RosieH

maxxi Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > i think they are like EDF aristocracy Are you mental? They're like EDF idiocracy ;-) edited to add a winky punctuation face, because that might have appeared ruder than intended.

I think the same should go for people who ski, bungee jump or play rugby.

Nonsense, the Lounge is for talking about whatever we like. I think you're thinking of the as-yet-not-created-but-if-I-ever-get-my-way-it-will-be Sandpit section, maxxi.

Or just head down to White Stuff.

In which case, I say slap a Wombles patch on your back pocket and all will be right with the world.

My love for Ted Max > your love for Ted Max I've never made a faux pas. Unless you count my sugar nipples in a new business pitch. I've never looked at a picture of myself with a dodgy haircut or ra-ra skirt and wondered what I was thinking. I was thinking I loved my outfit. I was thinking ain't life sweet in my over-knee socks and bowler hat, or my red womble cords, or my flared jeans that soaked up the Manchester rainwater like so much chromatography. If you're ashamed of something you wore, you want to take a good hard look at yourself and ask just what have you become? You used to be so carefree, so full of joie de vivre, you used to run down hills just because they were there, and go for a quick fumble behind the bike sheds and listen to bands your parents hated, and now you're just a bitter old hack who begrudges the young 'uns their fluoro nail varnish and Primark tat.

Do people still take acid?

angeles y gitanos now if you were to say more like Brindisa, I'd be in like flynn

As I said before, I do think the Annabel Chong story is something of a red herring in this debate, because it's so very extreme. There are arguments to say that she's a very damaged individual, but even if you don't subscribe to that, a record-breaking 251 sexual acts in 10 hours can polarise opinion in a way that I would argue doesn't help the case of ordinary women who are sick of being judged for having slept with more people than their partners, or even fewer, but still "too many". The pill with its holy grail promise of the zipless f*ck has come to be something of a double edged sword. At last. all the sex we ever wanted, and no need to cut out our wombs because we can now fuck with impunity so no more hysterical coughs because we fell in love with bearded pervy old men. And then comes the judgment of all and sundry (and yes H, other women as well as men) and we come crashing down like Icarus in lipstick.

Oh, just to add, nice to be on the same side for once, Huge.

LadyD, have you actually seen it? I've seen some of it, but couldn't watch it all: she self-harms IN the film. She slashes her arm with a knife. I'd consider that to be an actual source, wouldn't you? While I applaud your desire to see every woman in porn or prostitution as positively exploring her sexuality, I think your glasses are more than a little rose tinted. She doesn't look as though she's enjoying herself, and people who have both seen the film and interviewed her have suggested that in actual fact, she was the one exploited by her film-maker boyfriend.

Sex the Annabel Chong Story [quote name=The documentary reveals to the viewers that she was gang raped as a student living in London and describes her many complex emotional issues, including signs of depression, self harm,and substance abuse.] I was aware of the event at the time. Initially I thought more power to her elbow, or indeed, vagina. Until I looked into it more, and then I felt sad.

LadyD, I'm not accusing women who have many sexual partners of being mentally ill. I'm saying this particular woman had issues: Chong had a history of self-harm after having been gang-raped, and at a time when awareness of AIDS was high, she took no precautions with her health. I would suggest that's another form of self-harm. And I would suggest that makes Chong a red herring in the argument. Of course women should be able to indulge their sexual appetite without fear of having their womb removed before an audience of slavering men. Or just being called a slut. no brainer, surely?

you would

mockney piers Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Of course they wouldn't, she's obviously a bloody > loon. Well yes. Evidentemente. My point was precisely that, though it didn't stop the men having sex with her. Personally I prefer to have sex with people I actually like.

Damian, I think there was widespread concern among women that the stunt was in fact a grotesque film of self-harm that had come on the back of earlier sexual abuse. There were serious concerns about the state her mental health. The lack of precautions taken (no use of condoms / sexual health testing of the participants) and her comment that she likes to be treated like a piece of meat, and talking about the pain involved are probably pretty instrumental in women's not taking a positive view of this as some affirmative piece of empowerment theatre. It blatantly wasn't. And of course the men were blase, 251 of them fucked her. But would any of those men have married or made her their girlfriend subsequently? There's the dichotomy.

I agree. Many many around me need to find a book and a history of the sex. Not me though. I wrote the book. No no, I didn't, LadyD did. I just read at her knee.

Badoom-tish. I love Fridays.

Haha, yes Hughie, to be fair, I can see how you ask the question. I actually read it as the concept of slut, which probably says more about me than it does about you. And you're right again, women want all kinds of things from a man. But I'm yet to meet a woman who actually thinks less of a man because he deigned to sleep with her.

Huguenot Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I'd barely got a paragraph into it before she > asserted that men invented the word 'slut'. Well to be pedantic, she doesn't say men invented the word. Dearest Huguenot, you do this on every single feminist argument and one of these days I'm going to come over there and slap you round the chops with a bloody tampon. Don't get so caught up in a sense of your own indignance that you refuse to enagage sensibly with the argument, it's beneath you and a little toddler / toys / prams. She said a mean thing about some boys and I'm a boy so therefore she's calling me Jack the Ripper. The madonna / whore dichotomy is fairly widely accepted. Women come up against it regularly. I know I have, and I know it wasn't from women establishing a pecking order, it was men employing double standards. So stop being an idiot.

Yeah Quids, I don't blame the media really - they lived down to my expectations - even where I'd expect better like in the Guardian. The whole debate's pretty fractured, even within the feminist community. (Although I wouldn't include Victoria, however sharp her cardery). To reclaim or not reclaim the word "slut", to dress deliberately provocatively or not (and by that I don't meean sexually, just literally to provoke a reaction), and something I hadn't heard before the walk itself, only since, but does the walk somehow commodify feminism by packaging it up in a nice pretty brand like a burlesque tea party. However for me, the Feminist Library summed it up nicely as "an energetic wave of feminist activism against rape, victim-blaming and police sexism". That makes me happy when I see so many interviews with D list celebs who litter the pages of our most popular magazines as role models for the intellectually stunted and morally bankrupt, and shun "feminism" as not for them.

On the welly front, I recommend Aigle. French chic without David's camel. And GaGa is too irritatingly look at me, look at me, love me please love me to be stylish. She's just taken Katy Perry's girl-kissing to a whole new meat-dress level.

yeah, you'd better run, girlie

Well it might Mockney, if any fucker actually bothered to look at pictures of the fucking thing. MOST PEOPLE WERE WEARING JEANS AND T SHIRTS. Christ on a bike, how many times do I have to say that I was there and saw what people were wearing and it's not what Victoria Coren (who can frankly shove it up her, I'm-a-woman-me-and-I-play-poker-and-it's-just-so-liberating-and-men-find-it-sexy arse) thinks, so and her fucking stupid assumption that the Slutwalk was a load of riot grrls in their bras and pants was fucking stupid. And what's that, "fitted dress" you say Victoria, you great big slut you. So Piers, lovely Piers, reader of history and fact and normally quite sensible Piers. GET YOUR FUCKING FACTS STRAIGHT. ahem.

What was that Janet Jackson / Luther Vandross song where they "improvise" a bit towards the end and she says, "Oooh, Luther"? Spot on Janet, Idris Elba is delicious. And I think I've said this before on here somewhere (in many respects, this place is like the morning room in an old people's home, all telling each other the same stories over and over and occasionally soiling ourselves), but Cracker was just as improbable in his powers of deduction: what's that, he used the possessive with the gerund but has the hands of a labourer? He must be a monk. I blame Conan Doyle.