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Photo description: an AIDS awareness mural by Keith Haring in Barcelona The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a proliferation of medical trials seeking to treat and eventually cure the virus, one of which is the convalescent plasma trial. Scientists hope that, by recruiting volunteers who have had coronavirus, they will be able to develop a […]
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Image description: A Punch and Judy puppet show Vada’d any bona eeks recently? No? Surely you’ve at least zhoozed your riah? Blimey, you’ve really let yourself go. Contrary to popular belief regarding the quality of my writing, I have not, in fact, smashed my keyboard and sent it off with a smile and a wave. […]
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Image description: Joe Exotic crouching next to a tiger Netflix’s Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness has taken the world by storm. A missing husband, a sex cult, a murder attempt and hundreds of captive jungle cats have made for incredible, if completely bizarre, entertainment under lockdown. The ‘Tiger King’ himself, Joseph Maldonado-Passage – more […]
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I want to start by acknowledging how lucky I am. Many of my fellow LGBTQ+ people at Oxford will have been forced to lockdown without their significant other. Some are even shut away in hostile family environments, or trapped in the closet with no clear reprieve. I know how fortunate I am that that is […]
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Image description: a person at the window of dark room “I’m going to make sure that your wedding is nearby so I can visit you lots.” The acrid taste of my dinner after my mother said these words was not due to the food going off in those few moments. When saying this, I imagine […]
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Image description: a rainbow flag with the slogan ‘Queer & Proud’ The Albert Kennedy Trust (AKT), the charity for homeless young LGBTQ+ people, recently advised that young people considering coming out to their families should pause their plans as the restrictions in place to combat coronavirus could make a bad coming out experience a whole […]
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Image description: an activist holding an LGBT rights placard at a rally in the US In February, Pete Buttigieg became the first openly gay man to win a delegate at a US presidential caucus, with the former mayor for South Bend, Indiana polling ahead of Senator Bernie Sanders by two percent. It seems a simple […]
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Image description: A pride flag flies above Balliol College. Image credit: Balliol College Facebook page For the first time, Balliol College is flying a pride flag for LGBT History Month in its entirety. This has followed something of a prolonged battle between past student representatives and the college’s powers-that-be. To many students within and without […]
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Image description: Player characters from The Adventure Zone: Balance. Image credit: “The Adventure Zone” by Nicholas Kole is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Like many of my peers, I’m hungry for queer stories that aren’t exclusively about being queer. Coming-of-age and romance stories, while great on their own terms, are not my favourite genres, and I have little hope […]
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Image: Hijras in Laxman Jhula. Image credit: “Hijras in Laxman Jhula” by Quixosis is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 India has a complex relationship with the trans community. Historically, trans people have occupied a unique space in rituals; yet they still fight for basic human rights today. Many people in the West are not aware of India’s intersex and […]
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When I was twelve, I started at my relatively small secondary school, after moving with my family down to Newcastle. Anyone who’s been the ‘new kid’ knows that in the package of the experience is an obsession over the things we think make us weird. I was considerably overweight until I reached my late teens, […]
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Last Thursday, I attended a philosophy reading group which aimed to unpack the term ‘queer theory’ and the implications of such a term. In summary, queer theory explores how LGBTQ+ narratives are created and perceived in the culture of heteronormativity. Stephen Turton, an English DPhil student, led the discussion by dissecting Michael Warner’s 1991 article, […]
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Images: Publicity graphics posted by @interunilgbt on Instagram. Image credit: Charmaine Kok I’ve always resented the feeling that my existence is a political act. Coming out is a white-hot kind of dangerous in an environment where allegiances can be very efficiently defined by terms like ‘pro-gay’, ‘ex-gay’ or (heaven forbid) ‘a practising gay’. When your […]
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Upon arriving at Oxford, I was initially tentative about dipping my toe into the water of the LGBTQ+ ‘scene’, as it were. As a closeted and very awkward fresher, I assumed that I would continue down the path which I had precariously followed for the previous years of my adolescence, i.e. attempting to deflect all […]
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Image description: A pride flag hangs above a building in Oxford. Something dawned on me while I was watching the BBC interview with Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price during the recent election. Why, in 2019, was a politician’s sexuality still worthy of discussion? Too often, LGBTQ+ people are viewed more as representatives than as individuals. […]
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As culture and society have evolved within the west, so too have attitudes towards the LGBTQ+ community. In response, media depictions of Queer people and Queer stories have become increasingly prominent. While my natural inclination is to endorse this, I feel we must be cautious that representation does not become erasure. As a historian, perhaps […]
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Those of us who exist within the Queer spaces of social media will no doubt have been confronted with the ‘rainbow poppy’ controversy. It brings with it the toxic and all-too-familiar dog whistles of ‘I’m not homophobic but…’ and ‘I don’t care what you identify as, just don’t shove it in my face’. But why […]
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Image description: a pad of paper, pen, mug, and laptop placed on a desk. I’m sure that most of us, LGBTQ+ people especially, have been pretty disappointed by the way a show or book has turned out at some point in our lives. Maybe your favourite character died, or didn’t get the spotlight you wanted […]
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Image description: a photo of the entrance to Examination Schools, with the doors closed. Last Friday saw A Woman’s Place UK (WPUK) holding an event within Oxford. Their presence was not just in the city, but in the university. Specifically, in Examination Schools. I have all my lectures in Exam Schools. Last year, I took […]
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