Public Address: Up Front

Gathered Together

Emma Hart — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 09:35:00 +1200

This is a slightly weird day for me. Today, something I've been fighting for for years is going to come to pass. The Marriage Equality bill is going to pass its third reading. What will I do tomorrow?
Obviously, the answer to that question, for me and hundreds like me, will be 'groan, wince, and think "I really shouldn't have done that".' Tonight is for celebrating, with like-minded individuals.
It's days like this when I really wish we could all be together. Not that you could fit all the people I'd want to spend this evening with into the same…

Another Brick in the Wall

Emma Hart — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 10:02:00 +1200

Parents of special-needs children are used to fighting their government to get their kids' needs met. Giovanni's talked about it here, and I touched on it here. By the time our kids get to high school, we can no longer be shocked, right? Introduce Unit Standard 26625 as compulsory, so hearing-impaired teens have to pass "actively participate in spoken interactions" to get NCEA Level 1 Literacy? Of course. Why not? Turn my gifted writer into a failure in her strongest subject because her speech isn't clear.* Why would we expect to be treated any better? Hearings on enrolment applications for…

Oh, Grow Up

Emma Hart — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 10:49:00 +1300

Know what I hate? Yes, you do. Know what else I hate? Those lists of things people should be able to do to be proper... whatever. Men. Women. New Zealanders. Grown-ups. They're normative and stereotype-reinforcing and they're always going to make someone feel excluded and inferior. (The obvious exception is Hyperbole and a Half's "This Is Why I'll Never Be an Adult", being as it's the best thing on the internet.)
Lately, however, we've had to accept that our "children" are now... offspring, or progeny. Something: but no longer children. (You can't say "our teens"; it sounds like you keep…

Card on the Table

Emma Hart — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 10:09:00 +1300

Five years ago, we lived in a house over the fence from Middleton Grange's school auditorium. Some mornings, when I went to hang the washing out, I'd hear the cheerful strains of Queen coming from that hall, and it really used to piss me off. How about we have a rule, I thought, where if you teach that someone's burning in Hell, you don't get to use their music?
What they were doing, I guess, was separating the art from the artist. And that's something all of us do sometimes, right? How many books, how much music would we have…

Twenty-Two Two, Two

Emma Hart — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 11:03:00 +1300

There is some kind of slow slide, between the first anniversary of something and the tenth, where it gradually loses significance. It becomes less fraught, impinges on your consciousness less. This is particularly striking for me because every anniversary of the February Earthquake is preceded by the same anniversary of the death of my mother a month earlier.
This year's trip to Timaru to visit her grave* was much less painful than last year, although someone had left her plastic flowers. She would have appreciated the thought. And then thrown out your horrible tat. Soz.
The second anniversary of the…

In Committee

Emma Hart — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 10:27:00 +1300

I could really get to like this Select Committee thing. I'm not wearing shoes, and better yet, nobody's in the slightest bit concerned about my phone. Which is excellent, because:

@Simonpnz Hey, y'all, @Ghetsuhm is live-tweeting a #MarriageEquality committee hearing. Best entertainment on the web

I'm here with my partner. He really wanted to come, despite being just a few days out of hospital after an Unexpected Appendectomy. I was very happy for him to be here, because he drove.

At the committee. Something about unnatural lusts. This might be more fun than I'd expected.

You can tell just by…

Whimsy Is an Extra 5 Cents a Word

Emma Hart — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 13:21:00 +1300

I think it's beyond contention now that my university cohort are all adults. There don't seem to be any particular benchmarks: it's not breeding or house-buying, but rather the simple toll of time. Though I have to admit I did feel more adult somehow after my mother died, and I was no longer someone's child.
In any case, our bright-eyed youthful idealism is behind us. Some of us had a good deal more of that than others, of course. The light you see in our eyes in old photographs is not so much belief that the world can be better…

Or It's Who We're Drinking With...

Emma Hart — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 13:35:00 +1300

It's always nice to feel, as an activist, that things are changing. Progress is being made. Things will be easier for the next generation than it has been for mine. That is a great feeling.
Which is what makes this research so depressing. It's nothing I haven't said before. The sample size is tiny, but it agrees with overseas research: bisexuals have higher rates of alcohol and drug abuse than other sexualities. What also isn't in the least surprising is that Stuff will headline their article like this: Binge Drinking a Problem for Young Bisexuals.
Here's a clue, guys: it's…

Staying In

Emma Hart — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 10:54:00 +1300

As the fabulous girlonthenet says, being a sex blogger is great. And, as she goes on to add, being a sex blogger is awful. While her conclusion is absolutely correct, posts like that give me pause. See, it's really unusual for someone to blog about sex, even in the more theoretical less explicit way I do, under their real name. When people think those things, they think them about Emma Hart.
On Coming Out Day, Clarisse Thorn (not her real name) wrote about why she, in fact, isn't out. All of her reasons are things I've thought about myself. I…

Moa: Sub-Standard

Emma Hart — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 13:09:00 +1300

Okay, look. I don't own a tie. I'm not saying I won't wear one, but you'll have to provide it, and I'd like it to be a bit less fugly than that one, okay? The whole white blouse and black pencil skirt thing I can do: every skinny brunette needs that trick in their armoury, right?
Yeah, I like men in suits. I love cigars. And yes, holding someone's ashtray for them is the sort of thing I might do. It'd be negotiated, of course, as part of a relationship to which affection and mutual respect is integral. In that…