Category Archives: Gender and the Body

Resistance To Female Genital Cutting On The Rise In Egypt

There’s a good article in the NY Times on the growing and vibrant anti-Female Genital Cutting ((AKA Female Circumcision, Female Genital Surgery, AKA Female Genital Mutilation or FGM.)) movement in Egypt in the Times. (Curtsy: Feministe and Sly Civilian). Previous … Continue reading

Posted in Gender and the Body | 6 Comments

Weight and Race; Should non-white women really be taught to hate their own bodies as much as white women do?

I’m a little hesitant to post this, because — although Campos never actually blames white women for the obsession with weight loss (in fact, Campos describes it as something done to white women — he describes anti-fat “neuroses” as something … Continue reading

Posted in Class, poverty, labor, & related issues, Fat, fat and more fat, Gender and the Body, Race, racism and related issues | 46 Comments

Review: No Future For You: Part 1 (SPOILERS)

I’m in. I was undecided about whether the comic book was ‘Buffy’. I accepted it was cannon, Joss says goes. But I just wasn’t sure whether I was going to treat it like Buffy. I’m not a comic book person, … Continue reading

Posted in Buffy, Whedon, etc., Cartooning & comics, Gender and the Body | 3 Comments

My Daughter's Vagina, Part 4

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 At eleven, I’m the youngest of eight boys lined up along one row of lockers in the otherwise empty men’s locker room at the swimming pool to which the day camp I am attending … Continue reading

Posted in Feminism, sexism, etc, Gender and the Body, Rape, intimate violence, & related issues | 5 Comments

Abortions also make women skinnier….

The Health Select Committee has just recommended extending paid parental leave to six months, to encourage breast feeding. As a supporter of paid parental leave (or, more accurately, as someone who believes that paid parental leave doesn’t go nearly far … Continue reading

Posted in Breastfeeding & Lactivism, Fat, fat and more fat, Gender and the Body | 5 Comments

My Daughter's Vagina, Part 3

If you haven’t already, I urge you to read Part 1 and Part 2. (If you haven’t read Part 2, or haven’t read it in a while, you might want to read it before reading Part 3, if only because the last paragraph … Continue reading

Posted in Feminism, sexism, etc, Gender and the Body, Rape, intimate violence, & related issues | 2 Comments

If only people would just die of the shame like they're supposed to

While I write a bit about bodies, fat and ‘the obesity epidemic’ I don’t write that much about the health aspects of this. Mostly because I largely find them irrelevant. Other people can do very good jobs of proving that … Continue reading

Posted in Fat, fat and more fat, Gender and the Body | 4 Comments

What could be more of a challenge?

Project Runway has got everything you’d want in a reality show, interesting challenges, weird people and a look at a different world. In the most recent episode here in NZ the challenge was to design for another contestant’s mother or … Continue reading

Posted in Fat, fat and more fat, Feminism, sexism, etc, Gender and the Body | 15 Comments

My Daughter's Vagina, Part 2

To read Part 1, go here. You have to wonder what kind of research he did and how he did it. Did he interview women? Create a list of all the possibilities he could imagine and ask them to check … Continue reading

Posted in Feminism, sexism, etc, Gender and the Body, Rape, intimate violence, & related issues | 28 Comments

My Daughter's Vagina, Part 1

“My Daughter’s Vagina” is the title of an essay I wrote about five years ago that was published online here but that I have never really felt comfortable with as a finished piece. Not too long ago, I came up … Continue reading

Posted in Feminism, sexism, etc, Gender and the Body, Rape, intimate violence, & related issues | 63 Comments