MATTE magazine is a photography journal I started in 2010 as a way to shed light on good work by emerging photographers. Each issue features the work of one artist, and I shoot a portrait of him or her for the issue's cover. As photo editor of VICE, I'm excited to share my discoveries with a wider audience. 

Pixy’s photography is intimate and public at the same time. Her photographs are personal—she uses images of herself and her boyfriend to address gender roles and sexuality in our society. Although they are based on real incidents in their private lives, they are not documentary photographs. She stages and performs situations between her and her boyfriend, and with these pictures she challenges preconceived notions of heterosexual relationships. She does this with a sly sense of humor in perfectly executed photographs. Her pictures are witty, often tongue in cheek, and never deadly serious. Yet she makes her point succinctly, reversing gender roles or making purposefully unsexy sexy pictures. They are not intended to be feminist statements but they question the traditional and stereotypical notions of male/female roles in our society. Her photographs are conceptual and playful at the same time. She is a rebel with a twinkle in her eye.

 

—Elisabeth Biondi

Issue 28 of MATTE magazine features photos by New York-based artist Pixy (Yijun Liao) from the series Experimental Relationship. Some of the below images feature butts and nipples, so don't scroll down if you don't want to see that stuff.

Pixy was born and raised in Shanghai, China. She currently resides in Brooklyn, New York, with her boyfriend/muse, Moro. They have a band together, called PIMO.

Elisabeth Biondi is an independent curator and writer. She is photo editor emeritus of the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Stern.

Puchase physical copies of issue 28 of MATTE magazine featuring pictures by Pixy and text by Elsiabeth Biondi on mattemagazine.org, or at Printed Matter's New York Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1 this weekend.

Image by Sam Taylor

Tuesday was something called Bisexual Visibility Day. Which got me thinking: Where exactly are all the bi guys? I know a fair few fellas who've confided in me about their same-sex experiences, but only a handful of guys who straight-up identify as bi.

That might be because, for years, bisexuality has been maligned as homosexuality’s no-good cousin—a sort of halfway house between straight respectability and full-blown gay-dom. Bisexuals spread diseases. Bisexuals can’t accept that they're really gay. Bisexuals are greedy, confused, selfish. This is the sort of shit people say about bisexuals. No wonder bi dudes like to keep it on the lowdown.

I thought all of these stupid things once, growing up in Nottingham without registering that I, too, happened to be attracted to both men and women—depending on the men and women involved. On the whole, I generally prefer men, but I’d rather get off with an attractive young woman than a fat old man. I doubt I’m unique in that.

To be honest, I don’t know many women under the age of 30 who aren’t up for a bit of both. And though we seldom see the word bisexual mentioned in the press in the way that gay and lesbian often are now, there’s actually a plethora of bi women celebs: Angelina Jolie. Neneh Cherry. Drew Barrymore. Lady Gaga. Amanda Palmer. Sia. 

So where are all the bi guys?

They’re out there. They’re just not out. Recent research shows that just over a quarter of bisexual people are open about their sexuality. These days, there are probably more bi people hiding who they are than gay people. According to Alfred Kinsey, the godfather of our modern understanding of sexuality, "46 percent of the male population had engaged in both heterosexual and homosexual activities, or 'reacted to' persons of both sexes, in the course of their adult lives.” That was in 1948, though few studies have put the number as high as that since. There are some examples of male bisexuality in pop culture—Frank Ocean, Brian Molko and Bret Easton Ellis, for instance—but not many. While bi women might have the likes of Megan Fox for sexual inspiration, bi men are left with, uh, Alan Cumming.

And even when a famous guy does go on record talking about his same-sex attractions, it’s frequently followed by a retraction or clarification further down the line, usually around the point that he is trying to become more famous. It’s a depressing list of great men losing their nerve, and some of my respect, ranging from Byron to Bowie. And Tom Hardy, too—although I’d still definitely let him fuck the shit out of me.

Bush guitarist Gavin Rossdale initially denied that he’d been sexually involved with androgynous 80s pop star Marilyn when Boy George wrote about the relationship in his 1996 autobiography Take It Like a Man. He threatened Boy George with his lawyers at the time, but fast-forward to 2010 and he’d changed tact, merely dismissing it as experimentation and “part of growing up.” It’s entirely Gavin’s business who he dates, of course, and he has no obligation to talk about anything he doesn’t want to, but I can’t help but feel disappointed every time I see someone like him get defensive about their same-sex relationships. He’s hot. He’s successful. And he’s with Gwen Stefani now for fuck's sake! What has he got to be worried about? When the only thing you seem to want to be private about is your bisexuality, it gives the impression that it’s something to be ashamed of.

This isn’t just on bi people, though. We’re all to blame. When a bisexual person is in a same-sex relationship we secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) believe it means that they’re just gay, really. If a bisexual person happens to be in a heterosexual relationship, we assume their bisexuality was a phase and that they’re now back on the straight and narrow, so to speak. We all do it. I do it. You’ve probably done it. It must be suffocating being bi and having other people project all their stupid ideas of what your sexuality means to them onto you.

Many bisexual people end up in heterosexual relationships because it’s easier. Wouldn’t you, if being in a relationship with someone who was the same sex as you meant you had to deal with all the pointless fuckeries associated with being gay in our supposedly liberal society?

Keeping quiet about your bisexual desires also seems pretty shitty. Research conducted by the LGBT charity Stonewall revealed that bi guys are more likely to have attempted suicide than gay men. They are nearly twice as likely to have self-harmed. And they are much less likely to go and get tested for sexually transmitted diseases. These aren’t just faceless statistics—that person cutting themselves or thinking about ending their own life could be your work buddy, your best friend, your brother. Maybe someone you are sleeping with. How many people are suffering in silence and putting themselves—and their sexual partner—at risk through fear of rejection and ridicule?

I do understand that fear. It’s hard enough for some guys to get laid as it is without thinking that women will judge you for having been with other dudes before. But seriously guys, any girl who's put off by your experimental side is likely to be a shitty lay anyway. If she’s so basic that she can’t handle the fact that you also like men, how is she going to handle all that weird shit you’ve been saving up for a trusted and adventurous sex partner? The kind of dirty girl you’re looking for really doesn’t care about stuff like that. In fact, it probably turns her on.

And girls, you need to let your male friends know that it’s OK. Because the next time you want two guys to do you at the same time, don’t come crying to me if they pull out the moment their dicks start rubbing together through your rectovaginal septum. (Yeah, that’s what that bit's called.)

I’m not saying that everyone is or should be bi. Nobody should feel they have to do anything they don’t want to sexually. But, equally, nobody should feel like they can’t do something they desperately want to do—so long, of course, as their fuck buddies are conscious and willing, too.

So come on, bi guys—come in out of the cold. I’ll shag you. As will lots of other sluts of every possible gender up and down the country. I’m not saying that just because you jerked some guy off in college that you have to go around telling everyone you're bi for the rest of your life. Not if you don’t want to. But if—like gazillions of other sex pigs—you've enjoyed a same-sex splooge, that’s not something you should feel the need to hide. It’s all good. Love who you want, be who you want, shag who you want.

Follow Paris Lees on Twitter.

Photos by Holly Anderson

Santa Cruz Skateboards legend and former recluse Jason Jessee came up in a time when there was no money in skateboarding and no rules, when the more you stood out from the pack the more you were loved. And there’s not one skater from that era who doesn’t love Jason. Every story about him is more insane and preposterous than the last, and ten times out of 11 they’re actually true. From sleeping in a room full of chickens, to being pulled off an airplane—post 9/11—for possessing a notebook with the words “suicide bomber” handwritten across it, to his sketchy motorcycle designs that have made him the toast of Tokyo, it’s safe to say googling his name will send you down a rabbithole that you won’t want to come out of for days.

The first time I met Jason was at an LA theater for a screening of Stoked, the documentary on infamous skateboarder-turned-murderer Mark ‘Gator’ Rogowski. Jason crept in a side door, unseen, and took the seat in front of me and his old friend Dave Carnie, whom he pretended not to see. He’d look away from the screen every time he appeared to deliver one of his show-stealing quotes (“Fuck limits in your life. Eat corn dogs!”), and somehow disappeared out the same door into the night without anyone realizing he’d been there. He had remained that elusive and mysterious for the past decade, until he hooked up with Converse in 2012 and slowly started to come out of his comfort zone in Watsonville, California. Now he’s traveling the world with Santa Cruz and even hosting an art show this week in Hoboken, New Jersey. I decided to call Jason to hear his version of some of his lesser-known stories and to see if I could get any intel on what exactly his “art” is (I could not).

VICE: You’re a man who wears many hats—not figuratively, but literally. How many are you wearing at the moment?
Jason Jessee: Right now I have nothing to hide, but if I want, I’ll wear two because you can always take one off and then you have an extra one on. Or if someone knocks it off, you’re like, “I don’t care. I’m still wearing this one.” And if they knock that one off and you don’t have a third hat on, you’re just like, “So what? I just have to comb my hair back.” You have a few options in case you get into any street credibility issues.

What recently lit a fire under your ass? You were a recluse for many years until you got on Cons and then out of nowhere you’re all over the magazines and suddenly the skateboarding world’s darling.
I was just desperate for attention. You can only sit around for so long before you’re like, My god! I’m desperate for attention. I gotta get my message to the marketplace no matter what the cost. I don’t even know what the message is but I just had to get it out there. I was bored. My friend-meter filled up and I wanted to utilize my friends. That’s exactly what happened. I’m tired of being the victim; I just want to make victims. It’s all about humor and I couldn’t laugh at my own jokes anymore. I had to get out and be a part of the world. I ran out of jokes and had to get out and do some human behavioral tests.

Got any good jokes about destroying a brand new Dodge Charger?
No. Oh my god, no. That was one of my things on my dreams-come-true list—I wanted to roll a race car without getting hurt, and that’s what happened.

How fast were you going?
Not fast. There just wasn’t any room for error. It went into a ditch as I was doing a boardslide with the car and then it did a 180 lipslide and then it flipped and I landed in the backseat because I never wear seatbelts and I never will. Never have and never will. It’s like you put the condom on backwards and you ended up just throwing it away. I hate putting them on because you want to exit the vehicle quick. If you get pulled over you want to be out of the vehicle before the cops, so you can be like, “Everything is OK. I’m unharmed.” So I floated into the backseat and I could hear myself telling myself, “This might not be good.” Then I landed and the windows blew out and the car landed in the ditch and the passenger door opened and I rolled out. I was standing there and I yelled, “I’m in so much trouble.” I remember yelling that. Then I remember feeling my body and going, “I’m uninjured again!” Again the human remains! That’s exactly what happened.

I’m not shitting you. And then the California Highway Patrolman was my friend and he asked what happened. I said, “I have no idea but the airbags did not deploy.” And the tow truck driver was my friend Rocky, and I was like, “What’s up, Rocky? Let me clean up for you.” So I cleaned up the mess. The next day I went skateboarding and then for one week after that day I couldn’t move and I couldn’t get out of bed. My entire body shut down. Then I had to pay my girlfriend, Jen, $4000 for her to get a new car because that was the deductible. I was like, “Fuck. Really? Four grand?” She was like, “Are you an idiot? If someone came up to you and asked if you wanted to roll a brand new race car and live with no injuries for $4000, would you?” I said, “Yeah, no problem.” And I handed her four grand and thanked her.

Is she your ex-girlfriend after that?
She was already my ex-girlfriend. I lived with her but she’s my best friend. It’s like looking at your friends and knowing, I could never hump you. She’s actually like my sister. I’ll never grow up but I will mature because it’s kind of exciting and I’ve matured enough to realize my ex-girlfriend could be my best friend.

Have you matured enough that you’ve gotten rid of the metal box you used to drag behind your truck?
Oh, god. That thing is gone and gone, done and done. This was a long time ago. I’m so stoked I don’t do anything like that anymore. It was a metal box that was chained on the back of my truck and I could knock it off. You could do that and people would be like, “Holy shit!” They would clear out of the way. I took it on the freeway before and you would see people getting over and parking in the emergency lane. It was really fun. I had a little rope and I’d yank it and the metal box would drop off the truck and the chain was like 40 feet long and people would back the fuck off. It was the best shit ever. It was maybe my favorite time of life because it was just sketchy. And cops would just wave to me. I’d run red lights in front of cops and they’d just be like, “Hey, what’s up, Jason?” I swear to god. They didn’t like me but they just didn’t care. I talk to cops about it now and they tell me, “We used to drive by your warehouse and see the shit you were doing and just crack up.”

If you had a chance to get your hands on it, would you have done that chain trick with Steve Claar’s leg?
Oh my god! I called Steve Claar and the first thing I said was, “Can I keep your amputated leg? Please say I can have your leg.” And he was like, “I already asked because I knew you were going to ask me and they already threw it away. They have to dispose of it. They told me it was illegal for me to take it home.” Man, how rad would it be to beat your neighbor with your leg? I love Steve Claar. Do you have any idea how many frontside ollies that leg has done?

Do you think if you strapped his amputated leg to your leg you’d go extra high?
No, but you’d have a limp that wouldn’t go away, for sure. And your friends would be like, “Do you think that limp will go away?” Steve has a limp. It’s kind of weird. It won’t go away. I asked him. That’s why I don’t talk to him anymore. Would you want to cruise around with your friend with a limp? And you have that pressure to tell people he has a fake leg and that he had it removed, not from Vietnam but from smoking. It’s like you want to put them down. You see dogs that limp and you want to put it down. It’s natural human instinct that the strong shall survive and yet the weak are still here. It’s like a Devo quote.

Speaking of Devo, how did you come up on a Devo guitar?
From John Schuller. I traded a bicycle for it like 20 years ago. I kept it in good condition and then Bob [Casale] found out that I had it and I gave it back to him. It was the Devo cloud guitar and he said it was his favorite guitar and it plays exactly the same as it did. He said he went through a weird month where he had to give everything to a pawn shop and he went back to get it but it was gone because it got stolen. And I was like, “I didn’t steal it!” He didn’t think I did.

How is it that you’re big in Japan?
I’m not. I’m not even 6’4”. I’ve never even been to Japan. I have no idea. It’s because Japanese people come and visit me and I’m so nice to them and ask them if they want to do this or this or this and then they go back and tell their friends, “We went to Jason’s house and had so much fun!” You know how rumors start in Japan; it’s crazy over there. I tell them stuff, like I have Steve Claar’s foot and I show them real fast and it’s a big, fake Halloween foot and they’re like, “Oh my god! He does!” Then they go back and tell their friends that I have stool samples of my friends. But I’ve never been there. I’m never going. It’s so far away. Do you know how much a first-class ticket would be to Japan? Like ten grand. There’s no sponsors that would pay that.

You’re only flying first class? Is that your deal now?
Well, yeah—if you want to take me to Japan. There’s no way I’m going to sit coach or in the back where everyone smokes. I want to sit first class.

I know you always built motorcycles and that’s what they love you for in Japan. But you have an art show this Thursday in Hoboken. Is that a new thing? Are you the next great skate artist?
No, I’m not an artist. I don’t even draw. I just screen boards and then I destroy them with paint pens. It’s just a front for a meet and greet. I just want to meet new friends so I pretend I’m an artist and have art shows. Then when people show, I’m like, “Can I get your number? Your Instagram? If I’m ever in New Jersey I’m gonna hit you up so we can eat sandwiches and snacks.” That’s all it is. It’s just a ruse to get in and see who everyone is.

What should people expect from the show?
I’m not bringing anything to the table. I just want everyone to be themselves. I don’t want anyone to act weird or act out. I might not even show up. I don’t have anything prepared. I’m probably going to stop at a skateshop somewhere and buy some boards and hang up someone else’s boards and be like, “This is my work and this is what I envisioned.”

On a final note, we lost Jay Adams recently—rest in peace.
I refuse to believe that he is gone. But go on.

Every time you ran into Jay he was just the best and made it so memorable. I remember I first met him at a trade show and he was like, “Nieratko! You gotta meet my chick!” And he just took my hand and shoved it up his girl’s skirt and tried to jam it up inside her. It was insane. I know you guys were close. What’s your best Jay Adams story?
There’s too many to tell just one. He was the best dude ever. Everyone has such good Jay stories. People thought they had Duane [Peters] stories? Oh man. Anyone who ever interacted with Jay in any way had the raddest experience. He’s the epic human being in skateboarding. Someone asked me to write something about Jay but keep it G-Rated. I was like, “Nope, I’m out. Absolutely not.” But I will tell you, when I was 17, I learned common courtesy and consideration from him. We paddled out at Oxnard and there were all these sketchy locals out there. I was like, “Jay, we shouldn’t surf here. It’s sketchy. Those guys over there are sketchy.” And he was like, “What? Fuck that! I want to go meet them.” And he goes and paddles out and goes right up to them all crazy and says, “What’s up? I’m Jay Adams.” Not Jay Adams the skateboarder, just Jay Adams the human being. He shook all their hands, introduced me and then asked, “Is it cool if we surf out here?” They were like, “Oh, hell yeah. No problem.” It wasn’t like they knew him as Jay Adams; he was just cool. And they were a little bit nervous about him because they were kinda sketchy and he was sketchy and came right up to all of them.

He told me afterwards, “You just have to be cool and be considerate.” When I first met him I was, like, 12. And we all know the impact that he had on every human being’s life that he met. He rules. He was terrifying but the nicest, terrifying human ever.

OK, I gotta go. I’ll see you in New Jersey. Hey, when I get there I want to go to the Jersey Shore to tan. And I want to go to the gym and I want to do my laundry. I want to lay my towel out and I want somebody to walk by and kick sand on me and then I could be like, “We’re fucking out of here!” And then we go to the gym.

Sounds like a situation.

Follow Jason Jessee on Instagram and come out to NJ Skateshop in Hoboken, NJ on Thursday, September 25 to meet him in person at the art show.

More stupid can be found at Chrisnieratko.com. Or follow him on Twitter.

Still from VICE documentary The Islamic State.

Of the Danish Muslims who go to Syria, some want to do humanitarian work, while others want to wage jihad. But very little is known about those who go to Syria and then return to Denmark. That's what the leader of the section for prevention of radicalization and extremism at Eastern Jutland’s police, Allan Aarslev, told me, anyway.

Nevertheless, the risk of so-called homegrown terrorism is treated very seriously. But instead of confiscating passports and threatening them with prison—measures recently brought to Denmark that are similar to suggested laws in the United Kingdom—Allan and his team are trying a different approach with returning Muslims. They offer therapy and guidance, while reaching out to the parents in the community. They do this both preemptively and after the young men have come back to their communities, the idea being to reintegrate the young men into Danish society.

We gave Allan a call to hear more about the operation.

VICE: Tell us about the different aspects of your efforts.
Allan Aarslev: First of all, we provide counsel and guidance to the young men thinking about leaving for Syria. However, since it’s not illegal to travel to Syria, we can’t keep them from actually going. When someone does leave in spite of our counsel, we contact their family. They often call us when their sons return, sometimes even on the day of their arrival. We then invite them over for a talk. We get to know their situation, and figure out how we can help them return to Denmark in proper fashion. 

What do you tell the young men thinking of going to Syria?
First of all, the parents are far more receptive to our messages. If we can equip them with the right knowledge, they can guide their children far better than we can. When we do talk to young people, we let them know what they’re actually signing up for in Syria. Some tell us they’re compelled to do aid work there because of their religion. We acknowledge that, but no matter their intentions, it’s almost impossible to know what you’re really getting involved in down there. Even if you just help out in a refugee camp, it might turn out that it’s run by the Islamic State. Doing that would be a criminal offense, as it’s illegal to aid organizations on the EU’s terror list. These camps also serve as recruitment stations, and they might try to send you into battle.

It’s a muddy situation, for sure. 
Exactly. We urge them to use their commitment in a different way. Many of these young folks are very religious, making it difficult for us to provide guidance. In that case we ask them whether supporting the Islamic State really is the right way to achieve a caliphate. 

How do they respond to that?
Sometimes they just tell us what they think we want to hear. We can’t expect them to turn themselves in, telling us about their crimes, either. 

Of course not. But are you aware of any Danish individuals who travel to Syria with a militant agenda?
It is our impression that some leave for militant purposes, but we don’t actually know that. Quite a few people have left from Aarhus, so realistically some of them must have committed crimes. It’s impossible to document what goes on in a war zone, though. We just know that the returnees don’t tell us the whole truth.

And when they do leave, you stay in touch with the parents?
We have a network for parents. There are both parents whose children are likely dead, some whose sons are in Syria, and some who are nervous their boys might leave for Syria. Through the network, they support each other. We also stay in touch with them, informing them of their options. However, we’re heavily critiqued by the parents. They feel powerless and disappointed that the authorities can’t do more to keep their kids from going to Syria. 

Understandably so, though it seems that might change now. Tell us, are the parents typically in contact with their children?
Some of them are. Others haven’t heard from their kids for a year. There’s a psychologist connected to the parents network who help them communicate with their children.

How should the parents handle these conversations?
Start by listening to their sons, acknowledging their decision while making sure that the sons know their parents are loyal to them. From there on, the parents can try to convince their sons to come home. It’s a very difficult situation, fearing for the life of your children. 

What happens if they do return?
The parents call and tell us that their son just came home. We then call him up, and see how we can help him get a grip on life, so he doesn’t become a walking security threat. Some we’ve been able to help resume their education, which is great, because then they have something to keep them occupied. These are intelligent, young folks—most of them.

What’s your impression of the returnees?
Some have been totally stripped of extremism, while others are still radicalized. Some wanted to make a difference in Syria, but were disillusioned by the uphill situation. One came back just saying he wanted his old life back, that he’d made a mistake.

I’m sure you also have to consider whether they pose a threat to their community?
We’re very upfront about it. We let them know that we hope to help them, but that doesn’t change the fact that we’re keeping PET [the Danish military intelligence service] in the loop about their status. 

Doesn’t that compromise the therapeutic process? 
Surprisingly not. The fact that we’re open about our position seems to foster respect more than anything else. 

Do you help the returnees with health problems too?
Yes. We help them to queue up properly within the Danish healthcare system. Some have PTSD, others have physical injuries. One was shot. 

Many of them must have PTSD, right?
Well, research suggests that those of serious faith aren’t affected as much by being in a war zone. In our experience, the returnees aren’t as afflicted as others might have been.

That's surprising. What kind of results have you had with the program?
We’ve established a dialogue with certain communities, who are realizing they need to work with authorities on this. They’re very well aware of how it would affect their community if a returnee from Syria committed terrorism at home. So our efforts almost benefit integration. And we’re helping these kids, of course.

Has it decreased the number of men traveling to Syria?
There’s fewer traveling to Syria now compared to last year. We can’t say whether it’s thanks to our efforts, or just that the situation has become worse in general. But since we started a dialogue with the mosque on Grimhøjvej, close to none with relations to the place have traveled to Syria.

Al Jazeera calls your efforts a “soft hands approach." Do you see any risks in a softer approach?
I wouldn’t call it that. It makes it sound like we’re giving out prizes to people who’ve committed murder in Syria. No, it’s a dialogue-based approach where we look for alternative ways to prevent crime. The debate at home is sometimes too much about punishing as many people as possible, instead of actually preventing crime in Denmark. Our methods are not the only way to go about the problems, but they are a great, cheap supplement. 

How do you feel about the more conservative solutions, like confiscating passports?
It might have an effect, but it won’t solve the problem. You can’t punish your way out of people being willing to risk their lives in Syria. 

Okay. Thanks a lot, Allan. 

There’s an old adage that "Saskatoon's got nothing but hookers and hockey players," but despite the place having a bleak reputation, there's also a simmering underbelly of pure rock n' roll party debauchery at a level that only people from backwater towns can understand. Saskatchewan is a place of isolation where zero fucks are given—eight-month long winters at -40 make for a lot of indoor hobbies (sex, drugs, and Jenga) and our brief summers are grabbed by the neck and ridden out like we’d never heard the word ‘moderation’ before. 

To see more of Shannon’s photos, click here.

The pub where Charlie Fegan lived before his days as a property guardian. Photo by Nicholas Pomeroy

“There were hypodermic needles in the fireplace and on the carpets, rats in the basement, the walls were pushed through, and copper piping had been ripped out so it leaked whenever it rained.”

Charlie Fegan, a 24-year-old graduate of the University of London, is describing life on the fringes of London’s housing crisis. For the last two years he's been living as a "property guardian," paying for the privilege of sleeping in the city's empty buildings, where he essentially works as a security guard.

As rents in the UK capital soar, more and more people are turning to property guardianship as an answer to their individual housing crises. In the last four years the number of agencies in the country has increased by between 40 and 50 percent, with big multinational firms like Camelot and Ad Hoc and smaller “social” businesses like Dot Dot Dot all getting in on the action.

On the face of it, it seems like a good idea. Guardian agencies approach landlords with empty buildings and offer to fill them with people. Because it’s temporary, lasting until a long-term use is found for the building, the guardians pay cheap rents. And because the agencies get money from the guardians, they can offer a cheap service to the landlord. It’s sold as a win-win-win scenario. Cheap rent for the tenants, more or less free security for the landlords, and money for the agencies for doing very little.

But there’s a catch. The guardians are not in fact tenants, they are “licensees” who sign contracts to occupy buildings without any of the legal rights a regular tenant is entitled to. The result is a group of companies that, some guardians say, ban visitors, enter properties without warning, levy fines for minor violations, arbitrarily confiscate deposits, and dish out evictions on ridiculously short notice.

“Being a guardian means living in a constant state of anxiety,” Charlie tells me from a large three-story office he’s living in, a stone’s throw from Tower Bridge. “You have no rights at all. You’re essentially paying to be a squatter.”

A plaque marking the time Her Majesty opened the building hangs on the wall at the entrance to Charlie’s current home. It’s hard to imagine she was ever here. Lights flicker on and off over vast unfurnished rooms. A makeshift kitchen with two ovens and a single washing machine has been set up in the basement for 23 residents to use.

But compared to what Charlie is used to, this is luxury. Before moving to Tower Bridge he was living in an old pub in Dalston that had been run down by squatters before the landlord hired a company called Live-in Guardians, the brainchild of former lawyer Arthur Duke, to look after the building. It’s not uncommon to hear guardians complain about the condition of the places they are put in, but this place was apparently beyond the pale.

“I was desperate and glad to have a roof over my head, but I can’t describe how bad it was,” Charlie says. “We had no gas and none of the overhead lights worked. In my bedroom there was a hole through the window. The property owners were redeveloping the building into multistory flats and were doing ground testing while we lived there. Builders were there from nine to five with huge jackhammers. It was like living in a mine. All day long the house would shake.”

Photo courtesy of Charlie

Live-in Guardians insist every property is looked over and made habitable before guardians move in. But according to Charlie, the building was “extremely unsafe.”

“One day I arrived at the pub after a call from my house mate Rowan to find the power had gone off,” Charlie says. “When I went down into the basement there was thick smoke and all the electrics were on fire. There were no smoke alarms in the building and the fire brigade said that if we were upstairs sleeping they’d be pulling out dead bodies. These guys are evil and the schemes they offer are a ticking time bomb. It’s not long until somebody is hurt or gets killed.”

In the contracts most guardians sign, they are told they will have two weeks to pack up and prepare and leave when the landlord takes back possession of the building. But Charlie claims that a few months after the Tower Bridge property was opened, Live-in Guardians asked everyone inside to leave with just 48 hours notice.

“Last Friday we were told we had two days to get out,” Charlie says, visibly exhausted. “The emotional and psychological impact of feeling so precarious is unbearable. It’s draining, constantly looking out the window, waiting to be evicted.”

Photo by the author

When I contacted Arthur Duke, the CEO of Live-in Guardians, I was offered a very different version of events to the one Charlie described. I was told an electrician had rewired the pub and certified it as safe before the guardians moved in, but a small electrical fire had broken out after a storm that caused flood. A wireless radio–linked smoke alarm, Duke said, had alerted the guardians to the problem.

“The safety of our guardians is paramount and we take the matter very seriously,” Duke said. “We have a property inspector who has 30 years’ experience in the London Fire Brigade who undertakes surprise inspections at all our properties.”

Charlie and all his housemates’ dispute this account—they say there was no fire alarm or storm, just a squalid building offered to “desperate” guardians.

Inside a guarded property. Photo by the author

Whatever way you look at it, Charlie’s experience is a stark contrast to the way property guardianship is usually presented in the media as some kind of bourgeois lifestyle decision; an adventure for those with an appetite for urban shabbiness. In the companies’ promotional material, rather than shots of decaying pubs and dilapidated office blocks occupied by poor people, you get a slideshow of kooky locations, exposed brick and fixed-gear bikes, as if living in a guardian scheme is like going to an artisanal coffee shop. But Charlie’s story is by no means unique.

Holly Cozens, a 31-year-old from Brighton was living in an old convent run by Camelot—the largest guardian agency in the market—to save up money to rent on the private market.

“From my experience and from the other people that lived there, the fundamental problem was that they never give their deposits back to anyone,” she told me over the phone. “The other problem was that they can chuck you out for anything. Somebody I knew had an ashtray in the house. They hadn't smoked inside but they kept the ashtray in their room. When Camelot saw it they asked him to leave. There was no chance to talk to them or discuss anything, you just had to go. Nor would they fix any of the things that would break. When one of the showers stopped working, we had 20 people all using the same one. Everybody would be emailing them but it would take them ages to get back.”

Mike Goldsmith, Camelot’s COO, denies the company confiscates deposits arbitrarily. “Unless there is a legitimate reason to make a deduction Camelot will always repay guardian deposits,” he told me. “We are also in the process of putting together an SLA [Service-Level Agreement] which will give targeted times to react to issues such as broken showers.”

A "ghost mansion" in London. Photo by Simon Childs

Another issue is that nobody seems to be sure whether core aspects of property guardianship are even legal. Guardian agencies remain convinced that by distinguishing between tenants and licensees they are doing nothing wrong. But a deeper look at the law suggests the distinction doesn't get them as far as they think.

Take the issue of eviction. A guardian may not be a tenant, but they still qualify as a “residential occupier,” which means the 1977 t still applies. Almost all the guardians I spoke to had been thrown out with two weeks warning or less (although some agencies, like Camelot, have changed their policies and now offer their guardians more time to leave). Giles Peaker, a housing lawyer at Anthony Gold Solicitors, told me, “That means that in order to get somebody out there has to be, firstly, 28 days notice. And secondly, if the person does not go, the only way they can be got out is by a court order.” Those two-week notice periods are therefore on shaky legal ground, and if a guardian were to contest it, their agencies would have to take them to court to get them out of a property.

The guardian agencies are unsurprisingly keen to keep this quiet. If landlords had to wait a whole month to get their property back, would they bother with a guardian scheme in the first place?

These companies like to present themselves as offering creative solutions to the housing crisis—bringing empty buildings back into use as homes at rents people can actually afford. And people tend to agree with them. Last year Camelot even sponsored an Empty Homes conference put on by Shelter, the housing and homelessness charity.

But there's something ironic about guardian services selling themselves as anti-squatting services. Squatting is a common response to homelessness, but guardian agencies' livelihoods depend on convincing landlords and councils that squatting is bad. On their websites, squatters are portrayed as a threat while guardians are stylized as “key workers” and “creatives” happy to pay their way. The reality, of course, is that they are talking about the same group: people who cannot afford decent housing because wages are too low and rent is too high.

So businesses and landlords are outsourcing anti-squatting services to people who might otherwise have been squatters. “I’m completely ideologically opposed to guardianship but I had no other option that I could afford,” says Charlie. “I had just graduated and was trying to find a job. It was dark, though—the people who had lived there before, where are they now?”

Robin Hood Gardens. Photo by the author

And it’s not always derelict pubs or empty office blocks that guardians are asked to occupy. Often they end up in public housing that has been cleared and is awaiting demolition, to be replaced by luxury apartments for the well-off. Guardians become a physical part of the same process that makes it harder for them afford a proper home in the first place: gentrification.

This is the position that a 42-year-old council worker who we'll call "James" finds himself in. He’s living as a guardian with agency Dot Dot Dot at Robin Hood Gardens, a brutalist council estate that's soon to be pulled down. James told me, “I’m very aware of who we are and what this represents. But gentrification will happen whether we live here or not. I think we’ve integrated into the community as much as possible; there’s been no animosity toward us.” 

Nevertheless, while there are plenty of reasons to criticize guardian schemes, a lot of people continue to find them attractive, or at least necessary. “I think this is one of many solutions to the housing crisis,” a friend of mine living as a guardian told me from a run-down office above a parking lot in Camden. “It’s not a long-term solution. But it allows people who are trapped in a life of paying rent, who will struggle to ever earn enough money to afford a house. And with that comes risk. If I come back from a holiday and find my stuff on the porch, then that’s the risk I’m taking.”

This seems to be an example of the nose-diving aspirations of today's graduates, who often don't a future beyond unpaid internships and sleeping in old fire stations and closed infirmaries, locked in a long struggle for financial independence. No genuine solution to the housing crisis would look like this. But as long as London remains a place where finding a home is impossible for many, guardian schemes will continue to serve a purpose.

Follow Philip Kleinfeld on Twitter. 

Years before Christopher Nolan drastically altered the modern superhero genre, the late 1990s powerhouse trio of Tim Burton, Kevin Smith, and Nicolas Cage were poised to do the same. Unfortunately, Hollywood pulled the plug before the general public could get a glimpse at their cinematic vision—a radical reinterpretation of the Superman myth.

Director Jon Schnepp (Metalocalypse, The Venture Bros) and producers Holly Payne and Heather Piper are determined to lift the veil on what could have been the greatest Superman iteration that never was. In The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?, he interviews everyone from Burton, writer Kevin Smith, costume designer Colleen Atwood, and all of the people in-between who poured years of creativity into a project that never saw lift-off. I recently caught up with Schnepp to chat about the game-changing ability of Superman Lives and the heartache of Hollywood.

VICE: What makes this documentary subject matter appeal to you? What about it drives you to tell this story?
Jon Schnepp: The real basic reason was that I personally wanted to know why this film didn’t get made. I always trust my gut when I write or direct anything—I always know that if I like what I’m doing, my nerd brethren will get exactly what I’m doing and that motivates me. I couldn’t stop thinking, Why did a movie that got so far in its production suddenly go cold? I mean, we’re talking about Tim Burton—the guy who reinvented Batman, who put superheroes back on the map as not camp. Then having it star someone like Nic Cage, who back then was a top star—he went from an incredible character actor to being an action hero: The Rock, Con Air, then it would’ve been Superman.

I had been following the art releases every couple of months. I’d randomly do a search for Superman concept art and one or two drawings would always show up. Over the years, more artwork went online—MySpace, Facebook. The artists who worked on it would drop their illustrations just out of the blue. Then Kevin Smith came out with his version of the script, and John Peters unleashed the design for the movie’s giant spider. More and more glimpses from the movie surfaced. Then Steve Johnson uploaded a video of the light-up rainbow suit: It had a diamond, reflective S!

What’s the most common question people ask you when they hear about this project?
“Tim Burton—was he weird?” Everyone wants to know! He was actually a really nice guy—great sense of humor, really smart.

Jon Schnepp interviewing Superman Lives director Tim Burton. All photos courtesy of Jon Schnepp

You’ve been an animation director for a while now, but never made a documentary before. Besides the subject matter, what prompted you to take the leap into this kind of filmmaking?
I went to a Die Antwoord show at Meltdown Comics and ended up meeting this artist, Steve Johnson, just by chance. This guy was the creator of Slimer! He’s incredible. I knew I recognized his name, so when he went to the bathroom I quickly googled him, and when I saw he worked on Superman Lives, I got super weird with him about it. He came back and I just started asking all these questions. I could tell he was like, “Uhhh cool.” But then me and my friends all went to Rockin’ Thai, across the street from Meltdown, and I couldn’t stop talking about the light-up suit he made. I kept describing how amazing it would’ve been, from what I saw online. At one point my friend said, “Hey man, you sound like you’re really into this stuff—you should make a documentary.” But at the time I was like, “Nah.” I didn’t know how to even start with something like that. But then later, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head—this was around November 2012. I started thinking, Hey, maybe I should make a documentary! It wasn’t so much a feeling of, How hard could it be? But more like no one else was gonna make it.

So you took to Kickstarter and got the ball rolling.
Yeah, it was perfect. It was around this time I was ready to take a mini-break from animation—you know, directing cartoons can be very time-consuming, so I decided to move into this project. We put together a pitch, found a bunch of images online of what the movie could’ve been, and put together the Kickstarter page. Surprisingly, in the first weekend we got $35,000! It was really then that I thought, Oh man, people really wanna see this! But then Kickstarter became this whole headache. It just consumes every hour of your life—constantly having to remind people, asking all your friends, relatives, all these people you know in the business, and asking them to put it on their Facebook. It ended up being just a ton of work having to answer questions like, “Why should I give you $25?” And all I could say was, “Cause this thing's gonna be really cool!” But all in all, Kickstarter was the best way to go. It’s a weird thing, but I really like it. It allows you to have this flexible, creative medium.

Jon Schnepp interviewing Superman Lives producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura

What were some of the things you learned the hard way putting together a documentary for the first time?
Well, at first I thought it would take only seven months to get it done—it’s month 18 now and we’re still filming interviews. On top of that, we have three more months of heavy production every day. I kept saying, “I’ll have it together by Comic Con, man!"

Then we ran out of money and had to do another crowd-sourcing project. I was actually completely out of money by the time we flew to England to interview Tim Burton. Also, we didn’t even know if he was gonna be game to film with us! He just told us to come out and “see.” But after about five minutes of talking, he was game. Yeah, by the time we got to England, it took us that long from the start of the project to finally get Tim Burton and Kevin Smith to talk to us. 

So what are your next steps for completing the film?
Well, I could’ve slapped together the film a little while ago, but I want to do it right. I still haven’t interviewed as many people as I want—people who were real important parts to it—which is why I ran the second crowd-sourcing campaign. With that, it was tough to convince people to support us again. Other people came in and out of production and would ask, “What’s the quickest way to finish it?” See, right there, that’s not the person I want to be dealing with. I want someone who asks, “What’s the way it’s supposed to be made?” And then we deliver. That was a big wake-up call. I don’t want to compromise.

I get that.
After that I spent 45 days on Twitter, Facebook—constantly doing conventions just to keep the word out. Now that’s 45 days not working on the project, but I still managed to get two interviews in doing this. 

One of the most interesting things being involved in media is constantly explaining how things work. I remember when I did a music video back when I lived in Chicago: I was given $12,000 to get the job done. I remember all of my friends hearing about that and going, “Whoa, drinks on Schnepp!” But I didn’t make any money. I had to take that $12,000 and divide it up between the cast and the crew. For me, with this documentary, the big question was, “When are you gonna get Kevin Smith? When are you gonna get Tim Burton?” It just wasn’t that easy at first.

Jon Schnepp interviewing Superman Lives costume designer Colleen Atwood

Do you think there's any chance that this project could be revived? If, say, Tim Burton were open to it?
I don’t think this film could exist in the modern age—it’s a product of its time. It was produced in the late 90s where, at the time, there were very little superhero films besides Batman, Batman Returns, and then, of course, Batman & Robin. I don’t think it would get made now. I think the place we live now is all filled with nostalgia.

Also, here’s the thing: There’s no definitive version of Superman Lives. There are three separate working scripts that all have the same core story, but are individually very, very different. Kevin Smith wrote a script with John Peters, and then when Tim Burton came on, he hired Wesley Strick. Meanwhile, the artists were using Kevin Smith’s script as a jumping-off point for their designs. Each version is different, but [Lex] Luther is in there and there’s a giant thing that blocks the sun, so they have similar plot points. For me, with this documentary, it’s more about, “This is probably what the movie could never be, an amalgamation. It's a take on all the takes—what it could’ve been, would’ve been.”

I approached that with how I talked to everybody: It’s a time travel. We’re both from the future, but let’s talk about something from 15 years ago—you’ve lived a whole lifetime of experiences, so you bring that to your perspective on it. I sat with Colleen Atwood, who, since working on Superman Lives, has won three Oscars, been nominated for ten. She’s moved on and done cool shit. The sadness is, here’s one of the things most of the people who worked on it completely believed in it. They thought it would be cool and all regret it didn’t get made.The fun part, for me, is talking with them about it—hearing their experiences on the film and the creativity involved. It was kind of like a purging. This is what it could’ve been.

Well, that's Hollywood—nothing is ever 100 percent until the last minute.
Burton worked on [Superman Lives] for two years. He told me, “I basically made the movie, it just never got shot.” As a filmmaker, I can totally relate. You make the storyboards, designs—actors were cast, sets were being built. There’s such a heavy amount of pre-production. Films are such a collaborative medium. When you’re making something with all these different people, it becomes a transformed thing.

I can tell when I read some of these early drafts of Superman Lives... things would’ve changed and transformed, especially when you see the designs that came even from Kevin’s script. If the film came out in '99, it would have been a hit. It had a lighter feeling that [Burton's] other films didn’t have. He wanted to show flight how it had never been seen before. And Cage had all of these great ideas of Superman as an outcast—what nerds feel like. It would’ve touched upon that in ways that no one had ever touched upon in any other superheroes.

Superman was more like a kid in the corner who got laughed at all the time, but taking that to the extreme—being a visitor from another planet. You see that in all of Tim Burton’s movies. He said, “I always felt like I was an alien, growing up in Burbank,” and that was exactly what Nic Cage saw, too. People laughed at Nic Cage from the costume test footage, but, in the final costume, Nic Cage looks badass. I had a picture of it on my phone and would show it to people, and every skeptic says, “You know what, that’s not bad.” It makes me happy. You get that flip-flop.

It’s so hard to get through to those guys at conventions, people love to hate things so much—but to battle that with just genuine sincerity, you almost can’t argue with that.
Right. My whole approach to this film is “I‘m not making fun of it." The more I found out about it, the more I realized this would have been a really special film. It’s so easy to make fun of stuff. I want to transform the opinion that exists for no reason that “this film would have been horrible.” I wanna encourage people to open their eyes and say, “Look at what this could’ve been!”

Follow Julia Prescott on Twitter.

Beyond Retro T-shirt, vintage scrunchie

PHOTOGRAPHY: JAMIE LEE CURTIS TAETE AND FREEL & GORSE
ART DIRECTON: JAMIE LEE CURTIS TAETE
STYLIST: KYLIE GRIFFITHS

Stylist's Assistant: Thomas Ramshaw
Hair and make-up: Lydia Warhurst using MAC Cosmetics, Bumble and bumble
Hair and make-up assistant: Amelia Ferrari
Models: Adam and Khair at D1, Lucy and Keely at Milk Management

Beyond Retro top

Woolrich shirt, vintage vest

Beyond Retro T-shirt

Rokit T-shirt

Woolrich hat, Beyond Retro T-shirt

Eleven Paris T-shirt

Meet Bruce Gilden. He's one of our favorite Magnum photographers, and in case you're clueless, he won a Guggenheim Fellowship this past year and is known to be one of the badassest badasses in the business. When we asked him to film a new show, he agreed on the terms that it wouldn't suck and, if it did, we'd let him sock us in the face.

This is Take It or Leave It with Bruce Gilden, a photo-critique series in which Bruce tells up-and-coming photographers if their work is transcendent, total crap, or somewhere in between. In our second episode, he takes on the world of street photography.

Aspirational is a new short directed by fashion filmmaker and photographer Matthew Frost, the mastermind behind Fashion Film and a longtime VICE pal. Following his trio of Vogue shorts Best Actress of All Time, Slow Motion, and Scripted Content—starring Kate Winslet, Cate Blanchett, and Jessica Chastain, respectively—Frost is continuing his examination of celebrity and isolation in the modern age. In Aspirational, his star is Kirsten Dunst, who gets bombarded with unwanted attention from two bratty fans who want to use the actress merely as a prop in their selfies. It's a reminder that stars get into awkward situations just like the rest of us, and that people have a breathtaking capacity to be assholes.

We gave Frost a call to talk about his short and wound up chatting about social media and why he works with "Slamming Babes" so much. 

VICE: This video has really blown up, it’s everywhere!
Matthew Frost: Dude, I know. I've been trolling the Internet today! So many amazing articles! I use Twitter to get information, but I don’t really share anything on Twitter. I’m not like, Oh my God, like, this is so cool! You can’t share shit on Instagram [that way.] There are no links, you can’t pre-promote anything. Some people just promote themselves. Like they actually promote their physical beings, but you can’t really promote anything that you’re doing with actual words. It’s just like blurbs and things. Just pictures, stuff you see.

Like, if you see Kirsten Dunst on the street...
Yeah. That’s it, like you can’t say: Hey I wrote this. I wrote this essay. There’s no link, you can’t link, or even if it’s silly, you can’t go deeper than just that picture. I mean, it is what it is. It’s just funny.

How did you come up with the storyline for Aspirational?
The story came from the same sort of series of films that I've been doing lately where I'm offered the opportunity to work with a massive actress, and it’s like: What are you gonna do with her in a short period of time?

It sort of became these fictionalized portraits—sort of what I think that these actresses would be doing if they were confronted with things that everybody does. Say, googling themselves, or checking themselves online, or having people take a picture of them. And, in this case, it's not discreet. Someone's going up to Kirsten and taking a selfie. I'm imagining what that interaction would be like for her.

I guess it's a continuation of these little stories, but it’s all fictionalized and pretty scripted. But the fact that they're amazing actresses, they also sort of make it seem like they're completely playing themselves. So I’m not sure what their opinions of these real-life situations are. I think Kirsten agrees that people taking selfies with her kind of sucks. I think it’s more fictionalized, and I'm trying to get a feel of what that would be like—how random this would be. You see people taking selfies all around you. Say you’re in a restaurant and you see people taking selfies, it's still weird to me. It's become OK. It's cool. And it's just weird to observe, right?

That’s how Aspirational came about—through observing people. And it’s even more creepy when people want to take selfies of a celebrity, or a person they think is a good person and want to be seen with, you know? It’s like the ultimate popularity thing. And it’s quantified in actual numbers. You can assess your popularity with numbers. Pretty fucked up, man.

Why is it that so much of your work focuses on females?
Well, what you’re trying to say is why do I keep shooting slamming babes?

Basically.
I don’t know, it’s an interesting question. I mean, I tried shooting slamming dudes, but I just feel sort of increasingly uncomfortable when I have work on their poses. Working in photography, especially today, there’s definitely a lot of babes. You know I see people personal art photos and I can hear them saying, "Yeah, in my personal work I just like to document my friends....and some of them just happen to be babes who are cool and just like to chill.." There's always that thing where it’s babes instead of dudes. But now I do more film stuff, and I think the opportunities I’ve gotten have been with girls. I think if you’re looking for little films with fashion outlets or clothing brands, they’re kind of geared toward women. But then I think personally it’s always been a very natural sort of gravitation towards girls. I grew up with four sisters.

I think with guys, there’s a distance. With women, it goes beyond just seduction. I think that just a distance, a sort of a quiet observation of how that mechanism works, and how you could imagine they’re feeling at a certain time is... I don’t know. There’s a distance with women, and from a guy's perspective it’s always from the outside looking in. But it just depends on the distance, and some people are more comfortable getting a little closer. And other people are able to do a portrait from a little bit further back.

I feel uncomfortable objectifying, though it is inevitably [objectifying]. Even though you’re selling clothes and stuff, there’s still a weird thing, like hypersexual and stuff. And my films are what happens after that, and when [the women] are alone. There’s this isolation, and I think it’s exacerbated by celebrities because there’s an extra element of them being these hyper-women. These strong women of today, these big actresses, like Kate Blanchett—she commands a lot of respect. She dominates the space, and they all do. OK, I love women, fine!

But I think it’s more about being interested in those particular characters, but also the opportunities that I get through these brands and these things that are women-centric, you know? And then the tone is what we’re really working in. And you try to be consistent with it. That’s the thing that I want to go back to, which is I think a mood, a mood throughout the films. Beyond women or men, I think it’s just this space or zone—the way you think in your head—that I’m trying to execute through that filter.

I feel that that’s very obvious throughout all of the pieces, they all seem to have that kind of connection. Do you have anything else coming up that you’re excited about? What’s next for you?
Well these films have come up in a way where it’s so last-minute and also part of the exercise where you come up with the idea, and then you just execute it the best you can. It's a quick turnaround. I’ve been really fortunate to have these opportunities sort of just thrown on my lap. It’s really nice that I don’t know when the next one comes up. There are a couple more of these films that could happen, but I don’t know how many of these you can do. My time is sort of divided between writing another screenplay and trying and extend and push the opportunities I’ve had with these shorts into a longer format. It's hopefully not too far away. And then I have the photos and commercials. I’m lucky to be very busy.

Yeah, you’re the busiest person I know, I think.
I know. I don’t have two or three of these shorts under my arm waiting for dispatch. But, I think it would be nice to have something that connects overall, just a little bit longer—in a short format, but still a little bit longer than two minutes. I think that would be quite interesting. But, but my main goal is to get into long form with a similar tone to these shorts. Trying to preserve that in something long is the goal.

Follow Matthew Frost on Twitter and Instagram.

Foreign fighters from all over the world have left their home countries to join the ranks of the Islamic State, and the militant group's lightning advance across Iraq and Syria this summer has helped to boost recruitment. VICE founder Shane Smith spoke with a man thought to be 21-year-old Somali-Canadian Abu Usamah Somali, who has been in Iraq since July and is reportedly fighting with the Islamic State.

Aleppo is Syria's largest metropolitan area and a millennia-old commercial capital. Today, however, it is a relative ghost town, threatened by regime bombing from the air and a militant offensive on the ground. For two weeks over the summer, VICE News embedded with the Islamic Front, a coalition of Islamist rebels fighting the forces of President Bashar al-Assad on one hand, and Islamic State militants on the other. VICE News accompanied the Islamic Front through their underground tunnels, which they use to move through the city and to bomb enemy positions from below. Then we sat in on a Sharia court where even amid the fighting, criminals must answer for their crimes.

All photos courtesy of Fallon Fox

Time to talk about Fallon Fox. The transgender athlete who’s picked a fight with what seems like the whole of the professional Mixed Martial Arts community. Lover that I am, I don’t know why anybody would want to beat the shit out of people for a living—but, if that’s what you feel you want to do, you should have the right to do that whether you’re black, white, gay, transgender, or whatever.

So here’s the deal. Fallon was born with a peen. No one’s perfect. I throw away too much salad. She was raised as a dude, as I am told is traditional in Ohio for babies born with outwardly expressive genitalia. But that peen never did sit right with her and, since 2008, she has been a woman in mind, body, and soul. I’m not saying that being a woman is all about having a vagina, because there’s kind of more to it than that, but she even has one of those now. She’s totally going for this whole woman thing. I reckon she’s got it nailed. More importantly for her career, medical experts agree.

Last week, Fallon beat up another woman. In a fight. It’s what they do, these MMA fighters. No one forces them. People get hurt. All the time. It’s their job. I appreciate your gut reaction may be one of sympathy toward Fallon’s vanquished opponent, Tamikka Brents, but a china doll she isn’t. She’s a successful MMA fighter who could have opted out of the fight beforehand if she truly believed Fallon had an unfair advantage over her. After she lost, Tamikka went and whined about how "it just isn't fair" for Fallon to fight women. Complaining after you lose isn't just sour grapes—it's downright tacky, Tamikka.

And unless you personally happen to be a qualified medical expert specializing in sex-based physiological advantage in sporting contexts, I really couldn’t care less what you think about Fallon’s right to compete in professional MMA fighting. Anything you have to say is just an opinion and you’re entitled to an opinion, of course, but you’re not entitled to have people believe your opinion is backed up by fancy science because it’s not, OK? 

Even if—if—Fallon Fox happened to be taller than your average female MMA fighter, and if—if—she happened to have higher testosterone levels, this still wouldn’t be a reason to exclude her from the sport. But here’s the thing: She’s 5’6”. And she doesn't take testosterone. In fact, since she has neither testicles nor ovaries, both of which produce testosterone, the women she's fighting probably have more testosterone than she does. Testosterone isn’t this magical substance that only guys produce; most women have it too, just as men have estrogen in their bodies. Because biological sex isn’t black and white; it is, like all human physiology, a complex bouquet of various different factors within every single one of us. Fallon Fox is biologically unique—as is everyone else on the planet.

The real question is: When it comes to fighting, does Fallon have an unfair advantage over your average woman? Yes. She does. She’s a professional MMA fighter, FFS. Every single one of them has an unfair advantage. I wouldn’t want to get into a fight with any of these hefty bitches, and I ain’t no hollaback girl. But these MMA girls are strong. Vicious. Determined. They’re fucking crazy if we’re being totally honest. So the really real question we need to be asking is: Does Fallon Fox have an unfair advantage over your average crazy bitch professional MMA fighter?

Medical experts say no. Last year, Dr. Eric Vilain—director of the Institute for Society and Genetics at UCLA—examined Fallon’s medical records and pointed out that “male to female transsexuals have significantly less muscle strength and bone density, and higher fat mass, than males." She’s totally within the normal female range in terms of height, fitness, and strength. Which kind of takes me back to my original point: Fallon Fox is a woman.

Which is why, no doubt, the Association of Boxing Commissioners ruled last year that there is no advantage for trans fighters. I'm tempted to trust them over sore losers, personally.

So what does Fallon have to say? Does she honestly believe that being trans doesn’t give her an advantage of size or strength? “That all depends,” she tells me, “on the fighter that I am fighting against, right? I'm 5' 6" tall. That's about average for the women in my weight class.” And there are lots of female fighters in her weight category who are much taller anyway, “but then their height leaves them open for other things such as takedowns in some cases, and sometimes they tend to move just a tad bit slower than shorter competitors. We all have to deal with shorter opponents, taller opponents, opponents with shorter reaches, opponents with longer reaches, stronger opponents, weaker opponents, highly aggressive opponents, very smart opponents. Cisgender [not trans] or transgender, it really does not matter in women's MMA.”

She adds, “As the medical community that licensed me and other transgender athletes around the world in different sports can attest, we all fall within the physical parameters of woman.” Is she aware of any medical evidence to suggest trans women could have a measurable advantage in women’s MMA? “Not that I know of. And if there is any I'd like someone to bring it forward.”

Sorry to break this to you, ladies of MMA, but if you lose to Fallon Fox, it’s not because she “used to be a man.” You’re just not as good as her.

You know, I do get it. All the shit that Fallon has to deal with. When she first came onto my radar, as a trans woman myself, I remember thinking two things: Firstly, good for her. Go girl. Secondly: Wow, what do I think about that? Like, surely someone who used to be a man, physically, is gonna be stronger than the other women she’s fighting? Of course I did. Anyone would. We’re taught from day one that men are big and strong and women are tiny and weak, and that the ultimate act of unfairness is for a man to hit a woman. And it’s true, men shouldn’t hit women. And they are, on average, more likely to hurt and physically damage a woman than a woman is a man. But women shouldn’t hit men either. And women do hit men. And we laugh about it, or ignore it or downplay how serious it is. This is the problem with simplifying complex and context-dependent relationships between human beings. Some men are bigger than others. And some girls are bigger still. We all come in different shapes and sizes.

Fallon says people are hostile toward her for a host of factors. I thought she was going to blame ignorance or transphobia, but she believes much of it comes down to plain old misogyny. “After all, what's the worst thing that a male-bodied person could possibly do? That would be to give up male privilege. And the vast majority of haters out there hate me because they think that I am a man. A man who ‘gave it all away.’”

What we’re seeing with Fallon Fox isn’t anything new, sadly. I doubt there’s a transgender woman alive who hasn’t been told at some point, “You can’t do this, because you’re just a man really.” You can’t come in this restroom. You can’t call yourself a woman. You can’t have my love. From strangers in bathrooms to academics in ivory towers—right through to the people who are supposed to support us most, our parents—trans women know about this kind of shit because we’ve heard it all before. If transgender women listened to every person who’d ever told them “you shouldn’t be here,” we’d have nowhere left to go. We’d be nothing. Nowhere. No one.

There’s no doubt now that, in decades to come, we’ll look back on 2014 as the moment the transgender community pushed its way in from the cold. Laverne Cox. Carmen Carrera. Laura Jane Grace. Nobody handed these women their success on a plate, and nobody is going to offer trans people a seat at any table without trans people demanding one. People in power don’t just hand it over—worker’s rights, women’s rights, the right for people of different races to marry for fuck’s sake—every single one of them had to be fought for, the way the gay community is currently fighting for its rights too. I hate violence even it its professional forms, but I’m glad we have a Fallon Fox among our trans sisterhood. She’s a fighter in every sense of the word, and fuck me is this a fight.

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