Two to tango

"How about the men who go with them? It takes two to do business."
"Men have their needs."
"So do women, for money to pay for their food and lodging."

So goes the conversation between protagonist Dot and a male friend in Laurie Graham's 2015 novel, The Night In Question, which is set in 1880s London where a distinctly Jack-the-Ripper-esque murderer is preying on London's sex workers. What struck me was the similarity between Dot's defense of the much-maligned "fallen women" who are regularly blamed by a prurient, judgmental public for their own rapes, assaults and murders, and what Melissa Gira Grant wrote in her book Playing The Whore, which I first reviewed in 2014.

"The demand for victims, as anti-sex-work activists describe it, is driven by men's insatiable desire - not by sex workers' own demands for housing, health care, education, a better life, a richer life, if we dare."

The Victorian attitude dictated that men couldn't help themselves but women should somehow know better. The modern "end demand" movement, campaigned vociferously against by activists such as Molly Smith and the late Laura Lee, is more sympathetic towards the sex workers but allows them no position in the debate except that of victims. It is presumed they must want to escape the sex industry and that they would be happy to see their clients taken away from them by laws which punish only buyers, not sellers of sex. In this sense, it is not so far from the Victorian attitude that it is only men and their needs which are said to drive the sex industry, not sex workers' (some of whom aren't even women, a fact that is rarely mentioned) own desire for financial autonomy. Of course, that attitude was riven with contradictions; men had their needs, yet women were supposed to be devoid of sexual desire. Wives weren't supposed to want or enjoy sex, so men were expected to use sex workers to achieve sexual fulfilment. Sex workers were either abnormal for wanting, enjoying or simply consenting to acts that wives were supposed to be too pure to contemplate, or were mercenaries who endured acts they did not enjoy in order to stay financially afloat. Either way, this painted them as suspect and undeserving of public sympathy, hence the ease with which their murders were ignored both in real life and in Graham's novel.

Some Victorian feminists at least tried to make Dot's point that it takes two to tango, such as Josephine Butler, a Victorian suffrage campaign who opposed the Contagious Diseases Acts which gave the police free reign to forcibly examine any woman suspected of prostitution. As usual, the blame for the spread of venereal disease in port towns was being laid squarely at the feet of sex working women, rather than the men who visited them, and Butler broke with the squeamishness of the era by vocally criticising the total hypocrisy of the Act, which effectively sanctioned police sexual assault of women. This was a brave step against the background of a feminist movement whose upper class leaders felt women should see themselves as not just equal to men, but morally superior due to their lack of preoccupation with sex. You can see the point these women were trying to make--something along the lines of  "Since we aren't the ones raping, molesting, philandering and then blaming the opposite gender for our own sexual incontinence, perhaps we deserve at least the same rights, if not more, than the gender who are?"--but unfortunately this simply cemented the stereotype of sexless women and voracious men, and earned some Victorian suffragists the title of Moral Purity Campaigners. Butler was less interested in this debate and more interested in the rights of the women being arrested and forcibly examined, and succeeded in getting the Act suspended in 1883.

The unifying thread here is that those defending sex workers were not asking anyone to like, condone or practice sex work themselves, but rather to see those in the business as human beings deserving of rights. The right to earn money without the threat of violence. The right to do your job without being demanded that you defend it or love it more than anyone who does any other job. The right to do your job without being dragged off the streets and subjected to medicalised sexual assault. The right to safely choose and vet your clients without being hamstrung by laws which, as Laura Lee said to me, drive away the good guys and leave sex workers with the dregs. 

The quickness to explain away the existence of the sex industry via men's much-mythologised, much-generalised 'needs' doesn't just do that gender an injustice by portraying it as a monolith; it does sex workers of all genders a much greater injustice by erasing them from the picture altogether. So it was nice to see a bit of 21st century feminism sneaking its way into a book set in the 1880s; the fact that women like Butler really were standing up for sex workers during that era implies that the exchange from Graham's book might not be entirely imagined, either.

Destiny Calling - Now out in Paperback!

As an author best known for adult non-fiction work, people are often surprised to learn that I have written a children's book as well. Having already appeared in eBook format, I'm pleased to announce that Destiny Calling is now available in paperback for just £5 including shipping! 

Aimed at 8 to 12-year-olds, Destiny Calling is a funny, poignant and searingly honest tale of friendship, disability, class and family life, which been compared to the work of Jacqueline Wilson and has received glowing reviews from parents, children and teachers.

Beth, the 10-year-old protagonist of the book is a normal British girl living with her annoying older brother and parents, except for one difference - the family have all had to adapt to Beth's dad being in a wheelchair. This part of the book was inspired by my work as a carer for people with disabilities, especially those with spinal cord injuries.

Dad was in a car crash. I might as well say that now because you'll probably work it out sooner or later. I don't like talking or thinking about the crash, but I suppose I should explain why he's in a wheelchair, otherwise you might think he was one of those people who was always in a wheelchair, but he wasn't. His legs worked fine until the crash two years ago and now they don't work at all.

The characters of Beth and her brother Jez came about from my observations of children dealing with disabilities of a loved one. Adults' first reaction to wheelchairs or physical deformities is to become awkward, stiff and pretend everything is normal. What I liked about the children I met was that they had not yet acquired that ability to mask their reactions to disability. They were completely natural around their loved one and simply treated the wheelchair as another piece of furniture to climb on, hang off and mess around with. It showed me how much we can learn about breaking taboos from children's unfiltered attitudes towards subjects that adults see as off-limits.

Dad can't come into a room quietly or pretend he's not there. . . You can always hear the spoke things on his wheelchair turning or the clank of it going over the doorway.

"Hello darlings," he said, opening his arms. Jez was first into them hugging dad climbing into his lap. Even though he's 12, Jez still loves to climb all over people and with dad he's always got an excuse that is fair though and when I want to sit in his lap he tells Jez to get down. Jez doesn't argue with dad. He cried more than I did when dad was in hospital.

As I clearly remember myself, the hardest part about being ten years old isn't family life, it's school and the horrendous task of trying to fit in. Fearing her classmates' stares and questions about her dad, Beth has withdrawn from socialising and now silently watches her peers having fun without her. The arrival of new girl Destiny disrupts the quiet world that Beth has built for herself; lacking in fear or self-consciousness, Destiny is so different from Beth that she's the perfect person to break through Beth's self-imposed loneliness.

She spent every lunchtime with me, and even when the other girls came over she wouldn't leave me talk to them. She'd chatter away to them perfectly friendly, but would keep one hand on my arm or elbow linked through mine to show she wasn't going anywhere. The girls would hover around, asking her questions sometimes saying a quiet hi to me and finally give up and scuttle back to the group. Every time one of them walked off and she turned back to me, I felt like I'd won a little prize.The prize of being better to spend time with than all those whispering, staring girls with their perfect dads who weren't in wheelchairs.

Destiny opens up a whole new world to Beth, showing her life beyond her comfortable middle-class existence. She becomes the first person Beth confides in about her dad's disability, and Destiny's irrepressible confidence gives Beth the strength to start coming out of her shell again. When the two friends discover an X-Factor-style wish-granting show called Destiny Calling they hatch a plan to appear on it: not to get famous, but to make Beth's dad better...

You can get your copy now for just £5, by:
- using this link
- sending the money via PayPal to catherinescott24@googlemail.com
- emailing the same address for details of how to make a BACS transfer.

So what are you waiting for?!

Slow news day? Let's scapegoat porn!

I'm watching The Big Questions show on the BBC, this week with the title "Is porn damaging to society?" and am relieved to see Jerry Barnett of Sex and Censorship appearing as the sole voice of reason in a room where the consensus seems to be that porn is morally bad, psychologically damaging, and corrodes the potential for healthy relationships. A young pastor who claims to be a recovered porn addict has described the hold porn had over his life, while a porn actress claims that working in the industry has actually made her own sex life better.

These debates are always held in such blunt, polarised terms that it's rare to hear or see anything new in them. Emotive tactics are quickly deployed if a sex worker like the above dares to say that she enjoys her job--the pastor immediately shoots back with tales of trafficked and abused women forced into prostitution, even though this is a totally false equivalence. Barnett dares to point out something that is also regularly lost during these kinds of discussions--that porn addiction has never been proven to exist. 

"B-b-but surely it has," one might protest "God knows I've heard it mentioned enough in hushed, scandalised tones on talk shows and seen it slapped across the front of self-help books, written by proper psychologists and everything!"

Yeaaahhh....not so much. As someone who recently completed a book on how personal predjuces get turned into laws restricting what media adults can see, I discovered the following:

In 2014, Clinical psychologist David Ley carried out an extensive study on the literature surrounding porn addiction, and concluded "less than 1 percent of the 40,000 articles that they looked at were deemed scientifically or empirically useful". He added that this was because most people who write about porn addiction have an agenda to push, be it conservative, feminist or otherwise.

Ley adds that studies on porn addiction are regularly let down by "poor experimental designs, limited methodological rigor, and lack of model specification." US and UK media, including excellent independent outlets like Everyday Feminism, don’t help the matter when they write as if porn addiction is a proven illness. This explains why "the overwhelming majority of articles published on porn addiction include no empirical research. . . Less than one in four actually have data. In less than one in 10 is that data analyzed or organized in a scientifically valid way."

from Catherine Scott, To Deprave & Corrupt: Britain's Battles with Obscenity, out later in 2018!

Research like Ley's indicates to me that what is really at work is a hierarchy sketched out by the excellent sexuality writer Gayle Rubin, one in which the most socially approved sexual behaviours get a pass, while the most suspect are punished and pathologised. 

As Andrew Card puts it in an excellent essay on Medium,  

No matter how benign or inconsequential, sex which falls outside of the charmed circle, beyond the line, is prohibited to some extent or another.

Hence religious and conservative people scramble to distance themselves from a practice that is a harmless part of many adults' lives, treat it as a sickness or a moral failing, and treat those who indulge in it at best as damaged victims, and at worst as wilfully self-destructive sinners. And of course the rules on the "right" way to do sex or consume explicit material always ends up magically set by someone who claims neutrality for themselves. As Barnett put it in this morning's show "What I like is erotica, what you like is pornography." The stunning arrogance implicit in any human being telling another that their sexual tastes or practices are "wrong" demonstrates a worrying desire for social control; shame is a powerful tool. Yes, teaching the importance of consent, the skills to critically analyse pornography, and the strength to reject sexual practices or representations thereof that you find unpleasant or unoffensive are all valid priorities, but blunt and blanket statements about porn help no one. More than one of my interviewees for my book pointed out that children didn't report feeling guilty or anxious about accidentally glimpsing adult material until they got the firm message from adults that this is how they should have been feeling. Feedback loops are easy to create when you have an interviewee group that are eager to please. And also, on a more cynical note, what adolescent is going to be brave enough to tell their parent, who is probably the last person on earth with whom a teenager wants to discuss sexual pleasure, that they liked the content they stumbled upon and would like to see more of it and probably have a good old masturbate to it?!

I'll leave the last words to an 11 year-old boy, who one of my interviewees spoke to during an online
safety session in a UK school:
"They could bury all the porn in the world on a desert island, and I'd still find it."

Safety is sexy

I was concerned but not entirely surprised to read today's news that "Almost half of under-25s never use a condom with a new partner." As someone born in the 80s and raised in the teen magazine heaven that was the 1990s, I'd like to think I could never be as cavalier with my health or that of my partners as the interviewees in this piece, who simply shrug that using condoms for sex doesn't feel as good as sex without, and who seem to take contracting gonorrhea and chlamydia in their stride. Most worrying of all, one in ten of interviewees say they have never used condoms, and the consensus seems to be that if the female partner is using birth control, there is no need for one.

Now, I appreciate that sexual shaming gets us nowhere, and I do not wish to stigmatise anyone who has an STI. What I want to remark upon is how attitudes have shifted in my lifetime, and how it seems more and more difficult to get people to care about sexual health. It's not just the demonised demographic of feckless youths who don't seem scared by the prospect of catching incurable conditions; the over 50s have been highlighted as another group who think that calls to practise safer sex don't apply to them (so THERE, Dad!). In both cases, this complacency seems to boil down to "As long as no one gets pregnant, we're fine!" which is pretty frightening considering the havoc an undiagnosed STI can wreak on one's reproductive system, and in the case of HIV, your immune system and your whole life.

Thanks largely to the problem pages of Just 17, Sugar and Bliss magazines, I knew as an 11 year-old in the mid-90s all the myths surrounding safer sex, and I also knew exactly how to debunk them. I wouldn't be sexually active myself for nearly another 8 years, but I was armed with the knowledge that you could get pregnant the first time you had sex, even if you did it standing up or in water or if the guy promised to pull out before he came, and there was a lot of emphasis on how if a male partner refused to use protection, you should show him the door. Protecting yourself from pregnancy wasn't enough, the magazines reminded us; you were still at risk from STIs if you failed to use a barrier method, and one of those STIs was HIV, which took over your immune system and ultimately killed you. How is it we've shifted from that wealth of awareness two decades ago, to 21st century young people being either unaware of or unconcerned about these simple facts?

Now, I'm not advocating a return to the terrifying AIDS-awareness tombstone adverts of the 1980s which traumatised a whole generation of kids and also added to the demonising of gay men as the source of what was, horribly, known as the "gay plague" or "gay cancer" for much of the 80s and 90s. For one, the information in those ads is now totally out of date, because HIV-AIDS has gone from being a terminal condition with low life expectancy, to a chronic condition that can be managed so effectively that, with the right meds and all other things being equal, carriers can expect to live to old age and join the rest of us in grey hair, false teeth and a love of playing bridge. Which is brilliant news. But it shouldn't be cause for complacency.

None of us have lived a sexual life without mistakes or regrettable incidents, and I'm certainly not going to claim that I've never taken risks or been careless with protection. However, now I'm now longer a twatty 19 year-old who was long on seeking oblivion and short on self-care, I refuse to play roulette with mine or my partner's health. Being non-monogamous adds to my motivation to be safe ; the incentive to get tested regularly is increased when you know that failure to do so could harm not just you, but your lover(s). Even if you have a devil-may-care approach to your own health, you don't have the right to impose that on your sexual partners; not getting into bed with someone knowing you could possibly pass on STI on them seems like a basic tenet of human decency to me.

I know that situations where both partners are sober, in their right minds and have remembered to bring their own contraception can be rare, especially in those wonderful heady days of your late teens when getting blackout drunk is merely a competitive sport rather than a cause for concern. Perhaps it's time to recommend a buddy system, then: just like you wouldn't let your friend drive drunk, don't let them fuck without precautions. If you see your housemate about to leave the club with some pretty young thing they spotted across the bar, get yourself into the bathroom quick, stick some coins in a slot machine and go slap some condoms into their hand. I actually did this for a friend in my second year of uni. Because I was fairly sober and she was fairly wasted, and while I didn't doubt she was definitely up for sex with the fine specimen of man she'd been snogging on the dancefloor, I figured that friends don't let friends go home without condoms. And as she reported back the next day, much fun was had by all, with no need for a eyes-cast-downwards visit to the GUM clinic afterwards.

That's not to say the GUM clinic is a place of shame--it's just like any other hospital department, and if you don't know where your local one is, consider if that's because you've genuinely never needed it, or because you're too afraid to ask. If the latter, just bite the bullet and go. I've been to mine probably twice a year since I've been out of long term mono relationships (and yes, I also made sure that both partners got tested in said relationships too - I've never understood the logic that says only one-night-stands or casual sex bring risks of STIs; however much you love or trust your partner, there is no harm in gathering some info that reinforces that trust in the form of an all-clear from the clinic) and the only part I hate is the use of needles, which applies pretty much everywhere else in medicine too. But I still put my big girl knickers on, go and get tested, let the nurses laugh at me when I go pale and break into a cold sweat and have to elevate my legs after the blood test, then I receive a nice text message a few weeks later telling me I'm good to go, and everyone's a winner. No judgemental health professionals tutting at you--the staff could not be nicer or more pleasant, and there are no shocked expressions, gasps or lectures when you tell them you have many or concurrent sexual partners. All they want to know is info with which to calculate your risk from STIs, nothing more, nothing less. They also now ask you if you are afraid of anyone you live with, which I think is a fantastic and simple way of detecting concerns over domestic violence.

In a culture where sex itself is still seen as dirty, I think the idea of adding another layer of dirt and shame in the form of STIs is probably what deters teens and young people from confronting the risk head on. It's easy to tell yourself that what you don't know can't hurt you (which must go down as the biggest lie ever told to humanity!) or to set up a false dichotomy in your head whereby you convince yourself you're not one of those people who are most likely to contract an STI. You tell yourself that "well, I'm not a sex worker/gay man/polyamorous person, ergo I'll be fine," disregarding the fact that these groups are actually more attentive to their sexual health and are much more likely to get regularly tested and practise safer sex, partly because of the way they have been demonised by the mainstream media. And also simply because we can do the maths; as a nonmonogamist myself, I know that multiple partners put me at greater risk of contracting STIs, so I mitigate those risks via honest communication with all partners, ground rules and specific discussions about what sex acts are and aren't permissible without barriers, and yes, I'm afraid there's no getting away from it, kids, getting regularly tested, especially when new partners come into the equation.

I'll leave you now with a call to sexual health by the bizarre phenomenon Tim Westwood, which was broadcast on Radio 1's excellent Sunday Surgery when I was a teenager: "WRAP IT UP BEFORE YOU SLAP IT UP!"

To find your local sexual health clinic, you can search by postcode here

On Sexual Shame and Damian Green

I've just written a book about, amongst other things, how frighteningly easy it remains to ruin a public figure's reputation by alleging, well, pretty much anything to do with sex in connection with them. The allegations don't even have to involve illegal activities, they just need to have a faint whiff of sex about them, and that's pretty much all the scandal-hungry British media needs to go apeshit with the story. That is exactly what I believe is going on with the current Damian Green furore, and I'm so disappointed that no one in the left or right wing British media has been sensible enough to say this. Why can no one else see that this is a NON-STORY, borne out of nothing other than an antiquated attitude towards adult sexuality and a far-too-easily stirred shaming mob?

If you think that the 21st century media are all open-minded and groovy, and would never use sex as a cheap pretext to rake a public figure over the coals like they did in the age of Profumo, consider the 21st century case of Simon Walsh. In 2012, this talented young legal professional lost his job as an aide to the Mayor of London and had his private life as a gay man dragged through the courts and press--doing permanent damage to his reputation, employability and I'd imagine mental health--for simply receiving an email with five images depicting urethral sounding and fisting in them.

Now, neither of those acts may be your cup of tea, but they are entirely legal to do, and as the jury in R v Walsh quickly concluded, they're not illegal to look at (despite the best attempts by the misguided 2008 Extreme Pornography law amendment to make recording or watching consensual kinky and gay activity a crime). It's important to note that neither is the vast majority of pornography watched by consenting adults in the UK.  It's merely images and videos of sexual activity between adults; nothing more, nothing less. It's not anything to fear.

Yet a Member of Parliament is fighting to clear his name over an even less extreme allegation than the ones Simon Walsh was fighting; simply, that he had LEGAL pornography on his work computer.

Why is this being treated as news?

Seriously, I really want to hear someone give a credible explanation for why an Adult doing a Legal Adult thing on a work computer--when adults regularly misuse their work computers to spend all day on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and send each other cat memes and videos of raccoons washing mobile phones--is a story. Even before smartphones meant everyone now spends their workday glued to apps, I saw some audacious two-fingers-to-productivity behaviour in offices; one guy used to go into the loos and have a nap for an hour, the woman sat opposite me openly used the office phone to sort out her mortgage, and the guy who sat behind me was forever tapping me on the shoulder to show me videos of fat people passing out on rollercoasters. Is it really news that an adult might use their office computer for something other than work? And can any of us claim we're not guilty of doing the same?

Sorry folks, but if you've watched the above video on your work computer, you have no right to judge Damian Green

Am I expected to believe that we hold Members of Parliament to a higher moral standard than the rest of us? In which case, the only thing at issue is the MP doing something inappropriate in his workplace--note, STILL NOT ILLEGAL--and deserves no more attention than the average questionable shenanigans that our MPs get up to. Personally, I'm more interested in the fact that my local MPs racked up millions of pounds in travel expenses in the course of a couple of years. Because that's yours and my money going up the spout because an entitled politician refuses to struggle on public transport with the rest of us Great Unwashed and so spunks public money on taxis and First Class tickets for nothing other than their own comfort.

Having lived with the British press and legal system for 34 years I'm not surprised at the way Green's story has unfolded, but I am dismayed that this sort of shit is still happening in twenty-fucking-seventeen. Are we not long past the point of getting our knickers in a twist when an adult man is found to look at masturbation material? Because we really bloody should be. It is unconscionable that our dominant media is still so hell-bent on shaming consensual, legal expressions of adult sexuality, and boxing people into a corner that they feel they have no option other than to deny the whole thing.

One thing I found when researching my forthcoming book To Deprave and Corrupt is that thousands of British people plead guilty to charges of possessing Extreme Pornography each year--not because they necessarily deem the charges accurate, but because they know that going to trial will entail so much ruinous publicity that they would rather throw money at the problem and hope it goes away quietly. I can understand that; even as an author of a book on kink who is pretty upfront about what I get up to behind closed doors, I'd still think twice about having my fetishes read aloud in open court in front of my family, especially when I know how, if you want to discredit someone, making public their "alternative" sexual preferences is the quickest way to do it.

I'm no fan of Max Mosely, but I do approve of the fact he pushed back against the prurient hypocrisy of the British tabloid media--one that is happy to publish soft porn as long as it's aimed at the male gaze and is heteronormative, non-kinky and sells papers, but which condemns a man for enjoying bossy women shaving his backside and spanking him. Their attitude was depressingly transparent: How DARE Mosely have a sexual preference that grossed out straight male newspaper editors, and how DARE he use his own money to pay adult women to act out this entirely legal, actually pretty mild, sexual fantasy?!

Of course, the News of the Wank tried to make out that their concern was over Mosely's private party being possibly Nazi-themed, but I don't believe for one second that was their actual motivation for dragging him over the coals so publicly. Faux-concern over fascist imagery in Mosely's kink play was just another grenade for them to lob; what they were really banking on was the power of sexual shame being so great that Mosely wouldn't fight back. Wonderfully, the NOTW was left with major egg on their face when Mosely denied the Nazi-theme charges, sued for libel and--cue Nelson-from-the-Simpson's HA HA!--won massive damages.

This is the crux of the current scandal, though; people will try to sidestep the fact that all Damian Green is really being accused of is inappropriate workplace conduct by pushing the "It's not the porn, it's the fact he LIED about it!" line. Again, I just don't buy that explanation. If Damian Green was accused of nicking a few hole-punches from the parliamentary offices, I doubt it would even make the local news, let alone the national papers or the BBC. Even though that would ACTUALLY BE THEFT, AN ILLEGAL ACTION. That's because it would lack the failsafe component that propels a story straight on to the front page. Which is sex, closely accompanied by the notion that looking at wanking material is morally degenerate, something that must be excused or explained away or acknowledged with a sombre face and a promise to go to Porn Addicts Anonymous (don't even get me started on how shoddily constructed a concept porn addiction is--suffice to say I do not accept its existence has been proven). The thought that releasing endorphins, lowering your blood pressure and feeling less tense/randy is actually beneficial to adult physical and mental health is never even considered, even though we all know it's true!

Damian Green would be a brave man indeed to stand up and say "Yep, I did it, I had thousands of porn images on my computer," because of a climate where adults remain incapable of admitting that most of us have active sex drives. Which in 2017, is bloody RIDICULOUS. It also elides legal pornography with the darker types of image, such as those of child sex abuse, animal abuse and non-simulated sexual or physical violence. This is no accident, especially when the term "child pornography" is still used by so many media outlets. I know that "Non-consensual images of child sex abuse" is a bit unwieldy, but unless we get really strict about the language we use here, we run the risk of placing images of child rape in the same category as images of consensual adult sex. The two do NOT go together. Yet no one is pointing this out.

So, I'll stand up and say it. I don't care what Green had on his computer as long as it did not depict or entail the abuse of an adult, child or animal. As far as all the news reports go, none of the images met this criteria. Therefore this is a non-story, and I can't help but think the fascination with it merely draws the public's attention away from things we could be getting angry about: the constant quiet dismantling of the NHS, the explosion in homelessness and food bank use, the fact my severely disabled friend has just had her weekly care hours cut by another 2 even though her condition is no better, shit like that. Stuff that actually AFFECTS British taxpayers, y'know?

tl;dr: I DON'T CARE IF AN ADULT MAN LOOKED AT WANK FODDER. MANY ADULT MEN DO. MANY ADULT WOMEN DO. I HAVE. YOU PROBABLY HAVE. AS LONG AS WE HAVE NEVER HARMED ANOTHER HUMAN BEING IN ORDER TO EXPRESS OUR SEXUALITY, I DO NOT GIVE A FLYING FRIG.

Thoughts on Battle of the Sexes

WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE FILM BATTLE OF THE SEXES

There was never any question of my going to see this film; I consider myself someone who has proudly fought against "male chauvinist pigs" (my, how antiquated and angry that phrase sounds in the face of so much modern blanding out of feminism!) since the first time I called out sexism at about age 8 (the culprit was my grandfather, blowharding about his prejudice against Woman's Hour). However, what you quickly realise is that the story of tennis legend Billie Jean King beating the crap out of the so-ostentiatious-as-to-be-ridiculous Bobby Riggs in 1973 isn't a straightforward tale of feminist warrior vs sexist warthog.

Riggs isn't actually King's problem for most of the film. He's a tennis has-been and an incorrigible gambler perpetually seeking his next thrill; King is battling to hold on to her status as World Number One as her private life becomes increasingly complicated by the fact she is married to a man but attracted to women. By the time the two actually meet, the worst of the sexism is actually over; King has already had to fight the American Lawn Tennis Association for equal pay for female players, having been told to accept 1/7th of what male players were earning. She threatens to take her talents elsewhere, and the LTA promptly blackball her.

King is told that the men's game is more exciting and draws more crowds, even though she patiently sits across from three old white men and tells them that the women's games have been selling exactly the same amount of tickets. It's clearly not a matter of economics, but these men are trying to weasel out from being accused of contempt for women by playing the old "men are more interesting to watch" card. As part of the roller derby community, a place in which the women's version of the sport came first, this is particularly amusing to watch. If you tried to advance this theory in derby you'd be promptly laughed out of a sports hall. But in the sexist 70s, such ideas held a disgusting amount of traction, and when they're coming from the top of your own sports association, what options do you have left?

So yes, King exhibits massive bravery in telling Jack Kramer, the intransigent head of the LTA, to get fucked when he tries to hold her game to ransom, and doing it far more coolly and politely than most of us would manage. She rallies her fellow big name female tennis players to create their own tournament, knowing it will cost them their LTA association and rankings. Kramer is left looking like a bitter, spiteful misogynist who was so incensed at the idea of female tennis players refusing to kowtow to him that he did everything within his power to torpedo their careers. Riggs, meanwhile, is actually bankrolled by his rich wife and--thanks to Steve Carell's wonderful ability to humanise otherwise cringeworthy characters--comes across as a maverick, a buffoon, a man with too much energy and nowhere for it to go. The sexism he plays up is clearly for the cameras, and is so comical as to be easily dismissed. From early on in the film, there's no question of who really looks a fool--the middle-aged man dressed up as a shepherdess playing tennis as sheep run around him, or the understated, cool-as-a-cucumber King, who plays along to an extent but mostly lets her game do the talking.

The film is by no means perfect; it plays fast and loose with chronology at times, and the cast is pretty white. The need for a sports film about women of color has long been apparent--I couldn't understand why average white failure Eddie the Eagle got a whole film to himself last year when no one has ever bothered making a picture about the majestic Florence Griffith Joyner aka Flo-Jo, the fast women ever. It angers me that after all so much lip service has been paid to progress in terms of whose stories get told in cinemas, audiences are still expected to happily root for a white guy, and are expected to swallow the notion that his struggles truly are "against all odds." Pffafff. What odds would those be, exactly? Odds steeper than those posed by entrenched racism and sexism, which cuts you off at the knees and then tells you you're just not trying hard enough?

It's not only sports movies where this is a massive problem, either; while I loved watching The Theory of Everything, and as a former carer for the disabled am intrigued by the premise of Breathe, I'm still waiting to see a film tell the story of a disabled woman whose husband bravely stays by her side, encourages her to do groundbreaking work, and happily puts his life on hold so she can be the star of the show while his life is merely a supporting act. Can you name me a mainstream movie in which this happens? Because I cannot think of one. A same-gender couple would also be fine with me; the point is, I want to see male characters take the backseat and a woman's stellar trajectory take center stage. Battle of the Sexes is immediately head and shoulders above the glut of hackneyed films simply because it does show this. King is the star here; all other characters are rendered either a supporter or detractor of hers.

Battle of the Sexes is an even-handed, funny, incisive and brilliantly cast take on a story that probably should have been told a lot sooner--after all, Title IX had its 40th anniversary in 2012, and given Billie Jean King's pivotal role in ensuring the legislation was put to proper use by mandating equal pay for athletes regardless of gender, that seems like it would have been the perfect moment to put out this film. Its take on feminism is so mild as to be inoffensive; in one exchange with Riggs, King turns down his offer to join in a media circus, and adds "By the way--I shave my legs!" before putting the phone down on him. Don't worry ladies, is the message; you can take on sexist twunts and kick their arses but you can also retain your femininity. You can view this as a watering-down of feminism, or you can view it as a funny, ultimately human moment.

King is not portrayed as overtly political, but the speeches she does give are memorable--she turns on a reporter quizzing her about the game and asks him if he thinks his father is better than his mother. When he mumbles "No," she retorts "That's what you're saying if you think women should be paid less." She then storms off leaving him and all the other clamoring journalists in her wake. It's simple, it's unambiguous, and it avoids the endless debates about labeling oneself a feminist, or a women's libber, or what those terms mean. King's message is clear: you either walk the walk and treat women equally, or you're a sexist and you can get fucked.

Emma Stone is reliably great as the lead, showing the understated, media-shy manner in which the great tennis player dealt with a level of media attention for which she was deeply unprepared. Austin Stowell as Larry, her husband, also does a great job of humanising the man who could clearly see that his wife loved women, but did not turn on her or desert her for this. He's pragmatic: he recognises that King's parents are old-fashioned and would not accept a lesbian daughter, and he also sees that the sexist, homophobic media which followed his wife around would use the information to crucify her. So he continues to support her and her tennis, and all but gives his blessing to her affair with Marilyn, the team hairdresser. This is a much more nuanced portrayal than I was expecting; I thought I was going to see a sexually threatened, insecure husband lashing out at his wife for betraying him, and instead I got something that felt much more realistic. Again, this reminds us that the lines draw in the 'battle of the sexes' are never exact, or clear, or ineradicable. Since so much fraternising with the 'enemy' takes place, it's inaccurate to call it a battle most of the time anyway.

Sarah Silverman is also fantastic as Gladys Heldman, King's agent, publicist and chain-smoking, nasal guardian angel. I remember wo-manning a table for Ms magazine at a rally against the War on Women in 2012, and Silverman approaching us shy young interns and offering to have her photo taken with us. It was a moment where Hollywood and real life collided, where it occurred to me that the women who inhabit such seemingly faraway, ethereal worlds may actually share some of my concerns, passions and sources of rage. 

Battle of The Sexes has pulled off no mean feat by making feminism and equal pay seem like spiky, shiny topics worth examining and yet still funny enough to lose yourself in for 120 minutes. Two thumbs up from me.

Preaching to the Perverted: How Did I Miss This Film?!

Last night I watched the fantastic British comedy film Preaching to the Perverted (1997), of which I had been blissfully unaware until a brilliant lady in the kink community recommended it to me. 

My first reaction was "HOW did I miss this? This film includes EVERYTHING I wrote Thinking Kink about, and yet I didn't know about it til now!" My second was to laugh, hoot, snort, raise eyebrows and repeatedly think how accurate and incisive this colourful, anarchic film is.

Here's what I liked in particular:

1) It quickly moves beyond the obvious tropes

In the first five minutes, when the House of Thwax is being accused of spreading filth and feminists are condemning it as exploitative of the female form, Ricky Tomlinson's character pipes up and points out he's seen "more men's hairy arses" in the secret film from inside a kink club, than any naked female bodies. And he's spot on. If you step inside any BDSM event, you will see bodies of ALL shapes, sizes, genders and ages. Yes, the scene is agonizingly white and could do a lot more to be ethnically diverse. But it has no rules on who's allowed to take their clothes off and parade around for others. Which is great, because it means we see plenty of old, male, chunky, skinny, hairy, wobbly and generally real-looking bodies in the kink scene. It really is time pop culture caught up to this, instead of opting to show rail thin white females in black PVC every time kink is mentioned.

"Gentle Face" by istoletheTV, via Creative Commons

2) It's very, VERY British

The majority of pop culture artefacts I looked at in Thinking Kink are from America, because that's from where the majority of our mainstream TV shows, movies and music originates. This is slowly changing, but British movies, TV shows and art are still lagging behind when it comes to global recognition--with some notable exceptions such as Dr Who and Sherlock, but they have the weight of the mighty BBC behind them. So it was incredibly refreshing to see a British-made film full of actual British actors running around grimy streets and stately homes in THIS COUNTRY. A lot of kinks are very specific to Britain: caning and spanking have strong connections to the disciplinarian boarding schools of yesteryear, as do the corresponding schoolboy/girl fantasies. The idea of a buttoned-up, repressed people who secretly love to wear stockings and bend people over desks is also extremely British, and is explored heartily in the film.

3) It nails the hypocrisy behind British laws

As someone who has just written 75,000 words on the insane state of Britain's obscenity law, it was fantastic to watch a film that points out how much of an ass our laws still are when they try to prevent consenting adults seeking pleasure. In this film, the kinksters, freaks, pervs and dominatrices are pitted against the government, the police and a press eager to humiliate people for a headline. Obviously the real situation is much more nuanced, as the protagonist Peter discovers, but when the law comes for you and your sexual freedom, you have to decide what you care about more - money and public image, or personal integrity. Preaching to the Perverted nails this perfectly.

4) It shows the value of group living

The House of Thwax comprises a huge warehouse/living space where a lead dominatrix is served by a houseful of slaves. It's the kind of efficient, clean and well-ordered set-up that most of us can only dream of enjoying at home or work, but because everyone knows their role, it functions smoothly. That's not to say there aren't malcontents, complaints, misplaced affections and a fair bit of topping from the bottom, but that's life and that's human beings; this film does a great job of showing that even 24/7 kink has its limits. However, when a baby is brought into the equation, everyone in the house takes turns to look after it, rather than the responsibility all falling on to the knackered mother's shoulders. Yes, the baby is being walked around a house full of chains, crosses and spanking benches, but it's receiving love and attention from multiple caring adults who clearly adore it. Why isn't this kind of parenting shown to us more often?!

5) It emphasises consent and safety

Naive and young protagonist Peter enters the kink world undercover and soon ends up out of his comfort zone, clad in PVC and getting his nipples pierced in order to blend in. However, he is regularly asked what he does and doesn't want to do, and when he says he is afraid of pain, his mistress respects this. When he says he is a virgin, she also respects this. She regularly tells him he is free to leave or say no if he does not want to participate. Although this should be bleeding obvious to both kinksters and vanilla folk, there clearly is a problem with how pop culture and wider Western society understand consent. It's rarely shown as an ongoing conversation that involves regular check-ins. We're still struggling to get to the point where all men believe no means no, rather than "try harder because women play games, you see", let alone the point where sexual partners are seeking active, enthusiastic consent from women ("yes means yes" and anything else should be seen as no). So it's mighty important for films, books, music videos, and any other art depicting kink to keep emphasising: YOU DON'T JUST GRAB SOMEONE AND START WHIPPING THEM. YOU ASK. AND ASK. AND ASK. AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN. AND YOU RESPECT WHATEVER THEY TELL YOU, OR YOU ARE AN ABUSER AND A CRIMINAL.

6) It shows a variety of genders in a variety of roles

Images of submissive men, beautiful male bodies naked, chained, roped, guys being humiliated and strong women whose bodies aren't served up for the male gaze are still far too often absent from pop culture portrayals of BDSM. Not so in this film! The House of Thwax is decorated by chained, muscular male subs, the kink parties have plenty of older, saggy male flesh on show (much like your average real BDSM play party!), and apart from the mistress herself and her shaven-headed female slave, we see very few female bodies throughout the film. We also see plenty of young Peter in compromising positions, which makes a refreshing change from filmmakers' persistent belief that 'sexy' only means 'what straight men find arousing.'

7) It's just bloody funny

Lines such as "Stop electrocuting Peter! We were wrong to leave him in the road," had me hooting and snorting throughout. This is a film that doesn't take itself too seriously, and recognises that a sense of humour is essential to survival in the BDSM world. Sometimes you'll spill the poppers, knot the rope wrongly, trip over the spanking bench or end up look at a ball sack covered in clothes pegs when you really didn't want to see it. You have to be able to laugh, first of all at yourself, but also generally at this crazy community where we gather together to humiliate and beat each other, and then have a cup of tea and chat about it afterwards. Preaching to the Perverted shows that BDSM players are regular folk with jobs, lives and bills to pay, but they simply get their kicks from playing on the edge; not unlike anyone who does extreme sports, or--as someone points out in the opening scenes--boxing, a pursuit from which no law or government has ever tried to save men.

So what are you waiting for? You can buy the remastered version of the film here. Watch and enjoy!

How to truly #LoveYourLibraries

It's no secret that books, both the writing and reading of them, are my lifelong addiction. To paraphrase Paula Danziger, I feel like I'm addicted to the printed word because I need a book fix whenever I get upset. A major catalyst for this love of literature was having access to libraries from a very young age. I remember going to Dunstable library with my dad at age 4 or 5, and soon exhausting the limit on his card so he signed me up for my own. I treasured that card and proceeded to use it on a biweekly basis for the next two decades, until I was a graduate living on my own and had enjoyed the benefits of libraries located in my school, in Luton, Milton Keynes, Leamington Spa, Los Angeles and Warwick University to name just a few.

I'm lucky to know several librarians and I consider myself blessed to count such intelligent, book-loving, fun and kind people in my friends group. However, I know their job isn't easy, especially in the face of rampant budget cuts and complacency on the part of local government. I've seen veteran library staff forced to reapply for their own jobs after two decades, forced to accept ten or even 20 percent pay cuts, and constantly being asked to do more work for the same or less money due to redundancies and recruitment freezes.

So how can we help our brave literary warriors and make their days a bit easier? Here are my personal tips:

1) USE your libraries! 

I don't care if you never read a book yourself, you will most certainly read a magazine or use the internet or use maps or travel guides or have children who read or teenagers who are studying or need help filling in application forms or require tourist info. Libraries provide all this and more. Free wi-fi, free computer use and a huge, warm book-filled sanctuary from the madness of the outside world. Who wouldn't want to visit such a place?!

2) CARE for your libraries!

Take small children in to the children's library; adults come to libraries for peace. Teach your teen children to respect libraries, rather than treating them like a gaming arcade. Put stuff back where you found it. Take your loud phone conversations outside. Report anything untowards to staff but also be respectful, pleasant and patient with library employees - they are working harder than ever for fewer and fewer rewards. If there's a queue, don't huff - pick up a book and wait like a grown-up!

3) Don't BURDEN your libraries with unhelpful donations!

If you have a genuinely nice, immaculate modern edition of a book that you wish to donate, great. However, PLEASE do not donate any of the following to your local library (and this is straight from a senior library stock controller):

- Old, damaged or mildewed books. Your library will only have to pay to recycle these.

- Maps or travel guides older then five years. No use to man nor beast, trust me.

- Utterly obselete crap like WINDOWS 98 GUIDE. Gift it to a geeky friend or eBay it.

- Any books with cracked spines, folded down pages or annotations. This is a library, not Amazon marketplace. Library staff are not there to sort through your old schoolbooks just because you can't be bothered to do it!

4) SIGNAL BOOST the great work that your local library does! 

Give them a shout out on social media, take a picture of a great book display and Instagram it, tweet what you liked about your most recent visit; whatever you can do to keep libraries visible means they stand a better chance of retaining funding.

Now go out and spread that literary love! 

There go my heroes

Unsung heroes is a term that gets bandied around a lot, so I want to use my platform to actually describe some of the people who've made this stressed author's days a bit less awful in recent times. In no particular order, they are:

- the till lady in Iceland MK who chatted with pleasantly me yesterday despite her till being right under an air conditioning vent which she said her bosses refused to turn off. I was only standing there a minute and I was freezing; she said it was like that for her whole shift. Anyone who is warm and comfortable right now, salute this lady for still being nice to people when I would have been a raging grump within five minutes.

- the roller derby skater who turned up to a mental health fundraiser on Sunday, skated her heart out, chatted with me about my book and then had to drive back down the motorway to the care home where she works in order to do 12 bed calls. Probably for an absolutely abysmal wage, if I know anything about how the care industry operates. Could you do that and still be nice to people? I'm not sure I could manage even half of what this woman achieved in one day. 

And yes, I've wiped bums, changed adult nappies and cleaned up faeces and urine for £7 an hour, but I'm now in a financial position where I haven't needed to do care work for several years. So I salute every underpaid, underappreciated, stressed out person working in the healthcare industry right now. The HCAS, support workers and cleaners who get no praise and usually get the blame. You. Are. Heroes.

- Maria from Nationwide in Bletchley, who last week saw that I was about to cry with the stress of not being able to get a bank statement from my own bank without them charging me and putting me further in overdraft, and sorting out the situation instantly. I still owe that lady a big cake, but I did tell her I loved her and told her supervisor to give her a raise.

- Jess from Changes Walnut Tree who cut my hair this morning, did exactly what I asked, didn't try to anything I hadn't requested with my insane curly mop, didn't patronise me about being 'lucky' to have curly hair and was lovely to talk to.

- My friend Denise, who has suffered multiple disabilities since she was in her teens (she is now mid-30s), lives in a teeny council bungalow where she is afraid to put the heating on and who had her care budget cut by another 2 hours last month, yet is never anything less than fearless and cheerful. She is unfailingly generous and even made me an early birthday card with a cat on that said BE YOUR OWN KIND OF AWESOME. For someone who suffers such chronic pain to do this with her own hands renders me speechless with gratitude and love.

There go my heroes. Watch them as they go. 

Stuff men say to a woman fixing a car

"You know how to do that?" 

Passerby yesterday, as I was lying underneath my friend's Renault replacing her spare wheel. Needless to say he was assured with some gusto that yes I do know how to remove, refit, move, change, maintain and if needed, throw a car wheel fitted with tyre at mansplainers....

Still, he was friendly enough and once we had established that I am a master with a torque wrench, a wheel brace, a jack and a can of WD-40, he even took my number in case he ever needed a non-registered mechanic. After all, I'd just made one car MOT-passable in two hours, think what I could do with any old wreck!

And yes, my own car is stringently maintained. You don't grow up with an aviator as a parent without learning a LOT about tinkering with engines, gears, brakes, wheels, wipers, windows and tyres.

And yes, I warned this chap that my hourly rate for non-friends is high. He said he could pay me in champagne but I laughed and told him I already have a bottle in my fridge. (Which I do, thanks auntie!)

"Yes, I can help. No, you don't need to make me a cup of tea."

Nice young Eastern European chap working on a nearby building site who came and stood on the tyre iron when my 60kg weight wasn't enough to make it move. Yes, you! You're lovely! I owe you a cuppa! Not least because he did what I asked, expected nothing except a thank you in return, and then left me in peace straight afterwards.

"You need to learn this stuff. You need to practise it over and over, because when you actually need this skill it'll probably be dark and cold and you won't have time to mess around. Also, if you don't know this stuff, mechanics will rip you off simply because you're female."

Papa Scott, and he has been so right (and CHEERS THEN to the garage who dropped the price by £80 on a job whose need was questionable anyway, simply because I threatened to call my dad). I love my dad for how much he has taught me about cars, engines, aeroplanes, physics, mathematics and engineering. Thanks to him, I can take apart, clean and refurbish roller skates, wheels and associated derby equipment LIKE A BOSS.

One day I might even listen to most of what Papa Scott says! But my brain isn't quite as huge a computer/calculator as his yet. Give it time.

Next stop, learning to fly!
And if you think I say that lightly, well...
Let's just say you ain't seen nothing yet, world ;)

#ThisGirlCan

Thoughts on televised debates

... and debates more generally.

I was invited on to my first TV debate in 2013. I was thrilled, being a somewhat naive, keen young feminist writer. I was 29, was still getting used to the thrill of seeing my name in print (thanks Bitch magazine! Thanks TLS! Thanks BBC Academy, Ms Magazine, Telegraph Books) and was still inexperienced enough to accept being underpaid or not even paid at all for my writing (cheers Independent, I loved you but no wonder you went to the wall!).

However, when a pleasant sounding woman rang me on my mobile and asked if, with 24 hours notice, no pay and questionable terms I would appear on a major Sunday politics TV show, I immediately heard warning bells. The subject was, predictably, feminism. I knew from having watched enough Newsnight episodes with Laurie Penny, that feminists did not get given an easy time on TV.

Instead, they were usually portrayed as any or all of the following: shrill, unreasonable, paranoid, anachronistic, man-hating, humourless, sexless.

Paranoid and anachronistic I'll admit to; I'm an old soul in a young body, and yes I do consider the world at large threatening, incomprehensible and overrated. However, I refuse to even consider the other charges.

Which is why I ultimately said no to the pleasant lady on the phone.

I'd seen how London Feminist Network were portrayed on a documentary the previous year. Members were constantly asked if they were angry, and why, as if women's anger was SO unusual, so remarkable, and SO interesting that women should have to explain it, even though we have daily evidence of the results of men's anger. You only have to turn on the news to see where male anger gets us. But men's anger is the default, you see, and is justified, even if it results in wars, murders, mutilations, maimings, rapes, bombings and pissing contests involving nuclear arms.

But I digress.

I wasn't interested in paying money I didn't have, to spend a Sunday which I had already earmarked for a dear friend's birthday celebrations, to sit in a studio and not get paid while people tried to paint me and my people (that would be women and anyone else who considers women full human beings) as complete harridans.

I said fuck that, and got on with my weekend. And it was fine. I lost no sleep, no work, no money.

Later that year I would be asked to appear in a debate at Glasgow University Union, a place which has a deeply dodgy history  when it comes to treating female speakers with respect, or indeed admitting them at all. I asked for other feminists' views on Twitter - should I do this debate or not? Again, no fee was offered, and this was at a time I was still doing a LOT of tutoring and care work to supplement the abysmal writing rates I was being offered, from £0 to maybe £90 per 1000 words if I was very lucky, and living back with my parents to save up money. So I wasn't that keen to hop a train to Scotland anyway - but then came the abusive emails.

One polite but passive-aggressive missive from a female student who wanted me to know just how feminist GUU was - presumably so feminist that its cheerleaders took the time to harass a busy, skint feminist writer and try to persuade her to take down her cruel tweets where she had the GOD DAMN NERVE to  wonder if Glasgow University was worth a visit.

I soon got my answer. The frothing young feminist had obviously let slip to a male friend that a Nasty Older Feminist had dared to ask "GUU - worth speaking at?" on Twatter and this Fwend sent me a poisonously worded email about my "little display on Twitter" as if I were a naughty four year-old--rather than a 29 year old long sick of little boys and their bruised egos. This young upstart did not even ASK me to apologise to his Very Feminist Friend, he actually INSTRUCTED me to.

BIG MISTAKE, little man. 
HUGE.

I replied to neither email but instead promptly forwarded them both to GUU's head and told them this was how their representatives were behaving online. The apology I got from GUU was grovelling, to say the least, and at pains to distance the Union and the University from the Big Brave Boy who had decided to prove how NOT SEXIST his university was by harassing a woman!

[Oh, and son? If you're out there and haven't learned from your mistakes, do us all a favour and stay the fuck away from women. Or just everyone, you nasty little coward. Don't piss off a writer, you silly young boy. We always, always get our revenge in print, and we are MASTERS of the long game.]

Finally, a few months after that fiasco, I turned down a request to 'debate' the rights and wrongs of lads' mags on a local BBC radio station,. AGAIN, no payment was offered and by this point in my writing career I was getting tough on such nonsense. I freelance for the Beeb so I know that they can and will pay very nicely when it suits them; ergo, I ain't giving them my time for free. Sorry Auntie, but you're not actual family. You don't get my expert opinion for nothing. My real family do, and regularly, and usually when they're not interested, so God help them.

However, it wasn't just the lack of cash I was getting highly fucked off with. It was the constant request that I expose myself, my belief system and my people to criticism, mockery and probably being stitched up in the name of a ten minute segment that would inevitably be rushed or edited so that  we had no hope of getting our real point across. Trust me, I write BOOKS on feminism and sometimes 80,000 words is not enough to say everything I need to say on the matter.

So what hope could a feminist possibly have of coming across well in a radio segment squeezed between the shipping forecast and the traffic news? Who's going to listen or care or stand a chance of changing their mind?

Round this time, I did notice the UK media actually starting to - GASP! - consult the people whose right to exist it was debating. I heard the excellent @PastaChips being interviewed in a (I think) Woman's Hour segment on sex work, and thought TOO RIGHT! About time we heard from an ACTUAL, CURRENT sex worker rather than an exited one or a famous one or one like Dr Brooke Magnanti, who hasn't been a sex worker in 10 years. Not that the other women and men don't also have the right to have their say, but UK media and government seem USELESS at finding current sex workers and actually asking them how they feel.

On the rare occasions it does happen, they're usually not paid for their time (and has ANY sex worker EVER been paid for those stock images scantily clad women in windows and doorways that outlets love to use? I'd GENUINELY like to know!), are pumped for tales of degrading or horrible or comical encounters, and are treated somewhere between the Victorian stereotype of the fallen woman and her 19th century counterpart, the circus freakshow.

So yes, I thought good on ya Glasgow Sex Worker for speaking eloquently on live radio about how actually, deep sea fishing is far more dangerous than sex work but funnily enough no one ever suggests that fishermen are just too weak or stupid or brainwashed by, er, matrirarchy to know that they're choosing a hazardous line of work. But I was glad it wasn't me trying to sum up my viewpoint and also (insultingly) being asked to justify my right to exist and work without harm, on a ten minute slot on a grey Tuesday morning.

I don't think I could have remained so calm.

This is why I'm grateful when fantastic non-binary and trans activists such as @TheLolaPhoenix publicly point to me and my writing as friendly to trans/NB people. The impetus for Lola's statement  was an understandably pissed off thread by a fellow NB person Owl, who had been asked to 'debate'...something to do with gender, I don't know if the Beeb ever even specified.... live on TV, and was not having any of it.

I did not blame Owl one bit.
At the age of nearly 34, I feel like I've been arguing for women's right to be treated as full human beings MY ENTIRE LIFE.

I am not exaggerating. One of my Asperger's tendencies is unnerving recall regarding dates, ages, numbers, conversations.
I first told a man "You are just afraid that women will think you're rubbish and gang up on you"* when I was no older than 7. I said this to my grandfather, then in his 60s, when we were in the car with my dad, brother and grandmother. My grandmother had dared to suggest that she wanted to listen to Woman's Hour; my granddad loudly huffed that it was "just a load of women talking bloody nonsense."

[I had correctly identified exactly his and every other sexist man's greatest fear, but of course at the age of 7 no one takes you seriously.] 

By 10 years old, I was disgusted that I lived in a world where things like rape and child molestation existed, and furious that the state of my vagina was considered public property

(You could have been raped! bellowed Papa Scott when I was five minutes late returning from a friend's house that summer. I wanted to smack someone, or puke, at the idea that my being raped was somehow a man's business. I still do want to do all those things.)

By 16, I was baffled that other girls didn't seem to notice or care the persistent sexism around us, even though it pushed the intelligent, privileged girls at my Posh School to act like morons whenever boys were around, and the amoral gits from the local Boys' School to look through any girl who didn't simper, smile or otherwise seek male approval.

So when well-meaning friends or family said to the 29 or 30 year-old Chas that "It's telly! You should just do it!" I had to take it with a pinch of salt. I don't CARE about telly. It's just a medium, just another glowing screen in a world where screens have taken up my time, sanity, wrecked my wrists and my mental health. I love BOOKS. I am THRILLED by BOOKS. I LOVE the fact my name is on PROPER, PUBLISHED BOOKS and I can pick one up and read it and show it to my mum and build a HOUSE out of my books should I so choose.

But telly? Just to be dismissed as another sexless, humourless bitch carping on about First World Problems? Naaaah.

Been there, done that.

While you were sleeping

another woman reclaimed her body.

While you were sleeping, another man treated a woman like something he wiped off his shoe.

While you were sleeping, a 35 year-old woman lived in a housing association bungalow when she should live in a palace, because a man decided his desires were more important than not raping a child.

While you were sleeping, women's bodies were mutilated, maimed, stretched, contracted, hidden, exposed, celebrated, loved, desired, pleasured and hopefully somewhere, some women got some fucking sleep too.

Are you sleeping? Good.

Are you sleeping comfortably? Then you live in a rich, beautiful world indeed. A blessed world. One much like mine.

How much sleep do you think a woman who was raped as a child loses, on average?
Five hundred thousand hours?
A fucking lifetime's worth?

While you were sleeping, indignities beyond your wildest dreams were visited upon the bodies of those who dared not to fit in, who dared to not have breasts or bottoms or vaginas or vulvas or labia or clitorises that looked like someone thought they should look.

While you were sleeping, violence beyond your most terrible nightmares were visited upon women, children, men, non binary folk, trans women, trans men, and everyone in between.

So where were you?
If you were sleeping, count yourself so fucking lucky.

And then say it with me. NOT IN MY NAME.
Not while there's still breath in this body.
I believe women. I trust women. I believe children who say they were violated. I believe women who say it. I believe girls who say it. I believe boys, and anyone else who wants to come to me and who needs their story shouting from the rooftops because I am a writer and I have that platform and I will TELL. THAT. STORY.

Keep telling me. Never stop telling me.

Mental health & mental disability

(These are all direct quotes from people with invisible disabilities)

I always had a sense of being different, but as a child you don't know how to describe or express it. You just try to survive.

Even as a 4 or 5 year-old, I never understood why other people were so slow and eager to conform. I see neurotypicals as bovine, tedious and trivial. Other girls wanted to chatter and play with each other's hair--I couldn't see the point. Why would you waste time when you could be working? I was never a little girl who flirted or looked pretty to get her way. I cared about being complimented on my work, not my looks.

Adults and teachers often seemed stupid to me. I remember a friend in 6th form asking me "How does it feel to be smarter than the teacher?" I laughed and shrugged it off because that's what society teaches you to do. However, I've always felt like I had to really simplify things all the time just so other people could grasp it. I suppose others might feel like that with me and say, Maths or Physics, although I'm getting better at those as I get older. I always preferred English. My mind works in words, not pictures or numbers. However, if you think about it--words are pictures, and numbers can function as words!

I've always seen days of the week, numbers, letters and months in colour. People say "Oh yes, I do that too" but what they really mean is they associate colours with moods. Monday is NOT blue in my mind, however lousy people feel about Mondays. Monday is dark red in my mind. I don't know why, it just is. Wednesday is a good day for me not because it's 'hump day' or any of that neurotypical nonsense; it's a good day for me because Wednesday is baby pink and I love pink, purple and all strong colours.

I wish there was a purple number but there isn't. I love 8s though, because 8 is magenta in my mind. I met an autistic young girl and the first thing she noticed was that the room felt blue because of how the shades were pulled down and how they were catching the light. I felt like I understood her at that moment.

I think a lot of girls are on the autistic spectrum but because boys are noisy, violent and domineering, they get noticed first. I think there are probably just as many Aspie girls as there are boys, but because of male scientists refusing to recognise their own bias, girls don't get diagnosed until they are adults.

I know I'm on the spectrum but I'm NT enough to know that. I can translate between severly Aspie or Autie people, as I call them, and the rest of the world. Words are my gift, my chosen medium. I would always rather read than talk to strangers, I would always rather write than go to a big party. I love small gatherings with treasured family or friends. I can talk to a whole room of people, I can make small talk if I have to. However, I'm an introvert and these things drain me.

We all contain multitudes; I am Aspie, BPD, introverted, but I'm also loving, caring, have a fantastic memory and a huge sense of humour. I love to arse around, just like a kid. I may be 33 but I think I'm getting less serious with age, and I think that's what I need. I was so serious as a child. I had thoughts at age 4 that no child should have. At age 9 I cried so much once that I blocked the toilet! Now I'm two decades older, I can see that those were signs of, respectively, Aspergers tendencies, and Borderline Personality Disorder. I think a lot of mental health problems are caused by trying to live in the normal world.

Girls are presumed to have eating disorders if they're too skinny or too fat, but it could just as easily be Aspergers, ADHD or any number of mental health issues. The squeakiest wheel gets the grease in this world, so girls fly under the radar. Girls are taught at an early age that you either fit in, or you pay a huge, painful price. As a feminist, I strongly believe that autistic women melt down because they buckle under the pressure of trying to act "like other girls." When I was 13, I wanted to go to discos and kiss boys not because I cared about any of that, but because it seemed to be how you fitted in. At 15, I could see that getting drunk and smoking was a fool's game, so I did neither. When I got to uni at 18 and found that people could be genuinely nice, not just fake nice, I drank a lot and had a lot of fun, but I was also notorious for being volatile.

I'm lucky my old friends still speak to me. I was a messy, frightening person. My BFF said once "You are easy to love, but easy to fear." That really pulled me up sharp.

"There are actions that neurotypical people’s brains are doing in a very automatic and deep-seated manner; Aspie brains are doing the same actions but in a conscious, artificial way. 

For example: your digestion just works and you don’t have to think about it and it doesn’t tire you. But for us we’re doing it in a way that’s conscious and laborious. 

This is the problem in the research. I’m very self conscious about my learning disorder, my ability to read and take in things, and it makes me not want to contribute even though as an Aspie I want to read everything and take in everything on the subject." - Anon, woman with ASD

S*** People Say to People with Disabilities

These are all actual words said by actual people to either me or to people I know well. In brackets is the individual who uttered them. I think we can all learn a lot from this list.

"You don't seem like you have Borderline Personality Disorder; you're not manipulative." (Friend)

"You can't have an eating disorder, you're a normal weight." (Dietitian)

"How can you have X disability? You're black!" (Take your pick, h/t to J Applebee for that!)

"I don't do drama." (Usually massive apologists for awful people)

"You can't have BPD, you're not a twat. People with BPD act like twats." (Friend)

"We wouldn't be self-diagnosing there a bit, would we?" (Stranger)

"You don't need care hours for housework any more." (Local authority, MK)

"I don't think it's chemical. I think you just need to go for more CBT." (Social worker, Milton Keynes)

"You have to pay 20GBP more this month for care. No, we can't explain why." (MULTIPLE local authorities, UK)

"You make eye contact; you can't have Aspergers'." (Media, doctors, therapists, friends)

"You hug people; you can't be ASD." (See previous)

"You're not socially awkward enough to have ASD." (See previous)

"You claim you care about people with disabilities, yet you parked near a dropped kerb for 4 minutes. Yeah, we don't care that you paid for your ticket and weren't obstructing traffic." - (Local council that shall remain nameless for now)

"You're not like her. She's mental." (Cheating married man)

"You're just butthurt that X PREDATOR picked me!" (Defenders of cheating married people, throughout history)

"If I had an invisible disability, I'd never tell anyone I was ASD! You're lucky." (Stranger)

"You're too broken for me to help you." (Therapist)

"We can't bring your psychiatrist appointment forward any further. No, we know you just tried to kill yourself, but five days from now is the best we can do." (NHS)

"I think you're just very intelligent, I don't think you need a meds review or to see a psychiatrist." (Social worker, NHS)

"We gave you physio once and it didn't work, so I'm afraid you can't have it again." (NHS)

"Yes, we have to cut your care hours again. We either don't know or don't care that you're getting ill from living in a filthy house." (Local council)

"A new catheter fitting operation is going to be an 8 month wait. We're aware that you get so many UTIs that leaving the house is hard." (NHS)

"Boys don't get eating disorders." (Media, older generation, take your pick)

"Only intelligent people get eating disorders." (GP)

"Can't you just toughen up?" (Take your pick)

"You can't sexually assault a man." (Media, older generation, women, so-called friends....)

"Other people have it much worse, you know." (EVERYONE, EVER!!)