Contributor Guidelines

About Us

Cactus Equality is a campaign to improve the equal rights for UK citizens, specifically focussing on the gender pay gap, LGBT+ rights and BAME rights. We aim to raise awareness of these issues through our website, blog and shop. The more we get people talking, the more people have to listen.

Our blog is split into two sections; articles and perspectives. Both are important as without the people, we have no grounds for our cause but without the facts, our cause is without a factual foundation to stand on.

Articles

Articles need to be able to fit into one of the main three issue areas; the gender pay gap (and women’s equality), LGBT+ issues and BAME issues. Obviously these are umbrella topics more than specific ones, but that’s because there’s so much to cover.

The tone needs to be one of journalistic nature, with a totally unbiased viewpoint. However, sometimes a more personal conclusion can add to the emotion of the piece, but most of the time we want to show facts and figures with articles. An example can be found here: https://www.cactusequality.com/post/the-gender-recognition-act-what-s-actually-happening

Ideally, articles need to be about current issues and keep up with the current political landscape, although historical issues are also relevant and important. They need to sit between 400 to 1500 words as our audience often views the blog via mobile devices and so the writing needs to be direct and to the point.

Any sources used must be included at the bottom (books, websites, videos or otherwise) of the work, ideally with a link to find the source. Any terms that the average person wouldn’t know should also be included with their definition - at our core, we want to educate people.

If you are interested in submitting an article, please email Henry (cactiwriting@gmail.com) with a short blurb (50 words or less) and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. This can be in the form of a Google Doc, PDF or Word Doc.

Perspectives

Our perspectives area is for personal stories or experiences that align with our campaign (BAME, LGBT+, women’s rights). These can include your opinion on an issue, your experience as someone who is affected by the issues we campaign for or something in between that isn’t completely unbiased. However, perspectives shouldn’t be aimed at a single person or persons.

The tone should be more casual than articles; we want them to feel personal. You can find an example here: https://www.cactusequality.com/post/are-non-binary-people-now-safe

Perspectives should be between 300 to 1000 words. Most of our audience reads the blog via mobile devices and so the writing should be direct and to the point where possible. We do accept longer submissions but this is on a case-by-case basis.

If you are interested in submitting a perspective, please email Maiya (cactiwriting@gmail.com) with a short blurb (50 words or less) and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. This can be in the form of a Google Doc, PDF or Word Doc.

General Expectations

We want to use our platform to educate people about the issues that don’t get airtime on the news or radio, but still affect people every day. We include definitions of words that the average person won’t know (ie cisgender, BAME) so that they’re able to learn. We also include links to any sources used such as videos or books so, again, those who want to can learn more about the subject.

We don’t accept any foul language or hate speech, whether that’s towards a group of people or a person in particular. The perspectives section can seem like the place to do this, but that’s not the message we want to share. Articles are the same; no one person should have a piece of writing directed at them.

Any images used should have the permissions gained, be copyright free, or have been taken yourself. These will need to be provided separately to the writing submitted, as either a jpeg or png file.

What Next?

Well, we’re just a small team who do as much as we can between work and everything else going on in the world. We aim to get back to you within two weeks, no matter if we accept your piece or not - it’s super annoying when you don’t get a reply!

With any writing submitted, links and glossary terms will be added so as to help with the education around the issue. If we require any editing of the text itself, we will let you know. We’d like these edits to be made within 3-7 days of the request so that the article/perspective can still be posted on time. Please ensure you have thoroughly checked your work for grammar, spelling and punctuation as we expect a level of professionalism with any submission.

We will then schedule your piece according to our timeline and let you know of the date it will go live. We would ask that your writing remains exclusive to us for the first two weeks it’s live, after which it can be shared with other sites with a link back to the original at cactusequality.com.

If you have your own blog/website/social media accounts that are aligned with our campaign, please link them at the bottom of your submission and we will ensure they are part of the posted writing.