Tag Archives: women

New Year Resolution: The End

by Benjamin Kritikos

A year ago, I made a resolution to read only women authors.  The thinking behind this act of positive discrimination was that I’d read far fewer books by women than by men, and I felt like I was missing out.  While I knew there were shitloads of excellent books written by women, I somehow managed to pass 30 years without reading very many.  The year 2010 was my chance to redress the imbalance.

Boy, am I glad I did.  I’ve spent a good deal of this past year catching up with the millions of people who read and loved the Harry Potter books — for which I was mercilessly teased by haters.  That always happens to great works that happen to garner popularity, though; even Ovid‘s Metamorphoses had its haters.

Of course, most people who actively voice a dislike for Harry Potter have never read the books, but only seen the films (or sometimes not even that).  I thought the films were rubbish — but hating on these books means you should pre-book a room in an old people’s home … No, I take that back.  Old people are not, generally, as embittered and old-at-heart as you; and we wouldn’t want to upset them.  Go read Ivanhoe or Dan Brown or whatever it is you like, and leave the rest of us alone.

Continue reading

5 Comments

Filed under New Year's Resolution, Women Authors

New Year Resolution: Part 3

by Ben Kritikos

I’m going to take a break from talking about books.  All this reading women has caused an eruption of empathy for the female dilemma.

Men are idiots.  Not all men, of course.  But most.  They fuck everything up, from relationships, to economies, to the environment — even bands.  People blame Yoko Ono, but the Beatles broke up because of John, Paul, George and Ringo: not anybody else.

Lately, I’ve noticed how intolerable so many men are to be around.  Maybe it’s because of this project; maybe in 2011 I’ll be back to normal, all grunts and chuckles and punches in the arm.  But at present, I find myself cringing about five times a week in the midst of conversations with male acquaintances.

Whether it be the description of a woman simply by referring to a piece of her anatomy, or bemoaning the inability of women-at-large to perform some simple task (like driving, or playing drums for example), or whether they jabber mercilessly about something they know fuck-all about — ach, men can really make me sick.

Don’t get me wrong, some women are capable of the same degree of stupidity.  After all, people are people, and a doughnut is a doughnut no matter if it’s sugar-coated, glazed, filled with jam or a talk show host.

Ann Widdecombe - not a good example of what I'm trying to say

It’s men’s hubristic predominance that makes them offensive.  Their stupidity seems impenetrable.  When faced with a stupid man, you know the situation is most likely hopeless; he’ll almost certainly not level with you, or listen to reason, or be swayed to think about what he’s doing.

Men are like robots.  Could you imagine Gordon Brown or David Cameron in the middle of a parliamentary verbal punch-up pausing to hold back the tears after a particularly scornful tirade?  I doubt they ever even listen to each other.  Even Margaret Thatcher, who is more unusually-tall-evil-munchkin than human, was caught on camera weeping when her party turned on her (and, incidentally, gave the world John Major, who lost his lips in a tragic arse-licking accident).

Why are men so thick?  Just the other day I  tried to put spaghetti into the kettle.  I caught myself just in time, as I was laughing about some other man trying to cook a sausage by running it under hot water from the tap.

If you’re not convinced, just think of Jackass.  Better yet, think of Dirty Sanchez — the Welsh equivalent.  You won’t find women stapling their genitals to wooden planks, will you?  No, I didn’t think so.

When the shit really hits the fan, and the guilty come out from their skyscraper hiding places to beg the government for multi-billion dollar (or pound) bail-outs, you’ll notice it’s a bunch of cocks doing the begging — literally and figuratively.

The only political party in England with a female leader is the Green Party; Caroline Lucas also happens to be the only party leader talking sense.  The men seem to descend further and further into mudslinging as the election draws near.

Here’s my suggestion: give women 10 years to take charge of the world and fix the mess we’ve made over the course of history.  That’s 10 years to put right what men have had an eternity to fuck up.  I bet they could do it.  So long as nobody invites Ann Widdecombe.

Who’s with me?

8 Comments

Filed under gender, New Year's Resolution, Women Authors

The Vagina Is Coming To Get You.

VAGINA.

VAGINA.  VAGINA.

VAGINA.  VAGINA.  VAGINA.

VAGINA.  VAGINA.  VAGINA.  VAGINA.

VAGINA.  VAGINA.  VAGINA.  VAGINA.  VAGINA.

VAGINA.  VAGINA.  VAGINA.  VAGINA.

VAGINA.  VAGINA.  VAGINA.

VAGINA.  VAGINA.

VAGINA.

Seriously, people.  Get over it.

Why is the word “vagina” so hard for people to deal with?  What’s so threatening about it?  Why does American television insist on treating it like a profanity?  Network television doesn’t mind using sex to sell their mass-produced shite that nobody needs; but they certainly won’t have us talking about it.  It’s as though we discovered the Wizard of Oz’s name was Bill, and forever after the name “Bill” became — well, as taboo as the word VAGINA.

Some Europeans hold the admittedly ridiculous view that all Americans are puerile, right-wing, self-obsessed, sexually repressed nincompoops with no knowledge of geography.  When a network decides to pull a tampon advert for using the word “vagina”, you can almost understand why.

I was reading Richard Adams’ blog this morning, where he described a scenario in which an American network pulled a tampon advert by company Kotex in which they used the word “vagina”, presumably in reference to what women use tampons for.  Kotex changed the word “vagina” to the phrase “down there”, according to Adams, but this wasn’t sufficient apparently.  So, this is what they ended up with:

Admittedly, this is a brilliant advert — even if the area in question is conspicuously lacking.  But come on, America!  It’s a fucking vagina, more than half the world has one!

For shame, for shame.

8 Comments

Filed under gender

We Love… The Mooncup!

By Anna Jacob

Squeamish boys look away now! This week, I’m going to be talking about vajayjays.

I remember exactly when I found out about periods. I must have been about 10 and we were made to watch a video and endure a talk on the subject in school. I remember feeling cheated and experiencing a sinking realisation that life wouldn’t all be adventure playgrounds, Fisher-Price tape-recorders, Saturday sweets and the constant pursuit of Cheestrings. Things were about to get complicated. Things were about to get bloody, hairy, lumpy in new places and uncontrollably weepy at times. I was doomed to spend the next 5-10 years endlessly shaving, waxing, sobbing, stropping, uncontrollably giggling, applying eyeliner and nail varnish, squeezing spots and writing truly terrible poetry.

Needless to say, periods turned out to be the least of my worries. But in the couple of years when I was aware that they existed, but yet to experience what I could only imagine would be a crippling week-long monthly bloodbath, I plotted my counter attack against my own body’s forthcoming self-sabotage. I read that periods could start as late as the age of 18 or 19, and that in rare cases, menopause could start in one’s twenties and I prayed that I would be one of the lucky ones and only have to put up with this bloody inconvenience for five years tops. I heard that with certain contraceptives you could skip periods for months at a time, and decided to see my doctor the minute my period started and get myself an implant post haste!

Continue reading

11 Comments

Filed under We Love..., Waste Reduction

New Year Resolution: Part 2

Living in close quarters with the budding genius behind clothed porn blog False Modesty, you can imagine there are lots of smutty magazines lying around the flat.

I’ve never had a comfortable relationship with pornography. Maybe it’s because of early Catholic indoctrination. Maybe it’s because I agree with the basic tenets of feminism. Or maybe it’s something altogether simpler.

Most pornography is, quite simply, pretty gross. Lots of women in porn seem sickly infantilised. I’ve never been face to face with a bald vagina, its petally bits trimmed down to an unnatural size, the nearby anus bleached to the same monotone effect of “nude” lipstick — and I hope to never have the pleasure. Continue reading

1 Comment

Filed under New Year's Resolution

New Year Resolution: Part 1

by Ben Kritikos

It’s been a month since I resolved to read only women authors in 2010.  So far, so good.

Though I haven’t broken any “rules” as yet (well, that depends on whether or not you consider using Jamie Oliver’s Italy or America actual “reading”); but the unfortunate side-effect, one that I hadn’t expected, is that I haven’t read much at all.  In fact, besides Arundhati Roy’s An ordinary person’s guide to Empire, I haven’t so much as opened a book this month.

In my defense, your honour, January buried her tendrils — as Januaries do — deep into my wallet.  This month’s running theme sounds like a Conservative Party convention slogan: austerity.  2010 caught me with my proverbial pants down, unemployed, lurking in the shadows with dirty fingernails, a dubious visa status and missing teeth.

As a freelance musician, I’ve come to understand the month of January as an interregnum in the otherwise smooth flow of months in a year, a month when the only things that happen are the things you wish wouldn’t.  Like football.

Still, I’ve accumulated quite some number of interesting books from friends and well-wishers.  On my list for February are Iris Murdoch’s The Sandcastle; The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingslover; and, unlike most white Americans, I’ll actually be celebrating February as Black History Month with a long-overdue introduction to Alice Walker’s iconic The Color Purple.

The only noticeable change resulting from this resolution has been the lack of something to fall back on when I’ve nothing else to do.  Normally, I’ll skim through an old favourite, opening a page at random and reading a bit here, a bit there.  I’ve been forced to think about reading, which is a good thing.

J.D. Salinger’s death proved tricky: my immediate reaction was to reach for Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: an Introduction.  I supressed the urge.

Leave a Comment

Filed under New Year's Resolution, Women Authors

We Love… Arundhati Roy

“We have to lose our terror of the mundane.  We have to use our skills and imagination and our art, to re-create the rhythms of the endless crisis of normality, and in doing so, expose the policies and processes that make ordinary things — food, water, shelter and dignity — such a distant dream for ordinary people.”

So, as the year begins, and with it my resolution to read women authors solely, I find my nose buried in a collection of non-fiction pieces by Arundhati Roy entitled An ordinary person’s guide to Empire.  May I just take a moment to say that Roy is perhaps the coolest living woman in the world?

Somehow, in this life, it’s easy to get caught up in stupid shit of little or no consequence.  All this despite the fact that we live in a world where one half of a percent of the world’s population owns almost 60% of the wealth, and almost one third of human beings live below the poverty line.  I could name facts and figures until the cows come home, but we all know what I’m saying: the world is in shreds.

Continue reading

4 Comments

Filed under We Love..., Women Authors