The Bantee Returns

It's been a while since I've updated this blog. I intended to write a summary of my Edinburgh experiences, but in the event when I returned from Edinburgh I had other things on my mind pretty much immediately - some good (preparing for the Public Address tour) and some not so good but frankly necessary (acknowledging and dealing with some past trauma, which I now see has been one of the main themes of my new writing this year). So reviewing the experience kind of had to take a back seat. If you want a quick capsule review? Like everyone who takes a show to the Fringe the first time, I thought I was ready, and it became obvious very quickly that I wasn't. The experience was gruelling physically, mentally and emotionally and when I came back from Edinburgh if there was one thing I was convinced of it was that I would never do this fucking show again.

So why, then, did I decide to reprise the show one last time, in Brixton, this November?

Picture taken from the above review by Kate Corry

Partly because Dave Pickering asked me to. Dave had always been a big supporter of Howl of the Bantee, especially given that it tied in with many of the themes of his own show, What about the Men? Mansplaining Masculinity. Dave in  particular felt that the small audiences Howl... had been getting - due to a combination of an out-of-the-way venue, bad flyer design on my part, incompetent flyering (again on my part), and me being a comparative unknown in the Fringe spoken word landscape - were an unfair reflection on the quality of the show, and so he contacted me shortly after the Fringe with a proposal that we should do our shows as a double-header at Dogstar Brixton. During the Fringe run itself I had in fact turned down a similar proposal to reprise the show from York-based punk poet Henry Raby, but what attracted me to Dave's offer was that the suggested date, in November, was months away from the Fringe. By the midway point of my August run I was thoroughly fed up with the show and frankly impatient to see the back of it: I felt that maybe by November, particularly with having spent over a month working on and touring a very different piece, I might be able to muster some enthusiasm for Howl... again. In the event I was right, but not for any reason I could have anticipated.

The nineteenth of November was picked purely because it was the next available date Dogstar had open, but in terms of timing it worked for both our shows: being International Men's Day it was a perfect fit for Dave, and being a day before the Trans Day of Remembrance it was also a good fit for a show which, especially as it had evolved during the Fringe, dealt particularly with the idea of banter having a bodycount through the lens of the way transphobic jokes and attitudes legitimise the murder of trans people. I was keen to flag this up in the show: indeed, one of the biggest changes I made to my script for the Brixton performance was the inclusion of a poem I had written for a TDOR event in Teesside, because I wanted to contrast my own trangsty fears from poems of five years ago like The Bathroom Thing with the more direct suffering of less privileged trans women, particularly trans women of colour, throughout the world. But this wasn't the biggest thing that would affect the performance.

Half an hour before the doors opened for the night, the news broke, via Twitter, about trans woman Vicky Thompson's death in a men's prison in the UK. I couldn't not include this in the performance. Here was a trans woman dead, in the UK, on the eve of TDOR, thanks to the Ministry of Justice's draconian insistence on prisoners needing a Gender Recognition Certificate before housing them in the correct part of the prison estate. The same policy which saw Tara Hudson sexually harassed by male inmates before she was moved to a women's prison after a massive activist campaign had now resulted in a woman's death. I was angry, I was upset, I was heartbroken. My Edinburgh run had coincided with a period during which we seemed to hear news of another trans woman being murdered every day, and now it was happening again. And to be honest, I've thought about this and, while I know it's most likely Thompson's death was suicide, it's a suicide in which the MoJ, and particularly the Prisons Minister, Andrew Selous, are culpable, and while that may not technically count as murder in a court of law it seems that way to me.

So I amended the show yet again. I kept the TDOR poem but skipped large parts of it, at some points reciting only the names, to leave room to climax with Letter to a Minnesota Prison, followed by an angry speech in which I implored the audience to sign the petition demanding Selous' resignation and a downbeat ending with The secrets, almost silent, that we sang. And then I got off stage, hugged some friends and got drunk with them because I bloody well needed to.

I'm resisting the idea of comparing this gig to my Edinburgh run because it seems kind of hollow, given the circumstances, to do so. In a strange way I do feel vindicated, because on every objective measure - bucket take, audience numbers - the London reprise of Howl... did much better than its Edinburgh iteration. But what's more important, I think, is that having a larger audience meant I was able to get the message across to more people. The number of people who signed and shared the petition is something I'm particularly proud to have helped with, and I'm extremely thankful to Holly Brockwell for republishing my TDOR poem on Gadgette to help with that.

Ultimately, doing Howl... was about making people aware that banter has a bodycount and getting them to do something about it. In Edinburgh, it didn't reach enough people to do that effectively. In London, maybe, it did. I'm happy with that.

Will I reprise the show again? Maybe. One of the things that has came out of both the London and Edinburgh performances of the show is that while Newcastle audiences have seen me do these poems time and again and have, therefore, had as good an education as I can give them about trans issues, other audiences haven't, and while I may think there's a 100% overlap between the Venn circles of Awesome Queer and Trans People and Spoken Word Audiences because it's true in my case, that very much isn't true in general. Sadly, as much as I wish it wasn't, this is news to a lot of the audiences I perform to. There's a need for it. And while I know it can't be the only thing I do - not least because the activist burnout of spending your nights decrying transphobia in rooms full of cis people and waking up to find yet another example of trans people being shat on the minute you check Twitter is brutal - I think it may be one of the things I have to do. And if I have to do it, then I guess I have to do it.

Amber. Ashton. Kandis.

Amber Monroe was murdered this week. She was twenty. She was twenty fucking years old. 

Ashton O'Hara was also murdered this week. Ashton was a little older: 25.

Now there are reports of a third trans person murdered this week: Kandis Capri.  No word, as yet, on her age. I wouldn't want to bet she was older than thirty, though.

You wanna know why I'm doing this damn show? Because three trans people have been murdered in the US this week and every time you tell a joke which relies on 'but it turned out to be a tra**y!' as your punchline YOU LEGITIMISE THAT. Every time you tell a joke about how nasty and disgusting sex workers are YOU LEGITIMISE THEIR MISTREATMENT. Every time you treat rape like it's a fucking laughing matter YOU LEGITIMISE IT, and you leave the rapists in the room - and statistically there WILL be rapists in the room - chuckling in reassurance that it's just a bit of fun really.
And I can't stop ANY OF THAT. I can't stop the rapes, or the harassment, or the murders, and I can't even stop you yukking it up at your shit jokes about them. But I can tell you, as loudly and as angrily as I fucking can, that THAT SHIT IS NOT OKAY. That it ISN'T 'just bantz'. That it has fucking consequences. That it has a body count. That it leaves blood on your hands.

That's it. It's not enough. But that's it.

Amber Monroe.
Ashton O'Hara.
Kandis Capri.

Say their names.
And have a think about what was likely the last word they heard before they died.

Ready for Edinburgh?

HELL YEAH!

Howl had its first - and indeed only - full preview a week ago today at No Sleep 'Til Scotland, a day-long extravaganza of spoken word which also featured new stuff from Henry Raby, David Lee Morgan, Agnes Torok, Hannah Chutzpah, Matt McDonald, and Sophia Walker but mainly, for our purposes, gave me a chance to find out that this show does not suck. Those of you familiar with my creative process will be aware that I am never entirely convinced that anything I do doesn't suck until I actually do it, so you will know this is A Good Thing. Indeed, this is an excellent thing, as one of the first things I said at the first Scratch Club I went to way back when was that I wanted to develop an hour-long show with a strong through-line and tonal variety and this, people, is that show. I did it. I got there. Allow me, introverted self-deprecator that I habitually am, a little time and space to gloat.

You can find the show's listing on Broadway Baby, on the PBH Free Fringe website, and on The List's Edinburgh festival listings, where it appears next to an advert for The Ladyboys of Bangkok in an ironic juxtaposition of two very different modes of trans performance. It also appears in the PBH Free Fringe Big Blue Book. Oh yeah.

Shit just got real, baby.

And yes, I am straddling a chair like a dominatrix in an Eric Stanton cartoon in the above picture and yes, it is part of the show. Which bit? How? Why? Well, you're just going to have to come and see it to find out, aren't you...

Show Update

Anyone reading the Clarkson poem I posted last week will be aware that I have, until recently, had some concerns about how the show hangs together. I say 'until recently' because, after a mammoth, coffee-fuelled efiting session on Saturday morning, those problems have been licked. Links have been rewritten, in some cases new links were added (particularly to handle the tricky transition between the Clarkson poem and the anti-EDL number '25/5/13', which now forms part of an attack on UKIP), and one poem has been swapped out completely in favour of another. It's a stronger-sounding show: it all seems to hang together quite well now.

Perhaps as a result of this, I've also overcame a psychological block which has been affecting my work on the show. Increasingly disenchanted by the idea of performing a show in which I portray a strident, shouting feminist revenant, and interested more in the idea of portraying vulnerability rather than strength, I had retreated into writing a sequence of poems about masochism, and tinkering with the idea of creating a show based on them. This will probably be next year's show: there certainly isn't time to get it ready for this year.  But spending so much time and effort on a totally different show when I should have been getting Howl ready was a distraction. Fortunately, now this year's show actually does seem stronger, I find myself more excited about pulling on my Shouty Poetry Amazon outfit and getting in Banter Culture's face.

All of which has happened not a moment too soon, as well, as poet, illustrator and editor of the new online poetry mag The Fat Damsel, Jane Burn, recently completed designing the awesome, EC Comics-style flyer for the show. Ace, isn't it?

Now, come on...with a flyer that good, I kind of have to do the show now, don't I?

The Friendzon'd Pen

The Pen is friendzoned for the Muse:
the Pen, the Paper, always there,
unflashy and unflagging tools,
were with you on the fateful date
when you first set your sights on her,

and tried a dozen times to write
pretentious rhymes about the light
you saw reflected in her eyes.
The Pen's nib rolls; the Paper sighs
to see you off like this again.

Have they not always been your friends?
They've seen what happens: you get hurt
and channel that into your verse,
constructing pretty hate machines
of adolescent rhyming schemes.

Toying with smoking once again,
your lips will close around your pen,
an oral side-hug: it wants more,
but you have both been here before.
It knows, too soon, you'll put it down

to chase another Muse around,
so, penfully, it bears its pain:
this happened once, and will again.
Only Paper knows the truth:
this process only is the Muse.

     

Andrew Marvell is sick of girls like you not putting out for a Nice Guy like him

I could've just as easily put this on Wrestling Emily,  but I find the word 'friendzone' as annoying as 'banter' so I figured I'd put it on here. I've tried to write it in (my approximation of) a swaggering, Metaphysical Poets style, because I can see those guys being exactly the kind of pricks who'd complain about being 'friendzoned'. 'Had we but world enough and time...'? Yeah, you'd still be a creepy perv, mate.

Clarkson

It's the freedom of speech
of parents slagging off teachers,
the freedom of speech
of homophobic street preachers,
rich white men who call disabled people leeches, 
making me ask
just who the fuck is free speech for?

Because it seems like it's free speech
to say 'slope' and 'pikey',
but if I say 'kill all men'
I'm not behaving very nicely?

It seems like it's free speech
to support the Paris satirists, 
because freedom of speech
must mean the right to be offensive,
but it isn't free speech
if somebody burns a poppy,
because that's an act of sacrilege, 
an insult to the squaddies?

We've got a PM who's so venal
that he's even worse than Blair,
a Chief Judge who's a racist
and a Voltaire-quoting Mayor
who once asked one of his posh-boy mates
to beat a journo up,
but Jeremy's a Free Speech Hero,
and the blow he struck

should be a shot heard 'round the world
- so says some guy called Guido, 
who doesn't care that Thatcher's cabinet
was full of
men of questionable character, 
but wants to march to Parliament
and bravely take a stand
for the right of millionaires to punch their fellow man!

Because what does it matter if a coworker gets twatted
because a spoiled old sports car bore is absolutely ratted?
The principle's the thing, you see,
the principle is this:
any man who's white and cis and adequately rich
should NEVER face the consequence
of what they do when pissed!

That's why girls who wind up raped
by soccer stars are 'asking for it',
that's why women who say we've been victimised are 'basking in it',
that's why men on stag nights gas
that every lass is 'gaggin for it',
that's why sports presenters
chuckle about 'smashing it in',
this is not about one punch,
this is about the PATRIARCHY:

rule by rich old white cis men
who get away with murder
by distracting you with pictures
of a woman in a burqa
or a miniskirt, or anything
a camera lens can police,

because a woman's clothes
are evidently not protected speech
when what we wear can be the difference
of conviction and acquittal
on the basis that rape's fated
if we're wearing very little, 
and if we've been drinking - baby,
what did you let yourself in for?
You can't claim you've not consented
now we know you had a skinful!

Listen: do the maths, my love,
you'll find it's really simple:
woman PLUS drink MINUS clothes, 
you deserved it;
man PLUS money PLUS white
EQUALS impervious.

Look at his FUCKING FACE

My show's non-poem text mentions the Clarkson furore and the ensuing petition as a key example of Banter Culture, and then goes straight into a poem about...the EDL. Now, while I'm pretty sure the Venn diagram between Jeremy Clarkson fans and neo-fascists is as close to one circle as you can possibly get, it seemed to me that I probably needed to write a poem that would serve as a segue and - so far, I still think it needs a few shades of shit kicked out of it in the editing stage - this is it. I'm not entirely happy with it yet, but I think this is partly because my current approach to writing poetry leans more towards the kind of dark, taut stuff I've recently been writing for my non-show blog rather than the kind of prophetic ranting that makes up Howl of the Bantee. So to achieve that tone I need to do a certain amount of writing myself into it - I think this really hits its stride when I stop talking about Clarkson per se and actually go off on one about rape culture. I'm actually really pleased with everything from the sixth stanza onward, but less sure about the rhetorical gymnastics it takes to get there. And, of course, I'm not really any further forward in how we get from this to the EDL...

Banterwatch update - PC who called threats to kill protestors 'banter' jailed for assault

Andrew Ott, the police officer who joked about killing protestors, gouging their eyes out and 'clouting' them 'to get a bit of justice back' - and claimed that all the above was 'just banter' - has been jailed for eight months, ITV news reports.

Apparently he sobbed in court as the sentence was read out. Typical bantzman.

Banterwatch: Bantz, Bantz - that's the sound of the police

PC Andrew Ott. Picture from Central News, via the Daily Mail website (sorry).

Meet PC Andrew Ott, a member of the Metropolitan Police Force on trial over allegations of -  and I know this is going to shock you - assaulting protestors at a tuition fees demo.

It's alleged that PC Ott struck student William Horner with his riot shield at the demonstration in 2010, then said 'he's going to have to have done something, coz I've put his tooth out.' 

PC Ott seems to have been quite loquacious at the protest - his own voice recorder  reportedly captured him saying 'I wanna kill this little lot', 'I'll gouge their eyes out' and 'I've clouted a few, just to get a bit of justice back' (one wonders if that is anything like Justin Timberlake bringing sexy back - is PC Ott saying those other coppers don't know how to act?).

That's all quite serious, but as you know by now, it takes

more than just beating up protestors to get an entry on this blog. PC OTT here is our subject today because he claimed, in court, that his comments were down to 'bravado', 'frustration' and - yes - 'banter'. 

The British bobby, eh? Best in the world...

Banterwatch: Sportsball Special

Meet Andy Haden. Andy is from New Zealand. Unlike the last Kiwi we had cause to examine in Banterwatch,  however, Andy isn't in politics. Andy is famous for carrying a ball from one end of the pitch to another. Or rather, that's what he was famous for. His ball-carrying days behind him, Andy seems to have taken up a new career in professional douchery.

The most recent effusion from Andy's nozzle came in response to a new study,  Out On the Fields, which surveyed gay and lesbian athletes and found that 80% had witnessed or experienced homophobic actions in sports, with 19% of gay men and 9% of lesbians reporting being physically assaulted, and at least 82% of respondents saying they'd heard anti-gay slurs. Unsurprisingly, these experiences led them to stay closeted, with 48% of gay men and 32% of lesbians hiding their sexuality because they feared the response from their teammates, and 31% of gay men and 15% of lesbians worried about discrimination from coaches or officials. 

A pretty damning indictment of homophobia in the sporting world there, you might think. But Andy has a different take: yes, according to Andy, all those homophobic slurs and physical assaults are just banter.

It turns out, though, that it isn't just homophobia in sports that Andy Haden has opinions about. Haden has previously referred to Pacific Islands rugby players as 'darkies', and has dabbled in rape apologism as well, saying that women raped by sportsmen 'are targeting rugby players...and they do so at their peril'. What a charmer!

Andy Haden, then, is a man who throws around racial slurs, thinks rape victims are asking for it, and considers homophobia harmless bantz. So, Andy, this one's for you:

Well, gosh. There are a lot of you, aren't there?

So there we have it. You voted for a man who hangs out with Jeremy Clarkson and the racist cheesemonger Alex James. A man who calls women who disagree with him 'frustrated'. A man who patronises other women who disagree with him by sneering 'calm down, dear' at them. A man whose election campaign was based, essentially, on the fact he's supposedly a barbecue-attending, Aston Ham supporting 'lad' while his opponent is a 'North London geek' who can't eat a bacon sandwich properly.

In large parts of the country you chose to put a cross in the box next to a party whose candidates routinely engage in racism,  homophobia and misogyny, all because you reckon you could have a drink with its ale-quaffing leader. In the city where I work, and the town where I grew up,  enough of you voted for this genial bigotry to come in second place, behind Labour.

And so many of you, so many of you, will have voted on the basis of the relentless propaganda from a pair of newspapers which regularly publish prurient pictures of half-naked female celebrities while simultaneously moralising about their sex lives, and whose owner sent his venal minions to harass a seventeen-year-old girl for supporting the geek instead of the laddish misogynist.

So I dedicate this poem to you: every man who saw Cameron say 'calm down dear' and had a naughty little chuckle because ho ho, that's how to put the little woman in her place. Every sickening little shit who says Katie Hopkins 'says what we're all secretly thinking' - that may be true in your case, but not in mine. And every single one of you who voted for Boris Johnson because hurr, Boris is a legend! This is for you  Enjoy your laughs now. Because one day, the ones you laughed at might just make you disappear...

Hey, relax, lads. It's just banter.

Banterwatch: It's Not Just Girls

Normally I like to start off these Banterwatch posts with a photo of the guilty party, but there are no photos of today's subject, Grimsby resident Neil Withers, accompanying any of the reports.  So I've whipped up a quick artist's impression, instead:

Grimsby resident and 'intimate grabber' Neil Withers: artist's impression by the author.

You may wonder why I describe Mr Withers as a total shit. Well, as the Grimsby Telegraph reports, Mr Withers 'intimately grabbed' a colleague at work, which shocked and upset said colleague to the extent that they had to take time off work to get over it. 

This is sexual assault,  clearly: but Mr Withers doesn't see it that way, of course. He calls it 'horseplay and banter', one of those 'things that happen in the workplace'. It is, he says, 'just lads being lads'.

'Lads being lads', because the victim of Mr Withers' intimate advances is a lad: a male co-worker. A case like this highlights the fact that Banter Culture isn't just harmful to women, but to men, too. Indeed, it can have a particularly insidious effect on men, as objecting to it often leads to their masculinity being called into question. A response from a male respondent to a survey carried out by one of the NUS Reps at the Tackling Lad Culture Summit has stayed with me:

"If you stand up to banter, you face further ridicule, and either don't have a sense of humour or don't have any balls."

This is the kind of attitude men who stand up to Banter Culture have to put up with, so all credit to the man who took Neil Withers to court for not putting up with it. We need more people like him regardless of their gender. 

It's becoming traditional for me to dedicate a poem to the bantzman criticised in these reports, too. So to Neil Withers, I dedicate this poem, about my own encounter with a bunch of 'lads being lads' in the woods of my hometown, back when I was still presenting as male. I recorded this a while back, so there is a rambling introduction complaining about Julie Burchill, but just ignore that bit. I also thought it would be a good idea to record it in my bra, for some reason. Really, I ought to record a new version: aside from anything else, I have much better tits these days...

There's a happy ending to the tale of Neil Withers and his intimate grabbing. Withers was found guilty at Grimsby Magistrates Court, given an 18 month conditional discharge, and ordered to pay £100 compensation. While I would have preferred him to face jail time, it's good to know his 'banter' has now landed him with a criminal record. Maybe this will make him think again the next time he considers 'intimately grabbing' someone,  whatever their gender.

Banterwatch: Election Edition - Part Deux!

This morning, I was disappointed to see that while Sedgefield Ukip candidate John Leathley had said a number of astonishingly racist and sexist things about the journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, he had forgotten to issue the customary excuse that these comments were 'just banter', opting instead to make an apparently contrite - although misspelled - apology.

Thank God, then, for this man:

This man being Jeff Armstrong, Ukip candidate for Bolton South East. Jeff has been criticised for making and sharing posts on Facebook which have been described as 'crude and offensive' - including one joke comparing an 'ugly, fat woman' to a farm animal.

Unlike Leathley, however, Armstrong has followed the time-honoured tradition of seeking the last refuge of the douchebag,  telling the Bolton News that his posts are 'just a bit of banter' and pointing out that 'we live in a country where we have free speech'.

We certainly do, Jeff - though that didn't seem to stop your party leader complaining to the police about Have I Got News for You. Still, here at Howl of the Bantee we, like you, believe strongly in free speech, which is why I'd like to dedicate this poem to you:

I read that to a bunch of EDL goons who turned up to threaten the protest against your man Farage speaking at the Sage, Gateshead. Funny how guys like that always support your lot, isn't it? I mean, what with you not being racist and all.

Banterwatch: Election Edition

Meet John Leathley. John is a 23-year-old student at Durham University, and finds time between his studies to play at being the Ukip candidate for Sedgefield, County Durham. I say 'play' because Sedgefield is Tony Blair's old seat, and the Labour machine have it pretty much locked down.

Maybe that's why John decided to relieve himself by indulging in some rather unparliamentary language about the writer Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, when she appeared on Question Time last November.

Posting in a Ukip members' forum on Facebook - and let's all pause for a moment to imagine the sort of Socratic symposia that must go on in that virtual venue - John posted that Alibhai-Brown 'needs a good shag'. It's unclear how this would have helped exactly, as Leathley's prescription came at the end of a screed which began with the assertion that 'sleeping with women (when done properly) makes them crazy'. Perhaps Alibhai-Brown was being entirely too sane for Leathley's liking?

A fellow Kipper responded to Leathley's assertion by stating that they would 'stick a cannon up her arse and fire her into Israel, see how long she lasts :D' (there's no word, as yet, on whether this bizarre, emoticon-capped statement was the result of its author being slept with properly).

Leathley warmed to this theme, chortling that Alibhai-Brown would 'love a big black thing up her arse'. What he's doing there, you see, is comparing a gun to a black man's penis. Such wit! Doubtless the debating societies of Dunelm are distraught at the thought of losing such a gadfly to the world of professional politics.

In Leathley's defence, it might be pointed out that he has apologised, and hasn't tried to pass this particular exchange off as 'just banter'. Perhaps, however, his apology might mean something more if he'd bothered to spell Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's name correctly.

(For more on Ukip, and the way they attempt to cultivate a bantz-y reputation in order to distract people from the more cynical side of their policies, check out this piece I wrote for So So Gay last year.)

On This Historic Day

Decided to reply to David Cameron's tweet about the Royal Babbykins.

Yes, it's fucking violent

Since the Baltimore Uprising began this week, there's been a lot of discussion in the media of the limits of nonviolence as a political tool, and the cheek that white people have in lecturing people of colour about how they shouldn't resist state violence with violence of their own. To take this position is to judge people for smashing a few car windows or looting a drugstore, while ignoring the fact that for nearly a year now, US police forces have essentially been on a rampage, killing black men, women and children with impunity. That's a hypocritical position to take, and I condemn it. As far as I'm concerned, it isn't for me to dictate exactly how black people should resist state violence. 

It also set me thinking, though: because one of the worries I sometimes have about 'You're fucking dead LOL J/K', the key poem in my show, is that it's pretty goddam violent:

So violent, in fact, that there are places I've chosen not to perform it. When I played the women's tent at Newcastle Pride in 2012, for example, I deliberately decided to leave this poem out of my set because I didn't want to bring such violent imagery and language into a women-only space. 

Of course, one of the first things I was asked, by another woman, as soon as I'd finished, was: 'why didn't you do that banter poem?'

Actually,  the poem tends to get its most enthusiastic response from women. Men tend to sit there rather uncomfortably when I perform it. Understandable, really, with all the talk of kicking balls and introducing sharp objects to the urethra masculina. Women, however, tend to absolutely love it, because they know where it's coming from. They recognise it as an act of revenge on a culture which does terrible things to women and then laughs them off as 'laddishness', 'boys being boys' or, yes, 'just banter'.

(I should point out that not all women have been quite as receptive. One cis woman told me after a gig that 'of course, a real woman would never write something that violent'. At the time I was just shocked at the blatant transmisogyny, but looking back I should have showed her the violent, graphic death threats I'd been sent by a cis woman just a few weeks before, and which led, years later, to me writing this: 

But I digress...)

So many women have came up to me after gigs where I've performed the banter poem and told me about their own horrible experiences at the hands - sometimes literally - of Rape Culture.  And of how good it feels to envision the people who did those things to them being on the receiving edge, for once.

I mention Lisbeth Salander in the poem, and I think one reason women react so enthusiastically to the poem is for the same reason so many of us felt a rush watching or reading about Salander's brutal revenge on her rapist in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Yes, it is brutal, yes, it's problematic, yes, it's fucking violent but this once, just this once, the tables are turned. 

'You're fucking dead LOL J/K' is a violent poem. But it is violent as an act of resistance. It's an act of linguistic violence which makes explicit the violence of Banter Culture and then reflects that back at the aggressors, the oppressors, the bantzmen, the boys-being-boys. And I don't apologise for that, and I refuse to be lectured by people who claim we will only win by taking the moral high ground. Women have been doing that for centuries, and men haven't exactly stopped treating us like crap. Maybe it's time we started making them scared shitless instead.

Banterwatch: the case of the bothersome builder

Meet Ian Merrett.

Ian is a builder from Worcester. And probably not a very good one, frankly, because, for a month, during time when they clearly should have been working, Ian and his builder buddies wolf-whistled, catcalled and generally harassed 23-year-old Poppy Smart to the point that she had to report them to the police. 

Make no mistake: this was constant misogynist harassment. The builders must have been aware this made Ms Smart uncomfortable: she took to wearing sunglasses and headphones to try and avoid their attentions. They didn't just whistle from a distance, either: on at least one occasion, one of the builders invaded Ms Smart's personal space to intimidate her.

Ian doesn’t see it that way, of course. Ian says that 'no harm was intended' by the month-long campaign of intimidation. Ian says he doesn't understand her comments. Ian says it's been 'blown out of all proportion'. Ian even says that 'if she'd come up to me or one of the other builders and said "I don't like it, can you stop it", I'm sure we'd have taken that into consideration.'

You see what I mean about Ian Merrett being a rubbish builder? This man apparently lacks the common sense to appreciate that a young woman might not feel confident enough to firmly and politely tell a bunch of hod-carrying blokes to stop jeering at her. Do you really want someone that ignorant putting up your load-bearing walls? 

And - oh yes - Ian claims the whole thing was 'just a bit of banter'. 

Well, I have a message for you, Ian Man-without-merit:

And I want you to know that next time I perform this poem, Ian, I'll be thinking of you. Especially on the line 'shoving razor blades up your urethra'.

Just banter, Ian. Just banter.

Update: evolution of a performance

One of the central poems in my show is 'You're fucking dead LOL J/K', a poem which gives the bantzmen a little of their own medicine and invites them to laugh it off. I have, previously, tried doing this in a very angry style, as you can see here. But recently I've been thinking of doing it in something of a...different way. So feast your eyes, if you will, on the new version:

Banterwatch Down Under

Meet John Key. John is the Prime Minister of New Zealand. You know: where the Hobbit movies come from.

John also repeatedly pulled a waitress’ hair. Not just once, not just twice, but on a number of occasions over a prolonged period, until the waitress had to tell him to stop ‘or I will actually hit you’.

Can you guess what John’s excuse for this repeated, creepy, harassing behaviour is? That’s right: JUST BANTER.

What a statesman.

Tinpot Frank Sinatra objectifies woman for teh LULZ. Bantz. 

Apparently it was meant to be 'complimentary and lighthearted'. Say 'it was just banter', Michael, it takes less time and gives us a clearer idea of what you are. 

Devil's Advocate? You can leave out the 'advocate' bit

Bantzmen of a pseudo-intellectual stripe - you know, the guys who've read a listicle of logical fallacies on BuzzFeed in between their constant refreshes of 'A Voice For Men' - like to play a game. They call it 'playing Devil's Advocate'. They claim they do it to open people's minds, maaaaan, but really they only do it because they get off on being total groins. But they will always claim they're speaking hypothetically: that however much they may question rape statistics, or argue that revising our definition of rape is a 'slippery slope', they are only engaging in a thought experiment, being a gadfly, if you will. They'd certainly never actually rape anyone. Of course not.

Here are two stories about a young man called Jeremiah True. He questioned rape statistics. He argued that revising our definition of rape was a 'slippery slope'. So much so, in fact, that his Professor banned him from the discussion portion of his humanities classes, because his going on about rape all the time was intimidating the other students.

'Remember, Keanu...NOT ALL MEN.'

Can you guess what he did next, this Devil's Advocate, this courageous hypothesizer, this fearless thinker of the unthinkable?  Yep. He just got arrested for sexual abuse and harassment.

Gee, I wonder why he was so invested in minimising rape?

...and that's why I'm doing this show.

Lad Culture = Banter Culture?

So, today, as research for the show, I attended the Tackling Lad Culture summit at Northumbria University. I'll have more detailed stuff to say about this tomorrow, but for now I want to make a very simple point.

For anyone wondering whether this show is just me having a personal whinge because I'm a humourless left-wing harpy, some statistics. According to the National Union of Students' 'Hidden Marks' survey in 2010:

1 in 3 respondents felt unsafe going back to university or college buildings after dark

2 in 3 respondents had experienced either verbal or non-verbal harassment

1 in 7 had experienced serious physical or sexual assault

A 2014 follow-up survey found that:

37% of female students and 12% of male students had experienced unwanted sexual advances

2/3 of respondents said they had seen students put up with unwanted sexual comments

2/3 of respondents said they had heard rape or sexual assault jokes on campus

But hey - it's all just banter, right?

The NUS are on to that. Alison Phipps, in her NUS report 'That's What She Said', described laddism as a 'pack mentality', evident in activities such as sport, heavy alcohol consumption and "'banter' which was often sexist, misogynist and homophobic" and which, at extremes, involves "rape supportive attitudes".

And the culture of banter is something students clearly feel afraid to speak out against, as evidenced by a response which Newcastle University Student Union representative Olivia Jeffery received to a survey she carried out for the summit, and which she shared with us:

"If you stand up to banter, you face further ridicule, and either don't have a sense of humour or don't have any balls."

Well, my show is going to stand up to banter, and my show is going to have both.

It seems a little cheesy to say this, but...if you're a student, and have been affected by any of the issues discussed in this post, you may want to look at the Hidden Marks website, set up in response to the 2010 NUS report referred to above. 

Banter: Why It has to Die

Via to the manslator!

Banter Culture at work: the laughter of the entitled

Regarding this Paul Mason article - I can't help but be reminded of how much my rage at Banter Culture relates to things I've seen and experienced in workplaces. People I've worked with,  and for, customers I've dealt with. The laughter of the entitled.

And thinking of laughter makes me think about that Stewart Lee line about comedy and status, how most mainstream comedy these days is millionaires in suits giggling about their class inferiors. And who can afford to spend money on tickets to those big comedy gigs anyway? A safe bet you'll see no maids there, no-one left out of the charmed circle of the McIntyre set. But.

There are a LOT of us on the outside of that charmed circle, outside of the banter, the laughter you share. And one day, we'll show you OUR idea of fun.

Switch off the laugh-track. Listen. And you WILL hear us howl.

Today in Bantz

Hordak  upset that Electoral Commission won't let his party keep its jolly sexist name: blames She-Ra.

So, how's the show going?

It occurs to me that I ought to be using this blog to provide updates on how the show is developing, as well as continually beating you about the head with my opinions on how David Cameron is the Generalissimo Maximo of Banterstan, and needs to be deposed forthwith. So...

Things are developing. I have the introduction and the first four poems of the show pretty much memorised. Memorising stuff for this show is interesting, because of the way I've structured it. I'm trying something I've seen Buddy Wakefield do in his live shows: nesting one poem inside another inside another. In the case of my show, this primarily means that 'You're fucking dead lol j/k' is used as a framing sequence to nest the other poems, so I keep moving away from and then returning to that poem at points throughout the show. Also, because this IS going to be a show, and not just a long set, I'm being very strict about how I plan the movements which accompany each poem. This means that, after each rehearsal, I have been writing down notes of moves in lists like this, written for the moves accompanying 'A Common Assault':

hook hand, darting in on 'went in'
cocky stance, laughing head move
stroll
cocky stance, open up chest
pull down hem of top
hand sweeps back hair
cocky stroll
four fingers, right hand
index finger, left hand
mime unpeeling top
muscleman pose, both arms up
right fist to left palm
...
fists up, boxer-style
lean forward, break boxer pose
right hand grabs left tit
cocky stance
shlub stance
left finger point
shh gesture
gun point w/left hand
sweeping gesture w/left hand
Harley Quinn pose
lean forward, brazen tit-grab, both
jiggle boobs with both hands
pelvic thrusts
beckoning gesture
hands by tits

etc etc...when not grabbing my tits I've been trying to keep up the social media side of this project. But I'm increasingly gripped by the icy terror of knowing I need to get to grips with the traditional media aspects of this as well: flyers, posters, all that. I have a pretty strong idea of what I want: an EC Comics, tales from the crypt layout vibe - strong colours, powerful imagery, something that looks visually arresting, and which hints at the lurid, overblown, gothic aspect of the show (of which more later).

I've given myself a deadline of having flyers etc sorted by May, so that all I need to worry about then is rehearsing, scratching and previewing the show. Only time will tell if that's a realistic goal or the delusion of a wild romantic. We shall see.

The Week in Bantz: Electoral Dysfunction, UKIP, & The Man Who Capes For Sexists

I watched the Leaders' Debate this week, hoping that we might see either Cameron or Farage engage in some cringeworthy bantzmanship in an attempt to court the 'Boris is a LEGEND!!!!' demographic, but sadly banter came there none. Cameron looked on the verge of going full Flashman at times but held back, and Farage's interventions were more straightforward fascist bastard than his usual jolly pint-quaffing media persona. Fortunately, you can always rely on the Sun to come up with some inappropriate, insensitive, phallocentric crap to cheapen the election campaign further, and they duly obliged:

Yep, that's the Scum suggesting that a left-leaning male is lacking in sexual potency compared to the steaming hunk of virility that is...David Cameron. Stay classy there, boys.

Farage's disgraceful attempt to fan the flames of HIV panic was evidence of the dog-whistle racism and homophobia of his party. More of this came out on Twitter as Hope Not Hate exposed homophobic tweets from the party's prospective parliamentary candidate for Banbury:

Banbury? BANTER-bury, more like, eh? Amirite?

But the best illustration of Banter Culture this week came in the form of this Shakesville article which reveals that Jon Ronson (author of 'The Men Who Stare At Goats' and a journalist I had previously respected) smarmed his way through an interview with Adria Richards, who was horrendously victimized by Internet douchebros for daring to expose the sexist banter she was exposed to at a tech conference, while all the while planning to present the man whose sexist jokes she was exposed to as 'the real victim'. This 'real victim' quickly walked back into another tech job, while Adria Richards still struggles to repair a life destroyed by constant, vicious online and IRL harassment - but it isn't her story Jon Ronson is interested in. This is Banter Culture: a man who makes sexist jokes is defended, not just by the kind of half-human scum who inhabit the lower reaches of the Internet, but by a successful mainstream journalist, while a woman who has suffered appallingly is painted as the villain. It's vile. It's unfair. It's grotesque. Howl it down. 

Election Special: 100 Rich and Largely White, Cis , Straight People Support Cameron: No-one Surprised

The UK political landscape was plunged into a state of utterly uninterested torpor this morning, as 100 comfortably-remunerated mainstream arseholes in management positions declared they felt more comfortable with a man who sneers 'calm down dear' at women than with a man whose wife has a life of her own and doesn't just stand around in the kitchen looking pretty while her husband is interviewed.

In a letter published in the Daily Telegraph today, the 100 corporate pisspuddles threw their support behind Cameron because, fundamentally, they identify with him.

'David Cameron reassures me,' said 49-year-old golf-playing prick Harrison Shitwizard.'Like me, he likes Jeremy Clarkson, unlike those Guardian-reading lesbians at the BBC who let him get away with making racist and ablist remarks for nearly a decade. If Labour get in, they'll probably make it illegal for heterosexual men to even say the word 'car'! I bet Miliband lets his wife do the driving, if you know what I mean.'

Other fatcat parasite moneysuckers agreed.  'In an age of political correctness gone mad, when you can't even make a joke about your graphic fantasies of raping a young left-wing blogger without having to preface it with a trigger warning in case some queer gets upset, it's great to see a leader who isn't afraid to send out racist vans telling people to report foreigners, and who isn't afraid to describe a woman criticising a man as what she is - sexually frustrated,' said self-described 'gaming visionary' and 'tribune of the testicle' Norman Codswallop, another signatory. 'Frankly I'm not even sure Justine Miliband IS even a real woman, if you get my drift. Sounds a LOT like 'Justin', doesn't it? Eh? Eh? You notice how we never see her hands, do we? Eh? Unlike SamCam. Lovely SamCam. Silent and yielding, as all women should be. But aren't. Fucking DYKES.'

Other signatories praised the difficult course Cameron has had to steer on LGBT rights. 'Like my company, David Cameron has had to ensure that he sends the right messages about 'diversity' and 'respecting people's identities' and the rest of that wank,' commented Stonewall award-winning CEO Sir Anderson Gufftruncheon. 'But I feel confident that, behind closed doors, Cameron is as happy as I and the rest of my inner circle to get rat-arsed on Bollinger, abuse waitresses,  and swap Dapper Laughs quotes and jokes about how Ed Miliband's wife is DEFINITELY a transgender and anyway, even if she isn't, he probably wishes she was and gets her to fuck him with a strap-on. Hang on, are you recording this?'

Reaction from the general public was varied, with responses including 'well, colour me surprised', 'who gives a shit?', 'eat the rich' and 'who even reads the fucking Telegraph anyway?'

The UK General Election takes place on May 7th. Samantha Cameron is a replicant, and has seen things you wouldn't believe. At country suppers.

The Week in Banter: Clarkson, Cameron, drag

And so, having only written the introduction to this show less than a week ago, I find myself having to edit it. The BBC has finally decided not to let Jeremy Clarkson get away with something.

The news filled me with a mixture of joy and anxiety. Obviously, I'm happy to see the man who is practically the human incarnation of Banter Culture finally forced to face the consequences of his boorish bloviating; but a story needs a strong villain. Clarkson isn't the focus of my show - but if his ouster represents a trend towards finally holding the banterers to account, am I going to find myself flogging a moribund mare by the time I get to Edinburgh? I don't want to come across as someone delivering the last kicks to a twitching, barely-conscious enemy in addressing the Banterin' Menace...

But then, the Banterer-in-Chief is still at large. David Cameron promised this week that, if he secures a second term as Prime Minister, he won't seek a third one - presumably because by that point, his mission of turning large parts of Britain into a third world country will finally have been achieved. Many of Shiny Dave's defenders predictably became lachrymose at the prospect of the end of this era. I, personally, will remember Cameron for sneering 'calm down, dear' at a female MP, snidely telling another that she was 'frustrated',  and generally behaving like a bullying blowhard for his entire ill-gotten term in office. Little wonder that Dave was among those defending his mate Jeremy for punching a co-worker. Then again, Cameron has reason to be grateful to Clarkson, who lent his voice to the disgraceful disability bullying which served to undermine his predecessor at Number 10.

Finally this week, we had a reminder that Banter Culture finds its way into places where you might not expect it, when National Union of Students motions condemning drag performers for cultural appropriation and transmisogyny came to the attention of the gay media. I find myself in the position of agreeing with the spirit of these motions, while also thinking the way the motions have been phrased is deeply problematic. The fact is that, as much as fans of drag (and most of the drag fans I've met are very definitely white, cis gay men) may not like it, there are forms of drag which are racist, transphobic and misogynist. Equally, there are progressive forms of drag, and there are trans people who use cross-dressing as a way of exploring gender before coming out as trans. It isn't as simple as 'drag BAD, trans GOOD'.

So the motions are kind of a mess, but the way Gay Star News covered this issue isn't just messy - it stinks. For one thing, if I were subbing Joe Morgan's article, the bit about the NUS passing 'plenty of motions', ho ho ho, would have been struck from the piece. We get the joke - 'passing motions' is a euphemism for doing a big smelly poopy-poo! That's the sort of joke everyone makes on the morning of their first conference, and gets sick of hearing by lunchtime. But there's also the very lazy, slanted attempt to link the anti-drag motions to the earlier guidance that conference delegates use 'jazz hands' as applause, rather than clapping and cheering. Whatever your view of this policy it has no relevance to the drag motions - it's mentioned purely to make the NUS delegates sound silly. We've been here before - this is a 'those crazy FEMINISTS!' story worthy of the Sun back in the 1980s, when they were making up stuff about kids singing 'baa baa rainbow sheep' - and gay people being the only folks who caught AIDS. As someone who used to work in the LGBT media, I have to say that I think we owe it to ourselves to do better than this.

How is this relevant to my show? Well, because it's representative of a reaction I often see in LGBT media when someone addresses drag and its discontents. As I say, there is, it seems to me, a progressive kind of drag, but there's also a form of drag which appropriates black culture, mocks women, and glories in the use of transmisogynistic slurs. But when anyone brings up these aspects of drag, too often the reaction is not to think about what drag does do right, and how it might be made better - it's to tell the critic that they need to loosen up because it's, well, just banter. It's difficult for us, as LGBT people, to think that we may sometimes be guilty of the same kind of BS as a vociferous Clarksophile - but it happens, all the same.

You're fucking dead LOL J/K

Introduction

All my life I’ve been told to settle down and take the joke. The joke was always predicated on my being different, not fitting in. Partly because I was fat. Partly because I was nerdy. And partly because of something else: something my childhood persecutors figured out a long time before I did.

I never did learn to settle down and take those jokes. I grew up, got out, and moved on. But many years later, there seemed to be a new word for the kind of ‘jokes’ I’d had to put up with as a kid. That word was ‘banter’. The word had always been around but now it seemed to have been weaponised, to have taken on a new tone: menacing, creepy, aggressive.

It was banter when men trolled women with rape threats online. It was banter when TV shows aired transphobic jokes and sketches. It was banter when a rich man and friend of the Prime Minister was caught saying ‘slope’, and ‘Irish cunt’, and ‘nigger’, and was allowed to get away with it.

‘Banter’ had, once, been just another word, but now it had metastasized. Banter was something vicious and nasty and violent and unrelenting. And this time there would be no salvation in growing up, because this kind of bullying had spread from the schoolyard to the boardroom, and no hope in getting out because banter could follow you across oceans and continents, climb beside you onto the bus that took you home from work, and into the bedroom where you tried to sleep uneasily beside your blinking smartphone. Banter was everywhere.

Banter was the crap that I had hurled at me every day for simply daring to exist as who I was. What choice did I have but to howl back?