Wednesday, May 7, 2025
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Barr and “ONE” slate elected

Tilly Walters
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Barr and “ONE” slate elected

Beatrice Barr has been elected to serve as Oxford Union President in Michaelmas 2020 in the first uncontested election in 8 terms. She received 522 first preference votes.

Barr’s ‘ONE’ slate saw all three other candidates elected to officer positions – making up an all-female officership. Julia Willemyns secured the office of Librarian-Elect with 526 votes, and Geneva Roy was also successful in securing the Treasurer-Elect position, receiving 548 votes. Cansu Uyguroglu will serve as Secretary in Trinity 2020, having received 535 votes.

ONE were also successful in races for Standing Committee and Secretary’s Committee. Their candidates were elected to Standing (Tamzin Lent) and Secretary (Josh Wallace) with the most first preference votes. 

5 out of 7 candidates elected to Standing Committee, were from the ONE slate – this was every candidate nominated. 

Some independent candidates were successful in their bids for committee positions. Adam Shewry was elected to Standing Committee with “Another Way”, who did not field any officers. 

The last uncontested election occurred in Michaelmas Term of 2017 – ever since, at least two slates have attempted to put out full sets of candidates.

Speaking to Cherwell, Barr and ONE said: “We are so thrilled that almost every single member of the ONE team was elected today. 

The first uncontested Officer election in two years, while not unwelcome, brought with it a unique set of challenges – I’m so grateful for everyone who turned out to vote for us today. I couldn’t be more proud of every single ONE candidate for Secretary’s Committee and Standing Committee, for working so hard for contested positions, and for the incredible team spirit that they have shown.”


“It’a a privilege to have run with the first all-female Officer slate in memory, and I look forward to being the first female Michaelmas president for nine years. I’m incredibly excited for the next two terms-worth of opportunity to transform our pledges into meaningful work!”

The formation and growth of Somerville-Corpus Women’s Rugby Football Club

James Standfield
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The formation and growth of Somerville-Corpus Women’s Rugby Football Club

At the start of this term, after years of trying to establish a women’s team, the Somerville-Corpus Women’s Rugby Football Club held their inaugural training session in University Parks.  Since then, the team has gone from strength to strength, winning both of their opening Cuppers matches, and going into the final match of term at the top of their group.   

The dream had always been to be able to field a women’s team made up of players from Somerville and Corpus Christi, but it wasn’t until this year that it became reality.  Last year, a few players took part in mixed touch rugby Cuppers but only one was involved in the fifteen aside game. This year on the other hand, the team can boast a regular squad of 25, with players coming from a wide range of years and friendship groups, around ten of whom attend weekly university training at Iffley Road.  This sudden rise was amazing to see and seems predominantly to be the result of a large group of interested freshers taking up the sport and sparking interest in other year groups. After a couple of training sessions, as word spread, we were lucky to have a wider squad of 35, which continues to grow as new players keep joining every week.    

From a coaching perspective, it was a unique opportunity because we were starting with adults who had either played a small amount of touch rugby or had no rugby-playing experience at all, with only a few weeks until our first match.  Despite having played little to no rugby, everyone had experience from a vast array of other ball sports, so we wanted to build on the hand-eye coordination the players had already developed. Our first training session started with a game of rugby netball, the idea being that we began with a game that felt familiar, built on existing skills and therefore encouraged everybody to throw themselves into the session.  As time went on, we were able to introduce more rules one by one, gradually transitioning the game away from netball until it seamlessly merged into touch rugby.   

Since that first session, the progress the team has made has been phenomenal and it is amazing to see the huge strides that everybody is making on a weekly basis.  Although the men’s and women’s Somerville-Corpus teams are separate, we are one club and have formed a strong relationship between the two sides, both on and off the pitch.  We are lucky to be able to train at the same time as one another in University Parks and we finish every session with two simultaneous games of joint touch, creating a great opportunity for both sides to learn and also to bond as a club.  The men’s team has also been very supportive, with individual players giving their time to do specialist coaching and big groups coming down to watch all of the women’s matches.  

I have been immensely impressed by the faultless commitment of the whole team, consistently getting brilliant numbers down to each session, and I am incredibly thankful to Barnaby Vaughan, Meryem Arik and Captain Liberty Conlon who form a wonderful coaching team. My role has been made remarkably easy by being surrounded by great coaches and talented players who come and throw themselves into every training session, no matter what. 

On a personal level, I am so grateful for the opportunity to be involved with such a special group and the team has made my life so easy by being such a pleasure to coach. It is amazing to now have two teams under the banner of SCRFC, training alongside one another and supporting each other both on and off the field. The journey so far has been wonderful, long may it continue.

A Hard Day’s Nightmare: Music and Sleep Paralysis

Aine Kennedy
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A Hard Day’s Nightmare: Music and Sleep Paralysis

A typical depiction of sleep paralysis may be found in Henry Fuseli’s 1781 painting ‘The Nightmare’. A woman in a clingy white dress sprawls across the bed, like a puddle of melted vanilla ice cream; a hairy little hominid perched on her chest scowls directly at the viewer, while a demonic horse looks on with milky-eyed glee.

It is no longer 1781, so my sleep paralysis demon takes the form of my dental hygienist. Most nights, I spend at least part of the period between 2 and 5 am in a sweaty, muttering tussle with what appears, in the moment, to be Agata, the nice lady who does my scale and polish. ‘Sleep paralysis is when you cannot move or speak as you are waking up or falling asleep,’ explains the NHS website, blithely. ‘During sleep paralysis you may feel like someone is in your room; like something is pushing you down; frightened.’

‘Frightened.’ There it is, the last cursory little bullet point. ‘It can be scary, but it’s harmless and most people will only get it once or twice in their life.’

Lies.

Given that the cure for the condition is basically ‘sleep better and be less anxious’- two things that have proved rather difficult in third year- I’ve become increasingly reliant on music in dealing with sleep paralysis. After a few experiences, sufferers can usually recognise when an episode is occurring; thus, I can remain relatively calm when Agata appears at my feet, brandishing a drill and decrying my receding gumline. Still, as you can imagine, ‘calm’ is very much relative in this scenario.

Since, per the NHS, ‘your muscles are in sleep mode but your brain is active’, an immense stress in a sleep paralysis episode is the illusion of having woken up. Your brain sends signals to open your eyes and get out of bed, then simulates the visuals for this process- all well and good until you actually get your eyes open, and realise you’re still drooling into a stuffed animal. In these moments- as an invisible force, which you know is imaginary but sure doesn’t feel that way, starts pulling you down the bed- you will wish for nothing more than a wake up call. Preferably a glass of water to the face. If that’s unavailable, I thought, why not music?

Noting that my episodes usually occurred around 3:45 am- based on the fact that I was awake and shivering in a pool of my own sweat by the stroke of 4- I experimented with setting a loud, cheerful song as an alarm around that time, hopefully freeing me from the realm of sleep, and from Agata’s clutches. ‘Everytime We Touch’ by Cascada seemed to fit the bill. Upbeat lyrics; an insistent drum beat; warm, fuzzy D flat major tonality. What better to banish the powers of darkness?

Anyone familiar with the cover art for the single may understand why this was a bad idea. Cascada’s vocalist seems to be receding into a cloud of noxious green gas; her face has received the kind of restrained and tasteful Photoshopping standard for 2006, resulting in glassy, bottle-green eyes, sandwiched between broom-sized lashes, that burn deep into the viewer’s soul. Unfortunately, it was through this song that I learned music is rarely powerful enough to wake up your body. It just gives your brain more to work with.

‘Everytime We Touch’ runs to about three and a half minutes, which in dream-time is an eternity. Or at least it is when you’re being plagued by visions of Natalie Horler- the 38 year old German lead singer of Cascada- performing a live accordion cover at the end of your bed while maintaining continuous eye contact. I have had many sleep paralysis experiences, variously involving a tiger; Niccolo Macchiavelli; a creepy local barista; and an invisible man whose face I could still feel under my fingers when I opened my eyes. None were as terrifying as Natalie Horler.

The experiment did prove that while music can’t always end an episode, it can certainly change the vibe. It turns out that my sleep paralysis demon responds really well to Shakira. The homoerotic ululations and chirpy ska beat of ‘Can’t Remember To Forget You’ made Agata considerably less threatening, and even seemed to add a bit of a swagger to her gait. (I avoided ‘She Wolf’ for obvious reasons, having a closet in my room.)

Music can also provide psychological reassurance after an episode ends. Silly brain, you think, peering around your dark, silent room as the clock hits 4:15 am. Imagining all that malarkey. A sentient black lump of pure evil rising out of your recycling bin. Ridiculous. But as the silence grows more deafening, and the pile of clothes on your chair looks increasingly hostile, music is equally instrumental in returning a sense of normality. I usually turn to something old and familiar like the Beatles, vigorously ushering in images of home and family to replace memories of the dentist’s waiting room.

Keble’s evening compline service includes the Latin hymn ‘Te Lucis Ante Terminum’. A prayer for protection during the night, its second verse runs: “From all ill dreams defend our sight, from fears and terrors of the night; Withhold from us our ghostly foe, That spot of sin we may not know.” I sing that line with a newfound enthusiasm these days.

‘Studied carelessness’: How Virgil Van Dijk makes us think he’s even better than he is

Thomas Lyne
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‘Studied carelessness’: How Virgil Van Dijk makes us think he’s even better than he is

Virgil Van Dijk has cultivated a clear sporting persona: he is a formidably calm presence. His meteoric rise has often descended into a barrage of superficial superlatives, especially after he was named UEFA Men’s Player of the Year for 2018/19, and narrowly missed out on the Ballon d’Or to Lionel Messi. High praise for a centre-back. And yet time and again, his equanimity is emphasised over his on-field productivity. 

We need not look any further than Liverpool supporters’ chants to get an idea of the way he comes across on the field. In late 2018, just a year into his time at Liverpool, the Virgil Van Dijk chant had already become established as a hit on a par with the ode to Mo Salah and the infamous ‘Allez Allez Allez’ Champions League anthem. A playful re-working of Ewan MacColl’s ‘Dirty Old Town’, the song centres around the rhyme of ‘he’ll pass the ball calm as you like’ with ‘he’s Virgil Van Dijk’, always delivered with great affection, and hard to imagine without the characteristic Scouse fricative ‘k’. Here we have a player who’s reaching his prime, considered to be among the best in the world, whose distinguishing feature is his composure. Hardly the first quality that springs to mind for a player of his calibre.

The contrast between this chant, an on-brand tribute to the man who seemingly cannot be fazed, or even forced to break a sweat, and the fans’ response to the home-grown club legend, Steven Gerrard, demonstrates the impact Van Dijk’s on-field persona has been having. Whereas Van Dijk is seen in terms of his dual function in the team, in a somewhat essentialised manner, namely ‘defending and scoring’, Gerrard comes across as a gritty workaholic and a strong physical presence, who’ll ‘pass the ball forty yards’ and he’s ‘big and he’s fucking (pronounced fooking) hard.’ Anyone who’s watched Liverpool in the past two seasons will know that Van Dijk is very much capable of producing forty-yard passes in a Gerrardesque fashion, and he has three inches on him at 6’3”. 

It’s clear that the shift in tone stems not from their playstyle, or their physical attributes, but from the image they convey, their persona. Gerrard, a Scouser through and through, comes across as a stickler for the nitty-gritty and the unglamorous aspects of the game, never afraid to put his body on the line. That is to say, Gerrard’s chant conforms entirely to the nowadays tiresome Churchillian blood-sweat-and-tears archetype of the English club captain (think Gerrard, John Terry, Frank Lampard and Gary Neville). Van Dijk’s chant, on the other hand, seems to register a certain lack of investment in, or even detachment from, the passionate and physical aspects of the game.

But what exactly is this ‘calmness’ that keeps cropping up? I think it’s more than a complacent nonchalance. It’s a conscious strategy of disingenuousness and dissimulation. He makes it look like he’s not trying, but he very much is. It’s just that we don’t notice, as most of the exertion goes into maintaining the ‘calm as you like’ persona that serves him so well. Although I might just be an overzealous student of Italian literature who suddenly decides everyone’s a Renaissance courtier, I can’t help but notice that Van Dijk exhibits the same ‘defensive irony’ associated with the concept of sprezzatura that I toiled with for a shoddy tutorial essay. In the Oxford English Dictionary, it’s defined as a ‘studied carelessness’, and the term is mainly used nowadays to describe artistic and literary style. 

Of course, the footballing world of the 21st century hasn’t got much in common with the Renaissance court. But Castiglione, who coined the word, intended for the concept to be ‘universally’ applicable, a performative approach that must be pursued in word and deed alike: it’s not just artistic or literary. He defined sprezzatura as a performance of nonchalance that ‘conceals all art and makes whatever [one] does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it.’ Sounds like Virgil to me. 

When VVD clears the ball with a slashed backheel, or pings it forty yards to put Mane or Salah through on goal at the other end of the field, we might for a moment be justified in calling him ‘imperious’, as Steve McManaman feels the need to do every five minutes in BT Sport Champions League coverage. But what is remarkable about him is that he barely ever needs to make these flashy interventions, and avoids the pretension that they entail. Most of the time, he sticks to the aspects of the game where he can maintain his sprezzatura. There’s a reason that he’s only made 22 tackles in 27 games this season, or 0.81 a game, which is only the third highest tally at Liverpool, and 72nd in the league. Tackling is the only time he looks like he’s trying. Which is precisely why he avoids it.

In summer last year, there was much debate over a statistic that seemed almost too good to be true: no one successfully dribbled past him in the 2018/19 season in either the Premier League and the Champions League. But to be honest, obsessing over whether it’s true or not is a waste of time. The YouTube videos seeking to provide video evidence for players like Manchester City’s Bernardo Silva and Leroy Sane assailing the unassailable ‘Big Virg’ are missing the point. The key thing is that it’s even remotely believable. It’s because we know he picks his battles wisely, and rarely risks being beaten, something that is crucial to his implementation of sprezzatura. 

In short, Van Dijk only intervenes when the situation absolutely requires it. Over-committing is disastrous for his nonchalant performance. Because his primary defensive concern seems to be that of protecting the veneer of his ‘studied carelessness’, he focuses on the comparatively passive arts of positioning and interception. In a nation where the role of a defender has traditionally been regarded as that of an enforcer who’s willing to risk life and limb for their team’s cause, Van Dijk’s ‘calm-as-you-like’ demeanour is unorthodox to say the least. However, this all guns blazing, ‘blood, sweat and tears’ approach to defending can’t hold water in an age where tackling is a dying art, attackers are getting pacier (not just in FIFA), and everyone is expected to be comfortable with the ball at their feet.

On the surface, this kind of deliberate reticence might seem counterproductive. We might even find ourselves questioning why a player with his talent isn’t straining every game to make a great deal more happen, perhaps by snuffing attacks out earlier and more actively, or getting involved more in the midfield. But this would take away from the very ‘imperiousness’ on which his defensive deterrence is founded. Castiglione went to great lengths to present sprezzatura as the route to total mastery not only of the self but also of the rules that govern the court. I think Van Dijk is looking to achieve the footballing equivalent of this dual mastery. From day one at Liverpool, he performed the role of a man at ease with himself and the environment he’s working in. And by performing unassailability, he becomes unassailable for real. With the great centre-backs of old, it seemed that their deterrence was rooted in the things you can measure: their physical presences, tackles made, aerial battles won, and so on. You knew where you stood. But Van Dijk’s approach is rooted in something that will forever remain intangible, which is what makes him such a frustrating opponent.

I’m not saying he isn’t a good player. He’s immense. Last season, he won 244 duels in the 38-game Premier League season, which amounts to over 6 a game, and his tackle success was 74%. There’s no denying the frightening efficiency of those numbers. But they can’t and won’t ever register the intangible dissembling and deterrence that’s been at the core of his success. He performed the role of ‘best defender in the world’ even before he’d proved his mettle at the highest level. Effectively, he faked it till he made it. 

However, it’s important to note that Van Dijk isn’t the first to play in this way, and he won’t be the last. A whole host of players have incorporated a touch of sprezzatura into their game over the years, although few have done so as effectively as him: highlight reels of Glen Hoddle, Clarence Seedorf and Xabi Alonso all show a spark of it to me. But it’s unsurprising that perhaps his most successful predecessor comes from the peninsula where the term originated. Andrea Pirlo, the bedrock of the Italian midfield for most of the noughties and the teens, embodied it. Seldom did the man variously called the ‘maestro’, the ‘professor’, the ‘architect’ or even Mozart strain himself to chase lost causes or to slide into unnecessarily risky tackles. What’s more, Van Dijk’s approach has become infectious in the Liverpool camp. His centre-back partner and good friend Joe Gomez, when fit, is capable of providing a similar ‘calm-as-you-like’ sprezzatura for club and country. One thing’s for sure: if Van Dijk can continue in the same vein, Liverpool have a priceless asset. A player who is more than capable of inflating his own value by aggrandizing himself beyond some already more-than-impressive statistical foundations, and with the leadership skills to pass on the tricks of his trade.

Review: Conversations with Friends

Florine Lips
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Review: Conversations with Friends

At one point in Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends, the protagonist, Frances, tells her best friend and former girlfriend, Bobbi: ‘If I could talk like you I would talk all the time.’ They have just gone out for a cigarette, leaving behind a group of friends in a café, whom Bobbi has shocked with her views on monogamy and nonchalant disregard of how her tone might be affecting them. Only Frances seems to have been impressed, silently watching her friend dominate the conversation. The line is striking in the way it encapsulates the novel: Bobbi is dazzling and controversial; Frances is not; Bobbi is open with her emotions and speech; Frances is not.

The novel is about relationships, about how young people behave when they’re in them, and what happens after. Frances and Bobbi, both 21-year-old students, meet Melissa and Nick, a wealthy couple in their thirties, and unexpected (yet perhaps inevitable) intimacies begin to grow. Conversation, as the title might suggest, is a key source of contention – Frances is smart and talented, but unable to express her emotions, and often uses her razor-sharp wit to skirt around uncomfortable topics. The characters in the novel talk, yes, but they don’t actually say much at all, and often it’s more about what’s not being discussed than what is. Rooney’s direct style recreates the effect of these conversations, and her avoidance of speech marks or any other punctuation to distinguish dialogue from narration places us firmly within the world of her characters; like them, we absorb what’s being said, but we don’t always process it, and often it falls away into the background. On the rare occasion that Frances does acknowledge how she’s feeling, the response she gets is disheartening to say the least: ‘you’re being unbelievably dramatic, Frances.’ 

The novel has elicited comparisons to Elena Ferrante’s portrayal of female friendships in her Neapolitan quartet, the My Brilliant Friend series, with the quiet, unassuming narrator constantly feeling second-best to her ‘brilliant’, force-of-nature best friend. Bobbi does indeed resemble Lila, with her spark and effortless beauty, and her ‘way of belonging everywhere’. Frances and Lenù form the other half of their respective duos, fulfilling the role of the naturally introverted observer who balances out the wildness with stability and quietness. But where the 21-year-old Lenù is painfully aware of her own flaws, Frances is not; despite being observant and sharp, she is hopelessly naïve and ill-equipped to process her own feelings. At a major moment early on in the novel, she begins to cry without realising it, and quickly feigns nonchalance: ‘I couldn’t stop the tears so I just laughed self-effacingly instead, to show I wasn’t invested in the crying. I knew I was embarrassing myself badly, but there was nothing I could do about it.’ Emotional outlets are very physical for Frances, which builds into something more serious as the narrative develops. 

Rooney’s writing is incredibly engaging, and although the presentation of love is sometimes slightly bleak, her tone is masterful in reflecting the stage of life her characters find themselves in. Her sharp attention to detail is strikingly effective in its ability to convey meaning – on Frances’s first visit to Nick’s house, the narration includes that: ‘I brought my toothbrush in my bag’, a casual detail that says everything it needs to. Later on, following a mild disagreement, Frances receives an apology email from Bobbi and writes that: ‘for some reason I deleted it briefly, and then went into my trash folder to retrieve it almost straight away. Then I marked it as unread and opened it to read it again as if for the first time.’ It is in these moments that Rooney’s brilliance fully shines through, as she focuses on the tiny idiosyncrasies others might overlook as a way to convey character.

It is easy to see Rooney as the “voice of her generation”, the “Salinger for the snapchat generation”, as publications such as the New York Times have claimed, although these terms can often be reductive. As in Normal People, Rooney powerfully taps into an aspect of being young in today’s world; Frances, like Marianne and Connell, is emancipated but vulnerable, adept at conversation but unable make sense of her inner emotional turmoil. It is something she excels at, and readers of all ages, but particularly those who share her protagonists’ youth, can relate to.

Review: Bad Bunny’s YHLQMDLG

Sam Fouts
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Review: Bad Bunny’s YHLQMDLG

In December 2017, Bad Bunny performed just one block from where I was living at the time in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I didn’t know who he was, and not many people who weren’t listening to Spanish-language trap did. Not quite six months after that appearance in Minneapolis, Bad Bunny introduced himself to a global audience on a humble collaboration called ‘I Like It,’ with Cardi B and J Balvin. Less than a year after that, I impulsively got on a plane to Chicago to catch the tour for his first solo album, X100Pre (Por Siempre—Forever). In 16 months, he had outgrown that Minneapolis nightclub and was filling arenas across the US, Latin America and far beyond.

On Leap Day 2020, Bad Bunny dropped his much-anticipated sophomore album, YHLQMDLG (Yo hago lo que me da la gana), proving that he does indeed do whatever he wants. Coming little more than a year after X100Pre, there was serious risk that YHLQMDLG would simply be a vehicle for a couple of streaming hits but otherwise populated by so much musical fluff. Pero no. Bad Bunny’s second offering is more than worthy of his previous work, delivering infectious reggaeton tracks, impassioned breakup songs and innovative trap numbers that raise the genre’s bar from where he himself set it in 2018.

YHLQMDLG opens with the quirky ‘Si Veo a Tu Mamá,’ which charmingly layers a trap beat over a backing track reminiscent of early 2000’s video games—you know, the ones where you wandered around collecting mushrooms and no one got hurt. Right off the bat, we’re reminded of what makes El Conejo Malo so unique in this game—not only is he interested in new beats, but he provides variety with his own voice, writing melodic lines that showcase an expressive vocal range. In a genre where you typically pick your style of vocal masculinity and stick to it, Bad Bunny approaches his voice as a flexible emotive instrument. And Dios mio, is it ever.

The next track, ‘La Difícil,’ drops some dembow to give us the first reggaeton track of the album. However, this is not some overwrought perreo destined for nightclubs and not much else; this is the suave, nuanced, lush reggaeton that keeps Bad Bunny and the likes of J Balvin and Nicky Jam on the leading edge of this genre. ‘Pero Ya No’ shows off vocal and songwriting chops yet again over a watery celeste accompaniment that conjures up the playful dream world of a little kid, which is exactly the imagery that was chosen for the initial concept videos for this album.

What little kid doesn’t imagine singing with her or his heroes? ‘La Santa’ is the first collaboration on this album, with none other than Puerto Rican reggaeton’s first global star, Daddy Yankee. Despite his contribution, this remains a Bad Bunny track – having much more in common with last summer’s ‘La Canción’ than with Daddy Yankee’s EDM-flavored output. In fact, I think that the lead artist’s willingness, once again, to deploy different vocal colors and textures subtly upstages the veteran reggaetonero in a satisfying generational changing of the guard.

Bad Bunny picks up that mantle in multiple ways on ‘Yo Perreo Sola’ with a heavier dembow beat reminiscent of Luny Tunes’ productions for Yankee. Disappointingly, it also resumes an outdated tradition of prominently featuring an uncredited female singer. Génesis Ríos, a Chilean trap artist also known as Nesi, opens and closes the song and yet is not credited as a singer. She is credited as a songwriter, however, on an addictive track that showcases the effectiveness of música urbana’s current minimalist vogue. Don’t stop dancing, because the last track goes immediately into the irresistibly steamy ‘Bichiyal,’ featuring Yaviah. Bad Bunny’s sultry trap-like vocals contrast with the spacious, vocoder-augmented melody of ‘Soliá,’ which, instead of getting down-and-dirty on the dancefloor, floats on lush clouds of synthesizer and a light dembow beat.

A stand-out track is the reggae-flavored ‘A Tu Merced,’ which together with the whiplash nostalgia tour, ‘Safaera,’ serves as an upbeat palate-cleanser for the trap-heavy final third of the album. In this stretch, ‘25/8’ in particular reminds us of El Conejo’s early trap hits but also how very far he’s come since then, demonstrating a melodic creativity and vocal virtuosity that we’re not used to seeing from this genre. The stunning hook is its own proof that, in his own words, Bad Bunny is ‘nunca seguidor, yo siempre he sido un lider’ (never a follower, I’ve always been a leader).

Like X100Pre, YHLQMDLG saves its most personal moments for the end, with ‘<3’ serving as a poignantly sweet offering of gratitude for the career that has been. Fortunately, we can say definitively that it is far from over. YHLQMDLG cements Bad Bunny’s lonely place at the vanguard of urbano music. His first solo album (and subsequent joint album with J Balvin) set a challenge for his fellow musicians to create innovative, fresh and thoughtful art and to avoid monotony above all. Seeing that no one was up to it, he seems to have taken it upon himself to move the genre forward. Out in front of the pack, he does what he wants.

David Copperfield: strikingly modern?

Yii-Jen Deng
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David Copperfield: strikingly modern?

We often speak of a ‘writer for our times’, the ‘voice of a generation’ – there is this need to define our age, to make sense of it, and so we reach for the distinctive modernity of Sally Rooney, ‘Salinger for the Snapchat generation’. 

Armando Iannucci, however, goes for Dickens. 

Charles Dickens, that era-defining Victorian, in the golden age of empire, of lace fripperies and silly lapdogs? Scepticism is perfectly justified. If it strikes a chord, maybe it’s that of Brexit nostalgia. Yet, Iannucci effectively proves otherwise, opening up David Copperfield afresh to a wider audience, with surprisingly sympathetic resonances.

 “It’s the dark and serious nature of his themes that make his novels seem surprisingly modern,” argued Iannucci. These words, spoken in his 2012 BBC documentary Armando’s Tale of Charles Dickens, anticipate the vision propelling his 2020 award-winning film The Personal History of David Copperfield. 

Here the idea of this 170-year-old novel as ‘modern’ is strikingly foregrounded by Iannucci’s decision for colour-blind casting – a decision in stark contrast to the 1999 adaptation and which, as The Guardian enthusiastically observed, ‘could change film forever’. 

But also striking is how the ‘dark and serious nature’ emphasised by Iannucci in 2012 seems noticeably absent in his own film. Deborah Ross, writing in The Spectator, goes so far as to call it ‘a breezy soap that doesn’t want to go anywhere too dark’, and ‘feels more like CliffNotes than the real deal’. 

Ross is correct insofar as darkness is definitely not the dominant note of the piece. In a huge departure from the dirt and shadows of ‘Dickensian London’, the colours have a bright, exuberant richness, while surreal transitions – a giant hand bursting into a house, a carriage surging through a room – enhance the fast-paced, excitable narrative. The problem is that Iannucci does, or at the very least did, want to go somewhere ‘dark’. In his documentary, for example, he criticised previous TV adaptations for characterising the pecunious Mr Micawber as ‘a sort of gregarious, fat, rather optimistic chap’ when Micawber’s struggle with debt represents ‘a sophisticated painful read’. 

Sure enough, his 2020 adaptation casts the thin and spry Peter Capaldi as Micawber, and includes the scene he highlighted years ago where Micawber makes knife-cutting gestures across his throat. But any seriousness to this moment is arguably brief and drowned out by comedy; one review in The Financial Times comments cheerfully on the ‘chipper tone the film is after’. Similarly, the marriage of the young David and Dora, damned as ‘nuptial suicide’ by Iannucci in 2012, is represented by light-hearted comedic spats. Dora does not die pathetically onscreen, but symbolically chooses to leave David’s writing room. 

It is worth examining our disappointment in not seeing Dora’s death. Why should we see the child-bride die? The expectation of faithfulness to the novel; also, a suggestion of a voyeuristic element to audience desires, and a very specific kind of visual grammar or narrative convention, which Iannucci disrupts.

The film is more critical and relevant than it first appears. Colour-blind casting sounds the film out as very much belonging to the 21st century, but not only as some kind of ‘milestone’ (or virtue-signalling for cynics). It is importantly a deliberate reflection of the diversity of eclectic personalities celebrated by Dickens’s David Copperfield, that further reinforces the theme of universalism – a need for a kind of inclusive and accepting affection for all. But also (and here we enter the dark) universal struggle.

It is possible to see the flippancy to Micawber’s mimed action of slitting his throat, as echoing how almost normalised it is, to die that way. Britain’s suicide rates in 2019 had risen to the highest level since 2002. We laugh; indeed, the film is made for laughing, but it is made for questioning too. This is not a mere ‘breezy soap’. It is brisk and fast-paced – so too is the 21st century, with its attention economy, its frantic need to move on, even past the street-worn homeless. In an interview last month with Anushka Asthana from The Guardian, Iannucci asserted that David Copperfield is “all about ‘who am I’, this very modern theme of status anxiety and imposter syndrome… Do I fit in?” Dora’s resigned words ‘write me out’ have more chilling implications when we hear them in this context. Death today is more about being written out than ever before, whether it means being over-written and re-defined by the media, or the parallel silencing of our digital selves when we pass away. 

True, the film is not always successful. In many ways its themes could have been drawn out or elucidated further. Even so, Ianucci is on to something here. 21st century darkness is often formed otherwise, in the blank glare of electric lights, behind the flash of a camera, or under the softly-filtered sweetness of our Instagram snapshots. Still, Dickensian London is not so far from this as earlier adaptations may have us believe and David Copperfield, contrary to expectations, is not only for the odd student of literature but most importantly all of us. Yes: ‘This narrative is far more than mere fiction.’

Profile: Richard Bilton

Imogen Harter-Jones
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Profile: Richard Bilton

Playwright Tom Stoppard said, “I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.” The BBC’s Panorama programme is committed to using journalism not just to report world events, but to achieve longer-term objectives – seeking to encourage debate and influence important conversations.

Although I met Panorama journalist Richard Bilton when he gave a talk at my school in York a couple of years ago, when I recently interviewed him by telephone it was possible to go into detail about his personal journey and experiences of journalism, his varied investigations and the future of the industry in our changing world. 

As a teenager, he wrote for the Yorkshire Post in its section dedicated to young people and after studying Communications at Birmingham University, he started out in local radio, then became a special correspondent for BBC news, reporting on the 9/11 terrorist attacks and wars in Iraq, Lebanon and Sri Lanka. In 2007, he moved into investigative journalism on the BBC’s Panorama programme. 

For Richard, the desire to be a professional journalist was “all about storytelling” and telling that story in “the most interesting way” possible, whether it was about housing or dictatorships, and ensuring that people feel and understand “why it matters”. Indeed, his Panorama programmes have a clear focus on how ordinary people are affected.

Bilton has worked consistently within the BBC across his career, moving between departments and modes of journalism. I therefore asked about the future of the organisation in a modern world that is increasingly questioning the BBC’s integrity and agenda. The key issues Bilton identifies that will define its success and future survival are diversity and social mobility. The perception of “middle class media” makes him “nervous” as he stresses the importance of ensuring that “people on TV are like the people watching” and that people from different backgrounds are represented. There is no one voice of Britain and seeing onscreen diversity will impact social opinions of viewers and also encourages those who would not necessarily see themselves as conventional candidates to apply for roles within the BBC, and other such organisations.  Diversity of staff enables diversity of opinion and allows issues felt by all in society to be examined, thus helping to “justify the licence fee” for the audience. Whilst this is something that he feels has greatly improved over the course of his journalistic career, there is always more to be done, especially with the current uncertainty over the licence fee. 

For Richard, one of the key responsibilities of news outlets such as the BBC is covering the big, long term stories that matter. Bilton regards this as a social responsibility. He explained that his ‘pitch test’ is “in fifty years, what will people be saying? What really mattered?” and perhaps most importantly “was there enough on it (in the news)?”. In his in depth investigations, social issues really matter to Bilton; it is the lives of the people watching which drives him. During the course of his time working for BBC News as Special Correspondent he realised that he “always liked getting under the skin of stories”. It was not just the bare facts of what had happened that mattered to him but also “why” it was a story in the first place and “what was driving it”, whether this was war, gang violence or social housing. For Bilton, news would be boring “if it just focused on what happened” and ultimately the lives affected by the stories outlives the story within the news cycle itself. 

Having always felt the need to “dig around” the bare facts, his progression into the long form investigative journalism felt like a “natural evolution”. He says that even when he was reporting from war zones, he was not particularly interested in the fighting itself, he found “the real people and the consequences (of the war) more important”. However, he maintains that this format of facts-based accounts of warfare are still important to report, just perhaps not by him anymore. Whilst occasionally missing the speed and thrust of immediate news journalism, Bilton appreciates the time permitted – an average of two months on each episode – allows thorough investigation into more than just the immediate ramifications of the issues that are covered. 

Biltonhas investigated everything from corrupt dictatorships to police discipline, austerity to surveillance and social housing to smart motorways, the subject of a recent programme. Bilton believes that smart motorways are a “populist” issue and that it is important to interrogate government policies. This appears to be an example of his “fifty years” pitch test in practice. When I ask which topics he finds himself returning to he replies that it’s “always the basics of the way people live their lives.” Social issues, housing, health or education – these matters are relevant to everyone’s lives whether they are in the headlines or not. It is important to keep reporting them. Whilst his more internationally focused Panoramas are important, Bilton feels that there needs to be a fair distribution of focus on social affairs within the country for “the people living it”. He reveals that the little things people may not consider making a programme about actually get as big an audience, proving “people really care” about the stories away from the immediate headlines.

The stories that Bilton covers are often emotionally hard-hitting, with investigations exposing issues such as the sham marriage business, preventable disease in children and the vulnerability of stalking victims (which helped convict a violent stalker). When he was working within the mainstream news, as well as the aftermath of 9/11 in New York and war zones, he covered child labour in Brazil, people smuggling in Senegal and the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. With such high profile and emotionally demanding stories, I asked him whether he found himself becoming more personally and emotionally involved in his projects and about the personal cost of covering them. He admitted that “he used to be good at separating me from reporting” but feels much “more affected now”, after years of covering stories of pain and suffering “there is only so much horror you can hear”. However, due to the nature of his job he thinks it is “unhealthy to bring stories home” but this is can be a challenge at times. 

When reporting on Grenfell, Bilton and the Panorama team filmed a programme which was broadcast within six days of the tragedy. He found this really affected him and “felt guilty for not still digging,” so they investigated further and revealed new evidence about the health and safety failures that resulted in the 72 deaths. His door stepping of Robert Black, the chief executive of the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (responsible for the management of the tower) and his direct and persistent questioning – “So Grenfell Tower, that was your job to keep people safe, wasn’t it? That was your actual duty. Did you fail in that duty, sir?” –  shows his commitment to accountability and truth in the darkest of circumstances. In the making of “Grenfell: Who Is to Blame?” the emotional stakes were even higher due to the investment of trust placed in those who were attempting to establish accountability. 

With the average time of a Panorama investigation taking two to three months, with some lasting up to a year, all episodes are tightly researched, and fact-checked. Yet within the current climate in the Post Truth culture, Richard appreciates there is a cloud of distrust cast over even the most concrete of facts. Fake news, whist now seen by many as an outdated and clichéd buzzword, is something that journalists come across on a daily basis, and still prevails after the 2016 election. The main way that Bilton sees this at play is on Twitter. After an episode of Panorama, people both praise and dismiss their investigations. However, despite working on each episode for months, and having self-proclaimed experts dismissing it as “fake news” in minutes, Bilton sees this interaction as “healthier” and is a reasonable “price of everyone having a voice” within a public forum. Some leaders and organisations would rather obscure the truth.  Bilton was told that his investigations into Xinjiang camps were based on “pure fabrication.” “Don’t listen to fake news” stated China’s ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, despite months of research, access to evidence proving otherwise. Yet Bilton believes that the ambassadors refusal to engage with these questions in the press conference shows that ‘fake news’ is “the last thing that you can say” – the last resort – a non-defence defence. It is a desperate act of denial, which shows up the regime more than it embarrasses the journalists trying to expose it.

Moving back to national issues, Bilton believes that high-quality local news is imperative as “local democracy can get lost”. In his investigations Bilton ensures a spread of experience across the country, including his native Yorkshire. In 2016, with the election of Teresa May as Prime Minister, Bilton investigated the impact of six years of austerity measures on his hometown, Selby. With the spending and service cuts, he investigated the effects on individuals. For Bilton, the dispersal of the BBC across the country is an important step forward towards ensuring that everyone feels represented by it; the UK is not just London. He says that they are working “hard to rigorously pursue an agenda of everyone’s views” and to “shine a light to every area”. 

Despite the BBC’s recent major expansion into the regions, especially Manchester, I asked about the practicalities of him not living in London as a journalist. He admits that his job would be “easier if I lived in London” as often the “best contacts are in the centre.” However, due to the nature of his job with Panorama, and even as Special Correspondent, as long as he can get to where the filming takes place he maintains that you can live anywhere. He says his work/life balance is “healthier than it’s ever been”. His final message for me before he flew off to edit another Panorama programme in Ireland was that journalism is “a thing that human beings can do, it’s not just a closed off world” the real hope and push for a diverse media. He certainly inspired me to think that if a fellow, born and bred Yorkshireman who still lives in Yorkshire can make a successful career in national journalism then maybe I can have a shot too.

Richard is a caring, passionate and principled professional with a keen interest on social affairs and justice. When I first heard him speak in my school I was struck by how down to earth he was; my interview with him reinforced this and convinced me of his commitment to a forward-looking approach to journalism and the BBC. 

In Conversation with Amber Rudd: How Oxford’s Feminist Spaces Exclude Black women

Nadia Awad
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In Conversation with Amber Rudd: How Oxford’s Feminist Spaces Exclude Black women

With International Women’s Day falling this Sunday, several student societies in Oxford organised events with the intention of celebrating women’s achievements, including the UNWomen Oxford Student Society which promoted an event on the 5th of March titled “In Conversation: Amber Rudd”. Given Rudd’s hand in exacerbating racial and class tensions during her tenure as Home Secretary, I thought there must be a mistake in inviting her of all people to discuss her actions in championing women’s rights. As I read through the event description it became clear that the organisers genuinely intend on praising Amber Rudd’s role as a female MP and discussing obstacles she has faced in her career due to her womanhood, all whilst ignoring that her stance on race and immigration policies led to the further marginalisation of some of the most vulnerable communities in Britain.

Amber Rudd’s time as a Conservative MP was characterised by her consistently deleterious actions towards vulnerable communities, chief amongst which was her role in the Windrush scandal. Rudd’s handling of the crisis could, at best, be described as grossly inept, at worst, malicious and bigoted. The victims of her actions are struggling in debt, with eleven deportees having died overseas as a direct result of the government’s hostile environment policy. Not only was the implementation of these measures unjustified, the Windrush Generation played an instrumental role in rebuilding post-war Britain. They settled into the UK after the passage of the 1948 British Nationality Act into law, which provided UK Citizenship to members of British colonies. As Home Secretary, Rudd lied to the British public about immigration targets, leading to the forced deportation of these British citizens who arrived in the UK in the late 1940s and beyond under the protection of the Act. She offensively referred to the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, Diane Abbott, as a ‘coloured woman’ during a radio interview in 2019. Beyond this, she has consistently voted to cut benefits, supporting the ableist introduction of the bedroom tax and downplaying the fatal impact of universal credit. Although she undeniably championed the cause of tougher penalties on FGM and better sex education in secondary schools, which is what the event on Thursday will be focused on, these positive actions do not exist in a vacuum, nor do they erase the ramifications of her other actions in some kind of flawed moral calculus. The very action of inviting someone with a legacy of furthering racism and lauding them for certain policies is anathema to the concepts of ‘intersectionality’ and ‘diversity’ which mainstream feminist movements have co-opted in order to broaden their appeal. These are not just words to be thrown around performatively to seem inclusive, they must be actively utilised to make feminist activist spaces welcoming for the demographics who face misogyny as well as other overlapping forms of institutional oppression.  

My Facebook post criticising Rudd’s invitation to speak at the event was, unsurprisingly, met with a mediocre response from the society who trivialised the issue rather than meaningfully engaging with my concerns. After messaging me, Graham did not respond to my reply, instead messaging the African and Caribbean Society expressing concern about whether they’d boycott. This was a disappointing initial response – rather than replying to me individually they seemed to care more about the organisational clout the ACS could either confer or withhold. Beyond this disrespectful act, the initial response stated that, “All proceeds from the event go towards UN Women’s international campaigns, including Draw A Line Against FGM. All contributions to our society go to this cause, helping thousands of women across the world”. The fundraising aspect of the event will not make up for the sheer disrespect of inviting someone whose actions as an elected representative directly and adversely impacted ethnic minority communities. It instead underplays the damage of domestic racism and seems to exploit international campaigns as a justification for inviting Rudd. A feedback form was also included as the committee claim to want to “hear concerns from more marginalised groups”, yet this is a mediocre response- members of marginalised groups had already voiced their frustrations which the committee decided to deliberately misinterpret or ignore.

The primary response of the UNWomen Oxford Student Society was that the first half of the event will focus on the positive attributes of Rudd’s time as an MP, stating that they’re “not platforming her for her political views. We are rather discussing with Mrs Rudd the issue of Women in Politics; we will be discussing questions such as the difficult of women entering politics in the first place, and the way they are treated differently within parliament”, whilst the second half of the event will be an audience Q&A where we can express our concerns. This response speaks volumes regarding the society’s privilege in being able to pick and choose which aspects of her career to discuss and praise when convenient. This ability to cherry-pick her impacts is not afforded to the marginalised communities who bore the brunt of the policies they choose to overlook. Black students shouldn’t pay £5 to attend and perform the emotional and intellectual labour of debating someone who allowed for the deportation of members of our own communities, especially when the first half of the event will be applauding her policies. If the committee can’t see the paradox in claiming they “don’t stand for racist actions or speech” in their statement when their intention on Thursday is to praise and platform a racist, then I believe they lacked the intention of holding her to account in the first place. Additionally, if they seriously cared about engaging with the topic of inaccessibility of parliament for women or FGM, maybe inviting the same black MPs who Rudd offended would be a better move, or inviting grassroot campaigners whose activism put FGM on the agenda in the first place.

This entire situation has highlighted the disregard towards the voices of Black women, and women of colour in general, in Oxford’s activist circles, a sentiment which is felt by many of my peers. There is an inherent gulf in their understanding of our experiences, manifesting itself in the enactment of decisions such as these where a feminist event becomes inherently inhospitable towards us. This lack of welcome is why many of us don’t attend these events in the first place, instead attending events centring the experiences of women of colour. The UNWomen Society’s claim that they are ‘apolitical’ and are therefore able to invite controversial figures is a weak excuse. Upholding the mediocre achievements of a white politician who has actively harmed vulnerable women is not apolitical at all; this is reinforcing the existing white supremacist and xenophobic power structures which cannot be divorced from any of her positive actions as an MP. Feminist societies throughout the university need to seriously re-evaluate their approach to the valid concerns that women of colour choose to express, as our opinions deserve to be amplified and respected. The process of detailing our frustrations is exhausting enough to begin with, as we state the obvious and are met with confusion or accusations of aggression or misinterpreting the situations. If discussions with your guests are contingent on side-lining a major aspect of their career which was harmful to women of colour, they are not truly inclusive, diverse, intersectional or any of the other words which are cavalierly thrown around without being meaningfully engaged with.

We see the same issue of exclusion permeating society when the women of colour who conceived the #MeToo movement are excluded from the conversation, despite being more likely to experience sexual assault. We see it when a young Black climate change activist is cropped out of a picture with Greta Thunberg and other white activists despite all of them advocating for the same issue. We see it when Amber Rudd spearheads the deportation of Black women and refer to her black female colleague as ‘coloured’ but is still invited to a feminist discussion when there are more notable and less problematic MPs who could discuss the same issues without such a contentious legacy in their wake. We see it also when the opinions of women of colour in Oxford with regards to the insular nature of feminist circles here are trivialised and side-lined rather than engaged with seriously. In the context of the painful lack of diversity in Oxford, and the wider atmosphere of the continued hostile environment, the last thing we need is Amber Rudd being hailed as a feminist advocate in our institution. The socialist and inclusive roots of International Women’s Day deserve to be respected this week rather than arbitrarily tarnished.

Coming Off the Pill: A Thought Process

Emily Reed
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Coming Off the Pill: A Thought Process

I had been on the pill since I was 16, so that’s 4 years on the medication. In this time I assured myself, friends and family, that I felt completely and absolutely normal. And I did. As many other people gave up their pill because of the impact it had on their mental health, I felt like I had struck gold at my ability to swallow it down with seemingly no consequences. However, come September last year my pill began to cause unexpected bleeding throughout the month. As with all female health problems, this could either be absolutely normal or unspeakably bad. After a few panicked pregnancy tests, STI checks and cervical tests, alas, the bleeding seemed to have no alarming cause, instead it was just something I’d have to wait out. For a month I sat tight and waited for the bleeding to cease, which unsurprisingly it didn’t. 

You know when you hear of something and then you see it everywhere? Or alternatively described as the Frequency allusion. Suddenly the world was full of reasons for me not to take my pill. Dr Sarah F. Hill became the central figure in my media consumption, with interviews of her popping up on Facebook, Twitter, and every odd newspaper I picked up on the bus or in a waiting room. I now realise this is what can also be called a press release, her new book ‘How the Pill Changes Everything’ was doing it’s media tour. But nevertheless, after the seed of doubt had been planted, I decided to come off the pill and see what happened.  

At first, not much. I had a painful period and some moody spells. However a week in I realised that my life had changed. Bare with me for this bit, you may cringe but I’ve found many other women who have chosen to come off the pill have felt exactly the same. Suddenly I felt like my head worked a tiny bit faster, I felt my own presence in my body a tiny bit more, and most importantly I felt every feeling a little more too. Things that had once just made me interested made me incredibly happy, things that had once made me slightly uncomfortable filled me with anxiety. I suddenly felt as if I had been living the past few years without the normal highs and lows of life, and instead had been feeling a kind of numbness.

And alas, the first thing that felt the impact of my new anxiety was my bike. The last thing I thought that would be impacted by my choice of birth control would be my brand new bike from the Cowley road Cycle King. When I came back to Oxford after Christmas, the thought of getting on my bike and having to traverse the busy roads was just overwhelming. I am dyspraxic and even on a good day would find the journey worrisome- but now something that had once just made me nervous now filled me with a new kind of dread. Although I dearly miss the £150 I handed over for the bike and lament the 20 minute walk into town, I feel some kind of satisfaction that my fears and anxieties, as well as my joys and excitement, are no longer buried as deep inside me. 

 Going from someone who swore the pill was perfect for them, to someone who refuses to use hormonal birth control, gave me some kind of whiplash. Just to be clear I completely understand that the pill is the right choice for many people, and we all have to make trade offs when it comes to birth control and do our own calculations about what we need. 

But we sadly live in a world where those of us with a womb carry the brunt the brunt of birth control. Of course this stems from the fact that we would inevitably have bigger consequences of conception, however logistically it makes no sense. A biological female will always create significantly less offspring than a biological male. One person’s ejaculation could theoretically impregnate more than one person every day, every day of the week. Whereas a menstrual cycle only grants fertility for a fraction of the month, female contraceptives cannot be taken on those few days and instead require constant implantation or ingestion. It makes much more statistical sense of birth control to be directed towards male fertility. 

The patriarchal world has allowed women to act like guinea pigs putting up with a range of worrying side effects and going on with little complaint. Even though the limited choices available to us in the UK seem bad enough, birth control is involved in a colonial dynamic in which early stage development of pills have been tested on impoverished communities all over the world by Western pharmaceuticals under the tagline of empowering women. The U.S carried out contraceptive trials on many women in Puerto Rico, many of whom did not consent. They were not informed of the risks involved and given high doses of oestrogen- they presented all of the side effects that are still present today, but to a much more severe degree. Multiple women died on these trials and their deaths were not recorded, simply dismissed as a coincidence despite strong circumstantial evidence. This is just one of numerous communities that have been exploited. Although it delivers freedoms, the pill clearly has oppressive, patriarchal and colonial history. 

It is a privilege to be able to access birth control. The ability to engage in sex simply for pleasure, the prevention of pregnancies in places it could be life threatening, the ability to control you timetables- among other things- have all undoubtably changed women’s lives. In communities with access to birth control, women are healthy weights, spend longer in education, climb career ladders and are able to release themselves from the domestic position that children put them in.

But where does that leave us? The few months where I came off the pill and debated different contraceptive methods made me realise how really limited our choices are. This is a testament to the lack of funding and research that ever goes into women’s health. It is not pedantic to suggest that if it were men who were forced to carry the burden of contraception, their options would be much greater, much safer and carry much less side effects. Male contraceptive trials have never gone far because of the dangerous and unpleasant side effects that most women face every day on popular forms of contraception. Society builds not only tolerates, but accepts, female pain and struggle. 

My experience on the pill has been much less problematic and painful than most, and for that I am grateful. But I can’t help but think what I, and many others, give up when we take medications that have not been developed with women’s welfare in mind. We are all grateful to be able to enjoy life free of the risk of pregnancy but our feminism must not stop there, we must demand that women’s health and contraceptive issues be given the funding and development it needs to confront the dark history of contraception and the unwelcome side effects.

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