#gcses 2021 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cheriladycl01 · 26 days

Text

My love, is mine all mine - Max Verstappen x Norris! Reader x Charles Leclerc Part 4

Plot: Norris' Twin sister is also a driver in the 2021 line up and is in her rookie era. Not only do the commentators struggle to now talk about the pair in the race, but they also struggle to talk about talent. What happens when two drivers find her eye-catching.

A/N: I've brought Luisia into things because of the timeline and it being 2021. Don't hate on her, or the fact that i've brought her into my writing please!

Credit to countingstars-17 for the GIF

"MAX VERSTAPPEN WINS THE AUSTRIAN GRAND PRIX, LANDO NORRIS COMING CLOSE BEHIND HIM IN P2 WITH HIS SISTER Y/N NORRIS FOR SECOND PODIUM IN P3. THAT'S A DOUBLE MCLAREN AND A DOUBLE NORRIS PODIUM!" the commentator screams.

The second stint in Austria was far better with the stresses from the first gone, you were able to fully concentrate on the weekend and it was like you were a completely different person on track.

You're driving was aggressive and you were unstoppable when working your way up to your brother who was ahead of you. With some incredible team strategy and the help of DRS from your brother you were able to retain a double podium for your team and defend from both Mercedes car's effortlessly which was a shock to you since one of them was a seven times world champion.

You stood on the podium that day with your brother, your dad was there watching the pair of you tears in his eyes same as yours.

Celebrating a win with your brother was a feeling you don't think you'd ever forget.

Post race interviews were incredible and everyone could see the glow you were emitting from how proud you were. But a lot of your answers were just leading them onto your home race which would come after the large break that was coming. Not huge break but enough for a small holiday.

You moved in with you brother as his home was closer to Woking where the MTC was based and it just made sense. You guy's lived together for the first 22 years of your life so it wouldn't be any different now.

You and your brother however did want to travel over the summer, and when you got invited to go to Mallorca with Carlos and Lando you couldn't say no. You met the Sainz family who were all so welcoming to you and helped you further your Spanish that you took at GCSE while you were out there.

Then you guys ended up travelling to Portugal where Lando met Luisia. You both immediately jelled to the point where you were probably more obsessed with her than Lando was.

You became her best friend and Lando and her kept talking on and off after you left Portugal. You also texted her all the time, making sure she was okay.

Lando had to explain to Luisia that you'd just had a falling out with your childhood best friend so it was natural for you to want to be attaching yourself to someone new and the crazy thing was Luisia didn't mind at all.

You went to Silverstone, excited for the race, and even though it wasn't a podium at your home race you and Lando place P4 and you in P5.

Then you moved onto Hungary which honestly wasn't great, you managed to slip into the points in P10, but Lando had a DNF on Lap 2.

After Hungary, there was the actual summer break where you joined Lando on a yacht with all of his friends. You ended up inviting Luisia where of course her and Lando finally got together and you couldn't be more excited for them.

There was one day when you all docked up in Monaco and you were alone as Lando had stolen Luisia and were having fun swimming and on Jetski's, your mum and Oliver wanted to go sight seeing and all of Lando's friends hit Monte Carlo casino, so you decided to go shopping by yourself.

You were walking the streets of Monaco when a familiar voice called out to you.

"Y/N?"

You spun round to be met with the Monegasque man who was standing behind you alone.

"Charles?" you smile a little looking over him and he steps forward coming up to you. It's a little awkward at first and it's almost like he doesn't know what he should do. You can tell he wants to pull you into a hug and typical European greeting but seems, tentative after everything that happened between the two of you.

"How- are you I haven't spoken to you since..." he trails off and looks down.

"Since you kissed me and admitted you'd basically been in love with me for the last like 8 years?" you chuckle looking over at him with a small smile on your face.

"Erm yeah. I just wanted you to know I wasn't making any of that up!" he nods.

"I know, I think part of me ... the immature part of me panicked especially where anyone could have seen, and you know I was right too because someone did" you smile. If you were to get into a relationship with another driver you'd have to be really careful with how it got out into the media.

"Yeah, it's funny actually Max and I used to argue over you a lot!" he chuckles and your head snaps up to him.

"What?" you ask looking up at him, now stood closer to him than before.

"Max and I we're both attention seekers, especially when it came to you. We both would fight for your approval, it was childish but we both liked you! Can't believe Max won you over" he smiled reminiscing.

"Max hasn't won me over, he's sleeping with my best friend while she's been lying to me..." you frown, offended that he'd think that especially after what happened after the first race in Austria at the restaurant.

"But Pierre said... and that one article about ..." he starts but you quickly interrupt him.

"There is nothing between me and Max trust me. He made me nervous and was able to make me blush but if he likes Y/BF/N, i wouldn't get in the way of that!" you offer, but Charles still doesn't seem convinced.

"But Max told me to back off" he murmurs to himself and you nearly didn't hear it with how quietly he'd mumbled it. You pretended not to be shocked, and looked down so he couldn't really see your facial expression.

"Have you ever been on a yacht?" you ask, kind of out of the blue.

"I grew up in Monaco, of course I have!" he grins.

"My family, Lando and I all rented a yacht to spend the summer on, did you want to join us while we are here!" you grin, and he thinks for a second before nodding.

"But you have to come shopping with me first!" you grin and he rolls his eyes before gesturing for you to lead the way. You spend about and hour walking through the streets of Monaco buying things with your new F1 money.

"You travelled back to the docked boat before turning to Charles remembering about your brothers new girlfriend. "You travelled back to the docked boat before turning to Charles remembering about your brothers new girlfriend.

"Just so you know, Lando has a new girlfriend so erm. You know if you post anything don't get them in it together" you smile and he looks over at you in shock.

"Lando has a girlfriend?" he asks as if it's a bizarre concept.

"Yeah, she's a model and super super sweet!" you cheer, happy your brother was happy.

"Well, lets go. I want to see you brother!" Charles grins before going in front of you and onto the boat.

What a summer this would be.

Taglist:

@littlesatanicassholebitch @hockey-racing-fubol @laura-naruto-fan1998 @22yuki @simxican @sinofwriting @lewisroscoelove @cmleitora @stupidandunnecessary @clayra-g @daemyratwst @honey-belden @moonypixel @lauralarsen @vader-is-hot @ironcowboycopnickel @itsjustkhaos @the-untamed-soul @beebo86 @happylittlereader @ziejustme @lou-larcher5 @thewulf @purplephantomwolf @chasing-liberosis @chillyleclerc @chanthereader @annoyingmoonballoon @summissss @evieepepi08 @havaneseoger08 @celesteblack08 @gulphulp @fandom1ruined2me @celebstories @starfusionsworld @jspitwall @sierruhh @georgeparisole @dakotatankbig @youcannotcancelquidditch @zzonsbeek @tallbrownhairsarcastic @mellowarcadefun @ourteenagetragedy @otako5811 @countingstacksandpanicattacks @peachiicherries @formulas-bitch @cherry-piee @hopexcroc @mirrorball-6 @spilled-coffee-cup @mehrmonga @bigsimperika @blueberry64857959 @eiraethh @lilypadlover @curseofhecate @alliwantisadonut @the-fem1n1ne-urge @21stcenturytaegi @dark-night-sky-99 @spideybv28 @i-wish-this-was-me @tallrock35 @butterfly-lover @barnestatic @landossainz @darleneslane @barcelonaloverf1life @r0nnsblog @ilove-tswizzle @kapsylia @laneyspaulding19 @lazybot @malynn @cassielikereading @viennakarma @teamnovalak @landosgirlxoxo @marie0v @jlb20416 @yourbane @teamnovalak @nikfigueiredo @fionaschicken @0picels0 @seomako @urdad-hot @formula1mount @tinydeskwriter @butterfly-lover @ironmaiden1313 @splaterparty0-0 @formula1mount @styl1shl1v

242 notes · View notes

princessanneftw · 4 months

Text

Zara Tindall’s best friend to be appointed as lady in waiting to the Princess Royal

NHS midwife Dolly Maude, who delivered Tindall child on bathroom floor, previously wore joky ‘lady in waiting’ badge on day at the races

By Camilla Tominey for the Daily Telegraph

She once turned up to the races with her best friend Zara Tindall wearing a playful badge bearing the words ‘Lady in Waiting’.

A spokesman for the royal was later forced to clarify: “It was a joke. Zara doesn’t have any sort of lady in waiting.”

But now Dolly Maude, an NHS nurse who helped to deliver Mrs Tindall’s third child, Lucas, on the bathroom floor at her Gatcombe Park home in 2021, has been well and truly welcomed into the royal fold.

Despite the high jinks at Cheltenham last January, the 51-year-old mother of four has been appointed as a lady in waiting to Mrs Tindall’s mother, the Princess Royal.

The Telegraph understands that Buckingham Palace will announce the appointment in the Court Circular on Feb 1, when Mrs Maude will be revealed as one of four newly appointed ladies in waiting to the King’s sister, to replace others who have retired.

A lady in waiting is an attendant to a female member of the Royal family who acts as a companion on royal engagements as well as helping with their day-to-day duties.

Mrs Maude was maid of honour when the Princess Royal’s daughter married Mike Tindall, in 2011, and helped to deliver Lucas when his birth did not quite go to plan.

Mr Tindall described the birth on his The Good, The Bad & The Rugby podcast, saying: “Fortunately Zara’s friend Dolly is, she’s actually more important than I am at making sure she’s been at all three of my children’s births. She was there and recognised that we wouldn’t have got to the hospital in time, so it was run into the gym, get a mat, get into the bathroom, towels down, brace brace brace!”

One of Mrs Maude’s friends said: “She’s such a great girl. For the Princess Royal, it’s a perfect fit because of their shared love of dogs and horses.

“She’s not only extremely close to Zara, she also gets on brilliantly with the Princess. She’s fiercely loyal and discreet. It’s a great match.”

Mrs Maude and her husband Chris have four children. Billy, 26, attended Swansea University; Nell, 24, studied at the Central School of Ballet; Ted, 17, is, like his mother, a keen skier. He was a page boy at the Tindall wedding and Mrs Tindall is his godmother. Their youngest daughter, Mary, 15, is studying for her GCSEs.

Mrs Maude is occasionally spotted looking after Mrs Tindall’s children Mia, who turns 10 this month, five-year-old Lena and Lucas, at equestrian events.

Three years ago it was revealed that the Princess Royal, who carries out the second highest number of royal engagements a year after the monarch, had 11 ladies in waiting, two of whom had worked for Her Royal Highness for more than 50 years, three for more than 40 years, and five for more than 30 years.

Traditionally, ladies in waiting would be the wives or daughters of peers but they can also be a cousin or close friend.

When Queen Elizabeth II died, it was announced that Queen Camilla would not have ladies in waiting but instead be attended by Queen’s “companions”, and that their role would be much more informal.

#awww I love this!#princess anne #princess royal #zara tindall #dolly maude #british royal family #brf

80 notes · View notes

pronoun-fucker · 2 years

Text

Like many people in Britain, you probably watched with horror the US supreme court’s reversal of Roe v Wade, thinking, “Thank goodness women could never be prosecuted for having an abortion here.”

But let me tell you, it already happens here.

Two women are currently awaiting criminal trial in England for abortion-related offences, both facing charges that carry a maximum sentence of life. At least 17 women have been investigated by police over the past eight years for having had abortions.

In Oxford, a 25-year-old mother of one is facing trial for allegedly taking the drug misoprostol – one of the two pills routinely prescribed by doctors to abort a pregnancy. But her baby was born alive and she was subsequently reported to the police. She is being charged under the Offences Against the Person Act, a law passed by parliament in 1861, before the invention of the lightbulb and before women had the right to vote. The law states that a woman must be “kept in penal servitude for life” if she procures an abortion.

Another woman is facing trial after she took abortion pills she obtained from the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) by post when rules were relaxed during the pandemic to allow this. She was allegedly 28 weeks pregnant at the time and is facing charges of “child destruction” (note the visceral language) under the Infant Life (Preservation) Act from 1929, which also comes with a maximum life sentence. She could spend the rest of her life in prison.

We so often think that the 1967 Abortion Act legalised abortion. But it did no such thing. It partially decriminalised abortion in England, Scotland and Wales, so long as strict conditions were in place, such as a confirmation from two medical practitioners that the pregnancy had not exceeded 28 weeks (subsequently reduced to 24 weeks in 1990), or that the termination was necessary to prevent injury or mental harm. Any abortion outside these criteria is still a criminal offence.

We know that it is overwhelmingly vulnerable women who are investigated and prosecuted for having abortions. One woman collapsed in the dock when she was sentenced to two and a half years in 2015 for taking tablets she had bought online to induce a miscarriage after the 24-week period of gestation. The court heard that she had “a history of emotional and psychological problems”.

Another woman, a mother of one, ordered pills online to induce an abortion in 2019 after her abusive boyfriend had told her not to go to the doctor. She had believed she was eight to 10 weeks pregnant but after a traumatic miscarriage in her bath tub, where she has described sitting in an inch of blood, she realised her pregnancy had been much further along. She was arrested in her hospital bed and served two years in prison.

These are just some examples of women who have faced trial: there are multiple other women who face gruelling police investigations. In 2021, a 15-year-old girl was investigated for a year after suffering an unexplained stillbirth. Her phone and laptop were confiscated during her GCSE exams, she was self-harming, and the investigation only ended after a coroner concluded that the pregnancy ended due to natural causes. Another woman was arrested in hospital last year and kept in a prison cell for 36 hours after a stillbirth at 24 weeks, and is now suffering PTSD. My question is this: if a woman has had an abortion late in the gestation period, or a traumatic miscarriage or stillbirth, should she go to prison or should she be offered support from medical practitioners at what is clearly a horrendous time, both mentally and physically?

Women in 2022 are being shackled by a 160-year-old law made at a time when we were not even allowed to set foot in the House of Commons. Urgent reform is needed to protect more women from harm, which is why organisations such as BPAS and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) are calling on the director of public prosecutions for England and Wales, Max Hill QC, to drop all charges against these women. The RCOG this month has gone further, calling on ministers to finally legalise abortion. There is absolutely no public interest in sending vulnerable women to prison for terminating pregnancies. Instead, these prosecutions will only serve to put off women seeking help from doctors because they might get arrested, pushing more women into unsafe and underground options.

Meanwhile, according to the criteria of the Abortion Act, a woman has to show that she would suffer grave permanent injury to her mental health if she did not have an abortion after 24 weeks. Why should women still have to pathologise themselves as mad, hysterical, unfit or suffering to legally access healthcare?

The state currently has a triple lock on women’s bodies. By not legalising abortion it has the right to force pregnancy, birth and motherhood upon us. Look to the rules on organ donation: it is illegal to donate people’s organs after they die (however desperately they are needed by people on waiting lists) without their permission. The law at present, which denies women the right to abort a pregnancy on their own terms, is to give us less autonomy than a corpse.

Link | Archived Link

#abortion #USA #uk #radfem #radical feminism #misogyny

1K notes · View notes

becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys · 2 years

Note

Thought I’d let you know that the op of the abortion post (pronoun-fucker) is a terf. When I looked at the recommended post it was suggesting a bunch of terf shit and when I check their blog yeah they’re a terf. You don’t have to answer this just thought I’d let you know cuz I reblogged the post without even realising.

Oh, gross. Alright then, let's see...

Cool, okay, so the post was literally just the text of the linked newspaper article, so allow me to recreate it here:

Link | Archived Link

And, just to be clear, while is a situation that is 100% rooted in punishing women for having sex and also primarily affects women, women are NOT the only people affected by it. Trans men and enbies also can get hit by these laws, and we shouldn't forget them.

#abortion #also fuck transphobes with a cactus‚ just so we're clear #feminism

590 notes · View notes

conanssummerchild · 2 months

Note

I vaguely remember something about the periodic table being a metaphor for the sex spectrum (and metalloids were intersex). ionic bonding is cisheterosexual marriage. anyway you impregnate someone by giving them electrons to make compounds (babies).

acidity and basicity was the gender spectrum i think?? so elements are conditioned to behave a certain way but you know chemistry it's full of anomalous behavior (yay transgenderism!!!) so yes water is nonbinary LOL

noble gases were aroace (yes we're the coolest everyone wants to be us).

I think carbon was the lesbian protagonist because obviously. anyway also there was some sort of revolt going on because of the horrific class system (mass number corresponded to economic status or smth). I think carbon was in a benzene found family polycule

✨️chemistry brain damage✨️ (I'm so sorry you can't unsee this but this is what happens when the two biggest aspects of your life are science and tumblr like mine was back in 2021 LOL)

ahh sorry i was busy writing angsty songs on my guitar but OH MY GOD. IM LITERALLY IDEK

water being nonbinary im literally in love with that omg i need to start saying im drinking nonbinary juice 😭 fhsjahsjdjajajr

and noble gases being aroace is literally perfect wtf wtf im losing it why are you a genius

i love that carbon is the lesbian protagonist lets go lesbians amd shes poly i love it

no bcs im dumb enough to go into my gcse, freeze and then write 'the noble gases dont form chemical bonds bcs theyre aroace' like an idiot and think that the scientific term or something

anyway i love chemistry so this is everything to me ily 😭 <3

#moots <33 #kavya <3

20 notes · View notes

religion-is-a-mental-illness · 1 month

Text

My journey through gender equality advocacy has been one of two starkly different halves.

When I tell people about my support of women, I do so to more or less exclusive approval and applause. The stories of standing up to cat callers and to confronting misogynists are warmly welcomed; my time spent homeless in London raising money for vulnerable women, a proud feather in my hat.

And whilst it’s not why I did these things, I can’t help but noticed how it’s made me socially, intellectually and dare I say it, sexually, more attractive.

Then I move onto part two. I’ll talk about boys failing in school, the unique criminalisation of gay men historically, the abysmal male life expectency, or the abused men shut out from refuges, and suddenly the situation changes.

The environment runs cold, smiles are wiped from faces, and nodding heads grow stiff.

Often outage and condemnation follows. To them I’ve fallen down some kind of rabbit hole. My views are problematic. Ignorant. And somehow misogynistic.

People, even my own family, will protest and leave the room. “King of the Incels!” or “Z List Jordan Peterson” I am called. I’m always left wondering why I am the subject of such colourful language, for simply making my views consistent and my compassion complete?

And so the transformation is complete. The face of compassion, warmth and approval, has become the face of ignorance, coldness and stupidity.

It is, in my eyes, the ugly side of equality.

The male side; of snails and puppy dog tails, of lazy and obtuse catchphrases and victim blaming mentality. Toxic this, and patriarchy that, and privilege sprinted on top. Yawn.

So how has your journey into the ugly side of equality played out?

And why do so many progressives forsake their own beliefs, compassion and virtue so quickly?

Sources:

Telegraph Article: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/11/16/boys-left-fail-school-attempts-help-earn-wrath-feminists-says/

Dr Farrell Protest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiRasOrIoYQ

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/aug/13/girls-overtake-boys-in-a-level-and-gcse-maths-so-are-they-smarter

The activists don't care about this. They don't care about people. They care only about imposing their ideology onto everyone. You can tell from the girl who says "feminist spaces" should be used to talk about mental health. You're not allowed to talk about any real issue or problem without applying their corrupt, fraudulent ideological framework, in order to produce false, ideologically acceptable answers. Such as that suicide is caused by "the patriarchy" or "toxic masculinity." They'll literally attempt to stop you and call you a bigot if you try.

This is analogous to how believers will say that famine or disease are the result of "sin" or are "god's punishment," rather than non-fictional, actual real-world causes.

P.S. I absolutely detest how quasi-therapeutic language like "spaces" has leaked out into the everyday language of these ideologues.

#The Tin Men #gender equality #equality #education #hypocrisy #western feminism #systemic bias #misandry #it was never about compassion #religion is a mental illness

9 notes · View notes

ukrfeminism · 3 months

Text

Violet felt misunderstood and invisible when she was at school, as though teachers did not care or believe in her. She was permanently excluded aged 16, just before her GCSEs.

Racial injustice could have been to blame. New research from the charity Agenda Alliance has revealed that girls from a Black Caribbean background are excluded from school at double the rate of white girls.

A freedom of information request to the Department for Education found that in the 2021/2022 academic year, white girls were excluded at a rate of 0.06. That equates to six exclusions for every 10,000 pupils.

Black Caribbean girls were excluded at a rate of 0.12, while it was even higher for girls of a mixed white and Black Caribbean background at 0.14.

“Things were bad at school and sometimes things were bad at home but nobody ever gave me support,” Violet says. “When I was permanently excluded – just before my GCSEs – I didn’t know who I was going to be or what I’d do.

“I think there’s stigma around Black British girls. We’re treated differently with perceptions about us. We’re often punished just for being different. We get told off for the way uniforms look on our bodies, but they’re just not made for our body types and don’t fit us in the same way as white girls.

“Also, sometimes Black girls just have an opinion and it’s then taken as aggressive, or we’re just labelled ‘rude’. I could do the same thing as a white girl and I would get in 10 times more trouble.”

Research from charity Voyage Youth, which tackles racial imbalance in London, has found that around 70% of students had never been consulted on policies that affect them in school.

School rules can be “overly oppressive of self-expression”, with beauty products and hair styling often come up as valid reasons for punishing young people. Voyage Youth has seen that exclusions are often fuelled by “huge misunderstandings and misconceptions about young people of colour”.

Paul Anderson, the charity’s founder, explains that one of the key issues is ‘adultification’. He says: “Young people are mistreated as they are seen as mature, aggressive and more physical so their behaviours and actions are seen as intentional and not accidental.

“Many young people express they are not understood and valued by some teachers as many working in inner cities have no understanding of young peoples lived experiences, cultures, races and religions. This creates a disassociation and distance and can lead to teachers making recommendation to exclude due to a lack of understanding about diverse lives.”

Family background also plays a role – if parents are not present at school events, teachers might be able to “exploit this gap” and young people feel particularly targeted.

Anderson adds: “We are also concerned about new covert policies schools are also adopting such as managed moves. This is when one school partners with another to swap young people that are on the peripheries of exclusion. This helps them overcome being exposed as excludees.”

The situation is even worse for girls from Gypsy, Roma and Irish traveller girls, who are excluded at triple the rate of their white peers.

Pauline Anderson, the chair of trustees at the Traveller Movement, says: “Schools are legally required to have behaviour policies in place that address race-based bullying, yet these educational institutions are continuing to fail to protect our children.

“We need to see a zero-tolerance policy for racist bullying in schools from both pupils and staff. For our young girls, the combined discrimination of racism and ableism as well as sexism has a detrimental impact on them.”

Agenda Alliance is calling for schools to adopt improved behavioural policies, addressing how gender and racial stereotypes are disproportionately impacting girls.

The charity wants all specialist staff working with children at risk of exclusion to have better training that is aware of how culture, gender, age and experiences of trauma might impact behaviour.

Agenda Alliance also warns thatresponses to high rates of absenteeism “must avoid unnecessarily punitive approaches”, and instead work to address the root causes of girls’ absence from school alongside girls and specialist organisations that support them.

I ndy Cross, Chief Executive of Agenda Alliance, says: “These are extremely worrying findings. We are calling for zero tolerance to harmful behaviour policies which blight girls’ futures. We know schools do a tough job and that teachers are hard pressed. But by the government’s own measure, girls at the sharpest end of disadvantage are being set up to fail.

“Racial and gender stereotypes have no place in today’s education for young women. Enough is enough. No more excuses that poverty also inevitably jeopardises education. We can – and must – do better than this.”

Alba Kapoor, Head of Policy at the Runnymede Trust adds: “These disturbing statistics reflect the racism that continues to pervade every aspect of our school system. That girls from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds are being disproportionately punished and marginalised as a result, is something that needs to urgently be addressed.”

“That’s why we are calling on schools to implement a temporary halt on school exclusions, and to instead prioritise non-punitive, proactive approaches which actually address harm. This would of course need meaningful investment in education from the government.

“It will take whole-school approaches to root out racism, and embed anti-racism throughout school cultures, policies and curricula. This means improving racial literacy amongst teachers, broadening the curriculum to help students learn about race, migration and Empire, and doing away with discriminatory policies which disproportionately target Black and minority ethnic children.”

Fatima Ahmed, helpline coordinator at Southall Black Sisters, says: “In my experience, young black girls who have approached our services often struggle to remain focused or remain in schools at all due to their multi-faceted and consistent experiences of racial injustice. For example, those who experience violence at home or in any other setting are less likely to directly approach their schools for support, which is why they may approach a local domestic abuse agency to advocate on their behalf.

“There is no one proven way to challenge racial injustice in schools as, often, it depends on the school’s geographical location and willingness of institutions to prioritize the experiences of young black girls subject to racial injustice. One suggestion would be to take a synergistic approach by bringing together teachers, counsellors, and safeguarding professionals to create tools to tackle structural racism and embed racial injustice awareness into every subject possible.”

Violet was referred to the charity Milk Honey Bees who offered support and empowered her to be herself. The charity supports Black girls who have been excluded and those who are at risk of exclusion and sees stories like Violet’s far too often.

Ebinehita Iyere, founder and managing director of Milk Honey Bees, says: “In my experience as a practitioner, racial biases are applied resulting in harsher punishment for things such as uniform or lateness.

“As an organisation, we are calling for support from policymakers, schools, funders and our wider community to understand and foster positive relationships between teachers and Black girls to stop them being marginalised by the education system.

“Only a joined up therapeutic approach will work. Creating safe spaces for Black girls to heal from their traumatic schooling experiences must be a priority, in order to prevent further risk of exclusion.”

With the right support, Violet found hope for her future. She says: “I got referred to Milk Honey Bees who worked with me and reassured me that it’s okay to be myself, without judging me from stuff on my form but going off my relationship with them. Now I see there’s a lot more I can offer in the world but, at school when I was excluded, I felt like if my school has given up on me, why should I believe in myself?”

#articles #education #organisations

10 notes · View notes

auggietopia · 1 month

Text

i started this blog in december 2019. it was the first tumblr i was ever truly active on, and i had no idea how tags or anything worked. i was freshly 16 and at the age where i was just starting to discover who and what i was, and a lot of it came through in the poetry i posted here. i had very rigid ideas of what literature and poetry was, as i had stopped doing it for a very long time. i wanted attention. i was eager, although i didnt know it then. i was hopeful.

covid hit three months later, in march 2020. i was in the year group whose gcses were cancelled. i posted one poem right as covid hit, in march, and then my last poem i posted in september of 2020 around when i started sixth form, after the longest summer i will ever have in my life. it was also the best summer i have had in my life. i spent 5 months calling with my best friends so constantly to the point i woke up at 6pm and went to bed at 9am just to talk to them. i realised my identity and tried to come out to a mother i would quickly find out was transphobic. i made a lot of friends. i started to gain some real footing on who i was.

i blinked and i am in march 2024. it is four years and a few days since i posted my second to last poem, which is a number that feels truly shocking to type out as it feels like it has been a year at most. in 2019 i turned 16, but in 2024 i will turn 21. this fact upsets me as the absolute formative amount of ageing i went through between the ages of 13-16 feels like it was my entire life and that there isnt room for anything else worthwhile to occur. on my 18th birthday, i held the frog teddy i bought for myself and listened to lord huron at full volume to block out the fear blurring its way into the edges like a migraine. on my 19th birthday, i was alone and terrified in my university dorm. i can't even remember my 20th birthday because of how insignificant it was. ageing, past the age of 18, went from being something exciting to something terrifying in a way i told myself it never would. and yet i am still here, and yet i still age. in a few months, it will be my 21st, and it will likely be at home, and it will likely be alone.

in the space between 16 and now, a lot happened. there were some pretty good things. they sit tiny next to the fact i lost my best friend in 2021 because they turned out to be quite literally the worst person i have ever known on this planet. i will never forgive them for what they did. realistically, every problem i hold against them is so small in the scale of the universe that maybe it isn’t worth holding onto at all, but i have not learned that lesson. i am aggressively refusing that lesson, in fact. at least for right now.

my mental health also took the biggest nosedive it has ever taken. sixth form shut down all sense of self discovery i had once i begin to nosedive in my academics and lose all of my friends. i still havent regained my footing. it has been 2 years since i left sixth form, and i still havent regained my footing.

but it is nice to look back over this blog and not regret a single thing i wrote.

all of this is to say i am going to start posting here again. and, in the most cliche way possible, i am going to do it for me this time. and i am going to post whatever i want without caring whether or not it is refined enough, because life is scarily fleeting and i can do whatever i want.

i was first allergictodrowning, and when i thought that was stupid i became autumndrowns, and now i will be something else that i havent decided yet but it will definitely be equally as stupid. :)

#writers on tumblr #writing #my work #poem #fiction #literature #my writing #do most of these tags apply? no #can anyone stop me? also no #poetry #poems #covid #covid 19 #mental health #art in covid #i am cringe but i am free

5 notes · View notes

girlinplaits · 2 years

Photo

Screaming. Crying. Throwing myself against a wall; A walkthrough of Netflix’s ‘Heartstopper’ with Set Decorator Maxwell Fine

Image credits: Netflix, Rob Youngson, See Saw, Maxwell Fine

This post has been copied from Maxwell Fine's website for future reference.

My phone didn’t stop buzzing on a random Wednesday in February 2021. Colleagues and friends were tweeting, facebooking and whatsapping me to tell me See Saw was producing a new show called Heartstopper for Netflix and I had to get myself involved. After making a little bit of a name for myself in LGBTQIA+ creative projects earlier in my career It sounded like the perfect fit for my next TV show!

I’m Maxwell Fine and for the past 10 years I have worked as a Set Decorator in TV, Advertising and Music promo. I’ve been in the most bizarre and fabulous situations on set from steaming silk curtains for Kate Winslet on a Lancome campaign to watching Lady Gaga be strung up to a studio ceiling in Japanese ropes for an Art Film. I’ve made panel shows, scripted comedies and fiercely bold dramas for BBC, Disney and Netflix amongst others - the list really does go on and on.

Thankfully, my phone often rings and my inbox is filled with requests here and there “can you do that?” or “Are you available to jump on this?” and on this particular random Wednesday afternoon, the brilliantly bold and BAFTA award winning designer Tim Dickel, asked me to jump on a Zoom to discuss a new project.

I had never heard of (the absolutely delightful) New York Times Best selling Author, Alice Oseman’s ‘Heartstopper’ before the script landed in my inbox. Like a lot of people, once I discovered it I couldn’t get it out of my head. There were so many parallels to my own life and I immediately understood why it was a queer story that just had to be told mainstream. If you can, you must - and so we did!

A few years previous I had campaigned for Switchboard LGBT+ helpline with the launch of my Print and Neon sculpture project ‘Robbed’. I created a load of typographical artworks inspired by a mentally exhausting jaunt I had with an ex partner who struggled with coming to terms with his sexuality.

The Art Department on a shoot take care of everything visual. From designing and building sets, booking Animals and Characters Vehicles, Food styling through to all the props and furniture used to dress a space. Paperclips to Spaceships - it’s up to the Art Department who design, buy and coordinate. As a Set Decorator, I work with a Designer and team to bring their vision to life through … stuff!

Observation is king.

I learnt to be a keen observer really early in secondary school. I was around 14 years old when I found myself squirrelled away at the back of the Art Classroom. I found myself set up on a stool next to the photocopier because I wouldn’t stop talking to my friends all lesson. I soon worked out that I really liked playing with materials and making things and so, headphones in I would sit for hours and hours, in lunch breaks and after school - making things. Painting, drawing, crafting sculptures, working with layering, cutting things out, trying again and again to make something out of nothing - a theme that would take me into this weird and wonderful career in Television!

We were being taught to observe. A weird task perhaps but an important one that would give me grounding for my future career working in TV design! As students, we would look at the world around us and try and replicate. Impressionist brush strokes, shadows and highlights on fruit, the texture of an onion out of papier mache - whatever we were working on - observation was king. Looking back now, I can not stress enough the importance of this life skill.

I gently honed my craft and with a lot of encouragement from teachers I passed my GCSE in Art and moved onto A Levels, then graduated Secondary school to a Foundation course in Art and Design and then onto Central Saint Martins to study Performance design as a University degree.

When we find Charlie sitting alone on the floor in the Art Classroom pondering life, it really made me think back to my own experience at school. Okay - so it’s wasn’t quite the same and our stories are different - but that connection to creativity and our shared curiosity with the world Charlie has is familiar to my story too.

In practice, being lead by our brilliant designer Tim, I tried to take the messy creativity of my own Art Classroom at School through to the Art Classroom at Truham. Together with our fabulous Production Buyer Zoe Seiffert and our Art Department team, we worked to create endless lists of what we were going to put in this empty room to bring it to life as a working Art Classroom.

I dug out some old photos I had of my Art room and we started to observe and take notes. Paint bottles, dirty brushes, coursework, notebooks, portfolios, stacks of paper. “Plants! We always had plants!” Zoe noted - quick - we popped some plants in the space and then our Art Assistants started making sketches of leaves, paintings of trunks to put around the place - as if the students had had a botanical project of some sort and had made work from the objects around them. All the amazing Artwork you see in the space was conceived by Tim and made in house by our team. Themes of Identity, open doors, the eye project, animal and environmental sculptures, self portraits - we were really exploring classic school themes here!

We added layers upon layers to bring life to the abandoned school we were filming in. We brought in coloured glass objects on window sills for light to bounce through, splattered paint all over the walls and repainted furniture. Our Art Assistants made recycled sculptures from coloured cellophane we found at a recycling warehouse on the outskirts of London. Tim has a knack of finding brilliant source images to work from. Sea animals, giant Jellyfish sculptures, Cassette tapes made from string, Fingerprint Artwork made from Newspaper cuttings - the creativity was endless!

You may notice throughout the series the Artwork in the room changes as the story moves through the seasons and our Characters develop their romance. Cacti sculptures come into bloom, Tissue Paper buds begin to blossom and we add more detail as the series progresses - in a way, the props here have their own way of growing with the Characters!

To say this set specifically was a labor of love is an understatement. We moved the artwork around the walls more than you’ll ever know, mounting, stapling, creating labels and really trying to capture the vibe of a busy British Secondary school Art room. We knew it was the one place in School where Charlie seeks refuge and so the relief of uncapped creativity needed to come through the props and dressing in this space more than anywhere else in the School.

Continuing our theme of integrating Alice’s illustrations, the sets in the Schools are almost their own character!

Tim was keen to create contrasting shapes and block colours to define spaces and keep the visual clean and graphic. The team made some epic 3D science posters in the Higgs form room and printed a semi transparent window film of the Periodic table to put in the window panes. Throughout the schools you can find nods to illustrations. From the Hokusai inspired blowing leaf mural (drawn by Alice!) in the Hallway (a beautiful nod to the winds of change!) at Truham to the Julian Opie inspired mural outside by the picnic benches. The best design ideas are often the simplest.

Tim wanted to work with the concept of a Geography classroom in the Truham Form room. Volcano sculptures made by students (actually made by our super talented Art Assistants) and segmented diagrams of Geodes and Rocks on the windows. We even found some really cool sandy beige school chairs from the 70’s to use here. Tim loves using light panels and placed a brilliant display of backlit images of rocks in the corner behind Nicks head for the scene where Charlie and Nick first meet. I loved the idea of rocks being formed under pressure and the metaphor of our characters blossoming romance - it all seemed to fit quite nicely. There are little gems like this all over the sets if you’re on the look out!

How to fill an empty space

Rule number one: Some spaces need to remain empty and some spaces are full on purpose.

Everything you see on screen is intentional, from dying plants to folded post-it notes. The colour of confetti through to the pattern on Nellie the dogs collar - every single item was hand picked by the Art Department with intention. You might think, why does this matter? Well, if it was any other way - we’d be telling a different story!

I talk a lot about contrast in this blog and really it’s the idea of full spaces vs empty spaces, light rooms vs dark rooms that bring the magic of a set together. The Dark, empty hallway Charlie follows Ben down vs the busy bright and colourful Art Room Charlie feels truly comfortable in to discuss his innermost feelings with Mr Ajai - everything we do is designed to support the storyline.

Working from Alice’s source material, we wanted a sense of hand drawn details in our sets. You can see this in patterns on ceramics and fabrics all over our sets. We tried to select elements that had a friendly illustrative element to them, from mugs to water bottles, curtains to cushions. The shapes within objects have softness, curves, uneven lines - we set ourselves guidelines to know what sort of objects to search for when we were buying.

As in most film shoots, we worked to create the perfect environment for our characters to exist in to let the story unfold. Charlie’s room is eclectic and messy because his story can be seen as eclectic and messy. He absorbs everything going on around him, over thinks and questions everything, so our question was; how do we show this through stuff?

Nicks room is more uniform in style. Nick’s life can be seen as more stereotypically ‘together’ than Charlie’s and so his Bedroom reflects this. It looks more settled and more formulaic. For me, the way Charlie embraces his sexuality is a direct result of him being so creatively curious in life. Although he might not think it, he’s bold, courageous and sure of himself. We wanted to create a design contrast between Nick and Charlie’s spaces to show their differences. Having such rich source material from Alice’s illustrations was a brilliant starting point for us to create from.

Our team worked on fleshing out the illustrations and adding layers of British Teenage life to them. We discussed how these characters would have grown up in these bedrooms and what the objects would be within them that make the bedrooms theirs.

There’s magic in the clutter!

We try to create a sense of realism by mixing and contrasting objects and colour tones. Brand new things next to vintage fabrics, hard surfaces next to soft, light next to dark. It can even get as granular as Matt next to Gloss - it’s all in the contrast. People tend to gather things in their environments over time from all sorts of places. It’s our job on a shoot to find the balance and create a convincing space in a super fast turn around -often a matter of weeks from concept to finished set.

Charlies bedroom wanted to be messy but also had to have a sense of ownership. We wanted to give him layers and layers of life that had collected as he’d grown up in the bedroom. We start with working out the furniture and then the rest falls into place from there. Our question often was, if there were 100 objects available what ones would Charlie pick to have in his bedroom? Out of all the things in the world, what represents him the most? Lamps, shoes, trinkets and bedding, books and posters - everything chosen specifically with the character in mind. I like to think the props tell their own story!

Early on Tim was keen to involve graphic shapes in the design for Heartstopper which came directly from Alice’s illustrations. The key to this was pulling reference directly from the Graphic novels. Stripes, stars, squiggles, leaves - you can see it in every scene and every shot. I found the rug from Charlie’s bedroom in a closing down sale in North London. We thought it worked really nicely with its bold geometric shapes in the scene where Nick and Charlie are on the floor doing homework.

I knew from reading my scripts (1000 times) that we had a sleepover here and our Characters would be hanging out on the floor. We found a vintage mattress to pull in on the floor for this scene and a load of random bedding and camping accessories we imagined would have been hauled out of the attic by Charlie’s dad. Charlie’s ‘cabin bed’ is raised up on cabinets which gives us some texture and shape behind him when he’s leaning against it sitting on his bedroom floor.

I found a job lot of amazing vintage erasers - we really wanted a sense of collections and nic’naks on shelves, stuffed behind the bed and on the desk. Our Art Assistants set to work scribbling, doodling, scratching marks into the furniture and remaking various things to turn one thing into another. A camel sculpture wears a vintage Action Man jacket, Toy Soldiers climb around Charlie’s bedroom door. It went on and on, including the excessive Converse piled around the room and plenty of Knitted jumpers noted in the graphic novels! If you looked super closely, we even scratched height marks into Charlie’s bedroom door frame as if his parents had noted different heights as he grew up.

Tim wanted realism in the sets to ground them in something believable and provided us with a lot of creative references to work from. We spent a long time researching what teens had in their bedrooms to guide us! I was asked if I could frame one of my Art prints for Charlie’s bedroom and we thought that the iconic ‘Stand Tall’ print would be the perfect piece to pop on his bedside table. It’s available to buy here if ever you needed an ounce of positivity and encouragement in your life too!

Our fantastic Art Assistant Anastasia Louka is a creative force and is behind most of the hand drawn elements in the show. Anastasia set about doodling and drawing, scribbling and making little personal bits all over the sets. The idea was to show a life lived in these spaces. We love stuff and our stuff (much like our clothes) show the world who we are.

Charlie’s house wanted to continue on the theme of being relaxed and creative. We wanted to create a connection to Charlie’s bedroom with a more grown up feel to it. The house needed to be familiar and cosy - we settled on the idea of his parents, much like Charlie being worldly people who had collected a variety of things in their lives. Peoples homes and bedrooms are often nests where they bring objects back from their experiences out in the world. Human beings are brilliant collectors of stuff and we try to show this when we work on sets for any project.

We set about buying in a load of artifacts from their travels, lots of terracotta and memorabilia from Europe. We thought about trinkets they may have brought home from a holiday to put on Kitchen surfaces, bits and pieces Charlie’s Dad may have collected over time on the fireplace in the living room. Teapots and vases, jugs and magnets - all sorts! I found a patterned sofa on eBay that I thought looked super comfy and something his mum would have bought when they moved in. Maybe something to bring gentle nostalgia for that iconic scene where Charlie is asleep on the Sofa with Nick.

I think the whole vibe of the house is that they’ve been there since Charlie and Tori were kids. There’s something about an old house that is so warm and lovely rather than something new and clean looking that can be a bit more hostile as an environment. Rather than going heavy with pattern, we worked with variations on tone and colour shades within ceramics and various pieces of wood furniture with knocks and deep wood grain to look like they had lived a life. We carried this through to slouchy cushions and floppy tropical plants, everything we put into the space was to create a sense of warmth, the sets here were almost sunkissed.

Nick’s room wanted to be a contrast to Charlie’s. In Charlie’s bedroom we see a lot of personal creativity in the objects he surrounds himself with. It’s almost like his Mum has decorated it for him and he’s added personal touches as a layer on top of that. We start our story with Nick not really knowing much about his sexuaility, so we wanted to add heteronormative touches to his room to ground his Character visually.

Our King of Rugby has a lot of trophies and sports medals. We dressed Robots on the window sill, Tin Spaceships and sports themed games, metal gridded shelving, Aeroplanes hanging from the ceiling and of course a load of hoodies everywhere - it’s a boys bedroom. There are a few bits from when he was younger but we thought maybe his mum had had a good clear out and a redecorated as he grew up. He even has a double bed!

As with all our sets, when we have hard surfaces we needed to cosy it up a bit and we do this here with soft linen curtains, throwback bedding and a slouchy corduroy beanbag. I especially loved Alice’s ‘Straight boy puts up one string of fairy lights for Christmas and never takes them down’ vibe.

Of course, there’s buckets of personality in Nick’s bedroom too but we wanted it to be less free flowing and fluid than Charlie’s. Knowing Nick’s mum was a Doctor we thought there had to be a sense of formality and style to the space to contrast with Charlie’s wholly creative and organic environment. The most ‘out there’ this room gets is the bright yellow sunglasses hanging on the peg board! Crazy Nick ;) There’s more structure to the objects we put into this space, less eclectic and more scandinavian design themes - block colours and cleanly shaped objects in light wood, chrome and frosted perspex. I think this sets the tone for a teen who seemingly has his life together and allowed us to strike that distinction when he realises it may be taking a turn in a different (but fabulous) direction as our story develops. I guess it depends on how much you think ‘stuff’ defines a person.

We had the challenge of bringing life a few more amazingly detailed bedroom sets for the other Characters in our story. We knew we wanted a Top-Shot of Darcy’s room and that they were super super expressive as a person. We set about finding all sorts of things to have on their bedroom floor that they could lay amongst from toys to clothes through to random bits of bedding from their childhood and even some fun fairy lights and streamers to throw into the mix. Elles bedroom was a bit more refined, she’s a talented artist so we made a load of doodles and paintings to put on the wall. The fun part was getting variations between the bedrooms and this comes through in the detail the team put into the sets.

Tao’s bedroom was bursting with Polaroid photos and amazing Artwork made by our in house Graphic Designer Mike Cranston. For this set, Tim wanted to push through that Tao was a film lover so we collected a load of vintage equipment, old cameras and even wire sculptures of cameras to dot around his bedroom. Tim found a gridded wallpaper to use as the base to line up all the wall elements with and it flowed from there - LED lighting behind the bed, cool perspex shelves to display his collection of cameras on - it all came together and was the perfect setting for Tao and Elle’s movie night together!

Tara’s bedroom was one of my favourites - the script said she was surrounded by stuffed toys - so we went to town and covered her entire bed in 40 teddy bears! We also got to work on a snippet of Isaacs bedroom as he sits against a wall (classically) head in a book! With all of the sets, we tried to get a lived in look going by washing bedding on a high heat and leaving out to air dry and putting them on the beds unironed. It’s all in the detail!

Harry’s 16th Birthday party is where it all comes together so we had to make it fabulous! When Designer Tim asked us to arrange Balloons all over the exterior of this magical building I knew exactly who to call. Our fabulous Balloon Queen Jane and team were up for the task! We had some coloured balloon samples sent to our office and plotted out where the balloons would go on a print out of the building. There were 1000’s of Balloons inflated indoors the day before filming and then were strung out of windows for the shot when Charlie arrives at the party in his dad’s car.

Another challenge on this set was to recreate Floral arrangements from the books when Charlie and Nick have their first kiss. I took note of Alice’s illustrations and I knew Jenny Tobin (Florist to the stars!) could do them justice. We referenced Daisies and meadow flowers with their big relaxed droopy heads and floppy leaves. It was important to us the florals were friendly and approachable instead of stiff and corporate. Charlie and Nick run off to find a quiet spot to catch up at the party and we wanted to try and match the florals here to Alice’s Illustrations as best we could in real life. A lot of thought goes into everything we put on screen and most of the florals in Heartstopper are Jenny’s brilliant work.

Towards the end of our shoot schedule, in the middle of Summer we started work on the Herne Bay / Pier sets. Our designer Tim had some amazing mood boards of truly British Seaside scenes so we set about pulling in all the various items we’d need to recreate that. Our production buyer Zoe found some fantastic sealife balloons that we thought harked back to our Art Classroom sculptures (we love a throwback reference!) and we filled baskets with all sorts of things you’d find at the seaside. From buckets and spades, through to pool noodles and parasols - if its on a beach we had it.

One of the final scenes we filmed was the merry-go-round fairground ride that was (inside scoop!) filled with crew!! Safe to say, by the 5th time round I was feeling like I was about to vomit but it was far too late to get off as we were already filming and I was right in the back of shot.

Of course there are plenty of other sets that we worked on for the show that I haven’t gone into detail about but overall we worked to create a fully realised splash of queer teen British loveliness throughout. I was continually humbled by the 110% our team put into every day at work on this project, we really were all working at a million miles per hour to make the visual the best we could and try to do Alice’s brilliant world justice.

All said and done, I hope our side of the story has come through in the props and set dressing for the better! It was a massively exciting project to work on and myself and our fantastic production buyer Zoe felt a huge responsibility to Alice, the fans and the LGBTQI+ community to inject as much vibrancy and life into these sets as we could. We knew from the start how groundbreaking this show would be for Netflix and our community as a whole. We made sure we took extra care selecting every one of the thousands of items we put into the sets and felt so lucky to have Tim, Alice, Patrick, Zorana and Euros to guide us each step of the way.

We could not have done it if it wasn’t for the inspiring framework our designer, Tim Dickel had set out for the visuals for the show - his endless creativity and passion for storytelling is compelling and bursts through every scene! Most importantly, we had a tonne of fun pulling it all together which is really, what it’s all about.

As always with the LGBT+ projects I work on, we stand on the shoulders of the giants who have come before us and we pay immense gratitude to everyone in the queer space past and present who have created work to better the community we all belong to.

#heartstopper #heartstopper series #Maxwell fine #set decoration #I have lifted the photos and text directly from the web post because I couldn't find a source anywhere else #I just wanted to hold it as reference #there's nothing quite as fascinating as the character of the sets inside a show/movie #it's all in the little details - and to fill a set you need HUNDREDS and nothing has gotten in there just by accident #I could pore over sets for hoursss if I was allowed and to listen to every item being talked about for the why and who and where of it all #SIGN ME UP.#I love that the carousel scene at the end is mostly cast because what a gem of a scene to highlight the growth and the build and the coming #together of nick and Charlie to that point in time #and in terms of the show itself - they couldn't have had that without the incredible team involved #also see me LOVING how Maxwell Fine talks about the differences between nick andcharlie's bedrooms and the thoughts on those UGH YES #set design

85 notes · View notes

dollypartonswig · 2 years

Text

But let me tell you, it already happens here.

In 2021, a 15-year-old girl was investigated for a year after suffering an unexplained stillbirth. Her phone and laptop were confiscated during her GCSE exams, she was self-harming, and the investigation only ended after a coroner concluded that the pregnancy ended due to natural causes.

33 notes · View notes

thetardisisnotourdivision · 1 year

Text

Was this you, Mr Sunak?

In GCSE Media, one of our CSPs is an edition of the Daily Mirror from March 5th 2021. I've found on it an article that's very interesting in light of all the strikes:

its not very clear but you can see at the bottom there that Sunak called the "pay rise" or lack thereof an "insult". I wonder if he's raised it since then?

#uk politics #rishi sunak #nurses #tories #uk news #conservatives #strikes #uk strike

7 notes · View notes

bxrtycrouchjr-is-a-theatre-kid · 11 months

Text

'Why do we need pride month' aka my y11 gcse speech

My first memory was small, little, 5-year-old me, looking in the mirror and thinking, “You do not look like a [my deadname]”. That’s the first thought I can remember, word for word. Looking in the mirror and not recognizing the face that looks back, is not the biggest hardship these people face. Now I am not the only person who has had these experiences, in the 2021 UK census, 0.5% of the population said that their gender was different from that at birth, and that’s just those over 16 who answered the question. This group of people who are part of the LGBT community.

Now, we all know of the LGBT community, all know people in it, friends, families, acquaintances, celebrities, all that jazz. There is two whole months of celebrating, February and June, LGBT History month and Pride month, respectively. And, well, I’m sure we’ve all heard, maybe said, maybe thought pf a simple question: ‘Why do we need Pride Month?’

Pride Month, set in June, is filled with celebration, parades, floats, weird things in stores that are just there for corporation’s capitalist games. Many of us have issues with the way that companies have commercialised a period of joy and triumph over hardships. By turning this month, a time of celebrating, into a time of consummation of as many distastefully designed products as they can, businesses have ignored the persecution, execution, homicide, and torture inflicted on the LGBT community in favour of making a pretty penny. You might be thinking ‘doesn’t doing it in the name of the community help? No, not when they aren’t working to educate people. Not when they don’t donate even the smallest part of their profit to an LGBT charity, actions speak louder than words, so if these companies are really trying to help, they should practise what they preach.

You may think I’m saying: ‘No we don’t need Pride Month,’ but I am instead saying the exact opposite, we need the celebration. We need education on the history, hardships, and rights of a group of people that make up a rough 20% of our world (that is 1 in 5 people). We should donate to charities that help Queer People who are homeless, on the run or being abused because of something that they were literally born as. We must look at our laws and how they prevent those who aren’t cis-het from living a normal life. But we must also step away from looking at the pretty face of Pride and instead see how we can change for the better.

In 2021, there were 375 recorded murders of trans people globally with 95% being trans women. This number has been steadily increasing every year, and I would like you to remember that this is recorded deaths where the motivation was because the victim was trans. In 69 countries it is illegal to be queer (as of 2020)including Barbados, Malaysia, Saint Kitts and Nevis and Liberia (Afghanistan, Algeria, Antigua & Barbuda, Bangladesh, Barbados, Bhutan, Brunei, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Cook Islands, Dominica, Egypt, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Grenada, Guinea, Guyana, Iran, Jamaica, Kenya, Kiribati, Kuwait, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Myanmar, Namibia, Nigeria, Occupied Palestinian Territory (Gaza Strip), Oman, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Qatar, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and The Grenadines, Samoa, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Togo, Tonga, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe- include list in PowerPoint-)- in fact 70% of the commonwealth it is illegal. Now, here we should be both proud and disturbed that this is something we are proud of, in only 10 countries is homosexuality punished through capital punishment. That is right, being executed because of who you are, including Brunei, Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen. (Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Quatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, UAE, and Yemen -include list on PowerPoint-).

In England and Wales only decriminalised male homosexuality in 1967 (with female homosexuals legal throughout time and law which makes relatively little sense because either they didn’t believe lesbians exist or some other strange reason). However, despite being frowned upon, male homosexuality was only punishable by death from 1533 in the UK, another reason to despise Henry VIII. It was only in 2001 when the age of consent for queer couples was lowered to 16, the same as the heterosexuals. In 2000, people could be openly queer in the military, in 2005 both the legal ability to change gender and Same-Sex civil partnership was legalised and in 2014, the same was applied to Same-Sex Marriage. Surprisingly it was only 2020 when Northern Ireland did the same, with Cuba and Slovenia legalising in 2022 and Andorra’s Same-Sex marriage laws coming into affect this year. A total of 34 countries have legalised Same-sex marriage, including Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico and Taiwan. (Andorra, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands,, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay -include list on PowerPoint?).

Now as we can see through legislation, despite us getting excited about 34 countries doing the bare minimum, there is still a lot of work for us to do. However, it is best to understand why we need Pride month if we look back at its origins. Pride Month originated after the Stonewall riots in the US 1969, the UK had their first Pride celebration in 1972, thus the 50-year celebration in the New Years celebration last year. The Stonewall Riots began in the 28th June 1969 when Police raided the Stonewall Inn, brutalised a number of patrons for being suspected homosexuals, female police officers to certain Patrons into the bathroom to check their sex because they thought they were crossdressing- there where laws on crossdressing which is mad- and it ended with the Patrons fighting back, a catalyst that started a gay rights movement. Now if you have heard ‘Glad To Be Gay’ by the Tom Robinson band, or you are a Marauders fan, or you just pay attention in History, you would know that up until the 1980s, Police would raid gay pubs and arrest queer people for stuff like resisting arrest- which makes no sense because why would they be being arrested for resisting arrest, what was the original charge?- and there was just a lot of violence against the LGBT community, because that is exactly what they needed during the AIDs epidemic when they were losing many friends and lovers to an invisible enemy.

Now with that briefest History you will ever get from me, I do hope you see how important it is that we recognise, remember and rebel for the sake of the millions of people killed throughout time for being something that God made them. We need pride month to remember the trials and tribulations, we have, are and will face but also show how far we have come. Hopefully next time you think about a question similar to this one, or choose to completely disregard common sense, you will remember why the LGBT community shout, fight, rebel, cry, celebrate and laugh, and rethink what you’re saying.

umm yh idk why im sharing this. this was the first draft (i couldn't find the last lol' but yh hope you enjoyed.

#lgbt #pride month #gcse speech #gcse english #why do we need pride month #legislation and stuff #laws #homophobia #pride #im a queer

3 notes · View notes