Vivat Libertas

Well, it's official. I got into Manchester to study physics, with a year in Europe like the cherry on top (France, here I come!). By mid-September, I'll be driving hundreds of miles up north to the great cold city while my friends are still down south packing for university. I'm filled with pride that I did well enough to get in and excited to start my new life in a new city, and I'm scared too that I'll find myself rejected by the people who don't already know me. And although just a week ago I was walking out of the house and vowing that I couldn't wait to get of that fucking house in London, as moving day inches closer towards me I find myself wanting to hold on to life in the south. There's nothing wrong with the north...it's just not home. Not yet. Yesterday, I woke up on a grey rainy day and dragged myself to the nearest shopping centre to get kitted out for Manchester; when it comes to big things, I'm ridiculously organised. Unfortunat...

There are two things I like about second-hand books: the price and the atmosphere. Living in London, where a decent science paperback can set me back anywhere between £8.99 and £10.99 and hardbacks break the £20 barrier, being able to get books cheaply is important to me and my insatiable desire for more stuff to read. ...Maybe the problem is that I've got too many books. That's probably it. The atmosphere, however, is what makes me love coming in bookshops - any sort of bookshop. In a normal bookshop, the kind where all the books are fresh and bright and new, I love just getting lost looking at the new releases or the promoted books, or going further back into the winding bookshelves to search for their classics and foreign literature sections. I love picking up books and looking at the blurb, or catching a whiff of some of that new book smell as I quickly flip through them to see whether I like the writing style. I love sitting on the floor to arrange the books I wa...

Evasion and Diversion as Manipulation Tactics

So a lot of straight people don't understand why heteronormativity is a bad thing. And my head feels like a mess right now so bear with me if this isn't particularly well-structured. First of all, what is heteronormativity? I use it to mean the idea that heterosexuality is, effectively, the "default setting" for humans, and that by extension MOGAI people are special and different. On the surface, you can see why this would be adopted: somewhere between 95-98% of the population are heterosexual, which is an overwhelming majority. Secondly, why am I moaning about this in the first place? Well, because I think it's harmful. And why do I think it's harmful? Let's start with the definition I just gave: in heteronormativity, heterosexuality is the default, the norm. Boring. You are presumed to be straight. Now, if heterosexuality is the norm, being anything else must be different and weird - and because you're presumed to be straight, you have to make ...

...or what happens after that person you love killed themselves. (Obvious trigger warning for suicide is obvious.) So on tumblr there used to be this post (I can't find it now) that went something like "If, when I committed suicide I could see how it would affect other people and choose whether or not to go through with it, I'd be dead already". If you could see how your suicide affected other people, it would spook you out of trying for a long time. Tumblr isn't always great with mental health help. I have attempted suicide more times than I care to share and witnessed the suicide attempts of people close to me, so I've been on both sides of the discussion and I think I have a fair idea of what I'm talking about. A lot of suicidal people think that if we killed ourselves, our loved ones would be better off. It happens a lot when you're depressed: your self-negativity clouds everything and your low mood isolates you, so you don't feel l...

This post discusses self-harm. You have been warned. I spend a disturbing amount of time in the company of people slightly younger than me (I'm 18). Not much  younger, of course - 15, 16. Old enough to be articulate and form ideas about the world, but not old enough to see as much of it as I have. I really need to get off Tumblr. Anyway, if you remember being 15 or 16, you probably remember being very confused, insecure and angsty. (If you don't, you're either lying to yourself or you lived in a happier time and now I'm jealous of you because I spent my early- and mid-teens being suicidally depressed.) Some of you probably remember showing your angst to others in some pretty horrible ways. I'll now make an obligatory digression so I can say something very important: if you are considering self-harm, I have been there. I have looked at my body and thought "how utterly disgusting, I'm such a poser, I need more scars". I have looked at my body and...

This article is going to be boring, for which I apologise in advance; not everything I write can be interesting and engaging. Indeed, nothing I've written so far actually is. However, as my mother drilled into my head from a very young age and continues to drill into my head today, not everything important is going to grab your attention. So, you're into social justice. You're radical and progressive and all about breaking down systems of oppression. You see the injustice in everything and rail against it with all the righteous fury you can muster. So far, so good, right? I'm not going to pretend that changing the world is simple or easy or produces instant results. I guess a good analogy is water running over a rock: you might think that the rock's just going to stay there, immutable and unmoveable, whether you pour the water over it for one month or one year or even ten years. But perhaps in eleven years' time you can start to see the rock wearing down, and ...

Well, I stuck a slur in the title. Don't read on. There's no hope. Flee from this evil blog. More slurs are incoming. This article is also not particularly friendly to straight people. If you're straight and reading this, chances are that I don't hate you. This is because you're likely to be a complete stranger to me and thus me hating you based on my assumptions is pointless and logically faulty. However, there are straight people out there who do shitty things and I will rant about that without necessarily stopping every 5 minutes to say that not every straight person is like that. When I was growing up, I grew up in an environment where most people were straight. I didn't meet an openly MOGAI person till I was 12. And so I was only vaguely aware of stereotypes: the catty, effeminate gay man, the masculine lesbian, the slutty and almost invisible bisexual. They're something I only really came across when I was older. So I think somewhere at the back of...

As has probably been made abundantly clear over the years, I'm a woman. So I can't speak as anyone other than a woman - and a pretty privileged woman at that. I'm aware that there's a lot I don't see, maybe because I'm not looking hard enough, maybe because there are some things that my perspective on life simply doesn't allow me to see. I am writing this from a very limited and narrow viewpoint and I would be more than happy for others to add to what I've written or to correct what I will inevitably get wrong. I remember facing a lot of pressure to conform to conventional gender roles and gender expressions when I was younger. I had to like shoes and make-up and boys and shopping, and not show my intelligence because none of the boys would like me. I had to be quiet and conventionally feminine instead of being loud, in-your-face, and more than slightly androgynous - allegedly. I stayed being loud, in-your-face, androgynous me and got threatened with a...

I know this is only a little thing compared with such issues as global inequality and people not having access to clean water, but it annoys me. So, this is the 21st century. In the West, things might have a long way to go, but they could be worse. Theoretically, we have a better understanding of the fact that different people think differently, like different things and have different lifestyles. In practice, people still throw hissy fits over the tiniest things, not understanding that in a free and diverse society at least one person is going to do something you disagree with and that there's not very much you can do about it, short of keeling over into authoritarianism. Now, I'm used to people disagreeing with ideas and wishing everyone thought the same. Most people and their mothers do that to some extent - or maybe it's just me holding opinions that cause everyone around me to disagree with me. I can cope with that, because I've grown up with it. And it's n...