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Late night supermarket in Berlin’s wild west. Two pretty girls in their pretty outfits are queuing ahead of me, they have high arses and high heels and high ponies, their hair spilling from the crowns of their heads. The blonde one rolls her three bottles away slightly from my lumpy ginger root and my mesh […]

4

I saw two girls, two women, long-haired and standing round bags, close together on the subway and talking American. The train jolted round a corner and the girl nearer me fell against her lover as if accidentally, snatching a kiss as she fell. The lover was displeased, detached herself, stood gazing out at the striped […]

Yesterday walking down a very Turkish street I saw four groups of boys, one after the other, carrying large, menacing, (plastic) bazookas. One held his fake sub-machine gun to his friend’s head as the friend squirmed and several times tried to bat it away. An eight-year old carrying the Ramadan bread tucked it under his […]

“I’m not racist or anything, but… [racist remark]” vs: “I’m not a feminist or anything, but [women are people too.]” Why is it still embedded in our use of language that we need to apologize for opposing hatred of women the same way we need to apologize for hating people of other races?  

2

Group of academics at the breakfast table, they are five women and one man. “So it involves all of my areas of interest,” says one, “gendered language, and… I’ll be doing some structural violence…” She rolls her hand to indicate these topics are known and need not be enumerated. “Oh, interesting,” says her nearest neighbour. […]