February 2012
1 post
2 tags
January 2012
1 post
2 tags
December 2011
1 post
2 tags
November 2011
1 post
2 tags
August 2011
3 posts
6 tags
Where Julie Bindel tells us all what sort of... →
From my blog: tenderhooligan.wordpress.com/
I’ve put about 100 things aside recently to blog about and none of them are timely or current any longer. I’m not going to blog about the UK riots because I really have to make a commentary on them in a journal article I’m writing and I haven’t thought them all the way through yet. I’m also not going to blog about what’s going on in Libya because that...
6 tags
Abortion rights: Anti-choice counselling: tell... →
This might well be the most important thing I post all year.
PLEASE follow this link and write to your local MP.
We need you to stand up for access to safe, legal abortion and the right to impartial information.
The Department of Health is planning to introduce new counselling requirements for women seeking abortion, which could limit their access to impartial advice and delay access to...
7 tags
16% think it’s OK for a man to hit his wife?... →
From my blog:
[Trigger warning for violence.]
This piece from alternet.org really doesn’t require much additional comment. A report (link to PDF) from a group called UN Women has revealed some frightening views on violence towards women, and includes data on, for example, the massive gender pay gap (particularly between white men and women of colour) and sexual violence against women of...
July 2011
2 posts
3 tags
Just doing a very quick tag catch-up here on tumblr. Flipping ‘eck, but there are a lot of anti-feminism and anti-women posts under the “feminism” tag. I think I see the way tumblr is going. (Though I’ve seen it for a while, to be honest.)
4 tags
The New Revolution? →
From my blog:
No, I’ve not stopped blogging again but I have done lots of other things (including moving house) that have kept me busy.
Anyway, |’m back now. Sort of. And I have a new design. I ain’t ‘alf tired of the stock of wordpress designs. They do add new designs often but none of them do quite what I would like. (I’m not sure what that is but I would know it if I saw it.)
The world...
June 2011
4 posts
11 tags
In brief: child brides →
Post from my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress)
(Trigger warning.)
Photo caption: “Whenever I saw him, I hid. I hated to see him,” Tahani (in pink) recalls of the early days of her marriage to Majed, when she was 6 and he was 25. The young wife posed for this portrait with former classmate Ghada, also a child bride, outside their mountain home in Hajjah.
National Geographic have compiled a...
9 tags
No sex please; we’re British. And we’re called... →
Post from my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress)
Below is an excellent and interesting critique of the recent announcement by Dave (Cameron) et al that said that we need to halt the over-sexualisation of our young girls. Dave et al are backing several proposals (from a Christian organisation, it’s worth noting) that aim to protect children from sexual imagery (e.g., by selling top shelf magazines...
8 tags
Get Satoshi Kanazawa out of LSE and off Psychology... →
Post from my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress)
I’ve written about this genius before (here or elsewhere or somewhere). He’s an evolutionary psychologist from the London School of Economics (LSE) – one of the top universities in the UK – and he writes, a lot, for Psychology Today. Now,Psychology Today is not, by any stretch of any imagination, a reliable academic source but it does have...
7 tags
In brief: women keeping women in their place →
Post from my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress)
(In brief because I’m still too busy with work.)
If you need any convincing today that religion and feminism just do not mix, have aread of this piece. The site on which I found the piece seems to be devoted to merging religion and the state as much as it can (and we all know what a good idea that is!), and claims that it wishes to “support the...
May 2011
7 posts
9 tags
SlutWalk: reactions, responses and comments
Post from my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress)
I have yet to go through and read most of these but, for your information, here is a list of several reactions to and comments upon the recent “SlutWalks”, which have taken place in various locations (originally in Toronto). For those of you who don’t know, SlutWalk came about as a response to a police officer in Toronto saying that women who don’t...
3 tags
Recommendation: redlightpolitics
I don’t use tumblr much any more for a variety of reasons but you really, really, really all should check out this tumblr because its author is insightful, considered, critical, and very very very informative. You won’t regret it.
http://www.redlightpolitics.info/
11 tags
Acid in YOUR face →
From my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress)
I didn’t hear about this case until this morning (trigger warning for image).
In a literal application of the sharia law of an eye for an eye, Iran is ready for the first time to blind a man with acid, after he was found guilty of doing the same to a woman who refused to marry him.
Majid Movahedi, 30, is scheduled to be rendered unconscious in Tehran’s...
7 tags
What I’ve been reading – rock and roll whores, and... →
From my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress)
I’m still trying to process this particular story: girls who like rock and roll are whores(thegloss, hat tip to lastyearsgirl). One should always begin a discussion which involves the word “whore” with the question: “what is a whore”? It’s a much-used term yet I’ve never quite understood what it means. It’s generally directed at those women who have sex...
5 tags
In brief: Nadine Dorries proposes abstinence-only... →
From my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress)
We all need to speak out about this. Nadine Dorries, the now notorious anti-choice, anti-women Conservative MP, is calling for the sex education bill to be amended to require that sex education in schools include content promoting abstinence to teenage girls. Only girls.
Two things:
1. We know that abstinence-only education does not prevent teenage...
7 tags
Calm down, dear. Fuck off, toerag. →
From my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress)
Yes, I know Osama Bin Laden was killed today or yesterday or overnight but I have a feeling that’s been done to death (pun intended) at this stage. Frankly, I’m trying to avoid seeing any more menacing crowds full of people who seem to be delighting in the bloodlust. It’s stomach-churning.
And I want to write about something else anyway.
Many of my...
6 tags
That wedding happened, and didn’t we all know it! →
From my blog (tenderhooligan/wordpress).
In most countries in the world, parents can tell their kids that if they work hard and do everything right, they could grow up to be the head of state and the symbol of their nation. Not us. Our head of state is decided by one factor, and one factor alone: did he pass through the womb of one particular aristocratic Windsor woman living in a golden...
April 2011
38 posts
1 tag
Charlie Brooker tells you everything you need to... →
Post this week from my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress).
If you missed the nuptials yesterday (as if that were possible!), Charlie Brooker has a précis of it all here. Really, nothing else happened. Oh, there might have been the two of them in an Aston Martin being driven by Wills*, about which a BBC presenter said, “They’re just an ordinary couple”. Yes, in an Aston Martin with a security...
9 tags
What I've been reading - Indiana abortion laws,... →
Post this week from my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress).
• Recently in the US, the Indiana State Representative (Eric Turner) expressed his concern about an exception that may be written into legislation that makes abortion after 20 weeks legal only in cases in rape or incest. Turner is worried, apparently, that this will result in numerous women “crying rape” in order to gain access...
6 tags
What I've been reading - bad mothers, and more NYT... →
Post this week from my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress).
Just two pieces today for I feel rather sick about both of them.
• Sweet mother of all that is good and holy, the Daily Fail may just have surpassed itself with this one. Think your man doesn’t pull his weight at home? Maybe it’s YOUR fault. Yes, you can do a double-take. The wimmin are too precious about the...
5 tags
Me and [lapsed] Catholicism (pt1) →
Post yesterday from my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress).
Today’s as good a day as any to start writing about why you’re no longer Catholic, right? I think so. “Good Friday” was the day that Jesus died for our1 sins, apparently. He rose again three days later (even though the resurrection is celebrated just two days after the crucifixion) but I can’t quite recall why that happened.2
But this...
8 tags
What I've been reading - adoption discrimination,... →
Post from my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress).
• I was shocked this morning to hear a report on Radio 4 that there is something of an “adoption apartheid” in Britain (reported by thetimes). White children in care are three times more likely to be adopted than black children, and the waiting time for initial decisions about black children is up to six months longer than it is for...
18 tags
What I’ve been reading - burka ban, budget 2011,... →
Post from my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress).
Ok, yes, I possibly have been on the Interbets all week. Here’s some of what’s been happening: • It’s quite unbelievable, still, that France passed the “Ban on the Burka” law last week, but it did. Needless to add, there was outrage. The irony of telling women that they’re not allowed to wear what a patriarchal...
8 tags
What I’ve been reading - Willets, "virginity... →
Post from my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress).
If only I could spend all day online reading blogs, I would. I can’t, so I can only give you what I see. Recently:
• David Willets: feminism has held back working class men (thetelegraph). This is from weeks ago, of course, but never let it be said I’m in fashion. Willets (our Universities Minister for our sins) declared recently that...
3 tags
Oh, I’m not a feminist… →
Post from my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress).
I must blog about this very same thing twice a year because I just don’t get it.
From padaviya:
Feminism has fought no wars. It has killed no opponents. It has set up no concentration camps, starved no enemies, practiced no cruelties. Its battles have been for education, for the vote, for better working conditions.. for safety on the streets… for...
4 tags
What I've been reading - French ads, men against... →
Post from my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress).
I’ve been absent from tumblr, I know. I used to spend a lot of time here but recently, for a variety of reasons, I’ve been spending less and less. I want to learn from the blogospere (for there is so much to learn) and I felt that I was no longer doing that so much on tumblr. On a related note, keeping up with my dashboard (even though I...
1 tag
Hiatus.
Just too busy.
4 tags
Late abortion: the new clash in the Choice Wars →
This is anmportant piece which differentiates between the much sensationalised illegal late abortion service provided by the recently incarcerated Dr Godnell’s and the harrowing reality of women’s experiences who, for whatever reason, have to abort late in their pregnancies. The discussion is around how the former has been used in the media to demonise the latter.
Dr Gosnell’s...
7 tags
Afghan women are still at risk →
Sima is 15 but looks younger. I met her in Kabul, in the female juveniles section of the Badam Bagh prison. She talks very little, but her eyes are full of grief. A defence lawyer told me it was likely she had been raped.
What is Sima’s crime? She is serving her sentence for running away from domestic violence. About half of all women in Afghan prisons are there for the same...
4 tags
Why feminists are less religious →
To be honest, I’m not sure what the point of this piece is. It’s almost being presented as if it’s a Bad Thing. And it’s just not…
Feminism, said evangelist and Republican broadcaster Pat Robertson in 1992, “is a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy...
5 tags
Uterus? You Hardly Know Us! →
They’re plenty prepared to tell you what to do with your uterus but it will not be mentioned by name. Dirty, filthy, lady bits!
Let’s face it: the GOP has some problems with understanding science. It probably comes from embracing creationism, or their refusal to listen to those dread agents of the government, teachers. But whatever the cause, Republicans tend to react to discussions of...
4 tags
Fixing the Mistake With Young Offenders →
There is new evidence that state governments are finally understanding what a tragic mistake they made during the 1990s when they began trying ever larger numbers of children as adults instead of sending them to the juvenile justice system.
Prosecutors argued that harsh sentencing would protect the public from violent, youthful predators. But it has since turned out that most young people...
5 tags
An Epidemic of Rape for Haiti’s Displaced →
Life after Haiti’s earthquake has been especially difficult and dangerous for displaced women and girls. In addition to the ongoing crises of homelessness and cholera, a chronic emergency of sexual violence prevails in the settlements where hundreds of thousands still live, well over a year after the disaster.
Groups of Haitian women have been struggling to defend themselves, banding...
5 tags
Illinois Proves (Again) That Ending the Death... →
Thanks to Illinois, we now have more proof: ending the death penalty saves money - a lot of money - and quickly.
So what is California waiting for?
It’s less than a month since Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed the death penalty repeal bill, replacing the death penalty with life without the possibility of parole and diverting the cost savings to victims’ services. Just two weeks later...
10 tags
When it comes to pay, do the thin win? The effect...
Thank you for this very telling piece, redlightpolitics:
Just came across this study, from late 2010, which compares the effect of weight gain and pay gaps for men and women in Germany and the US (link goes to PDF). The study was conducted by Timothy Judge from University of Florida and Daniel Cable from the London School of Economics and it took multi-year data from around 11,000 people in...
7 tags
The Gender Pay Gap is a Complete Myth
redlightpolitics:
The Gender Pay Gap is a Complete Myth
I’m going to present this without commentary, because anything I say will not do this nonsense any justice:
Why the Gender Pay Gap is a Complete Myth
Men are far more likely to choose careers that are more dangerous, so they naturally pay more. Top 10 most dangerous jobs (from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics): Fishers, loggers,...
7 tags
Slut Shame: Why Do We Still Attack Women for...
lipstick-feminists:
Slut Shame: Why Do We Still Attack Women for Having Sex?
On January 26, Loren Feldman wrote an open letter to media personality Julia Allison’s father, alleging to her expertise at oral sex and her promiscuity. The post, which has since been removed, is a prime example of the ease with which the accusation of being a slut is still hurled at women as a way to shame and...
5 tags
The Horrors Perpetrated By Fake Christian Clinics
brittanibotulism:
The Horrors Perpetrated By Fake Christian Clinics
Now that South Dakota has actually passed legislation requiring every woman seeking an abortion to be ‘counseled’ by a Fake Clinic, it’s obvious that, in all fairness, every pregnant woman who is considering having a baby has to be counseled at an abortion clinic. Of course that wouldn’t make any sense because, unlike...
6 tags
Abortion is safer than having a baby, doctors say
Link via padaviya:
Pregnant women should be told that having an abortion is safer than having the baby, according to medical chiefs.
The advice, which would be given to women considering terminations, has caused anger, with anti-abortion campaigners accusing doctors’ leaders of forcing an “absurdly liberal agenda” on women in a vulnerable situation.
The draft guidance from the...
8 tags
Have Women Built Up An Immunity To Sexual...
The female body is pretty powerful. Compared to men, we live longer, we’re more likely to address mental health issues, we’re totally immune to sexual harassment, you name it!
Okay, not exactly. In a recent study, Social Psychological and Personality Science examined “how both men and women view harassment —whether they saw it as bothersome or frightening— and how these...
2 tags
Unfavorable view of the Tea Party on the rise →
Well, it’s something.
redlightpolitics:
via CNN Poll: Unfavorable view of tea party on the rise (emphasis mine)
Nearly half of all Americans have an unfavorable view of the tea party movement, putting it in the same company as the Democratic and Republican parties, according to a new national poll.
A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Wednesday indicates that 32...
3 tags
"When The Fairy Tale Ends, Real Life Begins"
sayhimariah:
luiibadass:
This is one of the most amazing thing’s Ive seen on Tumblr.
THIS.
This def made me incredibly sad. Whateva.
6 tags
What's really driving the GOP's abortion war
Link.
When Republicans profited from the miserable economy to sweep up huge wins in last fall’s election, most political watchers figured they knew what was coming: budget cuts, privatization of more government functions, and tax cuts for the wealthy. The push to dismantle public sector unions has been a bit of a surprise, but not a jarring one.
But what seems to have thrown...
9 tags
The Horrors Perpetrated By Fake Christian Clinics
brittanibotulism:
The Horrors Perpetrated By Fake Christian Clinics
Now that South Dakota has actually passed legislation requiring every woman seeking an abortion to be ‘counseled’ by a Fake Clinic, it’s obvious that, in all fairness, every pregnant woman who is considering having a baby has to be counseled at an abortion clinic. Of course that wouldn’t make any sense because, unlike...
7 tags
Rape is not a compliment
petitefeministe:
Rape is not a compliment
TRIGGER WARNING: RAPE
As the bafflingly tenacious power of religion proves, humans like stories that help them make sense of the world, even if the stories themselves make not a jot of sense. The belief that life is part of a divine plan in which one’s fate will be what one deserves will always hold more allure than the idea that life is just a...
4 tags
Happy Anti-Street Harassment Day! →
bibliofeminista:
Examples of the Types of Street Harassment, from Stop Street Harassment Survey:
Whistling, honking – 95%
Vulgar gestures – 82%
Sexually explicit comments – 81%
Following – 75%
Sexual touching – 56%
Public masturbation – 37%
Assault – 25%
On Guard Behavior:
Avoid making eye contact – 69% (32% said they always do this)
Constantly assess their surroundings - 80% (62%...
6 tags
Louisiana Law Forces Many Sex Workers to Register... →
There are several broad critiques to be made of sex offender registry programs. In addition to the racial profiling and discriminatory enforcement noted in the Colorlines article, there are also further questions regarding whether sex offender registries actually keep communities safer and/or lower recidivism rates. Support for sex offender registry programs generally, however, should not...