Up Front by Emma Hart

So it turns out that Adric can’t stay in the Tardis. It's Earthshock time. He’s been poking his little tendrils in where they don’t belong and generally mucking things up, and he’s got to go.

Seeing my brain scan images was fascinating. My nose is big enough in real life – on an MRI it’s enormous. I’d never before been able to use a mouse wheel to travel through my own skull.

The registrar was lovely, and had a level, no-nonsense way of explaining that if Adric stayed where he was, I’d go blind in my right eye. If they took Adric out there’d be a ‘small risk’ (10-20%) that the operation would blind me.

And generally being a calm reasonable person who makes good risk assessments, I had no problem with acknowledging that yes, any surgery involves risk, but leaving Adric where he was and letting him grow bigger was not a choice I could take.

I was still holding on to that with only the slightest quaver when he described making a six-inch incision from above my right ear upward to about the middle of my scalp, and then pulling my scalp down to expose the skull, so that no matter where they started sawing into the bone, the scar would still be above my hairline. (Squeamish readers should look away shortly before the start of this paragraph.) There will be drilling. There will be shrinking my brain. There will be chipping and sucking and at least six hours of surgery. There may be radiotherapy afterwards. My consent is pretty much informed right up the wazoo.

I went on the waiting list for the operation. Waiting lists being what they are in countries with socialised medicine, I was probably going to come up before a Death Panel first, right?

Last Wednesday, on a trip into town to see our son’s Learning Advisor, we dropped into the tattoo parlour I use, to book in a new tattoo. Last time, the waiting list was about three months. This time, though, I managed to get a cancellation slot – for Saturday. Brilliant. Then I’d have it all done before the operation and not have to worry about cancelling it after booking so far in advance.

Shortly after getting home, I got a message to phone the hospital. They’d had a cancellation and they wanted me to come in – on Friday. Or at least, they wanted me to come in and do pre-admission on Friday, then go home again and come back on Sunday evening. Perfect. I could get my operation, and my tattoo.

The tattoo was awesome. My last day of freedom has been lovely all round. My last day of freedom, and my last day of reasonable hair for quite a while. Now comes a week Inside. I am stocked up with food, books, headphones and internet access. I have the promise of visits for the viewing of my silly hair. My partner and I have been constantly reassuring each other that everything will be fine. I can’t help thinking that things would have been a lot finer if I hadn’t got a bloody brain tumour.

Let’s deal with the obvious question before it comes up. Yes, I still get The Listener. No, I don’t really know why. Part of it is, I suspect, that I’m so lazy you can pwn my soul for the price of a few crosswords and t.v. listings. Part of it, though, seems to be morbid curiosity, the need to see just how bad it can get. And boy did Rebecca MacFie set a new bar this week.

Is this what the women’s movement was fighting for? The right to get wasted on equal terms with men?

…Outside one of the bars, a strikingly attractive young blond(sic) screeches about unwanted attention from a man inside. With her up-thrust, barely-clad breasts and short skintight dress, might she be the author of her own difficulties?

“I’m f---ing sick of being harassed,” she squawks at police. “I just want to have a f---ing good night.”

A good night, apparently, entails dressing up like a hooker and coming to town “pre-loaded” on booze some time after midnight

I honestly don’t know where to start. Is this what the women’s movement ‘was’ fighting for: the right to define a woman’s sexual harassability by the amount of cleavage she’s showing? Do we need to have a Listener Guide to Dressing for the Liberated Woman, containing instructions on how to choose your clothing solely for the impact it will have on men? Life would certainly be easier with a set percentage of Breast Tissue Exposed to View which entitles men to sexually harass you and women to describe you using verbs more usually applied to chickens. You could perhaps take a digital photograph of yourself and see what your ‘dressed like a hooker’ ratio was before you went out. Because that’s what the women’s movement was all about, right? Replacing being told what to do by men with being told what to do by other women.

I’m also really impressed with this woman’s chest, both up-thrust and barely-clad. Obviously she has an invisible push-up bra, which is awesome.

And you know, I was going to go the Full Sarcasm on this. I was going to pull examples of the kind of sexist Victorian paternalism from which this ‘feminism’ is largely indistinguishable. Be decorous. Behave like a proper lady. Dress appropriately. Speak quietly, if at all. (A gown for an evening out from a hundred and fifty years ago, while properly covering the ankles, exposed vast amounts of decolletage. Shocking.) But the prospect was just too depressing, and far too easy.

So for once, let’s be serious about this, because apparently it still needs saying. There is no amount of flesh I can expose on a night out which makes me fair game – sorry, the author of my own difficulties. It is, by definition, impossible to deliberately attract unwanted attention:

it’s unwanted.

I have a partner, and have had for a while now. Many times over the years I’ve gone out for an evening without him. On none of those occasions was I looking to get me some. And yet for some reason I still put on nice clothes, which made me feel good, even though in some cases breast tissue may have been visible. (My French Whore Top is awesome.) On some of those occasions I have attracted ‘unwanted attention’. I work on a ‘gracious deflection’ principle which works almost all the time. But if someone persists after that, it makes no difference at all what I’m wearing – or where I am or how much I’ve had to drink. I am not responsible for a strange man’s behaviour.

Now, it’s true that it’s not at all unusual for a woman to criticize another woman’s dress sense. We do it really a lot. In the last couple of years I’ve been making a conscious effort not to slag off other women for their clothing and make-up choices, which has made me realise just how normal it is. It’s especially hard for me, because when I’m drunk and bitchy? Fuck I’m funny.

So we do this, but you know what? We don’t call it feminism, and we don’t call it journalism.

Earlier this week I was reading the Parents’ Guide to Getting your Child into University, and while what it says is excellent, I think it’s missing a vital step.

Basically, with universities restricting entry to more courses, it’s getting much more difficult and complex for parents to get their children into their desired careers. The report by Auckland University researchers suggests that parents find out about university entrance standards for courses, then choose their children’s high school subjects accordingly – from year nine.

This is excellent advice. Two years ago, my son wanted to be a writer, but at year nine, he’d settled on a much more sensible career choice – high school science teacher – and he’s not likely to change his mind again at any point. Especially if we get him stitched into it nice and tightly at thirteen. In twenty years time, when he’s downing a bottle of whiskey over a pile of marking and throwing occasional maudlin glances at his unfinished novel, he’ll have the consolation of knowing he fulfilled his prospects just like his parents wanted him to.

Where this guide falls down for me is its single-minded concentration on what parents should do to get their child into the correct university courses. That’s just piking. Organic-wholegrain-bread middle-class parents are made of sterner stuff than that. We’re in it for the long haul.

I went to uni (slightly after they moved lectures out of caves) and we could always spot those kids, the ones who’d been pushed and shoved through high school without ever having to make their own decisions or take responsibility for their own study habits. Without anyone looking over their shoulders, they spent at least a year falling down, throwing up, and smashing letterboxes. Any course-work handed in would be done in a blaze of panic; a couple of hastily-typed pages thrown together and sprinted across campus to be flung in a submissions box seconds before the deadline.

Responsibility for this, like a child’s high school achievements, lies squarely with the parents. They piked. There’s no reason to take your foot off your child’s neck just because they’ve left school. Get them through university too.

Keep them at home. This is essential for keeping an eye on them. If, at year nine, your child has indicated a preference for a career like dentistry or architecture that would require them to go to a particular university, move. If those preferences would require your family to simultaneously live in more than one city, you really should have thought about that before you had more than one child. You may need to divorce so each child can be adequately supervised. Committed parents make these little sacrifices.

Keeping them at home will allow you to ensure that they do a regulation number of hours of coursework a day (Auckland Uni may have some suggestions), but it brings the added bonus of hampering their social life. This is a delicate balancing act: you want your child to make the sort of connections that will be useful to them in later life, but on the other hand you don’t want them getting distracted by enjoying themselves. It’s not called fun-iversity. Also, under no circumstances do you want them having sex. Both the good and bad parts of sexual relationships will get in the way of your child Achieving like nothing else. But if you’re keeping your child nice and close like a good parent, you’ll have no end of ways to deter potential sexual partners.

The other big danger of university, outside of sex and drugs and booze, is the Arts Faculty. Beware of your child showing an interest in doing ‘just one stage one philosophy paper’. PHIL 120 is a gateway drug. In no time, you’ll find your child staring blankly into space instead of working, and when you ask them what they’re doing, they’ll say, “Thinking.” Well, thinking ain’t going to buy them no investment properties. Knock that shit on the head sharpish. Let it go as ‘just a phase’ or ‘potentially useful I guess’, and five years down the track they’ll have a Masters in Unemployability.

You’ll still have to make some tough calls, of course. At what point does further study become pointless? When should they leave and get a job? How long should you keep them at home after they get a job, so that you can ensure they’re making the proper progress in their career? These are your decisions to make – you want to give your children a ‘fighting chance’, don’t you?

"Pleasure derived from the infliction of pain is an evil thing. Cruelty is uncivilized."
~ Lord Templeman

Somehow, quite against my will, I've become one of those people who goes around blog comments saying, "That ‘funny’ comment you just made? It’s not funny, and this is why." How did this happen? I hate those people, the ones with no sense of humour. On considered reflection, I blame you lot.

What you’ve done is convince me that there are people who are willing to listen and try to understand when I explain dodgy things, without being all judgemental about it. I hope you’re happy with yourselves. That’s what brings us to this place, one where I’m going to try to explain BDSM, in a manner so unsalacious as to suck all the fun out of it. Nonetheless, if the subject matter makes you deeply uncomfortable, please do stop reading.

There’s no statement I can make about BDSM practice or practitioners that would be unequivocably true. If you know one BDSMer, you know one BDSMer. A particular person may be part of the ‘scene’, or not. Their practice may involve pain, humiliation, bondage, actual sex – or not. It may pervade other areas of their life, or be entirely restricted to occasional bedroom sessions. There will be two things: explicit consent, and some degree of ritualised role-play.

There are, however, a bunch of clichés – things people think they know – that maybe I can do something about. Some of the myths even contradict each other, which is mildly hilarious. So for instance, the British Conservative Politician myth says that all subs/bottoms are powerful men who find sexual enjoyment in being subjugated by leather-clad dominatrices. Meanwhile, radical feminism pretends male subs don’t exist, and teaches that all subs are women conditioned by society to think they enjoy being dominated by men, sexually and in all other areas of their lives.

There is, quite simply, no relationship between someone’s position in the rest of their lives, and their BDSM sexual identity. It neither agrees with nor runs counter to their status or social conditioning in any reliable way. There are, of course, people in the BDSM community who fit those clichés, but there are a lot more of those people – powerful men, happily subjugated women - who aren’t BDSM practitioners. There is no correlation between gender and BDSM sexual identity.

These myths also ignore the over-representation of LGBT people in the BDSM community. It’s very hard to get any kind of demographic read on BDSM practitioners, because so few are prepared to be open about their proclivities, but various surveys have pegged the level at somewhere between 25% and 50%. In general sexual surveys, the group most likely to articulate an interest in BDSM practice is bisexual women. The two cultures – BDSM and LGBT – cross over and become sub-cultures of each other, most obviously represented by Leathermen and the lesbian feminist group Samois.

This rather effectively argues against the idea that BDSM is inherently sexist or patriarchal, if BDSM practitioners are more likely than vanilla people to have same-sex partners.

That doesn’t stop this group, however, and people like them, preaching exactly that: that BDSM is inherently degrading to women. Nor did any sense of irony stop them then banning a number of female subs from commenting in the group, because they were saying the wrong things. (You do not want to piss off female subs, as a generalisation. Those poor deluded degraded brain-washed chickies will hand you your arse and ask if you want fries with that.)

Of course, it might not be general social conditioning that causes BDSM. It could be that BDSM subs were smacked as children, and therefore associate pain with love. It could be that they were abused, and so seek either to be abusers, or victims.

To which I can only say this: the search for a cause is inherently degrading. It sees a particular sexual taste as abnormal, as a departure from how people are supposed to be. Nobody asks what causes a person to enjoy vanilla sex. The need for an explanation is reserved for kink. You start by telling me I’m wrong, then you try to work out how I got broken. The next step is of course fixing me. This is the same attitude some people display towards homosexuality.

The sexual response to pain actually requires no elaborate sociological explanation. The biology is quite sound. Sexual arousal changes the way the body processes stimuli. I’m sure there are a lot of people who have found marks on their body – bruises, scratches, bites – that they didn’t notice getting during sex that would have hurt them under normal circumstances. Pain and pleasure can blend: the sensation of pain is blurred, but the body still releases endorphins in response. This can lead to the phenomenon of subspace, where a sub becomes incapable of perceiving pain at all, on a total endorphin high – an experience referred to as ‘flying’. The pleasure is an entirely genuine physical response.

Nevertheless, people continue to believe that it is impossible to consent to violence. That attitude is entrenched in the British legal system, and led to the awfulness that was Operation Spanner:

The police had obtained a video which they believed depicted acts of sadistic torture, and they launched a murder investigation, convinced that the people in the video were being tortured before being killed…
The apparent "victims" were alive and well… 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.

Nobody struggles to believe that I can consent to being tattooed, or having my teeth drilled, or entering a boxing match. It’s only sexual violence where I suddenly can’t know my own mind.

And the Dom/Top role is so far from an abuser or a rapist I can’t really get my head around the idea. It’s a caring role: a good Dom(me) is expected to know his or her sub’s likes and dislikes, freak-out points, and be able to tell when he or she enters subspace and needs the Dom(me) to judge their tolerance for him or her. The Dom(me) is expected to provide after-care for the sub. The person with the power to bring the whole thing to a screaming halt, whose needs supercede the other party’s, is the sub.

Christian Domestic Discipline is not ‘like BDSM’. That is inherently sexist: a husband is allowed to administer physical punishment to his wife because, being female, she’s inherently stupid and wrong. I’m sure some couples practicing it get an erotic charge out of it, but that doesn’t make it the same.

Where to from here? Wikipedia is excellent on BDSM: well-written, well footnoted, and non-judgemental. For ‘out’ BDSM blogging I recommend the fabulously-named Let Them Eat Pro-SM Feminist Safe Spaces. From both those places you can find links to other sites and resources. And who could pass up a site called Wipipedia?

The very, very brave among you might find some value in visiting lesbian BDSM site Bleu Productions (NSFW!) and watching the teaser clip in the top right-hand corner. There are no nighties and hairbrushes in sight. (Also, the candles will make you giggle, and ‘Post-Apocalyptic Cowgirls’? Awesome.)

As some of you may remember from earlier in the year, I haven't been seeing so well. It's not all that bad, I'm not bumping into things any more or less often than usual, but it is inconvenient.

Last month I went to see an ophthalmologist. That meant more optometric testing, which I just love. (P.S. Sarcasm.) They even came up with a test I hadn't done before: the visual field. This meant sticking my face in a big white bowl and pushing a button every time I thought maybe I'd seen a dim green light. I couldn't help wondering, though, why they'd made the whole thing so much brighter for my left eye than my right. I am a bit thick sometimes.

The specialist was a very lovely man called Shaun, which is one of the names that causes an instinctive positive reaction in me. (You don't want to be called Christopher or Sharon, but experience suggests that Daniels, Karls, Richards and Rachels may get some traction as well.) Shaun put anaesthetic drops in my eyes ("this will sting"), followed by dilating drops ("but not as much as this would") and sent me out into the waiting room to wait for them to take effect.

The biggest lie on the internet is the 'funny' tag, and the most honest statement is 'tasteless'. When it comes to hospitals, the biggest lie is 'they'll be with you in a minute', and the most honest is 'waiting room'. We waited. My pupils grew massive. My partner was very impressed. "You look like a cartoon character. You look like Jessica Rabbit." My eyeballs felt like they'd been coated in clear plastic.

Shaun was slightly relieved to find that the entirety of the bottom half of the visual field for my right eye was completely missing, as this was the only symptom that pointed away from optic neuritis and its bestest buddy, Multiple Sclerosis. No, he was much more in favour of blood clots in the vessels supplying my retina. Still, as a precaution he ordered an MRI as well as all the blood tests.

The MRI wasn't fun. There was more waiting, in what appeared to be a converted cupboard. The radiographer was lovely, though with a curious total inability to refer to my partner as my partner and not my husband. Said partner reassuringly held my ankle while I went inside something which, despite appearances, failed to transport me to another dimension. I'd been warned it would be loud. What I wasn't expecting was for it to sound like having my head shoved into a speaker at a Jean Michel Jarre concert. My brain kept compulsively trying to make music out of all the thumping and bleeping.

Then we went home to do some more waiting. That wasn't quite how it turned out. The health system is frustrating when it crawls, but completely bloody terrifying when it moves at speed. The wait for the first MRI had been six weeks. The wait for the one after they saw the results was three days. Even so, the ophthalmology appointment beat them to it, in a record two.

We were pretty sure this didn't mean the scans had come up clear. I postulated that perhaps what they'd seen was an obscuration caused by all the porn I'd read and watched in the last few years: a smut-clog. Either that or there was now medical evidence that 'it' really does make you go blind.

So we went back to the waiting room and waited, for over an hour. We speculated on what was in the Services Duct (services, surely), and whether I could chisel off the 'ser' without anyone noticing. Or a chisel. Parents tried desperately to keep their bored children amused. Stroke victims and people on crutches and drips endured the odd tedium of waiting and waiting to hear life-changing news. I'd forgotten how spirit-sapping the waiting room could be.

They must have gained some time after my consultation though, because it took about two minutes all up. All Shaun could do was tell me that they'd found a tumour pressing on my optic nerve, and he was referring me to a neurosurgeon. He was obviously upset that he couldn’t be of any further help to me, and I was tempted to give the poor guy a Shaunish cuddle.

We got out, and down the road, and all the way up to our car before I needed a Karlish cuddle, and to cry for about twenty seconds. Then we did what medical professionals have nightmares about. We went home and fired up Wikipedia.

I have an optic nerve sheath meningioma. The good news is that they never kill you. I'm looking forward to it making me stronger. Shaun called it "the best kind of brain tumour to have", which I’m pretty sure means it gives me super-powers. The 'meh' news is that it's the sort of tumour that you just leave in, and keep an eye on.

After we told everyone who needed telling, we got down to the serious business: finding a name for my tumour. We're calling it Adric. It's my constant companion, but it never does anything useful, just hangs around being annoying, and everyone will be really pleased to see it go.

On the down side, I got less than a day's mileage out of 'but I have a brain tumour'. ("Can you get out and open the garage door?" "But I have brain tumour!"). The clock is still running on "Adric made me do it."