Life in a pickle

FINGERS CROSSED...

2012-01-17T13:28:00.000Z

Last year, I wrote a piece about what life was going to be like for me in 2012. I'm republishing it here with an update after the runaway success of the Spartacus Report campaign which followed on from the Hardest Hit marches of 2011. Sick and disabled campaigners including Sue Marsh, Kaliya Franklin and Dr Sarah Campbell raised money, issued Freedom of Information requests and put their health at serious risk to expose the fact the government had lied, disseminated and abused their own processes to try and force through changes to Disability Living Allowance. Up to 98% of respondants, including Boris Johnson, oppose the change from DLA to Personal Independence Payment.

You can read the report yourself to get the details about money and economics. I'm not good with stuff like that. But I know a lot about life on benefits. That I can tell you about. It's a pretty bleak one and it's been even worse the last few months with a non stop drip drip of stories from the Coalition and the Department of Work and Pensions press office about 'scroungers' and fraud and the twisting of stats and reality to suit their agenda. We sick and disabled haven't just been fighting our usual challenges, we've been fighting for our reputations and our entitlements too.

But last week, the tide started to turn. The Responsible Reform report was the top trending item on Twitter under '#spartacusreport'. The Daily Mail published pro-Spartacus articles. Sue went on Newnight to debate Chris Grayling. The Lords defeated the government on 3 amendments in the House of Lords. The Express is printing unbiased articles about disability. Today's vote on PIP is on the BBC news channel. Flying pigs are not as rare as last week. Things are changing.

In fact things are changing so much that if the Lords cannot pass today's amendment according to this 'test yourself' piece on Benefits and Work, I'll lose my DLA completely. A third of my income will be gone in one sweep of a pen and all the things that add colour to my life to stop it being a picture of simple grey depression will be gone. Along with my very real chance to get better and get back to work. Some people see that as me being demanding, spoiled or the sole cause of the deficit or that most people on benefits are fakers. I think that's horseshit, but my previous post explains it better so it's below:

I'm not going to tell you there isn't benefit fraud. I'm just going to tell you how much it really is. For Disability Living Allowance, which is paid for the extra costs of being sick or disabled whether you are in work or unemployed, according to the Department of Work and Pensions who administer it, has a fraud rate of 0.5%. Yup, 99.5% of people claiming DLA are doing so legitimately. Just like David and Samantha Cameron were when they claimed for their severely disabled son Ivan. DLA helps with the cost of taxis when you can't get on a bus or the extra washing you have to do when you suffer bowel disease or the posher products you have to buy when you have arthritis and can't open things easily or the fact you have the heat on for longer and more frequently when you're housebound. Frivolous stuff like that.

DLA is hard to get. The form is over 30 pages long, takes on average 2 hours to fill out from start to finish and asks about every single part of your life in agonisingly intimate detail. Your words need to be backed up by your GP, specialists and support agencies. It's a major event. And even with those pieces of evidence, there is no guarantee you'll get it. Despite suffering from a combination of bowel problems, chronic fatigue, agoraphobia, depression, panic disorder, post traumatic stress disorder and anxiety disorder and providing eveidence from one specialist, my GP, a social worker, a psychiatrist, two psychologists and my current therapist, I was turned down for the benefit this week and told I don't need any care at any time in the day or night.

But, you say, I've seen you out and about holding court in social settings and seen pictures of the food you cook. You looked clean and immaculatly turned out to boot. You're obviously not that ill really and your benefit decision just agrees with that. But do you really know enough about my life to be sure? Did you know the reason I am early for everything is that I need to allow around 2 hours to get anywhere so that i have time to try leaving the house four times, have a panic attack or stave one off and arrive in time to scope out the whole area so that i can flee the scene at 5 seconds notice if I feel threatened? Did you know that taking the tube or bus places might result in me getting off it or changing seats three or four times because I am so freaked out by certain people just existing in the same space? And that to come and meet you, it's the first time I've left the house all week because the effort of getting washed, dressed into clean clothes that required the exertion of laundry is too much everyday? I, in fact, spent the other six and half days, in the same clothes I also slept in, either slumped on the sofa doing very little or trying to do housework and live my life but having to stop every 15 minutes to use the toilet or because I'm so tired I feel dizzy and the room is starting to spin. Pretty much everything I do is accompanied by gut wrenching nausea. This has been controlled by medication to the point where I no longer boak in bins in the street when I'm out, but is exacerbated by things like eating, bending over and changing temperature like getting in or out of a hot shower. Being sick on myself in the shower is quite my party piece.

Of course you didn't know all that. I didn't want you to know it. I don't want to have answer questions about it. I don't want your pity or your judgement. I don't want your helpful advice. (yes, I have tried hot baths and ginger...) I don't want to be defined by my illnesses. I find my life difficult. Even the basics many of you take for granted are just that bit more monumental for me, so I don't have time to take your feelings about my ill health on too. I also need a break from it all by not talking about it. Plus I'm concentrating on not throwing up on you. And more than anything I cannot bear to be that person you all dread saying 'how are you?' to and fearing a blow by blow symptom by symptom answer. So instead you get the version of me that's held together with sheer bloody mindedness and very strong painkillers. And also, having people around really helps, so it's hard to convey just how bad I feel by myself when you're there.

So if I didn't want you to know all this, why I am posting it on the internet? Well, I'm getting desperate, because the government wants to take my entire income away from me, bully me back into work and beg for my basic human rights with the Welfare Reform bill. They plan to make my migration from Income Support to the new Employment and Support Allowance a Herculean task by declaring Chronic Fatigue an unrecognised illness and not allowing fatigue to mention on the report issued by the private firm Atos who assess you. They also don't allow agoraphobics to be assessed at home and count the fact you made to an assessment on pain of death and destitution as proof that you can't possibly be agoraphobic. You'll also be time limited to a year's receipt of ESA if you have a partner no matter what you have wrong with you, incurable or degenerative (luckily no one wants to even date someone like me). They plan to rebrand DLA as Personal Independence Payment and with one deft change of criteria, remove 20 % claimants in one go and make harder to get, even if you are dying. Housing Benefit will be capped and changed to the point where the sick and disabled can't live alone under the age of 35 or keep a spare bedroom in case they have serious flare ups and need a carer to move in to help. Social Fund payments to help with unexpected costs like the boiler blowing up or having to travel for medical treatment are to be abolished and replaced with food parcels and interest paying loans you have to beg for. Social services for the disabled children and the elderly are being scrapped by cash strapped councils while bins get emptied once a week. Legal Aid for benefits and housing issues is being cut. Libraries with free internet access are being shut as DWP forms are moved to being online only. Welfare advisors are being made redundant and people's eligibility to see them restricted by the closure of Community Mental Health Teams and specialist services. The terminally ill are being told to find jobs and we're all being tarred as undeserving lying scrounging scum not worthy of the gutter and refusing to work for shits and giggles. Not because there's a global economic crisis and only 8% of employers say they'd hire someone on sickness benefits.

Things are stable for me right now, but every single day I wonder if this is the day the postman will bring the buff envelope that starts the process of migrating to ESA. Huge numbers of people with all documented conditions fail the Work Capability Test for this benefit and appeal it. 70% of those people win their appeal after waiting up to 9 months for the appeal to be heard. So instead of changing the test, the government want to abolish your right to claim a reduced rate of benefits while you wait. That would of course stop your Housing Benefit and make it damned difficult to pay the gas bill with invisible money. Every morning when the letterbox clicks, I wonder if this is the day I start the route to losing my home again.

That's terrible isn't it, you think, but what's it got to do with me? Well, firstly, it affects you because if you don't know and love someone who is terrified they are going to end up penniless and homeless under this bill now, you will very soon as your family ages and people's lives change. You might not know just how sick they are as they try to hold onto some dignity in face of ever enquiring forms and doctors but you do not get to judge. You might not think they are deserving, but it's not up to you. Same way as I don't get to tell you to sort your credit card out and discipline your bratty kids even though I think you're doing it wrong on both counts. You don't have magic X ray vision or you'd probably get paid more at work. Secondly, it says a lot about a society by how they treat the most vulnerable in it. And thirdly, you're telling me that if you agree with this despite your oh so fashionable disdain for the Daily Mail and the Sun, you're swallowing their propaganda without a moment's thought or attempt to educate yourself. Fourthly, you're also telling me you think you're better than me. You'd never get sick or disabled or ill or old or have an accident or anything weak and icky like that. And lastly, you're paying your National Insurance every week to allow you to use the welfare state and you'll notice that while they are getting rid of the services it provides you aren't getting a rebate. You're being ripped off and encouraged to think about private health and lifestyle insurance. Doesn't that piss you off?

The Welfare State does need reformed. It needs to be well informed and fair. It needs to stop propping up employers who don't want to pay a living wage. It needs to address the taper of rate that means people lose between 65 and 95 pence in the pound they earn when they come off benefits. It needs make part time work more viable. It needs to stop making sick people sicker. It needs to stop paying families on 50k pa child tax credits while the single and childless get nothing if they earn minimum wage. It needs to deal with Buy To Let landlords who want to get rich off high rents that cost a fortune in HB and mean their own family home is worth more while Housing Benefits tenants live in squalor. It needs to stop conflating fraud and error figures to make it look like people are cheating the system when the majority of incorrect payments are due to DWP fuck ups. It needs to stop energy companies taking 25% of your benefits before you even see it to pay fuel arrears and putting you on pre-payment meters. It needs to look at the inequalities it creates where single parents can get free prescriptions while MS sufferers can't or the families of disabled children can't afford to heat and eat while rich pensioners get £250 minimum Winter Fuel Allowance because it isn't means tested. Unfortunately, the government is only doing the last one and that's by scrapping the payment not looking at making it fairer. The rest of their policies can be summed up as moving the deckchairs on the Titanic and pointing the finger at the vulnerable and blaming them for the iceberg at the same time.

No one chooses to get sick or develop a disability. I'd much rather have even minimum wage than my £91 a week and the finger of blame and shame that comes with it. I'd sell my soul to Satan to be fit and healthy, even though it wouldn't make up for the fact I cannot count the number things important to be that ill health has spoiled in the nearly 20 years i've been sick. I refuse to get self pitying and slump further into depression over it. Instead I plan to try and draw attention to the unfairness of it all. Righteous indignation and the desire for justice keeps me warm on long cold winter days of ill health. I never did see a cause I didn't want to take up, but I hope you'll join me when I run out of spoons. Adopt a Lord, write to your MP, donate to a food bank, fight for Legal Aid, buy a friend a cup of tea when they have benefits issues and please please please, stop assuming you know who's really in need or not. The harder you make me fight to prove I'm 'deserving' the more energy you take up that I could be using to get back to work and off benefits...

THE HAND OF TIME

2011-12-31T14:28:00.000Z

Everyone is abuzz with it being New Year. Strangely some people like it better than Christmas, despite the lack of presents and roast meat. I don't much care for it myself. Not only does it tend to be a time when people get maudlin and more pissed than normal, I find it more pressured. There are resolutions, grand declarations of forthcoming intentions and looking back to count up achievements. It always feels like time is ticking by to me. I prefer to avoid it if I can.

This year is a bit different. I'm still not keen to go crazy and embrace Hogmanay like someone who is half Scottish might be expected to. But not because I'm being anti social. I'm just sorry to see 2011 go. It's the first year in a very long time I've had any fondness for. Not only was it not unrelentingly crappy, it was surprisingly good. I feel like I achieved real things. The kind of things I can tell other people and have a conversation about, rather than have them smile indulgently at me when I mention managing a trip to the Post Office as if I'm a delicate and slightly batty old lady.

Obviously I don't live my life solely according to what other people think, but sometimes it's nice to be able to join in the big people conversations and talk about stuff everyone can relate to. Years of being single, unemployed and ill mean a lot of people feel they have nothing to talk to you about and when you add in being depressed and having had bad things happen, they are practically running away. It's a big confidence boost to be able to join in again, especially as I have more than one achievement under my hat this year.

I'm not quite sure where it all started to change. Possibly when I yelled at Naomi Wolf. Being able to withstand that level of unrelenting patronising and bullshit seemed to buoy me. I certainly took the confidence with me to my new volunteer job, leaving the attitude behind and calling on my reserves of empathy instead, trying to turn my own experiences with the DWP into something that would help others. Getting up and getting out of the house within a set time frame was a challenge, but seemed to come together a bit after some practice and lots of support from my ever patient boss. In fact, I took to being back in the world of work (oh how I missed you!) well enough to apply for a proper paid job, be offered it and decline it in favour of some more work experience.

Frankly, I haven't had time to have a job. I've been too busy. I got a bit further toward my gold badge for the person in the UK to have the most therapy (and it really seemed to help.) I went for a walk on more than one occasion. I learned that wearing make up wasn't the be all and end all. I bought some clothes that weren't black. I showed my knees for the first time in ten years. I socialised without having five excuses to get out of each event (just one or maybe two...). I went on more than one date with a man, who although not interested, wasn't a total bastard. I met lots of new people, both connected to the internet and in real life. I learned some new skills and how to put other people first. I made bread. I discovered my life had been lacking an ice cream maker. I spent an entire year away from Belfast and realised homesickness can get stronger after a decade. I had a couple of days that felt normal and anxiety free and reminded me that there might be more round the corner.

So why am I so nervous about seeing 2011 go? Why aren't I embracing 2012 with gusto? Partly because it means seeing Seb Coe on the TV almost indefinitely for the next few months, but mainly because for all my progress, change still scares me. I'd got 2011 all worn in nicely, like really well loved flannel pyjamas. What if 2012 is more like a pair of shoes that never quite get comfortable? I might not achieve so much. I might be disappointed again. I know there are bad things coming this year with the introduction of the Welfare Reform Bill for example. I just don't know if any of them will touch me directly. But I feel unsettled and tense about the change of year. I plan to circumvent this though. Not with the marvellous CBT based coping strategies I've been taught this year, but with some good old fashioned avoidance. Depending how I feel after a nap, I'll either go to bed at 9pm or open a bottle of Cava and be too tiddly to care what time it is.

I'll see you all on the other side. Thank you for helping make it the best year in a long time. I look forward (albeit tentatively) to keeping it up next year with you all too!

KNOW THE DIFFERENCE?

2011-11-25T10:33:00.000Z

There are times that victim blaming feels like a national sport. Look at any article about rape or sexual assault in any newspaper and even if it isn't at Daily Mail standards, there's almost always an undercurrent of it. Look at the language used. You'll note that often a rape victim is an unmarried mother or a single woman, yet I don't recall ever gleaning the marital status of a male robbery victim from an article. Descriptions of what she was doing or what time of night or day it was add a salacious tone that often lifts it from simple police inquiry for witnesses to morality tale. It's the little comments about her clothes or her routine that are commonplace in sex crimes reports, but would jar if the paper told us what electrical goods or amount of money or type of bank card a man was mugged for.

But it isn't just the papers who do this. Read, if you dare, any thread on Comment is Free on the Guardian or the Daily Mail site about rape and about 80% suggest that if she hadn't been wearing that/doing this/ female/alive and had her vagina unpadlocked while not locked in a cupboard only she had the key for, then she must share some culpability for her attack. This is often dressed up as 'concern trolling' where said opinonated commenter publishes their view because they're just worried wearing a short skirt will end badly for womenhood. It's a convenient smokescreen though for trotting out all the ways that they feel women are ultimately more responsible for rape than the men who commit it. Without fail, these beliefs drip with misogyny and tie themselves in knots to try and justify why women doing legal and normal things in their lives are definitely worse than men committing an illegal act. Hang around long enough and you'll hit the clothing/alcohol/out after dark trifecta that shows the person commenting knows nothing about rape and probably believes it never occurs in countries like Saudi Arabia which to their mind sensibly ban alcohol, enforce burkas and have magically elimanated rape to the point where they can be sure they're stoning the woman to death for the right reason....

Victim blaming and rape myths tend to be a year round chorus to leading your life, but it picks up a notch every Christmas. Police forces, Transport for London, local councils and other public bodies get a free reign to indulge their belief that after a night out men are blameless happy go lucky fools who constantly have the problem of not being able to contain their pesky penises and falling into the drunken/not well enough covered or simply all too tempting Hungry Hippo style vaginas of those modern day Eves they've been socialising with. We are bombarded with expensive campaigns telling us women what we should or shouldn't do to avoid being raped. We must watch our drinks like hawks, spending money on special bottle stoppers, lip glosses and portable CSI labs to test for roofies. We must do everything in pairs as if we are partying in Noah's Ark. We must keep extra money in our shoe to afford a cab, but then carry extra shoes to make sure we aren't vulnerable in our heels, leaving our tiny lady brains wondering which of our four feet contains the magic cash and taking our attention away from the exact level of flirtatiousness and friendliness we must be displaying at all times around men so as not to give incorrect impressions. We should have nightclub bouncers learn a trick from headmistresses and have us kneel down upon entry to check our skirts touch our knees or issue us with a regulation shroud to protect us. And while we all know we mustn't have sexual contact with anyone because consent isn't really a time by time thing, but something that covers you for life. Instead we should be spending all evening considering how we get home. Should we try and renact one of those highly triggering TfL posters about illegal mini cabs or take a black cab and hope there aren't any more John Worboys out here? (This is actually a trick question. We shouldn't have been out in the first place so no matter which way you get home, you're in the wrong, silly!)

The appalling rate of attrition at police level, policy of 'no criming' rape allegations, lack of medical provisions for victims, bias amongst the police, judiciary or juries, stigma against victims, low levels of remand for those charged with rape and the reactions of trauma after assault that all help lead to the woefully low rape conviction rate of 6.7% in the UK don't tend to get a glossy poster campaign. These are expensive things to change and require a huge amount of effort and engagement from people who feel they would have to work harder and not get their own way like they've been used to. The willingness really doesn't seem to there when you read South Wales Police suggest it'd be offensive to men to ask some of them not to rape over the festive period, but refuse to see the disconnect that it's offensive (and patronising) to ask all women not to get raped. But then again, this is the force who hired the officer who deliberately destroyed the paperwork and evidence that allowed my second rapist to go free and said it would be unfair to punish him for something he did at a previous force, promoting him to Sex Crimes instead, so I'm not sure what I was expecting...

Well, a little something like the initative from my own council. For the second year running, Lambeth Council are promoting their 'Know the Difference' campaign this Christmas, making the valid point that not all men rape, but that all rapes involve a rapist and most of those rapes are by men. They've come up with a campaign that puts the onus on men not to rape, but that speaks across the lines of sexual assault to recognise it isn't always a heterosexual crime. But more to the point, they've identified the crucial fact. Rape is not for the victim to prevent, it's for the perpetrator to stop it happening. Nothing about this campaign is about victim blaming. It's about speaking to everyone, especially perpetrators and seeking to clarify the laws and morals that keep people safe. They show the fine line between harrassment and sexual assault and underline everything with the need for informed and enthusiastic consent, all delivered with a reminder of the law and options for victims. Nothing is about forbidding a good time, but about making sure everyone is participating equally.

As long as Lambeth Sapphire have upped their game since I dealt with them and aren't still leaving victims abandoned and scared, then I just can't fault this campaign. Informative, clear, clever and without the merest hint of scolding toward women, it proves to me that there's no excuse for the usual victim blaming cliches. It was widely displayed in Lambeth Tube stations, borough wide buses, bars, clubs, restaurants and prominent billboards last year and I presume this year will be the same. I've been trying to find out if the borough's above average reporting rate last year was because this non-judgemental campaign made victims feel more able to come forward or whether we really do have a big problem with sexual violence in the area, but I might leave the details til after Christmas and just enjoy living and socialising in Lambeth like a normal, non traumatised woman. Being told rape isn't my fault in a campaign like this makes it easier for me to believe it the rest of the year too. Maybe it'll also help me reclaim Christmas as a time to have fun, not be repeatedly triggered? Either way, I'm even more grateful than usual to live in Lambeth right now...

DOCTOR, DOCTOR...

2011-11-19T10:53:00.001Z

These days I dread going near a newspaper or the TV. Each day seems to bring another creeping insiduous way to make life more difficult for the sick and disabled in this country from the non stop hassle from Atos, the drip drip of 'scrounger' rhetoric and today, deciding that GPs are not suitable people to decide if someone is too sick to be signed off work for more than a week.

Bearing in mind that GPs are already not seen as suitable to assess whether people are long term sick when claiming benefits, it looks like the government is showing vague consistency by saying they can't do it short term either. Then you realise that they want to hand the entire running of the NHS in England over to GPs and you wonder if they understand what that the word doctor and manager are not actually interchangeable? One requires seven years of training, the other does not. Yet the coalition government seems to think it would help all of us to hand the medical stuff over the managers and the managerial stuff over to the doctors.

Not only do they want to save money, they also seem to be under the impression that GPs are such kind caring people that they are handing out the adult equivalent of lollipops left, right and centre and signing people off work and onto benefits in such droves that it's like a game of roulette as to whether you'll pop in for a prescription or come out signed off. This suggests they have never actually spoken to someone who has been signed off when they get sick but don't actually know what's wrong yet.

It's actually really quite hard to get a sick certificate. These days doctors can also issue something called a 'fit note' that directs employers that you need extra help and can't do your job fully due to ill health, trying to avoid the situation where an injury for example stops people working completely if the employer could try and find you alternative work within your role. This has merits, but sometimes you just need a break from work completely and trying to do bits and bobs just drags things out. I had had a period of employment upheaval for several months and had a few 'fit notes' due to an injury, but at no point did I ask my GP to sign me off even after a turbulent six weeks where I had lost my job, split up with my boyfriend, and been raped. I kept going to job interviews and failing to get them due to the fact I couldn't stop crying in them. I decided to sign onto Job Seekers' Allowance.

Only when my job advisor and his supervisor took me off into a smaller room off the main drag, sat me down and kindly told me that they could not allow me to sign the Job Seekers' contract to be available to work 40 hours a week because I was so clearly unwell and unable to work that the thought of going onto a sickness benefit even occurred to me. They sent me off to my doctor to get a sick certificate to go onto Income Support so that I could claim Housing Benefit at least. Totally and utterly freaked out that the JobCentre were being so nice, I stumbled through the door of the GP tearfully, explained what I needed and then proceeded to have a panic attack and cry for the next 30 minutes to the point where the practice nurse suggested sedating me.

I left without my certificate. The GP refused to say that I was unfit for work and suggested unless things got worse I go back and say I wanted JSA. She didn't think there was anything she could do. I went home and as luck would have it, was made homeless that night by the flaming mob that were my housemates. Shellshocked and unslept, I went back to the Job Centre and explained the last 24 hours. They conjured up a surprisingly formal letter to take to the doctor. I went back to the surgery and had an even more spectacular meltdown this time, but luckily enough, did it in reception and another doctore had to be called out to deal with me.

He took one look at me, signed me off work for 8 weeks and gave me a prescription for anti-depressants, a referral to a counsellor and a Valium. I have no recollection whatsoever of applying for Income Support later that day. The next 8 weeks generally passed in a blur of trips to the housing office, trying to move my stuff, find somewhere to live and continuing to apply for jobs. I was quite surprised when I was signed off again for another 8 weeks. Which took to me to the week I was raped again.

Almost immediately I developed a galloping case of Post Traumatice Stress Disorder and started to become extremely agoraphobic. Just getting to the doctor was an epic struggle and concerned enough about my mental health to only give me a week's medication at a time, but not enough to refer me to the Community Mental Health Team or more specialist services, I continued with the 8 weeks at a time certificates, always aware that everything hung on my doctor remaining sympathetic to me. If he decided there was no certificate, then there'd be no Housing Benefit and no hostel. It was nervewracking.

You might say that removing that pressure from the GP to an impartial body would lessen the pressure but I disagree on several points. What both the GP and I needed were better specialist services. The GP needed someone with more experience of someone in mental health distress to guide him and a faceless council looking to tick symptoms off a list isn't it. It would be better to spend the money it costs to set up this council on retraining GPs to be able to deal with undiagnosed conditions and get them moving people on to specialists to get diagnoses. I also fear that some Atos style pen pusher would have been less likely to sign me off as they'd only have seen me once the problem started, not developed a relationship with me over months and seen how things changed and progressed. They also have bad form on being able to take fluctuating conditions seriously and to see the tie in between mental and physical health.

If the government would like us to stop being signed off work long term, then they'd be better off imposing some kind of rule that you must be referred to the appropriate specialist team within a certain number of weeks if you are signed off for more than 8 weeks with one condition. I wouldn't have had to go through the gamut of emotion of wondering every 8 weeks if my GP was going to sign me off or whether I'd lose my house again if they said no. I wouldn't have had to take up a GP appointment every five minutes. I wouldn't have had to wait three years to get referred to the CMHT and another two and a half to get a proper diagnosis and my PTSD therapy. Waiting almost six years to know what is wrong with you is unacceptable. I literally had no words to describe what was wrong with me and this allowed my mental health conditions to become bigger and scarier and harder and harder to come back from. I had no idea if I'd actually lost my mind completely.

Improving GP services and encouraging them to ask for help and support and link to other NHS services (while we still have an NHS) would be the best thing for the sick and that taxpaying public (who shock horror, are often the same people...). It would also be of advantage to GPs as they'd be able to share the workload better and offer better support to the long term sick which might be a cost effective way to maintain confidence and interaction with the long term sick than yelling at them and giving the impression they are a burden on everyone. Bringing in Atos earlier and earlier will only lead to more money being paid to private companies and diverted from those in need. It will also conflict GPs further and bully them into making decisions only based on cost not care. And it will not help anyone get better, unless your idea of better is ignoring symptoms, rubberstamping forms and tossing people aside in to poverty and fear.

This is total Tory scaremongering to excuse commodifying health and vulnerability further in the UK. There might be a few people in the UK signed off who could work, but do we want to make it that it's impossible to take time of work unless you're dying? Plenty of people need some breathing room when life happens. People's physical health can fail, their mental health may not be stable, conditions fluctuate, people need time to grieve after a bereavement, recover when having a baby doesn't go to plan and cope with an unexpected accident. Unless you're a multi millionaire Cabinet member, you are vulnerable to needing these things on the NHS and welfare state between now and the time you die. Don't let them be sold off. And if you still think it's easy peasy to get signed off because you fancy lying on the sofa for a few weeks, doing some light scrounging, why don't you ask your GP and see how far you get before they hound you out of the surgery, howling with laughter?

A SICK JOKE

2011-10-27T11:33:00.000+01:00

This Saturday saw the Hardest Hit marches happen across the UK. These are designed to show how the sick and disabled are likely to face the lion's share of the Coalition's cuts programmes through the Welfare Reform Bill and the slashing of local services. The marches also hope to give the sick and disabled a voice in the onslaught of media and political hype about scroungers and fraudsters.

I'm not going to tell you there isn't benefit fraud. I'm just going to tell you how much it really is. For Disability Living Allowance, which is paid for the extra costs of being sick or disabled whether you are in work or unemployed, according to the Department of Work and Pensions who administer it, has a fraud rate of 0.5%. Yup, 99.5% of people claiming DLA are doing so legitimately. Just like David and Samantha Cameron were when they claimed for their severely disabled son Ivan. DLA helps with the cost of taxis when you can't get on a bus or the extra washing you have to do when you suffer bowel disease or the posher products you have to buy when you have arthritis and can't open things easily or the fact you have the heat on for longer and more frequently when you're housebound. Frivolous stuff like that.

DLA is hard to get. The form is over 30 pages long, takes on average 2 hours to fill out from start to finish and asks about every single part of your life in agonisingly intimate detail. Your words need to be backed up by your GP, specialists and support agencies. It's a major event. And even with those pieces of evidence, there is no guarantee you'll get it. Despite suffering from a combination of bowel problems, chronic fatigue, agoraphobia, depression, panic disorder, post traumatic stress disorder and anxiety disorder and providing eveidence from one specialist, my GP, a social worker, a psychiatrist, two psychologists and my current therapist, I was turned down for the benefit this week and told I don't need any care at any time in the day or night.

But, you say, I've seen you out and about holding court in social settings and seen pictures of the food you cook. You looked clean and immaculatly turned out to boot. You're obviously not that ill really and your benefit decision just agrees with that. But do you really know enough about my life to be sure? Did you know the reason I am early for everything is that I need to allow around 2 hours to get anywhere so that i have time to try leaving the house four times, have a panic attack or stave one off and arrive in time to scope out the whole area so that i can flee the scene at 5 seconds notice if I feel threatened? Did you know that taking the tube or bus places might result in me getting off it or changing seats three or four times because I am so freaked out by certain people just existing in the same space? And that to come and meet you, it's the first time I've left the house all week because the effort of getting washed, dressed into clean clothes that required the exertion of laundry is too much everyday? I, in fact, spent the other six and half days, in the same clothes I also slept in, either slumped on the sofa doing very little or trying to do housework and live my life but having to stop every 15 minutes to use the toilet or because I'm so tired I feel dizzy and the room is starting to spin. Pretty much everything I do is accompanied by gut wrenching nausea. This has been controlled by medication to the point where I no longer boak in bins in the street when I'm out, but is exacerbated by things like eating, bending over and changing temperature like getting in or out of a hot shower. Being sick on myself in the shower is quite my party piece.

Of course you didn't know all that. I didn't want you to know it. I don't want to have answer questions about it. I don't want your pity or your judgement. I don't want your helpful advice. (yes, I have tried hot baths and ginger...) I don't want to be defined by my illnesses. I find my life difficult. Even the basics many of you take for granted are just that bit more monumental for me, so I don't have time to take your feelings about my ill health on too. I also need a break from it all by not talking about it. Plus I'm concentrating on not throwing up on you. And more than anything I cannot bear to be that person you all dread saying 'how are you?' to and fearing a blow by blow symptom by symptom answer. So instead you get the version of me that's held together with sheer bloody mindedness and very strong painkillers. And also, having people around really helps, so it's hard to convey just how bad I feel by myself when you're there.

So if I didn't want you to know all this, why I am posting it on the internet? Well, I'm getting desperate, because the government wants to take my entire income away from me, bully me back into work and beg for my basic human rights with the Welfare Reform bill. They plan to make my migration from Income Support to the new Employment and Support Allowance a Herculean task by declaring Chronic Fatigue an unrecognised illness and not allowing fatigue to mention on the report issued by the private firm Atos who assess you. They also don't allow agoraphobics to be assessed at home and count the fact you made to an assessment on pain of death and destitution as proof that you can't possibly be agoraphobic. You'll also be time limited to a year's receipt of ESA if you have a partner no matter what you have wrong with you, incurable or degenerative. They plan to rebrand DLA as Personal Independence Payment and with one deft change of criteria, remove 20 % claimants in one go and make harder to get, even if you are dying. Housing Benefit will be capped and changed to the point where the sick and disabled can't live alone under the age of 35 or keep a spare bedroom in case they have serious flare ups and need a carer to move in to help. Social Fund payments to help with unexpected costs like the boiler blowing up or having to travel for medical treatment are to be abolished and replaced with food parcels and interest paying loans you have to beg for. Social services for the disabled children and the elderly are being scrapped by cash strapped councils while bins get emptied once a week. Legal Aid for benefits and housing issues is being cut. Libraries with free internet access are being shut as DWP forms are moved to being online only. Welfare advisors are being made redundant and people's eligibility to see them restricted by the closure of Community Mental Health Teams and specialist services. The terminally ill are being told to find jobs and we're all being tarred as undeserving lying scrounging scum not worthy of the gutter and refusing to work for shits and giggles. Not because there's a global economic crisis and only 8% of employers say they'd hire someone on sickness benefits.

Things are stable for me right now, but every single day I wonder if this is the day the postman will bring the buff envelope that starts the process of migrating to ESA. Huge numbers of people with all documented conditions fail the Work Capability Test for this benefit and appeal it. 70% of those people win their appeal after waiting up to 9 months for the appeal to be heard. So instead of changing the test, the government want to abolish your right to claim a reduced rate of benefits while you wait. That would of course stop your Housing Benefit and make it damned difficult to pay the gas bill with invisible money. Every morning when the letterbox clicks, I wonder if this is the day I start the route to losing my home again.

That's terrible isn't it, you think, but what's it got to do with me? Well, firstly, it affects you because if you don't know and love someone who is terrified they are going to end up penniless and homeless under this bill now, you will very soon as your family ages and people's lives change. You might not know just how sick they are as they try to hold onto some dignity in face of ever enquiring forms and doctors but you do not get to judge. You might not think they are deserving, but it's not up to you. Same way as I don't get to tell you to sort your credit card out and discipline your bratty kids even though I think you're doing it wrong on both counts. You don't have magic X ray vision or you'd probably get paid more at work. Secondly, it says a lot about a society by how they treat the most vulnerable in it. And thirdly, you're telling me that if you agree with this despite your oh so fashionable disdain for the Daily Mail and the Sun, you're swallowing their propaganda without a moment's thought or attempt to educate yourself. Fourthly, you're also telling me you think you're better than me. You'd never get sick or disabled or ill or old or have an accident or anything weak and icky like that. And lastly, you're paying your National Insurance every week to allow you to use the welfare state and you'll notice that while they are getting rid of the services it provides you aren't getting a rebate. You're being ripped off and encouraged to think about private health and lifestyle insurance. Doesn't that piss you off?

The Welfare State does need reformed. It needs to be well informed and fair. It needs to stop propping up employers who don't want to pay a living wage. It needs to address the taper of rate that means people lose between 65 and 95 pence in the pound they earn when they come off benefits. It needs make part time work more viable. It needs to stop making sick people sicker. It needs to stop paying families on 50k pa child tax credits while the single and childless get nothing if they earn minimum wage. It needs to deal with Buy To Let landlords who want to get rich off high rents that cost a fortune in HB and mean their own family home is worth more while Housing Benefits tenants live in squalor. It needs to stop conflating fraud and error figures to make it look like people are cheating the system when the majority of incorrect payments are due to DWP fuck ups. It needs to stop energy companies taking 25% of your benefits before you even see it to pay fuel arrears and putting you on pre-payment meters. It needs to look at the inequalities it creates where single parents can get free prescriptions while MS sufferers can't or the families of disabled children can't afford to heat and eat while rich pensioners get £250 minimum Winter Fuel Allowance because it isn't means tested. Unfortunately, the government is only doing the last one and that's by scrapping the payment not looking at making it fairer. The rest of their policies can be summed up as moving the deckchairs on the Titanic and pointing the finger at the vulnerable and blaming them for the iceberg at the same time.

No one chooses to get sick or develop a disability. I'd much rather have even minimum wage than my £91 a week and the finger of blame and shame that comes with it. I'd sell my soul to Satan to be fit and healthy, even though it wouldn't make up for the fact I cannot count the number things important to be that ill health has spoiled in the nearly 20 years i've been sick. I refuse to get self pitying and slump further into depression over it. Instead I plan to try and draw attention to the unfairness of it all. Righteous indignation and the desire for justice keeps me warm on long cold winter days of ill health. I never did see a cause I didn't want to take up, but I hope you'll join me when I run out of spoons. Adopt a Lord, write to your MP, donate to a food bank, fight for Legal Aid, buy a friend a cup of tea when they have benefits issues and please please please, stop assuming you know who's really in need or not. The harder you make me fight to prove I'm 'deserving' the more energy you take up that I could be using to get back to work and off benefits...

LOST FOR WORDS?

2011-10-06T15:43:00.000+01:00

Rape and sexual assault have been the hot topics du jour in the last few months with Dominique Strauss Kahn, Ken Clarke, Nadine Dorries, Coronation Street and the Slutwalk movement all providing opportunities to discuss the issue. I was discussing this with a friend the other week when she basically said 'I know what to say about rape 'on paper', but I don't know what to say to someone who has just told me it happened to them.' I wanted to hug her. Of course you don't really know what to say to someone who has just disclosed something so personal and painful. But the mature (but difficult) solution is to admit that rather than blunder on for the sake of it.

I half forgot about the conversation until another friend linked to these amazing pieces about what and what not to say to a cancer patient from The Awl and it got me thinking about the social minefield that is talking about traumatic events and what we should say or do and whether there are certain things that are universivally insensitive or are all traumas different? Has anyone ever published an etiquette guide on such things? But since it's unlikely they included the seen as taboo affects of sexual violence, I thought I'd make a few suggestions myself.

1) Don't say 'things happen for a reason' to a rape victim or try to find explanations. I use the word victim here specifically. Someone who has recently been sexually assaulted or only just been able to tell someone is feeling victimised. They need empathy and a shoulder to lean on. They don't need problem solving or theories or any other reason to wonder why it happened or chances to ask 'what if' further. They are already doing that. Don't encourage it. Seeking to 'explain' an attack also skirts dangerously close to victim blaming....

2) Don't ask what they were wearing. I really don't want to patronise you by explaining why this is a bad idea, but suffice to say you don't usually find yourself asking what the colour the car that drove into someone was or what style of front door the burgled house had. (And if you do, then frankly, you need to re-think your priorities when conversing with people because you are either missing the point or inutterably shallow.)

3) Don't lunge at them to give them a big comforting hug without asking first. Some victims crave touch and the reassurance that they aren't 'damaged goods' after rape. Others will freak the fuck out if you start touching them without permission because it is a massive trigger. You don't need to be super formal and put in a written request for a pat on the back next Tuesday, but just say 'Is there anything I can do to help? Would you like a hug?' That way you've given them back bodily autonomy and control and allowed them to say no without offending you.

4) Don't make it about you. You may be dying inside seeing the person you love go through this, but certainly right at the start, it isn't about you. So if you feel hurt that your previously affectionate friend flinches when you touch her, don't tell her that her right now. Swallow your feelings temporarily, make her feel OK and then talk to someone else about how you feel. Your friend can't take your pain as well as her own, mainly because it makes her feel guilty about 'creating' it. Seek other sources of help and only show how you are suffering in a way that shows it's because you love them, not because you blame them for bringing this hell to your door. There's a world of difference between ' I hate to see someone as lovely as you feel so bad about this' and 'have you any idea how hard it is for me to see you like this?'

5) Consider privacy, but don't get too hung up on it. Not making life trickier for the victim and keeping their privacy is a hard one, but take their cues. You may find you need to write stuff down, yell at the cat, sob to a houseplant or seek help for yourself from Rape Crisis or a counsellor, but it is vital not make someone feel even worse. Rape and sexual assault creates so much guilt already that we can't cope with it from other sources. We already feel terrible in ourselves for 'spoiling' it for everyone else and any silence or shutting the subject down compounds it.

6) Don't take over. Ask if your actions are ok. Don't tell her she must go to the police. She may not want you to come to appointments themselves, but to meet her afterwards for a life giving martini and some distraction. And if you don't know what to do or say, be honest and say you don't know. She probably doesn't know either and the pressure of feeling like she has to be strong for other people is something she doesn't need.

7) Under no circumstance tell her she needs to do this for all the other potential or past victims. She is struggling to keep herself together and protect those around her, she cannot take on the pressure and weight of all these other invisible unknown women too. And it's not fair to ask. You're asking her to take on the way society feels, the work of the police, judiciary and prison service all while recovering from trauma. Setting aside the fact the police often don't play their part, does that seem a fair thing to do to someone vulnerable?

8) Don't ask what actually happened. You may not quite understand the ins and outs of the assault, but don't pry. It's impersonal, extremely rude and tends to sound disbelieving. I thought my first assault was an attempted rape for about eighteen months when one of the women at WAR happened to describe the same event happening to another woman as a rape and a big lightbulb went on in my head. Legally it was assault by penetration but it always felt like a rape to me and it was important for me to own that. I wasn't lying when I switched terms, but it also wasn't appropriate for people as to say ' so what actually happened?' as if I was changing the details daily. I also, ironically for such a chatterbox, literally didn't have the words to describe it for in some cases years after the event. Some aspects I only articulated for the first time to my therapist last year and other bits I still cannot actually form the words to describe aloud. You may also have to prepare yourself for hearing some really brutal stuff when you ask such personal questions. It's not a pretty thing to describe, so be ready and don't hold it against the victim if her recollection gives you nightmares.

9) Realise there isn't a 'right' or 'wrong' way to react to trauma. Some people will cry. Some will be seemingly untouched. I sobbed daily and at the drop of a hat after the first rape. I have never shed a tear over the second one. Neither time did I follow the rape victim trope of bathing repeatedly. I simply cleaned and painted the whole house obsessively in the weeks after not realising it was the damned spot I was trying to out. Traumatised minds work differently to untraumatised ones, but it takes time for the traumatised person to make sense of it all.

10) Don't say all men are bastards/evil/rapists. That just makes a frightened woman want to stay in the house alone with the doors and windows locked forever and ever. You also don't need to go overboard and show her photo albums of the amazing enlightened men you know. Just try be normal. And if you are a man? Don't yell and threaten violence against the 'scum' who did it. You'll scare her. She needs to know men aren't all secretly violent. And that 'scum'? He might be her partner, her dad, her uncle, her friend, all people she loved and now fears. She needs to know they are in the wrong, not that her judgement in being with them was wrong.

11) Don't say 'you of all people should know better' if the woman has previous experience of rape and abuse or is a strong feisty woman. Rape is not like measles. You aren't immune to it for life after it happens once. And being raped doesn't give you a magical all seeing all knowing power to spot sexual predators at fifty feet. If it did, Neighbourhood Watch schemes would actually count for something. And rape victims would never end up broke and on benefits, because the police would hire them to help them out and improve the conviction rate about a gazillion-fold. Plus the biggest risk factor for being raped is prior abuse or trauma, especially in childhood. Being a victim makes you vulnerable.

12) Judge wisely. Sometimes in the searing aftermath of extreme trauma, people act strangely and do things you aren't comfortable with. Just consider this stage as something akin to an Outward Bound version of breaking up with someone. The stakes are kind of higher this time so she might go in for something a bit more outre than a new fringe. Lots of traumatised people end up clinging to risky and ultimately unhelpful behaviours to stop themselves feeling like they are drowning in their new world. Women who have been raped often become promiscuous for a variety of reasons. They also find themselves having 'just the one' to take the edge off. Or developing all or nothing behaviours with food. These things are really really hard for you to watch. We know that. We just need someone to try and see that we're doing it because we're frightened and confused and emotionally adrift, not telling us we are bad people and then trotting each example of our failings out for years to come like exhibits in a courtroom of friendship. When things are better, we'll apologise. But dislike the action, not the person.

13) Ask questions, but don't interrogate or bombard them with queries. Like when walking with someone else, take their pace. Don't try and speed them up. If you don't understand, seek other sources of enlightenment. This might also lead to you finding out things that can help and that you can suggest gently. Rape victims crave control and this makes their minds one track. You changing the route seems minor to you, to them it can make feel like they are reliving the moment of no control when they were raped. Remember, you can't problem solve this situation. No suggestion in the world can make her unraped and take away the problem.

14) Mirror their words. Do they use the R word? Are they saying 'the incident'? Do they prefer 'survivor' to 'victim'? Copy them. The first time I had to use the words 'rape victim' in relation to myself was like being punched in the stomach. It felt like those words were ripping the grasp I had on my life further apart. I still hate that I could even be described that way and on bad days, it makes me want to vomit. I can detach it the rest of the time, but words matter.

15) Think carefully about how to cheer the person up. None of the following are a good idea.*

a) A DVD of Rosemary's Baby for someone who has been drugged and raped. She probably hasn't worried about being impregnated by Satan in with all the other shit going on. Don't be the one to give her the irrational fear. Plus films by child rapists aren't ideal right now generally.

b) A copy of The Lovely Bones. Not only is it a terrible terrible book, it perpetuates the feeling that you've ruined everyone else's life by being raped and make you feel guiltier. And telling the victim who calmly explained she didn't like it, that lending it to her was designed to remind them to be grateful he didn't kill them as well isn't helpful. Your average recent rape victim has enough going on without getting a conviction for ABH with a paperback as well.

c) A vibrator. Sexual pleasure may be the last thing on her mind and even if it isn't, I always think it's a private thing at any time unless the person asks you how to increase it. Handing them something pink and sparkly and cock shaped and explaining your reasoning as 'helping them out since they won't be able to consider having sex with a real man again' wins gold and sets a world record at the Insensitivity Olympics. The fact that she's gone silent and is opening and closing her mouth a lot isn't a preview of what she's going to do with the thing. It's watching someone's mind actually boggle.

d) But don't be utterly po faced and super serious. We aren't invalids. We won't break if someone smiles. Everyone needs some breathing space. The night I came home from my forensic examination, my friend Jo ordered us Chinese takeaway, failed to make up some flatpack furniture, gave up and we watched CSI instead. (Yes, I know. CSI after the day I'd had? You'd think not, but it was my choice and an episode I still love. I sympathise with it being hard to second guess the situation.) Switching off and thinking about other stuff for a while is great for everyone involved, especially if there are prawn crackers. But be prepared that kindness might make people emotional. Even thinking about some of the kindnesses people offered me makes my eyes leak even now.

I'm pretty sure all of these tips would apply to any life altering event from death to divorce, but hopefully they do highlight a bit of the extra issues round violent assault and trauma. So basically, be gentle, let them set the pace, look after yourself too and stay calm. We'll love you all the more for it. And don't beat yourself up if you think you've done it wrong. How are you meant to know if no one tells or guides you?

*All of these things happened to me. I no longer speak to any of the people involved. I can just about see the humour in them now.

NO SOFT SOAP

2011-09-22T18:33:00.002+01:00

Most of you feel you probably know every single intimate detail about me after reading this blog, but did you know that under my massively middle class surface, I absolutely love soaps? I watch both Eastenders and Coronation Street, catching up on the omnibus if needed and only recently kicked my Neighbours and Hollyoaks habits. I feel no shame in admitting to this and have a low tolerance for soap snobbery, especially from those who don't realise Corrie is one of the greatest comedic programmes on TV. I usually revel in my evening visits to Weatherfield. So why on Wednesday did you finding me turning the television off completely and going off to tidy my sock drawer and polish the teaspoons?

I didn't have the Queen calling round the following afternoon. I haven't decided to start watching 'real' programmes. I was simply knocked sideways by the latest storyline in which the somewhat ballbreaking Carla Connor was violently raped in her own flat by the man she declined to marry. Except it wasn't the rape that floored me. It was the aftermath. Twenty two minutes of the immediate consequences of sexual violence.

How do you get rid of him? Do you tell anyone? Who do you tell? How do you tell them? Because once the word 'rape' slips past your lips, the genie is completely out of the bottle. You'll never look at yourself quite the same again and you know no one else ever will either. Can you actually form the words to articulate the changing of your entire life? Do you call the police? Are you pressing charges? Do you even know what's happening or does it feel like the world is spinning round you as you try to comprehend the new reality?

Guided by her friend Maria, who had been the victim of an attempted rape by the same man, Carla finds herself reporting to the police. I expected big drama, screaming sirens and high octane. Instead we got something that felt almost like real time. Carla's reaction with the specially trained WPC were calm, quiet, banal even. Everything was so understated I imagine the average viewer thinking 'what's the big deal? Yes, her blouse is ripped, but she's fine really' until Carla's rapist calmly lets himself in through the front door carrying a takeaway and she responds in an instinctual frenzy of fea, panic and self preservation that is quite terrifying to watch. There can be no doubt that she is not fine. People do not respond like that to people if they have just had a tiff or changed their mind or regretted something. Even Carla herself realised it, no longer so resistant to going with the police officers to be examined by the doctors at the closest Sexual Assault Referral Centre or SARC.

I expected them to skirt over the forensic side of reporting in favour of some good old fashioned soap screaming and disclosure in front of as many people as possible at the least appropriate time possible. I was wrong. There was nothing whipped up to be dramatic, just a very precise portrayal of what a full forensic exam for rape can be. Obviously they didn't show the most intimate parts, nor could they convey just how endlessly long the procedure is, but so accurate was the bleakness of sitting in a hospital gown in a clinical room with a doctor and nurse starting at your head and working down to your feet and methodically examining every centimetre of your body for the evidence of your rape, I couldn't watch at the time. I actually thought I might be sick with how much it brought back. My life and how I felt about my body changed more and more with every inch further they looked at during the three hours my examination took. If I'd been wearing anything more than a sheet, I'd have run away to make it stop. It was the worst experience of my life and remains the one memory of either rape that I cannot look back on without feeling the bottom drop out of my stomach and a cold sweat break out even now.

Yet unlike a bunch of stick up their ass commenters in the press, I think Coronation Street was right to show the scenes of the examination that they did, even pre-watershed. Just like i think they were right not to sanitise the rape scenes (or the subsequent videoed interview session with Carla) because if you don't want to see it, you can turn the TV off and because the only people who benefit from sugar coating sexual violence are rape apologists and deniers. Ignoring that rape is an intrinsically violent act even without (for example) being held at knifepoint allows these people dress it up as 'changing your mind after sex'. Decreeing it can only be rape if you fight back/don't freeze/scream bloody murder/don't know him/incant no repeatedly as it happens or he wears a balaclava allows people to pretend that no one they know is raped, commits rape or that the 80% of rapes that occur between people who know each other actually exist. Pretending that rape victims are a particular type of woman who then react in one textbook way to sexual violence allows people to victim blame when they don't like what they see and creates a smokescreen for rapists to hide behind.

Along with the non sugar coated scenes discussed above, Corrie haven't shied away from anything on this storyline. Carla is not an easy victim who tugs on the heart strings of everyone. She's a ballsy bitchy woman who has been married twice, conducted an affair with her first husband's brother while he was married, dresses pretty sexily, never has a hair out of place, is an alcoholic and took the side of a man she didn't know at the time when her friend said he'd tried to rape her. She's flawed and fucked up (and I, of course, love her) and actually just the right person for them to choose to suffer sexual violence rather than a 'perfect' victim who has no past. There is no doubt in the storyline that her ex-fiance raped her precisely because she's a strong woman and he wanted to humiliate and destroy her, not because this is sex gone wrong.

I would be extremely surprised if Coronation Street (and Alison King who plays Carla) had not worked closely with both victims and support services on this storyline such is their understanding of the complexities of rape and the level of accuracy they have shown so far. They have grasped the fundamental, but often misunderstood, fact that rape is about power above all else. They have immediately moved to show a variety of people's reactions to Carla's rape, including a female friend (who for many reasons, isn't especially understanding.) They've written with sensitivity and educationally, showing the overwhelming number of concerns after a rape from the need for emergency contraception, concerns about Hepatitis and HIV, privacy and not being able to return home to a crime scene. Even where they've had to move the plot on for time constraints, they've explained that it isn't normal to do the medical exam and video statement on the same day. They've shown the self doubt and fear Carla experiences from the minute she is fully questioned by the police and enters the biased and non victim focused world of the criminal justice system. I'd be surprised if they gave up the ghost now and reverted to cliche, rape myths and ratings boosting like a lot of rape storylines.

I know some people feel it is inappropriate to feature sexual violence on entertainment shows as they feel it sensationalises the subject or frightens people from reporting or is 'inappropriate' especially for kids. I'm not sure i agree them on any of those points when the storyline is done well. Soap operas in particular were created to raise issues and I feel that they can be a valuable way to bring things to people's attention, allow them to ask questions and become acquainted with things outside their own sphere. In this case, it might make a woman aware of a SARC before she or a friend are in need. It might also help raise awareness of their patchy provision geographically and the lack of funding for SARCs and Rape Crisis centres in the UK. And although it might have been frightening to see what happens in a medical exam, I think it's better to know what you're letting yourself in for than discover as you go. It could lead to making an informed decision to report than leaves victims less traumatised. It might also make a few people who think reporting rape is something so easy and inconsequential for women that they squeeze a bit of 'ruining his life' in between waxing, picking up a latte and planning an abortion.

I also dispute the fact that sexual violence isn't a subject for kids to hear of when 53 children a day report sexual abuse, hundreds more suffer in silence and girls are abused at three times the rate of boys in the UK. How the hell else do we protect and reassure those being abused and stop others from being abused at various stages in their lives? Silence just breeds the conditions for sexual violence to continue. If you feel it would be too much for your child to see these scenes, then don't let them watch, but do use the occasion to make sure they understand about having the choice to let people touch them.

Maybe it is ridiculous that we need a show that should be half an hour of escapism to challenge and teach us about things that seem so far-fetched but in fact affect at least 50,000 women in the UK a year*. But I think they've done an excellent job and look forward to seeing where the storyline goes, even if I'll be watching a lot of it from behind a cushion. I also really hope a lot of people use it as a chance to educate themselves and challange a few preconceptions. Not even about rape, but about the delightful time waster that is a soap opera...

*It was announced that The National Rape Crisis Centre experienced an 800 per cent increase in calls to their hotline this week after the Carla Connor storyline. Says Rosa Knight, Helpline Co-ordinator: "That we have had such a huge increase in calls demonstrates that it is not that women who have survived rape do not want or need support, rather that many are not aware of the support that is available to them."

MAKE UP OR BREAK UP?

2011-09-18T19:00:00.000+01:00

Probably the longest, most intimate relationship I've had as an adult has been with make up. I could practically count the number of days I've left the house totally bare faced since I was an adolescent. I'd only consider a desert island if my make up bag counted as one item such is my devotion to mascara and eyeliner equally. I cannot remember my first proper kiss or what record I first bought was, but I can tell exactly what my first eyeliner was*. I know the day and date I started wearing blusher. Every event in my grown up life is just little bit more technicolour, more photogeni, more fabulous and less acne ridden due to the art of maquillage.

I'm really not sure how I came to worship so devotedly at the shrine of slap. My mum wears very little make up beyond the basics. Her sisters and mother sported a similar look. The women on my dad's side were slightly more au fait with the world of make up and hairstyling due to being hairdressers and beauticians, but I barely saw them when I was growing up and if I'm honest, my dad was fairly disapproving of careers he saw as rather shallow so it wasn't encouraged or expected. But somehow my mum's make up bag exerted a hypnotic pull from an early age.

Green with a blue trim, it lived in the downstairs cloakroom and I used to hide in there with it and apply its endlessly fascinating contents to myself with such absorption it's amazing I didn't fall into the sink and drown à la Narcissus. Everything called to me, but none more so than the mascara. Unaware of the hygiene rules of this miracle product, I was quickly lured in by the siren song of the thicker darker longer lashes that even clear mascara offers. But it was the discovery of the transformative effects of black mascara that set me on a path I've never wandered off since. My foray into Yardley Raspberry Ripple lipstick was much less life changing though. I don't own a single lipstick even now. Possibly because they don't have that old fashioned scent anymore...

I moved onto buying my own make up fairly quickly, probably to the relief of my mother who wanted her's back and less pawed over. My first foundation was Rimmel's Clear Complexion in a hideously branded maroon and yellow tube. It had the consistency of mortician's wax mixed with grit and a range of colours all based round an apricot in varying stages of ripeness. I slathered it on with gusto, feeling that something resembling a mask was preferable to my current face of lurid and painful acne. I added some extra colour contrast to this combo with an equally incorrect shade of Hide the Blemish concealer. Even now I don't think this product lives up to its name if you have an actual spot rather than the more demure sounding 'blemish'. To me it just makes them look like angry swollen uneven lumps with a coating of stuff on top. You might as well wear a spot cosy for all the good it does.

I soon realised that with limited funds, a lack of places to buy premium brands at the time and a complexion too pale for any range even in Ireland, I wasn't going to be able to hide my acne that well. Better to distract from its malignant presence by use of eye make up. As a child I loved to draw, favouring brightly coloured intricately detailed pictures until teenage self consciousness and an evil art teacher by the name of Miss Newell bullied away the idea of putting pen to paper ever again. Discovering eyeshadow was like finding a way to bring that love of colour, tone and creativity back into my life and it wasn't long before my lids were rarely unadorned.

Whereas I used to spend my pocket money and disposable income from part time jobs on music and gigs, it all began to go on make up and magazines that taught me how to apply it and what look was in and with what. I saved up and then splashed out when I went to cities with trendy new brands, practically needing resuscitated in Browne Thomas and Kendalls where I discovered MAC for the first time and realised why being an adult could be wonderful. I scoured niche mail order companies like Beautique for Delux nail polishes and Le Club des Createurs de Beauté for Agnes B products. I braved a bomb scare in Oxford Street to be the first of my friends back home to own Hard Candy when those plastic rings on top of the bottle were the hottest accessory in town and Urban Decay when it was actually edgy. I went on waiting lists for Chanel products and still prize my red and black compact with eyegloss from 1998 which despite making me look like a lab rat is still the fanciest thing I own.

My poor brother became well trained in the art of avoiding the hard sell at beauty counters as he went on missions to get me coveted items for Christmas and birthdays, even learning how to branch out and choose for himself, as the 22nd birthday present of Fuji by Nars proved. Father Christmas got used to every list reading like the Beauty Hall of Selfridges (which ironically became my least favourite job of all time). When I think back over my late teens and early 20s the years aren't punctuated by music or fashions in clothing in the same way as make up. Turning 18 was all about my first MAC eyeshadow in Contrast. I still struggle to get this super pigmented product to blend and wear this dark metallic navy as a liner instead. 19 was Pigments in Melon and Vanilla and Aveda lipstick scented with clove and cinnamon. 20 was Lancôme Maquisuperbe, stacking pots from Ruby and Millie and my very first blusher. 21 was when I discovered Nars and found my signature look with the beautiful Lola Lola shadow from Space NK in Glasgow. 22 was cat eye flicks in Fuji, pinching my friend Jennifer's Cranberry Frost by MAC and realising how useful the right brush is.

At 23 I was working for Space NK in my first job in London and was like a kid in a candy shop. I was given bags and bags of products either as training items by PRs who wanted you to push them above all else or of testers that no longer looked the part in the store displays. The pay was minimum wage. The perks lay with the freebies. Beautiful fashionable products I had drooled over in magazines and would have had to work three or four hours to afford. By 24 I had trained as a make up artist at London College of Fashion and was working at it full time between stores, side projects and freelance jobs. I lived make up. I ate make up (and very little else as the stuff is so damned expensive). I spent most of my spare time either trawling make up stores or standing in front of the bathroom mirror applying make up and practising a variety of looks. I loved the stuff.

But somewhere in my late 20s make up stopped being something fun and creative and endlessly fascinating and became something I did out of habit and to hide myself behind a mask. When fully made up with my customary 20 products, primed, shaded, sealed and blended to perfection, I exude an air of haughtiness bordering on the fuck off. Men especially don't glance my way and thus don't hassle me in the street the same way they do as when I'm scrubbed clean. Make up makes me feel safe. I also feel it distracts women from commenting on my clothes choices or my body (as they did all the time in fashion.) I also feel more able to hold my head up and fake it when I've got my 'face' on.

I didn't really realise I did any of this, thinking it was perfectly normal to wear a full face of make up popping to the Post Office, although I did admire and slightly envy my fresher faced friends and have never thought they should wear more. I knew I wasn't wearing make up for men, but I wasn't aware I was daubing myself in the stuff to repel them either until my therapist dug a bit deeper and set me the challenge of going out with no make up on to confront my fears. I couldn't think of a polite way to say 'not on your nelly' and comprised somewhat by going light on the products instead.

Taking advantage of my Roaccutane perfected skin, I got this down to under eye concealer, primer and pressed powder on my face. But like Amy Winehouse (rest her soul) I understand the lure of a thick track of liner on the upper lids. It seems to keep the world at bay and convey a certain style of self. We've been together roughly 18 years. It was staying, but I've been shaking it up and using dark navy or green or brown instead of black. All topped off with my customary lashings of 2000 Calories mascara by Max Factor. I'm happy to trade somethings for good mental health but I'd rather not go back to looking like a blinking mole with my fair lashes.

As well as using make up as a mask, I'd forgotten what I could look like and was still buying into the industry urge to make everything smoother, tighter, lighter, sleeker, longer, deeper, pinker and less like yourself. I thought I look crap without make up and that people would avert their eyes or snigger if I cut out a stage. But wanting to be able to say I'd at least tried to my therapist, I streamlined my look for an entire week.

And promptly received more compliments about my appearance than the previous ten years combined. Not ringing my eyes with heavy kohl apparently makes me look fresh faced and luminous. It also gets me carded more often trying to buy gin. But it doesn't cause the sky to fall in. It's also made me feel more creative with colours and techniques than I have in years. And having more time to waste on other stuff before I leave the house is rather marvellous. A month in to my experiment, I'm starting to rather like actually seeing my own face without the idea of what I should look like superimposed on top of it. I haven't been hassled in the street at all, probably because I still give good bitch face. But I think I'll be keeping up the lower maintenance look for day to day life and the smoky eyes for when impact is required.

Of course, this means I'm not allowed to buy any make up probably ever again so stop me if you see me going near a MAC counter or sniffing round the Nars stand. It's for my own good you understand...

*Boots Natural Collection Black Kohl pencil. Slightly more comfortable on the eye and barely any darker than a 3B graphite pencil from my case. I learned quickly to move on.

BLAME ME, SHAME ME...

2011-08-31T11:17:00.000+01:00

Last week's decision not to bring the case for attempted rape and sexual assault against Dominique Strauss Kahn was hardly a shock. The whole case was a clusterfuck of supreme proportions. The prosecution went overboard trying to make Nafitassou Diallo out to a be a room cleaning representation of perfect womanhood, setting her up to fall very hard and fast if anything proved otherwise. The defence played a clever game in saying the prosecution ws biased against DSK because of who he was and hoist them with their own petard as Cyrus Vance Jr and his team did the defence's dirty work for them by digging very deep on Diallo to try and show just how unbiased they were. Diallo turned out to be a flawed victim (but then aren't we all according to the very high standards set?) and her lie on her asylum application about a gang rape in Guinea did make a fair trial tricky to ensure.

But I'm not here to re-hash the DSK case. I really don't think much else can be said about it now. What has piqued my interest is the unbelievable amount of victim blaming, rape apologism and attempts to belittle sexual assault that have floated to the surface around it. Some of it is overt and palpable, some of it is so insidious and internalised that it blows my mind and some of it is borne of ignorance, the peddling of rape myths and the perceptions that our imbalance justice system creates. But despite the different paths, it all leads to one result. Women who report rape aren't believed and their trauma and fear is minimised at every step of the way.

If we weren't talking about something so serious, I'd laugh at the increasingly desperate almost hysterical levels of denial that rape and sexual assault even exist. In a blog conversation with the fantastic Sian at crooked rib, a charmer by the name of Iain dismissed forensic evidence in the DSK case with "that it's [semen] on a wall or clothes seems totally irrelevant. I'm surprised that anyone (even those who'd never had sex with a man) would be unaware that semen ends up in all sorts of places. It shoots out, quite a long way if allowed to." So apparently in an encounter where the accused denies being in the same room or touching the victim until his bodily fliuds are found present, this can be written off further by trying to tell us that penises are a bit like a shower head dropped in the bath and make a terrible mess if not watched closely at all times.

Another peach (now deleted) on the comments below this Hadley Freeman piece on the Guardian asked how oral sex could ever be forced? I like to think this is because it's honestly never occurred to him that a rapist will threaten to kill or injure a victim (or someone close to her) unless she does his bidding or that it isn't especially difficult to overpower a smaller person who may actually be on her knees or physical prevented from getting up. But since his username was 2Sceptic, I don't think he was having a gosh-golly learning experience about the shittiness of human nature.

Also on CiF, a serial rape denier by the username of FelixKrull declared with a Poirot-esque flourish that because she went back and cleaned the room where the assault had taken place magically erased the fact she had been attacked and thus rendered her a liar, rather than a frightened confused woman simultaneously trying to come to terms with being raped (forced oral sex is rape in the UK, hence my use of the term) and worried about losing her job for not cleaning the room, let alone utterly humiliated by the fact she had someone's semen on her (at work for extra mortification) and not necessarily wanting to advertise her shame to everyone in the hotel.

Nothing, not even calm measured explanation of how trauma works and the kind of reasoning shame and degradation affects people would change their minds and those who flocked to agree with them. Rape myths got a fresh airing with people queuing up to state that if she'd been raped, she'd have been cleaning herself instead of the room. They were unable to see the close link (admittedly it did take me several years to realise why I repainted our kitchen three times in the month afterwards, but then again I was having a nervous breakdown and no one was helpfully writing internet comments explaining the link for me). I wrote a few comments trying to explain why these people are both wrong and being massively unhelpful and then went off and banged my head against a wall instead for more effect. But then again, all the rape apologists had got nicely warmed up earlier in the year trotting out the short skirt and tight tops argument over the Slutwalks, so I should have known I was on the back foot.

Two other things came to my attention in the midst of this orgy of fingerpointing. Firstly this horrifying Mumsnet survey about rape and sexual assault (which needs a trigger warning) and secondly this amazing piece about Schrodingers' Rapist which seeks to explain just how prevalent the fear of rape and the spectre of blame for such a thing is for so many women. It makes chilling reading. I mean, you've read this blog, you know how scared I am of everything? That post still shook me up when I realised some of the things that we women are just expected to give up or go out of our way to do or if we get raped it'll all be our fault. And if it can shock someone like me who is hypervigilant, hasn't worn a skirt above the knee for seven years, refuses to match her underwear and checks the locks five times everytime she goes near the door all because of being both raped and being blamed for it, then it's rocket fuel for someone who has never had to consider it. And yet it wasn't wholeheartedly followed by a lot of people saying ' wow. That's shitty. What can we all do to change this and make everyone feel safer?'

No, it was followed by a whole load of people who have obviously mistaken the rape apology bingo card for the EuroMillions on a ten week rollover and can't wait to get every square in record time by spewing bullshit and looking butt-hurt that not all single women react to them to the street like a Babycham fuelled housewife at a Tom Jones concert. But then why would they take an (albeit) brilliant blogpost so seriously when the big boys in the police and judiciary don't have to play by the same rules? Because if you want to see victim blaming taken up a notch, this is where the gloves come off and you have to glue your eyes into the sockets to prevent an injury from rolling them.

The police suggested to me with utter seriousness that the roughly 100 injuries (that took almost 2 hours to photograph in detail) on my body could have been caused by either my friend and I giving each other hickeys in the pub for fun, arm wrestling, tripping over my flip flop and long skirt more than once in the evening and landing on the backs of my hands and the tops of my feet each time or (and this is my favourite) crouching down to pee in the park and catching myself on a twig or a combination of all the above. Not being drugged, forcibly held down and raped by at least one person. No, for one night only I became an arm wrestling, body contortionist with a hitherto unknown before or since penchant for pissing in parks with 8 foot high railings and didn't remember one nanosecond of it. I was too busy crying inside to hear how they explained away my bag ending up in the street in a mile away minus only a spare pair of knickers, a library book on Ted Bundy and my debit card while my mobile phone was sold by a bloke to a man in a shebeen in Tottenham Court Road and used to call India for next few hours. No doubt, they thought I was trying to renact a entire gap year without leaving W1.

Unsurprisingly this culture of sticking their fingers in their ears and going la-la-la got in the way of them investigating my rape (or the other four ultimately believed to be connected to the same bar) and no one was ever identified, let alone questioned. Weirdly despite trotting out every excuse and myth possible they did actually seem to believe a rape had taken place and said so when I claimed compensation several years later (even if it was grudgingly and with a sting in the tail). Recent missives from the frontline of the Sapphire units don't sadly seem to show any great enlightenment amongst the Met and the sound of clutching at straws still whistles on the wind as women seek justice.

This is why the Dominique Strauss Kahn case is important. It allowed rape myths to be seen as gospel and weak excuses to be commonplace like gossip. It also showed the uphill battle to raise rape conviction rates while such attitudes are so rife. The Stern Review touched on this handicap but sorely underestimated its insidious impact on the police and jury members alike which unless tackled counteracts every other proposal to raise rape conviction rates. The DSK case shows the media is a reluctant ally, so looks like we've got to speak up for ourselves. Challenge a preconception where you can. Poke holes in people's ignorant arguments. Educate without preaching*. But speak up all the same!

*Doing this in internet comments is optional for your mental health.

PARK LIFE

2011-08-26T15:06:00.000+01:00

I'm going to go out on a limb here. Whoever popularised the expression 'a walk in the park' for doing something easy-peasy did not suffer from agoraphobia.

I find leaving the house pretty bloody difficult at the best of times, but going for a stroll round a park is particularly nervewracking for me. I don't know if that's because the concept of leaving the house because you want to or to have fun is quite alien to me these days or because I was most likely raped the second time in Soho Square in the line of sight of lots of people or because parks are quite wasp friendly. So why did last Monday afternoon find me walking round Holland Park?

Well, I'm having some more therapy (it might make me less mental or it might qualify me for the Guinness Book of Records) and I'm really trying to tackle my agoraphobia. After roughly six years of sitting in the house, I'm bored of it. I've seen every episode of Murder, She Wrote. I've read the entire internet. I've managed to make enough of the immediate area feel safe and established a support network of people who either understand my agoraphobia or don't like to make a fuss about it and suddenly I'm no longer content with being stuck indoors all the time. I can see normality on the horizon and it looks like a nice place to be. I want to be over there with people who go on days out or have jobs or don't have to leave the house two hours early to allow for panic attack time or just like being outside. People who just get on the bus and do stuff at the drop of a hat rather than construct a bizarre life held together tenuously with a tonne of coping mechanisms of varying oddities. People not like me in other words.

So my therapist and I are working on a series of exercises that work on overcoming my agoraphobia and minimising my reliance on control and coping mechanisms. She has been suggesting things like try buying the paper in a different shop to normal or get off the bus early. In a classic case of frustration, making life hard for myself and trying to run before I can walk, I suggested going to an area of London I've never been before and dandering round a strange park by myself. And then if I had time on the way home, I could climb Everest and cure cancer...

I left my day trip to the last possible opportunity before my next therapy appointment and finally found the time in my busy schedule of sitting on my arse when I weighed up the discomfort of having to make up an excuse as to why I hadn't done my homework next day. Realising I have no dog that could have eaten it, I took the Tube to Holland Park with a sense of dread and duty. I didn't quite manage to break a recently realised coping strategy and went fully made up as it (oddly) makes me feel less scared that men will leer at me and of course the use of mascara discourages me from crying with fear in public in case I end up looking like Alice Cooper. But off I went all the same. One incident of hiding on the platform pretending to read a poster, rather than get in the lift alone with a slightly strange man, two double checkings of the map in the concourse and a brief lurk at a bus stop to re-read the map later, I reached the park.

My reasoning behind Holland Park being a good place for this activity was that it would be full of posh people, excellent signposting and nice manicured lawns from edge to edge with nothing larger than a box hedge for crazed rapists to skulk behind. Unsurprisingly like all assumptions, there was little actual fact to back this up. Everyone looked much like all the people I've seen in other parks (albeit with more pedigree dogs), signposts appear to be banned and there are fucking great hedges everywhere. The whole place is like a nature reserve crossed with a Crimewatch reconstruction. I mean, it's lovely. All green and leafy and like a forest rather than just a patch of grass like most parks. And it has a bloody great pen of pigs milling about being all oinkworthy and cute. Great stuff, unless like me you are convinced that going into a park is the most dangerous thing you can do outdoors and like to be able to see everything clearly and not have any chance of anyone sneaking up on you. Plus all that privet is like a street party for wasps.

I walked from one end of the park to another with grim determination and a knot in my stomach. Even though it cloudy and overcast I kept my sunglasses on. I tried to think things like 'what a lovely tree' but everything kept going a bit blurry and feeling like it was swimming around me as I attempted to not just curl up in a ball and wish myself somewhere else. I felt immediately better when I got out onto the street, but I was still so flustered and upset and panicky that even wandering into the High St Kensington Waitrose and staring for ages at all the types of cheese couldn't soothe me. And while the high number of stiff upper lip posh folk probably made the park less scary, it also meant a lack of pubs in which I could resort to a stiff drink to take the edge off. (Yes, I know alcohol solves nothing long term.) Instead I made myself go into lots of shops and look at things to distract me from that feeling of impending death I was having.

And it kind of worked. An hour later I'd impulse purchased several items of clothing (which turned out to flattering and not black when I got them home. Apparently fear is what my wardrobe has been missing.) and discovered that eating some lunch would make me feel less wobbly and sick. I pootled home feeling like I'd almost enjoyed myself. Despite that, I couldn't have been more relieved to get home and lock the door. I could physically feel the tension drop away as I turned the key. I spent the next hour or two reminding myself what fun it had really been and how nice it was that I hadn't died/cried/vomited/punched anyone or run away screaming, but then at just after 7.30pm, I had to go to bed because I was so exhausted I was starting to stagger and slur my words. I felt I deserved a lovely long deep sleep to perk me right up again.

Unfortunately I had a good 12 hours of nightmares and flashbacks instead and woke up feeling like I hadn't bothered going to bed at all. One little meander had popped the top off those PTSD symptoms I have become quite good at keeping stashed away. I felt like I had an emotional hangover, topped with a general feeling of being a failure for not even being able to do something toddlers find fun. But rather than stay in, refuse to even open the windows like a really bad agoraphobic day usually makes me feel, I hauled myself out to my therapy appointment for a serious post mortem of the event. My lovely therapist helped me be less bleak about the whole thing and awarded me some CBT gold stars for my mental wallchart. I then surprised the hell out of myself by going to meet a friend for lunch and do dinner with another instead of hiding away back home.

Maybe I'm not as bat-shit as I thought. Maybe parks are just intensely dull places full of slightly weird people after all and no one goes to them if they have a garden? Maybe I'll be able to completely dismiss the idea of art galleries and museums after this week's homework and go up another level at the game of self delusion? So help me out...where outside the house do you go alone to recharge your emotional batteries*? Is it ever fun to go out by yourself?

*unexpected pigs are a plus, not a necessity in the venues.

ANY ANSWERS?

2011-08-02T17:02:00.000+01:00

I went on a date recently. And it was fantastic. We clicked immediately, there was a certain chemistry, we talked the whole evening away without noticing time passing and there was no game playing. He texted me at lunchtime the next day to say he'd like to see me again soon, was I free on Thursday? We met again and had another great evening over sherry and tapas. There was a enthusiastic goodnight kiss. Other commitments for both of us stopped us meeting the next week, but there were many texts and arrangement to meet again the first night we were both free. There were drinks and dinner, again not leaving the restaurant til the staff wearily told us to go home. We lingered on the way to the Tube and talked about meeting again, parting with giggles and jokes. It all seemed promising and delightfully grown up. And then he vanished into thin air and stopped contacting me completely...

More than a week after our last date and I hadn't heard a dickybird. While I'd like to tell you that I have laughed this off and simply moved on to arranging dinner and drinks with my next admirer, I hadn't. Instead I have been vacillating between dejection, frantic excuse making (Maybe he's lost his phone? Maybe he's in a fugue state? Maybe he's dead and someone else is updating his Twitter account?) and sheer seething annoyance. Few things piss me off more than unexplained disappearances from someone you're dating.

I have a long history with this tactic, starting with the very first boy I ever 'went out with' aged ten who favoured the unexplained absence followed by the outlandish excuse before he'd even hit puberty. Pretty much every single guy I've dallied with since has pulled a similar style stunt, but since many of them weren't serious relationships and often the kind of person I never wanted to speak to again after spending time alone with them, I didn't mind so much. It was the fact that each man I have had a serious relationship with embraced this method of indirect communication with gusto that really made me loathe it.

There was the boyfriend when I was about 17 who went out for a drink after work before meeting me and didn't re-appear for a week and a half. I never quite established what he'd been up to, but since it involved running away to Ballycastle in February, it didn't sound like a lot of fun. We struggled on for a while after his apparently Valentine's inspired flit, finally breaking up when he turned up to take me to my Lower Sixth formal in a borrowed suit with his head shaved with a Bic razor and being mistaken for the bouncer by everyone else there. The icing on the cake though was leaving me sitting alone at the table all dressed up and feeling like an idiot while he disappeared back to Belfast in a cab in search of a drink, never to be seen or spoken to ever again.

Or my hairdresser who I had been flirting and making eyes at for about a year (mainly at the expense of having my hair cut every three weeks) who vanished about a week after we finally got together, which in a pre-mobile phone era, neccesitated me having to write to him at his flat to enquire as to whether I needed to find a new hairdresser (let alone a new boyfriend)? Setting aside the agonising realisation that I didn't know his surname and had to address said missive with his name and 'hairdresser' in brackets to avoid confusion with his identically named flatmate, it didn't entirely put things to rest. Our erratic relationship dragged on a while longer before he took up with a woman who looked uncannily like me and had the same name and I refused to give up a decent coiffure in the wastelands of 90s Belfast in favour of self respect. I saw him a few years ago for a haircut and was horrified that 12 years later, he insisted on talking about what happened between us, thus making me cringe so hard I'm surprised my scalp didn't turn inside out.

And so that you don't lose all respect for me, we should probably skim over the five year long relationship I had in my early 20s with a man whose vanishing skills really should have been on the stage at a fairground. Even with the modern marvels of a mobile phone didn't help especially, but simply provided me more opportunities to sit round like a total sap waiting to see what new methods of dismissiveness and rejection might come my way. It also provided the area for some truly bizarre apologies to restore my hope, including one memorable exclaimation from him that having stood me up without warning to go to Sweden that he was 'a lunch-out fucker' and desperate to make it up to me. It may not surprise you that the eventual (and agonising) end to our relationship also involved total silence, desperation and disappearing tricks, but ratcheted up a notch that rubbed it in just that little bit more.

Once I'd come to terms with the end of that relationship and taken a good long look at myself, I swore that I wouldn't find myself hanging on like a sadsack and making far fetched excuses while some guy I liked had done a disappearing act again. I would not display my chronically low esteem so openly again by putting up with this behaviour. I wouldn't derive some kind of perverse enjoyment and importance from this uncertainty. I would not condone it by failing to mention it. And I'd be damned if I was going to keep playing bullshit games about seeing someone now I'm in my early 30s. I would be firm and assertive and not worry about seeming like a nag or coming across as crazy. So when every single guy I've dated in the past six or seven years has slunk off into the woodwork without so much as a 'it's not you, it's me' I've mainly shrugged, rolled my eyes and got on with it (allowing for some mild infuriation and a few slow to learn communications). And while no one positively revels in the equivalent of a Dear John letter, some feedback on why men seem prefer heading to the hills rather than date me would be good.

It's just not especially good for the soul when people suddenly bolt for the blue when faced with the option of spending time with you. It leads to enormous amounts of self absorbed questioning and in my case, helps to feed the barely suppressed crazy in my life. I suffer from not one, but three (count 'em) anxiety disorders. And nothing nutures anxiety like uncertainty, a feeling of loss of control and lack of communication. Firstly, I find it almost impossible not to imagine the worst when someone drops out of my life and I don't mean that've met someone else with better legs. More that they are dead in a ditch, being held captive and tortured or some such. It's called catastrophizing and it's a firm favourite of anxiety disorders. Once I've reassured myself there have been no shark attacks in central London, I like to move on to some obsessive compulsive thoughts, wild self recrimination and crippling guilt for my supposed short comings. I mix this up with feeling like men are cruel and hurtful and can't be trusted. (Calm down, MRA types. It's not a slur on you all. I though raw mushrooms were poisonous until recently too.) Then exhausted and bored by my own endless neuroses, I realise these guys just don't actually have any manners or balls or they'd be polite enough to send a text or email to say ' Hi, don't feel this is going anywhere. Good luck in the future.' and we could all move on without lingering worries and resentments.

However, the lack of contact in this case has brought my resolve and assertiveness to a grinding halt. Ultimately I didn't feel any great chemistry or inclination to develop a relationship with the other guys over the past six or seven years so when they did the Great Vamoose, it wasn't crippling and generally I'd clocked that they were shallow assholes already, so it wasn't unexpected. But having taken a break from relationships for a long long time, had a lot of therapy, trained myself out of taking a shine to shallow assholes and gone for the grown up dating route on this occasion, it has thrown me that things have disintegrated into avoidance. One of the things I liked when I met this guy was the feeling that he wasn't the game playing type...and yet here I was wondering what the fuck happened, jumping with anticipation everytime my phone tells me I have a text even though it's not the phone number I gave him and marvelling at just how stunted my intution about people really is.

But in a good approximation of being grown up and emotionally balanced, I sent him a text saying hi and asking that if he's not interested in seeing me again to do me the courtesy of letting me know that, rather than just driving myself crazy wondering what's happening and bending everyone else's ear about it. We ended up going for coffee on Sunday morning and I spent a good two hours listen to him explain in (minute) detail how his life is so stressful and wait for him to finish up this monologue with a 'can we be friends?'. Everytime I thought we'd got to that stage and I could go home to my hangover, he chickened out and changed the subject.

Three cups of coffee, a jug of water and countless attempts by me to get to the point, we still hadn't ended things. That came outside the Tube station for maximum awkwardness. He started another spiel about his tricky life. This one involving his sourdough starter needing daily feeding. Beginning to wish I was also a non sentient life form in a bowl, he finally managed to ask if we could 'go back' to being friends. My hangover and I agreed enthusiastically and left before he started to clarify what he meant. I'd gone from desperately wanting an answer to desperately wanting to get away. In future, I'll be more careful as to what I wish for...

TALK ABOUT A TIT...

2011-07-25T12:15:00.001+01:00

I've been watching the all recent talk about phone hacking and police corruption with the kind of interest I normally reserve for the Christmas episode of Eastenders. I've been glued to the select committees and press conferences. I've seen a lot of people offer justifications and excuses. And I've started about eight intense and earnest blog posts about the whole thing to add my two cents to all the other endless pieces of debate, but I got bored wading through the minutiae of the Met's failings and realised all I wanted to say was ha ha ha, I was right, you were wrong...

The idea that the Metropolitan police are incompetent had been put in my head long before I ever dealt with them, but my dealings with them in 2004 did nothing to dissuade of that notion. To accuse them of not being able to organise a piss up in a brewery is insulting to those with poor events managment skills in a licensed property. Not only could they not find their arse from their elbow with a map and the Mountain Rescue to help, they were bitchy, disorganized, biased and bloody rude. Asking them to actually prove my rapes felt like asking a particularly stroppy teenager to clean their room, but with higher emotional stakes. They huffed and puffed and sulked and stamped their feet and made me feel like a burden who gone and got herself raped just to bugger up their nice tidy paperwork.

But in amongst their inability to even do their jobs to a basic standard, there was something else niggling at me. I didn't trust them at all. I thought they were a bunch of lying and corrupt bastards. Their threats that they couldn't keep my details anonymous when my first case looked like it would hit the papers. Gossiping about other cases as they drove me round from appointment to appointment, even pointing out houses where rapes involving footballers had happened. Slandering me to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority. Forging my signature to make it look like I'd withdrawn my complaint. Cajoling phonecalls during the day and hang-ups at 4am. The first response to discovering my entire paper file, including over 100 photos of the injuries visible on my naked body, had gone missing was not 'sorry' or 'I'm sure it's just be incorrectly filed'. It was 'Let's hope no one has sold it to the papers.'*

They kept telling me they were rotten. They kept lying to me. They shouted it from the rooftops. And I didn't quite take it on board. Part of me was convinced they stank like three day old fish. The other part of me kept telling myself I was so fucked up and traumatised and bitter I was just lashing out and saying horrible things about them out of pain. I felt utterly biased about the Met. Asking me about them was as likely to get you a balanced answer as doing a bridal shop survey with Miss Havisham. But thanks to a winning combination of trauma, self doubt and the Met's own very persuasive tactics, I ignored the fact I thought they were corrupt, thought I was just nuts instead and learned to swallow the hot sick feeling that rose up everytime I thought about who might be looking at those photos...

Until the last week that is. When the Schadenfraude Fairy came to visit and I realised I'm not mad, I'm not raddled with bitterness and I was right. The Metropolitan police really are institutionally corrupt and full of shit. And don't give me the line that it's just a few bad apples and point to the fact that top coppers like John Yates and Sir Paul Stephenson resigned quite quickly. Everyone I dealt with at the Met covered up for the corruption pervading their police force. Even when I made a formal complaint about them, intending it to go to the Directorate of Professional Standards and be treated with the respect and gravity it deserved, the Sapphire Unit involved managed to practically everyone in the department involved to bully me back down to the ineffective (and illegal) Local Resolution. Officers who had never heard my name before or had any dealing in my case put their names to coaxing letters, bullying phonecalls and bargaining tools that were designed to make me back down and prevent their shameful handling of my case from being exposed. That mixture of cajoling and implied threats went as high as to involve senior officers any news hungry citizen would have heard of.

And that was after the original officers destroyed paperwork, forged details, ignored evidence and it was all covered up from the eyes of their superiors either by lies and deception or people simply turning a blind eye. They all covered ther arses, I had a nervous breakdown and my rapist walked free. It might not be the same headline grabbing corruption of the past few weeks, but it's corruption all the same. So it didn't come as a shock to find out they've been indulging in underhand dealings and nefarious actions worthy of a John La Carré novel as well. But even though I have a spectacularly low opinion of the Met and it was nice to realise I haven't become a conspiracy theorist, I was disappointed to realise just how bad the organisation really is. It's fundamentally important to have faith and trust in the police. It makes us feel safe. It underpins the real need we all have to feel the world is just. It's so incredibly vital to a functioning society that I can't overestimate it enough. And the Met have spoiled it for everyone.

They need to at least try and come clean about their behaviour in general and their involvement in the News of the World hacking scandal and they need to stop taking us for fools now they've been discovered with their mealy mouthed denials, insistence on their 'integrity' and vaguely comical soundbites. They need to shake things up from top to bottom, lose the butt hurt tones and appeal to us to respect them again in the future after showing us what they've changed and achieved rather than just telling us loudly and with the aid of their 45 PR officers. I, for one, will be happy to wait. It might go some way toward making me less regretful and upset that I ever got involved with them.

* I have no idea if they did sell the file to anyone. I have no idea if I want to know. But I know I won't be entirely surprised if it turned out to be true.

WHAT A BURDEN TO BEAR...

2011-07-03T15:20:00.000+01:00

The Dominique Strauss Kahn case turned into a real rape investigation today. Not the eyes of the world are on us, let's pretend we're a Linda Fairstein novel investigation of the past six weeks, but the proper bare knuckle fight every victim who has ever told what happened to anyone, especially the police, recognises with a sinking feeling in their stomach. The kind where facts and forensics get shunted aside and all focus turns on taking every single part of the victim's life apart to intimate that even though the alleged attacker is a super nice guy who wouldn't do such a thing, the victim is a vile lying harpy that represents all that is bad about society and would have deserved to be raped...if of course a rape had taken place...

Obviously I have no idea what went on in that hotel room in New York, but I can smell the distinct odour of bullshit emanating from the vicinity as things progress. Strauss Kahn does not deny sexual contact, he just disputes that there was no consent, giving us the potential scenarios of him having consensual sex with a chambermaid who didn't even know he was in the room but upon seeing him emerge dripping wet and naked from the shower, didn't scream in surprise, but drop to her knees and show a guest at her place of work a good time orally. I find it unlikely that she'd risk her job for a quickie on the shagpile. I find it even more unlikely that after zipping himself back up, he was so overcome with the guilt of cheating on his wife on a whim that he hightailed it to JFK so fast he left his phone behind. Yet plenty of people seem to be thinking this is entirely feasible. I only assume they are the kind of people who don't realise that 9 times of 10 the pouting honeys in lads' mags are essentially playing a role when they are 'up for it' in front of the camera and that women don't actually walk round in a state of such permanent arousal and consent that they no matter what can't say no to cock? Not even when they sober, or working or in a long term relationship or hormonal. Women can't say no. Of course the chambermaid would have been wooed by the simple act of pulling back the shower curtain. It happened all the time in 70s porn films...

Or if it seems unrealistic that both of them were overcome with carnal lusts for each other within 30 seconds of their eyes meeting across the bathmat, maybe he paid her. I'm not naive enough to think everyone who phones down to reception for a spare pillow actually likes to sleep well supported. High end hotels probably see quite a lot of sex work. And without debating the ethics of prostitution, it is possible that the chambermaid might have been engaged in sex work alongside her cleaning duties. That doesn't mean you can't rape a prostitute. Prostitution invloves the exchange of a specific agreed sex act for money. It's not a entrance fee. Just because you paid for manual stimulation doesn't mean you get oral sex as well. And that doesn't even cover the fact that you can still threaten, cajole and coerce a woman usually charges for sexual services if you are that way inclined. But the people who are supporting the supposition that she's a working girl and thus lying are probably the kind of people to think the only thing worse than a prostitute, is a prostitute with the attitude to stand up for herself.

And even when the suggestion is made that Dominique Strauss Kahn sexually assaulted the chambermaid, as feasibily suggested by the vaginal bruising, ligament damage to her shoulder and cuts and bruises documented by police approved medical staff at the hospital within hours, there are still other excuses made. The usual one even when she's torn and bleeding and bruised is that she likes it rough. And not only does she like it rough, unlike most people in normal consensual BDSM relationships, she doesn't wait to have rough sex in a trusting relationship with boundaries and safe words, she engages in it instantly without discussion with a man she met mere moments earlier.

Even with the encouragement of a chorus of 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil' monkeys, all the scenarios for consensual sex sound a little implausible*.( But since the truth is often stranger than fiction, that's exactly why both accused and accuser should get their day in court.) So that's when things step up a notch, the tone changes and the focus shifts from him to her. The character assassins have arrived with their insanely ridiculously unrealistically high standards. While no one suggests that anyone should be convicted of rape or sexual assault on mere whimsy, I find it telling that in every case, the focus changes from trying to prove a crime was committed into trying to prove the victim isn't worth the paper the law is written on. In a cute new twist on the witchtrials of yore, rape victims' trustworthiness are ducked in the pool of morality. Fail to mention one second of your attack or one aspect of life or past and howls of 'liar liar' go up and it is deemed that you can't rape a liar. Be brutally upfront and mention the recreational drugs at college or the prior flirtatious relationship with him or the year you were a sex worker and beneath the gasps of shock and fanning of one's self and inhalation of smelling salts at failing the test of social acceptability, you'll hear the belief that you can't rape a woman of low morals. These days the ducking stool is more likely a witness box.

And if you were the one lone woman who didn't fail the test that has no right answers, don't sigh with relief just yet. Even if you tick all the socially acceptable boxes, the boundaries will simply be moved until you are pushed outside the lines. So even if you were cycling home from the library with an unbridged Bible and a fully intact hymen, they'll go after those around you. Maybe you fraternise with prisoners. Maybe you stole a penny chew aged seven. Maybe you told a friend that hareem pants don't make her arse look enormous. Maybe you asked about how your finances even though you've lost your job after being assaulted.Maybe your dad has a few bondage magazines tucked away in the garden shed? You are no longer perfect by association. You no longer deserve to be protected by law and treated like a human being. You have fallen from grace. It's like you ate the bloody apple all over again. And you can't have been raped.

But strangely enough this intense spotlight of suspicion doesn't seem to shine on the other person involved. The accused is not held to the same unrealistically high burden of proof. His inability to remember the entire situation in pinsharp detail is forgiven. His drinking habits and dalliances with drugs aren't scrutinised. His finances, work history and wardrobe aren't put under a magnifying glass. Those trips to strip clubs with friends, subscriptions of men's magazines and internet porn history are just examples of being a red blooded male. Even in cases were there are prior allegations of domestic violence, rape or sexual harrassment are seen as irrelevant, just the rantings of those man hating feminazis. The allegations of his bad character cannot be used as grounds for conviction, but her perceived flaws are enough to dismiss her case and her as a human being.

Occasionally, just occasionally, a case sneaks through and gets a guilty verdict. These will be the cases so beyond the pale that everyone has run out of excuses for the accused and an invisible line has between flawed human being and monster has been crossed. The depravity and violence has become frightening and uncontrollable and starts repulse people. Girls are hit on heads with hammers, bodies are hidden in churches, rape victims are so numerous they couldn't all fit in one court, crossbows are used. And when Levi Bellfield, Peter Tobin, John Warboys, Delroy Grant and Stephen Griffiths are convicted and the country reels in horror, there is always a litany of dropped cases, short sentences, shoddy investigations and disappointed doubted victims left shattered and brutalised. And everyone who says 'it must never happen again' about those infamous events, start tutting at the length of her skirt or judging her for not wanting to sit in a room full of strange men and shooting the breeze about sex acts and semen or her Female Genital Mutilation the next time they hear or read about a rape victim again. And the cycle continues.

I'm not suggesting Dominique Strauss Kahn is a serial killer in the making. We don't yet have answers about whether he's a rapist. All my slightly hypocritical nitpicking earlier might be me showing how little I really know. But the problem lies with the fact that no one outside of the prosecution (and actually it was the prosecution who leaked the details to the New York Times in this case) in rape cases actually seems to want to get the truth. And that truth is that some men hurt and abuse and assault women. It's also that some women accuse falsely. It's that rapists are fucked up and flawed people. And that victims are humans, not idealistic representations of virtue. And that everyone involved in cases of sexual violence bring their pasts and presents and thoughts and feelings to it and it's not easy. But that's all the more reason to let events and facts and realities speak for themselves and show the way to answers in all their gritty reality rather than compel things into being as simplistic and saccharine as to say all men are one way and all women are another.

Life isn't black and white, but when the stakes are as high as they are with rape, we need to start accepting shades of grey. And we start doing that by having the same rules for victim and attacker, not letting bias be the bonus ball. But until we stop holding women to unrealistic expectations everywhere else in their lives, it's unlikely the balance of power will change and we will have the same debate the next time a case like this hits the headlines again.

*A Twitter commenter reminds me that I "forgot the everyday more likely set-up scenario" and that DSK was framed. I have no idea how one conveys weariness with conspiracy theories in writing, but in real life I simultaneously sniggered, rolled my eyes and sighed...

2011-07-02T08:54:00.004+01:00

I LOVE THE INTERNET

2011-06-01T16:41:00.001+01:00

I am not enormously technologically minded. I prefer my mobile phone to just be a phone rather than all singing all dancing and if given the choice, I'd rather write information on paper with a pen than use an iPad, but I do love the internet...

I was slow to warm to my first computer, hoping when my mother handed me a large box, that it was wine glasses instead. On finding a new shiny laptop, I wasn't quite sure what the hell to do with it, even when people suggested going online. In my defence, Web 2.0 hadn't happened yet so the internet appeared to just be full of price comparison sites and porn, neither of which much appealed. Plus I lived in a house with five other people, only one phone socket and a dial up connection that cost a fortune and could only accessed by sitting on the floor outside the kitchen.

It wasn't until I was shown the ways of Ebay that the internet started to have any resonance in my life as I discovered a penchant for vintage shopping at odd hours of the day with a cup of tea to hand. The arrival of cheap broadband in my life soon had me dabbling in the selling side as well as that interest in vintage helped pay for the net connection. Like any gateway drug, it wasn't long before Ebay led me to other online shopping sites and my agoraphobia became so much easier to contend with when I realised I could still shop without panicking in crowds and save money on my groceries to boot!

But the big turning point was when a now ex-friend introduced me to the feminist leaning pop culture site Jezebel. This was the first time I'd ever used the internet to interact with other people and since I was intensely lonely and experiencing some of the most intense stress of my life, I embraced it like the proverbial drowning man with a lifebelt. In those days, Jezebel was sharp, snarky and smart and the editors and commenters were both held to that standard. I had shied away from the formal title of feminist after my debacle of cliche and squabbling at the Marxist second wave leaning Women Against Rape, but suddenly I was confronted on a daily basis with a smorsgasbord of feminist thinking and a dazzling selection of witty women who were proud to call themselves feminists.

I created an online identity and got involved, reading and commenting daily and revelling in having something to stimulate my brain again without being too overwhelming. Depression destroys my ability to concentrate so the bite sized style of the internet suited fine. I also began to recognise others online and as I mentioned before, I met up with some of these London based commenters a few years ago. It was a turning point in my life where I put myself out there again and I was rewarded by meeting some of the most fantastic people I've ever spent time with.

I was amazed by how different these people were to my previous friends. While they liked a wee Pimms, they didn't spend every night in the pub and every day nursing a hangover. They had interests and hobbies and real careers based on skills rather than lurching from one poorly paid temp job to another to earn beer money. They read widely and could converse about anything. I felt shamefully unknowledgable in comparison so I took to simply using the internet to expose me to the things they mentioned and like Joey Tribbiani when the encyclopaedia salesman came to call, absorbed all the knowledge I could. My brain started wake up and work again from the stimulation and that's when I decided to start this blog (that and the fact everyone else had one and I felt left out!)

Suddenly I had the opportunity to speak out without being minimised like I had for the past few years. I could express thoughts and opinions into the ether in a more modern version of the old message in a bottle, not really bothered if they ever reached a readership. I began to aim these posts in the direction of some of the people I knew by using Facebook and this helped me develop a belief that what I had to say was actually worthwhile. My confidence also began to increase as I wrote more and realised that a bit like riding a bike, you never forgot how to structure what's essentially an essay.

Then at the start of last year, I started to realise a lot of my friends were conversing on Twitter and that I was missing out on this. I signed up, not knowing what the hell it was all about and quickly found myself sucked in the joys of microblogging. Within no time I was passing the time chatting with friends, keeping up to date minute to minute with current events and being pointed in the direction of the choicest articles and stories to read online. These came from newspapers, magazines and blogs and my interest in life and curiosity in learning continued to come back steadily.

I also set up a second blog around then with my brother to write about food and began to turn Twitter into a useful tool rather than just an (albeit interesting) but almighty timesuck. Suddenly everything on the net seemed connected and useful and I began to use it for both blogs, feeling now that I liked having an audience. But keen not to bore those around me, I also aimed a lot of things I wanted to say at the world of newspaper commenting, alternating between giving my experiences on subjects people like to mouth off about to clear up a few myths and getting a kick out of winding up Daily Mail readers by leaving comments that expose my single childless benefit claiming ways.

While some might see this as the online equivalent of banging your head against a brick wall, it's been enormously rewarding for me. I was asked to write for the Guardian earlier this year, debate with Naomi Wolf, have an enormous photo of me splashed across in the Independent due to being interviewed about internet commenting and offered a volunteering job at Shelter this year alone. It's also been an amazing year to network in a way that allows me to recover from my mental health problems at my own pace and meet some great people.

Now it seems as if nearly all the people in my life come with an internet connection. Most likely I met them that way or even those who go back to childhood have a almost daily input in my life due to the power of social media or email. Being able to have 140 character chats with people or read their blogs allows me to have that close friendship feeling of knowing the minutiae of other people's lives while living alone or hundreds of miles from them. For me, this outweighs the bad of YouTube or Yahoo commenters or sinfully dull Facebook updates or the fact that online dating is a disaster for me that has ceased to even produce humourous anecdotes anymore...

Here's to many more hours online with you all. Where's the like button?

YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE...

2011-05-11T14:05:00.004+01:00

As you all know, I do love to bore you all with talk about the evils of rape culture, ponder the possibilities of 'rape prevention' and generally try to challenge people's ideas about rape myths. So it might surprise you to hear that I won't be joining the newest anti-rape march movement in London on June 4th. This movement is the 'Slutwalk', borne out of reaction to a Toronto cop's comment at a safety talk last year to some students that women should try not to dress like "sluts" to avoid being raped or victimised, and while I applaud their belief that no one deserves to be raped, just about everything else leaves me utterly cold about the idea.

The first thing that happens when you Google 'Slutwalk London' is that you simply get links to all the press articles written about it. There is no webpage for the project itself visible on the first page of hits. Then your eye falls on the descriptions in the press of the event. The words 'slut' 'scantily clad' 'revealing' dominate mixed in with 'rape' 'blame' and 'fault'. Without even trying, the Slutwalk has given us a little taster of rape culture. The media has immediately focused on the titillating aspect of the idea rather the details and without a clear mission statement to counter this and set out objectives for the project, I feel the whole thing is creating a perfect storm of word association where the average person, unschooled in the various waves of feminism, unaware of 'sex positivity' and naive to the concept of 'reclaiming' a word, simply gets a jumbled message that links the words 'rape' 'blame' and 'slut' in the same sentence. Doesn't that just reinforce already negative thoughts about the victims of sex crimes? In a soundbite culture, is it surprising that people don't sit down and read beyond the headline and seek to educate themselves about a subject that seems irrelevant to them, especially when it is punctuated by pictures of pretty white women in their bras?

Ah, but that's not the fault of the Slutwalk, I hear you cry. That's the fault of rape culture, icky side effect of the patriarchy. The Slutwalk can't help that the Daily Mail called them 'scantily clad' can they? Well, in my mind, yes they can. They could actually stop and think about the culture they are trying to challenge and consider whether their actions are going to change or perpetuate it. Does society usually really listen to a woman with visible breasts or does it just nod and pretend while enjoying the view? What makes them think the people who need to have their attitudes changed about rape are going to remember anything relevant from this movement afterwards apart from some images in their head of women in their skimpies? If rape culture is so damned important to them why haven't they considered that seemingly copying its actions isn't the best way to break it down?

And haven't they considered that if you don't want what victims are wearing to be the main focus of the discussion about rape, it's odd to make the outfits of women so incredibly central to their entire movement? I want us to move entirely away from the 'what was she doing/wearing/saying' debate about rape to the 'what was he doing when he raped her' question and I really really don't think focusing on clothes is the right way to go, even if that focus is saying clothes don't matter. Simply mentioning them makes them noticeable. That's how advertising works. Mention something repeatedly, even subliminally and people make associations. And to me, this constant focus on your clothes, no matter how normal or unslutty they are, forges that link to those people who just hear about this in passing and don't have the time or inclination to research further.

I am not naive to the importance people place on what a rape victim was wearing. The first question most people, including the police, want to ask me when they find out I was raped is 'what were you wearing'? Generally the level of sympathy they are willing to accord you very often depends on your answer. Mini-skirt? Crop top? High heels? Empathy levels tend to wane. In my case, people nod and tilt their head to one side sympathetically when I mention my ankle length skirt that night. The same head that snaps back in judgement when I also say I wasn't wearing a bra at the time. It's a fine line. I am applauded for having worn a slip to make sure my knickers weren't visible, but the police accused me of going out on the pull because both the slip and the knickers were pink. Matching my undergarments must mean I'm a slut, right?

And there's the other big sticking point with the Slutwalk for me. What is the definition of a slut? To some people it's sleeping with everyone you meet, for others, it's co-ordinating undercrackers. Even jokingly, ignoring the tradition that it's a woman who doesn't keep a clean house, seeks to ignore the very fact that it is an arbitrary term and incredibly gendered. We don't have a word for a man who hasn't mastered the art of taking the washing out of the machine on time, but we do have many admiring ones for a man who is sexually experienced. Who ever heard of a man being 'stud-shamed' after all?

Why do we want to 'reclaim' a word that has traditionally been used to divide and conquer women? While all sluts seem to be women, not all women are sluts. Unlike words such as 'queer' that I understand seeks to be a common umbrella term to promote a feeling of community amongst people who already feel on the fringes of society or using a racial word like 'Paddy' that was once used to reduce a whole race to an amorphous mass to be ignored and flipping it so that it conotates pride and power in your 'outsider' status, slut has no universal definition or use. So how can it be re-appropriated to create a sense of community and cohesion? Especially when to many women, it is one of the cruellest and most cutting comments they hear, rendering them helpless and angry no matter how positive a spin is put on it. Why reclaim something that even in its original statement was a cruel gendered slur? Why not appropriate another word? Something women have always seen a positive or at least something non gendered rather than trying to dress up something nasty.

I think the use of the word slut as a title for the movement would only work if women were united behind it and didn't abuse or judge each other on the same moral terms that slut suggests. By anyone putting a value on a woman for her sexual choices, we just perpetuate the same old bullshit that makes life so difficult for women the world over. We've all done it. We've all judged a woman by our perceived beliefs about her sex life. And I don't believe anyone who says they haven't. Ever called a soap barmaid 'a tart with a heart'? Classed something as 'stripper shoes'? Raised your eyes higher than someone's hem at their choice of outfit? It might not seem like it, but we've all had a teeny tiny hand in allowing women to be primarily judged by their sexual choices. And if women do it to themselves, in what way are we telling men they can't do it either? By judging ourselves, we give permission to others to do the same and I think it would be a hell of a lot more helpful to move things away from what a woman does or doesn't want to do in the bedroom when she spends so much of her life outside it. So instead of talking about 'sluts' and 'allies' ( a dichotomy that still forces women to take a place on one side of the sexual fence and keep up the old Madonna/whore thing under a different guise), let's focus on something else, something more inclusive of the gamut of women.

I also wonder where the hell the people who want to fill Trafalgar Square over a comment a cop in another country made, where when the police and the judiciary actively blamed and discriminated against women here in the UK and allowed their rapists to walk free? When this 15 year old's rape case was seen as less important than car crime did we see banners? Did the Twittersphere go apeshit when the hundreds of victims of John Worboys and Kirk Reid were laughed at and sent away by the Met? Did anyone take to the streets when a teenage victim of Ian Huntley was ignored? Why did I never hear so many people getting worked up about Rape Crisis centres closing? Did any of these feminists stand up for me when my case hit the front pages and male commentors in the media called me brazen and a 'vile faced slut'? Did they hell. Those cases feature actual women who've been raped with all the complications, flaws and realities of that crime, not headline grabbing representations of womenhood that can stir indignation amongst those on the sidelines. Something about the Slutwalk pushes a competitiveness between victims and those who are taking offense as if they don't want to be lumped in with the 'weak.' It echoes the classic denial tactic of telling yourself 'she was was wearing a short skirt. I don't wear short skirts. I won't be raped like her...' and having heard that shite from more women than I'd care to remember, the whole Slutwalk thing leaves a nasty taste in my mouth and smacks of 'party feminism' to me where the clothes and fun mean more than the cause.

So instead of 'slutwalking' I'll be challenging rape culture differently and in a way that is to me less about individual 'me me me' based actions and more about collective good. I'll be trying very very hard not to pass judgement on another woman that makes a presumption about her sexual life. I'll be moving the conversation away from clothing when people try make it central in conversations about rape and toward the common thread of the cause of rape being near a rapist, not what you wear. I'll be commenting on newspaper sites, debunking rape myths and offering a first hand of experience that those people might remember if they sit on a jury one day, taking the info to them. I'll be keeping up the pressure on the police and judiciary not to focus on the external details of victims. I'll be training to empower women who have been raped to take control back. I'll be criticising rape culture in the press and the people around me if they tell rape jokes. And I'll be respecting the fact that for some women, the Slutwalk does offer them just one small voice in the cacophony around rape, but I won't be keeping quiet when people involved in it try to suggest it is the best or only way to express ourselves. And I won't be answering what I was wearing the first time I was raped...

HOT AND BOTHERED...

2011-04-25T14:39:00.000+01:00

Summer has come early this year. Temperatures in London this weekend were higher than Madrid, Sydney and Hawaii. And coming after the coldest December on record, you'd think I'd be embracing all that Vitamin D with open arms. Well, not exactly, because bright sunshine brings a particular set of tribulations for the supernaturally pale.

The rest of the year passes quite quietly, in part due to the murderous expression I wear in public deterring even the most lairy of white van men from hollering at me, but as soon as the sun comes out, all eyes are on me. Not because I'm shimmying down the street in a string bikini, bosoms bouncing. But because I'm doing something even more shocking instead. I'm completely covered up with only hands and feet poking out as I go from A to B...

While this stops me from being the colour of a lobster (and feeling as the kind of pain being said crustacean felt when being boiled alive), it really provokes people's attention. Men and women alike feel entitled to comment on my skin and my hair colour and my choice in clothing. Men seem affronted that I'm denying them their summer right to ogle my body in skimpy clothes (although if they'd seen an arse as pale as mine wandering down the road more often, they'd be less keen in future. It's more Caspar the Friendly Ghost than Copacabana.) Women seem to think I'm looking down on their hotpants and haltertops and everyone seems to regard it as practically un-British to not turn my skin red as part of the Union Jack.

You only have to see the frothing and gnashing and wailing over Nigella Lawson's burkini moment on Bondi Beach to see that the Brits regard exposing their tender flesh in large quantities and for long periods of time as something so dear to them that it should be enshrined in the Magna Carta. This is a woman who has a complexion that is just ripe for malignant melanoma and has lost her mother, sister and first husband to cancer and yet she has been castigated for covering up in the Australian sun. The fact that she has a sexy persona in her job means that she has no right to protect herself from short term discomfort and long term danger. Even the slightly less tabloidy readers of the Observer all had a opinion. Why couldn't she just wear a a T-shirt and leggings? Gloves? Factor 50? Sit in a box? Stay indoors?

But none of these things shut people up around the translucently pale. When I wear something as out there as a shirt in the summer, passers-by yell at me from their cars, tut at me in the street and pass comments on my chances of missing out my Vitamin D or needing some colour to look healthier or somehow being repressed. When I shuffle round in beer gardens to avoid the baking midday sun, people roll their eyes at me as if I'm acting like a total diva. If I stay indoors with the windows open, sampling the fresh air by proxy, people tell me I'm spoiling it for them, I'm no fun and I need to get out more. If I carry a parasol, they fall about laughing, cracking jokes about raining men and umbrellas. Going puce provokes howls of laughter and endless jokes. When I slather myself in Factor 50 million, they refuse to help me with the back bits I can't see, mock the level of SPF and then trot out the conspiracy that suncream causes cancer rather than protect from it.

Cancer is a frightening word and I understand that most people laugh in its face rather than think about its cruel realities, but from a very very young age, the spectre of skin cancer has hung over me. I am pale, the kind of pale that people gasp at, that veins glow through, that turns slightly blue in winter. I can't buy commercial foundations and even the sheerest tights look like gravy browning on my legs. I am also a natural redhead with a fairly good smattering of freckles (not that you can see 'em under the wrong shade of make up I have to wear) and I burn in the sun almost instantly. I famously once got sunburn over lunch in Glasgow. Even slightly overcast days have been known to give me water blisters. I am so Celtic looking people assume I'm Irish from 50 paces. I have a grandmother who never sunbathed in her life who had a melanoma removed and monitored for years. I am at such a risk from skin cancer, I'm like the poster child for dermatology students. Every time I go out in the blazing sun I am aware at the back of my mind that I might be paying for this period of pleasure for years to come.

Therefore it's beyond bloody annoying when people mock and mention my attempts not to die early. Yes, I also like staying out of the sun to avoid getting wrinkles and to keep my youthful complexion, but primarily, sun-dodging is for me about not ending up in pain and with a liefe threatening illness. Weirdly, neither myself or the sun police were so concerned by years of enthusiastic smoking and its wrinkle creating, cancer causing charms, rarely ever being told to give up or hearing any comments about it even though that's definitely the more antisocial habit. But everyone's got an opinion about my SPF habits...

I won't mind so much that interest involved telling me where the hell you can get a decent suncream with a high factor and good UVA and UVB protection that doesn't leave an unctuous oily white film on all exposed flesh while attracting every scrap of dust, dirt and dead insect life in a 40 mile radius, before sliding off and staining clothes, upholstery and melting plastic and leaving you broken out and slippery. Until then I'll continue with my attempts to dress like an eccentric Agatha Christie heroine crossed with a beekeeper and play musical chairs with the shade instead. And yes, I am hot and in my layers and I'm envious of your golden limbs and well behaved skin. Try not to provoke me further please with stupid questions. You won't like it when I start commenting on your crow's feet and wrinkles in return!

FIT AS A FIDDLE...

2011-04-07T21:00:00.000+01:00

After my successes last year in having more therapy than anyone else you've ever met, giving up smoking and turning my Diet Coke consumption from excessive to once in a blue moon, I'm keeping up with the idea of breaking bad habits and trying to be a bit more healthy and hoping to embrace the somewhat alien world of exercise.

This is trickier for me than my previous life changes. I have never been one for exercise, even as a child. While I was happy to play outside, as soon it became at all organised and good for you, I would always forgo exercise for sitting quietly in a corner with a good book. I am also the opposite of competitive. I couldn't care less who wins the game and displays of intense team spirit over winning make me uncomfortable in the extreme. And I have chronic fatigue. Along with being permanently tired, one of the main symptoms of this illness is feeling excessively exhausted from minimal exertion. My body just can't take a ten mile run. It can barely take a shower without keeling over sometimes. So how do I get a bit fitter and stronger without boring myself stupid or making myself feel ill?

I'm not entirely sure and since I can't really stretch (if you'll pardon the pun) to hiring a trainer, I thought I'd avail myself of the free advice of the internet to find some blogs where people talk about starting to get fitter and stronger and take some tips from there and balance it up with my resources and abilities. I was unprepared for what I found lying behind this particular door online.

It was like stepping back into the changing rooms at school, with only the voices of the fittest and most competitive and most privileged being heard. Everyone I've found who writes about exercise seems to have either always been the effortlessly sporty type who chose a cross country run as a treat as a child or the born again type who once used to be very unfit, quite overweight and now embrace exercise with the zeal of a drowning man sighting a safety raft. Both talk about exercise in quite intimidating terms, talking marathons rather than seeing it as a hobby. They often disuss calories burning in a fashion that might pique the interest of anyone restricts food for any reason or trigger someone trying to move on from those often self destructive behaviours. And most of them take a less encouraging tone, going for the hectoring style of a particularly sadistic PE teacher with added sanctimony. Just because your body can do a certain form of exercise doesn't mean everyone else's can too.

There seems to be little room for for personal variation in these blogs or celebration of the myriad talents of the human race that gives us a million different sorts of sport and exercise. If the blogger is a runner, then everyone reading should be a runner too, even if their skills really lie with swimming or pole vaulting. This slightly superior tone and rigidity isn't really the encouragement I need. I don't really know where my skills in the world of exercise lie yet, so I'd prefer not to be scolded and castigated from the outset. I'd like to hear more about the fun of exercise, not be bombarded with pictures of the latest workout gear and shoes so fancy they have a mind of their own.

So I've taken the unusual step (for me) of putting down the laptop and venturing out into the real world in search of inspiration and instruction in the art of getting fitter and taken up trapeze lessons. I'd like to tell you it's a lifelong dream of mine after reading all those stories of kids running off to join the circus in Enid Blyton books, but it's actually the influence of the job advice service I'm attending instead. Someone there attends these lessons in their spare time and thought that the non competitive and work at your own pace feel would suit a bunch of women get back into the world of work and exercise after mental illness while feeling a sense of achievement.

So with visions of sailing gracefully through the air (and lithe toned arms) in my mind, I went off to my first lesson yesterday and faced the challenge. And what challenges they were. Even finding something appropriate to wear was difficult enough and thanks to my appalling foot eye co-ordination half the warm up involved me going the wrong way and out of time. Things didn't get much better or easier when I saw how complicated actually getting onto the trapeze was.

You pull yourself up on the bar, swing your legs backwards over your head and then up straight with your feet on the bar, sliding your hands up the ropes until your chest and legs meet and then you should find yourself balancing on the bar, swinging gently in the breeze. Or plummeting toward the crash mat like a stone in pond if you're me. Incredibly unflexible, I found it extremely difficult to get my legs over my head while hanging upside down while holding onto something that swings about when you grab hold of it. Repeated attempts got me nowhere near mounting the bloody thing and eventually I had to climb onto the bar from a chair, only to discover that swinging about five feet above the ground on something less substantial than a child's swing makes me feel horribly nauseous and quite terrified.

I didn't feel much sense of achievement at the end of the first lesson and I'm kind of dreading next week's already, even though my arms are stronger than I thought and less achy than anticipated today. I'll be spending quite a lot of the next week practising tipping my toes over my head and steeling myself for the swinging again, but I'm not holding out hope that this is my chosen exercise regime for the future. So what works for you? What's good fun and doesn't induce the dry heaves? And have you found an exercise blog that keeps it inspiring and enthusiastic?

'ELLO 'ELLO 'ELLO

2011-03-26T10:41:00.003Z

Another day, another dollar, another serial rape case in court. London has had rather a run of these disturbing cases in the past few years and along with the fear and havoc they bring to people's lives, they have one other thing in common...the Metropolitan Police has fucked them up royally.

The organisation entrusted with protecting and serving the most vulnerable people in the country's capital has time and time again proved that as soon the crime involves a penis, they can't cope. With a combo of disgust, misogynisy, hypocrisy, inepititude and intransigence, accompanied by two fingers firmly stuck up at anyone who has the misfortune of becoming the victim of a sex attacker, they have managed to leave a trail of cocked up investigations that have destroyed lives, terrorised communities and left John Worboys, Kirk Reid, Robert Napper and Delroy Grant amongst others to attack hundreds of women (and men) over the past twenty years alone. These cases have been all over the press, discussed at length in the media, formed the basis of a restructuring of the Met, given the public a new view of their police force and kept the Independent Police Complaints Commission in business almost single handedly in the past three or so years. But the information they have imparted to anyone who has reported a rape in Greater London in recent years, hasn't been at all shocking. We have known for years through personal experience that when it comes to investigating rape, the Met can't organise a piss up in a brewery.

Instead of reading each example of barely believable incompetence and total contempt of victims as we unfold the Metro each morning on the Tube, we had a ringside seat. While trying to report our own rapes and sexual assaults and to do our part in regaining control of our own lives while trying to protect others from experiencing the same life changing events, we were treated to a truly nightmarish sequence of affairs at the hands of the very people we should be able to trust. Despite growing up where I did, I was brought up to have faith in the police and taught from a very early age that if I had a problem I should find a policeman. So when I was raped and my life fell apart around my ears, I did just that. Frightened and confused, I went to the police, hoping that they would help me out and support me as I tried to seek justice for what happened to me, taking the pressure off and allowing me the chance to get back on my feet. Instead they took what shreds of dignity and belief in the goodness of the world I had left and trampled all over them until they pushed me to a spectacular nervous breakdown and left me feeling even more violated than the morning I woke up confused and bruised in a Soho street.

Admittedly this reaction shouldn't have been a total shock to me. They'd been at best ineffectual and at worst devious and threatening when I'd reported my first rape earlier that year, but I put that down to a three month gap between attack and reporting, a lack of forensics, reluctant witnesses and a well connected attacker with a good grasp of the law. I'd agreed to having the rape recorded as a 'no crime' in return for a crime reference number and a police report to the Homeless Person Unit to try and sort out the housing mess going to the police had in part caused. I also didn't have the chops for an argument with the law and was happy enough to not take it any further. But when I found myself confused, injured and without a single memory of what had happened to me, a mere five months later, I wanted to know what had happened to me badly enough to rock up to another police station and ask them to help me find out. After all, this time I had evidence a-go-go, witnesses up the wazoo and mere hours between the attack and the report. What could go wrong?

It turns out everything. And more. From the moment I was handed over to the specially trained officers of the much lauded and trumpeted Sapphire Unit who exclusively deal with sex crimes, my life fell down a rabbit hole in a traumatic journey that would completely change how I felt about myself and the world around me and left me unable to ever countenance dealing with the police again no matter what happened to me in the future. It would become the greatest regret of my life and it would last for almost four years before stopping. It was beyond my wildest fears or the bleakest parts of my imagination and still provokes an incredibly visceral reaction in me now, in part because right from the start, my intuition told me I was doing the wrong thing and had I listened to it, I could have walked away and possibly saved myself years of turmoil. Instead, ravaged by the self doubt and fear created by being raped twice in eight months, I put my trust wholeheartedly in the officers assigned to me and literally from the start they betrayed that.

Trying to be honest from the outset, I told the uniformed officers assigned to babysit me while Sapphire arrived that I had previously reported a rape. Half a packet of fags and almost two hours later, the CID lot made it to Charing Cross from St Johns Wood. My previous report wasn't mentioned, but I was fairly sure they'd been reading it rather than sitting in Saturday morning traffic or picking up coffee and croissants. We then had a weird moment when the four coppers in the room opted not to tell me I needed to have a forensic medical exam, but have another policeman tell me this on the phone while they chatted about weekend overtime.

Things took a more hectoring tone as I sat in the back of the police car en route to the hospital. Looking at me in the mirror, the male sargeant fired questions at me, asking if I had my period and when I'd last had sex. Understanding why they were asking those things, I was happy enough to answer. I was less sure why the WPC was handing me a piece of paper and a pen and asking me to write down the name, address and telephone number of the last guy I'd slept with so they could double check the details or why they needed to know if I used tampons. Everything felt like they didn't believe me and each question, particularly those barbed and accusing queries outside the hospital about my previous rape, dripped with suspicion and distrust. And just in case I hadn't quite got the message that I couldn't be trusted and thus wasn't deserving of respect, these officers chatted on the phone, ate fried chicken, laughed, joked and watched the football next door to where I was having an incredibly intimate medical exam for the next three hours.

Once this was finished, they tried to whisk me away for questioning at the police station without either a pair of knickers to change into or a cup of tea, but were no match for a nurse who insisted I ate something first. Two biscuits and some clock watching later, I was taken to the station where I met the investigating officer in charge of my case. I'd assumed he'd been hard at work finding out what had happened to me, but when left alone in his office, the only signs of activity came from two goldfish and partly read copy of The Murder Book by Jonathan Kellerman. I was questioned further and told I'd need to come back the next day to have my injuries photographed by the police photographer and like a pupil at the end of a odd day's school, excused to go home....even though I was homeless, broke and stranded on the other side of town to where I needed to be. They basically told me to call them if I got busted without a ticket on the bus and said they'd be home too late to tuck their kid into bed if they drove me home.

The tone was set. Feeling shaken up, utterly lacking in confidence and believing that as policemen, they must be right, the next few encounters with the officers on my case were a similar mix of interrogation, irritation and inertia. Told that because I had no memory of the night, I mustn't talk to others about the case until I gave my statement (almost two weeks later), I had no way of knowing what the officers were up to. Meeting with my SOIT (or sexual offences investigation trained) officer to pick up my missing bag which had been handed in was a bizarre afternoon of chit chat and coffee drinking spent together that he later denied had ever taken place. I was told two months later nothing had showed up in my tox screen and the calls about my case dwindled until January next year when I received a voicemail from the senior officer saying they'd investigated all they could, hadn't got anywhere and were sorry, but were closing the case. Not utterly surprised by this, I wouldn't have been bothered if he hadn't signed off with the positively Jeeves and Wooster-esque 'toodle pip' in a Welsh accent.

I picked up my never forensically tested clothes from the police station and attempted to do the same with the rest of my life. I did quite well too until one sunny day in late June when the fragile balance of my life crumbled completely. Hungover and at a friend's house early in the morning, I received a call from a brusquely efficient policewoman who informed me in one breath that my case wasn't closed, had never been closed, she had taken over and needed more information from me to see if I'd been gang raped since the original documents didn't tell her enough. This was the first time more than one attacker had been mentioned and in that moment, I felt like I'd been assaulted all over again. The sun stopped shining in my world and my nightmare began in earnest.

I realised that the police had never ever bothered to investigate my rape. My clothes weren't checked, my friends weren't interviewed, my photos hadn't been looked at. My rapist(s) had never ever felt the long arm of the law so much as near them. And the feeling of having had a safety net protecting me after being drugged, taken against my will and raped on the streets of London by a man I couldn't identify was ripped away from me, leaving me utterly devastated. Within a week I was back on antidepressants, wracked by severe anxiety and unable to sleep due to what I discovered later was Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Furious and with even more questions in my head than when I reported in August of the previous year and desperate to regain control and get answers, I made the slightly demented decision to write a letter of complaint to the Met about my case, pointing out all their flaws and hoping they'd sort it out. Still touchingly naive about the police, I thought it was a bit like writing a snotty letter to British Gas and it'd all be done and dusted in no time. I briefly engaged the services of the IPCC, but ran away screaming when they sent me a four line letter with eight spelling mistakes, including my name. Instead I sat down and bashed out a letter with some help from my family, but without engaging a solicitor, even though Legal Aid would have covered it and sent it to the most senior officer at the station I could find.

It was the start of almost three years o a complaint which would see my case opened and closed like a bus window, 16 officers interviewed, the shocking discovery that my underwear from the night of the rape had ended up pinned to an office noticeboard as a joke, meetings with coppers all the way to Assistant Chief Constable level, intimidation, threats, midnight phone calls and forgery from the Met, along with the agonising discovery that my rapist was most likely an organised serial attacker who had preyed on others and ultimately an apology for (their words, not mine) 'an almost completely worthless investigation'.

I never found out who'd raped me. I did discover that even some of my friends weren't quite as they seemed on the night and the lies were never ending. I learned there were opiates in my bloodstream that night and my officers had lied, obstructed, destroyed paperwork, refused to investigate, hidden behind excuses about their home lives and slandered me at every turn even after they saw a medical report that stated without doubt I'd been raped. They didn't care enough to find out what happened, but treated me like an inconvenience who wore too much make up and deserved to be raped because she drank too much and talked even more. They lost my file, complete with hundreds of semi naked photos of my injuries and didn't tell me for months and told me my attacker might have filmed the rape so not to be surprised if it was on the internet. They left me crushed, with my belief in the police destroyed and the feeling that the world was a place of such unimaginable terror and danger that I was never safe to leave the house again. Their abandonment of me after bullying me left me feeling like I had a target painted on me, made bigger and easier to find if I wore a skirt or dress.

The fact that one of the officers did not receive the 'words of advice' he was disciplined with because he had moved to Dafyd Powys police sex crimes (who have almost as poor a rep as the Met on rape) and his new employers didn't think it was relevant, incensed me. I was driven to distraction by the fact that none of the other 15 officers were re-trained, advised, had their wages docked or made to move job or reliquinsh their position for cocking up my case to the point where they cheerfully admitted they couldn't charge my rapist even if he walked in and admitted doing it to me or anyone else. I did derive some comfort from the fact my case was one of six used (along with the Worboys and Reid cases) to show the egregious behaviour of Sapphire and see it amalgamated into Homicide and Serious Crime rather than left for each borough to deal with as they liked, to hopefully improve the lot for future victims.

I'd like to tell you that this change in command has worked wonders and that things have improved, but I'd be lying (or hallucinating). The rape reporting rate continues to rise in London and the conviction rate continues to fall. John Yates still believes the highest rate of attrition lies with the police. Car crime still receives priority in some boroughs. Officers are charged with misconduct in public office for cases like mine. No criming continues unabated. Attacks described as some the worst Scotland Yard has ever seen are still mishandled for years and hundreds and thousands of victims have to live life knowing they've been let down, betrayed and left to try to piece their lives together knowing their attackers walk the street without so much as a slap on the wrist.

This cannot be explained by simple human error. It's just not possible for people to be that terrible at their jobs and never be fired, properly disciplined or questioned on it by superiors unless they just don't care about what they are doing. They might not care because they are disgusted by victims, because rape is seen (wrongly) as a woman's issue and they don't respect women, because they don't really think rape is a big deal or because they think the 94% of victims who don't see justice are liars or in someway deserved their rapes due to wearing a short skirt or having a drink, but only the utterly deluded could argue that they actually give a monkeys and try their very very best to catch and punish rapists. Instead they let them hone their skills and develop a cockiness that fuels re-offending and a belief that they are above the law.

All the shuffling and re-arranging the deckchairs on board as Sapphire's reputation sinks even lower do nothing ultimately if the Met refuses to acknowledge their problem with institutional sexism, poorly trained officers with old fashioned views and a structure that encourages the most difficult to investigate and expensive cases to be shelved at the drop of a hat. Recent Commissioners have been too damned chummy with government, preferring to soak up money and kudos than fight the corner of the weakest and most vulnerable while the divisions between the graduate educated top brass and the rank and file bred mistrust and made it harder for the brass to crack down on failing officers. This allows the culture of silence that lets officers behave like they did in my case and get away with it. Worryingly, the Met sets the pace for most other police forces in the UK and where they lead, others follow, making this an issue for everyone, not just Londoners.

I find it hard to forgive the police for their treatment of me. The only way I can deal with it is to put it to the very back of my mind and try and pretend it didn't happen, waiting for the mists of time to ease the feelings of burning indignation I still have. I find it harder to come to terms with their betrayal than the rape itself. The police wilfully and soberly on repeated occasions treated me like shit on their shoe. I was not an anonymous body in a skirt to them. They knew my name, my previous victimisation, my current vulnerabilities and still they degraded me, belittled me and ignored me, bullying and intimidating me on a regular basis. They made everything about my rape much worse and it is in spite of them, not because of them, that I have been able to move on. But I doubt I'll ever trust a man who has ever worn a tit on his head again...

FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS?

2011-03-05T11:26:00.003Z

I recently watched David Cameron and Iain Duncan Smith do their double act as they announced their sweeping Welfare Reform Bill. Aside from ruining my lunch with their smarmy tones and chummy air, the whole thing piqued my interest for many reasons.

Mainly because right now I am entirely financially dependent on state benefits. I receive Income Support with a disability premium along with Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit. The welfare state is my safety net, but we're not so much friends as frenemies. It keeps me fed, clothed and with a roof over my head, but it has also been one of the biggest stresses and sources of uncertainty and fear in my life in the last six or seven years.

You'd think claiming benefits due to ill health would be fairly simple wouldn't you? Your doctor signs you off, you fill out the forms, another doctor agree that you're sick and the Department of Work and Pensions ponies up. You know what the meerkat might say. But the reality is vastly different. Firstly you have to accept that you are sick enough to remove yourself from the workforce. This is a massive step, often accompanied by fear, trauma and pain and shock, and requires a level of resignation and acceptance of illness that is directly contrary to how we usually live our lives.

Then you have to start finding your way round the maze that is the benefits system. Slightly less ciruituous these days since all out of work benefits for ill health are combined into Employment and Support Allowance rather the previous three or four different types, it is still tricky enough. The forms are long, suprisingly oblique considering they boast a 'Plain English Mark' and incredibly detailed. Everything is covered, often raising questions and seeking details you may not have considered, depending how recent your illness is and in a depth some people may find painfully invasive.

You fill out your forms, answering the same question several times, answering everything to the best of your ability but unaware that you shouldn't use your average day of illness, but your worst day to make sure you don't accidentally make yourself sound less ill because you happened to have not cried with pain/needed a nap/managed to get out of bed the day you did the forms. Despite trying to remain positive in order to cope with ill health day to day, you must in fact be as bleak and hopeless as possible when doing the benefits form in case you deteriorate in the interim. You persue your GP to make sure your reports are up to date. And if you are lucky enough to have a specialist, consultant or therapist dealing with you (which is unlikely if you've only recently become ill) you chase them up too. Once you've got everything, you queue for ages at the Post Office to send your forms back Special Delivery to make sure you have proof of postage that you did return the forms within the allocated four weeks allowed.

A few weeks later a buff envelope falls through the door. You open it eagerly, you haven't been dealing with the DWP long enough to get the Pavlovian response of sheer dread when you see one of these yet. And you read that you have not provided enough evidence of your illness and must attend a work capability assessment. They don't tell you this, but it won't be with a twinkly eyed doctor with a white coat and stethoscope around his neck. Instead it will be with a 'healthcare professional' employed by a private company called Atos. This person might be a midwife, retired nurse or medical person from another country with differing qualifications to ours. The assessment will be at a venue of their choosing, without any consideration of where you live or your travel options. You are not encouraged to bring a friend or family member and the idea of having a solicitor or trade union official is about as likely as going to the venue by flying pig.

On the alloted day, you travel to the venue and are seen by your healthcare professional, althought their qualification is not revealed to you. If you are lucky, you'll get someone who speaks good English and if you're really blessed, they'll have honoured your request to have a female doctor (if that's what you chose). You'll then be rattled through pretty much the same forms you have already filled out, but in about a tenth of the time you took originally. To shake things up further, it will be interactive with a physical assessment (even if you're claiming for mental illness). If you've looked at this as basically the same idea as a job interview up until now, you will be in for a massive surprise.

Seemingly simple chatty questions like do you watch Eastenders aren't just an interviewer's attempt to put you at ease (or query your tastes). If you say yes, the assessor marks you as able to sit pain free without moving while concentrating and following the show for a full 30 minutes, concluding that you must have been lying when you said you couldn't sit for periods of time due to pain or that the lack of concentration due to depression was a big fib. Even if they allow you the chance to speak up and try to explain that you have to get up and walk around or get confused as what's happening in that half hour, they won't record it as there's no box for additional information on their computerised form. Refusing to be physically examined or asking them to stop even if you are distressed or in pain is seen as refusing to attend the assesment and leads automatically to your benefits being stopped. It's a bit like going for an interview for one job and being interviewed for one you've never even heard of.

You've answered the questionnaire again, no matter how embarrassing or difficult somethings are to say out loud (in my case questions about the pyschological impacts of my rapes no therapist would countenance for fear of my mental health), you've been poked and prodded and silently judged for whether your shirt has buttons or you've brushed your hair. You now expect that the assessor will make you sit for ages in uncomfortable silence while they pore over the reports from your GP and specialists. But instead, they completely and utterly ignore the fact that those things exist and shove your out the door again to find your own way home no matter how exhausted or upset you might be.

A few weeks pass and with less enthusiasm you collect your next buff envelope from the doormat. All the questions and examinations at the assessment still haven't scored you enough points on the required tickboxes. Cursing and starting to panic, you trek out to the JobCentre Plus to get an appeal form. Maybe this time you'll be able to get that world reknowned consultant who diagnosed you to tell the DWP in their own words that to stop obsessing about lifting bags of spuds and pay attention to the information you provided beyond the tick boxes. Only if you knew what to say on the appeal form, since being open and detailed hasn't got you very far yet...

So now you need to find a welfare advisor at your local benefits advice centre or Citizens' Advice Bureau (if of course they haven't lost funding and been shut down). Once located, it might take up to a week to get an appointment or several days of turning up bright and early to queue before opening in the hope that you get seen. Hopefully you won't have a difficult case and require more than one visit. Eventually you have the from filled out and you're back to the Post Office to do another Special Delivery (and hope that the DWP office you need hasn't moved address without telling you like has happened to me on more than one occasion).

It's around eight weeks since you applied, you're spending a fortune on photocopying (got to keep a record of what you said to them) and postage, but you haven't actually had any money yet. You've tried calling the DWP office, but they keep putting you on hold and that 0845 number costs about 10p a minute from a mobile. Plus you've got to get in touch with the council and keep them informed on what's happening so they can deal with your Housing and Council Tax Benefit claims. Then you've got to hide from your landlord or mortgage provider when they come a-knocking to see why your payments seem to be invisible. Maybe you fill the time by begging the bank to up your overdraft to tide you over. All of this is akin to a full time job while you are too ill to actually have a full time job.

Thankfully it's third time lucky with the buff envelope. You are now in receipt of sickness benefit. you can relax and get on with the business of being sick on your £90 a week. Can't you? Actually no. Firstly you've got to sort that Housing Benefit and Council Tax. That's more forms, more queuing and the very real fear that even if your rent is low, it won't be fully covered, especially if you have any bills or services included, But once that's sorted you have to now find an interesting balance between being ill and not getting better too quickly, all the while looking as sick and pitiful as possible. You see, if you have therapy for a mental health problem or start a new med and feel better for a bit you will be whipped off benefits faster than you can say Work Capability Assessment, even if it's only a temporary boost or comes with awful cumulative side effects or a relapse. And if you have the audacity do all this while being able to walk or occasionally lift something and driving the car you owned previously or in a good wool winter coat, you will be opened up to the tax-payers' jury where people who feel you are getting their money feel entitled to question you intimately about your illness or disabilty, judge you and hope that all your nice things in life are removed and replaced with sackcloth, ashes and a small begging bowl. If you're really unlucky, they might phone up and report you anonymously for benefit fraud because, well, didn't you know that simply knowing someone who claims benefits bestows you with magical powers of insight into people's financial and medical life?

Even if you're not unlucky enough for this to happen, the DWP can still ask to see your bank statements at any time they like and query why your great aunt Marjorie put twenty quid in your account for Christmas. And still you're waiting for that fabled day when being on benefits automatically entitlees you to a swanky £400 a week flat in Central London, a flatscreen telly the size of a swimming pool and all the Special Brew and B&H you can get down you daily as someone else pays your gas and leccy. After all, no one would lie about Welfare Valhalla, would they?

But in reality, you just get on with living life balancing up a serious illness and your uncertain finances. I'm not going to bitch about the the amount of money I get. Its work out about equivalent to minimum wage did for me when I was working and thanks to many factors such as good literacy skills, a credit rating and an understanding bank, I can live comfortably on it. I will always be grateful for benefits allowing me to keep a roof over my head, but I don't think I will ever get used to the arbitrary nature of the welfare state where whole benefits disappear, change rate and are altered at will. It's as if your boss came into work one day and decided they don't like your computer screensaver and fire you on the spot wihtout regard for rules, laws or regulations.

After proving my ill health first every six weeks and then every six months, I finally got two psychologists, a psychiatrist, my GP and a social worker to confirm my diagnosis and was signed off for three full years. But due to the government switching Income Support to ESA, I can be called for re-assessment at any time without warning and have to start the whole process again while having my money stopped or reduced. I have taken lots of steps to improve my health in that time and am worried that because I'm not just as sick as before, it will count against me. It took almost four years to get my benefits stabilised and not entirely coincidentally, my mental health has begun to improve since then and I am even able to think about retraining for work in the future since I don't have the constant fear of losing my entire income and my home hanging over me like a black cloud all the time.

Strangely none of the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Tories with their incessant mantra of 'making work pay' has aided me toward this change in my life. Promises to allow me to keep around 5p on the pound more than before when returning to work, threats to make it harder to claim and being called a scrounger repeatedly have not made me wake up one morning having decided I'd no longer like to be an agoraphobic with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Such castigating rhetoric has not made the global economic crisis and British recession imaginary or created an abundance of jobs that allow you to take an afternoon nap and don't mind if you have to take a week off at the last minute. Amusing as Iain Duncan Smith's selection of mournful serious faces are, they haven't made it less likely that I would need to spend a lot of extra money on prescriptions when back at work or guarantee my boss and colleagues would allow me time off to attend all my medical appointments. All the chanting of 'being in this together' in the world doesn't hide the big fat hole in my CV caused by chronic illness and convince anyone to actually hire me. Changing the terms of the test that assesses sickness doesn't miraculously make me well again, despite what the tick boxes say. Even jacking the minimum wage up so far it looks more like a Euromillions rollover won't really have an effect on me because I am not well enough to hold down a full time job rather than lazy.

If the Coalition wants to get disabled people working it would help if they didn't start slashing things like the Access to Work Fund that funds the costs of disability in the workplace or trying to make Disability Living Allowance harder to claim. When you're balancing a job with a chronic illness, the little things really count and even having the extra £18 a week low rate DLA care can mean being able to buy ready chopped veg and quicker to cook foods like chicken breast so you can still eat without exhausting yourself after work. They could also look at tapering benefits differently so you don't start even part time or jobshare style work to ease in gently and find yourself on essentially a 95 pence in the pound tax rate.

They could also while embracing other Victorian ideas with gusto, warm to the old fashioned notion of convalescence. The rhetoric around benefits is black and white. You're either sick or not. They want everyone back to work, but they refuse to support people as they get better. To them having a bad back means lying prone in the house behind closed curtains until the magical day when you levitate yourself back to a full time job. Considering their obsession with pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, there is no room in this world for gently walking round a park or cycling for 30 minutes a day to strengthen and heal one's lumbar regions, which I would have though was entirely the kind of improving your situation right wingers love. But instead of welcoming that (and the input of the NHS), they like to berate you for being so weak and useless and pathetic for succumbing in the first place. Taking time to heal didn't build the Empire you know: it merely oversaw it from a position of privilege the proles just shouldn't be afforded.

They could even go a bit controversial and try talking to some chronically ill or disabled people to see what they need to help them back to work, instead of relying on the word of people in rude health, who incidentally aren't dependent on the vagaries of the NHS since they can afford private healthcare. And while they've got their listening caps on, have a word with businesses to see what they need to make it worth their while hiring someone with extra needs. Then they could stop cutting the mental health budget behind everyone's back, keep childcare accessible and stop giving stupid amounts of money to private firms like A4E to send chronically ill people on courses that teach them how to fill out a form (we're form filling experts for godsake. DLA is a 63 page epic. ) and use that cash for retraining instead. That way people who are unable to have one job due to certain health problems might be able to find another one that works for them. Economics aren't my forte, but I'm pretty sure that this kind of joined up thinking will save money in the long run as benefits costs go down and tax revenues go up when people can access and keep jobs with some support. They'd even save enough to stop bullying and barracking those who just aren't well or stable enough to hold down a job no matter what.

But that wouldn't sate the Tory and Daily Mail* need for benefit scrounging blood. How will they feel superior if people are well treated and not made to feel ashamed of being different? And who will make money off this situation if they can't privatise as much of the icky reality of illness as possible? I still won't like if they fessed up to their ideological aims, but at least I wouldn't feel so patronised while they threaten to make my life even more unstable and difficult to deal with. But we've just got to try and keep fighting their sneaky underhand tactics with honesty to show people how devious their government is really being.

*New Labour were no better really, but it didn't fit the sentence as nicely...

CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN...

2011-02-26T13:31:00.001Z

Last week, I stumbled across an interesting little programme on BBC iPlayer. Entitled As Others See Us, it followed four reknowned journalists as they recollected their experiences of reporting on The Troubles in Northern Ireland. A lot of it featured events from before I was born or too early in my life for me to recall, so I thought it would make an interesting watch. I did not expect to feel such an emotional reaction to it.

I live in London these days and every passing day in Northern Ireland makes peace that little bit more stable, so I haven't thought much about those past days in a long time. Every time I visit Belfast, there is something new and shiny to distract me from its previous reputation as a war torn town and the place where I grew up. So it was shocking to be reminded just how bleak the bad old days were.

I had a very normal childhood, growing up in a pleasant part of South Belfast, only a few miles as the crow flies from the riots and roadblocks, but a million miles apart. Unlike many Northern Irish kids, I did not grow up with the army just outside my door day in day out. I have never seen a riot in person and I am lucky enough never to lost anyone I know to the conflict. But I felt the presence of the Troubles as I grew up. It hung over everything like a pall and ensured that whether I realised it or not at the time that I was quite scared and confused by the place I grew up.

Life carried on a normal every day fashion most of the time, but so much of that normality was simply not knowing any different. It never occurred to me that you didn't see armoured cars or rifle toting police on the streets of a similarily sized English city. Going shopping of course involved patdowns and razor wire at the end of streets: how else did they stop Oxford Street getting too full? Painting the end of terrace houses with two storey sized representations of men in balaclavas was a nifty way to use up empty brick. Daubing the kerb stones with your chosen trifecta of colours and hanging out bunting and flags just seemed to brighten up the grey skies. Helicopters were the soundtrack of every city. And having your bag searched on the way into shops was just what every branch of Marks and Spencer asked, wasn't it?

With a child's love of routine and repetition, certain things were a constant. The start of the Twelfth Fortnight in July was rioting time for the Protestants. The 9th of August and its memories of Internment was the equivalent for the Catholics. Going to the International Airport to pick daddy up after a trip away for work always meant being stopped at the permanent roadblock outside Templepatrick and having policemen with torches check the car. Coffee jars make better bombs than jam jars. Every single secondary school will stage a version of West Side Story with the Prods and the Taigs standing in for the Sharks and the Jets Talking about 1972, the year that my parents married, rarely referenced the wedding, but always ended with the story of how their flat in Ireton Street was seriously damaged when the bomb at Botanic Station went off on Bloody Friday. One of 22 bombs denoted in just over an hour by the Provisional IRA, it was one of the worst days of the entire conflict, killing nine people, injuring over a hundred and thirty and leaving Belfast in ruins. I knew that neither of my parents were hurt, but their home was badly damaged by flying glass and that had things been very slightly different that day, neither my brother or I would exist, and my parents would never have had a dog with a touch of PTSD...

Other things were shocking, erupting almost out of nowhere and leaving behind a frightening silence and a sense of stillness where the people of Northern Ireland struggled to come to terms with them. One of the first times I remember this feeling of something so terrible it couldn't really be talked about was when I was five and the caretaker of my school, David Galway, was shot dead in his house on the school grounds by the Ulster Volunteer Force during an armed robbery. His wife was left confined to a wheelchair by the same shooting. While I saw nothing of the actual event, my bedroom overlooked the grounds of the school and faced the same direction as the house. Confused by the low voices and whispers of the adults in my life, I didn't feel I could ask much about things and I didn't feel I could tell them that I was frightened for the time we lived there to look out the bedroom window at night in case they came back. (Although walking past the house where it all happened to get to a classroom or to the changing rooms day to day for years never had the same fear because it was daylight.)

That feeling of the world changing and the air feeling different in the aftermath of terror and tragedy was an infrequent but constant one as I grew up. A happy family afternoon playing on the organ at my aunt and uncle's house to celebrate my granny's 79th birthday was brought to an abrupt end in shock and disbelief when we heard the news of the bombing at the Cenotaph in Enniskillen. Being in Royal Avenue with friends, seeing what seemed like every emergency service vehicle in the city scream up the street toward the Shankill Road the afternoon nine people died in a bombing in the fish shop. Only learning where tiny two horse villages like Greysteel were when masked men yelling 'Trick or Treat' gunned six men and two women to death on the evening before Halloween. Being reduced to tears while making cushion covers with my mum one August evening when the news of the Omagh bomb broke.

This climate of normality and uncertainty, meant that I grew up certain in myself that I would never stay in Northern Ireland once I was old enough to leave. While I never judge my parents for staying put, why should they have felt they had to move on? I could not imagine living there myself when I had the choice as an adult. As a child I could not imagine the situation changing and even momentuous events like the 1994 IRA ceasefire seemed more like a cruel joke to show us the tantalizing reality of peace before returning us to intimidation and fear as if nothing had changed. Had you told me that by the time I was 21, Northern Ireland would be at peace, I would have thought you were pulling my leg at professional levels.

My friends and I were so sceptical of the events the Good Friday Agreement that we spent a proportion of the evening drinking cheap gin in the toilets of the Europa bus station before going next door to Glengall Street to gawp at the Ulster Unionists going into their headquarters, calling in at Vico's for some misbehaving and rounding the night off with some lock in drinking at a raucous party in the (rather Republican) Hatfield, where most people were treating the whole political thing as a tenuous reason to have a right old knees up. The attitude was that since attempts to end the Troubles were like buses, it didn't much matter if this one went arse up, we'd just toast the next go and carry on as normal.

Still sceptical two years later when I boarded a ferry for a new life in England, I still felt peace was so precarious in Northern Ireland, that I had no choice but to leave if I wanted to get on. I could always come back to Belfast, but best to have a back up plan for when the peace process ground to a halt again. Next thing I knew I was living in London in a fleapit house and working a minimum wage job and Belfast was thriving. Politically stable, economically exciting and still cheap to live in, it looked like I'd picked the wrong horse. Then personal events happened that soured many of my relationships with people from Belfast and I was reminded of the Northern Irish ability to hold a grudge come hell or high water. The chances of a bunch of people brought up on hate and being judgemental forgetting things was slim to none and the fact that I no longer recognised anything in the city of my birth beyond the City Hall, made me feel that London might actually be a better option.

I do miss Belfast. I miss sounding like everyone else. I miss the decent opening hours. I miss the comfortable familiarity of growing up somewhere and knowing the backstories of buildings, businesses and families. But I don't miss the fact that when I go home and hear the local news, it's still a litany of punishment beatings, pipe bombs, peace walls and general sectarian intimidation. I don't miss the fact that old habits die so hard that taxi drivers still make assumptions about your background when you give your address and telling people what school you went to has the power to end a conversation in its tracks.

But I'd forgotten until I watched this documentary, what other emotions I feel about growing up where I did. I'm angry that the situation was allowed to become so volatile. I'm ashamed that I lived amongst people who thought blind hatred was natural and that voting for those who had not surrendered arms was logical. I'm disappointed my parents' and family's opportunities were restricted by years of turmoil and I'm resentful that I grew up feeling so trepidatious and with the knowledge that leaving my home town was a neccesity rather than a choice. I'm sorry we were such slow learners. I'm also glad to be given the chance to look back and see how far Northern Ireland has really come and finally believe that peace is going to stick. Pity the property prices are even more ridiculous than London or maybe I'd think about going back...

HEART IN MY MOUTH...

2011-02-15T11:39:00.000Z

Unless you were under a rock yesterday, you couldn't have helped but notice that it was Valentine's Day. Everything the shops can possibly cover with romantic emblems has been covered in hearts, cupids and other lovey doveyness. Restaurants triple booked everyone and squeezed an extra table or two in. Schmaltz hung heavy in the air...

I did nothing to mark the day apart from check the email affiliated to my OKCupid account with a mixture of dread and amusement. Would they take this opportunity to remind I'm in my thirties, single and have no one interested in me at all? Instead they decided to dredge up that swelling feeling of inferiority that only another barren Valentine's Day could bring in high school and ignore me completely, leaving me somehow feeling annoyed and lacking about something I just don't care about the other 364 days of the year.

But that's Valentine's Day for me. Over the years, it has been the thorn in the side of my usually steely exterior of singlehood. No one else cares about your romantic attachments the rest of the time, but Valentine's is a perfect storm of them asking probing questions and basking in the glory of their own Clinton Cards teddy bear and padded card the size of Milton Keynes. I shrug off their insinuations by playing up the advantages of the single life and remind myself that I would hate it if someone bought me a stuffed animal as flammable than a box of matches.

And while I would, I can't help but admit that it would be nice if I'd ever been bought anything on Valentine's Day at all. Not once, either when single or coupled up, have I ever received so much as a card on February 14th. I'd like to tell you this is because the men in my life have been so busy dreaming up impossibly non commercial, yet dashingly romantic gestures instead, but I'd be lying through my teeth.

My first experience with Valentine's Day set the tone for pretty much every single one that has followed. I was about ten, in P6 of primary school and my best friend Kelly started 'going out' with Gareth Morrow, so in that pre-pubescent way of balancing things up, I had to start going out with his best friend, Blair Robinson. I think at most a peck on the cheek passed between us, but no fear, Valentine's Day was at the start of the next week and things were bound to be interesting.

The big day arrived. Kelly got some kind of satin montrosity from Gareth. The rest of the class seemed to be swapping cards like their lives depended on it. Feeling a bubble of disappointment rise, there was nothing for me in my desk, not even later in the day. But then as we filed in from lunch, Blair leaned over and asked me to meet him at the end of the day. Spirits lifted, I thought how romantic it was that he wanted to give me my card away from prying eyes and the classroom desire to score points.

Trying not to look too eager, I sailed through the afternoon and met him once we were dismissed for the day. He looked bashful, I looked keen and when he spoke, he informed me that he hadn't bought me a card. Expecting the cheeky postscript that he had made it instead, I grinned foolishly as he carried on, telling me that he had taken the bus into Belfast city centre to buy the card at the weekend with his brother and as the bus had gone down Royal Avenue, some scaffolding had fallen on it, breaking the windscreen and causing the driver to crash. No one was allowed off the bus while the police and ambulance arrived and by the time they had gone, the shops were all shut, so he hadn't been able to buy me a card...

I was ten and utterly unschooled in the ways of romantic relationships. But having spent a lot of time in and around stables, I could smell horseshit a mile off. I'd like to tell you that I gave him a sassy brush off and walked off with my dignity intact, but as I don't remember doing anything of the sort, I think I muttered something wishy washy like 'can't be helped' and ran off toward my mum's car as she came to collect me. Blair and I never spoke again and twenty years later I've never quite forgiven Valentine's Day. It might have been the most creative excuse I've heard for letting me down (especially since Blair is now a chartered accountant) but sadly it wasn't the last. The day has been so riddled with disappointment on my part and indifference on the men's part, that by my early twenties I had perfected my happy-go-lucky response to the day to the extent that I actually fooled myself.

I've practiced it further since, even going as far as taking a trip to Ikea once to watch miserable couples rowing over their new wardrobe on the night to make my day seem better by comparison, and as I've got older, I have managed to make the day cease to have any resonance in my life at all. This year, I only noticed the date when a newly single friend pondered how she would handle the day on my Twitter feed. It took me a moment or two to realise she wasn't simply having a fit of the Mondays and make the association with the date. But once I did, I felt a hint of that lonely inferiority and couldn't quite quash it.

Next year though, I'm going to be on top of that niggling little thought and able to ignore it completely, making sure my feminist card doesn't get its yearly Carrie Bradshaw stamp. I'm also going to be that irritating person who keeps asking when it stopped being Saint Valentine's Day and tsking when everyone pretends that bloodsoaked martyrdom never happened on the Day of Lurve. So you'll know why I'm single. You won't need to ask and spoil it all...

ONE YEAR DOWN...

2011-02-13T17:46:00.000Z

Last year when I decided to stop buying cigarettes, I was so unsure that I would manage to quit smoking that I didn't make note of the date I started giving up on. It was a Wednesday in January and I was walking home from therapy and I realised I just couldn't choke down another minty fresh menthol for a while. I decided to see how many days or weeks I could last...

And almost without trying, I have reached (and possibly exceeded) that magical 52 weeks. It has been a year since I last bought a packet of cigarettes. In concentrating on not buying any, I seem to have distracted myself into giving up completely. Apart from one drunken mistake a few months in, cigarettes have ceased to have any presence in my life. Sometimes I am more taken aback by the fact I ever smoked rather than the fact I have stopped. Everything about cigarettes has become rather alien to me and I stare in wonder at those who still partake, unable to fathom the appeal.

I also try to keep this feeling very quiet. No one likes a born again non smoker, especially one who has also had a shit-ton of therapy and would be prone to some judgemental hand waving and accompanying pyschobabble if they didn't keep themselves in check. I'd like to pretend that this is because I am a kind and thoughtful person, but it's really because I'm terrified I'll be exposed as a hypocrite if I'm not careful.

I gave up smoking for a full 18 months a few years back around the time I was 27 or so and then fell off the wagon in stress filled style, puffing away with vigour for several more years. So until I've passed that benchmark, I'm a little bit wary of calling myself a non smoker for sure. I can't imagine going back, I'm too used to the extra cash and not smelling godawful, but I'm still hesitant. Just in case pride goes before a fall...

HAVE LIBRARY CARD, WILL TRAVEL...

2011-01-27T20:11:00.000Z

There are terrible things afoot. Ghastly things that chill me to my very soul and threaten the very fabric of our society because there are plans to close local libraries in their droves. Since we're all in it together according to the Tories, even books need to make sacrifices to help the deficit...

Frantic to cut costs no matter what, libraries have been pushed into the firing line thanks to coalition policies on cutting local government spending. Less immediate than bin collection, less green than parks and less bright than street lighting, libraries are the Cinderella of council spending. Everyone forgets they are there, but relies on them without even thinking.

My love of libraries goes back to when I was knee high to a grasshopper and my parents used to take me to the local library every single week. It held several charms to a small child. Firstly I can't remember not being able to read and I have always loved books, so all those coloured spines twinkling at me and tempting me to lift them were a feast of excitement and one I was encouraged to indulge. Secondly, thanks to the open plan layout of our library, my parents could leave me alone in the kids' section while browsing for their own tomes and the frisson of independence was electrifying. I felt so grown up it made me feel giddy. It's just another small way that books have shaped me for life...

I still remember some of my favourite books from the library more than 25 years later. Choice was a wonderful thing, but so was the familiarity of certain books taken out time after time or read again and again while sitting on a small plastic chair in the building itself. I adored Christobel Mattingley's The Picnic Dog which introduced me to the unfamiliar heat and vast space of Australia while in sight of the drizzly River Lagan. I thrilled and frightened myself with The Giant Jam Sandwich and its novel approach to the problem of wasps. Already a fan of Shirley Hughes' My Naughty Little Sister, I copied other tips on being a torment to my brother from Edith Unnerstad's Little O stories as she charmed and infuriated her Shakepearian named siblings.

I drifted away from the library for a while as I got older as the shelves didn't contain enough titles to sate my overwhelming desire for pony books. My dad took me to a charity shop bookstore instead where for mere pennies I could buy enough books to last me a week and build an impressive collection of novels in my bedroom. I grew to love the smell of used books, but it's never replaced my love of the library (and its oddly squeaky floor.)

I came back to the library as I hit puberty. Partly because I couldn't trust myself to study effectively in my own bedroom due to my uncanny ability to procrastinate and partly because the library had a social side. As we got older, our parents trusted us to trek down town on a Saturday morning to stake out a seat at the first floor of the Central Library. Pre mobile phones, friends would know that if they wanted company for study or an illicit wander round the In Shops later, you could be found in the library. I learned many things from those days from the poetry of Robert Frost to how to disguise the smell of craftily smoked cigarettes to how to banter and flirt with the staff (male and female) when you needed something obscure finding amongst the shelves or when you hadn't returned something on time.

But the library really came into its own for me when aged 18 I went from academic over achiever (a much nicer word than precocious) to seriously ill and almost completely housebound. The Ormeau Road library became the centre of my weekday world. Just close enough to be possible for me to walk to and feel a sense of achievement, I would. at least once a fortnight, go there and rummage the shelves for the six books that would stop me losing my mind stuck in the house with only 4 TV channels to watch in a pre-internet era. I devoured those books, each page keeping me sane and connected enough to the world to cope as my friends passed exams, moved away and started new lives at university on the other side of the Irish Sea. They gave me something to talk about with people who had jobs, courses and commitments beyond being awake for an afternoon episode of Quincy.

As my health improved and I returned to study at the local tech to get those elusive A-Levels that would restart my life, I relied ever more on the library as the standard of teaching at college was to say the least, erratic. I also discovered that my small South Belfast library had the most startling selection of unusual American Literature, particularly African American writers and this cemented my desire to work hard and get into university to study American Studies when I was wavering in my ambition. This early knowledge of the works of Chester Himes and Iceberg Slim also helped me impress my way into a place at King's College, London.

Strangely, I spent very little time at the library while at university, disliking the old creepy building on Chancery Lane and preferring to take books home and study there instead. Put off the joys of reading by my Lit degree for some time, I never once in three years set foot in the library in Waterloo, despite it being one street away from my house.

I came back to libraries with renewed vigour when I was homeless. Warm, safe and distracting, I spent long lonely days in them able to occupy myself without spending any money. I found the only book I could find on how to cope after rape or sexual assault in Tooting Library where it had been gifted by Cosmopolitan several years ago. Rarely taken out, but so well worn it was almost falling apart, I could sit anonymously and seek advice I hadn't been able to find anywhere else at the time. I also began a long love affair with crime fiction, immersing myself in a world where cops might be mavericks, but they cared about victims and got criminals off the street...

I collected library cards for each borough I had a hostel or a bed for the night in, so that I always had somewhere to go when I tried the patience of friends far enough with my ever present misery and so that I didn't need to weigh myself down with heavy books as I traversed London with my possessions on my back like a modern day snail. I even committed some light fraud to obtain cards in Hackney and Southwark and almost got away with it til my library book on Ted Bundy was stolen the night I was raped in Soho, and I had to fess up that I wasn't Marie Smith to Hoxton Street Library. I was then asked for a huge fine to replace the book with a look of such disapproval, I still cross the road rather than walk past the desk.

I could also access the internet for free and get the details and information about my legal rights as someone homeless. This helped me contact both Shelter and a legal aid solicitor and I believe, ultimately get rehoused and start my life again. It worries me immensely that in this ever-increasingly online world, the one free source of the internet is being taken away from the poorest and most vulnerable. Add in the fact that legal aid is being slashed and you realise that being able to at least access a law textbook or online advice becomes even more crucial, yet harder to obtain. How can this not feel ideologically driven when usually even the right wingers embrace the virtues of education?

I'm not sure what we can do to put pressure on our councils and our government and remind them libraries are just too important to mess with like this apart from congratulate Philip Pullman on his brilliant pro-library speech and use the hell out of our libraries. If you don't already have a library card, go and sign up. If your card is gathering dust, get it out and use it more. It should be harder to take away something if its so popular...and that's worth so much I'm prepared to risk the odd fine again!

LEGAL AID, NOT JUST A BAND AID...

2011-01-18T19:32:00.000Z

Amongst the many many sweeping cuts to spending in the UK under the deficit fever that is afflicting our not entirely elected overlords, the decimation of legal aid hasn't received as much attention as it really should with the impact it will have on personal cases and on the concept of justice in our society.

This is probably because like many things, few people think about how important access to the legal system is until they need it personally and obviously no one likes to imagine a situation in their life when they are desperate, vulnerable and in need. I certainly didn't and yet I have had need for a legal aid solicitor more than once in my life.

The first time was in December 2004 and I was living in a homeless hostel having been raped twice in the previous twelve months and while I was managing to hold myself together most of the time, the prospect of spending Christmas (and the first anniversary of my first rape which happened to be a few days earlier) alone in a hostel in Croydon, miles from my family and unable to even go and visit friends elsewhere in London due to my sign-in restrictions, was just too much. I couldn't do it. Faced by a wall of shoulder shrugging and ambivalence at Lambeth Council, I took myself to the library and found the contact details for a local solicitor who dealt with housing matters and accepted legal aid cases. I made an appointment and explained the situation. One snotty letter from the solicitor later and I had permission to go back to Belfast for a week for Christmas without further issue. I also got a better hostel place when I returned to London. I was immensely greatful to both the solicitor and the option to access legal help when no one else could help.

I did hope (in the nicest possible way) never to have to deal with a legal aid solicitor again, but a few years later I found myself very much in need of one. Following the disastrous handling of my second rape case by the Metropolitan police, I brought a formal complaint against the force. Over three years after I was attacked, the Met admitted that they had been wrong and that in their words, the investigation was 'completely worthless'. All the officers involved in the case were disciplined, the case was closed and I was free to move on. Unfortunately the next thing I needed to move onto was my cureent claim with the notoriously bureaucractic Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA) to claim compensation for my attack. Exhausted and traumatised by the fight with the police, I couldn't face another battle without support. I gratefully accepted a recommendation for a legal aid solicitor from a friend to chivvy it along.

It was one of the best decisions I have ever made. Instead of fumbling around and hoping for a fluke like I had with the police, I had the firm steady hand of my solicitor pointing me in the right direction and supporting me through some immensely difficult moments. Not only did she sort the paperwork and deal with the woefully inadequate staff at CICA, she helped give me the confidence to continue appealing to the police's better nature and embarrassment over my case to access information from my file I should never have seen. She also broke the news to me that even after my complaint was dealt with, the police had added insult to injury and lost my entire file, including the multitude of photos that had been taken of my injuries for evidence, most of which I was at least semi-naked in. She literally held my hand when we had to go over the written medical report from my rape exam at The Haven and I had to hear the finest details of injuries inflicted while unconscious. It was excruciating and gruelling and so personally draining, I couldn't have done it without her.

When the buff envelope from CICA with the decision letter about my compensation arrived a few short months later, I was exhilarated. My solicitor and I had done it. I could be grateful to her and to legal aid and go on and rebuild my life. Justice had finally been served! Then I read the letter...

CICA agreed that I had suffered an injury (as they term a rape) and agreed I was entitled to compensation. They also said that I had been drinking at the time of the injury and therefore was at least partly responsible for my injury, so they were withholding 25 % of my compensation for that reason. Aside from the fact I was claiming for an injury that had taken place while I was drugged and unconscious thus rendering my alcohol consumption irrelevant, here was a government body telling a woman that she was to blame for being raped in the 21st Century.

Feeling slightly overwhelmed from the letter, the first person I phoned was my solicitor. Those of whom who know me are expecting to hear a tirade of injustice and a litany of complaint followed. Instead, I thanked her for the support and hard work, told her I couldn't fight further, could see their point and would be accepting the reduced award as it was better than nothing. Despite being utterly incandescant with rage, she listened to what I had to say without changing my mind or criticising my choice and told me she would call me in a week to arrange signing the acceptance form and see how I felt about it all then.

Exactly seven days later she phoned me back and listened to me explode into a ball of rage who was determined to fight their judgemental decision to the hilt. Knowing me well from working side by side in stressful circumstances, she had gambled on me just needing a short breather to gather myself before seeing how unfair CICA's actions were. She had left me to come to that decision myself and spent the week arranging to set a judicial review in action to challenge it and make sure I got full payment and all blame removed.

Safe to leave the work in her ever capable hands, I went off leaving her to it and had another nervous breakdown. The months between February's judgement and a revised decision in July were the most painful, most desperate and most difficult since I sat and faced Christmas in Croydon. They are in most part a haze of agony, self loathing and sheer desperation, punctuated with making strange (although oddly beneficial) decisions, being almost impossible to talk to and steadying calls from my solicitor. Without being false or shallow, she made it clear that she supported me all the way and was going to chase CICA all the way to the High Court and beyond if needs be.

It wasn't necessary. Confronted with the prospect of a case accusing them of indirect sex discrimination in their judgement since they had never made that judgement about a male rape victim, CICA backpedalled faster than a cartoon bank robber on a bike. A cheque for the full amount and a letter acknowledging that I was not in anyway responsible for my injury arrived smartish. I felt like I could breathe again.

Buoyed by the confidence the decision gave me and the money I had received, I began to rebuild my life, but at the back of my mind and my solicitor's mind was the fact that mine was not the only case CICA had ever assigned blame to a rape victim in. They do make it clear that in some cases you will not be rewarded for sustaining an injury because of drink fuelled behaviour, so if you were in a bar fight you started because of being pissed and got a fractured jaw, you shouldn't get as much as if you were an innocent bystander. I can see why having this option is useful to them in certain cases, but can only see it as blaming and shaming all the way when applied to rape cases. We were horrified to discover at least 14 other women had been slandered in this way and wanted to raise awareness of this rare, but damaging decision making, especially as the inference that my behaviour was inappropriate came from the police force who had already admitted they had been wrong in their handling of the case.

My solicitor got in touch with some press contacts and I was interviewed by June Kelly at the BBC and Rachel Williams, then of The Guardian. While sympathetic to my traumas, their eyes lit up journalistically when the details of the case came out. This was big news to them and after several days of poking and prodding the relevant bodies for information, the story made the front page of The Guardian in August 2008, quickly being picked up the major news networks including the BBC too. My alter ego, Helen, was interviewed by everyone that day from the Channel 4 News to the Evening Standard. Everywhere I looked the case was on the front pages and while that was a terrifying realisation when stepping into a Tube carriage, it also meant politicians and policy makers were talking about it.

While CICA refused to automatically review the other 14 cases, then Labour minister Bridget Prentice and the Justice Secretary spoke out to say how unhappy they were with the case, despite CICA's wriggling that it had just been a mistake. They talked good talk over the next day or so as the debate over drinking and rape raged in the media from the supportive editorial pages of the Guardian to the more judgemental opinions of Roger Graef and Peter Hitchens in the Mail to the blogosphere of Jezebel. I was scared to go near the internet or the newsagent for fear of hearing more about it (unfortunately I can't link to a Mail article where Peter Hitchens called me a 'vile faced drunken slut fit only for the gutter') as even the most supportive articles missed the point. I had my drink spiked, most likely a glass of water. They found evidence in my blood tests. I would have been raped even if I'd been stone cold sober and that's why this decision was even more heinously wrong than just a bit of casual shaming by CICA. Not only do they make bad decisions, they just make it up and make me the poster girl in the process.

Luckily Bridget Prentice got both these points and once the brouhaha had calmed down, she contacted me to let me know that the rules had been changed at CICA and that sexual injuries could no longer be influenced by the rule about inappropriate behaviour, meaning no one could be punished for having been drinking or taking drugs prior to a rape in the future. Not only that, but many of the other 14 women contacted CICA and their cases were reviewed, with some receiving the rest of their payout, but no apology for the slur on their reputations. Yet none of this would have happened without legal aid...

Without legal aid (and admittedly a beyond brilliant solicitor who was Times Legal Professional of the Week and nominated for Legal Aid Solicitor of the Year) I would never have received the money owed to me and used it to rebuild my life to try and become a functioning member of society again. 14 other women would have carried the burning pain of being blamed by the government for their own rape for the rest of their lives. Every single woman who had a G&T or a spliff the same day they were raped would have had to risk state mandated blame for that and essentially being fined for telling the truth or to forgo money that might help ease the problems caused by being the victim of a brutal crime. Everyone on a jury would have been entitled to think that women asked for it when they are raped after drinking because why should they have to feel differently when the government was allowed to actually write letters stating that?

I might be being idealistic about jury members and newspaper readers the length and breadth of the land not feeling the same way, but at least the law is now on the victims' side in a way it wasn't before Augsut 2008 and that takes away at least one small obstacle women face after being raped. And every single of one of those who don't have to worry about that obstacle were helped by legal aid. But my case would not be funded under the new proposals. No one would be helped if I'd tried to do this just three years later.

I started this to help myself, I don't pretend to be saying otherwise, but it ended up helping a lot of other people and if I wasn't already a fan of legal aid when I started, I was a devotee by the end. Legal aid gave me my life back and allowed me to rebuild my confidence while upholding the principles of justice that are the foundation of a civilised democratic society. I will be writing to my MP and to the Justice Minister to register my disapproval and show why it is so important to preserve legal aid. Please use your student fees, library closures and DLA cuts template letters and do the same...if you get made redundant, have an accidents, lose your home, have your benefits cut or get divorced in the next few years, you'll be glad you spent that money on a stamp...

ARGUING WITH NAOMI WOLF...

2011-01-08T17:31:00.002Z

Since writing my most recent blog post about the Naomi Wolf anonymity debate there has been no cooling in the feminist furore her Guardian article started, particularly online. Twitter has produced a spoof commenter NaomifuckinWolf who is a 'rape apologist, feminist troll' and tweets horribly precient, yet darkly funny bon mots about the subject of rape and rape culture. Twitter also alerted me to the fact that Naomi herself would be appearing on the BBC World Service programme World Have Your Say on Friday 7th January* and that you could leave questions or comments on their webpage. Conscious of repeating myself across the entire internet, I cheekily left the blog link instead of a specially written comment, as I think the blog post said everything I wanted to convey. A couple of hours later, checking my email to see what Groupon were offering today, I received an email from the BBC asking if I would like to debate the subject with Naomi Wolf live on air at 6pm?

Having never met a soapbox I didn't want to stand on, I called them straight back and volunteered my services, expecting to do what I've done on phone in shows before and ask a question by phone. After establishing with the researcher that I do actually know something about the subject, I went off to leave a unexpected voicemail for a friend cancelling our drinks that night so I could caterwaul at the patriarchy, make some notes of precient points and ask the good folk of Twitter if there was anything else I should say? All this was in the comfort of my dressing gown with wet hair since that's the joy of a radio phone-in.

Plans changed so radically at twenty past five that my feet barely had time to touch the ground. Instead of doing the phone question, the editor and presenter had decided they would prefer to have me in as a studio guest. Already nervous about confronting one of the world's most famous feminists, I was suddenly sidetracked by the whirlwind of making myself presentable, getting dressed and in a cab to Holborn by 6pm. Thanks to the powers of black kohl pencil and Addison Lee, I managed this with two minutes to spare, making sure I was so distracted I didn't have any further time to think about my nerves.

I was whisked into the studio where presenter Ros Atkins was already speaking to Naomi live on air from New York. I just had time to sit down, check my notes, make sure I had Carmex to hand and join the debate when Naomi took a break from her impressive monologue reasserting her position and reminding us that she is special and unique in having this viewpoint...

Sadly in order to introduce my own points about personal experience of rape reporting, I didn't get time to tell Naomi she's isn't special or important to hold these views; she's just like every other rape apologist who wants to derail the real debate about why rape victims aren't well served by society and the authorities. It's not edgy, it's not clever and in her case it's not well argued either.

She seemed surprised when I said I had been raped and was speaking about my experiences, stumbling from her otherwise polished script, especially as I was vehemently disagreeing with her. I felt I had some difficulty in putting my point across since she barely let me have a word in edgeways, but I did get to raise the crucial issues about personal safety of victims after they've had their names and pictures splashed out everywhere. In between repeating my (fake) name about a hundred times in the manner I would use with a tired toddler and telling me how important my point was, she managed not to really address it, interrupting me when I tried to expand my point, but scolding me if I did the same.

Things got massively interesting when after repeating her experience of sexual harrassment by Harold Bloom she admitted she had been the victim of two attempted rapes that she had never told anyone at all about them before. It added an extra dimension of what-the-fuckery to her proposals and seemed oddly competitive in its timing as if she was trying to one up me or elict sympathy from audience and interviewer. She didn't get it as Ros Atkins immediately picked up this crucial point.

The woman who wants to remove anonymity from rape victims and coerce them into the public eye after being attacked could not apparently do that very thing herself, even with the protection of anonymity and the virtue of a privileged position in society. When coaxed further, she flipped and flopped, saying she had reported one to the police, hadn't told anyone about either and that on reflection she didn't think the second man had actually committed a crime, all the while failing to name either man in the public domain like she thought other non anonymous victims should. (I'm sure to the BBC's relief as unlike Naomi, they do believe in libel and slander laws!) At best it's a stunning lack of self awarenss and empathy, at worst it's a rank hypocrisy. Made cynical by the oppression Olympics I have encountered in the rape campaign group I used to volunteer with, I sensed the pouty tones of someone feeling less important than usual and the armchair psychologist in me wondered if she feels a failing in her handling of these events and wants to take this out on other victims?

Rapidly losing any respect I had for Naomi Wolf who seemed to be hellbent on backing her illogical argument with a combination of being patronising, overbearing and immature rather than actual fact, explanation and debate, I tried to remain calm when replying to her points, even though I sounded like an aggressively squeaky woodland creature in my own head. Although I would have liked to make several salient points here about how despite remaining anonymous I had managed to force change at both the Metropolitan Police and the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, I was glad that I did get the opportunity to challenge her when she mentioned her mother had been raped. Her mother is an admirable woman to allow that information to be broadcast globally, but Naomi again missed the point by a country mile and didn't seem to realise that by asking her mother's permission, she had afforded her the very choice she wishes to remove from others. It was like arguing with a 15 year old who has just discovered debating.

And it didn't get any better when Naomi launched into another monologue about how reporting rape should have consequences and suggesting that without anonymity, it had none right now. Obviously she doesn't believe that medical examinations, court cases, custodial sentences, police complaints, expense, time and trauma are already consequences. She seems to be erring on the right wing tabloid belief that women (and in this case, it is always women) report rape on a whim and the anti-rape pixies immediately condemn the nearest man on say-so alone and thrust him into a dungeon in a fairy tale castle forever and forever and all the feminists lived happily ever after. Even thought she was sure to tell us how she worked in a Rape Crisis centre for two years and barely saw a conviction, she thinks rape reporting is too easy. If she had her way, she'd spice it up a bit and make it the extreme version for the victim while shaking her head and pretending that rape culture and rape myths don't exist or influence conviction rates and thus don't need changing.

And if that wasn't mind blowing enough, she also thinks it's OK that you should only lose anonymity if you report to the police, creating a Solomon's choice for victims between the right to justice and the right to privacy. She cannot see that making it a choice between a system that is already failing (but that she doesn't propose changing in any other way) and the chance to seize back identity, makes it harder to get victims to speak up and thus handicaps conviction rates. I wanted to remind her 'you studied American Literature at Yale! Didn't you read The Crucible? Don't you remember John Proctor going to the gallows rather than lose his name? Don't you yourself make your living off your name, and by that extension your reputation and see the value it holds? Why can't you see that when stripped bare at a time of crisis, your name is all you have left?' But instead I was quite pleased that Ros moved things onto the submitted questions and gave my blood pressure time to reduce again.

Breathing deeply, I was interested to see that amongst the comments and questions, only one person (a man trotting out the high false allegation line) wholeheartedly backed her. Elani from Johannesburg seemed to agreeing with the status quo in South Africa and willing to do what she needed to obtain anti retrovirals. Naomi relaxed and lapped up this seeming support up while I willed Ros to ask would she still have reported without anonymity if she could have got the drugs any other way and to remind Naomi that South Africa has the highest reported rate of rape in the world with a conviction rate that makes Britain look good, even though over 20% of South African men have admitted raping a woman. If this is the country Naomi Wolf wants us to ape when it comes to dealing with rape, she blows my tiny mind completely.

I was further gobsmacked as we discussed the situations for rape victims in both Zambia and Liberia. Naomi Wolf acknowledged a serious stigma there and informed us that she wouldn't dream of telling another country how to handle its rape laws, despite being an American on the British BBC talking about a theory that came about because of an article about Sweden's rape laws. How I didn't snort loudly and contemptuously in my microphone, only God can tell us. Having decided that African women on the African continent could still have anonymity what with being all war-torn and lacking in democracy, but ignoring the cultural issues that follow some African women (and other immigrants) to Western countries, we moved on to try and address some specifics.

Sadie from the excellent Pandora's Project in Manchester asked Naomi Wolf exactly how victims who have reported and had their anonymity lifted should move on and rebuild their lives when facing stigma. I thought this was a perfect opportunity to say that since her proposals were dependent on tackling and condemning the heady combo of culture, media and myth that creates stigma, hopefully these victims wouldn't be in that situation, but Naomi showed once and for all that she doesn't actually care about changing the world, just making life more awkward for victims, and uttered the only realistic statement of the whole hour.

She urged victims to use their local Rape Crisis centres and then reminded us that these are always underfunded and struggling, so listeners should get their chequebook out and help them. I call these wise words if she actually meant to help Rape Crisis orgs rather than flood them with a tsunami of even more frightened and traumatised victims to challenge them further. She also showed massive ignorance of the fact that there is no central government funding for Rape Crisis in the entire UK, a situation started by Labour and of course continued by the coalition. She might as well have been telling a victim to start their own support group...

Beryl from Uganda then brought the conversation back to the elephant in the room and mentioned stigma again as a very very pressing concerns for victims. Naomi seemed to dismiss this again as a quaint African custom and started to explain to us that anonymity was increasing stigma as it prevented victims from forming the same style of grass roots movement that allowed homosexuality and abortion to be more openly discussed. Ignoring the fact that she herself radically shifted her ideas on abortion when she had kids, she again missed the point that generally the people speaking out to de-stigmatise these subjects had a choice in the matter (even her beloved Oscar Wilde.) and that anonymity is being used even today in the current pro choice Twitter campain by IAmDrTiller. She also then grasped at another straw and told us all that the police and press take other crimes without a sexual element to them super seriously and that proved why anonymity was a bad thing

Having almost burst trying not to interrupt up til now, I just couldn't let her naivety stand and told her a little bit about how the police reacted when I was bitten in the shoulder in a bar. Nothing sexual about it, very violent, extremely life changing and I was literally laughed out of the police station. It became abundantly obvious that Naomi Wolf really doesn't inhabit the real world, but a rarified circle where her opinion and tireless self promotion count above all else and nothing, not least the truth, is going to spoil that.

But kudos to her, just as the programme drew to a close, she did acquaint herself with the truth and admit that she wrote her first piece in the Huffington Post on December 7th defending Julian Assange without the full details of the allegations about him and that it was inaccurate. She did not however apologise for other assertions she made that it isn't rape if the victim is sleeping or unconscious and she continued to sound like a petulant teenager defending her favourite popstar when discussing Assange.

She also flounced off the line the second the programme went off air, not even waiting to thank the BBC or Ros for an hour of barely interrupted self propaganda. I like to think it's because she was scared I might tell her about yet another assault against me, forcing her to tell us about the time she was propositioned by Joe Camel being sleazy in an undergraduate bar or something else she hadn't mentioned before, but I think it's more because despite being well raised and educated up the wazoo, Naomi Wolf just doesn't have very good manners and couldn't wait to slam the door on the way out.

Ros Atkins remained utterly impartial as he thanked me for my time, but other staff were less discreet, telling me there had been some serious swearing in the office every time she Helen, Helen, Helen'd me. We were all agreed though that Naomi is seriously good at holding her own (admittedly to the point of derailing) and that she could talk the hind leg of a field full of donkeys and frankly any interjection was an achievement, even though I had a million other points to make.

I then went to meet some of the London Jezebels for a drink (as originally planned) and commenced a good natured post mortem of my unexpected evening. They were delightfully supportive as were other friends and feminist allies on Twitter and Facebook (especially those who got a hashtag going!) and it became apparent that most people, even those who don't have to pretend because they don't know me, that Naomi Wolf did not come across well, couldn't even back her weak argument up and came across as self promoting, shockingly unself aware and lacking in a real comprehension of the intricacies of the subject she has appointed herself High Priestess of.

I make no illusion that I am speaking for myself and putting forward what I have learnt from own experiences, rather than talking for all rape victims. I suggest if Naomi Wolf learns one thing from this whole debate, it's to speak a little less and listen a little more...

*The iPlayer link should be available worldwide for the next seven days until 00.00 GMT January 14th. If not, please contact me for a recording of the whole programme.

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN...

2011-01-06T13:50:00.000Z

Occasionally you read or hear something so egregiously awful and wilfully ignorant it makes your mouth drop open and your rage glands fully engage. Normally it goes away when you stop reading the Daily Mail, but this time this result came from reading an article in the Guardian by Naomi Wolf where she suggested that the women who alleged Julian Assange raped them should have their anonymity recinded as should all other rape victims who report.

Bearing in mind Naomi Wolf has long since been seen as an Alpha female in the world of feminism, this is quite a statement to make. I'm used to right wingers like Melanie Philips or Men's Rights Advocates spouting this kind of stuff, but I am surprised to hear it from the woman who wrote the seminal The Beauty Myth.

Ms Wolf thinks that anonymity for rape victims (or as she incorrectly calls them, women) is a Victorian hangover that is completely unnecessary in this more enlighted era where being a rape victim is so much easier and without stigma, and that this level of protection is actually a big pile of paternalistic nonsense that is making it harder for people to report rape. There are so many glaring holes in her reasoning you could use the article as a doily...

Let me state, I am wholeheartedly in favour of anonymity for those making reports of sexual crimes, even though there is a small, but vociferous group (of mainly men) who insist that anonymity allows (mainly) women to make unfounded allegations of rape and destroy men's lives (mainly) for shits and giggles. To them, I suggest they stop taking Dr. Eugene J. Kanin's highly discredited 1994 report as gospel and realise that his 41% statistic has been disproved time and time again by the FBI, the Metropolitan police and the Home Office who insist the false reporting rate to be between 2 and 8% of all allegations. I am much more inclined to trust the word of organisations for whom a high false reporting rate would be useful (since it would make them look less incompetent), but consistently find the rate to be lower than suggested. By concentrating on the maximum 8% of false allegations when only an estimated 5% of all rapes in England in 2007 were reported to the police focuses the debate on a miniscule number of cases and people while derailing it from the wider issues faced by those who try and seek justice after being attacked.

As I've mentioned before, I think re-introducing anonymity for those accused of rape has many merits. I feel it would shut the chorus of 'all women are liars about rape and just out to ruin men's reputations' down incredibly quickly as it balances things up and takes away one of the major rape myths that affects both the police investigation and the jury, especially if the accused is famous, powerful or prone to embarrassing the hell out of major world powers in his day job. I was always baffled as to why so many vocal feminists opposed the idea when it was mooted again last year (aside from it being a Tory idea.)

Enraged by Naomi Wolf's dangerous views which appear to be based on ideas of unicorns and puppies rather than the realities faced by the many victims of rape in this country, I left a long comment on my personal experiences of rape, explaining the massive stigma I have faced from being both raped and 'uppity' enough to report it and how important my anonymity was in allowing me to report, campaign and complain about the way my cases were handled. Unlike most of the comments (and the piece itself) it was based on experience and genuine knowledge of the subject and was therefore, of course, deleted.

However a few people did get to read it before the mods exercised their trigger finger and Naomi Wolf herself replied to it, more or less telling me I was wrong. It wasn't the social stigma of being raped twice or the police being incompetent and uncaring or people accusing me of being a liar that prevented me from ever seeing either rapist banged up for what happened, it was my own anonymity...

Despite the fact that I was not anonymous to the police who investigated the crimes, the flatmates who threw me out for reporting, the friends who shunned me, the people who saw me as damaged goods or the witnesses who refused to come forward, Naomi Wolf thinks that it was only the fact that the papers couldn't publish my name that was the issue and has chosen to concentrate on this straw man than address the fact that the there is still enormous social stigma in being the victim of sexual crime, a high rate of attrition at police level and a very low conviction rate. I have no idea why she might have gone for this route, although I suspect that she is blinded by her current Assange obsession, but I feel she's doing rape victims and feminism a diservice. I also think she's flat out wrong if she doesn't think anonymity is crucial right now for rape victims.

Since my first rape would have been of interest to the press, there is no way I would have reported if my anonymity wasn't assured. Being the only person on the electoral register with my name makes me easy to spot and I had to think about the other people in my life, my friends, family and flatmates. They hadn't been raped, they weren't victims, most of them weren't even witnesses. Why the hell should they risk having their privacy invaded when it was discovered they shared my name, my house or my bed? I had a responsibility to them and I took it seriously. At times when my second case was in the press, I considered dropping my anonymity to see if it would more impact, but I knew my family would prefer it if I didn't, so I remained the elusive Helen instead.

I also discovered that remaining anonymous actually seemed to have more effect in getting people to listen. Instead of being able to look at a image of me and decide I wear too much make up, sound common or am too bolshy for my own good, people had to focus on the words I was saying and the injustices I was telling them about. Yes, it would be just peachy to live in a society where women aren't judged on their looks, opinions and supposed morals, but it isn't happening and I think it's better to find a way round that than remain silent and unopinionated.

Remaining anonymous meant that although I have given interviews to the Guardian, Mirror, Independent, The Scottish Herald, Scotland on Sunday, Grazia, Now!, Channel 4 News, Panorama, ITN News, the Hindustan Times, The Washington Post and the BBC about my second rape case and subsequent compensation case, only one person who I hadn't told about these inteviews ever guessed it was me. This meant I could home and switch off from a day's campaigning before I totally lost the plot and more importantly, it meant that prospective employers (and all those housing officers tec I had to deal with) wouldn't see my name and associate me with being a troublemaker either. (One woman's campaigner is another person's shit-stirrer after all...)

It also allowed me, in as much you can when dealing with bureaucracy, to take it at my own pace and take back some of the control rape robbed me of. If my name had been all over the press with the first rape, how could I have decided to withdraw the complaint as I did choose to do? I would have had pressure from all sides and strangers and I cannot imagine that the Daily Mail would have hestitated to brand me a liar and the allegation false, thus helping make it harder for all the other brave women (men never get accused of lying about this) after me.

This may come as a shock to some people, particularly a certain breed of feminist who trumpets the sisterhood, but I don't have a responsibility to anyone I don't know just because someone chose to rape me. I don't have to report because 'he might do it to someone else and it'll be your fault' and I shouldn't have to feel that my choices and actions in my own case have a bearing on other women and I would have had that if Naomi Wolf had her way. That's a terrible pressure to put on someone trying to rebuild their life and it also conveniently takes the blame off the perpetrator in a way that doesn't happen with other crimes, thus giving rape culture another shot in the arm.

But perhaps most importantly, I feel remaining anonymous kept me safe. Having my name and face and details that might identify where I live and socialise makes me vulnerable. Who better to attack or rape in the future than the girl who's already been raped twice and criticised the police so much? Who the hell would believe her a third time and what are the chances of her reporting it? (The answer you are looking for is slim to absolutely none.) Maybe you think I'm being melodramatic, but having had my safety compromised so much on several occasions I am understandably paranoid about this. It's bad enough that I probably have a massive black mark against my name at the Met meaning I'll definitely get a hostile response if I ever report a burglary or mugging. You don't criticise an entire force on the front page of the Guardian and get 16 officers disciplined at work without pissing a lot of people off. I'm just grateful anonymity means their disgruntled friends and families can't find me and make my life miserable in other ways.

I know I shouldn't let people like Naomi Wolf who pull the 'but I speak to rape victims all the time' card get to me, but I do get infuriated by people who speak to, but don't listen to rape victims and then spout feminism 101 style theories about the subject that while boosting their desire to be heard, actually live those living with the consequences of rape to pick up the pieces that make life more difficult. I feel I have to take the opportunity to speak out from experience and try to show a more facted, less myth ridden view of the subject, hopefully without roobing everyone else who has suffered sexual violence of a voice. Ironically I think my anonymity here helps too. After all as Gherkinette, I have no money to make, no persona to build and no need to shout louder than anyone else to get another article or book commissioned. I just have a story to tell and experiences to share and a hope that those things will make the whole debate more balanced and nuanced than people like Naomi Wolf are doing...

NEW YEAR, NEW YOU?

2011-01-06T10:30:00.003Z

The New Year is upon us and so is the annual burst of soul searching and introspection that traditionally accompanies the 1st of January. I find literal 'Resolutions' somewhat tricky to stick to, thanks to the air of wholesome sanctimony and enforced keen-ness that surrounds them, so I have given them up as a concept, but I do intend to introduce changes and developments into my life in 2011, as and when I feel ready for them.

As I have mentioned here before, I gave up smoking last January. It genuinely wasn't a resolution and I didn't even start to try stopping until the New Year was about 3 weeks old. I intended to see how long I could go without buying a packet of cigarettes and somehow in the intervening year, I not only managed this, I also forgot why I ever bought them in the first place. This life change fitted my mind set as I was still in the throes of some very intense therapy at the time and everything was about change and self improvement. I like to think that instead of dropping too much therapy speak into day to day conversation, my new and improved self came out in giving up smoking and smelling much nicer...

Buoyed by managing to get my PTSD fairly under control and giving up the evil weed, I also managed to give up my phenomenal Diet Coke habit going from roughly 2 litres of the brown stuff a day to more like one can a month. This came about in September which with its associations with the new school year is just as much about change to me as January is so seemed an apt to time to do something I was dreading. I actually found kicking Diet Coke much harder than the cigarettes, suffering the kind of cravings that made me want to punch someone (probably myself as distraction!) for several weeks. I eyed up those lovely silver cans in the shop and dreamed about bubbly brown goodness on my tongue, but refused to have the stuff in the house for about a month. When I finally decided to treat myself to a can while out with a friend, I couldn't believe how artifical and unpleasant it now tasted. I'd have felt cheated if I didn't also feel about a million times better for cutting out heavy amounts of caffeine.

Now that my lungs and bones are no longer under daily attack from my various bad habits, I think it might be time to start addressing the many many body issues I have. A combination of ill health, assault, weight gain and getting older have left me wracked with body loathing and extremely uncomfortable in my own skin. I feel that my my body has constantly let me down over my life time and its physical and mental failings make it impossible to have any pride in it. Add in the fact that just after I was raped for the second time I began to gain weight and developed a much more ample cleavage, going up around two dress sizes and five cup sizes in six months at a time when my body was being treated as a crime scene and it probably isn't a surprise to hear that I find the idea of anyone looking at or noticing my body makes me incredibly and horribly self conscious. This desire to be invisible is definitely helping keep my agoraphobia alive and kicking so it's imperative that I tackle some of these body related problems.

I'm just not quite sure where to start. Exercise seems like a good place, but having been someone who has always shunned physical exertion in favour of sitting quietly with a book, I haven't got the faintest idea how to go about getting fitter without overdoing it, injuring myself or making myself feel like a failure if I don't do it right. I also find it difficult to separate the concept of exercise for health from exercising to make yourself as thin as possible. (I blame growing up in the 90s, mainlining copies of Vogue and watching Ally McBeal...) But I think I've finally realised exercise has many other benefits and I'm in a place to give getting sweaty and out of breath a go, even if the thought of it also fills with with horror.

Considering that I'm gruesomely unfit, I anticipate that I will have very sore legs very soon and will need to to sit down quietly in between bouts of exertion, which gives me an excuse to get cracking on some better reading this year. I read a lot, but frankly most of it is bollocks and better suited to being bought at an airport than a decent bookshop. This leaves me with a reputation for being bookish, but unable to converse with anyone about literature unless they also favour brutal serial killer novels and gritty police procedurals. I aim to try reading a mixture of mindless and make me think books this year and have a particular desire for some historical works and some of the Mitford sisters' works...

Maybe reading about well dressed gels about town will inspire me to be less of a boring dresser by the end of the year? I used to have great style, wear fabulous colours and not look like I'm wearing a uniform at all times and I'd like to go back to that, but being unhappy with my body, being able to blend in thanks to all the black clothes and broke means I've become very blah with my wardrobe, rarely wearing heels, skirts or dresses anymore. I need a bit of a shake up before I bore myself into frumpdom. Maybe if I can get it all together you'll see my knees by next November?

TIGER BEATDOWN, BUT NOT BEATEN...

2010-12-19T18:27:00.000Z

You can't have missed the constant media hoopla surrounding the sexual assault and rape charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in the past few weeks. Before the snow hit, the media seemed to be covering every minute of his court hearings and bail applications, especially since this has been happening in the UK. But what you may not have heard so much about is the reaction to the Assange case in the USA and boy, is it a shitstorm.

Famous progressive film maker Michael Moore, never a man to keep an opinion to himself, firstly put up $20,000 for Assange's bail and spoke out on to Keith Olbermann, declaring the rape allegations to be 'hooey' and a fuss over a 'broken condom'. Moore is not the first person to come out on the behalf of Assange, declaring they know what happened between three people on two occasions in Sweden several months ago and pooh-poohing the allegations of rape in order to declare their support for the work Wikilieaks is doing, but he is the most derisory about the fact that a serious crime is alleged to have happened. And because he's a left wing type, his rape denial has attracted a lot of attention for several reasons.

Firstly, it's incredibly stupid to make absolute statements about events you aren't involved in and thus don't know the full facts on. Moore was not present when the alleged attacks took place. I haven't even seen anything that suggests he knows Julian Assange. He has since changed his statements about the allegations as the Guardian reports more Wikileaks cables over the weekend. I don't know what happened between Assange and those two women. I'm aware the timing is convenient for some people, but I think that the case should be persued, investigated fully and taken to court if the women wish to continue. Moore and his cronies do not think that this need happen. To them, Assange is such a good guy with his Wikileaks work that he is above the law. This is no better than the rightwingers who think Assange is so evil that he should be extradited to the USA and not stand trial for rape because other things are more important.

And it's this attitude towards rape that's caused the storm online. Angered by the continuing and constant denial of rape, belittling of rape victims and attempt to see powerful men as above the rule of law when rape is alleged, Sady Doyle of TigerBeatdown has articulately and emphatically lost her rag with this epic example of rape culture and started a Twitter based campaign to try and explain what exactly men like Michael Moore are doing to victims of rape the world over, not just the two women in the Assange case. She highlights the fact that since rape is widely acknowledged to be about power rather than sex, declaring powerful men to be above the law in this cases allows all men to be excused from rape allegations. So if all men are exempt from rape claims, it doesn't take much to suggest all women are lying about rape and if all women are lying about rape, then no one has to take the allegations seriously and the police and judiciary don't have to enforce the laws and rape and sexual assault continues unchecked. And for anyone who can't see for themselves why that's a bad thing for society, take a minute to reacquaint yourself with how the Catholic Church has been dealing with their abuse claims...

Infuriated that no one in a position of influence seems to have learnt from those lessons, Sady launched the #mooreandme hashtag on Twitter and urged anyone who felt that Moore (and a lesser extent John Pilger, Jemima Khan, Bianca Jagger and Ken Loach) needed to be informed and educated on the subject of rape and rape culture to tweet their feelings using the tag or addressing @MMFlint directly.
Hundreds of thousands of people, male and female, who have been touched by the tragedy of rape did just that. Stories of unreported rapes, violent rapes and rapes ignored by the authorities flooded Twitter. People talked about the lives the crime ruins and irreparably changes. Debates happened about the wider politics of all rape reporting, but especially the Assange case. Considering it all took place in 140 characters or less, it was informative, engaging, upsetting and nuanced.

Then the tone changed and a more misogynistic and angry element began using the tag to threaten Sady, to threaten the women who had shared the experiences of their own rapes, to excoricate the men who supported their struggles and to bully anyone who disagreed with them or suggested Assange needed to be investigated. I'd laugh it off and call it a troll convention if it was simply an online thing, but the thing is that it so uncannily mirrors the attitudes that come to the fore when rape comes up in converstation in real life that it just can't be ignored. This pool of rape denying women haters are the same people who sit on juries and who apply to be police officers and raise children. Their prejudices are not just confined to their own world. They teach boys to feel entitled to women's bodies and girls to be too cowed to assert themselves. They say they would never do that and bring judgement and blame to the table and they fight dirty when anyone stands up to them, whether that be accusing them of lying on the internet or throwing them out of their house in real life.

They spread a poison of fear and anger and intimidation at every turn. They made my life unbearably distressing for years and within four days have pushed Sady to write one of the most painful personal pieces I have ever read. I don't think I can say much more than she has, except to say that I deeply admire and respect anyone who speaks up for the men, women and children too frightened and traumatised to raise their voices loud enough against their attackers. Sitting seven years to the day since my life, my confidence and my identity was shattered when I was raped, I thank Sady for speaking up for people like me who felt too bullied to do it themselves and urge anyone on Twitter to add their words of support on Sady's account or the #mooreandme hashtag. And if that isn't allure enough, don't miss the chance to be standing tall on a feminist issue with Larry Flynt who has just pledged a $50,000 donation to rape crisis charities in solidarity with Sady!

HOLLOW LAUGHTER...

2010-12-02T14:50:00.001Z

Last Thursday marked two things. One was Thanksgiving, but the other was International Day of Elimination of Violence Against Women. This isn't just a day of awareness but the start of 16 Days of Action Against Gendered Violence when this often taboo subject can be discussed and action taken to prevent it and aid those who have already suffered its effects.

Here in London there have been events such a Rape Crisis fundraiser and the annual Reclaim the Night March last Saturday. I toyed with going to the march, but the cold weather and an invitation to go for cocktails sidetracked me. I also have some issue with the fact the march itself is female only. I understand some people think it should be a 'safe space' but I think it would be helpful to get a wider variety of men on side, not just the kind of right on guy who happens to be dating an outspoken feminist, but the kind of regular guy who doesn't know whether he knows any rape victims or feminists, but probably knows the type of man who thinks getting a girl blind drunk doesn't 'count'...

There's a pretty pervasive 'rape culture' out there in wider society typified by the high rate of attrition by the police, low rate of conviction, surveys that say women should take some of blame for rape depending on their behaviour, the casual violence advocated by Danny Dyer and his ilk and a rise in the amount of 'rape talk' in popular culture with rape jokes apparently being laugh a minute these days. Even places you think would eschew this attitude, like Jezebel, cannot be relied on at all times...

To me, it's the people who look at those points and don't see a problem who need to be brought to the fold of rethinking rape. And without giving that ghastly old trope about 'all men being rapists' house room, I generally find the people who think this way are primarily male. While some women attribute blame to other female victims of rape*, they very rarely joke about rape or use the word to describe inconsequential events. I think this is because the fear of being raped hangs so heavily over most women that it just isn't humourous to them. I have also found that most of the 'victim blaming' I have encountered from other women is really dressed up in fear. If you say you would never get drunk with a man you don't know or wear a skirt that short, you're not just blaming the victim, you're telling yourself you're safe and it won't happen to you. And it's a lot easier to live life like that than admit their are men who rape out there and you are vulnerable if you meet one no matter what you do.

The victim blaming I've endured at the hands of my fellow women has done a hell of a number on me over the past few years and I'm not going to pretend it isn't a problem, but after living through the misery of sexual violence and seeing just what crippling impact it has on a person, I can see why the very real fear of it happening can cause women to act badly. I find it much more painful and infuriating when men minimise the severity of rape by joking about it or describing a gruelling gym workout as having 'raped' them. Can we please just say it now? Rape isn't funny. The degradation, violation, intimidation, and injury of other people isn't a laughing matter at the best of times, but especially when society seems to condone it by prosecuting those who report it, a low conviction rate and light prison sentences for committing it. Find something else to laugh at.

Perhaps that makes me sound like a stereotypical humourless feminazi, but I can live with that. Ironically I have laughed at my own experiences of rape, but even where I can see a certain gallows humour in my last few years of my life, the laughter has been somewhat hollow. But a bit like only you being able to bitch about your family, just because a rape victim can titter about events in their life, doesn't mean other people can do the same, especially if that humour has a mocking tone to it.

I know expressions like "I could murder a coffee" crop up in society and may well be painful to anyone who has lost a loved one in a violent death, but I see none of the victim blaming or mocking tone that tends to accompany the same casual attitude in conversation about rape. I don't really advocate being flippant about murder or other forms of violence in conversation, especially with people you don't know well. But if you think you should be cautious about references to murder, you should definitely being careful about casual chat or giggles about sexual violence since it is estimated that 1 in 4 women will be a victim of either a completed or attempted rape or sexual assault in their lifetime. When you include the friends and family of these women who have watched them suffer, that's a hell of a lot of people you might be upsetting or angering with your lighthearted comment.

So while I realise the pro-active nature of the Reclaim the Night march makes lots of feminists feel like they are doing something to stop the scourge of sexual violence on society, until it and its affiliate organisations aim to further include men who don't act like this and harness the peer pressure they can assert on the less forward thinking men they know, rather than just inviting them to the party afterwards, then I'm not entirely sure I could get involved in the march.

Instead, and not just for 16 days of the year, I'll be sharing my experiences of rape, reminding those who joke about it or belittle the experience that their attitude is hurtful and offensive and leaving comments on all those 'cry rape' stories on the Dail Mail to try educate those whose ignorance perpetuates rape culture. I'll also be being brave and be 'reclaiming the night' everytime I refuse to be scared by what's happened and go out after dark. I'll also be drinking a few cocktails along the way too! I hope I'll have some company along the way...

*No word on how the women interviewed felt about male victims. Maybe they though their trousers were too tight?

DING DONG! THE BELLS ARE GOING TO CHIME...

2010-11-17T14:19:00.001Z

Unless the last 24 hours have been your annual cave retreat, you just can't have failed to have heard or seen the announcement of Prince William and Kate Middleton's engagement after 8 years together. The media has seized this rare piece of good news and have rolled with it to the point where everyone has had to talk about it and express some kind of opinion.

Let me say upfront that I am perfectly happy that William and Kate are deciding to tie the knot. They've been together a long time out of choice and seem to be a strong partnership who are very happy together and who have really thought about the responsibilities of marriage. But before you think I've turned into a crazed monarchist with a rom-com attitude, let me highlight why the Royal Wedding™ is chapping my ass...

Firstly, did we really need every single facet of the media to be taken over by Royal Wedding fever for an entire 24 hours? The BBC had a helicopter over Buckingham Palace for chrissakes and an ever changing roster of correspondents standing on the traffic roundabout outside getting ever more hysterically excited about the impending nuptials that I feared someone might just break down sobbing when it all got too much for them.

And just to make this media onslaught more annoying, even well balanced and usually reputable journalists started squeeing and squealing over the forthcoming frock and commemorative china like twelve year old girls with a scented glitter pen. With this level of immaturity coming out, it wasn't a surprise when the discourse turned to cliche quite quickly.

Without actually addressing Kate by the rather snide tabloid title of 'Waity Katie', the tone insinuated that Kate Middleton had finally bagged her man by a combination of cajoling, waiting and sacrificing all autonomy in her life and that this level of manipulation is perfectly reasonable, perfectly common and wouldn't all women do it for in order to bag a real life prince? There was absolutely no mention I could hear about this engagement being the culmination of a relationship of two people who despite their different backgrounds, regarded themselves as equals who want to proclaim their love publicly. Despite being so excited by a wedding, the press couldn't help but make marriage sound like something the man is nagged and bullied into by a wannabe Bridezilla of a woman who like all women just wants to be a princess more than anything else, rather something rather delightful that a couple chooses to do together.

And not content with making Kate sound like a conniving witch out to ensnare a prince by any means possible, we also had to listen to people exclaiming that it was just as well she was bagging a decent husband because as a middle class girl, what else could she do? Setting aside the fact that Kate Middleton is only considered middle class by the press, with her private education from Marlbororough and multi-millionaire parents, it is 2010. Is it so difficult to believe a whole decade into the 21st Century that women, middle class or no, can do more than just get married (and be quizzed on the day of their engagement announcement as to how many children they want)?

Women are supposed to have options these days. They have the opportunity for education, self improvement and financial and physical independence. They can run businesses, be CEOs, housewives, part time workers, full time campaigners and have aspirations, no matter how wacky. They no longer have to go from their father's house to their husband's house and do what they are told, but an alien beaming down to Earth yesterday would have been forgiven for not realising that. The whole tone in the press seemed to be how lucky it was that she was marrying well and what a relief it would be to her parents, as if their privately educated daughter with a 2:1 from a good university had no other life options but get married or remain a spinster.

I'm not going to dwell on the fact that William apparently asked Kate's dad permission to marry her since that's simply the spin the press is putting on it. For all we know since Kate and her dad seem close, this was more a chat to assure him that despite coming from a family with a bad track record on marriage and fidelity, he would be doing his best to treat Kate with the respect and love she deserves. We just don't know and considering the unrivaled levels of press scrutiny this couple are likely to face, it would be nice for them to have some private moments.

Although the small 'r' republican in me does chomp at the bit slightly at the fact that these private moments are going to be paid for by the public, especially at a time when the public are facing unprecedented cuts to welfare and public services. Both William and Kate come from wealthy families who could well afford to pay for at least some of the wedding costs and it seems unfair that despite this, they will getting it all comped by the British public.

Despite the boost the economy the wedding will likely create (if the Americans on Jezebel are anything to go by, the USA at least will be falling over itself to buy commemorative tat and queue for a good spot on the Mall), I'm concerned as to how much things like policing will cost. Can the Met afford to police this massive event and still provide frontline services to the rest of London at a time when their budget has already been cut? Especially when they are already having to plan for the Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics a year later? I'll be interested to see if the government makes up the shortfall or whether there will be a sneaky rise to council tax next April.

It's going to need to be a damned nice frock and a decent party, preferably accompanied by a Bank Holiday to take the sting out that for Londoners in particular, but instead we'll probably just get around 9 months of breathless ecstasy about venues, carriages and the best way to fold a linen napkin, all trotted out when there's some more bad news to hide like the sweeping cuts to legal aid were yesterday.

I'd consider going abroad, but they seem more taken with the Disney-fication of it all then we Brits do, so maybe I'll just plan a nice trip away that weekend to somewhere less monarchy mad. I hear the Falls Road is just lovely that time of year...

DAMNED IF YOU DO, DAMNED IF YOU DON'T...

2010-11-11T19:50:00.000Z

It's never a great week to be a victim of sexual violence in the UK, but this week is particularly awful and shocking...

This is thanks to the news that a woman in Wales has been jailed for eight months for making a false retraction of rape claims against her husband after feeling so intimidated by him and his family that she felt it was best to withdraw her allegations. The police and CPS felt the case against her husband was strong enough that it was scheduled to go to trial when this woman was imprisoned for a false retraction. She is now in prison and the charges against her husband have been dropped, despite the fact that a false retraction suggests to me that the original allegation must have been true.

This case means that women can now be prosecuted and imprisoned for both reporting an allegation of rape and withdrawing an allegation of rape if the police and CPS deem them to be false. I am not naive enough to believe that false allegations don't exist, but I'm also aware enough of the massive failings of the police and the CPS in investigating so many rape cases, that I just don't trust their judgement. In my experience, neither the police or CPS is actually on the side of the victim, just what suits their agenda better at that time. The Metropolitan Police in particular have been reprimanded on more than one occasion for 'no criming' allegations of sexual crime at a very high rate. This essentially means that although an allegation has been made, the police decide (often without any investigation at all) that nothing actually happened and write it off without it affecting their statistics. It has long been suspected that 'no criming' has been used to avoid difficult to investigate cases fouling up the unsolved crime rates. It also has the handy of side effect of allowing police officers and the CPS to see the person who made the allegation as a liar and score points with an arrest or charge against them for perverting the course of justice. In the current climate of league tables, an arrest is an arrest and who cares if it's against a frightened vulnerable victim who has just seen their allegation of sexual assault dismissed like an inconvenience?

This attitude helps no one and simply helps foster a culture of disbelief against victims that is used to legitimise the police being able to get away with not bothering to investigate allegations of sexual crime. After all, if all women are lying about rape and going to prison for it, then why should the police bother spending their resources investigating mere lies? And if people in authority say women are lying, it becomes much easier for the papers (step forward the Daily Mail) and the people who comment on them to tar all women with the same brush and disbelieve everything they say.

But the problem is that in the majority of cases, these women (and it is primarily women) aren't telling lies. Like me, they not only had the audacity to 'get themselves raped', but to do it in an inconvenient and awkward fashion that requires some actual detective work to make things clear. Instead of treating them with respect for coming forward and refusing to be intimidated by their attackers, the police sees them as a pain in the arse for not managing to be assaulted on CCTV by a perfect stranger with at least 3 witnesses and irrefutable physical evidence. So they punish victims further by ignoring what evidence there is because it isn't just handed to them on a plate and then they try everything by hook or by crook they can to get the allegation to go away.

I'm sure by now you're sympathetic to the plight of these victims, but assuming that I'm a teensy weensy wee bit biased here and making things seem much more sinister than they really are. And you know what, maybe am I, but that's probably because I've experienced this first hand when I reported my first rape.

My rapist threatened me and my female flatmates if I went to the police about what he'd done. I believed him and since he'd raped me in the kitchen of our house, he definitely knew where we lived. For three months I tried to deal with what had happened, but it became apparent that living in a permanent state of fear was causing me to fall apart. I decided that I needed to take back control and that meant reporting the crime against me. Having no idea how to do such a thing, I turned to Google and found an email address for the Met who advised me to go to the police station that housed the Sapphire Unit for my borough and report in person. I was assured that the gap between the attack and reporting wasn't a problem.

I plucked up the courage and went off to Clapham police station and made probably the biggest mistake of my life. From the outset the police were dismissive, criticising me for coming at lunchtime, making me wait almost an hour and half before I saw a Sapphire officer. It only got worse from there, interrogating me repeatedly as to why I hadn't reported earlier and seeming to dismiss it when I explained about the threats. They rolled their eyes and sighed when I explained I no longer had the forensic evidence and went completely silent when I identified my attacker and where he worked, looking meaningfully at each other and leaving the room for another 45 minutes.

When they came back in, they told me I could leave. I asked them if I could tell my flatmates that they would be expected to be interviewed, assuming this would be the next step after arresting my attacker. I was told that no one would be being interviewed and that I needed to go away and think very carefully about what I was saying and make a decision about whether I wanted it recorded in a statement next week and the consequences of that decision to me. Too distressed to go home I sobbed my way to a friend's house, discovering the only way to get a seat on a rush hour bus is to howl like a banshee and drip snot everywhere. (So tough do I think I am I had forgotten to bring any tissues...)

After several days I plucked up the courage to go home and tell my flatmates that despite what the police said, they should expect to be interviewed about what had happened that night. I just didn't believe the police would do nothing. And I could scarcely believe what happened next.

My housemates went ballistic when I told them I had been honest with the police that there were drugs in the house the night I was attacked. Instead of being glad that a violent attack against their friend was being taken seriously, they panicked that they were going to get in trouble with the police. When I pushed them to look at the bigger picture, it all started coming out....

They didn't believe me that I had been attacked. Unsure of how the law would address what had happened to me, I had described it as an attempted rape ( I later discovered under the Sexual Offences Act of 2003 that it would legally be seen as rape and began addressing it as that.) They demanded I tell them in detail exactly what had happened and when I tried to while retaing some privacy, they dismissed my details as lies and told me it didn't match what my attacker had told them. It became apparent that they had all been spending time with him without my knowledge and he had told them that I had got the wrong end of the stick and that I was a very troubled young woman who was threatening to say terrible things about him. Apparently he was so scared by this he felt he had to buy one housemate a Chloe handbag and take another on an all expenses trip to Spearmint Rhino. They had responded by letting him sleep in my bed while I was away in Belfast and happily partaking of the drugs he always seemed to have around, even though they barely knew him.

It was apparent that they simply didn't care what had happened to me. They veered between calling me a liar and telling me they would let my attacker back into the house to finish what he had started if I didn't go back to the police and tell them I had lied and that there were no drugs in the house. Terrified that they would call their new friend and let him do whatever he wanted, I barricaded myself in my bedroom that night and never spent another night there again, feeling safer to be homeless. I had lived with some of these people for three years and considered them close enough friends to have feared for them after being attacked.

I went to the council to declare myself homeless and ask for help. I considered just packing up and going back to Belfast, but I was worried that 'running away' would make me look guilty. I accepted the offer of a sofa from two friends and went back to the police to make a statement that would involve me telling them the witnesses had threatened me.

My righteous indignation ran out of steam pretty quickly when the investigating officer handed me a pre -typed statement saying I was not persuing the allegation and allowing it to be recorded as a 'no crime'. Incensed that I had just lost my home over something that wasn't even going to be called a crime, I reminded her about the threats and how scared I was. She leaned over the statement and told me if I didn't sign it, she couldn't guarantee that the police would be able to provide the crime reference number the council needed to declare me in need of housing. Forced to choose between persuing an attack that had no witnesses and no forensics and having a roof over my head, I signed. I withdrew a perfectly true allegation of rape because the police bullied me into it.

I was too scared, too bewildered and too confused to fight their request even though I knew it meant a self confessed serial rapist would go free without so much as a tap on the shoulder. I had no idea I was also setting myself up for the possibility of being prosecuted for making a false allegation, wasting police time or perverting the course of justice. Part of me is glad I didn't have that extra worry as ignorance can be bliss, but part of me is chilled to the bone that other women are not forewarned as to what the consequences of reporting a crime against them can be. No wonder 99% of the women posting on Mumsnet said yesterday that they would not report it if they were raped...

With a 6% conviction rate, the risk of being prosecuted for both making and withdrawing an accusation, having your sexual history, alcohol consumption, mental health and choice of dress dissected in court, the possibility that the police officers involved will fake your statement and the fact that the average rapist gets 7 years and is out in just over 3, it is a minor miracle that anyone ever reports a rape. But yet the reporting rate is rising year on year. Women are refusing to be cowed by their attackers and are coming forward in record numbers to say that what happened isn't right and the people involved must be punished. They don't want other women to suffer as they did and they want to protect them by making sure dangerous rapists are taken off the street.

Instead of responding with integrity and respect for these women, the police, the judiciary and the government resort to bullying, ignoring and slandering them. They drop cases without warning, they destroy or fake evidence, they prosecute victims as liars and they withdraw funding from Rape Crisis groups. They treat victims like modern day lepers and allow rapists to continue violating women and destroying their lives without fear of punishment.

We need to keep up the pressure to prevent things getting worse. We can do this by writing to our MPs, questioning our police forces and donating to charities that help victims of rape. But we can also do it by challenging the propaganda of Daily Mail and its ilk. We can remind people that rape jokes really aren't funny. And we can believe any woman who confides in us that she's been raped, no matter what she was drinking, saying or wearing. They might be small steps, but they're all going in the right direction...

THESE BOOTS WERE MADE FOR WALKING...

2010-11-03T13:29:00.001Z

Something very interesting has been happening in London recently...the stranglehold of the 80s revival seems to be easing and a more 90s look seems to be coming into the shops and street. This is partly refreshing after a decade of ra ra skirts and flouro (as long as satin and chenille don't come back), but also deeply terrifying for someone like me who wore this stuff first time round. This is what it feels like to not be the youth of today anymore...

I feel very lucky to have gone through my teens in the Nineties. It was a low maintenance decade where fashion and comfort were not mutually exclusive and apart from the Ally McBeal effect toward the end of the decade when actresses on American TV seemed to shrink before our eyes, I found it to be less filled with pressure about looks and appearance than popular culture seems to be today. The desirable size was a 'perfect ten' rather than the size six that all famous females seem to have to be this days (yes, I'm looking at you Cheryl Cole and Katie Price.) Strappy dresses weren't accessorised with perfectly perky fake boobs, but short sleeved tee-shirts. Maxi skirts and baggy trousers were pratically
de rigeur. Heroin chic was only really seen in the edgier magazines that we just couldn't afford each month. Foot wear was practical, bordering on the stout. It was a great time to dress around an ever changing body yet still being trendy and deliciously warm, living somewhere like Belfast.

I think it might be the footwear I loved the most. Like many girls who came of age in the late 90s, the heels of Sex and The City seemed utterly magical in comparison to the clumpy numbers we had been wearing and with the fickleness of youth, I abandoned my Converse One Stars, army boots and Doc Martens in a flash and spent the next few years tottering round in a pair of Patrick Cox's or a pair of wedges so precipitous you could have developed vertigo wearing them. I loved the extra height, but they never held my heart the same way as my DMs did...

Everyone seemed to have a pair of Doc Martens when I was a teenager. Thanks to grunge, they had lost their racist skinheads connotations in most part and now become associated with the slouchy fashions of the day. Both my best friends had a pair and I begged my parents every Christmas, birthday and new school year for a pair of proper boots to replace my DM shoes that had been bought for school, but got worn all the time. They weren't keen on the idea, partly because they didn't see them as terribly ladylike and partly because they were bloody expensive, but just before my 15th birthday, my cajoling and coaxing paid off and my mum took me to Moore's Shoes on the Lisburn Road to get a pair of boots.

Moore's was the place to buy DMs in Belfast. It had been selling them for years to coppers and postman and builders, but had discovered a whole new clientele since the boots had become the footwear must-have amongst the youth. They stocked every kind you could imagine and it was here that I found the pair that became my constant companion for the next 3 or 4 years. Aware that I was following the crowd to a certain extent, I wanted something just a little bit different to everyone else's black 8 holes with yellow stitching and I found them amongst the piles of boxes.

My eye was drawn to a pair of black 9 hole boots*. Slightly higher on the ankle, they didn't gape the same way as the 8 holes did. They had a steel bump toe and less noticeable stitching than the standard boot and to me they looked cuter and more feminine. With beseeching eyes on her, my mother paid up and I couldn't wait to wear them in.

But within about ten minutes I couldn't wait to take them off again. While the Airwair soles bounced like I was walking on clouds serenaded by angels as I went, the sturdy leather was less malleable and everything seemed to rub, chafe and refuse to bend in a way that didn't cause my feet to either hurt or go numb. Other Doc wearers sympathised and I was immensely grateful that my mother had put her foot down about 12 or 14 hole pairs. But having begged for the boots for so long, I refused to be defeated by the unwieldy leather and I soldiered on til they either stopped hurting or I simply didn't notice it anymore.

I wore those boots probably every single day for the next 3 years, even taking them to Boston in the summer heat. I wore them with everything from patchwork tie dye dungarees to layered leggings and hotpants with striped tights. On the odd occasion that I was going to a gig or social event after school, I wore them with my woolly school socks folded over them to save carrying an extra bag. I thought I was the bee's knees with bells on when I was wearing those boots, even though recently unearthed photographic evidence suggests otherwise.

I also added a pair of yellow eight holes to my collection, but they made me look a bit like a kids' TV presenter dressing up as a wasp so I never really wore them that much, preferring my 9 holes to everything else. It was a sad day when I realised that the already notoriously slippy soles had worn down to a nubbin and were becoming positively life threatening in the Belfast rain. It was time to replace them, but I think it says a lot that I honestly cannot for the life of me remember if I did this with another pair of DMs or whether this was the time that I bought a pair of steel toed capped army style boots instead. Turns out that although I'd never seen Tank Girl, she was firmly my footwear icon!

Despite having retired them from everyday use, I couldn't quit my 9 holes completely and decided to give them a new lease of life by spraying them silver with car paint and adding some rather natty red tartan laces and wearing them on special occasions that needed a bit of glitz and glamour rather than army chic. In a fit of kindness I now regret deeply, I gave the now silver 9 holes to my then best friend on her 18th birthday. She had coveted them for years and was at the time becoming frighteningly ill with anorexia. Not quite understanding how insidious and powerful this illness was, I was desperate to show my support and try and help her, but not knowing what to say, I conveyed it by giving her probably my favourite things in the world instead.

The friendship didn't survive the severity of her anorexia and the change in circumstances in my life when I also fell seriously ill a few months later. I have no idea what happened to the boots and while I don't regret expressing my feelings to my friend as I did, I do regret that the boots came to be associated with such an emotionally painful time in my life that I find it hard to look back on the years that I did wear them all time and loved them without a reminder of less happy times. It may seem strange to have such feelings about a pair of boots, but they were such a constant presence in my adolescence that it's impossible to think about that time without them.

In all honesty, I haven't thought about those boots that much for years until the recent revival of Docs that seem to be hitting London's streets, in part thanks to their 50th anniversary. Suddenly lovely young girls have been appearing wearing pairs of DMs I could only have dreamed of in 1993. Seeing a pair of white patent numbers with skinny dark jeans on the Tube a few weeks ago brought back a wave of nostalgia (and envy) like no other. Since I remember the grunge trend first time round, I guess that makes me too old to try it again this time, but the sulky teenager in me covets a pair of those white boots and makes me bitterly regret not holding onto any of my clumpy steel toe capped boots from the 90s. I guess I'll just have to pin my hopes on the neoprene soled Swear boots favoured by the Spice Girls coming back into fashion...because I've still got those!

*These boots were rare even then and I cannot find any images of them now even in family photographs. I'm starting to think the fairies brought them.

AN ILL WIND...

2010-10-26T14:02:00.001+01:00

You'll have to forgive my recent blogging silence, but I've been keeping quiet for fear of being accused of not being ill by another nutbucket like Nadine Dorries...

The recent witch hunt against the many sick and disabled people in this country who receive benefits to help them survive culminated in the ever reliably bonkers MP for Mid Bedfordshire announcing that if the sick or disabled can Tweet several times a day or keep a blog then they must be capable of working and thus should cease to receive benefits. This taps right in to the common belief that the sick and disabled should be shamed and punished for their misfortune by staying home quietly, only watching TV on a clunker of a cathode ray box (which they don't make anymore. But note how a flatscreen TV has become short hand for being a scrounger), eschewing the internet and certainly never spending their money on cigarettes, alcohol, junk food or fizzy drinks. Bonus points if they wear sackcloth and ashes to identify themselves in a crowd.

While I have found it most beneficial to my health and my purse to give up smoking and knock my Diet Coke habit on the head in the last few months, I've only been able to quit things that I previously considered a 'treat' now that I am addressing my depression and anxiety. I no longer feel the urge to ingest nicotine and caffeine as a crutch, but I certainly haven't given up nice things completely. Sometimes I do outrageous and profligate things like buying cheese. And I'm damned if I'm going to live in total austerity because my cheese money comes from the government right now instead of an employer.

I've had jobs since I turned 16, even working when I only had physical health problems to contend with. I've paid tax and National Insurance since getting my number and I'm using the welfare state as it was intended: as a safety net in a time of hardship. I hope that some day in the (not so distant) future I will be able to return to some form of paid employment and of course resume paying tax and NI. I cannot express how grateful I am for the Welfare State. I'm not exaggerating when I say that without it, I would have been starving in a ditch somewhere. It has picked up me, put a roof over my head and provided me with the means to feed and clothe myself for the past few years while retaining some semblence of independence.

That means the world to me, but doesn't mean that I am utterly forgiving of the system. Even before the recent cuts by the coalition I think that the Welfare State is letting everyone down in many ways. The use of the private company Atos Healthcare to administer medical checks to the sick and disabled causes these vulnerable people unbearable stress (I found mine worse than the medical after being raped) and often means that desperately ill people are removed from disability benefits, placed on the lower rate Job Seekers' Allowance and bullied into finding work. The seemingly high rates of benefits that single mothers who started having kids young seem to be able to claim for large families despite never having held down paid employment breeds (if you'll pardon the pun) resentment and anger amongst 'hard working' families. Having the state provide the crutches of Working Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit indirectly gives big business the excuse not to have to pay anyone a living wage and so people are enmeshed in the benefits trap for generations.

I think that some things about the welfare system needed overhauling and that the Labour government missed a trick in tightening things up. It's shocking to me that a single parent on Income Support gets free prescriptions, but a Mulitple Sclerosis or cancer patient on Incapacity Benefit doesn't. It smacks my gob that families with a household income of £50,000 per annum can receive Child Tax Credit while a single and childless person who returns to work after being on Job Seekers Allowance on minimum wage doesn't in most cases qualify for Working Tax Credits or supplementary Housing Benefit to help ease the path and make work pay.

But I can tell you know that the coalition's plans to overhaul the Welfare State are not the way to go. They will only make things easier for the kind of people who don't think that the poor and vulnerable are worth any kind of compassion in our society. These people seems to either be Tory multi-millionaires who inherited their wealth or the narrow minded sort who insist that they get nothing for their tax payments (because where they live there are no streetlights, schools, hospitals or bin collections) and seem to know with the psychic power of the now sadly departed Paul the Octopus, that they will never lose their job, contract a serious illness or become disabled and thus think the Welfare State is a bad bad thing that must be stopped at all costs.

I understand that the country is financially up shit creek without the internal capabilities to manufacture and sell itself a paddle and that we need to reign it in a bit to sort it out. But the jobless, sick and disabled didn't cause the problem (unless you're one of those Daily Express readers who think people get ill just to spite them) so why are they paying so much to sort it? George Osborne wrote off a 6 billion quid tax bill that Vodafone owned, allowed bankers' bonuses this year to reach 7 billion and then cut the Welfare bill by another 7 billion. Economics really isn't my forte, but even I can see how these things overlap....

This kind of shenanigans suggests two things to me. Firstly Gorgeous George and his plummy pals have an ideological dislike of the poor and welfare claimants and are using the deficit as a handy smokescreen to implement stuff that wouldn't wash otherwise. And secondly, I'm not sure they've got any actually practical experience of running a budget. You know, like poor people and normal families do every day of the week rather than reading about it in a book. Most of us know that if your incomings and outgoings aren't matching up, you try and increase the incomings while reducing the outgoings to a manageable level. So you flog some stuff on Ebay or take a second job in a pub on the evenings; you don't stop paying your rent because it's currently your biggest outgoing. This is a pretty surefire way to actually end up less secure and spending more money in the long run (when you have to try and move house after losing the one you've got). I don't see why this tactic will work any better for the Government than the average man in the street.

In the meantime while we all watch and wait to see how the Comprehension Spending Review will effect the economy and the country, I will be looking for ways to maximise my incomings without resorting to breaking the law and making sure I have a safety net for when this safety net is pulled away from me. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the changes in Housing Benefit, particularly the raise in age for single occupancy to 35, won't cost me my flat and the stability that goes with it. Getting back to work in the foreseeable is a lot less likely to happen if I'm hostel-surfing again. I'll also be trying to help speak out for those who are also being unfairly penalised for being ill, disabled or jobless. But until the Tories crack down on the incendiary rhetoric of their own party members like Nadine Dorries and stop trying to portray the sick and vulnerable as primarily liars, scroungers and cheats, I think I and a lot of other people will be whistling into the wind...

BYE BYE EVIL WEED...

2010-09-09T20:57:00.000+01:00

It is now September, which means that I have definitely have given up smoking for more than six months. If I sound a bit vague about this it isn't because I don't care, but because in an attempt not to put pressure on myself I didn't actually note the day that I finished my last packet of cigarettes. It was somewhere at the end of January and it wasn't an entirely conscious decision to quit but an attempt to see how long I could go without buying anymore cigarettes...

The first month was pretty tough thanks to it being the 28 days of tedium we call February and the banging headache that accompanied my lack of nicotine. A few weeks without booze made it much easier to break the association of drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other and I was extremely pleased when on my first night out with a drink or two that I didn't fall prey to the demon weed. Apparently after years of drunk dialling Joe Camel, I have grown up and managed to delete his number...

And then almost without trying and without thinking about it, I just ceased to think about smoking. I was spending all my time around non smokers and it was refreshing not to have to always check my bag for the paraphenalia of fags, lighter and mints each time I went out or changed bag to match an outfit. I loved having £20 or 30 a month more in my purse and being able to go out for lunch or a coffee every so often rather than spending my time in the house, only popping outside to the patio for a quick cigarette in my slippers, because I couldn't afford both 'pleasures'.

Over six months after giving up, I have got past the urge to just have 'one little draw' of other people's cigarettes to see if I still I didn't like it. I don't feel like I've forgotten something if my bag just has keys, phone, purse and lipbalm in it. But I do keep forgetting that I used to smoke. It seems as alien to me now as wearing a school uniform everyday, yet I used to do both without thinking. It would no more occur to me to buy a packet of cigarettes right now than I would make the impulse purchase of a pet snake.(Although that might also be down to the fact Camel Lights have changed their packaging and the familiar pale blue packet no longer winks down at me in shops anytime I pop in!)

Oddly though I don't feel the slightest bit healthier for giving up smoking and the only reason my skin looks glowing in the past few months is the repeat prescription of Roaccutane. I smell nicer by default, but other than that I have no physical changes from quitting. I feel slightly cheated by this, but not enough to put me off my path of being smoke free. I've managed the whole summer without a cigarette to scare off the wasps...I think if I can do that, I can do this long term!

GIVE US A SMILE, LOVE...

2010-08-31T19:24:00.000+01:00

My usually cold dead heart was warmed slightly this week to see the issue of street harrassment making so many headlines. I'm not sure I've ever met a woman who hasn't had at least one comment about her looks or body aimed at her by a man who is a total stranger. Street harrassment is so widespread that pracrically the first thing everyone associates building sites with is smutty remarks rather than cement mixers and hard hats. But some people are trying to change this...

Recently the Guardian ran two articles on this subject. Firstly an article in the Bike Blog to highlight the sexist abuse female cyclists in particular get and to promote the new blog 101 Wankers that allows victims of harrassment to photograph the perpetrator and record where it happened on Google Maps. This takes the effective tactic that Hollaback started in New York a few years ago and makes it bike specific. The comments on this article were predictably depressing with many men especially unable to see the difference between an idiot in a car having a go because they are on a bike and abuse that is just because you are a woman.

The clear and concise Rosie Swash followed the bike blog article with one of her own that highlighted the very real and very common abuse and harrassment that women face daily when they have the audacity to travel to and from work, buy groceries or simply go about life like normal members of society. Over a hundred comments showing examples of sexual harrassment from strangers followed. The anger, fear and resentment this situation creates were palpable and for once, very few men interjected to ask why no one cared that someone had cut them up in their car earlier this week. This was a rare moment of female bonding over shared wounds and vunerability and it made me think back on my experiences of street harrassment.

Aside from the time a man in Dublin mistook me for a prostitute while I was standing on a street corner wearing hotpants and I could understand the confusion, each of these experiences has been in its own way life altering. That may seem melodramatic. How can one cat call be life changing? But it's the cumulative effect of those insults, propositions, assaults and questions that has altered the path of my life.

As a flat chested, but extremely confident and fairly flamboyantly dressed teen I have always attracted a lot of male attention in the street, but it has rarely been complimentary. Mostly it was mocking of my looks or informing me that they would make me a woman. Leers and jeers in the street were bearable, but by the time I left Belfast the harrassment had turned to physical assault on a semi regular basis with me being bitten by strange men so often it had ceased to be a notable event. This was accompanied with being slapped, pushed and punched on more than one occasion, usually for daring to ignore their attentions or reject them sexually. But since I grew up in the era of ladettes, around some fearsome drinking exploits and in a city famed for its violent tendencies, I didn't really question this situation despite finding it quite intimidating and at times a real blow to my self confidence.

Things calmed massively when I lived in Brighton with nary a cat call, let alone chunks being taken out of me on a regular basis. I assumed this change was down to living a much less drunken life and living in a slightly less turbulent town, but in all honesty I didn't really question it. I just got used to it very quickly and assumed England was rather more civilised than my hometown. Which meant that when I moved to London a few months later, it didn't even enter my head that it would happen there. Was I in for a shock...

Moving somewhere with a frenetically busy transport system simply created another opportunity for people to manhandle and intimidate women and I soon learned to usually avoid grabby hands and suspicious leaning in packed Tube carriages. And on the one occasion a fellow passenger managed to get his hands down the back of my jeans I happened to have a watermelon in my shopping bag that made a delightful sounds when colliding with his balls. I'm surprised more people don't realise that women carry such heavy handbags at times as a handy weapon!

I also made the most of the nightlife in London and began running the gauntlet of men and their teeth again on a fairly regular basis. On my 23rd birthday on a night in Soho, a total stranger sank his teeth into my neck with such viciousness that I ended up with a lovebite the size of a grapefruit with a set of teethmark bruises in the middle which were interesting to explain to my new uni mates, and somewhat embarrassing to explain to my mum and my boss. It was also the reason my birthday money that year went on a black poloneck that made me look like a spy.

Over the years I encountered many hands, comments and sets of gnashers in clubs, pubs and parties. Luckily pointy toed stilettoes were the shoe du jour at the time as I quickly discovered that bouncers never took the side of the damsel in distress. So common was their inability to step in and help you when you were being pawed, poked or threatened that it came as no surprise that the night I was bitten so badly in the Mother Bar that the injury eventually cost me my job and was so painful at the time that I finally snapped and slapped my attacker in the face, that the bouncers forcibly ejected me into the street in the wee hours, unable to contact my friends. To add insult to (literal) injury, I saw them offering my biter a beer on the house to apologise as I left.

I wasn't surprised by the actions of the bouncers, but I was shocked by the reaction of the others I told about my injury. My boss told me I shouldn't have been out in a bar without my boyfriend, my friends asked what I had done to provoke him and the police actually laughed out loud when I reported being assaulted and then ushered me to the door, damp eyed with mirth and with no intention of doing anything about it. Instead of raging against them, I concentrated on not getting fired and making sure I had a roof over my head.

I had been distracted and was only just questioning the attitudes and reactions to what was a vicious assault with a distinctly sexual overture when I was raped in the kitchen of my house by my flatmate's best friend one night before Christmas. Unsurprisingly people's reactions to my bite foreshadowed their responses to my rape. It just felt shocking to me because my life as I had known it had just imploded round my ears and every felt so raw and different to me in the wake of such violence that it took me a while to see the similarities. The wave of disbelief, victim blaming, minimising the events and sheer ignorance by the police in particular carried me into the amazing shitstorm of my second rape the following August without any chance of regaining control or my feet touching solid ground.

And that feeling of floundering without being able to find a solid surface to rest on continued for years, exacerbated by the insomnia and flashbacks of PTSD, until I began my therapy last year and quickly discovered that those seemingly isolated events of sexual and street harrassment before the rapes had altered my life as much as the more serious assaults. I had developed crippling agoraphobia because while I had been slow to see the similarities in people's responses to the different attacks, my brain had made the leap without prompting and I couldn't see the difference in dangers anymore. A man grabbing my behind or hissing sexual slurs at me in the street could only end in rape for me now.

This fear felt inevitable because I recognised the same feelings of fear, violation, humiliation and being degrading in being watched in the street like prey and actually being raped, making it impossible to separate them in my mind. The fact that the street comments and harrassment seemed to have been near constant in my adult life made me feel that everytime I left the house and saw a man, I was running the very real risk of being raped again.

Agoraphobia was a classic avoidance behaviour, designed to make me feel safer. As was trying not to take the last Tube home, or a late nightbus or walk past a pub at kicking out time or wearing a skirt or dress than exposed any flesh that might catch someone's eye. Weeks of painstaking CBT unravelled these fears, so tightly held for years that I didn't even realise I had them. And once the fears had been exposed, we worked on debunking them, showing that while I did experience unwanted sexual attention in the street, it was much less frequent that I thought and that it had never actually ended in rape.

Therapied up to the hilt, I am slowly regaining my confidence over the past few months. I have worn a skirt and a dress. I have taken nightbuses, gone to late night bars and walked around the market alone. I have also perfected my unapproachable bitch-face to a level where even the pushiest of charity muggers let me walk past unchallenged. Even a leering drunk who looked like Boris Johnson's lovechild who tried to paw my breasts the other week on the Tube was dealt without major incident.

I think I'm ready to stop hiding away and ready to get angry instead. Thrilling as it would be to wield my heavy handbag like a lethal weapon and inflict some pain on the catcallers and harrassers, I shall take the moral high ground instead and lend my support to the various campaigns around to raise awareness of the issue especially amongst the police and hopefully make the streets a less intimdiating place. I can't help but think that for every woman who finds this behaviour an annoyance, there is another like me for whom it feels like a personal reminder of the time they were the victim of a sexual assault. But no matter how any women interpret it, they all deserve the chance to live their lives without harrassment at all...

GET STUFFED...

2010-08-16T17:17:00.000+01:00

Reading the papers today, nursing a cup of tea and feeling slightly grumpy on a Monday morning, I stumbled across an article that elicted a heartfelt 'awww'. According to a survey by budget hoteliers Travelodge, a third of British adults still take their teddy to bed each night...

And I am not in the slightest bit ashamed to admit I am one of them. Except my stuffed animal of choice is a rhinoceros. Bought in a French hypermarket when I was 10, this little fellow has been my constant companion ever since through hospital visits, ill health, adolescence, leaving home, university, homeless hostels and everything in between. He's looking a bit tatty these days, but he still graces my pillow every night at home without fail.

However I rarely take him away with me from home. An interesting experience in an airport when I was about 11 where the security guard screamed upon finding a stuffed rhino in my hand luggage has made me slightly paranoid about keeping him close to me on flights. But wandering luggage a few times (courtesy of Easyjet) makes me terrified that he'll end up jetting off somewhere else in the world never to be seen again. And as Travelodge point out 75,000 other stuffed animal lovers have been careless enough to leave their companion behind when staying in a hotel. I think Rhine (oh come on, the French hypermarket was on the banks of the river. What else was I going to call him?) will be staying housebound from now on.

I can't speak for anyone else who still cuddles up to a stuffed toy in their 30s, but it was kind of inevitable that I would still be clinging onto at least one of mine like a overgrown child since I was obsessed by cuddly toys as a kid. I had several favourites over the years who I couldn't bear to be separated from even during the day, often trailing them round by the arm wherever I went.

My first love was a little black monkey called Ricky who came into my life when I was only months old. He and I were so inseparable that on our first family holiday abroad, my parents went back to the shop where he was purchased and bought a replacement just in case. Luckily there were no crises as I found the replacement in my parents' room, saw through the deception immediately, christening her Rebecca and ignoring her for the rest of my childhood. Ricky remained as the apple of my eye, being loved until he became threadbare and had to be filled up again with rice and stitched back together by my patient mother. He now sits on a bookcase in my bedroom, more closely resembling a half chewed liquorice allsort than a monkey, but still very much loved and a permanent reminder of childhood.

Then there was a soft squishy spider monkey with pleather paws called Malcolm who I coveted so much when my friend Ingrid owned another one like him that my parents took me shopping for specially. He wore a jaunty red ribbon to distinguish him from Ingrid's Malcolm (he came ready named with a tag sewn in) and we both carried our apes everywhere for months before we both fell madly in love with Disney's Wuzzles. We fell for different characters luckily. She had an Eleroo and I had a Rhinokey.

But even a cuddly genetic mutation couldn't hold my attention for long. There was also a stuffed Garfield, a handpuppet hedgehog called Horace that looked more like roadkill than the real deal, a Kevin the Gerbil in his pink and grey tracksuit, a bear with a bell in his ear from Hamley's and countless other soft squishy friends until I met my rhinoceros and he replaced all others in my affections for the next twenty years. Not bad going for a toy I had to beg my parents to buy me since he was a quite expensive piece of WWF merchandise that knowing my fickle nature they thought I would have tired of by the time we got home!

I've always thought I'll know I've met the right man when he doesn't mock me for the stuffed animal on my pillow or mind sharing a bed with it on occasion. Until then in the absence of a slew of cats or a collection of plastic bags, I'll be proudly revelling in my singledom by dozing off each night with a slightly balding pachyderm and hogging all the pillows...

PANIC STATIONS

2010-08-06T15:57:00.000+01:00

Just when I thought I'd got a handle on my greatest fear in life™ and stopped freaking out everytime I see a wasp, along comes fear in a new form...an article in the Daily Mail about a massive influx of the little bastards in Britain this year.

I can just about cope with rightwing newspapers that spout thinly veiled bile in the form of badly researched articles. I can almost tolerate vespula vulgaris loitering around all summer. The two together are enough to induce a full scale aneurysm in me.

Although I did manage to look their large and somewhat lurid photos without vomiting, bursting into tears or having to take a Valium even if I didn't much enjoy it. That and the fact I haven't screamed while outside even once this year makes me think that hypnotherapy did wonders!

MANY SHADES OF BLUE....

2010-08-04T17:56:00.000+01:00

This week, nestled in amongst advice on Breton sweaters and eating outside, is a gently effective article in the Guardian about depression. Without being melodramatic Mark Rice-Oxley recounts his experiences with serious depressive illness and his attempts to recover. It spoke deeply to me.

I have learned many things about depression in the past 6 years, none more than how hard it is to explain the depth and context of this crippling illness to someone who has never experienced it. Feeling normal unhappiness and clinical depression bear about as much resemblence to each other as a Big Mac and a fillet steak. Trying to compare your depression to someone else's life experience is like apples and oranges.

But that's not to say that because it's hard to quantify depression in different people we shouldn't talk about it. On the contrary, we should talk about it much more in order to lift remaining taboos about this illness and to educate people that depression is a many fanged beast and that not everyone's experience is the same.

This isn't to encourage competition between sufferers. I am not suggesting that anyone's depression is better or worse or more bearable or less worthy of understanding. I am simply pointing out that depression has different causes and therefore different effects, so will require different paths to recovery. Rarely do mainstream articles about the subject acknowledge this fact, preferring often to search for one cure-all, the Holy Grail of mental health and missing the wood for the trees somewhat.

Someone who has bi-polar is reliant on medication in a way that some with dysthemia may not be due to their use of mediation or exercise, while the person with depression stemming from unresolved trauma or grief may thrive with talking therapies better than the person whose brain chemistry has been inviting the black dog into their life since childhood. Unsurprisingly the ways to tackle depression are as individual as the people who suffer from them and yet in any debate I hear about depression this crucial fact is often missed by a country mile.

Maybe because depression's grasp is so all-enveloping, those who have suffered from it find it hard to see others' situations and see that their personal experience may not have that much in common. I also think some of this comes from the fact that depression inhabits a shadowy netherworld for many people where it isn't quite an illness and isn't quite a lifestyle consequence. It can be one or the other, or a bit of both and most people don't know whether to sympathise like you would with a diabetic or offer advice on 'pulling yourself together'. But the little discussed side effect of this lack of consistency is that it creates a competitiveness amongst sufferers that I feel undermines attempts to discuss the subject.

It seems to split the camps, creating factions who swear by medication alone or had their lives saved by exercise or people who see taking anti-depressants as akin to taking crack cocaine. This divisiveness helps no one because it shifts the focus from the things that all sufferers of depression (in fact all people full stop) need; supportiveness, stability, understanding, love and kindness.

Whether medication is your answer or a ten mile run each day or if you're in the pit of black despair right this minute, a society that doesn't blame or judge you, provides economic provision for you when you're unable to work and people who care and support will make things just a little bit better when it feels like you're worth nothing and the world is a terrible place you barely cope with. I can't thank the people who've done this for me enough even if I thanked them everyday for the rest of my life.

So let's stop competing to have our voices heard, but lead by example and offer some actions that will help. That should stop the needless competition of sufferers and allow the wonderful people who help and support the depressed everyday of the year to come back from their brink to have a say and be appreciated for what they do for their loved ones and the world around them. Maybe if we've got time we could teach the world to sing in perfect harmony too?

.

LIKE A SHOT...

2010-07-29T20:34:00.000+01:00

I am embarking on yet another new passage in my life and giving up my beloved hormonal birth control...

This may seem like an overly personal thing to post on the internet, but I think blogging about it is the probably the easiest and fairest way to warn you all that I may be going slightly nuts for the next few weeks (or months) so you can take appropriate action involving underground bunkers and tin hats.

So, you ask, if this birth control is beloved, why are you giving it up? The answer to that is that it is not out of choice. After my long summer of Roaccutane last year I had perfect smooth movie star skin. For three whole weeks...before it erupted in an angry oily pustulent mess that even a fourteen year old wouldn't tolerate. When I finally got an appointment with the dermatologist, he was fairly sure the problem was being caused by the progesterone in my Depo Provera injection. The only way to find out was to stop getting my shot.

That dark day dawned this week and I'm not looking forward to doing without my hormones. While hormonal birth control seems to send a lot of women into a downward spiral of mood swings and misery, it has always been a great thing for me. I started taking the Pill at 17 and almost immediately felt calmer and more level generally. Unfortunately the oestrogen in the Pill isn't suitable for me thanks to my pesky gallbladder problems, so about 9 years ago I switched to Depo.

I've never met another woman who actually likes the contraceptive injection. Tales of mental health problems, heavy bleeding and massive weight gain have always accompanied it in conversation. I've had none of those problems and have revelled in the years I haven't needed to bother having a period. If I could continue to take it for the rest of my life I would, but I've been tripped up by my lifelong nemesis in the shape of my complexion. And true to form, I'm desperate enough for good skin that I'll risk being hormone free.

So if in the next few months I turn into a raging raving lunatic with steam coming out my ears, please be nice enough to ignore that fact and compliment me on my lovely complexion instead. That should be enough to slay the hormone-less beast inside me!

A FINE VINTAGE...

2010-07-19T18:54:00.001+01:00

Monday morning dawned with some good news...the Daily Mail has decided at which arbitrary age women are acceptable to them and for the next 8 or so weeks, I fit the bill! Yes, 31 is apparently the age at women have reached their peak appeal.

Reading this article provoked several reactions in me. Firstly, it's nice to hear that women aren't actually seen as Christmas cakes who are useless after the 25th. Secondly, I didn't need to know which highly successful women in the spotlight are the same age as me. It just provokes massive feelings of inferiority...

31 has been a very strange age for me. I got my head firmly round turning 30 and rather enjoyed it (thanks to a fabulous trip to Barcelona) and the whole year was extremely promising and not all scary. That came with the ripe old age of 31. Turns out I'd been so focused on turning 30 that it hadn't occurred to me that you keep getting older after that and I came down to earth with a bit of a bang, feeling rather old and underachieving.

It felt like I hadn't really managed any of the things I had hoped to achieve by the time I was a fully fledged grown up and it's taken most of the year (and an astounding amount of therapy) to realise that it's OK for life to take different paths to the ones you expected and that achievements don't have to be things you can write on a CV...(which is just as well as my CV is so full of holes it closely resembles a doily!)

I think my party trick for the impending age of 32 is to start having aspirations again. Over a decade of poor physical and mental health coupled with academic disappointment, unemployment and trauma has seen me loath to look forward to anything in life for fear it will end in yet another soul sapping crushing disappointment. It feels like everything I have dreamed of, worked toward and hoped for since I was 18 has ended this way and in order to cope with having my dreams shattered, I have stopped looking forward to anything at all. Being unable to even countenance imagining my life several years from now for fear of more let downs was a major sticking point in my recent therapy.

Part of the problem lies with the unpredictable nature of my life. Will I actually be well enough to hold down a job in a year or so? The other problem is that I have never aspired to the things that so many other people aim for in that I'm in no need of a mortgage, am ambivalent about marriage and definitely don't want kids. So if a career is only a maybe and the other grown symbols of life hold no appeal, what is there to aim for? Volunteer work? A slew of hobbies? A tendency towards hoarding?

Unfortunately my therapist couldn't give me any ideas and my reticence toward positivity is hampering my own attempts to think of anything. So if anyone has any bright ideas, please do let me know! I'll be here, counting down the days til the Daily Mail says I'm past it...