The essence of F***

‘I had to fake it till I made it’ is Rhianna’s explanation for how she became ‘so comfortable in her sexuality’, a sexuality which Esquire magazine described as ‘the very essence of F***’.  I think I found these statements some of the most disturbing of the whole interview.  Essentially it was a discussion not about the individual life choices and experiences of one 24 year old but a moment, for those who could see it, of real honesty about the pornification of the music industry and indeed the universe.

There have been a lot of responses that have raised concern about Rhianna’s comments about her relationship with Chris Brown, jumping to reiterate that abuse is never acceptable and berating Rihanna for not giving a more nuanced  response, especially since she was a ‘role model’. But even if she had given a model response would we want to be promoting her and by implication the industry she is involved in, as a role model.  

It makes no sense to say that Rhianna is comfortable in her own sexuality if she had to fake it until she made it. If she had to fake it, it is not her sexuality it is someone else’s, and is not about her pleasure, desire or sexual expression it is about someone else’s. But what choice did she have? As Gail Dines puts it the choice for many young women ‘is to be f***able or invisible’.

Rhianna was described as the very essence of ‘F***’ not ‘sex’, not ‘beauty’ not ‘love’ but ‘F***’ There is something in the word F*** that is inherently aggressive and violating.  The way we use the word reflects this. Have you ever heard anyone say ‘My love shall we have a F***’? It is rarely something mutual but normally describes one person doing something to another without consent and to the detriment of that person. I wonder if the pictures of Rhianna after Chris Brown assaulted her contributed to her ‘F*** essence’?

Rhianna stated that she was not sure that that was what she had been aiming for. I am fairly convinced it was exactly what many in the industry where aiming at for her and I’m not sure she really ever had a choice about how people would see her. But here we are, in a situation where the highest accolade for a woman is that she is the essence of ‘F***’.

Of course the other option available for women (though it is a little more niche and American) apart from invisible or ‘F***able’ is to be virginal, so virginal in-fact that you can’t even get raped and certainly can’t conceive from rape.

Is this why 50 Shades of Gray is so popular? I have to be honest I have not read it and do not intend to, but I have read substantial amounts about it. From what I gather the book is all about Ana becoming F***able and F***ed by a powerful, rich and controlling man. Women who have been so surrounded by pornified images and narratives, but for the most part still not able to overcome the social mores and watch porn, are perfectly able to read something penned by the hand of a woman (but really written years ago in the offices of Hustler et al.) that dresses itself up as a romance novel, and dream about gaining some value through becoming ‘F***able’.

And is this why so many people seem so confused about what rape is? ‘Cause clearly if a powerful man like Assange “inserts” (thanks George!) while you are asleep you have been ‘F***ed’ and should therefore be flattered. When ‘the essence of F***’ becomes the dictated ambition of women rape becomes a compliment.

It looks like the ‘essence of F***’ is here to stay impregnating every part of our lives, it looks like it is determined to be the dominant definition of what it is to be a woman, forcing all others into obscurity. But I for one refuse to be invisible and they can think of a million names to dismiss me with, but I will not become invisible.

I will not become invisible because I have unearthed other archetypes and role models, some in legend, some in story but my most favourite in scripture. A diversity of strong courageous diverse women who lived life on their terms creatively challenging the patriarchy around them and a Jesus who meet them on their own terms and offered them not 50 shades of ‘F****ed up’ but a celebratory rainbow of humanity. 

The pornification of childhood

My small daughter’s life is extremely edited.  She is likely to grow up thinking the only program on TV is Abney and Teal. She will have a surprise when she gets to school and discovers that the bedtime stories she’s come to love actually don’t have an equal representation of men and women and that the world is not a fair and egalitarian place.  And she will at some point encounter that horrifying narrative of the princess.

What has any of this got to do with porn? Well what I would like to argue is that:

1.) We use story and narrative to understand and explain the world and this is especially important to children.

2.) There is a particular narrative that Porn tells

3.) This narrative has been present in childhood for a very long time, but is now becoming more insidious and endemic and it primes children to accept and expect a porn narrative.

So what is the porn narrative? Essentially it is that women exist for the sexual pleasure of men and their worth is connected to how sexually attractive they are to men. Masculinity is defined by sexual violence and predatory conquest within the porn narrative. 

Recently I re-watched Disney’s Snow White. In an early scene Snow White is singing about wishing for the one she loves to find her, she is clearly not talking about someone she knows, she looks like a teenager. Suddenly an adult man appears beside her she is clearly frightened and runs away but then listens at the window flattered by the attention. We all know what happens at the end of the story, that while unconscious, having been drugged, this same man sexually assaults her and then they live happily ever after. (While we are at it Sleeping Beauty is the story of a women out cold, a strange man climbs through her window and sexually assaults her. This is not OK.) But that initial scene struck me as I had just finished Gail Dines’ chapter on the use of pseudo-child images and the narratives were very similar ‘At first she was nervous, but she wanted it really’.

So these storys we tell young girls and boys that normalise sexual violence and male ownership are far from new, but while they used to function to groom young girls into being submissive compliant wives who on getting wed discovered Cinderella had no better time of it in the happily ever, now we are seeing a narrative creep into childhood that has a slightly different angle. Building on the princess, girls are now taught that they must exude sexiness in order to please the men.

So enter beauty pageants (http://www.missminiprincess.co.uk/), Bratz by day Catz by night, (http://www.bratz.com/), pole dancing dolls, cute little playboy bunny’s everywhere, make up and high heels for toddlers, even Lego thinks a girls preoccupation should be beautifying herself (http://friends.lego.com/en-us/Products/Details/3187.aspx), and don’t even let me get started on Hannah Montana. While grooming our girls we equally groom our young men into a sense of privileged and a warped idea of masculinity. How many times have you seen 'naughty' 'trouble' etc written across toddlers just because they happen to be male. Boys watch the princess stories too and learn they are to be characterless thugs. Boys also play with dolls, only theirs come with weapons and biologically impossible muscles and a noticable absence of genitals.  

So the messages of porn are infecting early childhood, grooming and priming children so that as they enter adolescents their space and freedom to explore and discover their own sexuality is severely restricted. And now they are bombarded with normalising attitudes in magazines, television programs and even on occasion what purports to be objective positive information. Girls begin to experience sexual violence and intimidation in school environments and discover adults are ill equipped to respond and protect them, that victims get blamed and perpetrators get kudos. They begin to hate every part of their body because, like the all seeing eye in lord of the rings, the pornofied gaze is everywhere. The only option of validation left for a young woman is as a sexual object and the ultimate expression of masculinity for a young man is to perpetrate sexual violence.

I know some people think my anxiety about my own daughter and other childrens experience of childhood is misplaced, that it is not that dangerous or toxic environment I think it is, that body dismorphia and self loaving are not inevitable.  I agree, they are not, but in our current climate they are probable and I am not kidding myself about the kind of effort we need to make to provide an alternative storyline for young people.  Hugh Hefner himself said ‘I don’t care if a baby holds up a playboy bunny rattle’. So let’s not pretend that a powerful industry is not trying to groom the next generation of product and purchaser. 

The beginners guide to consensual sex

It has come to my attention that a great many people seem not to have the understanding and skills to enjoy healthy consensual sex.

I thought it might therefore be useful to outline here in brief some basic pointers. However if you are still unsure what consensual sex is I strongly advise you to seek further support before embarking on any sexual activity. This information is for those who are unsure how to ensure their partner is able to consent. Those who are not being given the space to consent are not the ones who don't understand consent.

1.) In order to engage in consensual sex it is important to understand what consent means. The law defines consent as follows:

"A person consent's if they agree by choice and have the freedom and capacity to make that choice'

I've highlighted certain words here lets take a look at them one by one:

Agree: They were able to say 'no' and they choose to say yes.
Example:  'Would you like to have sex love,or do you need to get some sleep?'
                 'Oh yes please, I'd love to have sex right now'

Choice: They had at least two non harmful or threatening options.
Example: 'Would you like to have sex love?'
               'No thanks, I'm watching TV at the moment'.

Freedom: They are not coerced, manipulated or threatened in any way. It is therefore important that you don't physically restrain, threaten or otherwise attempt to control your partners behavior. If you are unsure you could try these line 'It's really important to me that we have consensual respectful sex, do you in any way feel you are unable to say no to sex?', 'Please don't feel any pressure if you don't want to have sex, I would much prefer it if you said no than do something you are unhappy or uncomfortable with.' or 'I understand that if you say no to sex you are not rejecting me as a person but that you don't want to have sex, or you are not comfortable with the particular sexual act.'

Capacity: A person does not have capacity if they are under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or asleep (the law also states that anyone bellow 13 cannot consent and that it is illegal for anyone bellow 16 to have sex). If you want to have sex with your partner but they are asleep it is not possible to have consensual sex with them as a person who is asleep does not have capacity to consent.

We suggest the most appropriate action would be to leave them to sleep and get on with something else. Perhaps you could compose a poem for your partner about how much you appreciate them, or spend some time thinking about what you could do to sexually pleasure them. Then at a more appropriate time (probably not when they first wake up - especially if they are not a morning kind of person) you could share your poem or thoughts with them. If however you really want to have sex right then and there and you suspect they may also want to have sex you could gently wake them up and ask if they want to have sex. Proceed with great caution however as it is highly probable that they do not want to have sex and will be very annoyed at being woken up. But at least this way you have given them the opportunity to consent and have not committed a crime. If you are worried that you may want to have sex with your partner when they are asleep why not try this: 'Sometimes at 2 in the morning I'm awake and sometimes think it would be nice to have sex. How would you feel if I gently woke you up and asked if you were also up for it?'

2.) Talking really facilitates consensual sex, as many of the examples above have highlighted. It is apparently common for people to become concerned when they realise that they can't just have sex whenever they feel like it with whoever they feel like, that they will have to start getting written consent before every act. This is not necessary and actually also not sufficient. Consent can be withdrawn by either party at any point so even if you had a written agreement it would become invalid the minute it is signed. But don't panic! You can talk about sex. I am sure you arrange and organise many joint activities with your partner, like your social diary, what your going to do at the weekend, maybe you discus house chores, perhaps childcare arrangements. All these joint activities are things you discus and agree with your partner, its exactly the same skill set its just about healthy respectful communication and agreement. If your finding it hard try this line 'Love, I find it a little hard to talk about sex, I feel a little awkward and embarrassed, but I think it's really important to our sex life that we have good, honest discussions about sex so that we can both enjoy it and ensure that we are respecting each others boundaries. Do you think we could make some time to talk about sex, what we are comfortable with, what we like and don't like, what we would like to try?'

3.) Remember this simple rule: yes and no are two sides of the same speech bubble. If someone can't say no, yes is meaningless. If they haven't said no that doesn't mean they've said yes. Whenever we say yes to something we say no to something else, whenever we say no to something we say yes to something else.

Example: We say no to sex and at the same time we say yes to our current desire and need to sleep
               We say no to rape and at the same time we say yes to healthy respectful consensual sex
               We say yes to allowing our partner a choice and at the same time say no to sexual manipulation        and violence

So if you want your partner to say:
yes, yes,yes, yes, yes, yes, YES, YES, YES, YES!  to sex
you have to make sure they are able to say no.

Simples.

If you are still unsure about how to ensure you have do not have un-consensual sexual activity and thereby violate another human being and commit an offence check out this blog.

Brilliant Brave

(Warning: contains a few spoilers)

Would you believe that I voluntarily went to see Disney's new princess film... and loved it, absolutely loved it. I cried nearly the whole way through. 

Recently I was lent a copy of 'The Women who Run with Wolves' I've hardly started but am immediately  captivated by the idea of the wild woman archetype. I think Brave provides just that. Here's a girl who run's with bears.

I loved the couple of occasions where her bear mother leap's forward to defend her. It was a fantastic picture of the Mother heart of God.

I loved that the relationship between the two women (Merida and Elanor) was the central theme of the film. That it was really real, that they both learnt from each other, that there was reconciliation and that together they managed to challenge and change a patriarchal system. 

I loved that there was no man coming to the rescue.

I loved that even the witch came off well, and the sense that she was really standing in solidarity with Merida.

I loved that the sibling rivalry/collusion between Merida and her brothers seemed normal and healthy and wasn't about gender.

I loved that there was nothing ever at any moment passive about Merida, that she 'went out and made her own fate.' 

But the bit I loved most was the moment when she stood up and claimed her right as a first born to compete (for her own hand). This is what I want for our dear daughters, not passive princess like waiting for some man to come rescue them, but a fearless reckless bravery that stands up and dares to claim its full inheritance in Christ. 

It felt like Disney was almost deliberately having a dialogue with itself. The part of the old princess archetype was played by Elanor, who clashes with the new (though the scenery and setting made it feel that she could also have been the ancient) archetype Merida. And this is not a story about one vanquishing the other, both learn from each other and new possibilities are opened up. Merida is not an archetype that requires us to be like her, but one that open's up new possibilities, new questions. One that will give permission to our daughters to be themselves.

This is a brilliant, brave and welcome statement from Disney. Thankyou. 

"We're all individuals" - "I'm not"

(Lot's of Life of Brian References) 

However nice "always look on the bright side of life" is as a sentiment, the world would rapidly not be a nice place at all if we only ever spent our time looking at the nice sides. Unfortunately we need to look head on at the nasty bits, call them out and seek to change them. 'Cause sometimes life is "a pile of shit when you look at it", and someone needs to say it.

I feel I have been getting into many different arguments recently, about the Olympic closing ceremony, 50 shades of grey, whether its ok to say female commentators voices are 'grating', whether free market economics will solve all the worlds problems, etc. etc. 

Often I feel like I'm in that crowd of people all chanting 'we are individuals' and being the loan little voice suggesting that maybe we're not. 

The tyranny of western 'freedom' is starting to get me down :(

Let's take 50 shades of grey as an example. The reason I and many others are publicly and loudly stating that this book is about and condones abuse and we suggest people shouldn't buy it, is because we understand the normalising power of popular culture. 

You're reading 50 shades of grey on the tube - now you identify the behaviours of Christian Grey as abusive and would never tolerate it. But the 17 year old girl next to you, whose boyfriend makes her watch porn and who's just seen 50 shades prominently displayed in a bookshop and is now reading a bit over your shoulder, she now feels less able to say no to abuse and coercion. As Gail Dines points out the decision for many young women has come to be 'be a sexual object or be invisible'. 

Now you could say that's not your problem, that a person's right to read what they want shouldn't be infringed, that a book can't cause abuse, that someone else should do something to support this young woman, after all you're an individual, she's an individual, you don't know each other and have nothing to do with each other.

Or you could recognise that every choice you make, from where you keep your money, to what tea you buy, to who you give a platform, to what jokes you laugh at, to what you chose to market and sell, impacts on the degree of constraint or freedom of other people's choices. Now here's a choice: you could choose to let that be important data in your decision making process. 

So you can choose to continue to be in a crowd of individuals making individual choices, and strangely still all heading in the same direction, or you could join the little crowd of people who recognise their need for, and responsibility towards each other.

'What has individualism ever done for us?' Well it's brought us creative freedom, freedom of expression, individual rights etc. etc.  - But I still don't think it should get to be an occupying force. 

ROMANES EUNT DOMUS

Uni-tube

I've just been watching a TED talk and it made me think - wouldn't it be amazing if we used the internet to democratise learning especially higher education. 

Higher education as it is at the minute is pretty expensive - whoever is paying. It's also designed for an elitist system. 3+ years hidden away from the rest of the world living apart from your family and community. And at the most 'elitist' universities structures that make it very difficult to engage in economically productive work. 

What about if we filmed and made available ALL higher education lectures to anybody and made uni lectures free to whoever wanted to go and people would just go to there local uni but when studying a subject you could watch lectures on that subject from any uni. It would massively increase the quality of teaching. We could call it unitub!

Then academic papers would have to be freely available - maybe through local library or cost reasonable amounts like say 50p a paper - seriously if you wrote a good paper and charged 50p and had a nation that had a culture of lifelong learning - you'd make a lot more than you do currently by writing a paper.

Lectures would have to be publicly funded - but it would be worth the investment because you would have one of the most educated populations in the world and that would be an enormousness resource.

You could have pop up study groups; people who want to talk about a certain lecture or paper or question could put an event on unitube and all meet at a coffee shop or library or something. This also would fundementely shift understandings of learning from ones where the teacher imparts knowledge to the student to one where we all learn from each other and all learning and knowledge is valuable. It would change attitudes to problem solving and stratergising in the work place because we'd have a culture of collective discussion and interrogation. 

If you really want to insist on the tyranny of exams - which are no sensible way to assess peoples ability. You could still run exams and people could pay to do them  rather than paying for the learning. 

And people could still pay to 'go to uni' if they really want - charge them a fortune to spend 3 years getting pissed and the rest of us can get on with life and take part in continuous learning. 

I have a list of about 4 or 5 Masters I'd like to do - mostly because I think they would hugely benefit the work I do with young people. There's a lot of research I can't access cause its just to expensive - what's the point in doing research into better ways of working with young people if practitioners are never going to read it? 

In summary I think what I'm trying to say is knowledge should not be privately owned. So I haven't got the time or the know how (writing a blog is about the most technical advanced thing I'm capable of) for this idea so if anyone wants to run with it please do. And a plea to lecturers, academics and universities out there if you want to do something really subversive in response to tuition fees why not make lectures and papers publicly available?

"Conservative christians" aren't the only ones with something to say...

I am unapologetically christian (and if you're into labels evangelical at that) and I am unapologetically feminist and socialist. This is not easy at the same time as being remarkably easy. I always say I am a feminist and a socialist not despite being a christian but because I am a christian - but that's a blog for another time.

Here I just want to try and explain why groups and spaces that only ever (or in the overwhelming majority of cases) refer to faith communities in terms of the 'religious right', are doing themselves and their causes no favours. I am in no way suggesting they stop exposing stupid things said by such groups but that they equally ensure they give the same platform  to faith communities with different perspectives. Here are the dangers I perceive with the current set-up:

1.) Firstly it gives an inaccurate portrayal of Britain's faith communities thereby spreading mis-understanding and miss trust and weakening community cohesion. What you say may be an accurate representation of a certain subset which is already very vocal - so why give them the microphone again? I know many many churches where it would be a brave person who admits that they vote Tory. Many christians are pretty left of centre. I can't speak for other faith communities but I'm sure the same is true - they are not all right of centre, but those voices that are not, are almost completely absent from those environments where I hear the 'religious right' condemned with huge regularity.

2.) Secondly it makes a group of people rather than an ideology the route problem. We need to confront and challenge the belief system if we are ever to change the world. And almost without fail when the 'religious right' or 'conservative christians' and blamed for a belief system I can think of several people with no faith who hold the same views.

3.) There is often a bad use of logic. I have very often heard people disregard an argument because its 'what christians believe'. Just because someone you don't like thinks one thing doesn't mean the opposite is automatically true!

4.) It plays straight into the hands of the 'this is a christian country' rhetoric. All those people out there who do not hold a genuine believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and that he came that we may be reconciled to God, to each other and to the earth, but who self define as christian for political motives are able to continue to wield political power. This is especially dangerous in our current climate. Because if you only present faith groups as right wing, you continue to feed that false perception, that this is a large group who have the hotline to God and face no criticism from within their community making them seem like a much larger group than they actually are and allowing those who do not genuinely have an active faith to align themselves with them.

5.) You alienate people like me, people who would like to be your allies. And I am very definitely not alone.

6.) You convince people the only option is to be religious + right or secular and left driving some away from faith and many away from the left. I know many christians who read right wing papers because they don't feel welcome elsewhere - if they did their politics might be very different.

We really need to change the understanding of faith and political views. I can't talk for other faith communities but certainly among the faith communities I'm part of 'conservative' christians are by far in the minority.  Most of us are desperately trying to see the world change in progressive ways, trying to be Christ-like, trying to see a just, equitable, sustainable world.

So next time you write or say something about 'conservative christians' or the 'religious right' could you just put in a sentence or two about what 'progressive christians' or the 'religious left' think. I would be very grateful.  Thanks.

My body

I love my body. It fascinates me. The way it changes, adapts, grows, learns, survives, thrives. It's energy, it's weariness, its journeying, its learning, it's power, its weakness, its uniqueness, its sameness, its joy, its sorrow, its story telling and its story making, it's dying and its renewing, its temporarlity and its eternity.

My body does not need to be thinned, tightened, controlled, straightened, perfected, tamed, tanned, lightened, changed.

My body is a paintbrush not a canvas. It creates its own picture, it is not a blank for others to paint perfection on.

I love my body, it is me and I am it. To alter it is to assault myself, to starve it is to hate myself.

I do not need to look in the mirror to know my body is there, it always comes with me. I do not need a mirror to tell me if there is something wrong with my body, it is supremely articulate and always let's me know. I do not need a mirror to tell me I'm the fairest in the land - I and my body have no desire to be.

My body beats the rhythm of the day, the week, the month, the year.

I am so tired of the war on my body. I was going to write a blog explaining why my vagina is not too lose, my legs not too hairy, my breasts not too saggy, but why should I. My body does not need to mount a defence against the tempest heading toward it, that storm's waves will crash apart against the rock that is my body.

I love my body and the more I'm told not to the more I'll love it in all its defiant glory. The older I get - the more defiant it will become it will wrinkle, increasing its ability to communicate a million complicated emotions, idea's and adventures. It will continue to journey away from that caged magazine pretty, towards beauty, freedom, hope, adventure, discovery, wisdom, death and glory.