Autumnal list-based enthusiasm

In quite a stark contrast to my previous post (which you were all lovely about, you darlings), I thought I'd go for a lighter one this time. Also, I like listing things. Therefore: here are some lists of things that have been particularly excellent lately.

Five tip-top TV shows
Ah, autumn. It's so generous and thoughtful of the television networks to stack the schedules with fabulous shows when it's too cold to go outside.

The Hour

HEY EVERYONE, WATCH THIS SHOW. Series 2 started on Wednesday, and oh sweet lord how I have missed the magnificence of this programme. Set in a 1950s BBC newsroom, it follows Bel (Romola Garai) as head producer of a weekly news show, balancing her commitment to presenting the balanced truth with the pressures of management and the network's restrictions. Her frontman, Hector(Dominic West) is caught up in the whirlwind of new celebrity, while Freddie (Ben Whishaw) - sparky, irresponsible, idealistic journalist; Bel's right hand man, partner in crime, soulmate, etc.- is back from finding himself abroad, sweeping into a co-host role, giving The Hour back its zest.

Series one was staggeringly good - tense, smart, tuned-in, incredibly well-observed, and the three leads have the most preposterously brilliant chemistry. Series two adds to the mix Peter Capaldi as the enigmatic new Head of News Randall Brown (with a gloriously suggestive history with Anna Chancellor's fabulous Lix), and sexy lion* Tom Burke as Bel's rival producer. It's sumptously styled, gorgeously shot and staggeringly well acted, and basically you should all watch it, k?

Parks and Recreation

Anybody who knows me will most likely be sick of me evangelising about this show, but sweet lord it's just the most delightful, charming gift of a TV show - like sunshine distilled into 20 minute bursts. It follows the staff of the parks department of Pawnee city goverment, but basically just deals in awesome friendships, idealistic community work and heart-breakingly gorgeous relationships between adorable bureaucrats. What more could you want?

Fresh Meat

I can't believe I missed out on this show the first time around - I'd heard people taking about how great it was, but only got round to watching series one this month. Which, of course, I fell in love with and binge-watched with hideous speed, before moving onto series two. AT first I thought it was just a silly teen comedy show, but BAM there go the feelings, what with JP's posho daddy issues and everybody starting to lean on each other like a constructed family and oh god I just love these drunken idiots.

Elementary

Elementary is brilliant. It's not a Sherlock rip-off, and deserves none of the derision it has received from certain circles. It's a procedural, but it's smartly written and beautiful to look at. But, of course, the Holmes/Watson dynamic is what matters: and, oof, it's good. Lucy Liu's Watson is unapologeticly herself, taking none of Holmes' shit, and Holmes slowly starts to appreciate her instinct and emotion. Holmes himself is darker, more broken than other interperetations -- he's overwhelmed by his own mind; he's fragile and occasionally callous, but he's learning. Jonny Lee Miller is a marvel (and just preposterously good looking, it's gross).

Guys with Kids

A daft comedy about three dads and their kids? Yeah, it's hardly groundbreaking, but it's fun and sweet and, you guys, Jesse Bradford has a career! You can't imagine how happy this makes me - formative crush Jesse Bradford, on my telly once a week!

Runners up (aka. watch these things too): Modern Family (S4 is stellar so far); The Mindy Project (so charming!); New Girl (just keeps getting better); Me and Mrs Jones (don't talk to me about my Robert Sheehan thing).

Five earworms

McFly -- Love Is Easy. The perfect dreamy pop song (plus a wonderful video).

Charlene Kaye -- Hummingbird Heart. My favourite album track changes almost daily, and it's currently this.

Zooey Deschanel -- Who's That Girl? The sunniest song to ever exist.

The Reindeer Selection -- Whodunnit? Thrown my way by Ed, bringer of all the Scottish-accented goodies.

One Direction -- Kiss You. Shut up.

Five interesting and excellent articles/pieces of writing

Chelsea Fagan, 'I Will Always Care Too Much.

riotrite on Tumblr, 'Misandry Isn't Real, Dudez'

Jen Dziura, 'When Men Are Too Emotional To Have A Rational Argument'

Steven Thompson of NPR, on music snobbery.

Ryan O'Connell, 'The People You Will Fall In Love With In Your Twenties'

Five chunks of eye candy

Yeah, this wouldn't be a proper Hannah blog post without some mild objectification.

Jonny Lee Miller -- situation: critical. He keeps making faces like this and this and I am powerless.

Ben Whishaw -- sexy elf king, talented bastard to boot. Just the most wonderful actor.
Louis Smith -- sambaing me into incoherence. Thank God Sophie is here to share in the #winterofhypocrisy.

Jesse Bradford -- purveyor of formative sexy teeth cleaning; still as handsome and charming as ever.

Dylan O'Brien -- pushes every one of my buttons. Every. Single. One.

Five slices of all-round excellence

-- The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. A video-blog retelling of Pride and Prejudice. Bear with me: it's properly excellent, and everyone is charming and adorable. You'll get addicted, I promise you.

-- This photo of Obama and McKayla Maroney doing the unimpressed face. I just. Beautiful troll president!

-- These poems. Thanks, Sophie <3

-- Nobody hates Twilight more than Robert Pattinson: a roundup.

-- A 24-hour KITTEN CAM I shit you not.

*SUCH A SEXY LION.

On 'political correctness', and trying not to be a dick

"Rape culture is a culture in which people who have survived a violent crime are asked to laugh about it because other people think it’s funny" - Anon*

This post has been kicking around my head for a few months now, changing format and gathering ammo from the dozens of brilliant articles tackling similar issues (no doubt far more articulately than I will here). It's probably going to be full of mistakes and won't be by any stretch of the imagination conclusive, but I needed to try and write things out somehow.

A fair number of my friends take this piss out of me for being Politically Correct. Overly so, apparently. It's got to the point where people will introduce me with 'this is Hannah, she's really PC', and will say questionable things to try and get a rise out of me. Whatever, that's fine, I can deal with that. This blog post isn't a self-piteous "oh man, people are so mean to me when I try to do good, life is so hard", because that would be ridiculous. This is, I hope, my reasoning for being the way I am. I don't want a cookie or a gold star, nor do I deserve one; I just want to have some kind of coherent explanation.

I'm pretty sure political correctness is bullshit, as a concept. People frequently state that, when they're called out on questionable and problematic language, it's "political correctness gone mad", and the culture we live in today is too sensitive and people get offended too easily. BULLSHIT. As this excerpt explains far more eloquently than I can, I see the use of 'PC' language (i.e. not using terms that are racist, sexist, ableist, sizeist, ageist, classist, homo- or trans-phobic, plus other -ists I am no doubt forgetting**) is basically realising that, hey, these words are offensive, and maybe as a person in a privileged position I shouldn't be throwing them around willy nilly. It's not censorship, it's not a violation of freedom of speech, it's the world standing up for itself and asking not to be treated like shit.

Using these words perpetuates a culture in which it's okay to malign minorities; regardless of the intent behind the use of the word, its use still has an effect. Just because you say a word and 'don't mean it in that way' doesn't erase the cultural history of the word actually being meant in that way. Take the Ricky Gervais debacle -- Gervais insisted that his use of ableist terms was harmless, that he was reappropriating a word, that he didn't mean it as an insult. Nope: Gervais isn't in the position to reclaim a word's meaning, and regardless of how clear his own conscience is, it's still using an offensive term where you needn't, and by doing so, implicitly saying that it's okay to do so.

I read Richard Herring's blog post on the whole shebang and rejoiced as he explained my single, overarching opinion on this and similar matters: why not just NOT say the word? It's not a monumental fucking sacrifice to not use a term that a) has absolutely, unequivocally been offensive in the past and b) can and does remain offensive to some people in the present. Don't say it, use another word. It's not that hard. It's not hard AT ALL. We don't lose anything by not saying these words, by not making the inappropriate joke or generalisation, but we might gain an insight into what it's like to treat people fairly, and not contribute to the never-ending shitstorm that so many people face in everyday life.

The usual reaction to this kind of argument is 'but FREEDOM OF SPEECH, I am being CENSORED'. Your freedom to say the douchey thing remains entirely intact, but this does not entail a freedom to do so without people reacting to it, calling you out on it, or being offended. Freedom of speech is incredibly important, but I happen to think that 'don't be a dick' is a better #1 rule. Not being a dick is super easy, and in a small way might make the world a bit nicer - sounds pretty swell to me.

I found this online about two hours after making this post, and just had to add it. (source)

(I see the same argument all the time when people call out -isms in popular culture, too: "oh it's just a TV show/film/book, stop overanalysing it", as if the media culture with which we are saturated has no effect on what we think, say and do. BULLSHIT. Media doesn't exist in a vacuum. Culture matters. Representation matters. Not being a dick matters.)

A good deal of recent articles have dealt with this in reference to rape humour. This article on Jezebel - which I would quite like to etch permanently across the ozone so everyone can read it - articulates the same argument perfectly. See also the quote at the top of this article (when I first read that, it was like a punch in the gut). I have not been sexually assaulted, and therefore it would be twattish of me to joke about it, particularly knowing how frequent sexual assault is, and not knowing whether anybody in the vicinity might be a survivor. This is why jokes about abuse, Jimmy Savile hallowe'en costumes and casually using the word 'rape' in everyday conversation sucks - because the crime itself is a violent, hideous one and, for some people, hearing that could be horribly, horribly triggering and distressing. Same goes for other offensive speech terms.

JUST DON'T SAY IT. IT'S NOT THAT HARD.

Oh god, the more I read this back, the more it really does look like I'm asking to be lifted on high for being morally superior. I promise that is not the case; white saviour-ing is patronising. By trying not to say certain words I'm not better, I'm just trying to be less of a dick - trying being the most important word. I am still a dick. I still use offensive terminology, I still laugh at inappropriate things, but I listen when people speak up, realise what a dick I've been and make an effort to stop. It's not miraculous behaviour, it's basic human decency. I'm not losing out, being censored, or sacrificing anything.

This article about the use of more savvy, less offensive symbols in British Sign Language explains things quite well, too, and highlights the final point of this whole business. Another reactionary argument is "well my [insert minority] friend says that all the time". So they should; as a person in a privileged position (white, middle class, straight, cisgendered) I don't have the right to tell a person in a minority how to behave, but they have the right to tell me, because they're the ones who have suffered. I don't know better, and they do. If someone in a minority isn't offended by a minority-specific term and wants to use it themselves, awesome, but if they are I'll change my behaviour. The onus of responsibility shouldn't be on the victim to not be offended, as suggested by some assholes; it should be on the person in the more powerful position, who is thankfully free from the weight of centuries of oppression to not perpetuate it***. Because it's not a sacrifice for us, it really isn't. It's easy.

It's tough when someone calls you out on being a dick. It sucks. But it sucks much less than constantly hearing offensive and cruel language that can just as easily be not said, and having to consistently explain why it sucks to hear/read such language. Just because you used a racist term doesn't make you a racist, but it also doesn't mean you can't listen when someone tries to explain why using the racist term is pretty awful anyway. So suck it up, say sorry, and make a bit of fucking effort to be less of a dick. 

And that's why I can be prickly, annoying, whiny, whatever you want to call me. I'm a dick, and I'm trying to be less of one.

"Using a word which you know to be politically or socially volatile, and then saying ‘pff, it’s just a word, cool down guys’ is a bit like letting off fireworks in the high street and going ‘hey, it’s just explosives, it’s not my fault if someone gets in the way’" - Mark Watson

[This post doesn't nearly cover everything I want it to, but hey if anybody wants to talk about this more, hit me up - talking things through is amazingly good at helping me realise exactly what my opinions are any why.]

EDIT: as a friend rightly pointed out, the original version of this post used the word 'lame', which is ableist language. I really am a dick. I've now removed it, and I am so sorry.

*and by 'Anon', I mean 'one of those quotes that circulates on tumblr so I don't know who said it first'. If you do, let me know and I shall happily credit it.

**And by PC language, what I DON'T mean is the ridiculous insistence that "you're not allowed to sing Baa Baa Black Sheep in schools any more" and othersuch straw man arguments. We all know those instances are absurd and rare, stop bringing them up.

***This explains things quite neatly. 

----

A few more links that may prove interesting, and are related to this whole topic here, here, here, here, here and oh god there's thousands I can't link to them all but everything is super interesting and important and just read everything, k?

Baby's First Conference

WELL. I thought post-dissertation life would mainly involve luxuriating in front of the TV watching endless repeats of Murder She Wrote, but it turns out to be even busier than before!

Alongside PhD applications, conference abstracts, and discussing potential teaching opportunities, I have started a new job; I'm now Project Officer for the Temporal Co-ordination in Communication project run jointly by York and Cambridge universities. My role sounds far more fancypants than it actually is, but basically I am working on gesture and rhythm in speech, and analysing audio and visual data in various ways to investigate how participants negotiate communication using both their voices and bodies. It's SUPER interesting, and I'm enjoying it immensely - I learn about eight thousand new things a day, and working on an actual linguistics research project is the most amazing opportunity.

Wednesday saw my lovely bestie Becky visit Grand Old York, and we had a fabulous time getting spontaneous piercings, exploring the city and the Minster and such (I love any opportunity to go Full Tourist; despite living here for a year, it never gets boring), and kicking through bright autumn leaves like the big kids we are. Subsequently joined by Ed, we all later prepared my house for a Hallowe'en party which went off wonderfully*, with costumes ranging from the typical (ghosts, skeletons, etc.) through a-typical (Caeser, Alice Cooper), to the quite magnificent (a zom-bee, from an apiologist friend). My offering was Daphne from Scooby Doo**:

Jinkies

Following a fantastic few days (and a discombobulating trip around Illuminating York, which you honestly couldn't have thought up unless you were in some kind of trippy fever dream), a different Becky and I headed off to Manchester for the New Researchers Forum in Linguistics, where we would both be presenting our MA research.

I've never been to a conference before, let alone presented at one, so the whole experience was terrifyingly exhilarating. I learnt a staggering amount (with several of the talks being directly relevant to my work, which was incredible), met some truly wonderful people I very much hope to see again, and according to Sam, did my first conference 'properly' i.e. went out to the pub the night before giving my presentation.

My talk had run long every single time I did it, but I think the nerves of the day brought out my usual, jabbery self and I garbled my way through it just on time without missing out too many important points. Questions were helpful and not too intimidating, and people were wonderfully lovely about the whole thing. I know I have a tendency to a) ramble and b) flail about, so it's good to know people got the jist despite my ridiculousness.

Giving it my best presentation face (photo by Becky).

I think the best bit about the weekend was just being able to casually chat about, amongst other things, linguistics and language with like-minded, lovely folk who are just as keen-beany as I am. Glorious. I can see why conferences are so addictive!

One final thing that came from the weekend was a sprawling Twitter-based game of #linguistmovies, which spread into #linguistsongs, and got so fun I decided to collect everything together here - a page which will no doubt be constantly extended, as we continue to furiously procrastinate from our real work by making terrible/excellent puns. Hell yeah, linguists.

*even with the presence of a Jimmy Savile costume, despite my assurance that I wouldn't let anybody in if they were dressed up like him. Not big or clever, guys.

**I'm more of a Velma myself, but my hair is the right colour for Daph.

#BOOM

I am very sorry in advance for the tone of this post, which will be quite shamelessly giddy and slightly bragging, but please do allow me this little immodesty.

MA Linguistics, with Distinction

WELL THAT'S A BIT EXCITING.

Having had a weekful of sleepless nights and anxiety attacks waiting for my results to come out*, we were finally told our dissertation results on Friday. I was shaking like a leaf logging into e:vision, and promptly burst into tears upon finding out I'd managed to get the Distinction I was so, so hoping for.

Basically my reaction. For reals.

My dissertation was a little bit of a risk; there was little background, and the phenomenon I was investigating was entirely unattested. And thank the sun, moon, stars and cosmos it all worked out. This is so far beyond anything I could have imagined that I still haven't quite been able to process it.

So, yeah, I'm basically over the moon! This year has been both the best and worst of my life in parts, and I'm just so happy to have something to show for it, something I'm immensely proud of. And, of course, I am incredibly grateful for everybody who helped me stay sane; friends, teachers, counsellors, and my amazing family.

And now comes the next step; PhD applications are in the offing, and I'm presenting my dissertation at the Manchester Salford New Researchers Forum in Linguistics in a couple of weeks, my first conference. Both terrifying prospects, but incredibly exciting, and I feel so lucky to be where I am right now.

Onwards!

*Remember Little Miss Academic Insecurity? Yeah, this time of year is where that kicks into overdrive and starts to affect me physically as well as mentally. Fun times!

Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare's Globe, 13th October 2012

Oof, I do love theatre. Next to linguistics, it is the light of my life. Compared to last summer, where I practically lived in London and overdosed on the stuff, this summer has been pitifully theatre-bare (pissing all your money away on an MA and then spending your summer writing a thesis for said MA kind of shoots any kind of recreational theatre horse right in the face*). However, I made sure to book for The Globe's closing weekend the day the tickets went on sale -- last night performances always have that something special about them, a kind of exuberant frenzy tinged with sadness from the cast and creatives, and in a theatre like The Globe, that's all the more electric.

Following a thoroughly excellent housewarming party at our new abode, I tore myself out of bed and just about managed a five-hour coach journey to London with a stonking hangover (remind me again why I continue to drink wine?), but was cured by the fresh yet biting October cold, the presence of Emma, and a little hair of the dog.

Classing it up with melon martinis

After a thorough deconstruction of the recent terrible life choices of Team Shameless, we wandered Globewards, queued for a time, and got a sweet spot thrust-left alongside Sophie, Jo, Jan, Rhian, and Rob, living proof that people you meet on the Internet are uniformly excellent.

Our first show of the weekend was The Taming of the Shrew. Though I know the text, I've never seen a production before and have heard that, pitched poorly, it can be DIRE, being one of the most problematic of Shakey's plays to transfer to a modern, enlightened audience. This production, however, overcame any and every issue with the text, resulting in a sparky, filthy, hilarious and gorgeous rendering of the play which left me giggling and delighted for the whole next day.

The onus of responsibility for pulling off a good Taming is going to rest on your leads, and Samantha Spiro and Simon Paisley-Day carried it brilliantly, fizzling with chemistry from their very first moment, and managing the tricky textual relationship between the lovers perfectly. Their Kate and Petruchio were swaggering, kinky and super hot for each other (without betraying their own integrity), and there something about a height difference that makes a Kate/Petruchio dymanic all the more delicious (see also: Rufus Sewell and Shirley Henderson in Shakespeare ReTold).

Height difference!

The 'taming' scenes, where Kate bends to Petruchio's will were played like a game, with Kate indulging her husband very knowingly - a fantastic way of interpreting the script. This Kate has always had to act up to get even the slightest bit of fair treatment, that's all she knows, and this Petruchio sees that and wants to change her for her, not his own gain. Fabulous.

(Also, Simon Paisley Day spends a goodly amount of this production in a thong-codpiece. Props to him for braving the cold, and for having some killer hipbones.)

The younger, flightier Bianca and Lucentio were adorably interpereted by Sarah MacRae and Joseph Timms; the former adding fantastic, calculated cruelness to the textually weak sister, and the latter being the most puppy-eyed, giddy-hearted sap you could hope to see. The entire supporting cast were faultless, adding tiny slivers of comedy to nearly every line and filling the stage with a cheeky exuberance which left you feeling scandalised - in a good way.

Even with such strong leads, two of the supporting roles were absolute scene-stealers. Tom Godwin's Biondello was brimming with rakish charm, twinkly-eyed asides and hilarious physical comedy. From miming the contents of a letter to book-carrying and wielding a sword, everything was executed hilariously and on-point. Jamie Beamish played a beaming (no pun intended), ridiculous Tranio whose exaggerated everything had us consistently in stitches - whenever he, Timms and Godwin shared a scene I swear my face hurt from grinning so hard.

This photo had to be embiggened, for facial expression reasons.

Special mention should also go to Pearce Quigly, whose lackadaisical, snarky Grumio was a thing of beauty, and who managed to make kicking a bucket the most spectacular joke of the night.

Throw into the mix some glorious music, typically gorgeous costuming and a beautifully tender ending and you're left with several hundred raucously cheering theatregoers. All in all, a tremendous stonker of a show with buckets of vibrancy and even more heart. The Globe at its best**.

*That metaphor kind of got away from me there.
**I do think The Globe owes me some recompense for the fact that I shall never be able to get the incredibly catchy Cuckoo's Nest song from my head, mind. However, if you've been standing for three hours watching a show, imitating supernumerary Robert Heard's brilliant 'Cuckoo's Nest Wiggle' is great for the spine.

Doctor Who, Series 7, episodes 1-4

I cannot lie, a second, sneaky reason for reinvigorating this blog was as a place for tellyfeelings, because - lo! - it is Autumn, which brings the best of all the television and more and more reasons not to leave the house. Strictly Come Dancing! Downton Abbey*! The Thick of It! Parks and Recreation! Elementary! New Girl! Spy! And a million and one other new and returning shows delighting (and occasionally frustrating) my eyeballs.

Most of my current feelings come, as always, from Doctor Who, which remains the show of my soul. (I wouldn't have it any other way - I honestly hope I never grow out of it.) And so, here's some brief thinky thoughts about Series 7 so far:

Asylum of the Daleks
An interesting season opener, but rife with flaws and frustrations. Really enjoyed the idea of a Dalek asylum, and having other species suffering from PTSD, even a species with famously little emotion. Oswin was a darling, and I am thoroughly excited to see how it works out with her character, timey-wimey-wise. (There were a billion plot holes and things that will need explaining, but - sigh - this is what we are used to.) Regardless, Jenna Louise Coleman is precious, and I'm always excited for a new companion. I just hope Moffat does her justice.

Alas, the episode was thoroughly sullied by the ridiculousness of the Amy/Rory dynamic. It was, in short, bullshit, and made them both look like idiots: Amy for not voicing her feelings, and Rory for playing the martyr card yet again. And, really, in this day and age, would a young couple who can't naturally have children seriously not think of other avenues - adoption, fostering, surrogacy, IVF, or - I don't know - not having children? It cheapened their relationship, and drove me fucking nuts. A shame, really, because the rest of the episode was decent.

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship
I've read mixed reviews of this one, but I am firmly on the 'loved it' side. It was, as Hector puts it, "sheer, calculated silliness"; a good old jaunt full of spacey-wacey, timey-wimey ridiculousness. And DINOSAURS. What's not to love? Of course, the random addition of Queen Nefertiti and silver fox Rupert Graves (who probably had a character name, but it escapes me) was daft, but the whole thing was sweet and fun and lovely. Brian Pond was a delightful addition (how could a character played by Mark Williams not be?), and his mini-arc was absolutely gorgeous, bringing several tears to my eyes. All in all, not a groundbreaking episode, but charming all the same.

A Town Called Mercy
Toby Whithouse is a reliably excellent writer (still not over how awesome The God Complex was), and this was no exception. A really thought-provoking episode with solid plot and characterisation, and a good old moral dilemma. The wild west was gorgeously portrayed, Adrian Scarborough was - again - reliably brilliant, and it tapped into some aspects of the Doctor's psyche (guilt about the Time War, never wielding weapons, what to do when a bad guy's also a good guy, etc.) which have been lately untapped. The Ponds were a little superfluous, but overall it was excellent.

The Power of Three
WARNING: feelings ahead. Absolutely my favourite episode of the series so far. I've heard people criticise it for its lack of plot, so I'll tackle that first. I admit, the resolution was hasty and hand-wavy, but the underlying plot was really solid -- the idea of a slow invasion, one that encourages people to trust the invadee, is excellent, and I thought the whole 'we need to stop humanity before they colonise space' was a brilliant observation (which, I concede, would benefit from being explored properly), and one that reflects cleverly upon our nasty tendency to stick a flag in things and call them ours. (Also, can we have more Kate Stewart in the future, please? Because awesome.)

However, this episode wasn't really about the plot. It was ALL about the characterisation. Oh, and what characterisation it was! In the new series, we haven't explored the dynamic of having the companions gradually fade from the Doctor's life of their own accord; Martha left, but succinctly, and otherwise it has been a swift memory wipe** or banishment to a parallel universe which has signalled the end of a partnership. I liked that Amy and Rory came to realise, enjoy and stand up for the importance of their everyday lives, and build a normality that wasn't based around the Doctor - it's important for their characters.

And the Doctor's reaction was beautifully explored. The scene on the Thames, "you're the first face this face saw, and you're seared onto my hearts" - oh my soul, just gorgeous. He's so used to being the dazzler, the one everybody runs to, that he never quite realised that he runs to people too, that he needs them. And Amy in particular has always been this little girl fascinated by him -- she was the girl who waited, and he's finding it hard to deal with the fact that she doesn't want to wait any more.

And yet, they make such a wonderful team - while Amy and the Doctor have a special bond, Rory is fully integrated into the ~gang, as demonstrated by the badassery of this shot***:

Sauce

Ach, it was just a perfect example of the Doctor/Amy/Rory dynamic - the Ponds and their temperamental space toddler. (To some extent, they really have brought him up!) Of course, this comes but a week before what promises to be a gut-wrenching finale full of woe. But for the moment I'm happily not listening, and am just basking in what was a bloody excellent episode.

*Downton may get its own post, which will mainly be made up of 'WHEN DID THIS SHOW GET GOOD' written over and over again.

**Still bitter.

***Don't even get me started on how good Arthur Darvill looks this series. Your hair looks sexy pushed back, etc.

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Were this blog a real-life book, I would be dragging it out from under my bed and blowing dust off the cover. I have been spectacularly neglectful recently; dissertation-madness can take most of the blame, but in general it has been the most spectacularly awful two months*. Heartbreak! Family illness! Everyone I love having emotional breakdowns and crises at the same time! etc. etc. moan whinge.

I am only allowing myself the briefest of whines about all this gumph, however, because the whole damn point of this blog post is change! Newness! Epiphanies! I have one more week until I move into my new house for the year with a lovely bunch of new and old friends, and I am so ready for a change I can't even tell you. New house, new academic year, new ventures - I'm currently looking for work in York, while I spend the year applying for PhD schemes and funding. Really looking forward to getting to know new people, developing new skills and having a bit of a brain break. (Not too much, mind. I'm presenting at the Manchester Salford New Researchers Forum in Linguistics in November - aaaaaah!)

In amongst all the ANGST of the past few months, I have found both solace and eternal frustration in my dissertation, which I submitted eight days ago.

It liiiives.

My preeeecious. Good lord it's terrifying thinking that someone may currently by hacking at this with a red pen, cackling wildly at my terrible prose and ludicrous ideas. I'm working on a blog post that will (hopefully) explain the content of the thesis in non-linguisticky terms, so I will refrain from doing that now, but it has been a labour of love getting it done, and - much as I'm worried about the impending judgement - I'm proud of it.

The MA has finished with a fizzle rather than a bang. Variable deadlines, people going on holiday and a general bereft melancholy that has beset us all has meant that there wasn't really a definitive ending to the whole thing. The finicky time between submitting and moving house has been filled with seeing people before they leave, museum-visiting and frantic job-applying. I feel really lucky that I've made great friends with people from various far-flung corners of the world this year, and hope to visit lots of them in the future. Today's particularly tearful goodbye was to Ali and Bri, two wonderful, wonderful girls who have made this year immeasurably better. You know people are friends for life when they screech AVPM songs with you at 2am <3

And today? Today I have fallen in love with cycling. I bought some roller blades a couple of months ago; I was always more of a skatey child than a bikey one, so wanted to reignite my love of skating. I did, but the pavements and roads around York and prohibitively bad (cobbles! *shakes fist*), and it just wasn't viable to use it as a method of transportation. I'm going to keep skating recreationally, but I bought Ali's bike from her to give that a go instead.

IT'S WONDERFUL. I now wish I'd had a bike this year - I was so worried I'd be bad after so many years off, but, whaddya know, riding a bike really IS like riding a bike! I fancied getting out of the house today, so I cycled off with no particular destination in mind, and ended up accidentally cycling about 20 miles altogether! Around local villages, up and down the Ouse, and the whole Solar System route, all in beautiful sunshine, taking in the most wonderful Yorkshire scenery. My thighs may not forgive me tomorrow, and I am already suffering from sore butt syndrome, but it was such a wonderful way to spend and afternoon. I returned quite invigorated :)

Cycle-weary, but sunshiney happy.

At the final solar system point - Pluto. Still a planet, dammit!

More regular blog posts, including (I hope) more cycling adventures, to come!

*I appreciate I haven't updated since the end of May, but shh.

On Stoke, and a change of heart

Here are two facts about me:

1. I grew up in Newcastle-under-Lyme, a small town right next to Stoke-on-Trent.
2. I used to be ashamed of this first fact.

And a third.

3. I'm no longer ashamed of the first fact, but I am ashamed of the second.

I'm from Stoke. I'm not really a Stokie, nor will I ever be, really, but I'm sick of being embarrassed by my hometown, and I'm angry with myself for having been so in the past. I've had what you might call a minor epiphany, of late, and have realised that a lot of the resentment I held towards Stoke as a city was wrapped up in my own, under-the-surface classism and prejudice, something I'm hoping to rid myself of in the future. Here's hoping this is the start of it.

To provide a bit of history/geography, Stoke-on-Trent is a city in the North West Midlands of the UK, approximately equidistant from Manchester in the North and Birmingham in the South, not far from Crewe and Alton Towers*. 

Look, there it is!

Notable Stokies include the novelist Arnold Bennett; Edward Smith, Captain of the Titanic; footballer Stanley Matthews; Slash from Guns n Roses (for the first five years of his life, anyway); and - of course - Robbie Williams**. It's quite unique in its construction, being a conurbation of six towns - Burslem, Tunstall, Hanley, Fenton, Longton and Stoke*** - which also means it has a complex identity and fragmented sense of self, juxtaposed with a strong sense of local pride.

Historically, it has always been an industrial centre, surrounded by moorlands. Its pottery, mining and steel industries were some of the best in the country, with Wedgewood pottery being its most prominent and impressive export. However, recession and the Conservative government of the 80s led to much of this being closed or downsized - a huge hit for the city's economy. It's never quite recovered.

Perhaps owing to a combination of its faltering industry, lack of 'historic' and stereotypically pleasant architecture and portrayal in the media (as well as other factors), Stoke is often used as a shorthand for non-affluence, dreariness and/or unpleasantness. For example, in Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe, he described a video game which depicted a post-apocalyptic landscape strewn with dead bodies and toxic waste, and likened it to 'living in Stoke'. The amount of times, when telling people I'm from Stoke, I've been greeted with sighs of patronising pity, is really quite ridiculous.

Thing is, I used to buy into it, too. I was embarrassed. Stoke isn't pretty - it's not York or Durham or Cambridge. And it's not a new, thriving urban centre like Manchester or Sheffield. It's stagnant, it's struggling, and it's deprived. It has poor levels of heathcare, a high number of families relying on benefits, and was recently listed as the eighth poorest place in the UK. Football-related violence and BNP support are rife and widely-reported**** in the area. But I've realised that doesn't make it a bad place and doesn't make its people any lesser, nor does it justify a) my being embarrassed by it, or b) people openly mocking it.

I don't claim to be working class - to say would be appropriative and stupid. I may have been mocked by my Southern friends for not trying pesto until I was 18, but I had a middle-class, comfortable upbringing, which is not the case for many people in Stoke. There is an inextricable link between working class origins and violence, low intelligence and laziness, a link perpetuated by the media, and by the inherent classism that many middle class people carry with them. This isn't the place to get into social disenchantment, but the coverage of the London riots displays it perfectly - a generation of people left stranded by their government driven to extremes, yet brushed off with statements about yob culture and poor familial discipline.

It makes me quite disgusted with myself to admit this, but I think my rejection of being from Stoke has a lot to do with my need to detach myself from the city's poor reputation. While I don't think it's the 'working class'-ness specifically that I rejected, the stigma of being from Stoke always annoyed me, and I tried my hardest to disassociate myself. Going to University, the majority of people around you are new and excitingly middle-class, so any opportunity to have a quick laugh at my awful home town was embraced, without me realising that I was perpetuating the horrid stereotypes myself, and adding to the barrage of classism people face day-in, day-out.

Visiting recently has given me a much-needed punch in the face when it comes to my mocking of Stoke. Having read more on classism and prejudice, I realised how awful my own actions were, and how horribly haughty and stuck-up I'd been each time I'd looked down upon people who live in Stoke. I'm absolutely no better than anybody who lives there, and to think otherwise is to have a sense of my own self-importance that is beyond measure. Hideous.

I'm reminded of Jane Austen's Emma, where the eponymous hero mocks the 'tiresome' and lowly Mrs Bates, and is thoroughly chastised by Mr Knightley. 'She should secure your compassion, not your contempt!' Knightley angrily cries, admonishing Emma for thinking herself so above Mrs Bates, who is financially hard-done-by and considered ridiculous by higher society. That's precisely the case with me and Stoke. Stoke has had a bloody hard time of it, and continues to do so. It's not pretty, it's not affluent, and it's not the cultural capital of the country, but mocking it is cruel and unnecessary. It gets a hard enough time as it is - I should be defending it, helping somehow, not tearing it down even further. By speaking poorly of it on such a regular basis, particularly as a native, I'm only perpetuating the awful stereotypes it is associated with, and furthering its poor treatment by the public, a treatment wrapped up in classism and prejudice.

The accent

One of the most salient stigmas I distanced myself from was the accent. I remember being about seven and coming home from school, talking to my mum about a book. The general vowel for the 'oo' in book in the North of England is [ʊ], like the vowel in full; in Stoke, however, it's often pronounced as [u:] like the vowel in cool. When I told my mum about the bewk I'd read, she told me I wasn't to say it like that, that it was wrong, and that I should say buck, luck and cuck. I've said that ever since, and have often cringed when people did otherwise, and have looked down upon the Stoke accent, thinking it common or improper.

I was a fucking idiot, as I have later realised. Many years of linguistic study has made me realise that, no matter how many times people say that there is a correct way to speak (and believe me, people say it A LOT), no accent is intrinsically better than another. They are only judged as 'better' because of the arbitrary associations between location, accent and personal characteristics, and the rise of the Southern 'standard'. I repeat: NO ACCENT IS INTRINSICALLY BETTER AT THE JOB OF COMMUNICATING THAN ANY OTHER. It's that simple. People will say that some accents sound ugly, stupid, or wrong, and they are of course entitled to their opinion, but it's important to understand that such opinions come from years of ingraining prescriptivism into our collective consciousness.

That's why I'm hoping to study the Stoke accent in detail - for a variety with so much idiosyncrasy, connection to identity and stigma attached to it, there's been very little academic linguistic analysis going on. I'm looking at a specific feature for my MA dissertation, and - with a lot of luck and hard work - I hope to use my potential PhD to document, explore and understand the complex relationship between the city's accent, its residents, and the general public.

In my own, quite pathetic way, these projects are like my love letter to Stoke. They're not going to change the world, but I hope that, in a small way, I'll be able to contribute to softening some of the stereotypes people have about Stoke, and I can make amends with the city who, for better or worse, made me who I am.

You're damn right I do.

----------

*I add in these details because, notoriously, nobody knows where Stoke actually is, and I've had to use some or all of these descriptions when trying to explain its location in the past. It comes from being part of the forgotten, unspecified Midlands, I think, combined with not being a notable visiting/tourist destination. Most people's reaction tends to be 'yeah, I went through the there on the train.'

**Definitely our most famous alumnus, it was originally pretty cool to be associated with Robbie, and to be able to tell people I once served his mum in Boots (claim to fame!!1!). I think we tend to play down the association since 'Do The Rudebox' came out. You understand. I'm listening to Escapology as I finish this post -- why did you fire Guy Chambers, Rob? Whyyyy?

***Bennett's 'Anna of the Five Towns' comes from this - he decided to omit one, because it sounded better with five.

****While the tone of this article is often frustratingly patronising, it accurately sheds light on why the citizens of an ailing city, let down by Labour and staunchly anti-Conservative, often drift towards the far right.

Teacher appreciation LIFE

This post had been kicking around in my drafts for about a week, when yesterday I discovered that today is National Teacher Appreciation day. What serendipity! And so, here is a waffly blog post about teaching, and why teachers are tip-top humans.

'Those who can, do. Those who can't do, teach.' And those who trot out this old adage can get stuffed. Those who give enough of a shit that they devote their lives to enabling others to do, teach. Teachers are heroes, inspiration, the best of people. I know it's clichéd, and I'm sure repeated watchings of Mona Lisa Smile* have given me an even more romantic view of teaching, but I know without a shadow of a doubt that I wouldn't be where I am without the effort, support and general brilliance of several staggeringly excellent teachers. Yeah, I'm passionate about learning, and about linguistics specifically, but if through random happenstance I'd not progressed through my schooling having been taught by the people I was, I'm not entirely sure I would be this excited, this driven, this in love with studying.

**

At my high school, every single student between years seven and nine was terrified of Mr Taylor. He was a force of nature, and everyone knew not to cross him, lest face his wrath. And what a wrath it was - he could stand inches from your face and bellow at you, never faltering, almost sinister in his eloquence. Thankfully, this never happened to me, but I saw it many a time, and that was more than enough to stop me crossing him. Of course, it didn't help that Mr Taylor was also a PE teacher, and thus his yelling was also heard on freezing November afternoons as we did cross-country running (or as it was more commonly known, institutionalised torture). Basically, we were shit-scared of the man.

Then came GCSE English, and Mr Taylor was assigned our set. It was like knowing a different man. Mr Taylor smiled, laughed and joked his way through our lessons, vibrant and hilarious but still with an incomparable command of the class (probably from the residual fear that he'd explode - the man crafted his reputation well). He encouraged critical thought, pushed us to be better, but mainly let us feed off his enjoyment of the subject, of poetry and prose, of literary history.

I remember his teaching of Second World War literature in particular. I can recall his explaining the translation of "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori"; needing us to understand the terrible irony of the 'glories of war' was incredibly important to him. And the pause, during Wilfred Owen's Disabled, after he read 'In the old times, before he threw away his knees' -- I've never quite been able to shake the power of that line, and I think the pain in his reading of it is the reason. He cared so much, about history and suffering and the importance of art and literature in allowing a generation who never had to live through it to understand, to appreciate what came before them, and how we're able to live so well now.

As is a pattern with all of these teachers, I was a bit of a pet to Mr Taylor. Not because I was particularly academically adept, but I spoke up in class, and went to him for extra help. He used his lunchbreak to gently dissect a piss-awful poem I wrote and help me to draft another (to this day, I remain a piss-awful poet, but he did help), and another to calm me when I freaked out about reading the bit in Great Expectations where Mrs Havisham catches fire and dies, and to read that section through with me, making sure I was okay after every few lines. We also bonded over being Manchester City fans, and thus started my long career of pretending to know more about football than I actually do. At one parents' evening, as my folks sat down at his desk, he said 'Hannah's doing fine - so, did you see the match last night?' and proceeded to talk to my dad about City for fifteen minutes.

When we left year 11, he wrote the whole class a poem (still pinned to my noticeboard), which contained a line for each of us. He also wrote individual poems for a few of us, and I can remember mine off-by-heart, even now.

Hannah Leach
A blue
Good for you
Stay true
To your calling

Hannah Leach
The beach
Lies across the water
Don't do what you think
Do what you ought to
And the sun lounger will be yours

I hope I never forget that.

We went back to see Mr Taylor a few times after leaving school, but haven't been in over a year now. I hope I get to see him again, but more than that, I hope he knows the lasting effect he had on our class. (I'm realising this is getting a bit Dead Poets Society all up in here. I promise none of these stories end with a classmate shooting themselves and a bunch of us standing on tables.)

To complete the picture, a school-aged Han (who apparently only had one photo-pose)

**

Then came college. In my second year, I studied English Language and Literature with the same teacher - Stewart McNicol. Here again was a a teacher who gave a shit, who was interested and interesting, and a little bit weird. He taught us about diphthongs by talking about hyaenas, schooled us in l337 speak, and littered child language acquisition lessons with anecdotes about teaching his infant son the word 'meteorologist' so he'd look super smart when anybody asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. He just enjoyed it.

Stoo also invented McNicol's Gallery of Tedious Anthropomorphism, a new instalment of which greeted us nearly every lesson, and elicited a welcome chuckle.

One of the things I remember most clearly is, when talking about books written for children and their simplified syntax, I spontaneously quoted Black Books without thinking - 'look in the alligator's mouth: it's not there either!' Being met with stony, confused silence from my fellow classmates, Stoo finished the quote - 'we all drank lemonade, the end!' - simultaneously a) making me feel like less of a moron, and b) cementing himself as teacher-type extraordinaire.

Since leaving college, Stoo has been kind enough to help me complete my undergraduate dissertation, giving up his free time for naught more than a bag of Tangfastics. Actually, considering he follows me on Twitter, there's every chance he's reading this sycophantic waffle right now. If so, cheers, Stoo!

**

My lucky streak extended into University, where I was fortunate enough to be taught by some cracking linguists, many of whom had paved the field of linguistics in the first place. (I still get a frisson of excitement when I see a book and think 'the author of that book taught me!') Specifically, I was particularly felicitous to be taught extensively by Kevin Watson. While I loved English Language at A Level, it was my three years at Lancaster University that saw me actually fall head-over-heels in love with Linguistics, and Kevin had a LOT to do with that. Here again was a teacher who radiated enthusiasm for the subject, who took pride in the field, and who was sure of its importance and relevance.

Kevin also supervised me through my dissertation, and the man deserves a MEDAL for putting up with me. One time, having gotten nowhere with an assignment for a course he didn't even teach, he sat quietly by as I cried and waffled about the Turkish noun data in front of me that just didn't make any sense god dammit, and calmly told me that I just needed to read a bit further and think a bit harder, and - lo and behold! - having found the right book in the library, it all finally clicked. He made me feel like I could actually do something in this field, make an impact, and do it well.

Beyond that, he's just a damn good teacher. Eloquent without being confusing, clear without being patronising. And, sharing a common thread with the other brilliant teachers I've mentioned, he gave a shit. He cared.

And a uni-aged Han (no seriously, why do I only have one pose/expression when a camera is pointed at me?)

 **

There have been times where I've felt more of a nuisance than a pupil, and generally discouraged from doing anything innovative, challenging, or left-field. Instead, I've felt encouraged to sit back, take the easy option, to not really try. It happens, and while I don't blame certain teachers for occasionally being this way (teachers have bad moods too!), it can be disheartening.

I've been struggling, lately, feeling a little lost academically. And then last week, I had a brilliant meeting with an MA lecturer, who - yet again - seemed to give a shit, and who encouraged me not to abandon my ideas. Good teachers make me I feel like I can do stuff, and do it well. I now have to actually do the stuff, of course, but the encouragement I've received throughout my academic career has been absolutely invaluable.

Teachers are heroes, and a good teacher can make a cosmos of difference.

*I knowww, it's terrible, but it's so pretty! And their faces! And the clothes!

Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside

I am British. As such, when I experience freak, out-of-season sunshine, I roll up my trousers, throw on my douchebag sunglasses and defiantly bake myself. 'It's March!' the haterz cry, 'March, you fools!', yet I push my fingers into my ears and chime 'la la la I'm not listening' as my pale, pale skin pinkens within five minutes of seeing the sun.

Yes, for the last week we've been experiencing a HEATWAVE. I should, by all rights, dislike the sun, being the palest of pale Janets who burns preposterously easily, but as soon as the sun comes out I'm infected with SPRING FEVER, wherein I listen to happy-clappy folk music non-stop, skip in public and beam at strangers. I don't dislike the late-in-year seasons, but spring and summer are my favourites, and make me even more giddily enthusiastic than I already am. Which is saying something.

Caught up in the spirit of the sunshine, Becky and I decided that we very much needed to sack of any work we should have been doing and hotfoot it to the seaside. Enlisting Alex, Jamie and Ellen, we got an early train to Scarbrorough on Thursday morning, and spent the day being achingly touristy and embarrassing, and loving every second.

After eating our lunch on the beach at 10.30am (deciding early on that we were totally buying fish and chips later on), we steadfastly refused to move from the sand as the day took its sweet time heating up. (Hoodies on the beach - yeah, we did the whole, clichéd shebang.) Cheering when the sun finally showed its face, we proceeded to play tick, leapfrog and show off our manifold gymnastics skillz.

Y M C A!

Y O R K!

We then preceded to eat our bodyweight in seaside-y treats (fish and chips, ice-cream, doughnuts, rock), before making the sensible decision that we should swim in the North Sea. In March. Yup, five postgrad students thought that would be a good idea. We managed about half an hour of intermittently running in and out of the water and screaming bloody murder as it froze our respective reproductive organs, which was a thoroughly enjoyable endeavour despite it making our skin actually burn with the cold.

My cornea-burning fashion sense: let me show you it.

Sunny, smiley beachfolk.

It was basically the most delightful of days, spent with the most delightful of people, and was the perfect break from the essay madness that has been clutching us in its grasp. One assignment down, with another to go, plus two exams and a dissertation proposal to prepare for, it's been heavy duty, of late. But with seaside sojourns as joyful as this one a possibility, I realise how lucky and happy I am right now.

Linguistic smack talk: it's a thing.

This is going to make sense to approximately nobody, but I needed to document the GLORIOUS SASS of the linguistics article I am currently reading.

Basically, in 1989, a bunch of linguists discussed and voted on revisions to the International Phonetic Alphabet, and as such some new symbols were added, while some existing ones were changed, and others dispensed with entirely.

Geoffrey Pullum, prominent linguist and scholar, had some stuff to say about these revisions, and - boy - is he not one to mince his words. He wrote a piece* for the Journal of the International Phonetic Association expressing just what he thought about the proposals, and (indirectly) those who supported/rejected them.

He starts by telling us how his article will be laid out:

'Following two standard practices that are in fact objected to on phonetic grounds by many phoneticians, I will organise these notes by pretending that there are such things as clearly identifiable segments, and that among these segments there is a clear distinction between consonants and vowels.'

People who believe in the tangible segmentation of speech sounds? What imbeciles! God, I love that this dig is so unnecessary, and SO sassy. 'Let's just pretend for a second, in some crazy, imaginary world, that the ideas of 'consonant' and 'vowel' even exist. Come on, kids, let's play. LET'S MAKE BELIEVE.'

'It is unfortunate for the IPA to have had to introduce no fewer than eight new letter shapes for a set of sounds that are so rare ... But it is done.'

I am sobbing, this guy is the best. 'You guys just do whatever, see if I care. I mean, your idea is STUPID, but whatever, it's your funeral.'

'A long-standing movement to introduce a symbol for a (fully) open central vowel (a turned small capital A is the symbol of choice for this faction) raised its head once more again and was defeated once again. Students of the deja vu will be amused to note that the first known move  to get an open central vowel ordained was in 1907.'

Students of the deja vu! I honestly could not love him more. Also of note: the sassy use of the term 'faction' for the pro-open-central-vowel types, which for some reason makes me think of an underground sect holding hands and chanting 'aaaaaaa'**

'The [ɶ] symbol for Cardinal 12 survived - the unusable in pursuit of the unspeakable, as Oscar Wilde might have said, since Cardinal 12 is an unpronounceable contradiction in terms with jaws fully open and lips rounded. Perhaps one day it can be acoustically synthesised so we can hear it uttered as nature never intended.'

STOP IT, I CANNOT HANDLE HOW GLORIOUSLY BITCHY YOU ARE. Invoking Oscar Wilde! Imagining hypothetical futures to prove your point! Messing with common idioms to add extra sass! I think I love you.

The end of the article is too long to quote in its entirety, but it's a brilliant and oddly heart-wrenching few paragraphs that compares the debates between phoneticians about various symbol usage with the fall of the Berlin Wall. I shit you not. It is, like I said, actually really lovely, and suggests that while huge political conflicts can be overcome, such silly bickering about the use of the letter [j] in American vs. IPA graphic representation of sound should easily be dispensed with.

But, at the same time, it is comparing debate in linguistics to the fall of the Berlin wall, so.

I have to stress that I have no strong feelings for or against Pullum's opinions - this isn't a vehicle for mocking his ideas, it's just a celebration of the cattiest, most entertaining scholarly article I have probably ever had the joy of reading in my brief career as an academic. Four for you, Geoff Pullum - you go, Geoff Pullum.

*Pullum, G. (1990) Remarks on the 1989 Revision of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 20, 33-40.
**I would have used the symbol for a fully open central vowel here, but - quelle horreur! - there isn't one! Oh, I amuse myself.

The only type of 'cardinal' I like is the vowel kind. Ba-BAM.

I'm sure, twelve hours after the offending article was published – in which Cardinal Keith O'Brien (President of the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland and Britain’s most senior Catholic) aired his views on the potential legalisation of same-sex marriage – that there will have been no less than eight million angry blog posts in retaliation, all of which are likely to be better than this. However, having read the article on the first leg of my eight-hour journey back to York from Winchester this morning, and having spent the following two hours hand-writing a three-page long strongly-worded rebuttal on a wobbly train tray-table, it would seem the most phenomenal waste of my efforts not to type it up. Plus, an hour of angry typing will be excellent catharsis for any deep-seated frustration I may be harbouring.

I also appreciate how special-snowflake-y and horribly appropriative it is of someone who identifies relatively low on the Kinsey scale to write a blogpost about this. I really, really don't want it to come across like that - I just give a shit, and wanted to write some words to that effect.

And thus begins a paragraph-by-paragraph dissection of the Cardinal's article, with a something of a linguistic, capslocky, sweary slant.

Those of us who were not in favour of civil partnership, believing that such relationships are harmful to the physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing of those involved

(Alas, the blogpost should really begin with an intelligent deconstruction of the Cardinal's arguments, but since his does not offer any kind of logical, sensible argument in the first place, I shan't offer him the same courtesy.) Of course! For someone who identifies as a man to be in a loving relationship with someone who identifies as a woman is a healthy, safe and wonderful thing, but should their partner identify as a man (or vice versa), it immediately becomes disease-ridden, breakdown-inducing and spirit-crushing? Excuse me while I laugh so hard I cough up a lung.

Since all the legal rights of marriage are already available to homosexual couples, it is clear that this proposal is not about rights, but rather is an attempt to redefine marriage for the whole of society at the behest of a small minority of activists.

Well whadd'ya know? The Cardinal starts out by being kind of right! (Bear with me.) I mean, his point is phrased horribly, but he's got the gist: it is about redefining marriage. Many non-heterosexual people don't want to get married; aligning themselves with a tradition that has ostracised them for hundreds of years is not something they fancy doing - completely, completely understandable. But some do, and this is where the Cardinal's point falls short: it is also about rights. It's about the right to get married, a right which is denied many people for no good reason. And yes, despite the pejorative connotations of the phrase 'behest of a small minority of activists', it is absolutely about redefining marriage for the whole society. Why the Cardinal thinks this is somehow inherently bad, and can thus stand alone as an argument, is beyond me.

Redefining marriage will have huge implications for what is taught in our schools, and for wider society. It will redefine society since the institution of marriage is one of the fundamental building blocks of society. The repercussions of enacting same-sex marriage into law will be immense.

And he's done it again! The Cardinal speaks the truth! I concede, his intended tone is drawn, apocalyptic and disparaging - I imagine it could be read like the voiceover for one of those 'natural disaster hits NYC and only Mark Whalberg can save the world with a mixture of lifting things and blank looks into the distance' sort of film trailers. However, try reading the same paragraph in the voice of a child in the car on the way to the pound going to pick up their new puppy. That adequately expresses how I feel about the whole thing. Redefining marriage will have phenomenal consequences for society – phenomenal, brilliant, boundary-breaking consequences that will shape the future for the next generation of young Britons.

But can we simply redefine terms at a whim? Can a word whose meaning has been clearly understood in every society throughout history suddenly be changed to mean something else?

In short: yes. That's the brilliant thing about words: they change, evolve, move with the times. Language change isn't the issue here, and the Cardinal really needs to stop masking his prejudices behind linguistic euphemism.

If same-sex marriage is enacted into law what will happen to the teacher who wants to tell pupils that marriage can only mean – and has only ever meant – the union of a man and a woman?

Well, Cardy my sweet, they will tell those pupils that marriage means the union of two people, regardless of gender, because THAT WILL BE THE TRUTH. If the law redefines marriage in this way, and a teacher claims otherwise, they will be lying. This isn't about belief, it's about what is the legal case, and in this hypothetical future, the only answer will be to explain that marriage is not restricted by the gender of either spouse. If a child asked a teacher 'what is murder?' and they answered 'it's when a person tickles another person with a feather', that would be a lie, just like telling a child that marriage is only for heterosexual couples. I'm afraid, to put it bluntly and a little childishly, that teachers – imparters of knowledge, not arbitrary moral judgements – will have to suck it up.

Will both teacher and pupils simply become the next victims of the tyranny of tolerance...?

I can't even finish this quote, gobsmacked as I am that the phrase 'tyranny of tolerance' can even exist in real life. Good Christ I hope it doesn't catch on as a buzzphrase for this bullshit. How dare a nation suggest for a second that each and every one of its citizens be treated equally! Quelle horreur! What of us who want to direct hate and abuse at an arbitrarily selected group of the population? We're being oppressed, I tell you, oppressed!

Fuck off.

In Article 16 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, marriage is defined as a relationship between men and women.

I'll let the selfsame Declaration of Human Rights speak for itself (and me) here:

Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2: Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Many people will spout back article 18 at me, here – 'Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion'. I don't deny people like the Cardinal the freedom to hold their horrid beliefs (being involved in religion quite heavily in the past, religious freedom is something I believe deserves a great deal of respect – though the issues and technicalities of this are lengthy enough to warrant their own blogpost). What I – and the Declaration – do disallow is the right of those beliefs to impinge upon the rights of another person, which is what the Cardinal is advocating. He believes that his personal belief is enough to prevent certain people from enjoying the same freedoms as others. How about no?

Instead, their attempt to redefine reality is given a polite hearing, their madness is indulged. Their proposal represents a grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right.

Dude, 'reality' used to constitute a person's right to keep slaves, or murder people. Redefining reality is what moves our society closer towards freedom and fairness for all. I'm finding it hard to comment upon the extreme stupidity of this particular quote, but perhaps it need explicitly saying:

Dear Cardinal,
Your proposal represents a 'grotesque subversion' of the universally accepted #1 tip-top human right that 'all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights'.
Love, Hannah xoxo

As an institution, marriage long predates the existence of any state or government. It was not created by governments and should not be changed by them. Instead, recognising the innumerable benefits which marriage brings to society, they should act to protect and uphold marriage, not attack or dismantle it.

Who gives a rose-tinted fuck if marriage predates the government under which we operate? So did murder, but I don't hear any complaints about governments imposing pretty strict 'don't kill people' regulations. Marriage is a legally binding procedure, the technicalities of which are in the remit of the government. If the government can offer various legal benefits to married couples, they can sure as hell alter the technicalities of who can marry whom in the first place.

And, hello, the government clearly do recognise these 'innumerable benefits' (issues I have with these so-called inherent benefits notwithstanding), and hope to open them up to everyone, so that everyone may benefit, and we can all bask in this marital bliss the Cardinal speaks so highly of, should we wish to.

...yet today advancing a traditional understanding of marriage risks one being labelled an intolerant bigot.

You said it, Cardy.

It has been damaged and undermined over the course of a generation, yet marriage has always existed in order to bring men and women together so that the children born of those unions will have a mother and a father.

This brings us to the one perspective which seems to be completely lost or ignored: the point of view of the child. All children deserve to begin life with a mother and father; the evidence in favour of the stability and well-being which this provides is overwhelming and unequivocal. It cannot be provided by a same-sex couple, however well-intentioned they may be.

The sheer, staggering arrogance of words like these kind of make me want to throw up in my mouth a little bit. Is the Cardinal trying to suggest that the potential for love, care and compassion is rendered null and void should we choose to pursue a life with a partner of the same gender? Or perhaps he's saying that those children raised by homosexual parents, in single-parent households, by aunts, uncles, grandparents and other relatives, or by any guardian of any kind, have not received the same level of care as those from a mother/father home, regardless of the stability or happiness of this heterosexual family foundation? Now that really is intolerant, illogical and incomprehensible bigotry.

It would create a society which deliberately chooses to deprive a child of either a mother or a father.

Newsflash: a court of law can already do that (should the parent be deemed unfit), as can a person choosing to parent alone, whether through surrogacy, adoption or using a sperm bank. And, I repeat: why is this a bad thing?

Other dangers exist. If marriage can be redefined so that it no longer means a man and a woman but two men or two women, why stop there? Why not allow three men or a woman and two men to constitute a marriage, if they pledge their fidelity to one another? If marriage is simply about adults who love each other, on what basis can three adults who love each other be prevented from marrying?

Possibly a more controversial opinion here, but if all parties are happy and consenting, would this be so terrible? I'm inclined to say it wouldn't, but I'm more inclined to say it is none of my damn business, and no right of mine to dictate what people can and cannot do with their lives.

In November 2003, after a court decision in Massachusetts to legalise gay marriage, school libraries were required to stock same-sex literature; primary schoolchildren were given homosexual fairy stories such as King & King. Some high school students were even given an explicit manual of homosexual advocacy entitled The Little Black Book: Queer in the 21st Century. Education suddenly had to comply with what was now deemed “normal”. 

Has the Cardinal ever seen the figures for LGBT teen suicide? Can he not fathom that this kind of early visibility and normalisation of what is – shock horror! – NORMAL human sexuality might help a child with confused sexual feelings to not feel alone, ostracised and driven to self-abuse? It is precisely telling children that non-heterosexual behaviour is normal that can save lives in the long run. You're not warping children's minds, you're widening them.

Imagine for a moment that the Government had decided to legalise slavery but assured us that “no one will be forced to keep a slave”.

Would such worthless assurances calm our fury? Would they justify dismantling a fundamental human right? Or would they simply amount to weasel words masking a great wrong?

I come to the Cardinal's next point rather serendipitously, having forgotten what he'd written while making my former point about slavery. How odd that we both compare the legalisation of same-sex marriage to the abolition of slavery, but in such different ways. The Cardinal seems to be forgetting that LGBT people and slaves are the oppressed minorities in these cases, and he instead aligns the slaves with those poor souls who believe that marriage should be a strictly heterosexual institution (a group that cannot, by any stretch of the imagination be described as 'Christians', as so many firmly advocate same-sex marriage, and so many non-Christians don't.)

The Universal Declaration on Human Rights is crystal clear: marriage is a right which applies to men and women, “the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State”.

This universal truth is so self-evident that it shouldn’t need to be repeated. If the Government attempts to demolish a universally recognised human right, they will have forfeited the trust which society has placed in them and their intolerance will shame the United Kingdom in the eyes of the world.

One of the things that is linguistically confusing about the Cardinal's argument is his consistent invocation of the phrase 'human right'. According to the phrasing of the declarations, article 16 is as follows:

1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

The Cardinal talks of 'dismantling a fundamental human right' twice, as if legalising same-sex marriage will somehow impede upon heterosexual couples' ability to marry freely and unhindered. Should same-sex marriage be legalised, this will not be the case – the only thing anybody may lose is the ability to discriminate and dictate who is free to declare and ceremonially cement their love in a public ceremony with friends and family present. The only thing the Cardinal is losing is his right to be such a dickhead, and – as far as I can tell – the Universal Declaration does not support 'the right to be a massive dickhead', and as such his invocation of the statute is nonsensical and erroneous.

I was going to say that, in direct contrast to old Cardy's views, legalising same-sex marriage could make the UK a bastion of tolerance from which other governments may take lead. I then stopped to think about the word 'tolerance', and it left a bad taste in my mouth. 'Tolerance' smacks of begrudgingly putting up with something – the way I tolerate takeaways who put ketchup on my burgers without me requesting it. We shouldn't tolerate same-sex marriage, we should fucking celebrate it; celebrate the slow but optimistic progress towards a society where sexuality and gender have no bearing on how one person treats another, not does affect the rights, liberties and opportunities afforded to us all.