Vivat Libertas

It kills me inside when I see people whose only aim in life is to be rich. Not be happy, not work hard, not do something actually useful for humanity. Just be rich. Fuck capitalism with a shovel.  (And yes, that was a blatant promotion of my Twitter account.) It's a sad reflection on our society that this is what we've come to. Money is fundamentally an abstract entity exchanged for tangible things, the lubricant of a system based on hurting, oppressing and marginalising every living thing on the planet in various different ways. What these people tell me is that they don't give a shit about all that. They just want to get to the top of the pile and can't even be bothered to put the hard work in. Why? Because they want to buy shit, of course! Our society is centred around youth, sexual attractiveness (not beauty - that's a different kettle of fish altogether), wealth, and power, all shown through the acquisition of material goods and services. And, like good lit...

I've been keeping this blog for a year now. Time to do some reflection, methinks... ...Originally I started this blog to keep track of all my random thoughts. Well, that didn't really work out - look how many times I've gone on hiatus. The name didn't fit either - most posts here aren't about freedom, they're about the random shit going on in my life. One of the things I noticed is how stupid I was when I was younger, and how stupid I was even a few months ago. Based on current trends I'm just going to keep being stupid, I guess. It makes me cringe how cruel and idiotic I can be - and yet amongst all that there are still a couple of half-decent articles. So where am I a year on? I've started up a new blog all for my Latin-related stuff; I've probably become a worse writer (though that's partly compensated for by me being slightly better at maths than I was last year), and I've hopefully become a deeper, smarter and more secure per...

This post was originally written for the Paint it Purple blog carnival (run by the fabulous Pixel Project ), but I was too late to enter. I'm fortunate enough never to have had someone beat, hurt or rape me for being a woman; others I know have not been so lucky. From being struck in the ribs to being touched by guys who can't keep it in their pants, all the way up to rape, I haven't seen it all but I know I've seen too much for me to keep my mouth shut. What's just as bad is that these girls and women have their experiences played down; either society trivialises and outright lies about what happened to them (they say that she "wanted" to be sexually harassed or that she willingly slept with her rapist) or the women themselves try to rationalise what has happened to them, absolving the abuser of all blame or blaming themselves. I know this is anecdotal evidence, but it's all I have and it's what has made the biggest impact on me. Though I wa...

There! That got your attention, didn't it? It might be worth pointing out now that I'm a raging feminist and totally disagree with the title. Unfortunately, most of Western society agrees - including a rotten core of hostile misogynists, one of whom gave me the title for this post. Misogyny is one of my triggers for righteous anger, as is pretty much anything which assumes it's acceptable or ethical to oppress another group of people for no good reason (actually, is there ever a good reason for oppression? No). Hence this blog post. Today, I learnt to laugh at it. No, that doesn't mean I think misogynists are trivial. I don't think that rape jokes are funny or a thing of no consequence. I don't think that being regarded as a man's property, for him to do with me what he will, is at all unimportant. I do, however, think misogynists are some of the most incredibly stupid people on the planet - and stupidity is really quite funny. It's depressing ...

OK, I know I haven't posted for about two weeks. The real world, unfortunately, calls me to do actual work and that's why. I do, however, have quite a lot of stuff to be working on - and a new blog! I love Latin to bits, so I set up a blog dedicated to it:  trialsoflatin.blogspot.com . I'll put up posts in the days and weeks to come - all Latin-related, of course...see for yourself if that sort of thing interests you.

I am a humanist and a sceptic. I also take great pleasure in snarking and watching others snark - and being a good sport some of the time, I don't mind if others snark at me. I'm a little jaded, quick to imagine motives, and I always question statistics with reckless abandon (and probably very little knowledge of the subject). I'm also a wild idealist. What did you think when you read that last sentence? Did you think I was stupid? Naive? A little cuckoo, perhaps? That's what happens when I try to discuss things with people (and no, my age doesn't help ). I'm told that I'm too radical, too unworldly, too...well...I guess my ideas upset them a little, because I'm constantly reassured that the world doesn't work that way and that everything is okay - or that it's better than anarchy. (I disagree with them on just about every point there.) One of the most idealistic parts of me is my faith in humanity - my presumption of goodness, if you will....

Yeah, I'm a Twitter addict...and this time I found #RIPSophie trending. I don't know if I should put a warning on this post, but it discusses bullying and suicide. If those count as triggers, this post has them. (You can never be too careful.) The story goes that a Wanted fan called Sophie ( @JaythanILoveYou ) killed herself over bullying. Another story goes that she hasn't actually killed herself and the story is fake. I want to say this: even if the whole thing's a hoax, that in no way mitigates the fact that too many - I don't have the numbers to hand, but it's too many - teens actually do  kill themselves because of bullying, and that it's a real, despicable problem. Faking a suicide - and I really don't know why anyone would do that, not because I'm naive but because it's a hell of a lot of work and brings a lot of negative press - may be vile, but it pales in comparison to the vileness of driving someone to take their own life. Even ...

A big, BIG disclaimer here: I am an upper-middle-class white cis female. I am quite aware of my privilege. I want the same privilege for everyone else. I've been reading a lot of feminist material lately and following a lot of feminists on Twitter - one more reason to love it. Now, I'm not strictly speaking a True Feminist - I have not yet been involved, for example, in some infighting. Neither have I taken any classes on it. I haven't even read the seminal works of feminism, poor ignorant thing that I am - for I was never aware of them. I used to think that all the major struggles for women's equality were over and that feminists were just strident science-haters. I was an idiot when I was younger, OK?! My views changed right about when I started connecting with actual feminists  and found that no, they didn't hate history, science or men - they hated being objectified. I started to warm up to them. I can't remember the exact day when it hit me. But it ...

I've been thinking. This is not necessarily a good thing. Those who read the news or who follow what's going on via Twitter will probably have heard about Scott Olsen, the Iraq veteran who was hit in the head with a tear gas canister at Occupy Oakland. He has a skull fracture and brain swelling, and the part of his brain dealing with speech was affected; though he can communicate with his family, he cannot speak and his spelling is " not near what it used to be ", according to Keith Shannon, who served with him in Iraq. He is currently under observation to see if he needs surgery. Right...update over for those who hadn't heard the news. Now, Occupy supporter or not, one would expect people to rally round him and condemn the actions of the Oakland Police Department - which went far and beyond what is legal and ethical. Stupid idealist that I am, I expected that to happen. Apparently not. For example, there have been right-wingers claiming that he started a si...

I do love Twitter...sadly, some of the Top Tweets are complete shit, like #UglyGirlsAreNotAllowed . Why is this trend shit? I shouldn't really have to explain - it should be incredibly obvious. Apparently, however, people missed the memo so...it's pretty much the height of stupidity to focus on looks alone when brains and personality get you further, for a start. I have known many people who didn't quite understand this and haven't done particularly well for themselves as a result. It's also psychologically damaging to people's minds to be told that they must  be beautiful or they're worthless - as in, my-self-esteem-is-totally-fucked-up-and-I'm-going-to-kill-myself damaging in the very worst cases. If you still  don't understand, suicide isn't funny. It is not funny when someone tries to wipe themselves from existence because it just hurts too much to keep on existing. It is not funny to push someone into that. It is not funny when your frie...