Does she want to go travelling and to see the world? Does she want to leave Bristol and move to London with her best friend? Does she want to tend a garden and start making homemade pesto? Or does she want to be licking a shot from a strangers belly button in Ibiza? Does she want to be a high-flying corporate GirlBoss or does she want to live in the forest and wear floaty skirts? Does she want safety? Or excitement? I saw the world in a set of binaries. One or another.
Read MoreCommenting on other people's bodies, or rather, refraining from doing so, is a topic increasingly circulating not only on image-heavy platforms like Instagram, but also in the collective consciousness. The more people I meet, the more I realise that attitudes are changing, or at least, some thought is being invested into what is and is not acceptable or appropriate to say to someone about how they look.
Read MoreWe live in a society where love is overly romanticised. Love is most often seen (incorrectly) as everlasting relationships, ‘till death do us part’. There are thousands of books and movies – like Pride and Prejudice – that sell us the dream of ‘happily ever after’, but does happily ever after even exist? Is it just a marketing gimmick? After all, love sells and sells well.
Read MoreIt 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?
Read MoreWe’ve reached the magic seventh instalment of ‘Sacred England’, our series that seeks out mythology in English places – but what even is mythology, anyway?
Read MoreAh Naked Attraction – we love it, we hate it… my Nan once confessed she watches it when my Grandad goes to bed.
Read MoreStraight Through Processing (STP) is used in almost all industries in the world and is used just as much as the internet. When a person pays for anything using a Credit or Debit card, they are using STP.
Read MoreSeason 14 of RuPaul’s Drag Race has been rightly celebrated for its trans representation. In addition to the series’ laudable trans representation, this latest season has also featured two neurodivergent queens, as Jasmine Kennedie and Orion Story have both revealed (since filming the show) that they have been diagnosed with ADD and ADHD respectively.
Read MoreObjects are designed to break under consumerism, otherwise no one would bother buying new. And when the waste generated by decades of constant buying, breaking, and binning gets too much, we get another spin. We are not doing enough to fix it. We are not good enough at recycling, or at eating vegan, or at sacrificing the convenience we have been told to desire to solve the overwhelming problems of climate change, of poverty, of war.
Read MoreIt is the day of my tahoor, or purification; it is the day that I am to be cut. I am feeling joyous but slightly nervous (and a different feeling I couldn’t quite categorise) about the occasion: the communal ritual which will, in my eyes, make me a woman!
Read MoreBDSM 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?”
Read MoreBefore, I was not a divided person. I took pride in my decisiveness, and my ability to dissect, understand and articulate my own feelings. That was until chronic illness split me down the middle, like a kitchen knife through an overripe avocado.
Read MoreFeminist algorithms on TikTok have sweepingly moved away from meaningful discussions or helpful political praxis anyway, regardless of such internal infiltrations. #Feminist videos now filter through harmful and outdated strands of feminism, which ultimately disguises privilege or which neatly rebrands and repackages misogyny, whilst claiming to be ‘empowering’ women.
Read MoreIt has become a concerning trend that “my anecdote beats your expertise.”
Read MoreA weird thing started happening to me a few years ago, I started to become invisible. It wasn’t everywhere or all of the time - in the private sphere of my life I was still very much solid, visible and three dimensional, but I started to notice it happening occasionally on the public stage, like some sort of glitch. Groups of teens and twenty-somethings would start looking through me as I walked along the street towards them. Or I’d stand waving a tenner at the front of a busy bar for what felt like hours whilst the staff served everyone to either side of me.
Read MoreTo all these companies, who claim to be diverse and inclusive, is it just a publicity stunt so that they can maintain their image in front of shareholders and stand out from their competitors? Diversity and inclusion are merely words that carry no weight unless they are put into practice.
Read MoreLeaving aside the vested interests of those who stand to materially benefit from the status quo, let’s assume most people do not want to bring about climate destruction. Fairly uncontroversial. Why is it, then, that we struggle to collectively reckon with its significance?
Read MoreAre people having children without realising what it will mean for their life? Did you feel unprepared for the impact parenting had on your life?
Read MoreThe UK Government’s response to Ukrainians fleeing their country is a conscientious commitment to an ideology piously hostile towards refugees and asylum-seekers. Initially resistant to opening any adequate routes to asylum, the government has resolutely maintained their stance on requiring visas for those escaping Putin’s aggression. Every other country in Europe has waived them.
Read MoreIs plastic surgery a symptom of a patriarchal society or should we let women do whatever they want with their bodies?
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