I am the luckiest boy ever

Got me bike didn't I? Yay. Someone at Mansfield College spotted it and called Hertford about it and Hertford called me and yaaaaaay there it is. With a flat tyre, but a bike with a flat tyre is better than no bike. Having reconciled myself to never seeing it again, it has come as something of a great shock to be reunited. It has made me re-evalute everything that is great about it.

1. It looks cool
2. It is pretty lightweight
3. It's just the right size
4. It's pretty damn fast
5. It has some sickass 80s or 90s design on the handlebar griptape


Unfortunately the scumbag what stole it also decided to rip a load of the grippytape stuff off the handlebars, but no matter as I will wait til it's not really wet from being in the rain and then tape it back on with hockey stick tape. Yeah. Man I love this bike.

As a token of my love for it, I bought it a sexy new lock. Gone is the slightly flimsy combination lock it had before, and in it's place is this badboy. Not only does the pink look absolutely dashing against the green, the colour combo has something wonderfully defiant about it. I am not one for subtlety. A big part of me wants to leave my bike out the front of my house all the time specifically so whoever stole it sees it and feels bad, but the more sensible part of my brain has learnt its lesson so from now on it's living in the shed.

Another milestone was reached as for the first time ever, I managed to change a tyre without direct supervision from my father. Woo. I think this means I am now 'a man'. And not just any man. I am 'the man'. Just to justify myself a bit here in terms of this not happening before, my dad knows a lot of stuff about bikes and putting them together and changing bits on them and stuff like that, and thus can change a tyre really quickly. I have changed tyres before but have always made a point of timing it so that he's nearby and able to give me a hand should I need it. Or decide that I'm being too slow and it's easier if he takes over. Until now I haven't got any punctures whilst at university so it was pretty scary to attempt it with no safety net but yay I managed it. It took me forever and my fingers still haven't recovered but yay managed it didn't I yay.

For those readers who have never changed a tyre, here's a Blue Peter-style how-to.

You will need:

One pain threshold
Twelve layers of skin on your thumbs.

Step 1: Push bit of tyre until your thumbs really hurt and have lost a layer of skin, eventually the tyre should come off
Step 2: Swap the inner tube
Step 3: Try to get the tyre back on the wheel
Step 4: Try again
Step 5: Keep trying
Step 6: Start bleeding from where your skin meets your thumbnail
Step 7: Push
Step 8: Push harder
Step 9: Have a brief out-of-body experience
Step 10: Finished. Stare at your mangled and blackened thumbs, catch your breath, wipe tears from your eyes using your sleeves

Easy as that.

Ridiculous happiness in all directions, I have my bikey back and thanks loads to the people who helped me get it back. I had a brief moment when I sort of believed this was good karma. Which is pathetic, as I should have just been grateful for what happened and not filled my head with thoughts about supernatural forces rewarding me for being the fantastic person I obviously am. That and the fact I definitely have not been building up much good karma recently, so I'm now really worried that I'm building up a good karma deficit and something really bad is going to happen to me. A bit like when you're playing monopoly and you get the Chance card that says 'bank error in your favour', this was an undeserved karma windfall and I am literally terrified of what's going to happen next. Cancer perhaps.

I have been the victim of a crime

My bike got stolen from out the front of my house on Abingdon Road in Oxford at some point on Saturday.

Here is a picture of what it looks like:

I am literally devastated. I loved that bike so much, it was a perfect lovely little bike, one of the reasons I loved it so much was that despite being really good it looked kinda old and crappy so therefore I reasoned it was unlikely to get stolen.

Right now, I'm losing all sense of proportionality, fairness or human decency. I feel a strong urge to walk down the road and approach the first cyclist I see, steal their bike and then throw them under a bus. Then once the bus has moved avay, steal their wallet, phone and anything else of value that they might have in their pockets. It is so unfair that my bike's been stolen. So. Unfair.

I'm going to do my best to ignore the evil voices in my head, but I'm going to have a quick moan about everything that's wrong with my life right now. I just googled the word 'catharsis' and it turns out that I was right and this is the word I'm thinking of. Writing down a list of everything that's shit about my current situation will allow me to see it all in proportion and perhaps deal with it.

1. Some bastard stole my bike
2. I lost my passport
3. I lost my copy of The Blind Assassin
4. I lost my sketchbook
5. My gums keep bleeding all day every day
6. My wisdom teeth are at it again
7. The pack of satsumas I bough the other day are mostly rubbish and taste of bin. only one of them so far has been nice
8. It's been a good year of me not getting any taller which means I am probably never going to be six foot tall
9. My torso has not miraculously decided to form itself into a six-pack. Despite the fact that summer is coming
10. I have exams in seven weeks and I'm hideously unprepared
11. My computer deleted all my internet favourites
12. My iPod died and Apple won't give me a new one for free, I have to pay a hundred quid
13. I still haven't got unpacked fully despite moving in to my room on Thursday last week

My mother's always telling me and my siblings that it's good for you to count your blessings so I'm going to briefly write a few things that I have to be grateful for

1. I just found my nail scissors (thought I'd lost them too)
2. It's lunchtime and I'm going to make a tasty spaghetti
3. My hair's looking quite nice at the moment
4. I might be going to a drinks thing at the Randolph this week
5. I ate lobster for dinner on Saturday
6. I'm famous and read my name in a (student) newspaper
.....

I know I should be trying to write a longer list of positives than negatives but I just can't do it right now. I want to wallow in misery for the time being. A really self-indulgent sort of misery. I'm going to spend all day avoiding human contact, or if forced to deal with people I will scowl at them until they ask me what the matter is, or if I'm feeling ill. (This is what happened yesterday, but today I'm going to do it on a conscious level.)

You try and be a nice person and happy and fun and caring but then someone steals your bike. I'm lowering my expectations from life. I'm going to grumble. I'm going to lie in bed and watch Jeremy Kyle. I'm going to eat lots of crisps, not shower, or get dressed properly. That's what I'm going to do.

Unless of course someone spots my bike anywhere - there is a really vague possibility that it wasn't actually stolen and that I went on a bike ride at some point on Saturday afternoon, locked up my bike and forgot where I left it. I've been racking my brains and talking to friends about what we did on Saturday and I'm 99% certain this isn't what happened (thus making someone stealing it in the middle of the night the more likely option) but if you see it anywhere around Oxford PLEASE LET ME KNOW.

Yeah.

/////EDIT: I just ate some lunch. The spaghetti was so good. And my friend Oscar is making a fish pie for dinner and it looks amazing. I'm feeling infinitely less miserable. Hooray. Now let's find that bike.

I have entered a competition

To win an iPad. Mostly to wind up those of my friends who have iPads that they spent money on. There was something of a tricky question to answer first though.

Q: Which fruit would you associate with the makers of iPad?

a) Banana

b) Apple

Hello, I'm just a fool who's willing to sit around

T'other week I had a lovely evening with a couple of friends watching that film about the aliens where instead of the aliens being aggressive invaders they've crash landed in South Africa and they just wanna try and go home.

For some reason it  made me think a little bit about my stance on animal charities, which is pretty much that I do not care at all. This isn't because I have no compassion for retired donkeys or abandoned cats and dogs, it's just that I have a lot more compassion for charities trying to help people - when there's so much human suffering in the world I really don't know how people can choose to prioritise giving money to animal charities. I suppose in a utopian world where there isn't famine, homelessness or cancer or HIV and we've all got big enough pensions that we aren't going to freeze to death in our living rooms, and hospices are properly funded and women's refuges are properly staffed - then let's open up a greyhound sanctuary and pat ourselves on the back for doing so. For now - whenever someone gives money to an animal charity then that's money that they could have given to a people charity.

Yes, animal suffering is bad and we should do what we can to alleviate this. However, it's perfectly moral to say we should be selfish in terms of prioritising our own species above that of animals. Not because objectively we are more important, but because it makes sense. To me, human suffering is more important than donkey suffering, and I'd expect donkey suffering is a more important problem to donkeys.

I'm all about compassion and making the world a better place, but you've got to be objective and do a bit of cost-benefit analysis. Keeping hundreds of dogs alive - dogs that nobody wants to adopt because they're really vicious, and they're so vicious that they have to be kept in separate cages - or helping to build a school in a developing country. Which is going to do more good pound for pound?

I don't mean to act like I'm a massive philanthropist - as a student living entirely off government loans and university bursaries it's not as if the meagre amounts I give actually add up to a huge amount of income for charitable causes. But like how in an election you only get one vote, there's a finite amount of money that each person is likely/willing/able to give (delete as appropriate). We need to be shrewd about which causes we choose to support, and shouldn't let us ourselves think that as long as we're giving to charidee then it doesn't matter where our money's spent.

Animal charities are one sort that I think are rubbish, but you can cast a critical eye on plenty of others. When I was at school they had a non-uniform day where we all had to bring in a pound and go to an assembly about the charity it was raising money for. They'd bought a brand new PS2 to go in a London hospital wing where there were teenagers undergoing cancer treatment. Being a teenager and pumped full of chemo in a hospital does not sound like a lot of fun, and I don't begrudge them having a playstation. It must be mind-numbingly boring, not seeing your friends at school and not being able to go outside. A playstation game would help take your mind off this, and would stop you worrying about your health as much. In theory, I support the idea of playstations for teenage cancer patients.

But is this a charity I'd choose to give money to? No. For one thing, I wondered why the representative made such a big song and dance about them buying a "brand new" PS2 - it was 2004, and there were thousands of second-hand ones available for a fraction of the cost. But even if they had explained that they'd managed to get one for 40 quid off ebay, it would not be my chosen charity.

What would I choose? International development. Emergency aid. Clean water. Vaccinations. Disease research.

What wouldn't I choose? Playstations for kids who already have the NHS at their disposal. or Battersea Dogs Home.

This is of course ignoring the fact that my primary motive for giving money to charity is to keep the guilt I feel about being alive somewhat at bay. (For the sake of convenience we can blame this on my catholic upbringing.) Every now and then if I'm feeling ridiculously fortunate and privileged, the charity box might get a few pennies tipped its way, even if it's for something I wouldn't consider a priority usually. And of course, homeless people when it's raining. I know there might be people somewhere who could be less fortunate or more deserving of a quid, and maybe "they'll just spend it all on drugs". But when it's raining, and you're confronted by the realisation that unlike you, this person is not about to have access to a hot bath and a cup of tea, it's hard not to want to help.

I'm really, really worried that any of the above might sound like me showing off about me being such a caring spirit and how much money I give to noble causes. Let's be clear: that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying yeah we should give money to charity, but we should be picky about which ones ... unless it's a homeless person.

Or charity shops. I occasionally buy stuff I don't really need from charity shops, the kind of stuff I wouldn't dream of buying if it was from a normal shop, and I'm not all that picky about which ones I go to. Recently, I've been all about the CDs. I got this CD called 'Shirley Bassey Sings the Movies', where she sings her way through a load of songs from films. As in, songs by other people. Including 'Hopelessly Devoted to You' from the film Grease, which is really funny because the song just does not go with a Shirley Bassey-type voice, the production is awful and just about everything about it is god-awful. Which is what makes it so great, it came out in the mid-nighties while the Tories were still in power, it's got that really crappy optimism-on-a-budget plastic fantastic vibe to it. Some fool decided they didn't want it any more, and it was mine for 25p.

I really should shut up now, so I'll conclude. give money. Be picky. Unless to homeless people. Buy Shirley Bassey CDs. Yeah.

I'm Famous!

The amazing non-story of a bunch of queers bickering on Facebook has made the front page of the Oxford Student - Oxford's very own trashy tabloid/village gazette/Take A Break magazine rip-off. Next to a picture of some alpacas. On the one hand, I'm very pleased about this, especially the fact that they've included a quote from me. But then I saw what they'd put and my blood began to boil. I have been misquoted.The article starts out sounding reasonably balanced, detailing one mini-episode

The dispute has intensified after a number of blog posts about the incident were posted online, including one by Alex Gabriel, an undergraduate studying English and German. Tom Oakley, a student at Hertford, posted a link to the blog post on the Facebook group on Monday, to which Webb, replied: “ Right, Tom, posting that here wasn’t in any way provocative….”

Which is all true. But then later in the article they forget about journalistic integrity and go absolutely nuts.

Oakley added: “Basically they’re acting like we’re naughty schoolboys and can’t be trusted with their precious internet… some people are being ridiculously oversensitive, for example pretending to be really offended by the fact that a female member of the group said something along the lines of ‘can we have more girls turning up to events’ and someone took huge offense to not being referred to as ‘women’.” He went on to say: “The person in question is lovely in person but she really needs to get a life when it comes to being offended about things on the internet.”

I DIDN'T SAY THAT. OK, WELL I KINDA DID BUT I DIDN'T WRITE IT IN THAT ORDER.

In the extremely long and unstructured email I sent to the OxStu, the bit I said about naughty schoolboys was definitely after the bit about people being oversensitive. Yet, in this article they have done the opposite. They put my sentence  about naughty schoolboys before the bit about people being oversensitive. I'm completely outraged. You can't just quote people in the wrong order. What would happen if journalists did that? Terrible things. For example, we could turn this passage:

Another student, Eli Keren, also posted: “I don’t think that it’s going to help anyone if we risk descending into another public tiff. That’s not what this group is for.”

into this:

Another student, Eli Keren, also posted: “I ... think ... this group is for ... descending into another public tiff ... not ... to help anyone.”

Student journalists, what do you think you're playing at? If the Oxford Student had reported the Monica Lewinsky scandal, they'd have probably come up with the following headline:

Clinton: I did ... have sexual relations with that woman

or

Clinton: I want to ... have sexual relations with ... the American people

I'm obviously very upset about this, I have sought legal counsel (spoken to my friend Charlie who studies law) and I'm hoping the Leveson Inquiry might be interested in me giving evidence. Apparently a second-law student isn't the same thing as a proper lawyer but I think we can do this. The Oxford Student must apologise for this.

Seeing as the non-Murdoch press took quite a big interest in all that phone-hacking stuff and apparently 'pointless online beefing' counts as news, I'm hoping this story might be picked up by a more serious publication, like The Cherwell or The Oxford Mail, or perhaps a national broadsheet. If you're a journalist and are looking to run this story, here's a few pictures of me and my lawyer going over some case notes that you could use to help illustrate the seriousness of the matter.

or not, as Charlie doesn't think I'm being funny by posting photos that are already in plain sight to all 664 of her facebook friends. Instead, I'll give a description. 

Me eating Charlie's hair

Me and Charlie dancing badly, dressed in white t-shirts with writing all over them (it was freshers' week)

Charlie ramming her tongue down my throat

Not Again

Someone got upset that a female member of the LGBTQSoc page wrote something along the lines of 'let's have more girls turning up at events!'  - This was deemed offensive by some people, because she should have said 'women'. As if what was discouraging women from going to the events was they were all really upset about being called 'girls'.

I shit you not.

There's a really bizarre tendency some people have where they think that having an incredibly thin skin is somehow virtuous, and if they make a big song and dance about any minor infraction of what they consider to be politically correct then that somehow makes the world a better place. But here's the thing: they are wrong.

You've got to question their motives. Why must they be so boring? There is so much joy to be had in life. Yesterday I saw a crow pecking away at a Dairy Milk wrapper before carrying it off to its nest on the roof of a train station. A baby waved at me on a train. I waved back. Then the baby's sister, who was maybe two or three years old, waved at me. And then my mum picked me up from the train station and timed it so that I was waiting at the station for less than 30 seconds. These are a few tiny examples of good things in life that we can all be grateful for.

Here are a few bad things in life:

Sayeeda Warsi

James Ibori

Paul Dacre

Someone casually referring to female students as 'girls'

WAIT A MINUTE - That last one. Isn't really a big deal. Now, I'm not going to go along the derailment tactic of 'it isn't that much of a big deal so you should get over it' - nope. I'm going to explain why it is not any kind of deal.

When has anyone ever heard an undergraduate (of either gender) refer to one of their peers (of either gender) as a 'man' or a 'woman'? I'm sure it happens every now and then, but the answer is 'very rarely'. I, and just about everyone I know, would say 'some boy I know' or 'some girl I know'. It's a question of formality. Later in this post I delve into a slightly more serious tone and do use the word 'woman', but it's all about context. Making a massive hoo-ha just makes you look like you take yourself far too seriously. You sound like child who insists they're eight 'and a half' years old.

I'll refer to one of the comments I got about this post I wrote last week.

a big part of being a man involved in feminism is knowing when to listen to women telling you that they're offended or hurt

But is it really that feminist to kick up a fuss because another woman has written something you don't think is politically correct enough? Being a boy - or maybe I should write man at this point, I'm kinda confused - I don't have the right to decide what women collectively should or shouldn't find offensive. But women don't share one collective brain, and they won't all agree on what is isn't offensive.

This post isn't very well-written but I'm going to fail my degree if I devote as much time as I to making my thoughts clear. I'll refer you to the wise words of Latrice Royale: Five Gs, please.

Good God girl, get a grip.

Oh and one last thing before I forget (seeing as these are kinda linked in theme): in response to that other post of mine someone threw down the gauntlet over Facebook and she made a good point I think.

I think while we're all taught that making fun of women can be funny, and indeed women themselves are taught to self-effacingly laugh at their 'silliness', and dismiss their discomfort with particular social situations as merely an over-reaction, the reason feminists bristle at this is that this kind of humour doesn't permit the questioning of social norms and stereotypes. It's sexist because it allows the woman no space to explain herself, indeed it's 'laughing at' rather than 'laughing with' and brushes under the carpet someone's discomfort with a situation without allowing any examination of why they feel this. It's possible to have a lot of fun and have a great sense of humour while still being PC, and as people who have the benefit of a great education, among other things, I think we should try.

I'll really briefly say that though I did make a joke about women I don't think this was really about trying to belittle them - it was as much about women being a different species to men and men's inability to understand women as it was a 'LOL women'-type joke. This is an issue I intend to respond to in a bit more detail at some point but I really should get on with some revision now. Ciao.

Rambly blog post takes its cue from misguided article

I read this article by David Shariatmadari about Stonewall's 'Some people are gay. Get over it!' adverts and it raised a few good points, although I didn't arrive to the same conclusion as him. He wondered:

Who was it aimed at, I wondered? Was it a) homophobic people? Well, I'd be surprised if anyone actually believes it has the power to inspire Damascene conversions among the prejudiced. So that leaves b) gay people, who I'm confident don't need much convincing that they – we – exist and c) sympathetic straight people, who equally don't need to be persuaded. 

Well, is it as simple as dividing straight people into homophobes and sympathisers? Despite the fact that us gays like to imagine we are the centre of attention the whole time, there are lots of people who perhaps don't have any gay friends or acquaintances and haven't given a huge amount of thought to it either way. People like my grandparents who, upon hearing "Tom's news" have never had a bad word to say about it. One congratulated me on the fact that even though I was gay, at least I wasn't "like that Chinese chap". Their assertion that being gay wasn't a problem as long as I was slightly less camp than Gok Wan  was obviously meant with love, and despite the anti-Gok Wan overtones I'm sure if I was as camp as Gok Wan they'd have thought of something else supportive to say.

I nearly wrote: "He thought that the whole point of  campaign was about equal marriage rights (it isn't)". I'm wrong about this - the campaign is now all about marriage apparently. Or sort of. They've had the exact same campaign for a few years now, although currently on bus adverts instead of directing people to stonewall.org.uk, it has the web address stonewall.org.uk/marriage. Great. A campaign about fighting equality and discrimination is now all about getting married. Even though we already have civil partnerships.

'Get over it!' could be viewed as kinda confrontational, although it makes a pretty good point. Some people are gay. So? It doesn't even really mean you have to like gay people, or condone the horrifying sex acts we get up to. It just asks you to leave us alone. Which is why I'm surprised they've bastardised this old campaign into being about marriage, when the slogan doesn't really fit. 'Some people are gay. Therefore we should change the law to allow same-sex marriages!' - would be more appropriate. 'Get over it!' vaguely implies that the only thing that needs to change is your attitude, and not a centuries-old law.

Saying that - I don't really approve of Stonewall banging on about marriage so I should be grateful that they've changed tack in a really half-arsed way. The campaign keeps its its original message intact, despite the url change.

Back to the 'who was it aimed at?' point. Well, not just people's grandparents. Basically, people are more impressionable than we think. Especially young people. As Judge Judy once said to a 16-year old girl who'd crashed her friend's car, "When you're 16, you're not fully cooked". Stonewall does a lot of important work fighting homophobia in schools, and seeing these ads all over buses probably hammers the point home a bit.

I take issue with this paragraph:

Being gay is still seen as fine in some contexts, but not all. It's acceptable in your proverbial Islington dining room (though perhaps not in the Islington registry office), fine according to the statute book, but not if you try kissing your same-sex partner in public. Or sit next to them on the bus. Or hold hands in the street.

You sure about that David? Not to say I've never had any problems with random members of the public, but is it sensible to let a few hate crimes intimidate us? Don't let the terrorists win. Letting random attacks deter us from holding hands in public seems a pretty defeatist attitude.

But when I saw the advert it occurred to me that it, and that supercilious exclamation mark in particular, could in fact give people an excuse to express their homophobia. Stonewall's good intentions might simply end up making gay people's lives more difficult.

And so it came to pass. The Core Issues Trust ("God's heart in sexual and relational brokenness") and Anglican Mainstream, a group of hyper-conservatives within a generally quite gay-friendly church, took the bait. They booked space on buses to display a different tagline: "Not gay! Post-gay, ex-gay and proud. Get over it!" Slightly baffling, but definitely homophobic, and obviously intended as a riposte to Stonewall.

OH MY GOD.

Remember on that show Dead Ringers, how Jan Ravens took the piss out of Kirsty Wark, and deadpanned the lyrics to rubbish pop songs "don't be shy, touch my bum this is life"? Maybe just me then. These crazy gay-curing people already existed. The fact they somewhat unhilariously satirised a gay-rights campaign is not really going to make our lives any harder. And pointing out they copied Stonewall so it's Stonewall's fault this story even happened is a bit like saying If Kirsty Wark didn't present Newsnight that the first minute of Dead Ringers would have been that old BBC test card of the girl with the creepy clown.

Gay people have been pointlessly reminded, not that homophobia is unacceptable, but that there exist organised groups that detest them.

Thanks David. Yeah, gay people are that forgetful. We had no idea that there were some Christian groups who are jealous of our fabulousness until I heard about yesterday. I was so wrapped up in making myself margaritas and browsing the Ikea catalogue that I just forgot some people reckon they can cure me of my inherent deviance by electrocuting me whilst showing me slide after slide of gay pornography.

What he's trying to say is that we can blame homophobia on gay people. As long as we play nice and don't make too much noise, the homophobes will leave us alone. Basically, we should hide.

He makes one very good point though:

If that weren't enough it's now impinged on the mayoral race as a dream pseudo-controversy for Boris, an opportunity to flaunt his inclusivity and his modernising credentials just before polling day.

We really need to think what Ken would have done here, and it would have been the exact same. Ken Livingstone has an amazing record of fighting for gay rights and let's not let Boris use this as point-scoring to win the gay vote. (Btw: I have a few issues with Ken, but he's a better mayoral candidate than Boris).

Oh and because I'm feeling generous, let's pick one more issue with the article.

Stonewall could learn a thing or two about campaigning, and changing attitudes, from Dan Savage

Well no, Dan Savage isn't as great as you think. He thought of those 'It Gets Better' videos, good on him, but read this article where he comes across as a complete dick.

The tranny activists are going to jump down my throat for this, but it seems to me that your ex could’ve put off the sex change until after his son was out of high school. One of the things parents are supposed to do is make sacrifices, big and small, for the sake of their children. And while I think people have a right to do pretty much as they please (and parents are people), I also believe that children have a right to some stability and constancy from the adults in their lives. Perhaps I’m a transphobic bigot, but I honestly think waiting a measly 36 months to cut your dick is a sacrifice any father should be willing to make for his 15-year-old son. Call me old-fashioned.

Unfortunately, your ex wasn’t willing to make that sacrifice (selfish tranny!) or it never occurred to him to make that sacrifice (stupid tranny!). So what do you tell your son? Tell him his father can do what he likes—suck dick, flaunt it; get his dick cut off, flaunt that. If dear ol’ dad chooses to live as a woman, well, there’s not a lot you or your son can do. But guess what? Your son is old enough to do what he likes and if he chooses to live without seeing or speaking to his father, well, there’s not a whole lot his father can do. If your son can’t deal with having his dad/mom/whatever around right now, support your son and tell his dad/mom/whatever to leave the two of you alone for the time being.

Now I am sometimes tactless. But this? You've gotta admit this isn't nice. It's more of this 'I'm gay but discreet' bullshit.

People shouldn't be afraid to challenge homophobia. It's all about context I know (if a drunk stranger shouts something at me then I'll run away if it looks like there's the slightest chance they're good at punching) and it's not like the situation is all that terrible in this country when we compare it to other parts of the world - but this doesn't mean we should chastise people for trying to make a difference.

We don't hear about racism and say it's because there's too much anti-racism campaigning going on, or that the anti-racism campaigning is too aggressive. We shouldn't do the same for homophobia.