society

Shocked and delighted, Meg Barker explains why winning meant so much.

Following my last post I'm very pleased to report that last Friday, I was the proud recipient of the Erotic Award in the academic category. Even better that my co-nominees Sue Newsome and Brooke Magnanti both received awards in other categories: Sue for her important sex therapy work around disability, and Brooke for her recent book about sex work and sexuality, Sex Myths.

My award was the last one of the night to be announced so I was extremely nervous by the time they got to me. Despite regularly talking to large audiences, I found the thought of going up on stage absolutely terrifying. My main worry was that nobody would know why I was there: that they would see me as something of a fraud compared to all the performers, activists and practitioners who had preceded me and who are so well known in these worlds.

The audience mainly consisted of members of the kink and related communities who were also staying on for the rest of the Night of the Senses ball, including those in Outsiders (the sex and disability charity which the event was fundraising for. These are very important groups for me because so much of the academic work that I've done has been within such communities, and with the aim of increasing awareness of them beyond the stereotypes and myths that frequently circulate. I've always tried my hardest to make my work accountable to the people who are involved in it, and to the wider communities that they come from, but this seemed to be a real test of that. Would they see my writing as valuable? Would they even know who I was?

I needn't have worried because the announcement of my award received a wonderful round of applause. As I made my way to the stage my legs were shaking, and I have very little recollection of what I said other than of hugging the startled compere. So I'll use the opportunity of the rest of this post to say what I wanted say then about why this award meant so much more to me than almost any other that I could have received.

A decade ago when I started researching sexual communities, very few people in my discipline of psychology studied the kinds of groups that I was working with: the kink, bisexual and polyamorous communities. Those who did were generally seeking to conduct research which would explain why some strange people deviated from ordinary sexual behaviour: by engaging in practices other than genital sex; by falling outside the gay/straight binary; or by being in sexual relationships with more than one person.

I felt that the much more important, and less patronising, question to ask was what we could all learn from people in these communities who had – by necessity – examined issues of sexuality, gender and relationships closely and come up with many different ways of doing things. Inspired by the work of Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues, my assumption was always that there is a diversity of possible ways of being sexual and relating to others and that there would be real value in making people more aware of this. My work as a sex therapist has brought home just how much rigid ideas around sex and sexuality are responsible for all kinds of pain and suffering: from the teenage girl trying to figure out what to do sexually so as not to be labelled too tight or slutty; to the person who forces themselves to have sex for fear of losing their partner; to the people with disabilities who struggle to find any representations of themselves as sexual beings; to the many people who live in fear of their sexual desires (or lack of them) being exposed because they don't fit into what they've been told counts as 'normal'.

It hasn't always been easy working in this area. At the start many colleagues found it embarrassing and questioned the legitimacy of what I was doing. Being open about my own involvement in the communities I was studying – so that people could evaluate my work with knowledge of my potential biases – led to exposure and judgement that was very painful at times. But over the last few years it seems that more and more academics have been taking these areas seriously and asking the same kinds of questions as me, as you can see if you check out the papers in the journal I co-edit Psychology & Sexuality. Also colleagues in other areas have become much more interested and supportive. And public awareness has shifted such that media reports are far less likely to demonise or ridicule either the communities or the research.

Last year I published my book, Rewriting the Rules, which brings much of the work that I've been doing to a general audience. The response has been completely positive from academics and non-academics alike. I'm very grateful to my university – The Open University – who have been nothing but supportive, publishing The Bisexuality Report launching my book, and publicising my Erotic Award on their website.

This year Christina Richards and I are publishing a book on sexuality and gender for therapists and health practitioners. This will hopefully make professionals more aware of the needs of people across diverse sexualities and genders, whether 'normative' or 'non-normative'. I'm engaging again with kink communities to explore the sophisticated understandings of  consent that are developing there which may be helpful more broadly given the current climate regarding sexual abuse. Finally, I'm starting a project with Rosalind Gill and Laura Harvey analysing sex advice in self-help books, problem pages, and TV shows. I'm hopeful that this work can lead to the publication of some more positive sex advice which is inclusive of all of our sexual practices, identities and experiences.

I'm so grateful to all of the people and communities who have supported my work over the years and who have taken part in it for little direct reward. There is no way that I could have done all this without them, and that is why this award means the world to me.
Meg Barker 24 May 2013

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain 

 

 

The swing against ‘Europe’ reflects a wider swing against the concept of any community wider than a gated one, writes Alan Shipman.

While the EU’s opponents say that leaving it would boost our national solidarity and sense of community, the policies built around the new Euro-scepticism suggest something else. 

It’s more than likely that the United Kingdom Independence Party’s (UKIP) remarkable 26% vote share in May’s local elections reflected a traditional mid-term protest. The Liberal Democrats, now in government, were no longer a viable vehicle for followers of the two big parties to signal impatience with their leaders. UKIP stood out as an especially alluring alternative: the only party capable of reducing taxes while raising public spending, improving the NHS and public transport while turning away the immigrants who’ve helped to keep them running, removing red tape while intervening to stop ‘unwanted’ buildings and retail developments, and making home-owners better off while reducing housing demand. 

But as well as viewing UKIP as a serious threat, some big-party strategists are assuming that its appeal derives from its central manifesto commitment: withdrawal from the European Union. That’s why certain ministers have taken the extraordinary step of suggesting they would vote to leave the EU if a referendum were held now, and might see little disadvantage in doing so even after David Cameron has renegotiated its terms (see this article). It even led some to reject resistance to a Queen’s Speech amendment designed to force the prime minister’s hand over a referendum date.

These may be clever tactics to ensure the success of Cameron’s renegotiation. Germany and other large member states might concede more if (as Euro-sceptics argue) the EU needs Britain more than Britain needs the EU, and can be convinced that even the once firmly pro-European Conservatives are in danger of slipping away.  But they run the risk of creating a national presumption in favour of withdrawal, unless the benefits of membership can be proven. And that’s an impossible task.

A cost-benefit analysis of joining the European Economic Community (as it then was) could have been attempted in 1973, because the UK’s situation was known and its trajectories with or without accession could be sensibly projected. After 40 years of membership, it’s very hard to stage the exercise in reverse, and decide if the UK would get richer by withdrawing. On the positive side, it’s estimated that 3 million of the UK’s 29.7m jobs are directly supported by the EU’s single market. But that doesn’t mean that leaving the EU would put 3 million jobs at risk (see this article), since the rest of Europe would still be open to UK exports, though we don’t know on what terms. 

On the negative side, EU directives are now the main source of regulation that continues to grow, despite successive government's business secretaries’ promises to reduce it. But regulation can be an enabler as well as a constrainer of free enterprise; and it’s likely that governments of a non-EU Britain would have introduced many of the same rules. 

While former chancellor Lord Lawson argues that the EU will intentionally undermine the UK’s financial service sector (over 10% of its national output) with new rules if it stays in, the mayor who presides over most of it is dubious about leaving. Boris Johnson realises that Eurozone business could then drift to financial centres – Luxembourg and Malta, as well as Paris and Frankfurt – whose governments are unequivocal about staying in the EU’s inner core. And although this should be an easy time to condemn Brussels technocrats for persisting with economic policies that are amplifying the deficits (and re-awakening the national animosities) they were meant to eliminate (see this article), the UK’s pursuit of a parallel austerity programme makes that harder to do.

A much broader narrowing
What is clear – and increasingly challenging for those who want to continue UK membership – is that this country pays more into the EU than it directly gets out. The UK contributed EUR 11.3bn, and received EUR 6.6bn, in the most recently accounted year. No amount of renegotiation or agricultural policy reform will change this, since the UK (even after its long recession) is among the bloc’s richest economies, part of a better-off ‘north’ that will always be a net payer while the disadvantaged ‘east’ and ‘south’ are net payees. The case for staying in is based on indirect economic benefits – freedom to trade with, move between and migrate to 26 (soon to be 27) other countries, playing by the same rules – and non-economic gains, of which the bloc’s internal peace and external strength are the most obvious but least quantifiable. 

But the inclination of a quarter of the electorate to assess the EU on a straightforward money in/money out basis – and of major parties to be pulled in the same direction – confirms a seismic political shift over the past 40 years. The welfare state, and Britain’s wider tax arrangements, have been re-appraised on the same basis. People now expect to get out at least what they have paid in, and to scrap the system if they do not. The days of looking beyond money as a measure of benefit, and of expecting those with more to pay more, are long gone. 

Beneath its headline anti-EU statements, the UKIP manifesto contains commitments to (among other things) letting local authorities keep the proceeds of their local business rates, ending ‘benefit and health tourism’ even within the UK, and subjecting national infrastructure schemes like HS2 to local referenda. All are designed – deliberately – to stop any redistribution between better-off and worse-off people and communities. They’re framed in the knowledge that those who feel comfortable are now an electoral majority, confident they can wall themselves off from the consequences of neglecting those who are not. 

It’s a world away from the generation of politicians (led by Edward Heath and Harold Wilson) who brought Britain into Europe and fended off the earlier demands for renegotiation or withdrawal. They had lived through a world war which not only underlined the need to build a European community, but also brought a sense of community broad enough (and of fluctuations in fortune sharp enough) for the advantaged to accept some ongoing obligation to the less advantaged. The swing against ‘Europe’ is, when viewed more carefully, a swing against any community wider than a gated one. UKIP is adamant that scaling-down the UK’s international obligations would enable it to rediscover and enhance its intra-national solidarity. Other parties should be wary of imitating a challenger whose detailed commitments actually suggest the reverse.
Alan Shipman 21 May 2013 

Alan Shipman is a lecturer in Economics at the Open University. He is responsible for the modules You and your money:personal finance in context and Personal investment in an uncertain world,  part of the foundation degree in Financial Services.

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As a regular writer for the Society Matters blog I'm very pleased to announce that my book Rewriting the Rules – which I've frequently written about here – has been nominated for an award. This was very unanticipated so I'm stoked about it.  

What was even more unanticipated was the kind of award. Something from the psychology or psychotherapy world might have been expected, but I have been short-listed for an 'erotic award'!

For those who are not familiar with them, the Erotic Awards, initially called the Erotic Oscars, have been running since 1994. They were founded by Tuppy Owens Tuppy_Owens who is a sex therapist who campaigns particularly on issues of disability and sexuality, and the whole event raises funds for the charity, Outsiders, for disabled people and their relationships. My book explores the complicated and contradictory rules on relationships that we are subjected to in 21st century relationships.

Awards are presented presented to campaigners, films, writers, artists, publications and sex-workers, as well as to academics, like me. The Erotic Awards are an annual 'celebration of sexual creativity and diversity' with the goal of helping society become more open about sex and more accepting of sexual diversity.

The other academic finalists are Brooke Magnanti and Sue Newsome. Brooke Magnanti is a biological scientist who recently wrote the book The Sex Myth to counter prevailing myths about sex, sexuality and sex-work. Brooke also wrote the best-selling Belle de Jour series of books which were adapted for a BBC series featuring Billie Piper. I've met Brooke at a couple of events that I've been involved with and she is an extremely friendly and approachable person, as well as somebody who has done a lot of good challenging assumptions about sex and sex-work. 

The other nominee, SueNewsome, is involved in a conference which I'm putting on for COSRT later this year. She is a sex coach, educator and therapist who is also involved with SHADA (the Sex and Disability Alliance) and does very important work in this field.  

I'm guessing that my own work was nominated because, like Brooke's, part of its aim is to challenge assumptions and myths about sex and relationships. Also, one aspect of Rewriting the Rules is to counter conventional psychological work which often tries to explain less common sexual and relationship practices – instead of seeking to discover what can be learnt from people in diverse sexual and relationship communities.

This is important to me because it moves away from the idea that there are normal ways of doing things, and that any other way is strange and problematic, towards the idea that there is a great variety of possible sexual and relationship experiences and understandings possible, and that it is worth tuning in to those which work best for us, as well as reflecting upon the ethics of different possible practices and identities. 

However I'm up against two very impressive co-nominees who both certainly deserve the award. We will see what happens on the night!
Meg Barker 17 May 2013

Meg Barker is a registered psychotherapist with the UK Council for Psychotherapy. She  

• organises the conference programme for the College of Sexual and Relationship Therapists (COSRT) as well as being on the editorial board of their journal and writing for their website, 
• co-organises the Critical Sexology Group which presents open interdisciplinary seminars on sexuality in London three times a year
• co-edits the Taylor & Francis journal Psychology & Sexuality with Darren Langdridge and is on the editorial boards of Sexualities, Porn Studies, the Journal of Popular Romance Studies, and the European Journal of Ecopsychology.

Catch her Youtube presentations: 90 second lecture on sex therapy and introduction to bisexuality research in the UK

 

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain