Category: women
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From Blairites to sex workers

*** Long Read*** [It’s taken me a few weeks to get around to writing this. It’s one of the articles I drafted out when I was thinking about dropping my FB account. There was absolutely no doubt it was giving me problems but, as the horror that is the Israel / Palestine story dominated even…
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What every women’s rights campaigner wants for Christmas

The glorious wave of new feminist books published in this decade has been one of the joys of the women’s rights campaign. For a while, my favourite was Julie Bindel’s Feminism for Women… Oh hang on, before that there was Caroline Criado Perez’s Invisible Women… A lot of people swear by Helen Joyce’s TRANS, but…
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They may not exist but they keep producing good work

In the month that the Scottish courts finally went so far down the rabbit hole they’ve succeeded in convincing themselves that women don’t exist as a material entity, the tabloid press have reached the point where most people are aware that something rather silly is going on but most have yet to realize the gravity…
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Dear Socialists

*Header pic: Andy McDonald was one of the three MPs who turned up to talk to the RMT and their supporters when we went to Westminster to argue for the ‘keep the guard on the train’ campaign. (an aside perhaps, but vital for solidarity in the current struggles) Dear socialists, I’m glad you’ve remembered thought-crime…
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Whodunnit?

Don’t ask me which women’s issue this article is about… I have written elsewhere about a “controversial” meeting that happened in my town a few weeks ago. It shouldn’t have been controversial beyond the room it took place in. If political groups want to talk to people with a range of views, whether they agree…
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No, this is the best feminist book … no, THIS is… No, wait…

We were sitting around cabaret tables, at the end of the main conference day. In front of us, a promising array of glasses and cutlery and other shiny things. At the top of the room, on the other side of an expanse of empty carpet that would no doubt soon be full of activity, long…
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How to use all that anger wisely

I went to a really interesting talk that a lot of people didn’t want me to go to last month. It was laid on by the local Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Apparently, even some members of their own organization had their doubts about it. It’s because the speaker was David Miller, who seems to have the…
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All human life

All human life on the planet is born of woman – Adrienne Rich That quote introduces the editor’s column in the latest edition of The Radical Notion which I intended to lose myself in, but people just kept lending me books, and suggesting I read books, some of which were immediately irresistible and so the…
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Reaching across #NoDebate

Notes for the sex-and-gender debate I am going to write this as though it were a letter to someone who thinks of themself as ‘a trans ally’ or perhaps a trans rights activist. I know such a person is highly unlikely to read my blog, because they think their opponents are ‘anti-trans’, and because I…
