On opposite sides of the world, women and not-enough-male allies are rightfully and righteously angry about the failures of state actors to act – at all or enough – around women being raped and murdered. The facts of the UK case is relatively straightforward. On March 2nd a young white woman, Sarah Everard, was kidnapped... Continue Reading →
Patriarchy and sexual violence. From complicity to resistance
Content warning: discussion of rape, suicide, complicity. I knew the woman who is at the centre of the allegations of rape against the Attorney-General of Australia, Christian Porter (allegations he denies). Her family have asked for her not to be named, and although her name is now circulating in corners of the Internet, their wishes... Continue Reading →
Activism, patriarchy and still saying goodbye to all that 50-ish years on…
Dr Manuel Cervera-Marzal, the author of a book chapter - "Ordinary Resistance to Masculine Domination in a Civil Disobedience Movement" - very kindly sent me a copy of his work. It's ... really good, and everyone doing activist work should read it. It escapes that most common of academic-studying-activists traps, the uncritical puff-piece extolling the... Continue Reading →
Holy Moses or “There’s never an irony policeman when you need one”
We watched the documentary. Excellent if problematic, it was basically a morality play: a bunch of old white powerful men in a self-designed and policed echo chamber are eventually brought low by a scrappy band of diverse (gasp) women. And so immediately after the film there was to be a discussion. And a bunch of... Continue Reading →
Men critique things of me: of Winterson and Solnit in #Manchester #activism
aka some cishet white guy's uninvited commentary on two feminist literary icons. But it's his website and he can say what he likes. Nobody is forcing you to read it, 'kay? Rebecca Solnit will be known to the casual reader as the woman who wrote the (fantastic) 'Men Explain Things To Me’. Last night she... Continue Reading →
Men and #feminism – labels and so forth.
So, with a fellow PhD student I've set up a blog called 'feminismandtwoguys'. The about is this We are two guys (Steffen and Marc) who are studying in Manchester. This site is about us trying to learn from different types of feminism. That involves listening, reflecting, honouring the vast amount of physical and intellectual work... Continue Reading →
Me love you laing time… The work of forgetting and suppression
Somewhere in the pile of things-read-awaiting-bookmarking-on-t'website is a recent article on the what the authors called "memory work" - (corporate) work of suppressing past mis-behaviour. It does not use R.D. Laing, but it could. This below is the epigram from Joanna Russ's amazing book 'The Female Man' [my review here] If Jack succeeds in forgetting... Continue Reading →
“Finding the Woman Who Didn’t Exist” #afterthethesis
Finding the Woman Who Didn’t Exist Nineteenth-Century French Studies Volume 42, Numbers 1-2, Fall-Winter 2013-2014 Laure Katsaros Hawthorne, Melanie C. Finding the Woman Who Didn’t Exist: The Curious Life of Gisèle d’Estoc. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013. Pp. 216. isbn: 978-0-8032-4034-6 Who was the woman hidden behind the name “Gisèle d’Estoc”? The pseudonym suggests a strange... Continue Reading →
Attack of the hipster tomatoes! Or “things to do in Vienna when not talking about social movements”
What happens when you get four and a half thousand academics (sociologists and sociologically-minded fellow travellers, to be precise) in one place (the University of Vienna, to be preciser) at one time (10th to 14th July – perciser still)? You get a lot to talk and think about, is what you get. The third “International... Continue Reading →
Awesome tips for “female-friendly” meetings #toptips
Guest post by Kari McGregor: when trying to make orgs, groups and meetings female-friendly, I think it's important to look at it all holistically, and accept that it'll take time for the changes to happen - i.e. everything you can do to bring the change won't actually result in change until later.... source: Punch Key... Continue Reading →
