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[Background: A few years ago I was involved in several relationships at once with the knowledge and consent of all involved. This is known as polyamory.]

It didn’t work for me. I won’t be pursuing this type of relationship in future. Polyamory is a legitimate and happy way for people to live, and I support anyone’s right to do so and not be harassed into persistent justification of their lifestyle. What didn’t work for me was the plate-juggling aspect of trying to keep everyone happy with the level of attention they were getting. I have enough trouble keeping one person happy! I didn’t want extra emotional attachments, I just wanted to be able to sleep with other people. Not very poly. It’s also hard to openly maintain a lifestyle that goes against prevailing social mores - I must admit that’s part of the reason my life is so much easier now.

I am irritated to find myself included in conversations where poly and open relationships are derided, as if “all that’s behind her now, she’s one of us normal people again.” I am tired of speaking up and find myself nodding along to keep the peace. It’s funny - I am now free of being constantly put on the spot about it, but I can’t help but feel that an erasure of history is being attempted. “She made a mistake”, “It was just a phase”, “That was then, this is now” and other dismissive comments about a time in my life that was turbulent and unpleasant but still happened, because I wanted it to happen. I think I needed to go through that to find out where my limits were, so to erase that experience would erase my way of knowing what I want from a relationship. For me, it was a phase, but there’s no call for “just”.

Plenty of people who knew the situation are surprised that I still have anything positive to say about polyamory, but I just don’t feel that my experience is generally how it goes. I had some awful times, but I put that down to the people involved including my own inability to set boundaries until it was far too late. I have met and spoken to several poly groups who are happy (and not suicide cult happy, just normal, everyday happy). They are at the point where the fact they are poly doesn’t even come up that often, they are just getting on with life. I’d wish them the best of luck but they simply don’t need it and it would be patronising to do so. I also have some admiration for their ability to live against the norm, which they aren’t doing for the sake of being alternative but for the sake of their own happiness and authenticity.

Dan Savage recently has something to say about open relationships, which triggered this post.

Today is Ada Lovelace day and what I’m supposed to do is share a story about a woman who inspired me on the path to science/tech. The sad truth is that no woman really did that for me. I have been inspired by men doing things, by noticing that women don’t do those things, and by my own stubborn and contrary need to be different. My own late mother Joy Melton was a part-time payroll clerk - which at least showed me that women can do maths - and she always encouraged me to go as far as I possibly could, so there’s that, but I didn’t view the life she had as one I wanted for myself. Ironically she was made redundant in the late 90s by a computer system, the sort of thing I am now qualified to create.

Nevertheless, the older I get the more useful role-models seem to be - and so the only women I can think of who I view as role-models are people I know and see often, about whom it would be rather embarrassing to write.

People like Jimmy’s mum - Joyce Carter, who fought her way through sexism in the banking industry back in the 70s. People like Hannah Dee who is not just a woman in science but one who actively sets out to get more women in science, being the deputy chair of BCSWomen. People like Edel Sherratt, whose enthusiasm for the theory behind computing has kept me inspired where other teachers would have had me nodding off. People like Amanda Clare who quietly gets on with very hard research, whose level of focus and commitment to her work is something I fear I’ll never attain. People like Su Wainwright, who has spent decades destroying stereotypes by working in the computer industry and somehow managed to be a mother at the same time.

So there you go, I couldn’t possibly write a full profile of any one of these women because it would just be a bit weird. It has been something of a surprise, however, to realise that I do have female role-models after all.

Cryonics is the idea that you can preserve people shortly before, at, or shortly after death, and then wake them up with as yet unknown future technology.

I always thought that cryonics was a kind of whack job money-making scheme, like homeopathy, astrology, mediums etc. Certainly a lot of money can be gained from vulnerable (dying, grieving) people who will grasp onto any hope, however slim. The thing with cryonics is that it doesn’t rely on magic, like the other things I’ve mentioned. It relies on future technology. Which, to the level that we understand it, is indistinguishable from magic, but the difference is it can exist.

The last time I checked up on this, we could freeze bodies, but ice crystals formed, making the revival impossible. Then, we started putting antifreeze in, which stopped the ice crystals forming, but was poisonous so the revived body would immediately deteriorate. At that point, I kinda stopped listening to the arguments, because it seemed pretty stupid. Now, a quite comprehensive paper has been brought to my attention, which *also* says that we can’t do full-body preservation but that there is a size limit such that organs might be individually preserved. The example for this is that a rabbit kidney was cryonically preserved, then brought back to a working state, re-installed in the rabbit, and it lived for 48 days on that one kidney before being euthanised for histological analysis. This is news to me. So, small organs can sometimes be preserved (I’m not sure how many rabbits *didn’t* make it, nor how long the vitrified kidney was stored that way).

My other major problem was knowing brain death means that the mind dies too. If the mind is gone, I see absolutely no point in preserving body parts except of course for transplant into a (different) living person at a later date. Now, true brain-death *does* mean the mind dies, but the cryonics claim is that you can get to the patient quickly after brain-death (I would suggest before brain death would make more sense but legal issues about assisted suicide currently prevent this) and the brain structures can be preserved. It has been known for brains to cease function (or appear to) in hypothermia and then “restart” - meaning the mind perhaps doesn’t need to be continually running for a survivable state.

It seems to me a very large leap from the current ability to preserve rabbit kidneys and the fact that a brain might survive for a little while without the “software” (terrible analogy, sorry) running, to “we can preserve whole human bodies *now* for the later revival by future humans with better technology”. There are so many assumptions:

• There are going to be future humans
• They will have improved on our technology to the point where this is possible
• The way we have preserved people, *in our time* will be good enough for them to revive us, in an appreciably better way than e.g. mummification.
• The *known problems* with what we do to preserve people now will not be problems in the future

And that’s just problems with the technology. I am quite happy to state that should the human race survive long enough to do so, we will develop some sort of “save my mind” technology. What I don’t agree with is that we can do a damn thing about it *yet*. I would probably not agree to be cryonically preserved unless I have seen evidence of someone being revived from cryonic preservation. If this means I miss the window, so be it. I will *certainly* not be paying for it!

Slightly woolier (moral) issues:

• Population control - we don’t have room for the living, never mind the “life-challenged”
• The massive assumption that the future people would bother to revive people from the distant past just because they wanted that to happen when they were last conscious.
• That humans will still be sufficiently “human” as we know it, to communicate with
• The idea that you might still have a place in society, even if the future people were happy to bring you back
• It’s very easy to abuse people’s trust and/or money in order to promise them an afterlife that can’t yet happen, and I think this is appalling.
• It’s another way of creating a rich/poor divide.
• Potential loss of organ donors

There’s one argument I hear rattle around my head when I think about this, and it’s this: “Any chance, however slim, to save a human life is morally justified”. No, it’s not. It’s a reality that resources are finite. Any resources going into preserving yourself after death could have been invested in giving thousands of other people better lives. There’s a sense of “If you’ve got the cash to do it, why not?” - Spend your money to plant that shade tree under which you’ll never sit, you selfish idiot.

http://www.brainpreservation.org/ are one group researching the answers, and who knows - it could be a short amount of time before we can do it. What I am certain of is that as yet we don’t even know if it works, and that’s not good enough for me to participate. I await any results with interest. I am fully in favour of research into the technologies in the area, I am of course not against research with no immediate return — look at what I study — but the extortion of money for the service is morally bankrupt and the technology has a way to go before it looks reliable (a vast understatement). As the Society for Cryobiology puts it:

The act of freezing a dead body and storing it indefinitely on the chance that some future generation may restore it to life is an act of faith, not science.

RationalWiki - which I read *after* writing this to avoid totally coming from the “it’s bollocks” side from the start, has more.

Sitting on the fence eventually gives you splinters. If you already know how the systems work but you aren’t voting yes, skip to the end.

Problems with our current system are numerous and varied. We probably can’t solve them all in a single change. Certainly I’d prefer proportional representation with Single Transferrable Vote, but that’s not on offer here. What’s on offer is a simple binary choice between First Past The Post (FPTP) and Alternative Vote (AV). Fortunately, that means the system by which we choose the voting system is fair - 2 choices makes FPTP and AV equivalent.

What is FPTP?

You pick the candidate you prefer. At least, that’s what you’re supposed to do. After the vote, the candidate with most votes gets in. In a close 3-way election, this can be as little as 34% of the vote. In a close 10-way election, it could be as little as e.g. 11%. Obviously, there aren’t very many 10-way close races. Those whose candidate doesn’t win often perceive their vote to be wasted, since it had no direct effect on the outcome.

What is AV?

You rank candidates 1, 2, 3, etc. until you no longer care about the order. At the end, if one candidate has >50% of the “1″ votes, they win. If that isn’t the case, the lower preference votes get used to top up their levels, but not until the last place candidate is removed from the running. This is important, as it makes certain that your later preferences cannot be used against your earlier ones. So, in AV the last place candidate’s ballots are redistributed according to their second preferences. If this pushes some candidate over the 50% line, they win. Otherwise, the process is repeated.

If you don’t understand how the counting works, it doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that:

• When you vote, you get to pick a second choice and a third choice, etc. if you so choose
• In no circumstance can a later preference affect an earlier one.
• In some circumstances, your later preferences can make a difference to the final outcome.

Why is AV better?

• If you voted for the winner as your first choice, it’s exactly the same as FPTP - your vote is counted exactly once.
• If you didn’t vote for the winner, but you didn’t care about the rest, it’s exactly the same as FPTP - your vote is discarded.
• If you *do* have a second preference, tactical voting (e.g. a vote for Labour cos the Lib Dems can’t win in your constituency) is unnecessary - you can vote for your true preference, sure in the knowledge that if your second preference is required, it will be used. You still get a maximum of one vote that is counted. It may not be required, though.

Let’s look at some examples:

A constituency where Lab Lib and Con only stand:
Lab gets 40% of the votes. Con gets 45%. Lib gets 15%.

Now, it all hangs on the second preference of the 15% Lib voters. It’s therefore pretty likely that Lab will win here. FPTP would have had Con win. This means that similar parties would no longer be disadvantaged by separating voters.

A more comprehensive example:
Lab gets 34%, Con gets 34%, Lib gets 15%, Green gets 7%, BNP gets 6%, Independent candidate gets 4%.

No single minor group could be the kingmaker here. The FPTP answer is probably going to require a recount and a very slim victory for either Lab or Con. But it could be resolved before that were necessary with AV.

First, the independent candidate’s 2nd prefs are redistributed. Let’s say they all go to the Green party. Green now has 11%.
Now, the BNP votes get redistributed. Let’s say they all go to the Tories. Now we have Lab 34%, Con 40%, Lib 15%, Green 11%.

I’m going to divide the possibilities here.
a) Green gets redistributed. By now some of these are onto their third preference, and some people haven’t given one. So let’s say only 10% instead of 11% get reallocated, because that 1% put Independent 1, Green 2, and then nothing else. So that 1% is lost. Yes, lost votes can still happen in AV. The rest of the Greens voted for the Lib Dems. Lab 34%, Con 40%, Lib 25%.
Lib dems are redistributed, but many of those greens didn’t want Lab or Con so they left it. So only 20% goes to Lab, but it still pushes them over the line, Lab win.

b) Green gets redistributed. All their votes go to the Conservatives, because their logo is a tree. This makes the Conservatives win with 51%, and the Lib Dem votes are never counted. BTW, STV might fix this - it redistributes from top and bottom.

c) None of the Greens had a second/third preference. All their votes are discarded. All the Lib Dem votes go to Labour - Lab have 49%, Con have 40%. I *think* in this situation the Con votes are redistributed, and then if *none* of them voted Labour as a second, presumably the election has no clear winner? Or do Labour default win? I’m unclear on this very unlikely point.(See comment 4 - Labour win) Even this unlikely outcome is only as bad as FPTP in the same situation.

Still, AV gives you the chance that a second preference might be counted. This is inversely proportional to the chance of your first choice getting in. What I would suggest is that you put all your preferences in, as that maximises your chance of being counted. Australia mandates this, but they also mandate voting, and that’s an argument for another day.

One of the main problems of FPTP is that tactical voting is sometimes the logical thing to do. Tactical voting is where your preferred choice is unlikely to win, which under FPTP is a wasted vote. What you end up doing is voting for your second choice if they are one of the big 2, which still wastes your real preference and perpetuates a 2-party system. The whole system expects there will be 2 major parties — look at how the House of Commons is laid out! The idea is that this creates a strong government who can get lots of bills passed (non-majority wins can lead to a large majority of seats), but I’d rather have a representative government. Change should be difficult if over half the country is against it.

The Tories are against AV. This is because it offers them no advantage and may reduce their voter share. The Lib Dems are for AV, because it gives them a huge advantage. Labour are for AV, I hope because it’s actually a fairer system. Please vote for a fairer system by saying Yes to AV on 5th May. This isn’t about party politics, it’s about making the system better represent what all the voters want.

To those who are so jaded by politics that they don’t see the point:
We can actually fix one reason that you don’t think your vote is worth giving. It’s small, but it’s a start and it’s in the right direction.

As to the arguments against AV, Here are some myths about AV debunked. The only reason I can see to keep FPTP is if your party will lose from AV and you’d rather your party win unfairly than lose (more) fairly. That, or you’d rather the wrong party was in charge than that no single party had a majority. Let me know if, after checking out the myths, you have others.

I’ve implemented hexadecimal time.

Happy 7db/0/c 8:3:5!

The only set values I’ve allowed are the days in a year and the total amount of time it takes for a day, as these are set by nature. There’s an argument for months too but since the current calendar doesn’t account for that properly I’m going to ignore it.

• There are 16 months in a year, each having roughly 22 days.
• There are 16 hours in a day, 16 minutes in an hour, and 16 seconds in a minute.
• Everything is represented in hex instead of decimal.
• The new time divisions are referred to as: hexear, hexonth, hexay, hexour, hexite, hexond.
• conversion is best achieved using total seconds in a day, and total days in a year, since these are static.
• Of course, zero-indexing is used, even for the month and day.
• A hexond is about 21 seconds, a hexite is about 5 minutes, and a hexour is 1.5 hours.

Here is some Ruby code for calculating it.

standard = Time.now

daysec = 86400
hexoursec = 86400/16
hexitesec = hexoursec / 16
hexondsec = hexitesec / 16
hexear = standard.year.to_s(16)
hexonth = (standard.yday / 16).to_s(16)
hexay = (standard.yday % 16).to_s(16)
totsec = standard.hour * 60 * 60 + standard.min * 60 + standard.sec
hexour = (totsec*16 / daysec).to_s(16)
hexite = (totsec*16*16 / daysec % 16).to_s(16)
hexond = (totsec*16*16*16 / daysec % 16).to_s(16)
puts hexear + "/" + hexonth + "/" + hexay + " " + hexour + ":" + hexite + ":" + hexond

I’m expecting my Nobel prize in Mathematics any day now.

Apologies for the length of this, I haven’t blogged for ages and all my thoughts have come out at once. Lots of my friends have got / are getting married, and it leaves me wondering about my own feelings about it.

(TL, DR? Open to all, all religions treated equally, civil marriage is the legal part, no tax advantage, yes maybe someday)

Marriage always looks a bit odd to me. Any kind of attempt to pin down a definition of marriage gets you tied up in knots as you try to decide whether the legal, or the religious bit is what makes it marriage rather than “partnership”, and whether historically marriage mean two lovers, or a financial arrangement between families, or about ensuring the right lineage. It’s all a big mess of differing and changing social norms across places and times.

Having said that, I’m not *against* marriage, and I think it could do with an actual definition. I don’t think it should be ok to marry a dog or a child or the Eiffel Tower, whether that’s a religious or legal experience, but that’s mainly because none of these things can consent to be married. I believe marriage should always be consensual! I don’t see a problem with multiple marriages in any configuration provided all are consenting. And I don’t see any reason it should be denied to same sex or divorcee couples, though if a particular church/religious-building-of-indiscriminate-faith/religious-leader doesn’t want to perform those ceremonies that should be their right.

Marriage the religious ceremony
If you are in a religion that doesn’t approve of your relationship, it’s probably not the best religion for you. Some religions have different status to others in this country, i.e. their ceremonies count as marriage without a separate civil licence - this we should be rid of. It’s discriminatory against all the other religions. Make the civil part the legal part, and the religious part the ceremonial part - I presume your God(s) will still let it count. Other than that, not much to say, I don’t personally anticipate having one of these.

Marriage the legal document
A legal agreement covering your assets, what happens with the children if you die, and who your next of kin are in a medical emergency are all a very good idea, and if you’re sharing a house and contributing towards a mortgage but one person’s name is on it, being married is a great way to ensure you don’t get kicked out on your arse with a month’s notice. But, all these things can be obtained separately in wills, etc. through solicitors. Marriage is one convenient, possibly even cheaper, way to get these legal reassurances, and that’s not a bad reason in itself, if you are committing to relevant things together.

I think state-sponsored tax breaks for people who have had the good fortune and desire to pair up and the intention to remain that way are a bad thing. You can’t (yes, can’t, it’s proven not to work) incentivise marriage, and why would you want to? What is so commendable about pairing up? Why should people be treated differently because they are or aren’t in a state-sponsored committed relationship?

Marriage the party
I think the amount of money people spend on weddings, which is at most 1 day of your marriage, is mental. I’m sure there’s a lower limit for having a *nice party* with *many of your friends and family*, but I can tell you from Q party that that limit is very much below £1000, including food, venue, music and outfits. Presumably the actual legal wedding bit costs something, but I still find it incredible that the average wedding costs anywhere between £13,000 to £16,000. Especially given that the average after-tax income is £18,740. Somewhere in here is a law of diminishing returns. I like the party, obviously, and it’s as good an excuse as any to get all your friends around for a big knees-up, but don’t spend what could be a first-home deposit on it.

Marriage the environment for bringing up children
I do believe in a stable home environment for children, and I think there are a myriad of ways to achieve that. I don’t think being married or not makes one iota of difference to you being a good parent. I do think that *at least* 2 parents is ideal (it’s a lot of work), I don’t think their gender matters. I do think that if 2 or more people are committing to bringing up a child, there should be indications that they have been able to get on and function as a team, that their finances are ok, that the child will have enough room in the house. I *don’t* require that the parents be in a sexual relationship. I realise that this is how children *come about*, but that doesn’t mean that only people having sex with each other can raise a child. So, in conclusion, marriage as a “stable environment” is meaningless - it ensures nothing that isn’t already ensured by circumstances. And nothing is ever totally secure. So any advantages afforded to married couples because of this function should be only given to homes with children in, regardless of marital status. Simply register the parents at the birth / adoption, and these are the people who receive the benefits. Treat a persistently absent parent like they have divorced the child, and update legal docs accordingly. Tax breaks for child rearers in this age of mass overpopulation are another issue, but I’ll leave that for another time.

Marriage the public statement of your love and/or commitment
This can be lovely, and as I said above, a great excuse for a party, but some people may prefer to commit and love in private or outside of religious or legal trappings, and that should be ok. There is an inherent problem in the assumptions of what it is you’re committing to, as well. Not everyone who loves and commits is monogamous, wants/can have children, wants to live together, wants to consummate their love. This can be fixed with vows, somewhat, but of course you can’t circumvent the bigamy laws and adultery is still grounds for divorce, annulment still possible without consummation, and estrangement cause for dissolution after (I think) 6 years. So, it works for those it works for.

Marriage the tradition
I’m not one for traditions but I can see why people might like it, and that’s fine, as long as you’re not getting government favouritism for being traditional.

Marriage the “our parents want us to”
Linked to the party and the tradition, I think. I sympathise but would hope that most adults could make life decisions separately from their parents. I accept that keeping your inheritance may be an important consideration.

Marriage the “all my friends are getting married, I’m going to die alone, ooh you’ll do”
Self-evidently stupid.

Marriage the permanent gluing of yourself to one other person for the rest of your life
Painfully naive, have you seen the statistics? But moreover, it’s a bad idea to draw your self-worth from another person or from who you are within that couple. A promise to love forever cannot be honestly made - you do not know your future self. A hopeful statement of love and future plans is the best that anyone can get. I’m not being patronising here, I think most people getting married do realise this, but the words of the ceremony should reflect it!

Marriage to get into the country
Why don’t we just grant every UK citizen a “+1″? It’s an awful lot fairer and no-one comes round your house checking if you’re actually a “real” couple or a “fake” couple. United Kingdom invites you to a *citizenship party*, you may bring one guest but we reserve the right to kick them out if they throw up on the carpet.

Conclusion
Marriage as a legal document and civil ceremony should be available to all. Get married if you want but don’t expect it to change anything except your bank balance. Have a good party but don’t spend like you’re Richard Branson, unless you are actually Richard Branson. Will I get married? Maybe. Don’t go looking for the John Lewis list just yet, though.

Dan writes about the Aber Effect, inspired by Adam apparently.

I’ve been feeling it a lot since I’m one of the few who is *still* stuck here, and the lifestyle Liz has described was sort of whipped out from under me — at least that’s how it seemed! But I, too, am coming to terms with the fact this mass exodus had to happen sooner or later, and I’d be feeling similar even if I were the one who’d moved. I’m looking forward to getting out, eventually, maybe getting that push to grow up a little. The students are only getting younger and thus more irritating, plus I have less and less desire to make friends who are going to bugger off in at most 3 years. To be sure, there’s still enough people around that I can go for a pint at short notice, and I do appreciate that, but we’re all a lot older and busier than we used to be and we have to be in bed by 11!

What Ruth commented on Kit’s blog about the family in Aber is true, and I doubt I’ll ever be part of such a close group again. I’m going to have to break the habits of a lifetime and get good at long-distance, because it’s never going to be as easy as it has been here to make friends and maintain friendships. On the plus side, I hear outside of Aber you can go to things called “nightclubs” and “comedy venues” not to mention “see a band” (without driving for 3 hours) so I’m looking forward to all that. Scratch the nightclubs, actually.

It’s an open day today, and throwing Aber open day tradition to the wind, the weather isn’t great (cloudy, and windy). There are still nervous young’uns wandering about with yellow bags, and their parents look as worried as they always do. One day I’d like to be a worried parent at a university open day, making sure they’ve picked the right place and they’ve got their meal vouchers and they aren’t going to drink too much and they’ll definitely call me once a week (Sorry, Dad). And that shows a change in me I’d never have thought possible. So, I’m not worried about stagnating, nor wallowing in nostalgia. I miss the closeness, both figurative and literal. But I no longer think it’s the end of the world as we know it. I feel fine.

On election night itself, I was painfully disappointed. The Lib Dems had lost seats, of all things, which struck me as yet another indication of a broken system. We held Ceredigion with a huge margin (>8000 votes) which made me feel like my vote counted for a lot less than it did in 2005, when we won it from Plaid by a mere 200 or so.

As the final result of a hung parliament emerged, I was unsurprised. Evey poll for the last month had pointed at it, and the exit poll was equally sure. What I didn’t expect was the LibCon (or ConDem for haters) coalition that we now have. Going back over the last few days, I first expected a Con minority government, no deals, because the numbers didn’t really allow for a LibLab majority unless they cobbled together some sort of fragile rainbow which, to me at least, seemed much more unstable than a simple minority goverment. And of course, there was no way the Tories could work with the Lib Dems, was there?

Talking to other people convinced me of at least a chance that a progressive alliance could work, but I fairly consistently pointed out that whilst the party similarities might allow for it more easily, the balance of seats just did not.

Many Lib Dem voters, especially those who voted for the Lib Dems for reform rather than because they actually supported their other policies, may be angry at Nick Clegg. He’s done a deal with the devil, in their eyes. But to those who wanted reform, as has surely been pointed out by now: this type of government is exactly what you are asking for! This is a test run of what you will get if we reform the system to be more proportional — even AV will make some headway towards it. If you don’t like it, you should have voted for whichever party would oust the party you don’t like. Tactical voting is much less of an issue in AV or STV. More equally sized constituencies will also help a bit. No, we’re probably not going to get Proportional Representation. But isn’t any electoral reform that genuinely comes from within the system going to be an impressive step forward?

From the sounds coming from the media and more importantly the Lib Dems, Labour never really had a serious plan for coalition. What was it that you wanted Nick Clegg to do, exactly? Go back on his word and refuse to deal, resulting in a Conservative minority government and no hope of reform? This way the policies of each party to be implemented are set out in a manifesto-like way at the beginning. It remains to be seen whether the promises will be kept. But I tell you what, surely if you’ve got yourself a deputy prime minister and another 4 cabinet positions, Lib Dems, haven’t you won? Surely this was the best possible outcome?

No, I don’t really like David Cameron. He’s smarmy. His general attitude galls me. But if more people voted Tory and more Tory seats were claimed than for any other party, he deserves a bit of a say-so, doesn’t he? And what, so do Labour? Yes, and they’ll get to have their say as the opposition, which ought to be fine. I don’t want to say they’ve had their turn, but they have had a very long go at running the country, outcomes have been some good, some bad, and now the country wants someone else or some other system, ideally both.

It’s not going to be an easy ride for anyone. What the Lib Dems have achieved is to make David Cameron’s job really really hard whilst not giving him much option to avoid doing it. He’s going to be unpopular within and outside his party, most of the time. There’s a chance it’ll lend him a bit more humility, and it’s certain that he won’t be able to run sweeping conservative changes across the country in the manner he would have if he’d got a majority.

If all my other arguments have failed, then just remember this: the coalition Nick Clegg and David Cameron secured was possible because they were able to compromise and behave decently. That they were able to do this despite glaring differences in ideology is a glimmer of hope for fair and honest government. Just a glimmer, but at least a glimmer, of hope.

I frequent Bicon, and many people there have self-identifying labels which, if I use them in the outside world, are rejected or laughed at by even my closest friends. This upsets me. I am often told that “label x” just doesn’t mean that, it means this, and therefore the person doing the self-labelling is wrong. I can’t agree. What I can say is that if their label is obscure or badly understood by the general populus, most people aren’t going to get it, and perhaps it is therefore a useless label.

What I would prefer is that when a minority group comes up with a label that against all odds most of them agree on the meaning of, the wider world would do well to accept it and its meaning as a shorthand for what it represents.

An example, to make this all a lot less vague:

Sex
What chromosomes you have, and what primary and secondary sex characteristics you have. It is possible for even these to be “mismatched” for want of a better word, either through having a different set of chromosomes from XY/XX, or by your body developing in different ways that the expected (given the chromosomes), or by surgery.

Gender
Gender is an individual’s self perception as male or female or both or neither or something inbetween. It may or may not line up with what their chromosomes or physical characteristics are. It is possible, for example, for someone to have female genitalia and be brought up female, and identify as female, and yet have XY chromosomes. Many combinations are possible. There IS NO EASY WAY to say what someone’s gender is by simply looking. Take the difference between perhaps a transwoman and a transvestite - both could appear identical, and yet one identifies as a woman, the other as a man (very often). The point is that gender is not a black and white issue, and gender and sex do not mean the same thing.

Statistically, in the ‘real’ world, you’re not going to get it wrong very often. Most people who want to be thought of as male do all the things society expects of men, and vice versa for people who want to be seen as women. Thus, even the least convincing (physically) male transvestite or transwoman is going to be called “she” or “her” by all but the most insensitive souls, as long as she’s put on a bit of makeup and a dress so you know what to do. Likewise, any transman wanting joe public to treat them as a man will don typical male clothes, maybe somehow achieve a bit of stubble, short hair etc. because it makes it easier for everyone else to guess the right pronoun.

There is no easy solution, however, for those people who reject gender labels entirely, or believe themselves to be in the middle. You can’t dress like someone with no gender, because society doesn’t have a blueprint for that. Whatever you do, people are most likely to go on your physical characteristics and plump for one thing or the other. And it’s hard to blame them. Thus, such people find a term to describe themselves, so that people who know them can at least be sensitive to it. Usually that term is genderqueer or transgender.

If someone said “I am a couch, not a person” I could refute it, because being a couch is not a social construct, it is a physical description of an object. I think it’s different when you are referring to your place in society, and that is pretty much all gender refers to. The trouble is the same words are used at the physical level as at the social level. Thus, a genderqueer person who e.g. feels they have no gender, and yet was “born” a woman, can reasonably state “I am female” (sex characteristics) and also “I am not female” (identity). What do we do about this? What about if we could magically make all words gender neutral, so you could only be referred to as a person, never as a woman or a man? Would different people be upset at that? It is all compounded by some people feeling very strongly about gender whilst others don’t believe it exists at all.

Here’s a completely different example: What if someone says “I don’t believe there’s a God, but I’m a Christian?” Is that concrete enough that we can say “No you aren’t”? What about if they say “I’m a Jew” instead? Now it’s a race too, but which is meant, the race or the religion? What about “I’m a Catholic”? Dara O’Briain manages that one, though I’m not sure how seriously he means it.

I don’t have an answer, but I wish there was more respect given from all sides. There isn’t an obvious solution for every situation. I identify as an atheist but by some logics come out agnostic. That annoys me because of connotations *I* make when someone else says they are agnostic (e.g. that they don’t care, or are 50/50 on the matter). I want to assert my right to be called atheist, even if society in its entirety thinks I’m agnostic! And that is no use to me, or to them. Therefore I am inclined to think that the more people who understand a label the same way, the more useful it can be. Maybe we should just talk more instead of giving one-word answers to everything and hoping that the other person has made the right assumption.

Wikipedia’s article ‘transgender’ was really useful when writing this post.

And thus, today’s xkcd is particularly funny.

Though I have a feeling cowbirds in love already did it, but I can’t find the comic in question. Let me know if you do.

Also:

A man goes to a doctor of physics. He says “doctor, doctor! I keep hearing Gaussian noise! Is this normal?”