Things. Things are happening

Five weeks to Living Wage Campaign launch. One and a half days until I meet members of my committee. Twelve weeks until I head home to see my family and friends for Christmas. And a whole ten hours until I have to get up - that's right. It's my evening off.

The gaps are where I do my uni work

So it's time for a super-brief update. I've not taken anything else on...sort of. I'm doing the STAR award this year, because it essentially makes my VP role epic, an upgrade on the awesome it already is. I talked about the STAR award a little bit last year; it's a few hours of workshops with someone I respect and look up to on campus plus genuine employers from the world of real jobs. An extra six hours is really all it's going to cost me between now and graduation, so I feel I can take that on.

Living Wage is kind of planned out, and I need to talk to some people about getting other groups on board - groups like trade unions and Aberdeen City Youth Council, but also groups that don't even know they're powerful. Groups of staff in shit-paid jobs who could band together and apply real pressure to the people above them.

Aside from that, things progress. If you knew me a few years ago, as some of my readers do, you'll know I was an insufferable ass. Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty sure there are still time when I'm that, but I think I'm getting better. Case in point: Sartre vs. Beauvoir.

N.B if you're bored by existentialist philosophy and gender roles as performances look away now.

Simone de Beauvoir (r) and Jean-Paul Sartre (l)

So: Sartre and Beauvoir, like all of the most I of VIPs, go by only one name. Sartre's existentialist philosophy is fascinating: it says we are condemned to choose. There's no God; not a God who controls us nor a God who commands us, so there is both free will and no moral imperative. If you, like young Raskolnikov, see a young woman bothered by a lecherous drunk then be assured that there is no moral imperative to act. Similarly, if you are depressed by your boss, who works you to the bone for almost nothing, then (says Sartre) you choose to allow him that. You might also choose to punch the odious boss in his pallid face and make your way through the cheering crowds - but then, you have chosen that too. Almost any person in dire circumstances, according to this philosophy (one he argues is only for philosophers, which makes a lay person like me wonder what the damn purpose of it is then), is in those circumstances as a consequence of those choices.

In an egalitarian world where everyone starts from the same circumstances I could have time for this kind of philosophising, but since it ignores all pre-existing racist, classist, sexist, cissexist and homophobic structures that already existed in society and yet were apparently invisible even to a man as smart as Sartre, this philosophy for people who've already won the lottery of life and need a reason to sneer at people in other socio-economic conditions goes IN THE BIN.

THE BIN I SAY.

Also: check out the sheer length of that sentence. This is what happens when you read French at university: you lose all sense of scaling sentences and end up writing Ulysses. 

In any case: enter Beauvoir, who expanded on the philosophy and produced a phrase that defines feminism, the problem with so-called "femininity", and is also epic in French. In English it gets fuzzy. It goes:

On n'est pas née femme; on le devient. - We are not born women; we become women.

Womanhood - and, indeed, manhood - are performances or constructs that you grow into and in doing so you completely give up your freedom. You trade freedom for security. You fit into the mould crafted for you and you don't need to choose any more; you are no longer "condemned to choice," as Sartre said above. You can go through the motions, like a character on a cuckoo clock.

So then we get all kinds of complex questions like (a) are you betraying womanhood if you take part in this construct (b) what do you mean, womanhood? Aren't we all individuals? and (c) hey, I'm a guy, I have an opinion on this and you should listen to it.

I'm super-sarcastic this evening, and I do not even slightly apologise.

If you skipped past existentialism and gender roles, please start reading again here.

Other news: big scoops with the Tab this week, but not mine. We have done a pretty good job exposing the frankly obscene amounts the university paid a company to make a super-shitty video that they finally took down. As a sort of unofficial response to that piece of crap, there's a "Reclaim the Night" march happening in Aberdeen for self-identifying women and genderqueer people. If you don't know about it yet I know you'll be made welcome if you go, and if you are in either of those groups, do please join the march. If you are instead a man, don't go. Don't be that guy.

It's that simple.

PIR - our next event is shaping up to be bloody enormous, with over 170 folk turning up. It's going to be huge, and I will be working as per. I hope people get photos.

Right. That's a massive update. I'm well, I'm doing many things, and I shall shortly be kicking some buttock or at least poking it with intent to harm. I hope you're all well and if you've got this far have a prize of my friend John using the phrase "penis monsters" in a chat about his sexuality. 

References to Crime and Punishment are all well and good, but for humour there's nothing better than an Englishman using the word penis.

It's done, it's finally done

21 days and 8,000 researched and referenced words. Quite frankly I'm not sure even I believe it, and I wrote every one of those words. It is without doubt the biggest task I've ever undertaken, and if I could go back in time there's no doubt I'd do the whole thing again exactly the same way.

What can I say? The month I should have spent writing I spent working in an organisation I'd love to go back to, so it wasn't wasted. I wouldn't have given it up for all the sleep I haven't had these past three weeks - though perhaps I'd have asked for just a little more time, so that I could have got home to see my mother, whose birthday I missed due to this enormous project.

With that particular enormous project out of the way, though, it's back to other enormous projects.

• My VP project - to try to encourage Aberdeen's big businesses to move up their minimum wage. It's looking likely anyway - both the Conservatives and Labour have been making noises about it - so my argument's going to be simply that if they do it before they're forced to, they look like positive, pro-active members of society rather than the vile, tax-evading corporate monsters they are.
• My PIR project - generate coverage for our trips. I'm going to involve the Loch Ness monster.
• My Tab project(s) - cover something big. Really big. Like a pyramid. Wait no, not like a pyramid. Wrong kind of big.
• Degree classification - this...probably shouldn't be at the bottom of the list. Still: it's got to be a 2:1. 2:1 or nothing baby.
• Life project - don't take on anything else between now and graduating. Kick me if I even think about it.
• Post graduation projects - apply for every job going. I've already got one well in hand, another in progress, and others are lining up as I speak. There are a few I can't start until next year, post-graduation, but until then I can keep plugging away at the ones that accept predicted grades.

See? When I make a list it doesn't look at all like a Sisyphean boulder I have to push up a mountain. Besides, even if that is what is resembles, I'm getting into Camus again (via Sartre's more-than-a-bit-privileged-existentialism and these bloody gorgeous comics) and that means I can he happy about my Sisyphean task, because it gives me purpose, and without purpose (even if that purpose is meaningless) we are nothing.

A cheerful blog today then.

And just to round it off, here's my front page: a work of art and a challenge to the laws of language; a 30-page, mildly acerbic, poorly written assault on laïcité that stretched the word "no" into 8,437 words.

In terms of words per minute, formatting this page
was the hardest thing in the entire paper.

Turnabout's fair play

I am in the library, and I am feeling very lonely indeed. There's almost nobody else in here, though I'm pretty certain that if I open up my Thermos full of soup a librarian will swoop out of nowhere or manifest out of bats or electrify my laptop.

I am suspicious of the powers of librarians.

So why am I in the library? Simply because my dissertation must be written, and it will not be written while I sit at home and play Civilisation IV or film applications or write blogs. No, instead I must go forth and read all sorts of books about government, the future, and possibly even read some of the manifesto of the Front National, after which I'll need a shower.

I had another run this morning with a slightly faster time. This is a bit silly, because I should really be trying to slow my pace and go further rather than running straight at it as fast as I can before I collapse, but then that's how I've lived my entire life up until this point. It's a hard habit to shake, and it's really only just struck me how it keeps popping up in a lot of aspects of my life.

Running away at top speed only to get back to where I started. This may be a sign.

As a side note, 87 calories is not very many calories at all, and I am quite frankly horrified that this is all I get for the feeling of lightheaded proximity to death I experienced. I should be able to eat more than a handful of grapes for that sort of sensation.

As time off for good behaviour (in terms of my dissertation) I'll be writing an article for everyone's favourite tabloid, +The Tab, about things you can't wear after uni. So far I'm thinking onesies, ironic t-shirts and yesterday's clothes (that, let's be honest, were yesterday's clothes yesterday). If you've got suggestions, leave them in the comments or get in touch with me via my social media profiles.

I start my new job on Wednesday, which is pretty damn exciting, because quite frankly I'm running out of money like Prince Charles is running out of time - quickly. Still, unlike Charlie, I've got an end in a sight. Speaking of royalty, by the by, the Queen has made her speech to parliament and good lord it's a dirge. "My government this...my government that...". One needs to vary one's language in order to convince, persuade, entertain, or even hold the attention of one's audience - but then I suppose Lizzie's pretty much extraneous at this point, and it's an awful lot of bother just to tell a load of people what they already know. Still, we do like our pomp and circumstance. After all, why else would we have a new state coach when there are 3.5m kids in poverty?

I'm going to call it a day there, because that question's a difficult one to follow with anything cheery. There'll be macaroni cheese for dinner tonight, because lactose free cheese and lactose free milk exist.

There might be a god after all.