If I had been shown this poem, ‘If you don’t come…’ by Christa Bell at age 17, I think it would have blown my mind.  (If you haven’t seen it, I guarantee it will be the best four minutes of your day if you watch it now).  I was aiming for a high shock value when I showed it to a group of sixth form students at Hills Road Sixth Form College in Cambridge, the top state sixth form in the country.  I had been asked to do a lunchtime talk on feminism for students by their sociology teacher, who told me that his students were sceptical about feminism and didn’t see the need for it – a red rag to a bull!  After consulting the glorious feminist twittersphere, I decided to talk about the equal right to sexual pleasure. Read the full story

Of late I have been trying to work out where I stand in relation to porn. Read the full story

November 11th 2011 saw an exciting joint symposium between the Youth studies and Sexualities BERA SIG at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. Read the full story

GEA’s policy officer, Miriam David, coordinated our response to the UK government’s current consultation on Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) and Sex and Relationships Education (SRE). Read the full story

Davina’s paper looked at the Toronto Women and Trans Bath House, a venue for sex between women who were often strangers, as an example of an ‘everyday utopia’. The notion of how to institutionalise social change lay behind the argument, but Davina was more focussed on alternatives to an institutionalised ethics which has become embedded in the ‘fetishisation of a colonised future’. Read the full story

Becky Francis’ keynote took on the task of exploring the current place of gender in the education system. She reflected on our current place as researchers in gender and education, on the theoretical challenges of our work and on our relationship to practice. Read the full story

Whilst I am always happy to see critical discussion on the role of sex and relationship education in schools and youth centres, worryingly, this week saw a new amendment narrowly passed in the UK Commons. Read the full story

In the wake of Japan’s catastrophic earthquake and tsunami, the English service of China Radio International reports that among the groups sending their condolences to the Japanese people has been a group of South Korean elderly women who organized a silent demonstration to commemorate the victims of the earthquake. Read the full story

On the 15^th October the End Violence Against Women (EVAW) organisation called upon the Coalition Government to urgently address the “alarming levels” of sexual harassment and violence against young women in schools. Their YouGov 2010 online survey of 788 16-18 year olds found that a third (29%) of young women reported unwanted sexual touching at school and witnessed routine sexual name-calling on a daily or twice-weekly basis. Over a quarter (28%) said they had seen sexual pictures on mobile phones at school twice a month or more. In the same month, Girl Guiding UK continued to fight the sexualisation of girl culture by delivering a 25,000 signature petition to Downing Street calling for the Government to introduce compulsory labelling for all airbrushed images. This concern addressed the findings from their Girls’ Attitudes Survey, in which 50% of the girls reported that they would consider having surgery to change their looks and more than half had been bullied for their appearance. Indeed, the impact of ‘sexualisation’ upon girls and young women has become the subject of high profile controversial reports and inquiries from a number of government and non-governmental bodies (Home Office 2010). Read the full story