искра/iskra

A response to zetkin

2012-01-13T17:59:00.002Z

My anti porn article has attracted the ire of zetkin.net. This is my response:

It seems pretty unlikely that myself and Sofie are ever going to agree over this, seeing as she's not anti-porn, but I think there are a couple of things I'd like to say about our respective positions.

Sofie's objection to my use of the term 'rape' to describe sex work is, I think, a liberal one. My use of the argument 'you can't buy consent', means that all sex workers are not capable of consent, and this I will return to later. But as I say in my article, what happens in porn is only in the best case happening for money. Vast numbers of women are in bonded labour. Some women are there because of sex trafficking, some because they owe a 'debt', many because - as with prostitution - their partners, or at least a man with power over them, have forced them into doing it to get money, whether just to live, or as is far more common, to finance a habit. These women do not have a choice. It is not controversial to point out that this is not a choice.

To return, then, to the example that is beloved of liberal defenders of the sex industry: women who decide that sex work would be a good way to earn money and work in liberating conditions that allow them to freely withdraw their labour at any time. It doesn't matter that that's an absurdly small minority of women, because I recognise that for my argument to stand up I must show that that too is exploitative.

For a start, in the basic Marxist sense of exploitation, all labour is so. When the labour is required to come from specific people, in, again, the simple Marxist sense, it is obvious that capital will exploit those people the most. Indeed in the attempts to continually increase profitability, vast efforts will be made to maximise the profit available from the labour and the bodies of these people, and this will be reinforced by (in the case of women in pornography) the fact that most women try not to be part of such an industry, and of course by the patriarchal power structures that have historically and do currently force women into positions of less power. Examples of this 'less power', lest I am again accused of thinking women 'feeble', might include the way many women are talked over, the way many women are paid less (in conventional wage-labour), and the way many women's opinions are dismissed as mad or irrational. There are, of course, many women who fight the conditions of this power, and their victories are many and brilliant. But I'm sure me and Sofie are in agreement that patriarchal power structures make many things very hard for most women, and for some, destroy their whole lives.

Most women who work in pornography have 'agents' - people better described as pimps, who take a cut of the money that the woman is paid. Again, in the strict Marxist sense, these too are exploiters, who force women to do more and more work in higher and higher paid films so that they can live on the profit. I should also say that the pay in porn films is correlate with how difficult it is to find people to work in them - which usually means things that most women would refuse to do. In the Marxist sense, these people living on the 'surplus' of the labour are the ruling class, and the reason they are able to do so is because they have power over - an orthodox Marxist might even say 'own', but I shan't- the woman. After all, if they didn't have this power, why on earth would the women give them a cut of their pay?

Consent in capitalism is a bourgeois privilege. For example, the proletariat are forced to sell their labour. It's not even true that they have genuine choice where they can sell their labour. Their consent was not given for this, nor is it possible that they could ever have given consent. I argued in my article that commodity fetishism - put very roughly, the commodification of human relationships into relationships between objects - meant that consent was becoming impossible to give, as women were increasingly - due to the commodifying effect of pornography - being viewed as objects from which commodities were extracted.

I think, therefore, Sofie's accusation that I presented women as objects is entirely correct. I did so deliberately, as I was attempting to point out how the industry operates. As the industry treats women as objects, I described the way it does so. I'm genuinely very sorry for its being upsetting reading, but as a polemic against a horrifying industry I felt it necessary not to shirk the realities.

However, this point:

"If a sex worker cannot consent, even within more-or-less constrained circumstances, why does it matter when she is raped?"

-is a very poor one indeed. Certainly I think that sex workers do not have the ability to consent. But of all the terrible things that are done to their bodies, if there are some they decide are beyond the pale, then why on earth would Sofie think I would not think that was rape? Of course it's rape. Of course it matters, any such incident matters if someone in that position says so, and there is nothing in what I have written that suggests I would think that a sex worker saying she's been raped shouldn't be taken seriously. It's a completely unfounded accusation.

I suppose I should mention that I worked with several sex workers in Scotland, when I was a mental health caseworker. I certainly think it's vital not to patronise these women, and I know very well that the patronising approach of giving sex workers a hug and telling them you understand that it's all rape is going to get you little more than contempt. But in much the same way, I wouldn't approach a rubbish collector or a secretary and give them a hug and tell them I understand it's all slavery. Naturally, to say so is utterly unhelpful and a complete ignorance of the day-to-day realities of these women. But that doesn't mean it isn't true. I agree that the end to the sex industry will not come from white men telling sex workers they're being raped. But neither will it come from liberal feminists saying that these women choose to be sex workers.

Frankly, accusations that I am denying sex workers agency are liberal arguments, and if that's Sofie's position then certainly we shall never agree. Agency in patriarchal capitalism is frighteningly low, and I think arguments that it is higher tend to the liberal, arguments that it is the lower, tend to the Marxist.

I do not ever claim to speak for any women, let alone all women, I merely intended to show the danger of the commodity fetishism in pornography. Yes, I certainly stated that women are being denied choice by porn, yes I did it in polemical language, yes I think porn is causing men to treat women as objects, yes I think porn is diminishing the agency of women. But these are obviously terrible things. It's a lament, not a celebration.

However, I am a man, Sofie is a woman, and while there have been women pleased with the article there are several women disgusted with it, and I must obviously bow to them. To all those disgusted, I am sincerely sorry. I hope that our differences are merely different schools of feminism; I have tried to show this in this response. If I am wrong, I am sorry.

UPDATE 16/01: A response to a few more criticisms aimed at me from twitter and Mhairi McAlpine's article.

I do not intend to suggest that it is impossible for consensual sex to exist. I merely wanted to explore the ways in which it was being eroded. The final paragraph is in future tense; this is deliberate, as it is only a theorised outcome. It is not intended to describe the facts of sex for every woman in the world. Indeed, I couldn't describe the facts of sex for any women of the world. It is only a theoretical exploration of forces that are making things more difficult for women.

Mhairi (and others) make the very good point that exploring what is making things harder for women is all very well, but it is important to recognise that even despite the vast array of forces and powers against them, women are very far from the passive actors I described, and even in the toughest circumstances they challenge and subvert their oppression. This is of course perfectly true, and I will certainly admit that it is something of a glaring omission from my article. By intending to explore only the increase in oppression that women face from porn, I precluded myself from describing what women do to fight this. I recognise that this is something I should have written, however. Part of the reason I did not is my expected audience: writing for the Anti-Porn Men Project, I had in mind a mostly male audience who might have been unconvinced of just how serious the effects of pornography are, and so I was intending to make them aware of what their porn use and their actions might be capable of doing. I also based the entire article around a series of conversations I have had with women about their sexual experiences, and while there are not quotes, these are some of the problems they described to me. However I realise that it isn't enough to say that I wrote it for those men based on what some women have said: I should have been more fully aware of how women might respond.

As for the question of women being 'unrapable'; frankly I find it extremely frustrating that I have been repeatedly accused of denying the possibility of rape for women. I certainly intended to point out that rape might be much more common than many people think; but I never intended to 'dilute' or trivialise the definition of rape. As it was put to me on twitter, I was creating an 'all cats are grey' situation, a logic puzzle where it is impossible to say which cat is grey; but this is a fallacy, as it assumes that I would, should a cat approach me and say 'I'm grey!', deny it was so, so to speak. The idea of some rapes being more serious than others contains within it an implicity that some rapes might not matter, and this certainly is a terrible thing. Every rape is different, yes, and every rape is terrible. The idea of comparing them or suggesting some have equivalence and some do not, is a terrible thing that would be a slippery slope to rape denial. Nowhere in my article is there the slightest suggestion that I would establish such rape hierarchy or deny rape. In fact, I have been roundly attacked for the reverse, ie suggesting that there is more rape than we might be aware of.

Lastly, a final word on sex workers: I understand the points made here as a liberal argument. Conflating the positions of all-sex-work-is-rape and rape-is-'part of the job description' is based on the assumption that sex work can be considered a 'job' in the liberal sense of the word. Dismissing the rape of sex workers as irrelevant due to their 'job' is clearly an abysmal thought, but crucially, one that can only exist on the basis that sex workers freely choose to be in the work they are. If one approaches this from the Marxist view that their work is not something they have a choice about giving, it means that that which their labour demands of them is not their choice to give either. To talk specifically, if we understand sex work as something that is not entered into freely (as is the case with all proletarian work), then any and all rapes that occur during the sex work cannot be understood in any sense as the fault of the sex worker. Somebody who might say that 'rape is part of the job' to a sex worker is therefore actually saying that rape is something happening repeatedly and completely out of the control of the sex worker, and shows clearly that the sex worker is in a terrible position indeed. Vegan Vixen says, "Rape against prostitutes needs to be taken seriously, and recognized as rape, not just a necessary danger that’s bound to happen in prostitution. [my italics]" Indeed, its seriousness is paramount, but the conception of necessity is a liberal one that implies conditions in choices. The Marxist argument that there is no work choice removes the possibility that there can be conditions to a choice, and thus the possibility that responsibility can be assigned to the sex worker for being attacked, and incidents dismissed on the grounds of 'you've made your bed, now lie in it'.

As a result, then, a position of complete humility to sex workers follows, I think, naturally: what boundaries and behaviours as they need must be given to them, and dogmatic seriousness must be given to any and all reports they give of any oppression, whether rape or otherwise.

New article published on Antiporn Men

2012-01-12T13:53:00.003Z

http://www.antipornmen.org/2012/01/12/fetishes/
Edit: Until such time as the editor will let me amend the sentence in the third paragraph, please read this appendation:
"I just wanted to make one clarification – when I suggest that people looking at porn might naturally prefer porn of their own race, I was referring specifically to people of colour. Whiteness is specifically constructed in porn to be the dominant and the norm, and seeking a situation where people that look like them exist as equals is impossible. I certainly did not intend to imply that a white homogenisation would be a good and sympathetic goal – as after all, a making white of porn is exactly what goes on, as the process of making white is done by opposing and abjecting blackness. So people of colour are necessarily in porn, in order to assert further whiteness. I hope this clears up any ambiguity."

A thought on 'chav'

2012-01-09T17:20:00.003Z

One of the most common views of the word 'chav' amongst the left is the idea that it's offensive because it's simply interchangeable with 'poor person', and that to use it is in itself class hatred. Things that are associated with being a chav (or ned, townie, kev, charver, etc) are those that cost little, and to denigrate such a culture is to directly insult people for their poverty.
I think, however, it is more meaningful to characterise 'chav' as a subculture. Subcultures, as any good Marxist would assert, are very much products of socioeconomic conditions, but by no means should be considered to be insults. Of course insults are bandied around, as with all subcultures, fights and bullying exist between groups and inside them, but I think to reduce 'chav' or any of it's synonyms to merely an insult is ignorant.
Most of the chavs I've known describe themselves as such. They can often be hesitant with the word, but that's not an unusual feature of subcultures too, especially amongst teenagers. While possibly Britain's biggest subculture, it's also not, to my estimation, the majority of the poor and shouldn't be considered an interchangeable term with poverty. There are certainly features of being a chav that have their origins quite plainly in an (sometimes aspirational) poverty - things like diamante, fake gold chains, hatchback cars and tracksuits, representing the poorest ways to indulge in what everyone else seemingly has effortlessly - but what people seem to be ignoring is people in that subculture who do have money, and what they spend money on remains similar - real diamonds, real gold chains, hyper-upgraded hot hatches, Emporio Armani tracksuits.
It wouldn't be accurate to say that everyone who started off as a poor chav and became richer remains in the subculture, and there are some obvious exit routes that confidently work concurrently with growing up, too, such as the Essex Boy and his extremely sharp suit - Emporio Armani become Armani Privé - but it must be recognised that there exist people who spend tens of thousands of pounds on those hatchbacks with the loud exhausts and blue running lights - it's something to be proud of.
There of course also exist chav celebrities: I think less of the Jade Goodys of this world, because of the obvious rags-to-riches story, and more of people like Peter Andre, Katie Price, Lady Sovereign, and Wayne Rooney. These people have differing backgrounds and yet all (with the exception of Lady Sovereign) have been very rich for quite a long time - if we understand chav as just a classist insult, it doesn't explain why they've stuck to their chosen lifestyles, despite the derision that it draws from the media.
However, what is salutary about the existing understanding of 'chav' that I have noticed is recognising that, whatever it means, it is definitely a term used to bully and exclude people, and certainly from the most conservative of positions. It contains implicit hatred not only of the poor but of the nouveau riche, with all their brash cars and flashy jewellery. This form of classism is of course also familiar in its racist use against the hopelessly misnamed 'hip-hop culture', and it's difficult really to imagine anyone without a lineage to the Hapsburgs who qualifies as acceptable.
I didn't write this in order to reclaim the word 'chav'. I wrote this because I'm becoming increasingly concerned at the very top-down nature of the engagement with chavs. Too many people seem to say "you mustn't call them that" while simultaneously remaining completely blind to the fact that the people they are trying to protect have no such interest. It's nauseating to hear the chinless wonders braying for a 'chav hunt', but I think no less so to hear an leftwing activist bright-eyedly denouncing the idea that people might genuinely want branded sportswear, even if - shock horror - it costs more than plain Ikea chic.

Police and the homeless: revisited.

2011-12-13T14:33:00.000Z

The Birmingham Mail carries the story that four police officers are being investigated for mugging the homeless.
I said this happens on Novara and in my Big Issue article.
But of course the vast, vast majority of cases of this go completely unreported. Nobody sees what happens in the middle of the night in underpasses. Nobody believes the homeless, let alone police desk sergeants. And so it isn't reported. Even the word of a bourgeois citizen almost never gets a police officer convicted.
There is a very telling sentence, too, at the end of the Birmingham Mail article:
"..cops said legitimate sellers of the magazine had told officers that aggressive beggars were having a negative impact on the public’s perception of homeless people."
This wedge, the homeless turning on the homeless, is exactly what I aimed my Big Issue article at - making some see themselves as better than the others, and resulting in even more horrific conditions for the non-vendors.
Hate to say it, but I fucking told you so.

Homelessness talk on Novara - Resonance.fm

2011-12-12T20:47:00.001Z

My appearance on resonance.fm has been uploaded: Aaron Peters' Novara show, talking about homelessness.
There are, it's important to note, a couple of errors - the Vagrancy Act was 1824, not 1874; and Dale Farm is in John Baron's, not Eric Pickles', constituency.

To listen, click here.

Deaths caused by police clarified.

2011-10-31T23:17:00.005Z

Many anti-police-brutality sources are citing that there have been 333 deaths in or shortly following police custody since 1998. This is true (well, as of this financial year's statistics it's 354), but some sources are not clear on the distinction between police custody and police contact.

Deaths during or shortly following police contact are much higher - 147 this year alone, including 46 suicides - and although I only have statistics back as far as 2001, there have been 1072 deaths since then. You can check the statistics back to 2005 here although you have to request older data from the IPCC as they do not keep it on their website as far as I know.

It is of course absurd to pretend that deaths in police custody are all we should be focussing on. 46 of the deaths this financial year were suicides, and this is always the largest proportion of deaths. Last year it was 54. It's almost certainly a conservative estimate too - only suicides in the two days following police contact are counted, unless there is other strong evidence that links the police (for example, in suicide notes).

We also need to understand the number of cases that never make the annals of the IPCC. Deaths amongst the homeless, and the isolated are rarely, if ever, recorded. Nobody notices they're gone. Hundreds of cases are dismissed due to 'lack of evidence'. Well, when somebody's beaten in the back of a van, or in an underpass, that pretty well goes without saying.

Deaths that occur in public order situations attract a lot of publicity. While this is obviously a good thing, the deaths that occur in the everyday work of the police are far more numerous. Where is their publicity?

It's time we started counting the other deaths due to police action. It's not a competition, but police driving people to suicide is arguably worse even than directly killing them. Let's stop saying 333 deaths since 1998. Let's start saying 1072 in the last ten years.

Major sources here:
333 deaths, IPCC: http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/news/Pages/pr_031210_deathsincustodystudy.aspx
Annual deaths, IPCC: http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/en/Pages/reports_polcustody.aspx
Remainder available on request.

Police weaponry post updated and expanded

2011-08-22T22:37:00.000+01:00

Here.

Tasers

2011-08-17T11:57:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, 16th August, a man was murdered by police in Barrow-in-Furness.
He had a Taser used on him, while being arrested in his home for criminal damage.
Why did officers arrive at his house carrying weapons? And why were those weapons used?
When Tasers were introduced to the UK we were told that only authorised firearm officers would be allowed to use them; that they would be a non-lethal replacement to firearms. This didn't last long: in 2008 Jacqui Smith ordered 10,000 more to be given out to non-firearm-specialist police.
Death from the use of Tasers is not at all uncommon. Nor is it restricted to those with heart or other health problems; Taser were recently ordered to pay $10m to the family of a 17-year-old killed by their device in North Carolina. Taser themselves were forced to admit that the device cannot be described as non-lethal. Instead we now call them "less-lethal". I wrote in June of the escalation in lethality of police firearms; yesterday's murder complements this with illustrations of what untrained police with lethal weapons do.

I shouldn't have to repeat this: the police are supposed to protect, not murder. Their position is supposed to prevent crimes, not commit them. This idea of committing murder or GBH to 'prevent a greater crime' is not only fictional, but abhorrent; our doctors have to swear 'first do no harm'; why not our heavily armed police?

The Big Issue

2011-07-24T01:40:00.002+01:00

So it seems David Cameron is to edit the next edition of the Big Issue.
This should come as a surprise to none. The Big Issue is perhaps one of the most foul and conservative institutions working in homelessness in the UK. Its liberarian fuckwittery is summed up exactly in its tagline, "Working Not Begging".
I'll level with yous. I've been both homeless and vulnerably housed for long periods of time, and in my mental health case work I've worked with a lot more people in the same situation. And nothing, but nothing, prepares you for how you are treated - spat at by passersby, beaten and repeatedly mugged by others, including other homeless people as desperate for the means to survive as you are, and repeatedly beaten, searched and mugged by police as well, who deliberately won't arrest you for the devilry of depriving you of a bed. If you're found with drugs or alcohol on you, it's still unlikely you'll be arrested, just beaten and moved on, which means into the wet and cold from wherever you've been found. And they come back and check you aren't still there. And there's no need for them to kick softly. Nobody really notices when someone homeless dies. I was first kicked in the head by a policeman when I was five years old. This is the reality of homelessness.
And begging- begging is the single most humiliating thing you will ever do. You stink. Your hair is matted, your clothes soaked and muddy, your stuff is falling out of ripped tesco bags and you're in their way. You quite possibly don't have the strength to stand up, and you certainly don't have the mental strength to look them in the eye and not feel shame, right to your core. The can of Tennents Super that's the only thing blocking out the cold and the inevitable sores in your hand makes them shrink from you. And you know what they're thinking. They're thinking "Ugh." They're thinking "He's there because he's addicted to drugs. It's his own fault". They're thinking "If I give him money - I can see what will happen! It will be spent on beer!". Well, so fucking what.
This is what John Bird sees. And what is his solution? I will make these people salesmen. They will sell products, products nobody wants, and to make things worse, I will make them pay for the privilege. That way, he thinks, these people won't be able to spend half the money they make. The more desperate their need one night, the less they'll make the next. It'll teach them.
It'll teach them the world fucking hates them.
Working not Begging? Only the sickest libertarian scumbag with a hatred for the homeless so blind that he refuses point-blank to understand how it happens could have come up with this foul slogan.
When I was first homeless in the sense of sleeping on the streets, I was looked after by a man called Alf. Alf had acid burns on his cheek and shoulder so deep that you could see open bone for a week before it healed over. He'd been given them because he got one of those 'payday loans' from a pawnbrokers'. He'd missed a payment. Interest on those things is about 3000%, so what he missed quickly spiralled out of control. The pawnbrokers, a chain firm incidentally, called the bailiffs. They discovered Alf had nothing they could sell. He'd sold everything already just to make rent. So they called the 'boys', and Alf's debt got passed on to local organised crime. It went from £600 to £6000 that day, with a demand to pay it in a month. Alf was on benefits. He couldn't -didn't - do it. They threw acid over his face and set fire to his house. His landlord evicted him. Hello, homelessness.
Alf's story isn't remotely unique, and nor does it end there. Nearly 40,000 people die every year from the cold. It claimed Alf, three years later. I was lucky enough to be adopted by a loving family. If I'd been older I'd likely have had the same fate.
It's none of your fucking business what someone spends the money you give them on. You aren't 'keeping them in a cycle of dependency'. You aren't 'contributing to the drugs trade'. Yeah, lots of homeless people are addicted to drugs. Yeah, lots are to alcohol. Yeah, they spend money on it. But exactly what the fuck do you think you are doing denying them even the possibility of help? Do you think you control addiction by keeping someone in the rain, in the cold? Do you think you control addiction by giving your sarcastic fucking sausage roll? Do you know why they're addicted? Has it occurred to you that all they want is to stop hurting and stop feeling? You really want to help? Give them money. Fucking talk to them.
What fosters this kneejerk hatred of the homeless and their motives and deeds is exactly the Big Issue's rhetoric. "Why aren't they working?" "Why can't they get a job?" "Why can't they get off drugs and alcohol?" "Why don't they have any ambition?"... Why? Because being homeless destroys everything you are.

So let Cameron edit the Big Issue. And for fucks' sake, buy it. Even better, give them the money and tell them to keep the magazine, pride allowing. But don't be surprised. Cameron's natural home is this rightwing institution, fostering the hatred of the vulnerable and yet couching itself as an idea of help. And it's time we made it clear to the political class. Nobody deserves to be homeless, and there's no excuse for it.

Baader Revisited; Retracted.

2011-07-04T23:06:00.004+01:00

(First article here).

There must be something peculiarly boring about reading an article that talks to you about your set of genitals, but assumes they’re a type you don’t possess. Actually fuck it, let’s drop the nonspecificity, it basically only happens to people without penises. I’m directly guilty of this, and so I’d better start with an apology: sorry, everyone.

The reason I did this, not that I’m trying to excuse it, was because it’s exactly the appeal I felt the film was making, an appeal to phallocentric sexuality, a trick that was designed exactly for it. But mine might have been a more interesting critique if it hadn’t had such sexual exclusivity – effectively, guilt of the same crimes as its target.

Let me follow that through. I claimed that Baader “fires his gun from the hip, spraying his revolutionary ejaculate over Germany”. Who actually thinks of guns like that, except men? Why the keenness to see the penis not just as a weapon but a deadly one, why the keenness to see a 1,500mph projectile as equivalent to semen? Why so quick to equate sex and violence? Why so quick to use interchangeably the words fucking and sex?

This belies a certain misogyny in the writer. Many feminists write about male obsession with guns as phallic objects, as analogies, and there’s weight and worth in that. But that isn’t what I did. What I did was directly take a gun as a phallic analogy myself. My critique was not “the film vainly attempts to make us see a penis in Baader’s gun” – no, it was more like “the penis we feel in Baader’s gun emasculates his audience” – which firstly doesn’t apply to 50% of the world, and secondly sounds like the idiot conscience of the 50s bemoaning its macho sandcastles slipping away to the tide.

Lots of readers won’t agree with me that the words ‘fucking’ and ‘sex’ should not be used interchangeably, (and I daresay I’ll get the usual accusations of romantic conservatism. But you’d be wrong, so fuck off), but I think it’s essential. This is my explanation:

Many women have their first sexual experience with men. The formula for this is becoming almost hegemonically prevalent: man/boy has very clear idea of what sex is, woman is much more open about what it might be, with the result that the woman is aggressively ‘taught’ what sex is. It’s hard to describe it as “sex with”, instead “sex on”, “sex to” or perhaps “sex against” might be more accurate.

Let’s try to throw out right away any accusations that I think women can’t look after themselves or that women are never in control; many women are in control. But let’s not be in revolutionary denial here – one of the most obvious aspects of patriarchy is the way apparent norms are imposed on women, the way male discourse is dominated by the imperative, and the level of violence and humiliation (and readiness to employ it) at the disposal of the average male. Of course there are many women and men, girls and boys, who don’t fit this.

But it goes further. Lots of feminists, both pro- and anti-porn, have noted the rise in proportion of female users of porn. So what? The porn they watch, the porn there is, is entirely within male gaze. Women are raped and forced to beg for more in a structure that is exclusively about ‘traditional’ phallocentric sex* and that which is faked itself a form of violence in its own level, the fantasy of endless choking screams being forced out of someone by the sheer weight of physical assault. I mean, violence is fine, if you’re into it, but remember that porn is ideology. Is your ideology violence against women?

So there’s this phenomenon of sex as done to people, sex as the ideology of porn attempted as reality, and I don’t think it’s one that can be described as sex. Say what you like about the importance of not over-romanticising sex, but it should never be consensual in deed but rape in form, or to put it another way, consent given for sex but taken by males as acceptance of fucking.

That’s how I distinguish the two words. Maybe this will anger some of you who like the word fucking, and I’m not going to make you accept my meaning, worse still tell you that your sex is not what you say it is, but nonetheless I do continue to worry about the level of porn-centred, male-imposed sex that exists. I’m not trying to impose definitions; I’ve always thought of the word this way. For those of you who also wouldn’t use the word fucking about something you wanted to happen with or to you, perhaps you already understand the definition as I do.

Hence my apology for using fucking and sex interchangeably.

One last point. When I said “sex is measured in time and speed and decibels, and consumerism in time and speed and pounds”, I meant not sex, but fucking. I believe the rationalising (time, speed, decibels), although we haven’t yet used numbers in these categories, is a feature unique to the porn ideology and therefore something that explicitly demarcates talking about fucking from talking about sex.

I retract the article; it was, while perhaps funny, perhaps ebulliently angry, perhaps fun to write, was also revealing of lazy misogyny on my own part, and doesn’t stand up with that removed; and most of all, it acted as if my audience was entirely male. Fuck that.

Kit

*as opposed to other phallocentric sex: worshipping someone’s penis doesn’t have to fit in with beginning, middle, end, or fasterfasterfasterSTOP as you might phrase it, and is of course not necessarily unfeminist.

being nuts - a snapshot

2011-06-26T05:00:00.002+01:00

I crush your pillow into my face. I’m screaming, screaming at somebody, I can’t see or understand or remember what they’re doing to you but you’re loving it. I dig my fingernails into the edge of my sanity to keep from doing it aloud, I know it’s real but it mustn’t be said aloud, nobody must see me! I keep screaming into the pillow, my throat raw, and the panic takes over me like an orgasm, threading through my arms and fingers, down my legs, through my chest to my head – and I pass out. I must have, because I’ve fallen from my tense crouch into a foetal position, and the pillow is limp in my hands. My head is split with murder and I’m breathing like a dying dog. My fingers are starting to tingle from hyperventilating. It comes back, hits me in the back of the eyeballs like a boot to the head. I can’t cope, I’m not passing out, it must pass, it must, but it doesn’t, so I reach up to my fingers to break them, one my one, until the pain will crash through this to show me what is real. I don’t know what I was seeing, but as soon as I reach my little finger the adrenaline makes me puke, and I’m sick through my mouth, but I keep my teeth clamped shut because I know I have to stay silent in case they hear. I start to choke on the vomit and one hand rips the pillow from my face and I shove my fingers into my mouth, involuntarily, because the vomit’s solid and I have to hammer an airway into it. I don’t have a hammer. I bash fingers into my mouth with the heel of the other hand, and I can breathe, but it’s all liquid, I must have been wrong – or right, I can’t remember – and bite them, hard. I’m snorting through vomit, but I can still hear you laughing at me, nothing can block it out, unless, perhaps – yes, I’ll thump my stomach, so I do, and you get quieter every time I do, but I feel sicker, and sicker, and having swallowed the last vomit I know I need to run to the toilet, and I do, and rest my head on the cool white rim, and let the disgusting fear pour out of me.

I’m shaking, and although I’m weak when I put my hand to my eye the shaking knocks my finger into it hard enough to make me exclaim out loud – and I start to giggle. It’s a silent giggle, and a mirthless one, but it’s a giggle because I said “ouch” and so I know I’m not hallucinating any more. I rub the sweat off my face with the towel and sit there, trying to breathe slowly, until I’m surprised by your knock on the door.

It's Not Just You

2011-06-22T12:46:00.000+01:00

Quick promotion for what I believe is an excellent project: Ms Ellie Rose (@eleanorrose) is looking for people who've had experience of mental illness for a blog project called It's Not Just You. The point of the project is to reduce the stigma around mental health by showing people how it is- hence the title. I'm proud to say I've contributed myself. Anyway, she can describe it better than I can, see here: http://bit.ly/li9YEr
Please circulate to your networks - the more people get involved the better.

Machine gun police: what you ought to know.

2011-06-08T14:59:00.005+01:00

David Allen Green has written an article at the New Statesman about the plans to give the British Transport Police machine guns for use on the tube. Further to his article, I want to point out some of the more frightening aspects that he doesn't mention. Lots of people, especially on the left, don't know a lot about guns, and this is usually a very good thing; the fetishisation of phallic murder doesn't really go hand in hand with standing up for the oppressed.

However, for better or worse, I do happen to know an alarming amount about firearms, and I do think it's important that we understand what these plans will mean.

The Evening Standard was first to pick up on these plans - here. The justification is the "rising threat" (more phalluses anyone?) from terrorism. They also mention that John Yates, Assistant Commissioner in the Met, has argued for more guns on the grounds of preventing a copycat attack of the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
What I want to focus on most of all, however, is what they're going to be armed with. The Standard reports that they will carry Glock 9mm pistols and MP5 carbines.

First, the Glock pistol. Two variants of this are currently used by the Met; the Glock 17 and the Glock 26. The 17 is your run-of-the-mill semiautomatic (ie fires one shot at a time, but doesn't need to be cocked between shots), and it has a 17-shot magazine. The 26 is a much smaller version of the 17, and is designed for 'concealed carry' ie so people can have one without you knowing. The smaller handgrip makes aiming harder and recoil more difficult to control, and the shorter barrel makes the gun less accurate. All pistols are pretty inaccurate; they're designed for only one thing, convenience. They tend to be used at very close range, and the lack of a butt makes them relatively hard to control.

The MP5 carbine, however, is a different and altogether more frightening beast. It's 70cm long and weighs 3 kilos, has a 15, 30 or 32 round magazine, and a holographic weapon sight. Usually the Met use the "SF" variant of this gun, which stands for "Single Fire", i.e. semi-automatic like the Glock pistol. However, this is not a given: The armed officers around Stockwell station were armed with a shorter, less accurate, and automatic version of this gun. "Carbine" means a gun shorter than a rifle, and, it's important to note, with a corresponding loss of accuracy. These guns do have a stock, so can be braced against the body for more accuracy than a pistol. However, if fired in automatic mode, they become quickly impossible to control, and extremely inaccurate. Using one in a confined space is staggeringly dangerous. We don't yet know what variant of this gun the BTP will be armed with.

However, most serious of all about this is the ammunition that's being rolled out to armed police in the UK. The Guardian picked this up in May. The police are to start using what's called "Hollow Point" or "Dum Dum" bullets. In the linked article, the Met's spokesman, Commander Jerry Savill, is knowingly lying about this ammunition. Allow me to give you a little background.

The name "Dum Dum" comes from a town on the outskirts of Kolkata, where the British empire founded an armoury. The bullets they made had a hole drilled in the front of them (pic here and here). This meant that once they entered a target they 'mushroomed', becoming much larger in frontal area, delivering much higher hydrostatic shock, tissue damage, and blood supply damage (if all else failed the target would bleed to death rapidly). This shows what happens to the bullet.

"Hollow Point" is just a technical description of what became culturally known as "Dum Dum". They are exactly the same thing. Savill is correct that some criminals drill holes in bullets in order to ape this effect, but the effect is only to make the bullets the same as the Met now use.

I can't stress this enough: Savill is lying - the bullets are the same.

The Met's argument for using hollow point ammunition is that they tend not to exit the body and will thus reduce bystander casualties. Firstly, this is very misleading; at close range (and given the inaccuracy of their chosen firearms, it will have to be close range) hollow point bullets are very likely to exit the body, and since they frequently fragment, that which exits the body could well be a spray of shrapnel rather than the single piece of a normal bullet. Secondly, and most seriously, it means that almost any bullet wound is likely to be fatal. You are very likely to bleed to death, suffer a stroke, heart stoppage or serious brain damage from shock even if hit in a normally non-lethal area. The amount of damage these bullets do compared to a normal "full jacketed" bullet is phenomenal. See this (horrible) video for an illustration of it.

Using hollow point bullets is one of the most serious escalations of lethal force by the police that has ever happened in the UK.

This idea of bullet exiting merits a little more unpacking, I feel, as it's the main justification given for this ammunition. Of course there can be no justification for murder, but there's no harm in pointing out the foolishness of even this argument to the psychopathic utilitarian. Firstly, there is absolutely no guarantee a hollow point bullet will not exit the body, whatsoever. Secondly, if there are people standing behind or near your target, police are absolutely instructed not to shoot - it's called 'not having a clear shot' and takes into account the fact that the officer may well miss the target anyway. Thirdly: even was there no exiting and police were 100% accurate and shot people in crowds, are we seriously listening to an argument that thinks reducing exit velocities is an important enough priority that we should kill people to achieve it? Because that's what using hollow point bullets will do.

Hollow point bullets have been banned in warfare since the 1899 Hague Convention. It was believed that they are too lethal. This ruling does not seem to be likely to be challenged, and rightly so. So why are the UK police using them? How is this legal?

Well, basically, because soldiers in wartime effectively have more laws to protect them than you or I. The Hague convention doesn't apply to police. The world's legal systems are more worried about bullets killing soldiers than their own civilian citizens, it would seem. It's important to remember too that it's never legal for a police officer to shoot somebody; they may be taught endless guidelines and so on, but if they shoot you, it's murder, it's the same as anyone else shooting you, legally speaking.

But of course the police are never prosecuted on the same terms. Even according to the cronyist and complicit IPCC, who dismiss hundreds of cases of violence and murder committed by police every year, UK police kill about 100 people every year. And yet not one police officer has ever been found guilty of murder or manslaughter in the UK. The CPS and IPCC have a lot of explaining to do; and the more guns we have everywhere and the more lethal the ammunition is, the more deaths are going to occur. I don't even need to talk about Jean Charles de Menezes here; shooting by the police is never acceptable, even if against a nutter with a bomb or a gun; we don't have the death penalty in this country, and even if we did, it would require a trial. Our doctors follow the principle of 'first do no harm' - why not our police? Why do the police not take ambulances when they carry guns? Why haven't tasers (terrible weapons, but less lethal) replaced firearms, as we were told they would?

I'll finish with a graphic I made in 2008. It charts the number dying from police contact, (source IPCC, and unquestionably a serious underestimate) against the number dying from terrorism (source Home Office), to help you see things in perspective - to advance against utilitarians the folly of arming against terrorism.

Who's the real threat?

Explode Me

2011-04-20T19:06:00.001+01:00

I stood in the corner of the department store, leafing through pink plastic-packed jumpers warm from the spotlights. I was tired, yet restless from hours spent between iphone and sales assistants.
At the back of the shelf my hand hit something soft. Without staring into the dark at the back of the enclosed shelf, I scrabbled at it and tore it away from the wall it was stuck to.
It was heavy, and wrapped in brown paper and sellotape. With one hand I pulled my damp collar from my neck and looked behind me, the other clutching at the package.

Nobody was there. I tore at the paper, my hands moving quickly from their shaking. I thought I already knew what was inside, and my heartbeat accelerated.

It was a bomb. Two brown tubes, about eighteen inches long and three inches in diameter lay in my hand. My heart missed three beats, I counted them, as the most important things. I began to grow hard.

On the first beat, my body was soaked in a chill. I checked my shoulder again. Nobody. The shoppers had mostly gone home while it remained light. I turned the bomb over, and my heart missed its second beat. A circuit board was pinned to the tubes. On the third beat, I saw, scarcely believing, a red display, counting down.

I had one minute thirty-seven seconds until it exploded. Enough time to run, enough time to be safe. But I couldn’t let go of this impossible machine. My heart started, my body flooded with adrenaline and warmth. Nobody could take this bomb away from me.

I grappled the brown tubes in my hands like live things. They were twin phalluses to me, their rounded ends breasts, the gap between them a thick vulva. Sweat covered my hands and back.

Who had made it? In one minute and twenty-one seconds I would be joined with them in a second of sexual ecstasy, their technological orgasm delivered to me in these brown tubes. I pressed the circuit board against my crotch, feeling the pinpricks of carefully soldered wires against my skin.

How had it been made? Flasks had been filled by phallic test tubes, and within them had gestated this monster, watched over in secret by someone in a mask and eye goggles, checked on in baths and waste carried secretly miles away. In one minute and six seconds it would be complete, a fulfilment of weeks of work and growth.

It would rip through me, in time counted by my heartbeat, four for every red LED second, from where it was clamped between my legs, through my body, through my head, covering these plastic-packed clothes and hangers and shelves in my liquid lust.

In forty-three seconds, in orgasmic slow motion, it would spread through my flesh, taking each nerve and propelling it into me, in its long flash engorging them, penislike, to burst with uncontrollable pleasure.

It would reach to my heart, sending a shockwave through it stronger than the worst of lovers’ jolts, thrusting it through itself, giving me one heartbeat to take all others, smashing my body and my blood, and boiling them.

In thirty-one seconds, its sexual holocaust would snap my neck back like a dancers, dominating through me utterly in the way I only craved to be pushed further, breaking me like a thousand rough lovers. It would ejaculate itself into my brain, its spermatozoic atoms filling my last ecstatic thought with its fire and fertility.

My legs tightened around it, my breathing heavier and heavier and more ragged. In nineteen seconds, in one impossible moment, my orgasm would spread from this inception, the atomising of my penis, through a mist of lust.

In eleven seconds, I alone could be triumphant, standing on the edge of this realisation of my dream. I rubbed my crotch against the bomb, the utter bomb, blood spurting from my penis.

I thrust it harder and harder against myself, and grunting and screaming, mashed it with myself harder than my muscles could burst it to. This was just foreplay, blood now covered my arms and my hands pumped like irons, in just five seconds, so close, rolling on my back, in just four seconds, thrusting my whole into this bomb – three seconds – this incredible bomb, this eternal bomb - two seconds – and curled over to eternally – one second –embrace my utter lover.

disclaimer. dear police. i don’t want to hurt anyone, or blow shit up, yeah? so don't go all paul chambers on me, mkay?

Housmans competition & Red Pepper article

2011-04-20T14:03:00.001+01:00

Here's Housmans' blog on my winning their article competition, complete with (uncensored!) version of the article (although I titled it "Millbank" myself).

http://www.housmans.com/blog/?p=835

They were extremely generous, giving me a large stack of excellent books. As always - support your radical bookstores, they support you!
Article is in this month's Red Pepper if you want to read it, although please bear in mind I wrote it January 30, so isn't quite so relevant now.
Thanks again to both Housmans and Red Pepper.

Cameron decides he's not been nearly racist enough

2011-04-14T01:45:00.005+01:00

Original article here.

"In his most forthright speech on the issue since he became Prime Minister, he will say that mass immigration has led to "discomfort and disjointedness" in neighbourhoods because some migrants have been unwilling to integrate or learn English.

Pledging to cut the numbers entering Britain to tens of thousands, rather than hundreds of thousands, Mr Cameron will say that "for too long, immigration has been too high".

He can't. 7 of 8 immigrants are from the EU, and changing that number would mean leaving the EU. It's empty rhetoric. Rhetoric intended to just to give bigots a wank, and increase Tory support. But what will actually happen as a result of your rhetoric? More brown people will get spat at, their windows broken, their paperwork 'overlooked'. And let's not piss about here. Immigrants, in Dave language and the language of the bigots he's addressing, means brown people. White people are "expatriates".*

"In the speech to party members in Hampshire, the Prime Minister will attack Labour for claiming it was racist to talk about immigration, saying it is "untruthful and unfair" not to speak about the issue, however uncomfortable.

Oh, Dave, I'll happily talk about immigration. But that isn't what you mean. You want licence to be racist.
But this isn't about you. This is about the bigots you're wanking. What you want, is to tap into that aggrieved sense the Daily Mail cultivates so well, that sense of 'you can't talk about this stuff any more', that sense of private racism having to be cloaked. You're telling them not to cloak it. Don't worry. They don't. But sweet of you to give them a clear conscience.

"He will say that the "real issue" is "migrants are filling gaps in the labour market left wide open by a welfare system that for years has paid British people not to work".

Clearly, for the 2 million people who can't get a job (2.48m unemployed minus 445,000 jobs) it'd be better if they starved and died. Must remember to go and kill myself, stop Dave's country going down the drain.

"Between 1997 and 2009, 2.2 million more people came to live in Britain than those who left to live abroad, Mr Cameron will say.

"That's the largest influx of people Britain has ever had and it has placed real pressures on communities. Not just pressures on

Hold it...

schools,

Don't worry Davey. Now you've cut EMA, people won't be staying at school. And guess what - it hurts those brown people more! What could be more convenient!

housing

Pressure on housing? Aw Dave, there's no pressure on housing! I mean, it's not as if you're forcing thousands onto the streets, is it?

and health care

Oh Dave. We wouldn't have a health care system without immigrants.

– though those have been serious – but social pressures, too."

Isn't it just horrible living next to brown people?

He will reject concerns about the effect the tightening of rules on student visa applications will have on universities.

Yeah, 'cause it isn't like universities are going bankrupt, is it?

Prof Gary Becker, of the University of Chicago, said selling visas for £30,000 a time would help the Government select the best migrants.

Words fail me.

*(c) Dani

Dear Neil O'Brien

2011-04-10T00:20:00.002+01:00

A response to Neil O'Brien's delightful blogpost here.

Neil thinks we've "lost the argument".

As he says, we got into the building and sat outside his office. We asked to speak to him, or any of his colleagues, but they didn't come out, presumably because we'd lost the argument.

We did more than stage a die-in, in fact; more a brief street theatre, simulating the death of the NHS, but the people that watched, and the people who joined in the chanting, they'd all lost the argument too.

It was disturbing for the people he works with, he says. Presumably this was not because our 'wonky megaphone' was leading some biting chants and some alarmingly cutting analysis of what Policy Exchange do, but because it was disturbing to see so many people losing the argument.

Poor staff, especially the younger ones. Presumably Clegg has a few friends in there, and when all the horrid 'trots' have gone away they all listen to music and cry. One apologises. One didn't mean to so upsettingly lose the argument.

It's certain in fact that they must have been terribly upset, after all, considering they were winning, they couldn't bring themselves to say anything to all the 'trots' busily losing the argument.

Neil thinks he's got to the root of it - thank goodness for such incisive minds, this must be all that think-tank experience - we're 'idiots', that's why we're losing the argument.

Neil understands, that we're just 'trustafarians intimidating normal people', and he is right to think so, because we're all definitely extremely rich and that definitely means we're losing the argument.

Oh, and Neil:

-None of us hit police with metal rods, that was the other way round, remember?

-None of us have trust funds - but if we did, it's probably worth pointing out that if rich people can't win arguments, you may want to resign.

-It's not 'intimidation' to tell people they're destroying thousands of lives.

-UK Uncut's protests are frequently supported by staff, who see none of the millions evaded in tax by the companies they work for, and are often on minimum wage or just above.

-Caffe Nero cups have absolutely nothing to do with proletarian solidarity.

-The country is divided - against you. Remember the size of March 26?

-We aren't 'trots'. We're people who don't want the NHS to be destroyed. Many of us are current and former health workers.

-Asking to speak to you, chanting outside your offices and performing street theatre isn't bullying.

-Hate to say this one - but saying it's for 'idiots' and 'losers' doesn't technically win the argument.

I will also add I am not a spokesperson for the group, merely an eager participant. We don't have a spokesperson. What we want to say, we say in our protests.

oooh i'm famous

2011-04-08T15:45:00.001+01:00

Guido Fawkes has blogged about me.

I'm quite flattered to be honest... I think this is an excellent lesson about the misleading nature of the internet. I'm about as scary as a petulant theorist (oh wait...) but he's more than welcome to be alarmist about me. Bless

Political Mountaineering

2011-03-21T03:00:00.002Z

Lots of people ask me how I can square mountaineering with politics.

It's not as stupid a question as some might at first see it as.

Mountaineering was perhaps most enthusiastically pursued by the Victorians, and their approach to it often characterises people's approach to it today. As an example of this, people are often unembarrassed about the huge danger to life and limb it can pose. They argue that such things don't matter. They see the danger as irrelevant, as a small part. What's the big part? It's the Victorian part - conquering.

The Victorian urge was to claim a conquest over nature at its most inhospitable. What this said about their psychology spawned -as well it should- a field day of psychoanalysis in the 20th century. Suffice to say, that obviously doesn't square with my politics. It's not only an imperial urge, it is also one obsessed with the body - not just a privilege of the able-bodied, but of those stronger, faster, fitter - the worst forms of elitism. And the conquest of nature went on in their heads as well as under their boots - peaks were named, quantified, classified, listed, measured - rationalised.

So why would I love mountaineering?

Just because that drove Victorians from their homes and to their deaths doesn't mean it's the only thing. In our global quasi-American media, mountaineering can only ever be understood thus, perhaps. This is because expeditions that depend on sponsorship must publicise their daring for their existence - and because those that talk loudest about mountaineering talk loudest because they brag, about their "achievements" on mountains. But that doesn't mean we cannot reclaim mountaineering from them.

Rationalisation is a big problem. Within climbing (here I refer to trad and sport climbing and bouldering) certain ways of moving over vertical ground are graded for difficulty in a system. There are specified requirements to be adhered to in order to "tick" a route, that is, to claim that you've been up it and followed all the rules. Climbers talk about "pushing their grade", ie getting ticks against higher route grades.

Mountaineering is different. Within what is usually called mountaineering, that is to say, moving over mountainous terrain, usually involving climbing of some sort, usually to a summit, there are no such rules, and usually few or no grades. The reason for this is simple - nature is ungradeable. There is an implicit understanding in mountaineering that if you go up a mountain (or around, across or down it, I don't talk only about summits - "getting to the top is optional, getting down is mandatory") your progress depends on snow conditions, wind conditions, avalanches, rockfall, temperature, visibility, acclimatisation, and as many expeditions are more than one day, your physical health. Two people go up the same mountain and it's almost impossible that they go the same route. Even if they do, everything else is different - and usually, they can't be certain of their route afterwards anyway.

Many climbers talk of the movement of climbing being a pure act, of the yoga-like properties of moving in complicated yet confident ways, with acute balance and poise, over rock. This is not about achievement, it's about an experience, a way of moving and of acting. I won't write here about the purity of action versus thought - that's for the book - but suffice to say it's that.

There's more, though - why mountains, not trees, or buildings? Here my thought is more confused. There's a lot to be said for its being a reaction of my eyesight - to go from endless text consumption on a TFT screen at two feet to horizons, to picking safe rock out of a whiteout, to moving quickly over shifting snow and watching the stars is a relief that needs to be intense for its rarity. Crucially for me, it's the unconquering, the unforgiving nature of the mountain that provides more solace. It's the uncaring mountain that cannot notice if I slip or die, that gives me perspective over my personality. It's that hatred is wasted on a mountain, it's that you don't have to do things a certain way but you always have perspective, you always have the mountain telling you what is impossible. And you can do all this with any body. I know I shall enjoy it when I am too old to climb as I do now, or if I lose my mobility to an accident. To me a mountain is the perfect cure for the neurotic existence of the city dweller, as it does not allow half measures, as its immediacy is plain, not constructed, as it takes no glories and does not reward the lucky.

I must stop here as a book can easily (probably will be, in fact) be written on this, and that the rambling is becoming increasingly unstructured - this may be the whisky. Anyway - I hope I have reassured some of you that I do not seek to conquer things.

2011-02-11T00:11:00.000Z

Ficken und Entkaff sind ein Ding! or A Letter To A Confused Liberal

2010-12-31T15:08:00.005Z

(now retracted - read retraction here)

Of course Baader shouted "Ficken und Schiessen sing ein Ding!" (fucking and shooting are the same thing!), feeling his rebellion was as much against sexual conservatism as Capital.
Perhaps this is the root of the revisionist attempt to misunderstand Andreas Baader. In Uli Edel's film, this quote is symptomatic of the entire approach; to portray the RAF as this gang of the socially excluded and the impressionable, following the Marlon Brando figure of Baader as a symbol of just their desire to be loved. Baader is given a speech about the gun, as if to cement this idea that his ejaculation is his revolution. I don't intend to get into how little Moritz Bleibtreu knows about his character, but to think of Ficken, Schiessen und Entkaff.
Of course we don't know if he ever said it. But Edel's inclusion comes at a critical point in the film. We witness the RAF training with the PLO, and beginning to act like spoilt children - led by the id Baader. At this stage the revolutionaries are playing at soldiers in the desert, with an authority to rebel against, and it is the relish with which they do so that cements their adolescence. We are in danger of sympathising too much with them; we have seen the shooting of Rudi Dutschke, and of Benno Ohnesorg, and Gudrun Ensslin stamping her feet. Now we see the liberal nude Germans defying these conservative Arabs, and our inner rebel is erect.
But then he says it, "Ficken und Schiessen sing ein ding!", and our erection is crumpled. Surely he can't be worshipping guns? I thought he was just a bit drunk earlier? It's gone to his head. He's taken it too far. I'm guilty about my penis, but he seems to love his! I hope nobody thinks of mine as a gun. I'm scared of the caveman.
This is how we have to misunderstand Baader. He fires his gun from the hip, spraying his revolutionary ejaculate over Germany. He thrusts his body forward in argument. He wants to fuck us so that we love him, he wants to turn us round so we can't talk to him and fuck us.
We have to see his frustrated dick as the 1960s. It is a phase, something they used to do back then.
Then: we don't have to fear Baader. We can fuck him as well as talk to him. We have always been in control of the speaking: now though, we are no longer scared of spraying our own ejaculate on his face. We are excited by the thought of it. Because he is just a phase, a phase we all go through. You remember wanking as a child, don't you? That's all he is! He's just the bit when you used to rub yourself til you bled over the lingerie section of the Argos catalogue! He's a fantasy, he doesn't exist! He's the bit we grow out of! He's Hitchens before he grew up, he's the bit where you try to be funny at your parents' dinner party! So fantasise back! He's in your private world, he's the bit -you know the bit- where it's OK to push someone's head into a pillow until they suffocate, he's the bit you fuck harder and harder and harder because you want to shoot and shoot and shoot and hit and hit and hit! He is porn! He is waiting, eager to be blinded by your cum facial.
Because, see: he thinks fucking will free him. He is us, being told masturbation is naughty, being caught with pants down in front of the mirror, being embarrassed when we ask our partner to put their fist in our arse, spending money in Pigalle.
Fucking and Spending "sind ein ding". More, more, more, harder, harder, harder, i'm nearly there, nearly, i'm gonna, i'm gonna... and you do, and it's short and dirty and then you're depressed. Consumerism has always been a sexual act, in the way that sex is measured in time and speed and decibels and consumerism in time and speed and pounds. No wonder Baader's revolution failed. It was only within himself, he only fought himself. "I want to spend/I am ashamed of spending" "I want to fuck/I am ashamed of fucking".
So it is with coffee. I am tired, I want a break, I will spend, I will buy coffee, and then I will be awake to do my work. But I don't want to work! I don't want to be up all night! Capital comes to my rescue: Decaff, Entkaff! I can set aside my guilt at spending to sit down, at spending on something from miles away, on something grown by slaves - it is decaf! It is fairtrade! It is cheap! Just as fucking was a capitalist rather than libertarian revolution, so ethical coffee is a capitalist revolution. We can provide coffee with no problems! We can provide the ultimate coffee. Because coffee too is sex - coffee, strong, moodily lit, what filmstars do with their perfect bodies in the places they all meet to have verbal sex before they do it violently later.
There is a sign in Brighton that says "The Espresso Revolution Will Not Be Televised".
Ficken und Entkaff sind eing Ding: Kapital.

2010-12-10T13:07:00.001Z

What follows is clumsily written, but my head still hurts like murder and I can't bring myself to think about it too clearly. I hope that it can stand for now as a preliminary report of my experience at the protest.

I was on the edge of a group of protesters in Parliament Square, standing peacefully. We weren't even moving. Suddenly, police on foot in full body armour (and wearing balaclavas so we couldn't recognise them) charged us with batons raised. I was pushed backwards into the people behind me in the initial charge but the crushed and scared crowd pushed back to stop everyone falling over. I saw several around me hit by batons and fall, screaming. I was then hit over the head by a baton, hard enough to knock me sideways, then hit again, I think by the same officer. My ears rang, everything went quiet and I couldn't hold my balance. My knees gave way and I fell over. An officer stepped forward and deliberately stamped his foot into my chest, winding me. Another officer rested his boot on my head. A huge man, a protester, who had stood next to me picked me up and held my bleeding head in front of the police (this I have heard from him as I was semi- or un-conscious). They did not hit him but did not move aside. He repeatedly screamed for a medic but the police pretended not to hear him although it was clear to look at me that I needed one. He held me in both arms and pushed at the police line with his shoulder. They pushed back once, but then let him through - but hit a man who tried to follow. Next to him, a police officer spontaneously collapsed, apparently feigning unconsciousness. As the officer was not on the front line, had had nothing thrown at him and was wearing full body armour including helmet with visor down, he could not have been injured. The only nearby medic immediately tended to this officer, who had apparently faked an injury. Both medics and police ignored me and my friend who shouted repeatedly for assistance. Giving up, he half walked half carried me to hospital. Once there he attempted to get police to take a statement from me but was told there were none available.I spent three hours in hospital, dizzy, bleeding from the head and being repeatedly sick. My speech was apparently slurred and I have poor memory of what happened for the rest of the day. I had been told to stay overnight but feeling scared and victimised from being hit I left and returned home. The man who'd saved me was named Adam but I never learnt his surname. He left once I'd assured him I was fine as he had friends still at the demo and was worried about them.

I could justify being violent as using subjective violence against sytemic violence. I could justify being violent as I saw the innocent being beaten to the ground around me. More than anything, I could justify ripping the armour from these heavily armed cowards, as to hit people so heavily protected could never be called violence.

But I didn't. I didn't lift a finger. I didn't push. I didn't even shout "fuck the police" as I should have. I didn't have the chance to. I was beaten to the ground, and stamped on when unconscious by brutal men who couldn't have cared if they'd killed me.

I later learned I was one of the luckier ones. I am thinking of Alfie today, and of others who might not have made the news. Thanks to everybody who has sent me messages of support - it's meant a lot. I can't describe how confused, frightened and victimised I felt, bleeding and vomiting in a hospital bed. I'm not ashamed to say I cried a few times.

I hear Bob Brecher has suggested the police were ordered to scare protesters into not coming back. I'm coming back. They have no idea how strong they've entrenched hatred in me, hatred for their actions, their facelessness, their carelessness, their inhumanity.

We're all coming back. For Alfie, for everyone who was hurt, and most of all for the countless wrecked lives that will never make the headlines - the poor, the disabled, the homeless, the students, everyone in the gunsights of this government. We're all coming back.

Article published on Antiporn Men:

2010-12-08T14:46:00.002Z

http://www.antipornmen.org/2010/12/06/the-marketisation-of-sexuality/

2010-12-01T16:27:00.000Z

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/video/2010/nov/30/student-protests-day-three

Interesting selfconsciousness in that video: cabbie says "they should do it like France" (ie more violent) but the students wanted less violence, concerned how they'd appear to the "middle aged". We must ask ourrselves how the free-education middle class who grew up in the postwar consensus, "appear". Students need to understand the objective, systemic violence against them, not just the moral high-ground they appear to have over the unprovoked subjective police violence. And even just thinking in subjective violence fighting the police makes sense as they are preventing the protest. It doesn't matter how protesters "appear". 2003 alone showed how genteel protests do not sway parliament. This has always been the beauty of strike action. Like that, students have to FORCE politicians to listen.

We've heard "I listen to rational debate, not protest" from MPs too much. They do not listen, and even when defeated in arguments they still go ahead. The point of a protest is to threaten the government. That's doable electorally, sure, but this is too early for that.

Public order and the running of the economy are much more frightening things for the government. to lose. Hence "direct action".

A protest must not be a self-conscious action, as it is a form of expression, and self-expression is not subject to others' opinion. Anyway, there's an excellent history of criminal damage etc being quashed in court as it prevented a greater crime taking place - Kingsnorth being a recent example.

^ ramblings on twitter

2010-12-01T16:21:00.000Z