The last decade has seen an increasing focus on gender equality and the impact of the climate crisis. In 2019, Greta Thunberg was named Time magazine’s woman of the year, and in 2022 women and climate change was named a top priority by the UN for COP27 negotiations in Egypt. However, within the dialogue, there is no room for queerness or indeed for intersectionality, or a womanhood that is not comfortably represented in political agency. Experiences of the world which do not fit neatly into a category aren’t accounted for…
About the artist: Coline Dünya
Coline is a young photographer of French-Turkish descent based in London. Her beautiful and thoughtful work has been and featured in PhotoVogue Italia and granted her a nomination in 2020…
Pop Up Gallery: Coline Dünya
Model: Anzhelika Graceva
5 Lines Thoughts On…
From world-shifting crises abroad to major decisions and events taking place here in the UK, it’s no doubt been an overwhelming time. The task of creatively expressing our thoughts about such difficult times can often swallow our energy instead of fuelling it. That’s why we asked our readership to note down an emotional response to a current issue in no more than 5 lines. See them here!
1 Clitbait pitch & opportunity currently available
Find out all the article pitches that you could write and the pieces you could get involved with here!
Who ‘leans in’ and how? Masculinities in workspaces
In 2010, the then Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg, delivered a TED talk entitled ‘Why we have too few women leaders’. This talk spawned the now-infamous 2013 book Lean In which lays out her brand of corporate feminist doctrine in greater detail. The crux of Sandberg’s argument is that women lack the assertiveness and ambition of their male colleagues, and that is why they fail to get ahead in their careers.
Poetry Callout – Freeverse
Hey cuties, we’re doing another poetry callout! For December we’re looking at free verse poems and the theme we have chosen to go along with this structure is “Distance”. You…
Clitbait’s Recreate Art Series- Lovers Walking in the Snow by Suzuki Harunobu
In line with this month’s theme of Queen of Hearts and all things love-inspiring, our recreate art piece is this beautiful print of two lovers walking in the snow by…
Dear Pre-Pandemic Me, Don’t ever shrink yourself again…
You started well, but you got lost. You realised the importance of community; a community you connect with. In the absence of love, you turned to appearances in a desperate attempt to change your circumstances. It did not work. You met the wrong people and did the wrong things, but it was not a waste. But it did feel like it…
Photography Project: Two images from 2021
Send in TWO PHOTOS OF YOUR YEAR ~ inspired by the prompts ‘Movement’ and ‘Stillness’. It’s been another year of extremes so we would love to see this reflected in your…
Send in your letters: ‘Dear Pre-Pandemic me…’
What would you say to your pre-pandemic self? We have all learned so much since the pandemic started, whether about rest, care or community, the lessons have been monumental. So…
A poem about roots (that constrain me)
CW: Sexual assault/violence
A poem about roots (that constrain me)
Why do you grip that rock there
That place in particular
It is not exceptional yet you sniff
to find the resource jackpot with little thought for my feelings.
One flaking and one green
You are Brand new
colonising my mind and making my forces act through different lines
Where do I lean today
On what soil do I make my stance;
hallowed ground?
I want to move yet you tell me I can’t
And they look at me funny and it is all due to you
Lost in assumption not to be talked
To but by, they see how I curl and retract
Wishing I could fly but indelibly in contact
with the ground of my past
politics routine
Each little xylem strand has length running resources
to change and nourish my self.
And I regret you
Despise you
You are unsatisfactory
For keeping me so still
Retaining my right to freedom.
I wish I could wiggle and dance.
Enact and be my dream
I steal the freedom to be who I want to be
A fairy woman at the end of a long voyage
My narratives an endless strand of silk
to wrap around your neck.
You see you would love the me
That’s exciting and proud and flamboyant
With endless presents and
pockets that bulge
I wiggle my wing rigs
and struggle to see how they care for me
grateful I should be for these life sustaining lines
for time and a past and events I can learn from
They connect me
Brushing up to me with knowledge
Drowning me in memories that
keep me so separate
I am an entity to sustain and condense
Yet not to be.
By Anonymous
Dear past me, you are not on this earth for male gratification.
Dear past me, why are you smiling? Gossiping smugly with your partner in math class, talking about pretty exciting news. You were chosen by a boy. One evening and your self-worth increased to heady levels. Insecurity about your beauty vanished. You are a goddess and he has made it so…
Poetry Workshop and Open Mics – Edinburgh
Please come along to our gorgeous monthly poetry evening at the Golf Tavern, Bruntsfield, Edinburgh. (Please be aware that the venue is up one flight of stairs). The first half…
Transcendence – Nov 2021
A joyful queer club night at The Mash House, Edinburgh that raised over £1,500 for Mermaids Gender: https://mermaidsuk.org.uk . The event was in honour of Trans Day of Remembrance, sitting…
Hunting for Change: Why we can’t trust those in power to get anything done
Fox hunting is a countryside tradition that goes back centuries. It involves a bunch of richly dressed men, women, and children mounted on horses and accompanying a pack of hounds, tearing around the countryside in search of a fox to kill.
Do you know how fast a hedgehog runs?
Do you know how fast a hedgehog runs?
Night hangs and I, nocturnal, scout the grounds,
the hedgehog, shuffling insomnia-laden under the moon,
head among worms, I cannot see the astral dancers make their rounds,
trapped in a homeland of windswept grass and rainswept loam.
My patter a ritual, earth’s epidermis feigns a heavenly taste
yet so anti-celestial, living from night to night to night
mired, the entanglement of root and briar and living wasted,
ensconced in darkness, I’ve forgotten what it is to see the light.
The hedgehog senses predator, confronts her choices
tight entombment in a prickling shell, waiting for teeth,
or else to flee. Do you know how fast a hedgehog runs?
I curled so long I no longer remembered what it meant
to live without a spiny wall, self-made sarcophagus, dark and tight.
It took the gouge of jaws to make me race away, seeking freedom, seeking light.
Personal Grit
Personal Grit
NEED ANSWERS, understanding & more
MARK the path beyond research.
To find out more Create TIES And switch OFF
The constant need to be visually rich, bright, useful and a resource for the creative
& DEPART FROM
If ur happy PLANTING A RAINBOW
YOU CAN APPRECIATE inspiration,
>>> YOU FEEL READY TO SOW AND GROW ROOTS SHOOTS BUCKETS AND BOOTS
HELP EACH OTHER TO SURVIVE.
BUILDING HERITAGE A NEW WAY
Browse, Explore, Enjoy, ADVOCATE Live Better
YOU are a priority
Jenny Harvey
Hummingbird
Hummingbird
The morning comes into consciousness
And bathes the blue-throated hummingbird in light.
They sit, they hold.
They listen.
For what?
For whom?
My mind is compounded
From the sky
This mother voice hollers
So sickly sour
Through some orifice of heaven
For all we do
Is dance in the rusting leaves
Waiting for her to
Call us inside for sup’
As streetlamps buzz
And the dew and the dust
Settle
Am I to abide by the father’s voice?
One that does not recognise
Why the hummingbird changes colours
If perhaps pink and white take their fancy
One who is so flippant
Omnipotent
So potently
Distasteful
Disgusted
At the ferocious ideas that unfold from under The beating wings
Of patience personified
Are they to give up on body,
But not the world?
I should not think so.
For if we
Too
Sit, hold, and listen
Perhaps
The earth will call out,
Or reach out a hand,
Bathed in light.
Alex MacPhail
Biphobia and Me
Like so many things in life, my sexuality makes so much more sense in retrospect than it did when I was in the stages of “figuring it out”. I now know I have been bisexual all my life. I either just didn’t know it earlier on, or didn’t know what it entailed.
As White Women We Have to Put the Microphone Down
“White women need to learn how and when to follow — not lead. They need to do their part to uplift, learn from, follow and support Black and Indigenous women in dismantling white supremacy. But again, not lead.” Amanda Svachula.
God Is A Womxn – Jan 2020
To celebrate 1 year of Clitbait, we hosted a night of spoken word, drag performances and live music. We were honoured to have had the wonderful Grace and The Flat…
Cancer in the time of Covid
Don’t dare to go outside, my sweet lady
Although we’re just a bubble, ever-ready to burst,
You’re safe with us, I promise
I remember catching a bus a day before we would meet again
Crying, because I thought I was going to kill you,
For I had stepped into a world
Which was trying to live with covid while you have cancer.
And it feels like I can’t breathe knowing you won’t,
Between the grief-stricken gasps, gritting teeth through glaring tears
One might be assuming symptoms of that thing, when they are effects of the other
And I hate how the two interchange,
How our fear is preyed upon by them both.
What is going through your sweet head?
While I usually wear my heart on my sleeve, I stiffen up
When I see that you are guarding yours behind secret chambers,
For you’re a headstrong rationalist, a chin-up kind of woman,
But when the night has been rough to you,
And you wake up vomiting, with words I’ve never heard come from your mouth before,
That proud chin drops in your hands
And what I see before me is a scorned child with a distasteful gaze
As I try to hand you your peeled grapes or spiceless daal.
I’m sorry sad one, I feel like a terrible parent,
When we say the world outside is too big and bad for you right now,
For best intentions look so opposite
When the blue-suited baboons control what comes next.
I felt like I couldn’t offer much at first,
Helplessness hurts the most.
But I’m trying, really hard, to be your doctor,
Your friend, your mother, anything you want and need,
Even if that means at moments I have to stop being your daughter
So that I can get you to keep on being my mother.
It’s selfish, I know. And I’m sorry.
-Anonymous
Relearning ‘pleasure’ and improving Sex Ed: an interview with Ruby Rare
“Pleasure is not something to be consumed. Pleasure is something to enfold into different aspects of our lives as much as possible.” – Ruby Rare
We Need to Stop Calling Young Girls Bossy
From a young age, I was always told that I was a bossy person, and I just accepted it and took it as the criticism it was intended to be. Thinking back to when I was labelled bossy, it was when I took charge of a task and put myself in a leadership position in order to do something. This adjective has never been used to describe one of my male friends, but many of my determined female friends.