Quick hit: NHS privatisation: compilation of financial and vested interests

Read this. List of politicians who will directly benefit from the NHS bill (http://socialinvestigations.blogspot.co.uk).

This list represents the dire state of our democracy. The financial and vested interests of our MPs and Lords in private healthcare. Why are these people allowed to be in charge of our NHS, to vote on a bill that they clearly have something to gain from. Who cares that they have put it in the register of interests. This doesn’t excuse their interests, it merely highlights clearly why they should have no part in voting for the privatisation of the NHS. It is privatisation, despite the media’s continued use of the word ‘reforms’. The question must be asked. Are they public servants or corporate servants?

The list is long, and could surely be longer, I make no apology for that, tragically that is the reality of our politics today; and although the majority of vested interest lies with the Conservatives, as you might expect, it is however a cross party issue. It is compiled from accessible and trusted sources throughout the Internet. If one of these listed is your MP, then contact them and let them know you will not be voting for them again if this bill goes through. If the Lord is under your area, email them and let them know what you think. If there are others to be added, then please let me know with link to source – as this is by no means a complete list. Equally if you think someone should not be on here, then please say with reason and then they may come off if justified as the list should be as strong as possible.In short – they won’t be stopped unless they are stopped. They do not listen and nor do they care. The time has surely come to protest in large numbers and for the union members to ask their leaders to call for a strike. You can help apply pressure by spreading this out on twitter. It is already gone quite viral, but can go wider still.

Read on.

 

Quick hit: that’s enough politeness – women need to rise up in anger

As usual. Laurie Penny is pretty on the money:

Women, like everyone else, have been duped. We have been persuaded over the past 50 years to settle for a bland, neoliberal vision of what liberation should mean. Life may have become a little easier in that time for white women who can afford to hire a nanny, but the rest of us have settled for a cheap, knock-off version of gender revolution. Instead of equality at work and in the home, we settled for “choice”, “flexibility” and an exciting array of badly paid part-time work to fit around childcare and chores. Instead of sexual liberation and reproductive freedom, we settled for mitigated rights to abortion and contraception that are constantly under attack, and a deeply misogynist culture that shames us if we’re not sexually attractive, dismisses us if we are, and blames us if we are raped or assaulted, as one in five of us will be in our lifetime.

[...]

Like the suffragettes and socialists who called the first International Women’s Day over a century ago, women who believe in a better world are going to have to start thinking in deeds, not words. With women under attack financially, socially and sexually across the developed and developing world, with assaults on jobs, welfare, childcare, contraception and the right to choose, the time for polite conversation is over. It’s time for anger. It’s time for daring, direct action, big demands, big dreams. The men who still run the world from boardrooms and government offices have become too used to not being afraid of what women will do if we are attacked, used and exploited. We must make them afraid.

[independent]

In brief: Ex-Blur bassist Alex James on food

There’s a lot of talk these days about how Alex James (formerly of Blur) has become something of a bellend. If you needed some evidence, check out the bit below (from here). No one should be buying chickens for £2, don’t you know? He prefers his organic sort at £20 a pop, and he thinks that everyone else should do. More tips on the link for the poor folks. If you can stomach it (pun intended).

Alex James there, with no idea or care how privileged he is.

As a rule, though, he thinks that good food is worth the hefty expenditure, and cites an organic free-range chicken from Daylesford that cost him £19. ‘Britain is only just overcoming that wartime mentality of making food cheap,’ he says. ‘I actually think anyone can afford to eat well. On the whole, the less money you have, the more time you have, so you can grow your own food. And the people who need to buy a chicken for two quid are overweight anyway. In this part of the world, you can tell how affluent people are by how thin they are.’

Quick hit: when states abuse women

Here’s what a woman in Texas now faces if she seeks an abortion.

Under a new law that took effect three weeks ago with the strong backing of Gov. Rick Perry, she first must typically endure an ultrasound probe inserted into her vagina. Then she listens to the audio thumping of the fetal heartbeat and watches the fetus on an ultrasound screen.

She must listen to a doctor explain the body parts and internal organs of the fetus as they’re shown on the monitor. She signs a document saying that she understands all this, and it is placed in her medical files. Finally, she goes home and must wait 24 hours before returning to get the abortion.

“It’s state-sanctioned abuse,” said Dr. Curtis Boyd, a Texas physician who provides abortions. “It borders on a definition of rape. Many states describe rape as putting any object into an orifice against a person’s will. Well, that’s what this is. A woman is coerced to do this, just as I’m coerced.”

[nytimes]

Quick hit: unilad set to return

Still laughing? These statistics, just like the article’s statistic that 85% of all rapes go unreported, illustrate the reality of the rape culture in Britain. It’s far more complex than just one “Uni Lad” making a joke about rape. One joke doesn’t cause rape to happen, but it also doesn’t exist in a vacuum – it contributes to a society were rape is trivialised.

43 per cent of female students who’ve been sexually assaulted don’t report the attack because they thought they’d be blamed for what happened. Almost half of unreported attacks on women students are not attacked because the victim fears they will not be taken seriously.

In January, Alison Saunders of the Crown Prosecution Service told the Guardian that, “the demonization of young women is contributing to the failure to secure more convictions of suspected rapists… Some victims are deterred from coming forward because they fear they will be vilified.”

Rape is one of the few crimes in which the behaviour of the victim is scrutinised so closely: Why were you walking home alone at night? What were you wearing? Had you been drinking? Were you on a date/in a relationship with the attacker? None of these things alter the fact that sex without consent is rape, yet the victim-blaming myths and accusations prevail.

[studentjournals] by my good friend Sarah Graham.

Quick hit: can’t take a joke? Too right

Laddish “banter” is nothing new, but due to the leakiness of information online, women can now see the way that some men talk about us behind our backs. It’s as we’ve always suspected. Before they were chased from the internet by fire-breathing, feminist hell wraiths, the boys at Unilad apologised for “going too far” and for causing offence. This is an Olympian feat of point-missage: the problem is not the offence caused but that some men still think this is an acceptable way to talk about women in or out of our earshot.

[new statesman]

Stalking for academic research

In what world is stalking a research “subject” acceptable? I would hope that you agree that such a “methodology” is never acceptable. As academic researchers, we must ensure that the privacy of our research participants is never invaded, that their identity is never revealed (at least so far as possible), and they we never do them any harm. When you stalk someone, you invade their privacy and you certainly do them harm. One would hope that the “researcher” who conducted this study would have known that. Maybe he did and just didn’t care.

In the numerous research projects I have conducted to date, ensuring that I am ethical with my research participants is always a priority for me. I am confident that I never did anything in any study to compromise the safety of a participant, or to cause them harm. I ask you again: In what world is stalking a research “subject” acceptable? Let’s ask the author of this article. It’s called: “Saved!” by Jena Malone: An introspective study of a consumer’s fan relationship with a film actress.

I think you all know what you’re about to read here.

For the “study”, the “researcher” developed an obsession with this woman, built a shrine to her in his home, spent several hours of his life devouring her films, had numerous pictures of her (included in the article), delved very deeply into her private life, and kept a diary and a “contemporaneous dataset” about his “relationship” with her – which, incidentally, stacked up to nearly 200,000 words.

He started off his description of this “relationship” with the following statement:

I still remember the day in April 2005, when I saw Jena Malone for the very first time. Her lovely smile and her beautiful eyes captivated me so much that my entire body was filled with the same prickling warmth that I feel each time I fancy a particular girl/woman.

If you, too, are picturing the archetypal peeping tom in a trench-coat, then you’re in good company here. He goes on to say:

Though I felt sexually attracted to her, my initial interest and admiration for Jena Malone was mainly based on her work and achievement as an actress. But the nature of my emotional attachment to her changed after suffering another major disappointment in my private life. As I hadn’t been on a date for a long time, I was filled with an enjoyable and arousing feeling of excitement, anticipation, happiness and nervousness mixed  together, when a nice girl finally agreed to go out with me.

What the actual fuck is wrong with you?! Is anyone feeling sick yet? Yes, you’re still in good company.

The whole narrative reads as if it were complied by a confused and horny teenage boy indulging his fantasy. But it wasn’t; this is a “study” by a grown man whose obsession is being passed off a piece of academic research. It is published in a respected academic journal. I’m finding it difficult to express just how unbelievable it all is.

OK, let’s breathe and start again.

So he never actually met the woman, and presumably he wasn’t hiding in the bushes outside her house with a flask and pair of binoculars, but that does not make his obsession any less disturbing. Stalking as a activity takes many different forms, particularly now with the increase in internet use and our unlimited access to other people’s lives (if you know where to look, wink, wink). This case qualifies as stalking just as much as any other. Perhaps she didn’t know she was being stalked (many women don’t, as it happens) but she was. This man knows everything about her life – intimate details about her past, her finances, her family and her upbringing. He’s no “fan”; he’s a repulsive obsessive. That he attempted to disguise this obsession as academic endeavour, and cynically used a theoretical framework to “explore consumerism”, does not make his obsession any less reprehensible. For crying out loud, he doesn’t even try to mask his motivations half the time!

Anyway, frustrated with having to live my lonely life as an involuntary single again, I started to seek romance and love from a very different source — Jena Malone.

My mind is well and truly boggled.  But creepiness, aside, this “study” has been published as a piece of  academic research. That is incredibly damaging to the academic research community. Cataloguing teenage masturbatory fantasies is not academic research. That is not what we do. Using theoretical terms to “introspect” on your teenage masturbatory fantasises is not academic research. That is not data. And stalking someone, whether in person, on the telly, online, or anywhere else, is not academic research. People like this give the rest of us a very bad name and I for one would like to see the publication of that article challenged.

The article ends:

This experienced ‘bond of emotional closeness’ can at times be strong enough to elicit a feeling of ‘personal friendship’ within the consumer or, in some way, even a feeling of ‘love’ towards the admired celebrity … that can express itself in a parasocial relationship. It also provides an explanation as to why fans sometimes feel enormously disappointed, when their most desired dream of actually meeting the adored celebrity in person comes true, because the celebrity turns out to be a different person in private life or just can’t live up to the (perhaps unrealistic) imaginary person that the consumer has created in one’s own mind.

Jena Malone, are you scared? I would be.

In brief: baking powder to keep him…

I don’t know where this  board is from but I have but two words I want to say about it.

Fuck.

and

Off.

Ok, more than two. Yeah, we can all laugh (and we do!) but there are too many people who believe in what this board says (i.e., that a woman should be chained to the kitchen sink if she wants to keep her man and make him happy or she’ll lose him and it’ll serve her right) and that is no fucking laughing matter at all. I feel sick when I see messages such as this one and realise that both men and women subscribe to these ridiculous and hateful norms. Let’s not even start on the heterocentricty of it all. It’ll be another couple of centuries, I’d say, before the bible-bashers are able to have a sensible conversation about that.

Breivik’s far-right friends in America

If you give Breivik’s 1,500 manifesto a good read (though why would you, I suppose), you’ll see that his political influences (particularly with regard to his hatred of Islam) did not come from European sources but rather from the far-right in the US.

Though he referred heavily to his fellow Norwegian, the blogger Fjordman, it was Robert Spencer, the American Islamophobic pseudo-academic, who received the most references from Breivik — 55 in all. Then there was Daniel Pipes, the Muslim-bashing American neoconservative who earned 18 citations from the terrorist. Other American anti-Muslim characters appear prominently in the manifesto, including the extremist blogger Pam Geller, who operates an Islamophobic organization in partnership with Spencer.

Alternet.org describes how these hate-mongers were cited more times in Breivik’s manifesto than anyone else. If there was ever a time to address Islamophobia in the US, it’s now. We have Islamphobes in Europe too, of course, but they’ve not been given the same time, power or political voice as their counterparts in the US.  Unfortunately, the former Republican presidency condoned and encouraged Islamophobia in the US because it suited its own political ends, and it’s arguable that Obama hasn’t done as much as he should have to address the trend. Though I’m not sure how he could either.

I went to a conference paper recently which was describing research examining the ways in which we (i.e., society) in 2011 think about (and address) isms/ obias. They all still exist (sexism, ableism, ageism, homophobia, etc.),  of course, and some are more prevalent in certain pockets of society than others (e.g., the religious and homophobia) but Islamophobia is new, very widely dispersed throughout all sectors of the population, and is increasing frighteningly quickly. But to what end, I ask? What is there to be gained from a blanket hatred of an entire religion and culture? I’ve never been able to work that out. Are we in the west still such unremitting colonialists that we can’t even now understand or accept a culture that differs to our own? That’s the only plausible explanation I can think of right now. And seriously, I’m mortified for us!

In brief: Satoshi Kanazawa removed from Psychology Today

Update to yesterday’s post: Get Satoshi Kanazawa out of LSE and off Psychology Today. Psychology Today has now removed Kanazawa as a contributor (links from change.org and colorofchange.org).

Good work. Now to remove him from LSE too.

I’m so glad this arrogant offensive little prick is finally being dealt with.