Airport security. Bloody nuisance. Also a conspiracy designed to subjugate women. Allow me to elaborate. Despite flying quite a lot, I’ve never been the focus of airport security attention, even though I always forget to take my lighter, tweezers or (on a recent flight) 250g jar of jam out of my handbag before entering the ...
Laptop bags; conspiracy of the patriarchal overlords. Oh yes. I am a woman with hands. The average-sized hands of an average-sized woman. So things should basically fit into my hands, especially the things I need to do my work on an average day. Like my laptop bag. My longest finger (the middle one, I’m not ...
There I was in the supermarket. It was an ordinary day, in an ordinary shop. Nothing sinister about the place apart from the peculiar choice of Duran Duran as background music. I weighed my apples, ground my coffee, selected my shampoo and reached for the tampons…and reached…and reached… Tampons on high shelves. TAMPONS ON HIGH ...
Bloody Facebook. I knew there was a reason I became a reluctant convert. It’s all very well having hilarious banter with my actual friends, who are an international crowd, but there’s the well-documented difficulty of “people from the past.” I don’t mean a dark, shady past like everyone on Days of our Lives reveals just ...
Sandwiches. Gender conspiracy. War on women. Let me explain. It was a sunny afternoon here in southern Germany. I’d escaped from the office to the organic bakery across the street, and found an outdoor table where I could read my book and drink the peppermint tea I’ve taken to drinking instead of coffee, to avoid ...
This week I had a meltdown. In its wake, the remains of a Very Nice and Thoughtful Man who (I once spent a weekend with) (and) happened to be in the wrong email conversation at the wrong time, was being a bit flippant about the thing that was upsetting me. Let me give you some ...
Thanks to Margo Hannah for letting us repost this great article! After years of inhabiting a female body, I believe I’m entitled to a partial opinion on how it operates. One thing I’d like to bring up is the hormonal excuse we drag out to exempt ourselves from owning erratic behaviour. As far as I’m ...
We all know that toy advertisements use a lot of gender stereotypes in their commercials. Girls get Barbies, clothes, makeup and rainbows. Boys get guns, war, action and loud noises. This is nothing new. But this website is new. A new site lets you “mash up” boys’ and girls’ toy commercials so that you can ...
There aren’t many gender-exclusive spaces left in our terribly enlightened society. Who needs them? Men’s clubs filled with (I guess) leather chairs, pipe smoke and oil paintings of hunting dogs have probably been fumigated and converted to pizza chains, while late-morning mothers’ groups have a healthy minority of full-time fathers. Only restrooms are gender-segregated, and ...
Since my friend had her first baby, she’s had her tits out all over town. Most folk have just ignored them, since they generally have an infant attached. She’s not pole dancing with sequinned tassles whacking people in the face or anything like that. Breastfeeding isn’t LIKE that. She didn’t make a decision to actively ...
Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved arrived in my hands via a public library, when I was a broke teenager with...
My attention was drawn this week to an article about the reaction at a Canadian university to proposals to...
Airport security. Bloody nuisance. Also a conspiracy designed to subjugate women. Allow me to elaborate. Despite flying quite a...
The Cannes film festival has kicked off this week with controversy over the lack of films made by women...
Dear Madame X, I seem to be only attracted to men who are macho assholes. I like them at...
When A Clockwork Orange was published in 1962, the term sexualized violence wasn’t in use. The distinction between sexualized...
Skincare. Not so very long ago, a man would have been mocked mercilessly for using just the word, never...
Laptop bags; conspiracy of the patriarchal overlords. Oh yes. I am a woman with hands. The average-sized hands of...
