InTuition

Daniel Priestley - Writer and Editor The Green Party has in the past been known first and foremost as the party of the environment. It was founded in 1990, but it’s roots can be traced 1970s and the PEOPLE Party, which went on to be renamed the Ecology Party. In 1976 the party won its first political representation in the form of a councillor and went on to win two seats in the European Parliament in 1999. The party has struggled to gain seats in Westminster due to the first past the post voting system and benefits instead from a proportional representation system due to its limited, yet widespread support. Arguably in General Elections, a vote for the Green Party is more of a vote to send a message to the government that there should be an increased emphasis on environmental preservation rather than a legitimate attempt to elect a Green Party MP. Since the beginning of the Green Party, it’s policies have always been left leaning and environment focused. However, since the rise o...

Lily Frost - Writer and Deputy Editor Jameela Jamil; Actress, model, presenter, radio host and activist, started the Instagram campaign ‘I Weigh’ in March 2018. This campaign was sparked by an image that was made public by Kourtney, Khloe, Kim Kardashian and their half siblings Kendall and Kylie Jenner, which detailed each woman’s weight. In response to this Jamil posted a picture of herself in the mirror with the words,    ‘ I weigh: Lovely relationships, Great friends, I laugh every day, I love my job, I make an honest living, I’m financially independent, I speak out for women’s rights, I like my bingo wings, I like myself in spite of EVERYTHING I’ve been taught by the media to hate about myself ’. Since this post, the campaign has exploded with women detailing what they weigh, in non metric terms. In addition to kick-starting a campaign tackling how society values women, she has also been successful in putting a spotlight on celebrities promoting get-thin-quick products...

Daniel Priestley - Writer and Editor Most people who regularly use the platform will be aware of the constant criticism of Youtube and their practices. Across the last few years, waves of criticism have come from all corners of the Youtube community, with creators who make their living off the platform offering up damning judgment of it’s actions. In the last few years there has been the attempted integration with Google+, the so called Adpocalypse, suspicions about the in built bias of the trending page, constant unannounced tweaking of the algorithm and more recently the experiments with the subscription feed. I think it’s fair to say that no other company attracts criticism for its decisions in the same way and people seem to want YouTube to act in accordance with different standards. So why is this request a natural and logical reaction to the website, as opposed to a random misguided response to the business practices of a company that is merely seeking profit? Youtube as a ...

Eleanor Parsons - Writer ‘Extinction Rebellion’ (XR) are currently making their presence known on the streets of London. Their action began with a nude protest in Parliament on the 1st of April 2019, and has proceeded to civil disobedience across the City of London. The action is planned to continue until April 29th according to the group’s website. Who are Extinction Rebellion? As defined by the Guardian ‘ Extinction Rebellion is an international protest group that uses non-violent civil disobedience to campaign on environmental issues. Demonstrations have included blocking bridges to traffic in London and a semi-naked protest inside the House of Commons. ’ The group’s website lists three main ‘demands’ for the UK - for the Government to ‘tell the truth’ by declaring an emergency on climate change, for the Government to ‘act now’ by reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025 and for the issue to be taken ‘beyond politics’ and be led by citizens input. The action and ...

Lily Frost - Writer & Deputy Editor 2018 brought with it a storm of campaigns against sexual assault and harassment, especially against authoritative figures. First the rise of the #MeToo campaign and then multiple sexual misconduct allegations that were made against Supreme Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh. The Kavanaugh case showed how, understandably, many women are silenced and are afraid to speak up of against men of authority, at risk of being publicly humiliated or being framed as a liar. This ‘hushing’ of women resonates with the characters of Isabella and Beatrice in Measure for Measure and Much Ado About Nothing. To help understand the plot better, the Royal Shakespeare Company summarises Shakespeare plays, for Measure for Measure, (link: https://www.rsc.org.uk/measure-for-measure/) and for Much Ado About Nothing, (link: https://www.rsc.org.uk/much-ado-about-nothing/). Shakespeare wrote Isabella and Beatrice as independent women who act on their on behalf. However, after...

Katie May Huxtable - Guest Writer  - Deputy Editor Quench Magazine In the academic essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinem a, Laura Mulvey argues that the film and television industry suffers from a huge imbalance in terms of gender perspectives and hegemonic discourse. With screens full of straight, white, male protagonists, and a crowd of men working behind the camera, Mulvey argued that men and women became forced to view films and television from the perspective of a heterosexual male or, using a theory she coined, through a ‘male gaze’ (Mulvey, 1975). However, her suggestion that females can only view themselves through the gaze of a man, though a theory applicable to many forms of media, I feel cannot be used as a sweeping generalisation for all cinematic film or television. After reading the work of Williams (1996) I too struggled to escape limitations of Mulvey’s theory claiming that the pleasures in cinema were restricted to voyeurism and masculine fetishism. Televi...

Sophie Bond - Writer African American Vernacular English (AAVE), also previously known as Ebonics, is a variety of English that has come into focus within the past 60 years, but there is a debate as to how it originated. There are two theories, Anglicist and Creolist, which give possible ideas for how it came about. The Anglicist hypothesis suggests that AAVE is a dialect that was acquired by African slaves on southern plantations from British ‘owners’, whereas, the creolist hypothesis suggests that AAVE is a language that originated as a creole. A creole begins as a pidgin, which is a very restricted form of language comprised of the bare minimum that is required to communicate. It uses very simple grammar and often arises when two individuals from different languages don’t have a language in common to communicate. This then becomes a creole when two speakers of pidgin use it as the main language with their children. The creole becomes a more complex form of the pidgin because it ne...

Niamh Brook - Writer Everyone knows it. Disney is one of the biggest entertainment companies in the world. With their animation studio, multiple bought out studios such as Marvel and Lucasfilm, theme parks and shops. It is clear. Disney is a corporate giant. It is difficult to leave the house and not be faced with one of their products. Whether it be is Let it Go blaring on the radio over and over again (a dated reference, I know) or Mickey Mouse smiling at you from across the cereal aisle. As of 2017, Disney now owns 27% of the entertainment industry after its purchase of Fox. This percentage is colossal and can be seen to have a major impact on our consumption of media and how we interact with it. Until recent years, Disney was known for its spellbinding animation, thus creating the well known stereotype, “Disney is for kids”. Which is true. It is. Those who watch the Disney animations, no matter how hard they resist, are enveloped by Disney’s charm although many do not wish to a...

Emma Bentley - Guest Writer Editors Note: Emma writes her own blog discussing politics, literature and classics which can be found by clicking here Euripides’ Medea centres around an eponymous protagonist who, angered by her husband leaving her to marry a Corinthian princess, murders her own children in an act of vengeance. Despite being the most frequently performed Greek tragedy of the 20th century, and one of ten Euripidean plays to be canonised in the library of Alexandria, Medea and its tetralogy placed last in the 431 BC City Dionysia (Griffith, 2013, 1-2). Athenian citizens ranked the competing tragedies, suggesting that Medea’s reputation among them was unfavourable, perhaps because of the protagonist herself. One can thus argue that Euripides’ male audience were unsettled by Medea, a figure with heroic stature and rhetorical power who rejects traditional womanhood and transcends beyond the limits of human mortality. Alongside the combination of intelligence and sexual jeal...

Daniel Priestley - Writer and Editor As established in the previous article in this series discussing the current crisis, legal aid has been almost entirely removed in private family law cases. The removal of lawyers from the family court process, specifically in child arrangements issues and divorce cases, has caused an issue with the traditional process. Perhaps surprisingly, a lack of lawyers has caused more time in court and this is partially due to two out of court practices not taking place. There are two practices which lawyers would engage in before starting proceedings for a child arrangement order and other private law endeavours; they would refer their clients to mediation and they would attempt to negotiate with the other party’s lawyer outside of the courtroom. Settlements A good example of the need for out of court settlements are cases for financial orders in divorce. When parties cannot reach an agreement between them with regards to the division of joint assets o...

Alison Romaine - Writer ‘The city’ is more than a territorial delineation on a map - it is reproduced by the flows that populate and activate space. Yet the mobilities of citizens are prismatic, often interweaving and are scalar in power - with curious temporality and spatially. From early morning commuters hastily navigating the concrete, to skateboarders later grazing the same curbs, it is assumed we all have equal right to the city (Lefebvre talks of ‘droit a la ville’) until the quiet spikes, sprinklers and slanting street benches creates a hostile city for the homeless. These examples of ‘defensive architecture’ as well as the rise of pseudo-public spaces, destabilises the liberalised expectations of our place in the city - as the ‘unwanted citizens’ are designed out (Andreou, 2015) to privilege the space for ‘consumers’. With this narrative, the playful sounds and activity of skateboarders have become politicized - highlighting how territory is not just the possession of a ce...