Weekly round-up and open thread

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Welcome to another weekly round-up, where we share (what we see as) the most interesting and important articles and essays from the previous seven days. This week’s collection of links includes everything from #FreeKesha to Paper’s conversation with bell hooks and Emma Watson. We’d love to hear your thoughts on either (or both!) of these issues or on any of the other issues covered.

As always, linking to articles does not mean endorsement from the F-Word and certain links may be triggering. We welcome debate in the comments section and on Facebook/Twitter but remind readers that any comments containing sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic or disablist language will be deleted immediately.

If you notice that we’ve missed out any important articles from the past week, feel free to let us know.

On the sad inevitability of the grown man and the teenage girl (The Pool)

A Kind of Grace (Harper’s Magazine)

From the article: “The safe space does not guarantee protection, but it does offer a method for thinking harder about cruelty. The contingent, strategic demand for safety is not a retreat from reality but a closer examination of reality’s contours — not in every case, yet often enough that its critics should be more careful.”

The remarkably different answers men and women give when asked who’s the smartest in the class (The Washington Post)

Gender quotas do not pose a threat to “merit” at any stage of the political process (Democratic Audit)

Court of Appeal rules Government cuts to legal aid for victims of domestic violence ‘legally flawed’ (Independent)

Public toilets – the key battleground for bigots wanting to legislate trans people out of existence (Guardian)

When Neutral is Really Default Setting For Male (and White): A Slightly Non-Scientific SocMed Experiment (Sunny Singh Online)

From the article: “The change in handle took all sexualised, gendered, and racialised interaction to zero. Some discussion with women friends on twitter raised the additional possibility that perhaps a large dog, especially a Rottweiler, was being read as male. The next step seemed to test out (1) if this were true and (2) would a dog visually read as more ‘femme’ change the interactions. So next photograph was of our little Dachshund.”

What Bill Cosby taught me about sexual violence and flying (Literary Hub)

From the article: “Committing to not just valuing consent with partners, but willing ourselves to have hard, loving conversations with friends and partners about where we’ve been sexually, where we hope to go, and the roles that violence has played in our history, might be part of the work. Making sure that survivors of sexual, domestic and interpersonal violence living in poverty have healthy, free alternative places to stay and heal when home is bloody and emotionally destructive might be part of the work, too.”

Kesha Was Sexually Assaulted And Yet Capitalism Still Wins (Ravishly)

All children need to learn about sexual consent – it’s their right (The Guardian)

Susan Cahill: ‘My abortion was not remotely traumatic … I have no regrets’ (The Irish Times)

Do women really say sorry all the time? (The Debrief)

In conversation with bell hooks and Emma Watson (Paper)

As Rental Prices Rise, Women Stay In Bad Relationships to Survive (Broadly)

‘The lowest of the stack’: why black women are struggling with mental health (The Guardian)

The Media’s Reporting of Murdered Mother and Sex Worker Jessica McGraa Is a Disgrace (Vice)

The image is used under creative commons with thanks to John Talbot on Flickr. It shows a cherry blossom tree in full bloom against an extremely vivid blue sky.