An array of young people are in a room together competitively solving Rubik’s Cubes. We got lost on the way to the event and a young man with a Rubik’s Cube t-shirt directed us to the hall, saying ‘you won’t miss the rattling of the cubes when you’re close’. He was quite right. The plastic…
Read more
Man jailed for Nude Facebook Photos In a landmark case a man has been sentenced to jail for posting nude pictures of his ex-girlfriend on Facebook. This is the first time in Australia that someone has been convicted of a crime committed on social media and one of only a few cases of this kind…
Read more
Time schedules our day. This is obvious. We get up at a particular time, we get to work or meet people at specified times. We might like lunch at midday or one o’clock or one thirty. If we are late to appointments, we run the risk of missing the person we want to see. We…
Read more
I’ve been watching SBS after 10.30pm on Fridays again… They always seem to feature documentaries on ‘uncomfortable topics’. Brothels, prostitutes, nudity. Most recently, SBS featured one on genitalia. The documentary was made in relation to the growing trend of girls and women, of basically all ages, feeling as though they need surgery on their vagina/vulva…
Read more
The news has been rife with stories recently of women making cruel or nasty comments towards other women. It all started with Germaine Greer criticising Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s choice of jackets on the ABC’s Q and A. Later, we saw British Daily Mail columnist, Samantha Brick, claim that women are nasty to her because…
Read more
Call for Nike Boycott Last week, in a Cambodian factory which manufactures Nike apparel, at least 107 female garment workers fainted. It is believed that poor ventilation and the use of harsh chemicals caused this mass fainting. Fainting is not uncommon in the course of factory operations. It is believed that exposure to factory conditions…
Read more
Stalker App Pulled Blogger John Brownlee posted an article a few weeks ago warning women of the potential dangers of technology and stalking. An app called ‘Girls Around Me’ uses publically available facebook and foursquare information in order to show the users who is geographically close to them. To make it even more scary, the…
Read more
Although I haven’t lived there for over four years now, I do like to think of myself as a Melbourne local. This guide includes some of the places in the CBD and its surrounds that I like to take visiting non-Melbournians; the others have been shown to me by people who have a bigger claim…
Read more
Israel’s New Photoshop Law Legislation has been passed in Israel which bans underweight models and requires advertisers to disclose where they have used Photoshop to alter images to make a model appear thinner than they are in every instance. The legislation is an effort to change idealised perceptions of beauty that, according to evidence presented…
Read more
As a movement, and speaking in very general terms, feminism has been guilty of marginalising the voices of other people. While it has been rejected on ignorant grounds which rely on stereotypes (feminists are hairy, scary people who hate men and burn undergarments), it has also been quite fairly rejected on the grounds that it…
Read more
This Week in Marriage Equality It has been a big week for marriage equality. The biggest story was probably Bob Katter’s Australia Party’s crazy video which ‘accuses’ wannabe Queensland Premier, Campbell Newman of supporting gay marriage (Lord forbid). The video is so offensive that even Andrew Bolt doesn’t like it! Earlier this week, first submissions…
Read more
The potentiality for feminism to be a global movement sometimes can be a bit of an elephant in the room for Western feminists. It is clear that the rights of women are fundamentally and consistently in question throughout the world. In many nations, women lack the right to a public life on their own terms….
Read more
A Right to Kill Newborns? Late last week, Australian philosophers Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva argued in the British Medical Journal that killing a newborn is of no moral difference to aborting a foetus. This is justified on the basis that a newborn and a foetus have the same lack of a sense of their own life and aspiration. As long…
Read more
Even More Defence Force Sexism The Australian Defence Force has seemed to appear in this column more weeks than not. Yet another disappointing example of the sexism rife in the Defence Force was brought to light this week. In this case, the ABC has been given access to a private facebook group of over 1000 former and serving members…
Read more
