Sex trafficking and Child pornography
If you thought MindGeek couldn’t get in any more hot water, they’re now facing a $600 million class-action lawsuit. MindGeek operates dozens of porn websites. PornHub is their most popular one. At the end of last year, Mastercard and Visa stopped processing payments on PornHub. Very soon after, PornHub deleted around 80% of their platform’s content. These were videos from unverified accounts.
This lawsuit was filed at the end of December. The class representative is an anonymous woman who was raped at the age of 12. Video footage of her rape was uploaded to PornHub ten years ago. She alleges that PornHub ignored her pleas to delete the rape video from their platform. …
We must never take them for granted
Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinions starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there — fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge — they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling you’ll find that love actually is all around. …
Since we keep getting asked about it
As a woman who’s spent a few years on Reddit, I’d like to discuss a recurring phenomenon I’ve noticed there. No, I’m not talking about r/AskReddit’s obsession with people’s masturbatory habits.
I’m talking about the frequent question asked on female-centric subreddits.
‘So…what do you ladies think of MGTOW?’
Cue the eye roll.
Some of you lucky souls might be wondering, ‘what the hell is MGTOW?’ Let’s break it down, shall we? MGTOW stands for, ‘Men Going Their Own Way.’ It’s a subreddit for straight men who have chosen to remain single.
As a straight woman, I’ve taken it upon myself to answer this question. …
It’s time to farewell 2020. I’m curious to know what the world has learned from this year. I have learned that worrying does exactly nothing. I’ve learned about courage from…
Say goodbye to the strawberry dress, ‘cos there’s a new fruit in town
Remember when coolness was all about being hardcore? Well, 2020 turned that concept on its head. We were locked inside for most of the year and wound up with a severe case of cabin fever.
This brought on the ultra-niche aesthetic of Cabin Core. Punters plastered their Instagram feeds with home baking, plaid fabrics, fleece jackets and warm tones. Before Cabin Core, we saw the floral older sister trend, Cottage Core, with its infamous strawberry dress that didn’t suit anyone. …
This win for victims seems to be upsetting a lot of people
There are three types of people in the world:
- people who are happy with the recent mass deletion of videos from PornHub.
- People who are unhappy with this outcome.
- People who don’t know what has been happening on PornHub.
For those of you who fit into the third category, let’s do a quick run-down. For years, PornHub has hosted pornography, some of which isn’t consensual. This includes rape, child rape, trafficking, revenge porn, and hidden camera porn. Victims have implored PornHub over the past few years to remove non-consensual content. Sometimes, PornHub deleted this vile content, only for it to resurface again in the future. …
How I built a better relationship with myself and others
An old school friend sent me a private message on Instagram, her tone concerned:
“Is everything alright? Are you okay?”
This was a year and a half ago, soon after I’d deleted my Facebook account and messenger forever. Because she lived far away and was an important part of my life, I’d let her know I was leaving before, in private. The truth was, I hadn’t been okay. Not for a long time. When I left Facebook, I tried to do it with the least fanfare possible.
Why I quit Facebook
There was one reason you’ve no doubt heard before: I didn’t trust Zuckerberg. I didn’t trust his handling of data and user’s private information. I hated Facebook’s policies and poor handling of abuse towards marginalized groups. I didn’t like the constant stream of adverts and the manipulative nature of the algorithm. …
I’m attempting my first short-form, since I don’t know what to write, today. I’m borrowing Linda Caroll’s idea, and posting my five top-performing posts on Medium thus far. Why are…
Author: Clementine Ford
Boys Will Be Boys is the sequel to Clementine Ford’s book, Fight Like a Girl. I had been meaning to read both for years, and this year, I got around to listening to both as audiobooks. My review for her first book is here. I’d heard many rave reviews and been a fan of Clem’s work for years.
Fight Like a Girl talks predominantly about women, featuring personal anecdotes. Boys Will Be Boys is a little different. This book tackles the harmful effects of toxic masculinity on society.
If you’ve ever heard, ‘well, men get raped, too,’ in conversations about women, this book addresses that. It discusses what happens to male victims and how society responds to it. Spoiler alert: like women, male victims suffer from society’s dismissal of them. Clementine addresses the myth of unfair treatment towards men in family court. It’s common to blame feminism for unfavorable outcomes for men. Clementine challenges this view and shares the reality of what happens. …
How do we confront the gatekeeping culture of the comedy scene?
‘Women aren’t funny.’ It’s a line society has peddled for decades. Female comedians still struggle to break into this industry, as much as ever. But is this because women aren’t funny, or are there other factors at play? One study suggests it’s an issue of bias, rather than fact:
College students (N = 228) from 3 countries (Britain, Canada, and Australia) rated the funniness of male- and female-authored cartoon captions while blind to the gender of the caption authors. Participants were then asked to guess the gender of the caption authors and which gender they believe to be the funniest. Participants both male and female in the Canadian and British samples believed men are the funniest gender, whereas participants in the Australian sample were split between men as funnier or the genders as equally funny. No difference was found between funniness ratings of male- and female-authored captions for the Canadian and Australian samples. The British sample rated female-authored captions as funnier. Support was found for a bias in attributing male authorship to the funniest cartoon captions and female authorship to the least funny for all countries. This stereotype may be self-fulfilling in nature, and additional mechanisms maintaining this stereotype are proposed. …
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