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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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Image description: the interior of a church with empty pews. Disclaimer: this is my experience of Christianity and of people of faith who I have interacted with – I believe that no one is inherently homophobic because their religious beliefs. People are often surprised when I mention I am a Christian (or Agnostic) – usually […]
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Image description: a shelf of several textbooks arranged according to colour, creating an appearance resembling a rainbow. It’s Michaelmas term, and this means that the time has come for Just Like Us to run their annual recruitment drive for the LGBT+ Ambassador Programme for students aged 18-25. It also means that it has been an […]
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Image description: My boyfriend and I at Wadham Commemoration Ball 2019 The life of an Oxford student can, at times, create a certain disconnect with the world outside. For me, my link to home is my partner, James. From the beginning, our relationship has been closely tied to my Oxford journey: our first date was […]
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Oxford Pride this year was the first Pride I ever attended; I’ve been firmly in the closet around my family for a variety of reasons, and couldn’t take time to go to my local parade without them knowing exactly what I was doing. So, for me, attending Pride this year felt like it was going […]
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Image description: Three generations of a Chinese family “I couldn’t make any sense of it. I couldn’t get over it. That precious son of mine, what happened to him?” These were the confused words of Hao’s mother, fat teardrops sliding down her face. “When I had my son, I loved and treasured him. Plus I […]
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Whilst my escapades with you have not always been riveting, and often not positive, the bizarre social dynamics of this bubble we live in has broadened my perspective on casual sex. In coming to this university, I felt that I was equipped with enough experience to sleep around and ‘sow my wild oats’ as my […]
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Image Description: Naomi Wolf. On Thursday, Blackwell’s hosted a ‘Philosophy in the Bookshop’ talk with Naomi Wolf to promote her new book Outrages. Her recently-published work explores the life and work of John Addington Symonds, a queer English poet who fought for gay rights through persistent expression of his homoerotic experience, and more poignantly, tormented […]
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There are a range of avenues to go down for lgbtq+ specific welfare in Oxford such as locally based charities and college reps, but a massively underused resource is the Rainbow Peer Supporters programme. The programme is made up of already trained Peer Supporters who identify as lgbtq+, who can meet up and support other […]
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“Arthur”, a children’s television show airing since the 90s, kicked off its twenty-second season with a homosexual wedding between the main character’s teacher Mr. Ratburn and his husband Patrick. Arthur the aardvark begins the episode by trying to guess who the bride-to-be is but is surprised to find out the bride is actually a groom. […]
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Image description: Marlene Dietrich in Seven Sinners (1940) “Fashion is merely a form of ugliness so absolutely unbearable that we have to alter it every six months!” – so wrote Oscar Wilde in a newspaper article in 1885, one of many reflections on the subject of clothing during his prolific career. It is commonly held […]
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Image description: London Pride 2017 After the Supreme Court’s ruling in favour of same-sex marriage, 26 million Facebook users added rainbow stripes to their profile pictures to show support and allyship. After the Pulse shooting in Orlando, GLAAD released a similar filter of a rainbow flag and the words ‘We Are Orlando’. As much as […]
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Being gay at Oxford for me is a very polarised experience; my college is one of the most accepting places I’ve ever been to, and I’ve never felt so comfortable anywhere about my identity before, but the institution at large still suffers with an amount of internalised homophobia I naively thought was extinct. Being a […]
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Image Description: Bird lady painting. The beauty of gender is that it is a mirror. Its tragedy is that we are so seldom able to pass through it. When we do, we are cut adrift, existing beyond the perfect paper fold of a handprint butterfly in a wonderland where nothing seems quite real. Where there […]
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Image Description: Marsha P. Johnson, her boyfriend, Joseph Ratanski, and Sylvia Rivera in parade, 1973 The Oxford Student recently interviewed Henna Khanom, one of the co-chairs for the Oxford SU LGBTQ+ Campaign. For any people who don’t know them, they are the political and activist arm of the university’s queer community. Henna is also a member […]
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