Saturday, May 17, 2025
Blog Page 489

Oxford MP Layla Moran enters Liberal Democrat leadership race

Rachel Cordery
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Oxford MP Layla Moran enters Liberal Democrat leadership race

Oxford West and Abingdon’s MP, Layla Moran, intends to stand for Leader of the Liberal Democrats, it was announced today.

Layla Moran was re-elected as MP for the marginal Oxford West and Abingdon in December.

Moran, an MP since the 2017 General Election, beat the Conservative PPC by almost 9,000 votes to maintain her seat.

The leadership contest follows the resignation of Jo Swinson, who was forced to resign as leader of the party after losing her Dunbartonshire East seat to the Scottish National Party.

Layla Moran said: “The message I’m hearing on the doorsteps is that the Liberal Democrats need to move on from the last decade, and put forward a positive vision for the future. This is what I intend to do as the leader of the party, and I’ll continue to listen to the ideas and opinions of both members and voters over the coming months.

“I’m finding that we have strong support and credibility at a local level, but we need to set out a clear and positive vision in order to win back support nationally.

 “It is clear that we face a battle for the heart and soul of our country. Instead of accepting the path the Conservatives are taking us on, imagine a United Kingdom that is more equal and compassionate, where politicians at all levels cooperate with each other on issues like tackling the climate crisis and electoral reform.

“I want to lead and empower the Liberal Democrats to fight for this future and to grow our support, so that we can make people’s lives better. I want the party to be in a position to win power within a generation, so that we can bring about the change our country so desperately needs.”

Self-isolated student diagnosed with Covid-19

Imogen Harter-Jones
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Self-isolated student diagnosed with Covid-19

Public Health England (PHE) has confirmed that a student at the University of Oxford has tested positive for coronavirus (Covid-19) after returning home from a specified country.

The university has said that “Our immediate concerns are for the affected student and their family, along with the health and wellbeing of our university staff, students and visitors. The student is being offered all necessary support.”

The university has established that the affected student did not attend any university or college events after they felt ill, when they subsequently self-isolated. 

PHE has advised that the risk to other students and staff is very low and that university and college activities can continue as normal. They have also advised that the university and colleges do not need to take any additional public health actions in the light of this specific case.

A university spokesperson has said “We have worked with PHE to make sure that anyone who was in contact with the student after they fell ill have been notified and that they are able to access support and information as needed. PHE do not consider individuals infectious until they develop symptoms.”

The university is providing support for students, staff, and the wider community.

The University is sharing further updates on the current infection at  www.ox.ac.uk/coronavirus-advice.

Picasso at the RA and the experience of solitude

Raphael Zyss
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Picasso at the RA and the experience of solitude

The curved, sick, and boney fingers are everywhere. The Frugal Meal (1904), one of Picasso’s early paper engravings, is immediately striking. A couple sit by one another, elbows resting on the square tablecloth, facing an empty plate and a quarter piece of tough stale bread that neither dare to look at. In the monochromatic piece, everything becomes a matter of contrast. Tension is built through a subtle kaleidoscope of impressions, the last of which is that of the couple drifting apart from one another. As such the dramatic use of black and white takes a multi-layered meaning and comes to play with our very own contrasting impressions. Whilst an initial gaze shows love and unity, a longer gaze quickly reveals disunion, mimicking what French author Andre Gide called the “de-crystallization of love”. The emphasis on movement, the waves of creases in the tablecloth, the filled and empty glasses, the shaded male lover and exaggeratedly bright woman all seems to suggest a rat race to the end of love. The depiction of the couple’s starving fingers comes to magnify the enduring impression of misery and growing resentment, copied onto multiple places, like a leitmotiv shape of the engraving.

 “You little prick, we didn’t bring you the RA to a play Angry Birds” shouts a man to his son before snapping the phone out of his hands. The “sandal and socks” German tourist cracks a dirty joke. I am forced out of the piece. Going to the museum sometimes takes us deep into the experience of solitude, especially when confronted with such magnanimous genius as that of Picasso and such frivolity as that of a couple violently making out by the “Painter as six years old” drawing. The Spaniard, in the space of a rectangle, sometimes a square or a napkin (see later in the exhibition) creates a dense expression of humanity. The “Blue period” is emotionally pervasive, the shades of a single colour resonate like death and love in two corners of a same piece.  Yet we are but walking entities, with limited experience and when we face such diverse and explosive demonstration of what human experience can be, we are forced into our little shell of lonely self. Maybe that’s the reason why we think so much about the trivial stuff when wandering around the fancy corridors of the RA, Have I fed the cat, when next will I be able to down ten pints an hour with the boys, is youth long gone already? I know that soon enough my failing liver will become less trivial than Picasso’s “Crystal” and “Rose period”. But right now, regardless whether trivial or high, my mind is trying its best to take me away from the real stuff.

The real stuff is the jarring confrontation of the self with the intimate universe of another. Almost never in life do we get to contemplate for as long as we would like, the intricacies, the fantasies, the real intimacy of another: the alter ego human. Picasso is a master at its craft because he expresses so articulately the shapeless complexity of desire, fear and all that constitutes us. We are thus forced into a careful and meticulous inspection of the self.

The piece Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe is no better example, inspired by Manet’s historic oil painting which propelled the Impressionist movement. The 27th February 1960 green-themed version is strangely captivating.  In Manet’s original piece, the art of detailed observation is cultivated in the indecisive looks of the subjects, the shy nudity and the subtle variations of green. From dark to light we imagine a secret path to sensuality and pleasure, an esoteric recipe of the senses. If Manet is revolutionary in how he exposes nudity, and stands for his style despite the stifling conformity of his time, Picasso is ground-breaking in the way he reinvents shapes and creates an instinctive emotional language with the observers.

In the Confucian tradition, only a master, a sage, can establish new rituals once he has fully internalised and acquired the ways of the ancients. Only then can he come to truly invent new forms for the expression of essential principles. There is a sense of that in Dejeuner sur l’herbe and the succession of paintings which chronologically precedes it in the exhibition. The master has come to the height of his art through a progressive internalisation of the ways of the past and through intimate experimentation with colours and ideas, but here he establishes a rupture. He negates any sort of accepted conventions but creates something truly meaningful; an enlightened form of human expression. The sense of childishness evokes something universal. The crude and raw nudity brings sensuality to its most sober and fundamental level.

Wandering around further we stumble across yet another form of solitude. That which is necessary in the process of artistic creation, fostering its most essential component: self-cultivation. Picasso was a regular of Gertrude Stein’s Salon and a prominent figure in mundane continental life. Less known, however, are his long periods of retreat in the Spanish countryside and the solitary life he so often led. This exhibition reveals so brilliantly the long inner path that the acquiring of such mastership must have required. It is an exhibition on the perpetual coming of age and constant transformation of a true artist. The initial daunting solitude felt at facing such incredible genius morphs into a model for approaching life; one of discipline, rigor, and belief.

Oxford professor disinvited from conference

Ellen Pasternack
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Oxford professor disinvited from conference

Selina Todd, who teaches modern history St Hilda’s college, had her invitation rescinded from a feminist conference where she was due to speak on Saturday 29th February.

The event, which took place at Exeter College as part of Oxford International Women’s Festival, marks 50 years since the first Women’s Liberation meeting was held at Ruskin College, Oxford. Todd, whose work specialises in the history of feminism and class relations in Britain, had helped to organise the event and was due to give a brief introductory address.

The 1970 Women’s Liberation meeting is regarded as an important landmark in feminist history, which kickstarted the second wave of feminism. 

Selina Todd has attracted controversy for her involvement with Woman’s Place UK (WPUK), an organisation set up in 2017 to highlight women’s concerns about proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act. These changes would make any person’s legally recognised sex a matter of self-declaration, and some feminists are concerned that this would undermine legal protections based on sex as a protected characteristic.

However, trans rights organisations as well as many others regard this concern as transphobic and WPUK as a transphobic group.

The event organisers did not respond to our request for comment.

In a statement for Cherwell, Todd said “ I am shocked to have been no-platformed by this event, organised by Oxford International Women’s Festival and hosted at Exeter College. I was asked to participate in October 2019, and I explained to the organisers that some trans activists may object to my being there. In fact, trans activists had already tried to shut the conference down because they claimed second-wave feminism was inherently trans-exclusionary.”

“However, the organisers decided that as a historian of feminism and working-class women, they would like to invite me, and were open to many different points of view being expressed at their event. I was delighted. I am deeply interested in the history of the WLM [Women’s Liberation Movement]— my first academic article focused on it— and my parents met at Ruskin shortly before the first conference was held there.” 

“Between October 2019 and February 2020 I helped the organisers to get support from Oxford History Faculty and to find media contacts. I was stunned to receive a phone call at 6pm on the evening before the conference telling me that I had been no-platformed because of pressure from trans activists and Feminist Fightback.” 

“I refute the allegation that I am transphobic.”  

The student advocacy group Trans Action Oxford told Cherwell: “Trans Action Oxford had no role in the decision to disinvite Selina Todd, and did not call for it. Our stance on giving platforms to bigots like Todd is clear: at a time when trans people are under vicious attack in the press, it is dangerous and irresponsible. Todd is a transphobe, and she is regularly given a platform by the press to spread her hatred. To claim she is being ‘silenced’ is laughable, and we call for trans voices to be uplifted and our oppression highlighted in place of her hatred.”

Neither Oxford International Women’s Festival nor the conference appears to have issued any public statement on Todd’s disinvitation, and she is still listed as a speaker on the programme published online. A photograph circulated online seems to show a programme used at the event with Todd’s name covered by tape.

In footage of the event posted anonymously on YouTube, one of the event organisers is seen explaining that they were forced to disinvite Selina Todd due to threats from other speakers to pull out if she was involved.

Lola Olufemi, a feminist writer, had posted on Twitter on the previous afternoon that she was withdrawing from the conference “because of their clear links with Woman’s Place UK […] They have no place in my vision or understanding of the political possibilities that feminism offers us.” A statement from Olufemi was read at the event, which said that she had withdrawn because “the organisers had clearly not done enough to investigate speakers’ links to Woman’s Place UK— a clearly transphobic organisation— or to ensure that members of this group would not be in attendance.”

In this same footage, audience members including prominent feminist Julie Bindel are seen questioning the decision to de-platform Selina Todd, and asking for a show of hands to gauge support for her.

The event organisers explain themselves first by arguing that Selina Todd’s talk wasn’t important anyway, and then saying that they had proposed a “compromise”: Todd was “welcome” to attend the event as an audience member but not to give her scheduled address.

After around fifteen minutes of heckling from the audience, one of the event organisers ends up saying that she would invite Todd back to the conference, except that “I don’t have her phone number.”

Prior to this, the organisers are seen reading out a statement from John Watts, Chair of the History Faculty Board, in response to Todd’s disinvitation. He said: “We cannot accept the exclusion of our respected colleague Selina Todd from speaking at this event. As an academic department we simply cannot accept the no platforming of people who hold and express lawful views.”

Samira Ahmed, the presenter who recently won a pay discrimination case against the BBC, also reportedly criticised the decision to no-platform Todd during her scheduled talk at the same event.

Cherwell has previously reported on remarks made by Todd that were criticised for being transphobic. She has previously retweeted a parody account called ‘British Gay Eugenics’, which claims that young people are being pushed towards transgender identities as an alternative to being gay or gender non-conforming. She retweeted a tweet from the account which joked: “Please join our MASSIVE thanks to @stonewalluk, @ruth_hunt, Gendered Intelligence, & Mermaids UK for helping #transawaythegay. Parents, there is an alternative to having an embarrassing gay son or lesbian daughter! All it takes is timely intervention!”

In another tweet, referencing a trans man who said he was happy after transitioning, Todd wrote: “Here are lots of success stories as we #transawaythegay. Emmett wasn’t allowed to be a lesbian and had to wear skirts and makeup. But when he realised he was supposed to be a boy and started taking testosterone, his church accepted him. All better now!”

Outlining her perspective on trans rights, Todd wrote on her website: “As a gender critical feminist, I have seen my views misrepresented on social media and elsewhere. So here, I explain my views. By ‘gender critical’, I mean that I believe that men and women are defined by their sex, not by culturally constructed gender norms. You can’t change sex – biologically, that is impossible.”

“I believe that UK law should remain as it is, with sex a protected characteristic under the 2010 Equality Act, against the claim of some trans activists that people should be able to define themselves as men or as women simply by describing themselves as such.” 

“The notion that people can ‘feel’ like a woman or like a man is highly socially conservative, implying as it does that being a woman rests on dressing or behaving in a ‘feminine’ way. Being a woman rests both on certain biological facts and on the experience of living in the world as a woman, from birth, an experience that is shaped by particular kinds of oppressions. A movement that claims to be advocating a liberating kind of ‘fluidity’ is in fact reinforcing and promoting highly conservative gendered stereotypes.”

“The claim that some people ‘naturally’ feel feminine is ahistorical, since it overlooks that what is understood as ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ has changed over time.”

In January this year, Cherwell and other news outlets reported that the University had issued Selina Todd with security personnel at her lectures, after she received a tip off from two students that threats had been made against her. 

The protection accorded to Todd comes after attacks on other feminists who oppose the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act. Julie Bindel was attacked by a protestor after giving a talk on violence against women at the University of Edinburgh last year. 

Bindel told The Independent in June that the attacker had screamed at her “saying that I was scum, I was a c***, I was filth,” before attempting “to punch me in the face but was dragged away by security.”

In December 2018, Rosa Freedman, a law professor at the University of Reading, said that she had received phone calls making death and rape threats and had urine poured under the door of her office, in retaliation for her public views on gender issues.

A spokesperson for Exeter College wrote in a statement on Saturday “In May 2019, Exeter College, Oxford, agreed to provide the venue for the Women’s Liberation at Fifty conference, in enthusiastic celebration of all that the feminist movement stands for, and in recognition of the symbolic importance of the former Ruskin College site, which now houses Exeter College Cohen Quad. Exeter College has played no role at any stage in the taking of decisions about the programme or its speakers.”

“Exeter College is committed to the open and respectful discussion of ideas and to providing a supportive and inclusive environment in which the rights and dignity of all its staff and students are respected and valued, and in which people can work and study, without fear of discrimination or harassment.”

C’est la Brie: why we love cheesy music

Sasha Mills
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C’est la Brie: why we love cheesy music

Few would care to admit that the dated tunes of ‘cheese’ make up a significant portion of our listening habits, and yet music once seen as a ‘guilty pleasure’ has reached recognition as its own genre- arguably surpassing many other categories in terms of its enduring popularity and recognisability. Areas dedicated to cheese music can be found in student clubs throughout Britain, with both Bridge Thursdays and Park End in Oxford dedicating entire floors to the genre, and clubs such as Vinyl in Cambridge playing nothing but cheese every night it’s open. Spotify playlists collecting cheesy music have amassed hundreds of thousands of followers, such as: Songs that Never Fail to Make White People Turnt (104, 705 followers) and Spotify’s own Cheesy Hits! (825, 954 followers). I’ve somehow managed to end up with three separate cheese playlists in my own account (collecting 90’s cheese, 00’s cheese and general cheese respectively). The genre has even produced distinct offshoots, such as Indie Cheese, a category that has seen hits like The Bullingdon Club’s ‘Fluorescent Adolescent’ event and an unshakeable place at any house party.

Cheese at times seems difficult to define, but certain themes can be seen in any playlist. Pop seems to be the main genre, with artists like Britney Spears and S Club 7 being regular fixtures, and boy bands are a constant hit, such as One Direction, McFly and Busted. R&B and Hip Hop have also found their place in cheese, with songs like Waterfalls and Kanye West’s Gold Digger joining the category. The genre seems to evade clear boundaries, with wildly contrasting music finding a union within it, but common features include catchy lyrics that can easily be sung along to (albeit with varying levels of quality), a strong beat to dance to, and widespread recognisability. Cheese music is also unashamedly uncool – if your Dad likes it, it’s probably cheese. The genre almost refuses to be taken seriously, avoiding critical acclaim and awards in favour of its status as a staple at every wedding reception and New Year’s Eve party.  

The popularity of The Eurovision Song Contest only provides further evidence for our love of the tacky, cheesy, and just plain odd in music. Acts in the contest can sometimes feel like a fever dream, like Russia’s singing and dancing babushkas (2012) and the constant clusterf*ck of fire, flashing lights, and misplaced props that make up almost every performance. Despite the declining popularity of traditional television as streaming services take over, the Eurovision song contest has consistently maintained high viewing figures in the UK, drawing in 7.7 million UK viewers in 2019, 11.6% more than the 6.9 million that watched it in 2018. Viewing parties for the contest have become an almost regular fixture in many groups, with The Telegraph even having produced a list of steps to hold “the ultimate Eurovision party”. Eurovision alumni ABBA are practically a case study for the endurance of cheese, having seen meteoric stardom and two wildly popular feature films built entirely on their songs, despite their unashamedly poppy music and spangled lycra costumes.

So why has music often condemned as tasteless and tacky been able to remain at the heart of pop culture? A wider epidemic of cultural nostalgia could be to blame, with film photography also seeing a resurgence in recent years, and vintage garms becoming the norm. Indeed, few songs post-2010 make it onto Spotify’s Cheesy Hits! playlist, and those that do tend to have a distinctly nostalgic feel, showing a clear link between songs belonging to decades past and the genre. There’s also an argument to be made for the carefree feeling that comes with cheese. In an era characterised by ongoing global conflicts, growing political extremism, and the looming threat of climate change, cheese music provides an escape to times that seem easier, even if they really weren’t. It is easy to feel divided from your peers in a time like this, but the sing-along, inclusive nature of ‘bad’ music brings people together. There’s something to be said for taking ourselves less seriously, and embracing that which makes music fun, rather than allowing the constant necessity to appear cool to overtake us. 

Where Things Turn Out Different

Kavya Deshpande
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Where Things Turn Out Different

Bombay stands upright at the edge of the Arabian Sea as if it is facing a challenge. In a way, it is: it proved that it could conquer water in the mid-nineteenth century, when a mass land-reclamation project by the East India Company combined its seven islands by brute force. Today, the time of embankments buckling under floods, of rubble unceremoniously emptied into the shallows, has passed, and city and sea have arrived at something of a compromise. Bombay no longer aspires to reach further into the water. The two now meet like tired combatants who have decided to spare each other dignity. The buildings on the coast are grand and dry, and the Arabian Sea remains, to the eye, endless. 

Bombay is an Anglicisation of the Marathi word Mumbai. For this reason, it has become a source of awkwardness. In 1995, the city’s name was officially reverted to its indigenous form after a campaign by the Shiv Sena, a far-right political party that is more blood-and-soil than decolonisation-discourse. Mumbai now exists on maps, in news reports, and on the lips of cautious university students. Bombay, however, remains alive and coiled at the centre of the colloquial. It is in personal histories and half-memories. It is in the response a taxi driver gave me when I asked him why he chose to leave his hometown for this place: “Bombay is Bombay, Miss. Things turn out different here.”    

Bombay’s architecture is evidence of the city’s casual relationship with its own cultural ambiguity. The centrepieces were done in Indo-Saracenic, a style designed to belie its late-nineteenth-century beginnings, when imperial architects fell in love with bygone Mughal palaces preserved only in drawings made a hundred years prior. Those hasty sketches transformed into arched and minaretted structures that now exude faded splendour across South Bombay, the grandest of which is the Taj Mahal Hotel. My dad once took me there for breakfast. I ordered a falooda, a creamy dessert drowned in rose syrup, so pretty that I forced myself to drink it slowly.In 2008, the restaurant where I tended to my falooda was strafed. 167 people were murdered in the hotel when terrorists sieged it for three days, one of many synchronised attacks on the city. My family watched the live news coverage in Hong Kong, where we were living by this time.People trapped inside the Taj phoned the news stations and described how they were being hunted in softly-lit corridors, smoke poured from the hotel’s destroyed dome. When we returned to Bombay for the summer holidays in 2011, the city was nearing the end of its recovery. Everybody spoke about what had happened as if it were a fever dream, brief and grotesque but something that was firmly assigned to the past. I found the descent of normality disorienting. I had not been here during the nightmare.

Marine Drive is a coastal road that represents the last front of the urban planners’ incursion into the sea. It is also the site of a long stretch of art deco. The sudden presence of European architecture could easily be misread as a civilising device, an attempt by the British Raj to stain the landscape with colonial imagery. The truth, however, is somewhat gentler. Art deco began in post-war France, where Cubist, Classical, Fauvist, and Ukiyo-e aesthetics were hybridised to create a new shell for living, one that was stubbornly modern. Between 1930 and 1950, Indian architects were called to populate the edge of the newly-constructed coastline, and to do so they plundered the frontier of their discipline. What arose was an uncoordinated assemblage of curved concrete and bright accents, spaces that somewhere else might have demanded to be looked at but here were simply lived in. The design of insurance offices, residential blocks, jazz clubs and cinemas received the care and attention usually afforded to a monument. All emerged from a delight taken in beauty and structure, and for decades now all have had their strange geometries whipped and rusted by winds that come from deep within the Indian Ocean. At the centre of Marine Drive is the art deco building I know best. It is called the Taraporewala Aquarium and it is gloriously eccentric, its facade saturated with cut-out colours and huge paintings of whales. It was here that I first saw a clownfish, an event of great importance at the time because it occurred a few days after watching Finding Nemo in the cinema. 

I have so far positioned Bombay as a shadow city, one that is willed into existence by texture and subtext. It is violence and brine, magpie architecture and the quality of light that sweeps over the Arabian Sea every evening, it is an inconceivable number of people believing in tandem that things turn out different here. But Bombay is also 2004. Bombay is the last full year I spent living in it. When you emigrate as a child, you lose not just the place you come from but all the people that place could have allowed you to become. You can no longer wear the city like you used to. It outgrows you. Familiar spaces disappear and those that persist develop new histories. Memory turns brittle, leaving you with images of broken clarity. Had I not had access to research and photographs, these would be all I have left of Bombay. The only thing I can attest to with absolute certainty is that there is an aquarium on the coast that holds a school of clownfish, and I once watched them with my face pressed against the glass. 

This House Believes Sex is Good…But Success is Better

Debate
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This House Believes Sex is Good…But Success is Better

Proposition – David Tritsch

In a place where much of our lives seem to revolve around collection marks, internship applications, and the praise of cynical academics, some of us have also had our sexual awakening. Be it a messy post-crew date pull in Park End, or a date night with your long-term significant other, could anything even come close to beating sex? I would argue that success is, in fact, better than sex. Contrary to sex, success is multi-dimensional, making it much more sustainable as a source of long-term gratification.

Firstly, let us distinguish between how much we crave sex and how much we actually enjoy it. From a biological perspective, it is essential that we desire sex, so much so that anthropologists mention it together with food and shelter as a human necessity. That being said, we seem to enjoy sex much less than we crave it. Once we get what we want, our desire for it decreases rapidly. A 2017 study found that couples who have sex more than once a week did not report being any happier. So it looks like sex is a desire that we crave to fulfill, much rather than being a source of ever-increasing pleasure. What does success mean to you? Ask twenty people and you are likely to get twenty different answers. Yes, it could be that Goldman Sachs Internship, but for some, it might be dealing with their mental health, being a good friend, or just finding an extra onion ring in your chips. Success is multi-dimensional, meaning that while we succeed or fail at different things, most of us should not see themselves as either completely successful or as complete failures. This is an attitude that does not come naturally but needs to embraced by appreciating our big and little successes. Because this attitude to success is so multi-faceted, it is much more sustainable than our sexual cravings as a source of long-term pleasure. Now, that is not to say that sex has to be boring and repetitive. Same-sex or mixed-sex, threesomes, foursomes, SM and pillow talk, there are many ways we can add variation to our sex lives. For some of us, a fulfilled sex life may even be one facet of success. Understanding your body and how to enjoy yourself can be amazing and will not diminish your excitement when you find out that you have passed this year’s exams.

Sexless success or sex without success? While many of us will have resonated with either of these at some point in time, it is not what this debate is about. We crave sex and a life without it would be miserable. That being said, there are limits to how happy sex can make us. But if we embrace the idea that that success is multi-faceted, we can attain long-lasting satisfaction by succeeding at the big and little things in life.

Opposition – Anonymous

As Oscar Wilde once said, “Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.” We are animals. We might try to convince ourselves otherwise, but all we are driven to in life is procreation and then, eventually, death. What separates us from the birds and bees is that sexuality dictates everything we doable in the meantime. The brain is the human’s most important sexual organ, though many men would benefit from considering the clitoris a contender. It draws us irrationally to the ugly, ushers us down bizarre pornographic rabbit-holes and beguiles us into supplanting human touch with strings of Thursday night shags. Conversely, our niggling libidos push and pull us in our daily lives too. Why else would we aspire to fame and riches if not to impress potential mates?

Sex seemingly affirms to us our social importance, as anyone who’s slept with a hack knows. It assures us we’re admired and desirable to of our peers. Nothing better explains Oxlove’s cult following. For the distress of the incel, being shag-able is the climax of social acclaim. At our most desperate, we’d do anything to get it, and it can do many things for us in return. The one-off encounter is the world’s oldest bartering chip. Sex is shorthand for so much: adoration, achievement, ability. When powerful men through history have idolised harems, it’s no little wonder that so many view sex in terms of conquest. Conversely, powerful women have always been subject to speculation over their sexual ‘misdeeds’. For sure, sexual favours are exchangeable for arbitrary ends, but not every high-achiever sleeps with her boss. The assumption this must be the case demonstrates how sex is often conceptualized as the social climber’s icepick. In one case, power affords sex; in the other, sex seemingly affords power. There’s often little point in even attempting separating the two.

What do we mean by success, anyway? Is there anything we do that isn’t implicitly sexual? Admittedly, sex is never really had for the sake of sex alone. The bedroom is an adult’s playground, not the exclusive domain of the kinky. We use it to hash out the basic dynamics of our romantic relationships, feeling empowered by pleasuring others and experiencing imitations of real-world reverence by being pleasured ourselves. Paradoxically, sex is also a social leveler. Sharing the experience of nudity with another person is something entirely removed from the economic conditions usually surrounding success. As linked as sexuality is to the world outside the boudoir, sexual intimacy is also an escape from it. Rarely do we get opportunities to be fully honest and vulnerable with another, even if only physically. Oscar Wilde probably didn’t claim that the best things in life come for free, but he may as well have done – sex lends meaning to all our successes, regardless of how we otherwise might define them.

There’s Lots Left to do in Oxford’s Battle with Sexism

Helena Murphy
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There’s Lots Left to do in Oxford’s Battle with Sexism

This Sunday it is International Women’s Day. Around the world people will be marking the occasion with marches and parties in support of women’s rights and gender equality. Here in Oxford, several colleges are celebrating the day with special lectures, dinners, and other events.

Oxford has come a long way in correcting its sexist history. This year St John’s and Christ Church are joining the ranks of the likes of Queen’s, New, and Balliol in celebrating 40 years since starting to admit women. Plus, for the past four admissions cycles, the female proportion of UK-domiciled students at the university has risen each year, and since 2017, Oxford has offered more undergraduate places to women than it has to men. The university looks more equal than it ever has before. But don’t mistake these improvements to mean that Oxford has done all that it needs to do.

If Oxford’s racial and social diversity remains poor it can’t claim to have resolved its issues of sexism. It’s great that more than half of the undergraduate student body are women, but if those women are primarily white and of an upper-social class background then all Oxford has achieved is making itself accessible to only a tiny subset of the female population.

Beyond its evident lack of student diversity, Oxford also fails to offer the same opportunities to female academic staff as it does to male. In July 2019, the university’s statistics on its staff demographic revealed that 80% of the university’s professors are men, as are 70% of its readers and associate professors.

Oxford may like to think of itself as progressive and always improving but its professional academic body suggests quite the opposite. What Oxford’s staff statistics prove is that the glass ceiling hasn’t disappeared for female academics, it has just been raised higher.

Opportunities for women in academia are simply not as bountiful as they are for men. As a woman, you may have greater opportunities while you’re an undergraduate student than those who came before you did, but ultimately if your plan is to pursue a career in academia you’re going to face serious obstacles further down the line. It will likely be, in no small way, because of your gender.

Many of us would like to think that the fight concerning women’s equality in society is a fight only for other people in other countries where women face greater oppression in their daily lives. It is true that in the UK women are fortunate enough to be afforded rights that many other women are not as lucky to have. We can access contraception. By the end of March of this year abortions will be legal throughout the UK. Education is freely available to all up until university. While issues like child marriage, female slavery, and FGM do exist in the UK, for many of us they feel like a distant reality existing only in developing countries.

International Women’s Day is not only a chance to celebrate all that women have achieved and how much has been accomplished in the fight for equality, but it also serves as a reminder. A reminder that Oxford still has more to do, more to fight for. Regardless of how much Oxford has improved over the years it is far from being an equal opportunities university. For as long as it boasts a primarily male academic staff and embodies a lack of racial and social diversity, the fight for equality applies to Oxford as well. International Women’s Day isn’t for someone else, someplace else, it’s for Oxford too.

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.

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