Society

Although I tend to keep my romantic nature under wraps, every year Helena, my wife, and I go on a “luxury mini break” either to Birmingham or Manchester. By strange happenstance this always seems to coincide with the Conservative party conference and the same was true this year, thus we headed off to Birmingham with a detour via Oxford. Normally I never wish to leave Somerset, especially without having had Sunday lunch, although this is less of a penance than normal as our cook has retired and we have not yet found a replacement, if anyone is interested… But this time I did so happily as we were taking our eldest son, Peter, to Oriel College.

I was mid-hip thrust when I found out Shane Gillis had called me a whore. Technically I found out four hours later, when I reviewed the footage of Saturday Night Live. My tripod was on the bench, my ring light was clamped to the squat rack and my boyfriend Tanner was holding the back-up phone for the side angle. Tanner films all my content. He is not allowed to look at me.   Solidarity means centering yourself in other people’s trauma, in front of a camera, with good lighting The “joke” was about how women dress at the gym. I know it was about me, because everything is. So I did what any survivor would do. I went to my car and filmed myself crying.

I have always been afraid of watching the 1977 film Looking for Mr. Goodbar.  I grew up hearing about how my mother, upon seeing it in the theater, had walked out and immediately vomited. The movie, which follows New York schoolteacher Theresa Dunn through a series of at times humiliating sexual encounters (and the lasciviousness of the 1970s) until one of her sex partners murders her, is an adaptation of a novel, itself inspired by the real-life death of Roseann Quinn. Just two days after her body was found, Quinn was described as having “no regular boyfriend but the type of girl who would have a guy in if he brought her home” in the New York Times.  Mr. Goodbar is a deeply anxious picture of post-revolution sexual guilt In the panic-stricken moral universe of Mr.

Jade, 27, shows me the email she’s just received, offering to buy her eggs “to help an Asian couple build their dream family.” As a Harvard student who helps me with research, Jade fits the criteria: healthy, attractive, and at a top US or Chinese university. “How much?” I ask. She’s staring at the screen. “$220,000.” Whoah. That’s a staggering amount of money, even if you find the whole thing icky. Eggs are becoming a valuable commodity in a world where couples are postponing children. Almost a quarter of first-time mothers in the UK are now over 35, an age when our fertility can start to wane.

Berlin is a wonderful city, even if its hipster vibe is a bit much for a square like me. The decadence is part of the charm, and the Germans, or at least the Prussians, are good at it, having enough sense of order that it can feel squalid without feeling unsafe. When I most recently visited the German capital last year, there seemed to be quite a bleak mood. The politics of sustained boredom that characterized the successful post-war Federal Republic had run out of road, and a mindset which had worked for so long now seemed to be pushing the country to the brink of disaster. As someone who loves Germany and admires its culture, I find this very sad, although at least it provides a brief distraction from my own country’s woes.

The public will be able to watch via livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan, the US-born Muslim terrorist who shot dead 12 unarmed US soldiers. Officials in the Pentagon said that more details would follow of what would be the first public execution in the US in almost a hundred years.  Nobody should be in any doubt about the abhorrent nature of Hasan’s crimes, but is that sufficient cause to turn the gravest of punishments – the death sentence – into mass entertainment? Executions are not, and should never be, public spectacles. It is the very least that is expected of a civilized democracy, which is why public viewing of executions has been a no-no for a long time now.

Whisper it, but the tide may be turning for one of Britain’s most unpopular, and unfortunate, men. The news that Thames Valley Police have admitted to using unlawful warrants to search Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s homes when he was arrested earlier this year is undeniably a victory for the beleaguered former Duke of York. It also might well be the beginning of the end for the police investigation into allegations of his misconduct in public office. There was widespread skepticism when it was announced that Andrew would be taking the police to court, and Buckingham Palace sources were quick to stress that the King would not be funding any part of the legal process. But Andrew has now won the first round at the Royal Courts of Justice. Mr.

It’s October and a new academic year is underway. In Britain, students are taking diversity classes; in France, they are rioting. And in America, they are panicking about campus rape culture. Plus ça change… The legacy of the almost decade-old Me Too movement is that we ‘believe all women’ but, as the Cornell case shows, sometimes reality is more complex The case of the “Cornell Seven” has been making headlines across the US this week after a female student, known only as Jane Doe, filed a civil lawsuit alleging she was drugged and raped by seven male students in the Chi Phi university fraternity house in October 2024. At first glance, the facts are horrific.