FGM: THE FINAL CUT

Midwives wait for the next girl to be brought in, Indonesia

Earlier this week it was decided in Parliament that extra measures would be taken in order to protect girls living in the UK (permanently and habitually) from Female Genital Mutilation. If a girl is suspected to be at risk, the government now have the authority to confiscate her passport so that she cannot be taken out of the country and subject her to mandatory medical examinations so that they can check if she has been a victim of the practice. These new measures were introduced as part of the amendments to the serious crime bill; parents now have a legal duty to protect their daughters from mutilation or they'll face prosecution. An estimated 137,000 women and girls in England and Wales have been affected by FGM, most before they reach puberty; and 65,000 are at risk this year. But with so many of our girls falling victim to infection, infertility and even death as a result of it each day, why do we know so little about FGM?

TEEN QUEENS #2 - PETRA COLLINS

Sooo it's been some time since I've written for teen grrrrl - I've been busy exploring america and running around London with my friends screaming horrors lyrics. Today is Wednesday, meaning it's your fav time of the week, TEEN QUEENS. This week I'll be raving about the heavenly Petra Collins.

DEEP END: LITTLE TROUBLE GIRLS

original photo by Olaf Martens

btw this is sort of a companion piece to 50 shades of sasha grey but like an expansion on why sasha grey sucks and her effects on other girls

Now if you've read Melissa's post on porn earlier this week you probably know who Sasha Grey is, if you don't I recommend this super handy vice doc on her. And if you can't be bothered to watch that she's basically the face of sex,kink and porn positive feminism or whatever. And while that's all cool and she's like made all her own choices completely independent from anyone else but herself she still sucks a lot.

FIFTY SHADES OF SASHA GREY

sasha grey durrr

"As you read this, somewhere there is an eleven year old boy curiously typing 'porn' into Google, probably hoping to see some big boobies. Fast forward a couple of years and he is masturbating to a video of a crying woman who is being tied down, simultaneously penetrated by three men, spanked, and being called a whore. Young boys are being de-sensitised to violence and the more they consume, the more abusive, the more graphic the porn has to be to excite them" - Clara Bennathan (Violence, Teenagers, and Gonzo Porn)

Being 16 (for the past ten days) opens a lot of new doors for the British teen; I can get hired (and fired), hitched and - now that I'm allowed to buy lottery tickets - unbelievably rich. But 16 in the UK also means another thing - sex. Unlike many other countries, the legal age of consent here is 16 and now that I've made it I figured I should probably discuss the ins and outs of getting down with the sexies. Now I know it might be hard to believe but I actually found out about sex before I turned 16, thanks to the interweb...

AN OPEN LETTER FROM A TEENAGE GIRL

What's your least favourite thing about being a teenage girl? Have a think, I mean there's a lot to go through. There's the super uncomfy 'bras', the god-awful period cramps and even the constant underlying worry that you'll be next, that you'll be 'the one'. The One out of the 1 in 4 women who are victims of sexual abuse every year. The One who "should've been more careful". The One who wakes up to find that a video of themselves unconcious, half nude and raped has gone viral on social media. According to various sitcoms and cheap magazines, the life of a sixteen year old girl goes along the lines of like pink filtered web surfing, texting, lightning speed boy-talk and like the frequent sentence filler. The media prepares us for an adolescence of absent minded bliss; something I have yet to encounter and something Jada, the sixteen year old from Texas who's rape pictures went viral, will never see.

TEEN QUEENS #1 - KIM GORDON

Ask any one of my friends to give you words that remind them of me and it's highly likely you'll get 'fringe' (i'm infamous for trimming it myself), 'the horrors' and 'sonic youth'. Sonic youth are just my fucking band, okay. They are the shit. So, I decided to combine my two favourite things (cool female role models and baggy nineties alternative rock) and write my first post about Kim Gordon. 

In case you're not familiar with the work of kim gordon/thurston moore/lee ranaldo/steve shelley, Sonic Youth were an experimental rock band from NYC that played together from 1981 to 2011. They practically led the experimental rock genre, creating twelve minute long songs filled with weird, dissonant guitar DIY and politically correct lyrics. Kim Gordon was the bass guitarist and vocalist (along with now ex-husband Moore) and was basically a fucking riot girl pioneer.

DEEP END: SOFTER SOFTEST

collage made by me, original photo credit to andy warhol

Virginity is a strange concept, mainly because at this point no one really knows what it means any more. That sounds like quite a vague description but ask anyone what they think virginity means and I can bet that not everyone will have the same idea of what exactly virginity is. It's a highly personal subject to be wholly honest which means it can be interpreted in various ways but that in turn can become quiet problematic.

You see the problem with virginity at the moment is that most people aren't getting that virginity is a concept. And the definition of concept is an abstract idea. This means that virginity can actually mean a whole range of things and doesn't even have to have one sole definition. But this isn't about defining virginity as such, it's more about what that concept of virginity has become, and it's actually become an oppressive social construct really.