Quantcast
Channel: VICE CA
Viewing all 38002 articles
Browse latest View live

Does London's Drag Scene Have a Race Problem?

0
0


Illustration by Marta Parszeniew

Being both of color and LGBTQ has always involved facing extra hurdles, compared to white people in our community. Racist profiles are two a penny on Grindr; mainstream gay media is still not representative of its black and minority ethnic (BME) readership; and health inequalities between BME men who sleep with men and their white counterparts are well known.

Historically, our pubs and clubs were places to escape a world that didn't love us. The same is true today—with recent figures showing a "shocking rise" in homophobic hate crimes.

In the last few months, there have been a number of alleged incidents of racism within London's drag scene, prompting bigger questions about whether clubs and performers are doing enough to stamp it out. While the representation of BME performers is—thankfully—slowly improving, we need to ensure the scene progresses in an inclusive way.

Santi Cardona is originally from Colombia and was taking part in a quiz at LGBTQ bar the Two Brewers, in Clapham, south London, in April this year. The night, which was hosted by a gay cabaret entertainer, soon took a sour turn when the host allegedly started to make racist remarks.

"It was my first time at the Two Brewers pub quiz," says Santi. "Initially, it was fun. But halfway through, things started to get really uncomfortable. There was a salsa class taking place in the back room. Once it finished, people were walking through the room towards the exit. He interacted with a few of them, including a black woman. He had a bit of back and forth with her over the microphone and said goodbye. But once she was out of earshot, he turned to the crowd and said, 'Bongo Wongo Congo.'"

"He then asked me my name and where I was from. I told him I was from Colombia and he said, 'Oh do you have lots of cocaine?' Given the overt racism I'd just seen from him, I was in no mood to let this slide. So I called him out on it. His response? 'I am not racist... Well I am.' It was simply using stereotypes and offensive comments to try and get laughs at the expense and humiliation of minorities."

It was simply using stereotypes and offensive comments to try and get laughs at the expense and humiliation of minorities.

Santi's friend, Andrew Le Breton, was also there that night. "There was a man who came through from the back room to leave, and was also called out by the host, who asked him where he was from, and then—presumably because the man was of color—said 'Oh shit, he has a backpack, we should have searched him.'"

The host did not respond to our attempts to try and contact him. The Two Brewers declined to comment about the incident. However, according to Santi, after he complained, the bar's management held a meeting with him on April 30, in which they were "very apologetic."

"They assured me that they do not tolerate that sort of behavior. They said that the act was new, and that they believed it was just ignorance rather than malice, which led him to make the comments he did. They said he was on his last warning. They seemed genuine."

These allegations are one of a number of incidents where the lines between entertainment and prejudice have been blurred on the queer performance circuit. Earlier this year, east London drag troupe Sink the Pink came under fire after one of their performers, Ginger, wore a white hood in the exact style of the Ku Klux Klan. When I challenged them about this on Twitter, they defended it as being "inspired by the Capriote" (a hood worn by some Christian brotherhoods in Spain). It's difficult to imagine that Ginger would have been unaware of its racially provocative connotations, though. The group also faced criticism for using culturally insensitive "jihadi cat memes" to promote the night in question.

"The response from some people to my performance that night has raised a lot of questions for me," Ginger told me in response to the backlash. "What parts of our visual history are out of bounds? How do different communities take ownership of their past and those people who continue to oppress them? How can I better document my work to serve as context for my practice? How do I make myself more visible as an ally?"

Earlier this year, Sink the Pink came under fire after one of their performers, Ginger, wore a white hood in the exact style of the Ku Klux Klan.

There is, it seems, a willingness to do better. Sink the Pink is a huge cultural focal point for the London LGBT scene, and the sorts of questions Ginger posed in her response suggests an understanding that, as the troupe's reputation grows, the responsibility to get things right and be a queer space for all will grow too. But at the same time, the very ethos of drag is punk, and the idea that there may be "rules" will naturally feel uncomfortable to those who believe in the purity of drag as a vehicle for no-holds-barred self-expression.

But the thing is, drag does come with rules. Shaming a man's femininity, for example, is unacceptable. Homophobia is intolerable. Perhaps because these rules benefit the majority, they don't feel like boundaries. And without extending these boundaries to meet the needs of queers of color and trans people, a space designed to provide temporary liberation from a hostile world runs the risk of inflicting that same hostility on minorities within the LGBT community.

"The drag scene is littered with racial microaggressions," says black drag queen Leigh Fontaine. "I was once pulled up on stage at a popular cabaret venue, and the drag queen performing cracked crude jokes, saying if anyone in the audience wanted a big black cock she would auction me off in the bogs. To a white audience that might be funny, but to someone whose early sexual experiences were colored by racial fetishization, it reminded me how often the white gay community reduce me to a sexual object."

Too often, laughs from white audiences seem to be prioritized over the comfort and dignity of ethnic minority punters. And the lack of diversity in the drag scene only allows this ignorance to fester.

"The drag scene is very white," explains Leigh. "I don't think that's due to a lack of excellent black performers. For some reason, venues don't often book black acts. A burlesque friend was actually denied a spot on a line-up because the promoter had told her they already had a black artist performing. The line-up had six white acts, but that was apparently beside the point."

Diverse talent struggling to be heard is doubly frustrating when acts that rely on stereotypical interpretations of minorities manage to land work. Take Charlie Hides, a white queen who performed as Laquisha Jonz at a number of venues including the Royal Vauxhall Tavern (RVT) in south London and The Two Brewers, using African American vernacular and heavy tan to resemble dark skin.

A campaign, led by activist and writer Chardine Taylor-Stone, was started to get her banned from venues. "The LGBT community is more than just white gay men and we all should be able to feel that we are safe and respected when attending places that are meant to be for all of us," she wrote on the petition. "We are asking these venues to stop booking Laquisha Jonz and to create a code of conduct that supports artistic freedom but says no to acts that perform in blackface or perpetuate racist stereotypes."

The Royal Vauxhall Tavern responded positively to the campaign, saying: "Our venue is steeped in rich LGBTQ history, and we pride ourselves on supporting the community as a whole. It is for this reason that the character of Laquisha Jonz will in the immediate term not perform at RVT."

However, the venue still allows Charlie Hides to perform as its Sunday night headline act. "We fully support Charlie Hides... Charlie is a talented and innovative performer," the statement read.

What can and cannot be performed as drag will continue to be debated—and many defended Hides' character. But while it may feel as though Hides was censored, the RVT's decision accommodated everyone's needs—Charlie Hides is still able to perform without resorting to stereotypes of a community to which she doesn't belong, and punters aren't subjected to blackface.

As voices of intolerance against LGBTQ people grow louder across the world, our safe spaces have never been more sacred. When queer and trans people of color speak up, it's because we recognize the potential of these spaces and want them to do better for everyone. Pointing out where an act crosses the line isn't about shutting down artistic expression—it's a push to create something better. We're edging towards a scene that feels more ready to listen to what racial minorities are saying, but without a diverse range of performers, and a zero-tolerance approach to racism, the march towards inclusivity may just come to a halt.

Follow Josh Lee on Twitter.



‘Maybe I Got What I Deserved’: Larry Wilmore Reflects on the Cancellation of 'The Nightly Show'

0
0

On the VICELAND TV channel, there are hosts and then there are famous hosts. When Ellen Page, Eddie Huang, or Michael K. Williams do a show, their celebrity fuels tons of press coverage. But it's not like that for those of us who are just measly reporters. Although me and my co-hosts, Wilbert L. Cooper and Martina de Alba, take viewers on a wild ride across the US exploring the insanity of the 2016 election in our show VICE Does America, we're chopped liver to the media who can write about shows hosted by the pregnant girl from Juno or the stick-up dude from the Wire. With nary any interest from major outlets, my co-hosts and I have had to cajole our professional acquaintances and our four-digit Twitter followings into tuning in and watching our show on Wednesdays at 10 PM.

While getting press for VICE Does America has been like pulling teeth, that struggle made my appearance on The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore all the more special. Except for The Nightly Show, there is not a single late-night show on TV that would have had someone at my lowly level on its program, unless it had just went viral on Snapchat for doing something inane or stupid.

The scrappy sister to The Daily Show slid into the 11:30 PM slot a year and a half ago, delighting an underrepresented young black audience and confusing the hell out of everyone who expects to see a toothy white dude behind a desk after the kids go to bed. The show was the result of Comedy Central's overhaul of its late-night slate, where it replaced beloved white boys Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert with two brothers. While Trevor Noah's outsider perspective as a South African in America anchors The Daily Show, Wilmore's exploration of the inherent racism that thrives in American society is what made his show special. These investigations weren't funny because discrimination is funny—they were funny because, if minorities can't laugh about the bullshit we deal with, this country would be headed for another Civil War.

Wilmore's small and dedicated audience understood that. But ratings aren't measured in authenticity. Unable to meet the numbers of his predecessor Colbert, whose shtick miraculously resonated with viewers on both ends of the political spectrum, Comedy Central canceled Wilmore's show last week, making me one of his final guests. When I made my first-ever late-night appearance last week, I had no idea that only days later I'd be interviewing my interviewer to figure out what the hell happened with my favorite show. But that's exactly what went down last night.

Here's what Wilmore had to say about losing the show and the future of black comedy. For a guy who just lost a TV show, he's is a pretty cool cucumber.

VICE: What would you say was your all-time favorite moment on the show?
Larry Wilmore: I think the very first Cosby joke where we said, "We're going to ask the question 'Did he do it?' and the answer will be 'Yes.'" That was such a satisfying moment. Just to say that joke was so liberating, like: We don't have to guard our thoughts on this show; we can absolutely keep it 100 percent real.

As you were saying in the last episode, your one regret is that you won't get to cover the rest of this insane election. If you could share one final thought on the election, what would it be?
Well, I kinda did that on Monday night. I let that be my final election thought, covering Trump. But my whole thing was that at this point I wanted Hillary to win every single electoral vote. My reasoning is not so much that "I'm with her"—it's that I'm with her, being the Statue of Liberty.

When you formulated the nightly show, what was the ultimate goal you had in mind in terms of audience and style of humor?
Well, John Stewart pitched the show to me. He thought it'd be great to have a show that showcased voices you don't normally get a chance to hear from, in a panel-packing format. The show was originally pitched as an all-panel show. I felt it was important for me to establish my opinion in the show first and have what's become that opening monologue, kind of Daily Show–like segment, first. So it felt like some kind of like a hybrid.

Now that the show's over, do you feel that there's gonna be a void in intelligent comedic content from the black perspective specifically in the mainstream?
Well, it's kind of unfair for me to say.

But you were the only show for a lot of people.
It's flattering when other people say that. But, you know, I'm gonna strive to do something like this again, in some way. Hopefully I'll be able to do it again. I really enjoyed connecting with all the people who enjoyed what we did and getting guests on our panel—people like yourself, who maybe a lot of the mainstream don't know, but they should know, and that's how they become known. We weren't interested in booking big stars and having people plug their movies. We were interested in having people like yourself, who could be funny and informative and just interesting, like: Who's this interesting person? And I was really proud of that.


You took the late-night slot, which traditionally, has kind of been the same thing. It's been, like, a white dude saying stuff, for years, making politically benign jokes. Now that The Nightly Show's been canceled, does that mean that audiences are not ready for the other perspective? Do you feel that the show was ahead of its time?
TV can work or not work for a number of reasons. You just don't know. Cheers was last in the ratings its whole first season, you know? And could easily have been canceled—they could have justified that completely—and then it became a classic. I worked on The Office for the first three seasons, and that first season we did six episodes, and we could easily have been canceled. Nobody was watching it; our ratings were horrible. But Kevin O'Reilly really liked the show, and he left it on, and we started really connecting in our second season.

You did take the show into some pretty controversial directions. If you had to do it over, would you be less controversial for the sake of wider appeal?
No, absolutely not. I don't mind being a niche show. That was kind of our mission, was to go after those things. I wish we could have had more audience out there, but I wouldn't have sacrificed that for the other.

So maybe I got what I deserved.

"We weren't interested in booking big stars and having people plug their movies—we were interested in having people like yourself, who could be funny and informative and just interesting." —Larry Wilmore

It does seem like your audience for this show—they might have been fewer in number, but boy, they were a very loud, very participatory, very active on social media. What was it about your show that resonated with these people?
For me, I was on The Daily Show for maybe eight years before I did this. And so I already had a bit of a relationship with some of John's audience. People, I think, had an expectation from me in a certain way. And hopefully they felt that I delivered on that. And I think cause maybe I'm a little older, they know: Larry's too old to be fucking around—he probably means what he says at this point. He doesn't have time for bullshit, or whatever. I think people kind of respected that.

Comedy Central traditionally has a lot of white programming, but yet the big hits were black shows, like Chappelle's Show and Key and Peele.
It's kind of ironic, yeah.

Watch Abdullah on 'VICE Does America' on VICELAND:

You jokingly mentioned that The Nightly Show getting canceled is an extension of "the unblackening," in some way, right?
Yeah.

And I mean, do you feel Comedy Central understood the show that it had?
Sure. I think they understand what they had here. It probably doesn't ultimately fit with their places for this time slot, which is more of an issue. They absolutely know what they have. And they feel very respectful of what we're doing. They never got in the way or that type of thing. The notes that they had at the beginning were very helpful. You know, when you're developing a show, you try the best that you can. But sometimes you just don't work out on a network, and there's no hostility in it or anything. Sometimes, you're just not a good fit for what they want. It's just, they may not want this type of show in that slot where you're tackling these types of issues. And that's fair—it's their network.

"I don't think a TV show is the thing that's gonna put us over the top. I mean, when Obama was elected people were like: OK, racism over. Look what we did, give us credit."Larry Wilmore

In terms of your correspondents and other black voices in media, specifically in comedy, who do you think is going to take the reins now?
Well, I hope to be back doing it again. So I hope nobody does it too soon.

Right, or too well.

Totally. And you also mentioned, jokingly, that racism's solved, that that must be why—
Right, open. Not anymore.

Yeah, I'll report from the Muslim perspective, we're good.
Yup. Everything good.

It's a joke, but it has this dire truth to it. At this point, having completed this show, how far do you see America from some semblance of solving racism? How many Nightly Show s does it take to actually fix it?
Hundreds of years of Nightly Shows. We are not close at all. I don't think a TV show is the thing that's gonna put us over the top. I mean, when Obama was elected people were like: OK, racism over. Look what we did, give us credit.

Looking ahead, you've obviously got a ton of projects coming up. Insecure looks really dope. What's next?
Insecure definitely is my next thing, so that I'm really looking forward to. I co-created it with Issa Rae, but it's really based on her life and her web series. It's about a late-20-something black girl who's trying to figure out where she's going and who she is, with her group of friends, all trying to figure things out.

Abdullah Saeed is a co-host of VICE Does America. Follow him on Twitter.

The final episode of The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore airs this Thursday, August 18 on Comedy Central.

Asking For a Friend: Can You Get Cancer from the Occasional Cigarette?

0
0

Logo by Kitron Neuschatz; image via Shutterstock

Ah, friends. They're like family but cooler. Fully customizable. Fall and one of them will be right there to pick you back up. But as great as friends can be, they also do a lot of really stupid stuff. Stuff that blows your mind. Like, sometimes it seems crazy that you even hang out with people who make such crappy decisions. Stuff that, were it to get out, would be mortifying for anyone with even a shred of self-respect. Lucky for your friends, they've got you to ask their deepest, darkest questions for them. And lucky for you, we started this new column to answer those most embarrassing of queries.

The scenario: Your friend is always bumming cigarettes at parties because buying her own would make her an actual smoker.

The hope: That they're only cancer sticks if she smokes a significant number of them.

The reality: Light smoking is better than heavy smoking, but to paraphrase Smokey Robinson, a taste of tobacco is worse than none at all. Much worse. Sorry.

As it turns out, smoking doesn't result in what scientist-types might call a dose-response relationship, wherein your risk would inch up incrementally with each puff you take. No, the hard reality is that even low levels of tobacco exposure seem to have about 70 percent of the ill effects that smoking heavily has, per an analysis of the research on intermittent smoking.

Women who smoke between one and four cigarettes per day are five times more likely to develop lung cancer than nonsmokers are; men are three times more likely. One or more a day also gives you a way higher chance of developing esophageal and gastric cancer—140 percent to 325 percent of the average person's risk.

Hold up, your friend might protest, I'm just a social smoker who definitely has less than one a day! Well. While there isn't a ton of research on the 41 percent of American smokers who dose less frequently than once a day, the existing data suggests that "the adverse health outcomes parallel dangers observed among daily smoking, particularly for cardiovascular disease."

There's also the unfortunate but real possibility that your friend is a carcinogen sponge. "Some people are built to retain more carcinogens, so they don't get eliminated from the body as quickly," Alexander Prokhorov, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, told VICE. "Without knowing whether your genes put you at higher risk for a smoking-related disease, being a social smoker is like playing Russian roulette. There's no such thing as a safe number of cigarettes."

What to do: If your pal has graduated from smoking like Leo to lighting up only occasionally, pat her on the back and tell her to keep cutting back. But if she's just starting to smoke, even if it's only piecing it on weekends, start percolating on a quitting strategy.


How Rape Complainants Are Having Their Social Media Feeds Used Against Them in Court

0
0


Stephanie Stella (photo by Troy Manning)

After she said she was sexually assaulted by an acquaintance, Stephanie Stella went home and looked up an article on consent she recalled reading when she was younger.

"I posted it on my Facebook," with the note, "I think the world is due for a timely reminder about consent," the Toronto resident told VICE.

That post—and others—would come back to haunt her during her sex assault trial a year and a half later in February 2016.

The man accused of sexually assaulting Stella, Di Yang, was acquitted in March. While reading her decision, Ontario court Justice Leslie Chapin said "the fact that did look up articles about consent when she was home, leads me to think that there was some genuine confusion on her part as to whether or not she was consenting."

While that wasn't the sole reason Yang was acquitted, it points to a trend in which sexual assault complainants are being discredited in court based on things they post on social media.

According to evidence presented at trial, both Stella and Yang agreed that sexual contact took place. However, Stella said it started out consensual and became non-consensual. She told the court he penetrated her with his fingers after she told him she wasn't ready for that. Yang's defence argued the Crown couldn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt Stella withdrew her consent and that even if she had, Yang didn't realize it.

During cross-examination, Yang's lawyer Naomi Lutes brought up the fact that Stella had once posted a comment on Facebook that said "when a woman says 'no' it is the beginning of a negotiation."

"I couldn't prepare for that," Stella told VICE, noting the post was six years old.

"It did a very good job of throwing me off my game. Not only is she starting to discredit me right from the word 'go,' but she's showing me how much she knows about me. She had gone into my account and scraped it all the way back. She knew everything I had posted from at least six years back."

Stella also posted about the fact that Jian Ghomeshi had surrendered to police on sex assault charges the day before she reported Yang to the cops. Ghomeshi's trial also ended up taking place at the same time as Yang's—in the same courthouse—something Stella noted on Facebook, where she was chronicling her journey through the criminal justice system.

"She... accused me of trying to get in on the spotlight," said Stella. Justice Chapin, in summarizing the defence's position, wrote, "Her social media posts are indicative of someone who's come to court with an agenda."

Other sex assault complainants have also found their social media feeds under heavy scrutiny, with some arguing such evidence has little to do with the alleged crime but is instead being used to prop up rape myths.

York University PhD student Mustafa Ururyar was recently convicted of raping fellow student Mandi Gray.

While cross-examining Gray, Ururyar's lawyer Lisa Bristow brought up a February 2016 tweet in which Gray referred to the court system as a "rape circus."

"And this was going to be perfect for your agenda, correct?" asked Bristow, adding, "your agenda to show how the criminal justice system doesn't work for sexual assault victims."

Mandi Gray (photo by Canadian Press/Chris Young)

"I was actually quite amazed by how many objectives she put upon me, from me being jealous to me having an activist agenda," Gray told VICE. Despite the conviction, Gray has said she felt violated by the criminal justice system and that she would "never encourage anyone to report to the police, because of how emotionally, financially, and psychologically taxing it can be."

In March, three of four men on trial for gang raping a teenage girl from Ottawa were acquitted, despite the judge concluding that the victim, 15 at the time of the assault, was raped. (The DNA of the one man who was convicted was found on the victim's body.) The judge called the victim's credibility and reliability into question, noting that she refused to admit to smoking weed and drinking despite the fact that her social media posts indicated otherwise.

Toronto criminal defence lawyer Michael Lacy told VICE the difference between preparing a defence now compared to 30 years ago is that back then you might have hired a private investigator to research a complainant, whereas now social media offers a wealth of information on the record.

However, he said there are rules that protect complainants from having a defence lawyer make assertions based on social media posts that are irrelevant to the matter at hand.

"I also trust that judges are fully equipped to separate meaningful issues that affect the credibility of a witness and those that don't," he said.

Lacy said he has a Facebook account solely for the purpose of preparing for trials and has had "tremendous success finding things."

In 2012 he represented a 27-year-old man who was convicted of sexual assault and sexual interference after having sex with a 15-year-old girl. Lacy's client said the girl told him she was in college. At trial Lacy asked the complainant if she'd ever lied about her age, which she denied doing; however, he discovered she had created a Myspace account, which requires a person to be at least 16 years old. The line of questioning was shut down at trial, but Lacy later successfully appealed the conviction for his client and a new trial was ordered.

"There's an example, I think, where it's quite properly used," he said, adding, "I'm surprised that people are so open with what they say or that they have Facebook accounts that are not protected."

Vancouver-based privacy consultant Caitlin Hertzman said there are lots of loopholes on apps like Facebook that allow defence attorneys to get information about a complainant. One of the most straightforward routes is simply asking a complainant's Facebook friend for dirt.

"You would be surprised how many people are willing to share that just to be part of a story," she said, describing each Facebook friend as a "loose end."

Hertzman told VICE that complainants in sexual assault trials are best off shutting down their accounts completely once they report a crime and not talking about anything publicly until the proceedings are over.

"If you felt like there was ever anything on there that was problematic you should assume that it's already been screencapped and saved," she said. "So before you shut it down, make sure you get copies of everything to the Crown so they're prepared."

She advised against trying to scrub your account because "it takes too long and you're not going to do a good job."

Gray told VICE she chose to waive her publication ban because "I realized very early on if I didn't remove that publication ban there was no way for me to speak out about the abuse that I was experiencing, through university, through the legal system."

For Stella, documenting her trial publicly, helped her cope with what she described as an "emotional breakdown."

"You could follow my ups and down on my Facebook. This was to show people this is what we go through—this is what the healing process looks like." The posts received many supportive responses, some from other survivors, she said.

"That was what really drove me, knowing that I was helping other people."

However she said having those posts thrown back at her during trial—something she didn't even realize would be possible without her consent—made her feel violated all over again.

"When they say you get raped again on the stand, I initially didn't believe it to be true but it absolutely is."

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Comics: 'Treasure Chest,' Today's Comic by Dame Darcy

Here’s All the People Who Call Toronto 'The 6ix'

0
0


Photo via Wikimedia

Toronto has played host to a range of attention-seeking behaviours in recent years, pushing it to a level where people outside of Canada are actually believing it's cool. Drake became the biggest rapper in the world, our previous mayor Rob Ford smoked crack on camera, and Vogue named Queen West the second-coolest neighbourhood in the world (lol). But for all the hype globally about Canada's biggest city, it was missing something—a cool nickname. That is until Aubrey Drake Graham dubbed Toronto "the 6ix."

A marriage of Toronto's main telephone area codes, 416 and 647, or possibly a reference to the number of boroughs that amalgamated into the City of Toronto in 1998, some Torontonians (see: haters) initially resisted the name even though it sure as fuck wasn't as bad as calling the city "TO" or its sad, leftover airport code "YYZ." But according to a new Research Forum Poll, still only seven percent of Toronto's residents have given in to calling the city "The 6ix." Here's who makes up that seven percent:


Photo via Flickr user Rick Harris

  • Norm Kelly
  • Norm Kelly's social media person/nephew
  • "Influencers"
  • VICE interns
  • Community managers
  • Hockey bros
  • Start-up bros
  • Your mom
  • Sophie Gregoire Trudeau
  • Baby thugs
  • OVO store employees
  • The entire neighbourhood of Liberty Village
  • People who also say "Toron-tow"
  • American ex-pats
  • Legacy media entertainment editors
  • People who get all pissy when it's referred to as "The Six" not "The 6ix"
  • Jake Kivanç
  • Toronto tourism board social media producers
  • People who take gym selfies
  • Anyone who has had a shot at El Furniture Warehouse
  • Struggle rappers
  • Meek Mill
  • Ron MacLean
  • People from the GTA who pretend they're from Toronto
  • Headline writers who are desperately trying to stay relevant and oh god life is passing me by and I have no exit strategy for this industry
  • People who used to call it T-Dot
  • The guy from Chicago who's hitting on you at the bar and wants to sound cool
  • Scotty
  • Anyone with a handle on Twitter that starts with "ovo" who isn't part of OVO
  • People with Drake tattoos
  • The staff at Fring's
  • Ryerson University students
  • "Cool" chatty streetcar drivers
  • People who use Snapchat's Toronto geotags whenever they're in the city
  • Craig Silverman
  • Paulina Gretzky
  • Anyone partying on King West
  • People who get personalized licence plates
  • Men's fashion bloggers
  • Dude you 100 p aren't interested in who super liked you on Tinder
  • People who exclusively use Bluetooth headsets to make phone calls
  • The bride on bachelorette party buses from Oakville
  • Justin Bieber's mom
  • UberBlack users
  • CP24 reporters
  • Aubrey Drake Graham

Gay People Tell Us the Questions They Absolutely Hate Being Asked

0
0

Illustration by Lili Emtiaz

"I have a weird question."

My straight female friend had FaceTimed me to settle a debate: "Do gay guys get turned on when they look at themselves naked?"

I laughed. "I don't think I do," I said. "Maybe, though. Some of the hot guys I follow on Instagram—the shirtless selfie ones—they might?" She seemed satisfied by that. I added, "You're lucky you called me—you can't ask just any gay person that."

As the gay son of a Muslim immigrant, I'm often asked offensive questions by strangers. And I'm not alone. To better assess where we're at in 2016, we asked LGBTQ people to tell us the most offensive questions they've ever been asked and how they responded.

JASON COLLINS, 37, RETIRED PROFESSIONAL BASKETBALL PLAYER, LOS ANGELES

When I first came out three years ago, people kept asking, "Are you sure you're gay?" That was easy to answer—I'd flip it with, "Are you sure you're straight?" But one time, I was in the Houston airport after a trip to Puerto Rico. I was in line to buy water and a cashier said, "Where are you traveling?" I told her, and she said, "Puerto Rico, lots of beautiful ladies down there. Did you have fun?"

I shot back, "There are a lot of beautiful men down there, too." She gave me a look and told me I didn't look gay—something I get a lot. I said, "Yep, I am," paid for the water and walked away.

I could've let it go, but it's important to challenge preconceptions. Maybe next time she'll say, "Puerto Rico, lots of beautiful people down there."


LIANA M. DOUILLET GUZMÁN, 33, VICE PRESIDENT OF MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS, BLOCKCHAIN, NEW YORK

I wear dresses and high heels and used to get questions about not "looking" gay. Now it's about the child I have with my partner. Outrageous questions like, "Who's the dad in the couple?" There is no dad. That's the whole point.

More often than not, it's about my pregnancy. I'm not offended, but you'd never ask a straight couple if they had trouble conceiving or how they did it. I get asked, "Who's the sperm donor? Why did you pick him? How'd did you decide who would carry?" Very detailed questions. Colleagues who I wasn't even close with would say "are you going to turkey baste it?" at cocktail parties. At face value, it's offensive, but no one had bad intentions.

I get detailed in my responses. I walk through the reason we picked our donor, why I carried. I carried my partner's egg, and I'm this brunette Puerto Rican. Our child looks more like her. It makes people curious, and I'm happy to make it comfortable. A lot of ignorance comes from an inability to understand and a fear of asking questions. By answering them, I want people to think of me as less of an other.

TAYTE HANSON, 26, DANCER, PHOTOGRAPHER, PORN STAR, NEW YORK

In porn, you're totally exposed. Everyone's seen my butthole, so people feel comfortable asking me anything. Most gay men are hypersensitive to superficial questions, like sexual preferences, or if I feel feminine when I'm bottoming. I don't have a problem with those—porn has hardened me.

The ones that bother me scrape at the psychology of my homosexuality, like, "If you had a choice, would you be straight?" It implies that being gay is wrong, and it's asked with a level of complete ignorance. They assume, prior to asking, that I'm uncomfortable or upset with my life. I think so much of my life is perfect, and I'm extremely fucking happy.

Not a lot of offensive questions about me or my work. But I'm not counting online comments—I stopped reading those a long time ago.

SARAH MEYER, 33, MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARTIST AND PART-TIME UBER DRIVER, CHICAGO

I don't define my gender. I respond to all pronouns—so people will ask, "What are you?" I say, "I am a giant human person filled almost always with anxiety. What are you?" But offensive questions don't just come from strangers.

My therapist once asked how women have sex with one another. Like: What? Where is your imagination? Why should I help you use it? Did you realize before this moment that your sexual experience apparently only included putting whatever penis into whichever vagina and that this means you are bland and that bland is not great?

My answer to her and every other time I've been asked this (why does it keep happening?) is always just another question: "How would you have sex with someone if they didn't have a penis?" Somehow everyone who wonders about queer sex can answer this question. They just can't ask it of themselves.

JOHN TARGON, 33, FASHION DESIGNER, CO-FOUNDER OF BAJA EAST, NEW YORK

I came out when I was 14. I work in fashion. I live my life. I don't get a lot of questions that offend me, but the most common is that if my co-founder Scott and I can truly be friends—everyone automatically assumes that we've slept together. We haven't.

As a big astrology guy, I know we're best for work. And I've known him for 12 years. He's my business partner, best friend, and roommate. We have a brotherhood. I feel it with a lot of attractive, eligible gay men I'm friends with—this brotherhood that has nothing to do with sex.

It's similar to when someone finds out you're gay or first meets you and says, "Oh hey, I have someone cute to set you up with." Being a gay man isn't all about sex. We don't like all other gay men. The whole thing discounts the fact that gay people are multidimensional, too.

Follow Khalid El Khatib on Twitter.

What We Can All Learn from One Cat-Hating Midwestern Dad's Pot Brownie Misadventure

0
0


Photo via Flickr user jeffreyw

Breaking news from Nebraska, via the Omaha World-Herald:

"Omaha police officers were called to a house near 90th and Maple Streets about 9:45 PM Tuesday to investigate an accidental overdose. They learned that a 53-year-old man had been unloading groceries and found some brownies in the backseat of a car that his adult children had used earlier in the day.

The man ate four of the brownies."

The rule journalists are taught to follow is to report the unusual, the important, the world-shifting. Newspapers are therefore filled with exceptional moments: earthquakes, war, elections, controversies, arguments, crises. Even the death and marriage announcements represent important life events. The stuff of minute-by-minute existence, the ho-hum moments that make up daily life, are usually left to novelists and the earliest, greatest period of the Onion.

But here the mundane is leaking into the news via what should go down as a hall-of-fame level police blotter item. There's a bit of foreshadowing in the first sentence, but to start with, this is an entirely normal event in the life of a 53-year-old man. Wait, why eat some brownies that obviously weren't his that he found in his car? you ask. Well, I'll tell you:

  1. Brownies, even subpar brownies, are tasty desserts.
  2. They were there.
  3. What are this man's "adult children" going to do? Ask where the brownies went? He'll just lie and say "what brownies?" or own up to eating them, depending on what kind of Midwestern Dad he is. He raised them! They owe him more than four brownies.
  4. If you eat food you find in your car, you don't have to tell your wife and therefore don't have to have that cholesterol/weight conversation. Sometimes, hurriedly and secretively stuffing four brownies into your mouth in the backseat of your car is the best part of your day, and that's OK.

"The man's wife told police that as she and her husband were watching TV, he noted that he was getting 'bad anxiety.' She tried to call their children to ask them what was in the brownies but couldn't reach them."

Let me just say, shame on these adult children! You're not a teenager, pick up the phone when your mom calls! Even if you're with your friends, it's totally fine to answer a call from your parents, and if they make fun of you for that, well, they're not such good friends, are they? Also, if one of you doesn't know where your pot brownies are, you're probably pretty sure what this call is going to be about, right?

"As police were at the house, one of the couple's sons arrived and told officers the brownies belonged to his siblings. He told them he was 'pretty sure it was just marijuana in the brownies,' according to a police report."

It's sometimes hard to string together a proper narrative from police reports, which are notoriously short on details, but here's what I think happened:

  1. The mom, unable to contact any of the kids, called the cops, a very Midwestern Mom thing to do.
  2. The adult son who owned the brownies saw his mom's call and, in the way that the brains of adult children sometimes perform enormous leaps of logic in times of crisis, realized exactly what had happened.
  3. He then rushed home, found the cops there—Oh shit, his brain, operating at normal speed no doubt thought, the cops—and was asked about the brownies.
  4. Playing it "cool," in the manner of many adult children caught in a bad spot, he blamed his siblings, and, not wanting to appear too knowledgeable about the brownies, pleaded ignorance. Meanwhile, he had to watch this happen:

"Paramedics called to the scene who checked the man found his vital signs to be normal. But they noted he was displaying odd behavior—crawling around on the floor, randomly using profanities, and calling the family cat 'a bitch.'"

So, to understand this situation: Here are the cops writing their report, there are the paramedics ready to intervene, over there is the adult son and the Midwestern Mom having the kind of awkward conversation family members have when someone has done the inexplicable, and in the middle of all that, the Midwestern Dad is crawling around, cursing, and telling the cat, finally, what he really thinks of it.

Now, taking so many drugs that you are literally on the floor having full-blown arguments with the nearest animal/plant/couch cushion can be a worthwhile, invigorating experience. I'm going to guess, though, that Midwestern Dad did not have a good time because by the time you're 53 years old, you're pretty dang comfortable with your inhibitions. It's inconvenient, not to mention a bit shameful, to have them torn down unexpectedly and discover that what you really want to do, after a batch of drugs your shady adult children bought reduces you to your basest impulses, is call the cat a bitch.

Also I bet the cops were laughing a lot at this part. Having cops laugh at you is a literal Midwestern Dad nightmare.

"The man told paramedics he felt like '"he's trippin."'"

I mean, yeah, no shit.

"The paramedics helped the man to his bedroom, and he got into bed. The man and his wife were told to call 911 again if his situation worsened."

Let's end by applauding everyone involved in this. The man freaked out but apparently kept his shit together well enough to recognize that he was tripping and didn't get violent or say anything to make his wife sad. The wife called all the appropriate authorities, who responded appropriately. The man wasn't cuffed or arrested, everyone recognized he didn't need further help, and the whole thing died down. The cat was probably fine.

The only villain here, obviously, is the adult child whose drugs turned their adult parents' normal evening at home watching a DVR'd Dancing with the Stars episodes or whatever into a Withnail and I outtake. They should feel bad, and I hope they do.

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.


This Gay Porn Company Is Upending the Definition of Porn

0
0

A still from Alfa, the latest release from Naked Sword Film Works, out today. Photo courtesy Naked Sword

Note: Many links below are NSFW.

What is porn?

That's the question at the heart of a new initiative by Naked Sword, the Netflix-like site that bills itself as "the largest collection of gay porn on the net." While primarily a distribution house for other studios, this February, Naked Sword expanded its original production wing with the launch of Naked Sword Film Works (NSFW for short), an indie arm aiming to "produce and showcase new work from independent film directors with an eye toward the provocative, the experimental, and the explicit."

NSFW may be the most prominent effort by a major gay porn industry player to date to blur the line between art film and pornography. Its productions mix erotic and often hardcore sex with funny, moody, and contemplative moments: Nova Dubai is a 50-minute meditation on gentrification, incest, and suicide in Brazil; Brontez Purnell describes his 100 Boyfriends Mixtape as "one hundred failed relationships condensed down into one;" and Hattie Goes Cruising is a documentary following Hank Major, a 70-year-old black gay man from Philadelphia, as he remembers a life of public sex. The studio's latest offering is the short film Alfa, about a porn star's first day on set after his lover's death, which launches today.

A still from 'Nova Dubai.' Photo courtesy of Naked Sword

The studio is making a claim that porn can be diverse, experimental, emotionally contemplative, and grapple with complex questions of power and social relations—while still delivering hot, balls-deep sex.

"In 2008, the industry was starting to get hit hard by tube sites and piracy," Jack Shamama, the website's product manager and one of the creators of NSFW, told VICE. "I could see that things were going to be bad."

Shamama was interested in distinguishing Naked Sword from competitors by pursuing things that might "keep people on longer." As he put it, when it comes to pushing the envelope in terms of what porn can be—especially in a beleaguered industry, where other studios' offerings have grown extreme to court clicks—"we're as progressive as the market will allow." So when he met filmmaker Travis Mathews (who would co-direct Interior. Leather Bar, the 2013 film that recreated lost, explicit scenes from Al Pacino's homophobic masterpiece Cruising), Shamama decided Naked Sword would try something new: partnering with indie filmmakers to produce films that didn't look like porn but packed an erotic wallop.

To test their concept, Shamama and Matthews produced an excerpt of a planned film called I Want Your Love. It saw more than 2 million views within a month of its debut on the site. In 2011, they produced the full-length version, which garnered a 70 percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. London-based critic Ben Walters, writing for Time Out London, coined the term "mumblehardcore" to describe the result—and he deemed that "the gambit works."

After a few more one-offs, Naked Sword brought on filmmaker Adam Baran to curate NSFW, with an eye toward distributing or producing one new film every month. Shamama said that NSFW accounts for about 1 percent of the site's content, yet pulls in about 10 percent of their monthly viewership.

Baran had previously worked as a programmer for NYC LGBT Film Festival NewFest and saw the opportunity as a chance to promote great filmmaking to a new audience. It was also a chance for Baran and Naked Sword to push back against one of the worst aspects of both mainstream porn and LGBTQ film in general: its glaring whiteness.

"We don't see a lot of diversity in porn," Baran said. "Or, if you do, things are segregated"—black actors with black actors, white actors with white actors. Even when porn features diverse actors, it can exoticize actors of color for the gaze of a white audience. By bringing on filmmakers of color, NSFW flips the script, presenting sex through the eyes of a black hipster in Oakland, for instance.

Naked Sword, like many porn studios, has a rough history with issues of diversity. Recently, a social-media firestorm erupted when it emerged that one of their models, Cameron Diggs, had neo-Nazi tattoos and may hold white-supremacist beliefs. When I spoke with Shamama, he said that Naked Sword would not work with Diggs again, but several of Diggs's scenes remain up on the site, and Shamama said the studio hasn't yet determined whether they're going to take them down. His frustration was obvious as we discussed the issue; as a "gay Jewish man," he said he found Diggs's views "vile."

But in a market that pushes for a constant stream of new content, he argued, it's impossible for a studio to vet a model for everything that could possibly offend a viewer, and Naked Sword has no internal policies about what to do when this sort of information comes to light, though Shamama said the studio is having conversations about how to handle such issues in the future.

The bigger issue, he said, is that "there's a severe lack of representation and diversity in the gay community." Porn is merely "a record of the tastes" of gay men at-large, he said, and many seem to want racially regressive porn scenes. "I'm sick of seeing them," Shamama said, "but we can't force the community to have that conversation." The best a porn producer can do is show consumers other porn is out there, which is, he said, "as close to a mission statement as I can get for NSFW."

Gustavo Vinagre (right) alongside two characters in a still from his film 'Nova Dubai.' Photo courtesy of Naked Sword

Even NSFW's indie filmmakers have been surprised by mainstream interest from Naked Sword. "I was really excited because in the festivals, there's always this discussion, if it is porn, if it's not porn," said Gustavo Vinagre, the 31-year-old Brazilian filmmaker who made and starred in Nova Dubai. For Vinagre, "sex is a part of life," and he's continually shocked that audiences who can handle brutal, life-like violence turn into nattering schoolmarms at the site of an erect cock.

What the future holds for NSFW is anyone's guess. The industry has spent the last decade in free fall, as tube sites and the era of free content decimated porn's traditional DVD business. That very collapse, however, has forced studios to "expand our reach in terms of who we find and who we market to," said Shamama. The destruction of the porn industry may well be good for porn itself, by forcing those who make porn to cater to more than just a narrow audience of older white gay men. If so, it will be initiatives like NSFW that pave the way.

Follow Hugh Ryan on Twitter.

Is University Still Worth It?: Debt, Depression, and Dud Degrees: Why Would Anyone Go to University?

0
0

You're 16 years old. Unless you want to stay in an underpaid, zero hours job forever, you'd better fill in a UCAS form. That's what school tells you. That's what your parents tell you.

You might wonder, quietly, if you do really want to spend three years studying business studies or English literature or geography. But then, what's the alternative? A job at Sports Direct? Graduates earn more, you're told, by school, by your mum. You'll be taught by expert professors, you'll learn loads. And there's all the social side of it. Given how messed up the job market is, you'd be daft not to go. You apply.

But while you're visiting open days and writing your personal statements, you keep seeing things that make university sound less appealing. There are the £9k fees, the scrapping of maintenance grants (which have been replaced with more loans), the overpriced student housing, the reports of stressed and anxious students. Jo Johnson, the universities minister, even admitted that teaching quality is sometimes pretty shit. But fine, you'll put up with that, because at the end you get a degree, and that'll get you a decent job. Except a big report came out recently saying that graduates at some universities actually earn less than non-graduates. For students who study the creative arts, more than half earn less that £20k. Last month, a think tank said the government should "be charged with gross mis-selling" because many students will never see the vast graduate premiums that politicians have promised.

University is about more than getting a decent job – it's about learning new things and meeting new people – but, given the debt that students are taking on, it does matter. For years, young people have been told that university is a "phenomenal investment", that they'll earn more if they have a degree. But Stephen Kemp-King, author of the Intergenerational Foundation's recent report on the graduate premium, says politicians should not be allowed to "dangle the carrot of high graduate employment figures" if these do not stand up.

Unfortunately, for a significant number of graduates, they don't.

For a start, getting a graduate-level job isn't exactly a sure bet. Most graduates (around 60 percent) are actually working in jobs that don't require a degree, according to research by Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

This might be partly down to the recession (time will tell if the numbers recover or if recent graduates simply get stuck in non-graduate roles) but it's also because there are too many people taking exactly the same path: a full-time undergrad degree, says Andy Westwood, professor of politics at Winchester University. "In other words the competition for jobs is most severe as people graduate and they try to get into the labour market at that time. Employers, obviously, can benefit from that - you can get a graduate in a non-graduate job, great. You can offer an internship that takes the piss, great."

It's perhaps not that surprising then, that the much-talked-about graduate premium doesn't always materialise.

Government research has estimated that, after taking into account taxes and loan repayments, graduates are paid £168,000 (for men) or £252,000 (for women) more across their lifetime. But this is an average – and the amount of variation both above and below these figures seems to be increasing, says Geoff Mason, visiting professor at the UCL Institute of Education. "For a lot of potential students, they cannot assume that the average figure is going to apply to them," he says. "They do really have to be aware of the involved and that some students end up a lot worse off than others."

A recent study, examining graduates who left university in 2004, found that median earnings for a graduate were £16,500 one year on from when they left university. Fine, you might think, many of them would have struggled to get jobs or started off interning. But a decade on, a quarter of those graduates were still only earning around £20,000 a year. Pretty low considering the average wage in Britain is currently £26,500.

It's students on creative arts courses who get the worst deal. Ten years after graduating, they earn no more than non-graduates, with median annual salaries of £14,500 for women and £17,900 for men, according to a separate study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). That's a lot less than medical students, the highest earners, who can expect a wage of £55,300 (men) or £45,400 (women). Economics graduates, unsurprisingly, also earn loads more – £42,000 (men) and £38,200 (women).

Some universities negatively impact your earning potential. Male graduates from 23 universities, and women graduates from nine universities, had lower average salaries than those of non-graduates 10 years on.

It's not just subject choice that affects your future income, it's where you study. There's a huge difference between what certain graduates can expect to earn. More than 10 percent of men graduating from LSE, Oxford and Cambridge earn in excess of £100,000 a year, ten years after graduating in 2012-13. At the other end of the spectrum, earnings aren't so impressive. For men at 23 universities, their salaries are actually lower than those of non-graduates 10 years on. This is true for women at nine universities.

The report doesn't name which institutions these are, but the researchers do explain that it's partly down to local labour markets. If you're graduating from a university in the north east and staying in the area to work, you'll probably find your salary is generally much lower than someone who has just left LSE and is working in central London.

Still, there's a huge gap between the salaries of different university leavers (which research suggests lots of school students aren't aware of). And although graduates typically earn more than non-graduates, a significant group of them don't. Still, if they're earning more than £21k they'll be faced with repayments on their student loans.

Kemp-King says the government is not doing enough to show young people how much they'll be paying back. "Like other workers young people will pay 12 percent National Insurance contributions over earnings of £8,000 a year and 20 percent basic Income Tax after income of £11,000 a year," he says. "Unlike other workers they now face an extra nine percent tax on earnings over £21,000 as repayment towards their student loans." Others say that, actually, not enough is being done to explain to students that they won't need to pay upfront for university. Either way, more impartial guidance for young people is clearly needed.

It's not hard to find graduates who, having opened a statement from the Student Loans Company, suddenly realise that they took on a loan without fully understanding everything about the Ts&Cs. When recent graduate Simon Crowther wrote to his MP complaining that he had been poorly informed as a school leaver, he struck a chord with many other university leavers – his letter was shared more than 20,000 times.

Although the basic principle underlying repayments is simple enough – the repayments are the equivalent to just one "posh coffee" a day, as the former universities minister helpfully put it – the terms can be changed. And the government has already broken a key promise. When £9k fees were introduced, the government said that the £21k threshold for repayments would rise annually in line with average earnings in April 2017. Then in November last year it backtracked, saying the threshold would be frozen until at least April 2021. It's been estimated that this will cost students almost £3,000 in increased repayments over 30 years.

At the time of the announcement, Martin Lewis, founder of Moneysavingexpert.com, said he was "spitting teeth" over the change, which affects students who had already agreed to take out the loans and means they will now repay their debt at a faster rate. Lewis, who chaired the government's student finance taskforce, has since hired a team of lawyers to investigate whether or not the U-turn could be challenged in the courts. He's advised students to assume that the freeze will remain.

Gill Wyness, lecturer in economics of education at the Institute of Education, fears that the U turn will damage students' trust in student loans, adding that it adds "a layer of uncertainty which is not welcome in this system."

This month, new figures emerged showing that the proportion of state school pupils going to university dropped the year that tuition fees tripled to £9,000. Many fear that the scrapping of maintenance grants, which will be replaced with loans for new students starting in September, will make things even worse. The change will "raise debt for the poorest students, but do little to improve government finances in the long run," according to the IFS. It says the poorest 40 percent of students going to university in England will now graduate with debts of up to £53,000 from a three-year course, rather than up to £40,500.

Even if students don't pay all this back – and, to be clear, the vast majority of people won't pay it all back, many won't even pay the interest, instead they will pay nine percent of their wages for the next 30 years – they probably will wonder what the headline cost of their course is actually paying for? "When I think about whether it was value for money, my immediate answer is no," says Hardeep Dhaddha, 24, who recently graduated from a media and communications course at Birmingham City University and who is now working as an assistant producer at Somethin' Else, an agency that produces multimedia for the likes of the BBC and Topman. Around two thirds of students in England feel the same way about their course fees, according to a study by the Higher Education Policy Institute.

Hardeep got her fair share of contact hours because she made sure she approached tutors when she needed extra help. But more information about how fees are actually spent would have been welcome, she says.

For many, a breakdown of tuition fee spending will include depressing news. If you're a student on a course that has very few contact hours and is cheap to deliver – ie. maths, English, and most of the humanities – then you're subsidising the flashy labs that your engineering friends use. You're also more likely to be sitting in an overcrowded lecturer hall – cheaper degree programmes are exactly the kind of course that universities find easiest to expand, despite academics' fears that cramming in extra students is damaging teaching quality.

"Every single university in the country, even the specialist ones, have higher cost subjects to teach and some lower cost ones, the £9k fee is somewhere in the middle," says Westwood. "The problem is, do those individual students know that they're paying for this (obviously in some case they aren't)? And are they ok with that? Are they happy with that? All the other things the university puts its money into - the library, accommodation, student union - is that enough of a deal for those that are cross subsidising the more expensive subjects?"

But it's a fine line – research suggests that most students believe teaching should be prioritised above buildings and social facilities when it comes to saving money. Realistically, some are probably too busy studying, working for extra cash or worrying about their job prospects to care what the student union bar looks like anyway. Westwood says there has been a change in students' priorities since the fee rise. "Certainly just from teaching you see this change is more obvious in terms of what people want from their studies, how much they turn up, how much feedback they want," says Westwood. Students, aware of how much their degree is costing and of how hard it is to get a good graduate job, want to make the most of their studies.

There are worrying signs that this pressure to achieve at university and to line up work for afterwards is having a negative impact on students mental health and happiness. Almost a third of students experience clinical levels of psychological distress including anxiety or depression. Universities have warned that demand for counselling is increasing at an annual rate of around 10 percent. And earlier this year, statistics showed that student suicides also rose to their highest level since 2007.

Rachel Piper, policy manager at Student Minds, says the growing demand for counselling services is down to both increased prevalence of mental health difficulties and increased reporting. There are lots of factors affecting mental health, she adds, from the transition to living independently and problems with housing, to culture shock and pressure around alcohol. "Then there's the more overarching issues of the job market and anxiety about prospects coming out of university and the pressure to achieve high academic standards," she adds. "We know that now, as of 2013, 50 percent of young people enter higher education so there's obviously more competition there."

The poorest 40 percent of students going to university in England will have more debt than anyone, up to £53,000.

Sharon Walpole, CEO of Not Going to Uni, says students are more and more interested in doing on-the-job training rather than university. The problem is there aren't yet enough high-level apprenticeships (where you might work towards a degree for free, train on the job and get a salary) out there. And, as funding for careers advice in schools has been cut, there's a real lack of information about those that do exist.

Walpole remembers visiting a group of 25 apprentices and asking where they found out about their scheme - not one had heard about it through their school. "One girl put her hand up and said that when they got to talking about Ucas said put your hands up if you're not going to do Ucas - they put their hands up, and they were sent off to the sixth-form room and the teachers just carried on working with the kids doing the Ucas process. I think that's really quite harrowing."

She hopes that attitudes are gradually changing, but fears that often university is presented as the only route. Students, aged 17, are told they can rack up a load of debt by moving away from home and studying full-time on a three-year course at university - or they're told... well, there isn't much else out there. Every year, there are record numbers taking up the first option. And there's a long queue of universities who are keen to get more bums on seats (an extra £9k per person) and who are ready to woo them with marketing campaigns.

Lots of students will find university a transformative experience. But there are signs that some will also find it a disappointing one – whether because the contact hours and teaching quality just isn't good enough or because the job prospects are nothing to shout about.

Telling students that university is a possibility, regardless of what background they are from, is obviously a good thing, but there needs to be a decent range of options out there. The current system doesn't encourage people who want to study as mature or part-time students (the number of part-time students has dropped 60 percent since 2006, while the number of mature students has halved over the same period). Nor are students given enough information about what to expect after graduating and how this compares with other training routes. And, at the same time, there's no space for mistakes or bad judgement on the part of students.

You're only entitled to student finance in England for your first degree – if you screw up and do the wrong undergrad, you can't ask for another loan so that you can go back and do another one. And if you earn over £21k, you'll be faced with repayments – even if you don't think the course was worth the sum that's being deducted from your pay slip, and even if your pay packet isn't as big as you'd hoped it would be when you first signed up for a degree.

Today, 18th of August, thousands of students will find out whether they got the grades to earn a place at university. They are likely to be left thrilled or disappointed. But few will wrestle with the complexities of whether higher education is the right thing to strive for.

Hardeep says that she's pleased with her job, but that not everyone from her course has found their feet. "Some of the people I know who were really driven and were obviously going to try hard, they've done well... but there's other people, the people who were lost at uni, are still lost."

Looking back, she doesn't regret studying, but she's not convinced it was really necessary: "I know now that I have a job that you can do it without going to uni."

@rebeccarat

More Should You Go To Uni on VICE:

Vice Writers On Their Worst Photo From Uni

A Third of Graduates Regret Going to University




Vancouver Versus Toronto: Two Renters Talk About Who Has It Worse

0
0


Original images via Creative Commons Flickr; photoshop by Ebony-Renee Baker

Drake or Swollen Members, Leafs or Canucks, Raptors or Grizzlies, CN Tower or Stanley Park. The East and West coast Canadian hubs have had plenty to squabble over in the past. Based on the list above, it seems Vancouver has been losing for some time. But there is one sad way Vancouver beats out Toronto, though it's nothing to brag about.

In recent years the insane cost of living in Vancouver and Toronto has become one of the most hotly debated issues in this country. Both cities take a strange pride in just how unaffordable it is to live within the city centre, as if it's hip to live in a place where you have to choose between paying rent or eating. Vancouver is well known around the globe for its housing crisis, but the reality is Toronto isn't far off. The cost of purchasing a house in both cities has become so insane that most millennials have been relegated to renting—forever. Unfortunately, now even the rental market has become a shit show of bidding wars and horror stories. Anyone who has looked for a new apartment in either city in the past year knows that it's become a competitive sport, and if you're not ready to throw some elbows and flash some cash, you might end up without a place to live.

So in the spirit of our constant battle to be the best at being the worst, here's a conversation between a Vancouverite and a Torontonian about which city is worse to rent in.


A person gazes out a window at the impossibly expensive Vancouver. Photo via Flickr user Blok 70

Lonnie Nadler: I just signed a lease this past weekend, after only two and half weeks of looking, and I feel like I got super lucky.

Manisha Krishnan: Why lucky, did you score a sweet deal? I also just signed a lease and I'm kinda panicking.

L: Yeah, I got a crazy deal... Like unheard of. But something about it doesn't feel entirely legit. We signed a custom lease, not a BC lease. Just hoping my stuff doesn't get jacked. Why are you panicking?

M: I want the details of this 'crazy deal'! Stop being coy. I'm panicking because I'm not sure if I made a mistake or not. Literally the outgoing tenant told me she sometimes sees random bugs and that I should probably keep looking. But it was a decent price in a good location so...

L: Alright, fine. It's a 900-square-foot, two bedroom place for $1,000. I think we got it because we showed up half an hour before the actual open house, and the landlord happened to be pulling up just as we arrived. I'd be panicking if I were you, too. "Random bugs" sounds horrifying.

M: What the FUCK. You are kidding? In Vancouver proper?

L: Yeah, it's in East Van. Five-minute walk to a major Skytrain stop.

M: That makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong with my life. Congrats though. Also, I found out the bugs aren't random—they're cockroaches. But I'm told it's not really an issue anymore. I asked a couple of the tenants there, one said he's seen two in the last seven months, and the other said he hasn't seen any.

L: I saw my fair share of shit places, and even signed another lease a few days before I signed the one I'm in now just because I was also panicking and thought I had to grab the first decent deal I saw. That landlord was not stoked when I said I don't want the place anymore. Two cockroaches in seven months is two more than I care to think about crawling on me while I sleep.


Nope. Photo via Flickr user Michael Lehenbauer

M: Yuck. I know. I honestly never thought I'd be one of those people who would put up with roaches, and who knows, maybe I'm not. I have kept looking for stuff on the off chance that I find something better but this place is my max, price-wise, and there's not a lot of stuff in Queen West that's comparable aside from basements or actual shit holes.

L: Well I'm rooting for you to find another semi-legit place at an affordable price. What's the worst place/person you came across in your search?

M: Tbh, it was a super-brief search. I pretty much made up my mind that I was going to take over my friend's bachelor, which is $800 a month, but then I saw this place, which is a one-bedroom for $1,200. His bach is alright, but it's pretty fucking tiny and it's so hot. I went by this week and he said it was 47 degrees inside. No AC. I just felt like I would've ended up moving out of there within a year anyway. How about you?

L: Forty-seven degrees is way too fucking hot. Like a sauna in there. My worst experience was at this place that advertised as a 900-square-foot for $850, and we went to check it out and it was max 400 square feet. There was probably about 30 people packed into this tiny apartment, all trying to suck up to the landlord as he was giving impromptu interviews on the balcony. After 20 minutes of waiting, one dude cut in front of me in line to say it was his turn next and, "I hope you won't make this an awkward argument." I just said, "Have at it."

M: Haha, yeah fuck that. A couple years ago, while I was hunting, I went to see a bedroom within a three-bedroom unit and in reality it was just like a bathroom with a dirty mattress inside. Then the roommate who was showing me around told me they all smoke inside. I'm a smoker but I could not deal with that.

L: Nothing like a chic bedroom/bathroom in one.

M: Literally shitting where you eat/sleep. (I eat in bed a lot.)

L: I actually think this past search was the easiest, and I chalk it up to having a girlfriend with me this time. Before I was looking for bachelors by myself and had a tough time getting anyone to call me back. At risk of sounding like an asshole, I don't think most people are keen on renting to a young dude with tattoos and a nose piercing.

M: I have legit thought about getting a boyfriend just to have someone to split rent with! This search was the easiest for me too though, because I wasn't looking for a place with a roommate. I am so over having roommates that I'm willing to either cut back on my spending or go into debt just to live alone. Not having to interview people and judge how good of a match you'd make made the process much easier.


Some Toronto condo you probably can't afford. Photo via Flickr user marc falardeau

L: Having roommates fucking blows. I moved into a place two years ago with this guy I didn't know. It was pretty good for the first few months, and then one night he bangs on my door at three in the morning with flesh melting off his hands because he set a fire trying to cook bacon in the oven. Never. Again.

M: That sounds like something I did when I lived with my mom—she eventually started removing the stove elements at night. My worst roommate experience was actually in Calgary, when I lived with a control freak engineer who blasted reggae music early morning and made me bend down onto the floor in front of him to mop up a couple drops of water. I didn't last very long. Mostly, I just want to be able to come home and not have to interact with anyone if I don't feel like it—which I rarely do.

L: The older I get, the less I feel like compromising my living habits. Never stoop to a reggae engineer!

M: Lol. You must have friends in Vancouver who've had a shitty time finding places? A lot of my friends there are thinking of moving farther out into the suburbs.

L: Oh dude, it's insane. In the last two months, three of my good friends have either moved or are moving to somewhere where buying a house doesn't cost a million fucking dollars. Lots of people moving to remote BC.

M: Yeahhhh. I lived with my parents when I was there so I never actually had to pay rent or deal with that whole hassle. I can't see myself moving back though. The prices in Vancouver almost desensitize you to how much real estate is actually supposed to cost. Having said that, Toronto isn't exactly bargain bin.

L: I also have a lot of friends here living with their parents, and these people are like lawyers and shit. I certainly don't advise moving here, though I don't think I want to leave.

M: Do you care about owning property?

L: I mean, I feel like I should because I'm an "adult" now, but I honestly don't think about it. Probably because it seems like such a pipe dream when I see the prices in Vancouver. You?

M: I mean, there's no way that I would ever be able to afford it in the near future. Probably true for most young journalists. My parents own some property though so I assume at some point, they'll hand it over. Like when they die.

L: Grim, but hilarious. My dad is currently selling the house I grew up in, so I don't know that banking on a will is my best bet. I'll never be a land owner.

M: In Van?

L: In Ottawa. The selling price of his four bedroom house would get you a bathroom/bedroom in Van.

M: Would you have sex for rent?

L: Only with my girlfriend. Does that count?

M: Cute answer, but no. My friend just visited from Brooklyn and told me her 50-something boyfriend that I met is actually her "daddy." And he was paying her rent for months (until she dumped him). And in response I logged onto the Seeking Arrangements website to see what was available in Toronto. But I wouldn't actually do it! (Probably.)

L: I mean, it doesn't sound like the worst arrangement. I know a couple people doing that with cougars in LA. I'd feel soooo greasy though.

M: It's less than ideal. Would 100 p rather live w/ the risk of an occasional cockroach.

L: What about sex with a cockroach for rent?

M: I just feel like it wouldn't work logistically, you know?

L: I could get into detail, but I feel like it would be taking this convo to a real dark place.

M: It's another VICE.com story for sure. I think maybe we should wrap this up, considering the level of dialogue...

L: ... Considering it's devolved to talking about insect sex.

M: Ya that's what I was getting at. I guess I'll check in with you in a few months and we'll find out if your landlord is some sort of sketchy front for a major drug operation or something.

L: And I'll check to see if you've solicited your body to the roaches yet.

Follow Manisha Krishnan and Lonnie Nadler on Twitter.

Is University Still Worth It?: VICE Writers on Their Worst Photo from University

0
0

University is basically a haze of drunken mistakes, terrible sartorial choices and nutritionally questionable meals, which, years after the event, with rose-tinted glasses, you can then refer to as "the best years of your life". Or at least that used to be the case. Since the late 90s, for some reason, there was one person in your "friendship" group who carried a digital camera with them to document your entire three years together. The green vomit, the fluctuating weight, the comedy T-shirts: every fucking waking moment.

In honour of this desperate truth, we found our worst photo and posted it here with commentary so you can see what desperately sad, socially inept losers we were.

JOEL GOLBY

I mean every photo of me taken at university has been embarrassing in the very extreme, but this one truly takes the cake, because: well look at me. This truly captures me as the person I was – first week of university, dangerously obese, baby-faced, fat-handed, pale little idiot boy who thought XXL bright yellow Threadless t-shirts were a viable fashion choice, posing for a photo with a basketball and a piece of tin foil to go over my head. I mean: does any photo ever taken more say, "I have barely been out of my home town for more than one day" than this? Has a photograph, before or since, ever said "my mum still buys my underwear for me" with such almighty power? Would it surprise you to learn my sexual honour is intact in this photo, and would continue to be for about a year-and-a-half after it was taken? It would not. It would not. Imagine how action-packed my masturbatory schedule was, here. Imagine how many share-sized bags of crisps I am capable of eating to myself in this photograph. Imagine how much time I spent drawing robots. Imagine the state of the beefy boy-sized cargo trousers I would wear day in, day out.

I used to wheel this photograph out to show new people when I met them to sort of get an impressed "oh, wow, you used to look like someone gave diabetes to a doughnut, and now you don't" reactions (I had to stop this recently because I chunked on too much weight again and the reactionary faces are less impressive and far more harrowing now, and I am eating a lot of courgetti to counteract that), and I often say with it that this is my most embarrassing photo, but in a way it's the exact inverse: I wasn't happy being this dude, and over the course of university I changed entirely into someone else – cooking for myself and playing lots of football and generally getting a real late-in-the-day hormone boost which made me drop a ton of weight and change the entire shape of my face and I have pubes now, thanks, loads of them. Then after uni I was kind of happy and more complete and just comfortable with who I was, so in a way I'm proud I'm not this dorky basketball fatlad anymore and became something else, I'm kind of proud I turned from a potato into... a less potato, but then this is still a photo of me looking really fucking unshaggable while wearing a tin foil hat, so yeah. Sometimes you can't escape your past.

HANNAH EWENS

Ah yes, there she is. Back for a second year - a year older, two stone heavier and now with an added anxiety disorder!

This photo is both hideous and illustrative of every single Wednesday night: at Walkabout, doused with sweat and hurled drinks, grinding against some d and hoping for the best, while a Jack Wills bro towers over you with a mix of contempt and vague sexual interest.

What are you looking at Hannah? Eyes wide, begging for some divine intervention to remove you from your circumstances. Searching the skies for escape. Are you terrified at the prospect of another Jägerbomb or naively optimistic for the future? Or are you just praying to yourself: please say these are not the best days of your life?

TSHEPO MOKOENA

I will just preface this by saying that I went to an international school in Zimbabwe before landing at Sussex Uni. There wasn't a ton of advertising around telling you what to buy and wear to be a sexy girl/goth girl/hippie girl/delete as necessary. I mostly worked with a mish-mash of Miss Sixty jeans, Converse All-Stars and those tops from New Look with things like "Gorgeous" written across the chest.

That's why I looked like this. It was September, and already so much colder than I was used to, hence the grey marl gloves and me wearing my older sister's hoodie over about four layers that you can't see. I bought that hat at one of those stalls in Brighton's North Laine. There is no excuse for those glasses frames.

On this night, we'd walked up from our dilapidated halls of residence to the forest just beyond the campus, for a bonfire. It was the first term of first year and I hadn't yet started the glow-up that would turn me from looking like a Dungeons & Dragons-playing member of the environmental club into a presentable and fuckable member of society.

SAM WOLFSON

When I was 18 and living in London I was Mr. Cool Guy. I ran this trendy blog and wore those thick grey T-shirts American Apparel used to sell and everything was great. Then I went to Cambridge and it was like being back at school. All the nightlife took place in people's tiny bedrooms and were shut down at midnight by the porters, who are like college security. Occasionally there would be a big night out, but that would still take place in college, like a school disco, and they would always be fancy dress, which was a nightmare because who brings like hundreds of weird clothes to university on the off-chance it might fit with a party theme? Everyone else, is the answer to that question. That's what this photo is of. What am I supposed to be here? A badly rendered Guitar Hero character? It's impossible to say.

But none of that is the bad part. The bad part is I became a real loser in this environment. Everyone else did hardcore bonding and partying and staying up till 9am and fucking each other and going on holiday together and I just sort of couldn't. I forgot how to talk to new people and when I did I would say universally awful things like "god there's so many people here". I was always the schmuck.

Uni was not a sad time for me. I had great library mates, great vegetarian dinner mates, great come over for tea and Garibaldi biscuits mates, but no real night out mates. I think people were trying to be super nice to me and invite me out, but I would throw it back in their faces and stay in and tweet ironic jokes about X Factor with my trendy London friends. What a dick. It's especially telling that I am in touch with almost no one from university, even though I see them all on Facebook, going to Crete without me.

ALEX HORNE

Much is made of the potential for reinvention that university offers. With your ideas of self worth and social hierarchy smashed to dust, you can build yourself anew. But all that construction requires foundations. When I arrived at uni my personality had the constitution of mist. I was privileged but not posh enough for gilets; in love with drugs but prone to phoning my mum during comedowns; northern but not hard. Not hard at all.

Afloat in this identity crisis I clung to weed like a buoy. It gave me an excuse to be boring at house parties. I could make small talk with coursemates about champagne haze and vaporiser gas masks. Sometimes girls asked for twos on my joints. I was truly living the High Life.

I don't really smoke skunk anymore because it makes me feel like my brain has been shot with a beanbag. I have, however, developed mild breathing problems and a constant sense of low-level dread, so don't let anyone say uni can't change your life.

ANGUS HARRISON

Hold on, Angus, why is that the most embarrassing photo of you at university? Yes, you've got a denim shirt on, but give it a rest, it was 2011! The Walkmen were still together! Oh and what? You're not DJing with vinyl? That isn't that embarrassing. At this stage it's almost more embarrassing to DJ with vinyl given the overbearing smugness of the entire culture. What, so you're just embarrassed because you're DJing at all? Sure, it's a pretty tired student cliche by this point, but give yourself a break, loads of people do that! What do you mean it's not embarrassing for any of those reasons? Well, then, why is it embarrassing?

Oh I see. It's embarrassing because you weren't DJing at all and in fact this photo exists because you were completely fucking spangled and asked the person who was DJing if you could hop behind the booth, put on their headphones and have your photo taken pretending to DJ, fully in knowledge that you, yourself, couldn't actually DJ. Right, that's why it's embarrassing.

DAISY JONES

This was taken the morning after the Queen's Jubilee in 2012 (hence the patriotic bunting I am clutching to my face). In the 24 hours before this photo was taken, I'd found out my great granny had died, quit my job of three years by texting my manager to say I had a bad case of scabies and could never return (this was a lie, my skin was not infested by little bugs, sorry Alison) and skipped my sixth lecture in a row to drink three bottles of cava in Hyde Park. When I woke up that morning I had a black eye from face-diving into my bedroom desk and a split knee from falling down the stairs at my halls, I was inches away from a breakdown that would go on to last months, and I had these really fucking ugly curtains.

Life got better, obviously. I now have nice-ish curtains, a job I want to keep, and I am too boring and sober to attain any injuries. Even so, I still look at this photo and think YO, WTF.

RYAN BASSIL

Just a bunch of lads, having a good time, before never talking to one another again.

More on VICE:

Debt, Depression and Dud Degrees: Why Would Anyone Go To Uni

We Asked University Lecturers About the Weirdest Excuses They've Ever Heard

We Asked Students What Drugs They Take to Study


The VICE Morning Bulletin

0
0

Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.


US swimmers Gunnar Bentz and Jack Cogner being detained at the Rio airport. Photo by Chris McGrath / Getty

US News

US Swimmers Pulled off Plane at Rio Airport
Brazilian authorities removed Olympic swimmers Gunnar Bentz and Jack Conger from a plane at the Rio airport and detained them on Wednesday night. Police are skeptical about the account of four US swimmers who claimed to have been robbed on Sunday. Jimmy Feigen will join Bentz and Congar for further police questioning today, but Ryan Lochte has already left Brazil.—NBC News

Death Toll Rises to 13 After Louisiana Floods
The death toll in the devastating Louisiana flooding has risen to 13, officials have confirmed. With an estimated 40,000 homes badly damaged by the floods, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it will look into rental properties for those left homeless and will consider using temporary housing units.—CBS News

Whitey Bulger Asks Supreme Court to Review Case
Convicted Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger has asked the US Supreme Court to hear his appeal of multiple racketeering convictions. Back in March, the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Bulger's 2013 convictions for playing a role in 11 murders. It is unclear if the high court will now take up Bulger's case.—AP

International News

Car Bomb Kills Three in Turkey
A car bomb at a police station in the city of Elazig, in eastern Turkey, killed at least three police officers and wounded another 100. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the early morning bombing, but Turkey's defense minister has blamed the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).—Reuters

Almost 18,000 Have Died in Syrian Jails, Says Amnesty
Almost 18,000 people died in government custody in Syria between 2011 and 2015, according to an Amnesty International report. The report alleges beatings, torture, and rape, and it features interviews with 65 survivors of abuse in prisons and detention centers run by President Bashar al-Assad's government.—CNN

China Restricts North Korean Airline
Chinese authorities will limit the operations of North Korean airline Air Koryo, after one of its Beijing-bound flights was forced to make an emergency landing last month. China's Civil Aviation Administration announced "measures to limit operations" without giving details and ordered Air Koryo to improve training and maintenance.— BBC News

Irish Olympic Official Arrested in Rio
A senior International Olympic Committee official has temporarily stepped down after he was arrested over allegations of illegal ticket sales in Rio. Brazilian police have recommended charging Patrick Hickey, former president of the Olympic Council of Ireland, with "forming a cartel" to sell tickets.—Al Jazeera

Everything Else

Kanye Announces Global Pop-Up Stores
Kanye West announced on Twitter that he will be launching The Life of Pablo pop-up stores in 21 cities around the world this weekend. Exact locations for the exclusive merch will be revealed 24 hours before they open.—Rolling Stone

Freddie Gibbs Charged with Sexual Assault
Rapper Freddie Gibbs has been formally charged in Austria for an alleged sexual assault that occurred in Vienna in July 2015. He is alleged to have spiked a woman's drink before abusing her, but he denies the charge.—Pitchfork

British Athlete Robbed in Rio
A Team GB athlete has been robbed at gunpoint after enjoying a night out in Rio. The British Olympic team confirmed the theft but said no one had been hurt in the incident.—The Guardian

Oracle Wants Third Trial Against Google
Database company Oracle has asked for a third trial to pursue Google for breach of copyright. Oracle lost a $9 billion judgement against the tech giant for allegedly infringing Java Standard Edition when it created Android.—Motherboard

Kodak Black Is Being Kept in Jail
Florida rapper Kodak Black, who was set to be released from jail Wednesday, will remain incarcerated following the discovery of two outstanding arrest warrants. The 19-year-old was expected to face a year of house arrest.—Noisey

Wilmore Vows to Make Late-Night Comeback
Ahead of tonight's final show on Comedy Central, Larry Wilmore said he has no regrets about the cancellation of The Nightly Show. "I'm gonna strive to do something like this again, in some way," he said.—VICE


Autobiographies: Cillian Murphy Talks About Tackling Eclectic Roles and His Love of Storytelling

0
0

In this episode of Autobiographies, we caught up with critically acclaimed actor Cillian Murphy to discuss the evolution of his career and what it means to be in the media spotlight. He talks about failing school, his passion for the theater, and examining the strange behavior behind his eclectic roles.

Is University Still Worth It?: Discussing the Myth That You Make All Your Friends at University

0
0

Angus, billy no mates

Before I went to university there was one piece of advice that wouldn't go away. It was filtered down through friends' parents, older cousins and teachers—and before that it had been hanging around in television and film. Everything from Superbad to Toy Story 3 was telling me the same story: childhood ends, friends part ways, life begins. University wasn't just going to change my educational outlook, it was going to reshape me completely. Every friend or relationship I'd known until this point had been a practice run for the real thing. University was where I was going to meet my real best friends, my best man, my children's godparents and the love of my life.

Why does this matter? Well, if we're asking the question "should you go to university?" then surely the promise that you're going to make all your friends and lovers in an SU bar factors pretty heavily in that. It's probably the main reason we desire "the student experience". You never hear graduates reminiscing about specific course modules, or telling lengthy anecdotes about 'that really interesting seminar on body politics'. No, they talk about pub golf, catching chlamydia, fights in Tiki bars and "the night I met your mother".

Personally, I was terrified of this social revolution. By the time I was leaving my hometown for university, I had amassed a modestly-sized but thicker-than-thieves mob of friends. As the days before Fresher's Week dribbled away and my parents' hallway filled up with bowls and pillows, a collective concern grew among us. We knew we were friends 4 lyf, but inherited wisdom said this was it. The beginning of the end. We would go our separate ways, the texts would grow further and further apart, and soon our once indestructible squad would be nothing more than a courtesy pint every Christmas Eve.

Looking back, the expectation that you're going to meet the most important people in your life at university seems bizarre. Compared to the decade-plus you've spent with your home friends, you only have a few months with with your university mates. You're randomly sorted into accommodation blocks, with all the precise algorithmics of a tombola, only to have to navigate an entirely new set of people once you start lectures.

The model is totally unsustainable. It always goes like this: You'd meet someone on a night out, during Fresher's Week say, and realise you recognised them from one of your courses. You'd enjoy a brief 6-8 minute conversation with them in a smoking area. The next time you saw them in a lecture you'd smile and nod. The week after that you'd have a 40-second chat with them on the way back to the bus after the lecture. The week after that you'd sit next to them and have a couple of longer stretches of unbroken conversation, maybe something about what A-levels you did and what modules you thought you might do next year. By this point the endorphins would be rushing through you. This is it! Mum! Dad! I've made a mate! Then, the week after that would be the end of term and you'd never see them again. Trying to make friends at uni was the ultimate Sisyphean task. At least, that's what the bloke I chatted to once in my Stories and Storytelling in the Ancient Greek and Roman Worlds module reckoned.

Perhaps the idea made more sense 30 years ago. In an age before the internet and cheap international travel, maybe moving to Reading did seem like starting again. But our social patterns have changed. While I was at university I was in constant contact with my home friends via a private Facebook group, and Facetime meant we were able to stumble in fucked, cheesy chips in hand, and catch up on the dumb minutiae of the night immediately. In a smaller world, maybe the young adults of today are too world-weary and self-aware to have their lives changed by something as simple as leaving home.

It's also worth bearing in mind that before Tony Blair's target to see 50 percent of young adults attend university and the subsequent boom of the mid-1990s, there was a much firmer divide between those went and those who didn't. Think about how many parents take pride in their children being the "first in the family to go to university" - it's hard to imagine as many from our generation saying that. For our parents going to university was more tribal. Once you went, you were with your people. This was the start of grown-up life and as such whatever came before was filed neatly into "childhood".

Everybody's different, and obviously tonnes of people arrive and university and never look back. They grow beards, fall in love, and buy houses in Sheffield. Good for them. But for a lot of people the opposite is true, and they shouldn't be made to feel like they've failed or are missing out just because they prefer their home-mates, or they didn't go to university at all. For as long as university is packaged as the typical coming-of-age route, then the people who can't afford, or have no reason to go, are going to feel excluded. That's a myth we should dispel. All they are really being excluded from are a few strawpedos, some dodgy MD and a second-hand copy of Orientalism.

More on VICE:

Debt, Depression and Dud Degrees: Why Would Anyone Go To Uni?

VICE Writers on Their Worst Photo from University

A VICE Special Series: Is University Still Worth It?



A Polish Photographer's Dark, Dreamlike Series Shows Her Daughter as She Grows Up

0
0

This story appeared in the August issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

Though Polish photographer Magdalena Switek only began shooting in 2009, she has already become known for her distinctive style, a brooding, dreamlike mixture of street and documentary photography, all black-and-white. She often intermingles among these photos images of her daughter, showing her as she grows up, as Switek describes it, "her body balancing on the borderline between innocence and guilt, between unawareness and awareness."

The VICE Guide to Right Now: J. K. Rowling Was Just Kidding About Not Writing Anymore Harry Potter Books

0
0

Photo via Wikimedia

Even though J. K. Rowling said at the beginning of August that she was done with Harry Potter, the author can't seem to stop churning out stories from the wizarding universe she created. On Wednesday, Rowling announced that she'll be publishing three new short stories based around Hogwarts in September, TIME reports.

The three titles will serve as background to some secondary Potter characters and their time at Hogwarts before Harry arrived, like the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them guidebook that inspired the upcoming film.

Power, Politics, and Pesky Poltergeists centers on Voldemort's ties with Professor Horace Slughorn at Hogwarts; Heroism, Hardship, and Dangerous Hobbies offers a look into Professor McGonagall's roots; and Hogwarts: An Incomplete and Unreliable Guide provides readers with everything they ever wanted to know about Harry's prestigious wizarding school.

Whereas Harry Potter and the Cursed Child—the new play co-written by Rowling—is basically the Rugrats All Growed Up of the series, the three new stories serve as a bit of a prequel. According to TIME, they'll also be a little darker and grittier, since the people who originally grew up with the books are grown adults now and can probably handle it.

The three new ebooks are scheduled for release on September 6.

Read: Trump Is Worse Than Voldemort, According to J. K. Rowling

Life is Weird, Gritty, and Beautiful in the Everglades

0
0

This story appeared in the August issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

For the past year and a half, Sofia Valiente has been living in the heart of Belle Glade, Florida, a swampy little town in the Everglades that local historian Lawrence E. Will once called "one of America's last frontiers." Today, high poverty, crime, and poor housing make life difficult for a diverse population of residents, including scores of Caribbean workers who stayed behind once work dried up. Beginning in the 1930s, Belle Glade was developed like a labor camp, and companies constructed buildings that maximized usage for the seasonal workers who came there to cut sugarcane and pick vegetables. Mechanization of farming jobs, integration, and isolation, left Belle Glade poorly developed. But decades later, the town is still vibrant. Jamaican-born residents own clubs and support one another through domino tournaments and round robins. Other locals hunt rabbits and sell them in town for a couple of dollars. Meanwhile, less than 50 miles away on the island of Palm Beach, billionaires including Donald Trump live in mansions. These folks may be rich, but as one pioneer put it, this whole region was built "from the same swamp."

How a US Kid Became World Champion of a Japanese Sport We've Never Heard Of

0
0

All photos courtesy of Bonz Atron

During a trip to Colorado last month, I did what any self respecting Englishman traveling through that beautiful state should do: rented a cabin in the mountains and then got as baked as possible.

One night, while fireside, I got chatting to the guy who worked at the reception desk of the cabin place I was staying at.

The hours floated by, and at some point, he pulled out a weird wooden toy and started tossing it around. It was kinda like one of those cup-and-ball games, but more complex than any I had seen before, with two extra cups and a point on the end.

Holding the stick in one hand, the kid swung and caught the ball on the end of it, before bouncing it between the two other cups and the pointed end of the stick. Though I had no frame of reference, he seemed to be insanely good at it. He'd bounce the ball on the edges of the cups, juggle with the stick, make a cats-cradle with the string, even take the ball in his hand and balance the stick on top. Each trick was almost too fast to see, yet his body looked as though it was moving in slow motion. It was as though the ball and cup were staying still in mid-air, and he was moving around them.

When I complimented him on his skills, he informed me that he was practicing kendama, a traditional game from Japan.

"You're incredible at it," I told him. "I bet they have competitions, you know, have you ever entered one?"

"Yeah... they do," he shrugged, barely looking up, "I'm actually the world champion at this."

I chuckled and told him I thought that was bollocks, and after I explained to him what bollocks meant, he challenged me to look him up online if I didn't believe him. I did. It turned out that I was in the presence of none other than Bonz Atron, 2014 kendama world champion. I had discovered a new sport and met literally one of the best people in the world at that sport in the space of a three minute conversation.

Bonz in action at the 2014 Kendama World Cup

It emerged that this friendly 21-year-old was in fact living a glamorous double life: When he wasn't the receptionist for a log-cabin complex outside Boulder, Colorado, he was a superstar in Japan, where the sport is huge. "What's life like out in Japan for you?" I asked. He grinned. "The girls man. They're crazy."

Bonz never intended on being world champion of anything. His first encounter with kendama was in August 2012, when he saw a friend playing at a house party. That first evening Bonz landed a trick called the Lighthouse, which his friend had been trying to get right for about six months. "Before I'd even touched it, I knew I would play for the rest of my life," he said. "I just knew it."

And play it he did, eight hours a day from then onward. Skipping college classes to practice, mastering every trick he could try. "I was just so into it," he said. "When I started, I had no idea that kendama was popular anywhere." That was a year before he found that a company called Kendama Co was organizing an online competition to find a new player for its team. "There was no way I thought I was good enough, but I sent my audition video in anyway." Despite having only been playing for a year, Bonz's tape won him a place on Kendama Co's team.

This is a pattern that was to repeat itself throughout Bonz Atron's career: He'd enter something thinking he didn't stand a chance of getting in, and then he'd go on to win it. His first tour with Kendama Co saw him take on his kendama hero Keith Matsumura in the Battle in Seattle, the biggest competition event in the world at the time. "I worshipped this guy on YouTube", said Bonz, "he was the one I had been idolizing as the most OG player on the planet." Bonz beat him, won the whole competition, and in 2014 found himself on a plane to Japan to compete in the first ever Kendama World Cup.

Around the campfire, Bonz showed me the secret to the game. "It's all in your knees," he explained. "You want the ball to move upwards in a straight line so you can catch it." It turns out I suck at it. It wasn't until I actually tried the thing myself that I realized just how good Bonz is. My abysmal performance only served to throw his ludicrous skills into perspective; skills which would serve him very well in Japan.

There, kendama is something of national obsession. Children play from early ages, and Japanese employers have even been known to favor job applicants who can demonstrate proficiency with the toy, due to the significant perseverance and patience needed to get good.

The Kendama World Cup is a two-day event, with the highest scorers from day one allowed to compete for the cup on day two. Each contestant must perform ten tricks. These tricks are a complex sequence of tossing, catching and stalling the ball, pulling off near impossible balances and exquisite landings. Rhythm is important too. As usual Bonz arrived on the first day of the competition expecting to lose. As usual, he came first.

With his place secured in the finals the following day, Bonz went and partied all night with the players who had failed to qualify. "I was pretty haggard on the day of the finals," he said. "But because I had the highest score of day one, it meant I went last on day two." After a power nap and a whiskey Red Bull, he was ready to go. What happened next remains a bit of a blur. "I just sort of blacked out as soon as I hopped on the stage," he said. "When I was finished with my run, everyone in the arena was chanting my name, and I seriously couldn't even remember what I had just done."

He still didn't think he had done enough to win, but he was wrong. "When they called that I had won first place, man, my stomach just dropped." Then it was on to the press tour. "Suddenly there were camera crews following us around constantly. We traveled across Japan going on all the news stations—it was crazy." The kid from the log cabin reception in Boulder is almost a celebrity in Japan. When I asked him about it, he took a long look into the fire. "My trip to Japan was the most unbelievable experience of my life," he said.

After about an hour of trying, as the fire was dying down, I finally managed to catch the ball in the cup. "When you can catch the ball on the spike, that's when you know you're getting somewhere," Bonz told me, not all that reassuringly.

After becoming the world champ in 2014, Bonz returned last year to win the inaugural freestyle competition, with fellow American Wyatt Bray taking the main title.

"I never expected any of this to happen," Bonz told me. And I believe him. So naturally talented that, rather than work his way up through the ranks for years, he just kept beating people. At this year's World Cup, he didn't get the top spot, finishing in tenth place. "I have made so many friends for life across the world, and everyone's talent is just amazing," he said.

Everyone's it would seem, but mine. That said, I did buy a kendama and, the other day, managed to land the sodding ball on the end of the goddamned stick. And it felt pretty good–maybe I'm not so bad after all. But then again I did, quite literally, learn from the best.

Follow Tom Harrad on Twitter.

High Wire: Why Is the US Supporting the Brutal, Deadly Assault on Drug Users in the Philippines?

0
0

The corpse of a suspected drug pusher and victim of a vigilante-style execution lie along a street in Makati, Metro Manila, Philippines, August 9, 2016. Photo by Zeke Jacobs/NurPhoto via Getty Images

When foreign governments kill people because of their race, religion, or sexual orientation, the United States often condemns them vigorously and sometimes threatens sanctions. But the same human rights protections are not accorded to people executed under suspicion of selling or even just using illegal drugs.

Those killings, according to your typical news headline, are different because they're part of an ongoing global "drug war." Yet the battle playing out right now in the Philippines, where hundreds of alleged drug users have been shot and killed in recent months, is an international disgrace—and the US is offering new funds to the man waging it. The horrific state of affairs suggests that even as harsh policies are being toned down at home, America's foreign policy apparatus remains plenty accommodating of senseless brutality rationalized as drug policy.

On May 9, the Southeast Asian island nation and former US colony elected Rodrigo Duterte as president. Since then, on his orders, upward of 700 suspected users or dealers have been extralegally shot down in the street—often left to die alone, bound and bleeding. Hoping to avoid a similar fate, nearly 600,000 people have turned themselves in to Philippine authorities, according to the Associated Press. While enough suspects are being held to stretch already overcrowded prisons beyond capacity, most have simply had their names and confessions taken and been released.

Duterte came to power after using similar tactics over his two-plus decades as mayor of Davao City. Locals credit him with making the city safer, despite a reported 1,000 extrajudicial killings under his watch; one recent survey estimated the president has the support of 91 percent of the national population. Although some other countries in the region are also known for harsh drug policies—Indonesia, for example, routinely executes low-level drug sellers and suspected mules—the level of violence and complete disregard for due process in the Philippines is unreal.

This photo taken on July 23, 2016 shows Jennilyn Olayres (center) hugging the dead body of her partner, Michael Siaron, who was shot by unidentified gunman and left with a cardboard sign with a message, "I'm a pusher." Photo via NOEL CELIS/AFP/Getty Images

In a June speech delivered before he began his term, Duterte called on citizens to take it upon themselves to kill those involved with drugs. "Please feel free to call us, the police, or do it yourself if you have the gun," he said, dangling a "medal" to anyone who complied. Duterte has also assured police and the military that he will take responsibility for extrajudicial killings and protect anyone who assassinates suspects from being held criminally responsible.

By late July, an anguished photo of newly widowed Jennilyn Olayres, tenderly cradling the body of her dead husband, Michael Siaron, had gone viral. A squad of men on motorcycles reportedly shot the 30-year-old pedicab driver and left him to die on the street, accompanied only by a cardboard sign that said "drug pusher." Olayres told reporters that Siaron was innocent and had never harmed anyone; although her husband had taken drugs, she said, he'd never sold them and could barely support his family.

The man had even voted for the new president.

Apparently disturbed by the attention given to the photo, Duterte mocked the grieving widow for echoing the posture of the pieta and creating "drama." Since then, his police have continued publishing kill lists, and the president has vowed to press on in his murderous campaign, even if he has to soak his hands in blood.

Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, right, welcomes US secretary of state John Kerry during his visit at the Malacanang presidential palace in Manila, Philippines, on Wednesday, July 27, 2016. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

Meanwhile, neither President Obama nor Secretary of State John Kerry has spoken out publicly against the killings. Kerry himself even met with Duterte on July 27, when at least some evidence of the slaughter was already widely available. Incredibly, the US dignitary pledged $32 million to the Philippines specifically for use in law enforcement. (The next week, Duterte called the US ambassador to the country, Philip Goldberg, a "gay... son of a whore.")

To be sure, lower-level officials in the State Department have suggested the US is "concerned" about the killings and stressed that the Philippines should not violate human rights laws. And Kerry has vaguely alluded to privately nudging the government on the issue. Meanwhile, Mario Moreno Zepeda, a spokesperson for the US Office of National Drug Control Policy, told VICE, "We are concerned by reports regarding extrajudicial killings of individuals suspected to have been involved in drug activity in the Philippines. We strongly urge the Philippines to ensure its law enforcement efforts are consistent with its human rights obligations."

The problem is that barbarity like this is the logical endpoint of the demonizing language and mass incarceration that marks the war on (some) drugs. The United States itself still has on the books a 1994 federal law that allows the death penalty for some "drug kingpins"—even if they are not killers and haven't arranged specific killings. The founder of the still popular (and ineffective) drug prevention program DARE, former LAPD chief Daryl Gates, once told Congress that casual drug users should be "taken out and shot." And for decades, many states punished nonviolent drug dealing with sentences longer than for people convicted of rape and murder.

Some still do.

The corpse of a suspected drug pusher and victim of a vigilante-style execution with his hands tied and head wrapped with tape lie under a bridge in Manila, Philippines, July 31, 2016. Photo by Zeke Jacobs/Sipa USA via AP

Some commentators have argued, however speciously, that mass killings of people addicted to opium by Chairman Mao "solved" China's problem with the drug in the 1950s. But today, even that country uses gentler approaches like needle exchange and methadone maintenance for people with opioid addictions who do still exist there. And Iran, which frequently executes people for drug crimes, actually has one of the highest rates of opioid addiction in the world.

Though atrocities like Duterte's are obviously extreme even in the context of the global drug war, they show what can happen when moral panics about drugs get way out of hand. When you call people "junkies" or "scum," when even papers like the New York Times run stories that question the "consequences" of saving the lives of people with addiction, and when coverage often focuses on "demons" that supposedly afflict drug users, social stigma is reinforced.

If America really does believe that addiction is a medical problem as both Republicans and Democrats now tend to agree, its leaders must condemn Duterte's brutality in no uncertain terms. Drug wars are wars on people, usually those who are poor and marginalized. We won't reduce the stigma associated with addiction when the government can't even bring itself to assert unequivocally that drug users have the right not to be shot dead in the street.

Follow Maia Szalavitz on Twitter.

Viewing all 38002 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images