To celebrate the holiday season, this is a bit of a different post to usual. I can often be accused of asking rhetorical questions, but I offer this one in all sincerity.
I stand before you as a fully paid up (closet) member of both the Prude Society and the Angry Brigade. For years, I have railed, in my head and occasionally to friends, against the objectification of women and girls in clubs, on posters on the Underground escalators, on clothing, in the gender stereotyping of children’s toys. Individual protestors and campaigning groups alike have been barraged with accusations of prudishness, extremism, absence of fun etc etc, as they have argued against the widespread dissemination of such images which they have considered demeaning, or misrepresenting women. Those who spoke up were made to feel in the minority and the implications was that they wanted to return to Victorian standards of decency. Yet the last few years have seen the development of a new kind of feminism in Britain which has taken on these issues and made real inroads into what is deemed acceptable and normal. Continue reading
HOLES IN THE WALL 