I have a friend – well, I know and admire a woman who might yet be a friend – and this morning I woke to find an email from her in my inbox, with a recording attached. She’s a journalist and normally an email from her means she’s writing a piece and is interested in my professional opinion on the topic. We’ve been back and forth-ing for a couple of years and, as you do, we’ve been rearranging the boundaries a little more each time.
Have you been affected by the #MeToo campaign?
I am a huge fan of finding ways to empower ourselves and act to be the change we want. With that in mind I wrote this piece as a “what we can do” response to the Weinstein and consequent #MeToo outpourings on social media – an outpouring I warmly welcome and enthusiastically embrace!
The full piece is on FamilyFriendlyHQ – click on the pic to get there:
In my last piece I asked a scary question – Is your child sexting?
And here is the follow-up piece with some suggestions on how to introduce the conversation to your child. And even though it says ‘teen’ in the title – I wrote this with younger children in mind too.
Because as you may or may not know, children as young as ten are accessing porn and are being pressured into sexting. So it’s a very real concern that has a lot pf parents worried and feeling powerless. Hopefully, this will help. And if you have any other tips from your own experience and wisdom please do share them below.
Warmly,
Now I know that thinking about your child sexting is not on your list of fun things to do for the weekend… Continue reading
I was catching up on my Facebook messages earlier and this post sent to me by a friend really caught my eye. It’s a meme from one of those humour pages on Facebook. Judging by the comments it resonates with most people and they think it’s really funny! (It is too – I mean who hasn’t waited years for a plumber?!!)
You’ve probably already heard about the new Calvin Klein advertising campaign. It’s worked, that’s for sure, in that Twitter and Facebook can’t get enough of complaining about it. And of course the pro-sexism and creepy factions can’t get enough of defending it and lashing out at people who recognise it for what it is – blatant sexist glamourisation of and dismissal of sexual harassment.
Every day, women (and men) are bombarded by messages on the TV, radio, print media including the internet telling us (and selling us) on how to change how we look. Unless you actually live under an actual rock you are bombarded by change-your-body messages maybe twenty, thirty times a day (?!!). All designed to sell you something. All disguised as “help”.
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Continue reading
Firstly let’s define sexting:
Sexting is the sending of a sexually revealing image of oneself or an explicit text using a phone, or other device that is connected to the internet. You will have heard about the celebrity photo leaks, most notably the recent Jennifer Lawrence leaks .
And last week we heard about SnapChat pictures being leaked.
Yesterday I wrote about my depressing experience in a gym changing room where a little girl sucked in her tummy when she noticed me looking at (admiring) her.
Today, I’ve decided to suggest things we can collectively challenge in our society, things that hurt us and our children. I’m a big believer in taking action!
Here’s a little taster of where I’m going with this one:
