All things considered I think I'd rather be expelled from the Labour Party

I'd like to thank everyone who has posted and commented about James and Clint Heine's comments.

Clint Heine appears to be claiming that he thought James was talking about masturbation (he also claims to know that James was only talking about masturbation too, although I've no idea how Clint could know that).

He seems to think that this would mean that there was no implications of non-consensual sexual activity in what James wrote.

He's wrong.

James does not care about me as a person, he has no knowledge of, or interest in, my desires. His prescription of a dildo - whatever he imagined was done with it, was based on him, and what he wanted, not on me. To talk about sexual acts in a way that renders women's desire invisible and irrelevant is to promote rape culture. To talk of 'fixing' a woman with a sexual act and ignore her desires is to threaten rape.

I'm aware that James, and Clint had no intention of taking any action, that discussion of sexual violence is just words to them. But the effect, and the intention, is to police women's behaviour, with threats about what will happen if we don't conform.

I promise to get back to things that aren't about me tomorrow. I've still got a report on Angela Davis's talk to write (although I'm afflicted by a kind of curse, whereby if I ever mention that I'm planning on writing a post on this blog then it's guaranteed that I never actually get around to writing it).