Category: women
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Red lines are my grey area

***Long read for the weekend*** Some people thrive on passion and drama. Some people believe they need it in order to feel alive. If you like a quiet life, you should probably avoid working with people like that. If you can’t think or act effectively around noise and drama, you should most definitely avoid working…
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Under-rated heroes and forgotten wives

Happy anniversary, Gustav and Isobel Holst A guest post by author Philippa Tudor Fame and fleeting, modest fortune Aspiring but not-yet-famous composer Gustav von Holst and Isobel Harrison were married on 22 June 1901. It was a quiet wedding in Fulham Register Office (a former workhouse), witnessed by Isobel’s brother and Gustav’s aunt, who had…
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Four Long Years

It feels like about 200 years ago I stepped down as a Labour Party CLP officer, and got stuck into the women’s rights campaign. Initially, I didn’t have a particularly articulate view of the conflict between women’s legal rights and Stonewall et al’s demands under the title ‘trans rights’, but I did have a very…
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Excluded by inclusion

Or: who will save us from nice blokes? Mark Drakeford tramples on women’s rights Mark Drakeford is a nice bloke. He was a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn and, from his comfortable position as a white male with a successful political career, has a firm grasp on the idea that inclusion is always a good thing.…
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Oh look, Humpty Dumpty again

Who speaks, who listens, and who is heard? I didn’t watch the Depp/Heard circus. I get that anyone involved in an alcohol-soaked, dysfunctional relationship behaves badly. I also get that Depp was violent and abusive. That had already been proved beyond reasonable doubt in a previous court hearing, so I take the new US court…
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Who speaks, who listens, and who is heard?

The extract above is from a statement by Ruby Cox, a former councillor in Hastings, who has been asked and asked, for months, for her version of something that happened to her but, after all this time, will anyone want to hear? I think there are two ways in which people are controlled. First of…
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The original mistake?

Has it ever occurred to anyone that the founding of the Labour Party might have been a mistake from the start? I have spent a large part of my political time over the last decade on campaigns arguing for workers’ rights and women’s rights. The Labour Party has been, to put it generously, a fair-weather…
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Terrible Fish

My blog ‘About’ Page descriptor says that I intend to write about ‘books, politics and the terrible fish.’ When I was setting up the blog site, and came to the box that said something like ‘summarise what this site is about’ I gave it about ten seconds thought. For those in the dark, Sylvia Plath…
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Owen Jones and the Venerable Beard

In which Owen Jones struggles with a difficult idea: Chomsky reminds Jones of the hard road women have had to get their basic rights acknowledged. As you can see from the eyebrows, this is hard going for Jones, who still hasn’t grasped even the precariousness of his own history, let alone women’s – and has…
