OK, Here's How the Legal System has to Work...

Yesterday Bill Roach was cleared of the allegations of sexual assault that had been brought against him. I'm not a legal expert. I have no clue as to the details of this case as I didn't even really follow it on the news so I don't feel qualified to comment on the verdict or trial. I am, however, a resident of the United Kingdom and therefore I do have a right to comment on the reaction I saw last night.

 

The Twitter search function is completely useless so I couldn't find the tweets I read last night that made me so angry to quote so this is probably going to read a bit like story time. But please bear with me. There is a point. Someone re-tweeted a tweet into my time line calling the women who'd brought the complaints against Roache 'disgusting', 'liars', 'the worst kind of people', 'whores' etc. I clicked through to the hashtag and saw that this tweeter was not alone in their feelings.

 

Because Roache was found innocent it seemed OK to declare open season on the prosecution. Clearly they had to be lying (and 'money grabbing' to boot, although I never found an explanation for this). And because they were lying they themselves should go to prison, have their right to anonymity removed and probably whipped through the streets.

 

THIS CANNOT BE HOW A LEGAL SYSTEM WORKS!

 

How anyone can think it is alright to punish people who bring unsuccessful cases to court is staggering. Can you imagine what kind of a world we would live in if that were the case? The only people who would report a crime would be those who were certain of the verdict going in their favour. It would be a tiny minority who had the power and influence to ensure cases were ruled the way they wanted them to be. Everyone else would be terrified to make a complaint in case they themselves were prosecuted. It would be an outrageous way to conduct things. It wouldn't just leave the most vulnerable amongst us without access to the justice system, it would leave damn near all of us without it.

 

That, and there is a reason it is called 'not guilty' rather than 'innocent'. It means the jury didn't feel the case had been proved beyond reasonable doubt. It doesn't meant it didn't happen (although I feel I should point out it also doesn't mean it did, and Roache may very well be innocent. I just don't know). For what it's worth I think this should be how it works. Any doubt and the jury should go with 'not guilty', but that's a rant for another time. My point is these women could have been telling the truth. A 'not guilty' verdict does not automatically mean the prosecution were lying and it's not up to random upstarts on Twitter to decide that they are.

 

Incidentally, I noticed a lot of people last night railing against the CPS for bringing the case to trial. This also baffled me. If every case the CPS brought to trial went in favour of the prosecution what would be the point of the trial? It also irked me that these people assumed the CPS 'hadn't done their job'. Who are you, disgruntled avatar, to tell the CPS how to do their job?

 

The other thing that really made my blood boil is that this was a sexual assault trial. The CPS has recently been criticised for the dwindling numbers of such cases that they refer to the courts. That suggests to me that this would not have gone forward had it not been felt the case was pretty robust. 

 

And now we come to the delightful misogyny these views betray. 'The worst type of people', 'whores', 'money grabbing sluts'. Yet again the myth that being accused of rape or sexual assault it worse than being raped or sexually assaulted. That, my friends, is cast iron bullshit. It must be awful to be accused of such a serious crime if you haven't done it, but it's a whole lot worse to have to life with the aftermath of rape and sexual assault (that, and regardless of what idiots may say, false rape allegations are pretty damn rare). Yet we seem to live in a culture where it's acceptable, even expected, that women in these cases are not believed. That doesn't hold for any other crime, and it is not OK. I can't help but feel these women would not be vilified to the same extent had Roache been cleared of stealing their handbags. Also, I think we can see from the aftermath of Ched Evans' guilty verdict, they wouldn't have been treated any differently had Roache been found guilty.

 

As for naming the women involved....just read this post at Sian and Crooked Rib because it explains the reasons why those who report rape and sexual assault should remain anonymous far more eloquently than I could. 

 

In short, random angry people baying for the blood of women who may not even have done anything wrong, get the fuck over yourselves.      

Owning Words

There’s been a lot of excitement over the last week or so in the feminist blogosphere (which I spend a great deal of my time hanging about in, although can’t really claim to contribute to) generated by this piece in the New Statesman by Sadie Smith. In the interest of fairness I want to point out it was responded to eloquently in the same publication the next day by CN Lester and they addressed many of the points well so I’ll leave you that one to read, and I thoroughly recommend that you do.

But one of the most contentious points of Smith’s article was her discomfort with the word ‘cis’. This was answered in Lester’s piece (as well as by Stavvers and Cel West here), and that got me thinking. I’ve never really thought about the word before. I understood that it described me, as many words do, but I had never thought about it as being particularly problematic. I then came across this article (I have linked to it, but please be aware that some of it, especially the comments, is very transphobic. Seriously. This is pretty hurtful stuff) also arguing against the use of the word cis.

The main gist of it is that the word is being applied to a large swathe of women who had no say in it. I understand how this might tick someone of, but I honestly think there’s been a bit of wilful misunderstanding going on here. This wasn’t something that was just dropped on people with little or no basis in lived experience. The concept already existed. There are people who are trans and people who are not trans. It seems obvious there should be a simple, succinct word that means ‘not trans’. That word is cis. Stated like this I realised that cis actually benefits me because it means I don’t have to define myself in negative. I don’t like defining myself by what I’m not. There is a recognised word that describes me and that can only be a good thing.

The article also takes issue with cis by claiming it is reductionist and separates people into two discrete camps, reducing their identities down to a narrow definition. Again I think this is wilful misunderstanding. There is not one way to be a cis man or cis woman, or a trans man or trans woman, or anything in between. There’s not one universally understood way of being lesbian, British, Northern, White, socialist, feminist or agnostic but I use all these words to describe myself and understand what other people are getting at when they use them to refer to me. There’s nuances and differing definitions and a whole spectrum of identities encompassed in these words but I like to think they have space to allow these interpretations. I also like to think that people respect the way I chose to use these words and are prepared to allow me to explain myself. I see no reason why cis should be any different. Equally the claim made that it makes gender a concrete, immovable thing is also flawed. Having equivalent but different terms illustrates that there is a range of expressions of gender and all are equally valid. All words are somewhat blunt instruments that are open to interpretation. None of them are perfect in all situations but its how we communicate. Seeing people refusing to engage with language this way is just frustrating.

Smith’s article also highlights the use of terms such as ‘cissexist’ and ‘cisfascist’ that she claims are freely thrown at cis women in an attempt to silence them. I’m not sure about this. I’ve never come across the term cis being used as a direct insult, but that doesn’t mean that it’s never happened. The terms Smith quotes seem more likely to have come from someone being frustrated at how trans people are seen as ‘abnormal’ and how society is set up on the assumption that everyone is cis. This is something that needs to be challenged so I don’t really accept Smith’s argument in this place.

Ultimately I think the resistance to the word cis comes from people who previously assumed they were the norm, the default, and this position has now been challenged. There is no such thing as normal and if the term cis is used as freely and frequently as trans then it will help work towards a more equal, inclusive society.

GUU and the Sense of Entitlement at Uni

Over the last week there has been a lot of excitement and comment generated by the misogynist abuse directed at two female debaters who were attending an event at Glasgow University Union. The university paper has been covering it, and so have national news outlets including the Huffington Post and the Guardian. The behaviour of a few individual members of GUU is absolutely appalling, but, sadly, not all that shocking. As has been seen recently women who speak out in the public realm are subjected to abuse not for their opinions but because they are women. It is, quite frankly, pathetic that we are still in this state in 2013.

However, the problem of misogyny seems to be endemic in the GUU, as detailed in this blog post by a former Glasgow uni student. Reading her words (which I encourage you to do, although I know I have already been quite link happy in this post) really made me feel sorry that she and other students like her had suffered in this way. I’m not going to discuss what happened at the GUU debate, that has already been done extremely well (see links above, and Google) but I have been thinking about the mindset that seems to have been betrayed by these men.

The things shouted at the women (‘get that woman out of my union!') are very telling. These appear to be privileged young men from wealthy backgrounds who feel able to dismiss anyone who isn’t exactly like them out of hand. This got me thinking about the greater environment of universities and how they are can very easily become places where a specific elite call the shots. Anyone who doesn’t fit the mould can be made to feel very uncomfortable.

I’ve been to three unis in two countries (Oooooooo! Get me!) and I have to say that I, thankfully, was never made to feel uncomfortable because I was a woman. I was never even made to feel uncomfortable for being British when I was studying abroad. I was, however, in England, made to feel uncomfortable about my accent.

I don’t have that strong an accent, but it is there. I did my first degree at Manchester (a place where Northern accents I assumed would be commonplace) but I still was once told in a seminar that I was ‘a chav’ because of how I talked. I was also aware that some societies were closed off from me because of either disproportionate joining fees or astronomical equipment costs. Those people who’d taken a proper ‘gap year’ (rather than a year out to work in a call centre, which was what my ‘gap year’ was) and gone travelling exuded a self-belief that came from the experiences they’d got. Then, when it came to my final year, there were those who could be set up with jobs or internships through existing family connections. They were the ones least concerned (particularly about revising. It makes sense. If you don’t need a 2:1 why bust your gut?) about the future.

There was a clear class of people far more comfortable than the rest of us. I’m not saying by any means that those from wealthy backgrounds were all dicks (you can be a tool regardless of where you’re from) but I can see how those young men in Glasgow, brought up believing that they were entitled to be there, came to the conclusion that they were above others. They were the best, the privileged, the elite and they could talk down to anyone they wanted. This sense of entitlement is there in British universities and anyone who doesn’t fit in with the clique is open to abuse. It’s not right, but it’s a world view held by people like this.

And it’s only going to get worse. With the increase in fees certain universities will become more and more homogenised as only a small section of society can afford to go. The original idea of university (to open your mind and expose yourself to new thinking, people and ideas) will suffer if everyone who goes there is from a similar background. The ideas held by misogynistic spoilt brats will be more likely to go unchallenged if they rarely come across someone whose lived experience is different from their own. Of course, I don’t think for a moment that everyone who is lucky enough to come from a comfortable background will think like this, but the evidence is that there is a portion that does.

We are on the verge of further segregating universities. Incidents like what happened at GUU will increase, and it won’t just be women who suffer. It will be everyone who doesn’t already enjoy the comfortable life of the elite.

Thoughts on Same Sex Marriage

Today MPs are debating whether or not to allow same sex couples to register their relationship as a marriage. There’s also a section of the bill that proposes trans people can remain married to their spouse despite their change in legally recognised gender. To say this bill has been controversial would be understating things slightly. Google it and you will get an avalanche of views and arguments. People have claimed it will undermine marriage, others that it will strengthen it. Both religious groups and LGBT rights organisations have claimed it doesn’t go far enough and that it goes too far or is deeply unhelpful. Then there are those who claim this is not the issue to be focussing on at the moment when we have so many bigger things to worry about. This is mainly the economy, which appears to still be SNAFUed, and no amount of smiling gay people is going to change that.

I personally agree with the bill and that view is the result of some quite soul searching conversations with myself and others. I think that same sex couples should be allowed to call their legally recognised partnership a marriage. The fact that all the people I know currently in same sex civil partnerships refer to their partner as husband or wife and their relationship as a marriage seems to me to support a change in law.

A lot of problems seem to stem from the use of the word ‘marriage’. Some opponents of the bill feel that a marriage is between a man and a woman and, although many have no problem with a legally protected, legally binding relationship such as a civil partnership between gay people they would rather the word ‘marriage’ were not used. I cannot agree with this. Although ‘equal’ does not always mean ‘identical’ I think in this case having different words for different kinds of relationships signifies that they are not equal, and in a society where, despite great gains in recent decades, LGB (I’ll come back to the T later) face prejudice and discrimination it is not helpful.

Equally those who argue that this is going to create a second category of marriage I disagree with. As far as I can see a heterosexual marriage and a homosexual marriage would be the same. I see no difference why relationships would differ just because the genders of the people in it do. To assume otherwise reinforces gender roles and stereotypes that I also don’t agree with. This is where trans people under the law as it stands can find it difficult. If they wish to undergo a transition or present themselves as a different gender to when they got married they currently have to divorce their partner. Allowing them to remain married to the same person also means that, if the relationship is now a same sex one, it is the same marriage as it always was.

Similarly the argument put forward that marriage needs to stay heterosexual and separate for ‘the sake of the children’ I find deeply insulting both to same sex couples who have children and straight couples who do not. There is nothing that I would consider essential to a healthy relationship that cannot be found with a partner of either sex.

The point I have the most respect for is that changing the name is unnecessary because not every couple wants or needs to be married. And that’s fine. I agree whole heartedly with that sentiment, but I think that everyone should have the same choices open to them. All relationships should be supported, but if someone wants to get married and have it called a marriage with all the romance and permanency that word invokes then they should be allowed to. As I said above many same sex couples already do, it’s just not legally recognised.

I understand that some people have a deep, often religious objection to same sex relationships in all their forms. Although when I come across this viewpoint it breaks my heart that’s not really what I’m discussing here. People are entitled to their views as long as those views are not interfering in the lives of other people. I think there are ways that religious leaders and groups who support same sex marriage can perform the ceremonies and support the couples without enforcing every member of that organisation to. I’ve heard the ‘slippery slope’ argument in relation to this one a lot, and I frankly think religious groups are quite capable of remaining vigilant and ensuring no one is forced to do something they don’t want to do. Individual churches can refuse to take a female priest, but that doesn’t meant there are no female priests in the church. Surely a similar system could be worked out?

I understand a lot of the arguments, but ultimately I support the changing of the law. I don’t think it will cause any social or personal harm and I think it would send a message, if nothing else, that LGBT people really are equal in Britain today.

I’ll leave you with a word from my favourite angry, animated squirrel, Foamy.

‘Gay folks should get married. If anyone is going to appreciate the concept and institution of these unions, it will be them. They fought for the right to be married, they’ve taken media back-lash for it, they’ve been beaten, spat upon, ridiculed, but still, they persevere and want to marry their significant other. They’re not standing at the alter with a shot gun to their head. They’re fighting through crowds of angry protestors and backward thinking religious fanatics in order to marry someone they love.’

Gok Wan's Rules of Attraction

Before we start I’m going to freely admit something; I quite like Gok Wan. It’s probably because on telly he’s always so sweet and nice to everyone but I always thought that he’d be really lovely in real life as well*. I can’t imagine him getting disproportionately angry if you forgot to record Downton Abbey for example. I also, and this could just be my soft spot for him, genuinely believe he wants to do his best for the people that appear on his shows. He does want them to feel better about themselves. My only problem is, I think he’s going to wrong way about it.

I love about 70% of the stuff he does on How to Look Good Naked. I get a bit uncomfortable by his constant reinforcement that all women must look smaller all the time but I also understand that, as that’s the message that’s constantly around us in society, that is what makes a lot of women feel good. Maybe I’m asking a bit much of Gok to challenge that assumption (his is, after all, just trying to make a bit of light entertainment) but I wish he’d make a bit of an effort.

However, I was pretty disappointed in last night’s fare, Gok’s Style Secrets. This time around not only is Gok giving out fashion advice, but dating advice as well. Whenever I see the phrase ‘dating advice’ alarm bells start ringing. If the advice is not ‘be yourself, surround yourself with people who like you to build up your confidence and then go talk to people you fancy’ then the advice is likely to be dodge. If the advice is not what is previously stated (or a version of it) there’s a pretty high chance that this will tell you to change yourself in order to meet someone. I have reason to believe that Gok’s advice is in the second category as it states on Gok’s own website he’ll be telling you what to do, say and wear on a date. The answer to all three is ‘whatever you want and whatever feels comfortable’ but that can’t be stretched out for an hour.

This advice is overwhelmingly aimed at women, and it overwhelming tells women to appear more ‘sexy’ and demure, to quieten down, to wear different clothes, to not laugh too loud or burp or talk for an hour about your favourite album/film/football team/breed of dog. As well as being oddly inaccurate (I’m as obnoxiously gassy and badly dressed as they come and I’ve never had problems getting into relationships. Or bed) it seems very strange to change yourself to appeal to someone else. Because then they’re not attracted to you. They’re attracted to the sanitised version you’ve chosen to portray. What if your dastardly plan works and you get married? Spending your whole life not farting and avoiding interesting topics of conversation sounds like just about the worst thing I can think of. You see this advice all the time, in magazines, in rom coms, even sometimes from ‘friends’ (who, if they think you need to change that dramatically, have no business calling themselves your friends).

The other aspect I find problematic is the focus on appearance. Setting up a woman for dating by telling her to be ‘sexy’ suggest that there is only one way to be sexy and this is the most important part of a date. What’s that? You think it is? It’s not. Finding someone physically attractive has nothing to do with how hard they tried to look sexy. Also looks are not the be all and end all of attractiveness.

And these looks are so prescriptive. The lady on last night had a very specific and personal style. Clearly she wasn’t sure it was working or else she wouldn’t have contacted Gok but other women might see that, look down at their crushed velvet dresses and think so is this wrong? It’s not, it’s not wrong. You wear what you want to wear, and it doesn’t matter if it looks sexy to someone else, or even to you, because it’s OK not to look sexy all the time.

This is the problem I always had with Snog, Marry, Avoid, although they occasionally let women who dressed in a punky or gothic style off the hook because they were ‘individuals’ it still told women even more specifically than Gok that being attractive was the most important aspect of appearance (the clue is in the title) and that only certain looks were sexy. If a girl wants to wear layers of fake tan and eyelashes with pink feathers on the end then what, really, does it have to do with you? These women will see themselves as just as individual as the goth girl whose just been told by Gok she looks scary.

So, I’m sorry Gok, but you’re assumptions are wrong, your delivery is wrong, your emphasis is wrong and I’m still gonna rely heavily on Doc Martens, band t-shirts and thick black eyeliner. And my lady loves it.

Maybe it’s different for lesbians.

*I did actually meet Gok Wan once. It was when I lived in Manchester and drink might have been consumed. I saw him on Canal Street, ran up to him, told him I thought he was ace and I wished I’d met him when I was sober. He patted me on the shoulder and said 'I wish you’d been sober when you met me too, love’. So he’s quite funny as well as sweet.