What’s Current: Men are allowed to age, why aren’t women?

Glosswitch asks: “Why don’t we value older women?”

“As shown by the recent furore over Germaine Greer lecturing at Cardiff University, it’s not enough to disagree with an older woman. One must cast her as ‘a dinosaur’ facing ‘a slow and painful extinction.’”

The Becky Watts murder shows that in a world of violence against women, porn is just one more form of it. (Sarah Ditum)

University academics say it’s “natural and normal for males to be aroused by children.”

“Women are just better at this stuff”: Is emotional labour feminism’s next frontier?

“In a work context, emotional labor refers to the expectation that a worker should manipulate either her actual feelings or the appearance of her feelings in order to satisfy the perceived requirements of her job. Emotional labor also covers the requirement that a worker should modulate her feelings in order to influence the positive experience of a client or a colleague.

It also includes influencing office harmony, being pleasant, present but not too much, charming and tolerant and volunteering to do menial tasks (such as making coffee or printing documents).

Think of air hostesses, which was one of Hochschild’s main examples in 1983, having to cater to clients’ needs with an accommodating smile and a sympathetic ear, no matter how tired or disgusted they are by a vomiting child or a sleazy business class male customer.”

Shakespeare’s plays do not pass the Bechdel test. Luckily, an all-female troupe of players and directors is remedying this by putting on Shakespeare plays with an all-female cast! Famous Shakespearian actress, Dame Harriet Walter says:

“[Shakespeare] doesn’t write less well for women; it’s just that the themes are smaller, on the whole, and they are less fulfilled characters. When the greatest playwright—so considered—in the English language leaves women out of the picture so much, it has a bad effect on your sense of worth, because the culture that followed in his shadow has reinforced that. It does have an effect on us.”

Susan Cox

Susan Cox is a feminist writer and academic living in the United States. She teaches in Philosophy.