Feminist Current

Emily Witt’s recent essay, in which she describes traveling to San Fransisco, where she watches a BDSM porn shoot for a Kink.com series called Public Disgrace, which depicts “women bound, stripped, and punished in public,” inspired a number of responses. Despite my, probably obvious, criticisms of both porn and the BDSM genre, in particular, the piece [...]

About five years ago, I was out and about with some dude-friends. We went to a bunch of bars, danced, drank, etc. I was single and also, therefore, mingling. Flirting, they call it. Eventually when there was no more bar-hopping to be had, we went back to a friend’s house and laughed and talked and [...]

After all my frustrated and repetitive attempts at trying to explain the difference between porn and images of naked bodies and the difference between objectification and images of female sexuality that aren’t exploitative or sexualized, Sunday night’s episode of Girls basically did it all for me. Go watch it, if you can, but here’s a [...]

I spoke with Feministing’s executive editor, Samhita Mukhopadhyay, back in February 2012 about the romantic industrial complex and her ‘Occupy Valentine’s Day’ initiative. She wrote, in a blog post: In an effort to push the bounds of that exclusivity that so many of us feel on Valentine’s day, I wanted to think about the ways [...]

If you haven’t yet heard about revenge porn, you’re lucky. Notorious dickbag, Hunter Moore, is big into the revenge porn game. He can be credited with mainstreaming the concept of punishing your ex by posting their nude photos online without their permission via his website, IsAnyoneUp.com. Doesn’t take much to get rich these days, just [...]

This interview was recorded in July 2011 and originally aired on Vancouver Co-op Radio.   In this episode, Meghan Murphy explores the older man/younger woman relationship with guest, Hugo Schwyzer. We’ve all heard or seen the cliche that is the middle-aged man who, maybe post-divorce, seeks out a much younger woman; but whether it be [...]

Meghan Murphy speaks with neuroscience journalist, Maia Szalavitz, about some of the controversial claims made about female sexuality in Naomi Wolf’s new book, Vagina. In her article, ‘Naomi Wolf’s Vagina Aside, What Neuroscience Really Says About Female Desire‘, Szalavitz debunks many of Wolf’s conclusions around the science of female sexual pleasure, including the ways she [...]

Shut-up and spread your legs. That’s the gist of some of the most recent advice offered by Australian sex therapist Bettina Arndt to the heterosexual women of the world in her series of books about what men want in bed and why women should give it to them. Over the last few years, Arndt has [...]

Margaret Wente is doing her part to contribute to the desperately needed cannon of writing that encourages women to live in fear of growing old, man-free. These kinds of pieces have been coming out on a regular basis for some time now. Notably, Susan Faludi addressed ye old ‘man shortage’ scare in her 1991 book, [...]

Earlier this month ago I began a little project based on the frequently asked question: “Can men and women be ‘just’ friends?” For the purposes of my (and hopefully your) entertainment and interest, I’ve been publishing transcripts from some of these interviews. Sam I met Sam in grad school.  He is 32 years old, heterosexual, [...]

Earlier this month ago I began a little project based on the frequently asked question: “Can men and women be ‘just’ friends?” For the purposes of my (and hopefully your) entertainment and interest, I’ve been publishing transcripts from some of these interviews. Amy Amy is a 33 year old heterosexual woman. She is engaged to [...]

A couple of weeks ago I began a little project based on the frequently asked question: “Can men and women be ‘just’ friends?” For the purposes of my (and hopefully your) entertainment and interest, I’ve been publishing transcripts from some of these interviews. Daniel Daniel is a 37 year old single heterosexual male and a [...]

The third interview I did for this series was with my friend Chris; a 27 year old bisexual woman who is in what she calls a ‘monogamish’ (so, monogamous, but flexible) relationship with a man. I met Chris through my ex-boyfriend. She plays music with some of his friends and band mates and is super [...]

Last week I began a little project based on the frequently asked question: “Can women and men be ‘just’ friends?” For the purposes of my (and hopefully your) entertainment and interest, I’ll be publishing transcripts from some of the interviews I conduct over the next week or two.   Tom The second interview I did [...]

“Can women and men be ‘just’ friends” is probably one of the stupidest, yet most-asked questions in lazy feminist/sex/gender writing… So here we go! In July, The Daily Mail published an article about a recent study done on the subject, writing: Researchers have found that men’s friendships with the opposite sex are driven by  sexual [...]

Much of the response to Hanna Rosin’s latest Atlantic piece, “Boys on the Side” runs something like this Jezebel headline: “Finally Someone Says It! Hookup Culture is Great for Women!”  Rosin’s article details the rise of “hookup culture” (a phrase I detest but can’t think of anything better, or at least anything as self-explanatory) on [...]

As feminists, sleeping with men is always going to be a little fraught. Not getting to the actual act, per se – jumping into bed with people we feel like jumping into bed with can be pretty straightforward – rather the politics surrounding feminists having sex with men within the context of a patriarchy as [...]