I went back to college in the Nineties to learn computer coding and language. I was blind but not confident about using a cane so I felt my way along the corridors. One tutor took me to one side and said “I've noticed you feeling your way. Why don't you use a cane?” There followed an uncomfortable exchange but in the end, after some back and forth about whether he could have been less blatant, we hit it off and he was a great teacher.
I learned that digital information is a series of zeroes and ones which are turned on or off according to set data instructions. there is no half-on half-off.
The word for this is binary.
Almost all of us are now facing the fallout from the binary referendum question on Europe – in or out. we were not given other alternatives and very few of us hoping for truth, nuance and healthy debate got any. So we either voted or we didn't.
Today we read that Jermaine Jenus, former footballer and now TV personality, has been sacked by the BBC for sending 'inappropriate texts'. Apart from the recipient being a woman we have no further information. The press have always taken great delight in a posture of coyness. By not revealing more, they imply they have special inside knowledge which, as our moral custodians, they feel obliged to keep secret. That combines with a current expectation that we the people are supposed to have a binary view on anything we come across, whether or not we have all the facts and whether or not we even understand the full scope of the issue.
If you're not with us you are against us.
If you support women only sport or changing rooms you are sexist. If you don't have enough clarity to make a confident decision then you are transphobic.
If you have sympathy for Palestinians then you are anti-semitic. If you have sympathy for ordinary Israelis then you are Islamaphobic.
As if I could possibly come down to such a binary view about a deep fundamental division of hearts and minds which started thousands of years ago and which the combined might of the world's cleverest diplomats has been unable to resolve at all in seventy years.
I noticed one of the more recent cases against someone posting online in the last three weeks of “behaviour likely to cause fear”
This would imply that the test is like the old legal test “what would the bystander on a bus think?” Doesn't that depend on the views of the person on the bus? This troubled me even back in the day as a law student. I'd grown up experiencing nasty racism for me and my family, cruelty by my peers for my disability and little or no public engagement in either.
So I had a fairly dim view of the person on the bus.
Now, all these decades later and in a time when there has never been more back and forth about social issues, I find myself holding a long internal debate about all these matters. However, it's a largely silent debate because, as Chair of a disability charity, I have burning issues I feel I can help to address and I'm fearful that in my blogs I will say 'the wrong thing' and be asked to step down.
So we are supposed to judge Jenas now and I think we are supposed to judge him harshly. This without knowing if the text or texts in question were at one end a vague compliment about someone's hair or at the other end very nasty explicit comments or suggestions about that person or even about another person which used crude, explicit language.
We should all reflect on one crucial matter. Being insulted is a fact. Being offended is a choice.
If someone tells me I look weird because of my eyes - something which little children do a lot I have a choice. I can either smile at the insult and say “well you're probably right but I bet I'm better looking.”. Or I can say “That was totally offensive and I'm going to ask for you to be fired or removed from my life. Personally I have little appetite to ruin or end someone's career and livelihood forever because of something they said or wrote to me. If it's really worthy of sanction then of course I'll file my report.
It's my choice.