Things I find weird / cultural differences between the US and UK

I seem to know a lot more Americans, than I did before I visited two years ago. I think it’s partially that, after I visited, I found myself following lots of travellers, so I could marvel at their local adventures and write a list of all the beautiful places I would visit, if I was ever to return. I have noticed a few distinct cultural differences between the US and UK that I find fascinating enough to write a blog about them

1) Paying for health care

Top of the list has to be paying for health care. In England, when you are sick, you get support from your doctor or you can go to a hospital and though there may be a (long) wait, eventually a highly skilled person will fix whatever is wrong with you. We don’t pay for this, directly. We pay, via a mandatory tax which is taken out of our pay packets. (This is mostly from National Insurance – and up to 12 % of our salaries. Your employer is also expected to pay National Insurance, dependent on your earnings, and they pay approx 14% towards this cost.)

Most Americans have health insurance (often through their employers) and most accidents would be covered under their insurance premium. Much like our dental practices in the UK (which we pay for), for general appointments (our equivalent of GPs), US citizens must pay. For important surgeries and operations, most of these would be covered under the person’s insurance, but it really depends on their premium type. Some people can’t afford health insurance; if they are injured, they may try not to go to hospital, as they may not be able to afford the surgery. US hospitals have an oath to treat patients in urgent situations, but the recipient is likely to receive an invoice for the amount after treatment – and the cost of this can be really high (often $30k – $100k for surgery). Citizens will often be allowed payment plans to pay this money back after a period of time, but imagine, if you will, $100k of debt, on your back, after a skiing accident or falling off a ladder, and you are not sure when you will be able to work again. (This is a nice overview of how it works – thank you HSBC.)

Every person in the UK is entitled to “free” health care. This has massive benefits in that there is no inequality between those who can afford health care, and those that can’t. It means people from lower income backgrounds get the same level of care, as those within a higher income bracket. There are options in the UK to “opt” for private healthcare, if you so wish (and if you are a billionaire, you may prefer to do that), but most people don’t, because the standard of care is good and British people believe that health care should be for everyone, not a privilege for the rich. People in the UK do not go bankrupt from their health care bills, they do not have to factor in health insurance, they don’t have to worry about health insurance expiring or paying for services on the way out of A&E. To Americans, it probably seems really very strange. We can be carted into a hospital and waltz out again without a cheque book or a credit card.

2) No maternity pay

I found out recently that American companies don’t pay their (American) workers maternity leave. In the UK, every woman is “entitled” to some maternity leave – the statutory period is 6 weeks at 90 % pay, but most companies pay (some) maternity (pay), up to 39 weeks (9 months). It varies, per company, but depending on your contract, this could be up to a year of (paid) maternity leave. In the UK, it is law that you have to hold a woman’s job open, while she is on maternity leave. She can also choose to take maternity leave for up to a year, without pay, if she so wishes – and the company has to hold her role open for the first 6 months of that. If she returns after 12 months (and they have replaced her role), then they can offer her an alternative role with the same pay and perks. This allows women to be able to continue their careers, after having children. (see: gov.uk/maternity for more details)

In the US, apparently, it is pretty standard that women are not offered any statutory maternity pay. However, something called the Family and Medical Leave Act requires that US employers (with 50 or more employees) allow women to take up to 12 weeks off, after their pregnancy, while holding their job and health insurance in place. Companies are not required to pay women during this period. Many US women resign their roles, as soon as they are pregnant. Women who want to return to the workplace, after bearing children, are then faced with the difficult process of finding another job.

3) How American companies expect customers to pay their staff wages, via “tips”, because they don’t pay their service staff appropriately

In the UK, we don’t really leave tips. They are certainly not mandatory and we only really leave them in restaurants, where we’ve had a really nice meal and the service has been impeccable (like as a “bonus”). The tips we leave tend to be about 10-12.5% of the cost of the meal. It’s at the customer’s discretion; sometimes, this will be added on the bill by the restaurant, but you can opt to get this removed from your bill, if you so wish. We don’t, generally, leave tips for haircuts, in cafes, coffeeshops or hotels. It is expected that service people, and wait staff, specifically, are paid by the companies that hire them, not by customers directly.

In the US, it is pretty commonplace to expect a 20 % tip on top of the cost of pretty much everything. In restaurants and cafes, a charge of 20 % is often added to the bill. American servers don’t consider this to be optional, in the way we do in the UK. When we visited, we left the expected tip in restaurants, more or less because our guidebook told us too – and we thought we might want to go back there!

Servers in the US feel “entitled” to tips, as they cannot survive on the wages paid in the service industry. And this is true in the UK too, these companies often don’t pay more than minimum wage and as the cost of living is high in the UK too, so the people who work in these industries are often students, or have more than 1 job. UK companies are expected to pay ” the living wage” to their staff (it’s £8.91 as of 2021 – £17,374 per year) but many people would argue that this isn’t liveable. And if you compare to the average UK salary of £31,000 that’s 44% less!

Unlike the US, in the UK, we don’t feel it is the customer’s responsibility to “top up” these wages with tips; we believe that companies should be responsible for their operating costs (it’s their business after all); if they want to operate, they should pay their staff fairly and not expect customers to “top up” their failure to operate responsibly. I realise this is a big cultural difference and it fascinates me how fixated Americans are on this: how this is the customer’s problem to solve. And much like healthcare – it’s you (the customer’s) problem to solve.

Most of the dinners we bought, when we were in the US, cost us between £15-20 each, plus a tip of between £8. In contrast, if me and my boyfriend went for a meal, locally in London, we would probably spend £35-40 between us (including tip). In the US, we’d be looking more like £45-50 for the same meal. If you are on a low income, then that could mean the difference between eating or not eating out.

The reason I find it interesting is because there’s such obvious wealth inequality in the US. It’s a giant country, so there are lots of uber rich people, but there are also a lot of people on low incomes that would likely not be able to eat out because the cost is so much higher than it is in Europe. In Europe, everyone goes to eat out. If you go to Italy, or Portugal, for example, every single person of whatever income bracket will frequent cafes for 1 euro espressos or go to a restaurant for a beautiful 10 euro meal. But, there is a tipping culture in the rest of Europe. It is very common to leave a 10 % tip for most things, across Europe. From that eye opening first espresso, to your power lunch, to a lazy afternoon Aperol Spritz on a terrace, it’s fairly common to leave a euro or two for the wait staff. And when 10 % equates to a euro or two, no one really minds that much.

Back the UK, it’s definitely expected that the company should pay the server’s wages. I think in the UK, we have much higher expectations around companies’ social responsibility, to uphold worker’s rights and to pay them fairly. We actively boycott companies who treat their employees like shit (looking at you Wetherspoons!) but in the US, there appears to be no backlash to companies’ lack of respect and fair treatment of their employees. It’s just something that the average American has been brainwashed to accept as “normal” and that they expect customers to solve.

4) How their taxes are so low

In the UK, the tax brackets look like the below. TLDR: people on low incomes pay less tax and people on higher income brackets pay more tax. This isn’t perfect, the income brackets are too low to reflect the reality of high wages – there is a question of whether people who earn £150k per year should be expected to pay the same percentage of tax as a person earning £1m per year. But here they are:

Under £12,750 p/a – tax free
£12,571 to £50,270 – 20 % tax band
£50,271 to £150,000 – 40 % tax band
£150k+ – 45 % tax tax band

Source: gov.uk

(Please note: the top band was recently lowered – as it used to be 50 %. Ah the tories, always making those who already have money – even richer! If you asked me to do that tax band by the way, without looking at the economy budget, it would be more like: first £20k tax free, £20-50k @ 20%, £50k-£200k @ 40k, £200k-£1m @ 45%, £1m+ @ 50%)

There is a different rate for the self-employed (usually owners of their own companies) – as they pay themselves in dividends and can put through many of their expenses through their company. These tend to be the richer people in our society, if we’re being honest.

The interesting thing about our ranges are that they add up cumulatively, meaning that every single person gets their first £15k earnings tax free, the next £50,270 is charged at 20%, and then the next £150k at 40%, etc. Each person is assessed, individually.

We also have to pay National Insurance (which is an additional tax of up to 12% of earnings – this is what actually pays for your health care). Tax for lower thresholds tends to be about 22 % total (including 2% NI), tax for mid earners about 52% (including 12% NI) and tax for high earners 57% (including 12% NI). This is why we are precious about our money because we don’t take home all of our salaries. Our real life take-home is often substantially less, than our net pay. You are essentially losing half of your salary, before you ever receive it. So tell me again why we shouldn’t have “free” healthcare? (Source: gov.uk)

There are no joint calculations in the UK. Each person is assessed individually.

In the US, the federal income brackets are much lower. Federal taxes are also calculated as “married” or joint income. And there is something called “head of the household”. This chart basically tells you, it’s more tax efficient to get married in the US.

	Single	Married Filing Jointly	Married Filing Separately	Head of Household
10%	$0 – $9,875	$0 – $19,750	$0 – $9,875	$0 – $14,100
12%	$9,876 – $40,125	$19,751 – $80,250	$9,876 – $40,125	$14,101 – $53,700
22%	$40,126 – $85,525	$80,251 – $171,050	$40,126 – $85,525	$53,701 – $85,500
24%	$85,526 – $163,300	$171,051 – $326,600	$85,526 – $163,300	$85,501 – $163,300
32%	$163,301 – $207,350	$326,601 – $414,700	$163,301 – $207,350	$163,301 – $207,350
35%	$207,351 – $518,400	$414,701 – $622,050	$207,351 – $311,025	$207,351 – $518,400
37%	$518,401+	$622,051+	$311,026+	$518,401+

Federal income tax brackets: https://smartasset.com/taxes/current-federal-income-tax-brackets#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20currently%20has%20seven,your%20top%20marginal%20tax%20rate.

(Jesus, if the man is always head of household, that means that women are actually taxed more than men! Look at the “single” column vs “head of the household” for the lower tax brackets – married men are getting tax breaks!)

The average salary in the UK is £31,461. In the US, the average salary is $94,700 per year (£66.902) – which is more than twice as high.

The average (single) person earning $94,700 (£66.902) would pay 24 % tax which would mean a take home of $71,972 (£50,861). At the highest tax band, a (single) person earning $518,401+ (£366k) would only be charged 37 % tax, which would mean a take home of $326,593 (£230,799).

In comparison, the average UK person earning £31,461 would pay 22% tax (including NI) which would mean a take home of £27,686. At the highest tax band in the UK, you would be charged 57% tax (including NI) on £150,000. This is a take home of £64,500 after tax.

If you want to compare oranges with oranges, then a person earning £366k in the UK, would pay 57% tax, which would mean their take home is actually £157,380 which is £73,419 less than an American earning exactly the same amount of money. (It’s even more if you take into consideration the “married man tax break”.)

5) How it’s naturalised that women don’t work

I guess because of the above points: that it’s tax efficient to get married, the “head of the household” is given a tax break and because Americans don’t believe in paid maternity leave for women, it’s naturalised in their culture that when women get pregnant, they quit their jobs and become full-time home workers (in our terminology: housewives and unpaid carers). In this culture, women almost always stay home and look after the children, while the father’s life is not impacted at all by the birth of the children and all the mental and physical load of caring for children falls to the woman. Women aren’t paid as well as men in America; presumably for this reason, they have to take years out of their careers to be child carers and then they lose years of experience and have to get back on the ladder, back where they got off five or six years before.

In the UK, for my parents’ generation, this was certainly the case too. In the last twenty years, however, there has been a massive shift, presumably because of the number of women in the workforce, which has increased due to legal statutes such as the Equal Pay Act and the Discrimination Acts working to improve working conditions and opportunities for women.

Women have “proper” maternity rights (in fact, maternity rights aren’t new) but employers can be prosecuted from not hiring women because of the fact they are women (and may at some point want to go on maternity leave). I mean some companies still won’t care, and will discriminate (I’ve seen it with my own eyes), but many companies operating in the UK, actually, proactively hire women, and support women who return, from maternity leave, in positive ways. Women in the UK are encouraged to take time off work to let their bodies heal from the trauma of child bearing but they can return to work, whenever they wish (within that year) and whenever, economically, it makes sense to them to do so. Paid child care is quite naturalised in UK culture. We often pay other women (mostly) to look after our children. We have nurseries for our children to go to from aged 3. Often, more wealthy families, in the UK, will have “live-in” au-pairs to look after their kids. Often parents will drop their kids at a nursery or with a carer on the way to work. Other women (not always on lower incomes, but often so) will quit their jobs and become full time carers for their kids, especially if one parent earns significantly more than the other (and fyi, it doesn’t always mean the woman. In the UK, many men stay home and look after their kids <3).

In the US, “moms” do all this work. “Moms” quit their lives to become “moms”. And this may suit them – they may be very happy to do so – but this isn’t optional. It’s an expected part of their culture. And to us, under 45s, in the UK, we find that pretty sexist!

6) The “trophy wife” (“career wife”) phenomenon

Perhaps because all women are expected to “stay home” and perform “unpaid caring” duties, Americans have a very high number of women who become “trophy wives” to snag a rich husband. These women often have careers as models, actresses, secretaries, real estate workers, etc, (Melania Trump or the Kardashians are the ultimate “trophy wives”) but they do these jobs, often, to meet rich men, who will take care of them throughout their lives (or, at least, until they cash-out in the inevitable divorce settlement). These women exist, not just as unpaid carers for their joint children with their sugar daddies (and maybe they don’t look after their own kids) but, more importantly, as arm candy at awards’ shows, important business meetings, and as conversation “filler” / decoration at the country clubs. They are a status symbol for the men, who want other men to envy what they are loving nightly but not really at all or, at the most, only ever so slightly.

In the UK, we generally find these people really grotesque. British people find this notion preposterous and we harshly judge men who fuck their secretaries and leave their wives, so they have something pretty to look at over dinner. We find their surgical, airbrushed faces, fake tan and coiffured long, blonde, hair grotesque. In all honesty, women who have careers in the UK sneer at these sorts of women. They, probably, look down on them. They, probably, pity them because we find that culture trashy and misogynist. And most women, in the UK, want to be empowered, have their own lives and not be beholden to some douche bag with a fat wallet and a golfing bag. (Regardless of their political affiliations, I must say. This applies to the whole political spectrum.)

“Trophy wives” do exist in the UK. Again, it tends to be models and actresses who get caught by a rich predator, looking for a pretty doll to hang on his arm. It isn’t that common though. You can usually tell these women a mile off, because they have given up all their rights and they tend to be very grateful (read: desperate) because they see their looks as a commodity to sell; and their “beauty” as their only economically viable source of labour. Exchange value capitalism at its finest folks, aren’t we all proud?

7) How confident they are

Americans are so confident! It’s maybe because in the UK, we are mostly bought up to be self-effacing, reflective and y’know aware of other people, but we don’t really have the same level of self-confidence that Americans do. Americans are generally go-getters! They have a great attitude for going after what they want. Often, in fact, they feel very entitled that they should receive what they want (The customer is always right, after all). Americans will walk into a room and demand stuff. If you are an American, who works with the British, you’ll very quickly notice how this puts the backs up of your British colleagues. British people “collaborate”. We do everything via a (damn) committee. We have meeting, after meeting, to discuss what we are doing and agree a way forward. We don’t force others to do what we want; we have to quietly, and assertively, put forward our proposal and then we have to convince other people that it is a good idea.

Americans will often walk into a room, share a vision and demand compliance and the British will be very cynical about this approach. We’ll find fault, after fault, with this proposal. It’ll be very painful to get us to do your bidding for you. We don’t like to be told what to do – we want to be engaged, heard and collaborated with. Brits are confident, when we have the group consensus. We can be quietly confident but we don’t tend to operate in the aggressively confident, and entitled, way some* Americans do. (Before you get at me: NOT ALL Americans!)

8) How helpful they are

Ah, the American good samaritan! Americans are very helpful people. If you having issue at a gas station, can’t read a menu, need directions, want to ask a question, no worries, an American has time for you! They will show you how to fill up your gas, recommend you good food on a menu, give you great directions, answer your questions, jump in the road to save a parking space for you, lend you their bikes, their map to go for a hike, anything they can help with is, is no trouble at all for an American. They are (often) great neighbours, people who work in service industries are impeccably helpful, every person you meet will be wonderful to you, especially if you are a travelling English person who has questions about their beautiful town.

In the UK, don’t bother to ask people to help. They will very rarely have time for you. A Brit is always late to get somewhere. A Brit will roll his/her eyes at you that you can’t just use Google. (Basically, don’t ask us anything that Google could tell you.) We will give you directions, if you stop and ask us, but it will be begrudgingly, and those directions won’t be good. You’ll end up in the “vicinity” of wherever it was you wanted to go, rather than the actual place, but hey, getting lost is all part of the fun of being a Brit! We’re too stubborn to stop and ask for directions, ourselves, so we just want you to have as much fun, getting lost, as we do!

9) American drivers actually give way at crossroads

Americans have a rule at crossroads that all cars must stop. The cars must proceed in the order that they arrive at the intersection. There is no road that has priority, all the roads that meet must stop. Americans follow this rule to the T. Every, single, driver stops at these intersections and every, single, driver goes in turn, according to who arrived first, every, single, time. It’s a wonder of American roads! And you won’t believe it – but they actually obey this rule, every, damn, time!

The UK is (quite) different. If you drive up to a crossroad in the UK, it doesn’t really matter who got there first. Get that out of your head! Two lanes of traffic will have the right of way, and this traffic will continue across the intersection, without interruption. On each side of this road, there will be — lines signifying a “give way” action. If you are on one of these roads, you will have to wait for a gap in the traffic to continue your journey. If you have two opposite — lines (which we often do), a crossroads, if you will, then welcome to hell ; you will never get across this road, until someone waves you to go.

You see, the (unofficial) rule in the UK, on the “give way” roads, is that you have to let the more aggressive driver have the right of way, so your car does not get hit. Of course, you are meant to give way, according to who arrived first, but you never really know who that is, because you are watching the flow of traffic from the major (uninterrupted) road. So if you are ever at a crossroads, and you’re not an aggressive person, the rule is just sit and wait until someone lets you go. If you are aggressive, go ahead and go but just hope that the person on the opposite side isn’t aggressive too – or you’ll end up with a dent in your bonnet.

10) How politics in the US is mostly about federalism vs confederalism but Brits see it through our socio-economic left vs right lens

This probably deserves its own blog- and maybe at some point I’ll write one! But this is probably the biggest difference between the UK and Americans and a thing which we see through our own lens. In fact Americans don’t see “left” vs “right” in the same way that we do in the UK. These notions are very very different, but in the media you’ll see this reported from the lens of whichever country you are in. (I will link to the separate blog about this here, once I write it, as I don’t think I can do this point justice in three paragraphs.)

11) How giant America is

The omnipresent nature of Google maps in the UK and Europe has perhaps lulled us into the false sense of security that the world is actually quite small. But one day, you will go to America and you will realise there is a giant piece of land that has a low population density in comparison (to Europe). When you leave the big cities, you’ll see just how expansive the land is here – and therefore, just how long it takes to get anywhere! You cannot drive for more than about 14 hours in the UK – John O’Groats in Scotland to Land’s End in Cornwall (the longest stretch of land across the UK) is a 14 hour drive. If you were to drive from Pismo Beach in California to Mann’s Harbour in North Carolina, which is across the breast of the US, then that drive would take you 43 hours. (One of the longest drives I can find is Orleans Town in Rhode Island from Port Angeles in Seattle, which is a 49 hour drive.) A fourteen hour drive, I would probably do in about 3.5 days because I don’t like to drive for more than 3 hours. A drive across the US would take me 14.5 days, by that logic. Basically, the country is huge. This may also be why they drive automatic cars because it would be incredibly exhausting to be changing gears the whole time!

12) There are motels everywhere and they love their RVs

If you wondered why there is such a proliferation of RVs and motels across the US, the scale of the land is why. It takes hours to get anywhere! Americans love exploring their beautiful land and they will spend many days and weeks away from home. Many families have RVs to explore new lands. Many people utilise the many motels, near interstates and highways, to give them a break while making long journeys. We don’t really have this concept in the UK, our hotels are used mostly for holidays and overnight stays for family events. We don’t tend to use them to have a rest from driving. Some families do have RVs (or caravans) in the UK, some people here even live in them. But it is not as common. Though it is still probably more common than the rest of Europe, to be honest, because (household) driveways are much more common here than they are across the rest of Europe.

13) Americans love their cars – and they are huge fuel guzzlers

Cars are so popular in the US, because really you can’t get very far without one. Americans drive those kind of trucks you see in toy stores (hot wheels), as their regular family car. They guzzle huge amounts of fuel and they are probably quite bad for the environment but Americans have to make long journeys and the bigger cars are more comfortable.

In the UK, we have quite small cars, because we have really small roads. They are not made for 4x4s, in the same way that the US is. I have a micro-4×4 and I grind my teeth on some of our roads here, because they are just so narrow. In the US, the roads are really wide. Their main roads are often 3 lines of traffic (like motorways here). And you won’t ever struggle to find a car parking space in the US, driving around for an hour looking for one, before admitting defeat and leaving for somewhere else, in quite the same way you will in the UK. There are parking lots absolutely everywhere and next to almost every single restaurant. In the UK, you can sometimes expect to park about 1 mile from the town centre and most restaurants do not have their own parking lots. Good luck finding a space in UK tourist “hot spots” in high summer – you may as well just drive to the beach, with your own sandwiches – you can thank me later for this tip!

13) Their National Parks are on a scale you won’t believe

When you go to the National Parks in America, the scale of these parks will also astound you. They make the Peak District look like a farmer’s field. We went to Joshua Tree, two years ago, and the scale of the land there was absolutely fascinating. Miles and miles of nothing but desert – and Joshua trees! Long, open, never-ending roads, that lead to some of the most beautiful destinations you will ever see! I’m really looking forward to more trips to the United States and learning more about this great nation! I am especially looking forward to visiting more of your (giant) National Parks – and meeting more of your kind and helpful people! Sorry if we forget to tip you; it’s not something we always do!

She was walking home : it’s a tough week to be a woman

What a week for womankind, eh?

On Monday (8th March), it was International Women’s Day – a day meant for the international celebration of women’s accomplishments.

Late Sunday night (1am UK time), a two hour interview between Oprah, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle was broadcast in the US. By Monday morning, the UK papers were filled with vitriol against Meghan Markle, calling her vicious things because she had the audacity to marry a prince and due to having a successful acting career, prior to meeting him, did not want to completely give up her life or her independence to be a states’ person with no will of her own , who is constantly barraged by racist abuse.

By Monday night, ITV had secured the rights to the broadcast and it was shown at 9pm. By Tuesday morning, every person on Twitter had an opinion on the broadcast and every tabloid out there was smearing the woman’s name, lest she take down the monarchy with accusations of racism!

A well known morning TV presenter, ex-Daily Mail columnist and ex-tabloid Editor walked off (and then quit) his morning TV show, after he was challenged by his co-presenter, Alex Beresford, about the fact that he was obsessed with destroying Megan, after he went for a drink with her once, and then she never spoke to him again. See:

Piers Morgan just walked off the Good Morning Britain set (!!!) after co-presenter Alex Beresford defended Harry and Meghan and condemned Piers' treatment of them in yesterday's programming pic.twitter.com/mH75J8ND4O

— Chris Rickett (@chrisrickett) March 9, 2021

Here is a highly “editorialised version” (not by me):

He met her once pic.twitter.com/igBu50WTHN

— Megha Mohan (@meghamohan) March 11, 2021

Much worse, and under the radar at this time, a London woman had been reported as missing by her boyfriend on 4 March. She had left a friend’s house, in the Clapham area, on 3 March at 9pm, and had the audacity to walk a 2.5 mile journey home, to the house she shared with her boyfriend, in Brixton. She was last seen, on a Ring doorbell, at 21:38, not far from her home. This story broke the very same week, as the police sought information from the public about her whereabouts. (Source: BBC)

This woman’s name was Sarah Everard. She was a 33 year old Marketing Executive. She was a woman with a family, a partner, a life. Sarah did everything that is drilled into women, from a young age, to keep ourselves safe: she walked on a well-lit, main, street back to her home; she had a 15min phone call with her boyfriend on the way home; she wore trainers and bright clothing. She did everything we are told to do, in this women blaming discourse; she tried to protect herself.

On Wednesday 10th March, they found human remains, 30 miles away, in a wood, in Kent. It was later reported that her body was found inside a builder’s bag, thrown away like trash, and was identified through the use of her dental records.

A man is now being charged with her abduction and murder. This man is a police officer. The very kind of person we expect to keep us safe.

All of us women are very affected by the murder of Sarah Everard. As well as being loved, unique and special in and of herself. She is also every single one of us. What happened to her could have happened to any, single, one of us. And when I say us, I specifically mean “Women”. We are all Sarah Everard. She did absolutely nothing wrong. She is completely blameless. But a man still abducted and murdered her, when she was walking home.

There is a very unfair discourse, in our society, that things just “happen” to women. Our newspapers, police institutions and court systems report on the number of women, who are murdered, raped, beaten up, subject to domestic violence. It is a thing that “happens to us” (passive), not a thing that “men do to us” (active). For all the women who are murdered, raped, beaten up or subjected to domestic violence, there is a man (in 97 % of cases that is a man) who murders, rapes, beats up or subjects women to domestic violence. These are things that are done to women – by men. But very often, far too often, just like men are absent from the discourse (because it is something “done to someone”, not “done by someone”), they are also void of responsibility, and accountability, for the things that they do. Often they are not caught, or punished, or tried, or convicted, for the things they do.

Most rape cases don’t come to court, most rape cases aren’t even reported (source: The Independent). 97 % of women have been subjected to some sort of sexual harassment by men. That’s not 97 % of men doing this, of course, but do you think it’s one lone man terrorising 50 % of the population on his own? There are many many men who kill, rape or abuse women. I can guarantee that a man you know has done this to a woman you know, even if you don’t know about it. The men you think are good, wholesome, pillars of society may well not be.

This graphic should terrify you, as much as it terrifies me.

_{Before you “not all men” me, there is a detailed analysis of this infographic here}

We all have our stories (plural). I want to share a story about something that happened to me outside my house, when I lived in Ealing, because it still gives me chills and I am grateful to this day that I got away.

I used to live in West Ealing in a beautiful converted townhouse with those lovely high ceilings and Georgian style architecture. I used to work in Chiswick and each day, I would get the tube (district line) from Ealing Broadway to Chiswick and back again. One day, I came home from work (probably about 7pm, as that was the usual time I got home). The main station was a 20min walk from my flat, so I usually listened to headphones to keep me company on the walk. I was walking up my road one day; it was still light, so it must have been spring or summer. As I came towards the townhouse, where I lived (converted into three level flats), I saw two men walking towards me, on the pavement, in the opposite direction. I did the calculations all women do, in their head, to see if they have the time to get to their front door. It was close and I made a dash for it. As I jumped through the cut-through in the hedge for our walkway, I felt something light on my neck, I turned in the opposite direction and ran, pushing the men, violently, out of my way. They had turned to follow me up the walkway to my house and, as I ran, I realised that what I had felt on my neck was the way the air moves, when someone is about to touch you. In that split second, I caught them off-guard, before either of them had a hand on me, and I ran. I ran until I couldn’t see them behind me. (Reader, I am not a good runner!). I tried calling my housemate, he didn’t answer. I tried calling a friend that lived a 15 minute walk away to see if I could go to her house. She picked up and consoled me on the phone, but she wasn’t home. My housemate rang me back. I waited 30 mins in a nearby (busy) street until my housemate arrived home. I got him to come outside and meet me. I carried a rape alarm in my purse for a year after that. I was genuinely scared to go home after that.

Every single woman has a story like that. A story where we were lucky because we got away. But so many women aren’t lucky, they don’t get away. And these women do absolutely nothing wrong. They are just walking home. The problem isn’t what women do. It is what men do.

Just a month ago, I went for a walk, alone, around the streets near my house, to get some air and a man followed me. (I know he followed me because I did a really strange route to get some air, a route that went absolutely nowhere and no sane person would ever do). I think because women are conditioned to be hyper-aware when we are outside, we notice and pay attention to the people in the street around us (something men don’t ever really have to do)! And I saw the man see me notice him. He, assumedly, took that as an invitation to follow me (he was also originally walking in a completely different direction and doubled back to follow me, instantly, after I noticed him). Men do not realise how frightening this is for a woman. I texted my boyfriend and asked him to meet me outside the house. My boyfriend didn’t respond to my text and he wasn’t outside when I walked home. I, again, made a run for it before the guy rounded the corner. When I got home, I told my boyfriend and he told me I was being dramatic and this doesn’t happen and was gaslighted in the way that all women are, when they say there is a problem and men just do not see it because it has never happened to them.

Men walk around in public spaces far more freely than we ever have.

Men do not live with this constant fear about other men (even if they too have experienced violence from other men). They don’t change their behaviour, their routes home, they don’t walk only on well-lit paths – and never through parks; they don’t carry rape alarms; they don’t stay home after dark. They aren’t subjected to an unofficial curfew, as soon as it get dark, in the same way that women are. If we’re outside in public spaces after dark, it’s like they (the rapists and murderers) believe we’re baiting them. We have no right to be there – they can do what they want to us. And maybe they are right; they rape and murder so many of us without consequence, that some may consider that to be the case.

We are all tired. We are all heartbroken about Sarah Everard. We want this to stop. We want to be safe to walk home. We want to be safe in public spaces.

RIP Sarah Everard. ❤ I am so sorry that a man murdered you, when you were just walking home.

Maybe at some point, our broken society will fix itself and women will be able to walk freely, without fear. In all honesty, I think I’m unlikely to see this in my lifetime.

Books to quell your wanderlust

Being stuck inside for three months, under Covid regulations, is comparable to being stuck at home for months as a teenager, unable to leave the house because – where are you going to go?

When I was a teenager, and was living in a village, in the middle of nowhere, I had no (personal) transport & had to rely on Mum&Dad Taxi’s to go anywhere. The village was three miles from civilisation (the town where I went to school) and every morning, and evening, without fail, we had to get a damp, cold, double decker tin-can to/from school. There was nothing to do in my village – you could try your luck at getting into one of six pubs, knock some tinnies back in the park, after begging one of your older sister’s mates to buy you & your friends wine, or you could stay home to get good enough grades to get the hell out of this godforsaken place!

Lucky for me, this village also had an amazing library, which was a Godsend to families like mine, who couldn’t really afford to keep me in the custom to which I had become accustomed, accruing a large number of library books on loan each month (up to 20 books)!

That being said, whenever I am stuck inside for a prolonged period of time, winter mainly, it’s my go-to thing to do. Books have an incredible way drifting us off to new, otherwise unimaginable, lands; and of allowing us to immerse ourselves in other’s experiences, without ever leaving the comfort of home. Right now, when what is outside, our four walls, can fill us with a dreaded, anxiety that inhibits us from leaving home, there is safety in losing ourselves in a good book – to take you to a place you’ve never been and could never have imagined.

Here are a few books I have read both in this lockdown (and just in life), which I would recommend to grounded wanderlusters, who are itching to fly off to far-off lands:

1. Wild by Cheryl Strayed
   This is a story about a woman who walks the Pacific Crest Trail, from southern California to Oregon, in an attempt to heal her heart, after her mother dies. Cheryl’s backstory is that she descended into darkness, after the death of her mother, got addicted to heroin, and instead of further succumbing to self-destruction, she decided to walk away her sins, accompanied by a backpack called “Monster”, and far too much stuff to actually carry. She ends up dumping most of her belongings on the walk, and along with it, her emotional baggage, in order return back to herself.
   
2. Into the Wild by John Kraukauer
   A young, upper-middle class, graduate, who feels depressed by the “American dream” and the rat race that awaits him, after university, decides to sell all of his belongings, say goodbye to family and walk to an alternate life. In his new life as a nomad, Alexander Supertramp lives off-grid in the wild, cold, lonely, forests of Alaska in a converted school bus.
   
3. A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
   Seasoned rambler and travel journalist, Bill Bryson, decides to embark on a very long walk along America’s Appalachian trail. He walks it in many parts and documents his journey, along the way, with an odd mix of companions accompanying him. Scattered with seemingly trivial, historical, notes about the trail and the places within breathing distance of it, it is also a funny and endearing tale about getting older.
   
4. October, October by Katya Balen
   A beautifully written novel about a child, who really loves the woods, written with the innocence, and consideration, of a child exploring the grown-up world beyond their beloved woods for the very first time.
   
5. Penguin Lessons by Tom Mitchell
   A scholar, accidentally, adopts an injured, oil-slicked, penguin, while travelling in Uruguay. He becomes the unlikely guardian of the young Juan Salvador, smuggling him through customs and giving him a home at the University, where he works. Jibes ensue!
   
6. Good Vibes, Good Life by Vex King
   Some cynics refer to this book as the new self-love movement. Those of us less cynical, but interested in how the power of positive thought can transform our lives and lead us in miraculous directions to unlocking secrets to happiness, may find this book very inspiring.
   
7. Departures by Anna Hart
   A memoir about the Northern Irish travel journalist, Anna Hart’s, life living out of suitcase, as she embarks on adventure after adventure, and eventually finds herself in (of all places) Margate.
   
8. Last Train to Istanbul by Ayse Kulin
   This is a love story about two Turkish lovers trapped in Nazi occupied France, who, with the help of the Turkish government, attempt to get themselves back to Istanbul, against ever-increasing odds.
   
9. Dispatches from the Kabul Cafe by Heidi Kingstone
   This is a memoir from the pen of Canadian journalist, Heidi Kingstone, who lived in Kabul between 2007-2011, during the humanitarian crisis and Taliban occupation of Afghanistan.
   
10. The Taliban Cricket Club by Timeri Murari
    A lovely novel about an attempt to escape Taliban rule, under the guise of cricket! A determined woman decides her best chance of avoiding marrying a cruel Taliban commander is to learn how to play cricket!

Let me know in the comments, if you read any of these, and what you think! Happy reading!

Pack it in: how to travel light (ish)

Back when I was living that jetset life (pre-covid), I was travelling up to 3 times a month. Some of these trips were for my own entertainment, but I was mostly travelling for work. As I started to travel more, I found some items that I now (probably) can’t live without, so I thought I’d write a post about some of the things I have purchased to make my life a little easier, either on the road or on a flight. In case, the world opens up again, you may find something useful.

As you can see from the photo above, there are some fairly standard things I take on any trip. I generally travel with just a carry-on suitcase. My trips are usually short (less than a week) and if I travel overnight, then I’ll just make do with a rucksack. Traveling light isn’t something that came naturally to me. I just realised the more I travelled that some of the things I was taking with me weren’t actually all that useful.

1. Noise cancelling headphones : the day I first used my noise cancelling headphones, on a flight, was the day my flight experience irrevocably changed for the better. Ever find yourself in economy and there’s a screaming baby sat behind you? With these bad boys, a nuclear reactor could erupt and you would hear absolutely nothing. They will lull you in a false sense of security that you are the only person in the entire world and never again will your boyfriend distract you from listening to Goodbye Sky Harbour seventeen times on repeat. They will completely block out irritating plane noise: someone clearing their throat, picking their skin, twitching or drumming their leg, nervously, mindless mundane stream of consciousness throughout the entire 10 hour flight, which is, I suppose, the point. Mine are now discontinued but you can still buy similar.

2.Entertainment subscriptions : two subscriptions keep me sane on the road:

1) Spotify: it is an absolute godsend for downloading albums, prior to flights, and for accessing music under patchy network conditions. I tend to save a few playlists on my wifi at home before I head off on a trip.
(£15 p/m for family subscription. Be nice to your parents, after all they’ve done for you, and put them on your Spotify subscription.)

2) Netflix: I used this all the time in Europe, as previously, with EU roaming, we were given access to the UK catalogue, in any EU country. I have been known to sit in my pants in hotel rooms, watching Scandinavian crime thrillers on Netflix, keeping the rest of the world out.
(I have no idea how much a Netflix subscription costs, as like everyone else, I have a partner/kind family member, whose account I freeload.)

3. Kindle Paperwhite : I first learned of Kindle on a holiday in Greece, when I lugged three books on a two week holiday. I met a woman, who looked at me incredulously and foretold me the joy of the Kindle. If you don’t know about Kindle, and frankly, where have you been? You can basically store as many books as you want on a device the size of one single, small, volume of poetry. It makes me feel a little guilty, pouring so much money into Jeff Bezo’s pockets, but this really is a game changer, and is, now, one of my favourite things. If you buy the Paperwhite, you’ll also get a nightlight, which is great if you are camping or even just for reading on the beach, where the light might be a little bright.
(Paperwhite, Amazon, £129.99)

4. Reusable water bottle : I have been through, possibly, thousands of reusable water bottles. I was, previously, purchasing single use plastic bottles at the airport and utilising for the entire duration of each trip. I didn’t see the point of investing in expensive reusable bottles, when your water just, fatalistically, ends up at room temperature. Before I went to California, I purchased a reusable bottle by Manna. I love it because, if I fill it up with ice cold water from the fridge, it will actually keep my water fridge-cool, for up to 12 hours. I don’t use it with hot water bottle (as I have a separate flask for that and I didn’t want to ruin its cool-ability). But this is the best bottle I have found.
(You can pick up this brand in TK Max, for under £15, which is a bargain, when those Chilly’s bottles are £30).

5. Reusable coffee cup : when I worked at Discovery, I was given a branded KeepCup, which is, now, unfortunately, long-lost to the London tube network. It was replaced by another plastic one, which is great because you can throw it in your backpack, with no recourse! Please do not buy the glass ones, even though you like the hipster aesthetic – and they look really cool; mine met its end on the floor of Discovery HQ and I don’t think the facilities people will ever forgive me for that. You can also design your own on their website.
(You can get direct from KeepCup or John Lewis for approx £10, which is pretty great – considering you’ll be using it for the next ten years or until you leave it on the tube again.)

6. Bamboo cutlery set : after far more instances, than I’d like to admit, of attempting to eat yoghurt in a hotel room with just my fingers, I purchased a bamboo cutlery set. This is great, as it comes in a little pouch and you can wash them in your hotel bathroom.
(Amazon, approx £8, China’s finest)

7. Travel friendly hoodie : No matter what time of year I travel, I always find myself getting cold. Is it just me or do they really ramp the air con up on flights. My current favourite is this light weight, fleeced inside hoodie from Volcom (which I got on sale a few year’s back) but basically you could buy one from any surf or skate brand. I switch this out in the winter, with a fleece one I bought in Decathlon, which is much warmer.

8. Travel blanket : I always like to have a blanket with me in case the sheets/duvets in hotels aren’t great. I got my latest one a few years ago, from Decathlon. It’s fleece and it rolls up to be the size of a small hoodie.

9. Travel pillow : I bought this pillow because it had a kawaii face. I can’t even remember where I got him from but the shape is perfect both for bolstering your face up, if you get the window seat on flights; it also doubles up in yoga practice. And who doesn’t love a kawaii face?

10. Youtube yoga channels : finding a decent yoga class in every new city you visit is near on impossible, so I like to use flows I find from yoga practitioners on YouTube. I also attend classes, from local teachers, when I am back home, which help me escape getting into bad alignment patterns.

11. Ear plugs : hotels are noisy places to sleep (and boyfriends are often snorers), so I find ear plugs are a general necessity for getting any sleep at night.
(Boots, £6.99 for 20)

12. Sandals : I like to avoid black sole syndrome in hotels, so I always pack a pair of sandals to mooch around hotel rooms in, in case they don’t supply a complimentary pair of slippers. They also double up to wear down to breakfast, dinner, the spa or popping to the corner shop, without going to the effort of tying your shoe laces up.
(My favourites are from Birkenstock. Various prices.)

12. Nighttime socks : I always seem to get cold feet in the middle of the night, so I usually pack a “designated” pair of night socks.

13. Microfibre towels : some hotels have 400tc cotton towels, made for teenage-sized bodies, others resemble the towels you once used to change the oil at your parent’s house. I tend to prefer to take at least one fully body and hand towel with me on trips, just in case. The benefit is these microfibre towels dry in about 30mins and roll up into nothing. They’ve been the best / most durable microfibre towels I have ever bought. I used to have one from Blacks, but it was much heavier and much more expensive!
(Full bath sheet, Decathlon £10.)

14. Small refillable toiletry bottles : I cannot express the struggle, the first world problems I have suffered with being able to take all my makeup and beauty products in just that one plastic bag allowed in carry-on. The first thing I had to do was to reduce my consumption to about 8 (liquid) products. The second was purchasing one of these stackable cosmetic pots which holds small quantities of multiple items, so you can put your foundation & moisturisers in tiny little jars and free up space in that bag for essentials like shower gel, deodorant and shampoo.

15. Battery pack : I tend to carry a spare battery pack with me, just in case my phone battery dies. Most European flights do not give you phone charging ports. I used to have terrible trouble with my old iPhone 5, losing battery in the evening and I’d find myself sitting in the airport for an extra thirty minutes, trying to get enough battery to call an Uber to the hotel. I bought one of these to negate that issue.
(It’s probably from TK Max. Most of these purchases were made in my lunch break from the one across the street from my office.)

16. Sunglasses : it’s always sunny in southern Europe, so don’t forget your sunglasses, even in January!
(I tend to buy designer sunglasses in TK Max, as they are usually discounted by about 400%)

17. Sunscreen : I always take suncream with me on holiday, especially between March and October. I found myself getting sunburn hanging out the window of Ubers, like a dog with the wind in its fur. I have sensitive skin, so like Nivea products generally. The smell of this stuff always takes me to back to teenage beach trips in Portugal.

18. Kag-in-a-bag : You can never predict the weather, so if travelling in Northern Europe, always best to pack a roll-up mac, just in case the heaven’s open on you! I first bought a kag-in-a-bag, when I went to Glastonbury (back in 2006) and I found myself wearing it the whole week, as it pissed it down. I was surprised that it kept me pretty dry, considering the colossal downpours. I traded the original out with a newer, better, smaller, lighter one, many years later from Joules. More importantly, it buttons up, rather than throwing it over my head, which is better for not fucking my hair up.

I hope that was useful. I always find its better to spend your hard-earned cash on things you will actually use, so you have more money for all the cakes and coffees you want to buy when you’re actually on the trip! Let me know if there’s anything missing, in the comments.

How to be happy

I sometimes get asked how I manage to be such a happy and positive person. I can tell you I wasn’t always this way. There was a time, when I felt as though I was under a dark storm cloud, as thick and black as my mood. It was a long process to move myself from under this dark storm cloud and back into the light. A process that I feel I repeat, every year, after we come out of the cold, dark, long winters that we have here in England.

I am happier, when it is light outside. I am happier, when I can feel the warm rays of the sun on my cheekbones. I am happier, when I can feel the wind in my hair. My preference is summer. It’s always summer. I like the colours of autumn too but, really, autumn is just a stop-gap; a bridge between all the things, I love, that are decomposing in front of my wide eyes, and the cold, dark, bleak, winter. Autumn is my last sunset. Autumn is, simply, holding on a little too long to something that is soon to dissipate. Soon to be replaced with things I do not like. And like a caterpillar rolling back into its cocoon, I wait patiently each year for March to come – for the nights to get lighter, for the sky to open a little more, to breathe back into myself and open my wings, like a butterfly, as the flowers come back into bloom and the sun peeks out from behind the trees, whose leaves are replenished onto the branches, as the sweet circle of life continues and seasons anew .

I was always that “sensitive”child; the difficult child. The child who felt too many things and wasn’t the master of its emotions. I was always too loud, too quiet, too sullen, sulking, never quite right, imperfect, out of control, wild, raw, unfiltered. And over time, I learned to behave appropriately. I learned grace, compassion and pulling all the pieces of myself together, into coherence. But it did not come naturally. I was born, awkward. A person that didn’t fit into a mould. A person that was difficult, problematic, wild. And as I moved through the years of my life, like a vine, wrapping itself around a tree, I roamed a little far from where I had started. I forgot who I was. I came back to the house, where I had lived as a child, as an adult and I asked myself, “Where am I?” And I didn’t mean in the geographical sense. I meant “Where did I go?” Why did I end up so far from where I intended to go? Why did I get so distracted on a pre-determined path that I concluded that I no longer wanted to go where I was headed? I wanted to abort the journey and be somewhere else. And I sat there in the bedroom, where I grew up, which bared no sign that I had ever been there. All my things were packed into a storage unit, off the A40. And I looked at the barrenness of the life I had made for myself, represented by the small suitcase, I was living out of, which sat, sullenly, in the corner of the room, like a petulant teenager, and I thought: I am on a holiday from my life. I realised I was hiding from the life, I left behind. I think I intended to go back, but it had to be different. I wanted to be different. I stopped what I had been doing, holding onto the things, and people, that didn’t want me. I stopped being the person who made the effort, with people who didn’t reciprocate the same effort. Things, naturally, ebbed away from me. People who were once important, where now just not there. If I didn’t reach out, then they never would. I realised that I had been the person who made all the effort in most of my relationships and I realised how little I had received in return. That was a difficult realisation to come to. And I had to learn to cope with that. And I learned, slowly, to live without them. I was, completely alone, living at my parent’s house, like it was a hotel. And I realised that all my stuff had been holding me back, like a heavy suitcase I had been carrying around me. I had baggage and I needed to learn to put it down. Just as I realised that things that other people had said about me were holding be back from attaining my full potential. I knew that to be happy, I needed to let go of both the idea of who I wanted to be, and the idea of who others thought I was.

But to be able to do that… I first had to learn yoga…

Yoga may look like a bunch of blonde, gym bunnies, twisting their lithe bodies into unmentionable, tantric, positions to impress a nameless male, but if you go to a (good) yoga class, you will realise it is the furthest thing you could possibly find from that. Traditional yoga is practiced by all sorts of people: young, old, virile, not so virile. It is practised by all sorts of bodies: male, female, tall, short, thin, lumpy, able, less able. It is a “church”, a place of worship to do the work of healing.

Yoga teaches us to listen to our bodies and to take time for ourselves. The commitment we make to ourselves is: for the (limited) time we sit on the mat, we respect ourselves, our time, and we give, to ourselves, the gift of listening. We listen to our bodies, we still our thoughts. We quieten our loud brains and we are able to hear something, quieter, subtler, fluttering underneath, and that is the voice of our heart. Yoga teaches us to sit with discomfort, as we contort our bodies into shapes that do not feel natural, and stretch muscles we have never before used. It teaches us to exist in our bodies. It teaches us that our bodies are powerful, strong and capable, and therefore, so are we. Yogis do not care about the size of your ass, the cut of your yoga pants or your number of instagram followers. And if they do, you are in the wrong yoga class! There is no quest for perfection in yoga – only the desire for improvement. Every moment we give to ourselves, on the mat, is an investment in improving ourselves, both how we feel and how we are with ourselves. Yoga has taught me so many lessons about how to sit in my body and feel the things I do, without reacting, that I owe it a deep, long breath of gratitude.

And so we come onto the next tool in our happiness toolkit: gratitude. I learned many years ago, that the act of practicing gratitude is the antidote to unhappiness. You know how sometimes you feel irritable and everyone is getting on your nerves? You know sometimes, the sound of someone whistling on the street, can prick a shiver up your back? You know how sometimes you are in a miserable black cloud and everything just makes you really, really, mad? The answer to these difficult and irritable moods, I always find is focusing your attention on “things” that make you grateful.

Being grateful is a way to dissipate that bad mood and make your brain “hone in” on those small moments that make being human, more beautiful. An example might be: gratitude to the barista who made your coffee, exactly the way you like it, or who put a smiley face on your cup; the station guard who held the tube for you, as you were running up the stairs, out of breath, to get that last tube to get you to work on time; a colleague who holds the lift doors for you; the colleague that goes out of their way to make everyone laugh; your partner who makes you dinner, after a long day; the girlfriend, who runs you a bath, with her favourite bath salts, after a long run, when you are covered in mud because you fell over; the dog, who greets you with a waggling tail every day, when you come through the door; a child who makes you a picture, which holds pride of place on your fridge; the Deliveroo man who brings your hangover breakfast. There are endless moments of kindness that happen to us, each, and every day, that we will notice once we start to pay attention. Once we cultivate this respect, admiration and gratitude to other human beings, we will see there are “helpers” everywhere. There are people who will be kind to you, for no reason other than that they make the world a better place. They are the people who smile at dogs on the train; who wave to children in passing cars; who often work in service and health industries; who are kind to old ladies and help them count out their change; who pick up a wallet that has fallen out of a stranger’s pocket and immediately hand it back to them. You will notice these moments, every day, if you teach your brain to focus on them.

Another lesson in happiness is to surround yourselves with people who encourage you to grow and who accept you exactly as you are. This is a much harder thing to achieve, of course, if you are not being your truest version of yourself. But if you are able to open your heart to who you really are, and allow that person to live out there in the world, unencumbered by others’ expectations, then you will find you have an easier life. You are not fighting a constant battle, against yourself. I’ll give you an example: if you are a highly tolerant, caring, liberal person, then working in an environment filled with narcissistic, greedy, intolerant, self-serving, assholes is probably not going to make you happy. It is less of a struggle to be with “our people”: people who share our values and like us. But I also think it’s important to be around people who challenge us, and push us to be better. How else will we grow? And it’s not good to surround yourself with people who push you in a direction that you don’t want to go in, or push you to do things you don’t want to do… No, I am talking about the kind of people who call you out on your BS and make you better, because they know you and want what’s best for you, even when you can’t see that for yourself.

Another tool in the happiness toolkit, is this very small lesson: we are all growing, learning and improving every day but we will never be perfect. If you see life as a journey, where we are learning, every day, then you will no longer beat yourself up around what you know, or don’t know; you’ll not carry unrealistic standards of knowledge around with you; you’ll be able to hear others, because you’ll realise you can learn from them. And that’s not to say, everyone can teach us something, you have to learn who to tune in/out to. But if we can approach life as a journey, where we will learn and grow, we rid ourselves of the expectation of perfection or “destination”.

I always find that the quest to reach a certain “destination” or to achieve a certain goal has sometimes hindered my enjoyment of the “thing” you have to do get there. If you rent a car just to get from A to B, you’ll only ever get from A to B. You’ll have achieved your goal, but would you have achieved any joy on that journey? Probably not, you’d have achieved a chore. What if you rented a car to get from A to B, but you took a route you knew you’d enjoy or you asked a person you like to come along on the ride with you, what kind of journey would you have then? Is getting to B what would you would remember from that trip or would you remember the the places you saw, the things you did and the conversations you had with the person you went with? When I tell myself that life is an “adventure” or it’s a “journey” that is what I mean: the tiny pockets of time that are filled with joy are the things that make life beautiful. We just have to sit still to appreciate them and see them for the important moments they really are.

Next-up, spend your time doing things that you enjoy. This is a really basic one. The more time you spend doing things you actually enjoy, the better the quality of your life. If you love singing, spend a few minutes a day doing that. If you love dancing, spend some time each day, dancing to your favourite songs. If you love swimming, go swimming. If you love playing an instrument, spend some time each day doing that. If you like reading, cultivate some time in your schedule to spend some time with a good book. The more time you allow yourself to do things that bring you joy, the more joy you will have. I personally love travelling, so I always try to plan a few trips a year, as I’m always feel happy when I am visiting a new city, or am taking a flight to an unknown land. And when I am landlocked for a long period of time, I start to see my mood darken, so I know it’s time to plan another trip.

Another way to be happy is to practice kindness as much as possible. Don’t get me wrong, we should not be doormats to be walked all over; some people are entitled assholes, who should be shown where the door is; but mostly people are imperfect humans, who make mistakes, who are on occasion, annoying. Most people are just trying to live their own lives; and some of the seemingly, most unpleasant or annoying people are (often) the ones who need your kindness the most. So always approach life, if you can, with the intention to be kind. You’ll find you enjoy life more, where there is less day to day conflict. But in giving kindness, I fully expect that should be reciprocated. People are not doormats to be exploited. Effort should be reciprocated. If people are unwilling to show you they care about you (with actions not words), then you have no choice but to distance yourself.

This are my go-to tools to be happy. It’s an imperfect science, but an open mind and an open heart, I find, at least guides us in the right direction.

You can’t sit with us: the trans-female divide

First of all, I should probably caveat this post with the usual disclaimer that I was biologically born a woman; my gender is female and though I self-identify as a “liberal” feminist, some people (misogynistic men, usually) would consider me a “radical” feminist, mostly because I wear dungarees, have bright hair, and have opinions. I generally identify as “a human being”. I don’t think your sexuality is anyone else’s business. I’m going to write this blog post, anyway…

^ Disclaimer: that was also the most “millennial” thing I have ever written. Sorry.

I’ve been wanting to write about the JK Rowling Twitter storm for a while, but I wanted my response to be thoughtful. I wanted to talk sensibly about what she said and why it’s problematic, in a rational way. I do not agree with the response she received. It is never okay to threaten someone and this “left-wing” bullying mob mentality has to stop. Please, for the love of God! I want to explain why I found what she said problematic to people who identify as – and use the “label” – “trans”, as well as to (perceived “radical”) feminists, like myself.

I am calling an identity a “label” (on purpose) because I strongly, and firmly, believe that “gender” is a social construction. I’m not just saying that to be “de rigeur” or appear “woke” or whatever gen-y call it. I am saying that because this is what I honestly believe. I do also believe in biology. I believe there is a biological difference between people who are born with a penis (almost always labeled a “man”) and people born with a vagina (almost always labeled a “woman”). I don’t consider myself to be “woke”. I’m going to just be myself, writing this. I don’t intend to insult, or offend, anyone.

So the context, if you’ve been living under a bus (and who would blame you? After all, we’re still in the midst of a pandemic, but I suppose everyone has forgotten about that!), JK Rowling wrote some stuff on Twitter about “sex”.

If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 6, 2020

Let’s be honest, she could’ve phrased that in a less offensive way. I don’t think anyone in the “trans” community is trying to erase the experience of (biological) sex for a start!

But I want to pick this apart because… and I think this probably goes without saying, but… biological sex is a meaningful construct in all of our lives, but it is especially meaningful to those who struggle with their gender identity and don’t confirm to “societal norms”. (It’s also important to sexuality, but I don’t intend to talk about that in a great amount of detail here.)

I’m going to back it up to GCSE level because there’s just too much to pick apart in that tweet, without doing so.

Let’s look at “gender” and “sex” as two completely separate constructs.

1. The biological sex to which you are born: i.e. “with a penis” or “with a vagina”. I’m going to try to make a point here by referring to these groups of people, in short-hand, as WiP or WiV. But you will know them as the social constructs, to which we are all familiar: “man” or “woman“. I am choosing not to use those terms, on purpose, to make a point about social constructions. There are biological characteristics that are common to WiP (man) or WiV (woman). Some examples: WiP tend to be more muscular; they tend to be physically stronger; they tend to be taller; they tend to have more testosterone in their bodies; they tend to have deeper voices; they do not have the biology to grow a child inside their bodies; they excrete a liquid that can be used to impregnate WiV.WiV (woman) tends to be smaller; they tend to have more body fat; they tend to have fat tissue on their chest – which are functional in child-rearing; they have different biological “parts”, which mean they can produce a child inside their bodies; they have menstruation cycles that enable them to child bear; they tend to have wider hips.
2. The gender assigned to you based on the biological sex to which you are born. This is generally referred to as male/female but I am again going to use different words to make a point here. I am going to use the words: “feminine” and “masculine” instead.So “gender” is a social construct. It has been, purposefully, created in our society to split WiV and WiP into two separate camps. We believe that gender is binary, because biological sex is binary and these terms are often indiscernible in discourse because we use very similar terminology to describe them.

   The “feminine” gender is associated with “girlie” things: the colour pink, barbie dolls, being arm-candy/a trophy to a man, passivity, aesthetics, “to be looked at-ness”. We tell little girls that they should wear pink and they should wear certain clothes (dresses). We tell little girls they should dream of being a princess, who will be rescued by some man, who will live happily-ever-after, once they catch a man, get married and have his children. The ‘feminine” needs not accomplish anything else. “She” is a muse for the male gaze. “She” is pretty. “She” is worthy for her beauty. “Her” value is based on who she marries. “She” does not need to accomplish anything herself. “Her” place is beside a man.

   The “masculine” gender is associated with “manly” things: the colour blue, GI Joe (The Army), fighting, being active, doing stuff, being brave, being a leader, being fearless, having adventures. We tell little boys they should wear blue and they should wear certain clothes (trousers). We tell little boys they should dream of being an astronaut or a rocket scientist or a doctor or a lawyer – or whatever the hell they want! They would never be rescued by a woman (!!!); they won’t live happily-ever-after from meeting some woman, getting married and having children. Their focus is on work and accomplishments. The “masculine” gets stuff done. “He” is active. “He” is the protagonist. “He” is not a muse. “He” is an active practitioner of whatever the hell he wants. “His” value is based on what he does in his life. “He” has to accomplish things. “His” place is in a “boardroom”.

   I am being deliberately facetious to show you how ridiculous these concepts are. Truth is, and I know most people see this to be true, “masculine” and “feminine” exist on a spectrum. Some of us have “masculine” qualities, despite the fact we identify as “female”; in spite of our biology; in spite of the fact we have “heteronormative” relationships, we don’t fit in the cookie cutter mould of these genders either!

Many radical feminists have been saying, for a very long-time, that gender should be abolished but these constructs are so “normalised” into our culture that it actually takes quite a lot of bravery and grit to say, “Actually, that “gender” doesn’t work for me. I want to wear blue dungarees. I want to “boss” people around because that’s my personality and if I was a man, you’d say I had “leadership skills” – you wouldn’t call me “bossy”! Likewise, if you don’t want to look like a barbie doll, it takes some bravery to say “Actually, that “gender” doesn’t work for me. I want to have bright red hair, a lumpy body and I don’t want to shave my legs. Thanks though!”

Of course, it shouldn’t take any bravery at all. People should be like, “gender” is a spectrum – be/do whatever you want!

So back to JK Rowling, she appears to be equating biological “sex” with “gender”. And in doing so, she’s not making a point about the biological realities of people’s bodies (and yes including their sexual orientation/ attraction), but she’s invalidating the existence of an entire community of people in doing so. I believe this is wrong.

I cannot imagine what it is like for a young person growing up (and it’s hella confusing growing up anyway) to feel like you are in the wrong biological body. That must be harrowing. I don’t pretend to know the experience because I don’t. But a point that a lot of feminists make, and I will make it here, is that:

it should be okay to identify with the “feminine” gender and/or “feminine” traits and have a penis (WiP). It should be okay to identify with the “masculine” gender and/or “masculine” traits and have a vagina (WiV). Though (biological) sex is binary, gender should not be. Toxic masculinity and femininity, literally, serves no one.

If you are WiP, and you want to wear a dress, go for it! If you are WiV, and you want to wear dungarees (like me), go for it! I don’t want to tell people what they can or can’t do, but I do want to say how much it saddens me to see young people “mutilating”* themselves by changing their biological sex, when they might not have to, if we didn’t have these ridiculous constructs of “masculine/male/man”, “feminine/female/woman”.

I think this is what the queer movement is about, being sexually progressive because they are attracted to “people” and not social constructs (please do feel free to correct me if I am wrong). There are others who are only attracted to WiV or WiP and I think that’s okay too – this post isn’t an attempt to shame those people either. Love whoever you want!

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* mutilating: I just want to explain why I have chosen to use this word: when we hurt our bodies, we mutilate ourselves. Changing our biological sex is a very extreme process. It requires putting a lot of chemicals into our bodies to “mimic” the biological functions of the other biological sex. It requires the, literal, castration of our most sacred sexual parts. Trans people know better than anyone how violent this act is. But I want to call it out as a violent act against ourselves, because I believe it is. I believe that social constructions are the problem – not individual bodies. We, as individuals, are not the disease that needs saving through reverting biology: gender is the disease and we should abolish this. I realise this is probably controversial and I don’t judge you if you want to change your biological sex – I just think you shouldn’t have to to feel accepted in our society.

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So back to JK Rowling and her TERF-ness, which by the way, I found out means Trans-Exclusionary-Radical-Feminist. So as a person who is sometimes referred to as a “Radical feminist”, I feel it important to tackle this one too. There seems to be a discourse – and I have no idea where this one came from – that Trans-women are in some ways violent or likely to prey on (other) women, that they are somehow a danger to (other) women and should be kept out of women’s spaces. Have you met any trans-people? People who identify as “trans” are more likely to be “abused” than you, as a woman. And the stakes are already pretty high for us! Trans people are more likely to be subjugated by partners; they are more likely to be dominated by partners; they are more likely to abused by partners. They are more likely to be “unsafe” in male spaces, than they are in women’s spaces.

Shall I tell you who I want out of women’s spaces? Violent people & rapists. I don’t believe those people tend to be “trans” women.

I have spent time in queer spaces. I used to live in Manchester and I had some gay (both male and female) friends. We used to hang out in bars on Canal street – and we felt safe, as queers, and as people, there. They had unisex toilets in many of those bars. We’d do our makeup with our friends (male and female) and yes, it’s weird seeing any man pee with the door open! But, I never felt unsafe there. If a group of extremely “masculine” people were to infiltrate those spaces, I may have felt differently. I feel like every person who tries to exclude trans women from our spaces, should think about that! It’s not our biological “sex” that’s the problem, it’s extreme behaviour – and often that troubling (extreme) “masculine” behaviour is also directed at people who identify as queer, trans or gay. Often, more so! And I am specifically talking about extreme “masculine” behaviour and “rape culture” (I’m so sorry to write that because that shouldn’t even be a thing).

For my last point, I’d like to point you to the academic, Judith Butler. She wrote a series of essays on gender and my favourite is an essay about “gender as performativity”. In the essay she writes about how gender roles are “performed” in our society and we treat them as “natural”, when they are not. They are actually a learned set of rules and behaviours that are carried from birth that we naturalise into our own beings. I recommend you read some of her work, if you want to learn about queer theory.

I recommend all “radical” feminists, who stopped their academic education at Simone deBeauvoir and Betty Friedan, expand their literary horizons and read some of Butler’s work. And I’d make that same recommendation to JK Rowling, who must’ve missed that seminar in her gender studies class.

Related links:

• Judith Butler: Gender Trouble at Amazon
• Queer Theory summary in The Cut
• Judith Butler: PERFORMATIVITY, PRECARITY AND SEXUAL
  POLITICS 
• Judith Butler: Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory 

An open letter to “cancel culture”: don’t. An essay on sexual abuse in the music industry during the 2000s

Dear “cancel culture”, please don’t. Silencing people doesn’t make the problem go away!

Don’t get me wrong, there are a list of people I’d like to “Get In The Sea” and rapists, and sexual aggressors, are up there on that list. I have criticised people, such as Ched Evans (remember him?) and Dapper Laughs, for the horribly misogynistic culture they permeated. And if you don’t remember Ched Evans, then maybe you should, because he was the footballer who went crying to the press because “feminists” came after him with pitchforks, after he was charged with rape. He was, very famously, re-tried and found “not guilty” of rape, after the court allowed counter evidence about the (female) victim’s sex life. I think I speak for everyone when I say, we’re still angry about it (it should not have been allowed) and when I stand outside my house with my own feminist pitchfork, I quite often think of Ched Evans and where I’d like to stick said pitchfork. A feminist never forgets. That being said… even I think “cancel culture” has gone too far.

I’m going to criticise the “left” today, which is something I rarely ever do. I have seen a lot of instances recently where people on the left (probably because we’re all so emotionally exhausted by this bullshit – it’s 2020 and the shit just keeps rollin’) are “cancelling” everyone, who doesn’t agree with them. JK Rowling got “cancelled” (I promise I”m going to tackle her on another blog that I haven’t yet published because that whole subject is incredibly problematic). Lana Del Rey got “cancelled” for a perceived racist tweet. Left-wing journalist, Owen Jones from the Guardian, seems to get “cancelled”, every other week. Basically, everyone is getting “cancelled” because what better time to ask everyone to shut up, than during a pandemic, when we’re all sitting around just consuming awful news story, after news story, trying to tell ourselves that we’re not all about a die from a deadly virus, rocking back and forth, hiding in blankets and hoping one day, in the future, even when the virus has long gone, it will be safe for women to leave the house again, without fear of sexual predators around every corner.

The latest awful news stories is about a series of pop punk bands (and I’m not going to name names here), whose members have been accused of sexual misconduct. People on both the left and the right are “cancelling” these bands on the premise that they are all sexual aggressors – and we don’t want to be associated with that. I’m going to say first of all: no, of course, we don’t want to be associated with that! But this is a much deeper problem than one bad egg in one band. There will be more exposed. More victims will come forward. The unpopular news is that the pop-punk scene between 2000-2010  was very misogynistic and many men, in those bands, were known to hold problematic views about women. I’m going to argue in this blog, that instead of “cancelling” these bands, we should hold them to account. As empowered women, we need to completely rethink the behaviour that we are willing to allow. We need to act together to make gigs safe for women, generally; where the behaviour of abusive men is called out and those men take the appropriate steps to put things right – like going to therapy and taking actionable steps to manage their own behaviour.

I’m going to very quickly touch on something that is related to this. And this is about abusive behaviour in response to abusive behaviour. I don’t think it is okay to respond to abusive behaviour with yet more abusive behaviour, even if “triggered” by the original behaviour. I am specifically talking about online bullying. It’s okay to hold views about people and to express those views – but it’s not okay to directly target those individuals with abusive messages. Those people may have underlying mental health conditions, related to managing their own shame and trauma to which “responsive” bullying behaviour, won’t have a positive outcome. In the UK, we were very affected by the online bullying of a beautiful, well-liked, TV presenter, who took her own life, after she was hounded online with abuse. She had been accused of domestic abuse (she apparently hit her boyfriend over the head with a lamp). She was subjected to bullying and abusive behaviour both online (from ordinary people) and from the press. She eventually took her own life. I don’t think anyone wants to see a repeat of that and the intense self-hatred that this sort of bullying ensues that mean people feel they have no other option than to end their own lives. You may think someone is a piece of shit for subjecting a woman to sexual abuse. I know I do! But I’m not going to send that person abusive tweets on the internet (although in the Ched Evans case – it is tempting!) and you shouldn’t either. if we hold people to higher standards, we should hold ourselves to those standards too.

Abusive behaviour from guys in bands IS NOT okay; it’s not right. “Cancelling” the bands doesn’t solve the problem – sure, it shuts them up and stops them from being able to earn money and abuse women at shows. But what if a large majority of these bands (at the time) held really misogynistic views about women? Do we cancel all of the bands? Do we cancel all of the shows, so we can be safe? Because I hate to tell you this, but we’re left with a small number of bands and lots of female musicians! Because, news flash, it’s worse than just a few bad eggs. It’s quite a lot of bad eggs. It’s an entire culture that allows this behaviour – the entire reason that historical abuse cases are coming to light now, is that our culture is changing to empower women – much more – and we are now standing up against this and saying, “This isn’t okay. We don’t want to support these people.” How do we know, if they are still abusive? How do we know, if they are still problematic? How do we know anything, really, about bands’ lives outside of the public domain? Their lives often are completely different to the ones they portray in public. 

To contextualise my views on this: between 2004-2009, I was involved in the music scene, as a music journalist, a promoter and I also did some PR. I interviewed many bands in the UK music scene during this period. Some of these bands were American. I was exposed to the sorts of people my mother would prefer I never met. I was exposed to people that sweet, little, innocent Luisa was not ready to meet. Unfortunately, back then, the music industry hid predators inside it – an invisible problem; wolves in skinny jeans. The music industry acts as though “toxic masculinity” isn’t its biggest problem but I’d argue that it is.

Young women (some even teenagers) have been abused by men in bands for years. We only to have to go back a few years to see a proliferation of historical legal cases (from the 70s) against musicians, who pursued underage women and abused them. There were still “wrong-uns” in the music industry, when I was interviewing bands. Some PRs would take women journalists to the side and warn us about certain band members. Sometimes they’d brief us beforehand, if someone was difficult, or “handsy”. Sometimes they’d make sure we were escorted out the building safely, with no one trailing behind. I wasn’t unattractive back then. I was slim and I had big boobs and I got a lot of male attention. I wasn’t in the “trophy” troupe (that these men target) because I don’t have blonde hair, I’m short, I’m sarcastic, I make jokes and I shut people down pretty quickly, who say misogynistic shit to me. I am not (generally) the demographic that these men target (for those reasons) but I witnessed it. I saw it with my own big blue eyes how they preyed on other women. Women who weren’t as vocal as me. Women who were already infatuated with these men, because they were fans.

If you are a woman, working in the music industry, you are exposed to all sorts of nefarious creatures. I cannot count the times that I was accosted by some jerk in a band and asked to go back on the tour bus with him. I was the recipient of a full blown hissy fit from a famous lead singer, who screamed in my face, at a festival, because I refused to go to bed with him. He was such a narcissist that he could not comprehend why some woman would not be interested in that – in him! I laughed about it, with my friends afterwards, but I was terrified of him at the time! I really didn’t know what to do. I’d only met the guy thirty minutes before! (Don’t worry, I had an awesome circle of male friends around me, who acted like a protective shield. One of which, was actually in the same band and later became a friend of mine. There are good guys!)

I have witnessed other instances of toxicity from men in bands: there was the man, who I was interviewing, who casually asked my friend for a blow job. There was the time a lead singer in a band asked me to get my boobs out at gig. There was the time, I got groped at a show. I’ve seen men take women on their tour bus and discard them, when they’re finished, (disrespectfully) as though they are taking out the trash. I’ve seen (married) men select their sexual partner for the night, from a menu of screaming females – that they’ve already set the foundations with online. I’ve seen some stuff I really wish I hadn’t, because I think I’d have a much better view of men!

There were also many other occasions, where I had a lovely time with men in bands who are my good friends: men who took care of me when I had a bad day; men who gave me hugs when I “fan-girled” over their bands; the (good) guys in bands whose parents I hung out with at shows; the guys (and gals) who took me out for dinner; guys who gave me free t-shirts and advance copies of their albums; guys who were kind and thoughtful; guys who walked me to my car to make sure I got home safe. Not all men in bands are complete assholes. Some men in bands are wonderful human beings, who are respectful and kind and create safe spaces for women to work in. This rest of this blog post, unfortunately, is not centred on these wonderful humans. So sorry about that! But I just wanted to say there are good guys! (Though just because you had a good experience with those guys – doesn’t make them immune from treating someone else terribly just fyi, before you “cancel” victim’s testimonies!)

There is a toxic culture in music that is created by small communities of men, who operate (largely) without coming into contact with many women on a day-to-day basis. It is the culture of the “tour bus”. Men whose only company is other men and who sit around and watch porn, drink beers and go out looking for female prey. These men do not only exist in bands, but some of them happen to be in bands. They do not understand “mixed” spaces, or have ever been conditioned to operate safely and respectfully to women. It has, historically, been an environment for them, where they are able to do whatever the hell they want, without any consequences. These people exist in their “tour bus” microcosms, without the usual standards of behaviour policed by society. Think of how “lads” used to behave on holiday in Ibiza because it isn’t that different! My experience, at the time, was mostly that the badly behaved “boys” were in American bands and they had the “holiday” mindset that they weren’t in their native lands, so there were no consequences! When you mix this with drugs, alcohol and women (narcissistically) dying to shag someone in a band, you have a toxic cocktail. These men operate like animals – and they find women willing (at least at first) to be their prey. And as long as they get their fix for the night – everyone win’s right?! (That’s a joke; I’m not actually excusing that.)

The recent allegations have surfaced have been around certain band members coercing women, known to them, into degrading situations without any regard for their safety and well-being. People are screaming for these bands to be “cancelled”. But I’m going to tell you that this issue is not just one or two people in the music scene. It’s a toxic masculine “culture”, where these men believe (narcissistically and naively) that masculinity is about being a “player”, about using people and about being a terrible human, who doesn’t treat other people with due care. I can almost assure you that anyone who has ever woken up next to someone they don’t really know has used a person before. But coercing and abusing a person is not the same as a one night stand. Coercion and abuse cause trauma! There is a thin line here, though, and I think it’s worth calling out because this is why the culture needs to change. Young men need to be taught boundaries. They need to be told this isn’t acceptable. The culture is what needed to change. (I haven’t been a music journalist for ten years, so maybe it has?)

There are a lot of really trashy people in bands who operate as sexual predators, looking to score with a chick and these people pull out all the stops – I’ve heard stories from women who were flown all over the world – for sex. I’m pretty judgemental, so I do judge people who sleep with a different person every night of the week, especially if they’re “supposed” to be in a committed relationship (and their wife thinks they are). I’ve heard from women who were coerced into sex acts with men in bands – and yes, some of those women were coerced into having sex with multiple members of the bands, not always expressly with consent. It has happened. (And society calls them “groupies”, even if they are women who think they are in love with someone in a band, who are coerced into becoming “community property”.) And closing your eyes to this doesn’t make it go away. I wish we’d acknowledged this toxicity sooner – and said, “This isn’t right”. But I honestly think young women, in my generation, were just so used to males’ shitty behaviour. It was just so commonplace! Fame gives toxic people a shelter to hide their toxicity. It is not in the music labels’ best interests for this information to get into the public domain, because it won’t sell records. There are predators who have operated under the radar, for a long time, because it was simply not in anyone’s financial interests to expose them. (And to be brutally honest, most of the music industry is ran by men, who are mainly interested in money.)

I feel for the women who have reported these abusers, but I am not surprised. Gigs should be a safe space for women. A female journalist or a female press office, or a female fan, should be able to exist in these male-dominated spaces, safely. I reiterate, again, that almost all of the musicians, I came into contact with, were very respectful towards me.

In my experience, the worst things to happen, occurred long after this little lady had gone home to (her own) bed. But women, I implore you: if you don’t feel safe, don’t go on the tour buses. Don’t get into their cars. Don’t go home with them. Behave, as you would, if they were an ordinary person – hold them to the same standards and go home with your friends! If they stalk you online, set boundaries. Tell them what is and what isn’t acceptable. I think we have to force these changes in behaviour, ourselves. And it shouldn’t be our jobs to do this. It shouldn’t be for victims of sexual abuse to have to defend themselves as to why it is abuse. Because “abuse” just is. To the victims, I believe you. And I hope, we all believe all the victims who come forth. But if we want this change to be permanent, cancelling bands won’t cause that outcome. It’ll push the behaviour back into the shadows. It will still occur under the radar. And not cancelling them and not saying anything, is “enabling” it. They’ll continue to operate in the same way because that behaviour is just “accepted”, as apparently, it was back then, because we had no power to change anything! We need to reeducate people on what is acceptable behaviour. (Even if they should already know how to treat people with basic human decency!)

I hope all the men that are involved in these incidents, or in related bands, take a really hard look at the choices they have made in their lives, which has enabled the bad behaviour of their bandmates, or behaviour they are guilty of themselves. And make the appropriate apologies to the people they have hurt (directly, ffs, Ryan Adams!). They should also take the steps to put it right! This behaviour is not okay. It is toxic and damaging to women. We need to create a better culture! We need to educate men on “toxic masculinity” and try to stop it at the root cause. Or we’ll be stuck with it, and our children, and our children’s children, will have to deal with it too.

I think a lot has changed in the years, since I was a music journalist. We’ve had #metoo movements, as well as just a generally more equalitarian outlook for women, especially in the UK. We have jobs; we have legislation that (supposedly) gives us equal pay; we have all of the rights. But we still don’t make it easy for women to report sexual crimes, without recrimination; too often the victim (like in the case of Ched Evans back up there are the top) is subject to more scrutiny than the rapist. There is no benefit to women coming forward with these allegations, without anonymity. These men need to take responsibility for their actions, not just in words but in deeds. Let’s start acting human to one another. Let’s make a positive change in the world, by making our culture better, safer and more inclusive. Cancelling people doesn’t do that – it stops the conversation. Men, we want you to all do better! I’m not going to cancel you, but I do expect you to be accountable and to take the necessary steps to put it right. And in these instances, to put your money where your mouth is and provide the appropriate trauma-support for the victims! If you’re in a position to help, maybe you should? We all have a human responsibility to take care of our each other. While we have the opportunity to make this a better society, why don’t we all be the change we want to see in the world?

Lana del Rey and the Quest for meaning

I’m an over-thinker. I’ve always been this way. It’s one of the reasons why I am excellent at problem solving because I’ve thought of literally every possible way that something could have gone wrong and already have an analysed mind map of all the possible ways of fixing it. I have an anxiety disorder that makes me this way. It’s always made me feel abnormal but I’ve been able to capitalise on it in my older years and actually use it for good.

I wrote a blog a while ago about Lana Del Rey and her post about the culture and how other women are allowed to write about certain things but she isn’t, because she gets accused of “glamourising abuse”?

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Lana Del Rey (@lanadelrey) on May 21, 2020 at 12:26am PDT

What I did connect with was about being accused of “glamourising abuse”. I don’t intend to go into any detail in this about my own past relationships, but I do empathise with a woman who considers herself to have a “poetic soul”, using her art and creativity as expression of her personal experiences and, ultimately, of herself. I like Lana del Rey’s music, personally, but I can also tell you it is somewhat problematic for feminists because of the way that she details her personal experiences of somewhat abusive relationships, by romanticising them.

I understand the need to do that. Love is challenging and problematic. We all want to be in love and profess love in healthy ways to one another, but it isn’t always possible. Sometimes we love people who hurt us. Sometimes we love people who have been abusive to us. Does that make us anti-feminist? Maybe it does. She details her relationships as a passive muse and of a more demure and delicate feminine passivity in relationships with men. It, can, strikingly, mark out codependent and power-imbalanced dynamics that aren’t always healthy. She writes extensively about romantic relationships with men – that many of us would consider to be narcissistic. The reality of relationships with men, who are narcissistic, is, of course, a constantly draining power struggle, where you are forced to submit to their dominant needs and desires, or else you will be punished: triangulated, stonewalled, gaslighted, abused. In these relationships, women’s own needs are secondary (if considered at all) to these men’s constant demands for attention. These relationships aren’t always empowering – but I admire Del Rey’s attempt to make them so. I admire her for taking these experiences and writing about their messy, problematic beauty. It is perhaps overlooked that writing about these experiences can also empower women deeply shamed by their own similar experiences, comforted by the commonality. But should del Rey not write about such things because they don’t meet our “feminist rhetoric” about how we should feel empowered?

I feel like our creativity and self-expression can sometimes be used against us to silence our feelings and our authentic selves, especially when perceived by others as a form of self-destruction. We shouldn’t be silenced because it makes someone else uncomfortable or because our “feminism” doesn’t fit into someone else’s box. The question is, does Lana feel empowered writing about these experiences?

Art exists in a world of meaning, free from its creator. We only have to look at structuralist theory to know this is true. We can hold creators to account, and of course we should if there’s malpractice, but so often there isn’t. Sometimes people don’t intend the meaning that you derive from art. Del Rey was heavily criticised from this post for mentioning multiple women of colour. Did Del Rey intend to offend WOC by comparing herself to WOC who write about the same subjects as she does? I’d like to think not. But I don’t know Del Rey personally and I have no idea if she is actually racist based on one Instagram post.

But regardless, she was bullied online for putting this post out on her personal instagram and I have to say this bullying “counterculture” has to stop. It’s mob mentality at is absolute worst!

The people who went after Del Rey for her comments and started to bully her because they didn’t like what she had to say were part of the problem. She might need educating on why her comments were problematic to POC, but I don’t think bullying solves that. A female TV presenter committed suicide last year, after she was involved in a domestic violence court case (she’d hit her boyfriend over the head with a lamp). She was bullied on social media and by the British press and in the end she saw no other option than to take her own life. This bullying has to stop for this reason. People’s lives are important. Just because you don’t agree with someone, or you find someone problematic, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be respectful to others.

When someone has treated me badly, I have, perhaps misguidedly, asked myself “What does this mean? What does this say about me?” In glorious hindsight and maturity, of course you know it says nothing about you, but everything about them. And this is the same for art. Artists create but it is up to you how you interpret their art. And that’s based on a lot of factors: what you know about the artist and their intentions, how you feel about yourself, what it means to you. Can you blame the artist for their work that you gleamed meaning from? Maybe, if it was knowingly aimed at you – but how would you ever prove that?

Art is just art. Let’s not cancel everyone who is making it because we’re bringing our own issues to the table.

How to be Anti-racist

I am sometimes a pretty embarrassing person. I talk to animals, constantly, like they are humans. I, literally, have full conversations in my garden, with the cats that live next door. I spend a lot of my time managing my self-shame at being rubbish, or getting something wrong or being embarrassing. I’m a perfectionist for this reason because who likes to walk around feeling ashamed of themselves?

However, one of the things I am really proud of is that I have been a practitioner of anti-racism for as long as I can remember. I have actively striven for all kinds of equality for most of my life. I am an active feminist: I believe in furthering the rights and fair treatment of women in society and in the workplace (you can check the “feminism” section on this website if you want to read about that). I am a supporter of LGBT rights. I am also anti-racist. And I’ll disclaim that I haven’t always got it right. I haven’t always noticed the things I should. I haven’t always been in the position (or had the audience) to fight, loudly about racism. The desire is there though, to see a better, fairer society for us all.

I have seen racism with my own eyes. It is real. it is happening in our society. (And even if you don’t see it yourself, it’s there. Ask POC!)

• I saw it when… I got the bus to school and I heard my school friends talking horribly about “dirty immigrants” and how “they should get out of our country”.
• I saw it when… kids at school called people “Pakis”.
• I saw it when… someone called my friend a “chocolate bar” and the perpetrator lied and told the teacher it was because he’d called him the “milky bar kid”.
• I saw it when… we were teenagers and one of the boys in my class was black and the most intelligent (with the nicest handwriting, man I was so jealous of his handwriting!) but he was always being distracted by drama and fighting.
• I saw it when… I worked in a retail shop and Indian women would return clothes and people in the shop would refuse to take them back because they smelled like curry.
• I saw it when… I worked in a pub and I’d see drunk men having a go at black or brown people because of their race.
• I saw it when… I worked for a media company and our manager was racist and didn’t want to hire the most talented candidate because of his skin colour (and some preexisting assumptions he made that such people were “lazy” based on nothing other than the colour of their skin).
• I saw it when.. I heard a woman get shouted at on a train for her race.
• I saw it when… my British grandad used racist slurs.
• I saw it when… my dad told me grandad called him a “dirty immigrant” and forbade my mum from marrying him .
• I saw it… when one of the newspapers I worked for wrote racist articles about immigrants.

So you’re probably thinking, you saw all that shit – did you just sit there? Didn’t you do anything? Dear Reader, you don’t know we very well, do you? I can be a very difficult person when it comes to equality…

• When I saw it… on the bus to school and heard my school friends talking horribly about “dirty immigrants” and how they “should get out of our country”… I responded, “Did you know my dad’s an immigrant?” And they’d all look at me shocked because I was an “invisible” 2nd generation immigrant. And go, “Well, no obviously we don’t mean you.” And I’d say, “Ok, well who do you mean then?” And they’d go silent. Because we all know they’re racist because they mean “non-white” immigrants.
• When I saw it… when kids at school called people “Pakis”… I would say that’s unacceptable and don’t be racist.
• When I saw it… when someone called my friend a “chocolate bar” and the perpetrator lied and told the teacher it was because he’d called him the “milky bar kid”… I told the teacher what really happened; eventually that boy was suspended (after many other incidents).
• When I saw it… when I worked in a retail shop and Indian women would return clothes and people in the shop would refuse to take them back because they smelled like curry… I would question them on it and they’d claim they couldn’t be returned because they didn’t have the tags & I’d say, “Yes, but you accept untagged returns from white people all the time”.
• When I saw it… when I worked in a pub and would see drunk men having a go at black or brown people because of their race…. I’d ask the person being had a go at if they were okay, before launching into an anti-racist attack on the offenders and kicking them out of the pub. (Much to the dismay of the Owners. People did complain about me.)
• When I saw it… when I worked for a media company and our manager was racist and didn’t want to hire the most talented candidate because of his skin colour… I said he was the best candidate and we should hire him. (I can only apologise to the person in question for this because he was subject to racism for basically the whole time he worked there, even when I asked if he could report to me so that he wouldn’t have to deal with him. We both ended up leaving that company – and it was good riddance from both of us!)
• When I saw it… when I heard a woman get shouted at on the tube because of her race… I told the man on the tube off so fiercely, he got off at the next stop.
• When I saw it… when my British grandad used racist slurs… I’d tell him that he couldn’t say that about people and he’d say “It’s my house, I can say what I want.” I had no answer for that, other than to ask my dad if we could go home now.
• When I saw it… when one of the newspapers I worked for wrote racist articles about immigrants… I immediately emailed our lawyers and asked for legal advice as it was racist. I found out about it because Facebook flagged this to me as racist content, so it had grounds to be removed. The regional Editor didn’t want to remove it, quote, “because it will get loads of hits”, but I got our lawyers involved to get it taken down, which it was a couple of days later (facepalm) – unfortunately after the damage had been done.

I may have been branded a “trouble-maker” so many times in my life (“Oh Luisa, you are so dramatic, why do you care what people say?”), but I look at the world today and I’m proud I stood up for what I believe in. And I see the protests now (Disclaimer: protests I won’t be attending because of Coronavirus and my health conditions) and I am proud of everyone who, peacefully, marches to support the rights of others . It’s up to every single one of us (both white and POC) to call this out. We may get branded as troublemakers; we may fear being let go of our jobs – and this is, especially, true for POC such as John Boyega who admitted at the protest that “I don’t know if I’m going to have a career after this, but fuck that.” (source: the guardian); we may face detention at school; we may upset our racist elders but it is essential work. It is uncomfortable, but essential and, more importantly, it is the right thing to do. I am not condoning violence, though, ever. And I hope, in our country, we have enough freedoms to exert social change without needing to use it.

Our racist pasts: a history of racism in the US and UK

Disclaimer: I am white person. What I write below is to educate other white people about their privilege and the disparities in our society, including population, history, representation and social discrimination. 

So far in 2020, we have had severe bushfires in Australia, wiping out large numbers of already endangered species (source: bbc), followed by a deadly pandemic that was started with the human consumption of a bat in a (potentially unsanitary) food market (source: wired), and tragically led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people across the world. We are currently in month six (it’s June, as I write this). Most countries are coming out of a three month lockdown, which has impacted our economies and in some countries, led to a high number of job losses. In the US, there have been protests,  predominantly by white Americans, on the street with guns (!!!), protesting their right to work and/or get their haircut. This was dealt with civilly by the Police. In contrast, there have been multiple cases of police brutality, some against innocent civilians, resulting in the death of three black people: George Floyd (source: bbc) Breonna Taylor (source: ny times) and Ahmaud Abery (source: bbc). And on top of all of this, their “great” (I use the term, sarcastically) President think’s it’s a good idea to have posted the following on Twitter:

There is so much privilege to unpick here (and Trump is a whole other blog post of concern) but namely that when Twitter – a service that a private company owns and which Trump chooses to use, and of which he would have accepted the “Terms of Service” to be able to use – which, by the way, does include a clause against inciting violence (source: twitter) – put a warning label on his tweet because he broke one of the “Terms of Service”, he became enraged and the following day threatened to legislate against the company. He was incredulous that a (global) company would censor his “freedom of speech” (1st Amendment), in this way, though it resulted from his own violation of their “Terms of Service”. Unfortunately, the US does not have the same sanctions as we do in the UK for “hate speech”, however, there are protections against this in “Common Law” (source: cornell law school).

In response to this situation, a man, far smarter than me, posted this on Twitter, basically summing up racism in America, and the ugly truth that was later disclosed.

*It’s worth re-looking at the date of that tweet – it was before the protests.

I think it would be helpful in this situation to educate some people about US history (though I have very limited knowledge about this myself – I’ll share what I know but, disclaimer, there will be gaps). And I’ll also talk about the history of the UK and the problems we have with racism, here, in the UK.

The racism we have in the UK (though still racism) IS different to American racism. I’m going to explain why. I’m going to explain why both are bad for different reasons and I’m going to explain what we, as white people, should be doing to make this situation better for everyone.

What is modern-day racism?

When we look at racism, we generally want to consider the following four things:

1. institutional
2. structural
3. interpersonal
4. internalised

(source: slow factory foundation)

Each of these four things can be severe or less severe in any country. You could have a country, whose structural dimension aims to cease discrimination (such as the UK) but of which some institutions are problematic and uphold certain value i.e. House of Lords has 6 % representation against 13% of total POC in UK (source: Parliament). We have a large problem, in the UK, with interpersonal (social) racism, largely related to immigration (which I’ll touch on later). We also have other countries, such as the US, who are widely criticised for systemic and structural racism, which occurs in most of their institutions upholding racist policies (which I’ll touch on in more detail below).

Population & Demographics

UK*: In the 2011 census, the population of England & Wales was 56.1 million. Please see ethnicity breakdown below.

White 86 %
Asian 7.5 %
Black 3.3 %
Mixed race 2.2 %
Other 1 %

US: America has more recent figures. In the 2019 census, their population was 328 million. Ethnicity breakdown below.

White 60.4 %
Hispanic or Latino 18.3 %
African American 13.4 % *
Asian 5.9 %
Two or more races 2.7 %
Native Indian American 1.3 %
Native Hawaiian 0.2 %

(You’ll probably also realise that the American officials can’t add up on their census website. I found no reason why their total population breakdown adds up to 102.2%, yet it does. Please don’t blame the person copying the facts from the original source.)

*It’s worth noting that in London, this data is slightly different (as it’s one of the UK’s most diverse cities. Here’s the London figures for completion (disclaimer: I live here).

White 59.8 %
Asian 18.5 %
Black 13.3 %
Mixed race 5 %
Other 3.4 %

Summary:

• In UK: Black people make up 3.3 % of total (2011) population, which means the black population of the UK is approx. 1.9 million.
• In US: Black people make up 13.4 % of total (2019) population, which means the black population of the US is approx. 43.9 million.

There are a very large number of African Americans (or self-identified “black” ethnicities) in the US. 13.4 % of the total population equates to roughly 43.9 million people. That’s over 1 in 7 of people. Theoretically speaking, and assuming proportional representation, in a classroom of 30 kids that would include 4 black kids. If you worked in an office with 500 people, you would (theoretically) have 71 black colleagues.

In the UK, 3.3 % of the UK population are (self-identified) black ethnicities, this equates to roughly 1.9m people. This is 1 in every 30 people. In a classroom of 30 kids that would, (obviously) theoretically, and assuming proportional representation, be 1 black kid in a class of 30. If you worked in an office with 500 people, you would (theoretically) have 3 black colleagues. Of course, we know the systems aren’t as simple, or as fair, as that.

A Brief History of the United Kingdom

The United Kingdom is a Kingdom, and a country, of immigrants. Great Britain was established in 1707 when England, Scotland and Wales came together under the “Treaty of Union”. England itself is a very old country (thought to exist for approximately 800,000 years) and long before we started to “properly” measure time. British history is pretty gruesome and complex, so I will try to summarise in a few short paragraphs.

The original Britons were thought to be Celtic, followed by a Roman invasion (in 43 AD), followed by Anglo-Saxon (Germanic) migration in the 5th century, followed by Viking (Scandinavians) raids in the 8th century, followed by the rule of monarchies: the Normans (William The Conqueror) from 1066, the French from 13th century (Lancaster, York, Beaufort families) and this line of succession was overthrown in the “War of the Roses” (between 1455 and 1487), ending with the famous Tudor (Welsh) and Stuart (Scottish) families ruling England from 1485-1653. They were overthrown in 1653 by a military dictatorship, after the Civil War (see: Oliver Cromwell). The monarchy was restored in 1660 by Charles II but there were lots of wars between families wanting to secure the throne. In 1689, one of our most constitutional documents “The Bill of Rights” was passed which restricted the Monarchy’s power, which included not being able to overrule laws passed by parliament, levy taxes without parliamentary consent, raise army during peacetime without parliamentary consent and unduly interfere with elections. The Industrial revolution followed in 1820-1840, which (loosely also) gave us the colonial British Empire (16th-18th centuries). In 1913, The British Empire had 23% of the world population under its rule, including Canada, Thirteen Colonies in what is now the United States (see below), and other countries such as India, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Zanzibar, etc (source: Brittanica).

The British Empire was decolonised in the 20th century, mostly due to loss of power in the World Wars. Most of the British Empire‘s overseas territories became independent countries but immigrants can still remain subjects to relaxed immigration rules. Most of the countries that were previously colonies under The British Empire became part of the 54 Commonwealth countries, which was established as recently as 1949 (source: the commonwealth). The Queen still rules in 15 “Commonwealth realms“, including: Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, St Christopher and Nevis, St Lucia & Tuvalu (source: the royal family).  The Commonwealth has also previously included British colonies such as Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Singapore, Jamaica, etc, etc.

England joined the United Kingdom in 1707 (source: historic uk) and the UK joined the EEC (now known as the EU) in 1973 (source: parliament).

When you look at the make up of UK immigrants, they mostly come from EU and Commonwealth countries. It is useful to know that the UK today (that 86 %) is mostly made up of descendants of Anglo-Saxon and Vikings, as well as the more recent immigrants from the EU and (now) Commonwealth countries. A lot of UK racism is aimed at “immigrants”; we have a strong media influence, which tends to stoke the conflicts between UK born and migrants. (It’s worth noting that many black or POC people are now 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants and were actually born in the UK.)

Britain and the Slave Trade

Britain was, of course, involved in the “Slave Trade”, which is something our history teachers like to gloss over (source: national archives). In the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal and Spain led global exploration, colonising large empires overseas. The English, French and Dutch also began to establish colonies and trade networks in the Americas. Part of these trade networks included the sale and transport of “slaves” to the Americas. In the interests of total transparency, England was dominant in the sale of human slaves between 1640 and 1807 (that last date is the year the British slave trade was abolished).  It is estimated that Britain transported 3.1 million Africans (of whom 2.7 million arrived) to the British colonies in the Caribbean, the Americas and to other countries (source: national archives).

There were “Thirteen (British) colonies” in the British Empire (and as they are now):

1. Maine
2. New Hampshire
3. Connecticut
4. Rhode Island
5. Delaware
6. New York
7. New Jersey
8. Pennsylvania
9. Virginia
10. Maryland
11. North Carolina
12. South Carolina
13. Georgia

Slaves were mostly used in the Colonies and not so much in Britain itself, though some of the rich merchants did return to England with their own slaves (source: historic England). It’s worth knowing this because the British did substantially contribute to the enslavement of millions of Africans.

A Brief History of the United States

The history of the United States is essentially that it was stolen from the Native Americans, who were the early settlers. In 1492, Christopher Columbus (an Italian explorer) started the European Colonisation of the Americas, which was generally led by the Spanish to create the “New World”. Britain was also involved in the colonisation (see above). England’s first permanent settlement in America was founded in 1607 in Jamestown, led by Captain John Smith and managed by the Virginia Company. There were colonial fights between Dutch and English merchants for ownership of the States and the plantations for many years (source: the history channel).

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, Africans were kidnapped from their homeland, trafficked and forced into slavery in these colonies – exploited to work on British, Spanish and Dutch-owned plantations to produce crops like tobacco and cotton. The 1864 Kansas-Nebraska Act, unfortunately, opened all America’s territories to Slavery. Opposition in the North, surprisingly, led to the formation of the Republican party, who opposed the extension of slavery into the western territories (this was potentially quite a different Republican party to the one we see today). The northern colonies became important for industry and manufacturing and agriculture was limited. However, the southern colonies profited from large scale farming, which wholly relied on slave labour. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected and it caused several of the southern states (South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas) to break away from the Americas and form the “Confederate States of America“.

The Civil War started in 1861, after decades of tension over slavery, rights and expansion. “The Union” victory (supposedly) freed all slaves in the “rebellious states” from January 1, 1863. The “Confederate Surrender” ended the Civil War in 1865 – the same year that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. The south was left in ruins but the nation’s slaves were (supposedly) freed (source: the history channel).

Though African-Americans were supposedly liberated in the late 19th and early 20th century, a collection of state and local statutes, known as “The Jim Crow laws“, legalised racial segregation. These were “Black Codes” which specified how, when and where former slaves could work – and for how much compensation. These laws took their rights to vote and controlled how they lived – even seizing their children for labour.

Eventually under the 14th Amendment, African-Americans were granted the right to vote and were allowed birthright citizenship, which extends to descendants of freed black slaves and immigrants even today. That’s not to say there wasn’t tension between white and blacks during this period; “Knight Riders” (did you know this term was racist? I didn’t!) went out at night and burned the (self-owned) homes of African Americans. Southern, wealthy, white democrats (!!!), attempted to roll back the freedoms ensued by the “Confederate Surrender“.  The Ku Klux Klan, originating in Tennessee, was originally a private club of white “Confederate” veterans, which grew into terrorising black communities: their legacy, unfortunately, still exists today – associated with far right, fascist groups.

When we talk about “Systemic Racism”, this is what we mean. There were laws (“Jim Crow laws“), which specifically worked against black citizens and the American legal system, which was often run by “Confederate” veterans now working as police and judges, upheld these laws and ensured black people would not win court cases to determine their freedoms. These codes also worked in operation with (prison) labour camps; those incarcerated were (again) treated as enslaved people. Black offenders typically also received longer sentences than white equals (as many would argue is the case still, today). Many of them died in the prisons (source: history channel).

These “Jim Crow laws” continued to be in operation well into the 20th century. It was only after the second world war (1945) and “Civil Rights movements” (of the 1950s & 60s) that things improved. As late as 1964 (which, by the way, was only 56 years ago), President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, which ended the segregation and allowed both votes and ownership of homes.

Today

It’s worth noting that rich families operate as dynasties that hand material wealth, and the freedoms associated, through the generations. 56 years ago (probably the age of your parents or grandparents) African-American families were not allowed to own homes. So your grandparents (or great grandparents) would have been unable to own property. Those of us who aren’t from those dynasties (as most of us aren’t) tend to rise in the class system, as we accrue material wealth from our own jobs or endeavours. And this is true for some African-American families – they have received a good education (often from extended social mobility, educational policies or scholarships which have actively encouraged participation from African-American communities), worked in well-paid jobs and eventually managed to rise from the poverty to which they were, too often, born. The most prolific example of this is the Obamas: Barack was born in Hawaii to a white mother and a Kenyan father; Michelle was born in Chicago to black parents and one of her great grandparents migrated from a southern plantation to the city of Chicago. Michelle was (proudly) raised on the “south side” of Chicago – a neighbourhood that she describes as a largely African-American community. They both went to “Ivy League” universities (Harvard & Princeton) and both worked in (comparatively) well paid jobs in law and public service (source: Becoming by Michelle Obama). And we all know the fate of Barack Obama – who became the United States’ first black President!

A study taken in 2017 (three years ago), showed the median income of white homes in the US was 10 times that of black households (source: the guardian). And the reason is largely to due with social mobility, education and access to well-paid jobs, which has only been recently extended to African-Americans.

When we look at the history of both the UK and the UK, it is probably shocking to British citizens (both black and white) the measures these white “Confederates” took to ensure their “supremacy” but still in the UK, of the 50s and 60s, white landlords would put up signs in their windows, such as “No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish”, discriminating against immigrants (source: each other).

In the UK, we often consider ourselves to be very tolerant of immigration and we have laws that, specifically, exist to protect citizens from discrimination (see above). But even in our country, most of these rights didn’t come into effect until the late 60s. In 1968, parliament passed the Race Relations Act and people have been able to prosecute against discrimination since then (assuming, of course, they have the funds to do so). The more recent Equality Act 2010 has merged most of the original discrimination laws, including:

• the Equal Pay Act 1970
• the Sex Discrimination Act 1975
• the Race Relations Act 1968
• the Disability Discrimination Act 1995
• the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003
• the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003
• the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006
• the Equality Act 2006, Part 2
• the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007

(source: equality & human rights commission)

Many of you who grew up under New Labour (as I did) may remember the proliferation of social policies and educational support (including scholarships) specifically for POC or from lower income households. This wasn’t coincidental. It was an attempt to redress the balance and provide social mobility for young people to digress from the poverty they may have been born into. Growing up, we didn’t understand this push to offer POC places at top universities or in employment graduate schemes – it seemed unfair that (white) people from poorer backgrounds weren’t offered the same support. When I asked a teacher about this at my school (I had to be taught too), they explained the difference between equality and fairness. I think the below image summarises this quite well – and shows us our own (inherited) privilege.

We do still have a culture of racism in the UK. It’s largely from poorer families, upset by social mobility policies that excluded them, or “internalised” discourse passed down from the older generations, who somehow believed they were more deserving of rights because they were born in this country. Holistically speaking, we are all, of course, human and many would argue (myself included) there are many basic human rights that a person should be afforded regardless of where they live or where they were born. To live a life free from discrimination, anywhere in the world, should (arguably) be one of them.

I also just want to very quickly touch on the subject of the economy. Our economy was built on cheap imports from lands occupied by the British Empire and our economy has substantially benefited from the use of slave labour. That is British history. If people (of any creed or colour) live or are, even more importantly, born here then they should be given the same rights as our (white) citizens. No question.  Many black and Asian POC are second and third generation and should without any doubt (or argument) legally be given the same freedoms and rights, as their white counterparts. Immigrants (one of which I am a descendent of to be completely transparent) who have been given the “right to remain” (a legal status comparable to UK citizenship, but without the right to vote) should be given the same human rights, as any other person in our society. None of these people should face any sort of discrimination. But, of course, we don’t live in a perfect society and we know we have social issues with racism in the UK. We need to actively work to rectify the social (often unconscious) racism in ourselves, and in others.