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By sal • 15 years ago

No, ex-colleague, I don’t want to know your bra colour!

I wish I hadn’t checked my Facebook yesterday.

Even though I was immediately disturbed by the bra colour status trend once I worked it out, I was annoyed to catch myself imagining what lies beneath the shirts of several of my female friends and associates, young and old, as I saw their updates.

I can’t help but feel that it created a new platform to objectify millions of women and reduced them to their body parts. Not that I’m advocating bra-shame, but I think we can read between the lines and see who benefits most from these updates.

For those few split seconds it felt like I, a mostly straight woman, was thinking inappropriately about women I’m not even attracted to. I would never ever have visualised these particular women in that way had I not seen their status updates. I just can’t help but wonder if they considered who amongst their friends might be doing the same.

In comments people keep associating it with breast cancer awareness (or at least a reminder to check breasts for lumps) but I found what I think is the original chain message and it does not mention this once. It’s all in the name of ‘fun’ and supposedly ‘awareness’ but I can’t help but wonder, in the interest of improving the status of women, can’t we do better for ourselves than announcing our bra colour to the world?

I was tempted to update my status with ‘Ash – burnt it’ but ...
By sal • 15 years ago

Help me: my feminist boyfriend paid for a ‘happy ending’

My boyfriend, who identifies as a feminist, paid a prostituted woman in a ‘massage parlour’ for a hand job on Friday, after being pressured to participate by a male colleague who he was desperate to impress.

He doesn’t even like massages.

I’m totally devastated on two fronts. Firstly, I just finished a postgraduate thesis on feminism and the sex industry. I won’t go into the details of the topic, but the more I researched, the more I came to intuitively feel that the liberal pro-prostitution position and its murky distinctions between force and freedom were problematic. By the end of the process, I became more and more sympathetic to radical feminists like Sheila Jeffreys (whose recent book The Industrial Vagina is a ...

My boyfriend, who identifies as a feminist, paid a prostituted woman in a ‘massage parlour’ for a hand job on Friday, after being pressured to participate by a male colleague who he was desperate to impress.

He doesn’t ...
By sal • 15 years ago

Tell me about your mother…

I had a really unfortunate experience growing up with a mother who was secretly mean to me at home but heaped praise onto me in public. She was and still is very distant emotionally and I don’t really know who her authentic self is. I can only ever remember her talking to people about me as defined by my prizes and achievements. She actually became emotionally abusive in my early teens and would scream in my face for hours and hours on end. I didn’t know it was abuse until nearly a decade later and I think I just used to disassociate and ignore it by day to survive. It affected my emotional and personal development in many ways. I ...

I had a really unfortunate experience growing up with a mother who was secretly mean to me at home but heaped praise onto me in public. She was and still is very distant emotionally and I don’t ...
By sal • 16 years ago

Yeah, fucking hilarious… Australian footballers and sexual assault (Trigger Warning)

This is a desperate post from Down Under.

Three Brisbane Broncos players were questioned by police after a 24-year-old woman alleged she was sexually assaulted in the male toilets of the Alhambra Lounge in inner-city Fortitude Valley last Saturday night.

As Jessica noted , Not a single Australian footballer has EVER been convicted of sexual assault in 28 years, despite so so many bloody allegations being made. What is even more concerning is the public reaction to the allegations. Even the (female) Police Minister said that fans should continue to support the team and ‘encouraged’ the public not to judge the players.

Breathe.

Over the last few days, I have been so upset by the public reaction on news websites and social ...

This is a desperate post from Down Under.

Three Brisbane Broncos players were questioned by police after a 24-year-old woman alleged she was sexually assaulted in the male toilets of the Alhambra Lounge in inner-city Fortitude Valley last ...