Men's things XXXV: A Man's Search for Dignity

Pursuing a Diagnosis

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

I have found myself at the intersection where solutions designed for women seem to be just as suitable for men.

Many years ago, this first arose when I set about addressing folic acid deficiency anaemia. It was flagged when I noticed an out-of-range and irregular reading of my MCV (Mean Corpuscular Volume) blood test, which pointed, in the first instance, to a possible nutritional deficiency of folic acid, iron, or vitamin B12.

At my insistence, I persuaded my GP to order the specific tests for serum folate (folic acid), serum ferritin (iron), and serum B12. It was discovered that my folic acid levels were quite low; hence the diagnosis of folic acid deficiency anaemia.

Since then, I have requested the granular serum tests that sit beneath the headline MCV.

Pills Made for Mothers

I bought over-the-counter folic acid tablets, each with a strength of 400 micrograms. The label on the container carried the message, “Supports the overall health of your baby during conception and pregnancy.”

Well, I did a double take. The ability to conceive or carry a baby is not one I possess. My GP then gave me a prescription for folic acid at a strength of 5 milligrams, twelve and a half times that of the over-the-counter tablet. It meant I was not going to fix my deficiency by popping chemist pills.

A New Reality

Anyway, we have grown inured to watching adverts for sanitary towels and pads on television, and to seeing what the women using such protection get to do once their fear of leaking, and of embarrassingly revealing their flow, has been overcome by advances in sanitary towel technology.

Now, following treatment for prostate cancer with radical radiotherapy, I have experienced occasional bowel incontinence and regular bladder incontinence.

Once, in the case of the latter, it was the cover of darkness and a long overcoat that spared my blushes when my red chinos were soaked through.

Searching for Protection

For anatomical reasons, I could not simply start wearing feminine sanitary pads, just as I had taken to correcting folic acid deficiency anaemia with pills marketed primarily to fertile and pregnant women.

The male incontinence underwear I found was expensive, and it did not contain the urgency to the extent needed to forestall embarrassment.

The protection did not entirely eliminate the fear of emission or excretion; it offered only temporary safety, in the hope that you might reach the refuge of a convenience before the dam burst.

Adverts Not for Men

It goes without saying that the strain of advert music with the line “body formed for you”, or the tagline “Always with wings”, does not pertain to menfolk. Either we are too poorly served, or I need better discreet guidance when I visit a department that accounts for dignity in its solutions, without public spectacle.

So, imagine how I felt when a new advertisement came on television this afternoon for the Always Discreet Maxi Comfort Pads 9 Drop, offering the highest-absorbency pads designed for heavy bladder leaks, with a wider back for 50% more coverage and OdourLock technology. If only that catered for me too.

What We Actually Need

You might ask why I have not considered nappies for adults. It is a valid point, but that also suggests a level of incapacity and loss of control that is probably excessive for my current situation. It is a concession I do not think anyone, adult female or male, would make willingly if nature had not imposed it without option.

Minimal, unintrusive, anatomically aware, fully absorbent, and effective is what we need: coverage, protection, and odour lock without bulking out your trousers. There, I have written the advert for a product that serves bladder incontinence in men.

Breaking the Silence

My own route to this predicament was prostate cancer, but I am hardly the only man walking about with a secret and a spare pair of trousers in mind. Age brings it, an enlarged prostate brings it, so too do surgery, diabetes, neurological conditions, and plain bad luck; the company is far larger than the silence would suggest.

That silence is convenient for everyone but the men living it, and it is worth naming the circular trap at its heart: manufacturers under-serve men because men under-report, and men under-report because they find themselves so poorly served. Somebody has to break the loop, and it will not be the men, who have every reason to say nothing.

Which leaves the people who make and sell these things. I have, after all, written their advert for them; the product is the easy part, and dignity costs no more to design in than to leave out.

A slim thing built for male anatomy, an honest range of absorbencies, odour locked away, trousers uncreased, and a shelf a man can reach without rehearsing an explanation, none of this is beyond an industry that manages it handsomely for women.

A Matter of Dignity

The country decided, from January 2021, that period products should carry no VAT, recognising them as a plain necessity of life rather than a luxury; a woman buys them relieved of tax and relieved of explanation.

Incontinence products, as it happens, can also be had free of VAT, but only once you have declared yourself “chronically sick or disabled”, the very badge of incapacity I was at pains to avoid. [The UK Parliament: VAT on incontinence products (PDF)]

So, the tax is not quite the point. The point is that one necessity is met with a shrug and the other with a form; that dignity, for some of us, still comes conditionally. These things need thinking about, even if men's things rarely get talked about.

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Thick Skin and the Colour of Pain

A Familiar Ethnicity Pain Gap

It comes as no surprise to me to read that in the UK, women from Bangladeshi, Pakistani, and black Caribbean backgrounds were less likely than white women to receive an epidural whilst having a vaginal birth. [The Guardian: “Women from minority backgrounds in UK less likely to receive epidurals, research finds”]

The ideas, conceptions, perceptions, or prejudices that feed the narrative that non-white people, especially from the aforementioned backgrounds, do not need adequate pain medication to arrest high levels of discomfort and distress have appeared in studies for decades.

This situation, termed the "ethnicity pain gap", is quite concerning, and it might persuade one to surmise that there is a seething racialised disadvantage in the public health system, one that ascribes thick skin to the Black population and precious delicateness to the Asian cohort.

My Own Experience

My experience of this in late 2009 came as a result of cancer pain in its enduring intensity. I was on multiple regimens of pain medication, with Fentanyl dispensed as a transdermal patch being the most critical palliative, yet I was in pain.

When I informed my consultant that I was still in pain, and this was in the Netherlands rather than in the United Kingdom, he did not acknowledge my distress or seek to address it. Instead, his response was that the pain medication I was on should be enough. An ill-informed perception that I should have a higher pain threshold.

I remonstrated that it was not, and he then sought to double the dose from 12.5 micrograms to 25 micrograms. This made all the difference because it tackled the pain, and I got much-needed relief. Why I was not also told that transdermal patches could fall off, and that they could be held in place on the skin with an adhesive film, escapes me.

Knowledge Withheld

Returning from church, one Sunday, a few weeks after I had the new prescription, I was in a lot more pain than usual, and then I saw that the patch had fallen off.

I laughed myself to delirium to produce endorphins as pain relief whilst the new patch took hold. It was only when I told the nurse who came to dress the lesions on my foot daily that he told me I could get an adhesive film to keep the patch in place.

The knowledge was there all along, but it was never shared. As a race, in our encounters with the medical establishment, we are constantly pathologised, and this is characterised by either not being listened to or being ignored, because the medical personnel assume they know and understand our bodies more than we do with the intimate experience of our own skins.

Asserting Our Reality

That Caucasians are immediately responded to and given palliative succour on demand speaks volumes, without suggesting something untoward. Whether it is bias, prejudice, or indifference, we need to be better equipped to ask pertinent questions and persuade our doctors of our reality, without having to jump through hoops, trapped in suffering until it becomes unbearable.

It is not just in matters of pain, but in decisions being made about diagnostic and treatment regimes without explanation or rationale, delay in action when the full knowledge of a condition is evident, the lack of respect, courtesy, and the according of dignity to your personhood and humanity, or the use of the wrong indicators based on race for decision trees towards useful outcomes.

I approach the medical establishment on the premise of “It is my body first, before it is your guinea pig.” This need never be the default, because you are then preparing for a fight instead of fully trusting someone who took the Hippocratic Oath to do you no harm. Yet you find you need to assert yourself and manage the egos to ensure that you, at the very least, leave the hospital better than when you went in.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Essential Snobbery 101: The Etiquette of Getting Caught

The Art of Discretion

If one were to court controversy, one could say that infidelity is congenital or consanguineous, but rarely learnt or taught. The debate around that is for another forum.

However, the tendency to stray must surely come with the essential common sense of, first and foremost, not rubbing your partner's nose in it. This means according those liaisons the respect of keeping them at a distance, and being as discreet as you possibly can in order to avoid getting caught.

History, as I have read it, would suggest that the Victorians and Edwardians who kept mistresses made sure their spouses were not disadvantaged in dignity, position, attention, or latitude. It was usually a case of knowing without feeling threatened.

A Cautionary Commotion

What I cannot abide are those who break the rules in wholly unforgivable ways, such as placing their matrimonial bed at the very centre of the travesty whilst hoping not to get caught. What on earth are you thinking? The follow-up question is unprintable.

I was once privy to a narrative relayed to me of a commotion that brought the police to a home, the cacophony having included the shattering of glass, and whatever else might have been flung, in both words and objects, when a hapless fool was caught in the act.

His wife had gone away and was not expected back until the weekend; she returned the previous night, however, only to find her husband canoodling with another woman. There is no need for a graphic replay, at the risk of sensationalising the matter with the aplomb of a village rag.

A Failure to Plan

There must be a reason why she did not telephone ahead to forestall what might have been her suspicions of something untoward. Some people spare themselves the possibility of such situations by making allowances, in the spirit of "out of sight is out of trouble".

He, however, in his careless and carefree manner, played the oily mouse whilst the cat was away. He should have planned his rendezvous for a motel, or somewhere far from home, yet he did not.

Stepping back to view this from an objective angle, the effrontery and audacity required to bring someone else home should always have come with the forward planning of a number of things. First, an alert system that detects proximity, so as to avoid an encounter. Then, easy sequestration, should your spouse enter the house when there is no chance of escape.

Hiding the Evidence

You cannot put the interloper on the window ledge outside if you are on the tenth floor, especially if that was not intended as a final goodbye. Slipping them under the bed, behind the curtain, or into the wardrobe are far too common as places to hide, and so to be found. Just roll a bottle under the bed; if it does not come out the other end, take a look.

Someone suggested the oven or the fridge, which left me thinking of the double-jointed contortionist who performs at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town, doing such unimaginable things with his body that the spectacle is too suggestive for a polite audience, and yet impossible to look away from.

Perhaps the clothes basket could help, and what you would need next is a snake charmer to play the pungi as your quarry wriggles to the swaying hypnotism of the sound, lifting the lid of the basket and unleashing the scandal that would ensue. You may not be prepared for the confessions.

If you do not have a number of well-planned escape routes, no amount of explaining would extricate you from a complex situation that would serve as entertainment for your neighbours, and inspiration for this very piece. You got caught, pants down, and the only thing you might ever salvage is your dear life, by the skin of your teeth.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Dreamscape: I said hire me

Untouched by Touch

It was one of those contactless payment nightmares, and it truly was a nightmare. I was with a close family friend, and we had boarded a train within the city to travel from one location to another.

Upon arrival at my destination, my mobile phone simply refused to provide the NFC-related information and contactless payment interaction to let me through the exit barriers.

Despite my efforts, my friend easily exited and waited for me as I began to look like a fare dodger. However, I had indeed touched in where my journey began and was struggling to touch out.

A Free Pass Granted

One of the staff came to help, first directing attention away from us before moving us outside the perimeter of the checking system. Effectively, I was beyond the exit barriers and could go on my way.

However, having touched in, if I did not get a legal touch out, I could potentially be fined almost 10 times the cost of travel. I needed this resolved before I was subject to a cash grab from my account.

Finding a Solution

Upon reviewing transactions on my phone, I found that the entry contactless system had failed to register my touch-in properly, posting an Error 21, indicative of a fault with the system rather than a mistake of my own making.

I approached the staff who called in a technical architect to review the error. While acknowledging the error was not my fault, he opted to do nothing about it as he prepared to take his dogs out for a walk. As far as he was concerned, the cost was too minuscule to warrant concern.

Meanwhile, in my examination of the information related to the error, the company admitted fault and offered compensation for the inconvenience. As the architect was walking away, I inquired about the compensation, and he promptly signed off a few free tickets for daytime and nighttime travel.

Fighting My Corner

It was his attitude that was grating, inconsiderate, and failed to recognize the needs of the customer. To which I vocally stated, for all to hear, “If your company needs a technical architect with an eye for detail and solutions to help the customer, please immediately hire me.”

That was completely out of character for me; I am not typically one to express myself in that manner. However, I felt irked and disrespected; it needed to be said. All that agitation, and it was only a dream.

The dead hand of bureaucracy

Agency is supreme

If there is anything a free agent as I can desire is that one never loses agency, the need outside the machinations of systems put in place to implement processes with no consideration of the people affected.

Incensed does not begin to describe the sense of unjust and atrocious manipulation one has been subjected to whilst apparatchiks go about ticking boxes, dotting their I’s and crossing their T’s, ensuring the P’s and Q’s are just right, aligning forms to readers and auditors whose main purpose is to see to the rules being followed as an embodiment of mendacious misrule.

One has suffered

How my person has been abused, the man in the middle trying to manage expectations completely oblivious of the indignities suffered at the hands of mindless bureaucracies seeking relevance where common sense has deserted the fray. Whilst one cannot say it has been intentional, the consequence has been no less demeaning, one’s interest in the project is now barely there but for the genuinely nice people we once called colleagues.

In all the toing and froing, it has been impossible to plan anything and in the process, a month has passed in what was supposed to be an interregnum of not more than a week. In my heart of hearts, finding something else would be the better part of the story. No one, I mean, no one, should be subjected to this sham of a system pretending to ensure everything is in order.

References

Blog - The auction of grey matter is open

Blog - Sitting here in limbo

Blog - Like pawns in the game of spaghetti red tape

Opinion: Apportioning the responsibility for a mishandled pandemic

A mishandled pandemic

Through several news stories, one begins to see the fundamental issues with how the Coronavirus pandemic has been handled by certain governments and how the infection and death rates have been reflected as a matter of consequence.

This especially with the admission of Prime Minister Boris Johnson to hospital last night for further tests having not shaken off the symptoms he acquired 10 days before. The real condition of the Prime Minister is subject to conjecture but generally immaterial. My comment on that matter is that all the best of my humanity wishes him well, yet there is nothing of his principles, his virtues, or his policies regarding the pandemic that persuades me to feel more that way. [BBC News]

Our sympathy towards a situation of human frailty should not automatically confer absolution from culpability and responsibility for the way the UK government has failed to grapple competently with this pandemic in scaling up tests to determine who is infected, in providing protective equipment to NHS staff, some of whom have unfortunately succumbed to the COVID-19 virus and in acquiring sufficient treatment facilities as ventilators.

Michael Gove confirms death of seven NHS workers fighting coronavirus [Evening Standard]

Indecision cost too many lives

A study puts the mean duration from the onset of symptoms to death at 17.8 days, the range being between 16.9 to 19.2 days. Whereas, from the onset of symptoms to hospital discharge with the patient having been through the worst of the disease to recovery is 24.7 days with a range of 22.9 to 28.1 days. [Estimates of the severity of coronavirus disease 2019: a model-based analysis - The Lancet]

The UK was finally asked to lock down on the 23^rd of March 2020, that is 14 days ago, going by the data capture today at COVID19Info.live, 4,948 people have lost their lives to the COVID-19 virus, people who otherwise might well be alive if this virus had not complicated their underlying conditions and sped them to their demise.

These are the people who inadvertently took it on the chin as Boris Johnson suggested we should in early March and were knocked out. The loved ones who we have lost before their time.

Blog - Thought Picnic: The vulnerable to be martyred to the Coronavirus in the UK

People make up these numbers

That would imply the 625 people who have died in the full day of yesterday, the 5^th of April were infected somewhere between the 17^th of March and the 20^th of March, by inference, if the UK government had acted a week earlier on the 16^th of March, there is a likelihood for each day from the 31^st of March, 3,529 lives might have been saved. The UK breached the 100 mark on the 26^th of March with 115 deaths. [COVID19Info.live]

This could link up with the well-attended Cheltenham Festival that ran from the 10^th to the 13^th of March and the Liverpool FC match with Athletico Madrid with visitors from Spain on the 11^th of March.

This is information we cannot ignore because too many individuals, people with names who through unfortunate happenstance died lonely deaths in hospital and had no immediate family at their funeral ceremonies.

Stripping off our human dignity

In the story of two COVID-19 victims, Pastor Landon Spradlin, 66, was survived by his wife and four daughters, an entertainer and evangelist, he was recently attended at the Mardi Gras, yet when he died there were two guests at his funeral and none of his immediate family. Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab, 13, himself had parents and siblings, none of whom were at his graveside, he was buried by strangers. [BBC News] [ITV News]

The Coronavirus, in life and in death dehumanises us and strips us of all human dignity that decisions are being taken for reasons that do not essential protect life and more towards rationing treatment and intervention depending on assessments of viability determined almost unilaterally by GPs as seen in letters informing the aged and extremely vulnerable of decision not to attempt resuscitation if they should fall ill.

Blog - Thought Picnic: From chills to thrills in health updates

We were adequately forewarned

The argument of the benefit of hindsight is moot as we all had the warning signs from China, the extreme measures taken were indicators and as it swept into South Korea and then Italy, our government was not oblivious, just unpersuaded and caught flat-footed. Including in the US, we had almost a 2-month lead time and it was squandered valuing the economy over human life and the atrociously untested policy of herd immunity with a vaccine does not exist for a virus we know little about.

The lockdown has its usefulness, but the emphasis should be on social distancing rather than on people filling up parks. This considering many might just live in apartments without outer spaces as balconies or gardens. Obviously, going out should not be for the leisure of it, but for essential activity.

The responsibility is with the government

What would save the NHS the most is the social distancing and the equipping of the NHS staff with protective kit, the widespread deployment of testing and kitting intensive care units with ventilators to manage respiratory distress. There is enough space for us to keep our distance of 2 metres and maybe more, but I see a surreptitious ploy to deflect attention from where the problem really is, the incompetence, the ineptitude and the lethargy of Boris Johnson’s government.

We should not be inured into just seeing the numbers with recognising that the statistics are made up of individuals, people like you and I, over 4,000 families grieving the loss of loved ones over and above the nominal death rate, in the space of a month. That is why I cannot absolve my government from this somewhat avoidable human tragedy.

Thought Picnic: Of character building moments

As I walk

Building character is an evolutionary activity that is under constant review, assessment, reflection and adjustment. At least, that is how I think about it.

One episode this morning caused me to reflect on some of my attitudes to certain situations. It had snowed in Reading and as the pavements had not been gritted, one had to be careful as one walked from the hotel to the railway station.

As I walk briskly, albeit, with a walking cane, I am careful and usually do not expect to have to manoeuvre run more able-bodied people on the street. I would tend to walk close to buildings as well as follow the crowd.

Don’t talk back

I turned the corner and almost walked into someone coming up against me, I made my excuses and he walked around me. The next person simply ignored what had happened in front of him and made to stand in my way when I swung my cane directing him to walk to the right of me as there was no space to the left of me.

He followed my guidance, but as he passed me, he said, “Don’t use your stick at me.”, I then looked back at him as said, “You’re being an idiot.” As the words came out of my mouth, I was both agitated and deflated. I regretted it.

The situation made me reflect on why I had to answer back because there was no reason to. Once he had followed my directions, whatever way he felt about it should have been left to him as I had achieved my goal of, standing my ground and keeping my lane.

Tackle and leave

I felt diminished by the unnecessary outburst and promised myself to do better. I have on many occasions set in motion an act with the aim of attaining a goal and left at that. Engagement beyond having instigated my action simply develops into unhealthy interactions one can do without.

It reminded me of one instance where travelling in the 1^st Class compartment of an international train, I could neither relax nor nap because a child was completely implacable and an unruly disturbance. I got up and loudly addressed the parent to see to their ward then sat down.

For 5 minutes the father abused and railed, cursed and vituperated vitriol to the point of exhaustion. I ignored him. By that time, the child was quiet, we all could relax and the journey ended peacefully. From the little intervention, I had achieved what everyone wanted, peace and quiet. I don't dislike kids, but where parents are not embarrassed enough for their kid's behaviour to be seen to do something about it. They do have to be called out.

Achieve the prize

My not engaging the father at all meant the situation did not escalate or degenerate into a breach of the peace. Yes, I took brickbats for it, it was completely worth it.

I can be a better man even if people cannot be reasonable or considerate when they encounter me. I do not have to revel in the uncouth just to impact them. Silence is golden and worth its weight in gold. That is the building of character, only engage when your aim is about to be defeated, else, leave, your aim achieved and your dignity intact.

Opinion: Marriage as a commitment between consenting adults

Changing views

My views about marriage have broadened and liberalised over decades to the point where I am quite easy with the idea that any two consenting adults in love can decide to formalise their relationship with a marriage ceremony.

It is strange that though I have transitioned from High Church Anglican through almost fundamentalist Pentecostal to rather a relapsed and nominally assenting Christian, there were times when I thought divorce was unthinkable or even unforgivable, but with time by understanding human nature more, I have realised no marriage is made in heaven, the partners in a marriage have to work hard at it.

Then again, I will also challenge the young-earth creationist view that appears to put marriage firmly in the docket of a Judeo-Christian or Abrahamic construct. Maybe up half the world follows that belief system, but there are considerably large Asian religious groups, agnostics, atheists, apostates and non-religionists that do not subscribe to the Adam and Eve Genesis mythology of the human race, yet they all seem have a tradition of marriage with all its ceremonies. Religions of the world – Wikipedia.

Marriage is more civil than religious

Love carries a deeper relational context between people, be it between man and woman, man and man or woman and woman, but more broadly, marriage, whilst is still appears to cling to religious apron strings in many societies has long been extricated from the grip and hold of religion.

It is mostly a civil and legal contract of commitment with accoutrements that accrue to it, giving legal standing to the relationship, recognition of next of kin and a partnership that gives a greater say to the spouse over the family in important matters of life and death.

The religious part of marriage has almost become a kind of nostalgia, a sop to the innate spirituality of the participants who generally might not be regular attendees of the religious establishment that grants a blessing to the union.

A matter of equality, respect and dignity

It is in light of this that I welcome the Same-Sex Marriage ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges where James Obergefell sued to have himself recognised as the spousal survivor on his husband’s death certificate.

The majority verdict delivered by Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy made a most profound announcement that should once and for all put paid to the culture wars and wedge issues that have long become the staple of conservative American rhetoric and religious disputing.

“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfilment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilisation's oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. The judgement of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed. It is so ordered.”

I read this to mean that love is the foundation of marriage regardless of the pairing of genders and it deserves to be treated with respect, dignity and fully honoured by the law of the land.

Just over a month before, Ireland, a recently very Catholic country voted in a referendum that garnered 62% of the votes accepting that, “Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex.”

Fundamentally, marriage as an institution whichever way you view it is rapidly becoming more a subject of recognising a commitment of consenting adults and providing them with all the rights, the privileges and the benefits that such a union entails before the law. It must not be reductively seen in its primary purpose for procreation, else people cannot make choices about having offspring and to be found infertile will seemingly be too unnatural to contemplate, yet life is that different for different people.

Address the matter of consent

More importantly, what we should address is where minors or non-adults are conscripted by mechanisms of religion or custom into marriages outside of their fully informed consent, but coerced by parentage, relations, traditions or customs – such activities generally defined as child marriage can in no way be accepted as a contractual engagement of commitment between consenting adults or an expression of love, no matter how that illicit union eventually turns out.

Then, on the issue where people especially the Supreme Court Chief Justice, John Roberts averred that the majority ruling he dissented to might lead to polygamy, if the question of marriage with the view to equality does not fully enshrine and honour the rights to polyandry too, then polygamy should not have the free run to trample on the marriage commitments of the woman or consign her to sharing her husband if the man will not countenance the idea of sharing his wife.

One to one, on the matter of love and commitment, marriage is a wonderful thing and as James Obergefell did say, he hopes that the term ‘gay marriage’ will soon become a thing of the past as we just default to the simple term, marriage.

South Africa: Enter the soapbox European

We expect and intend

One thing that fills me with pride as a European is the embracing sense of humanity that we tend to have that tends to seek to treat others with respect and dignity. Sometimes, in our rush to help situations we might miss out on essential elements of custom, tradition, beliefs, setting or understanding that could make our intrusiveness and interventions in the quest for the greater good unwelcome. We mean well, even if we are naïve.

I have a tendency to carry around my European world-view wherever I go and where I do observe situations I find somewhat intolerable, you will find me doing something about it.

I returned to my hotel to meet a sense of unhelpfulness that I tolerated until we were hit with load shedding that led to a power outage of almost two hours. I am sure, I read somewhere in the hotel about banishing the inconvenience of load shedding which has been a problem in South Africa recently.

Serving the lights out

When the generators were switched on, only single lights in the apartments were powered, the sockets were dead and well, the emergency lightings and lifts were still operational.

This meant my laptop ran until it conked out, there was no television to watch, but the complimentary wireless Internet service was still operational. Going down to the restaurant, the tables had candlelight, this was not going to be a romantic dinner for one.

The waiter had torches and the kitchen had no hot food to offer. Not a situation I liked at all. I returned to my room to have biscuits when the reception were not as helpful as would have expected in helping me order a takeaway meal.

I was ready to go to bed on an empty stomach when the lights were restored, it gave me time to fix my South African phone and contemplate a second visit to the restaurant. After sitting for about 10 minutes, I got to remonstrate with the waiters to attend to me promptly before I got the service I went there for.

Trying for a pass

The starter I wanted yesterday was again not available today, but the mushroom soup starter and ostrich fillet main course appeared to make up for the unfortunate showing yesterday. By my rating, this is NOT a 5-star hotel, it does not even aspire to be anywhere near a good 4-star hotel either.

Yet, it might appear that I am blinkered by my First World problems mind-set, but knowing what comfort and convenience along with good customer service is, verdict comes in at below par, they are trying, but this leaves many of us in a quite trying situation, whether this redeemable, we’ll just have to see.

The day at work was ordinary and hectic, signing in myself, my computers and other extraneous activities and protocols that tested my patience almost to the point of exasperation. The indignities people suffer in these climes will not be attempted in Europe.

This is not us

However, it was visiting a venue where we engage a number of technical personnel down a convoluted contract chain that left me utterly appalled.

The room had no natural light, the air-conditioning was barely functions, and the air reeked of ozone emissions from an overcrowded computer building facility where the owners or the building had pasted signs prohibiting any kind of recording equipment for recording videos or photographs.

We were watched intently from each corner by cameras in what was essentially a sweatshop by generous assessment. It might have lacked sewing machines, but with my European eyes, I did not believe anyone should be working in those conditions.

More pertinently, I do not believe anyone engaged by my company to deliver the kind of critical infrastructure they deliver for us should be working in those conditions.

Use your leverage for good not for cost alone

It behoves my organisation it impress on the contractual chain to either move this activity to other premises, or make it more habitable. In the first 5 minutes, I was beginning to feel claustrophobic.

Yet, much as the people working there might not have the clout or say in determining the conditions in which they work, we should be ashamed of ourselves that some of my colleagues from the UK had seen these premises have never had the gumption to make this a matter of decency and dignity above the issue of cost.

This is why I hate politics in all its ramifications, from the government to the office, people are pandering and genuflecting, in personal quests for position and authority no matter whose ox is gored, forgetting their humanity and sense of empathy and compassion. It ought not be so, and I will be make representations to my line management to facilitate necessary change with the leverage we have got to make things good for those who are our partners, even if by an arm’s length, to making a success of what we do.

We owe them that much and much more, we lift people up not tread on them like grass, because whatever comes at the end of that, no matter how successful is done on the backs of others without and sense of nobility or honour. That is why, I am proud to be a European and I am proud of the values that has imparted to me and my world view.

Thought Picnic: Giving Them A Good Piece Of My Mind

A piece of my mind

Seeing a psychologist gives you the opportunity to speak your mind without prejudice and that is what I did when we met this afternoon.

I relayed to her what happened with regards to meeting with her, the social worker, the doctor and Lewisham Housing Services, then I spoke of my expectations making clear comparisons with experiences I had with similar circumstances in The Netherlands.

The gaping holes in the safety net

The fact is the system for handling exceptional cases like mine where I do not seem to fit into pre-defined categories, but have a compelling case worthy of assessment and consideration is disjointed, incoherent and basically a mess.

Opinion: Where Do You Stand on the N-Word?

The Education of History

There is a great clamour for education, education that changes the circumstances of a person, lifting them out of situations that tell a compelling story of social mobility where the success we see today is far from the lowly beginnings that will resonate and offer hope to others.

However, with education, I adjure you to get history, a sense of history, the lessons of history that will hopefully ensure that you have learnt from the mistakes of the past and can build on the foundations that were laid before.

Those who carry that sense of history when celebrated can find such inspiring words as were spoken by Oprah Winfrey when she was inducted into the NAACP Hall of Fame in 2005[YouTube] – “Because they were the seed of the free, and because they were the seed I get to be the fruit.”

Getting the Perspective of the N-Word

Beyond the uproar that accompanied the means-profiling of Oprah Winfrey in Switzerland in that CBS-ET interview there is an even more significant aspect of the interview that is being lost, it is in the use and the context of the N-word. See the later part of that video.

This is what Oprah Winfrey had to say:

“I do not run in the circle of people who use the word loosely or use the word because for me, it is out of respect to those people for whom that was the last word they heard while they were being hung, it’s the last word they heard when they were being fired, it’s the last word they heard when their house was being burnt, it’s the last word … it’s the word they heard every day when walking down the street, when they had to step off the sidewalk and let other people pass.”

She concluded by saying, “I owe them the responsibility and honour by not trying to denigrate them as they were by using that word.”

There is no other history for the N-Word

The N-word is loaded with history that some of us have never learnt and those who have learnt have easily forgotten, but the memory of those it was not a few generations ago to bear the humiliation, carry the repudiation and live the seething hate that denigrated a people to almost insignificance cannot be abolished to a trend and fad that is gaining currency amongst our youth – a people without a history are a people bereft of roots, swept around like clouds in turbulent winds without stay or anchor.

No, my friends, we do have history, documented and living history that should hold a significance in the journey of life that we experience from a record of our ancestry to the gifts that we bequeath those who follow us – there is no respect in the N-word, it cannot be gentrified away from the seed, the tree and the fruits that have ripened and been eaten by those who revelled before as the necks of those before us bore the yokes we can never imagine or fully understand.

If there is anything that we can take away from this, it is that there is no other parallel history of the N-word that means nice, beautiful, acceptable, honoured, revered or desired.

Standing as 10,000

Oprah Winfrey sadly appears to misquote Maya Angelou in Our Grandmothers when she says, “I come as one, but stand as ten thousand”, it is no less significant in the misquote or paraphrase, it is laden with meaning and a clear perspective of history, knowing the road she has walked and where she has arrived today.

This is what the part of that poem says:

No one, no, nor no one million
ones dare deny me God, I go forth
alone, and stand as ten thousand.

Where Do You Stand?

The question then remains, shall we - with the sense of history that underpins the present in which we stand on the shoulders of the many who marched, walked, talked, prayed, were harassed, were beaten, were murdered and were martyred for the cause that gives us the humanity we now enjoy – go forth alone and stand as ten thousand for the shame and humiliation they suffered by celebrating the name that made our history so blackened by suffering and denigration as our new identity?

I say again, with education, get history and with history, get enlightenment for the N-word was given to call our grandmothers worse than the master’s dog, it must not cross our lips again, if we really know who we are.

Opinion: Some universal concepts from the SCOTUS sexuality opinions

Clarity of opinions

I have always felt that on matters of social justice when cases are brought to challenge a perceived infringement of rights, justices do take their time to give their opinions which might become case law if those opinions go unchallenged afterwards.

When it comes to the issue of the separation of religion and state, the justices in the United Kingdom have been lucid and comprehensive in the views they have expressed that one cannot but agree with them.

Just last week, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) that many will say have a rather conservative leaning on many issues ruled on the matter of same-sex relationships and the recognition of such relationships, again, I see a universal application of their thinking joining case law when such issues arise elsewhere in the world – the arguments are well made.

Liberty for all

There are many SCOTUS opinions, opinions being the majority verdicts searchable at the Cornell University Law School Portal, many of which I cannot cover but going by the opinions of Justice Anthony Kennedy who apparently has been at the centre of gay rights for the past decade, there are gems to take away.

It is clear that in the 21^st Century, we are faced with issues that must compel us to promote liberty, ensure dignity, remove inequality and excoriate humiliation, these are the core elements of that govern every civil rights causes and it must stand paramount in quest for civilising our humanity daily.

I have a liberal to libertarian slant on these matters and I have liberally quoted from my sources at NPR and Cornell University Law School to support the views and understanding I have of the opinions.

We are not in a police state

The SCOTUS in a 6-3 decision in 2003 struck down the Texas “Homosexual Conduct” law that criminalised some sexual acts in Lawrence v. Texas, this was a case where two gay men engaged in consensual sex in a private home were arrested, charged and jailed – more background here – liberty and freedom formed the basis of the opinions.

“Liberty protects the person from unwarranted government intrusions into a dwelling or other private places. In our tradition the state is not omnipresent in the home. And there are other spheres of our lives and existence, outside the home, where the state should not be a dominant presence.”

Clear as this is, it suggests that the state should be limited in its access to dwelling places and private places except where it is warranted, it however should not be a dominant presence in our lives that it begins to operate like a police state – if a person is not a resident of a police state, then the state must constrain its surveillance into private affairs.

Autonomy or regulation

“Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct.”

This again builds on the foregoing except if the state intends to regulate thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct – then the question arises as to how far the state will be allowed to regulate such for certain people until it arrogates the responsibility to regulate it for all.

This becomes pertinent when moralist laws are promulgated predicated on religion, culture, traditions and much else, the state must not extent its function to civil society to then encroach on the individual liberties of the people.

Mandating moral codes

Before, this view is extrapolated to support licentiousness, the SCOTUS goes on to develop this thinking.

“It must be acknowledged, of course, that the Court in Bowers was making the broader point that for centuries there have been powerful voices to condemn homosexual conduct as immoral. The condemnation has been shaped by religious beliefs, conceptions of right and acceptable behavior, and respect for the traditional family. For many persons these are not trivial concerns but profound and deep convictions accepted as ethical and moral principles to which they aspire and which thus determine the course of their lives.”

Here, the court acknowledges in 1986 that centuries old laws had deemed homosexual conduct as immoral and agreed that the concerns of opponents of homosexuality were not trivial.

However, in the following excerpt, the SCOTUS returned to the role of guaranteeing liberty.

“The issue is whether the majority may use the power of the state to enforce these views on the whole society through operation of the criminal law. Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code.”

Here, the court curtails the power of the state by saying it should not take what the majority views as immoral and legislate on that view to create criminal law. As with the court, the state should rise to the responsibility of guaranteeing liberty for all and not be manipulated to mandate moral codes.

I see this view as quite pervasive and universal in the separation of religion and the state except where the state is governed by a theocracy and all the citizens of that state follow the same beliefs, tenets and doctrines. Where the citizens are not of similar and equal beliefs, it behoves the state to err on the side of secularity guaranteeing freedoms and liberties rather than codifying moral views into laws.

Protection and dignity

In United States v. Windsor, which was brought to challenge the Defence of Marriage Act of 1996 where the surviving spouse of a legally married sex-same couple in another country, then recognised at the state level in the country of their residence was not given federal estate tax exemption at by the Inland Revenue Service.

There are broader issues particular to the United States but there are universal concepts to take away from the opinion offered by the SCOTUS.

“In authorizing same-sex unions and same-sex marriages, New York sought to give further protection and dignity to that bond. For same-sex couples who wished to be married, the State acted to give their lawful conduct a lawful status. This status is a far-reaching legal acknowledgment of the intimate relationship between two people, a relationship deemed by the State worthy of dignity in the community equal with all other marriages. It reflects both the community's considered perspective on the historical roots of the institution of marriage and its evolving understanding of the meaning of equality.”

The key words where are protection, dignity, lawful conduct, legal acknowledgement, intimate relationship and equality.

Whilst communities around the world differ, they are evolving and whatever historical roots and systems those communities might have, the institutions they hold dear are coming under more persuasion towards more equality and this has applied throughout history on matters of privilege, citizenship, gender, beliefs, disability, sexuality and much else.

Laws injuring protection

Society strives towards egalitarianism where the equality of opportunity is not defined by status but through ability, character, merit and basic rights.

“DOMA seeks to injure the very class New York seeks to protect. By doing so it violates basic due process and equal protection principles applicable to the Federal Government.”

Here, the SCOTUS opines that there should not be an overarching statute that seeks to injure a class that already receives protection from such injury.

It goes without saying that the quest to protect a minority should of essence eventually have the support of a higher power to ensure that minority receives protection within the domain of that higher power – a process of time but where that protection is refused there is just cause to challenge that view as a matter of fairness, rights and justice.

“This is strong evidence of a law having the purpose and effect of disapproval of that class. The avowed purpose and practical effect of the law here in question are to impose a disadvantage, a separate status, and so a stigma upon all who enter into same-sex marriages made lawful by the unquestioned authority of the States.”

Here, the SCOTUS questioned an overarching law promulgated to disapprove, discriminate and impose a disadvantage on a class, thereby stigmatising those who belong to a class already given protection.

Eliminating inequality

“When New York adopted a law to permit same-sex marriage, it sought to eliminate inequality; but DOMA frustrates that objective through a system-wide enactment with no identified connection to any particular area of federal law. DOMA writes inequality into the entire United States Code.”

The SCOTUS is clear in this by saying a federal law is writing inequality into the constitution, having same before that, “Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code.”

“The law in question makes it even more difficult for the children to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.”

In general, the law does not just affect the principals, it affects the innocent offspring of that intimate relationship which is by no means illegitimate, but legal, valid and recognised as the community has evolved in its understanding of such relationships.

Unnecessary burdens

“Under DOMA, same-sex married couples have their lives burdened, by reason of government decree, in visible and public ways. By its great reach, DOMA touches many aspects of married and family life, from the mundane to the profound.”

Not only do they have their lives burdened but unnecessarily burdened by reason of government decree – this burden is what the SCOTUS sought to remove by declaring DOMA unconstitutional.

Whilst we might generally agree that marriage constitutes the union of a man and a woman, the broader and wider definition of marriage today as society has evolved now is the union of partners regardless of the pairing of genders – it is the recognition of an intimate relationship of people who have committed to have that relationship recognised and with it will come all the accoutrements and benefits of having had that loving, intimate and committed relationship in life and in death.

In Africa and beyond

In Africa where the advent of anti-homosexual fervour and the promulgation of homophobic laws is gaining traction, the communities have yet to reach that level of guaranteeing liberties in such a way that their lawmakers do not preoccupy themselves with mandating moral codes and criminalising views the majority consider immoral conduct, but the opinions stated above will almost eventually lay the basis of arguing the human rights issues of minorities beyond just the matter of sexuality.

I am of the view that when the core purpose of protecting the liberty of all is the guiding principle of the courts above all else, in the hands of good human rights lawyers, no law will remain in our statute books that seeks to discriminate, denigrate, disapprove or stigmatise an African because they believe differently, act differently, or espouse views and lifestyles that are different and thereby all Africans will have equal access to justice, fairness and be protected from menace, sanction or injury to live in peace regardless of who they are.