A place for your most challenging views - and to smash boring echo chambers.

It is these types of questions that could help feminists grapple with over a decades’ old debate: How do we delineate between what is pornographic content filled with sexual menace and what accounts only as sexual fantasy?

BDSM is frequently captured as a manifestation of misogyny, and its practice is presented as wholly derivative of patriarchal culture. On social media platforms such as TikTok, or more specifically ‘Kink Tok,’ you might find assertations made by women in comment sections, such as: “call me vanilla, but I don’t find violence sexy,” or “why does nobody like vanilla sex anymore?”

Johnson’s pie-in-the-sky promise of making Covid-19 untransmissible – at least that’s what I’m assuming he means by declaring that there is no need to isolate even when you are infected and infectious – is a last-ditch attempt to maintain that bump of popularity.

I’m not going to dispute that these items and activities don’t work for people but why have we accepted that self-care is something we can buy when, in essence, it shouldn’t be a necessity? And if self-care can be bought, who gets to be the customer?

Earlier that day, I’d gotten into a bit of a heated debate with a classmate. Looking back, I can’t even remember what on. I’ve always felt an intense need to be a good person and felt equally as intense guilt any time I thought I wasn’t being up to scratch. One of the ways this manifested itself was in me keeping exhaustingly up to date with any matter of social justice.

Of course it makes sense that the memes we find most hilarious are the ones we find most relatable. There is something strangely comforting about having someone hold a mirror up to your deepest, darkest, mental health struggle and reflect it back to you as a 240-character tongue-in-cheek witticism that’s gone viral.

Understanding and overcoming the act of confrontation logically and objectively is going to aid you in dealing with a confrontation. Having a methodological mindset will likely help you as only you can change, if you believe that your behaviour is or is not working and so long as you are asserting positive change.

As a current third-year student, who has no interest in her current degree, I am currently debating whether a degree is relevant. The pandemic, specifically, has changed my perspective on degrees and university in general. There are lots of changes to how universities run and although some of the changes could not be helped, that has significantly changed the university experience.

Representation, equality, inclusion… No matter how you dress it up over the past few years, there has been an uptick in conversations about closing the gap between what we see – via TV, Social Media or otherwise – and the realities of the diverse world we live in.

In a since deleted tweet, Good Morning Britain polled its viewers on a question that is hot on everyone’s minds – Should we be making vaccine’s mandatory? In the short time the poll was up, a resounding 89% of 45 thousand voters decided no, it isn’t time to make vaccines mandatory, whereas the remaining 11% agreed that we should.

As a history student who is currently studying apartheid, I was mortified that such comparisons were being made: these protestors had clearly misunderstood what apartheid actually is.

Securing employment without some form of relevant work experience is harder than ever. It is this that makes unpaid internships particularly problematic. It is usually people already on a low wage or no wage at all who need this experience.

If you don’t know who Che Guevara is by name, you almost certainly know his face. Emblazoned on t-shirts around the globe, the pop-art print of the revolutionary’s face has become a staple of capitalism and fast fashion.

You can now buy Mindful Mayo from Whole Foods, paint your bedroom with a pot of Mindful Grey paint, drink excruciatingly expensive Mindful Tea, all whilst wearing your brand-new Mindful Motion leggings from Lululemon. Is there actually any benefit to this, or are we just being consumed by the latest capitalist fad?

What struck me more than the dress, the cheap baccy, the husky voices, was the attitude that ‘looking’ and ‘acting’ working class was a novelty, something to be picked up and dropped by comparison to their own backgrounds. Which by implication meant dressing like they had no money, drinking to oblivion, and generally treating the idea of being working class as simply an aesthetic.

How much warning do we need? We ALL have our own shit to deal with and it is just that, our own shit. Life can be entered into with too much caution sometimes, this I’ve learned to my cost over the years. Sometimes you need to boldly and blindly go into something, confront it and hopefully come out of it a little better. But exposure therapy isn’t for everyone and isn’t always helpful. Face your demons they say...but in your own time.

Close the curtains, shut the door, make sure your phone isn’t connected to the family TV, and come with me to explore how porn’s treatment and depiction of age warps our cultural conception age in relation to sexualities, consent, and discrimination.

For years the act of penetrative sex has been the dominate narrative of sexual discovery, but what, if like me, you can’t have sexual intercourse due to pain? You invest in a sex toy.

This is an exploration into why you should care that 55% of men said porn was their main source of sex education (BBC 2017). This is a deep (if you pardon) discussion about three of the most prevalent, and arguably most damaging, taboos in porn: Race, Age, and Violence.

It is not fundamentally expensive to be vegan; if you think of it in its most basic form, the husbandry, slaughter, preparation, preservation and cooking of meats is far more of a task than growing fruits, vegetables and cereals on your land. So why do I say that veganism is not cheap?

Cancel culture has stripped us of our courage to learn from each other for fear of being publicly shamed for exploring other perspectives, and as a consequence has shut down many spaces for progressive conversation.

Why am I still sitting here bemoaning the lionization of the NHS? Do they not deserve the applause? Should they not go to the front of the queue? After all, they are at the ‘coal-face’ of this pandemic, exposing themselves day in day out to this virus.

The royal family has a convoluted existence: their identity is made up of perceived grandeur and a history of pain, power, and political manipulation. According to the official website of the royals, one of the most important roles of the royal family is to help “strengthen national unity and stability.” Whilst this might be the case, it in itself births its own issues.

These lockdowns have one rule: no guests in your home. Otherwise, go off sis. Do literally whatever you want. Go to a bar and ‘socially distance’. Go for a cheeky Nandos with your Gran - but don’t you DARE go to her house for a cuppa, for fuck’s sake, what’s wrong with you? Do you want your precious Gran to die? For shame! For SHAME!

Most of us will have a vague three part tier in our heads of the class system: the upper class (who own yachts and brush their teeth with truffle), the middle class (in nice five bedroom suburban houses and a golden retriever), and the working class warehouse workers in council flats. But note the imagery - all the markers are superficial. Types of houses, holidays, food, and accents are things we use to assume someone’s class and economic standing. It is simply too reductive. Class is way more nuanced than that.

Sometimes I catch myself feeling the same way when I see my fellow peers share a hashtag or raise an on-trend issue about something I have never heard them once refer to up until that moment or in IRL. And thus for a brief moment, pre-teen Clara returns and she’s judging you. Hard. Much to my disappointment and despite our ageing and all the wonders of technology, it turns everyone’s still a god damn poser.

Some people argue that cancel culture does not exist, that it is “a myth”. Others say that ostracism has always been present in society, that it has just changed trajectory, flipping against elites which are now upset about it. Whether or not you think of cancel culture as new phenomenon, the two words most typed in the latest weeks are actually not as recent as you may think.

When we think about ‘being offended’ as a concept and as a right, what do we mean? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, to offend means to ‘make someone feel upset, resentful, or annoyed.’ So far, so clear - but what does this definition tell us about the function of being offended? To my mind, to be offended is to examine what you stand for, what you find unjust, and why something makes you feel uncomfortable. Perhaps most crucially, it forces you to evaluate who you stand in solidarity with.

In the last five years, the amount of vegans in the UK has quadrupled, and concern for animal welfare and the environment have proved to be two of the major factors for people considering adopting a vegetarian or vegan diet. That was certainly what was on my mind when I decided to give up meat at the beginning of this year.

Allowing ourselves to be obsessed and knocked back by every little thing that is said is not just inane, but exhausting. Language is supposed to facilitate sense. Stop shoehorning meaning into words and phrases so that you can claim to take offence and then gather in safe spaces whingeing about it.