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US comedian Daniel Tosh sparked a furore with his now notorious rape joke. Many women have at least one story about being inappropriately and non-consensually touched — it first happened to me when I was 13. While jokes like Tosh's perpetuate such a culture, other comedians' 'rape jokes' seek to enlighten as well as entertain.
Recently Catherine Deveny tweeted that my claim to be a Catholic and a feminist showed I was 'suffering serious cognitive dissonance'. Many gay Christians are confronted by a similar lack of understanding from non-believers who can't understand why they would embrace a Church that rejects them.
The largely positive response in Australia to the American Lingerie Football League reveals we are not the progressively egalitarian people we imagine ourselves to be. We give lip service to female equality, but women will still be exploited whenever the opportunity arises, and feminists vilified like it's 1972.
Nearly 90 per cent of Wikipedia's editors are men, the majority in their 20s. This is not Wikipedia's fault: it exists in a world that is already weighted towards the white male experience. The murder in Florida of African-American teen Trayvon Martin has catalysed criticism of the effects of white male privilege.
Women have fought the long, hard fight, marching into battle with a baby tugging on one heel and a man hanging off the other. And while the man has largely loosened his grip, the baby never will. Many women are still forced to submit, if not to patriarchy then certainly to maternal instinct.
'Women in Bougainville have no choice but to be political,' I was told by a community leader. From housekeepers to businesswomen, they all seem to be pretty fierce feminists. Even random women I meet at cafes and pubs tell me about the work women do in their communities.
Germaine Greer has said she did not want to be a high priestess of feminism. What may have been extracted from her views and the constant evolution of feminism has been diminished by being reduced to a formula such as that used to denounce Melinda Tankard Reist.
Slutwalk is an international feminist movement in response to victim-blaming in cases of sexual violence. Detractors argue that supporters are mistaking their sexual subjugation for liberation. That assumption entirely misses the point.
British sociologist Gail Dines argues that porn shapes young people's expectations of how sex should be, at the cost of healthy intimacy. Positive erotic portrayals can inspire and guide us by enhancing our perceptions and extending our narrow world view. Dines argues that the hardcore porn industry promotes a damaging view of sex that shapes young men's (and women's) fantasies and expectations of how sex should be, at the cost of healthy intimacy.
Patricia Brennan put the ordination of women on the agenda of the Anglican Church and kept it there. Like Germaine Greer, she was tall, with an unmissable presence and rich voice. And, like Germaine, she was often called strident.
Some say that not only is The Female Enuch of little relevance today: it never was relevant. Such arguments are often based more on attacks on Greer personally, and feminism generally, than considered critiques of the value of the feminist agenda set out in the book.
Rudd's eviction should strike fear into the hearts of feminists everywhere. For this is how the Labor Government operates, unsheathing the swords, wrenching power, cutting down a leader before he has had time to really prove himself. Imagine what it will do when that leader is a woman.