November 24, 2008
Greer, Cole, Ellen and Feminism
Barbara Ellen’s comment pieces in The Observer seem to be getting worse with every passing week. I used to rather enjoy her articles, but over the past couple of months her column has become increasingly lazy and ill thought out. Her leader piece this week was so objectionable I actually found myself getting out of bed at 10 past midnight to write a letter to The Observer in reply. You can read Ellen’s piece here.
As my letter is a tad long, it probably won’t get printed. So:
When Germain Greer comments that Cheryl Cole is ‘too thin’, it is
surely a mistake to take this – as Barbara Ellen does – as a sign of
‘thin-woman-hating’. Surely Greer is making the reasonable point that
a woman whose physical appearance is vaunted as sexual perfection, but
which is unattainable for 99% of women, can hardly be classed as a
feminist icon? Ellen writes “Modern feminism could do a lot worse than
claim Cole as one of our own”. Really? A woman whose career is based
on singing songs about love, looking attractive and crying on The X
Factor? A woman who embodies a patriarchal attitude towards women
whereby docility, prettiness and virtually unattainable physique are
the ultimate virtues? Ellen claims that she must frequently “explain
what [feminism] is from painful scratch”. Yet a key tenet of modern
feminism is that the struggle for equality is not straightforward
emancipation from the kitchen, unequal pay and domestic violence
(though those issues certainly remain), but a mental emancipation from
the ideals of a society dominated by artificial male stereotypes of
the feminine ideal. Key is for ordinary women to reject the
patriarchal male ideal. Given Ellen’s unflinching praise for Cole, it
is puzzling as to why she considers herself a ‘modern feminist’.
November 18, 2008
Organs, Consent and the State
Until now i’ve held out against writing anything about the ‘opt-in/opt-out’ organ donation debate because, frankly, I had nothing to add. The case for switching to an opt-out system seemed so overwhelmingly strong that – apart from a few thin objections from the usual religious suspects – I hadn’t come across a single argument for not switching to opt-out worth responding to. Then I read this, originally from the Sunday Times of 16th November. Minette Marrin presents what looks like an intellectual case against switching to opt-out. Accordingly, it should be subjected to intellectual scrutiny. Does swithcing to opt-out constitute the state’s owning our bodies and an end to the free society?
We can begin by ignoring Marrin’s thinly veiled references to Stalin and the implication that Brown is putting us on a slippery slope to indiscriminate state massacre. Brown is not about to impose state socialism, nor is he about to start massacring millions of his own people, whether the donnor system switches to opt-out or otherwise. We can dismiss Marrin’s opening remarks as substance-less (not to mention crass and cheap) demagoguery designed to get her predominantly right-wing readership fired up with some easy remarks about the commies and Brown being a socialist dictator.
So let’s examine the parts of the article which might possess intellectual substance. Firstly, Marrin’s principle objection to opt-out systems – and she states this herself – is an idealogical one, not a practical one. Even if opt-out saves lives, she is still against it. Fair enough, we can say, but in that case she’s going to need some pretty good arguments againt making the switch, as they are going to have justify the possibility of allowing people to die.
Her core claim is this: “The idea [opt-out] lets in an evil and dangerous political principle – the assumption that the state owns our bodies”. That our bodies are our own is, she says, “an essential assumption of freedom and personal autonomy”. Now, putting the pieces together, Marrin’s argument basically goes like this:
1. Individual freedom and autonomy are the basic foundations of a free society, which we desire to live in
2. We cannot have freedom and personal autonomy if we do not own our bodies
3. An opt-out system would mean that we do not own our bodies, because the state would own them
4. THEREFORE: An opt-out system is incompatible with a free society
From this, Marrin is in a position to argue (or as she actually does, imply) that a free society is so important, that it should not be sacrificed even if people die as a result. That is, even if switching to opt-out lead to fewer people dying, it would not be justified because we would have lost the foundation of a free society – and that is more important even than saving lives.
It all sounds very grand and noble, doesn’t? Except that, if we look closely, it’s sheer nonsense. There are lots of things wrong with Marrin’s argument, but to keep matters brief I will focus only on the most pertinent.
An opt-out system along the lines being proposed would not amount to the state owning our bodies for the blindingly obvious reason that it is an opt -out system, not a totalitarian snatch-and-grab system. There remains plenty of free choice. If a person feels sufficiently strongly that they do not want their organs to be used after they have died, they can make that clear to the relevant authorities. If they do not, then it is assumed that they had no objection before dying. Now, family and/or friends will still be asked if they had any unofficial record – e.g. conversation – of the deceased saying they did not wish their organs to be donated. If so, the family (or close friends) would still be able to veto the donating of organs. The reason opt-out is deemed to be a desirable default is because under the present system doctors of the deceased must ask friends and/or family very soon after the terrible news that somebody close to them has died, whether they wish to approve the donation of the deceased’s organs. In many cases, when the deceased was not on the organ donor register, friends and family are reluctant to donate in case the deceased had not wished for this to happen. With presumed consent, the picture changes. The doctors can say “we have no record of their objecting to become donors, do you?” The idea is that this takes the pressure off families and friends at a difficult time. Organs could still be refused, even under a presumed consent system. The difference is that with presumed consent, the apathy or indifference of the deceased can now contribute to saving lives, rather than leading to more death.
When laid out honestly, as above, the idea that an opt-out system is tantamount to the state “owning our bodies” and that it would lead to the end of a free society is sheer, unadulterated, cheap, pseudo-intellectual nonsense. However, Marrin appears to believe she has other, supplementary arguments against switching to opt-out. Unfortunately those don’t stand up any better either, and indeed serve largely only to land her in contradiction.
We can quickly dismiss the scare-tactics of the slipper-slope argument, the warning that if we switch to opt-out, the Organ Gestapo will be at the door chopping off people’s arms and pulling out their eyes to facilitate the Brown Socialist Dystopia of Marrin’s nightmares. Slippery slope arguments are invariably poor and sensationalist, and a little calm reflection shows this again to be the case. There is a world of distance between the organs of dead people – who themselves left no objection to their organs being taken and used, combined with agreement from friends and families – being used to save lives, and the state taking the organs of the living. If the state did take – without consent – the organs of the living then we would certainly have ceased to live in a free society. But to get to the stage where the Organ Gestapo is coming to collect your kidneys on behalf of Fuhrer Brown an awful lot more would have to change in our society than simply moving to opt-out. And there’d be plenty of places along the way at which we could stop and reverse the process. Switching to opt-out in view of the dead will not automatically lead to the harvesting of the living.
Marrin is right that the NHS is grossly inefficient in places – but that is a practical constrain against switching to opt-out (remember, those constraints she said at the start she wasn’t interested in?) It could be true that the NHS is too much of a mess for us to switch to opt-out. But that just means we need to sort out the NHS first, not that there is anything wrong with opt-out itself.
Marrin then makes the startling claim that: “The real reason that people keep dying for lack of life-saving transplants, after 11 years of Labour spending on the NHS, is not that there aren’t enough donors. There are plenty of donors – 14m have signed up. Their organs just aren’t used”. This is the first time i have heard anything of the sort. From every other source I have read there is a chronic under-supply of organs. And even if 14m have signed up, most of them are living so that statistic hardly proves anything. When she writes that
As Tim Statham, chief executive of the National Kidney Federation, explained last week, about 1,500 people die in the UK every day and 400 of them, statistically speaking, have signed the organ donor register. That makes about 800 available kidneys a day, not to mention all their other organs. Wasted. Denied to the living and buried or burnt.
I am not sure this proves anything. From my understanding even if 800 kidneys are made available, given the problems of compatibility between donors and receivers, that’s still not enough. I am extremely dubious of Marrin’s claims that there are enough organs being donated currently, and would like to see them substantiated. I assume that they can’t be, and anyway her claims are straightforwardly contradictory with what she says soon after. Marrin goes onto rail further at the NHS and return to her practical objections, quoting lots of statistics – and then drops in the mysterious line that “The problem is that there is no transplant culture here. Transplants don’t happen.” If that is supposed to refer to a lack of a transplant culture amongst donors, it contradicts what she says mere sentences earlier about there being enough organs. Alternatively, if it is meant to be an indictment of the medical profession, it is pretty galling. If Marrin is seriously suggesting that doctors in this country lack a transplant culture, and are letting harvested organs go to waste because they don’t care about saving lives, as she seems to be, it is difficult to know what to say in reply.
But I will, however, say this. Let’s assume that Marrin is right – and there are good reasons to doubt she is – that there are enough organs, and were the medical profession simply to develop a culture of transplanting and the state to make the process more efficient, then we wouldn’t need to switch to opt-out at all because the present opt-in system would be enough. Let’s assume that’s true (which it seems not to be). Even if it is true, it remains that we should still switch to an opt-out system. I showed above that switching to opt-out does not take away our autonomy or remove the foundations of a free society – that was mere blunder and rhetoric on Marrin’s part. Given that opt-out does not have these consequences, why not move to it in spite of Marrin’s practical objections? If Marrin is right that there are enough organs and it’s merely a problem of efficiency, then we have two choices. Either make the system more efficient, or get more organs so that the inefficiency is compensated for. In either case, lives are saved. The first option – improving efficiency – will take years and billions in funding (assuming Marrin is even right that this would solve the organ shortage problem). The second option – moving to opt-out – would take effect almost overnight, and cost nothing in comparison to the alternative.
As moving to opt-out does in no way undermine the possibility of a free society, and instead carries the probability of saving thousands of people’s lives each year, the arguments against making the switch continue to escape me, Marrin’s not withstanding.
November 2, 2008
Most Interesting
With two days to go, there are things which give you hope in the face of all pessimism and cynicism:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/us_elections_2008/7704636.stm
September 24, 2008
Slipping through nets
Some recent experiences of mine have served to open my eyes to a few things which, being of a somewhat left-leaning persuasion, I had assumed myself to be fully conscious of already. Allow me to elaborate.
Today I was back in my old university town of Oxford. The reason being that I recently lost my job, and also defaulted on a lease for a flat in London (losing £250), so I am now in the process of trying to find work in a town where the rents are more affordable and I know an established network of people. As I was walking back to my old college to meet a former tutor, I passed two policemen who were hastling a homeless Big Issue seller. Now, the homeless man in question has been selling the Big Issue for at least the past three years, and doing so consistently on the same spot. Today he had perhaps 20-30 copies of the magazine with him, but had apparently forgotten to bring, or else had lost, his official vendor badge.
From what I could tell the two policemen were giving the man a very hard time by accusing him of being an illegal vendor and telling him he had to move on. There was a high police presence all around Oxford today, and I get the feeling they had been told to make the streets look tidy for some reason (perhaps some ‘important’ rich person was visiting?), hence the incident in question. (I can’t prove this, but I think it’s a good bet given the unusually low numbers of homeless people and unusually high number of policemen about today). From past observation I know the homeless man in question to have mental health issues, and the police were behaving in a very domineering and intimidating, albeit a calculated passive-aggressive, way towards him. Seeing this taking place, something inside me snapped and I decided not to just walk on.
I turned back and without introduction stated to the policemen that this was outrageous: I knew for a fact that this man had been selling the Big Issue for over three years on this spot, and it was clear from the number of his magazines that he was an official vendor – and that surely they had better things to do with their time than hastle the homeless?
The younger of the two officers asked me why I was getting involved and what business I thought it was of mine, to which I replied (somewhat nauseatingly) that “it’s a free country and I have a right to voice my opinion”. As is usual, the policeman at this point tried to bully me, employing his status as an authority figure in uniform, and demanding that I step to one side whilst he talk to me. I wasn’t in the mood for lectures and so I flat out refused, pointing out that I was doing nothing wrong and that he had no authority to make me stay, and so I walked away. He called after me but I ignored him.
Why did I do that? I’d like to say that it’s because I am a champion of the poor and downtrodden – a true socialist hero. But sadly the truth is more self-referential than that. The events of the past week and a half have brought something home to me: the ease with which people can slip through the net.
It’s an old adage, which I have frequently heard uttered, that people on the streets must be there because they deserve to be. This of course is an extremely comforting thought: it ameliorates the sense of guilt any decent person must feel when seeing the homeless, and especially when one is turning them down for support. It also shifts the burden onto the needy: if they are responsible for their plight, they are responsible for getting out of it. To challenge that commonplace remark, I’m now going to tell a slightly different story to my actual life-history, and we’ll see how well things turn out.
Imagine I didn’t go to Oxford, imagine instead that I went somewhere less prestigious which didn’t have a college full of established people looking out for me even after I had left. Imagine I didn’t do so well at school. Imagine that my mum had died, and my dad disliked me and had re-married, hoping to try and start a new life which didn’t include me in it. Imagine my parents hadn’t put money in a building society for me. Imagine that when I defaulted on a flat that was the last of my £250 I lost to Victor Michael, a particularly unscrupulous and devious estate agent in East London. Imagine that when I lost my job, I lacked the skills and references to haul myself into the recruiting agents’ offices, which are a living testament to the fact that the Marxist labour theory of value is not entirely empty. Imagine that my girlfriend got fed up with me and kicked me out. Imagine that my friends increasingly became sick of letting me sleep on their couches. Imagine that the job centre – which no longer employs job-guidance workers (thanks Mr Brown) – became an increasingly fruitless place to be (if that is possible). Imagine that because of my lack of permanent address, I could get neither employment nor a permanent place to live, lacking both secure income and proof of previous address for the last 3 months. Then imagine I couldn’t find a sofa for a night. Now imagine that my borderline mental health difficulties started to go through a bad patch (the charity Shelter states that 30-50% of people living on the streets suffer from mental health problems).
It’s not hard to see how the story ends. My experiences of the past week have made me accutely aware of just how easy it must be for people who are less fortunate than myself to slip through the net. It has also made me a lot more grateful for what I have, my parents especially included. It also scares me, a lot.
So the next time you pass a homeless person on the street, don’t assume they are there because they deserve to be (and perhaps ask yourself: even if they did actually do some very stupid and bad things, can it ever possibly be right to say that someone really deserves to lose everything?). The person you pass on the street might be there, not because they deserve to be or have committed some terrible fault, but quite simply because they are a little less lucky than you, or for that matter me.
It’s a sobering thought.
