I meet you at the cemetery gates
I'm annoyed with Britishness, livejournal.
I'm quite happy to be British: indeed, I'm about as much an anglophile as someone born within a hundred miles of Big Ben can legitimately be. I do think if I'd grown up in England I'd have been significantly more of a Japanophile than I already am, but that's by-the-by.
What I am annoyed with about Britishness is our attitude towards innovation. It's not that we don't like it; why, successive governments smarm on about encouraging it all the time! It's that it has to be the right sort of innovation, you know? I'm not saying it has to have gone to the right schools or that where it went to university is important (where did you study, by the way?), but, well, it just has to be presented in the right way and go through the proper channels, you know?
It's just hard to be British and excited about something! Even now I'm using all too many exclamation marks and italics and god-knows-what.
Specifically, I'm thinking about trans activism and trans and queer art.
America! Land of the free, home of opportunity, an underrecognised novel by Franz Kafka. North America, specifically. Huge and varied. A good place to be rich. Not an easy place if you don't have your shit together, or if you're marginalised (but where is?) Somewhere I'd like to go back and visit, but not, I think, stay.
It does seem like somewhere that it's a lot easier to be excited.
TransGiving! Grishno.com! Trannystar Galactica! Questioning Transphobia! TrueSelves! All shiny and full of energy and bouncy and bright.
Perhaps the grass is always greener. It's not like we have a shortage of awesome and amazing people here - several of you are reading this entry. We have Helen writing for the F-Word and Ben doing Shine at Galop and Jane Fae writing for Pink News now, and our own auntysarah and rozk, QYN, Trans London, people involved through student politics and many more.
It just seems to me that in the UK, and perhaps more broadly in Europe - who knows, how much contact do we actually have with our European allies? All I've seen of trans* and queer activism in Europe is blurred video footage of a conference being stormed in France, a queer trailer park in Berlin, vague murmorings of things happening in other places with few specifics, and not much more. In the UK there's just not so much going on that's exciting. I could go into why I think that is, and talk about things like funding channels and state involvement and class and history and perspective and energy, and no doubt be partially right and partially wrong and potentially step on a lot of toes.
Really, the only point I want to make is that it seems hard for us to get excited, and in my opinion that's sad.
So I guess I need to get off my ass, or possibly on my ass, and try to change that.
I'm quite happy to be British: indeed, I'm about as much an anglophile as someone born within a hundred miles of Big Ben can legitimately be. I do think if I'd grown up in England I'd have been significantly more of a Japanophile than I already am, but that's by-the-by.
What I am annoyed with about Britishness is our attitude towards innovation. It's not that we don't like it; why, successive governments smarm on about encouraging it all the time! It's that it has to be the right sort of innovation, you know? I'm not saying it has to have gone to the right schools or that where it went to university is important (where did you study, by the way?), but, well, it just has to be presented in the right way and go through the proper channels, you know?
It's just hard to be British and excited about something! Even now I'm using all too many exclamation marks and italics and god-knows-what.
Specifically, I'm thinking about trans activism and trans and queer art.
America! Land of the free, home of opportunity, an underrecognised novel by Franz Kafka. North America, specifically. Huge and varied. A good place to be rich. Not an easy place if you don't have your shit together, or if you're marginalised (but where is?) Somewhere I'd like to go back and visit, but not, I think, stay.
It does seem like somewhere that it's a lot easier to be excited.
TransGiving! Grishno.com! Trannystar Galactica! Questioning Transphobia! TrueSelves! All shiny and full of energy and bouncy and bright.
Perhaps the grass is always greener. It's not like we have a shortage of awesome and amazing people here - several of you are reading this entry. We have Helen writing for the F-Word and Ben doing Shine at Galop and Jane Fae writing for Pink News now, and our own auntysarah and rozk, QYN, Trans London, people involved through student politics and many more.
It just seems to me that in the UK, and perhaps more broadly in Europe - who knows, how much contact do we actually have with our European allies? All I've seen of trans* and queer activism in Europe is blurred video footage of a conference being stormed in France, a queer trailer park in Berlin, vague murmorings of things happening in other places with few specifics, and not much more. In the UK there's just not so much going on that's exciting. I could go into why I think that is, and talk about things like funding channels and state involvement and class and history and perspective and energy, and no doubt be partially right and partially wrong and potentially step on a lot of toes.
Really, the only point I want to make is that it seems hard for us to get excited, and in my opinion that's sad.
So I guess I need to get off my ass, or possibly on my ass, and try to change that.