So for want of something better to do, I click on this Buzzfeed article called ‘8 Stories Of Everyday Sexism, As Told By Female Journalists‘ and I get really, really pissed off and angry that people like those described still exist in the world and their pathetic, irrational fear of women achieving something is having an impact on lives and careers in 2014.
Continue reading “Everyday Sexism: With One Hand You Giveth, With The Other You Slappeth Away”
I was wrong. This response, from Adam Hills on his Channel 4 show, ‘The Last Leg’, is far more appropriate. I can only apologise.
A massive congratulations to Paddy Power, who, with their latest betting offer, have managed to be even more brutally offensive and dehumanising to the memory of Reeva Steenkamp than the Sun newspaper managed in their coverage of her murder.
As an elderly person with what I like to think is fairly decent taste, I’ve never really understood the purpose of One Direction as a musical entity. I’m so uncomfortable with the whole ‘mogul grooming and primping boys for the purpose of manipulating the vulnerable, fecund areas of teenage sexuality for financial gain’ thing, that the actual music has passed me by.
The snippets I have heard makes me yearn for the touchingly disorganised and cheery console manipulation of Stock, Aitken & Waterman.
A blogger from a well known feminist website has copped some serious heat this week after a piece she wrote about crowd sourced funding was published in the Guardian.
It wasn’t so much the subject matter that provoked floods of angry comments, emails and tweets to the Vagenda offices, the Guardian and the social networks, but the springboard she launched her story with – a British musician who had just lost his home, creative output and pet dog in a house fire.
“I feel like I’m one of the biggest feminists in the world because I tell women to not be scared of anything.”
Let’s not be under any illusion here. Miley Cyrus is a hardworking, savvy businesswoman who knows precisely what she needs to do to maximise her earning potential.
But she is also young, and while her desire to make the world a less frightening place for women is admirable, what she needs to realise is that her weapon of choice cuts most out of her sphere of influence before she even opens her mouth.
Continue reading “Miley Cyrus: Haven’t I Seen You Somewhere Before?”
As someone who followed the Leveson Inquiry with the kind of furrow browed concentration a slavering dog applies to a careless barbecue operator, the subsequent trial and inevitable revelations therein were front and centre on my radar.
Whether it’s the machinations of an ever hungrier media desperate to pad out their empty pages that enthralls me, or the theatrical hand wringing of a public completely taken aback that such things go on at all, let alone to feed their interest, I know not.
I guess I just like the idea of seeing those for whom the concept of personal responsibility is an abstract get a slapping.
This week, we’ve learned two things. Saying monkey while standing in the same postcode as a black person means you are a racist and refusing to offer your seat to a pregnant woman is indicative of a general decline in chivalrous behaviour among men, but complaining about it is sexist.
Continue reading “They Say If You Stare At The Sun For Too Long, You’ll Go Blind”
What is this person buying from a pharmacy? Nothing that will benefit mankind, I’ll warrant.
I used to be a goth. A proper one, who would not leave the house with first festooning myself in crushed velvet, eyeliner, talcum powder and at least two unfeasibly large hats.
Many people saw me. Many people laughed as me and my little gang – an erstwile group equally caught up in the romanticism of gloomy men covered in flour shouting indecipherable lyrics about Cthulhu into the fog – dodged between shop awnings to evade the watery sunlight. We drank cider and black, found philosophical meaning in the work of Wayne Hussey and drank heroic quantities of cider & black.
Continue reading “Cosplay: When There Simply Aren’t Enough Fancy Dress Parties”
You don’t have to be a porn star to work here, but it helps.
If there is anything to be learned from the sexualisation of the music industry debate, it’s that we as a society are more comfortable with our kids watching the soft porn that purports to be pop music than we are with older, and therefore less titillating women’s opinions about the damage it can cause.
I think I preferred it when Miley Cyrus astride a bloody wrecking ball was the nadir.
Images via instagram, theinterrobang.
Kelly Welles 