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Around 3% of people are estimated to be autistic and it is a lifelong disability. Most autistic people experience the sensory world differently, such as places being too loud or too bright. We also typically communicate in a more direct way than is usual.
In the UK, the Equality Act 2010 means that autistic people should receive reasonable adjustments – meaning organisations must make changes to how they provide their services to remove environmental and social barriers. Despite this, autistic people often experience society as highly disabling. We die between 16 and 30 years younger than non-autistic people, and have a suicide rate nine times higher.
Autistic people are often misunderstood by non-autistic people who fail to recognise how autistic people show empathy. This misunderstanding is embedded in many government bodies, which can result in dehumanising policies and services that do not meet autistic people’s needs.
We reviewed the evidence from a range of government and non-government research and reviews to understand how well autistic people fair in relation to government services. We looked at the areas described by William Beveridge, founder of the UK welfare state, as “the five giants”: health, education, employment, poverty and housing. Our findings, which focused on England and Wales due to differences relating to devolution, were bleak.
1. Health
Many government services designed to support autistic people are not available without diagnosis. However, in the UK, most autistic people aren’t yet diagnosed.
We found diagnosis waiting lists were long – for example, more then 20 months for people served by the Cardiff & Vale health board in south Wales. Across England, between June 2021 and 2022, the waiting list for an autism assessment rose from 88,000 people to more than 122,000.
Even with a diagnosis, autistic people often don’t receive healthcare that meets their needs. Some people don’t even tell doctors they are autistic, because they expect to be treated badly. Of those who have told their GP, more than 75% said their GP didn’t make any reasonable adjustments, such as allowing extra processing time during appointments.
Being expected to phone to book appointments is also difficult for nearly two-thirds of autistic people, yet many GP surgeries insist on phone calls to book appointments. Autistic people also report that clinical spaces are painfully bright, busy and loud, which can make it harder for us to explain what is wrong to the doctor.
2. Education
Autistic people often struggle in educational institutions because they rarely meet our needs. This can mean, for example, that autistic children are labelled as “troublemakers” by teachers, rather than disabled.
Despite autistic people accounting for only 3% of the population, around 80% of those sent to pupil referral units are autistic. This has lifelong effects, as only 8% of students with a “statement of special educational needs” or an education, health & care plan progress to university, compared with 50% of non-disabled people.
For autistic people who do make it to university, the disabled students allowance (DSA) should pay for extra costs – but less than one-third of eligible students get DSA. In addition, the support provided by universities is often poor quality or absent, leaving autistic students disadvantaged.
3. Employment
The UK’s Autism Act 2009 says that autistic people should be supported to be able to work. However, autistic people are less likely to be in work than non-autistic people.
Access to work is a UK government scheme to pay disabled people for the extra costs of working, but the application and claiming processes are complicated. Of the 42% of autistic adults who say they need help to access work, only 12% are getting it.
4. Poverty
Autistic people are more likely to live in poverty than non-autistic people. A 2009 report found one-third of autistic people in the UK were not in paid work or getting benefits. One reason for this is that the benefits designed to stop disabled people living in poverty, such as the personal independence payment (PIP), can be hard to apply for, especially for autistic people.
And for people who manage to apply for PIP, autism falls within the “psychiatric disorders” category, which means they are least likely to receive the award and most likely to lose their PIP upon renewal.
5. Housing
Around 12% of autistic people are homeless. As rent typically costs far more than the amount of money awarded in housing benefit, and autistic people are less likely to be in work or have access to benefits, they are more likely to struggle to pay for housing.
This can be made worse by the “bedroom tax”, which is when tenants in social housing have their benefit reduced if they have spare bedrooms. This affects single people under 35 especially, as they are only eligible for the shared accommodation rate. Autistic people can find it hard to live with other people due to their sensory needs, and there are few one-bedroom properties.
Autistic people who do not have somewhere to live are more likely to be placed in secure residential care, where they are subjected to similar confines to people in prison, by staff who may have limited understanding of autism. They can also be subjected to clinical “treatment” that has the same questionable origin as gay conversion therapy, and which guidance states should not be used.
The research supporting this approach, known as applied behaviour analysis (ABA), is often riddled with undeclared conflicts of interest. Those who experience ABA have been found to be more likely to experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Worse, some autistic people in residential care have experienced abuse by staff. In the most severe cases, autistic people have died due to abusive and/or negligent treatment while in residential care.
In every area of government services, we found policies that failed to account for known autistic needs. These failures have a cumulative impact throughout life. A lack of accommodations in education leads to less likelihood of securing accessible employment and greater reliance on benefits and social housing.
To improve this, the policy-making process needs to be made accessible to disabled people so that services meet our needs. This could include ensuring that consultation processes reach out to a broader range of autistic people, and then meet their needs to submit evidence.
It is also important that policy-makers put evidence from the autistic community ahead of evidence provided by non-autistic “experts” who fundamentally misunderstand autism, can have conflicts of interest, and thus can not speak on our behalf.
Autistic lives depend on it.
Aimee Grant receives funding from UKRI, the Wellcome Trust and the Research Wales Innovation Fund. We wish to thank Dr Gemma Williams and Richard Woods, co-authors of the chapter this article is based on.
Kathryn Williams receives funding for her PhD studentship from the Economic and Social Research Council. She is affiliated with Autistic UK CIC, where she is a voluntary non-executive director.
Hugh Hefner launched Playboy Magazine 70 years ago this year. The first issue included a nude photograph of Marilyn Monroe, which he had purchased and published without her knowledge or consent.
Hefner went on to build the Playboy brand off the backs of the countless women featured in its pages, whose beauty and performance of heightened feminine sexuality have entertained its readers for generations.
Approaching its 70th anniversary in December, Playboy has radically shifted. With the magazine no longer in publication, the Playboy Mansion sold to a developer and London’s last remaining Playboy Club closing in 2021, what is the future for Playboy? The brand is changing to keep up with the post-#MeToo world.
Hefner passed away one month before allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein surfaced in 2017 giving momentum to the #MeToo movement (which saw survivors of sexual assault and harassment speak out against their abusers).
In recent years, many have re-evaluated Hefner’s legacy and relationships with women. The 2022 docuseries The Secrets of Playboy (which aired on Channel 4 in the UK) detailed sexual misconduct accusations against Hefner from several ex-girlfriends, including model Sondra Theodore and TV personality Holly Madison.
Hefner and Playboy’s relationship with women has been complicated. Playboy was an early supporter of abortion rights, helped fund the first rape kit and was at times an early proponent of inclusivity (for example featuring transgender model, Caroline “Tula” Cossey, in its June 1981 issue). But most women featured in Playboy have fit within a narrow beauty standard – thin, white, able bodied and blonde.
Meanwhile Hefner’s personal relationship with his much younger girlfriends reportedly followed patterns of control and emotional abuse. Ex-girlfriend Holly Madison described Hefner as treating her “like a glorified pet” in her memoir, Down the Rabbit Hole (2015).
Hefner’s passing meant he evaded reckoning with the #MeToo movement. Playboy, however, responded, releasing a statement in which it affirmed support for the women featured in The Secrets of Playboy and called Hefner’s actions “abhorrent”.
The statement declared that the brand was no longer affiliated with the Hefner family and would be focusing on aspects of the company’s legacy that align with values of sex positivity and free expression.
Today, Playboy is a very different company from the one Hefner launched nearly 70 years ago. Roughly 80% of Playboy staff identify as women, according the company and its motto has changed from “Entertainment for Men” to “Pleasure for All”. Shares in the company are publicly traded and 40% of its board and management are women.
The company has also moved towards more creator-led content through its app, Playboy Centerfold. Similar to subscription content service OnlyFans, Playboy Centerfold allows subscribers to view content from and interact with its creators, which it call “bunnies”.
On the app, creators – or bunnies – are able portray their own bodies however they wish, putting the power back in their hands. Perhaps Playboy’s future is no longer in serving the male gaze, but instead the very audience Hefner dismissed in his first letter from the editor:
If you’re a man between the ages of 18 and 80 Playboy is meant for you … If you’re somebody’s sister, wife or mother-in-law and picked us up by mistake, please pass us along to the man in your life and get back to your Ladies Home Companion.
The stars of Playboy’s mid-2000s reality series, Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt, are also enjoying a resurgence among fans.
The Girls Next Door launched in 2004. The show focused on the lives of Hefner’s three girlfriends, Madison, Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson. It became E’s best performing show and cultivated a new female audience for Playboy.
The Girls Next Door was a story of complicated empowerment despite patriarchal interference. Its three female protagonists went from being known solely as some of Hefner’s many blonde girlfriends, to celebrities in their own right.
They each ultimately broke up with Hefner, leaving the Mansion and going on to lead successful careers.
The show’s depiction of Madison, Marquardt and Wilkinson as empowered, fun-loving and complex individuals, who found joy and agency through expressing their sexuality was perhaps what drew so many female fans to the show. However, amid the girls’ fight for agency, Hefner retaliated.
The series shows that he maintained final say in every Playboy photograph of the girls, as well as imposing strict curfews and spending allowances.
In Madison and Wilkinson’s memoirs, Down the Rabbit Hole (2015) and Sliding into Home (2010), they claim that production consistently undermined them. They refused to pay them for the first season, didn’t credit them until season four and aired their uncensored nude bodies in foreign broadcasts and DVD releases without consent.
Fan interest in The Girls Next Door remains strong. In August 2022 Madison and Marquardt launched their podcast Girls Next Level, where they interview previous playmates and interact with fans. They also recap episodes from their own points of view, unpacking their experiences of working on the show.
Having reached 10 million downloads as of February 2023, the success of the podcast – 14 years after the last episode of The Girls Next Door – speaks to the cultural legacy of the Playboy brand. It also shows that despite Hefner’s original editor’s note, Playboy resonates with some women.
Playboy is now in a post-Hefner era, where the imagery of women found within old issues of Playboy can serve as inspiration for others to enjoy their own sexuality. Whatever the future has for the company, the concept of Playboy has become public property – be that in the appearance of Playboy bunny costumes each Halloween, the popularity of cheeky Playboy logo tattoos or branded lingerie and clothing.
In a post-#MeToo era, the women of Playboy are speaking up and taking over. With the mansion gates closed, the bunnies are finally reclaiming the brand as their own.
Daisy McManaman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Plastic pollution poses a threat to marine wildlife. The plastic bags, bottles and straws that we see strewn across beaches have long been identified as a danger. But tiny fragments of plastic – called microplastics – that are less than 5mm in size are also a major source.
Microfibres are the most common type of microplastic and account for up to 91% of the microplastics that float around our seas. These minuscule fibres are shed from textiles as a result of the wearing and washing of clothes, and from the weathering and abrasion of marine equipment.
Marine animals will encounter and even consume these microplastics. Shellfish, which feed by filtering organic particles from the water, are particularly vulnerable. One study found that shellfish ingest far higher concentrations of microplastics than most other marine animals.
At the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, my colleagues and I studied the effect of microfibre exposure on young blue mussels (only 1cm in length) over three months. Younger animals are generally more vulnerable than adults to changes in their environment. Younger mussels, for example, have higher mortality rates in the wild, mainly due to predation. Therefore, the impact of microplastic contamination on younger mussels is likely to be profound.
We found that prolonged exposure to polyester microfibres led to smaller mussels that grew at a slower rate.
Blue mussels are an important indicator species for scientists as they reveal wider trends in the ecosystem. By constantly filtering water, blue mussels are exposed to pollutants, so are a good indicator of water quality. Mussels, as part of a group of shellfish called bivalves, are also an important part of marine food security. So, if reduced growth is also happening in the wild, it could send shockwaves through the marine ecosystem and the bivalve aquaculture industry.
In a controlled-temperature laboratory, we exposed the mussels to polyester microfibres (between 0.01mm and 0.5mm in size) at two concentrations: 8 and 80 microfibres per litre. We also exposed mussels to cotton microfibres at 80 microfibres per litre.
Scientists have found marine microplastic concentrations of 10 particles per litre of seawater to be common. So, the concentrations used by our study are representative of natural environments.
The blue mussels that were exposed to the higher concentration of polyester microfibres were significantly smaller and showed a 36% lower growth rate on average than mussels that were not exposed to any microfibres. This result was only observed in the mussels exposed to the highest concentration of polyester microfibres. Exposure to cotton microfibres did not cause a significant decline in the growth rate of young mussels.
Toxicity studies have shown that microplastics can cause damage at the molecular and cellular level in adult mussels. One study recorded a strong inflammatory response in mussel cells after six hours of exposure to polyethylene microplastic particles.
The reduction in mussel growth in response to plastic microfibre exposure could stem from a shift in their energetic budget (the balance between the energy taken in and the energy used). These changes could be caused by the mussels altering their feeding behaviours to avoid consuming microfibres, diverting energy away from growth into processing ingested microfibres, or towards repairing the damage caused by these microfibres.
Reduced growth rates in mussels could in turn affect the wider ecosystem.
Young mussels grow at a rapid rate – reaching marketable size in 12 to 24 months. However, they must compete for food and space both with each other and with other species. Younger mussels that cannot grow as fast may be outcompeted by other species and are subject to higher predation.
Smaller mussels are also of less nutritional value. Predators, like crabs, whelks, starfish and many bird species, may find themselves having to eat more of these smaller mussels. This could impact the populations of both the mussels and their predators.
Humans, as consumers of seafood, will also be affected by smaller mussels. Oysters, mussels and scallops alone provide over 8 million tonnes of food to the global population each year. But lower growth rates mean that mussels will take longer to grow to a harvestable size. Smaller animals and longer time-to-market may reduce the profitability of bivalve aquaculture in the future.
Microplastics have a clear impact on the growth of young blue mussels. But the actual impact could be even more severe.
In some more polluted marine environments, scientists have identified microplastic concentrations of up to 182 particles per litre – over double the concentration used in our experiment. Separate research also suggests that microplastic concentrations in our oceans may be even higher than currently found, as many particles are too small to capture and count.
Our study highlights the importance of conducting long-term experiments when evaluating the impact of microplastics on marine life. The impact on the cells and tissues of an organism when exposed to microplastics can become evident over short timescales.
But the impact of environmentally relevant concentrations of microplastics on growth, reproduction and survival, which have the greatest relevance to entire populations, require far longer observation periods.
Marine environments are already threatened by overfishing and climate change. Studies like ours are now starting to shed light on the damaging effects of microfibres and other microplastics on the animals within our oceans.
Chris Walkinshaw received his PhD funding from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), in association with the University of East Anglia in partnership with Plymouth Marine Laboratory.
Tanya* is telling me just how important her Methodist Christianity is to her. We’re chatting over a video call, and I can see Tanya’s living room in the background. This also happens to be her workspace because Tanya, who is 50, is a full-time phone and cam sex worker. For Tanya, earning her living through sex work does not conflict with her religious beliefs at all. Tanya tells me that she had a client who talked to her about his enjoyment of wearing women’s clothing. He confided in her because they both shared the same religious identity.
He [the client] started talking more and more … he said I listen … he told me he goes to church every Sunday and was a church elder and he opened up. I also said to him … that I used to go to Sunday school every week and so we connected … because I am not going OMG when he told me. And he asked me if I still go to chapel now, and I said no but I still pray and believe in God, and he said that’s nice.
Tanya reassured her client that there was “no need to feel guilty”, that what they were doing wasn’t “wrong”. She even told him: “I bet there are other people in the church who do it”.
Tanya was one of 11 sex workers I spoke to who all had spiritual and religious beliefs. I wanted to discover how these two seemingly opposite life choices could interconnect and coexist. I discovered people like Tanya, who spoke to their clients about God and religion, but I also spoke to women who used religion as a kink to arouse their clients or as a tactic to earn more money or, in some cases, protect themselves when they felt threatened.
I found out that rather than being incompatible, religion and spirituality can create unique connections and meaningful experiences for both sex worker and client. Tanya’s story shows how sex work experiences are not one dimensional, and are not only about selling sex for money. They can hold multiple meanings. As the journalist Melissa Gira Grant suggests in her book, sex work is a role where social skills and empathy are regularly performed.
This article is part of Conversation Insights
The Insights team generates long-form journalism derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.
My PhD research attempts to shine a light on the realities of the everyday lives of religious sex workers, which include positive experiences as well as distressing ones. I spoke with sex workers who were Christian, Catholic, Muslim, Norse Pagan and spiritual. All the women were over the age of 18 and were consensual sex workers.
So, what do different religions say about sex work? Research by independent scholar Benedikta Fones, suggests that in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament representations of sex workers are typically negative. That perhaps doesn’t come as too much of a surprise. The stereotypical “religious” view of sex before marriage is that it is immoral, so why should sex work be any different? Fones argues that these religious ideas, about sex work being “unacceptable”, then spread into wider culture.
Research shows that sex work is generally considered an immoral act within Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
That said, there are some religious organisations or charities that do provide essential support for some sex workers. But there are also “saviour charities”, whose existence gives further insight into the complex relationship between sex work and religion.
As the sociologist Gemma Ahearne has written, some religiously motivated groups aim to stop people working in the sex industry and aim to eradicate sex work entirely.
And it’s not just religious doctrines which find sex work to be immoral – some religious sex workers do too, as a research project in Thailand discovered in 2015. But the women I spoke with rejected that narrative of religious condemnation. For them, religion and sex work can co-exist and both were a meaningful part of their lives.
One of my first discoveries was how some sex workers use religion to earn more money. One example of this was how one sex worker had decided to capitalise on her Muslim heritage to boost her “brand”.
Zahra and Islam
Zahra is a 26-year-old British Muslim. Zahra was inspired by other women who use the hijab when sex working. From this, she created her alter ego, where she wore the hijab when she made online sexual content and when working as an escort. She said:
On Twitter … I networked with this one girl, she wears a hijab, not in her real life but using it to make more money and mix it up and she is like earning 150k, she’s up there with celebrities and stuff and so, yeah I decided I would have an alter ego, my “hoejabi”, that’s what I called it and I made content wearing a head scarf and like that and I had jobs coming through from that.
So Zahra utilised the hijab and, in her own words, “made a lot of money from it”.
However, this coexistence of identities – as sex worker and religious person – is not simple, and must be managed by a process of constant internal negotiation. Zahra spoke to me at length about the requests she has had from clients which she turned down, because to agree with them would have challenged her religious values and morals.
She added: “I have had clients go, ‘can you sit on the Qur’an and cum or can I bring a Qur’an and ride it whilst saying this and that’, and I say no. That is too extreme for me.”
So although Zahra uses her religion to earn more money by sexualising Islamic symbols like the hijab, she is still a Muslim woman. She believes in Allah in her private life. She set boundaries within her work to ensure that she doesn’t go against her own religious beliefs.
But sexualising religion in this way can come with risks. In 2015, the former porn actor Mia Khalifa starred in a porn film while she was wearing the hijab. She received death threats as a result and was strongly criticised by some people in Muslim communities. Some claimed she was letting down the Islamic faith (although Khalifa herself was raised Catholic).
But despite – or perhaps because of – the controversy around her film, Khalifa became one of the most searched-for stars on the adult movie site Porn Hub.
Being a Muslim and sex worker may be risky - but for Zahra, it was empowering and positive. And she is not alone. There is a Muslim group called Muslims for Full Decrim whose members are also current and former sex workers who support the decriminalisation of the sex industry. Clearly, religious communities like Islam are diverse and this is reflected in how people feel about their religion and sex work.
Maya, yoga and spirituality
Another sex worker I met used elements of her spiritual life to increase interest from clients. Maya, a 25-year-old British woman showed me her bedroom over a video-call. Maya, like Tanya, is a cam sex worker, so her bedroom is also her workspace. But Maya’s bedroom is also the space where she practises yoga. She told me that she performed yoga on camera for her clients:
Good spiritual link, customers have said they find it relaxing to watch. Yeah, I don’t know why I didn’t mention that! I think it’s even like, called a subculture … I sent a video of myself into the site proving I can do it [yoga], you add it to your list of specialities so people can find you for specifically doing that.
For Maya, yoga can be relaxing and a way to connect with her spiritual identity. But it is also a way to make money and it shows how religion and spirituality are becoming more diverse and less bound by traditional religious rules and doctrines. Maya was managing her beliefs flexibly. This was also true for Zahra.
Maya’s and Zahra’s stories show the evident demand from some clients for religion when they are paying for sex. Zahra and Maya sexualise their religion and spirituality when sex working – meeting the desires of clients who get off on that.
Khan, a trans Norse Pagan
But there were other women I met who needed religion to help them belong. Khan, a 41-year-old transgender woman, was raised Christian but now has a Norse Pagan religious identity. She told me how she changed her religious path because she felt conflicted between her gender identity, sex work identity and, specifically, her Christian identity.
She said that being a transgender woman created challenges to being a Christian and that Christianity would not accept her occupation as an escort.
I don’t think there is a way to reconcile the sex work with Christianity.
It is these kinds of religious ideas about the immorality of sex work that meant Khan looked for and found a religion – Norse Paganism – which better suited her feelings and identities. Norse Pagan practices are diverse and people engage with the religion differently. An introduction to Norse Paganism on spiritualityheath.com states that it “is an inclusive spiritual practice, open to all who are moved toward it”.
The inclusivity offered by this religion seems to enable people with diverse and marginalised identities to feel accepted within it – in other words, it is a religious community free from judgement. For Khan, it was a welcoming religion. It helped her to overcome the challenges she had experienced as a transgender woman sex worker within the Christian faith.
Khan’s story supports the idea that religious beliefs are becoming more fluid and that people are able to tailor religion to better align with their “self”.
But, as Tanya’s story showed, there are Christian sex workers who do not feel conflicted in the way that Khan did. Religious beliefs – even those within mainstream religions like Islam and Christianity – are diverse and one size does not fit all.
Another topic I was keen to examine was whether sex workers themselves experience sexual pleasure while working. This point is seldom addressed. But according to a number of the women I interviewed, they not only enjoyed sex with some of their clients, but religion and spirituality sometimes increased that pleasure and led to more of a connection.
Amy and spiritual vibes
Take Amy, for example. Amy is a 23-year-old American porn actor who has a spiritual identity. Our interview lasted nearly three hours. She explained to me how being a sex worker and being spiritual were not at “odds with each other”. She described how they are two separate things within her life. However, she also told me that sometimes her sexual encounters (for example, when she is creating pornography) can be a spiritual experience.
Sex can still be spiritual for me … And even if you don’t have, like, a connection with the person and you’re not gonna see them again or don’t care about them, or whatever, you can still enjoy … the moment.
Amy told me that sex could “turn her brain off” and “that’s kind of like a spiritual experience”. Amy’s spirituality concerns “high vibes”, which are positive qualities such as love, and “low vibes” associated with negative qualities such as hatred. So for Amy, although sex work and spirituality are separate, there was also a blurring of lines between them, and some sexual experiences when making porn gave her “high vibes”.
LRE, astrology
Another sex worker I spoke to said that the sex part of her work could become especially enjoyable when she and her client connected over a shared love of astrology and star signs.
LRE is a 22-year-old British woman who works part-time as an escort and sexual content creator. Like Amy, LRE’s spiritual identity could sometimes enhance her sexual pleasure with clients.
Oh, he was a Sagittarius [client]… we did bits and then halfway through he was like, what star sign are you? I was like, ‘you are my new favourite person ever’ … he was like laughing and smiling and I was like ‘no seriously, I love that you asked me that’ … and I thought … this is why there is such sexual chemistry.
Although the stories of Amy and LRE have some things in common, their spiritual identities were present in their sex work in different ways. In Amy’s case, her spiritual identity was not necessarily known to the fellow porn actor she had sex with. But for LRE, her spiritual identity was known and openly discussed with her client.
Despite the many empowering and sex-positive stories I heard, there was sometimes a reminder that not all sex worker experiences are positive.
Lilly, Christian Orthodox
Lilly is one such example. Lilly was a 25-year-old escort, originally from Romania. She is Christian Orthodox and lives in the UK. She told me how she prays in her head when she is with a client who makes her feel uncomfortable:
If I have a problem or think something is wrong with this guy, I start to pray in my head, and it helps me not to think because if they feel I am scared, they will take advantage. So, when I start to pray, I forget I am scared and go away from those feelings and so, he will be quiet as he doesn’t feel like this.
Safety challenges are an occupational hazard for sex workers. It is important to say, though, that for Lilly at least, feeling unsafe with a client was not a regular occurrence.
Lilly told me that sex work provides her with greater opportunities to earn more compared to other jobs available to her. I did feel concerned that Lilly, at times, was made to feel scared by her clients. But it was also clear to me that, for Lilly, these negative experiences do not outweigh the positive benefits she says she gains from being an escort.
One way to keep sex workers like Lilly safer is to decriminalise the sex industry. Those who oppose decriminalisation seem to be under the misconception that all sex workers are coerced, trafficked or exploited. Although this is true for some, it is not true for most and the misconception that all sex workers are victims is itself, as research shows, a result of stigma and lack of knowledge about the industry.
It is also important to differentiate between criminalised, legalised and decriminalised sex industries. Criminalisation of the sex industry makes all sex work-related practices illegal. Legalisation of the sex industry is where sex work is legal under specific state defined conditions.
For example, under legalisation laws within the UK (except for Northern Ireland, who have adopted the Nordic Model) sex work practices are predominantly legal. However, some engagements with sex work such as soliciting on the street and working with another sex worker within the same house (as this is considered a brothel) are criminalised.
Decriminalisation is where sex work is stripped of regulations and sex workers can operate freely. I support the decriminalisation of the sex industry globally because it is under these conditions that sex workers can best protect themselves and it is the first step in abolishing stigma. Research has also shown it is the best strategy for harm reduction.
Although it is not the belief of all sex workers, the women I spoke to argued strongly for the decriminalisation of the sex industry. Stories told to me by Khan and LRE, who are both escorts, are cases in point.
Khan lives and works in a US state where escorting is illegal. So, if she has a violent client, she will tell staff and security at the hotel where she is working that she is on a date that has gone wrong.
… God forbid, something does happen, like there’s staffed or security and I will say I was on a date and this guy went crazy …
Khan is forced to hide her sex work from staff when she is in potential danger due to fear of prosecution. LRE faces similar issues in the UK. She told me how she has to hide her income around her hotel room when she is escorting to reduce the likelihood of theft and violence.
… If you get money, put like £100 in the safe and then anything else, just stash it around the room …
All the women I spoke to informed me they do not report violence from clients or thefts to the police. This is not surprising, given evidence that women, men and transgender sex workers are all at heightened risk of police sexual misconduct in comparison to non-sex workers.
I think my interviews show that sex workers are not just sex workers – they have complex and multifaceted identities. You absolutely can be a sex worker and be religious or spiritual. But it is not necessarily easy to always get a balance. It is the result of constant and skilful identity management. The stories of women like Tanya, Maya, Zahra, LRE, Amy, Lilly and Khan underline how important it is to recognise the sheer diversity of people who work in this industry.
Although there are negative experiences in the sex industry, the women I spoke to, on the whole, felt empowered by their profession. They saw it as providing great opportunities for earning money and offering them positive experiences.
And, importantly, it didn’t get in the way of their religious and spiritual beliefs. As Zahra told me at the end of our discussion:
…I do believe in God and believe in Allah and in my private life. I believe in it.
So whether it was Tanya consoling a church elder, or Zahra finding a way to utilise her Muslim faith, these women were opening up new discussions about what it means to be a sex worker.
All names have been changed to protect the identities of those involved.
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The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
From the fairy tales read to us as children to the costumes every Halloween, the figure of the witch has been with most of us for our entire lives. Unkempt and warty, the witch of our childhood was generally a repulsive creature flying on a broomstick beside her toad or black cat.
Yet recent years have marked a reinvention of this ancient character, giving her a modern twist in a new subgenre of literature that some are calling “witch lit”.
The novels that have been categorised as belonging to this new subgenre often take inspiration from historical events such as the witch trials of the medieval and early modern periods.
A.K. Blakemore’s award-winning novel The Manningtree Witches (2021), for example, is set in the town of Manningtree in 1643 just as Matthew Hopkins begins his hunt against witches. Jenni Fagan’s short novel Hex: Darkland Tales (2022) revolves, in part, around the story of Geillis Duncan, one of the first women to be accused of witchcraft in the North Berwick witch trials.
We can see this resurgence in film and TV too. In Netflix’s Wednesday (2022), the young protagonist learns about her magical heritage through her ancestor Goody Addams, who was accused of witchcraft in the 1600s.
Popular shows like Outlander (2014), The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018) and A Discovery of Witches (2018) also prominently feature historical witchcraft beliefs and practices.
The witches featured in this new media are rarely comparable to the dirty hags that appeared in older stories. The new witch is often beautiful, at once dark and gothic and ethereal and wild.
Even Disney’s sequel to Hocus Pocus (2022) features a more sympathetic version of the Sanderson sisters. Winnie Sanderson, although still a child-killing witch, now becomes a woman who values her coven of sisters above all else.
In all of this, one thing is clear: the story of the witch is being rewritten and a new type of tale is taking its place.
An important addition to the witch lit sub-genre is Kirsty Logan’s Now She is Witch (2023). It perfectly captures the magic of this kind of story. The novel follows Lux, a girl who sells poisons and poppets, and the mysterious Else who is seeking revenge against a lord who kills women for witchcraft.
Many of the elements we have come to expect from witchcraft literature are evident in this tale. Through her protagonist, Logan picks at the hypocrisy of the rhetoric used to condemn witches. As Else puts it: “Men desire women but it is not their fault, it’s because women are wicked”.
Lux is also on a journey of self-discovery. She is trying to understand the place that she occupies in the world and the names that have been given to her, be it maiden, mother, crone or witch. Where this novel really finds its brilliance, is in the moments that it strays from the path that has been set out for it in this genre.
The medieval setting of Logan’s story feels real and textured but there is also an otherworldly, almost carnivalesque feeling to the novel. The journey that Lux takes through woods populated by a colourful cast of characters, is almost reminiscent of the voyage Little Red Riding Hood takes to her grandmother’s house. Though Lux is as much a wolf as she is a lost little girl.
In her novel, Logan is making use of not only historical beliefs around witchcraft but also folklore and fairy tales. Her witch is complicated: powerful and somehow also powerless, woman and sometimes man and sometimes neither and sometimes both, real and made up, dangerous and innocent, girl and wolf.
Read more: WitchTok: the rise of the occult on social media has eerie parallels with the 16th century
At the centre of the story is a hunger from both Lux and Else to be allowed to be more than just one thing, to simply exist without worrying about what word or role will be used to define them.
It is not only in television and literature that the witch has gained popularity in recent years. Feminist activists and writers such as Silvia Federici and Mona Chollet are turning to the witch as a figure of injustice, power or rebellion.
One glance through the section of TikTok that has been affectionately named WitchTok reveals a number of people identifying as witches and calling out for power through the use of healing crystals or tarot cards.
At a time when female bodies are still policed in many parts of the world, the witch retains the power to speak through history and across generations. Perhaps this process of rewriting the witch is actually giving writers a new way to tell the stories of women.
Lucy Atkinson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Countries are betting on forests and soils to mop up their remaining “difficult-to-decarbonise” emissions to achieve their climate targets. More forests and better soils are good for nature and for adapting to climate change, but this strategy may prove a risk to the global goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions.
Substantial emission cuts across the global economy are required to stay on course with global temperature targets. Reaching net zero, however, will also involve removing CO₂ from the atmosphere and storing it, a process known as carbon removal.
The latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claimed that carbon removal will be “unavoidable” for balancing out the continued emissions from “difficult-to-decarbonise” sectors, such as aviation and agriculture. In our new paper, we examined how governments plan to pursue carbon removal in their national climate strategies.
We examined all national climate strategies published in English before 2022, totalling nearly 4,000 pages across 41 strategies. We found that the majority did not estimate how much of their emissions would be difficult to decarbonise in 2050.
Out of the 20 strategies that did, the majority rely primarily (and in some cases solely) upon forests, soils, or other natural sinks to compensate. In fact, forests and soils are the most commonly mentioned removal methods, present in nearly all strategies.
Forests, soils, or other natural sinks are not the only carbon removal options available. Engineered methods are increasingly gaining traction in climate policy.
One engineered method is direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS), which uses chemical reactions to pull CO₂ out of the air and pump it underground. Another is bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), which captures the CO₂ released when burning plant matter (referred to as “biomass”), before also storing it underground.
These engineered methods feature in far fewer strategies. Only two countries (the UK and Switzerland) estimate how much CO₂ they might remove with DACCS, while the method receives mentions in a further five.
BECCS fares better. Its contribution to carbon removal is quantified in five strategies and mentioned in a further 11. Many of the examples in which they are mentioned are speculative, stressing that their potential deployment depends upon further technological breakthroughs.
Governments seem hesitant to embrace engineered methods and are more drawn to nature-based carbon removal. This isn’t too surprising – removing CO₂ through land use has been a feature of global climate policy dating back to the Kyoto Protocol in 1997.
Many existing policies, such as the EU’s LULUCF Regulation, help countries account for carbon removals by forests and soils in their emission totals. Engineered methods meanwhile account for a tiny proportion of what is currently removed from the atmosphere, according to a recent report.
Countries are rightly drawn to nature-based methods as they not only remove carbon but are critical to halting the decline of biodiversity and adapting to the impacts of climate change. Nature-based methods, however, may be a risky bet when it comes to removing and storing carbon to mop up remaining emissions.
Countries seem aware of these risks. Portugal’s national climate plan relies on forests and soils to close the gap to net zero yet describes damaging rural fires, which in 2017 flipped its forests from removing and storing CO₂ to adding it back to the atmosphere.
Sweden and Slovenia similarly rely upon their forests, but fear they are vulnerable to pests and disease. Hungary, Finland, Slovakia, South Korea and Ukraine anticipate that their forest carbon sinks will make a shallow contribution towards their long-term climate targets owing to the age of existing forests or limited land for growing new ones.
Countries such as France note that carbon storage in soil will be temporary if farmers decide to move away from practices that add carbon to soils and instead return it to the atmosphere. Malta similarly fears that the impacts of climate change may reduce the ability of soils to store carbon.
These concerns largely echo what researchers have already identified, underlining the limitations of removing CO₂ through these methods, particularly as climate change makes forests and soils more vulnerable to natural hazards.
Engineered carbon removal methods may offer a more durable way to remove and store carbon by pumping it underground. But the capacity of these methods must be urgently scaled up this decade.
Within their national strategies, countries either note a lack of potential storage sites or ample storage capacity. Making widespread deployment of engineered methods a reality may rest on countries collaborating to transfer CO₂ between one another or remove CO₂ on one another’s behalf.
Given the limited capacity of countries to remove carbon, the challenge of rapidly scaling up engineered methods and the necessity of addressing other pressing issues like declining biodiversity, carbon removal cannot substitute emission reductions.
Mitigating climate change requires both large and rapid emissions reductions and the responsible scaling up of carbon removal methods. Both natural and engineered methods are likely to be needed. Our research suggests that countries may need to engage with engineered removal methods if the challenge of net zero is to be met.
As of March 2023, 58 national climate strategies have been submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Compare this to the 194 nationally determined contributions, shorter term emission pledges made by countries, and it’s clear that there should be many more strategies to come.
These strategies must quantify the pathways they will take to their climate target and recognise the unique but different roles nature-based and engineered removals have. Those with existing strategies should follow suit in future revisions.
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Harry Smith receives funding from The Leverhulme Trust.
Johanna Forster receives funding from Horizon Europe and has previously received funding from the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF).
Naomi Vaughan receives funding from The Leverhulme Trust and has previously received funding from the Natural Environment Research Council.
Suicide is an act so shocking and violent that it undoes not only sensation, memory and feeling, but meaning. Poet and novelist Ocean Vuong describes how it unpicks even the connective tissue of language.
The death of my best friend by suicide last summer completely undid me. The experience has changed the way I experience the world, my relationship to myself, friends, loved ones, but it has also changed my relationship to my work. It has forced me to think differently about suicide’s frequent appearances in what we know of ancient Greek and Roman tragedies.
Phaedra is one such suicide tragedy. Director Simon Stone is at the helm of a new adaptation for the National Theatre, having previously directed Yerma (2016) with Billie Piper, at the Young Vic and then Medea (2014), which came to London’s Barbican in 2019. In both previous productions, Stone has the female lead take her own life at the end of the performance and his Phaedra is no different.
Stone is working from multiple sources: Hippolytus by the ancient Greek tragedian Euripides, Phaedra by the Roman poet Seneca, Phèdre by the 17th century French dramatist Jean-Baptiste Racine and Phaedra’s Love (1996) by British playwright Sarah Kane.
As classics professor Edith Hall explains in the National Theatre’s programme, each version portrays Phaedra’s suicide differently in her plot to love and then discredit her stepson Hippolytus by falsely accusing him of rape following his rejection. A second death occurs when Hippolytus’ father kills him, for what he believes Hippolytus has done to his wife.
In all these versions – but especially Kane’s – suicide is an avoidable but seemingly inevitable horror. It is a corrosive agent for the drama, that leaves the characters on their knees, making sounds “like an animal that just learned the word for God”.
The National Theatre’s Phaedra is quick witted, acerbic and does some light decolonial thinking, but it cannot fathom the ways in which suicide undoes people and their relationships to one another.
Stone changes much of the Phaedra story. Phaedra’s part is distributed among a couple of characters. Firstly, Helen (Janet McTeer), a shadow environment minister who, while studying at Oxford, went abroad to Morocco. There she fell in love with a man and took him away from his family so that he could drink, consume drugs and dream of being a rock star.
Hippolytus is no longer Phaedra’s stepson but Helen’s lover’s son, Sofiane (Assaad Bouab). Sofiane looks just like his father, who died tragically in a car wreck. We hear his voice recordings to his son which play in the long blackouts between scenes, variously morose, loving, macabre and suicidal.
Helen is complicit in this infidelity and her former lover’s eventual death. The play blames her almost entirely, with a long, hateful monologue delivered in French by Sofiane’s mother Reba (Sirine Saba) and translated live into English by Helen’s diplomat husband Hugo (Paul Chahidi) in the final scene.
The part of Phaedra is also shared with Helen’s daughter, Isolde (Mackenzie Davis) – a millennial who would be a good fit in White Lotus. Isolde is wracked by white guilt and very upper- middle- class privilege consciousness. Her marriage and NGO are failing. She shares Phaedra’s desire to be out in the wilderness, have scraped knees and hoist a bow over her shoulders.
Both Helen and Isolde sleep with Sofiane, producing much of the play’s farcical energy. The scene in a London restaurant that opens the second act is excellent – the audience gasped, feared, pitied and wondered at every revelation, expertly delivered by the ensemble. But it is Helen alone who shares Phaedra’s death.
Excruciatingly, she takes her own life on stage, creating the final image of the play. Sofiane disappears into a heavenly white haze, while Helen sinks into the ground alone, traces of her blood and sweat staining the “glass” box in which the production unfolds.
In Euripides and Seneca’s versions, Phaedra is undone by a god. But Stone’s Helen is a villain driven mad by the guilt of her own actions. “At least”, a Telegraph interviewer reports McTeer saying, “Phaedra has the ‘redeeming’ grace to kill herself.”
Instead of implicating us in Helen’s choices and their aftermath, Stone asks us to project our shame onto this “post-menopausal woman” and make her the scapegoat.
I marvelled at the set design and excellent performances. And I enjoyed the skill of the lighting, costume and sound designers, the work of the intimacy director, the speed and determination of the stage managers and backstage team. In minutes, they turned an upscale London living room into a Suffolk field.
However, I found the choice to stage Helen’s suicide as a redeeming act – and the invitation to cheer in the curtain call, just seconds after her death – dreadfully misplaced.
Instead of railing against Helen, I’d like to see a version of Phaedra where the desires of a postmenopausal woman aren’t played for shock and laughs. One that looks at why suicides like this take place and advocates for a world where mental health services are funded and people don’t die in their thousands.
Phaedra is on now at the The National Theatre, London, until April 8.
If you’re struggling with suicidal thoughts, the following services can provide you with support:
In the UK and Ireland – call Samaritans UK at 116 123.
In the US – call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or IMAlive at 1-800-784-2433.
In Australia – call Lifeline Australia at 13 11 14.
In other countries – visit IASP or Suicide.org to find a helpline in your country.
Marcus Bell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The Russia–Ukraine war has exacerbated an energy crisis that directly affects the costs of heating, cooling, lighting and mobility, and indirectly pushed up the costs of other goods and services throughout global supply chains. While all households are affected, they are affected in different ways depending on their income, how they spend their money, and how and where the products that they are buying were produced. Targeted energy assistance can help vulnerable households during this crisis but for that we need to know who is affected, to what degree and why.
To investigate this, we have modelled the direct and indirect impacts of increased energy prices in 116 countries, covering 87.4% of the global population, with a focus on developing countries. Our results are now published in Nature Energy.
Since the conflict began almost exactly a year ago, energy prices have increased sharply but to varying degrees depending on the type of fuel. The following graph shows the price fluctuations:
We used a computer program to simulate the impact these energy price increases would have for households around the world. On the basis of a set of energy price scenarios, we show that total energy costs (direct and indirect) for households have increased by at least 63% and possibly as much as 113% (that is, more than doubled). This contributes to an increase in global household expenditure of between 2.7% and 4.8%. This is a huge shift, equivalent to a massive economic shock: households around the world have suddenly been required to find a few percent of extra income just to maintain their pre-2022 living standards.
The wide uncertainty is because such a big part of the increase in household expenditure is for indirect energy consumption – energy used to produce the stuff or food that we consume. So for instance if someone in South Africa eats imported beef, the price of that beef might be affected by the cost of energy for the fertilizer (from Germany, perhaps) that is used to produce soybeans in Brazil which then feed the cows, along with the associated costs of fuel for transport. Factoring in lots of things like this means we cannot be too precise.
We do know that wealthier groups tend to have higher energy costs on goods and services, while poorer households tend to spend more on meeting daily needs such as food and direct energy. More vulnerable households tend to be more reliant on purchasing energy-intensive, processed goods and services.
In some countries in sub-Saharan Africa, household energy costs increased by up to three times the global average. In Rwanda, for instance, it increased by 11%. Residential energy use in these countries is less dependent on fossil fuels (99.6% of households in Rwanda cooked with wood and other biomass in 2018, for example), but there are huge indirect costs through the supply chain especially for food.
Rising energy prices are making households more vulnerable to energy poverty, particularly during the cold season. People in energy poverty do not have access to adequate heating, cooling, lighting, and energy to power appliances. The global energy price spikes would increase the number of energy-poor households, that is their energy costs account for more than 10% of total expenditures somewhere between 166 million and 538 million people (2.4% to 7.9% of the global population).
Also, under these cost-of-living pressures, somewhere between 78 million and 141 million people could be pushed below the World Bank’s extreme poverty line.
The energy price increases due to the Russian-Ukraine war would not have had such an extreme impact if better policy decisions had been made before. Take, for example, the quite recent COVID crisis that provided a great opportunity to redirect investments toward the energy transition and loosening the dependence on fossil fuel imports given the huge amounts of money used to kick-start the economy. Yet a large share of the public funds was invested in fossil fuel infrastructure.
A similar picture emerges today as governments extend brown coal extraction (in Germany), build new coal infrastructure (for instance, in the UK and many developing countries such as Pakistan), or invest in liquid natural gas terminals all of which are highly carbon intensive or hugely inefficient. These kinds of solutions lock us into a very expensive infrastructure that we shouldn’t have in the first place if we take climate change seriously.
Despite multiple global treaties and agreements to reduce carbon emissions, the slow and hesitant progress in the energy transition is reflected in the dependency on fossil fuel imports and has amplified the severity of the cost-of-living crisis. This crisis has pushed a number of economies into recession, caused higher inflation, and put painful cost-of-living pressures on vulnerable households around the world. This unprecedented global energy crisis should come as a reminder that an energy system highly reliant on fossil fuels perpetuates energy-security risks and accelerates climate change.
Jin Yan receives funding from China Scholarship Council PhD Program.
Yuli Shan receives funding from UKRI Research England and NSFC. He is affiliated with the University of Birmingham and the University of Groningen.
Yuru Guan receives funding from China Scholarship Council PhD program.
Klaus Hubacek does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Pamela Anderson’s Netflix documentary is worth watching for many reasons, but one of the greatest lessons it has to offer is what a victim-survivor of intimate partner abuse looks like: resilient, resourceful, eternally optimistic and compassionate.
Unlike most other victim-survivors, Anderson has been granted a platform for a narrative we still rarely hear in the mass media but which professionals in the field have known for decades. People who experience intimate partner abuse are not the submissive stereotype but often strong willed and resistant.
Netflix are billing Pamela, A Love Story as a “humanising documentary”, necessary precisely because this is a woman who has been systematically dehumanised by media narratives throughout her life.
Anderson’s voice has always been drowned out by the stories other people have written about her. Most recently her experiences in her relationship with Tommy Lee and the exploitation of her reputation and private life have been mined without her consent in Hulu’s drama series, Pam and Tommy (2022).
This has prompted a woman who has finally found her power (spoiler, it was inside her all along) to tell her own story, out loud and in control of her narrative.
Narrative power is an important aspect of social identity – and taking control of it is one of the most powerful tools used by perpetrators of coercive and controlling behaviour.
Techniques such as gaslighting (where an abuser constructs a false reality by denying and contradicting their victim’s perception) manipulate and degrade the victim’s sense of reality and their sense of self. Yet it is not only within the abusive intimate relationship that a victim’s sense of identity can be warped by narrative.
Criminologist Nils Christie drew attention to what many of us think of when we consider victims of crime – especially victims of intimate partner abuse - in his classic work on the “ideal victim”. Christie explained that we view victims as inherently weak or vulnerable and that anyone who deviates from this is not considered a “real” victim.
In my research as an expert in intimate partner abuse, I often hear the common misconception that victims are submissive and dependent. Those who show resistance to their abuser are considered to be complicit or provocative.
Many victim-survivors I’ve spoken to explain – just like Anderson does in her Netflix documentary – that they do not perceive themselves as victims. This is because they do not align with the “ideal victim” stereotype. Instead, they see themselves as strong and fiercely independent, and with good reason.
Pamela Anderson is eternally optimistic and compassionate – she believes in love and romance. We hear the story of how Lee “wooed” her with constant messages and a whirlwind of drugs and champagne before they settled into a life dominated by his heavy drinking and control of her everyday activities.
It’s only looking back, she says, that she sees these red flags. Anderson continued to believe in her love story as she juggled young children, a gruelling work schedule and media onslaught.
“I thought I could love him/her better” is a common refrain in the work that I do. Persistence in an abusive relationship is not submission but fierce loyalty and generosity. Even after the relationship with Lee ends, Anderson retains her faith in romance, going on to marry three more times in attempt to find it.
It’s evident that she is not dependent on men – it’s clear that she was the one holding her life with Lee together. She just believes in the love stories we are all saturated in.
Anderson is also resilient. She withstood Lee’s demanding behaviour until the point that he attacked her physically.
At that point, she ended the relationship swiftly and with conviction, admitting that she was lucky to have the resources to do so. But she continues to co-parent with Lee and she endures the trauma of having had her most private moments revealed to the world in the infamous “sex tape” with integrity.
Read more: Don't watch Pam and Tommy – the series turns someone's trauma into entertainment
The documentary uses old photographs and videos to tell the story of how Anderson made a safe and happy life for her young sons, despite the heartbreak of “not being able to make it work with the father of my children” – a grief she carries still.
This is not to say that victim-survivors are invincible. Anderson explains that she doesn’t see herself as a victim, but as someone who puts herself into “crazy situations” and survives.
Anderson uses the status she has been conferred with – “sex-symbol” and “thing that belongs to the world” – to campaign for animal rights, an issue she is passionate about.
In a montage of chat show interviews, she is seen sidestepping the hosts’ jokes about “the sex tape” and relationship with Lee to talk about her work with the animal charity Peta. But the most poignant example of her resourcefulness comes through her pieces to camera – especially towards the end of the documentary, where we see her draw on her reputation and her survival instinct to train for the starring role in Chicago.
Anderson has transformed her experiences into wisdom, self-reliance and confidence.
In one of my research interviews, a victim-survivor told me: “I’m stronger than I could ever have been if this hadn’t happened.” This glows from Anderson too, as she’s shown performing on the Broadway stage at the end of the documentary.
It is not enough for Pamela Anderson to tell her story – it needs to be heard. I hope the world is ready to listen carefully.
Sarah Tatton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Every two to seven years, the equatorial Pacific Ocean gets up to 3°C warmer (what we know as an El Niño event) or colder (La Niña) than usual, triggering a cascade of effects felt around the world. This cycle is called the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) because every El Niño is naturally followed by a La Niña and vice versa, with some months of neutral conditions in between events. The change in sea surface temperature associated with ENSO events might seem marginal, but it is more than enough to disrupt weather patterns globally and even the large-scale circulation of air in the polar stratosphere 8km above the Earth.
It is not surprising for La Niña conditions to last two consecutive years, but a three-year La Niña, which the world has had since 2020, is more rare. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has reported that the equatorial Pacific Ocean will return to its neutral state between March and May of 2023, and it is likely that El Niño conditions will develop during the northern hemisphere’s autumn and winter.
Given the strong influence of ENSO on global patterns of precipitation and temperature, scientists keep a close watch on the status of the tropical Pacific to provide the best possible information. So what can the world expect from the next El Niño event?
During an El Niño, the ocean transfers some of that excess heat and moisture to the atmosphere, as when you cook pasta and your kitchen gets steamy. On top of the global warming trend, a strong El Niño can add up to 0.2°C to the average temperature of the Earth. The hottest year on record was 2016, during a particularly strong El Niño. A La Niña year can also break heat records, as the warming trend imposed by the increasing accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere can mask the cooling effect of natural processes.
Since the planet has already warmed by around 1.2°C relative to pre-industrial times and El Niño adds some extra heat to the atmosphere, it’s possible that Earth’s rising temperature will temporarily exceed the 1.5°C threshold of the Paris agreement some time after the peak of the El Niño in 2024, though it is too early to know how strong this next event will be.
Australia has had three years of above average rainfall due to prolonged La Niña conditions that brought severe floods, especially in the east. During El Niño, scientists expect the opposite: less rain, higher temperatures and increased fire risk, especially during winter and spring in the southern hemisphere.
As the globe heats up, some regions are warming faster than others. A good example is Australia, which is 1.4°C hotter now than in the early 20th century. Every year, the area of the continent scorched by wildfires increases, fuelled by a dry trend induced by climate change. This occurs despite the anomalous wet years that Australia has experienced during the recent La Niña event. The underlying influence of climate change makes the country extremely vulnerable to the effects of an El Niño.
South America is where the effects of ENSO were first documented by Peruvian fishermen centuries ago. Given the proximity to the equatorial Pacific Ocean, South American weather is significantly disrupted every time an El Niño event occurs, with flooding on the west coasts of Peru and Ecuador and drought in the Amazon and northeast, where the consequences of crop failures can reverberate across the continent.
During El Niño events, the fall in precipitation and rise in temperature in Colombia has been linked to outbreaks of diseases spread by insects, such as malaria and dengue fever. Higher temperatures during El Niño boost the rates at which mosquitoes breed and bite.
Elsewhere during an El Niño, the Amazon rainforest dries and vegetation growth slows so that less CO₂ is absorbed from the atmosphere, a trend repeated in the tropical forests of Africa, India and Australia.
The balance between high pressure over the Azores and low pressure over Iceland determines where rain goes in Europe during winter by pushing the jet stream – a band of strong eastward winds that carries rain across the Atlantic – north or south. During El Niño winters, both pressure centres lose strength, and the jet stream brings wetter conditions to southern Europe.
The largest effect is observed in northern Europe, however, where winters become drier and colder. A frosty 2023-24 winter season is likely if El Niño ramps up sufficiently by then. As a result of global warming, scientists expect El Niño’s influence over the North Atlantic and northern European winter will strengthen.
Understanding the intricacies of the climate system is similar to trying to assemble a big jigsaw puzzle. The oceans talk to each other, and to the atmosphere, which at the same time feeds back to the ocean. Scientists are still unsure how El Niño will behave in the future, but its effects will probably be amplified by climate change in different regions of the world.
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Paloma Trascasa-Castro receives funding from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
Autistic people and people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) often experience anxiety and depression. When these conditions occur together, though – as they often do – it can be hard to unpick which one is contributing the most to poor mental health. Our latest study aimed to find out.
We discovered that people with more ADHD personality traits were more likely to experience common mental health problems like depression and anxiety than people with more autistic traits. This is the first study, as far as we are aware, which shows that people with ADHD are more likely to have poor mental health than autistic people.
To conduct our study, we asked over 500 adults in the UK to complete questionnaires measuring autistic and ADHD traits. We also asked them to complete standard questionnaires for depression and anxiety.
This is known as a “trait approach” to autism and ADHD. It involves looking at people’s individual characteristics rather than their diagnoses. This allows us to indirectly understand how much different conditions overlap.
We then used statistical tests to measure the strength of the relationship between autistic traits and mental health problems and compared this to the link between ADHD traits and poor mental health.
Our results showed both ADHD and autistic personality traits could predict the severity of a person’s anxiety and symptoms of depression. But what was new was that people were more likely to experience these symptoms if they had many ADHD traits compared with those who had a lot of autistic traits. We found that the link between ADHD and poor mental health was around three times stronger than the link between poor mental health and autism.
These results were replicated in computerised simulations with a 100% “reproducibility rate”. In other words, ADHD traits are almost certainly more linked to poor mental health than autistic traits in the UK population.
Our study highlights a clear link between ADHD and common mental health problems in adults. The next step is to examine the factors that might be driving this relationship. Scientists know that the genes linked to ADHD are also linked with certain mental health conditions, such as depression. People with ADHD are also more likely to experience stressful life events, which can lead to mental health difficulties.
It will now be important to look at how environmental and social cognitive factors (such as how well people understand others) may influence mental health in this group. This research is crucial for identifying people who are most at risk of poor mental health. Knowing what signs to look out for could let doctors intervene early, before people become severely anxious or depressed.
But to better understand the links between ADHD and mental health, and which support approaches may be most effective for this group, more funding needs to be invested in research. Funding for ADHD research is lacking in comparison to other conditions, such as autism. Yet, considering that almost 30% of autistic people also have ADHD, it’s clear that greater funding into this research area could have far-reaching benefits for many people.
If you are autistic or have ADHD and are struggling with your mental health, there are many charities and non-profit organisations that may be able to help you.
Luca Hargitai receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.
Lucy Anne Livingston has received funding from the UKRI Medical Research Council and The Waterloo Foundation.
Punit Shah receives or has received funding from the UKRI Medical Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council.
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