Be Yourself. No, Not That One, The Other One
(First published at the Huffington Post) There’s a lot of advice out there about being yourself. It’s generally in favour of the idea, and quite right too. The opposite of being yourself is not being...
View ArticleGender interviews
I wrote a post about non-binary gender for the Huffington Post, and as part of that I asked some of my friends some questions. Here are the full questions and answers. If I asked you to describe your...
View ArticleGendering Free: Exploring Outside the Binary
First published at the Huffington Post So this is how I’ve started to think about gender. It is just a metaphor. Once upon a time there was a country called Gender. The country consisted mainly of two...
View ArticleThe Dilemma Habit
[This was the original, and totally different, version of my Huffington Post Halloween article, Eight Legs No Soul.] I love working out the answer to imaginary dilemmas. I know you only really get them...
View ArticleMerry Christmas, Fatty! and other festive conversations
The National Obesity Forum has suggested that Christmas is the perfect time to tell loved ones that they’re overweight and to suggest remedies for this. This is an excellent idea, of course. People who...
View ArticleThe Useful Anxiety of Narrative Thinking
I think about being kidnapped far too much. It should not be high up my list of things to worry about. There is no obvious reason why I should get kidnapped. I am not famous. I am not related to anyone...
View ArticleAngilt and Other Emotional Cocktails
Babies only seem to have room for one emotion. It’s as though joy or hurt or hunger literally takes up so much room inside them that another feeling can’t get in till the first one’s gone. Distract a...
View ArticleThe Delicious Fudge: a tribute to a plot resolution trope
Resolution is important. You’ve spend all that time getting involved in the characters’ problems, intrigues, romantic complications etc., and you want a properly satisfying climax to all that. When...
View ArticleIs Online You The Same As Drunk You?
I was born in 1975. Which means that for the first 20 or so years of my life, I didn’t have the internet, or mobile phones, or even email. It genuinely feels like I’m talking about The Olden Days when...
View ArticleMentally Unwell Isn’t Less Than Human
Guest post by Sally Brewer, reprinted with permission from a private rant. So, I was just reading an article about zoos. It was in the Guardian, it was a very interesting article and I quite enjoyed...
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