21st-century hysteria, click bait and the absence of common sense

It’s a sorry state of affairs when something that should be blindingly obvious that it requires no comment demands digital column inches to point this out.

It appears that veteran Channel 4 news reader Jon Snow dared to admit that he had thought about colleagues in terms of S.E.X.

This provoked an outcry – not just on Twitter, but also in the Spectator and, inevitably, in the pages of that bastion of hypocrisy, the Daily Mail.

Such was the response to this admission of being, err, a human being, that Felicity Morse penned a short piece on the topic for the Independent, pointing out that this is entirely normal for a normal human being – we are sexual creatures, after all – and adding that not only is he hardly the only one who has entertained such thoughts, but that … wait for it … women have too.

Of course this also comes at the same time that a certain organ (fnar, fnar) was berating the performance of singer Beyoncé at the Grammy Awards.

Oh My God! She wore something that wasn’t as modest as a burka! She gyrated! Alongside her husband! Our boys will be turned into rapists and our girls into sluts!

I bet you won’t be able to guess which media outlet was leading the charge on that one, will you?

Of course you will.

It was indeed our old friend the Mail that shrilled: “Is this really what little girls should aspire to, Beyoncé? Parents attack ‘vile’ display at Grammys”.

Apparently they found one parent was quoted anonymously, plus a couple of the professional ‘won’t-somebody-think-of-the-children’ brigade, Pippa Smith of SaferMedia and Vivienne Pattison of Mediawatch-UK.

Let’s clarify this: the Mail is the same rag that publishes lashings of pictures of women in as little clothing as possible – mostly to point out that they have put a bit of weight on/lost a pound or two/got cellulite.

The pages of the dead tree edition are bad enough: the online version sees this obsession squared.

And on top of that, as I and others have illustrated previously, it uses its website to publish pictures of underage girls with creepy, sexualising captions and stories alongside – describing an eight-year-old child as “a leggy beauty” is but one of the more notorious examples.

It’s so depressing to have to point out that Morse’s piece is common sense.

It’s equally depressing to point out that Ally Fog’s latest Guardian article, in which he called on people to stop pretending all teenage boys are becoming violent because of porn, is another example of a situation of there being an apparent need to state the bleedin’ obvious.

Fog uses the article to press the case for serious reform of the sex education situation in the UK, where some schools are still using materials related to the homophobic Section 28, and where others are censoring what they tell the children on the basis of religious beliefs.

It’s difficult to understand who would consider it progress that such articles need writing – primarily as a response to plenty of idiocy in a media that is increasingly given to straightforward sensationalisation in order to sell copies or as click bait, and in the case of Fog, he acts as a bit of a counterbalance to the extremist voices of the likes of Julie Bindel and her misandrist, transphobic friends.

How on earth do they get away with it?

Is the British public at large really so puritanical (when not consuming and being scandalised by vast amounts of titillating gossip) that it actually considers it abnormal or surprising that their fellow humans might look at other people and consider matters sexual?

Or that they think that Beyoncé’s dancing will turn their daughters onto a path of sexual promiscuity?

Or that all teenage boys are internet-porn addicted abusers?

But then, there are apparently parents around who do not want their children to have an open and proper sex education.

Part of the problem, though, is that spouting the sort of bile and myth that in these pieces was being rebutted, is irresponsible, and risks giving a sense of justification to bigotry and intolerance and sheer stupidity.

Only yesterday, I read of a court case where two men escaped prison after beating a trans woman in her home, with their lawyer telling the jury that they were “having a laugh”.

The likes of the Mail, when it lets Richard Littlejohn spout transphobic bile and the Guardian, when it let’s Julie Burchill et al do the same, do nothing to stop a culture of seeing trans women (because it usually is trans women) as ‘odd’ and, therefore fair game.

And that leaves us with a pretty sad state of affairs: both that such articles need writing and that at least some people do believe all these sort of myths and more.

A real horror story for Halloween

A victim of the cult of paranoia

A day ago, reports emerged that two men have now been convicted of murder and are awaiting sentence. While always involving tragedy, this particular crime had a particularly nasty element to it.

To précis: Bijan Ebrahimi, a disabled man living on the outskirts of Bristol, thought that he saw local youngsters vandalising his flower baskets and decided to take pictures of them doing so. Evidence, you might think.

But a neighbour saw him and decided that it was obvious that photographing youngsters meant that he was a raving paedophile. And the neighbour then spread the word. And other neighbours fell for it – happy to believe that taking photographs of youngsters means you’re a kiddy fiddler.

Ebrahimi told the police about the vandalism – and about the harassment that had started, but he was the one who was arrested on suspicion of breaching the peace, as a mob cried ‘paedo, paedo’.

More rumours were running around, with claims that he’d been burned out of a previous home.

Released from police custody with absolutely no charge against him – and the police had checked his camera and his computer and found absolutely nothing of a dubious nature – he was dead within two days, after being beaten into a state of unconsciousness before white spirit was poured over him and he was set ablaze.

Lee James, a 24-year-old father, has admitted murder, and his neighbour, Stephen Norley, has admitted assisting in the crime.

Various police and call centre staff are being investigated for their role in the entire debacle, because they ignored Ebrahimi’s pleas for help.

And at the heart of this horrific series of events is the apparent reality that merely taking pictures of youngsters or children is now deemed, by some individuals – who then become the mob – as absolute proof of paedophilia.

It is difficult to know where to start with this.

Salem, the Nazis, McCarthyism – we never seem to learn.

A widespread climate of paranoia exists about child abuse – even after the Paulsgrove riots and the case of the Welsh paediatrician who was driven from her home because some intellectually challenged individuals ‘thought’ that paediatrician and paedophile were one and the same, and then further ‘thought’ that they should do something about it.

Or to be more accurate, this is paranoia about child abuse by strangers – so-called ‘stranger danger’.

Yet the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of the abuse of children happens in the home and is perpetrated by family or friends.

Did you get that? The fact is that the vast majority of abuse is by someone known to the child – not a stranger.

So how do we deal with this? How do we stop it happening again?

Well, to start with, greater responsibility from mainstream news media would be welcome.

Part of the current culture of fear is down to sensationalist reporting of a very few cases where abduction has been involved. It can, at the least, create a perception of the dangers as being far more widespread than they are.

At worst, it helps to provide the climate in which the mob mentality can take over, and it can provide a sense of legitimacy for those who might want to move toward actual vigilantism.

But then we see much the same thing in coverage of other issues – not least at present, welfare.

As government has started a process of demonising the disabled and anyone else on benefits, so much of the media has been complicit: choosing, for ideological reasons, not to challenge statistics that, in some cases, have subsequently been shown to be fictions.

The joys of a ‘free’ press, eh?

Innocent people ‘monstered’ and demonised – dead as a result – and a point where merely pointing a camera at youngsters or children can see you branded a paedophile.

And the mob doesn’t even question it.

Indeed, some commenting online have sought to suggest that Ebrahimi was obviously ‘dodgy’ for photographing the youngsters or children from inside his house.

That’s right – blame the victim.

The police have categorically stated that there were no indecent pictures on his camera or computer, yet still people question why he was taking pictures at all – and suggesting that that in itself is now an inherently dubious thing to do.

What an utterly crazed idea. Do people really look at someone taking pictures in the street and think, if there’s a child anywhere near: ‘what’s that nonce doing?’

The facts of Ebrahimi’s death are hideous enough – and by god I hope that some people in that area are feeling some damned serious guilt and shame right now – but the fact that an entirely innocent action is being seen as an indicator of something as serious as child abuse is pretty nearly as sick.

The media need to show responsibility – but so do we, in stopping to actually think before we leap to conclusions based on anything the media tells us and anything any neighbour tells us as gossip.

And we need to constantly ask the question of why on earth anyone would imagine that pointing a camera is indicative of an act of abuse in the first place.

And we think we live in a civilised society?

Report of the case

Forget foodbanks, we've got another porn panic

Grande Odalisque, Ingres. It's Art – okay?

The latest brouhaha about pornography broke out last week, as the Daily Mail set its hypocritical sights on WH Smith.

The unfortunate retailer’s crime? It found itself in the line of fire after an online cataloguing error meant that pornographic or erotic ebooks were spotted near titles for children.

The Mail, which doesn’t include the titillation of its audience as one method of making sales; which doesn’t include and comment on as many acres of female flesh as possible on its own website, and which doesn’t – oh no, sirree – use creepy language to sexualise underage girls in that very same part of cyberspace, has apparently read every one of the naughty ebooks that were available to buy and announced that the subjects include rape and incest and beastiality and, and … well, won’t somebody think of the children (but not the way Mail hacks do)!

Lawyer Myles Jackman has adroitly dismantled some of the Mail’s inaccuracies, showing how it misunderstands – or misinterprets – the law, for instance.

But unfortunately, the Mail was not alone.

The Guardian, for instance, was in spectacularly disingenuous form.

First, it effectively admitted that it hadn’t bothered doing any actual investigation itself: “At least 60 pornographic ebooks – some featuring rapes and bestiality – were available on the company’s online store, and could also be found on Amazon, Waterstones and Barnes & Noble … according to the Mail on Sunday.” [my emphasis]

That’s cool: just rely on the always-reliable Mail family of newspapers to feed you the details of the story. After all, this isn’t the Mail that has a record of ‘exaggerating’ on such matters, is it?

It’s not the same Mail, is it, that published an article by one Amanda Platell, claiming that she had searched for and easily found images of child abuse online? It turned out that she had found no such thing and, if she had, she would have broken the law in attempting any such search.

But let’s move on. A few paragraphs later:

“The National Crime Agency warned on Sunday that books appearing to legitimise child abuse ‘might feed the fantasies of paedophiles and in some cases encourage child sexual abusers to commit contact offences’.”

Woah! Where’s the child abuse thing come from? Where is there even a suggestion that some of the ebooks – which are self-published, apparently – include anything “appearing to legitimise child abuse?

Of course, the mere mention of kiddy fiddlers is enough to send half the nation into a state that includes the shut-down of their reasoning skills.

Odalisque with Magnolias, Matisse. Not erotic. At all

As it happens, other sources say that some of the books do contain themes of abuse, but if that’s the case, let’s have it mentioned in the article, without the sudden jump to the subject of paedophilia, which simply looks like a conflation of child abuse and pornography/erotica.

But this is entirely in keeping with the sort of knee-jerkery that is increasingly coming to inform the debate on whatever someone or other decides constitutes porn.

After all, in what passes for that debate in the UK, claims of the untold harm to women and children caused by pornography dominate, without a shred of actual evidence for that. Yet it has become accepted unquestioningly by many that it is simply true.

Say something often enough …

And the Mail and the Guardian are among those publications that are culpable on this count. Which should tell you something.

Mind, since we also apparently live in a world where a convicted and time-served criminal can herself state that most women commit crimes because of men, perhaps certain people do need ‘protection’ from anything that might ‘deprave’ them?

Maybe the Victorians were correct in believing that only respectable men of a certain class (which class presumably ensured the aforementioned respectability) could be trusted to look at dodgy images?

After all, women are obviously so clearly weak, aren’t they?

Well, that seems to be the theme of Vicky Pryce’s comments, as she continues to look for ways to blame her former husband for her own crime.

After all, stealing a load of designer handbags is all the fault of men, isn’t it?

Or when a woman is guilty of animal cruelty to her dogs, which also kill a child, it’s obviously the patriarchy behind it.

Or when a woman enters the home of an elderly person and sexually abuses her, that’s the fault of the patriarchy too.

Olympia, Manet. Entirely respectable pic of a prostitute

All of this – every little bit of it – plays to a censorious, reactionary agenda on women: one that is entirely happy to see womankind as vulnerable and as a perpetual victim, and to shoehorn womankind as a whole into a particular and limited template for ideological reasons.

At its extreme – its logical conclusion, one might say – is the likes of the Taliban.

Unfortunately, many people who would claim to be progressives buy into it and blithely aid the growth of a culture of victimisation, which demonises men and happily portrays women as eternal victims of ‘the patriarchy’.

And then, in response, we get the victimised white male routine.

This is all at a time when the populace as a whole is under attack from yet another government that readily does the bidding of the neo-liberal supra-national corporatocracy – and in this case, uses the result of the 2008 financial crash to batter the majority and set them against each other.

Against such a background, playing at divisive politics is not even intellectual masturbation, but far worse, it’s utterly counterproductive in terms of rallying and uniting people around the key issues, which have sod all to do with sex/gender and what turns people on, and everything to do with economics and actual politics.

And if anyone starts spouting off along the lines of: ‘if we only had more women in Parliament’, respond with two words: ‘Margaret’ and ‘Thatcher’.

The idea that somehow there’s some sort of unified feminine niceness out there that’ll solve everything is, at best, a misguided fantasy.

Even a cursory glance at history would suggest that, when women have power, they behave no better or differently to how men behave.

But that’s okay – because if we take on board the narrative of a certain type of feminism, then women don’t have to take personal responsibility because it’s all the fault of ‘the patriarchy’.

Which brings us back to the point where, if you continue to argue that, then you effectively argue that women are inherently weak – in which case, why, rationally, should they be considered equal within society?

The porn ‘debate’ is just one part of a wider war being waged by a number of protagonists with some slightly differing perspectives.

James as Odalisque, Niki Grangruth. Still Art

Other aspects of this war include, for instance, the male-dominated campaigns against abortion and the right of a woman to control her own body.

But if we believe that a woman should be able to have complete control of her own body, then it is inconsistent to patronise, condemn or exclude women who, for instance, work in the sex industry.

Do those who do that condemn the rent boy equally? Or what about the female ‘escort’ who provides services for other women?

The ‘debate’ is so up it’s own metaphorical arse that you will, even now, hear spectacular claims such as the famous one that ‘all porn damages women’. What? Even the gay stuff?

It’s also indicative of that divisionism: conflating all womankind to a single version. There is no female or feminist consensus on these subjects, no matter how much Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has apparently allowed himself to be told by the merry little band of misandrists that he continues to give space to.

You don’t have to like porn yourself to see this. That’s not point. But get caught up in the rhetoric, without understanding that, and you become just like the Daily Mail itself or the Guardian.

And don’t forget: there is – as I’ve mentioned before – there’s also the small matter of class.

Ask yourself: would the campaign against page 3 exist if it wasn’t in a working-class publication?

Leather Crotch, Robert Mapplethorpe. Not sex. Art

If you think so, why is there no comparable campaign against odalisque paintings that hang in open galleries? Perhaps because visiting galleries is considered a rather middle-class thing to do? And, when it’s in a gallery, it’s Art anyway, isn’t it?

If there are issues about how availability of pornographic materials is affecting young people, then perhaps the answer is proper education?

However, given the generally parlous state of sex education across the UK – not least because governments still cravenly kowtow to religious groups, schools and parents in allowing them to opt out of proper sex education – it’s easy to see why a spot of ranting stupidity appears to be the preferred solution for some.

The thing is, porn’s a nice, easy target, because few people will defend it, so bound up are we ideas of sex as still rather dirty – certainly if it’s lust and not lurve – and because the moment the ‘won’t somebody think of the children’ soundbite gets bandied around common sense is bundled out of the room.

Now just imagine if the Mail in particular brought as much concern to the news that the Red Cross is now handing our food aid in the UK.

As I said: a useful distraction – and not for the good of women or men as a whole.

Silence or shouting? The problem of bullying

Since the silence was hardly been deafening, you might have missed the news that last Sunday was Twitter Silence Day.

It was a day when some predominantly middle-class journalists and columnists decided not to tweet as a protest against online abuse of women.

Let’s be clear: the nature and level of some of the abuse is disgusting. There is no excuse for it.

Not that she’s alone, but classicist Mary Beard seems to have become a prime and repeated target.

This isn’t just a spot of name-calling, even with the sort of added Anglo-Saxon words that renowned ‘double-cunter’ Paul Dacre would be in admiration of, but goes into explicit and sexual terms, and has reached the level of rape threats and bomb threats.

You have to wonder at the mentality of those who come out with this sort of thing. What do they think they’re doing?

Beard has taken to ‘outing’ some of the abusers by retweeting them. Only last week, one such episode turned darkly hilarious when another woman tweeted back, telling the professor that she knew the address of the abuser’s mother and, if she wanted, she’d forward it.

They don’t all hide behind anonymity and are clearly not all uneducated illiterates. It’s not a class thing or a race thing, because the abusers come from a wide range of backgrounds.

And it’s not something that can be blamed on the internet, social media in general of Twitter specifically.

I’ve had a taste of it online – the imbecile who disagrees with you, runs off to look at any picture of you on Twitter, and then comes back to declare that you’re an ‘ugly cunt’ who is clearly single etc.

I’ve had it in other online places over the years: comments about being a Nazi who had a home decorated in lampshades made of human skin. Which was all the more amusing since the abusive little sod was himself at least sympathetic with the far right.

I’ve had emails with the old fascist tactic of ‘we know who you are and where you live’.

I’ve had abuse in the street: just one example being “Oi! You’re a big fat cunt!” Self-awareness was not his strong point: he was an extremely big, fat slob standing around outside a pub trying to see if his brain cell could come up with something to entertain him.

And some of this was deeply upsetting at the time.

But let’s be clear, so too were all the incidents, over many years and involving more than one female boss, of being put down at every opportunity, often on the basis of how I looked or dressed.

Oh, the language might not be as blatant, but the intent is no less negative.

So let’s not pretend that bullying and abuse are one-way streets.

However, to come back to the point about precisely what is going on with some of these Twitter abusers.

It’s all about power and attempts to exert it. And it isn’t remotely new.

As Libby Purves delightfully explains: “Years ago, when I was the first woman presenter on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme in the days of green-ink letters, I amused myself, unbeknownst to my employers, with a standard reply to any correspondence that was couched in rudely misogynistic terms (many men gave their real address, so secure were they in the patriarchy). I’d write:

“Thank you for your interesting letter. I am sure you will not mind my passing it on to Professor (Fictional name) of the Cambridge University Institute of Psychosexual Medicine, who has a research study about men who write strongly-worded letters to women in public life.”

I had several panicky replies forbidding me to pass on their name and even apologising. Nothing scares a nasty bloke more than the thought of someone knowing all about him. Digital technology doesn’t change that.”

In the days before the internet – or prehistory, as it sometimes known to today’s youngsters – I was bullied at school, too, but in some ways my parents seemed to regard it as quite normal (both of them had, apparently, suffered it too) and believed that teaching the old ‘sticks and stones’ rhyme would have power over bullies, together with the knowledge that a kick to the shins would sort out problems where that didn't.

There was an irony here in that constant put-downs were my father’s chosen oevre.

But while my fists eventually sorted out two particular situations of long-term persistent bullying (both were in all-girl schools, incidentally), one nearly got me into a real jam, while in the first, I apparently nearly broke the ring-leader's nose.

Interestingly, in both cases, the culprits were younger. Both also taught me that ignoring it is far from guaranteed to actually work.

But then again, that’s easier said than done, as I later found it in the workplace, where a boss bullying is a rather different matter, since it is based on very specific and quite real, economic power.

At least these days we take bullying more seriously.

And the kind of harassment that Beard and others have been faced with is prosecutable – as harassment. In other words, there are real, existing legal solutions to such issues.

I remain convinced that censorship is to be avoided at all. And the idea of a Twitter report button concerns me, as it’s easy enough to see how it could be abused (for want of a better phrase) against people who have done absolutely nothing wrong.

If there is to be any such system, it needs very serious and good moderation.

In the same vein, I reserve the right to call a politician, for instance, a choice name, just as I don’t go bleating to anyone if I get called something similar. These days, I’m old enough, ugly enough and thick-skinned enough to realise that if I want to play hardball, I have no right to expect to be treated with kid gloves myself.

There may be, however, some cases where some forums need either to be closed altogether or where some very strict and serious moderation needs to come into play.

Such an example is ask.fm, a social networking Q&A site that has featured in a number of cyber bullying cases, up to and including ones where young people have taken their own lives, apparently as a direct response to serious online bullying.

The latest to die in such an horrifically tragic way was 14-year-old Hannah Smith.

Prime Minister David Cameron has called for people to “boycott” such sites. Yes, because that’s what teenagers are going to do, isn’t it? And instead of putting all the responsibility on young people who could become abused, how about acting at government level to demand that such sites be closed down or better regulated?

Is it hysterical to ask how many more young people have to die before it ceases to be their responsibility alone?

The onus so often seems to be on the bullied.

And here I’m also wary of the words. I deeply dislike the promotion of any ideas of inherent victimhood. My own personal experience is that the key is confidence.

Since getting some, I’ve never had a repeat of any of the verbal assaults I was on the receiving end of in the street. It’s a cliché for a reason, to say that bullies themselves are basically cowards. They don’t pick on someone they realistically think will fight back. But they seem to be able to easily spot those who will not; those who are low on confidence.

I do also wonder whether part of the targeting of Beard and other high-profile women is not so much just about sex as also about a very British dislike and distrust of intellectualism. It could also be suggested that it’s about a dislike or even fear of those who don’t conform, and we Brits do, in so many ways, remain wedded to conformity.

Beard most certainly doesn’t conform – in her case, on the grounds of how she has chosen to allow herself to be seen, without kowtowing to conventional and mainstream views on make-up, hair etc.

I wonder too what other issues are at play. Does a society that is, of itself, so troubled with massive job insecurity, for instance, also help to create a climate where some feeling need to target those who appear to have success?

In a country where politicians regularly demonise those who cannot easily make their own voices heard – the disabled, for instance – is it then easier to start targeting all manner of other groups?

Does such a level of abuse exist in other Western European nations?

A good friend, who was a young adult in Germany in the 1960s and had a very libertarian attitude toward anything that occurs between consenting adults, once observed to me that he was also shocked (and he was pretty unshockable) at the way in which he overheard British men talking openly about women.

There are real questions about bullying and about the wider culture, but they seem to get lost – perhaps because they’re difficult.

What we don’t need is some really poor new legislation or scheme, but education and a system whereby real offences can be easily reported and are properly followed up and, where applicable, the law is brought to bear.

What benefits nobody is gestures. And while I sympathise with anyone – male or female – who has been harassed and abused online, the Twitter silence was just that. If anything, there’s a danger that it will have given encouragement to the trolls: ‘oh look – if we do it more, maybe they’ll fuck off altogether and we’ll have won’.

That Beard was subsequently berated by Giles Coren for ‘breaking’ the silence by using Twitter to highlight yet more abuse should perhaps tell us something about the rather elitist nature of this protest.

Now, on one hand, good for Giles for considering the abuse unacceptable and for supporting those (or some of those) facing it. But frankly, outing these bastards is actually far better. Let them be seen for their attitudes. Don’t hide them – and certainly don’t hide from them.

The abuse is not acceptable. But in terms of social media, boycotting it is tantamount to giving in.

Many, many women (and supportive men) chose not to be silent. They used the day, instead, to go about their normal social media business, or to #ShoutOut against sexist behaviour and, even more positively, list #InspiringWomen – a hashtag that was both educational and full of surprises, and precisely because of that, genuinely inspiring.

The underlying roots and causes are complex – and the last thing this issue needs is simple answers that will merely wallpaper those real roots and causes. And treating it as though it's essentially a matter of sexism will also get in the way of finding real and lasting ways of dealing with bullying as a whole.