The Labor government appears to have a spring in its step. After months of poor polls and difficulty passing legislation, things now seem to be going Labor’s way. In recent weeks, the government has been…
The opening round of respectful tributes have been flowing through the media after the death of Helen Gurley Brown. The original Sex and the City girl died in New York on Monday, aged 90. Long-reigning…
This trend will continue into the 2014 Winter Olympics with women permitted for the first time to compete in ski jumping. Since their inclusion in the modern Olympics in Paris in 1900, female participation…
Vibrators have been causing a buzz for as long as they’ve existed: sometimes this happens behind closed doors, and sometimes in the public sphere. But as the new film Hysteria shows, there’s still fascination…
Who said we could have it all, anyway? This notion is a media myth that somehow translated the idea that women should not be excluded from any sphere on the basis of sex into the sexy but fallacious view…
When one reads an opinion piece littered with references to “liberal elites”, it is usually a safe bet that one is reading an inherently conservative point of view dressed up to look progressive. So it…
I’m a fan of the retention of pubic hair. I don’t much like the idea of breast implants. Thoughts of vaginoplasty coax me into an involuntary Kegel exercise. I’ve no idea why any woman would bleach her…
The front page of Saturday’s edition of the Sydney Morning Herald on the weekend was dominated by a story about the actor Rachel Griffiths and her husband, artist Andrew Taylor “playing swapsies” with…
Equal pay was, and still is, one of the key demands of feminists. Basic to any idea of gender equity should be that paid work is fairly rewarded, whether it’s undertaken by a male or female. In early Australian…
It is time we recognised pornography as part of popular culture. Millions of people watch the content the porn industry produces. And make no mistake, it produces a lot of content. According to prominent…
The poster for Secretary is up on my wall at work. I actually paid to see A Dangerous Method purely for Jung’s novel approach to therapy (and God do I hate period films.) While I probably won’t read all…
It seems Australians aren’t ready for a real debate on porn and sex. Yet. The Australian reported last month that Telstra was offering “soft-core pornography” with titles like “Dirty Housewife and Hot…
US conservative radio show host Rush Limbaugh apologised to a young woman this week. His apology to law student Sandra Fluke is unusual for a number of reasons, chiefly because shock jocks are rarely called…
As one of the few women to have run a political party in this country Cheryl Kernot is well aware of the role gender plays in the Australian political landscape. In the wake of Bob Brown’s claim this week…
SEVEN BILLION PEOPLE: I had better write fast. Sometime between my deadline to submit this story and the time it goes live, the estimated world population will exceed 7 billion for the first time ever…
There’s a new generation of women quietly getting things done in China. They are insiders: well connected in the Communist Party, and flourishing in the business world. In Chinese, capable and shrewd women…
Defence Minister Stephen Smith has announced the Australian Defence Force will open up full employment opportunities for women. In a decision made by Cabinet on Monday night, with the full support of the…
No one is too surprised today if a young woman becomes a doctor, lawyer, or executive. But eyebrows are raised just about as much today as in decades past if a couple features a tall woman and short man…
Pornography is hardly an under-theorised medium. For decades, radical feminists have decried its imagery as an instruction manual for rape. As women being objectified, humiliated, tortured. As men receiving…
I was recently approached by a young journalist, who asked for my comments on the Feminist Porn Awards. In the course of the interview, she asked if I thought feminists should watch porn. I replied that…
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne