Category: rage at the system

Rape, the police and political point-scoring

Obnoxious reality TV star and Lib Dem Brian Paddick has done something interesting. Hot on the heels of his whistle-blowing about being asked by the Met to water down a report about rape, more revelations have emerged.

From years of experience in the Met, Paddick has identified certain problems–problems with which regular readers of this blog will certainly be familiar. Basically, the police don’t give a shit about rape. They often assume that the survivor is lying, they try to deny a crime happened for the good of their statistics, they subscribe to rape culture myths, and they just don’t get it. From his interview, Paddick seems to understand the seriousness of rape, and the set of attitudes in the police and broader society which allow rape to happen. It really is quite gratifying to see a public figure discussing these issues openly, and highlighting suggestions for how this can change.

Paddick’s suggestions are very sensible, involving a radical rethink in the way police and other parts of the system treat survivors. He also has ideas for poster campaigns targeted at dispelling rape myths, and offers support to advocacy groups. All in all, it looks bloody good, and it feels like a tiny little victory for feminism to see these issues being put onto the public agenda.

There’s always a but, though. There’s always a sneaky little catch, the barely perceptible string which rather spoils the whole thing.

Brian Paddick is running for Mayor of London. All of what he is saying forms part of his campaign. The criticism of the police only comes now Paddick is safely out of the institution, and control of it lies in the hands of a rival political party. His speaking out serves to discredit his opposition while bidding to win the votes of rape survivors and those who fear it one day happening to them. His suggestions–ideas put forward by feminists and advocacy groups for years–are not framed as things that should be done as a matter of utmost importance, but, rather, as campaign promises.

Paddick probably believes everything that he is saying to be right, and that’s because he is talking sense here. It is just that the stench of politicking rather sullies the whole thing. It becomes a matter of a better approach to rape being useful rather than being the right thing to do. Rape is a deeply traumatic yet horrifyingly commonplace event, and it should be fought against because it is a travesty that this happens, rather than because it might gain Brian Paddick a few more votes.

It is a form of blackmail, to use this as an election promise, particularly when it comes from a member of a party who are not exactly famed for holding to their election promises. All that he has proposed is things that should be happening anyway, not only as a component in a campaign. We don’t need to put a cross in a box in the vain hope that some bloke will possibly try to tweak the system a little bit. With his connections and platform, Paddick can serve as a useful ally, but ultimately the battle is ours.

It is we who need to fight rape culture where we see it. It is we who need to decide whether the state can ever be an adequate source of support for survivors and whether it can ever truly help right the wrongs that have been done. It is we who need to work towards building a safer world.

Rape is not a party political issue.

Rape and “no crimes”: this is a fucking travesty

Trigger warning for discussion of rape

A while back, I wrote about how for many women, not reporting a rape to the police can seem like the best possible option. Information which has arisen in the last week has changed nothing in this thesis: if anything, it is worse than I had previously thought.

A report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorates of the Constabulary and the Crown Prosecution Service on rape investigations has found some pretty worrying facts, but also some good news. More survivors feel able to report rapes to the police, and the police response has improved. On the other hand, police are failing to identify patterns of repeat offences and were using intelligence poorly.

Most worrying of all, though, is the incidence of “no crimes”. According to guidelines, a no crime should be:

Where following the report of an incident, which has subsequently been recorded as a crime, additional verifiable information is available which determines that no notifiable crime has been committed.

The two crucial constructs here are that the evidence the crime did not happen can be proven, and that whatever happened was not a crime. In rape cases, this sounds like it might be pretty difficult to prove, yet the report found that 12% of reported rapes were consigned to the no crime pile. These statistics often involve women withdrawing their complaint, which can be seen in this FOI request to South Yorkshire Police. There are obvious problems with this approach, and these are so apparent that even the police have noticed this:

In reality a rape that has been reported and then recorded as a crime, should only be “no crimed” if for example, the victim states that the crime did not occur. Even in these circumstances it should be anticipated that there would be further verifiable information available to support this, because our experience shows that victims may withdraw allegations because they cannot face the criminal justice process. In other words if there is any doubt the crime remains recorded. There is a key difference between a victim who retracts their allegation and one who withdraws from the investigative process.

Given the high prevalence of no crimes, it seems that the verification that no crime occurred is not being followed through adequately. In some forces, it was found that only 40% of the no crime decisions were actually correct.

This is a fucking travesty. Thousands of people who have shown the courage to enter the agonising process of rape reporting are being let down, and their complaints dismissed away to nothing. When even the police think it is a problem, it is a serious problem indeed. This has very serious implications. For the survivor, this must be a thoroughly horrific experience: he or she will be unable to access the support provided by the system, and will experience doubt and guilt over what has happened. More broadly, it will make it harder to identify repeat rapists if a crime is not investigated or recorded.

It gets worse. Former police officer, politician and rather irritating public figure Brian Paddick recently testified at the Leveson enquiry regarding his time in the Met. He said that he had been asked to “tone down the criticisms and water-down the recommendations” in a previous report on rape reporting and investigation. In the light of this, what has been identified in the recent report may well be downplaying the problem rather than reporting it accurately.

Certainly, in my reading of the report, it was difficult to find some crucial data. For example, the statistic that some police forces have very low levels of correctly no criming rape allegations was fairly well-hidden and no attention was drawn to it. The problem of burying bad news remains in a desperate attempt to maintain a good reputation.

This PR exercise has major ramifications and can ultimately only make things worse, rather than better. Rather than frantically flapping around to cover their arses, the police need to admit honestly to their failings to create real solutions. Trust in the police is low. Most rape survivors do not report their rapes to an institution that should, theoretically, be on their side and help amend what has happened to them. This is not happening: it is merely an illusion of aid.

People are being failed due to severe problems which may be worse than imagined. Lives may be destroyed. This needs to change.

Nothing says “I love you” like reinforcing stereotypes for profit

Sometimes I wonder if the capitalist calendar is marked not by months, but by abstract concepts from which to draw profit. March is the month of maternity; October, horror; April, rebirth by the medium of chocolate. And so forth. February happens to be the month where romantic love is the money-spinner, by accident of having the feast of an early Christian martyr plonked squarely in the middle of it. This has been twisted into tawdry pink cards, oversized teddies, lavish dinners for two, knickers, flowers and chocolate. Nothing, we are told, says “I love you” like excessive consumption.

To sell this idea, the marketers and media-types operate in stereotypes. It’s easier for them, that way. In the first few weeks of February, therefore, we are bombarded with narratives of “getting him to propose” and “getting her in the mood”, because of course men only want to get laid and women only want to get married. The tropes of hegemonic monogamy are paraded around, playing on the niggling fears of the masses that they may end up alone if they do not capitulate and buy that heart-shaped box of champagne truffles.

It’s all grindingly awful for those of us who do not subscribe to the ideals of the default brand of monogamy. It is probably worse still for those who believe, but are single. It is the sort of thing that makes one want to leave the country and head far, far away, were it not for the fact that flights seem to cost more in the middle of February due to the glut of minibreaks for two. Instead, I learned to filter out the monotonous drone of “BUY BUY BUY”. It is only the truly terrible that makes it through. This year, I have noticed–rather fittingly for National Monogamy Day–two particularly horrid ad campaigns.

While walking through Waterloo, I encountered a set of billboards featuring a model in underwear covering herself with a bunch of flowers. LOVE STUCK? it proclaimed, before breathlessly telling me to hold my smartphone up to the poster and view it through an app to “see the model come to life” and get gift ideas. I didn’t bother. I guessed that what would happen would be that the flowers would fall away, leaving the nubile young model prancing about in her scanties. One quick Google later, and I was proved right.

This ad campaign features several of the oppressively tiresome Valentine’s Day ad tropes. It essentially says “Hello men! I know Valentine’s Day sucks, but if you buy her some nice undies, she’ll have to let you look at her in a state of near-undress. Then you’ll probably get to have a go on her tits.” It unabashedly, unashamedly advertises to the male gaze, taking the objectification of women to giddying heights. The only thing that differentiates this ad campaign from the dull static hum of the rest of it is the technological side of things. It is, at its heart, the digital age equivalent of pens that reveal a naked lady when you click the top.

The other campaign that came to my attention was one flogging gin, using the folk tradition of women being “allowed” to propose on the leap day by putting on murkily misogynistic events. Here, if you are a woman, you can learn “the knowledge and skills to trap your man” in a way which is presumably unrelated to how the words “gin” and “trap” traditionally fit into a sentence together. In order to provide equality in advertising, men may attend a “school for scoundrels” where they may learn how to “retain their liberty”. I would say that implicit in this campaign is the stereotype that women want commitment while men do not, but it is actually spelled out in the top of their publicity materials. 

Far too many young women run the risk of a Horrendous Disappointment – and too many men may succumb to dread ‘Commitment’…

What is to be done about such egregiously awful ad campaigns? So much of what they are trying to do is to gain attention, and by being so overtly hideous, they are bound to draw the eye. I have purposely avoided naming the brands in the post for this reason, and I have a personal policy of not buying from brands whose advertising has really pissed me off.

The problem is not so much that these campaigns will cause controversy: neither campaign has provoked more than a tiny murmur of frustration. The issue here is that to most people they are eye-catching not because of their flaws, but because they’re a little bit different, a little bit exciting. There is a fine line to walk between discussing misogyny in advertising and accidentally publicising companies that blithely push stereotypes to make a little bit more money in the post-Christmas slump.

The fact is, it is simply not acceptable to turn humans into cartoonish parodies: the ogling, horny man and the woman who will do anything to marry him.  It is patronising, dehumanising, and reinforces a power structure which reifies these archetypes, while wiping away any person who does not conform. This wearisome shit needs calling where its seen in the faint hope that one day we can chip away enough that February is just a short month and if you fancy giving a lover a present, then that’s absolutely fine, but nobody’s going to try and make you.

There is no ad-blocker for life, unfortunately. We need to work around that.

“Blue” feminism: a disaster for social justice

Blue feminism is the latest Big Thing. We see women like Louise Mensch and Nadine Dorries strutting around proudly declaring themselves to be feminists, and discussion as to whether Margaret Thatcher was a feminist icon. Of course, the answer to the later is a resounding, echoing, unequivocal no; and Mensch and Dorries are about as feminist as pink Lego.

The brand of alleged feminism promulgated by these sorts has very little in common with feminism. For a good introduction to blue feminism, I would strongly recommend reading this deconstruction from Boudledidge: ultimately, feminism for the blue team equates to little more than “having a cunt and having a good job”.

This construction of feminism falls flat on the social justice front repeatedly. I was originally going to term it “probably having a cunt and having a good job”, but I realised fairly swiftly that the blue feminists appear silent on whether trans women are included in their construction of women. I suspect none of them have given these women a second thought.

The notion that career success is the ultimate goal of blue feminism is also woefully misguided and denotes a complete lack of consideration of any women but the most privileged. Having a successful career and becoming rich is only an option for those who are already in a position to pursue this course: for those who can afford the university degree, the unpaid labour of internship and the right connections in the first place. One can only pull oneself up by the bootstraps if one is wearing boots in the first place. Practicalities aside, it is also somewhat jarring that career success is seen as the goal rather than the ability for women to lead a fulfilling, happy life. What of the people who are not made happy by making a lot of money?

The focus of blue feminism taken in combination with the notion gaining traction is disastrous for social justice-driven feminism. There is a complete blindness to intersectionality, and to actually making things better for everyone. To the blue feminist, feminism is an individualistic quest towards getting rich and famous while kicking away the opposition. It is hardly feminism, a means of societal change: it is a mode of justification for the selfishness of the lucky few. Blue feminism is a problem, not a solution.

The way blue feminists talk of life is in terms of perpetually scrambling up a greasy pole until finally smashing your way through the glass ceiling with your Louboutin stiletto. All blue feminism will ever achieve will be the occasional leg-up to raise a person inches up the pole. In contrast, those of us who strive for social justice would prefer to see that greasy pole replaced with a nice wide staircase from which we can collectively smash the glass ceiling with hammers.

Blue feminism is system justification. Blue feminism is not a neutral force, but actively harmful for almost all but the already-privileged. Blue feminism is an idea that needs to die.

“It’s just a show, I should really just relax”

After the post where I pointed out some sexism in a TV show, I found myself being chided with the MST3K mantra: I was told it was just TV, and I didn’t need to worry about the ins and outs of it all. Some claimed that they were “embarrassed” to be women and/or feminists because I had pointed out some sexism in a TV show–the feeling here is mutual, and I am thoroughly embarrassed to share an identity with people lacking such a capacity for critical thinking.

It’s just a show, they told me. I should really just relax, they said.

And they’re wrong. I fail to see why one should not criticise something in the mass media for displaying problematic content. It does not mean one needs to disregard the entire thing because it is utter crap: this post at Social Justice League provides a handy guide to being a fan of things which are problematic. In short (though you should really read the whole thing, as it’s brilliant), one needs to acknowledge the problems and not make excuses for them; not gloss over issues or derail conversations about problematic content; and acknowledge other, less favourable interpretations of media you like.

After all, there are very few films, TV shows or books which are completely unproblematic. It is all produced within an oppressive system wherein racism, sexism and ableism prevail and therefore seep into popular culture. Cracked hit the nail on the head with their deconstruction of “Five Old-Timey Prejudices That Still Show Up In Every Movie“, and there are heaps more on top of this.

Should we therefore “really just relax” when we see something on the screen that we would never stand for in real life? Of course not. As for the defenders of sexism on screen, are they perhaps as willing to let oppression slide in the meatspace? I suspect that they may, and that worries me greatly, and strengthens my resolve to call bullshit where I see it.

The function of critiquing and drawing attention to oppression in mass media is made clear by MediocreDave (again, you should read the whole article, as it’s great):

My only answer is of course it’s ok to seek escapism, to watch things for pleasure without composing a political response. But that’s why we need to force improvements of our popular entertainment, so that it’s possible to watch them without having to confront the tiresome and horrific inequalities that define our daily lives. Art can only ever be so far ahead of the society that produced it, and is likely to be a fair way behind, and as such will always be riddled with problems which, in our ignorance and privilege, we may only be dimly aware of. If we attempt to deny ourselves and each other, explicitly or implicitly, the act of critical analysis of the art that we consume, be it by claiming that the work doesn’t warrant so sophisticated a reading or by declaring that offence taken is somehow not valid, we leave ourselves disenfranchised. If we value our ability to watch a television program unchallenged as higher than someone else’s ability to watch it uninsulted then we have probably picked the wrong side in a long established relationship of privilege and degradation. We may choose to sit quietly through the objectionable bits of a work of art, from time to time, even when it offends us, but we can’t expect other people to do so with us (even on Christmas day) and we must be prepared to acknowledge it when the things we like problematically contain things we have to hate.

 Be angry if you feel angry. Listen to others’ anger. Perhaps, then, we will finally have shows where we can really just relax.

A vision from The Bad Future

The kids come every day clamouring to hear stories from Before. I am something of a novelty to them, one of the few in Containment Area 7b who remembers anything, one of the few who knows we are not kept here for our safety. They sit at my feet in a semi-circle, cross-legged, the LEDs on their ankle tags twinkling in the half light.

“Where’s Bobby?” I ask.

Jenny sighs. “Banged up. Workfare said they’d let him have another fiver if he stayed for another three hours, and his mum needed extra for the leccy bill. Workfare didn’t OK it with Above, his tag lit up like a Christmas tree and he was caught over The Blue Line after hours.”

I am still flabbergasted by how this system works, even after all these years. It feels more like a heavy-handed dystopian metaphor than the reality we inhabit. “What’s going to happen to him?”

Jenny shrugs. “Probably not too bad. Duty solicitor reckons they can get him a good community payback placement in the back room of Tescos. In two years he’ll work it off and be back on the tills.” The kids smile with relief. I shudder.

“It was kind of his fault anyway,” pipes up Tabby, Bobby’s little sister. “Easy for the cops to have mistook him for a rioter. They showed restraint.” Tabby seems full of the joys of spring today, a veritable cannon of misdirected optimism. “Bobby’ll be cool, he always is. Can you please finish telling us the story  about the hospitals and how they were all nice and that?”

“The hospitals? Ah, I remember. Back Before, the hospitals were very different. If you hurt yourself or got ill, you would could go to the hospital and they would treat you…” I pause for dramatic effect. “For free.”

A collective gasp from the children. “Free?” they breathe, their incredulous little brows furrowed.

“Free. For absolutely everyone. Nobody had to pay a penny.”

“That can’t be true,” professes Jack, the eldest of the bunch. “Do you mean it was free for all the Consumers and Wealth Creators? They’d never give things away for free to Scroungers like us.”

“It most certainly was true,” I correct him. “Everyone who needed anything from the hospital got it for free. Rich or poor, black or white, whatever you needed, you’d get it for free.”

“That doesn’t sound very competitive,” Jack scoffs. “Was it funded by the Europeans? I bet loads of people must have died.”

“Not at all,” I said. “We were all healthier because of it, and lived much longer.” These days, kids like these will probably live to fifty at most, and that’s a mercy.

“Weren’t there riots over it? Nobody would want to queue up for operations when they could just pay for it, surely? Is that why it stopped? Did the Scroungers push to the front of the queue?”

“Kids,” I say firmly. “When have any of you ever rioted?”

“Never, silly,” Tabby says, blowing a raspberry. “We’re safe now. But Before, kids like us was always just grabbing anything we could get because we’re feral, innit?” She taps her tag sagely.

I decide this conversation can wait for another day. I do not think this short story needs a tacked-on, saccharine happy ending.

“Anyway, the NHS–that’s what we called the hospitals back then–fell down because people didn’t fight hard enough, and the people wanting to take it down were too powerful. It was a very special thing, the NHS was.”

“Will it ever come back?” Jenny asks quietly. Jenny’s a funny one, more optimistic than most, even though until six months ago her family were Consumers before a dose of bad luck brought them to 7b.

“I don’t know,” I say. And I don’t. It seems like a monolithic nemesis, and everyone has absorbed the message wholesale. There is always hope though, always hope. Irrational, perhaps, but it lifts me. Maybe there still is a spark of rebellion and fight in these kids.

“I think everything will get better,” Jack announces, an air of gravitas beyond his young age. “All we need is for all the Consumers to vote Labour in 2015.”

And with that, I know we’re fucked.

On individual responsibility

It’s not your fault if you’re unemployed. There’s no jobs for you to have. It’s not a question of not wanting it enough, of not trying hard enough. There nobody who will take you, and they’ll always find an excuse. You’re underqualified or overqualified, too much experience or too little experience, too radical or too conservative, too aggressive or too placid, or maybe they just don’t like you. It’s all fobbing off, “it’s not you, it’s me”. In truth, there just aren’t many jobs around.

It’s not your fault if you have a job that you hate. There is nothing pathological about dissatisfaction with spending your waking hours in crushing monotony just so you can eat. This daily monotony does not make you a whole, happy person: it is a lie so pervasive we now ask “what do you do” instead of “how do you do”.

It’s not your fault if you don’t feel like you got the education you wanted. The doors are closing, one by one, till none but the rich can learn. They will point at the “underqualified” and close more doors, when what opportunity did you have in the first place? Its all a lie, a deliberate stacking of the deck so that only the privileged few may enjoy education.

It’s not your fault that the planet is fucked. That you forgot to separate the paper from the plastic, the tea bags from the veg, that last drip of milk from inside the carton will hardly melt the polar ice caps and cause the world to burn. While you are told that the entire future rests on you turning out the kitchen light, it is not true: the bulk of the damage comes from the corporations who freely set fire to finite resources and choke the sky. Washing your laundry at thirty degrees will not change their behaviour.

It’s not your fault if you get attacked, raped, abused. It never is. Any blame is due to a system covering its own back, desperately declaring that it is all fair and just. The length of your skirt makes no difference, where you walk makes no difference, what you drink or eat or say to a stranger is of no consequence. It wasn’t your fault.

It’s not your fault when you are denied opportunities for being too young, to old, the wrong colour, the wrong gender, too disabled, too queer. In their eyes, you are wrong; you are navigating the world backwards in heels. You are trying hard enough; harder than most. You want it enough. They just don’t want you to have any power. They want to hoard it.

It’s not your fault if you’re sick of this shit. It’s not your fault if you claw back power by any means necessary, just for a brief taste of what those who hold you down enjoy every day. They will attack you, they will call you a criminal, feral, violent, and pretend you are nought but an aberration. Yet you are not an aberration. You are part of many, one of us.

They see us all as one, those who cling on to their power. They make sure everyone else sees your problems as your own fault. It is a lie fed to hold on to their comfort. We tear each other apart under their narrative.

Remember, none of this is your fault.

When is an attack not an attack?

Today, I found myself in a position I hadn’t been in since early 2010: I agreed with Nick Clegg. On the proposed tax breaks for married couples, Clegg said the following:

“We can all agree that strong relationships between parents are important, but not agree that the state should use the tax system to encourage a particular family form.”

I don’t take this to mean that Clegg has suddenly started talking sense. He has just spotted an open goal and managed to kick the ball in vaguely the right direction in a desperate bid to resuscitate his dead party, the political equivalent of slapping a corpse and screaming “PLEASE DON’T DIE ON ME, I LOVE YOU”.

He does have a very good point, though. The state should have no role in meddling with how a family should look. This suggestion has naturally pissed off some of the usual suspects like Cristina Odone and the bafflingly-still-alive Norman Tebbit. As always, when a socially progressive attitude towards families is expressed, they fall back on the favourite language: the language of being under attack.

It happens all the time. The notion of the family being somehow attacked crops up frequently in discussion of marriage equality, the rhetoric surrounding single-parent families, and more broadly in terms of socially progressive legislation. Put simply, they cry out THOSE SCARY HUMMUS-MUNCHERS ARE COMING FOR OUR CHILDREN. In fact, it is nothing of the kind.

The language of the attack on the family implicitly applies the capitalist narrative of scarcity to families. As with money, their line of reasoning goes, there is a finite amount of love in the world, and we’d better not let those scrounging single mothers or gays have any of it, lest there’s none left for anyone else. By their very existence, non-conventional families threaten the social order by apparently hogging some love which could better go to a family with a mummy, a daddy and 2.4 kiddiwinks.

Of course, this line of reasoning is patent gibberish. Love is infinite, and money is a fiction so the narratives fail to hold up in any way imaginable. I pity those who believe that a family with one parent, or four parents or two parents who happen to be of the same sex are in any way a threat to their wellbeing. They are hiding from an imaginary foe, terrified that the rug will come out from under them when that rug is perfectly secure.

Perhaps the fear is where all of this ends, yet I suspect that using the language of an external threat or attack serves a deeper, murkier function. When one is attacked, one has two options: to fight, or to surrender. While an unprovoked attack is generally frowned upon, few except the most peaceful of pacifists will have an issue with self-defence. Pretending that families are under attack therefore legitimises the genuinely coercive tactics that the state is using to regulate family structure. It stops being outright aggression and starts to look like reasonable defence against the phalanx of queers and single mums who are bogarting all the nice things.

There is no attack on the traditional family. If anything, it is quite the other way round: we are being gradually coerced into living in the way that suits the state. It’s so clear, even a Lib Dem can spot it.

Placebo buttons and the illusion of control

Some things are not what they seem. You perform an action, you get the desired result. You’re in charge. You have power, you have agency.

So you think.

In some cases, it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference what you do. Take, for example, pressing the the button at a road crossing. We are taught to believe that by pressing this button, the lights will know we’re waiting and they will change accordingly. In fact, most of these buttons do absolutely nothing, and the lights will change whenever they are scheduled to change, particularly at busy periods of the day. This is what is known as a “placebo button“, a button which is entirely useless but is there anyway. They are surprisingly prevalent: on many lifts, the “close door” button does absolutely nothing, as do the entirely decorative buttons for opening and closing doors on the Tube. In some office buildings, they will go so far as to fit fake thermostat knobs.

The purpose of a placebo button is to make the user feel in control of their environment. The illusion of control is a well-studied effect. It is an example of the cognitive short cuts our big old brains take to minimise processing power: we like to think we have an ability to influence outcomes. Often, the illusion of control springs up naturally: for example, when playing craps, many people tend to throw the dice harder if they want a high number and softer if they want a low number, despite the probability remaining exactly the same for any kind of throw. If the outcome is the one desired, people will believe they were responsible for it.

According to Self Regulation Theory, a fairly strong model of how thoughts translate into behaviour, the illusion of control is a reaction to stress or uncertainty about outcome. We cope with it by conjuring up a false sense of control over the circumstances and therefore feels as though we have reasserted control over the situation. Interestingly, people with depression are less susceptible to the illusion, having a more realistic view of the level of control they have over an outcome.

The illusion of control is considered to be a “positive illusion”, though it has some less pleasant real-world effects. In one study of stock market traders, it was found that those with the higher belief in their own control were rated as performing less well and tended to make less money in their investments. Their illusion of control could well have contributed to the financial crisis. With placebo buttons, there is some evidence to suggest that our own perception of time is warped. People who pressed the “door close” button on a lift several times believed the lift came on average two seconds faster than those who only pressed the button once. Merely interacting with the placebo button produced poor judgment.

The function of the illusion of control is fairly well-studied on an individual level, though there does not seem to be any research into the motivation for facilitating people for believing they have control. There are some anecdotes from managers and engineers involved in installing fake thermostat buttons in offices, which serves as semi-decent qualitative evidence:

“We had an employee that always complained of being hot,” recalls Greg Perakes, an HVACR instructor in Tennessee. “Our solution was to install a pneumatic thermostat. We ran the main air line to it inside of an enclosed I-beam. Then we just attached a short piece of tubing to the branch outlet (terminating inside the I-beam without being attached to any valves, etc.).”

The worker “could adjust her own temperature whenever she felt the need,” Perakes says, “thus enabling her to work more and complain less. When she heard the hissing air coming from inside the I-beam, she felt in control. We never heard another word about the situation from her again. Case solved.”

“Even though we were sure our system was working as it should and maintaining space temps to within one degree to two degrees, we could never completely satisfy the occupants of the space,” he wrote. “We mounted a ‘dummy stat’ (short for ‘dummy thermostat’) adjacent to the ‘controlling stat’ and gave the floor manager the key to the stat—now the occupants could ‘control’ their space as they desired with the permission of their manager.”

“The dummy stat did nothing except to give the occupants the impression that they had control of the HVAC system and the psychological effect of having control of their work environment,” continued Langless. “Our service calls disappeared, and to my knowledge, that system is still set up and working as it has since 1987.”

Here, it is clear that the motivation is to make people feel like they are in control without actually changing anything. The placebo button is seen to serve its purpose, stopping unrest and people becoming difficult.

On a grander scale, one can compare many of the methods in which we are encouraged to engage with politics. We are encouraged to vote, and told that it is our way of making our voices heard. In fact, under the current system, in most constituencies, your vote is merely a confirmation or rejection of a pre-determined outcome, with prevalent “safe seats” meaning that your vote is about as meaningful as pressing a button which lights up the word “WAIT”.  Even small changes to this system, such as AV, would make little difference to the level of control you would have.

Writing to an MP is about as effective as pressing the “open door” button on a Tube train. Remember that under the current whip system, they are likely to vote whichever way they are told to vote, and your concerns will only be raised in a debate if it cements what the party was planning on doing all along. Likewise, the government e-petition system has been explicitly linked to “making people feel more engaged“: while you may feel more engaged, all you have done is press a button and registered your opinion.

Ultimately, these encouraged methods mean nothing: they are placebo buttons put in place by structures of power which let us feel we have a sense of control, of agency, of involvement in a corrupt system. It is not true.

This realisation of powerlessness is upsetting, and cynically, I find myself wondering if the lack of illusory control is a contributor to depression.

The difference between political engagement and waiting for the traffic lights to change, though, is an important one. If we look beyond the placebo buttons of representative democracy, we can find a wealth of methods for achieving real change through direct action, towards building a direct model of democracy. While the things we are told give us power are meaningless, with creativity and a rejection of placebo, tangible, real results can be achieved.

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This post was inspired by a lovely conversation with Jed and Wail.