‘Black is the Color of My Voice’ takes us on a compassionate, celebratory journey through the life of Mena, a black woman who uses music as a constant source of inspiration and strength. Paralleling the life of Nina Simone, Mena experiences pain, love, and rises to fame under the spotlight with her songs to become the voice of the Civil Rights Movement.
To Catch a D*ck – London Hughes
I would sum up London Hughes’ comedy show ‘To Catch a D*ck’ as ‘hilarious, empowering but definitely not one to watch next to your parents’.
Summer self care tips
A few weeks ago, we posted a story on Instagram asking you for your summer self care tips. It may seem contradictory but summer can be such a stressful time….
Two websites, Three girls
We teamed up with Eliza Lawrence of wasitgoodforyou.co.uk, a website pioneering honest and open conversations about sex. We asked Eliza questions about herself and her incredible project, and in turn, she asked us about ours!
Women in the workplace: challenging ‘male’ spaces
My name is Hannah, and I’m a nineteen year old self-confessed cinema fanatic. I would love to be involved in the creative, wonderful world of movie making in whichever way…
Taking up space in cishet* places
Being a queer slut, a blazing gay, an unapologetic sex educator is no easy feat. I cannot begin to tell you how to do so. I became one both incidentally and accidentally…
The power of a woman with a shaved head
The #OmgShesBald experience had an energy that is incomparable to any event I have been to. The room was chic and minimal with the exception of a colourful area with a barber’s chair in its centre. Every womxn in the room was radiant, friendly and unapologetically themself…
Dear Past Me, do what you want with your body hair
You and your friends (all self-identifying women) were off to meet some boys in your year at school in the park. However, you all suddenly stopped and realised that it was hot, you were in shorts and your leg hair was visible. So you all decided you shouldn’t go.
Anxiety and Activism
I have sat here for what feels like hours attempting to know how to start this piece, and this in itself sums up what I like to call ‘activism anxiety’….
An interview with Rosie Taylor
Rosie, a second year student and the current LGBT+ Officer at Edinburgh University talks about the process of writing an open letter against the horrifying misconduct of a university gym manager…
How do you sleep?
How do you sleep?
Is there room for me there?
Between you and the new girl,
Lying with you,
Does she weep?
You know, even after,
I never told a lie,
I never asked you why.
“He’s honestly a good guy”.
I should have been the one to cry.
To cry rape.
To cry assault.
To cry out.
To cry tears,
to rinse away your unwelcome touch.
I don’t need much more room.
Maybe more today than I did that day, sure.
But who doesn’t grow?
Upwards. Outwards.
I stretch my body.
Pulling it apart like putty.
Moulding it with warm hands,
against its natural will.
Doesn’t that sound familiar?
I pushed it in on the days it felt too big.
Too broad.
Too unending.
I’ll ask you again.
How do you sleep?
Maybe, if you both lie on your sides,
Facing in,
Forcing me to stay in between,
We will still all fit.
We could do. We did,
But, after, you slept.
“I should have watched where I stepped.”
I still haven’t slept.
I still haven’t wept.
Sophie Nankivell
Sexualisation of black bodies panel
A few weeks back we attended a panel on the sexualisation of black bodies held together by Edinburgh’s Sexpression and ACS. All panelists talked openly and frankly about their experiences,…
‘Celestial Bodies’, an interview with Bella Neergaard
‘Celestial Bodies’ focuses on marginalised bodies and how we define beauty. It is an Instagram project, which seems vapid but in reality people are checking their Instagram all the time. The project is trying to start conversations. “That’s on my newsfeed? Does that mean its accepted?”.
Growing
Growing
When I was four years old
My hair was in pigtails
The pin straight parting line, an indicator
Of the righteous path
I was meant to follow
All the way down
To my eyes stained with kohl
To ward off darkness
Underlining my eyes
Underplaying my achievements
To the crook of my nose
That was religiously massaged
By well-meaning keepers of my sexuality
Who sniffed out solitude
From the arch of my nose
My earlobes pierced
Before I could say the word gender
Branding not just my femininity
But my place in society
Weighed down by its expectations
But still enduring
The fuzz above my lips
Smeared with concoctions
To rid itself of sins
That would mar the image
Of a perfect woman
My lips aching
For lipstick to stain them
The foray into womanhood
Only completed by this rite of passage
But not too dark
Dark means evil
But doesn’t dark ward off evil too?
Saira Banu
Of battles and wars
Of battles and wars
Of battles we fought inside
Like spiralling whirlpools
Never allowed to spill
Always dripping
Not parched, but never full
Unlike the wars they indulge in
Gushing forth like a tsunami
Washing over battles
For the victory of the war
Of battles that are fought
Over tears shed
For fathers, and brothers, and lovers
Of the wars that they fought
Over the honour
Of what lies between our legs
Of battles fought quietly, demurely
As is expected of our fights
The carnage, our dreams
The spoils, their might
Unlike their wars
Unlike the havoc they wreak
Claiming the laws of the universe
Of the battles we endure
Of all that we ration
As the wars they fight
Steer out of their bastions
The wars they wage
While we salvage
Of all the battles provoked
The ones we did not want to fight
Of the wars we were dragged to
A display of their spite
Of the battles they fought
But claimed were wars
Of our war
The one waged everyday
Against the world
Against us
Against war in itself
Saira Banu
I’m too dyslexic for uni
I’m too dyslexic for uni
I’m too dyslexic for uni
a source on marriage and sacrament in Spain in the 1500s looks smudged
But it’s on a computer screen
I want to scream
I’m too dyslexic for uni
The walls of my room are shrinking
I just want to finish this fucking reading
Before tomorrow
So i can sleep
Before my eyes get so heavy that they fall to my toes
Its 13 pages
I have read one and a half
The rest is miles away
Stretched out like the desert
Or a really flat field that you look out at and feel like you could just walk off the end of the earth
I’m too dyslexic for uni
I started writing this because i was fuming, panicking, needed to be calmed
Now i just feel embarrassed
because i just considered writing that i’d thought to call up my grandma to read it to me
Then i stopped
This is so embarrassing
I’m too dyslexic for uni
My chat with the disability service is on Monday
But even once i get extra time what are they gonna do
Get someone to fucking read these journal articles to me?
I feel like i don’t belong here unless i can do the readings
I’m studying history so should be able to do them no problem
History is all about books
Layered with dust and old white men’s semen
So i guess i don’t
I don’t belong here.
But i find it so interesting
The one and half pages i read on a trans man called Eleno in the 1580s was fascinating
So maybe i do
I wish they did audiobooks of historical sources…
Lilah Hyman
Dear Past Me, focus on the small stuff
‘Focus on the small stuff’ has almost become a cliche. It’s the mantra of every self-help coach, the driving concept behind many successful books and the topic of copious podcasts….
Let’s direct our criticism towards the right rather than each other
I am tired of anybody criticising somebody else who is literally striving for the same goal as them.
Let your fellow feminists thrive and together we will hopefully get further in our fight against all layers of inequality…
Victims
Victims
You made me shatter / and I was in pieces / mirror shards / your shitty protestations staring / back at you from the floor / where you couldn’t help but throw me / like I was nothing / but a plaything to twist / into a victim
So sometimes I take myself back / and pretend like I’m who I was / before I opened my arms to you / but the truth is I’ll never have the / bright eyes you pierced between your fingernails / without care / because you said they were so pretty
But explosions don’t come without aftermath / and the proof will always be where / you left it / because you have never been more wrong / than when you thought you would escape / in your nonchalance
I like to think / I know your guilt
I know the darkest parts of you / and I know my memory still lives / somewhere you don’t want to address / so you’ll act like it’s fine / that I disappeared because you / couldn’t stop blaming me
You will cover your wounds / with plasters too small / and you will tell yourself / you were right all along
Pretence does not prove anything / and that is a promise because / I am not a saint / and I have screwed things up too / but I have changed and I / would let myself collapse / before papering over the cracks / with lies that will only fracture
Let me tell you / you will not stay sane / as long as you cannot grow
I do not search for a sorry / and I do not plead for you / on your knees / but I ask you / learn / do not look to be a hero / before you have been a victim / to your own mistakes
Katie Proctor
Modes of communication
Modes of communication
Would you be surprised if I told you that I want you?
Has the stammering not been clear enough?
What about about the awkwardly timed jokes?
Have my side-glances not been direct enough?
Surely, the spiteful sarcasm, loaded with longing, was a dead giveaway?
In fact, I think I’ve done everything I could to tell you that I want you
Except tell you.
Dear Past Me, it is not your job to change his mind
Dear Past Me, You don’t need to change his mind. You don’t need to change the mind of any oppressive man. You do not need to convince him your experience…
Dear Present Me, it is important to notice how gendered the world is…
I have decided to try not to take gender lenses off, but leave them in place, and, rather than trying to eliminate the gender discriminations and differences that appeared, understand them and point them out for other people to realize they are there…
Inked
inked
I trace the draft of
the story you planned to write-
in pencil-
but you wanted it in pen.
maybe I did too.
but I knew life could be brighter
if only you wait.
so waiting is what I did,
afraid you might let go-
if I were too fast or slow-
but no- together,
we took the ink
and brushed the page
with a feathered quill,
and together,
we wrote our story
in permanent ink,
the cursive letters
joining words, alike
to the way our hands
connect. eternally.
with the quill, we
write our story into
motion, and the ink
flows free, creating something
beautiful, even in
the stains left
as the ink blots,
as the heart’s passions explode.
art. the smudged
blends into the paper,
the other threads of the tale
to create our own
kind of beautiful.
Lauren Curr
To steady the pendulum
To steady the pendulum
swinging in the dark,
left to right,
I cannot see my own direction.
disillusioned-
unsure of what’s reality,
unsure of me.
dysphoric,
but of what?
who knows,
who needs to know.
maybe, of me, you see,
of me and who I’ll be.
and one day
I’ll know
that I was just for show
and I can be,
truthfully,
the one my heart does know.
Lauren Curr
Dear Present Me, you are allowed good sex
So I had sex last night, after months of torturing myself with that “I need to get laid” mindset. But now post sex, I guess I’m just a bit disappointed….