Disability and the return of blame culture

May 17, 2012
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It’s no longer enough to be disabled. One must, in modern Britain, be a type. Are you the real type? The genuine that is, the sort that sits there quietly and is grateful for any hand-out they receive. Showing a bit too much life, there? Then you’re a faker, dear, undoubtedly a scrounger – and that objecting attitude means you’re a manipulative threat. It’s not enough to be disabled in these days of cuts and exclusion. There’s a right way to be lame and a wrong way, and if you spot someone doing it wrong it’s your duty as an able-bodied to let someone know.

Cristina Odone did her bit this week in the Telegraph, valiantly supporting Iain Duncan Smith’s “defiant stand” in reforming disability benefits despite him basing it on six inaccuracies. Using lies and distorted facts to win a fight against people deemed liars and fakers is an irony we’re not meant to talk about – or call the nasty hypocrisy which it actually is.

The good disableds stay quiet, as the myths and distortions spread. Myths that now include the power – and desire – to close down entertainment premises, that is according to Royalty’s favourite licensee Howard Spooner. It wasn’t fighting, urination or swearing in the street that led to his club’s late license being withdrawn but angry dwarves and wheelchair users who just wouldn’t move out the way. “If a dwarf says he can’t live opposite a nightclub,” he stated with apparently full mental function, “then it is impossible to have a nightclub there because able-bodied people are having fun.” Though not having the pleasure of Spooner’s personal acquaintance I’m assuming he needs no help to play the entitled fool. It’s saying something though when licensing laws are blamed on people with disabilities – and when it’s a correlation a person is confident in declaring out loud.

But the real disableds don’t scream about the blame culture, the one that’s been given new life by dire economic conditions. They sit by as it grips and excludes and pushes them outside, only brought back in when something on the inside needs to be declared their fault.

The true disabled take whatever’s done or said to them, dutifully lifeless in body and the mind. When they get a little vocal though, when they dare object and campaign and speak the truth – that’s when they become a different type of disabled, the type that Odone took the time this week to warn us against. This type are “savvy activists”, she told us; having the potential to succeed appearing to be a reasonable ground on which to criticize the opposition. They favour “manipulation and shock value”, she distorted, citing the menacing vision of a few campaigners wearing a symbolic glove.  

True disableds fit the box that’s been made for them. Passive, needing and accepting. Just not enough to make Odone or the compassionate conservatives start to feel guilty; then it’s probably time to take your offensive need and go indoors. Luckily that’s starting to happen anyway, thanks to cuts to the benefits and services that enable many disabled people to leave the house. Taking a human’s dignity and freedom is all well and good of course, but one doesn’t want to have to look at it whilst it occurs.

Don’t worry though! There’s nothing to fret about, not if you’re the real disabled. These measures will only affect the liars and the fakers, the ones all this is out to get. The slashes to welfare and the hateful rhetoric is, as Cristina tells us, “for the sake of the disabled” and that’s something we shouldn’t forget.

Disabled people are enduring vilification and the arbitrary withdrawal of life-defining welfare. They’re now being told to be grateful for it.

** As featured on The New Statesman

 

“Can I keep him mummy?” Twitter reacts to ‘The Undateables’

April 4, 2012
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After several weeks of waiting, The Undateables has begun. At a minimum, it was a nice chance to see the programme we’d been complaining about.

On Monday, I previewed the series for the Guardian. I wrote:

 “…for the most part the show is done beautifully. Despite a voiceover that sometimes verges on patronising (“First EVER date!”), when those involved are left to speak for themselves we get an honest, personal depiction of what are universal experiences. This seems to be the point the show is simultaneously missing and making. Viewers are told from the opening that they’re about to see a group of “extraordinary singletons” when in fact we see the opposite: nine single people who happen to have a disability… Overall…it’s not the differences but the similarities you’re left with: human beings who want companionship and physical affection. Sometimes funny, sometimes aching, it doesn’t once say disability and dating don’t quite fit.”

For what it’s worth, after a second viewing my opinion’s unchanged. In direct contrast to the marketing, the show was a touching, funny, honest portrayal of dating with a disability – both in showing the issues specific to disabled people and the ones, from lack of chemistry to awkward silences, general to everyone.  

Like any marginalised group, many people with a disability will naturally have strong feelings when a programme emerges that (at least tacitly) seeks to represent them. I maintain my right to simultaneously object to being treated as if I’m part of a homogenous group whilst taking great interest in how ‘I’m’ being depicted.

If we’re interested in what The Undateables is going to do for social attitudes towards disability and relationships though then the focus should be less on the reaction of people with disabilities and more on those without.  These are the people who have little or no experience of disability other than what the media presents them with. These are the people who, in the post-mortem of another dalliance of ‘mainstream television does disability’, I’d like to pay attention to.

Last night, within minutes of airing, #undateables was trending. It featured the full spectrum of stereotypes and a couple of new ones for good measure.

What follows is my highly unscientific sample of the Twitter reaction:

 

The ‘Disabled people are like puppies with less hair’ tweet

“Bless the people on #undateables”  

The ‘Thank Christ they’re here to make me feel better about myself’ tweet  

“I wanna meet someone with tourettes from watching #Undateables. Really feel sorry for them…”

“Just watched the #undateables and I feel so sorry for themmm! :( “  

The ‘Thank Christ they’re here to make me feel temporarily bad about myself’ tweet  

“Aww :( .. I moan cos my ass looks fat or my hair has not gone right.. And them poor fuckers have never had a date :( .. #selfish #undateables

The ‘Don’t get left on the shelf multiplied by 83 because you’re a cripple’ tweet  

“Couldn’t help but feel the girl on the #undateables was being a bit too picky. The phrase “beggars can’t be choosers” comes to mind…

The ‘Point and Laugh’ tweet

“Anyone watch #undateables last nite??? Funny as fuck!! #weirdpeopleinthisworld”  

The ‘Look everyone! I just thought of a pun’ tweet

“#Undateables pennys date was wheely good ;) ”  

The ‘Well-meaning but completely misses the point’ tweet

“”#Undateables” is trending. I know I’m shallow, but that’s mean. EVERYBODY can find love, no matter how odd they are.”  

“I hope u people laughing at the #undateables never have the misfortune to have a child with similar problems yourself !!!”

The ‘Misogynist finds any excuse to be a Misogynist’ tweet 

“”She seems like a really nice girl…Fucking slag!”. The Tourettes fella has just summed up my last relationship in 1 sentence #undateables”  

“Whores #undateables”  

The ‘Undateables is now a word’ tweet  

“Girls who smoke cigs  #Undateables”  

“#undateables ANY man tht has spent SO MUCH time in jail he done lost his mind & tlks abt conspiracy plots & hides food like he still in”  

The ‘back handed compliment to Channel Four’ tweet

“Seems that #ch4 #undateables wasn’t the insulting voyeuristic nonsense suggested by trailer”  

The ‘random insult’ tweet  

“The little dwarf thinks she looks like Cheryl Cole, silly stuck up dwarf #Undateables”

 The ‘restores faith in humanity’ tweet

“So in the end I learned a lot about several conditions and was rooting for Richard and Luke. Well done C4 #undateables”

Lactivists reject the facts

March 3, 2012
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Facebook wants to know every bit of you. Except, that is, your breasts. Not even if they’re lactating ones, with a flash of a nipple and your child latched onto your chest. Mark Zuckerberg hates your baby and sells bottle formula on the streets – or is currently following Facebook’s anti-nudity policy and taking breastfeeding photos down from the site.

It’s not gone down well with some – breastfeeding activists complaining on the site and outside the offices on the streets.

You do well to avoid the sexist stench of hypocrisy coming from blocking pictures of half-naked women. This, after all, is Facebook – the company that for months advocated the right of its members to discuss ‘hilarious’ methods of rape and just last month, after misogyny-mag ‘Unilad’ cited low rape conviction rates as a tip for men trying to get laid, was home to chat about the best way to punish the “dykes” who complained.

Facebook have found themselves embodying the view of women that sees it as more offensive to show a mother’s lactating breast than to joke about a “slag” who’s asking for rape. 

It says something about how poor ‘the lactivists’ case is that in the bid to win the argument, then, it’s the social networking site with a record of misogyny that’s coming out on top. If current commentary is anything to go by, making such a confession may lead to scrubbing the dirt off yourself for weeks. Feminism, last time I checked though, doesn’t require defending women regardless of whether what they’re doing or saying makes any sense. 

There are many flaws in the campaign against Facebook banning breastfeeding images; one major one being that no ban actually exists. What’s being taken down are photos of any breast that show a fully exposed nipple (and even then only if a fellow user complains). Less an anti-breastfeeding statement then and more of a consistent anti-nudity policy – or at worse, one against bad photography. And the photography would have to be pretty appalling, to aim for your child’s head and instead get your girlfriend’s entire chest. These are the only times Facebook may have an issue with you putting it on their website – an issue that, for different reasons, quite a few of your 300 or so friends may share.

When it comes to breastfeeding, there are plenty of genuinely negative attitudes – just as there are towards the mothers made to feel like second class citizens for opting for the bottle. Being banned from putting semi-nude photos on a website though is not the same as being shamed for feeding your child discreetly in the street – and to claim otherwise does no woman any favours.

Facebook doesn’t think breastfeeding should be “hidden.” They most likely couldn’t care less. Like any company dealing with millions of photos daily, they care that their image policy is easy and that a user who doesn’t want to see their boss’ nipple feels free to (secretly) let them know. Lactivists can say it’s personal, claiming prejudice and all the rest – but in Facebook world, all breasts are equal, those used for dinner and the ones used to ogle at. That isn’t sexism or even prudishness, it’s a pretty practical idea: if you want to show someone a photo where you’re partly naked, social networking isn’t the place to go.

** This is an extended version of a piece originally featured on Liberal Conspiracy

Rod Liddle’s attack on disability cannot be ignored

February 11, 2012
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** As featured on Comment Is Free

“My new year’s resolution for 2012 was to become disabled. Nothing too serious, maybe just a bit of a bad back or one of those newly invented illnesses which make you a bit peaky for decades – fibromyalgia, or ME … I think we should all pretend to be disabled for a month or so, claim benefits and hope this persuades the authorities to sort out the mess.”

Last Thursday a national newspaper published this. Rod Liddle, writing in his column about the “ease” with which swaths of Britain were claiming disability allowance, was paid to publicly declare his desire to be disabled for a month. Until the Sun takes on a hiring policy that has a standard above an internet troll, the best response may be the one suited to any playground bully: ignore it. But, despite what Tiny Tim and Hollywood’s “bravery against diversity” back-catalogue suggest, disabled people are as far away from saints as the rest of society. It’s impossible to read the level of bile produced by Liddle and attempt to keep your mouth (or typing fingers) mute. Moreover, right now, staying silent is the last thing we should do. As disabled people face the double-edged attack of the government’s fast, arbitrary cuts, and a rightwing media intent on peddling fear and lies, this is not the time to sit quietly by.

When Liddle’s rant went viral online, the response was far from quiet. Twitter alone was filled with it, anything from fury from campaigners to bemusement. After all, Liddle’s theory that it has become “easier” to claim benefits partly because it is in “the disablement charities’ … self-interest, [to] insist that an ever-greater proportion of the population is disabled” made me worry for his own health. I fretted about how far this paranoia went; whether poor Rod dreams of the maniacs at The Donkey Sanctuary breaking into petting zoos at night and taping bandages on healthy hooves.

But the vast majority of people just felt angry. Insulted, mocked, lied about. The anger is natural. There’s little more disgusting than belittling something that on a daily basis affects real people. It’s no wonder that Liddle soon had a host of people inviting him to stay with them for a month, volunteering to show him what living with a disability – both those making his classification of “real” and those not – was really like. Many even offered to help him achieve his dream, selflessly promising to loan him a hammer if at the end of the month he still wanted in. I laughed. I didn’t feel like doing the same though.

There are a lot of voices – in government, in the media, even in the street – bleating about the fakers, whispering about how cushy it is to present your disability and get a big fat cheque. The natural response is to inform them otherwise, to list the inabilities, the hard parts, the bits men like Liddle will never see.

I’m not sure it helps with the battle though. Those trying to attack are portraying disabled people as scroungers. Those seeking to defend shouldn’t feel they have to portray themselves as anything close to pitiable in response. There has to be the balance between expressing the fundamental needs that come with disability, and not being forced to play into the hands of those who demand we justify ourselves; presenting our lives as something unenviable they could never want. They present the image of scroungers. It’s our job in this fight to not simply replace one digestible image with another, but to carve out simple personhood, rejecting the image of “otherness” that helps form the ignorance in the first place.

To be in need is not the beginning or the end of disability, and to unintentionally create a rhetoric that suggests otherwise is as reflective of the people behind the word “disabled” as the ones we fight against. Disabled people need the benefits they have a right to – they can also be smart, sexual, funny, empathetic, and a huge benefit to society. Maybe for a month Liddle would like to try that.

Twitter storms, sexism and the relevance of novelty feminism

January 3, 2012
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The New Statesman taught us two things last week: women are capable of being angry (or ‘ANGRY’) about more than one thing at once and ranting on Twitter about it won’t actually solve anything.

Depending on whether you’re in the Lewis or the Ball corner that means you either woke up on New Year resolving to make 2012 the year you would become less outraged or vowed to make it the year that you would become outraged about absolutely everything.   

In highlighting the way online anger-fests like ‘Pandagate’ are essentially futile, James Ball had a point. The structural sexism that displays itself in multiple forms and affects (at least) half of the people on the planet will not be solved by ensuring that next year the BBC makes everyone on their ‘Faces of the Year – Women’ list a human. I imagine few thought it would.

It isn’t just the thinking of those expressing anger that matters though but those they hope are listening. Even being generous enough to believe women capable of tweeting about a panda and lobbying for better representation in Parliament, it’s a genuine worry that it’s the trivial point that will get noticed. Whether it is actually being said louder or not, it’s a reality that the superficial – or ‘novelty feminism’ – is easiest to hear.

It’s time we questioned this sense of constant competition – both in what feminists are permitted to care about and what we want others to. If it’s insulting to claim women can’t be angry about two things at once, it’s just as insulting to suggest who we are trying to reach can’t do the same. Having read a tweet about the chauvinism of ‘the woman on the left’ trend for instance does not render anyone incapable of hoping the Leveson enquiry investigates media sexism – and more to the point, are they not often part of the same pattern?    

Pandagate or ‘woman on the left’ aren’t distractions from the ‘real issues’ but representations of them. They may be novel, they may have the easy digestibility that celebrity and an internet storm can bring – but that a concern can be shrunk to a tweet does not mean it is small. They are mainstream depictions of big problems, problems that for multiple reasons the public too often shy away from and the media bury in the Life and Style section.

On Friday Michael Winner tweeted a defence of Roman Polanski, claiming people should learn the ‘facts’ and remember the thirteen year old girl was “no virgin” and that “Hollywood [was] full of underage girls who looked older putting themselves about.” I replied with my disgust, as many others did.  Did tweeting about it improve rape convictions or draw back the cuts to legal aid and rape centres? No. Did it spread the message that rape is rape and that it is misogynistic apologists that say otherwise? Perhaps.

Few cared enough to get angry because a posh pensioner with a catchphrase off the telly said something offensive. They cared because it was a representation of an ignorant victim-blaming view of rape, one that is horrifically common, heard down the pub, in the papers, or on social networking sites. The tweets were about rape, not Michael Winner. He was simply the inspiration. Just as a professional lawyer presented as a flirty school girl was and a panda (and those humans revolved around marriage) judged as the most relevant women.

Is it that “perpetual outrage [is] obscuring the important issues”  – or are the important issues creating perpetual outrage? That those getting attention may present themselves as trivial does not mean there aren’t crucial issues lurking underneath.

The ‘right’ to discriminate

November 29, 2011
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** As featured on The New Statesman  

An Englishman’s home is his castle, or so the phrase informs us. That small scrap of land that is ours to do with as we please. However, as Christian guesthouse owners Peter and Hazelmary Bull have found, once said castle is opened up to the public, the rules begin to change. Specifically, if you say you’ll rent your rooms to strangers, it’s illegal to turn away the ones that are gay.

Nelson Jones wrote this week that “the intimate circumstances of bed-sharing…complicate the situation”. I would have to disagree. Banning gay guests from your premises becomes no more legal if the rule “only” applies to those who might end up having sex. Or in this particular case, those who wish to do so in a double room and without one of the couple making a walk of shame to spend the night back in their single bed.

Though some of the issues raised by this trial may be complex, the concept of discrimination is not. Just as it’s against the law to run a business and only serve people with white skin, so it’s against the law to run a business and only serve people who like to sleep with the opposite sex. That the banned customer could go elsewhere does not, as Nelson suggests, change this. There could be a hundred other guesthouses available to a gay couple but it would have no relevance to whether it was right or legal for one to turn them away.

Everyone (conducting themselves within the law) has the right to be served everywhere, and to say a policy like the Bull’s “need not unduly inconvenience gay couples” is to severely reduce what’s wrong with discrimination.

When civil partners Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy were denied a double room, the harm didn’t simply come from the effort of re-arranging their plans, or even the (at best) embarrassment that such a need would cause. It came from being excluded because of a biologically determined difference, from being banned from doing something because of who they are. The law says this is wrong. That “the God worshipped by the Bulls does not” is, though unfortunate, irrelevant. Discrimination is discrimination, whether it stems from the playground or a Holy Book.

It would be easy to see such a verdict as an attack on freedom, an attempt by the state to take an unpopular belief and make it illegal. This would, though, be inaccurate. This is not a case that judged the right to be homophobic (or “old fashioned” if that is what we wish to call it). It is a case that judged the right to be homophobic and use that belief to hurt someone else.

How hurt is defined is fundamental — whether we live by the notion that prejudice only hurts its victim if it involves blood and a physical blow. Nelson is right that philosophy can teach that “multiple preferences” are best, provided they don’t cause ill-effects, but it can also tell us the point at which these ill-effects mean our actions must stop. Liberal theory — the ideas we base our laws on — sets clear restrictions on personal liberty: “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.” The Bulls have the right to think homosexuality is wrong. If they so wish, they have the right to be repulsed by the thought of two men having sex and even to declare out loud the perils in this sin. They do not have the right to put these beliefs into harmful action, to use them in a way that leads to discrimination.

No one laid a finger on Martyn or Steven. By all accounts, Mr and Mrs Bull were very polite in telling them they were not allowed to share a room with the person who is their partner by law. This does nothing to change the fact this was discrimination. One can’t help but wonder whether if their reason had been something other than sexuality, this would even be under contention. There would be unanimous disgust at a guesthouse that held a policy of “No Blacks with Whites Allowed” — and that it involved “the intimate circumstances of bed-sharing” would evoke little sympathy if inter-race couples were told to take separate rooms.

Such beliefs, in these times, cannot be put into practice. If you open your castle to the public, it’s the price you have to pay.

The feminist name game

November 18, 2011
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** As featured on Comment Is Free

There’s a lot in a name. As a form of identification names provide a fine service, more personable than a numbering system 1 to 7 billion and one that prevents social interaction from degenerating into “you, the one with the hair” and a range of vague descriptions. They aren’t without their problems, though: none more of a quagmire than what happens to a woman’s name if she gets married.

Though sense would respond with “Nothing, why should it?”, when it comes to marriage and female autonomy, sense has no place.

The reasons that were used to justify a woman losing her name up until the mid-20th century are in the modern context, irrelevant. Few couples wake up in a cold sweat over proving an heir and who will inherit the land and the town house. Despite what fathers still giving away their daughters suggests, if you rank people’s reasons for saying “I do”, passing a woman between estates most likely won’t even make the top three.

In our minds at least, marriage has moved on. The same however can’t be said for what we do with our names.

Despite an estimated 50% of UK brides bucking the trend, be it in law or culture, the assumption that a woman will take her husband’s name persists. You’ll do well to find a newlywed who isn’t greeted with “Mrs” despite having no intention to be anything but a “Ms”; the decision to keep her name still perceived as different enough to be of note.

Faced with the patriarchal status quo and the warm glow of history, it seems we can’t help but get a little teary. Slotted somewhere next to the thinking that a wedding is a woman’s chance to (finally) be a princess, it’s apparently a sign of love to sacrifice the name that’s been yours since birth. As pop tells young girls a man’s name is the ultimate gift, some would be concerned for the state of modern romance. I’d suggest starting with squashed flowers from the local garage and working up from there.

Ultimately, of course, the pull is tradition. The antiquated past in this case being a positive to embrace.

Tradition, however, can be abandoned. If indoor toilets and women no longer being tethered to the sink have taught us anything, there might be even be benefits to it.

Far more fun than thank you cards, there can be no greater post-wedding game than sitting down, rejecting convention, and figuring out what you’re going to be called.

The obvious option is to keep your name as it was before. It has the advantage of respecting both genders as equal, and most importantly allows girls you haven’t spoken to since school to still be recognisable on social networking sites.

For many there’s an appeal in the change, though, of the sense of family unit that comes in not only sharing a home but a name. It’s a strategy of particular use if children come along, allowing you to avoid the fight between names that usually results in the one enduring childbirth having theirs consigned to the dustbin of life.

Double-barrelling is a classic for this purpose – though in ducking feminism and entering straight into class warfare, it isn’t without problems of its own.

Some men have started to take their wife’s name and the world as yet hasn’t ended. That they have to do it via deed poll rather than the simple tick of a box offered to women just ensures the law can confirm they’re indeed weird.

Luckily the newest marital name trend has ensured the long search for a solution is over. Couples are now “meshing”: blending the key syllables of both of their surnames to form a brand new sparkling one. For the romantics, it’s the ultimate union – and allows the fortunate to discard the shackles of mediocrity and swap Den and Granger for “Danger”.

It’s the same principle used by the media to morph the first name of celebrities. You and your betrothed will be just like Brangelina, but instead of gossip spreads you’ll have bank statements. When my own sister married Ben and gave up the Ryan name, it seemed only natural he would from that day be known as Bryan.

The possibilities are endless. This is your chance to get creative, to find something better than a tradition that says having a womb is reason to start married life by submitting your identity to another. Then again, calling yourself 6,575,689,967 makes more sense than that.

Why Facebook’s rape jokes are no laughing matter

October 8, 2011
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** As featured on The New Statesman

Have you heard the one about the struggling woman and the rapist trying to pin her down? Rape is funny. It’s quite the joke, and Facebook apparently doesn’t mind if you spend your time swapping fantasised tales of abuse.

In between talk of Greys Anatomy and the annoying ones from X Factor, the global social networking site is home to pages dedicated to discussing rape in a positive light. “You know she’s playing hard to get when your (sic) chasing her down an alleyway“,”Riding your Girlfriend softly, Cause you don’t want to wake her up” and other delights have been on the site for months, places where fans can discuss strategies of forcing women into sex and split their sides laughing at the thought.  That this is, according to Facebook, acceptable, is the truly sick joke.

In response to calls to take the pages down, the site released a statement declaring that “groups that express an opinion on a state, institution, or set of beliefs — even if that opinion is outrageous or offensive to some — do not by themselves violate our policies.” A quick read of the site’s own terms and conditions confirms this is very much not the case. It is there in black and white with, “You will not post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence”. According to Facebook, talking about raping your friend’s girlfriend to see “if she can put up a fight” is neither violent nor hateful, and advocating such a scenario is a “belief”. Not for the first time, we are told rape is something to be trivialised — the special crime that can be actively promoted with the confidence that few will bat an eye.

It’s not a newsflash that the internet is home to some deranged, offensive language — in many ways, it is the place where good taste comes to die. A distasteful liberation comes from the anonymity, as the author is comforted by the knowledge that they cannot be seen behind the screen. It’s a sense of security that is often misleading, it being illegal to stir up hatred on the grounds of race, religion or sexual orientation. When it comes to hatred on the grounds of gender, however, there is no such legislation, with anyone free to whip up misogyny to their sweaty fingered content.

Be it Facebook policy or our own laws, abuse against women is treated differently; separated and viewed as lesser than that leveled at other marginalised groups. The rules that would rightly apply if the victim were black, Muslim or gay are deemed irrelevant if the victim is female. The hate spouted based on this factor is not a type that counts. Women, it seems, do not count.

We exist in a culture that views the abuse of women as something less than serious. Rape can be encouraged on global networking sites, just as t-shirts and hair products can be sold based on the concept of coming home to your boyfriend and being smacked round the face. Facebook says it with confidence — if directed at women, violence is a joke. But abuse is abuse. That which is based on gender should be seen not simply as offensive, but a hate crime like anything else.

This is not marriage equality

September 30, 2011
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** As featured on New Left Project

I hadn’t been to a wedding in what I had worked out was twelve years, back when I was four foot something and it was socially acceptable to fidget during hymns.

I was unimpressed, I remember that much, though I had always been the odd child who had never liked the fuss. You find yourself back there, as grown-ups do, watching another ceremony surrounded by distant female relatives in seismic hats.

“Marriage”, the clergy in charge will proclaim, “is a union between a man and a woman.”

It’s the definition of civility, to have the rules laid out for you. Useful too, in case you were planning a revolt or those dozing at the back just wanted clarification. I had heard the same line at my sister’s civil ceremony the month prior, though the registrar had had the good grace to look a little ashamed.

She may no longer need to, thanks to the ’Marriage Equality’ commission – or at least won’t by 2015, as these things do take time.

Centuries deemed to be the joining of a husband and wife for (a bit of property exchange and) procreation, this could fundamentally re-define the historic definition of marriage. For an institution obstinate in its antiquation, the enormity of this should not be underestimated.

It’s without doubt a move to rejoice over, but rather than get distracted by the glitzy appeal of long-drawn out legislation, let’s look at what we will actually be getting. (If the Government’s proposing, it’s only sensible to read the pre-nup.)

What’s being offered is a consultation, not legislation, and one that had been promised to start back in June. It’s now scheduled for spring – with no word on why ending discrimination needs debating or why to do so there needs be a delay. The purpose is to work towards the legalisation of same-sex marriage. This does not however include straight civil partnerships nor, crucially, anything but civil gay marriage. Religious marriage will continue to be solely between a man and a woman, and despite only being at the discussion stage, this aspect will not be included. Those religious bodies who want to practice non-discrimination will not be given a chance to even put their case forward.

 January this year saw the ban on civil partnerships being held in religious places be uplifted. The move was welcomed, not only by individual campaigners but religious organizations – amongst others, Liberal Jews, Quakers and Unitarians. Eight months later, as each major Party applauds the announced commission, the idea of offering the same for marriage has not even been mentioned.

There is, contrary to claims of equality, clear inequality being maintained between two sets of people – one that instead of ending the distinction between unions creates just another form of division.

Lesbian and gay couples are being given their own brand of marriage, with the other choice-holding sort saved for heterosexuals.

Granted a religious element if they opt for a civil partnership, if instead marriage is chosen, the option is taken from them. That civil partnerships are permitted to have religious involvement ironically furthers the sense of segregation – it being solely for homosexuals and thus a union of lesser importance not in need of protection.

Marriage is being offered to gay people but with a condition, and does so ensuring it remains closed-off, the proper institution that will not be tainted.

It should be little surprise that in the fight for equality and respect for all shapes of family, David Cameron would end up failing. The man who as recently as 2003 voted against the repeal of Section 28, Cameron is now said to be “emphatically in favour” of gay marriage, seemingly having lost his bigotry one night in the past eight years.

There’s a need for honesty – not simply in the Coalition’s motivations (a timely gift to the Lib Dems presented as a change in morality) but what it is that the commission is actually offering. Those expected to look closer are failing, with Ed Miliband, traditionally outspoken on LGBT rights, having now fallen silent.

To permit same-sex couples to marry is a key step in the right direction but without allowing the option of religion it is a falsity to dress it up as anything remotely equal. It is marriage inequality between unequals – and as the grown-ups in each Party applaud themselves for their toleration, that should not be forgotten.

A funny sort of oppression

September 19, 2011
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**As featured on Liberal Conspiracy  

New for Topman Winter ’11 fashion comes ‘misogyny chic’, plum shades slotting between the heady glamour of wife beating and comparing your girlfriend to a dog.

To many, the concern is how clothing with unapologetically misogynistic branding had ever been put on sale. To Brendan O’Neill, it is that removing them from the hangers is an act that sees the “controlling and censoring of men”.

Faced with the selling of t-shirts with the slogans “You provoked me” or “What breed is she?”, what really matters is over-sensitive women robbing a man of his freedom to dress like a fool.

“The dumping ground for society’s killjoys and miserabilists”, feminists, according to O’Neill, just didn’t get the wit, willfully refusing to find the funny side of trivializing domestic violence or being dubbed less than human.

In doing so, he reaffirmed women’s place as the only group to suffer harassment whilst being told it is their fault for not getting the joke. We were pressed, not for the first time, to ‘stop going on’ about it, to attempt to overcome the sense of humour bypass that comes with having breasts.

More than one in four women will be abused by a partner at some point in their life. 100 women will be murdered this year, by someone that sleeps in their bed.

The men that come home to punch, ridicule, or rape don’t do so because of what’s sitting in their wardrobe. And contrary to O’Neill’s distortions, no one is claiming that they do.

Adorning a hateful t-shirt does not transform a boy into an abuser. As the top snakes over his head, his mind is not in an instant contaminated by the slogan’s stain. He is though given yet one more societal hint that these are crimes to be trivialised – as the young girl next to him is given another to teach her these are not matters over which she should make a fuss.

There is something deeply disturbing in taking the abuse of women – prevalent, and growing, and real – and making it into something consumable, to produce a profit and a self-congratulatory laddish laugh.

This is the problem, despite what O’Neill states – not that women aren’t able to see the lighter side of domestic violence, but that we exist in a culture that would dare suggest we should. It’s a warped hatefulness littered through O’Neill’s own reasoning, never more prevalent than when finding hypocrisy in feminists who have campaigned for permission to dress like “slags.”

His choice of words says plenty, as does comparing a woman’s fight for the right to dress as she wants without risk of rape to a man’s right to dress in a way that takes the same crime and makes it a joke.

Women hating clothes aren’t the direct cause of a misogynistic society, but they are without doubt one of the many symptoms of the disease. To the outrage of some, this particular symptom has been quashed.

O’Neill really needn’t panic over not having a t-shirt to announce he’s full of anti-woman bile. He can do that all on his own.

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