Patriarchy

Twenty teams. One winner. Three teams relegated. Year after year, the simple formula of the English Premier League (EPL) draws in millions of football fans, both to live games and TV feeds across the globe. Entranced by the lure and lore of classic clubs like Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City and United, and Tottenham Hotspur […]

It’s 8:30 on a Friday night and I’m seated at the bar of Revoluciòn de Cuba in Milton Keynes’ egregiously titled Theatre District. A mixologist who clearly loves his job has just made me an off-the-menu fruit mocktail, its taste dominated by the sour punch of lime. I’m chatting with friends while Caribbean beats pulse […]

While the term ‘honour-based violence’ is often used in the context of the British Asian community, it includes all violence meted out for infidelity or perceived sexual slights, which all communities are prone to. (It’s worth noting that the British Parliament was urged to make adultery punishable by death as recently as 1857.) Honour-based violence […]

I recently attended a fun day at a factory celebrating its 100th anniversary. Among the events at the fun day was a small circus featuring a variety of skilled acts. The ringmaster, an Australian called Steve, performed the world’s most difficult trick involving toothbrushes. Two Kenyan brothers did an extraordinary hat juggling act. But the […]

Ca-ching! Multiplex cash registers around the world are still sizzling hot from the record-breaking box office performance of The Force Awakens, episode seven of the long-running Star Wars saga. Star Wars Inside darkened theatres, a whole new generation of children—the film is rated PG-13 in the US—thrills to J.J. Abrams’ revitalising take on the tired tropes […]

Videos from Papua New Guinea reportedly showing women accused of witchcraft being tortured have recently appeared on social media. These videos—taken by people participating in the abuses—are commonly shared among Papua New Guinean students who approve of these trials, which have long been a feature of the social landscape of this rugged island nation. Papua […]

“Makes Saturday is better with some #underboob”, runs a Facebook post from drunkenstepfatherdotcom. But for Thai actress and model @saramalakul, tagged in the said post, Saturday (or whatever day of the week it is when the Thai police arrest her) may not be better. For, in the latest Asian aversion to the depraved Western tendency […]

In an incendiary article in Foreign Policy magazine titled Why Do They Hate Us? [link no longer works] Mona Eltahawy lays bare the “pulsating heart of misogyny in the Middle East” with a catalogue of politically or culturally sanctioned sexual abuses against Arab women. From the Egyptian criminal code to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report to […]