Back in the 20th century, if you cried while watching Star Wars, you were just sad and alone. Not any more. Now, you can hop online and publicly document your weepy catharsis at seeing Harrison Ford dressed as Han Solo for the first time in 32 years.

If you don't think this is a thing, just type "Star Wars crying" into Twitter:

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When I spoke with Tor.com staff writer and geek critic Emily Asher-Perrin, she told me the waterworks first started when she heard the voice of Luke Skywalker for the first time since 1983. "My childhood hero was back, and he sounded just like himself, and it was the most comforting feeling in the whole wide universe," she said. "[It was] like being wrapped up in a space blanket."

An old publishing friend, Jacob Arthur told me the direct address from Luke worked for him, too: "When Luke said, 'You have that power, too.' That you brought my chest to a mighty swell."

He continued: "I've waited too long for someone to awaken that hope and pride. I think that might have been the second or third most meaningful you I've heard in my life."

On Vulture, in his shot-by-shot recap of the trailer, the critic Abraham Riesman catalogued his entire emotional reaction to the trailer. He was struck by the "silver stormtrooper with a cape," which caused "actual tears" to pour out of his eyes.

When I spoke to Riesman to understand why he had such a reaction, he said what he was seeing in this trailer matched up for what he'd always hoped for as a kid: a dystopian battle-scarred Star Wars. "To see your hopes given life is a powerful experience that transcends cynicism," he explained. "I sort of lost control. It was like being in a very extreme yoga pose: I was crying as a form of release beyond words."

In numerous ways, cultural critics have tried to pinpoint the exact moment when Star Wars ceased to be a movie franchise and became a cultural touchstone. That point remains elusive, but it's an unshakeable fact that Star Wars has effectively slipped into the public domain in terms of how we think about it. Part of this has to do with to what degree we're angry—or hurt—about what George Lucas "did" to a thing so many of us loved. For Star Wars fans, Star Wars itself is like a deadbeat dad who left, came back, and left again. By extension, everything we associate with "real" Star Wars (i.e., anything from the original three movies) is also like a parent that has ditched us—or, worse, died.

In the 17th century, when the word nostalgia was invented by Johannes Hofer, it was all about a longing for a return to a specific place. Simon Reynolds explores this in the opening chapter of his 2011 book Retromania: "Nostalgia was literally homesickness, a debilitating craving to return to the native land." With this in mind, it shouldn't be any surprise that Han Solo's utterance of the word home at the end of the trailer really did it for a lot of people people. The line, "Chewie, we're home," even caused Asher-Perrin to break out into a second wave of tears.

Of course not everyone who was moved went so far as to cry.

"I knew a lot of this was coming," Brandon Burton, a fan of Star Wars who works as a classically trained actor, wrote me in a email. "I was like, 'Yah, black people as main characters'... R2-D2 is the blackest character. Dude throws shade with beeps and boops. But I saw most of that shit coming. So, no, I didn't lose my shit. But yes, there was an approving nod."

Two years ago, Burton and I had a long discussion in which we both prayed for a nonwhite lead actor to show up in the new Star Wars. When John Boyega was cast, it was a moment of relief and celebration.

In speaking to the crowd at the Star Wars Celebration last Thursday in Anaheim, Lucasfilm CEO Kathleen Kennedy echoed the notions of diversification and representation when she stressed the importance creating more gender parity in Star Wars. When asked which Star Wars character she would be, she responded, "Up until recently, I didn't have much of a choice. There was only Princess Leia," reminding me that this thing we're crying over has some sexist baggage.

The trailer that opened the facial floodgates

For me, the heartstring tugging and tear jerking is mostly connected to Han Solo, who was a big part of my adolescence. There's a passage about a Luke versus Han debate in Ashley Cardiff's book Night Terrors that I love and quote all the time: "But right about ten or so, I started thinking Han Solo was the more charming and interesting of the two. This is because Luke represents chastity and virtue, while Han Solo represents cock."

With his unbuttoned shirt and infectious, shit-eating grin, Han Solo is the guy a lot of us want to be. (And not just guys, either. Asher-Perrin's wife, the science-fiction author Kelsey Ann Barrett, frequently dresses up as Han Solo for conventions.) You could argue that this is down to the fact that Harrison Ford created a certain flirty-but-safe-type of sex symbol with both Indiana Jones and Han Solo. But Han Solo is relevantly different from Indy for one reason: He's the outsider in Star Wars, the guy who doesn't believe in the religion that surrounds and binds the whole phenomenon, both in the films and in real life.

Fittingly, Harrison Ford is bristly about the iconic character. His Reddit AMA from last year made some of his flippancy about Star Wars fandom pretty clear. Who shot first, Han or Greedo? "I don't know, and I don't care," was Ford's response. During the Force Awakens panel on Thursday, John Boyega detailed a story from the most recent film set in which he creeped out Harrison Ford by asking the actor to sign a Han Solo action figure. Boyega claimed Ford said, "This is weird," but signed the "doll" (Ford's words) anyway.

So, despite flying planes and helicopters, Harrison Ford is not Han Solo, and at 74, he's certainly no longer the conventional sex machine that we all fell in love with. Now, seeing Harrison Ford as Han Solo in the new trailer is bittersweet. This happened with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in 2008, to an extent. But at that point, the zeitgeist was sort of ready for that movie to be disappointing. There was something about Shia Lebeouf that made us prepare to be let down. But the promise of The Force Awakens is that there will be healing for those who've felt that George Lucas, Star Wars, and specifically Han Solo, Princess Leia, and Luke Skywalker abandoned them.

Spencer Kornhaber, writing for the Atlantic, recently worried that the new Star Wars film may be pandering to a fan-service culture, and I think there's something to it. But it's deeper than simple fan service. Fan service was George Lucas putting in someone who sort of looked like Boba Fett in Attack of the Clones in 2002, or the promise of a Batman versus Superman throwdown in the next Zach Snyder flick. Fan service is the camera rotating around all the Avengers as they prepare to do battle. But an old guy, looking really gray, grinning, talking about "home"—that's different. It's a promise that whatever thing we think we've lost has come back.

Ryan Britt is the author of Luke Skywalker Can't Read and Other Geeky Truths forthcoming from Plume (Penguin Random House)on November 24, 2015. He's written for the New York Times, Electric Literature, the Awl, Tor.com, and elsewhere. He lives in New York City. Follow him on Twitter.

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Marguerite Duras in 1972. Photo credit: AP Photo

When I was asked if I wanted to write about The Lover for its 30th anniversary, I said yes immediately, despite having never read it. Most people would assume that I, like many sad young literary women, love this novella. And considering the reverential awe it inspires among my cohort, that's pretty fair.

Published in French in 1984 and in English the following year, The Lover is often called an autobiographical novel, though that's not really what it is. It's more of a memoir, heavy on the memory, which means it's more subjective than factually accurate. Its author, the Marguerite Duras, wrote it when she was 71, after a long career during which she influenced the new French novel, an experimental literary movement that, like French New Wave, rejected traditional narrative concerns like plot and character development. She called the book "shit" and "train-station literature" and said she wrote it while she was drunk. It won France's biggest literary prize and sold over a million copies in more than 40 languages.

It was inevitable that I would eventually read The Lover, if not this week then at least sometime during my tumultuous 20s, a time when sexual awakening is distant enough to not be humiliating, but recent enough to justify a fixation. Before I read it, I understood the book to be about a poor 15-year-old French girl's coming-of-age via an illicit affair with a wealthy 27-year-old Chinese man in pre-war Indochina, which is appealing for several obvious reasons. (The headline for the 1985 People review of the novel: "France's Marguerite Duras Unveils a Secret Love Affair 55 Years Later in Her Sensual Best-Seller.") But wait, there's more: The Lover is one of those rare sensual, secret-love-affair best-sellers that is also stylistically rigorous, or challenging, or at least worthy of the vague but still meaningful literary designation.

I realized I had never encountered a person who didn't love this book until last week, when I went to see a panel discuss it in a performance space on the Upper West Side, also in honor of its 30th anniversary. The participants were as follows: a funny, well-versed French New Yorker editor (female), who played the role of expert; a good-natured younger novelist (female), who sort of played the role of moderator; a postmodern feminist critic and novelist (female), who played the role of die-hard fan; and a respected writer who recently published a novel with a similarly closely autobiographical bent and even more recently was announced as one of the recipients of a very prestigious arts fellowship (male). As in life, the French person seemed like she had it right, and the man was a contrarian hater.

Not easily swayed by what sounds in synopses like soap opera, the hater (Akhil Sharma) criticized Duras to the incredulity of the postmodern feminist critic (Kate Zambreno) and the bemusement of the French New Yorker editor (Françoise Mouly): Duras's language was "enigmatic due to grammar and... awkwardness"; the "lack of wisdom in the reflection" felt "unearned"; he was "not sure what to take away." The younger novelist (Catherine Lacey) was good-natured, but skeptical. The French New Yorker editor was funny and appeared to know much more about Marguerite Duras, The Lover, and everything than anyone else in the room, or anywhere. The postmodern feminist critic was flabbergasted and kept saying that the book (which she said she'd read pretty much every year since she first found it) was "magical," that various aspects of it had just "struck" her.

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That kind of emotional appeal has rarely, if ever, worked on a contrarian (male) hater, but it's in keeping with the popular opinion. People talk about The Lover as if it's not a book but some kind of spiritual experience. The cover of my copy calls it, in a small serif font that is both whimsical and definitive, "THE HYPNOTIC BEST-SELLER." I can see why someone might find it undeservedly hazy, though I think you have to go into the reading experience as a hater to end up feeling that way. The Lover is both very specific and very vague, and it ranges wide in time and perspective. You're just as likely to run into passages on abstract concepts—"desire," "despair"—as you are very concrete sex scenes. Duras switches from first person to third, from the reflection of an older woman to the narrative of the young girl. It requires a couple of reads to get the hang of. But when a funny, well-versed French New Yorker editor agrees with a postmodern feminist critic that part of a book's appeal is simply its "magic," shouldn't you try to understand that special quality for yourself?

Yes, sentimental attachment is also a part of it. Discussion of The Lover is almost always framed with personal narrative: "I was [insert 20-something age here] when I first read..." begin the laudatory essays. Even the good-natured younger novelist started the panel by asking her fellow participants to describe how they felt the first time they'd read it. Reading The Lover becomes an after-the-fact milestone for people, particularly for women. The book is a part of its readers' life stories, immediately and forever associated with whatever point they picked it up, with particular relationships, or breakups, or epiphanies, or sex.

For most of the way, I got it, sort of, but not really. I wasn't hypnotized, though I did think, Oh, great line, many times. I probably wanted to be ambivalent because contrarian haterism is easy. It wasn't necessarily the ending itself—though that is devastating, in a romantic way it embarrasses me to admit—but the culmination of the specificity and vagueness, the abstract concepts and the concrete sex scenes, had changed my mind by the ending. To say The Lover is about an illicit affair does the book a real disservice. Though blessedly short, Duras's "enigmatic" perspective manages to also cover family, childhood, memory, class, pre-war Indochina, etc. If you've read it, you probably know what I'm talking about. If you haven't read it, well, you should.

Lauren Oyler is a staff writer for Broadly. Follow her on Twitter.

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Paris Hilton's debutante dog Tinkerbell died yesterday. In her short 14 years, she managed to become a reality TV star and amass a bigger wardrobe than my ritzy grandma. It seems like only yesterday that she was being featured in Guess fashion ads and getting squeezed into human-like outfits. Tinkerbell's sudden demise was a reminder that, after all the designer collars and pet Xanax, pampered celebrity animals check out the same way their less famous counterparts do.

With Tinkerbell six-feet deep, I began to wonder what other animal celebs have bitten the dust. VICE's sister site Noisey recently revealed that most of the critters who appeared on the covers of albums from my youth are probably in pet heaven. But is it the same for the cute creatures who starred in movies and TV shows?

With fingers crossed, I looked up a few famous animal actors from my childhood. Unfortunately, the prognosis is grim. What follows is a round up of some celebrity animals you definitely remember who are also definitely, definitely dead.

BUDDY FROM 'AIR BUD' (1997)
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Buddy, a Golden Retriever, made his first TV appearance on America's Funniest Home Videos. His owner had trained him how to play various sports, including football, basketball, and hockey. These skills earned him a role in the 1997 film, Air Bud. Fun fact: he also starred as Comet in the sitcom Full House, known for launching the careers of the Olsen twins. In 1997, Buddy had his right hind leg amputated due to synovial cell sarcoma, a form of cancer. He died in his sleep in San Diego on February 10, 1998.

Babe from 'Babe' (1995)

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While no one pig played the titular babe of Babe, the average lifespan of a Yorkshire pig is about 10 years. To film this lovable classic, director Chris Noonan used 48 real Yorkshire pigs and an animatronic double. It's been 20 years. All of these pigs are likely dead.

EDDIE FROM 'FRASIER':

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Moose, a Jack Russell Terrier, was born December 24, 1990. He became famous for playing Eddie Crane, a dog on the TV show Frasier. Moose was so popular that he even appeared on the cover of Entertainment Weekly at one point. He died on June 22, 2006 at the age of 15. His son, Enzo, replaced him on the sitcom, and also starred in the 2001 film My Dog Skip, alongside Frankie Muniz. Enzo died on June 23, 2010.

The Orangutan from 'Dunston Checks In' (1996):

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In Dunston Checks In, the eponymous ape was played by primate-actor Sam the Orangutan. Sammy, as he was often called, was born on December 23, 1989. He was originally a tourist attraction in Miami before starring in commercials, movies, and even Baywatch. In 2004, he retired from show biz and was moved to the non-profit sanctuary, The Center for Great Apes. He died of heart failure on December 24, 2010.

Related: For more on pets, watch our doc 'Backyard Exotics'

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Gidget was born on February 7, 1994. She had an expansive career, including appearances in a number of Taco Bell commercials, GEICO ads, and the movie Legally Blonde. Her trainer, Sue Chipperton, wrote a book about the star chihuahua, titled A Famous Dog's Life. Gidget was euthanized on July 21, 2009 after suffering a stroke.

THE PETS FROM 'HOMEWARD BOUND' (1993):

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In this adventure movie, a Golden Retriever (Shadow), an American Bulldog (Chance), and a Himalayan cat (Sassy), travel on a cross-country voyage after being left a ranch while their owners are on vacation. According to Hollywood Paws, the crew used four Goldens, four bulldogs, and eight Himalayan cats to film all the action. Himalayan cats live an average of 15 years, while Goldens live to about 11, and American bulldogs commonly live between 10 and 15 years. This movie was made in 1993, 22 years ago. These animals are no longer alive.

Follow Zach on Twitter.

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Photo by Flickr user Sean MacEntee

On September 2, 2006, 20-year-old twin brothers Alex and Nicholas Grunke and their friend Dustin Radke were apprehended by Grant County Sheriff's Deputies as they were trying to dig up the body of Laura Tennessen, who had died a week prior from a car accident at the age of 20. Later, their intentions were summarized in a 2008 study in the journal Mortality as follows: "Upon questioning by police, Alexander Grunke explained that the three men wanted to exhume the body so that Nicholas Grunke 'could have sexual intercourse with her.'" Before they arrived at St. Charles cemetery that night, "the men stopped at a nearby Walmart store and purchased condoms 'because Nick wanted to use them when he had sex with the corpse.'"

While the men were charged for damaging cemetery property, a dedicated Wisconsin statute forbidding necrophilia—or attempted necrophilia—did not exist. So instead, prosecutors added the charge of attempted third-degree sexual assault using the provision that the "section applies whether a victim is dead or alive at the time of the sexual contact or sexual intercourse."

The judge, however, was not convinced and removed the sexual assault charge. According to Dr. John Troyer, who wrote the 2008 case examination and serves as the Deputy Director of the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath, the judge was faced with a peculiar dilemma. "Since Laura Tennessen was already dead at the time of the alleged crime and therefore no longer a person before the law, her body was legally recognized as human remains and not as a victim. Had Laura Tennessen died while the crime was being committed, then the attempted sexual assault charges could stand."

Later, the Wisconsin appellate court reversed Judge Curry's decision and the men were eventually tried for attempted sexual assault. But the case highlights something important: The status of dead bodies is fairly unique. They have no agency, so it's not really possible to "hurt" them in the same way one would a living person.

On the one hand, there are very practical reasons why classifying the dead as "persons" in a legal sense is problematic. But on the other hand, considering dead bodies "property" isn't a great option either, since that implies a right of full ownership. Opening the door to allowing legal challenges by the necrophiliac "owners" of bodies requesting that their "property rights" be upheld is but one potential rabbit hole that courts and lawmakers have rightfully resisted descending into.

Many states have struggled to come up with reasonable laws regarding the way we treat dead bodies. Just last February, State Senator Lisa Gladden introduced a bill that would make desecrating human remains a misdemeanor in Maryland—something that isn't currently illegal, despite state laws that forbid grave robbing, trafficking in stolen body parts, and destruction of cemetery property. On the other end of the spectrum, Massachusetts passed a regulation that requires embalmers and funeral directors to "abstain from using profane, indecent, or obscene language while acting in a professional capacity," seemingly so as not to offend the corpses.

There's no need to reinvent the wheel, though. Under centuries old English common law, dead bodies were considered " nullius in bonis" (i.e., no one's property) and basically rendered to the church, with ecclesiastical courts resolving any disputes. However, the US never recognized ecclesiastical courts. Sometime around the end of the 19th Century the idea of "quasi-property" was articulated, and it applies to this day. In the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Shyamkrishna Balganesh summarizes it:

"Quasi-property thus emerged as the American common law term for the possessory or custodial interest that members of a deceased's family had over the deceased's mortal remains for purposes of disposal. The use of the term, and the development of a liability regime, were motivated by the impetus to protect the 'personal feelings' or 'sentiment and propriety' of the next of kin in having the corpse buried. Prosser thus described this idea of a property-like right in the body to be a mere 'fiction likely to deceive no one but a lawyer.' Nonetheless, the fiction had real functional significance, since it enabled relatives to recover damages upon commercial and noncommercial interferences, and located the middle-level principle motivating this right in the idea of possessing the corpse."

The "quasi-property" doctrine described here is quite useful. Some protection from harm does seem sensible—not for the sake of the cadaver, but for the sake of the feelings of family and friends. And there are ways of doing it that are much more legally defensible than Wisconsin's method of applying existing statutes that were passed to protect the living.

The problem is that we live in a society where there are many opinions about what is considered a "dignified" way to treat the dead, and where citizens and lawmakers alike often think it is their place to tell strangers how to behave in this regard—often asking for "protections" where none are appropriate.

Related: VICE visits the Aokigahara Forest, the most popular site for suicides in Japan.

When I put it to human rights lawyer Sarah Kay, her take on it was that popular perceptions of what is and is not OK to do to a corpse is based more on old religious notions than anything else. "Laws referring to necrophilia or mutilation of corpses are laws referring to principles of desecration." Desecration is a moral concept, which basically means that violating a corpse was violating God. "Desecration is tied to morality more than it is tied to sheer legal logic; it is an idea that somehow the respect and honor due to the body while it was alive perseveres in death."

This "I know it when I see it" attitude is often reflected in corpse abuse statutes in other states. Ohio's statute vaguely states that "No person, except as authorized by law, shall treat a human corpse in a way that the person knows would outrage reasonable family sensibilities." Pennsylvania has very similar language. While most people would agree that specific restrictions against necrophilia (like in Nevada, for example) are probably warranted, "reasonable family sensibilities" could mean anything at all and is hard to use as an objective basis for anything really. Embalming, for example—which is allowed and regulated most places—is a highly invasive process that significantly alters the natural appearance of a decaying body. But the process is socially acceptable in America, and morticians are given exemptions from these statutes in order to provide the service. When I asked Troyer how courts navigate what is and isn't "abuse," he told me it ends up being largely a matter of prosecutorial discretion and circumstances.

Take 91-year-old Jean Stevens, a woman in Wyalusing, Pennsylvania, who had someone dig up the bodies of both her dead husband and her twin sister from their respective graves. The bodies were found propped up inside her home by police. When asked about it by the Associated Press, Stevens said she "hates death and could not bear to have the ones she loved in the ground." The county initially removed the bodies, but a few months later, the coroner worked with Stevens to return them as she built an above-ground vault near her house with cases for sealed see-through bags to place them in. At no point during all this was Stevens charged with a crime, even though prosecutors probably could have exercised that option had they wished.

Not all prosecutors look quite so kindly upon wives that simply don't want to let go of their husbands bodies however. For six months in 2013, Kaling Wald kept her husband's body locked in a spare bedroom of their house in Hamilton, Ontario, due to her belief that praying would cause him to be resurrected. She only told their five children, aged 11 to 22, and their seven adult roommates. The body was only discovered when the house went into foreclosure.

Wald's neighbors didn't share the same affection for her that Jean Stevens's neighbors did, and neither did the authorities it seems. A judge agreed to prosecute Wald for " neglect of duty regarding a dead body and offering an indignity to a body," a crime which carries a sentence on par with possession of child pornography. Only at the last minute was this charge dropped with a very stern statement from the judge about "public health concerns."

On the one hand, there is a need for laws governing mistreatment of dead bodies—and in some cases these are lacking. On the other hand, society's views on what is and isn't "dignified" burial leads to rules being made that are overly broad can lead to unfortunate outcomes. Together, these forces create the murky and often contradictory legal landscape that exists today. American views on treatment of the dead have come from a traditionally Protestant point of view, in stark contrast to the rich and varied traditions seen all over the world.

As more and more people from different cultures and different backgrounds move to the US—and as more Americans explore additional options themselves—there will likely be more and more cases of people wishing to forego the traditional burial or cremation choice that have been presented to them. How our society and our laws evolve to accommodate is hard to predict—but it will be interesting to observe.

Follow Simon Davis on Twitter.

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(All Photos by Chris Bethell)

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Yesterday, residents and activists in Clapham, South West London faced down and halted bailiffs sent to evict Trace Newton Ingham, a disabled 56-year-old woman, from her home of 35 years. For Trace, this is a matter of life and death. Her doctors say that the stress caused by eviction attempts such as today's could kill her.

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Suzie

As Suzie, her partner told me, "When she heard from the solicitors that they hadn't managed to get the eviction suspended, her blood pressure just went through the roof and I had to take her to see the doctor. The GP told her that if her blood pressure goes over a certain level—she was way over that yesterday—she's under the severe risk of a stroke or a heart attack."

Trace has a long list of medical problems: back pain, bilateral Achilles tendonitis, equinus deformity, hypertension, acute chemical sensitivity, hyperacusis, visual stress disorder, ataxia vertigo, sleep disorder, migraines, memory problems, ME/PVS, and trimethylaminuria (a rare metabolic disorder), and anxiety stemming from her being the victim of numerous assaults. All of this is exacerbated by the fact that she experiences strong side-effects when she takes her medicine.

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Yesterday's eviction attempt was the culmination of a years long campaign by Lambeth Council to kick Tracie out of her home. Following her story has been a lesson in the inhumanity of the housing crisis and the callousness of the bureaucracies waging it.

When I fist met her in 2012 he told me how she feared being forced to leave her community of friends, who she depends on when she's unwell, and how the council had bizarrely ignored her doctor's advice that, were she to be evicted, any new accommodation would need to take her disabilities into account. She currently has an offer of a new house, which she deems unsuitable.

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Trace is one of Lambeth's last remaining "shortlife" residents. In the 1970s, there were thousands of council-owned houses in London that were too sub-standard to be rented out legally. Councils came to agreements with residents, allowing them to live in shortlife properties for a nominal rent. Essentially, it was a way for councils to wash their hands of houses that they couldn't afford to look after.

Lambeth is the last council to deal with its shortlife housing stock. It is now doing so by kicking people out of what, over several decades, have become much-loved homes. Trace was instrumental in formulating an alternative strategy, which would have seen houses like hers turned into council-owned cooperatives, but Lambeth has been blind to this vision. For the council, what used to be undesirable, run-down properties are now boutique cottages and luxury flats that development sharks can snap them up, redevelop, and sell for huge profit.

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Clapham is a place synonymous with gentrification. Last year, the Brixton Buzz joked on April Fool's day that Brixton was to be renamed "East Clapham." The word evokes images of a thousand blue jeans, brown-brogue, and blazer-wearing estate agents vomiting their salaries up the wall of a faux tiki bar bar on a Friday night. It seems apt that one of London's cruelest dispossession stories should take place here.

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A Lambeth press officer and Simon Matthews

Trace's supporter's were holed up in her house. There were perhaps a hundred or so local people and housing activists standing outside, as well as Simon Matthews, Lambeth's Shortlife housing officer and therefore the man in charge of the eviction. People started shouting at him, asking, "Why are you here?"

"Are you here to gloat?" said one, as Simon stared deep into his smartphone in a vain attempt to ignore the dozens of people shouting at him. It was pretty awkward.

Related: Regeneration Game

Before long he mooched off, but it wasn't long before another hated council bureaucrat turned up—this time a press officer. For a communications man, he was weirdly quiet as people heckled him and asked him if he was happy with what was going on. His answers came as a barely audible mumble about how it was somehow "nothing to do with me."

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Soon, people started clamouring, "Bailiffs! Bailiffs are coming!"

People rushed to block the entrance to Trace's front garden and blocked the path.

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A solitary, large bailiff in a stab vest marched up to attempt to evict the house.

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He had no luck. Like the Spartans at Thermopylae, the eviction resisters used the narrow passage to their advantage—a dozen activists is a lot when they're blocking a path that is two people wide. He quickly gave up on his perfunctory attempt, after bouncing off the activist wall a couple of times, with the police trying to calm everything down.

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The following quarter of an hour was a little tense, as people wondered if there was a larger squad of heavier bailiffs, perhaps moonlighting from bouncer gigs at the nearby Infernos nightclub.

As it turned out, there weren't. Gingerly, victory was declared, for today at least. "This is the true spirit of cooperation" shouted Suzie out of the window—a reference to Lambeth Council's laughably inaccurate branding as the "Cooperative Council." Nobody seemed sure when the bailiffs would come again, and how much notice would be given. People started compiling a list of phone numbers to be quickly contacted in the event of another eviction. Everybody was worried that they might come really early in the morning.

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Plenty of people there had their own story about having to fight to stay in their home. Trace's story may be particularly astonishing, but her situation is far from unique. I asked Julian Hall, of the Lambeth United Housing Co-op, what he made of today's protest and other housing activism like it. "They're filling a vacuum that can't be filled by negotiation or consultation with the council because there is none," he said. "Had the residents been given at least some say in their future, it may not have got to this. Their priorities are not the same as the communities around them."

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Kate Hoey MP (Left) and artist Maggi Hambling (centre) who said the council is "behaving like Jack the Ripper. They're trying to actually murder people in what they're doing".

Vauxhall's four main election candidates—Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem. and Green—were there, showing their support for Trace. The incumbent Labour MP Kate Hoey was more than happy to round on the council which is run by her own party. "I'm ashamed that it's a Labour council," she said. It seemed to be another indication that the housing crisis is becoming politically impossible to sustain.

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Lambeth Council continues to argue that by selling shortlife houses, they can plow the money into maintaining dilapidated council houses. A case like Trace's highlights the shortcomings of trying to solve a housing crisis by trying to play a broken market at its own game, and by valuing homes in pure monetary terms when the cost of property has gone completely berserk. The case begs the pertinent question: Is it really, definitely a great idea to kick someone out of their house for financial gain, if they might die because of it?

Questions like that and stories like Trace's are a reminder of what's really at stake when we talk about the housing crisis.

@SimonChilds13 / @CBethell_photo

Previously:

Labour Is Still Kicking People Out of Their London Homes

Since January, when Mitt Romney officially bowed out of the 2016 presidential race, the assumption hanging over the Republican primary has been that Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, son of a president, and brother of a president, is the runaway favorite to win the party's nomination. Of course, anointing frontrunners eight months before the Iowa Caucuses is a little like naming your child before you've met someone to have it with. But with the Koch Brothers bestowing their papal blessing this week on a candidate that does not share his name with a former White House resident, it might be time to ask if there's a different horse leading the GOP herd.

It's unclear how exactly the Kochtopus plans to spend its promised $889 million in the election, sort of in the way you don't quite know what the supervillain is up to for the first three quarters of a movie. But on Monday, the billionaire brothers gave their first indication of how they might get involved in the 2016 GOP primary, when, according to the New York Times' Nicholas Confessore, David Koch told donors at a fundraising event that Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin would be the Republican nominee, and that the brothers would support him along the way.

Confessore also reported that two people at the event heard David say Walker should be the nominee, although that's been disputed by a spokesperson, on the grounds that David Koch is not officially endorsing a candidate during the primaries. By Tuesday, though, aides for David and Charles Koch had conceded that the brothers might not stay so neutral. According to a report from Politico's Mike Allen, the Kochs are in fact considering jumping into the GOP primary, although aides insisted that they would still audition Jeb Bush, plus anyone else who was interested.

Even if that is true in any more than a nominal sense, it's clear that the Kochs like Walker, and that the cat is in the bag and the bag is in the Wisconsin River. In the meantime, Walker has been swapping the first-place seat with Bush in early 2016 polls, despite having no college degree and not a ton of national name-recognition. With the Kochs' news, it's time to acknowledge that if Walker isn't the GOP favorite, he's at least running even with Bush.

And why shouldn't the Kochs like him? This is Scott Walker, scourge of organized labor, the governor who erased a hundred years of liberalism in a state that gave birth to progressive icon Robert La Follette and the Wisconsin Idea, a part of the University of Wisconsin system's mission that says it will help create and suggest efficient public policy, from the state's budget before being caught in the act. I mean this literally: he tried to erase the "Wisconsin Idea" this year, by taking the relevant language out of his state budget proposal.

Since Walker took over as governor in 2010, his policies have been a case study in the kind of deregulation, tax cuts, and limited government spending that are at the heart of Kochtopus organizational platforms. First is his union-busting, which reached a head in 2011 when his proposed budget repair bill slashed collective bargaining power and take-home pay for state employees. The bill was so offensive to liberals that the state's Democratic legislators literally left Wisconsin to a vote, while pro-union demonstrators mobbed the state house. The legislation ultimately passed, but forced a recall election in 2012—which Walker also managed to survive.

Meanwhile, the Wisconsin economy has taken a nosedive during that same period, some of which has been attributed to Walker's policies. As governor, he turned down federal funding for both broadband infrastructure and high-speed rail transportation, and his record of creating jobs — one of the biggest tenets of his campaign platform — has fallen well short of what he pledged to accomplish, as well as behind that of the rest of the country and Midwest.

Koch organizations have been pulling for Walker all along, playing a major role in helping the Wisconsin governor in all three of his gubernatorial elections, whether through Koch Industries or the Koch-affiliated Tea Party group Americans for Prosperity. Particularly in the collective-bargaining fight, the Kochs played a significant role, with Koch-backed executives working behind the scenes to push Walker into a fight against public employee unions. At one point during the 2011 showdown, Walker was tricked by a prank caller pretending to be David Koch, and revealed just how tight he and the billionaire really are.

As he gears up for 2016, Walker also appears to be feeding off support from both the Establishment and the Tea Party, making him one of the only Republican contenders who can appeal to the two distinct wings of the party's base. Some of that stems from the fact that Walker has made his name as an economic warrior—the clarion call of the center-right—while still taking hardline stances on abortion, gay marriage, and, well, whatever else seems necessary.

On immigration, he made a particularly hard-right turn Monday, telling Glenn Beck: "In terms of legal immigration, how we need to approach that going forward is saying, the next president and the next Congress need to make decisions about a legal immigration system that's based on, first and foremost, on protecting American workers and American wages."

Walker's attack on legal immigration strays from his previous comments about the issue—a shift that even conservative commentators seem baffled by. "This can be seen as both a flip-flip and a demagogic pander," the Daily Caller's Matt Lewis wrote Tuesday, expressing what has been the typical reaction. "This only serves to confirm deep-seated suspicions about the GOP. But branding be damned — there are votes to get!" Former Walker strategist Liz Mair, tweeted that she was glad she no longer had to defend both "a) that level of policy gymnastics or b) that specific dubious policy."

Still, if Walker has, in fact, managed to straddle the fault-line between Tea Party and Establishment — and can stay straddling it without being torn in half — then that would be a major milestone for an increasingly bisected Republican party. Even so, would it be enough to beat Hillary? David Koch thinks so, and he's the guy with the checkbook.

Follow Kevin Lincoln on Twitter.

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Loretta Saunders, seen in a handout photo.

Loretta Saunders' two former roommates admitted Wednesday that they murdered her.

In a surprise move the day after jury selection finished, Blake Leggette and Victoria Henneberry entered guilty pleas.

Minutes later, Judge Josh Arnold found the pair guilty of murder.

Leggette went first, pleading guilty to first-degree murder, meaning he will serve an automatic 25 years in prison. Henneberry then pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, which carries a 10-to-25 year jail sentence.

The pair will be sentenced next Wednesday.

Loretta's family quickly left the Halifax courthouse after the judgment. They briefly told media outside they were happy with the decision.

Saunders, a 26-year-old Inuk student who was researching the national crisis of missing and murdered First Nations women, disappeared on February 13, 2014 in Halifax.

Her family in Labrador travelled to Halifax to search for her. Police found her body hundreds of kilometres away almost two weeks later, in a snow-covered hockey bag along the side of the Trans Canada Highway in New Brunswick.

During the preliminary inquiry into the case, some family members were included on the witness list and couldn't enter the courtroom, making the process more painful for them, they told media.

When video evidence was screened during the inquiry, one of Loretta's relatives stood and made a sudden move toward the bench where the two accused were sitting. Her relatives comforted each other as the man was removed from court.

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Chris Swain swimming the Gowanus. Photos by the author

Growing up, my dad would say that if any part of your body touched the Gowanus Canal, you'd glow in the dark. The waterway that runs nearly two miles through South Brooklyn into the Hudson River and the Atlantic Ocean is an environmental nightmare, an EPA-declared " Superfund" site in the backyard of America's glitziest metropolis. The Gowanus has been turned murky, polluted, and even carcinogenic by decades of combined sewer overflow (CSO) and dumping; on the bottom of the canal sits a layer of gunk that Gowanus aficionados call "ten feet of black mayonnaise."

Needless to say, it's not a very nice waterway in which to swim, but on Wednesday afternoon, that's exactly what Christopher Swain did in front of a crowd of New Yorkers and members of the press.

As Swain, a 46-year-old environmental activist from Massachusetts, descended into the water, someone began to chant, "S-T-D," referring to rumors that anyone swimming in the river could contract gonorrhea, which Swain said he wasn't scared of. He has swam in rivers including the Hudson, Columbia, and Charles to prove a point: that we shouldn't be treating our waterways like this. So on Earth Day—and against the EPA's wishes—he chose one of America's dirtiest canals to bring attention to his cause.

Andrea Parker, the executive director of the Gowanus Canal Conservancy, told me that one of her main concerns right now was development. Over the past few years, the Gowanus neighborhood, like many parts of Brooklyn, has gone from an industrial playground to a real estate gem, with dozens of shiny new buildings going up everywhere. And that demand, of course, makes the need to this damn thing more urgent. "That's 700 toilets we now have to worry about," Parker said, pointing to a waterfront condo nearby.

Before jumping in at the end of Degraw Street, Swain told reporters that "it was like swimming into a dirty diaper." He donned a drysuit, covered his face in water-resistant oil, put a cap on his hair, and stuck goggles around his eyes. He looked like he was going 20,000 leagues under the sea, except we were all watching this guy jump into a literally shitty canal. "So... how do you feel, Chris?" was probably not the best question to ask at this point.

Throngs of onlookers lined the bridges that overlook the canal to watch the swimmer's progress. But the event was delayed—to decontaminate afterward, he would need to have a bunch of bleach poured on him, and city officials were unwilling to let him do that on public land for liability reasons, so he needed to find a private landowner who would let him clean up. This was tricky, as he later told me—one business owner backed out on him—but he eventually got permission from Whole Foods.

All of this meant the swim was delayed for an hour and a half, which led to even more people showing up. Two drones flew above, while a reporter used a selfie stick to track herself and the race to get the best shot of the courageous, GoPro-fitted environmentalist. During his swim, an assistant on a canoe swam beside him and collected water samples along the way.

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Swain prepares for his swim

Two-thirds of a mile and about 20 minutes later, Swain decided to stop the swim because of health and safety concerns from city officials; a storm was approaching. Even his incomplete attempt broke a record: No one had ever swam the entire length of the canal, let alone two-thirds of a mile. He emerged onto the Whole Foods parking lot to a horde of cameras, covered in what looked like grease. Again, "So... how do you feel, Chris?" was probably not the best question to ask.

"If New York really is the greatest city in the world, part of our responsibility of our waterways is to show that even in this place, we're great, too," he told reporters. "Instead of paving it and pretending it can go away, why don't we make something out of it? Why don't we clean it up so it is a jewel and a diamond so people all over the world know, 'They turned the biggest mess in North America, the dirtiest waterway on the continent, into the cleanest way.'

"I'm saying we can do that," he continued.

After getting out, Swain showed me how much grease he had on him. Taking his gloves, he wiped it on the fence to show a streak of muck. Then I asked him some questions.

VICE: So what did the water taste like?
Chris Swain: It tastes like mud, poop, sand, detergent, oil, gas, and then that taste in your mouth after you have a green drink. Not good. It's really cloudy, and about 50 degrees. I can feel it on my gloves and boots. To decontaminate, I'll be getting hosed down, and dumping a bucket of bleach on my head. I washed my mouth out with hydrogen peroxide along the route.

"The weirdest thing about the water here is that you can feel the greasiness on your gloves."

What was this canal's water like, compared to the Hudson and Charles rivers, which you've also swam in?
The weirdest thing about the water here is that you can feel the greasiness on your gloves. And you can't see your own gloves in the water because there is so much goop. That happens—like when I swam in the Columbia River, the water is like that because it has so much rock dust in it. I'm used to that situation. But up by the Flushing Tunnel, you can see foam. That's not seafoam. That's foam from grease and fats that are in the storm drain, basically getting emulsified and foamed up when they're in here. At the bottom, you can feel the goop. "Black mayonnaise" really is an apt thing to call it. The Hudson River, you can feel the bottom, but it doesn't feel like that. It's like black whip cream.

Related: Watch our documentary about the island of garbage floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean

Now that all of these developments are going up, do you think that the pressure is on the city to clean it up is because of that?
This is some of the most expensive real estate on the planet. Right? And we're seeing pressure. Here's one way to think about it: The EPA is responsible for the mud, and the city is responsible for all the plumbing and all the runoff. For the city, I'd say, "You're doing great, but just keep going." Let's just make sure we redefine clean. Let's define the finish line, let's change the finish line to it being clean enough to swim every day. And there are three reasons for that. One, that's what we need. Two, there's actually a scientific standard for that. And three, that puts it on a human scale. Everyone understands what that means, even if they're in kindergarten, right?

What's your ideal vision of the canal?
I think it'd have soft sides, no more bulkheads. Parks and riparian buffer zones; every development would be required to do it. Plant all of these roofs with rain gardens or vegetable or flower gardens—capture the rain. Fix all the plumbing issues around here, and map all of the ghost springs and streams that used to come in here. Daylight them. Right now, these springs are paved over, and they're connected to the sanitary sewer system. Disconnect them, and send them back into the canal where they used to be. You've got fresh, real clean water inputs. Every dead end street should have a street end park, and there should be incentives to include things like Whole Foods, which basically made a storm garden. They're catching the stormwater that's coming off the property.

So in terms of getting this shit cleaned up, what's in the works right now?
The EPA is putting half a billion dollars from potentially liable companies and their successor companies. That money is going to getting rid of 600,000 cubic yards of muck from the canal by the mid 2020s. They're gonna do it in three sections, they're going to incinerate the sludge because there's so much coal tar residue that it's practically flammable. So it's gonna be a trash energy source. That'll be the muck. Then they're gonna cap what's left. Imagine a ten- to 20-foot layer, anywhere where you are, of sludge. Get that out. Then, cap it. There's probably stuff way down, but the sludge is gone now. The black mayonnaise is gone.

Then it'll be like a normal riverbank, with rocks and sand that fish will like. The reason the water is so dirty, besides the stuff that's dumped in and bubbly, is the plumbing issues. More than half an inch of rain overwhelms the system, because storm water systems share the pipes in the sewer system—the sewer system can't handle it and so it vents to the nearest waterway. Well, this is the nearest waterway. So then you've got a problem.

Chris Swain is going to try to swim the entire canal again at a later date.

Follow John Surico on Twitter.

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A screen shot from 'LEGO Jurassic World'

If you've never been fascinated by dinosaurs at any point in your life, you never had a childhood. It's really that simple. That these monstrous (but not always), terrifying (just some of the time), unbelievable (except, y'know, they lived) creatures walked the Earth blew my young mind. I can still picture the first dinosaur book I got, albeit in the state it was when I last saw it: held together with tape, its corners all beaten up, the occasional tear running through an illustration of a Hypsilophodon. I went on to own freaking loads of them, some for kids and others completely impenetrable for the eight-year-old me—but I still adored them, poring over the pages, drinking in the imagery, imagining what it'd be like to stand beside one of these incredible beasts for real.

And then Jurassic Park happened and became ground zero for a whole new wave of dinosaur madness. I'd grown up on 1988's The Land Before Time, the Dinobots from Transformers, and VHS recordings of Ray Harryhausen movies. When Steven Spielberg's CGI-enhanced film adaptation of Michael Crichton's (considerably more violent) 1990 novel, a prehistoric spin on his own Westworld story, came out in 1993, I thought I was over my obsession with tyrannosaurs and ceratopsians. Of course, I was wrong. The film was amazing—hell, it still is. Sit a kid down in front of it for the first time and their eyes go as wide as saucers, their mouth as open as Tim and Lex's own when face to face with the Park's resident T-Rex.

Being the 1990s, of course there were numerous video game takes on Jurassic Park, and its two sequels of 1997 and 2001. Some were pretty decent, given the frankly awful track record of movie-to-game conversions. A point-and-click affair for Sega's Mega-CD actually dipped into Crichton's novel for narrative inspiration, whereas the Mega Drive's platforming take on the film's story gave the player the option to control a velociraptor (cinema-proportioned, rather than the real-life turkey sized sort) instead of Sam Neill's Dr. Grant character. Naturally, playing as the dinosaur was the right way to see the game through. And clearly Cheshire-based developer Traveller's Tales was paying attention.

That's the studio behind the forthcoming LEGO Jurassic World game, due out on multiple platforms in June to coincide with the fourth movie in the series, the Chris Pratt-starring Jurassic World. Traveller's Tales has a long history of working with the plastic bricks manufacturer, with their first LEGO-meets-cinematic-IP crossover being 2005's LEGO Star Wars. I've come to admire these LEGO games a great deal—much like last year's The LEGO Movie, they tend to arrive with enough subtle humor of grown-up appeal that a parent can play through them in co-op company with an infant-school kid. Of particular note was 2013's LEGO Marvel Superheroes, a genuinely charming collision of the comic company's biggest stars and attractively blocky aesthetics. (I have to say though, running on PS4, Jurassic World is by far the most handsome LEGO game TT has made, to date, and its dynamic weather is a lovely extra in the looks department.)

Related: The Secret History of the Cabbage Patch Kids

At a preview session in the center of London, I got my hands on four stages of LEGO Jurassic World, and pardon me while I get a little enthusiastic for a second: oh my, I just want to play more of it, like, right now. The gameplay is much like previous LEGO games, a mix of light combat and gentle puzzle solving where the solution usually entails breaking something apart to use its pieces in some new game-progression formation. But, and this is the important part: it's Jurassic Park. It has the theme tune, and everything. I play through the sequence (from the first film) where the T-Rex bursts through its enclosure (yes, the lawyer gets eaten, even when rendered in LEGO), and then control the gas jeep as (Laura Dern's) Dr. Ellie Sattler flees the scene with the injured mathematician Ian Malcolm (played in the movies by Jeff Goldblum). It's ace. In another part of the game, I control Sattler in seeking out ingredients to perk up a poorly triceratops. And once the triple-horned giant's back on her feet, I get to play as her.

Seriously, playing as a triceratops is way more fun than running around as a little LEGO person, at least in the short term. And TT is promising 20 playable dinosaurs across the game's two island settings of Islas Nublar and Sorna—including the T-Rex, which you can later take control of during that Jeep pursuit. There will be 100 playable human characters, too, drawn from all four movies. I also got to see one Lost World level, where the teenage gymnast Vanessa leads her adult companions across the rooftops of buildings overrun with raptors. It's surprisingly tense for a LEGO game, and I can easily imagine the series's youngest fans being shaken by its jump scares—even though the fiends in question are just toys, really.

I sat down with Tim Wileman, associate producer at Traveller's Tales, to learn a little more about the making of what might just become my favorite LEGO video game of all.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/VDfsUO_KPkE' width='560' height='315']

'LEGO Jurassic World', gameplay trailer

VICE: Do you think that the Jurassic element of this title is going to bring a whole bunch of new players to your LEGO series?
Tim Wileman: I think it's a game that not only fans of the Jurassic Park franchise, but also gamers in general, have wanted for a while now. It's a proper, authentic LEGO Jurassic World-slash-Park game.

Well, as authentic as an entirely fictional thing made out of bricks can be.
Exactly. We've stayed as close to the source material as we can. I think that'll attract some interest. This has been a fantastic collaboration, and everyone involved has understood each other. It's been a joy to work with all of our partners, it really has.

I found the Lost World level a little, well, scary frankly, for kids. And LEGO games are for kids, so what's the deal there?
Yeah, it is a little scary, and dark. We don't want to shy away from the tension and the atmosphere of the original trilogy, because that's a good part of the reason why they were so successful. But what we do is balance that fear with humor, with comedy value, like we have done with all of our games. And that might be something very subtle, like a smiley face or a wink, or it might be something more slapstick. But it's about finding that balance, and taking the edge off. For example, with the dinosaurs in the game, we treat them like pets, really. As you play through the game, you'll see how they all have personalities, which softens things slightly. But we do want to have thrills and spills in there, in the process.

[body_image width='960' height='540' path='images/content-images/2015/04/23/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/23/' filename='lego-jurassic-world-lets-you-play-as-the-dinosaurs-sold-131-body-image-1429786038.jpg' id='48905']

A screen shot from 'LEGO Jurassic World'

And you have the original movie voice recordings in the game—that's definitely Laura Dern I'm hearing when I'm diving into triceratops shit. But there has to be new lines, too. So what's the studio done there, to expand on the movie script?
We are using the original voice over where we can, but we're talking about a film that was made over 20 years ago where audio techniques were very different to how they are now. The recordings simply weren't as good then as they would be today, so where we can use them we have, but we've also had original dialogue created for the gameplay. We've brought Mr. DNA back, and he'll talk you through a lot of cool stuff in the game, and provide educational tips on the dinosaurs. So we want to create this authentic experience, as much as we can.

It's interesting, to me at least, that you're putting this educational material in there. This game could be the equivalent of my first dinosaur book, to a kid today.
Well, dinosaurs are real, and we're still learning about them every day, how they lived and how they evolved. So it was nice to add this extra element. It's not going to be rammed down players' throats—it's there if you want it, and you can take it or leave it.

Was there no temptation to update the representation of the dinosaurs, from how they were in the movies to how they're generally seen as appearing today? A lot more feathers, basically.
I know that the scientific knowledge on dinosaurs has evolved a lot, and we get that, but we want to deliver this authentic Jurassic Park experience. If we put a feathered velociraptor in there, I think it might raise too many eyebrows. We want to stay close to the source material, and do it justice. We want to do a proper job on the original trilogy and the new fourth film, which is going to be amazing by the way.

I suppose some of these dinosaurs are iconic villains, really.
Exactly, so with the T-Rex, we've tried to give her a personality that emphasizes that. The raptors are really cool in the game, and they're going to deliver a lot of laughs. Of course they're serious, too, but I'm lucky to work with such an amazing animation team, and they've really brought these inanimate LEGO objects to life, which is really cool.

The most recent LEGO game I've played, before this one, is the third Batman title, Beyond Gotham, which I found rather over fiddly, with too many costumes per character and, honestly, some confusing level design that dragged on. But Jurassic World already feels more streamlined than that, simpler, in a good way.
I think we have possibly, in a direct comparison sense, gone for a more "snackable" approach to these sections, rather than larger, expansive levels. That doesn't mean this new game is any smaller, and we have the hubs too, which are vast and full of content, like the dinosaur customization tool. (Oh yeah, you can create your own dinosaur from pieces of the "proper" ones, if toying with nature is your thing.) Each level is made up of several small sections, but they have you progressing through each story very comfortably. We want this game to cover as much of the series content as possible. I think the feeling is that this game is more old school, gameplay-wise, which I personally prefer.

LEGO Jurassic World is released in June for just about every system under the sun.

Follow Mike on Twitter.

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The new Occupy movement is up and running in Montreal. Photo by Matt Joycey.

In an effort to breathe new life into the somewhat dwindling anti-austerity movement, nearly 100 students have set up a makeshift campsite outside a Montreal CÉGEP school.

In Quebec, protests against the provincial Liberal government's austerity measures have been becoming smaller yet increasingly creative, with events like a non-mixed feminist march, the UQAM occupation—which led to violent mayhem and the arrest of more than a dozen students—and a "die-in" in opposition to health-care cuts that would threaten access to abortion.

But CÉGEP de Saint Laurent students—most between 16 and 20 years old—claim these methods are no longer cutting it, and have opted to build a more "permanent" symbol of their dissent. As of Thursday, more than 60 tents lined the school grounds.

"It's another way to protest and get our message across because, while the protest marches work, there are fewer and fewer people attending, and we get pepper sprayed all night," said one student named Alex. "This is a new way of doing things."

Channeling 2011's Occupy Wall Street movement, the students have baptised the movement Occup' Toute (Occupy Everything) and have written a manifesto detailing their motivations.

"We are on the ruins of a society," it outlines in French. "Our minds become stranded on the reef of capitalism and are broken and eroded before they deteriorate into a bottomless pit."

Taking on a heavy mandate, the students are now trying to maintain the momentum of a province-wide protest movement that's slowed down considerably since the student strikes began to settle.

So far, the group has shied away from mainstream media, proclaiming that such coverage is biased. They've also decided against the appointment of a leader or spokesperson. Student Andra explained that this is because they are all protesting for a variety of "individual reasons."

Personally, Andra said she's there to "continue resisting against austerity measures and fossil fuel extraction," but also to fight "the political, media and police repression that's taking place right now."

"I'm doing this because the system really pisses me off and I would like to wreck it," said Alex. "But for now I can't do anything about it, so I'm trying to live alternatively."

Since the first tents were pitched on April 20, the site has become increasingly sophisticated and now includes a first-aid tent and a fully functional kitchen. Floria explained that, through donations and dumpster diving, the group has been able to provide protesters with three meals a day "and occasional snacks."

The campground is governed by a code of conduct, which dictates that all discourse be feminized or gender neutral, that all social interactions reflect consent culture and that defined spaces be respected. Campground dwellers must also keep the space free of discriminatory language, mass media, police, security guards, authority figures, alcohol, drugs and even tobacco.

So far, the school administration has tolerated the impromptu tent city but said they're planning more meetings with the students, who continue to attend their classes.

Police have also been keeping their distance, and while they've driven by, they have not confronted the students. "Cops are not allowed on CÉGEP grounds unless the administration calls them," said Floria. "It's a private property."

The students say they plan on occupying the site for about three weeks, or at least until the May Day protest.

"We're going to stay as long as we want, really," said Alex.

Follow Brigitte Noel on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

London's 24-hour supermarkets witness everything. The drunks, the City boys, the families, the men getting weirdly aggressive when a member of staff tells them razors are out of stock. In a bid to learn everything there is to know about the nature of our capital—as well as the strange world of the all-night supermarket—I decided to stay in one for 20 hours, specifically the ASDA in Clapham.

When my alarm wakes me up at 3:15 AM on the day, I'm absolutely raging. The taxi I had to get because I'm traveling halfway across London at 3:15 AM arrives ten minutes early and my iPhone starts quacking, which only angers me more. I forgo a shower and leave. I take my dictaphone in a bid to feel like Agent Cooper talking to Diane, as well as a phone, a massive bottle of water, and notepad.

I gaze out the taxi window with the kind of hazy head you had when your parents woke you up in the middle of the night to go on a budget flight. But this man wasn't my dad and I wasn't going to Gran Canaria to argue with my sister about who'd get the top bunk.

Here's what happened:

4:20 AM: I arrive and decide to strategically split the ASDA into realms. I'll explore one realm per hour to ensure I stay curious, because there's only so long you can stare at a Muller Corner without losing your entire sense of self-worth. No matter what happens, I tell myself, do not get greedy. Do not take it all at once.

4:41 AM: Sophie Ellis Bextor's "Music Gets the Best of Me" is playing as I peruse the fruit. It really does get the best of me, Sophie, I think, because music journalism pays very poorly. I wonder what's happened to her. Does she still play V Festival? Does she have a bargain bin get-fit DVD? No doubt I'll find out once I make it to the entertainment realm.

4:49 AM: Fruit is dull. I leave fruit and enter meat.

4:50 AM: It's absolutely freezing. I do not want to stay in here long.

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5:12 AM: I stare at a huge pack of tiny withered wings. It's only £2.85 [$4.28]. I'm fairly certain the red tips are something to do with the bleed time being too short and the neck not being cut properly. It's probably because it's five in the morning but I get a lump in my throat and stare at their webbed edges for ten minutes, stifling tears.

5:48 AM: I really need to pee. Why aren't there any signs for the toilet in my immediate line of sight? ASDA's been a thing since 1949; why haven't they worked out a more intuitive navigational system yet? I realize I've never been this concerned with signage.

6:15 AM: A young guy restocking the meat section grins and says good morning. Everyone is restocking. He and the other workers all seem truly happy, despite the fact they're working alone, without really getting to chat to anyone. Which is actually maybe why they all seem so happy.

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6:29 AM: I have to find the toilet. My lower abdomen is bulging under my tracksuit waistband.

6:32 AM: The toilets are locked. This is no good. The security guard looks me up and down suspiciously. I realisz he's been watching me wander around the meat section for two hours on the cameras. He asks what I'm looking for. The toilet, I say. The disabled one is open, he replies.

6:38 AM: I'm in the disabled toilet. I get the feeling that something unspeakable has happened in here.

6:43 AM: Two hours in. After peeing I walk towards the entrance to get some air. The security guard is waiting for me with a woman. This is bad. He asks to check my backpack. His face is hard. There's nothing in my bag besides my dictaphone, water, a notebook and a battered box of Tampax. His eyes narrow. "I'm writing a novel set in an ASDA," I shrug. "I've come to soak in the atmosphere." He suddenly seems pleased. If I need anything else, I should just ask him, he says.

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6:47 AM: I pace around the car park, taking in the grounds. Two hours down and I'm not bored at all. I'm stimulated, in fact.

7:24 AM: ASDA FM is a very effective piece of consumer engineering. It plays all day long, vaguely familiar pop songs spattered with ads for products in-store. "Everything's great," it's saying. "You're safe here. Keep humming along to that bit in that Hozier song and nobody can hurt you. Buy some Kenco. It's on offer."

7:47 AM: A very large man holding a packet of Weetos tells someone on the phone: "I'll fucking take her out again, then." I really hope he means for dinner.

7:59 AM: I'm aborting the whole keep-to-one-realm-an-hour idea because I'm inquisitive and greedy and don't want to throw away another 50 minutes staring at parked cars when I could be learning about everything else ASDA has to offer. I'm going up the elevator.

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8:02 AM: I'm greeted by a cut-out of Robin Williams and feel sad. I look across at the other Night at the Museum cutouts. It's one of my most hated movie franchises of all time. I see Rebel Wilson dressed in a policeman's costume—presumably in some kind of comedy sidekick cop role—and frown involuntarily.

8:16 AM: I enter the realm of clothing.

8:28 AM: George actually has some decent clothes, you know. They need better PR.



8:40 AM: Why the fuck do girls' clothes all have butterflies on them? Butterflies are gross. They're just tarted-up moths. They feast on feces and rotting corpses. Dwell on that the next time you buy your niece a PJ top with a diamanté butterfly on it.

8:41 AM: I decide to count all the items of clothing with butterflies on them. I get to 20-something and lose count because the tops all look the same. It's between 40 and 50.

9:16 AM: A five-year-old cries: "Mom, no! They're minging shorts!" I laugh. The mom scowls at me. I apologize.

9:32 AM: A bunch of moms start squabbling over who had the last age 9-10 green primary school dress first. Apparently it was just on a rail, so a mom took it. But another mom—the initial mom—had put it there. It was her rail.

"That's mine, I'll thank you very much," initial mom said in manner which I felt to be very unnecessary and fairly abrasive. "Alright. I didn't know..." second mom retorted, sassily. A third mom became riled by the rudeness of the first mom and a three-way argument erupted. I am desperate to stick my beak in too but decided against it. I bid second mom a silent good luck and move on.

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10:19 AM: I come back to those primary school dresses and try a few on. They look great, to be honest. I wonder if it's creepy to buy one.

10:31 AM: "Superstition" by Stevie Wonder comes on. I decide to start doing my kegels to the beat. Hello, summer!


10:34 AM: May as well maximize productivity so continue kegels through Michael Jackson's "Beat It." I reach 350 and tire.

10:51 AM: It's much easier to do this during waking hours without feeling like a criminal. No one cares. If nothing else, so far I've learnt that if you want to spend a whole day hanging out in an ASDA, you can. I mean, trust me, you don't want to. But, you know, could.

11:14 AM: Feeling pretty flirty now, I decide to see what George offers in the way of sexy underwear.

11:16 AM: More fucking butterflies. Seriously, product designers: the number of women who actually like them is about 0.05 percent of whatever figure you've been throwing around. That ugly butterfly print stationery in Paperchase will always be on the sales table. ALWAYS.

11:21 AM: I rank least sexy underwear. They all have something placed on the crotch. In descending order: Betty Boop "You had me at hello" crotch, Spongebob Squarepants crotch, You + Me Bear "Tatty Teddy" crotch.

11:39 AM: I go to the candle aisle and spend half an hour smelling every scented candle and taking notes until I feel really light-headed.

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12:20 PM: According to the cards on offer, between the ages of eight and nine is when little girls are developed enough to make the move from glitter and flowers to obsessing over One Direction. They've picked a photo of the band looking like the sort of cheeky blokes you bring round your mum's who spend ten minutes in the kitchen, winking, and joking about her age, before taking you upstairs.

12:31 PM: "Party in the USA" is playing. I throw my hands up in the knowledge that I'm going to be OK. Because I'm not even a bit bored yet. I could do this all day.

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12:42 PM: I flip through the posters and stop at the Vamps. I feel I've heard that name before but can't be sure. Honestly, who are they? I text a friend who I'm pretty certain will know. "I'm convinced they've never released any music," he replies. "They are just a press shot."

12:45 PM: A mom comes up behind me and says, "You're the second person since I've been stood here to photograph that poster. Who are they?" I don't know, I tell her. I really don't.

12:53 PM: I stare at the 1D poster. Christ, Zayn really was magnificent.

1:12 PM: I look at the engraved pen my mom gave me the Christmas after I said I wanted to write for a living. I wonder what she'd think of her A* student now, crouched over Horrible History books, writing Zayn a haiku.

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1:26 PM: None of ASDA's books engage me. Except maybe Tom Jones' one, his smiley, craggly face peering out from the darkness. "The life, the legend, the voice—laid bare," it promises. I realize there's not a lot I want to learn about Tom Jones that I don't already know, so I leave him there to gaze out at the opposite row of shelves, alone, until someone takes him home and leaves him on a table next to the loo, unread, for the next 30 years.

1:48 PM: I find the iPads. They aren't connected to the internet. I take out my iPhone for a quick treat. It's already on 65 percent battery. I put it back in my pocket.

1:51 PM: Absolutely raging about my iPhone battery. The amount of times I plug that thing in during the day it may as well be a fucking landline.

1:54 PM: We need to stand up and be counted, re: battery. There is something that must be done.

2:01 PM: I've been buying Diet Cokes half from fatigue, half for something to do, and the caffeine has me wired. My right eye is pulsing. I'm buzzing and pissy, which is a horrendous combination of things.

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2:04 PM: I was planning to save the ASDA café for much later in the afternoon, but I need a boost.

2:06 PM: Everyone here seems to be a freelancer. Why have I only just learnt about this place? Why have I been spending £2.60 [$4.00] on a coffee every hour like a dickhead when I could have come here and worked for half the price?

2:28 PM: I take a break for more food. It's sunny outside so I stroll around the car park, a free agent. I drink a soy milkshake and relax. I look around and people seem to know each other here; this ASDA is a hub for community spirit that would otherwise be lost in somewhere as soulless as Clapham. A place for people who might not speak to many people during their day to touch base and share experiences. I'm slightly embarrassed by how elated this makes me feel.

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2:39 PM: I find a garden display out front. Its beauty is unparalleled (in the context of greeting cards and training bras decorated with butterflies). I long to cook on that barbecue and drink with my family. I take a picture. This will come in handy later during my darker moments.

2:56 PM: I text some unemployed friends to see if they want to come here to drink with me. "Meet Clapham ASDA?" No one's fussed.

3:17 PM: I'm on a downer after seeing how nice the weather is, so I head to the magazine aisle and read all my favorites back to back. Seriously, though, it feels like I've been in here a week.

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4:39 PM: There is a magazine for every niche interest. Two tractor magazines. We're in London. London.

5:01 PM: You know the best thing about niche mags? They don't have to compete so they can actually have a laugh with the cover lines. "Ladies ploughing" from Tractor and Machinery and "What flicks your switch?" from Scootering are my two favorites.

5:11 PM: I look at Carp Talk and remember when a guy from a carp-based magazine came in to talk at my uni. I smile. Then remember I paid to do a masters in magazine journalism. I stop smiling.

5:19 PM: I go back near the entrance to stare outside.


5:41 PM: I realize I've been stood here for about 20 minutes. An attractive couple in denim shorts walks in. "It's horrible in here," the girl shivers. "Let's just get these drinks and get out," her boyfriend agrees. I want to smack them.


5:58 PM: I buy some ciders, put them in my backpack and go out to the barbecue again. I want to drink them but can't risk being asked to leave. Plus I really hate getting told off. Why is it summer weather and why am I here?

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6:05 PM: There are no hidden cameras. I quickly drain a couple of tins, staring at the barbecue from behind the fence. This metaphor for my whole predicament is not lost on me.

6:22 PM: There's a "chimenea" in here, too. My dad wanted one of those. I think about my dad and life and death and family and it makes my chest ache. I think about stealing the chimenea for ages.

(I would later pinpoint this half hour as the beginning of the end.)

6:47 PM: I feel anxious. I sit on the bench by the entrance next to some people from a gym who are trying to flog some crap. The guy starts flirting with me but I'm incapable of human interaction. I pretend to be on my phone but that doesn't stop him. He keeps circling back around and whispering. It's too much. He gives me his business card. I stand up to go. He is the worst; he has made me leave the solace of the car park. My Eden.

6:59 PM: I go back inside to sit down and collect my thoughts. I head to the top floor to look out over the store. That the Script song about the guy waiting on the girl is playing.

7:13 PM: I see a woman reaching for a box of Dolce Gusto capsules at the very top of the shelving of additional stock. She'll never reach it without calling for help; it's a few feet taller than her. It makes me angry she's waving her arm at it. It's "Lungo" she wants. I notice there is a line of "Lungo" midway down. Why hasn't she seen this? I want to call out and tell her. Make her stop waving. I stand up and hiss through a gap in the glass. She turns around and looks at me blankly. She hasn't heard. I scream instructions. She reaches for "Lungo" and walks away.

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7:29 PM: I'm on a real caffeine slump and feel awful, so buy some Wellwoman Boost "Fizz" because my mum recommended it once.

7:46 PM: There's a Femfresh deodorant spray. What is 2015? My vagina is an armpit is a vagina is an armpit is a vagina.

7:47 PM: I wonder if I need to be doing something more fulfilling with my life. Not just the supermarket thing, but in general. I feel anxious.

7:57 PM: This task is more difficult than I thought it'd be.

8:13 PM: Apparently I've just made a note and forgotten about it instantly: "Lynx Africa. Problematic?"

8:15 PM: I realize I've spent the last hour aimlessly pacing the store like a distressed labrador. I'm barely looking at anything any more. I pick up food and drink, pay for it, and consume it, circling around again. Time is moving so slowly. I NEED to go home. For my health.

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8:31 PM: I go back to the café. It's shut. I stare at the barricade of tiny baby highchairs put there to stop people going in.

9:00 PM: I realize I've been staring at them for half an hour and set myself some tasks to keep my mind ticking over until I can finally leave. I need to stop thinking about ~ things ~. I set myself the task of finding the most disgusting food.

9:06 PM: There is so much stuff here. Someone buys everything in this shop. Every weird, unappetizing or useless product is here because someone out there keeps buying it.

9:29 PM: Teacakes and Snowballs are disgusting aren't they? The sort of crap treat your nan would get from the cupboard every time you'd go around and you'd always say no so they'd keep making that quarter-yearly trip out of the cupboard for years.

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9:32 PM: Princes Bacon Grill. Ingredients: Pork 43 percent, Mechanically Recovered Chicken (16 percent). How the fuck do you mechanically recover a chicken?


9:38 PM: Princes Lunch Tongue. That one's just tongue. Princes has a lot to answer for.


9:41 PM: Food is absolutely foul. The more you think about it, the more abhorrent it becomes. We should all just eat, like, an apple when we really need it and nothing else. I can't believe all these disgusting products will soon be in the bodies circling the aisles.


9:50 PM: Here's something I've always wanted to know: what's in dog food? I find the aisle and pick up a can of ASDA own brand Hero "Select": steamed turkey and rice in gravy. Its lettering is in silver Clintons font, which gives it a real air of quality. The ingredients read: Meat and animal derivatives 36 percent including 4 percent turkey. What animals? What derivatives?

9:53 PM: To further my investigation I pick up what I believe to be a respectable household name—Pedigree—just in case ASDA's own brand had some cheap, nasty practices going on. The story is the same: 36 percent animal derivatives and 4 percent named meat. Four is the magic number.

10:0 3PM: I return to the chicken wings because I want to cry. I want to provoke any semblance of emotion out of the spiritless husk that my body has become. I'm so tired.

10:11 PM: I sit outside for an hour and think about what I'm doing with my life. I text my friends and loved ones. Nine percent battery.

10:33 PM: I think again about life choices. I wonder whether I should move to Brighton.

11:02 PM: I decide to move to Brighton.

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11:03 PM: I decide to leave early and pretend I stayed the full time. I get a text from my friend Sophie saying she's coming to get me. I'm so close. I'll stay.

11:09 PM: I gather my last dregs of mental strength and return inside. It's nearly time to leave. I've never wanted to be in my shit house more than this. Even on a festival comedown, I swear to god.

11:11 PM: A woman is walking around in a slogan tee with "TAKE A MENTAL PICTURE ;)" written in caps in gold lame and it breaks me. I crouch on the floor and flitter between laughter and very solemn moments of introspection. I realize I haven't blinked for what seems like ten minutes.

11:24 PM: I realize the security staff are different. I've seen three rotations now. Staff are coming and going. I remain.

11:35 PM: Sophie arrives and I hug her very hard. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" she says. "You're acting so weird."

11:40 PM: We walk around the supermarket as Sophie rattles on about how horrible and cold the supermarket is.

11:42 PM: We plan to wait out the remaining half hour outside so I don't have to be in the building any more, but I don't care. It was like opening the cage door to a whippet's cage. We ran across the car park. A man told us he'd lick our pussies for a pound. We screamed at him and I felt one tiny bit of my old self come back again.

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What did I learn from this experience? I learnt that you need to have a very strong mind to spend 20 hours anywhere watching everything change, fall apart, be restocked. To watch people come and people go, endlessly. Come without due preparation and training and you could well find yourself in an existential crisis. I avoided supermarkets for the week following this.

Less insularly, I remembered that the nicest people all work in retail. The 24-hour supermarket is the great leveler. Everyone comes here at some point. Some depend on it more than others. For human contact, for routine. The staff here have seen everything. And I hope to never see any of it again.

Follow Hannah on Twitter.

[body_image width='696' height='421' path='images/content-images/2015/04/23/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/23/' filename='whats-up-with-chinas-erectile-dysfunction-problem-body-image-1429785098.png' id='48890']Erotic drawing from China via Wiki Commons.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

"Hard like a cucumber" or "soft like tofu"—these were the two main options to describe an erection in a study known as the"China Ideal Sex Blue Book," which went viral at the end of last year. Sadly for the respondents, almost 50 percent of them said they were closer to tofu. China, growing in most aspects, is apparently shrinking here. The nation's men are overworked and overstressed, the study reported.

It's a very modern problem and it needs a modern solution. Namely, Viagra. Dr. Jiang Hui, an author of the study (supported by Pfizer, the manufacturer of Viagra) concludes as much. For Jiang, Chinese men present a toxic mix of being too reluctant to seek support and too misinformed about sexual problems. They need help, ideally from the infamous blue pill. But is this merely an attempt by Pfizer to drive sales or are Chinese men actually suffering from a severe sexual setback?

Concern about impotence in China first left the bedroom and entered broad daylight in the 1980s, when nanke (men's medicine) arose as a new division of Chinese medicine specializing in impotence and other issues. It was just what the doctor ordered. In the decades that followed, China witnessed a huge increase in the number of men seeking treatment for impotency. Clinics offering nanke mushroomed. These clinics provided traditional Chinese medicinal treatments alongside Western remedies—including Viagra, which made its Chinese debut in 2000.

The industry continues to grow. New drugs and companies enter the market regularly, such as Guangzhou Baiyunshan Pharmaceutical Company, which recently introduced an herbal product called Tiema, Mandarin for "iron horse."

Enter Everett Yuehong Zhang, who has spent around 15 years researching what is going on, or rather off, in China. In 1999 Zhang found himself inside a Beijing TV studio during a one hour show on the "contagion," as erectile dysfunction was then being referred to. The show featured three prominent urologists fielding calls from the general public. The lines were jammed. One of the camera operators in the studio turned to Zhang and exclaimed, "ED is becoming an epidemic!"

WATCH: Chinese Cock Block: The Sex Doll Factory

His comment clearly influenced Zhang, who published a book this March called The Impotence Epidemic: Men's Medicine and Sexual Desire in Contemporary China. In the book Zhang interviewed 350 men and their partners from Beijing and Chengdu, who were seeking treatment for impotency. They ranged fro 18 through to 81. Zhang found countless reasons for their issues, some of which were unique to China: trauma from famine and political violence; social anxiety especially for those who lost stable jobs as a result of recent economic reforms. And, of course, China's seedy business culture, which can literally demand men to have sex in front of their bosses.

READ: Booze, Sex, and the Dark Art of Dealmaking in China

But what Zhang did not find were statistics painting a picture decisively worse than before. Despite his book's title, Zhang does not think China has gone limp. "I don't know if there has been an increase in the incidence of impotence," says Zhang, "just that there has been an increase in reporting it, which shows a change in the public view of sexual desire."

For Zhang, what we are witnessing now is actually "a positive phenomenon." It is part of modern China's movement away from the collective towards the individual. This individual is increasingly daring and pleasure seeking. "They are taking actions to satisfy desire and to strive for a good life," Zhang says. "The epidemic is a story of change in China over the past 30 years."

Zhang's theory rings true. For China's youth at least, sex now serves a dual purpose of recreation and procreation. The strict moral codes that for centuries painted lust as negative have dissolved since the death of Mao in 1976. Today, sex is everywhere in China, from adult stores on urban streets to endless hair salons, massage parlors, and karaoke joints which, for an extra price, will provide extra services.

In the words of one young man, Viktor, who's in a local punk band in Beijing called Bedstars ("because it sounds slutty"): "When you walk down the street, everyone looks like a virgin, but they all have sex. I did a survey of a porn site and discovered many career people doing kinky, perverted things." Viktor's setting up an online sex toy company on the side to capitalize on these increasingly daring tastes.

It's not just in shadowy corners that sex is on the menu, though. In 1989, eminent sexologist Li Yinhe conducted a survey that showed just 15 percent of the population had premarital sex. Today, according to local figures, it has risen to 71 percent.

[body_image width='700' height='515' path='images/content-images/2015/04/23/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/23/' filename='whats-up-with-chinas-erectile-dysfunction-problem-body-image-1429785292.png' id='48895']Chinese erotic art via Wiki Commons.

Chinese people are talking as much as they're doing. Despite government aims to control vice, China's blogosphere overflows with it. Muzi Mei, a female journalist who once uploaded a 25-minute video of herself making love, actually managed to knock Chairman Mao off the number one most searched spot for a while. Then there was Lady Cat, whose blog contained essays like "An Orgasm a Day," a chronicle of her discovery of masturbation. These are just two examples in a long list of lasciviousness.

It's no coincidence that increases in the reporting of erectile dysfunction are in tandem with gains in female sexual liberation—the two are really different sides of the same coin. Behind every strong man is a powerful woman? More like behind every impotent man is a woman pushing him into a clinic. For this reason, Zhang has a chapter on women. As he writes: "This book is about male impotence. But women played such an important role in the experience of impotence and the production of desire that this book is surely about women as well."

As people talk more about sex in all its various manifestations, the shame associated with erectile dysfunction has been reduced. The Chinese even joke about it. "Nowadays, a man relies on drugs to do "homework"—i.e., have sex with his wife—and he relies on feelings or sensations to do "outside work"—i.e., have affairs or see prostitutes," one business man joked to Zhang, who labels the sharing of these "erotic jokes" a "veritable fad" in his book.

Put simply, Chinese people are getting more into good sex and less into bad, and nothing kills the mood more than a flaccid penis. "There's an increasing public concern about male sexual function," adds Zhang. That said, China has a long way to go before it can call itself a sexual Mecca. It remains deeply conservative, with a degree of shame still attached to topics of a sexual nature, not least ones as sensitive as erectile dysfunction.

This might explain why China, a country which represents around 20 percent of the world's population, records under 8 percent of Viagra sales, though Zhang is keen to highlight this could result from other factors. "The Chinese understanding of impotency is different to other societies," he says. "They approach Viagra in a different way." Namely, plenty of Chinese still rely on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), which is a billion-dollar industry, officially funded and sanctioned as part of the state medical system.

Viagra has won over a large chunk of men who previously used TCM and, with this, the price of seal penises—one of the most popular traditional ED remedies—has dropped. But it hasn't won everyone over. A view that herbal is best (or at least more affordable, as is often the case) continues. Add to this a plethora of health and safety scandals pegged to chemicals and you can see why not all are won over by Viagra.

According to the traditional Chinese outlook, sexual health also requires longer term cures, rather than quick fixes. If that be the case, those who are closer to tofu might have to wait a while before they become cucumbers. But at least they can now talk about it. Sort of.

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Jemimah Steinfeld is author of Little Emperors and Material Girls: Sex and Youth in Modern China, which will be published in the US on April 28.

[body_image width='800' height='430' path='images/content-images/2015/04/23/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/23/' filename='florida-woman-writes-amazing-motion-to-fuck-this-court-and-everything-it-stands-for-121-body-image-1429807114.png' id='49119']Tamah Jada Clark was booked in 2010 for trying to break her now husband, Jason, out of his 30-year sentence. Photo via Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office

The story of the greatest legal filing of all time begins in September 2010, when Tamah Jada Clark was arrested for conspiring to break her baby's father out of prison. Investigators learned of the plot by listening into the couple's phone calls, then pulled her car over in Pelham, Georgia, and found she was carting around an AK-47 and a bunch of wilderness supplies.

She was never prosecuted for the jailbreak scheme, and eventually ended up suing the cops for violating her civil rights because she was held and interrogated over what she calls "accusations." On her website, she claims that she's a "little miss goody two-shoes" former honor student who decided to crusade for justice after the incident. When I spoke to her on the phone, she told me that she was a triple-major in college who once aspired to study international law before she became disillusioned by the whole legal system after seeing the 1999 movie The Hurricane.

Her rage against the machine is evident in her note "F*ck This Court and Everything That It Stands For" (embedded below), a bona fide work of art addressed directly to Willis B. Hunt, Jr., the judge who dismissed her civil rights case.

Clark would take issue with the use of the word judge; in "F*ck This Court" she places it in quotation marks as a way of throwing shade. According to her, there was no valid legal argument to support dropping the suit. "F*ck you, old man," she wrote. "Your court's a joke. You take it up the a*s and you suck nuts. Lol." This note is followed by a much longer, and more dense, attachment entitled "Why Most Americans Do Not Inherently Owe Federal Income Taxes."

The "Floridian-American," as she calls herself in the note, is angry because she's apparently filed 100-plus pages of rebuttal documents that were ignored by the judge, who the states-rights activist describes as a federal government lackey. "Just for the record: you are a hoe," she wrote. "This court is a hoe. And I will backhand you both, should you continue to waste me time."

The Pensacola woman told me is now married to the man she was once accused of trying to break out of jail and she doesn't "go to regular work." She says she "owns things—a few businesses and things like that." (Florida state records show no businesses registered under either her married or maiden name.)

Over the phone, she expressed surprise that a reporter would call her over "F*ck This Court," and spoke at length about "American jurisprudence," all without acknowledging that a legal document calling a judge a "hoe" is inherently pretty funny.

"What did I think it would accomplish legally? I don't know," she told me. "But sometimes when someone's been asking for it for a long time, they need to hear about themselves." She adds that she has nothing to lose for calling out the system, because she's not an attorney.

The profanity-riddled, nine-page rant deserves to be read it its entirety, which you can do below:

Fuck This Court

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

[body_image width='1000' height='725' path='images/content-images/2015/04/23/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/23/' filename='the-uphill-battle-to-make-prison-safer-for-trans-women-body-image-1429812555.jpg' id='49145']

Photo of Ashley Jean Arnold by author

In a landmark decision earlier this month in the case of trans woman Ashley Diamond, Georgia eliminated its "freeze-frame" approach to gender transition, which mandated that trans prisoners could take the medication they were using prior to their arrest, but couldn't continue or start to transition while behind bars.

It was an unquestionable victory for trans rights, but Diamond's struggle is not over—on Monday, a federal judge refused to transfer her to a lower-security facility out of deference to prison authorities.

Although the response to Diamond's case has been remarkable, even receiving front-page coverage in the New York Times, this latest ruling shows that questions remain about just how much change is needed to accommodate those who wish to transition on the inside.

In February, Ashley Jean Arnold—a transgender woman held at a men's federal facility in Virginia— committed suicide, reportedly after being denied access to comprehensive gender-affirming care. Since Arnold was a direct beneficiary of the 2011 elimination of "freeze-frame" policies in federal prisons, her death raises questions about the limits of the recent steps taken by the Department of Justice. What's more, the Justice Department defended the Bureau of Prison's treatment of Arnold in response to her case by arguing that honoring the medical needs of incarcerated trans people might stand at odds with maintaining institutional safety and security.

As courts across the country take up lawsuits brought by trans people on the inside, Arnold's life and death raise questions about whether it is possible accommodate prisoners' transitions without fundamentally altering the gendered structure and culture of America's prisons.

At the time of her suicide, Arnold was incarcerated at Federal Correctional Facility Petersberg, a medium security facility located about 30 miles south of Richmond, Virginia. Her long bid—25 years—was a result of the serious nature of her crime, namely a 2008 guilty plea to a charge of producing child pornography.

According to court documents reviewed by VICE, it was only once she was incarcerated that Arnold received a diagnosis of gender identity disorder. But from the beginning, it seems, Arnold believed she was receiving inadequate medical care—and that this negligence was leading to her psychological deterioration.

In a lawsuit filed against prison officials in July 2013, and amended in September of last year, Arnold alleged that she had been denied access to a range of treatments consistent with the internationally accepted Standards of Care established by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health's (WPATH). Court documents reveal that prison officials rebuffed Arnold's repeated requests for access to female undergarments and brassieres, makeup items, voice therapy, a male anti-balding medication, and sexual reassignment surgery.

The lawsuit also outlined the many delays Arnold faced in receiving hormone replacement therapy. Although Arnold was eventually placed on hormones in January 2014 (about six months after the suit was first filed), the process took nearly two years. Like Diamond, Arnold and other incarcerated trans women have argued that their limited access to gender-affirming care constitutes an Eighth Amendment violation, which bars cruel and unusual punishment and mandates the provision of adequate medical treatment to prisoners.

The judge in Arnold's lawsuit dismissed the case in December 2014, finding that prison officials had provided her with "constitutionally adequate treatment" and had acted without deliberate indifference to her medical needs. Some legal advocates, though, believe that Arnold's suit had merit. Jennifer Orthwein is a Pro Bono Counsel with the Transgender Law Center, a nonprofit that has provided legal support and advocacy to transgender people, including those who are incarcerated. She reviewed Arnold's court documents at the request of VICE.

"[Arnold] desperately sought to receive treatment for her gender dysphoria and acknowledgment of her gender," Orthwein said via email. "Instead, nearly all her efforts were ignored, obstructed, delayed, or denied based on incompetence, indifference to her serious medical need and outright bias."

While it is impossible to determine whether the dismissal prompted Arnold's suicide—she left no note explaining her actions—in court documents Arnold openly asserted that her patterns of self-harm and suicidal ideation were linked to her lack of care.

Trans women incarcerated in men's facilities can end up in solitary confinement simply for possessing feminine items.

Her suicide may also be linked to the alleged retribution she faced as result of filing the suit. According to jailhouse lawyers Christopher Zoukis and Sangye Rinchen, both imprisoned at FCI Petersburg, Arnold faced sexual harassment and retaliation from prison officials in the time leading up to her death. Zoukis has published articles about Arnold's suicide on Prison Legal News and the Huffington Post.

Although Arnold appealed the District Court's decision to the Fourth Circuit just weeks before her death, the case will be dismissed unless next of kin pursue it on her behalf. VICE contacted the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Prisons to inquire about Arnold's lawsuit and the circumstances surrounding her death. Both offices declined to comment.

Related: Watch our documentary "Young and Gay in Putin's Russia"

Trans people behind bars face distinct barriers. According to Orthwein, it is the specific nature of the prison environment that makes the experiences of trans people so painful. "Gender dysphoria, which is marked by symptoms like depression and suicidal ideation, is not something that all transgender people experience, but rather reflects the distress transgender people feel when they're not allowed to live as their authentic selves," she told VICE. "Prison, where gender is suppressed and transgender identities are ignored or attacked, is an environment that is practically built to exacerbate dysphoria and cause transgender people extreme harm."

Trans women incarcerated in men's facilities can end up in solitary confinement simply for possessing feminine items. In the amendment to the lawsuit, Arnold recounts how officers searched her possessions during a compound-wide shakedown. They located bras, panties, makeup items, hair accessories, nail polish, and pantyhose in her cell–a serious violation, since she did not have explicit permission to have the items. As punishment, Arnold was sentenced to 30 days in the disciplinary segregation, the special housing unit (SHU).

In Arnold's case, as well as several others, the security threats allegedly created by these things seem to stretch the bounds of credulity. In their motion to dismiss Arnold's suit, lawyers for the Bureau of Prisons stressed the Warden's concern "that inmates can wear makeup to disguise themselves and escape from prison."

In an environment that is strictly governed by rules and regulations, some prison officials may believe that trans women's requests will undermine institutional safety or security.

Security concerns also played a role in the First Circuit's December decision to deny sexual reassignmentsurgery to Michelle Kosilek, a trans woman locked up in Massachusetts. In his dissent, Judge Ojetta RogerieeThomson compared the decision to Plessy v. Ferguson and Korematsu v United States —perhaps the most infamous Supreme Court decisions on the books. The case has been appealed to the Supreme Court.

As case law evolves, questions remain about how to alter the policies and procedures that govern trans women's lives. Valerie Jenness, Dean of the School of Social Ecology and a professor of criminology, law, and society at the University of California, Irvine, has written extensively on the experiences of trans women behind bars. In a telephone interview with VICE, she said that pushback from some correctional officials is not necessarily a reflection of bigotry, but can be traced to the paradoxical question of how to house trans or gender-nonconforming people in facilities that are segregated on the basis of genitalia. In an environment that is strictly governed by rules and regulations, some prison officials may believe that trans women's requests will undermine institutional safety or security.

"After years of filing, and taking a case to court, four transgender inmates are now beginning hormone therapy, myself included!" –Ashley Jean Arnold, before her suicide

There have been small victories in improving the lives of trans people behind bars. In early April, a federal judge in California ruled that the state's Department of Corrections must provide sex reassignment surgery to an incarcerated trans woman named Michelle-Lael Norsworthy.

But access to gender-affirming care is just one of the issues faced by incarcerated trans people, for whom sexual violence at the hands of prisoners and guards, and the routine use of solitary confinement for "protection" and punishment, can be daily realities.

Transgender people continue to resist the legal and societal barriers they face as a result of their gender identity. Jason Lydon is the founder of Black & Pink, an organization that aims to build support between LGBTQ people across prison walls, primarily through a pen-pal scheme. "When transgender prisoners fight for access to hormones, underwear, makeup, and any other moments of gender self-determination they are fighting for an individual and collective power to refuse the gender based violence of the prison system," he told VICE.

Arnold published a brief letter in the July 2014 Black & Pink newsletter. "I am writing to share with everyone a long-awaited victory at our institution," she wrote. "After years of filing, and taking a case to court, four transgender inmates are now beginning hormone therapy, myself included!

"We want to publish this story to inspire everyone not to give up—keep fighting; the war is far from over but this is a major battle won. Keep your heads up!"

A little over six months later, on February 24, 2015, Arnold hung herself in her prison cell. She was 32.

Aviva Stahl is a Brooklyn-based journalist who writes about prisons, particularly the use of solitary confinement and the experiences of terrorism suspects and LGBTQ people behind bars. Follow her on Twitter