The UK General Election 2015

On May 7^th, my country held a General Election to determine the structure of Parliament for the next five years. The result was a shock for almost everyone and a profound disappointment for most of those within my own friendship circle. I've been trying to figure out how best to put my feelings into words ever since... and also trying to get a handle on the truth of the situation. This has taken a lot longer than I anticipated, simply because facing the matter is so depressing that I've rarely been able to stomach working on this article. Even so, I feel these results are worth posting belatedly.

If I had to state my personal emotional reaction to the General Election, it would probably be:

My country held an anonymous survey of the adult population which proved that a majority of them were ignorant, hateful or selfish enough to willingly cause harm or death to their neighbours and cared nothing for other people's rights. As a result, this was adopted as public policy.

I'm not trying to say that this is fair, but it's honestly how I feel. The stakes of this election were extremely large where the future of British society were concerned and a Conservative majority was the worst of all probable outcomes.

For the benefit of my overseas readers, I should explain that our country has traditionally had two electable parties – the right wing Conservatives (or Tories) and the left wing Labour party. I was born under the premiership of the massively influential Tory leader Margaret Thatcher (who destroyed the power of Trade Unions in this country) and her party continued to reign until I was 15. Unfortunately the Labour party remodelled itself into the centrist New Labour shortly before defeating them, meaning that I have never experienced a firmly left wing government during my 33 years of life.

In 2010, dissatisfaction with both these parties resulted in a hung parliament. The result was a coalition government led by the Conservatives but also incorporating the left wing Liberal Democrats (traditionally the firm but distant third place party). Although I was displeased to see David Cameron take leadership, as a Liberal voter I was pleased to see the party finally advancing and hoped that it was a sign of genuine three party contests to come.

Unfortunately the ability of the Liberal Democrats to restrain the Conservative agenda proved far smaller than the left hoped. By repeatedly backing Conservative moves in order to maintain a functional administration, Deputy Prime Minister Clegg lost all credibility with many people and the Liberal prognosis for the 2015 election was always dire.

Having taken the reins of a country in severe economic difficulty, Cameron focused on attempting to cut public spending whilst encouraging private sector growth. Unfortunately, a conspicuous part of this broadly sensible policy consisted of slashing the provisions designed to keep the poor from utter destitution and the incapacitated from dying. A relentless propaganda campaign painted this not as a process of grim necessity, but as a just action based on the recognition that these people didn't deserve the provision in the first place.

As a predictable result of these actions, poverty became more acute for a lot of struggling people and some of the incapacitated started to die. When declaring his intended policies if re-elected this year, Cameron announced that he intended to retain these welfare cuts in all future spending plans regardless of the size of the available public purse. He first announced this from a gold-plated lectern after a free banquet, apparently not seeing any negative symbolism in doing so. Having already removed free legal assistance for poor people in cases where the defendant is the State, he also promised to scrap the Human Rights Act – which binds the UK to observe the European Convention on Human Rights. He has also pledged to increase the amount of government censorship and surveillance applied to law-abiding members of the general public, declaring an intention to move away from the philosophy that 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'.

On May 7^th 2015, the population of my country promoted his party from head of a coalition to a lone majority government. On a practical level, this means five years of the same unpleasant government without any of the minor restraints they formerly faced. On an emotional level, it's hard not to take it as an overt demonstration that the Dark Side is stronger in Britain.

When seeking escape from this feeling, the first thing that must be remembered is that the Conservatives didn't actually need to secure over 50% of the vote to get over 50% of the seats. Although there is no doubt that they received the greatest number of votes cast, the Tories actually only got 36.9% of the vote. Of course, many people also voted for the even worse UK Independence Party – a 'straight talking' newcomer that publicly skirts far closer to racism and homophobia than the other major parties care to and whose candidates are exposed as being far worse in private with almost comical regularity. UKIP polled 12.6% of the vote (more than the Liberal Democrats and the left wing Green Party put together) but their support was so evenly diluted across the country that they only got a single MP.

Added together, this gives the political right 49.5% of the vote. But only 66.1% of those registered to vote actually did so, giving them the active support of less than 32.8% of the national adult population. Even adding in the statistically insignificant numbers that voted for the avowedly racist British National Party, the proudly fascist National Front, the anti-feminist Justice For Men And Boys and the delightful War Veterans Pro-Traditional Family Party (who believe that anti-social and criminal behaviour is caused by teaching schoolboys that 'homosex is OK') the total number of practising Sith in this country may be less than 1 in 3 of the people you meet on the street.

I say 'meet on the street' because this certainly is not a reflection of many individual social circles. People tend to group together based on ideological common ground, with the result of excluding differing people from their lives. This is obvious to anyone with a Facebook feed – if mine truly monitored the pulse of the nation we'd have had a Green Party landslide – but the scale of the segregation is often underestimated. In a generally fascinating article, one American author stated that he didn't believe any of the 150 people who form his Dunbar's Number of social contacts were Creationists. Using overall polls of belief within the USA, he then calculated that the odds of randomly selecting 150 non-creationist Americans in a row were approximately the same as those of randomly selecting one specific atom from the entire mass of the Earth.

Of course, he's probably slightly wrong in this estimate of his friends. There was no statement in the article that he'd actually surveyed all 150 people on that specific subject. It's easy to assume that a generally like-minded person will hold the same opinion as you on a given subject, but they can surprise you when you actually ask. After the election the media made much of the concept of the 'Shy Tory' – someone who votes Conservative but won't admit it to their left wing social circle. But even if a few folk blind-side you, the vast majority of those who differ are likely to be in separate social circles composed of others like themselves. The very concept of the 'Safe Seat' in politics proves that these divisions can be large-scale enough to be geographically mapped, even in the internet age.

As a result of this, the question of 'why did so many people vote Conservative?' isn't an easy one for me to seek an answer to. I just don't know that many Conservatives to ask. The answer from some of my left-wing friends is simple enough – 'they figured that the Tories would do things that benefited them, and didn't care about the harm they'd do to others.'

Unfortunately, that answer won't do. Although there are certainly people who will endorse a universal erosion of rights because their social privilege will protect them and who will let others starve in exchange for a tax cut, this isn't a fair assumption to make about all Tory voters. None of us truly know what will happen if a given party takes power – we simply make our best predictions and cast a vote accordingly. Voting for UKIP because you believe that they will end racial inequality isn't immoral, it's just really dumb. If someone says that they truly believe voting Conservative is the best thing for Britain, my question must not be 'why are you such a dishonest prick?' but rather 'what does the world look like from over there?'

Although I don't know many Conservatives, I do know some. I therefore messaged the one person on my wall who was conspicuously celebrating the result, asking him about the issues of Welfare cuts and the repeal of the Human Rights Act.

The response was quite illuminating. On the subject of Welfare, he argued that the current Welfare state was unsustainable in size due to the expanding actions of the previous Labour government. He acknowledged the damage caused by withdrawing these supports, but argued that this was why they should never have been erected in the first place.

From this viewpoint, the responsibility for the harm caused by the cuts does not lie with the government making them. It lies with the Labour politicians who made impossible promises in the first place, thus forcing the economic grown-ups to be the bad guys by reneging on them out of necessity. This perspective does nothing to explain the deliberate exaggeration of the actual Welfare bill by including public sector pensions in the figures, the systematic denial of benefits to people who are still legally entitled to them or the attempts to use the unemployed as a pool of coerced unpaid labour, but it does much to explain how many Tory voters can sleep at night.

On the subject of the Human Rights Act, he cited the desire to avoid unjust judgements being forced upon us by Europe. This kind of thinking is hard to sympathise with, given that the media portrayal of most controversial cases and of the actual influence of the European court has been so wildly inaccurate.

However, he also pointed out that these rights would still broadly exist without the Act. This is not unfair – Britain outlawed slavery a long time before the Convention on Human Rights was written and ditching it won't throw that into question. We have many hundreds of years of law protecting most of these rights, the Act just puts them all in one convenient place.

The Convention isn't a holy scripture and there is no reason to think that it couldn't be improved. The Tories have always stated that they would replace the Act with a new Bill of Rights, which could theoretically be better than the Convention it replaces (although nothing they've said so far supports that idea). When it comes down to it, my problem with this proposition is based on a profound suspicion towards the motives of those making it. Many of their more problematic and abusive actions in the past (such as attempting to force Welfare claimants to do unpaid work) have been challenged on the basis of the Human Rights Act. The fact that Britain cannot change the Convention also provides a degree of security to its provisions that the new law would not have. I can only perceive the government's actions as an attempt to remove a limitation upon their own power, in order to permit them to oppress or abuse the British people – but perhaps some of those who bestowed votes upon them take a more positive view.

When looking into the question of 'why do people vote Conservative?' more generally, the most interesting thing I came across was the work of Jonathan Haidt. Although I haven't yet read his book, I've read several articles explaining what he says in it. Haidt proposes that the left and the right are equally influenced by moral concerns when casting their vote – but that they have very different feelings about which moral questions are the most pressing.

Haidt divides moral sensitivities into six different axes, representing different concerns. These are Care/Harm (protecting and tending to others), Fairness/Cheating (justice and consistency), Liberty/Oppression (concern for freedoms), Loyalty/Betrayal (standing with your own group), Authority/Subversion (respect for tradition and legitimate authority) and Sanctity/Degradation (respect for taboos and aversion to 'disgusting' things). He surveyed a large number of people with questions related to these different fields, noting how their responses varied with their position on the political spectrum.

As a group, the left showed noticeably more resistance to the idea of kicking a dog in the head for personal gain. Conversely, they showed far less resistance to the idea of repeating unflattering lies about their home country to a foreign audience in exchange for the same profit.

Although most left wingers would probably be quite happy with the notion that they take a firmer stand against puppy kicking than against unpatriotic behaviour, a true moral divide would show increased resistance to both ideas. Instead the left demonstrated a far stronger passion on the Care/Harm axis and a weaker regard for the Loyalty/Betrayal axis (and indeed most of the others).

The overall conclusion that people have drawn from this work is that the left have an overwhelming concern for the Care/Harm axis. In fact, they care so much about it that it can overpower the other concerns entirely, creating what the right dismiss as 'bleeding heart liberals'. Ironically, the right consider themselves more concerned with Liberty/Oppression than the left – because the left are more willing to make protective laws obliging people to behave a certain way and to condemn opposition as immoral. The main reason that the concept of the 'Shy Tory' gained so much currency in the media is that it portrays the right wing voter as the suppressed victim of an ideological dictatorship. Many on the right have been known to complain that accusations of racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia are used in an attempt to invalidate their stances, allowing social changes that are undemocratically opposed to what many citizens want to see.

Haidt's model does shed some light on how the right wing voter thinks differently to the left with regard to the election issues I've described. To a left wing voter, the question of whether benefits cuts will cause large amounts of human suffering is vastly more important than the question of whether continuing to distribute public money in this fashion is fair. To a right wing voter, these moral issues have a far different weighting and stories about 'scroungers' and 'cheats' strike a powerful chord. It is obvious to the left that human rights should be equally available to all humans as a shield against harm, but empathy with the Loyalty/Betrayal axis allows the right to justify a hierarchy of protections in which immigrants lose out to locals and foreign civilians lose out to our soldiers.

For me personally, engaging with these theories has in no way lessened my commitment to the political left. I honestly believe that the moral character of an act is greatly dependant upon the intended or foreseeable consequences regarding the well-being of others. I recognise the importance of things like justice and liberty, but ultimately see them vital foundations of the popular well-being. I am entirely at ease with the idea that morally correct laws should be passed even if most people don't agree with them – with moral correctness here being largely defined as shielding people from harm that they would otherwise (continue to) suffer.

It is however very important for me to recognise that the actual building blocks of my moral perspective can be out of sync with those of others. It is important because ultimately we must engage with right wing voters and change their minds. People may socially isolate themselves from the politically different, but elections serve as a painful reminder to us all that the very existence of those differing people can harm us. It is therefore necessary to reach out and try to sway others to our side. The left is far more passionate about this than the right in many cases – but we must recognise the difference in moral priorities that we will encounter. I honestly believe that the choice of a Conservative government will have a terrible effect upon at least some sections of the British public in Care/Harm terms, but it is sobering to realise that this isn't nearly as important to the moral centres of many other people as it is to mine.

The Fifty-first Shade - Fifty Shades of Grey and trying it for real.

Apparently 50 Shades of Grey is really popular. Over 100 million copies of the book series have been sold, with the film now set to give the whole thing another round of popularity and publicity. Since the key element of the erotica tale is a BDSM relationship, sales of fetish gear have also sky-rocketed as many people previously underexposed to such things (or lacking a social in-road to broach the idea to their partner) have awakened to the idea of trying it out. If you are one of these people (or thinking of becoming one) this article is for you.

Unlike many articles that offer criticism of the books, I don't want to to start out by stating that it is wrong to enjoy 50 Shades as a piece of fantasy. It isn't the most well-crafted tale of our time, but as a man who owns all five Resident Evil films I understand that entertaining trash has its place. 50 Shades essentially exists to provoke sexual fantasies and apparently it does a more than passable job for a lot of people.

Sexual fantasies are not always politically correct and over-analysing them isn't always beneficial or productive. If you enjoy imagining being Ana then go ahead and imagine it. (I guess some people enjoy imagining being Christian in some scenes, but hopefully that involves willfully stripping away basically everything about the man as a person).
Projecting yourself into the enjoyable parts of an existence that would have serious downsides if you lived it is entirely normal – few people really want to be a traumatised orphan, but that doesn't stop them flocking to a new Batman film. Ana's life isn't a pretty picture either - but the reputed 20% of the film she will spend having sex is still a big draw. Being aroused by the idea of a powerful man taking control of your life doesn't make you a traitor to feminism – it just means you have a fantasy you enjoy and possibly a lifestyle choice you're free to make. If the sole result of this series is to inspire millions of hours of enjoyable masturbation across the western world, the world is probably a better place for having it.

Of course, that isn't the sole result. If all those rope and whip sales are any indication, 50 Shades is inspiring a vast number of people to start exploring the world of BDSM for real. The reaction to this from those already involved in the fetish community has generally come down to an expression of two fears - that couples who attempt to re-enact the books in isolation will get themselves hurt, and that people who enter the fetish scene armed only with the books will believe themselves experts and mess up badly. Truthfully both of these fears are pretty reasonable, so I've decided to become a small part of the solution and provide a few hopefully useful pointers.
More general social commentators have expressed fears that holding 50 Shades up as an aspirational love story could warp the expectations of a generation and lead them to accept or seek out abuse. That argument is very important, but I don't really have the space to cover it here. Most people have been told many other (better) romance stories besides this one - but 50 Shades is probably the first and only BDSM tale that most folks have read, which gives it a massive amount of influence in that area.

I ought to mention that although I have a fair amount of knowledge, my practical experience is pretty limited. I'm not trying to be an authoritative guide here – I'm just trying to be a far better guide than 50 Shades is. The fact that this sets the bar so very low gives me both confidence and motivation.

It's OK to be Kinky.

Although BDSM proclivities are FAR more common than those without them think, being kinky is an usual state of being. Like many abnormalities, this leads many kinky people at some point to ask themselves “why am I like this?” Since kink often involves liking things we are generally conditioned to see as bad, it's easy to come up with some fairly negative theories – and some of those around you may find it easier still.

Blossoming as a kinky person can sometimes be a process very similar to coming out as gay. Becoming able to talk about it and confident enough to identify as such to others is a gradual thing. However, it's also the second half of the journey. The first is an internal one, in which the person grapples with questions like 'does liking pain mean I'm screwed up or self-destructive?' * and 'does wanting to beat someone more than I want to make love to them make me a bad person?' **

Some people still struggling with such issues tend to go hot and cold on the issue of BDSM. Desire and interest draw them in for a while, then self-loathing and worry drive them away. Some attempt to repress the interest whilst being powerless to change it, remaining unfulfilled for a long time. Tragically, some even end up secretly paying professionals to give them kink sessions without ever asking their partner to do the same things to them. All of this is bad and the sooner a kinky person is able to accept themselves and be accepted by those around them the better.

The reason I bring this up is that 50 Shades is actually a really negative portrayal of BDSM in some ways. The series casually implies that Grey's preferences are a result of childhood trauma and mental issues – a toxic idea that surveys of actual kinky people have repeatedly shown to be false. Like Edward's bloodlust in the often-compared Twilight series, his sadism is portrayed as the one scary downside of an embarrassingly idealised love interest – and unlike being a sparkly bloodsucking monster five times her age, seems like it might actually be a deal breaker. When Ana gets angry at the end of the book she delivers a very negative judgement of his character based on his S&M tastes, which he accepts as accurate.

Yet in spite of all this, it's clear that the only reason for 50 Shades to exist is to present fantasies about S&M for your enjoyment. As a result, it is a work that can encourage both interest and self-loathing in a kinky person at the same time – which can't be terribly healthy. If you feel inspired to make BDSM part of your life, don't swallow the idea that you are inherently doing something wrong (but oh so right). You aren't. It doesn't make you a bad person and you have nothing to be ashamed of.

*No. Pain is just a physical sensation like any other. We first encounter pain in association with harm, but a lifetime of aversion therapy doesn't mean it's actually bad in and of itself. Obviously the primary purpose of pain is to act as an alarm system to protect us. However, adrenaline exists so that we can flee or kill to protect ourselves and few have an issue with tricking the body into giving us a shot for pleasure.

**No. The key here is the intended result of the session. Typically a fantasy that owes anything to your practical desires for real life will leave the subject of your whipping pleased and fulfilled by the experience. Dreaming about relentlessly stimulating someone attractive until they lose every last vestige of self-control is actually really normal.

YKINMKBYKIOK (No, really).

As you might guess, the BDSM community uses a lot of jargon and acronyms in its online communication. Probably the most absurd acronym in semi-regular use is the snappy YKINMKBYKIOK – which translates as Your Kink Is Not My Kink, But Your Kink Is OK.

The truth is, a lot of people are extremely 'vanilla' in taste. Perplexing as it is, they see nothing attractive about BDSM and react to images of people being bound, gagged and flogged for fun along the lines of “Gah, why would you like that, what is wrong with you?” If you're a 50 Shades fan, this probably isn't you. But the fetish community is a diverse place, and if you go peeking into other people's dungeons for long enough you will undoubtedly see some things that will make you think “Gah, why would you like that, what is wrong with you?”

If everyone went ahead and voiced these thoughts, the BDSM community couldn't exist as a social entity. Everyone would be too busy rejecting each other to remain on speaking terms. As such, people within these social networks are expected to give the same respect to others that they desire for themselves and accept that fetishes they don't happen to share are equally valid. This is not to say that you can't condemn anything, but concerns should be grounded on questions of consent and risk-management ethics rather than on whether looking at it makes you excited or nauseated.

50 Shades doesn't really put forward this concept. The process of defining the couple's 'hard limits', for example, is couched as little more than confirmation of the fact that she doesn't want to do things no sane person wants to do anyway. It's therefore important to learn this idea before you start discussing kink with other fetishists – hopefully including your partner.

If you happen to find someone who shares your interests, recognise that they might also have interests that you don't share. If your partner reacts with enthusiasm and relief when you nervously venture the idea of whips and chains, don't call them disgusting if they bring up the idea of urinating on their face. If that's too much you don't ever have to do it - but denigrating them as a person and making them afraid to share their wishes won't help any part of your lives together. Since they may have fetishes they've not told you about, it's better to practice this kind of respcetful consideration at all times – casually reviling a third party can cut almost as deeply if they're doing what your lover has always wanted.

I've talked before about the problems kinky people can face from mainstream society. The increased acceptance that 50 Shades has brought is therefore a good thing – but it can be overestimated. 50 Shades has not caused YKINMKBYKIOK to be more widely understood, which limits the social effectiveness of the book.

There are certainly plenty of people out there who take a 'whatever makes you happy' approach to other people's lives. Unfortunately, a very noticeable segment of society remains mired in the 'different = bad' thinking that festers in every schoolyard. The sheer popularity of 50 Shades means that some kink is now regarded as normal, but that's all. The boundary fence of 'normality' now cuts through the middle of kinkyland instead of running along the border, but the consequences of being found on the wrong side haven't gone away.

BDSM includes 3 separable groups of activities and none of them are sex.

BDSM 'play' includes a wide range of activities. In many cases, these activities are highly arousing for people who are into them. For that reason, kink is often used as a form of foreplay or to enhance an act of intercourse.

However, 'kinky sex' isn't the only way in which fetish activities are practised within the fetish community. Those events you've heard of where dozens of people in fetish gear meet up in a room and do things to each other really do exist – but they're not always orgies. At many organised events actual penetrative sex is banned and many of the attendees don't leave with each other to do that afterwards. Casual sex is fairly available within the mainstream world – when the BDSM community meet up they are primarily interested in playing different games.

This seems worth mentioning due to the ceaseless way in which BDSM play is used as a supporting act for Mr. Grey's penis. While the wider world will probably regard kink and sex as inextricably linked, if you venture into the fetish community you shouldn't regard sleeping with people as a necessary 'price of admission' you must pay to have things done to you. Far more importantly, if you are on the other end of the whip you shouldn't just assume sexual consent from those who are up for receiving play from you. Nor does attending an event mean that they are up for receiving such play – it's explicit consent all the way here.

Most people are aware that Bondage can be practised separately from other activities. In bed, many who find the idea of S&M or domination far too extreme can appreciate the advantages of being held immobile and powerless to resist while their partner goes to work on them. For many kinky people, however, the very act of binding or being bound can be mentally stimulating enough to be worth doing on its own as play or even as art. Japan has a tradition of treating erotic rope bondage as an art form (under the name of Kinbaku or Shibari) and the western adoption of these practices has created an interesting fusion of styles.

Domination/submission and S&M are more closely entangled within popular culture. The stereotypical 'scene' incorporates a dominant person performing S&M upon a submissive one. 50 Shades again doesn't help here – Grey refuses the term 'sadist' in favour of 'Dominant' when it is obvious that he is actually both.

In fact, such a dynamic is not needed to perform S&M. Many people do it in a co-equal environment. Sometimes the masochist adopts a dominant role in proceedings, precisely dictating what is done to them for their own enjoyment. The BDSM community often uses the words 'top' and 'bottom' to describe the acting and acted upon without the implications of the terms 'Dom' and 'sub'.

Domination/submission is also capable of being practised in isolation. Having one person 'take charge' in bed is an example of this – and traditional relationships where the husband carries overall authority over the couple's choices are technically D/s in nature. Couples who consciously adopt a D/s dynamic (sometimes complete with collars and titles) often have an interest in the other parts of BDSM. However, it must be understood that those who live this way as a lifestyle (rather than just assuming the roles for a 'scene' of play) do not do this to create excuses for S&M play. A sadist running a D/s relationship solely to justify lots of 'punishments' is not going to be a good Dom. This is quite a complicated matter, so I'll discuss it in more detail.

Play vs. punishment vs. abuse.

S&M play is normally based around the giving and receiving of pain for mutual pleasure and intimacy. It is not necessary for the people involved to assume any particular role, much less for the entire relationship to embody such roles. That being said, some people do use role-playing to enhance the experience.

One common element of this role-playing is the concept of punishment. Enjoying the pain of S&M is dependant on being in the right psychological place when it is delivered and many masochists find that the idea of being punished gets them there very fast. However, the offence in question should NOT be a real one. S&M is no way to work out genuine dissatisfactions, concerns or arguments within a couple and bringing in such baggage is not good. The actual motive for the punishment (if it is even discussed) will likely be vague and spurious or something that only the character you are role-playing is guilty of.

Many Dominant/submissive relationships incorporate provisions for the Dominant to punish the submissive (whilst many others do not). In this case, the punishment is a response to a breach of expected behaviour on the part of the sub.

Some subs deliberately vex their Doms into punishing them for mutual S&M gratification. These subs are known as 'brats' and their relationships are recognised as unusual. For a 'normal' D/s relationship, the goal is for the Dom to actually rule the sub effectively – with punishment being and undesirable consequence when the relationship's terms are breached. S&M play might also occur as a separate thing - who needs an excuse to have fun, after all?

Even when the physical mechanics of punishment are the same as those of play, the former is generally reported to not be enjoyable because it occurs in such a different head-space. Conversely, a punishment might be nothing like S&M. As you can see, a Dom who seeks excuses to punish the sub for his S&M pleasure is likely to make the D/s part of the relationship dysfunctional.

The notion of a Dom deliberately discomforting their partner when their control is defied sounds pretty abusive at first glance. The thing to realise is that all the unique elements of a D/s relationship should be consensual things that both partners find preferable to the alternatives – including the existence of punishment.

All relationships are built upon agreed rules – whether the informal social expectations of boyfriend/girlfriend status or the legally registered vows of marriage. People in D/s relationships add extra, unique terms to their agreement (usually without writing up a contract, though some do). This is a genuine part of the relationship structure like any other – I read a piece by one sub saying that 'stepping outside' the D/s dynamic for a particular purpose wasn't something she could do any more than a couple could 'step outside' of their marriage to do something.

Some subs value punishment because they find themselves unable to live the life they want without that motivation not to fail. Others find the set, measured consequences vital for leaving behind mistakes and failures that they otherwise fret over excessively. Some consider punishment a treasured sign that their Dom values them enough to watch and guide their progress. Others simply find that consistent punishment gives concrete reality to the rules of their relationship and their own decision to submit. All would far rather be punished than successfully conceal an offence or be 'let off'. If a sub sees no benefit to punishment, their relationship probably won't include provision for it and they will see Doms who require it as incompatible.

None of this is evident at all in Fifty Shades of Grey. The way Christian tells it, punishing Ana is all part of what he needs/enjoys about being a Dom. In effect, punishment forms a second thread of S&M fun for him – with Ana's disobedience to the agreed rules replacing a proper discussion of consent and waiving her ability to say no if she wants the relationship to continue.

Unsurprisingly, Ana feels physically unsafe under these unacceptable circumstances. She attempts to avoid punishment first by concealing things from him and then by actually having sex with him as a distraction. This is NOT a healthy situation. Her seductive diversion actually works because Grey has no interest in being consistent or affirming in his punishments – he uses them to gratify his own feelings of anger and has no interest in delivering an 'earned' punishment if he isn't too angry to think clearly. You only have to look at the motives above to see how well a sub that actually wanted a punishment dynamic would take that.

This is not to say that Christian has no interest in properly training Ana. However, his goals are based not on who she wants to be (like in a healthy, mutually desired D/s situation) but rather on who he wants her to be. Although he has a genuine interest in getting her to take better care of herself (in a cloying, patriarchal kinda way) his main goals are that she ceases to argue with him under any circumstances and desists from going places and seeing people without his knowledge and approval. In other words he is exhibiting the number one habit of the bad Dom – using the differing roles solely to get more (in terms of time and attention) in exchange for giving less (in terms of compromise and enduring the hard parts of a romantic relationship). A good Dom instead focuses on meeting the great responsibilities that come with all that power and trust – because they aren't doing the D/s thing purely as a means of enabling their own selfishness.

The punishment aspect of the Grey/Steele relationship is actually abuse. This is not a rejection of the entire alternative lifestyle D/s represents, but simply an accurate assessment of their own case. If you want S&M and/or a punishment dynamic in your own life, there is nothing about Fifty Shades that can wisely be used as an instruction manual.

Informed consent requires being informed.

A lot of the time, sexual consent in the vanilla world is a fairly generalised thing. This is because the people involved know what to expect from the idea of regular sex – though a person's first time is generally taken a bit more carefully. By contrast, more unusual things like anal sex are usually explicitly discussed in advance rather than just taken as part of the package.

In BDSM, basically everything is 'unusual'. This means that basically everything needs to be explicitly talked about. Even if the implements involved are commonly agreed in advance, the way in which they are used can be subject to a lot of variation. As respected author Jay Wiseman puts it “when two people are alone together, and one of them is naked and tied up, and the other is standing over them with their hands full of torture implements, this is not the time to have a serious mismatch of expectations”.

As well as discussing things with your partner, you should research into any safety hazards that your plans might involve. Most of these risks are low probability (meaning that people get away with unsafe behaviour most of the time) but knowing them and acting sensibly reduces the risk a lot more. It also allows you to prepare for a highly unlikely but possibly life-threatening situation ahead of time. Grey seems to know enough to keep a cutting tool handy so he can free Ana from bondage immediately in the event of a medical emergency, house fire or the like. Given his punctuality and staff of minions, it is likely that Ana would eventually be rescued if Grey himself had a heart attack. Unfortunately he hasn't learned not to use cable ties, which are so unsuitable they can cause nerve damage.

Of course, a person's consent regarding something they've never done before is still based on their guesses of what it will be like. Most people are aware of the 'safeword' mechanism, whereby a person can demand that the scene stops immediately by uttering a particular agreed word. What tends to get over-looked is that a scene with so much momentum that it can only be stopped by a special pre-arranged code is really psychologically intense. Under most circumstances, the top should be monitoring the bottom's emotional state well enough to know if they need to stop. Grey seems to feel that giving Ana a safeword absolves him of all responsibility as she should just learn to communicate, but this isn't an appropriate attitude.

Even when a scene goes really well, a top should generally provide emotional support and reassurance as the bottom 'comes down' from the intense experience. If you're in a relationship with them (or do something really extreme during a more casual hook up) it's often good to check in with them again later when the whole thing has had the chance to 'sink in'. Grey's contact with Ana the day after her first spanking would almost qualify as this kind of aftercare – if he didn't blame her for expressing uncertainties and tell her that she has to quash them if she's going to be a 'real' sub. Generally speaking, he totally sucks at this kind of thing.

Then there's the time that Christian pins Ana down when she tries to push him off, threatens to gag her if she cries out and has sex with her against her clearly stated wishes. What this means should be obvious and it isn't even out of character for him. The entire book is saturated with examples of him invading her boundaries without permission or obtaining 'consent' with the aid of threats or alcohol. Grey's behaviour throughout the book is not a model of the true dominant – it's a model of a stalking abusive rapist. If I'm going to write about the ways in which 50 Shades is inadequate as a guide to good BDSM practice, it's probably worth mentioning that honouring the very basics of proper consent are the foundation from which all else follows.

I understand why Fifty Shades is written in the way that it is. Removing a female character's agency before fulfilling her (or rather your) darkest dreams has been an effective method of popularising taboo fantasies for centuries. If Ana wasn't a virginal good girl who gets pressed into this stuff, she'd be a far less socially acceptable surrogate for the mainstream female reader. I'll refrain from providing a full examination of all the ways in which that is a bit screwed up.

What I will say is that there honestly are a huge number of really kinky and dominant people out there who are also really nice and considerate. If you want to find someone who will fulfil your Fifty Shades fantasies, don't go looking for an obsessive stalker and emotional manipulator who regularly breaks their own rules, forbids you to talk to anyone about the relationship and generally raises enough red flags to bring a tear to Lenin's eye. If you find one, get out. Unlike Ana, you probably won't be in a situation where they are the only person you've ever wanted to have sex with – and they won't be the only person who will do BDSM with you either.

Have fun!

BDSM is about people doing what they want to do because it makes them happy and fulfilled. Although some find powerful psychological benefits and deep relationships can be formed within its dynamics, kink isn't really founded upon anything more complex than this.

As such, what you do should be what you want to do. If you are doing something only because an experienced kinkster, a book, a film or an internet article has said that it is the 'right' way to do things then something is wrong. New submissives are particularly vulnerable to this because they want someone to dictate to them – yet those in successful relationships have usually taken a strong role in defining the terms of that relationship.

That being said, some things are non-negotiable for anyone involved in this field. You must be scrupulous about consent. You must conduct your real human relationships in a non-abusive fashion. You must learn about the potential mental and physical dangers of the activities you want to do and act in a way that minimises and watches for these risks.

Christian Grey does a really bad job in these three fields. As such, he is no kind of role model or teacher whatsoever. If you try to do this stuff for real, neither of you are going to benefit from using him as one. Thanks for listening.

Conversations with the Censor - the Amendment to the Communications Act

As you might have heard, new regulations limiting the sale of pornography went into effect at the start of this month. These laws apply the restrictions imposed on material granted an R18 certificate (the label that only sanctions sale in licensed adult shops) to online website-based sales, preventing UK-based producers from vending them. I think that this is a sufficiently bad thing to be worth writing about.

I've explained my objections to the recent anti-porn laws before,but it is likely worth repeating them here. As a Christian, it is impossible for me not to have some moral reservations about the practices of the porn industry – if only because the sex life it typically requires differs so strongly from the Christian model. This doesn't in itself mean that I would support a legal ban on pornography – confiscating free will from adults with regard to their own bodies isn't always a good thing. In fact I'd regard a blanket ban on porn as stupid and destructive in exactly the same ways that the 1930s American ban on alcohol was stupid and destructive. Even so, such a move would carry some moral arguments in its favour that I could respect.

The recent legal changes against pornography have not, however, been intended to create a blanket ban. Nor have they been intended to suppress 'hardcore' porn whilst allowing 'softer' productions to flourish. Instead, the law has criminalised porn that features certain specified sex acts, leaving porn that features different ones unaffected.

There is a truly vast amount of pornography in the world and most people don't view it entirely at random. Different porn caters for all kinds of different sexual interests, meaning that the specific porn a person chooses to seek out is a reflection of their own sexuality. Banning porn of specific acts therefore marks the target audience as undesirables, who are prevented from exploring themselves in the same way as everyone else in the alleged interest of the public good.

Although this is certainly understandable in the case of paedophilia, the vast majority of the restrictions imposed by the legislation regarding 'Extreme Pornography' and by the R18 guidelines impact squarely upon the BDSM community. Since this minority is already widely misunderstood and mistrusted, such attitudes from the top are harmful by default. The implications of selectively erasing the evidence of a particular sexual identity from the pornographic record are also fairly ugly. Even worse, the Extreme Pornography legislation has spent a great deal of time actually harming the harmless with prosecutions since it was enacted, whilst doing little to nothing in terms of protecting the public.

I was therefore rather concerned when I read last summer that Mr Cameron intended to bring in new restrictions for online porn based on the R18 rules. If the new law created new crimes for viewers, it could lead to a rise in these kind of prosecutions. I took a look at the BBFC's website to see what the new restrictions would entail. The list currently available runs as follows:

Material which is in breach of the criminal law,

including material judged to be obscene under the

current interpretation of the Obscene Publications Act

1959 (see Annexe)

Material (including dialogue) likely to encourage

an interest in sexually abusive activity which may

include adults role-playing as non-adults

The portrayal of sexual activity which involves real

or apparent lack of consent. Any form of physical

restraint which prevents participants from indicating a

withdrawal of consent

The infliction of pain or acts which may cause lasting

physical harm, whether real or (in a sexual context)

simulated. Some allowance may be made for

moderate, non-abusive, consensual activity

Penetration by any object associated with violence or

likely to cause physical harm

Sexual threats, humiliation or abuse which do not

form part of a clearly consenting role-playing game.

Strong physical or verbal abuse, even if consensual, is

unlikely to be acceptable

You can probably see how a lot of this relates very much to fetish material, which is problematic in itself. Although the list provided some kind of guidelines, I also felt that they were too vague if consumers were to be expected to apply them. I therefore emailed the BBFC enquiring about clarifications. Some were provided in response to my specific questions:

“use of ball gags and hoods is allowed, and may be allowed if hands are also restrained, however, full restraint and use of a gag, which prevents an individual from indicating a withdrawal of consent, is not acceptable. Careful penetration with a whip used in consensual BDSM play, for example, may be allowed, although there may also be circumstances in which it would be a problem.”

“The BBFC does not allow breath restriction or acts which restrict oxygen in sex works. We will also cut sight of penetration with objects likely to cause physical harm or associated with violence, such as knives and guns, and objects which are breakable or which have a higher likelihood of being lost internally and requiring medical intervention. So far as physical harm or the infliction of pain goes, there is, as you've noted, an allowance for moderate, non-abusive, consensual activity. However, and also in line with the Crown Prosecution Service guidance on the Obscene Publications Act, we will not allow the infliction of injury which goes beyond trifling and transient. You will understand that it would be impossible to provide an exhaustive list covering what is and is not allowed, given the wide range of possible practices. Certain acts we would also need to consider on their own merits in the context of a submitted work, taking into account such considerations as any evident care being taken.”


This is all very well, but ultimately much of it comes down to the judgement of the censor in regard to a specific work. But surely the BBFC can't study and rate every video with a .uk address on the internet? The examiner I communicated with was understandably reluctant to speculate on the mechanics of future legislation, but when pressed on the existence of any more detailed guidelines his response was clear:


“In terms of examiners' consideration of submitted works, we do have internal guidance which is based on research, medical and psychological advice, precedent, and our years of experience. But this is internal working guidance and is not publicly available. We do offer distributors and producers detailed guidance on what is and isn't likely to be allowed where specific questions are asked of us. But it is more difficult to respond in general terms because of the wide range of variables which can be relevant to the classification decision.”


So if you are making porn for DVD release in the UK, you are required to abide by a censorship guide that you are not allowed to actually read in full. This is an actual true fact. And now it applies if you run a website too.

1950s icon Bettie Page is spanked whilst gagged and in full bondage in a film by Irving Klaw. Although selling hardcore footage of orgies is entirely legal in the UK, the legal ability of a British Klaw working today to sell this film would be questionable.





Of course, the new legislation didn't in fact create new offences for consumers as I had feared it would. You can still watch porn that was legal last month, it simply can't be supplied to you online by UK-based pornographers. Since there are plenty of other countries in the world, the only actual effect of this new Amendment will be to damage the UK's porn industry in the truly international marketplace of the internet.
A notable number of people would probably celebrate news of a decline in domestic porn production, but it sure is an odd way to legislate when your grand plan is to stimulate private sector growth whilst shrinking welfare. In fact, the Tories recently emailed me to inform me that “the Conservatives are backing small businesses every way we can” - a statement that probably wouldn't go down well with the individuals and tiny companies under threat following the Amendment..At the very least they will be required to register their existence with AVOD and receive advice about how to run their show – for which they will be charged at least £137. This is because AVOD actually IS going to try and survey all British-created online porn – and charge the creators for doing it. Good thing the Tories are going for “lower taxes, better infrastructure, less red tape”.


The law only makes any kind of sense as a social policy – an assertion that the current R18 rating system is so fit for purpose that it should be applied more consistently instead of subjected to any kind of reform. So what does the system actually do?


Much of the press has been circulating a list of erotic acts that have been banned outright in UK porn. The list typically runs as follows (this example taken from the Independent):

Spanking
Caning
Aggresive Whipping
Penetration by any object 'associated with violence'
Physical or Verbal Abuse (regardless of if consensual)
Urolagnia (known as 'water sports')
Role-playing as Non-adults
Physical Restraint
Humiliation
Female Ejaculation
Strangulation
Facesitting
Fisting

The last three are described as 'life-threatening', due to the theoretical risk of smothering in facesitting and the danger of internal lacerations if fisting is performed under tragically ill-judged circumstances (such as wearing a large uneven ring in one known case). 

Facesitting can be lethal if you base your technique on Soul Calibur IV.

 
These kind of outright restrictions seem at odds with the contextual approach the BBFC has previously described and I can tell you that they are definitely over-simplistic. The best summary of the actual legal position that I've seen can be found here: These restrictions are not necessarily any less random or arbitrary, but they are at least more nuanced.


In fact, both the BBFC and AVOD have condemned the reporting on the issue as inaccurate. A similarly clear and comprehensive summation of their own has not been forthcoming from either of them. In response to further enquiries from myself, the BBFC replied:

“The amendment gives effect to the Governments commitment to align online regulation more closely with offline regulation. It created two types of content on UK-regulated VOD services: First, specially restricted content, which is content the BBFC has rated or would rate R18 and must be placed behind access controls on UK-regulated VOD services ; and secondly , prohibited content which is content the BBFC has refused or would refuse to classify. This content is banned from UK-regulated VOD services.
Media reports of a BBFC list of banned sexual activity for content on VOD services are misleading. There is no such list. Nor could there be given the importance of context in BBFC classification decisions.”

Of course, a body of proven 'prohibited content' does exist – and one assumes that the Independent in some fashion drew its own list from this evidence. The alleged restriction that has provoked the most outrage is the limitation on female ejaculation. It is not immediately obvious why this would be subject to such measures, given that male ejaculation is unrestricted. So is this a case of false reporting?


I dug up an old response by the BBFC to a question by Feminists Against Censorship which explains that:
“The Board does not in fact take any view on whether or not female ejaculation exists... At the most basic level, however, the Board is content that the pornographic tapes presented to us as examples of 'female ejaculation' are in fact nothing other than straightforward scenes of urination masquerading as 'female ejaculation'...
To conclude, the Board remains open minded about the issue of female ejaculation but we have yet to be presented with any pornographic video that has convinced us – or our medical advisor – that it consists of anything other than an excuse to display scenes of urolagnia. Such scenes are regularly found obscene by juries in the UK and therefore cannot be classified.”

My own communications with the BBFC confirm that this position remains in force:

“With regards to specific media speculation about banning female ejaculation, the BBFC is required to seek to avoid classifying material that is likely to be prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act. According to the CPS's guidelines, sex works featuring urolagnia are likely to be prosecuted. Therefore, unless it's very clear that what is being shown is indeed 'female ejaculation', as opposed to urolagnia, the Board's position has to be that scenes of this nature featuring liquid that might be urine have to be cut.”

They further linked me to their FAQs section, which includes the following:

“Consequently, we may not classify any material which may be subject to prosecution. Among other activities, this includes any repeated focus on urination during sex and urination over any other person, including any act which cannot be distinguished from urination on the basis of the onscreen evidence alone.”

This level of confusion is not surprising. The existence of female ejaculation – and whether any liquid expelled is actually urine – honestly is subject to a great deal of uncertainty within the scientific community. Given the thorough scientific understanding and pornographic acceptance of male emissions, it's unsurprising that some see female ejaculation as a bona fide feminist issue. I'm... unsure how the ban on depictions of sexual urination in any fashion (or of any kind of breathing restriction) is compatible with the statement that there is not and could not be any list of banned acts.


If female ejaculation is a problematic subject due to the relationship with urolagnia, the obvious follow-up question is 'why is peeing a concern of the CPS?” As you can see, the answer lies in the current status of obscenity laws. One of the foremost duties of the BBFC and AVOD is to ensure that illegal material is not certified for distribution. Aside from the Extreme Pornography legislation, the key piece of law is the Obscene Publications Act 1959.
The act in question prohibits the publication of material which is deemed 'obscene' on the grounds that it “is, if taken as a whole, such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it.” Material can be exempted from these measures if it is published in the interest of “science, literature, art or learning, or of other objects of general concern”. In fact, a dominatrix recently fought off AVOD by successfully claiming that her website The Urban Chick Supremacy Cell was a piece of feminist art. On the other hand, there is little sign that much evidence is needed to convict beyond the personal estimation of the jurors – making cases into a survey of popular mores with a remarkably small sample size.


Obviously attitudes have changed since the early days of the Act, when a jury was asked whether Lady Chatterley's Lover was the kind of book "you would wish your wife or servants to read." The CPS guidelines on obscenity have consequently evolved with them. Although many both inside and outside of the Church might argue that all hardcore pornography threatens to corrupt and deprave its users, porn has become far too normalised for prosecutions to be attempted on this basis alone. The only porn likely to be acted against is that which features acts so unusual that the average person might experience a negative visceral reaction upon seeing them for the first time. In other words, the Act now exclusively suppresses minority interests that Joe Average finds icky.
Awareness and acceptance of sexual minorities has increased significantly in recent decades, but acceptance of the BDSM community is lagging behind many others. Some claim that this must ever be so, because celebrating acts similar to those used to violate the unwilling when they are performed in a mutually appreciative environment is incompatible with civilised society. Obviously, applying the exact same argument to regular sex would lead to the conclusion that the crime of rape makes celebrating consensual sex unacceptable – which would immediately be dismissed as nonsense. This double standard persists due to the alarmingly common notion that hardcore BDSM enthusiasts are malicious predators, who use things like negotiation and consent as reluctant compromises and cynical shields. Although such exceptions do attempt to move among them, defining the whole group in that way is wildly unfair. Many of the restrictions on the porn that people are allowed to be 'influenced by' are most consistent with this hostile mode of thought – and that matters.
Even so, the willingness of juries to convict on obscenity charges is pretty low even in BDSM cases. In 2012, the case of R v Peacock returned a not guilty verdict regarding videos featuring various BDSM activities including fisting and urolagnia. Following the trial, several legal experts stated that the Obscene Publications Act no longer made any sense. Two years later, CPS guidelines still cite both fisting and urolagnia as obscene (forcing censors to classify them as prohibited) and the only legal change has been to apply the unaltered Act to more material.


The BBFC is perfectly willing to admit that it will censor beyond the strict requirements of the law to avoid negative social influences. In a public statement they explain that:


“Underpinning the BBFC guidelines is a specific requirement for the Video Recordings Act to have special regard to any harm that may be caused to potential viewers, or, through their behaviour, to society. This means that, before classifying a work, the BBFC may cut certain acts in pornographic works where imitation or the influencing of attitudes is a particular concern. Breath restriction is one such example. It would be wrong to assume that the BBFC consequently cuts all sight of people sitting across other people’s faces. But the BBFC will cut sight of clear and deliberate restriction of a person’s ability to breathe during sexual play. Breath restriction for the purposes of sexual enjoyment can result in death. Given such a clear and well-documented risk of harm, passing such breath play in a sex work would be contrary to the BBFC’s designated responsibility.”


Concern about foolish and dangerously performed imitation of riskier play is a valid thing – people really do hurt themselves and others that way. But attempting to erase all examples (including all the properly performed ones) in the hope that the idea will go away seems profoundly naïve. Of course, such footage would probably be illegal anyway so the choice of argument is surprising.




Practically speaking this new law will have very little actual impact – being limited entirely to damaging a small part of a domestic industry via new regulations that other, less international parts are already dealing with. Ideologically, however, expanding the enforcement of these laws without amending them is a slap in the face for all the activists who have been campaigning for years to raise awareness of the problematic features of both old and new legislation. It is also of necessity a positive endorsement of internet censorship.
Some writers have described porn freedoms as the 'canary in the coal-mine' of civil liberties – the first to die when conditions become toxic. When discussing a government that has made scrapping the Human Rights Act into a re-election pledge, this kind of doom-saying isn't entirely unreasonable. Apparently AVOD is already proposing that banks be obliged to decline payments to foreign pay-sites that don't meet its standards. This is a logical progression of the current measures, but one that has far wider implications for public freedom.




Backlash has launched a challenge of the new law, as can be seen here. For whatever it's worth, a direct.gov petition is also collecting signatures.
Other protests against the Amendment have been less... conventional. To the very best of my knowledge, no one died.

Gaming - I don't need GamerGate because...

This thing called GamerGate is starting to turn from a flash in the pan to a sustained conflagration. I didn't pay much attention to it at the start and have been waiting for it to go away, but that just isn't happening. Since the debate about social issues around gaming and geek culture is something that I keep coming back to on this blog, I guess we've reached the point where it makes sense for me to make some sort of comment on the existence of this controversial movement.

The exact nature of the GamerGate movement is something that is being furiously debated on many corners of the internet. To some writers, it is a grass roots movement to overturn a long-term culture of dishonesty and unaccountability amongst game journalists. To others, it is a brutal male campaign to drive female writers out of the games journalism industry. Despite the vast volume of material, it didn't take me long to figure out the basic truth.

GamerGate is a hashtag.

To align their actions with the GamerGate movement, all a person has to do is to attach the statement that they support GamerGate to them. In the same way that not everything credited to Anonymous is the work of people who collaborate with each other, not everything done in the name of GamerGate is the work of a united band of people. Since applying the symbolic title to yourself doesn't require a third party's approval, different people who support GamerGate have entirely different ideas about what it is they are supporting. GamerGate stands for 'fighting against corruption in the gaming press', but the definition of corruption is somewhat varied. To some people, it means bribery and undisclosed conflicts of interests. To others, it means the growing (though actually still very small) presence of feminist and social justice related discourse in the gaming press. To a slightly confusing third group, it means both.

There is strong evidence that some women who have spoken out against GamerGate have been driven from their homes by detailed threats to rape and kill their entire families. This is a more important issue than anything else surrounding GamerGate and deserves to be focused on to the exclusion of the original point. If a politician is kidnapped by terrorists who intend to behead him, it simply isn't the time to continue publicly debating whether he should be fired for cheating on his expenses. Yet the debate still rumbles on about whether these kind of outrages are any kind of reflection of the main GamerGate movement and what it should mean for the future. Is GamerGate an attack on women that is being shielded by crowds who accept its cover story, or is the criminal element a rogue offshoot emboldened by what it falsely believes is a wave of popular support? If a symbol is disgraced by some of its bearers, should it be discarded to isolate them or reclaimed by public displays of the true meaning?

The second question is actually really interesting on a philosophical level and I'm sure that powerful arguments can be made in both directions. However, the answer in a given case will typically be related to the original purpose of the movement and the likely results of its future actions. It's one thing to claim that the church should continue to exist in spite of the inquisition and the crusades. It's another thing to claim that the Ku Klux Klan should continue to exist now that it (probably) doesn't murder people any more.

Although some of the articles supporting GamerGate have done more to drive me toward hostility than anything else has, I haven't yet bothered to dig down to the roots of the the first moments of this event and try to figure out what was going on in the heads of those involved. What I have seen, however, is that many people now genuinely believe that the main body of GamerGate is a force for good. Although I suppose any incidence of dishonest behaviour is worth a little head shaking and tut tutting, the only logical conclusion I can come to is that many people believe that 'corruption in game journalism' is a threatening source of harm for gamers.

To me, that's a bit weird.

The main reason that I stayed ignorant of GamerGate for so long is that the bits and pieces I encountered whilst reading other things didn't actually interest me very much. I was vaguely aware that some sort of activism was going on in response to possible revelations of hidden agendas among game journalists, but that never sounded like something I needed to care about. Despite the fact that I consume a large amount of game journalism and buy games whenever I have the money, I didn't feel like such an issue was actually a threat to me.

On reflection, this may be due to the specific nature of myself as an individual. As a trained historian, I've read a remarkable number of documents with undisclosed biases. Taking a critical eye to what I read and sifting out the agendas of the writer is just something that I naturally do all of the time. If gamers are genuinely afraid that corruption is going to result in them being taken for a ride, it suggests that they don't know how to read the articles they are consuming properly in the first place. If you truly are worried about being suckered by dishonest games journalism, allow me to explain how you stop that from happening to you.

One of the most basic skills that all history students need to learn is the ability to distinguish between fact and opinion. Obtaining factual knowledge of the past is a key part of the discipline and documents from the period in question provide a wealth of information. However, such records are nearly always filled with the opinions and interpretations of the person who felt motivated to write them in the first place. It is vital to be able to weed those out and examine the facts yourself independently, potentially coming to very different conclusions.

A fact is a concrete, objective truth. An opinion is a conclusion or a value judgement, which is usually presented as a logical progression from the facts stated. In gaming journalism, opinions are things like '10/10', 'game of the year', 'this game sucks' and 'sexist and objectifying'. Facts are things like 'over 200 quests with multiple possible outcomes', 'I encountered 5 game-crashing glitches in the first hour of play' and 'there are only two female characters in the whole game and both of them are strippers'.

The trick, therefore, is to divide the accounts of a game's actual features and content from the level of enthusiasm that a particular critic is displaying for the game. If a writer declares something to be 'the best game of the year' and goes on to describe a game-play experience that you would find completely uninteresting, the thing that you should take away from this is that you have no interest in the game. I can entirely accept that not everyone is going to enjoy Gone Home as much as I did, but I'm bewildered by the number of user reviews that savage it for being a 'walking simulator'. The reason I'm bewildered is that the game's publicity was fairly open about there being no combat or puzzles, which suggested to me that I was going to be walking to the exclusion of shooting and jumping.

No games journalist is going to deliberately present untrue facts about a game that has been released. There is simply no possibility of getting away with it. However much it might help the game's profile, Ubisoft would be unable to bribe anyone to announce that 'actually you CAN play a female character in Assassin's Creed Unity'. Such a claim would be thoroughly disproved for free by others almost as soon as it was made and the journalist would potentially lose their entire career.

Of course, lies can be told about games that are still forthcoming – purely because the developers themselves are the only source of information on the subject. In this case, journalists might well end up repeating those lies to you because they have no means of detecting them either. If you think that such advance coverage is the result of the developers actively soliciting it, you'd be absolutely right. In the real world, people don't create a product and then wait for the press to beat down their door. Promoting your product is how you sell it and much of what journalists report has been actively brought to their attention. If you want developers to stand or fall on their products rather than their skill at generating publicity, the best thing you can do is not pay top prices to pre-own products that don't exist yet.

If you want to avoid falling prey to deliberate propaganda for a particular game, look out for articles which consist almost exclusively of opinions. A piece that tells you a title 'is set to blow gamers away', 'redefines the genre' and 'is the must-buy game of the year' without actually saying anything detailed about the features and content is not worth your time. Such writing doesn't have to mean that the author has been bought – but if you can separate the facts from the opinions, it doesn't really matter why the writer is being so enthusiastic. You'll reserve judgement and form your own opinion when you have more information.

Of course, not all authors are balanced about the facts they include. Many emphasise facts that support their conclusions and neglect facts that don't. This means that if you are going to base your purchases on the reviews you read, it is best to read several reviews (both positive and negative) before you come to a conclusion.

You'll notice that the value judgement of whether a game is 'good' or not is an opinion. This means that the final score a reviewer assigns to a game is always just an opinion. Viewing these scores as objective consumer information therefore slightly misunderstands what they mean. For reasons that Moviebob explains here, the very notion that critics exist simply to provide consumer advice is not true. Critics are perfectly entitled to examine the value of a piece to themselves in terms of their own broader perspectives and tastes.

Don't ask a critic 'will I like this game?' They aren't psychic and they've never met you. Ask them 'did you like this game?', 'do you think that the creative elements have value?' and 'what does it do?' Be aware that a game's score is based on answers to these questions. A critic who sells their opinion on the first two points is being dishonest with you, but it's still up to you how much you embrace their views as your own.

For some gamers, the habit of regarding their own tastes as an objective measure of value is quite acute. Many gamers seem to feel that developers are duty-bound to produce games that cater to what gamers (already know that they) want – and it is certainly a useful business strategy. Unfortunately, some define the term 'gamer' as 'a gamer like me', regarding significantly different recreational consumers of games as intruders rather than as a part of the community.

Gamers of this type tend to see critics as existing purely to provide them with consumer advice. More specifically, they expect the review score to be an objective assessment of how closely it panders to their own tastes. They expect this regardless of what the reviewer's own tastes are, since the critic exists to serve gamers and the only true gamers are like themselves. Reviewing games according to differing sets of values provides a varied range of differently reasoned review scores and validates diversity within the gaming community. A vocal minority of gamers get violently upset every single time this happens, questioning the integrity of the dissenting critics and their right to exist within the game journalism sphere.

Whatever your stance on GamerGate, don't be one of those guys.

Otherwise, just read critically and you'll be fine. Sometimes journalists will publicise the existence of a game without telling you exactly how much they like the creator. Sometimes they'll express a wish for a game to succeed without fully explaining the reasons behind their desires – or will explain them in terms of what the game's reception means for wider socio-political issues. Neither of these things will result in you being conned out of money, as long as you take the time to detach yourself enough to form your own conclusions instead of just absorbing theirs.

Of course, that's just my opinion.

Review - Gone Home (Spoiler free)

I'm a role-player at heart. When I play a game that casts me as a character – even one that doesn't meet my definitions of a role-playing game – I tend to enjoy it most when I get into the head of that character. This is really just an extension of the basic need to suspend disbelief, of course, but asking me to dictate the character's actions places me in a role-player mindset.

First and foremost, my enjoyment as a role-player comes from experiencing the world around me. I can enjoy the competitive skill-based element of an RPG, but the victory means far less if I don't care about the stakes. I definitely enjoy crafting and exploring an interesting personality, but there are few RP experiences more frustrating than guiding a well-crafted and interesting persona through a dull story and/or nonsensical world. By contrast, I can happily use my character as little more than an avatar through which to visit an entirely new world and explore every detail of an environment where anything could be possible.

Video games are equipped to bring that world to life in a way that no other form of RPG does. To actually see and hear the world in question and experience the pivotal events in real time is as awesome as a really good film adaptation of a novel. To have the entire world prepared for you in advance and no need to share the limelight with others is a luxury few other RPGs will afford you.

The downside, of course, is the fundamentally limited nature of a pre-built world. There's no fun in exploring if you won't find anything off the beaten path (except maybe a new type of random monster encounter). Bethesda games like Oblivion and Fallout 3 are among my favourite games ever because you can find actual people and stories in areas that the main plot does not dictate you must go. Yet even these can only afford to furnish an empty building with two or three interesting props, telling a story effectively but briefly.

Gone Home is a game that is dedicated to pushing the world-exploration feature of gaming to its limits in the most intimate detail possible. The concept is simple – amidst a powerful storm in 1995, you arrive home after a year abroad to find the family home unexpectedly deserted. There is a note on the door implying that there is a serious reason for this unplanned state of affairs, but no full explanation. The entire game thereafter consists of exploring the domestic Marie Celeste left behind by your loved ones in an attempt to piece together what has happened to them. In the course of this, you can pick up basically any object in the environment – and there are hundreds if not thousands of them waiting to be discovered. 

The sheer minimalism of this game has left some questioning whether it is actually a game at all. If they'd built this thing in the real world (which would almost have been possible) it would be labelled an 'experience' or an 'art installation'. There is no competitive element and little that requires skill. What there is is an finely crafted narrative experience that is definitely worth having – providing you have the right mind for it.

Gone Home is a game that will move you and make you care – if you let it. Gone Home is a game that will creep you out if not outright scare you – if you let it. But with so few actual pieces of overt theatricality built into the game, getting your head into it is a task you must fulfil for yourself. Being sufficiently immersed to care what has happened to all your character's loved ones and afraid of what might be down the next unlit corridor is something you have to manage without a cinematic cutscene or a weapon to point at the darkness. This isn't a game you play casually, power through or do whilst multi-tasking – it's a game you stick your head in for as long as you can, then quit until the desire to know the answers drives you back to it.

That's not to say the developers haven't done their work to engage you. This game has been thought out meticulously to the last detail. The house is a large old mansion, with a serious number of rooms and the potential for hidden secrets. However, your family only moved there after you left – leaving you unfamiliar with the environment and limiting the amount of stuff that has yet been unpacked to a workable (if very large) quantity. The targeting prompt has also been designed to bridge the gap between the character's knowledge and your own – with targeting familiar items resulting in prompts like 'It's Mum's old work mug' and 'It's that book Dad wrote'. The prompt also changes in reaction to some items – which helps to characterise you given that almost all of your own stuff is still boxed away.

As a mystery game, Gone Home obviously has less replay value than a lot of titles. I therefore recommend that you force yourself to take the play-through slow. The house is brilliantly designed to make your imagination run wild and learning the truth will close off the uncertainty with a gratification that is best delayed. I got two days out of the game by being methodical and taking notes on everything I found – but it's easily possible to complete in one or two hours if you are more focused on the stand-out items. The open-world approach actually makes it possible to complete rather prematurely if you find keys in the 'wrong' order – my advice would be to explore the basement and beyond before venturing into the attic.

To be critical, the game could probably have sustained more major plot threads. Gone Home succeeds on novelty – if this form of gaming becomes a genre, the next big title will have to be far more elaborate. However, each thread is developed in unprecedented detail – I'm still finding new items that keep altering my interpretation of old ones. I'd love to talk about my reaction to the ending, but I'm honestly unwilling to spoil the sense of mystery that will enhance your experience so much.

Obviously, a game like this has plenty of space for indirect character development. Different priorities might hand the title of 'best female character' to other contenders as diverse as Clementine, Samus Aran or even GLaDOS, but it should be mentioned that Samantha Greenbriar is almost certainly the most thoroughly and satisfyingly characterised woman in the history of video games. Ironic really, since the excellently portrayed adolescence shows that she herself is still developing as a person.

The price has been a sticking point for many user reviews and it's not surprising. For the same money, it is easy to find games that offer 10 or 20 times the number of play hours with more replay value than Gone Home has. Pick the right one and you'll also get a game with far more features, able to tell a powerful story whilst also providing skill-based action and a spectacular visual feast. On the other hand, the price doesn't really seem excessive for the amount of genuine artistic effort that has gone into crafting this product. Gone Home is a game you splurge on because you want to have the awesome and thought-provoking experience it provides and on that basis I recommend it. If you do decide to buy it, go for the direct sales rather than Steam - $20 works out as less than £15 and the direct buy includes a code to unlock it on your Steam account whilst leaving you with a game that'll run without Steam being online. Console releases are coming, but this is a PC game originally.

Final Score: 8/10. It ain't Portal, but this short game deserves a look.

Best Item: Sam's Reproductive System Worksheet (Music Room). Hilarious and characterful.

Worst Item: Although it advances some ideas, I could have done without the contents of the hidden panel opposite Sam's room.