If Oxford’s needlessly infamous sex-party scene (think the Piers Gav, or termly ketamine-fuelled fumblings in someone’s Cowley living room) is anything to go by, it’s a wonder anyone at all takes kink culture seriously. My sources assure me that spending …
Rape trials are broken. Are juries to blame?
When the man charged with Miss M’s rape was finally brought to trial in 2015, she was determined to face him. “I thought: ‘Why should I have to hide away?’” So, she refused a screen. She also wanted to sit …
Rape trials are broken. Are juries to blame?
When the man charged with Miss M’s rape was finally brought to trial in 2015, she was determined to face him. “I thought: ‘Why should I have to hide away?’” So, she refused a screen. She also wanted to sit …
How the Cleveland scandal silenced children
The Cleveland child abuse scandal did not actually involve that much child abuse. Or so the story goes. In 1987, in the north-east of England, 121 children were removed from their homes and placed in care after medics and social …
The new snobbery towards feminist activism
In 2017, Gina Martin was the victim of a sexual offence that was not, at the time, a sexual offence. Martin was attending a festival when a stranger took a photograph up her skirt without her consent. For her, this …
The murder trial that broke me
I see the worst of humanity, the very depths of depravity: I am a reporter on male violence against women and girls. There was a time in Sarajevo, not long after the Balkan war, when I witnessed a dozen women …
Pornhub is screwing its workers
Sex work is work. Accept the proposition; start from there. The next question is: what kind of work, with what compromises? Very good work, if you listen to the porn performers interviewed in Netflix documentary Money Shot: The Pornhub Story. …
Why wasn’t PC David Carrick sacked?
Some men join the police for the wrong reasons. Senior officers know this perfectly well — and they should be on guard against predators in their ranks. So what did the Metropolitan Police do when PC David Carrick, now revealed …
Is the Shitty Media Man innocent?
Even in the colourful environs of New Orleans, Stephen Elliott’s car stood out: a bright pink Honda hatchback with a panda motif on the doors and hood. But on a January morning in 2019, people who walked past the vehicle …
The truth about sexsomnia
When is a rape not a rape? When the perpetrator is asleep. In the summer of 2003, a mixed group gathered at a grand house in the Beaches district of Toronto. It was an annual thing — a house party …
How gender self-ID is being abused
I assumed Harvey Marcelin was an elderly woman guilty of some sort of financial crime when I first read the charge sheet. The Department of Corrections website describes a six-foot, black female, born in 1938, charged with defrauding the government.…
Feminism has a biology problem
If you remember anything about sex differences in biology lessons, it’s likely to be this: males mate as much as possible. They evolve horns to fight off competitors, and beautiful ornaments to win over females. Females, by contrast, focus their …