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Last night, I was drawing away at my desk with Radio 4 on in the background and idly chatting to my boyfriend, who is in Poland at the moment.

A Moral Maze came on the radio, aiming to address the moral challenges around the government’s Troubled Families initiative, in the wake of the government’s ‘Broken Britain Tsar’, Louise Casey, suggesting that women in these families should be financially discouraged from having more children if they are struggling to cope at present. This comes off the back of Eric Pickles saying we’re too politically correct to lay blame where it belongs, which is with the troubled families where recidivistic criminality and truancy endures across several generations.

It is, they suggest, a moral failure of the families who languish on benefits that they do not lift themselves out of antisocial behaviour and state dependency.

In this Moral Maze, it was said more than once “we all know who these families are” when panel members asked for clarification on whether they were discussing troubled or troublesome families.

The criteria for being regarded as a Troubled Family are that a family has five or more of the following seven traits:

• Having a low income
• No one in the family who is working
• Poor housing
• Parents who have no qualifications
• The mother has a mental health problem
• One parent has a longstanding illness or disability
• The family is unable to afford basics, including food and clothes

Source: they’re outlined in this Independent piece.

However, the Moral Maze‘s panel also discussed some very loaded terms like “serial fatherlessness” which seemed to point quite firmly to where they apportion the blame for this supposed crisis.

Of course, like most government statistics, the figure of 120,000 families in the UK meeting this definition is disputed, with most attempts to replicate the research finding far, far fewer families than in the initial research.

The panel didn’t seem to pick up on what seems to be glaringly obvious to me as a major issue with the defining traits, focusing instead on whether poverty caused families to struggle to the point where adhering to social norms was difficult or whether the families themselves were essentially lazy or immoral enough to drive themselves into this situation. There are obvious echoes to the description of “feral youths” we had a year ago when the country was ablaze with rioting.

To me, the most pernicious aspect of the definition is the bias against disabled people, particularly against disabled women. Since it’s far harder for disabled people to find decent education or well-paid employment, and since depression and other mental health challenges are incredibly common among disabled people (perhaps because we’re being told that our problems are our own moral inadequacies?), it seems like a given that most families where one or both parents are disabled are automatically well on the way to being labelled as problematic.

In fact, if you examine a family where neither parent is ill, disabled or has mental health problems, they must meet all five of the remaining criteria, but a disabled family where the mother has mental health issues need only meet three of the five non-health-related factors to be labelled as problematic.

If you then add in the idea that the mothers in troubled families should be discouraged, perhaps financially, from having more children than they can afford or cope with, we’re worryingly close to a programme of eugenics that disproportionately targets disabled and mentally ill women.

The discussion on Moral Maze didn’t pick up on this point, seemingly assuming that it should be taken as read that ill-health and impairment, whether physical or mental, constitutes a problem for society.

It’s a disturbingly regressive idea that in order to end poverty, you end the poor, and one that should be challenged with passion at every turn.

Reading through earlier government documents relating to this, however, paints a different picture to the one now being presented by ministers. The definition there ran:

• First, examine families where either there is proof of the child having committed a crime or where a member of the family has an ASBO or similar charge around social conduct.
• Secondly, identify families where a child has been regularly excluded from school, has 15% or higher unauthorised absence or where the child is regularly truanting.
• If families meet one of the two, then examine if no-one in the family works or is in post-compulsory education (one of those NEETs – Not in Employment, Education or Training).
• After examining these identifying factors, local considerations may be applied where families meet two or three of the above factors exist and there is cause for concern.

These local considerations can include:

• Where a family member has been in prison in the last year, where the police have been called out regularly, where the family is involved in a gang or where they are prolific offenders.
• Where a child is on the child protection register or where the local authority is considering taking the child into care.
• Where a family member has long-term health problems, particularly:

  Emotional and mental health problems
  Drug and alcohol misuse
  Long term health conditions
  Health problems caused by domestic abuse
  Under 18 conceptions

Now, this list of issues seems problematic, but less so when you take into account the idea that these should only be considered once it’s established that there are problems with criminality or where the child is not attending school often enough. Worklessness is given less priority than these and health problems such as alchoholism are even less relevant.

Source: this Troubled Families Programme PDF from March 2012.

I think that the shift from what this document describes to the seven traits of unsuccessful people defined above and communicated by ministers more recently is incredibly telling in determining the underlying ideology at play here. Rather than say that criminality and absence from school or the structure of employment, education or training are the main challenges facing families and requiring intervention, we’re left with the impression that there are wickedly immoral, lazy people, primarily the poor, disabled people and single mothers, who are tearing apart the fabric of the country.

The original notion – that families who are troubled and troubling through antisocial or criminal behaviour, where children are being denied the life chances that education provides, could do with additional support and intervention to assist them in re-introducing structure to what can often be a chaotic and fraught existence – seems sound. To turn this into yet another attack on poor people, disabled people and women just seems like a moral failure of government, and that, I think, is far more likely to tear the country apart.

• Described as ‘suave’ by Simply Knitting Magazine, Howard Hardiman is a writer and artist who makes comic books about lonely badgers, dog-headed escorts and disabled superheroines. He lives on the Isle of Wight and collects jigsaw puzzle pieces he finds in the street.

www.howardhardiman.com
www.thelengths.com
www.thepeckhaminvalids.com

Which is high praise as these days, as I usually balk at the price of books when they can be gotten for free from your local library – and indeed should be for the most part, because otherwise those fools in power will try to close them.

Torygeddon aside, I’ve recently been really happy with the “new” (over the past ten or so years; they aren’t appearing like the rash of teenage vampire novels) books about feminism – like Living Dolls by Natasha Walter. Angry books, clever books, often books by young women. But at the same time I did get a little turned off by them – they were also difficult books, thoughful, smart books that needed full your full attention and dealt with very big, very important feminist issues in very serious ways. After which you tend to feel sad, or angry and a bit frustrated.

Whilst there is certainly room and need for those books, there’s also a need for this book. Because this isn’t about the big stuff, not entirely. It’s about one woman and her journey through a very personal feminism. It’s about pants being annoyingly too small, fashion, eating too much cheese, having a crap dog, rowing with your family and the general business of living. It’s pop-feminism, and we at BadRep are all behind that – the kind of feminism that is easy to access, relevant and doesn’t require you to have digested a thesaurus or the entire works of Helene Cixous in the original french. It’s a “normal” book, and normalising feminism is something I am all for. It does cover some “serious feminist” topics – such as abortion (covered in more detail in a review by Abortion Rights over here), having children, not having children, prostitution, rape, sexism in all its many forms. But you never feel preached at, or patronised.

So, what’s it like to read? Well, it’s a bit like being in the pub with our Editor, Miranda, when she’s had a couple of ciders and is “holding forth”. Certainly as far as goes the excessive use of CAPS LOCK AND EXCLAMATION POINTS TO MAKE THINGS STAND OUT!!!¹ To call it “friendly and personal” sounds a bit pat and cliched, but it is. The book takes the form of an autobiography of growing up – poor and in Wolverhampton – and dealing with the challenges of becoming a woman. It’s deeply refreshing to find some non-university educated, working class feminism. Feminism that doesn’t rely heavily on theory. Feminism that makes me laugh, and read sections out to my flatmate so we can both spew milk from our noses. It’s a book that’s easy and fun (yes, feminism can be fun!) to read, and I devoured it in a few hours.

I recommend it, naturally. But I also offer a few caveats. There were a couple of points that I didn’t like, and they came from the same place as the stuff I did like. You see, when you write informally, personally and from the heart, you also tend to be a bit less careful than you might with word use. And sloppy language is very perilous when you are criticising sexism, which is also about sloppy language, in part. The word “retarded” for example, is used a couple of times, to describe being like someone with a learning disability. This is not cool. It’s a word that we should all stop using (much like “n*gger”). There is no reclaiming this word. End of.

I also found myself getting a bit twitchy with some of her assumptions – and again, these were down to the personal, anecdotal approach. Her feminism is not exactly my feminism. I do not believe, for example, that women are quite so biologically constrained that cystitis is the reason we didn’t found empires. I found the focus in on the experience of living in a cisgender woman’s body and the assumption of “natural” consequences to this a bit disarming. But then, my teenage years were not hers. My growing pains were different.

It is a brave book. It doesn’t pull any punches, and there will be bits that you disagree with. But that’s part of the point of polemics; they stand their ground, pitbull-like, and assert a view. The ensuing debate carries them forward. And the jokes. Still cleaning milk off my t-shirt over the high-heeled shoe bit.

1. “Oh GOD, guilty as charged” – Ed

Photo by Flickr user Ol.v!er, shared under a creative commons licence.

Much has been said about his words, but a lot of the online discussion focuses on “I now think he’s a douche” and not on why the post should be regarded as offensive. Well, I’m pretty clear on why I find it offensive.

In my posts for BadRep I have often expressed the sentiment that men have unique problems in society, and that those problems are just as invisible as some feminist issues. I believe it’s true. I’ve also recently written a post which stated my feelings on the constant cry of “but what about the men?” in response to feminist discussion. Short answer: if you look at the world and don’t see massive gender inequality harming women a lot more than men, and don’t think that reducing the gap (and aiming to eliminate these issues for everyone) would be a good thing, then I don’t want to know you.

Scott Adams didn’t say that feminism was no longer needed, or that men have bigger problems than women. His post can be summed up in two parts:

“Now I would like to speak directly to my male readers who feel unjustly treated by the widespread suppression of men’s rights:

Get over it, you bunch of pussies.”

Why would he say that – because he sees women’s rights as far more under attack? Er… no. He has this advice instead:

“The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently. It’s just easier this way for everyone. You don’t argue with a four-year old about why he shouldn’t eat candy for dinner. You don’t punch a mentally handicapped guy even if he punches you first. And you don’t argue when a women tells you she’s only making 80 cents to your dollar. It’s the path of least resistance. You save your energy for more important battles.”

Scott states that he’s not comparing ‘women’ directly to ‘people with disabilities’ or children, but does advise his (male) audience to treat them all the same way – to take into account the “emotional realities of other people”.

And this is where most online discussion is only just starting to get it. It doesn’t MATTER if he’s right, or if he’s a realist. Either way this is shitty, inhumane advice.

It puts the reader in the group taking action, and puts women (and other humans with inconvenient ’emotional realities’) in a group marked “Other”. And as we all know, that’s classic 101 to dehumanising your target and making it easier to see them as objects who don’t need to be considered. It’s also bollocks. He’s giving instructions for how to manipulate others for your own success, without looking at any possibility of finding any common ground, sharing boundaries, or viewing them as real people who could be talked to. They’re just there to be made to go away with the least stress to him. Adams is dismissing the idea that his current views could be wrong and that he might learn something from women, because dialogue is not an option. He’d rather choose the path of least resistance. That’s a pretty closed mind right there.

It’s not easier for “everyone”, Scott. Just you.

It’s not easier for women, for example. Also: women, children and “the mentally handicapped”(!) are together a majority, which makes you sitting inside your privileged minority and dismissing them like this all the more craptastic. The majority of the human race are more emotional than you, Scott, and as you’ve just demonstrated probably have more empathy too.

Towards the end of the post he says:

“Fairness is an illusion. It’s unobtainable in the real world.”

For someone who has spent decades writing about the inhumanity of big business, that’s a surprising quote. And my inner Hopeless Idealist rejects it totally. Yes, men face different inequalities: in the divorce courts, in countries with a military draft, in society’s ancient ideas of what ‘masculine’ behaviour is. But even if I felt that these somehow matched the towering mountain of (frequently lethal) inequality facing women (which I don’t by several miles), I would never give up on seeking fairness. It’s an instinctive, empathic, humane response which shows that you’re a decent human being.

So yeah, I now think Scott Adams is a douche as well. Several additional words spring to mind (the lovely Miranda put in a vote for “ableist asshat” at this juncture). If you want to read his justifications (that he often takes the point of view on his blog which is most difficult to defend, that his readers know he often doesn’t even believe the argument he’s making, that we’re all devoid of “reading comprehension”) then you can wander over to where he’s currently trolling the comment thread at Feministe. Yes, seriously. At no time does he back down from the opinion he stated, or acknowledge how the act of grouping 51% of the planet and more into an ‘overly emotional’ box to be safely ignored for his own mental peace of mind is in any way douche-worthy.

We are better than his exclusionary, patronising bullshit, people. There’s an alternative where we keep talking, and learning, and looking for ways to make a society we can be proud of. Together. Because women are human beings, and the fact that this still needs saying means that all men should be jumping aboard the feminism boat for joint rock n’ roll pirate adventures. The alternative is a land run by people as ignorant, reactionary and self-absorbed as the boss in the Dilbert comics, and no-one wins when that happens.

– Steve B.
White, mid-thirties cis male who used to work for a giant American corporation and buy Dilbert calendars.

Today is World Down Syndrome Day 2011.

I don’t know how much you know about Down Syndrome as an individual reader. Don’t know much about it? Go and find out more about it. Think you know about it? Take some time to read and listen a bit more. Don’t be the person who scrolls on, eh?

I learned about Down Syndrome Day because I have a younger sister with Down Syndrome whom I lived with for sixteen years (I only moved out about two years ago) and so my family have lifetime membership of the Down Syndrome Association. I’d like everyone to know about it, though.

I’m not going to tell you a great deal about my family here because this is a short post – and because I haven’t asked what my sister thinks either about blogging on here, or being blogged about, yet, and not to do so would be at the least a bit cheeky. And also missing the point massively, in that “raising awareness” doesn’t mean I (an able-bodied person) get to trot out my non-consenting family on the internet in the name of Issues, or decide that me posting is better than actually getting they themselves on here to speak.

But here are some things to look at and read:

• Why disability is a feminist issue, from Feminists With Disabilities for a Way Forward. It’s a US-based perspective, but really, you should read it. Edit: this post too.
• A recent case of completely shitty education-based discrimination against a young woman with Down Syndrome. The words of her parents on this one struck a depressingly familiar chord with mine. They’ve had to navigate this sort of bullshit far too often, too.
• Mencap: find out more about what a learning disability is. Over 1.5 million people in the UK have a learning disability, so if you really care about activism and intersectionality of any kind, it’s worth your time. Seriously.

Will you let us in? A five minute film, covering 45 countries.

Read, think, share links around, and have a good week.