Monday 17 December 2012

So, wearing underwear is mandatory now?

This week, I have a new hero. Anne Hathaway is my new go-to girl for how to handle awkward situations with perfect poise and diplomacy.


It all started when she was photographed getting out of a car at the Les Misérables premiere. She was wearing a tight dress which obviously needed to be a VPL-free zone. Unfortunately, it also had a large slit, which meant that she exposed more than she meant to. A photograph then circulated and was added to the gleeful gallery of accidentally exposed "lady bits" as the magazines insist on calling them.

The first interview after the incident was with Matt Lauer on the Today Show. He kicked off the interview with "Seen a lot of you lately!" This seemed an unnecessarily jaunty way to open the conversation, when she was clearly feeling pretty violated by the event. (It makes me wonder how someone like Matt Lauer would greet a rape victim. "So, I heard you've been getting around a bit lately....!?") But because Anne Hathaway is such a lady, she actually said "Sorry about that". 

SHE said sorry. She apologised for the fact that someone had taken a picture up her skirt.

He blithely carried on, "What's the lesson learned from something like that...? Other than you keep smiling, which you always do."

What's the lesson for Anne Hathaway to learn? Because it was obviously her fault, right?

Her answer deserves to be printed in the celebrity survival handbook (if such a thing exists....):

"It was obviously an unfortunate incident," she said. "It kind of made me sad on two accounts. One was that I was very sad that we live in an age when someone takes a picture of another person in a vulnerable moment and rather than delete it, and do the decent thing, sells it. And I’m sorry that we live in a culture that commodifies sexuality of unwilling participants, which brings us back to 'Les Mis,' that's what my character is, she is someone who is forced to sell sex to benefit her child because she has nothing and there's no social safety net."

Well played! Shifting the blame back to the perpetrator and bringing the conversation back to the film, in one breath. Bravo!

However, this incident is one more very telling moment in the "War against women". (Which, like, totally doesn't exist. It's a complete myth, right? 

I don't recall anyone calling Kanye a slut who should have been wearing trousers which fit him properly.

Well, let's take a look at the media reaction. Entertainmentwise used the headline "Where is your underwear?" and said "Do you think Anne's vag flash was accidental or intentional? Take a look at the graphic photo in the gallery below." (I PROMISE you this is the exact wording.)

Gawker's headline: "Anne Hathaway shows her vagina to distract from her hideous outfit." Wow, slut shaming, misinformed biology and fashion advice, all in one go! (As many commenters pointed out, nobody could see Hathaway's vagina without a speculum and a torch. It's VULVA, people! I may seem overly pedantic, but using the wrong word is like constantly referring to your ankles as your "knees". )

The words "wardrobe malfunction" and "flashing" were used frequently. No mention of "Anne Hathaway violated by perv with a camera" or "Woman's clothing choices used to justify sexual violation. Again." 

The general consensus seems to be that it's all Anne Hathaway's fault, because she "should" have been wearing underwear.  I do realise that if you don't want pictures of your undercarriage to be widely circulated, going out knickerless and then exiting a car may not be the best way to go about it.  But even if the photo had clearly showed her wearing panties, it would still no doubt have created a stir.) And while she has been called upon to explain herself like a naughty girl caught flashing the boys in the next classroom, the guy who made money from selling the picture has never even been named. 

Naturally, when someone works in an industry which occasionally requires them to be naked and / or simulate sex, and this earns them millions of dollars, all bets are off. They're "asking for it." And money makes up for every possible infringement on your privacy, yes?  

There is also the small point that celebrities in general, but women in particular, are considered public property. As challengers to this view, my other heroes are Will Smith and  Jada Pinkett Smith parents of Willow. (No, I don't like her music.) Jada recently used her Facebook page to answer critics who objected to her "letting" Willow getting a buzz cut. 


"The question why I would LET Willow cut her hair. First the LET must be challenged. This is a world where women, girls are constantly reminded that they don't belong to themselves; that their bodies are not their own, nor their power or self determination. I made a promise to endow my little girl with the power to always know that her body, spirit and her mind are HER domain. Willow cut her hair because her beauty, her value, her worth is not measured by the length of her hair. It's also a statement that claims that even little girls have the RIGHT to own themselves and should not be a slave to even their mother's deepest insecurities, hopes and desires. Even little girls should not be a slave to the preconceived ideas of what a culture believes a little girl should be. More to come. Another day."

Back in May, Will Smith also spoke up on the concerns of raising a daughter, telling Parade: "When you have a little girl, it's like, how can you teach her that you're in control of her body? If I teach her that I'm in charge of whether or not she can touch her hair, she's going to replace me with some other man when she goes out in the world. She has got to have command of her body. So when she goes out into the world, she's going out with a command that is hers. She is used to making those decisions herself. We try to keep giving them those decisions until they can hold the full weight of their lives."

I love this couple. (Even if that goes against every instinct I have about the kind of people who name all of their children after themselves.)

Jada also wrote brilliantly about how the "War on Women" is also detrimental to men:

"How is man to recognize his full self, his full power through the eye's of an incomplete woman? The woman who has been stripped of Goddess recognition and diminished to a big ass and full breast for physical comfort only. The woman who has been silenced so she may forget her spiritual essence because her words stir too much thought outside of the pleasure space. The woman who has been diminished to covering all that rots inside of her with weaves and red bottom shoes.

I am sure the men, who restructured our societies from cultures that honored woman, had no idea of the outcome. They had no idea that eventually, even men would render themselves empty and longing for meaning, depth and connection. There is a deep sadness when I witness a man that can't recognize the emptiness he feels when he objectifies himself as a bank and truly believes he can buy love with things and status. It is painful to witness the betrayal when a woman takes him up on that offer. He doesn't recognize that the create of a half woman has contributed to his repressed anger and frustration of feeling he is not enough. He then may love no woman or keep many half women as his prize. He doesn't recognize that it's his submersion in the imbalanced warrior culture, where violence is the means of getting respect and power, as the reason he can break the face of the woman who bore him four children.

When woman is lost, so is man. The truth is, woman is the window to a man's heart and a man's heart is the gateway to his soul.

Power and control will NEVER outweigh love."


Wise woman. AND she gives me hope that I too can look better when I'm 40 than I did at 20! Hooray for Jada!  

Thursday 29 November 2012

Brilliantly Bonkers

So, it was my birthday a couple of days ago, and while I can't say my new age without inserting an expletive between digits, I had a great time. (Even if the final part of Breaking Dawn was a somewhat disappointing experience. Michael Sheen's ridiculous giggle is still echoing in my head.)

One of my pressies was Katzenjammer's Le Pop album, which I discovered on my beloved Spotify and have been playing obsessively ever since. And when I say obsessively, I mean it's on my stereo when I get up in the morning, I carry the CD downstairs so I can play it in the kitchen while I'm making breakfast, and keep my MP3 player to hand at all other times during the day. It is awesome.

There are other words to describe it. "Insane" would be one. Theatrical, Original, Energetic, Addictive. These are some talented Norwegians.


Is it folk? Is it Klezmer? All I know is that it's impossible to listen to without jigging about a bit. And underneath all the craziness, they actually have beautiful voices.


 
This video cuts off before the end of the song, but you get the gist. I can't help feeling that this video should be part of a longer movie, one in which the oddly disconcerting characters on stage would flit between worlds via a magic portal. Kind of Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus style.

I do like a good fantastical story, and while Hollywood generally prefers to stick to the tried-and-tested (Hobbits, Narnians, Hitchhikers) there are some amazing brain-twisting novels out there. I'd highly recommend Scarlett Thomas – starting with The End of Mr Y. Magic ahoy! Which makes it the perfect literary accompaniment to a band who style themselves after cartoon characters, play countless different instruments and laugh in the face of manufactured pop. Hurrah for them!

Monday 19 November 2012

Hands up who's zombie-proofing the house right now?



When I was a kid, my parents let me watch one of those horrendously low budget Christian films called A Thief in the Night, all about the "Rapture" – an event in which Christians will apparently fly up to Heaven*, avoiding the apocalyptic reign of Satan which will occur just prior to Jesus' second coming. As a child I found it terrifying (there was a lot of screaming when people’s clothes were left behind, signalling their ascension to Heaven, although I seem to remember there were a few false alarms where people had just stripped off their cardigans etc.) I'm pretty sure that if I watched it now, the comedy value would make it worth the price of the rental.

*I know regular churchgoers who have never even come across Rapture teaching, as it's more "American Evangelist" than Church of England. Apparently the predictions for the end of the world are in the book of Revelation, although there are as many interpretations of that bizarre chapter as there are Christians. If you're interested, the much-mocked Left Behind books are quite good yarns (if you fancy the equivalent of a Pentecostal Dan Brown novel). And if any self-proclaimed Christian ever tries to tell you that they know the date of the end of the world, you can remind them of Matthew 24:36 "However, no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows."

It has been pointed out that “w” is the 6th letter of Arabic and Semetic alphabets, which casts an interestingly Omen-esque slant on the World Wide Web, doesn’t it? Much as I adore the interwebs and can't imagine how I ever coped without its many life-enhancing qualities, I can see it has some tricky loopholes. Just as Jeff Goldblum predicted in Jurassic park, we're doing things because we can, without asking if we should.

I just wanted an excuse to use this picture. *Girlish giggling*

People are always freaking out about privacy, for instance. There has been a disclaimer doing the rounds for AGES which we are encouraged to copy into our FB status. It says "In response to the new Facebook guidelines I hereby declare that my copyright is attached to all of my personal details, illustrations, graphics, comics, paintings, photos and videos, etc. For commercial use of the above my written consent is needed at all times!" Of course, Snopes has the real low down – as you might expect, the message has as much power as signing a contract and then sticking on a post-it saying “Didn’t mean it!” 

But why all the fuss over FB? People tell me, wide-eyed with horror, that “Facebook officially owns all your photos!” Um, like any other website you’ve used to upload pictures? Once they're “out there”, ANYONE can save them to their own computers, thus “owning” them – not in a moral or legal sense, but in the sense that they can make a dartboard out of them, or photoshop them in any way they choose. Removing yourself from FB will not erase them – and even if you’re not there to be tagged, pictures of you can still be featured in your friends’ albums, open for all to see. The only way you can avoid this is to run and hide from any camera.

If you can.... Oh, the irony!


While the very name “Facebook” sounds like something George Orwell dreamt up, it’s not the only aspect of modern life we would associate with 1984. You'd have to be miles from civilisation before you could be sure there were no CCTV cameras nearby, and if you use an Oyster card, every tube stop you've made will have been tracked. Slightly creepy, yes – but as we've seen in murder cases, it’s actually really useful for police to be able to see where you have been. (Not to be morbid or anything.) Obviously, you'd have to avoid any kind of public places or transport if you were doing a fugitive-style flight from the FBI. (This is actually a long-held fantasy of mine. I just really like the idea of emerging from a public bathroom with a totally new hairstyle, you know?)

And it's one of my fave movies EVAH!

Another Facey B fact which has everyone in a panic: if you try to leave, your profile will remain, and can be re-activated at the flick of a switch. (Yikes! It never dies!) But isn’t this just a good business policy? I have friends who are forever declaring that they have had enough and are leaving FB forever – only to come crawling back in a matter of weeks or days. I can only imagine the level of moaning I’d have to listen to if they had to re-input all their info each time. While we all hum Hotel California, has anyone actually tried deleting all their information before attempting to duck out of the system? I haven’t, so I don’t know if it works, but it’s worth a try, no?

It used to be quite common to get messages threatening “Facebook is going to start charging you money! Copy this into your status!” although apparently now everyone has realised that it will always be free. This leaves us with the question: How does FB make any cash?


So, Facebook gets money from advertisers eager to know all about the habits and desires of their prey customers. But if people want to show me adverts, that’s their problem:

They cannot make me buy anything.

If it’s a well-chosen advert, it may benefit me, so it’s win-win. (I admit that I did find it a tad sinister the first time Boots sent me vouchers for THE VERY THINGS I’d been buying while diligently gathering points on my advantage card. But they were for things I wanted, so why complain? People whinge that offers like this are unfair to those vulnerable people who JUST CAN’T SAY NO, and will HAVE to use the vouchers even if they don’t want / can’t afford that product. But we’re all adults. (Except the kids whose parents let them fake their ages to have a FB account, obv.)

Finally, a lot of people were shrill and indignant about the fact that FB could use your picture “in adverts”. This is a little misleading – you’re not going to suddenly find your likeness quaffing beer on the telly – it just means that when you “like” something, that piece of information will show up on your friends’ newsfeeds, thus acting as a quasi-advertisement. (Of course there is always the embarrassment factor that you may have liked something uncool.)

This is why I love shopping in the run up to Christmas.You can pretend you're buying
for an elderly relative, when really, it's just that Neil Sedaka made some bangin' tunes.

But if you think about it, it’s a pretty reasonable exchange. Often the “liking” is what you have to do in order to enter a contest or get frequent updates. You could just go to the product’s website and sign up for email updates, or you could make a daily pilgrimage to check on the site. “Liking” on FB is simply the easiest and most convenient way to keep an eye on the latest developments. The price you pay is that people are informed that you like it. Is that so terrible? We’ve been doing it for years – every time we carry a bag with a shop’s logo on it, or clothing with a brand name. So why don’t we just enjoy all the ways FB makes our lives better, instead of whining like spoilt brats?

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some shopping to do before the end of the world. We'll need plenty of tinned food, bottled water and ammo for when we're all, um, dead......

Wednesday 31 October 2012

Happy Halloween!

Some of you know that I occasionally write stuff about movies. The fantastic Den of Geek is one of the lucky recipients of my work, and you can read my latest offering (of 25 spooky movies) here.


I hope y'all appreciate how many scary films I had to watch in order to write the list; I now pee my pants if I hear a floorboard creaking in the next room, and if I see a kid with long straggly hair, I'm OUTTA here. Which reminds me... apparently this makes a prank which really will make grown adults scream....

Doesn't anyone think it's kind of odd that something spooky should so closely resemble a movie stereotype? I wondered the same thing watching Derren Brown: Apocalypse. In a nutshell, some poor sod has been deemed to "take life for granted" by his sanctimonious family as well as the TV hypnotist. So with mind-bending cruelty, they *apparently* set him up to believe that a huge meteor shower was due (with the possibililty of this introducing  a "virus" from space). Apparently confident that his only news source would be a particular website, they hacked into his phone and computer, and later planted passengers on a train carrying fake newspapers. (Really? You wouldn't be worried he was going to buy a paper himself? Or use google?)

Admittedly, they were fiendishly clever – employing XFM newsreaders to record fake stories which would then be playing on a radio in a cafe that their victim (Steven) went into. The culmination of the elaborate hoax came when Steven was on a minibus and the "asteroids" started hitting the ground. Derren Brown sneaks up, hypnotises him in 2 seconds, and the next thing he knows, he's re-enacting the opening scenes of 28 Days Later. (Or if we're going to be fair to John Wyndham, scenes from his 1951 novel, Day of the Triffids.)

I can't help thinking that anyone in Steven's position would say "Wait, I've seen this, It's zombies, right?" However, many people (well, teenage boys) believe that a zombie apocalypse could be upon as at any time, so maybe it would seem like the most natural thing in the world.)

Naturally, there are cries that the guy is a stooge, it's all a set-up and we're the ones who are being fooled. Derren Brown strenuously denies it. (But then, can you trust a man who happily admits to victimising a stranger with a faux apocalypse? I think not.)

As with  Keeping up with the Kardashians, my overriding thought was "Thank GOD my family isn't like that." I also couldn't help thinking that being hypnotised into believing you're in life-threatening danger could one day be the latest stunt for thrill seekers. Just as long as somebody hides all the machetes...

Friday 28 September 2012

Has womb; will get hysterical.


Did you know, the Sun newspaper features a topless woman every day? Of course you did. The words “page three” have been weirdly synonymous with “tits” for years.  It may be something you don’t think about much; I certainly didn’t. I’m not a great reader of the Sun, and I had sort of accepted that they had page 3 girls, the same way I accepted that their articles included sentences such as “Tot-attacking MONSTER to ROT in jail.” It’s just the way they ARE, bless ‘em.

Luckily, Lucy Holmes is not afflicted with a similar apathy; she has started a “No more Page 3” campaign which is snowballing with a speed that must be most alarming to Dominic Mohan, The Sun’s editor. (As of right now, the number is 38,059.)

Labour MP Clare Short attempted to ban page 3 twice, back in 1986 and 2004. A clue to her lack of success can be found in the response from her peers; “As I spoke, putting the case for the removal of pornographic pictures from the press, a large clump of Tory MPs began to giggle and chortle and make crude remarks about me, my bill and my body.” (See what happens when you go to a boys-only school?)

So, is there any justification for keeping Page 3? Neil Wallis wrote amusingly in the Huffington Post this week about “Why the Self-Serving Wimmin Who Want to Ban Page 3 Are So Wrong”. His resorting to a misspelling that nobody has used since the 1970s, along with words such as “hysteria” and “shrill” are all fairly obvious attempts to undermine the campaigners. (Neil, if you want us to take you seriously, learn to spell. It’s Womb-en, ok?)

He also admits defeat rather quickly, saying “The answer is easy to those who will hear it: NO-ONE CARES.” Good. Then you won’t mind if we take page 3 away then, will you?

He’s under the impression that anyone who would dare to vote against the “institution” is out of touch with reality; Sun readers aren’t like that, you see. As he says of its vast readership, “Do those three million worry about Page Three? No, they worry about their kids' health, the rent, putting food on the table, work, their relationship, benefits scroungers, immigration, the telly, and a drink at the weekend.” As Glosswatch puts it, “As a white, university-educated, middle-class feminist, there are many things about which I don’t give a toss. My children’s health and earning enough money to pay the bills, for instance. When it comes to those things, I really couldn’t give a monkeys. I prefer to let the “real women” worry about such mundane trifles.”

So what about all those poor Sun readers who just want to see “a bit of fun” in their newspaper and can't be bothered to turn to the comics? I hate to throw your own words back in your face, Neil, but: NO-ONE CARES. So what if it hasn’t occurred to Sun readers that having sexist drivel might be a bad thing to have in a “family newspaper”? It doesn’t mean that nobody else is allowed to think about it or start a campaign.

Of course, nobody who is in favour of Page 3 wants to see bare breasts in the newspaper for selfish reasons, good God, no! It’s really just a way of doing young, impressionable girls a favour. To take their chances of “modelling” away from them is pure arrogance, according to Mr Wallis: “And why shouldn't a girl stuck behind the bread counter at Tesco, an office girl down the local council, the unemployed, find a new glamorous life via Page Three?”

      What on earth would young girls do without role models like this?

This seems to be quite a common defence of “glamour modelling”. It's the route to a “better life” for many young women! A life which revolves around fake tan and vajazzling and the knowledge that little girls are looking at them and hoping that one day, they too will be topless in a newspaper! Imagine a world where this didn't happen. Imagine a world in which Jordan had never become famous! Wouldn’t that be, um, awful.....?! 

I’m always suspicious of anything which requires the defence “it’s just a bit of fun.” This seems to be brought out all too often, explaining everything from rape jokes to mean practical jokes (all shit and giggles til someone has a heart attack) and of course, beauty pageants in which 8-year-old girls parade around in bikinis and heels. You know what? When something’s a bit of fun, there is no need to point it out. Fun is one of those wonderfully self-evident things. It doesn’t normally involve 50% of the population being valued only for their sexuality. 

As  Benjamin Jones of Mitch and Murray points out: “It should be fairly obvious that a special page in a newspaper dedicated to a woman with her tits out for no other purpose than having the presence of some tits is not really there to advance equality or celebrate women.  It’s there to say “corrrrrrr, nice tits” and that’s it.  And just because they add “Sally, 19, is currently studying politics at Birkbeck” it doesn’t mean she’s being treated as an equal.” 

Wallis wants to know “Why aren’t those (No More Page 3) petition signatories putting their energy into campaigning against, say, female genital mutilation? White slavery? Sexual stereotyping in the workplace? Forced marriages? Under-age sex and pregnancy? TxtSexploitation in schools? The list is endless – in my view, all these are far more important… but silence.”

Well, it’s not really silence, is it? The fact that you know about these issues at all tells you that somebody, somewhere, in the media has reported on them. And as others have pointed out, most people can manage to sign more than one petition. The point is, Page 3 is ONE huge issue we CAN solve very easily, and it would make an immediate difference to women in Britain; we would be assured that showing topless women is the territory of lads’s mags and porn, not daily newspapers. 

Clare Short writes “One young woman told me that she went to a police station in London to report a sexual attack and was confronted by a pornographic calendar. She went home feeling sick. She did not report the attack and felt that she could not trust the police who proudly displayed it on their wall. Another woman went with her small daughter to report a road accident and was confronted by a similar calendar.” The sooner pornography loses its veneer of normality and “harmless fun,” the better. 

So there you go. I don’t care if the lack of Page 3 means that all those poor Sun readers will be sobbing into their cornflakes every morning when they are DEPRIVED of the glorious sight of a 19-years-old’s knockers. Boo hoo. Get over it. (Because it’s not as if they can see bare breasts anywhere else, is it? It’s not like people have the internet on their phones or anything like that.) I don’t even care if there are some young women who were planning to make a career out of taking their clothes off and now have to find something else to do, possibly involving their brains, creativity and imagination. I don’t care if Page 3 is an institution. Time’s up.

You can start by signing HERE.


Thursday 27 September 2012

Even more cheerfulness


Sometimes, something happens which restores your faith in humanity. This article from Jezebel is one of those things. Not only was the victim of cyber bullying able to give an intelligent, articulate response, but the self-proclaimed "european_douchebag" recognised that he couldn't even begin to argue against it and BECAME A BETTER PERSON. Yay!

Sunday 16 September 2012

Best video in the whole world, ever?

As I seem to have been somewhat serious and / or grumpy in posts lately, I will attempt to redress the balance with this video. It is the best ever. I can literally watch it every day and never get tired of it. Aw.


I especially like the way that the cat, after being a little unsure of his new pal's rambunctious attempts to "play", finally gets into it and then he's all "Noooo, come back! I HAVEN'T FINISHED KISSING YOU!"


As youtube vids go, I also like this one:


It's not often that you see something on the internet that you've never seen before, so kudos to you, Jeremiah McDonald!

Friday 31 August 2012

Jeremy Clarkson's Crash Course in the Law of Attraction


He also heard that women have been laughing at his indiscriminate groping antics.

Jeremy Clarkson has decided that “Britain is a nation of 62 million complete and utter bastards.” Why? Well, he thought that it would be a good idea to announce via Twitter that his dog had died, and was then surprised when his 503,861 followers made jokes about it. 

I’m not going to be a real meanie and say “Well, he deserves it because he’s such a horrible, horrible person.” (But he is.) I will, however, make the point that Twitter serves as a mirror. It’s not as if the people who saw his tweets about a dead dog were picked at random. They were all people who had chosen to follow him. And if you were the kind of person who says stupid things all the time in the hopes of getting a reaction, what would you expect?

If Oprah wrote about a sad event on Twitter, she would probably get a number of weirdo replies, because she’s famous and freaks go with the territory. However, I suspect most of her followers would probably react with sympathy, because dog-hating thugs don’t often subscribe to tweets such as "I'm ready to be an instrument. Thank you for an inspiring, spirit filled, blessed #SuperSoulSunday."

So Mr Clarkson, time for a long hard look at the kind of person YOU are?

Thursday 23 August 2012

I am the Captain of my Soul – Unless I Can't Move...



On the 16th August, Tony Nicklinson lost his “right to die” case at the High Court. Yesterday, he died of pneumonia – exacerbated by his refusal to eat in the days since his defeat. 

Since his stroke 7 years ago, Mr Nicklinson had suffered from “locked in syndrome” – being fully alert and conscious on the inside, but unable to move beyond some facial expressions, the most heartbreaking being his face when he learned that he would not be allowed to die. The judges on his case decided that "voluntary euthanasia is murder, however understandable the motives may be". Because of his inability to move independently, he would have had to enlist help from a family member in order to end his life.

Euthanasia is one of those subjects I’ve always been fairly neutral about – nobody wants to think of people suffering, but equally, when is it ok to turn off the life support? Even people who appear to be braindead have occasionally snapped out of their comas, none the worse for it. And how can you trust that the person making the decision really has the patient’s best interests at heart? People can be very odd when wills are in the equation.... 

However, it still makes sense to judge cases on an individual basis. Would the judges have changed their mind about Tony Nicklinson’s fate if they had experienced just one day in his body, communicating through blinks and having to give up every shred of dignity? Mr Nicklinson pointed out; "Judges, like politicians, are happiest when they can avoid confronting the real issues and this judgement is no exception to the rule.” He admitted that his biggest regret was summoning help at the hotel when he collapsed; “If I knew then what I know now, I would have let nature take its course.” 

Jean-Dominique Bauby was the editor of French ELLE when he suffered a stroke and became a victim of locked-in syndrome. He painstakingly spelled out every letter of every word of a short book about the experience, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, before he died (also from pneumonia). He describes correspondence from his friends; “Other letters simply relate the small events that punctuate the passage of time: roses picked at dusk, the laziness of a rainy Sunday, a child crying himself to sleep. Capturing the moment, these small slices of life, these small gusts of happiness, move me more deeply than all the rest.” One could argue that as long as you’re alive, it is still possible to find some value in every moment. 

But how long can someone go on living in purgatory? Mr Nicklinson’s response to his high court defeat was: “I am crestfallen, totally devastated and very frightened. I fear for the future and the misery it is bound to bring.” His daughter Lauren told the press “He would rather have three months of the physical and mental anguish of starving himself than 30 years living locked-in.” It’s an understandable stance; not only would 30 years of living mean more years of ‘dull, miserable, demeaning, undignified and intolerable’ life for you, but also for the family who would have to sacrifice their own lives to take care of you, adding guilt to the list of daily pains. 

So what was the court’s problem with Mr Nicklinson’s “right to die”? As he was extremely keen to end his life, it seems irrelevant that the actual drugs would need to be placed in his mouth by someone else. So it appears that the actual debate isn’t about whether it’s ok to “help” someone die – it’s a debate about the moral rights and wrongs of suicide. The judges decided that Tony Nicklinson had to stick it out rather than end his suffering. 

But like it or not, every human being has the right to kill themselves, if they so choose. If someone is physically incapable of doing so, why is it suddenly someone else’s choice to make?