Making generalisations about why Other Wymmynz consume the media they do, without, as far as I can tell, actually consulting them (or indeed having any very deep or nuanced knowledge of the media in question), for coming up for 50 years (see her assumptions in The Female Eunuch about why gurlyz read romance - which she seems to think pretty much co ( Read more... )

When I first started publishing chapters in edited volumes, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and the text was created on an Amstrad 512, the author got a small - very small - one off payment.
And then it was, authors got a free copy of the hardback.
Then it became a free copy of the paperback.
Then it became a free downloadable pdf of their own ( Read more... )

While I daresay the young woman who wrote this piece - I’ve come of age in the porn generation. Here are some of the problems we face - may have some reasonable points, she, as they say, does her argument no favours by saying: Sex is now referred to, among other things, as “beating” and “boning”. These brutal terms reflect the depiction of sex in ( Read more... )

Germaine Greer takes issue with the claim that modern sex began in the late 17th century -
Dabhoiwala ignores the kinds of economic, social and demographic history that were systematised at Cambridge. It is not enough to show that somebody somewhere was thinking thoughts that we might think of as amazingly progressive, without investigating ( Read more... )

Unfortunately, Germaine Greer's review of Caitlin Moran's new book How To Be A Woman is sequestered behind The Times paywall (chiz! chiz! this is the second time this week that this has thwarted me - apparently Helen King had a letter there exploding the Queen Victorian, cannabis and period pains historimyth, which I have not been able to access).

( Read more... )

Yes, I'm back for some self-indulgence at Grayshott, and they have put me in an exceedingly spiffy room in the oldest part of the building with creeper-clad walls, overlooking the entrance drive, with an enormous bathroom.

Crumpled rose-leaves: this morning, before leaving, I was getting agitated pop-up messages from the virus programme on my ( Read more... )

Did anyone else see this and get a cold chill yesterday? - The Hindu goddess Kali is on my side.

If this is so, surely one should try and use those powers For Good, rather than in the pursuit of personal vendettas?

On the accuracy of the description of Kali and her place in the Hindu pantheon, deponent remaineth silent but hopes for enlightenment.

( Read more... )

On my desktop, Firefox keeps losing all my open tabs when I shut it down - even though yesterday I went into options and ensured that 'save open tabs' rather than 'homepage' had been picked as the default - and today I didn't even get the 'Save and quit/quit/cancel' option when I closed the browser.

I'm not saying there is a causative correlation, ( Read more... )

Further to my earlier post on men and litfic, do we note that most of the winners of the Bad Sex Award have been male and that the existence of the BSA seems to have induced a certain, hmmm, performance anxiety about writing about it?

On women's writing, am not going to be terribly convinced by a piece on the New Women's Confessional which avers ( Read more... )

I've braved earthquakes and bullets in my hunt for fabulous fabrics.

Okay, yet again the art/craft binarism going on, permission to beat her about the head with a copy of Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, accompanied by a recitation of West's wonderful accounts of Balkan women's embroidery?

Plus, how is that wonderful textiles are only ( Read more... )