Birmingham University Labour Students

I think most of us can agree that sex education has an important role to play in public schools. But to what level of importance would you say it is?

To Conservative MP, Andrea Leadsom, it seems not very. Let’s put this into context. In England and Wales sex education is not a compulsory subject for public schools (I know for one that I personally received nothing at my High School) and that parents are allowed to “opt out” their child if the school does teach it. And you wonder why we have the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Europe.

Anyway, back to Andrea Leadsom. It seems she believes that parents should have to “opt in” their children to sex education classes and that current sex education books are “inappropriate”. This is while a report published by Ofsted last year pointed out that a quarter of schools in England are not providing good enough lessons about sex, relationships and health.  At the same time new research in the last couple of weeks provided information that “81% of 14 to 18-year-olds said their information came from the internet, the television and their friends.” and “one in four pupils do not have any sexual and relationship education in school.“.

Now some may say that abstinence only sex education is the only sound and “moral” way forward. But when we analyse this claim, it’s quite apparent that this argument is not grounded in research and facts. The Council of Scientific Affairs states that ”Current research findings do not support the position that the abstinence-only approach to sexuality education is effective in delaying the onset of intercourse.”.

I have already done a similar post on sex education before. But the point still stands, we need more not less sex education. If we truly want to tackle STDs, teenage pregnancies and yes, even abortions (again look to my previous post and subsequent comments regarding abortions) we need sound and effective sex education with no “opt-outs” for pushy and insecure parents.

So please Leadson, could the education system have some more.

Max

“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” ~ T. Jefferson.

Julian Assange and his colleagues have acted in a brave and selfless way, persisting in outing secretive documents despite smear campaigns and pressure from the highest levels of government.

Even if Wikileaks’ actions achieve nothing in terms of delaying action against North Korea and Iran, a point has been made. The internet is a weapon for transparency and democracy, and governments have never been more accountable.

Another possible consequence is simply increasing the security of intelligence, which can only be a good thing in a world threatened by terrorists.

Suzy

Tyler Clementi – the victim of murder? Involuntary manslaughter? His own low self esteem, thin skin and inability to take a joke? Gravity?

Livestreamed by his room mate from a hidden camera, Tyler was exposed on the internet having sex with another man. His subsequent suicide, declared in his final facebook status, is a tragedy for him, for his family and for our generation. The media is labelling this as just another instance of cyber bullying, but the perpetrator could get several years in prison.

So what’s the problem here? The easy access to publicity that makes total humiliation simple? The latent homophobia that made it an even better scoop for his room mate? Or original low self esteem and a feeling of isolation that affects so many freshers and other young people? Our generation needs to prove that we’re better than this.

Suzy

The personal is political, and never more so than on the issue of abortions. What can be more political than a debate which includes facilitates the inclusion of gender, religion, age, class, nationality and health? And, not to put too fine a point on it, what can be more personal than what goes on inside a womb?

I’m so pro-choice that I’m literally incensed about having to describe myself as such, with the alternative implied by the term. And I’m sick of a moral case being made by the “pro life” side which is supposed to have all sexually active women cowering in shame.

In a society that sets great store by scientists that show us exactly how to make perfect babies, and politicians that tell us exactly how to have stable families, surely the biggest pre-requisite for producing healthy children is for the mother to want it in the first place, because no amount of scientific development or government programme can ever supercede parental love.

In the 21st century quality of life is to be favoured over quantity. Rather than having more babies we should be spending more time and attention on the ones that are born, and the ones that we want to have. Choosing the time and father are essential, unquestionable rights for women. The most moral thing to do is to defend abortion rights.

But the coalition is making very worrying noises….

Suzy

Wearing a headscarf can and has been construed in many ways. Here in İstanbul, as in Birmingham, women can receive a lot of unwanted attention from lascivious observers for venturing out without one, especially in some areas of the city, and especially at night. In terms of keeping conservative parents happy, covering the hair seems a small concession to make for many teenage girls. For casual muslims, it`s nice to be ready to pop into mosque whenever the mood takes them.

So for scarved women who date, or have close male friends, or don`t fast during ramadan, or wear sexy underwear for their husbands, it`s a blow to be labelled hypocrites as lightly as they often are. The visibility of the scarf makes it impossible to disguise seemingly contradictory behaviour, and the woman in question must resign herself to even more unwanted attention. As with nuns and priests, people find it funny to catch scarved women out.

There is another problem with this attitude, that casual hypocrites like myself  notice – as imperfect humankind can never hope to follow all the rules all of the time, isn`t it better to at least try to adhere some of the rules laid down by whichever holy book you profess to follow? And is it really unethical to put a scarf to start with just because it`s the most obvious symbol?

Suzy 

Yesterday evening an unknown man was buzzed into our building, entered our apartment through the door we often leave open and offered my flatmate money for sex. After a clear refusal in Turkish, English and Spanish, a violent struggle and threats to call the police he eventually went home, and we were left feeling terrified and dirty.  

The consensus about the event among my Turkish friends is as follows: that it is known in the neighbourhood that our apartment is occupied by young foreign women, who are probably not Muslim and definitely without the support of a large family bent on avenging insults to its women. Our brothers, fathers and uncles are far away, and we probably act like the American women in gossip magazines anyway, so will welcome advances. And if we don`t like it we can go back to where we came from.

Other things I find difficult to adjust to in İstanbul are the poor record on women`s liberation, the high birthrates, the tradition of the hostess never sitting down during a meal but continuing to serve throughout, the constant and indiscriminate leering by men of all ages and the incredible statistic that only 10% of Turkish women are in employment.   

It all makes the Ed/Yvette leadership issue look very, very trivial.

Suzy

Stephanie Meyer`s Twilight Saga, heaven knows, gets its fair bit of exposure. Precisely because of this I want to give it some space on our own venerable blog. The amount of impressionable people worldwide hopelessly in love with its characters or  ideas make it worth taking seriously.

The ”twilight is sexist” debate can be argued convincingly from either side. While Bella replaces her absent mother in exclusively performing traditionally female chores for her father, suffers from a lack of professional ambition in terms of a career outside the home, is perpetually in need of rescuing and puts up with an emotionally abusive boyfriend who also supervises her every move 24/7, bruises her during sex and prevents her from seeing her friends; there is plenty of objectification of the male characters to counterbalance it, from lingering descriptions of male beauty in the books to many many minutes dedicated to the sight of muscly topless men in the films. By the fourth book Bella is strong enough to stand up for herself, and becomes a protector instead of a victim, albeit mainly in the role of a wife and mother. Also the author, screenplay writer and director are all women, the audience is predominantly female and there is some attempt at a reversal of the Adam and Eve story in terms of who is tempting whom into sexual maturity.

So much for gender.

What I`m concerned with is the heteronormativity of it all.

In the world of Twilight borderline inter-species sexuality, necrophilia, paedophilia and sado-masochism are allowable and more or less practised. Nothing is off limits but the same sex. Werewolves undergo a process of “imprinting” when they find their soulmate, and whenever it is discussed the subject is represented as “he” and the object as “she”. Vampires never seem to bite a human of the same gender, and following in the footsteps of Buffy there is a certain devotion developed towards to the one who changed you. There is no exploration of sexual identity, all the characters are introduced in ready-made boy-girl pairings, in fact there is no possibility, in this world of societal outcasts, counter-culture and misunderstood teenagers, of any LGBT experience.

Suzy

Paraphrased from a facebook conversation between Sean Woodcock and Oliver Jackson:

SW: Whilst I can sympathise with him having issues regarding his Catholic family it does not justify using taxpayers money to hide his sexuality. I don’t think he did it out of greed (he is already a millionaire) and I don’t think it necessarily makes him a bad person. But what he did was wrong and he absolutely deserved to go. Not to mention that he was naive to assume that he would not be found out for it.

OJ: He was one of the best men for the job, and his transgression was not by any stretch of the imagination the most serious offence in the whole sorry episode of the expenses scandal. “Had he been just another MP, his position would surely have been secure. Sympathy for the awkwardness he clearly felt about his sexuality would have overridden anger at the breach of the rules.” However, he had an exceptionally important position in the new government, a government wishing to at least be seen to be breaking away from the “old politics” in a position that would necessitate him having to explain harsh and deeply divisive austerity measures where not a shade of scandal can be had.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been making the news recently, as a Muslim woman who ran away from home in Somalia in order to escape an arrange marriage. She has since become an atheist and an outspoken critic of Islam.

“Here are a number of principles within your religion [Islam] which are not compatible with liberalism and democracy”

“To extremist Muslims it is not acceptable that Jews now have their own homeland”

She is impatient of moral relativism, and decrys the tolerance of Female Genital Mutilation by the Western world as “just one of those cultural things”. She says that these are the real issues of feminism, and that feminism in Europe and North America is just a luxury.

The levels of oppression women suffer in Britain do seem laughably small in comparison with the situations in countries like Burkina Faso. If cliteral reconstructive surgery was given to all those who have undergone FGM in Burkina Faso alone the total cost would be 23 billion euros.

http://clitoraid.org/

Suzy

Those MPs who have been frugal with their second home allowance.

In America they still refer to Bill Clinton as ‘Mr. President’ and so on for both Bush’s and the rest.  We don’t do that here for MPs, ministers or Prime Ministers, but it’s interesting to see the importance being attached to Alice Mahon, who resigned from the Labour Party today. Alice Mahon is a former Labour party member and was an MP for 18 years.  It seems a little self-serving to seek such press attention in order, solely, to embarrass the party she was a member of.

I completely forgot who she was, until I saw a picture of her and was reminded how discontended she used to be during Tony Blair’s time as Prime Minister.  It’s not the most exciting story for the news to be covering.  Indeed, its quite obvious to me why people like Iain Dale are kicking a fuss about it and I’m sure we’ll see our old friends from BUCF criticising this post just like the criticised Hollie earlier in the week.

Madonna failed to adopt an orphan from Malawi today after being turned down by the Malawi court on the grounds of not having stayed in Malawi long enough before adopting. In my opinion this was quite right, as it does seem a little bit sickening to go into an African orphanage with several hundred million pounds and choose just the one you like the most. Lets face it, would you see a 50 year old single mother being able to adopt in the UK? No, of course you wouldn’t. She should continue investing in Malawi’s schools and orphanages (and encourage her rich pals to follow suit), although I think I would prefer it if she treated the adoption process a little less like going for a nice afternoon walk down Oxford Street. After all, there are many children in the UK crying out to be adopted, but I’m sure its far ‘cooler’ these days to adopt African children (I mean if Brad and Angelina can do it…)

Last week I went to a talk from a friend of mine on the ‘Stop The Traffik’ campaign. The aim of this organisation is to pull together all the different anti-trafficking charities from around the world to put an end to slavery around the world. As well as working with Eastern European migrants in the UK who have been forced to work in factories and brothels against their will, it also fights against slave labour in cocoa bean production in Africa, particularly the Cote d’Ivoire (where 40% of the world’s cocoa beans are grown).

Many of the children found by this organisation had been taken away from their families to do un-paid labour in atrocious conditions. The cocoa beans they pick on these plantations supply many of the large chocolate making firms in our country and across the world. In turns out that although ‘Stop The Traffik’ are working on an equivalent logo to ‘fairtrade’ for ‘slave free’ goods, it hasn’t been released yet and is only on a few goods as a trial. Therefore the only way to know your chocolate is ‘slave free’ is to buy Fairtrade, as there is much greater regulation on the production of their chocolate.

I don’t want to keep funding those who use slaves to make their goods, so I am only going to eat fairtrade chocolate during lent – and hopefully afterwards (although probably with slip ups!).

Also, just as a thought, maybe we should all make an effort to buy fairtrade Easter eggs this year? I certainly will be doing so.

I don’t know if anybody caught Charlie Falconer on the Today program this morning, but he was giving a spirited defence on why publishing the minutes of the Iraq debate would damage Cabinet Collective Responsibility. I have some sympathy for this position owing to the setting of possible precedence whereby minutes maybe demanded of a discussion by a sitting government on any issue recently debated (barring national security concerns etc). This would totally undermine any aspect of collective responsibility and could intentionally be used by cabinet ministers as a ‘get out clause’ for unpopular issues, which they can show they have argued against.

While I believe that the minutes should be published at some point, the tough question that arises is of how long since the debate can this happen. Perhaps it might be best that no cabinet members serving at the point of the relevant discussion are currently serving in the cabinet at the publication of the minutes. Or maybe we should just abolish collective responsibility and have big brother style cabinet meetings?

After an impromptu meeting with our vice-chair elect in the library the other day, I was left wondering whether we should actually feel guilty about having more than two children in our families. I also noticed earlier,  the report that came out from some ‘green’ organisation that it was in fact selfish to have more than two children and more of us should consider having no children at all because of their carbon footprints.

I come from a family of three children, and upon pondering this idea it struck me that if the authors of this report had their way I would not have the younger brother I adore today. What is worth more, him or his carbon footprint? It strikes me as odd that these people would value human life purely in terms of tonnes of prospective CO2 emissions, surely we are worth more than that as humans?

How could this plan be implemented? If it were voluntary surely no-one would follow it unless they valued the environment (in a very tenuous way I might add) more than the life of another child that they could have if they so felt inclined? Would this be an enforced law saying ‘you are not allowed any more children’, through which we lose benefits for children, or get fined, or even more extremely like in China have forced abortions? I would hate to be part of any Neo-Marxist state that implented any of the latter.

It is not the West that are causing world wide population issues, it is developing nations in Africa, South America and parts of Asia. These people rely on their children to support their families, as it is poverty that causes population pressures, not the ‘irresponsible’ people of Western nations choosing out of emotion, not neccessity to have children. The only way to relieve population pressure on the environment is to provide economic support to the people of developing nations so that the people do not need to have so many children, and eventually to aid their development for the prosperity of all.

Sahars recent contribution regarding BULS liberation officers appears to have stirred up much passion and debate over whether such a position is positive or negative toward the general well-being of a society. There are a lot of pertinent issues which have emanated from this debate, one being that of positive discrimination.

So do we have a legal, moral or societal duty to redress historical imbalances that have been perpetuated over time owing to discrimination of one sort or another and how should we go about doing this? Or is this history of racial, class, gender and other such forms of discrimination a thing of the past and we all end up where we are destined to be based on how hard we work?

Most would probably agree that our society is far from perfect, workplace discrimination still occurs, nepotism is rife in many industries and we still see drastic inequalities between sexes, ethnicities and classes that are statistically significant. However, broad categories perhaps simplify the problem and many post-modernist I’m sure will alert us to the interconnection between these, leading us to ask such questions as: do we give preference to the black, straight, middle class woman over an white, gay, working class man? These are not easy issues to overcome, when we start giving preference to one group over the other it will not only stir up animosity but it may not guarantee that we are even targeting those worst off.

And yet still we are left in a society that broadly speaking, we all wish to be a meritocracy, but is not. If not affirmative action than what? warm words and a reliance on current failing legislation? We still do not live in a nation where everybody is given comparable opportunities to succeed, which damages our moral standing, our economy and our social cohesion. Until a time when everybody is afforded an equal opportunity to succeed in life, the debate will carry on.