In my experience, your perception of ÔÇ£the pillÔÇØ shifts hugely as you enter your university years. Birth control goes from something maybe a few of your friends are on, to it being a rare occurrence to find someone who can be prescribed the pill and who hasnÔÇÖt been. It seems to be a modern medical superpill. From cramps to spots to sex, youÔÇÖll generally hear: … Continue reading Birth Control: A Tough Pill To Swallow?
Words by Katie Brosnan External validation is an addictive drug. Whether you seek it from dating apps, social media or in person, it can either leave you feeling delighted or disgusted. As a result, seeking external validation can make you engage in a pattern of toxic cycles until you feel that bit better. Social media normalises these cycles too; weÔÇÖve all heard of Hot Girl … Continue reading The Validation Game
An Ode to friendship in women. There is a special type of magic laced in the love between friends, my heart five pounds heavier in the company of my own. Only one ring away from all the right people at all the right times. Silent pacts sealed in shared bathroom stalls and the warmth of living room lights. The simple intimacy of knowing and being … Continue reading Cupid’s Corner: Sharing Cardiff Students’ Love Notes
The AIDS crisis gripped the world for most of the 1980s and 1990s, with an estimated 40.1 million people having died of HIV and AIDS by 2021. At the time, rather than being seen and treated as a serious pandemic that posed a threat to everyone, the perception of it was distorted to become a moral disease caused and spread by the LGBTQIA+ community. The … Continue reading Unpacking The AIDS Crisis and The Continued Discrimination Against the LGBTQIA+ Community
The ÔÇÿBitchÔÇÖ is a constant and repetitive figure within the music industry. Whether she is being denounced as a perpetrator of promiscuity, discarded as money-hungry and manipulative, or paving her way through life on her own terms, the message is clear: It always comes back to the Bitch. Listeners are now immune to a word that, may we remind ourselves, was originally used in the … Continue reading Last Night a DJ Ruined My Night: Profanity in Music
Dating has long been referred to as a game, one with pieces and players and one that you need to learn how to play if you hope to find that oh-so-elusive stereotypical love story. Who makes the first move, when do you call, what can you share on the first date: all of these questions are based on long-standing inexplicable rules that the world of … Continue reading The Digitalisation of Modern Dating
Words By Alice Moore The Ick – we all get it. Whether itÔÇÖs imagining them running for the bus, to getting food around their mouth while eating, itÔÇÖs becoming so much easier to get turned off by a partner for the smallest of things. This increasingly common gag has gained a high amount of traction on social media, but although it started as an internet … Continue reading The Ick: Is It Stopping People From Dating?
By Craig Strachan Porn can be a maze of so many unreliable truths and urban myths towards sex. The howling, the non-existent pubic hair, and of course the raw sexual energy of the plumbing and pizza delivery industries. Whilst many of these might become obvious to us later in life, a lot of us discover porn from an early age of adolescence where we wouldnÔÇÖt … Continue reading The Pornstar Penis is a Fa├ºade
TW: abusive relationships and sexual assault. Dear You, When I met you, I thought you couldÔÇÖve been the one. Yes, we were young- but I thought we had done everything right. We were still kids when we met. People would say we both had a lot of growing up to do, and I guess we thought we could do that alongside one another. I think … Continue reading A Letter to the One Who Hurt you the Most
Outercourse is a word that most people havenÔÇÖt heard of ÔÇô itÔÇÖs a term used for sex without penetration. I remember asking my flatmates a couple of months ago: do you have sex without penetration? I was met with some judgement and a few harmless jokes, but thereÔÇÖs definitely a stigma surrounding the idea of penetration-less sex, which IÔÇÖve never really understood. I left with … Continue reading The Benefits of Outercourse
By Phoebe Bowers TW: SEXUAL ASSAULT & VIOLENCE They donÔÇÖt call it ÔÇÿPlan AÔÇÖ for a reason. For type A personalities, ÔÇÿPlan BÔÇÖ may seem like a frivolous option to rely on – I have even known people who have had no idea where to go or what they should say to require this pill that a lot of us feel so begrudgingly about. There … Continue reading ‘Planning’ Plan B
By Alice Moore For years, sex has been entirely based upon reaching the ÔÇÿBig ÔÇÿOÔÇÖ ÔÇô the orgasm. Sex was conceptualised as a competition with one goal only, and failing to make yourself or your partner reach this was essentially deemed as a failure; a waste of a shag. It goes without saying that this perception was (and still is!) highly patriarchal, predominantly focusing on … Continue reading The Big ‘O’ IsnÔÇÖt Always the Goal!
By Holly Chapman TW: homophobic laws, infertility. Where someone struggles with fertility and has to reach out for help when wanting to conceive, members of the LGBTQ+ community follow similar steps in their difficult journey towards parenthood. Unfortunately, their rights to conceive or have children in general, have been protested in the past. It was only in 1967 that The Sexual Offences Act decriminalized sex … Continue reading The Rainbow Test Tube
While it feels like the transition between 2020 and now has been a thousand years longer than it needed to be, dating post-pandemic has definitely taught me a lot! Regardless of having done all of my dates this year with individuals I met on apps like Tinder or Hinge, I can assure you the nerves that come with meeting a stranger for the first time … Continue reading Valentine’s Special: Your Editors’ Worst Dates
Can it work? I think we will begin at: are we still friends? Which is no. Not even acquaintances. We never talk anymore either, though IÔÇÖm sure many of you had already guessed that. I would love to say I hadn’t been warned of what I was getting myself into, but all my friends were disgusted with the contract (with added benefits) I had entered … Continue reading Friends…with Benefits
Written by Niladri Singh Rajput Graphic* by Maja Metera If there is a common thread that holds most living beings together, then that thread is this feeling we call love. It has for generations governed the world, our believes and all of the people. The ways in which we show love is different for each one of us. We are great lovers, all of us, … Continue reading How Our Cultural Backgrounds Shape Our Perception of Love
Art By Sian Hopkins University is right around the corner again, and after a long time in lockdown, so might be hookup culture! For this week’s topic, we collected several testimonials from Cardiff University students to discuss the intricacies of hookup culture. Hookup culture is often misunderstood If your problem with hookup culture is getting cold sores from a sweaty strobe-lit meathead, the culture is … Continue reading Hookup Culture at University: What Cardiff Students Think
