One editorial in last week’s New York Times has started a significant debate about women of colour and their relationship with their bodies. Alice Randall wrote that many black women are fat because “we want to be.” That is why, she explains, “four out of five black women are seriously overweight” and “one out of four ...
Dear Madame X, I am in an interracial marriage. Things are fine most of the time, but members of both our families occasionally let slip racist comments. What is the best way to deal with this? Offended Dear Offended, This just goes to show how much racism can be engrained in our culture that we ...
After the publication of his fourth and most successful novel The Slap, which was turned into a TV miniseries in Australia and kicked off the 2012 Edinburgh International Book Festival, Christos Tsiolkas complained of the poverty of criticism of the sex in his book. I agreed. The novel itself is written in eight parts, telling ...
Female genital mutilation surgery (FGM) is still being offered in the UK, despite being illegal. This thought horrifies me. Investigators from the Sunday Times report that doctors have offered to do the procedure on girls as young as ten. They also reportedly video taped a doctor, a dentist and an alternative medical practitioner offering to ...
A Halifax radio station managed to spectacularly miss the point of International Women’s Day by…erm…selling women. Q104, who also facilitate something called “thong of the day,” are totally comfortable with their idiocy. NDP MP for Halifax Megan Leslie apologized in Commons to the women of the Czech Republic on behalf of the women of Canada ...
On Sunday a blog post by a 17-year-old Romany boy in the UK went viral. It started when a journalist tweeted a link, which soon was picked up by hundreds. By late evening Pip, the teenage author, was reporting blog hits in the tens of thousands. The post was an open letter to Britain’s Channel ...
I’ll get straight down to the point. Who is responsible for educating who when it comes to issues of oppression, sexism, racism and the like? As Lena Chen of the Chicktionary eloquently writes, I don’t expect gay people to prove to me, a straight person, that there’s actually homophobia. I don’t expect poor people to ...
You know the saying “It’s not the journey, it’s the destination?” Well, my hair story is a journey. A journey of self-discovery. I know what you might be thinking. What the hell kind of First World feminist, skewed self-awareness and failed attempt at philosophy is that? This piece is about much more than hair. It’s ...
Do Vancouver Men Suck? was (unfortunately) one of the first pieces of writing I read for the New Year. Shouting in riled-up disbelief at the computer is a tragic way to start the year, let me tell you. Let’s start with the premise of this piece. The article attempts to “call out” Vancouver men who ...
I always request books for Christmas. I always have. I’m not sure if that made me an easy child to buy for. Novels are certainly cheaper than a new Nintendo (which is what we called an Xbox back in my day), but how to select one for a grumpy nine-year-old? Or, for that matter, a ...
Dear Madame X, I have just started seeing this girl. She seems great, but she recently told me she...
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...
