Gay Star News stories of the day

Credit: GSN website. I hope they don't sue me or sack me for stealing this image. 

I'm doing a stint of work at Gay Star News, which is a website reporting international LGBT news. This means that instead of simply writing biting, funny and insightful commentary, I get to REPORT the NEWS. The real live events that are happening as we speak.

Over the next two weeks I'm going to post my stories up here daily. If you would like to know what's happening to queer people around the world (supposing you believe in global queer identity/ies) then I suggest you keep checking back.


Here is a selection of stories I wrote today:

1. Ghana Christian group slams pro-gay gender minister

Essentially, Ghana's new Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection is being badmouthed by a group of homophobic Christians:

http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/ghana-christian-group-slams-pro-gay-gender-minister140113

2. Calls for Burchill to be sacked over 'disgusting' anti-trans rant

I don't think there are any members of the British commentariat who haven't written an opinion piece about Burchill-Moore-gate over the past two days. But this is NEWS, and therefore bears reporting. The story is about how former Minister for Equalities Lynne Featherstone tweeted that Burchill should be sacked. It also has some other juicy info.

http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/calls-burchill-be-sacked-over-disgusting-anti-trans-rant140113

3. Aboriginal gay man murdered in Canada

This is a sad one. It's also the most interesting story I wrote today. Dolan Badger, the man who was murdered, had previously written a really exciting piece about two-spirit identities and his struggle with different kinds of oppression: race, gender, indigenous heritage and so on. I linked to it in the report.

http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/aboriginal-gay-man-murdered-canada140113

4. Judge says UK civil partners can divorce like married Canadian couples 

Some men who were civilly partnered in Britain were allowed to divorce in Canada. Because their partnership amounts to a marriage. Good news for people in favour of equal marriage. Actually, it's great for one of the guys involved because he can get a divorce settlement and rights and so on. Excellent.

http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/judge-says-uk-civil-partners-can-divorce-married-canadian-couples140113

I'm giving up New Year's resolutions for 2013

Grace Jones doesn't care about how you want to be a better person.

No-one has ever stuck to a New Year's resolution. Nobody. Let's face it, even the supposed resolution-keepers profiled here (warning: The Sun) have probably been given fat cheques for their lies. They're doing it to make you feel bad. The idea is that you will make resolutions and tell other people about your resolutions, making them feel as if they should also make resolutions. The only people that profit from this are gym owners and life coaches.

Think about this. A year's membership at Fitness First costs about £400. For that you could have:
-52 packets of 20 Marlboro Gold (King Size)
-268 packets of Mr. Kipling Bramley Apple Pies (or 1608 individual pies)
-A return flight to Barcelona, leaving London on New Year's Day (with enough money left over for a hotel and some tapas)

In any case, we all know that New Year's resolutions are really about shared guilt. It's capitalism's way of getting the population back under control. Ok, Ms. Smith, you've had your Christmas turkey. Now back in the office. It's time for another eleven months and twenty three days of data input. Don't complain, the holidays are over.

Responding to neo-liberal aspiration culture, the resolutions we make are grotesquely self-centred. For everybody who resolves to spend their time volunteering somewhere worthy, another hundred* simply want to look better. We're caught in an endless annual cycle of dead-end working, relief binging and resolving not to do it again. Next year I will be better. Next year I will stop being me. Next year I will be somebody else.

"I should really lose this paunch", we think. I should quit biting my nails, drinking and sitting around making it look as if my belly button can speak.We fantasize about becoming the person of our dreams: a quadrilingual, zitar-playing, pilates appreciating, flat-abbed work fanatic. Imagine how boring 2013 would be if everybody became this person. Sales of zitars would rocket in inverse proportion to the amount of fun people would have.

Every New Year for six years, I resolved to quit smoking. This resulted in two months of smokeless smugness, followed by the occasional guilty fag, followed by a return to full smoking by April. For several years I resolved to quit by never buying fags. Not buying was an easier resolution to keep, but it didn't stop me smoking. Instead, I alienated friends and lovers by constantly sponging off them.

New Year's resolutions are made to be broken. Secretly, we know this. We also know that you can let yourself off the guilty hook by February (at the latest) if you haven't stuck to your resolutions.

Anyway, the only thing more tiresome than bettering oneself is telling other people about it. As Grace Jones once famously said, "Save your breath".

For 2013, my New Year's resolution is not to have a resolution. I had been thinking of valuing my friends and family, ending procrastination and finally writing an insane polemical novel. But fuck self-improvement for 2013. Instead, I'm going to revel in being resolution-free. Gloriously, wantonly and lazily. Only another 1603 apple pies to get through.



*This is scientifically proven

Five top tips for getting a job

You've finally graduated, with a good combined degree in Humanities and Other Useless Studies. You spent your university years relatively well. You played sport for a team, you joined an orchestra. You had a social life. You're reasonably well rounded, and entirely sure that you can a: answer the telephone, b: send an "email" and c: talk to people without accidentally saying "cunt". Ready to take on the adult world of employment.

But the glorious, hopeful summer has now turned to October, and you're sitting in your parents' kitchen in yesterday's pants with a mysterious crust on your face (this bears no relation to my own life, I'm totally fine. Having a great time, actually). You're on your fifth cup of instant coffee and its only ten in the morning. You're flicking through the same unpromising job ads that you've seen every day this week. Most of them tell you neither what the job is nor who it would be for, but they do use plenty of fun, meaningless phrases like "self starter".

The fortnightly trips to the job centre take on a nightmarish air. The night before sign-on day you wake up in your sleep, soaked in sweat. Will you be able to convince the sceptical woman behind the desk that you are worthy of this week's £56.25? Difficult to say, when passing the test to keep your benefits depends on you accepting individual blame for the failings of the political system.

Of course, there's always an opening in recruitment consulting, bribing other people into becoming recruitment consultants. If you don't think about it hard enough, maybe you won't notice that its an empty, self-perpetuating job cycle created to give desperate graduates something to do. Sometimes these consultants even call you up, deliberately ignoring whatever sector it is you marked as desirable on your CV:

Consultant: "Would you like a mind-numbingly boring job that you have absolutely no interest in?"

You: "No, thank you kindly"

Consultant: "You are clearly a benefits scrounging loser. I read about your kind in the Telegraph."


I've never had a conversation like that, but it's only a matter of time.


In any case, from one work-shy feckless job-seeker to another, here are my five top tips for getting a job. They have served me admirably well in the past:


1. Start your cover letter thus:

"Dear Company,

I have no idea who you are or what you do, but frankly the position advertised is an insult to someone of my abilities. Obviously I am capable of filing, answering the telephone, and making tea. During my degree I had to write essays about dialectical materialism, for fuck's sake. Please, please, please give me this job, I really need the money."


2. Apply for unpaid internships. When they offer them to you ask if they'll pay you. If not, turn them down in an outraged email railing against slave labour, linking them to the wikipedia page for the principle of "a fair day's wage for a fair day's work". Repeat.


3. Turn down any job offers you receive. If they're offering you a job, it can't be that great a job. What's wrong with them? (See: Groucho Marx)


4. Write intimidating speculative applications to companies who don't have job openings. Threaten to leave the country if they don't create a job for you. Why should multi-billion pound businesses receive favorable treatment?


5. Whenever friends, parents, partners or bloggers try to give you well-meant job advice, laugh long and loudly. You have no need of their advice! Have you not sent five thousand applications this very week! Do you not have as much chance as anyone else of landing the BBC Director-General job (as and when George Entwistle vacates it)? Shout all these things aggressively, then cry and run out of the room.


Good luck! You'll need it! 

Why the gender pay gap matters

The real castration complex? 

I have a new post at openDemocracy. It's about the gender pay gap, but is also sexy and exciting: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ray-filar/why-gender-pay-gap-matters

In propria persona: a guide to philosophical excellence, qua the Cambridge philosophy tripos

Devoid of any remaining critical capacity to create some sort of opinion piece, I've been thinking rather of what the last three years ostensibly undergoing a philosophy degree has taught me. I thought I'd share some key moves, some baton deploy*, some shapes, if you like, to whack out when faced, as you inexorably will be one day, with the need to write some words on something philosophical. I speak particularly with reference to what I have learnt from the Cambridge Philosophy Tripos.

A GUIDE TO PHILOSOPHICAL EXCELLENCE:
Its so easy. There's one step you can follow, one fail safe key rule that if you use from the beginning to the end of a degree, will result in lifelong happiness. Are you ready? Here it is: Get up early in the morning. Go to the library. Spend at least eight hours there working (i.e. not staring into space/browsing the internet). Come home, get an early night. Repeat.

On the other hand, that's a bit like hard work, and if, like me, you would rather sit in your room eating and watching D.Housewives than doing hard work, below are ten alternative steps to excellence:

They just published a particularly successful paper on Kant, probably following the below guide.

1. Throw in some latin. 'Wollheim seems to be positing something SUI GENERIS' sounds much more impressive than it would if you hadn't said 'sui generis'. It doesn't really matter if the latin is accurate, nobody speaks it anymore.

2. Repeat the same irrelevant point over and over again without expanding on it. Good in exams.

3. Make a spurious distinction. Drive a contrived theoretical wedge between what clearly could easily be one concept and another aspect of the same concept. Stating that one concept is two concepts is almost like making an argument that one concept is two concepts.

4. Talk about all the different ways you might respond to a particular argument. Don't commit to any of them. This is what is technically known as treating them mean to keep them keen (the arguments, not the examiners. But also maybe the examiners).

5. Write obscene and/or misleading remarks in textbooks - that will distract other people trying to read the same thing after you, and you'll get a better mark than them.

6. Spend loads and loads of time making up funny songs about philosophers. This is a much better way to engage with the text than reading it.

7. Be dismissive. So Wittgenstein was able to tell his own PhD examiners that they would never understand his work because he was a massive genius? Big deal. I can refute him in one sentence. Like this, 'Wittgenstein has clearly not thought this point through.' Next paragraph.

8. Give only the reasons 'this is intuitive' or 'this is plausible', and no further explanation in favour of any conclusion. Examiners don't like to be spoiled.

9. Allow each of your essays to rest on an unexplained assumption, like that the radical feminist perspective on things could logically be the only correct one. Allow this perspective to permeate everything you say, without ever justifying it. For example, 'surrogate pregnancy is clearly derogatory and bad'. End of argument, next paragraph.

10. When in doubt, come across as slightly bigoted - 'Multiculturalism gives too much power to ethnic minorities, liberals should use interventionalist policies to stop all and any minority cultural practices'. End of argument, next paragraph.

Hope this helps!


*Due credit for 'baton deploy' is given to its creator, Josh Ebsworth