Category Archives: the Internet

Media sexism

Posted on January 25, 2012 | 14 Comments

Not all media sexism is as overt and in your face as the examples given by women’s groups during their awesome testimony to the Leveson Inquiry yesterday. Media sexism, (or #mediasexism if you want to do a Twitter search for coverage of Tuesday’s morning’s hearing) isn’t always about Page 3 ‘girls’, victim blaming, sexual objectification or downright misogyny: often it’s a lot more subtle than that.

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.

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Posted in blogging, campaigning, churnalism, cynical? what me?, Daily Mail shite, feminism, FFS!, gender, misogyny, sexism, the Internet, the meeja

Women’s organisations get their say at Leveson

Posted on January 24, 2012 | 1 Comment

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…….

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Posted in blogging, campaigning, churnalism, Daily Mail shite, feminism, local politics, me, misogyny, sex industry, sexism, the Internet, the meeja, violence against women

It’s all just ‘stuff’ on the Internet

Posted on January 17, 2012 | 5 Comments

I know I know: no sooner did I announce I was going to be blogging more this year than I all but disappeared off the Internet. Rest assured though, I haven’t been idle in my absence. Last week for instance I was on BBC Radio Suffolk’s Breakfast Show talking about Suffolk Police’s ‘no means no‘ campaign (where I reminded listeners of the Rape Crisis England and Wales Christmas campaign – Drinking is not a crime. Rape is – and suggested that “Don’t Rape” might be an effective campaign message to target at young men), and I also wrote this piece for Comment is Free about Lord Astor’s contribution to the HS2 debate. And by the way, if anyone’s around tomorrow morning and fancies being woken up by my dulcet tones, I’m due to be on BBC Radio Norfolk at some ungodly hour to talk about lap dancing clubs: I’ll let you know how that one goes.

In between all that, and working, and tweeting, and watching my beloved soaps (more on those in a future post), and getting hooked on BBC 4′s Borgen; like a lot of people with far too much time on their hands I’ve also been following the Leveson inquiry.

Now a ton of ‘stuff’ has already been written about Leveson, so I’m not going to bore on about it too much here, however, I couldn’t let Ian Hislop’s testimony pass without comment.

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Posted in blogging, campaigning, churnalism, me, the blogosphere, the Internet

Keep on keepin’ on

Posted on November 15, 2011 | 10 Comments

As I said in last week’s post – Women speak out about online abuse – I’ve been really pleased to see how Helen Lewis Hasteley’s New Statesman piece and others have helped kick start a pretty wide ranging debate about the misogynist abuse a lot of women are being subjected to when they write online.

However, a few days ago I started to have a bit of a panic about it all as well. Not an “Omg why on earth did I stick my head above the parapet again, now I’m going to get all kinds of shit from the haters” kind of panic though, but a panic about the potential impact these revelations could be having on women who might be thinking about blogging or going into online journalism. Because the last thing I would ever want to do is to put anyone off writing. In fact I’d be pretty devastated if someone told me they’d been planning to set up a blog but had then read my Occupational Hazard article and decided the whole blogging thing wasn’t worth the hassle or the risk.

Because it is. Or at least I think it is, and that’s why I continue to write and blog despite the crap that (sometimes) comes with it.
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Posted in blogging, campaigning, feminism, me, misogyny, sexism, the Internet

Women speak out about online abuse

Posted on November 7, 2011 | 18 Comments

I was one of those who contributed to the New Statesman piece last week about the abuse women writers and bloggers are subjected to online, and I’m really pleased to see how that piece and others have helped kick start a wider debate on the subject.

Unfortunately though, this isn’t the first time this debate has been had: and that’s because rape threats and other threats of violence towards women who write online are not new phenomena. Many of you will have been around long enough to remember the attacks on Kathy Sierra for instance, as well as being fully aware of some of the concerted campaigns against radical feminist bloggers, including Julie Bindel who for some inexplicable reason has been completely ignored in this latest round of discussions.

Online abuse is a subject Jessica Valenti has written eloquently about in the past, and indeed, one of my own earlier pieces for Comment is Free way back in 2007 – Speaking truth to power – was about the abuse women receive when they venture online. I asked then: “Is it really any wonder that women are so reluctant to contribute, when all we get for our pains are campaigns of harassment and intimidation?”

Sadly that’s a question that’s still being asked today.

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Posted in angry? what me?, blogging, fear, feminism, FFS!, me, misogyny, sexism, stuff everyone should read, the Internet, violence against women, you really couldn't make this shit up