"A critique of SlutWalk Singapore? Try again." by Desirée Lim.

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ETA 22 June 2011: You can read Ben Cheah's reply to Desirée Lim's piece and Lim's further deconstruction of that email at her Facebook note. And if one's feeling extra intrepid, one can witness more FAIL from Cheah here: (TRIGGER WARNING - and yes, you have to copy and paste the address if you really want to feel the pain) https://www.facebook.com/notes/benjamin-cheah/the-blame-dialogues/183967081658348. As far as the farm is concerned, we're no longer entertaining Cheah's rubbish on this subject.
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Readers will remember our 'favourite' rape-victim-blaming, Rational Male Blogger^TM Benjamin Cheah from a while back. Well, Cheah has resurfaced from what little manhole in which he resides to offer more useless cents (and sense) on the proposal to host SlutWalk in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. The farm is honoured and most delighted to host our first guest post, this lovely response to Cheah by frequent #sgfeminists contributor, Desirée Lim. This is x-posted here.
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Today I came across a blog post titled "Slutwalk: noble but misguided" by Benjamin Cheah. I am personally for Slutwalk and am pleased that it's coming to Singapore, but as I believe it's important to critique the things we support, I decided to read it. I hoped to read something that could shed light on SlutWalk's shortcomings and limitations in a Singaporean context, which I have been ruminating over the last few days: boy was I disappointed. If anything, it's shown me, all the more, how goddamned pervasive the exact attitudes SlutWalk stands against are, "academically" expressed or not, and how important it is so rally against them. Here is a brief response.

SlutWalk Singapore x Kuala Lumpur’s Facebook page says that one of its goals is ‘to stop victim-blaming in sexual assault, which is a crime that has nothing to do with what we wear or even sex.’ This reveals a dangerous misunderstanding of sexual assault.

Clothing matters. Rapists prefer women who wear clothes that are easy to remove. Rapists want to do the deed as quickly as possible, to minimise risk to themselves. The more time they spend removing clothes, the more time the victim has to defend herself and call attention to the rape-in-progress. Rapists aren’t necessarily turned on by scantily clad targets – but they will prefer targets who are easier to attack.

Naturally, this paragraph displays an excellent understanding of sexual assault, far superior to that of Slutwalk's! So rapists regularly sit around evaluating women's attire, poised to attack the first woman who has clothes that are "easy to remove".

Rapist: "Hmmm. This one's wearing a jacket, so nah. Shit, that one is wearing stockings and ripping them off is going to hinder my rape, so I'll let her off. Damn it, HER dress has BUTTONS on!"

The next time I walk out in a dress with a zip down the back (I can't think of any other article of clothing that would be easier to remove - maybe my old sweatpants that are loose around the waist and can thus be swiftly yanked down?), God help me. In fact, I should conduct sartorial experiments, just in case - does anybody want to volunteer to rip off a series of my outfits so I can be absolutely sure?

A protest march is a public expression of group opinion – but rapists don’t care. They don’t see themselves as part of society. (More on that below.) Protests can’t pressure someone who won’t feel it.

Workshops, fora and meetings attract people who have a stake in the topic. Rapists do not. They won’t show up. They may know someone who attended such a workshop – so they’ll just take her and her friends off their target list, if they care. Or put them on the list, if they care that much. (Again, more below.)

How does this invalidate SlutWalk? Cheah seems to be suggesting that it is pointless because rapists are not going to join women in the march, speaking out against victim-blaming. By the same logic, protest marches against any kind of injustice would be useless as well, since the perpetrators are probably not going to join in. Moreover, did anyone ever suggest that SlutWalk would stop rape? I doubt so. What we're more interested in is changing preponderant public attitudes towards rape - the very attitudes that Cheah himself, as I will show later, cheerfully propounds. He later continues along the same lines: A predatory rapist isn’t moved by popular outrage. He doesn’t even see himself as part of society. A social rapist doesn’t care…and may turn on ‘his’ woman if he learns she took part in something like SlutWalk. It’s not rape to him; he’s just putting her in his place. Right, and we feminists simplistically believe that SlutWalk can "move" and dissuade rapists. The day a protest march moves rapists to tears when they think about their wrongdoings ("This is it! I'll NEVER RAPE AGAIN!"), I'll eat my hat.

The heart of SlutWalk’s stance on rape is its attack on ‘victim-blaming’. SlutWalk believes that society pins all the ‘blame’ of a rape on the victim instead of the rapist. On the surface, this is only logical. A rapist committed a rape, therefore the rapist is to blame. But this is a shallow way of looking at rape – the rape probably occurred because the victim didn’t look after herself.

What did I tell you? Can a deep, incisive, correct way of looking at rape point us back to (gasp) victim-blaming? If you can bear to, let's read on.

Predatory rapists like to ambush their targets. The key word is ambush. They wait in dark, secluded areas, and assess everybody who walk by. As soon as they see a target, they strike. Predators can be avoided by going where they can’t hide and not provoking an attack. Personal safety is beyond the scope of this blog, but for more information, there are plenty of books and websites available. I favour Marc MacYoung, Gavin De Becker, and Rory Miller. While geared towards an American audience, much of what they say applies across cultures and borders. More importantly, they make sense, and their tactics work.

Social rapists are people you interact with. To avoid being raped by them, cut them out of your life, and spread the word about them. Potential rapists tend to fit a profile: if you know what to look for, you can take appropriate measures. They’re not that difficult to spot; they tend to be misogynistic bullies or slick charmers.

Most rapes occur because a woman took a risk, and got burned. She took a risk by walking down a dark alley, by ignoring the three young men lined up against a wall, by leaving a charming handsome stranger alone with her drink, by continuing to live with her abusive husband, and she paid the price. But these are avoidable risks. Most crimes occur this way. It’s controllable, even eliminated in some cases.

Now, two things. I first need to point out how ludicrous the second paragraph is. So, to avoid being raped, I am responsible for developing an internal Rapist Detector that enables me to systematically de-friend any rapist that could inhabit my friendspace. What's more, Cheah claims that they're "not that difficult to spot". I would love to personally introduce him to all my friends, just so he can tell me, afterwards, who is most likely to rape me - lest I suffer the consequences. It's easy! Cheah also conveniently ignores the fact that many rapists are people that you cannot easily disassociate yourself from with the click of a button - what about family members? Work superiors? Husbands you have young children with? Is it my fault that I am raped, or is it their fault for raping me? No prizes for the correct answer.

Secondly, being strongly against victim-blaming doesn't mean that we can't encourage people to be careful. There is a reason why I avoid walking alone in the dark by myself. It is perfectly natural for me to ask a female friend to send me a text when she reaches home safely. Before I left for university my mother gave me a flashlight/alarm hybrid that I was supposed to set off if someone tried to assault me (I never used it). The problem arises, however, when we say, not only that rape happens because we fail to do these things, but that we, as Cheah implies, have it coming.

Let me use a simple example. This point has been explained to death by more capable feminists, so feel free to skip over it, unless you need to be disabused. I am an amateur sailor who decides to go boating in an extraordinarily violent storm. No doubt, I am taking a risk because I choose to go boating in a storm. If I drown as a result, it will be my foolishness at fault, even if no one will say it at my funeral. How is this different from a woman who takes a risk by walking down a dark alley that might be populated by rapists? The key here, which so many people fail to grasp, is agency. Storms have no agency, but rapists (hopefully) do. A storm will continue to rage no matter what, but rapes happen because rapists actively decide to rape. A woman who does - or fails to - do x is in no danger of rape if men do not choose to rape. If we blame the victim and not the rapist, we are assuming that rapists, like storms, are an uncontrollable constant we should accept as a fact of life. Men rape. That is normal. They can't help it. If we believed this, I seriously think it would be a huge insult to men in general.

With the aid of another analogy:

Either: To stop rape, women take EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE PRECAUTION to make sure they don't get raped. This includes, as Cheah suggests, wearing clothing that is difficult to take off (like thick leather onesies with conspicuous locks on) and fine-tuning their aforementioned Rapist Sensors. Disappointed, potential rapists give up and go home.

Or: Potential rapists stop themselves from raping.

Either: To stop ourselves from being hit by drunk drivers, we make sure we TAKE EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE PRECAUTION to make sure we don't. We wear fluorescent clothing and refuse to cross roads, ever. Otherwise, it is our fault for being hit.

Or: People stop drink-driving.

Which looks more sensible? I leave it to the reader.

A journo's juvenile jeers

Journalist Joyce Hooi has weighed in on the whole degradation-of-divorce-proceedings-into-a-flesh-parade barfery that my dear comrade Porky talked about. Hooi's argument, as far as she has one, is that there's no problem with courts treating all divorcing women as hawkers peddling themselves as commodities in a jolly old meat market, because that's precisely what divorcing women are. Products which can be helpfully ranked to assist browsing consumers, since all straight men are exactly the same and can classify all women on the same one linear scale of what they want in a mate.

I excerpt Ms Hooi's offering with humble observations of my own.

THIS weekend, when men in bars all over Singapore size up the pickings available, they will use a new lexicon for attractiveness: a woman will be either 'lump sum' or 'monthly' instead of 'hot' or 'have a few more drinks before you look again'.

Women are "pickings", to be rated by a cost to quality ratio. Charming.

This was triggered by the divorce settlement of a 37-year-old Vietnamese Singaporean woman in which another judge had asked if the woman in question was attractive.

Why is her background even mentioned? As a commenter on Piggy's entry pointed out, you have to wonder if this question has arisen in part because of the nasty stereotypes Singaporeans have about Vietnamese women.

From the subsequent appeal of the lady in question - the maintenance sum for her son had been cut from $12,000 to $600, among several things - I have no choice but to imagine that she's the spitting image of Gisele Bundchen.

Pay attention here, this is a real live example of sexist culture at work. The original report was quite careful to state that "attractiveness" isn't assessed purely on physical terms - which doesn't make the assessment any less problematic, since it still assumes that all divorcing women will and should get remarried, and that women are essentially interchangeable commodities of varying quality. But Ms Hooi has neatly elided this to ensure the discussion is all about women's appearances again, thus using a bad judgment to further an even worse cultural trope! Skilful work.

The cut in child maintenance might not have been solely influenced by the woman's attractiveness, of course, and might have something to do with the fact that $12,000 is a lot of Xbox 3 games, but that's fodder for another column.

Please don't write it. We don't like you.

In any case, enraged feminists (a redundancy, if there ever was one) have objected to the idea that looks have any bearing on alimony.

Yeah, we're pissed off. Gee, you noticed? Quite obviously, being frequently pissed off can only mean we don't really have anything to be pissed off about. It's a mathematical law:

{ IFF* Cause = 0, THEN feminist = enraged }

*IFF: If and only if

Her name is Joyce Hooi, and logic is her weapon.

The two main links in the argument that they object to are: attractiveness is objective, and attractiveness is an indicator of how quickly you can get someone to say 'I do'.

The short rebuttal to both arguments is: surely you kid.

You need to make the long ones, because the short one is lousy.

Actually, on second thought, please don't.

The longer one to the first concern about the subjectivity of attractiveness is this: while there might be room for quibbling about how someone is more of a 7 than an 8, the gulf between a 2 and an 8 is wide enough for most people to see (unless, of course, you're Arnold Schwarzenegger).

Railing against the objective definition of beauty is like saying that America's Next Top Model is bunk; it is futile and makes everyone suspect that the person doing the complaining is ugly.

She's doing the logic thing again! Everybody take cover! Here I refer you to the frolics of some friends of the barn on Twitter (or Clucker, as I would like to see it renamed):

illyrica: Joyce Hooi playground reasoning: "If you object you are ugly haha!" OK I'm ugly. Big fucking deal. This makes me wrong how?

MizHalle: she considers ugly people to be worth less than non-ugly ones so she doesn't have to listen to them
and if you disagree with her article you must be ugly.
So therefore, if you disagree with her article she automatically doesn't have to listen to you!
And therefore, she's automatically always right!
Circular logic FTW! *shoots things*

As a matter of fact, Hooi is simply wrong. It may well be the case that in the artificial playground of Hollywoodified media, there is an "objective" scale of "attractiveness" against which people can be ranked, according to their ability to meet some arbitrary checklist of requirements.

But back on planet Earth, when it comes to the daily grind (heh, heh) of people meeting others, and getting to know one another, and deciding who they like or don't like, and fitting their values and tastes and senses of humour and different sexualities together, and dare I say it falling in love, there simply isn't a scale. We aren't all in the hopeless thrall of the latest Mr & Miss Universe. Many of us yearn for actual people who touch us (giggle) in highly individual ways. There are certainly people who never cultivate brains of their own, and only ever strive for partnerships and marriages as status symbols to be valued in the way that the television producers and the glossy magazine editors tell them to. But they are fewer than they believe, and public policy shouldn't be made around them.

Diversion aside, the other concern - that attractiveness does not have a correlation with chances of remarriage - is naive. Some have brandished the Women's Charter, saying that physical attributes are not mentioned.

The Women's Charter (which begins titillatingly with the definition of 'brothel' but sobers up pretty quickly thereafter) mentions 'income, earning capacity, property and other financial resources' of both parties as some of the determinants of maintenance quantum.

Since marriage is correlated with financial security especially where a woman is concerned, why can't her marriageability be considered part of her earning capacity? The day Donald Trump breaks with tradition and marries a Plain Jane, I will stand corrected.

Open your eyes. Every day people enter relationships and/or marriages that confound the shallow expectations of your sexist media narrative, a narrative which calls them "exceptions" or "oddities" and then pretends they don't exist. "Plain Janes" - that is, the vast majority of normal human beings, who have better things to do than get hung up on boring media stereotypes - get married all the time. Your glib correlations are not borne out by reality.

But also importantly, not everyone wants to get married. Not everyone who gets divorced wants to get remarried. Being married is often, for women, actually quite a bad idea. Not everyone who wants to get remarried can do so to the person of their choice, because same sex marriage is still not possible. The courts of law have no business financially penalising people for not wanting to treat their personal relationships as bargaining currency.

But it gets better. Ms Hooi then tries to pretend she is against reducing people to their appearances and for women's rights:

One of the many studies done found that plain people earn 5-10 per cent less than average-looking people, who in turn earn 3-8 per cent less than those who are good-looking.

...

If a relative lack of attractiveness qualifies as an impediment to your capacity to make a living, it confounds me that people would object that the courts try to redress that imbalance. Some have railed against the idea that women rely this much on marriage. But they do; studies in America have shown that single parents consider their economic situation far more precarious than married parents.

And if you argue on the basis that marriage is simply a technicality that can be postponed even by good-looking women, then the court's approach can be seen to be incidentally progressive. Even if a beautiful women never marries, she is likely to be better taken care of by the workplace and quicker to find a companion who will split the COE with her, compared to a plainer woman.

How exactly are the courts redressing any imbalance here whatsoever? Is the daily objectification and prejudice faced by women over our appearances going to be reduced by this judgment, or is it strengthened by this institutional support? (Hint: the answer is in the first paragraph of your column.)

It might also be good to ask what, in reality, is the "advantage" that Ms Hooi believes "more attractive" women enjoy over "less attractive" ones? Consider the experience of job seekers in China:

In China, sexual harassment and being asked to sleep with interviewers in a tough job market was a very real concern to my friends in their final year of university, and they themselves attributed it to men being valued so highly that women are asked to ‘give a little something extra’ to be considered.

The imbalance that needs redress can't be seen for what it really is without understanding the role gender plays in this. The problem isn't "hot" and "ugly" women battling it out in a vacuum-sealed room of our own. The problem is misogyny, which women are encouraged to ignore while we battle one another for the scraps tossed to the "pretty". The problem is misogyny, and the solution won't be found by defining women as commodities whose value depends on heterosexual male use.

"A woman schlemiel".

In light of Singapore's imminent general elections this year, and the ugliness of sexist dissections people feel entitled to enact upon candidates (e.g. Tin Pei Ling), I thought it'd be timely to share some passages from the Rebecca Traister's Big Girls Don't Cry (an interview with the author), which discusses the sexism and misogyny faced by vice- and presidential candidates - Sarah Palin and Hillary Rodham Clinton, respectively - in the 2008 United States elections.

Breaking from writing conventions, I'm just going to paste the relevant passages without comment or leads. This all seems quite self-explanatory:

It's not that male politicians escaped related evaluation (based on looks) ... The scrutiny was much more intense for Clinton, because women value is intrinsically tied to desirability and attractiveness .... For those who supported her had to downplay her feminine attributes lest she be diminished by objectification. For those who hated her the goal was to humiliate her, and at the same time affirm that she held no alluring power over them. As Shirley Chisholm said decades before, "One distressing thing is the way men react to women who assert their equality: their ultimate weapon is to call them unfeminine. They think she is anti-male; they even whisper that she's probably a lesbian..." (pp76-77)

These points of recognition (of sexism) were about identifying with a certain strain of ill treatment, something feminists are loath to do lest they be accused of capitalising on victimhood. But feminism was born precisely because women faced gendered injustices. To identify and overcome obstacles and resistance was to advance the project of female empowerment ... To see a woman get taunted for being simultaneously frigid and lachrymose and then get teased for her smarts was not to ascribe to her inherently feminine qualities of frigidity, sentimentality, or unsociability. Rather it was to witness femininity as it has historically been cast, especially when it threatened male power structures: as a laughable, silly, unpleasant, or devalued condition. Women had watched a popular version of Hillary Clinton, a front-running candidate with whom they may have had a complicated or cool relationship but whose strengths, weaknesses, achievements, and mistakes had never been traditional or one-dimensional, manipulated to fit into retro molds of lightweight (peevish, unpopular, calculating, shrill) feminine illegitimacy. In a cartoon drawn by Pat Oliphant in the days after New Hampshire a bubbling Clinton is shown at a desk, facing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Osama bin Laden, Lim Jong Il and other menacing men murmuring "Aww, she's sensitive--I had no idea"; "Was it something we said?"; and "Buy her flowers." A thought bubble above Hillary's head reads, "You guys are mean!" and in the corner, a miniature Bill remarks, "This is when PMS goes nuclear." In the face of plenty of good reasons to criticise Hillary Clinton, women now realized that for some it still came down to this: the same twisted characterizations used for centuries to bolster the idea that women were unfit to lead. (pp104-106)

Letters to left-leaning publications and blogs bubbled with enmity toward Clinton. As Katha Pollitt wrote, "Vats of sexist nastiness splattered across the Comments section of hundreds of blogs and websites. It's as if every obscene phone caller and every exhibitionist in America decided to become an amateur political pundit." ... The trouble was that because everyone was liberal and officially down with female empowerment, that many women who couldn't cite actual uses of the words bitch or cunt found themselves troubled by their inability to specify the sexism they sensed. "I don't think anyone in my (progressive) peer group ... would be comfortable saying, 'I'm not ready for a woman president,'" said Alex Seggerman, a twenty-four-year-old art history Ph.D. student. Seggerman was an Obama voter but noticed people making remarks like "She's had plastic surgery" or "Her attitude is off-putting," which she heard as "expressions of some deeper issues with the fact that she is a woman." People can always come up with reasons they don't like the candidate they're not supporting," said Dana Lossia, the Obama-supporting labor lawyer. "But no one disliked Joe Biden or Chris Dodd as much as they dislike Hillary." She's never heard her friends say anything explicit: "[They never say] anything where I could say, 'That's a sexist comment.' It's just that I can't understand why they hate her so much."

It was a contemporary iteration of Betty Friedan's problem that had no name, a maddening cycle of vague hunches and self-righteous denials that left many of us feeling as though we were going insane. Even (Jessica) Valenti was disoriented by it; she was particularly hamstrung because, as she pointed out, she made her living identifying sexism. "You'd think I'd be able to find an example," she said, adding, "Because it's not [always] explicit sexism, it makes it impossible to argue with people, because if you say something, then you're the wackadoo feminist." (pp169-170)

The liberalish radio host Ed Schultz, who had said on air that (Sarah) Palin set off a "bimbo alert", who asked, in conversation with Larry King and Republican Susan Molinari, "What kind of mother is she? Is she prepared to be the vice president? Is she going to be totally focused on the issues?" The Washington Post's Sally Quinn asked if Palin was "prepared for the all-consuming nature of the job ... Her first priority has to be her children. When the phone rings at three in the morning and one of her children is really sick what choice will she make?"

... The feminist writer and lawyer Susan Estrich weighed in, remarking, "No one would be asking these questions if she were a man. No one asked whether Arnold Schwarzenegger should run for governor because he has four children ... This is how the double standard works ... I have no doubt that Barack Obama can count on his fingers the number of times he has been home in the last 19 months to put his two beautiful daughters to bed ... Does this make him a 'bad father'? Should it undercut his claim to the presidency? Of course not?" (pp233-234)

[Palin] was a bad vice-presidential candidate, like bad vice-presidential candidates before her, and her communications team had allowed a prank caller to get through. She was ill-prepared and inarticulate, and her chattiness about how much she liked Sarkozy's model wife, Carla Bruni, was cringey. But progress takes all sorts, and in the pantheon of political leadership there has been thousands of craven, ill-intentioned, pompous, and stupid men. There was no rule that said that in order to make history Palin had to be a decent, honest politician, nor that she was a rocket scientist. Were we to envision true equality in politics, it would involve as many Sarah Palins as it would Hillary Clintons. As Bella Abzug had said, "[The goal is not to see a] female Einstein become an assistant professor. We want a woman schlemiel to get promoted as quickly as a male schlemiel." (p280)

And just to be clear, this farm also attributes sexism as the cause for the imbalance of attention spent between demolishing Tin's political aspiration and other candidates. Head over to Weekday Blues' post to find out why.

When you say or do something sexist and/or misogynistic towards one person, man or woman, you do it to everyone else because you remind us, the everyone else, that we are supposed to have a restrictive place in life too. Don't try to make this them versus us; exceptionalising the hated as someone deserving of discriminatory and violent scorn, then especialising everyone else as different from the pack, like as if we're supposed to feel good about your not being directly bigoted towards us. Oh, looky, Brownie cookies for us! We have your favour and approval. How lovely!

Though the real beauty of exceptionalising it is that it muddles it for us. Makes it difficult for us to call you out, because people don't like to be associated with the scorn, and then be scorned too. Especially not when a large group of people are the culprits of it. Especially not when we least expect our immediate network best friends, greatly admired people, closest of family members, or supposedly most progressive of internet blogs--all of whom supposed to protect and stand with us from all this grotesque discrimination--be the ones promulgating this bullshit.

Don't kid yourself, there's no us and there's no them in social injustices. It hurts every-fucking-one.

Teh menz, they sure knowz betta!

People wonder why there's no gender equality in Singapore?

Seriously!?!?!? (WARNING: proceed at your own risk.)

Everytime AWARE or anyone speaks up for gender equality, suddenly everyone else has an opinion (cursory survey of TOC's recent published links on Facebook suggests that AWARE's post garnered the most comments) and invariably the Men Rights Activists (MRAs) are bound to come out of the woodwork. Especially for AWARE, someone must see it in hirself to bring up their involvement in The Gay Agenda, for mawd knows why!

Every occasion of a stab at establishing some gender equality, someone else is bound to draw out his list of Greater Priorities to Achieve Real Gender Equalitiez. Every occasion to commemorate or discuss substantively policy push in gender equality, someone is bound to hijack the platform to promote the various ways in which Gender Equality Iz Im/Possiblez. Every occasion is never allowed a brief moment to critically engage the push against the environment in which policies are moulded in Singapore. (Seriously, these people see press releases or news items, then conclude that lobby work is as easy as opening their mawddamn mouths?)

And every time someone speaks of gender equality, someone else will without fail play the National Service card.

I don't mean to speak for anyone, but I doubt any of these farm animals nor our barnyard engineer, nor AWARE, nor the government, nor TOC, nor even the Unaccompanied Ursidae on its most delusional day have all the answers. The good thing is that lobbying work isn't a zero-sum game. We can all get in on the action and tackle the problems of the world from various angles. And you know what? There're far more of these MRAs and People For-Real-Real-Not-For-Play-Play Gender Equality than there are of us who've made it our personal, unpaid mission to push for changes. But never has this Festive Bee Cheng Hiang Spicy Bah Kwa seen any of these vociferous eXXXperts ever get themselves organised to set up the "male version of AWARE"*?

Call this Suckling Pig chao-tar, but he has a few theories for this.

Either:

A, these MRA ideas never gain traction under the banner of equity because they're found to only further reinforce the idea that this is a male-dominated/prized society;

B, these ideas are so rare and specious that they don't find critical mass; or

C, that the people who hold these views care not a bit about gender equality, for they don't believe or want it, even if you were to serve it to them on a silver platter. Often, those who do find the time to get organised, eventually find themselves at A or B, or in the Republican party, I guess.

And here on the farm, we know bullshit when we see, smell, hear it. You people at TOC's thread? You smell just like...

---
NOTE:
* Well, does the men's chapter of AWARE qualify as the "male version of AWARE"? Also, male unfeminist pig has always assumed that the very definition of gender equality means equality for all genders, although granted it's important for specific groups to speak for themselves.

Degrees of hate.

Char Siew Pau here was ambivalent to see news of American teen, Tyler Clementi's suicide appearing in the local Straits Times last week. It wasn't clear to this male unfeminist, badly drawn pig what exactly it meant for him that the papers prioritised the article on the third page of the main papers, because he was still reeling from a couple of events that broke with the news of Clementi's death.

Such as learning that one of the two guys recently caught having sex together in a local mall toilet is being charged under Section 377A [ed: please read People Like Us's statement in full!], i.e. the anti-male homosexual act law that our parliament said it won't repeal for symbolic appeal. Then there were debates amuck on the veracity of saying that homophobia was the key ingredient in driving Clementi off the bridge.

From the latter thread, one such detractor was the very rational and evidence-based--let's call him--Mr Mensch, asserting--and I paraphrase, "Until I see evidence of homophobia, I'm inclined to believe it has nothing to do with Clementi's death. Charlotte’s Interwebz encourages people to distribute exposés all over. It's free-market sexcapade galore for straight people, for gay people, for all!"

Why, what a wonderfully insightful libertarian mensch! I would have totally gotten my Pork Trotters twisted in the excitement of such sound revelation if not for fact that, hey, my stupid gay, asian Lup Cheong self looked around and saw that he remains in the shadow of a vigilant heteronormative state. A state in which the assumed default and premium is in being heterosexual (or at least discreetly straight-acting), failing which you are a frowned-upon deviant. It precedes that when straight people, who aren't presidents, hotelier heiresses or pop stars, are caught in the hanky panky on film, there's practically no uproar about their sexual orientation, only mixed reactions of privacy invaded.

Never fear, you could be a random breeder snogging in China, Alaska, South Africa or Greenland but still find that nowhere will you so pervasively come against some bigots calling for your demise, accusing you of bearing some hidden agenda that seeks to devalue the family, desecrating one's holy ground, insulting one's gods, or going against nature's ways. If you are caught on film making out with the opposite sex, no one in any part of the world has the image of you in mind when zie plans for the never-going-to-exist ex-straight conversion camp that will fix you of your widely-popular choice of lifestyle. If you were caught on film doing the heterosexual hoochie coochie, some people may be happy to reenact the scenario on a R-21 screen without the fear that censors will snip you out because we don't want to promote deviant lifestyles--and they don't mean being caught on camera.

No, the sensationalism here never rode on the fact that Clementi kissed someone--few 18 year-olds warrant any attention with their snogfests, but that he had "asked for the room till midnight" (oh, he must be hiding something!), and later caught "making out with a dude"! GAY! TRYING TO HIDE!? GAY BUSTED! - to the whole fucking world, both friends and foes. The thrill of it comes in irrevocably exposing Clementi of his furtive engagement in something still denounced in many circles, inviting the floodwalls to collapse for all to see, celebrate, wank to, but also jeer, hiss, laugh, mock, cuss and pitchfork.

And the gates will open to the nefarious, especially since a person already doesn't even need to be caught doing anything (homo-sex-ual) except exist to cause a stir in others, then finding hirself at the brute end of all forms of physical, mental and emotional attacks from others of all walks of life--family, friends and absolute strangers—and for no reason than that they *think* zie's quee, which somehow justifies abusive behaviour. Even if one's truly queer, making no excuse for living as a proud and openly queer person, coming out as such is to continually navigate through a minefield. Because despite hir feeling secured in hir own skin--a feat not to be belittled ever, there are always unsafe spaces to come out in, and forever the unsafe people to come out to.

In Clementi's unfortunate case, such a person was Dharun Ravi, the sneaky little asshole who not only recorded but also broadcasted Clementi's make-out session. Ravi may seem like such an equal-opportunistic mercenary to the likes of Mr Mensch, but really his tactics are but a leaf out of the books of anti-gay witch-hunters, exploiting nothing but the dangers, fears and anxieties associated with an out gay person, and the sickening, self-righteous thrill of those who seek to uncover and tabloid the secrets of bones and people in closets for effect beside the well-being of the outed. (Newsflash: if you care about a queer person, do not out hir in any manner, or demand to know if zie's queer.)

So guess what? Just because thick-skulled Ravi is, presumably, unable to recognise the cause and effect of a hate crime does not mean he operated by anything less than that--imagine what the world would be like if members of the Ku Klux Klan actually knew they were being assholes! And just because Mr Mensch proves himself equally obtuse to the undercurrents of context, it proves nothing but that there're people who continue not to grasp the extant of homophobia and the real-life cruel aftermath it has on a whole lot of people.

That said, what really chaps this Suckling Pig's hide is that despite how much we protest this grave injustice, and even come to the point of publishing news of deaths brought on by homophobic pressures, this sunny-but-not-so-happy island of Singapore remains guilty of similar exploits all the way up the ranks. It makes it nearly impossible to take home any lesson on tolerance and acceptance of queer people that can be taken from this reportage when anti-sodomy laws are kept for what seems to be the express purpose of making it central to any sex-related crime between two consenting men.

Seriously, just what the fuck was the egregious crime here that Tan Eng Hong and his partner are caught for? Having sex in a public location, or having homosexual sex in a public location? A similar case involving a straight couple might have been charged under Miscellaneous Offences (Public Order and Nuisance) Act--like how the nude couple in Holland Village were--instead of S377A, noting that not only is there no equivalent in “gross indecency” in heterosexual terms following the repeal of anti-straight oral/anal sex in 2007, but also that, technically speaking, "gross indecency" between two men may occur in and out of the private sphere. This is imprecise a charge, and frankly a disappointingly unfair one, given what was envisaged by PM Lee Hsien Loong in 2007.

This only leads my Braised Pig-head to conclude that, just as how the problem wasn't about Clementi kissing someone but about him "kissing a dude", this is now not about displays of sexual acts but displays of male homosexual acts between two men.

Even with the decriminalisation of homosexual acts in so many parts of the world, including the United Kingdom, United States, China, Japan and Taiwan, it is still an uphill battle for queer people to get even an ounce of respect and acceptance. A not-so-symbolic anti-gay law in our legislature, so arbitrarily reapplied despite claims of non-pursuance, empowers people to continue doing and talking shit about gay people without the slightest hint of contrition (read: Rony Tan). Because always it's what the government believes in, and now even it's the greater crime prosecutable. Abusers will always be on the right side of the law, and by the government's suggestion, they’re bedfellows to a wider, bigger majority that is all right with the active discrimination and abuse of gay people.

If you think Clementi's case is free of homophobia, if you think it's okay to throw S377A at Tan et al, then you are part of this----in a clever play of language to make them sound so marginalised—(mythical)silent majority that the government seeks to valiantly protect.

Don't be mistaken though, I hear and feel every sub-decibel of contempt your silence holds to my piggish ears even if you think you know otherwise.

Dear Oliver, I'm sorry.

Bacon Bits here just learnt that the Swiss graffiti artist Oliver Fricker, who had a month or two ago broken into our SMRT depot to tag an MRT train, is receiving 3 strokes of Singapore's cruel cane, accompanied by 5 months in jail:

But Swiss IT consultant Oliver Fricker ... failed to convince District Judge See Kee Oon that a deterrent sentence was not in order.

Finding that Fricker, 32, had displayed a "calculated criminal conduct", Judge See sentenced him to five months' jail and three strokes of the cane.

The sentence was handed down about six hours after Fricker pleaded guilty, around noon, to charges of vandalism and entering a protected place. A third charge stating that he had committed an act of vandalism by cutting the fence of the depot was taken into consideration.

Judge See agreed with Deputy Public Prosecutor Sharon Lim who said Fricker had committed "a very serious offence" - and that the whole incident had "alarmed the general public" and "shaken their confidence in the security of protected places".

Shake my confidence in the security of protected places!? What fucking rubbish!

The only thing that is being reinforced here is the stranglehold that the State has on the insecurities in its people of itself. The fear that Singapore insists in instilling in her people of the elusive terrorist, of the potential invasions by our regional neighbours, of all sorts of bloody calamities effected by external enemies who hate the State and apparently also her people. The constant insistence that I need to be wary of suspicious looking people at all my public spots, and that I need to mindful that there're terrorists out there waiting to kill me and my family.

Strangely enough, I already know that.

I also know that if the terrorists really want to get us, they're likely going to go about it in ways and at times least expected. Because terrorism is essentially an element of surprise. That's why it's scary: you never know when it's going to happen.

But I also don't know when I'm going to die. I also don't know when I'd finally meet the Hamsomest Porkchop of my life. I also don't know when my buses and trains arrive. I also don't know what my life will be like in the future: will I be happy, sad, single, sick, with kids, unemployed, married, with a cat (hello Cat in the Cream!), the first gay porcine Prime Minister of Singapore, a war hero, a dissenter, or even a terrorist?

This fear that our State security can be compromised should be like any other existential woe. It is difficult to dissipate but we roll with it as and when the shit hits the fan. Instead, what we have now is constant pressure to turn this precautionary stance into a debilitating phobia that arrests us in our own minds and country. There're basically two types of people who we're also encouraged to be wary of. If by media standards (read: stereotyping), it's always going to be some darker-skinned person, or who looks like he might be a Muslim (that's two assumptions there: male and Muslim), or who looks poor, or doesn't speak well, etc.

If like me you have actually been physically attacked by random pigs, you know that the kindest and friendliest people can indeed turn into major arseholes who'd beat you up. The only way to effectively get around this is to either develop an unhealthy paranoia of everyone, or become a conspiracy theorist who never leaves his/her house.

But I don't want to live in a state of constant arrest. I don't want to fear for all these potential arseholes who are out to get me and my barnmates. So I refuse to put on my tinfoil hat and x-ray glasses and with all those off, I inadvertently gain a clarity and the eventual realisation that there's someone else far more frightening than real and imagined criminals.

In the case of the People versus Oliver Fricker [2010], who is the one sending terror down my spine? Allow me to share with you what Jolene Tan dug up for her argument against caning, published at The Online Citizen--from a victim of State atrocity: (do read her whole article, it's really good!)

I heard the cane. It sounded like a plank hitting the wall. A split second later I felt it was tearing across my buttocks. I screamed and struggled like a mad animal. All I thought was that I want to run away. If I’m not tied up, one stroke could keep me running for a mile.

And I just could not control my screams. It went on and on, one stroke, one minute. Some lashes fall on the same spot, splitting open the skin even more.

Some prisoners urinate and even faint because of the pain. I felt giddy and went limp on the trestle at the last stroke. My bleeding buttocks throbbed with pain and felt like they were on fire.

A few prisoners pretend to faint to escape more strokes but the warder will go on flogging to see if you cry out. That’s because if you’re conscious, you will scream.

After we were flogged, a medical officer applied some antiseptic on the wounds. My buttocks then swelled to twice their normal size. My thighs went blue-black. I had to go without shorts for more than two weeks so that my wounds could heal. I couldn’t sit or sleep on my back or bathe all this time either.

The pain burns in your mind long after it is over. Until now I have nightmares about it.

You know who scares the shit out of me? It is none other than the bloody State! A State that can so easily turn to arcanely barbaric corporal punishment involving intentionally splitting people's skin with the crack of a cane because so-and-so premeditated some crime. A State that continually justifies the premeditated use of such punishment because--and I paraphrase--this is written in the books, you know our practices, so if you don't want to suffer these consequences, then you jolly well don't transgress.

Really? So if you decide that, hey, thieves should have their fingers chewed off by sewer rats, or that male rapists get their penises skewered by a satay stick, or that homosexuals get publicly stoned to death, or that spouse abusers will have mouths stitched together, then it's all okay. Because, come on, don't like the punishment? Just don't commit those illegal acts.

Make no mistake here, the message might be subtle but eerily clear: the confidence that the State has the will, power, and temperament of an enraged hulk must be protected. It is not an entity to be fucked with because it will unleash its cruelty against you even if you do something as completely harmless as give commuters a delightful experience. Peddling fear of others, fear of truths, and fear of the State. State torture. State murder. State terror. This State will tell you when, where and how to have fun; please, declare and surrender all imagination, initiative and peace of mind at immigration checkpoint.

Dear Oliver, on behalf of the many Singaporeans and farm animals who don't believe in the legitimacy of your sentencing, that tag was awesome, and I'm sorry for my country.

Avatarred

[WARNING: SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS]

Yeah, okay, the CGI was amazing, and on the whole it was entertaining enough.

But now that we've got that out of the way...

Much of the film was distractingly silly, in a way that relates directly to its political failings. A great deal has been said, very masterfully (especially by Annalee Newitz), about the problematic colonial 'saviour' fantasy playing out in Avatar, so I went into the cinema with probing Magical beak at the ready.

(To dispose of this objection quickly: the film features human beings from a corporation backed by armed might who seek, out of a profit motive, to relocate a racially distinct indigenous population with cultural features strongly recalling stereotypical representations of native Americans, namely war paint, 'feathered' clothing, and bows and arrows. If anyone still wishes to argue the film-makers don't specifically invoke colonialism - an intertwined complex of racism, militarism and capitalism - please do so elsewhere.)

The weakest aspect of the story is that Jake Sully, who initially comes as part of the invading force, is apparently divinely ordained as The One who will lead the indigenous people, the Na'vi, to success in their struggle against humanity. Two issues with his portrayal really leap off the screen.

One is the astounding, untenable ignorance with which he approaches the Na'vi and their planet, Pandora. This just defies belief: he goes wandering into a completely alien forest, in a completely alien body, without the faintest clue about the completely alien perils he might face. He wanders off mid-mission to poke completely alien plants that - for all he knows - might eat or poison him; and when faced with gargantuan and dangerous animals he hasn't the foggiest how he ought to respond to them, so he shoots randomly. Despite the enormous expense they have incurred to transport him to Pandora and kit him out in this new blue body, none of his employers sees fit to ground him in even the most basic facts about the hostile environment in which they want him to operate, nor does he - apparently entirely lacking in curiosity - ask.

This is the guy your amazing life-force-embodying-tree-goddess, allegedly calling upon the cumulative wisdom of thousands of sentient beings of times past, chooses to lead the people? ...and specifically, this guy is chosen over the careful, respectful, interested scientist Grace Augustine, for inclusion in the Na'vi community?

Second, the inevitable counterpart to Jake Sully's ignorance is the collapse of the Na'vi into a cartoonish bunch of mystics. There's a lot to be said for the attractiveness of their culture, like the respect for life and biodiversity, but it all becomes undermined by the film-maker's Super Duper Top Priority, i.e. that Jake Sully must be the one to lead them to victory. Quite aside from the fact that at the time of his selection by the floating seeds he appears to be totally, wilfully clueless, there's also the manner in which his eventual leadership is established. Are the film-makers genuinely telling us that in a society where mastering the flying Toruk brings pre-eminence, no one for generations other than this n00b has successfully completed the relatively simple task of flying above it and dropping onto its back? Moreover, the story implies that the Na'vi are so utterly simple-minded that they'll immediately accept not just the help but the leadership of a traitor whose deception and betrayal have just destroyed their sacred home, just so long as he turns up on the back of this red dragon.

This ridiculousness, again, has its source in the imperative that this member of the colonising force must be the one who leads the oppressed people to victory. The film-makers are simply more interested in the colonisers than the colonised, and this ideological perspective warps an otherwise promising story. It's also for this reason that the audience never gets to meet Na'vi who aren't members of the royal family, or to witness any complex dynamics within Na'vi society (by contrast to tensions within the human camp). Heroism is not available to the oppressed group.

All of this makes the movie less believeable, less interesting and less meaningful than it could have been. In other words, it's not critics of Avatar's approach to colonialism and racism who are spoiling the story with their politics. The film-makers have been more than adequate at doing that themselves.

++++

I am indebted to conversation with Badly Drawn Pig, who astutely points out that this problem may inhere in the very concept of "The One" to begin with, especially when "The One has traditionally always been a dude ... here to save all us sissies".

Short Answer: Yes, Long Answer: No.

A very wise man who I constantly regret having lost contact with once cautioned me that if I ever felt like I completely understood something, I assuredly did not. He said to visualize the knowledge you have as the area of a circle. Circumscribing that circle is everything you are aware of not knowing and beyond that are things you know so little about that they may as well be non-existent (to you, anyways). The larger your area of knowledge, then, the deeper your understanding of what is left to understand.

Adding to the idea that a narrow worldview gives one a sense of having all the answers is a recent study (aptly titled "Unskilled and Unaware of it" [link]) documents how those who are more unskilled, concurrently lack the skills to properly evaluate themselves. From the abstract:

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it[...]Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities.

In other words, this problem is not insurmountable. The more you know, the more you know you don't and the less of an idiot you will appear in the process.

So the point I'm trying to make (and I will admit it has taken me some time to get here) is that if you feel like you have some prescriptive advice that will completely revolutionize a movement or if you think you have an overarching theory of something (see: xkcd:Revolutionary) you probably don't and it would be worth hanging around a little more to educate yourself by listening to the people who have been at it longer than you have. Yes, occassionally it's true that it takes a fresh perspective...but incredibly rarely and it's the height of hubris to just assume that you've struck upon it.

This is particularly important as it applies to being an activist and an ally. Having your consciousness raised is typically such a mind-blowing experience that it is tempting to think that you now understand all about oppression and how it works in the world, afterall if you understand systemic racism/sexism/ableism/enter-ism-here, then you understand systemic everything right? Now that you can spot misogynist tropes in adverstising you can also see how racial stereotypes are used as shorthand for all manner of unflattering things and how transphobia is used to police the gender binary and and and and and and...

...and how could you possibly if you've just heard about all these issues? Let's not forget that we were all raised in this world, this kyriarchy, that up until we were made aware of these issues in the first place we accepted the status quo as right and true. That undoing that will take much more than a single a-ha moment. Don't forget that we live in a world where this bullshit is largely accepted at face value despite the frankly towering absurdity of it being even remotely true.

I want to stop for a moment and explicitly state that I do not think I know everything or that I am in some hallowed position where I can see all that I do not know about and am therefore the perfect activist and ally. All I want, really is for all of us (often me included) to try and be better allies by listening and participating in the communities we are vested in supporting. To de-centre ourselves, to remove ourselves from the James Cameron's Avatar version of activism (where it is you, the privileged who should lead the poor oppressed people to victory). Tami (from What Tami Said) has an excellent post up about how to be a good ally which is very worth reading and essentially boils down to the point I'm trying to make - it's not all about you, listening and being still is vital, and if you think you have something just absolutely revolutionary to say, by all means share it (afterall, that's what participating in a community means) but have the wherewithal to be gracious when you aren't well received, with the attitude that you may not know best.

I think sometimes, even the best of us, with the most noble of intentions, needs reminding.

Play it again, Sam

There're some aggressively fauxgressive stink bombs being dropped in the comments at Leona Lo's blog.

You may recall Most Insightful Blogger Sam Ho, who previously came by the barn to express his deep concern that clubs might make less money if they stopped being nasty to trans people. (Maybe they would. Boo fucking hoo.)

Sam asked Leona to seek submissions and responses from trans people in service of some website project he's working on, to "debunk (damaging/hurtful/insensitive) myths people hold of folks who are LGBT". In response to this, Samantha, who is trans, kindly offers her perspective.

Get this - an actual member of the actual community you seek to help, giving you her take! She's talking from a lifetime of experience with an issue you, as a straight cis man, can only ever really know second-hand. This is a good opportunity to learn and improve your project. Right? Right???

Wrong.

Sam engages nothing at all Samantha says, instead choosing to lecture her on Reel Praktikull Activistyism. The first step to doing this is talk over others:

categories to me and you are meaningless. but to think like that isolates us from the business of making change.

Actually, Samantha didn't say anything about categories being meaningless. In fact, she begins by specifically questioning this point. But good job on erasing her actual point of view and substituting your imaginary one.

The second step is to have no bloody idea what you're talking about:

i don’t think we’re employing the gay/straight dichotomy in our thinkstraight campaign. since categories tend to fuck us up, we should fuck them back (in the academic sense). in having the queer-straight alliance, “queer” and “straight” do not mean what they are. for instance, “straight” represents cisgender/sexed persons who identify as heterosexual. and “queer” also encompasses people who are questioning, as well as people who know live in their correct gender and who identify transsexuality as a phase they have long left; not all post-op transsexuals acknowledge their trans past, so they can identify as “straight” and/or “queer”.

Let me parse that for you. Sam isn't "employing the gay/straight dichotomy" because he's saying that all people who aren't cis and straight are "queer": i.e. the word is divided into cis-and-straight-folks and everyone else is this great big queery lump, no matter how they choose to define or describe themselves.

No matter that a gay cis woman has a different social situation from a straight trans man who has a different social situation from a bisexual cis man who has a different social situation from a questioning trans woman.

No, they're all Not Like Sam, so they're this uniform porridgelike audience to whom he can pontificate without knowing his elbow from his asshole.

Let me highlight this sentence for you again, because it's so mind-bogglingly ignorant:

not all post-op transsexuals acknowledge their trans past, so they can identify as “straight” and/or “queer”

Most Insightful Sam, the reason why ALL trans people (regardless of what's between their legs) can identify as "straight" or "queer" or having any other sexual orientation imaginable is because whether you're trans has nothing to do with your sexual orientation. Whether you "acknowledge your trans past" (whatever that means) has bugger all (no pun intended) to do with whether you are straight or gay. They are totally different issues. As Samantha tried to tell you from the beginning.

Sam isn't just ignorant and wrong. We're all ignorant and wrong sometimes. But Sam is also breathtakingly arrogantly wrong, and patronising.

activism now is not about bulldozing or being hotheaded, but about making change with friendship and smiles, and not taking everything so seriously and personally.

I like "friendship and smiles" as much as the next person, but when people are murdered and excluded on the basis of a form of discrimination that will never ever come within a galaxy's length of your experience, telling them not to take it "seriously and personally" is the height of callousness.

The final word must go to Edward Flaherty:

You couldn't get a clue during the clue mating season in a field full of horny clues if you smeared your body with clue musk and did the clue mating dance.

Indeed.

People we love: Molly Meek

An inspiration to this farmland fowl, Molly Meek is the original furry dissident. In The Importance of Being Bitchy she calls for less mealy-mouthed, status-quo-reinforcing pseudo-balance in favour of more full-blooded animal spirit.

What do we have then? We have vocal activists and opposition politicians (though not that many of them). We also have those who, interpellated by the State’s seductive call, fancy themselves balanced, rational, constructive critics who, more often than not (and I think they might lash their constructive whips on me here) spout wishy-washy pseudo-criticisms and are on stand-by 24/7 to cane those whom they deem unreasonable, i.e truly political. “You must be fair to the PAP. Not everything they do is wrong.” These are the people who believe that when you have a kilogram of criticism, you must balance it with a kilogram of praise and acknowledgement of good work. (Admittedly, this is an exaggeration, but do I not have the right to use hyperbolic language to make a point, however imbalanced and unfair it is?)

What we need are Political Uber-bitches. And what they need is some real space in which to exist, not an abyss in which they are constantly hurled prescriptions of sedatives to cure them of their perceived excesses.

In bold is a perfect description of the people who make me want to punch walls. (Disclaimer: no walls were harmed in the making of this post.) Their obstructionism is only ever placed in the way of those who are trying to make things better. Never is it directed at those silent and invisible but nevertheless tangible and forceful - even violent - forces that keep the burdens of prejudice, abuse and deprivation where they are.

"It is a good aim in theory, but your methods are bad," they utter from a reclining position on a sedan chair, never raising so much as a little finger in service of any allegedly superior methods to promote the aims they supposedly support.

Kudos to Molly for turning those sharp feline eyes onto this.

Nobody's perfect

Really, nobody. I, for instance, despite my myriad virtues, have been known to fart.

Occasional flatulence is the price we pay for eating and breathing and moving about in this material world as corporeal (or even Magical) beings. Our bodies process the stuff we take in, and our digestive system works on it, without our needing to consciously regulate the matter. Sometimes, toxic eruptions are the result.

And likewise, as social creatures we encounter, every day, every second, multifarious and splendiferous examples of exclusion and marginalisation, ever-so-subtly presented as so fundamental a part of our world that we even come to believe the total opposite, that systems of domination that are well entrenched are somehow precious fragile crystals under threat. The concepts and beliefs and embedded valuations are so thoroughly built into the molecules of thoughtfood we consume that sometimes, we even swallow libels about ourselves.

It is no wonder, then, that everyone - and I mean absolutely everyone - produces racist, sexist, ableist, heteronormative, cissexist and other verbal and behavioural flatulence from time to time. As long as we live in the world as it is, and put the crap into our brains that we do, our mental digestive processes will operate like an iron law. However loudly you declare yourself a liberal or a progressive, how many hours you spend doing activist and consciousness-raising work, whatever petitions you have signed or legislation you have campaigned against, you will still, sometimes, fart.

Now, you have several choices as to how to react to this unavoidable truth.

You can recognise the reality in which you live. You can do your best to avoid farting in company. If someone says, "Wow, that pongs," you can own up and apologise. You can do your best to avoid consuming specific foods that you notice encourage these gaseous emissions.

Or you can go about farting gratuitously at everyone you meet, get defensive when you are called on it, and insist again and again that your shit just doesn't stink. "But I'm doing research into anti-fart food standards and technological advances! My fart physically cannot smell bad!"

You might also throw up your hands and say, "There's no pleasing these people! What is the point of my work on air fresheners if people will still judge me as - ye gods - a farter?!?!?!? Will you only be happy if I wallow in guilt all the time?"

To which I say, the point of trying to eliminate environmental contributions to smelly farts is not to prove your personal purity or vindicate your soul. The point of the work is the work itself, and if you believe otherwise, you are probably doing bad work. I for one am utterly uninterested in whether you enter into paroxysms of guilt after every poot: I am only interested in you taking actual steps to minimise the degree to which others face your shit.

Nobody's perfect. But most of us could do something to be a hell of a lot better.