Unscene Berlin

Making feminism a threat again is the motto of this year's International Women's Day march in Berlin.  It's  not as scary as it sounds, though.  For some men, just being born female is enough to make someone a threat, after all.  It really doesn't matter to them what women say or do, how feminist they are or aren't, or how demurely they behave, or how promiscuous they are in their personal lives.  Just by existing, women will always upset certain men and, for those men, no excuse is needed to mete out a punishment that fits the 'crime'. But it always helps to have a plausible-sounding reason for attacking women and right now, that reason could be summed up as: "Feminists have gone too far and/or become too equal.  They need/want/are asking for a backlash." If the 'feminism has gone too far' bandwagon was an actual vehicle, it would be a Ford Model-T because its that old. as the foto below illustrates, fear of feminists has been around ...

Spot the victim: almost all of the above images are from mundane, every day ads on magazines, billboards and news sites.  Some are indistinguishable from images of true violence against women (bottom, center).  Ads like this tap into the misogynist's fantasy life and whether we share that fantasy or not, we have to admit it's riddled with violence and hate... which means that society is, too I've been reading about the recent Gamergate debate(s) on Twitter - which I've still not got my head around, and am unlikely to, now that the number of tweet accusations flying around has reached critical mass.  But one thing that stuck with me after reading a few threads was the shocking blitheness with which guys on these threads bandy the word 'misandry' about.  They seem to have decided that the word 'misandrist' can be used to refer to any woman who says or thinks negative things about men.  Is being negative about sexist men such an innately ...

Is there really a 'war' between the sexes? Depends how you define war. If you define 'war' as an armed conflict between two groups of people who already have lands, rights and freedoms of their own, then there isn't any war between the sexes. In a 'war' both sides usually have access to weapons and defence training of some kind. Both sides are usually fighting to defend resources or rights that they have been granted by laws or traditions that they defined themselves. The struggle for gender equality is not like this at all: it has been led by women whom, until recently, could not even enter the military; who started off with no rights, freedoms, lands, laws or even elected leaders of their own. And how many 'wars' have you heard of where the victors simply want to work WITH their opponents and earn equal pay, or live with them in peace? The 'war' between the sexes is not really a war. If anything, it's a popular revolution; a mode...