Things to make and do

Here comes a link-post of interesting and worthwhile things, cross-posted from my personal blog. (As such, a couple of points are only locally relevant; sorry about that.)

• Project V (#ProjV on Twitter) is a campaign to get people to realise the impact that denying Disability Living Allowance (DLA) to those who need it would have, organised by The Broken of Britain. It was designed to coincide with the end of the consultation on reform of DLA, on the 14th February, but the consultation has now been extended until the 18th. You can read contributors' tweet-length stories here. What you can do to help (from here):

Whatever the reason, we now have 4 more days of the DLA Reform consultation so let us use it well. Write, e,mail, and send a Valentine to your MPs, MSPs and AMs, asking them to oppose DLA reform, tweet your story at #ProjV, and use the extra time well!

• Meanwhile in Cambridge, the city council are planning to close the ground-floor, accessible public toilets in Lion Yard shopping centre on very shaky grounds, moving them to smaller and less accessible quarters on the first floor. Apparently they will be debating the subject on Thursday (tomorrow), thanks to the Cambridge Forum for Disabled People's work to raise the profile of the issue. If you're in Cambridge, please do read the text of their leaflet send off a quick email to the council asking them to reconsider (directions at link)!
• More Cambridge-based stuff: the launch event for the brilliant Think Outside The Box campaign is happening on the 24th February. Details:

  Think Outside The Box Launch, Thursday 24th February, 7:30pm, Cavonius Centre, in the Stephen Hawking Building, Caius' Harvey Court site off West Road.

  The Think Outside The Box Campaign has been launched! It started with the simple idea of not forcing people into the boxes of 'male' and 'female' and now has a range of recommendations which challenge many day-to-day ways in which society tries to force us all into the gender binary. The Campaign focuses on access for and awareness of non-binary-gendered people (including gender queer, polygendered, bigendered, agendered, androgynous people) but the benefits are far wider for anyone who doesn't want to have to constantly declare a binary gender. To find out more see the website at www.lgbt.cusu.cam.ac.uk/think.

  We're having a launch meeting, come along to find out about the campaign, ask questions about the reasons behind the campaign or discuss plans for the future, both local and national. There'll be an introduction for people new to the issues and then a discussion so bring your questions, your ideas, your concerns and your enthusiasm and help us get this campaign going both in Cambridge and outside.

• Via Saranga (see her post for more information), please support the Norwich Eating Disorders Association and the Abortion Support Network, both of which do vital work but are being threatened by lack of funds.
• Moving to the international, The Godmothers is a way to get involved with helping the UN's new women's agency. I've seen links to it in a few places but The F-Word blog (naturally -- how I love it) has a good write-up here. From the front page of The Godmothers' website:

Worldwide more than 60 million girls have been forced into early marriage. Of the 780 million people who can't read, 510 million are female. Women work two thirds of the world's working hours but earn just 10% of the income.

The new UN women's agency could put a stop to all this. But to fulfil its promise it needs your help.

They are currently inviting people to take part in their first action, calling on parliamentarians to sign an Early Day Motion calling for proper funding for UN Women.

• I haven't actually read this article yet (ho ho, I thought posting some links would be quick and it's taken most of the evening), but here is one of my favourite bloggers, Merrick Godhaven, debating Philippe Duhamel on the question: Is property damage in protest justified?
• If anyone has read through this whole list -- and maybe sent a few emails -- you deserve a reward. Here's some really beautiful art: a billboard replaced by a swingset for two.

Julian Assange and Rape-Rape

This may be a rather controversial post, so I will have an extremely short temper with anyone who does not actually read what it says on the page. In that spirit, this comes with three disclaimers:

Disclaimer 1: I think Wikileaks' actions are excellent and necessary. The Iraq and Afghanistan war logs show that we cannot trust governments to do what is right in the absence of transparency. They will abuse our trust to cover up killing journalists, spying on the UN, and letting outlawed munitions into the country. I look forward to further leaks, especially to the ones promised early next year featuring the deeds of a major US bank. And they make me hopeful that individuals can in fact challenge those who consider themselves beyond human accountability.

Disclaimer 2: Julian Assange does not equal Wikileaks. One can fall while the other survives. If Assange were to blink out of existence tomorrow morning, the leaks would continue. If he were assassinated, as some US politicians who should really know better have suggested, the leaks would happen a lot faster, courtesy of the infamous insurance file. And if it turns out that Assange is actually a horrible person, this does not invalidate what Wikileaks has done. They are not the same.

Disclaimer 3: Assange has just been arrested in the UK to be extradited to Sweden on charges of rape. (Having walked into a police station of his own accord with the intent to fight the extradition to Sweden, mind). He says that the allegations are false and orchestrated by the US. The two women who have accused him say otherwise. Swedish prosecutors are acting in a strange manner by refusing to actually communicate with him.

It's possible that Assange is right, and that the charges are bogus and a result of US pressure on Sweden. But it's also possible that Assange is in fact guilty of rape. I don't want that to be the case, but we can't just dismiss that possibility because we don't like it.

Now, assuming the charges are genuine:

What exactly is he accused of? Most news sources just recount the unhelpful official arrest warrant. But according to Feministe, his actual deed is this: "in one case, condom use was negotiated for and Assange agreed to wear a condom but didn't, and the woman didn't realize it until after they had sex; in the second case, it sounds like the condom broke and the woman told Assange to stop, which he did not".

At this point, I'm going to make a cruel comparison using a made-up summary:

"Well-travelled man, his work beloved by many, is accused of rape. Supporters rush to side, saying 'it was not really rape, those who say otherwise have ulterior motives'."

When Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland last year, his supporters rushed to his side, voicing their anger that such a great man would be so unfairly hounded. When challenged, they would tend to downplay Polanski's crime. Whoopi Goldberg infamously explained on TV that Polanski's sexual assault of a thirteen year old was not "rape-rape": not actual, proper rape.

Many people now say that what Assange is accused of is not rape but simply a bit of naughtiness, not a very nice thing to do, but not enough to warrant arrest. Sometimes this is because the crucial fact that he did not stop when told to is omitted by many reports, but others simply don't see what he did as rape. "Rape", to many people, is half-human monsters lurking near bus stops waiting to assault total strangers, not a "disagreement in the bedroom".

But if we actually want to clearly define rape, we end up with something like "sexual intercourse without consent". Polanski is definitely guilty of this. So is Assange, according to the women he slept with in Sweden. It makes me wince to see people who were baying for Polanski's blood now refuse to entertain the idea that Assange may be guilty of rape.

As a Swiss, it also makes me extremely angry to see a Swiss bank close Assange's account on a technicality, given that the Swiss government, having nabbed Polanski, ended up releasing him again, on a technicality. It seems such technicalities always crop up whenever there is sufficient political pressure.

But here's the thing: It is possible for Julian Assange to be both a crusader for openness and a rapist. After all, Polanski is both an accomplished director and a rapist.

Famous people are never entirely good or entirely evil. All human beings have flaws and contradictions. Assange can be a maven on political freedoms and a dunce on sexual ones. He can have a sophisticated moral compass in politics and still think "I don't like wearing condoms, and I'm not going to be told otherwise".

This does not excuse his actions. We can't simply offset a person's good deeds against their bad ones and judge them on the result. It may be that the right thing to happen is for Assange to go to prison for rape and for Wikileaks to continue leaking state secrets. After all, they are not the same thing.

We must evaluate Wikileaks' actions on their own merits and not confuse them with those of its figurehead.

I don't talk to children: Is fear of sexual predators reinforcing gender roles?

I've been reading "There's a good girl" by Marianne Grabrucker, in which she describes her attempts to raise her daughter in a sane way free from gender stereotypes, and the difficulties she faces.

One of the recurring themes, especially at the start of the book, is that men ignore children. When a child sits down next to a woman on the train, the woman will often engage it in conversation, and the parent present will look on approvingly. On the other hand, a man will simply pretend the child is not there at all.

If he's forced to interact with it, he will do so very distantly, in a condescending voice and a minimum of words. To quote Grabrucker:

"So a man is apparently permitted to ignore someone; he is in control of the situation and decides who he will talk to and when. When he does address children, he adopts the tone he will later often use with women."

(page 34f)

Now, the fun thing about examining societal attitudes is that you can just look into yourself to figure them out. A thought experiment with an imagined situation can yield quite surprising results.

In my case, I have realised that I just don't talk to children!

For example, let's say I'm over at some friends', who have a little girl. They're busy making dinner. I have offered to help them, but there is nothing for me to do. The little girl is bored, and bothering her parents.

I could go and entertain the kid - ask her to show me her toys, tell her a story, chase her around - do something to get her out of her parents' way so they can cook in peace.

If the parents ask me to, I will happily do this. I like children. But I would never take the initiative: talking to or touching a child who isn't family feels like a huge transgression to me. So unless prompted, I just stand in the doorway and chat.

A woman, on the other hand, would be expected to entertain the child. Women are supposed to help others out, and to take care of children. Men are not expected to do the former, and are societally prohibited from doing the latter.

Another scenario: A little boy is running across a big park, and falls flat on his face, right next to me. He starts crying. I stand rooted to the spot and wait for his mother to run across the park to pick him up and make sure he's OK. I behave like that because interacting with a kid I don't know at all feels like an impossible transgression.

The same kind of attitude also extends to women, if to a lesser degree:

About two years ago, on the bus home, I noticed this young women and her kid come onto the bus, carrying a bunch of plastic bags. The little girl was pretty hyperactive and kept zooming around the bus, despite being repeatedly told off by her mother. Eventually, I noticed that the mother was crying. I had another look at the (translucent) bags, and noticed that they were haphazardly stuffed with lots of clothes and personal things.

I might have jumped to conclusions there, but to me this looked very much like the two had just been thrown out of wherever they had been living. For all I knew, they didn't have anywhere to go.

So of course, I did nothing.

What should I have done? Gone up to the woman, and asked "Pardon me, it looks like you've just been turfed out on the street. Do you need help carrying your bags? Would you like a cup of tea? Do you need somewhere to sleep? We have a sofa."

But I'm a pretty tall guy who's dressed mostly in black. The last thing she needed at that point (turfed out or not) was having to deal with a random stranger, trying to figure out whether he could be trusted. If I had been with my girlfriend we might have done something, but alone, I worried I would just look too threatening.

The whole encounter left me feeling distinctly uncomfortable with myself.

So a few months ago, when I was cycling down the road, I noticed a young woman sitting slumped on the verge, crying. As such things go, any number of cars and pedestrians had passed her already without taking notice. I cycled past her too, but twenty metres down the road, I remembered my previous experience and turned around.

She was not in a happy place, though she refused to tell me any details. In the end - and after consulting with my girlfriend over the phone - I called an ambulance and let them take care of her.

I'm not telling this story to trumpet my own credentials as a Samaritan, but to point out that it took quite a lot of mental effort on my part to override my conditioning to ignore her as well.

Why?

When I ask myself why I don't interact with children - or women in distress - the reason that comes to mind most readily is that as a man, I'm a potential child molester and rapist.

Of course I want to scoop up that kid and make sure he's all right. But I don't want to panic his mother as she sees a strange man touching her child. If I were female, I think I would appear much less threatening, and this wouldn't be a problem.

But the mind readily makes up rationalisations, so I don't know if that's the real reason for my behaviour. I may well be just following the rules society has instilled in me and justifying it after the fact.

The moral panic about child molestation is mostly misdirected. Most such transgressions happen within the circle of family and friends. Your dear uncle Bobby is much more likely to interfere with your child than a random stranger on the street. So is your aunt Susan. And even a stereotypical crazed child-rapist would be unlikely to grab your child in broad daylight and run off with it, cackling.

The idea of men as potential child molesters does seem to be a popular one - I've heard it as the received wisdom that there are nearly no male primary school teachers because all it takes is a single accusation of molestation to end their career. I don't know if that's true, but the attitude does certainly exist. But is it, again, a rationalisation of traditional gender roles?

Certainly the worry about child molestation has resulted in some strange things: parents get in trouble for taking photographs of their children taking a bath, and in one case, they are banned from the playground. The justification for such insanity?

"Sadly, in today's climate, you can't have adults walking around unchecked in a children's playground."

So there you go. This is why I don't talk to children, don't smile at them, don't comfort them if they're hurt. And what does that teach them? That taking care of children is women's work.

What am I going to do about it? I will try to push at that boundary a little, at least. Smile at little kids on the street. Offer to entertain my friends' children. What else? Suggestions are very welcome.

EVERY BODY IS BEAUTIFUL: BODY ACCEPTANCE ACTIVISM IN MY NEIGHBOURHOOD

Crossposted at my personal blog.



On my way to work, I cycle past a gym called Greens. It's a Health and Fitness Club, in fact, or perhaps even more of a lifestyle centre, complete with "stylish, fully licensed bar and brasserie" and "luxurious health and beauty salon".

Outside the car park, on the corner of a main road where hundreds of people must see them every day, Greens have two large advertisements. The posters, which are changed regularly, used to be the size of the ones in bus stops. They recently replaced the old boards with two enormous ones, nearly ten feet tall and each completely covered with a new ad.

The images below are representative of the Greens advertising style. The new ad in question featured the bum of a woman in bright pink shorts, and if I remember correctly, the model was actually pointing her finger directly at her rump. The caption read, "Does my bum look big in this?"

These ads present the female body - usually divested of its head or any other indication that it belongs to an individual person - in a purely passive, sexual way. Even the two women who seem to have been exercising, one with a Swiss ball and the other with boxing gloves, are posed to be coy, inviting, sexually receptive. This is the only image of female beauty that is possible in the Greens advert. Additionally, this is a beauty only attainable by women who have the means to buy a membership to this expensive and luxurious health club and the leisure time to spend many hours working out there.

Greens offer many classes (in aerobics and so on) and talk about health benefits on their website. I'm sure you could get fit there, but according to their advertising the primary reason for women to join is to conform to this sexualised, exclusive and unrealistic notion of beauty. For the men? Either they don't need to be advertised to, or Greens is counting on the timeworn idea that a few shots of tits and ass will lead them wherever the advertiser wants.



I say, "if I remember correctly," because I came back past Greens yesterday to find that the posters had been pulled down and the graffiti above sprayed on one of the boards: Every body is beautiful.

I was overjoyed to see this - activism for body acceptance and against this unrealistic beauty standard, in my very own neighbourhood. I have been annoyed with these ads - which are put up in several other places around the area too - since I started noticing them, almost as much for the bad puns they sport as for their representation of female beauty (they never feature men). I'd never really moved on from annoyance to anger or determination to act, though. I think part of my pleasure in seeing this graffiti is because it's a reminder that kicking against these images, which dominate our public spaces without our consent, is possible and has an effect.

I wonder who wrote this? I'd like to meet them.

Women, men, games, cleavage

Beyond my friends' journals, the two kinds of blogs I mostly read are ones about programming and ones about politics. Typically, their content does not overlap, but the other day there was a rare exception: Both Coding Horror and Sociological Images pointed out the hilarious-yet-depressing evolution of the ads for a browser-based game called "Evony".

Starting out with a fairly generic man-in-armor-with-sword, the ad switched to showing a series of women with increasingly more cleavage - until the final ad, which is literally just cleavage. Any mention of what kind of game this is supposed to advertise has long fallen by the wayside. If I had to take a guess from the way the ad looks, I would go for strip poker, not a "Civilization"-esque empire building game.



The makers of the ads probably noticed a correlation between the amount of cleavage and the proportion of viewers who clicked on the ad - but in the process, they have outed themselves as troglodytes.

(In case you would like to see confirmation that these ads are indeed out on the web, as of the time of this writing, going to livejournal.com is likely to do the trick.)

Sadly, they are hardly alone. Large chunks of the video game industry understand themselves as a hetero-men-only club. The line between game mags and lad mags is frequently quite blurred, for example at IGN.com, who have a "Babe of the day" section. Then there are the ubiquitous "Booth Babes" found at trade shows, a tradition of scantily clad women to be ogled by the (assumedly) all-male crowds. The few games which actually feature female main characters often treat them as mostly eye candy. And on the rare occasions where this isn't the case, certain people complain and wield photoshop.

Still, there are games developers out there who remember that women are people, not eye candy. Spiderweb Games is pretty good on that score. And then there's PopCap Games' Plants vs Zombies, who decided to have their own special take on the Evony ads:


Hence:

• Vote with your wallet. Don't play or buy games with sexist content or advertising - or at least consider the alternatives. There are plenty of online empire-building games that don't feel the need to insult their potential customers with the assumption they'll be swayed by boobies. If you like building things, you might also like FreeCiv - and you can typically buy a copy of Sim City 2000 or Alpha Centauri for a pittance.


• Write Angry Letters: To game mags that think casual sexism is OK, to game developers who think the same, and to websites who allow said ads to be run.

For example, I sent the following letter to LiveJournal:

Dear LiveJournal team,

I have noticed that you are showing ads for the web-based game "Evony" on your site. From their cleavage-centric appearance one would guess that they advertise porn, or perhaps strip poker, though apparently they advertise a strategy game.

Certainly, the ad's creators feel the need to insult their potential customers by assuming that the sight of breasts will make us play their game. Given that (according to your stats) some 55.3% of your readership is female, and given that the majority of your male readership (myself included) probably doesn't want to be subjected to these ads either, do you really think it's appropriate to run them?

As you may be aware, there has been quite a backlash against these ads in a number of online communities, and your display of them does taint you by association. Livejournal hosts a large number of different communities, many of whom will feel less than welcome as long as you are showing these ads.

I certainly don't feel welcome.

I look forward to hearing from you on this important matter.

I encourage you to send a similar letter, perhaps based on this one - but be sure to make it different enough so that it doesn't look to them as if someone just pasted the same thing a dozen times using different names.

Equally, I encourage you to send a letter to Evony. Now, given that they are still running these ads, it's likely that they are rubbing their little hands with glee at all the publicity the Internet outrage has produced. Try to make it clear to them that insulting their potential customers isn't going to work in the long run.

But if you only send one letter, go for the LJ one, or a letter to another site that's showing the ads. I think we have more of a chance shaming them into not showing the ads than Evony, who have already outed themselves as slimebags.

Rape crisis crisis followup

I have been in contact with Yvonne Traynor, director of the Croydon rape crisis centre currently forced with closure due to Boris Johnson reneging on his promise of funding. According to her, they are currently in negotiation with the major's office, so let's hope some good will come of that.

Meanwhile, others have set up a campaign called Boris Keep Your Promise aimed at saving the centre. They had a charity event on the 4th which I sadly did not find out about in time, but I will get in touch with them and keep you posted on further activities. Alternatively, you can get in touch with them directly by email or Facebook.

The consultation to decide the funding closes on 20th July. Please write an email or letter to the Major and (politely but firmly) remind him to keep his promise. You can use this one I sent, though I urge you to paraphrase or edit it significantly, as a set of identical emails is just going to be ignored:


Dear Mr Johnson,

I have recently been made aware that you have failed to provide funding for London rape crisis centres. You specifically promised to fund them in your election manifesto. As you are no doubt aware, this means that the only London centre may well have to close.

This is a shameful state of affairs. It is not what you promised, it is not what your supporters signed up for. I urge you to correct this at once and provide the centre with the funding you promised.

I look forward to hearing from you on this important matter.

Your sincerely,

your name here

"Della"

Dear Dell,

I was very glad to see your new Della website. My wife has just bought one of your computers and can now keep track of her weight so much more easily!

I was wondering, though: I have a black neighbour, when are you going to make a website for people like him?

Regards,

- David Stark

PS Oh no, wait. Let me rephrase that: WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING? Your "Della" website is a nauseating, patronising, sexist mess. Please stop insulting your potential customers with this garbage.

So Dell have recently opened a new sub-site called "Della" aimed at women in the most offensive way possible. Bereft of any technical information about their hardware, or indeed any information at all, the site instead includes "Tech Tips" about keeping track of your weight...

Unsurprisingly, most people aren't too happy about this - and indeed Dell have already backtracked a little - the most offensively stupid "Tech Tips" (like keeping track of your weight) are now gone from the site.

But the site itself is still up. It's perhaps unsurprising that Dell wanted a more "feminine" way to present itself to its customers, given the amusing "masculinity" of the main Dell site - with phrases like "engineered for maximum performance and scalability" and "HP and IMB should be very afraid". But a computer is a computer is a computer. There are no "girl computers" and "boy computers". And Dell doesn't seem to get that.

So what can you do?

In this case, it's very straightforward: go to the Della website, click on the little "Feedback" link at the bottom right, and leave them a message. Tell them that you're offended by their troglodyte sexism, mention that you're not going to buy a computer from such an unpleasant company, and tell them to shut that site down.

Rape crisis crisis

"Victims are not normally strong enough to tie themselves to the railings outside Downing Street, shouting 'this has happened and I don't have any help'. Survivors of sexual abuse don't want people to know what happened to them. They won't be marching to Whitehall."

 — Yvonne Traynor, chief executive of the south London branch of Rape Crisis

Back when he was campaigning to become Mayor of London, one of Boris Johnson's campaign promises was to increase funding for rape crisis centres in London. At that time, there was only one such centre in London - woefully inadequate for a city of more than seven million. Johnson stated his intention to provide £744 000 to set up an additional four centres.

Unfortunately, once elected, he proceeded to renege on his promise, and in fact provided no funding at all. As a result, the single centre is now facing closure.

To give you an idea of the disastrous impact this will have, in 2008, the centre helped some 320 women who had been raped. In the year 2003/04, the total number of rapes recorded by police in England and Wales was 13 354. [1] A back-of-the-envelope calculation based on the fact that London contains one seventh of the population of England and Wales yields about 1700 rapes per year in London.

And the one rape crisis centre that's trying to deal with this all is closing, thanks to Boris Johnson's complete lack of interest. Not that he's alone - thanks to funding cuts lack of enthusiasm from all corners, the number of centres has massively decreased in the last two decades. Instead, the government makes up its own domestic/sexual violence policies without bothering to consult anyone who knows anything about the topic.

What can you do about it?

• Especially if you're in his constituency, write to the Mayor of London and remind him of his campaign promises.


• Or you can donate to them directly.


• Finally, if you live in an area with a centre, you could volunteer.

I'm also contacting some other people who have written about this topic, and will do a followup post on what I learn.

[1] http://www.cer.truthaboutrape.co.uk/3.html