In Her Nature: Weekend Round-Up
Feminist writings to savour over a coffee and croissant
This week, in the midst of debates in the UK about the Assisted Dying Bill and the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Equality Act’s use of ‘woman’, I’ve put together a long view of a fascinating, depressing and highly relevant historical pattern: men jumping at the chance to identify ways in which new legislation, especially equalities legislation, can be used to hurt women. History shows us that legislators must never give men the benefit of the doubt, but must consult consult consult with women’s groups, in order to forestall misogynists’ exploitation of legal loopholes.
To Keep Women Safe, Legislators must Assume the Worst - not the Best - of Men
In the UK, we are in the midst of impassioned legal debates, in which the benefits of certain options for one group are being weighed against the attendant risks for other groups.
This week, I’ve also written about the links between my seemingly disparate Substack posts about feminism, trauma, abuse, running and DIY. I describe how my focus is on psychological patriarchy: how individual men and patriarchal culture damage women’s minds, bodies and wellbeing, often via abuse and trauma. I write from the perspective of a victim-survivor, as well as a feminist writer and a historian-biographer of wome…