[potential trigger warning]

The super-cool mega-amazing singer that is Rihanna released the video for her new (and fucking awesome) single Man Down just the other day. As well as being visually stunning, it tells a compelling story. Shot in Jamaica, the first scene shows Rihanna shooting a man in a train station. A day earlier, the viewers are prompted; Rihanna visited a club and danced with a man. Things became more heated, but she firmly pushed him away, telling him “no”. She left the club sometime later, only for the same man to approach her from behind. After a struggle, it is implied that he raped her. Following the attack, she flees home, where she takes a gun and seeks the ultimate Thelma-&-Louise-style revenge.

The video can be viewed below. Some people may find it upsetting and potentially triggering so viewer discretion is advised.

The video has sparked controversy, mainly for its depiction of violence. I find it unsettling that people are shelving the rape and instead choosing to protest at the shooting; “How dare she condone murder?”; “Promoting violence as a solution to violence is wrong”; “Won’t somebody PLEASE think of the children?”.  I find these analyses quite weak and hysterical. People who watch this video aren’t going to go on to shoot rapists (not that that would be a terrible loss), and it’s not going to increase someone’s capacity for rapist-killing. People won’t take this video literally as no-one is that suggestible. Rihanna is merely cinematising one of the many reactions a rape victim is wholly entitled to feel following their attack.

Some victims will have feelings of revenge and anger, just as some will have feelings of shame or guilt or shock. I sure as hell would not dispute a rape victim being allowed to have payback fantasies, and wanting to cause their rapist the same harm he’s brought upon them. To go through something so dehumanising as rape is something those of us lucky enough not to be victims of will ever be able to comprehend, and we have no right to tell a rape victim that they are morally deranged or wicked for wanting to see their rapist dead.

The controversy also has underlying racist motives. The media is always quick to demonise music primarily performed by black people (for instance rap, hip-hop, r’n’b and dancehall) for its moral shortcomings, whilst smiling approvingly upon the white musicians who perpetuate the same message. Critics are quick to penalise Odd Future for their misogynistic lyrics (and rightly so), but will turn a blind eye to the rampant sexism in, say, rock music; where groupie culture thrives, and women are categorised in lyrics as either sexy devilish ’sluts’ or pure and helpless maidens. The same trend applies to violence in lyrics. Was the media up-in-arms following Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison Blues, where he sings about how he ‘shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die’? Was there nationwide outrage following Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody (‘mama, just killed a man, put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger, now he’s dead’)? No, there was not, despite the facts these lyrics glorify gun culture just as much as any rap song can. Kenny Rogers’ country ballad Coward of the County tells a story almost identical to Rihanna’s; a young boy finds out the girl he loves has been gang-raped, and shoots the perpetrators in an act of vengeance. Yet this song is regarded as a classic, and is not subject to petty complaints from parent councils and reactionary censorship boards. Why? Because the music industry is inherently racist.

The media outrage over the shooting is also distracting people from what should be the real issue in the video, and that is the rape itself. Why are people so quick to scold Rihanna for the shooting, and not the man who rapes her for being a rapist? The shooting is obviously an exaggerated reaction, primarily for theatrical purposes (it’s not as if many rapes end in the rape victim shooting her rapist), but this does not deter from the fact that rape is critically under-punished in society, with conviction rates under 5% in most countries. This is what Rihanna has honourably tried to raise awareness of.

Rihanna - actual feminist icon

Sadly, a lot of the public reaction echoes the media’s out-of-touch attitude. The YouTube comments on the video, for example, are absolutely soul-destroying. There are people trying to make a petty geographical issue out of it; claiming the Jamaican setting is offensive and that Barbados (Rihanna’s home country) sees much more sexual crime. This fickle game of “my country is safer than your country” sorely misses the point. What these people are failing to understand is that rape is endemic in any society and in any culture, and I think this is what Rihanna is trying to say, especially if her Tweets regarding the video are anything to go by:

“Thank you for the amazing response on ManDownVideo I love you guys, and I love that u GOT IT!!! Young girls/women all over the world…we are a lot of things! We’re strong innocent fun flirtatious vulnerable, and sometimes our innocence can cause us to be naïve! We always think it could NEVER be us, but in reality, it can happen to ANY of us! So ladies be careful and #listentoyomama! I love you and I care!”

If you continue amongst the comments, you then arrive at the absolute gutter of victim-blaming; commenters who insist that since Rihanna was “dressed like a slut” and “dancing like a whore”, she has no right to complain when he “merely reacts on impulse” and rapes her. The level of misogyny is really quite outstanding. It makes for a distressing read, and sadly these attitudes are microcosmic of society’s general attitude to rape; blame the victim for getting raped, not the rapist for committing the rape.

Rihanna stuck to her guns, Tweeting: “I’m a 23 year old singer who doesn’t have kids. What’s up with everybody wanting me to be a parent. I’m just a girl, I can only be our voice. We all know it’s difficult and embarrassing to communicate touchy subject matters to anyone, especially our parents. The music industry isn’t “Parent’s ‘R Us.” We have the freedom to make art, let us! It’s your job to make sure your children don’t turn out like us. You can’t hide your kids from society, or they’ll never learn how to adapt. This is the real world!”

When controversy like this arises, it reminds us of why women have far from achieved equality. It reminds us that plenty of people have appalling views regarding rape, and will mock arguments to the contrary because they’re men and they know better. It reminds us why events like Slutwalk and Reclaim the Night are so important to the feminist movement; that attitudes need to be challenged and we cannot suffer in silence any longer. I’d encourage anyone who wants to stand against sexist and apologist bile (like the feedback to this video) to attend a Slutwalk event over the coming months. To find the nearest one to you, check here: http://www.slutwalktoronto.com/satellite.

With that, all I have to say is that Rihanna is a fucking rockstar, and I for one salute her for trying to raise awareness about the nature of rape and sexual violence. Bollocks to the haters.

Slutwalk is the result of women fighting back against the idea that what you wear will determine whether or not you are raped.

It all started with Toronto Police’s lecture to women, saying that “…women should avoid dressing like sluts” to prevent being raped. Women of Toronto fought back by organising a protest which they named “Slutwalk” as a hit-back to say that it doesn’t matter what you wear – if a man is going to rape you, he will do it regardless of your attire.

The concept is multifaceted and has cause a disturbance with feminists and non-feminists alike with the idea that we are to reclaim the word “slut” in order to take it’s power away as a slur on women. I’m going to discuss fully why I think this is a good and feminist idea, and healthy debate is welcome in the comments. (Misogyny will just be deleted though. So no stupit folk, plx)

Toronto's Slutwalk

Okay. What’s the deal with the event? The even itself is a march. It’s purpose is to all say the same thing, which is to reject the idea that a woman can bring rape upon herself. Particularly through means of the way she dresses, which is one of the most common scapegoats for why rape happens.
Slutwalk aims to bring attention to the fact that men rape because they want power. Sexuality and attraction does not even come into it. A man will rape whomever he feels he needs to teach a lesson to or beat down. It is a tool of war and abuse and should be seen as nothing less.

To call a woman a slut is to imply that she should be ashamed of her sexual behaviour. Why is this an issue to anyone other than her? The simple fact of the matter is that it is not. A woman should be free to have sex with whomever she chooses and not be judged for it. It is a product of nation-wide misogyny that a woman should be “Slut-Shamed” for enjoying sex and having it when she likes. Sex is not a bad thing, and it’s just a way of keeping us miserable that it should ever be deemed a bad thing. But the freedom in it should be choice. Not doing it only a certain way, or with certain numbers or certain people. Slut, and all it’s variations (Whore, ho, cow, slapper, tart…) are words that have been put into play to beat women down. To put a woman lower than all the other woman. Everyone knows that the best way to oppress a group is to make lots of in-fighting happen. Women call other women these names because they have been told to, as a mechanism for creating levels of shamefulness and hatred.

We as women need to see that if you are called a slut, it is because you are a woman who is not living up to the male expectation of how you should live your life. Slutwalk aims to bring women together to say that if someone calls a woman a slut, they are calling all women sluts.

This brings me seamlessly onto the concept that’s got everyone talking – reclaiming the word ’slut’. History has shown success in oppressed groups taking words back off the privileged and robbing them of their power. Black people in America were branded with the word “Nigger” as a way to dehumanise people, and thus making it much easier in people’s minds to treat them less than human. The same goes for the word “slut”. If a woman is thought to be less than a human, someone who makes bad decisions and deliberately puts herself in harm’s way, it makes it easier for people to accept that someone has raped her and that she somehow brought it on herself and to treat her badly.
However, Black Americans took back the word “nigger” and began to use in in their own way, as a word to refer to a peer and thus disabling in in it’s use against them.
The same goes for examples such as the word “queer”, while it’s still early days and there’s a huge amount of work still to be put itno LGBT issues and gay rights, the word “queer” has it’s own meaning within the LGBT community. People use it to in a sense, non-describe their sexuality, to say that they do not conform to straight ideas of a “normal” gender binary.

A lot of people have raised issues about the word “slut” being reclaimed, and this is not to be taken lightly or disregarded. Women have been harmed by this word, their lives destroyed and their reputations been stomped into the gutter by vindictiveness about their sexuality. That is an issue to be respected. However, the reclamation of the word does not mean that we’ll simply use it in the same way, to describe promiscuity or even immediately start using it. The de-powering process is long and will take a lot of work from people who care about women’s rights and want to stand up for those who are oppressed. The starting point for this reclamation can in fact be, the simple act of protesting in Slutwalk. Showing that women cannot be singled out as being shameful, if one of us is a slut, then we sick together and all take the insult.

Another point made by Slutwalk is that what the Toronto Police Force say and what the opinion of the sexist majority think about rape – it happens late at night in dark alleys. This is a huge misconception. These things do happen, but rape is overwhelmingly happening in people’s families and homes. The statistics show that around 80% of cases are by someone the victim knew well, such as a friend, family member or partner. It is important to highlight this fact and stop dwelling on the idea that rape is something that happens to someone, comitted by a bogey man and start looking up to the reality that men rape. These men are husbands, sons, brothers, uncles, friends, grandfathers etc. Rape is committed by men who want to over power women. The reason that the media portrays rape as a bogey-man is that people raped by men close to them will be less likely to report it for many complicated reasons, and this must be respected.

If you agree with what Slutwalk aims to do, then find out if there is one near you and step up to protest the continuing abuse and oppression of women everywhere. Slutwalk Glasgow will be happening on the 4th of June, from 1pm to 4pm hopefully starting at George Square. Bigger numbers mean louder voices, and we need all the noise we can get to uproot this deep seated hatred of women.

Do any, as close to naked as possible, Men feature in this calendar? Naw. Didnae think so.

It can be plain and simple, striking and popular. It’s available in every store, for all to want and all to buy. And no I’m not talking about the latest deal on Wotsits or Toilet paper. I’m talking about sexism.

From chocolate bars to airline companies and designer suits to crisps you’d have to be blind as a fucking bat to say you’ve not noticed it. Not even once. However, if you are one of these people, before I ask you how long you’ve been living on Mars, I suggest you do at least one of the following and then tell me you still don’t notice it:

1. Walk into your nearest supermarket and pick up a Yorkie.
2. Turn on your telly and wait for the McCoys advert.
3. Fly with Ryan air and ask for their charity calendar.

That’s just naming a few, and boy do I mean a few.

If I could afford to spend the rest of my life finding all the sexist ad campaigns ever to exist I’m positive it wouldn’t even be a little bit hard to find one for pretty much EVERY consumer bracket imaginable. But at the rate they’re churned out, that’d be damned near impossible. Yet people are still so quick to jump in and tell us that sexism simply doesn’t exist anymore. Women are equal to men. End of story, Bye bye and Goodnight.

Just incase you’re a lazy cunt and cannae be bothered to do any of the three things I suggested above let me make it a little easier for you.

Isn’t the campaign for underwear, on the right, absolutely hilarious? Incase you can’t read the tag line, it  says -

Bet you didn’t notice the armadillo

Naw. Wanna know why? Because you’ve made it look like a fucking cushion. Had you put it somewhere a little more obvious… say in front of a white wall, photoshopped to ‘perfection’/death sticking it’s chest out for example, or even at her feet or how about on her bloody head then aye, I’d have noticed the fucking armadillo.

And isn’t this Pepsi advert just fan-fucking-tastic?!

Her life is clearly of such high importance that a single can of Pepsi can ‘buy’ this creepy weirdo as long as he wants to assault her whilst the lifeguard sits back and what, enjoys the view? So fucking respectable Pepsi. Tell you what, even if your product didn’t taste like shit, this advert certainly wouldn’t send me to the shops in search of a can. And if I happened to come across one? I’d save it until the chance to lob it at the head of whoever passed this god awful campaign arose.

Oh, and how about this -

You know you’re not the first

The first what? Lassie you’ve fucked in the back of your BMW because it’s such a ‘babe magnet’. Please give me a break. This shit is actually allowed to run whilst an advert that showed electric eels being released into the water systems was placed on an after 7:30pm rule? If you still try to tell me sexism doesn’t exist? GET TAE.

And here’s a little message to the ‘brains’ behind this oh so wonderful campaign – Ken whit I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Buying a BMW does not now, or ever get the buyer laid any more than if they drove a pimped out polo or a three wheeled banger. Many men are not stupid, and will still buy your fucking vehicle without you trying to make them believe it comes with some added ‘bonus’. Chumps.

Some brands even go as far as banning girls from buying them. But don’t worry ladies… it’s all in the name of humour, right? How about you go and buy a packet of McCoys instead? In fact. NAW. They’re ‘MAN CRISPS’.

I could continue on for hours and hours and hours but I think you probably get the drift, or at least, I hope you fucking do. Yes, I am aware that it’s going to take a while and a lot of work to remove sexism from advertising and ultimately from the world, but until that day comes, gonnae naw be a complete ignorant bastard and at least admit that it does still happen. And not only does it still happen but it happens in the majority of companies and campaigns. I hope that if you did not realise the extent of this problem before -YES, IT IS A PROBLEM -you can at least realise it now. And if not… I hope it’s because you’ve either:

a) Just been born.
or
b) Don’t live in this fucking universe.

(Cross posted and adapted from my personal blog)

If you’re a Tory, you’re pretty much already a contemptible little prick. If you’re a Scottish Tory, then you’re up there with Bond villains – you’ve basically chosen to become something EVERYONE AROUND YOU DESPISES. That might explain why Bill Aitken made comments earlier, that a woman who was raped might have been a prostitute.

Little Prick

In an interview with the Sunday Herald, Aitken said of lane rapes (4 of which have occured in Glasgow city centre since Christmas) “I really think we need to know a bit more about these. They are not always as they seem to be, put it that way.”

When he was asked to explain what he meant, he said “Somebody should be asking her what she was doing in Renfrew Lane. Did she go there with somebody? … Now, Renfrew Lane is known as a place where things happen, put it that way.” The “things that happen” are men buying women for sex of course. But instead of condemning this, Bill – after immediately assuming a woman in Glasgow at night in a certain area is a prostitute – condemns the victim, the woman who is bought to be abused.

Of course there is no evidence except Bill’s prejudice to suggest the woman was a prostitute. But even if she was, does it make it any less of a crime? When rich folk get burgled or mugged, Tories don’t blame them for being a victim of crime because they flaunted their wealth. When it comes to rape, there’s a disturbingly high % of people (including young men) who blame women for their ordeal. At the same time it’s prostitutes – and not their abusive consumers – who are persecuted by the police, with many of them currently jailed in the Cornton Vale woman’s prison.

This viewpoint obviously is represented in the corridors of the legal establishment as well – Bill Aitken (currently Tory spokesperson on Law and Order) was formally a District Court Judge and a Justice of the Peace. With people like Aitken in these positions it’s probably unsurprising that Scotland’s rape conviction is shockingly low – less than 4%. While Aitken is no longer a Justice of the Peace or a District Judge, his involvement in legal matters has not ended – disgracefully he is chair of the Justice Committee at the Scottish Parliament. Someone who insults and demeans rape victims has no place in Parliament, let alone a committee that’s meant to be run in the interests of victims.

Giles Coren: just fuck off

Giles Coren – star of food history programme The Supersizers, posh food critic, winner of an award for writing the shittest sex scene of any novel in 2005, “Fuck the Poles” racist and general snobby bastard (see his twitter at any one given time for evidence) – has authored an article for the Daily Mail today. About the sexist comments made by Sky sports presenters Richard Keys and Andy Gray (and his caught-on-camera sexual harassment), two old misogynists unable to accept that women are real people with the ability to work competently, and their subsequent sacking/resignation. Coren starts from the ever-promising position of ‘I’m not sexist, but…’ and from there on blunders into a horrifying public display of loathing for women that would shock even Tommy Sheridan.

The article is actually so offensive it makes the rest of the Mail’s content look like it’s been written by the Teletubbies loved up out their bins on MDMA. I can practically see the eternally offensive Jan Moir, Bel Mooney and Richard Littlejohn hugging each other and intently discussing how they totally now really get why hate and fear is just a media ploy to keep us from joining together in happiness and song. Coren’s article is THAT bad. Yes, I know it’s in the Daily Mail, so I shouldn’t expect better. That doesn’t make it okay for something this sexist to be published, especially as Giles Coren often presents himself as some kind of average liberal middle class guy whose opinions educated people should listen to. It’s like he’s tried to pack every offensive trope out there into the one piece. How bad the article is really can’t be explained adequately second hand, so we’ll just have to show you exactly what he said. And demolish his pish line by line.

Read the rest of this entry »

We live in a world where at every turn we are constantly bombarded with images of ‘perfection’. Whether we choose to believe this affects us or not is solely the opinion of the individual, but how can today’s society not see the dangerous and drastic effects caused by this consumer culture it is so engulfed within? This seems to have become our way of life, continuously judging and comparing ourselves against how we appear, or believe we should appear, when put side by side with images printed in magazines or displayed on a computer screen.  Popular culture perpetuates identity norms, focusing on the portrayal of women and the constant need to change oneself, physically and mentally, in order to emulate the seemingly flawless images, created by the media.

With the vast growth of the Internet ‘self image’ has turned into a worldwide phenomenon, causing women, in particular, to concentrate on an unhealthy need to continuously present the best, most attractive, images of themselves, both online and in person. With the rise of social networking sites like Facebook, Bebo and Myspace, physical appearance has quickly become the focus of our everyday lives. People have adapted their personalities and personal profiles to conform to societies ideas of ‘beauty’, ‘youth’ and ‘perfection’ causing “our bodies [to] become increasingly distanced in images, increasingly viewed as ‘resources’ and increasingly lived as ‘things’ to be seen, managed and mastered.”  Which is the reality? The ‘people’ we present via these Internet profiles or the physical being or body that is presented in the real world. These online networking sites give us the time and control to portray ourselves exactly how we want, allowing us to edit photographs before they are broadcast to the masses or simply avoid uploading images we believe to be substandard. They allow us to manage aspects of our lives that when human contact is involved, we cannot. However, the muting of our physical selves does not just stop with photographs, with most people mentioning their best assets alongside some witty or well thought through, ‘about me’. It seems we have become obsessed with perfecting these virtual versions of ourselves.

Our deranged ideas of ‘perfection’ continue on from the computer screen, and stem from the millions of images presented to us on a daily basis through advertising and the media. “The tendency in late capitalist culture is for our bodies to become objects and commodities,” and because of this women are unknowingly forced into becoming a ‘product’ in order to prove their self worth. Which according to adverts like L’Oréal ‘because you’re worth it’ is determined by our external beauty and apparent youthfulness. Buying these products will not now, or ever miraculously turn the consumer into Cheryl Cole or Penelope Cruz, yet we are still spending outrageous sums of money in order to try and achieve the unachievable, this polished end product conceived by the minds of white heterosexual males. Predominantly male ran magazines such as FHM, Nuts and Front falsely convince men that a Barbie doll figure consisting of a tiny waist and a massive chest is true beauty. So how hard can it be for women to conform to such an ‘easy’ fantasy? In 2006 Dove tried to open our minds with its campaign for ‘real beauty’, with a television advert named ‘Evolution’ a short stop motion movie showing the before and after of a commercial beauty advert and coming to the conclusion that ‘No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted.’

However, with only one company trying to break away from these ‘perfection’ stereotypes the remainder of our consumer culture is yet to sit up and listen. Our addiction for beauty is furthermore fed by television series such as Desperate Housewives and Sex and the City, both shows based around women conforming or trying to conform to societies vision of perfection. Programs like these, although slightly exaggerated, mirror the way women are living within our culture today, with all main characters at some point showing their frustration when explaining that there is always someone more ‘beautiful’ that themselves. With episode titles such as, ‘Models and Mortals’ and statements like ‘I just know no matter how good I feel about myself, if I see Christy Turlington, I just want to give up,’coming from the mouths of women we look up to and aspire to look like, it becomes harder to prevent beauty from being societies driving force.

Youth and beauty have rapidly become two words women seem to be stuck in a vicious circle with. So much of our time is spent trying to catch up with something that always seems just an arms reach away. If Madonna can do it, where are we going wrong? However, we are forgetting a couple of the vital elements of the ‘beauty’ regime, Photoshop and Money. Unlike these celebrities we idolise, we are not ‘lucky’ enough to wake up to a personal trainer and an entire squad of trained personnel to adhere to every one of beauty wants and needs. The closest most of us will ever get to this ‘helping’ hand is from magazines aimed at the female market such as Heat, Reveal and Closer, who dedicate around one hundred and fifty pages a week in order to ‘help’ us follow the eating habits and training patterns of Cheryl Cole and Coleen Rooney. In order to try and feel better about our own body image we grab these cheap yet appalling magazines off the shelves like they’re going out of fashion, religiously turning through pages titled ‘bikini bodies 2010, the good the bad and the WEIRD!’ and ’Kerry falls off the diet wagon AGAIN!’

The effect these magazines and images have on us is not however a positive one. The bikini bodies being slated are in fact normal, healthy womanly figures, which we are being lead to believe, are somewhat flawed and unfortunately these lies don’t just stop with tacky magazines. Photoshop has become a vital tool for our consumer culture, with no image being shown to the public left un-touched. These images we are trying so hard to emulate will always be beyond our reach.

Madonna before and after Photoshop

So why is it that “Between 1992 and 2004, breast augmentation procedures in this country went from 32,607 a year to 264,041 a year – that’s an increase of more than 700 percent,” and girls as young as sixteen are opting to drastically and permanently change their physical appearances to feel beautiful? Not yet

out of my teens I already know three young, gorgeous girls who have taken their bodies under the knife in order to achieve a more ‘womanly’ and ‘beautiful’ figure. These three individuals all work in the Glamour Modeling or Pole Dancing industries, where the need to appear ‘porn star perfect’ comes before ones physical or mental condition. They are convinced these risks must be taken in order to ‘make it’. The rise in television channels showing back-to-back episodes of Extreme Makeover and The Swan a “reality series… in which average-looking women were surgically, cosmetically and sartorially redone to look average in a shiner, pornier way” have driven women to conform to this false idea of ‘perfection’. We are once again taken back to these physical images the media are selling to us as examples of ‘beauty’ and ‘freedom.’ Ideas conjured up by heterosexual males in our society, and passed back to us as ‘our own’. Women have been lead to believe that looking like Pamela Anderson is a healthy objective to aim for and with the rise in ‘quickie surgeries’ like Lunch hour Botox it seems we have whole heartedly taken on the impossible task of achieving what this male dominated society is asking of us. Women have been manipulated into believing that achieving the best body, even if it means resorting to plastic surgery, is empowering and sexually liberating. Together with the explosion of pole dancing and burlesque classes, which are now offered in most gyms as a sexy and creative way to express oneself, women are slowly being removed from their own comfort zones and molded into objects of male sexual desire. With seemingly confident spokespeople for the sex industry, including Jenna Jameson, author of ‘How to Make Love like a Porn Star’ saying that, “ ‘being in the industry can be a great experience’ because ‘you can actually become a role model for women’ ” proves just how naïve women in today’s society have become. In the book Female Chauvinist Pigs, author Ariel Levy goes on to explain that “Jameson like most employees of the sex industry is not sexually uninhibited, she is sexually damaged” as Jameson tells her she was,

“beaten unconscious with a rock, gang raped and left for dead on a dirt road during her sophomore year of high school; she was life threateningly addicted to drugs before she was twenty; she was beaten by her boyfriend and sexually assaulted by his friend. She also [says] “To this day, I still can’t watch my sex scenes.’”

When looking into these industries, we are lead to believe it is glamorous and sexually freeing to cut up our bodies and/or strip for a male dominated audience, drawing us all closer, with everyone wanting to experience what it is like to feel powerful and in control of their bodies.

In conclusion we have become so wrapped up in the need to be beautiful that we do not know how to live our lives without it. These images we are bombarded with every day, now control what we do on a day-to-day basis. They are physically running our lives. Until we reach this delusional goal or hopefully realise that what we are reaching is in fact unreachable we are going to continue to spend our time and hard earned money on trying to attain this ‘perfection’ we see in our consumer culture. If this is the reality of what it is to be ‘beautiful’ why do we still feel the need to desperately cling onto, and continuously climb this ladder of ‘perfection’? Surely upon closer inspection, we should realise “that you still can’t bottle attraction.”

Adapted from an essay.
All quotes from ‘Female Chauvinist Pigs‘ by Ariel Levy and ‘The Body and/in Representation, Self/Image by Amelia Jones

Russians, shortarse Frenchmen, artistic pictures of horses and people who duet with Blue: Just some of the things that the US government HATES

The publication last week of the first few batches of leaked US embassy cables has brought whistleblower website WikiLeaks – as well as the fate of its founder and editor in chief Julian Assange – dramatically to the front pages and top bills of news media around the world. As this article was being drafted, Assange, the website’s principal spokesperson and main public figure, is reported to be have been taken into custody in London, in connection with alleged sex offences in Stockholm in August this year. Unlike some others, SSY prefers to take rape allegations seriously, at least until substantial evidence suggests we should do otherwise.

To deal with this issue first, first of all let’s say something – Wikileaks is not Julian Assange, and Julian Assange is not Wikileaks. Attempting to repress and punish Wikileaks for being inconvenient and worrying to the establishment is not the same as a man being arrested because he is suspected of the very serious crime of rape. Let’s not confuse Assange with Wikileaks. Wikileaks (with Assange as its public face), as we will go on to discuss, has made a brilliant contribution to anti-imperialist activism and we absolutely applaud it for that. Do not let the fact that Wikileaks has got the right ideas about freedom of information blind us to the fact that rape is one of the most reprehensible crimes someone can commit, and that violence (sexual, physical, psychological, emotional) against women (which the overwhelming majority of the time goes unpunished) should be opposed in all its forms – and perpetrators brought to justice where it has been committed.. We offer no opinion on whether Julian Assange is guilty of the crimes that he has now been charged with. It wouldn’t be appropriate. But neither is it appropriate for socialists to promote the position that the women who have made allegations against him should be disbelieved, simply because Assange’s organisation Wikileaks do good things, or because of what the women have said on the internet in the past, or because they are women – which is what a lot of the ‘Defend Assange’ stuff out there on the interwebs is boiling down to. Just because we consider someone to be a “good man” who promotes some of the same ideals that we do does not mean that, if they HAVE abused women, they should get away with it, sticking it to the man yeah? Many men, men who consider themselves to be left wing, are using this arrest as an excuse to propagate often repeated rape myths, and this is unacceptable. Rape myths should always be challenged, no matter how suspicious you find the timing of Assange’s arrest. It’s sad to see people we respect, like Naomi Wolf join in the reactionary smear campaign against the women who reported Assange to the Swedish authorities. This is a misguided approach to anti-imperialism. You have to be anti-patriarchy too, or sorry, you’re not a socialist. For a brilliant article on the meaning of the word ‘consent’, visit Feministe. No means no, and tricking someone in to consenting to sex is rape. That goes in all cases, not just the ones where there’s no left wing icons who might be involved. Now, on to the substantial issue of the leaked cables..

WikiLeaks was founded in 2006, originally adopting a wiki-style of organisation (similar to Wikipedia, where users could freely upload, edit and discuss documents. However it has since taken on a far tighter editorial policy, as it became clear the wiki format wasn’t appropriate for the organisation’s aims.

The ongoing release of US embassy cables – taken from the US military internet system SIPRNet (insert Terminator joke here) and representing a database of some quarter of a million secret communications from US embassies around the world – is just the latest in a long line of high profile stories broken by the organisation.

Read the rest of this entry »

This great new meme tumblr illustrates the concept of privilege in a highlarious and clever way. Stuff like this is really good cause there are plenty of people out there who regularly display similar examples of white/male/straight/middle class etc privilege without understanding either where this comes from or why it’s offensive. Not many people take too kindly to being called out on their displays of privilege, and will often react defensively against the suggestion that the stuff they are saying might just not be okay with an argument (sometimes on this very blog) that just makes you want to crack your head off a wall in despair at how some people just REFUSE TO LISTEN. Equally, they’re probably not all that interested in reading academic pieces on privilege.

But they might come across someone posting a Privilege Denying Dude somewhere, and realise what an arsehole he is. Also, a lot of internet memes are hopelessly misogynist, so it’s nice to see a little fightback. Spread it: http://privilegedenyingdude.tumblr.com/

For some theoretical guidance on how not to be a prick, also see: http://www.derailingfordummies.com/

Sexist arsehole: Judge John Rogers QC

. . .here’s the proof. (Trigger warning.)

A woman from Powys in Wales has been jailed after being raped by her abusive husband. The reason? Because under huge pressure from him and his family, she at one point retracted the allegations.

In November last year she made a 999 call to report that her husband had raped her 6 times. But in January she told Dyfed-Powys police she didn’t want to press charges. They replied that they would continue to investigate anyway, and in February she told them the allegations had been false.

The truth of the matter was that her abusive husband had put her under intense pressure and she had cracked. Her marriage has since ended, and she maintains that she was in fact telling the truth, and the retraction had been made falsely under coercion.

The man involved has now been charged with rape, and the marriage is over. The woman involved had to be moved to a refuge to protect her from him. Clearly, she deserves sympathy and support for the ordeal she has survived. But that’s the opposite of what she received at the hands of a misogynist “justice” system.

After being prosecuted for perverting the course of justice, she was jailed for 8 months last week. Sexist bastard Judge John Rogers QC said:

“Despite all the support and time taken in the investigation you eventually made a retraction. I now have to deal with you because you made a false retraction. If you had to be dealt with for making a false allegation of rape you would be looking at a sentence of two years. The position has now changed but there are two aggravating features. One you have caused a substantial amount of wastage for the CPS and police [wtf?!], and two you have had to admit that retraction was false, perverting the course of justice, and for that the imposition of a prison sentence is inevitable.”

Dyfed-Powys police have also defended their actions, claiming they treat sexual assault “seriously.” However, both they and Judge Rogers have shown a contemptible lack of understanding of the reality of violence against women, and the pressure put on survivors of such abuse. As Rape Crisis point out, there isn’t a specific offence of making a false retraction, and a decision has been made to pursue this woman.

In the quote above, the Judge highlighted the costs to the Crown Prosecution Service and police. But, at a time when across the UK vital services for abuse survivors are being cut because the government thinks rich capitalists need the money more, surely the cost of this prosecution was an unjustifiable waste of public money that we just can’t afford?

Campaigning and support groups have reacted with fury to the outrageous judgment. Holly Dustin of the End Violence Against Women Coalition said:

“Imprisoning a woman for a ‘false retraction’ of a rape allegation sends out a chilling message that parts of the criminal justice system are still in the dark ages in relation to sexual violence and do not understand the pressure women come under from perpetrators during the legal process. The potential threat of prosecution makes it less likely that women will report.

“Victims of rape already have little confidence that the police and courts will treat them fairly which is why only around one in 10 report the assault to the police.

“Resources should be focused on improving the very low conviction rate of just 6% of reported cases, and ensuring that all victims have access to specialist support from a Rape Crisis Centre whether or not they choose to report.”

Cases like this actively make the situation for women in the UK much much worse. The woman in this case is just the latest rape survivor to be jailed for “perverting the course of justice”, leaving us wondering, what justice? For example, Gail Sherwood is a rape survivor who police refused to believe and who was then jailed for two years.

The fact that we have a profoundly anti-woman legal system throughout the UK can’t be denied in the face of this evidence, and tackling it is vital. Cases like these help fuel the myth that women “cry rape”, distract attention from the appallingly low conviction rate for rape, and encourage men to carry out sexual assaults with the knowledge they are unlikely to be punished. It’s time for all those against inequality to take a stand.

Meanwhile, John Rogers is now retired to enjoy his hobbies of gardening and sailing, according to Debrett’s database of the posh. He’s the one who should be locked up, but we’d settle for his boat sinking.

The solicitors acting for the woman in this case will ensure any letters of support and solidarity sent to them will be received by her. Write to:

Geraint Jones & Co, Bronwydd House, The Bank, Newtown, Powys, SY16 2AU

Fourteen years after it first started, South Park remains one of the funniest comedy shows in the world. I am a massive fan, I’ve watched every single one all the way back to the start. Some of them are among the most powerful satirical statements of our time, like the way they absolutely nailed Mel Gibson’s obsession with torture to the one where they managed to make every single person involved in the Terri Schiavo sitation look evil.

I wanted to say all that to make it clear at least part of the reason I’m writing this is concern for the future of a show I love. Because although the most recent series still have hilarious episodes, there are more and more crap ones as well. And a big part of the reason is that South Park is increasingly depending on the “shock value” of rape jokes.

The absolute low point came a couple of years ago in season 12, with an episode about the newest Indiana Jones movie. In it, there were repeated scenes of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg raping Indy, as a comment on how crappy the 4th installment of his adventures was. Before we see this we see the boys having flashbacks, traumatised and crying, as they come to admit that “one of our friends was raped.” But then, da dum tsh, the joke turns out that the rape is of Indiana Jones. Ha ha, you never saw that coming did you?!

This episode was widely criticised for being insensitive, unpleasant and unfunny. As if to rub in our faces what they were doing, they didn’t make this joke once, but kept coming back throughout the episode to graphic and pretty horrible rape scenes that aped movies like ‘Deliverance.’

Since then the word rape crops up week after week. In this week’s episode, school councillor Mr Mackey comes out with “Don’t touch that or I will rape you in the mouth!” out of nowhere, before we see a scene of him being abused as a child. Last week they made a character from a US reality TV show into a weird monster which pounced on Cartman with him crying “It’s raping me! It’s raping me!”

Yet again, it seems, we need to go over why it’s not cool to make rape jokes. People who find rape funny are generally men, and generally have no idea just how prevalent it is in our society. The odds are that you know someone who has experienced rape or sexual abuse. A big part of the reason I can’t find these episodes funny is because when they start laughing about rape, I think about my friends and how it has affected their lives. Shows like South Park, Family Guy and The Mighty Boosh use rape so freely, as just another word to shock and get a laugh, that they rob it of how important it is. In their ignorance, they have no idea how many people are going to watch these episodes and suffer from real flashbacks, and genuine trauma, unlike the pretend horror and terror experienced by Stan and Kyle “for a laugh”.

Now, a common response to this is, yes, rape is awful, but so is murder, so why is it being singled out? The problem with that is it ignores the way rape is treated by the justice system throughout the world. Rape is a crime overwhelmingly committed by men against women. In Scotland, only 3% of those tried for rape end up convicted. There are two ways to explain this: either 97% of women who report being raped are crazy liars, or the justice system is systematically sexist and biased against women. These figures of course leave out all those who didn’t even go to the police because they knew at best it would be a waste of time, and at worst it could lead to their public humiliation in court and being branded a liar by the press.

In other words, our society doesn’t take rape seriously. We’ve come a long way from the past in terms of attitudes, but their remains the patriarchal social attitude that women basically deserve it (“What were you wearing? How much had you had to drink? Are you sexually promiscuous?”), and that rape basically performs a function of putting women in their place, and disciplining them for not being sexually available.

In that context, rape jokes help to normalise rape, help to make people feel that it’s not that bad. If rape is only as bad as the latest Indiana Jones movie, then what’s the big deal? When you try and pull someone up for making an unfunny, offensive and hurtful rape joke, inevitably they get defensive, because they find it hard to deal with being challenged. They will tell you that you’re being ridiculous, that it was just a joke, that you should calm down. The fact that big popular shows back them up on rape as comedy scenario is only going to make this worse.

Now, I also want to make clear that I know South Park deliberately sets out to offend. I have been watching it you know. And I understand that Trey Parker and Matt Stone are nobody’s political allies. They are just as happy to mercilessly rip the pish out of anyone from anywhere on the political spectrum. They are not feminists.

But there’s a difference between the rape jokes and, say, Cartman’s constant anti-semitic abuse. And that is that ultimately, you are not meant to respect and admire Cartman. He is ultimately a fat, unbearable spoiled little dick. And many of the targets of the show’s satire are well found – it is funny to laugh at the hypocrisy of liberal Hollywood actors for example. But laughing at the expense of rape survivors just isn’t funny. What South Park does best is forensically take apart why a person or group is hypocritical, full of shit or otherwise worthy of being mocked, and do it mercilessly. The rape jokes aren’t that, they are harnessing the power of rape to shock to produce a cheap laugh from ignorant, uncaring idiots. For the rest of us, it’s JUST NOT FUNNY.

There really isn’t much that’s funny about rape survivors, and they don’t deserve to have their pain mocked, or treated as if it’s the same as seeing a really bad film. Hurting or offending them is something I care about, in a way I don’t, for example, about Scientologists or John Edward. If the show isn’t funny, then it’s failing not just in terms of feminism or decent treatment of fellow human beings, but in terms of COMEDY.

FAO The Mighty Boosh: Changing the rapist to the Donnie Darko bunny doesn't make it funny

So I’m not just saying this because I am pro-feminist. I am saying it because I love South Park. I think it is genuinely one of the greatest and most daring comedies that’s been on in my lifetime. I know it will come to an end one day, but I don’t want it to have a slow death of seasons sprinkled with unfunny episodes. Constantly relying on rape jokes is a sign that the writing is weakening, that they can’t come up with the goods as often as they used to. I’ve seen it happen before, with the latest series of The Mighty Boosh, which was far less funny than the other two, and, not coincidentally, relied heavily on rape jokes.

Another thing that shows that South Park and The Mighty Boosh understand what they’re doing is the reliance on what initally look like cute things that then turn out to be evil. In the latest episode they go on a field trip to the woods, where there’s a mascot called Woodsy Owl that sings a little song encouraging the kids not to litter. As soon as I saw it, the first thing I thought was that it would turn out to be some kind of paedophile. And surprise surprise it turned out I was right. I’ve been trying to see if I can find if there’s a proper term for this phenomenon of the cute turning out to be evil, and couldn’t get any closer than coulrophobia or fear of the ‘evil clown’ (e.g. “Stephen King’s It”). But you’ll know what I mean when I refer to the Woodland Critters of the South Park Christmas special a couple of years ago for example.

Blending horror concepts with comedy can work and be funny, but the fact that I knew what Woodsy Owl was the second I saw him means that this particular trope is being overused and is losing it’s power. To me, it’s appearance was simply about using things that are cute, and therefore associated with childhood and innocence, and violating those expectations to give the eventual shock all the more power. Except it’s getting boring and predictable. But more importantly, the shock and horror of abuse are very real for millions of people, and by laughing at it you’re making them feel humiliated and angry.

I’m not saying that rape is a topic that can never be discussed or treated in TV or other media. Absolutely not. But I would like to see the makers of shows try and do it a bit sympathetically, with at least a token of trying to understand reality rather than sensational patriarchal propaganda that has no care for people’s feelings. Using the word and the act of rape as a cheap shock tactic to get a nervous laugh out of the audience (or, certainly, a big laugh from sexist, ignorant bastards) just isn’t good comedy. And it’s killing the enjoyment of one of my favourite shows for me. So consider this a plea to Trey Parker and Matt Stone to think a little bit more, and come up with more episodes of the show I love.