By most standards, 2014 has been a big year for issues concerning race at Oxford. March saw ‘I, too, am Oxford’ go viral as non-white students took to Tumblr, wielding placards inscribed with incensed one-liners. Within weeks, a university-wide Race Equality Summit had been set up with Oxford’s own powers-that-be joining the conversation.

You have probably also heard that just before the end of term, the same people behind the ‘I, too’ campaign launched a zine off the back of their earlier success. Entitled Skin Deep, it essentially spells out the core philosophy powering the placards in its call for “a post race writing… which claims that race is a fiction, which is only ever given substance via the illusion of performance, action, and utterance”.

For some, this “race as fiction” approach goes a long way in explaining their experience of Otherness. Unsurprisingly, it has proven particularly relevant to those who have an Occidental suffix like ‘-British’ appended to their identities; after all, if you have been bred in the same socio-political petri dish as most white Oxonians, it is perfectly conceivable that, for you, the particularities conveyed by an ‘ethnic’ background really do start and stop at the skin.

No surprises, then, that a significant portion of the ‘I, too’ and Skin Deep campaigners are long-term citizens of the West, who resent being told what great English they speak when they have spent their entire lives based in New York or London. Other campaigners, whilst not British, are nevertheless the sort of global elite who have embraced the West conclusively enough to protest, against all appearances, that yes English is their first language.

In cases like these, race may genuinely be a form of unhelpful fiction that deserves to be overlooked. But personally, as an international student, I cannot help but feel a little alienated by the assimilative racial programmes du jour which argue that people ought to be treated like they’re all ‘the same’ inside, regardless of ethnic particularities.

Like other non-Brits I’ve spoken to, I get nervous about what the word ‘same’ is meant to imply in this context: that there exists some ideal version of ‘Oxford’ that I’m supposed to have the capacity to ‘be(come)’, in spite of my tinted skin and completely un-English background. Far too often, I have seen the phrase ‘the same’ elaborated into an irrational expectation that under the skin, all Oxonians ultimately are — or even worse, ought to conform to — some combination of British, white, and middle-class.

It has been precisely this expectation of underlying, unrelenting sameness that has produced some of my most unsettling experiences here at Oxford. Truth be told, I can live with being asked regularly if English is my first language; I have an accent that is clearly not local, a fact which makes this assumption somewhat more understandable.

But I cannot, as I have discovered, live with friends and tutors who insist on belittling non-European forms of belief or social organisation to my face, on the blanket assumption that the whole world buys into — or worse still, should want to buy into — their own society’s myths (If you’re a working adult who still lives with your parents, then you must be a sponge; if you take the occasional dose of Traditional Chinese Medicine then you must be superstitious, or living in the dark ages).

Similarly, I felt wronged when a university supervisor informed me point blank, one day, that I was on the “wrong side of History” for erring on the side of so-called Asian-style democracy, rather than agreeing with his fancifully liberal and privileged British abstractions about what a Southeast Asian utopia should look like (Whose history was I on the wrong side of? His?).

On a less subtle note, I also remember feeling mildly disturbed when a British friend once proclaimed, half tongue-in-cheek, that he could form a real friendship with me only because I was Singaporean, and therefore “just an English person with yellow skin on” (“Actually,” I told him, “I’m very yellow on the inside too.”).

As I see it, then, the logic of ‘race as fiction’ applies to some of us here at Oxford more than it does, or should do, to others. On the one hand, there is admittedly no doubt that it works well if you do count yourself as British at heart, like many of this year’s most vocal campaigners. There’s also a certain amount of truth in its foundational premise that race does not make a person — I am well aware that my ethnicity is not the sum of my personality, and I feel a little slighted whenever people assume straight off the bat that I read physics or do kung fu.

But on the other hand, it is perhaps worth asking ourselves just how far this attitude can be applied to the entirety of the international student community since, in many cases, race does signify a whole plethora of genuine cultural differences for them.

How far can you treat everyone like they are the same, before coming across as disrespectful in your refusal to acknowledge genuine points of uniqueness rooted in ethnicity, and the expression of this through performative social beliefs? What is this ‘same’ that we’re all meant secretly to be, anyway; is it shorthand for ‘culturally British’?

And what if, horror of horrors, the very skin colour you want to brush aside turns out to be the best route to approaching someone who does not identify with your culture, and wants people to take a more active interest in his own?

In Oxford, of all places, the legitimisation of ethnocultural differences ought to be the basis from which genuine cross-cultural understanding can develop. I, for one, feel that if my skin makes me seem culturally distinct from the average British person, then it is only doing a good job of telling the truth.

I am different on the inside, and would much rather have this fact cast out into the open and be treated positively as the Other that I am, rather than as the standardised, generically British person whom people would prefer me to be. 

On February 26th this year, the European Parliament voted in favour of legalizing selling sex but criminalizing its purchase. This is indicative of a growing international movement towards criminalizing the client, or ‘shifting the burden’; first adopted by Sweden in 1999, this has become known as ‘the Nordic model’. Supporters say it will decrease demand for prostitution while protecting the rights of individual women.

However, The English Collective of Prostitutes, a network of activists who advocate for the rights of sex workers, are strongly opposed to this increasing support for the Nordic model. For Laura Watson, a spokeswoman for the organization, the only way the safety of sex workers can be guaranteed is complete decriminalization. Their manifesto powerfully asserts the way that both current UK laws and the Nordic model ‘criminalize sex workers, divide us from our families and friends, make us vulnerable to violence, and set us apart from the rest of the community — separate is never equal.’

In the UK, it is currently legal to exchange sex for money, but Laura tells me that laws which criminalize certain activities in the sex industry inevitably endanger the sex worker. “Everything you can do to keep yourself safe is illegal. So, for example, working together in a house, if there are two or more people inside, that’s illegal. The laws are very draconian.” Women are forced out of the relative safety of brothels onto the street, or away from their colleagues and security networks: it is very difficult to protect sex workers when part-criminalization preserves stigma and prevents equal treatment in our legal system.

In light of the EU vote, the UK is being urged by many to adopt the Nordic model. However, its central premise is not entirely new. “Kerb crawling is currently illegal, and so we already know the effects of criminalizing clients… basically, police crackdowns disperse women into dangerous and isolated areas”. Police crackdowns are perhaps the most harmful consequence of the part-criminalization of the sex industry. Often, crimes such as ‘controlling prostitution for gain’ conceal an agenda which works to eradicate sex work from our communities at any cost. “The Ipswich murders, in which five women were killed, happened in the wake of a police crackdown.”

This is the central criticism of systems which criminalize clients: their attempt to decrease demand drive the sex industry ever further underground, so that services are used by clients who are more determined, unconcerned about breaking the law,  and more likely to be disrespectful, derogatory or violent. Aggressively targeting clients also results in a culture of non-collaboration with the police among sex workers, for fear of losing business. It is therefore clear that if we cannot prove that criminalizing clients has led to an increase in violence, these laws have certainly not increased protection or relations with the authorities, as is often claimed.

Advocates for Nordic-style legislation often claim that it reduces demand for sexual services. Some official reports have indicated that Sweden’s laws have cut prostitution in half. However, this is an assertion which has been disputed; others contend that sex work in Sweden is simply less visible, and that a reduction in sex work is merely a reduction in street work, so that the majority of prostitution is now conducted online or in private apartments. One report by the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare asks “Has the extent of prostitution  increased or decreased? We cannot give any unambiguous answer to that question… it is difficult to discern any clear trend”

Its supporters claim that if prostitution was decriminalized entirely, exit services which allow women to leave prostitution would be compromised, because the industry would be considered a more legitimate choice. However, Laura is quick to dispel this myth: “In fact, criminalization means that you can’t leave prostitution, because if you have a criminal record it’s incredibly difficult to get another job. We are also campaigning for services which allow women to leave prostitution if they wish.”

One of the most important issues to consider in legislating prostitution is human trafficking, which is often used by anti-prostitution campaigners as evidence of the intrinsic problems with the sex industry. However, the extent of trafficking in the UK is uncertain, due to inadequate research, and multiple cases of repeatedly inflated statistics, as comprehensively detailed here. While no one is disputing that trafficking is a problem which must be confronted in the sex industry, the ECP and other campaigners see trafficking as another excuse for social cleansing. In Laura’s experience, “victims of trafficking are not getting help and are instead targeted for arrest and deportation, which is despicable. Anti-trafficking efforts are used to raid brothels and target immigrant women.” She gives an example of anti-trafficking raids in Soho, in which “No victims of trafficking were found. But two hundred police officers, with dogs and riot gear, raided the flats…dragging women out in their underwear, smashing the place up. The idea that this is how we should treat victims of trafficking is a complete sham, and a cover for their real agenda.”

The English Collective of Prostitutes campaign for adoption of total decriminalization, a model which has been tested in New Zealand since 2003. My conversation with Laura so far has indicated that the biggest impediment to sex workers’ safety is social stigma attached to their profession. We discuss a successful case of sexual harassment brought by a sex worker in New Zealand, in which a tribunal ruled that ‘Sex workers are as much entitled to protection from sexual harassment as those working in other occupations’: I ask her if she thinks such a ruling would be possible in the UK. “I think that it would be very unlikely to happen here. It’s a largely criminalized industry currently and is very stigmatized as a result. The fact that such a conviction could happen demonstrates that in New Zealand, things are definitely moving forward.”

Attempts to eradicate the sex industry entirely, consciously or unconsciously, whether under an anti-trafficking or womens’ rights agenda, have often had disastrous consequences for the safety of sex workers. The UK’s 80,000 sex workers are among the most vulnerable women in our society: around 70% of women in prostitution are single mothers who do not receive social benefits. My conversation with Laura has convinced me of the need to forget abstract morality and listen to sex workers themselves, to scrutinize laws which, in her words, “currently do everything they can to sabotage whatever you’re doing to keep yourself safe.”

The recent arrest of Peter Sunde, a co-founder of the popular file-sharing site The Pirate Bay, has brought back to light the issues surrounding copyright piracy on the Internet. Sunde had been on the run for more than two years, while another founder, Fredrik Nejj, is still a fugitive. The three co-founders and their sponsor were sentenced back in 2009 on charges of copyright infringement, but there is still debate on whether or not their actions should actually be illegal.

The site was originally founded by members of the Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, or The Pirate Bureau, an organization devoted to the promotion of copyright freedom within the Swedish government, and a counterpoint to powerful lobbyists such as the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau. In Sweden, their movement is highly respected, and has even spawned a political party, The Pirate Party, which has since been mirrored in a number of countries around the world, including the UK.

Since the foundation of The Pirate Bay, there has been a ruthless campaign to shut it down, a campaign which has not always stayed within the bounds of the law. In 2007, an anonymous hacker leaked emails from anti-piracy company MediaDefender discussing the hiring of hackers to attack users of The Pirate Bay. In response, the site filed charges against clients of MediaDefender including the Swedish branches of Twentieth Century Fox, EMI, Universal Music Group, Universal Pictures, Paramount, Atari, Activision, Ubisoft and Sony. Whilst these charges were not pursued, this case highlights the strength of opposition to the anti-copyright movement.

Accusations of corruption, bribery and bias have dogged the footsteps of The Pirate Bay’s enemies. For example, police investigator Jim Keyzer, accused by Sunde of a conflict of interest when he declined to investigate MediaDefender, later accepted a job at Warner Brothers, a client of MediaDefender.

In 2009, a guilty verdict was returned against The Pirate Bay’s founders, and the legal battle against the site was stepped up a level. Numerous countries, including Germany, the Netherlands and the UK, have blocked access to the website, while some ISPs such as Virgin Media have taken matters into their own hands and even blocked numerous proxy websites, used by file-sharers to circumvent the original blocks.

The high profile of The Pirate Bay’s enemies has had a large impact on the response of governments to it. The power of Hollywood around the world and the political impact of big business has meant that the anti-copyright debate has been suppressed at every level, with even Piratbyrån, the seemingly harmless, award-winning think tank, being subject to a police raid in 2006.

Greedy corporations, such as those which hire the likes of MediaDefender or the even more sinister-sounding Rights Alliance to defend their copyright issues, should not be allowed so much power.

Interestingly, the debate has been changed recently through an unlikely source: Game of Thrones. Due to the fact that it’s actually pretty difficult to watch the show legally unless you live in America and have access to HBO, the show has been setting record after record for illegal downloads. The finale of season 4 was downloaded 1.5 million times in the first 12 hours, with 250,000 users sharing the same file.

However, it seems HBO doesn’t care.

Despite Time Warner’s involvement in putting legal pressure on The Pirate Bay, CEO Jeff Bewkes told Forbes magazine that they had been dealing with piracy in the form of people connecting wires in apartment buildings and stealing cable for years, and they had found it led to greater publicity and therefore more paying subscribers.

It also seems clear that the war on piracy cannot be won. Despite numerous attempts to block The Pirate Bay, it still enjoys widespread usage all over the world, thanks to proxy sites and other mechanisms used to bypass government blocks. This shows that there is a strong desire by many people for less stringent copyright laws, and a consideration of the legitimacy of file-sharing.

However, as recently as January 2014, the UK Prime Minister’s IP advisor, Mike Weatherly MP, told the House that there needs to be “some sort of custodial sentence for persistent offenders”. He even advocated the imprisonment of people who only use file-sharing for their own entertainment.

The relentless attempts by big business to stifle free speech and freedom of expression on the Internet show a wilful disrespect for basic rights and an overwhelming desire to make money above all else. While a complete dismantling of the concept of copyright seems overly extreme, there must be some middle ground whereby men like Peter Sunde aren’t locked up for founding websites which don’t even host any content.

The creative industries need to recognize that it is their responsibility to change their businesses to adapt to the new technological landscape, and not to use their political influence to prevent development and criminalize pioneers.

YES

Niamh McIntyre

An article recently published by the Oxford Student ‘Ben Sullivan’s victim “knew her claims were false”’ was highly offensive for a number of reasons which have been discussed extensively since it appeared online on the 30th June. However, perhaps the most compelling reason for the outrage it provoked was the way in which it effectively compromised the anonymity of Sullivan’s alleged victim, publishing details which could have made her identifiable within the Oxford student community. The anonymity of alleged victims once a claim has been made is legally guaranteed, regardless of whether the proceedings are ongoing or, as in this case, dropped on the grounds of insufficient evidence.

There was, however, a marked counter-response: if Ben Sullivan’s name was allowed to be revealed before he had been charged, why should we protect the identities of the victims?

This is a debate which is reignited every time there is insufficient evidence to prosecute a notable person, or a jury cannot prove beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant committed rape. Nigel Evans, repeatedly compared to Ben Sullivan, is the most famous example of a defendant who, once cleared, becomes a vocal advocate for anonymity in rape cases; Ben himself in a Daily Mail interview supports “the right to anonymity as the inquiry is at a preliminary stage”.

This reaction is understandable given their personal experience; of course, the experience of being accused of rape for Sullivan and Evans was undeniably traumatic. However, the portrayal of both figures in the mainstream media after the declaration of innocence ironically demonstrates the immediate rehabilitation and mass public support for those cleared of rape charges.

Ultimately, a small number of isolated individual experiences should not be used to overwrite those of tens of thousands of men and women who are raped every year in the UK. The most damaging consequence of a change in the law regarding anonymity is the inevitable implication that false rape accusations are a significant threat which must be accounted for in legislation. We do not have discussions about anonymity when a defendant is cleared of murder, or drugs charges: this debate serves to perpetuate the idea of ‘crying rape’ by implying that false accusations are far more common in rape cases than in other felonies, an attitude explicitly betrayed in Peter Lloyd’s article in the Daily Mail, which asserts that anonymity would “deter anyone from making false claims out of spite, seeing the accuracy of convictions rise – not fall”.

The CPS last year noted that 0.6% rape allegations over a 17-month period were proven to be false. When these statistics are taken with appalling conviction rates (on average, 1,070 convictions compared to around 78,000 victims of rape per year), it should also be noted that a decision by the CPS not to bring charges due to insufficient evidence is not unqualified proof that claims were false, a distinction often missed in claims for the prevalence of false accusations. Providing anonymity for those accused of rape reinforces the idea that victims will not be believed, a myth that ultimately leads to 85% of rapes never being reported.

We must then consider the consequences that anonymity would have in the context of the incredibly low reporting and attrition rates of rape. Melissa McEwan’s comprehensive definition of rape culture explicitly refers to this consideration. She argues, “Rape culture is the pervasive narrative that a rape victim who reports hir rape is readily believed and well-supported, instead of acknowledging that reporting a rape is a huge personal investment… embarrassing, shameful, hurtful, frustrating.”

There are clear advantages to naming the alleged rapist,  the most obvious being the encouragement of other victims to come forward. This is something Sullivan himself has repeatedly acknowledged, “I understand why naming people is useful – naming Jimmy Savile obviously had a huge impact in getting people to come forward.” It was for this reason that the Sexual Offences Act, which used to offer anonymity to alleged rapists, was amended in 1988: police forces needed, and continue to need, to reveal the identity of rapists before they are charged to conduct the most effective investigations and improve attrition and conviction rates which are almost universally perceived as inadequate.

Women live with the threat of rape constantly hanging over them, a culture of fear which dictates how they should dress, how they should act in public, and where they should go at night. As Willard Foxton convincingly proposes in a recent New Statesman article, we might make significant progress in ending the endemic social problem of rape if there were instead a culture of fear about the consequences of raping someone.

I would agree with Ruth Hall’s, a spokeswoman for Women Against Rape, statement on this question of anonymity, that legislative reform “should pay attention to the 94% of reported cases that do not end in conviction rather than the few that are false”. Evans’ and Sullivan’s must look beyond their personal experiences, and examine the implications that anonymity would have in a culture in which 1 in 5 women (and thousands of men) will experience sexual violence at some point in their lifetime.