Take the erasure of women from the MSM for example. The way women are ignored or marginalised, treated as though we don’t exist or as though our issues are unimportant in the grand scale of things, that’s also media sexism.
For those of you who missed it here’s the link to this morning’s Leveson Inquiry hearing where representatives from women’s organisations finally got their say on sexism in the media. The relevant bit starts at around 105:00, and it’s well worth watching: Leveson Inquiry Tuesday am
And here’s my Storify of some of the tweeting that went on during it: Women at Leveson
In other news, I did the interview about lap dancing clubs on BBC Radio Norfolk’s breakfast show that I mentioned in my previous post – you can listen to the full thing here. And yes I know, I said Camden when I should have said Hackney, but never mind.
Anyway, here’s the money quote from that interview: I’m still ridiculously chuffed that I managed to get that line in. Hey Norfolk, have some radical feminist theory with your cornflakes…….
I wrote a while back about my (now ex) friend who gained her ex status when she suddenly expressed a belief that civil partnerships in churches were wrong after coincidentally hanging around with a bunch of evangelical Christian homophobes, who were coincidentally black Africans, and who then, in one of the only genuine instances I’ve ever come across of political correctness gone mad, further proposed that there must be something in homophobia if black Africans were expressing it because it was obviously some sort of ethnic characteristic, thereby being simultaneously homophobic AND racist. She is doing a PhD in ethnography, which might explain it. That and the prodigious quantity of illegal drugs she gets through.
She was of course at pains to protest her non homophobia, and just before being chucked as a friend, said that I must know she’s not homophobic, it’s just that she didn’t agree with every bit of my “political agenda”, and couldn’t I respect her view, the way she “respected” mine. My response was that unfortunately I couldn’t respect her view, because it was homophobic. Well she did ask. And I wasn’t prepared to facilitate a delusion that she couldn’t be homophobic because hey – some of her best friends are lesbians.
I’m often behind a trend, so it came as no surprise at about half past eight in the evening on Tuesday, to find out that I’d just witnessed the complete breakdown of western civilization as we know it, without even realising. AKA the Manchester riot
I’d spotted the shops were closed in the centre of town at just before 7 when I got there, but apart from that it looked like a normal rush hour, and it was only when I got home that I was informed via various people who weren’t actually there that Market Street was in the grip of criminal mobs. Well Miss Selfridge was on fire actually – there goes my chance of getting a vintage inspired maxi dress.
I’m not going to dwell too much on what Ken Clarke had to say about rape last week, mainly because, let’s face it, that analysis has already been pretty much done to death.
All I will say is that although his comments were offensive, clumsy, outrageous and so on, and more so as they came from the Justice Secretary, someone who really should know better (and who should certainly have a better understanding of the current law than he displayed during the Victoria Derbyshire interview), I genuinely don’t think his bumbling attempts to explain why some rapists receive lengthier sentences than others warrant the calls for his sacking that have since ensued.
"Those of us who love reading and writing believe that being a writer is a sacred trust. It means telling the truth. It means being incorruptible. It means not being afraid, and never lying."
Andrea Dworkin
"Sex-negative feminism consists of, what, Andrea Dworkin and that weird Cath Elliott woman at the Guardian?"
Someone on the Internet
