Not sheepish, but individ-ewe-al

I posted a slightly tongue-in-cheek essay to my OKCupid journal recently, on the topic of men who whine that women on OKCupid are rude to them. I give several possible reasons why women might be rude in an online dating context like OKCupid:

1. The major one: most women have the experience of being pestered and hassled by men who won’t take no for an answer. Polite friendliness is taken as a definite come-on, mere polite refusal may be ignored or used as an excuse to try to persuade, so many women jump straight into blunt refusal, or simply ignoring unwanted overtures altogether.
2. In person, women are afraid (to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the person and the situation) of violence. Often, women try to turn men down as gently and politely as possible, not because they really care about hurting the guy’s feelings, but because they are afraid things will turn ugly if they are too direct. It’s a balance between making it unambiguously clear that you’re not interested, and causing offence which might put you in danger. I personally hate having to judge this balance, but it is a fact of life.

   However, online the threat of violence is much less, and even verbal violence can be avoided by blocking messages from a harasser. Men who (without realizing it) are used to a certain degree of deference from women they approach in person, find it shocking when women online are free to say what they really think.

3. In an online dating context, women have quite a significant advantage over men; simply being female means you are in demand to a certain extent. That means women can afford to be picky, and in fact probably need to be picky, if they don’t want to spend their entire life managing their social network on dating sites.
4. Some women are just rude, superficial, etc. The online context allows the worst of women to behave like the worst of men, whether it’s rudeness, impossibly high standards, pursuing sex aggressively or whatever. It’s dangerous for women to do this kind of thing in real life, so few do.

Basically, my suspicion is that men have the upper hand in in person dating contexts, because of their social position and to a minor extent greater physical strength. When they lose these advantages in online dating, they are distressed. Some of them are distressed because they are genuinely decent people who are utterly unaware how a certain proportion of jerks behave towards women, and don’t understand how that benefits them in person (because they get let down gently when they approach a woman who isn’t interested), but disadvantages them online (because women are on the defensive and expect to be hassled). Some of them are distressed because they are sad cases who enjoy having power over women and can’t deal with any diminishing of that power.

The version I posted on OKCupid was a lot less harsh than this. I filled it with disclaimers about how I’m sure all the men doing the complaining are basically decent people, and how I understand that it’s really upsetting if a woman is rude to you because of other men being jerks to her in the past. Even so, within minutes I got a comment from a guy whining that I was expecting men to be omniscient, and how unfair it is that women are so mean to him. (I suspect this is partly a ploy, he wants me to come back to him and try to prove that I’m not like those mean horrible women that he’s complaining about.)

I’m also reminded of this long and tangled discussion on Making Light. There was a thread that was vaguely about feminism, and a commenter showed up with an anecdote about an incident of fairly standard harrassment of a woman by men. The reaction to it was kind of amazing. Many women started talking about how she might have been in physical danger, and ways to assess the probability of and hopefully avoid really extreme things like gang rape in that sort of situation. Many men started talking about how the guy sounded like he was a bit clueless but he didn’t mean any harm, and there was no need for her to overreact so much, she should have been more polite. (Her supposed rudeness, by the way, consisted of: So I take off the headphones, look him dead in the eye, and say, “I would like to be left alone. I thought by now that would be obvious. Good night.” And I put the headphones back on.)

Now, the discussion wasn’t divided purely along gender lines, but the gulf was definitely significant. The thread unfortunately devolves into people yelling at eachother, with some trying to frame the whole discussion with standard feminist theory and others not understanding the asusmptions of said feminist theory, and I don’t think any of that is helpful. But I think it’s part of the same phenomenon I’m talking about in this post. Men just don’t know what it’s like to go through the world being female, and don’t understand why a lot of women make an assumption of malice when an unknown man approaches them. Also, they don’t see malice when it actually exists; the guy in Nicole’s story wasn’t just socially inept, he was getting off on having power over her, but he was keeping his threats deniable.

I’ve never been offended by a man chatting me up or expressing interest in me, if it’s genuine. I am offended by men being sleazy and lechy because they can get away with it. I really don’t like having to be wary of men; by nature I’m very friendly and will chat to pretty much anybody who approaches.

I’m probably going to offend everyone with this post, but hey. Several things have come up recently that have put the idea into my head to post about the dreaded topic of abortion.

The main trigger was Lavendersparkle’s excellent polemic. I really like her argument, and it’s one I don’t really see being made in all the mountains of pointless aggro that makes up most of the abortion debate. She argues that The majority of abortions in the US and UK are caused by patriarchy, and gives a very closely reasoned and compelling explanation for this position, because: Abortion doesn’t solve [...] problems; it simply makes them less visible. It pushes the burden of ‘dealing’ with them onto women who are then expected to be thankful that had the ‘choice’ to have an abortion. And her conclusion is the triumphant: I get so annoyed when I see pro choice feminist schmucks kidding themselves that they’ve achieved some kind of feminist utopia by being allowed to use their money, their bodies and their offspring to cover up the huge injustices of our society.

Then I found myself discussing abortion with Ploni bat Ploni, and ended up being quite vehement about certain aspects of the issue. I think I’d probably like to set my thoughts down here.

The last thing which really convinced me I should overcome my trepidation and post about this is the aftermath to this incident at Den of the Biting Beaver. (In case you haven’t seen this, I’ll summarize the background: Biting Beaver is a fairly strident American feminist blogger. She experienced a contraceptive failure and posted about having to go through hell to get the morning after pill. Her post was very widely linked, primarily by lefties outraged at the way the ill named “moral right” have all but closed off access to emergency contraception in the US. But this prominence brought the post to the attention of the pro-life crowd, some of whom proceeded to troll her (see the first link). Eventually, Biting Beaver was able to obtain her morning after pill. However it didn’t work, and Biting Beaver was brave enough to post publically that she is pregnant and intends to have an abortion.)

This conjunction of people talking about abortion served to remind me why I potentially alienate everybody by being neither pro choice nor pro life. Essentially, I think the pro choice movement is generally well-meaning, but in their fervour to keep abortion legal, lose sight of the fact that abortion is not a good thing. However, I think much of the pro life movement is actively evil, even though I am broadly in agreement with the basic tenet that abortion is wrong.

What I think about abortion actually isn’t terribly relevant here; I want to talk about the debate and politics around abortion, not rehash the debate. But FWIW, I believe abortion is wrong, but not murder. I don’t believe that making sure all pregnancies are carried to term is the greatest moral imperative that could ever exist. There are some circumstances where abortion is the least worst of several bad options.

Anyway, my beef here is with the kinds of arguments and behaviours that exist on both sides of the debate. When it comes to the pro life movement, it’s not even a case of the ends justifying the means; most of the methods and arguments are not only cruel and unjust, but actively counterproductive. The people who called Biting Beaver the vilest of names and sent her death, rape and torture threats when she was in the middle of a personal crisis are surpassed in evil only by the people who sent her apparently helpful, sympathetic emails with recipes for lethal poisons they claimed were herbal abortefacents. And that kind of thing is all too common in the pro life movement. A prolifer would argue that it’s not fair to judge the whole movement by a few fringe extremists, but the fact of the matter is that even the supposedly moderate sectors of the pro life campaign do a lot of harm, and don’t save any babies in the process.

Good sex education would prevent a large number of abortions, yet pro life politics seems to support leaving sex education as late as possible and as incomplete as possible. Teaching teenagers (and vulnerable adults) that having sex is evil, but using protection is really, really unforgivably evil can only lead to unwanted pregnancies. Lying about the effectiveness of protection and the biological reality of pregnancy might change a few minds on the abortion issue, but only for as long as the victim remains ignorant; once they find out they’ve been deceived they’re almost certainly going to reject the central part of the message too. That is to say, if your argument against abortion is based on an Aristotelian view that a zygote contains a little tiny human being, fully formed from the moment of conception and therefore having full human rights, it’s a pretty weak argument given that an early embryo is not in fact a miniature human being. And arguing from cuteness is very dubious indeed; there are plenty of non cute creatures and people who need protection and if a foetus’ rights depend on the fact that it’s (supposedly, though actually not) cute, they are not real rights.

Attacking women who are sexually active (and if someone’s pregnant there’s no way for her to be in the closet about it) is only going to encourage abortion. In general, promoting rigid gender roles is likely to leave more women vulnerable to being pressured into sex or unsafe sex or, in fact, abortion. Arguing as if having a baby were a punishment for being “irresponsible” or worse, slutty is certainly not an encouragement for keeping the baby if an unwanted pregnancy occurs. Restricting adoption to white, middle class, monogamous, straight, married couples (and then slandering even those who do adopt because it’s so important for children to be brought up by their biological parents) means that it’s harder to find adoptive parents and more women will choose abortion than otherwise. In Biting Beaver’s case, the actions of the pro life movement led directly to her being in the situation of needing an abortion; the lie that pro life propaganda has promulgated that the morning after pill is an abortefacent means that more and more medical institutions are reluctant to prescribe it, and the length of time it took Beaver to obtain her pill would undoubtedly have reduced its effectiveness.

As for withdrawing funding from charities that provide medical care and education to the world’s most vulnerable, on the grounds that such charities have “links” (defined extremely vaguely) with abortion providers, that is absolutely morally despicable and is certainly going to lead to more, not fewer, babies dying. And there’s a whole bunch of stuff on these lines, where abortion is so broadly defined that various gynecological medical procedures are subject to the same opprobium, and again, worse healthcare for women and mothers is going to lead to more pre-natal deaths. So this is wrong even if you somehow believe that the mother’s welfare is entirely irrelevant and only the unborn child matters.

I can only conclude that the real motive of the pro life movement is not, in fact, preventing abortions. I think part of it is in fact simple misogyny. As a side note, I don’t believe that “the patriarchy” is trying to make lots of women have unwanted babies, any more than I believe that there is a worldwide conspiracy of men to make lots of women have abortions. This is primarily because I don’t find it plausible that there is a worldwide conspiracy of men full stop. But “the patriarchy” can be a useful shorthand for all the ways that society is systematically unfair to women. I do think that some of the pro life attitude is based on assumptions which boil down to women being inferior and sex being evil and so on, and that some of that has the largely incidental consequence of putting lots of women in situations where they need abortions while also attacking them for being in that situation and for having abortions.

A major part of it is this weird political thing where you somehow convince the electorate to vote against their interests by using abortion as an emotional lever. If voting for a right wing party, no matter how racist, authoritarian and even incompetent it may be, is seen as supporting the baby savers over the baby killers, that’s a very strong card for the right wing party. I have also seen the extremely cynical argument, I think probably from , that people who don’t have good access to birth control are likely to be more politically compliant. Some of the best people, the ones who would otherwise be at the barricades, are neutralized because they are precisely the ones who will step up to their responsibilities and take care of more children than they can really afford.

Now to the pro choice movement. I think because they are fighting such a dreadful beast, many pro choicers are inclined to get quite fanatical about their cause. Anyone who expresses the slightest doubt that abortion is great, the pinnacle of human achievement, and people should have as many abortions as possible because yay abortion, is suspected of helping the pro life enemy.

I think there is an important difference between the US and Europe. Certainly, it is American politics which dominates online debates, and the issues are not always applicable over here. I know that some people react to stories like Biting Beaver’s relatively smugly, sure that that kind of religious fundamentalism claiming to be pro life in order to push a particular religious agenda, could never happen here. I’m not so complacent about that; I think a lot of American political ideas do contaminate the meme pool over here. Still, while the evil pro life movement has less traction in Europe than the States, there are important differences in the respective pro choice movements.

American pro choice arguments are often based on rights and feminism. Women have the “right” to choose, the “right” to self-determination, the “right” to decide what happens with their bodies, the “right” not to be pregnant and not to give birth and not to be mothers. AIUI, the original laws permitting abortion were based on considerations of privacy, so it makes sense that this is the argument that pro choice campaigners rely on. The problem is it makes little sense to talk about the right to do something which is not a desirable thing to do in the first place. Pro lifers would counter that the unborn child has a right to life which trumps the right of the woman to these issues of autonomy and privacy. And my problem here, as very well expressed by Lavendersparkle, is that by loudly proclaiming the right of women to minimize the effects of injustice by having abortions, it is easy to forget about fighting the injustices which led to women being a situation to want to have an abortion in the first place.

European pro choice arguments tend to be much more medical. In the UK, which is the situation I know best, the law and many of the arguments are framed in terms of permitting abortion where carrying the pregnancy to term would harm the health of the mother. At the moment, a situation where having a child would totally ruin the mother’s life is, and I think justly, regarded as a real harm. But there’s this other aspect, which is about the health of the potential child. Foetuses with congenital defects can be aborted right up to full term; there is no time limit as is the case for healthy foetuses. This political reality is, I think, extremely harmful to the cause of disability rights. If one frames the argument in the American terms, one can say that a woman has the right to refuse the responsibility of caring for a disabled child. That’s perhaps distasteful, but my opinion is that it should be distasteful. That’s what the whole idea of the right to choose is based on, that women are entitled to kill a foetus if they don’t want to be responsible for the baby it will become. But in Europe, you often hear people arguing that abortion is morally best for the baby, because it would be “cruel” to bring into the world a child that would have such terrible quality of life. That is an argument I have a huge problem with, because it very quickly shades into the meme that it is better to be dead than disabled.

I happen to believe that the issue, like many moral questions, is extremely complicated and good people can come to different conclusions from me, and still be good people. But if you want to take exception to this, go ahead.

A few months back, I wrote a post about why I don’t get Christianity. And it worked out really well, it generated loads of interesting discussion and I learnt a whole lot. I’ve been meaning to do something similar about why I don’t consider myself as a feminist. Because I find feminism both fascinating and repulsive, so I’m hoping to get a similar level of discussion going.

I want to start with a lot of the same stuff from the intro to the old post. If you want to be offended, be my guest; I’m not going to mince words here. At the same time, this is by no means directed at any individual who identifies as a feminist. I am aware that ‘feminism’ is not entirely monolithic, and not all the criticisms here apply to all feminists, so don’t bother calling me on that one. Do, however, feel more than free to correct me otherwise, because I have not made a detailed study of feminism, and it seems likely that many of my problems with the movement stem from ignorance. I should point out that I am in sympathy with some feminist aims; I would not bother writing an essay about why I am not a neo-Nazi, for example!

When I was a kid, feminists were rude people who came into my house and made my mother cry. Most people would express gratitude for her excellent hospitality and the delicious meals she would provide, but feminists would criticize her for spending so much time in the kitchen. As often as not, they would go on to tell her she had wasted her life and betrayed the Cause because she had left her high-powered professional job when I was born to become a full-time housewife.

I try not to be prejudiced by that negative first impression, but it does lead on to a more general point. Feminism seems to be extremely concerned with telling people how to live their lives. To take a trivial example, I’ve never come across any sexist man criticizing me for not making enough effort with my appearance (the way sexist men are apparently prone to do), but I’ve very often been taken to task by feminists for wearing long skirts and keeping my hair long, because apparently I’m promoting sexist stereotypes of femininity. And that’s direct, personal, in-my-face criticism, not even counting all the articles that have been written complaining about women who dye their hair, or wear makeup, or revealing clothes, or have cosmetic surgery.

I agree with the feminist view that women should not be forced to conform to certain patterns of behaviour, but I do not agree that women should be forbidden from those lifestyles. I think people should be able to dress how they like, and do the jobs they want and are capable of, and make personal choices about whom to sleep with and how they want to structure their families, and so on. I honestly can’t see how someone (like my mother) choosing to be centred on the domestic sphere and local community rather than the professional sphere is harming women who want highly paid and highly respected city jobs.

Then there’s the obsession with oppression and persecution. I mean, I’m rich, I have skills that society values, I have good health, I’m white (I tend to hope that doesn’t make too much difference, but as far as it does, the difference is in my favour). I’ve always been able to get whatever I want in life. The idea of considering myself oppressed or persecuted is pretty much ridiculous. Yet, most (not all, I know there are some exceptions) feminists are people like me; they are among society’s most privileged people, yet their whole philosophy is centred around how much they, as women, get discriminated against.

Women in affluent western societies earn, on average, 10-20% less than men over their working lives. This is a bad thing, it’s discriminatory, and something should be done about it. Thus far I agree with feminists. However, it’s hard for me to get extremely worked up about it when those women are still part of the 20% of the world’s population controlling 80% of the world’s resources. It’s a problem if a businesswoman is passed over for promotion on grounds of gender, and reaches a glass ceiling so that she can never exceed her five-figure salary when her male colleagues are earning far more. But it’s pretty insignificant compared to a billion people who earn less than a dollar a day. And even if you only care about this country, there are a lot of people (of both genders) who are far worse off than typical feminist causes célèbres.

The narrowness of this view reminds me of another bugbear: women who wear the various forms of traditional Muslim dress are automatically regarded as victims of terrible oppression by their evil patriarchal religion. At the same time, female circumcision is absolutely fine and dandy, because it’s “culturally determined” and often practised by women.

I don’t like being told what to think. Every time I’ve observed feminists, they seem to be accusing someone or other of not being a real feminist because they don’t hold the right beliefs. For my part, I’d rather define myself as not a feminist, so that feminists will try to persuade me why their cause is right, rather than defining myself as a feminist and being told I’m not good enough because I don’t agree with someone’s pet theory. Also, a lot of feminist theory is presented in a way that makes it totally unfalsifiable; there’s this whole ‘if you don’t accept this view, you must be collaborating with the patriarchy’ sort of approach, and I really hate that.

Then there’s all the jargon and shibboleths, which again focus energy on deciding who gets to be counted as a feminist, rather than actually doing anything to improve women’s situations. Sometimes it seems to me that feminism is mostly a branch of post-modernist literary theory. I find any kind of literary theory only of limited interest as an intellectual discipline, and really completely useless as a tool for political change. So I can’t be a feminist because I know next to nothing about post-modernism.

The other consequence of this sort of approach is the emphasis on gender-inclusive language. I don’t care about gender inclusive language. I’m not violently against it, it’s not a sinister force destroying the purity of communication, or something. I also don’t base this opinion on the ridiculous examples of ‘political correctness’ which are all too easy to mock. If some gender-inclusive language is kind of clunky and awkward right now, that’s just because people aren’t used to it yet, and I’m sure it will sound much nicer if becomes habitual. It just seems rather pointless. It takes a lot of effort to make people change the way they speak, and I’m really unconvinced that the effort is justified. It’s really hard to get any sensible answers out of feminists on this issue - I’ve tried - because either they accuse me of being sexist myself if I don’t support feminist language change, or they go off into flights of post-modernism and I really can’t follow. So I remain unconvinced.

I find myself disagreeing with feminists even on some of what you would think would be absolutley no-brainer questions. Rape is bad, duh. Except that a lot of feminist rhetoric seems to imply if not actually state outright that rape of women by men is the only serious problem. I don’t care if men are a thousand times less likely to be raped than women (I think that’s highly unlikely, but anyway, hypothetically); it’s still an absolutely terrible thing and should in no way be condoned. The feminist view on this seems to fall on a spectrum from trivializing rape of men and same-sex rape, which is pretty bad, to accusing anyone who cares about these issues of being evilly anti-feminist, which is just disgusting. Exactly the same argument applies to domestic violence which is not sexual in nature.

I’m not happy about what I perceive as the attitude of feminism towards men. Now, feminists are always loudly declaring that they don’t really hate men, that’s just an evil caricature by anti-feminists. OK, so I’m prepared to believe that feminists don’t hate men, but I’m still going to take issue with the way feminism portrays and interacts with men. For a start, the idea of a ‘patriarchy’ sounds like a conspiracy theory to me, and I am automatically hugely skeptical about conspiracy theories. I really can not believe that all or most men actively collude to retain power and suppress women. Also, my observation of the world does not suggest that most men even have power over most women.

The corollorary to this is the view that men can not possibly ever be feminists. And if they try to be feminists, they are going to be constantly acting against their own interests which is an incredibly difficult thing to do. Thus, any man who claims to be a feminist is either actively lying (see above re the patriarchy theory), or at best is automatically suspect. I can’t believe that. I think if feminism is genuinely about justice and equality for women, then it is just as much in men’s interests as women’s. And if feminists persist in declaring that men can’t be feminists, it makes me suspect that their aims are not really to do with justice, but something else, and I’m not sure if I want to buy into that something else.

I’ve tried to be fairly balanced up to now, but one thing that makes me absolutely spitting furious is the hate speech that comes from some feminists against transsexuals. I know that not all feminists are prejudiced, but there are far too many who go about saying the sorts of things that I would expect from thugs, not serious scholars, and the fact that such people are still accepted as part of the mainstream feminist community is enough to put me off the whole movement. Apart from a small minority, even those feminists who are not spouting sick, disgusting, dehumanizing crap tend not to see the rights of transsexuals as important, whereas I would say that transsexuals suffer from much, much worse discrimination than born women. Obviously some transsexuals are also women (or if you want to look at this way, all transsexuals are women at some point in their lives), so if feminism really cares about women’s rights, then those transsexuals should be included in their cause.

I don’t want to associate myself with a group that turns a blind eye, much less contributes, to violent hatred of a particular minority. Even apart from that, I think these kind of attitudes betray a serious underlying problem. Male-to-female transsexuals seem to be villified because they’re “really” men. Now, the obvious part of this assumption is just ignorant, it wouldn’t take very much reading to find out that this is not in fact the case. But the less obvious assumption is that they are men therefore it’s ok to hate them, which tends to belie the feminist claim about not hating men in the first place. Likewise, if feminists don’t hate men, why should they have such a problem with someone born biologically female choosing to become a man?

To take another emotive point (and I’m expecting to get absolutely jumped on here), there’s the abortion issue. While I believe abortion should be legal, I can’t call myself pro-choice. I don’t think women have a “right” to abortion, because I don’t think abortion is a good thing. There may be limited circumstances where abortion is the least bad of several bad options, but that doesn’t mean I see abortion as desirable. I’ve repeatedly heard feminists say, if you’re not pro-choice you can’t be a feminist; ok, so I’m not a feminist.

The other reason I have a huge problem with the pro-choice movement is their tendency to use arguments along the lines of, well, obviously abortion must be legal, because no sane person could possibly expect a woman to give birth to a disabled child! And that slips frighteningly fast into, disabled people have no quality of life, so it’s kinder to kill them. No, I’m not entirely objective about this. I’m the daughter of a disabled mother, and the sister of a severely (by any definition) disabled brother, so it’s not something I can regard in a purely theoretical light.

I think my major problem with feminism as an approach (rather than particular individual aspects of the feminist movement as it actually is) is that it genders things that don’t need to be gendered. I see people as people first, not men and women. I want to make the world better for people, not for women (particularly not if improving things for women is at the expense of men). I don’t want to see more women in positions of power and influence, I want to see better systems to ensure that the best people are rewarded and have the most say in running things. That means that if in a particular circumstance, women are being discriminated against, I would want to do something about that discrimination, but I don’t want to start from the assumption that in every situation, increasing female representation is the most important issue. Likewise, I want to encourage people to behave more compassionately and less aggressively; I don’t think this corresponds to with ‘promoting feminine values’.

Even on its own terms, I’m not entirely convinced that feminism is actually the best way to make things better for women. It’s good for a particular subset of women, but my feeling is that it’s doing far too little (and in some cases is actually harming) for some of the women who most need it. Feminism sometimes seems to be promoting the rights of women as long as they’re not too traditionally feminine, not poor or uneducated, or foreign, or Muslim, or transsexual, or disabled, and most certainly not if they’re critical of feminism. I’m overstating my case here, but I do feel that feminism is a bit of an interest group for a particular crowd of people. I have no problem with that as a cause, but it’s not a cause that I feel much obligation to commit myself to.

I was at a cancer conference the other week. One of the talks was about the developments we can expect to see in cancer medicine in the next few years. One of the things he was getting excited about was a vaccine against HPV, which is currently at quite an advanced stage of development.

HPV is the virus which causes cervical cancer. The virus is sexually transmitted; a clear majority of sexually active people carry the virus, although it doesn’t always cause cancer. But it does cause cancer in about 3000 women per year in the UK; most of them are between the ages of 30 and 60. It’s treatable if caught in the very early stages (that’s why there are widespread screening programmes by means of the cervical smear test), but in the advanced stages it’s incurable. The virus can also cause fertility problems, and genital warts in both sexes.

A vaccine is within reach. There’s a good chance that in a few years’ time, a routine injection at the start of secondary school could be saving thousands of women’s lives, and preventing huge amounts of suffering. That’s a pretty significant medical breakthrough, and all the evidence so far is looking positive.

But this vaccine has been blocked at every stage, the initial research, the clinical testing, and now the larger scale testing preceding setting up a national vaccination programme. Why? Because some busybodies are offended by the idea of vaccinating young teenaged girls against a sexually transmitted disease. Erosion of family values! Green light for promiscuity! Corrupting the innocent!

Well, fuck you, lobbyists. I hope you are haunted for the rest of your life by all the women who die unnecessarily and in horrible pain as a result of your stupidity. I hope that your smug self-righteousness gives you exactly no comfort when you come face to face with people who have lost friends, wives, mothers and daughters because you are a bunch of fucking prudes. I don’t hope that you end up among the unfortunate people who get cervical cancer, though, because that I wouldn’t wish on anybody.

How can anyone seriously believe that people dying of cancer is preferable to providing decent sex education and contraception and making the most of major medical breakthroughs like this one? Which, incidentally, are the results of years of work costing huge amounts of money. And it’s not a few weirdos who think like this, it’s people who have a significant influence on funding policy and laws which determine which experiments and trials are allowed to go ahead. Ugh!

Sorry to rant, people. I’d sort of like other people to get angry about this kind of idiocy, but more importantly, I want all my friends to look after yourselves. Eat a sensible diet (including plenty of fruit and veg), do a reasonable amount of exercise, cut down on smoking as much as possible, be responsible about sex, that kind of thing. Oh, and if you’re female, keep up to date with your smear tests.

That’s all.