Can't sleep...can't work...

So its Pride Week here at Warwick.

A few fliers up on the walls, and a Pride banner in the Piazza, is basically all i’ve seen of it so far, though. I know a whole bunch of stuff is meant to be going on, though. It's a big campus_maybe i've just missed it.

I was talking about this to a friend about this the other day.
We were killing time before our Modern World Lit. lecture (i.e uncomfortably warm room, and right before most people start thinking about dinner. the result is fairly sketchy notes + some pretty impressive doodles of elephants wearing hats).

This came up sometime after our discussion about how we could become Park Gremlins (and should: since it has been impressed upon us many times how useless our degrees will be once we have actually gone out into the real world, this would probably constitute a wise career choice. After all, it's either that or street performers), and after realising that capes make everything cool and interesting (any scene from history, any person, would be improved if capes were involved. Now just let the simple truth of that sink in. Okay, done?)

I saw the Pride Banner and pointed it out.
Becuase it just occured to me... that Pride is cool and that, but how its normally something that is needed more in places where it ISNT okay to be out: a small village in the Midlands, for example. Or the bible belt of the USA.

I mean here, everyone is just okay with whatever_everyone is pretty liberal. Gay, Straight, Bi....It's just a non issue. I mean that not in that it isn't talked about, just that it isn't talked about much more than sexuality in itself is talked about: everyone talks about past romances, and people they're crushing on, and thing like that, but everyone- gay, straight, bi- joins in equally and without reservation.
If you want to go to a gay bar, then you do. If you go on a Pride rally or something, then you do. It's treated in the same way that going on political rallys are: with mild interest, and general positive feeling, but not something that causes shock or surprise, or that prompts a dicusion about whether it is "right" or "natural" or not.

But I think its easy to forget how sheltered it is here. On campus, we’re isolated in our own little bubble, away from the general idiocy of the outside world. We’re in a place where most responses to Pride Week are: Cool…have you got a light? (Which is the response to most things, including the recession and global warming), and you can forget that anyone anywhere would have a problem with something as natural as love.
You can forget that homophobia is still strong in the UK, and in the USA.
You can forget that University is probably the minority, when you look at how the world treats people who are gay.

It's just so....tempting, to live only in your own personal bubble of liberal friends, liberal lecturers, liberal parents and family.

It's so much nicer in the bubble than in the cold, hard real world, you see....