Helen Martineau's Blog

                                                   The battle for and against assisted suicide, what used to be called mercy killing, is always fierce and heartfelt. But in the State of Victoria in democratic Australia an act to make it legal for the terminally ill is close to being passed in parliament’s Upper House. And then it will become legal. In some countries it is legal already. To take the responsibility for ending a life, even your own, is momentous. And there has been plenty of passion around the euthanasia debate, with valuable and compassionate considerations on both sides. These are widely accessible and most likely you will know them. I want to look from a different direction. Humans have a complicated, conflicted and often irrational attitude towards taking the life of another human being. There’s a universal injunction against it that lies a...

                                                                                                                                A world of difference Society on Gethen is ambisexual. That is, for most of the time people are androgynous, but once a month at the time of kemmer they become sexually active as either male or female – they never know which it will be. This is the setting for Ursula K Le Guin’s stunning sci-fi novel The Left hand of Darkness. In her mutable fictional culture, the rigid gender divisions we hold have no relevance. I think ambisexuality is worth a close look when the issue of equality in marriage is a hot potato for politicians and a sourc...