Is Labour really mucking the country up? Is it a myth? Is it a myth being propounded by the Conservative Party to whip the electorate up into Brown-bashing? Is the Sun the Conservative Party's Communications Department? Was David Cameron's Hugo Young Lecture at the Guardian last night all linguistic gossamer and policy-lite? Is it true what the Conservatives say about Labour, that they have made Britain a broken country? Are communities really more fragmented than when the Conservatives were last in power? Is society more fragmented than when the Conservatives were last in power? Is one reason for the fragmentation of society unfettered materialism? And does this not suggest that the very people likely to vote Conservative in the next general election the very people who enjoy the unfettered materialism critiqued by the Conservative Party as part of their campaign for a Britain built around civic communitarianism? Would this not be paradoxical on the part of those voters? Is the Conservative Party right to ask people to roll back their own levels of materialism when the Party is ever so keen to waive inheritance tax for the rich? Is the Conservative Party right to promote marriage, rewarding people for getting married, when all's said and done, marriage is purely a matter of choice and very rarely a manifestation of civic responsibility? (Moreover, is it not true that modern marriage exhibits the very crude levels of materialism that the Conservative Party wishes to erase?) If the Conservative Party is truly progressive, then why do they not refer to civil partnerships in their civic crusade for heterosexual marriage? Moreover, would rewarding heterosexual marriages increase levels of inequality, by ignoring civil partnerships, which in turn implies that they cannot function as part of the massive reorientation of Britain's moral compass? Moreover, moreover: how does the Conservative Party's love affair with heterosexual marriage square with the need to erase poverty, seeing as it implicitly targets the lives of single-parent mothers, whose 'moral compass' is skewed precisely because they are raising children outside of a marital framework?
In sum, does this country need to wake up from the spells being cast by David Cameron's rhetoric and the myths being propounded by the Conservative Party?
More questions to follow (suggest your own in a comment to this post)...
Wednesday, 11 November 2009
Thursday, 5 November 2009
No sex, please (we're a faith school)!
In a way, this story doesn't affect me, since I don't have children. I am not bothered, either way, by the threat of a teenage daughter becoming pregnant well before she should do, wrecking her life because of the selfish actions of an irresponsible male child who in any case absconds the scene when the deed has been done, leaving the poor girl in pieces at the looming magnitude of her future. It's awful that continue to happens, but given my situation, it's beyond my concern.
The issue of sex education in schools, however, does bother me, particularly where the lack of information for gay students is concerned. So when Ed Balls announces that sex education in schools is to be made compulsory, including information for gay kids, then the government is to be congratulated. But then he completely detracts from the potential success of this new policy by allowing parents the option to withdraw their children from such classes, and faith schools the freedom to make ideological statements which conflict with it. All in the name of 'values'.
There are two main problems here. One is the issue of the parents who choose to take their children out of sex education classes, deeming such tuition inappropriate. You only wonder what the more enlightened parents feel about this 'voluntary' action: they couldn't be blamed for saying something like 'So my child learns something vitally important, but you think your child is beyond this? Are they beyond the responsibilities taught by the course as well?'
The second issue has to do with faith schools. The luxury afforded faith schools is that unlike in the case of non-faith schools, they are allowed to step outside government policy as per the 'values' and 'ethos' dictated by the institution's religion. In respect of Roman Catholic faith schools especially, you can see where this one is going in terms of sex education: with contraception, homosexual, before marriage - sex is just not up for discussion.
Then there is the relative invisibility of gay people in the school system. Faith schools enjoy luxuries here, too, by enforcing their ideological teachings on vulnerable young people, which ultimately threaten the human and civil rights of gay students. But then, according to the Liverpool schools that recently rejected homophobic hate crime information packs entitled 'Denial', there are no such things as homosexuals in their schools. (Did they not see the irony of this gesture?) So enforced invisibility, ignorance, and inequality of educational opportunities continue to imbalance the rights of gay people. Or they might, if faith schools persist in failing to acknowledge their gay students unequivocally by teaching what the government is asking them to teach. And equally, in terms of religious teachings on contraception, the rights of female teenagers are also put in the balance. The religious ideology on the issue of contraception serves the power of straight males students, whilst the female students whose lives are destroyed by foolish, ill-judged actions are left to tend to the consequences.
The issue of sex education in schools, however, does bother me, particularly where the lack of information for gay students is concerned. So when Ed Balls announces that sex education in schools is to be made compulsory, including information for gay kids, then the government is to be congratulated. But then he completely detracts from the potential success of this new policy by allowing parents the option to withdraw their children from such classes, and faith schools the freedom to make ideological statements which conflict with it. All in the name of 'values'.
There are two main problems here. One is the issue of the parents who choose to take their children out of sex education classes, deeming such tuition inappropriate. You only wonder what the more enlightened parents feel about this 'voluntary' action: they couldn't be blamed for saying something like 'So my child learns something vitally important, but you think your child is beyond this? Are they beyond the responsibilities taught by the course as well?'
The second issue has to do with faith schools. The luxury afforded faith schools is that unlike in the case of non-faith schools, they are allowed to step outside government policy as per the 'values' and 'ethos' dictated by the institution's religion. In respect of Roman Catholic faith schools especially, you can see where this one is going in terms of sex education: with contraception, homosexual, before marriage - sex is just not up for discussion.
Teachers in religious schools will still be free to tell pupils that sex outside marriage, homosexuality or using contraception are wrong, because the legislation will include a clause allowing schools to apply their "values" and "ethos" to lessons.So, you might ask, what is the point of this new legislation? If sex education is to be welcomed on the basis of its potential positive effects in reducing early teenage pregnancies, then how do you reckon with the situation of Liverpool, a city whose legendary mix of poverty and Roman Catholicism drastically conspire to keep teenage pregnancies high. Given that a massive amount of Liverpool's children are educated by faith schools, mostly Roman Catholic, then how will Catholic teachings on contraception square with the more urgent need (for society as much as for the individuals concerned) to keep teenage pregnancies low precisely with the use of contraception during sex? Pardon the pun, but it beggars belief.
Faith schools will be allowed to deliver the lessons in line with the "context, values and ethos" of their religion, the legislation will say.
Then there is the relative invisibility of gay people in the school system. Faith schools enjoy luxuries here, too, by enforcing their ideological teachings on vulnerable young people, which ultimately threaten the human and civil rights of gay students. But then, according to the Liverpool schools that recently rejected homophobic hate crime information packs entitled 'Denial', there are no such things as homosexuals in their schools. (Did they not see the irony of this gesture?) So enforced invisibility, ignorance, and inequality of educational opportunities continue to imbalance the rights of gay people. Or they might, if faith schools persist in failing to acknowledge their gay students unequivocally by teaching what the government is asking them to teach. And equally, in terms of religious teachings on contraception, the rights of female teenagers are also put in the balance. The religious ideology on the issue of contraception serves the power of straight males students, whilst the female students whose lives are destroyed by foolish, ill-judged actions are left to tend to the consequences.
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Democracy empowers/dies (delete as applicable)
The vote against gay marriage is bad enough. If you think it isn't, then read this little fact:
Gay marriage measures have lost in every state, 31 in all, in which it has been put to a popular vote.Note: POPULAR VOTE. This is when other people's freedom is put to democracy, and democracy fails in the name of justice. So what we have is a situation in which democracy bolsters discrimination, allows haters the opportunity to limit the freedom of others. Democracy is the freedom to hate. This idea that democracy can work against justice has always been at the back of my mind, but the sentence above says it all. And it makes me feel sick. But more than anything else, I am sorry in particular for the gays and lesbians of Maine, USA, who go about their daily lives today in the encroaching shadow of limited freedom, advancing inequality, and the discrete but threatening knowledge that this has been decided by a number of the people who pass them on the sidewalk. What a society!
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
Claude Lévi-Strauss 1908-2009
The age doesn't matter, it's still a sad - not to mention, remarkable - event. I'd hazard a guess that it's a epochal one too: not in terms of its ramifications, but rather the way in which the death of such colossal intellectuals invites us to reflect on what has passed, and what has passed along with it. Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Richard Rorty, now Lévi-Strauss: the deaths of thinkers, the very individuals who mine the seam of humanity and present the findings for our illumination and delectation, mark the death of an age. Such is the case with the death of Lévi-Strauss: because of his loss, we really have moved on from the twentieth century. The contribution of Lévi-Strauss's work is immense: he altered whole systems of thought (with structuralist anthropolgy), redirected our propensities (post-colonial before the end of colonialism itself), and reached out to other disciplines by being revolutionary (the bricoleur lends itself so well to the study of literature). And we should fear what he said, because if we're not careful, we really will end civilisation before its time.
Monday, 2 November 2009
Confused rights/rites
I wonder how this little situation can be resolved. What does the far-right and fundamentalist Christians have in common? They hate gays and as far as possible wish to remove the new-found rights of gays and lesbians in the workplace and in the arena of public services. Religious fundamentalists are on the same scale as the thugs who threaten gays and lesbians with death. Until they realise this, religious fundamentalists will continue to be complicit with violent homophobia.
"This case is part of a homophobic fight-back by Christian fundamentalists who resent the removal in law of their right to discriminate against lesbian and gay people," said human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell. [. . .]
"Liberty fiercely defends freedom of conscience and religion, including its reasonable expression in the workplace. But other people have rights and freedoms too," said Corinna Ferguson, legal officer at Liberty, which is intervening in the case.
"Ms Ladele is entitled to her views but not to pick and choose who is worthy of public services."
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
DON'T! DO!
I'm loving the fact that the Penguin Classics edition of Daphne du Maurier's Don't Look Now on Amazon exhorts you to "LOOK INSIDE NOW!"
Tuesday, 27 October 2009
Gays and family life: the eternal incompatitbility
First the death of Ian Baynham, now the life-threatening situation facing James Parkes. Both gay, they resisted homophobia on the street by challenging the perpetrator. In doing so, they sustained life-threatening injuries, which in the case of Ian Baynham led to his death, with James Parkes' injuries leaving him in a very critical, though thankfully stable, condition. These attacks are being treated as homophobic hate crimes. The respective police forces have issued strong statements (Liverpool's statement for James Parkes is particularly strong) that convey a similarly strong defensive response to the crimes. Such statements as have been issued offer public assurances that the justice will eventually err on the side of the victim, but as we saw with Michael Causer, justice did not prevail.
Why should justice be left only at the doors of police headquarters and of the courts? Justice should be rooted in the very structures that hold society together; that justice has to occur after criminal acts take place is one indication of society's fragmentation. The wish for justice should be enmeshed in the civil life of families as part of an expanded practice of the responsibilities families have to other families and to individuals who are threatened by the conduct of separate actors in a given situation. Families, of course, demand justice for each other, by interconnecting on specific issues - one example being 'Families for Justice', an organisation established in the wake of a succession of failures by the justice system to punish murderers. The governing paradox of all this is that the family unit proffers both the victims and perpetrators. Perhaps this goes without saying: every individual is a member of a family, but is it this factor alone that determines their behaviour? Families choose to accept the need for justice from within a set of interpretations that relate to certain members of their grouping: in committing this or that crime, that family member was not behaving in the manner in which most members of that family conduct themselves. The criminal stands apart from the family as an aberration, an unfortunate anomaly in the designation of the family name. But what this describes is a family uncommitted to the overarching responsibilities of the family to ensure civility through a coherent system of values that challenges aberrant behaviour in either word or deed. This model of the family is the worst case scenario; the perpetrator tendencies of members of other families is ordered by degrees, not via the convenient binary of absence or presence. In this light, all families can be accused of sustaining aberrant behaviour in the manner in which they attend to the intractable issue of the gay subject being born in their midst and becoming one of their number.
It goes without saying that the variability of responses to a gay subject being born into a family is massive. But the persistence of institutionalised homophobia confirms that the overwhelming response is at best ambivalent, at worst stridently negative. Where the stridently negative response is maintained is in a family setting where the gay subject is viewed and treated as the aberrant, even rogue mishap in the largely patriarchal and/or matriarchal reproducibility of the genetic line. Such families are fastidiously heternormative and spend much time expressing angst over the accidental breeding of the aberrant gay son or daughter. This type of response might be tacitly assumed by the parent(s), but the gay child will undoubtedly sense this perspective on their natural identity. From within this matrix of heternormative assumptions springs the institutionalised homophobia of the family, by which the parent(s) subject their gay child to relentless hectoring or studious ignorance over their sexual identity from a homophobic perspective, thereby adopting the role of proxy oppressor with which the gay subject learns to cope - that is, if they don't commit suicide as a way of escaping such disproportionate levels of scrutiny. In the thwarted, tortured world of the family with a rogue gay in their midst, the gay subject becomes the incompatible link that sullies the heteronormative line. It is not difficult in this light to understand why homophobia is rife in both family life and the expanded notion of 'family' of society at large. None of this should be the case; it is only true to be reminded of its brutal facticity.
An expanded notion of what 'family' means is required if homophobia is to be eradicated. Homophobia is institutionalised because of its origins in the family unit. We return to the idea of the 'aberrant family member': every homophobic word or deed issues from an individual who sullies the coherence of the family unit by threatening a member of another family. By threatening the Other, Another Family is likewise threatened. As the rupture between rationality and instinct engaged by a criminal act demonstrates, the homophobe is truly aberrant. But as a result of the institutionalised homophobia of the family, this homophobic criminal views him/herself less as an aberration and more as an agent in the upholding of family values. The disastrously paradoxical short-circuiting involved in their barbaric behaviour is that Another Family is destroyed in the process. Families crave stability, but normally only for themselves and not for others (for the Other). There lies the germ of catastrophe worming its way through this particular human grouping: the gay subject is targeted in as much as a family's recognition of this sense of terrible destiny allows.
Gay rights must argue for the gay subject's valuable place within the family unit by insisting that threats to gays are by their very nature targeted at the preservation of the 'institution' of the family. And where democratic conditions and individual choice allow, gays should themselves form strong families as a rebuke to the idea that gays are incompatible with family life.
Why should justice be left only at the doors of police headquarters and of the courts? Justice should be rooted in the very structures that hold society together; that justice has to occur after criminal acts take place is one indication of society's fragmentation. The wish for justice should be enmeshed in the civil life of families as part of an expanded practice of the responsibilities families have to other families and to individuals who are threatened by the conduct of separate actors in a given situation. Families, of course, demand justice for each other, by interconnecting on specific issues - one example being 'Families for Justice', an organisation established in the wake of a succession of failures by the justice system to punish murderers. The governing paradox of all this is that the family unit proffers both the victims and perpetrators. Perhaps this goes without saying: every individual is a member of a family, but is it this factor alone that determines their behaviour? Families choose to accept the need for justice from within a set of interpretations that relate to certain members of their grouping: in committing this or that crime, that family member was not behaving in the manner in which most members of that family conduct themselves. The criminal stands apart from the family as an aberration, an unfortunate anomaly in the designation of the family name. But what this describes is a family uncommitted to the overarching responsibilities of the family to ensure civility through a coherent system of values that challenges aberrant behaviour in either word or deed. This model of the family is the worst case scenario; the perpetrator tendencies of members of other families is ordered by degrees, not via the convenient binary of absence or presence. In this light, all families can be accused of sustaining aberrant behaviour in the manner in which they attend to the intractable issue of the gay subject being born in their midst and becoming one of their number.
It goes without saying that the variability of responses to a gay subject being born into a family is massive. But the persistence of institutionalised homophobia confirms that the overwhelming response is at best ambivalent, at worst stridently negative. Where the stridently negative response is maintained is in a family setting where the gay subject is viewed and treated as the aberrant, even rogue mishap in the largely patriarchal and/or matriarchal reproducibility of the genetic line. Such families are fastidiously heternormative and spend much time expressing angst over the accidental breeding of the aberrant gay son or daughter. This type of response might be tacitly assumed by the parent(s), but the gay child will undoubtedly sense this perspective on their natural identity. From within this matrix of heternormative assumptions springs the institutionalised homophobia of the family, by which the parent(s) subject their gay child to relentless hectoring or studious ignorance over their sexual identity from a homophobic perspective, thereby adopting the role of proxy oppressor with which the gay subject learns to cope - that is, if they don't commit suicide as a way of escaping such disproportionate levels of scrutiny. In the thwarted, tortured world of the family with a rogue gay in their midst, the gay subject becomes the incompatible link that sullies the heteronormative line. It is not difficult in this light to understand why homophobia is rife in both family life and the expanded notion of 'family' of society at large. None of this should be the case; it is only true to be reminded of its brutal facticity.
An expanded notion of what 'family' means is required if homophobia is to be eradicated. Homophobia is institutionalised because of its origins in the family unit. We return to the idea of the 'aberrant family member': every homophobic word or deed issues from an individual who sullies the coherence of the family unit by threatening a member of another family. By threatening the Other, Another Family is likewise threatened. As the rupture between rationality and instinct engaged by a criminal act demonstrates, the homophobe is truly aberrant. But as a result of the institutionalised homophobia of the family, this homophobic criminal views him/herself less as an aberration and more as an agent in the upholding of family values. The disastrously paradoxical short-circuiting involved in their barbaric behaviour is that Another Family is destroyed in the process. Families crave stability, but normally only for themselves and not for others (for the Other). There lies the germ of catastrophe worming its way through this particular human grouping: the gay subject is targeted in as much as a family's recognition of this sense of terrible destiny allows.
Gay rights must argue for the gay subject's valuable place within the family unit by insisting that threats to gays are by their very nature targeted at the preservation of the 'institution' of the family. And where democratic conditions and individual choice allow, gays should themselves form strong families as a rebuke to the idea that gays are incompatible with family life.
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