A little fish in a big pond

A little fish in a big pond

As university students, often we live in our own little bubble. We learn, socialise and work all within the same groups, in the same places, mostly at the same times. But a not-so-wonderful consequence of this is that we can forget that we’ve invaded someone else’s city.

I was born in Durham and then lived here for 3 years before my family decided to move down to Bradford in West Yorkshire. I don’t really have any sentimental attachment to Durham itself, but the North East is where a lot of my family are from so whilst I think of myself as very much from West Yorkshire, this part of the country will always be very special to me.

However, in my first year of university I, like many others, got swept away in the excitement of it all. I barely ventured outside of the university world – by this, I don’t mean I never left college, I mean that everywhere I went was with my friends and either for lectures or drinking…So even though this is where I was born, by the time I started my second year I’ll be honest and say that I had very little knowledge of where I was living.

During my time in Durham so far, I’ve noticed quite a lot of rudeness from students to local people; both unintentional and intentional. I’ve been in conversations where I’ve heard students complain about locals being out at the weekend in the bars and the clubs, when I don’t really understand where this sense of entitlement to a private club night came from. These people are from here, and have as much right to a drink and a boogie on a Friday night as any student.

Also, whilst it is super annoying when your neighbour calls the police on you to make a noise complaint, you do have to sit back and remember that they’re probably not enjoying being woken up by a load of drunken students shouting on the street either…

I don’t mean to sound critical of student behaviour, because I’m one of the first to get giddy on a night out and go on a stupid adventure. All I mean to say, is that we do have to remember that we’re living within a wider community than our university bubble. So rather than shooting nasty glances at local people or ignoring them completely, start a conversation with your neighbours. This way, everyone can put a face, a name and a personality to who they’re living around.

I’ve spoken before about how important I think community is, and I think that now more than ever we really need to make an effort to not isolate ourselves from each other. Being a student is great, but it’s good to make sure that you’re not just someone staying in the city for the term; you’re part of the community living there.

Safety in numbers

Safety in numbers

Recently I’ve been thinking about how when we move to University, there’s this weird societal assumption that we’re all going to fit right in and find ‘our people’ as soon as we walk through the door. And whilst that can sometimes be true, it rarely is.

I was super fortunate to meet most of my friendship group within the first week. But I can’t say that we were all nearly as close last year as we are now, nor can I say that I felt 100% myself whenever I was around them. Clearly, this is because it takes time for people to relax enough to properly get to know one another away from the excitement of having just met.

So now I really appreciate how stable I feel in the friendships I started last year. Obviously, we still don’t know everything about each other, but I’m definitely expending a lot less energy trying to explain why I am the way I am to everyone this year. And that’s a huge relief.

But an even more liberating part of this term has been the stability of the relationships I have with the young women around me. Especially seeing as finding friendships with girls where you feel completely safe to speak about anything – without judgement – isn’t that easy. From my experience, some of the cruellest effects of our patriarchal society show themselves in women attacking each other.

As unfortunate as it is, feeling safe and free from judgement when around your female peers can sometimes become a matter of safety. I don’t like to catastrophise or to assume the worst, but it’s a dark reality that at least one of my female friends and I are likely to experience sexual abuse or harassment at some point in our lives – if someone hasn’t already. Not to mention the general discrimination we’re all going to experience pretty much every day. Therefore feeling secure in our relationships with each other often determines whether we’ll ever have the confidence to talk about this abuse or not.

On a more positive note, these close female friendships also afford young women the space to be completely themselves. They create room for us to discover and experiment with who we want to be; making mistakes without having to fear that those mistakes will be used against us in the future.

So if it’s taken you a year (or longer) to feel settled into the University/adult life, then know that there’s no shame in being a part of this club. And if you’re female, remember that women aren’t your enemies. Don’t support this f*cked-up patriarchy we live in by tearing each other down when society gives us enough grief already. As this week’s title states: there’s safety in numbers.

Please don’t waste my time

Please don’t waste my time

Lord knows that I’m appreciative of men. Some of my favourite people on the planet are men, and most of the time I’d probably prefer the company of a man rather than a woman. But I’m sorry lads, sometimes you can be absolute trash.

This past year I’ve experienced a (sometimes) overwhelming feeling of loneliness when it comes to romance. I’m 21 years old now and I think it’s safe to say that I’ve not been all that lucky when it comes to love for reasons I can’t really control. Naturally, this has gotten me in my feelings at points but this past year has made me lose all patience with the game of it.

I don’t know about you ladies, but I’ve wasted far too much time and energy on boys who have no clue what or who they want…and I am SICK OF IT. Whether it be talking to the straight-up f**k boys who chat a lot of romance until they’re around their mates, or the ‘nice’ lads who like you but not as much as they think you like them – not that they ever actually ask you how interested you are – I’m exhausted from the soap opera of it all.

This accommodation of men and their feelings we spend so much of our time doing, has got to end. If you’re texting a boy and he’s being sketchy, just cut it off. If you feel like you’re convincing someone to spend time with you, stop it. If when you talk about him to your mates you’re constantly making excuses to make him seem like less of a pr*ck, realise what you’re doing and how little sense that makes.

Many lads say that they want ‘simple’ and complain about how complicated girls are all of the time, but I’m sorry, from my experience the male species are riddles wrapped in enigmas that I’m expected to unravel. Why? Why should I do that? I don’t want to have to do that. I’m not making you do the same with me…

This isn’t an angry rant, because I feel calmer about my love life than I have for a really long time. I’m not saying that I don’t still want a boyfriend – that’d be ideal to be honest – I’m just at the point where I can’t face the game of it anymore. It’s really unrewarding. I’m also not trying to imply that I’m perfect when it comes to romance; nobody is. But I do know that I try to always treat people with respect, and I never waste anyone’s time on purpose.

After all, if someone values and respects you enough, then they’ll make an effort to spend time with you. If they don’t – regardless of what they say – then they’ll mess you about. Unfortunately however, it does seem like the age we’re at is a time when most people just want to mess about a bit. And that’s fair enough: you’re young, have some fun. But I want to have a fun, exciting, adult relationship with someone who cares about me as much as I do them, and I don’t see why that should have to start with some pointless game of ‘who’s going to text first?’.

So I’m not gunna do it anymore, and neither should you.

Is this a witch hunt now?

Is this a witch hunt now?

Recently, I’ve been trying to learn as much as I can about the world and other people. Though I’ve always enjoyed asking questions, it’s been the past few years of my life when I’ve really made an effort to engage with what’s going on around me. But I’m not just talking about reading the news, or history books; I’m talking about asking my peers questions about sex and relationships, questioning those in positions of authority, and challenging my own views on things as much as I can.

I’ve not reached any definitive conclusions – obviously, I’ve been on the planet for about 20 seconds. However, one of the things that I have come to realise is that people have a real issue with trusting each other. It’s understandably due to all the corruption and deceit experienced throughout human history. But it seems that even in the moments when there’s no need to be so suspicious, we’re automatically assuming the worst of each other.

And that’s kind of sad.

I’m not saying that people should never be suspicious of others, I’m only saying that in always assuming the worst of each other, we’re really losing sight of the importance of community. To make matters worse, in the total tumult of a global pandemic, our own government are explicitly encouraging us to turn on each other. So it might seem like nothing, but the second our government urge us to snitch on our neighbours, that is the moment when our society has a HUGE problem.

Preaching about your civil rights is all well and good, but remember that you aren’t the only person in this society. You can’t dob people in just because you judge what they’re doing as wrong: it’s your right to live your life the way you want to, but don’t forget that your neighbour has the same rights as you. Let’s not have an ego trip and start playing judge, jury and executioner over a neighbour allowing another person into their own home. Frankly, taking that road leads society to dictatorships, ignoring the presence of concentration camps, and public executions. It definitely doesn’t lead to any kind of effective democracy – it never has.

Thus even though it can sometimes lead to disappointment, we really need to trust each other more. After all, very few people commit crimes sp there’s no need for us to assume that the worst will always happen first.

Government likes to dismantle community to strengthen its own control. But the government won’t be the ones rushing to your aid if you get knocked over by a car and start bleeding in the middle of the street. They won’t be there to speak to you when you’re lonely. They won’t be the ones you ask to look after your children whilst you run to the shop to get some more milk. So be careful about burning your bridges with your community: they’re the people you actually need.

Get woke

Get woke

The last 8 months have drastically altered the way the world works. By being forced to stay indoors for weeks – in some countries, months – on end, we’ve been thrust into personal isolation in a way we’ve never experienced. In the future, some will probably only talk about how they were really bored, unable to go on holiday, or gained an unhealthy obsession with TikTok during this time (guilty…). Whilst others will have worse tales to tell.

Overall however, there seems to have been an increase in how much the general public pay attention to the news. It’s an unsurprising change, given we had very little else to do…but even though people started watching the news more, it seems we still struggle to fully engage with what we’re hearing.

When we go through school, there are often moments in our classrooms when we’re encouraged to discuss the politics relating to whatever we’re studying: whether that’s how the social climate of 1920’s America influenced F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, or whether it’s answering the million-dollar question: why did Henry VIII have so many wives? However, a lot of the time our curriculum doesn’t actually encourage us to really think about the topics, and then relate what we learn to our society today. We learn phrases we know ‘the examiner wants to hear’, but we’re 15, so why would we need to care about these things outside of the classroom?

But then we come into the world and we’re completely unprepared to understand everything that’s going on. Only we’re not completely unprepared: it’s just that we’re rarely taught how to recognise that what we learnt about the Tudors, the Bolsheviks, or the Ancient Romans is relevant to us now. Furthermore, people think they don’t have access to politics because they don’t know the lingo. But politicians complicate things on purpose; they’re trying to make you think that you don’t get it because then you’ll leave them to it.

Plus as humans, we separate ourselves from our history and assume that because we weren’t there, we don’t need to give it that much attention. And our learning at school is for exams, it’s rarely for the sake of knowing. But trust me, you’d probably recognise a lot of the ideas and political tactics kicking about now, from your history lessons if you took a second to think about it. After all, humans can be amazingly innovative but we also have a habit of ignoring our past, then repeating it because we’ve ‘forgotten’ about it.

So I couldn’t care less about how many news articles you share on your social media: it’s your profile, do what you want. What I do care about though, is people asking questions and actively learning about the world they live in. We’re the next cohort of citizens and we’re inheriting a big, phat, stinking mess. I mean, the planet is literally dying…

You learnt so much about how the world works today from school and everything you’ve ever read. It’s not irrelevant and it’s not always ‘boring/depressing’: educate yourself about the positive/exciting parts of world history too. But there’s so much to be said for paying serious attention to humanity’s past mistakes, learning from them, and finally doing something else.

I listened to a podcast the other day that said around 22% of American millennials don’t even KNOW what the Holocaust was. And that’s terrifying. So please please please exit Instagram/Facebook/Twitter/TikTok for a couple of hours today and read a book, watch a documentary, listen to a podcast, read an article – I don’t care, just learn something new.

Discrimination is surprising

Discrimination is surprising

The response to last week’s blog has been amazing: people were completely outraged! And this was so weird (lovely !!, but weird) to me, because my getting blocked by students at my University didn’t even make me that angry: it wasn’t an unprecedented event. But you were all so shocked and furious! So, I realise, that you have no idea of just how poorly your disabled community is treated…

So let’s actually talk about disability and society, and let’s first take the idea of ‘looking’ disabled. Well, I don’t ‘look’ disabled. But the fact that I don’t has had serious consequences on the way society treats me.

There are two instances from Secondary School relating to this which particularly stand out for me. The first was when I was in Year 7: I was 11 years old and I’d recently developed a blister on my foot from walking too much, or having a fold in my sock, or something else tedious. (Yes, folds in socks can shove me in a wheelchair for months: it’s that stupid.) So in an attempt to avoid going into my wheelchair, I started to use the lift for disabled students to cut down my walking.

I was outside the lift one afternoon on the way to my next lesson with my best friend when my Deputy Headteacher came over and asked me what I was doing. I politely explained how I had a note from my parents, that I had a blister and that I had to use the lift. She didn’t look at my note, and she wasn’t interested when I started to lift my trousers so she could see my shoes. Instead, she yelled at me saying ‘a blister?! I’ve never heard such a thing! You’re stopping disabled students from using this lift!’. So I went to lesson in floods of tears: completely humiliated.

In this moment I didn’t ‘look disabled’ to my Deputy Headteacher: I didn’t have a noticeable body deformity, sound disabled, nor was I in a wheelchair. Flash-forward 2 weeks however, and I was in a wheelchair…no challenges as to why I was using the lift then…

The other memory I have is from being in Year 10 – the 3rd time I was in a wheelchair at Secondary School. My friends were pushing me through the halls to our lesson, and a student I didn’t know saw us. He shouted ‘piss off! I saw you walking last week, get out of that thing!’ at me across the hallway. I was stunned but my friends shouted back at him and we kept moving. Clearly, to this boy I was a liar; I was the person the media and government demonise as ‘abusing disability services and benefits’, and he took this moment to publicly expose my lie.

The world is constantly fed this finite version of what it is to be disabled: what it looks like, what it sounds like and what it feels like. But nobody ever takes the time to work out whether this stereotype is true. So just think about how many people you know without a disability: are they all the same? Do they all have the same bodies and personalities and emotions and ideas? Now think about applying that to disabled people. Do we all have the same disabilities? Do people who even fall under the same type of disability, have the same variation of that disability? Do we all look the same? Sound the same? Feel the same?

The answer is clearly ‘no’. Still, we’re grouped into one blob and are treated poorly by people and institutions who take very little time to try and actually understand us.

I’ve never been bullied directly because I’ve always had people standing up for me, and I’ve always had the confidence to stand up for myself. But I’ll always be vulnerable to discrimination by institutions and the general public because of an unwillingness of people to sit down and actually learn about things they know nothing about.

If you’re outraged by my experiences then start learning about other people’s, because I’m such a privileged white girl and my exposure to discrimination is nowhere near as bad as it gets. Trust me, you know more disabled people than you think, and you have more preconceptions about disability than you recognise.

Lol, I got blocked

Lol, I got blocked

When I first started this blog, I didn’t really think that anyone would read it. Then after a few months I realised that hundreds of people every week were clicking on my links. (!) And I thought that if I promoted it on social media, then maybe even more strangers would take the time to read what I write.

One of the ways I did this was by occasionally sharing posts to my University’s ‘overheard’ page. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s basically a Facebook page run by students of universities where the members share all kinds of things: information about houses, people trying to find things they lost on nights out, promotion of student events or student projects, all sorts. And when I shared blogs to this page, I received hundreds of reads on each article (one time, the views even reached over 1000 in 24 hours), with strangers sending me messages saying how much they’d appreciated my writing. Some even said ‘thank you’.

However, whilst many were grateful to me for talking about subjects such as social class at Durham University, others reported me as promoting a scam…This then caused me to get blocked from the page – a fact I only realised when I checked and saw that I could no longer access the student community.

Bit harsh, but never-mind, whatever.

When I asked the administrator of the page to unblock me, they did it straight away. Then last Wednesday I shared a blog about disability representation. I did so because disability is really not something I ever hear mentioned at Durham, and I thought that reading a blog about it might be a safe and easy way to get students in on the discussion. Plus, I thought, if you don’t want to read it, then just scroll, it’s not exactly an offending topic???

I received hundreds of reads and around 50 likes on that post. But once again, some found it so insulting that they chose to report it, and got me blocked. Only this time when I asked the administrator if they could undo it, they said they couldn’t because at least 50 students reported the post. At least 50 !!! The administrator didn’t remove or report it, my fellow students did.

Why am I even writing about this, you ask? Well, I’m writing about it because when I shared blogs about dating or relationships, they stayed up on the page for weeks – no problem. But then when I discussed social class or disability, at least 100 people took the time and effort to report me. So this isn’t about my ego, it’s about how objectively insane it is that at least 100 students at my university have reported articles about social class and disability as having no place on a Facebook page devoted to a student community. These people may make up a minority, but they exist, and they’re actively rejecting conversations about disability and social class, and I’m not okay with it.

Durham is one of the best universities in the country and many of those attending it will reach powerful positions in their lives; some will even become the people who make the rules in this country. So if later down the line these people are going to control my rights as a disabled person, then why can’t I ask them to try and understand what it’s actually like to be the disabled person?

If you don’t like my writing then it’s calm, just keep scrolling. But don’t tell me to sit down and shut up, or get me blocked because I’m not talking about something you want to hear: it’ll only make me more persistent.

I want to go for a walk

I want to go for a walk

For me, disability causes a constant conflict between personality and body. Ever since I was small I’ve struggled to mesh the two together because I’ve never wanted to accept that there are things that I’ll never be able to do. From the age of about 8 until 14 I was awful for it: I’d just do everything that my friends were doing because I wanted to, and I’d rarely give a second thought to my feet. But then I’d end up with infections, and in a wheelchair. So living that way didn’t get me very far.

After about the age of 16 I’d managed to (sort of) make my peace with it. I accepted that I couldn’t ever live my life the way most people could, and I mourned it, but ultimately I realised that those are just the cards I’ve been dealt. I mean, my disability could be so much worse, and what do I gain from fighting it?

Then I was 19 and I had my gap year. I proved to myself that I could travel the world on my own: I went to seriously remote places, away from medical institutions, and showed myself that doing what I want to do doesn’t always have to end in infection and debilitation. It might sound trivial to you, but it was breaking news to me, my family and my doctors.

This year, quarantine happened and after a while the government started allowing people out for walks and exercise. This change to the lockdown brought so much relief to most people, but not to me because I can’t just go out for a run. I can’t just walk down loads of steps to the beach and then back up them, because if I do, I have to accept that I might injure myself. I might put myself in a wheelchair.

This is where we get back to how complicated disability is, because many of my readers have seen me in person and have seen me walk plenty of times. I can walk short distances, and I’ve been known to dance for hours on a night out, but sometimes it’s just luck that I don’t end up with a blister after doing these things. I’m a seasoned professional when it comes to internalising my worries and pushing my disability as far as it can go. I’m stubborn and I’m young, and I don’t see why all my friends can but I can’t. Like I said, it’s a constant conflict.

But I don’t write these blogs to be all ‘woe is me’. Loads of people have it so much worse than I do, and everyone does the best with what they’ve got. It’s just that if I’m going to write blogs about when I feel empowered by being a young disabled woman, then I have to show you the side of my condition which gives me no joy whatsoever.

Some days I just don’t want to be this disabled person. It makes me feel weak and suffocated. I don’t want to have to think about whether I can go somewhere, I want to be able to just go. Sometimes I look at my feet and wonder how it’s fair that I have to be the only person I know who can’t just wear normal shoes and have normal legs. I wonder how it’s fair that I’ll have this for the rest of my life, and how I’m supposed to get over it when there’s nothing I, or anyone else can do to ever improve it.

There are no solutions to these problems. Life doesn’t work in ‘fair’ and ‘unfair’ – especially when I don’t believe in any type of God. As far as I can see, random people get random sacks of sh** to deal with, and we move. I have a really good time even with the headache of my Spina Bifida, and it’s shaped me in so many positive ways. To be honest, if someone told me that I could flick a switch to get rid of it I’m not even sure that I would. Disability can enrich a person’s perspective on the world and life in many ways, but I’d never, ever, wish it on anyone.

Not feeling it

Not feeling it

Until yesterday, I wasn’t going to write a mid-week blog. Mostly because I’ve spent so much time with myself these past 52 days. 52 days man: I’ve not been outside in almost 2 months. (!) In fact, I have absolutely no clue what the country I’ve been living in for that time even looks like. If it’s past the view from the windows, then I’ve never seen it.

So the routine of my week kind of revolves around writing blogs now. But I’m only any good at this when I’ve got something to say, and how can I have anything to say when I don’t do anything? I’m trying to write down the things I talk about in my head, but I’m soooooo bored of hearing that little voice blabbering on all the time. I’d kinda like to hear someone else for a bit.

Lol didn’t manage it though, did I? Here we are, reading another instalment of that little voice’s monologue… ah well.

Quarantine has been a serious strain on the mental well-being of my parents and I. We never argue and we get along uncharacteristically well, so generally speaking we’re totally fine. We have a laugh and our issues are never with each other. But human beings aren’t built to be locked inside for months on end; it doesn’t matter how much they like each other.

Thankfully, me, my mum and my dad have somehow managed to alternate our breakdowns so none of us have been miserable at the same time so far. It’s not every day but every now and then, it just hits you. And whoever isn’t feeling like jumping out of the window on that day, gets the job of comforting whoever does. Lots of hugs, loud music, drunken dancing on the balcony, crisps and chocolate, Blue Planet, Judy Garland, sarcastic jokes. You know, usual family stuff.

But what I’m trying to get at in this blog, is that if you’re waking up some days feeling absolutely miserable then that’s a totally valid feeling to have right now. It’s a completely mad, upsetting time. It doesn’t matter how lovely your house is, or how amazing the people you’re locked in with are, sometimes you just can’t face another day doing the same thing, in the same rooms, surrounded by the same people, with no idea of when you’ll all be able to do something else.

I could end this with ‘hey, it’s mostly not that bad, let’s not dwell’ – a very true point. But there’s a lot to be said for allowing yourself a minute to just listen to some maungy music and bask in how crap you feel. You don’t always have to rationalise things; sometimes you just feel rubbish. And we’ve been stuck in the house for weeks with no prospect of an end date, in a world where the only news story seems to be how many people are dying. So if that isn’t an excuse to feel sad for a day, then I don’t know what is.

Xx

Does being masculine mean you shouldn’t slut-drop?

Does being masculine mean you shouldn’t slut-drop?

I wanted to know whether these young men feel like they need to act/look/talk/think a certain way when they like someone, and whether they think there’s a generally accepted version of ‘attractive’ for the male sex.

My favourite response was: ‘I’m not saying I go around crushing beers against my forehead but I do maybe try and avoid slutdropping for hashtag bant’. I mean, that first part is just a really funny mental-image.

But overall, the answers were interesting because they were all pretty 50/50 on ‘yes’ and ‘no’, with equally passionate viewpoints on both sides. However, the ‘no’ answers had quite a lot of contradictions, with boys saying ‘no, not really’ or ‘definitely not’, but following it with ‘I try to be the most appealing version of myself’. Noting that it’s ‘pointless’ to be something they’re not in the first stages of getting to know a person, but still wanting to make themselves ‘more likeable’ to ‘not put girls off’.

I did completely understand what they meant: we all try to temper or alter ourselves when we first meet someone because we want them to like us. But, I can’t help feeling sad at how much pressure we put on ourselves just because we want the approval of a stranger…

Regardless of how many of these lads said ‘I just kinda do me’, there were a lot of mentions of the ‘tall, dark and handsome’ trope. The ‘v-line’ and the ‘older look’; the ‘jawline’ and the ‘muscular look’; the ‘confidence’ that always almost crosses over into ‘arrogance’. Oh, and ‘that typical white boy look’: I’m learning that for both men and women, other races have a lot more trouble with fetishisation than us Caucasians. But that’s a whole other blog.

Overall, the boys were saying a lot of things which equate to the experiences girls have our age. We all overthink how we should be when we’re trying to impress someone. We try not to change in front of strangers we fancy, but often we do it anyway. We have social standards we kind of want to live up to – no matter how impossible they might be. Our upbringing and our social class influence what version of ourselves we think is preferable to whoever we’re talking to. We’re all just kind of insecure and unsure at this age.

However these boys made a point that deserves a specific mention: not enough time is given to how much these pressures to look a certain way damage the mental health of young men. My friends were so right to tell me that ‘body image amongst men isn’t taken as seriously’ as it should be, because according to the National Centre for Eating Disorders in the UK, men are thought to make up around 50% of all cases. And I don’t know about you, but that statistic came as a surprise to me…

I think we’re doing pretty well in diversifying what it means to be ‘masculine’ in the modern world. But we’re moving so slowly. We still need to fully recognise that sexism is a huge problem for both men and women now: in 2020. If we sorted it out for women, then men would definitely feel the benefits too. Maybe we’d even realise that if someone likes us, then they probably couldn’t give less of a sh** about our hair colour or our height. Imagine it! A world without gender rules.

So, does being masculine mean you shouldn’t slut-drop? Well I certainly hope not. And FYI lads, if you want to play with gender expectations, then a little bit of eyeliner can go a long way too…I’m just saying.