Thursday 16 March 2017

Tuesday 7 March 2017

I'm with Jenni Murray

Because, in these miserable days, we need a wider and weirder pool of words to choose from.

If you're choosing the nuance of your sexuality, then surely you can find a lovely bag of words to fit. Woman won't cover it all, in the same way that man never covered it all either.

I want to hear more lovely, more interesting words. I want words that are wonderful and curious to say; words that throw consonants b and d together in unlikely correspondence.

I want words like slubridiscious and prescloibidly. That would surely be better than a misery trans or the reductive cis. What fun are these? Make some new words to describe nuances of states of being, please, not fight over tunnel-narrow definitions of single words.

Yes, man never did it for me. I still hear it and read it everywhere.

I remember in primary school the teacher explaining how a book called Man and Nature actually meant women too.

That word - man - was the only one I got. I didn't get to own my word in 32pt bold type.I had to do the work to interpret man in my own way.

But then, after the teacher taught us that when the word man was used, it actually meant all humanity, all women, everyone - it was just the word man, okay? - when I read that book, the story never had a woman in it, unless she was the mummy who waved off the conquering hero, then the nurse who tended to his wounds when he got home. So include yourself in that word, girl who is called a man, and yet not a man. Double-thinking words became a part of growing up.

Now, when we have more options to communicate than we did in 1963, we need more words, simple as that. And if they don't exist, then call them into being.

Monday 6 March 2017

One for our guerilla art afternoon

Rachel Sussman repairs pavements with gold paint. Result: destruction and creation walk hand-in-hand.