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.

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.

The Charming Face of Homophobia and Heteronormativity

David Davies has said some pretty eyebrow raising things recently. He claimed that ‘most parents would prefer their children to be not be gay’ (which was then replied to by several witty individuals that the truth was most people would rather their children were gay than a Tory MP. I know my parents certainly would). Following this he decided to do an interview with the Guardian, presumable to set the record straight. Said article was published yesterday and, as I sat with my Bailey’s coffee preparing for a good old knees up with the in laws, I read it. I was left almost speechless at how someone can seem to be completely unaware of how offensive they were being.

Davies spent the majority of the interview (as was described by Decca Aitkenhead) squirming, looking flustered and apologetic and muttering that it really wasn’t his intention to cause offensive. He bleated that he didn’t understand this world, it was different and confusing to the one he’d grown up in and, really, he was just an endearingly bumbling fool who meant no harm. Kind of like a Welsh Boris Johnson, and, just like the original BoJo, despite his attempts at a cuddly image, so much of what he said wound me up.

I’m left with two possibilities. Either Davies is genuinely that clueless, in which case I will be kindly pointing out to him that the flimsy excuses he’s been hiding behind do not stop his views being extremely troubling and damaging for many people, or he is using it to try and dig himself out of the hole those comments dropped him in.

So, please allow me to take a systematic look at the things Davies got wrong.

"But I suppose, at a certain level, I see heterosexual sex as being – and it's probably the wrong word to use – but the norm. I think it's reasonable to say that the vast majority of people are not gay[….]I just worry if children are going to be taught that [heterosexuality] isn't necessarily the norm, and that you can carry on doing all sorts of other things, are we going to have a situation where the teacher's saying, 'Right, this is straight sex, this is gay sex, feel free to choose, it's perfectly normal to want to do both. And you know, why not try both out?' I mean, are we going to have that?”

This is the attitude that makes young non-heterosexual people feel scared, lonely and ostracized; the idea, still rampant in our society, that heterosexual sex is ‘the norm’. Also, I have never understood why there is any cause for concern over discussing homosexual sex. If a young person is not attracted to the same sex no amount of discussion of homosexual sex will alter that. There’s also an argument to be made that young people should be encouraged to explore their sexuality safely and in an informed way.

The sentence ‘right, this is straight sex, this is gay sex, feel free to choose, it’s perfectly normal to do both’ sounds like a fantastic way to approach sex education. If sex education covers pleasure and intimacy as part of sex it can quite easily then go on to discuss lesbian and gay sexual acts and relationships. For young gay and bisexual kids struggling with their sexuality such frank discussions could be a tremendous comfort.

Davies, however, doesn’t think that changing sex education like this would necessarily be a good idea. He cites the example of a friend he knew at school who came out as gay at 16 but, when Davies met up with him aged 20, he had settled down with a woman. Based on this one anecdote Davies seems to have been put off the idea that young people should be able to experiment and try things to see what works for them. Aitkenhead points out, as noted above, that if young people have no same sex desire sex education is unlikely to change that. Davies mumbles about worries concerning how much detail will be gone into, and when Aitkenhead explains that no amount of discussion of lesbian sex would have turned her younger self into a lesbian he decides ‘it’s different for girls’. On to the next bit of problematic drivel;

"But you're a lady, you're a woman, so you wouldn't have felt quite the same way. I mean, at school the girls all went out and bought Erasure without any issue." He's being perfectly serious. But what about the lesbians in my class – what would have helped them? "Oh, I don't know what they went out and bought." No, I mean what about them feeling confused and excluded? "I wish there was some way round this that meant they didn't feel excluded, I really do."

Somehow women are not just different to men but they don’t need to be shown the same level of concern. The flippancy of how he discusses these young women in comparison to the young men mentioned above is very telling. If I was being paranoid it would say this might be because gay men are far more visible than bisexual people and lesbians and so a clueless twit like Davies will not have given them much thought. If I was being more generous I would probably suggest that Davies simply hasn’t given it much thought because he rarely seems to give any thought to anything. In all honesty I’m inclined to believe option one, but that is an issue to be addressed in another post.

The other problem with the above quote, which was touched upon earlier in the interview when Davies discussed the school friend, is that it seems to equate a non-heterosexual identity with liking Erasure (I know. What. The. Actual. Fuck). Not only is this a bit of a tired reliance on stereotypes it is massively reductive and extremely insulting. Who does this man think he is to reduce people he has already demonstrated he knows fuck all about to taste in music?

Then he wishes there was some way to avoid such young people feeling excluded. There is. It might even be something to do with the broader sex education he had just expressed his mistrust for.

Aitkenhead then asks him a hypothetical question. What if his worst fears materialized and a change in sex education led to more openly gay people? What would be the problem? The best Davies can offer is a vague sense of ‘unease’. He can’t really put it into words, he just doesn’t really like the idea of it. Basically he doesn’t know why, he just doesn’t really like gay people. That, my friends, can also be said as disliking gay people for no good reason and/or because they are gay. Otherwise known as homophobia. It doesn’t matter how much he whines that it is just ‘instinct’ it’s still homophobic. Maybe if we lived in a society that didn’t treat heterosexuality as the ‘norm’ and therefore everything else as ‘abnormal’ snivellingly thoughtless little shitbags like Davies would be made quite so nervous by those big bad gays.

Then he drops another clanger;

"I make no bones about it, I'm a product of my upbringing and of the time I was brought up, so I'm not going to pretend not to be. It's not like I was brought up in San Francisco or somewhere like that.”

Ah, that old chestnut. The ‘it’s all down to the place I’m from/the time I grew up’ argument. This is, quite frankly, the biggest, most irritating pile of apologist wank I’ve ever heard. Whenever someone blames their upbringing for their intolerant views it’s either laziness or looking for excuses. The same goes for the ‘generational’ argument. I cannot believe no one else is insulted at the suggestion that, because a person is raised in a strictly religious household, or South Wales, or the 1940s that they cannot listen to or critically assess new ideas and arguments. I would rather someone brought out the arguments against something that they had come to a considered conclusion over rather than just blaming their parents like sulky teenagers. It’s crap and generally offensive all round.

Do I think David Davies is a hate filled, miss informed, ranting homophobe? No, actually I don’t. I believe him when he says he doesn’t really know much about the debates surrounding gay marriage (although one then wonders why he spoke about it on BBC Wales). I think, sadly, that he is blinded by our heteronormative society and so bound by the ideas we are spoon fed that he really doesn’t have a fucking clue. But he needs to get one. Everyone does. No one, lesbian, gay, straight, bi, queer, asexual, pansexual, poly or other is benefitting from a situation where the rights of millions of people can be questioned due to a sense of unease.

But I also think he’s avoiding the issue by hiding behind a wall of (probably at least partially) fabricated confusion. This isn’t sweet. It’s worry for a politicians to be so utterly uninformed about something he pipes off opinions about. He needs to educate himself and anyone else who wants to weigh in on the debate needs to as well. There is no received wisdom here. Although it pains me to say it even Tories have braincells. They should learn how to use them.

Fox Hunting and the Nature of Charities

Yesterday a hunting group in Oxfordshire were fined after admitting to engaging in illegal fox hunting. Two members of the hunt were fined £2800 between them and ordered to pay another £5000 in costs. The Heythrop Hunt itself was fined a further £4000 and told to pay £15000 in costs. However despite these princely sums the case still cost the RSPCA a whopping £327000.

It was remarked upon by the magistrate that perhaps the money the RSPCA spent could have been put to better use. He hinted in a BBC news report last night that people who made donations to the charity maybe didn’t intend for their money to be spent on things like this.

That is, quite simply, bollocks.

Aside from the fact that these people BROKE THE LAW and there is footage of them BREAKING THE LAW and therefore it should have been a criminal prosecution and not left to a charity to bring these barbarians to trial that is not how charity works. There have been problems before of people earmarking the donations they made to charity and the charity having a lot of money but not being able to use it as it came with stipulations to be used for something else. This has caused unnecessary problems in Indonesia where money was given just to built orphanages. Anything else the communities needed was denied by do-gooding Westerners who thought they knew better. Almost the opposite happened in Japan after the recent tsunami. Being a developed and relatively wealthy nation Japan did not need all the aid donated to them, but because the money was given to help only victims of the tsunami it couldn't be given to any other causes. 

The arrogance of a person giving to charity to tell them what to spend the money on is staggering. When I donate to charity it is a charity I know well and so I assume they know what they are doing so I trust them to put my money to good use. There have also been times when I have heard the argument made by people that they won’t donate to charity because the charity might just ‘use it for overheads’. Does it really never occur to these people that, in order for it to do the best work, the charity will need some sort of infrastructure?

Also I have donated to the RSPCA before. I have made cash donations, bought things in RSPCA shops and it is one of the buckets I am most likely to put spare change in. This could be put down to years of watching Animal Hospital as a child but I really feel the charity does good work. Do I think they did the right thing in this case? Yes I do. Would I be proud to think some of my money went towards bringing the Heythrop Hunt to justice? Damn right I would.

This case sent a clear message to everyone who thinks they can flout this law that it is a law. To continue to hunt and torture foxes for fun is illegal and if you continue to do it you can expect to be prosecuted. Hopefully next time it will be a full on criminal case brought by the CPS and charities won’t need to foot the bill.

Fox hunting is barbaric. I have never heard an argument for it that convinced me to keep it legal. If it controls pests and keeps the fox population at a manageable level there are far more humane ways to do that. I also do not accept that something should be kept alive just because it’s tradition. I also resent the implication trotted out some pro-hunters that I don’t understand because I am not from the countryside or I am not from the particular class that indulges in this vile past time that I don’t understand it. I’m sorry, but I do. You are watching an animal get ripped to pieces for fun. That is both horrific and suggestive of a particularly vicious mindset. Getting pleasure out of watching something being brutally killed should be sounding psychological alarm bells. You can argue the positive social aspects all you want, but I’ve always managed to find positive social aspects in pubs, parks, house parties and good conversation. No animals needed to die.

I applaud the RSPCA’s actions, I just wish it hadn’t been left to them to do it. My only regret is that these scumbags aren’t going to prison.

All seventeen year olds love Boris

Aren’t digests great? You get exposed to the most odious and ill-informed of opinions without having to hand over money to the Daily Fail or give them advertising revenue through your precious mouse clicks. Marvellous. Also if it makes it into a digest (in this case The Week) the assumption is that it definitely is not a joke article and the fool with their head stuffed up their arse writing it actually SERIOUSLY BELIEVES THIS SHIT. Although I can never quite bring myself to let go of that last little pinch of salt when dealing with the Fail.

So the most recent thing to waft under my discerning nose is the crap spewed forth by Viv Groskop concerning giving the vote to sixteen and seventeen year olds. Apparently Groskop used to think they should because if you have the right to marry and join the Armed Forces you should be able to vote. I agree with that previous sentence. Except now Groskop has changed her mind. Why? Because of the X Factor.

Yeah, because of a sub-par talent show that exists only to make Simon Cowell money and act as a showcase for a load of whiny, self-obsessed, fame hungry morons the debate on whether or not sixteen and seventeen year olds should have the vote should be over.

You see the way under-eighteens behave on the X Factor is so immature that they shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Seriously. This is the argument Groskop is making in the Fail on Sunday. I’m going to start with the obvious point that everyone acts like a twatbag on the X Factor. I’m fairly sure that’s one of the big reasons why people watch it. That’s EVERYONE Viv, not just under eighteens. Do you think everyone should therefore be banned from voting, or only the exact ages represented in the current series of X Factor?

But apparently even someone who writes for the Daily Fail doesn’t think that the behaviour of a group of ill adjusted and fame hungry teenagers should be the sole reason sixteen and seventeen year olds shouldn’t vote. Groskop's other concern is they might vote for Boris Johnson. She actually said that as well.

‘They love him because he is the funny man with the funny hair.’

^Genuine astute observation from our Viv there. I don’t think I need to spell out how insulting that is to anyone born between 1992 and 1994.

Because no one over the age of eighteen voted for Boris Johnson. Oh wait, everyone who voted for Boris Johnson was over eighteen. How the fuck does that work, Viv?

If we’re being generous I suppose we could say that there’s something to the ‘voting for a personality’ thing, but again that’s been going on for centuries and sixteen and seventeen year olds can hardly be blamed for it. It’s also a pretty sweeping assumption that Boris’ particular brand of baffoonary is what the average sixteen or seventeen year old is looking for.

Perhaps they’re concerned with, oh I don’t know, tuition fees and bus fares? Not in Groskop’s world. No suggestion that they might actually be politically aware, socially conscious and give the same amount of thought to the democratic process as older voters. No consideration of the possibility that being a vacuous dick magically stops when you turn eighteen.

Effectively Groskop Has looked at a current and interesting debate and thought I’m going to say something so bafflingly insulting and yet clearly bullshit it will confuse everyone and stop the debate. Fortunately they also write for the Daily Fail so no one who has ever had a logical thought will give a puffin’s chuff what they say.

NB. I’m not linking to the article because I don’t want to be responsible for people clicking on it. I’m sure if you really want to read it you can find it.   

Nick Griffin and why it isn't Cool to be Gay

Right, before I get onto the main rant I need to hock up a warm up rant about how Nick Griffin is an immature, bigoted, vapid cockwomble and anyone who has ever even considered voting for his band of knuckle dragging, neo Nazi, scumbags deserves to have white hot needles pushed through their eyes. Fair enough, you’re probably thinking, I already knew that Griffin was an immature, bigoted, vapid cockwomble. What has he done now?

What he has done is tweet the address of the couple who just won their case after a court decided they were unlawfully turned away from and B&B because they were gay. The High Priest of all Fuckwits then told the couple to expect legions of his grunting supporters to pay them a visit and tell them, somewhat bizarrely, ‘an English couple’s home is their castle.’

Apparently Lord Cuntbucket thinks this is acceptable behaviour. Intimidating someone because they had the audacity to be right in the eyes of the law is not big and clever you utter bellend. Not only have this couple gone through the stress and inconvenience of the court case but now they’re potentially going to be hounded by pond scum. Fortunately Griffin has made their address public so I can send them some homemade jam to keep their spirits up. I’m sure the police officers who now have to keep an eye on the house would appreciate some as well. Wasting police time as well Nick. Tut tut.

I sometimes think someone created Griffin just for me. It’s so easy to argue against his ridiculous party when he’s in charge of it. There is very little excuse for most of the things he does (including breathe) and this is a particularly shitty example of a coward who is being ignored (because he’s wrong) so he gets all nasty and playground bully-esque and just makes himself look like a snivelling childish waste of oxygen. Fuck Nick Griffin. Fuck him with a crowbar until his spleen explodes.

But what I really wanted to rant about is what I heard on the Jeremy Vine show concerning this story. My Mum’s lived here longer than I have so she gets first dibs on the radio, although she is fully aware that they often pick people to go on Jezza’s show on based solely on how much they will annoy me. She knew this, she could have switched over to Lauren Laverne on 6, she didn’t and this is the result.

The guest they dug up from some unknown cavern (supposedly Vanity Fair magazine where she is the contributing editor) was Victoria Mather I’m not completely sure what kind of magazine Vanity Fair is so I’m not going to comment on it, but I will comment on one particular sentence she said which demonstrated perfectly to me that she is at least semi-detached from reality, or at least any reality that I’ve ever had any dealings with. This sentence was;

‘In contemporary life it’s cool to gay but it’s not cool to be Christian.’

I’m assuming that you’ll want to read that several times to make absolutely sure you got it right so take your time.

Yep, this woman thinks it is ‘cool’ to be gay. There’s so much wrong with that statement I’m not entirely sure where to start, but I’ll give it a go. The word ‘cool’ carries connotations of being both a conscious choice and temporary. Being gay isn’t a trend. You don’t stop being gay when some other sexuality comes into style. I won’t even go into the nasty little notion this woman hinted at that there is an element of posturing to being gay, that people do it because it’s the thing to do at the moment.

Actually fuck it I will. Does anyone really genuinely think that people are so shallow that they will pick their partner on the basis of which gender it is currently fashionable to date? Besides I’d put money on it actually being far more common for the opposite to take place. People who fancy others of the same sex will likely pretend they don’t. These days, thankfully, stage relationships and marriages to hide a person’s sexual orientation are pretty rare in the UK but it’s still at work on a more subtle level. If you have a partner of the same sex chances are, rather than lie, you just won’t mention them or use gender neutral terms particularly with people you don’t know. If being gay was the next big thing there wouldn’t be the fear of rejection sitting in your stomach every time you reach that first point in a conversation with someone when you have to reveal the gender of your partner.

If being gay was cool you wouldn’t be accused of ‘waving it in people’s faces’ just by acknowledging that your partner exists. You wouldn’t think twice about holding hands in public. You wouldn’t feel just a little bit nervous when you leave a gay bar late at night.

But, and I wish dearly this wasn’t so, there is a tiny grain of truth embedded in Mather’s bigotry. There are prevailing narratives surrounding queer people in popular culture at the moment and this might be what she was getting at (although quite what that has to do with a couple being turned away from a B&B is beyond me).

Let’s start with the trope of the young, urban gay man with a lot of disposable income who is well dressed, quick witted and faaaaaabulous, darling. Some gay men are like that, some aren’t, and the ones that are (unless they stay constantly in Brighton, Vauxhall and Manchester’s Canal Street, which I will be coming back to later) will probably get a fair amount of abuse for being so visible. This is probably the man she had in mind when she uttered that stupid statement. I have an idea that Vanity Fair is connected in some way to fashion and I’m also given to understand there’s quite a lot of camp gay men in that industry. So, at the very best Mather is generalising her experience to the whole world. That’s naughty and every fucker else that does it gets rightly told of for it.

Let’s move on to the other narratives, specifically the ones that concern women (sorry lads, if you don’t act like a character out of Queer as Folk your visibility in popular culture is pretty low). The ‘cool’ one Mather was probably thinking of is young women who are openly bisexual. There’s a pretty disingenuous theory currently being grumbled around that these women do this to attract men. This is because porn has taught a generation that lesbianism only exists to turn men on. Think I’m stretching that a bit? Go look up some generic, badly made porn. You won’t get far without some HotGirl4GirlAction or whatever they tag it as these days. So, naturally, a young women who finds herself attracted to women as well as men or who is exploring her sexuality is faking it. Because what’s the point of women having sex if men get no pleasure from it? Oh, and male bisexuality appears to not exist.

Beyond that you have the tried and tested lesbian stereotype. You know the one. It involves short hair and dungarees. A gay woman can’t win. If she wants to rock the DMs she is told she’s feeding into this stereotype and should stop it as well as getting so comprehensively mocked no one in their right mind could consider that image ‘cool’. If she doesn’t she’s a ‘lipstick’ lesbian and this renders her, like the non-camp gay man, invisible. It’s hard to be cool if you’re not even acknowledged.

I’m not saying the LGBT community is immune from this petty pigeonholing, because it certainly isn’t. They appear to have bought wholesale into the myth that the only group worth catering for is the affluent city dwelling gay men. The advertising on Canal Street is pretty squarely focussed on this demographic. This is a situation hampered by the one remaining lesbian bar being run by the most arrogant, self-aggrandising tosspots this side of the X Factor.

So, basically, not being straight is still pretty hard Victoria, and saying pointless tripe like the above does no good. Also, when was the last time being ‘cool’ got you a room in a B&B? Oh, that’s right, you work for a magazine. You probably really think that’s how the world works. Maybe you’re not a bigoted heterosexual threatened by the fact that loving someone of the same sex is no longer a mental illness. Maybe you’re just deluded. Either way I’m not taking a word of what I said back.

That goes for you too Griffin.