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Rape and death threats are all too common in feminist circles, just ask Laura Bates
From jokes to rape, there have been nearly 60,000 posts by women recounting their experiences of sexism and sexist violence since journalist and feminist Laura Bates launched her Everyday Sexism project in April 2012. Now the material has been collected for the first time in a book of the same name.
I’ve been familiar with the project for some time. Yet the sheer pervasiveness and repetitiveness which emerges when the material is presented in book form, accompanied by Bates’ clear, angry, witty, feminist commentary, is refreshing, depressing and enraging.
I’ve been familiar with the project for some time. Yet the sheer pervasiveness and repetitiveness which emerges when the material is presented in book form, accompanied by Bates’ clear, angry, witty, feminist commentary, is refreshing, depressing and enraging.
If this sounds familiar …
Everyday Sexism also feels incredibly familiar – and not simply because of the inevitable echoes with my own experiences. I have read this book before.
It is the book Clare Short MP wrote in 1991, comprised of letters that women had written in support of her anti-Page Three campaign.
It is Sue Wise and Liz Stanley’s 1987 book Georgie Porgie where, like Bates, they talk about the “drip drip” effect of sexual harassment in reducing women’s aspirations, modifying their behaviour and creating a climate of everyday fearfulness.
It is Liz Kelly’s Surviving Sexual Violence, which in 1988 introduced the notion of a “continuum” of sexual violence: a concept Bates uses to powerful effect.
It is Everywoman’s 1988 publication of the civil rights hearings on pornography organised by the late Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon. There too, women and girls talked about how men’s everyday use of porn affected their lives and sense of self, even before the ubiquity of internet porn.
I could go on …
Everyday Sexism also feels incredibly familiar – and not simply because of the inevitable echoes with my own experiences. I have read this book before.
It is the book Clare Short MP wrote in 1991, comprised of letters that women had written in support of her anti-Page Three campaign.
It is Sue Wise and Liz Stanley’s 1987 book Georgie Porgie where, like Bates, they talk about the “drip drip” effect of sexual harassment in reducing women’s aspirations, modifying their behaviour and creating a climate of everyday fearfulness.
It is Liz Kelly’s Surviving Sexual Violence, which in 1988 introduced the notion of a “continuum” of sexual violence: a concept Bates uses to powerful effect.
It is Everywoman’s 1988 publication of the civil rights hearings on pornography organised by the late Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon. There too, women and girls talked about how men’s everyday use of porn affected their lives and sense of self, even before the ubiquity of internet porn.
I could go on …
http://theconversation.com/rape-and-death-threats-are-all-too-common-in-feminist-circles-just-ask-laura-bates-25418