Barbed wire knots together sky and earth. Burned-out vehicles, modern-day carcasses of industrial warfare, dot the landscape. The ground is strafed and cratered: Eastern Ukraine has been disembowelled by shelling. The war here is fought with 21st-century drone technology, but …
The emptiness of being queer
What does “queer” mean to you? For many older gays and transsexuals, it’s an unpleasant reminder of past homophobic encounters, some of them physically threatening. Yet thanks to its positive recuperation over the last 30 years, today queerness means something …
Pro-choice Republicans could rescue Kansas
Growing up in Kansas in the Eighties, nobody could have convinced me that the state would one day become the protector of abortion rights in the Midwest. Traditionally a bright Red stronghold, Kansas has been the site of massive, and …
I will never give up on Chelsea
“The famous Tottenham Hotspur went to Rome to see the Pope” we sometimes sing at the Shed End at Stamford Bridge. I probably shouldn’t tell you how it goes after that. It’s certainly more profane than sacred. Suffice to say …
Did hipsters start the gender wars?
What could Florida’s legislation banning the teaching of gender identity to children possibly have in common with the skinny-jean devotees known as hipsters? Only that both movements are responses to the unraveling of settled gender roles that is one of …
Roe v Wade deserves to fall
For 50 years, Roe v Wade has dangled like the sword of Damocles over the American political landscape. Pro-life dreams and pro-choice nightmares have fixated on the reversal of the Supreme Court case — which established a woman’s right to …
Why old-fashioned Tories turn to porn
A great deal of discussion following the resignation of porn-watching Conservative MP Neil Parish has concerned sexism in Parliament, where the working culture is apparently a hotbed of pervy remarks, “noisy sex” in offices, “sex pest MPs” and vomit-spattered champagne …
You can’t be born in the wrong body
What if you woke up one morning and found you’d swapped bodies with someone else: your mum, the boy next door, “a monstrous vermin”, an older version of yourself? Would you still be “you”?
There’s a reason this setup is …
Will Leeds atone for David Oluwale?
It was a moment that had been 15 years in the making. As Leeds unveiled its latest blue plaque, the mood at the ceremony was festive. The 200-strong crowd heard music and poetry in memory of David Oluwale. “A British …
American feminism has turned its back on women
Back in the mid Eighties, a woman named Eleanor Bergstein wrote a movie warning young women what would happen to them if their right to abortion was taken away. “It seemed to me that women in the Eighties no longer …
How Labour broke Liverpool
Liverpool is often held up as the epitome of a Labour stronghold — a city that bleeds Red, and always will. And in many ways, this view is justified: since 1997, all the city’s MPs have been elected under the …
Morrissey will never be cancelled
You, me, everyone loved The Smiths. Yet love them as much as we did, The Smiths were still one of those bands where you know that after rehearsals or shows, none of its members ever went out for beers. They …
Do we need a capitalist civil war?
We Americans like to think of ourselves as a thoroughly modern people — living proof of what, with enough toil and grit, the rest of the free world can one day hope to be. And yet for all our progressivism …
What Harry Flashman teaches us about empire
How should we understand Britain’s colonial and imperial history? The 200th anniversary, this week, of the fictional birth of the great imperial anti-hero, Sir Harry Paget Flashman VC, is a timely way into the contested politics of historical memory. His …
Don’t panic about unvaccinated kids
In the United States, some parents — and more than a few physicians — are still panicking about unvaccinated children.
Last week, Politico reported that the US Food and Drug Administration might wait until this summer to consider authorising a …