The Handmaid's Tale of the Destruction of Democracy

Warning: spoilers for Hulu's/Channel 4's The Handmaid's Tale

"In a gradually heating bathtub, you'd be boiled to death before you knew it."

Things have never been so good, right? It's 2017 and more than ever before women are MPs, there is same-sex marriage and a muslim Mayor of London. Our country has never been so diverse, so progressive.
So much on the brink of regression.

10 people could be all it takes. 10 people could be the difference between the rights of gays and lesbians to marry and adopt, or not. 10 people could be the difference between the legal right to abort, or not.

No, not really. They're only 10 people, you cry. 
No, really. Because 10 people are currently the difference between Theresa May forming a government, pushing through policies that will make people on benefits poorer, make pensioners poorer, make food banks more necessary and keep people in debt for years - or fighting every policy battle endlessly for the next 5 years.

Is this where it starts? Where the tightening of security and the questioning of human rights begins?

If you haven't read The Handmaid's Tale, I implore you to read it.
If you're not the reading kind, then watch the new TV series. It's right here on All 4. 

And if you don't want to read it or watch it because you've heard it described as "feminist" or a "woman's story", then I roll my eyes at you so hard they fall out of their sockets, roll down the drain, into the sewer system and end up in a reservoir so pretty and clean I that I can't believe my eyes... 

The Handmaid's Tale is a story about the dismantling of democracy, of the ripping away of civil liberties and human rights. Yes of the society we've built, which I'm not always in favour of, but we're creating equality too. (slowly)
It tackles the stigma that gay people face, the idea that they are 'unnatural'. 
And the latest episode even includes FGM, not originally in the book, but that women and girls across the world face - with an estimated 137,000 in England and Wales. 

I hold my hands up and say I'm a hypocrite. I dismiss things for being too "girly", too "manly". These are stereotypes of behaviours that I have had drilled into me from a young age that I need to undo. 
There is really only one kind of behaviour - "human".

We all deserve equal opportunities, regardless of age, race, religion, ethnicity, ability, sexuality, or gender.

We have the opportunity right now to stand up and oppose the erosion of human rights. 

My last blog post of 2013

2013. 
Twenty thirteen.

I could spend some time reflecting on the year that is in it's dying moments, but I won't. Too much has happened. And it's New Years Eve tomorrow. And New Years is all about new starts, new beginnings, looking into the future, not behind us into the past.

I've been umming and ahhing about my 2014 New Years resolutions. As you know, resolutions mean a lot to me. I worry bout making them attainable, but want them to reflect who I want to become and achievements I want to accomplish. 

So. New Year's Resolutions for 2014:

1. Visit Uluru using an Aboriginal tour company
2. Be officially employed in Australian TV/media (i.e. get paid!)
3. Write something creative that isn't a blog. This doesn't have to be a full novel, but could be a poem, short story or a film script.
4. Choose next tattoo design (and maybe get it done...)
5. Improve my health by exercising and healthy eating so that by the year's conclusion I am able to:
     - Run 5k
     - Do 30 push ups
     - Do 100 sit ups
     - Touch the floor in Yoga poses (specifically Triangle)
6. Read the following list of books:
    - Better than Fiction (collection of short stories, already started on iPhone)
    - Heart of Darkness (on iPhone)
    - Villette  (on iPhone)
    - On the Origin of the Species  (on iPhone)
    - Around the World in Eighty Days  (on iPhone)
    - White Men'll Never Do It (already started, paperback)
    - Bewitched & Bedevilled  (on iPhone)
7. Start learning French? (Rosetta Stone e-learning for 12 months costs $273. Still deciding on this one...)
8. Climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge
9. Skydive.


Last two, and number 4 is easy....

What are your New Years resolutions?

Oh, and Happy New Year!!

Another One Down

I completed another New Years Resolution this week.

This one was to complete the list of books I had set myself to read this year.

Being unemployed for the first two months of the year meant that I got through a lot of them quite quickly. And then the rest took, well, longer.

This is the list (and I added one while I went along that I had borrowed from a friend):

1. We Need To Talk About Kevin
2. Fifty Shades trilogy
3. Cary Grant - In Name Only
4. The Descendants
5. Enduring Love
6. Pride & Prejudice
7. Anna Karenina
8. Gulliver's Travels
9. Huckleberry Finn
10. Freakonomics

Of these I enjoyed The Descendants, We Need To Talk About Kevin and Pride & Prejudice the most. Enduring Love was also very, very good.  My least favourite were Gulliver's Travels and Huckleberry Finn.
And I am now looking forward to watching various film and television versions of Pride & Prejudice, as well as the more recent film adaptations of We Need To Talk About Kevin, and Anna Karenina.

Now I shall have to make a new list of books...

**

I also completed all the things on my April To Do list bar one - watch 6 1001 films (I've managed 5, though I still have two days to go and I have some on my iTunes that I could put on my phone.)

One thing I did achieve was my first real piece of DIY. I've put together beds and such (yknow, with those IKEA-style instruction manuals) but today I just guessed what I needed to do, learned from the mistakes I'd made last time I tried, and went for it.

And I managed to put up my bag hooks.
Hoorah!