Julie Bindel is a feminist campaigner against sexual violence. She is the host of The Lesbian Project podcast, with Kathleen Stock.
It has been a bad fortnight. Not only am I off the sauce for a few weeks to help my liver grow back, last weekend saw me preparing for a children’s birthday party. This was one I had to attend, seeing as the children are my godchildren (or whatever the secular version is). This meant
There I was flexing my defensive muscles, waiting for the tsunami of hatred to come my way once my new book hit the shelves, when I discovered that not only did I have some great reviews for Straight Expectations (which rails against the complacency and conservatism of today’s gay rights movement), but the book has an American
Last week I experienced the horror of Stansted Airport. I had paid for a fast track through security to avoid the hell of standing in a queue for an hour behind people grappling to put their haemorrhoid cream and K-Y Jelly into a see-though bag and struggling to the conveyor belt with their trousers around
My friend Cathy once paid £9 for a small bag of green beans from an organic deli because she ‘wanted to support local businesses’. But this shop, in trendy Crouch End (a leafy, north London suburb), was actually part of a chain of organic rip-off merchants, filled with over-priced fruit and vegetables half eaten by
I was at the Way with Words literary festival in Devon last week, reading from my new book. Afterwards I was led to the authors’ tent to do signings. As I approached I was delighted to see a long queue snaking around the gardens, everyone clutching my book, eagerly waiting for me to sign them.
I prefer the music and lyrics of Pharrell Williams’s Happy to Morrisey’s Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now (because I loathe the smug insincerity of Morrisey more than anything else) but – in case you haven’t noticed – I’m still a miserabilist. Being a glass-half-full-and-cracked-and-laced-with-poison type of gal, I can’t abide the influx of positivists that appear
Who could possibly choose hay fever, insect bites and heat rash over an open fire, cashmere blanket and hot chocolate laced with brandy? Although I love the bright early mornings and blue sky I can’t bear the heat and all that comes with it. Give me winter over summer any day. But to admit my
They annoy dogs, drivers and cyclists, and get in the way of pushchairs, wheelchairs and groups of people out for a stroll enjoying the weather. Who are they? Joggers, of course. And runners. Runners, however, hate joggers. ‘No, I am not a jogger,’ you will have heard, ‘I am a runner.’ The difference between joggers
In the past few weeks my poor dog Maisie has been screamed at, threatened, vilified and monstered, just as she is every summer. Why? Because as soon as the weather promises to be nice a significant number of idiots dust down their Tupperware and schlep a picnic to a public park. Why is it, then,
Growing up in the 1970s I watched as much TV as humanly possible. When we had important visitors to the house my mum would merely turn down the volume, and by the time we went to bed you could have fried an egg on the screen. Now that I am a middle-aged, middle-class professional the
I hadn’t seen a Ken Loach film in years because I got sick of his schmaltzy sexism but yesterday decided to give him another try and popped along to see his latest, Jimmy’s Hall. Set in 1930s Ireland, it tells the true-life story of self-educated, community-serving James Gralton, who enraged the Catholic church and the
I am trudging around a field in the middle nowhere with mud up to my genitals. The joining instructions for the annual HowTheLightGetsIn festival at Hay-on-Wye does not include advice about avoiding looking like a filthy puddle by the time you get to do your talk. I was booked to speak at a few sessions
There is so much to hate about massively successful TV series Masterchef that I have been glued to it for ten years. But then I always watch Nigel Farage when he pops up on TV, and even sit through that advert for Sheilas’ Wheels. But let me explain why I think Masterchef is so bloody
It was early evening and I had not yet eaten, so I took a glass of wine and a packet of Haribos into the private screening of I Am Divine: the story of Divine. I touched neither, because early on in the film I felt a little sick. I’m unsure as to whether that queasiness
My mother always had a keen ear for slang and lazy pronunciation when I was growing up. Because my siblings and I were working class and attended an absolutely dreadful school in the North-east in the 1960s and 1970s, my parents made sure we were as educated as we possibly could be in manners. My
The news is dominated by tales of ‘sexual misconduct’ by men in positions of power, and nowhere is the smell of sleaze as strong as in Westminster. Our politicians work in a building formally known as a ‘palace’ where they are often treated like kings — and, occasionally, behave like them. Even more occasionally, the
Do you remember the rather brilliant comedy sketch featuring Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse in which they played laid-back police officers in Amsterdam, bragging that they no longer have to deal with the crime of murder in the Netherlands since the Dutch legalised it? Don’t laugh too hard. In 2000 the Dutch government decided to
In the good old days of the gay liberation movement, in the 1970s and early 1980s, the excitement of challenging the orthodoxy attracted even the shy and apolitical to its cause. To those of us around at the time, it felt like a cultural insurgency: a rejection of compulsory heterosexuality and the lifestyle that accompanied
