320 Posts

Voices

A Pride of Lionesses: the Queer Culture of Women’s Football

  • Posted byby Ruby Hann
  • 7 min. read

“She’s out.” My friend whispered, as we watched the Lionesses run onto the pitch. “So’s she. She used to date one of her teammates.” This commentary preceded the Lionesses’ stunning 4-0 semi-final victory over Sweden, which we watched at my local sports pub. My friends and I had been invited to join the table of two women, who we had met at the previous England game. We’d bonded with the couple over not just our love of the Lionesses (after all, half of our group had been loudly cheering for Spain) but through a tacit acknowledgement of our shared queer identities…

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“Do you enjoy what you do?”: George Michael, Beyoncé, and the Right to Rest

  • Posted byby Ruby Hann
  • 7 min. read

“The right to rest”, or resting as somehow radical, political, or subversive, are thoughts that I’ve been mulling over since January of this year. In my mind, January is a particularly fraught moment when it comes to rest, leisure, and relaxation. Conventional wisdom dictates that the new year is the time for setting goals and dreaming of future productivity — I’ll exercise more, I’ll finally write that article — but, in reality, lots of us are still hungover and languishing in the post-Christmas lull…

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COMING HOME

Despite the murky comments sections, snide remarks, relentless sexism, and dated denial, the Lionesses have done it. They have brought football home.

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Women’s Fashion in the Work Place and How it dictates sexist stereotypes

  • Posted byby Clitbait
  • 3 min. read

When I asked my friends the question ‘what should someone wear to work’ the resounding response – after the initial grunt of confusion – was simply their ‘uniform’. But if I dared to press them more, asking specifically what a woman should wear to work, their faces couldn’t disguise the conversation’s trajectory towards the controversial.

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GOOD NEWS: A Win for Wild Places

  • Posted byby Ailsa Beck
  • 2 min. read

Welcome to the first Good News instalment. Each month we will bring you some happier and
lighter news in relation to climate change and wild places. We are often shrouded with bleak
stories about the climate crisis, and in turn, this can create a negative space in our heads.
By also including some good news in your lives, we can instead choose to reclaim a sense
of hope and belonging…

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Soil isn’t Brown, it’s Green.

When you think of ecosystems, what comes to mind? Rainforests, coral reefs, thick woods full of life. What about the stuff beneath your feet? For too long we have dismissed what lies below as mere dirt and dead matter-this unknown and untapped universe is on the brink of extinction.

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Harnessing the Green-Eyed Monsters

  • Posted byby Ruby Hann
  • 4 min. read

It’s clear that politics and emotions are inseparable across the political spectrum. How could they not be? After all, when we vote, we’re voting based on which candidates and policies best bolster our hopes, assuage our fears, and share our anger. After each election, we see the same images time and again: overtired candidates and campaigners, crowded in some church-hall-turned-polling-station, moved to both elation and tears. It’s just the colour of the rosettes that changes between the photos…

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Queer Dating Stories

  • Posted byby Clitbait
  • 5 min. read

It’s Pride month! In addition to the over-commercialisation of Pride by brands and companies, it’s also a time of reflection for the queer community on our experiences and what being queer means to each of us. 

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‘Darling, I have no dream job, I do not dream of labour’

James Baldwin, discussing the mythology of the American Dream, spoke the words ‘I have no dream job, I do not dream of labour’. Decades later, these words are a popular TikTok soundbite comically backing memes and skits poking fun at work for our generation. Though comic, this satire is evidence of a larger sentiment surrounding work and labour for Gen Z, particularly the disillusionment many feel with the precarious prospects available to us…

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Dreams and Nightmares in Audrey Diwan’s Happening

  • Posted byby Ruby Hann
  • 4 min. read

The night after we watched L’événement (Happening), a 2021 French drama currently receiving a British release, two of my friends had dreams about being pregnant. This, I think, is the greatest testament to the power of Audrey Diwan’s direction and Anamaria Vartolomei’s leading performance: we began dissecting the film the second the cinema lights lifted; carried on for the whole walk home; through three rounds in the pub; and still we couldn’t get the story out of our heads…

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What’s the point of sexual fantasies?

  • Posted byby Clitbait
  • 4 min. read

For many, their sexual fantasies are a source of shame, a well-kept secret or even a source of anxiety. For others, sexual fantasies are no different from the sex they are already having. The transition from one to another requires much unlearning of sexual norms, personal growth, and open communication with sexual partners. Although challenging, it allows us to expand our understanding of sexual pleasure and explore our sexuality both within and outside of relationships…

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Transfeminine masculinities – structural [trans]misogyny

  • Posted byby Kate Goss
  • 8 min. read

I feel that the label ‘transmisogyny’ is a bit opaque. It often describes many of the moments where transfemme people are understood and treated as ‘biologically male’ by one means or another; an intersection between misogyny and transphobia. I want to talk through a little of what’s going on in the different moments and processes that make up these interactions and situations of transphobia, to give an insight into my world of masculinities. Within the bounds of transmisogyny, there is no room for me to explore my gender nonconformity; no room for my experimentation with pronouns, presentation, or personality; no room for any subversive tendencies without or beyond the original sin of my transfemininity. There isn’t a lot of room in people’s consciousness for masculinity from transfems. It’s hard for us to embody our masculinities as non-men without the people around us eroding, invalidating, and redefining us.

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The Home Front of the Culture War

  • Posted byby Ruby Hann
  • 8 min. read

Considering that we are currently witnessing one of the most serious conflicts in Europe in recent decades, you’d be forgiven for wondering why so much of the surrounding discourse appears preoccupied with pronouns, gender, and sexuality – topics that perhaps, on their surface, appear only tangentially, if at all, related…

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Who ‘leans in’ and how? Masculinities in workspaces

  • Posted byby Clitbait
  • 7 min. read

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.

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Talking anxiety with Nin-ja

  • Posted byby Clitbait
  • 3 min. read

Most alt-R&B tracks are centred around more or less the same thing – love. Love in all its agony, love in all its euphoria. But Nin-ja wants to dig deeper than that. The singer-songwriter’s just released her new single Lockjaw where she sings candidly about her struggles with anxiety. Nin-ja’s been in the music game for about four years now, but after taking a brief hiatus, she’s back with a new single and more honest than ever. 

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