Donald Trump in Westchester County after winning more primaries on Tuesday. Photo by Monica Jorge/Sipa USA via AP

On Tuesday night, Donald Trump won the Republican nomination. Again. The #NeverTrump hopes that Ted Cruz would still be competitive by the time of the California primary have long since been squashed, as have the dreams of a contested convention. The Republican Party lost to Trump; now, for all intents and purposes, Trump is the Republican Party.

There were still primaries to be held in California, New Jersey, and a handful of Western states, but they were beside the point. The only show in town was at the Trump National Golf Club in New York's Westchester County, where reporters and fans in red "Make America Great Again" hats listened to the real estate mogul once again talk about how great he was.

"Tonight, we close one chapter in history, and we begin another," Trump told the crowd. "Our campaign received more primary votes than any GOP campaign in history. No matter who it is, no matter who they are, we received more votes. This is a great feeling. That's a great feeling."

But even as he all-but-officially won the GOP nomination (it won't be official official until the convention), Trump once again found himself trying to convince the Republican Party to accept him as its leader. He took the stage amid a self-inflicted shit storm, and a resurgent #NeverTrump movement that seems to have found its legs again in the wake of the candidate's alarmingly racist remarks about the federal judge presiding over one of fraud the lawsuits against Trump University.

Just hours before, South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham was instructing all Republicans who endorsed the presidential candidate to go back on their word. Mark Kirk, a Republican senator from Illinois in the midst of a tight reelection battle, rescinded his support, calling Trump's remarks "dead wrong" and "un-American."

Trump seemed unconcerned about all the infighting and negative stories about his campaign, and made his entrance to Queen's "We Are the Champions," smiling, waving, surrounded by his family and low-hanging chandeliers. The backdrop itself was a slight change of scenery for the campaign, which has held most of its primary night question-free "press conferences" at Trump's more ostentatious Florida clubs, or his Midtown Manhattan palace, Trump Tower.

However, his speech, in which he outlined his "America First" platform, was exactly what the Establishment had wanted from their candidate. It was policy-driven—or at least had some shred of coherency—but also heavy on the Hillary hate. Just the fact that Trump read it from teleprompters rather than ad-libbing was perhaps the sign of a pivot to maturity his party is begging him for.

"On foreign policy, we will never enter into any conflict unless it makes us safer as a nation. It has to make us safer as a nation," Trump told supporters. "This is the opposite of Hillary's foreign policy, which invaded Libya, destabilized Iraq, unleashed ISIS, and threw Syria into chaos, and created the mass migration, which is wreaking havoc all over the world."

He then promised to protect workers against competition from China and Mexico, harped on broken deals, and brought forth a vision of an America that was nearing total collapse: "Our infrastructure is a disaster. Our schools are failing. Crime is rising. People are scared.

"The beauty of America first is that it brings us all together," he added later. "Every American worker of every background is entitled to the same benefits, protections, and rights and privileges. It's got to be that way."

Trump even made noises indicating that he'd be trying to expand his heretofore white and male base. "We're going to take care of our African Americans, who have suffered so much," he told the basically all-white room on Tuesday night.

He also made a crude appeal to Bernie Sanders supporters, many of whom may be feeling angry and ripped off after their candidate's loss to the Establishment-backed Hillary Clinton. "To all of those Bernie Sanders voters who have been left out in the cold by a rigged system of superdelegates, we welcome you with open arms," Trump declared.

"Why would politicians want to change a system that's totally rigged in order to keep them in power?" he later asked, sounding unusually Sanders-like. "Why would they want to change a system that's made them and their friends very, very wealthy?"

He then tried—somewhat clumsily—to tie that "rigged" system to the Clintons—with lines like, "The Clintons have turned the politics of personal enrichment into an art form itself." He promised to hold a press conference devoted entirely to the Clintons, "possibly on Monday."

The GOP may be divided by Trump's victory, but hatred of the Clintons can bring Republicans together. Attacking Clinton will distract people from whatever heinous stuff Trump has said, while also reminding Republicans unenthusiastic about the angry orange man why they should back him anyway. It also plays to Trump's strengths—does anyone think he'll be well-versed in policy by the time of the election.

The scene on Tuesday night was a taste of what the country will be in for over the next five months, as Trump and Clinton drag each other toward November. Soon after Trump exited the stage to raucous applause, someone at the golf club turned up the volume on the surrounding TV screens, blaring Megyn Kelly of Fox News, who was asking a focus group of San Diego Democrats and Republicans what they made of Tuesday's primary results.

As the conversation rapidly descended into a shouting match about lying and racism, Trump's words from earlier in the night sprang to mind: "We're only getting started, and it's going to be beautiful."

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Darius McCollum shooting the documentary 'Off the Rails.' All photos courtesy Gemini Pictures

Darius McCollum is something out of New York City tabloid lore: the thief of all thieves, the guy who gets caught over and over again (30 times, in total), seemingly the minute he gets out of jail or prison for his previous caper. When he is inevitably arrested, the local press corps adds the latest incident to its running list, and his exploits in newspapers almost always carry roughly the same lede, Darius McCollum, the infamous subway thief....

It's no surprise, then, that Off the Rails, the documentary out this spring about McCollum's life, ends with the man behind bars on New York City's Rikers Island. Because for the last three decades, he has been through the notorious jail complex many times, always roughly for the same reasons: impersonating a subway conductor or bus driver; stealing said vehicle; and then, eventually, getting caught.

But as McCollum likes to say, "The thing is," he doesn't exactly steal the vehicles—at least not in the traditional sense. He drives them to their next destination, dropping off people as he goes, just like any bus or subway driver would. The only problem, of course, is that he isn't one—McCollum has been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, which his lawyers and defenders say plays a key role in his pattern of criminal behavior, an "obsession" he just can't seem to shake.

On a recent afternoon, I sat down with McCollum on Rikers Island, where he's currently awaiting trial on charges of criminal impersonation and grand larceny after allegedly stealing a Greyhound bus last November. (That case is ongoing, and, per his lawyer's request, we did not discuss it in detail.) His voice is calm, his sentences articulate: By the end of the conversation, we were talking about the intricacies of New York City's subways more than him actually stealing them. We touched on his favorite station (Herald Square in Manhattan), his concerns about local infrastructure ("It's not what it used to be"), and the eternal dilemma of delay ("It's gonna take you longer than three years," he says, of the L train's pending closure).

What struck me most is the man's sense of self-awareness. He's almost painfully cognizant of the bizarre nature of what he's up to—as if he's watching a movie or news reel of himself play out on repeat. So we talked about that, the documentary (which he still hasn't seen), mental health behind bars, and what he describes as a possible movie about his life starring Julia Roberts and Idris Elba.

VICE: What's it like returning to Rikers, having been here so many times?
Darius McCollum: I try not to know it well—I just have to deal with it while I'm here. That's not something I really look forward to. There are things that go on that are particularly cultured, so to speak, and like I said, you just have to deal with it. So what I do is try to keep myself busy, occupied, help out people, and so forth, like that. Not really workshops, but programs throughout the field that I could benefit from. I try to do whatever I can to help the inmates, and sometimes the officers, just to help with different jobs and so forth. I try to keep myself busy.

Sometimes when you're out working, or on a certain detail, you don't feel like you're in a jail. You don't have that locked down feeling; you feel more responsible for doing something, as opposed to just doing nothing.

Brock Turner. Mugshot via Santa Clara Sheriff's Department

At this point, pretty much everyone has read the bizarre statements made in defense of Stanford rapist Brock Turner, and enough people have read Judge Aaron Persky's "explanation" for the former Olympic aspirant's lenient six-month jail sentence that the jurist is facing a possible recall campaign. But on Tuesday, the Guardian obtained the statement Brock made to Judge Persky ahead of sentencing, and it's not pretty.

As suggested by the victim in her lengthy statement, Turner seems to be in profound denial that what he did constitutes a crime—instead blaming his sexual assault of an unconscious woman behind a dumpster on the "party culture" that was new to him.

Oh, and he also blames lots of alcohol.

"I want to show that people's lives can be destroyed by drinking and making poor decisions while doing so," he claims. "One needs to recognize the influence that peer pressure and the attitude of having to fit in can have on someone. One decision has the potential to change your entire life. I know I can impact and change people's attitudes towards the culture surrounded by binge drinking and sexual promiscuity that protrudes through what people think is at the core of being a college student."

Turner's victim told the Guardian that "people need to know that this way of thinking is dangerous. It's threatening. More than my emotions, it's my safety, everyone else's safety. It's not just me feeling sad and defeated. It's honest fear."

"It's unacceptable," she added. "There's no way you can wiggle out of this."

The convict's letter is high on self-pity and painfully lacks much in the way of contrition.

"During the day, I shake uncontrollably from the amount I torment myself by thinking about what has happened," Brock continues. "I wish I had the ability to go back in time and never pick up a drink that night, let alone interact with . I can barely hold a conversation with someone without having my mind drift into thinking these thoughts. They torture me."

The statement, like the one penned by friend Leslie Rasmussen, also attributes responsibility to the toxicity of college campus culture in America. Brock ends by pleading with Judge Persky to grant him probation, promising he'll never be an issue for law enforcement.

"I've been shattered by the party culture and risk taking behavior that I briefly experienced in my four months at school," he concludes.

Bernie Sanders at a May rally in California. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Bernie Sanders will not be president. During Tuesday's primaries, Hillary Clinton decisively won the key states of California and New Jersey, bolstering her already-pretty-insurmountable delegate lead to 2,184–1,804. That's pledged delegates, not superdelegates—if you include those much-derided free agents, Clinton had already clinched the nomination Monday night, according to the Associated Press. Sanders supporters were enraged that the race was called before Tuesday's primaries (some even harassed reporters covering Clinton), but it's becoming harder and harder to deny the simple truth of Clinton's victory.

That doesn't mean that Sanders completely lost. He proved that an old Jewish man who called himself a socialist and spent his campaign railing against American inequality and injustice can be not just a viable presidential candidate, but a beloved symbol of America's youth. He earned the right to name members of the Democratic platform committee, which could push the party's official stances leftward. He forced Clinton to answer his critiques on everything from Palestine to health insurance, and it was partly thanks to his consistent pressure that she endorsed some more liberal economic policies. He's also energized a generation of voters who felt left out of politics, many of whom say that they'll continue his movement after the election.

Some Sanders supporters no doubt feel in their bones that the process was rigged, that they were squeezed out by an unfair system. But insurgent campaigns always face long odds and disadvantages. It's not strange that Sanders fell short. It's strange how close he came.

The rub is that he could have come closer, were it not for some campaign miscues that made it even harder for the Vermont senator's campaign. Here are a few of the most obvious reasons for his defeat:

Sanders Should Have Played to Win from the Start

In the beginning, no one thought Sanders could win—not even Sanders. Unlike Clinton, who has been preparing herself for the grind of her second presidential campaign for years, the Vermont senator split his time between Congress and campaigning in the months after announcing his run.

"He thought he could compete effectively by campaigning about three days a week while the Senate was in session and then making weeklong trips when Congress was on break," the New York Times reported in April. "As a result, he had limited time to campaign in crucial states like South Carolina; he canceled a visit to Charleston in mid-June after the church shootings there, and he did not return to the city until late August."

The problem, according to the Times, was that "he was originally skeptical that he could beat Mrs. Clinton, and his mission in 2015 was to spread his political message about a rigged America rather than do whatever it took to win the nomination." He certainly spread that message, but by the time it became apparent he might have a shot to win the nomination, he wasn't well positioned to actually do so.

He Should Have Cared About the "Damn Emails" After All

In one of the most famous moments of the early campaign, Sanders told Clinton during a debate that "the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails." It was a big applause line, an indication that the Democrats, unlike those mudslinging Republicans, were going to keep their campaign arguments in the realm of policy, not personality.

It was also an indication that Sanders, at least at the time, wasn't really running to beat Clinton. There are reasons to care about those "damn emails"—the former secretary of state hiding her government correspondence on a private email server is an indication of her intense desire for secrecy, and after an Obama administration noted for its lack of transparency, that's a problem. Sanders could have used the moment to denounce a governmental culture of obfuscation and surveillance; instead he played it safe and ended up handicapping himself in the future. From that moment on, he wasn't able to attack Clinton over the email scandal, even as new details trickled out about the FBI's investigation of her use of a private server.

He Lost the South Way Too Easily

Another consequence of Sanders's initial reluctance to fully commit to the campaign was that he essentially forfeited primaries across the South, allowing Clinton to build an insurmountable lead early on in the race. As noted above, he missed out on opportunities to visit states like South Carolina early, which was particularly important because Sanders needed to shore up his support among black people, the region's key Democratic voters.

As the Washington Post reported earlier this week, he was hesitant to inject his progressive personal history into speeches, didn't emphasize race enough, and simply didn't know how to work with black crowds. "No slowing down to receive or acknowledge affirmation or an 'Amen' here or there," a black South Carolina state senator told the Post. "He was brusque. He didn't appear to feel comfortable—and it showed."

By most accounts, Sanders was more comfortable with black audiences by the time he got to California—but by then it was too little, too late. No long-shot campaign can afford to simply surrender an entire region of the country—Barack Obama was able to succeed as an insurgent candidate against Clinton in 2008 thanks in large part to his Southern black support.

He Should Have Had Answers Ready on Foreign Policy

Running against a former secretary of state, it was always going to be hard for Sanders to win a debate on foreign policy. But early on, the Vermont senator seemed hesitant to even mix it up with Clinton on these issues, although her record includes not just passive support for the Iraq War but an active role in the Libya intervention, something that could have been a vulnerability.

Sanders's single-minded focus on income inequality won him fans, but it also allowed Clinton to cast her opponent as a single-issue candidate and a foreign policy newb. By April, when another Democratic debate rolled around, Sanders had seemingly found his bearings a bit and hit Clinton for being excessively pro-Israel, a valid left-wing line of attack. But by that point, he was too far behind in the delegate count for the attack to matter much.

Going Negative Didn't Work

As Politico reported late Tuesday night, Sanders himself was calling the shots throughout the campaign, so the rancor of the final weeks of his campaign can't really be blamed on rogue aides or supporters. No one pushed him into dismissing Clinton as "unqualified" before the New York primary—a rash remark that ignited a blowback against him—or told him not to condemn outright the fracas that broke out at the Nevada Democratic Convention.

Sanders was under no moral obligation to treat his opponent with kid gloves; Clinton certainly didn't pull her punches when she relentlessly attacked Sanders for his record on gun control, or criticized him for not releasing his tax returns. The problem is, none of Sanders's attacks worked. Maybe they came too late to matter, maybe they weren't artful, maybe they tarnished his image as a prophet of left-wing economics. But after his defeat in California, it's clear that his bitter rhetoric was more damaging than helpful.

Someday soon, Sanders will have to concede. His supporters will have to find a new burn to feel, new candidates to crowdfund. Sanders himself will go back to the Senate with new fame and a bigger grassroots base than any of his colleagues. Whoever takes his place as the designated insurgent in 2020 or 2024 may not have his firebrand style or his unexpected youth appeal, but they'll have one thing he didn't have: They'll be able to study the Bernie Sanders campaign and learn from it.

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.

The Spaceman still likes to talk. Photo via AP.

Bill Lee is a reluctant politician, but an apparently committed one. The Spaceman, who pitched for the Boston Red Sox from 1969-1978 and the Montreal Expos from 1979-1982, compiling a lifetime record of 119 wins and 90 losses, has decided to run for governor of Vermont, under the banner of the socialist Liberty Union Party—the party that launched Bernie Sanders' career. In an election cycle this weird already, his campaign makes a bizarre kind of cosmic sense.

"I've been offered the job, and it would be in the best interests of mankind that I take it," he told VICE. He was grinning when he said it, but Lee has always been fiercely competitive despite his stoner sensibility.

It's hard to tell how serious Lee, 69, is about his candidacy. He obviously likes to talk, and references names like Plato, Socrates, Buckminster Fuller, Victor Papenak, Eugene Debs and other early labour socialists. And while his beliefs are no doubt deeply held, some—such as Vermont seceding from the US to join Canada—are also deeply impractical. In the interests of democracy and baseball, VICE sat down with Lee over a beer at his hotel patio in Old Montreal.

VICE: You said you're conservative. I've also heard you describe yourself as a liberal with a gun. Where are you here, politically?
Bill "Spaceman" Lee: Well, I cut my own firewood. I turn my potato patch over with a shovel. I don't use gasoline, I don't use fossil fuel. I gather all my own kindling. I recycle all my own paper, I recycle everything. I eat within 15 miles of my house. I think those are conservative things that Republicans don't do. Republicans are these animals that have these little short arms until Charles Bronfman and some of your big corporations here get involved and you put it in a really nice ballpark that has a temporary domed area so you could play in inclement weather. We'll find a space. I know they're putting condos down there and stuff, but we'll find another small space downtown where we can build that. If we have to elevate it and have it up in the air, over the condos. Have stadium in the clouds, overlooking Mount Royal. If we can get new design technology to levitate a ball field, a floating ball field.

Right on.

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Classic multicultural family picnic entertainment. Photo courtesy Flickr user Chris Araslab.

The pinnacle of Toronto's cultural history is coming to an end after nearly 40 years.

VICE cannot confirm how CHIN plans to replace their beloved underwear show, nor have have we tried.

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All photos by the author

Darren Smith has Gothic tastes. Dungeons, dragons, swords, and sorcery—that's his kind of thing. The one-time server even trained for a part-time gig as a falconer at Toronto's Medieval Times for the fun of it. Then, nine years ago, he met Rob Shevalier.

Photo by Stephanie Smith via Wikimedia

A great concern of today's men is the idea that they'll disappoint. Disappoint their families, their bosses, their friends. Being a disappointment in a sexual setting is the front line of this anxiety. Coming too early not only leaves your partner smirk-frowning in a what-the-fuck-bro state of confusion, but it also sends you to sleep immediately—like a big, stupid bear that's just eaten all its hibernation food at once.

There are ways to stop the flood, though, to tighten the screw on the bubbling hydrant—just with the power of mind. We canvassed a bunch of dudes from all over Europe and asked them what they think about to keep the hot panic of ejaculating at bay.

JONO, 23, UNITED KINGDOM

I like to imagine what capitalism would be like if it was a person and how much it would hurt if it actually stepped on my balls, rather than just figuratively speaking.

PAOLO, 26, ITALY

I think of a shitting dog's face. You know that stupid face dogs have when they're shitting? Like they're scared to death because they're pooping and can't run away if there's any danger afoot.

CHRIS, 29, GREECE

I have no idea how this came to be, but every time I try to keep myself from coming, I think of Jacques Cousteau commandeering a small ship, with whales swimming in the waves behind the boat. I really have no idea why. I never particularly cared for Jacques Cousteau or the sea in general—I'm not even sure what Cousteau ever actually did, beyond helping me stave off orgasms.

WILLIS, 20, GERMANY

I mentally play a bunch of really complex deathcore tracks on guitar. It's pretty distracting, even without having an actual guitar. And no, that doesn't mean I suddenly start fingering my partner's fretboard the same way.

PABLO, 21, SPAIN

I try to remember as many football team lineups as I can. It's simple, but effective.

LEON, 23, ITALY

I concentrate on the feeling of having some shards of glass in my mouth. I don't know why, but I just find that terrifying. When that's not enough, I imagine those shards actually being glass splinters. It always works—to the point that I once lost my erection. And even when I think about it now, I feel queasy.

Photo by Andrés Nieto Porras via

TOM, 23, UNITED KINGDOM

Ed Balls's Shadow budget proposals delivered in a monotone drawl.

ZORAN, 26, SERBIA

I was never any good with numbers and math in school, so I try to do some calculations during sex. For example, I will take two big numbers, like seventeen and fifty-four and try to multiply them. That's hard to do for me, so the trick usually works—but the strange thing is that now when I have to do some simple math I sometimes get a bit of a boner.

ALEXANDRU, 28, ROMANIA

I usually try to think of video games. I'm a gamer, so I just close my eyes and think about the last level I've played—that'll get my mind off of things. And if that doesn't work, I just think about the possibility of leaving the girl pregnant or searching for the morning-after pill at three in the morning.

ELLIOT, 21, UNITED KINGDOM

I usually think of something that's a shock to the system—like being hit by a car or punched in the face or something. And every now and then, when I'm really desperate, I think of the Queen in a bikini.

Photo by Charlie Brewer via

SIMON, 26, FRANCE

It's quite rare, but I think of my great-grandmother. She was bedridden for two years before she passed away, so you can imagine in what awful states I've seen her.

CYRIL, 27, FRANCE

I always have the same trick: I deeply concentrate on a particular element of my surroundings. I'll study the patterns on the bedsheets, look intensely at a crack in a wall, or just focus on the bed frame. It's had a hundred percent success rate so far with me.

ENZO, 30, ITALY

I generally think of metaphysical stuff—things like death and void. The futility of existing—the futility of it all, really. Is there a life after death? Sometimes I think of a lizard lying on a road, completely ripped open. Which would mean the lizard is dead—so basically everything that revolves around the idea of death works for me. It's a bit sad that you're forced to think about something like that in those sweet moments of joy.

JULIAN, 28, SPAIN

I think about wood—wooden furniture, usually. Touching or knocking on wood is an old superstitious custom for good luck, and I'm a very superstitious guy—so that might have something to do with it.

SAMUEL, 25, SPAIN

I think about numbers—mainly the last numbers I've had in mind. So I think about how much money I spent on dinner and how much money I still have in my account after it. Things like that.

MICKEY, 23, THE NETHERLANDS

I usually think about something I find really disgusting. I once saw my dad take a dump. That image generally works.

Painting of the rape of Lucretia via Wikipedia

All of a sudden, Brock Turner is the most famous rapist in America. The 20-year-old former Stanford swimmer was sentenced last week to just six months in jail for sexually assaulting a passed-out woman behind a dumpster; the light punishment drew outrage, as did a letter from Turner's father saying that his son's life had still been ruined more than "20 minutes worth of action" and a letter from a childhood friend of Turner's blaming the whole thing on political correctness.

Nearly a week after the sentencing, the media and public is still fixated on the case. A statement the anonymous victim read aloud in court went viral after being posted on BuzzFeed, an online petition is calling for the lenient judge's removal, observers have called Turner's case a glaring example of white privilege, and Turner himself is still casting about for excuses, calling his crime a result of college "party culture."

At the heart of the controversy is the complex and sometimes seemingly unfair way sexual assault is prosecuted. In April, for instance, a judge in Oklahoma found that according to state statutes, performing oral sex on an unconscious person is technically legal. But at least we think of rape as a violent crime—historically, in societies where rape was even a crime, it was often a property crime, not a violation of a person. Here are how some cultures dealt with people like Brock Turner:

The Ancient Near East

Life in Biblical times wasn't a barrel of laughs for anyone, but women, unsurprisingly, consistently got the short end of the staff. Robert Kawashima, who teaches Biblical law at the University of Florida, referenced Exodus 20:17 as evidence that women were legally thought of as objects, because they're listed among things that people shouldn't covet alongside homes and servants. "The basic shocking principle––in my view––is that women were seen as a type of property," he told VICE. "So the ancient near east, including Israel, didn't have a proper notion of 'forcible rape'––just adultery with another man's wife or fornication with another man's virgin daughter. The other man, in either case, was the victim of the crime."

For instance, in Babylonia, if a woman who was set to be married was raped and she was a virgin, the rapist would be killed. But if the woman was married, she would be killed, too. In Assyria, the father of a rape victim was allowed to rape the rapist's wife as punishment.

Perhaps the strangest piece of rape law from the region comes from the Israelites, who made a distinction between what happens in the city and in the field. Basically, if a woman was raped inside the city walls, it was assumed that she could have cried out for help if it wasn't actually consensual. She and her attacker would be stoned to death. If the rape took place outside of city walls, however, the woman would be blameless, since no one would have been around to help her. Instead of being stoned to death, she would be forced to marry her attacker (who would pay a dowry to her father) if she were not set to be wed already. If she was already engaged, that arrangement would be canceled because she was considered damaged goods, and she would be put back on the market at a discount price.

America Before Columbus

Women in pre-Columbian American were safer than their Biblical counterparts, according to Amy Casselman, a professor of Native American studies at San Francisco State University. She told VICE that sexual assault was basically unheard of in America before the Europeans came over. "Because women played central roles in all aspects of indigenous culture, violence against them was fundamentally incongruent with one's conception of self and society," she told me. "And, in the rare cases in which violence against native women did occur, native nations used their own fully functioning systems of law and order to swiftly address the perpetrator and restore balance to the community."

Today, Native Americans have their own tribal courts, which Casselman contrasted with the American ones, which she called less survivor-oriented because they rely on maximum/minimum sentences and presume the alleged assailant's innocence. Tribal courts let victims decide what punishment they want to see doled out––like if they want an apology, a shorter sentence than what a federal court would give, or some form of public shaming. "Today, women who report sexual assault are routinely put on trial themselves and rarely get a voice in the outcome," she said. "Stanford's Brock Turner is a perfect example of this."

The Roman Empire

Rape as a concept didn't exist in either Ancient Greece or Rome––there wasn't a word for it, even though it seems like every story in mythology involves what we'd call sexual assault. "If one were wealthy and/or powerful enough, personal revenge was a possibility," says Michael Peachin, a classics professor at New York University. "However, sexual assault of any and every kind was simply not understood as a matter in which the state should involve itself."

He says that unlike in the near east, rape wasn't even considered a property crime. In fact, it was worse in some ways: If the woman was married, she could be tried for adultery. Rome was an even more lawless place when it came to protecting children, though. "Indeed, if one did not want a baby, one could, without any legal consequence, throw it away––literally, on the garbage dump," Peachin says.

Medieval England

Rape was made a capital punishment in 1285 in England, but jurors were always reluctant to convict people of the crime because women were perceived of as temptresses who asked for or deserved assault, according to historian Sean McGlynn. In an article for History Today, he wrote about how unlikely it was for all-male juries condemn one of their peers for what we would today called sexual assault: "In the English Midlands between 1400 and 1430, of 280 rape cases, not one led to a conviction."

While noting that women had little recourse if they were raped, he added one exception. In 1438, an English jury acquitted Joan Chapelyn for killing a man in self-defense as he was assaulting her. The past pretty much sucked.

Colonial America

In America, the word "rapist" wasn't referred to until the late 19th century, in reference to lynchings. The Oxford English Dictionary notes its first use in reference to a "nigger rapist." It was much easier to convict black men of crimes than whites, because they were tried in slave courts that did not require unanimous jury verdicts. Sharon Block, the author of Rape and Sexual Power in Early America, told VICE that white men accused of rape would often get their charges reduced.

She gave the example of a woman named Sylvia Patterson, who was raped by Captain James Dunn in New York City during the early 19th century. He was only charged with "assault with intent to seduce," which was common when powerful white men were accused of raping working-class women––particularly women of color. During the course of the trial, Patterson was called promiscuous, and it was said that she had venereal diseases.

"In the end, the court convicted Dunn, but the judgment was only one dollar––a real commentary on what they thought her sexual integrity was worth," Block said. "What went on in the Stanford case is very much reminiscent about colonial America. Men with social power could engage in sex virtually unheeded––social power translated to sexual power."

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In one of the funnier scenes in Nanfu Wang's documentary Hooligan Sparrow, Chinese women's rights activist Ye Haiyan (a.k.a. Hooligan Sparrow) is sprawled on her bed, entertaining questions from the endless stream of journalists who have shown up at her apartment. She has just been arrested protesting the non-conviction of a rape case in Hainan, but the inquisitors are more eager to know what she did at the Ten Yuan Brothel, where she offered free sex to draw attention to the dismal working conditions of sex workers in China. Sparrow seems tired and bored, but then a mischievous spark enters her eyes. She recalls a man asking her during the middle of sex,"'Where are you from? Why are you so kind? Who sent you here?'" Then she laughs about it with her head thrown back. "I told him that Beijing sent me," she deadpans, an unlikely scenario, to say the least, for the government-harried activist.

Aside from these brief moments of levity, the rest of the documentary is a grim foray into China's political repression machine, a complex web of unchecked corruption, misguided patriotism, and pervasive propaganda. For her activism, Sparrow has been relentlessly pursued, intimidated, beaten, evicted, and detained. Wang followed Sparrow for one summer and documented the government's terrifying yet oftentimes absurd efforts to suppress her: In one scene, a mysterious, angry mob suddenly appears at Sparrow's apartment, rattling her front door like bogeys in a horror movie, and the 41-year-old's only recourse is to defend herself and her daughter with a giant kitchen knife.

Mostly shot with an easy-to-conceal, point-and-shoot DSLR camera, cell phones, and secret-camera eyeglasses, the footage that comprises the film is dizzying and riveting, providing a first-person perspective on what it's like to suffer the consequences of being a political activist in China. Selected as the opening selection of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York on June 10, Hooligan Sparrow earned Wang the Nestor Almendros Award for courage in filmmaking. I met Wang at her home in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, to talk about the Chinese government's tactics of repression and her wildest hopes for future reform.

VICE: I'm Taiwanese, well, I guess technically that makes me Chinese, but I had no idea political activists were so suppressed in China. When I left the theater I was totally speechless and couldn't do anything for an hour. I felt completely ignorant.
Nanfu Wang: Before I made this film, I was also ignorant. And I grew up in China. My whole life, I had not met an activist or talked to one. Activism is a sensitive word in China. It's not something you hear about a lot. Even in the newspaper or social media, if you see something about Falun Gong, it's so taboo that no one in China would think about it without associating it with some kind of craziness or anti-government sentiment. It's almost like activist, human rights—these are not neutral words anymore. Ordinary people don't want to involve themselves at all. Because the media depicts activists as extremists who must have some kind of mental illness—something must be wrong with these people if they want to protest.

How did you hear about Ye Haiyan and why did you want to make a film about her?
I first heard about Ye Haiyan on social media. She was popular at the time because of the Ten Yuan Brothel action that she did, where she offered sex for free in order to call attention to the working conditions of sex workers. When she started blogging around the 2000s, she gave herself the nickname Hooligan Sparrow. Liu Mang Yen. She was one of the few bloggers who were very bold, blogging about their sexual experiences. Her blog was called Mei Ri Yi Zi , which means "a record of each day," but it's also a play on words, because ri is slang for "fuck." So, a blog for every fuck.

Some people criticized her, but others admired her courage. Although I knew about all this, it was only after she did the free-sex action that I started paying attention. I read about what she was advocating—legalizing prostitution—and I felt that I agreed with her. She's smart. She argued that once prostitution is legalized, sex workers can be protected and the industry can be regulated.

How did she get radicalized?
I think that she became an activist because it's her personality. She is a radical person. She's very adventurous, she has a great sense of humor, and she is very creative.

For instance, at the Hainan protest against the principal who raped the young girls, we were all discussing what to write on the signs, and she said, "I'm going to write 'Hey, principal, get a room with me—leave the children alone!'" Which was so funny! So we were sitting there laughing. And of course she did it, and the image went viral.

Where is Sparrow now?
She recently moved to Beijing, to an area called Song Zhuang, which is where a lot of artists live. She started painting about three weeks ago, and now she's selling them online and people are buying it.

Is she still getting hounded and threatened?
Her passport was taken by the government in November 2014. Before she moved to Beijing, when she was in Wuhan, her hometown, they put a surveillance camera in front of her apartment. Whenever she left, they would question her. After she moved to Beijing, the police visited her twice to threaten and warn her. They said, "Don't try anything otherwise we could evict you from here as well." So she was scared but very angry too. She can't do any campaigns in the streets anymore.

But she writes a lot. She writes on her blog probably every day. She writes, people read, and they pay for it. It's her income resource. The censors delete her posts after one day, two days, depending on what she writes, but then she'll just do screenshots and post it again.

So people do have access to provocative content on the internet.
I think the government is pretty freaked out about that. They reacted so strongly to the Hainan case because they want to control things as much as possible. Last year, there was a crackdown on human rights lawyers, and the government questioned 300 lawyers and then arrested 29 of them—almost all the human rights lawyers in China. It's a sign that they are really afraid the lawyers are educating people about their own rights and ways to defend their rights.

Still from 'Hooligan Sparrow.' Courtesy of Little Horse Crossing the River Productions

A principal that rapes young girls is obviously wrong, right? You don't need a lawyer to tell you that's wrong.
But it's so complicated. For the Hainan case, for instance, people didn't have first-hand information. Their only channel of information was from the state media and newspaper.

The media was saying there was no rape. There was no abuse. They were saying that the girls received money and gifts from the principal. Then the media steered the conversation toward how parents should educate young girls. The message was like, "Oh, nowadays the society is so deteriorated that even young girls want cell phones and clothes and money." So then the public debate became about the parents' responsibilities in educating their kids. It was like, "These young girls wanted money. These girls were not well-educated."

That's so enraging. It became all about disciplining women.
Yeah. The debates would be like, "Why did the girl go with the principal? As we see from the surveillance video, he did not kidnap her! She was walking with him." And then they interviewed other school kids and quoted them saying things like, "She always had a good relationship with the principal and she would brag about it!" Even my own friends who knew I was making this film were dubious about what happened.

If you remember, in the film, I interviewed one of the dads of the girls. I asked him, "Do you know Ye Haiyan? What did you hear about her?" And he said, "I heard she slept with men." And I said, "What do you mean? Like a prostitute?" And he said, "Yes." At that moment, my heart went so cold. I thought, Even him. This woman sacrificed so much to defend your rights, and now you're still judging her. But I don't blame him. All the information he got was through the media.

Can you describe what it was like to be threatened and followed everywhere?
Each time I went out into the street, I had to be alert. It was paralyzing. For me that meant I couldn't take out my camera. If I tried to film secretly with a secret camera in my pocket or somewhere on my clothes, it would feel like there was something burning my leg. Or wherever the device was hidden. That part of your body got really hot.

Director Nanfu Wang. Photo courtesy of Little Horse Crossing the River Productions

Do government officials contact random people to say, "Hey, can you follow this woman and harass her?" Is there a list somewhere?
A government official or police officer can personally go to a friend in the community and say, "Hey, I have a part-time job for you." There is also an official community organization that exists in China called the "Stability Maintenance Team," but I don't know.

What struck me was that all of these harassers were men, and often they would have a pleased expression like it was fun for them!
In China we have this strong sense of patriotism, this idea: I need to protect my motherland. The brainwashing starts in school. Everyone has to recite things like, "The party is higher than anything." We are told that the motherland is your mother: "No matter how ugly your mother is, you don't criticize your mom." They use that analogy to teach us to love China. But it's a false analogy—the party is not like your mom!

Even my own mom, when she learned I was making this documentary, she said, "Why are you doing that? You shouldn't! If there is a problem with the local government, you should report to higher level official instead of taking it outside of China. You will create a negative image and everyone will think China is bad."

Will you go back to China anytime soon?
I don't think I will go back anytime soon. People say it's risky. At customs they might check your name and say, "No, you can't come in." Which happens to a lot of activists who are now in exile. Or I go back but I can't come out. Or maybe nothing will happen. Just some harassment. In the future, if I have a period of time when it won't be such a disaster, I will try.

What's your wildest hope regarding political reforms in China?
I would like to see complete personal freedom—freedom of expression and protest and public assembly. America's not the freest country, but I would be happy if China could reach the same levels of freedom. But I don't see it happening. Because of the brainwashing, it would take many generations, and the education system would have to be reformed entirely.

The other problem is that information is so restricted right now. Everything people read and see is filtered. Even if, in a year, the internet firewalls are taken down, and people have access to Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and everything, that would be a huge step. Soon, the younger generation won't even know what Google is.

Are you managing to change your friends' minds? Do they think you're crazy? Yeah.

None of your friends are backing you up?
Well, I am making new friends now! But awareness is the first step. Sometimes people will come up to me after the screening, crying. They say, "I did not know this was my country."

Hooligan Sparrow is the opening selection on June 10 at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York.

Follow Anelise Chen on Twitter.

Rakeem Edwards dressed up for Sad Day. Photo by Alec Karl Marchant

In a world where dudes are taught that vulnerability is weakness and emotions are for pussies, there aren't many safe spaces for a man to cry. Some men cry as little as six times per year, according to a recent study. But one particularly emotional event in Portland, Oregon is trying to changing that.

Sad Day is a literal pity party, for people to "have fun but not smile," according to Patrick Buckmaster, the event's founder. The monthly event includes live criers to get people "in the mood," as well as drag performances. "It's about people feeling whatever the fuck they want—crying on stage, doing drag, people making their DJ debut with one song," Buckmaster told VICE. He said the link between all performances is an expression of melancholy. According to Buckmaster Sad Day is the "first of its kind" and now several other clubs are following suit.

One of Sad Day's "live criers" is Rakeem Edwards. He's a luggage salesman by day and drag queen by weekend, where he goes by the stage name Faux Breez. Once a month, he stands before a crowd and gets paid to cry at the Sad Day party.

We spoke to Edwards about what it's like to regularly cry in public, why it' so important to have spaces to be sad, and what he thinks about to get his rivers to flow so frequently.

"Not that many people come , so it's like a sad family reunion." — Rakeem Edwards

VICE: When you're not on stage, how often do you cry?
Rakeem Edwards: Hmm, I don't know. I cry when I'm inspired, which happens often. If people are finding themselves on a TV show, I'm like, "Oh my god, that's beautiful," . Or if Beyoncé creates an hour-long visual album called Lemonade, just in time for summer, that inspires me not only to do more but also to be more? Then I cry.

When did you start doing this at parties?
When Sad Day booked me to perform earlier this year, Patrick just asked me to do something depressing on stage. I dressed in drag and sang "I Dreamed a Dream" are just live criers.

Do you feel like you're challenging societal perceptions of masculinity—both with the crying and performing in drag?
I just show up as me. If I want to put on a dress, throw some dirt on my face, and lip sync to my girl Anne Hathaway, I'm going to do it. If more people weren't afraid of being vulnerable with each other, we would live in a better world. So if you want to cry, do it. I fully support you.

What's the Sad Day scene like?
The first Sad Day I went to was last September. Not that many people come, so it's like a sad family reunion. It's also a very queer event.

Why do you think other people are interested in seeing people cry? What was the idea behind having live criers as part of Sad Day?
In my opinion, everyone gets sad and everyone makes being sad a bad thing, but some people need to be sad to get through whatever they're going through. Sad Day is shining a light on this idea of, "Hey, you're sad and we know it. Come party with us."

Watch: How American Men Are Redefining Masculinity

How are you able to summon so many tears though? Have you been through some tough shit?
My whole life has been a cry-fest. My childhood was not perfect at all. My mom was definitely in my life but my dad was not, and I didn't live with my mom all of my childhood. I was in group homes and foster homes. That was... you know, sad.

What is the longest you've ever been able to cry in front of a crowd for?
I wouldn't put a time on it. I don't know how long I was crying because I was so sad. I cried at another event I performed at, To Kill a Mockingbird, because I was playing Tom Robinson. He was falsely accused of raping this girl and was killed for it. It was very emotional for me. He was accused of something he didn't do, and I know that feeling.

"If more people weren't afraid of being vulnerable with each other, we would live in a better world." — Rakeem Edwards

Is it important for you to make your audience feel vulnerable, by making yourself vulnerable onstage?
Yeah, it's powerful being vulnerable, and I want the audience to have that same courage. I think that some people are afraid to be vulnerable because it may come off as weak. Who wants to look weak? But being emotionally vulnerable allows you to know yourself, and also the you come in contact with. You can learn and grow from uncomfortable situations.

Do you have any tips for crying on command?
I don't know... cry, fuck. Everybody has been through some sad shit. It definitely takes practice and I'm not saying that I can cry at any moment, but I am able to cry often.

Follow Jack Rushall on Twitter.

Illustrations by Joel Benjamin

I decided last week that if I could find my signature scent I could stave off death. By death, I don't mean the big one, but little daily deaths: the meaninglessness, nothingness, and feelings of disintegration that are symptoms of my depression. Sometimes I am able to forget that I have depression. Unfortunately, depression doesn't usually forget me.

After a day spent scouring the perfume shops of New York City for a scent that would make me a whole person, purse laden with samples of Mojave Ghost, Thé Noir, Black Orchid, Sensual Orchid, Lipstick On, Beach Walk, Tobacco Vanilla, Champaca, Portrait of a Lady, Carnal Flower, Santal Carmin, Dior Addict, Love In White, Gypsy Water, Eau Duelles and What We Do In Paris Is Secret, I suddenly felt the urge to throw all of them in the trash.

I engage in these obsessive hunts in order to avoid feeling my feelings. But in the end it's the hunt that distracts me from the void and not the hunted thing itself. Once I acquire the objects that promise to be a panacea, they just sort of rattle around in the abyss.

Also, the notion of a "signature" anything is an illusion, as though the multitudes a person contains could ever really be branded. As though branding isn't just the narcissism of small differences in a species that hurts one another over religious, cultural, and philosophical differences, but in the end is pretty much just one big annoying person.

Perfume samples aside, I'll engage in practically any compulsive behavior to escape the depression I forget that I have: sexting, internet attention-seeking, dating apps, food restriction, food rituals, and in the old days, drugs and alcohol. It would be great if any of these things ever worked in the long term. But the reality is that the moment I secure a hit from any of them, a flash of dopamine or serotonin, I only need more of them to feel OK.

Years ago, when I was getting sober off of drugs and alcohol, I learned the old adage "feelings aren't facts." I came to say it to myself, and discovered that it was true. A bad feeling didn't mean that an entire day had to be ruined. I could restart my day at any time by making a conscious choice to do so. This didn't necessarily mean eradicating the feeling itself. But it meant knowing that what I was experiencing was just that—a feeling—and is, by nature, fleeting.

I also came to discover that just because I didn't feel high, ecstatic, entertained, excited, or profound bliss, that didn't mean that a day sucked. A day could sometimes just be a day, an hour just an hour. I became more able to cope with and tolerate things that felt boring, neutral, or even unpleasant, like going to the dentist or getting the mail. There was a certain excitement, even, in my growing ability to just let life be life, without having to chemically alter myself to make it more special and/or tolerable.

But it's not always possible to recognize that a feeling is just a feeling. The depression that underlies my desire to escape continues to shapeshift, and it's clever. The depression speaks to me in declaratives that appear to be facts. It says, "everything is shit," "you're fucked," "you're shit," and "it's going to be like this forever." And the anxiety, from which I have sought refuge in everything from Sephora to sexting to street drugs, declares that feelings are indeed facts and that every bad feeling is going to kill me.

It seems like I've divided my feelings into categories, the way that one might do with fragrance types: floral, citrus, earthy, smoky, gourmand, spicy. Like my taste in fragrances, I perceive my feeling-groups as delicious or disgusting. There are the good feelings: joy, anticipation, peace, bliss. There are the bad feelings: sadness, anger, boredom, fear.

But are these "bad" feelings truly bad? Is it the "bad" feelings themselves that I find so torturous or is it the narrative I construct around them.

Aquilaria trees secrete a resin called oud when they are attacked by a parasitic mold. Oud has an overpowering scent, designed to protect the tree from the invasive bacteria. What if these feelings of mine are like a pure, stinky oud? Necessary, powerful, deep and interesting in their own rights? Over the past few years, synthetic ouds have become trendy notes in commercial perfumes, as synthetic sadness can also be commodified.

The narrative around my feelings that frightens me the most is the idea of permanence. Sometimes I'm afraid that if I allow myself to just feel a "bad" feeling, rather than trying to escape it, I'm going to get stuck in there forever. A common mantra for me, whether it's the drudgery of daily tasks or a swell of sadness, is Oh my god I'm going to be like this forever.

In thinking about this, I realize that nothing is forever. Good feelings, unfortunately, are not forever and bad feelings are not forever either. Like fragrances, they eventually dissipate. They may come back multiple times within a day—within an hour even—but they ebb, flow and shapeshift. Like complex perfumes, the longer we sit with them the more we can see their facets.

I always complain about feelings. I feel like I have too many and I say that I want to be numb. But the truth is that a world without a range of feelings is a world without depth. The oud that smells so bitter on its own lends a rose fragrance more dimension. I am inclined to want to always be high, and for everything to always be sweet. I wish my signature scent was vanilla, or some shit. But vanilla can be so cloying on its own. I'm really a range of fragrances: some warm, some melancholic, some flowering in the abyss like night-blooming jasmine.

I didn't end up throwing out the fragrance samples. Like any good addict, I've even hoarded twenty more vials since then. But rather than trying to confine myself to that one, elusive signature scent, I'm wearing a different one every day.

Buy So Sad Today: Personal Essays on Amazon, and follow her on Twitter.

Donald Trump. Photo by Michael Vadon via Flickr.

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

US News

Trump Lawyer Donated to Clinton Campaign
According to Federal Election Commission filings, the lead lawyer defending Donald Trump in the Trump University fraud lawsuits donated $2,700 to Hillary Clinton after joining the Republican's legal team. Trump has attacked the legitimacy of the lawsuit, partly because the plaintiffs' law firm gave money to Clinton.—Politico

Former Guantanamo Detainees Tied to Attacks After Release
The Obama administration believes about 12 former prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have been involved in attacks since their release, leading to the deaths of about a half-dozen Americans in Afghanistan. While most of the attacks have been on military personnel, the deaths include one US civilian aid worker in 2008.—The Washington Post

Stanford Rape Case Judge Receives Death Threats
The Santa Clara County courthouse has been forced to boost security after the judge who gave a six-month sentence to Stanford rapist Brock Turner received several death threats. Judge Aaron Persky has faced criticism for the perceived leniency of the sentence and a recall petition signed by more than 600,000 people.—Reuters

Charges Dropped Against Woman Accused of Killing Twin
A Hawaii judge has ordered the release of a 37 year-old woman who was accused of killing her twin sister by driving the car they were both in off a cliff last week. District Court Judge Blaine Kobayashi ruled that prosecutors had not presented enough evidence to support a second degree murder charge.—ABC News

International News

Israel Suspends Palestinian Entry Permits After Terror Attack
Israel says it has suspended entry permits for 83,000 Palestinians after two gunmen killed four people and wounded six others in an attack at a shopping complex in Tel Aviv. Police said the attackers, now in custody, were from a village near Hebron in the West Bank. The permit ban will prevent Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip entering Israel to visit relatives or holy sites during Ramadan.—BBC News

Al-Shabab Claims to Kill 43 Soldiers at Ethiopian Base
Somali rebel group al-Shabab said it has killed 43 soldiers in an attack on an Ethiopian military base inside Somalia. Al-Shabab claims a car equipped with a suicide bomb caused a huge explosion, before they began firing on the base. The militant group said "several" of its own fighters were also killed.—Al Jazeera

Baghdad Car Bomb Attack Kills 22
At least 22 people were killed and 70 others injured in two separate bombings in Baghdad, Iraqi police have said. One suicide car bomb targeted a commercial street in east Baghdad, where at least 15 were killed. Another suicide car bomb hit an army checkpoint in the Taji area.—Reuters

Police Investigate Whether Wrong Man Extradited
Friends of a man extradited to Italy on people smuggling charges say police have the wrong man. The British and Italian authorities believed they had flown Mered Medhanie, the head of a huge people-smuggling operation, from Sudan to Italy. But they are now investigating claims the arrest is a case of mistaken identity.—The Guardian

Maria Sharapova. Photo via Wikimedia.

Everything Else

Medical Weed Legalized in Ohio
Ohio governor John Kasich has signed legislation legalizing medical marijuana in his state. It makes Ohio the 25th state to approve use of medical marijuana, although it will take another 90 days to come into effect.—Cincinnati Inquirer

Nike Continues Sponsorship with Sharapova
The sports giant is to carry on its sponsorship of Maria Sharapova after she received a two-year ban from tennis for failing a drugs test. Nike and racket sponsor Head are both satisfied Sharapova did "not intentionally" break any rules.—Sky Sports

IS Leader in Bangladesh is Probably Canadian
The leader of Bangladesh's offshoot of the Islamic State (IS) is believed to be Tamim Chowdhury, a former Canadian resident. Shaykh Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif was profiled in the IS English-language magazine.—VICE News

Music Venues Train Staff for 'Active Shooter' Situations
SWAT experts from the Seattle Police Department have been training show promoters, stage managers and theater security in the city how best to respond when someone opens fire in a venue.—VICE

Done with reading today? Watch our new video 'Talking Art, Acid, and Architecture with Filmmaker Jonathan Meades'

This article originally appeared on VICE France.

My grandfather's name is Jean-Patrick, but everyone calls him Jean-Pat. He lives in a village of 100 people, about half an hour by car from the French city of Angers. Even though he still works, he spends most of his time with other old people and farmers, and he's bitter about the state of our society. He votes for the National Front, the French right-wing party—far right, according to some. I don't agree with him, but I understand where he's coming from.

He was born into a family of five brothers and two sisters, and left school at 16 to help support them. He first went to work in a factory, but after leaving the family home at 21, he opened a restaurant with my grandmother in Verdun.

Today, Jean-Pat is 59 and works in milk transportation—he drives around the countryside at night with his tanker collecting milk from local farmers. He's worn out. A while ago, he had an operation on his knee. He has never claimed benefits when he was out of work—he thinks that's an abuse of the system. He likes gardening and fishing and once swore to me that he had only one regret in life: "I wish I had studied longer. I would have liked to have been a cabinet maker, to have worked with wood."

We don't talk about politics, but I know his opinions. He votes for the National Front mostly because he is worried about the government constantly reforming the pension system. He thinks he needs to work for another year before he can retire, but it's hard to tell. "Every week I hear news that the pension system has changed," he tells me. He's bitter and frustrated—he feels that he has spent his life contributing to society and that it's giving him nothing in return.

Our different outlook on life and society doesn't affect our relationship—our passion for photography keeps us close. Because of that shared passion and our different views, I wanted to capture moments in my grandfather's day-to-day life—the moments that tell the most about who he is, what his life is like. In the process, I got to spend a lot of time with him.

More of Martin Bertrand's work can be found on his website and on Twitter.

San Francisco Gay Parade, 1978 via Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art

Lesbian history has undergone a kind of erasure. The stigmatization of homosexuality over the years forced lesbians into the closet, and with them went their stories. This means that a whole lot of people, lesbian or otherwise, don't know much about the relatively few lesbian films, books, and TV shows out there, and more specifically, about the women who were behind them.

In 2016, a lot more lesbians are 'out and proud,' but that doesn't mean they're any more visible than Ellen DeGeneres' fashion sense. Society has a habit of ignoring queer women—something the cult Instagram account Herstory aims to correct.

Run by off-duty photo editor Kelly Rakowski, the account posts iconic lesbian archive photographs almost daily, reviving a black and white picture of a cute lesbian couple at a gay rights parade, and placing it alongside a butch press shot of K-Stew.

In order to find out more about why seeking out lesbian history is so important, we quizzed Kelly about her visual geekdom, as well as where she finds some of the hilarious images she posts on Herstory.

VICE: So tell us, how did you start Herstory?
Kelly Rakowski: Herstory began without too much thought. I was surfing the internet, happened upon a digital photo archive called the Lesbian Herstory Archives, and was completely inspired by the photographs in their collection. I really wanted to share the images with my friends, so that day I started an Instagram account to post them.

Why Instagram?
I was already following an account called Butch History, which focuses on women athletes and is written and researched by Molly Schiot (now renamed @theunsungheroines), and I just really liked how defined it was. I also thought Instagram was the best network for potentially the most eyes to see historic lesbian images. And the lovely thing about it is that you can post all day, every day... I'll usually do a bout of research and then post during down times, like at lunch, or standing on the subway platform, or waiting for a friend to show up a bar...

@h_e_r_s_t_o_r_y

What do you do in your day-to-day job? You research images, right?
Yeah, I'm a photo editor at a design and architecture magazine, and also a textile designer. Both require enormous amounts of image research, which is my overarching passion. I think photography archives are extremely important to the world; they document life and work and progress.

How do you choose what you post? What's the criteria?
The number one thing for me is that the image looks good and is striking. I definitely aim to post a strict regimen of lesbians; that's to say, not pictures of sweet Victorian girls holding hands. I really like images with messages, from T-shirt slogans to protest signs. It's important for me to have a variety of very political images through to images of celebrity culture, too. Social media shouldn't be too academic, so I like to keep it fun and spicy. My favorite posts right now are ON OUR BACKS personals, written in the late 80s and early 90s, which are lesbians looking for love but mostly sex. The personal ads are so hilarious and filthy—you really get a vision of who is writing the ad and what they're looking for. I also really liked the 'Do you have a steady boyfriend?' Jodie Foster interview clip post we put up. It just says so much about the patriarchal world we live in, where everyone is assumed to be straight. Even if you were straight, why an interviewer would ask this? I love Jodie Foster's expression, the blank stare.

@h_e_r_s_t_o_r_y

How has the response been? Do people get it?
Response has been overwhelmingly positive. Strikingly. I think people like to see images of themselves and their culture. Plus it's super fun to see old pics. It's informative... It's important to know your history and where you are from, the struggles that lesbians and gays have had in the past. It's really a tribute to our lesbian elders. I think there's so much to learn from the people that led the way in queer rights.

What have you learned for yourself since you started the account?
Well I'm not a women's studies or gender studies archivist or professor person and there were gaps in my own knowledge about lesbian culture. I wanted to learn more and since I started this I've had so many friends point me to books, films, and people I should know about and feature on Herstory. I became obsessed with reading, watching, and looking for lesbian images. Or just reading about lesbian culture. And I also learned how difficult it is to find images of lesbians or queer women and how many more images there are of gay men. Which really inspires me to comb through and share images of determined lesbian culture, in order to keep it alive by making it visible.

@h_e_r_s_t_o_r_y

Talking of keeping it alive... Who is your number one lesbian icon that we should know about?
Audre Lorde! I encourage everyone to read Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. It's so personal, but also really gives you a herstoric view into a very specific time in New York and what it was life was like as a black lesbian in the 1950s to early 60s. There are just so many details that make the book rich; the talk about clothing, food, jobs, education, bars, books, apartments, and neighborhoods... the different groups of lesbians—black and white, uptown, downtown. It's just the best, I wish it were a movie.

@h_e_r_s_t_o_r_y

It was my parents who taught me that in Islam you are not supposed to have any idols. There is only one being to worship and that is Allah, or God, the single omnipresent deity in whatever language you may choose to refer to him. So what to make of boxer Muhammad Ali (Peace Be Upon Him), a man deserving of idolatry if ever there was one?

Even my father spoke of the three-time heavyweight champion in terms approaching hero-worship. My dad worked as a booking clerk on the London Underground, so his brushes with celebrity were minimal to none, but one of his fondest memories was an evening spent with Muhammad Ali. Ali was in the English capital in 1966 to fight Brian London at Earl's Court, and a group of Muslims, including my father, approached him at his hotel, inviting him to dinner. A couple of days later, Ali would go to one of the only halal butchers in Central London that then existed, and my father would fondly recall that the champion ate 20-something chicken legs.

There have been many stories since his death of Ali fulfilling the dreams of the regular man and even helping negotiate the release of American hostages from Iraq. Yet, for my father and many others, it wasn't what Ali did in the ring that made him the Greatest of All Time—it was the decision to convert to Islam, two days after he shocked the world by wresting the title from Sonny Liston in February 1964.

It would be wrong to think of this conversion as spiritual. Not initially, in any case. A look at his rhetoric from the time shows that much of the decision to convert was political. In one of his first interviews after conversion, a month following the fight, he said he'd been interested in Islam, "For the past six years, after a lot of teachings of Negro history and who we were before we got here."

Ali would later link his conversion to a 1960 trip to Miami, where he first visited a Temple Mosque run by the Nation of Islam: "I went to a Muslim meeting. And as soon as I heard it, I knew this is what I've been looking for all of my life."

What he was looking for was freedom. "I like what all Negroes like, and what they're fighting for is freedom," he said to reporters in a 1965 interview. His conversion to Islam has to be understood in the context of segregation in America and the Civil Rights movement. "Cassius Clay is my slave name," Ali explained in another interview. "I'm no longer a slave." As the pugilist would tell those that asked, "Muhammad means 'worthy of all praises' and Ali means 'most high.'" Never has a name been so apt.

Islam gave Ali a social platform and a hope of a better life for the future. Religion was his tool for emancipation.

Most controversially, Ali would also claim on the BBC that the white man is the devil—"their history is the history of the devil." This was in line with the preaching of Elijah Muhammad, the charismatic head of The Nation of Islam. Some commentators like Piers Morgan have argued that this statement makes Ali more racist than Trump, but that is a typical whitewashing of history. It's an attempt to tell Ali's story without speaking of the times in which he lived, when blacks were not allowed to go to the same toilets as whites, sit in the same section of the bus, and that's even before we get near voting rights or equal pay. The North Africans were fighting the French, just one of the many European nations that had profited from centuries of colonialism, and America sent young black men to their death in wars in Southeast Asia. This was the establishment. And if you're constantly being beaten down and told you're worthless because of your race, it's not hard to see the white oppressor as the devil.

Ali was saying what many felt and that resonated. Islam gave Ali a social platform and a hope of a better life for the future. Religion was his tool for emancipation.

That said, Ali wasn't exactly spouting central Islamic tenets. Rather, his words were informed by the teaching of the Nation of Islam, a group formed in Detroit in the 1930s by Wallace Fard Muhammad. In the 1960s, their view that leader Elijah Muhammad, who had led the Nation since 1934, was a messenger of Allah, ensured that the group would remain ostracized from the mainstream Islamic community.

What Ali signified when he converted to Islam was that he was tired of being part of an oppressed people. He was black and he was proud. The talk of being "pretty" may sound vain to today's ear, but at the time, he was telling the world that black was also beautiful.

WATCH: FIGHTLAND Meets: Uriah Hall

The rhetoric was still the same when Ali fought the "Rumble in the Jungle" in 1974. He described the fight between himself and George Foreman in the following terms: "If he wins, we are slaves for 300 more years. If I win, we are free." When the Congolese screamed, "Ali Bomaye!" (Ali kill him!), they weren't only asking for him to defeat Foreman, but to challenge imperialism itself.

During his time in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), Ali was also placing a greater emphasis on the spiritual side of Islam. "For this fight," he claimed, "I've prayed every day, five times a day for five months, and everything is perfect." So perhaps it was no surprise that a year later, after Elijah Muhammad had died, Ali converted to Sunni Islam, Islam's most practiced form, and then decades later to Sufi Islam, the religion's more mystical branch. As with Malcolm X, who left the Nation of Islam in 1964 after having visited Mecca, the Nation of Islam had been a stepping stone to a more orthodox Islam, and this transformation also marked the end of the white-man-being-the-devil rhetoric.

With America pulling out of Vietnam and racist laws being repealed, it was harder to justify the comments, so Ali put them to bed, later admitting he didn't really believe his most extreme argument. In recent years the Nation of Islam has also walked a more peaceful route, preaching unity with orthodox Muslims, though the group remains listed by the Southern Poverty Center as a hate group.

Peace and unity became key elements to Ali's later legacy. Despite being diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease at 42, the former champion remained astute and honed in on the times. He condemned murder being done in the name of Islam around the world and also rebuked Trump for his anti-Islam rhetoric. He spoke of Islam as the religion of peace.

Ali did not transcend race: He is race,­ a Muslim who used religion as a way to change the world in a wholly positive way.

There is a lesson to be learned in this amazing life for America, the West, and the world. Injustice drove him to use religion as a means to bring about change. Initially, it was a radical form of religion to suit his political message. He chose Islam as a way of separating himself from America's past and demanding a different, brighter future. It is an act of defiance—religion used as political weapon.

Yet even Ali has admitted that sometimes he pushed this rhetoric too far. His was a complicated multi-step conversion to embrace an inclusive version of Islam. Yet, young kids in the Middle East today, driven by their own sense of injustice, are being encouraged to make stands—and in certain cases sacrifice themselves—by zealots interested in attacking and sowing terror in the West, a process that also stops their followers from reaching the true inclusive and peaceful heart of the religion.

Remove the injustice and begin righting the wrongs, and Ali's view of Islam took on a peaceful hue. Ali, to the end, always hit the zeitgeist with the timing, beauty, and accuracy that made him a champion. It was his politics rather than his faith that would define him, but the two are so intertwined that to prioritize one over the other would be to downplay the importance of either. Ali did not transcend race: He is race,­ a Muslim who used religion as a way to change the world in a wholly positive way.

Follow Kaleem Aftab on Twitter.

This story appeared in the June issue of VICE magazine, which will appear online on June 13 on VICE.com. Click HERE to subscribe.

They burned a car that night in celebration, and the flames were hot and jumpy and I laughed out loud, for no reason—the hills were so dark against the sky and no one from my real life knew where I was and it was the solstice, and who cared if it wasn't actually the solstice? I had distant thoughts of my mother, houndish nips of worry, but she'd assume I was at Connie's. Where else would I be? She couldn't conceive of this kind of place even existing, and even if she could, even if by some miracle she showed up, she wouldn't be able to recognize me. Suzanne's dress was too big, and it often slipped off my shoulders, but pretty soon I wasn't as quick to pull the sleeves back up. I liked the exposure, the way I could pretend I didn't care, and how I actually started not to care, even when I accidentally flashed most of a breast as I hitched up the sleeves. Some stunned, blissed-out boy—a painted crescent moon on his face—grinned at me like I'd always been there among them.

The feast was not a feast at all. Bloated cream puffs sweating in a bowl until someone fed them to the dogs. A plastic container of Cool Whip, green beans boiled to structureless gray, augmented by the winnings of some dumpster. Twelve forks clattered in a giant pot—everyone took turns scooping out a watery vegetal pabulum, the mash of potatoes and ketchup and onion-soup packets. There was a single watermelon, rind patterned like a snake, but no one could find a knife. Finally Guy cracked it open violently on the corner of a table. The kids descended on the pulpy mess like rats.

It was nothing like the feast I'd been imagining. The distance made me feel a little sad. But it was only sad in the old world, I reminded myself, where people stayed cowed by the bitter medicine of their lives. Where money kept everyone slaves, where they buttoned their shirts up to the neck, strangling any love they had inside themselves. How often I replayed this moment again and again, until it gained a meaningful pitch: when Suzanne nudged me so I knew the man walking toward the fire was Russell. My first thought was shock—he'd looked young as he approached, but then I saw he was at least a decade older than Suzanne. Maybe even as old as my mother. Dressed in dirty Wranglers and a buckskin shirt, though his feet were bare—how strange that was, how they all walked barefoot through the weeds and the dog shit as if nothing were there. A girl got to her knees beside him, touching his leg. It took me a moment to remember the girl's name—my brain was sludgy from the drugs—but then I had it, Helen, the girl from the bus with her pigtails, her baby voice. Helen smiled up at him, enacting some ritual I didn't understand.

I knew Helen had sex with this man. Suzanne did, too. I experimented with that thought, imagining the man hunched over Suzanne's milky body. Closing his hand on her breast. I knew only how to dream about boys like Peter, the unformed muscles under their skin, the patchy hair they tended along their jaws. Maybe I would sleep with Russell. I tried on the thought. Sex was still colored by the girls in my father's magazines, everything glossy and dry. About beholding. The people at the ranch seemed beyond that, loving one another indiscriminately, with the purity and optimism of children.

The man held up his hands and boomed out a greeting: The group surged and twitched like a Greek chorus. At moments like that, I could believe Russell was already famous. He seemed to swim through a denser atmosphere than the rest of us. He walked among the group, giving benedictions: a hand on a shoulder, a word whispered in an ear. The party was still going, but everyone was now aimed at him, their faces turned expectantly, as if following the arc of the sun. When Russell reached Suzanne and me, he stopped and looked in my eyes.

"You're here," he said. Like he'd been waiting for me. Like I was late.

All photos by Bridget Collins

I'd never heard another voice like his—full and slow, never hesitating.

His fingers pressed into my back in a not unpleasant way. He wasn't much taller than me, but he was strong and compact, pressurized. The hair haloed around his head was coarsened by oil and dirt into a boggy mass. His eyes didn't seem to water, or waver, or flick away. The way the girls had spoken of him finally made sense. How he took me in, like he wanted to see all the way through.

"Eve," Russell said when Suzanne introduced me. "The first woman."

I was nervous I'd say the wrong thing, expose the error of my presence. "It's Evelyn, really."

"Names are important, aren't they?" Russell said. "And I don't see any snake in you."

Even this mild approval relieved me.

"What do you think of our solstice celebration, Evie?" he said. "Our spot?"

All the while his hand was pulsing a message on my back I couldn't decode. I slivered a glance at Suzanne, aware that the sky had darkened without me noticing, the night gliding deeper. I felt drowsy from the fire and the dope. I hadn't eaten and there was an empty throb in my stomach. Was he saying my name a lot? I couldn't tell. Suzanne's whole body was directed at Russell, her hand moving uneasy in her hair.

I told Russell I liked it here. Other meaningless, nervous remarks, but even so, he was getting other information from me. And I never did lose that feeling. Even after. That Russell could read my thoughts as easily as taking a book from a shelf.

When I smiled, he tilted my chin up with his hand. "You're an actress," he said. His eyes were like hot oil, and I let myself feel like Suzanne, the kind of girl a man would startle at, would want to touch. "Yeah, that's it. I see it. You gotta be standing on a cliff and looking out to sea."

I told him I wasn't an actress, but my grandmother was.

"Right on," he said. As soon as I said her name, he was even more attentive. "I picked that up right off. You look like her."

Later I'd read about how Russell sought the famous and semi-famous and hangers-on, people he could court and wring for resources, whose cars he could borrow and houses he could live in. How pleased he must have been at my arrival, not even needing to be coaxed. Russell reached out to draw Suzanne closer. When I caught her eye, she seemed to retreat. I hadn't thought, until that moment, that she might be nervous about me and Russell. A new feeling of power flexed within me, a quick tightening of ribbon so unfamiliar I didn't recognize it.

"And you'll be in charge of our Evie," Russell said to Suzanne. "Won't you?"

Neither looked at me. The air between them crisscrossed with symbols. Russell held my hand for a moment, his eyes avalanching over me.

"Later, Evie," he said.

Then a few whispered words to Suzanne. She rejoined me with a new air of briskness.

"Russell says you can stick around, if you want," she said.

I felt how energized she was by seeing Russell. Alert with renewed authority, studying me as she spoke. I didn't know if the jump I felt was fear or interest. My grandmother had told me about getting movie roles—how quickly she was plucked from a group. "That's the difference," she'd told me. "All the other girls thought the director was making the choice. But it was really me telling the director, in my secret way, that the part was mine."

I wanted that—a sourceless, toneless wave carried from me to Russell. To Suzanne, to all of them. I wanted this world without end.

The night began to show ragged edges. Roos was naked from the waist up, her heavy breasts flushed from the heat. Falling into long silences. A black dog trotted into the darkness. Suzanne had disappeared to find more grass. I kept searching for her, but I'd get distracted by the flash and shuffle, the strangers who danced by and smiled at me with blunt kindness.

Little things should have upset me. Some girl burned herself, raising a ripple of skin along her arm, and stared down at the scorch with idle curiosity. The outhouse with its shit stench and cryptic drawings, walls papered in pages torn from porno mags. Guy describing the warm entrails of the pigs he'd gutted on his parents' farm in Kansas.

"They knew what was coming," he said to a rapt audience. "They'd smile when I brought food and flip out when I had the knife."

He adjusted his big belt buckle, cackling something I couldn't hear. But it was the solstice, I explained to myself, pagan mutterings, and whatever disturbance I felt was just a failure to understand the place. And there was so much else to notice and favor—the silly music from the jukebox. The silver guitar that caught the light, the melted Cool Whip dripping from someone's finger. The numinous and fanatic faces of the others.

Time was confusing on the ranch: There were no clocks, no watches, and hours or minutes seemed arbitrary, whole days pouring into nothing. I don't know how much time passed. How long I was waiting for Suzanne to return before I heard his voice. Right next to my ear, whispering my name.

"Evie."

I turned, and there he was. I twisted with happiness: Russell had remembered me, he'd found me in the crowd. Had maybe even been looking for me. He took my hand in his, working the palm, my fingers. I was beaming, indeterminate; I wanted to love everything.

The trailer he brought me to was larger than any of the other rooms, the bed covered with a shaggy blanket that I'd realize later was actually a fur coat. It was the only nice thing in the room—the floor matted with clothes, empty cans of soda, and beer glinting among the detritus. A peculiar smell in the air, a cut of fermentation. I was being willfully naïve, I suppose, pretending like I didn't know what was happening. But part of me really didn't. Or didn't fully dwell on the facts: It was suddenly difficult to remember how I'd gotten there. That lurching bus ride, the cheap sugar of the wine. Where had I left my bike?

Russell was watching me intently. Tilting his head when I looked away, forcing me to catch his eyes. He brushed my hair behind my ear, letting his fingers fall to my neck. His fingernails uncut so I felt the ridge of them.

I laughed, but it was uneasy. "Is Suzanne gonna be here soon?" I said.

He'd told me, back at the fire, that Suzanne was coming, too, though maybe that was only something I wished.

"Suzanne's just fine," Russell said. "I wanna talk about you right now, Evie."

My thoughts slowed to the pace of drifting snow. Russell spoke slowly and with seriousness, but he made me feel as though he had been waiting all night for the chance to hear what I had to say. How different this was from Connie's bedroom, listening to records from some other world we'd never be a part of, songs that just reinforced our own static misery. Peter seemed drained to me, too. Peter, who was just a boy, who ate oleo on white bread for dinner.

This was real, Russell's gaze, and the flattered sickness in me was so pleasurable, I could barely keep hold of it.

"Shy Evie," he said. Smiling. "You're a smart girl. You see a lot with those eyes, don't you?"

He thought I was smart. I grabbed on to it like proof. I wasn't lost. I could hear the party outside. A fly buzzed in the corner, hitting the walls of the trailer.

"I'm like you," Russell went on. "I was so smart when I was young, so smart that of course they told me I was dumb." He let out a fractured laugh. "They taught me the word 'dumb.' They taught me those words, then they told me that's what I was." When Russell smiled, his face soaked with a joy that seemed foreign to me. I knew I'd never felt that good. Even as a child I'd been unhappy—I saw, suddenly, how obvious that was.

As he talked, I hugged myself with my arms. It all started making sense to me, what Russell was saying, in the drippy way things could make sense. How drugs patch-worked simple, banal thoughts into phrases that seemed filled with importance. My glitchy adolescent brain was desperate for causalities, for conspiracies that drenched every word, every gesture, with meaning. I wanted Russell to be a genius.

"There's something in you," he said. "Some part that's real sad. And you know what? That really makes me sad. They've tried to ruin this beautiful, special girl. They've made her sad. Just because they are."

I felt the press of tears.

The undercooked look of his dick, clutched in his hand: I wondered where Suzanne was. My throat tightened.

"But they didn't ruin you, Evie. Cause here you are. Our special Evie. And you can let all that old shit float away."

He sat back on the mattress with the dirty soles of his bare feet on the fur coat, a strange calm in his face. He would wait as long as it took.

I don't remember what I said at that point, just that I chattered nervously. School, Connie, the hollow nonsense of a young girl. My gaze slid around the trailer, fingers nipping at the fabric of Suzanne's dress. Eyes coursing the fleur-de-lis pattern of the filthy bedspread. I remember that Russell smiled, patiently, waiting for me to lose energy. And I did. The trailer silent except for my own breathing and Russell shifting on the mattress.

"I can help you," he said. "But you have to want it."

His eyes fixed on mine.

"Do you want it, Evie?"

The words slit with scientific desire.

"You'll like this," Russell murmured. Opening his arms to me. "Come here."

I edged toward him, sitting on the mattress. Struggling to complete the full circuit of comprehension. I knew it was coming, but it still surprised me. How he took down his pants, exposing his short, hairy legs, his penis in his fist. The hesitant catch in my gaze—he watched me watching him.

"Look at me," he said. His voice was smooth, even while his hand worked furiously. "Evie," he said, "Evie."

The undercooked look of his dick, clutched in his hand: I wondered where Suzanne was. My throat tightened. It confused me at first, that it was all Russell wanted. To stroke himself. I sat there, trying to impose sense on the situation. I transmuted Russell's behavior into proof of his good intentions. Russell was just trying to be close, to break down my hang-ups from the old world.

"We can make each other feel good," he said. "You don't have to be sad."

I flinched when he pushed my head toward his lap. A singe of clumsy fear filled me. He was good at not seeming angry when I reared away. The indulgent look he gave me, like I was a skittish horse.

"I'm not trying to hurt you, Evie." Holding out his hand again. The strobe of my heart going fast. "I just want to be close to you. And don't you want me to feel good? I want you to feel good."

When he came, he gasped, wetly. The salt damp of semen in my mouth, the alarming swell. He held me there, bucking. How had I gotten here, in the trailer, found myself in the dark woods without any crumbs to follow home, but then Russell's hands were in my hair, and his arms were around me, pulling me up, and he said my name with intention and surety so it sounded strange to me, but smooth, too, valuable, like some other, better Evie. Was I supposed to cry? I didn't know. I was crowded with idiot trivia. A red sweater I had lent Connie and never gotten back. Whether Suzanne was looking for me or not. A curious thrill behind my eyes.

Russell handed me a bottle of Coke. The soda was tepid and flat, but I drank the whole thing. As intoxicating as champagne.

Excerpt from Emma Cline's debut novel, The Girls, on sale June 14.© 2016 by Emma Cline. To be published by arrangement with Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

(Photo via Arpit Gupta)

"Sucks to be you, students!" news now, and hey, sucks to be you, students! Over two-thirds of you (students) think your degree does not offer good value for money. Your incredibly expensive degree! Yeah, that! It's really bad value for money, turns out! As investments go, you'd be better off decking it all on scratch cards! We all would!*

According to a Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) survey published today, satisfaction levels have fallen among undergraduates over the last four years since the introduction of £9,000 fees. Of the 15,000 students who took the survey, only 33 percent felt they were getting "good" or "very good" value for money, compared to the 52 percent who were loving life and loving their degree back in 2012. Another 35 percent felt they were getting "poor" or "very poor" value, and 32 percent didn't feel strongly either way. Satisfaction was particularly low for students from BME backgrounds.

The survey also asked students if they fancied – as the government has planned with a recent higher education bill – paying even more for the privilege of learning things. Turns out that no, no thanks, not really. While 86 percent of students said they'd oppose a price increase, 8 percent said they were for it. I'm struggling to imagine precisely who, when asked the question, "Would you like to pay more than you are currently paying for this already overpriced thing?" would answer, "Yes." But every time I close my eyes now I just see this vision of a thin yet ruddy boy wearing a striped ironed shirt and a blazer firmly shaking my hand and telling me unasked that his name is "Tristan" and that his dad is "worth oodles". That his ex was on Made in Chelsea once. That his favourite sport is rowing.

Mental health was also a focus of the survey, with high anxiety levels reported across the surveyed students – just 21 percent of students said they experienced low levels of anxiety, against the 41 percent of the general population who report the same. "The tripling of tuition fees did not just have an economic impact, it had a psychological and cultural impact on students," Brunel University union president Ali Milani told the Guardian. "We should take very seriously how the marketisation of higher education and the hike in fees has had an impact on wellbeing."

Anyway, time to repaint the stereotype of a student now: out with the rugby club hoodies and out with the boring nerd lads who try to reboot their personality entirely at Fresher's Week by wearing a fedora and drinking real ale; and out with near-offensive Pot Noodle consumption, and in instead with extremely stressed students in massive amounts of debt sobbing in the library and hoping the job market won't be irreparably flamed down to dust once they graduate from this academic prison. But also all wearing rugby club hoodies.

* Legally required editorial note: no, we would not all be better off decking it all on scratchcards.

@joelgolby

More stuff about students and how fucked they are:

Photos of What's Inside British Students' Fridges

Why UK Students Are Calling Bullshit on Universities for Not Living Up to Their Marketing Hype

George Osborne Wants to Turn Students Into Cash Cows for Rich Spivs

Still from the recent VICE film, "Locked Off"

British nightlife is beautiful. In its present-day form, it's a wonderful, if increasingly beleaguered, free-for-all of house parties, grown and sexy nights, night buses, night trains, Afrobeats, gabba, internet drugs, shufflers, 24-hour casinos, Irish pubs where you can belt out "Total Eclipse of the Heart" while obscure horse races play on mute, Corsa cruises, lager boys, craft ale wankers, Wavey Garms girls, nitrous oxide, pre-drinks, afterparties, iPhone meph mirrors, rave nostalgia, rave revival, rave martyrs, Rave Mums, easy sex, tough love, CCTV justice, taxi wars, drug drivers, student music, xenophobic beer mats, queer politics, jacked Snapchat banter, industrial estates, and noise complaints. And all the tools you really need to do it properly are CityMapper, Uber and––apparently––entire rainforests worth of cocaine.

But while this is a list that would set anyone familiar with the Great British Night Out's teeth to Pavlovian grinding, all that paraphernalia and polyvalence can be confusing to outsiders, such as Americans, who still tend to be confused by the tribalism, street drinking, and slang. How do you explain the feeling of 4 AM drizzle on the nape of your neck as you realize that, yes, everything is shut, and yes, the only way of extending the night is with that bloke from the high-rises who wants to talk about hunting knives and Brexit? The wildly inconsistent drug etiquette? The tortured politics and prurience surrounding one-night stands?

Which is why a bemused Yank––VICE's US weekend editor, Zach Sokol––sent me a series of wide-ranging questions in an attempt to make sense of the whole sorry mess.

The word count for this article could have run into the tens of thousands, and no primer on British nightlife could ever be truly comprehensive, but for now, here's a brief overview of a sordid, sublime, sprawling world.

Photo by Bruno Bayley

Zach "Yank" Sokol: What's the difference between a pub and a bar?
Fran "Brit" Garcia: The difference can seem negligible but is actually profound. For example, if you walked into a bar and loudly proclaimed it to be a "pub," no one would bat an eyelid. Do the same in the wrong pub, though, and you'd get your head staved in in the bogs (toilets). Another giveaway is the music––bars tend to play songs about lust, and pubs will play songs about love, or at least songs that celebrate the death of it. As such, someone who goes to the pub too often is probably an alcoholic, while someone who goes to a bar too often is probably a pervert.

"Bar" is actually quite a vague, wide-ranging term used to describe everything from the sticky, neon 99p-a-mixer fuckpits where most British teenagers experience their first pangs of fake ID freedom, to the joyless payday venues full of pension-ready office workers filling the abyss in their souls with xenophobic ale every Friday night. Perhaps most crucially, dogs don't live in bars.

But pubs. Well, pubs are one of the big, fat pillars holding up the whole edifice of "Britishness." They're in terminal decline, are loftily idealized, and the concept can seem wooly––at best––when you try to define it for an outsider. They are at once enduring and persecuted spaces, full of cliché and myth. They suggest discarded football accumulators, locals playing bar billiards, pool, computerized quiz machines or dominos, rounds of foaming chestnut brown ale, and dogs, which often live in them or on them, depending on the sturdiness and angle of the roof. You'd have your first pint in a pub and your first shag in a bar, often in the same night.

A typical date in a typical British pub. Photo by Bruno Bayley

Yank: Would you ever go on a date in a pub?
Brit: This sounds like a huge cop-out, but it depends. It depends on your location, the origins of the date (dating app = bar/pub = taking your girlfriend back to your hometown for the first time) and the intensity of the date. Casual, low-stakes dating is for aggressively lighted midtown bars or the nearest cocktail place, but pubs are for the dates of desperate yearning. Nothing screams "I am intensely in to you" quite like a room temperature pint of Caffrey's (in case you were wondering, it tastes like a liquidized loaf of bread made from coins) and a bag of Taytos down a proper spit and sawdust local.

Yank: How does it all begin? At what age do Brits start getting obliterated?
Brit: In your teens, at different ages and with varying amounts of enthusiasm. Or at least that was my experience of it: oversized bottles of supermarket own-brand cider shared between hyperactive, cynical, and slightly scared gangs of kids in parks and at bus stops, on housing estates and outside corner shops. These are the eternal rallying points for the rites of British teenhood. These days, many fifteen-year-olds make their entrance into the nightlife at illegal gabba raves in repurposed metropolitan abattoirs, like Home Counties Christiane Fs––but for me, it was the time-honored combo of shit, cheap booze and underage boredom.

However, what is more or less universal is the process that occurs between the ages of twelve and seventeen, which turns every little acne-ridden Tom, Dick, or Harriet into an expert in duplicity. A tangled web of lies regarding sleepovers will be woven, bedroom windows will be subtly unhinged, jackets will be marinated in the smell of cigarettes and then attacked with entire cans of Lynx Africa. As you've probably already figured out, it's a type of duplicity that all but the most gullible parent immediately sees right through, leading to the time-honored "conflict years" between child and progenitor that you've been immortalizing in your country ever since that "Yakety Yak" song was in vogue.

This is what people look like when they're first getting to grips with British nightlife. Photo by Emma McKay

Yank: What are those teenage rites you mentioned, and how do they differ from what happens in the US?
Brit: Here, things do tend to be uniquely British. Teenage transgression tends to start with a game of football (or soccer, to you) with the older kids from school who inexplicably don't seem to have any mates in their own year. (Judging from what I've gleaned from American pop culture, you guys tend to replace the football element with throwing toilet rolls at people's houses and setting fire to animals in the woods.) These older kids from school, they always seem to love stealing their mum's cigarettes.

You will try one of their mum's cigarettes. You will be sick. You will graduate to patrolling the local area thumping on the doors of the local citizenry until an old man gets so mad that you get a chase. You'll keep doing this till Ricky gets caught and essentially kidnapped until his mum has to come and get him. Ricky is never let out again.

You start drinking tins (cans) or bottles that the weird, older kids nick (steal) from their dads. You are sick again. You realize that as you are one of those equally cursed and blessed fourteen-year-olds who can grow a beard, you are now designated carry-out provider. You go to the local shop and buy 50 quids' (about $70) worth of communal cans and fags (cigarettes) every single weekend. You are a god, you are untouchable. Every weekend you get home at 11 PM, fight with your mum, and send messages of deep, unrequited yearning to a girl in your biology class. Gradually, virginities are jettisoned, gang loyalties are built and destroyed, parties are attended, gatecrashed, but never danced at, eyes are filled with blood at the behest of scandalously overpriced "bush weed."

You are caught by the local police one weekend and say that you've left your ID in your car. They ask where your car is. You panic and say that it was nicked. They laugh and say they know your mum. You are taken home and promptly grounded till your eighteenth birthday.

That's how it was in my day at least, can't imagine much has changed.

Photo by Fran Garcia

Yank: So drinking on the street is legal, correct? I feel like in London, people don't make drinking outside as much of A Thing as other EU cities, like Berlin. Do you feel the same? Do people purposely meet by the river or in a park to "slug brews" and talk bullshit?
Brit: Yeah, it's legal, and yeah, it's very much A Thing, maybe just not in a way that a Berliner or Parisian would be able to comprehend. I grew up in London, so it never felt particularly abnormal that, on those rare, four-clover-leaf days of summer, everyone would head directly to the nearest designated green space to smash tin after tin of supermarket deal beers. It still exists to this day, except with more people huffing NOS balloons, and if it ever gets banned in London, it's a sign that this city really is dead as a concept.

That said, leave the glazed unreality of the capital, and you're in very different territory. I've spent a significant amount of time living in Scotland, where confusingly drinking outside is a) illegal and b) a national pathology. Despite the fact that it cops a hefty fine, every––even rarer––day of sunshine will unleash legions of braying "tapps aff" (tops off) lads ready to obliterate any patch of grass or hedgerow in the noble pursuit of ripping the arse clean off the next twenty-four hours.

Photo by Adrian Choa

Yank: What type of alcohol do "bros" or "basic" people drink? What is the UK equivalent of a Natty Ice, Mike's Hard Lemonade, Four Loko, or Bud Light Limerita? What about alcoholics? What's their tipple of choice?
Brit: Without knowing what the fuck any of those drinks actually are, I know exactly what you mean. Normos/squares here have a litany of luridly colored, diabetes-inducing "alcopops" on which they can suck to pep them up before their next Tinder date. (Up north, these drinks often have the spectacularly un-PC sobriquet "poof juice" attached to them.)

Then you have the weird, class-spanning drinks like Buckfast and Mad Dog (MD 20/20). They have a mythical hold and this hold increases the further you go north. It's been reported that Buckfast––a 16.5 percent fortified wine that is brewed by Benedictine monks and has a caffeine content equivalent to three Red Bulls––made over £36 million ($52 million) in sales last year, the vast majority of that taken in Scotland.

Yank: What's adult pre-game culture like? In the US, it's still common to meet up before a house party/DJ set/whatever and drink, bullshit, do drugs, and chain smoke cigarettes with your friends—even if you're in your twenties.
Brit: Pre-drinking is one of those odd rituals you're supposed to shed as soon as soon as you hit your early twenties. The reality is that it just modifies, subtly. You might jettison the dirty pints of Jack Daniel's, spit, and Stella, but the underlying impulse remains the same, just with more expensive drugs. In London, I don't know anyone old enough that the pre-game lifestyle has completely loosened its grip. In the suburbs, pre-drinks are a distant dream in the worn-out eyes of young men and women who've swapped kicks for kids.

Yank: What is the social policy like re: drug sharing? If someone has coke or molly, is it fair game to ask for a line if you're friendly? Are certain drugs considered more of a rare commodity or something?
Brit: Absolutely fine, as long as you're actually mates, you don't take the piss, and you don't call MDMA "molly."

Yank: Do people give a fuck about strains of weed like indica vs. sativa and all the precious specifics in the UK like they do in the US? Or is weed just weed?
Brit: Ah, the connoisseur stoner, one of the most tedious and pervasive of nightlife stereotypes the world over. Over here, they exist across every campus, are embedded in every satellite town, linger perpetually at the edges of every shit house party. Between the ages of fifteen to twenty-five, you will inevitably encounter a small legion of Pink Floyd poster purchasers who just can't wait to outline every minute facet of the looooud cranberry kush they've just picked up, fam.

They're ultimately harmless, though. They are basically the sound of farts in the bath, made human.

Photo by Jamie Clifton

Yank: What's considered a "late night" in the UK? Like, if the average "lad" was "on one" and went out hard, when would he or she be getting home? Do you see the sunrise often?
BRIT: This is probably the one bit of the night, or early morning, that we do best. The eight in the morning trudge to the local hill, reservoir, park, field, or drugs flat with a blue off-license bag full of tinnies and a saucer-eyed slab of regret is one of the tiny moments of universally recognized transcendence available in these blighted little times, on this declining little island. In fact, the British night out, and all its attendant romance, has always been more about the edges of the night, the start and the ending, than it has the central, primetime thrust of it. We do private introspection far better than public jubilation.

Yank: What drugs are considered taboo at most parties?
Brit: The usual, I guess: Smack and crack don't seem like viable nightclub intoxicants and aren't particularly welcome guests at most house parties, other than in certain parts of south London and Bristol. I feel like life-shattering hallucinogens, such as DMT and salvia wouldn't help most party hosts foster the desired "vibe." There's also a certain sniffiness about M-cat (or mephedrone, to you uncultured snobs), which makes you a) smell like cat piss and b) incredibly horny. Nothing too "Romeo and Juliet" about that combo, really.

Yank: Dogging. Let's talk, dawg. Do people actually fuck in public regularly in the UK?
Brit: Yep, most nights. At about four in the morning, the roads leading out to the darker, leafier edges of town are clogged with cars and cars full of people migrating to the nearest dogging spot to shag the shit out of whoever and whatever they find there, usually in the hope of waking up Monday morning to find they've "gone viral" in an embedded Facebook video. Some clubs even run mini-bus shuttle services. If you want in, approach the bar exactly five minutes after the bell has rung for last orders and ask the glass collector for a "ticket to ye olde fuck show" while curtsying and rubbing your genital region with a slice of lime.

Yank: What's the appropriate way to hit up a new drug dealer you haven't bought from before? In New York, you wouldn't be like, "Yo I want a gram, you around?" You have to ease into it... What's that first text like for y'all?
Brit: "u about m8"; "lookin for 1" (Not Delivered, 8:42 AM); "Hi man, wee johno gave us ur number"––cast around for a reliable contact and sling any of those at it and you're pretty much golden. These are––generally speaking––paranoid, twitchy, busy people, and so conversation, if it exists at all, shouldn't extend much past mumbled pleasantries in the back of a blacked-out Vauxhall Astra.

Photo by Jake Lewis

Yank: How common is drug use in bars, clubs, and other non-residential venues? Do bouncers give a fuck? Will they kick you out if they catch you doing lines in the toilets?
Brit: In terms of frequency, public drug use is rife and routine. The bouncer's reaction to that is largely dependent upon what sort of place it is. There tends to be a correlation between how "trendy" a club or bar is and how lax its management are when it comes drugs. Generally speaking, the more wank and expensive a place is, the easier it is to sniff blow in the toilets. Pubs are a different beast altogether, where the opposite is probably true (see the toilets of every pub within a five-mile radius of a football ground when the local team's at home).

Yank: Is there anything else I should be aware of?
Brit: Ketamine is a lot more popular here than it is in the US. I have no idea why.

Follow the Brit and the Yank on Twitter.

Illustration by Maria Qamar, aka @HateCopy

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, a Bangladeshi friend asked me if I was a terrorist too. Eight year-old me gave him a WTF kind of look. He motioned to a group of white teenagers down the road: "They all say I am, so I guess you are too."

This wasn't a momentous epiphany where I suddenly became aware of the world's injustices. It was, however, the first time I noticed that race was a thing—an early introduction to the stigma attached to brown skin and browner names.

Over the past few years, the South Asian presence on social media has massively increased. Most of the activists are the children of first generation migrants, who—unlike their parents—can fight racial bias without the fear of having their visas revoked. They came of age with social media, so they took to the internet to vocalize their experiences. Now, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr are awash with bindi-adorned brown girls demanding change.

"The campaign confirmed the sanity of countless desi girls who felt a bubbling resentment every time Becky with the bindi took to the gram feelin' ethnic. Its tagline is simple: 'Dark is lovely and the bindi isn't indie.'"

#ReclaimTheBindi was an early pioneer of the movement. It surfaced on Tumblr in late 2014, shouting down the appropriation of Hindu culture by Coachella-loving white girls. The campaign confirmed the sanity of countless desi girls who felt a bubbling resentment every time girls named Becky put on a bindi and took to the gram feelin' ethnic. Its tagline is simple: "Dark is lovely and the bindi isn't indie."

The founder of the campaign—who chooses to remain anonymous to keep the focus on the issues, rather than on her—says she was tired of the whitewashed mainstream media and the lack of online spaces exploring "desi specific" issues. So she created one herself. " if I couldn't find it then somebody else probably couldn't either," she says. "People need a space where they know their voice is being heard."

Illustration by Maria Qamar.

Maria Qamar, the Pakistani-Canadian artist behind @HateCopy, takes a more satirical look at desi life in the West, depicting it through pop art. One of her pieces captures the Coachella bindi debacle perfectly; three embittered, saree-clad women side-eyeing that "Gori wearing a bindi again."

Like #ReclaimTheBindi's founder, Maria wanted to create an online space to share her experiences. She was the victim of racially-motivated bullying at school and had very few desi friends to share her experiences with. "I went through so many things that I couldn't express because there was no open platform," she says. "Sharing my work online has let me know that I'm not alone."

But in airing the experiences of the South Asian diaspora, problems internal to desi culture were also dragged out of the shadows and forced into the social media spotlight. The erasure of some perspectives, and colorism (discrimination against darker skin tones, typically within ethnic groups), remained as problematic online as they had been in real life.

Shruti Mishra founded the @DesiBeautyy Twitter account as a direct challenge to the underrepresentation of brown skin in fashion editorials and advertising campaigns. Her account popularized the #EmbraceDesiBeauty hashtag, which in April of 2015 drowned my timeline in painfully attractive South Asian girls to mark Desi Beauty Day.

"South Asian spaces are still plagued with anti-blackness and superiority complexes," she says. In particular, the 1971 Bangladesh genocide is often the target of insensitive jokes. "Online South Asian presence is dominated by Pakistanis and North Indians," she says. "When those two groups aren't being represented, you see the most abuse take place. The Bangladeshi presence is not respected nearly as much."

One Bangladeshi Twitter user told me that this has put her off "desi Twitter" altogether. She remains a relatively prominent voice online, with over 3,000 Twitter followers, but now regards South Asian online spaces with guarded cynicism. "I've seen a lot of ignorance towards the genocide, and even denial from so-called activists," she says.

Competing estimates claim that between 300,000 and 3 million Bangladeshis were killed by Pakistani armed forces (and minority Bangladeshi support groups). Hundreds of thousands more women were also victims of genocidal rape. "There's a lot of erasure, even though it was only 40 years ago," she says. "I get a lot of social media hate when I talk about the genocide."

Intersectional feminism makes a point of addressing the additional sexism suffered by women of color. However, the nuances of experience within non-white ethnic groups, like the erasure of Bangladeshi voices by other South Asians, are equally significant. Colorism in particular manifests itself in a damaging way—fair skin is still commonly seen as being more desirable in South Asian communities.

One of Maria Qamar's older pieces shows a woman trapped inside a bubblegum pink tube of Fair and Lovely skin lightening cream. The image is a pop art parody of what many South Asian girls experience—being told to avoid the sun and smother yourself in bleaching products. It's a problem rooted in anti-blackness. After all, as so many girls are told: no one will marry you if you're dark.

An #unfairandlovely campaign image featuring Mirusha Yogarajah (left) and Yanusha Yogarajah. Photo by Pax Jones

Most prominent desi activists today are those with the lightest skin. The #UnfairAndLovely campaign aims to increase the visibility of dark skinned people across ethnic groups.

It was founded by two activists of different ethnic origins—Eelam-Tamil Mirusha Yogarajah and African-American Pax Jones. They point to the Instagram profiles of Sanam Sindhi and Minahil Mahmood as evidence. They are two of South Asian activism's shiniest stars, with cameos in Rihanna's "Bitch Better Have My Money" video and Carly Rae Jepsen's "Boy Problems". Both, Mirusha says, are "objectively light skinned".

The prevalence of exotic-but-not-too-ethnic faces is problematic. It says that if we have to have racial activism, we'd better make sure its champions don't stray too far from European beauty standards. I'm a mixed heritage, relatively light skinned South Asian. Exposure to online racial activism like #UnfairAndLovely has made me acutely aware of the benefits I enjoy compared to people who can't hide behind racial ambiguity. No one's throwing bleach bombs at me—an experience Mirusha faced when she was protesting against colorism on her university campus in Texas.

Through #UnfairAndLovely, women have been able to share their experiences of colorism; "I was 11 years old when my uncle told me I should bleach my skin," one testimony reads.

"It's beautiful how our campaign has unfolded," Mirusha says, trailing off.

"But it's tragic how quickly it blew up," continues Pax. "It shows how much we needed it."

Through social media, a previously silenced minority is biting back. But how can online activism achieve longevity? The very nature of trending topics is just that—a transitory trend. Mishra has some ideas. "I envision desi activism turning into something physical," she says. "There's still a lot of learning to do in our own communities before we expand outwards, though."

Every community has its problems, but luckily the dominating voice here is one demanding acknowledgement and change.