This is interesting, particularly in the context of the recent flurry of studies of Virago Press, Lucy Delap, Feminist Business Praxis and Spare Rib Magazine, in what I see is a themed journal issue on feminist publishing, which appears to be Open Access, right-on, sisters! and also to included work on some of the UK feminist publishers that weren' ( Read more... )

I know I first clicked on this because someone tweeted a line or two that sounded like ponceyness to the max begging for a codslapping, but when I actually read it, there was certainly something I would consider as deviation into sense, or at least what I could only acclaim as a recognition of It's All More Complicated:
Retail Therapy: An excerpt ( Read more... )

I don't know if anyone else has seen this: Over 90,000 people have joined r/SemenRetention in the hope of storing their sacred male energy, which sounds like a ponceyer version of the Anti-Fap movement, what with the invocation of Ye Antient Wisdome of Ye Orientale Sages* (why not, we ask, Ye Antient Wisdome of all those Victorian and Edwardian ( Read more... )

As I thought while watching and mentioned in a discussion elsewhere, perhaps the most recent movie fits betters into the category of works inspired by/riffing off LMA's famed work, of which there are so many, rather than as a recreation: but, as I suggested elsewhere, if you want the backing for a movie, you have to make LW for TODAY, rather than ( Read more... )

Ann Summers* is the latest struggling retailer to seek lower rents from landlords amid a high street downturn.
*UK high street retailer, best known for its sex toys and lingerie, established in the 1970s as the first lady-friendly sex-shop, but I think its home-based parties possibly did more to get British women into buying sex toys etc.
And I ( Read more... )

Recently dawned on me that at present all my academic-related activities seem to be all contraception all the time: I'm reading 2 mss on aspects of the topic, the last book I reviewed was on Noted Pioneer, last night I went to book-launch on Forgotten/Neglected Pioneer, and I'm supposed to be giving a talk in the next months on the history of the ( Read more... )

This is very good, with the proviso that a) it's got a fair amount of dense theoretical discussion in it and b) the topic is depressing and partway through I had to break off and read a fluffy romance.
This is about the 'seduction' community in the UK, in which O'Neill managed to do embedded research (she discusses how she managed this and there is ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished Point of Hopes - quite good, but boy, what becomes the central m/m relationship as the series progresses is a bit muted.
Diana Block, Clandestine Occupations: An Imaginary History (Spectacular Fiction) (2015) - one of the PM Press ebook sale books I took a punt on, novel about intertwined lives of various activists and their ( Read more... )

This is probably becoming a well-worn theme, i.e. moaning about journos who contrast the Better Way Things were in Past Times compared to the Degeneracy of the Present.
And while I am not an art historian or a historian of collecting, I have been around enough galleries and museums to be just a tad sceptical of the claims advanced in this article ( Read more... )

I was in one of the charity shops while doing my shopping, and waiting to pay for a copy of Helen Rappaport's book Beautiful For Ever: Madame Rachel of Bond Street - Cosmetician, Con-Artist and Blackmailer, which has been on my 'vaguely interested' list for some while,
And in front of me at the till was a chap with a pair of boots, which seemed to ( Read more... )