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stella41b -> RE: Dominance in other Countries? (10/30/2008 2:13:44 PM)
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America land of the free? Land of the free my left foot, and I have two lines of numbers scrawled in biro on the inside cover of my passport that America may not be the open, free, tolerant el dorado some people may like to think it is.
I disagree with Rover that 'control of the masses' is the preserve of the left wing governments. Now stretchng the definition of 'left wing' like bubblegum so it applies to our own government in the UK we have more diversity legislation than any other country in the world. I can also share with you all the attempts of the Polish far right and Lech Kaczynski in driving both the LGBT and BDSM communities underground. This is the same Lech Kaczynski who as President of Warsaw declared all BDSM studios and events illegal, who has labelled gays and lesbians 'sexual deviants' and even issued pamphlets in high schools on 'warning signs of homosexuality' in which it was asserted 'homosexuals and lesbians tend to base their relationships on S/M, beating, whipping, even to the point of drinking each others' urine and eating each others' faeces.'
I don't see this as a left or right issue, in fact I don't even see this as a political issue, but more of a social issue.
Yes where you live may seem tolerant and free, especially if you are in a heterosexual relationship which for all intents and purposes looks "normal", but does this mean that society is really all that free and tolerant? Maybe, but only from your perspective.
So okay, let's change that perspective to that of a gay male, a transgendered female, a lesbian, a polyamorist, and try to put yourself in their shoes. Also, can you generalize to the extent of an entire society and country? I think not.
I live in London, a world city, the capital city of traditionally one of the most open and tolerant societies in Europe. But this is just a generalization. It just doesn't work out like that. Now you can take a train any direction out of London and once you get beyond the orbital M25 motorway you come into England proper. London is in England but London isn't England, there is a difference. And as you travel around you come to realise that tolerance and diversity isn't as uniformly widespread as we think it is. I have spent time in Dover, Kent, and it isn't either free or tolerant. I have spent time in Southampton, also in the South of England, and got a completely different impression.
Here in London it's generally tolerant but you cannot always take this for granted. I live in a district known as Nine Elms, which lies between Vauxhall, Stockwell and Battersea Park. Here it's free and tolerant, as it is in Vauxhall with Torture Garden, the Coliseum, and the various LGBT pubs and clubs like the Royal Vauxhall Tavern and Barcode. Go down into Stockwell and despite its reputation as a dangerous place to be nobody will harm you. Not so in Clapham.
I run an SLGBT support group in West London. It was originally meant to be an LGBT group but I added the 'S' to make it a Straight, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered group specifically so it could embrace both the LGBT and BDSM communities. This is a group which has been formed to work at promoting acceptance, diversity and tolerance in the community and thereafter in society. Not everyone who is heterosexual is vanilla, and it just seems strange to me to be advocating diversity and tolerance using an approach which is non-inclusive.
Nor am I basing my opinion here on those people in society who feel persecuted because I am well aware that there are those in both the LGBT and BDSM communities who actually prefer to feel persecuted, in fact some of them get off on it and there are some who will use religion or politics blindly as justification for their persecution.
I can make an example of my own experiences with the black community here in London. On the one hand there is the ten months of systematic harrassment and abuse I went through whilst living in a hostel for the homeless at the hands of a Jamaican born female manager and largely African staff who believed I was the Devil incarnate and when I was sexually assaulted in the hostel they sided with my attacker. It is my refusing to back down or give in and taking this manager and her staff on through repeated complaints with the hostel organization which led me to be given the support group together with my stance with the homeless and among them the gays, lesbians and transgendered. But I have also experienced many gestures of support and kindness from other black people and therefore cannot say that black people as a whole are intolerant.
I am basing my opinion here solely on the level of oppression that one can face from others not for what you do in the bedroom, but for being who you really are, for living the lifestyle you genuinely want to live in relationships which you genuinely want to form.
This brings us back to Spanner, that now infamous case in Manchester in 1987 where the police acting on a video they had received, which they perceived as acts of sadistic torture decided to mount Operation Spanner and arrest 16 men for taking part in homosexual BDSM activities. The police steamed in making raids on various addresses and arresting those involved.
The apparent "victims" were alive and well, and soon told the police that they were participating in private homosexual BDSM activities. Although all of those seen in the videos stated that they were willing participants in the activities depicted on the videos, the police and Crown Prosecution Service insisted on pressing charges. Sixteen men were charged with various offences, including "assault occasioning actual bodily harm" (ABH).
This is what led to the setting up of The Spanner Trust and also Backlash, a movement working against the proposed criminalisation of the possession of 'extreme pornography'.
Now from the way I see it there cannot be any real diversity, freedom or tolerance until we have the heterosexual community working with the LGBT community together to work towards the same goal of acceptance, diversity and freedom but in a much more informed way.
These are issues I feel which exist in every country including the United States. I am planning to relocate across the Atlantic, to be with my family in Toronto, but here I could speculate a little and wonder. Would someone like me be free and safe for example living in a small town in one of the Southern states in the US or in the Mid-West? What is the answer?
But to me freedom is when someone genuinely doesn't face any oppression on account of their skin colour, sexual orientation or gender and when society returns to being an inclusive one. And from the way I see it we still have some distance to go to achieving this and it's very unlikely that I will live long enough to be part of such a society.
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