Things I Like / Things I Don't Like

Here is a swing away from the more serious blog posts that have started infecting this blog. Here is a list of things I like. It's nice to think about things I like.

In no particular order:

• Diet Coke
• Chocolate
• Patterned tights
• Jeans
• Glasses that fit my wonky face
• Alone time
• Listening to new songs over and over again
• Arguments that aren't fights
• Feedback
• Speaking French
• Crazy lady-shoes
• Boobs
• People dressed flamboyantly
• The snooze button
• Hair dyed a completely unnatural colour
• Go-karting
• Drawing
• Writing
• Being tired and not having to do anything
• Taking my shoes off at the end of the day
• Being retweeted
• Board games
• Nudity
• Interesting tattoos
• Thongs
• When you're able - just for a moment- to look up and realise how vast the universe is
• Dead arms
• Making other people laugh
• Really sour sweets

And here are some things I don't like:

• Pineapple
• Meeting new people
• Colouring
• Engaging with celebrities in person
• Explaining jokes
• Small talk
• Last minute invitations
• Hardcore film violence
• Feet
• Having a body that seems to have no comfortable sitting position
• G-strings
• People who talk rubbish that you don't know well enough to challenge
• Injustice beyond my influence
• Perfume

The Road From Damascus

I am an atheist.

I used to be a Christian, in the sense that I believed in God and Jesus and the gospels and some of the other vagueries of the New Testament. My primary school told me New Testament literalism and that all the things that Jesus did were true and that God was love and all of the wibbly-wobbly stuff that the Bible teaches. We did not cover the Old Testament, but I knew the old stories like Noah's Ark and Adam and Eve. We were taught they were metaphors and symbols. And I believed everything I was taught, because when you're a kid, you do. That's how you learn and develop - you look to your elders to guide you and grant you knowledge. If they told me the sky was held up by magnets, I'd believe that and - like with all the religious doctrine - grout over all the logical cracks and holes because I just assumed I was too young or stupid to understand why some things didn't make sense.
The prodigal son. I never understood that. It made no sense to me at all. A loving God who sends people to hell? Didn't understand that. What age will people be in heaven and will we recognise each other, what is there to do in heaven and will we be allowed to do all the naughty, but fun, things we weren't allowed to do on Earth? These were all the kind of questions I thought about from about eight years old but I just thought I was too stupid to understand the solution. In fact, I was too modest to understand that these were probably pretty good questions and that I should have been demanding answers.
I remember I once asked my RE teacher why envy was a sin if God said that He Himself was 'a jealous God' (Deut.). The answer given was that it was 'a different kind of jealous that was subtle and beyond my understanding.'. I totally bought that. What was wrong with me?(1)

I continued to believe in God throughout right up until I was around 23. I stopped going to church in my early teens because I found it a bit boring and irrelevant (though the Vicar was very nice and always remembered my name). I never reall acted out my faith through practice; I had a sense of a God existing somehow in the aether and watching us and my belief was that to be a believer and good person was enough to be a good Christian and get to heaven.
I think the hook that kept me clinging to my faith so long was fear. Now, Britain is a mostly secular country where the vast, vast majority of its population really don't give a crap about religion. They'll have a vague kind of faith and belief but it doesn't dominate their lives or society. Religion wasn't rammed down my throat at all. And yet, the idea of God watching me was very scary. It crept into my mind when I did something wrong, when I questioned my believe, when I considered my own life and how it would look to Jesus when I died. I had these genuine thoughts in my head and believed it was definitely safer to hang on to my faith than to let it go - call it a crude Pascal's Wager.
I remember learning about quantum mechanics in University and the Copenhagen Interpretation of the entangled particle problem (2). I remember distinctly thinking that day, 'ah - there is wiggle room for God here. This is where God must act.'. It was a despereate attempt to god-of-the-gaps myself into maintaining (what I considered to be) a rational belief in God.

So what changed me? It's cliché time: Richard Dawkins. Now people give Richard Dawkins a lot of bad stick. Based on the criticism of him I've observed, the bile towards him seems to be based on a straw man charicature of him set up by hyperbolic religious defenders. He really isn't shrill or militant at all. He has a kind of Latin-teacher-esque, old school, hardened personality but he's not angrily shouting down religion, puffing his cheeks red and trying to destroy everyone's right to be religious. He's actually very calm and gentle. But, I digress.
I picked up The God Delusion not actually knowing what it was. I had just seen a poster for it saying it was a great read. I actually thought the title was a metaphor and didn't realise it was about religion at all until partway through the first chapter. I found it incredibly interesting. It delved into the parts of the Bible that church and school ignored; it addressed the very questions I had been asking myself and made me feel less of a fool for thinking that way; it laid out very clear, very calm arguments for it's position. It allowed me to let go, without fear or foolishnes, of theism.
And that's when I indulged in skepticism (3).

Skepticism suited me to a T. My mind approaches things pretty logically and I am very keen to understand why something is the way it is. Why have people come to this conclusion? Why do people do things this way and not that way? Why is the sky blue? Give me a good reason.
The interesting thing is, most people are swayed by a good narrative. This is how British Newspapers operate - they will sell you an emotional hook and pummel you with it to get you on their side. They won't give you a hook reason for their shouty headlines, they will panic the shit out of you or fill you with rage, or love, or empathy or xenophobia. Because that's how people operate - humans are 'designed' to respond to stories (4); we are social beings and it allows us to work together and fight together.
I like stories and I respond to an angry editorial like anyone else. But following my move into skepticism I now ask 'why'. What is the evidence to back up your opnion, Ms. Editorialist? Show me your working. If I'm going to stop giving my kids vaccines, you better give me a bloody compelling argument, I don't care how loud you yell at me.

And thus we return to religion. The ultimate emotional hook. God made the world - isn't it pretty and wondrous and magical? The whole concept of being alive among amazing flora and fauna - it's so divine and wonderful. The idea of a super-ultra-mega-Dad that loves you so hard he will always be with you is a tremendous comfort (even though you know you stil can't stand in front of a moving bus). Not only that, he's going to send to to an even more amazing place when you die with everything you ever wanted and you will live forever. But also, if you're not good and if you don't follow these complicated and vague rules you will burn and be tortured forever in Hell. So play by the rules.

1) This is horrible. This is what you do to children to keep them quiet: 'be good and you'll get a sweetie; be naughty and you'll get a smacked ankle. Except it's not just to keep kids quiet for half and hour, it's to keep entire societies quiet forever.
2) Why, why, why do you believe this? There isn't any reason to believe it. An old book is not good enough.
3) You can make truly horrendous decision based on bad reasoning. Look at the horrors the are following the vaccine scare. Children are dying of preventable diseases because a bad study scared the hell out of parents.

I am an atheist because these is no reason to believe in God or spirituality. I am an antitheist because religion can cause tremendous harm to both people and society, directly and indirectly. It's a bad, archaic foundation from which to make potentially life-changing decisions.
I don't want to restrict people's beliefs. I want people to have to freedom to worship and pray and take part in whatever beliefs and rituals they want. But while I respect their freedom to believe, I don't respect their beliefs. Their beliefs are nonsense, as magical and wonderful and imaginative as they may be. Keep it to fiction.





(1) - Answer: I was young and naive and accepting of adults' wisdom
(2) - tl;dr, but the idea behind CI is that properties of two 'twin' particles are not actually set until they are observed. At the point they are observed, both particles instantaneously gain their fundamental properties, not matter how far away from each other they are.
(3) I spell it with a "k" because skepticism as a movement and society seemed to have universally adopted to "k" spelling, though it means exactly the same thing as "scepticism" really.
(4) Hence why I am currently writing skeptical fairy tales.

Gender Bias in Rape

So a short while back, I made a comic in response to a NYT piece about a gang-rape on a 12-year-old girl. The piece was editorialised in such a way as to emphasise the adult and sexual attire of the 12-year-old and the irresponsibility of the parent for letting her out in public that way. While these are important discussions to have, the problem with the article was that these statements glossed over the fact that multiple people at minimum performed statutory rape on a minor. Hence my comic.

Now, this comic has been spread around a bit on a number of feminist/liberal sites as a point of discussion and I'm glad for this. I'm the kind of person who likes to track when my work gets passed around (I like to see people's responses) and today I came upon this comment:

I get this, really I do. But, I was raped by a woman, so why is the rapist always a man? They even gender it with pink and blue and say “guy on the left is a rapist”. Shit like this really invalidates my experience of being violated by a female. I wish people would be more gender-neutral when calling out rapists and rape apologists.

Which is a fair point, and one I hadn't really considered. I mean, I know some rapists/sexual assaulters (?) are women but in this context it didn't cross my mind when compiling some examples.

So I think I've got a couple of things to say as a response:

1) I absolutely agree that sexual assault can comes from almost any type of person. Male, female, heterosexual, homosexual, (x)-sexual, adults, children, strangers, loved ones... I don't mean to make it sound like there are rapists round every corner, but the point is that yes, indeed, the perpetrators of such assault are not limited to just evil men. And this is definitely a fact we should not lose sight of as there is definitely a propensity to shrug off sexual assault by a woman as 'ridiculous' as if a woman couldn't commit such an offense. We should take every accusation of assault seriously and investigate and provide support accordingly.

2)However, this was not the point of the comic. The point of the comic was the intrinsic social misogyny that rears it's ugly head in many, many rape cases. Time and time again we hear that the woman must shoulder some of the blame for the attack because she was dressed inappropriately, that she was walking in a dodgy part of town or that she was too drunk to control herself. Now, while there is a need to act responsibly and be aware of potential dangers, there is simply no excusing the rapist for taking advantage of their victims weaknesses. If you walk down a dark alley and get stabbed and mugged, we don't transfer any of the blame from the mugger to the victim simply because the victim was in a dark alley.

But a significant portion of society does this with 'liberated' women who are assaulted by men and that was the issue I was attempting to highlight in the comic.

(Incidentally, I don't think you'd be able to find a case where a drunken straight guy was raped by a man and the straight guy was expected to accept his ordeal as a consequence of drunkenness).

3) It's very difficult to tackle a lot of issues in one punch. I think the comic seems to work (at the risk of talking myself for the briefest of moments) because it has one clear message. If you start mixing a number of issues into the pot then the 'punch' of the message gets lost.

So I absolutely sympathise with anyone who has tragically been the victim of assault, no matter who the perpetrator. I further sympathise with victims who have been assaulted in a manner that has yet to be given the seriousness it deserves (e.g. by a woman). But believe me when I say I had no intention of trivialising any aspects of assault by their absence.

EDIT: As an addendum, I've focussed on the assaulter in this post, but equally not all victims of abuse are women. Again, I have focussed on the victims who are most likely to have the blame passed onto them by social ignorance/the most commonly reported victims.

Why Writing Erotica is the Best Thing You Can Do

I am not a writer by any stretch so I wouldn't dream of attempting to give any advice on such matters. If you want writing advice, go to Lauren. She's got all the good tips like 'stop randomly capitalising words' and 'shimming isn't a word'. She's a gold mine of information.

I do, however, enjoy writing and it used to be the feather in my academic bonnet between the ages of about 6 and 14. I managed to impress teachers with an early aptitude for creative writing, which distracted them a little from my appalling maths skills and retarded drawing ability (1). But somewhere along the lines, I must have got confused and came out of university with an art foundation and a maths and physics degree. Writing disappeared backstage during those dark years.

But I still enjoy writing, and in recent times I've been trying a few things out again (reducing my comic-load in the process) so when I spotted a writing competition on twitter, I went and checked it out. It turned out to be an Erotic Fiction Competition (2) for a women's magazine called Filament ("the thinking woman's crumpet"). I toyed with the idea in my head for a bit, never really wanting to commit, as writing about sexy times could be pretty embarrassing. But then I kind of got into a dare with a lady on twitter so I wrote the damn thing.

I won't go into the plot or who-did-what-to-whom here (just in case), but I will tell you a little bit about the experience.

Firstly: everything sounds like a bloody innuendo while you're writing it. "I was up late last night"; "you've got to get it in by the end of the day"; "fucking hell". Everything.

Secondly, and most importantly: it was the hardest (!) thing I've ever written in my life. Not in the sense that I was writing about sex and that it was awkward and cringeworthy, though it was. Once you commit to writing erotica, you're going to have to accept you're going to have to write about sexy bits and sexy actions; you get over it pretty quickly. No, it was difficult because you quickly come (!) to realise that the whole sexiness of sex is that it's an unspoken language. And a language without words doesn't work well in written form.

I'm sure there are some people that get their rocks off with dirty talk in the bedroom or with an endless stream of verbal instructions ("do this"; "do that"; "put it there"; "let's do it this way", etc) but in the world I'm familiar with, everything is a lot more subtle and spoken in actions, expressions and suggestion-by-touch. I might be the statistical whisker here, but whatever - it's my story (3).

This is coupled with the fact that sexy anatomicals... aren't sexy. Vagina sounds like something you'd floor your kitchen with. Penises and breasts are too clinical; cocks and pussies are too vulgar; boobs and willies are too silly. Even Vagitionary (4), the thesaurus for female anatomy stayed mostly within the vulgar/silly/clinical groupings.

And this is exactly why I found the whole experience so rewarding (though the result was utter cack). I really had to think about what I was writing. It reminded my of my French lessons: the teacher would encourage us to keep talking if we didn't know the right words, 'Talk around the words,' she'd say. 'Describe what you're talking about if you don't know the word you want.' This is what I had to do here: I had to talk around all the anatomical words and sexual acts and terrible, terrible dirtiness and describe everything as emotively as I could without getting too explicit. Because, in my opinion, explicitry (that can't possibly be a word) isn't sexy.

In working this way, you think a lot more about what you're doing and what you're trying to do. And it's bloody hard (!). Not only that, what do sexy feelings actually feel like? You can't just write "orgasm" or "sexy rumblings" throughout, you have to emote the whole feeling to the reader. I spent a lot of time staring into space trying to think of that the actual physical feeling of sexual interaction felt like. It's like trying to describe the colour blue (5): a fundamental sensation that can't be broken into smaller feelings. And furthermore, I wanted to tell it from a woman's perspective - it is a women's magazine, after all.

All in all, it was a journey fraught with obstacles that taught me a lot about writing, so I'm very glad I did it. And I'm very glad I never, ever have to do it again.

(1) I use retarded in its naissant sense, meaning that I was slow to figure out how to draw and colour properly. I still remember that beautiful day in year 5 when I finally figured out how to colour in the lines and the class congratulated me. I am not making this up.
(2) http://bit.ly/dKljuE
(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_and_whisker
(4) http://gregology.net/Entertainment/Vagitionary
(5) 7.5*10^15 Hz. Sexy.

Notes on the Right to Speak Offensively

Recently, two football pundits came under attack for a variety of sexist comments towards some particular women in football. Of this, enough has been said. However, someone on twitter (who I shall paraphrase for anonymity) said, rather angrily:

"Dad reckons that the guys off sky sports were unfairly vilified; that it was free speech and 'why we fought the war'"

There are a couple of responses to this. It's easiest to start with the parts that are right: that people have fought for the right to free speech. I think it's entirely fair to say that no one had to fight for the right to denigrate women, but all in all, thanks to long efforts in progressing society people can say whatever they like.

But here's the important part: if people don't like what you say, they can very much tell you so. The point of free speech is that it works both ways. If you're a public figure and heard to give some rather archaic and offensive views then it is very likely you are going to get a very public battering. It's not the madness of political correctness; it's not that 'you can't say anything anymore'; it's that your comments are open to scrutiny.

So, yes, it was free speech. And yes, we've fought for such freedoms. But freedom of speech is not the right to say anything without rebuttal.

But we don't even have to go that far, in this case. These two fellows are employees of a national broadcaster - in fact, they're not just employees they are spokespeople. They are voices of Sky Sports, and as such have a responsibility to their employer to behave ethically, responsibly and without bigotry. Heck, I'm just an analyst (professionally) and bear no outward face for my company and my contract still states I can't use language of a racism, sexist or otherwise offensive nature. And I can only piss off the few people who sit around me.

I think what we've seen from this is that while you can say nasty stuff about whomever you like (no one was arrested), most people will object to it and smack you down. Good.

The Language of Sexuality

This is a little thought about the language we use to describe sexuality and how there might be better ways to use our language to be more socially inclusive and to make things less "scary". Please note that I'm well aware that it would be mostly foolhardy to attempt to believe we can affect a change in today's language use; this is merely a reflection on a potentially better method. (Note: similarly, I read a great little essay on how people were using the wrong number for Pi (1), and the author similarly knew no one would ever change the way they used Pi). Hat-tip to Rebecca (2) who actually formulated the new terms used below.

So here's my thinking. The terms, 'homosexual' and 'heterosexual' are unnecessarily segregative  They've been used over the years to create an 'us and them' mentality in society that has brainwashed (for want, perhaps, of a lighter word) a good number of people into thinking about their fellow men and women in an imperfect light. Even paid-up members of the so called leftist, liberal elite have confessed a reactionary 'ick factor' when considering different sexualities, though whether this is a result of memetic language use is a matter for debate.

It all begins with a need to break things down into categories for descriptive ease. Anyone who's explored evolution a little will know that even the divide between species is not a black-and-white one, but a sliding scale at which point we have (somewhat) arbitrarily put a fence, with one side labeled as homo erectus, and the other homo sapiens. And that's fine. Labelling is a necessity for communication.

A lot of segragation is born of catergorisation and classification. Black people and white people; thin people and fat people; glasses-wearers and non-glasses wearers - these are some natural and obvious differences between us that are readily identifiable and immediately useful, if only for pointing at a crowd of people across the room to focus in on a particular person. The correctness of these terms to pick people out of a crowd will not be discussed here, but one can hardly disagree with its simplicity and usefulness.

With sexuality, however, there is no immediate need to start separating people out in this way (3). And, in fact, as sexuality operates in a two-dimensional array (the dimensions being 'your own gender' and 'the gender(s) you're attracted to'), dividing people into 'homosexual' and 'heterosexual' is not, in my opinion, the best and most elegant solution.

Firstly, from the literary and social research I have studied it is quite clear that the heterosexual/homosexual divide is not a binary one. It exists on a sliding scale, much the same as there aren't just skinny people and obese people. Generally, it seems that the segregation exists between the heterosexual side and anyone who shows inklings of bisexuality onwards.

So, to the actual point of this post: the language. I think it would be far simpler and more useful to use classifications based on 'who you are attracted to', not 'how the gender of your attraction relates to your own gender'. When asking for labels, Rebecca came up with the superbly elegant Androsexual (attracted to men) and Gynosexual (attracted to women).

So what is the benefit of this re-classification? For starters, it's not really a classification at all anymore, it's more of an adjective. It describes what you like and it bleeds across the genders and other classifications. And let's face it, we are all familiar with androsexual and gynosexual people anyway, and comfortable (for the most part) with those different from us within this description. If you are a straight man, you don't (I assume) find it disgusting and unpalatable that your straight female friend is attracted to men, even though you are not. You probably never batted an eyelid about it. If you ever thought a little deeper you'd probably think: yeah she's probably done [sexual acts x,y,z] with men and though you may not like to think too much about close friends in sexual situations, you won't consider such things heinous, offensive or wrong. Androsexuals and gynosexuals get along; they understand each other. In this sense, you (a straight man in this example, still) can approach the idea of a gay man as no different in sexual appetite to your straight female friend. You are perfectly familiar with the concept of androsexuality.

Secondly, we start to move away from the sliding-scale sexuality to a more attributable sexuality. Let me explain: in the hetero/homo system, as you move from one extreme to the other you pass through a middle zone of bisexuality. As humans, we find this trickier to pin down that actua attributes. In the andro/gyno system, you can simultaneously hold both attributes at the same time, and not necessarily equally. This is similar to how I can like both apples and bananas, but prefer bananas. If you take a moment and reverse the fruit analogy back into the hetero/homo world you'd live in a world where, as a man, I would be expected to be a banana eater - a fruitnormian, maybe? The hetero/homo language is loaded with expectation.

I feel I've rattled off enough on this. It's a speculative and hypothetical idea, though I don't think I'm completely off the wall.

(1) http://unnaturalhistorymuseum.tumblr.com
(2) http://tauday.com/
(3) though I will admit, it certainly becomes useful in the singles dating pool.

British Atheism

Sometimes I have a moment of reflection about how I tend to make a lot of commentary on theism and religion and wonder why I feel so compelled to do so.

For in the UK, the issue of God's existence and what she actually wants if she does existent, barely seems to break the fabric of society at all. Even when people do manage to get their knickers in a twist, like the Daily Mail readers who followed Shirley Chappell's plight to be allowed to wear a crucifix chain in her nursing job, they don't care any further than tutting over their breakfast cereal.

Unlike in America, where huge groups of people can father together under one religious message, I'd be surprised if you could result find a parade of Britons who could passionately agree on their religion's stance on any social issue. And I say 'passionately' purposefully, because even when people can agree on something, they often won't regard that viewpoint as particularly important.

'Are gay marriages right with God?'; 'would god be annoyed if we clone humans?'; 'is there a heaven and hell?'. A lot of us British folk, believers or not, jusy don't care about these questions.

And I don't speak for all churches, but a lot of the ones I've been to exist more as a community and social lecture than a reinforcement of ancient dogma. Though the old stories, prayers and parables are stol recited, of course.

So, my question to myself is: why do I find out necessary to argue, commentate and satirise something that is almost negligible in my home kingdom? I may as well be talking about astrology, frankly. I haven't done the research, but the belief system around astrology seems pretty similar. "Yeah, I think its true, maybe, probably. Can we talk able something else?"

Firstly, the fact that the internet gives me a potentially global audience (most of our comic readers are from the theistically troubled US) means that anything I have to say on religion isn't entirely for a stagnant audience. The whole Gnu Atheism thing is really a euphemism for the re-energised social religious conflict America its going through at the moment.

Bit I would say the main reason I continue to cover religion (other than that I find it fascinating) its that the UK is in that sleepy period between the acceptance of an idea and its dismissal. Much like alternative medicines, religion is waved away wishy-washily as if it's fine to let everyone get on with it and annoying to address. We all suspect it's a bit of nonsense but best to let sleeping dogs lie than bother to think about the issue a little deeper.

Which is fine, in a way: everyone is entitled to their own beliefs. And like dormant volcanoes, the whole lot may go extinct, given time. Or, more dangerously, if we let it sit quietly it could become part of the furniture; something to be cherished, like grandma's old chez long. When that happens, you'll find people getting all protective over 'tradition' and 'custom'.

Or we could push to raise people's consciousness one last time just to make them realise how ridiculous the whole concept of theistic religion is. Something too silly to take seriously.

Also, it's really easy to make jokes and comics about God. That's another reason.

You know it's love when...

From: Lauren Taylor

Sent: 19 January 2011 10:17
To: Taylor, Stuart

Can't shift this cold

On 19 January 2011 10:18, Taylor, Stuart wrote:

Me either! Snif snif snof

From: Lauren Taylor

Sent: 19 January 2011 10:21
To: Taylor, Stuart

It's 'me neither'

Skeptic Logic Puzzle Solution

If you head over to Skepchick.com you'll find this neat little number puzzle .
I get a bit obsessed with number puzzles so here is my solution.

EDIT: Erm, I kind of buggered up the final step, so assume I picked the other solution :)

Movie Plots in Haiku

No one believes him
Even though he's an expert
But now it's too late




She's surprised to find
The man she thought she hated
Is the one for her




Enough time has passed
To exploit past disaster
For millions of bucks




He goes back in time
And finds to his amazement
A world of plotholes




We were getting high
Instead of writing a plot
The Wayans Brothers




A city hotshot
Takes a trip to the country
Learns to love again




This light comedy
Created in the eighties
Gratuitous tits