LGBTQ+ – The Orbital

An Honest Discussion About Queerness and Connection

21Jun

By Beth McCowenNo Comments

Lifestyle

An Honest Discussion About Queerness and Connection

Relationships can be difficult to navigate for anyone, but finding your place as a Queer person can present quite the challenge. Not only can it be more difficult to meet a love interest, but it is also common for LGBTQ+ individuals to feel less comfortable discussing their romantic prospects with friends and family, even if they are confidently ‘out and proud’. It can be difficult not to feel like an outsider when friends are frequently discussing their heterosexual crushes and flings. Particularly for lesbian and gay students, the loneliness of being on a night out, surrounded by straight couples and afraid to approach someone of the same sex for fear of being seen as predatory (an insecurity ingrained into those who fall outside of ‘the norm’), is quite an upsetting experience. Not ...

Convenience Store Woman Review: The Perils of Sexpectation

Asexuality – what is it? Simply put, someone who is asexual experiences little to no sexual attraction. In Sayaka Murata’s book, she captures the minds of her readers through the unapologetic and quirky character of Keiko, a convenience store worker in Japan. Keiko, thirty-six and unmarried, is asexual. Few novels approach asexuality from such a unique perspective, and they are rarely this successful in doing so. When Keiko got her first job at a local store at age eighteen, her family were happy to see her find a job; now, nearly two decades later, her family – as well as her friends and co-workers – all have something to say about the ‘dead-end job’ she has not moved on from. But for Keiko, change just isn't on the menu in any aspect of her life, including romantically. She has ne...

Debrief: Dr. Amy Tooth-Murphy

When I met Amy in her office, something I immediately noticed was her collection of books. One caught my eye straight away: Female Masculinity by Judith/Jack Halberstam. Coincidentally, the book came up more than once in our interview - she described how she came across it for the first time while she was working at Oxfam during her undergraduate degree: “I was a stones throw away from the uni but nothing like this had ever been shown to me. It turned a light on in a way, I didn’t realise Queer studies was something that even existed.”. Amy described how her journey in academia actually began in law – and that after a short 6 months she realised that it was too constrained for her ‘fairly strong opinions’ to be heard and explored, so she ended up doing her undergrad in English Literature a...