I wrote about what empowerment means in the age of celebrity “feminism”. [Daily Life]
Miss World Australia and the “right” kind of Aboriginal woman. [Daily Life]
Sex workers deserve to be on the panel about them at Melbourne Writers Festival. [Daily Life]
Violence against women and misogyny is the key factor in recent high profile mass murders. [The Telegraph]
*Trigger warning for transphobic language and discussion of sexual assault.
TERFS (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists) and SWERFS (Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminists) have been making headlines of late.
First there was Germaine Greer and the protests surrounding her talk at Cardiff University in Wales over her trans-exclusionary history. Appearing on BBC Newsnight, Greer asserted that trans women “don’t look like women”—a completely regressive and anti-feminist proclamation if ever there was one—and “a man who gets his dick chopped off is actually inflicting an extraordinary act of violence on himself”, ignoring the fact that many trans women don’t undergo bottom surgery and that being trans is about more than what parts you have. Doubling down on her previous comments, Greer spat in a follow up statement to the Victoria Derbyshire Show that “just because you lop off your dick and then wear a dress doesn’t make you a fucking woman.”
While a petition to prevent her speaking at the college garnered over 3,000 signatures, it was ultimately unsuccessful and the talk went ahead late last month.
https://twitter.com/stoya/status/670685987601825792?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/stoya/status/670689154498449413?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Meanwhile, rape allegations against the porn industry’s crown prince James Deen by his ex-partner and fellow porn performer Stoya, as well as others, have illustrated how much of the world views sex workers: undeserving of rights and incapable of being raped. Even Lena Dunham, who is usually pretty progressive on feminist issues today, has joined other famous women such as Meryl Streep and Kate Winslet in a bid to urge Amnesty International to reconsider their recommendation to decriminalise sex work, a move that could improve labour conditions in the industry.
While the title of this piece might be triggering for some in this age of click- and rage-baity headlines, you can rest assured I’m not defending TERFS and SWERFS; I’m asserting that the acronyms to describe them need to be rethought because feminists who exclude trans women and sex workers from the equality they’re allegedly fighting for aren’t radical at all. (I would go as far as to say they’re not feminists at all, but that’s another piece for another time.)
What’s radical about subscribing to widely held notions that trans women aren’t “real” women and therefore don’t deserve the rights feminists have been fighting for since the dawn of last century? What’s radical about pushing sex workers even further into the margins of society than they already are? Nothing.
Radical feminism, to me, is one that is accepting of not just all women, but all people. It’s one that supports movements such as #BlackLivesMatter, refugee and asylum seeker rights and labour conditions. It’s as concerned with tearing down the patriarchy that prescribes only one way to be for men as it is for the rigid guidelines for femininity. It wants to give visibility to old women, poor women, immigrant women, trans women, disabled women, queer women, women of colour and women in sex work alongside the predominantly white women who get to voice their opinions and have them heard, at least in some form. I would even go as far as to include environmentalism and animal rights in radical feminism, which have so often worked side by side. Not being in favour of these things, or only being in favour of them for certain people, is conservative, anti-feminist and not radical in the slightest.
Truly radical feminism—which I guess is really just intersectional feminism—needs to continue to stand up for society’s most marginalised people and take ownership of that title once again. Greer and co. are old hat and painfully conservative. It’s the women who started #BlackLivesMatter; women like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera who spearheaded the Stonewall uprisings; women like Laverne Cox and Janet Mock who are giving increased visibility to trans people and, specifically, trans people of colour; young women like Amandla Stenberg and Rowan Blanchard who are showing that young people aren’t ambivalent about human rights; women like the those who started the Sex Workers Project and those who speak out about sexism and violence in the industry, like Stoya; women who work and campaign for Planned Parenthood in the face of defunding and violence, like the post-Thanksgiving shooting; the women who started THINX, period panties for, yes, privileged women who can afford to buy them, but also for trans men and women in rural, developing areas who struggle with the stigma surrounding menstruation; and women who fight for the education of women and girls in the developing world, like Malala Yousafzai, who are the real radical feminists.
Elsewhere: [BBC] Germaine Greer: Transgender Women Are Not “Real Women”.
[Change.org] Cardiff University: Do Not Host Germaine Greer.
[The Guardian] Germaine Greer Gives University Lecture Despite Campaign to Silence Her.
[The Guardian] Actors Call on Amnesty to Reject Plans Backing Decriminalisation of Sex Trade.
Judd Apatow makes the same sexist, conservative and boring movie over and over again. [The Guardian]
Is there ever a justification for killing an animal? [Jezebel]
Why I won’t work with Lena Dunham as long as she supports the criminalisation of sex work. [Molly Crabapple]
How do singletons feel smug now that longtime lonely girl Jennifer Aniston is hitched? [Daily Life]
My friend Camilla Peffer wrote about how her persistent acne wasn’t caused by a lack of self-love. As an acne-sufferer myself, I can totally relate to this. [xoJane]
Anti-choicers shouldn’t dare proselytise to women about abortion: we know about it all too well. [The Cut]
Sesame Street‘s move to HBO begs the question: what about kids and families without access to premium cable TV? [WaPo]
Telling a rape joke made me feel amazing. [Jezebel]
The double bind of wearing—or not wearing—makeup. [Triple J Hack]
Why you shouldn’t search for people you know amongst the Ashley Madison hacks. [Fusion]
The best of Aussie and Kiwi feminist writing from July. [Zero at the Bone]
ICYMI: The full transcript of my interview, originally published on Junkee, with Rachel Hills about her new book, The Sex Myth.
These are the books I’ve read over the past year.
Why Walmart and Rite-Aid in the U.S. shouldn’t ban Cosmopolitan.
I went to see Into the Woods this week and I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would having read some things on the interwebs about its race and gender problems.
While it certainly still had those (*spoiler alert* both The Witch and The Baker’s Wife die because they don’t subscribe to typical notions of femininity; The Wolf wears a zoot suit in a dodgy part of the woods) it’s probably the least problematic of all the Oscars bait in cinemas at the moment.
I found the politics of gender very interesting. I was surprised by how on the nose the rapeyness of The Prince was, and I thought Chris Pine played him to perfection. I was taken aback by the pedophilic undertones rife throughout the musical, exhibited by The Wolf and The Baker, amongst others. And for those unfamiliar with the stage version, in it the actor that plays The Prince also plays The Wolf! It gives a whole new meaning to the niceness/charm VS. goodness that reverberates throughout Into the Woods. If you like musicals and/or picking apart the underlying meaning of pop culture, go see it. [The Windowsill]
Why are some of our favourite TV shows given a “free pass” on their problematic content while others are expected to be all things to all people? I love that Sinead Stubbins threw in the gender card: Sex & the City, Girls and even Grey’s Anatomy are often held to a much higher standard than prestige TV’s other (read: male protagonist-based) vehicles. [Junkee]
Not knowing you’re beautiful is exactly what makes you beautiful. [Daily Life]
The history of the Lifetime movie. [WaPo]
Disney’s Agent Carter isn’t feminist: it’s about “Disney owning feminist entertainment, and thereby being able to set the terms for it.” [In These Times]
Just as relevant to the #Tay4Hottest100 controversy as it was when it was published last year, Brodie Lancaster writes about gender-based music elitism. [Rookie]
“Authorities want to ban hoodies but not guns, sagging pants but not police murdering unarmed Black people, natural hair but not unnatural racist discrimination.” [Dame]
Nicki Minaj sacrificed love for career success on her latest album, The Pinkprint. [One Week One Band]
Looking at Pretty Woman‘s positive portrayal of sex work. [Bitch Flicks]
Why do all on-screen female journalists sleep with their subjects for a story? [NY Magazine]
The inevitability of being called fat for deigning to be a woman in public. [Musings of an Inappropriate Woman]
“The Girls effect” on the Iowa Writers Workshop. [Vulture]
The effect menstruation has on professional sportswomen. [Birdee]
Glee flies in the face of character development, storyline continuity and sensitivity by making Coach Beiste a trans man. Would you expect anything more? [Autostraddle]
On being a fat bride-to-be. [The Guardian]
Sex & Relationships.
Men find us more desirable when we’re incapacitated. [Reuters]
Rachel Hills on sex then and now. [Time]
Three former sex workers tell their stories. [Cosmopolitan]
Sometimes human bodies are just human bodies; do we have to sexualise them all the time? [SBS]
Race & Racism.
People of colour can be racist, too. [Daily Life]
“Every 28 hours a black person is killed by police or vigilantes”: what Aboriginal deaths in custody have in common with America’s current protesting of the murders of unarmed black people by police. [Daily Life]
Please don’t act so surprised that Indigenous children are 5.2 times more likely to die than non-Indigenous children. [The Koori Woman]
“When is anthropology going to start taking Indigenous theories seriously instead of subjecting them to their own analyses and theorising about them?” [Fieldnotes & Footnotes]
A guide to therapy for Asian Australians. [No Award]
Punjabi migration to New Zealand. [Stargazer]
The cycle of poverty and homelessness continues for one West Australian Indigenous family of women and girls. [The Stringer]
Reflections on #illridewithyou from the woman who started the hashtag. [Silence Without]
Australia’s racism problem in ten incidents from 2014. [The Koori Woman]
Racism in Australian media: some choice examples. [No Award]
Pop Culture & The Media.
The Australian ran a photo of Christmas-ruiner and Greens senator Larissa Waters’ young daughter wearing pink because journalism. [Junkee]
“Dear Mark Latham, Mothers Are Not the Natural Enemy of Stay-At-Home Dads.” [Daily Life]
Sarah MacDonald called the Australian Financial Review to complain about Mark Latham’s column. They called her husband back. [Women’s Agenda]
Lena Dunham and the Slenderman attempted murder both make us confront our fears of women and girls not behaving in socially prescribed ways. [Bitch Flicks]
Further to that, we’re still as captivated by witches in popular culture as we were during the medieval and Salem witch inquisitions.
What does Miss Julie have in common with Gone Girl? [Flaming Moth]
The responsible reporting of sexual assault and intimate partner violence. [Women’s Agenda]
On that note, Junkee published a guide on responsible social media use in the wake of Sydney’s hostage situation.
Why did The Guardian give a platform to an allegedly falsely accused rapist when alleged victims of rape are so rarely afforded the same? [Women’s Agenda]
“The Best Misandrist Films of 2014.” [Brocklesnitch]
Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is in dire need of an update. [Hoyden About Town]
How many times do we have to read news reports on sexual assault that focus on the victim’s actions not the perpetrator? [The News With Nipples]
Ju’s Australian Women’s Writers Challenge wrap up. [The Conversationalist]
Girl-friendly video games. [On the Left]
Violence Against Women *trigger warning*.
Has 2014 been the year of the stalker?
“The Worst Time I Was Street Harassed.”
“Why Rape Jokes Are Never Okay”. [Feminaust]
We don’t need to ask why Man Haron Monis perpetrated the Sydney siege. His miles-long rap sheet of sexual and physical violence towards women speaks volumes. [Women’s Agenda]
And in the wake of the siege, a dissection of the Change.org petition calling for stricter bail laws and the impact that might have. [Hoyden About Town]
This is what happens to women who fight back against street and sexual harassment. [Daily Life]
Reproductive Rights.
“We are a society that can land a rocket on a comet, splice fish genes into strawberries, and invent cars that reverse park all by themselves; we’re people that fight for marriage equality, dig deep during natural disasters and legislate overnight against ‘coward punch’ violence in the street. And yet our attitudes to the simple procedure of discontinuing a pregnancy remain shrouded in misconception.” [Daily Life]
We can’t forget informed consent when it comes to medical procedures. [On the Left]
Politics.
Tony Abbott plays that “gender card” he so often accused Julia Gillard of. [Women’s Agenda]
Further to that, it’s “too little, too late”. [No Place for Sheep]
Women lawyers have a fat chance of being considered for appointment to High Court judge. [Women’s Agenda]
A Very Tony Abbott Christmas. [Brocklesnitch]
Just like the Labor government they said they’d be nothing like, the Coalition has had their fair share of surprises and excuses since taking office. [No Place for Sheep]
The way we report on politicians’ personal lives proves that “understanding and empathy aren’t dependent on one’s relationship status or parenthood”. [No Place for Sheep]
Prime Minister Tony Abbott misses the mark on why the repealing of the carbon tax is good for women. [Curl]
Why don’t our politicians have any personality? [No Place for Sheep]
Miscellaneous & General Feminism.
Depression around Christmastime (trigger warning: suicide). [Brocklesnitch]
On identity politics: “You’re Not Really X”. [The Rainbow Hub]
“Adventures in Free-Boobing.” [Jessica Hammod]
“How to Be a Good Parent to Your Bisexual, Lesbian or Gay Child.” [Opinions @ BlueBec]
The history of cyberfeminist group VNS Matrix. [Motherboard]
“To be alone is to be eccentric. To be alone and a girl is to be nuts.” [Spook Magazine]
Rachel Hills has just started a newsletter: sign up for updates on her blog, book and more! [Emails of an Inappropriate Woman]
How personal feminism evolves. [Skud]
“Pregnant Refugees Left in Sun, Denied Food & Water, Removed with Force: Advocates.” [ABC]
I said goodbye to friend and colleague Stella Young.
More farewells to Stella, from Maeve Marsden and Brocklesnitch.
On Old Fartism: “a position of social insecurity… Old Fartism can be found in people of any age or gender, but it is most prevalent among those who have lived in a world where their viewpoint and interests were reflected by default, to the exclusion of other subject categories.” [Junkee]
Critiquing modern motherhood doesn’t equate to being anti-children:
“It is indeed the opening of these doors that has rendered work-family balance problematic in the first place since it is the entry of women into the public domain, and specifically into paid employment, that problematises liberal-capitalist conceptions of the ideal worker, which presupposes a wife at home.” [Online Opinion]
Who are the top game-changing women medievalists? [Australian Medievalists]
Rosie Batty is Daily Life’s Woman of the Year.
The ugly girls club. [Daily Life]
Sorry about the lateness but I was unexpectedly without internet over the Christmas break (luckily I was connected to Twitter and Facebook via my phone, so I didn’t have to spend too much time socialising with the family. Phew!). I hope you had a lovely one xx
The mainstreaming of feminism. [Oregon Humanities]
Critiquing Nicki Minaj’s feminism. [Jezebel]
Feminism in Sons of Anarchy. [Bitch Flicks]
I was a Hooters girl: the similarities between waitressing and sex work. [XOJane]
“Kim Kardashian works full-time as a professional metaphor.” [Matter]
Black women are constantly surveilled but do we ever really see them? [Model View Culture]
I profiled OCW’s fastest rising star, Slade Mercer.
ICYMI: Little girls swearing is not the worst thing in the world.
Sex & the City makes me feel bad about my life. (Reminds me of a similar piece I wrote about Gossip Girl.) [It’s Okay for Intellectual Feminists to Like Fashion]
Sex and consent on Scandal‘s underaged-Eiffel-Tower sex tape episode. [Feministing]
Still with Shonda Rhimes’ creations, is How to Get Away With Murder the most progressive show on TV? [Vanity Fair]
On relatability (“To appreciate [art] only to the extent that the work functions as one’s mirror would make for a hopelessly reductive experience.”) VS. likeability (“If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble.”) [The New Yorker, Buzzfeed]
Tyra Banks is a feminist. [Mic]
Lena Dunham has tweeted and Instagrammed in support of Tom Meagher’s blog post earlier this year about the rape and murder of his wife Jill Meagher two years ago. [Buzzfeed, White Ribbon]
Wendy Squires wrote on the weekend that Eddie McGuire is leading the charge of male feminists because he built a change room for women runners to have a safe space after exercising at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne. That’s great, but here are four reasons why McGuire isn’t the feminist Squires thinks he is. They highlight why language is just as important as action. [The Age, Daily Life]
Speaking of language, stop calling sex workers “pr*stitutes” and “wh*res”. [Junkee]
White privilege is alive and well in 2014 if the recent nostalgia for Friends is any indication. [The Globe & Mail]
Anne Helen Petersen on Renee Zellweger’s changing face:
“… Zellweger’s picture personality has been about the striving performance of femininity—and a striving performance that’s rooted, always, in the appearance of twenty- and thirtysomething youth. To see her at the age of 44, amid a long period without acting work, with plastic surgery seems yet the latest attempt, and failure, to conform to the ideals of femininity, the sad second act in the latest Bridget Jones. Only this time, as the book tells us, Mr. Darcy is dead, which means there’s no man to validate her and thus save her from self-punishment.” [Buzzfeed]
A women in refrigerators supercut.
What relevance should a sex workers’ occupation have to her sexual assault? Nothing, but unfortunately it’s everything. [Daily Life]
Dzenana Vucic follows my train of thought about the public outrage against Jennifer Lawrence’s violation of privacy VS. previous nude celebrity leaks. [Junkee]
The second- VS. third-wave feminism of Marge and Lisa Simpson. [Bitch Magazine]
Janet Mock on Beyoncé and her feminist awakening. [Janet Mock]
The cognitive dissonance of Joan Rivers’ life and death. [Buzzfeed]
In the wake of Ray Rice’s dumping from the NFL and the Baltimore Ravens for beating his then-fiance, a refresher course on all the famous men we’ve forgiven for their abuse because they do stuff we like. [Dame Magazine]
“You made me hit you in the face. Now everyone is going to know.” (*trigger warning*) [Guernica]
The trajectory of calling women bitches. [Vice]
Kim Kardashian has figured out a way to make bank for doing “women’s work”. [Brooklyn Magazine]
TMZ: pioneers of social justice in sport? [Slate]
The Brittany Murphy Story and the rise of the celebsploitation movie. [Daily Dot]
Pop Culture.
I wrote about Katy Perry’s insistence on appropriating other cultures.
I’m also at Bitch Flicks writing about physical and mental health on Orange is the New Black.
Still with OITNB, Morello has such a fractured relationship with romance she’s in prison for stalking her faux-fiancé.
“I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Feminism!” [Bitch Flicks]
The racial and sexual politics of Hitch. [The Hairpin]
Clementine Ford writes about the Girls on Film Festival in Melbourne from the 12th to 14th of September: “Where are the men’s film festivals?!” [Daily Life]
Race & Religion.
Racism in the job network. [The Koori Woman]
Where was the Native American representation at this years’ San Diego ComicCon? [The Travelling Unicorn]
Racism in the digital age. [The Anti-Bogan]
Qantas’ Recognise campaign “seems to be little more than corporate endorsements and photo opportunities for powerful figures to prove how much they like us.” [Rantings of an Aboriginal Feminist]
And she’s not the only one who’s got a problem with the campaign. [New Matilda]
Struggling to be a “traditional” Sudanese woman by a woman who has Sudanese heritage but was not raised there. [Redefining the Narrative]
“What is a Moderate Muslim, Anyway?” [Redefining the Narrative]
Navigating Islam and feminism in the 21st century. [Days Like Crazy Paving]
Evelyn Enduatta writes about “a pivotal time in the local history of my adoptive Yolŋu family…. [and] the introduction of wage labour relations in north-east Arnhem Land[;]… a case study in the nature and violence of alienation.” [Upswell]
“Just because you’re Aboriginal doesn’t mean you have to have an ‘Aboriginal’ job.” [ The Travelling Unicorn]
Violence Against Women. *trigger warning*
Clementine Ford sheds light on the savage beating of adult actress Christy Mack by her mixed martial arts fighter ex-boyfriend War Machine. [Daily Life]
There’s probably domestic violence in your workplace. [Women’s Agenda]
Examining the link between animal abuse and intimate partner violence. [SMH]
How liveable are our cities if women aren’t safe? [Daily Life]
Rape culture in politics. [The Hand Mirror]
Instead of devising beauty products that help women prevent their rapes, maybe we should be telling men not to rape. [National Union of Students Women’s Department]
LGBTQI*.
The tragic tale of Australia’s (alleged) first trans man. [Daily Life]
Thinking about trans identities in primary school. [Sal Gold Said So]
Sex & Relationships.
Are you putting out enough to justify your cost per (male partner’s) orgasm? [Daily Life]
“The kids are [having anal sex], let’s make sure they’re alright.” [Daily Life]
The infamous Brocklesnitch (aka Rebecca Shaw) on those “marriage vouchers”:
“Perhaps it might be more useful for the Government to focus more on things like housing affordability, availability of jobs, and letting young people access the welfare system rather than funnel millions of dollars into a counselling voucher scheme.” [SBS]
So Sam de Brito wrote a column about seeking the female orgasm and Junkee ridiculed it thusly.
Asexuality: the next sexual orientation frontier. [Cosmopolitan]
Physical & Mental Health *trigger warning*.
Going undercover as a surrogate mother. [Daily Life]
Working with ichthyosis. [Carly Findlay]
In the wake of Robin Williams’ suicide asking RUOK is not the answer. [Culture, Nurture, Nature: Views, Reviews, Rants]
Another thoughtful response to Williams’ death. [The Hand Mirror]
Clem Bastow writes heartbreakingly about never being “enough”:
“You don’t tell your boyfriend, or your parents, or your friends, or your kind therapist that you’re thinking about all these things, because you figure it’s not worth being upset about after all these years, even though you are. You see people go through far worse things and continue the ‘It could have been much worse!’ charade, even though some days you feel so sad you want to lie down on the carpet for a week. Why can’t you just get over it? Why can’t you Think Positive About It All? Why would anyone write you a letter about such small things that it’s not worth being upset about, Dear Young Person?
“Young Person, you think a lot about all of these things. There are so many others: you laugh off your Bipolar 2 diagnosis as ‘the straight-to-video sequel to a real mental illness’; your plummeting weight during a two-year spell overseas is just ‘Los Angeles, lol!’; the nights you eat Vitamin C tablets for dinner are fine because ‘Other people are poorer’; the guy who makes you wear a horse-bit to bed is ‘great comedy material!’; the death of your dear dog at just five years of his young life ‘isn’t as bad as it would have been if he’d been around for 15 years, I guess.’ It never seems to be quite enough to be upset about, not really, truly upset, like some people have the right to be. Not poor enough, not depressed enough, not beset by grief enough, not abused enough.” [I Believe You, It’s Not Your Fault]
Blindness in speculative fiction. [ A.C. Buchanan]
My Decision/Kei a au te Whakataunga is a New Zealand-based campaign to shed light on health care professionals who refuse to provide or refer productive health services. [The Hand Mirror]
And there’s no shame in making these health care professionals known so that people in need of reproductive health care don’t make the mistake of visiting them. [The Hand Mirror]
“Abortions Don’t Cause Cancer Any More Than Parties Do.” [The Conversation]
Women in the Workplace.
“There’s a bigger debate to be had here about whether care work is valued enough (it’s not), whether the needs of children are prioritised appropriately (they’re not), and whether the desire by both men and women to spend time with their children is accepted (it’s not), but let’s at least agree that eliminating child care struggles is crucial for undoing sexist gender-role divisions. Where women can’t get to work they can’t achieve personal career goals, but nor can they claim the kind of decision making power that comes with income.” [Daily Life]
Australia still has an equal pay problem. [Women’s Agenda]
On the persistence of the pay gap: from penal colony to glass ceiling. [UNSW School of Business]
Ban bossy, be the boss. [Daily Beast]
It’s all well and good to feature a panel about the politics of sex work as part of Sydney’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas, but perhaps it should, I don’t know, feature some sex workers? [Sex, Lies & Duct Tape]
Miscellaneous & General Feminism.
“Do not hold me to the standards that you have internalised. Do. Fucking. Not.” [Facebook]
Deborra-Lee Furness on Australia’s anti-adoption culture. [The Hoopla]
Melbourne schoolgirls were inspired to Kickstart their own “feminist collective” in the wake of Women Against Feminism and after “studying the character of ‘Curly’s Wife’ in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice & Men.” [ABC]
Helpful hints for overcoming Tall Poppy Syndrome. [No Award]
Friday Hoyden: Emma Goldman. [Hoyden About Town]
Diversity and rebellion in Life at 9. [Hoyden About Town]
How to home school a preschooler. [Free Range in Suburbia]
Five reasons why Women Against Feminism actually need feminism. [The Conversation]
Are men better writers than women? No, they just have more time to write. [Overland]
“Political correctness gone mad” is more about not being an asshole. [TheVine]
What Kevin Andrews’ speech at the World Congress of Families might have sounded like. [Brocklesnitch]
More on protesting the World Congress of Families. [Gladly, The Cross-Eyed Bear]
The problem with limited-edition, girl-focused Lego. [Hoyden About Town]
What Orange is the New Black‘s Pennsatucky’s dental health says about class. [Bitch]
The history of the sex education film. [Alternet]
Most women have periods at some stage, so why are we so afraid to talk about them? [The Lifted Brow]
There should be a Bechdel test for mothers in kid’s movies: “Show me an animated kids’ movie that has a named mother in it who lives until the credits roll.” And when mothers are present, they act as a sort of Manic Pixie Dream Mum, paving the way for the main characters—and their fathers—to carry out the rest of the narrative. [The Atlantic]
Duke porn star Belle Knox writes about her experience being slut-shamed from within the industry she works. [Jezebel]
The Scarlett Woman 