All of them had: my parents, my teachers, my friends, my pastor. They had lied to me at school, at church, at home. They had kept that information from me, and used that ignorance against me. They had forced me to pretend for years to be someone I was not. They had made me feel pathetic, trapped, suicidal.
But telling me I was a woman wasn’t the last lie they would tell me, and far from the last one I would believe.
Read MoreDisabled LGBTQ+ folk should not be, and should never have had to consider, giving up something that should ordinarily be a wholesome and enlightening experience. Disabled LGBTQ+ people should not have to forgo the feeling of being special, included, and seen due to inaccessibility. Many people have no experience of their health, wellbeing, and safety being disregarded and therefore put at risk due to a lack of accessibility. Yet disabled people are often made to compromise our health in the name of inclusion or opt out of attending. Why?
Read MoreSince my early teens, I have carried a sense of shame for being interested in and enjoying sex. I come from a family (and culture) where sex is not openly discussed, and it has taken some considerable effort, discomfort, and re-learning to understand what sexual power means to me and how I can harness it for my overall empowerment.
Read MoreI broke myself, I closed off, dissociating, derealizing, depersonalizing, putting every feeling in a neat little box and slamming closed the lids. I could not just not feel toward a single person, or several, I had to form disjunction after disjunction in my capacity to feel such ways at all. It is no surprise to me now that in my worst depressive states I admitted to my partner that I did not love them. How could I? I loved no one, by necessity. To play the role of monogamist I had to abandon the pretense of monogamy as growth of purest love.
Read MoreThis year, the BBC celebrates 100 years of broadcasting, and those who regularly watch its TV channels will notice the recent ‘This is our BBC’ idents, where clips of programmes have been edited to create a narrative around the importance of the BBC, featuring greats such as David Attenborough, Lenny Henry and Judi Dench. On the surface, it may look like a way to tug on the heartstrings and appeal to nostalgia, but there is a subtle change of tone with the line ‘But the BBC doesn’t have to be here, it only exists if we really believe it matters’. We’ll come back to that.
Read MoreJust imagine you come out of a long relationship, so you have tons and megatons of pictures of your ex on your phone…the chances of seeing their face whenever you go left from your home-screen are pretty damn high. Sure, sometimes it helps you relive the highs of June 2019… but it also helps you relive the bad times. The very, very bad times.
Read MoreI’m sure I speak for many people when I say that it can feel fantastic to receive a compliment – both within the first (and hopefully, continual) steps of the ritual that is dating, and as part of everyday life. Paying compliments, too, can feel just as nice.
Read MoreIf only being someone’s muse was enough. The best of friends. For seven years I held your hand like it was almost my own. Your superb kindness and loyalty was like a chain around my neck. I stayed because the thought of leaving your beautiful soul hurt me too much. How selfish of me. You deserved better than that. You should have had someone in your bed that ran like a horny badger in the night to get to your body. But really, I was stuck, my cartoon addictions and inability to say ‘I don’t think this is working’ was toxic. I didn’t like how I spoke to you. I didn’t like how I was with you. I didn’t like how I needed to drink wine every day. I didn’t like that I wanted to leave when I was sat next to you. I didn’t like that I had already left.
Read MoreLife is for living, learning and loving, and even when times are uncertain, unstable or unprecedented, life is moving forward, lessons are being learnt, and love is carrying people through.
Read MoreGrowing up as, and forever being, a girl-without-mother has become somewhat a defining character trait. This trait is malleable, and has morphed over time to represent, and be represented by, different things.
Read MoreI shall attempt to advise my 20-year-old self, but it’s hard because I’m not entirely sure she wasn’t a bit of a dickhead. So, that’s the first thing I’d say: If you can look back every 5 years and think, “God, I was an idiot, wasn’t I?”, then you’re making progress.
Read MoreMy Mum often laughs about the first time I asked her what it means to die. She told my 5 year old self that it was like being at the playground when there’s too many people on the roundabout to get on. You have to wait your turn. Life, she said, is just like that.
Read More“My first hero is my dad, a firefighter for 25 years, he showed me in essence what hard work looks like from a young age and I have so much respect for the job he did. My second hero was my personal tutor for 3 years and also my dissertation project leader, Dr Andy Foey, who inspired me to follow down the path of immunology.
Read MoreAt first glance, I look just like your average 20-something-year-old woman, you probably think I have a job, a busy social life, and do all of the things a woman in her 20’s does. But you couldn’t be more wrong.
Read MoreBack in December 2020, I tripped and fell into Bullet Journal Instagram. As someone with a creative streak I don’t indulge in nearly often enough and a crippling need for order and organisation, I’d found the answer to a question I didn’t realise I was even looking to answer. I knew, then and there, that I needed to join the Bullet Journal revolution.
Read MoreBack in December 2020, I tripped and fell into Bullet Journal Instagram. As someone with a creative streak I don’t indulge in nearly often enough and a crippling need for order and organisation, I’d found the answer to a question I didn’t realise I was even looking to answer. I knew, then and there, that I needed to join the Bullet Journal revolution.
Read MoreBinarism is the way Western, colonialist, imperialist philosophy transforms the achingly beautiful breadth of experience into the heartache of rigid, violent divisions. It is a fundamental building block to anti-Indigeneity, to racism, to exorsexism, to transphobia, to ableism, to homophobia, to acephobia, .... It is divide and conquer, a tool to fracture us across a dozen fault lines, one group taking resources by subjugating another and destroying the rest.
Read MoreOn Monday 15th November 2021 Wildscreen held Communicating COP26 at Bristol Harbour Hotel & Spa. The purpose of the event was to translate complex but critical climate science and conservation and spotlight the crucial role that visual media plays in doing this.
Read MoreI go through phases when it comes to addressing people. For a long time, ‘man’ was my go-to. Yeah man. Thanks man. You’re standing on my foot, man. For a while I moved onto ‘dude’, because I’m a bit of a slacker and it felt apt. I’ve never been much of a ‘pal’ guy: I feel you have to look at least a bit hard to say pal, and I look like Tin Tin, so.
Read MoreBack in December 2020, I tripped and fell into Bullet Journal Instagram. As someone with a creative streak I don’t indulge in nearly often enough and a crippling need for order and organisation, I’d found the answer to a question I didn’t realise I was even looking to answer. I knew, then and there, that I needed to join the Bullet Journal revolution.
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