On winter

"I woke up and I was covered in snow," Tony told me with startling cheer last night.

We chatted about his attempt to get his foundation for lifting people out of poverty and exclusion, The Outcast Foundation, up and running, about the farce of how he almost had free office space courtesy of Landsec until he was deemed too homeless. 

Tony is the guy who sells me The Big Issue at Victoria Station each week. Like Big Issue Bill, from whom I used to buy the magazine, atoning for my hungover sins on many a blindingly sunny Sydney morning, I've started chatting with Tony. The stories of vendors are frequently moving and inspiring and Tony's story is no exception.

So it's an absolute travesty that he should have woken up on Sunday morning covered in snow. 

Meanwhile, barely half an hour after I bid Tony good night, I was on the bus from the tube station to my house fruitlessly poking away at my phone screen in a state of irritation. I was trying to turn on the heating via an app. I couldn't connect to the internet and had to endure the hell of coming home and then turning on the heating via a switch on the wall just inside the front door.

I had to remind myself that I have never woken up covered in snow.

And for the too-many people who have woken up covered in snow this week, the reasons, the chain of events which lead to people not waking up in warm beds, underneath roofs, surrounded by solid walls, with the central heating set to switch on before the alarm goes off, are complex.

For some people, such as Tony, the attempts at assistance from well-meaning charities can be more of a hindrance than a help.

For some people, they know there is a door somewhere out there that will always open for them but there are other issues at play, such as mental illness, which lead to sleeping rough. And this is the situation for a dear friend of mine as I write this, safely indoors, with the heating turned on.

To understand life in the mind of someone with a mental illness is a challenge for those who are not in this uniquely pernicious pain. To voluntarily be homeless, as my friend currently is, to leave a warm home where loved ones await can seem like an almost offensive rebellion, an act of profound ingratitude. And on a purely academic level, maybe it is. But mental illness is not rational. It produces irrational responses and behaviours that don't always make sense and can be genuinely terrifying to the patient and to the people they love and who love them, even when their situation is bleak.

And that is my fear for my friend who has again abandoned a roof over his head, who has been known to sleep in the gardens and garages of friends and family, who has taken up residence in woodlands and in the parks and shop doorways of London.

Too many times I have spoken to him or had an online chat with him and feared that it would be the last time I would ever see him or hear his voice or see his words pop up on my phone or computer screen. He is a brilliant writer, a wonderful raconteur, when he is at his best, he is the funniest, most entertaining person in the room.

He wrote a piece for me only a few weeks ago and it was excellent - it was insightful, there was not a cliche to be found, it was everything I wanted for that particular commission. I barely changed a thing, just a couple of typos. If only every writer whom I edit could consistently file such sparkling copy. It was a joy to edit his work, it was a joy to process the invoice.

Richard, once again, I ask you to come home, to follow the treatment that is on offer, to sleep in a warm, clean bed and not cause your family sleepless nights.

I have given three eulogies in my time - my paternal grandparents and a godmother all died within two years of each other and Dad and I somehow found ourselves appointed the family funeral orators. As far as I can tell, my eulogies were well-received. But they were written about people who died aged 89, 91 and 86. They were long lives well lived.

Richard, I have had horrific dreams about giving your eulogy. As much as I like the sound of my own voice, I don't want to give your eulogy any time soon. We are doing our best to understand why you are currently at the mercy of what is already a biting British winter. And we are all hoping for that day when nobody wakes up covered in snow.

This is Richard. Please keep an eye out for him in central London and Hertfordshire

Photography by Karim Corban/Flickr

On vulnerability

This week, I have been reflecting on vulnerability, on my own vulnerability and that of others, especially those who are close to me, of why few of us want to admit to being vulnerable, of why it would be empowering if more of us were able to admit to our vulnerabilities, whatever form they may take.

Fear and vulnerability go hand in hand. In my case, my vulnerabilities are physical - I have two club feet, arthritis and a damaged lower back. While these afflictions cause me some level of pain most days, I do tend to just get on with things and, fortunately, I have a career in which skills such as mountaineering, skiing or tap-dancing are not required. 

But when I have a bad pain day, it doesn't just hurt me physically, it upsets me, although I seldom show this side of my psyche in public. I had one such bad pain day on Monday - I was too proud or vain or silly to retrieve my crutches from the cupboard under the stairs to help with my commute, even though that would made life so much easier. I got angry and annoyed when someone walked at me when I was using a handrail on the tube station staircase. By the end of the day, I was in so much pain, I had to cancel my plans for the evening and limp home to wallow in the bath.

On those days, the fear is that my feet or knees will seize up at an inopportune moment. Awful scenarios often pop, unsolicited, into my head - maybe I will be rendered immobile in a busy tube station in rush hour, or a cyclist or scooter rider will come up behind me on the footpath and I won't be nimble enough to get out of the way in time. This nearly happened to me this afternoon and all I could do was impotently shout: "Use a fucking bell, you twat, or ride on the fucking road!" when a cyclist silently rode up behind me on a footpath as I walked to the shop and gave me a massive fright. Not my finest moment, I admit, but it's just what came out as I realised that a stray step to the left or right could have put me in hospital.

For me, it is these feelings of powerlessness and the fear that one day, being in pain will put me in real danger that make me vulnerable. What if someone is chasing me and, despite my commitment to flat shoes, I just cannot run away? What if the next time I fall over, I'm home alone? So many what-ifs...

Getting older, and its inevitable physical consequences, add to this fear. And I hate it, I fight it, but sometimes I need to vocalise it. If I cannot go out because I genuinely cannot walk, I should not be afraid or embarrassed to say so.

For others, their vulnerabilities stem directly from mental health issues, rather than the psychological distress following on from a physical condition. Anyone who dares tell me that mental health issues are not real, that sufferers can simply "snap out of it" can, with all due respect, get the hell out of my sight. Mental health conditions cast long shadows over the lives of patients and everyone around them. 

Such conditions can be managed but they can also lead to irrational behaviour, to frustration and despair among those who love them, to ends of tethers being reached, to crippling feelings of guilt when one feels that one has not done enough or can do no more. 

Insidiously, mental illness does not discriminate. To say that someone is too pretty/rich/intelligent/successful/talented or whatever to suffer from a mental health condition is reductive and asinine. The suicide of Robin Williams is tragic, the suicide of a member of my family was also tragic, there is no hierarchy here, no one more or less deserving of help. Vulnerability has a distressing power all of its own.

Any one of us could be felled by mental illness - and the causes are myriad - so to dismiss someone's condition because they don't fit the perfect victim stereotype is to make it harder for these conditions to be understood. It creates stigmas, it makes it harder for people to seek the help they need. 

It's as awful and unhelpful as condemning rape victims who don't fit the perfect victim stereotype - as if a woman who had the temerity to sleep around or be a sex worker or walk home by herself in a short dress is somehow less deserving of sympathy than a violated virgin. This mentality causes monstrous behaviour. When a hitherto strong, gutsy woman is reduced to a fragile, vulnerable mental state after being raped, she too needs support rather than being merely expected to get on with things. 

But it's not just about us not being afraid to admit our vulnerabilities. We all have a responsibility as a society to ensure there is a safety net for the vulnerable, that it's not just left to charities to pick up the pieces, that governments ensure that their programmes and institutions are properly funded and offer real help, not false economy Band-Aid solutions. 

This weekend, I experienced first-hand an NHS emergency mental healthcare service and I was impressed with the patience, efficiency and compassion that was shown on behalf of a friend in crisis and towards me as well. It was reassuring to be told that I had done the right thing and not to be made to feel as if I was wasting time. But I know that the excellent work of NHS mental health workers is undermined by underfunding, overstretching of resources and overwhelming demand.

I have no easy answers but as I shut the door on an emotional weekend, I do know that the safety net is gossamer-thin and when someone falls through it, it doesn't really matter who they are. What matters is how we can do better, how we can not be brutes, and how we can be kinder to ourselves and to each other for we all have our vulnerabilities.

Photography by Beth Punches/Flickr

Why I'm still a feminist: Part 3

And now for the last look at my feminist rants in honour of this year's International Women's Day... Let's see what I ranted about last year and whether anything has changed...

Just as I ended 2013 with a rant about first ladies, I started 2014 in the same vein in the wake of all manner of details about the private life of Francois Hollande emerging. Basically, it's only the business of those affected by his sex life and nobody else. Move on, nothing to see. Similarly, there was another sex work fauxrage over government employment incentives for strip clubs and the adult film industry. Sorry, but if the jobs are legal so are the incentives. And nobody is being forced by the government to work in these places. Again, move on, nothing to see.

Female genital mutilation was discussed in great detail for the first time on my blog last year - I am a bit saddened with myself that I did not do this sooner or more often. I have no time for cultural relativism here. It is a barbaric and brutal practice which pretty much always happens without consent and in appalling conditions. The privileged women who claim that it was their choice to be mutilated, that it was just a little nick and that the still-ghastly procedure was done in sanitary conditions by a doctor are ridiculous. They are in no way representative of the countless women whose lives are ruined in this way every year.

Reproductive rights in Australia came under the spotlight after the terrible Reverend Fred Nile used the suicide of an Australian TV presenter to push his anti-abortion barrow. Compared to the UK, Australian abortion laws are much tighter and differ from state to state. Here in the UK, they just differ if you live in Northern Ireland. That needs to change too.

And then another tragedy - the suicide of L'Wren Scott. She was reduced largely to being "Mick Jagger's girlfriend" rather than a talented fashion designer, a perfectionist, a woman from all reports of grace and charm.

And then there was the almost-abortion of Josie Cunningham. Her situation provided a challenge to prochoicers everywhere and a lot of snobbery emerged as a result, as well as some silly comments below the line. If you are prochoice, you need to be comfortable with all women's choices. That is how it works.

In may last year, the UAE trumpeted great results in a survey on women's rights. Having lived there for five years, I figured I was well-placed to analyse the results. The UAE remains a pretty good place to be a woman for the most part, but stats always need a closer study. This was no exception. It depends who you are as to whether being a woman in the UAE is a good thing or a bad thing. On the upside, it's not Saudi...

My eyes rolled hard last June when Kirstie Allsopp said she'd advise her daughter to skip university, find a nice boyfriend and just buy property. Given that her imaginary daughter would have access to education that millions of girls around the world still do not have, this was awful, head-in-the-clouds-and-up-one's-arse stuff. Allsopp gives sound property advice. Her life advice is another matter entirely.

I waded into murky territory with my "Fracking and feminism" blog post. The reality is that energy poverty denies girls and women the chance to reach their full potential in the developing world. It deprives them of access to education, it keeps them at home, often literally keeping the home fires burning. If shale gas was discovered in any of these places, the access to energy would be life-changing for many girls and women. But at what environmental cost? As opposition to fracking reaches fever pitch (although if Germany fracked more, it would not be relying on Russian gas...), intelligent long-term solutions are needed more than ever. But while everyone argues, girls and women are getting left behind.

The notion of women as victims is a murky one too so naturally I went there last October. Sympathy for women who have suffered something terrible varies wildly - it can depend on class, race, what she wore, how much she had to drink, the way she looks... And so the comparison of Monica Lewinsky and Ched Evan's rape victim led me to the conclusion that compassion for women remains conditional.

And then we ended the year with boobs. Another breastfeeding row... And now it is 2015 and International Women's Day has come and gone for another year and people still lose their shit about breastfeeding in public. Perhaps I need to resolve to do better. But I am just one blog. We need more voices across the world to be heard. And if you are doing anything to stifle freedom of speech, you are silencing women. So that is the uphill battle that now needs to be fought on top of improving the lot of women across the world. This is truly depressing.



Photo by Anna Langova

Reading Elliot Rodger's manifesto so you don't have to...

There are a couple of things that I can't see changing in the wake of Elliot Rodger stabbing, running over and shooting innocent people in California. One of them is gun control laws in the state of California (or indeed anywhere else in America) and the other is mental healthcare.

Regardless of where you stand on the issue of gun control, it's hard not to be moved by the tearful, angry speech made by Richard Martinez, the father of Christopher Martinez, one of the young men killed by Elliot Rodger. In any case, Californian gun laws were tightened up after the Sandy Hook shootings in Connecticut and Elliot Rodger still managed to obtain a gun and kill people. This latest incident is not likely to inspire other states to tighten up firearms legislation.

Rodger's family alerted the police prior to the killings about his mental health issues and, perhaps if these reports were taken more seriously and police were able to uncover his manifesto and three semi-automatic handguns, perhaps his victims might still be alive. Or perhaps Rodger would have found other ways to kill people. We will never know now that Rodger is also dead. Should he have been detained against his will in a psychiatric unit? Will any of this lead to changes in mental healthcare for California or anywhere else? Probably not. And there are plenty of mentally ill people who do not kill people and they do not deserve the stigma of being tarred with the same brush as a murderer.

But the big conversation that is happening is centred around the bitterness and hatred towards women that is expressed in Rodger's 137-page manifesto. This is good because misogyny - endemic, entrenched misogyny among many men - was central to his actions and this needs to be discussed. I have seen this important conversation happen with people across the political spectrum and it is heartening to see that Rodger's issues with women are horrifying plenty of people from the left, the right and the middle.

He was a 22-year-old virgin and this seemed like a fate worse than death. He resented young men who were getting laid, he was particularly vitriolic and racist towards sexually successful black men, and he was seething with rage at women who would not have sex with him. This is despite him not apparently making any real attempts to interact with women. He seemed to think his mere existence as a wealthy male with a BMW entitled him to sex. The way he dealt with his hatred of women by committing multiple murders was an anomaly, but his vile attitude is not uncommon.

Rodger had wealth, privilege and a comfortable, international childhood, but this came with an inflated sense of entitlement in relation to women's bodies. He was a classic case of a guy who was viewed by women as the geek who gets "friend-zoned" or is invisible to them. But while the notion of geeks missing out on sex is a well-worn comedy movie trope, it's also the public face of much darker notions and this is uncovered in his manifesto.

When Rodger's family moved to the US when he was five years old, his first friend was a girl. In the manifesto, he deems her to be the only female friend he ever had - it would seem she was the only female he was willing to befriend before he started to believe that women were out to get him by denying him sex. But he also describes other women in his life, such as a teacher and his step-grandmother, with much fondness. Despite his parents splitting up, he was not isolated from positive female role models.

His manifesto describes his childhood in great detail. He attended good schools, he had opportunities, he writes quite well and his words are sometimes even touching, especially when he writes about his teacher. But a thread of bitterness runs through his words and deepens as you read on. Being told he was too short for an amusement park ride, not quite fitting in with the cool kids and having to change schools are described as injustices. He resents his mother when she encourages him to get a job. As puberty kicked in and he was attracted to girls, his story gets darker and more disturbing, a horrible case of a kid discovering he could have anything he wanted apart from social cachet and sex.

Rodger pinpoints his last satisfying physical experiences with girls as school dances where he was taught to slow-dance in the seventh and eighth grades. He never moved on from this. He discovered masturbation and then he hated himself for masturbating. He became obsessed with the way girls would interact with him, reading way too much into unremarkable behaviour, and he resented that self-pleasure was the only sex he was getting. He deemed sex as well as women to be evil, especially when he realised that, thanks to artificial insemination, women could get pregnant without having sex. He dreamed of a world where nobody had sex or relationships as long as he remained a virgin. His words are those of a hate-ridden, self-involved narcissist.

And so the hatred of girls and women and the resentment of sexually active boys and men built up, unchecked, over the course of his life. Rodgers was not an idiot. He had great potential to be a success in life but all this was warped by perceived sexual rejection which turned into a certain kind of misogyny that has found its place in the world. It is not new for men to feel entitled to sex and rage-filled if they miss out, but it is a notion that has been not been questioned enough. Now is the time to do so.

To any man out there who is enraged by the fact that women are not having sex with them, I'm sorry but sex with whomever you want is not a right. Sexual rejection, or simply being ignored by women, is hurtful but it's not an injustice. Being a 22-year-old virgin may be frustrating and annoying but it is not an injustice. Are any of you even trying to form meaningful relationships with women? Men like you have got to stop looking at female friendship as being akin to tokens you put into a woman like she is a slot machine until sex comes out.

Women get friend-zoned or unnoticed by men too. Sure, it feels like you've been consigned to the unsexiest kingdom of it all, but it is not an excuse for violence or wholesale hatred. As a woman who likes things like cars, cricket and rugby, it has happened to me plenty of times - I have often been the woman a with whom a man wants to watch sport but not take to bed. Shit happens. I didn't walk away from those cringe-inducing "I just want to be friends" conversations feeling entitled to the man-in-question's penis. Friend-zoning and merely not being noticed are things that happen among gay and bisexual people as well. It is simply what happens when the sexual attraction just ain't there and it is something people need to be able to deal with maturely, regardless of who they are.

But, like lifting a rock and finding it crawling with spiders underneath, Elliot Rodger's story has revealed a deep vein of hatred among some young men (and it is pretty much exclusively young men, let's not be shy about this). It is a vein made up of feelings of entitlement to women's bodies, of viewing women as prey or targets, of assuming women are all shallow bitches who only want musclebound, wealthy athletes, of hero-worshipping Rodgers, of rape apologists, of stalker apologists, and, chillingly, of plotting manifestos and copycat attacks in online chat rooms. They are not just talking about guns or knives but about bombs, about using their intelligence to kill as many people as they can.

To pretend this isn't a problem is naive. The geek who isn't getting laid is not merely a pitiful caricature. In Elliot Rodger, we have an example of the deep, violent hatred of women that is real and encouraged by an awful underbelly of men. If this is left unchecked and not talked about openly, if sex education is either suppressed or merely talked about in terms of genital plumbing rather than the broader context of respect and relationships, more awful things will happen to innocent people.



Photography by Piotr Siedlecki

L'Wren Scott and the inevitable grim spectacle

L'Wren Scott was a fashion designer who died a tragic death in New York City, aged just 49. That's no age, as they say. But in today's papers, she was, above all else, the girlfriend of Mick Jagger who committed suicide yesterday, who happened to be a fashion designer and, hey, what better way to sell a few more copies than to run a poster cover purporting to show a gigantic photo of the moment the ageing rocker heard the awful news.

I get it. As a believer in the free press and a free market economy for the media with minimal government interference, I support the right of any newspaper to report on this story however they damn well please. And the Mick Jagger angle is going to attract clicks galore. Obviously. It's Mick freakin' Jagger. Don't like the coverage? Don't buy it or click on the website.

But a free press must be open to criticism. I find it sad that a 49-year-old woman with accomplishments of her own is reduced in death to a "girlfriend". Even the way the relationship is described is reductive and juvenile. L'Wren and Mick were together for 13 years. At their age and after a relationship that lasted longer than a lot of marriages, "girlfriend" can be upgraded to "partner". Yes, I know plenty of people find the word "partner" to be utterly naff but at least it is grown up. With the exception of Dennis Thatcher, dead men are seldom identified first and foremost by their relationship, but for dead women, it is often the preface to her other achievements.

From a cold and cynical free marketeer point of view, the three words that are "suicide" and "fashion designer" will attract interest and will drive traffic to websites and subsequently lead to newspapers being sold too. People are complete and utter ghouls. Those three words will lead people to ask themselves who committed suicide and click on the link and, hey presto, the media outlets get what they want.  We have the additional story of Mick Jagger understandably putting his Australian tour on hold. There's plenty of mileage in this beast yet.

Armchair psychologists will also have their own grim field day with this story. The earliest news on the inevitable question of "Why?" points to financial problems. Cue people asking why she simply didn't ask Mick for some cash, or claiming that financial problems are a lame reason to commit suicide despite not knowing L'Wren Scott personally, or trotting out the trite "but she had so much going for her" line.

But just as Fred Nile reduced Charlotte Dawson's suicide to an abortion she had 15 years ago, nobody will ever truly know what the final moments were like for L'Wren Scott. Instead, there is a morbid rabble out there tweeting nonsense and none of this will advance our understanding of suicide or depression.

And none of this noise, none of this crude speculation over an unspeakably sad situation, none of the awful pictures of Mick Jagger in a state of utter shock and heartbreak, none of this predictable ghoulishness will bring a talented, interesting woman back.

An open letter to Fred Nile

Dear Fred,

Congratulations on your marriage last December. I'm sure you had a lovely wedding day and, as someone who is also happily married, we can both agree that finding someone you love to share your life is a wonderful thing. It's just a shame that in your perfect world, you would not extend the right to such joy to same-sex couples.

Whoops! Sorry! That was a bit crass of me, wasn't it? Did see what I so thoughtlessly did there? I used the example of your personal life to make a political point. I've never actually met you, save for the time I was on Sydney's Oxford Street with my family watching the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras back in 1992 and across the road, I spotted you and a few supporters trying to pray the gay away, but I figured I'd still use your personal situation to share my views on marriage equality.

It's as rude as, oh, I dunno, using the suicide of Charlotte Dawson to hammer out an anti-abortion message, as you did, Fred. Perhaps obituary writers did not feel the need to mention the abortion she had in 1999 because she had already shared this story in her autobiography, or because her privacy had already been stripped away, partly by herself and partly by the media, or because of editorial word limits, or because, maybe, just maybe, the writers figured that an obituary might be a distasteful place to mention pregnancy termination.

Oh dear, sorry, I got distracted again. I was writing to congratulate you on your marriage. Er, where was I? Oh yes, that's right, it is indeed marvellous to fall in love and share your life with someone. It is such a shame that you didn't have the full support of your family on your wedding day. From what I've read in assorted newspapers and gossip columns, I understand that your daughter and one of your three sons didn't attend your wedding. Something to do with them not being comfortable with you remarrying so soon after Elaine, your first wife, passed away? Is that correct? How awful for you. I can't imagine my own wedding day without my family being there.

Whoops! There I go again! I don't know what has come over me today. What was I thinking in bringing up details of your family dramas when I've never met you or your family, I wasn't invited to your wedding, I am not privy to what goes on behind closed doors in your family, and I do not have access to all the facts.

That's bit like pulling out a quote about an abortion from a recently dead woman's autobiography and posting it on your Facebook page with a comment about the lack of abortion mentions in her obituaries the day after she was found dead in her apartment. The quote from her autobiography - "I felt a shift, I felt the early tinges of what I can now identify as my first experience with depression" - do indeed refer to the "total turmoil" she felt on the day she had an abortion after falling pregnant to her ex-husband, Scott Miller.

From her account, it would appear that she felt pressured into terminating the pregnancy at the behest of her ex-husband. But you didn't feel the need to think about this side of the story before posting on Facebook, did you, Fred?

The circumstances surrounding her abortion include a failing and troubled relationship that was being played out in the public eye. Charlotte's writings on the subject do not paint Scott in a flattering light. And nobody who is truly prochoice is OK about any abortion that happens in an environment of coercion. Prochoice is about supporting all choices women make, giving them the information to make educated choices, and the resources to ensure that all choices are available to them, including carrying unplanned pregnancies to term.

Here's the thing, Fred: Just as I have no real clue about the details of your family life, your wedding day, or your relationship with your sons and daughter, you have no real idea about what Charlotte was going through 15 years ago - or last week. Equally, neither you or I have a time machine that we could set to 1999 and change the course of Charlotte's life so that she chose to carry the pregnancy to term. We will never know what sort of a mother she might have been, whether having a baby would have saved her, how she might have coped with pregnancy and childbirth, whether she would have been felled by the horrors of post-natal depression, whether her marriage would have survived, or whether she would have gone on to be a successful and happy single mother. These scenarios are all in the realm of the ghoulishly hypothetical.

Given that nothing anyone can say or do can bring Charlotte back, given that her friends and family are going through the terrible process of grieving for a woman who felt so desperate that, despite her many advantages, she took her own life at the age of 47, and given that depression is a complex condition that cannot be summarised in a Facebook post, it is appalling that you'd give a troubled woman one last agenda-loaded kick when she was as low as any person can possibly be.

Like I said, Fred, congratulations on your marriage. May you and your new wife have many happy years together. May you recognise that such joy isn't as forthcoming to everyone. And next time you feel the need to make a point about abortion, consider whether using the early death of a woman who was in enormous pain really is the best way to push that particular barrow.

Kind regards,

Georgia