Not built for public speaking.

I am pretty useless at debating and arguing in person. I cannot think of appropriate responses to challenges and I can never find the right words to make my point. This is one of the reasons I like to write this blog - I think I write better than I speak, after I've had time to consider what it is I should say to best make my point. My biggest weakness is that I often use a hundred words when ten would do. I've learnt that for me it's often better just to shut my mouth and lose an argument because whatever I say on the spur of the moment will make me sound like an idiot. After a drink, I sometimes forget this and talk utter shite, and I also forget I have a volume control on my voice. I suspect, however, that I am not alone in that particular trait.

I got to thinking about this after a conversation I had with a friend in which I was asked to confirm whether or not I find Professor Brian Cox attractive. I wrote about science and what it means to me here and I have a huge amount of respect for the new poster boy of physics and cosmology. I refused to answer, because any yes or no answer I gave would not necessarily be what I meant. I think they occasionally read this thing, so I'm going to try to answer it here.

At the route of my refusal to answer is my hatred of being labelled, classified and grouped together with others who are similar. I hate it happening to me and I hate it happening to other people as well. I'm not gay and I'm not straight. I'm not bi either. I am physically attracted to the female sex, but there's a range of different types of attraction. I don't want to put myself inside him particularly, but hell yes, Brian Cox is attractive. I may not fancy his arse much, but I do fancy his mind and his enthusiasm for what he does. To instantly reply to my friend's question in the negative would be, I felt, to disassociate myself from gay people, to intentionally distance myself from any and all elements of homosexuality. I find myself extremely intolerant of any form of intolerance and any assumption that there should be any normal way to live, to be or to love. If you've read certain posts on here, you may think I'm fairly intolerant of religious people but that is not true. A religious person that does not attempt to bring me onside or to indoctrinate others in any way is fine. Public displays of religiony things, like praying, is just dandy. The religions themselves I have less time for, but that's another post. The 'I don't mind, just don't bring it near me' is prejudice masquerading as acceptance. It's like the Tories trying to appeal to environmentalists.

As soon as you take it upon yourself to educate yourself, all reasons and excuses for prejudice disappear. You learn that thinking of being gay as a 'lifestyle choice' is utter bullcrap as sexuality is one of the many things decided in the womb and completely outside a person's control. You learn that to deny the truth of evolution is one of the most absurd things a person could do - the biological, genetic and fossilised evidence of the unifying theory of biology (that's a scientific theory, not a regular one - read up on the difference before you embarrass yourself and declare it's 'only a theory') is so far beyond the ability to successfully debate against that the number of people who still genuinely try is bizarre and frightening. How do these people trust doctors and their diagnoses when the diagnoses are based on where the bacteria lie on the phylogenetic tree, which was developed by studying and building on evolution? You learn that Republicans denying the evidence of man made climate change are basically declaring to the world that they will compromise on anything and cross any boundary if it gains them votes, power and wealth.

All these things and more underlie my refusal to answer the question of Brian Cox's attractiveness. Cox's Wonders of the Solar System and follow up Wonders of the Universe speak so clearly to a way of thinking I feel passionately about, that he becomes a person I find extremely attractive in a number of ways, sexually being the least relevant. Anyway, he's not exactly hard on the eye is he?