Is the Burka any more offensive than the Miniskirt?

By Joshua Surtees

On the 13th of July, the day before Bastille Day, the French parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of a ban on women wearing the burka in public. 335 politicians voted in favour of the ban, just one against. Justice Minister Michelle Alliot-Marie described the occasion as a victory for democracy and French values.

But surely, the point of democracy is that people have the freedom to choose things like the clothes they wear?

Just in the same way that some women in France choose to wear miniskirts, hotpants, push up bras or bikinis in the street. Just as men and women in France are allowed to walk around naked on nudist beaches. Just as newsagents and broadcasters are allowed to display pornographic images of women on shop shelves or national television channels like Canal +. Should Muslim women not be given the democratic freedom to determine how much or little of their bodies are seen? Just as these two Lebanese women in the photograph below have both made their individual decisions to cover or uncover their bodies – why should a government take it upon itself to ban one of them?

My personal opinion is that people should be allowed to wear what they want to wear and if that causes offence to others then those others should simply look away. I don’t particularly like the bomber jacket and cherry red Doc Martens uniform of the National Front – a symbol of the overt racist tendencies of the wearer. But I would not expect the government to ban it from being worn.

Some people may object to tattoos or piercings and the values they symbolise, some may object to the elongated ‘giraffe necks’ of some Burmese women, some may object to the sartorial choices of some transsexual people; but just because a style of dress reflects a culture that is different to ours, it is surely an extreme measure to officially eradicate it.

On the face of it this ban appears to have three strands. The first is a stance against the oppression of Islamic women. The second is a symbol of France’s secularisation of the state. The third is Islamophobia.

Turning first to the oppression of Islamic women. Do these women photographed in Birmingham look oppressed?

It’s an interesting question. Some of you might say yes, others might see a group of strong Muslim women, defiant and proud of their culture. In what way is what they are wearing any more oppressive than the cultural European norms that dictate women should be seen in high heels and make up?

On a trip to Syria a few years ago I met a young Parisian woman of Algerian heritage. Before leaving the hotel one day she decided it would be easier for her to wear a headscarf. When I asked why she told me it would attract less attention. As a woman in a city like Paris she endures the daily stares, whistles and comments that all men direct towards women. When a woman covers up the parts of her that men find attractive it neutralises the potential for sexist behaviour or unwanted attention. In Islam it is seen as a symbol of modesty. In France it is seen as oppression. Feminists would argue that rather than covering women up, instead men should be held accountable for their behaviour. But how do you stop men from staring and whistling? Perhaps a law against lewd sexist behaviour in public should have been pursued in tandem with the ban on the burka. But that will never happen under French law. There is no feminism within French law, only the pretence of it.

It is often said that women are forced to wear the burka by their husbands and, of course where this is the case – as in Afghanistan when the Taliban came to power – it is entirely unacceptable. But in Europe, large parts of North Africa and the Middle East, the choice to wear the veil is predominantly a woman’s choice based on her religious beliefs and not the result of coercion or domestic patriarchy.

With regard to the second point; the secularisation of the French republic. While all religious symbols are banned in schools and universities, there is currently no legislation banning the Jewish kippah or Sikh turban from public places. Jean-Francois Cope of the UMP party declared that “the burka is not a question of religion, it is the way for some extremists to make an instrumentalisation of the religion in order to make politics.” A deeply flawed and questionable statement which leads us on to point three. Is this simply Islamophobia in action?

There are 5 million Muslims living in France – many of whom opposed the ban. Only 2,000 French women are believed to wear the full burka. It therefore seems a symbolically aggressive gesture directed from the French state towards a minority community. Surely, in a case such as this, where the tangible effects of passing this law will be to remove from France’s streets a physical manifestation of a culture and religion, would it not have been more acceptable to put the vote to a national referendum? Or would that serve only to further polarise communities and exacerbate the tensions that have always existed between France and the peoples of its former colonies?

In Britain, a ban such as this would be seen as inherently racist and unacceptable. British Muslims would see it as an act of marginalisation of religious behaviour. Moreover it would be seen as an oppression of basic human rights. Tory MP Andrew Grice has already been warned that his statements about refusing to meet with constituents dressed in the veil could lead to legal action legal action. Yet, in Spain, Holland and Belgium similar bans to the one in France are already being discussed. This suggests something fundamentally different in the extent to which diverse racial and religious groups are accepted in British society as opposed to elsewhere in Europe.

On my way home on the bus the other day a woman was sat with her two young daughters. All three of them chatting away and laughing in Arabic. Her two young girls were wearing jeans, trainers, t-shirts while their mother was wearing the niqab. At one point during their conversation she turned to me and though I saw only her eyes, I could see she was smiling. I smiled back and she turned back and continued her conversation. Where I live in north London the veil is simply a small part of life just like the colourful flowing dresses of the Roma gypsies, the Lycra leggings of the Polish girls, the head scarves of the Turkish, the furry hats of the Orthodox Jews or the miniskirts of English women. Nobody stares, nobody is scared, nobody appears offended.

Why should they be?

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Why Are There No Gay Footballers?

by Joshua Surtees

My ex-girlfriend physically despises professional organised sports. Apart from figure skating. But then, she is Canadian. And Canadians notoriously have difficulty understanding any sport that doesn’t involve ice. Or snow. Or both.

 
Above all sports, however, she had a particular dislike for football (or “sah-kerr” to use her North American terminology). The instant football came on the TV she would magically produce a book or magazine and start reading, steadfastly refusing to glance at the screen even for a millisecond. Unless of course Cristiano Ronaldo was playing. She liked CR9. Although I’m pretty sure it wasn’t his sporting prowess she was admiring.

Other than Ronaldo, the only other aspect of association football that fascinated my ex was the inherent homoeroticism of the game. She would point out homoerotic aspects which many ‘sah-kerr’ fans choose to ignore but, when examined, are clearly present. E.g. that 60,000 men (and football crowds still are 90% male) crammed into a stadium very close to each other watching 22 men run around in tight shorts, mimicking the players’ kisses, cuddles and embraces that follow each goal, is quite a ‘gay’ thing to do. Bear in mind she is a staunch supporter of gay rights and has more gay friends than any other straight person I know. Her point was that the majority of the men doing these ‘gay’ things at football matches are, generally, rather homophobic. The beautiful irony she saw in fat, unfashionable, largely illiterate, straight men getting “all homosexual” with each other was hilarious to her. “Are you off to the game now to be gay with your friends and all the other guys?” she would goad. “It’s not gay,” I would respond, “it’s what’s known as male bonding. It’s about as non-gay an activity as you can get”. But I was only fooling myself. It is gay. It’s very, very gay.

The question she would ask me about football, above all others, was: why are there no gay footballers? This ponder is dedicated to her musing…

So, why are there no gay footballers? And I do literally mean none. The only footballer in the entire history of the world game to come out publicly was Justin Fashanu in 1990. Upon coming out he was instantly mocked and reviled by supporters, even disowned by his own brother, the cretinous John Fashanu. Sadly, Justin Fashanu, a talented footballer in his mid-80’s prime, took his own life in 1998. As a black man, having put up with years of racism within the game, he became unable to deal with the homophobia, the general turbulence of his life, the taunts of managers, fans and players and an unfounded sexual assault claim filed against him by a teenaged boy he coached in the US.

Other than Fashanu, no footballer has ever admitted being gay. Marcello Lippi last year claimed there are no gay players in the game. Now, in a sport played by 250,000 people world wide, around a quarter of whom are professionals, it’s simply not possible for them all to be straight. That’s just a question of simple logic. Some, perhaps as many as 10%, must be gay. If they are, then it’s very sad they have to live in the closet through fear of what might happen if they were public about it. Sadly, such fears are well founded. Football in many ways is still truly a philistine sport.

To put homophobia in football in context; within very recent memory in the UK, loud open, vitriolic racism was heard at nearly any game you went to. In some places it still exists: Millwall, Oldham, Stoke, Burnley, Leeds or Cardiff to name a few. You will still hear racist abuse at all of these places. In Italy and Spain racism is commonplace and barely questioned, even by the authorities. Given this fact, you are probably able to imagine what attitudes to gay people are like. Homophobic abuse is already directed at players who are not openly gay but simply suspected of being so. Or even just because they read books! Graeme Le Saux, an intelligent former player and league title winner, was one such player subjected to taunts. Sol Campbell is another. “Have you ever seen Campbell with a bird? Have you fuck.” they sing at him. And far far worse things I’d rather not repeat here.

While anti-racist policies such as the FA’s Kick It Out have been in place for a while, the intolerance of homosexuality in football circles is only just beginning to be challenged at an official level. The FA has a Homophobia In Football working group. Shamefully, professional clubs are neglecting to support its aims.

Other sports have featured openly gay players. Rugby, with the recent example of Gareth Thomas, basketball player John Amaechi in the US, even the ultra-macho, Irish sport of Hurling recently had a gay revelation in the form of star player Dónal Óg Cusack.

So, what is football’s problem? Clearly one can accept the culture of football is decisively masculine, aggressive and centred around male posturing. But I don’t see that this stops a player from coming out. Gay men can be just as masculine, aggressive and posturing as straight ones. The question is: why would they choose to expose themselves to the hatred by disclosing their orientation? The hatred would not necessarily come from fellow players. David James, Portsmouth and England goalkeeper, demonstrates this, writing rather eloquently here about his hope for a gay player to come out.

And yet, to come out in the Premiership in England would take a huge amount of bravery. PR guru Max Clifford believes there are gay footballers out there who are too scared to come forward. But somebody will have to take the first step. While initial reactions may be harsh, I feel that if a strong role model gay figure was to emerge, somebody with the equivalent status to a David Beckham or Wayne Rooney, the bully boys and homophobes in the crowd could be silenced. All human rights campaigns require trailblazers, groundbreakers and martyrs. Gay football already has its martyr, Justin Fashanu. Let us hope there will be no more martyrdom but at the same time let us hope that one day somebody will emerge with the courage and conviction to cope with the stress and to change footballing attitudes, just as Clyde Best, Brendan Batson, Cyril Regis, Viv Anderson and Laurie Cunningham did for black players and fans in the 70s.

There are gay men involved in some ways with football. Elton John owned Watford FC in the 1980s. Matt Lucas is an Arsenal season ticket holder regularly seen at games. It would, however, be a giant step forward into the 21st century, if an actual player or indeed manager, intimately connected to the sport came out. One day it will happen. Maybe not necessarily in the UK. Maybe in Holland, Germany, Sweden; places with more forward-thinking, European attitudes. Not that homophobia in the UK is generally a huge problem. Historically we are one of the most tolerant and supportive countries when it comes to gay rights. It’s just such a shame our tolerance and support does not extend to our national sport.

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Am I Really Black?

by Joshua Surtees @joshuasurtees

“But I’m not black” says my sister. We are in the car with our mother driving home from the airport. “Yes you are” I say, mildly annoyed. Since childhood, our white mother has always told us we are black and should describe ourselves as such, even though we are half white. Right now, however, our mother appears to be supporting my sister’s argument, and beneath my growing angst I realise it may be wrong of me to impose my personal view of our ethnicity on to her. And yet I persist.

“No, I’m mixed race” she says. “Yes,” I say “but you’re also black”. “No, I’m as much white as I am black, but nobody calls me white so why should I call myself black?” “Do you really not know?” I say. “If you mean the one drop rule, then yes of course I know” she says “but why should a theory derived from the civil rights movement in the US decades ago apply to me now?” It’s an interesting point…

Let me back track to the conversation that sparked this discussion. In my kitchen at home one evening I’m talking to my lodger. She is of the same background as my sister and I (her father is black her mother is white). We are talking about her imminent return to Suffolk after a year in London. “I’m going to miss London,” she says. “There aren’t many brown people in Bury St Edmunds”. I’m amused by the comment. “You don’t describe yourself as brown do you?” I ask, slightly bemused as it’s been a while since I’ve heard the term. “Yes, I’m not black and I’m not white, I’m brown”. “Oh that’s interesting,” I say, “what does your dad [a black American] think about that?”, “He’s fine with it” says my lodger.

Over the next 20 minutes or so my lodger and I discuss the merits of the various labels that could be applied to us. I tell her that my own perception of the label ‘brown’ is the derogatory, condescending term ‘brown babies’ used in the British post-war years to describe children of white mother’s and black US soldiers. I also explain my concern that mixed race people often refer to themselves as brown out of some residual sense of lingering shame at the thought of calling themselves black. It must be remembered that in the eyes of most of the world, being black is something that only relatively recently emerged as something to be proud of. This is especially so in England where immigration of black people in large numbers only really began in the 50s and 60s. The generation of the earliest immigrants from the Caribbean still to this day refer to themselves as coloured. Because that is what they were told they were. Because being ‘black’ back then was undesirable. The term coloured today is racist, and yet older generations, including my white grandmother, still use it innocently, as if it is the correct term.

At school in the late 80s/early 90s, the awful term half-caste was commonly used. My siblings and I would come home from school describing ourselves thus, having been described as such in the playground or even by teachers. My mum would tell us never to describe ourselves as such, nor allow others to, explaining that the term comes from the Indian caste system and essentially means you are half a person. Of a lower class. Thank god that term is largely eradicated now along with terms such as mulatto or indeed yellow.

I suppose the term half caste came about from a genuine embarrassment in this country about the new phenomenon of mixed race babies. Until a turning point in the 60s and 70s, it was rare for a white woman and black man to have a baby, or vice versa. It is this embarrassment around issues of race that I have a problem with and may be why I am not a fan of the term brown. To me, it feels like an attempt to sanitise, ‘pretty up’ or get out of simply saying black. It is ‘black’, made more palatable for society. To me there should be no sense of shame or compromise with the word black. It should be something to be proud of. That is what was drummed into me by my mother, and indeed my father, and has stuck with me. “People will see you as black and you should be proud to be black, never deny that you are” was their message. “But Rachel [my sister] is lighter than some Italian people” we would argue. “She’s still black” would be our mother’s response.

For me, the black pride factor runs deep in this debate. Many black people require black success stories and role models to identify with, to motivate and to stimulate personal pride. If a half black person achieves success and calls themselves a black man or woman, this represents a greater fillip to black empowerment, than calling themselves brown or even mixed race. Barack Obama describes himself as African-American. What would it do to the psyches of other African-Americans in the States if he instead described himself as multiracial, bi-racial, mixed race or dual heritage? I feel it would be a disservice.

But am I wrong? Is it me who is living in the past? Is it not the choice of each individual to decide their ethnicity, even when those individuals come from the same background or even the same family, like my sister and I? Surely she has the right to call herself mixed race and my lodger to call herself brown? In the months since my lodger used the term brown, I’ve heard it quite frequently, most often from people of Indian or South Asian origin. So, is it just me that’s still living in a 1980s PC ‘Right On’ world where we march against ‘the bomb’ and acid rain and Thatcher and people calling themselves brown?

I tell my sister I find the term ‘mixed race’ unsatisfactory. “It’s meaningless. It doesn’t even describe which races one is a mix of. Ethiopian and Italian? Korean and Mexican? Iranian and Jewish?” In an, ideal world I would describe myself as half English half Jamaican. When I ask my half Norwegian half Guyanese friend he concurs. Yet these are our parents’ nationalities, not really our ethnicities. I think dual heritage is a prettier term. For me, ‘mixed race’ is just the latest in a line of flawed terminologies that the government and equalities agencies haven’t really thought through. I think it will be replaced fairly quickly with another generic, unflattering term.

My sister recounts the a time when a chatting with two childhood friends she said to one “please don’t call me half caste it’s incorrect” and the other joined in “yeah, and don’t call me Indian”, to which my sister had to politely point out “but, you are Indian!”. The unfortunate interjection somewhat devalued the original point but it neatly highlights my previous point; that some people actually are embarrassed or confused about who they are.

Then, she makes the final point that another mixed race friend, a well educated young woman, until only recently referred to herself as half caste. I am shocked.

It seems political correctness is not the solution to everything where individuals are concerned. This is the essence of the debate. Is it the right of individuals to call themselves whatever they want? Whether that be black, white, brown, mixed race, coloured or even half caste? Is it unacceptable for others to label people with official, political or ideological terms?

I think it’s fair to say I have mixed feelings on this one.

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No Ball Games

by Joshua Surtees

Recently, while walking through a council estate in Wood Green where I live, I noticed a small boy repeatedly throwing a basketball against a sign that clearly read 'No Ball Games'. Now, I don't know whether kids are subversive at age 10 or just naughty, but this was a deliciously brazen act. He was bouncing the ball, I believe it's called dribbling, and then using the sign as his 'hoop'. If only I'd had a camera to hand (oh but wait, it's illegal to photograph minors...as my brother recently found out when trying to take a photograph of his own son at a cafe). I particularly liked how the basketball kid looked around occasionally, just to check if anyone was looking. It was genius, and added a needed touch of comedy to an otherwise bleak scene of garages, concrete and prohibitive signs.

A couple of days later while reading the Tottenham and Wood Green Journal, I happened across an article featuring a Banksy story. Banksy has come to Tottenham and given us a beautiful new piece of art. What is interesting about this story, as with all Banksy street art, is the debate about what should be done with the piece. The owner of the building (which houses a Polish grocery shop and, I believe, a kebab shop) clearly has the right to remove the painting (as has been done many times in London before people cottoned on to the fact that Banksy is one of our greatest current artists). Apparently the owner is still debating what to do about it. Haringey council meanwhile, not wanting to appear culturally ignorant, have erected a Perspex shield around the piece to protect it and "to draw visitors to the area". Hahaha...if you have ever been to this junction in the heart of Tottenham you will know why NO visitors will EVER be drawn here by ANYTHING....it's grim). Perspex, you will recall, also covers a Banksy piece on Essex Road. While the reflective plastic does tend to deface and emasculate these pieces somewhat, at least councils are now protecting them, and drawing attention to them rather than chemically removing them.

It is, however, an interesting dilemma. If the owner is a Neanderthal and has never heard of Banksy he could have it removed. Which brings us to an interesting debate about ownership; who really does ‘own’ this piece? Can the artist claim ownership or is he technically a vandal? Does the building owner have the right to remove, alter, cover or indeed sell it as his own personal property? Does this piece of art belong to the community at large and everybody who walks past it and beholds it? I do not have the answers to these questions but I do feel that areas like Tottenham deserve this kind of adornment. This is now (hopefully) a permanent artwork on display and touching local people’s everyday lives. It is exactly the kind of subversion of the restrictions society places upon individuals that De Certeau would be proud of. In areas with bleak prospects and living environments, the inspiration, aesthetic uplift and humour that such work can bring is invaluable.

I also feel strongly that senior figures within the artistic community should do more to encourage high quality street art. In cities like Lisbon or Paris I have seen vibrant examples of street art which appear to be understood and celebrated by the local residents and artist communities. London, meanwhile, until fairly recently had a blanket policy of removing any so-called ‘graffiti’ from its streets. Artists such as Banksy have made great strides in altering perceptions and, indeed, differentiating between ‘tagging’ artists, whose mission is to simply proliferate their monolithic symbols as widely as they can, and ‘real’ street artists.

To end, I refer back to the aforementioned ball-throwing kid and share with you some of the thoughts that his wanton act instigated in my mind: Was he referencing Banksy in his act of juvenile delinquency? Was he sending out a big 'fuck you' to Haringey council, to the government, to the state, to the authorities who create these stupid signs? Will he be the next Michael Jordan and grow up to tell the stories of how he used to have to use a sign for a hoop? Will he grow up to be a nihilist, an anarchist, an agitator, a political activist, an anti-capitalist demonstrator, a football hooligan? Was it simply that he could not speak English, or was perhaps illiterate, and therefore couldn't understand the sign or the significance of his act? Or was he just a naughty kid chucking a ball against a sign? Whatever the facts behind this extraordinary sight are, it was a beautiful, beautiful thing to observe. Thank you small boy, whoever you are.

And you can read/see more about Banksy and other street art from around the world at this rather pleasant website

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