Is a shaved vagina really an unacceptable health hazard?

It’s time to end “the war on pubic hair” according to a prominent physician quoted in the Independent. The article – which many comrades have been sharing –  highlights the health risks of having a “bikini wax” and of  generally screwing around with one’s pubic hair and naughty bits. Personally I find this whole line [...]

Why it Doesn’t Matter if Rich Women Can’t Have it All

Anne-Marie Slaughter’s article in the Atlantic was brought to my attention the other day by a feminist friend who was unsure of her feelings about it. Certainly the piece has received a lot of praise.  It is by far the most popular article ever published in the magazine. But, as I told my friend, Slaughter [...]

Withdrawing an invitation is not censorship

As readers of this blog may or may not be aware, Cambridge Student Union’s Women’s Campaign has a petition running at the moment, calling on the Union Society* to withdraw its speaking invitation to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, on the fairly reasonable grounds that he’s a deeply unpleasant individual who seems to have a serious problem with [...]

Yes, I would let a porn star read to my (hypothetical) kids

Ladies and gentlemen, your confected moral outrage du jour is….an actor who used to do porn daring to read a book in the same room as some children. Some of the more depressing and scandal-obsessed corners of the web are currently a-buzz over the news that Sasha Grey, a “porn legend” who moved into mainstream [...]

Nadine Dorries, abortion and “The Right to Know”

This is a guest post by Lauren O’ Donnell. A longer version of this article can be found here. Nadine Dorries, the self proclaimed ‘feminist’ MP of Mid Bedfordshire, has cooked up yet another of her insane ideas; “The Right To Know”. In theory, the bill would assure that women who have an abortion do [...]

The Best Way to Promote Female Equality is to Give Men More Rights

EU gotta be kidding! Yesterday’s vote in the European Parliament’s to extend maternity leave to 20 weeks on full pay across the EU should be welcomed by anyone who believes the work-life balance in the UK needs to be seriously revised. If approved, which is far from certain given Conservative opposition in Britain, it will [...]

Fashion Is Not Escapism If It’s Still In The Real World

So, there’s been a huge amount of pixels spilt on Lady Gaga. I don’t want to get into every aspect of the debates, but there’s one aspect which I find strange, and it isn’t just relevant to feminism. To quote one blog in particular, here’s Gender-Agenda: She is also an innovator. Working with famous fashion [...]

Hegemony and the Desexualisation of Children

The so-called sexualisation of children has been all over the news this week with a report for the home office being published by Dr Linda Papodopoulos. Amongst recommendations are those about softcore men’s mags such as Nuts and Zoo being made to be top-shelf publications, as they are often seen by eight to fifteen year [...]

The Grey Ceiling

This is a guest post by Francesca Rose Lewis. Much has been written recently on the malaise (if not quite death) of feminism. In 2006 Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs bemoaned the desire of women to become sex objects in a perverse re-reading of female power. Germaine Greer went on Celebrity Big Brother, and, in [...]

Sex, relationships and the weird world of Liz Jones

The taboo on relationships between older women and younger men is one of the stranger and more persistent ones in modern Britain. No one seems to think much of Rod Stewart being married to a woman 26 years his junior, but the love lives of Sam Taylor-Wood and Iris Robinson are the focus of a [...]