Random Rants from an Insane Butch Bunny

The last few posts have been pretty depressing, haven't they? I think it's time for a little something to lighten the mood, and with that in mind I'm going to inflict my favourite things-to-cook upon you all!  Perhaps I'll make this a regular thing.

I'm an enthusiastic cook. I'm a firm believer in cooking-from-scratch wherever possible. You can control what goes in your food better, leading to better health, and it generally tastes better, too.

Now, like all cooks I do use recipes, but rather than sticking to them I modify them to suit myself, Thus, most of the recipes below will be sourced from other places but have been altered considerably.

So!  Today's recipe is...

Spiced Plum Chutney

900g deep red or purple plums
450g apples
450g onions
300g dates or other candied fruit
600ml white malt, or white wine vinegar
450g unrefined sugar
3-4 fat cloves of garlic
cinammon, ginger, cayenne pepper, salt and pepper to taste

Peel and core the apples and stone the plums, then cut them and the onions finely. I generally find it easier to stick them in a blender, but don't blend it too long as you want the apples to still be slightly chunky, not pureed. The garlic should be mashed very finely or pulped. Add to a big pan with the vinegar and simmer until the fruit is soft.

While it simmers, sterilize the containers you'll be keeping the chutney in.  I do this by mixing fround-up camden tablets in hot water, filling the jars and leaving them.  Then I rinse them in hot water and put in the bottom shelf of the oven in a very low heat.  Not only does this thoroughly sterilise the jars, but it also gets them warm and ready for the chutney.

Add the spices to taste (I recommend using a LOT more than you think you need, but that's my personal preference). Stone and chop the dates. You can use other fruit, like figs or raisins, but I find that dates work best. Raisins, for example, often stay solid rather than mushing up nicely. Add the chopped dates and the sugar gradually, stirring the chutney so that the sugar doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan. Turn down the heat a little and let the chutney thicken. This may take a little while, but I sometimes speed it up by giving the chutney a workout with a spud masher.

Once the chutney is very thick and gloopy, turn off the heat and spoon it into the containers. Feel free to add a little extra spice at this point. Seal the jars and store at room temperature for at least 4 weeks before eating. And if you can wait any longer, remember that chutney gets better the longer it is kept. My best result so far was from a 3 month old chutney.

Remember that the jars were sterilised?  Chutney is a preserved food, and as such is very susceptible to contamination.  When eating the chutney, don't eat directly from the jar.  Also don't put dirty cutlery, or cutlery covered in whatever your eating, into the storage jars.  You'll probably find that within 3-4 days the whole jar will be mouldy and inedible.

Best eaten on rough oatcakes with very strong cheeses, like an overripe camembert (think runny and stinky) or a soft blue cheese. Also goes very nicely with soft sheep and goat cheeses.  I'm not going to tell you what wine to drink with this because I am a pleb.  My dad eats it with thick slices of ham and chips, the big freak.

Following an extended debate over at Feministe I'v realised that there are a few fundamental points which a lot of people seem utterly ignorant of.  People really seem to misunderstand how abusive relationships work, despite the similarities in so many documented cases, despite common sense, despite all the evidence.

During the debate, one particular point was repeatedly made;

"It is my observation that others - some women - feel irresistable attraction to the hyper-masculine with misdirected aggression to feel they are with a “real man,”

"Here’s a concept - if the beaters couldn’t get laid quite so easily, maybe there would be some introspection instead of an apparent bonus for being a really bad mofo."

"The point is to be made for the next girl, going forward, who thinks it is exciting to live the way that Davis did, for whatever reason. The better course is a reciprocal relationship of mutual respect and admiriation, with a sprinkling of fidelity and a decided dearth of “bitch I ain’t gonna tell you again.”

"I don’t think that all battered women really want to leave, even knowing that they are risking their lives by staying."

"Don’t you – maybe – see that some women are a little fucked up and think that battering equals virility and masculinity for whatever reason, and these are the only men that they can feel a strong attraction towards?"

Some people are just stupid, others are weak, and yet others need the physical drama to get off

That's right, you read that correctly. Some women deliberately go after utter bastards and put up with being beaten and abused because it's exciting and edgy.

There are a number of incorrect assumptions here, so I'll address them individually.

Some women look for violent men

Actually, most abusive men don't show their true colours immediately.  Most abused women will say that their partner was such a nice, caring gentle man when they met him.  They'll recount being showered with unexpected gifts, romance, kind words.  They'll recall how much their entire family liked him, how good he was with the children, and how helpful he was when granny had to be driven to the hospital.

Usually, the abuse doesn't start until after the man has, or feels that he has, some hold on the woman that will prevent her from leaving.  This might be moving into a house which is under his name, marriage, pregnancy, financial dependency or a host of other things.  And the abuse won't immediately become beatings and cruelty.  It'll be little things at first, a few words to put her down.  Moodswings, perhaps.  The sort of things that can easily be attributed to the stress and nerves involved in taking such a "big step" like marriage, or parenthood.  The woman will be gradually whittled down; her confidence and self-esteem shattered.  He might do things to isolate her from her friends and family, so she has no one else to turn to.  By the time he starts abusing her physically, she's already trapped.

This means that, if there are women out there who get off on violent men, chances are they're quite frustrated women.  The early, caring behaviour of most abusive men is likely to put off these hypothetical abuse-junkies.

Once some one starts abusing you, just leave

Because, obviously, that's easy.  Now, based on the above we know that an abused woman is likely to be financially dependent on the man, or pregnant with his child, or married to him, or a combination of these and more.  It's likely that any attempts to break up the relationship are met with threats of murder, murder of friends and relatives, murder of their children or other threats.  What options does this leave her if she thinks of leaving?

1. Break up with him and stay at the current home..  If they live together, throw him out of the house, change the locks, throw out his possessions.
1. Since he has already shown himself to have a temper, and to be violent, isn't he likely to respond to this with further violence?  Smashing his way in and inflicting further harm on the woman, and then imposing greater restrictions on her life to prevent a reoccurence.
2. If he owns the property, this could be a bit of a difficult isse, don't you think?  If he stops paying for the property then she may end up on the streets.
3. He knows where she lives, and can easily wait for her there, or at a place she frequents, to threaten her.
2. Break up with him and leave the current home.
1. Regardless of whether the couple live together or not, this is likely to be very problematic.  The woman may be financially dependent on the man, so she may not have any money to find a new place to live.  Even if she has her own income, few people are able to just get up and leave without notice.
2. She may be isolated from her family and friends, and may not have the option of staying with them.
3. If there are already children involved, she is forced to choose between leaving them behind to face abuse, or taking them with her and possibly enforcing homelessness on the children.
4. Not knowing where she has gone, he may start threatening any friends and family he is able to find, demanding that they tell him where to find her, take him to her or get her to meet him.

On top of this, the extended emotional and psychological abuse is likely to have left the woman feeling, in part, that it is her fault she is being beaten.  She did something to deserve it, somehow.

No sane person chooses to stay with someone who beats them, tells them that they are a fat, stupid, lazy cow, threatens their family, hits their children or treats them like worthless objects.  Saying that they do is the same as saying that having sex with a prostitute isn't rape, even whilst her pimp is beating her for not making enough money that day.  It ignores the fact that the person mayhave tried to escape, and failed.  They may be trapped, even when the abuser isn't in the room.

Chains aren't just made of iron, after all.

WARNING- THIS BLOG POST REFERS TO AN EXTREMELY OFFENSIVE BLOG ABOUT A VERY SENSITIVE TOPIC.  THIS POST IS ALSO EXCEEDINGLY RANTY.  IF YOU ARE OF A SENSITIVE DISPOSITION PLEASE DON'T READ.

This Article on Feministe left me feeling more than a little sick to my stomach.

For any of you who aren't familiar with this story, Jessie Davies, 26, was murdered by her boyfriend, Bobby Cutts Jnr, a local police officer, in Ohio, US.  Ms Davies was pregnant with Cutts' child, and the murder was committed in front of their 2 year old child.  That the murder occurred at all is horrific.  That an almost full-term baby was killed is disgusting.  That a 2 year old child witnessed his mummy being murdered, and then watched daddy hiding the evidence, is sickening.  That a police officer, a person that tghe public are supposed to be able to trust, could do such a thing, is disturbing.

But that's not what some right-wing bloggers are concerned with.

They are more concerned that Davies, a white woman was dating Cutts, a black man.  They are more concerned that Cutts was married to another woman.

I am not going to link to this offensive blog.  If you really want to read it in full, there is a link on the page I've linked to above, but they have pasted a variety of excerpts from said blog which, really, speak for themselves.

Be warned, if you do choose to view these pages, you may be deeply offended.  I don't wish to go into details, but will lift one term from the pages which should give you a pretty good idea of what to expect.  Mixed-race relationships are referred to as "animal husbandry".

These extreme right-wingers think that this murder was all Ms Davies' fault.  She clearly brought it on herself by having sex with a married man, carrying his children and, on top of that, having a relationship with a man who was a different colour to her (shock! horror!).  She chose to stay in an abusive relationship, so apparently she deserved everything she got.

How anyone can be so ignorant, so utterly devoid of basic humanity as to blame an abused woman for her own murder?

I can't even begin to articulate how I feel at hearing this sort of racist bigotry broadcast like this.  I know we haven't dragged all the bugs out of the woodwork but I really did believe that this sort of idiocy belonged firmly in the last century.  Then again, as a white woman I am privileged not to have had to experience racism except when applied to my friends.

I am also privileged to have never been in an abusive relationship.  But even I can see how utterly idiotic it is to blame the victim for their own suffering.  When a woman (or man; women can be arsehats too) is being abused by their partner it is often not a simple case of getting up and leaving.  The abused partner will probably be suffering intense psychological abuse and emotional blackmail.  They will be made to feel that what is happening is their fault, that they did something to deserve their "punishment".  The abusive partner will shower them with promises and apologies "I didn't mean it hunny, but you just got me so angry, you know I'd never hurt you, I'll never do it again I promise...".  When you love someone, it isn't easy to just change your mind and leave.  A part of you wants to believe that this person whome you've invested so much time, and love into really does mean what they say.  You may also be terrified of what would happen if you did try to break up with them.  You might be receiving threats against yourself, your children, your family.  And unless you can just up-sticks and leave town, telling no one where you've gone and abandoning your whole life, the abusive partner can always come after you.  It isn't simply a case of "choosing" to stay with someone who treats you this way.

Seriously, do these people imagine some battered little girly shrugging her shoulders and saying "well, I don't like it when he beats me, but the sex is great!  Teehee!"?

I can't write any more.  I'm too angry.

Oh, and be warned.  Feministe appear to be getting some trolls from this right-wing guy, so I'll be altering my blog settings to ensure that comments require moderation before being permitted.  I don't want that sort of thing happening here.

Yes, that subject again.

Now, one argument female comics readers seem to get a lot is "if you don't like pornface in your comics then don't read them" often connected with "comics are marketted for biys, anyway, you have manga".

Really? Manga is for women, is it? Manga closes the gender equality gap, then? Women are portrayed positively in manga?

Really?

Now, I'll be the first to admit that this here is something of a extreme example, but it serves my point. Manga, whilst cute, is full of pantie-shots, up-skirt shots, gratuitous female nudity, boobies, girls with cum faces, girls acting weak, girls acting dumb, girls acting like barbie dolls ("Maths are hard! I like pink!"), presumably kick-arse ninja girls crying and being unable to do anything in a fight, and girls "knowing their place" (ie, submitting to the wills of men).

Of course there is manga hat gets it right, that shows women as complex and intriguing characters, just like the men.  But if you're going to tell women "if you don't like sexism here, go there instead" the art form that brought us tentacle rape might not be the right place to suggest.

***

On other news, I've also decided to take a little pop at this whole Land tracing debate.  Now, having seen the evidence, I'd say that the pictures match up too closely with the "references", and that they definitely look traced.  I also agree that there is a lot of pornface anf porn poses.

Of course, I know some people who don't see this.  A lot of people say "he just uses references, look this bit is different" or "the pictures look good, so who cares?".  Now, for one thing, I've seen frames inside comics traced by land which are made up of half a dozen characters moving/standing/posing in completely random positions that have absolutely nothing to do with the plot and which don't look like they;re doing anything.  I think of these as "scrapbook pages" because that's what they look like.  A jumble of random pictures pasted on top of each other with no thought for what is actually supposed to be going on.  Also, I don't think these pictures look good when the girlsall look like they're getting pumped hard by some invisible entity.

But you know what?  There are better ways to debate this.  I'm going to make my own comic, based on traced images from porn and sports websites, but with the men looking hyper-sexualised, and I'm going to post it here for your perusal.

Now, be patient with me over this; I've not done this sort of thing before and my art skills are not exactly top-notch.  I will keep posting as normal in the meantime.  So far, I've found most of the best pictures come from gay porn sites and pictures of peoiple mid-pose in diving competitions.

Okay,  First of all apologies to the people at feministe.us and girl-wonder.org.  I've realised that I am far too easily influenced.  I read an article somewhere, more often on those two sites and places linked from them, and get thinking about it, and then I have to write about it.  Please understand that the people at these sites have been blogging far longer than I have and can write far more eloquently than I.  Please, please visit their sites so I don't feel like an inspiration thief!

Now to the point.

I've been thinking about the little addictions I and so many of my friends have, and how easy it is to fall into an unhealthy addictive pattern.  I know people with bullimia and with anorexia.  I know self-harmers and comfort eaters.  I know people that rely on cannabis or alcohol.  I know some very brave and strong-willed people who have an opiate addiction, but who've somehow managed to stay clean without the aid of opiate-substitutes.

I am a self-harmer.  I also cycle between extremes of comfort-eating and self-starvation depending on my mood and the inout I've received from others.  I know that addiction to anything is something which never goes away completely, though it may lessen with time.  Until Saturday I'd gone almost 2 years without taking a sharp object to my skin.  There'd been times when I wanted to, but I'd avoided it.  I sought other outlets; attention and a cheer-up from my partner, making lists of plans to help whatever problem made me want to cut, drawing and painting, treating myself to something small and inexpensive, and so on.

On Saturday, unfortunately, I failed.

We've been really short of money and my bank are going overboard with charges.  We've always been on a tight budget, so the first time an unexpected expense resulted in us being charged was, really, the beginning of the end.  That £30 charge meant that the following month, we didn't have enough money to cover our basic outgoings, and were charged again.  This has gradually increased and has now reached the point where, each month, we no longer have enough money to live off.  It;s continuing to spiral.  So far, this month, I have incurred 6 £30 charges, all of which will be take at the end of this week, totalling £180.  Last month they took £210, but we've now taken to rationing our food and living off of home-made bean stew during the lean weeks to reduce our outgoings further.

On Saturday I received 3 letters from the bank totalling the charges above.  My partner was out working (he's currently taking on all and any work he can find to try and get us out of this rut) so he wans't available for cuddles.  I've already been off sick for a week with a bad back and was stressed out and depressed about this, as well as worrying about the workload I'll have when I get home.  As we had no money, I couldn't buy myself even a packet of biscuits and some milk to cheer myself up.  Then the electricity ran out, and of course we didn't have any money to buy any more.  I felt helpless.  We're cut to the bone and there's no where else to cut back.  I didn;t know what to do. 

I snapped.  I started crying and couldn't stop.  I get panic attacks at night sometimes and this felt like a really, really bad one of those.  I tried little things to calm myself down- splashing my face with water, punching pillows, nothing helped.  I couldn't stop crying and I couldn't calm down.  I cut myself.  Even as I was doing it I felt so weak, so ashamed of myself for failing after so long.  I was weak, no wonder everything was going wrong. I have no self control.  I became angry at myself, so I stated cutting deeper and harder, and looked for blunter things to cut with so it'd hurt more.  As soon as the blood started to really pour I calmed down.  Watching it ooze out, feeling it dripping down my arm, watching it congeal.  I felt calm again; not happy, or relieved, but emotionally numb.  Afterwards, I felt ashamed of myself.

It is so easy to become addicted to punishment.  When I'm depressed, when people tell me I'm fat or need to lose weight, I tend to overeat.  I'll do something stupid like make myself a big glass of cream-soda float or hot chocolate and snarfle it with loads of sweet biscuits.  Then I'll feel guilty and hate myself for being so weak- no wonder I'm overweight, if I'm as weak as this.  When I'm in a good mood, when my partner makes me feel like I'm beautiful just as I am, I suddenly get in the mood to diet and will starve myself.  The pain and cramps in my stomach make me feel proud of my own self control, and the hunger itself becomes a reward.

t would be so easy to become bullimic, or to just start starving myself all the time.  It's only the knowledge of how damaging this can be, having of many friends who suffer because of their addiction to starvation, that I'm able to stop myself from taking this route.  I'd rather be fat than starve myself to the point where I pass out in toilets, or become so addicted to vomiting that I'm unable to eat a sandwhich without needing to throw up.  I'd rather be fat than watch my teeth rot away from extensive exposure to bile, or become so obsessed with weight-loss that I weight myself 2-3 times a day and panic if my weight doesn't visibly go down.  That is the only thing that holds me back.  Knowing how easily I could go to that stage, and the side-effect of that in people I care about.

Addiction is something which stays with you for the rest of your life.  It's an endless cycle of depression, weakness, shame, punishment, then rewarding feelings and pride for being able to punish myself.  Then more shame, and embarrassment as I try to hide the evidence of what I've been doing.  People harp on about self-harmers being after attention, but if they only knew the lengths self-harmers go to to hide what their doing, and the shame we feel when we are caught.  There are those incidents when you realise you need to stop, but you aren't strong enough to do it alone, so you fantasize about failing to hide it, about being caught.  Then someone would know, and would help.  That isn't a cry for attention; it's a cry for help.

So I was remeniscing recently, and I remembered a woman I'd met when I was a student.

At the time I was working and studying in one town, and living in another.  With study and work hours combined it was generally approaching midnight by the time I was on my way home, so it was usual for me to encounter empty, dark streets punctuated by the occassional group of revellers.

I remember one evening, seeing a woman, Emma*, curled up in the entrance to one building, trying to sell on the last of her Big Issues.  I bought one off her and we got to talking whilst I waited for my bus.  She'd had a hard life (well, duh) but despite everything she'd been through she came across as a strong-willed, intelligent and positive woman.  She was working hard to get herself out of her current position.  She seemed strong.

Just as my bus was pulling up a group of drunks came leering up the street, cheering.  They approached Emma and it was clear that they knew her from a previous encounter.  These guys were quite leery, rowdy and I didn't really want to leave her alone with them.  But Emma just stood up, smiling, and said to me,

"Don't worry, hunny, I know these guys.  You go home, I've got this game I play with them."

I got on the bus as she lifted her top for them and the bus pulld away to the sound of their cheers.

***

I really don't know how I'm supposed to feel about this.  As far as I know from future encounters with Emma all she did for those  guys was flash her tits, they'd make a few bawdy jokes and she'd banter with them, giving as good as she got, and then she'd generally get a few notes to "go buy herself something nice" as they put it.  Emma was a strong, intelligent woman and she chose to do this.  I can understand why.  My partner was homeless and selling Big Issues, especially when you only have access to one day centre, is hard.  You have to pay for the issues you sell so in a town with a high homeless population you're taking a risk.  These guys brought in a guaranteed profit for comparitively little work.

But I worried.  It was all just fun and games fo rthese men and I know that Emma, being quick-witted and intelligent, would be able to talk her way through these situations and keep control over things to some extent.  But it could all go wrong so easily.  All it takes is one guy to go too far, one guy to decide he wants more than just a "look" and she could end up raped, or worse.  Especially if she tried to say no.  Also, no woman should have to flash her body for a few quid or put up with drunken letches on a nightly basis.  This willing submission to male entitlement seemed at odds with what little I knew of her.

That said, I know the feeling.  Since I was young male entitlement and being treated like a piece of meat seemed, well, normal.  It was just the way things were and was expected.  If you didn't like it you did your best to avoid it, but those sort of things would just happen.  Men touch when they want, look when they want and will try to take what they want unless you're smart enough to evade them.  I'd gotten used to being considered a sex toy, used to being groped and prodded in clubs, pubs, at work, in the town I lived in.  When a guy you didnt find objectionable did it you let him, and when a guy you didn't like did it you said no, nudged him off and made sure to stay by male friends for the rest of the evening. 

It's only as I got older, and especially since I met a man who actually respects me and who has worked hard to increase my sense of self-worth, that I've realised how much bollocks all of that is.  Men are not entitled to just take what they want.  Women are creatures with as much worth as any man and we shouldn't have to rely on our tits and arse to get by.

I suppose I just don't understand.  When I was younger I had no confidence, no self-esteem and no sense of self-worth.  It was easy to let myself be used.  Now that I am stronger, I feel diminished just thinking about letting someone treat me that way.  Seeing a strong woman diminish herself leaves me bitter.

I guess I don't know whether I should respect Emma for her strength and ability to handle that sort of situation so well, for her confidence to take that and still bounce back, or whether I should pity her for having to diminish herself in such a way.

Warning, this blog entry concerns the brutal and drawn-out murder of a man in Indiana.

Further information here, here and here.

Now, Shorty Hall encountered three young men; Garrett Gray, Coleman King and Jamie Hendricks and was invited back to Gray's house for drinks.   Garrett Gray lived with his father, the deputy coroner for Crothersville.

It is unclear what exactly happened next, except that it involved Shorty saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.The murderers claim Shorty may have made sexual comments or flirted overtly with one of the three young men.  He may also have insulted Gray's deceased mother.  Shorty Hall was not known to be interested in men.

What resulted from that was that Gray, King and Hendricks beat Shorty Hall to death over a period of 24 hours.  They held him down and beat him about the face and eyes.  they beat and kicked him over an extended period, then took turns jumping up and down on his body.  They dragged him feet-first down a staircase so that his head would bounce off of the stairs.  They propped him up and posed with him (still alive at this point) to take photos using their mobiles, which they forwarded to a friend.  The beating took several hours and spread blood throughout the kitchen, the outside deck, railing, stairs, and in the front room.  They piled him into the back of a pick-up truck and continued to beat him as they drove to a small, deserted field.  They asked him if he wanted to die that night, and at that point he was still able to reply "no".  They then dumped his body in a ditch and beat him further.  Shorty Hall had, at this point, a broken nose and ribs mong other injuries, but managed to crawl out of the ditch whilst they went to retrieve a shotgun to finish the job.  By this point he was naked as well.  The young men shot into the darkness of the ditch which, fortunately for Shorty, he was no longer in.  The following day they returned to steal his coat and to check on the body, and found him dead in the field.  They wrapped his body in tarpaulin and hid him in Gray's garage.  The body was not found by local authorities for 10 days, after their friend, James Hodge, who had received the pictures of his broken body, alerted the authorities.

All in all, this sounds like an incredibly gruesome and drawn-out murder.  The murderers asked Shorty if he wanted to die, tried to finish the job with a shotgun which they had to go and retrieve from the truck, and returned to the body the following day to steal Shorty's coat.  They wrapped his corpse in tarpaulin and hid it in a garage.

In their defence, the three young men are referring to what occurred as a "sudden heat" and a case of "gay panic".  That's right.  They claim that they "panicked".  Now, I don't know about anyone else, but I've never experienced panic that lasted over 24 hours before, and I've certainly never experienced panic that involved forsight and planning and taking photos.

Onepoitn which has not yet been answered is this; if Gray's father was the local coroner, why didn't he get suspicious about the extensive blood-stains throughout his house?  Why didn't he notice a rotting corpse in his garage, by sight or smell?

And why haven't the local press raised even a snifter of an article on this brutal and terrifying episode?

Since the local press don't seme to care about spreading the word, it is up to us ordinary, everyday interweb peeps to do their job for them.  Spread the word.  Let the world know what the press in Indiana don't want released.  A man was brutally murdered over an extended period involving beatings and was humiliated in having photos of his battered body taken and passed around by the murderers.  The murderers are claiming that they "panicked".  Tell everyone.

Pass on the word.  Shorty Hall died needlessley.  Don't let the same thing happen to his memory.

Even More Bad News

Climate change is a very real, very serious threat.  The evidence for it is overwhelming and as research and scientific knowledge progresses, yet more serious and worrying effects are being discovered.

Whether England sinks, freezes or burns isn't as important as the fact that we do not have nearly as much time as the government thinks we have in order to save ourselves.

It is easy for individuals to take action, and once individuals are committed they can bandtogether and force action by larger groups.  Stop being lazy and start making sacrifices.  In fact, you don't even need to do that.  A lot of the little things you can do are really, really easy and to not do them is unforgivably ignorant and lazy.

Stop using Plastic Bags

If you drive, then take a few storage boxes to the shops with you.  Leave your shopping loose in the trolley after you pay for it, pack it into the boxes when you reach your car, and unpack it straight into your kitchen when you get home.  Will you even really notice the lack of bags if you only carry your shopping for a few seconds once you reach your house?  Also, boxes are more stable so you won't hear your shopping clinking about in the boot whenever you turn a corner.

If you don't drive, take a big back-pack, a freezer bag and/or a beach bag with you.  You can now buy attractive fabric bags, easily folded up small for convenience, which can be used in place of plastic bags.  Not only do you save on plastic, but fabric bags don't cut off the circulation to your fingers.

Shop online.  This saves you time and can save you money as well.  Sit down in front of the PC, have a nice cuppa while you browse what you need, see the cost of your shopping neatly and conveniently totalled up on screen.  Some shops now are starting to get the hint about excess waste and will offer you the option of having your food delivered without plastic bags.

Turn things off

Do you really need to have the curtains shut and the lights on as soon as it reaches 5pm?  Why not wait until it gets a bit darker?  If you're leaving the kitchen/bedroom/hallway then turn the light off.  If you're watching TV, turn off your PC.  Play the music through said PC instead of through your music system.  Do you really need a TV in each bedroom?  At night you watch 5 minutes of a show then fall asleep, and the TV stays on needlessly all night.  If you're only a little bit chilly, a jumper, cushions and a hot drink are much cosier than sticking the heating on and then changing your mind half an hour later when it gets too hot.  Save the central heating for the really cold weather.

Be Sensible with water

Only put just enough water in the kettle for what you need.  Put a brick in the toilet, and if you bathe rather than shower, put a block in the bath as well.  Save the decadent, full baths for occassional treats and just use enough water to clean yourself with.  Do you need a full bath every single day?  Shower during the week, since you only spend a few minutes in the bath anyway, and save the big soaky scrubby clean for the weekend, when you can laze in there for an hour and really make the most of it.  If you have a small garden, use a watering can and save the hose for when it's really needed (although if you live in the South East like me you never get to use the hose anyway, since the ban appears to be constant now).

Stick a big water drum under the downpipe of your roof guttering and use the collected water for gardening.  The tomatoes won't know the difference.

Flush less.  If you're just doing a wee, if it's just you and the missus, leave the loo unflushed and put the lid down.  Flush when you poo.  This step isn't one for everyone, but again it's one that requires very little effort.

Walk, you lazy sod.

If you're only going to the off licence, will it really kill you to get off your fat arse and walk the 200 yards you need to go?  Or maybe you could dust off that bike of yours and cycle down there?  If your friends live 10 minutes drive away and you're only taking 1 dish and a bottle of bubbly to them, leave a bit earlier and walk it.  That way you can have a drink as well, and not worry about needing to drive back.

Separate your rubbish.

This isn't hard.  No.  No, it isn't.  Once you've bought/arranged a few smaller bins in placeof your one big one thats the main bulk of the effort done.  Have one bag for plastic, one bag for paper, one bag for glass and one for organic waste  (food etc).  Stick the food waste (and the paper waste if you like) in a big covered bin in the garden and you have cheap fertilizer for your rhubarb.  Since most supermarkets have recycling bins outside them these days dump the glass in one of those and the plastic too.  If the plastic is mostly excess packaging and other crap from said supermarket, dump it on their doorstep and join that stop-excess-waste campaign.  This means that you'll have far less rotting crap sitting outside your door on all those times that you just missed the binmen and, subsequently, you'll have far less crap strewn outside the front of your house by foxes/seagulls/little bastards.

Shop Locally

A lot of the food you buy from supermarkets is shipped from abroad and heavy in airmiles and fuel usage.  If you do your weekly shop on a Satruday, surely you have time to spend those extra few minutes in town getting your fresh food- bread, vegetables and meat- from little local shops that probably get it from nearby?  And don't believe the lies.  I live in a small, crappy little dive of a town and my little local butchers sells rabbit, duck, venison, oxtail and a wide range of meat my supermarket doesn't.  It's also cheaper.  My local greengrocers sells a range of vegetables, both traditional english and exotic, which I can't get from Tesco and they are very, very cheap.  The vegetables are fresher as well, and last longer.  You can even ejoy the little foray into town and the excercise of walking, the fresh air.

Become Energy-efficient

Buy those fancy lightbulbs.  They may be more expensive individually but the savings you'll make by having to buy bulbs so much less often will make up for it.  If you're on a budget like me, replace one bulb in the house with an energy-efficient one every month.  In a surprisingly short time you'll have filled your house with them.

When the time comes to replace the washing machine, boiler, etc, add a little extra to your budget and buy a more efficient one.  Don't go out and replace all your stuff, obviously, because that would be stupidly expensive and wasteful if the items you have still work.  But when they do need replacing, just think a little beyond which one looks prettier.

Chuck out the TV

This is a hard step for some people to take, but its worth it.  Within a couple of months you'll stop missing your tv shows.  Not only that, but how many people claim not to have the time to do some of the environment-saving activities I mentioned, but happily spend 4-5 hours staring at a TV screen in the evenings?  You're not really enjoying half of what you're watching- you spend most of your time channel-hopping because "there's nothing on".  Ditch the TV and take up some hobbies; grow some of your own food- easy things like tomatoes.  Spend more time doing things with the family, and save electricity to boot!

Get More Active

Every now and then, log onto websites like faxyourmp and the like, and send a quick, polite note asking them to start lobbying high street shops to turn off their stupid, gaudy, annoying and unnatractive lights when they close up for the night.  No one needs to see that there's a New Look at 3am, and the light pollution and electricity waste is awful.  Just do this every now and then.  MPs do keep track of the opinions of their local people and will consider what you say.  In fact, lobby them about anything you care about.  Force them to take notice.  Its so easy to do online and for a little effort you may eventually get a significant response.

So that's it.  A few small sacrifices.  Bigger ones are needed to really halt/slow global warming, but take the small steps first and, if you find them easy, consider the larger ones later.  But just take these first few steps and see how it goes.

Just for the record, I am an evil, satanic, baby-killing evilutionist homosexual-loving ugly fat bull-dyke with a forest of unshaved bodily hair and I dance naked every full moon after bathing in my own period blood.

Translation: I am a neopagan, I am pro choice, I am a feminist and I consider evolution to be the most accurate current theory concerning the development of life on this planet.

Why have I written this? Because I am becoming tired of hearing the same old reactionary responses from people who prefer intelligent design (or, to be more accurate, people who bat for ID not out of any love for the theory but because they think evolution = evil).  Now, I love debate. I love meeting people who genuinely disagree with me and who can state why. The opportunity to spar intellectually is stimulating and helps me develop. I am a scientist. This means that I do not "believe" anything and, if evidence is shown, will happily modify my understanding of the universe to fit this evidence. In fact, as a scientist I am compelled to by the very values to which I adhere. However, the evidence is often lacking. And "UR A STOOPID UR GAY I KNOW ID IS RIGHT GOD SEZ SO DARWIN GETS RAPED BY MNOKEYS IN HELL BITCH" is not, actually, intelligent debate.

Point the First
Evolution is not linear.

Evolution does not operate like a mechanic's workshop. People see those charts showing the ascent of man and think it is the whole. Such images are, in fact, simplified.  To demonstrate, let us travel to the Planet Slugus; an entirely fictional planet designed to show off my lack of PC-based art skills.

Now, here we see the Ascent of Slug.  You can clearly see each stage.  Slugs evolve spots.  Then they evolve wings.  The wings turn into fins when they start living in the water.  The fins become more flexible tentacles.  The slug grows more intelligent, this allows it to learn to use these tentacles to create tools, write and walk.  Slug achieves civilisation.

However, this also creates the false impression that these slugs evolved with purpose.  It lends credence to the lie that it was all planned, that the slug was aiming for Slugus Sapiens from day nought, and that previous slug stages were "inferior" and transient.

The truth is that amongst all of this there were slug species which evolved to dead ends, slugs which devolved and slugs which stopped evolving.  The later stages are not migrations of all previous slugs, but an off-shoot.  Both the off-shoot and the ancestor may coexist for a time, although they may live in different habitats.  In some cased slugs devolve and are left with seemingly-useless, vestigial parts, such as Supergenius Slug and it's vestigial wibbly-bits.

Basically, look above and you will see a timeline that shows many offshoots from each species.  Some are successful up to the present day, such as the basic Slug.  Some are successful for a time, such as the Spiney Sabre-toothed Slug, which proliferated until it's main prey, the Hippy Slug, died out.  Others, like the Rave Slug, exist only for a brief time before they die out.  In the case of Rave Slug, this is because it was adapted specifically to life in the universe's most tasteless rainforest and could not survive in duller surroundings after the rainforest was destroyed due to being an eyesore.

Point the Second
Evolution can go backwards

Take another look at my big, messy graph.  Notice that Sabre-toothed slugs, and similar species, reoccur at different times, and from different branches.  This is because of the whole changing-habitat thing.  Take Stumpy Sabre-toothed Slug.  That slug evolved from snake slug when it's environment changed.  Rolling meadows and warm forest died off when a continent shifted, leaving harsh desert terrain and less food.  Having big fuck-off teeth served to assist with the killing of prey and as a deterrent to predators.  When the desert became more hostile however, food became ever more scarce.  Tendencies towards cannibalism resulted in the evolution of a spiney sabre-toothed slug which, died out due to an inability to get up when rolled onto its back in soft sand.

Albino Vampire Slugs evolved their large teeth via sexual selection.  Longer teeth would grow on slugs which were healthier, and female slugs preferred long-toothed slugs as mates.  For a time the teeth were also used in mating rituals, resulting eventually in a new, aggressive sabre-toothed slug with wings.

And so on.  Notice also that the Late Slug looks almost identical to the Slug.  All the characteristics gained by previous slug species dissappeared, purely and simply because this slug lived in suc a non-hostile environment that there was no need for large teeth, spines or wings, and such body parts took unneccesary amounts of energy to maintain- simpler slugs could survive easier and were less susceptible to brief famines.

Point the Third
Useless bits sometimes remain

Look at Supergenius Slug.  Hyper intelligent but utterly lacking in limbs.  This slug species evolved in tandem with Slugus Beefcake and they existed in a symbiotic relationship.  Over time Slugus Beefcake took on more and more of the physical duties, being stronger andmore agile, leaving Supergenius Slug with the thinking side of things.  Supergenius slug was also hindered by a bulky braincasing, and over time its offspring, which quickly died out or interbred with Slugus Beefcake if not sufficiently intelligent, devolved their limbs which took useful energy away from the brain, leaving just randomly placed little wibbly nubs which may have eventually disappeared, leaving a spherical slug, had the hyper-aggressive Fundie Slugs not eaten them all.  In the same manner, some species of snake on earth have vetigial toes, the remainder of lost limbs, which they use during sex.

Point the Fourth
Transient Species

I hear a lot of people asking why, if evolution is true, don't we have transient species- fossils showing animals half-way between other species?  Why are there gaps?

1. Fossils are only preserved in rare circumstances, and often found by chance.  There may be fossils out there waiting to fill the gaps which we simply haven't seen yet, because they are buried deep underneath cities or have been eroded under passing glaciers.
2. All species are "transient" in the way I think you mean.  This is because each new fossil found which lies between two species is another species in its own right.
3. Evolution can do big jumps as well as little ones.  Creatures don't just have to change one thing to change species- they can take something away, add something and elongate something else simultaneously, if the environment calls for it.
4. If you're imagining a fossil that looks like the child half-way between his transformation in those awful Species movies, then you have utterly misunderstood evolution.

Point the Fifth
Half an Eye?

I believe that the premise behind the "what good is half an eye/bacteria flagellum/mouse trap" argument has been pretty much answered, and answered more elegantly than I could hope to, right here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye

But, suffice to say, half an eye is useless.  Luckily no creature ever evolved half an eye- because as I said evolution is not a mechanic's workshop.

Point the Sixth
But you need Predictions!

This is a fair point.  In order to be considered real science, a theory needs to be useful for making predictions which can be proved-disproved.

Let us look at Tiktaalik.

The scientists involved knew what they were looking for.  They expected to find a fossil showing evolution midway between fish and amphibians.  They predicted, based on previous fossil evidence, the likely age of sich a fossil and, based on biology, the environment it was likely to live in.  From this they worked out the sort of sediment/rock they would expect to find it in and the age of this rock, and subsequently how deep they would need to dig.  They made a list of known areas which held rocks likely to match this period and started digging.  They found the fossil they had predicted.

For more information, see below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiktaalik

I recomment Wikipedia for all your reading needs.  Here are a few pages you might like to start from if you wish to debate science.

Scientific Theory
Evolution
Intelligent Design
Transient Fossils
And a list of them
Evolution of the Eye
Irreducible Complexicity

You know, comics get a lot of flak for being so rampantly sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic etc. The general understanding being that if you're not a young, white, middle-class, male, cis-gendered heterosexual looking for action porn with spandex then you're looking in the wrong place for your jollies. (And even then you have to also be slightly misogynistic).

But there are comics which get it right. Admittedly they tend to be independent comics, or comics published by less mainstream groups, but they do exist.

Below is my list of great comics for those of you who want to love comics, who try to love them, but who've repeatedly been scared off by things that just drive you potty.

Wet Moon (go to greenoblivion.com)
Mountain Girl (also at greenoblivion.com)
Serenity Rose (slave labor graphics)
Nightmares and Fairytales (SLG again)
wapsisquare.com

Go and enjoy the love!

So recently two young girls were raped/almost raped on the way home from a local nightclub.

Sadly, I really wasn't that surprised when I read the first story, and not much more shocked when I read the one afterwards. I'm used to the idea of not being safe in my own home town and where I live now actually isn't as bad as where I grew up. And in this town I regularly hear chaos after the pubs empty; glass smashing in streets, screaming arguments, boy racers screeching around corners, fights, including involving my neighbours and the tenants upstairs. I knew as soon as I moved here that this was not a safe town. You spot little things, little signs that prepare you for all of the above.

No, I've been far more interested in people's reactions.

One of the girls was, yes, a girl. Not a woman. Seventeen years old. She was too young to be drinking in a nightclub, but at seventeen she's so close to legal age as makes no difference, and I don't know anyone who didn't drink from the age of at least sixteen. She was walking home, drunk, underage from a nightclub on her own and a man she hadn't met before offered to walk her home "to keep her safe". He led her somewhere secluded and attacked her.

I've not heard anyone say how terrible that she was raped. I've not heard anyone offer concern for her wellbeing. I've heard a lot of people, including women, discussing her stupidity.

Yes, she was stupid. You do not go to a nightclub alone. Or, if you go with a group, you leave with that group. If you cannot do this, you do not walk. You call a taxi, even if you live 10 minutes away. If you do find yourself walking alone, you do not accept the company of strangers. You do not walk into secluded underpasses. You stick close to groups of other partygoers and the main streets, where there are plenty of other open pubs and clubs you can enter, or approach the doormen of, if you feel threatened. Take a panic alarm with you, or at least try not to look like an easy victim. This girl broke every basic rule that was drilled into me by my parents when I was fourteen. And I can vouch that even when you follow all those rules things can still go wrong.

That does not make it her fault that she was raped. I have heard people insinuating that she was probably so drunk she wanted to have sex with the guy that raped her and that it only became rape when she chickened out. I have heard people say a drunk little girl probably wouldn't remember enough to say if it was rape or not so she probably just doesn't want to get in trouble at home. I've heard people say that they hope the rapist drilled some sense into her.

There is no excuse for rape. When a girl says no, no matter what happened up until that point, if you continue you are raping her. If she is too drunk to give/refuse consent, you are raping her. If you coerce her into sex because you've "done her a favour" you are raping her.

After the second girl was attacked, people stopped talking about the first girl. Now it's "these girls that don't know how to act" as if they bring it upon themselves. "Those girls that go out and get drunk and leery". "Those girls that flash their tits at you in the street and jeer at men". "Those girls that are as bad as the boys".

"What do you expect to happen? You made a mistake and now you've been raped. It's all your own fault. You should know not to go out after dark without your father/big brother or a trustworthy male."

The sad fact is we don't have many details. We don't really know what happened. It is almost certain that the first girl put herself in a vulnerable situation. The second girl was raped on the beach just behind the club. She might have just left the door and barely left the sight of the doormen. But because she was young and had been to a club it is assumed that she was some shit-faced little chavvy girl, half-naked at the start of the night and so drunk she was flashing her bits, wandering off alone and getting in trouble.

And for the record, I hate girls who act like that. But we don't know that these girls did act like that, and even if they did they should not be blamed for their own violation.

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2007/06/11/justice/

Go here.

I found this article quite interesting, for a number of reasons. I have to admit that my friends and I did have a little snark session over the whole Paris-Hilton-in-jail thing. The truth is that none of us have any real interest in celebrities and our main reason for general dislike of this particular woman is her snobbery, her fame which appears to have bubbled up out of nowhere, her utter lack of substance and the way she does so much harm for women in general by her very existence (she perpetrates a number of rather hateful stereotypes). I'm glad to say that during our little snark session neither I nor my friends stooped to using sexual slurs.

For me the pleasure in seeing Paris Hilton go to jail is the utter unfairness I perceive when most celebrities are convicted of a crime. Repeat drug offenders get minor rehabilitation-based punishment in often swish rehab clinics, for example, and while I don't believe drug use should be a punishable offence I do believe that the law should apply in the same way to everybody. It feels good to finally see judges treat a celebrity the same as other people, and I hope that in prison Paris meets women who've had far harsher lives. Women who have been beaten, abused, forced into sex-work, forced onto drugs, abandoned, suffered terrible poverty. Women who committed crimes not out of ignorance, or out of a desire to be a bit naughty, or out of some bollocks sense of entitlement, but out of need or desperation or lack of choice. I hope she meets these women who have suffered and scraped. I hope she realises how fortunate she is and how much she is pissing away all the gifts she's been given. I hope she learns something and grows a little.

As much as I dislike this woman, my dislike of her is based on how sh behaves and what she stands for. Should she come out of prison changed, should she start campaigning for woman-prisoners rights, to reduce the terrible statistics of women who self-harm and attempt suicide in prison, who are separated from their children and transported to prisons so far away they don't get to see their families, well, I think I could start to like her.

Another thing I find interesting is they was people in the post have responded to the sexual slurs used against Paris Hilton. There seems to be the assumption that these slurs are used on purpose, consciously selected with the intent to belittle a woman's right to be a sexual creature. When the truth is probably that people just don't think.

I don't believe that it's right to call a woman a slut, or a whore, or a cocktease. Regardless of a woman's sexual tendencies these words should not be used. However, people use insults unconsciously, in my experience. We use words our peers use automatically, and we usually don't think about it beforehand. I use the word cunt a lot. Steaming cunt, greasy cunt, bloody cunt; I rarely think of the word as a description of my pussy, although I describe that body part as my cunt as well, but I am so used to using this word that I do it without thinking. Similarly, when someone calls a woman a "slutty bitch", chances are they were not thinking "I do not think women should be entitled to control of their own sexuality, I also think it is wrong for them to be promiscuous and casual in their attitude for sex. I also believe that women are subhuman, so I will combine my beliefs into a single insult to describe my feelings of all women, and project it onto this woman I dislike". They are probably just thinking "I don't like her, she's a snob".

It's still wrong, and we should still challenge it (and yes, I DO realise I'm a hypocrite since I'm so fond of the word bollocks), but I don't think we should read too much into general use of these terms. People are so used to hearing them that they have lost their meaning.

Okay, so I know most guys don't mean anything by it when they do this, and they probably don't realise how frustrating it is, but do you know what REALLY pisses me off sometimes?

You're walking home at the end of a long, very crappy day. Maybe you got stood up by your mates, maybe its raining and some git in a flashy car splashed you, maybe work was difficult, whatever. Either way you're exhausted, stressed-out, and in need of a cuppa and a sit down. And some arsehole feels the need to comment on your mood and appearance as if you were on show.

"Smile, luv, no one likes to see a frowny face"
"Cor, you don't look 'appy, your boyfriend being a git, is he?"
"Hey, luv, smile for us, eh?"
"You don't 'arf look ugly when you frown like that."
"Blimey, who's in a mood, then?"
"Lovely tits!"

I am NOT. A. PIECE. OF. PRETTY. MEAT.

I was not put on this planet to suppress my own desires and feelings just so that I can skip merrily down the streets in frilly dresses, smiling at all the men. It is none of your bleeding business what mood I'm in or why, and it is not my job to please you.

Also, I know I have lovely (ie, big and wobbly) breasts. I know that they are very noticeable and they do kind of stick out. It might occur to you, however, that I did not grow big ones on purpose so that you could comment on them/grab a hold of them/brush up against them. If you want to look, well fine. I like looking too and I won't begrudge anyone their right to a bit of eye candy. But don't think my having outsized body parts entitles you to play with them.

I have been told not to get so worked up about this sort of thing. Apparently, if a man comments on my breasts/arse/legs/elbow/whatever he is just "being nice", or maybe he "likes me". I should be a good girl and smile and take the compliment.

If you like me, how about you come over and talk to me. You know; say hello, give me your name, ask for mine, initiate conversation about something. My current partner did that- we were at a noisy nightclub and, as soon as I went outside for a bit of fresh air, he came out, sat down by me (in a well-lit and peopled area), asked if I minded him joining me, and struck up a conversation about life, love, and anything we could find common ground on. That night I took him home and fucked his brains out. Five years later and we're still going strong. So you see where being nice can get you? (snark). Besides which, chances are if you're going tocomment on the most obvious parts of my body, you're going to say something very similar to the comments I've had from builders/drunks/jocks/perverts every day since I was a teenager. That, probably, isn't going to impress me much.

I've even been told that being grabbed is not such a big deal. Really? When some huge (or who seems huge and imposing compared to likkle me), drunk, leery, noisy man approaches me, leans up against me, pushes me slightly towards a wall and sticks his hand up my skirt/down my bra without so much as a hello? That is terrifying. It's not a bit of harmless fun, its not a joke, its not just flirting. It. Is. Scary. I've been approached by men since I was thirteen years old; men who start to get aggressive if you don't respond the way they want. In fact a quarter of all women say they have been sexually abused in some form, and this IS abusive. It reduces us down to nothing more than meat. A fine joint of beef in a butcher's shop. A melon. Try it before you buy it. So when some idiot approaches me like that it takes me back to all those men who thought it was okay to ignore words like "no." "no, thank you." "I'm not interested." "Get off of me." "Please stop.". And it scares me.

Anyway, that's my little rant over, now. I'm going to go get some ice cream.

Hello, and welcome to my blog.

I'm somewhat new to the whole blogging thing so please bear with me whilst I workout how to use this thing. I was never interested in blogging before; I saw little to no point in posting intimate details of my life for alland sundry to browse and judge. I've changed my mind now, however, having discovered that blogs can be used to do more than just rant about a person's love-life and how celebtrity X is a whore/slut/dog/the best thing since cheesecake. I started reading femeniste.us/blog and girl-wonder.org. Well-written, witty, intelligent and relevant topics.

So that is what my blog will (I hope) become. A place for me to reflect on the ills of society, or at the very least comment on areas we need to improve upon.

So anyway, my first topic is...

Girls and Gaming.

A few months back I read an article in PC Gamer titled "Why won't Women play?". It made a lot of interesting points, and just recently I've started thinking about it more.

Women aren't really marketted for in the gaming community. Or in the comic community. Or in any community generally presumed to be the preserve of geeks and fanboys. Oh, there are a few token gestures, but the general assumption seems to be that girls don't do geeky things, or that if we are going to market to them we'll do it by painting everything pink and putting puppies in there.

The truth is that women do love geeky things. They play computer games, they read comics, they tinker with science kits and they paint warhammer figurines. Or, at least, they want to.

It's hard, really hard, to immerse yourself in something that makes you cringe on a regular basis. I love comics, for example, but find that I can only read comics such as Serenity Rose, JTHM, Nightmares and Faerietales, and other cult titles. Why? Because the mainstream comics make me gag. The characters are interesting, the art is, sometimes, lovely. But I just can't immerse myself into a plot when I'm wondering why, for example, Vampirella hasn't fallen out of her 3 inches of clothing, why Wonder Woman she doesn't have to stop running after 100 yards to catch her breath because her chest is in agony, why none of them have turned an ankle trying to fight in those heels.

When I play a game, I like to chose my character. I prefer to play as a woman when I have the choice. But I don't want to fight in a metal bikini- it makes me feel vulnerable in sympathy for my character, and in turn effects the way I play. I take more risks and play harder when my character is sensibly dressed and well protected. I have more fun.

And I don't want a "girls game" filled with ponies and pink and shopping. I want blood, and massive warhammers, and tank rushes. I want a way to vent the stress and emotions of the day. I want a "boys game". For girls.

How many potential fans are waiting out there, money in hand, for the geekdom-manufacturers to notice our existence?