[Elsewhere] Immigration is a feminist issue

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I left the country of my birth at the age of 10. For six years I was only tolerated in my new home because my father had a work visa. My mother, too, was in Austria on a family visa with no right to work. It is telling what I remember from those years. My father’s present to my mother for our first Christmas in Austria was a bank card allowing her to access his account. My parents didn’t often go through really rough patches in their marriage but the one time they did, when they didn’t speak to each other for two months and it looked like they would be getting divorced, my mother asked me if I wanted to stay in Austria with my father or return to Bulgaria with her. I was 11, maybe 12. I knew even then that if she wanted to leave my father she had no other choice – and that I would not go with her. I remember my mother struggling to learn German with very little social contact, and then struggling again to get a work permit. I know what she bought with her first own paycheque in Austria: a dishwasher. My mother, a research chemist originally, is now on her fourth career as a result of our migration; and while her current work is reasonably skilled and highly-paid, it is nothing like her first career.
Read more at The F Word.
ETA: You now also read this article in Polish on Codziennik Feministyczny. Many thanks to translator Robert Kielawski.

[Elsewhere] Expecting More

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Last week saw the publication of Julie Bindel’s new book, “Straight Expectations”, partly based on a survey which deliberately and specifically excluded bisexual people. Ruth Hunt, Acting Chief Exec of Stonewall, tweeted on Monday morning,

Read more at The F Word.

[Elsewhere] Rape and Reputation

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I am guest blogging on The F-Word this month. My first piece was on our society’s obsession with the reputation of alleged sex offenders. Trigger warnings apply for the piece and most of the links in it for discussion of sexual violence.
***
It’s been an interesting couple of weeks for sexual assault and the law. Last week Radio 4 ran an edition of the Moral Maze titled “Should the accused as well as the victim be given anonymity in the trial of sex crimes?” Panellists fell over themselves to explain how the legal system was tilted in favour of alleged victims of sexual assault, how the accused’s reputation was in tatters forever even if they were acquitted. (As I have written elsewhere, there are good statistical reasons for that.) This week has of course seen the conviction and sentencing of Rolf Harris on 12 counts of indecent assault. And there it is again, that phrase, “Your reputation lies in ruins”, this time uttered by the judge himself.
Read more.

[TW rape & sexual assault] A solution this is not

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The New Statesman today had yet another run-in with Poe’s Law. Caroline Criado-Perez apparently thinks that suggesting women learn self defence is the opposite of victim blaming.
I happen to have some personal expertise on this matter, being both a survivor of several sexual assaults and the holder of several martial arts qualifications, including a black belt in kickboxing. For the sake of accuracy, I should point out that the assaults predate my learning martial arts, but there is no correlation, let alone causation here. So let me tell you a few of the things I’ve learned over ten years of practicing martial arts.

  1. I am not a small woman and I possess a fair amount of physical strength. Particularly when I’m training regularly, I have the muscle mass that allows me to pack quite a punch. Even when I’m not training regularly, my technique is good enough to make my kicks and punches quite effective. (This is something I am proud of.)
  2. Men tend to be stronger than me. Obviously, most of the men I practise martial arts with are likely to be stronger. But often even the newbies have more muscle mass and a stronger grip than me. I may be able to kick head-high, but if they really want to hurt me, they can easily do so. (This took me a while to realise, and still upsets me.)
  3. Martial arts is not the same as self defence. I have done both, and they are very different things. Self defence moves tend to be simpler and more practical (if your instructor is any good). Martial arts moves have more potential to truly hurt – if you can get them right. Having said that, sometimes the difference is as subtle as your hand position: a fist indicates an offensive move; a strike with an open hand is legally classed as a slap and is therefore defensive. If I actually landed a martial arts kick or punch, even in the heat of the moment of a self defence situation, I’d probably get done for assault. (The reader is invited to make their own comparisons to men who “in the heat of the moment” can’t stop themselves from raping.)
  4. While self defence moves are simpler, self defence is still fucking hard. Not the moves themselves – they tend to be straightforward. What’s hard about self defence is practising it to the point where it’s muscle memory – where you don’t think about it, you just react. Not only do you need to be able to just react, you need to be able to get yourself out of the situation. That means disable your attacker and either run or call the police. You need to be able to deal with all sorts of eventualities. How good’s your wrestling, if you both end up on the ground? How good are you at continuing to fight while injured? (I know for a fact that I’m not there.)
  5. And then there’s the small matter of the practicality of self defence when dressed for a night out. I have yet to see (and I have occasionally looked) a self defence class that asks participants to wear high heels and tight skirts; or for that matter to show up tipsy; or to practise in anything other than a safe, well-lit environment on a flat and even (and sometimes cushioned) floor. Any and all of these factors are likely to affect how you react, even if you have practised to the point where you can do the moves in your sleep. (Reality, alas, bites.)

Armed with this knowledge, let’s think our way through a few scenarios. [Trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault, rape and domestic abuse]
You’re a 15-year-old girl. The man who’s abusing you is your uncle. You have trusted this man your entire life. He’s the one you ran to every time you had a fight with your parents as a child. “If you don’t like it,” he says, “all you have to do is slap me. I’ll stop.” Yes, that young woman is me, minus the martial arts training. But all that was “required” was a slap, right? You don’t need any training for that. I couldn’t do it – physically and mentally I couldn’t get myself to do it. And do you think he would have stopped if I had? Even if I had had any martial arts of self defence experience, my mind was so disassociated from my body I couldn’t actually feel anything, let alone lash out and hit him.
Let’s do another one. You’re a black belt in karate. The man forcing himself on you is your husband. Your children are in the next room. What do you do?
Another. You fall asleep at a party wedged on a sofa and wake up to someone pulling your underwear off and pushing your legs apart. What self defence techniques would you apply?
Another. You’re walking home from the bus stop after a night out. You’ve had a couple of drinks, you’re wearing high heels and a cocktail dress. Do you stop to take off your shoes before trying to kick the guy harassing you in the balls?
Another. You fight back. You use all your techniques, perfectly. You kick, you scream, you claw, you punch. You end up with a broken arm, broken jaw, and still raped, for all your trouble. How do you feel about yourself? At least you tried? Not good enough? All your fault?
I have days when I am so angry I imagine kicking in my abuser’s face – in defense or in revenge, I don’t particularly care. But I also know that is not an option – was never an option. I can see the attraction of trying to take control of a situation that’s beyond our control; of doing things that make us feel less at the mercy of others, even if it means investing two nights a week over years and years to learn and then keep up your self defence skills. But in a world where – as Ms Criado-Perez acknowledges – our attacker is much more likely to be our uncle, our father, our brother, our partner, our friend rather than a random stranger, let’s not kid ourselves that this actually makes us in any way safer.
By all means, take up martial arts. It’s a great way to learn to love your body, to stay fit and healthy, to learn how to kick in your front door when it’s jammed, to burn off excess energy and emotion. It’s also a hell of a lot of fun. But don’t feel that it will make you safer from sexual assault and street harassment; don’t feel that if you are attacked you have to physically fight back for it to not be your fault; do not, even for a second, think that it is (in Ms Criado-Perez’s words) a solution. To suggest otherwise is, indeed, victim blaming.

How to clear your name if you’ve been acquitted of sexual assault

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Max Clifford has been found guilty of eight counts of indecent assault. I must admit, I am surprised that the criminal justice system has finally managed to deliver justice to the victims in a high-profile sexual assault case where the perpetrator is still alive.
Of course, had the verdict gone the other way (by far the more likely outcome), we would today be treated to a parade of Clifford’s friends and the man himself declaring in the media that the case was an outrage, what a lovely man the accused was, how false allegations of sexual assault should result in harsher punishments for the accusers, and how the accused’s legal fees should be paid by someone else. They would be bemoaning how the accused can never clear their name as people tend to think there is “no smoke without a fire”, how this terrible ordeal will forever be a stain on their life and reputation, how they had been dragged through the dirt.
I have a simple suggestion for the likes of Bill Roache and Nigel Evans (only the two most recent high-profile defendants to be acquitted of sexual assault charges) if they truly want to clear their names. Instead of grandstanding, explaining how you are the victim, sending in your friends to tell everyone how you wouldn’t hurt a fly, throw your energy and considerable resources into ensuring that the criminal justice system is actually fit for purpose when it comes to sexual assault and rape cases.
Right now, regardless of the actual court verdict, statistically [US data, the UK data is similar] there simply is no smoke without a fire with regards to sexual assault allegations. The vast majority of sexual assaults are not reported, of those that are, the vast majority do not go to trial, and of those that do, the vast majority result in acquittals after the victim has effectively been put on trial and dragged through the mud. So yes, even if you are cleared of all charges, the most probable scenario is that you are guilty but got away with it, not that someone made up the allegation.
Having a criminal justice system that can actually deliver just that – justice – in sexual assault cases would therefore be in the interests of anyone who has ever been falsely accused. Lowering the odds that an acquittal means you probably did it anyway should be good news for anyone wanting to truly clear their name. I look forward to the day when Nigel Evans campaigns to make reporting of sexual assault easier, to sack judges who think it’s “inevitable” for the jury to laugh during the testimony of a victim, to re-examine what kinds of “evidence” should be admissible as defence (“He’s a nice bloke guv” just doesn’t quite cut it), to look at whether “beyond reasonable doubt” is a sensible standard of evidence for a crime which generally happens in private between two people, and which affects about one third of the population.
Until that day, I’m afraid, there will continue to be no smoke without a fire, regardless of what conclusion the jury reaches, and I will continue to be surprised at every guilty verdict. My thoughts are with the victims and survivors of sexual assault everywhere. I believe them.

Border crossings

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The first time I crossed a border, I was ten years old. I was in the back of my father’s car, wedged in between a significant chunk of my family’s earthly possessions, with the book I was reading at the time stored securely in the microwave oven at my feet. We were leaving Bulgaria for good. We were going to start a new life in Austria. I have a couple of very specific memories about that first border crossing.
I remember setting my watch to CET. And I remember my Dad telling me how he’d picked up some East German hitch-hikers in their late teens or early twenties and how crossing into Bulgaria had been the first time they had crossed time zones. He wanted me to understand what a privilege it was for me to be doing this aged ten.
I remember, in the lead-up to our emigration, my grandmother telling me how Bulgaria was the most beautiful country on earth. If you’ve never driven through eastern Serbia (then Yugoslavia) and western Bulgaria, there are some stunning landscapes and geographical features there. And if it wasn’t for the queue and border guards and document check and strip of no-man’s land and then another queue with border guards and document check, there’s no way to tell whether a particular tree or rock or hill belongs to Bulgaria or to Serbia. I remember very clearly thinking how beautiful that landscape was on the “wrong” side of the border and wondering if it was okay to think that.
I don’t remember crossing the Yugoslav-Hungarian border that day. What I do remember is arriving at the Austrian border at 9 o’clock that evening, July 31st 1991. My father had been living in Austria for a month already at that point, but my visa and my mother’s didn’t start until August 1st. The Austrian border guard was very nice about it (or at least he was the way my father translated him), but he wouldn’t let us enter the country until midnight. We slept for three hours in no-man’s land.
***
My early and mid teens were characterised by crossing borders bearing a passport that marked me out as the undesirable kind of immigrant. Travelling east, “home” ostensibly, was relatively painless. I don’t know how many times I crossed those borders, collected the relevant stamps: Austria to Hungary, Hungary to whatever successor state of Yugoslavia was flavour du jour, that to Bulgaria. In cars and in coaches, sometimes relatively quickly, often after four or five hours of waiting. Travelling west remained a near-impossibility for years. Nothing came of the plan to go to Berlin to see the Reichstag wrapped by Christo – I would have needed a Schengen visa for that. I did manage to get a visa for a school trip to the UK, but not one for a yearbook editors’ training event in Amsterdam. It was as if the Iron Curtain had simply moved a few hundred miles to the west.
And then I was Austrian: citizenship applied for with years to go before we met the minimum residency requirements, and granted – I suspect – based on some nebulous concept of “integration” and how well I in particular spoke the local dialect. (Thank you, former classmates who made me say “jo” instead of “ja” and wouldn’t put up with my misguided attempts to speak Hochdeutsch.) I was a citizen of the European Union, of a Schengen member state. My passport gave me the right to be anywhere in Western Europe. The freedom was almost unimaginable.
***
Border crossings were different after that, yet for me no less noticeable. They stay with you, those borders you couldn’t cross for years. There was the time I flew to Greece from Munich airport. Part of the journey to Munich involved a train that had started out in Slovenia. Schengen or not, you bet that train got checked at the German border. I was wearing branded clothes and had been on the train for two hours, rather than twelve like my fellow passengers. I was the only person in that carriage to not get asked for a passport. There was the epic “going home by train for Christmas – UK to Germany via Belgium, France and Austria” trip of 1999: only two years earlier I couldn’t have dreamed of that! There were regular trips to Ireland to see my then-boyfriend, complete with getting sniffed for drugs when getting off the ferry at 7 a.m., not having slept in 24 hours. One memorable weekend shortly after the introduction of the Euro, I found myself, completely unexpectedly, going from Austria to Germany to the Netherlands and back to Germany in the space of a couple of days – no border checks and even more startlingly no currency exchanges.
Bizarrely, for a time going east became an issue. I needed a visa to study in the Czech Republic for three months. The Czech embassy in London was confused by the Austrian living in the UK with no entry stamp in her passport. In mid December, I withdrew my application in order to get my passport back, so I could travel to Germany for Christmas. A trip in person to the consulate in Bonn on one of those ungodly days between Christmas and New Year sorted it all out eventually.
***
These days, my more adventurous border crossings tend to be outside of Europe. I check my sense of humour at the US border. Russia – as expected – is not that different. Europe is still good for a few surprises though. Entering Schengen at Schiphol continues to be a bane of my life as I invariably get interrogated about what I’m doing there. Last time I cleared immigration at Newcastle, an Asian-looking woman got pulled out of the EU passport queue in front of me, presumably because people like her couldn’t possibly be EU citizens. Perhaps my favourite recent border crossing though was an unintentional one: there is a length of road somewhere in central Europe one side of which belongs to Austria and the other to Slovenia. I like that the Iron Curtain has become a three-letter country code either side of a dotted line.

Some free advice on workplace harassment

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It won’t have escaped people’s attention that I am a queer, foreign woman. It sort of goes with the territory that occasionally, I will be exposed to microaggressions, or outright instances of harassment – on the street, in media, from friends and acquaintances, and sometimes in the workplace. Frankly, I am mouthy enough that most people who know me know to behave around me and when they slip up it’s genuinely that – an honest mistake – and not intentional harassment. But over the years, with various employers, I have accumulated my fair share of “colourful workplace experiences” – from my boss making blow job jokes, to strategy deployment videos containing jokes about violence against women, to people casually informing me that something is “so gay” (and no, the fact that they rephrased it to “camp” and then “awful” did not help their case).
I want to give you an insight into what goes on in my head when I’m cheerfully going about my business and I’m suddenly blindsided by one of these things. Perhaps because in most workplaces I’ve worked at these instances have been mercifully few and far between, my first reaction is always one of disbelief and surprise. The workplace culture is such that it is clear these things are unacceptable, and so when someone does slip up, I tend to do a double-take and think, “Did they really just say that?” At which point my brain enters “fight or flight” mode.
That may sound slightly dramatic, but I literally have two choices here. I can say nothing and live with the knowledge that I to an extent sanctioned and enabled the behaviour in question. More likely than not, the person doesn’t even realise what they said or did and that it was wrong; or if they do, they think they got away with it. Either way, they are likely to do it again – to me or to other people. Again, I am mouthy, I’ve been in workplaces for 15 years, I have some experience with these things and broadly speaking can look after myself. But there are people around me who either witnessed the incident or who may be exposed to similar future incidents who aren’t as mouthy, haven’t been around as long, or who for other reasons are more vulnerable than me. In many cases, I simply cannot let it go because I have an obligation to other people. By not challenging the bahaviour I am setting a tone where it becomes acceptable, and that’s not a culture I want others to work in. Over the years, I have let a few things go – and I still remember, and regret, every single one of them.
My second choice therefore is to call out the behaviour. There are different ways to do this, and depending on the situation one may be more appropriate than another. Over the years, I have done everything from casually asking people to rephrase their comment to taking formal complaints to HR, and all of these have generally yielded good results for their respective situations. I have got company policies and promotional materials changed, I’ve got people to change their language and understand why something they said was inappropriate. Whatever I do though, chances are it will leave me a bit shaken (and often physically shaking), emotionally drained, and unable to focus on my work for at least a couple of hours as my brain processes the conflict.
I want to make it clear that this is what goes on in my head. But one thing I can guarantee you: that fight or flight choice is something everyone who experiences or witnesses workplace microaggressions or harassment is faced with. And there isn’t a right or wrong choice here. All sorts of factors play a role in whether we choose to challenge the behaviour or not: concerns for our safety, how much the issue in question affects us personally, whether we feel the structures around us are such that our action would lead to genuine change. Neither choice is wrong. You are not wrong for “making a fuss”, and neither are you wrong for “standing by”. What is wrong is that we are having to make the choice in the first place – that we’ve been put in a situation by someone else where we are forced to pick the lesser evil out of two pretty horrible options.
Here are a few things that employers can learn from this. Firstly, if your workplace is an environment where microaggressions and harassment – on whatever grounds – thrive, your company is losing out because a significant proportion of your employees is spending time and energy either being upset by the harassment and trying to dodge it, or trying to call it our and change things. All the time and energy spent on dealing with harassment is time and energy not spent being productive. This is a lose-lose scenario – don’t let it happen.
The way not to let this happen is to create a workplace culture in which harassment and microaggressions are clearly unacceptable. It’s not enough to just have an HR policy gathering dust in a filing cabinet that says “Don’t harass people.” Start with the identity of your organisation – think about what it is that you want to stand for, and how that relates to the experiences of your employees, customers and other stakeholders. Make sure everyone knows this. Then move on to policy. Make it clear in your policies what harassment looks like – be specific, give as many different examples as you can think of, but also keep it open so people can relate their own lived experience to your policy. A clear statement in a policy that the situation I am experiencing definitely counts as harassment will give me confidence to report it. A clear statement that this is not an exhaustive list will also give me confidence to report things that fall outside it. Use your people: make sure that senior leaders are role models and set the right tone; enable people managers to set that tone in their own teams and to challenge inappropriate behaviour when they see it; train everyone on diversity and inclusion – and not just on the “legal” bits but also on the awesome bits, on why having a diverse organisation is valuable and exciting. Ensure that your values and your policies permeate every level of the organisation.
Finally, recognise that people will occasionally get things wrong – and have strong processes in place for dealing with it. The one thing that has consistently enabled me to call out inappropriate behaviour has been the certainty that it will be addressed appropriately by management and HR. The first time, that confidence comes from the company values, and policies, and training – and that’s great. However if someone is encouraged by all of these to make a report, and it gets mishandled, all that credibility and confidence you’d built up vanishes in an instant. So make sure that managers and HR know how to handle issues, that they do so quickly, effectively and sensitively, and that feedback about the outcome is always given to the individual. This way, you enable everyone in your organisation to create a harassment-free workplace, and you end up with people who are motivated and focused on their work rather than on distractions.

[Elsewhere] Adding Insult to Injury: The Media Coverage of the Bisexual Asylum Seeker Case

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This article also appears on Huffington Post.
Last month, immigration law blog Free Movement published a set of questions which had been asked of a bisexual asylum seeker during an interview by the UKBA. The questions are degrading, intrusive and deeply queerphobic. Yet the reporting of this incident in some mainstream media outlets is similarly concerning. On Saturday, the Guardian ran a story based on the Free Movemement post, titled “Gay asylum seekers face ‘humiliation'”. The article talks repeatedly of “gay” or “gay and lesbian” asylum seekers; among quotes from immigration lawyers and LGB rights charities, the word “bisexual” appears only once in the entire piece, when describing the individual asylum seeker at the heart of the report.
This kind of bi erasure is almost routine for bisexual people – and we find it comes from our lesbian and gay friends just as often as from straight people. It is hurtful, but particularly in areas such as asylum and immigration, bi erasure, biphobia and stereotyping are downright dangerous. As bisexual immigrants go, I am extremely privileged: the country which issues my passport has not declared my existence illegal; I am white; I am an EU citizen, and therefore my right to stay in this country and my very life do not depend on my ability to navigate this maze, the love child of Orwell and Kafka, and give whatever the UKBA deems to be the “right” answers to questions such as “In [country] how many relationships have you had with women?” Others are not so lucky.
The popular myths of the non-existent bisexual, the “too scared to come out as gay” bisexual, the “doing it for the attention bisexual” all stack the odds heavily against us when it comes to “proving” our sexuality. The UKBA questions illustrate this clearly. Asking about the number of partners of different genders someone has had implies there is a “right” answer here – some optimal number of men, women and genderqueer people one is to have to slept with before one can be truly recognised as bisexual. (And beware of aiming too high with those numbers, lest you are declared the greedy, possibly disease-ridden kind of bisexual who should not be allowed into the country according to some MPs.)
One wonders, too, what the “right” answer is to questions like “When x was penetrating you did you have an erection?” The trouble with this is that there are as many answers to this question as there are occasions upon which the particular sex act being asked about has been performed in human history. But regardless of your experience, only one of those will get you the magic ticket that allows you to stay in a country that might not execute you for who you are.
Questions like “How do you show your sexuality when you are in the UK?” and “How does that display you are bisexual?” almost naturally lead to “Why have you got to behave as a bisexual in [country]?” and “That was with x only and he initiated the contact you claim. Why can’t you return and live a full life there?” The box one needs to fit in to “deserve” support and asylum is so tiny as to be almost non-existent for bisexual people.
This is why media coverage of this case and the way it persistently talks of “gay and lesbian” asylum seekers when the individual at the centre of it is actually bisexual, and the lines of questioning are very specifically and deliberately, biphobic is dangerous. It is another stitch in the giant invisibility cloak society has thrown over bisexual people. It makes it easier to perpetuate myths and stereotypes, to question whether bisexuals really exist; and that in turn makes it possible to set impossible standards for “proving” bisexuality and to deny people persecuted for who they are shelter when their story doesn’t quite match those expectations.
It is vital for bisexual people’s stories to be heard; for biphobia and bi erasure to be called out for what they are. Bisexuality doesn’t fit neatly in a gay/straight narrative. That doesn’t make biphobia any less hurtful or harmful, sometimes, as in this case, in a “life and death” sort of way.

The UKBA – protecting you from filthy, foreign bisexuals

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Earlier this week I came across this post detailing questions asked by the UKBA of a bisexual asylum seeker in detention. The profound levels of ignorance, queerphobia and specifically biphobia displayed here should be shocking. What is perhaps more shocking is that they aren’t. [The rest of this post comes with trigger warnings for discussion of rape, torture, homophobia, biphobia, slut shaming and probably all sorts of other things. Sometimes my own writing scares me.]
I am going to attempt to answer some of the questions that I apparently would face should I find myself persecuted by my own country for who I am. I am in the extremely privileged position that I can choose which questions to answer and which ones to just leave as evidence of their own cruelty, I can be flippant, I can be didactic: my right to stay in this country and my very life do not depend on me navigating this maze, the love child of Orwell and Kafka, and trying to give whatever the UKBA deems to be the “right” answers to these questions. Do not be deceived by this: for far too many people this is a matter of life and death.
Can you explain to me in detail what you mean by bisexual?
Bisexuality is the potential to be sexually (and romantically) attracted to people of more than one gender. In my case, I have the potential to be attracted to people of any gender/all genders/regardless of gender.
Can you explain to me what you mean by man to man?
I don’t even. Also, I’m a woman so I’ll genderbend some of these questions.
Please explain?
What do you mean by “something”?
Obviously this question is out of context but I’m going to assume they are either fishing for sexual practices or for relationships. Imagine for a moment that the country you were born in makes it illegal for you to be you. Maybe you are short. Or tall. You wear glasses. You have blue eyes. Or brown. You have health condition, inherited or acquired or tunred up out of fucking nowhere like the really scary ones do. There is something about you that your country despises so much that they would throw you in prison or even kill you for it. So you leave. You ask another country to protect you. And what you get in return is “Well, can’t you wear heels? Slouch a bit? Don’t wear your glasses. Wear coloured contacts. Pretend to be healthy. Actually, how do we know you’re not pretending now? Are your eyes really blue? We should gouge them out to check.”
What does that mean to you?
How many boyfriends did you have in [country]?
Are you sure you’re really tall? Maybe you’re wearing heels. Maybe you’re walking on stilts. We should do a strip search, just to make sure.
What was the name of your friend?
What is his date of birth?
Do you know his date of birth?
How did you meet him?
Does he have any brothers or sisters?
What is her name?
Or maybe, if the problem is that you’re short, we can put you on a rack.
How old were you when you discovered you had an attraction for boys?
I was 12 or 13 when I realised I was attracted to women as well as men. I was significantly older, in my twenties, when I realised I was also attracted to people of other genders, because where I grew up the gender binary was pretty strictly enforced.
What about before you were 18?
Repeated
Can you explain how you realised your sexuality?
I liked and admired women. Female actors, teachers, friends. Initially I thought I wanted to be them but then I realised that no, I actually wanted to bang them. I also wanted to bang men. (Note: some women; some men; not all men and women.) I misspent part of my youth reading trashy sci-fi novels because they were the only literature I could get my hands on that acknowledged that LGBT people – people like me – existed. By about age 17 I was okay applying the label bisexual to myself and started coming out, carefully, to partners and friends. Some time after that, I realised that there were people of other genders than men and women out there too, and that I wanted to bang some of them too.
What happened?
Tell me what you did?
What did you do with x?
Did you do anything other than kissing x?
What did you do?
Where did this happen?
How often did you have intercourse together?
Is that every day?
So that’s an epic set of TMI questions, all based on the assumption that bisexuality is about banging people. And whilst I have used the word “bang” liberally in my descriptions above, bisexuality as a sexual orientation is not necessarily about who you have banged/are banging, but about who you want to bang. Funnily enough, that’s precisely how other sexual orientations work too. Straight and gay people who’ve never banged anyone, or aren’t banging anyone right now don’t magically lose their sexual orientations, and they don’t become asexual. For that matter, asexual people who for one reason or another have sex with someone don’t magically lose their asexuality either.
Did you put your penis into x’s backside?
Oh look, it gets better! This preoccupation that many cishet people seem to have with how non-cishet people have sex is somewhat troubling. I mean, how do you have sex, Mr or Ms UKBA employee? And then there’s of course the implicit assumption that if it’s not penetrative it doesn’t count. We know how well that went for Bill Clinton, right? I guess if your understanding of sex it that flawed then it would be an act of charity to educate you about how we non-cishets do it. Shame I’m not feeling very charitable today.
When x was penetrating you did you have an erection?
Here’s a few possible ways this could go. It was the first time for both of us, it was awkward, we fumbled, it hurt. Or I can’t remember, we were both off our faces. Or yes, I came my brains out. Or turns out I don’t much like this particular sex act, but we found many other ways to have fun. The trouble with this question is that there are as many answers to it as there are occasions upon which the particular sex act being asked about has been performed in human history. But regardless of your experience, only one of those will get you the magic ticket that allows you to stay in a country that might not execute you for who you are.
[TW: rape for this paragraph] I am willing to bet that asylum seekers who have survived rape get asked the same kind of question. Did you enjoy it? Did you have an erection? An orgasm? Well it can’t have been rape then, can it?
Did you ejaculate?
Did x ejaculate inside you?
Are you taking notes so you can get off to them tonight?
Why did you use a condom?
Because I value my own and my partner’s sexual health. Because I grew up queer in the 80s and 90s. Because that happens to be the best contraceptive choice for me personally when having PiV intercourse with people in possession of a penis. Because when I don’t, I expose myself not only to the risk of serious STIs but also to the almost-certainty of a host of minor but highly unpleasant conditions like thrush and cystitis. (Yes, yes Mr or Ms UKBA employee, I am indeed judging you for asking this question, possibly more so than for some of the arguably worse questions, because this is one that even cishets should know.) And while we’re at it, have you heard of dental dams?
How did you feel when having sex?
By necessity, I can only give you a non-exhaustive list of emotions I’ve experienced during sex: insecure, amused, worried, confused as fuck, entertained, relieved, bored, elated, horny, angry, blank, scared, annoyed, overwhelmed, satisfied, surprised, close to my partner, tentative, slutty, powerful, needy, melting, impatient (often), loving, loved, happy, snarky, safe, unsafe, fascinated.
Did you have feelings for other boys?
I have all sorts of feelings for all sorts of people. Many of my feelings towards fellow human beings tend to be on the “annoyed” end of the spectrum.
Did you have physical relationships with other boys in [city]?
I wonder, how many people of which gender do I need to have fucked to demonstrate my credibility as a bisexual? And how many is too many? What number makes you think that I’m a disease-ridden slut who should not be allowed to stay in the country for public health reasons?
You think I’m joking about that last one? Parliament nearly voted on a proposed amendment to the Immigration Bill which would have banned HIV-positive immigrants from entering the country. Last week. Let’s be clear, this is something not even Russia, everyone’s current number one enemy, does anymore. (ETA: fact check says I’m wrong about that last bit.)
Did you love x?
Define love.
When was his birthday?
I have no intention of handing you that password.
Did you buy him presents?
Still do occasionally.
Did he buy you presents?
Still does occasionally.
How could you afford to buy him presents if you were studying?
One makes do.
In [city] did you have sex with other men?
See above.
What do you find attractive about men?
Often, I am shallow and go for physical features. But sometimes, I want to make out with people’s brains.
Tell me what you like about men that turns you on?
What is it about the way men walk that turns you on?
What is it about men’s backsides that attracts you?
How did you get found out?
I came out to people I thought I could trust. Most of them were awesome. Many were ignorant. Some were dicks.
In [country] how many relationships have you had with women?
We gouged one eye and it was blue. We’d better check the second one too though, maybe only one of them was really blue.
How did you meet y?
What did you find attractive about y?
On the night you met her what attracted you to her?
Did you have a sexual relationship with her?
How often did you see y?
How were your feelings for her different to x?
How are your feelings for you ex different to those for your current partner?
Were you and x lovers at this time?
Ah, the greedy bisexuals.
Did you tell x about your affair with y?
The dishonest bisexuals.
Repeat
What was x’s response when you told him about y?
Blast, maybe not dishonest anyway.
Did you tell y about x as well?
Gotcha, totally dishonest!
Why not?
Oh I wonder why a bisexual person wouldn’t out themselves immediately to a new partner. Let me think about that one…
What do you like about women?
Only one question on the attractiveness or otherwise of women? Not four probing questions on when I want fuck people in the arse? I am shocked!
How do you show your sexuality when you are in the UK?
How do you show yours, Mr or Ms UKBA employee? You don’t think you need to because you’re straight? Is that a wedding ring on your finger? A photo of your spouse and children on your desk? Now tell me again how you show your sexuality.
How does that display you are bisexual?
I have a permanent rainbow halo.
Where do you go when going out?
Which pub do you go to?
What is your religion?
What does the church say about homosexuality?
I don’t know. What does it say about heterosexuality? That’s about as relevant to this conversation about my bisexuality as anything else.
What is your view of same sex marriages?
Well documented.
What do you think of men marrying men?
Sure, but I’d advise them – or anyone getting married for that matter – to get a decent prenup.
Why do you think it is a good thing?
Would you marry a man?
Not even for the tax savings. I wouldn’t marry a not-man either.
Why have you got to behave as a bisexual in [country]?
So, we’ve gouged out both eyes. They were indeed both blue, for which you could have been persecuted in your own country. But you don’t have them anymore, we fixed it for you. You can totally go back.
That was with x only and he initiated the contact you claim. Why can’t you return and live a full life there?
I don’t know about you, but I’m on the verge of both tears and throwing up. For the record, the UKBA is part of the Home Office, and the Home Office came in joint 5th in this year’s Stonewall Workplace Equality Index.

[TW:Rape] Be very careful how you score your political points

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OnFire
The above post has been making the rounds on Tumblr and, more recently, on Twitter. It makes some very valid points about the tendency of our cutlure to blame the victims, rather than the perpetrators, of sexual assault. “She was wearing a short skirt.” “She was drunk.” “She was walking alone in the dark.” “She enjoyed it.” “She wanted it.” “It was her fault.” Victim blaming is one of the biggest obstacles to tackling violence against women, it’s hugely damaging to those who have experienced sexual assault, it’s a major factor in the appallingly low conviction rates for rape, it needs calling out and, frankly, it needs to die in a fire. And yet, something about this post makes me extremely uncomfortable.
Here’s the thing: Some people don’t seem to have read the headline the comments are referring to; some seem to have thought it was made up. It isn’t. It’s a true story. Somewhere in India, there is a woman who was raped; who was subsequently so badly let down by the justice system that she felt this was her only option; and who now will presumably go to jail (or possibly has already gone to jail) for murder. No matter how valid the political points about victim blaming, I feel it is in incredibly poor taste to score them in this particular way off the back of this particular tragedy.
By all means, challenge victim blaming. Challenge the criminal justice system which treats victims like suspects and sees only a handful of cases end in conviction. Campaign, and educate, and do everything in your power to make violence against women history. But do also show respect for the survivors; their stories; their lives. Do not (even in anger – as I suspect the original posts were made) make light of this.