Dave I/O

Flee, Swastika Man! Flee!

Germany is still very twitchy about its Nazi heritage. It’s concerned enough about that twitch to criminalise possession of Nazi flags, insignia, and uniforms. Even using Nazi-linked slogans and forms of greeting are punishable by the same penalty – up to three years in prison. That also includes propagandising or promoting any goals of any organisation deemed to be anti-constitutional. Germans: they don’t fuck about. And who can blame them? National Socialism was undeniably one of the biggest evils in human history – arguably the biggest.

But, as we all know, censorship does not kill ideas – no cause is too radical (or, in National Socialism’s case, too evil) to lose all of its followers. For better or for worse, ideas endure.

Fortunately, there are people out there willing to continue the fight against fascism. One such group is Exit Deutschland, a German initiative to assist those within neo-Nazi groups to get out of the world of racism and violence that they bring.

The free T-shirt handed out by Exit Deutschland. Original on left, after washing on right.

So where’s the awesome? The answer is, as Exit Deutschland call it, “Operation Trojan T-Shirt”. Exit recently attended a neo-Nazi music festival called “Rock for Germany”, under the guise of being nationalists themselves. They handed out free T-shirts printed with “Hardcore Resistance” and “Nationalistic and Free”.

Doesn’t sound particularly helpful, does it? “YEAH. WE WILL SMASH THE FASCISTS BY GIVING THEM FREE STUFF. THIS WILL CONVERT THEM TO SOCIALIST UTOPIANISM.”

The cool stuff happened when the T-shirts were washed.

Parts of the dye were made to dissolve in the washing machine, to leave a completely different message – translating to “What your T-shirt has done, you can do too” and “We will help you to get away from right-wing extremism”. Contact details for Exit were also left visible after washing.

I am awestruck with how cool this stunt was. Parents will have taken T-shirts for their kids. If just one child sees the message without their parents realising, and sees a way out of a life they didn’t choose, then it’s been worth it.

Incredible work.

Atos' behaviour has inspired protests across the country.

The Tories do not like the welfare state. You only have to look at the words that come out of Conservative politicians about ‘benefits scroungers’ and ‘layabouts’ to see that the narrative they want us to believe is one of the vast majority of those on benefits are there by choice because they’re too lazy to work.

In a country where we’re told that cuts to Governmental services are essential – not necessarily true, when you realise that large corporations are paying microscopic portions of the tax that they should, even after legitimate deductions – this narrative is a convenient straw-man to justify heavy cuts in welfare expenditure.

What’s the easiest way to cut welfare expenditure? Simple, really. Cut the number of people on benefits. You’ve painted those in receipt of benefits as lazy scroungers already, so people won’t listen to them when they complain. There’s only one problem – how do you avoid getting caught, and how do you make sure you can squirm out if you are? The tiny amount of Governmental transparency that we have in this country makes the former a risk from irritating dissenters like the Guardian, and the latter is impossible if you’re the one making the decisions about who gets to keep receiving their benefits and who gets cut off.

There’s a simple answer: let someone else do it.

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Once upon a time, I went on the London SlutWalk. You may have heard about it if you were anywhere near me for any period of time around the time that it was happening, because I wouldn’t shut up about it.

I won’t go into detail again, because that’s not the point of this post. That said, it is the point of this post here, if you’re interested. The important bit here is one placard held by an attendee of the SlutWalk – saying, simply, “CONSENT IS SEXY”.

As you may suspect from the description up in the title bar, we’re a little bit kinky in the NSFW Cave. By ‘a little bit kinky’, I do of course mean that the lot of us are Grade A perverts. As such, consent is something that we have to be very, very careful with.

Let’s be clear – like the vast majority of people out there, from the vanilla to the downright bizarre, I would never, ever force anything on anyone against their will. That said, sometimes when I do what I do with someone, ‘no’ actually does mean ‘yes’ – unless ‘no’ is given in the form of a safeword, of course. Consent can be withdrawn at any time, and if you ignore that withdrawal – regardless of when it comes – then you are a rapist.

I like to think that I understand the general motive of a rapist – that forcing their will on someone else is an empowering experience. You know what’s sexier, though? Having someone beg them to do all manner of awful things to them, having them scream and beg and cry and whimper, and knowing that the more you ‘force’ them into enduring unpleasantness the more they’ll want to do it all over again. Surely there’s more power in someone begging you for more than trying to get away from you?

Consent is sexy in of itself. There are few highs more intense than absolute trust. The feeling you get when someone trusts you enough to restrict their ability to resist and then control their oxygen supply, for example, is intoxicating. There’s protection in breaking someone – they know that you’ll put them through hell, and then bring them back from that wonderful headspace with warmth, touch and love (and, often, tea). They see you as a strong, powerful force that can hurt them and comfort them, and that feeling of power and strength is the best drug I know.

Rape – taking control by force – is a fleeting glimpse of power, chosen by the weak. Here’s the big secret, though – it can’t compare to the amazing sensation of being given control freely.

If forcing yourself on someone is a slice of cake, consensual power exchange and the wonderful give-and-take that comes with it is a whole bakery.

Duke secretly cries at night about human rights abuses in Burma.

It’s tempting to give in to the Daily Mail style hysteria about Duke Nukem Forever and cry, “BAN THIS SICK FILTH”. But that’s not what I want to happen. I want you to read this post, and the ballsy, excellent and accurate Ars Technica review, and I want it to stop you from buying it. I want the people behind this game to make a financial loss that they can’t blame on anything other than their own design decisions. I want all of this to happen because Duke Nukem Forever is the only game that has ever caused me to stand up, switch it off, and walk away, with no desire whatsoever to go back to it.

I bought the game in HMV for £39.99. I will be taking it back as an unwanted gift and swapping it for something worth owning. Hopefully it’ll be something with genuine innovation, design and thought behind it.

The important part is that I’m fairly certain that, in whatever game I swap it for, I won’t be presented with two forcibly impregnated women begging me to save their life by promising to lose the weight that their alien pregnancy has caused them to put on. As a bonus, I’m pretty sure that my character won’t bombard me with self-aggrandising wisecracks about abortion should I accidentally kill naked, abducted and imprisoned women.

I could piss and moan about the game design itself, which is chock full of invisible walls, enormously finicky aiming, extended empty sequences with only sparse dick jokes for company, and a terrible health system that doesn’t work with the map design, but Ars has done that better. What disgusted me was where they’ve taken Duke Nukem, a character that made sense in 1996 as a fairly well-constructed retort to ultra-macho, ultra-chauvinist movie stars of the day like Stallone and Schwarzenegger. Duke Nukem might have been saving the Earth, but he was more to be pitied than idolised. He was exclusively brawn.

Today’s game paints him as famous and hero-worshipped in the 15 years since Duke Nukem 3D. Instead of being distracted from saving the world by tipping strippers for a quick look at their boobs, he’s the one in control – women literally beg to please him. In fact, they’re the same women who beg for his help later by promising to maintain their figure, as I mentioned before. Kids shuffle up for his autograph. “One day, you might be as awesome as me”, he says.

I don’t think that this game is going to ruin any young minds, or any other tabloid newsbite about video games, and I’m against enforced censorship regardless. It’s just sad that it’s so symptomatic of things that are still bubbling under the surface, no matter how hard we try to pretend that we’ve all grown up since the 80s and see each other as equals.

The first time that I came across the reclamation of the word ‘slut’ was in 2000, in Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy’s book on non-monogamous relationships, The Ethical Slut: A Roadmap for Relationship Pioneers. The point was difficult to argue with – why is ‘slut’ such a bad word? Onomatopoeically, it sounds unpleasant. There’s a real spit to it. But that’s not what we’re addressing here, we’re addressing the meaning of the word – and that is usually ‘a promiscuous woman’.

You just know that when a gender identity is enshrined in a derogatory term, there’s going to be something wrong. And there is – the male counterpart is ‘stud’, which has a far more rounded sound to it and, of course, is considered a compliment. So what we have here is that if person X is promiscuous and female, they are classified by a derogatory term. If they’re promiscuous and male, they’re classified by a complimentary term. Not cool, dictionary. Not cool.

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(This letter is in reference to this horrible, anachronistic mess of homophobia that happened, on the 13th of April 2011, at the John Snow pub in Soho, London.)

Management of the John Snow, and those concerned at the Samuel Smith brewery -

This will not just go away.

Your decision to remove James Bull and Jonathan Williams from your pub on the 13th of April was reprehensible.

I, and the other organisers, have had many heterosexual people come forward who have kissed in the John Snow.  None of them have been ejected.  Along with other reports of the landlord drunkenly flying into a rage and physically manhandling his victims out of the pub, the 1,100 people who voiced support on the protest know that this was a homophobic and anachronistic piece of discrimination that has no place in our society – let alone a pub in Soho.

We will keep protesting – and we will make sure that everyone knows what you have done.

Google’s first result for “john snow pub”, as searched by many people looking for your establishment, is the Guardian article about the protest and the reasons behind it.

Neither the John Snow management, nor the Samuel Smith brewery, have made any sort of statement – let alone one refuting the homophobic nature of the matter, or accepting it and apologising for it.

But, despite all of this, we don’t want to put you out of business.

We appreciate that the landlord and his staff run the John Snow to make a living.  We also fully accept that we have absolutely no right to tell anyone what their opinions should be.  What we do feel, however, is that when the actions based on those opinions further marginalise an already threatened group of people, that cannot be simply ignored.  Your opinions are your business, but your actions are a different matter entirely.

Here’s what we want, and here’s what will resolve this matter -

• Apologise for your actions.  Everyone makes mistakes – what we want here is for you to accept that a mistake was made.  At the very least, this apology needs to be made to Bull and Williams.  Ideally, we would like it to be made public, so that everyone can see that you are not as bigoted as you are currently appearing.
• Either allow both homosexual and heterosexual kissing in your pub, or post a notice saying that no public displays of affection will be tolerated.

We also feel it would be appropriate for you to make a significant donation to a LGBT rights charity of your choice, and publicise the amount and specific charity. We can provide suggestions of charities if desired. This is not, however, something we consider absolutely essential – just something that would show your commitment to the fight against homophobia.

We are doing this on behalf of Bull and Williams.  If, at any stage, they ask us to stop, or say that they consider the matter closed – we will stop.  My suggestion, if you will not or can not comply with any of these points, is to contact them directly with your apologies.  However, any harassment of Bull and Williams will not be tolerated.

Bull and Williams have also asked me to state that they are not signatories to this open letter, and as such may be responsive to different reparations.

Please – join the 21st century, and let’s work together to make this right.

Westminster Council (they’re Tories, if you couldn’t guess) would rather like to be rid of all that riff-raff moping around the street and dying of hypothermia in their borough, so they want to ban soup runs. Yes, I know, when you see “X wants to ban Y” the Daily Mail instinct kicks in and your natural inclination is to disengage any credibility for the story, but they’re quite open about the truth of it -

A spokesman for the council said the measure was being taken “in a particular area which suffers disproportionately from the negative impact of soup runs”.

He added: “Westminster believes that food handouts only serve to keep people on the streets longer, damaging their health and life chances.

“For many years, the piazza and surrounding area has been the destination for soup run organisations, a number of which travel into the city from across the capital and even outside of London.

“Up to 100 people at a time can congregate on or around the piazza while food is being given out, turning it into a no-go area for many residents and businesses with issues around litter, urination, violence and disorder.

“The council is now launching a consultation with residents, businesses, local day centres and hostels and the voluntary sector on its proposals to ban soup runs and rough sleepers in this location.

via Council accused of ‘callousness’ over soup run ban » Local Government » 24dash.com.

Scalpel please, Nurse. Let’s dissect.
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