I know it was wrong, but when Douglas Carswell announced his defection to UKIP and the forcing of a by-election in his Clacton constituency, I couldn't help but think "brilliant!". I imagine the prime minister was somewhat less chuffed. His terrible summer has taken a distinct turn for the worst. And as for UKIP it needed something to command the headlines again, and they have successfully captured them with style. Carswell, however, is not and won't be your archetypal 'kipper. Yes, he agrees with the party's europhobia and wants to see a little Britain paddle out into the mid-Atlantic. But that's about as far as he goes. He's a rare beast among the Tories, a politician who actually takes the hard right, libertarian principles he espouses seriously. Never mind that so-called "libertarianism" is the comfy shoe for capital's iron heel. Still, when Carswell gave his defection speech this morning and praised modern Britain for its tolerance, diversity and, yes, feminism; you don't have to be Mystic Meg to foresee tensions somewhere down the line. That, however, is the far future. Now is what matters, and this contest is high, high stakes for UKIP and the Tories. For UKIP, it's obvious really. If Carswell wins it shows the party can win a first-past-the-post contest. The morale of 'kippers up and down the land will soar, Tory defections at the yellowing grass roots level will pick up and, more significantly, UKIP's co-religionists on the government benches might be emboldened to take the plunge. For Dave, this is the Tories worst nightmare. Carswell has not so much reopened Tory wounds over Europe, more ripped off the and stuck a whacking great oar in. There will be no talking up the economy and concentrating fire on Labour as per the Crosby playbook, instead Dave has been manoeuvred into trading blows on the ground of UKIP's own choosing, on an issue way down anyone but hard right voters' priority list. Win or lose in Clacton, the Tories will not be able to focus their attention on the centre ground and key marginals. Things were looking grim next year anyway. Carswell has just made their horizon look all the more threatening. On the outcomes for Clacton, UKIP and the Tories will throw all they can at it. Just like Newark, the entire national apparatus of the Conservative Party will relocate for the duration. Unlike Newark, it is the Tories that are the challenger party. What was a huge majority for them is totally open to contestation. Except it's not. UKIP have no local councillors, and of the nine seats they hold on Essex County Council, none hail from Clacton. What UKIP does have in its favour is their European election vote. They polled 19,398 votes, as against the Conservatives' 9,981 and Labour's 5,241. The standard, establishment argument is that protest votes tend to fall back in parliamentary elections as "these matter". However, the by-election (which is likely to take place in October) is, like the Euros, a second order election. Because it is an election that "doesn't matter" that huge UKIP vote, plus Carswell's incumbency advantage is likely to swing behind him. Today talk has been of a safe Tory seat becoming a three-way marginal overnight. No. On the basis of what's gone before, the character of the election, and the political mood it could well go from straight from safe Tory to safe UKIP. If seeing that happen doesn't embolden the hard Tory right, nothing will. The one great unknown in the coming by-election is the anti-UKIP vote, and this is where Labour needs to be serious. In the Newark by-election, we saw the emergence of something novel: an anti-UKIP protest vote. As UKIP's vote has surged, so has a growing, hostile counter-reaction among more centrist voters of all political persuasions. Though a bampot like Roger Helmer was never really any threat to the Tory position there, anecdotal evidence suggests they were helped by voters who would never otherwise support the Conservatives to keep UKIP out. In Clacton, on the basis of the Euro poll, this might happen again. The temptation in London would be for Labour to commit few resources and leave it to the local party to fight off two national mobilisations. This must not happen. Labour needs to fight to be the repository of the anti-UKIP protest vote. The reasoning is quite simple. If we do not work to be the natural home of that reaction, then in the swing seats next year, everywhere on paper UKIP is in with a notional shout of winning, these seats, the ones our party needs to win off the Tories might find them strengthened by an anti-UKIP backlash as they're the "best-positioned" to keep Farage and company out. If I was the Tories, that's the card I'd play. Clacton is high stakes all round. It's more than a family squabble among the right.
Sexual violence against women and girls comes in all skin colours, all languages, all forms of religious belief. One would hope its tacit acceptance by institutions laying claim to the protection of the most vulnerable lies in the distant past. But the report into the institutional silence, if not silencing of the victims of a Pakistani-descent paedophile gang shows this appalling abuse is not part of our uncomfortable yesterdays. It's contemporary, it's here, and lives are still being broken by sexual predators who rape children with seeming impunity. Evidently, a lot of serious questions have to be asked in Rotherham. For instance, while our gutter press are playing up the Muslim/Pakistani connection I think more pertinent is a shared misogyny between the abusers and those tasked with enforcing the law and child protection. There's an obvious case for council officials and police officers to be investigated, for digging up the roots of this casual attitude to grooming and rape. Sackings should follow and, if the CPS deems it appropriate, prosecutions where there is evidence the law has been broken. The 1,400 girls and young women victimised by the paedophile gang deserve nothing less, as do children everywhere at risk because of lackadaisical institutions. The last thing needed is political point scoring. That is exactly how not to write about child sex crimes. This is why I'm going to pick on Louise Mensch. From the salubrious surrounds of her upper westside apartment, last night our failed Tory MP-turned Murdoch shill proclaimed in a series of tweets everything that was wrong in Rotherham.
Labour has many questions to answer as a party. I will not shrink from saying Rochdale Rotherham Bradford all Labour, Trojan horse bham Lab
— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) August 26, 2014
Now we have local Rotherham Labour MP @sarahchampionMP calling 2013 abuse "historic" not calling her Labour Cllr colleagues to be prosecuted
— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) August 26, 2014
Where the hell is John Healey MP? Where is Kevin Barron MP? Not talking b/c holidays? 1400 Rotherham children raped, councillors blamed
— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) August 26, 2014
When a number of tweeters pointed out that by her logic the Tory party also has some very serious questions to answer about Jimmy Savile et al, the reply came:
Don't whataboutery on Jimmy Savile please when children doused in petrol at 11, gang-raped and trafficked in racial/religious hate crime
— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) August 26, 2014
If you're going to roll in muck, don't be shocked if you attract a few flies. Mensch's line of argument has been picked up in the press today, and UKIP are running with it - as you might expect. After all, force a police and crime commissioner to step down and they have a reasonable chance of picking up the position and the patronage that comes with it. There are a couple of things worth noting with here. One is a shift in how social services work. As Paul from Though Cowards Flinch put it last night:
I see everyone on twitter is now an expert on Child Sexual Exploitation, including those who'd never heard the term this morning #Rotherham
— Paul Cotterill (@Bickerrecord) August 26, 2014
The CSE horror in #rotherham coincides entirely with the rise of managerialism and allied loss of professional autonomy is social work.
— Paul Cotterill (@Bickerrecord) August 26, 2014
Sadly, #rotherham will bring moves to further remove professional autonomy and enhance managerialist doctrine.
— Paul Cotterill (@Bickerrecord) August 26, 2014
Paul is, of course, right. Social service departments across the land have been stripped of professional autonomy. The judgements of expert specialists have been trumped by a tier of local authority managers for whom their real concerns are the bottom line and career advancement. It's not just social services or councils. Teaching, nursing, social security, everywhere you look the public service ethos is being stripped out in favour of arbitrary targets, be they assessment scores, turn around times, or semi-official application caps. Against the backdrop of such a culture the needs are service users come second and perverse priorities - such as not being seen to be racist, as per Rotherham - come to the fore. As the crucible of this horrifying case things at the local authority and the police need looking at very carefully. But this is not enough: nothing less than a public inquiry and consultation into the prevailing culture of how our services are run is sufficient. On the transparent attempt to damage Labour nationally by making out the local party in Rotherham was up to its neck in paedophiles, it is worth remembering that political parties do not run local authorities. They do not make day-to-day operational decisions or manage staff. Their job is to set the strategic priorities of a council, provide political direction, hold the officers (i.e. senior management) to account, and ensure the casework brought to their attention by residents is done. During my time scrutinising a local authority up-close, I lost count of the times senior officers circumvented elected member decision-making, and manipulated it by misrepresenting facts, telling porkies or failing to pass information on to the councillor nominally overseeing their area of work. Thankfully, none of these matters were especially serious in the grand scheme of things. Therefore what was the political culture like in Rotherham? Did senior officers inform the politicians that a sex abuse epidemic was happening in the town? I don't know, that is something to be established. If that was not passed on then appropriate action must be taken against officers who so acted. Likewise, if any Labour councillors were aware of what happened and turned a blind eye, or took part in a cover up, then they should be prosecuted under the law. It really is that simple.
Observant readers may have noticed a small change round these parts. If you're not among them, let your eyes float the the top of this page. There, nestling along with Home and About are seven new buttons; Sociology, Economics & Politics, Far Left, Gender, Sex, Books, and Games. Now, we know how unwieldy search and archiving functions are on blogs. If you're trying to find a half-remembered blog post either the search buggers up, or you have to wade through dozens and dozens of posts via the archive or label cloud. Not ideal. So I've grouped together a sort of 'greatest hits' by theme. It's not entirely comprehensive. There's a poor showing from before October 2012, but this has more to do with lack of time going back and mending broken photo links than anything else. The buttons are more or less straight forward, but a few words are necessary. Sociology covers loads of stuff. Here you can find posts on the character of capitalism, celebrity, class, Marxism, social theory, and sociology (i.e. case studies, methods, sociologically-informed commentary, etc. Economics & Politics is the writing on the issues of the day. What you might call economic commentary is in there, alongside class and labour movement politics; and party politics proper. Tories, Labour, LibDems, UKIP, Greens, they all have their bits. And for the few Stokies who care about such things, there's a little section on local politics too. Sadly, I have written enough for the Far Left to have its own section. Here you will find comment and polemic on the far left as a whole, as well as meditations on Left Unity, Respect, the SP, SWP, etc. etc. Gender is self-explanatory, really. Sections here take in feminism, masculinity, intersectionality, and ... science fiction. Sex isn't just about the old 'how's your father', it covers sexuality too - hence there's a lot of toe-treading/tank-parking with gender. Ranging from the chin-strokey to the tabloid, this is where you'll find the stuff other politics bloggers dare not write about. Books are book reviews and comments about books. Novels and heavy duty social theory, it's all there. Last but not least there's Video Games. Readers yet to come to terms with Space Invaders might be sorry to hear that I'll be peddling more video game writing in the near future. A diet of Tory skulduggery can only nourish me for so long. Them's the buttons. Get pressing.
The 1970s. A time of social dislocation, strife, dodgy fashions, and brilliant music. As it is August bank holiday, for your consideration here are the greatest dance songs of the 1970s. So you rock dinosaurs out there that means no Bowie, Sweet, Eagles or Bay City Rollers. In is soul, disco, and electronica. And perhaps the odd bit of bubblegum too. As is usually the case, there's bound to be a glaring oversight on my part somewhere. If there is, do let me know. If you want more (of course you do), here are my top 100 dance tunes of the 1980s, the 1990s, and the 00s. Play them loud. Very loud.
Before sitting down to watch the new Doctor Who with Peter Capaldi, there are two things reasons to be optimistically cheerful about. Mr Malcolm Tucker has said no to flirtatious banter with his co-stars. Second, Jenna Coleman might exit at Christmas. This is no reflection on Coleman, she's only playing a part after all. Unfortunately, Clara is a highly problematic: an object that exists solely as a story line, from the get-go she was a wise-cracking, ass-kicking, bum-pinching get-up-and-go-girl; a walking, talking female sonic screw-driver whose sole reason for being was to get the Doctor out of a pickle or two. How can you develop a character after that? Take a deep breath (see what I did there?), the opener of reboot series eight was something of a minor triumph. Not Steven Moffat's greatest work, but probably the best introduction to a new Doctor we've seen. Your Ecclestons, your Tenants, your Smiths, they set a consistent tone that's ran like an annoying thread through seven series and sundry specials: a tendency to overact. Did CapaldiDoc succumb to the same temptation? Having a Scottish Doctor cutting a serious, troubled, and (seemingly) more ruthless jib demands can only work if a clean break is made with Smith's hipster Doctor. The new Doctor lapses into a temporary breakdown and runs around London at night, lamenting over a dinosaur barbecue and scrabbling in bins for clothes. Sanity seemingly returns when he meets back up with Clara to do battle with the automatons slicing 'n' dicing their way through Victorian London for their own dark purposes. As the Doctor struggles to rebalance himself, Clara is conflicted about the transformation. You'd be a mite perturbed if your closest friend had a full person transplant too. In conversation with Madame Vastra she lets rip about how she's not a distraction for the Doctor, that she's a proper person and not a pretty face that turned his head. Could this be anything other than Moffat answering his critics via Clara? There was also a curious meditation on relationships throughout the episode. Whovians know Vastra and Jenny are married. Fair enough, viewers new to the show won't necessarily know that. Yet this was repeatedly emphasised with monotonous regularity. Why? Is Moffat fishing for plaudits for putting a lesbian relationship front and centre in the BBC's flagship kids' show? To portray their marriage well, he might want to be more subtle than every five minutes having a big great megaphone screaming YES THEY ARE LESBIANS DEAL WITH IT. Less is more, Steven. Then there is the Doctor and Clara. Again, as per the break with the previous are-they/aren't-they boyf/girlf flirty tedium of Smith/Coleman, a necessary line had to be drawn under it. And, actually, I think this was handled fairly well. Surprisingly given the tone of the pervious series, it turns out Clara wasn't the one who harboured The-Doctor-is-my-boyfriend fantasies, it was the other way round. The impossible girl was the object of an impossible crush. The other key relationship was that we have with ourselves. The Doctor is confused and is trying to get his bearings as a new person in relation to his predecessors. It's something we as the audience will be doing for a long time to come too. But the monster of the week was a smart choice in this regard too. As the Doctor builds on multiple personalities, the android from the 51st century was approaching personhood by supplementing circuitry and mechanics with bits of people. As they float above London under an inflatable bag of skin, the Doctor lectures the automaton on how his consumption of human parts has transformed him into something beyond the parameters of his programming. The cycles of replacement have so changed him that the essential android, the original before he made like a Kwik-Fit fitter with body parts, no longer exists. This is to the point he cannot tell what was original and what has since been learned and incorporated into his personality. Allegory much. Then there is the closing scene. After getting impaled atop Westminster's Clock Tower (did he jump? Did the Doctor push him?), the android wakes up in a garden. After spending the episode prattling on about the 'promised land', a woman informs him he's made it to heaven. With a sinister overtone she introduces herself as the Doctor's "girlfriend". So we have moved from a companion/Doctor relationship in which we'd been led to believe was suffused with unrequited love on Clara's part to having that upended to a new woman whose love for the Doctor is not so much unrequited as downright stalkery and co-dependent. Just as the new Doctor promised an improvement in the portrayal of women, for inspiration Moffat's new villain channels Fatal Attraction. We'll have to see how this plays out, but going on past form I fear the new season will be scarred by sexism. Again.
Marshajane Thompson is, in her own words, a "Unison activist and general lefty type". She lives in London with her family and used to blog at Union Futures many moons ago. Inbetween work and her union responsibilities, Marshajane tweets here. - You used to blog at Union Futures. Why did you stop? Life, work and twitter got in the way! - What would be your main blogging advice to a novice blogger? That choosing your blog theme will take longer than you think :) But also to update it often and not be afraid to engage when you're called out or disagreed with. - Is blogging different now from when you first started yours? Not really , though there are a lot more blogs now than when I started (wow now I feel old) - Do you find social media useful for activist-y-type things? Yes very, I do quite a lot of activisty type stuff online and organising real life stuff. You'd be surprised at how many members contact me and prefer to talk about their issue over Facebook than email. - Who are your intellectual heroes? Rosa Luxemburg, Keynes, Tony Benn (I know, I'm such a reformist) - What are you reading at the moment? I'm re-reading Tom Paine: A Political Life by John Keane - What was the last film you saw? Frozen (yes I know Disney was a fascist, but hey I love it and my kids are obsessed with it) - Do you have a favourite novel? The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell. - Can you name an idea or an issue on which you've changed your mind? Faith schools (I am now opposed thanks to the political education of some comrades ...) - How many political organisations have you been a member of? UNISON and the broad left in UNISON, Respect (very briefly), Labour Party and Labour Representation Committee. - What set of ideas do you think it most important to disseminate? Equality issues. We do seem to be going backwards in some areas. The myths around immigrants and myths around the welfare state and scroungers. Also, exposing all the tax avoiders and tackling low pay. - What set of ideas do you think it most important to combat? The idea that violence against women and everyday sexism is acceptable. - Can you name a work of non-fiction which has had a major influence on how you think about the world? Recently, The Failed Experiment – and how to build an economy that works by Andrew Fisher fits that bill. - Who are your political heroes? Tony Benn (again) and Peppa Pig. She is apparently a "feminist, communist, gay rights-loving pig spouting dangerous left wing propaganda. - How about political villains? Thatcher (obviously), but also Cameron and Blair - What do you think is the most pressing political task of the day? Defeating the neoliberal consensus - If you could affect a major policy change, what would it be? Getting rid of all the changes in the awful welfare reform and universal benefit crap and having a decent social security support level. - What do you consider to be the main threat to the future peace and security of the world? At the moment the situation in Gaza is awful and we should be doing all we can to assist Palestine and free Gaza. - What would be your most important piece of advice about life? To have broad shoulders, there will always be someone (or many ones) ready to have a go and knock you down. Have confidence to keep going but also admit when you are wrong (not that I have learnt any of that yet :p) - What is your favourite song? Better Man by Pearl Jam - Do you have a favourite video game? Still love Mario, but also Rayman - What do you consider the most important personal quality? Confidence - What, if anything, do you worry about? Literally everything, I can worry about the smallest things (like that I still haven't packed yet for my weekend away because I'm a week late with this :) ) to things that really matter like my kids. - And any pet peeves? Being ignored. - What piece of advice would you give to your much younger self? To relax more - What do you like doing in your spare time? Spare time??? Mostly any spare time I have is at the caravan with my family :) - What is your most treasured possession? My phone obviously! - Do you have any guilty pleasures? Not what you can put on your blog! - What talent would you most like to have? Some willpower - If you could have one (more or less realistic) wish come true, what would you wish for? An unlimited amount of shoes. - How, if at all, would you change your life were you suddenly to win or inherit an enormously large sum of money? It wouldn't, I often have hypothetical arguments with my family because they correctly moan that if I did come into any money I would give it away or waste it on politics :) - If you could have any three guests, past or present, to dinner who would they be? Kurt Cobain, Angelina Jolie, Karl Marx - Socialism. Will you live to see it? No
Our Nige is standing in South Thanet (at last!). The party's pledged to take minimum wage earners out of income tax (and, whisper it, cutting the top rate for the very richest too). Prominent kippers gaffe, gaffe, and gaffe again. Admiring Hitler's demagoguery? Calling a Thai supporter "ting-tong"? It's so much water off a racist duck's back. Yet whatever they try, this silly season just isn't that interested in the doings of UKIP. With a low profile, some might be tempted to rule them out of contention for next year completely. After all, it's a rule of electoral gravity that protest voters happy to lend their vote to populist rabbles inbetween general elections return to their homes when ballots really matter. Will that be the case with UKIP? They topped the European polls in May with 4.4m votes (27.5%) and record an average score in the range of 11-15.5% in local council by-elections. The polls tell the same story. When asked explicitly about general election voting intentions, 17, 18, 19 - even 21% are not unknown. How reasonable can we expect a vote collapse and an exodus that would disproportionately benefit the Tories? I would be surprised if UKIP's vote dips beneath 10% next May (assuming Scotland decides to stay - a yes vote might boost the party further). There are a couple of reasons for this. First off, British politics entered properly new territory after the 2012 Corby by-election, the last 'conventional' parliamentary by-election this parliament. Since then, regardless of who holds the seat, UKIP have come second. This underlines their character as an anti-politics protest party with the capacity to do well everywhere as fed up voters succumb to temptation and give Westminster the finger. The drivers of anti-politics are well established, and need not be repeated here. That said economics, culture, and gender all play their part. This anti-politics vote is pretty volatile. The LibDems used to benefit from its less virulent forms, as do the SNP, Plaid Cymru and Greens to greater and lesser extents. The BNP panicked official politics because it fished well from this pond for a short while. UKIP also have well before their current turn in the sun. Remember, Farage has been a professional politician since 1999. As is well known, this disproportionately affects the Tories but UKIP benefit from general discontent - they drink deep from the main parties' electoral run-off. Unfortunately, most political comment operates as if this "run-off" is all there is. UKIP attract more Tory supporters because they too are a right-wing party, albeit one unafraid of putting the boot into immigrants and Europe. For most of UKIP's history, this has been the case. But since the Coalition was formed, Farage and friends have benefited from an organic crisis in the Conservative Party. They have demographic trends against them, whole swathes of the country are electoral no-gos, the Tory grass roots have yellowed and withered, and they're so beholden to the city that as a party of business, they are outright dysfunctional for British capital-in-general. Dave's half-arsed "modernisation" - embracing equal marriage and equality for LGBT, women, and minority ethnicities, and faux toughness toward Europe - has exacerbated long-term decline and delivered activists by the blue-rinsed brigade load to UKIP. He hasn't really moved away from the Thatcherite Toryism his misanthropic membership hold dear, but it appears otherwise. Because UKIP's growth is underpinned by the crisis of British conservatism, a lot of these people will not be going back. They are fundamentally and irreconcilably alienated from the Conservatives' direction of travel. That's why anyone betting on a collapse in UKIP support, like a number of "professional" commentators I could mention, is very foolish indeed. Don't take it from me, though. Look at the evidence. Cast your mind back to the early 1980s. Labour was bingeing on internal strife as factions duked it out in a no holds barred battle for the party's direction. In March 1981, the so-called Gang of Four - David Owen, Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins and Bill Rodgers led a right-wing split from Labour. The new Social Democratic Party could eventually count on a parliamentary phalanx of 28 former Labour MPs (and one Tory). It would stand as the Alliance (with the Liberals) in 1983 and 1987 before merging and creating the modern Liberal Democrats in 1988. The SDP attracted all kinds to its banner but, as you might expect, it was most appealing to soft and moderate Labour supporters - just as UKIP does to hardened Tories. Furthermore, the SDP's support did not evaporate in the 1983 general election. Compared with 1979 (where the Liberals got just shy of 14%) the SDP arguably brought about 10% to the Alliance's vote tally. It was less the Falklands and "the longest suicide note in history" that did for Labour. It was the product of their own crisis: the SDP. Subsequently in 1987 the SDP vote held up, the Alliance slipping by just 2.8%. The SDP performed well because it was an outcome of the organic crisis in Labourism. Electoral precedent is no iron law, but the British electorate have form for voting in substantial numbers for political alternatives under certain circumstances. After the crisis in Toryism exploded into the open, looking back at UKIP's general election scores for 2010 and 2005 is misleading. Now the present day party is as much a product of crisis as the SDP was, what happened back then is a better indicator of UKIP's performance next May. Add that to hundreds of thousands of voters in the habit of voting for them in second order election after second order election, those polls might not inflate UKIP support by a great deal at all. UKIP's vote is not going to collapse. There will be no significant drift back to the Tories.
You don't have to be steeped in social theory to realise that the kind of society we live in is bound to have a huge impact on the things that happen in that society. And yet social movement scholarship these last 20 years has acted as if this law of sociological gravity does not apply. But when the theoretical perspective that consistently gives the weight of wider social relations due recognition is Marxism, you can understand why some scholars might prefer to fight shy of integrating capitalism into the analysis of movements. But it's not just a matter of political reticence. The kind of Marxism passed off as Marxism is mechanical, clunky, economically determinist and crudely reduces everything to narrow understandings of class. If that's Marxism then, how could it possibly make sense of social movements around women, race, sexuality, disability and nationality? Well, in my opinion, it can. And so do social movement scholars Gabriel Holland and Jeff Goodwin. Given the history of social theory since the unlamented demise of the USSR, sometimes the basics of a Marxist approach need restating time and again. Their 'The Strange Disappearance of Capitalism from Social Movement Studies' article in the excellent (but ludicrously expensive) Marxism and Social Movements does just this. Here's a segment summing up why Marxian methodology is vital for getting to grips with all kinds of movements.
Capitalist institutions (factories, railroads, banks, and so on) or institutions that capitalists may come to control (such as legislatures, courts and police) are often the source or target of popular grievances, especially (but not only) during times of economic crisis; these institutions, moreover, shape collective identities and solidarities - not just class solidarities - in particular ways; they also distribute power and resources unevenly to different social classes and fractions of classes; they both facilitate and inhibit specific group alliances based on common or divergent interests; class divisions, furthermore, often penetrate and fracture political movements; and ideologies and cultural assumptions linked to capitalism powerfully shape movement strategies and demands. The effects of capitalism on collective action ... are both direct and indirect (that is, mediated by other processes) and are the result of both short- and long-term processes.
Holland and Goodwin, in Barker et al (eds) 2013, p.85
Stated this way, it's common sense. For a case study on social movement history that operates with these principles, I recommend this book.
Ho, ho, ho, now we know why they call him "Beefy". Yes, regardless of all the horrors scarring the world there's nothing quite like a celebrity dick pic to set social media a-flapping. When Ian Botham tweeted a picture purportedly to be his "old man" this morning, Twitter had one of its periodic meltdowns. Botham himself denies all knowledge:
@RobbieSavage8 yes mate just changed my password !!! There's some idiots out there !!
— Ian Botham (@BeefyBotham) August 18, 2014
Sure you were hacked, Ian. The just-visible chin of said willy-wafter bears no resemblance to yours at all. No awkward questions from Lady Botham then. Perhaps his 1994 autobiography was sub-titled Don't Tell Kath for a reason. A couple of points of interest. First, the celeb angle. The internet groans under the weight of celebrities who've got their bits out. Whether freeze frames from mainstream film and TV, wardrobe malfunctions, long-lens shots, and the invasive upskirt picture, there's a ready trade in such fare. Some, okay, a lot of this is sexual. The celebrity system exploits sex appeal after all, whether consciously or not. Celeb nudity is the next logical step. It allows the aura of fantasy surrounding them to be pushed even further. Yes, believe it or not, there will be those who have enjoyed Botham's faux pas in an altogether different way. But this kind of aura is increasingly old hat. It belongs to a bygone age where celebrities were more distant, where there was a certain deference. Now we live with an everyday tabloid sensibility. Whereas the media once made celebrity sacred, reality television and social media have coloured them profane. While it is useful to be famous for a talent, it's no longer a prerequisite. The growth of celebrity culture, the websites, blogs, magazines and ents sections demands an infinite procession of famous people to build up and knock down. Celebrity nudity is just so much disposable fodder for the machine. Lucrative fodder, it has to be said. Even mainstream sites like The Huffington Post have top tens of full-frontal nudity. If a "leaked" sex tape, a scene, papped nakedness or whatever hits the internet it's clickbait for the few who get hold of it first. They also get to hog the search engines for the related keywords too. The greater the number of celebrities, the greater the likelihood someone else in the public eye will get their bits and bobs out. From the perspective of the one-handed internet wanderer, the interchangeability of celebrity segues seamlessly into the disposability of porn. As some pour over drug issues, relationship problems, outrageous behaviour and the rest, so others skip from naked celeb to naked celeb. There is no difference between people who get their kicks from celebrities who parade their lives as opposed to those who get off on their bodies. For both, there is something about exposure that captures their imagination, be it erotic or otherwise. The laying bare of bodies and lives, the thrill of peering at things that shouldn't be seen or known, it removes what's left of a celebrity aura and repositions them as everyday people one may gossip or secretly/not-so-secretly fantasise about. It constitutes a simulacra of familiarity, and illusion of an easily-accessed personal and sexual closeness. Also, Botham's tweet says something about sexuality in the media age. His is not the first celebrity John Thomas to be tweeted, nor will it be the last. It seems to be a cultural thing. I have heard women complain about getting cock shots from complete strangers on dating sites, yet none of my male friends have ever mentioned the appearance of a random vagina in their inbox. So why men (not all men)? Some of it comes from a dark place - of the tawdry, creepy thrill of harassing women knowing there's vanishingly little chance of a comeback. For others it's a case of masculine projection. Who needs a fancy sports car when all you require is a camera to show you've got a big dick? Conditioning both is a stunted sexuality focused almost entirely on genitalia. It's easy to blame porn for this, with its gratuitous crotch shots and close ups of the action. Yet I think this is more symptom than cause, and is rooted in the indissociable relationship between masculinity and sexuality. Dipping your wick, as it were, remains a key marker of straight manliness among men. It's the notches on the bedpost, a quantifying of desirability and being a lad that matters. Women are passive bodies, objects whose own agency has to be overcome for the all-important conquest. Women's sexual pleasure is secondary to their incorporation into a narcissistic project of self. If this is the sexual culture many men are socialised into, it conditions intimacy in particular ways. There is the (gendered) separation between love and sex, waxed over by relationship experts, agony aunts and uncles and Mars/Venus-style life coaches. More importantly for the cock shots, there is a failure of erotic imagination. Because genital heterosexuality is about gratifying and impressing other men, men are left ill-equipped to establish a rapport with women. So, instead, they go with what a woman has to do to turn them on, but reverses it. For example, if a woman sends them a message with a pic of her genitals and the line "come and get me" they know it would work for them. So why wouldn't sending a dick pic have the same effect? Especially as porn and your Lothario mates show women are gagging for it just as much. It projects one's sexual outlook onto others and makes assumptions about women's motivations, precisely because genital sexuality positions them without agency. Hence when these kinds of online advances are spurned, it's either because the woman is frigid or fussy. Not because sending a photo of your penis is entirely inappropriate.
