The Floating City: A Weekend in Venice (Part 4)

Sunday:

The last day in Venice was very, very windy. It was the type of windy where you felt you could run twice as fast, or fall back and have the air hold you up for a moment. Nevertheless, we vowed to make the most of the final day, and we began with an early lunch at a restaurant that came highly recommended. It used to be a jazz club, but after the residents complained about all that wild music and loosening moral standards, they converted it into a restaurant (with live music two days a week). There were several components which made this the best decision of the trip. The first was the lax policy on cats. There were three of them sleeping in the counter window when we first arrived, and over the course of the meal they wandered around the room, people giving them little nibbles of fish and pasta. The second was all about spectacle. A gigantic cheese wheel had been almost hollowed out to allow fresh pasta to be spun around inside. What resulted was a cheesy, melty, hot mess of a pasta dish, and it was as good to eat as it was to watch made. Thirdly, and quite-expectedly, the food itself. I’ve mentioned previously that I began eating more fish whilst I was there. Thus, we ordered several plates of the stuff, all delicious, and all undercut by the fact I’d eaten too much bread whilst waiting. This is not to mention the three-man band that started playing shortly before we left. The atmosphere was the most down-to-earth I had experienced since arriving, and it was a very honest locale.

We stayed for so long that it was pushing 1pm, so we had to rush to catch the ferry to Murano. Th wind battered us the entire way, strengthening or weakening depending on which alleyway we ran down, but ultimately, we made it with time to spare. Although the wind was punishing, once we were sheltered it was much easier to pretend it was a nice day for a boat ride. We floated past the cemetery, which is an a walled-in island. I suppose it makes sense to seclude it away from the main islands, but it seems a bit impractical if you intend on visiting a lot. Then again, if you’re having to visit the graveyard a lot, maybe it’s not transportation that’s the real issue. To manage the routes around the archipelago, the Venetians put individual stilts in lines around the lagoon so as to funnel the vessels. This stops them cutting each other up or upsetting fishermen when James Bond blows past in a speedboat chase, I assume. Trundling along the sea roads was fun in of itself, and it was refreshing to get away from the city for a while.

Unfortunately I would soon discover why people don’t talk about the surrounding islands too much, as there isn’t an awful lot to do, save for one or two key places. The first such place was Murano. World-famous for its glassware, my first impressions were hampered by the bitter cold. The short walk to the furnaces was awfully quiet, but this may have been because it was a Sunday. It felt like a farmyard, complete with a rusted tin roof and a slight dirtiness from all the smoke.

The interior, in complete contrast, was spotless. Huge glass chandeliers, some made of more than seven levels high and impossibly twisted around themselves with several colours, hung from the ceiling of the workshop. Examples of glassware were littered around the room, both big and small, and in a variety of styles and colours. My favourite was a composition of three large-scale flat glasses with concentric circles spiralling inwards. Watching the master glassmakers working was delightful. Everything was done so precisely, yet so quickly that if your eyes strayed for a second you would miss them creating the handle, or melting the different metals into the product to change its colours. He even made a little horse to show how fast their production could be.

Once they had finished, we were given a tour of the ware house and the various examples of their work. In one particularly mentionable case, some jellyfish chandeliers glowed in the dark, whereupon you could observe the patterned dots that ran down it. How they managed that with glass I have no idea, but it was brilliant to see. They had everything from table football, to kitchens, to beds made entirely of glass were on display. When confronted with this ostentation I suddenly thought back to my own house, and the clay pot I’d made in Year 9. I was never going to be a master tradesman, I concluded, but at least I had my winning personality…right?

Afterwards, we wandered around the rest of the town whilst we waited to catch a ferry to the similarly-named Burano. There wasn’t much to see, so there isn’t much to say, except we made the classic mistake of looking interested in a café and having to walk past the waiter several times again as we walked around. Luckily our boat arrived so we were able to flee the awkward situation.

The wind had dropped by the time we stepped off the boat. Even the sun was peeking through the clouds, which lent some slight warmth to the day. Burano is famous for its lacework, and whilst I wasn’t currently in the market for frilly knickers, the shop had a radiator inside, so I at least had to feign interest in their stock until I had warmed up. Burano is also known for the multicoloured houses, and it certainly delivered on this boast. It looked like a toy town. The brightness of the colours meant the slanted tower looming over the middle canal looked remarkably out of place, as if it had been left over from the construction of Venice and dropped off at Burano instead. We also saw grass for the first time on the trip, which was exciting. To finish the day trip off, we found a little coffee house just off the canal, Riva Rosa which turned out to be rather lovely. Lots of weathered wooden furniture and exposed brick made it feel very cosy, and the tea was a great accompaniment to the end of the trip. We even tried a few desserts, of which the chocolate brownie was hoovered up in no time at all. By this time however, it was getting quite late, and we still had one last dinner to attend. We decided to head back, but ended up going the wrong way initially, so we managed to see another unexpected part of the archipelago before heading home.

It was dark when we returned, and after a quick turnaround we were back out the door and on our way to the same restaurant as before. The place was packed; we were waiting for at least twenty minutes to sit down, an even ran into Melissa in the line behind us. She decided to leave however, and I was tempted to do the same before we were seated a few minutes later. For dinner, I was talked out of a fish platter I would have enjoyed more in favour of a tempura-style battered selection of whitebait and squid. It was oily, and not unpalatable, but certainly not as nice as what my friends ordered instead. One ordered a delicious-looking steak, but had to leave it as he felt unwell and went home. As soon as he’d left, I swapped my plate for his, and there was much rejoicing. Towards the end of our meal, we were joined by the owner’s son and a few other people who were seated next to us, and we all drank wine until after closing. We were rather toasted by the end of the evening, but after an aborted attempt to find another bar (it was late on a Sunday after all), we said goodbye, and went back to the flat for the final time.

Not much can be said about the day after. We packed up, became embittered by the gorgeous weather we were now leaving behind, stopped for a final coffee, and travelled back to the airport.

Venice was a surreal experience, all things considered. I felt like I could have stayed for another week or two, despite the fact I’d experienced a lot of it already. I’d certainly experienced the wine a lot more than I thought. Yet the feeling of Venice was enough to enjoy by itself. Just being in Venice was a nice change of pace from the everyday of London. No cars, no bicycles, just tiny boats and a lot of cobblestones. It is an utterly unique place that rightly deserves its place in our fantasies. But this was also its undoing. There were so many tourists on the better days that the calmness was shattered, replaced with the din of countless gawkers. So yes, I would of course recommend visiting, anyone would. Just bear in mind you might have to go searching for your own private slice of the Floating City, or else wait until very late to have the city all to yourself.

#2018 #Venice #Europe #Food #Travel

Sex and Gender: Education, not Simplification

Sex and Gender: Education, not Simplification

(A glossary of terms used can be found at the bottom of the article.)

The other day, a friend and I were chatting to a guy at the bar whilst we waited for our drinks.

‘So, does that mean she’s into girls or boys?’

‘She’s into everybody. She’s pansexual.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means she’s attracted to everyone, regardless of sexual orientation or gender.’

‘But, doesn’t that just make her bisexual?’

‘No, because not everybody is a man or a woman. Some people are genderfluid, or intersex.’

‘What do you mean? How can your gender be fluid?’

This conversation went on for ten minutes, as my friend and I tried to summarise as much of the sexuality spectrum as we could remember off the cuff. It ended with the man giving a resigned shrug, and saying this:

‘I don’t know. Wouldn’t it be easier if they just said whether they liked girls or boys?’

This article is not about standing on a high horse and decrying the ill-informed. This is meant as a sort of catharsis, a way to say what I wanted to say after that conversation.

Firstly, it’s important to note the very sensible idea that simplifying makes things easier to understand. If gender was binary, then you could correctly assume everyone identified as either a girl or a boy. Because of this, logically you could only ever be heterosexual, or homosexual. This would be the same as asking whether someone was Theist or Atheist, and expecting to fit everybody into these two categories.

The universe is not a binary place. The moon is placed opposite the sun because it appears at night. But it’s always there, even during the day. There’s nothing inherently anti-sun that puts the moon in opposition. We just ascribe the moon to night, because the sun is absent at that time, and the day is associated with the sun. This is where you could also argue that true opposites deal with presence and absence - the true opposite of the sun would be non-sun, in that case - but then I’m not here to try and argue with Kant’s views on existence being a predicate (although the philosophy of religion is something I’d love to dive back into at some point).

The point is, our minds don’t have time to think about the actuality of day-to-day reality. You don’t look at the moon and deconstruct its relationship to the sun. You don’t look at a car and wonder at how many parts you could take away before it stops being a car, you just look at it as a car.

The same is generally true of people. We assume somebody’s character based on their appearance and mannerisms, because we are programmed to immediately form an opinion about other people. This natural habit is meant to protect us from possibly dangerous individuals; if I know that a man from this tribe has stolen food before, I know not to trust someone wearing this tribe’s colours. A simple concept for a simple purpose. Unfortunately, thanks to the agricultural revolutions of pre-history and the several thousand years of social evolution that came after it, we now live in a society where assumptions are generally more damaging than beneficial. Individualism is an omnipresent idea. We are all taught that we are special, that everybody is good at something. This is a hangover from the very real requirement of individual purpose during the Industrial Revolution, up until the end of the Second World War. Economic advantage and military might was entirely dependant on how many factory-workers you had on the production line, and how many boots you could put on the ground. Since then, mechanisation and intelligence warfare have largely replaced the individual’s mass involvement in these areas, leaving one to question the benefits of socialism in a world that doesn’t need every available hand on deck anymore. But I digress. The point is, we now live in a world where people are far more comfortable asking questions, and are able to do so privately, without someone over their shoulder telling them what they should believe.

The reason I bring these ideas up is that prejudice is the product of poor information, which necessitates the requirement for a reactionary opinion. People are generally unwilling to be proven wrong; we like to think that we are faultless in our opinions, because otherwise we can’t trust our opinions. ‘’If I’m wrong about this, why can’t I be wrong about that too?’’ someone might think. Sexuality and gender diversity, as far as I have observed, fall victim to this sort of attitude as well. Individualism encourages introspection and a desire to understand oneself. This extends to how one chooses to identify. It can take a lifetime before people may realise certain things about themselves, and this is in part due to a default binary view of gender and sexuality. This is why, at birth, intersex babies are determined to be male or female, and have their genitals assigned accordingly. This is also why on almost every survey or form, you are asked whether you are male or female only (with ‘other/prefer not to say’ becoming more widespread, if not universal).

Before I went to College, my views on sexuality and gender were entirely the product of PSHE lessons. I believed you could only be straight, gay, or bisexual. The only genders were male or female, not that I really understood the difference between sexuality and gender, and I would joke about transvestites and lady-boys because my friends and I didn’t know any better. People thought I was gay for a lot of my school years because I did musical theatre and sang my whole life. I once asked them why they thought I was gay, and they responded that they didn’t know, they just thought I was. As far as I know, nobody at my school was gay. We joked that the IT teacher could be, because he had a high voice and went to see Britney Spears live (which I also saw, and went on the better night, apparently. He was quite bitter about that). That was it though, and that’s all that mattered for those years.

Once I attended college however, the diversity exploded. Suddenly I was talking to people who were transgender, asexual, pansexual, genderfluid; it was pretty overwhelming. I had no idea there were so many different identities, let alone what any of the terminology meant. I fell into a friendship group that was incredibly diverse in comparison to my existing groups. I witnessed schizophrenia for the first time there. I talked to people dealing with depression, and found out about preferred pronouns. I discovered that people were quite comfortable not identifying as male or female, gay or straight, and that that was perfectly fine. You didn’t need to define yourself at all, if you didn’t feel comfortable with it. You could be you, whoever that ended up looking like. After this, I started noticing that some people would try to retrofit other people’s sexuality into categories they understood. Certain identities were invalid, as they were a product of an unnecessary splitting of hairs, according to some. In this case they preferred to simplify, and get on with their lives

The issue here is that I had to be taught about the spectrum by members of the community before I realised there was a spectrum at all. ‘I’m honestly not surprised,’ said one of these friends, ‘that it took me and so many others in the LGBTQ+ community to realise that the cisheteronormative ideal isn’t the only form of attraction that exists. Our lives are just as valid and maybe even more common than we’re made to believe.’

The simplification of sexuality and gender in my education meant that I had no reason to consider anything more nuanced than gay or straight as an identity. Admittedly, I have no idea what’s taught in schools now with regards to this subject, so hopefully kids leave a little bit more informed than I did. Still, heterosexual as I am, my life has only been affected by this so much, and my understanding of it is purely anecdotal. That’s why I asked some people to share their experiences of dealing with this issue, both personally, and publicly.

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What was it Like Discovering your Identity?

Katie:

I would purposefully pick a guy every school year to pretend to have a crush on, especially guys who were absolutely out of my range. It backfired once and I had to go out with someone for about a week before finding a really minor reason to break up, then I got to pretend I was just sad about that breakup for years. I didn't particularly think I was gay, I just knew I didn't like men in the way my friends did, and being anything else never occurred to me in a conservative town and schools that still tried to push abstinence. It took going to college to really think about it, where it wasn't just people and opinions from Swindon. It was a gradual shift after that, into barely remembering what I even thought about my identity back then.

Sue:

I've spent years trying to dissect my own sexuality, as it's never been as straightforward as "heterosexual" or "homosexual". It was after a massive breakup with my long-term girlfriend at the time - I identified as lesbian then - I began to understand sexuality is more fluid than I initially thought. I was trying to "get over" my ex by "getting under someone else", and I wasn't getting very far. Every time I attempted to have casual sex with a stranger my body seemed to reject it. I would suddenly feel turned off or I wouldn't (pardon my language) get "wet". Eventually, I realized I felt so disconnected to the person I was trying to hook up with that I felt nothing. With no emotional connection, I simply couldn't have sex. It was baffling. A successful one-night-stand with a good friend of mine indicated this was probably the case. A couple others seemed to seal the deal. It was the first time casual sex was enjoyable to me, and it's the only time casual sex is satisfying for me. Without that bond, my body just doesn't follow through.

I started researching demisexuality then, wondering what was wrong with me, and thankfully realizing it's perfectly normal to need an emotional connection in order to have a physical one. As I came to accept being demisexual, I began to be attracted to people of all genders for their personalities, for their passions, for their warmth, for their kindness, and for their minds. I, in turn, began to question if I was even gay. "Am I gay, or am I bisexual? Do I like men? Do I want to have SEX with MEN??" These were the questions that kept running through my mind.

I read through article after article looking for more sexual orientations, more options, more definitions for what I feel and how I identify. I thought, "I suppose I do feel biromantic as I can have romantic feelings for anyone, and it doesn't say anything about sexual feelings." Then I wondered what I could even say about my physical attraction to cisgender heterosexual men, as it usually disappears the more I get to know them.

As of today, I accept my sexual fluidity, I understand my most fulfilling relationships will probably be with women, and I am open to love.

Ade:

It took awhile, and it’s definitely something I’m still learning. Since I was 15, I felt I was attracted to people regardless of gender (i.e. pansexual). Whilst that may still apply to aesthetic attraction (everyone is very pretty to me), I find now I am attracted to women and/or people of the same gender as me (feminine genderqueer/non-binary) and only want to engage romantically, sensually, and sometimes sexually with those folks.

During the peak time of my sexuality discovery, it often hurt a lot to feel what I did - to love the way I did. I thought I was broken for the longest time because I didn’t seem to like boys the same way my straight friends did. To pile that on with how differently I experienced sexual attraction (note: rarely/not at all) to a lot of those around me , it was easy to feel like something was wrong with me.

I didn’t ‘officially’ come out until the last couple of years of secondary school, but way before that I was still victim to homophobia. Even a ‘small’ off-handed homophobic comment can stick with you for years afterwards because it’s linked to something you can’t change about yourself. It’s been about 6 years since I left secondary school but I’m still trying to learn that a simple label like ‘lesbian’ isn’t a bad word or a slur. It’s stuff like that that have just been drilled into my head thanks to peers I had at school and teachers not really doing anything to stop homophobia amongst students.

Once I went to college and then university, living my truth became a lot easier as I had people who shared my experiences and feelings in close proximity. I didn’t have to explain myself as much for people to understand me, because they related and/or lived it themselves. I’m incredibly grateful to know people like this.

Noah:

The realisation of who I was was something that I think I knew, and others like me know, wasn’t going to be easy but it also wasn’t going to be quick. It started from a very young age, and due to heavily underfunded resources and help, there wasn’t really a positive word for it until I got to my 20s. I’m trans, that’s who I am and who I’m proud to be, as difficult as it might be sometimes. But from the age of 4, I always had this undertone of knowing I was different to the other kids around me. At the age of 16, I found a label for this difference, which was in regards to my sexuality; bisexual. I knew I was attracted to girls but that was about it. It took me years to finally realise I was trans, and I can say it was heavily due to me having virtually no knowledge of what being trans was or how to process my feelings towards my gender or my identity.

When I finally realised, my initial reaction was to allow a lot of toxic masculinity to take over my way of thinking about it; a ripped body, certain clothes and certain ways of talking. But with time, I realised that this was a very bad way of thinking about it and that I could identify as trans but that it could be by my own definition, which is how I got to where I am now. The label is my own definition, not someone else’s, despite what general society seems to think.

What is it Like Living with your Identity?

Sue:

Publicly, I identify as gay, queer, and demisexual. It's more open-ended, true to the fluidity of sexuality, and doesn't box me in.

Ade:

It’s never easy explaining how you feel to a family, especially one that isn’t very sentimental. However, I am lucky enough to still have parents and older sisters who are open minded and just generally want to support my way of life when it comes to who I’m attracted to, if it means I’m happy. Of course, there are still the gender exclusive comments regarding relationships that can occur but I’m still grateful that they try to understand my experiences. It can be hard to convince them that I’m now only attracted to women/feminine folks at times but I’ve been fighting that narrative forced upon me in everyday life outside of my family so I tend to just shrug it off now when it comes to them.

Since I graduated, I’ve started working part-time in retail to gain a bit of money. It didn’t take long for me to realise that I was different to my most-likely-straight co-workers. I want to believe they would be comfortable if I said I was gay, and wouldn’t react maliciously. But when people don’t give a second thought about sexuality, that’s also where the issue comes in.

By this, I mean when people don’t actively think and consider that others aren’t straight by default - and thus have different experiences to them when it comes to love, relationships and sex - that obliviousness can produce exclusivity, erasure, and (as the only one you know to be gay in a workspace (or any heavily straight dominated environment)), can make you feel very alone.

I’ve had older female co-workers ask things like ‘are you two on a date?’ when I’m just sat next to (not even interacting with) a co-worker who happened to be a guy. Even when I was working with those same women co-workers, they’d play a game amongst themselves were they’d ask ‘out of all the guys here, which three would you hook up with?’.

At the time, I froze, stuttered. I knew I could just say I was gay, but if I did, when they were just trying to have ‘fun’, the mood could/would shift. How can I trust that they won’t recoil at my words, dismiss my experiences, or treat me differently afterwards? In the end, instead of coming out to them, I find myself shrugging that last question off with a flustered ‘I don’t think any of the guys here are my type’ as a reply. Despite being afraid of a potentially negative reaction, I still want to live my truth for my own happiness and comfort. With explaining my sexuality to new people, I’ll find myself being safe and careful at first, but not silent. I’ve lived that way enough in the past.

Noah:

As for getting others to understand, I’m constantly having to come out as trans and the way I do it has definitely changed. I used to be very soft and gentle and explain everything that was needed, whereas now I tend to explain the very basic and simplified version, and if they have any questions they can ask. A big reason for the change is because I’m less patient due to people asking blatantly inappropriate questions, or just being down right rude about things. It changes how you come out and the patient or even kindness you have towards coming out to people you’d prefer not to have the conversation with.

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Once I'd read these accounts, I thought about what I’d said at the start of the article. I still firmly believe that education is the key to normalising the concept of a gender/sexuality spectrum. But, I’m not sure if my explanation of the public perception of non-binary people was the best it could have been. However, I decided to leave it unedited as an example of how there is always room to change an opinion, and always room to learn.

I’d like to finish with a last thought from Ade, which I thought was pretty cool:

‘I’ve come to realise now that the complexity of the human experience is beautiful, and should be embraced rather than dismissed. There is no ‘’right or wrong, black or white’’ answer to sexuality. Just because one experience may not be as common as the other doesn’t mean it’s bad, especially if we’re talking about how people love one another. Of course, this experience is very rarely represented in media or even discussed in everyday conversation, in the same way relationships which involve a cisgender heterosexual man and cisgender heterosexual woman are. Yet, with around 8 billion people on the planet, the idea that a man and a woman being together is the only way to experience love, sex, and intimacy is just ridiculous.’

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Glossary of Terms:

• Gender - the state of being male or female, with reference to social and cultural differences.

• Sex - the state of being male or female, with reference to physical biology.

• Heterosexual - sexual attraction to people of the opposite sex.

• Homosexual - sexual attraction to people of the same sex.

• Bisexual - sexual attraction to more than one gender.

• Pansexual - sexual attraction to a person of any sex or gender.

• Asexual - a person who has no sexual feelings or desires.

• Demisexual - a person who does not experience sexual attraction unless they form a emotional connection.

• Genderfluid - a person who does not identify themselves as having a fixed gender.

• Intersex - a person born with sexual characteristics that do not fit the typical definitions for male or female bodies.

• Transgender - a person whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond with their birth sex.

• Cisgender - a person whose sense of personal identity and gender corresponds with their birth sex.

• Cis-heteronormativity - the default view of people as cisgender and heterosexual.

#2018 #Experience #Opinion #Politics #Social

Essays From the Crypt: What I Found when I Typed ‘When’ into Five Different Search Engines

(Originally published 2016)

What I Found when I Typed ‘When’ into Five Different Search Engines

Ladies and gentlemen, I humbly present to you the intriguing and mystifying suggested searches for the term ‘when’, after typing them into five of the most popular browsers.

First, we begin with Google.

Google:

The existentialism of when I am and when you are has perplexed this generation’s finest philosophers, which speaks to the very heart of one’s psyche: do we really exist? Can we ever say for certain when we are, if we are? How can one truly claim to be if one does not know when one is? When does the narwhal bacon? Self-existence is as clear as midnight.

Ask Jeeves:

Ask Jeeves is apparently used by ageing men, so worn down by years of labouring under the harsh glare of their regional managers that they long for the sweet embrace of their pensions. With their retirement on the horizon, they may finally have time to celebrate Easter 2013.

Bing:

Eid al-Fitr, the last day of the holy month of Ramadan, and when Muslims may break their fast: very important. Easter, a day that celebrates the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ: also very important. Avoiding your father’s disappointed look as you clumsily explain why you didn’t get him a card this year: the most important of all.

Yahoo:

The Yahoo! user never knows whether they’re an hour early or an hour late to harvest potatoes, and are never on time for Easter. Seriously, can anyone tell me when Easter is?

AOL. Seriously. I know, I didn't even realise it was a search engine until now. What a mess:

AOL is used so infrequently that the fourth result is for a Bruno Mars song from three years ago. No one even asked about Easter, that’s how little traffic AOL appears to be getting, and a search engine without Easter is hardly a search engine at all.

Your move, Google.

#2016 #EssaysFromtheCrypt #Technology