Human sexuality is nothing to be ashamed of, but this doesn’t mean we leave nudie magazines on our coffee table for guests to enjoy a sneak peek. But how would you feel about Playboys at the public library? In all my years as a library-devotee I’ve never even noticed Playboy magazines lying around, but it ...
The rise of the genre as a platform for the experiences of women is appropriate at a time in history when the individual experiences of women are gaining greater significance.
Nothing ruins a good book like bad sex. Let’s clarify. I’m not talking about the hideous, awkward and violent encounters that form a legitimate part of a story or character. I’m not talking about graphic or ugly sex. I’m talking about badly written sex. There’s a whole award for this crime, organized by the Literary ...
The Obedient Wives Club is a group of women in Malaysia who tell women they should be whores to their husbands in order to keep them. The group created a lot of controversy this summer when it first began. Now it has published a sex book called Islamic Sex that is being banned by the ...
Parents in PEI are attempting to ban a book that they think is too sexual for their teenagers. But is it that bad? Subversive. Indecent. Sexually explicit. These are just a few terms attempting to justify banning books. Although I am one among many supporters of Freedom to Read Week, I can accept that educators don’t choose ...
Many of you have wracked your brains (and Wikipedia) searching for the identities of the amazing women pictured in our photo album. By now the obvious ones have been named, but the contest is far from over. Remember that you get points for comments containing new biographical information, and every person who adds something will ...
Books. Apart from the occasional celebrity who claims never to have read one (as if ascribing at least part of their success to the fact) we all love them. We read them on the bus, we have a pile by our beds, we even take a carefully chosen stack on holiday. But what about differences ...
Love has always been a difficult concept for writers to put into words. It’s an abstract feeling that can’t be trapped inside the box of language. The challenge becomes even more apparent when you’re trying to describe romantic love to youth. In The Amber Spyglass, the last book in the Dark Materials trilogy, Philip Pullman ...
Conservative parents have found something to complain about for every generation. First it was Elvis and his corrupting hip swings, then it was Marilyn Manson, and when I was a kid it was Harry Potter books with all their black magic and paganism. The current panic that conservative parents are trying to raise is that ...
It hasn’t even happened and it’s too much for you to bear. And it’s WAY worse than those Valentine’s Day blues that make you want to stay in bed all day eating junk food and spiking your coffee with Baileys to turn your blues into delirium. I’ll say it just this once…it’s the royal wedding. ...
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...
