Tuesday 2 February 2010

Things I wish I'd said

So there is a lot to be discussed in relation to the ’sexual revolution’ and women: the slut/stud dichotomy, ’slut shaming’, the right to say ‘no’ – at *any* point, and have *that* be fully respected and deferred to, as well as yes, a respect for women FULL STOP, not JUST a respect for their desires and wishes when it happens to coincide with a particular male wish that she get on her knees and enjoy it. I don’t wish to be put in the same camp as Sam here – I’m no crusader for the ‘Good women bake cookies and keep their knees TOGETHER’ camp: I want a respect for women who like it vanilla and a respect for women who like it kinked to the hilt, respect for women enough to know that they all might like it in all kinds of ways/not at all depending on time/context/various considerations, respect for women enough to know that sexual desires and sex acts *do not define them as a type of person*, respect for women monogamous and poly, single and into casual sex, I want respect for women in the sex industry, and for women who don’t like sex at all at all ever, who consider themselves asexual and I want respect for gay/bi/trans* women, I want respect for rights to choose to *be* sexual at any given time and to choose *not* to be sexual/sexualised at any given time.



From this excellent person who actually does blog when she feels like I rant.
I just yell at my living room and feel hopeless.

Monday 1 February 2010

Cows with guns

In the print version of this article the Herald-Sun used a heading that called rural women cows. It didn't actually use the phrase 'they are cows' but it did refer to them being in "pastures too green" or something similar. I wish to God I could recall the exact phrase, but I, and many of my colleagues, were incensed, so I know it was bad, and so should they.

There were 3879 participants, which includes both rural and metro women, so let's estimate that about 1900 or so were rural citizens. Shall we ponder, for a moment, how small a sample that group is... Let's be generous and say only 20% of Victorians live in rural areas (that's, with generosity, 800,000.) then half of that being females and then maybe half again being the age group they're talking about... 200,000 women? vs less than 4000 sampled? Good survey.

But anyway, back to the HS. Do they have Andrew Bolt do their headings too?