Jonathan Bishop

Today is International Day Against Homophobia, a term deriving from homo (shortened from homosexual) and phobia (fear of). One is homophobic according to the organisers if one has an unfavourable attuitude towards “gay” people – a 1980s term synonymous with “homosexual”  with no relation to today’s meaning of “gay” which means out of place, unusual, uncool, among others.

In my language I’m against homos – that is people who expect me to be the same as them, and androsexual men or gynasexual women are no different.

I am pluralist by name and pluralist by nature. One could say by virtue of this I am afraid (phobic) of being the same (homo) as other people.

If one looks at the Equality Act 2010, this is the definition of sexual orientation:

Whether a person’s sexual attraction is towards their own sex, the opposite sex or to both sexes

With my pluralist sexuality all of these, some of these, or none of these could reflect my state at anyone point in time.

If I were to say look at a woman in a size 10 dress with a 30D chest cwtching an equally slim man with a six pack, and their visage is fine too, then I may have a sexual attraction to the woman (opposite sex), a sexual attraction to the man (same sex) and therefore both sexes at the same time. If I am working the equally I may not have a sexual attraction towards anyone (asexual) and therefore be attracted to neither sex, which is not protected specifically.

So one could say I am homophobic in that I don’t like people who are the same as me, even if I’m open-minded about the level of sexual attraction I have to different sexes and different points in time. In fact I would say that the people who want to only use words like “lesbian, gay, bisexual transgender” or “straight” are all the people who should be campaigned against today, even if they fall into the first group.

Sexual orientation is not the same as sexuality. Sexuality encompasses a range of factors, including sex, gender, belief, values, and race, among others. Someone, such as a man, may be sexually orientated to Black women and Indian men, but be grossed out by Black men and Indian women. Are we seriously going to say they are homophobic and racist because Black men don’t float their boat?

Using others’ definition, it should not be homophobic for a ‘straight’ man to think that men kissing and touching is gross and revolting. It might be considered wrong and illegal for them to be treated less favourably because of their sexual orientation, such as by being denied a job or called hateful names, but just because someone ‘sinks’ someone’s boat instead of ‘floating’ it, it doesn’t mean their preferences should be attacked as immoral.

Whenever a man calls a woman a “minger” because he is not attracted to her, he is not called a ‘heterophobe’, so why should the same man be considered a ‘homophobe’ just because he thinks a man also looks “minging”?

The world needs to grow-up. One should not be castigated for whom one doesn’t wish to be copulating.

Anyone can get a book published these days. Pontypridd Poet Dave Lewis, who might struggle to get his work accepted by a traditional publishing house, has used Lulu.com to self-publish his books.

There is nothing wrong with ‘self-publishing’ outside of traditional publishing houses – if it is done properly. The biggest cost of publishing a book is the pre-press costs, like graphic design, legal fees, and editing and formatting. Many of these things Dave Lewis overlooked.

These upfront costs are one of the reason traditional publishers are not willing to take the risk with unknown authors, who might have a book of merit, but would be too much of a risk. These publishers – and authors – are going to have to change.

I am a director of a publishing firm I founded – The Crocels Press Limited. We had a bumper turnover last quarter with the elections, and are going from strength to strength with our Print & Pixels socially responsible publishing model. We get our publications printed ‘on demand’. That is, we use digital publishing contractors to print our work a unit at a time along with lots of other books, so we don’t have to make the risks established publishers do where they print in the hope someone will buy the book.

I intend to publish all my monographs through The Crocels Press, with exceptions. The books will be as good as from a traditional publishing house, as I will take on all the up-front costs. I will then get more profits from the books, than the in some cases only 7% I get from established publishers for books I edit for them. This will be the norm in the future – there will be little need to go to traditional publishers, as they will eat up too much of a book’s profits.

In the future, publishers will be more like ‘labels’, in that they will have a reputation, which others respect, like Routledge Falmer, Wiley, etc. But these will, on their own, only have the appeal to trophy hunters, who want their prestige. Instead these labels are going to have to develop brands in order to entice authors to them.

Wiley’s major brand, the ‘For Dummies’ is such an example. An author knows, by having their manuscript formatted as a ‘For Dummies’ book will get them a lot more sales than being a book in its own right. Publishers pulp thousands of books each year because they didn’t meet sales targets. Branded books, whoever they are written by, are more likely to appeal to the public, even if they are in what one would consider a niche market.

The most exclusive of publishers will lose out in the future. Authors will want to go to press now and not later. Labels like Nature Magazine will soon return to their low impact factor, as open access publishers, like their major competitor PLoS, get better cited due to them being open to the public outside of subscriptions.

So, in essence, I’m saying that with the competition from print-on-demand and the low cost of being a new publishing house, the older ones will simply depend on their reputation, as authors will be looking to keep more of their money for themselves, as marketing and distributing books will not be as difficult as it was in the past. If an author can build up their reputation, then who publishes it is not important. There will still be those who will only go to the reputable labels, but people like Dave Lewis who probably wouldn’t stand a chance can still self-publishing their books for their friends to buy, even if others don’t because of the quality for instance.

Popular self-confessed 12-year-old lookalike Owen Jones posted this tweet to Twitter:

“The General Strike has taught the working class more in four days than years of talking could have done.”- Tory Arthur Balfour

I replied to this, criticising him for glorifying class conflict, and he replied:

@jonathan_bishop To get rid of those divisions we have to understand the ones that currently exist, rather than pretend they’re not there

I think he is right that we should understand the ones that exist, and many of them are perpetuated by many associated with the Labour Party calling entrepreurs who want to do something with their life, or any public service funded by tax-payers income and not their taxes “posh”.

It seems from Labour politicans point of view, anyone who has any amount of wealth, even if they earned it from the fruits of their own Labour are “posh” and being posh is bad. One thing one can take from this is, working class voters, are not posh, and therefore as Labour aren’t posh, then if one is working class one should vote Labour.

How does one define working class? Is it someone who works hard but earns below the national average? Is it someone who is a member of a trade union who has no choice but to work in order to live?

If it was the first one, then as a risk taking entrepreneur I meet that definition. In terms of the second, well I could not maintain my existence without working, but how does one define ‘trade union’?

For me being working class has little to do with income and more to do with division of labour and control over one’s working life. I would say one is working class where:

• One works for an employer for income and has little freedom over the work they do and the direction it takes.
• One cannot vary one’s asking price for work as one’s paymasters has one tied down to a restrictive contract of employment
• One cannot easily withdraw one’s labour without risking breach of contract and losing one’s income stream
• One cannot send someone else to do one’s work if one is ill, meaning one could lose one’s income for the day one is not at work
• One has to work a set amount of hours in order to get by and often relies on overtime to make ends meet.
• One can be moved from a task one is enjoying doing without any say-so if that is what one’s paymaster wants

Trade unions depend on the working class, as if there were not people under the restrictive conditions above, they would have no purpose. I am self-employed, and probably take home less money that most workers in those jobs above. However, I don’t see myself as working class, for one because none of the above apply to me, and also because I:

• Enjoy the fruits of my own labour – the profit made from the work I do goes to me
• I control my own means of production – I can do whatever work I think profitable, at present writing and speaking, and I can vary how much I do and when I do it
• I control my own means of distribution – I can sell my products and services to whoever I want who also want it. I can distribute it via any printer/publisher, I can choose my own supply chain, engage my own marketers, etc.
• I control my own means of exchange – I can decide to only write for people who pay me certain royalties, or I can choose to barter, by providing a person with a good or service in exchange for theirs, or even using what I call ‘co-operative advantage’ which is where I work with others pro-bono in the hope of future profits from what we co-produce

Ask yourself this. If everyone, like me, was self-employed and a member of a profession body that gave similar rights to traditional trade unions, then who would join these traditional trade unions? Equally, if every worker was emancipated through self-employment, accountable only to themselves and not being supressed by an employer or trade union, and therefore not working class, then who would vote Labour?

While Labour and The Sun are the guardians of the working class, and the Tories and certain broadsheets are the guardians of the business owners the class system in this country will continue to perpetuate. It is only by breaking past these divides and people taking control of their own working life, perhaps through self-employment, that the suppression of the working classes can end, as they would cease to be working class and start being the individuals they are.