As a bisexual art historian, I have taken part in many senseless debates in which people have tried to erase parts of a historical figure’s life to fit their own narrative. They have denied documented historical facts because it challenges their homophobic rhetoric. They have gone on to write books, and influence people, spreading their rubbish like a conservative plague.

What do you mean Alan Turing was gay? I own a computer! He can’t be gay.

This is my way of standing up to these hateful, snobbish academics. I intend to make this a series of articles, with no end…

I was six the first time my mother tried to kill herself.

She always survived, somehow.

For the first five years of my life, my father tells me, she was rather distant. She refused to hold me, convinced that I was born solely to take my father’s affection away from her, in an Elektra-type Greek tragedy. We have been rivals ever since.

She did not love me. My father remembers me walking around, calling aunts and teachers “mamma.” The few times she came to pick me up from school, my father says, I denied even knowing her.

For the first…

Now, I know The Favourite is based on real people, who lead real lives and had real personalities. But isn’t that all characters? Every fictional being carries a part of humanity. It is the weakness of writers, filmmakers, and all artists. In The Favourite, the three main characters are so complex they truly become fleshed-out human beings, or historical figures resurrected from the grave. Either way, they are so touching, so tragic, so horrible, so cunning, and, it is hard to be believed, women, so terribly human.

The last time I encountered so many fascinating female characters was in The…

This summer, I will be graduating from a small university in Paris with an undergraduate degree in Art History. It was fun. I wrote essays on Frida Kahlo, dicks, Leonardo da Vinci’s lazy ass, Impressionism, and my love of performance art. I live in Paris, so before the pandemic, I had classes in the Louvre, in the Musée d’Orsay, some of the biggest museums in the world, studying artworks as close as you could physically get. Paris is a museum in itself, some would say. I even had the opportunity to participate in a student program in which, for a…

I’ve heard a lot of people say this. “I wish I could just move to a new country, get a new life, a new job, become a new person.”

Well, what’s stopping you?

For many, the answer is family, or financial setbacks. I was lucky enough to go study in a foreign country when I was 18, and I haven’t stopped moving since. It is so exhilarating to create a brand new life, somewhere you’ve never been before. It reminds me of a quote from the (excellent) film, Kill your Darlings:

“I love first times. I want my whole life…

I have always been attracted to “darker” subjects. Even as a child, I grew up watching violent 1980s Japanese animes in which demons competed in deadly fighting tournaments (Yu Yu Hakusho) or in which a man walks around a post-apocalyptic nuclear Earth, blowing up people’s heads (Hokuto no Ken). I even remember having my very first orgasm at 9 years old, watching a scene in which a character from Saint Seiya is chained to a rock and almost drowns as the tide rises.

I don’t know much about psychoanalysis, although my therapist likes to link my fascination with horror films…

The vast majority of filmmakers who are given recognition and awards are men. That’s a fact. Men also love, love, love making films about women, preferably women having sex. That is also a fact, and the list ranges from good to bad, very bad, and so disgusting I’m calling a lawyer.

It’s no surprise. Lesbian porn is one of the most-searched-for categories. It makes sense they would want to direct films about it too.

Now, I’m not saying all films about women in love directed by men are inherently terrible. Some actually come from well-intentioned people who want to tell…

There’s this idea that women don’t feel self-conscious about their bodies around other women.

That it is only when confronted with the male gaze that a woman starts to question the way she looks, if her skin is too oily, if her breasts are too small. However, I argue that in today’s society dictated by impossible body standard and Instagram filters, women are self-conscious all the time, even with each other, even when we’re alone.

I’ll always be haunted by this Margaret Atwood quote: “You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.”

It’s true. Even when sitting in bed by myself, I’ll start nitpicking every single…