Category: Blog posts

Part one of a two part essay investigating how sexual and gender oppression are inherent within capitalism.

Originally published in ByLine, 12 August 2015

My thesis is that the history of sexual relations has always been connected with our economic system. More specifically I argue that modern sexual oppression, and how we understand sexual freedom, is inherently linked to capitalism.

So how is this the case, and why is it important? In an essay split over two parts I am going to look at how sexual relations developed via capitalist society, and how this continues to play out today.

In part one I am going to go back in time and look at sexual relations before capitalist society. It is through understanding the history of sexual relations, I argue, that we understand them today.

                                                                           ***

When I first came out as gay at the age of 16 I remember my mum being worried my sexuality would make life more difficult for me. It was a genuine concern, and as a nervous sixteen year old, it was one of the big fears I had as well.

In reality, for me, it has not been the case. Being white, middle class, and from a wealthy city in Australia I’m doing pretty well for myself. I can honestly say that, as far as I’m aware, I’ve never been on the receiving end of any major life-changing discrimination.

This is a sign of great achievement. Of all areas of society, sexual and gender relations have probably seen the greatest shift over the past fifty years. It is easy to forget that at the birth of the second-wave feminist and gay liberation movements in the 60s and 70s women were still largely expected to live their entire lives in the home, while homosexuality remained illegal in most Western countries. Discussion of sex in the public sphere was extremely taboo. Much has certainly changed.

Yet, look a little deeper and at the same time little has changed as well. While gays can increasingly marry, other queers still face significant poverty, discrimination and violence. While some woman are reaching the top of our power structures, the wage gap remains seemingly intractable, violence against women takes lives every day of the week, and restrictions remain on abortion rights in most of the world. The freedoms we have won seem increasingly only available to a few, with the underlying factors of sexual and gender oppression remaining unmoved.

Why is this the case? Is it a matter of us just needing to be patient, or is it because of something much more fundamental? To answer this question we need to look at why sexual oppression occurs in the first place.

There have been many explanations of why sexual and gender oppression exists. Many feminists, for example, argue that male privilege comes down to a biological need for men to dominate, a need they have managed to exploit over different periods of history. For gays and lesbians the answer is often directed at religion and the massive influence it has had on our society.

I argue however that it comes down to something very different — economics.

To understand this we need to look at the most influential sexual institution in our society — the family. From the moment we are born we are all conditioned with values of the nuclear family. We’re told a simple story: you are destined to grow up, meet the boy or girl of your dreams — always of the opposite sex —, fall in love, get married and have children. You will search for this person from the moment you hit puberty and will not give up until you find “the one”.

This is the story of us all entering the modern nuclear family, a relationship that has a range of values imbued in it. The nuclear family allows us to search for one partner and one partner only. That person will remain with us for the rest of our lives, through thick and thin, in sickness and in health. If the relationship ends, as more and more do these days, it is a failure. And of course you will have children, and if you don’t you will be followed around for the rest of your life being asked “when are you going to have children?” or “why didn’t you have children?”

Many see this as the natural way for humans to mate. In fact many scientists have tried to claim that monogamous unions are rooted in our biology. They use evidence such as the supposed ‘low female libido’ or the existence of monogamous unions in one of our close relatives, the gibbon, to back up these claims. The nuclear family, and the patriarchy that comes with it, is as old as society itself.

This story is based in Charles Darwin’s theory of sexual selection. Darwin argued that due to their need to carry and nurture children women have a great investment in their offspring than men. They are therefore much more hesitant to participate in sexual activity, creating a “conflict” between the two genders.

This conflict leads men and women to negotiate what anthropologist Helen Fisher calls the “Sex Contract”. With women producing such “unusually helpless and dependent offspring” they require a mate who can look after both them and their children. Men however are only willing to do this if they can be guaranteed the child is theirs — otherwise they are investing their resources for the genes of another man. In turn men demand fidelity; an assurance their genetic line is being maintained. A contract is formed — resources for fidelity.

In many ways the Sex Contract is exactly how modern relationships have been formed (more on that soon). However, unlike how many of these theorists have suggested it is not actually a ‘natural’ way for humans to get together. Evidence suggests that early hunter gatherer families actually looked very different to this. Many biologists and anthropologists argue early hunter gather societies lived largely in polyamorous relationships where much of the social stratification we see today was non-existent. In fact anthropologists say people in this period practiced “fierce egalitarianism” — that is egalitarianism that is not just a mistake but a thought-out-process. And this was not just for men — women were largely seen to have a high level of authority and power.

That is not to paint a picture of a “nobel savage”. People lived this way primarily as it allowed their communities to survive. Hunter-gather societies existed as small roaming groups where men hunted and women largely gathered. In these societies community was everything — everyone relied on everyone else in order to survive. As Jared Diamond explains, with no ability or need to store or hoard resources, “there can be no kings, no class of social parasites who grow fat on food seized from others”. This was true as well for our sexual relations. As the co-author of Sex at Dawn Christopher Ryan explains, “overlapping, intersecting sexual relationships strengthened group cohesion and could offer a measure of security in an uncertain world.”

So how did the Sex Contract, and the modern family, arise?

The modern family has grown, changed and adapted significantly since our prehistoric origins, but its modern ideals can be found in the birth of agriculture. Hunter gatherer societies did have gender roles — men hunted and women gathered. But this did not mean women had less control. In fact with hunting being a very hit and miss game, women provided the majority of food, and had significant authority and influence in social and family affairs.

Agriculture however changed this. When we began farming humans began to settle down, and in turn start accumulating. With farming we first developed the concept of private property, a notion that changed our society and our sexual relationships dramatically.

Private property did not necessarily change our gender roles, it just changed the value provided to them. Moving from their position as hunters men began to look after the farm, while women largely stayed in the home looking after domestic duties. As resources were now derived solely from the farm, wealth landed in the hands of men. On top of this, as farming required significant increases in labour capacity, women were increasingly forced to stay at home to look after a growing family.

Here we see a major shift in sexual relations. No longer economically independent, and losing much of the community that existed in hunter-gather periods, women became more dependent on men. But men required something in return. Accumulating wealth they now needed someone to pass that wealth on to. In turn men demanded fidelity — the assurance their children were theirs. Here we see the defeat of “mother right” and matrilineal descent. Friedrich Engels described the impact of this:

“The overthrow of mother right was the world historic defeat of the female sex. The man took command in the home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude; she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children. . . . In order to make certain of the wife’s fidelity and therefore the paternity of his children, she is delivered over unconditionally into the power of the husband; if he kills her, he is only exercising his rights.”

Hence we can see how the rise of agriculture and the class society brought much of our sexual oppression with it. Agriculture, and the idea of private property that came with it, led to the development of the patriarchy, and the loss of much of the sexual freedom that existed in hunter-gather societies. It created our first social stratification.

But this is just the beginning. These changes took hundreds of years but were probably some of the most significant in human history. But it is not the entire story we have to tell.

What happens next is what we’ll explore in part two of this essay.

Welcome to blog five in my sex and society series in conjunction with Left Flank. Today we will ask the question, what’s love got to do with it?

Over the past four posts I’ve spoken extensively about the connection between the nuclear family (whether gay, lesbian, straight or other) and our class and capitalist society. But, how does that connect to relationships today? Relationships aren’t about economics; they’re about love.

So what does love have to do with it?

***

#Lovewins. That was the message from Friday’s Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage in the United States — a message from the marriage advocates, the President and even Justice Anthony Kennedy, who it was said wrote a “love letter to marriage — and gay marriage” in his ruling. In turn, the decision not only codified the connection between love and marriage, but effectively defined what love is — a love based around “fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family.”

But, since when has love been part of marriage? And why are our ideals of love based in the ideas of fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family? 

The idea of romantic love has clearly been an important part of our society for centuries. Way back in the 1500s William Shakespeare was writing plays in which people literally killed themselves because they couldn’t be with the person they loved.

Yet, despite much of this historic imagery, love has only played a major role in marriage for the past two to three centuries. As I’ve argued in my past posts marriage was all about economics with too much love being thought of as a threat to the institution. Love, it was seen, was best expressed outside the main union of marriage. Researcher Stephanie Coontz uses the French as an example:

Most societies have had romantic love, this combination of sexual passion, infatuation, and the romanticization of the partner. But very often, those things were seen as inappropriate when attached to marriage. The southern French aristocracy believed that true romantic love was only possible in an adulterous relationship, because marriage was a political, economic, and mercenary event. True love could only exist without it.

So how did love become part of modern marriage and what does it say about relationships today?

In my past two posts (on capitalism and women’s oppression and capitalism and gay oppression) I spoke about how the rise of industrial capitalism fundamentally changed the nature of the family. With people moving into the city, workers were able to live more independently of each other, in turn not relying so heavily on the bonds of the nuclear family.

This didn’t just have impacts on the power structures of relationships (as I’ve argued in those posts), but on the very fundamental question of why people entered relationships in the first place.

In previous centuries marriages was seen more as a contract between families, primarily designed to ensure financial stability. Families therefore played an important role, with parents in particular providing the resources and dowry required to make a marriage work. Families even used to attend a couple’s honeymoon, which was at the time seen more as a communal affair to reinforce new familial relationships.

But as people moved away from the land and into cities they relied far less on their families for economic stability. Working in factories, the working class was able to disconnect itself somewhat from family ties. Women, for example, were even able to start earning so they could pay their own dowry. Hence love became a greater motivating factor in relationships. This also occurred at the same time as the French and American revolutions, as well as the Enlightenment, which all promoted the ideas of the “right to happiness”. That right, it was seen, extended to relationships as well.

Yet this provided challenges, both for the capitalist class and, in particular, women. As noted before, while capitalism threatened to destroy the nuclear family, it also required it to survive more than ever. Love based marriage was seen as a major threat: “There was a fear that love would, in fact, lead not only to divorce but to out-of-wedlock sex and childbirth.” Initially the ruling class responded by trying to reinforce the traditional family ties. But young lovers kept at, meaning capitalism was required to adapt. And here the problem women faced in this new regime played directly into the hands of ruling social interests.

The problem for women was that while marriages now became about love, men still held the upper hand. In previous centuries the legal doctrine of coverture had been developed — a legal precedent that meant married couples were seen as one person, a person controlled by the man. As industrial capitalism grew this doctrine remained intact. Men maintained all of their power, making life much more difficult for women. In the old world, with marriages being arranged, women could be assured of a secure economic future. But now, in a love-based system, they were required to fight for that future — they had to prove they loved their man more than anyone else could.

Hunter Oatman Stanford argues women did this by becoming the perfect homemaker. The “cult of the domestic” was developed, “centering on a stereotype that desexualized women and made child-rearing their primary goal. In her role as a domestic angel, the perfect wife was completely pure in body and mind, submitting to her husband’s erotic advances, but never desiring or initiating sex herself.” To survive in a relationship a woman had to submit fully, proving both that she could look after her man, and more importantly that she had no sexual desires for other men (otherwise there was a threat that she would procreate with another man).

This standard was developed and pushed heavily by the ruling class. Having lost the battle against love-based marriage, this was the next best alternative. Queen Victoria for example was an advocate both for love-based unions, with her wedding in particular setting many of the traditions we still have today. Yet, Victoria was also an advocate for female puritanism. And here our standard narrative of love was developed — you fall in love with one person and that is who you stick with “till death do you part”. This form of love is key to your happiness. We are taught from the moment we are born that we are all destined to fall in love, and those who “can’t” or “won’t” are deeply questioned in our society, immediately thought of as sad and lonely.

This love has been devotedly sold to us as consumers also. From the very early days romance became an important commodity, with white weddings costing thousands of dollars, and celebrations such as Valentine’s Day pushing people to buy lavish gifts for their loved ones. If you did not spend money on your other half, you clearly did not love them enough. This had dual benefits. Businesses were able to develop new multi-billion dollar industries based around romance, and in doing so they could reinforce the ideals of the modern nuclear family that is still required for the reproduction of capitalist society.

We can see this best in modern campaigns around same-sex marriage and the SCOTUS decision on the weekend. Same-sex marriage provides an interesting intersection between love and capitalism.

Love has played a major role in same-sex marriage campaigns. Campaigns have been based on the idea of “equal love”, which states that same-sex couples deserve equal recognition (i.e. equal access to the state institution) because we love each other as much as heterosexual couples. In doing so marriage equality campaigns have actively reinforced many of the norms of modern love (as we saw in Justice Kennedy’s ruling) — either through reinforcing the ideas of monogamy or on the other side actively rejecting the idea of polyamory as a valid form of love.

But all of this has occurred with an economic basis to it. Marriage equality advocates have touted the list of federal benefits marriage brings to couples, while campaigns have emphasised the economic benefits marriage equality can bring a nation. There has even been a growth in a childbirth industry for same-sex couples — primarily focused around expensive surrogacy programs. Same-sex couples (despite some conservative rhetoric) have increasingly been expected to participate in child rearing, in turn doing their part to provide the next generation of capitalist workers.

This is the story of last week’s SCOTUS ruling, and same-sex marriage campaigns in a broader sense. Last week was a win for one particular form of love — love now defined by the state and based primarily in the needs of our economic system. That’s why you see conservatives arguing same-sex couples need to defend the “traditions” of marriage when they enter it. To gain access to the benefits of marriage you have a responsibility to stick to the norms of love is based upon. #lovewins, yes, but only a very particular type of love.

That’s what love has to do with it!

Now, I hope you all enjoy the Frank Sinatra, or maybe the Tina Turner I have inadvertently put in your head because of this post.

– See more at: http://left-flank.org/2015/06/29/sex-and-society-5-love-marriage/#sthash.zxlncBTv.dpuf

Over the weekend my partner and I went and saw The Stanford Prison Experiment at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

For those of you who don’t know about it, The Stanford Prison Experiment was carried out by the psychologist Philip Zimbardo in the 1970s. Zimbardo set up a make-shift ‘prison’ in the basement of Stanford University, recruiting volunteers to either be ‘guards’ or ‘prisoners’. He then intended to observe how the guards and prisoners acted over a period of two weeks. You can find out more about the experiment here.

Zimbardo’s experiment only lasted five days. The guards became abusive, both physically and psychologically even within the first 24 hours, and soon enough it was becoming very clear the experiment was significantly harming the prisoners. After immense pressure Zimbardo called the whole thing off.

While I originally thought this movie was going to be a documentary, it was actually a re-enactment of the experiment. The director and production team used tapes and transcripts to recreate what happened in the experiment almost directly. And in doing so they created a unique psychological thriller. I had always thought the experiment ended up much more violently than it did. While there definitely was a little bit of physical abuse, most of the abuse was actually psychological — guards degrading and teasing prisoners until breaking point. And that was far more interesting than some physical fights.

For me, the Stanford Prison Experiment has always been interesting. It provides a unique insight into the state of the human mind, and in particular the nature of the prison industrial complex. As I have been working on Forgiveness — focusing on the life of someone after they have left prison — I have become interested in it even more.

Most people find the Stanford Prison Experiment horrifying because of what the guards did. How, even knowing the prisoners had done nothing wrong, could they get so abusive so quickly? Is human nature that bad that just given the right settings we will quickly turn around and abuse anyone we can at the drop of a hat? Are we really that bad?

While clearly this is fascinating, I think the impact the experiment had on the prisoners is also fascinating. Most of the prisoners became immediately submissive to the abuse of the guards, simply following orders even knowing they, in reality, didn’t have to. They lost all of their power in a moment, not even willing to stand up to the abuse the guards doled out.

The movie concluded with a range of interviews with the different participants, recreated exactly based on transcripts of interviews the research team conducted after the experiment was done. In one of these one of the prisoners said that even within the five days he felt he started to lose his identity — he started to forget who he was at all. Even in five days he became a number (all the prisoners were referred to by their numbers) and not a person.

If that’s what happened in five days, then imagine what would happen within five years? Or even ten or twenty or thirty? I can’t, in all honesty, imagine it. I hope I never do.

In my book I am attempting to write about someone who has left prison after fifteen years. The impact of those years is clearly huge impact on my character — it defines everything about his life after being released. But what watching the Stanford Prison Experiment made me think is, who actually is my character? I have spent a long time thinking about what my character was like before he entered prison, hoping to draw some form of identity to shape him afterwards. But is prison actually such an influence that is strips people entirely of that identity, leaving them with one based solely on the crime they’ve committed and the time they’ve spent inside?

Obviously I will (hopefully) never actually know that. Only people who have actually been to prison can give us that answer. But The Stanford Prison Experiment certainly gives us some clues, and those clues are terrifying.

As part of my running series with the people at Left Flank, today I bring you part four of Sex and Society: Capitalism and Gay Oppression. If you haven’t read the other pieces, stop, and go back. They are here, here, and here.

Otherwise, march on!

***

I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I’m a Conservative.

This statement by British Prime Minister David Cameron was heralded by many as a major win for gay and lesbian people. Lesbian and gay rights had now, it seemed, moved away from being a narrow concern of the Left to become a mainstream issue. With that, full equality was now within reach.

But what did Cameron’s statement actually signify? Did it indicate a final push towards full emancipation of gays and lesbians, or did it instead amount to the integration of gays and lesbians into the structures of the oppressive nuclear family?

In this blog post we’re going to explore the history of queer oppression, and how gays and lesbians have been slowly brought into the fold of the capitalist family.

***

Let’s start a little bit with a note on language. Debates about rights for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, trans*, intersex, queer and other sexual minorities are full of language issues, so it is important to get it right. First, I will use the term “queer” or “queer oppression” whenever I am talking about anyone who does not fit gender or sexual norms — anyone who is not a cis heterosexual person. However each group within this queer umbrella face different issues, so when required I will specifically name each group I am talking about. Given the focus for this blog I will be primarily focusing on “gay oppression” — i.e. oppression targeted at gay men and lesbians.

Where does queer oppression originate?

Modern perceptions of anti-queer feelings a based primarily on the idea they are based in “fear”. Hence the terms “homophobia”, “transphobia” or “queerphobia”. Patrick Strudwick argues that fear underpins the majority of anti-gay sentiment:

Being anti-gay is, without exception, at least partly fuelled by fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of unwanted sexual attention, fear of gender roles being flouted, fear of humanity being wiped out by widespread bumming, fear of a plague of homosexuals dismantling marriage, the family, the church and any other institution held vaguely dear. And, of course, never forget: fear of what lurks repressed and unacknowledged in the homophobe. Irrational fear. It’s a phobia, people.

In mainstream debate this fear is boiled down to narrative of an “inherent conservatism” within our society, based primarily in religious teachings. Hence a teaching of queer history that largely ignores anything prior to the Stonewall Riots of 1969. Much like the story of the patriarchy, queer oppression, we have been told, is as old as society itself.

Unlike the story of the patriarchy however it is much easier to look back in history and find multiple examples that disprove this idea. The most commonly used example is Ancient Greece — a society in which homosexual sex was elevated, seen as “the most praise-worthy, substantive and Godly forms of love.” Yet it is not just in Greece where we find this — we see varied and more progressive approaches to gay and lesbian activity in places varying from Russia to Africa.

So why then, did gays and lesbians suffer oppression in some societies and not others?

To answer this it is worth looking at queer oppression before the rise of industrialised capitalism. Britain for example has seen a long history of repression of homosexual activities. 1533 King Henry VIII introduced the “Buggery Act”, which mandated death for anyone convicted of “buggery” — a term used for any non-procreative sex, which was considered a “crime against nature.” This sort of oppression lasted well into the 1900s.

What was the reason for this? The answer connects largely to the source of the nuclear family as it existed prior to the rise of industrial capitalism — an institution developed based on a need for labour resources to create economic surplus and wealth (primarily in this time to provide labour for farms). Queer sex and activities presented a threat to this norm, and in turn, in particular during times of economic need, these activities were actively repressed. Sherry Wolf describes this when discussing the North American colonies of New England:

The need for labor in the colonies fuelled efforts by New England churches and courts to outlaw and punish adultery, sodomy, incest, and rape. Extramarital sex by women, who were considered incapable of controlling their passions, was punished more severely than extramarital sex by men.

How has this translated during the rise of industrial capitalism? Just as industrialised capitalism had the potential to break the bonds of the patriarchy, John D’Emilio notes it also had the capacity to lead to greater freedoms for gays and lesbians. As noted in previous blogs capitalism weakened the foundation of family life as it brought people away from rural family life into more autonomous lives in the city. This is why Engels predicted capitalism would lead to the end of the proletarian family. This breakdown of the traditional family also allowed for greater autonomy for gays and lesbians. Yet, with this came a problem. While industrial capitalism opened the potential for the breakdown in the family unit, capitalists required families to stay together more than ever — primarily so they could reproduce the next lot of workers. This remains a fundamental contradiction of capitalism.

This contradiction created a very unique situation for gays and lesbians. In The History of Sexuality Michel Foucault argues there have been two significant changes in the way our society approaches sexuality. First sex and our sexual desires shifted from something we simply do into something that reveals a fundamental truth about who we are, and second, with this, we have developed an obligation to see out that truth and express it. As Jesi Egan argues, “within this framework, sex isn’t just something you do. Instead, the kind of sex you have (or want to have) becomes a symptom of something else: your sexuality.”

As industrialised capitalism developed sex shifted from something you just did, to something that formed a core part of your identity. In doing so our capitalist society was able to identify and target people who connected to this identity. It’s worth noting that this is an interesting, and largely positive step forward in society. Industrial capitalism allowed for the development of individuality that was not possible in previous social organisations. Despite attempts to oppress this individuality, as occurred with those with “divergent sexualities” this is largely a positive step forward.

Foucault argues the creation of sexual identities was matched with a scientific approach to sexualities — what he calls Scientia Sexualis. The identification of different sexualities allowed for these sexualities to be “controlled” and “cured”.

This is how anti-gay sentiment manifested in the modern capitalist state. Capitalism created the very foundations of the homosexual identity, but also required that identity to be squashed so it did not mess with the norm of the nuclear family, which the state promoted because the breakdown of family structures caused by capitalism threatened wider social breakdown. Hence a process of scientific identification and treatment — treatment designed to bring those with deviant identities back into the fold.

So how does this all relate today? If queer identities are diametrically opposed to the modern state, why are we seeing conservatives such as David Cameron embracing gay marriage?

It is certainly true that equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans* and intersex people has come a long way in the last 40 to 50 years. In the early days of the gay liberation movement this emancipation was connected to challenging the nuclear family, and in turn the state which promoted and defended it. Queer people demanded liberation from (rather than within) capitalism.

Yet, Cameron’s statement indicates a major shift in this view over the past decades. In recent years gay and lesbian activists have become more focused on gaining acceptance within capitalist structures, rather than fighting them, and capitalists have slowly begun to welcome us with open arms – not least of all because queer communities have been increasingly identified as a locus of accumulation. This has occurred through a range of different means — from campaigns for same-sex marriage, to the promotion of gay and lesbian parenting. Gays and lesbians have gone through a process of “normalisation”, one in which they have become part of the capitalist family instead of standing from the outside opposing it.

I will explore these issues, and others, in my next blog post — where we look at how capitalism sells sex today, and how this has allowed the nuclear family to survive.

– See more at: http://left-flank.org/2015/06/19/sex-and-society-4-capitalism-gay-oppression/#sthash.AoN41xGk.dpuf

Yesterday I got back from an amazing weekend in London.

Taking the trip at the instigation of my friend Tim, who was playing in a show with his band FourPlay and their special gues Neil Gaiman over the weekend I took the opportunity to have a long weekend. Boy, it was worth it!

Last week I was feeling flat, stressed, anxious and overwhelmed. I hurt my back earlier in the week and was struggling to sleep. But, unfortunately I still had heaps of work to do, so I couldn’t just rest and get better. It made for one rather unhappy Simon.

The weekend away made me realise once again how important holidays are. Working as a writer I find that I often end up working all the time — I take my computer wherever I go and it is hard to stop myself from working on that next piece, or editing my books. But just having a few days where I didn’t do any work was amazing for my mental health and enthusiasm. I got to just chill in London — I went to a couple of shows, wandered through the streets, had some beers, went to the Welcome Collection exhibition and met with a few friends. I completely and utterly cleared my head.

I also remembered one other valuable thing — the importance of getting away from my damn computer! Anyone who knows me knows that I rarely go anywhere without my laptop. I almost feel naked without it. I took it to London but after some indecision about it I finally decided I was better locking it away than lugging it around.

For just this one weekend, it was bliss. Not being able to use my computer I didn’t end up sitting at a cafe feeling guilty because I wasn’t writing that piece I needed to get done. There was nothing I could do but read or watch people go by. That was lovely!

And in doing so I realised the power, again, of the pen. Instead of taking my computer around I took my notebook (I always take my notebook wherever I go) and with a bit of a clear head and some inspiration from the FourPlay concert I ended up writing three and half short stories in my notebook. I was that guy who sat late and night with a beer writing things down while everyone else got drunk on their Friday nights. But it felt good. I got away from the constraints of “work” and got to express my creativity in whatever way I wanted. And I came out, I think, with some good stuff. I will try and go over them sometime this week and see if there’s anything worth popping up on here (or sending elsewhere).

So that was London, and a good lesson about getting away, not just from my city, but from my workspace as well. Being creative means being creative about how you go about sometimes, and I learnt that this week.

A couple of other notes.

First, if you ever get the chance you should go and see FourPlay play — particularly if they are teamed up with Neil Gaiman. The concert was just fantastic — a mixture of great original tunes, covers and spoken word backed up with some amazing string music. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute. I also hear they are working on a new and exciting project, so let’s be excited for that!

Second, I also went to the Welcome Collection in particular to see their Institute of Sexology Exhibition. It was excellent. I haven’t been to a museum so creative and well put together in quite a while. Not only were the exhibitions interesting, interactive and informative, but they had regular tours as well as workshops on creative writing and more. And it was all for free! I know I will be back and I think you should head there too.

So London! As I said on Facebook, for me it is still not quite as awesome as Berlin (my favourite city in the world), but it comes pretty damn close!

A couple of weeks ago I reviewed the excellent book, Sex at Dawn. I loved Sex at Dawn and really think everyone should read it. But I ended my review with a word of caution/concern — and here it is explained. 

At its heart Sex at Dawn is science book. Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá outline a vast array of scientific evidence to back up their argument that our sexual history is based on polyamory, not monogamy. But Sex at Dawn also presents a political and moral argument as well. Ryan and Jethá not only talk about the biology of our sexuality, but also make a moral case for the expansion of polyamorous and monogamish relationships in our society. In fact the book dedicates an entire chapter at the end outlining polyamorous movements where they reference authors such as Janet Hardy, Dossie Easton, Dan Savage and more.

I don’t have a problem with this. I think this is a moral argument we should be making. Yet, I am concerned that Sex at Dawn makes this a biologically deterministic argument. We should all be polyamorous because we are “born this way.”

This is the basic thrust of the book. It is heavily focused on biological evidence towards polyamorous relationships, using anthropological and archaeological evidence to then back up the biological claims. I laid out some of the arguments in my review last week, and there are heaps more if you read the book. .

As I am concerned this biological and anthropological evidence is pretty strong. But I am concerned they, and in turn many in the polyamory movement, are relying too heavily on this evidence.

This reminds me a lot of the gay movement. Many lesbian and gay activists have taken on the “we are born this way” mantra; the idea that our society should accept homosexuality because it is just in our genes. There is nothing we can do about it. But as I have argued in the past this argument has stopped us from making a far more convincing argument: that homosexuality should be accepted simply because there is nothing wrong with it.

This is what I fear the biological determinism of Sex at Dawn could lead to. It is an argument that we should all be polyamorous because that is what we are born to do: we should be polyamorous because we cannot escape our biology. This worries me for a few reasons.

Firstly, it ignores the fact that humans have been willing and able to make many active decisions to reject our ‘nature’ for many many thousands of years now. Just look at where we live. We no longer live “natural lives”. In fact, as Ryan and Jethá argue, our bodies are able to adapt to what has often been considered unnatural events — adapting to be able to consume lactose for example. We at experts at destroying our nature and then adapting to unnatural behaviours. Why not be able to do this with sex?

Leading on from this, a biological deterministic approach deny the opportunity for people to make active choices about their sexuality — whether it to be polyamorous or monogamous. I for example have made a very active choice to be polyamorous and I am proud of that choice. That is important to acknowledge. In a society where heterosexual monogamy reigns we have to celebrate the others who have the bravery to make active choices to live outside of this norm — just as well celebrate those who decide to stick with the norms. We must celebrate sexual diversity — something that biological determinism fails to do. Biological determinism just puts us all into little boxes — we are all born this way and just have to deal with it.

Finally, a biologically deterministic approach opens up the potential for continued discrimination for those who make active choices that aren’t scientifically “natural”. I suspect there is nothing natural for example to the use of whips, chains and ropes in sexual activity, just as there is nothing natural to most of our methods of contraception. But that doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with them. These are active sexual choices that people are making and ones we should be celebrating, not ones we should be searching for natural causes of.

And here is the crunch of the matter. Our acceptance of sexual activity should not be based on biology but rather on the measure of ‘harm’. We should not be asking ‘is that act natural’ but rather ‘is that act harmful?’. If the answer to that question is yes then we can have an issue with it, but if not we should leave it alone. Of course harm is subjective and different for many people. We cannot classify it in any stringent way. But it is the only way we can judge sexual practices.

Now, I suspect that if I were to put this to Ryan and Jethá they would probably agree. That is at least what I’ve gathered from what I have read from them so far. Also, this shouldn’t take away from the awesomeness of this book. I still give it five stars and think everyone should read it. But it is something we need to be wary of. If we are going to promote polyamory, or any other sexual choices, we need to do so for radical and moral reasons, not rely on biological determinism.

 

After a couple of week’s break, here is blog three in my series in conjunction with the team at left flank, Sex and Society. Make sure check out blog one (the prehistoric family) and blog two (the rise of the nuclear family) before you read these ones. If you’ve already read them, that welcome to blog three: capitalism and women’s oppression.

How are capitalism and women’s oppression connected?

In my last blog post we discussed the rise of the nuclear family and the connection between the class system and the shift in roles between men and women. This week we’re going to explore how modern capitalism has perpetuated the oppression of women.

 

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Let’s start a little differently however. I think it’s time to bring up the opposition to Engels’ theory of the oppression of women. There has been significant anthropological and scientific debate around the standard narrative of human sexuality, but for the purpose of this blog post I want to focus on the feminist arguments against Engels (a quick thanks to Jasmina Brankovich, who has been debating these issues with me in my first post).

This feminist charge against Engels was led by Simone De Beauvoir, who in her groundbreaking book The Second Sex stated that Engels’s theory is “disappointing” with “the most important problems (are) slurred over”. De Beauvoir’s arguments are complex (check this link to see them in depth), but they boil down to what I call a “naturalist” approach to gendered oppression. De Beauvoir acknowledges that economics has played a role in women’s oppression, but argues this only occurred because men used their superior physical strength to take advantage of shifts in economic circumstances. She contends:

Without adequate tools, he did not sense at first any power over the world, he felt lost in nature and in the group, passive, threatened, the plaything of obscure forces; he dared to think of himself only as identified with the clan: the totem, mana, the earth were group realities. The discovery of bronze enabled man, in the experience of hard and productive labour, to discover himself as creator; dominating nature, he was no longer afraid of it, and in the face of obstacles overcome he found courage to see himself as an autonomous active force, to achieve self-fulfillment as an individual.

In other words the development of tools and agriculture gave men the opportunity they had always been looking for to oppress women — primarily through the domination of nature. As leading feminists such as Sherry Ortner (who builds on De Beauvoir’s work) argue, women — primarily through their capacity to have children — are seen as more connected to nature than men. Hence men expressed their domination not only over nature, but over women as well.

These theories form part of an account of “the patriarchy”. There are lots of different definitions of the patriarchy, but the theory is largely based on the contention that men have oppressed women for all eternity, with this oppression operating rather autonomously from economic circumstances. Different feminists give different reasons for this (i.e. the female connection to nature), but what is key is that the oppression of women operates across historical periods, with men using economic circumstances to work together to continue this oppression. Economic circumstances are therefore not the cause, but a tool used to oppress women.

I will leave these theories to one side for the moment.

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If we want to explore the connection between capitalism and women’s oppression we cannot go beyond the current mainstream form of familial expression — marriage. Marriage today is largely seen through the lens of “love”. Yet, this has not always been the way.

Let’s go back to the standard narrative of human sexuality. This narrative is based on what Helen Fisher calls “The Sex Contract”; the idea, based in Charles Darwin’s theory of sexual selection, that women require men to be able to provide for them and their offspring, while men will not provide those resources unless women ensure fidelity. Men and women engage in a contract — resources for fidelity. This is the ‘nuclear family’ I started to describe in my last blog post.

As I argued last time, the biological determinism of this narrative is incorrect. Yet the economic foundations of modern marriage are surprisingly sound. The question is though, how did this structure maintain itself with the rise of industrialised capitalism?

One of the unique things about industrialised capitalism is that it had the potential to radically change gendered relations within society. With the growth of the factory people flooded to cities, in turn losing much of their small amounts of private property. Industrialised capitalism became an equaliser of sorts — everyone, men and women, were now workers. Women were entering the workforce, with their oppression now occurring through capitalist exploitation. This is why Engels predicted that capitalism would see the end of the proletarian family.

So how is it that even when capitalists were desperately looking for workers to fill their factories women ended up back in the home? Many argue male workers banded together to keep women out. Heidi Hartmann for example argues that male-dominated unions organised to keep women higher paying jobs for men, primarily through excluding women from the workplace. Yet many others disagree with this. In their essay “Rethinking Women’s Oppression”, Johanna Brenner and Maria Ramas argue unions were both too weak to win fights against the inclusion of women, and in many cases they actually worked heavily to benefit women’s economic rights. So what is their answer? Brenner and Ramas look back at biological arguments, arguing that whilst a biological deterministic approach (that dominates the standard narrative) is false, the:

Biological facts of reproduction — pregnancy, childbirth, lactation — are not readily compatible with capitalist production, and to make them so would require capital outlays on maternity leave, nursing facilities, childcare, and so on. Capitalists are not willing to make such expenditures, as they increase the costs of variable capital without comparable increases in labour productivity and thus cut into rates of profit. In the absence of such expenditures, however, the reproduction of labour power becomes problematic for the working class as a whole and for women in particular.

Here was the problem. In the early stages of industrialised capitalism men, women, and children all ended up in the factory. However, as people moved to the cities, the infant mortality rate shot through the roof. In Manchester, for example, there were a recorded 26,125 deaths per 100,000 thousand children under the age of one. This was three times the rate of mortality rater of non-industrial areas.

With the rise of industrialised capitalism workers were robbed of control of production process, and in turn robbed of their capacity to incorporate reproduction into the needs of production. In simpler terms, being forced to work long hours in unsanitary factories made it much more difficult for workers to properly look after their children. And, as Tad Tietze argues, “this created severe problems for the system’s ability to ensure the reproduction of the working class.” Capitalists were watching as their next swathe of workers died in front of their eyes.

Brenner and Ramas argue the creation of the “family-household system emerged as the resolution to this crisis.” The idea of the “family-household system” was introduced by Michèle Barrett in her book Women’s Oppression Today, described as a structure

in which a number of people, usually biologically related, depend on the wages of a few adult members, primarily those of the husband/father, and in which all depend primarily on the unpaid labour of the wife/ mother for cleaning, food preparation, child care, and so forth. The ideology of the “family” is one that defines family life as “ ‘naturally’ based on close kinship, as properly organized through a male bread- winner with a financially dependent wife and children, and as a haven of privacy beyond the public realm of commerce and industry.”

As capitalists were not willing, nor able, to provide services for parents to nurture their children (paid maternity leave, childcare centres, etc.) and with household services (maids, cleaning services, etc.) being too expensive for the working class, women were forced back into the home to look after children and complete domestic duties. As Tietze argues: “The capitalist family thus had to be consciously constructed, with all the coercive and consensual elements of that process — a process involving significant state and extra state mobilisation in terms of ideologies, laws, policies, regulations, work reorganisation, and industrial relations strategies, including settlements around the family wage, etc.” The family-household structure had to be developed in order to ensure the survival of the capitalist system.

That doesn’t mean women stopped working, but when they did they faced particular disadvantages. Brenner and Ramas argue there were particular classes of women who were working at this time; those with children, who were widows and those married to men with unstable incomes. “These women constituted a particularly defenceless and desperate labour pool,” they write. With domestic responsibilities making it difficult to organise in unions and a lack of mobility making it difficult to find better jobs, women were stuck in lowing paying, often part-time work. Hence we see the development of the gender wage-gap — a gap that continues until this day.

Herein lies the roots of female oppression under capitalism — roots we still see today. While some women have broken through the “glass ceiling” the majority still suffer both because of a historical disadvantage they have faced in the labour market, but also due to a capitalist class that is unwilling to provide the resources required to nurture children (which is still largely seen as a woman’s job). Paid maternity leave has been a huge fight, while services such as childcare are expensive and hard to come by. This leaves women still at a disadvantage.

While these roots are economic, however, that cannot explain sexism in its whole. These economic roots have also created cultural realities. There are a number of examples of this, but let’s just look at one: the perception of female sexuality. The repression of sexuality (through ideas that women have low libidos to the medicalisation of female sexuality through the “illness” nymphomania) is perhaps the greatest form of the ideological oppression of women. We (men in particular) are all taught early on in our lives that female sexuality is erratic and therefore the right of men to control. This has been ingrained culturally, and is probably most graphically expressed through continued high levels of sexual and physical violence targeted at women. Yet, if we think about it, this has a material foundation. When women are required to be monogamous the collective oppression of their sexuality is “logical” (although not moral). This is just another way to ensure women complete their economic roles.

Herein sits sexism and misogyny in our society — a system with material roots that expresses itself culturally and economically. Any attempt to defeat women’s oppression therefore requires tackling both sexist culture, and its economic base. We cannot do one without the other.

In my next post I am going to explore the connection between queer oppression and capitalism. I look forward to it!

As part of my research into ‘Sexy Capitalism’ I recently read the book by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá: Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality.

Sex at Dawn for me was a revelation. Well maybe not a revelation, but certainly an exciting and perspective-changing piece of work. The book dives deep into our sexual history and provides a convincing account of how our predominant stories about this history (i.e. that the nuclear family and the patriarchy) is simply false. As the authors state:

“Deep conflicts rage at the heart of modern sexuality. Our cultivated ignorance is devastating. The campaign to obscure the true nature of our species’ sexuality leaves half our marriages collapsing under an unstoppable tide of swirling sexual frustration, libido- killing boredom, impulsive betrayal, dysfunction, confusion, and shame. Serial monogamy stretches before (and behind) many of us like an archipelago of failure: isolated islands of transitory happiness in a cold, dark sea of disappointment. And how many of the couples who manage to stay together for the long haul have done so by resigning themselves to sacrificing their eroticism on the altar of three of life’s irreplaceable joys: family stability, companionship, and emotional, if not sexual, intimacy? Are those who innocently aspire to these joys cursed by nature to preside over the slow strangulation of their partner’s libido?”

The book starts with the premise of what the authors call the “standard narrative of human sexual evolution”. This is not new stuff and if you are a human you are likely to have heard this story many times. It goes something like this (this is the truncated version):

1.) Boy meets girl

2.) Boy and girl asses one another’s mate value from perspectives based upon their differing reproductive agenda/capacities.

– he looks for healthiness and sexual fidelity

– she looks for wealth and social status

3.) Boy gets girl: assuming they meet one another’s criteria, they “mate” forming a long-term paid bond – the “fundamental condition of the human species”

Our stories are normally much more romantic than this, but at the most basic level this narratives dominates our telling of human sexual history.

This story is based on a few assumptions. A woman needs a man who has a high level of wealth and social status to ensure he can protect her and look after their children. In return a man demands fidelity to ensure the children he is looking after are his. A man is not going to spend lots of energy on another’s genes. In doing so monogamy, and male domination over females, is in our nature — it is what we have always done to survive.

Ryan and Jethá however take a contrarian view. They argue this story is not about something that is ‘natural’ but is rather the result of particular social developments. They offer a range of evidence to support this and it is impossible to cover all of it in one review (you should just read the book) but here are a couple of stand outs.

First, Ryan and Jethá look at our closest biological cousins, the apes. What’s interesting here is the many myths that exist within or understandings of apes — primarily because when it comes to sexuality different ape species are very different. For example, many advocates of the standard narrative point to the existence of gibbons, who are completely monogamous, to back up their claims. But as Ryan and Jethá point out, our closest relations are not gibbons, but are in fact, bonobos. And when you look at bonobos you will find a range of interesting behaviours. Bonobos live in female-centered societies, war is rare and absent, and sex serves as an important social function. Bonobos are polyamorous with both male and female apes having regular sex with multiple partners. If you want to look at our extended family therefore, they argue, you are better looking at bonobos than at gibbons.

The authors then back this up with biological and anthropological evidence looking at human beings. Again, so much to cover, but for example, they argue that human sexual organs are evolved to be ready and raring for sex at any time. This evidence ranges from the fact that women can and do have sex at any point in their menstrual cycle (which differs from most mammals) to the existence of male testicles on the outside of the body, which allows men to have sex at any point of time. Beyond this, the two argue that women in particular are biologically evolved to have sex with multiple partners — with evidence ranging women’s ability to have multiple orgasms in a single session (which largely differs from men) to the way in which women make lots of noise during sex (which Ryan and Jethá argue is an adaptation designed so women can call potential other mates during sexual activity).

Finally, Ryan and Jethá use a bunch of anthropological evidence to back up all of these claims. Anthropological evidence around the existence of polyamorous hunter gatherer societies is not new, but this is interesting nonetheless. The authors for example look at the Mosua in China, a polyamorous society in which women and men have sex with many partners and where children are looked after by mothers and their immediate relations (the idea of a ‘father’ is non existent). In this society there is no shame associated with this — people have sex, enjoy it and do it proudly.

Brought together all of this evidence is convincing. Ryan and Jethá produce an extremely excellent piece of work, which, while research heavy is entertaining and very funny. They actively convinced me of our sexual history, leaving me with a greater desire to investigate more into this topic. It is definitely worth a read.

However, and this is a big however, I have a concern. I fear that basing this work on biological determinism (i.e. that ‘polyamory is natural’) could eventually undermine their claims. That is the topic of another blog post however and one to come!

Welcome to blog two of my six part series, Sex and Society. This is a series I am running in conjunction with the awesome folks at Left Flank. If you have not read the first piece: stop! Turn around and go here to read it first. Then come back. If you’ve read that one, please continue!

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How did nuclear families become the norm?

In last week’s post I discussed our prevailing modern story about sex and the family. This story tells us that both monogamy and the patriarchy are inherent to our nature. They are as old as society itself. Yet, as I showed, many anthropologists and biologists strongly argue the evidence suggests something different. In fact during prehistoric times families were largely polyamorous and in lots of societies women had a high level of authority and control.

So how did we get to where we are? That is the topic of this week’s post.

The prehistoric polyamorous and egalitarian societies we discussed last week were disrupted primarily through one invention: agriculture.

Agriculture has probably had the greatest impact of any invention of human society. It fundamentally changed the way we lived. Hunter-gatherer societies lived largely or completely by subsistence. Different societies lived in different ways, but people primarily lived in small roaming clans, rarely settling in a single place for too long. Constantly on the move, we humans had no means, nor need, to hoard resources. We gathered berries, roots and other vegetable growth, or hunted and fished; working only for a few hours per day to gather what we needed to survive.

Agriculture changed all of this. With its development, particularly as processes became more intensive (through the use of the plough and irrigation) humans were suddenly able to extract significantly more resources. We started to accumulate surplus, or what we now call wealth. As Sharon Smith argues:

This was a turning point for human society, for it meant that, over time, production for use could be replaced by production for exchange and eventually for profit – leading to the rise of the first class societies some 6,000 years ago (first in Mesopotamia, followed a few hundred years later by Egypt, Iran, the Indus Valley and China).

Instead of roaming in small clans we settled in towns and on farms to accumulate wealth. We no longer lived by subsistence but instead started trading resources with those around us in order to survive. In turn we had to produce more and more so we could have more resources to trade.

The impacts of this were obviously huge, but not necessarily in a positive way. Scientist and author Jared Diamond for example called this shift “the worst mistake in the history of the human race”. Agriculture brought with it, he said, “the social and sexual inequality, disease and despotism, that curse our existence”. Evidence suggests agriculture resulted in an intensification of work for what ended up being a less varied diet. In turn the health and average life span of communities dropped dramatically.

The egalitarianism of the past disappeared as well. Agriculture led to greater specialisation of labour, creating new social roles. This division created the first social hierarchies — the owning classes who managed resources and the working classes who worked on farms. With the potential for individual economic gain some families became wealthier than others, creating the first stage of our modern class system.

These social changes were felt most deeply within the family. Engels argues that with the development of agriculture men’s roles moved away from hunting and towards looking after the farm. Since men were largely in charge of sourcing protein during hunter-gatherer societies it made sense they continued this role by looking after the domesticated animals of the farm. Moreover, since it was difficult for women to complete heavy agricultural tasks while nursing a child this job landed in male laps. This is a very important shift. The farm or, more specifically according to Engels, domesticated cattle, was the first real private property. Farms and domesticated animals were owned by individuals, rather than belonging to the entirety of the community. Through taking control of agriculture, therefore, men also took control of private property. Men took control of the vast majority of wealth in a society.

This impact was compounded by the fact that agriculture required a greater focus on reproduction. In hunter-gatherer societies families were kept small, with people only reproducing in order to replace existing community members. In fact, the authors of Sex at Dawn, Christopher Ryan and Cacila Jethá, argue there is evidence that hunter-gatherer societies practiced a high level of infanticide — killing off babies that were seen as excess to the needs of the community. This was now all turned on its head. Agriculture required significantly more labour than hunting and gathering, therefore requiring more human resources. Families needed children to help look after their farms. This is why we see a significant increase in population after the development of agriculture. While men were playing a greater role in production, therefore, women’s roles turned more towards reproduction. It was now women’s role to reproduce, to produce workers for the farm.

And here, Engels argued, is how we saw a shift in the power relations of the family. With men now taking control of the production of resources they needed someone who they could pass these resources onto. They needed someone who could inherit the wealth they had built. But in the polyamorous families of the past men had no avenue to do this — they did not know who their children were and, in turn, who they could pass their wealth onto. Hence the new demand for monogamy. Men now demanded monogamy in return for looking after (i.e. providing resources for) women and children. That way they could have a guarantee that the children they were passing their resources onto were their’s. This slowly led to the defeat of the matrilineal society. As men took control of production so did they take control of the family, and then so came the introduction of patrilineal descent. Engels described it like this:

The overthrow of mother right was the world historic defeat of the female sex. The man took command in the home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude; shebecame the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children. . . . Inorder to make certain of the wife’s fidelity and therefore the paternity of his children, she isdelivered over unconditionally into the power of the husband; if he kills her, he is onlyexercising his rights.

What’s important here is that the sexual division of labour did not actually change significantly from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural societies. Men were still largely in charge of the “outside world”, women were still in charge of reproduction and the household. But as class society developed power shifted significantly away from the household, and so the relative influence of the genders shifted as well. In the book Toward an Anthropology of Women Karen Sacks argues:

Private property transformed the relations between men and women within the household only because it also radically changed the political and economic relations in the larger society. For Engels the new wealth in domesticated animals meant that there was a surplus of goods available for exchange between productive units. With time, production by men specifically for exchange purposes developed, expanded, and came to overshadow the household’s production for use… As production of exchange eclipsed production for use, it changed the nature of the household, the significance of women’s work within it, and consequently women’s position in society.

That is the story. Monogamy and the patriarchy are not natural, they are part of a particular economic development — the rise of agriculture, private property and a class based system.

In our next post we will explore this a little more by looking at capitalism and the modern patriarchy. There have been many critiques of Engels, which we will explore. But we will also look at the evidence that back these theories up, asking the question how have these gender roles continued to this day?

– See more at: http://left-flank.org/2015/05/15/sex-and-society-2-the-rise-of-the-nuclear-family/#sthash.XWsG5Jdo.dpuf

A couple of weeks ago TimeHop showed me a tweet from my first ever article published online. Appearing four years ago in New Matilda the article was titled Obama Goes the Chop.

I had been blogging before this and writing for FUSE Magazine, but for some reason this article stands out as the official start of me being a writer. It was the first time I realised I could do something serious with what I then considered to be a hobby. 

I have been writing a lot since on blogs and online and recently have been working on a couple of ideas for books. And here are those plans!

I’ll say here that I have always been nervous about talking about writing books. Maybe it’s because I fear I will fail, or potentially because I worry people will think my ideas are stupid. Or alternatively you may all think I’m big headed for speaking them out loud. More importantly though I think that speaking it out loud makes it real — it makes them something I have to follow through on. But that is why I need to do it — I need to force myself to follow through. 

As I said, two books. One fiction. One non-fiction. Here they are.

Fiction – Forgiveness (working title)

This is a book I have been working on for almost two years now and it is quite developed (70,000 words at the moment).

The book follows the story of two characters — John and Irene. John is a convicted murderer who has just been released after fifteen years in prison for killing his girlfriend, Alicia. Irene is Alicia’s mother. Both are dealing with John’s release and the impact the murder is having on their lives. I  wont expand too much more on the plot from there as I don’t want to write in any spoilers and things may change, but hopefully you can get the idea based on that.

As I said I am quite a way through Forgiveness and my plan now is to try and power ahead to finish my first draft. That’s probably about another 10,000 words at the moment. That means buckling down and writing. Then will start the very long editing process.

Non-fiction – Sexy Capitalism (again, a working title!)

Very much a working title Sexy Capitalism aims to be my first foray into really long-form non-fiction.

Sexy Capitalism aims to draw the links between our economics (capitalism) and sex. The book is inspired The Origin of Family, Private Property and the State from Friedrich Engels and I hope to present a modern version to this classic. I want to draw the links between how capitalism still has a major impact on our sexual and familial relations and in particular how the roots of much of our sexual oppression lay in the foundations of capitalist society. It is therefore only through challenging capitalism that we are able to challenge sexual oppression.

This book is in its early stages. I am reading, taking notes, developing ideas and starting to work on proposals for potential publishers. No real text just yet.

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So there you have it! My plans for my two books. Writing it down certainly does make me feel like I need to commit, and that is excellent. But you can also expect these books will be a running theme throughout my blog — expects lots of posts on crime books and the justice system as well as on sex, capitalism and the family. 

Like my ideas? Please help! I can always use encouragement, links to interesting articles/books or even people who are willing to chat, read and edit. Let me know.