Feminism has fought no wars. It has killed no opponents. It has set up no concentration camps, starved no enemies, practiced no cruelties. Its battles have been for education, for the vote, for better working conditions, for safety in the streets, for child care, for social welfare, for rape crisis centres, women’s refuges, reforms in the law. If someone says, ‘Oh, I’m not a feminist’, I ask, ‘Why? What’s your problem?’

           ― Dale Spender, Man Made Language (1980)

Dear Women,

You’d think everyone knows it’s a man’s world, right? Well, men don’t, and why would they? Men are the default human, after all, so they don’t need to think about themselves in the ways that women do.

That’s why WAAC has Caroline Criado Perez’s new book, Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, on order, so watch the WAAC Library space for when it arrives. Her research explains why our chainsaw chaps don’t fit properly, why we can’t find small-enough chainsaw gloves, why our chainsaw safety glasses don’t sit right, and why the bloke at the chainsaw shop never looks us in the eye (presumably out of a sense of bamboozlement). But hey, women aren’t supposed to use chainsaws, probably, so, you know. Our fault.

Yours in Sisterhood,

The Women of WAAC.

EVENTS, ETC.

• Symposium: Climate change adaptation in Asia and the Pacific. Is gender relevant?
• Hidden Figures at the Shine Dome
• Self-defence workshop

SEXISM, MISOGYNY, HARASSMENT, PATRIARCHY, GENERAL ICKINESS

• The deadly truth about a world built for men – from stab vests to car crashes (to space suits …)
• ‘Make another suit,’ Clinton tells NASA after scrapped all-female spacewalk
• Air-conditioning: Why might women feel temperature differently from men?
• Uganda’s new tourism campaign blatantly objectifies women
• #MeToo reaches Mexico: majority of women in media report harassment at work
• ‘Enough is enough’: Nigerian women fight sexual harassment and groping in markets
• Women’s pain is different from men’s — the drugs could be, too

PORNOGRAPHY

• UK websites that have a third or more pornographic content will require users to provide a driver’s license for proof of age
• UK Government vows to protect women from unwanted penis photos
• The rise of image-based abuse online: It’s time to stamp out the trolls

PROSTITUTION & TRAFFICKING

• Kachin women from Myanmar ‘raped until they get pregnant’ in China
• There’s nothing woke about the sex trade, by Julie Bindel, Legend
• Another comfort woman survivor passes away without apology from Japanese government
• Hundreds of child sex dolls seized at UK borders
• 50 women accuse tech giant salesforce of facilitating’ their sex trafficking and prostitution

MALE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

• Jailed Saudi women activists testify they’ve been caned and groped while in custody
• ‘Embarrassing and strange’: Boxer kisses female reporter on lips during interview
• ‘High-risk’ transgender inmates at Downview mix with women
• Domestic and family violence, housing insecurity and homelessness (ANROWS research synthesis)

NEW IN THE WAAC LIBRARY
Please see Megan to borrow a book from the WAAC library.

• Down Girl. The logic of misogyny, Kate Manne (2018)
• Women Who Run With the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estés (1996)
• Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman, Phyllis Chesler (2009; available in PDF via the link, or in hard copy from Megan)