There seems to be genuine, reasonable (and rather convincing) logic behind the scrapping of spelling penalties, one that aims to fight elitism in British universities.

I have been riding out the pandemic like many people on furlough, safe in my little bubble at home, but after just over a year of hibernation we are coming back - which leaves me feeling anxious. And that’s because I am a bartender in a local pub in the heart of the home counties.

I have often written about the obstacles trans people face when accessing healthcare, and when it comes to transitional healthcare, the situation is not any different - if not worse.

Finally, I myself have been well and truly sucked in, enticed by the complexity of my birth chart and the self-reflection that it offers me. Which led me to thinking, what has really caused the recent boom in astrology and why are we all suddenly so fascinated with it?

There were women of all ages at the bandstand. Women from all parts of the world, from every corner of London. This was something that was felt by everyone.

Nuns can continue to wear their religious veils, but Muslim women cannot? Surely this is unfair and quite the opposite of equal, yet no one has raised awareness on the matter.

Perhaps when your mate from a poorer background says no to going to the pub for a third time that week you can cut them some slack.

These aren’t thoughts I consciously have though. They're ingrained, a part of every outing.

All the xenophobic acts we are unfortunately witnessing nowadays are just the tip of an iceberg that carries centuries of oppression, exclusion, and racism.

As a trans man, one of the most common questions is “are trans men trash as well?” The short answer is yes. We are men, we uphold the patriarchy, we benefit from male privilege.

June 21st is a deadline I both dread and await impatiently. You would wonder why the dread? It’s so exciting to be back to ‘normal’, but what is ‘normal’ at this point?

No one is born an ally. Allyship is a choice, an action, not an identity. An ally is only an ally in the moment of that action. They cannot be relied on inherently, and the word means nothing when it takes on a role as internalized identifier. Self-proclaimed allies often worry so much about the perception of being an ally that it prevents them from actually being one.

The pain of being the only Black friend is having to accept that I have spent more of my life code-switching than I have existing as my authentic self. It means that I have wasted so much time swallowing my disgust when former friends caught a glimpse of other aspects of my identity and told me that I was behaving ‘out of character’.