Thursday 17th July 2025
Blog Page 846

Grayson Perry’s Polymorphous Popularity

Georgiana Wilson
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Grayson Perry’s Polymorphous Popularity

Welcome to “The Most Popular Art Exhibition in the World!” – Grayson Perry’s latest public performance in his fluid identity as man/woman, craft potter, celebrated fine artist, esteemed Reith lecturer and TV presenter. His new show is at the Serpentine Gallery in London, on the site of Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition of 1851 – the hugely anticipated show of international culture and industry in a specially-constructed crystal palace. According to Perry, his exhibition is potentially even more sensational.

Identity and how we define ourselves within society is at the heart of this exhibition. Just inside the entrance a large piggy bank blocks the way, with two heads and different slots for Urban, Left, Male, Leave, Fear, Poor, Old, and many other options. Feel like you might fit into more than one slot? Put another coin in- it’s all the more money for Grayson! Next is a vast woodcut of Perry himself, reclining, nude, made up as his alter-ego Claire, with breasts and penis. Equally self-aware and playful are the two nearby ceramic vessels entitled “I Really Love You Super Rich Person”, and “Puff Piece”, with the invented sycophantic remarks of famous art critics inscribed on its body, (“Wow” says John Berger).

One room shows the works made in his Channel 4 documentary “All Man”, which investigated cultural prejudices surrounding masculinity. The phallic pot “Object in Foreground” is one of Perry’s less subtle works about bankers in The City. It is decorated with images of money, along with George Osbourne’s face. Beside it, another towering woodcut titled “Animal Spirit” represents the stereotype of alpha masculinity as a horned bear with an erection labelled “reasonable” and “objective”. On the subject of Brexit, Perry has made two pots (one for each side of the debate) depicting his own biased perceptions of the type of people who voted for each.

An art exhibition by a transvestite exploring the idea of the self and more specifically, gender fluidity couldn’t be more appropriate at a time when this subject is the current hot ticket for media debate. Rather than achieving a subtle commentary on our society’s beliefs and identity, however, these illustrations of stereotypes throughout the exhibition highlight how ridiculous it can be to try to strictly define a person. Perry enjoys a special polymorphous position as a cross-dressing ceramicist with a teddy bear and a big macho motor bike which defies categorisation.

Having started cross-dressing when he was a child, Perry has now become a self-proclaimed mascot for fluid identity. He chose to dress Claire as Little Bo Peep because this is the furthest from alpha masculinity: “vulnerable, innocent” and pink. “I tick so many boxes” boasted Perry in a recent interview.

In this exhibition, Perry addresses quite a few minorities in the art world (and by consequence wins some small ownership over that minority), despite not being a part of it. A flag on the wall, entitled ‘Gay Black Cats MC’, shows two grinning cats embracing on a motorcycle as it escapes the bared teeth of a rearing lion in a domed church, not to mention the candy pink “Princess Freedom Bicycle” (custom-made for his alter-ego Claire) and the pink hearts on his motorcycle. All these grant him a ‘gender privilege’ over the female, gay, black or ‘straight white male artist’. In the “most popular” current identity debate, he is a clear winner.

But Grayson Perry continues to present himself as a jester on the margins of the art world and British culture, licensed to observe everything from the outside. In self-consciously confronting his own influence and “popularity”, he excuses the contradictions that are so obvious throughout his self-presentation. “Irony has become this crippling get-out-of-jail-free card”, he says. Yet his play on outsider art, a talismanic shell sculpture of the artist’s teddy bear in the exhibition called “Outsider Alan” pretends to be something outside the mainstream.

Perry may still enjoy performing as a twee, marginal, craft potter, but as early as 2008 he was ranked number 32 in The Telegraph’s list of the “100 most powerful people in British culture”. It is with this power that Grayson has made himself untouchable, beating the critics to the first and last comment through his popular TV programmes, lectures and books.

One label he can’t hold on to is his self-made reputation for controversy. I recall walking, amongst large crowds of families, through his 2015 Margate exhibition – “Provincial Punk”. In a festival atmosphere, large groups giggled and photographed the pornographic pots and obscene slogans. Perry is mainstream. His self-conscious title: “The Most Popular Exhibition in the World!” is, irritatingly, appropriate.

Hollywood’s Hellboy watershed moment

Greg Brinkworth
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Hollywood’s Hellboy watershed moment

All told, it hasn’t been the best week in the PR offices of the Hollywood film industry.

In what might be the first move of its kind, Deadpool star Ed Skrein announced his departure from the cast of Hellboy and his role as Asian-American soldier Ben Daimio on Monday, citing Hollywood’s “worrying tendency” to reimagine ethnic minority characters as white. As his decision was lauded by many on social media, including the original creator of the Hellboy comic series, actress Chloe Bennet revealed that she changed her name from Chloe Wang, after repeatedly facing discrimination from Hollywood casting agents. Again, not the best week for PR.

What both actors accused Hollywood producers of was ‘whitewashing’ – a term that is fast becoming the most toxic label to be associated with a fledgling studio project. American cinema has always struggled with the concept of racially sensitive casting, from the crude and offensive blackface of the 1920s to more recent criticisms of films like The Ghost in the Shell and Dr Strange, which cast Scarlett Johansson and Tilda Swinton respectively in roles originally written as south-east Asian characters.

Following on from the ‘#OscarsSoWhite’ controversy last year, it should have been apparent to the producers of Hellboy that the tide of public opinion is turning, and shoehorning a white actor into a role that they really don’t belong in is as bad for business as it is morally reprehensible. It remains an uncomfortable truth, however, that Hollywood is perfectly happy to develop stories that borrow from other cultures, whilst denying non-white actors a chance to participate in their production.

The whitewashing debate, like all conversations around minority representation, often attracts criticism from its detractors as yet another example of the pitfalls of political correctness. Clearly, the expropriation of cultures and histories, alongside the marginalisation of the people to whom they belong, goes far beyond this. Denying non-white actors access to breakthrough roles in big-budget productions not only contributes to the embarrassing lack of diversity in Hollywood, but more worryingly reinforces the insidious notion that white actors are worth more on screen than their non-white counterparts.

Yet thanks to the actions of Ed Skrein (and doubtless the support he has received on social media) things may, finally, have reached a turning point. Crucially, Skrein spoke out against whitewashing before starting work on the film, unlike Johansson, Swinton, and many others, who took up their artificial roles before clutching at some form of retroactive justification for their actions. And equally, the Hellboy production team have apologised for their offensive casting, rather than attempting a damage-reduction approach of denial.

In these monolithic film companies, with their eyes aggressively fixed on profit margins, change thus far has been depressingly thin on the ground, and even harder to achieve in an industry notorious for conducting most of its business behind closed doors. Whatever progress has been made on this issue, individual cases do little to help the lack of diversity in general – we still have a situation where unless a role mandates a non-white actor, in all likelihood the position defaults to a white one.

From the days of early cinema, the guise of institutional racism in Hollywood has morphed, a fact which the film-going public is increasingly waking up to. But Ed Skein’s brave decision to speak out, emphasising that whitewashing is still a shameful tendency in mainstream film production, is perhaps a sign that things are slowly getting better.

Student wins battle to remain in UK and take up Oxford place

Cherwell News
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Student wins battle to remain in UK and take up Oxford place

A student has won his battle to stay in the UK and take up his place at Oxford University.

Brian White, an orphan from Zimbabwe, was facing deportation but has been granted indefinite leave to remain.

He spent the first six years of his life at at an orphanage in Zimbabwe, but moved to the UK with his adoptive family at the age of 15.

He received three A stars and an A at A-level at Highfields School in Wolverhampton, and held an offer to study Chemistry at Lady Margaret Hall.

Fears over his immigration status and inability to obtain student finance meant his offer had already been deferred by 12 months.

White’s schoolfriend Luke Wilcox set up a change.org petition which last week gained the support of over 110,000 signatures including the author Phillip Pullman and the comedian Frankie Boyle.

On Monday, White’s lawyer Louis MacWilliams confirmed to him that he would be allowed to stay in the UK.

White told the Wolverhampton Express and Star: “I got the email from Louis and sat down and let it sink in for about five to 10 minutes. Then I started ringing everybody round to say thank you. I owe so many people so much.”

LMH Principal Alan Rusbridger welcomed the news on Twitter.

The Arpaio pardon is misuse of power, plain and simple

Grace Bowland
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The Arpaio pardon is misuse of power, plain and simple

Joe Arpaio, one-time sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona: not the racist, sexist monster that the media portrays, but a devoted law enforcement officer just trying to do his job?

I’m just kidding. He set up self-described concentration camps, and chain gangs. He ignored over 400 sex crimes, including 32 cases of child molestation. He faked an assassination plot against him for political capital. He ordered his department to racially profile Latinos, his county lost millions in lawsuits to the families of victims killed in his jails, and he looks like the old man from Up‘s evil twin. There should be no question as to the nature of his character.

Trump’s recent pardon of Arpaio is controversial to say the least. In a recent poll, 60% of Americans said that they disapproved of the pardon. Already, legal challenges have sprung up against it. The most worrying part, however, is not the President’s support of such a controversial figure; we already knew what kind of man the 45th President of the United States is. It’s the conviction itself.  In July, Arpaio was convicted of contempt of court following a refusal to stop his department’s racial profiling practices, and this is the conviction that Trump has intervened on. By pardoning him, Trump shows blatant disregard and disrespect for the decisions of the court; to do so is not only to condone Arpaio’s original crimes, but also to give presidential cronies free rein to ignore the law. The concept of the presidential pardon sits uneasily with the ideal of the separation of powers to begin with, and when applied to a conviction for disobeying the court, it becomes far more sinister.

The separation of powers has long been held up as one of the foundations of any successful democracy, and a fundamental aspect of this is that the executive should not have control over the decisions of the judiciary. The American approach to the power of pardon has long undermined this principle. Using the pardon to nullify a conviction only a month after the guilty verdict is returned makes a mockery of the system. Why respect the law when the President can decide, on a whim, that it no longer applies to you?

Perhaps my British perspective skews my approach. While our Prime Minister is very much “first among equals”, appearing to act mostly as a figure for roughly half of the country to hate at any one time, the President holds a far greater constitutional authority. Our closest equivalent to the presidential pardon, the royal prerogative of mercy, is a far more controlled process. The Queen acts on the suggestion of her ministers, who review the case thoroughly beforehand, and generally uses the power for less controversial reasons. Recent examples of the British use of the power of pardon include the early release of two prisoners who saved a man’s life in 2001, and a posthumous pardon for Alan Turing in 2013, after his conviction for gross indecency in 1952. It is for those kinds of cases that I shy away from suggesting that we abolish the pardon all together.

The pardon itself is not necessarily outdated, or a constitutional crisis. Used correctly, a pardon is an instrument for checking the judiciary; the law is not always right, and wrong decisions will be made. Posthumous pardons, like that of Alan Turing, are an excellent example of this.  The law was wrong, the conviction was wrong, and while the past cannot be changed, reparations can be made. However, the rampant American exercise of the presidential pardon undermines the decisions of the courts. It is no longer part of the system of checks and balances, instead used for political manoeuvring. Where was the injustice in Joe Arpaio’s case? In what way had he demonstrated that he was deserving of mercy?  This misuse of the power sends a strong message, but possibly not the one Trump was aiming for. The Presidential pardon has gone unregulated for too long – it must be reined in, before men like Trump can abuse it further.

Oxford SU “angered and dismayed” by vice-chancellor homophobia comments

Fred Dimbleby
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Oxford SU “angered and dismayed” by vice-chancellor homophobia comments

Louise Richardson, the Oxford vice-chancellor, has come under fire from Oxford Students Union (SU) for comments regarding homophobia at the University.

Richardson, who also attacked “tawdry politicians” for the handling of the dispute around her pay level, suggested that students cannot be offended on University campuses.

Speaking at the Times Higher Education summit, Richardson said: “I’ve had many conversations with students who say they don’t feel comfortable because their professor has expressed views against homosexuality. They don’t feel comfortable being in class with someone with those views.

“And I say, ‘I’m sorry, but my job isn’t to make you feel comfortable. Education is not about being comfortable. I’m interested in making you uncomfortable’.

“If you don’t like his views, you challenge them, engage with them, and figure how a smart person can have views like that.

“Work out how you can persuade him to change his mind. It is difficult, but it is absolutely what we have to do.”

The Oxford SU LGBTQ+ Campaign has today criticised her comments saying that they were “angered and dismayed” by the remarks.

Mentioning the high levels of discrimination that LGBTQ+ individuals can suffer at university, and within the country, they accused the vice-chancellor of “furthering an environment which makes LGBTQ+ people feel more unwelcome in Oxford.”

They added that while they “recognise that individuals are entitled to personal views and opinions, we see no way in which these are relevant to an academic context, and believe that the expression of such views has detrimental effects which go far beyond making students feel ‘uncomfortable’.

“This is hardly the conduct one would expect in an individual, tasked with ensuring that all members of this University are able to thrive. These attitudes are a failure to recognise the very real impact of homophobic views on both academic success and personal well being, and we hope that she, and others, will consider the issue with more nuance in future.”

The vice-chancellor’s comments have sparked considerable debate online, with many students and JCRs expressing outrage.

In an open letter to the vice-chancellor, Wadham SU said her comments could “legitimise and normalise homophobia from academics and staff.”

It added: “We believe such a comment sends a bad message to LGBTQ+ students, and all students who have faced harassment and discrimination.

“Moreover, the comments made will discourage students from approaching their senior tutor in college when faced with discrimination from tutors, something that we already struggle to encourage students to do.

“Of course we want to encourage free speech and open discussion but to put the burden of challenging homophobic viewpoints on LGBTQ+ students is unfair and dangerous to the mental well being of those students.”

Hertford College JCR, in an open letter to Vice-Chancellor Richardson, said her comments were “of considerable concern to us, as we are of the view that homophobia has no place in Oxford or indeed our wider society.

“Although we do agree with the right to free speech, and acknowledge and celebrate the diversity of views expressed by those at the University, we want to make it clear that we feel there is a point at which ‘uncomfortable’ comments become hateful language.

“We must therefore wholeheartedly reject any notion that views against homosexuality have acceptable grounds within academic conversation.”

Oxford SU took a similar approach, offering advice to those who had been impacted by the comments.

Student Union President, Kate Cole, was more explicit in her criticism of the statement.

Richardson also drew criticism from those outside of Oxford with Dawn Foster, a Guardian columnist, and Charlotte L. Riley, a historian at the University of Southampton, both attacking the comments.

An open letter addressed to the vice chancellor has been launched.

Louise Richardson attacks “tawdry politicians” over tuition fees

Akshay Bilolikar
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Louise Richardson attacks “tawdry politicians” over tuition fees

Oxford’s vice-chancellor, Louise Richardson, has criticised “tawdry politicians”  for linking high levels of pay for university vice-chancellors with tuition fees.

Speaking at the Times Higher Education World Academic Summit, Richardson warned that “mendacious media and tawdry politicians” risked undermining Britain’s higher education sector, and called on academics to resist the “acceptance of a post-truth world.”

She described it as “completely mendacious” of politicians “to suggest that vice-chancellors have raided the £9,000 fee to enhance their own salaries”.

“We know that the £9,000 fee was to substitute for the withdrawal of government funding,” she said.

Richardson, whose £350,000 salary was described as “grossly excessive” by the New College bursar, said her own pay was “a very high salary compared to our academics.”

She said that pay rates reflected a “global marketplace” with American university chiefs much better paid than their British and European counterparts.

Figures released in January showed Louise Richardson was the third highest-paid VC in the UK, and that on average, the VCs of Russell Group universities took home six per cent more than they did two years ago.

Labour’s Lord Adonis and the Universities minister Jo Johnson have criticised “excessive” pay levels in the higher education sector.

Adonis, a former education minister, called for an inquiry in the House of Lords after criticising the “serious controversy” of an 11% salary increase awarded to the Bath University vice-chancellor in contrast to the 1.1% public sector pay cap.

“The highly paid should set an example to the rest of the community, particularly at a time of pay restraint,” Adonis said.

Richardson said that she hoped that the “spurious” correlations between fees and executive salaries would end, “not because it’s embarrassing for me and my colleagues, but because it’s damaging” to the reputation of UK higher education.

She added: “Why would you want to try and damage what is one of the most successful aspects of the British economy?

“The calibre of university education is something that should be celebrated on a daily basis – not just trying to drag it down by making spurious correlations between fees and salaries.”

Lord Adonis criticised Richardson’s remarks, accusing her of a “head-in-the-sand” attitude. He told Cherwell: “There is clearly a link between the hike in fees and the hike in vice chancellors’ pay and that of the army of highly paid university administrators under them.

“Instead of denying it, Prof Richardson would have done better to announce a cut in her excessive salary and a reduction in fee levels at Oxford.

“This head-in-the-sand attitude is damaging our universities and harming students who now face debts of up to £100k on graduation.”

“If you don’t like his views, you challenge them.”

Richardson also challenged universities to protect free speech on campuses, stating that students did not have a right to not be offended.

“I’ve had many conversations with students who say they don’t feel comfortable because their professor has expressed views against homosexuality,” said Prof Richardson. “They don’t feel comfortable being in class with someone with those views.

“And I say, ‘I’m sorry, but my job isn’t to make you feel comfortable. Education is not about being comfortable. I’m interested in making you uncomfortable’.

“If you don’t like his views, you challenge them, engage with them, and figure how a smart person can have views like that.

Oxford University was contacted for comment.

‘A nuanced and complex musical creation’

Thomas Athey
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‘A nuanced and complex musical creation’

It would have been easy for Public Service Broadcasting to become bland and boring. Once the novelty of their distinctive style had worn off, there seemed a serious risk that all they would do is apply the same trick in new contexts. Happily though they have avoided this trap, with their latest offering Every Valley being so much more.

Partially this is down to the depth of the subject matter. Every Valley is primarily a story about the rise and fall of the coal industry in Wales, but also symbolically a miniature of post-industrial decline worldwide. This not only feels more topical than previous subject areas explored by PSB, it is also significantly broader in scope. Their previous offering for example, Race for Space, is a simple tale of the struggles of getting humans beyond earth. Every Valley has this simplicity too, with the core events of the decline of coal mining outline in the way you would expect, but there is an added layer of nuance not found in their earlier work.

One way this is particularly evident is in the vocal delivery. The crisp, upper class recorded tones PSB habitually use return on this album, especially during ‘The Pit’. This track emphasis the danger and risk involved in mining, yet it raises the question of whom exactly is narrating these risks. The miners themselves are certainly not telling it, and as such the track invites us to consider where our perceptions of coal mining come from. This then contrasts with the otherworldly and angelic voice of progress on the track of the same name. Progress is God’s will, and pits will close.

The album also benefits from guest starring other musicians to fulfil vocal roles. Most notable of these is James Dean Bradfield, of Manic Street Preachers fame. Present on the track ‘Turn No More’, it is hard to imagine this particular song being as convincingly delivered by anyone else. Trace Campbell however also provides the voice of progress mentioned above, and folk musician Lisa Jen contributes some warming tones towards the end of the album. This variety of musical expertise both helps ground the album in its Welsh context (James and Jen are both Welsh), but also speaks to how its themes permeate across wider society.

Rounding off the package instrumentally Every Valley shows PSB on top form, as they always are. To be fair, they have had a lot of time to practise the use of instrumentation to set create a mood, but it is still a joy to hear guitar riffs that perfectly complete the theme of the song. Gentle plodding, a gradual noise building back up, the descent into the pit, before jarring and screeching guitar chords create a sense of conflict for the strikes. Overall, Every Valley is a nuanced and complex musical creation, and should be enjoyed by everyone.

We need a second referendum

Will Dry
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We need a second referendum

40 years of integration with our neighbours is about to be fundamentally reversed. Borders, custom checks, policing, nuclear, genetic – the beginnings of the negotiations have shone a penetrating light upon the previously nebulous picture of our relations with the EU. The last weeks of the referendum campaign centred on the £350m for the NHS lie, and Turkey – two giant red herrings devised to stop the real gambit of Brexit from being explained.

Removing ourselves will be a mission that a slim majority, some unwittingly (disclosure: such as myself), decided to impose upon everyone. It will be a mission which will require the sum of our concentrated, collective energy for the next decade and more. The year following the vote should have instilled doubts in any Leaver barring the blind, feckless and couldn’t-give-a-feckless. The economic argument has only become clearer. Philip Hammond challenged Liam Fox, in charge of negotiating all the new wonderful trade deals, to show that any number of post-Brexit trade deals could compensate for leaving the single market. Liam Fox is yet to reply. Politically, on a daily basis we seem to be learning the value of institutions we had either never heard of or assumed to be useless. Take Euratom, I still can’t explain what it does – something to do with nuclear safety, but I know that even the head of Vote Leave called Theresa May a “moron” for trying to take us out of it.

The matter was always finely balanced. There are still indisputable benefits of Brexit to be realised. Democracy can’t work in such opaque circumstances, across cultures so different, and with no general understanding of who the main parties or politicians are, and what they stand for. Democracy behind closed doors isn’t really democracy – the EU has amassed power and accountability in a dangerously unequal ratio. The EU also has its eyes on further expansion and integration – something that our country will likely never come around to.

I readily share these sceptical sentiments, but I’m willing to suppress my intuitions because I recognise I can grasp very little of the complexity regarding our relations with the EU. And the opinion of those who are unfortunate enough to have spent some of their life reading about EU law and supranational cooperation – MPs, industrialists, economists, political relations experts, the Prime Minister – could not be more clear. The unanimity and clarity, in the year when political gravity was suspended, became a weakness of the Remain campaign – how dare those in the know lecture us about things we know nothing about and are expected to vote on?

After the mess that Brexit has become, the likelihood of our being handed a hefty exit bill acceded to by May a couple of weeks ago being a case-in-point, it seems that the one remaining argument for Brexit is that we voted for it. This is marked by a certain Corrigan-esque British aversion to admitting cock-ups. “So.. you’re going to leave the EU and stay outside the EU for the rest of your life out of embarrassment?” … “Yes, and I’d appreciate it if, for the rest of my life, you don’t bring it up”. However, as comical as this is, the mandate is questionable for two reasons.

Firstly, an Ipsos poll conducted after the referendum suggested that people of voting age who chose not to vote supported remain by a ratio of 2:1. Even without considering the 12.9m who did not turnout, a Financial Times model indicates that based on the same turnout, with the necessary adjustments to the demographic profile of the electorate (i.e. older voters die, younger voters enter), the result would be reversed by 2021.

Secondly, it is questionable how final referendums are. As pointed out by Vernon Bogdanor, Farage said that if Remain won 52-48 “this would be unfinished business”, and that “win or lose this battle, we will win the war”. Suddenly, the battle is now a war. Had Leave lost, the night of the vote the Brexiteers would have been plotting how to expand their coalition into a majority within the next thirty years whilst publicly nodding that they accept the vote. David Cameron has gone off to live in an expensive shed, Will Straw has disappeared, and Nick Clegg is unemployed. The best case for remain is currently being articulated by a rogue SpaD gone bad’s intoxicant fuelled 2am tweets.

Remainers, like last year, have all the intellectual credibility and no momentum. We are not blessed with a leader, or even a movement, to capitalise upon the currents favouring the case to remain. The case for Scottish independence collapsed with the oil price post referendum yet the movement strengthened. The case for remain has only grown stronger since the referendum yet it is the movement that has collapsed. If you feel so inclined do not submit to the country’s fate but be naive enough to attempt to influence it. A young Churchill wrote “Twenty to twenty five! These are the years! Don’t be content with things as they are. The earth is yours and the fullness thereof”. With the stakes as high as they will ever be, a government totally unequal to the task, and spiritless politicians unable to challenge the so-feared people’s verdict – a verdict likely to change with time, it is left with those outside Westminster who still believe in the same principles they did last year to convince the confused middle to come to their senses.

The only escape from this mess is a second referendum. Whilst its not currently on the cards, as the details of Brexit become clearer, and more politicians and journalists find their spines, it could be the least damaging way to avoid this nightmare.  

Sarah Champion’s resignation is a testament to the dangers of political correctness

Jordan Bernstein
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Sarah Champion’s resignation is a testament to the dangers of political correctness

Serious conversations can rarely take place without saying things that largely go unsaid. If there is a problem and everyone is afraid to point it out, afraid for their jobs or for how they will be perceived, then the problem perpetuates itself. When it comes to the subject on which Sarah Champion was writing last week, I’m not going to pretend that I have an in-depth knowledge of the problem or all of the relevant factors. I can only refer to what she said, the facts as they stand, and the consequences which ensued from her remarks.

Her central claim was that “Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls”. This is a shocking statement: true or not, it is rare in this country that we hear politicians speak so openly along racial lines. There was no buffer, no filter, no hedging with the favourite phrase “in communities dominated by…”

Champion, MP for a constituency which has all too frequently seen the evils of the grooming of young girls, was not greeted by applause for her bravery in expressing her opinion or the basic facts of the matter, nor was she greeted by the opportunity for nuanced debate on the subject, to which she would have much to offer. She was instead greeted by the intolerance of dissent and demonisation of speaking one’s mind that we have come to expect from Corbyn’s Labour party. Be it because she has never quite been forgiven for her resignation last year in the midst of the attempted coup, or because she chose to pen her piece in The Sun, a shining symbol of the dastardly Murdoch empire, sense was not seen. The inevitable ultimatum came: resign or you’re fired.

And so Sarah Champion resigned from the front bench as Labour’s Shadow Equalities Minister. This was to the dismay of many; not least Sajid Javid, David Blunkett and a whole host of level-headed reasonable people whose first response to a shocking claim like Champion’s isn’t to take to their keyboards and call for resignations on Twitter, but instead wish to consider the case in question and encourage debate.

Majid Nawaz of LBC was among those in Champion’s corner. Of Pakistani descent himself, he decried Champion’s resignation. He stated that as much as we can talk about the slippery slope of demonising whole groups, statistics from only six years ago categorically show that whilst British South Asian Muslims made up three per cent of the population, members of that group were perpetrators of no fewer than 28% of the sorts of cases on which Champion wrote.

Our British and tolerant sensibilities were too quick to dismiss Champion’s remarks as Trumpian rhetoric. But if, as Nawaz claimed, the figures do show a disproportionality, then we’re faced with a real problem. Because apparently now the mere mention that there might be an issue in certain communities sees one branded a racist, a bigot and the individual in question is faced with the threat of losing their job. How, then, will the problem ever be solved?

From politicians and journalists to human rights and equalities watchdogs, large swathes have come to Champion’s aid. Among other things, they have said that our problem as a society lies in our fear of using a lexicon which actually helps us get to the root of major problems faster. True, at times Champion expressed herself in a blunt way. True, as well, the article could have focused more on the victims rather than the perpetrators, and it certainly doesn’t help Champion’s case that she tried to distance herself from her article in the aftermath.

But victims are only helped when problems are solved. If indeed there is a disproportionate problem in certain communities in this county, we owe it to victims to highlight the issue and go about fixing it.

Sarah Champion’s resignation is a crying shame.

Correction: a previous version of this article claimed that British South Asian Muslims made up a third of the UK population. In fact, they make up three per cent. 

‘Sex Education’ at the Fringe review: ‘unapologetic’ and ‘well-researched’

Po Odomil Ler
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‘Sex Education’ at the Fringe review: ‘unapologetic’ and ‘well-researched’

Everyone will have gone in to a sex education class with preconceptions. That is, if you ever attended a sex education class: one of the many issues writer Cressida Peever lists in explaining why she wrote Sex Education is that the classes weren’t made compulsory until this year! My experience of sex education was the typical run-down of STIs, contraception, and puberty, all delivered by a straight-talking NHS nurse. Freshers’ week at university brought with it compulsory workshops which explicitly dealt with consent and facilitated student discussion. So, I came in to the Edinburgh Fringe Preview of Sex Education thinking that I had actually received a pretty good education on sex in my teenage years, and that perhaps I was in a relatively fortunate and unique position.

The play unapologetically puts across its message about the need for reform and open discussion in sex education, and for the inclusion of consent, pornography, and equality in the curriculum of a Year 11 class. The well-researched dialogue of teaching assistant Rebecca, played with confidence by Madeleine Pollard, highlights how these topics, often considered only auxiliary to the standard ‘birds and the bees’ curriculum, are of paramount importance in teaching teens to enjoy sex healthily, rather than merely be wary of it. I began to wonder if I had been projecting my present awareness on to what I knew when I was 15, and realised that at school consent really hadn’t been broached as a topic that left any lasting impression. I started to see the important conversation that this play is prompting. 

While the discourse around the important new additions to the curriculum was pleasing and thorough, there seemed to be no ‘in-between,’ as it was mainly met by – in the words of the more informed Mim – ‘lairy’ banter in the classroom and stunned silence. I wondered whether there could have been a more nuanced presentation of the students really absorbing the information they were being exposed to.

The student characters were a varied, if somewhat cliched, bunch, ranging from clued-in Mim to Patrick, who took a lot of convincing that anal sex is not ‘normal’ (heterosexual) sex. Between the teachers Rebecca and Dr Talbot, whose characterisation was developed strongly throughout by Jon Berry, there was just the right amount of awkwardness to reflect the clash of their different approaches to teaching sex education. I enjoyed how the more adult characters were not exempt from the many parallel processes of learning taking place and interweaving during the play.

With a week still to go until they would take the play to the Edinburgh Fringe, and in a very tight stage space, the actors pulled off an impressive performance with very few hiccups. Sex Education gave a fast-paced, funny presentation of classroom dynamics that left me feeling slightly nostalgic about school, and envious of Rebecca and Dr Talbot’s students, having missed out on the kind of sex education lesson they received. In light of walk outs from sexual consent workshops in York and elsewhere in 2016, Sex Education brings home how important it is to give school students the right information at the right time. 

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