On “innocence”

There’s a very interesting view in New Zealand that seems to permeate through certain sections of the population.
Namely, it’s the view that children are born innocent and that society corrupts them as they go along. The view that we should all aspire to be like children.
While I agree that there is much to be liked [...]

Let’s talk words (in which I am apolitically correct)

Words are powerful things. While the origin of the quote is disputed, back in the annals of history, several people opined something along the lines of “among great leaders, the pen is mightier than the sword”, referring to how the best leaders recognise the power of ideas before they recognise military power. Words fuel discrimination [...]

Advanced Consent (2), and some libertarian philosophy

Firstly- a quick apology for not being able to get this up sooner. We’ve had some wiring problems with the electricity that have stopped me from internetting until today.
Last time I covered why sex is risky and complicated, why there are excellent reasons to justify men saying no, and why arousal isn’t the same as [...]

Advanced Consent (1)

Seeing as I’m having a bit of writer’s block on the issue of gender essentialism at the moment, I thought I’d depart from my plan and do some advanced work on other types of consent, (ie. male and gay/lesbian consent) as was suggested in an earlier comment, because hey, it couldn’t hurt to sneak in [...]

Sexual Choices (and the introduction of tooltips)

Before I start this very late friday/saturday post, I’m quickly going to share two new features I’m going to add at least to all upcoming posts- I’m going to add tooltips every time I introduce a piece of jargon to that post, allowing you to better understand what I’m saying in my essay posts just [...]

In which consent is clarified

I mentioned earlier when I covered social attitudes to rape that meaningful consent has to be “explicit and free”. Many a man interested in exploring the murky deeps of gender politics from a male perspective dives into the issue of consent in straight sex, which I find almost painfully simple, and comes out with some [...]

Police ignore sexual misconduct

Idiot/Savant over at No Right Turn has an excellent piece on the fact that police have ignored the recommendation that they include guidelines on power abuse and other sexual misconduct in their Police Code.
Shame on the police- writing something like this into their code is an extraordinarily easy commitment to meet, and could have wide [...]

We’re all in this together

One of the most frustrating things for me to explain as a feminist and queer rights advocate (and occassional opponent of racism, although as a white male geek I am pretty out of touch on this one, even if one of my family members is in a relationship with a Maori woman) is that injustice [...]

Eating disorders are all in the mind.

Feministing had a wonderful piece about men’s body image concerns, particularly about John Prescott, the former deputy PM of Britain speaking out about his stress-induced bulimia. There was also mention of how 10% of eating disorders are suffered by men, aided by wonderful back-patting publications by buff lads like Men’s Health that help spread body [...]

Emergency contraception: Free in Auckland

TV3 did a small piece tonight in its main news confirming that the Auckland DHB has followed the Waikato in approving a plan to make the morning-after pill available for free from pharmacies. (They get bonus points for cleverly putting “uh oh” on the pills in their image) This is great news for women, as [...]