Snow, global warming, pollution, etc

I really don't care that much about these climate change and global warming arguments. Nor do I care about the alleged "major shift in the UK weather" reported in the media and all the TV pundits going on about it.

I care about not polluting and husbanding resources.

Why?

Because it makes sense!

How odd is the male logic

I sometimes read Joe My God's blog. Today he has an article "Ignorance is Bris" with some sort of poor video on it, one that I gave up on. But the comments were telling.

Now I acknowledge that the comment I left there will upset my Jewish friends. I can't ask them not to be upset, and I do recognise that circumcision is a part of their faith that will take many years to persuade them is rather odd.

I thought that you might be interested in what I put there:

What makes me wonder is the guys who say "I was cut and I am none the worse for it!"

How do you KNOW?

Have you never wondered what sex would be like if you had it still? A foreskin, that is, not sex.

What if it were a bit better?

What if it were a lot better?

If a god wants me to chop off a bit the he allegedly designed because he got the design wrong, dude, that god is not my god!

If a breakfast cereal guy and a cookie king want me to do it as well, just coz they're squeamish about sex and boys jerking off, that has to be some lame argument.

And the bris - the mohel is meant to suck the blood away. That has to put the kid off blow jobs for life!

And why isn't that child sexual abuse? If you or I sucked a baby's dick we'd be arrested!

"Well, officer, it's part of my religion to cut a kid's penis and then suck it!" Yeah, I see that going down well in the defence!

Are real women thus obsessed?

I watched TV last night. In one commercial break, sequentially, there were women singing the praises of:

• softer stools for a better feeling poop experience
• a yoghourt product for bloated bellies
• An indigestion remedy so you can paddle a kayak faster (whatever happened to Tampax, I though that was what let you sail, swim, ride, waterski, and fish, all in white tight trousers!)
• a remedy to stop diarrhoea 

Don't men need a bit of bowel ease, too, or is this all just an invented set of ailments for women?

Thank god we didn't get the little brat who would only do a poo at some other kid's house because that kid has "Poo-be-gone" scent in the toilet!

Let The Punishment Fit The Crime

Am I the only one thinking that these aircraft failed suicide bombers should be given another chance?

It's not as though the courts would make an error, is it. Man with burning fuse is rather good proof. So try them and sentence them thus:

Re-unite them with their explosives, chain them to a large piece of concrete in a desert and ignite the explosive. It's what they would have wanted.

Gay Men, The UK, The Prohibition against Donating Blood

I have been posed a question that I am unable to answer without the help of all four of you who read this blog. It comes from my pseudonymed friend Oranjepan who hails from Reading in Berkshire, and I am using the text of his email to me as a guest blog article.

This is an area I feel strongly about. I'm not sure whether I'm coming at this from the gay angle or from the health angle, but it aggravates me. There is a petition for the UK Prime Minister to change the rules. I've signed that. So should you if you qualify to sign it. But it's a damp squib. Only 540 of us have bothered.

That petition says:

The National Blood Service currently allow straight men to donate blood if they THINK they dont have any STDs. This leaves the blood supplies open to lots of infections and diseases. Some of you may argue that the blood is tested anyway, so this doesn't matter.

Then why do they not allow gay men (men who have had sex with another man) to donate blood, even if they have been tested for any STDs. The NBS claim that it takes up to a year for any HIV to show in the blood tests. Fair enough...

What about protected sex then. Condoms are used to protect yourself from the infections out there. Still, no gay men cannot give blood if they have only had protected sex.

So why are the straight men who go around having unprotected sex with any woman they see allowed to give blood. Surely this could pass on HIV or any other STD that hasn't shown up in the blood tests...

Contradiction comes to mind.

This petition is not only to stop the discrimination within the NBS, but to try and prevent ANY diseases entering the blood stocks.

We know that HIV is not orientation specific. Just look at Africa where it's even used as a terror weapon in warfare. So what is going on here?

If my government has my health in mind as a recipient of blood, is it simply that they are not confident in their screening mechanisms? And if they aren't confident, what the hell is going on with the National Blood Transfusion Service?

A strong argument from UK Gay Youth may be found here:

Bad Blood: Gay Men Not Allowed to Give Blood
The Gay Youth Corner - Thursday, 31 December 2009

© The Gay Youth Corner

Don't just read the article. Read the comments, too.

In his email, Oranjepan, very concerned about this, says:

I've recently come to discover that gay men are prevented from donating blood in the UK because of the risk of infection to blood stocks.

Frankly I'm appalled at the situation - gay men are not in a higher risk group than any other category, and anyway any infected stocks would be identified with an effective screening programme (there have been some recent high-profile cases where it was shown this isn't rigorously undertaken on cost grounds), so the excuse is complete prejudice and disenfranchising.

Lives are being put at risk in the health system because the health service is not engaging with particular demographics and in doing so is allowing inequality to persist with official complicity.

Blood stocks are notoriously low in this country because of a general state of disengagement, but tend to be even more so at this time of year. So this is an issue which shows how prejudice and inequality can directly effect lives.

I'd very much appreciate it if you could use your connections and do a little bit of research to help me bring it to help convince a few more people that this is something to be taken seriously. I've raised it myself but the party honchos said they wanted a sense of the strength of feeling, so could you perhaps sample the opinion of a few acquaintances and hopefully conclude that donating blood is a way to contribute to society?

I've requested slightly different perspectives from several other bloggers according to their specialities and I'm optimistic that if it is well-coordinated we could have an impact. This is potentially a highly significant campaign, and one which could make a practical and symbolic difference across society.

According to the results of a policy review earlier this year the blanket ban is still seen as more cost effective than screening - so clearly a price is being put on health and social inclusion by politicians who are more interested in votes than real issues which impact real lives.

I've read the FAQs and understand the reasoning, but I don't completely accept that enough is being done. If the bloggertariat can step up the pressure and show there is an interested constituency making the arguments then that will at least help provide information on the issues at stake and push for improvements.

With David Cameron coming to Reading wanting to discuss health matters in just over a week's time I think it would be an excellent way to ask him if he puts money before people.

That is Oranjepan's perplexity. And he has the opportunity to question the Tory Head Honcho.

How can you help him?

By putting your depth of feeling here as a comment. Comment pro or con, what matters is understanding the reactions, not the proportion in one direction or another.

Non UK folk need to know that the UK blood donations are precisely that: donations. No money changes hands. It is a truly charitable gift.

When you comment, as I hope you will, please try to adopt a pen name. 2,000 folk all called Anonymous looks a bit silly, and it gets darned hard to reply to "Anonymous poster 27".  If non UK please, if you feel comfortable, add a note of your nation. I would not expect Iranians, Ugandans, etc to do so!

As Oranjepan said to me in another email:

It particularly worries me that there is no safeguard for people deliberately lying on the forms, and therefore infected people of any orientation are capable of maliciously spreading diseases with no way to stop them until it is too late.

I said I was looking at this from a health viewpoint as well as a gay viewpoint.

From a health viewpoint, I'm afraid of the act giving blood, but I want to receive it if I need it. If I'm afraid and I then worry about answering their questions and being banned, that is enough to stop me going. And I'm not about to tell you if I have or have not had sex with a man since 1977.

From a selfish viewpoint, I do not want anyone with healthy blood who wishes to donate to be discouraged. Imagine the NBTS truck arriving at your place of work and your being unable to donate because you are gay, but not being out at work nor wanting to be out at work. How would you feel about that, especially if your blood is healthy - Outed by a truck!

From a gay man's viewpoint, I feel like a second class citizen. Nothing else makes me feel like one so effectively as this.  Isn't this like not wanting to receive the blood of a black man if you are a white supremacist?

'An Englishman in New York' made me think

Denis Pratt, or, as we know him, Quentin Crisp, was dramatised in his later years in the TV film shown over Christmas 2009, and portrayed admirably by Jon Hurt. Crisp was not a pleasant person, though he was an amusing, witty and diverting person, and has been roundly condemned by Peter Tatchell as not being a gay hero at all. Tatchell says:

Why did Quentin turn so bitter? Jealousy. He resented the fact that he was no longer unique – no longer the only visible queer in town. Hence his loathing of the gay liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s. It had encouraged and empowered the mass coming out of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. They stole his limelight. Put bluntly: Crisp disliked being overtaken and over-shadowed by other gays. We queered his pitch.

Perhaps he is right.

Even so, the film made me think. And it made me think hard because it was, presumably, as true to life as a dramatised documentary can be. Some dramatic licence is taken, of course it is, but the basics must be true, or thereabouts.

But the part that made me think hard is where Crisp is speaking of the desperation homosexuals have of finding that partner. And, to set that in perspective, we need some figures. Bear with me.

Let's start by assuming that Kinsey was correct and that 10% of the population is homosexual. If he was wrong then the figures just need changing, but the logic remains

If 10% of the population is homosexual, then out of any 50 men and 50 women, only 5 men are available as potential partners (assuming one is, as am I, a male homosexual). The corollary of this is that for a heterosexual man, 45 women are available as potential partners. Already there is a huge inequality.

This inequality also is interesting when one looks at the imbeciles who say "Homosexuality is a choice." Who would choose limit their possible pool of lovers to 5% of the population instead of 45%? Who?

But, that digression apart, the film made a statement that opened my eyes. I wish I could recall the words exactly.

So, in my poor paraphrasing, Crisp says that homosexual men are deeply unfortunate in that it is men that we like and need. We are real men needing real men as equal partners, as lovers, as soulmates. Whatever it is that we may accept, what we need is the masculine real man.

In that 5% there are masculine men, real men. And they are searching for masculine men, real men.

You who are reading this are likely to be heterosexual. You know how hard it was, is, will be, for you to find your perfect lover, to fall in love with them, and to have that love returned, in 45% of the population. You know it and accept it because it is the norm. You know how many and how few partnerships are based on true love, and how many are based on mere acceptance of companionship, you see the breakups and the divorces.

So imagine doing that in 5% of the population.

Now imagine that there is no way you can tell who is in that 5% with you and who is in the 45%. Homosexuals do not have distinguishing skin colour, small ears, large noses, or, as Ian Fleming thought, an inability to whistle!

So, in your day to day existence, you see and fall for a real man. Your mind and body falls in love with him. The chemistry that we do not understand happens, and you are smitten.

And the probability that he is homosexual is one in ten. And if he is, what is the likelihood of his loving you in return? Can we even guess at it? Would it be one in 45, perhaps? Out of 50 souls one might return the love of another?

If so, and it may be so, mathematicians tell us that probabilities of independent events, and these are independent events, must be multiplied together. Am I wrong to do this, I wonder? Because one in 10 multiplied by one in 45 makes one in 450.

In betting terms it is 450:1 against a homosexual man ever finding love that is returned.

That means that, when I as a homosexual man fall for another man, there is a 450:1 probability against his even considering me as a potential love interest.

You, the heterosexual who is reading this, you may calculate your own probabilities based on these figures. What interests me is the total improbability of finding returned male love.

It's not that I'm looking for it. I was lucky in my love and recognised that I could also love one woman, and she loves me in return. But, had I not been so lucky, how would I have ever found my man?

I was already deeply in love with one, one who was blissfully unaware of my adoration, who was heterosexual, and who went about his own life happily without caring if I lived or died. I was attracted to a great number more, but nowhere near the 450 I would have needed to have a fighting chance of a soulmate. I know. I counted. I have a list! You are not on that list! (450:1 against!)

So the homosexual man can never be happy unless he is very lucky indeed. His search for love is almost impossible. He will always have to take a double risk when he is smitten. First he has to risk rejection, automatic rejection, because the man he is attracted to is heterosexual, and then he has to risk rejection because of incompatibility.

Is it any wonder that so many of us end up either promiscuous or as bitchy queens when we are faced with all this deep hardship just to have what the rest of you have?

And you strive to deny us the rights you take for granted. You want to deny us the simple Human Right of Marriage. You want to be able to evict us from our homes. You want to be able to fire us from our jobs. You want to imprison us. You want to execute us. You want to marginalise us and stamp on our embryo rights.

We have it tough enough anyway, and far tougher than you do, and yet you still want to trample us under your feet.

Or maybe, after reading this, just maybe, you think that perhaps those queers have it pretty tough after all. And just maybe you will at least no longer oppose our quest for simple equality. We didn't choose this life. It isn't contagious, and most of the time it's fine.

But it also sucks.

Helping hands for a craft business

I have an old friend, Alice Evans, who is a spinner, weaver, dyer, and teacher of these crafts and much more. She also manages to do loads of other farming stuff on a busy farm in Wales.

She asked me to take a look at her embryo website, SpinWeave. She asked me for some advice on making it easy to find with search engines and for comments which she may disagree with on layout and design.

There's loads to do for a new webmaster, so I'm feeding her bite size chunks until she says "enough, already!"

I love the site. It says everything about a craft business that can be said, and all it really needs are a few small tweaks. In the next bite size chunk I'll tell Alice about analytics tracking code. Meanwhile, have a look. And tell your friends. Please!