Vivat Libertas

Picture the scene, if you will: a nuclear family such as you rarely see these days. (I won't get into the morality or otherwise of that, because for the moment it's not what I want to talk about and because I think that the near obsession with the nuclear family as the only good type of family structure is a load of damaging bollocks.) They're probably perfectly nice middle-class cis people - by nice, of course, I mean boring, tedious and vaguely homophobic, ableist, transphobic, xenophobic and racist. They're a married couple with two children, a boy and a girl. The man is a logically-minded strong, silent type; in his youth, stereotyped women used to swoon over him for his physical prowess and his readiness to go out and do tasks. He personally doesn't like women doing what he calls "a man's job" - actually going out and being a breadwinner - and he's always chivalrous towards women, though he has problems communicating and showing emotion. M...

Do stereotypes normally enter into a discussion of freedom? Certainly I haven't seen any discussions of it, and at least superficially that makes sense: stereotypes are social, freedom is political or socio-political. The two don't really seem like they would go together. Thinking about something that happened yesterday jolted my mind. I love singing and I love Occupy, so once I heard about a mass sing-up at St Paul's my heart was set on it. After much wrangling, some guilt-tripping (not from me) and almost wrecking the delicate social structure (that was most definitely me), I went to the 3-hour rehearsal yesterday at the Bank of Ideas. OK, so I had a bit of trouble finding it due to being directed to the back entrance, but once I got there it was amazing! The atmosphere was absolutely wonderful - so full of hope - but I guess I should stop talking about singing and start talking about what this blog post is actually supposed to be about. (One last note: if you want to ...

Not all Americans are idiots. Not all Chinese are evil and/or communists. Not all Germans are Nazis. Not all Greeks are lazy. Not all Israelis are fascists. Not all Italians are cads like Berlusconi. Not all Poles want to take your jobs. Not all Russians are communists/corrupt/evil/criminals. I think I've got most of the stereotypes down, but the point I want to make is that you can't generalise about entire nations . In every country there are the cruel, the lazy, the stupid and the greedy, that's true, but there are also the kind, the hard-working, the clever and the generous. That's just the way of people. If you spent time around them, you'd change your ways. Why am I preaching to you about this? Because I hate it. It makes me feel physically sick to see people talked about like that. You do not get an entire country full of fascists. You do not get an entire country full of saints. You have the good and the evil (if there are indeed such things) and ...