Why, Stephen Fry, WHY?

I consider myself a normal person (pretty much). And like every other normal person I love Stephen Fry. His wordiness, his wit and his intellect have often left me amazed. In fact, in my last blog post I asked whether it was "possible to describe anything Stephen Fry has done as anything other than wonderful?". Sadly, it seems that this might almost have been a challenge.

In case you are unaware, Fry was interviewed for Attitude magazine, and made a series of comments suggesting women did not enjoy sex, but "that sex is the price they are willing to pay for a relationship with a man, which is what they want." When these comments were picked up by The Guardian on Sunday, there was naturally a huge commotion on Twitter, amongst other places.

Fry claims to have been misquoted by the Guardian, saying

"So some fucking paper misquotes a humorous interview I gave, which itself misquoted me and now I'm the Antichrist. I give up."

Since then, he has tweeted once more -- "Bye, bye" -- and so, worryingly, looks like he may be about to leave Twitter, which would be a terrible shame for one of the most popular tweeters out there.

I have found the whole situation to be incredibly confusing and disheartening. Fry has not earned the "National Treasure" badge by accident, but by being one of the most likable and warm public figures in the country. These comments seem so out of character, so naturally I would hope that he has been misquoted, as I'm sure would so many people.

But Fry doesn't seem to be using Twitter as he said he could. One of the benefits of the social networking site is that it enables you to clarify your position without having to be filtered through the journalists who can twist your words to suit their own agendas. When the Mail accused him of leading an "Atheist Hate Campaign", he neatly demonstrated this to be false in his blog, and was able to put across what he actually believed.

Slightly more problematic in this regard is that Fry himself tweeted a link to a website with extracts from the interview himself (I believe it was this one), but has since deleted that tweet. Certainly, this article contains contentious quotes, so it seems less likely that The Guardian has entirely misrepresented his case, leaving one to wonder why he would initially tweet the link, then remove it after he claims to have been misquoted? (For what it's worth, I had this on my Tumblr the day before The Guardian ran with the story, and it's contents are such I don't feel I need to argue Fry's point again here.) He also seems to have made similar comments in a previous interview, which can be found on YouTube here.

The curious thing I have found is that some defenders of Stephen Fry are so ready to criticise The Guardian for misquoting the interview without looking into any other sources to see what the interview said. Of course, it's still possible that his intentions have been misread, and I would dearly love this to be the case, but to blindly assume that someone is right just because they're Stephen Fry is wrong.

I have focused on this more than most stories of this nature. Had it been almost any other figure, I probably would have made some remark and passed over it, but Fry is different. His charm has won so many people over, including me, and his intellect is so great that it's often easy to forget that he is fallible, and so devastating when proved so. But I hope that Fry rejoins Twitter, takes the time to clarify his statements, point out where he's been misquoted, and that this issue can be left behind very soon.

5 Minutes with the Pope

I've been meaning to do a blog on the Pope UK visit for some time now, but this article in the New Humanist has finally inspired me to get around to it. So, if I had five minutes with the Pope, this is what I would like to say:

Pope Benedict, may I assume, for a second, that there is no God -- the primary justification for your actions and your position of authority. If this is the case, you have made women second class citizens and homosexuals outcasts for no reason. You have helped to spread HIV/AIDS by condemning condoms on the basis of a myth. And people in your organisation (and, if many reports are to be believed, you yourself) have covered up child molesters to protect the reputation of a lie. Given these countless millions who have suffered or have been killed, how is it that you can be regarded as a figure of moral authority, and how can you say, with the complete confidence that it would require, that you have acted justly?

I believe that this is the closest I can come to expressing my disgust at the actions of the Catholic Church, but I will never be able to put into words the horror and sadness that I feel, knowing that there are millions of people who hold this hateful, bigoted, misogynistic homophobe in the highest regard possible.

Pride (In The Name Of Love)

Hello all,

This weekend has seen the annual Pride events held in London. As usual (though in reassuringly small numbers), people took to the internet asking why there is no "Straight Pride" event, in a way that reminds me of the time when I asked my mother why there was a Mothers' Day and Fathers' Day, but no Children's Day. Her reply was that that was every other day of the year, and with LGBT rights this certainly is the case.

The LGBT community is, of course, served badly by the media in most of its forms (popular literature, music, film and television etc.), but there is one area that has consistently underrepresented it, and in my opinion will continue to do so: marketing.

Little seems to have changed since this article was written two years ago. Gay men often seem notable by their absence, and women even less so. Why is this? When Maltesers made the original version of this advert, it featured a gay couple, but it was decided that this limited the market to just gay men. On that logic, of course, no-one in the LGBT community would be able to buy anything. This advert features two pregnant women, but it would be incredible to claim that it would limit the market to just pregnant women, so I do not see how this idea holds. I, despite being a heterosexual male, buy Galaxy chocolate, but not Yorkie bars, and I am sure I am far from the exception.

I don't believe that this situation is likely to improve very soon. Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe showed the difficulties that globalisation has introduced to marketing (6:30 into this video), focusing on the casual racism of the industry, but clearly affecting the representation of LGBT people. The medium must be inherently conservative to appeal to the largest number of people, but its prevalence it propagates the society it is trying to reflect.

Of course, I am aware that it is not the advertisers who are homophobic, racist, misogynistic or anything else. If it turned out that they could make more money featuring homosexual couples in their adverts, they'd start today. It's a nasty system, and one can't help sympathise with Bill Hicks in his classic rant on marketing.

The Real Bigotgate

Hello all,

The big news of yesterday is that Conservative MP Philippa Stroud used to run prayer sessions to cure people of their homosexuality, claiming that "demons" were possessing them. Naturally this is news that offended a great many people, and before long #PhilippaStroud was trending in the UK.

Actually, the truth of this story is even worse. The church has, shall we say, highly questionable views on the role of women in marriage, all of which the electorate deserve to know about. Any church that preaches:

“A church where Biblical family life is highly valued, where husband and wife embrace male servant leadership and joyful female submission, where godly parenting is taught and practised and where the special value of singleness and its unique opportunities are affirmed”

should be questioned, and its influence on an MP challenged. As Bartley points out, an MP subservient to her husband in all things may not even be voting under her own viewpoint, but under her husbands. This somewhat trumps "Vote Clegg, Get Brown/Cameron", I would argue.

Of course, they also have a right to know about the positive sides, such as their work for charity, but I would imagine Ms Stroud has already covered that in her own leafleting.

The truth remains that Ms Stroud's views on homosexuality and feminism do not match the views of most people living in Great Britain today; A nation whose proudest claim should be its tolerance of all cultures that do not infringe on the happiness of others.

And yet... Shamefully, the worst part of this big news is that it is NOT BIG NEWS! A search for Philippa Stroud on the BBC News Website produces little beyond a Woman's Hour clip from last October. I recognise the institution's stance with regards to impartiality (and, let's face it, none of us were expecting to read this story in the Mail or Sun), but it was happy to publish the controversy surrounding the smear stories of Nick Clegg, and I fail to see why this story should receive special treatment.

Perhaps we can draw one positive from this story. Due to the comparative lack of coverage in the mainstream media, people have been tweeting, Facebooking and blogging about this story just to get it out there, and, by all accounts, it seems to be working. Social media is bypassing barons like Murdoch, and this can only be a good thing.