. But The Candies Foundation is apparently not so hardline: their website explicitly names the use of condoms as a core campaign message.
Of course, the Candies’ focus on preventing teen pregnancy – and focusing, it seems, especially on teen girls – is one that I’m not entirely comfortable with. As I’ve said before, teen pregnancy is not bad per se and it’s worth thinking about why Anglophone societies exhibit such hysteria over the issue. But compared to the wingnut state of much American politics – especially when it comes to sex – Candies appears relatively inoffensive.
What I find far more interesting is the specific advert itself. For it potentially tells us something remarkable about American politics. The pitch that Palin explicitly makes is that getting pregnant wasn’t too bad for her – after all, she is from a rich and famous family. For those from poorer backgrounds the story will be very different.
Will this campaign work? The organisers must think so. But success requires that intended viewers do not respond with a well-considered “fuck you Bristol”. Their reaction must not be one of feeling patronised or lectured-to by the privileged daughter of a celebrity politician. They must take her words as the sound wisdom of experience, despite the fact that the core message is “don’t have sex and get pregnant if you’re poor“.
Perhaps the campaign organisers are off-target and this will be contemptuously laughed at by American teens. Certainly it seems unlikely that a mere advert can encourage hormone-swamped teens to self-deny. But if that’s not the case – if young poor Americans don’t blink at being lectured over their sexual choices with direct reference to their socio-economic circumstances, by the extremely privileged offspring of a wealthy public figure – then this may be a remarkable testament to the fabled lack of American class consciousness.
April 5, 2010
How to think about…Gay Equality and Bed&Breakfasts
So I have a short weekend off and the Conservative Party kindly validates some recent blog posts. Firstly, that gay equality matters and that the broad media condemnation of homophobic slip-ups indicates that social attitudes are signficantly changing for the better. Second, that the Tories are in a terrible bind about dealing with the rapidly changed status quo on homosexuality. Witness Cameron’s dalliance in condemning Grayling. He’s stuck between the rock of the media and the hard place of the Conservative grass-roots, many of which were probably muttering that Grayling “got it right”.
Of course Grayling did not get it right. But from a few conversations I detect that some are apprehensive about exactly why. “After all” – an apparently sensible thought goes – “surely B&B owners running their own businesses have a right to turn away anybody they choose?” Indeed. Whilst we might think Mr Jenkins is a nasty bugger (and one with bad business sense) when he turns away Mr and Mrs Harris on the grounds that he doesn’t like their shoes, surely we wouldn’t want the state to legislate that B&B owners can never turn anybody away? After all it’s their business, right? So surely B&B owners must be able to reserve the right to refuse admission, or else their freedom to run their business in the way they want is impinged? Accordingly, why should they have to accept gays if they don’t want to? These are seductive thoughts – so as usual watch out for distractions.
The first red herring to be aware of is connected to Chris Grayling’s foolishness: that there is somehow an important difference between hotel owners and B&Bs, on the grounds that on is a “home” and the other a “business”. Peter has a good post up demolishing this. He also helpfully characterises the dividing-lines as properly understood: between those who say “you cannot refuse gay people under any circumstances”, and those who say “hell no, if it’s your business you can refuse whoever you want – it’s your (legal) right to be a homophobic bigot even if that makes you a morally bad person and the actualisation of your bigotry a morally bad act”. As Peter says, those are the only two coherent positions – a home/business distinction a-la-Grayling cannot be sustained.
Red herrings thrown over-board, let’s get back on target: why is it OK for the state to legislate against banning gays, when we want to say that businesses can retain a right to refuse admission more generally? Let’s start by considering B&B owners themselves.
A first thing to note is that homophobic B&B owners are certainly having their freedom restricted if the state says they can’t actualized their bigotry. Their freedom to be homophobic is, undoubtedly, constrained. To which I say: “and a jolly good thing too”. The freedom to be homophobic is not an important or valuable freedom – indeed, it’s the exact opposite. This is (to cut corners) because discrimination on the grounds of people’s sexuality is a moral evil and I want to see less of it in society, which will in turn become a better place. Homophobes have their liberty constrained? My liberal heart bleeds.
Secondly, the case is different with the hypothetical grumpy B&B owner who turns people away at random. Certainly that sort of behaviour is undesirable and not very nice. And I wouldn’t want to be at the mercy of such a host. But ultimately it’s a minor piece of unpleasantry. Compared to the evil of homophobia (the deep and lasting insult that homophobic behaviour inflicts, the inconvenience caused due to sheer unabashed intolerance, not to mention the potential fear and shame that may follow acts of homophobic discrimination), random refusal to accommodate is exceedingly trivial despite temporary inconvenience and irritation.
Now let’s look at the people on the receiving end. If you are the unfortunate victim of a grumpy B&B owner who turns you away because he doesn’t like your shoes (or whatever) that’s annoying. But it’s also likely to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. By contrast, if gay people can legitimately be turned away simply because they are gay this puts them at the mercy of homophobes (of which their remain many) and thus makes it much harder for gay people to plan holidays, or life more generally. It also means that they can neither anticipate nor expect the levels of respect, accommodating behaviour and routine acceptance that heterosexual couples take for granted. This puts homosexual couples in an unstable position regarding the ability to plan their choices and therefore their lives, and even worse puts them at the mercy of bigots who may happen to have control over resources (in the present case, places to sleep for the night). Generally it means gay people’s lives are made more unpredictable, less convenient and less empowered than those of heterosexuals. And that’s straightforwardly wrong, because the morally unimportant fact of a person’s sexuality should carry no such (unequal) consequences for their lives.
Which leads neatly to the question of state enforcement. It’s not obvious that a law against “turning people away because you happen to feel like it” would be unenforceable. Yet it’s equally not clear that the benefits (such as they might be) would outweight any likely costs; think of all the B&B owners forced into accepting rowdy destructive vandals if they couldn’t retain a general right to refuse addmission. Hence there’s not much point in such legislation. Whilst some unluckly people might randomly get turned away by grumpy B&B owners, the ability to refuse entry more generally has clear advantages to B&Bs that want to accept only people who respect other customers and the premises themselves.
By contrast there are multiple reasons to make it illegal to discriminate against homosexual couples. Firstly, enshrining and enforcing the legal right of gays to be treated equally will help mitigate or eliminate the inequalities arising from homophobic discrimination described above. Sure, the freedom of homophobic B&B owners is thereby constrained – but again that’s not something I take to be a moral loss, especially as there will be no adverse business effects upon B&B owners from not being able to turn away gays (as there would be if B&B owners had to accept anyone and everyone).
Secondly, by enforcing such legislation the state can play a huge role in re-shaping moral attitudes, which in turn promotes a more diverse and tolerant society where the unpleasant and morally objectionable consequences of sexuality inequality are vastly reduced.
This second point may strike some as scary and over-bearing. But it really shouldn’t. It’s largely due to government -led or -funded programmes, coupled with extensive anti-discrimination legislation, that over the past 30 years has resulted in the unequal treatment of women, gays and ethnic minorities becoming increasingly taboo, illegitimate and unacceptable. Even if problems remain and there are mountains left to climb, society has come a long way from the days of “No dogs, No blacks, “No Irish”, when women kept kitchen and poofs received electroshock “therapy”.
Government legislation has had incalculable benefits in this regard, because by making many kinds of discrimination illegal it has in turn made them increasingly illegitimate. And this really matters. It is not fear of the law that dictates most people’s actions, but the enormous power of popular morals and shared opinions. These condition people’s world-views and set the bounds of normality within which they determine what is and is not acceptable behaviour. If homophobia is perceived as popularly illegitimate then it will die away. Allow it to remain normal and hatred of gays will continue, with all the nasty consequences that follow.
A lingering worry will nonetheless be nagging some readers: “but shouldn’t the state be neutral and not take a moral stand? Or else are we not on the road to indoctrination and moral dictatorship?” To which I reply: “would it really be ‘morally neutral’ to allow homophobic bigots to be homophobic bigots, ensuring such activity remains legitimate in our society?”
Neutrality on such questions is a chimera. Whether the state acts or omits there are always moral impacts. To remain “neutral” is fictitious nonsense; it means doing nothing directly, but thereby giving free license to bigots. Better that the impact of the state be geared towards promoting diversity, toleration and the delegitimation of homophobic bigotry.
Yes, the state is moralising when it bans homophobic discrimination. But given the power of legislation to shape public morals, the state is always moralising even when it ostensibly does nothing. I say we embrace this truth and ensure that the state moralises in the right direction, rather than deluding ourselves that such choices can be avoided by hiding behind an imaginary fig-leaf called neutrality.
March 19, 2010
Teenage Girls Have Sex. Get over it.
Liberal Conspiracy recently reported the hilarious, if disturbing, remarks of Tory MP Tim Loughton:
“We need a message that actually it is not a very good idea to become a single mum at 14. [It is] against the law to get pregnant at 14. How many kids get prosecuted for having underage sex? Virtually none. Where are the consequences of breaking the law and having irresponsible underage sex? There aren’t any.”
So, The Guardian asked, should there be prosecutions?
“We need to be tougher. Without sounding horribly judgmental, it is not a good idea to be a mum at 14. You are too young, throwing away your childhood and prospects of developing a career.”
Without sounding horribly judgmental, anybody who thinks that there are no consequences to getting pregnant, and that a criminal record promotes a happy childhood and helps develop a healthy career, is a Platinum Imbecile.
Platinum Imbecility aside, there’s something to note about the bizarre universe Mr Loughton resides in: girls get pregnant by magic.
In the universe I inhabit, pregnancy outside of IVF clinics requires two people, male and female. Assuming that most teenage girls are having sex with teenage boys, the preoccupation with “teenage mothers” is thus striking. Why don’t we hear more about “teenage fathers”?
Sadly it’s not just idiotic Tories that insist on believing that Britain’s teenage girls are experiencing immaculate conceptions. Idiotic Labour MPs are possessed of this bizarre mysticism too. Check out this obnoxious nonsense from Tom Harris. Teenage mothers are the problem, he shrieks. But what about the boys who are getting them (if you’ll pardon my French) up the duff? Not a word about the lads.
Things become especially bizarre when we recall Don Paskini’s post highlighting that teenage motherhood can be an overwhelmingly positive experience. It’s just not the case that teenage motherhood necessarily results in packs of feral youths roaming the streets, gleefully breaking Britain. The problem is not with teenage motherhood, it’s with poor parenting. And that can happen whatever a parent’s age. A more sensible attitude, therefore, entails developing strategies to aid parents in difficult circumstances, not obsessing about their age and stigmatising them accordingly.
And you know what? I really have no problem with teenagers having sex – and even getting pregnant – per se. There, I said it. Scandalous. But it strikes me as obvious to any sane person that Teenagers Having Sex is only a problem if, for example, a particular teenager is personally not ready for the “consequences” of sex. Say because they are pressured into it, or find the experience traumatic. Or because they end up with an unwanted pregnancy.
But these qualifications are crucial. Sex is not bad per se, even for teenagers. Sex is bad when it’s attached to undesirable experiences and consequences. Perhaps the risks of “bad things” is higher for sexually-active teenagers. Maybe. But even then, a sensible approach is to make judgements using evidence, on a case-by-case basis. What’s silly is to condemn all teenage sex just because it is teenage sex. There is no inherent reason why teenagers can’t have sex without negative consequences. Thousands do on every day of every year – whether the Daily Express likes it or not.
Which brings us to an interesting point. Our society exhibits a bizarre hysteria about teenage sex. Most especially, there is an overwhelming hysteria about teenage girls having sex. We live in a world of paradox. Advertising, music videos, film and TV push relentless images of sexual availability in young females. Teenage girls are constantly encouraged to look available and attractive. Yet actual sexual activity by teenage females is viciously scorned and stigmatised. Adolescent girls are to look and act as though they are sexually available – but should they ever actually be sexually active and available they earn the labels of slut and slag. (Boys, of course, are players and studs – a significant attitudinal difference, I would suggest).
It’s the bizarre, confused, quasi-Victorian mania about female sex and sexuality that largely animates Loughton and Harris. The blunt horror of even thinking about teenage girls having sex so overwhelms them that they forget that girls do not have sex alone. Teen mothers are vilified by Harris, while Loughton demands they suffer criminal penalties. The question of whether teenage fathers bear responsibility, or are worthy of our extreme moral disdain, or even our attention, never makes it onto the radar. That these politicians’ attitudes are the norm tells us something important about our society.
March 8, 2010
A Confession
What follows is whiny and personal. I feel a bit pathetic writing it. I’m not asking for sympathy, however, but trying to illustrate a point.
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Over at Penny Red and cross-posted at Liberal Conspiracy, Laurie Penny has possibly the best blog I’ve ever read.
She asks us all to imagine a mirror-image world, where men and women swap places. Where it’s men on page 3, digitally- and surgically-altered men on every advert, dumb-and-silent men hanging gormlessly off the arm of every powerful woman, lauded as the ideal model for all young boys to aspire to.
It’s powerful stuff, and I’d hope that it makes people think.
But I’d like to make a confession, I suppose as a form of catharsis. I find Laurie’s piece powerful because for me it’s more than just an imaginary mirror image world. In some small but identifiable ways, the world she imagines has already started to be felt in my life.
Don’t get me wrong: women still face an infinitely more systematic and unpleasant expectation that they conform to impossible and destructive body ideals than men. There is simply no doubting that. But it’s starting to happen to men too. At least, that’s how it feels to me.
Every time I go to a train station or other public place my eyes are drawn to the adverts like Dolce and Gabanna – Italian Rugby Players, or the mandatory torso of the Abercrombie and Fitch hunk, or the Calvin Klein underwear model. If I go into a news agents, I pretty much can’t help looking at the cover of Men’s Fitness; at the air-brushed, black-and-white-shot perfection of the weekly Adonis.
And it makes me feel shit.
But then I’m not a fat slob, despite the unjustifiable hours I spend in front of a computer. I exercise a lot. I lift weights regularly. I watch what I eat (or at least, I feel bad about eating anything that isn’t apples and cucumbers).
It started when I went to University. At school, the girls I knew and talked to didn’t really go in for the archetypal muscle-man look. But when I arrived in higher education, suddenly almost all the girls I met emphasised their attraction to toned, muscular Brad Pitt-a-likes. Whether they all really meant it, or were merely living up to the stereotypes of sexually-liberated raunch culture, was irrelevant from my perspective. For the first time in my life I felt sexually inadequate. And I really didn’t like it.
So I decided to do something about it. A more controlled diet, regular cardio-vascular exercise, even more regular weight-lifting. And I pulled it off; I went from being thin and scrawny to pretty well-built.
But I’d be lying if I said it brought me satisfaction. For fleeting weeks I’d feel like I was physically up to scratch – but a few boozy nights, or a few missed gym sessions later, and I’d feel terrible again. Yet for most of the past 4 years I’ve been able to keep it under control. With spare time enough to exercise and eat well, I kept the demons telling me I look wrong at bay.
But over the past year things have started to get harder. I no longer have the time to exercise properly, and nor do I have the time to always eat well. As a result, whenever I eat food that isn’t healthy I feel a paradoxical conflict of liking the taste but regretting what I’m doing. I can’t remember the last time I ate something and just enjoyed it without also worrying about whether I’ve done enough exercise to compensate for the calories.
And for me, this is developing into a problem. I no longer feel comfortable taking a shower, because I look at myself and I feel fat. Which is ridiculous. I’m not. I know I’m not. But I feel like I am.
I understand that I’m therefore experiencing a very mild form of body dismorphia. But knowing this doesn’t at all change the way I perceive myself. Which is that I’m overweight and unattractive.
Luckily for me, the worst I get is feeling a bit pudgy and not liking it. My heart genuinely goes out to all those women for whom this feeling multiplies to the extent where they literally starve themselves, sometimes to death.
Now, I feel guilty writing these words on International Women’s Day. Despite my own body-image hang-ups, I’m still incredibly lucky. All I have to contend with are a few adverts and a couple of magazine covers. The body-image devastation wrought on the lives of so many women is fantastically illustrated by Laurie’s piece. (But just to add another comparison: although I have (mild) body-image issues, at least the clothes I’m expected to wear in any social situation always cover-up the parts of my body that I’m unhappy with. As the hot-pants and crop-tops industry will attest, women are not so fortunate).
I guess it’s because of my own personal experiences of dealing with a mild form of body dissatisfaction that I find Laurie’s piece so powerful. But perhaps there’s hope. Perhaps if enough men start suffering some of what women have dealt with for so long, then the impetus for change will arise. Maybe the market will not be allowed to simply do whatever sells, if it means that rich and powerful men end up being unhappy with their own bodies.
And wouldn’t that be a great big irony of our patriarchical society? If the suffering of women was alleviated only because in the end men started receiving a taste of their own medicine.
A Vindication
“These may be termed Utopian dreams. – Thanks to that Being that impressed them on my soul, and gave me sufficient strength of mind to dare to exert my own reason, til, becoming dependent only on him for the support of my virtue, I view, with indignation, the mistaken notions that enslave my sex.
I love my man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man. In fact, the conduct of an accountable being must be regulated by the operations of its own reason; or on what foundations rests the throne of God?”
- Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men and a Vindication of the Rights of Women.
