The Blame Game

The Blame Game

Why do we feel more comfortable blaming victims than abusers?

"Blame is the discharging of discomfort and pain. It has an inverse relationship with accountability. Blaming is a way we discharge anger." Brene Brown

This is a complex social and psychological issue with many layers and depths. The truth is it is undoubted more comfortable to blame the victims, or society at large or anyone really. In avoiding our own accountability we slide our shame, as well as the abusers shame onto the victim. It's tidy. The powerful stay powerful. The weak, get weaker and we can pretend it's out of our control (while controlling it).

Culturally we minimise, deflect and protect ourselves and those we care about from the ire of the powerful with silence and shame. Our silence and silencing victims. Our shame and the shame put on the victim.

We are programmed not to challenge authority, even when we know it's wrong. While looking for the psychological studies that prove exactly this point I found hundreds of blogs, articles and curriculum to teach children to "respect authority".  School in particular teaches this blind obedience to our "betters". Stand in line! Do as you are told! I'm right, because I say so (even when I am wrong). We learn early and model our social groups around this power structure. It is exceptional difficult to break this kind of conditioning. Yet it is also vital to do so.
Psychologically we also prefer the narrative where we can imagine we and our loved ones are safe, even if it is an incredibly damaging lie. It gives us a control over events that are not within our power. The thought that only slutty, bad, stupid, silly, immoral, pretty, pushy, weak, and so on are victims is a way to insulate ourselves and loved ones from something terrible. It "protects" us from the horrid reality that anyone can be a victim. It seems too random. Too paralysing to be true.
This way of thinking is of just as traumatic as the abuse itself.
It also leads people to minimise abuse to be able to hold themselves and those they care about within those careful place holder's in their mind.
"My daughter is a good girl, good girls don't get raped, so she can't have been."
This added trauma of trying to twist our ideas of victimhood about ourselves and others and our own narrative can pull and push so hard it breaks people.
We see abuse victims try and "make themselves ugly" or "be too strong to be a victim" only to fall fowl of abuser or abuse again because the truth, which is so much more scary, is that it is not in the control of the victims at all.
If you were mauled by a wild bear, that happened to stumble into where you work, no-one would blame you for not wearing a safer clothing option. It wouldn't be a moral judgement placed on you, it would be an outrage that the bear was allowed to roam around hurting people.

The truth is that predators walk amongst us. That they can and do wear human faces. That they can be charming or bullying. They understand power and gather power to aid their ability to get away with hurting and harming their "prey" (that's us by the way).

You can learn to defend yourself. Make yourself look like a troublesome target. Yet if the predator wants to attack you, they will usually find a way. The only way to stop this is for those who see what has happened to speak up. To alarm and alert that there is a predator and to remove it. Whether it is firing them, putting them in prison or something else.
I know it's hard. I know it goes against much of our conditioning but we must begin to see the problem is the abuser. That anyone can be a victim. Our silence is deafening and it's deadly.

Consent

Consent

Harvey Weinstien is a sexual predictor. He is a powerful bully who threatened or bought compliance even over powerful men (like the NY DA who dropped his case against Weinstein after a sizeable donation). Yet his favourite "prey" were young and powerless women. From models to receptionist, to actors and directors, as long as they were young, pretty and compared to him, powerless, he pursued them.
He (like a serial killer) had a favoured ruse to get these women alone with him. Though he was not rooted to this ritual exclusivity. First he would flatter, then he would bully and then he would strike.

"What about the women who had sex willingly to get the parts? Disgusting!"


If you are tricked, bullied or too frightened to say no, this is NOT consent.
If someone lies to you about the reason you are in a space with someone "just coffee" or "working on a project or script" to trap you in a room with them, this is not consent.
If someone threatens, bullies or bars the door, this is not consent.

The idea that women have the power to consent in these situations is just clearly not true. The threat of physical violence, social or career destruction if they continue to fight or reject these advances can be deadly and we need to remember that.
The very real fear that something worse could happen if they don't comply doesn't mean they consent.

They are not willingly, sexually interacting with this person. It's not a date. It's not respectful or fun. It's a terrifying choice.

"I trapped you here under false pretences and I will "destroy" you if you reject me ."

Someone in that situation can comply. They can take it, smile and get out, but they could not have consented. In a culture where saying no to men's unwanted advances can get you killed, doubly so powerful men, it is clear women under these conditions can not consent.

Women who complied with his "desires" long enough to safely leave are just as much his victims as those who fought and screamed and ran. They are too ashamed (they carry the predators shame) to come forward and who can blame them.
The real threat of violence (social or otherwise) now makes them subject to the full force of the public (and in particular men's) hate and ire. They may even have profited temporarily, or accepted his gifts. Compounding the blame and shame they already carried, making them feel compliance was consent.

It is of course easy to victim blame. It makes us more comfortable to place the blame with the weak, rather than the powerful. Challenging powerful authority figures is educated out of us from a young age.Yet it needs to stop.

We need to really understand how compliance is not consent. A robot can not consent. It can comply. If a victim loses the power to say no, to leave safely, to live as they did before, they can comply but they can not consent.

If you need to lie, bully, threaten or trick someone into having sex with you, you have robbed them of the power of consent.

My heart goes out to the many victims out there silenced still by the culture of blame-shifting and victim hating. My words are simply this. You complied but didn't consent and you are not to blame.


 

There is no "alt-right" they are nazis.

 There is no "alt-right" they are nazis.

The definition of a nazi is pretty clear. You are either the kind with the big N, the Nazi, a member of the German government from the 1930's or a nazi (small n) whom espouses the beliefs and policies of that same people.
If you espouse fascism as a political movement you believe in nation above individual, believe that some "races"are superior and some inferior, and prefer autocratic and a dictatorial leader. This means forced suppression of opposition and social and economic repression of "non-favoured" groups.

Fascism likes bias or voter repression, or not allowing people to vote at all. However by and large it is a system that tends to get voted into power or get there by military coup.

There is no "alt-right" there is only fascism. A desire to oppress and carve messy cultures and societies into nice neat groups to hate. In truth, anyone who isn't like them. It's difficult to argue with a nazi or fascist, because your very "otherness" makes you "inferior" and them "superior". They don't need a better argument, they have a bigger gun. They don't need to rubbish your ideas, because you are "rubbish". You can not make someone else grant you person-hood. You can not make them listen or understand.
Racism and fascism go hand in hand because fascism requires a way to define the "superior" group. These ideas are not based on science, history or facts. There was no Germany for the most part of history. There were Germanic peoples but they lived under many different monarchies in what became the Prussian Empire and didn't exist until the 19th century. Again Italy was "late" to being a unified country and tended towards fascism and racism to define it's nationality.

Science and genetics tells us we are not even a "pure" species (neanderthal d.n.a is now undisputed as a fact in our evolution) , and that our origins as a species was wave after wave of migration from Africa. But you can't use this argument with someone who doesn't believe in evolution, whilst believing in their need to keep their "blood pure".

Germany doesn't do the flag waving kind of nationalism, because while they are proud of their current progress as a nation, they know where the flag waving military marches ends up. At the end of the second world war, the ordinary people, the people who voted and worked with the government were taken to see the death camps. The efficient horror that their racist fever have brought about. The death and torture of their friends and neighbours. This was not done because they were evil.

Those middle-aged house wives with husbands in the army weren't evil. They were ordinary people, and they were nazis. They were children made to join Hitler youth, then man guns when the adults were dead. They were soldiers.

You want to see what nazis look like watch this. Engineering Evil. 
 There were lots of chilling moments in this documentary but the one that irrationally bothered me the most were the downtime pictures of the camp workers. Men and women partying, picnicking, drinking and laughing, sun bathing and playing with their dogs.

They are not the comic book natzis. They are not the super villain natzis. They look normal, healthy and happy. That is why fascism is dangerous. That is why it is deadly. Ordinary people can do very evil things. It makes them no less evil. All that needs to be done to perpetuate evil acts is for them to seem ordinary.


Those "misguided angry young men with bright futures" are nazis. I'm sure they are neighbourly and sweet. They are still nazis and if they are "believers" in fascism they will do terrible violent things. That is why they are dangerous. Pretending they are not is exactly how genocides, death camps and torture happen. Your inability or unwillingness to see them as dangerous is not spiritual or kind, it makes you blind. Blind to history. Blind to the hate. Blind to the systematic racism all around you. Can you imagine if anyone other than "nice white folks" had taken military grade weapons to a demonstration what would have happened? If they had been chanting about ethnic cleansing? If one of them had murdered and maimed innocent people? Every single PoC would have been arrested. Many would have been shot dead at the scene. This is the racism inherent in the system.

While punching nazis might make a good point, in reality we need to address the causes. The racism. The inherent violence in fascism. A nazi needs to be arrested and investigated as a terror suspect, because they are dangerous radicals that believe that violence is their right. This is what would happen is they were PoC, if they were Muslim, if they were part of groups that espoused violence.

Ordinary people are just as able, if not more so to do terrible evil things. They will tell themselves all kinds of lies, just doing my job, if not me someone else, if I speak out I could get in trouble, they are scum, I am better, my children will thrive if these children die...
Lying to ourselves or "wishing it away" plays into their hands. It allows hate to flourish.
We have to stand up, speak out and not tolerate fascism because it will be the death of us if we don't.

"Why haven't you killed yourself yet?"

I can not adequately describe what the assessments for the sick and disabled are like for those whom have never experienced them. As though the validity of your whole being is called into question. That your illness or disability (or both) that you have struggled with, railed against and finally gotten help for is now nothing, you are nothing. A waste. A liar. The words of doctors and nurses meaning nothing the words of The State humiliating and degrading you.

"Why haven't you killed yourself yet?"

My lone vigil after the first assessment for my darling suicide watch is still an ache in me. One that years later makes me weep uncontrollably. That we came so close. That they pushed him so far. Three weeks. Three weeks and everyday I woke to the dread question "is it today I lose my husband?" Will I lose him too?

So you cry in the bath so they don't see you. You clean and cook and smile and joke. You fight. You write letters and take calls and fight for him, fight so he will live. You pray and pray and pray.

You use diet patches so you eat less because you don't want anyone else to have less food. You live on next to nothing and you don't complain, no matter the ruined Christmases. You hold it it because holding it in and holding it together are not a choice.

You win. Sort of. Then all too soon you have to fight again. Wiser this time, savvy even, but still fear that shadow darkening over his face once more. That dread creeps over you. The taste of tears in the back of your throat and death's shadow falls over his face again. It bleeds out all the colour from him, and try and remember that he has blue eyes.

You make yourself all kinds of promises. Ones you can't keep. Never again. Never again but then that envelope heavily hits the mat and the dread, the humiliation, the horror of it washes over you and you are sobbing again, shaking uncontrollably. 

Yet you are one of the lucky ones. So many dead. So many you half knew and never knew vanished into that long bureaucratic death.

I don't think you understand yet. Stand or sit before these people and they will judge if you deserve to live, with any kind of dignity or even at all. For them to look you up and down and tick a box and ruin what little life you have. 

Keep Calm

Keep Calm and Carry On?

In the wake of a multitude of trauma and tragedies this country and people have faced these last few months I am getting a bit sick of people who haven't been directly affected telling those that have how they should feel and react.

"Calm down."

"Let's not get angry."

"Stop shouting and being unreasonable."

"You're not being logical."

Fuck off. Just fuck right off. Pain and grief are psychologically and naturally full of rage. It is a normal human reaction to the sudden and needless death.
I mean how many dead children is an okay amount to lose? How many people do you have to see die before your eyes before you are entitled NOT to be calm?
How many Government lies about these deaths are an okay number of lies? How many communities destroyed is too many?
At what point is outrage okay?
"I lost a hamster once in 1983, I think their taking this grief thing a bit far!"
Grief is not logical. Grief is not some containable emotion. It is the tearing of something intrinsic.
It is our basic human need to connect and if you have no idea how loss feels then your either really lucky or a sociopath. Neither of which entitle you to police people's real and raw emotions.
This Government is (and this Prime Minister is) culpable for these tragedies because of her policies people have died. They waged war on our public services from the police to the fire service, demonised and threatened immigrant communities all while taking away safety regulations for their own profit.
Direct, and logical.
These are the facts.
The facts are not pretty and it is likely that there will not be justice or truth for these people as there are gag orders placed on the media preventing them from telling it.
 When is it enough?
When it's your baby?
When it's your friend?
When it's your community?
We must let these communities and even as a country feel it, feel it all. We must not become numb the the pain of it. We can not normalise these tragedies. We can't afford the cost in human lives to "keep calm and carry on" any more.

Red Tape and Politicians for Hire

Red Tape and Politicians for Hire

Less than two weeks ago I was sat with a pot of tea and some scones discussing politics. It was just before the election. I said that one of my main problems was that  politicians and government officials from the Local Authorities to councils often based their actions not for the good of the people they were serving but for themselves, either directly or indirectly.
This clear nepotism and conflict of interest was irksome to me because it effectively removed the will of the people from the equation.
I cited our own councils past and present who use companies that are related to them to do work and seem to waste millions of pounds that is never found. They build buildings they don't need, and then can't use, and strangely it is never reported. They reclaim hundreds of vintage and expensive housing parts (from boilers, slate roofs and copper piping) replacing them with cheap and shoddy new models and get paid by the council for it.
The Local Authority used to be run by one man who had his wife acting as headteacher for 3 separate schools at the same time. No-one seemed to do anything about though they all knew it was a big problem.
We know that healthy care insurance companies lobby and pay money to Conservative companies that push and pull policy and rip off and sell our NHS. We know that Tory MP's voted to remove the rights and safe guards for residents with an overwhelming majority of them being landlords themselves.
"Red Tape" has been painted as boring, mindless, pointless bureaucracy but in reality it was hard won and woven from the innocent dead as a means to curtail the power of the rich to treat people with utter disregard. By demonising "red tape" and "health and safety" and ridiculous and pointless and making it seem as though they were "helping" they robbed people of health, safety and even their lives. By marketing it at "machismo" and those whom defend it as "whiners and whimps" at great many people believed this rhetoric; especially amongst those whom probably weren't allow scissors at school.
From removing guards on trains (their whole job is train safety officer was created to make sure something weighing about 180 tons going any where from 65 mph to 120 mph and full of people with hundreds of moving parts and so on was safe) to over crowding our juvenile detention centres; it all comes back to the utter disregard for basic human welfare. The right to life and health is not something given, so it is not one that can be taken away. It is inherent, innate, and important.
Red tape is the legal binding of those without care for human or animal well being.
One of the reasons I was so concerned about Brexit was because many of our laws do not have enough red tape. From food safety to enforcing our human rights, the EU laws were our safeguarding.
We need to bring back the joy of red tape. The glee of the poor man binding the rich. Let the rich admit our worth, be it financially or otherwise. Let them be forced to admit our humanity while tied  and gagged with shiny red tape.
  

The "Undeserving"

The "Undeserving"

" Human progress isn’t measured by industry. It’s measured by the value you place on a life. An unimportant life. A life without privilege." Doctor Who

When the conversation starts to move towards who deserves help or money it is remarkably one sided. No-one ever talks about the "undeserving" rich.
No-one cries out "but what about the drug addicts?" when discussing those who sell arms to dictators, or tobacco to children, have sweat shops with child labour or sell our health care to their family's healthcare firms. If they are "it" girls and party boys we don't hold them accountable for their actions, or that their wealth was stolen from other people (it's not stealing if an Empire does it?)That they are rich because they took it with a nice side order of genocide, slavery and contempt. 
No; that would speak to white guilt and privilege and that requires some kind of empathy.
No-one holds the rich undeserving accountable. No-one them expects to have to apologise for their ancestry or birth. Or who and how they conduct their relationships and marriages. They get to have "blended" not "broken homes".
The whole way we speak about the rich and poor pours more and more salt into the wounds.
What makes a human being "of value"? Is it the money you earn? Is it something you achieve? Something you endure?  
If a human being with money never has their validity of person-hood questioned why then do we do it to the poor? Why do we erode their person and blame them?
Blame is the discharge of vulnerable or uncomfortable feelings. It's actually quite simple.
Because they can't fight back.
If you take enough from someone they are too busy staying just alive to protest. Make them afraid and tell them they are nothing, evil, scum; long enough and they turn away.
It is our job then to fight, give voice to the voiceless.
To show them that they, at least to us, are still people and have value. That the children eating out of bins, the LGBTQ+ homeless teens, that the injured, disabled and ill are not trash.
That where their is life, their is hope, and maybe even kindness. That one person can make a difference.

Matriarchy isn't inverted Patriarchy

Matriarchy isn't inverted Patriarchy



Not as long ago as we would like to pretend the medical community agreed that women were "broken" or malformed men.
Patriarchy is still the dominant paradigm and there is this fear that equality would be more Matriarchy than equality. Matriarchy in this scenario would be an inversion of Patriarchy. A "broken" version of a male idea. In some post-Patriarchal communities (women and men who have reject male dominated concepts) do not display this at all. In fact they tend to exclude men in part, or entirely. From the Alapine's Womyns Lands in Alabama, which are a mostly lesbian older community to the Umoja in Kenya; a refuge for the women and children surviving sexual violence.
This idea of Matriarchy is a reaction to male violence, to Patriarchy at it's most vile and it is still tolerant, strong and thriving. It still doesn't look like "broken" Patriarchy. Women in these communities do not subjugate men. They do not abuse or hunt them for pleasure or sexual gratification. They live, and thrive simply without them. In Umoja there are several villages with more or less exclusion of men. There are ones that permit male contact but do not allow them to live within the village, and there are villages that allow them to live within their walls but they can not hurt, commit any violence or own any property.

This then is what reactionary Matriarchy looks like. A space where men are simply not required. A space where they are a choice, and sometimes a very temporary one.

There are still some traditional Matriarchies. The one that looks most like the idea that Patriarchal fear is in Aka in the African Congo. They live in the forests and are hunter gatherers. There are known to be several tens of thousands of them and they used to be called "pygmies". Childcare and cooking is done by the menfolk and the hunting and fishing done by the women. Violence is almost non existent and smacking a child is grounds for divorce. The men also commonly allow their nipples as a sort of pacifier.
In Mosuo in China, the 40,000 strong community with no word for "father" or "husband".Men live in the houses (large communities) of their Grandmothers, aunts and sisters, helping to raise their children whom are usually fathered by men who live with their own families house. Women do the finances and organising while men fish and tend the pigs.  Their "walking marriages"are a mature agreement that the relationship lasts as long as it lasts.

Interestingly for me, I find these echoing still in communities that have historic Matriarchies, like the Celtic cultures of Ireland and Wales I grew up in. Women ran the finances and the head of the family was likely to be an elderly and vicious woman. God help a man who beat a woman, for he would find (at the granny's behest) all the men in her family on his doorstep before the next night.The first time, they would break his left hand. A second, his right, and a third was usually his legs. Women were outspoken (if your not worried about getting a smack in the mouth you can be) and it was common for them to have "walking marriages" of their own having a distinct preference in the kind of person they wanted to have a child with and a distinctly different kind of man raise, live and love them. Out of necessity (due to dire poverty) the women in these communities often worked, be it doing laundry, raising orphans, or even in the industries pushing carts of coal, steel or iron.
Matriarchal tendencies still simmer just below the surfaces then. Yet when women in matriarchal communities rule they do not tend to horde power. When the centre or focus is mothering, nurturing, support and respect become the dominant ideals. There is emphasis on fairness, kindness and community. For the good of the many, not the few.
 Marriages and relationships tend to be a fluid and adaptive thing. No child is "illegitimate" and children are raised in a community. Crimes, especially violent crimes are greatly reduced in any society that has more egalitarian values. When men are not dominating men they do not react with rage and violence leading to calmer and happier societies.

Some people would like to believe that there has only ever been a fixed "natural" Patriarchal order to cultures but we know that they tend to be the loudest historically, like both ancient Greek and Roman cultures. However even in the male-centric  Greek cultures you find buried the Goddess underneath. Yes they have been paved over by Apollo, but Gaia's snake is underneath.
For the earliest remain of proto-cities we find Goddesses, in a multitude everywhere.

Patriarchy would like to claim that matriarchy is dangerous, wicked and just as bad as the worst kind of patriarchy but we know that it just isn't true.
We also now know that women are not "broken" men. That gender, sex and identity are a spectrum of being with huge parameters. Patriarchy is losing, no matter how hard it fights back because is not healthy for the majority. It makes for pretty monuments and large weapons, poverty and destruction. Our earth is a finite resource and we are in desperate need of a change of ideology. We first need to get rid of the idea that matriarchy looks like broken patriarchy. It looks like families, communities and freedom: sexual, economic, and emotional.  

  

Mansplaining

Mansplaining

I had no idea this was a contentious idea until I wrote it in a male dominated group. A D&D group on facebook. I put a shout out to my fellow female DM's about dealing with mansplaining, asking their advice.

Apparently my word was so hateful, so awful, so gendered and terrible I warranted death threats. I was a whore, a femin-Nazi, an attention seeker, an idiot, a liar, the ruiner of all good things.

Mansplaining is a short hand. It is the condensing of the experience of being an expert at something and having someone who is much less knowledgeable than you, "correct" you, repeat your answer as their own, wince, wrinkle their nose or simply just talk over you until they feel you have been firmly and justifiably put in your place.
It is an assumption that your grasp on any given subject is less, and predominately it is because of your gender.
I remember watching my mum when the kingpin broke on our Citron 2 CV on the motorway (we were lucky we didn't die) and while we waited for the tow truck three different men stopped and asked if she needed help with her tire.
I remember how sweet she was about it the first time. "Thank you but no, it's not the tire, kind of you to stop. Just fine..."
The programming of "stay safe, be polite" or "smile and nod" wears pretty thin, and as the thundering 18 wheelers kicked the standing water into a spay around us my mother found it increasingly difficult to stay polite. By kindly white middle-aged guy number three she had sort of resorted to yelling "it's fine" over and over while looking like she might shove him under the next lorry.

That's the thing, it an erosive and corrosive form of social violence. One that is almost always has the threat of violence behind it. The first time it happens that day your ability and patience are tested but it is an accumulative thing. Six "well meaning" assholes later it is much less easy to "shrug it off". It's a power play. When someone baby's you, it puts them in a position of authority. If you try and stay "adult" it can flip the conversation, but in terms of gender it usually goes that the man doesn't want to leave that position of power, and will do almost anything to maintain it.
This does a couple of things, firstly women learn to "be nice". You have to play along at least enough so this person doesn't violently erupt, because you can never tell which man will, and which won't. It also makes women use their "child" status much like a naughty toddler, twisting their "uselessness" into a weapon.

This is why I suspect me even voicing it's existence was met with such resistance. The hidden violence and pretence of kid glove sexual power was replaced by the real sexual violence.  (Fuck off and die).
I was told (thank you for mansplaining, mansplaining) that being patronised happens to everyone. Which is true, mainsplaining is not just about being patronised.  So if mansplaining is now a trigger word, one that makes this violence explosive, how can we ever talk about it? How can we unpick it enough to heal this power play? Undermining social verbal violence or  U.S.V.V. is a more gender neutral wording and it removes the idea that only men behave in this way (women do too, but it is not often backed by the majority and the threat of physical violence)  because the threat of dominating social physical violence D.S.P.V. is always present.

 Mansplaining is not being patronised. It is an undermining social kind of violence, one, that at anytime could explode into verbal and physical violence. It is a way to control conversations and power within a conversation, meeting or on-line thread. It is a "nice" form of gendered power play right up until the moment it isn't.

Poverty is not a meritocracy

Poverty is not a meritocracy

I used to like the Guardian. I spend more time writing responses to it's anti-poor and anti-Corbyn rubbish than anything else these days. Deborah Orr wrote a "piece" about the "deserving" poor. This was my response. 

"Deserving" 

" Human progress isn’t measured by industry. It’s measured by the value you place on a life. An unimportant life. A life without privilege." Doctor Who

 What makes them deserving? What makes them devoid of enough humanity to cast them aside as human waste? Poverty breeds bad choices. It breeds addiction and desperation. 
In Victorian Britain they blamed booze. If those feckless poor could just stop drinking themselves to death, then it would be acceptable to help them. The alcohol was cheap calories, it numbed the pain in the body and mind. The physical abuses, the lack of opportunity, the lack of basic human dignity and safety. 
Poverty is the same sickness for all the nice white smart phones the sickness endures and it is man made. It is easy to demonize the poor because no-one is really speaking for them. It is criminal that the taxes that huge corporations don't pay could solve this. It's not complicated. 
Poverty isn't a meritocracy. It is a social sickness, one that affects a great many and contributes to physical illness and even climate change. Will there be people that break the law, absolutely, but actually at a much lower rate than those in privilege positions. The reasons they break those laws (like stealing food from supermarket bins) are generally about survival. To say that because they are poor and "bad" they are less deserving" (by which you mean less human) is absolutely vile.