Minerva

Editor’s note…

This journal is divided into two sections: imagination and knowledge. These were chosen as themes because they are the two things required to change the world. With imagination we can visualise and aspire to a future where gender inequality is no longer an issue, and with knowledge we have a powerful weapon to slay ignorance and enlighten.

Thank you to The Feminist Society of The University of St Andrews for entrusting me with Minerva. A special thank you to Lauren Hossack for your help, and Rena Lapidaki for your magical illustrations.

And of course…thank you to all who contributed entries.

Read and be inspired.

Sincerely, Eva Wewiorski

IMAGINATION

The Tarnished Rose Construct

They say it has to be rose petals, Candle light They boy you knew half of your life

Stay as pure as a dove Wait until you find your love

But what if there’s just cheap hotels, Drunken delight?

No need to be his wife

It’s just a concept, an idea ‘treacherous’ roses are not tarnished.

The word which every girl fears; Slut- because her innocence is finished

No ‘good girl’ performance is needed “I can and will act like him” she decreed

Catherine Hopes

Denied

Sensual, sexual pangs Denied Her secret, saucy joysDespised

For pleasure is a crime, a lie For her

She said to me, I do not believe, No, for no good girl has a toy No, she must please her boy

That personal midnight delinquency-

Hush: Hush: Hush:

No. Words.

In lands everywhere A blade cuts ruby red Rips raw a white wonder That devilish diamond

For they shall be enraged Unless the dangerous dove is enslaved, Restrained, enchained

I dream alive with a smile I scream alive: no more denial!

Let your beautiful wings

FLY

FLY

FLY

She was, you are, we are deprived, Denied.

Catherine Hopes

The Red Pill The clock was so slow. There were no ticking sounds, just gliding silence. The hands moved in an endless fluid circle, convincingly dragging the time. On and on, and on and on…I stared at the clock with empty eyes, and then my eyes shifted down to stare at the old lady at the front of the row. She was busy arguing with the pharmacist, trying to prove that the bottle of medicine in her hands was overpriced. It was cold. I shivered.

A heavy sigh escaped. What was I thinking, I asked myself. What was I thinking of when I did not tell him to stop? Why did I not tell him to stop? I knew that the thing had broken… Didn't he know it? Of course he knew… of course he did… so why didn't he stop? I bet my friend Renée had an answer for that. (In fact, Renée had an answer for everything.) I could hear her voice echoing at the back of my head: "Darling, because he didn't care. Capisce? He didn't give a shit. 'Cause none of them give a shit. All they care about at that moment is themselves, and all the rest, well, you can take care of all the rest…" Yes, that is what Renée would say.

She would say it as she dug into a fresh, warm apple pie and swing her fork in the air for extra emphasis at the end of each sentence.

I took a step forward, slightly advancing in the stagnant queue. I heard a bell ringing. A gust of wind rushed in, as someone opened the entrance door. My head turned towards the entrance in an involuntary motion, and I crossed my arms. It was even colder. Two silly hats and some giggling noises; my verdict was instant: two girls—from another grade. Their carelessness irritated me. I was just about to wish for them to disappear from the face of the earth when I actually realized: these were two girls, from another grade, standing in the same tiny pharmacy as I did, and I was about to ask for the so called morning-after-pill right in front of them. My head began turning towards the exit door like a sunflower turning towards the warmth of the sun. I resolved to walk out and come back sometime later on, sometime more quiet…

I was taking my first step out of the queue when I heard a voice from behind the counter: "How can I help you today?"

I turned to face the blonde, middle-aged pharmacist staring at me with the most innocent gaze her blue eyes could possibly give. It was too late to run away now. My eyes danced around hysterically, as if they could just pop out of their sockets and run away on their own. A quick, automated smile popped up on my face. I leaned over the counter and said as quietly as I could: "Hello…err…I need the… erm… the morning after pill." There it was, I had said it. She stared at me for a second and then pointed at a metal chair in the corner. Could I wait there for a couple of minutes? Another pharmacist would be with me shortly.

My feet dragged me to the corner of the room and I sat down. As I looked up, I saw a girl's head quickly turn away from me. She leaned towards the other girl and quickly whispered something into her ear. The other girl grimaced (a gesture of disbelief I guess) in response and they kept whispering. The two girls… they would probably tell it to two other girls, and those would tell two other girls, and those would tell the others, until the story circulated down to the ears of the girls who actually knew me. I sank deeper into the chair and looked down at my feet. What was this feeling that I was experiencing: was it shame? Yes, the

corner of shame, this was where they had placed me. My lips curled in regret.

Suddenly I remembered how bitterly my mother had cried when her boyfriend told her that he did not want the child. He'd pay for the abortion, he had said. Back then, I was immersed in deep hatred both for my mother and her boyfriend. I could not understand what was so upsetting for her. I mean, he'd pay, right? What was her problem then? But now I could see it.

"I'll pay…" the phrase kept echoing in the deep well of my mind. So that's how it all starts out, I thought. I'll pay for your pill, I'll pay for your abortion… but, you know, keep me out of this. They would never willingly share the humiliation, but they would PAY for us to go through it. All alone. And what was our problem? Another shiver passed through my body.

In the end, the pharmacist came and asked me several questions, cast a last judgmental look at me, and gave me the pill. The miracle of science. The corrector of mistakes. I swallowed it like a dying man drinking from the fountain of life. Then I produced a couple of badly worn banknotes out of my jeans' pocket and handed them to the pharmacist. I turned and walked out.

I saw him standing across the road. He was waiting for me outside, you see. He was nice enough to wait for me outside, you see. We walked down the road in silence, or perhaps we didn't walk down in silence. All I know is that at that moment to me the world was silent. It wasn't silent like a silent room full of white noise, no. It was drowned in the depths of true silence—the kind of silence that makes people go mad, makes them scream and beat on the walls to be let out of the room. However, I had nowhere to escape to: the room was too big.

We ended up in a park. It was the park that we would usually go to. As a matter of habit, we walked in the direction of our bench, but it was occupied. It was a Saturday morning, after all. The usually empty ladders and swings were full of children. Their happy cries thinned out the air. The sight of them running around so happily, so lightly, so cluelessly… it brought an odd feeling to me. I could not decipher it. What was it? Was it guilt? I did not really know, and I still don't know, but the feeling was something white, depressingly dry and cold. It was something that you would not want to touch, like the dry ice that stings your fingers each time you caress its obscure smoke.

I always had a terrible conscience. It was the kind that liked to strike at you at random and most unsuitable times. And mine had decided to strike right at that moment. "Irresponsible bitch," it said to me. I could not reply. I could only nod.

He smiled at me and embraced me from behind. His right hand crawled down my belly.

"Hey, can you imagine what our child would look like?" he said. I looked up at him in bewilderment. Was he trying to mock me? Why was he saying this to me right now?

I slapped his hand away and asked him if he was trying to make fun of me. He seemed surprised. He said that he wasn't. My poisonous glance fixated itself on his face. He seemed to be clueless. He really did not understand. The poison in my eyes dissolved and I averted them, returning them to their initial position on the ground. That was where they belonged for now.

Eventually, his hands found their way back onto my shoulders. His touch hurt. It stung me somewhere deep inside, the ghost of a contraction. I did not say "don't touch me"; I couldn't. I just stood there silently, in the warmth of his embrace and yet feeling cold as a corpse. I was

alone.

I took his hand and turned my back to the park. "Let's go somewhere inside," I said, "I can’t stand this cold."

Fidan Kasimova

Lillith Ariana’s poems centre around historical characters in relation to female-oriented themes “…Eve and Lilith…opposite archetypes…” ~ Vanessa Rousseau; Diogenes Journal

Returned to dust.

Tread on me - I'll bite your feet, soft and human like mine were.

You didn't like meCreated with you, side by side, full of blood and fluids.

Returned to dust, To watch your labour.

Press a hand to your sideshe hurts, doesn't she?

I didn't.

I did not live to cause you pain.

I did not live to serve you.

Returned to dustBut not to dirt.

Dust is slyit haunts your path, as your children fight for what I was.

Force-fed liesthey chain themselves to gates.

You discarded me, He helped you-

Listened to you.

Returned to dustbut never gone.

Ariana Ellis

Funeral Oration My son is dead On the fields of Gaul.

His back is bent, His arm is out, Reaching for help that never came.

I am young, But I will never have another Son to fill the lossTo place his feet in brother’s sandals Until he too can die for Rome, Soaked in the certainty That he was never as blessed, Never as great, Never as loved.

Curse you.

Bear your own glory.

Ariana Ellis

The following three entries – a comic strip, short story and poem deal with an issue integral to all women: the body. How it is viewed and treated by society. An object to be moulded, shaped, and damaged in an endless quest for perfection. An object that seems to belong to everyone but them at times. An object to be used and discarded, her soul still alive and weeping inside. (E.W.)

Miriam Chappell

Recollection The four of us were sitting around my kitchen table drinking tea. It was oolong, from San Francisco's Chinatown; delicate and light, subtly sweet all on its own. The miniscule and modern rainbow cups were exuberantly at odds with the modest earthen teapot that had traveled, carefully wrapped and packed in my suitcase, from Singapore.

“What? That doesn't happen anymore.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah. Who rapes anyone anymore? This is the 21st century.”

“One in three women worldwide have been sexually assaulted or raped. If you know three women, which I'm pretty sure you do, since there are two at this table alone, it's a statistical probability that one of them has experienced it.”

“I don't know anyone who's been raped.”

“You do.”

“No I don't.”

“I promise you, you do.”

“I think I would know about something like that.”

“Patrick, trust me. I guarantee you that a good portion of your female friends have been sexually assaulted.” I was adamant.

He was shaking his head in disbelief. “I really don't think so. No one I know has been raped.”

I'll be honest: I was heated. Looking back, I suppose I should be grateful that I have friends, particularly male friends, who refuse to believe that sexual assault is common. The alternative, those who readily acknowledge and wave away this oppressive fact, possible perpetrators of these shockingly high rates, is significantly heavier. But in that moment, I was a bastion in the face of ignorance. It was my duty to educate. Yet – I didn't really mean to say it. It kind of slipped out. Even while saying it I tried to take it back. My speech slowed down.

“I've been raped.”

There was silence, and shock written on three faces. Somehow, I felt ashamed, like I always have when I've talked about or even thought about being sexually assaulted. Like I did something wrong. Like maybe it was my fault after all. Like maybe I wanted it and was asking for it, otherwise why would it have happened so many times? And I remember how I could have said no one more time, how I could have fought physically, how I could have told the police but never did, how I could have escaped, somehow, if I had just tried hard enough.

I remember how it took me years to tell anyone, and that the first person I finally trusted enough to tell told me to get over it, that it wasn't real rape. That I was exaggerating.

Silence blanketed the table. No one knew quite how to respond. But I couldn't blame them. I blamed myself. * I was months away from my sixteenth birthday. I had just broken up with my boyfriend of nearly a year – the controlling, manipulative type. His name was Jon, and he was never too keen on me having friends of either the male or female variety, but he was particularly venomous in regards to the former. Yet even innocent-seeming girls were potential menaces. He could see through their facades; he knew their insidious agenda. They had the power to instruct me in the arcane art of female entrapment: alluring makeup, clothing that revealed just enough to tempt, hairstyles that framed one's face and accentuated one's features rather than obscuring them. He preferred me in shapeless clothing, bare-faced, lank hair draping my downcast eyes. T-shirts and sweatpants were my wardrobe staples, and on my most daring days I applied a quick swipe of mascara to my lashes. On these occasions,

I kept my eyes focused on the ground, hoping he wouldn't notice and chastise me. I voiced, too loudly, that I just loved to be comfortable, that other girls were stupid and materialistic for being obsessed with clothing and makeup. I was above such frivolities. But in reality I had felt close to asphyxiation for far too long. I would like to think that I broke up with him because I had finally summoned the courage, that I was strong, that I was brave. But in reality I was just too close to breaking. In any case, I did it. I had tried to leave him many times before, but his manipulation had always bested me. But no longer would I endure his scrutinizing glares through my text messaging inbox – why are you texting boys this late? – or his look of contempt when I wore a tank top – trying to get attention from boys? – delivered slightly in jest, but with enough of a subtle undertone and warning in his eyes so that I knew I better fucking not be.

But I was a free bird now, so I concentrated my newfound energy on the demanding priorities of life. I was liberated; my horizons were infinite; my leisure time was mine to allocate as I wished. Cresting the top of my industrious to-do list was the goal “to be fucked up every day over Spring break,” and said break was fast approaching. The terms of this personal contract were loose, but ultimately binding. It required merely that my mind be definitively altered for some time during the day's 24 hours; the type of substance was hardly a pressing detail. * Bacchus was the raucous initiator of the week's festivities. The seven of us were drunkenly wandering the winding dirt path that flanked the canal behind our neighborhood. It flowed steadily adjacent to our footprints, calm and inviting. The dulcet tones of its gentle running seemed to make the dusty air less oppressive. Our parents maintained a monotonous insistence that the canal was dangerous, riddled with unforeseen obstacles like shopping carts and shoes, ropes and rats. They would adopt an appropriately stern face and a metronome finger and advise in a properly parental voice, “Never go into a canal. You could get sucked under and die.” But we knew better than to live our lives chained by fear. We had daringly submerged ourselves into its cool murky water during the hottest days of summer. We had emerged from the lazily flowing water unscathed, canal mud deeply encrusted under our nails, tendrils of green algae clinging to our damp nubile bodies.

It was well past midnight and the waxing moon was a mere silver sliver suspended against the deepening night. The slumbering matchbox homes were dark and grave, having fulfilled their nightly ritual of flicking off every light in unison at 10PM: epitomes of upright citizens. The cover of darkness forced us to feel rather than see their heavy and exacting suburban stares, their lips pursed and eyes narrowed. How could we? They seemed to ask.

Did our parents know we were here? We ignored their queries despite the weight of their passive-aggressive glares, for we felt so boundless, then, with our smuggled beers, wine coolers, and beat-up water bottles half-filled with cheap vodka that our brothers had bought for us. We used beer as a chaser and bragged to each other about using liquor to chase liquor.

The unsteady, linked-arms walking was making our heads spin round. We laid down in a heap on the dusty tar, somehow still retaining warmth from the sun's rays. We embraced the dirt working its way into our pores. Our store of gossip was too exhausted to sustain the art of conversation, so Ellie suggested playing a game. Driven by rampant teenage hormones and fueled by liquor, spin the bottle was the natural and unanimous favorite. We had improvised in the past: spin the remote, spin the cell phone – but tonight our game was officially sanctioned with an actual bottle. It was a dented old much-used water bottle with the label half ripped off, but we weren’t picky. I set it down in the middle of our circle, gave it a quick twist, let it spin. It landed on Ellie. We laughed, and kissed almost as a joke, but her lips felt electric. I kept my eyes open and I could see the sprinkle of freckles upon her face in

the slight moonlight. She was blowing watermelon bubbles and I felt her hot breath graze my lips as we parted.

We all kissed each other that night, leaning over the center of the circle to connect; wet adolescent lips pressed heavily to wet adolescent lips. Occasionally bravery overtook us and a tongue slipped out, met haltingly by another. We were hypnotized, life was as it should be, and we savored the taste of mouths that were just different enough from our own to fascinate.

But alas – we were cruelly shocked out of our reverie by a bright pair of white lights beaming at us from the street. I threw my hand up in front of my face to take the sting out of the light and squinted through the spaces between my fingers. It looked closer than most cars.

“What's that?”

Alex shrugged, ever cool. “Just another car rounding the bend, probably.”

“Are you sure? It kinda looks closer.”

A spotlight switched on dramatically – I swear dull and resounding piano notes accompanied it. Its glare was utterly devoid of any modicum of compassion or lenience as it raced toward us, cackling maniacally from the titillating knowledge that its vise-like clutches were inescapable. Its wild and violent joy at cornering fresh victims was palpable; it rent the air like a howl.

“Ohhh, fuck! It's the cops!”

“Shit!”

“Run! They can't drive up here!”

But drive up here they did, spotlights marking us as criminals, megaphone commanding us to remain still and silent, for our own good, naturally. The smooth unbroken wall resiliently separating the safe and sane homes from the menacing outside world offered us no respite, not a single place to hide.

Getting brought home by the cops again came nowhere near getting fucked up on my to-do list. I snatched up my blanket and vodka and threw them over the wall into someone's backyard. I made a valiant effort to scramble up after them, but I was too drunk and the wall too impenetrable. The surburbanites who had erected it had planned it well. It was contemptuous of my efforts, scraping my legs and arms to assert its dominance before throwing me mercilessly to the ground. Resigned to my fate, I turned my back to the heartless gray stone, my eyes blinded by piercing white light.

“Stay still. Put your hands up,” the loudspeaker blared, bored and gravely. The words were simultaneously lengthened and condensed. Our captors were torn between prolonging our suffering and hastening to the next trip to penalize another unruly band of drunken teenagers.

They were nearly salivating at the prospect.

They didn't take me alone. Jaimie, Ellie, and I were forced into the backseat together, a mockery of our earlier employment of each other as pillows. We learned firsthand that the doors of police cars don't have handles on the inside. The other three shared a similar fate, wedged in the backseat of a cop car that had arrived on the scene shortly after the first. Alex was the only one who escaped, probably due to his constant composure. I can picture him calmly strolling away, his mildness rendering him invisible. The cops asked our names, our birthdays, our addresses, if we knew that curfew was 10PM, if we knew how loud we were being, if we knew that people were trying to sleep right now. They were kind enough, but our wounded pride and natural animosity for being caught transformed them into clawed and saw-toothed monsters. They drove us home one by one, somberly frog-marching us to the door. Ellie was seated in the middle and she seemed even smaller than usual. She was stiff and tense, her eyes wide and fists clenched. “You don't understand,” she whispered, her fear forcing her voice into submission, “my dad's going to kill me.” We saw her at school a week

later with purple and blue blooms on her arms, and it was a long time before she snuck out with us again.

I got off easier. My parents weren't pleased with being woken up in the wee hours of the morning by the police holding their sheepish daughter by the scruff of the neck, but I managed to alleviate their anger through my ever-increasing lying finesse. “We were just hanging out,” I said. “It was spring break.” “There wasn't any alcohol involved.” Somehow the police were on my side, for once. “It doesn't look like they were drinking.” I had a strawberry Halls cough drop in my mouth to mask the acrid biting scent of alcohol, and it did its job well. I was thoroughly chastised and endured many disappointed shakes of the head, but was ultimately able to continue my drunken forays, albeit after resolving to increase my tact and secrecy. * I achieved my goal that week. I was fucked up every single day. To celebrate my success, I took advantage of a particularly enticing offer on the final night of spring break.

Jared's dad was out of town, and he had a hot tub, so obviously a party would be thrown.

Jared even drove his lifted truck twenty minutes to pick up Lynne and me – a genuine modern-day gentleman. The second we slammed the door we started slamming back shitty beer, building a pyramid of cans to rival Giza.

My recollections of the night were hazy at best then and remain so now, years later.

But parts of it retain a certain clarity, despite the benumbed fog of alcohol. I remember laughing recklessly in the hot tub in my black bra and underwear, carefully chosen to be bared, conscious of the way the water lent my skin an irresistible sheen, coyly looking out from under my eyelashes, the steam rising in coils and spirals.

I remember listening to Underoath and the disproportionate joy that engulfed us upon discovering that our favorite songs were the same.

I remember Pat slamming into our artfully and carefully constructed can-pyramid, and mass chanting as we forced him to painstakingly reconstruct it while chugging beer, heckling him to put this can here and adjust that can there.

I remember Josh leading me through the window of the master bedroom to reach the roof outside. He had confessed his undying love and devotion months previously, while I was still in a relationship. Then I had enjoyed the sense of an illicit romance conducted largely via internet chatting, despite not being genuinely interested in him. Now I had latched onto him shortly after breaking up with Jon, although I was strict about not wanting an official boyfriend just yet. I wasn't ready to give up my newfound freedom, unable to comprehend a relationship where I wasn't held captive by constant manipulation.

It was a comfortably warm night outside, but the wind had just enough of a bite to inspire cuddling. The stars were shadowed pinpricks of light, once, bold in their prime, but now, lackluster; dimmed by the brash smog and arrogant streetlights. Josh laid down on the roof, motioning to the spot next to him. I lay down beside him, hands propping my head up.

“Hey.” “Hey.” I was giggly.

“You smell like beer.” He wrinkled his nose.

“Probably because I've been drinking beer.” He frowned at my wit. We didn't call him golden boy for nothing. The only alcohol he had ever touched were the few molecules lingering in my mouth.

The two of us talked aimlessly for a few minutes. Palpably awkward undertones and frequent, halting pauses dotted the floundering semblance of a conversation, the adolescent's curse of graceless and obvious communication. We were undoubtedly products of the technological generation: when conducted in relative anonymity, via writing, typing, or

texting, our exchanges were exhaustive, comprehensive; but conversational topics ebbed and expired when we were face to face. Naturally, neither of us acknowledged this incongruity except in the smallest recesses of our minds. To outwardly grapple with this issue required more presence of mind and communicative prowess than either of us could boast of, and would be to simultaneously admit weakness and engender more discomfort. So instead we suffered silently and alone while attempting to pass the time with activities that didn't involve the spoken word. I’ve heard that it’s better to be lonely by yourself than lonely with someone else, but I hadn’t heard it then.

His hand enveloped mine, easily, clumsily. It was larger and rougher than mine; the lines engraved in it were dusty and ancient arroyos, the calluses eternal and impenetrable. He was older than me by 363 days – significant at that age. He made me feel small, and the feeling was electric, addictive. Wildly, frantically, we pressed our lips together in an effort to smother the uncomfortable silence. He pulled me on top of him and we kissed deeply, our bodies rocking, back and forth, back and forth, together. Yet even our kissing was artless and lumbering, as if our mouths didn't or couldn't quite fit together.

We stayed on the roof for a bit longer, pushing an agenda that should have been left behind, but my buzz started to fade. I needed another beer or two to keep it steady, and neither of us knew how to be alone with each other anyways. Josh and I both acted appropriately mournful that our time alone was coming to an end, but inside I was celebrating, and I can only presume he was too. We crawled back through the window to find two of our friends in bed together, drunk, unclothed. We stifled our laughter with our hands and stumbled out the door, leaving it wide open to the fluorescence outside, a gaping wound illuminating her shame. The scene would be a running joke for a long time to come, but our taunting targeted exclusively her, not him. She was an easy slut and he was asinine for having such low standards; never mind that she was one of my closest friends. The loyalties of a teenage girl are unfathomable, although perhaps I ought to stop making excuses for my poor behavior. Youthful ignorance and spiteful jealousy are a poor defense.

Josh's curfew came and he went, but hours were left for me.

There were a few of us who stayed up all night, an unspoken pact. In those hours we contrived secrets that I refuse to expose even in these pages, my pinnacle of honesty. Some things are simply best kept secret. The sun rose on time, sternly, considering it his duty to finally put an end to our madness. He shook his head disapprovingly at the moon's inability to constrain us, his tendency to instead egg us on.

I slipped into the bathroom to wipe my crusted eyes, albeit carefully leaving my makeup intact (it would be years before I gained the confidence to bare undarkened eyes in public; somehow I still receive a twinge of unease when I dare to), to rinse the taste of insomnia out of my mouth, and to wash the deeply embedded guilt from the spaces between my fingers. I heard the door creak and lifted my dripping face from the sink. Jared was there with a rather disarming smile. “Oh, hey,” I breathed, quickly wiping the vulnerability from my face. I thought I had locked the door, and the unlooked-for transition from privacy to company left me disconcerted.

His response was to gently, forcefully, push me against the bathroom counter and kiss me. I submitted to his presumption almost immediately, I wilted like a flower for him, and part of me still wonders why. A curious mixture of desire and my lack of acquaintance with agency, I think. It was simply easier to let my breath become heavy, to allow desire its reins.

Our kissing was furiously passionate and natural as it could never and would never be with Josh. I sat on the counter and wrapped my legs around his body, locking them tightly at the ankles to bring him ever closer to me. The sheer wrongness of it was mere kindling, but still I couldn't quite quiet my nagging conscience. I broke away. “Shit, what about Josh?” I half-

whined, irrationally hoping for Jared to tell me that everything was fine, that I hadn't acted with insane impropriety.

I fully realized that the damage had already been done, that my compliance which had immediately erupted into enthusiasm could not be revoked. But some disconnected part of me raced to rectify and erase the situation. I figured Josh would forgive me if things didn't go too far (what is too far?) anyways; I expected men to forgive me anything. Jared angled my chin towards his lips. “Forget him,” he said. “I want you.”

His dominance made me whimper and turned me breathless as his hand crept to the warmth between my legs. But I pushed his hand away, blushing, breathing out a meek, “Maybe next time...I have to go.” It was the closest I could possibly come to saying no, although I refused more due to embarrassment that I hadn't shaved than because of any contrition I felt. I left him standing alone in the bathroom and I left without saying goodbye.

The fulsome, oily residue of iniquity layering my hands – the very film I had intended to wash away – had instead become more viscous and ingrained. * I kept my growing crush on Jared quiet, but, typically, Lynne knew anyways. She was a gossip queen with a quick intuition who tended to know your dirtiest deeds before you knew them yourself. This crush was a secret I almost attempted to keep from myself, for I was well aware of its transgression and cognitive dissonance was making its presence loudly and uncomfortably known. Jared was older than me, and more importantly, one of Josh's best friends; there was no denying the corruption of our relationship. Still I made increasingly banal excuses to Josh and saw Jared several times in the next few weeks, never alone, for Lynne and I were inseparable. The only exceptions were during her frequent groundings; she was caught sneaking out at least once a month.

She would take her dad's car at night and pick all of us up. She didn't have her license, or her permit for that matter, but that was irrelevant. Our aimless cruising around town was too important to be constrained by such things as laws. These breaches only ceased after she backed into my neighbor's mailbox, completely uprooting it. She had to pay for the damages to the car and the mailbox, as well as face her father's anger and repeatedly broken trust – how it always healed so quickly I'll never know. He kept his car keys well hidden from then on. The naked earth around the mailbox was an embarrassing reminder of her mistake that lasted for weeks, until the grass grew in again.

Options in those days were limited; a smallish town has little to offer in way of entertainment for teenagers. But still we found ways to pass the time. However slowly and languidly, its golden honey did drip by. The three of us would go to the movies, the chilly interiors a welcome respite from triple-digit summers and frugal parents with a sixth sense for the air-conditioner's illicit usage. I would be home alone while my mom was at work, and would receive a text twenty minutes after I had turned it on: “PG&E is charging extra for AC today. Do not turn on.” I would groan and suffer with just a fan slowly drying my sweating brow. The three of us relaxed capriciously at one of our houses, preferably while our parents weren't home. Sometimes, we just parked the car near quaint suburban parks and sat around, listening to music and shooting the shit. Once, Lynne stepped outside to take a phone call and only Jared and I remained in the car, alone. He intensified immediately; made more eye contact, shifted his body language. I don't remember what we talked about, but I do remember his text to Lynne that she showed me later that day. “Ask her why we didn't mess around.”

Jared and I eventually began hanging out without Lynne's company. We wanted each other to ourselves; sharing had become old. His truck, constantly whisking me away from my home and transporting me to illicit lands, pleasure-filled lands, became a symbol of eroticism.

We kissed and fondled each other in both the front and the spacious backseat. His hand would rest on my leg and travel up, up, up as he drove. We would climb into the back and open our mouths upon each other’s. We were insatiable. Once, his hand crept between my legs and rubbed me until I let out a series of soft moans and just began writhing with pleasure. He cut me off; stopped touching me when I put my hands on his cock. He stopped me before he came and asked if I gave head. I did, but not to him, not yet. I didn't know him well enough, I said. I wasn't comfortable enough, I said.

Although Lynne and I shared everything, including the majority of our time, my best friend at the time – sporadically, in name only – was Tannaz (when we were 16 she would break ties with me because I wasn't a virgin, then sincerely apologize a few weeks later. I would refuse to accept on principle). Tannaz was a series of contradictions; she was abounding; she contained multitudes. She possessed a unique and captivating foreign beauty; dark and angular yet soft, with lustrous hair and piercing eyes, although I doubt she ever discerned these traits in herself. She was wildly loud and confident yet insanely insecure about her legs. She was fearlessly outgoing yet afraid to talk to her crush. She was vibrant and hilarious, bright, witty, and tenacious with considerable academic struggles. She was a jealous friend with perhaps more than her share of control issues, but I was used to being controlled and I found it easier.

Tannaz had hobbies that she nearly never talked about or exhibited, despite a high level of skill. She danced in the Persian style, she cooked well, she played piano. Although quite the exhibitionist when it came to humor, I never saw her seriously entertain with the arts. She had taken piano lessons for three quarters of her life, but I had heard her play only once, accidentally. Her music was beautiful and haunting, the kind of playing that perhaps should be best kept secret and safe. Lost in her craft, it took her a few moments to hear me come in. But when she did notice, her playing ended jarringly, discordantly, an abrupt ending that highlighted rather than destroyed the delicacy before it. Perhaps she somehow sensed this subtle and dangerous beauty and refused to entertain for that reason, perhaps she was merely shy or uninterested in showing off. Despite knowing her intimately for years, I never caught more than a glimpse of that side of her.

But she couldn't entirely avoid playing piano for an audience, else her parents would consider their money and the lessons wasted. The music school where Tannaz took lessons was putting on their biannual recital, and naturally she was to be involved. She had practiced religiously and was to be playing entirely from memory. She warned me not to come when I expressed interest, but I didn't take her request seriously. Jared, Lynne, and I knew what she wanted better than she knew herself, so we decided to surprise her and attend the recital. We were no sophisticates, but it would at least break up the monotony of sitting in cars and watching movies that repeated the same cheesy plot line and stagnant characters over and over.

The day of her recital arrived. It was a Saturday, overcast. The clouds were pregnant with a summer rain that yearned to grace the thirsty and cracked earth. The day's iron and leaden tones somehow highlighted beauty and colors rather than muting them. Yellow flowers embellished with delicate dew drops were intense and vociferous against the hushed background; people seemed to have a certain clarity and clearness of both lines and purpose absent in the usual sweltering heat. I remember Lynne's large, wide-set eyes, warm, deep, brown; they were the perfect antithesis to the unseasonably biting day.

Jared and his truck picked us up on that mute slate morning. Our moods, like Lynne's eyes, contrasted with the day's lackluster ambiance. We were exuberant in the innocent and naïve way that only adolescents can be, showing off as loudly as the yellow flowers. We were silly

and played games and teased and sang songs at the top of our lungs during the drive to a part of town I had never been before.

The rain began just as Jared parked. The heavens opened wide, a veritable downpour.

There was no warning or easing into the rain, no affable and admonitory first drops that politely and regularly increased in intensity. The first drops instead were serious and heavy and they lashed down, intertwined together in massive unyielding sheets. They drenched us during the five-second mad dash from the car's inviting shelter to inside the building.

The rainclouds did not regret their rudeness. They had cautioned us as best as they could, they insisted. We had eyes; we were the inconsiderate and impertinent ones, not them.

We had seen how fecund, how cumbersome they had been. Did we think they could remain in that anticipatory state, holding their breaths on the precipice of a yawning gorge, forever?

We waltzed, dripping wet, into the building, driven by the swagger of youth. We entered a wide and spacious room dotted with pianos. It was still, stuffy, and anticipatory, reminiscent of grandma’s sitting rooms that you weren’t actually allowed to sit in. We found the recital room towards the back corner. It was small and barren with white walls and a threadbare royal blue carpet. The chairs for the audience members were flimsy and uncomfortable grey plastic in imperfect rows. The lighting was too harsh and grating for a sensitive performance. Sharply contrasted with the thoughtless décor, concrete-like carpet, and unflattering light was a subtle and polished grand piano in the front of the room, placed artfully on a dais. It was gleaming black, all ebony and sinuous curves and lines. The audience was small and chiefly composed of parents, with the occasional close friend or relative sprinkled in. Our triad, young, uncertain, overconfident, was a definite outlier.

Tannaz had her back to us, speaking to another student. We pushed our way to her, excited to see her delighted surprise. But we were sorely disappointed. She was livid and embarrassed.

“What are you doing here? I told you not to come. How could you bring other people?” she hissed, the tension obvious in her entire body, but especially her face, her shoulders. She sat down in the front row while we took seats in the very back. The tension did not leave her shoulders but remained fixed; if anything it intensified.

Finally it was Tannaz's turn. She played beautifully, and entirely from memory, the music cascading and swelling. Her eyes were closed intermittently. Jared and I listened intently while Lynne remained glued to her cell phone. The rises and falls made me yearn for something nameless.

At the end of the performance Tannaz was visibly relieved. The tension had disappeared, she was glowing instead. We left quickly, unwilling to stick around and meet parents, teachers, fellow students. Not even the free pastries and coffee could persuade us.

The rain had stopped, but you could see its evidence on the gleaming pavements, the droplets clinging to the truck, the wetness that greeted your hands as you opened the door.

Since Lynne's house was on the way to mine, Jared dropped her off first. He backed out of her driveway, signing it with a smoking black skidmark, and headed towards my house. But we didn't go far. He pulled into a neighborhood only a few blocks away from Lynne's house, but still ten minutes from the safety of mine.

“Wait, where are you going?”

“I figured we could hang out for a little longer.” There was a subtle force in his voice and a hardness in his eyes. At first glance the statement seemed harmless, but I saw it for what a was: a command, not a request. But I wasn't bothered by it. On the contrary, I found it arousing. After all, I enjoyed his company and wanted to hang out with him.

“Oh, alright.” My reply, docile and accommodating as always.

“Do you know if there's a place in here where I can park for a while?”

A while – that undetermined amount of time, unknown activity. And we would while away the time.

We happened to be in my friend Stephen's neighborhood, so I had a decent knowledge of the layout. I directed him to the small but functional playground where I played hot lava monster with a small group of friends almost every Sunday. The air was frequently filled with gleeful shouts from playing children, but today, no one was outside. Exasperated parents were instead showering their energetic children with coloring books and television, staunch soldiers protecting against the fear that they might catch cold outside in the wet. Jared parked and turned his truck off.

We listened to the rain for a few moments. It was a haunting, lonely sound. I dwelled on the curious nature of raindrops. Such an incongruous fusion of both the fleeting and the eternal, for they might fall just once in their current form, but they would reform anew and thrive in clouds, rivers, lakes, oceans. They were world travelers; they had more freedom and fewer constraints than I. I interrupted the perpetual sound of the rain in an attempt to articulate these thoughts, an attempt to engage Jared in conversation. He feigned interest in my musings just long enough to be appropriate, but quickly changed the subject.

“Hey babe, get in the backseat.”

I obeyed his command. I crawled over the front seats and landed in the back, like so many times before. But this time felt different; more sinister, or perhaps I have assigned that difference only now, knowing what I know. It was then that I noticed for the first time how tinted the windows were. No one would ever be able to see us back there.

“Is this tint legal?”

What? Na.” Like his reaction to my raindrop musings, he was blatantly uninterested. I merely shrugged.

He followed me into the backseat and started kissing me immediately, shoving me to a lying position so that he could climb on top of me. I straddled him, with my legs wrapped around him and my hands running over his arms and shoulders. He firmly pressed his hips repeatedly into mine; faster; harder. There was ownership in his touch. His lips covered my neck, my face, my collarbones, but not my mouth.

He untied the laces of my converse and pulled them off. I wasn't wearing any socks and my toes were turquoise, glittering. He unbuttoned my beat-up jeans and he took them off. I was left in a zip-up hoodie and a thong. It was brown with pink polka dots, lace, and a delicate little bow affixed to the front. One of my favorite pairs. I was still in the days where preparation for sex was imperative. I couldn't let a man see me without makeup, unshaven, hair mussed. I was focused on presenting the perfect picture of womanhood. Flawless.

I opened for him; he slid his fingers inside me. It was only the second time he had been inside of me, and it was short-lived. I didn't orgasm, hardly a rarity in those days, plagued by a lack of understanding of my own body coupled with being surrounded by adolescent boys thinking only of their own cocks.

“Let me fuck you.”

I was taken aback. I was hardly a virgin – Jon and I had taken care of that a few months into our relationship. But I was young, freshly out of a long relationship with my first – in short, completely unprepared to sleep with another person. Plus Josh’s visage loomed ever in my mind. I couldn’t go through with the ultimate betrayal.

“Um, no, I don’t think so,” I managed to stammer.

But he didn’t let it go.

Come on. I want you so bad. I said no. Why not? I don’t know, cause of Josh and everything. My voice was meeker than it should have been. He kept his hands on me. He kept his weight on mine. I did not have the freedom to move around. He won’t know. But I will. Aren’t you supposed to be his friend? I am, but I want you. Silence. Come on. Let’s

have some fun. No. Shh, yeah. No. It’ll be good. No. No. I said no. It went on, and on, this constant pressure eroding my willpower, increasing my fear, pinning me down literally and figuratively. I wanted to go home. I want to go home. I’ll take you in a bit. I should have insisted that a bit wouldn’t do. I should have walked seven miles home in the rain. I should have…

“Come on babe.”

Until I finally gave in. It was the only way to get out, you see. Please tell me you see that. Please, tell me it wasn’t my fault. Please.

“Okay.”

He had won already.

“Let me grab a condom.”

I was afraid he would ask me to put it on for him – and I didn’t know how. Even though I didn’t want to sleep with him in the first place, I was ashamed to show my ignorance.

“Let’s just do it without one. It feels better anyways.”

He pulled my panties down and rammed his cock inside of me. I was wet – some might say I was ready for it.

During the act, I acted the part. I moaned and breathed heavily. I feigned enjoyment.

I did not orgasm, nor did I pretend to. In all honesty, I barely felt it, and this is not a slight on his sexual prowess. I simply was not present emotionally, and tried to be somewhere else physically as well. Acting involved was the easiest way for it to be over as quickly as possible.

We climbed to the front seat again, shaking, sweaty, stained. One of us was nauseated.

He drove me home. My arms were folded and I looked out the window at the rain the whole time. I didn’t speak once and he didn’t ask why. I got out of the car without looking at him, without saying goodbye. I never saw him again.

I walked into my house. I opened my door. I closed my door, got into my bed, curled up, and cried.

Lacey Burns

Face This is a hand You can take it, shake it Squeeze the cold long tendons Once used to reprimand.

Feel the heat seep In rivulets superfluous – As if shaped for tears Now rings and frills, And wedding bands.

As if ill, it dwells And breaks beneath the bells Which shrill, the sick to prayer As once before, Treading over-used air, it dwells Against the lasting sheath Of another door.

This hand has crossed Not a body, but a cast With which society enshrouds Her face And laughs, at the betrothed In their disgrace And strikes the hours Slowly as they pass And reaches But never finds the face.

Emily Oldfield

KNOWLEDGE

An Ecofeminist Critique of Badger Culling in the Cotswolds In this academic essay by Matthew, he writes about ecofeminism, arguing that the wellbeing of the environment quite literally relies on the equal treatment of women.

On the 27th of August 2013, badger culling trials began in the English counties of Gloucestershire and Somerset. These test culls, ordered by the government and run by the National Farmer’s Union (NFU) aimed to kill around 5000 badgers over the course of six weeks, and are, as I write, drawing to a close. Ostensibly, the aim of the pilots is to test the viability of culls as a means of reducing the spread of bovine tuberculosis (TB). The government writes: “Bovine TB is mainly a disease of cattle, but it can also affect other species. We know that the disease is present in badgers in parts of England and that the disease can be transmitted among cattle, among badgers, and between the 2 species” [sic] (DEFRA, 2013). It is claimed that TB has a devastating effect on the cattle industry in the united kingdom, with 26,000 cattle lost to the disease in 2011 alone, according to Environment Secretary Owen Patterson. (Gray, 2012). The government’s policy of reducing TB is thus, according to the Conservatives, best implemented by a badger cull - the pilots for which are the subject of our discussion.

Against this position, an opposition has been raised, mostly by those to the left of the government, yet even some back-bench Tories have rebelled against government policy.

Their (liberal-left) opposition is generally twofold: firstly, the killing of badgers is being done in an inhumane manner and secondly, there is no clear evidence that badgers are the primary cause of the spread of TB in cattle. The leader of the Green Party, Natalie Bennett, described the cull as “‘inhumane’ and ‘unscientific’” claiming that a “wide range of scientific experts” regard it as inappropriate (Green Party, 2013). There is a somewhat interesting debate going on between these two positions, with the main conflict being over the scientific evidence as to whether a cull would effectively cut TB rates in cattle or not (for example see Demianyk, 2013 and Mcmillan, 2013).

With only a few exceptions, however, these are the only viewpoints on the issue which are permitted space in public discourse, almost certainly because they speak within the dominant discourse of the modern era, natural science. Natural science, as Lyotard and other postmodern thinkers have taught us, legitimates itself and excludes other forms of explanation by posing itself as the only arbiter of the ‘objective’ and the ‘real’. It is a ‘totalising discourse’. Meanwhile, feminist critiques of science have pointed to its gendered nature, as a product of enlightenment rationality. I wish to open up dialogue about an ecofeminist standpoint on the badger culls, which would undermine the very assumptions upon which this scientific debate is founded, with an emphasis on the situated historical position of people and animals in England.

Ecofeminism aims to reveal our gendered conceptions about nature and thus link the oppression of women to destruction of the environment. In this manner, ecofeminism shows that the liberation of women is reliant on our conception and treatment of nature, and, viceversa, our treatment and conception of nature are reliant upon the ways in which we conceive of and treat women. In an immediate sense, the manner in which we treat the environment

affects women more severely than it does men as more women are subsistence farmers and rely directly on a stable ecosystem (Mies and Shiva, 1993, p303). However, the ecofeminist critique does not stop at a merely empirical level. The very concept of ‘nature’ itself, its history and its discourses, have consistently been linked to women. The manner in which this link has been made has varied over time, but ‘feminine’ and ‘nature’ have (at least in Western culture) been conceptually related since pagan conceptions of ‘Gaia’ and ‘mother-nature’. In the current epoch, Merchant characterizes the way we conceive of nature as “mechanistic” (Merchant, 1980, p290). This is an “ideology of “power over nature” ... and a gendered scientific discourse of “penetration” into her innermost secrets” (Merchant, 1980, p295). This discourse promotes the dualisms of male/female, rational/emotional and culture/nature and indeed links them together (Tong, 1998, p267). In some sense, nature is still conceived of as female - a relic of prescientific culture - yet the scientific revolution brought with it an attempt to dominate and control that (emotional, irrational) nature. The inevitable conclusion is that, in Western culture, the domination and control of nature, the splitting up and ordering of her parts, is inextricably linked to the control, domination and subordination of women. As Ynestra King put it, "Men identify women with nature and seek to enlist both in the service of male "projects" designed to make men safe from feared nature and mortality" (King, 1995, p286).

This insight is an excellent tool for understanding the badger culls from a more ‘feminist’ perspective. In the hegemonic discourse, the culling of badgers is seen as justified, so long as it is done in a swift and ‘humane’ manner. However, from our ecofeminist standpoint, the use of rifles - clean, powerful, modern technology ‘discharging’ ‘buckshot’ to ‘penetrate’ badgers - appears problematically linked to a domineering, gendered scientific discourse. The killing of individual badgers is thus linked to a wider culture, wherein the government, the NFU and their private employee marksmen, using the ‘promise’ of science, attempt to dominate and control both nature and women. Even the liberal-left attack upon the government’s cull on ‘scientific’ grounds is an attempt to demonstrate that they, the political opposition, can control nature more efficiently than the government, whether by cattle movement restrictions or using a badger vaccination program (Carrington, 2013B). The feminist may also point out that the debate over the scientific validity of culling badgers also leaves a vital assumption unquestioned - that we actually wish to maximise the number of cattle raised and then successfully harvested for milk and meat. Clearly, it is in the current government’s interests to do so, given the financial and electoral support the Conservative party gets from the rural England. Were they to no longer to have the support of the farmers, the Tory party would struggle to be elected. Yet the ecofeminist has no such commitment - instead seeing production and reproduction of cattle as an oppressive and gendered system of exploitation.

The vast majority of male calves are slaughtered in their infancy, and may be considered ‘lucky’. The female cattle are repeatedly forcefully impregnated, and separated from their calves shortly after they are born. Dairy cows are continually kept pregnant or nursing, ensuring, along with selective breeding, that a constant flow of milk may be physically extracted from them (Kemmerer, 2011, p18-19). Finally, once their milk producing capacity has been expended, they are sent to slaughter. Thankfully, the vomit-inducing terrors of ‘factory’ farming have been banned in Europe, but this does not mean that the horrific,

gendered practices of the farms have ended. The endless stream of female cows producing and reproducing merely to maximise profit, is a cruel, distorted mirror of our own capitalist, patriarchal society’s exploitation of women.1 The badger cull, for the ecofeminist, is thus an attempt to preserve the systems of gendered violence that exist in the cattle industries, and the left-liberal counterargument against the cull fails to question the system it is supposedly protesting against.

However, even if one accepts my argument, one may worry that the ecofeminist is not right to worry about the badger cull more than they ought to worry about any other aspect of meateating culture in the United Kingdom. There is a point here, but it fails to take into account the complex history of farming and class conflict in the UK. Landowners have, from the demise of the communal ‘open field’ system and the rise of capitalism in the 16th and 17th centuries, displaced the peasantry and working class. In the early period of this capitalist exploitation of the working class, a newly formed middle class of male yeoman landlords “enclosed common lands, raised rents, and leased land on short-term loans for high profits” (Merchant, 1980, p55). Merchant takes the example of the forests of England, which through capitalist exploitation, were torn down and the ecosystems therein changed irrevocably, purely for increased farming profit (Merchant, 1980, p62). Despite resistance from the inhabitants of the forests (many of whom were already refugees from the enclosure of the commons) and subsistence farmers who grazed their animals within the woodland, the poor were displaced and dispossessed (Merchant, 1980, p63). Such capitalist exploitation would have had a disproportionate effect on women in this situation, as studies elsewhere have shown (UNFPA, 2001). Putting this supposedly ahistorical, scientific event into its wider context reveals the deep class-conflict surrounding farming and capitalism in the UK, of which the badger cull is merely the latest expression. The ecofeminist’s focus on the badger culls is vital if we are to understand the history of, and latest development in, the intersections of class, gender and species in the history of the United Kingdom.

It is also important for the feminist critique to pay attention to points and strategies of resistance. In 1569, 300-400 laborers rose up and pulled down enclosures in the forests of England (Merchant, 1980, p63). Today, in the now much smaller forests of Gloucestershire and Somerset, hunt saboteurs have attempted to halt the badger culling - with a degree of success. Certainly, the ‘marksmen’ have failed to reach the number of badgers they were expected to kill (BBC, 2013B). However, just as in the 16th century, state apparatus has conspired to halt their peaceful actions, through harassment (Yong, 2013A) arrest (Yong, 2013B), court injunction (BBC, 2013A) and even collaboration with the NFU (Carrington, 2013A). This is simply the latest in police repression of peaceful protest - that which has plagued ecofeminist activism for years.

Given the ecofeminist critique of nature as conceptually connected to ‘the woman’, along This is not to say that women’s and cows’ suffering are equivalent - I should certainly not wish to be read as saying that the forced impregnation of cows may be equated with the specific horror that rape victims suffer. Rather, I merely point out where their oppressions reinforce and support one another.

1

with the other dichotomies operating in patriarchal-capitalist discourse, the UK government’s badger cull is a forceful attempt to dominate nature, and hence women, for political gain. It maintains a system of exploitation which oppresses women, the working-class and nonhuman animals in subordinating and intersecting ways. The dialogue surrounding the cull is one that silences voices other than those legitimated by the ‘light of science’ and fails to question the assumptions surrounding the misogynistic, speciesist and classist farming industry operating withing the UK. The cull is the latest event in a long history of exploitation and often violent oppression by both farmers and the enforcers of state power in this case the marksmen employed by the NFU and the police on patrol in Somerset and Gloucestershire.

Matthew Cull

Bibliography BBC “Badger Cull Zone Injunction is Granted in High Court” Bbc.co.uk BBC 22nd August 2013, Accessed 15th October 2013 <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-23791222> BBC “Gloucestershire Badger Cull Falls Short of Target” Bbc.co.uk BBC 17th October 2013, Accessed 17th October 2013 <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire24561955> Carrington D. “Badger Cull: The Police and NFU are Losing the Battle” Guardian.com, The Guardian, 1st October 2013B, Accessed 15th October 2013A <http://www.theguardian.com/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2013/oct/01/badger-cullpolice-nfu-losing> Carrington D. “How Many Cattle Herds get TB from Badgers” Guardian.com The Guardian, 11th October 2013B, Accessed 15th October 2013, <http://www.theguardian.com/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2013/oct/11/badger-cullcattle-tb-vaccination> Demianyk G. “We’ve “Lost Control” of Bovine TB, Say Top Government Advisors” Westernmorningnews.co,uk Western Morning News, 21st May 2013, Accessed 15th October 2013 <http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/ve-lost-control-bovine-TB-say-Governmentadvisers/story-19045534-detail/story.html> Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) “Policy: Reducing Bovine Tuberculosis; Detail” Gov.uk UK Government 13th August 2013, Accessed 15th October 2013 <https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/reducing-bovine-tuberculosis/supportingpages/badgers-and-bovine-tb> Gray L. “MPs Blame Bad Farmers, Not Badgers for Spreading Cattle Disease” Telegraph.co.uk The Telegraph October 25th 2012, Accessed 15th October 2013 <https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/reducing-bovine-tuberculosis/supportingpages/badgers-and-bovine-tb>

Green Party “Green Party Calls for Immediate End to Licensed Badger Culls” Greenparty.org.uk Green Party, 9th October 2013, Accessed 15th October 2013 <http://greenparty.org.uk/news/2013/10/09/green-party-calls-for-immediate-end-to-licensedbadger-culls/> Kemmerer L. “Introduction” Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice ed.

Kemmerer L. Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2011 pp.1-43 King Y. “Healing the Wounds: Feminism, Ecology, and the Nature/Culture Dualism” in Free Spirits: Feminist Philosophers on Culture ed Barberi M. And Bolen T. New Jersey: Prentice Hall (1995) Mcmillan J. “Fifty Percent of Bovine TB due to Badgers? A Spurious Statistic and how it was Created” Planetrant.wordpress.com n.p. 16th September 2013 Accessed 15th October 2013 <http://planetrant.wordpress.com/2013/09/13/fifty-percent-of-tb-due-to-badgers-a-spuriousstatistic-and-how-it-was-created/> Merchant C. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution San Francisco: Harper and Row Publishers 1980 Mies M. and Shiva V. “Ecofeminism” Halifax, Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publications (1993) Tong R. P. Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction Boulder Colorado: Westview Press 1998 United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) “The State of World Population 2001; Chapter 4:Women and the Environment” Unfpa.org United Nations Population Fund, November 2001, Accessed 15th October 2013 <http://www.unfpa.org/swp/2001/english/ch04.html> Yong M. “Badger Cull Protestors to Complain after Claims of being Shot At” Gloucestershireecho.co.uk Gloucestershire Echo, 18th September, 2013 Accessed 15th October 2013A <http://m.gloucestershireecho.co.uk/articles/news/article/19812934> Yong M. “Three Protestors will not Face Further Action after Arrests in Newent Badger Cull Zone”Gloucestershireecho.co.uk Gloucestershire Echo, 23rd September 2013 Accessed 15th October 2013B <http://www.gloucestershireecho.co.uk/protestors-face-action-arrestsNewent-badger-cull/story-19833037-detail/story.html>

Couple I The following is an academic essay from Ambra, a third year art history major. In it she examines the position of women artists in the history of art by analysing a sculpture by the influential Louise Bourgeois The exhibition “Louise Bourgeois: a woman without secret”, proves particularly interesting for an analysis of a very influential female artist of the 20th century. In particular, I wish to focus on the sculpture Couple I, a striking piece in the exhibition and particularly poignant for an understanding of the main themes in the artist’s oeuvre.

Bourgeois has been defined by critics as the mother of the “confessional style” 2, a definition which relates to her status as a woman artist 3 whose work is deeply dependent on her own biographical facts and past traumas. Bourgeois herself stated: “I am a woman without secrets…Anything personal should not be a risk. It should be a result, it should be understood, resolved, packaged, and disposed of”4. For these reasons, in this essay I shall also employ a careful and critical reading of Bourgeois’s diaries and interviews in the visual and formal analysis of Couple I. This will enable me to unpack the different layers present in this sculpture: the significance of the hanging objects, the importance of sewing and textiles, and a psychoanalytical reading of the anxieties expressed in the work via psychoanalyst Melanie Klein’s text Love, Hate and Reparation (1937).

Couple I was exhibited for the first time in London in 1996, together with Couple II, Single I and Single II (1996), designed by the artist as complementary artworks 5.

Couple I is a hanging, textile sculpture; Bourgeois stuffed female and male clothes to resemble headless human figures. She then sewed them together in embrace and hanged them from a meat hook to a steel wire. The man is identified through a blue and white pin-striped shirt, whereas the woman wears a black blouse with a white lace collar. This embrace, though, looks ambiguous: the woman’s legs are free to move, and yet she is being supported by the male figure, rendering the power relation between the two complicated to read. Furthermore, the man’s arms and legs are sewn together around the hook, suggesting a dead beast in a slaughterhouse- lulled by the female’s mourning embrace. The plinth has been eliminated, together with all the other elements of traditional sculpture; despite the light weight of the material, we become suddenly very aware of gravity acting on the figures. This condition of hanging objects renders the viewer’s experience both refreshing and ominous: the sculpture can now be approached from every point of view, it could be touched and smelled. Yet, the viewer cannot abstain from seeing the figures as just bodily presences of something residing in the artist’s mind and memory. They come to represent a physical connection, rather than an

2

Neal Brown, Tracey Emin [ London: Tate Publishing: 2006], 7.

Mignon Nixon, Fantastic Reality, Louise Bourgeois and A Story of Modern Art [ Cambridge Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2005], 1.

4 Christiane Meyer-Thoss, Louise Bourgeois: Designing for Free Fall [Art Data; 1992], 75.

5 AAVV, Louise Bourgeoise, a woman without secrets [National Galleries of Scotland, 2013], 83.

3

intellectual one, the complexity of sexuality between man and woman and the tragedy of loss and mourning.

The sculpture is confined to an indefinable physical space: neither grounded to earth nor able to escape, but wired to the ceiling, floating yet constrained. Bourgeois herself stated that “horizontality is a desire to give up, to sleep. Verticality is an attempt to escape. Hanging and floating are states of ambivalence and doubt” 6. The hanging object is one of the many themes in Bourgeois’s oeuvre, and can be observed in other sculptures. The controversial Fillette (Sweeter Version) (1968-99), also exhibited at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern art, is a good example of this ambivalence. This phallic, visceral object representing the merging of female and male genitalia challenges not only the established hierarchies of sexuality, but also the viewer’s preconceptions about traditional sculpture by posing a question about sexuality and never answering it decisively7. This idea might stem from her desire to shock the viewer: being hung at eye-height, the heavily erotic, deeply personal and disembodied objects become ultimately stark and aggressive. Furthermore, this installation has consequences on the viewer’s experience of the sculpture; first of all, the mobility of the object allowed by the absence of the plinth. The lightness of Couple I allows the sculpture to move into the space even when not touched; the closeness of the viewers, their movement and breath makes the figures float into the room, and like a pendulum it keeps going even when the room is empty. The hanging object is stripped bare of any ornament, it is minimalistic and yet challenging; the embrace of the couple is never allowed to become a universal symbol of love or loss, but always stays enclosed into the realm of Bourgeois’s memories. When approaching the sculpture, the viewer feels uncomfortable, as if stepping into the wrong room, as if peeping through a keyhole at a couple in a moment of intimacy8. And yet there is no door, no keyhole, no separation.

Bourgeois wrote of that feeling in an interview: “the couple copulating is seen through the eyes of a young girl. Are they fighting? Are they enjoying themselves? Is one killing the other? […] It is the question of an arrested traumatic experience.”9.

This element of personal experience as part the work of art is also reflected in the use of textile elements. Bourgeois stated she used her own blouse, socks and tights in the making of Couple I; clothes were her “signpost” for memories10, an exercise of dignity and the hiding place for intolerable wounds11. The use of the stuffed mannequin and of personal clothes, which tend to be confined to the female, domestic realm establishes also an interesting comparison with the sculpture Single II, exhibited together with Couple I in 1996. As the title suggests, the work now presents a single fabric, headless mannequin, again hanging from a hook tied to the ceiling by its navel.

The figure is black, a colour which Bourgeois associated with sex, death and the 6

Louise Bourgeois, Deconstruction of the Father, Reconstruction of the Father [ London: Violette Editions, 1998], 7 AAVV, Bourgeois, 81.

8 Bourgeois, Deconstruction, 362.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid.

11 AAVV, Bourgeois, 46.

mourning for the lost object of love12. The prominent genitalia would suggest the figure to be male, yet Bourgeois hinted at the female vulva where the neck should have been, therefore defeating any kind of simplistic reading. Couple I and Single II appear to be, therefore, essentially linked and causally related; they come to represent the sexual tension between man and woman, which can be read as physical relationship but also as the self-definition of the individual. They challenge gender double standards by acquiring attributes of both sexes (i.e. sexual organs), and yet they are the male and the female entwined, dealing with the anxieties of sex, of love and of death. Bourgeois modelled the bodies to be anatomically disproportioned and inhumanly arched, especially in the case of Single II and in the male figure of Couple I. In doing so, she was hinting at her personal inquiry over the theme of hysteria, again trying to challenge the gender double standards- in psychoanalysis, hysteria had always been labelled as a female disease. By attributing it to figures which are seemingly male, or whose sex is not predominantly relevant, Bourgeois digs deeply into the human mind in order to explain the anxieties related to interpersonal connections and human isolation.

The importance of psychoanalysis in Bourgeois’s life explains the continuous processing of past traumas and present anxieties in her work. The artist underwent psychoanalytic sessions for a long time, after the loss of both her parents and her husband; again, Couple I can be used to unpack the influence of psychoanalysis on Bourgeois’s work. Several critics have linked the artist to the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein’s studies. In her work Love, Guilt and Reparation, Klein analyses the love relationships between parents-children and wife-husband. In particular, Klein links a successful relationship with the husband to the relationship with the parents, where all the feelings of hate, guilt and revenge have been satisfactorily repaired. A lack of this can bring to sexual frustrations while in young age, particularly directed towards the father, and to sexual anxieties in adulthood13. The figures of Couple I, headless, in ambiguous power relations towards each other and hanging from a meat hook, seem to represent these anxieties. The artist, therefore, is reminiscing, accepting and disposing of those memories and traumas through the work of art, which becomes the embodiment of the trauma and the secret no longer hidden14.

Couple I by Louise Bourgeois, in conclusion, provides material for a particularly fertile description, which stems from the use of new materials, new installation and new subject matters. The analysis of these features helps inscribing this sculpture in the key elements of Bourgeois’s oeuvre, and unpacking the density caused by the apparent simplicity of the work. These formal aspects are informed by the artist’s biographical facts in a new way: the artwork, deeply embedded in a personal symbolism, becomes the physical disposal of psychological traumas, the trigger for personal memories and the healing process. Nevertheless, the very personal content can render the approach the sculpture somehow disrupted, ominous, and uncomfortable for the viewer, who is compelled to relate to the inner psyche of the artist.

12

AAVV, Bourgeois, 83.

Melanie Klein and Joan Riviere, Love, Hate and Reparation [London: The Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1953], 70.

14 Nixon, Fantastic Reality, 6-7.

13

Ambra Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Antone

Bibliography

AAVV, Louise Bourgeois, a woman without secrets. National Galleries of Scotland, 2013.

Bourgeois, Louise. Deconstruction of the Father, Reconstruction of the Father. London: Violette Editions, 1998.

Brown, Neal. Tracey Emin. London: Tate Publishing, 2006.

Klein, Melanie and Joan Riviere. Love, Hate and Reparation. London: The Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1953.

Meyer-Thoss, Christiane. Louise Bourgeois: Designing for Free Fall . Art Data: 1992.

Nixon, Mignon. Fantastic Reality, Louise Bourgeois and A Story of Modern Art. Cambridge Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2005.

Why Men Should Smash the Patriarchy Too. Walt’s essay reinforces what feminists reinforce time and time again only to have it fall on deaf and ignorant ears: feminism is not women’s rights but human rights. It affects all genders.

“Feminism is for Everybody,” according to bell hooks, and I wholeheartedly agree with her.

So why are men not more involved in feminism? A common refrain of so-called “Mens Rights Activists” is that feminism doesn’t provide an adequate response to the problems faced by men in modern society. MRAs are rarely making these arguments in good faith, but this is actually an interesting point to discuss. Feminism would remain an important and indeed necessary part of our society even if it did not provide recourse to “men’s issues,” but, wonderfully, it does. Through examining the workings of patriarchy, feminism provides an excellent way to analyze the problems of men in society, while simultaneously making it clear that men’s issues are nowhere near as oppressive as the problems faced by women in society.

In short, the hidden assumptions that patriarchal societies make, which keep men in power and women marginalized, are also harmful to those they benefit. Men who wish to participate in society are expected to behave in certain ways at the risk of the loss of their ‘man card.’ Crying in movie theaters? That’s a no-no sure to result in ridicule from more ‘masculine’ men. Liking the wrong kind of cocktails, or not enjoying sports? Clearly he’s not a real man. There’s nothing wrong with not being an emotional person, or drinking only Old Fashioned, or obsessing over football, but it’s bizarre that we would use these things to evaluate someone’s worth in society.

It is no mistake that I’ve chosen three ‘unmanly’ things that are also supposedly feminine in Western patriarchies. As unpleasant as it is for the men that we denigrate men who behave in ways we interpret as feminine, it is clearly even more horrific for women that these apparently unpleasant traits are apparently inherent to them. I don’t have much to say here, but I want to repeat how different the harm faced by women and men under patriarchy is in both nature and scale.

Still, men are harmed by the patriarchy. In one of his fantastic narratives, Johnny Cash tells the story in “Boy named Sue” of a man who is forced to constantly defend himself violently because his name calls his masculinity into question. This is a potent reminder that in a world where masculinity is power, the only reason a man is allowed to possess his masculinity is the threat of violence. For a pacifist, or someone without physical strength, or anyone who isn’t concerningly aggressive, this is a horrifying prospect. According to patriarchal logic, a man who turns the other cheek is not a man at all, and deserves the harm they receive.

So far I’ve been skirting around the point I brought up in the beginning of this essay: can feminism address men’s issues? Feminism provides useful analysis of some issues men face, but those who seem most concerned about men might not think these are important issues. To find out what matters to MRAs I have delved into the depths of reddit to find out why men are supposedly oppressed. Some of these issues I think are inherently mistaken, and

accordingly I have ignored them. Others make entirely legitimate points, and I’ll discuss a few of them, and their feminist responses. One is the relative invisibility of male domestic abuse/sexual assault survivors. Another is the problem of male homelessness, and the last is the prevalence of mental health issues among men. Feminism presents very clear explanations for all of these.

Under the patriarchal framework, as I have discussed above, a man who is abused is not a man at all. Society conceives of men as powerful aggressors, and so the idea that a man could be attacked and not defend himself is confusing and perhaps offensive to many. Men who are abused are not ignored as part of some feminist conspiracy, as MRAs seem to believe. Rather, they are abused because the very assumptions about masculinity that patriarchy uses to assert male superiority fall against these men who have been hurt.

Similarly, homeless men violate capitalist patriarchal norms about the role of men in society regarding labor, and or society has been set up so that it refuses to help homeless men and women, another oppression rooted in patriarchy, not feminism. Finally, men’s mental health issues are a clear extension of patriarchy. Alongside their supposedly violent nature, the reason men are presumed by patriarchies to be superior is their ‘rational,’ unemotional behavior. Acknowledging mental health issues is viewed in a patriarchy as a sign of weakness, hence the reluctance of men to get help with entirely normal mental health issues.

Men cannot afford to live in a society that rejects them for not fitting into its ideas of how a man should behave. Feminism provides the tools to examine and destroy these societal issues.

It is incredibly important, when we are conceiving of a better society, to critically examine the constructions of dominant groups so as to understand how we should change them. The violence underpinning masculinity is an example of this: my ideal society involves no resorts to force, not women being equal to men in their ability or willingness to be resort to force. Some models of gender and other equality seek to simply assimilate the oppressed group into the oppressive group, giving them the same rights and privileges. Assimilation is a failed model of creating equality because it ignores that while we should allow oppressed groups access to some of the privileges of dominant groups, other privileges of dominant groups (like the ability of men to sexually harass women) ought to be done away with entirely. In this vein, it is important to understand the constructions of dominant groups (e.g. masculinity) so that we can effectively do away with them. Violent masculinity is one example, but work is another: while we fight for women to be treated equally to men in the workforce, we must also examine the role of masculinity in the home. If women are to enter the workforce, presumably we should allow more men out of the workforce and into the home. Conversely, many women simply wish to stay at home, and we would do well as a society to make it clear that this is not simply a woman’s choice, but a choice available to and legitimate for all members of society.

At this point I’d like to bring in the concept of intersectionality, as originated by Kimberle Crenshaw. Oppressive societies are not oppressive in just one way. While women are oppressed, so too are people of color, and women of color in a particularly unique and horrific way. These intersections of oppression give us more insight into the problems within our society, which is in fact a kyriarchy, a society based on domination and oppression of many kinds, including but not limited to the oppression of women, people of color, LGBT*

people, workers, and children. Reflecting on the nature of kyriarchy gives us insight into the many things we need to fix about our society.

For example, societal conceptions of work are particularly important in feminism.

Substantial feminist effort has gone into giving women in the workplace the same roles and treatment as men. Yet as bell hooks points out, the goal these women were striving for was integration into a white, capitalist conception of work. Black women, who had been at work in the homes of white people, rejected the idea that work was in and of itself a liberating experience. The work that the white capitalist man does is not what our society should strive to open to all of its members. Instead, we ought to wholly redefine how work is done.

From a male perspective, we should work to understand the masculinity that is defined for us, so that we can reject oppressive masculinities that harm others, and also reject masculinities that harm men. What has become clear is that there is a need for feminist thinking about menâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s issues as well as womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s issues. We must question entire swaths of our societal practices, not just the ones that seem to directly affect women. Men must be involved in feminism to understand how we are harmed by patriarchy, and how we can improve the lives of all people, regardless of gender. That said, this not a call for men to take up leadership within feminist movements. Feminism is a womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s movement, and ought to remain that way, but it is important for men to participate by listening, thinking, and contributing where appropriate. We owe it to feminism to be involved, because without it we all lose.

Walt Andrews