From Scotland to Toronto, let's solve this problem pronto!

Today saw around 200 mostly young people take to the streets of Glasgow against victim blaming and recent political discourse surrounding the issue of rape, as Slutwalk arrived in Scotland for the first time. The Slutwalk phenomenon began in April this year in Toronto, following remarks made by a senior police officer that women should ‘avoid dressing [...]

Slutwalk

Slutwalk is the result of women fighting back against the idea that what you wear will determine whether or not you are raped. It all started with Toronto Police’s lecture to women, saying that “…women should avoid dressing like sluts” to prevent being raped. Women of Toronto fought back by organising a protest which they named [...]

Feminism, Pornography and the Fight Against Patriarchy

The following is an essay I wrote, and have recently submitted, for my Sexualities class. A bit long perhaps but the blog’s been kind of short of stuff recently and I thought it might interest some people. Have included the bibliography in case anyone wants to do some further reading. In this essay I will [...]

Who the hell is… Frida Kahlo?

Hey! It’s International Women’s Day! So let’s talk about artist Frida Kahlo, and why feminists like her. Frida Kahlo was a Mexican artist, notable mostly for her graphic depictions of the painful aspects of her life, and for surrealist and colourful self-portraits. Throughout her life she experienced numerous physical and psychological traumas which she documented [...]

Muslim Women Must Write Themselves: women and the multiculturalism debate

There’s an irony in the above title: I’m not a Muslim woman. I’m white, Western, and the lucky inheritor of an (ongoing) women’s movement. I’m also fully aware of the implications of claiming to speak ‘for’ this group, or any group of under-privileged individuals, from a such removed standpoint. But that’s the point: no one [...]

Giles Coren, what a cunt

Giles Coren – star of food history programme The Supersizers, posh food critic, winner of an award for writing the shittest sex scene of any novel in 2005, “Fuck the Poles” racist and general snobby bastard (see his twitter at any one given time for evidence) – has authored an article for the Daily Mail today. About [...]

“We don’t know how to exist anymore without imagining ourselves as a picture”

We live in a world where at every turn we are constantly bombarded with images of ‘perfection’. Whether we choose to believe this affects us or not is solely the opinion of the individual, but how can today’s society not see the dangerous and drastic effects caused by this consumer culture it is so engulfed [...]

Tory councillor first martyr of "feminist war against men".

James Williams, Conservative City Councillor in Portsmouth, has vowed that he will not undertake any work for his party until they repeal new anti-domestic violence measures. The new orders – which were designed by the last Labour government, but are now being piloted in three areas of the UK – give senior police officers on-the-spot [...]

Appearance

On splitting up with a boyfriend/girlfriend/whatever how do you react? Whether you dump him or he dumps you is somewhat irrelevant here, because break ups are never good. Do you go out and spend money you don’t have on retail therapy? Spend every moment of waking life with your pals? Spend every waking moment crying [...]

In case you ever doubted the legal system is sexist…

. . .here’s the proof. (Trigger warning.) A woman from Powys in Wales has been jailed after being raped by her abusive husband. The reason? Because under huge pressure from him and his family, she at one point retracted the allegations. In November last year she made a 999 call to report that her husband [...]

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