I’ve changed my mind a lot already since the nominations started rolling in, Ed Miliband has suprised me and is now fighting for my first vote alongside Andy Burnham, who has gone up and down in my opinion throughout.  David Miliband impressed me and Ed Balls has repeatedly made me reconsider my opinion of him.  But, despite brief flashes of glory, my original feelings against Diane Abbott have only been reinforced.  I’m glad she’s on the ballot, she’s widened the debate which we desperately need, but she’s not a leader.

In a Q&A with all five candidates for The Guardian yesterday, there were some interesting if not shockingly illuminating answers all round, but what caught my eye most was Abbott.  When she chose to answer the questions properly, she was good, although not especially inspiring either (not to mention her rather naive comments on defence), but on several occasions she chose short pithy answers that to me all had a bit of a “holier than thou” feel to them.  By the end of it I was overcome with the urge to listen to this song by David Rovics.  It is one thing to accept the mistakes of the party in recent years, it is another to put yourself on a pedestal for staying out of it, which also involves staying out of the good too.  It feels like she views her lack of ministerial experience as a bonus or a badge of lefty credibility, when as far as I can see it has nothing to do with it.  While we need to admit our errors and move forward, we also need to acknowledge and defend our record when fighting the coalition government.  And we need to unite, something I can’t image we could manage under someone so patronising Labour’s past.

I imagine I would mind less, if she could take what she dishes out, but her fairly disastrous reappearance on This Week last Thursday proved she can’t.  She couldn’t give a satisfactory answer to any of the questions, about her expenses claims for taxis, comments on West Indian mothers (although Neil as per usual pushed that one a bit far, god I hate that programme, but I like to think that hasn’t influenced my view of Abbott), or her decision to send her son to private school.  She couldn’t even manage to repeat her past comments on the school issue, which would have been a start.

A leader who can dish it out is great as long as you’re sat on the opposition benches, but is useless when defending our past and future record in government.  So, it’s down to four for me, I’m waiting for an inspiration.  Hit me.

Before I get into that I will say this, however.  Yes there are homophobes in the Conservative Party.  Yes there are most likely a few in Labour too, and I don’t doubt the Lib Dems and the vast majority of other political parties.  And when those people have influence over party and government policy, it’s a worry, however, simply attacking a small handful of individuals for their views just because they’re a member of a particular political party as well, and therefore siding up against the allies you need, is not going to help tackle the issue of homophobia in wider society.  What we’ve all seen, particularly on Twitter recently, are generalisations about the Tory party based on attacks on one person.  Now, I have no problem with attacks on policy and the apparent indifference in comparison to say Labour in terms of LGBTQ rights, however, claiming that all Conservative’s are homophobic because of one person is ridiculous, and pits LGBTLabour against LGBTory, which is completely unproductive.  These two groups should be preparing to work together to make sure that, no matter who forms the next government, LGBTQ rights are protected and advanced.  They should not be scrapping about who’s more homophobic, when clearly, neither are, they’re simply being tagged as guilty by association.  Both should condemn the actions of Grayling, I would’ve thought that was the very clearly right thing to do.

But the other thread related to the bickering between, particular Labour and the Tories, that sprang to mind today was how it looks from the outside.  It’s easy to forget, when you spend so much of your time dealing with politically minded folks, especially when fighting an election, that only just over 1% of the electorate are members of a political party.  Of course there are many others who are active and interested, but its party members who tend to get so fired up against one another.  And what do you think it looks like to the casual observer?  To see people at all levels of politics and parties scrabbling at each other with unproductive attacks?  We all know how badly people can react to the immature nature of things like Prime Minister’s Questions, for instance, so exactly how does replicating this in our “discussions” with members of other parties than our own help?  It’s one thing to heatedly discuss policy, or to joke about inadequacy in the other parties, neither of those are harmful, in fact they’re pretty helpful, but the downright attacks on one another with little substance and even less fact is ridiculous.  It looks scrappy and pathetic.  Argue about what matters.  Defend your viewpoint and question others’, but don’t assume that everyone under the heading of one political party share identical standpoints, and particularly don’t go telling them they do even after they’ve distanced themselves from whatever element you’ve connected them to.  At a time when so many politicians are being tarnished with the same brush, and politics is looking pretty murky to a lot of people, it’ll take a party that stands out and above the rest to win this election and the genuine backing of the British people.  That will not be achieved with your mouths wrapped around your opponents’ throats.

A few weeks ago, a Labour PPC got in contact with the local anti-racism group that I’m part of, asking for advice as to weather to appear at a meeting for candidates if the BNP were invited.  My response was as follows.

“Ideally, the BNP wouldn’t be invited, but if they are, and are prfectly entitled to be as a political party, while a no platform total boycott sounds perfect, it does have it’s own problems.  Seeing as it’s only the Labour PPC who’s asked for opinions I assume, chances are the other representatives would still attend, and still share a platform.  By taking away the best form of opposition to the BNP ie. the left, chances are it will only give them more excuse to prey on the allienated.  Even an all party boycott could easily backfire, lending fuel to the BNP’s argument that they are victimised by the other parties and the so called “political elite”.”

I do think the nub of the problem is that the left so often boycott, and thus present the public with no real alternative.  People tend to forget that the majority of BNP voters are not racist, rather they are disillusioned working class people, who the BNP offer easy scapegoats and eemingly genuine change to.  They key to defeating the BNP is to expose them, not to block and hide them.  Even if they are given no public speaking platform, their leaflets will still make it through letterboxes.

And yet, despite this refusal to engage with the BNP, certain left groups are all too eager to jump on protests against the party.  I’m thinking here mostly of the SWP with regards to UAF.  Anti-racist and anti-fascist organisations should not be party political.  It’s that simple.  The prescense of SWP banners at UAF demonstrations does several things.  It reaffirms the BNP belief that all protest against them is organised by the left wing political parties and it alienates those from across the political spectrum, for starters.  I have many problems with UAF, though this is probably my main issue.  That and the way they choose to demonstrate, most noteably the chants of “the BNP is a nazi party, smash the BNP” which is all but identical to those used three decades ago in response to the National Front (“the National Front is a Nazi front, smash the National Front”).  Not only is it an out of date way of dealing with a party that now has claim to a fairly sizeable chunk of the vote, it is also unhelpfully agressive.  If UAF could realise that shouting and screaming (and throwing eggs from time to time) is not helpful and in fact counterproductive, we might be able to make progress.  This is not the National Front, and it is not the English Defence League, we are not just dealing with the party and it’s members anymore, we’re dealing with the electorate, with people who aren’t racist and certainly not fascist, but who have been alienated by the main political parties in recent years and need their faith reaffirming.  That is a job for the political parties themselves, and while anti-racist and anti-fascist campaigns can offer advice to the parties on how to deal with this, we certainly shouldn’t tie ourselves to any party.  Instead we should focus on exposing the BNP, and promoting a message of hope, not hate.

My temptation, as per usual, is to go off on a tangent about the damaging nature of the gender binary, but I’ve done that often enough for now.  While I stand by my belief that gender is a social construct, that is not a view that is particularly helpful when dealing with women’s rights in a society that often doesn’t see the difference between sex and gender, and in which both are still painfully important factors.

The fact is, for all our legislation, the world is not fair to women just yet.  From continued inequality in the workplace, to fear of violence, knowing the unlikelihood of your attacker ever being prosecuted, and everything inbetween and beyond.

I defy you to find a woman who has not been subjected to some form of discrimination or abuse based on her gender.  Some things go unnoticed far too often, because they are used far too often, embedded deeply into the psyche.  I’m thinking here of things like casual yet callous sexist remarks amongst friends, yet often with no hint of irony.  The same goes for old fashioned beliefs, like those that suggest women are weaker than men.  Obviously some of the time that’s true, but it’s almost just as likely to be the other way round.

It’s at this point I feel the need to get unashamedly personal, though hopefully not too toecurlingly so.  It’s only because my experience provides a decent example of not realising what was going on until I had something to contrast it with.  For several months last year, and at the start of this one, I was in a relationship with a boy (somehow man doesn’t quite fit him just yet, so boy will do) who I didn’t get to see very often.  As a result, I perhaps didn’t clock on as quickly as I should that he had very little respect for me.  Frankly, I’m not sure he even realises it.  He’s from a very different background than me, not in terms of class or any of those factors, but simply in the beliefs of family and friends.  I have grown up surrounded by the weird and the wonderful, the liberal minded and the downright subversive, and it has had a huge impact on how I view the world, particularly my views on what the right would most likely call “traditional family values” and the like.  For the duration of our relationship I was expected to be softer and quieter, constantly pestered about the fact I wasn’t vocally very emotive, and any time I expressed my political opinions or any kind of anger or passion, it was greeted with patronisation.  Even for me, someone who is usually all too aware of these things, found that somewhere in me, was a voice telling me it was ok for that to be the case.  If it weren’t for two men (I still feel bizarre about the word men, they’re 18/19, it doesn’t fit!  But still, boys seems a little down talking, anyway, tangent…) I wouldn’t have finally cracked the next time he expressed the belief that he could push me around if he so wanted to my face.  Whether he realised what he was really saying, I’m still not sure, but the intent was there, that if he chose not to respect my stance, he could force me into anything if necessary.  It was only because of the aforementioned males that I did stand up, not there and then, simply because I knew I could appease him until the confrontation would be more effective, but a matter of days later, and got out of what could’ve been whole worlds of bad.

And so for that I thank those two, who may or may not know who they are, firstly a good if relatively new friend who reminded me that not all straight males see women as objects, something that was too often slipping my mind, and secondly to someone who inadvertantly opened my eyes to the dozens of better people out there and who, though he messed me around, was atleast honest about it and provided me with just the excuse I needed to leave and completely cut the ties that could otherwise have been problematic.

The point is, that both men and woman are still often socialised into roles and beliefs that focus far too much on the binary, and that cause harm, almost always to women.  Most men won’t realise what they’re doing, and many women won’t think to stand against it, or may even be afraid to, and as long as this system of socialisation exists, equality will never be accomplished.  Slowly it is eroding away, or so it seems, and yet so many, particularly in politics, mistake scenarios that require human decency and kindness or strength, for those that require men and women to fall back into their traditional roles, and thus the cycle is prolongued.

A similar problem arises when considering violence against women.  It is far from unheard of for men to be victims of domestic violence, and I for one firmly believe that it is an issue that needs far more attention, as I know of many straight couples where the woman is far more likely to hurt the man than ever he was her.  However, while awareness of violence and tackling it are crucial in general, it is still obvious that women are more often the victims, by quite a considerable margin, and as long as that is the case there does need to be some focus on gender related violence.

Really, what I hope of International Women’s Day, and everyday where sex and gender perceptions are challenged or related injustice is exposed, is that men don’t take it as a personal assault on their gender, but instead see it for what it is, a means, a reason and an encouragement to help fellow human beings, and created a better world for all of us.  How can anyone stand by and condemn one day of positive thinking to help millions the world over who suffer in varying degrees because of their birth.  This applies to race, nationality, sexuality, religion, anything.  Sometimes it takes a day like this to remind us all why we fight for equal rights.  It just so happens that today, it is the rights of women that need shaking back to the front of our minds.

For a very long time now, I’ve been stuck between two sets of people.  There are those shameless optimists who have always believed Labour could still win this election, and those who have spent the past few years telling me that a Conservative government would be inevitable by the end of 2010.  This poll has finally pushed me into the shameless optimists, probably just in time.  And after seeing David Cameron’s speech to Spring Conference this afternoon, the need to avoid a Conservative victory is screaming at the front of my brain.  A man who can so easily talk down this country time after time is not someone I want to be leading it.

It’s become very easy for me to complacently settle my efforts and interests in the North West, largely because I have easy access to like minded folk here, but it has finally sunk in that Hull is a hometown of sorts now too, and I definitely do not want to be represented by David Davies for much longer.  Having spent my Saturday amongst Labour activists in Manchester, it’s about time I tried to track some such action on the other side of the Pennines.  To paraphrased a now well worn hashtag, the game is most definitely on.

The second point of this blog is that it has only this weekend dawned on me how close we are to an election.  Which means my usual anti-BNP mindset has just jumped up a notch.  I’ve already had to miss one Hope Not Hate campaign day this month, but I intend to repeat my spring of last year, with every weekend out on the doorstep fighting the BNP.  Reassuringly, their recent track record in by-elections shows their support to be waning, but their campaign will escalate in the coming weeks, with both Nick Griffin and Mark Collette, amongst possible others, intending to stand for Parliament.  We have seen their hatred in threats and attacks, even outside their divisive and sickening policies.  The fight to stop the BNP has already begun up and down the country, and it is vital that anyone who can, stands up and joins Hope Not Hate in protecting what is right.

So this is it, the fight to keep Labour in, the Tories out, and the BNP far from power is on once again.

If a genie came to you and offered you one wish, to change your body in any way you like, what would your wish be?

I’m afraid I have to be really boring and say I’d be thinner.  I tend to lack the application to actually lose weight consciously, and other than that I quite like my body most of the time.

If you could either a) be born in the body of the other sex, with your same gender identity, or b) be born in this body, but be someone who never had gender dysphoria, which would you choose? Why?

Definitely a.  While I don’t particularly want to be male bodied, my dysphoria, though very infrequent, has helped me to understand a lot more about sex and gender identity, I would hate to risk losing out on that understanding.

If you could either a) change yourself to have the body of the other sex or b) change the world so you’d be accepted unconditionally as your gender without changing your body, which would you choose? Why?

Easily b, I don’t realy want to be “a man” but I’d like to be able to have masculine characteristics without being labelled and judged for them, and if the world was that accepting, then gender would cease to be an issue, whatever you wanted from it.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I’d kill my near impressive ability to procrastinate.  It’s a little ridiculous.

What would your gender identity be if you’d been born as the other sex? How masculine or feminine would you be?

I expect I would still be genderqueer and still pansexual.  Oh and camp, I’d definitely camp.  I once heard a transguy say that he was never the daughter his parents wanted, and now wasn’t the son they wanted either, referring to being a butch woman and a effeminate man.  I’m fairly sure that’d be me, I’d love to pull off camp.

When given the opportunity to construct a persona, such as online, in writing, or in video games, what gender do you make yourself, and why?

I vary it.  Online I generally opt for female, and base it as much around myself as plausible, but in my writing it changes all the time.  I particularly like writing a character and never mentioning their gender.  I’ll mention their appearance and relationships and so on, but I’d rather let the reader decide for themselves what’s going on in their underwear if they’re that keen to know.

Jewish tradition teaches that each person has three names: the name she is given at birth, the name she is called, and her real name. What is your real name?

I’d definitly say Becky.  Then again, my online spread is so wide, maybe CollectorManiac is coming close!  Obviously I jest, but yes, Becky is my real name.

What gender were you in your past life?

I’m not sure I believe in past lives, but I’d place good bets on me having been male.

The three months I spent in South Africa completely changed my view of the world. At first I lapped up the excuses trotted out by the white guys I mixed with and when I got home I trotted them out in turn to those who asked what I thought of the regime. Then my friend Franz told me about the treatment he had received at the hands of the local police on his return to his native Namibia and I felt such a fool. I had failed to look and so failed to see both sides. A mistake I have tried to avoid ever since.

So when the job offers came in from South Africa as I finished university I turned them down. I started to take an interest in the politics of southern Africa and became aware that Nelson Mandela embodied the struggle against Apartheid. Songs of protest and sadness, anger and dissent found their way onto the tapes I played on my Walkman: Johnny Clegg and Savuka, Miriam Makeba, Peter Gabriel’s “Biko” and later Labi Siffre’s “So Strong”.

All the things I did seemed feeble in the face of the South African government’s refusal to budge. So what if I didn’t eat Cape apples or Outspan oranges, derided sportsmen and bands who broke the cultural boycott as it gathered impetus, wrote letters for Amnesty, went to the concerts supporting the anti-apartheid and human rights causes and ponced about in “Free Nelson Mandela” tee-shirts (I think my daughter probably has my ubiquitous Rock Against Racism badge now). At the time it all seemed so impotent.

Could I have been more short sighted? Unlikely, because the South African government changed and eventually came to realise what the rest of the world had already concluded: Apartheid was not just untenable but wrong. Furthermore, they twigged that they could not keep Nelson Mandela in captivity any longer.

Nelson Mandela is such a fixture in all our minds nowadays it is difficult to remember that we didn’t even know who we were looking for when he took his long walk to freedom twenty years ago. He was just the tall bloke next to Winnie Mandela. Everyone waited to see what would happen next. Would there be a bloodbath? What followed demonstrated that the strongest form of leadership is by example as Nelson Mandela showed his country and the world a strength of character that most of us can only dream of possessing. He repaid in moments the faith which we had placed in him during the years of campaigning and has continued to prove himself a true statesman ever since.

I am uncomfortable with heroes. But if I had to plump for one well-known human being on this planet who has the qualities I most admire, it would be Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela – the man who embodies Amandla Awethu – Power to the People.

by John Walker (find him on Twitter – @keirhardiescap)

When I started campaigning with my local anti-racism group and a handful of other organisations, I found myself talking to real politicos, people with a genuine interest, the activists.  And sure enough the majority were left wing, and Labour supporters.  And they all hated Blair.  Whatever the good work he did, and he did do plenty, Blair has tainted the name of Labour amongst a lot on the left, as has the “New Labour” set up as a whole.  But spending increasing amounts of time on the doorstep for Hope Not Hate and the like, as well as settling down into the lefty Twitter crowd, it became quite clear that the rest of the party was not like that.  I still come across members who I think are in the wrong party, but it’s no longer the socialists, who are thankfully in the majority it seems.

I did join Socialist Students when I arrived at Hull, and I will no doubt continue to support them, largely because at the moment they’re the only student group doing anything to combat the BNP (and the National Front, who are depressingly over present in the area) and the only group besides the Women’s Society who seem to actively care about equality at the university.  But while I’m happy to work with them around the campus and even in the local area, the party is more or less futile at the moment.  There’s so much factionalism amongst the left in this country, every attempt at an alliance seems to fall through when someone refuses to compromise.  But someone wise once said ‘politics is the art of compromise’ and I’m happier to compromise with the middle ground than say, some of the lads I’ve met of late who advocate the “armed revolution”.  Side note, they’re far from representative of the Socialist Party and its members, but neither are the centrists of Labour, I’ve come to learn.

Not only that, when I do something, I like to do it ‘properly’.  That isn’t to say Labour supporting non-voters are of any less importance, far from it, I just like to go the whole hog.  Membership of anything doesn’t work for everyone, but it does for me.  I’m the sort of person who gets tired of sitting just outside a group, mainly because I feel less able to comment when I haven’t stuck my two penneth in at a practical level.

My family have always been Labour voters, my uncle was a Labour councillor in Blackpool until recently, and I know full well we would be far worse off under a Conservative government.

The fact is, Labour activists are some of the nicest people I’ve met, with some of the best opinions and finest arguments.  I am proud to be part of a party that fights for equality and has done so much good for this country.  I still maintain a healthy cynicism, no I do not worship the very ground Brown walks on, but yes I do think he should stay on as leader, for instance.  There are hundreds of reasons why I support Labour, but hopefully the decision to finally join the party will be a good one.  The future’s red, and I like it.  Here’s to the fight!

I know it seems petty, and I always thought it was, but, while there is no intention to exclude anyone, the slip of the “queer” does reflect a general ignorance of the queer community in wider society. Dozens of times I’ve had to explain my own sexuality and gender identity to people. Most assume I’m gay on first meeting me, when I say that I’m not, they jump to bisexual, should I stress that I’m not bi either, they then assume I’m straight and that they’ve insulted me horribley. I used to let it slide and settle for bi, but I’m proud of my sexuality as pansexual, and am now more than willing to spend time explaining it to those out of the loop. I’m fairly certain even my most liberal thinking of friends have had this conversation with me in the past. So no, I don’t call myself lesbian, gay or bisexual, thus I fall outside of your title.

Then there comes “T”. I’m not trans, but nor is my gender identity straightforward. The term is genderqueer and it’s another one I’ve had to explain often, usually when someone sees me binding and packing for the first time.

While it’s true that a sadly large proportion of the straight community is hostile to the LGBTQ community in some form, be it the homophobic, biphobic or transphobic, and this is why groups like this are so important, there is also a worrying amount of negativity within the queer community. Many gay people are biphobic and a fairly sizeable chunk of non-straight people are transphobic, and the same goes for reactions to pansexuals, genderqueers, asexuals and so on. In the USA there are Queer-Straight Alliances to fight inequality, which sound to me an excellent idea and definitely something we should try over here. But the recognition of the “Q” would be a good start.

So many organisations go to and fro about including “queer” (sometimes designated as questioning, though queer seems to cover that better). I’ve never entirely understood what the issue was. Talking to a friend of mine (@McWilloughby on Twitter), he suggested that “part of the problem is that people not in the know are too used to “queer” being a derrogatory term for a gay person.” I suspect he’s probably right, it’s another case of terms being hijacked as insults, as “gay” has been too. But it’s about time it was reclaimed. The most welcoming community I have ever been a part of, the Post Secret Community LGBTQ boards, have only added the “Q” in the past month or so, having been active for years. Many student groups still don’t have it, and neither do those attached to most political organisations. Though there is no harmful intention, if we really want equality, we must be completely inclusive. Alliances are the ideal, but in the meantime, let us queers join in too please.

The title of this post comes from Andrea Gibson’s poem, Swingset, which fairly accurately explains me, as it goes. http://genderkid.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/swingset/

I’ve been using the internet increasingly regularly for years, and yes, throughout my teens. I’ve seen my share of the creepy cyber stalkers and not-necessarily-paedophiles-but-certainly-a-bit-pervy types appear on my Hotmail contacts out of nowhere. Although that’s not what this is about, that’s usually what people fear, so I thought I’d flag it up. I’ve encountered numerous, and they’ve never been subtle. Ever. It doesn’t take a great deal to spot them, and just as little effort and tech-savvy to hit the big “block” button on whatever service you’re using. Some people fall foul of this, obviously, but most will never have more than a few minutes of exchange with these people, probably accompanied by a friend laughing at the blatant idiocy of the other’s attempt to “corrupt” you or whatever.

Now I’ve never witnessed anyone first hand who’s been in anyway affected by what is so often termed “grooming” and I won’t even try to grasp that. But it could easily be considored similar to what I’m about to talk about, but I want to distinguish it completely, purely because I would be disgusted with my self if I associated the individual in my example with such lowlifes. No, this blog is about trust and internet friendships. I frequent a couple of forum, and on what particularly tight knit and open community, there was something of a drama this week when a regular poster revealed that they weren’t who they said they were. Personally, although I’d talked to them quite a few times and looked up to them, I wasn’t upset by this, for me it was simply a case of getting used to calling them a new name. But I was away from the forum for a while this year (coincidentally, this person was the one who brought me back to the community, too) and I missed the event that was causing a lot of people to be extremely upset about this revelation. This was the invention of a serious illness, for which many of the forum members had worried and fretted and sent their love to combat. When you’re part of a community founded on honesty and sharing secrets, this was a particularly hard hitting blow. A lot of individuals on the internet use false names, particularly somewhere like this forum where they fear being found by those who know them, as it often contains very sensitive personal information about the posters. But to cause people so much worry over something that was entirely fictional, that was undoubtedly a betrayal of trust, especially considoring how much those who this hurt had shared with the individual concerned.

So, here, on the one hand, it’s clear that there is a particularly strong risk on the internet of being mislead, in various forms.

However, what annoys me spectacularly, is when people generalise to assume that noone out there is to be trusted. For example, there was an instance recently of someone apparently high and mighty suggesting that parents should very carefully monitor who their children are talking to and what they’re saying. This is fine to a point. By child, I mean teenager, I wouldn’t make these suggestions of anyone younger than probably thirteen. But I’d like to use myself as the example here. I was a miserable teenager, completely. I was unpopular, lonely and nerdy. It took me ’till about 3 years ago to even begin to fit in anywhere and with anyone. But nor was I naiive, being the nerdy unpopular one naturally I had enough of a brain in my head to be wary of people I didn’t know. But for me the internet was a godsend. This came in a few forms. The Boomtown Rats forums, populated by middle-aged women who humoured my obsessive nature. The Stephen Fry forums, full of fluffettes who made me smile. But most importantly were the following: PSC, that is the Post Secret Community, where being free to vent, completely open, without risk of cruel judgement yet nonetheless honesty, is exactly what it’s about, and exactly what a lot of teenagers need; and James. Now, James has helped me a lot over the past few years, and is now one of my very very best friends, and so continues to do so. My ‘old’ friends are by now used to me referencing in the same way I would conversations with one of them, but whenever I’m getting to know new people and it arises that I’ve never actually met one of the three people I considor my best friends, I usually get one of a selection of in some way dissaproving expressions. It’s this sort of thing that irritates me. Largely because for starters I know him better than I’ll ever know any of them. I know who he is and I don’t need to prove that to someone who distrusts my judgement. But it’s that kind of reaction that frustrates me. The assumption that because there are some scumbags out there, noone is to be trusted. Admittedly, after week or so talking to someone online it’d be fairly moronic to meet them if you couldn’t be sure they were who they said they were, but once you get to know them, and you know that they’re someone you’d like to know, and that you can trust them sufficiently, there’s no reason why it can’t sensibly happen. This is coming from someone with a complete trust defficiency, perhaps why it’s only now, after over 2 years of knowing him that I’m actually going to meet James, and I can’t wait. Yet still some people raise an eyebrow at this notion, and then I have this rant and the accompanying “you want to know how I know I’m gonna be fine?!” list ramble that can accompany it right at them. But my point is this. It’s a matter of judgement. Like everything in life, and sometimes people get it wrong, but that doesn’t mean that the internet is evil, nor that people on the internet are bad people, it’s just the few exceptions that are going to get the attention compared to the billions of contented and ‘normal’ users. But I wish we could see it like that. Rather than looking at the exception, look at it and see the rule, see the positives. I’m sure everyone reading this blog can think of something good they’ve gained from their internet use. I’m not sure I would’ve passed through my teens so relatively uneventfully without the internet, and maybe you think that’s the wrong way to do it, but I was vastly running out of options, tracking down like minded folk online was one of the few I could stomach. I’m not sure where I’m going with this, it’s a mush of too many thoughts in one (and it’s gone half one in the morning) but I’ve been waiting to put some of these thoughts down for so long, I thought I finally would. Welcome to the internet, be nice.