From the archives: why feminism is good for men

This article first appear last year in the lefty daily paper the Morning Star.

Whenever I hear a bloke describe himself as a feminist I reach for the sick bucket.

I certainly wouldn't describe myself that way, despite believing in equality and having right-on positions on the major issues of day.

Sometimes labels don't get us very far.

When men describe themselves as feminists they are telling us something about their politics, but that is not the same thing as actually having consistent positions on women's equality.

For every political stance you can think of there is someone who describes themselves as a feminist.

It can give an indication of how someone sees themselves but it doesn't tell us what they think about sex work, trade unions, abortion, marriage or a host of other issues.

Despite feminism's continued relevance, it has become so devalued as a term that it gets used to describe almost anything.

A recent piece in the Guardian, which should know better but never does, described fascist sympathiser Brigitte Bardot as a feminist because "she represents the power of women. What's iconic about her is her shape, the way she occupies space."

Was this what the pioneers of feminism were struggling for - to be defined by their "shape"?

There's a middle class version of feminism that focuses on language while ignoring social inequality.

I can't be the only person who has had a female manager who is more than relaxed about the all-female cleaning staff being paid a pittance and given no respect while insisting that the workplace uses bizarre jargon in order to avoid "sexist language."

It's enough to give equality a bad name.

However the feminist movement has brought enormous social advances - and not just for women.

Struggles led by feminists have brought about significant positive shifts over the decades, although no-one sensible would argue that these battles are over.

The break from the rigid moralism that kept people who didn't love each other within spitting distance provided a massive step forward in quality of life for millions of people. Divorce has saved countless couples from emotional disfigurement.

The right to an abortion, easily available contraception and sex education have not just been essential for a woman's right to control her own body but have been absolutely revolutionary in terms of how we all live our lives.

Family planning isn't just something that has enhanced people's sex lives or simply allowed them to have one, it's a social revolution allowing us to make choices about children, sexual health and orientation that simply were not open to us before.

I'm certain that the 17-year-old me would have been a pretty poor husband and father and I'm very glad that, due to the advances that feminism fought for, it never had to happen.

And feminism has broken down barriers to advancement for men and women. It may sound strange to some that allowing women to be promoted into positions previously the preserve of men should benefit both sexes, but it certainly seems that way.

When my mum was at school not only was she not allowed to take her best subject - maths - because it was not a "girl's subject," but she was all but forced to become a nurse, which did not suit her.

It was not in anyone's interest that the job of, say, a heart surgeon, did not go to the best person because gender roles forbade it.

The other side of the coin is that many men of my dad's generation simply never learned skills such as cooking because it was assumed that a woman would do it all for them. How many men have no confidence to do the simplest things around the home because they have been told it is "women's work?"

Feminism has gone a long way to making workplaces habitable too. My first job was in a lawnmower factory and I thought it was hell on Earth.

I found it difficult to cope with the constant use of the c-word, the misogynist tripe that my workmates came out with and the dull-as-ditch-water view on what was and was not "homosexual behaviour," even down to your choice of biscuit or how you wear your jacket.

These attitudes have now gone away but feminism should be heartily thanked for the progress made in workplaces in terms of how people behave with each other.

Feminism may not be about bettering men's lives but there is no question it has improved them.

From the archives: The spheres of Cambridge

I don't know how many of you have read the Philip Pulman 'Dark Materials' books but one theme they rely upon is the idea of worlds layered one upon the other, never quite touching but just one step away. So you have different Oxfords all co-existing without even noticing each other. Some very similar, some very different but all occupying the same geographical space.

I've begun thinking about Cambridge in very much that way - that you have different spheres who knock against each other in the street, overlapping, wrapped up in their own priorities but only recognising others from their own world.

Most noticeably this is true with the homeless community who, even when they're asking you for change, look through you like you aren't real. But it's also true with the two universities. Cambridge is a very different place to the bin man in Arbury to the Cambridge University student put up in halls whose world revolves around his or her college.

Quite how many of these communities there are it's hard to tell - particularly when you're only in one of them yourself. A few examples would be the Turkish community, which seems pretty tight, as do many of the Asian foreign students. Then there's the white working class "youth" in the clubs on a Friday night and their related but impoverished younger cousins lounging about on Parkers Piece or skateboarding around the Grafton Centre.

It isn't simply that there are class distinctions here (which there clearly are), there are also fundamentally different ways of seeing the world. A multistory car park is a place to store your 4x4 to some and a wild place for urban fitness to others. Parkers Piece at night is a place of concern for some who are crossing it and to others this is the social centre of the city, poor things.

Tonight I had the good fortune to cross one of these boundaries and get sucked into part of the world of the homeless community, if only for half an hour or so. On one level it was pretty unpleasant, essentially I had to intervene to prevent a Moroccan guy having his head beaten in by two, well, um, urgh, scumbags I suppose you'd call them.

There was an odd moment though when they realised I'd stepped into their space. The look on their faces, even the guy I was saving from a pasting was, "hold on - you're from the other place - you're not meant to be here!" The funny thing is part of me agreed, it was as if I shouldn't even have been able to detect a racist attack was taking place right in front of me.

But once you've started something you often feel you need to finish it so I stayed in their sphere. Anyway, my presence managed to diffuse the situation and I walked a ways with my grateful charge as he ranted and raved about how he wasn't one of them, he had a daughter, somewhere, and an Armani jacket.

As we parted he even charged me for his time, telling me "Come on, I've walked all this way with you" forgetting I was walking with him to make sure he was safe. For once I was happy enough to give him what was in my pocket and tell him to take care of himself, but it was still fascinating to see that although the gap between us had closed enough for us to actually recognise the existence of the other the fact we were from completely different worlds still remained, so I still hadn't quite transcended the status of cash machine for him.

Neither of these worlds is more real than the other, neither one more substantial - although mine is decidedly more comfortable than his to be to be sure. I'll be sleeping the sleep of the just up on my shelf tonight and Christ knows where he'll be. For a moment though we did see one another and were able to help each other out, if only for a brief while.

From the archives: Max Mosley and the policing of sexuality

In this celebration week one thing I'm going to do is to take a look back at the archives and repost some of those forgotten classics. Here's something I wrote for Stroppyblog in 2008 in the wake of revelations that Max Mosley had been visiting a sex dungeon.

Frankly all the papers have been very naughty. Very naughty indeed, and I have a basement flat that they must proceed to immediately for their proper chastisement. It really is not on plastering what are private goings on all over place. What's the use of being a fabulously wealthy son of Britain's most prominent wartime fascist if you can't have a private life, eh?

The term public interest is a strange one in the context of the Max Mosley sex scandal. Of course the public is interested, we all want to know whose bits and pieces have been going into whose whatchamacallit, but there does not seem to be a compelling democratic requirement for us to know the first thing about Mosley’s proclivities “sick” or otherwise.

Some of the discussion in the press seems to be of the opinion that because Mosley does the kind of things that only former Blue Peter presenters would contemplate he is not fit to be in charge of that stupid game where ridiculous looking cars whiz about until time itself seems to be standing still. For instance the Telegraph’s Kevin Garside thinks that the revelations around the case “paint Max in a deeply unflattering light, and more readily associates him with the kind of behavior unsuited to one running an international body like the FIA.”

Really? Frankly I could do with that one being spelt out for me because I'm not getting the connection. Perhaps he's called for the driver who comes in last to be stripped and lashed around the track and it's only now people have realised he had ulterior motives beyond simply spurring the others on to do better. However, unless this is so I am nowhere near convinced.

Admittedly when Garside describes Mosley’s sex life as “rich and varied” it’s difficult to know whether he is referring to the fact that Mosley’s five “friends” cost him £500 each and therefore he is regularly indulging a habit beyond the reach of most - even as a Christmas treat. That doesn’t include the reported £ 35,000 yearly upkeep of his fully equipped oubliette either. Yes, obscenely "rich" even.

Incidentally, there seems to have been very little focus on the prostitution angle of the case (and some of the evidence seems to be casting him in more of a pimp than a client) but there has been a great deal of censorious frowning about the so-called Nazi connotations of his ritualized abuse. As if the real social conditions of the women involved is far less interesting than the make believe games they were being paid to indulge in.

Mosley denies there were any Nazi overtones to his orgy, even though one of his captors was wearing a Luftwaffe uniform and a fellow prisoner pleaded with her guards that they were “Aryans” and so did not deserve to be harshly treated. Obviously there were Nazi overtones – but so what? They weren’t organizing a BNP branch, daubing local shops in swastikas or running for office as far right candidates – they were (or at least he was) having fun, mucking around – and they were not to know they were being videoed, so any sensitivities about other people’s feelings are irrelevant because for five out of six of them this was a private function, even if one of them was the wife of an MI5 agent. They just weren’t to know that the News of World would be posting selected highlights on the net.

In “Spanking good fun” I described the common “old stereo type of the elite white male in a powerful job by day and lashed to a dungeon rack by night” and that seems to fit our Max rather neatly. But the stereotype holds our attention because of the contrast between real world power and the make believe powerlessness - not because it reveals the old white guy's true nature, but because it reveals an unexpected side to it.

Some political people seem to be confused because they’ve mistaken sexual games for real oppression. Now obviously slap and tickle without the tickle is not everyone’s cup of tea. Fair enough, but that’s no excuse to go around tutting and getting sniffy at consenting activities you were never meant to find out about, let alone invited to.

In fact it’s worse when people start talking about BDSM as if it’s some sort of bizarre acted out therapy where he’s been working out “issues” with his father. I don’t get turned on by going round building sites, tapping pipes and then shaking my head sadly (which is how I imagine my Dad at work, perhaps the reality was different) and I don’t think it’s an appropriate way of sorting out any father/son issues that may or may not exist. Maybe it’s just that he’s into a particular form of kinky sex, and so he does it. I don't think you'll be getting any great psychological insights just from the press reports though.

Obviously there are some personal ethical issues involved. He’s been getting up to this for decades and forgot to mention it to his wife. That, dude, is not cool. There’s also the prostitution thing, I don’t think it stops being prostitution just because they’re getting paid large amounts of money and appear to be rather happy about the whole thing (which is perfectly possible). So there are power issues here, but it isn't the caning that's the issue.

Whatever the wrongs and rights of this I still find it difficult to get excised and start ranting about his deviance or immorality. I mean he’s not one of those back to basics Johnnies is he? He’s never openly nailed his personal morality to the mast – that just isn’t his kink - so I don't think it's our place to lash him for it. No matter how much he begs.

But still some want to send in the Nazi sex police. The weird thing is the press appears to be taking the position that kinky sex is alright, but German kinky sex? That’s just sick!

Take this from the Guardian when it was put to the reporter that in fact it was just an English dungeon fetish and had nothing to do with the Nazis the journo's patriotic feathers are ruffled and he replies "I know of no English prison that beats its inmates with a stick until their buttocks bleed. I know of no English prison where the warder will deliver those blows and count them out in German. I know of no English prison where the inmates then have sexual intercourse with the warder who has just given those blows." Whilst, of course, the real Nazi regime was just like the fantasy played out for Mr Mosley. Maybe someone needs a history lesson.

We should reject the policing of sexuality even by people who are progressive on other issues. The simple fact is that something can be an expression of a deep desire without being a literal exposition of what you’d like to really happen. Dressing up in a Nazi uniform for kicks does not make you an advocate of genocide – even if you’re a member of the Royal family.

Ah, I’ll go further, because I see some thin ice I’d like to skate on. Some people have rape fantasies, they do, it’s a fact. It does not mean they actually want to rape or be raped they are simply drawing from the deep, dark well of sexuality and if you are one of them it does not make you a bad person and you shouldn’t spend even one second feeling guilty about those fantasies.

Just as a dream does not mean you actually want to play strip poker with William Shatner at the local library (although, actually, that might be pretty cool) a fantasy or a fetish is just that and is not *real* in the sense that you're likely to act it out elsewhere. If you can’t see the difference between being caned by someone in a sexy uniform and the historic horrors of the Third Reich then you have officially left the building of free thinking and joined the temple of dogma where they burn the mention of "incorrect things" because they think that means they will no longer exist.