Gender Bias in Rape

So a short while back, I made a comic in response to a NYT piece about a gang-rape on a 12-year-old girl. The piece was editorialised in such a way as to emphasise the adult and sexual attire of the 12-year-old and the irresponsibility of the parent for letting her out in public that way. While these are important discussions to have, the problem with the article was that these statements glossed over the fact that multiple people at minimum performed statutory rape on a minor. Hence my comic.

Now, this comic has been spread around a bit on a number of feminist/liberal sites as a point of discussion and I'm glad for this. I'm the kind of person who likes to track when my work gets passed around (I like to see people's responses) and today I came upon this comment:

I get this, really I do. But, I was raped by a woman, so why is the rapist always a man? They even gender it with pink and blue and say “guy on the left is a rapist”. Shit like this really invalidates my experience of being violated by a female. I wish people would be more gender-neutral when calling out rapists and rape apologists.

Which is a fair point, and one I hadn't really considered. I mean, I know some rapists/sexual assaulters (?) are women but in this context it didn't cross my mind when compiling some examples.

So I think I've got a couple of things to say as a response:

1) I absolutely agree that sexual assault can comes from almost any type of person. Male, female, heterosexual, homosexual, (x)-sexual, adults, children, strangers, loved ones... I don't mean to make it sound like there are rapists round every corner, but the point is that yes, indeed, the perpetrators of such assault are not limited to just evil men. And this is definitely a fact we should not lose sight of as there is definitely a propensity to shrug off sexual assault by a woman as 'ridiculous' as if a woman couldn't commit such an offense. We should take every accusation of assault seriously and investigate and provide support accordingly.

2)However, this was not the point of the comic. The point of the comic was the intrinsic social misogyny that rears it's ugly head in many, many rape cases. Time and time again we hear that the woman must shoulder some of the blame for the attack because she was dressed inappropriately, that she was walking in a dodgy part of town or that she was too drunk to control herself. Now, while there is a need to act responsibly and be aware of potential dangers, there is simply no excusing the rapist for taking advantage of their victims weaknesses. If you walk down a dark alley and get stabbed and mugged, we don't transfer any of the blame from the mugger to the victim simply because the victim was in a dark alley.

But a significant portion of society does this with 'liberated' women who are assaulted by men and that was the issue I was attempting to highlight in the comic.

(Incidentally, I don't think you'd be able to find a case where a drunken straight guy was raped by a man and the straight guy was expected to accept his ordeal as a consequence of drunkenness).

3) It's very difficult to tackle a lot of issues in one punch. I think the comic seems to work (at the risk of talking myself for the briefest of moments) because it has one clear message. If you start mixing a number of issues into the pot then the 'punch' of the message gets lost.

So I absolutely sympathise with anyone who has tragically been the victim of assault, no matter who the perpetrator. I further sympathise with victims who have been assaulted in a manner that has yet to be given the seriousness it deserves (e.g. by a woman). But believe me when I say I had no intention of trivialising any aspects of assault by their absence.

EDIT: As an addendum, I've focussed on the assaulter in this post, but equally not all victims of abuse are women. Again, I have focussed on the victims who are most likely to have the blame passed onto them by social ignorance/the most commonly reported victims.

Why Writing Erotica is the Best Thing You Can Do

I am not a writer by any stretch so I wouldn't dream of attempting to give any advice on such matters. If you want writing advice, go to Lauren. She's got all the good tips like 'stop randomly capitalising words' and 'shimming isn't a word'. She's a gold mine of information.

I do, however, enjoy writing and it used to be the feather in my academic bonnet between the ages of about 6 and 14. I managed to impress teachers with an early aptitude for creative writing, which distracted them a little from my appalling maths skills and retarded drawing ability (1). But somewhere along the lines, I must have got confused and came out of university with an art foundation and a maths and physics degree. Writing disappeared backstage during those dark years.

But I still enjoy writing, and in recent times I've been trying a few things out again (reducing my comic-load in the process) so when I spotted a writing competition on twitter, I went and checked it out. It turned out to be an Erotic Fiction Competition (2) for a women's magazine called Filament ("the thinking woman's crumpet"). I toyed with the idea in my head for a bit, never really wanting to commit, as writing about sexy times could be pretty embarrassing. But then I kind of got into a dare with a lady on twitter so I wrote the damn thing.

I won't go into the plot or who-did-what-to-whom here (just in case), but I will tell you a little bit about the experience.

Firstly: everything sounds like a bloody innuendo while you're writing it. "I was up late last night"; "you've got to get it in by the end of the day"; "fucking hell". Everything.

Secondly, and most importantly: it was the hardest (!) thing I've ever written in my life. Not in the sense that I was writing about sex and that it was awkward and cringeworthy, though it was. Once you commit to writing erotica, you're going to have to accept you're going to have to write about sexy bits and sexy actions; you get over it pretty quickly. No, it was difficult because you quickly come (!) to realise that the whole sexiness of sex is that it's an unspoken language. And a language without words doesn't work well in written form.

I'm sure there are some people that get their rocks off with dirty talk in the bedroom or with an endless stream of verbal instructions ("do this"; "do that"; "put it there"; "let's do it this way", etc) but in the world I'm familiar with, everything is a lot more subtle and spoken in actions, expressions and suggestion-by-touch. I might be the statistical whisker here, but whatever - it's my story (3).

This is coupled with the fact that sexy anatomicals... aren't sexy. Vagina sounds like something you'd floor your kitchen with. Penises and breasts are too clinical; cocks and pussies are too vulgar; boobs and willies are too silly. Even Vagitionary (4), the thesaurus for female anatomy stayed mostly within the vulgar/silly/clinical groupings.

And this is exactly why I found the whole experience so rewarding (though the result was utter cack). I really had to think about what I was writing. It reminded my of my French lessons: the teacher would encourage us to keep talking if we didn't know the right words, 'Talk around the words,' she'd say. 'Describe what you're talking about if you don't know the word you want.' This is what I had to do here: I had to talk around all the anatomical words and sexual acts and terrible, terrible dirtiness and describe everything as emotively as I could without getting too explicit. Because, in my opinion, explicitry (that can't possibly be a word) isn't sexy.

In working this way, you think a lot more about what you're doing and what you're trying to do. And it's bloody hard (!). Not only that, what do sexy feelings actually feel like? You can't just write "orgasm" or "sexy rumblings" throughout, you have to emote the whole feeling to the reader. I spent a lot of time staring into space trying to think of that the actual physical feeling of sexual interaction felt like. It's like trying to describe the colour blue (5): a fundamental sensation that can't be broken into smaller feelings. And furthermore, I wanted to tell it from a woman's perspective - it is a women's magazine, after all.

All in all, it was a journey fraught with obstacles that taught me a lot about writing, so I'm very glad I did it. And I'm very glad I never, ever have to do it again.

(1) I use retarded in its naissant sense, meaning that I was slow to figure out how to draw and colour properly. I still remember that beautiful day in year 5 when I finally figured out how to colour in the lines and the class congratulated me. I am not making this up.
(2) http://bit.ly/dKljuE
(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_and_whisker
(4) http://gregology.net/Entertainment/Vagitionary
(5) 7.5*10^15 Hz. Sexy.

Notes on the Right to Speak Offensively

Recently, two football pundits came under attack for a variety of sexist comments towards some particular women in football. Of this, enough has been said. However, someone on twitter (who I shall paraphrase for anonymity) said, rather angrily:

"Dad reckons that the guys off sky sports were unfairly vilified; that it was free speech and 'why we fought the war'"

There are a couple of responses to this. It's easiest to start with the parts that are right: that people have fought for the right to free speech. I think it's entirely fair to say that no one had to fight for the right to denigrate women, but all in all, thanks to long efforts in progressing society people can say whatever they like.

But here's the important part: if people don't like what you say, they can very much tell you so. The point of free speech is that it works both ways. If you're a public figure and heard to give some rather archaic and offensive views then it is very likely you are going to get a very public battering. It's not the madness of political correctness; it's not that 'you can't say anything anymore'; it's that your comments are open to scrutiny.

So, yes, it was free speech. And yes, we've fought for such freedoms. But freedom of speech is not the right to say anything without rebuttal.

But we don't even have to go that far, in this case. These two fellows are employees of a national broadcaster - in fact, they're not just employees they are spokespeople. They are voices of Sky Sports, and as such have a responsibility to their employer to behave ethically, responsibly and without bigotry. Heck, I'm just an analyst (professionally) and bear no outward face for my company and my contract still states I can't use language of a racism, sexist or otherwise offensive nature. And I can only piss off the few people who sit around me.

I think what we've seen from this is that while you can say nasty stuff about whomever you like (no one was arrested), most people will object to it and smack you down. Good.

The Language of Sexuality

This is a little thought about the language we use to describe sexuality and how there might be better ways to use our language to be more socially inclusive and to make things less "scary". Please note that I'm well aware that it would be mostly foolhardy to attempt to believe we can affect a change in today's language use; this is merely a reflection on a potentially better method. (Note: similarly, I read a great little essay on how people were using the wrong number for Pi (1), and the author similarly knew no one would ever change the way they used Pi). Hat-tip to Rebecca (2) who actually formulated the new terms used below.

So here's my thinking. The terms, 'homosexual' and 'heterosexual' are unnecessarily segregative  They've been used over the years to create an 'us and them' mentality in society that has brainwashed (for want, perhaps, of a lighter word) a good number of people into thinking about their fellow men and women in an imperfect light. Even paid-up members of the so called leftist, liberal elite have confessed a reactionary 'ick factor' when considering different sexualities, though whether this is a result of memetic language use is a matter for debate.

It all begins with a need to break things down into categories for descriptive ease. Anyone who's explored evolution a little will know that even the divide between species is not a black-and-white one, but a sliding scale at which point we have (somewhat) arbitrarily put a fence, with one side labeled as homo erectus, and the other homo sapiens. And that's fine. Labelling is a necessity for communication.

A lot of segragation is born of catergorisation and classification. Black people and white people; thin people and fat people; glasses-wearers and non-glasses wearers - these are some natural and obvious differences between us that are readily identifiable and immediately useful, if only for pointing at a crowd of people across the room to focus in on a particular person. The correctness of these terms to pick people out of a crowd will not be discussed here, but one can hardly disagree with its simplicity and usefulness.

With sexuality, however, there is no immediate need to start separating people out in this way (3). And, in fact, as sexuality operates in a two-dimensional array (the dimensions being 'your own gender' and 'the gender(s) you're attracted to'), dividing people into 'homosexual' and 'heterosexual' is not, in my opinion, the best and most elegant solution.

Firstly, from the literary and social research I have studied it is quite clear that the heterosexual/homosexual divide is not a binary one. It exists on a sliding scale, much the same as there aren't just skinny people and obese people. Generally, it seems that the segregation exists between the heterosexual side and anyone who shows inklings of bisexuality onwards.

So, to the actual point of this post: the language. I think it would be far simpler and more useful to use classifications based on 'who you are attracted to', not 'how the gender of your attraction relates to your own gender'. When asking for labels, Rebecca came up with the superbly elegant Androsexual (attracted to men) and Gynosexual (attracted to women).

So what is the benefit of this re-classification? For starters, it's not really a classification at all anymore, it's more of an adjective. It describes what you like and it bleeds across the genders and other classifications. And let's face it, we are all familiar with androsexual and gynosexual people anyway, and comfortable (for the most part) with those different from us within this description. If you are a straight man, you don't (I assume) find it disgusting and unpalatable that your straight female friend is attracted to men, even though you are not. You probably never batted an eyelid about it. If you ever thought a little deeper you'd probably think: yeah she's probably done [sexual acts x,y,z] with men and though you may not like to think too much about close friends in sexual situations, you won't consider such things heinous, offensive or wrong. Androsexuals and gynosexuals get along; they understand each other. In this sense, you (a straight man in this example, still) can approach the idea of a gay man as no different in sexual appetite to your straight female friend. You are perfectly familiar with the concept of androsexuality.

Secondly, we start to move away from the sliding-scale sexuality to a more attributable sexuality. Let me explain: in the hetero/homo system, as you move from one extreme to the other you pass through a middle zone of bisexuality. As humans, we find this trickier to pin down that actua attributes. In the andro/gyno system, you can simultaneously hold both attributes at the same time, and not necessarily equally. This is similar to how I can like both apples and bananas, but prefer bananas. If you take a moment and reverse the fruit analogy back into the hetero/homo world you'd live in a world where, as a man, I would be expected to be a banana eater - a fruitnormian, maybe? The hetero/homo language is loaded with expectation.

I feel I've rattled off enough on this. It's a speculative and hypothetical idea, though I don't think I'm completely off the wall.

(1) http://unnaturalhistorymuseum.tumblr.com
(2) http://tauday.com/
(3) though I will admit, it certainly becomes useful in the singles dating pool.

British Atheism

Sometimes I have a moment of reflection about how I tend to make a lot of commentary on theism and religion and wonder why I feel so compelled to do so.

For in the UK, the issue of God's existence and what she actually wants if she does existent, barely seems to break the fabric of society at all. Even when people do manage to get their knickers in a twist, like the Daily Mail readers who followed Shirley Chappell's plight to be allowed to wear a crucifix chain in her nursing job, they don't care any further than tutting over their breakfast cereal.

Unlike in America, where huge groups of people can father together under one religious message, I'd be surprised if you could result find a parade of Britons who could passionately agree on their religion's stance on any social issue. And I say 'passionately' purposefully, because even when people can agree on something, they often won't regard that viewpoint as particularly important.

'Are gay marriages right with God?'; 'would god be annoyed if we clone humans?'; 'is there a heaven and hell?'. A lot of us British folk, believers or not, jusy don't care about these questions.

And I don't speak for all churches, but a lot of the ones I've been to exist more as a community and social lecture than a reinforcement of ancient dogma. Though the old stories, prayers and parables are stol recited, of course.

So, my question to myself is: why do I find out necessary to argue, commentate and satirise something that is almost negligible in my home kingdom? I may as well be talking about astrology, frankly. I haven't done the research, but the belief system around astrology seems pretty similar. "Yeah, I think its true, maybe, probably. Can we talk able something else?"

Firstly, the fact that the internet gives me a potentially global audience (most of our comic readers are from the theistically troubled US) means that anything I have to say on religion isn't entirely for a stagnant audience. The whole Gnu Atheism thing is really a euphemism for the re-energised social religious conflict America its going through at the moment.

Bit I would say the main reason I continue to cover religion (other than that I find it fascinating) its that the UK is in that sleepy period between the acceptance of an idea and its dismissal. Much like alternative medicines, religion is waved away wishy-washily as if it's fine to let everyone get on with it and annoying to address. We all suspect it's a bit of nonsense but best to let sleeping dogs lie than bother to think about the issue a little deeper.

Which is fine, in a way: everyone is entitled to their own beliefs. And like dormant volcanoes, the whole lot may go extinct, given time. Or, more dangerously, if we let it sit quietly it could become part of the furniture; something to be cherished, like grandma's old chez long. When that happens, you'll find people getting all protective over 'tradition' and 'custom'.

Or we could push to raise people's consciousness one last time just to make them realise how ridiculous the whole concept of theistic religion is. Something too silly to take seriously.

Also, it's really easy to make jokes and comics about God. That's another reason.

You know it's love when...

From: Lauren Taylor

Sent: 19 January 2011 10:17
To: Taylor, Stuart

Can't shift this cold

On 19 January 2011 10:18, Taylor, Stuart wrote:

Me either! Snif snif snof

From: Lauren Taylor

Sent: 19 January 2011 10:21
To: Taylor, Stuart

It's 'me neither'

Skeptic Logic Puzzle Solution

If you head over to Skepchick.com you'll find this neat little number puzzle .
I get a bit obsessed with number puzzles so here is my solution.

EDIT: Erm, I kind of buggered up the final step, so assume I picked the other solution :)

Movie Plots in Haiku

No one believes him
Even though he's an expert
But now it's too late




She's surprised to find
The man she thought she hated
Is the one for her




Enough time has passed
To exploit past disaster
For millions of bucks




He goes back in time
And finds to his amazement
A world of plotholes




We were getting high
Instead of writing a plot
The Wayans Brothers




A city hotshot
Takes a trip to the country
Learns to love again




This light comedy
Created in the eighties
Gratuitous tits

GameFAQs: Proof for God Walkthroug

Okay so I stumbled upon this site while trying to look at at pharyngulated poll and found a 'test' that seems to double as a proof for God.

It's not really structured as a formal proof, it's structured more as an adventure story in which God exists only if you press all the buttons to show you believe what the author believes, which is a bit dishonest so (as you'll see) I had to lie just to see what the Logical structure of the argument looked like.

And now I'm going to share it with you. Woohoo!

Prologue: Absolute Truth

The proof/test starts out by asking what you believe. This is a structure that will continue throughout the argument but only this part sees you in an infinite loop unless you accept their opening premise. Your options are:

1. Absolute truth exists
2. Absolute truth does not exist
3. I don't know if absolute truth exists
4. I don't care if absolute truth exists

Clicking on (4) sends you away from the website completely, assuming if you don't care about absolute truth then you don't care to hear about proof for God. This is quite a big assumption, but as their entire argument rests on such concepts I guess the rest of the site with be meaningless for you anyway.

Clicking on (2) or (3) is the first infuriating moment in this whole shambolic layout formal argument. It sends you to a subset of questions thus:

Absolute Truth Does Not Exist:

1. Absolutely True
2. False

This forces you to accept absolute truths (or else it tells you to 'think about it' and sends you back to the beginning. Which is kind of fine in a way if you're talking about Logical absolutes (in which something is what it is and is not what it is not, etc). They are essentialy forcing you to accept that absolute truths do exist, but we'll see later they will change the scope as if you accepted that all truth is absolute.
So anyway, you're forced to accept absolute truth exists or you cannot continue.

Part 1 - Laws of Logic

We're now told we're entering the proper formal part of the argument, starting with Logical laws. it gives a very brief introduction to what Logic actually is before asking you if the 'laws of Logic' exist.

1. The Laws of Logic Exist
2. The Laws of Logic Don't Exist

Pay attention, because it's going to play fast and loose with the word 'law' for the rest of the argument. i'm a bit of a pedant so I wasn't quite happy with the term 'laws of Logic' so I chose (2) to see what would happen.

If you say you don't think these 'laws' exist it - in a roundabout way - defines the 'laws of Logic' as the tools we use to make decisions. I would argue we aren't limited to Logical reason to make all of our decision or people wouldn't make reckless or stupid decisions every single day. However, I will be flexible and say that yes, there 'exists' a system of reasoning called Logical by which we can make decisions. Let's see where this takes us.

Part 2 - Laws of Mathematics

Being a mathematician myself, I was prepared to be angered by this part but I had no problem with what they said. They basically described the system of mathematics and ask:

1. The Laws of Mathematics Exist
2. The Laws of Mathematics Don't Exist

I'll admit at this point, it's a bit worrying where they might go with the term 'exist'. Mathematics, as with logic exist in a transendental way that doesn't actually interact with the world. I would tend to use existence in a way that describes something that can interact with the world, but for now I'll see where the journey takes me.

Part 3 - Laws of Science

Right, now they are definitely starting to irk me. The laws of science are very different from the internal formal structure of a logical or mathematical law. The laws of science are descriptive models - they are often simplifications (to a degree) of reality used to make predictions about matter/energy/whatever. They can be changed and updated and (if inaccurate or limited) can be violated.

We're asked if they exist (as is becoming standard) and of course you can only continue if you accept that they do. This leads me to another bugbear: if you don't accept any of the premises, the wholething grinds to a halt and blames you, the reader, for not accepting them. This isn't how it works, especially if you can't back up your premises. If I don't accept your premise, you haven't done a good enough job at presenting it to me.

However, once again, I can be lenient and accept that yes there is a system of 'rules' in the universe that govern how its components behave and interacts and we can call them laws even if we don't know what they are, fully. I think that's probably what they meant even if they didn't do a good job of explaining it.

Part 4 - Absolute Moral Laws

This part reminds me of an old playground trick between 8-year-olds that goes thus:

Child 1: Are you a boy?
Child 2: Yes
Child 1: Are you 8?
Child 2: Yes
Child 1: Are you from England?
Child 2: Yes
Child 1: Are you a gay?
Child 2: Yes
Child 1: Ha ha!
Child 2: No, wait! Argh - fooled me again, fellow 8-year-old!

So here we go then with the sneak-attack from behind. Using Logic, science and maths as a springboard we now get to 'laws of morality'. never mind that we've gone from Intrinsic Laws to Descriptive Laws; they now want to throw Prescriptive Laws at us as if all of them are equivalent.

They define 'moral laws' as the rules that describe how humans "ought to behave". They don't really describe 'abosolute moral laws' but give examples, like rape and child molestation. To be clear: an abolute moral law is a prescription of a behaviour that is always right or wrong. In effect, with the example, they are saying "rape is always wrong".

Having said that, I don't subscribe to the idea of absolute morality so I chose "Absolute Moral Laws Do Not Exist". This leads me to a difficult follow-up page in which they basically ask "Come on! Come onnnnn!"

The argument is thus: using the example that molesting children for fun is always wrong, they are the following:

1. Molesting children for fun is absolutely morally wrong
2. Molesting children for fun is not absolutely morally wrong

This does make you stop. It's meant to. Here is the thing though (and you might have to bear with me as I might not be able to phrase it eloquently enough to not make me look like a massive paedophile sympathiser): we have created a society in which it is wrong to molest children. I live in this society and I would agree that I cannot think of a single case in which it is okay for an adult to molest children, for fun or otherwise. However, we did not necessarily have to construct such a society. Our behaviours, interpersonal interactions, development from youth to adult, etc. are all part of a long period of social evolution which has culminated in it being wrong to molest children.

Now, I'm not saying we arbitrarily picked out molesting children as bad. I'm saying it's a product of our nature as humans, in which we've also decide that bashing people over the head is wrong. Why is it wrong? Because we don't like being bashed over the head. Why is molesting children wrong? It's an abuse upon their bodies at an age in which they are not mentally mature enough to cope with (there are lots of reasons for why it's wrong, in reality. Take yout pick).

In theory though, we could have developed into a society when molestation is a completely normal, non-distressing experience and, say, touching someone's ear is an absolute atrocity (for whatever reason). You see examples in animals (in my haste, I have not provided examples) that different animals have woldly different reactions to the same stimuli.

To summarise the above bit on molestation, it is not an "absolutely" immoral act because it is not demonstrably homogenous across the universe. It is not necessarily immoral. I know I'm treading a fine line here, but hopefully you know what I mean.

Therefore this premise is flawed and probably the rest of the argument is therefore unsound. But I have to pretend absolute morality exists to continue.

Part 5 - Laws of Nature A

For some reason, we're next asked if the laws of science/maths/logic/morality are material or immaterial. Immaterial. Agreed?

Part 6 - Laws of Nature B & C

We're next asked if we agree that all of the laws are universal and unchanging. That is, are they consistent across all space and time. The example is "is 2 2=4 true across all of the universe, or just because you say it does?"

I'm sorry but again I'm going to have to disgree with the answer they want me to give (that they are universal). Sure, the equation is univeral and logic is universal and we can ignore morality because I've already aired my beef with that (is that a phrase?). But the laws of science? I don't think i can say with much certainty that the laws of science are true across all time and all space. We have yet to unify quantum theory with general relativity. There are strong indications that the laws of physics were completely different before the Planck time (the time of the Big Bang expansion). There are laws of science we just don't know; if we don't know enough about science how can we declare them to be universal? This is clearly a flawed premise.

But I'm going to have to accept it anyway. This might all work out in the end. Here comes God!

The Pre-Proof

Right so now we've got all our premises down. We know the conclusion is "God Exists" so this part is the meat of the argument; the part that's going to say "having accepted all that (dodgy) stuff about those laws we spoke of, God exists because..."

Unfortunately we get a massive bold assertion and a quote from the Bible. This is worse than the Transcendental Argument for God (TAG).

Bold Assertion: "Universal, immaterial, unchanging laws cannot be accounted for if the universe was random or only material in nature."

Um, why? It doesn't say. Instead it says,
"there are 2 types of people in this world, those who profess the truth of God's existence and those who suppress the truth of God's existence."
which is a massive false dichotomy. I was impressive so far that they managed not to do this when guiding you though the premises but not only have they falsely dichotomised the entire human population, they've begged the question at the same time. And then:
"The options of 'seeking' God, or not believing in God are unavailable."
Wait, what? Yes they are - I so totally have taken one of these options.

We then get the old chestnut from Romans in which it states that God's existence and nature being written in the heart of every man (such that there is no excuse for denying Him). And then it makes another massive leap that you can't understand the universe if God doesn't exist.

Conclusion Arrrgghhhh! Why does it spend so much time spoonfeeding you through the premises and then not bother connecting them to the conclusion? Even if I had accepted all the premises we still wouldn't have got through this. SO FRUSTRATING.

Stuart

Why Draw Mohammad?

Someone asked me what the point was of Everybody Draw Muhammad Day (EDM). It's deliberately provocative, insulting, offensive and ultimately what do I expect it to achieve? If I want to draw Mohammad, just draw Mohammad; why do we need to do it in this big massive song and dance style?

Well it's true that we don't need to draw Mohammad as a largely anonymous internet mob. We don't reallyneed to do anything. But it feels right to do something even if it doesn't immediately cause the dissolution of oppressive theologies.

This all started with the controversial South Park double-bill in which their ultimate big-reveal of Mohammad (an act they'd already done without batting an eyelid, in the pre-Dutch cartoon era) was censored by Comedy Central. A lot of people thought this was outrageous but in all honesty it was probably the right thing for Comedy Central to do, in my opinion. Bearing in mind the circumstances and bubbling furore, broadcasting the episode uncensored could well have resolved in an attack of some description. It's all very well for artists to be provocative, but Comedy Central is a corporation and an attack on its offices or its studios might have serious consequences for its employees, most of whom probably weren't ready to risk their safety for provocative television. So Comedy Central protected itself and its employees and I agree with that.

What I don't agree with is that there was such a risk in the first place. What on earth is going on where you cannot broadcast an animation of a crude cardboard(esque) depiction of an historical character without having to decide if it's worth the likelihood of being terrorised? It's utter nonsense.

There is a rule in an extra-Qur'anic text that states it is forbidden and blasphemous to depict the prophet Muhammad. Well who gives a shit? Most people aren't Muslims and if you're not a Muslim then the rule doesn't apply to you*. Why is this such a problem - everyone (and I mean everyone) commit blasphemous (or equivalent terminology) acts every day from the perspective of religions they are not part of. I personally have sworn, taken the Lord's name in vain, worked on the Sabbath, idolised, lusted, coveted, been unruly to my parents, mixed meat with its milk (though indirectly), had sex before marriage, used contraception, eaten beef, eaten pork, been drunk, spelled out and spoken 'Yahweh' and now drawn the image of Mohammad. And none of it matters because I they are all part of my personal freedom to do so and I don't adhere to any religion that considers the above sinful. In fact, I don't even believe in sin because the whole concept is ludicrous. But let us not get distracted.

The point is: a good chunk of the population does a heck of a lot of these things without much consideration as to their irreligious nature. And most people who are part of religions that find some of those acts offensive accept that others aren't bothered by these acts and conscript them to their lifestyle. Heck, a lot of people Muslim or otherwise find young promiscuity to be abominable but they don't firebomb the crap out of everyone who has casual sex. They don't try and stab people to death for not fasting during Ramadan. So why must we even hesitate before committing ink to the basic shape of another persons prophet?

But we do. It's an act loaded with potential violence. And because of that, individuals do not commit to making Mohammad imagery for fear some overzealous nutter with spade them into submission. A corporation or organisation has the same problem - it has central locations; it has population wells to focus violence on - it cannot realistically take risks - that's not its job. But a hive of like-minded, non-centralised people can break the taboo. And they break it for no other reason than to demonstrate their freedom to do it. It isn't a riot or a blockade; it is more along the lines of a sit-in, just to let you know we're all here and we're not just going to vanish away.

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* 1) I am aware that if you are religious then you tend to believe your theology is the only true theology and therefore the rules apply to everyone. 2) I could argue that even if you are a Muslim you still should have the freedom to decide for yourself.

Stuart