‘What’s the boy word for slut?’ ‘They still haven’t come up with one yet’ – Definitely, Maybe (2008) Why is that? Mary Jane Sherfey asserted in 1966, that the female sex drive is an insatiable force that has been repressed by society for the sake of maintaining a civilised social structure. For every action there…
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When I was in my second year of uni, I had a friend who was adamant that her boyfriend watching porn was the equivalent of him cheating on her. I thought this was completely unfair and inaccurate. So I took a bit of a pro-porn stance on the matter. As I saw it, porn was…
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Aboriginal woman, Veronica Baxter, was born in Cunnamulla country in outback Queensland and died in Silverwater Metropolitan Reception and Remand Centre, NSW. On 16 March 2009, she was found dead in her prison cell hanging from a bed sheet. She was just 34 years old. Veronica, a Sistagirl, had lived as woman since she was…
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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…
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This book by Leora Tanenbaum is all about growing up female with a bad reputation. It is novel about slut bashing, sexual encounters and the horrors of group mentality. Primarily it all comes down to sexual inequality and the problems it is causing. My favourite part about this book is the afterword because it includes…
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When you write about a woman’s right to feel empowered sexually, you certainly get to have some great conversations. People from all sorts of backgrounds with all sorts of values want to engage in the conversation. My views and opinions on things can be radically different from others; I do, after all, publicly discuss masturbation…
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A friend once said to me that he’d have a difficult time becoming aroused by a woman who was not typically ‘clean shaven down there’. This propelled a heated debate into the modification of the female sex and led me to question whether the consumption of internet porn is impacting the way men desire women….
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Often the issue that arises from flying the feminist flag is that people expect you to align all of your beliefs within a perceived system of norms that align with what they view as ‘feminism’. For a movement as multi-faceted, widely dispersed and fragmented as feminism is, this is nigh on impossible. Every feminist (much…
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The other day I was browsing Tumblr when I noticed a gif from a movie that had been re-blogged by a friend of mine. The gif was from The Sitter and included the star, Jonah Hill, and the woman playing his girlfriend (or, really, the woman he wants to be his girlfriend), Ari Gaynor. The…
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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…
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We are growing up in a world leaving us sexually fucked. The media, pornography and the fashion industry all tell us that we need to be sex toys. They tell us we want to be having lots of casual sex with lots of men. They tell us this will make us feel empowered. However, we…
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Hi ladies, I wanted to take a quick moment to introduce myself as the new sexuality columnist for Lip Magazine. My main aim in this role is to start conversations. There are a few topics we shy away from because we fear they are taboo, or we fear differences of opinion. But I think those…
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Labels, labels, labels. What’s the deal with labels? I call myself a lesbian, but I’m not a ‘gold star’ lesbian (a gay woman who’s never slept with a man). Most people I know identify as gay, straight and sometimes bisexual, but I don’t meet many people who reject the idea of labels. Is it because…
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The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler is a book I honestly believe every man, woman and young adult should read – excuse the cliché. It is unlike anything I have ever read before and was so gripping that I read it in one very emotional sitting. The book was first written in 1966 after Ensler…
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