Originally published at The F Word, May 13th 2013 (reposted with permission)

In Giovanni Giommi’s documentary Bad Weather, the sex workers on Banishanta, the island off the Bangladeshi coast, know they are the victims of exploitation, yet refuse to let this define them. It’s a story of survival, religious imagery, unionisation and an attempt to give a personal history to the members of a forgotten community who tend to only be remembered by a select few when their services are required.

Giommi, known for his documentaries Parafernalia (2008) and Politica Zero(2006), is a director, cinematographer and writer and this latest project is an attempt to illustrate the threat of climate change across the world by focusing on a sinking seaside community.

The film follows the lives of several Banishanta women, varying in age, story and motivation, who inhabit the small strip of land, along with their families, and work as prostitutes serving the crews of passing ships. We see the women bargaining with the men who come to use their services and ultimately accepting that sex is their trade, upon which they must attempt to capitalise. The narrative is punctuated by the musings of two devout men who reside on the island with the women, each taking no part in, but refusing to denounce, the work of the girls.

The island is under the constant threat of rising tide, a very real consequence of climate change, with Bangladesh itself being only 15m above sea level. The destruction caused by the ever rising water reflects the ensuing havoc upon the arrival of a new swathe of passing men, often brought to the island by the lover of one of the workers.

The establishing shots tell the audience the setting is as bleak as the prospects of its residents: remote, isolated and enigmatic, but not hopeless.
When the boat full of ship workers arrives, it feels like the island springs to life. When they leave, it’s as if modernity is deserting the women and their strip of land is left defenceless to the mercy of the powers above. The religious imagery of floods as punishment for a sinful existence provides a creepy sense of inevitability and an impression that the factors at play against the girls are just too big to comprehend.

The boats bring a superficial and fleeting hope, as well as an artificial intensity and drama and the sense of possibility and love. Meanwhile, the real drama emerges slowly and endures as we get to know the girls and their lives in between clients (which is most of the time).

The Bengal tiger analogy reinforces the sense that the girls’ habitat is being pursued to its end by the encroaching sea, while their hope diminishes as the years pass and their children grow.

Shakespearean in its characterisation – the island’s imam as the modest moral anchor; the exchanges between not-quite-lovers – the film is haunting a western audience in the grip of glamorised rape culture and the rise of misogyny on our dry, paved streets. We know misogyny and exploitation isn’t just a Bangladesh problem; it isn’t just the problem of poverty. But the film’s subjects remind us of where sexism and conservative attitudes towards sex and sin, supply and demand, will take us.

The representation of the men in the piece is contradictory – on the one hand they are the moral pillars, the religious puritan and the patient lover, while on the other they are fuelling the isolation of the girls with their money and sexual demands.

This is the only film I’ve seen where climate change and sex are portrayed side by side as responsible for a community’s downfall, with these creeping and ominous unknowns together representing the volatile forces of nature.

The film in its entirety evokes feelings of fear and a sense of something ultimate, an inevitable end. The somewhat predictable imagery of the Bengal tiger does well in encapsulating the feelings some audience members may have watching the girls being swallowed up – their lives, their familiarity, their profession – by an aggressive predator, be it nature or the sexual dynamics of their culture.

The film doesn’t so much ask us to do something, but just to observe and learn from the subjects and their predicament. Which is what I did. Indeed, I remain in the grip of the enigma, almost unable to communicate the piece’s impact on me.

The Big Latch On is a bold idea with good intentions and an admirable mission statement, aiming to bring together women and families in support of breastfeeding and raise awareness of the need for greater breastfeeding support in the community .   However, I don’t quite *get* the usefulness of nurse-ins are in general in helping the average breastfeeding mother, or the promotion of breastfeeding.

My issue with them is that they do neither of two things – educate about or normalise breastfeeding.

Regarding the often abrasive attitude encountered by breastfeeding mums in public places – mostly, it seems, in eateries – it’s my conclusion (rightly or wrongly) that most people – customers, wait staff, etc –  don’t draw the ‘go to the bathroom’ card out of malice, but of misunderstanding. They don’t know that to breastfeed an infant or child is normal, to be expected as part of the social experience of raising kids.  They’ve been brought up to believe that it’s somehow freakish, sexual or something to be done while sitting on a closed toilet seat. To tell a suckling child or his mother to take their lactation activities to the restroom doesn’t make any sense, and we know that.  But a lot of people don’t think about it, have never had the opportunity to think about it, or have no reason now to think about it.  Many of them have been brainwashed by the hegemony of tits-and-ass and the idea of the ‘private’ realm they’ve been raised to believe such maternal pursuits to be.  I don’t think many people do it because they’re mean.

So society as a whole needs a paradigm shift on this one.

I guess a nurse-in is a form of protest.  Protest is, of course, a great way to make a point, to exercise one’s rights, even if the right to protest is a covert ideological tool for those in power.  However, I’m not sure nurse-ins really go very far in helping people get back in touch with their innate connection to and understanding of breastfeeding.  Rather, they risk perpetuating breastfeeding’s image as a novelty, the feeding choice of a few eco-loving, shameless cranks with nothing *better* to do. And while lactivists and breastfeeding advocates know that not to be true, nurse-ins don’t really help their cause. Nurse-ins seem reactionary, possibly antagonistic, and although the collectivity of such events has the potential to help mothers exercise their right (duh) to breastfeed in public, what do they really do to help individual women who just want to feed their infants in the normal (yes, normal) way and be left alone?

What I do think is important, however:

The availability of breastfeeding support in every community

The normalisation of breastfeeding, such that ignorant scoffs or head turns aren’t a *thing*.

Increased awareness of the fact that breastfeeding in public in the UK is a legal right (natch) and not something to be afraid of.  Nor is the exercising of that right a political statement.

That babies love and need boobs.

So, I ended up in this weird conversation with some otherwise rational people, trying to defend the idea that hitting children isn’t a good thing.  And by hitting I mean smacking/spanking which itself means hitting.

I found myself saying it’s not necessary, it’s not right, it’s not purposeful, it’s not nice, it’s not effective.  Effective?  What was I thinking?

Maybe I should been more blunt about what it is.

It is really mean and unnecessary.  And this is obviously not what adults should be doing to kids.

It is like trying to teach someone not to bully others, by bullying them.

It is like trying to teach someone not to shoot people, by shooting them.

It is like trying to teach others not to do anything to someone else, by doing it to them.

It is a bit like picking on someone smaller than you because they won’t do what you expect them to.

It is a bit like a world superpower having a sheesh-that’s-big nuclear development program, then telling anyone its not bff with to stop producing nuclear weapons because it makes them uncomfortable.  Not naming names. I love hyperbole.

Some people believe it’s okay to smack kids as long as you love them, or even that smacking them is a display of love. Or that it’s for their own good.   Uh, do intervene if I’m wrong, but isn’t this the rhetoric most commonly utilised by domestic abusers?

We no longer think it’s right to beat women or employees, so why do kids find themselves still in the caning line?  I know, I know what defenders of the hand of parental justice will say, but it’s not about resentful, frenzied caning anymore, it’s about smacking out of love, or to make a point, or to help them adjust to the realities of the cruel, cold world.

But check this out:  Kids MODEL behaviour because they’re growing up into little-then-big versions of us.  When I dig in the garden, my son gets his spade to help.  When I pop a Diet Coke that I think he’s not going to be interested in, he wants a swig (don’t worry, he doesn’t get it and I’ve stopped drinking Diet Coke just to avoid the drama each time; and partly because otherwise it’s probably going to kill me).  Ergo, I’m fairly confident that if I hit him, he’s going to think about maybe trying a bit of hitting of his own.

But apparently there are people who believe that all the evil and criminal deviance in our society can be traced back to not enough corporal punishment.  I’m not convinced.  It’s commonly accepted that bullies were usually bullied themselves at some point, and that ‘bad behaviour’ often sprigs up out of scorn and disparagement, so why do some people insist that smacking kids is a helping hand to making them into decent adults?

Someone, anyone, tell me?

Nope, couldn’t think of a more catchy title.

So, thanks to the Daily Mail and all who sail in her, the coverage of Mick Philpott’s conviction has turned into a veritable high-horse fest of criminalising the poor, maligning them as evil, manipulative, lazy, rich ne’er-do-wells, and smirking at what ‘we’re’ not.  Yay.

While I trust that no one here needs reminding that evil exists across the breadth of the wealth spectrum, and doesn’t just spring up when one has ‘too many children’ by ‘too many partners’ with not enough money, it’s worth mentioning simply because if you were to rely on much of the mainstream media’s perspective, you’d think that to be repugnant and villainous and abusive you have to be on welfare.  And that domestic violence is a lifestyle choice.

But it did get me thinking about how our welfare system fails the very people it purports to help, particularly women and their families, and has made us all – to some extent – reliant and helpless.

This week, UNICEF declared that Cuba is the only country in latin America not to have a problem with infant malnutrition.  A country we don’t hear much about these days, with a controversial government and resourceful but modest citizens, Cuba’s new reputation for keeping children out of absolute poverty (I’m prepared for someone to correct me on this), compared with our record of thrusting our poorest in the direction of destitution under the guise of them ‘getting a free house’, can only be attributed to one thing (in my amateur opinion):  consumption vs production.  I’m fully prepared that I may be wrong, but hear me out.

The thing is that our welfare system creates poverty, social immobility and strain – then blames those suffering the most for just being disgusting and poor.  The more reliant we need to be, given our circumstances, the more reliant we become.  And here’s how:

It’s all about consuming.  Our welfare system keeps people in a state of relentless, toxic and necessary consumption.  Tower blocks and uniform housing with very little potential for green space allow their residents shelter, for sure, but leave them with no means of producing their own food or establishing and maintaining a domestic economy, whilst ensuring continued reliance on the processed food and unethically-produced clothing from dominant superstores, who – in case no one noticed or realised – profit from the shite they sell to those of us, and we are an us, who live on the bread line.  Oh, and then vilifies them for being unhealthy and not eating organic and getting sick and utilising NHS services  (y’know, the services we want to still be there for us when we no longer pay tax, but are encouraged to resent sharing with anyone currently not paying tax).  We’re told that space in the UK is at a premium, yet those with the most in the bank are allotted the greatest surface area through a culture obsessed with hierarchy, competition and private property, not with creating equality.

Now, I’m not saying life was rosy before the industrial revolution, but surely if – as a ruling class (which I’m not part of, so I’m not sure why I’m still using ‘we’) – we’re truly interested in reducing inequalities, a welfare system can be developed that doesn’t just toss whole families to the hounds of capital and a volatile employment market.  Nowadays, the connection between (domestic/small-scale agricultural) production and agency has been lost, keeping people dependent on a system that cares nothing for their quality of life or economic advancement.  We rely on working for others to feel and be financially secure, and the system doesn’t provide an alternative for when this isn’t possible.

The welfare system we have now perpetuates the myth that capitalism is natural, and allows people no window to the world of alternative means of success that do exist.  To become hardworking for someone richer and smarter has been set up as a cultural goal, with the domestic sphere and all who reside in it most commonly characterised as the dumpster of the giver uppers, the failures, those with too much time on their hands.

Everyone needs land, space to (literally) grow, time and modest resources to become self-sufficient.  These should be default allowances afforded to everyone regardless of their economic status, this is what welfare should look like, not media vilification and humiliation.   Who has ever been humiliated into feeling more hopeful and in control of their own future?