Civil Partnership vs. Gay Marriage

So why is a Civil Partnership not a Marriage?

Marriage is a cultural institution. Gay relationships are also a cultural idea. The two are not part of the same cultural idiom.

Marriage is very much an institution created from the heteronormative patriarchal society. It assumes that a man and woman are united and that they take on their specific gender roles within this union. Whether or not the promise is made under God the gender roles are usually present. The man, for example, will likely wear a morning coat and the woman a dress for the ceremony. Sometimes couples break free from their prescribed gender roles. Although, in today's society, it is still only possible for women to give birth to children there has been a rise in recent years of 'house husbands' - men who stay at home to look after the house and the children whilst their wives work to become the main breadwinner. Even with this transferral of gender norm there is still a patriarchal overtone. The term 'house husband' is often used in sarcastic or mocking ways.

Homosexual relationships are fascinating in themselves because there are no pre-prescribed gender roles to be assumed. Many homosexual couples find that one partner is more dominant than the other. The more dominant may or may not be the more masculine. Many homosexual women choose to be either 'butch' or 'femme' and are usually interested in a relationship with someone who is the opposite of them in their gender expression category. Lipstick lesbians (feminine women who are attracted to feminine women), however, transcend these assumed roles. In a homosexual relationship there is no place for an institution such as marriage with all the historical baggage it carries. The civil partnership register affords homosexual couples most of the same rights as hetersexual married couples. In the event of something untoward happening to one partner the other is then granted the rights to carry out the wishes of the other. There are also rights with money and property that were previously not available for homosexual couples. This means, therefore, that homosexual couples are able to benefit from all the relevant priviledges of marriage without having to partake in a patriarchal institution.

Introducing the Civil Partnership is a great step for the United Kingdom. Some homosexual couples would like a full, recognised marriage and a civil partnership is the appropriate choice for some hetersexual couples. The next step for the government should be to introduce these other options. Seeing as it is equality we strive for there is little point in making the civil partnership available to homosexual but not heterosexual people.

Million

A million pounds a week?!!
That sounds like a lot of money. I haven't done any research but that's probably something like the amount on city spends on fast food or the cost of keeping up a hospital ward. Today, however, this figure was exposed to be David Beckham's salary in when he moves to California to play 'soccer' for LA Galaxy. The deal is reportedly worth around £128million (according to the BBC). Think what that amount of money could do for homeless people, arts education, a starving third-world nation, cancer research, rehabilitation - the possibilities are endless. I know he's a good footballer but is anyone really worth that amount of money? Some people have worked hard through education, qualification and service to their work which can be extremely demanding and often still have to scrape by on unreasonable wages. Paying someone this much money to promote a recreational activity is totally unjust. Surely.

Cardiff

So I'm back in Cardiff. It's wonderful here. I still have the house to myself which is very helpful as I hadn't tidied up properly when I left in August and now there are lots of things I brought down from home that also need to be tidied before people return!

I had a lovely time talking to Judith, Rich, Jenny and Ben in the library yesterday and it actually felt like being home. My parents were probably offended by my constantly referring to Cardiff as 'home' but that's just the way I think about it these days.

I've finally managed to get a few of the Alton Towers photos onto flickr but I'm having to do it by manual upload so it's a fairly slow process! Hopefully when they're properly online I'll be able to pick through and post a couple on here.

It's my 21st birthday tomorrow. Well I suppose it's today now actually! I don't feel much different. Which isn't strange at all. 21 sounds older but I still maintain that 21 is the party age and it's at 22 when you actually become a 'real' grown up. Conveniently my 22nd birthday will be just after I graduate (assuming I graduate that is - here's hoping) so it seems an appropriate time to become a 'reak' adult.

I've pretty much decided I'm going to run in the elections for Students' Union exec this year. It may sound like too early to be deciding but I read somewhere the other day that campaign planning starts as early as October! This paragraph is all pretty much to say 'please vote for me' if you're a Cardiff Uni student. You are also very welcome to wear a silly t-shirt and come campaign with me!

I went to see my lecturer about ideas for my dissertation topic yesterday and he (predictably) told me I need to narrow down the topic to one idea, one movement, one event or one composer. I wish I had 4 years and 200,000 words so I could write about everything I'd like to cover! On the plus side he did say that my ideas were very good and it was an ideal topic to look at.

Fun as it is to be 21 I'm getting quite sleepy so I'm going to finish here. Goodnight!

Update

So I haven't posted for a while. I blame flickr because the uploader wasn't working so it took ages to get pictures online. I'm still miles behind.

So here is a pic from Soul Survivor as promised:

It shows the ridiculous amount of mess we made around our patch of campsite!

Since Soul Survivor I've been at home and done various fun things. Last week I went to Alton Towers for Emma's 21st. It was amazing! We went to the waterpark, stayed in the Alton Towers Hotel and then went to the main theme park the next day with their celebration party day. We got to wear fancy-dress items. Many tiaras were worn! I took lots of photos there but with flickr not functioning I can't show you any of those either!

I did manage to upload a photo of my new haircut:

and a photo of my new fish:

Ellen and Sam got me the fish for my birthday. They are called Toby and CJ.
I love the fish! I always wanted a cool pet like that. We're mildly concerned about getting them down to Cardiff but the nice man at Waterworld was very helpful and gave us some bigger fish bags to transport them in.

I have a few more days in West Kirby and then I'm going back to Cardiff on Saturday. I'm quite excited about going back. I'm also enjoying the fact that my birthday celebrations started on september 9th and are going to continue until september 24th. Today my lovely father bought me a new stereo system for my birthday present. It's very very cool!

Survived

I shamefully haven't posted for weeks! I was waiting until I'd uploaded my Soul Survivor photos onto flickr but seeing as that still hasn't happened I thought I should probably just get on with posting and then I can add the Soul Survivor pictures when they're online!!

Soul Survivor was brilliant! I was stewarding for the first 6 days and then I was a 'delegate' for the students/twentysomethings week. When I arrived I met a couple of people I knew from stewarding last year who remebered, hugged and welcommed me. This made me feel a lot better about that fact that I'd backed out of the first week! I had a great week of stewarding and meeting other new people which was more easily facilitated by the fact that we were camping with all the other people who were working on site.

I had some concerns about whether or not I'd enjoy the students week (Momentum) as the last time I was a delegate at Soul Survivor I wasn't overly impressed and then decided not to go at all in the following years. Loads of the people we'd met in the previous week were also staying on for Momentum so everywhere I went on site I saw people I knew. We seem to have grown up a little since our previous excursions to Soul Survivor. This year we were admitting tiredness and going to bed - in the past we denied all knowledge and stayed up half the night for no apparent reason. We generally also managed to avoid any ridiculous behaviour apart from the following: Nick threw lots of things. Like cutlery, chairs and pistachio-nut shells. And I thought the best way to get the boys back for watergunning me was to grab the supersoaker and fight back. This was going well until I forgot to watch Rich for a minute and ended up with a bucket of water thrown over my head!

I feel there should be an insert at this point - a mini rant about the Severn-Bridge toll!!! IT costs £4.90 to cross the bridge to get into Wales. I find this totally ridiculous and I was most displeased that I had to pay to get back from Soul Survivor to Cardiff. 'Why didn't you just drive up to the Wirral?' I hear you ask... The answer is that I left various things like my computer in Cardiff and I needed to bring them home with me.

So anyway I finally arrived on the Wirral. Since I got back I've been 'catching up' with a lot of people and doing some relaxation. My mother has us all clearing out our stuff so we can sell the things we don't need in a car boot sale tomorrow morning. I do happen to think it's a good idea to clear all the junk out of the house so I'm going along with it. When it's all gone I'm going to try and clear my mum a girly chill-out space so when my dad and brother are watching programmes about cars and guns she can escape and watch The West Wing.

That pretty much brings you up to speed with what I've been up to so I'm going to stop. Since it's become tradition to add photos to each blog entry I will post one of my newly-edited fairground pictures and a newly-edited Cornwall picture:

Palm Trees and Seagulls

So I spent the week in Penzance with Paul and his mum. I am now feeling much more chilled out. It's unbelievable how quiet it is down there. Even with all the tourists around you can wander down to the sea front and it's totally peaceful and quiet. I took lots of pictures of sea and boats and things but haven't had time to upload them all yet. Here's one:



I made friends with Paul's cat who was kind enough to sit still for me to take some photos:

This reminded me of how much I like cats. I will get a cat one day. Hopefully it won't be because I have no other companion!


There really are seagulls everywhere but being woken up by them in the morning is a nice change from waking up to city noises.
We went to see 'Return to the Forbidden Planet' performed by a youth theatre group which was fairly entertaining. I also went along to the choir rehearsal Paul was accompanying and had a lovely time singing and talking to the nice old ladies in the choir!
On Friday we did 'touristy things' like visiting Lands End and other such pretty places. I felt it was necessary to take the ultimate tourist photo:

On Friday evening we went out for dinner with some of Paul's friends. I was a bit scared but they were all lovely and it was a really enjoyable evening :)
The traffic on the way back to Cardiff wasn't wonderful. It wasn't quite nightmarish but it was certainly heading that way. I drove past 6 miles of queuing tourists going the other way and laughed and gloated only to spend over an hour getting from the 'Exeter 22 miles' sign to Exeter. That'll teach me to gloat I suppose!


I'm going to Soul Survivor this afternoon now that I am refreshed, less stressed and slightly more awake. I'm stewarding for week B and then going to momentum with apparently quite a few people. It should all be lovely. There is apparently football on at the Millennium Stadium today. This often means the traffic is insane but I'm hoping that if I leave during the match it won't be too bad *fingers crossed*

Penzance

So instead of going to Soul Survivor tomorrow morning I'm going to Penzance.
Why? I hear you ask.
Well the short version goes something like: I was planning to go visit Paul to relax but then various things meant I couldn't so I didn't. Then last night I got very stressed and realised that i really really needed to relax. So I talked to Paul and he was awesome and told me to go to Cornwall and chill out. So that's what I'm doing. Then I'm going to Soul Survivor for the other two weeks on sunday.


I've had a nice productive day today packing and organizing things. It's been wonderful.


Mini shout out to Kat and Claire who are both nice and lovely. Just kidding. They are clever, caring, kind, considerate and wonderful.


I haven't uploaded any new pictures today so instead i'll post this lovely picture of Emma from the other day: