May2

Not Such A Novice

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Hey, things have been really quiet here recently. Sorry!

You’d think, what with being unemployed, I’d have loads of time to blog, but that’s not actually the case, as it turns out! Firstly, I’ve been obviously applying for lots of jobs (no luck thus far, but I’ll keep trying), and I’ve also been trying to get http://www.theyesresource.com off the ground – go and check it out: it’s a website set up to encourage a discussion of healthy relationships and consent and general Good Sex Education among 16 – 25 year olds. It’s going pretty well. We haven’t been around that long, and most days we get a pretty decent number of hits – more than I’ve had on my other blogs! Also, there are other people working on it besides me, which probably helps it stay fresh.

As for other things, I’ve also felt the need of this blog a bit less than I did when I set it up: when I started this back in January, I’d been out for a while, but single for not very long. I didn’t know if I felt confident flirting with women, I didn’t know if women would fancy me, I didn’t know if I ‘counted’ as a bisexual woman.

Enough of that. I’ve been doing a lot of growing up over the last few months. I’ve had to accept some fairly horrible things about my past, but I’m also learning to deal with them well. I’ve also, as part of that ride, learned to accept that my sexuality is what I make it. I am bisexual, I know that, and I’m not answerable to anyone else to prove or deal with it. It’s not like there are sexuality police.

Although, on that note, the border agency apparently tries to make LGBT asylum seekers prove that they are ‘genuine’ LGBT people in order to approve their application for refuge. How they are supposed to ‘prove’ this, I don’t know, short of perhaps making a sex tape? And if that’s genuinely happening then, my god, the UK border agency needs to sort its shit out.

SO yeah, it’s been a good few months. I’m also radically reassessing my attitude to monogamy. I think, certainly at the moment, and standing on the periphery of a couple of open relationships, I’m interested to see how the poly world works for me. I’m interested in exploring it. I’m also no longer scared of exploring what I want from life, whereas previously I’ve always worried about how and whether I fitted or belonged or was allowed.

I’m also twenty two. My birthday happened. That was exciting.

So yes, a lot has changed!

Apr6

A naming problem

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Hi guys,

It’s been ages, I know. In explanation for my long absence, firstly, please check out this page. Also, I’ve been away in Newcastle and Edinburgh for a week. I suppose, in hindsight, I could have done a couple of investigative/features pieces into the queer cultural life of both cities, but that wouldn’t have worked for two reasons: one, in Newcastle, I was staying with super-Catholic family. Might not have gone down so well. Also, that wasn’t the purpose of our visit. I wanted to see family, so there! And in Edinburgh – well, I’ll write a post on how amazing Edinburgh is soon, I promise. But firstly, I have had a Thought. And this being a blog, I thought I’d Share my Thoughts.

One of the good friends I was staying with in Edinburgh and I spent a long time wandering the city and chatting. Some of these chats revolved around mutual friends, shared histories, jokes, in-jokes, films and literature. Some of them revolved around feminism, consent and ‘The Yes Resource‘ (I’m going to keep plugging it, to be warned). One of the most interesting chats, to me, was about bisexuality, pansexuality and how you define a sexual identity that is defined by its lack of definition. (I’ve definitely used too many variants on the word ‘defined’ right about there…)

My friend, E, defines herself as pansexual, because she feels that is a more honest reflection of her sexual identity. I, meanwhile, despite my reservations with the binary aspects of the word bisexual (it implies, for example, that there are only two genders, that you switch between them, that it’s an on-off switch) cling to the word ‘bi’ and the world it conjures with the same tenacious faith that I hold out to the word ‘feminism’ and identify myself as a feminist, even while the global media tells me that ‘feminism’ has a ‘branding problem’ and implies too much femininity and maybe it’s time we called it something like “Equalism”… Another post, another time.

I am bisexual, not because I see gender as a 50/50 split men v. women. I don’t, and I think it is reductive and harmful to perpetrate the idea that gender is either one thing or the other, which allows no room for trans or genderqueer identities. In the words of Lola, from ‘Kinky Boots’ (amazing film, watch it!) the world should allow room for: “Ladies, Gentlemen, and those of you who have yet to make up your minds”. Although that said, ‘yet to make up your minds’ implies you should have to eventually, and that you should come down one side or the other.

This need to put genders in boxes is as damaging and reductive for views of sexuality as it is for gender identity, I think. Because that’s one of the major views behind a lot of biphobia – that you just haven’t yet made up your mind, you’ll get to it eventually, you’ll figure out where you are on the Kinsey Scale, and you just need the right man or woman to come along and prove to you that you *are* straight or gay, really, you just didn’t know it.

Whilst for trans people, though I’m less knowledgeable about this so I’m really worried I’m going to put my foot in it, it seems that whilst culturally the world is way more transphobic than biphobic and it’s just a horrible place, in some ways, there is at least a bit more understanding of people who chose to transition, than those who choose, consciously, to inhabit a middle ground. That tiny bit of understanding is small, and it needs to change, and it’s a good start, but I sort of feel (looking at it from the perspective of an ally who wants to learn more, so I’m really worried I’m blundering around like a drunken octopus here) like if you’re genderqueer, people expect you to want to transition, to change your gender pronoun to its opposite, to become she instead of he, and he instead of she. What about people who want to be ‘they’, instead? That seems like it’s harder for people to grasp.

Bisexuality, whilst obviously not carrying the same weight of hostility and phobia, has similar baggage. You’ve got to choose eventually. Oh, you married a man, that means you’re straight, right? You were straight all along.

And Pansexuality, from a political point of view, carries less of this baggage. There’s less of the language of binaries and divisions and choices. No hint that you might have to ‘make up your mind’…

But I’m not pansexual. I can’t fit the word to me. I’m ‘bi’, and I’ll stick as ‘bi’. I prefer it. Even if alongside all that, it still carries the weight of biphobic views, of teenagers apparently ‘claiming’ to be ‘bi’ to get noticed by the people they fancy, or to look more interesting… Or whatever. I’m bi and I’m proud of it. And will talk more about pansexuality later, as well, but first, I’m off to a lovely French coffee house to chat to a friend I haven’t seen in ages.

 

If anyone knows any independent coffee shops in London that also have free WiFi, let me know. I found one lovely such place in Edinburgh, and I’m fairly sure London *must* have an equivalent, but I’m yet to locate it.

Mar14

The Weekend

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This past weekend was lovely – well, the first part of it was a trip back to my old University town, which was strange but fun – and then an old, old friend came to stay. We watched Keeping Mum, which is a fantastic film and you should immediately go and watch it if you can – it stars Maggie Smith being awesome, and lots of exciting and sinister events. And Kristin Scott-Thomas. Both of these women are people I aspire to be when I grow up, but equally Kristin Scott-Thomas is someone I’ve had a crush on most of my adult life. Almost especially in this film…

On Sunday morning, we went to Liberty’s.

My friend is a massive haberdashery nut. She loves knitting, sewing, crafting and all other such things, and is brilliantly, wonderfully, obscenely good at it. I think I might be getting a scarf from her for my birthday this year, and it’s already one of the presents I’m most excited about. We pottered around Liberty’s for possibly up to an hour, poking bits of cloth, picking through different parts of the shop and marvelling at the delicacy and beauty of the inside – it’s tucked off Regent Street, round a corner, inside an elderly and beautiful half-timbered building. It’s wonderful! I had no idea. Until Sunday, John Lewis was my idea of a magical department store…

Liberty

After Liberty, the two of us walked down Regent Street, through Trafalgar Square and across Waterloo Bridge, and wound our way to The South Bank, where we had a very belated lunch in the BFI (British Film Institute) and planned a murder mystery.

Truly, a glorious day.

Then I went and had supper with T, my campaigning friend, who inspired me to kickstart the anti-rape culture project I’ve been hoping to start for weeks. If you’re interested – and you should be – it’s found here: http://www.theyesresource.com

Mar12

The Monosexual Privilege Checklist

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Sorry, this one’s going to be political.

You may be familiar with the idea of privilege checklists, which are essentially tools to help people from outside a minority group to understand the fact that they occupy a more privileged position in the world in comparison to members of that particular group. I found this list on the website The Radical Bi, which is a blog run by a bisexual, genderqueer, feminist, anarchist, Mizrahi (Arabic Jew), disabled/chronically ill, vegan, geek, metalhead crazy cat lady. She is awesome, from what I’ve seen of her blog/website.

So read the monosexual privilege checklist, and think about it, whether you identify as straight, lesbian or gay, or in other ways monosexual. I’m going to just pick up on a few I think are worth noting.

1. Society assures me that my sexual identity is real and that people like me exist.

So that when you come out to someone aged fourteen, they don’t immediately say “oh, it’s just a phase you’re going through – you’ll realise you’re straight/gay eventually” or “everyone takes a while to make up their mind”. Or “I thought that was just a thing you said…”

6. Perception/acceptance of my sexual identity is generally independent of my choices of relationships, partners, and lifestyles.

Best example – I was seeing a therapist last week. When I told her I was bi, she immediately referred back to a long-term (heterosexual) relationship I’d earlier mentioned and said “oh, so were you faithful to your boyfriend? I mean, are you monogamous?”

I suppose she was just trying to demonstrate her awareness of the various different codes and rules that govern all sorts of people’s sex lives, but by the fact that she first of all asked “were you faithful” made it sound like she didn’t in fact assume I was polyamorous but instead that, being bisexual, I was just keen to sleep with anything roughly human-shaped.

Not true.

To be fair, I don’t often get this. That’s partly because I’m not generally very open about my sexuality except around people I already know quite well, which is probably the same with a lot of people. For example, I’m not out at work:

24. I am more likely to feel comfortable being open about my sexual identity at work.

I work with a group of people who (apart from one person I overheard asking a friend if a mutual acquaintance was “a properly hairy lesbian”…) are in general very open-minded liberally politicked and friendly – and thus highly unlikely to mind if I were to come out as gay. But I’m not gay. And being out necessarily involves a conversation with people who, were I to mention, for example, fancying a girl, would want to know if I were lesbian, especially as when I started working there I’d just come out of a relationship with someone known to be a man. So they’d want me to explain myself, rather than just accepting it. If I were gay, it’s somehow much less of a conversation starter than bisexual: people feel they have the right to ask roughly where you find your sexual preferences divide, or how many partners you’ve had of either sex, or any other innumerable questions. And that can get a bit uncomfortable at work, so it’s much, much easier to pretend that I’m straight and to find myself neutralising the gender nouns when I talk about people I fancy, even while part of me shrinks a little inside.

7. It is unlikely that disclosing my sexual identity in a non-sexual context will be taken as a sign of sexual availability or consent.

Yeah, this one’s fun. You say you’re bi to someone (cis)male, particularly if you’re (cis)female, and it somehow gets translated into being a come-on.

I had that a few months ago with someone who used to pester me incessantly on the internet – he saw something online that clearly gave him the knowledge that I was bi, and, because I’ve learned to be polite to people (even when they’re overstepping huge boundaries, because, well, society) he initiated a conversation about it that I continued. As the conversation progressed, it became clear that the more I said “well, I fancy women and men”, the more he was hearing “I WANT TO HAVE A THREESOME WITH YOU NOW PLEASE”. Not the case.

So yes, if you’re monosexual and reading this, that whole list is something worth thinking about. If you’re bisexual, you probably (like me) went through that whole list thinking damn. This sucks. I think the most especially cheerful one was the one about bisexual people apparently being more likely than straight cis people to suffer mental illnesses like depression. That’s fantastic news…

Mar9

Feminism and rage

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So I want to talk about something that keeps coming back to bother me.

I recently joined an online group of young feminists in London – the plan, I believe, is to also have regular meet-ups and try and become a campaigning group for young, committed feminists in the area, all of which I wholeheartedly applaud.

However, one of the first things they say on the group page is “Rape apologists not welcome”. In many ways, I’m totally behind this statement – in that, as far as I’m concerned, ‘rape apology’ (which is quite a woolly phrase) is the way in which people try to explain away rape and sexual violence. This ranges from childish and unpleasant ‘rape jokes’, to people holding (or not examining) the beliefs that women who wear short skirts, get drunk, flirt, or happen to be in a relationship with someone are all things that excuse (or even explain) a rape occurring. Some notable rape apologists include pretty much any American politician who crawled out of the woodwork last year to explain that there are differences between ‘legitimate rape’ and some other, unidentified alternative; that somehow rape is only rape if it is violent, that abortion even in cases of rape shouldn’t be allowed because it’s apparently god’s will that that child should have been conceived – and thus it is god’s will that that rape should have occurred. Rape apology is George Galloway saying that having sex with a sleeping woman is merely ‘bad sexual ettiquette’.

All of these things are wrong and abhorrent to me. But I was earlier called a rape apologist as well (and since this is my blog, where better for me to, well, rant about it?!), for the simple reason that as far as I’m concerned sexual violence when it occurs is always wrong and always abhorrent, no matter whether the victim is male or female or the perpetrator is male or female. I think there should be a place for discussing the fact that men are also victims of sexual assault and rape.

As far as I’m concerned, this is not incompatible with my feminism, because the reasons behind the collective silence about this issue all boil down to the rigidity of the gender binary.

Speaking in hugely blunt terms (so bear in mind that I am simplifying a lot here and painting in broad strokes) the patriarchal, gender binary system would have us believe that women have less interest in sex than men, are manipulative, dangerous creatures who only want marriage and babies. They have more awareness of emotional complexity than men, and are more interested in emotions in general than men are.

In contrast, men don’t really have emotions. All they ever want is sex. Sex and power. They’re like little boys, desperate to fulfil their base, animal needs, and if they don’t get what they want, they’ll get violent.

(which is why, apparently, so we’re led to believe, men essentially rule the world. It’s because women are too clever for silly little things like political or economic power.)

The trouble with this broad division, however, is that it does no justice to either men or women, let alone those who find themselves somewhere in between or off the spectrum.

Women do want sex. They also want power. They are not, as a group, manipulative and dangerous and obsessed with trapping men. They only behave like that because they’re expected to, basically.

Men, equally, are not merely transportation vehicles for their penises, and to shrink them down to that is to be as dehumanising and rhetorically violent as to define a woman purely by the fact that she has a vagina.

But when people argue that rape perpetrated against men is (as I’ve heard several people say) a non-issue, a distraction from feminism, a cowardly pandering to a male-dominated world and an attempt to soothe a wounded male ego they, as far as I can see, are guilty of an enormous hypocrisy.

You cannot fight a system that decreases women down to their biological sexualy identity (i.e. their vagina) by doing the same to men, whilst demanding men stop doing so to you. That’s never, ever going to get anywhere. Claiming that you doing it to men is somehow okay because of the centuries of sexual violence perpetrated against men does not make it right. It just makes it the more distasteful.

I’m not ever going to say that in the campaign for feminism we should concentrate on men’s issues at the expense of dealing with – for example – the issues of Women of Colour (which is a phrase I use cautiously as I find it a strange phrase to use, but I think it’s politically okay, but please correct me if I’m wrong) or Trans women, or even white middle class women (whose feminism, I’m also told, is irrelevant.)

But I don’t see why, in a movement that purports to be committed to breaking down the sexual-political codes that hold everyone locked into a gendered prison, it shouldn’t be possible to talk about the fact that women are often as guilty as men of enacting gendered violence against each other and against men.

The belief that ‘men are always up for it’ is as damaging to feminism as the belief that if you flirt with someone you’re ‘asking for it’. It’s just apparently hugely taboo to discuss one of those problems.

Mar5

G-A-Y! (And Birthdays)

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About ten days ago was T’s (my awesome, campaigning, wonderfully political and generally awesome friend) birthday. There was a curry, at Tayyab’s, which is a curry house in Whitechapel. Considering T is a uni friend, there were lots of people I’ve hardly seen since graduating, if not beforehand, and also someone who used to go out with my cousin, which was a bit weird. I’m not sure he recognised me, despite having met him a few times – I’m not sure if it would have been more awkward if he had known who I was!

Anyway, that aside, we then all huddled ourselves off to G-A-Y Bar in SoHo. By the time we got there, I was fairly tipsy and kept screwing up the name in a variety of over-excitable ways. For some reason, this is one of the main things that sticks in my head from that evening.

If I hadn’t made it clear from talking about Ku Bar, I love gay bars, and clubbing in gay clubs. I feel so much more at home in them. And yet at the same time, I always find myself slightly drunkenly noticing how exciting it is that you can check out girls if you find them attractive, and vice versa and so on…

But at the same time, the clubs are also places that are more respectful and friendly and less unpleasantly gropey than non-gay clubs. It’s grand.

Feb21

Hostage Negotations

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On Tuesday night I went to a short, two hour course on Active Listening Skills, at Willesden Library Lab. Admittedly I went along somehow having led myself to believe that it was a course about assertiveness – it wasn’t.

 

Instead, ‘Active Listening’ (though it does help with assertiveness and managing relationships) is actually a way of retraining yourself when it comes to interacting with people, so that you get the most information or the deepest responses from people and (in the words of our course leader) find out “all their secrets”… Sceptical? I was.

But it’s actually been really useful for helping me think about (for example) interview technique, as well as managing ‘conflict situations’ and difficult conversations with people. One of the main (and very interesting techniques) we covered was how to have a conversation with someone without ever asking any questions – which means that you end up hearing what they want to tell you, rather than directing them towards your personal agenda. Questions inevitably lead the person you’re talking to, because they discover what it is you want to know, rather than what they want to tell you. The example the course leader (who was himself a hostage negotiator for most of his working life!) gave seemed very simplistic:

A: I’m going on holiday next week.
B: Right – where are you going?
A: Majorca…

which just tells you about the holiday. As opposed to -

A: I’m going on holiday next week.
B: On holiday…
A: Yes, I’ve been really stressed…
B: Oh, right -
A: Yes, it’s been really tough recently
B: I see, so…
A: My wife just left me… 

(I mean, obviously, I exaggerate, but by not asking questions you make the person you’re talking to ‘give away’ more than they would if you asked questions.)

I was sceptical, but then we tried it out, and I ended up learning that the person next to me is applying for various law jobs, is quite competitive, worried about their sister, has a supportive boyfriend and a few close friends and has ambitions to go into the UN. I didn’t ask a single question! Likewise, I gave a lot more away through the non-questioning technique than I’d ever have planned to tell a perfect stranger!

And the point about all of that is that by not asking questions, you can learn something of other people’s values and beliefs, which (although the course leader was using examples of hostage situations, can also be applied to every day life, because you can do this to get people to do what you want) allows you to persuade (or manipulate people…) into helping you get to where you want to be by using their beliefs and
values against them, as it were.

Bit creepy, no doubt, but on a general level really interesting!

For example (triggers of domestic violence, by the way) he described one hostage situation where there was a man threatening to kill his wife and the negotiation was happening through a locked door. Our negotiating chappy was talking to him and he, hostage-taker, was saying:

“I go out to work all day, I work hard, I do my best by this family, and I come home and she’s having an affair…!” 

Which tells you yes, that he’s jealous, yes, that he’s clearly dangerously abusive, but also that his main priorities are family-related. He’s a ‘family man’, even if he’s taken it too far. So there’s no point trying to tell him to calm down, and that what he’s doing is wrong, because he knows that. The course leader said that instead, a better tactic was to respond to the values this man already lives by:

“yes, you do your best by this family – you’re a family guy – let me talk to the real you; this isn’t you,
is it? I want to talk to the man who loves his home and family, not the man who’s done this…” and so on, and by emphasising his values (which he’s given away..!) you have a more powerful negotiating tool.

Something else useful that was said was that you should always go to someone’s level. I.e. if someone’s angry, don’t tell them to calm down, because if they’re angry it’s because something matters to them.
So you respond on that level (not by shouting – you have to remain in control, but mirror the level at which they’re reacting) “I know you’re angry, I can see this is important to you, but let’s talk about
this situation, shall we?” implies that they’ve got the power, but because you’ve responded to the need in them for it to be recognised, you’re controlling their energy levels…

And his final bit of magic, which is something my Mum actually taught me ages ago, is distancing problems. So you don’t go up to someone and say “We need to sort this problem out”, you say “We need to sort that problem out”. It’s further away from you. Likewise, “Why did you do that, you stupid boy” is unhelpful – instead you say “Why did you do that stupid thing? You’re not stupid, so why did you do that?”

So the other person isn’t ‘a’ naughty/stupid/problematic person, it’s just that there are naughty/stupid/problematic things occurring around them that need to be sorted out…!

And another thought – see, I told you I found it really useful! – was that to get more information out of someone, there are three questions you can ask:

  • “why is that important to you?”
  • “Why does that matter to you?”
  • “Why does that mean so much to you?”

which are all three ways of asking the same thing, but if you space out the questions, and build on key things someone has said, you develop from what they’re saying and get right to the heart of things. I.e.

A: What are the most important qualities you look for in a friend?
B: Trust.
Why is trust so important to you?
B: [cue blather... blah blah, because I can confide in them...]
A:Why does being able to confide in someone mean so much to you?
… because you can have someone’s support…
why does that matter?
B: because when I was three years old…. 

See?! Magic. Needs practice, and it makes you really pay attention to what the other person is saying, because you have to pick up on what they’re giving you. Saying things like “It seems to me that [x] really
makes you angry” “Yes, it does because…” gives you more of a lead in than “why are you so angry about this stupid thing?” which suggests more of a judgement and puts people’s backs up…

I’ll stop waffling now, but as you can see, I found it really exciting and interesting, and it’s given me a variety of tools I can use and apply to get to the heart of people (useful in interviews and at work, because that helps you build deeper relationships!) which can only be a good thing, right?!

Feb13

A little bit of Sandi Toksvig

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So there are advantages to a week spent off work (I staggered in for the morning on Monday, lasted until lunchtime and staggered home again; I tried the same trick yesterday and managed… an hour…) and they are that I now have the chance to get a bit more up to date on this blog! Sorry, those of you who’ve been popping in to check on it on and off, only to discover nothing new was happening!

Now, one of the most exciting things about living in London, as far as I’m concerned, is the fact that I’m within spitting distance of the BBC. My tube line goes past Television Centre (although that is now about to be turned into flats, it’s true). And one thing the Beeb (love it or hate it) does very well, is bring in audiences for its recordings, for free. As a public service broadcaster it’d be pretty damn harsh to charge for entry!

And a plus of going to recordings is that you get to hear things that aren’t heard in the finished recordings (which is why I’m hoping my embarrassing heckling of Sue Perkins three weeks ago will go unnoticed…)

So last week I staggered (I was just beginning to go down with this bug, so there has been a lot of staggering going on in the last few days) to Broadcasting house, where I met my good friend T, the LGBT, women’s rights and general social justice campaigner, and my near-constant companion on trips to the BBC. We spent the hour or so before the recording started sat on the floor in the lobby (we have a spot now, on the floor, which is where we always sit. I sort of feel like they ought to put up a plaque for us), and chatted about all manner of things. Including a girl across the way on whom T suddenly developed a fierce and lasting crush.

We shuffled in, we sat down. And then, the glorious Sandi Toksvig burst onto the stage. She is tiny, in person, but with such stage presence! Some people just have that kind of aura.

If you’ve heard this week’s edition of The News Quiz (warning, by the time you click on that, there’ll probably be a new edition out now, but never mind) you’ll know one of their major themes, especially given that the quiz-mistress is a very well-known lesbian was the success of the equal marriage bill in the Commons. And what those in the audience got that those listening on radios, laptops and online won’t have heard was Sandi Toksvig’s fantastic account of how she heard that the bill had passed:

“I was just going to bed quite late on Tuesday night when I got a text from my son,” she said, in her polite, rich, glorious voice (can you tell I might just have a bit of a crush?!) “and all it said was ‘we won!’ I immediately felt like a terrible mother; I didn’t know what he meant: was he playing some kind of sport? Had he been in a competition that I didn’t know about? So I texted him back saying “Oh great, congratulations! Very well done!” and then I did what all good parents do in this situation – I rang up his sister. And I said ‘what’s he won? Do you know what he’s won? What’s he been doing lately?’ And I could hear her rolling her eyes and she just said ‘Equal Marriage, Mum, the Equal Marriage Bill passed!’”

(I mean, bear in mind I’m writing this a few days after hearing the recording, and that’s all a vague account of Sandi Toksvig’s own story. So copyright, and so on. It’s hers. And it’s also not exactly the way she told it, but still. I just love the idea of that total confusion in response to an excited text from her son.

Anyway, along with that particular little extra story, there were also some glorious moments when the group deviated from humorous chat about the news and daily happenings and rattled off down deeply unbroadcastable tracks – Mark Steel’s rant about bankers probably topping the bill. Also, Sandi Toksvig swears a lot – and all they do is cut out the swear words and she suddenly sounds terribly couth. She really isn’t, it’s fantastic!

So after that particularly inane piece of babble, I just want to say yet again: go to the BBC! They do so much for free, it’s fantastic.

Feb10

The Zoo! With added pictures

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So, the Zoo. What happened?

Well, there were some animals, including this giraffe:

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The Girl, who I shall capitalise but not name, met me in the giraffe house. We moved on from the giraffes and circled the zoo several times, talking incessantly but calmly about all manner of things, from the ways in which we’d come out, to what our jobs were and how much or little we liked them, to families, to hobbies, to friends…

We passed some African Wild Dogs:

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A monkey or two:

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A parrot:

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And some porcupines:

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Before entering the ‘walk through’ monkey enclosure where we were able to get very up close and personal to a bunch of impish yellow things:

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After that, it was closing time, so we left, and walked out through Regent’s Park and down to Regent Street (past the BBC) to a coffee shop where we sat and talked more, before returning to mine for dinner and to watch Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

I’m not very good with new things, so I’ve been a bit all over the place (and, as you’ll have noticed, I’ve been getting angry and distracted by other issues), hence the lack of posts this week. I’ll be back on form next week, I promise. I need to tell you about Sandi Toksvig, for one thing!

Feb9

Right now, I’ve had about as much as I can take.

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Totally just copied this from my other blog (over at http://www.theteathinker.wordpress.com – go and check it out!) but this is important enough that it’s definitely worth posting twice, because I have different audiences on each blog. So hi! Honestly, feel free to email me if you want to get involved with my plans.

 

I don’t know why I’ve snapped, I don’t know when this happened, but suddenly, I’ve decided – I’m not taking it any more. Just to warn you, this post may well end up incoherent, angry and upset. It will almost certainly contain trigger warnings to do with rape, sexual violence and abuse. But this stuff is important. I am also probably going to swear. I know it’s not very eloquent, but I am boiling over with rage.

Someone just sent round on facebook one of those “Women: Avoid Being Raped” posts, with lists of helpful advice, taking from “Interviews with GENUINE RAPISTS” about how they “select their victims”. Now, to be clear: self defence is important. If you’re walking along alone at night, male or female, and someone jumps out of a bush at you, running might not save your life. Knowing how to get that someone to fall over or be temporarily incapacitated might give you a shot at getting away. But just because they’ve jumped out of a bush at you does not mean they intend to rape you. In fact, there are all sorts of reasons why anonymous strangers attack people on the streets, and they are primarily financially related. They probably want your cash, not to have forcible sex with you. Honestly.

There are statistics, I’m not bullshitting – the majority of random street violence is perpetrated against men, and it’s normally muggings or fights or other things. But women especially are taught to fear the myth of the anonymous rapist, the scary man in the dark balaclava who hides behind a tree and waits for an unsuspecting victim to grab and attack. We’re taught to keep in groups, to wear sensible shoes, and now, apparently, to avoid wearing our hair in long styles that can be “easily grabbed” by your passing neighbourhood rapist. All of this is to distract from the far more uncomfortable truth that rape most commonly happens between people who know and (sadly, mistakenly) trust one another. That most victims/survivors know their attacker.

Yes, there are awful isolated incidents in which there is a strange man lurking in a bush. Horrific things like that do happen. I believe that Republicans in the USA call those sorts of incidents “legitimate rape” or “forcible rape”, as opposed to the sanitised idea of “date rape”… well guess what? They’re both rape.

Moving on from the rant to the bit that I think is more important:

It’s past time that people started to have an open, honest discussion about rape. It does happen, yes, particularly in feminist circles or women’s groups, or very small concerned organisations, in which people are usually preaching to the choir. But in the wider world? We get told not to put our hair in a ponytail in case a rapist grabs it. I mean – what the actual fuck? I guess that makes me safe as houses – at the moment I mainly wear baggy jumpers and jeans and my hair is really short. How can anyone rape me?

Well, (and I’m really having a field day for being open about stuff here) speaking as a survivor of (a mild but emotionally crippling) assault when I was fourteen, from which I’m still trying to move on, it really wasn’t the length of my hair or the revealing nature of my clothes (I was wearing a hoody and jeans. I can still remember the outfit) that made me vulnerable. It wasn’t anything I did, beyond trust someone who made me believe they were trustworthy.

I don’t want this to turn into a blog post about “shit that happened to me” or wailing or gnashing of teeth. I don’t even want this post to turn into a bunch of friends or people I vaguely know saying “oh gosh, yes, that’s awful. Isn’t it rubbish the way people talk about sexual violence these days?”

I have a different idea.

I want to get a group of people together, from all ages hopefully, but possibly primarily from the 16 – 25 age bracket. I want to create lists and posts and short, twitter-sized snippets that talk about how to avoid getting yourself into a position where the person you’re wanting to have sexual contact with is feeling coerced, pressured and unhappy.

And yes, there are some humorous lists going the rounds, doing their best, about how to avoid rape (“take a whistle with you when you go out. If you think you’re about to rape someone, blow the whistle very hard so they can hear you and be warned” is a personal favourite), but there isn’t a serious equivalent of the ladles of well-meaning advice suggesting that women stop wearing ponytails. Or skirts. Or shoes that don’t also have a stash of pepper spray in the sole.

So my idea currently has this form, and if someone can point me to a website that does exactly this so that I can stop worrying and start reposting bits from it like mad, then please do that, and I can calm down… My idea is this:

A website, with articles, videos, short sharp practical things, offering advice, links to resources (aimed specifically at young people) allowing an open discussion of sexual violence. Discussing the fact that yes, women can be perpetrators as well as sufferers. That men can be victims. That you don’t always realise that you’ve just done something awful to someone you thought wanted to have sex with you. That you can survive it and you can move on. Offering short easy-to-follow self defence tips (for men and women) so that you don’t need to feel afraid to walk the streets at  night. So that people can start to feel safe no matter how they’ve done their hair.

And then I want people to take that stuff and to post it. Link to it on facebook. Talk about it. Tweet it. Retweet it. Tweet it again. Get it out there in the way that the 21st century does best. Tell everyone you know, from your thirteen-year-old cousin to your sixty-year-old grandma that this is how it is. That this is how to fight rape, how to fight sexual violence, how to live with dignity, no matter your gender, age, or sexuality.

If any of that was coherent, and if anyone is interested in being involved in any kind of project like this, for the love of whatever deity you happen to believe in, get in touch. I want this to happen. I want something to change.

Because “don’t have your hair in a ponytail” is no kind of advice to give to young people about how to destroy sexual crime forever. Really. It’s not.