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.
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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. 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.  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. To be honest I think we're all kind of bored of the pubes debate. We are passed all the flustered magazine articles asking if you have seen thatSex and the City scene (I've never seen Sex and the City) in which Carrie gets a Brazilian wax. Hollywood starlets have overcome that peculiar phase of teaming breezy short skirts with a pantless state, which was of course the best way to show that they had a Brazilian betwixt their legs - as it were. The debates over whether or not porn is the main influence for receding pubic hair are ebbing away and the questions over hygiene have been answered, it makes little difference. We don't live in some kind of nether region utopia in which your pubic grooming regime is deemed 'your business' but I'd venture to say we've relaxed a little bit over whether or not a landing strip is the exception or the rule. So it's surprising to learn that an art work by Leena McCall has been removed from the Mall Gallery in London having been deemed: "too pornographic and disgusting". Music fans, art lovers and injured animal carers were recently horrified to learn they had been listening to and watching a sexual predator. The disgraced TV presenter and entertainer Rolf Harris has been sentenced to five years, nine months in prison for 12 indecent assaults against four girls - one aged between seven or eight. Since judgement has been passed on Harris, Vanessa Feltz has announced that she was assaulted by Harris live on air, only to receive a barrage of abuse online. As Vanessa said when commenting on the hostile reaction she has received: "You think if people react like that, you can see why people don't come forward...I'm 52 and I can handle myself so imagine if I was a seven-year-old child, or 12 or 17...I'm not saying just if it's someone famous, but imagine if it was your dad, uncle or teacher...The kind of reaction I have had, I found so upsetting. I was upset by the outpouring of misogyny and hatred". Did you see the disgusted articles recoiling at the boys caught on camera who all allowed a girl to perform a sex act on them, one after the other? Did you read about the venue and party organisation Carnage Magaluf that encouraged boys to line up and allow a girl to perform sex acts on them? Those dirty, dirty boys. No, of course you didn't. It wasn't presented like that. The boys and the venue who took part in the incident (that I don't think is by any means isolated - I've seenSun, Sea and Suspicious Parents) hardly featured in the reports. Instead the focus is on the girl. Which is nice, usually any female in a news story featuring men doesn't get precedence but in this one she does! Why? Because she performed a sex act - as part of a game to win a prize in Magaluf. |
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