by thevagenda
George from the Famous Five – another girl who defies gender expectations Tomboy is a thing, right? It’s that phase that some little girls go through, where they don’t like pretty dresses and they do like playing at cowboys, where they rebel against their mother-imposed white tights by destroying them climbing trees, and they stare […]
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by editor
Right now I’m single and every time I need a poo, I cherish the simplicity of wiping my bum and pulling my pants up, instead of jumping in the shower for a furtive bum wash. God, it’s a luxury. If I get skiddies in my knickers, I celebrate their presence as a brown striped flag […]
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by editor
Let me introduce myself: my name is Shannon. I am a 22 year old White-Asian woman from England studying a PhD at university. In reality, this means I’m busting my butt off doing experiments from nine ‘til god-knows-when, nearly every day of the week, for three and a half years of my life. Not because […]
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by thevagenda
Image: Angela Campos / Memphis Workshop Do you drink pumpkin spice lattes? Do you use emoticons when you text? Do you giggle? Do you like music that other people like or wear clothes other people wear? Are you a woman? Unfortunately, any of the above is enough to label you “basic,” the ambiguous insult that […]
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by editor
You’re a feminist. You haven’t read Mary Wollestonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women, one of the seminal feminist texts. It’s a chewy read. You’re a busy woman. Alex Voakes has condensed the fuck out of it here, so you can quote it freely without even bothering to find it in a back room at […]
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by thevagenda
Nudity is great. Or, at worst, fine. It’s natural, it’s free, and it’s achievable by absolutely everybody. One of the most common misconceptions about feminism is that it is some kind of anti-sex movement with a fear of nakedness and sexuality, which is what makes endlessly re-occurring ‘debates’ about ‘can I wear a short skirt/ […]
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by thevagenda
“We have sexual feelings and we deal with them ourselves…Just to be able to talk about female masturbation…I find the subject both really moving and incredibly politically empowering that women can give themselves pleasure and enjoy their own bodies but it’s also really funny!” – Caitlin Moran. In this Swedish interview, Caitlin Moran (who, in the […]
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by editor
I hung up my drumsticks when I was seven months pregnant. I spent the last five minutes of my otherwise fairly glamorous drumming career wedged between a snare drum and the sweaty back wall of an Oxford venue, desperately waving my arms around in the hope that someone would notice my predicament. After an undignified […]
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by thevagenda
What music should you listen to when about to commence writing about a personal account of rape? This is what I’m considering right now. I have a dark sense of humour, but when I was about to make the long bus journey from Barcelona to Almeria, and I thought to myself : “Ok, this is […]
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by editor
As anyone with a long commute will know, those freebie papers and magazines that are shoved into your hands at the front of every train station are a godsend. And as anyone with a long commute will ALSO know, a good book is a solid companion, too (particularly when you want to distract yourself from […]
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by thevagenda
Hae Min Lee “Does it say Sarah Koenig on it?” “I don’t know… there’s a red S on a black background?” “Yeah, that’s it.” I don’t even need to look at the screen to verify that; I know. My flatmate is trying to locate the Serial podcast on iTunes, as I’ve worn her down over […]
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by thevagenda
What a wonderful world we now live in. The death of the barmaid – or, at least, the terminology; it’s “bartender” now please, people – should really have put the nail in the coffin for all bar-based sexism. That’s wishful thinking. But at least a woman behind a bar these days is regarded as more […]
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