Wow. Well, according to some leaked documents on Business Green, elements in the UK government are saying that they are opposing an extension of the European renewable energy targets. Right now they are 20% by 2020, and there are proposals to extend them into 2030 and beyond. The Department for Energy and Climate Change seems to be suggested that it wants a broader mix (i.e. nuclear) and that the targets should include this.
This is a terrible idea, and one will will likely turn into a battle. Nuclear is not necessarily the worst thing ever in my opinion, although I do have concerns over waste, proliferation and cost, but it is a poor excuse for a climate policy. Furthermore I suspect it will be left for dust in the coming decades by the rapidly falling cost of renewables. Failure to invest in renewables now and to cling to the nuclear white elephant could seem like a absurd move in a few years.
Indeed as I have said before this is my big hope for this issue - that pretty soon renewable electricity will be cheap enough to make all of these arguments seem academic, and that all the people who said it would never worked now claim to have backed it all along.
Monday, 12 March 2012
Thursday, 8 March 2012
Why our attitude to sexism needs to change
Happy International Women’s Day. I think we should scrap it, in the UK at least. Seriously. This is not some flippant attempt to undermine the issues that face women in the modern world, or a whiny chance to say that men also suffer discrimination, but my attempt to articulate that if we really want to tackle the issues of gender discrimination faced by women and men our society we need a more subtle and inclusive approach, and one that does not place everything in the context of women's rights. Let me try and explain.
Okay, I understand that this would all be very different if I lived in Pakistan or the 1970s, but I don’t. I live in the UK so I am talking about modern UK/Western society, and having a woman’s day seems not only anachronistic, but a poor response to the complex social issues tied up with gender. Maybe we could balance up with an international men’s day, but I would rather have some kind of gender respect day.
The trouble with gender politics is that in popular terms they are so one-sided, and that they take a whole bunch of complicated gender issues and boil them down into issues of discrimination against women. There is much talk of addressing the way that society views women, and much talk of men changing their ways, but very little talk about changing the way society, male and female, views men. For example how do we really view the stay-at home dad, or the old man who enjoys watching children play? How do we raise our boys, and why do so many think they need to act a way we say we don't want? Why is an unmarried father not allowed to get parental responsibility and his child a passport without the mother’s consent, while the mother needs no such permission?(1) These issues receive precious little discussion, especially compared to the standard fare of changing society's attitudes to women. Obviously this situation has evolved for historical reasons, but it has to change sometime.
There are also many over-simplifications, preyed on by the press. Take the pay gap issue. To most people that is about men and women getting paid different amounts for doing the same job. Actually that is exactly what it is not about. It is about the average earnings of men and women in society as a whole, and the largest differences are accounted for by time off to raise children, historical imbalances and career choices. Any discrimination is subtle, and will not be addressed through headlines and blunt legislation. There is also another way of looking at it, which is that men in this society still do not feel able, or are not allowed, to take time off to raise children or to work part time. And indeed much of society looks down upon such men. By contrast if we are to turn to Scandinavia with its famously generous parental-leave (which can be divided amongst mothers and fathers), this is widely credited with helping the situation of women. But it has done so by empowering and including men, as well as women.
In the area of violence – I received a tweet today saying ‘Violence against women is ever-present, across the globe and in all walks of life. This needs to change’. I agree. But I also think we need to question our acceptance of violence toward men.
Men and boys are more likely to be victims of violent assault than women,(2) and are almost as likely to be victims of domestic violence.(3) Women are much more likely to be victims of sexual assault, but men do suffer from this too. In the US prison system Human Rights Watch estimated 140,000 had been raped in 2001, over 22% of inmate during their prison term.(4) Not only is this a scandal but it is accepted and is made the butt of many jokes. Imagine the outrage if ‘don’t drop the soap’ was a fun way of referring to raping female prisoners. At the same time it is almost impossible for a woman to rape a male under the law in the UK, since it requires you to have a penis, whereas an 18 year-old boy is a statutory rapist for having sex with his 15 year old girlfriend.(5) Even the crime sexual assault against a child carries the unnecessary pronoun 'he'. Yet we know that older women can sexually assault minors or pressure young men, with sometime serious consequences.
At the same time there are endless stories of teenage boys pressurizing girls into having sex etc., and the need to empower girls to say no. This is true, but again it has been made one sided. There is clearly a need to allow girls to stand up for themselves, but often the result of this type of thing is the message that boys are basically bad, and must be restrained at all times, while women are hapless victims. This is the case sometimes, but I also remember the endless bullying and jeering that schoolgirls would direct at the boys who were not sexually confident or aggressive. If a certain kind of girl is attracted to a certain kind of aggressive male behaviour, there is little reason why that boy would change, unless educated otherwise. At the same time if we are told that all boys are essentially dangerous/unpleasant where does this leave those that aren’t, and where also does this leave individual responsibility? The assumption that all boys are inherently predatory is a dangerous path to follow for both men and women.
I do not want to get in to a pointless exercise listing the alternative areas of sexism in our society, or to claim that discrimination against women does not exist, and let me say once again that I am not for a second trying to downplay the problems that inequality, violence, power imbalances can cause to my fellow humans.
I am simply trying to explain that by constantly defining issues as women’s rights issues, we divide ourselves unnecessarily, divide society, and alienate a whole host of men who have never had a male boss, or who would no sooner assault a woman as fly off a cliff, but who are tired of being treated as though gender is entirely a one way issue. These men will become less interested, less responsive. If we really want to tackle gender problems and sexism, we need to start including both genders – not viewing everything through a female prism. I hope this is not misunderstood.
1. http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Parents/ParentsRights/DG_4002954
2. http://nortonbooks.typepad.com/everydaysociology/2009/05/who-is-most-likely-to-be-a-crime-victim.html
3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/sep/05/men-victims-domestic-violence
4. http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/prison/report1.html
5. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/contents
Okay, I understand that this would all be very different if I lived in Pakistan or the 1970s, but I don’t. I live in the UK so I am talking about modern UK/Western society, and having a woman’s day seems not only anachronistic, but a poor response to the complex social issues tied up with gender. Maybe we could balance up with an international men’s day, but I would rather have some kind of gender respect day.
The trouble with gender politics is that in popular terms they are so one-sided, and that they take a whole bunch of complicated gender issues and boil them down into issues of discrimination against women. There is much talk of addressing the way that society views women, and much talk of men changing their ways, but very little talk about changing the way society, male and female, views men. For example how do we really view the stay-at home dad, or the old man who enjoys watching children play? How do we raise our boys, and why do so many think they need to act a way we say we don't want? Why is an unmarried father not allowed to get parental responsibility and his child a passport without the mother’s consent, while the mother needs no such permission?(1) These issues receive precious little discussion, especially compared to the standard fare of changing society's attitudes to women. Obviously this situation has evolved for historical reasons, but it has to change sometime.
There are also many over-simplifications, preyed on by the press. Take the pay gap issue. To most people that is about men and women getting paid different amounts for doing the same job. Actually that is exactly what it is not about. It is about the average earnings of men and women in society as a whole, and the largest differences are accounted for by time off to raise children, historical imbalances and career choices. Any discrimination is subtle, and will not be addressed through headlines and blunt legislation. There is also another way of looking at it, which is that men in this society still do not feel able, or are not allowed, to take time off to raise children or to work part time. And indeed much of society looks down upon such men. By contrast if we are to turn to Scandinavia with its famously generous parental-leave (which can be divided amongst mothers and fathers), this is widely credited with helping the situation of women. But it has done so by empowering and including men, as well as women.
In the area of violence – I received a tweet today saying ‘Violence against women is ever-present, across the globe and in all walks of life. This needs to change’. I agree. But I also think we need to question our acceptance of violence toward men.
Men and boys are more likely to be victims of violent assault than women,(2) and are almost as likely to be victims of domestic violence.(3) Women are much more likely to be victims of sexual assault, but men do suffer from this too. In the US prison system Human Rights Watch estimated 140,000 had been raped in 2001, over 22% of inmate during their prison term.(4) Not only is this a scandal but it is accepted and is made the butt of many jokes. Imagine the outrage if ‘don’t drop the soap’ was a fun way of referring to raping female prisoners. At the same time it is almost impossible for a woman to rape a male under the law in the UK, since it requires you to have a penis, whereas an 18 year-old boy is a statutory rapist for having sex with his 15 year old girlfriend.(5) Even the crime sexual assault against a child carries the unnecessary pronoun 'he'. Yet we know that older women can sexually assault minors or pressure young men, with sometime serious consequences.
At the same time there are endless stories of teenage boys pressurizing girls into having sex etc., and the need to empower girls to say no. This is true, but again it has been made one sided. There is clearly a need to allow girls to stand up for themselves, but often the result of this type of thing is the message that boys are basically bad, and must be restrained at all times, while women are hapless victims. This is the case sometimes, but I also remember the endless bullying and jeering that schoolgirls would direct at the boys who were not sexually confident or aggressive. If a certain kind of girl is attracted to a certain kind of aggressive male behaviour, there is little reason why that boy would change, unless educated otherwise. At the same time if we are told that all boys are essentially dangerous/unpleasant where does this leave those that aren’t, and where also does this leave individual responsibility? The assumption that all boys are inherently predatory is a dangerous path to follow for both men and women.
I do not want to get in to a pointless exercise listing the alternative areas of sexism in our society, or to claim that discrimination against women does not exist, and let me say once again that I am not for a second trying to downplay the problems that inequality, violence, power imbalances can cause to my fellow humans.
I am simply trying to explain that by constantly defining issues as women’s rights issues, we divide ourselves unnecessarily, divide society, and alienate a whole host of men who have never had a male boss, or who would no sooner assault a woman as fly off a cliff, but who are tired of being treated as though gender is entirely a one way issue. These men will become less interested, less responsive. If we really want to tackle gender problems and sexism, we need to start including both genders – not viewing everything through a female prism. I hope this is not misunderstood.
1. http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Parents/ParentsRights/DG_4002954
2. http://nortonbooks.typepad.com/everydaysociology/2009/05/who-is-most-likely-to-be-a-crime-victim.html
3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/sep/05/men-victims-domestic-violence
4. http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/prison/report1.html
5. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/contents
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