"Never blend in".

Tomorrow marks the beginning of February. It is also the beginning of the UK's month-long celebration of LGBT history. (It's not the same everywhere; for example, the US celebrates in October, to coincide with National Coming Out Day.)

To mark this, the LGBT+ campaigns people in my university are getting ready to launch a month of events and awareness and fun. They made a poster, and it's pretty good. An open door, with rainbows bursting out, colourfully proclaiming that's it's LGBT History Month.

Underneath is the slogan: "Never blend in."

I have issues with this slogan, and its message.

On a base level, it says to me that, as a person who either has sexual orientation and/or gender expressions that vary from the norm, I should never blend in. Ever.

First, I'll take this from a public perception angle.

So, if I'm a gay girl who likes skirts and dresses, that's not okay. I shouldn't be like the heteronormal public. I should be yelling from the rooftops that I lick vaginas at night and that I wear androgynous clothing to label that I do indeed lick those vaginas and I listen to angsty female singer/songwriters (mostly lesbian ones, by the way) to signal the aforementioned licking does really take place. A lot. Because I'm very gay.

This is obviously ridiculous. The queer community always gets shirty whenever the General Public are like, "But are you really gay? You don't even like pink/Cher/tofu!" and we say, "Just because we're gay, doesn't mean that we definitely like those things. We're all different."

So, can we really stand up and say the exact opposite message? Never blend in? Never accept the parts of us that just happen to coincide with the heteronormative public?

I like knitting. I like skirts, and dresses, and flowers. I like cooking and I moisturise daily. I call my boyfriend every day and I mark in a pink pen. I'm not less queer because I happen to like, and do, a lot of things that heteronormative girls traditionally would be perceived to like.

Second, am I obliged to tell people that my relationships differ from theirs? Do I need to yell to everyone I meet that I am different, and thus require acknowledgement of my differentness?

I recognise there is a case to come out in the face of adversity (it's harder to be bigoted when someone you personally know and respect tells you that they're gay), or if they're misusing pronouns and you wish to correct them, but in the case where you're in a liberal, well-educated, set of people, and there's no need for them to know, do you need to shove it in people's faces that you are queer? Do you need to remind them that there's this barrier of "Well, I'm different. You can try to understand my issues and relate to me, but remember, I'm really different to you"?

There's more to you than being queer. There's more to anyone than their sexuality or gender. Straight people don't talk about their relationships all the time. Why should we?

If you truly like a different set of things to what people would expect from your (perceived) gender, then fine. Don't blend in. Be yourself. I don't have a problem with people being different, and letting them know that.

But for those of us who happen to quite like what the rest of society are doing... leave us be. Don't make us be something we don't want to be.

As one of my friends said: "Just accept it: assimilation *is* evil."

The times, they are a-changin'...

So, village life is pretty much dead now. Older folk everywhere lament. Woolworths is gone, there's no more local pubs (just a Wetherspoons, or a 'spoons' as the kids call it), and everything has become a hustle-bustle of city and town centre.

Where's the park? Where's the swing? Where's the town hall where they used to have the ballet classes? Where's the village school where you recognised every parent and every child?

It's sad when things change. I personally find change tough to take. But, eventually, things grow on you, and you enjoy what you have. I remember when we first got Windows Vista, and I missed the familiarity of XP. It didn't take me long to accept that Vista did have its upsides (once they fixed the larger bugs), and XP just wasn't around any more, so pining for it would have been pointless.

Similarly, the village life is/was nice. You knew everyone, everyone knew you, there wasn't the hustle and bustle and paranoia of "modern life" (whatever that means). Yet, modern living is pretty cool. We have high-speed internet. We're connected to the whole world ALL THE TIME. We have music from all over the world, we have experiences and lives from all sorts of places. We have less time, granted, and we have to make much more of an effort to keep hold of ourselves, but I don't think that's too much of a problem.

Saying you miss the "good old days" is a little like saying "I wish I could have something back that doesn't suit modern society." If village life was the best way to do life, we'd either be there right now, or we'll revert back to it eventually anyway.

Ways of living change. Find things that are good about today; don't dwell in your village green past.

(Unless you're the Kinks, and you're making a kick-ass album.)

"Is competition for graduate jobs too tough?"

So, as all graduates have known for ages now, you basically need a 2:1 for most graduate jobs now. I even said it a year ago. According to a recent article, some graduate employers are refusing to interview anyone with a 2:2 or lower. So, the BBC asks (on its ever delightful Have Your Say section), is that too competitive? Should we lower the criteria, make it a bit easier for graduates to get a job?

Here's a fact for you. It might shock some of you, but, here you go.

Graduates do not deserve jobs just for being graduates.

There! I said it! But, it's true. People, not just graduates, should get jobs because they'll be able to do the tasks required of them in the job. So, things like relevant work experience and interpersonal skills help. A degree doesn't in and of itself give you the relevant work experience or important skills required for most jobs out there.

In the past, you could leave school at 16, and then just head out, get work, apprenticeships, and all that. Nowadays, if you're not seen to be entirely hopeless at school work, it seems like you're expected to follow a conveyor belt of school, then Sixth Form, then uni. Uni is just something you do, another three years of school on top of the 12 you've already done, a rite of passage of sorts.

Seems quite sad that just because you're smart enough to do university, you're expected to do it. I know several people who would have been much happier just getting stuck into work from the age of 16 or 18. Admittedly, I know that certain degrees can open the door to certain jobs (you can't work in CERN without some really tricky science under your belt!), but you don't need a degree to lead a team of people, and it seems like you could probably get most qualifications as you work anyway.

So, where am I going with my ramble? Nowhere. To be honest, I'm unsure of what my job prospects are. Sure, I'm smart, I'll probably come out with that golden 2:1 (or even a First!), and I've got some experience from my time on the exec, and I've had employment before. I'm a hard worker. I'd hope I was employable.

However, I know that my module choices so far (i.e. choosing pure over applied) have meant that rather than having things that might be more useful for an employer, I've chosen fun, abstract things that don't immediately have a use, if they have a use at all. I take responsibility for that choice. I chose interest and fun over practicality and use. If that makes me less employable, I am not going to yell about my right to employment because I graduated from a top university.

I guess it's my responsibility to make myself employable. Find something that I can do for society, or learn how to do something that makes me useful to society.

Bulging brides, snap solutions.

I've been watching a show about women who buy their wedding dresses a little too early, and snack like fiends, so they put on weight. Oh no! So two exercise demons from health hell itself come to get our "bulging" bride down to size before the Big Day.

The first time I saw the show, the lady was a former figure skater. She wasn't actually overweight! She was just a little plump on the hips, which isn't a sin. Worse still, her measurements were tiny, and they tutted over her having a butt worth a damn. Maybe Exercise Demon Girl was jealous because she has no boobs and boy hips.

The show basically encourages the brides-to-be to restrict their diet for six weeks, and combine that with really hard work outs. So, salad leaves for lunch, chicken with one teaspoon of rice for dinner, 5k run.

It's not sustainable. I know, it's not supposed to be. It's supposed to be a quick-fix to get you into that perfect shape for the day when all eyes are on you. But, I know that these women will immediately pile on all the pounds once they reintroduce all the carbs, cake and wine they missed out on their 6 weeks of hell.

How about a show when you say stuff like "Stop eating Doritos *all* the time. Just have a little bowl, and leave the packet in the kitchen".

Or perhaps "Eat less cheese, but you can still have it".

Shock, horror, you could even say "Cake is not banned! Just don't eat a whole cake."

I simply don't believe that you need to get rid of all cake and wine and pasta to be able to stay fit. To get a seriously athletic figure, I admit, you'll probably need to get yourself some sort of plan designed for $28123o by some Dr Whatever in London, or LA. But, if you're just a regular sort of person looking to be a size 12 again, I reckon cutting down on the bad stuff, not eliminating, would be sufficient, as well as exercising, of course.

I've got the first half down. I'm eating normal sized portions again rather than the huge American portions I ate Stateside. Most of my old favourites are back, but I'm not eating cream cheese every day (delicious sacrifice, sadface).

Now I need to get the exercise bit in.

~~~

Turns out the show Bulging Brides have a Wikipedia page. Something tells me that there may have been some editing here.

No woman wants to be a bulging bride! (except those women who are confident in themselves, and believe the marriage ceremony is not about looking like a pretty princess, but instead about two people joining their lives together)

Right on!

Kylie, cocktails and boys.

There was a good piece of news recently, marred by a weird statement from the judge who created said good piece of news.

Good news: queer people actually have a chance of getting asylum in the UK for being persecuted because of their sexuality. Two men from Iran and Cameroon got the right to asylum after having been refused first time round. Quote from the article:

They had earlier been refused asylum on the grounds they could hide their sexuality by behaving discreetly.

Now, that's not fair, is it? A straight couple can hug each other, kiss each other on the cheek or hold hands in public. People would be in uproar if someone said they weren't allowed to show small signs of affection to their loved ones in public. And yet, it's okay to tell a queer person, "Well, given that you can just have a relationship behind closed doors, I don't see there's a problem."

Putting aside the inequality, rumours spread fast, especially in small communities. An unmarried person who solely entertains members of the same perceived gender to their house, well, it's not the norm, is it? Questions like, "Why does Woman X always have Woman Y over? Why doesn't she have a husband yet?" are inevitable.

Anyway. So, now the judge has ruled they can come in to the UK. Hooray! His two cents on the matter were:

Just as male heterosexuals are free to enjoy themselves playing rugby, drinking beer and talking about girls with their mates, so male homosexuals are to be free to enjoy themselves going to Kylie concerts, drinking exotically-coloured cocktails and talking about boys with their straight female mates.

I think that this is the sign of the journey that people are taking, when it comes to learning what LGBT+ people actually are. 50 years ago, we were abominations, nasty people with nasty lives, godless, decadent, wrong. Now, people see that, just like heterosexuals, we're people too. We have lives that we want to live. Some of these lives are more fabulous and glitter-laden than anything you could ever conceive, that's true, but not all of them. In the same way that not all straight men shag or fight everything they see, not all gay men wear glitter and sequins to work and say everything is fabulous.

But it's a start. It's a stereotyped start, but it's a symbol that says that progress has been made. I think that a lot of people in the community are too quick to say "This is bad, this is wrong, this could have been done better, I'm offended now." We need to look back, and see where we've come from.

We're not where we were. We're further on. We got somewhere. That's good!

~~~

On a slight tangent, I've been thinking about campaigning. Breaking down barriers like racism, sexism, queerphobia, etc. is like demolishing a wall. The first step is to get a bulldozer and ram it. Hard. Little chips here and there from hammers won't help. You need to get some strong force behind it, and break through. Now, once you've broken through, then you need everyone to get a hammer and start to chip away at the hole you made. If you try to use a bulldozer again to work, then people think, "Why do you need a bulldozer? That's overkill." and then, no matter how important it is to break down the wall, people only think of the fact that you used a bulldozer to knock over a few bricks.

What I'm trying to say is that we've had our Stonewall riots. Queers are doing relatively well today. Not as well as we could be, but we're doing well. We need to be more subtle in the way we change hearts and minds in places where we are doing especially well, such as the UK or America (of course, in places where queer people are still being killed, we still need to keep a bulldozer handy). Illustrating that queers are just normal people with normal lives, rather than constantly pointing out how we are SO DIFFERENT, will probably help with the whole "Treat us fairly" aspect of our campaigns.

I do my bit by just showing my friends that my queer life is pretty much the same as theirs, except sometimes I want to fuck people that have the same genitals as me. But that's just my two cents.

F*ck this.

I hate feeling this way. I'm at home, so that's throwing up a whole lot of feelings. I've failed to mention any of the big things I wanted to this holiday (mostly David)... I know that Mom talking about wheatgrass paint and church-related drama isn't the most thrilling thing to sit through, but it's a conversation about something. She decided to tell me the stories, so that's something at least.

I feel so insecure. I know I am probably alright on my own. Like, I can be okay. I don't *require* people to support me. But it's difficult. I just feel pretty worthless to be honest.

I mean, logically, I can say quite confidently I'm not ugly, I'm kinda interesting (I knit, I like strange music, and I can get drunk off nothing but a good atmosphere), and I shouldn't feel so down about myself. I'm me! It's not that bad, really.

I feel like, once again, I've screwed it up. I didn't do it the way you're supposed to.

I really really want this to work out. And, part of it is so that I don't have to be alone, I'll admit that. But, there's more to it than that. I like him. I like him more than I like people I've known for years. It doesn't make sense, but there you go. I get excited at the idea of drinking coffee with him, for fuck's sake. I like watching TV type stuff with him, chilled out in his room. There's so many little things I like about him, things he does, things he says.

I'm scared he'll leave me. It's always seems to be the way it goes when I find someone; either I leave, or they do. Nobody ever stays. I found an email the other day, when Laney left me. Summary: "You're nice, but I don't really like you all that much and I'll probably just cheat on you when I get to uni, so, yeah. Sorry." I remember being really sad when she said that. She'd really grown on me by that point. I remember I had made her this thing out of Celebrations and Quality Street wrappers, it was really bright and colourful, and it had "Penny Laney" on it, cos that's what I called her. I think I threw it away when I read the email, but it stayed on my bedside table for quite a while before I did. For some reason, I just wanted to torture myself, a reminder of how undesirable I was.

I hate feeling this way. Powerless. I guess that's why I hate the idea of love so much. It seems to be okay if both people feel equally powerless, and they're happy with that, but I like to be in control. I like to know where things are going, what's going to happen. I only like surprises if I know they're going to be good. Then again, I hate things being boring, and it is kinda boring being in control all the time. I can't win this way. Something's gotta change (and it's probably me).

When I was younger, 14 or so, I wished that I'd fall asleep one day and wake up as someone that wouldn't fuck things up all the time. Reading through my emails the other day made me realise how little I'm actually changed in 7 years. Still selfish, still cruel, still thoughtless. I'm less like that than I was, though. I do care about people who aren't me. I found an email I'd sent to my first ex, basically acknowledging I was deliberately messing with his mind because it was fun. I don't think I'm that girl any more. I'm still capable, I'd just feel too bad about doing it.

I'm trying to be better. I am. I want to be good for him, and anybody else that might come along later. I want to be good for myself.

Stupid fucking emotions. Getting in the way of my studies. It's the human condition, I guess.

(I'll get out of feeling this way some time in the next few days, and I'll look back at this post and just think "I'm such a whiny kid. Man up!" But, you know, this is how I feel right now. :/)

Post-electioneering...

So, after the weeks of being bombarded by "Vote Joe!" signs all over campus, we have a new Sabbatical Officer team sitting in the wings, waiting to take over the current ones. After being gently nudged and prodded to care about referenda and voting, the referenda all did reach quorum (just about), and two conflicting motions were both passed. (Can you simultaneously reaffirm and dissolve sponsorship bans from unethical companies?)

It is also interesting to note how a student body of over 20,000 can't get more than 2000 people to vote. Students are turned off by politics, and even more turned off by the politics that should be the most relevant to them: who runs their union, and what does their union do for them. People don't vote unless their friends are running, or they're one of the few people genuinely passionate about their union.

Most people don't care; they rarely see the union actively working for them. Most just see the union do things that they rather resent, like tearing down a grubby but well-loved union and giving them an expensive, empty-feeling building with silly names for places (who names a pub the Dirty Duck?!) Or, giving them a £100+ per ticket graduation ball and summer festival they didn't ask for, when all they wanted was a Final Fling, like every other year got.

But, I digress. In general, the student body doesn't care about their union, and they don't care too much about who's actually doing what.

Take Union Council, for example. In the yearly election, where some are vying for presidential power, or some other large Sabb role, others are elected to be on Union Council. Compared to how large the campaigns for Sabb roles are, the other elected positions fade into nothingness. So, nobody really notices (or cares) about bodies like Union Council.

Until now.

Among other things they do (of which I'm not quite sure), they also have the power to hold Sabbs to account. This means that they can question a Sabb's actions, censure Sabbs (an official written slap-on-the-wrist) or even pass a motion of no confidence if they feel a Sabb can no longer fulfil their role in accordance with the constitution they agreed to abide by.

So, when the Communications Officer sent a biased email, wrote a biased flyer, and made a biased Facebook group, they held him to account, and they passed the motion of no confidence.

What is the role of Communications Officer? To communicate. Referenda are probably the most important thing for a union, they are the way that the student body can actually make decisions on where its union goes. So, if the Communications Officer makes the mistake of only mentioning two of his favourite motions and making it quite clear what side he's on, I don't think that he's using his Sabb powers to benefit the union.

There are questions of course. Should it be right for Union Council to be able to make such large decisions with a meeting that barely reached quorum? Should there have been a 2/3 majority vote? Given that students are now becoming aware of Union Council actually doing something, they're in a tizzy, and everyone's crying for an EGM. Should an EGM be able to overturn the Council's decision?

Were they too harsh? He didn't do it on purpose, it was a mistake, he said. Would censure suffice as a punishment?

As for the whole "Union Council pushing around their power to ruin lives", well, you know, this is what happens when people stop caring about politics. A bunch of people they don't know get elected by their friends, and representation fails to work. They make decisions, and if you didn't go out to vote and choose them, you can't expect to strike lucky, and have a team that represents you. You need to vote, or, better still, be on that council and make decisions.

Besides, bodies like Union Council have to exist, for the sake of sanity. Could you imagine having direct democracy, a referendum on every issue? The levels of voter apathy are bad enough as it is.

A motion of no confidence is a pretty big deal. Should you trust the student body to be able to judge whether he acted constitutionally, or whether making him leave his job is a fair punishment?

I dunno. It's all a big mess, really. I'm not really that invested in the politics itself; I just like to watch the carnage...

To end though, I would like to point out that I have some friends who are involved in Union stuff, and are very passionate about it, and love their work, and take it very seriously. I respect what they do. Such a thankless job, for the main part. Yet, as we've seen, the decisions they make behind closed door really can make a difference.

It's not rape o'clock. It never is.

According to the BBC, there's quite a lot of women who think that rape victims should take some responsibility for being raped under certain circumstances.

Let's have a look at this, and get some stuff out there.

Here is a (non-exhaustive) list of things that doesn't immediately mean "It's okay to have sex with me":

• Talking to a man flirtatiously
• Wearing next-to-nothing
• Drinking an entire bottle of tequila, or equivalent
  
• Kissing a guy in a bar or club
  
• Going home with a guy for a coffee/drink
• Talking about sex with a guy
• Getting into bed with a guy
• Being naked with a guy
• Doing foreplay with a guy

Here is a (again, non-exhaustive) list of things that mean "It's okay to have sex with me":

• Saying "It's okay to have sex with me".

The second list is much shorter, I realise. This is because the only way you can consent is if you consent. You can even stop consenting during sex. At which point, consensual sex becomes rape. Of course, if the girl is absolutely silent and appears as relaxed/tense as before, the guy (in a world of sexual oh-my-gosh) might not be thinking of this and looking out for it. This is not a defence of the guy; everyone should check that people want sex all the way through sex. It just seems fair. And nice.

On a side note, how many people actually say, "Do you want to do this?" every time before actually having sex? How many guys really want to hear the true answer? Everyone's had that time when you're desperate to get laid, and your partner is like, "well, I'm not really up for it..." and you're just stuck, aroused as hell in the dark with a sleeping lump of person next to you. It's not fun... but, sex is just much better with consent. So, you can see where I'm going with this.

So, what about this responsibility issue? I think that girls should be careful, of course. Going home with a man you don't know is probably not the best way to stay safe, and incapacitating yourself through drink is, again, not wise. Neither action immediately implies consent to sex.

However, getting into bed naked with a guy you met hours ago could give the impression that you're "up for it". Being too drunk to realise you're pawing at a guy's clothes could give the impression of consent. I think girls should realise the power of actions. They speak louder than words, after all. I am not defending the rapist for "getting it a bit wrong." Clear consent is the only type of consent that's worth having. A slurred "yeah sure, go for it" isn't really consent.

TL;DR - girls should try not to give off the wrong signals, but guys should never use those signals as an excuse.

(I realise this post is pretty hetero-focused. I apologise; I don't know enough about queer rape issues to be able to comment on them. If anyone does know of news articles, etc, I can read, that'd be good.)

I wasn't really expecting that.

One summer, long ago, a friend of mine and I were left home alone. Being 16 years old, we raided the liquor cupboard. We ended up making out on my bed for quite a long time, with her alternating between pushing me away and pulling me closer. Finally, she shoved me away and slept on the floor.

The following morning we had a conversation that was essentially this:

"We're never doing that again."
"Okay."
"It was totally a mistake. It's not like we're gay or anything."
"Well... I'm not exactly straight."
*stony silence*

This silence lasted for damn near five years, punctuated with the odd hateful interjection. Since all our friends were shared, I lost everyone, since she seemed to win that particular battle (I didn't even realise I had to fight it).

I even heard from a close mutual friend of ours that she thought that I was in love with her. This was as far from the truth as you could get without coming back.

I just missed my friend.

We had been growing apart anyway; she lost her virginity in a tent with a stranger at a music festival, and the girl I had known wouldn't have done that. She left for university in London, and that was it.

It was her 21st birthday a few days ago. I sent her a Facebook message, "Happy birthday!" I have no idea why. I just felt like it was such a stupid thing we fell out over, and given the masses of posts she already had for her birthday, it's not like she'd have noticed my name in the notifications...

I was wrong.

The following day, I saw she'd left me a message in my inbox. She thanked me for the message, and hoped I was well.

It was nice of her to do that. It's funny how a few years erases things that seemed so major at the time, but really are nothing.

That's not what the NHS is for!

You see quite a lot of these stories in the news, especially on slow news days. They are invariably of the sort:

"Little Jack needs 3 million dollars for high-tech brain surgery that will give him four extra years of life. Oh, why won't the NHS fund this? Jimmy is a human being, and therefore deserves all the life that we can give him."

The NHS works like this, as far as I can tell:

Once upon a time, things were a lot like the US, in terms of health care. If you were reasonably okay for money and you got sick, you could easily be bankrupted. If you were poor, you couldn't afford treatment, unless you were very lucky, and able to find treatment in one of the few establishments helping people with no money. If you were rich, life was as good as can be. At some point, the UK thought, "This isn't really quite right," and decided that everyone deserves a free minimum standard of health care for two reasons - one, because it makes us productive and generates wealth, creates equality of value of life, rich or poor, etc, and two, because it's a Nice Thing to do.

The key word here is "minimum standard". The reason for this is that the NHS has finite resources and oh-so-finite money supplies. If they could give absolutely everyone who needed it a liver and a bed, they would. But they can't.

A key example of people forgetting the NHS's purpose is that liver drug. You know, the one that gives advanced liver cancer patients an extra 12 months or so.

First of all, how much good is this to the patient? 12 months of lying in bed, too weak to do much more than that. I may be exaggerating, I may not be, but quality of life is an important factor in these sorts of life-prolonging-not-actually-curing sorts of drugs.

To be heartless for a second, if their quality of life is poor, then they can't exactly come back to join society, work, pay taxes and contribute back to the State that has given them the money to get better. However, the State isn't always heartless. It recognises that it's okay to let people not of immediate utility to use resources. Still, it's something to think of.

More pressing is the amount of money this treatment costs. How many organ transplants, hip replacements, open heart surgeries, stitches and eye drops can we fund with the amount we'd spend on one person having an extra 12 months of (not necessarily quality) life? I don't know the answer to this question. The question is merely here to highlight that there is SO MUCH that the NHS has decided is part of a minimum standard of care. With all these things that are deemed to be essential, we don't have a great deal of money left over for things which are borderline.

By having a "minimum standard" existing, it means that certain treatments are not considered essential enough for the State to fund. That's why you can't get your boobs Jordanized for free. However, life is pretty precious. It's so precious that something about "right to life" is one of those human rights thingies. That's what makes this so hard to judge. Is prolonging life worth any cost? Some may say yes. (These people clearly have never been Chancellor of the Exchequer, balancing the books of the whole nation, not just the ill bit.)

I've not ever had a relative denied treatment on the NHS because they deemed it to be too dear, or too risky, or too *something*, so, I guess I'd be far more emotional and irrational talking about this if I was invested.

Still, I feel that no matter where you draw the line with free healthcare, someone will always be on the wrong side of that line, and they will always be upset. And that is how the world works, kids.

So, when you are on the wrong side of the line, go ahead and raise money, ask politicians nicely, get funding from some creepy rich business tycoon, but don't go to the Daily Mail and say "The NHS should fund this all for me because, because, because!" That's not what's it's there for. Sorry.

Oh, the things people say about you...

So, there was some Exec Drama. Resignations potentially flying, communication breakdown until ours ears bled, lack of cohesion. So, one emergency exec meeting later, and some of the air has been cleared.

Ents are resigning (again). It's a shared position between two guys, and constitutionally, if one half resigns, they both resign, since we elected them on the basis they'd both be there. So, one half resigned, the other followed. They'll work until a replacement is found, sort out a handover, and then that'll be it.

Anyway, part of the meeting was a Snap Cup. I've never done this before! We wrote anoymously about everyone in the exec, what we liked about them, and what they can improve on.

I thought I'd share what people said about me with you. I found it really interesting, because I feel like I've grown as a person over the past couple of years, and it's nice to know what's working.

Here's the good stuff!

• Showing commitment by organising socials
• Pushing the sober socials ideas
• Saying good stuff in meetings.
• Contributing to the society
  
• Being nice to everyone
• My unique (and refreshing!) perspective on life
• Being affable and charismatic (I had to ask what affable meant!)
• Being generally amusing
• Being "blunt, honest, fair, women-focused". (I liked this one the best)

Here's the stuff people suggested I work on...

• Adhering to rules and regulations without thinking about the effects my remarks have
• Speaking up in exec meetings
• Not being present enough (I guess this would be socials)
• Accepting that everyone's in the society for different reasons
• Letting others help me.

It's interesting how a couple of the comments contradicted (like the meetings comments!), and I do disagree on some of the criticisms. For example, it's good to have some Rules Nuts on board, so that some sense of continuity can be preserved in the society in the form of written rules, that evolve to reflect the society's views. However, it was very interesting to see myself from that side.

I know that I'm not the same as the majority of students right now. I'm not clubbing anymore, I'm drinking much less, and I'm getting very sensible sleep right now (not just sensible amounts, but sensible times too!), so that does make my list of "Stuff I Like To Do" quite different from others. I would never say "No clubbing because I don't like it" because I'm not the whole society. But, I'd like to think that there were a few people a bit more like me, just wanting some chilled out activity fun sober socials.

To sum up, I have a quote from one of my favourite lecturers, Jose...

Life is as good as it can be.

Online punctuation.

When you are speaking, you don't think about punctuation much. You pause at the end of sentences. You pause in between items of a list or between phrases, but for a shorter time. You pause between words, so that you can tell what's being said. You raise your voice in certain patterns for excitement, puzzlement or questioning. It's instinctive for most, and you don't even think about it. That's why it's so hard for a lot of people to use punctuation properly when it comes to writing.

We have spaces, commas, fullstops, colons, semi-colons, hyphens, dashes, brackets and all sorts for written communication. When I say written, I mean formally written. Letters to your mother, essays for your tutor, resignations from your job as Head Fry Chef in Floppy Burger. In this context, you can't rely on instinctively knowing how long your pause should be, or what tone you want to convey. You have to select which punctuation mark is appropriate. It's usually pretty easy. Full stops for long pauses between sentences, commas for shorter ones in between phrases and items in a list. Question mark are for questions; exclamation marks are for exclamations.

When you write online, it's different again. You have the same rules as a written letter, except you have the instant conversation factor. It's the half-way house between a letter and a phone call. Unfortunately, it's instant like a phone, and impersonal like a letter - try raising your eyebrows with punctuation. So, punctuation becomes your sole medium for conveying tones and emotions, and with the instant receipt of your message, every dot counts.

(This is obviously only applicable to those who would use punctuation in the first place, and not the type of internet user who strips words of vowels and meaning, abuse exclamation and question marks, and generally make me want to ban them from using technology with keyboard-like facilities until they learn to follow the goshdarn rules. Grammar Nazi? Only a little.)

For example, I greet a friend on Facebook chat: "Hi!"

I use the exclamation mark to convey that I am pleased to see her online, as we haven't chatted in a very long time. She tells me she is busy, and she hopes to talk to me soon. I begin writing the "Okay" in response, but I hesitate before hitting Enter. What do I put after? A full stop is rather final. It might imply that I'm in a strop with her for being too busy. An exclamation mark is even worse. A question mark is confusing and inappropriate.

This is starting to become worse than trying to decide what to wear to work today if you're my mother. She could easily spend two hours before bed, and one hour in the morning, deciding.

So, I opt for nothing. I send the message, "Okay", with nothing at the end. Crisis averted.

In fact, the general etiquette of my friends is to either fully capitalise, punctuate and write formally, or drop the capitals and use punctuation for effect. So, the full stop instead of a blank, question mark instead of a comma, it's all a new type of grammar in itself.

Phew. Isn't it tough going sometimes?

Student debt.

Students starting university courses this autumn can expect to graduate owing £23,000, a survey suggests.

- BBC

So, everyone's saying, "Poor students! So much debt to start their working lives with. How will they cope?"

There are two kinds of debt the average student gets themselves into.

Type One: The Student Loans. This covers tuition fees and maintenance loans. You never have to pay a penny of that until you graduate and earn at least £15k, you pay it off automatically from your salary bit by bit, and the amount you pay per month is proportional to your income, so it's always a manageable amount to pay (in theory).

A lot of people don't understand about the way student loans work, and assume they work the same way a regular bank loan works, with the corresponding difficulty getting loans and mortgages in the future. First, the interest on the loans is much smaller than a normal loan, so you don't get shafted quite as badly paying it off. Second, it doesn't affect your credit rating at all. Third, if you never earn more than £15k and don't manage to pay it off, you don't get angry men taking away your car/house/firstborn to pay off the debt. So, this sort of debt is (mostly) harmless.

Type Two: Proper Debt. This is what happens when, after you graduate, all of the sudden, your interest-free overdraft becomes a Proper Overdraft, with charges and interest. This is what happens when you fail to pay off your credit card bills, and you end up just about getting the money together to pay off the interest each month. This IS the sort of debt that can cause credit rating troubles.

However, a student may be forced to use their overdraft if the loan falls short, or parents can't give as much financial support as is required, or if work doesn't pay enough, or is unavailable, or incompatible with the type of study that is being undertaken. (Unfortunately, everything in this paragraph applies to me in varying severities. Yay!)

So, really. Most of that £23k of average debt is Type One, and shouldn't be worried about too much. Considered for a while, but not the sort of thing you should lose sleep over. It's the bit that the maintenance loan doesn't cover that you should really be looking at, if you're worried about not making ends meet.

Now, what would happen if the government allowed universities to charge what they actually wanted to for tuition? That's up to £30k. Of course, you would have to maintain a similar system to what we have today; £30k is more than the average yearly salary in Britain - not many families have it just lying around to pay upfront. So, let's say we keep the current system of not paying before you reach the £15k mark and paying off a small, manageable amount every month. Would you actually be able to pay off £100,000+ worth of debt over a lifetime of work without lifting the amount required to pay off a month? I doubt it.

This university thing sure is tricky.

(I might moan sometimes, but I'm pretty glad I study in the UK. It would be so much more expensive to study at MIT for four years, and there's very little government support.)

"Is going to university worth it?"

The BBC has a Have-Your-Say section, where people can post their opinions on a topic. The title of the post is today's topic.

I am exactly halfway through my degree right now, chronologically; in terms of weighting, just under a third of the way through. I have friends that didn't go to university at all, and I have friends that dropped out. I have friends that are getting, or have got, degrees from the Open University. So, there's a lot of different university stories in there.

Reading the comments on the website, people are focusing on the debt and whether it's a good investment for a career that may never materialise. One even said that degrees with no direct employment benefit shouldn't be offered, so that students don't waste their money. That comment upset me; not everyone goes to university to just get a headstart up the corporate career ladder! I know it's not the common thing, but quite a few of my friends are looking to remain in academia, and their degree is the first step in getting the PhD, and then onto the office in the University of Sweet-and-Awesome. It's money you spend that never really gets the wages back, but you do your subject for love.

I am of the opinion that the 50% university attendance target the government has for school-leavers is absurd. One of the smartest people I knew at school dropped out of university, not because he wasn't smart enough, but because it wasn't the right place for him to be. He had a job that he could learn as he went, they offer training as he works and he's happier now, an employed university drop-out, than I saw him before. If that could be the case for someone academically bright, with three As at A-level, and all As and A*s at GCSE, I'd hate to think of less bright people who aren't suited to the academic environment and the self-disciple required to do a degree who feel like university is something you should do, simply because it's something you should do.

In a recession, some school leavers will fear the job market won't be able to offer them the career they want, and so defer it for three years by doing some degree that might not be useful, but simply buys time. I can't decide if this is good or bad. It's good to get a qualification, spending three years gaining skills that are needed to succeed at university. It's bad if you spend three years drinking, partying, not studying effectively, not learning skills, and scraping a pass. Nowadays, the big graduate employers are looking for 2:1 or above (2:2 if you're lucky and they are particularly interested in relevance of degree). So, it's not really worth it if you're not going to get that.

Also, there are more mature students hanging around - people who entered the job market, realised that a degree would quicken their progress up the career ladder and decided to study for something. That's what happened to my friend, but he kept working while getting a degree with the Open University. He's now got a degree, but I'm not entirely sure that's changed much for him.

So, back to the question. Is university worth it?

If you seek solace in the hushed corridors of a library, find comfort in a proof outlined on a blackboard, look forward to discussing Voltaire with intellectual peers, university is most definitely worth it. (Can't say they discuss his works much in my current workplace.)

If you want skills to progress in the career ladder, I reckon the Open University could be a good option. Working to gain practical skills, studying to gain the paper ticket to faster career progression. It does depend on which career you want though. Some financial careers use so much maths that it's best to get a good degree in Maths or Statistics so that you can actually do the work!

If you're buying time, it's probably not worth it. You might lack the academic motivation to do well, and end up with a classification that will say to employers, "I spent three years partying, not studying".

For me, I'd say my choice to university was half love-of-academia, half buying-time. That's generally served me quite well so far. I've lost motivation at times, but my not-so-secret passion for maths always comes through to save me. And, I've proved to be smarter than I thought I was (although everyone claims they knew I was that smart already!) And, I met the best man in the world. So, is it worth it?

Most definitely, yes.

Does motherhood have a sell-by date?

Today, motherhood is shown in the media for three reasons. The first is massive multiple births, which are becoming more and more frequent, given the use of fertility treatments and the increased probability of twins, triplets or even more. The second is girls that are still children themselves having babies. The third are the one I've been thinking about recently - the women who want to reverse their menopause and have a child.

I have some pretty strong feelings about these women, and to try and obtain a view from the other side, I watched a Channel 4 documentary on the subject. I don't feel a great deal differently about it than I previously did.

The documentary started with showing us a 72 year old woman who wanted to have her first child. Since she was single and very old, she would be using both a donor egg and a donor sperm. She would have to conceive with the help of IVF, which is never a guaranteed baby former - it fails even for younger women. She'd have to pump her body full of hormones to ensure the pregnancy would continue. She would put her elderly body through 9 months of strain and pressure. She would then have not only the natural problems of being an older woman, but have to care for a needy baby, then a hyperactive infant, then a clumsy toddler, and so on.

Of course, she has to keep living throughout all of this.

She said she wasn't selfish, she was confident and prepared to have a baby. This is all well and good now. Assuming she survives the pregnancy, she will have a child. Not only does this child have far more chance of having a birth deformity or defect (due to having an older mother), the mother is not immortal. It is very likely that the child will lose her mother far sooner than any of her classmates. Add to this the potential fodder for playground bullies when they find out that Sadie's mother is twice the age of everyone else's mum, and it's hard to see how this couldn't be a selfish decision.

Some of these women are single women, who were career driven earlier in life, then couldn't find a partner to have a child with. Who would look after such a child if the mother was to die? There is no father, and the rest of the family may be equally elderly.

There was one case that was interesting in the programme. A woman became one of the first to have a child with IVF in the 80s at the age of 50-something. She is now 70 and her kids (twin girls) are in high school. They are well-adjusted healthy kids, and they live with their biological father, the woman's husband, and they have a happy home life. This is a happy story, to show that there are circumstances in which having an older mother isn't necessarily guaranteeing gloom and doom.

However, personally, I would love for these women to really ask themselves why they wanted a child. It's not a right, to be able to have children. Sadly, some people cannot have children. And, personally, I don't think that you should reverse nature's way of saying "Stop forming babby... now."

Veet, *this* is what beauty feels like.

Veet, for the uninitiated, is a brand of hair removal products, creams and wax strips.

Basically, you slap the cream or wax strip on your legs, arms, underarms (not recommended for hairy faces or muffs!), then wait. In the case of the cream, you're waiting for the hair to dissolve. The time required also gives you a chance to reflect on how you've just put something that dissolves HAIR onto your bare skin, and whether that's a wise move. In the case of the wax, you're just waiting to pluck up the courage to inflict pain on yourself. Then, you scrape off the cream and rinse, or rip off the wax strip and cry a little.

There are far more painful ways to remove body hair, such as epilators (I spell-checked this word; it suggested mutilators. Ha!) These handy little gadgets rip hair out of you with little barbs and claws and stuff. They look like fun on the adverts, but that's because the advert has calming feminine music, not the musical range of curses that really accompany this product.

I get quite excited talking about feminine stuff. Probably because sometimes I think about the hundreds of products the average woman uses in her lifetime to fit an social norm she's either expected to maintain, or an ideal she's expected to aim for, and I reflect on how it makes me feel, and whether it's worth making yourself feel like crap for "beauty".

The new slogan for Veet is "What beauty feels like." So, basically, once again, we're being told that female beauty is a hairless leg. Bollocks.

Confession: I haven't shaved my legs for several months now. I made this decision shortly after going out to see a friend last summer, and I was planning on wearing a really pretty floaty white knee-length skirt, since it was quite hot outside, and I fancied something light. However, I'd cut myself shaving on my knee (knees are so fiddly, I always cut myself there) and it wouldn't stop bleeding, so I had to opt for a pair of jeans and die of heat-related heat.

After that, I thought "What is the point of shaving?" I mean, women do it to feel beautiful, don't they? You get nice shiny smooth pins for two days, then the stubble comes in, and you feel a bit irritated but you can't really depilate with wax or creams unless you've got some decent growth first, and shaving every two days is rather time consuming. So, you wait, and you just feel ugly until it's time to remove the hair. Lather, rinse, repeat.

So, I've just stopped with the whole palaver. I am probably quite lucky though, in the sense that I have dark hair and dark skin, so unless you happened to be stroking my leg, you probably wouldn't notice I haven't shaved, so it's not like people pick up on it and stare at me when I wear shorts.

For some reason, I think that if my mother found out I'd stopped shaving, she'd probably feel disappointed in me. Maybe it's because I'm just a pair of dungarees away from becoming a Full-On Raging Lesbian. (This is partly a joke: to be a lesbian, you'd have to define as a woman, and frankly, I'm not up for that.)

So, to those who churn out slogans for Veet: take a look at my legs, if you can bear to stand it. I think they're beautiful. I'm sure others do. And they're not hairless like a child's. They are natural. A pair of naturally beautiful legs.

Ha!

A touch of controversy.

"Give the BNP some respect."

It's a funny thing for someone like me to say, really. I'm British on passport, but of Afro-Caribbean origin. My father grew up in the Caribbean, and my mother's parents moved to Britain from Dominica in the 60's. One of the BNP's main policies is to give people like my father, and my grandparents, money to repatriate, or basically fuck off home. So, I'm not the type you'd expect to be fighting in the BNP's corner.

I'm not really in their corner though. I'm just in favour of equality, democracy, and proper debates. None of this can happen if protesters throw eggs and make it impossible for us to hear what ideas they have.

I have taken the time to look at the BNP website, and look at some of their policies, read some of the articles, observe the comments. (I'm a firm believer in attacking an enemy with your eyes open rather than with second-hand information.) I've seen that some of the members are involved in rather unsavoury things, such as Holocaust denial, and there have been alleged links between violence and racial tensions and areas of high BNP support. (Don't quote me on this; I'm not entirely sure.)

However, I try to draw a line in my head between the BNP as individual people, and the BNP as a unit trying to "reclaim Britain for British people", to paraphrase. This line drawing enables me to think that, yes, they're not very nice people. And if the BNP got into power, the country would be fucked. But, for the sake of democracy, they should be allowed to speak. That way, mass audiences can easily see that their policies are flawed, if not outright dangerous.

If liberals attack them on the grounds that they're "not good people", or for fear of fascism, then we remove the opportunity to beat them in debate fairly. We promote them as martyrs. They've done nothing wrong as a party. They're legitimate, and the seats they won in Europe are a result of nearly a million people using their right to vote to support that party. By shouting at them, and attacking them, we give them the chance to say, "The current establishment don't want us to talk! They know that we are a huge threat to them, because we're a lot better!"

I'm disappointed that people voted BNP. I'm even more disappointed that the vast majority didn't vote at all. Voter apathy is reaching new highs, with the expenses just destroying what little faith in politics people had already. So, only those who are passionate vote. Who's passionate? Fringe party supporters, who see the mainstream voting malaise and realise their time has come.

Protests are important, I realise this. But, free debate and the chance to openly discuss and rubbish ideas is fundamental to democracy working as best as possible. We can't give the BNP the chance to win by sympathy. This is why we must give them respect as a political entity - only then can we truly defeat them.

Taking a closer look.

I like to keep up with BBC News; it's cheaper than a newspaper, and a procrastination device that actually leads to further learning, albeit not about perfect matchings or Gaussian primes. I saw an article today about how the hunger in South Asia has reached a 40 year high. I read it, and it mildly irritated me.

Journalism in general tends to annoy me for the main reason that they use statistics in the same way they use adjectives. They will twist them to make the text more emotive, more touching. Rather than letting statistics be open, frank, and speak for themselves, in a factual neutral environment. They become practically meaningless numbers to play with, rather than offering a reader real information.

First of all, in this article, we open with that 100 million more people are hungry compared to two years ago. Well, 100 million sounds like a lot, doesn't it? There's not that many people in the UK, so it can hit you to think that it's the "equivalent" of all of the UK starving, and a third or so of the people in France.

Except, we're not told how many were hungry two years ago. If, say, 100 people were hungry two years ago, that's a HUGE leap you've made, in relative terms. If it was 500 million hungry, adding 100 million is a smaller percentage gap, and you can put the rise into perspective properly. But, they don't want you to assess that; they just want you to think, "Gosh, that's a lot of people!"

Then, there's the obligatory wage comparison. "Millions of South Asian people live on less than $2 a day." Again, we're being lead to think "Wow! $2 can't even buy me a big enough soda to quench my mad Western thirst. How can they afford ANYTHING?"

Except, again, we're not being given perspective. For example, what's the cost of living in South Asia? Given that these people hungry, and not dead, $2 a day must be enough to sustain some level of life. Not enough to save, or afford a good quality of food or housing, but enough to stay alive. A lower cost of living does mean that a living wage is proportionally lower.

I've been watching a programme where 6 Brits go to South Asia to find out where food comes from. In the programme, they're given about £5 a day in some cases. This would get you the basics: somewhere to sleep, some food. Very few have enough to spend on luxuries, or save for travel. Some can't even afford to live with their families, since a wage doesn't stretch that far. But, they live. They survive.

So, $2 a day isn't good. That's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is that it's taken out of a context. It's just there - a figure. A figure can only have the voice of what text it's nestled in. And when your text is telling you, "Gosh, aren't there lots of hungry people? Wow, they live off the cost of a bottle of Coke!", then that's what you end up thinking after you've read it.

Unless you create your own perspective, which you can only do by knowing something more.

Breasts?

This post is going to be about breasts, but might wander.

I've just watched Kirsten's Topless Ambitions, and it was all about how, after 12 years of SMart and children's TV, she's ready for bigger and better things, and lots of presenters "graduated" from children's TV by having fairly sexy photoshoots. She's funny, and she decided to keep her breasts inside her clothes, and work on more stand-up comedy.

Breasts are... nice on other people, I have to say. Soft, round, warm, strokeable. (I had the pleasure of seeing some knitted breasts on the internet the other day, but the pattern to make the nipple was too difficult!) Being gay is really funny, because I really like breasts, but I can't seem to like my own, even though on someone else, I might find them quite appealing.

Most of the trans people I've met have differing relationships with breasts. Some want some, others don't want the ones they have, and there are some who are pretty okay with having breasts, or not having breasts. I met a transgendered person on a workshop, and they had larger breasts than I do (given I'm an E cup, this was quite epic), and they talked about how it was really hard for people to accept them as being transgendered, not just female.

How I feel about my own really does depend on how I feel each day. Sometimes, I have a day where I feel really womanly, and sexy, and having breasts like mine means I can wear the right tops, and just feel like a million fantastic-sexy dollars. Other days, I wake up, and I want nothing more than a big t-shirt and slouchy jeans to hide any sort of figure I may have.

I've never really *liked* them. I remember, being 11 years old, changing for games in the junior room, and, with the arbitrary social groupings, being nearest the door. I remember one day having a perfectly adequate vest, then next day, there were just *breasts* and I was a bit scared, and didn't know what to do. At the same time, another girl thought she had breasts too (but hers were puppy fat, which made everyone laugh. She got her revenge later, but that's another story).

From girls who were "late bloomers", I've heard a lot of "I was jealous of the girls developing first, they were so sexy and the boys loved them," but that was just the opposite case for me. I was massively uncomfortable with my body (and would continue until the age of about 18) and add this to the fact that I was a massive swot, and it's not the image of a sexbomb.

So, breasts. Mine specifically. They're not the ones you see in mens' mags, but I'd be really scared to touch a girl with breasts the size of beachballs and nipples the shape of bullets. It's not really that sexy. Natural is sexy. And, mine are most definitely natural!

They're okay.

They're not *bad*. They've got a size to them (an understatement, many might say!), and they're... pretty good. People do say they're nice.

I remember the first time I went to Marks and Sparks to get my first bra without my mother. Up to this point, we'd only ever shopped in Peacocks, so I'd get a cheap bra in the wrong size, because 8 years ago, breasts for women with D cups and above who shopped in Peacocks and Matalan didn't seem to exist. So, I went, and they told me I had a much smaller back size, and a much larger cup size, I was just amazed at the result.

I don't think any of my readers without breasts could really appreciate what a good fitting bra does for your figure, or your confidence. Clothes fit better, that's probably the first thing you notice. Then, once you've bought it, and you're wearing it out, you just feel... lifted. Your mood is lifted because you are wearing something that fits you and makes you look and feel good.

So, my verdict on breasts is this: they're pretty good. And, I have two. That's pretty good too.

Revision.

This post is a sort of reply to a post a friend wrote on her LiveJournal. She wrote about revision, and I will too.

At this present moment in time, I feel like I have got myself into a nice rhythm, consisting of good amounts of study and play.

I wake up in the morning, in between 8am and 10am. I spend a few hours relaxing; I will interweb, write a blog post, check out the news, Facebook, maybe knit a little, or watch David play Empire Earth. Then, I'll shower, eat a light brunch/lunch hybrid, then I'll go up to Housemate Matt's room, where we will work on assignment sheets for the modules we're doing.

In between 4-5pm, we will eat some toast. I might have a cup of tea or coffee.

In between 6-8pm, dinner will be prepared and eaten. Sometimes David cooks, sometimes I do. Sometimes we do it together. Sometimes I'll be absorbed in maths and then David will announce food is ready and that's really awesome, but unfair if I let it happen too much!

After dinner, there is cake and/or icecream (if there is any), then back to Matt's until I am tired, or I crash out.

Crashing out consists of my (already short) attention span fast approaching zero, being confused by simple concepts, and giggling until I cry. I don't always crash out, but it usually happens if I feel I haven't done quite enough for the day, and try to work too hard past 10pm.

I started revision last Sunday, and it took me a couple days to get into this routine. I have four lectures, one on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and this doesn't affect my schedule greatly, since they mostly occur before I'd start work for the day anyway. Out of all the days, Wednesdays are probably going to affect me the most, since I've designated them to be debating days - and desnigating a leisure activity means I get out of the house and interact with non-maths people, which is healthy.

Still, I'm averaging just under a sheet and a half a day. I've done 11, and I have 29 left to go. There are 31 revision days left before exams start. I might have to try and up my pace, if possible, but at worst it must remain steady.

I'm worried about not keeping pace though, since I have at least two weekends with plans coming up, and averaging a sheet a day would bring me too close to exams to be able to practice past papers.

I've been enjoying leisure times though. Before I start work in the afternoon, and after 10pm, I do have time to enjoy myself. David went out for a meal once, I went to a birthday party, we watch films, or HIGNFY, and we generally find time to chill out without going out.

Going out is expensive, and I've not been drunk for so long that it seems slightly pointless. I think I'm also getting A Bit Old; Rachel came over for a curry, and David, Matt, Rachel and I had a really awesome time waiting for the curry to arrive, and then eating it together at the table while talking. It was really nice to just enjoy that with friends.

I'd love a curry right now, actually.

Overall, I'm not too concerned about revision. I've never had a firm strategy before; it used to consist of reading through notes, writing down important theorems, getting bored, repeating, until a Crunch Point about 10 days before exams hit, and then I'd start exam papers, and panic because I'd been reading about but not practising the maths skills required. So, this time, I hope that doing all the assignment sheets will leave me feeling a bit more prepared on how to tackle questions.

I just have to keep it up now.