language: a feminist guide

This summer a publisher sent me a free copy of a book which someone evidently thought would be right up my street.

One of last week’s media talking points was a study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (JESP), which attracted attention mainly because of its claim that women use exclamation marks three times as much as men.

Over the years I have regularly been driven to distraction by the habit, especially among adults talking to young children, of referring to virtually all non-human animals as “he”.

This month we learned that the linguist Robin Lakoff had died at the age of 82.

Last week the bromance between Donald Trump and Elon Musk ended in a spectacular war of words on social media.

Since my last post was about the phrase “women of a certain age”, I was intrigued to see a report in the Mail Online last week which claimed that Bristol University wants to ban it, along with other ageist expressions like “golden years” and “silver surfe…

Recently, as everyone reading this in Britain will already know, the Masterchef presenter Gregg Wallace became the latest in a long line of Men On TV (the industry term is “talent”, though in this case it’s never been clear what talent TV producers thought

Last week the Taliban in Afghanistan published a 114-page document setting out the latest official version of its laws on “vice and virtue”.

After a knife attack in Southport left two dead and nine injured—six of them critically (one of whom has since died)—the police announced that a person described only as a 17-year old male had been charged with murder and attempted murder.

The last few weeks have been All About The Men—and I’m not talking about the football, I’m talking about the election.