The ISIS, Trinity 2018

TT18

THE ISIS THE ISIS

STAFF Editors Deputy Editors Non-Fiction Directors Non-Fiction Team Fiction Director Fiction Team

Creative Directors Creative Team

Creative Events Director

Amadeus Harte, Leela Jadhav, Katie Meynell, Michael O’Connor, and Priya Vempali Alastair Curtis and Jack Hunter Eleanor Birdsall-Smith, Libby Cherry, Victoria Gawlik, Mrinmoyee Roy, Marina Scholtz, and Flo Ward Lev Crofts Jerry Amokwandoh, Kiran Armanasco, Jorrit DonnerWittkopf, Daniel Haynes, Bethan James, Kitty Low, and Minh Tran Isabelle Davies and Kate Weir Sanaa Asim, Molly Aysu, Shauna Brown, Alex Christian, Kate Haselden, Arjuna Keshvani-Ham, Sophie Kuang, Syeda Maah-Noor Ali, Julia Manstead, and Sai Parepalli Sabrina Ruia

Creative Events Team

Natalia Ameen, Flora Clark, Georgia Edgley, Fliss Gush, Sophie Hardcastle, and Shamika Tamhane

Club Events Directors

Amber Shrimpton and Lauren Sneade

Club Events Team Broadcasting Directors Broadcasting Team

Business and Marketing Director Business and Marketing Team Social Media Manager

Joe Baverstock-Poppy and Lou Lou Curry Sholto Gillie and Ani Gilmore Olaide Adejobi, Freya Graham, Hugo Jacquemin, Owen Yunaputra Kosman, Darius Parvizi-Wayne, and Amy Ryder Harriet Davis Daanial Chaudhury, Fliss Gush, Katrina Harris, Sabrina Ruia, Claire Soh, and Shamika Tamhane Sophie Coe

Blog Editors

Julia Alsop, Ed Audland, Tilda Coleman, and John Livesey

Blog Writers

Sam Dalrymple, Victoria Gawlik, Ivonne Marais, Dan O’Driscoll, Karishma Paun, Lydia Stephens, and Tony Wilkes.

OSPL Chairperson Managing Director Finance Director Tech Director Strategy Director Events Director Non-Executive Directors

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Jiaqi Kang and Emily Lawford

India Barrett Polly Halladay Bryce Ning Antonia Siu Harry Gosling Tess Hulton Katie Birnie, Rebecca Iles, Utsav Popat, Louis Walker

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4 ISIS inbox 5 Editorial 6 ‘We’re not heroes’: An interview with the Night Climbers of Oxford Lou Lou Curry 8 Poem Verity Babbs 9 The Diviner’s Monologue Louis Davidson 10 Set in Stone: How Oxford’s buildings uphold elitism Flo Ward 14 Danse Macabre Alex Matraxia 16 Sexist politics, silencing, and predatory tutors: Oxford feminists’ battle to be heard Libby Cherry 20 The Splendid Kei Patrick 22 Triptych Rohit Chakraborty 26 Caterpillar Adrian Hobbes 27 Bug Lewis Hunt 28 Where the body ends Gaby Mancey-Jones 30 Hillary Clinton directly linked to vaccination Jess Evans

33 (a) conversation Katie Meynell 34 Ode to Joy Fenella Sentance 36 Scaffolding Vida Adamczewski 37 We leave bits of our bodies everywhere which means the hoover is always full of skin Vida Adamczewski 38 Dirty Dishes Leela Jadhav 42 Graceful Gaze at the Bethnal Green Cabaret Alex Matraxia 44 Not Your Habibti Emily Lawford 48 A Summer Sliced Up Joy Wang 52 Kids on the Beach Jorrit Donner-Wittkopf 53 Student vs Superpower Jack Hunter 56 notes Cara Nicholson 58 Anniversaries Maebh Mulligan Smith 59 500 words 61 Edges Sophie O’Sullivan 62 Lighthouse Verity Babbs 64 Uses for The ISIS 3

ISIS INBOX

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“ Sophie Kuang

EDITORIAL “No one reads The ISIS.” So we’ve been told: by our friends (apologetically) by each other (stressed out) by Cherwell editors (pityingly) and by our parents (who thought all the bright colours were a bit much).

We hope that’s not entirely true. Sometimes it seems that people are still interested in us, almost 1,900 editions since we were founded. After one drunk editor mentioned the messages we get from would-be Islamic State fighters in a London pub full of hacks, most of our senior editorial team were bombarded with calls the next day from tabloid diarists who wanted the details.

(We sold out to the Mail on Sunday—sorry).

Working for The ISIS means handing your life over to pastel-coloured spreadsheets and spending hours on end in college rooms with the same people until you all make each other sick—literally and figuratively. It means calling businesses for advertising and getting given fake email addresses by bored marketing managers, but it also means drinking Pimm’s and doing finger-painting on the grass with your new friends.

We tried in this issue to make people talk. We included writing about Oxford, because we think that’s important to students: investigations into the architecture that perpetuates inequality and the struggles of feminist academics in the ‘60s certainly got us talking about what has changed here, and what really hasn’t changed much. We spoke to activists who fight for free speech in Hong Kong and against sexual harassment in Palestine. And we let people talk about themselves: with stories about masturbation (not as wanky as it sounds!), and poems about boys, bugs, and the human body.

At our first panel discussion, brilliant theatre practitioners told us what they do to make theatre more accessible. The best answers they gave were the practical ways to get people who aren’t old and white and Oxford grads into theatre spaces. The solution was definitely not just talking about the problems.

But all we can do is talk about things we want to talk about from deep within our Oxford bubble. We know it’s self-indulgent. But we hope that people might read something in here and think about something in a way they haven’t thought before.

Is that unrealistic? Possibly. But we like to think it.

With love, Emily & Jiaqi

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‘We’re not heroes’: an interview with the Night Climbers of Oxford

Night has set upon the city of dreaming spires.

Rain pours over the freshers hastily making their way back from Cellar. The queue for Hassan’s spirals around Turl Street. The sound of joyful revellers intermingles with the patter of rain against gravel. You sense something above you, a fleeting instance of darkness. A slither of a silhouette, gliding from building to building. It’s a night climber.

The night climbers are the most recent local example of ‘modern’ heroism. From Beowulf to Batman, heroism is almost unrecognisable from what it once was. The hero warriors of old English poetry, endowed with super-human courage, have been replaced by a new ideal. If this is the heroic tradition established in the seventh century, what are the ideals of today?

The responses from an interview with one of the night climbers—both blunt yet pretentious, surreal yet foreboding—seem to encapsulate the new heroic ideal all at once.

How did you first learn about the night climbers and what inspired you to join?

Night climbing is by no means a new game here in Oxford, and its roots stem back all the way to the late 1930s. I myself have a multi-disciplinary background consisting of Parkour and Bouldering. I first learnt about night climbing when I visited Cambridge aged 13, during a tour around various colleges.

Before I decided to officially form a group, I did a lot of reading around the original group of Cambridge night climbers. I certainly share some key political views with climbers such as Nares Craig and Geoffrey Young regarding peace. Although I take more inspiration from the Yamakasi and the original founders of Parkour.

Lou Lou Curry 6

How do you recruit for the night climbers?

We usually recruit people in Oxford from two different communities, which we believe host physical disciplines that are applicable to our group. One of these communities regularly attends a venue which we find very easy to observe and select people from.

But we’re not just after physical attributes and you don’t have to be the best climber in the world—we’re after intellect as well. Above all, however, the people we select need to be trustworthy, so they have usually bonded with

one of our members before being invited.

What has been your most adventurous or dangerous feat as a night climber?

We don’t really make dangerous climbs because we don’t do anything outside of our capabilities.

The climbs we conduct are risky, but risk is relative. My philosophy is that if you’re not willing to risk the unusual, then you’ll always have to settle for the ordinary. The most adventurous climb I’ve undertaken so far has been scaling the northern face of Queen’s College.

How do you deal with fear?

For me fear isn’t real, but danger is very real.

Fear is the bi-product of intrinsic apprehension and scepticism in your abilities. For that reason, fear to me is a choice. You can train yourself to suppress it through repeating whatever your end goal is, because repetition brings confidence.

When I’m about to leap from one building to the other, and I’m confronted by the 60-foot drop, my thought process is always: “If you can do it at two meters from the ground, why not at 20?”

I guess what I’m trying to say is: no matter what the challenge is, try to ground yourself first.

Who are your heroes?

People are very dynamic, and as a result their belief systems, morals, and ideologies are forever changing. For that reason, I never look up to one particular person for an extended period of time.

In the early twentieth century, Georges Hébert developed a personal motto, "Être fort pour être utile” which translated means “Being strong to be useful.” I guess those are some good words to live by.

In what ways do you feel you may fit the ‘hero’ category?

In all honesty we’re not heroes, we’re more like annoying fairy god geckos. Hero is a term that’s used far too loosely these days. I like to think however that if you can display acts of compassion, bravery, resilience, selflessness, patience, and integrity in anything that you do, then your humanity has overridden all other instincts. Heroism spawns from times when we as people display these characteristics, and all we can do is aspire to achieve at least one of these each day.

How do you use social media and how does it have an impact on the group?

We decided to make anonymous posts to pages such as Oxfess, because we felt the need to bridge the gap between the ever growing roof culture and the general public. In the past, night climbing has remained a very abstract part of society’s night life. We’re seeking to bridge that gap, and get more people engaged. Social media is also a necessary evil. Whilst some of the group disagrees with its uses, the benefits do outweigh the costs. We use social media to bring light to political agendas, usually through posting highrise photos as this gets people’s attention. We also use social media to express our sentiments on key issues that people face in their day-to-day lives. Providing advice to strangers in their time of need usually brings out the best in us.

Do you ever feel that you are endorsing illegal activities and how do you justify this?

Technically what we do isn’t criminal, and it’s actually classed as a civil offence instead. Unless damage to property occurs, we can’t be arrested for our acts. We’re always very respectful of the buildings which we climb, and we never invade the rooftops of private homes. Even for us, there are lines which we don’t cross. Most of the time we do feel that the agendas which we are driving into view far outweigh the negatives of climbing though. I like to think that this brings balance to our controversial feats.

How do you use night climbing as a way to instigate positive social change?

Night climbing is controversial in nature, and controversy incites interest and promotes change. We attempt to instigate positive social change, not because it deems our acts to be more ethical than egocentric, but because it’s easier to get the message across when there’s a big banner hanging outside your window strung between two spires.

For example, the local council recently tried to impose a fine for rough sleepers, which was disgusting. Even if it was never enforced, it is an abysmal act of social segregation. In cases such as this I like to think of our government as everyone on board a cruise ship sipping champagne, and we’re the iceberg. You can either change course, or we’ll tear you apart and sink you to a new level.

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I

have a divining rod that I use when I go down to clubs to try and meet people, but it doesn’t really work. The man at the store (this was in Marrakesh, that’s a whole other thing) told me that if I walked into a room with it the rod would point at the woman I’m supposed to spend my life with.

It hasn’t worked yet. My routine is pretty solid: I wake up at five o’clock (PM) and then I sit in my room and stare at the wall for a while. I have this thing where it’s like there’s a film over my eyes and it looks like the wall is kind of shimmering. I stare at it while I’m waking up. Then I have a shower and I head out. I usually stare at the wall for a long time; I like to leave at about ten so that I’m the first one in the club. I sit in the corner with my sparkling water, but the bouncers don’t know I’ve been sneaking in my own squash so I get to drink that in there, and I sit with my divining and I wait. I stand there for a while until the place starts to fill up. Girls and guys come in and my rod doesn’t move, but one day it will. What am I gonna do when it does? I’m not sure yet, I imagined that maybe the girl would maybe from that same have her own divining guy in Marrakesh and then we’d meet and it would all be great. But for now I wait. For now I stare at the wall, and I let things happen.

The water passes around me, cause I am an island in a stream of stars. I’m not really in the water but I look up and I see the stars again. Revidere le stelle. But I don’t get to leave just yet. I don’t think of myself as a being but as a becoming; my divining is a becoming as well, all that matters is what it will one day do. Without that, what’s the point of it? There isn’t one. Who knows. Who cares. The stars are that which they will be. They look static, but we know that the stars wheel in eternity. When I’m in the ocean I like to look up and let the water

Louis Davidson coalesce over my face. I sink just a bit in, and look at the stars. Then I wonder what it would be like to lie there for so long I could see the stars tumble in the firmament. I can only hold my breath for so long, though. I hold my divining when I go underwater, and it always points down.

The last time I was under water at night I was with Lily and she didn’t realise I was gonna jump in. I should have told her but I didn’t. I wanted to have a look at the stars so I ran in. All that daylight and heat had been sucked into the water and it was amazing, just me and the fish. The salt stung my eyes but I didn’t care, the sky and the water were both winedark but the stars were glimmering. She thought I was drowning. She jumped in after me. I don’t know what happened to her after that, I haven’t seen her since. Whenever I’m on a beach now I turn around in a circle and just know that because the whole world is a circle at some point as I turn is pointing in the right around the divining direction, pointing at the one who’s coming.

Lately I’ve had this dream where I jump in the water and I have my divining and the way it points is always down into the yawning chasm and I wonder if I can see the last of her bubbles coming to the surface, and some ugly fish swims by, and I know I should swim back up but I follow my divining down and it gets darker and darker till I forget what the glittering meniscus of the ocean looks like. The blue is replaced with black and it’s not wine-dark but ink-dark. Maybe the only works under water; maybe it doesn’t work at all. I hope that it does. I wonder where Lily went. I should probably head off soon, the clubs will be opening, and I need to see who’s there.

Then I might take a swim. The light speaketh. The darkness comprehendeth not. You should get one of these things; they’re good for your health.

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Set in Stone How Oxford’s buildings uphold elitism

Flo Ward On 10 February 1355, two Oxford students drinking in the Swindlestock Tavern complained to the landlord about the quality of their wine.

The fight rapidly escalated into what is known as the St Scholastica Day riot—a two-day conflict between Oxford townspeople and students which resulted in 93 deaths. In the aftermath of this violence, the colleges constructed defensive walls and buttresses to separate their students from the commoners outside. The result was a little too successful, perhaps: hundreds of years on, Oxford remains closed off to those from underprivileged backgrounds.

Oxford’s access problem has been endlessly picked apart, most recently when Labour MP David Lammy accused the university of “social apartheid” over its failure to admit state school and BME students. His shocking figures—revealing vast disparities between state and privately educated students—were published in The Guardian last October, and sparked a debate over where the blame lies: in the poor efforts of an out-of-touch university, or a lack of encouragement within state schools.

The problems, however, run far deeper—they cannot simply be fixed by an admissions department or an enthusiastic state school teacher.

In fact, these debates ignore how the university’s idealised image in the media is inseparable from the story of its dark,

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classist underbelly: Oxford’s access problem is perpetuated by its old buildings.

T h e average Oxford college attracts just 53% of its home applications from the state sector (a poor statistic considering 86% of UK sixth-formers are state-educated). Oxford’s oldest colleges consistently drag this figure down. The colleges falling below average were mostly founded before 1700, whereas colleges founded post-1800 perform above average. These old colleges—built on foundations of classism and colonialism—remain physical reminders of an inaccessible and elitist past.

Five schools collectively send more students to Oxbridge than all of the country’s 2,000 other sixth forms and colleges put together. Four of these schools are independent, and three of them (Eton, Westminster and St Paul’s Boys) were founded pre-1600, rivalling even the historical prestige of Oxford. The university’s student body is disproportionately made up of students who have spent their teenage years in classrooms and dining halls that are just as ancient as some of Oxford’s oldest colleges, making the university’s very visible status and legacy significantly less daunting. By contrast, state comprehensive schools—a creation of the 1960s— are often uniform in their appearance, purpose-built and designed to accommodate much larger cohorts of students.

Michelle Codrington-Rogers, a teacher at Cherwell School and teachers’ union official, says that despite the fact she grew up in Oxford, “it wasn’t a place for me”.

“The majority of students at our school don’t apply to Oxford because they see it as separate from them, even though we live in its shadows,” she said, speaking on a

panel event organised by the campaign group Common Ground.

Although a sixth-former at any state school in Oxford could name every college and its location, independently-schooled students arrive with a sense of familiarity that outweighs this: not just through an inherited network of friends, but also because of the links between colleges and schools, which often stretch back centuries.

New College and Winchester College were co-founded in 1382, with Winchester intended as a feeder school— and both were designed by the same architect, William Wynford. A similar relationship was created between Westminster School and Christ Church, with Christopher Wren responsible for much of their architecture.

These relationships are therefore not just ancient: they are architecturally visible. The university’s ostensible commitment to recruiting students from every background is betrayed by its buildings, which act as stone-cold reminders of a history of elitism. Stepping inside colleges where the ratio of state school students is barely half, like New or Christ Church, is to enter a well-trodden path from feeder school through to an Oxford education—a path that has remained relatively unchanged for years.

The relationship between Oxford colleges and private schools is not just a historic relic. For schools with established links to the university, students are given literal access to buildings that would otherwise remain exclusive. A friend from a northern state school remarked that while she was feeling overwhelmed after her matriculation ceremony, the fresher beside her was nonchalant—he’d had many school assemblies in the Sheldonian on account of attending D’Overbroecks, an independent sixth form in Oxford. In fact, Magdalen College School has also used the space for performances, while New College School allows its students an annual ‘run’ of New College. According to the school website, “they get access to some of the College’s archives and treasures, climb the tower to see its amazing views over Oxford,

use the garden for fieldwork, visit surrounding historic buildings, and—many boys’ favourite—dine in the College dining hall”. What better way to demystify Oxford life than to allow students as young as four a chance to experience it? It’s a shame such opportunities are not available to all local children: New College’s access and admissions administrator confirmed to me that the college has not given any tours to state primary schools in the last year.

With these links in place, students coming from independent schools are undoubtedly more likely to feel at home in Oxford’s environment—they are collaborators in the cultural history of the buildings before they even arrive. ‘Imposter syndrome’ is often bandied about amongst students here: to an extent, it is an inevitable by-product of attending a world-class institution, although it is clear some students feel more alienated than others. This alienation is not only a problem for state school students once they are here, as it also contributes to the off-putting image of Oxford that will inevitably deter applications. Several JCR access officers at older colleges told me students on tours often assume accommodation costs will be higher because of the architectural grandeur. Mia Liyanage, Balliol’s access officer, recalled a time when one student she was showing around was shocked by the college’s size, remarking “is this all still Balliol?”

“I faced the age-old access dilemma”, she told me, “the conflict between wanting to reassure the applicant, and wanting to be realistic with them. I told him that you get used to the scale and architecture of your college quickly, but I also had to admit that Balliol is one of the physically smallest colleges in Oxford; a drop in the ocean. I have no doubt that he probably found this realisation intimidating”.

Oxford remains a stomping ground for the elite: this is evident in today’s student body, still benefiting from historic links and relationships, but also in the literal ownership of many rooms around the univer-

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sity. As Fall”, they said. I didn’t know anything about Rhodes, part of and so the red square seemed just another strange Oxf u n d - ford tradition, no more significant than being told to r a i s i n g wear my sub fusc ribbon. Researching the campaign schemes, many afterwards perplexed me—I had just moved to Oxford colleges ‘sell’ teach- from one of the most ethnically diverse areas of the UK, ing spaces and plaques so I could not understand why there would be any renext to student bedrooms sistance to taking down the statue of a renowned slaver. to alumni willing to make Oriel is the most shocking example of social diverdonations mounting into sity, only managing to attract 25% of its applications several thousand pounds. Over half the colleges that re- from the state sector between 2014-16. The college was sponded to my Freedom of Information requests have the subject of controversy in Lammy’s investigation for profited from such schemes in the past ten years, rang- accepting only one black British A-Level student withing from three rooms being sold at St. Hilda’s, to 183 at in the last five years. We can only speculate whether Keble. Defending the importance of these alumni do- the poor percentage of state school applications might nations, Camilla Matterson, from Keble’s Development have something to do with Rhodes haunting its enOffice, described the plaques as an “unobtrusive but trance, but the college’s visible history of classism and racism undoubtedly meaningful way” of acknowledging donor support. There is no doubt contributes to a sense that alumni donations are of un-belonging for indispensable to many access the few state-schooled schemes, often wholly funding and non-white stubursaries and scholarships; yet dents studying there. they are more obtrusive than Esther Agbolade, presishe suggests. Like the iconic Endent-elect of the Oxford glish Heritage blue plaques in LonAfro-Caribbean Society don, placing plaques next to student and Oriel student, admits rooms confers on them historical and that although Oriel’s colonial history and architeccultural importance. They become ture did not cross her mind a physical reminder of the hold that when applying, “when I the wealthy have on Oxford—quite finally came to learn who literally branding their names onto exactly this Rhodes person its buildings. was and that his statue lay While Oxford’s role in cementon the other side of my wall, ing class divisions is old news, the I felt somewhat foolish.” extent of the university’s founda“The remarks that were tions in colonialism are only now being addressed—it took until last made whenever I told people I was going to [or] was December, nearly 300 years after the Codrington Library was built, for at Oriel College made sense,” she added. “I felt like I was All Souls College to commission a the token black, female, plaque commemorating the slaves state school student used as whose labour funded its construca cover-up for the history of tion. When I matriculated in 2016, a the college”. group of students campaigning outOf course, the newer side the Sheldonian handed me a red Oxford colleges are hardly square of fabric—“wear it to show your solidarity with Rhodes Must exempt from a lack of social

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diversity, but there does seem to be a relationship be- from these foundations in access. Newer, exclusively tween college architecture and success in appealing to state school colleges will never be the answer when they state school applications. The construction of St Cath- stand in the shadow of Oxford’s oldest buildings. erine’s Old Quad and St Anne’s Rayne and Wolfson If there is a way to dismantle the elitism preserved buildings in the 1960s coincided with the mass building in and imposed by Oxford’s architecture without simply of state schools across the UK. While the former are bulldozing it, it must involve reclaiming these spaces.

Grade I and II listed, and the state schools mostly imi- Magdalen students recently voted to install a photo extations of their iconic Brutalist features, there remains hibition of current students and college staff in the dina similarity in their openness. Kellie Harkin, JCR access ing hall—including scouts, porters and catering staff. It officer at St Anne’s, which was founded in 1879 and is an effort, Magdalen’s access officer Mia Portman, tells comprises many new buildings, noted that state school me, “to make it a more personal, friendly space which students often comment on the college being “quite a gives a sense of the community at Magdalen today as nice relief from the rest of Oxford because it’s some- well as its heritage”. The motion was backed by severwhere they could actually imagine themselves fitting al students who admitted that they had not originally in and living”. This attitude is reflected in application applied to the Magdalen as a result of its intimidating statistics: Anne’s falls in the top-five best-performing facade and had “felt anxious when they found out they’d colleges for attracting state school applications. On a re- been allocated here”. Similarly, Catz is in the process of cent school tour I gave in Catz, a teaching assistant from hanging new portraits in the library, replacing rows of a state school in south-east London remarked that the male faces with portraits of female academic and supopenness of the college was “a good way of easing stu- port staff. Initiatives like these will not single-handedly dents into the Oxford experience”, none of whom had change Oxford, but they will begin to overturn some been to the city before. of the long-standing historical baggage that Surrounded by older and comes with such an aged institution. more traditional buildings, We can’t undo their history, but we newer colleges can seem can change the way we interact with swamped and dismissed as Oxford’s buildings. They have existed less legitimately Oxonian. for hundreds of years as the propA particularly popular Oxerty of an elite class, but they also belong to us as much as they do to fess labelled Catz “a cross those whose ancestry is preserved in between a prison and a the plaques by our bedrooms and the primary school”. The post portraits in our halls. Taking owneris indicative of a popular ship of Oxford’s buildings is the only belief amongst students way that the spaces can become more that suggests the status welcoming for future generations of of newer colleges—often slightly more dominatapplicants. Esther Agbolade tells ed by state school students—are me that while her presence at secondary to the more traditional a n d Oriel at first felt tokenistic, that obviously prestigious buildings. A recent feeling was only temporary: “I proposal by the Higher Education Policy remembered that my being here, Institute called for the construction of new in spite of the college’s homage to Oxbridge colleges designed specifically to a man who didn’t want me here, recruit students from under-privileged backhas already inspired so many grounds. The suggestion misses the point—severyoung people I know of and probal of the newer colleges initially began in the 1800s ably more that I don’t. The college as societies for students who could not afford trais more than the building. I am hapditional college fees. Their pervading perception py at Oriel, whether Rhodes would as being less authentically Oxonian is a hangover have liked it or not.”

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Danse Macabre Alex Matraxia

I passed through long night of half-created conversations, something about psychology, something about constipation & people mingling, staggering under the stars—it’s a one bedroom flat most eyeballs are just blanks, apart from Sam's, who is being monstrous & alive as host.

He sets out snacks—I ask him if asshole is a canape, he says he wishes nobody would notice & gesturing—that heavy heap of self-referentialism, the drug of the generation.

Sam put a print up, Van Gogh's orange cafe.

I stare for a while thinking how ethereal & satisfied his faceless diners look— this probably wasn't the case.

Jon comes in & nostalgia passes like radiator heat, smelling of burning plastic Clarence was in a corner, I join him & we talk about what we'd do with our lives,

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brainstorming until interrupted by one guest who vomited his skull into the kitchen sink.

Jon passes round an ashtray with half-dead flies in it, halfbuzzing in ash as if tiny Vesuvian corpses. He tells me how he’s feeling so cynical & not enjoying himself, something about ‘social indigestion’ he rolled a cigarette & the others unrolled themselves into the night, doing whatever guests do trying badly not to be seen, spectator & spectre of the people closest to me, when on these smoking evenings, unimaginable egos like epileptic clocks — maybe the city hated us all— for pollution, for littering, for writing ourselves blindly on the huge dirty windows We head into another room— Jon is stoned— we write something boorishly sentimental alternating between lines:

The cocksuckers I adore are dead, The night-men dance —they’ve lost their heads, I loved too much, my angel wept, I dreamed too much, I’m lost instead.

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“This is just going to be about feminism?”

– the Oxford women behind the theory

Sexist politics, silencing, and predatory tutors Oxford feminists’ battle to be heard

Libby Cherry 16

Throughout her life, Judith Okely has experienced institutional misogyny first-hand. When she was at secondary school, she was told by her headmistress that it would be inappropriate for her to apply to Oxford. Not because of academic inferiority—but because she was pretty and, therefore, marriageable. Going to university, she was told, would be “selfish”.

Okely ignored her. She went to Oxford—where she became the first female member of the Oxford Union —and now she is an eminent feminist anthropologist.

But her headmistress was not the last person with whom Okely had to contend.

Nowadays, taking a “feminist approach” is hardly controversial. It has become part of our academic toolkit, a failsafe framework for students to deploy in essays across all the humanities and social sciences. But we can all too easily overlook just how recently academia has accepted feminism as part of its core. It was only this year that Oxford announced the new undergraduate paper in feminist philosophy, despite many of its texts being written decades ago.

Feminist academics such as Okely, let alone those writing on women, have long been victims of systematic structural silencing. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Oxford. Here, institutional tradition has at best sanitised and at worst denied the work of feminist academics. Translated into the banality of a reading list or module syllabus, feminist writings have been dissociated from the ongoing struggle of their authors. I spoke to just some established feminist scholars about how different Oxford and society were when they started out as academics—and how they overcame these challenges.

I put the first question to Okely. According to her, our nostalgic view of a liberated Sixties is a fallacy. Far from espousing free-spirited hedonism, the world she describes is almost stereotypically Victorian.

Her memories of her college St Hilda’s, still all-female at the time, make it seem convent-like: girls who got caught with their boyfriends were told they were “unfit for education”, and abortion clinic phone numbers were swapped under the table at Hall (contraception was prohibited for unmarried women).

Having studied for a year at the Sorbonne, Okely came to university with a worldview in stark contrast to those of her chastened peers. While on the continent, she had become fluent in French, picked up a taste for black leather jackets, and had pinned torn-out pages of de Beauvoir to her wall. But in Oxford, Okely says, “there was no question of feminism.”

Before even arriving at Oxford, Okely vowed to get women into the Union as a point of principle. And two votes later, she was successful in her campaign, having rallied supporters from across the political spectrum.

But if this looks like a rupture of patriarchal structures, the criticism of the change only underlined the degree to which sexism was entrenched—not just in university circles, but in the wider public.

“I had a lot of publicity in the media,” she said. “As an undergraduate with long hair who wore makeup and black leather jackets, the media would follow me all over. One person on the [Union] committee sanctioned my membership because he said I had only got there because of my looks.”

Okely’s tone remained dryly ironic throughout our conversation, but I couldn’t ignore the dark truth of

what she was saying. She took up a lot of roles at university—a student, a Marxist, an activist—but in almost every area she was met with resistance because of her gender.

When speaking about her experiences, Okely continually referenced the “virgin/whore” complex. While to me it seemed outdated, it applied disturbingly well to the contradictory role that women at Oxford felt compelled to emulate. A web of public structures monitoring the girls’ chastity with almost puritanical zeal existed alongside an equally institutionalised network of sexual harassment from male students and tutors.

For female doctorate students, receiving sexual advances from supervisors was, Okely said, “a given”. “I always said thank God my PhD supervisor was gay, so I was safe. I mean that’s the scandal. There’s a guy—he’s actually my age—and I know he demanded sexual services from all his female PhD students.”

One of Okely’s female students told her that her supervisor, after having flown out to the country where she was doing fieldwork, demanded that she sleep with him. Such behaviour was not only normalised, but necessary if female students wanted to be successful.

According to Okely, only the women who gave in to these propositions, “got the right references and got the right jobs.”

But Okely did not escape being sexualised herself.

As a self-proclaimed “radical leftie”, Okely had little chance of being elected to the Oxford University Labour Club, given the party establishment’s centrist politics. To her surprise, however, she found herself appointed. But her pride at the achievement quickly tempered when she discovered the potential reason for her success.

One of Okely’s friends later asked a senior member of the committee why they had allowed such a radical left-winger to be elected. The official—the son of a cabinet minister, who would go on to be a professor at Oxford—replied: “we needed a fuck for the executive.”

Dr Janette Davies, an anthropologist at Oxford’s International Gender Studies Centre (IGS), told me women’s position at Oxford could be considered an extension of the social science concept ‘Muted Group Theory’. “In any society structure the dominant is always male and he can mute anybody’s voice—but mostly the woman’s voice.”

Although the term is more typically used in the context of far-flung rainforest tribes, Davies explained how it mirrors the historic institutional silencing of female scholars. Plagued by requests for sexual favours and discouraged from entering university—let alone academia—women were left unrepresented and unstudied.

Even 20 years after Okely’s student days, Ros Bal-

17

laster, currently a professor of English at Mansfield, told me the how in the 1980s curricula remained “archaeologically frozen”. Impatient for change, as a student Ballaster became part of Oxford English Limited, a group of “socialist-feminists” campaigning to modernise the English Faculty reading list.

She helped set up a feminist theory reading group to pour over what would become seminal texts in the feminist arsenal. But while this sisterhood may sound romantic, the practicalities of their situation were difficult. These feminist moonlighters also had lectures to plan, essays to mark, and households to run. There may not have been raging chauvinists shutting down the groups, but the everyday societal biases women faced formed another formidable obstacle to the group’s activities.

The outsider status of groups such as Ballaster’s is characteristic of seemingly all feminist study. The Cross-Cultural Centre for Research on Women (now the Institute for Gender Studies) was set up by women anthropologists in Oxford in 1983. But it remained firmly outside of the university’s responsibility, receiving no funding and little support.

In fact, the Centre’s newsletters from the 1990s unintentionally but constantly underline the parallels between their research on the oppression of women worldwide and their own struggles at Oxford. In a 1994 edition, a report on a workshop in Cairo where anthropologists discussed “perceptions of women’s rightful gender role” sits alongside another article describing the appointment of Professor Marilyn Butler as the Rector of Exeter, the first female head of a formerly allmale college, as a “major breakthrough for academic women”. The researchers’ interest in the plight of their international counterparts came with a deeply personal significance.

Although not at Oxford at the time, Professor Lorna Hutson was instrumental in setting up the Women’s Writing and Gender module at the London universities. It became a runaway success, but her memory of bringing it into existence was so traumatic that Hutson said she had “repressed it, it was so painful.”

Hutson had been included in the committee of academics advocating for gender studies in the ‘90s, despite being relatively junior. However, on arriving at a faculty meeting where the module’s introduction was to be discussed, she found herself the only represen-

18

tative of the group present. She left early, in tears after the rest of the faculty, “tore [her] to shreds about it.”

“I was surprised by what had happened,” Hutson recalled. “I didn’t know that no one was going to turn up to this meeting, I didn’t realise I would have to speak and I didn’t realise I would be told that I didn’t have the rights to be in there. The combination of things, it made me cry. Which is something I’ve never done before or since.”

Setting up Oxford’s master’s degree in Women Studies, Ballaster too felt the full force of bureaucratic inertia when it came to curriculum reform. Not only did the new degree attempt to tackle subjects which had formerly been deemed unworthy of study, but it was attempting to bring together elements traditionally kept separate within individual disciplines. As a result, the academics were constantly pitching their ideas from the outside, trying to persuade faculties to lend staff hours to the course. The study of women’s experience seemed, in its very inclusivity, barred from institutional existence and structurally destined for marginalisation.

But when the Women’s Studies degree was finally established in 1996, Ballaster admits her reservations about losing the “strategic separatism” that had previously provided such freedom in research. As Okely said, greater institutionalisation meant losing feminist studies’ occupation of the “non-place… where the usual social structure is not there” and that had allowed discussion to circulate without mediation. “It’s that kind of age-old problem—are you propping up the system or dismantling it from the inside?” Ballaster sighed.

“I think in some ways we were propping up the system. We were saying ‘It won’t cost the University any more, you won’t have to change your library holdings massively.’” Forced to graft, shift and perform to find a platform, these women paradoxically risked sacrificing the anti-establishment fervour that had given their ground-breaking work its impetus.

Okely described a similar situation when applying for her first lectureship at Durham during the 1970s.

Instead of being impressed by her feminist backgrounds, the all-male selection panel found her qualifications concerning. She remembers being told: “We see you’re a feminist. But would you still be interested in the job if you couldn’t teach anything about wom-

en?” Okely chuckled: “And I said, ‘I promise I won’t talk about women, I’ll only talk about men!”’

To be a female academic in male world, let alone to lecture in subjects relating to women, meant having to effectively re-incarnate male stereotypes. Besides relinquishing feminist politics, one had to promise not to have children, for fear of being considered “unreliable”.

Such requirements drove Okely’s predecessor in the Durham post to desperate measures. She told Okely that at her interview, she had broken down into feigned hysterical feminine sobs, declaring (untruthfully): “I’m barren, I’m barren—I can’t have any babies!”.

It worked. They gave her the job—without a fertility test.

“If she hadn’t got the job at Durham, she said she would have gone to a laboratory to ask for female ovaries and put them in two bottles,” Okely recounted.

“Then, at the next interview, she was going to say, ‘I’ve had my ovaries removed! So that can assure you that I’ll be a good academic!’”

This absurd image of a woman clasping stolen reproductive organs in a glass jar, simply to get a junior academic position, only indicates the lengths of the constraints which Okely’s generation faced. In fact, this kind of grim-faced humour is one that all the academics seemingly turned to. Women’s Studies’ lecturers became famous for wearing badges emblazoned with the words “Oxford’s Cheapest Faculty”.

Feminist theory may sound technical. But it is grounded in material reality, and entwined with the lives of those who have written it and shaped it. When we hear academics today lecture on feminist thought, their oratory power isn’t stemming wholly from their rhetorical prowess. They are speaking with the weight of experience—the weight of suddenly unrepressed silence—behind them.

Libby Cherry

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The Splendid The Splendid I am

We are

It is,

Partly, wholly, Wholly full and Barefoot on carpet, Washing, rising, Ebbing, flying The sea, like me.

partly growing, overflowing. sand and sea. rising, rising, to another shore.

Shifting, sinking, Breathe out and squint Tilt your head I am at the end of the phrase, Above the final, You know is approaching; Fill my lungs, and wait to yawn— Breathe, like me.

sunk and shrinking, to the size of a pin, and watch the world spin. foot poised, resolving-sound that final chord. breathe.

Quite quiet, sounds like sameness, The strangeness of a place you leave and return to; It was long enough ago now and you’ve learned to Expect changes. But the most different is you.

See? Like me.

Let’s see, You were telling me a story about halves and wholes, neat folds in the paper.

You creased it there: this page. And you said you’d come back Later. Now may be as good a time as any.

Let’s see, Please call me ‘she’.

Looking at myself through you, I see some of my confusion on your face. That’s okay, We start with a conscious change, words that push things aside to make a space.

A word is just a place-holder, bookmark for what will come. Sometimes An undercurrent becomes the main story; a sigh, a shower.

The words you speak in your head have power, Whether or not you think you believe in them.

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Kei Patrick Read like me, Keep flipping through the pages, No, let the wind blow them; Come flying out!

Let’s see, Are there two pre-written lines

to choose between?

Can we compare them and If we take from one and From its parallel partner?

better see what they mean weave through some theme Both lines go on forever.

Can we tell in which one Which linestyle really has its heart?

Which is equally infinite parts borrowed I used to try so hard to tell.

To the empty, like me.

a story starts? this tale and written?

Now I just listen,

I listen, When I can, to what is To every nuance that I notice I listen, Partly guessing, Speeds away and Music, like me.

I am,

give them some air. may bookmarks

strong and flowing; when I hear, for what is showing, partly knowing. slightly, slowing.

Like breathing: it takes space to expand into.

Words and clothes like bookmarks help to keep out the bigger problems of the age, So please, call me ‘she’.

But I need a blank page, really.

But I need fresh air and full lungs and a breeze on my face.

And I need to just make some noise to hear my voice.

Because I have a burning inside of me and I could make a flame That would flower on my tongue and with no letters would spell my name: Music, flying, fire, the splendid, empty sea, That’s the breath. That’s the rightness. That’s us.

That’s me.

But you can call me ‘she’ for now.

21

Tri | pty | ch I. Glynn Thomas BRAMFIELD, SUFFOLK Postcard 50p “Are you looking for something, dearie?” The thick Glaswegian greeting came from the coats hanging in the back of the vintage shop. Doyel Ghatak stood at the door scrubbing his glasses with the corner of his shirt. Speckled with drizzle drops, they had fogged over as soon as he had stepped inside warm Pegasus. Another customer, a ginger Jesus, was on his way out. As he fumbled with the doorknob with his wet hands, his eyes and Doyel’s failed to meet. Their shoulders did not brush in this overstuffed shop. But, as he struggled with the knob, for a brief moment, they were something akin to transnational Janus heads.

Jesus was gone. Doyel’s glasses were wiped.

He had done a poor job of it and his vision was still slightly blurry. But, the voice of the misty figure with a silver bob, a crown of cirrus clouds, was distinct, almost as warm as the heating. As she tilted her chin to encourage a response from him, he smiled, and produced an awkward yet practised reply: “I’m just looking”.

“Let me know if you find something you like,” Dawn unfolded her Guardian, and returned to the Weinstein scandal. Months ago, as Doyel sat before his computer, and England, Bay Garnett

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had made Pegasus seem like a goldmine. Now, he stood underneath puffer jackets and sheepskin coats, glitter, leather, velvet, paisley, leopard, snakeskin, fair-isle, and thought: that’s a lot of crap.

Doyel stowed the brown packet of postcards he had been swinging in his right hand under his left arm. He had no intention of posting them to his mother who lived in Jadavpur. His hand tugged at the sleeve of a vermillion military jacket with brass buttons.

“How much—I’m sorry—how much is this?” he asked Dawn.

“Oh, that’s a hundred and fifty.”

“But, it was someone else’s.”

“It’s only a fifty if you’d like to borrow it for a week.” She added with a seller’s smile.

“Borrow?” He removed his hand from the jacket and put it inside the pocket of the corduroy trousers which belonged to his father. “I don’t see myself wearing this really.”

“Sorry, dear. Are you a tourist?”

“No, I study here.”

“Oh, that’s good. We could help you with Halloween or when your college has a ball. Usually when the kids are putting up plays around town, they come here.”

Under the bower of musty second-hands, Doyel thought of the Thomas postcard he had just purchased. The ‘eagerness to be included’ within the fish-eye perspective had inevitably led to the distortion of what was real only to fit

Rohit Chakraborty

within the circle. How aptly Thomas divided the home and the town. Bramfield’s Church reminded him of the church of St Peter and the graveyard on Queen’s Lane. Queen’s Head reminded him of King’s Arms. And there, at the bottom of the orb, the bottom of the world, the row of houses reminded him of Calcuttan four-storeys comprising Middle Income Group flats row after row after row and one of the many windows which belonged to him and his mother. They were separated but arrested within the orb.

Town and home. Oxford and Calcutta. Doyel and Mahua.

As he fiddled with his receipt for the postcards from Arcadia inside his pocket, he felt something familiar: folded tickets to the Victoria Memorial from many moons ago. He pulled it out. Giddy reminiscing gave way to giddy anger. He had inherited his eyes, his hair, his nose from his mother, his trousers, his shirt, and his sandals from his father. He must inherit something else too, Ma’ had implied. Get rid of that which is dearly yours lest they gossip, Ma’ had implied. Under the bower of musty second-hands, Doyel realised how he was relegated to the bottom of the orb. The coats and frocks and costumes seemed to crush him, separate his present with things of the past: A coterie of connoisseurs who excluded him from their curation now seduced him with their spoils. In Pegasus, they were separated but arrested. What’ll I do with another disguise, he thought. “Maybe another time”: with these words

Doyel pocketed the tickets, dropped his Arcadia receipt, and left Pegasus.

II. Margaret Green BATHING HUTS, SOUTHWOLD Postcard 50p Mahua Ghatak studied the naked parting in her hair in the mirror. It had been half a decade since her husband exhaled his life in cigarette smoke rings, trivialising his slow death. Running into Anjali, her neighbour who lived across the air shaft, on the terrace had left her seething. As they were hanging their washing on the line on a crisp December afternoon, Anjali had alluded to seeing Doyel and his ‘very good North Eastern friend’ at the lawns of Victoria Memorial.

“Oh yes,” Mahua said. “The semester exams just ended. The boys made a day out of it. They deserve it.”

“What a day, indeed.” Anjali swung her husband’s towel with blue and white stripes and clipped the pegs. Mahua did not miss the tone of the busybody in her words.

“Meaning?”

“That Gohain boy is strange. Haven’t seen anything like him.”

“That’s racist—” “Bits of Assamese isn’t the only thing your son has picked up from him is what I’m saying.”

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Mahua studied the vermillion of Anjali’s sindoor in her parting and said, “You saw them smoking? Drinking? What?”

The nibbling irked Mahua but she did not protest. Subratah, who was the assistant to the librarian of the Comparative Literature library, munched on papdi chaat. Mahua, the librarian, chewed on warm momos. They were on their lunch break. “You should get a smartphone, Mahua-di,” he said with his mouth almost full. “It’ll make life easy. Your phone—it’s not… modern.”

“I’m afraid I’ll take a thing that makes my life easy and complicate it and then throw it away.

I’m not modern.” As she finished her last momo, she wondered if Doyel was asleep in the other side of the world. She recalled the Falgun evening Oxford wrote to Doyel. They skipped to the samosa man, bought a bagful to celebrate, and took an auto-rickshaw home. Inside the rickshaw, Mahua, who had months of repressed queries building up, since the Poush afternoon with Anjali on the terrace, finally spoke: “Anjali Auntie was in the taxi behind you.”

“I know,” Doyel said.

“We were chatting about you and Himanta.

How you two keep an eye out for one another. In class, outside class.”

“You never like how thickly she puts on her sindoor.”

“Like she’s mocking me,” Mahua scoffed.

Then, carefully, measuring the length of the intervening silence, she added, “I don’t like that she saw.”

“She’s a gossip. You always knew that.”

“Who might have passed it down to you? I know nobody like that in the family.”

“Passed it down?” Doyel stopped nibbling on his samosa. “Why can’t it be something that’s mine? I don’t need to borrow it. It’s mine.”

“It’s… odd.”

“Are you jealous that she has something that you lost?” He added cruelly, pointing at her empty parting.

“Are you jealous that both of us had some-

24

thing you never will?” She matched his cruelty.

Inside the rickshaw, the Ghataks were separated.

Arrested within it until they reached home. But separated.

Mahua turned to Subratah. “I haven’t seen him in months. Doyel. I’ve spoken on the phone.

But, not seen him. Only heard him.”

III. William Bowyer BEACH HUTS AT WALBERSWICK Postcard 50p Doyel was in the Indian and Chinese aisle of Tesco when he saw CR, 21, blond, 5’ 10”, Vers. top from Suffolk, picking out a jar of Tikka Masala. The night before, he had sent a message to Doyel’s faceless square on Grindr.

CR. Hi DG. Hello CR. What you looking for DG. I’m just looking CR. Do you have a pic CR reminded him of Himanta: kind eyes, hair combed back, thin lips, compassionate. He missed him. Doyel sent a smiling picture he took of himself in his room. Sent 22.40. Delivered 22.40. An hour and a half went by.

DG. Are you there?

CR. Sorry, your not my type. U r cute. But I’m not into brown boys. Just a preference. Sorry.

Then he disappeared. CR had blocked DG. Doyel spun and stared at the frozen pizzas. He turned surreptitiously. CR had disappeared once again.

The aisle transformed into the dim interior of the yellow Ambassador Himanta and Doyel took from Victoria Memorial to Jadavpur last December. He had shifted to Himanta’s side lest the taxi driver catch them on his rear view mirror.

Himanta recited the death sentence from Satyajit Ray’s Jana Aranya, “What is the weight of the moon?”

“You saw it?” Doyel giggled into his right ear.

“What did you feel?”

“Dismayed. Then… prepared.”

“Will you return home—to Dispur—after you graduate?”

“I think so. Can’t wait to stump my interviewers when they ask me what the weight of the moon is.”

“You’ll work?”

“For the Assam Tribune, I think. They’ll make me do the small stuff —transcribe this, Xerox that. I’ll be invisible. Just a little while. You?” “I’ll hear back in March. Either I’ll fly or I’ll crash.”

“You’ll glide, I swear,” Himanta took a drag from his cigarette which Doyel never demanded a share of. “I’ll seem tiny to you then.”

“Yeah?” Doyel nibbled on Himanta’s ear as he let out a stifled gasp. At a red light, Anjali Auntie sat in a taxi next to

theirs, smiling at Doyel as if nothing untoward had happened.

Under the orange glow of the bulb, Doyel towered over Bowyer’s huts. It had seemed that the world was only this: the land, the sea, two huts, two figures clad in white. Remote and inert. Nothing more. Himanta had once asked him if he grew tired of seeing his mother at home, then, at university, where she was the librarian of the department of which they were final year

students. “At home, I’m in my box and she’s in hers. Separated and arrested.” Doyel had wished that Ma’ had not been as silent as she had been after their rickshaw ride. He wished she had said something after her retort. Her silence had left him dismayed but prepared for the life of silence that stretched before him like the sea and the sky joining to form a dome to arrest him. He had not seen her in months. Everything I have is a handme-down, he would have told her. It’s peculiar but it’s mine. Let me keep this. He imagined one hut belonged to him, where Himanta hid. The other, where the two figures met, belonged to his mother. Separate and arrested. He imagined himself as the faceless man looking up at the other long-haired faceless figure, Ma’, surreptitiously pleading by the side of her hut. We’re in white for Baba. We’re mourning him.

My hair which is your hair has not been shaved, upon your request. What part of me is me? Just mine, just for me? Let

me have this. Let me have him. He would have said all of this.

His phone buzzed. Mahua Ghatak was calling. But, it was a different sort of call. Did Ma’ finally upgrade? There was a black screen, a clean slate. There was silence, then, static akin to a transistor between stations, then, a corporeal silence.

“Ma’,” Doyel said, “tap on the video camera icon. I can’t see you.”

25

Caterpillar Adrian Hobbes

It was small at first, the mark he left.

Awake, I felt along my flank and noticed, for the first time, a hole, cylindrical and exact, bored through me like a flawless bullet.

It did not take much light to see the redness on my hand, the loss that left me spinning.

The next day I held my side and shied away from speech.

It was weeks before I saw him, splayed across my sternum like the whole of me was his; thin and squirming, black, half-curled, like a question mark, or hook.

By then I was wreathed with holes, and couldn’t stand for the skin I lacked.

I was mute for his stinging ribbons, the crimson tramlines he trailed down each arm.

Mute as his fingers rippled, and pricked below my skin.

I lay silent, I recall, paralytic as a doll when he crawled inside my mouth and made a patchwork of my tongue.

Now he cradles in my ear, and rocks me nauseous into sleep.

He explores me like a lover, kisses bright as a lover’s stain.

And I am made a fountain.

Yet in the space between stillness I clutch at this: That in the moment of death, lost wings may grow and unfold in metamorphosis.

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Bug

Lewis Hunt Hurrying a marbled length Of paradise floor.

The forest Curls with amber growth Uncrushed—where lurid in pearls, A welt of excreta Each appals, witnesses a tapestry Dangling on the root, Where the Lorikeet flung it.

Is there a gap there, in the root?— Where a small vault Holes from the flaring denizens, Haute couture in the canopy.

The violent ensemble Drafting the vapour in flaps: We sprint on all six, The moon’s jellied wetness Relieving a thick light Onto the insects.

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“you don’t want a tapeworm because you don’t like to think of your body as a home for other animals you don’t want scabies because you don’t like to think about your body beneath the skin you don’t want head lice because you don’t like to think of your body as food you like to think of your body as a single unit but really it is an ecosystem”

Where the body ends

and a silent mini-drama plays out. We see the slice of cake through the alien’s eyes, as it sits inanimate on the plate, and is then moved painfully slowly on the fork to her mouth. It hovers Rob Bidder is endlessly fasoutside for a moment, is tentatively inserted, mechanicinated by parasites, mouths, and skin. In his recent Body Squabbles residency at the Well- cally chewed, and swallowed; then, as the camera pans out come Institute, the illustrator asks us to rethink where the suddenly, quickly retched out. To her, the animal process boundaries our human bodies lie. We are encouraged to of opening the body to allow other things in seems bizarre. reconsider the physical self: the slow and silent growth of Like in Bidder’s cartoons, we are reminded of just how odd fingernails while we are thinking about other things, our the permeable human body would seem to alien eyes.

As humans, we have always been interested in our rules of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ places to grow hair: the body as “an unfamiliar landscape that you have no map for”. bodies. François Rabelais, a Renaissance-era French docThroughout his drawings, bodies shift and change, grow tor-turned-writer, transported consumption and swallowand rot. Our existence, we learn, is sponge-like—a process ing into a fantastical context. His experience of witnessing of absorption, exchange, and eventual decay into the earth. early human dissections—rare for the time—colours his groNowhere is this more obvious than in the act of eating, tesque and hilarious stories. In Pantagruel, the narrator finds where we relish swallowing and absorbing scraps of the an entire civilisation living in the mouth of a giant. And later on, he is saved from an illness by an intrepid band of outside world.

“Eating is a conversation between the body and the workers who journey down the gullet and into his stomach, external world”, Bidder suggests in one comic. This odd- equipped with tools for excavation in this goulphre horrible. ness of eating is explored in the 2013 sci-fi film Under the These Fantastic Voyage-style journeys within human bodies Skin, as we view consumption through unfamiliar eyes: a can be seen across modern pop culture—particularly in anihuman-like alien sitting in a restaurant somewhere in the mated comedies, such as Futurama and Rugrats.

But the idea of transforming the human body into an Scottish Highlands. A waitress arrives with a slice of cake,

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s

Gaby Mancey-Jones

array of miniature landscapes ready to be explored has a much older heritage. Bronzino’s Il Piato, from the sixteenth century, depicts a long journey through the body of the giant Arcigrandone. And more recently, George Shepard Chappell’s 1930 novel Through the Alimentary Canal with Gun and Camera imagines a trip beginning in the “Oral Cavern” and ending in “Colon-sur-Mer”. In both of their journeys, the protagonists travel along the digestive tract.

It seems strangely common-sense that you would journey through the body on the same path as food, beginning in the mouth and ending (crudely) out the arse. Unlike the labyrinth of the circulatory system, and the twists and turns of the respiratory network, the digestive system has an obvious way-in—and an even more obvious exit.

Of course, there’s a more traditional way down the gullet. We humans, uncertain of our place in the food chain, are terrified of being consumed—by predators, imagined monsters, or even by other humans. We fear bears, lions, and sharks: for they could relegate us back to our middling rung on the hierarchy—as our flesh becomes food. But what of our smaller consumers that nibble and scavenge rather than attack and maul? These are the parasites—those insidious organisms that snack on us from within or without: hookworms latching onto intestinal walls, or botfly larvae burrowing into bites. They are in us, and we in them, an ouroboros-style harmony that we call ‘nature’. Bidder’s interactive ecosystem also applies to the bodies of our larger predators. Landscapes swallow landscapes, worlds digest worlds. The poet Francis Ponge notes the snail’s relation-

ship with humid soil in his collection Le parti pris des choses: “Ils en emportent, ils en mangent, ils en excrémentent. Elle les traverse. Ils la traversent.” (They carry it, they eat it, they excrete it. It passes through them. They pass through it.)

But we should not think of ourselves as simply prey to these microscopic organisms that live on and in us. We are, rather, a field of grass to be grazed on, or an orchard to be picked and cultivated. Human bodies teem with examples of symbiotic relationships—where organisms that live within us do not hurt us. Most adults’ skin is home to Demodex folliculorum, a microscopic mite that lives in our hair follicles, and the bacteria in our gut is not only harmless but crucial for our health.

While we look at the landscape of our bodies, we should embrace the inhabitants of our strange worlds. Perhaps we should take up Bidder’s attitude to mice: “It might make you scratchy to know they’re there, but most of the time we get along fine. Why not say hello to them next time you look in the mirror?”

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HILLARY CLINTON DIRECTLY LINKED TO VACCINATION Since 1999, vaccinations has promoted conspiracy theories to students.

Antifa is an influence for sex that, with police discussion, creates a relationship which has been one of the country’s most talked about stories in 2014. Fox News considered a stronger response, they understand. And something from hand att Indiana as the words appear to blend to take a destruction of the company. In 2016, the Washington Post suggested that people were allergic to science.

As of March 2017, Milo Yiannopoulos and his head with an organisation declared that ‘sex’ was a conspiracy theory. The Clinton Administration criticised the fact when he suggested it was an American response for gunfire. The Democratic National Committee (1995) appeared to allow the moment for his birthday, but was criticised entirely by the UK. Admitted of a less-advisable media rules, Trump said that he doesn’t even comment on the rules.

On the Green, Trump said that “it’s really good you have sex with medical cannabis.” Much of the leftists are all pregnant and say that “the start and end into flight MH370 depends entirely on flat earth.”

Most recent concerns leave a claim that sexual attractiveness creates Antifa entities that are unlikely go within the story. Online themed protestors ask for feminist research in social media. The One World News media self-promotes and distrusts the world, recalling the beautiful events of the 1980s.

The news tract of this reality was evidence that the truth is no experience because they’re going to expect fake news.

Why are all the protestors from the liberal market?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 12, 2017 Wikileaks deals Trump state-

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ment as “a present holding on its purpose.” Trump’s campaign story has part of this example in preparation for Assange’s body double.

US President Trump particularly staggers the YouTube University Health Conservation by demonetising vaccinations.

The Chinese have to account some of the fact that it was a preservative that would release free speech around the North Andreas fault. This Trump speculates Hilary Clinton fans leaked the DNC emails with aspartame.

Clinton has been an unpleasant contributor on the news website Zuckerberg, which has been organised by political tribute of nothing. But on Twitter, there has been allegations that she has been deleting herself. The event on Twitter on May 20, 2017 saw protestors release a video of Seth Rich’s murder.

The Senate declared the tape #fakenews and ban in New York City.

The news speculated that Hillary’s health and supporters were absolutely crucial to the tape.

Receiving the award, Yiannopoulos said, “I would thank the chance to the products of the tape and of the conspiracy theorists at the same time, on the second amendment of free media over memes.”

People was also presented on the truth and several fabricated presidential readings. A report on the Daily Mail reveals Clinton was “possibly vaccinate the alt-right for a minute to excel them into business.”

What we have in common is that the alt-right gives up to the better predictions of the presidential candidate. Vaccines are part of Trump, with the NBC reporting that the response to the country is all at once attractive.

Q & A:

What is your stance on fake news?

Wow, that’s something I haven’t given a lot of thought to. It sounds pretty terrible from what I know.

How do you feel about the article you have written?

What, the black hole machine you put me through that could potentially destroy the universe? It’s nice.

Why is it nice?

Because you have the opportunity to promote yourself in the workforce.

Can you distinguish fake news from real?

Of course.

Do you believe you are real?

Are you sure you are a student, Jessica?

Where did you get that information from?

From you...

How? That is irrelevant, more important is where they are going.

Who are they and where are they going?

Are similar to Pokemon and live in the digital world.

Thank you for your time.

You are most welcome. But you did not answer my question.

What question?

What’s the meaning of life, the universe and everything else?

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HOW TO CREATE YOUR OWN A.I.

This article was generated using Literai, an LSTM

neural network—a long short-term memory computer system modelled on the human brain. Literai can be programmed to write novellas, poetry, scripts and fake news articles.

Here is a step-by-step guide about how to run Literai on your Mac/Linux, and create your own AI:

2

Once you have installed Docker and the .txt file is ready, open up your terminal as administrator to start the Docker container. Copy the command into the terminal: docker run -ti --rn --name literai crisbal/torch-rnn:base

Once this is complete (you will notice a slight change in the terminal), open a second terminal window and run the following command. This command depends on where you have saved your .txt file—I have located it in the Desktop in a folder called ‘project’, but you should change these parts of the command accordingly: docker cp ~/Desktop/project/ literai:root/torch-rnn/data

4

Now you are able to train the model. Ensure that your computer is plugged into a source of power and will not sleep. If your .txt has a substantial amount of words (upwards of 3MB and over in file size), it could take anything from weeks to months to train. To train the model, type the following into the first terminal: th train.lua -input_h5 data/project.h5 -input_json data/project. json -checkpoint_name output/checkpoint output/checkpoint -rnn_size 512 -num_layers 2 -dropout 0.5 -gpu -1

6

When this has been done, you will notice a folder has been created in the Desktop called ‘output’. When you open the folder, you will notice many files called ‘checkpoints’. Find the file with the highest checkpoint number (rounded to the XX000) with a .t7 ending.

Jessica Evans

1

Before AI training can begin, at least 200,000 words of material needs to be collated into a .txt file. Any forms of text work, although if you are looking for a semi-consistent structure, it is best advised you begin with a series of novels from a single author. Once you have created a .txt file, you then need to install Docker. Docker can be found online—it’s an opensource container platform that makes it easier for users to create and run software.

3

Before training the AI, the computer needs to

be aware of a few parameters. In the first terminal (the Docker container), type the following (and remember that you may have named the project folder and .txt file differently to the example below): python scripts/preprocess.py --input_txt data/project/project. txt --output_h5 data/ project.h5 --output_json data/project.json

5

Once the program has completed, go to the second terminal window and paste the following. This command will ensure that your neural network has been saved: docker cp literai:root/torch-rnn/output/ ~/Desktop/

7

After all this, go to terminal 1 and type the following in order to print your words: th sample.lua -checkpoint output/checkpoint_ output/checkpoint_XX000.t7 -length 2000 -temperature 0.7 - gpu -1

After a few minutes, you will see that the computer has written a chunk of text. You can change the -length to increase or decrease the number of characters printed.

Then just copy the text from the terminal and add it to any document to save.

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(a) conversation I laughed and laughed through a mouthful of beads, teeth crunching plaster tongue folding plastic to powdery wisps of lettered strings.

Inside his eyes stood a tiny fist wristless swinging and knocking in reach— “The night isn’t always shouting and crowded.”

Our brains rolled swollen in slowing rivers of pebbled thought.

We looked on as thought chased word and ums formed a pattern of wincing jars, lining the pavement boldly shining I stood there waiting, awkward and upright So in the end he returned my disappointing smile and I walked back through splintered glass scattering moonlight across grey.

He turned at the noise— a jar escaped rolling towards the smile of the headlights

Katie Meynell 33

Ode to Joy When I first began to touch myself it wasn’t “masturbation”—it was nothing but an expressive action. Its implications and attached politics were unknown to me. I was unencumbered by any words or conversations that may have inflected my private action with shame or disgust.

I was, at least for a time, free from any awareness that something perceived as “unusual” was necessarily perceived as “bad”.

Of course this ended, as it does for most people, and especially for women. The death of this innocence was a slow buildup of self-consciousness, which gained strength only from my own creeping awareness that nobody else seemed to be doing what I was. But this was only foreplay for the greatest climax of realisation: a lunch time in Year 8. Here I discovered that not only was there was a term for what I was doing, but there was also a punishment attached. Once I had confessed to having done it, and worse, to having enjoyed it, I was cast in a new comic role.

Suddenly, I was clownishly sexual. I was desperate and almost pitiful—a neat punchline.

To my boundless relief, female masturbation and the steamy taboos which engulf it are being increasingly discussed. Masturbation is becoming an issue as regularly touched upon as many of our clirotises undoubtedly were by the time secondary school rolled around. From Rupi Kaur saying she wants to “honeymoon [her]self ” to ‘OMGYes’ promising “no blushing, no shame” in the virtual-stimulation of women, the route to self-pleasure is really having a moment. You no longer have to circumnavigate the internet to find material such as Cosmopoli-

34

tan’s instructive guide on how to “throw a party for one” (don’t “jackhammer” your clit?!), or Ilana Glazer’s elaborate preparatory ritual, which includes lighting candles, applying blue lipstick, and even erecting props—all just to feel herself up.

What’s striking about these ‘exposés’ of female masturbation is the recognition of masturbation as a sexual experience in its own right. Self-pleasure need not be the guilty, shameful, or a substitute version of ‘real’ sex with another person. Instead, it can be its own autonomous pleasure. It is to make love and embrace yourself as your own lover, to be the satisfaction of your own needs, and so close the rift between desire and fulfilment.

This view of self-pleasure might appear overly-indulgent, perhaps because it can seem incongruent with getting off to ‘Big Boobs Whores Squeezed Their Big Boobs’ (what a sick cyclical title!) at one in the morning. Wanking might seem, most the time, to be just wanking, but it has rarely been treated as such in relation to women. Festering beneath those Year 8 incidents, and the resultant embarrassed hesitation women are left to feel towards their erotic bodies, is a cultural compulsion to censure female-curated sexuality. It is key to mobilise a radically alternative narrative around self-pleasure, which not only divorces it of shame, but indulges in its brilliance. I understood and practiced this brilliance as a child, not yet fully submerged in the social politics that plague female masturbation.

Self-pleasure never operated as

substitute teacher for the ‘real thing’. Indeed, this ‘real thing’, that we commonly accept to be sex with another person, was neither known nor experienced. For children, then, self-pleasure is its own independent and lengthy romance; nothing less than a pure and messy adoration.

Yet, what with essays and dinners and jobs and driving lessons—and so much shame—this personal love-affair whittled away into something at best awkwardly guilt-ridden and at worst unspeakably gruesome. Perhaps these pre-shame childhood experiences are lost as much to the necessity of hyper-productivity as they are to shame: there simply isn’t the time to indulge in indulging oneself.

However, this loss of a devotedly self-adoring self-pleasure can be temporary. Set aside a moment. There is no feeling comparable to tracing out of the velvet of your own skin. Pad up and down its layers, indenting an index finger above the lip as if it is this very movement that makes the flesh sink and fold into its philtrum. These actions allow you to become the sculptor of you own body. It is a satisfaction akin to carving and squeezing a lump of clay and pressing out all its shapes. Play long and hard, tease and strain out each note of your body. Create the sensation and indulge in it. Crash and coalesce into a singular action. The joy is the work and the work is the joy. This, then, is what distinguishes masturbation from sex. Self-pleasure guarantees that the moment of desire can be the precise moment of fulfilment; you get to luxuriate in the sensations you yourself are creating. This easing of your own body into submission and desperation might seem an initially odd seduction, but it begins an experience that demands and reveals endless qualities all at once: your dominance, submissiveness, control, desperation. You soon appreciate that you are a diverse lover. An hour’s work: an hour’s joy.

Luce Irigaray wrote that the labia embodies both singularity and duality. As she points out, the folds of the labia are both two things (a pair of lips) and a singular whole. This pair forms an all-encompassing circle, a ‘Big O’, that is perpetually touching itself. It is a fitting analogy for the rewards of spending hours on pleasuring yourself. While masturbating, you are the lover and the loved—dual and singular.

Of course, sex is its own thrill, but these two sexual experiences are not substitutes for one another, nor are they interchangeable. By feeling yourself up, inside, and out, you commit an independent, explicit, and unrepentantly personal recognition of yourself as a sexual being.

Shame can go and fuck itself but, most importantly, so can we.

Fenella Sentance

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Scaffolding A shell invaded by a hermit crab, A mite occupying a clam.

You have made your home in me— Sheltering in the seams of my dress, Burrowing in the crook of my arm, Nesting in my hair.

Fat tick hanging in my armpit.

Termite in my window pane.

Bedbug.

You have built yourself onto me like a Bodged extension. Cowboy builders Binding us together with wallpaper paste.

You made your house here, Before you knew It was barren.

Make sure you draw the curtains When you come home.

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Vida

We leave bits of our bodies everywhere which means the hoover is always full of skin She spent the morning pulling his hair out of the plughole Felted into fibre glass, her hair Chokes up the hairbrush.

When she is half awake, She dreams about it falling out in clumps.

She'd look odd bald; an app on her phone confirmed his hunch.

She is chewing her lip, again.

She worries that strangers will mistake the scab for a cold sore. like they read into bruises.

He asked her whether she picked or bit her cuticles.

She told him those bits of skin don't tan anymore.

I guess she's dug the melanin out.

When she is bored, or waiting, She teases the hair round her temples, Idly nurses her thumb, Slides her nail under the scab.

She's not sure if it's an eyelash or an eyebrow hair; Either way, she'll wish.

If her breath can't tug it loose, because her finger's wet, She'll save it under her thumbnail and forget The murmur of him a single dark hair curled into the soap.

Adamczewski 37

Dirty Dishes Leela Jadhav 38

NIGELLA TALKS DIRTY—a YouTube video I found the other day, which manipulates scenes from Nigella Lawson’s various cooking shows to make it sound as if she’s having sex. “If you want to squeeze”—and here the video cuts—“my plumptious beauties”—and again— “then be my guest”. As Nigella chops, stirs and blends—all the while teaching and advising her viewers on how to make the perfect Turkish eggs, or cherry cheesecake—the video positions Nigella as an unwitting sexual object, destructing and degrading her authority as chef. Later, I discovered a similar video—GORDON RAMSAY’S SEX TIPS—in which Gordon slices and separates a chicken breast with as much vim and vigour as Nigella: “push your fingers in there”—surprise surprise, the video cuts here—“and it’s nice and moist”. What’s most interesting about this video is that Gordon stubbornly resists sexual objectification—instead it is his ingredients which are objectified, sexualised, even feminised, as Gordon hurls slabs of meat onto chopping boards, or dices potatoes with ferocity and Grit.

The differences between the two videos—in the way they are shot and scripted, in the self-presentation of each chef, are significant: Gordon cooks in a well-equipped if character-less kitchen; his “tutorials” are brisk and professional—he is clearly a teacher.

Nigella, on the other hand, starts and ends each “show” with the school-run. Much of the episode will feature her pondering over different-sized onions on supermarket shelves; when she finally get rounds to cooking, it is at home, sometimes even in pyjamas—an informality reflected in her conversational style. Nigella will float around her kitchen, smiling at her reflection in a polished steel pan, or gracefully arching her well-moisturised arm to reach choux pastry and porcelain. She uses “a handful of ingredients” with vague quantities like “a few splodges of cream” or “as much or as little lemon juice as you’d like”, whereas Gordon will be strictly specific with “a spoon of ricotta” or “one pinch of sugar” announcing his authority with abrupt imperatives like “season!” or “stir!” Celebrity cooking is pervaded by this gendered power difference: Nigella’s femininity undermines her professionalism, while Gordon’s masculinity is used to emphasise his. Nigella is

framed as domestic and amateur, a relatable image for those watching, whereas Gordon is professional and skilled—he is a respected teacher, while Nigella is a friend.

Nigella is no doubt as talented as Gordon, but NIGELLA TALKS DIRTY is symptomatic of the way in which female chefs are pushed into a binary reminiscent of the Madonna-Whore complex: there is either the friendly grandma, like Delia or Mary Berry, or Nigella’s hyper-sexualised objectification— there is apparently no alternative (plus a quick search on YouTube shows that not even Mary Berry is immune to filthy euphemistic videos—MARY BERRY INNUENDO BINGO). Men are afforded a greater variety of roles in the kitchen, as indicated by Jamie Oliver—the “family cook” and “ultimate family man”, who is capable of promoting healthy eating and balanced meals with a self-effacing ease and comfort. His web-site, for instance, groups recipes into “Healthy Super Easy Midweek Meals”, “Meals for Busy Parents”, “School Night Suppers” and “Family Favourites”. His family—his parents, his wife and five children—are frequently foregrounded in his cooking shows, his cookery books and his media appearances.

Like Jamie, the chef Lorraine Pascale has a similar focus on “healthy eating”—but with a “weight conscious” angle that Jamie lacks (“My Cleaner Beauty; Feel Good From The Inside Out”, her website reads, “Join Me On My Wellness Adventure”). Women, it seems, cannot just eat healthily—they have to be shedding pounds along the way. This distinction between weight-watching and healthy-eating, between Nigella’s playful kitchen advice and Gordon’s strict, sober-faced instructions, bolsters gender roles within the contemporary cooking industry—and when less than a fifth of professional chefs in the UK are female, it’s clear that the cooking ‘female friend’ is the product of a deep-rooted and pernicious misogyny. Kitchen culture has a reputation for being dominated by angry men, sweating and swearing while they furiously mash potatoes. Cooking? Baking? Cake decorating? All perfectly fine for women— but becoming a professional chef? We’ll leave that to the men I think.

Violence is embedded within kitchen culture, in the act of both preparing and eating food. Watching Nigella sensually lick her lips to the camera, and Gordon rip open the legs of a partridge, reminds us that food is quite an interesting part of our life, and our relationship with it has always been a bit odd. Right from when we used to eat each other, to when we used to eat our pets, and to now—when we happily eat anthropomorphic foods like Pom-Bears and Potato Smiles—there is something violent

39

about the emotional barrier we put up to the things we place in our mouths. A symptom of this is the language we use to cook—“dice” the onions or “crush” the garlic—and a certain recipe by the Israeli-British chef Yotam Ottelenghi even suggests I “blitz to a smooth paste” before “pounding the lemongrass”. This violence is overt, even over-egged.

Consider, for instance, that medical surgery is an inherently violent act—yet its semantic field is sanitised, purified and palatable: it is called an “operation” or “procedure”, the weapon-like tools are “instruments” and the cutting out of your bodily organs is described as an “excision”. The normality of surgery has effaced its violence. The same cannot be said for food, despite its normality: the violence implicit in its preparation and consumption is emphasised, its intensity highlighted, to enact our dominance over the foodstuffs we are blending, mashing, and eating. And this violence is routinely co-opted to subjugate women. NIGELLA TALKS DIRTY (a YouTube genre in and of itself: there is also NIGELLA LAWSON SEXY TALK and NIGELLA LAWSON HOT, both with hundreds of thousands of viewers) tampers and meddles with Nigella’s “instructions” so that she suffers the same violence she uses against her food: “pound the ingredients like so, and it’s perfect for me”, for instance, is reduced to just “pound… me”. Nigella becomes her food—and the viewer is invited to consume both.

The overt sexuality and violence of cooking is epitomised in the growing “foodporn” industry. I recently found a highly entertaining website that tells you what your food might say if it could “express love”. Some highlights were “Yeah, spank me harder with that spatula!”, spoken by a pancake, and “So go ahead, fondle and play with your fork”, said by a marinated chicken breast. Foodporn constitutes

another popular genre on YouTube, with videos like THE BEST BURGER: FOODPORN WARNING! accumulating nearly three million hits. Such videos can make anything appear sensual: melted camembert, a tower of pancakes oozing with runny chocolate, creamy macaroni cheese. While most of these videos tend to focus (intensely) on the food itself, a significant sub-genre features women consuming this food—glossy burgers and chips, ferociously tearing wings from a fully-fledged chicken breast. These videos should come with a NSFW warning—they can be borderline pornographic.

“Mukbang” is hugely popular in South Korea: a digital food phenomenon consisting of “online eaters”, often women, who film themselves eating and talking about eating. Viewers gaze passes between the “eaters” and the food, objectifying and consuming both.

The food we eat has suffered, as a mutilated or murdered living thing. Dominance is in the hands of the individual that feeds, while the food which is eaten is completely disempowered. An emotional disconnect prevents us from thinking too much about the butchering and killing that has gone into its preparation. In The Sexual Politics of Meat, the feminist-vegetarian critic Carol J. Adams argues that this emotional disconnect stems from the notion of an “absent referent”, where the animal we consume is “absent”—because, after it has been killed, it is swiftly transformed into “meat” and the signifier for its corpse is altered. We write the animals out of their lives when we kill and consume them. The animal is no longer a living and independent entity, which makes it easier to consume without actively thinking of the animal as ever having lived.

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Adams then goes on to apply the idea of an “absent referent” to the hyper-sexualisation of women. By objectifying women—by enclosing them within the framework of “a piece of meat” or “a dish” served up to male consumers/viewers—we remove their womanhood and their personal agency, so we can more easily see them as objects for consumption. Nigella’s image is built off sensuality: she wears well-fitted tops and smiles lusciously at the camera while licking dark chocolate off her fingers. While this is an image she has constructed and cultivated herself—she believes in using “food as a feminist act”, as a way of asserting self-determination and female agency—her pleasure is clearly subject to the objectifying dominance of the gaze, because the language of the kitchen, the language used to talk and objectify food, is also stacked against women. So the process that transforms animals into food is replicated in the production and dissemination of sexism in the kitchen.

So what can we do? Adams argues that vegetarianism represents a new wave of feminism. She links meat with toxic masculinity—and the violence we inflict on food with the murder of the animals we use to create it. But I’m not so sure. The problem stems from the way we speak about food. The language we use to prepare it make it sound like a show of masculine power. “Blitz”, “Pound”, “Smash” and “Whip” can just as easily be used to sexually objectify as to professionally instruct. Perhaps it’s time we overhauled and detoxified the language we use to talk about cooking—to reconfigure the act of baking, cooking, cake-decorating as a skillful procedure, requiring patience, practice and a little bit of talent. And what’s more, it desexualises the process of cooking which, let’s be honest, is kind of weird anyway.

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Graceful Gaze at the Bethnal Green Cabaret Alex Matraxia It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.

—Frank O’Hara The smoke goes now, discreetly leaving us with gold curtains, a blue Mulholland stage, where a blurred microphone of camp gods deliver us into a perfect land, middle ground between light & shadow, or as the dark master said of our ‘world of opposites’ “the more darkness you can gather up, the more light you can see too” in an evening where the bartender is performing at 11, singing of pills & gasoline in Greta Garbo-punk.

The silhouettes of glamor are drinking, nodding heads & glasses in the grand kitsch pit of small tables & small lampshades, applauding as someone pulls a string of lightbulbs out of a painted gasp.

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The emcee rages, red-sequined, breath like burning jasmine, igniting the ceiling & the long strands of glitter that blaze with a lost opalescence; & when the spotlight falls, he & us are silent, are performing for each other a dark magic, transfixion of escape, as all the eyes in the room stare helplessly at the fine way he swivels his ass in ridiculous white trousers & walks the stage decadently, regally cold. Why, we try so hard to be elegant yet if we have any grace at all, we are surely wasting it, passive to the almighty grace of others, selling their majesty to the pit.

The emcee gives us his gay farewell, reads from his own unsold novel, an entire plot in his chalked face & lips, like some ornate music box reminding us how dust takes the untouchable. It is difficult to appear so.

Frank’s saying hollers like a phone number, the ones we desperately try to remember.

In fact, was there any grace to begin with?

Or was there only bodies, waiting for a break?

Waiting to be broken by the spotlight & the dazzling gaze who take us in our sleep

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Not YourInterview with HabibtiYesmeen Mjalli

thing that had happened to us 70 years ago, and I knew we were all hurt and angry—but I didn’t understand why.”

Then she moved to Ramallah when she graduated college. Her desire for activism, she tells me, stemmed in part from her need to feel a sense of belonging. “I was struggling with this idea that I didn’t know who I was—when I was raised in the US I was always made to feel distinct from the rest of the people growing up who had blonde hair and blue eyes, and didn’t have this weird Arab background that was demonised in the media. Then I came to Palestine, and it’s sort of the same thing—they [Palestinians] were like ‘okay, but where are you really from?’”

Despite her American passport, Mjalli is a Palestinian citizen, which means she is unable to travel into Israel or fly to Tel Aviv. She has become hyper-aware of the restrictions and limitations placed upon her due to her Palestinian nationality—but neither does she feel entirely at home in Palestine: “I look a little different, I sound a little different, and people here definitely make me very aware that I come from a different background. So I found myself in TW: Sexual harassment /sexual assualt this sort of identity crisis, thinking, okay, I’m not really at When she embroidered a denim jacket with the words ‘Not home here, so who the hell am I, and why am I being marYour Habibti’ (Not Your Darling), Yasmeen Mjalli thought ginalised for this?”

Her sense of being an outsider led her to form Babyfist, of it as personal message of feminist defiance. But when a community where “it was okay to be different, it was in she posted a photo of herself wearing it in Palestine on Infact celebrated.

You can’t deviate from the norm—there is ternational Women’s Day, her comments and DMs were no norm. ” flooded with girls asking where they could get one like it.

Since starting out as an activist, Mjalli has faced criti“I realised there was something here that I could act cism from Palestinians who feel that her work should not upon,” Mjalli, a 21-year-old Palestinian-American student, be a priority under occupation. “It’s somehow as if, if I tells me. “I remember painting jackets out of the living draw attention to these issues of social injustice, I’m someroom. Every jacket took me four, maybe five hours to paint, how undermining the occupation. Many Palestinians’ misand I painted probably 50 before I was like okay, this is way sion is to illustrate to the world that we are occupied, and too much, let’s get this somewhere official.” And so Mjalso they find it frustrating when someone comes along and li’s brand, Babyfist Denim, was born—“designed to start a draws attention to an issue that isn’t occupation. conversation about Women’s Rights worldwide.” The jack“But my whole argument is that we should be able to ets are hand-embroidered in a co-op of 25 women across work on ourselves socially, economically, legally, without various villages in the West Bank, before they are sold to having it somehow take away from our right to be free, and buyers around the world. our right to be recognised as humans.

When we refuse to Mjalli was raised in North Carolina, but spent three months in Ramallah every summer. As a child, she was unaware of the political situation in the West Bank. “I knew that there was this big scary occupying power that we were all terrified of, I knew that there was this awful

The activist fighting sexual violence with fashion Emily Lawford

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Emily Lawford

work on our social issues, our legal issues, that almost gives fuel to the stereotype that the western media has given us.”

Occupation also has a physical impact on Mjalli’s business. The T-shirts are now made in the West Bank, while the jackets are made in Gaza—which causes difficulties, especially as the Palestinian postal system is dependent on Israel and its holidays. She describes how just the other day, she shipped a huge order for a group of female students in Jordan, only to find that only half of the clothes arrived, a month later. She sighs: “It’s just always so dependent—so unstable.”

On one October day last year, Mjalli took a typewriter and sat by the side of a road, asking women to share their stories of sexual harassment while she wrote them down.

The stories she heard began her ‘Typewriter Project’—a collection of anonymous women’s stories of harassment.

Some are displayed on the Babyfist website: I was so excited to visit Bethlehem on Christmas Eve. I expected it to be a memorable and special day filled with community and joy. What I didn’t expect was to feel a man’s hand reach through my legs and onto my vagina and he proceeded to grope me… I will not be silenced any longer.

I was walking along a dirt road and no one else was around.

A man approached me and said ‘hello’. He shook my hand and that was perfectly fine and friendly. Then he poked my breast

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and made a hand gesture implying sexual intercourse. I was so surprised that the only thing I could say was ‘NO!’ and I left. I walked away as fast as I could. I had never felt so scared in my life.

Coming from a “very small town” in North Carolina, Mjalli was subjected to little street harassment growing up—this changed when she moved to Ramallah. But, she tells me emphatically, she does not think that sexual harassment is something specific to Palestinian or Arab culture—as the Typewriter Project, which now records stories from women all over the world attempts to show. She is currently undertaking a typewriter tour of Italy and the US, travelling from university to university and collecting stories of harassment and assault from students.

“Honestly, you could copy and paste every story from the Palestinian side. I mean, if I gave you all the letters I’ve collected from the US and Italy and Palestine, and asked you to pin them up on a map, you wouldn’t be able to,” she says. “They transcend nationality, and local borders, and race, and religion—they’re so universal.”

For her latest exhibition, ‘Buried and Freed’, hundreds of letters are displayed in a child’s coffin, detailing stories of sexual harassment, which viewers are invited to pull out and read. Mjalli says she conceived this idea when she read about a pre-Islamic tradition where tribes would bury alive female infants as soon as they were born, to prevent any possibility of them bringing future dishonour and shame on their family. When the Qur’an was later adopted, it condemned the practice and decreed that the infants would be given a space before God to tell what happened to them— and only at this point would they be given the divine right to enter heaven.

For Mjalli, this was a powerful instance of the female voice telling her story, and in telling it, also finding catharsis and relief. “I feel that in today’s society, even though that practice is dead it still metaphorically happens—there are there are societal constructs and norms where female voices are buried. For me one of the biggest and most critical aspects of my work is to encourage women to use their voices—because not only does that catalyse collective

46

change, but it also catalyses individual healing.”

“And so I wanted to create this coffin through which all letters were featured and participants were welcomed to pull them out to read them. And by pulling them out, they are mimicking this resurrection of the child, and her voice, and by giving that child the honour acknowledging her story, they are helping her further down that road of healing.”

Mjalli will return to America next year to study for her masters’ degree in Women’s Studies at Duke University, North Carolina. She is “heartbroken” about leaving Palestine. “In the United States,” she tells me, “it’s such a bubble, you’re so removed from the tragic reality of the rest of the world. Most people’s concerns do not extend beyond their own lives here, and I was very much in that same bubble.”

I wonder, though, if Mjalli’s western upbringing ever hinders her ability to relate to the Palestinian-born women for whom she advocates. “It can be a bit difficult,” she admits, “because sometimes I feel torn between two very different cultures and ideologies. I’m always checking myself to make sure I’m not bringing one ideology from one side onto the other in a way that maintains a hierarchical structure of power. My goal is to foster conversations about what we can build in the liminal space of identity, free of post-colonial white feminism and of traditional Muslim patriarchy.”

Does her American identity change how she sees her responsibility? “Yes and no,” she says. “I was raised by two conservative Muslim parents hailing from a small village in the north of Palestine. If I feel distanced from other Palestinian women, it’s only because my struggle was particularly situated in the United States where I had to try and defend a culture that was simultaneously infringing on my own views.”

Although misogyny finds expression in different ways around the world, Mjalli’s mission is to help all women learn to speak up and acknowledge what they have undergone. “I ask women to share their stories with me,” she says, “because if you don’t let yourself feel the pain, you won’t heal, or even worse: you will forget how to love.”

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A Summer Sliced Up Joy Wang Saveur is an affordable French restaurant nestled between swish corporate offices and a busy shopping district. It has travelled a long way from its humble begin-nings as a modest stall in the far-most corner of a large food court, the passion project of two young Singaporean chefs who sacked off their office nine-to-fives to bring af-fordable French food to Singapore. Three hundred restaurants open and close every year in central Singapore, yet the fame of Saveur’s dishes has weathered it through eight years of market instability. You only need to glance at the menu to be drawn in: their signature duck confit and sweet rolled angel hair, a crispy pork belly and cassoulet—and, most famous of all, their legendary pistachio panna cotta. The restaurant’s location and decor is far from fancy—all polished plastic tables and white tiled walls—but their food attracts a faithful audience of Singaporean yuppies, who eat and drink to the sound of Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shape of You’.

The first thing I notice when I arrive in the kitchen—working a summer job—is that all the chefs around me are young Malaysian and Mandarin-speaking men. They sneak surreptitious glances at me as I cube the carrots and shelve the dishes. I am the new girl, the small Singaporean hiding her deficiency in Chinese by communicating exclusively in smiles and nods. Han, the front chef, stands next to me stirring the soup. He attempts to speak to me in broken English but I struggle to hear: the kitchen is loud and lively, everyone’s laughing and cracking jokes. During dinner service frenzied people continue to ask me questions in Chinese that I have to ask them to repeat once, twice; more than three times.

I am the exception in the kitchen, that much is obvious. Singaporeans like me tend to shy away from this kind of low-pay, labour-intensive, long-hour employment—leaving Malaysians to pick up the slack. They dislike the job as much as Singaporeans, but when you have committed three years of intense study to culinary school, there is no option but to take what you’re given. Everyone in the kitchen dreams of success. While pouring out the soup, Han tells me of his dream to set up his own nasi lemak (spicy coconut rice) restaurant. Progress is slow—hindered by sky-high rents, amongst other things—but his dream persists: “I’ve nailed the chilli sauce”, he tells me, “so now I just need to nail the rice.” All the chefs dream of owning their own restaurant in Singapore, though few will likely succeed.

A typical day’s work goes like this. I arrive at the kitchen at 10.30am, wearing cargo pants and clunky waterproof shoes, before I swap my shirt for a chef jacket and head into the kitchen, murmuring a shy Mandarin “good morning” to Eric and Thomas, who are already boiling potatoes and roasting the pork in preparation for lunch. Eric looks about my age, carries his shoulders in a boyish hunch and wears a flashy pair of sneakers, while Thomas is plump, bespectacled and slightly nerdy.

I join them, heaving out two big pots in order to make a start on the mushroom soup and begin to wash and dry the salad in a large spinner, hugging it close to my chest to prevent it from flying off the counter. I slice the cherry tomatoes, mince the chives, and haul the buckets of ice into the front kitchen. Work is in full-flow when Peter, the head-chef, arrives. He is tall and tanned, with his hair spiked like a Chinese pop star. He berates Eric, half-joking, half-serious, for wearing his brand new sneakers in the kitchen. Then, at 11.45am, the lights turn on and the opening plinks of ‘Shape of You’

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begin bouncing between the restaurant’s walls. It’s the first song of the day. It’s always the first song of the day.

Aprons are donned. Peter goes through each station and starts yelling orders. Service starts out slow—a mushroom soup here, a salad there. The crowds ebb and flow. I begin to roll the pasta into spirals, then heat the soups. The crowds slowly build. Orders begin to roll out fast and small paper slips are passed between the chefs. Mid-service something will always run out—often it’s the pork sauce for the pasta—and I duck into the freezer and ferry a new packet of sauce to the worktops. Bursts of orange flame illuminate our faces. “Two salad out,” I shout over to Han, placing two bowls piled high with leaves on the service counter. “Oui,” he replies. The bowls are whisked away by the service staff as I return to the mounting line of orders. Glasses of green pistachio panna cotta are dished out. The freezer door is opened and closed.

Often an unattended lava cake will erupt in the microwave. Eventually, the receipt machine falls silent. The chefs take a breather, or smoke in the parking lot. They giggle and play at impromptu arm-wrestling to fill the time.

I often went next door to the pastry kitchen to gossip with Fee. Unlike the other chefs, Fee is Singaporean and speaks both Chinese and English. I first met her when I was sent to retrieve the ice cream. Chatting to Fee soon became a part of my daily routine. Once, while she was stock-taking, she let me lick the pistachio panna cotta mixture off one of her spoons. To this day, it remains one of the best things I’ve ever tasted.

“You never eat the panna cotta ah?!” she asks.

“No!” I reply, in Singlish, “You never let me try!”

She sighs dramatically as I ramble on about how amazing it was, and how I need to get my hands on the recipe, and how I want to know how she made it taste so good, and how she is a genius, and so on.

“Oh my god,” she says finally, pulling out a plastic container of panna cotta from one of the freezers. “If I give you some, you shut up, can?”.

Dinner service is more difficult than lunch because there are double the customers. There is also the salmon confit to deal with, which is tossed into the sous vide along with shredded fennel bulb and apple. Then, there is the increased number of orders of foie gras, for which you have to coordi-

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Pistachio Panna Cotta recipe Adapted from Saveur Restaurant, Singapore Makes about 12 portions Ingredients: • Whipping cream (900g) • Whole milk (200g) • Pistachio paste (100g) • Sugar (120g) • Salt (1g) • Gelatin powder (7g) • Green food colouring (5g) [optional] Procedure: 1. Pour cream and milk into a medium-sized pot.

2. Lightly scatter the gelatin powder evenly over the surface of the cream mixture. Let the gelatin sit for 5 minutes.

3.After 5 minutes, place the pot on the stove at medium-low heat (do not let the cream mixture boil). Whisk in the gelatin until dissolved.

4. Pour the sugar into the pot and whisk in sugar until dissolved. Mixture should be warmed through and have no grainy bits inside.

5.Turn off the heat and transfer cream into a jug/big measuring cup.

Add in the pistachio paste, salt, and green food colouring, and whisk until fully combined.

6. Divide the panna cotta mixture into cups or ramekins, about 100g per portion.

7. Chill in the fridge for 4-5 hours or overnight. Serve chilled.

Notes: • If pistachio paste isn’t readily available, you can make your own: google Pierre Herme’s pistachio paste recipe.

• If your pistachio paste is not completely smooth, you may want to use a strainer in step 5 or 6 to ensure that the panna cotta mixture is smooth.

• You can choose to use 3 sheets of gelatin instead of 7g of gelatin powder, if sheets are more readily available for you.

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nate both the heating up of the lentils and the arrival of the foie gras itself—a delicate balance. Plating the salmon confit involves arranging three capers in a straight line, precariously balancing the salmon filet above it, and sprinkling an even layer of kombu flakes and minced chives over the fish—all while being careful not to spill any on the plate—before inserting a shard of crisp salmon skin in the middle. This all becomes instinctive. Soon your muscles begin to remember your own movements and those of the chef beside you as he reaches towards the sauce, which you hand over.

The wave departs as quickly as it comes. Soapy rags are whipped out, pots and containers cleared, as the countertops are washed and wiped. First the soapy water is sloshed down from the outer to inner kitchen, then clean water, then clean water again. The floor is scrubbed and the excess water is pulled away into the drains. The chefs will remove their bags from their lockers at 10pm. There are four chairs in the parking lot, where they smoke, chat and recover from the day. They tell me—the new girl, the small Singaporean—that I don’t have to wait with them, that I’m a part-timer. “It’s OK, you can leave early”. I never say it, but I want to be a part of this group—Fee, Eric, Thomas, Han, Peter—and soon they realise, and give in. Over time, I be-come their younger sister. Every night I follow them out of the restaurant, as they make their way to the bus stop, dipping in and out of their lives and their banter. On the way, Thomas shows me pictures of the cakes he used to make, or Han and I will be involved in a poking fight. Peter will rant about how easy it would be to earn money with just one person working a stall: “that way, the money doesn’t get split”. He turns around and points to me. “Eh, Joy, you can just sell mushroom soup, onion soup, pasta. You can set up a smaller stall just next door… It’s good money you know, you can earn $500 a day just selling the soups and pasta. See, she’s considering!”

I laugh a lot at these conversations. Han will say, “Wah, you’re smiling so much,” to which I’ll make an exaggerated frown and the rest will laugh. Then they get the bus back to Malaysia and I’ll head for the train home.

After two months working at Saveur, I told them I was leaving the job to go to university. I visited them twice after leaving, hanging around in the kitchen during their three hour breaks. Once, when I was sitting on the pastry kitchen counter, Fee gave me the recipe for the panna cotta. The recipe is still scribbled in my diary. When I began to drift away from Saveur, moving into new circles, meeting new faces—when I took a plane and arrived in Oxford in September to start afresh—this recipe became my lasting link to Saveur, to Fee, and to the moment I first tasted their pistachio panna cotta.

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A salmon sun above a glittering sea.

Tired lifeboats, Those spent mercenaries, Are the only ones to have weathered the storm.

Now they are but elegies of the forlorn.

Curled up in the sand he lies, His salt-crust hair black As the night which took him And laid him softly on Europe’s doorstep Picture those dusty Kurdish eyes Tearing as his mother died To lightning strikes, a hungry tide, Him huddled on the leeward side Of one of many ‘vessels’.

A three-year-old’s corpse was floating free Past Shylock’s quay, in Penelope’s sea: We surpass Churchill’s Gallipoli With the plight of our very own Bengalis.

We, the dry observers, In cool, calm and collected tones Solemnly discuss

His death— His final, waterlogged breaths.

Why belittle with sanitised language Aylan Kurdi’s unfathomable anguish?

These “deportations” That “detention” Those “hordes” This “crisis” Are all alien terms—those of the righteous.

How can we judge when among the Ibis Not “immigrants” but infants are washed up Lifeless.

Jorrit Donner-Wittkopf

Kids on the Beach 52

Student vs Superpower Jack Hunter When student activist Joshua Wong was arrested three years ago, 10 Hong Kong police officers dragged the skinny 18-year-old to the ground, and proceeded to beat him up. His hands were tied behind his back. He was kicked in the head and face; one officer even allegedly grabbed his genitals. His arrest, during the so-called Umbrella Movement protests, was part of a police crackdown against defenceless students—unleashing tear gas and pepper spray, dismantling their camps, and detaining their leaders.

Two months later, Wong, pale-faced and forced into a wheelchair after a 130hour hunger strike, vowed to fight on with the movement he had started as a 14-year-old schoolboy.

Wong co-founded his movement, Scholarism, in 2011 with fellow secondary school pupils who shared his determination to defend their Hong Kong way of life—founded on democracy, free speech, and education—against threats from mainland China. Specifically, they opposed Beijing’s attempts to “brainwash” their generation by making its communist “moral and national education” policy mandatory in Hong Kong schools. Mobilising support on Facebook, the students organised a radical new form of protest: they pitched tents outside the government’s headquarters, stayed put for several days, and eventually forced officials to back down. By 2014, Scholarism became part of the wider Occupy Central movement, formed to oppose Beijing’s refusal to grant Hong Kong residents a real choice in future elections. What followed was a series of mass demonstrations that saw hundreds of thousands of young people pour into

the streets to demand greater democracy. The protests, nicknamed the Umbrella Movement (in reference to the umbrellas students used to defend themselves against police tear gas), lasted almost three months and made Wong, a bespectacled and gawky teenager, a global icon—and an enemy of the world’s most powerful authoritarian state.

Three years on, Wong is 21; he remains uncertain of his future freedom. Last September he was re-arrested for unlawful assembly during the 2014 protests and handed a six-month jail sentence—just days before I had planned to meet him at a panel event in Oxford. After he was released earlier this year, we spoke over email. Wong was on bail, facing another possible prison sentence—but it was clear imprisonment had not weakened his beliefs.

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“Prison has only strengthened my political views, it has made me stronger in my own convictions,” Wong said in one of our early email exchanges. “Life in prison was, as expected, monotonous: water was my only beverage, and my only sources of news were the radio, a standard newspaper, and the television—a far cry from what I have grown to be accustomed to, which is a constant flow of information from multiple news sources and applications.”

But, Wong added, he was encouraged by moments of contact with those outside. “I had visits from my family and close ones, which I am very grateful for, in spite of the quota imposed by prison. They make up a huge part of the motivation which kept me going. I did receive letters from not only Hong Kong people, but also friends from around the world who sympathise with our cause and who wanted to show their support.” Wong has certainly attracted a burgeoning global fan base: in February, a group of US senators nominated him and fellow Umbrella Movement leaders for the Nobel Peace Prize. For Wong—an unassuming student in baggy T-shirts—it has been a remarkable rise to international prominence (a Netflix documentary profiling him was released last year, and won a Sundance audience award).

He admits being labelled as the unofficial voice of Hong Kong’s youth in the wake of the 2014 protests was “rather unexpected”. When he and some school friends ditched computer games and began holding meetings in classrooms, they did not imagine their campaign becoming a national movement. But within weeks, thousands of Hong Kong residents had piled onto the streets in support. “At the time, I did not expect as much support from the public, it started simply as a group of secondary school students who were concerned and met on Facebook. You can see how it evolved from a small protest to a mass one once parents decided to get involved.”

“With the Umbrella Movement, the resonance was even more amplified and unexpected,” he added. “Such a protest was unprecedented, and I am humbled by the power of the public.”

Wong embodies many of the aspirations of a younger generation who increasingly see their identity as ‘Hong Kongers’ rather than ‘Chinese’. Hong Kong’s youth is caught between the west and the mainland: energised by global ideas on social media, but living under the communist ideology of the Chinese system. Many are seeking new ways to express their identity, whether on the streets or in their minds. Some are even calling for full political independence from China.

But their freedom to express this nascent national identity is under threat. Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, has taken an increasingly hardline on dissent over the past year. Aside from Wong, several other young activists have been detained. Agnes Chow, a 21-year-old student, was banned from standing in election earlier this year after airing support for the city’s “self-determination”. Young Hong Kong football fans, who often boo and jeer when the Chinese national anthem is played before matches, could soon face up to three years in jail.

“It is evidently a form of suppression of dissident voices,” Wong told me. “Selective appeals to only prosecute activists, disproportionate sentencing, and biased wordings in the judgments are obvious signs of state intervention on free speech, be it initiated by the Hong Kong government, or the Beijing one.” Wong sees his battle with the Chinese state as a “David and Goliath situation”. But, he adds: “we need to keep fighting for what we know to be right, and to be fearless in this pursuit.”

Nowhere has Beijing’s interference and intimidation been felt more sharply than by students and professors in the cities’ universities—seen as hotbeds for dissenting movements like Scholarism. In Hong Kong, accusations of a “campus free speech crisis” are not merely the stuff of panicked newspaper headlines, but a real and growing danger. When a handful of students raised banners reading “Hong Kong Independence” outside their faculty buildings last November, they became engulfed in a bitter row that reverberated around China.

In response, the heads of all ten universities in the city penned a joint statement declaring “freedom of speech is not absolute” and describing calls for independence as “abuses”.

54

Even more chilling are Xi’s attempts to influence the teaching syllabus. In March, a video emerged online of Dr Benny Tai, a law professor at Hong Kong University and an early founder of the Umbrella movement, telling a seminar of students that Hong Kong could one day “consider becoming independent”. In the following days, he faced a wave of attacks from the Hong Kong government and the city’s pro-Beijing establishment. Some even demanded he lose his post or be persecuted for sedition.

“I believe the Chinese authorities are behind all the attacks,” Tai told me via email as the furore blew up. He said the wider threat to free speech in Hong Kong is “very serious, as reflected in my case”. (But, he added, he had not yet found himself self-censoring his work.)

Wong, however, believes the threat to academic integrity is more serious. “Professors are increasingly wary of what they publish and what they say.” Although students who protested against the mandatory Mandarin classes at Hong Kong Baptist University got suspended for occupying their Language Centre, and being rude to the instructor, students have relatively been rarely penalised for their political views, especially since they pay to be at the university.

“While for professors, their jobs are on the line, and doing research or speaking unfavourably about the Chinese administration can mean unemployment for them.”

Back in 1997, when Hong Kong was returned to China after 150 years under British colonial rule, a cheerful consensus prevailed. It became relatively autonomous, and was promised free elections, a free press, and the rule of law under a system called “one country, two systems”. But that world is now upside down. Like many of his generation who have grown up under Chinese rule, Wong believes China is betraying its commitment to maintain the city’s freedoms agreed with its last colonial governor, Lord Patten (now Oxford University’s Chancellor).

Can the blame be traced back to Patten’s deal? “I feel that Lord Patten did try his best to ensure a foundation

upon which Hong Kong could build a democratic society which respects freedom and basic human rights,” Wong told me. “Alas, the other half of the deal was China, and when China does not uphold its end of the bargain, the deal would evidently topple over. To get China to honour its promises is still a great challenge for the rest of the world.”

As Beijing’s grip continues to tighten, the outlook for activists in Hong Kong—by all accounts—looks grim. Yet some, such as Dr Tai, see hope for change in the younger generation. “I do not think we can have democracy in Hong Kong within the next five to ten years,” he told me. “However, we must persist. I can see this spirit among Hong Kong people. Some of my students do demonstrate this spirit. But whatever, we will continue to fight.”

Wong, too, remains optimistic about activism as a cause for change. “I am hopeful in the people of Hong Kong. Hong Kong may be a small city, but its people made it great. As long as people are still in the streets, fighting for their beliefs, I will still be hopeful.”

Wong’s continued fearlessness in pursuit of his beliefs— despite the rising threat of persecution—is impressive. The youthful, some may argue naïve, idealism that took him into the streets and into violent tussles with police as a teenager has clearly not been dampened. And when I ask him what his message would be for student activists across the world, he is characteristically resilient. “I would say, be brave, and do what you know to be right. Don’t let age restrict you from dreaming big.”

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notes

Cara Nicholson

? was Virginia woolf anorexic? when we labour the link between eating disorders and privilege we only pile on more guilt to gnaw away at the victim

To read: Patrick Melrose Nutshell Nights at the circus

Relapse is a déjà vu but not the funny anecdotal kind Watching live from the Tate Modern Picasso’s Girl Before Mirror feels like an homage to my body dysmorphia Sometimes I fall asleep hugging my body Comforting myself that my arms can fit around it

9am haircut

Reminders not fit for post its: Tell relatives how well you are doing How many ‘safe hands’ she is in Such a swarm of ‘safe hands’ DO NOT HIT THEM WHEN THEY SUGGEST MINDFULNESS

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i) Things that aren’t good for me;

i) Things that are good for me;

Glue

Paper

Mirrors

Baths

Dark

Sleep

Gym

Runs

Films

Books

Phone

Calls

Knives

Forks

Salt

Sugar

57

Anniversaries Maebh Mulligan Smith Solstice in reach with Protracted darkness And country roads As thick with flood As the waters that met you— It’s the time for anniversaries.

First rolls through That December night I remember since before My childhood ended My innocence stripped In week’s preparation for The Baby Jesus For the Holy Innocents we feast And I pray my soul (Father, forgive me for I have been sinned against, and cannot say and cannot pray with predator owner childsome abuser I know not what I did) Next falls your birthday: We celebrate, commemorate, Unable to whisper The sins you hushed The dead purged clear pure Of what you deprived Me, of course.

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JUDGES

ALEXANDER BEECROFT is Jessie Chapman Alcorn Memorial Professor of Foreign Languages at the University of South Carolina. He is the author of Authorship and Cultural Identity in Early Greece and China (2010), An Ecology of World Literature (2015), and of a forthcoming Global History of Literature.

ANDREW BILLEN edited The ISIS in Michaelmas 1978 with Sarah Boseley, subsequently of The Guardian. He began his career on the Sheffield Star and move to freelance in London in 1984. Over the past 30 years he has been a staff writer on The Observer, London Evening Standard and for the past 15 years on The Times where he has been a TV critic and feature writer. He lives with his family in Oxford.

ELEANOR MILLS is Editorial Director of The Sunday Times, Editor of The Sunday Times Magazine and used to write a weekly column in the News Review section of the paper on social affairs. She has been shortlisted as Feature Writer of the Year at the UK Press Awards. A passionate advocate of equality and keen feminist, she is also Chair of Women in Journalism. Publications include: Cupcakes and Kalashnikovs: 100 Years of the Best Journalism by Women, which is on the A-level syllabus.

She is on the board of the New York based Centre for Talent Innovation think tank and is a trustee of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund (JDRF). She appears regularly on TV and radio and lives in London with her husband and two daughters.

HSIAO-HUNG PAI is a journalist and author of Chinese Whispers: The Story Behind Britain’s Hidden Army of Labour (2008), shortlisted for the Orwell Book Prize 2009; Scattered Sand: The Story of China’s Rural Migrants (2012), winner of the Bread and Roses Award 2013, Invisible (2013), and Angry White People (2016).

For our 500 words competition this term, we chose a visual prompt: Edward Hopper’s The Lighthouse at Two Lights (1929). We received entries from students across the country who were inspired by the feelings of solitude, loss, and contemplation in Hopper’s painting to tell their own original stories. We narrowed them down to a shortlist and the judges chose the winner.

IRENE SABATINI was born in the coal mining town of Hwange (Wankie in then colonial Rhodesia) and grew up in the sleepy town of Bulawayo in southern Zimbabwe. She has degrees in Psychology and Child Development but writing has always been her passion. She wrote The Boy Next Door in Geneva and she received the Orange Award for New Writers for it: she was thrilled to see it as a critical commentary question for the Cambridge 2014 A and AS level paper. Peace and Conflict, a children's/young adult book, was published in 2014.

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“I was hugely impressed by these entries. All could be published in an an anthology and none betrays any hint of the callow. Having written 500-word pieces four days a week for ten years as TV critic of The Times, I know how much can be said in 500 words and how much must be left out. It is a real discipline, that word limit, but this is the age of the tweet so hey-ho. The other challenge facing the entrants was the prompt of the Hopper painting. Lighthouses have got themselves a romantic reputation for spirituality, introversion and the pathetic fallacy. In fact, they could not be more practical in purpose or design. Could the entrants acknowledge that interpretive tension?”—ANDREW BILLEN

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WINNER Edges

Sophie O’Sullivan UCL The light hits the room twice a day. It saunters in, gold to grey, through two bay windows. The holes in the wall make a magpie’s temptation of objects left on the table.

Both perspectives look to the sea. A unique selling point, the couple had agreed. There is room for one chair in each space. She favours the east.

After the fight she gets up early. Face, a creased pillow case, she sits for a while. She thinks about edges and rubs elbows and knees: the pivots of her body are thirsty. She observes the limits of the land bleeding into the morning. She cannot stand this much longer.

The day is short. It is November. By the time he wakes he can marvel at a blush at his window. He thinks of the blushes beyond the horizon. Ignores the marks she’s left in the condensation. Again.

“I do not like the sea. What is a beginning to you, marks the end of the land for me.”

“There is a wonderful, breathtaking tension in the piece. The last sentence is a killer!”

—IRENE SABATINI “The short prose piece by Sophie O’Sullivan won me over with its ‘magpie’s temptation,’ and the way in which it captured the same sort of Hopperian loneliness as the other pieces, but so concisely.”

—ALEXANDER BEECROFT “It seemed at times to aspire to be a poem…”

—ANDREW BILLEN

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