Why I am in the Fetal Position

Condemnation without understanding won’t change anything. Call the poor and desperate “scum.” Call them “thugs,” and “feral” and “rats”. You are free to. Make the call that the police who shot a man dead just days ago should be more brutal, and give them weapons. Fifty-two people die every year in police custody; fine, make the call regardless. It is the call many are making, and if the fires on the street are fed by social divide, so are yours. Yours are fed, too, by racism, by hatred of the working class, of the poor, of the young.

You will have to watch it keep happening. You can keep it down, you might seem to have stopped it, but that desperation will remain, and it will resurface. More repression than suppression, and I’m sure you’re familiar with the “bottling up” analogy that pop-psychologists love so much. It explodes.

Or, you could do what only a few are trying to do: figure out why. There is not a gene for social disruption, there is not a gene for rioting. What there is in abundance is poverty. There is poverty, and the idealisation of possession, the argument made in advertisements that you are what you own. There is demonization, because you have been making these same claims for years. You have already called these people “scum,” and “feral,” and “thugs.” The ASBOs were used to limit their freedom of movement, and the headlines about “hoodies” have made them feel already unhuman. There is a lack of education, and the recent cut of the EMA will mean that even fewer will continue their education past sixteen, because they will not be able to afford to. Those who will are deterred from applying to university by the threat of larger debt than ever. There are no jobs. Those who live on the job seeker’s allowance are further demonized and criminialized.

It’s still not right, and my thoughts are with those threatened, with the firefighters, with the family of the young man who died earlier today in hospital. But there is no line between the members of the community who riot and those who do not. They are all suffering, and we have to fight for all of them.

But without understanding where it comes from, it will never end, and your sweeping, discriminatory condemnations will make things a whole lot worse. That you are claiming again, and again, and again, that this is not political is absurd. What is political if a response to oppression is not? Those who are on the streets are there because they have nothing. They are not scared, as Cameron earlier today warned, of “ruining their lives.” What lives? 

So the reason I am curled in a ball is not that I fear those rioting. It is that I am fearful of what will come as a response. The social divisions- the demonization, the poverty- will be worsened. The police may well be given new powers. The BNP and the EDL and other such racist organisations will use it to boost their membership numbers. The Conservatives will come down hard, in an attempt to be seen to take control- if they are thought to have lost that, they will lose the next election. What has happened will be used as an excuse for many things, it is likely. And it is likely that they will not be fun. 

The Thing I Hate Most About Sexism (crossposted to Tumblr)

Women are taught that their primary source of power is sex. Through images of men being reduced to unthinking wrecks when faced with an attractive woman (an image, it is worth noting, that is damaging to men), we are taught that being attractive can control men. Women who get good jobs are accused of getting them because they are attractive, or because they had sex with their boss. Female superheroes are not just badass, but badass and sexy, with the emphasis on the sexy. Women are said to be better treated by strangers because of their appearance.

This is reinforced by the constant attention paid to women's appearances. Women's appearances are analysed by the media, condemned for one extreme or the other, criticised for flaws and celebrated for perfection. Life is presented to women as one long beauty contest, with the favour of Paris as the source of their power. Women's magazines promise women great things- largely employment, love, or orgasms depending on the publication- in return for restrictive dieting and the liberal use of moisturising lotion. Stripping and porn is said to be greatly empowering, a celebration of feminine sexuality (implying that feminine sexuality ends with performing sexuality.)

And then, we are told that this same thing makes us terribly and nakedly vulnerable.
Women are cat-called and harassed for dressing "provocatively" (loaded term, much?), or just for existing. Women are told that they are likely to be raped not by those they know as a power trip, but by strangers, driven out of control by the legs and hips and breasts that are supposed to be the woman's way of getting what she wants. Women are told that they are raped because of their bodies, turning it into their responsibility. Wearing a miniskirt is raised in court as if it implies consent.The reasoning seems to be that if women use their attractiveness to get what they want, which is sometimes sex, then if they are attractive, they must be communicating a want for sex, and thus giving them it cannot be rape. Who was it who used the analogy of force-feeding a woman chocolate cake?

The woman must hold two ideas about her body in her mind at once: it is a great manipulative tool which can get her anything, and it is something that makes her vulnerable and weak and at risk. This contradiction is at the heart of objectification and the sexist society's view of the feminine body, and it is damaging and harmful in a thousand ways, with victim-blaming being only one.

This is why I'm marching in Slutwalk. The contradicting messages about how to have a female body that we are bombarded with leads to victim-blaming not only amongst the media but in court, and the statement made by the Toronto police officer is a perfect example. The march will not change the ridiculous ways society talks to us, but it is a start. So come fight with us tomorrow. 

People who follow me on Twitter and/or Tumblr, I'm sorry.

People who don't, I'm sorry. 

(Please answer truthfully. I want to know just everything about you.)