Anti-Suffragette Postcards


Three postcards. The first shows a toddler girl writing on a blackboard - childishly writing things like "give us our rights" and a hangman showing a man being hanged. The second is of a fat and unattractive woman with the name "Aught To Be Spanked First" - she is saying "We only want what the men have got". The last is entitled Man's Reward and shows a woman using an umbrella to beat a policeman.

Due to a strange mix-up with an eBay order, I've come into possession of these rather quaint anti-suffragette postcards. I hope it is obvious that I am pro universal suffrage. What amuses me about these cards is how emotional they are! These aren't dispassionate arguments designed to calmly influence the rational man. It is all […]

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Telling Women What To Do


I had a weird experience in a previous job. As it is long in the past, I thought now was a good time to blog about it. I worked in a hip office. Everyone was trendy and right-on. It was a heavily female dominated industry and the office politics were biased towards intersectional feminism. Which […]

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Book Review: Mother of Invention - How Good Ideas Get Ignored in a World Built for Men by Katrine Marçal


Book cover.

Every day, extraordinary inventions and innovative ideas are side-lined in a world that remains subservient to men. But it doesn't have to be this way. Instead, ingrained ideas about men and women continue to shape our economic decisions; favouring men and leading us to the same tired set of solutions. For too long we have […]

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Book Review: The Heroine with 1001 Faces by Maria Tatar


Book cover.

Over a slightly boozy lunch, on a Mediterranean isle, the topic of Greek mythology reared its head. We segued into how those gods set the template for every modern story and superhero franchise. David, our somewhat taciturn companion, suddenly piped up "Of course, you really want to read Maria Tatar's take on Campbell's work." A […]

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Book Review: Sexual Revolution - Modern Fascism and the Feminist Fightback by Laurie Penny


Book cover.

This is a story about how modern masculinity is killing the world, and how feminism can save it. It's a story about sex and power and trauma and resistance and persistence. It's a story about how you can track the crisis of democracy against the crisis of White masculinity, and how the far right is […]

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Book Review: Difficult Women by Helen Lewis


Book cover for Difficult Women

Bomb-throwing suffragettes. The pioneer of the refuge movement who became a men's rights activist. Forget feel-good heroines: meet the feminist trailblazers who have been airbrushed from history for being 'difficult' - and discover how they made a difference. Here are their stories in all their shocking, funny and unvarnished glory. It is a cliché that […]

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Book Review: The Computer’s Voice - From Star Trek to Siri by Liz W. Faber


A circuit board embossed with a vocal wave form.

A deconstruction of gender through the voices of Siri, HAL 9000, and other computers that talk Considering Star Trek, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Her, and more, Liz W. Faber explores contentious questions around gender: its fundamental constructedness, the rigidity of the gender binary, and culturally situated attitudes on male and female embodiment. Going beyond current […]

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Book Review: A History of Women in Men's Clothes - Norena Shopland


A book cover of the title embossed in tight silk.

Traditionally, historic women have been seen as bound by social conventions, unable to travel unless accompanied and limited in their ability to do what they want when they want. But thousands of women broke those rules, put on banned clothing and travelled, worked and even lived whole lives as men. As access to novels and […]

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Book Review: Feminist City by Leslie Kern


A woman's shadow falls across some steps.

In Feminist City, through history, personal experience and popular culture Leslie Kern exposes what is hidden in plain sight: the social inequalities built into our cities, homes, and neighborhoods. Kern offers an alternative vision of the feminist city. Taking on fear, motherhood, friendship, activism, and the joys and perils of being alone, Kern maps the […]

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Book Review: The Problem with Men: When is it International Men’s Day? by Richard Herring


Book cover witha broken masculine symbol

For the past decade, Richard Herring has been answering sexist trolls on International Women’s Day when they ask ‘when is International Men’s Day?’ in the mistaken belief there isn’t one. If only the trolls had learned to use Google they would realise that there is an International Men’s Day – it’s on November 19th. In […]

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