In an attempt to atone for its appalling record on gender diversity Ciao finally appoints a female columnist. Preach it, sister!
Dear FF – Should all males be convicted of rape as soon as they hit puberty and ceremonially drowned by their mother (assisted by any sisters or aunts they have) in a vat of menstrual blood on the night of the full moon while the music of Pussy Riot drowns out their patriarchal screams of entitlement?
Lysistrata, Leichhardt
FF replies: Of course they should – why are we even still debating that in this day and age? Now we’ve dealt with that old chestnut, let me move onto a personal bugbear. Occasionally, one of those dreary ‘Women of Colour’ feminists will round on me in some online forum and spit something along the lines of, “Clementine, you’re a North Shore private girl with a secure academic career teaching gender studies and a tasteful renovated workers cottage nestled betwixt high-priced art galleries and independent bookstores – what do you know of grinding oppression?” Suppressing the urge to intellectually bitch-slap the posturing, povo slut I usually respond that I am a woman, ergo my experience is directly analogous to that of the disenfranchised Aboriginal, the third-world labourer and the handicapped welfare recipient. Of course, my time and energy is best spent not on improving the lot of those losers but working on smashing the glass ceiling and making sure that well-educated, high-achieving women like me have greater access to even more prestigious, powerful and lucrative positions. Not, I hasten to add, out of any sense of self-interest but purely because once women like Hillary Rodham Clinton are running the joint a utopia will dawn in which there will be no war, famine, poverty, disease, crime, racism, classism, workplace hierarchies, porn, body hair removal, beauty products, housework, Dead White Male thinkers, inappropriate humour or feminine competitiveness; just lots of women endlessly empowering themselves at consciousness-raising sessions then engaging in non-penetrative, mutually respectful Sapphic lovemaking in chamomile-scented yurts.
