On children.

Dear everyone with a very strong opinion of underage humans,

I never liked kids much. Perhaps because I was a kid myself, from the ages of, say, 5 to 18, the very idea of holding a baby or watching the little 'uns for a couple of hours filled me with abject terror. It's not that I woke up one day and decided that all children are exactly the same person with exactly the same horrible traits (although it seems many people actually have come to this conclusion, but more on that later). It had more to do with the fact that I'm not 'good with them'. I don't have that selfless motherly instinct. Maybe I would if I were given the opportunity to develop one, but I seem to have missed that opportunity in my upbringing, and thus, teacup humans terrify me.

However. I've noticed lately that I have developed a propensity for defending children - in theory - and I think it's because I'm just that sick of hearing people talk rant about how much they utterly despise kids.

Don't get me wrong: I don't care if you don't want to have children. Good. Good on you. I'm happy for you that you've made that decision. I'm not about to question it. If you change your mind later, also good for you. I really couldn't care less, because it is almost meaningless to me at this point whether or not you wish to procreate. That's entirely up to you and I respect your decision.

People who have decided that they don't want to have children often seem to find themselves faced with people who are rude enough to second guess them about it; "You'll change your mind"; "That's what they all say"; "You're too young to have decided a thing like that", etc. I find it stunningly presumptuous and condescending, and it infuriates me just to hear about it. One of the many downsides of the prevalence of this attitude is that deliberately childless people will often feel the need to overcompensate by attacking people who do have, or plan to have, children - or indeed, children themselves.

I'm tired of hearing both sides of the argument, because it is a fundamentally stupid argument. Neither side is wrong. It is a personal choice. It is impossible to be more right in your choice to reproduce (or not) than anyone else is. And honestly, I find it more grating to hear people go on about how they shouldn't have to see children when they go grocery shopping than it is seeing 20-year-old mothers post endless creepy photos of the fruit of their loins on Facebook. You're all nutters. Please find something else to talk about.

All Is Violent, All Is Bright

Sometimes you just have one of those days where everything seems solemn and sort of heavy, even if it's completely irrational. In my case, predictably, this is almost always triggered by some minor love-life-related incident. On the upside, in my 20 years on this planet I have managed to gain the perspective necessary to see minor love-life-related incidents as exactly that - minor - and I find it best to pass the moods with sympathetic music.

In a side note - and this is going to sound spoilt and bitchy but fuck it - it is annoying as hell to be followed around and stared at and complimented and all manner of other usually good things when it's in the context of someone being obviously interested in fucking or dating you, or both, and you would rather grow old and die completely alone than devote one more second of your time to even considering such an unappealing idea.

I don't even care, you bitches know I'm right. It is awkward and uncomfortable and you don't want to be mean about it but if they don't take the hint and quit humping your leg you're going to have to pull out the bitchface and that's a generally unpleasant prospect. If you're disagreeing, that's because you've never had it happen to you, and on that note, you should count your blessings.

Conversely, if you have had the displeasure of experiencing intense unwanted affection, it makes you hyper-aware of any time when you are interested in someone and you're not sure if said interest is returned. At least, that's how it works for me. I am suddenly very aware that there is a pretty good chance that any overt gestures are going to result in quiet but unmitigated irritation.

Or this.

I have yet to come up with a suitably subtle solution to this problem - because sometimes, just busting out with 'So, let's have sex!' doesn't seem to be the best option, and most people I know are too nice to snap out an unequivocal 'Look, I'm not interested.' I'm working on it, but until I find the answer, I think I'm going to have to stick to dear friends with Mogwai DVDs.

On bewilderingly popular films.

You know, I saw Black Swan, and I didn't care for it.

It was alright. I mean, it wasn't a bad film. I don't regret sitting through it. It held my attention reasonably well. However, I really don't get what all the hype is about. I've got status updates about its peerless brilliance littering my Facebook feed, and I just don't get it. I didn't care about the main character because she was a high-strung yuppie (and the only high-strung yuppie I care about is an insane serial killer), and the plot was so predictable that I spent at least half the film thinking "Hurry up and get to the bit where she dances and it all goes to hell. I get it, I get it, she's the white swan, Mila Kunis is the black swan, her mum is controlling, she's breaking free/going nuts, blah, blah, blah."

Really? People were really blown away by this? By Natalie Portman playing a repressed rich girl with a demanding job? I mean, I'm not saying her performance was bad, because it wasn't. It was quite good - but not great. It wasn't great, because she was basically playing herself. The girl peaked at 13 in Leon: The Professional. Frankly I found Mila Kunis more engaging; I'm struggling to see where the Oscar hype is coming from.

Evidently my opinion is in the minority at the moment, but...

On the f-word and why it's tragically funny that so many women are afraid of it.

So, almost all of us have at least a vague idea of what 'feminism' is, and the majority of the uninvolved public is pretty much wrong. But the best bit is women who don't seem to realize or want to acknowledge that That Dirty F-Word is the one and only reason why they aren't chained to a kitchen, running the risk of childbirth every single time they have sex, and so economically limited that they will never, ever be able to do anything they actually want to do. Unless everything they want to do takes place in the confines of the house their husband buys for them (and takes reparation for in the form of sex you legally cannot refuse even if you want to).

Sadly, most women will react to the mention of feminism with disgusted comments about armpit hair, because as women, they know that one of the foulest crimes they can commit is to utterly disregard gender roles and do something different with their bodies. They probably don't know that the only reason any of them have had it bashed into their heads that this thing is incredibly important is that in the 1920s, short-sleeved clothing for women was introduced, and Gillette saw an opportunity to sell more razors. So they ran a smear campaign against female body hair, denouncing it as revolting and ultimately undesirable. And it worked! Our consumerist great grandparents fell for it and decided that the marketing scheme was preaching holy truth, and ever since girls and women everywhere have been obligingly shearing themselves. Is this an inherently evil thing? Not necessarily, but it's pretty hilariously sad.

Having said that, fuck body policing up the ass with a splintered plank of wood. Shave, wax, grow, trim whatever the hell you want to. It's none of my damn business. Put on 20 kgs and wear the tightest clothes you can find, because people who find themselves offended by the sight need to grow the fuck up and realize it's not actually a problem. There are plenty of real problems in the world already without oversensitive judgmental shitheads taking it upon themselves to add hysterical, pretend problems. "Oh, I can't control the way that woman looks! My world is falling down around me! War is a totally acceptable fact of life that I have no problem with because there's no point arguing with it, but other people's body fat is something I'm going to take the time and effort to bitch about and loudly disapprove of!" Please. Go clutch your pearls over stupid shit somewhere else.

On female comedians and their hilarity in relation to their genitalia.

It confuses and infuriates me that there are still people in the world today who don't realize what an embarrassing thing it is to seriously claim that 'women aren't funny'.

What are you backing that up with, babe?

Because if I was that dickheaded and logic-deficient, I might conclude that men aren't funny.

"Aw man," I would say, "men aren't funny. All of their comedy is just them cracking gay/racist jokes and rambling about their ex-girlfriends and/or wives."

Which makes a similar amount of sense as "Women aren't funny, all female comedians ever talk about is their period and their kids."

This clever and obviously hilarious individual bases almost all of his acts around race or imitating the speech impediments of the mentally disabled. He's also so funny he has to steal jokes. A+

Oh good, another routine about your shit relationships. Don't men have anything better to talk about?

This one's such a pitiful attempt at comedy that even the guy filming can't force realistic-sounding laughter.

And then there's Carrot Top...the guy copying the watermelon guy and somehow managing to be even less funny.

I suppose the point I'm trying to make is, your anecdotal evidence that women aren't funny sucks. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that men aren't funny, and that is an equally stupid statement. What mystifies me is where you people decided that humor is innately connected to your sexual organs. Oh right, it was right around the point where sexism and the entertainment business intersect.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

It sometimes happens that, in the philosophical no-man's-land that is my everyday conversation, someone will make a comment that really grinds my gears. It starts off small: my immediate reaction is usually a quiet acknowledgement and, depending on how receptive to reason the offending party is, perhaps I'll offer a response hinting at how terribly wrong they are. The conversation continues, the gear-grinder forgotten for the moment. The thing that brings it looming back into my consciousness hours, days, weeks, months or years later is the haunting notion that I have left a grave wrong uncorrected. Thus, these vastly irritating comments could be considered a kind of delayed Berserk Button for me.

Case in point: one of my dearest friends made an offhand comment some months ago to the effect that "atheism is in itself a religion". At the time, I settled for a retort along the lines of "no, it's not, that doesn't make a lick of sense", but it has come back to annoy me ever since nonetheless. It troubles me more than is strictly reasonable that such an intelligent, intuitive and sensible young woman could accept for an instant the ridiculous notion that a term that denotes nothing more and nothing less than 'absence of belief in a deity' refers to a religion.

I suppose the strength of my objection stems from a deep-seated contempt for religion as a concept: I am deeply fascinated by mythology from around the world, and religion has never managed to strike me as anything other than mythology taken far too seriously. There are few demonstrations of utter stupidity grander than the argument that atheism is merely a different brand of religion, due largely to the fact that atheism is in essence the absence of religion. Can you imagine a cancer patient trying to argue that perfect health is just a different type of illness? 

Of course there is also the fact that entirely aside from the obvious fallacy, the other half of the argument - "atheists are a united group of people who all have the same belief system" - is simply untrue. I'm absolutely bewildered as to where people come up with this idea, because I've certainly never seen any evidence of it. Atheists present no united front; even atheists who choose to band together in small, localized groups of similar-mindedness are no more a religious organisation than middle-aged women in a book club are founders of a "Love Books Religion". Atheists, being grouped together on no other basis than one particular, very specific thing they do not believe, cannot collectively agree on anything other than that one single thing. Morality, politics, whether or not Jesus existed, we can't even decide what to call ourselves. If atheism is a religion where are its leaders? There are certainly people of note in the atheist community, and some who are much louder voices of reason than others, but we can't collectively agree on who our intellectual heroes are. Some of us are spectacularly uninformed - atheism does not in any case guarantee logic or intelligence.

We are ordinary people of every race, gender, shape, and social status, and we have only one thing in common: a lack of faith. More often than not this means that we are capable and more than willing to think for ourselves, and make our decisions based on fact and reason. This method of thought is fundamentally incompatible with faith. Faith is the mechanism which allows theists and/or stubborn, petulant people to refuse point-blank to allow the possibility that they could be wrong. It is also the basis of every religion ever invented. And it is this fundamental discrepancy that irritates me to this day. I still wonder what kind of incredible mental acrobatics you must have to perform in order to convince yourself that faithless = belonging to organisation of faith.