Tuesday 22nd July 2025
Blog Page 300

COP26 or COP OUT?

Johannes Moehrle
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COP26 or COP OUT?

On the 6th November, as I was walking past the climate protest on Cornmarket in Oxford, I saw several children, adults, and elderly people walking down the street with a sign asking: “COP26 or COP OUT?” 

In the past weeks leaders from all around the world have gathered in Glasgow to discuss how to make sure our planet is still liveable in a century. *Correction*: leaders from almost all around the world gathered in Glasgow, since Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, the leaders of China and Russia – both in the top 5 of largest CO2 emitting countries – decided to not show face in Scotland. Can a conference about fighting climate change be effective in any way, if the leaders of two of the countries who contribute most to climate change are not attending? It is hard to believe that much can be done without their involvement, but can we seriously believe that had they been there it would have been very different?  

Last April, newly elected US president Joe Biden held a virtual climate summit and managed to get leaders (including Xi and Putin) around a table to make vows to reduce emissions and achieve carbon neutrality. This extraordinary summit was meant to strengthen Biden’s position as leader of the fight against climate change, especially during the COP26 negotiations. However, more than six months later, diplomatic tensions, just like temperatures around the world, have not ceased to rise. After the disastrous retreat of US troops from Afghanistan, America can no longer dictate the world’s political agenda and expect everyone to follow. Biden closing his address by asking God to do the job for him (“May God save the Planet”), should tell us not to place too many hopes on his leadership. Similarly, tensions between France and the United Kingdom caused first by the cancelled submarine deal, then by the current fishing war that puts the countries on either side of the channel in opposition to each other, have not created an atmosphere that promotes cooperation. With allies not speaking and major polluters not attending, perhaps COP26 was a cop-out. 

On paper, leaders in Glasgow have vowed to lower their methane emissions by 30% before the end of the decade and to heighten their efforts in preserving forests and natural habitats which are key to the stability of the global climate. However, it is difficult to look at these engagements optimistically when 1) most countries are likely to not follow through, and 2) even if they were to commit, the UN’s climate commission believes that these efforts will prove insufficient in keeping the rise of global temperatures below 1.5 degrees before the end of the century. 

Greta Thunberg too, the face of the fight against climate change, has no doubts about the conference being a “failure”. Like many of the thousands of climate activists that were in Glasgow during the past few weeks, she opined that COP26 was just another “greenwashing” stunt, out of which no change will result. Despite promises and pledges that have been made during the conference, there is not much that guarantees any of them will be kept. After all, it would not be the first time that countries cop out of their climate engagements. Even the Paris COP21 agreement in 2015, which was deemed “the world’s greatest diplomatic success”, has yet to bear its fruits. Almost seven years later, most countries have not even started to put into place any action that will allow them to  achieve their targets (not mentioning countries that have yet to define their targets). 

With all this in mind, we can’t help but ask ourselves whether leaders care about leaving a planet behind on which the next generations can live. Luckily, this question is easy to answer when looking at our own Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, who was seen falling asleep next to UN General Secretary and Sir David Attenborough at the opening ceremony and was unable to resist making  jokes and references to James Bond  during his speech, which received few laughs. To top everything, he felt it was necessary to replace the four and a half hour train journey from Glasgow to London with a private jet flight to attend a  reunion at a private gentlemen’s club  with the confessed climate change sceptic, Charles Moore. Unfortunately, this makes it hard to believe that he takes the climate crisis seriously.

The COP26 might well have been another failure on the environmental front, with leaders happy to speak about the urgency of the situation, but far less willing to act upon it. It is frustrating to see that even after a year in which climate change-induced catastrophes have been more frequent than ever, with wildfires raging on all four corners of the world including Siberia, and floods causing devastating loss of human life in countries like Germany, there is still no impetus for leaders of developed nations to take drastic action. Furthermore, Glasgow has once more shown that there are plenty of solutions to reverse the curves of emissions and global warming. It will undoubtedly involve changing how the world works – how we supply our lives and where we invest our money – but there are solutions, but solutions which need to be applied soon. Sadly, for now, those who have the most leverage to implement change are not willing to do so, which casts doubt over the future of human life on this planet.

Image Credit: Andrew Parsons / No10 Downing St / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

THE NAME GAME: A personal reflection on the ‘transtrenderism’ trend

Ish Duncan
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THE NAME GAME: A personal reflection on the ‘transtrenderism’ trend

CW: Transphobia

The first thought I had upon receiving the LGBTQ+ Soc x Cherwell submission call was “Incredible, Cherwell is publishing an issue on trans experiences – maybe I’ll enter a piece”. It is telling that despite having been wrestling with my trans identity for nearly five years and having been out and proud as genderqueer for nearly five months, the second thought I had was: “I probably won’t let them publish my name. I wonder if they’ll accept anonymous submissions?”

Any queer individual reading the above paragraph will know the myriad of reasons which could have caused my trepidation. One of the very fun (read: not fun at all) upshots of laying claim to one’s gender-based ramblings is the sharp, cold panic that comes from outing yourself to someone new: that split-second moment as you gauge their reaction and determine whether everything between you has catastrophically changed. Now take that feeling and multiply it by all of Oxford. Putting your name on any piece of work ties it to you irreversibly; putting your name on a piece about the trans experience is a statement (particularly if you are trialling a new name in the process). A statement that says I am here, queer, and claiming it. Now – how are you going to react?

Yet the term ‘statement’ applies in more ways than one. Publishing an article such as this requires having not only the courage to come out, but the courage to trust oneself enough with one’s own identity to claim it in the first place. Thus, the insidious question currently reverberating in my head, persuading me away from proud authorship, is the following. What if put my name on the article, what if I change my pronouns, tell my parents, start transitioning… what if I do all of these things, and I’ve got it wrong?

After the aforementioned five years of self-interrogation and five months out of the closet, it seems ludicrous that I am still questioning whether I’ve been kidding myself all along. But for transgender youth, the concept of being seen as a fraud is all too stingingly familiar. As the trans community has become more visible, sceptics have sought to undermine us by saying that we’ve all been suckered by social contagion. The brutally dismissive terms often used to describe this are the ‘transgender trend’, or ‘transtrenderism’. I, personally, fell prey to the particularly nasty narrative of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, a term used in a much-criticised research article to describe an increase in questioning individuals who were assigned female at birth, and which many celebrities and mainstream media outlets have sensationalised under the concerned guise of ‘protecting young women’ who are supposedly taking desperate measures to ‘escape misogyny’. What, and face overwhelming transphobia instead? Let me be clear: there is no ‘transgender trend’, merely increased visibility, increased acceptance, and thus an increased number of people having the courage, language, and resources to explore their identities.

I am sick of infuriating conversations where J.K Rowling’s outbursts against trans healthcare provision are dismissed as frustrating but ultimately benign. Such rhetoric legitimises the concept of ‘transtrenderism’, leading directly to legislative decisions such as the banning of puberty blockers for trans youth, and most recently the inclusion of gender therapy in the UK government’s proposed conversion therapy ban, cruelly equating lifesaving medical treatment for trans youth to the traumatic, life-endangering process by which queer individuals are psychologically manipulated into abandoning their identities.

Yet while we’re no strangers to being battered from those outside the transgender community, accusations of faking it can also come from within. The impulse, upon experiencing external oppression, is to turn inwards and play the game of respectability politics. As a result, some of the most damaging rhetoric I absorbed as a young queer came in the form of internalised transphobia. Any questioning individual will be aware of the raging online debates over the necessary and sufficient conditions to identify as trans. I still don’t know where I stand on these issues, but I do know that the aggressive gate-keeping they engender lead to the isolation of those who need community the most. At fifteen, I spent hours of my life watching trans YouTubers who told me that I was mistaken, that I wasn’t trans enough, that I was a trender. If I didn’t fit into their narrow conception of an ‘acceptable’ trans person, I couldn’t be trans at all.

These are still issues I struggle with now. While some trans individuals know exactly who they are and how they want to transition – and good for them – I have no idea who I’ll be in twenty years’ time. It’s taken a while, but I’m slowly coming to terms with the idea that even if I do change my mind in the end, there is nothing inherently wrong with taking the time to explore one’s identity. I understand the panic that young people may make irreversible mistakes, but the solution to this rare phenomenon is not the blanket repression of trans identity and healthcare. In the UK, only 0.47% of post-transition Gender Identity Clinic (GIC) attendees surveyed experienced transition-related regret: to me, this does not speak to an epidemic of vulnerable young people jumping on the bandwagon and regretting their choices, but to individuals of all ages figuring themselves out, accessing crucial affirming treatments, and going on to thrive as a result.

Instead, the answer is a proliferation of the very services transphobes criticise. Greater availability of counselling will allow questioning youth to experiment in safe professional environments, rather than in mercilessly exclusive corners of the internet, and thus quite literally save lives. Besides, anyone who has tried to transition through the NHS will tell you that it is impossible to get surgery in a snap of your fingers. Wait lists for NHS GICs are staggering: as I write, they are currently offering first appointments to people who were referred to their services in October 2017. ‘Transtrenderism’ as a concept does not protect young people, but actively deprives questioning individuals of better resources. When nobody trusts you about your own identity, within your own community and outside it, it is difficult to trust yourself. There’s a reason it took me five years to come out, and that reason is because I was searching desperately for the self-assurance necessary to say no – I know myself best. As the trans community, we truly are the authorities on our own experiences, and we deserve to recognise that. So while it’s no wonder I was reluctant to write my name on this article, if you look beneath my title, you’ll see it there. It’s a statement indeed: a statement which still feels daunting, but one that I’m finally willing to make.

Image Credit: Ted Eytan / CC BY-SA 4.0

Bilingualism in music: a cure or curse for monolingualism?

Elena Buccisano
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Bilingualism in music: a cure or curse for monolingualism?

In a world in which more than half of the population can speak more than once language it has become increasingly common for an artist who is multilingual to sing not just in their mother tongue, but also in another language with which they are familiar. Bilingualism in music is nothing new but it certainly has seen a dramatic rise in recent years with artists such as Camila Cabello, J Balvin and Cardi B (alongside musical legends like Shakira and Celine Dion) producing songs written in multiple languages. However, this raises questions as to the impact of bilingual music on cultures. Does bilingual music allow these artists to reach out to English speakers and encourage them to understand a new language? Or does it undermine the importance of the language and the culture to which it belongs?

Indisputably, the rise of bilingualism in music can be attributed partially to globalisation. In this modern age, the process of interaction between people, companies, and governments worldwide is certainly increasing and the music industry plays a part in this. The world of music has, in the last few decades, seen increasing interactions between continents and their music styles – for example, the traditions of Latin American music have become intertwined and included in Western English-Language pop music. Indeed, the distance between Spanish-language pop and English-language pop has diminished rapidly in the last few years. On the one side, English-language artists have started creating massive hits based on drum patterns coming from Latin pop. The underlying beat of reggaeton, called dembow, has become more and more popular. There has also been an increase in musical collaborations between English speaking and Spanish speaking artists. A key reason for this is commercial incentive. Indeed, Latin American and Spanish music is consumed on a huge scale and western music producers, eventually realising the lucrative nature of this industry, have jumped on the opportunity through the vehicle of bilingual collaborations. This, in turn, has led to the explosion of bilingualism on the Western music scene. 

It is hardly surprising that the second most common language used in Western music is Spanish and its Latin American variants. This is largely thanks to the popularity of Latin American genres such as reggaeton in the West. Reggaeton, a music style that originated in Puerto Rico during the mid-1990s, is defined by its catchy lyrics and freedom of lyrics. Its popularity in radio and on the clubbing scene has led to its dominance on music charts across Europe and America. Artists such as Cardi B, Beyonce and Justin Bieber have collaborated with Reggaeton legends such as Luis Fonsi, J Balvin and Daddy Yankee to create hits such as ‘I Like It’ which appeared on Cardi B’s album Invasion of Privacy and have consolidated the prominence of bilingual music in the Western world. Perhaps the most recognisable example of afamous western artist aiding the spread of bilingual music is Justin Bieber’s collaboration with Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee to produce the remix of ‘Despacito’. Although the original version proved highly successful in numerous countries, the remix version,released on April 17, 2017, has been widely credited by music journalists as being instrumental in popularising Spanish-language pop music in the mainstream market again. The success of the song and its remix version led Daddy Yankee to become the most listened-to artist worldwide on Spotify on July 9, 2017, being the first Latin artist to do so. ‘Despacito’ was cited by Billboard’s Leila Cobo as the song that renewed interest in the Latin music market from recording labels in the United States.

In 2017, two of the most popular singles in America were bilingual: ‘Despacito’ and J Balvin’s club classic ‘Mi Gente’ which gained incendiary power thanks to a Beyoncé cameo. In both cases, the English-speaking singers made notable effort to acknowledge the dominance of Spanish-language pop by singing in Spanish. Indeed, despite the commercial benefits that these artists certainly received perhaps the most important outcome of their success is their cultural impact. The rise of bilingualism in music has led to the evident diversification of the musical landscape in the West and a significant increase in linguistic appreciation. These collaborations have opened audience’s eyes and ears to the diversity of music across the world. It has shown them the value of different musical styles which are linguistically diverse from the western norm. 

However, songs are not only being written with verses in different languages, now many bilingual artists record multiple versions of their hit songs. For example, Enrique Iglesias’ ‘Bailando’ exists in two versions, one in Spanish and English and one entirely in Spanish. In a similar way, Christine and the Queens wrote lyrics for every track of her album ‘Chris’ in both English and French. The reasons for these choices can be considered twofold; the first is personal and the second more cultural. Increasingly, artists are wanting to connect with their heritage and with the cultures that they identify with. Celine Dion is a key example of this; she grew up in Quebec, a predominantly French-speaking province in Canada, and so, honours this fact by singing almost as much in French as she does in English. On a wider cultural scale, by producing two versions of songs these artists succeed in widening their audiences. They make their music doubly accessible – encouraging their listeners to witness the blurring between culture, language and music. 

The comprehensive effect of bilingualism in music on listeners and audiences is, I believe, yet to be fully seen. However, the early impact is encouraging. Recently, Italian band Måneskin have been making waves across Europe and America after their win at Eurovision. Indeed, the role of international competitions like Eurovision in promoting bilingualism and linguistic diversity in music should be noted. It was Måneskin’s win at Eurovision which has allowed this band to broaden their audience across Europe and America. Their winning song ‘Zitti E Buoni’ was the first song in Italian to get into the UK Top 20 in 29 years and is an encouraging sign that the world of anglophone music is diversifying. Importantly, another one of their tracks, this time written in English, ‘I Wanna Be Your Slave’ also placed in the UK Top 40 – perhaps indicating progress in the idea that artists need no longer to be constrained to producing music in just one language. As summed up by Victoria De Angelis, the group’s bassist, their Eurovision success had now given them the “chance to experiment” as “it’s always been the goal to write songs in both languages.”

In all, the rise of bilingualism in music has meant that bridges are being built between people from different linguistic backgrounds and cultures. By giving a broader range of people access to music written and produced in multiple languages allows them not only a glimpse into bilingual culture but an insight into different ways of seeing the world and expressing thought. The act of engaging in musical expression with multiple languages makes bilingual music intrinsically more nuanced than monolingual music ultimately encouraging audiences to broaden their minds and appreciate the linguistic variety of the world. 

Image credit: CC BY-SA 4.0w

A House Divided: My dad and I can’t agree on Ben Platt’s album Reverie

Issy Kenney-Herbert
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A House Divided: My dad and I can’t agree on Ben Platt’s album Reverie

Ben Platt waltzed into my heart the way he did most other teenage girls: as the shy guy from Pitch Perfect and then the Broadway star in Dear Evan Hansen. When his debut album came out, I was ecstatic. I think I played it in every room in the house. Which is how my dad came to hear it – telling me to please let him have a moment of peace. 

With the second album out, I was ready to repeat the experience. However, instead of Reverie being my obsession,I found myself repeatedly turning to Maisie Peter’s recent album or reruns of classic Taylor Swift (Taylor’s own version of course). There are certainly songs that I love from this album, ‘Happy to be sad’ is beautiful from its lyrics to the layering in the chorus. When he released ‘Imagine’, I remember smiling and playing it to my then partner (turns out I could imagine my life without him, but I’ll leave that story for another time).

Yet, I find myself missing his debut ‘Sing To Me Instead’. The vulnerability, the soaring notes, for me it was one of those elusive ‘no-skip albums’ in which I felt like every song nailed it. I went to see his first album live in Hammersmith Apollo with my mum – we both cried throughout. His honesty about his anxiety in ‘Ease my Mind’ (‘When they pull me under/I can feel my sanity start to unwind/darling only you can ease my mind’) His discussion of dating someone who was still in the closet through ‘Honest Man’ is a situation that many in the queer community can relate to. Finally, the most up-beat track off the album ‘Share Your Address’ about Ben wanting to jump headfirst into a relationship after the first date and ‘spend quality time with your mother’ had everyone in Apollo theatre jumping to their feet.

As I sit down to write this article at the kitchen table, I started to play Reverie ready to somehow try to express some of the disappointment I felt as a die-hard Ben Platt fan that this second album hadn’t quite lived up to the experience of the first.

“Who is this?”, my dad says as he dances into the room. When I tell him, he replies, “this is one of his better songs, he’s really letting the emotion through.” I look up in shock – my dad has complemented the guy who he used to refer to as the “the one with the hair” and again ask me to repeatedly turn him down. ‘Childhood bedroom’ is, in my opinion, the best song of the album. I take a chance and play another one off the album ‘Happy to be sad’, and my dad starts smiling: “I am potentially a Ben Platt fan, I just find his belting notes unnecessary.” Maybe this is the difference between the first and second – Ben’s second album is certainly softer, there are certainly a faster tempo to some of his songs, but it ultimately does have that feel of being a body of work produced in the slower environment of lockdown. Childhood bedroom captures finding yourself back in an environment you thought you’d left behind, ‘falling right back into the way it was’ and the iconic line ‘dancing like I never get to’ makes me want to pick up my hairbrush and thud round my room.

The album is linked throughout with three parts of a song ‘King of the world’, and it’s electro-pop sound is a complete departure from anything Ben Platt has ever done, and to be honest is an immediate skip for me. I have listened to it multiple times now, and I’m still unclear of what this thread of the album is for him. The lyric ‘you took my weed and two years of my precious time’ makes me laugh each time I hear it in the song ‘leave my mind’ – ironically, the song can quite easily leave my mind as soon as I’ve finished listening to it. That’s how I feel with the majority of the album.

For me, the connection and emotion were lacking in comparison to the extent I experienced it in the first album. Yet, this is the first time my dad has actually sat down and enjoyed Ben Platt’s music. So, hey – why not give it a listen? You might be a potential Ben Platt fan in the making – like my dad!

Image Credit: Daniel Benavides/CC BY 2.0

Carbon-footprint Culinary: the Future of Menus?

Katie Schutte
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Carbon-footprint Culinary: the Future of Menus?

COP26, the United Nations Climate Change Conference currently underway in Glasgow, is providing catering that prioritises locally sourced and seasonal food ‘to minimise mileage for transportation and support[ing] local business’. What makes this menu radical, however, is the carbon count of the dishes.

Each meal on the COP26 menu is accompanied by a figure that estimates the amount of carbon dioxide that has been emitted in its production, which aims to encourage delegates to make more climate-friendly choices. At the bottom of each menu, a note is added for contextualisation: ‘Today, an average meal has a carbon footprint of 1.7 kg CO2e in the UK. According to the WWF, we need to get this number down below 0.5 kg CO2e to reach the goals defined in the Paris Agreement. By including climate labels on our menus, we aim to make it easier to achieve this goal — together.’ Faced with the option of carrot and thyme soup with an emission of 0.1kg of CO2, or a Scottish beef burger and cheddar cheese at 3.4kg of CO2, which would you choose?

95% of the food served at the conference is sourced from the UK, 80% of which is from Scotland. This local and seasonal produce, the government asserts, ‘put[s] sustainability at the heart of catering for the summit, reducing emissions and promoting environment-friendly food production’. But there are also other aspects to consider beyond CO2 emissions: the carrots and potatoes are sourced from Benzies, a Scottish farming company that power their cool storage using wind turbines, uses biomass to provide heating, and recycles the water used.

Not everyone would agree with the carbon footprint labels, however. Reading a sample of news headlines is enough to gauge the divided opinions this menu has sparked. Even within the same news outlet, one journalist frames the menu as ‘pioneering’ whilst another quotes animal right group Animal Rebellion, criticising the menu for including meat and dairy at all. The media’s alternate praise and criticism reflects the tension that surrounds attitudes to diet, as discussions about the sustainability of foods like meat and dairy can become emotionally charged very quickly. As more and more platforms discuss the ethical and environmental implications of food production, people have become more sensitive and defensive about their personal choices.

The main rebuke that the government has received for its COP26 menu is that only 42% of the dishes are plant-based. If the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) says that we should be eating meals that produce less than 0.5kg of CO2 to reach the Paris Agreement goals, then why would the menu include dishes like Haggis, which is labelled as producing 3.4kg of CO2? This is twice the amount produced by the average meal in the UK. Perhaps, it is an attempt to highlight the contrast between the emissions of plant versus animal-based meals. This would certainly challenge people’s conscience, making them think more carefully about the impact of the food they eat and possibly even to reconsider their diet.

But many environmental activists argue these high emission meals undermine the government’s promise to place sustainability at the heart of the conference. Confidence is wavering in their grasp of the significant role that the agricultural and food industry plays in climate change. Critics like Joel Scott-Halkes, a spokesperson for the campaign group Animal Rebellion, have accused the government of hypocrisy for hosting a climate conference that serves animal products: ‘Meat and fish on the menu at #COP26 ?! This is the equivalent of serving cigarettes at a lung cancer conference. Only when governments grasp animal agriculture’s central role in the #climate crisis will we stand a chance of solving it.’ And underneath this all, one can’t help wondering about the accuracy of climate labelling startup Klimato’s carbon footprint calculations.

The very fact that CO2 emissions have been added to the menus is itself a positive step towards changing social and cultural attitudes towards food production. It raises awareness about the food industry’s contribution to climate change, and is a visual reminder of our individual responsibility to make more sustainable choices. Perhaps we can expect to see carbon footprint labels in food businesses in the near future.

Victorian Christmas Market visits Oxford

Matilda Gettins
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Victorian Christmas Market visits Oxford

The ‘Oxford Victorian Christmas Market’ took place on Gloucester Green and Broad Street this weekend, with festive stalls, food courts and entertainment.

At Gloucester Green, the market was composed of a Victorian carousel, 60 stalls selling christmas gifts and goodies, food stands offering German sausages and hot chocolate, and live entertainment from a stage in its centre. 

Cadburys Chocolate stall, with a man in purple apron and black top hat.
Image credit: Matilda Gettins

At Broad Street, 70 vendors at the market sold goods such as candles, dried fruits and Christmas decorations. Stalls served food and drink such as mulled wine and roasted chestnuts. A large Christmas tree and reindeer sculpture decorated the market. 

Victorian themed stilt walkers and tall bike cyclists went back and forth between markets. 

However, the ‘Victorian’ label was not strictly adhered to. The Christmas markets also featured ‘modern’ stands and goods, such as mini doughnuts, Jamaican food or modern art decorations.

Some of the vendors have come up with creative ways of selling their goods, such as Liz from Treats of Warwickshire: “Instead of having a cheese board, you have a fudge board, so you can get five bars of fudge with a knife and a chopping board for Christmas and enjoy.”

Liz sits at Treats of Warwickshire fudge stand, showcasing many bars of fudge and wearing red hooded top.
Image credit: Matilda Gettins

The Christmas Market was organised by LSD Promotions, who also organise Gloucester Green Market, in cooperation with Oxford City Council. 

From 4 th to 5 th December, Oxford Christmas Arts Market will take place on Broad Street, featuring “local artists, designer-makers and selected guests”. From 9th to 19th December, Oxford Christmas Market will take place also on Broad Street, offering entertainment, festive stalls, and food and drink. 

Featured Image: Matilda Gettins

Cis-piscion and the difficulties of ‘identifying’ ancient transgender figures

Ezra Jackson
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Cis-piscion and the difficulties of ‘identifying’ ancient transgender figures

CW: sexual violence, misogyny and mentions of slavery

NB: They/Them pronouns are used for any figure whose gender identity is under question unless they identify themselves another way. e.g. Megillos (later in article) identifies as a man and so He/Him is used.

Queer analyses of Classics abound and have grown ever more popular in recent years as mainstream acceptance of these views has also grown, albeit slowly. It is a subject with a very strong appeal to the Queer community, in no small part due to its promise of an escape to a world vastly different from ours, where same sex pairings could be celebrated and gender can be ever fluid – particularly when the gods get involved. Over lockdown my love affair with TikTok brought me ever further into this discourse and I began to see videos hypothesising what identities such and such a figure might have held. I was surprised, however, to find myself very often disagreeing or being irritated by these videos. Had I become one of those historians, so often joked about, who insist that Achilles and Patroclus were simply roommates and that Sappho was just good friends with a lot of women? I don’t think so, and while it might be self indulgent to take an entire article to explain my historical pedantry…that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

One of the most interesting examples I came across on my TikTok for you page was that of Hatshepsut, an AFAB (assigned female at birth) Pharaoh ruling in the early 15th Century BC who wore a beard and other masculine royal regalia and was depicted in statuary and monuments with the stereotypically masculine body of Egyptian Art. Their reign was extremely successful, re-establishing trade routes disrupted by the occupation of the Hyksos, leading military expeditions and engaging in so many building projects that later Pharaohs would try and take credit for many of them. Some have seen their use of masculine depictions as being gender affirming and have theorised that Hatshepsut was in fact trans masculine or perhaps non-binary. While it is entirely possible that Hatshepsut may have experienced gender euphoria from the use of typically masculine regalia and facial hair, the overwhelming number of AMAB male Egyptian Pharaohs clearly shows a societal preference for rulers of that gender. For an AFAB Pharaoh to take power and rule as long and successfully as Hatshepsut did they would need to not only have a male heir still too young to rule, but also to be able to make themselves palatable to the priests and elite Egyptians upon whose support they relied. In this context, the use of typically masculine regalia and imagery might be stripped of its gendered nature and seen simply as the Pharaonic regalia that Hatshepsut utilised in order to maintain their rule. Indeed, to claim that they dressed and behaved this way purely because it was gender affirming seems almost a reduction of what they managed to achieve in the careful crafting of their identity and outward appearance in order to gain acceptance for their rule. It may well be that Hatshepsut would have identified with any one of the labels that have been suggested for them, but to focus purely on that and fail to acknowledge the political and religious facets to their actions is to do a disservice to a fascinating and impressive historical figure. Herein lies the first main difficulty of securely identifying ancient trans figures: how to separate persons acting in accordance with internal feelings of gender euphoria/dysphoria, from those who were simply utilising the tools at their disposal to escape oppression or to be able to wield some political influence in a world that would not usually allow it. Transgressive, though in a different but still important way.

In seeking to identify ancient trans figures we also come up against the problem that ancient views of gender and indeed sexuality were drastically different from our own. Modern views on gender have been deeply marked and shaped by colonialism and even as we try to deconstruct these imprints, the labels we use are still products of that history. As such, in many ways it would be erroneous to try and apply them to people who would not have thought in the same way. A helpful if rather unpleasant illustration of this is the Roman perception of masculinity and the way it was intertwined with sex. As a Roman man it did not matter who you slept with as long as you performed the active, penetrative role during intercourse. To be penetrated as a Roman man was to become lesser, to be feminine and in some way to no longer be a true Roman, as the mark of citizenship was to be inviolate and protected. In this way an enslaved man could never be truly masculine in the Roman sense as their body belonged to another who could do with it what they wanted. 

The picture is further complicated by the apparent grey area of adolescent Roman men who seem to have occupied a middle ground between these two states, being still under the control of their father and therefore not yet inviolable in the strictest sense. It may have been therefore that sexual passivity in this time of their life was less frowned upon or seen as somehow permissible. A complicated and viciously toxic mentality indeed. It would be entirely mistaken therefore to apply labels such as bisexual, heterosexual or homosexual to Roman men, because their understanding of sexuality had nothing to do with the gender of the people they slept with, nor indeed any feelings of internal attractions at all. Nor would it be right to suggest that those who did willingly play passive roles in sex were in some way gender non conforming as the vicious Roman authors might claim. Sexuality and gender for Romans was not delineated as it has become for us but intertwined in a complex and toxic mentality of conquest and dominance. This example also shows a further danger of uncritical queer analyses of Classics which have often (Song of Achilles, I’m looking at you) romanticised that which should not be romanticised. The desire to find representation should not blind us to the unsavoury and unpleasant aspects of the Ancient World, nor should we let it drive us to uncritically apply the labels of cis or trans to people who would not have thought in such a way.

A final problem in our identification of trans historical figures is shown in the fact that I had to illustrate my previous point with the unpleasant Roman conception of maleness. I had to do so because it is a perspective that we simply have a lot of evidence for, since our sources from that period come from the dominant, wealthy and mainly male elite who espoused it. This is unfortunately true of most societies and periods in the study of Classics. Even the case of Hatshepsut reveals this, since the main reason we know of them is their royal status. While they were certainly marginalised in other aspects, their elite status still gave them privileges that countless other ancient people throughout history with differing gender experiences did not share and as a consequence of which, are hidden from our sight. The history and identity of Classical societies is viewed through a very particular, elite lens that makes studying the more marginalised parts of those societies particularly difficult. This is most painfully evident in Lucian’s fifth ‘Dialogue of the Courtesans’ where two courtesans are gossiping about a threesome one of them had with another woman and an AFAB person who insists on being referred to as Megillos (the masculine form of their birth name) and proclaims that  ‘I was born a girl just like all the rest of you, but my heart and my mind and everything else is that of a man.’ Words to make the heart of any trans person sing with the joy of representation. Yet the two courtesans, through whom we hear this story, continually deadname and misgender Megillos and misunderstand his identity, asking if he is intersex. The dialogue was written as a comic piece and the butt of the jokes seems unfortunately to be Megillos and his ‘incomprehensible’ identity, which leaves us in a somewhat strange place when analysing it. Was there a real life Megillos on whom the dialogue was based or did Lucian just vaguely know of gender non-conforming people? Or did he perhaps completely invent the entire scenario as one he thought would provoke laughter in his audience? The authorial voice of our sources unfortunately often leaves us with more questions than answers where marginalised groups are concerned.

Are we doomed then to utter cispicion and to burst the bubble of every Queer analysis of Classics? Of course not. The Classical world remains one that was intensely interested in gender, from the transformation of the prophet Tiresias from man to woman and back to man again, to the joining of the fertility aspects of Hermes and Aphrodite into one intersex deity. Queer and trans analyses of Classics therefore remain entirely valid and important because that was a part of the ancient world. It is rather the way that we are often tempted to go about them, by seeking to prove trans existence as some kind of deviation from a norm that didn’t even exist in the ancient world, with which I take issue. Much of the problems of such identifications can be resolved when we stop trying to find an exact reflection of ourselves in the ancient world and figures therein. Does it matter if Hatshepsut was gender non conforming due to internal feelings of gender euphoria/dysphoria or simply an AFAB Pharoah using all tools at their disposal to legitimate their power? The assertion of their identity, the claiming of power and importance in the face of a world and society that sought to marginalise them is surely something we can still feel represented in, whether or not they shared our gender non conformity on a deeper level. To cease to restrict the past with modern labels and a modern understanding of existence is surely to open ourselves up to more stories and more figures who we can relate to and draw inspiration from, even if we cannot see every part of ourselves mirrored within them. To be Cis-piscious, not at all in the sense of denying the existence of gender non conforming people in the past, but rather in allowing such trans analyses to coexist alongside alternative interpretations, will result in a far fuller picture of the variety and life within the ancient world.

So. Historical pedant or accidental optimist? I’ll leave it to you to decide.

Disarm Oxford posters criticise Oxford University’s “ties to the arms trade”

Humza Jilani
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Disarm Oxford posters criticise Oxford University’s “ties to the arms trade”

On 4 November, students and residents of Oxford found city and University buildings dotted with posters criticising the University’s alleged “complicity with the arms trade.” The posters were placed by the relatively new group Disarm Oxford. Disarm Oxford seeks to “[lobby] the University — departments and colleges — to sever ties with arms companies, to stop taking research funding from such companies and to cease Careers Service advertising for them”.

One such poster features the image of Wafic Saïd, the namesake of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, referring to him as a “world-famous arms dealer.” Saïd, one of Britain’s wealthiest men, fixed the Saudi purchase of British arms in 1985, known as the Al-Yamamah deal. It is considered one of the largest-ever arms deals in history. 

“Having a business school after someone called an arms dealer honors an industry we think deserves nothing but dishonor,” said Matt Rosen, a student activist with Disarm Oxford.

Disarm Oxford activists are not only criticising the names of buildings. Another poster read, “Oxford doesn’t invest in tobacco because it puts lives at risk. But it’s happy to work with the arms trade. Enough contradiction. Disarm Oxford now.”

An example of one of the posters used in the protest. Image credit: Disarm Oxford

“There are ties of research, ties of funding, ties of career advertising, which deepen the University’s ties to the arms trade,” said Rosen. Oxford receives “millions of pounds of research funding,” from major arms companies and dealers, according to a press release released by Disarm Oxford on 4 November. 

The University disagrees with Disarm Oxford’s blanket characterization of all defence-related research. A University spokesperson told Cherwell:“All research projects with defence sector funding aim to advance general scientific understanding, often with a wide range of generic, civilian applications.

“All funding must first pass ethical scrutiny and be approved by the University’s Committee to Review Donations and Research Funding”.

Oxford’s Careers Services is a particular target of Disarm Oxford’s criticism. “Long-term, one of our main concerns has been the role of the career service, which advertises jobs in arm companies and doing research designing autonomous lethal weapons systems,” said student activist Rosen. 

The Careers Services office told Cherwell: “The Careers Services offers an impartial service which allows students to make informed choices about their futures through access to employers and professional networks”.

Despite only being founded in 2020, Disarm Oxford members see themselves as part of a long tradition of voices critical of the military-industrial complex on Oxford’s campus. “There was a debate at Oxford about whether Truman should receive an honorary degree, and some then said one should never do evil so good may come. Like them, we want a transparent conversation, but we are far from that,” said Rosen.

Saïd Business School has been contacted for comment.

Image: Disarm Oxford

‘Fear of Kidnapping and Beating’: The ‘Triple Crisis’ of Female Refugee Care

Fiona Zeka
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‘Fear of Kidnapping and Beating’: The ‘Triple Crisis’ of Female Refugee Care

CW: sexual assault, abuse, suicide, sexism

‘Dress as unattractive as possible’, my maternal grandmother instructed my 13-year-old aunt, ‘you don’t want to get raped.’

Costume was their only escape. In the cold, white-tented camp of Bujane, Macedonia, Kosovar women like my aunt and mother could not afford to be women. Having already escaped the horrors committed by male soldiers in their native land, they were all too aware of how their gender affected their treatment.

Their bodies were battlegrounds. In Kosovo, gang-rapes were a common ‘instrument of war’. Serbian security forces and paramilitary groups often entered private homes, raping women in front of their family members. It was performative; it was political.

Internally displaced groups drifting towards wherever felt safer, anywhere from home, were incessantly victimised. They were stopped and bullied by the army, police and paramilitaries, who used the threat of rape to extort money. In some cases, mothers and daughters were carried away even if money was provided. They were raped in the home, in the streets, and in temporary detention centres. But they were no safer in the camps that were supposed to offer them ‘refuge’. In the camps, women were not adequately provided for. Menstrual hygiene provisions were non-existent. A Kosovan female refugee I interviewed this year, and who has chosen to remain anonymous, commented: ‘We didn’t have menstrual pads. Just pieces of cloth which we had with us. We boiled the cloth strips when we could to clean them and share with others. Most responsibility fell on us women. The camps were flooded with women who were escaping with young kids in tow. We lacked protection from our husbands and male family members, many of whom were left in Kosovo. Constantly we feared kidnapping and beating.’

Not only did women have to ‘bear most of the responsibility of care’ in the camps, which included waiting ‘for hours’ in lines for water and rationed food, looking after children and elderly family members, but they also constantly feared ‘beating and kidnapping’. Soldiers and paramilitary groups surrounding the refugee camps preyed on vulnerable, solitary women out on errands. Young women were tempted by offers from men to go to Italy, France, America. They were desperate to escape their life in the camps. Those who escaped were never heard of again. Many have been assumed dead, or worse, embroiled in sex trafficking rings.

From lines of refugees girls were pulled, beaten, and sexually assaulted. B.B., a twenty-two year old woman from Mitrovica, Kosovo, reported that:

‘It happened while I was in line with the people. We met Serb paramilitaries. […] He took my hand and told me to get in his car. … He told me not to refuse or there would be lots of victims. He swore at me and said, “Whore, get in the car…” [….]He started to beat me. I lost consciousness. They said that they were paid to do this. I begged him [the first rapist] to kill me but he didn’t want to.’

Gender-based violence against refugees is more than sporadic, personal attacks – it is systematic. As the Serbian paramilitary claimed in B.B.’s report, they were ‘paid to do this’. Sexual violence was state-sanctioned.

Unfortunately, studies on sexual violence committed against displaced people are far and few between. A 2014 study estimated that around 21% of women in 14 conflict countries reported sexual violence,  but we know that the number of unreported cases far outweigh the number of those reported. In peacetime, rape crisis centres and other support services for women are scarce. In wartime, they are almost non-existent. Female refugees who were assaulted were barred from travelling to access support due to the conflict, and the danger that being a woman outside posed to them. Furthermore, there was a cult of silence around sexual violence – one which still haunts countries like Kosovo. In B.B.’s case, ‘He told me not to tell anyone or they would take me for good and shoot my family’. Violence was hidden by the threat of more violence.

Silence is a hard stain to get out. Even when they reached their host countries, refugee women and asylum-seekers could not voice their trauma. When your legal status is unconfirmed, coming forward with your story is dangerous. It could mean being sent to a detention centre, being interrogated, detained, and being repatriated. For example, the Women’s Aid Organisation in Malaysia assisted a Rohingya woman in 2020. When she went to the police station to report sexual violence, she was ‘detained by the police on the basis of her immigration status and denied her right to lodge a report’. This fear bars refugee women from accessing crucial support services in their host country, such as the police services, shelters and hospitals. An example of how this plays out is in Malaysia, where making a police report is a prerequisite for accessing women’s shelters and hospitals. When a police report could lead to detainment (in detention centres where you are not protected from sexual harassment), silence is safer.

This silence extends to cases of domestic violence and workplace harassment. In Malaysia, a refugees’ lack of legal status means that they are deprived of the lack of the right to work. Subsequently, many refugees are forced into the informal workforce, with no access to protection from employer abuse. They are left to suffer ‘inhumane working hours and the withholding of wages’. Labouring in the informal, or ‘grey economy’, deprives women of common social benefits such as a pension, health insurance and paid sick or maternity leave. Out of fear of losing their jobs or facing violence, they are open to routine exploitation.

Without legal status, and due to working for criminally low wages in the informal sector, many female refugees are forced to rely on their partner. Financial dependence on a male partner, combined with a lack of access to crucial social support services, mean that female refugees are particularly vulnerable to domestic abuse. In a survey conducted last year by Harmony Alliance, a migrant and refugee women advocacy organisation, and the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre, over a third of migrant and refugee women said they experienced domestic violence. Temporary visa holders invariably reported higher levels of domestic and family violence, encompassing physical, emotional and financial abuse. Survey participants also reported proportionately higher patterns of migration-related abuse and threats (for example, the threat of deportation or separation from dependants). The struggle of those abused is compounded by feelings of isolation from the rest of society. Only 30% of the sample said that they trusted their neighbours ‘a great deal’ or ‘lot’, and those who had experienced gender-based violence said they saw the police as systematically unjust. A lack of trust in their neighbours and local support services leads to more women continuing to suffer in silence.

Reaching out for help has become a task more strenuous than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic. A ‘loss of livelihood, home, savings, and prospects of a better future shape the narratives of these [immigrant] women’. Gendered employment precarity has sharpened, with employment rates for immigrant women falling by almost 15%, in comparison to a fall of 8% for immigrant men. Indeed, pandemic-induced job losses (and losses of life) have been concentrated among low-wage industries.

Policymakers must recognise that human rights are not conferred by your legal status, your gender, your birthplace or workplace. They are inherent. In order to protect female refugees, all countries must become party to the 1951 UNHCR Geneva Convention. This will enable refugees to access crucial services in their host country, thereby mitigating the risk that refugee women face when reporting abuse. Systematic sexual abuse must be dealt with by immediate international legislative reform. The ‘tradition of impunity’ which has plagued international courts must be reversed.

Underpinning this is capital. Female refuge centres are in dire need of funding. Financial stability is a prerequisite to leaving an unsafe domestic situation or an abusive dynamic in the workplace. We need to unmask those that exploit vulnerable women for informal labour.

Aside from political and financial changes, we need cultural change. This means thawing the culture of silence around sexual harassment that has perverted the justice system. We need to recognise women, all women, as human beings who have the inviolable right to live a life without fear of violence. Reader, we have a lot to do.

Oxford nightline is open 8pm-8am, every night during term-time, for anyone struggling to cope and provide a safe place to talk where calls are completely confidential. You can call them on 01865 270 270, or chat at oxfordnightline.org. You can also contact Samaritans 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, by calling 116 123 or emailing [email protected].

Image Credit: Mia Clement

“These are full humans that we have to take in”: An Interview with the Cast of Quartet

Sam Spencer
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“These are full humans that we have to take in”: An Interview with the Cast of Quartet

I wrote Quartet over a year and a half ago in early 2020, sitting down for an hour every morning to chip away at it as my way of getting through a term in lockdown. Having handed over my script to the trusted hands of Alex Foster (director) and our stunning actors, I was itching to find out how Quartet has developed. Sitting down to speak with cast members Rosie Owen and Lydia Free, I wanted to know their thoughts on Quartet and how they are finding their first foray into drama at Oxford.

The two came to Oxford drama from different paths. Lydia took a year out of education, working as a waitress, before coming to Oxford. The time out taught her that drama was her priority, so she jumped straight into auditions in her first term. Rosie is a second-year, who stayed out of drama in her first year over lockdown. She tells me she was pleasantly surprised by how friendly the auditions were and that it felt like a workshop, far from the image she had of Oxford drama that ‘you have to know the right people’. “I really enjoyed the audition. It wasn’t ‘you do this’, ‘you do that’ – it was ‘show us what you can do’,” she tells me, adding that she wants to tell her first-year-self, “Everyone can do this. You can.”

Rosie plays Joe, the titular quartet’s kind-hearted actor, while Lydia plays Chris, the quiet and observant writer. It made me laugh to hear that the two have a feud over who’s character is more likeable; neither are budging. Lydia jokes, “I am actually obsessed with Chris. I have a deep soul connection with that boy. I think he’s a beautiful human”. Rosie parries that Joe is “there for absolutely everyone”, to which Lydia ripostes that Chris “seems like a lovely, lovely, kind, observant guy”.

Seems is the integral word here, though. Conversation quickly turns to how thoroughly the actors have been investigating and unpicking their characters. Rosie tells me that in the read-through she initially saw Joe as “quite performative and has a kind heart” but, during the rehearsal process, has found him to be someone with “a very strong sense of integrity” and the true “glue” and “leader” of the group. Lydia too is reckoning with the darker sides of lovely lovely Chris who, to her enjoyment, delivers what is perhaps the cruellest line of the play. “These are full humans that we have to take in,” Lydia tells me.

For both Rosie and Lydia, the malleability of the script is one of their favourite parts of Quartet, that will keep it “new and fresh” with every performance. “It has got the potential to feel different each night … I love that about good writing, that it’s not just one-note … There are so many lines and dynamics that, if one night you say something differently, it can change the tone and meaning each night. It’s very poignant,” Rosie says.

Lydia in particular is looking forward to playing with the flexibility of the script in the final scene. Without revealing too much, the final action of the play leaves a lot to be questioned in regard to Chris. Lydia jokes, she wants to “maximum [sic] the audience’s despair of wanting answers”. Rosie too jumps in, “that last bit is really ‘Oh sh*t!’” You’ll have to come see Quartet to find out what it is they’re talking about…

Quartet is playing at the Burton Taylor Studio 9.30pm Tuesday 23rd November – Saturday 27th November. Tickets are available via the Playhouse website.

https://www.oxfordplayhouse.com/events/quartet

Image Credit: Zoe Heimann

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