This article was originally written for my new website, salmanshaheen.com There comes a time in every man’s life when two of his most dearly held positions come into conflict with one another and he finds himself questioning what he had hitherto believed sacred. For as long as I can remember, I have held firm to [...]
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 [...]
There’s a bit of a comments storm brewing over at LibCon over the ‘gender neutral baby’ story which came out a few days ago, with Flying Rodent in the ‘won’t the poor kid get bullied?’ corner, and Jennie Kermode of Trans Media Watch entering the fray for the ‘no it won’t, and gender’s just a [...]
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 [...]
Scotland, sex and decency. The combination of the three has long been known to generate weird and authoritarian outcomes. The scottish law against “Outraging Public Decency” appears to potentially criminalise anything that people might find a bit icky, and not long ago was used to convict somebody for having sex with his bicycle in the [...]
Writing in today’s Guardian, the last standard bearer of the dead dream that is a socialist Labour Party hit out at critics by saying that if necessary, he would stand aside to secure Diane Abbot’s nomination for Labour leader. In fact, John McDonnell went further to say that “if my standing down would mean securing [...]
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 [...]
With all the furore about a French parliamentary committee recommending a ban on Muslim women wearing Islamic face veils in public, I thought it was a good time to bring up France’s long-standing history of banning items of clothing… Historically religion isn’t the only area to fall victim to the fashion police in France, sartorial [...]
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 [...]
So the Tories want to incentivise marriage? Who says romance is dead? I got married two years ago (please contain your disappointment…). Contrary to popular belief I did this by choice. It hasn’t made one iota difference to our relationship, it does however change how others treat you (I now get patronised even more by [...]
