Obama fear

from Salon

Tom the Dancing Bug

I love this cartoon!

From salon.com

This is the reality of churches in middle England today.

My partner's parents are devout Christians. This has caused problems on occasion in the past. However, things have got easier, and these days, the relationship between my (athiest) partner and his parents is generally good. We agreed to go to a carol service with them at their local church on the 23rd. The church itself was lovely, very simple inside, but lit by Christmas lights and candles, which made for a good atmosphere. The service was well-attended, and the carols were good.

Now on to the negatives. I had never realised that there were so many pro-life paternalistic, and patriarchal overtones in the Christmas story. During the readings, I became very uncomfortable with the messages which were being conveyed. Mary, for example, is given no choice in whether or not to carry God's child. Furthermore, when Joseph finds out that she is pregnant, he no longer wants to marry her, but is persuaded by an angel sent by God who assures him that Mary is 'unsullied' and therefore is fit for marriage. There were many other examples, and at some point I intend to read these Bible passages in detail, and then write a critique of the ideologies expressed.

The worst thing was however yet to come. The vicar at this church felt that it was appropriate to start his sermon by making jokes about the name "Mohammed", and encouraging the congregation to laugh (which they did). My partner and I were so paralysed by horror that all we were able to do was to stare at each other in disgust. If this is the sort of 'tolerance' of other religions which the Church of England practices today, then it makes me want to run as fast as possible in the opposite direction. I cannot believe that he is able to get away with that sort of reprehensible behaviour. The Church of England should be deeply ashamed of itself. I am certainly ashamed for it.

Rape victim, aged 10, "probably agreed to have sex"

Oh. My. God. I don't know a great deal about the Australian legal system, but I know that the reason that there are laws in place which state that children under a certain age do not have the capacity to consent. Therefore any sexual intercourse with them is rape. These laws are there in order to protect young people from being preyed upon by adults and (in some cases) older children.

Even if this 10-yr-old had consented to sex, her consent should mean nothing in the eyes of the law. Otherwise why do we have these laws in place?

This just makes me so sad, and simultaneously confirms why it is that I am a feminist. I can only hope that the victim manages to access the support she needs in order to rebuild her life, and that the judges and prosecutors involved are sacked.

The politics of street-parking

Whilst I was writing the previous post, I heard an altercation outside in the street, with one man yelling loudly. Obviously, partly out of concern, and partly out of nosiness (I admit), I looked out of the window to see what was happening.

I have a lovely elderly Indian man as a neighbour, who has lived in the house next door for about 40 years. He had asked a young (white) man to move his car closer to the car in front, so that someone else would also be able to fit into the space which he was using. Now, knowing my neighbour as I do, I am certain that he would have been as polite and courteous as he was able. However, the young man decided to take issue with his request and started to verbally assault my neighbour. My neighbour said to him 'is this civilised behaviour?' which the young man leapt on as a 'racist insult'. I am really angry about this. This just screams of white male privilege doesn't it? How dare this elderly Indian man ask him to move his car? Doesn't he know that this young man can do what he likes, because he is superior in society?

I think this is one of the fundamental problems with our discourse about race in this country. I think that the term has been hijacked by people who resent attempts at equal opportunities. This is not the first time I have witnessed a white person use the 'race card' in an argument as a way of trying to discredit the opinions of their adversary. In contrast, I have never heard a person of an ethnic background accuse racism in this way. Now, of course, I am only one person, and so my experiences may well not be representative, but I feel very strongly that we are now deliberately misunderstanding the term 'racism' because, in fact, we are still deeply racist.

Now, I am sure actually that the young man did think that my neighbour was being racist. But I think it was because of several factors. This young man did not like being told that his method of parking was inconsiderate by an Indian man, whose English is a little accented, because he felt that his rights were more important than those of my neighbour, because he was born in this country. I think that this is very revealing about the deep-set opinions of this young man. He was unable to see past the colour of my neighbour's skin, and so for him, the issue became one of race. My neighbour, on the other hand, was shocked to be called racist, and I could see him reeling, because his simple request that this young man move his car forward by about 2 feet had been no more than that. There was no political, racial, or ideological motivation behind his request. As a resident of this street, where parking is very competitive, he was trying to ensure that the space was being used as efficiently as possible. The worst criticism of my neighbour is that he was being a busybody.

Perhaps we need to have a national poster campaign or something, to re-educate people about what constitutes racism?

Rape, Race and Prostitution; Campaigning for Justice in the 21st Century (Conference)

I recently started volunteering at Crossroads Women's Centre in London, and they put on this inspiring conference in honour of International Women's day. Despite harrowing stories of women's personal experience of rape and domestic violence, as well as racist attacks, I felt that this event was very positive. There was a genuine sense of support for the brave women (and men) who stood up to talk about their experiences. It was interesting also to see the links between rape, race and prostitution, and the ways in which women are particularly disadvantaged in these fields.

I think we have got a serious problem in this country. The police are not taking rape seriously enough, putting pressure on victims to withdraw their accusations, 'no-criming' cases, and failing to investigate others fully, which means that the CPS is then unable to take these cases to court and win. We are not protecting women. It is difficult to know what the solutions are, but I think that we need to start making a really big fuss about the statistic that there is a rape conviction rate of 5.3% here. As women, we have to start standing up for our right to be able to walk around alone, late at night, drunk and wearing a short skirt, and not fear rape, or if the unimaginable were to happen, we should not doubt that the police would work their hardest to find our attacker.

As for racism and prostitution, these are simply not talked about enough. We like to live in a fantasy world where racism doesn't exist, and if it were to happen, the police would 'deal with it'. The reality is somewhat different. A brave asylum seeker from Somalia told us her story of being violently attacked by her neighbour, who called her all sorts of horrendous names, and smashed her nose in. When she called the police to her house, they arrested her husband, and let her attacker get away. If this doesn't prove the institutional racism in the police, then I don't know what does.

I think that the most revealing thing that can be said about our attitudes towards prostitution is that it is still the prostitute who is criminalised, rather than the punters who perpetuate this cycle of abuse and humiliation (as it is for the vast majority of prostitutes in this country, who have a history of childhood abuse, drug addiction, or who have been trafficked.)

I can't claim to have any solutions to these problems, but I feel that the first course of action for us all should be to accept that these are still problems, which particularly women face, and are impeding their ability to contribute fully to society as they are fully entitled to do.

Shilpa Shetty

I don't watch Celebrity Big Brother, but I have been reading reports in the press all day about the appalling behaviour of housemates towards Shilpa Shetty. I think that this is a clear case of racism, and Channel 4 should be disciplined severely by the regulator. I would feel more comfortable living in a society where we call a spade a spade, and are able to find it in ourselves to accept that racism still exists, and we still have to strive for equality on race as much as we do for gender.