Rape and Sweden

Oh Farage, leading trumpet of disinformation, has told the nation via LBC that Sweden has the highest rate of rape cases in Europe. He's said this because President Idiot told the world that Sweden had suffered a terrorist atrocity...and it hadn't. There hasn't been a terrorist attack in Sweden since 2010, unless you count the attack on school children by young, white, male Nazi in 2015. But OBVIOUSLY, that doesn't count. THAT was the work of a lone gunman...

Sweden takes in a staggering amount of refugees, because Sweden's social model is based on fairness and generosity. And, Nazi terrorist attacks and other hate crimes aside, it works out fairly well. And that RANKLES. You see, it suits the right to have a common enemy and that common enemy at the moment is refugees. From David Cameron calling them 'swarms', to Teresa May stopping unaccompanied children coming here, to Donald Trump closing his borders to some Islamic countries apparently chosen by sticking a pin in a map of Africa and the Middle East. The rise of the right across Europe is a chilling reminder that all this has happened before, and can easily happen again. But that's not why I'm RANTING AWAY TODAY.

So, Sweden hasn't had a terrorist attack. Trump looks like even more of an addled idiot. How then to make Sweden look bad? Especially as it's one of the few genuinely left-wing countries in the world? I can picture the scene, Farage on the Trump Hotline promising he will sort it out on his widely watched TV show, shown every night on the single British channel. And that very night, on LBC with its listenership of 1.7% of the market share, Farage hold forth. THEY'RE ALL RAPISTS. THAT'S THE PROBLEM.

Now, in a sane world, Farage would be ignored and us lefties would have less ulcers. But for some reason, the media hangs on to his every word, waiting to either praise him or deride him. Like a little Enoch Powell, but without the Parlimentary seat or gravitas, his words have been repeated all over Twitter, to the disgust of Sweden. He cites this graph as proof:

So, it tells us that Sweden has a very high rape record rate, or at least it did in 2012. Remember that date, it becomes important in a minute. Now, the important question is "what does Sweden count as rape?"
The definition of rape is never simple - in UK law, for example, it has to be penetration with a penis or it's *just* sexual assault. They have just about got around to agreeing that unconscious people cannot consent. In contrast, this is the Swedish definition:

A person who by assault or other violence or by threat of a criminal act forces another person to have sexual intercourse or to undertake or endure another sexual act that, in view of the seriousness of the violation, is comparable to sexual intercourse [...] This also applies if a person engages with another person in sexual intercourse or in a sexual act which under the first paragraph is comparable to sexual intercourse by improperly exploiting that the person, due to unconsciousness, sleep, serious fear, intoxication or other drug influence, illness, physical injury or mental disturbance, or otherwise in view of the circumstances, is in a particularly vulnerable situation

This is a far broader definition than most countries. In Jamaica, where the second most rapes are reported, rape law broadly corresponds to the British tradition, but they don't recognise male-on-male rape because all sodomy is illegal. So, how come Sweden has such a high rape rate?
In Britain, between 5% and 25% of all rapes are actually reported. The rest are concealed, out of fear, out of shame, out of conviction that you will not be believed. Unless you are raped at knifepoint by a stranger on CCTV, there will always be an element of his word against yours, and your past sexual activity will be used against you. It is not easy to report a rape, whether you are male or female. It is not easy to be examined immediately after such a physical trauma. It is not easy to give a statement, to go to court, to defend your honour as well as your word, when you have done nothing wrong. About 85000 women are raped each year in Britain, and about 12000 men, out of a population of 64 million. The majority are not reported. Of those that are, the conviction rate is around 5.7%. About 2500 men were convicted of rape in 2014 in Britain.
Let us compare to Sweden. About 6700 rapes (in a population of 9.5 million) were reported in 2014, with around 190 convictions. But it's not the broad definition that makes Sweden appear more rapey - it's the culture. The culture of equality, the culture of believing victims and the culture of victims believing they will be helped. This is what is lacking in British policing culture - for all the claims that the raped will be believed, the trial of Ched Evans, to name just one, has demonstrated quite the fucking opposite.


But this isn't really about the rape statistics at all, let's be honest. It is the barefaced bloody cheek of Nigel Farage and Donald "pussy grabber" Trump pretending they give one solitary fuck about raped men and women. That graph is from 2012, before Syrian refugees had begun to come to Europe in anything like the number they do now. If Sweden has a rape 'problem', it long predates the refugee crisis. Rape is a serious crime, that tears the heart of its victims for years. It's a crime of power, used by men to subjugate and humiliate, to make sure their victims know that all they are for is sexual gratification. It's a crime committed by all races, by all faiths. It is not a refugee problem now any more than it was a Jewish problem in the 1930s. The threat of rape by invading forces as propaganda is hardly a new one:

           

Polish propaganda warning about the Russian army, and Italian propaganda warning about the French. Notice how the soldiers are both black, despite coming from predominantly white countries? The first one warns you to defend your women and girls, the second about your mother, your wife, your sister, your daughter. Coz fuck knows, men don't care about rape unless it's happening to someone they love. 

Rape has long been weaponised. It has long been used as an incentive to fight. But we are not at war, whatever Farage and Trump think. At least, not yet.

Peppa Pig: A Dystopian Horror

It is Monday morning, and Daddy Pig has gone to visit Dr Brown Bear for his check up.
"Ah!" says Dr Brown Bear "Daddy Pig! How have you been?"
"Well" replies the overweight, voluble swine "I keep having headaches Dr Brown Bear and strange flashes"
"Flashes? What kind of flashes?"
"Oh ha ha ha ha" says Daddy Pig "Flashes where I think I'm not a pig" Ha ha ha ha"
Dr Brown Bear opens a drawer. He takes the pre-prepared syringe. He turns, slaps Daddy Pig on the shoulder and slips the needle into his porky shoulder. "Sounds like you're working too hard"
Daddy Pig's eyes go blank, his mirthful face empty for a moment. "Yes. Too hard. Goodbye" He walks out, mechanically.

Madame Gazelle also visit Dr Brown Bear. Her purpose is somewhat different. She is hoarse, angry, agitated.
"Madame Gazelle! What ever is the matter?"
"The children, Dr Brown Bear, their incessant chattering! The Bing Bong Song! I smell their blood pulsing through them and I yearn for a taste. One taste, Dr Brown Bear, one taste. Freddy Fox, he would never know, he wouldn't know".
Dr Brown Bear nods. They have been here before. He goes to the fridge and passes her a bag of blood. She drinks it in one gulp. The shakes subside, her voice becomes normal.
"Thank you, Dr Brown Bear"
He smiles and waves her out. She will be back in a month.

Miss Rabbit remembers. She doesn't tell the others, but she remembers. She was a career woman, the opposite of her sister, the fecund Mrs Rabbit. She could do anything and she did and that memory is what drives her through this charade. She was a person once. Her name was Rosa. She was going to marry Bert...Mr Bull...but they changed. They went to sleep people and they woke up animals.

Dr Hamster has been known to help Dr Brown Bear with keeping the others subdued in this bizarre experiment. She was a vet before and she's a vet now, and nobody notices the paradox of a pig owning a fish, a bird. She is paid well for her compliance, by whoever They are. She never sees them. She knows they are there, watching, thousands of them glued to their screens seeing what happens when different species share a common language and habitat. The experiment only really succeeds because of her, and Dr Brown Bear and sometimes the guilt drives her mad. And when it does, she goes to the mountain beauty spot, and she stares out and makes her peace. It is better in here than out there. It is safe.

Another Epic Sandwich

When you have small children, you go one of two ways. The way of virtue - batch cooking everything organically and lovingly from scratch, pulling it from the freezer at the drop of a hat, remembering the use of a slow cooker, always being prepared. Alternatively, there is the the way of fuck this shit - cooking the same six meals on rotation all month because fuck this shit. This is slightly complicated when you have an autistic child who will literally vomit if you try and make them eat something new that they distrust. So we eat pie, and we eat pasta with sauce, and we eat a roast and then a curry made of leftovers, and we eat pulled pork, and we eat egg and chips, and we eat pizza and mini-kievs. And there's nothing WRONG with any of this, but my god it gets DULL.

So here is my treat tea, which I make only for me, and only rarely coz it's FAT, but it breaks up the monotony and the kids have had their egg and chips, and Tom is cooking pasta and I am replete.It's a sandwich type meal, because there's nothing better for a one-person feast. It's just a sandwich! Who can begrudge a sandwich?

Soph's Delicious Fucking Sandwich

You will need:
Two fresh eggs. You can tell how fresh an egg is by reading the use by date and subtracting 21 days. This will give you the day it was packaged. Much easier than fucking about with glasses of water.
Two bread rolls. Not ciabatta, something a bit more sturdy. A standard burger bun will do.
Some smoked salmon. Cheap offcuts are fine.
Salad.
Hollandaise sauce. Don't make it yourself, but do buy Maille brand because it tastes nice.
Ketchup, if you're a pleb. I am a pleb.

Slice your buns in half. Layer some salad and salmon on the lower half of each.

Now, poach your eggs. I have never had the slightest bit of difficulty poaching eggs, but some people treat it like it's neurosurgery. Make sure your eggs are reasonably fresh. Break them into water that's fucking hot but not quite boiling. Don't touch or stir them. Don't let the water boil. They will set into a little cloud. Skim off the white crap that comes sprouting up - I have a skimmer that I use solely for this, although I'm sure it has some mysterious purpose in stock making. You can use a spoon if you lack a skimmer. Poached eggs don't take long, but will sit for ages in warmish water. I can't tell you when your eggs will be sufficiently poached - for that you must use your eyes. If this is really too difficult, separate your eggs and poach the yolk only. It's much easier to see when the yolk is set. If EVEN THIS is too much, fry the fucking things.

Drain your poached eggs on kitchen paper. This stops everything getting soggy because poached eggs are a bugger for hiding water in their fat, white folds.

Heat your hollandaise. You want a fat spoonful per bun. Maybe two. Don't let it boil, it just wants warming up.

Put a drained egg on each salad-and-salmon bun. Put the warmed hollandaise on top of the egg. Put the top of the bun on top of all this.

Serve with some salad on the side, because the yolk bursts and goes everywhere and you don't want to waste it. And some ketchup, if you're plebby. Eat it. Revel in it. You will need to wash your face and hands afterwards, so you probably don't want an audience.
***

I would show you a picture, but I ate it too quick.

Moisturiser

Content Warning: Death. Medical details. Cancer. Woe.


Your guts live inside a sort of bag in your abdomen. This bag is called the omentum, and the idea is to keep everything snug and safe, and together. If anything should rupture within your abdomen, through cancer, or infection, or ulceration, this bag has to be opened up, emptied and cleaned if you are to have any chance of survival. When Mum's bowel burst, that's what they did to save her. As you can imagine, sometimes you miss a bit, and this also happened to Mum. This tiny missed bit grew into an abscess right on her liver. The cancer had so convoluted Mum's insides that attempting to operate again would have been enormously complicated and probably hastened her end, thus being a massive waste of money and quality of life. So, instead, they decided to stick a drain in it.
They stuck it in one lunchtime. You cannot imagine the smell, the miasma it created. Just the tiniest drop of pus would stink out a whole sheet. It really upset Mum. She was a very clean person, obsessed with food hygiene and the fact that molecules that could be smelled could be inhaled. The intention was to remove the tube, but this was impossible because first the infection kept filling back up, and second it was in a tumour. So, the tube stayed in and she had a 600ml capacity bag strapped to her leg. When it first went on, it fit perfectly. By the time she died, it flapped around and didn't fit to her leg at all. It was a very visual reminder of how much weight she had lost and how quickly.
She was terribly distressed about the smell, and the next morning, I was wracking my brains about what I could do for her to make her feel less violated. I found some travel Molton Brown bath gels and I took them into hospital, and bought some flannels. She couldn't have a bath or a shower with the drain in, so she chose the one she liked best and I put it on a flannel for her to smell instead of the drain. She liked White Sandalwood the best.
I had a travel sized pot of the white sandalwood moisturiser at home, so I took it round once she was home, and I spent a long time putting it on her. I'm not sure whether it was because she was chronically dehydrated, or the liver failure, or the immobility, but her skin cracked really badly and she hated it. The moisturiser helped a little bit. I ended up buying her a massive canister of the stuff as a reward for being so brave. As an early Christmas present. As an attempt to make her smile.

And so I spent the rest of her life gently stroking her with moisturiser, trying to restore some life to her dying skin, trying to keep in contact with her because I was afraid. I recall me, Jess and Sooz ALL moisturising her at once on occasion. She loved to be touched. She had trained as a massage and aromatherapist when I was young, and she had such an art when she gave you a massage. Jess has the same gift, but I do not. But I tried. And I'm not usually very physical, but I wanted to do something.
But as time went on, her skin became unbearably fragile and painful. I hurt her by accident so many times, because I got the pressure wrong. She would snap sometimes; she wanted us with her but she wanted to be alone. She sat in the garden, covered in fleeces, reading magazines, chainsmoking, and we would sit by her and try to read too, but not really taking in the words. I would try to stroke away the sloughing of her skin, the chafing of her frustration - only very occasionally expressed - and try to make her feel normal again.
After a while, she lost the feeling in her skin. We could touch her properly again, although I don't know if she could feel it. Dad could move her more easily. Whenever I was with her, when she couldn't have a conversation, which was most of the time, I reflexively reached for the moisturiser. I brushed her hair. I did the same things I do for my babies when they are poorly. I tried to show her how much I love her.

And now I will never ever be able to smell white sandalwood moisturiser again without smelling the bag of toxicity hanging from my mother's leg. Without smelling the hint of cigarette smoke that surrounded her right up to 48hrs before she died. Without feeling the cracked skin under my hands, desperately trying to rehydrate her by willpower alone. Without recalling the desperate urge to somehow stave off her death.

Which is a shame, because it was my favourite too.

Me? Doing a Masters?

I think it's a fair shout to say I haven't had the best start to doing my MA.

I signed up on July 27th. On July 29th, my mum became critically ill. I debated whether to defer for a year. I debated whether to do it at all. The more I read about the course, the more I wanted to do it.

I've been interested in social history for ever. I've spent the last year working on family trees for me and my friends, and become intrigued by family structure particularly in rural areas. I've got a talent for creating narratives from primary evidence, for constructing strong arguments, for finding links that aren't immediate obvious and for holding vast stores of intricate genealogy in my head. Local history extends this into the landscape - who lived where? Why did they live there? What did they do? What did they earn? How were they linked? How does this compare to other areas? It's a natural step up from family research and it appeals to my soul.
Then there's my mum. Mum loved social history. She was fascinated by the rise of leisure time in the Victorian era, and the link to the railway network and how resorts were created to supply demand. Having experienced the stigma of being a single mother in the sticks, illegitimacy interested her. Coming from a big family, and having one herself, she read about other big families. She encouraged me. We would talk about history more than almost anything, monologuing at each other on the phone for hours. When I did the preliminary tests for getting on the MA, one of the questions was on the rise of Blackpool. Mum was a bubbling torrent of information on it when I told her. I am devastated that she's not here to talk to about it all anymore. She didn't want me to do the MA when I first discussed it with her, way back in June. She thought I should go directly into writing (my eventual aim) so she could read it. But I didn't feel qualified to write about it without a single history qualification to my name.

So, I decided to do it anyway. My start date was 1st October, by which point my mum was nearing her end. I worked hard but sparingly. It is terribly difficult to focus when the person you need most is dying. You think about little else. You worry. You want to be with them. You don't particularly want to be reading about tiny Highland communities in 1780. Or doing anything really. It's hard. But I did it.
Then she died. She died and I had a deadline. I postponed the deadline, but I still knew it was coming. Everything I had studied before fell to fog. And since she died, every time I read something she would have loved to know about, I feel a stab. It's not fair.

So I wrote my essay. I struggled a bit, just to get my thoughts in order (complicated by having a general anaesthetic a few days before) and then to write it, to use a whole new system of referencing, and to write about something I've not really done before. There is a lot of crossover between modern history and sociology, but they require different styles, and the essay was theoretical. I got it in. I got 63%, which is far more than I hoped for. It was not easy to write, but I found my style and voice much faster than I ever have before.

Now I'm looking to my next essay, getting to grips with the vast amount of potential literature on offer, and having to decide for myself what is and isn't relevant. Before I began this, some mansplaining dick told me that there was 'lots of reading' involved in an MA. I was pissed off because...well duh, but it's the quality of reading that counts. History perhaps generates the most written material of any subject, and some of it is diabolical quality, and some of it is absolutely essential, and some of it is absolutely essentially and like wading through treacle. And you have to decide what's good. I am currently sitting with no less than six relevant books, another two on the laptop to work through, countless potential journal articles that might be useful. I might only use one paragraph from each book, but I need to find it. Your undergrad is SPOON-FED to you in comparison to this.
And I daresay for those who go on to do a PhD, a masters is equally spoon-fed.

I love writing history. I love writing, full stop, but history is a particular pleasure. Telling the story of people who lived long ago, who never hoped to be historically relevant, who did nothing to immortalise themselves. That's a privilege. Finding their stories, hidden in the records, and understanding their context. That's my favourite thing. Reading ancient newspapers is much better for the soul than reading facebook. I don't know if I can actually making a living doing this - probably not, the world is awash with historians and you have to be pretty fucking ace to get published - but even if I can't, I will try. I will try for my mum. I will try for myself.

Fascism

Yes, I said it. Fascism. Not the alt-right. What the fuck does that mean? The alternative to what? It's not an alternative to standard conservative right-wing politics, it is going further than it. It is fascism. I wish we could ctrl-alt-del that term out of existence. People dislike the term fascism, you see. For some reason, can't think why, it reminds people of Hitler, and no political movement likes to be associated with Hitler even when he should be their idol. Hitler is so internationally reviled across the West that identifying with him is a bit of a faux pas. So, they call themselves the alt-right, and they act all affronted when you call them fascists, or snerk about Godwin's Law, and somehow they go on.

The greatest divisions in society are religion, ethnicity, and perhaps most importantly, class. Everyone likes to think they are a slightly higher class than they are, to give them a comfortable feeling of superiority. This can manifest in many different ways - from doing the odd shop at Marks and Spencer,  to trying to get children into the better schools, to judging single parents, to generally hating immigrant workers. Fascism loves it. Fascism wants everyone in their place, and holds a hand out to the aggrieved and lacking in social mobility, and it says "This is all their fault". They can be the poor, the sick, the foreign, those of different faith. This is what Hitler excelled at - he told Germany that it's severe economic distress was not caused by poor government and war reparations, but by Jews, disabled people and gypsies. Switch out Jews for Muslims and gypsies for Eastern Europeans, and doesn't that sound familiar to UKIP and others rhetoric?

We have struggled economically as a nation since the banking collapses of 2009 onward, although our economy is one of the strongest in the world. We bailed out the foolish banks with public money. Ever since, we have been suffering under austerity budgets that cut and cut and cut. It is not the rich who particularly feel the brunt of this, because they are protected both by status and wealth. It is the Average Joe. It is you. It is me.
The NHS, an institution founded on socialism and the need to reward a ravaged nation with security, has been cut and cut and cut since the banking collapse. The Conservative government are destroying it, on purpose, because it is absolutely contrary to their ideology. But the news stories are about requiring passports at point of treatment to prevent health tourism. The people believe that the NHS is failing because of overdemand, not underbudgeting. The people believe that it is immigrants taking the NHS away, not a concentrated effort by the incumbent government to rid themselves of an outdated, unwieldy and expensive edifice. And 'the people' buy into this, because they aren't immigrants. They might go to the doctors every time they have a sniffle. They might have four months worth of unused medication in a cupboard for a rainy day. They might go to A+E after yet another punch up on a Friday night. But it's those damn immigrants ruining the NHS.
By the same logic, that idiot woman on Question Time who voted Conservative and was shocked when her benefits were cut. Surely only OTHER PEOPLE will suffer from cuts? The undeserving poor? The foreign? Not...normal people? Not, to quote the government's favourite phrase, hardworking people? Our government has no issue with insidiously implicating that the Others are to blame for all its problems, be they the chronically sick, the chronically underemployed. Muslims, immigrants or refugees.

And so fascism extends its greasy paw across Europe and the USA, promising results where centrist governments have not been seen as a success. Fascism promises that the immigrants and the Muslims will be dealt with, and the common man will rise again, and our country will be great again. Doesn't matter which country, they all promise the same thing: Take Our Country Back. Make America Great Again. Au Nom Du Peuple. Österreich Zuerst. Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Führer.

But we only have to look at the example of 1930s Germany and Italy to know what happens when Fascists are democratically elected. Democracy goes down the pan. The poor stay poor. The rich stay rich. Civil rights are eroded or dispensed with altogether. Immigrants 'disappear', but this does not magically improve working lives. Religious dissent is not tolerated, regardless of what religion is adopted nationally. The only way out of poverty is through military service. Class is not eradicated, but entrenched even further. There is no social mobility.

It vexes me when the lower social classes adopt fascism as a cause. I can understand it among the wealthy - after all, fascism was very popular in Britain prior to the outbreak of World War II, primarily because the rich missed their servants and didn't like all these upstarts being independent. But the lower social classes, and that's the majority of my readership, are deluding themselves if they think that going further right will benefit them in the slightest. Balls to the alt-right. Balls to fascism. Recognise it. Shun it.

Funeral Blues

We said goodbye to Mum on a bright, clear day, at a church approaching its 900th year. Religious or not, there is a great comfort in waiting in a churchyard, knowing that this little ritual goes back centuries, knowing you aren't the first. Her coffin was bedecked in purple and red, a gift from my dad. Usually in church, we sat together towards the back with Mum in the centre, frowning at any giggles escaping, occasionally giving a stern 'church pinch' to restore order among the brood. But this time, she was at the front. And everyone who spoke spoke of her. Her faith. Her love. Her generosity. Her selfless spirit. Her hospitality.
I still can't find a way to talk about my mum, to bring my mum to life. I cannot draw with words her intricacies, her humour, her smile, her goodness, her love, because I don't think there are enough words.The words haven't been invented yet.
Afterwards, at the wake, we drank and laughed and exchanged stories and my mum would have loved it. She would have bought herself a small glass of red and got my dad to top it up out of a box in the car. She would have circulated through all her many relatives. She would have sneered slightly at the buffet, then told anyone and everyone present that she could have done it much better for half the price (and she could have done).
I think we did her proud. We did what she wanted. If she could have been there herself to check it all went off OK, she would have been. I think perhaps she was anyway. I felt her so strongly before we left the house to go to the funeral, I was just waiting for her to come in from having a cigarette and brush the fluff from Dad's collar. There, but not there.

And now there is a great period of adjustment. I have not cried for my mum. I feel like if I begin, I will never stop. Instead, I grieve piecemeal, always with one eye on the calendar. It has been three weeks since I last saw my mum alive, and two weeks and six days since I last saw her. It has been one month since I last spoke to my mum on the phone. It has been 36 days since she was last able to text me. It has been two months since I last cuddled her properly. It has been three months and three days since she was discharged from hospital. It has been three and a half months since she was first admitted. I can't yet mourn my mummy because I have not yet assimilated the shock and the pain of these three and a half months. We had our son christened, and my mum was pale and thin but herself, still catering, still gossiping, still socialising. And six days later, everything that was possible to change had changed.

This is something the vicar read at Mum's funeral, one of the things that Mum did not plan. I love it because my mum loved the sea, and the idea of her being just out of sight, just out of reach resonates with me more than anything. I can feel her with me, I just can't be with her yet. But one day, I will be.

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side, spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.
Then, someone at my side says, "There, she is gone."
Gone where?
Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast, hull and spar as she was when she left my side. And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port. Her diminished size is in me -- not in her.
And, just at the moment when someone says, "There, she is gone,"
there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"
And that is dying...

(wrongly attributed to Victor Hugo)