Books

I am pursuing my interest in the gender war - not that I like that way of describing it because to me it isn't a war. I'm currently reading Gender and the Media by Rosalind Gill which I am finding fascinating even though it is really an academic text. It's about how the way different sections of the media portray gender so it's not just about women but about men and masculinity and about what is apparently called Queer Theory - i.e. lesbians, bisexuals and trans gender people as well as homosexuals. It covers newspapers and magazines as well as books - though not apparently the Internet.

I tried to read - and failed to finish - Dick Masterson's Men are Better than Women. It is basically a misogynistic rant and the author appears to think there is absolutely nothing a woman is good at or good for. I'm all for not having censorship but if he had written the same thing about any ethnic group it would have been an incitement to racial hatred but there is no law that covers hatred of women - or men for that matter. It made me wonder whether I would have felt the same if it had been a book written by women about men and I concluded I would have done. It is just completely distasteful. It is advertised as humour but even some men reviewing it on Amazon didn't think it was funny.

Audio book

As light relief I am listening to Jane Austen's Emma - read by Jenny Agutter - very relaxing and her voice is just perfect for this book. I had forgotten how bitchy some of the dialogue is. Mrs Elton especially is just so unpleasant in such a civilised way. I'm nearly up to the famous Box Hill incident. I really like audio books and listened to two of the discs before I got up this morning.