The Digital Economy Act is a truly soul-destroying piece of legislation, and OFCOM has not exactly been on the ball in meeting its obligations under the sections of the act designed to safeguard some small figleaf of consumer rights. Having read the entire consultation and parts of the Act itself, below is the response I have just submitted to OFCOM’s consultation on the Initial Obligations Code.
The deadline to respond to the consultation is Friday July 30th, 5pm. You can find the full consultation and details on how to respond here.
You can find more details on what the DEAct and Initial Obligations Code mean for you here.
You can join the Open Rights Group, which campaigns for your digital rights and against draconian legislations such as the DEAct, here.
Question 3.1: Do you agree that Copyright Owners should only be able to take advantage of the online copyright infringement procedures set out in the DEA and the Code where they have met their obligations under the Secretary of State’s Order under section 124 of the 2003 Act? Please provide supporting arguments.
Yes. In addition I would propose that an annual review is undertaken, comparing Copyright Owners’ initial estimates of CIRs with the actual number they have submitted throughout the year. The results of this review should be used for cost-sharing, as well as to help Copyright Holders improve the estimates they provide to ISPs.
Question 3.5: Do you agree with Ofcom’s approach to the application of the 2003 Act to ISPs outside the initial definition of Qualifying ISP? If you favour an alternative approach, can you provide detail and supporting evidence for that approach?
I am strongly concerned about section 2.23 (“Where a Wi-Fi network is provided in conjunction with other goods or services to a customer, such as a coffee shop or a hotel, our presumption is that the provider is within the definition of internet service provider.”). While I understand that initially such providers will fall outside of the framework of Qualifying ISPs, I believe it sets a dangerous precedent for the future. Open WiFi access points really help small businesses thrive. They also enrich the UK’s digital and physical economy. Increasingly, open WiFi access is expected as standard by customers of most coffee shops and hotels as well as other small business, and certainly is rapidly becoming standard in other countries.
The above quoted section is likely to strongly discourage proprietors of small business to provide open WiFi access as a feature to their customers. This is in turn likely to damage those businesses by driving customers away, and to have a significant negative impact on quality of life in Britain.
Question 3.6: Do you agree with Ofcom’s approach to the application of the Act to subscribers and communications providers? If you favour alternative approaches, can you provide detail and supporting evidence for those approaches?
I believe section 3.30 of the consultation document (“We consider that a person or an undertaking receiving an internet access service for its own purposes is a subscriber, even if they also make access available to third parties.”) potentially directly contradicts section (“Where a Wi-Fi network is provided in conjunction with other goods or services to a customer, such as a coffee shop or a hotel, our presumption is that the provider is within the definition of internet service provider.”).
Question 4.1: Do you agree with the proposed content of CIRs? If not, what do you think should be included or excluded, providing supporting evidence in each case?
I am concerned about the invasion of privacy which collecting this kind and amount of information about subscribers’ communication represents. I do, however, believe that if this kind of information is collected it should be made available to subscribers accused of infringement in its entirety to facilitate the appeals process.
Question 4.2: Do you agree with our proposal to use a quality assurance approach to address the accuracy and robustness of evidence gathering? If you believe that an alternative approach would be more appropriate please explain, providing supporting evidence.
This proposal does not meet the obligations explicitly put on OFCOM by the Digital Economy Act in Sections 7.2.a and 7.2.b with regards to the Initial Obligations Code, namely that “The required provision about copyright infringement reports is provision that specifies (a) requirements as to the means of obtaining evidence of infringement of copyright for inclusion in a report; (b) the standard of evidence that must be included”.
Allowing industry self-regulation on this matter risks breaching privacy legislation and does not live up to standards of openness and transparency one would expect in a modern democracy. I believe it is vital for OFCOM to review this section and set out detailed provisions as required by the Digital Economy Act.
Question 5.2: Do you agree with our proposal to use a quality assurance approach to address the accuracy and robustness of subscriber identification? If not, please give reasons. If you believe that an alternative approach would be more appropriate please explain, providing supporting evidence.
Similarly to question 4.2, I do not believe that OFCOM’s current proposals are meeting OFCOM’s obligations under the Digital Economy Act Section 7.3.a, namely “The required provision about the notification of subscribers is provision that specifies, in relation to a subscriber in relation to whom an internet service provider receives one or more copyright infringement reports (a) requirements as to the means by which the provider identifies the subscriber”.
Allowing industry self-regulation on this matter risks breaching privacy legislation and does not live up to standards of openness and transparency one would expect in a modern democracy. I believe it is vital for OFCOM to review this section and set out detailed provisions as required by the Digital Economy Act.
Question 5.3: Do you agree with our proposals for the notification process? If not, please give reasons. If you favour an alternative approach, please provide supporting arguments.
OFCOM has chosen a time-based approach for escalating copyright infringement notifications. In principle I agree with this, however, as I understand the current provisions, they do not foresee an expiry date for any notifications. I believe it is vital for notifications and CIRs to be time-bounded and to be deleted from a subscriber’s record after no more than 12 months, and that this should be made very clear and explicit in the Initial Obligations Code.
Question 5.4: Do you believe we should add any additional requirements into the draft code for the content of the notifications? If so, can you provide evidence as to the benefits of adding those proposed additional requirements? Do you have any comments on the draft illustrative notification (cover letters and information sheet) in Annex 6?
Any notification should, in addition to the proposed content, include a detailed explanation of how the evidence of copyright infringement was gathered and the subscriber’s IP address matched to them; a copy of the detailed evidence from both the Copyright Owner and the ISP; any other data the Copyright Owner and the ISP hold in relation to the incident in question; information on how long this notification will be held on the subscriber’s record before it is deleted.
This will help subscribers understand the process better as well as give them some of the data they will require to lodge an appeal if appropriate.
Question 7.1: Do you agree with Ofcom’s approach to subscriber appeals in the Code? If not, please provide reasons. If you would like to propose an alternative approach, please provide supporting evidence on the benefits of that approach.
To enable subscribers to lodge an effective appeal, they will need access to the detailed evidence (see also my response to question 5.4). Additionally, there is a significant information asymmetry between the subscriber on the one hand and the Copyright Owner and ISP on the other as the latter have significantly more technical expertise at their disposal. It is therefore extremely difficult for subscribers to lodge effective appeals as they may not be able to understand the technical details of the evidence against them and how this information was obtained. This is a very serious concern.
The deadline to respond to the consultation is Friday July 30th, 5pm. You can find the full consultation and details on how to respond here.
Author Archives: elmyra
ORGcon 2010
I’m going to confess to being the kind of geek who booked tickets to ORGcon the day it as announced, about 6 weeks ago, and who’s been looking forward to it for the last two weeks. And now I’m on the train home, utterly exhausted, having had a fab day and with my brain exploding with ideas. I think this post will mostly be an account of the event itself, though I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a couple of follow-up posts sparked by some of the conversations I had.
The opening keynote was a panel titled “Thriving in the digital economy”, with Cory Doctorow, David Rowntree (of Blur and ORG Advisory Council Fame), Jeff Lynn from Coadec, John Buckman from Magnatune and the EFF, and Obhi Chatterjee of Shyama fame. The panel covered a wide variety of areas, from why the current implementation of copyright, with all the DRM, litigation, etc. that comes with it, is bad both for content consumers and for most content creators, to looking at alternative business models and all the benefits that the real digital economy can bring.
One of my favourite quotes from the session was Cory Doctorow explaining how “it’s absolutely impossible to monetise obscurity.” On the flip side, he held up the example of Amanda Palmer’s recent pay-what-you-want album release accompanied by special edition merchandise: the merch sold out within 3 minutes, bringing in $15,000. Cory also spoke about how a side effect of the copyright hysteria is that we are increasingly designing our devices in a way that gives the user less and less control over them, and gives third parties (content distributors, rights holders, etc.) more and more control. Think of what Apple tell you that you can and can’t do with your iPhone and iPad, think of Amazon deleting paid-for ebooks from their customers’ devices, think of the closed, unstandardised nightmare that is your games console or set top box.
Dave Rowntree then spoke of the concept of an original of a work of art, and how in the digital age more and more artworks cannot really be said to have an original anymore. Faithful copies are cheap and easy to make, so to make money, he argued, artists need to create something that feels like an original, be that a box set, a special edition, or a performance.
Jeff Lynn spoke about how the legal framework of copyright should encourage creativity, not protect vested interests from technological change. John Buckman pointed out that digital rights are a global issue due to legislation harmonisation – even before ACTA there has been a significant convergence trend in this area. He also spoke at length about how DRM was protecting big companies’ interests from smaller competitors, and quoted Apple and Amazon as examples of this.
The Q&A at the end of the session included a really interesting question about the games industry. Cory Doctorow explained how the games industry has both suffered and benefited from the fact that legislators treat it mostly as a corrupting influence. The net result, however, has been that in the absence of DMCA-style enforcement in that area, the industry has had to think on its feet and re-invent itself as a service industry to beat “piracy”. I managed to get a comment in to the effect that content is a public good, and Cory Doctorow, riffing on Dave Rowntree’s theme of creating an original, pimped the forthcoming special edition of his short story collection which, frankly, gave the 400 or so assembled geeks a geekgasm. I am incredibly tempted to raid the savings account.
The next session I attended was a workshop on how to talk to MPs, in which Tom Watson gave an insider’s view into the life of an MP and gave us some invaluable tips for lobbying our elected representatives. I took a few key learnings from this: MPs are busy generalists and digital rights are an extremely complex topic; you have to take your MP on a journey, tell them a story to help them understand why the issues you are talking to them about are important; going to your MP’s surgery and talking to them in person can be the thing that makes the difference between them considering the issue or not; and making best friends with your MP’s case worker is a worthwhile investment. We did a brief role play to practise some of what we’d learned, and I was extremely fortunate to talk to an actual MP – Jane Ellison, Con., Battersea. She seemed genuinely interested in the subject as well as giving me some good input, which I really appreciate. Ultimately, digital rights is not a party-political issue, and chances are that you can find support from either side of the House – but you need to be prepared to take the time to educate your MP.
The next keynote was by Prof. James Boyle (@thepublicdomain), titled “The Incredible Shrinking Public Domain: A Paradox”. There was some great food for thought in that. Prof. Boyle pointed out how we are the first generation in history who are cut off from their own culture. The extension of copyright terms that we’ve seen in that past few decades from as little as 14 years to a retrospective extension to 70 years after the creator’s death has the effect that, barring a deliberate choice from the creator, our culture is not accessible to be built on by others within the same generation – or even several generations on. Yet, by far the majority of works exhaust their commercial viability after only five years, and most works which copyright term extensions have put beyond our reach are actually orphan works. In addition to this, because copyright law is inconsistent, impractical and only benefits a very small number of people, an entire generation is growing up with the idea that breaking the law isn’t actually wrong; and while this may be relatively harmless in the case of copyright law, it significantly undermines the foundations of our society. There was a good discussion in the Q&A on the subject of civil disobedience. I believe all the sessions were being recorded and hope that they will be made available on the internet. If you only have time to see one, make it this one – it was a very good talk indeed.
After lunch (which was spent with pfy, ewtikins and Simon and Julia Indelicate, talking about making art for everyone), Tom Watson, Julian Huppert, John Grogan, Anita Coles and Richard Allan (Eric Joyce having been “detained in Colombia”) gave us an eye-opening insight into the Digital Economy Act – both how it came into existence and what we can do from here to fight some of the more unpleasant parts of it. My key take-outs from the session: the DEAct was the result of the biggest lobbying operation Tom Watson has seen in his political life, with MPs being outnumbered 4:1 by lobbyists at some meetings; copyright is not actually something most politicians care or know much about – though some of that is changing and the ORG, Liberty and Consumer Focus campaigns are beginning to have an effect; a lot of the future of the Act will depend on two men in particular: Vince Cable and Jeremy Hunt; and while Cable is broadly supportive of the digital rights agenda, Hunt has so far been hard to read on this and some of the panellists were very pessimistic on that front. There was a general consensus among the panel that the DEAct was unlikely to be repealed in its entirety (and that that wasn’t necessarily desirable), but that “laser surgery” was possible and something worth fighting for.
Following this I attended a workshop on the future of the DEAct campaign, with different sub-sessions, including one on reclaiming public attention for digital rights issues. There might even be a video of me speaking at that (eek!), and I do owe Florian some notes which I will send through when I’m slightly less braindead. Incidentally, the immediate next step on fighting the DEAct is to respond to the Ofcom consultation by this Friday (30/07). You should do that.
I must admit I was ever so slightly out of my depth in the session on reforming privacy laws, but there were some very good speakers there, and I do have a fair amount of things to read up on as a result. Jennifer Jenkins’ talk “Theft! A History of Music” was both informative and entertaining. She pointed out that ever since Plato we have been terrified of remixing music; that technology is unruly and creates havoc with music; what used to be creativity is now considered theft; and that copyright extensions for the work of dead musicians seemed to be confusing composing with decomposing. Possibly my favourite quote of the day was from a Pirate Party member in the Q&A of the session, along the following lines: “Up until the 10th century you only needed musical talent to be a musician; from the 10th to the 19th century you needed to be literate as well; in the 20th century you needed expertise in recording technology, and in the 21st century you need a law degree.” I have to point out that I was ever so well-behaved in that session, as Cory Doctorow was sat behind me and two seats across (retweeting me on a couple of occasions) and I did not turn into my “crazed fangirl” alter ego at all. 😉
The final session I attended before running for the train was titled “Music Industry Reformists”, with the panel consisting of Simon Indelicate, Steve Lawson, Dan Bull and John Buckman. (Simon was scandalised that the four of them were “the best they could come up with” on the subject of music industry reform.) There were interesting discussions on music industry business models old and new and what it’s like being a signed artist, and going from signed, to unsigned, to unsignable (both Simon and Dan were very proud of their unsignable status). John Buckman made some interesting points about the process of shopping for music being neither fun nor cool, and finding new music being a social activity; he also thought (and his business results seem to confirm) that MP3 downloads aren’t the be-all and end-all of music distribution these days and there is room for a wide variety of streaming, downloading and other distribution options. Steve Lawson said that 90% of the time he talks about other people’s music, because what’s good for music is good for him. He also made a very good point about the “P” word – piracy is very far from being an appropriate word to describe copyright infringement, and the copyright debate has been hijacked by language.
Overall, I had a great time. My one piece of constructive feedback would be that there wasn’t quite enough time for networking in the agenda – there were quite a few people I wanted to meet or chat with and it just wasn’t possible, especially as I had to escape to catch a train and couldn’t head to the pub with everyone at the end. I do very much hope that this will be the first of a series of annual events, and that I’ll be able to wear my “Step outside analogue boy” t-shirt with pride next year. A huge thank-you goes to the organisers and the speakers for a great event.
The Big Society leaves a lot to be desired
So, David Cameron is really passionate about the Big Society. He tells us so in his greatly hyped speech today.
The Big Society is about a huge culture change…
…where people, in their everyday lives, in their homes, in their neighbourhoods, in their workplace…
…don’t always turn to officials, local authorities or central government for answers to the problems they face …
…but instead feel both free and powerful enough to help themselves and their own communities.
I think it’s a remarkable feat of rhetoric to propose largely the same idea Margaret Thatcher was talking about when she said there was no such thing as society and call it the “Big Society”. Compare and contrast:
“I think we’ve been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it’s the government’s job to cope with it. ‘I have a problem, I’ll get a grant.’ ‘I’m homeless, the government must house me.’ They’re casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There’s no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation.” (Margaret Thatcher)
I could quite happily write 6000 words about how those two statements are identical; but really, I don’t need to. I do rather think they speak for themselves. I must admit, though, that a small part of me admires the rhetorical skill it takes to pull this off.
At the very beginning of his speech, the Prime Minister tells us how there are two parts to his job: the bits that he does because it is his duty, like cutting the deficit, and the bits he is really passionate about, like the Big Society. And yet, not 500 words later, right in the middle of being told what the Big Society is all about, we are back on the deficit and how it’s a demonstration of the fact that “micromanagement from Westminster” doesn’t work. So maybe these are not separate parts of Mr. Cameron’s job after all. Which begs the question: is the Big Society a chore he is doing because it is his duty, or is he really passionate about cutting the size of the state and using the Big Society as a vehicle for that?
I must admit I was delighted to see a return of George Osborne’s catchphrase: “We’re in this together.” I thought it had gone out of fashion. Certainly for every “We’re in this together” I hear or read from Conservative politicians or commentators, there seem to be ten calls for this, that or the other (the NHS, the BBC, or any other public sector evil du jour) to “feel the pain of cuts”.
All good speech writers know that concepts come in threes, and David Cameron’s are no exception. First we have the three big strands of the Big Society: social action, public service reform, community empowerment. These are followed by the three key methods: decentralisation, transparency and providing finance. Let’s take them in turn.
“Social action” is looking for millions of people – every single one of us – to give time, effort and money to causes around us. I take issue with this on a couple of levels. Firstly, while there may be people out there who do have the time, I suspect anyone trying to hold down a full-time job won’t. You just need to take a look at unpaid overtime statistics to see that we as a country already give our employers £27.4 billion’s worth of free overtime per year (Source: TUC). Now our government is demanding the same. Secondly, I am not convinced that this kind of social action is necessarily the best possible use of resources, skills and talents. I may one day become a pushy middle-class parent. This does not make me in any way qualified to run a school. David Cameron himself has said in the News of the World that he is terrified about finding a good local school for his children. Would it be the best use of the PM’s time to go off and start a free school? Hardly.
Public service reform appears to be all about getting rid “bureaucracy” and getting organisations such as charities, social enterprises and private companies to provide public services. I’m probably not alone in suspecting that the operative word here is “private companies”. I’ve already talked on this blog about the Tories’ ideologically motivated desire to reduce the size of the state, to hand out large chunks of it to the private sector. This is largely based on the economic theory that free markets generate the most efficient outcomes (for a very specific and narrow definition of efficiency). There are two issues with this: firstly, markets only generate efficient outcomes under very specific conditions which don’t apply to most of the real world and definitely don’t apply to public services, and secondly I believe there is a strong case to be made for valuing things such a social justice over efficiency.
I am tempted to say that the only thing that needs saying about empowering communities is that David Cameron wants to create “communities with oomph”. Not sure which focus group they ran this one by, but it hardly sounds prime-ministerial to me. More to the point though, Cameron’s vision of “neighbourhoods who are in charge of their own destiny, who feel if they club together and get involved they can shape the world around them” has something of the 1950s about it. As with his marriage policy, there is something nostalgic about this, almost as if he’s in denial of modern life.
As for the methods, I have already talked elsewhere on this blog about “decentralisation”. Cameron wants to devolve power from central to local government, and even further down to what he calls the ‘nano’ level. (Anyone playing buzzword bingo here?) I find it interesting how this plays out in real life, for instance with Michael Gove’s flgaship academies and free schools policy, where the local level is going to be bypassed completely and control put into the hands of whoever fancies a go at running a school. Despite all the rhetoric, there is a very strong legitimacy issue here. Wasteful bureaucracy or not, the local authority does consist of my elected representatives and thus has a mandate to make choices about the delivery of public services on my behalf. Charities, social enterprises and private companies, on the other hand, hardly have such a mandate from anyone except the people directly involved in them.
Under transparency, the PM appears to be strongly advocating vigilantism:
“So, for example, by releasing the data about precisely when and where crimes have taken place on the streets…
…we can give people the power not just to hold the police to account…
…but to go even further, and take action themselves(…)”
Colour me worried.
Under providing finance, a lot of the emphasis again seems to be on getting private capital into the public sector. One thing bears pointing out here: While bureaucracy may be wasteful and inefficient (and that is not something I am particularly convinced of either way), the private sector demands its own tribute in the form of profit and shareholder returns. I have yet to see someone crunch the numbers on how public sector inefficiency compares to private sector profit seeking when it comes to the total cost of operation and taxpayers’ value for money of public services.
As an aside, I am also amused by the PM’s assertion that he believes in paying public service providers by results, about 1000 words after he has dismissed targets as ineffective.
So apart from the buzzword bingo, apart from the flashy rhetoric then, what are we left with?
I for one am left unconvinced. To me, the Big Society looks like a sustained effort to privatise the state, to privatise public space, and ultimately to abdicate responsibility, and I do not subscribe to the small-state ideology. Apart from ideology, though, I see three key issues with the Big Society. (See what I did there? All concepts come in threes.)
I think there is a real danger of ending up with pick-and-mix public services. David Cameron calls for communities to come forward and tell him what they are passionate about, what services they want to run. So my question here is what happens to those bits of the state that no part of the Big Society wants? This is, allegedly, not a “pilot” that will be “rolled out” – so if no one comes forward, what then?
I think the PM’s vision, geographically focused on neighbourhoods and streets as it is, is extremely limited and limiting. This is the 21st century. Yes, some of the issues I care about might be local, but the vast majority aren’t. I don’t share that many common interests with the people in my street, beyond seeing to it that our bins get collected. The people I have things in common with are elsewhere, and townhall meetings are not how we organise. Where is the scope for that kind of activism in the Big Society?
On a related note, the big trick that the Big Society, with its emphasis on decentralisation, misses is scale. Again, there are many local issues, but there are at least as many issues that require a certain scale – or to use Mr. Cameron’s word, a certain amount of oomph – to be tackled. If I passionately wanted to do something about violence against women, I could talk to my Neighbourhood Watch about it; but given the scale of the problem itself, this is hardly the right level to tackle it at. It needs to be addressed in healthcare, in education, in policing, in social services, and above all, it needs to be addressed on a national level.
Finally, for anyone who really passionately believes in the Big Society, I have this one question left: Which public service will you personally commit to delivering from tomorrow, through your own effort, in your own time, with your own money? If you can’t give me an immediate answer to that, and if our collective answers don’t match up to the public services actually needed out there, then this project is a non-starter.
On vision, values and ideology
The Conservative vision for our society is driven by an ideology that is outdated, philosophically unsound, and lacks basic human compassion.
I wasn’t in Britain during the Thatcher years, and even if I had been, I would have been too young to really understand and remember the political landscape. I came to this country in 1999, when New Labour had been in power for two years but was still shiny and new, when things still “could only get better”. My political consciousness when it comes to Britain therefore was shaped by a landscape where for a long time the Conservative party was beyond the pale, where they and their ideas were hardly even taken seriously. A procession of failed Tory leaders filed past, consigned to history, with me hardly noticing. The most remarkable thing about Michael Howard was that there was “something of the (k)night about him”, and in my memory Iain Duncan Smith’s leadership has no distinguishing features whatsoever.
And then along came David. I remember the Davis/Cameron leadership contest, and I remember finding it distinctly disturbing that the latter was – occasionally – making points I could agree with. This was clearly the man who was going to make the Tories electable again, and that gave me a vague sense of unease, though beyond pointing at specific policies I disagreed with I couldn’t have told you why. It has taken the Tories getting into power for me to realise where my real fundamental disagreements with them are, and I think it’s worth writing about – to make it crystal clear for all those of us who, for one reason or another, don’t remember the Thatcher years.
It is very rare in politics these days to speak of visions. The end of Communism, the fall of the Iron Curtain, heralded an end of ideology, and it is a lot more fashionable these days to discuss specific policies than grand visions. And yet, the vision is still there behind all the the detail, shaping that detail all the time, even if we can’t see the wood for the trees. Once the Conservatives were in power – and let’s face it, coalition or not, these are mostly Conservative policies that are being pushed through Parliament right now – their actions began to reveal the vision that drives them.
One of the first things to note is the Tory obsession with cuts. Ostensibly, this is to do with reducing the deficit. And yet, both the extent of the cuts and how they are being implemented goes well beyond that. Take, for instance, education and schools where the previous government’s Building Schools for the Future programme has now been thoroughly dismantled by Michael Gove, while parents, teachers and private companies are urged to apply for government funding to build new “free schools”. There is no argument on earth that can convince me that this is being done simply to reduce the budget deficit. Rather, it is driven by entrenched Tory ideology – the ideology of the small state, where the public sector must be dismantled and handed over to private enterprise. There is a blind belief here that “the market” does everything better and more efficiently than the state and that therefore as much as possible should be taken out of state control and handed over to the private sector.
The vision of the small state at any cost is highlighted further by calls from the Tory backbench and well-known Tory commentators like Tim Montgomerie for even the ring-fenced parts of public spending (foreign aid and the NHS) or the BBC to “feel the pain”. Such language makes me think not so much of reducing the deficit in order to ensure economic stability (and whether that works remains to be seen anyway) but of an almost childish, vindictive and willful destruction of the state.
Along with the small state, another key pillar of the Tory vision for our future is the family. David Cameron declared back in January that he wanted to lead the most family-friendly government in UK history. And yet, his government’s actions betray a sadly and shockingly narrow definition of family. The emergency budget hits women disproportionately harder than men, and single mothers even more so. Child benefit, housing benefit and a number of other benefits, allowances and services suffering the most severe cuts are disproportionately used by women. The proposed tax breaks for marriage – and I have no doubt that they will be back on the agenda soon enough – would only have applied to married couples where one partner didn’t work. This sends one message loud and clear: If you are a woman, get yourself married and preferably stay at home. No matter how many times David Cameron declares that when he says marriage he also means civil partnership, his vision of families is narrow, restrictive, and in the 21st century unrealistic. We are unlikely to return to the 1950s, regardless of the punishing cuts burdening single mothers or the “carrot” of a tax break for marriage.
And thus the twin visions of the small state and the nuclear family as the core unit of society are being rammed down our throats at any cost and by any means available. Learned-sounding men are telling us how it’s all about numbers and the deficit, how if we don’t do this we will end up like Greece, how it’s all about economics and there is only one way. What is important to realise is that there is more than one way.
Economics barely qualifies as a science. I can say this – I have a degree in it. Economics tells us that certain monetary and fiscal policies are likely – but by no means guaranteed – to produce particular outcomes. Economics does not tell us which of these outcomes are preferable. It can’t – it has no way of making that judgement. We as people make that judgement based on our values; our leaders make that judgement for us based on their values. It is very important to realise that any political debate at its core is not about outcomes – those are secondary. It is about values.
I am not going to try to second-guess Conservative values at this point. I can make some educated guesses on the subject, but ultimately those values are alien to me if they lead us to the small state and the nuclear family at any cost – which they clearly do. My values are different. Like many Conservatives I do value individualism and achievement – but only to an extent. Unlike most Conservatives, I realise that no one ever achieves anything entirely by themselves: There is a whole structure and society around us, a whole lot of factors like who our parents are or whether we were born black or white, male or female, straight or gay, that either limit or enhance our opportunities and choices in life. I believe that we as a society should counter-act those accidents of birth and should strive to create structures where their influence on choices and opportunities is minimised. I also believe that the more fortunate among us have a duty to support the less well-off. I firmly believe that the welfare state and progressive taxation are good things (and I say this as a higher-rate tax payer). I believe that while the market can create efficient outcomes in some situations, it is worth sacrificing some efficiency in order to gain social justice. Additionally, as an economist I recognise that in most real-life circumstances the market isn’t as efficient as economic theory would have it, and that there is a very good case for public provision of a significant number of goods and services.
And this is where any flirtation I might have ever considered with David Cameron’s Conservative party must end. Their vision, their fundamental values, are irreconcilable with mine. Their economic ideology is based on flawed assumptions as well as lacking the basic human quality of compassion; their social vision, too, is flawed and outdated.
Reframing the Narrative
(This was written a couple of weeks ago and has been sitting on my hard drive waiting for me to be back in the UK before it hit the Internet.)
If anyone had told me three weeks ago that I’d be sitting here writing this, and considering publishing it, I’d probably have had a nervous breakdown at them. As it happens, I pretty much did have a nervous breakdown in the meantime, and now it’s time to write this. This post may contain triggers. It is also not intended to speak for anyone else who may have had similar experiences to mine – it’s my own personal take on getting past a history of sexual abuse. I am writing this for a number of reasons:
- Writing helps me process things, and stops random thoughts popping up in my head at 3 o’clock in the morning. It helps structure and codify the reframed narrative I will be talking about below.
- I hope that in some small way I can help people out there on an individual level. I know that one of the most helpful things for me has been to understand that I am not the only one who has gone through this and that my own reactions to it are far from abnormal. If this helps you, then it would be great if you could let me know – either in the comments or via email. But you don’t have to – we all deal with these things in our own way, and it may not be the right thing to do for you at this time. Either way, you are not alone.
- Finally, this post is part of what is rapidly becoming a personal mission to raise awareness of violence against women in our society. When I first started talking about this in public not that long ago, it struck me how many people simply didn’t know not only the extent of the issue but even that violence against women was happening. By making it personal, I am hoping to move this beyond the realm of abstract statistics. The personal is political. I also owe a huge debt of gratitude on this front to RoadkillGerbil for speaking out about her own experience. The more of us do it, the more powerful the message becomes.
And this is as much preamble as this needs…
About seven years ago I wrote about being the victim of sexual abuse when I was in my teens. That post, at the time aimed mostly at my friends in an effort to break the silence and hopefully help me move on a little further, was full of justifications. It was written to answer the question which I expected from everyone: “Why did you let it happen?” As it happens, my friends are a lot less harsh than I have been with myself over the last 15 years, and that question never came. But at the back of my mind it has always been there.
Here’s what the world looked like in my head for 15 years, the narrative that I had created for myself: I was abused by an uncle when I was, as best I can tell now, 14 or 15 years old. In my head, I was grown-up enough at that point that it was reasonable to expect of me not to let this happen to myself. In my head, the responsibility was all mine, the pain was all mine, the guilt and the shame were all mine. And out of those, the worst were the guilt and the shame. I closed off a part of myself, and I didn’t speak about it for 5 years.
That narrative was incredibly damaging. It kept the guilt and the shame well fed, to the extent that even when I did eventually talk and write about my experience, it was in the framework of that narrative, expecting the challenge: “Why did you let it happen?” Whenever I considered telling my family, what stopped me was the fear of that challenge – the fear that they would blame me. And yet, very slowly and unconsciously to start with, and very rapidly and deliberately over the last few weeks, I have been reframing that narrative. Because there is more than one side to every story, and because sometimes what you always thought was your side isn’t quite right.
The first realisation which contributed to this reframing, ten years ago, was the monumental extent of the breach of trust which that person had committed. This was the person I had been closest to for my entire childhood. He lived in the flat below us. When I was upset or had fought with my parents, he was the person I ran to. When the abuse happened, I was too shell-shocked by that breach of trust to do anything about it.
Here’s another one: When a woman – or a child – says no, that means no. It should only need to be said once. There should be no conditions attached. This sounds obvious – it should be obvious; and if someone else came to me told me of a similar experience, that is exactly what I would say. And yet, in my head it somehow didn’t apply to me. Because saying no was clearly not enough to stop the abuse, clearly I should have done something else, something different. 15 years is a long time to carry that burden before you realise that no, you did everything right; it was the other party involved who was wrong.
And finally, there was the realisation that no matter how much I saw my 15-year-old self as an adult, I was a child. That was a blinding flash of insight I had while curled up in a ball on the floor in the corner of my bedroom, trying to talk to Paul about all this last weekend. The thing that finally helped me see it was that my cousin is now the same age I was when I was abused – and I see my cousin as a kid, and everyone else in my family does too; not a pre-teen sort of kid, and well on his way towards being an adult, but a kid who needs guidance and care and protection nonetheless. No one in my family – not even I – would expect my cousin to be able to protect himself from the kind of abuse I suffered entirely by himself. I have no words to describe the liberating power of this insight. Suddenly I felt free. I knew that whatever I chose to do from that point on was not going to be easy, but I also for the first time really, genuinely believed that, actually, this was not my fault. They weren’t just words I kept repeating to myself anymore.
All of the recent developments in my thinking have been prompted by some family drama we’ve been having. We’ve had a couple of deaths in the family recently, and my mother had expressed a desire to catch up with some more removed family members she’s not seen in a while – including the man who abused me. That was the first time I got an inkling that something had changed inside me. It was the first time I had a genuinely physical reaction to the thought of my experiences. My heart started pounding. I felt sick. I collapsed on the kitchen floor and sat there in a ball for a bit. I made it clear to my mother that I was not going to be part of this family reunion, told her not to ask why, changed the subject, finished the phone call and then just sat there feeling sick. And I decided this was progress. I wasn’t burying things inside anymore. It hurt like hell, but it felt good to actually feel something.
A couple of other family incidents, iterated with the thought precesses above, and eventually I told my mother. I am incredibly sorry for what it’s done to her, but it’s actually been incredibly helpful to me. Before that, my brain was trying to push me down one of two routes, neither very productive: keep suppressing things and live on like it never happened, or go see my abuser by myself for some sort of … fuck knows what, frankly. The thought of telling my mother, the thought of ever seeing him while she was in the same room, produced in my head a mental image of me as a very small child hiding behind my mother’s skirt. That of course played nicely into the whole “but you were grown up, you should have been able to stop it” narrative. Way to go, brain.
My first reaction to telling my mother was physical and violent. I hung up the phone, and I started not so much crying as howling. I couldn’t stop shaking. My teeth were chattering. I curled up in a ball on the sofa, Paul put a blanket around me and eventually, when I let him, held my hand, and I just sat there for a good 15 minutes. Even though my mother had believed me instantly, had not questioned a thing, had confirmed some of my new narrative in her reaction (“You were a child!”), the profound sense of shame that washed over me was soul-shattering. I thought, for those 15 minutes, that I would never be able to look my mother in the eye again. Eventually, it passed. Though the memory of the moment when I told her, of the words, made me physically whince and twitch for a few days afterwards – I’m slowly getting over that. I talked to Paul again later that evening and the entire time he held me and every so often I would just shake.
One of the many worst things about all this is having to deal with everyone else’s helplessness. There is no right way of reacting to someone you love telling you they’ve been hurt like this, but the most common reaction I have encountered is helplessness. That then translates into all sorts of things – deflection, denial, anger, self-blame; all those things that I’ve been going through myself, but from a slightly different, twisted angle. And because I have been through all of these myself, I have to help. When I tell people, I have to plan ahead for their reactions. One of the reasons I haven’t told my father is that I don’t think I can physically restrain him for long enough to reason him out of doing something monumentally stupid. With my mother, I suspect it will take me years to convince her that there is only one guilty party in all of this and it’s not her. So at a time when I’m feeling fragile and in need of support, I have to carry everyone else.
Another worst thing is that – while I’m beginning to accept that the guilt and the shame are not mine to carry – the power to hurt a lot of innocent people lies entirely with me. The choice of who to tell – and thus whose world to destroy utterly – is with me. Telling my mother has, miraculously, turned out to be the best thing for myself that I could ever have done. Whether she can cope with it in the long run remains to be seen. Do I tell my father? My abuser’s sister whose son is the age I was when I was abused? His mother, who has recently been widowed? Where is the balance between preventing him from doing further harm, getting the closure I need, and dragging more innocent people into this? That decision, that responsibility, lies with me. But it has been important for me to realise that the guilt is not mine, that regardless of what I do and who I tell now, I did not cause this.
I have had a number of friendly offers of violence on my behalf from friends since I started talking about this. I’m not going to deny that I’ve thought about it. There are ways and means. I have always shied away from it, and only realised recently why. Physical pain doesn’t even get close to what I’ve been through, and thus retribution in terms of physical pain is inadequate. The thing, I think, that would help me get closure is to know that my abuser feels the same shame and guilt I have been feeling for the last fifteen years – to get some sort of acknowledgement of guilt from him, to have him admit that he knows, and knew, that what he did was wrong. In my mind, there’s almost a zero-sum game of feelings here, and if he takes on the guilt, I don’t have to carry it anymore. And no, it’s not in any way rational, but that’s how I feel about it.
What telling my mother appears to have done for me is to short-circuit at least some of this zero-sum game. Maybe one day I will confront my abuser; maybe I will get that admission of guilt. But actually just knowing that my mother knows and she’s on my side – she’s got my back, she does not blame me – is enough for the moment. Not only have I reframed my own narrative to the point where I genuinely believe it wasn’t my fault, but I now have external validation from someone in the family. I had not realised until a couple of days ago how much that mattered, how liberating it is.
Suddenly the image in my head of encountering my abuser with my mother at my side is of me as I am now – truly grown-up, strong, a survivor, proud and with my head held high. The guilt is not mine. The shame is not mine.
Be the one dissenting voice
For the last week or so, I have been in Bulgaria, on something almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a holiday. There are generally two certainties about being in Bulgaria for me: family drama and culture shock. I’ve been having plenty of both, but I’ve gleaned an insight out of them, so I guess it’s been worth it.
Majorities and in-groups have a way of building a narrative to justify their being a majority or in-group. That narrative is deeply embedded in the in-group culture, so deeply that debate about it doesn’t happen; or when it happens it only goes as far as someone asking a rhetorical question so that the other party to the conversation can take the opportunity to re-affirm their belonging to the in-group. An example of this I witnessed a couple of times recently was the discussion among my Bulgarian contacts around Sofia Pride: someone asks “This ‘gay parade’ thing, do you think it should be happening in Sofia?” and there’s a chorus around them of justifications and excuses as to why, of course, there should be no such thing. Here’s how that chorus goes:
1. I’m a great fan of $gay_celebrity, but I don’t see why all of them should be parading about. (This is, of course, the pre-cursor to “I have a gay friend and thus I’m not a homophobe” in a country where most people won’t know that they have gay friends because people just aren’t out.)
2. Even $gay_celelbrity says they don’t feel the need to parade about. (Might that be because the social pressure is so strong that they feel if they did take part in Pride their career might take a dive?)
3. I don’t feel the need to parade around just because I’m normal. (Do I really need to dissect this one? Alright then. Firstly, you aren’t “normal”, you’re “heterosexual”. The two are not synonymous. And secondly you are, right now, contributing to the continuation of a heteronormative culture in which you, effectively, parade around all the time while a substantial minority of the population has to live in hiding and is denied basic rights which you take for granted to the extent that you don’t perceive them as rights.)
After four days of this, both in the national media and in overheard conversations, I felt the need to move on the debate. The constant heteronomative self-reassurance, self-justification and – yes – parading was rather getting on my nerves. So when someone had the temerity to ask me last night whether I thought there should be a Pride march in Sofia I said “Yes, and had I been in Sofia over the weekend, I would have been at it.” The three seconds of stunned silence that followed were well worth it. We then went into a brief argument centred around point 3 above, but as it was late and I was heading for bed already, we didn’t get very far into it.
What I do hope has happened, though, is that I have made a tiny crack in the self-perpetuating heteronormative narrative I’ve been listening to for the last four days. I hope that this person, now that they know someone who doesn’t agree with that narrative, will over time start questioning it; that they will start asking questions, start finding out more information. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t; but if I continue to be the one dissenting voice, the one voice that moves on the debate, then maybe one of the many people I talk to will, and that will be progress.
Here’s another example: I’m beginning to feel my way around the building blocks of the narrative that straight white men have built for themselves, of the cocoon they live in. Even men who are close to me, who I think are decent human beings – my father, my partner, my best friend – fall prey to this to some varying extent.
My partner was shocked when I talked to him about the pervasiveness of violence against women – he simply didn’t know. It’s something that’s clearly not talked about enough. My best friend and I have an on and off discussion about feminism where he occasionally comes out with arguments that sound very like “But what about equality for the menz?” and we have to go back to basics. I am not saying the issues he brings up aren’t real, aren’t relevant, or don’t need addressing – but it is a matter of perspective and of relative seriousness of the issue. The classic example here is anonymity for rape defendants. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it’s a numbers game – for as long as more women get raped every day than men get falsely accused in a year, I know where my priorities lie.
My Dad, too, came out with some classics over the last couple of days. We had everything from “Women’s hands just aren’t as good as men’s for heavy industrial work.” (Dad, the Second World War couldn’t have been fought without women who did all the heavy industrial work.) to “Well, maybe I do want equality of opportunity for everyone, but I don’t think it can be achieved.” (Dad, if we all thought like this, we would probably all still be living in caves, and nevermind about women still being chattel.)
These are all parts of a narrative that straight white men don’t even know they tell themselves. But they do, and it hurts not just women, or gay people, or black people, it hurts all of us, straight white men included, because it limits all of our opportunities and choices. And so I have been the dissenting voice again. I have been trying to explain to my Dad, with varying degrees of patience, what life looks like from the perspective of the out-group. It took me a good half-hour to explain that he is part of an in-group to start with. I’m slowly tackling the different ways in which boys and girls are socialised and educated, what society deems acceptable behaviour for each gender, how this pervasive gendered culture impacts even my own outlook to the extent that I have to consciously fight it. I threw some stats at him about violence against women, and that had him silent for about five minutes.
The tactic I find most successful is to mix in the statistics and general points with personal experience. The personal is political, and the more I can draw out into my Dad’s (or anyone else’s for that matter) consciousness the crass contradictions between statements like “You’re my daughter, you’re very clever and have had a lot of unique experiences, you have no reason not to be confident, and you can achieve anything” (personal, connected to someone he knows well and cares about) and “Women’s hands have no affinity for industrial work” (generalised), the more (hopefully) they will start questioning their narrative. It is easy to generalise about the womenz or teh gayz, it’s difficult to argue with someone’s personal experience. When that personal experience is then backed up with hard stats, paradigms hopefully will begin to shift.
Ultimately, what I’m trying to say with all of this is that it’s always worth being that one dissenting voice. It’s not always a comfortable experience, it can be incredibly difficult. However, staying silent, staying under the radar, will never change anything. Don’t be afraid to stand out, to speak out, to dissent, to question, argue and persuade. The changes we want to achieve can only be achieved through debate, discussion, argument and persuasion: one person at a time.
The Creation Museum – A cultural experience like no other
I read about the Creation Museum in Kentucky a couple of years ago. It’s just across the state border from Cincinnati, and what with there being a chance of a business trip to Cincinnati in my line of work I promised myself that if I ever ended up in that part of the world, I would go see the museum. Then, when I booked my travel a couple of weeks ago, I kind of forgot about it and didn’t leave any flex in my schedule for a visit, and when I did remember I was gutted. So when a meeting finished early on Monday, I jumped at the chance, escaped from the office early, threw myself into a taxi and went. It was certainly an educational experience.
The first thing to note about the Creation Museum is that when I told people I was going there, I felt really self-conscious about it. In my mind, there are only two kinds of people likely to be interested in that sort of thing: the religious wingnuts, and the trolls. Now, frankly, I fall in the second category, but I didn’t particularly want to come out to people I work with as a troll. Nor, however, did I want to give the impression that I was a religious wingnut. So finding that fine line where you explain that no, you are not of the Christian faith, but you are interested in different points of view and look at this as a cultural experience is… interesting. I’m not convinced anyone believed me.
Here’s what I found out about the museum beforehand, from speaking to various local people. Apparently they fully own the building and the grounds. It took them a long time to get all the money together, but they were very particular about running it that way and not being in debt before they started the whole thing. The colleague who told me this seemed to think that that gave them more freedom in how they presented their point of view, as they didn’t have to bow to commercial pressure just to make money to pay off debt. Having said that, it didn’t look to me like they were struggling financially. But more on that later. The other thing I learned on my way there from the taxi driver is that when the museum first opened, there were protests outside and significant police presence. There are certainly large signs on the doors asking you to behave respectfully to staff and other visitors. Oh, and another tidbit from the website: Apparently the Creation Museum is within a day’s drive for two thirds of US population.
The building is hardly small, and as well as the main museum, it and the grounds house a planetarium, a petting zoo and reasonably extensive botanical gardens. You can easily spend a whole day there, and the website suggests you actually buy a two-day ticket so you can revisit some of your favourite exhibits on the second day. With only two hours, I barely made it through the main exhibition and a couple of the media shows.
I asked the lady who sold me my ticket if she had any recommendations for a first-timer with limited time. She suggested I saw the entire main exhibition and the multi-media show called “Men in White”. I asked her what that was and she explained that it was about a girl who struggles with the thought of being “only a randomly evolved animal” and then gets visited by two arch-angels – the men in white – who help her with her self-doubt. So I got my souvenir guide book and headed off to the special effects theatre to see “Men in White”.
The show was introduced by a chirpy young woman who explained that it was not quite like the rest of the shows in the museum – it was more of a satire or comedy, and that we might recognise some of the stereotypes we saw. Then we meet Wendy (an animatronic puppet) sitting by her camp fire at night, looking up at the stars and asking questions about the meaning of life. (So far, been there, done that. I became an atheist one night in a graveyard in the Austrian Alps.) She asks whether she really is the product of random collisions of atoms and molecules, and whether there really isn’t any deeper meaning to life. At which point the whole thing just becomes surreal: enter the Men in White, Mike and Gabe, the campest arch-angels you have ever met. As in white dungarees levels of camp. They are glorious, as well as remarkably obnoxious for arch-angels. Mike and Gabe do two things: firstly, they walk us through the biblical story of Genesis – taking a few liberties here and there – and secondly they arm Wendy, and by extension the audience, with a number of soundbites to use when defending creationism against the insidious forces of science. They attack science education as closed-minded, not open to being questioned or to new ideas. They frame believers in creation as discriminated against in the education system (“I don’t want people to think I’m dumb”, says Wendy at one point), as victims of the modern world. They especially have a go at Darwin. Yet at the same time Mike and Gabe can’t fully dismiss science which, according to them, has given us microwaves. It’s an interesting balancing act, assisted by special effects such as water being squirted at the audience to demonstrate what the flood felt like. (This made the kid in front of me cry.) Men in White finished and I went off to see the main exhibition.
If you know anything about creationism, you might know that there’s a fairly wide spectrum of beliefs that fall into that category. The Creation Museum subscribes to the particularly nutty flavour of fully literal young-earth creationism. The guide book says, “In the beginning – in six, 24-hour days – god made a perfect creation.” According to the museum, this happened around about 6,000 years ago. The amount of cognitive and intellectual contortion necessary to actually believe this becomes obvious pretty quickly. There are two key framing devices the museum uses to aid with said contortion.
Firstly, it introduces its own historical narrative and paradigm, the “Seven Cs of History”. They are creation, corruption, catastrophe, confusion, Christ, cross, consummation. The entire main exhibition is laid out according to this narrative, starting with creation and moving progressively through biblical history to the modern world, again taking a fair few liberties in the process.
The second device, which is introduced very early on, is the dichotomy between reason and God’s word or revealed truth. So we have lots of exhibits which present us with a physical observation about the universe and then two conflicting “interpretations”, one by human reason and another by God’s word. For instance and exhibit on fossil layers says “God’s word: Fossil layers were formed by Noah’s Flood (~4,350 years ago) and its aftermath. Human Reason: Fossil layers were formed by present processes over millions of years.” This is subversive in two ways: firstly, it attempts to set creationism on an equal footing with science, but claiming to simply apply a different kind of reasoning to the same facts, thus attaching to creationism the credibility of the scientific method; secondly, there is a very strong implication that because both interpretations of the same facts are reasonable and possibly valid (though of course the creationist version is the right one), scientists who reject the creationist interpretation are closed-minded and therefore automatically wrong. Given how much of the exhibition is aimed at families with children, I will let you judge quite how damaging this is.
Now, in many ways it is absolutely pointless to do a point-by-point rebuttal of every single thing that is wrong, misleading or nutty in the exhibition. It would be playing the game by the wingnuts’ rules, and that’s not something I’m prepared to do. However, here is a non-exhaustive list of some of the especially striking cognitive contortions, mostly for amusement value.
You remember the bit from the guide book, about how God created the universe in 6 24-hour days? I wouldn’t have spotted this one, if it hadn’t been for the camp arch-angels, but they kindly mentioned Genesis 1:14 (Gods, I never thought I’d have use for a hotel Bible.), which says “Then Gods said, ‘Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night’ and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years.'” Which incidentally happened on the fourth day. So up until the fourth day, we have no way of really measuring days or hours. How, therefore, do we know that those first six days in which God created everything were exactly 24 hours long, when hours aren’t even defined yet? This is of course the danger of trying to sound scientific when talking about creationism.
There is the usual hilarity of presenting images of humans walking alongside dinosaurs. At the exit there is even the opportunity to take a photo of your child riding a saddled triceratops. There is also a special exhibit/feature (which I didn’t have time to look into at all) about dragons and dinosaurs. The most amusing part is the series of descriptions of the effects of original sin, which include gems like “According to the Bible, animals and humans have “life” (…), but plants do not. So humans and animals were created to eat plants, and in the original world before sin, humans and animals would never die.” So apparently it was only once original sin had been committed that we started to have carnivores.
Incidentally, the museum very squarely puts original sin on Adam’s shoulders, consistently calling it Adam’s sin. I must admit I’m not 100% sure which version of original sin I prefer: the one that blames women for everything for the rest of eternity, or the one that patronisingly takes responsibility away from Eve, making Adam responsibe for her actions. I’m willing to listen to arguments either way.
Another fun bit is where the exhibition has a go not only at science but also at the wrong kind of Christianity, i.e. Catholicism. Apparently Catholicism is wrong in much the same way as human reason is wrong, in that it relies on human structures and institutions, as well as human interpretation of the truth revealed through the word of God. Apparently this is a big no-no, and one should be taking one’s scripture as the only source of truth, quite literally.
Of course one of the biggest problems young-earth creationism has is the abundant scientific evidence that the universe is rather older than 6,000 years, and so the museum spends a lot effort trying to discredit this, starting with Mike and Gabe and going right through this exhibition. The phrase “millions and millions of years” is repeated in a tone of utter contempt until your little brain can’t think of it any other way.
An entire room of the museum is dedicated to what I would describe as wonders of the universe: beautiful pictures of plants, animals, galaxies, red blood cells, you name it. Even a video explaining how awesome carbon is, and another explaining how the earth is in just the right place in the solar system to support life. The little captions in the corners of the pictures tell you how God created all this, especially for us. The fun bit here is that every time an exhibit claimed that something was too good to have arisen by chance, the only scientific counter argument was the anthropic principle; and I must admit I’m really not a fan of the anthropic principle – it’s cop-out. Than again, I think God’s a rather bigger cop-out. But that room certainly gave me an insight into why some people may want to choose to believe in God as opposed to the anthropic principle.
The exhibition ends with another video show – The Last Adam – which takes us through the final three Cs of history (Christ, Cross, Consummation) by telling the story of the crucifixion and how Christ will save us all. One of the few images I remember from this is that of a very cute lamb which didn’t have to be sacrificed anymore because God had sent his only begotten son, etc. etc. At the end of this, a member of staff encourages us to pick some of the free literature and go out to tell others the good news.
Of course no museum is complete without a gift shop, and the gift shop in the Creation Museum is hardly small. One whole wall is covered in textbooks aimed at homeschooling parents. It is one of the scariest things I have seen in my life. Another scary thing is that the back cover of the guide book is taken up by an advert for a “Christ-centred liberal arts college dedicated to presenting a Biblical worldview in all [their] academic majors”. They “embrace a literal, 6 day, 24 hour creation account”. The associated picture is of scientists in lab coats with lab equipment.
From what I can tell, the museum is making pretty good money which, as I understand it, it funnels into the “Answers in Genesis” ministry. My financial contribution to all this, beyond the entrance fee and my guide book, was a t-shirt with a picture of a dinosaur and the words “Prepare to believe” printed on it. I am looking for suggestions on how to deface it. Suggestions I’ve had so far are “Prepare to believe – in science!” from Paul (where I’m tempted to also add “after carefully examining the evidence”) and “Holy crap!” from @_njd_ over on Titter. I would love some more suggestions on this please.
Overall my trip to the Creation Museum was a highly interesting and education cultural experience. Although I must admit the only reason I’m not running away screaming is that I made a conscious choice to look at the whole thing in a detached way. There are some deeply worrying messages and ideas in the whole thing, and the fact that people believe them – even people I work with – is truly scary.
You can find possibly slightly blurry photos of a lot of the exhibits in the Creation Museum here.
Diversity and representation in politics – moving beyond tokenism
I’m on a business trip in the States this week, so feeling very out of touch with what’s happening in the UK. So here instead a more general piece prompted by events from the last month or so on diversity and representation in politics.
Much has been made of the straight(ish)-white-male composition of the new cabinet over the last few weeks. Let me throw in my 2 Eurocents. Incidentally, this post deals mainly with the “how” of diversity and representation, and not with the “why”. I am assuming that the case for diversity has been made loud and clear – though some recent events and comments do make me wonder. But that’s a thought for another day.
Jane Manning writes over at LDV:
Racial integration is a marvellous bridge. If representation is about sending a message of inclusion to a part of society that has been marginalised before then I don’t need a Brown face at the top to make me feel included. Those days of John Taylor not being selected as a Conservative candidate in the 1992 general election because of his colour is what made me feel deprived and hopeless and gave me sleepless nights. The gates of politics have since opened wide to people like me. We aren’t excluded. If we don’t go through the gate it is because we choose not to for reasons based on individual choices, not because we are barred.
I agree with Jane that a lot progress has been made in the area of diversity and representation in politics. But I strongly disagree that the gates have been opened wide; a crack perhaps, but most certainly not wide, and the make-up of the current cabinet only serves to underline this.
Unlike Jane, I am not writing this from an ethnic minority point of view. I’m writing as a woman and with some insights into the LGB community. However, I do believe a lot of the points I’m making apply across the six pillars of diversity and beyond, and I’d be very interested in hearing other thoughts, especially from those six pillars of diversity[1].
The first thing to realise is that it’s not enough for anyone, and especially not Parliament, to just put up a sign saying “Women (or of course any other of the 6 groups) welcome”. It’s just not as simple as that. While outright direct discrimination has become very rare, there are still deep structural issues which act as barriers to entry. Jane in her article claims that the doors are wide open and it’s only a matter of personal choice that we aren’t seeing more women or people from ethnic minority backgrounds in politics. I would argue the opposite: It is very easy to make the choice to go into politics if you happen to be a straight, white, middle-aged, upper/middle-class man; if you don’t happen to fall into that category, suddenly a lot of other barriers pop up that are easily disguised as personal choices but really are not.
I have been known to quip that one of the ways to address gender equality in politics is to turn some of the 47 bars in Westminster into creches. People are amused by this, but there is a more serious point behind it. Providing 47 bars and a shooting gallery but no child care arrangements for your employees is on the same continuum of discrimination as not having ladies’ toilets or as City firms doing business in strips clubs. The latter is obviously worse as it is actively degrading for those companies’ employees to work in that kind of environment but the former is one of those things that allows us to point at the absence of women in politics and say “It’s a personal choice” while we haven’t actually set up the infrastructure to allow women to make that choice freely.
Here’s another example to reinforce this: Yvette Cooper was questioned a couple of weeks ago over whether she would like to stand as a candidate for the Labour leadership. The reason she gave for not doing so was that she had three children under the age of 14. Yet Ms. Cooper’s husband, Ed Balls, seems to have no such issues. This is an issue so deeply ingrained in the structure of our society, it’s only in these rare cases that the true absurdity of it becomes visible.
And another one: Recent quips about colour-coded ties notwithstanding, male politicians rarely get judged on their outward appearance, provided they meet a basic standard of appropriate dress (i.e. wear a suit). Yet Theresa May’s shoes and the jacket she wore to her first BBC Question Time appearance as Home Secretary somehow seem to be more worthy of media comment than her attitude to gay people.
Now, I’m an agency over structure kind of girl most days. I firmly believe in the power of individual action to overcome structural barriers. But to do so, we first need to recognise that the barriers are there. Here is a non-exhaustive list of structural barriers to wider diversity and representation in UK politics – feel free to add your own:
- The way Westminster works is based on the premise that either all MPs are single gentlemen with housekeepers or that they have a 1950s-style family with a devoted wife waiting at home with their dinner. And let’s face it, this doesn’t just harm women – any man who wants to be a part of his children’s lives would be put off by the hours, the travel, the sheer family-unfriendliness of the place. And these are the people we expect to pass laws to increase the family-friendliness of our work places. Having said that, having a Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister both of whom have young children and both of whom appear to genuinely want to be involved in their children’s lives seems to be doing wonders for the family-friendliness at least in the Cabinet. I found this article utterly delightful.
- The absence of visible role models – for any disagvantaged group – doesn’t help either. It sends a subliminal signal to women, people of ethnic minorities, gay people, etc. that this place is not for them; that they aren’t welcome; that they can’t have a meaningful career in that environment. New Labour was pretty good at providing role models for some kinds of disability, with both David Blunkett and Gordon Brown (I didn’t realise until fairly recently how significantly visually impaired Brown is.), as well as Alastair Campbell speaking about his depression. But even they rarely spoke out about how they got to where they were. It is not enough to be the first woman/gay/disabled person in your position, as I’m sure we know from the Margaret Thatcher experience. You have to help other people like you see the way from where they are to where you are.
- The power of networks is huge in male-dominated workplaces. There is actually a good reason why there are 47 bars in Westminster, and it’s that a lot of the actual business gets done there. There is a certain stereotype that women tend to have the meeting in the meeting, while men tend to line up their ducks in the coffee breaks and use the meeting only for rubber-stamping purposes. This, too, is an extension of the power of networks. Yet, it can be remarkably difficult for women and members of minority groups to gain access to those networks in the first place. There is something cultural about the way women are raised that makes a lot of us instinctively cringe away from doing business that way, and from self-promotion. The same applies to some ethnic minorities too. I have been challenged on a number of occasions at work as to why it is right to organise women-only networking events, or awareness trainig for LGB issues in the workplace, when there is no such support available for white, straight men. The answer is simple: Everyone is being forced to play by straight, white men rules. Straight, white men do not need help to understand or adjust to those rules. But our efforts to bring everyone else up to speed with the rules still don’t seem to be paying off. Perhaps we need to consider changing the rules.
- Another one on the cultural front, and this one applies especially for women, is the social taboo surrounding the expression of ambition. Women who openly express ambition tend to be seen as pushy and aggressive. Men doing the same thing are strong leaders. There was a very telling interview with three new women MPs (one from each main party) on Woman’s Hour the weekend after the general election. Each was asked what her ambition was as a new Member of Parliament. And each in turn answered that this was a great new challenge for them, they still needed to learn the ropes, they were committed to their constituency, and wanted to do the the best by their constituents. None of them expressed ambition beyond that. When was the last time you heard a new male MP admit that they had a lot to learn?
There is still a lot of work to do before Westminster is truly representative of the people it is supposed to represent. To achieve this in a sustainable way, we need to not only use the short-term measures some parties are already using, such as all-women shortlists; we need to take an in-depth look at the basic underlying structures of our political system, identify structural barriers to entry, and actively work to eliminate them.
[1] Gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, disability, age, for those who don’t know what the six legally protected pillars of diversity are in the UK.
How many more lives, relationships and careers will we ruin?
I’ve been offline for about twenty hours and have just come back to the news of David Laws’ resignation. I am incredibly sad. Here’s why.
***
Imagine you have to live two lives. Imagine you wake up in the morning next to your partner, you get up, have shower, have breakfast, kiss your partner goodbye, and then go and live your other life. In your other life, your partner doesn’t exist. You have colleagues. You see them every day. You work with them, socialise with them. You go for lunch, or for drinks after work. They tell stories of what they did with their family at the weekend, show you pictures of their kids. You nod and smile. You stay silent. Perhaps you make something up about what you did at the weekend by yourself or with friends. You get well-meaning questions and suggestions about finding a partner. You nod and smile. You stay silent. You go out to the annual company do and everyone is there with their partner. You are alone. You nod and smile. You stay silent.
In your other life, you have friends too. You meet up with them for dinner, you get invited to parties, you maybe even go on holiday with them. They start settling down with partners. They offer to set you up with a date. You nod and smile. You stay silent. Your friends start having kids. You watch them growing up. Your friends are still inviting you to parties, still taking you on holidays with them, and sometimes they ask whether you’ll be bringing someone with you. You nod and smile. You stay silent.
In your other life, you have a family as well. Parents, bothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousins, nieces and nephews. You get together once or twice a year – Christmas, maybe a bank holiday weekend. Your siblings and cousins start bringing partners to these family gatherings. People ask, how come you haven’t met anyone yet? You nod and smile. You stay silent. Those partners start becoming husbands and wives. You get invited to weddings, which you attend alone. Not met anyone yet, ask the family again. You nod and smile. You stay silent. You start getting invited to christenings. And your parents start dropping hints – they would like to be grandparents too. You nod and smile. You stay silent.
And at the end of your day, after work, and drinks with colleagues, and dinner with friends; after perhaps a weekend seeing your family; you go back to your partner – to your first life. You kiss them as you enter the house. You share drinks over late night television, or they cook you a meal. You tell them you love them as you fall asleep in their arms. But your partner isn’t happy. They want to meet your friends, be introduced to your family. You keep going off to family weddings, or dinner parties with friends while your partner is left behind. Unacknowledged. A secret. Someone you’re ashamed of. You look at them with sadness. And you stay silent.
Imagine you are living these two lives for years, decades. Imagine you live in constant dread that one day, your two lives will intersect. A friend will meet a colleague or a family member, will figure out that you weren’t where you said you were at the weekend. Or perhaps one day your partner will realise that they can’t make the compromise anymore – that they deserve better than being your dark guilty secret for the rest of their life.
***
Surely, you ask, no one has to live a double-life anymore. Surely we are a tolerant enough society by now that people should just be able to be themselves. It’s not a big deal, right?
And yet, that’s not true. Kids leaving school even today will have spent some of their school lives in an education system dominated by Section 28 of the Local Government Act, which stopped teachers from even being able to intervene when they saw homophobic bullying in schools. It was only in 2003 that Section 28 was repealed, and not nearly enough work has been done since then to address the issue of homophobic bullying which has become endemic in the British education system. It was also only in 2003 that it became illegal to sack people for being gay. Think about it – that was only 7 years ago. Before that people could be and were sacked simply for who they were. If your whole life’s experience tells you that it’s not safe for you to be open about who you are – that you may get attacked verbally and physically, that people in positions of authority will not step forward to help you, that you may even lose your job – would you choose to be open about your sexuality? Or would you try to find a way – any way – of hiding it?
Social change doesn’t happen overnight. We have the legal framework, and in some parts of society we even have the cultural framework. But the situation is still patchy, and there are still far too many pockets of overt and hidden homophobia out there. Saying that it’s all fine now is not enough. We have to take an active step forward to support lesbian, gay and bisexual people – to make them feel safe, supported and included in our society, so that they too can live happy and fulfilling lives and simply be themselves.
David Laws is not the first victim of this, not even the first high-profile victim. I fear he will not be the last. I may disagree with him on policy. I may even think that the way he handled his expenses was not right. None of this stops me, however, from being incredibly sad for him as a person. The one thing I can hope for is that we all learn something from this so that we can stop ruining lives, relationships and careers. After all, one in ten of us is lesbian, gay or bisexual. That’s a lot of lives to ruin.
The national curriculum is your friend
Michael “I am a banana” Gove [1] appears right now to be doing his best to privatise the UK’s primary and secondary education system. He wrote to all secondary schools yesterday, inviting them to apply to become academies; additionally, he will be pushing legislation through Parliament allowing parents to set up so-called “free schools”. All this is in the name of the “new politics” – a significant pillar of which is to devolve things ever further down: from central to local government, from local government to “the people”. Other buzzwords in this trend include “decentralisation”, “Big Society”, “individual choice”. But really, all of this is code for dismantling the state as much as possible – surrendering control also means surrendering responsibility. And in the current economic climate, with the deficit and debt we’re facing, surrendering responsibility to the mythical Big Society, or to the private sector, is a tempting proposition for any government. In the case of education, this seems like a spectacularly bad idea.
As someone on Twitter pointed out when I first commented about this there, academies were a flagship Blairite Labour policy. I didn’t think they were a good idea then either. Under Labour, the academy structure focused on poorly performing schools. It allowed wealthy individuals or organisations to spend a relatively small amount of money and essentially acquire control of a state school. For a modest investment of a million or so, you could turn one of those “failing” schools into an academy, acquiring control over pay and conditions of staff, teaching and most importantly the curriculum, while the state continued to finance the running costs of the school. This in turn allowed those newly-fledged academies to ignore key parts of the national curriculum which didn’t suit their wealthy benefactors. Don’t like sex and relationships education because the kiddies might learn about contraception or *gasp* that gay people are okay too? Easy – have an academy. Don’t like evolution? Here – this academy teaches intelligent design on a equal footing; or even that the Earth was created 6000 years ago, like the three schools run by the Emmanuel Schools Foundation, sponsored by Sir Peter Vardy. Mr. Gove’s vision for future academies is that they will have complete control over the curriculum.
Let me say this very clearly: I believe that state control of the curriculum – within a democratic society – is a good idea. It allows us to do a number of things: Firstly, it allows us to have a common standard. This is not about league tables and SATs. But it is about knowing that a pupil with a B in maths from one school has a similar level of achievement to a pupil with a B in maths from another school. Secondly, the national curriculum also allows us as a society to democratically determine some key things we feel it’s important our children are taught: things like citizenship, sex & relationships education, and yes – that evolution is scientific fact while intelligent design is a fairy tale. I am particularly passionate about that latter part. I believe the best way to determine what we value sufficiently to teach our children is through public debate and the democratic process, at a national level. Anything else leads to unjustified local variation, potentially disadvantaging whole communities where the local school is controlled by people who, say, happen not to believe in evolution.
Devolving control of the curriculum to the local and school level is not a good idea. Ultimately, as a future parent, I don’t actually want “choice” in my school system. I don’t want to have to check the curriculum of every school in a 20-mile radius to make sure they’re not teaching my child to confuse scientific facts with fairy tales. I want a school system that works – one where, regardless of which school I send my child to, I can be confident that they will have a good-quality, wide-ranging, exciting and engaging education experience and they will learn the things that we as a society have democratically decided are important. Again, this is not about taking creativity away from teachers, or standardising and regimenting everything, testing pupils to death to make sure they conform to some standard. It’s about having an education system that works for all.
Another issue with academies and “free schools” is around access. They would more than likely end up diverting money from local state schools, having a negative impact on them, while having a more selective admissions policy (up to 10%, says Mr. Gove). While initial results of this approach in Sweden were encouraging, more recently free schools have been found to lead to increased social fragmentation and segregation.
Ultimately, the UK education system is already more than sufficiently fragmented. Between public and state schools, academies and faith schools, my future parent self already has more choice than I’d ideally like to have to cope with. I’d much rather see some real effort being put into making sure that the state education system works consistently for all, than see education in Britain broken up further.
[1] Mr. Gove declared publicly on the Today Programme that he was a banana. I have a recording of it. I’m also trying to get as many people as possible to habitually start referring to him as Michael “I am a banana” Gove. Go on. It would make my day.