“Why Can’t A Woman Behave More Like A Man?” “Oh, Henry Higgins, just you wait.” My Fair Lady (1964) is musical film version of a musical theatre adaptation of an earlier film adaptation of a play called Pygmalion. Exhausted yet? It stars Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Dolittle, a poor flower girl whose alarming low-class accent…
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Last year my friend linked me to an absolutely brilliant article written by Patrick Stokes, a Lecturer in Philosophy at Deakin University, and I have not been able to stop thinking about it since. Because this man said everything that I had always thought, but had never before been able to put into words: You…
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There is nothing I like to do more than talk. Well, perhaps it’s tied with writing, but on the whole I live to communicate. Having a D&M, a conversation of depth and meaning, is my cup of tea and to a certain extent I like to push the boundaries. So when sitting amongst a co-ed…
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A Voice for Men (AVFM) is the most web-prominent set of men’s rights activists (MRAs) around. Browsing their website, one encounters a lot of statistics, factoids and other bits of evidence, all of which are deployed to make the case that feminism is an evil ideology, one that exerts an overwhelming influence in daily life…
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Its opening weekend has been reported as a letdown at the box office, but onscreen, this new Australian film is anything but underwhelming. Drift has the all the realism and heartache we expect from local storytelling, and supporting the Australian film industry is only a fringe benefit of forking out for a ticket. The film…
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I had a piece written for Lip this week about the issues I take with the ‘Fitspiration’ movement (I have discussed my issues with a part of this movement, clean eating, on Lip before). It was all about the recent fitness movement that has exploded across social media, carrying slogans such as ‘Strong not Skinny!’…
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You wake up in the morning and you’re in someone else’s bed. You calculate that there is a 75% chance you will need to vomit within the next hour. You are not sure whether you want to roll over and see the face of the person spooning you and snoring so nonchalantly into the back…
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Name: Theresa Smith Age: 57 Occupation: Professor of Religious Studies Location: Indiana, Pennsylvania, United States Describe yourself in one word: Stubborn. What is your feminist philosophy? I am a radical feminist. I believe that sexism is rooted in misogyny and misogyny is rooted in fear of women. Patriarchy is the institutionalised, trans cultural and trans…
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The big day is finally here. There’s no time left to find the right inanimate object to show your mum how much she really means! It’s not that I don’t like the idea of showing people you love them. And I can even ignore the commercialisation of that love (my boyfriend found out the hard…
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I immediately shot my hand up to write about Mother’s Day and then, a few minutes later, I thought, ‘why?’ What exactly excited me so profoundly that I said yes in the blink of an eye without even thinking of what I might, you know, actually write about? I think I did it because motherhood…
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There is something to be said about monkeys in films. Part cute and cuddly, part vicious and protective they have been continually reduced to predictable human stereotypes. King Kong, Mighty Joe Young or even the charming monkey Jack from Pirates of the Caribbean are all victims of this monkey stereotype curse which plagues the film…
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‘Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country, of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus the state, instead of being whole, is reduced to half.’ Well we know what Plato thought about feminist men — but that was…
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Thank you to all of the mums (and dads) of the world. Thanks for having sex, enduring a nine-month period of an alien growing in your belly and then pushing it out in a tawdry episode of sweat, blood and tears. And maybe poo. Because I really like your baby. I like the way I…
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She struts onto the screen. Leather clutches her hourglass figure, squeezing her tight; her breasts billow out of her shirt. She seductively glances at the man before her. He is incapacitated by her fishnet stockings and whip, reduced to a drooling, drivelling, mess. She slinks towards him, strokes his cheek and melts him with the…
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