It's probably reasonable to say that today's teenagers are under more pressure than ever. They are under pressure for results that will then be sneered at because the exams they take aren't nearly as challenging as what they examined you on in your day. They are under pressure to be successful and find a job and maybe even a flat in an increasingly competitive market. They are under pressure to negotiate social networking - a thing no responsible adult has yet perfected due to its youth. There are also the real life social pressures and while teenage boys have their struggles the quest for a certain kind of perfection that many a teenage girl doggedly pursues is still unique to them. What their aiming to be is Little Miss Perfect.
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A frustrating thing that happens when you are trying to express righteous feminist anger at a situation or subject is being told how you should react, and what would warrant a more passionate reaction. You, it seems, rarely manage to pick the right cause to get worked up about. You need someone to help you, someone with a science background maybe. Who believes only in their own highly evolved thought process. Someone with a mind that likes to organise and rank things. Someone with a Twitter account. Someone who can succinctly rank the tough subjects other people might not touch, such as paedophilia or rape. Of course Richard Dawkins's name had come up before I even made a list of requirements and fortunately he's already stepped up with several tweets informing us what kind of paedophilia and rape crimes we should be more upset by. There are a few things that we seem to be very behind on. World peace, equal pay, education and so on and so on. We are also very behind on acknowledging and discussing periods. Discussing periods with who? EVERYBODY! As well as not discussing the shedding of blood from the uterus, we don't discuss the various items, such as 'sanitary products', nor do we find ourselves idly chatting about various medical products that influence how we menstruate, such as the IUD coil, the pill, tranexamic acid tablets or the injection. Why is this? Dunno, probably because menstruation combines the two things we have universally agreed are gross: vaginas and blood. I'm a white, well-educated, able-bodied, middle class male, which puts me in a very privileged position in society. I'm aware of this, it's given me lots of opportunities that others don't get and shielded me from the abuse and harassment a lot of people receive. When I was asked to write an article giving a male-perspective on how I feel about the Cards Against Street Harassment I was dubious if I could do it - it certainly takes me out of my comfort zone of writing about comic book characters. The most important part of any and every sporting event is not the sports, not the alleged use of performance enhancing drugs, not the sponsors, not even the hosts - even if they appear to have questionable human rights records, but the opening ceremony. This week we saw the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in Scotland (uh, we were not implying earlier that Scotland has a questionable human rights record). There was a lot of tartan, Rod Stewart and a kiss from John Barrowman. With all the drama we thought perhaps other things could benefit from an opening ceremony, here are some of our ideas... No-one should be particularly surprised that there are people who are against feminism. Not just because it is logical to assume that if some people are for an ideology then there must be people against it, but because sometimes at first glance feminism doesn't look all that palatable. Yes it's puzzling, why would you think the idea that women and girls deserve equal rights isn't for you? Perhaps it is not so much that you think women should be the underdogs of humanity but you wish to stress your desire all genders receive equal rights. This is, at its core, what feminism means, rather than any argument for female supremacy. So why do people mistake it for the latter?
We have witnessed over and over again people trying to educate women and girls who seem to simply not know how to not get raped. It's super easy, don't drink, don't wear provocative clothing, don't express any sexuality, don't go outside. But these women and girls just don't listen. So it seems we might have to turn to go a little extreme. We're going to have to suggest boys and men try not to rape. Oh I know this is very simplistic. Not ALL men or boys rape. However, when you're constantly reduced to silly females who get drunk and therefore get what's coming to them (thank you for your advice Joanna Lumley et al) it's hard not to generalise RIGHT BACKATCHA! Last week Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper wrote in theIndependent suggesting we educate boys that it's not really acceptable to think abuse (verbal and physical) is normal.  Ah Cameron has been doing the reshuffle. Guaranteed to encourage everyone to take their eyes off the action and worry about who's sitting where in the cabinet. Teachers might breathe a mistaken sigh of relief that Gove is trapped in the loo, no longer able to meddle in education, feminists lean in (see what we did there?) to note the women appointed to top jobs and this means the media has one question: What did Cameron's Cuties wear on the catwalk that is Downing Street? We know what's important and it's shoes not views, so we have come up with a little run down of the Tory male fashion... In news seemingly designed to one up David Cameron's female focused cabinet reshuffle Marvel today announced thatThor is to become a woman. From October Thor's comic will restart from issue 1 and feature a new female lead who has inherited the magical hammer Mjolnir and the associated powers that come with it. This has brought the same tired old troglodytes out of the woodwork who protested when the amazing Idris Elba was cast as Heimdall and they got upset that it was unrealistic for a black man to play the role of a magical space god (extremely) loosely based on a Norse myth. |
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