stop before you say it

I saw a programme on Channel 4 the other evening called The Events: How Racist are You? which was, essentially, a repeat of Jane Elliot’s ‘blue-eyed/brown-eyed’ anti-racism exercise with a group of English people. I don’t think it quite worked, because Britain has never had a system of institutionalised segregation in the same way as the southern United States did in the 1960s with the Jim Crow laws. However, it was plainly obvious that the white people involved didn’t actually ‘get’ racism, and specifically that racism has more to do with power structures and privilege than simply prejudice based on skin tone. There is a world of difference between a member of a majority culture treating a minority differently and vice versa. Anyway, the idea of ‘political correctness’ naturally came up, as it tends to do in such discussions, with various people (as I recall) bemoaning their lack of a right to purchase goods with golliwog imagery.

Cut forward to today, and checking the Guardian website whilst procrastinating on an essay, I found an article about the Foreign Minister of the French government’s reaction to the Conservative Party’s new policy about Europe. He described them as having a “bizarre form of autism”. Which is fairly politically incorrect to use as an insult but no one really cares that much, apparently.

As someone who was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome over a decade ago, the continuous use of the word ‘autistic’ as a derogatory term for anyone mildly anti-social or weird bothers me somewhat as it is, but I’ve been working on a sense of humour for something like four years now and I think I’ve finally just about cracked it. It’s something I laugh about it constantly, because I have to be able to poke fun at it else it just becomes too much to deal with. I inwardly mutter “Oh whoopsy-daisy wasn’t that a silly autistic thing to do” when I can’t grasp a friend’s use of sarcasm or similar. Friends who know joke about it quite a bit, just like I poke fun at their quirks and kinks. However… it significantly irritates me when people I don’t know very well make a mean-spirited autism (or disability, race, gender, blonde, so on and so forth) jibe, but generally I accept it, move on, unless it’s particularly off-colour. Comedians using shock tactics – fine, not particularly what makes me laugh but there is a value to it. So I have a pretty high tolerance level; higher than I used to at least. The thing which I really cannot stand and really gets me irate is when statesmen and other figures of authority make such metaphors about policy or politicians they don’t agree with. It confuses me that there hasn’t been more uproar about this particular incident, actually; if he’d referred to the Tories as ‘retarded’ there’d be much more discussion about it. Oh wait, I forgot, the media pretty much demonise autism as it is (see: continuing MMR uproar).

I understand why ‘autistic’ might be an appropriate epithet for Cameron’s new Europe policy, I honestly do. It’s quite clear that M. Lellouche intended it as a dig against the stubborn refusal of the Conservatives to engage fully with Europe, meaning it in a sense of ‘lacking social skills’. When I first read the article I thought ‘hey France, stop giving autistics a bad name by lumping them with that lot’, and there’s an element of seriousness to that. I hate the fact that the word conjures up images of resolutely silent, stroppy monsters, a plague feeding on otherwise happy families; that the lion’s share of press surrounding autism is framed in such sensationalist, B-movie terms. Even the phrase ‘Ooh s/he’s such an autistic savant’ has a patronising ring to it. I don’t even really want to reclaim the word and use it for positive reasons, I just wish it was kept as a detached, medical term. Linguistically speaking, we need words that aren’t loaded, but they’re always stolen away and thrown like bombs.

Personally speaking, it did take me years to come to terms with having Asperger’s and I still wake up frequently thinking ‘god, why me, I’m such a burden on everyone I know’; I have days where I really don’t want to socialise and the deep, lurking instinct to hide under my desk rises anew. A little bit of support from society as a whole, as well as wider understanding, would go pretty far to make getting up in the morning on those days so much easier, but when my brain isn’t working ‘right’ people do tend to think I’m being deliberately callous and drama occurs and so on and so forth. Incidents such as this, although they seem little, make the stigmatisation of autism and related conditions even more insidious and make it even more difficult to see why exactly I am bothering since it’s clearly such an AWFUL thing to have.

Although these are rambles on two different matters, the uniting theme is this idea of ‘political correctness’. Over the last few years I’ve heard people rant against ‘political correctness’ on an increasing level until it becomes a deafening wall of sound drowning out any arguments for things such as equality and hate crime laws, in much the same way that the same people argue that some mythical entity known only as the ‘PC bridage’ jump down your throat if you try having a serious discussion about immigration. This could be me being young and fairly naive, here, since after all I grew up in multicultural Britain, in the aftermath of the Macpherson Report to be precise. But when anyone rails on about protecting their right to be as un-PC as they like I just think they’re vociferously defending their right to be a douchebag to people of a lower social standing than them. Because un-PC jokes are broadly aimed at people below you on the food-chain. I’ve heard plenty of white people complain that they aren’t allowed to use the N word to refer to black people but black people use it amongst themselves all the time; that’s because it’s a word, like faggot or queer, which changes connotations depending on context, especially the person using it.

Essentially, what I’m trying to say is that, bloody hell I want the phrase ‘political correctness’ to go away and die and instead of people accusing their critics of being PC to think about why exactly it might not be a very good idea to use that word, or express that idea; to think about their role in society and that (although they might not feel like it) they hold more power than others; and to lastly just maybe smile, accept that (although they might not understand why) their words have caused harm, and try to avoid being hurtful in the name of free speech. After all, just because you can say something doesn’t mean that you necessarily should.

these monsters are real

Last night – Halloween – I made a rare trip to the cinema to see Saw VI. Not exactly what I would have chosen to see, being a bit squeamish and well aware of what these films entail, but I was dragged into it. Even choosing to ignore all the torture and gore, which is a fairly difficult thing to do since I estimate that a hefty proportion of screen time is dedicated to all of the traps and games played on the victims, it left me with some pretty interesting thoughts. Not entirely to do with the excessive amount of violence either (although seriously, you have to wonder what kind of person comes up with these elaborate contraptions…)

- Spoilers ahead -

nothing more than a pantomime

Watching Question Time this week was just over an hour’s worth of extreme second-hand embarrassment on behalf of all involved, with the exception of possibly Bonnie Greer, who I think had the best performance out of everyone, including the audience.

I was in favour of the BBC inviting Nick Griffin onto Question Time. The legitimisation of the BNP has already occured in the aftermath of this year’s European elections. Electing a party is how you legitimise them, after all, not just rabbiting on about them incessantly. Anyway, I saw Question Time as a good opportunity to show the BNP up for being, like all fascist parties, an organisation of little real substance beyond xenophobia and fearmongering. However, this opportunity was unfortunately missed, through a combination of poor choice of panelists, the behaviour of the audience (and to an extent, David Dimbleby), and the protests organised by Unite Against Fascism.

Firstly, the other panelists: Baroness Warsi, the Conservative shadow minister for community cohesion; Chris Huhne, the shadow home secretary for the Liberal Democrats; Jack Straw, justice secretary; and Bonnie Greer, American playwright and critic.

Straw was a very bad choice of representative for Labour. As a senior minister, he was the most vulnerable to Griffin’s populist attacks against the establishment. Although he started off reasonably well, the attack on his father’s conscientious objection in World War Two (despite being a low blow which belonged more in the playground) knocked the wind from his sails. His role in the Iraq war also left him weak against Griffin, and he fell into that particular style of lengthy non-answering favoured by senior politicians. Jon Cruddas would have made a much better Labour representative.

Warsi was occasionally capable. Trouble with her, though, was the fact that she’s used very similar methods of attack to Griffin whilst trying to appeal to Muslims, notably her opposition to the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools*. I don’t particularly think it was a good idea to showcase someone in mainstream British politics who agrees with one of Griffin’s most abhorrent viewpoints, as it made Griffin himself appear acceptable and mainstream.

Huhne fell into the trap of trying to make himself seem anti-immigration. It would have been fantastic to see someone staunchly defend immigration in public, and intelligently, too; however, his slightly clumsy political point-scoring led to Griffin calling him out on trying to disguise the fact that the Liberal Democrats are in favour of immigration, and making it appear like that was the wrong position to take. It isn’t, and we’re long overdue for a loud defense of immigration into Britain, instead of the continued mumbling in protest at the Daily Mail and its ilk demonising “foreigners”.

As previously mentioned, I was incredibly impressed with Greer, who argued against Griffin with a tone of respect, while subtly tearing him a new one. Possibly as a result of the fact that she didn’t need to indulge in party politics and stuck, very effectively, to her own field of history.

Secondly, the audience, who treated the whole thing as some sort of pantomime. Seriously, hissing when the “villain” comes on? Yeah, way to play into the BNP’s victimhood complex. “Dick Griffin”?! I’m not sure how much more puerile you can get. Dimbleby let himself down somewhat by his own constant interrogation of Griffin, and by skipping over some very interesting sounding questions in favour of more race-related comments, despite his previous assertion that this was just another episode of Question Time in spite of Nick Griffin’s presence.

Finally, Unite Against Fascism and the protests outside BBC Television Centre. UAF’s No Platform policy is absurd and might have been effective in those halcyon days prior to the internet, but now it’s unfeasible. However, their protest would have been fine if it had remained peaceful and if the protesters who stormed the building had managed to restrain themselves from doing so, but they didn’t, and in doing so they harmed their own cause and added fuel to the BNP’s claims of oppression by a “liberal political elite”. Not to mention the fact that it could well be seen as a touch hypocritical to lambast a political party for being fascist.. and at the same time oppose their right to say incredibly moronic things out loud.

I said that I believed Griffin appearing on Question Time was a perfectly acceptable decision by the BBC. I still maintain that belief but I feel that the way the BBC went about it was somewhat damaging, and not to the BNP’s crediblity. One could quite easily see that Griffin is slimy, greasy and repellent without the panel constantly commenting on that fact and giving him cause to claim of being ‘reverse lynch-mobbed’.

One could quite easily argue that all of modern politics is just pantomime, or at least most of it, and point to Prime Minister’s Question Time as an example of this, with its constant, shameless jeering and pandering by the party leaders. But hopefully, last night’s Question Time shows how dangerous this development is.

(*Section 28, repealed in 2003, prevented what was termed as the promotion of homosexuality in schools. In reality it led to stigmatisation, the flourishing of homophobic bullying, and a lack of support for young people struggling with their sexuality. By now, we should have moved on from the outcry of ‘but they’re teaching our kids how to be gay’; however, it remains a bugbear for right-wing, socially conservative politicians, and an especially dishonest bugbear at that.)